The Rudolf Steiner Archive

As you know from the spirit of our anthroposophical work over the years, our work is not based on a striving for sensations. Instead, we want to calmly examine the facts of spiritual life that are important in our lives. It is not by speaking of what lies on the surface of daily life that we serve our age spiritually, but by gaining knowledge of life's larger connections. Our individual lives are closely connected with the great events of existence, and only when we judge our own life on the basis of the greatest phenomena of life can we assess it rightly. That is why we have tried in the last three years to deepen our fundamental views in relation to universal questions. We spent the first four years in this first seven-year cycle in the existence of the German Section of the Theosophical Society establishing our views and insights. From what you heard in the various lecture cycles, you will have realized that the lectures on the Gospels are part of the work of these last three years. Those lectures not only helped us understand the contents of the Gospels, but also showed what we can learn from them about human nature. Today, we will talk more about how the Gospels can be applied to our personal lives.

Conventional science is less and less willing to consider the Gospels historical documents about the greatest individuality ever to intervene in human evolution, Christ Jesus. The attitude toward the Gospels in the first Christian centuries and even in the Middle Ages was quite different from what it has become in modern times. These days, the Gospels are indeed seen as four mutually contradictory documents, and nothing seems more natural than to ask how they can be considered historical records when they contradict each other as much as they do in giving an account of what happened in Palestine at the beginning of our era.

Now, if people did not love to overlook the most important things, their thinking would inevitably have to lead them to the following realization. They would have to admit that it does not really take much to see that the Gospels contradict each other in our modern sense of the word. One could say that even a child can see the contradictions. But we could also add that nowadays the Gospels are available to everybody, and everybody can read them. However, before the invention of printing, they were not available to all people but were read only by a few people. These few were spiritual leaders. The content of the gospels was then taught to other people in a way they could understand. Now we have to ask if those few people who read the gospels, the spiritual leaders, were really such tremendous fools that they did not realize what every child can see these days, namely, that the gospels contradict each other.

When we investigate this matter, we soon notice that people's whole world of feeling toward the Gospels was different in the past. Today it is the critical intellect, trained in outer sensory reality, that has a field day with the Gospels. It has no problem at all finding the intellectual contradictions there; this is, after all, child's play.

How, then, did those leaders of spiritual life, who were reading the Gospels, come to terms with these contradictions? On account of the Gospels, people in ancient times had a tremendous reverence we can't even imagine today for the great Christ event. Indeed they felt that precisely because they had four Gospels they should revere and appreciate the Christ event all the more. This is because these early readers of the Gospels thought quite differently than we do today. Modern readers are no cleverer than somebody who photographs a bouquet of flowers from one angle. Then he has a picture of the bouquet and shows it around. People look at it and remember the picture, thinking they now have a clear idea of what the bouquet looked like. But then someone takes a picture of the same bouquet from another angle and gets quite a different picture. He also shows it to everyone but now people say it cannot possibly be the same bouquet because the two photographs contradict each other. And if the bouquet is photographed from all four sides, the four pictures will not be at all similar; yet they will be four pictures of the same thing.

This was how the early readers of the four Gospels felt. They believed the four Gospels are four different representations of one event, each taken from another point of view. They provide a complete picture of the event precisely because they are not alike. It is only when all four sides are combined that a complete idea of the event in Palestine emerges. People back then felt they had to look up to the Christ event with even more humility precisely because it was presented from four perspectives, for clearly this event is so great that it cannot be understood if it is presented from only one point of view. They felt they had to be grateful to have four Gospels describing this event from four points of view. However, they saw they had to understand how these four different points of view originated. Then they could develop an idea of what the individual can derive from the four Gospels.

What we call the Christ event is a tremendous, mighty event in the spiritual evolution of humanity. What place does that event in Palestine have in this evolution? We can say that everything humanity had previously experienced spiritually merged in this event in Palestine and from then on continued in one common stream. For example, the ancient Hebrew teaching, as it is recorded in the Old Testament, is one part of this common stream. It flowed in as the event in Palestine took place. Another stream proceeded from Zarathustra. This, too, entered into Christianity, which then flowed through the world as a kind of mainstream. Likewise, what we might call the oriental spiritual stream, which found its most significant expression in Gautama Buddha, also joined the one great mainstream. All these various streams are now contained in Christianity. You do not learn what Buddhism is nowadays from people who warm over the teachings of Buddha from 600 B.C. Those teachings have flowed into Christianity. Likewise, you do not learn what Zarathustrianism really is from people who want to explain its nature on the basis of ancient Persian documents. For the one who taught in ancient Persia what was recorded in these ancient documents has evolved further. He has let his contribution to the spiritual life of humanity flow into Christianity, and we will have to look for it there.

To get a clear picture of the facts, let us consider how these three streams, Buddhism, Zarathustrianism, and the ancient Judaic stream, flowed into Christianity. To understand how Zarathustrianism flowed in, we should remember that the individuality we call Zarathustra was the great teacher of the second post-Atlantean epoch who first taught among the ancient Persians and was then incarnated again and again. Through each incarnation he ascended higher and higher, and finally he appeared around 600 B.C. as a contemporary of Buddha. He appeared in the secret schools of the ancient Chaldean-Babylonian culture and was the teacher of Pythagoras, who had gone to Chaldea to perfect himself. Then this Zarathustra, who in 600 B.C. was known as Zarathas or Nazarathos, was reborn at the beginning of our era to parents called Joseph and Mary, as described in Saint Matthew's Gospel. This child of Joseph and Mary, the so-called Bethlehem parents, was one of the two Jesus children born at the beginning of our era. Thus, we see the individuality who was the bearer of Zarathustrianism—one of the significant streams mentioned above—transplanted to ancient Palestine.

This was not the only spiritual stream that was to revive and in a new form flow on in Christianity. Many different things had to come together to bring this about. For instance, Zarathustra had to be born in a body so organized that it was possible for him to develop further the faculties he had acquired through ascending from incarnation to incarnation. We must keep in mind that no matter how highly developed an individuality is, if it descends into an unsuitable body because it cannot find a suitable one, this individuality cannot express his or her soul-spiritual faculties because it lacks the necessary physical instruments. It takes a certain kind of brain to express such faculties as Zarathustra possessed. That is, he had to be born into a body that had inherited the qualities making it an appropriate instrument for such faculties. Thus, the Jesus child described in Saint Matthew's Gospel had to have a high soul-spiritual organization in his reincarnating I, which would allow him to have the powerful effect that was necessary, and he also had to have a perfect physical organization, which was inherited, for his soul to be born into. Zarathustra had to find a suitable physical brain.

This perfectly adapted physical organization was the contribution of the ancient Hebrews to Christianity. A suitable physical body for Zarathustra, a body with the most perfect imaginable physical instruments, had to be created in the Hebrew people through purely physical heredity. This had to be prepared far back in the past through many generations so that the right qualities were passed on and then inherited by the body that was born at the beginning of our era.

Let us look at how this life flowed into the mainstream of our present spiritual life. Just as we have seen the mission of Zarathustra in relation to Christianity, so we will now find out about the mission of the ancient Hebrews. Here I must tell you that the more spiritual-scientific research progresses, the more it has to admit that the Bible, not outer cultural history, is right. What cultural history digs up appears childish in comparison with what is written in the Bible and what only needs to be read properly to be understood. For spiritual science the Bible is more correct than historical research. For example, it is true that Judaism descended, in a sense, from a common forefather called Abraham or Abram. It is indeed absolutely correct that as we trace the generations back into the past, we come to a forefather who was endowed with very special powers by the spiritual world. What were these powers? To understand what special capabilities were given to Abraham, we must recall various things we have already spoken about here.

As we have said, when we look at ancient times, we find that people had other faculties of soul than we have today; these can be called a kind of dim clairvoyance. Back then, people could not look at the world in the self-confident, intellectual way we do, but they were able to perceive the spiritual around them, spiritual phenomena, facts, and beings. Since this seeing took place in a state of dimmed consciousness, it was like a living dream, but a dream that had a vital connection to reality. This ancient clairvoyance had to become weaker so people could develop our modern way of thinking and our intellectual culture.

Human evolution is a kind of education through which the various faculties are gradually developed. For example, in our present way of seeing, we perceive, let's say, a flower without seeing its astral body winding all around it. The ancients, however, still saw the flower and its astral body. We had to be trained in our modern perception that sees objects with the sharp contours of the intellect; this training required that the ancient clairvoyance vanish. Now, there is a certain law that prevails in spiritual evolution. According to this law, every capacity humanity acquires must have its beginning in one individuality. Faculties that are to become common to a large number of people must first appear in one person. Thus, the faculties having to do with reasoning not related to clairvoyance, with evaluating the world by measure, number, and weight—faculties that aim not at seeing into the spiritual world but at understanding sensory phenomena—were first implanted by the spiritual world in the individuality known as Abraham or Abram. He was chosen to be the first to develop the powers that are especially bound to the physical brain. It is not for nothing that Abraham is called the discoverer of arithmetic, that is, of the capability to quantify the world and calculate it according to measure and number. In a sense, he was the first of those in whose soul the ancient dreamy clairvoyance was extinguished and whose brain was prepared so that the faculty using the brain as instrument could become effective. Thus, the mission given to Abraham was a significant and profound one.

Now this faculty that had been given to Abraham in rudimentary form was to become more and more perfect. As you can imagine, everything in the world must develop, and the ability to perceive the world through the physical brain was no exception. This faculty was developed through being transmitted from Abraham to the succeeding generations. However, something different had to happen in this case than is usual when a mission is passed on from the older generation to the younger. After all, other missions, especially the greatest ones, were not connected to a physical instrument, the physical brain.

For example, let us look at Zarathustra. He gave his disciples a higher, more advanced clairvoyant vision than other people had. It was not bound to a physical instrument but was transmitted from teacher to pupil. The pupil then in turn became a teacher and gave this higher clairvoyant vision to his pupils, and so on. Abraham's mission, however, was not a teaching or method of clairvoyant perception but something bound to the brain. Thus, it could be transmitted to later generations only through physical inheritance. The mission given to Abraham depended on being transmitted physically from one generation to the next, that is, the perfected organization of Abraham's brain had to be inherited by his descendants generation after generation. Because Abraham's mission consisted in perfecting the physical brain, the latter became more and more perfect from generation to generation. In other words, the mission of Abraham depended on procreation for its gradual perfection in the course of physical evolution.

There was yet something else connected with this contribution of the ancient Hebrew people, and we will understand what it was when we consider people in other civilizations who had dim clairvoyance. We can ask how they received what was most important to them, what they revered most in all the world. They received it as inspirations that lit up within them. They did not have to do research as we do. Nowadays, we establish sciences by investigating the world outside us, by experimenting and deducing laws from the external facts. The ancients did not gain their knowledge in this way; rather, it lit up within them as an inspiration like a flash of lightning. They received their knowledge in their inner being; their souls had to give birth to it within them. They had to turn their gaze away from the outer world in order to allow the highest truths to blossom forth within them as inspirations.

This was to become different for those who derived their mission from Abraham. Abraham had to bring to humanity precisely the results of observation and reasoning. When people in those civilizations that were built on ancient clairvoyance looked up to the highest, they felt, “I am grateful to the God who reveals himself to me within me. I turn my gaze away from the outer world, and the Godhead is most present to me when, without looking at the outside world, I let his inspirations light up within me.”

However, the descendants of Abraham were to renounce inspirations coming from within themselves and prepare themselves to turn their gaze to the world around them. They were to observe what is revealed in air and water, in mountain and plain, and in the starry world, and to ponder how all things exist side by side. They were to connect external things with one another and to gain an all-embracing thought from this. When they condensed what they saw in the outer world into one single thought, they called what the outer world told them Yahweh or Jehovah. They were to receive the highest through a revelation that speaks through the outer world.

In contrast to what other peoples were to contribute, the mission of the Abrahamic people was to give humanity what came as revelation from outside. Therefore, the instrument of spiritual life had to be inherited so that its organization was appropriate for the revelations from outside, just as earlier the inner powers of soul had to be adapted to the revelations from within.

Let us look at what happened when the clairvoyants of ancient times yielded to revelations from within themselves. They turned their gaze away from the outer world because what was revealed there could tell them nothing about the spiritual world. They even turned their gaze away from the sun and stars and listened only to what was within. There, a great inspiration about the secrets of the world was revealed, and they had a picture of the structure of the cosmos. What these ancient clairvoyants knew about the stars and their movements, about the laws of the starry world, and about the spiritual worlds was not acquired through external observation. Rather, the ancients knew something about Mars, Saturn, and so on because they had revealed themselves within these people. The laws of the universe, which are inscribed in the stars, were also inscribed within the human soul and revealed themselves there in inspirations. Just as the laws of the universe, which rule the stars, were revealed in the soul, so the laws that rule the world were now to be revealed to the Abrahamic people through outer reasoning and deduction—that is, those laws had to be grasped through outer revelation.

For this purpose, heredity had to be guided in such a way that the brain could acquire the qualities enabling it to perceive the right relationships between things. This wonderful lawfulness was implanted into the predispositions transmitted to Abraham, predispositions that developed through the generations in such a way that their organization corresponds to the great cosmic laws. The brain had to be transmitted so that its inner capabilities and its structure developed like the laws of numbers in the stars in the universe. This is why Jehovah said to Abraham, “You will see generations descend from you that will be ordered and arranged in accordance with the numbers of the stars in the heavens.” The generations following Abraham were to be arranged in harmonious numerical relationships just as the stars in the sky are ordered in harmonious relations. In other words, these generations were to bear within them laws that are like the laws of the stars in the heavens.

In the heavens, there are twelve constellations. An image of this was to appear in the twelve tribes of descendants of Abraham so that the faculties that were implanted in rudimentary form in Abraham could be carried down through the generations. In the organic structure of this people, developing further from age to age, an image was to be created of number and measure in the heavens. In one Bible translation this is rendered as, “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore.” In truth, however, the passage should read, “Your descendants shall be grouped regularly in their blood relationships so that their arrangement is an image of the laws of the stars in the heavens.” The Bible is profound, but the way it is presented these days is colored by the modern view of the world. Thus, we read, “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore,” while a true translation would be, “Your descendants shall be so regularly grouped that, for example, twelve tribes will arise that correspond to the twelve constellations.”

Thus, the individual characteristics had to express that the Abrahamic people was to realize that their mission was a gift from outside, not something that came to life within them. They had to know that what they have to bring to the world is given to them from the outside. The Bible wonderfully expresses that Abraham's mission comes to him from outside in contrast to the old revelations that were given from within. What was this mission? Abraham's mission was to provide what flows through the blood up to the time of Christ Jesus. The entire spirituality of a certain stream had to be placed into this. It was to work as if it came as a gift from outside. Abraham had to give to the world the ancient Hebrew people. That was his mission.

If this people was to be in keeping with this mission, it had to be given to Abraham as a gift from outside. Abraham had a son, Isaac, and he was asked to sacrifice this son, as the Bible tells us. As Abraham was about to carry out the sacrifice, his son was given back to him by Jehovah. What was Abraham given there? The entire Hebrew people descended from Isaac. If Isaac had been sacrificed, it would not have come into being. Thus, the whole Hebrew people was given to Abraham as a gift. The sparing of Isaac wonderfully expresses the nature of this gift. It was Abraham's mission to father the Hebrew people, and with Isaac he received it as a gift from Jehovah.

This is how profound the stories in the Bible are; all of them correspond in their impressive details to the inner character of the progressive development of humanity. The Old Testament Hebrews gradually had to relinquish the ancient clairvoyance that continued within the other civilizations. This clairvoyance was connected to faculties coming from the spiritual world, which were designated according to their nature by expressions taken from the names for the constellations. The last faculty to be given up in exchange for the gift of the Hebrew people was connected with the sign of the Ram. Therefore, a ram was sacrificed in place of Isaac. This is the external expression of the sacrifice of the last clairvoyant power, making it possible for Abraham to receive the Hebrew people as a gift. The Hebrews were chosen to develop the faculties for observation of the outer world. Nevertheless, every new development contains also atavistic remnants of earlier things. That is why everything that was not purely in the blood and still recalled ancient clairvoyance had to be excluded for the sake of the transmission of the new outer-directed faculties. Thus, the Hebrews always had to exclude what came as an inheritance from other peoples.

We come now to a subject that is difficult to discuss because it contains a truth far removed from modern thinking. Nevertheless, it is a truth, and those who have worked for a while in anthroposophical groups may be able to accept a truth that is foreign to the conventional modern thinking. We must be aware that certain classes of people in ancient times retained their earlier faculties into later ages, especially faculties related to knowing. Clairvoyant powers lived in human souls, and people were closely connected with spiritual beings who revealed themselves in their souls. In certain people, who were the products of the decline of these ancient times, there developed ultimately a lower form of this connection to the spiritual world around them. While the actual clairvoyants were connected with the whole universe through spiritual intuition and inspiration, those who were part of the process of decline and who developed this connection to the spiritual in a phase of decadence were actually lower types of people. They were not independent because their I was undeveloped, and at the same time their clairvoyant faculties were already declining. Such individuals appeared throughout history, and in them we can see the relationship between certain physical organs and the clairvoyant organs.

Now we arrive at the truth that will sound strange to you. What we call ancient clairvoyance, this lighting up of the cosmic secrets within human souls, had to enter the soul somehow. We have to picture this as streams flowing into human beings. The ancients did not perceive them, but when these streams had occurred and lit up within them, people perceived them as their inspirations. In other words, certain streams flowed into people from their environment; in later periods these streams were transformed. In the distant past, these streams were purely spiritual, and clairvoyants could perceive them as purely astral-etheric streams. But later these purely spiritual streams dried up, as it were, and condensed to etheric-physical streams. What became of them? They developed into hair. Our hair is the result of these ancient streams. The hair on our body was formerly spiritual streams that flowed from outside into human beings. Our hair is nothing else but dried up astral-etheric streams.

Such facts are preserved only where the old truths have been retained externally in writing or through tradition. In Hebrew the characters for the words “hair” and “light” are approximately the same because people were conscious of the kinship between the light streaming in astrally and hair. In general, the greatest truths are contained in ancient Hebrew literature in the words themselves.

So, we can say human evolution is progressive. However, in those people whose ancient faculties were declining the incoming streams changed and dried up, but no new faculties appeared to take their place. Those people were connected with the new in an old way, yet unconnected because the streams were dried up. Such people were very hairy, while those who developed further were less hairy because new powers replaced those that later condensed into hair.

It will take a long time for science to arrive at these significant truths. Nevertheless, they can be found in the Bible. The Bible is far wiser than our science, which is still at the stage of a child beginning to learn his ABC's. Read the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob was the one who progressed a step further and developed the new faculty; Esau, on the other hand, remained at an earlier stage, and compared to Jacob he was a simpleton. When they were presented to their father Isaac, their mother had covered Jacob with false hair to make Isaac confuse his younger son with Esau. This shows us that the Old Testament Hebrews still had retained something that was inherited from other cultures and that had to be discarded. Esau is cast out, and what was to live on as sense-based reasoning is transmitted through Jacob. Here, what had remained in a retarded form was expelled in Esau. Similarly, the ancient clairvoyant faculties, an atavistic inheritance, appeared in Joseph, who was consequently expelled by his brothers to Egypt. Joseph had dreams through which he could interpret the world—this faculty was not to be developed in the mission of the Abrahamic people. Therefore, Joseph was cast out and had to go to Egypt.

There we see how a stream evolved in the Hebrew people that is built on the blood relationships of generations and from which the remnants of the old inheritance are gradually expelled. It was the special faculty of the ancient Hebrews to turn what is inherited down through the generations into a more and more perfect instrument so that finally a body could be produced that could be the instrument for Christ who would incarnate in it. If the Hebrews could no longer receive revelations from within, they had to receive them from without. They had to receive through external revelation even those things other peoples received through direct inspiration. That is, the Jews, led by Joseph, had to go to a people that still possessed the old inspiration. There, Joseph was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries, and the Jews attained through external means the knowledge they needed about the spiritual worlds. They even received their moral laws from the outside rather than as something lighting up within them. After they had assimilated what they had to take in from outside, they returned to Palestine.

We must now show how the Hebrews gradually developed from generation to generation so that finally the body of Jesus could be produced, and the ancient Hebrew stream flow into Christianity. Remember our discussion of the development of rudimentary characteristics in individuals. The life of an individual can be divided into periods of seven years. The first period, in which the physical body simply builds its forms, extends from birth to the change of teeth at the age of seven. The second period, in which the etheric body is active in growth and forming, continues until puberty. The forms are defined until the age of seven and the already-defined forms are then enlarged. From fourteen to twenty-one the astral body is especially predominant, and at twenty-one the true I is born and becomes independent. The life of the individual runs its course in certain periods until the birth of the human I.

In the same way the gifts of the people that was to provide a body for the most perfect I had to develop gradually. What takes place over years in an individual, however, develops in a people over generations. Each successive generation must further develop the characteristics of the preceding one. To explain the occult reasons for this would lead us too far afield, but you might recall a quite ordinary phenomenon. Just remember that certain qualities are inherited not directly, but skip a generation. For example, it is the grandson who resembles the grandfather in those characteristics. It was the same in the inheritance of qualities in successive generations of the Hebrews; every other generation was skipped.

What is one period of seven years in an individual's life corresponds in the successive generations of a people to two periods or fourteen generations. We can therefore say the Hebrews developed in twice seven or fourteen generations, which corresponds to the period from birth to the change of teeth in the individual. The following period corresponds to that between the change of teeth and puberty and again comprises twice seven generations. A third period of twice seven generations corresponds to the years between fourteen and twenty-one, when the astral body is especially prominent. It was then possible for the I to be born in the Hebrew people after three times twice seven or three times fourteen, that is, forty-two generations.

To describe the body that became Zarathustra's instrument, I had to show how the seed given to Abraham developed through thrice fourteen generations so that the I could be born, just as in the individual the I is born into the threefold corporeality after thrice seven years. The writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel shows this. He describes thrice fourteen generations—the generations from Abraham to David, from David to the Babylonian Captivity, and from the Babylonian Captivity to the birth of Jesus. Here, from the profundity of knowledge Saint Matthew's Gospel points to the mission of the Hebrews, showing how the forces were gradually developed that made it possible for the perfect I attained by Zarathustra to be born in a body produced by this people.

Looking at the destiny of the Hebrews, we find that the Babylonian Captivity occurred at the period when the individual, after the age of fourteen, prepares for life, when the hopes of youth to be realized later take root. The Babylonian Captivity was the time when the astral body of the Hebrews developed, and what gives this astral body its impulse in the final fourteen generations of the forty-two was implanted into it then. That is why the Hebrews were led into the Babylonian Captivity where, six hundred years before our era, Zarathas or Nazarathos was incarnated as the teacher in the Mystery schools of the Babylonians. There, the most prominent Hebrew leaders came in contact with Zarathas, the great teacher of that era. Zarathas joined them and became their teacher. From him the Hebrew leaders received the impulse that, in their last fourteen generations, prepared them for the birth of Jesus.

History as we know it then unfolded, and we see the writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel take into account a law in the spiritual sphere that will be recognized more and more as significant for all life. This is the law that whatever has happened earlier is repeated at a higher stage. This is expressed in science in a somewhat distorted form in the axiom that what occurs at a lower stage of the species throughout long epochs is repeated in brief in each individual. The writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel shows this in a magnificent way by saying that the I of Zarathustra was to incarnate in a body that was gradually developed within the Abrahamic people.

Abraham proceeded from Ur in Chaldea, the place where Babylonian civilization originated, through Asia Minor to Palestine. Through the dreams of Joseph, his descendants were led farther south to Egypt, and after they had received the Egyptian impulse, they returned to Canaan. This was the fate of the whole people. First, they were led through Canaan to Egypt, and then back again to Canaan. This fate of the whole people was to be repeated in brief. After all that had originated in Abraham had been developed, after the sheaths had been prepared, Zarathustra's I again took Chaldea as its point of departure. His spirit was connected with Chaldea, and in his last incarnation he was the Mystery teacher there.

What path does Zarathustra's soul take when it incarnates in Bethlehem? He had remained connected with the Magi, who had been initiated in the Chaldean Mystery schools. They remembered that they had heard him say he would reappear and that his soul, which had always been called “the golden star,” would proceed at a particular time to Bethlehem. When the time came, they followed the path his soul took, thus repeating the path of the Old Testament Hebrews. As Abraham traveled the road to Canaan, so this star, the soul of Zarathustra, also followed it. The three Magi followed the star of Zarathustra, and he led them to the place where he was born into the body from the Abrahamic people that was destined for him. Thus, the I of Zarathustra repeated in spirit the path Abraham had taken to Palestine.

The Old Testament Hebrews then had to seek the way to Egypt. They were led there by Joseph's dreams. Now the I that was born in the Jesus-child of Bethlehem was led through the dreams of another Joseph to Egypt along the same path the Abrahamic people had followed earlier. Zarathustra's I repeated in Jesus' body the ancient Hebrews' destiny, going first to Egypt and then returning to Palestine. Here, we have a recapitulation in spirit through the I of Zarathustra, reflecting the earlier fate of the Hebrews.

Based on his knowledge of the spiritual law that what appears at a higher stage is a brief repetition of what has occurred earlier, the writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel faithfully describes all this. How profoundly these Gospels record the event that inaugurated our era! That event is so great that the four evangelists found that each of them could only describe it from his own standpoint. Each of them has described this event according to his own limited powers. When we see someone from one of four sides, we get only one picture, and only by combining mutually contradictory pictures do we get an overall idea of the person. Similarly, the writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel described what he knew through initiation about the law of thrice twice seven, the law of forty-two, and about the preparation of the body for the great I of Jesus of Nazareth. Through his initiation, the writer of this gospel knew the Mysteries according to which Jesus’ body was prepared as the mission of the Hebrews. The writer of Saint Luke's Gospel described, on the basis of his initiation, how the stream of the Buddha flowed into Christianity. The other evangelists have described the event on the basis of their initiations. The event they recorded is so profound that we must be grateful to find it described from the point of view of four initiates.

Today I just wanted to mention a few details of the spiritual origin of Christianity to show how our knowledge of the world and of humanity grows when we study this greatest of human events. I wanted to give you an idea of how deeply this event should be taken and how the Gospels really are when we know how to read them.

Notes A from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede, Third Degree

The reason why it is so difficult to penetrate into the spiritual world is that our love for our personality is so great. Through the esoteric life, this love for the personality undergoes a transformation, so that a greater self-knowledge comes about. We begin to realize that we are very imperfect and very limited in our abilities. We feel that we cannot go beyond certain limits of our nature and that we have to be satisfied with ourselves as we present ourselves in this incarnation. In doing so, we release ourselves more and divert attention from ourselves more, which is an absolute necessity if we want to enter the spiritual world. We should strive to look at ourselves as we do when we enter Kamaloka after death and experience our life on earth as a memory.

In Devachan, we actually start putting together the possibilities for our next incarnation. We choose the body, the parents, the people where we want to spend the next incarnation. Yes, we even work from there on the composition of our future head, trunk and limbs, and the brain is formed in advance in such a way that it will determine whether we become a man or a woman. If we want to become a truly feminine person, then we shape our brain to be larger than the usual size; if we have a smaller brain, then we become a woman associated with masculine qualities. So we come into life with certain possibilities, and one feels that one can change little during life.

It has been said many times that we are now repeating the Egyptian-Chaldean age. The people of that time could not experience everything that today's people feel within themselves. Everything they did in their daily lives happened more through their feelings. They instinctively felt what they had to do; they would not have been able to think about it. For him, thinking was not something within himself, but he perceived what the gods were thinking for him. In the starry sky, they read like living thoughts, like characters, what was revealed to them through the constellations. The gods separated something of their own being so that people would be able to absorb and understand it. The stars in the sky were something material; hence it is said of the stars that they are dead or dying bodies of gods. There were certain times when one could feel something of the starry world, and especially when the stars were just beginning to appear, they became a meaningful script for the Egyptians. In this way, the ancient Egyptians were in touch with the spiritual world.

Today we have sunk even deeper into the material world, and the starry sky no longer has any meaning for us. Today we think a great deal. But where do all these thoughts come from, as if bubbling up from the depths of our being? They are memories of what the stars revealed to people in those ancient Egyptian times, which now arise chaotically within us and flow into our consciousness. What used to be outside of man as thinking and was reflected in the starry sky is now within us. Everything, even the most complicated invention, is a result of that ancient time when man did not yet think but performed his work on earth as the wasp does now. Wonderful buildings were also erected in those days, and what is being built now or is being delivered by science as knowledge is only a shadow of those ancient times. But everything that comes about in the material world has no significance, nothing lasting for the future, cannot be brought over to Jupiter; and the only way we can transcend this is to study spiritual science.

In ancient Persia, people did not need to be reminded of the gods by means of the starry sky; they only needed to be pointed to the spiritual behind the sun. They could still see the spiritual beings with clairvoyance, especially in the intermediate states between sleeping and waking.

The fourth period, the Greco-Latin period, stands alone; it does not merge into the fifth as in the third, but this self-contained period was such that its second part was reflected out of the first part. The people who were embodied in that second part of the fourth post-Atlantean period still had a memory from their life in the first part, so that Homer could describe himself as the previously incarnated Odysseus. In that time, which existed in itself, the souls incarnated in rapid succession and still brought their previous earthly lives with them as memories.

The second period will be reflected in the sixth and also the first in the seventh. But those people who do not now accept the Christ impulse, which alone can awaken the true memory of the spiritual existence, will experience an inner fear in the sixth period, an oppressive feeling of something that is there but which they cannot grasp. And in the seventh period, this will cause a complete destruction in the life of thought and feeling, which will manifest itself in the physical structure of the body.

Recordings B by Alice Kinkel

It is said that Christ died; then about Kepler, Odysseus, Homer, and also about the impact of first impressions in the spiritual world. Odysseus and Homer are the same individuality. He tells, in the second period of the fourth period, that is, as Homer, what he experienced as Odysseus in the first period of the second period.

During these periods, man was still in contact with the gods day and night and was surrounded by the living gods. The first period, of which we have spoken, will then reappear in the seventh period; the wisdom of the ancient Rishis.

But the masses of people who reject the spiritual life will dig the great grave for everything spiritual in this last period, and over the great field of corpses will then stride the small group that must save the spiritual life into a new culture. But the other people will be like automatons; such bodies will walk on earth; then comes the new time. Five thousand years must have passed beforehand.

A tremendous depression, that is the first impression one has in the spiritual world when one is outside of one's body. One now sees, when the body is discarded, all the weaknesses that one has and all the possibilities for changing what one has done in life and what one has not done in the body. And it becomes difficult for the person to understand that all this must now remain so until the next incarnation; because between death and a new birth we can no longer change anything, we can only recognize the mistakes.

And that is the meaning of the ritual of the third degree.

Today I would like to talk about the formation of the cosmos according to Annie Besant's “Ancient Wisdom”. I would like to show how to try to read the relevant passage. It starts on page 325, where Annie Besant attempts to describe how the transition from the lunar epoch took place, in which our ancestors underwent their development and then came to our earth. During the lunar Manvantaras, evolution produced seven classes of beings, who were called Father because they produced the beings of terrestrial evolution.

Just as we have the task during our earthly epoch to bring the mind and so on to the highest development, these beings on the moon had to bring the sentient being to the highest refined form. That is the chemical principle, so that they had developed the sentient life in the idealized way. When the seventh round had been completed, these beings entered into a state of Nirvana. That was the full image of Yahweh, the being that was their ideal. As seeds overwinter, so they overwintered through a pralaya. They thus developed soul.

There were also two other races. Solar Pitris were those who had progressed further than the ordinary lunar development. They had reached the highest level of similarity with their deity. But even during the lunar epoch there were Moon Pitris, Moon Pithakas. The more developed beings were solar Pitris. Those who had already become masters on the moon were, in terms of the development of the human mind, higher than the moon gods. The moon gods did not develop the element of reason. It would be futile for the deity to only come as far as it was in the beginning. Something must be produced that goes further than the beginning. If the Masters are looked upon as the end of our life development, they are found to be of a much higher wisdom than that which has been incarnated as Earthly Wisdom. The wisdom that has been incarnated is only sufficient to guide the Earthly development to its end. Therefore, it must be realized that the Master is, under certain circumstances, much higher than the Deva.

Yahweh only became the first person of the Trinity through an error. He is the god of earthly forms, who therefore forms the Adam out of matter. Of course, the Jews have the Father-God. But they don't talk about him. That is namely the one who was never spoken of.

People are called such lunar-age beings who advance the Pitris - Dhyanis. No one had developed the causal body on the lunar epoch. Those who had causal bodies had progressed beyond the lunar epoch into the earthly, human epoch. Plato will bring the highest development of the causal body into the next round.

The lunar Pitris had a certain intelligence, similar to that of animals. The earth is the fourth incarnation. The first incarnation is the planetoids, the second is at the position of Mars, the third at the position of the moon. The fourth incarnation of the planetary chain is the earth. The elementary essence is what I have described as world dust. Just as seeds absorb substances from the earth, the Pitris absorbed earthly materiality. [...]

Sphere a) is the archetypal world. The red sphere emerging from the archetype, developing out of the darkness. The archetypal world. The archetype of all understanding. The mind must be shaped. It must be formed into the body. There was only a solar plexus, no nerve plexus that emanated from the head. The planetary spirits are above the corresponding development. The planetary spirits are at work from the outside; they have the highest task. They determine the succession; they have a task that stands above the individual. They never enter.

The mental world is limited to one kind of sphere. Instead of the stars and constellations, the Akasha Chronicle appears. The formers are not active in the mental sphere, they are active in the realm of Budhi, so the planetary formers can only be found in the sphere of Budhi. At first, the thought is only a point, then it takes shape. The archetype of the plant and the archetype of the minerals arise. On the sphere b) the forms of lower-level formers are reproduced until they have matured into a denser matter. There are small signs and colors in it. The color is the astral matter. The sphere, which was red, has turned orange, and now it is turning yellow. Now it is filled with astral matter.

And now sphere c). On sphere c) the form reaches its densest consistency. From this point on, the nature changes. Spheres e), f), g) follow. On spheres e) and f), consciousness first manifests itself on the ethereal plane. On the blue sphere f), the beings begin to will from within, they begin to move. So the first automatic mind manifests itself. The Lunarpitris are the soul forces of form; they bring it to maturity and later inhabit it. That which they have here in black is the soul. That they think is spirit.

The earthly epoch is destined to make the marriage between spirit and soul complete. Fire is the element of the first round. It is actually fire air, ether fire. In the second round, the first-class Pitris continue their involution. In the second round, the archetypal forms of the plants come into being, which then take on their completion in the fifth round. The mineral is at the stage of highest perfection. The human brain, as a mineral substance, is only a carrier. The mineral kingdom is already dissolving. In the next round, the plant kingdom dissolves, followed by the animal kingdom. And only in the seventh round will man reach his perfection. The mineral has developed seven principles. It is the most perfect of what we have. We have three spiritual realms: the first, second and third logos; then the first elemental realm, the arupic realm; secondly the rupic realm; thirdly the astral, fourthly the physical, the mineral. The mineral is perfect in the fourth round. The plant will have reached its perfection when it has become astral. Genesis, with its seven days, indicates the seven rounds. The first four days are the first four rounds, the seventh day is the resting. The fourth day is the present round. The fifth, sixth and seventh days are yet to come.

The more you get to know Genesis, the more you will have to understand it literally. When you are ready to take the meaning of Genesis literally, then you have really understood it. Air is the element of the second round. The Pitris reach the beginning of the human stage here. The Solarpitris make their first appearance here, on sphere d), to take the lead in human evolution. The beings are always ready four rounds later. The archetypes of human forms were already given in the fourth round.

During their beautiful friendship, so significant for the newer intellectual life, Goethe and Schiller exchanged the works on which they were working, and when Schiller received parts of “Wilhelm Meister” from Goethe, he wrote to Goethe, overwhelmed by the impression of the chapter he had just received: “So much, however, is certain, the poet is the only true man, and the best philosopher is but a caricature compared to him.”

At the time, this might have sounded strange, but for us today it does not. We enter into Schiller's soul and gain insight into the truth of his words when we measure them against the significant letter that Schiller wrote to Goethe shortly after the beginning of their friendship. Both had discussed their views on nature and the world in their conversations. In the letter in question, Schiller expresses how Goethe does not gain his view through speculation, but seeks a necessary truth in the totality of the world's phenomena. Everything is contained in Goethe's intuition, and he has little cause to borrow from philosophy, which can only learn from him.

In Goethe's way of looking at the world, in his inner attitude, from which he created his works, Schiller sees something that introduces man particularly deeply into the secrets of existence. When one examines the thoughts and opinions that play between Goethe and Schiller, one sees Schiller absorbed in Goethe's imagination, in the inner truth of Goethe's imagination. At that time, Schiller was writing his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, in which he explains how man can develop into a fully human being through evolution, which is inherent in every human being as the higher human being. In Goethe's way of radiating his imagination, Schiller found something that makes a human being a complete human being; he saw in it a way to live into that which can bring a person into true harmony with the origins of things.

When you hear great minds talk about imagination like this, it seems very different from the way imagination is talked about today. Now that it is contrasted with objective observation, it is as if imagination were something arbitrary, something that leads people to put things together in any old way. (Gap in the stenography.)

If we consider that Goethe was a naturalist, so to speak, a specialist, his following statements have a double value: Man strives to fathom the secrets of nature and longs for its worthy interpreter, art. Art and beauty are manifestations of the secret laws of nature, which could never be fathomed without them. When imagination, which only plays out of feelings and impulses, mixes with other achievements of the human soul, we have to admit that it sometimes leads away from the truth. It is not for science and research. But as a forerunner of higher cognitive abilities, it shows the way to hidden connections between things that would not be seen without it. But for certain areas of life, it is absolutely necessary that what the imagination combines be substantiated by research in strict external evidence.

Accordingly, Goethe's words or Schiller's position seem to make it necessary for us to determine in Goethe how he sees something in his imagination that offers truth, in contrast to an arbitrary, disorderly game that we can call the fantastic play of ideas. When we seek to scientifically explore the laws of nature, our observations force us to our judgment. This is not the case with fantasy. Certain ideas or thoughts must be connected by inner necessity if they are to be justified. There must be something that leads them from thought to thought in a certain direction.

When we hear great minds speak of such truths, it is certainly permissible to apply to their insights the standards of the methods used in spiritual research, which lead to the truths that are often discussed. The methods are the so-called clairvoyant ones that enable messages about the facts and beings of the spiritual world. In their presentation, we will also touch on the lower forms of clairvoyance, but only briefly, because they can never lead to real goals. In contrast, we will make the method and scope of the higher clairvoyance, achieved through proper training, the subject of our consideration.

Some who only know the lower form of clairvoyance, which occurs as somnambulism, for example, consider it to be an illness. There are conditions in which the soul life of a person is filled with images from other worlds. It is a kind of sleep, perhaps of such a light degree that the layman mistakes it for complete wakefulness. When such a “clairvoyant” perceives images in this sleep-like state, they sometimes offer something strange and amazing. They can be prophetic in nature. Such a person can make statements about illnesses before they occur, or, what seems even more astonishing to the layman, they can state exactly what will help against them and so on. In such states, the person in question has another world before them. Anyone who denies this has not done any research. What is gained through such a lower form of clairvoyance is not the subject of our consideration today, but rather what is acquired on the path of trained clairvoyance.

The aspiring clairvoyant consciously takes each step, with strict self-control. The only question is this: how should we imagine the development of such a clairvoyant? If we want to define the essential, we can certainly compare it to the means of external research. In science, the researcher seeks to fathom the secrets of nature with the help of instruments. The trained clairvoyant also works with an instrument, and indeed with a very complicated instrument, without which he can investigate nothing. His instrument is precisely himself — not in his everyday state, but only when, through spiritual-scientific methods, he has transformed his cognitive faculty into a different soul constellation and created new spiritual organs for himself, when he can therefore testify from his own experiences. It cannot be that the external senses exhaust the insights. With every new organ, a new content of the environment is formed. There may be hidden worlds around us. For the trained clairvoyant, the otherwise hidden world becomes just as real as the external one. Just as after an operation for the blind, so a whole world flows towards the clairvoyant, which is his experience.

It should not be thought that this can be achieved by external means. I can, of course, only hint at how it happens. Later on I hope to be able to tell you more about how research is carried out. A person will observe most faithfully when he receives what the world of the senses has to tell him, uninfluenced by subjective effects. It is essential that man should only give nature the opportunity to express itself. The less subjective combination there is involved, the better it is. Man cannot help reflecting on the external world from which he gains his perceptions, but it is by no means the case that all his concepts, ideas and images flow into him from the external world. He draws the essential from his own inner being. This can be seen, for example, from the way in which modern thinking has come to understand the structure of the solar system. Copernicus and Galileo may well have seen the same thing that had been presented to the outer eye since time immemorial. But it was they who first established the laws. Copernicus added new combinations to the old observational material and thereby did the essential work. The same applies to orthodox Darwinism. Similar observations had been made before Darwin and Haeckel, but they approached the subject with a new state of mind. We must realize that concepts and ideas are not something that flows into us from the outside, but something that man himself must produce. When you sail out to sea, where you cannot see land, the vault of heaven seems to rest on the surface of the sea in the form of a circle. You will only understand why this is so if you are able to construct the circle around the point in the middle in your thoughts. In this way you can understand all the laws, and then reality must conform to them. Kepler would never have been able to find the path of the planets if elliptical orbits had not previously appeared in his mind.

Thus we carry our ideas to external things, which tell us: We accomplish what you have thought. - And so you come to understand that the same thing that lives in your soul underlies this external sense world as a law. Now imagine that a person tries to hold on to a thought that is constructed in his own soul. If a person succeeds in detaching himself from all external observation and directing his entire inner attention to the thought, a soul process takes place that is called concentration. The human soul must first take hold of something that lives only in the soul and hold on to it with all inner rigor. Now, of course, that is not enough, but it must be repeated over and over again. However, it is not effective to hold on to mental images that come from outside.

Now there is experience in this field, there is advice available on how to best develop the powers of the soul through concentration. There are certain core principles. It is not necessary to be convinced of their reality from the outset. The greater the lack of prejudice, the better it is. One instruction, for example, says: Fill your soul with a certain content, devote yourself solely to this soul content. You need not believe in it, but you must let it work in you, concentrate on it, and you will find that you achieve an effect in your soul through the content. It may be that external truth does not apply to the sentence; that does not matter, what matters is the working power in the soul. You will see that inner experiences arise with constant repetition.

Symbolic pictures are particularly effective. I would like to remind you of one in particular: the deeply significant symbol of the black cross with roses. Let us recall the abstract meaning of the rose cross: Goethe's “Stirb und Werde” (Die and Grow), namely, the demand that we, in developing our soul, must rise above the things of the sensual world so that it disappears around us, dies away. He whose soul remains empty is but a “gloomy guest on the dark earth”. If you succeed and are quite certain that something higher is growing out of the hidden depths of your soul, then you have become new in higher worlds. Dying in the cross, rising in the roses — that is the meaning of the symbol of the Rose Cross. In the mineral and vegetable worlds, spiritual life is everywhere to be found, and a presentiment suggests that the underlying spiritual is of physical origin. The outer world is ultimately only the physiognomy of a spiritual world. The human soul is like steel or flint; it conjures up divine-spiritual content from within the human soul's life. The important thing is to find the right symbol. Someone may say: You may well speculate as to what the Rose Cross means. The researcher is indifferent to that. When we establish a natural law in physics, science tells us something, explains it. The Rose Cross tells us nothing. — But that is not the point. It is most effective when symbols are ambiguous. One enters into a pure, inner soul activity, and by leaning on the symbol as a starting point, one concentrates in the soul on this symbol.

Let us consider what the soul consciously does; that is what matters. What works in the human being are forces that are capable of awakening what is dormant, experiences that are the only guarantee that it is an inner reality when the person comes to the feeling: Actually, the cross was only a kind of bridge. Now I have received something in my soul life, something quite different, which arises in my soul, an experience that I cannot receive through external things. At first the disciple does not know whether he has a mirage or reality before him. It depends on developing further abilities, because even what has just been described is still a detour for the clairvoyant, they are pictures. In the course of further practice, a feeling develops: it depends on what is expressed in the images. — If you press on your eye or apply an electric current to it, a glow of light may appear, determined by the inner constellation of the eye. This is roughly how it is when the images appear; they flash through the soul like spiritual lightning. When you are confronted with an object, you know that it is not produced by your eye, but that it communicates with your eye. The same thing happens in the spiritual realm. The seer now knows just as surely that he did not make the object, that the object expresses itself to him through his inner organs. In fact, the way the pictures are experienced now expresses objective facts. Just as imagination and perception are distinguished externally, so it is necessary that the seer be preserved in his healthy senses, for in hardly any other field is confusion as easily possible as in that of inner experience. Therefore, other things must go hand in hand with it.

If the observer were to practise only what has just been described, he could become a madman who believes that he can magically transform appearance into reality through his personality. It is necessary that the human being learns to renounce everything in the experience of the higher spiritual world that is connected with his desires and inclinations. Psychologically, the present human being behaves differently. He may correct the external sensory impressions, but feeling and subjective inclination are all too easily involved. An experience of spiritual reality must be preceded by the renunciation of every wish that something could be one way or another. Only when all sympathy has been eliminated can one experience objective spiritual reality.

Something else is essential. For those who are led on the way to clairvoyance in a professional, not amateurish way, who learn to see in a way that corresponds to the truth, it is of great value that they do not start the way without certain prerequisites. It is a difficult path. Therefore, one must have absorbed truths beforehand, messages from those who have already researched. It is also possible to start out with less knowledge, but then the soul world remains poor, its contents crowd together like fixed ideas. This is how those clairvoyants come about who then believe, for example, that they have united with God, describe him and so on. When such clairvoyants describe the higher worlds, their descriptions appear trivial. But to anyone who approaches the higher worlds with the tried and tested experiences of the spiritual researcher, a manifold world content appears, and everything outside appears only as a small part of the great world. The person who makes this experience his own knows that what he is experiencing is not deceiving him. He can perceive spiritually with the same certainty as in the external sense world. This is trained clairvoyance.

What must happen for these higher senses to be developed? For spiritual science, the human being is not only an external physical body, but for higher vision he also has the otherwise invisible etheric body and the astral body, the carrier of desire and suffering. You know what sleep represents for spiritual research. The physical and etheric bodies remain in bed, while the astral body and the I act on the physical body from the outside. On awakening, the astral body returns to the physical and etheric bodies, and the sense world reappears. Thus, during sleep, the astral body and I step out of the physical body. How can a person hear and see the sense world? With eyes and ears, otherwise the world would be colorless, lightless, and soundless. When the astral body leaves the physical body, it is in the spiritual world, but it has no organs. If it had such organs, it could perceive the spiritual environment as it perceives its surroundings in the physical. So if a person is to perceive the spiritual world, spiritual senses must develop in him. This happens through the methodical schooling of the soul life. When the astral body of a person who has been trained in this way, using spiritual methods, leaves the body, it is in a completely different situation than under ordinary circumstances. It is as if what was previously a chaotic mass in the astral body is now structured and forms organs. What used to be a misty, smoky mass is beautifully formed. This takes a long time. Since ancient times, this process has been called catharsis, purification or cleansing. The inner being of the human being is then cleansed of drives, desires and passions. This is the first stage.

The second stage follows on from the first. When a person returns to their physical and etheric bodies in the morning, the external organs have the stronger powers; they drown out the subtle new sounds in the internal organs. These are always present, but they are weak as long as they are drowned out by the powers of the etheric body in the sense organs. Later, the human being learns to handle the internal organs so that he can also see the spiritual perceptions alongside the sensory perceptions. This process is called enlightenment, photismos. These are very real processes that have been experienced.

Step by step, in every detail, the person applies the given method to train himself to become an instrument of perception. The schooling should thus cause him to provide his inner man with organs. Just as nature has perfected the outer man, so the path of development is continued, and what nature has begun is carried forward by the person himself. When man in this way gains insight into the spiritual, he owes this to the fact that his inner man has become ruler over the physical and etheric bodies. Man has become his own master. In the beginning he attains control over his etheric body. In the trained clairvoyant this happens in such a way that the etheric body adapts its powers to those of the astral body, it becomes elastic. If clairvoyance occurs of its own accord in pathological conditions, it is due to other causes. It falls under the same laws, but it is uncontrollable. When a person is affected in a certain way, or when he is ill, the etheric body can become partially or completely free from the physical body; it can be loosened. This is not normal. Then the person has an etheric body that is not as attached to their physical body as it is in the normal state of being, and is therefore easy to handle. In contrast, the spiritual student strengthens the astral body and thereby helps it to gain control over the etheric body. In case of illness, a part of the etheric body can be released and then handled by the astral body. Such people can sometimes gain real insights into the spiritual world because the condition is based on the same principles, but they are not reliable. The strict results of spiritual research are not achieved in this way.

The question is sometimes asked: How can a disease process produce extrasensory perception? — Health and knowledge do not have to go the same way, there is no contradiction in this, but also no recommendation. In any case, we see what is based on what leads facts of the higher world into the field of vision of man. Just as we enjoy the surrounding world, so we find in the spiritual world that which first makes the sensual world understandable to us. The communications of the spiritual researcher are based on processes that he has experienced. By telling this, he conveys facts of a world that can also be understood by the ordinary mind, while our soul world is otherwise determined by what is happening in the physical. That, for example, the image of the rose can affect me is possible because the rose lets its forces flow into me. It is the same in the spiritual realm. The trained clairvoyant experiences the spiritual outer world in his soul life. He says to himself: The sense world is determined by law through entities, whose working and rule is opening up to me. I see that a blossom is approaching me in this way, worked out of the spiritual, out of spiritual foundations. I must make sacrifices in my soul life in order to let the world of higher spiritual entities flow into me. Imagine that this world is there and at work, that man could enter into it. This world, which the clairvoyant sees, is all around him. It acts on man as a determining power, which he does not see, but which flows in on him in a subconscious way. The clairvoyant is not satisfied with just seeing the person as he is shaped on the outside.

The soul-power of imagination can also be stimulated by the spiritual worlds. There we have the real basis of imagination and an understanding of Schiller's saying, which characterizes what is created in this way. Thus we can understand Goethe's statement: “There is imagination that has an inner certainty. There is a fantastic quality that combines, and there is a fertile imagination that is inspired by the forces that the clairvoyant beholds. Schiller, in view of his circumstances, could have had no inkling of spiritual science, but he sensed and felt that Goethe was justified in ascribing to imagination the ability to fathom certain secrets. |

No matter how much external fact the intellect can supply, genuine imagination can be much truer. Man is predisposed to ascend into the worlds of the spiritual, for the corresponding abilities slumber in every human being. Every human being will achieve it, even if it takes many lives. Until then, he can be stimulated by art, in which not only the world of the senses is expressed, but the creative spirit itself, which has gone through the medium of imagination. It is the outer image of the same. Thus we may say that imagination and clairvoyance are set for man as a share in spiritual life, as a great goal, as something that some have already achieved and that is superior to all other existence. When trained, clairvoyance leads the human being into the higher worlds. Imagination is its representative in the world of the senses. That is why it has an outstanding significance among the human soul forces. Imagination is the representative of clairvoyance in the world of the senses.

Among the fundamental principles underlying Spiritual Science and to which your attention has been drawn in previous lectures, the most prominent is the idea of Reincarnation. According to this generally unpopular and little understood concept, it is maintained that human individuality is constrained to manifest again and again in a single personality, during its enfoldment in the course of repeated earth-lives. It has been previously pointed out that many and diverse questions are associated with this conception, and that such is the case will become more and more apparent as we proceed.

What deep meaning, we might ask, underlies the fact that the span of man’s life on earth is destined to recur, not once only, but many times, and that during each successive period between rebirth and death human individuality persists. When we study the evolution of mankind in the light of Spiritual Science, we find therein a progressive purport, a design of such nature that each age and each epoch presents in some fashion a different content, and we realize that human evolution is ever destined to maintain a definite upward trend. Thus do we become aware of a profound latent significance, when we know that the varied influences which act upon mankind are indeed potent and become absorbed over and over again by the Ego during the course of human development. A condition which is only possible because man, with all that comprises his being, is brought into contact not once alone, but recurrently, with the great living stream of evolution.

When we regard the whole evolutionary process as a rational progression, ever accompanied by fresh contents, there dawns a true comprehension of those Great Spiritual Beings who set the measure of progress. We are then able to realize the import and proper relation of these outstanding leaders, from whom have come new thoughts, experiences and impulses destined to further the advancement and progressive evolution of humanity.

During this Cycle of Lectures I shall speak of many such Spiritual Beings who have acted as guides to mankind, and at the same time bring forward and elucidate various matters connected with this subject. The first human individuality to claim our attention from such a point of view is Zarathustra, about whom, although there is much discussion in these days, little is known; for as far as external investigation goes his history is especially problematical, as it is shrouded in mystery and unrecorded in ancient documents.

When we consider the characteristics of such a personality as Zarathustra, whose gifts to mankind, as far as they are preserved for us, seem so strange to our present age, we at once realize how great is the dissimilarity in man’s whole being at different periods of earthly progress. Casual reflection might easily lead to the conclusion, that from the very beginning humanity has always had the same ideas concerning morality, the same general thoughts, feelings and conceptions as those which exist in our time. From previous lectures, however, and from others which will follow, you will know through the teachings of Spiritual Science that during man’s development great and important changes take place, especially as regards the life of the human soul, the nature of human apprehension, emotions and desires. Further, you will realize that man’s consciousness was very differently constituted in olden days; and that there is reason to believe that in the future yet other stages will be reached in which the conscious condition of mankind will vary considerably from its normal state to-day.

When we turn our attention to Zarathustra we find that we must look back over an extremely long period. According to certain modern researches, he is considered to be a contemporary of Buddha; the approximate date of his life being fixed at some six to six and a half centuries before the birth of Christianity. It is, however, a remarkable and interesting fact that other investigators of late years, after carefully studying all existing traditions concerning Zarathustra, have been driven to the conclusion that the personality concealed beneath the name of the ancient founder of Persian religion must have lived a great many centuries before the time of Buddha. Greek historians have stated over and over again that the period ascribed to Zarathustra should be put back very many, possibly five to six thousand years before the Trojan War¹

From the above, and from what has been learned through research in many directions, we can now feel certain that historical investigators will in the end be unwillingly forced to acknowledge that the claims of Grecian scholarship regarding the great antiquity of the Zarathustran era, as indicated by ancient tradition, are justly founded and must be accepted as authentic. Spiritual Science, in its statements and theories, fully concurs with the old Greek writers who already in olden days had fixed the period of the founder of Persian religion so far back in time. We have, therefore, good reason for maintaining that Zarathustra, living as he did thousands of years before the birth of Christianity, was doubtless confronted with a very different class of human consciousness from that which exists in our present age.

It has often been pointed out, and we will again refer to this matter, that in ancient times the development of human consciousness was such that the old ‘dream state’, or ‘clairvoyant condition’ (we will avoid misusing this term, as is so often done in these days), was in every way perfectly normal to man, so that his conceptions and ideas were such that he did not contemplate the world from that narrow perceptual point of view that is so prevalent to-day.

We can best picture the impressions made by the world upon the consciousness of the ancients, if we turn our thoughts to that last enduring remnant of the old clairvoyant state, namely, dream consciousness. We all know those fluctuating dream pictures that come to us at times, the most of which carry no meaning, and are so often merely suggestive of the outer world, although there may now and then intrude some higher level of conscious thought; dream visions, which in these days we find so difficult to interpret and to understand. We might say that our sleep consciousness runs its course pictorially in ever-changing scenes, and which are at the same time symbolical. For instance, many of us have had the experience that events connected with some impressive happening—say, a conflagration—have been after a time once more figuratively manifested to us in a dream. Let us now consider for a moment this other horizon of our sleeping state, where clings in truth that last remnant of a conscious condition belonging to a by-gone age in the grey and distant past.

The consciousness of the ancients was such that in reality they lived in a life of imagery. The visions which came to them were not merely indefinite unrelated creations, for they had reference to an actual outer world. In olden days primitive man was capable of intermediate conscious states, between those which prevail when we sleep and when we are awake; then it was that he lived in the presence of the Spirit-World, and the Spirit-World entered into his being. To-day this door is closed, but in those ancient times such was not the case. It was while in this intermediate condition that man became aware of visions which resembled to some extent dream pictures, but were definite in their manifestation of a spirit life and of spiritual achievement existing beyond the perceptual world. Although in the Zarathustran era, such visions had already become somewhat confused and vague, there was nevertheless still close contact with the world of spirit, therefore these ancients could say from direct observation and experience: ‘In the same way as I realize this outer physical world and this perceptual life, even so do I know that there exists another conscious condition belonging to a different region—a spiritual realm—related to that which is material, and where I do of a verity experience and observe the workings of the Divine Spirit.’

It is a fundamental principle underlying the evolution of the human race, that in no case can any one quality be developed except at the expense of some other attribute; hence it came about that from epoch to epoch, the faculty through which in olden times mankind obtained a clear inner vision of the spiritual realms became ever less and less pronounced. Our present day exact methods of thought, our power of expression, our logic, all that we regard as the most important driving forces of modern culture did not exist in the remote past. Such faculties have been acquired during later periods at the expense of the old clairvoyant consciousness, and it is now for mankind to regain and cultivate this long-lost power. Then in the future of human evolution a time will come when in addition to man’s purely physical consciousness, his intellectuality and his logic, he will again approach the condition of the ancient seer.

We must differentiate between the upward and downward tendency of human consciousness. Evolution has a deeper meaning when we realize that in the beginning man was entirely of a spiritual realm, where he lived in the soul, and that when he descended into the physical world it was ordained that he should gradually relinquish his clairvoyant power in order that he might acquire qualities born of the existing purely physical conditions; such as intellectuality and logic. When this stage in his development has run its course he will again return to the world of spirit.
Regarding the circumstances connected with these curious clairvoyant states and experiences of the ancients we have no historical record. Zarathustra lived in that same remote age, and was one of those great leading personalities who gave immense stimulus to the advancement of culture and civilization. Such guiding personalities must ever draw from the creative source that which we may term Illumination, whereby they are initiated into the higher mysteries of the world, irrespective of the standard of normal human consciousness existing in their time. Other such outstanding personalities of whom mention will be made during these lectures are: Hermes, Buddha and Moses.

Zarathustra lived at least 8000 years before the present era, and those glorious gifts to civilization which emanated from his illumined spirit have been reflected in the great cultural progress of humanity. His influence has long ago been clearly recognized, and can be detected even to this day, by all who take note of the mysterious currents underlying the whole of human evolution.

We now realize that Zarathustra belonged essentially to those Great Ones in whose souls lived a measure of the spiritual elements of truth, wisdom and perception, far surpassing the customary standard of human consciousness of their period. His mission was to proclaim to his fellow men, in that part of the world later known as the Persian Empire, those grand truths which emanated from the superperceptual regions—a world utterly beyond the apprehension of man’s normal consciousness in that dim and distant age.

If we would understand the true significance of Zarathustra’s teachings, we must remember that it was his task to present to a certain section of humanity, in an intelligible manner, a particular world aspect; while on the other hand, various movements which had been in progress among the peoples of other regions, had given a different trend to the whole sphere of man’s culture.

The personality of Zarathustra is of special interest because he lived in a territory, contiguous upon its South side to a country which was inhabited by Indian tribes, upon whom spiritual blessings flowed in quite a different manner. When we look forward from those by-gone times we find upon the selfsame soil where dwelt these ancient Indian tribes, the peoples among whom at a later period arose the poets of the Vedas. To the North, where spread the great Brahman Doctrine, is situated that region which was permeated throughout by the powerful and compelling teachings of Zarathustra. But that which he gave to the world was in many respects fundamentally different from the teachings of the great Ieaders among the Indians, whose words have lived on in the moving poetry of the Vedas, in their profound philosophy, and has reached yet an echo in that final glorious blaze of light—The Revelation of the Buddha.

We can understand the difference between that which was born of the flow of thought from Zarathustra and the teachings of the ancient Indians, when we bear in mind that we may approach the region of the superperceptual world from two sides. Already in other lectures we have spoken of the path which man must traverse in order that he may enter into the spirit realms. There are two possible methods by which he may raise the energy of his soul, and the capacities latent in his inner being, so much above their normal level that he can pass out of this perceptual into the superperceptual world. The one method is that by which man enters or retires, more and more deeply into his soul, and thus merges himself in his very essence. The other leads behind the veil which is spread around us by our material state. Man can enter the superperceptual region by both these methods.

When we experience within our very being a deepening of all values of our spiritual feelings, conceptions and ideas—in short, of our soul impulses; when in fact we creep more and more into ourselves, so that our spiritual powers become ever stronger and stronger; then can we, as it were, in some mystic way merge ourselves within and pass through all that we hold of the physical world to our actual spirit essence—the soul Ego—which Ego continues from incarnation to incarnation, and is not perishable but everlasting. When we have overcome our lusts and passions and all those experiences of the soul which are ours because we are of the body in a physical world, then can our true being pierce the surrounding veil and for ever enter the world of spirit.

On the other hand, if we develop those powers which will enable us not merely to be sensible of the outer world with its colours, tone sensations, heat and cold; and if we so strengthen our spiritual forces that we shall be aware of that which lies beyond the colours, the sound, the heat and the cold, and all those other earthly sense-perceptions which hang as a mist about us—then will the enhanced powers of our soul take us behind the enshrouding cloud and into that boundless superperceptual region which is without confine and stretches ever into the infinite.

There is one way leading to the Spirit-World which we may term the ‘Mystical Method’, and another which is properly called ‘The Method of "Spiritual Science"‘. All great spiritual personalities have followed these paths, in order to attain to those truths and revelations which it was their mission to impress upon humanity in the form of cultural progress. In primeval times man’s development was of such nature, that great revelations could only come to the people of any particular race, through one of these methods alone. But from that period on, in which the Greeks lived, that is, at the dawn of the Christian era, these two separate thought currents commingled, and became more and more one single cultural stream. When we now speak of entering the higher spheres, we understand, that he who would penetrate into the superperceptual region, develops both qualities of power in his soul. The forces necessary to the ‘Mystical Method’ are evolved within the inner being, and those essential to the course of ‘Spiritual Science’, are strengthened while man is yet conscious of the outer world. There is to-day no longer any definite separation of these two paths, as since about the time of that epoch marked by the life of the Grecian race, these two currents have run their course together—in the one, revelation comes about through a mystic merging of man’s consciousness within his very being—in the other, the veil is torn asunder by the enhanced power of his spiritual forces, and man’s awareness stretches outward into the great cosmos.

In olden times before the Grecian or Christian era, these two possible methods were in operation separately among different peoples, and we find them working in close proximity, but in divers ways, in the Indian culture which found expression among the Vedas, on the one hand, and that of Zarathustra, further North, on the other. All that we look upon with such wonder in the ancient Indian culture, and which later found expression through Buddha, was achieved by inner contemplation, and turning away from the outer world—through causing the eyes to become less sensitive to physical colours, the ears to physical sounds, and bringing about a deadening of the sense organs in general to the perceptual veil—so that the inner soul forces might be strengthened:—Thus did man press on to Brahma, there to feel himself unified with that which ever works and weaves as the Inner Spirit of the Universe,—In this way originated the teachings of the Holy Rishis, which live on in the poetry of the Vedas, in the Vedantic philosophy, and in Buddhism.

The Doctrine of Zarathustra was, however, entirely based upon the other method above-mentioned. He taught his disciples the secret of strengthening their powers of apprehension and cognition, in order that they might pass beyond the mists surrounding the outer perceptual world. He did not say to his followers, as did the Indian teachers: ‘Turn away from the colours, and from the sounds, and from all outer sense-impressions, and seek the path to the spiritual realms only through the merging of yourselves within your very souls’,—but he spoke thus:—‘Strengthen your powers of perception, in order that you may look around upon all things, the plants, the animals, that which lives in the air and in the water, upon the mountains, and in the depths of the valleys, and cast your eyes upon the world.’ We know that the disciples of the Indian mystics regarded this earth upon which we live as merely maya (illusion), and turned from it in order to attain to Brahma. On the other hand, Zarathustra counselled his followers not to draw away from the material world, but to pass outward and beyond it, so that they might say:—‘Whenever we experience perceptual manifestations in the outer physical world, we realize that therein lie concealed and beyond our sense perceptions the workings and achievements of the spirit.’

It is remarkable that the two paths should have been thus united in early Grecian times, and just because in that period true spiritual knowledge was more profound than in our day (which we are inclined to regard as so amazingly enlightened!) all things found expression in imagery, and the images gave rise to Mythology. Thus do we find these two thought currents commingled and fostered in the Grecian culture—The Mystical tending inward, and the Zarathustran outward into the great cosmos.

That such was the case becomes evident from the fact, that one of these paths was named after Dionysos, that mysterious god who was reached when man merged himself ever deeper and deeper within his inner being, there to find a questionable sub-human element, as yet unknown, and from which he first developed into man. It was this unclean and half-animal residue to which was given the name of Dionysos. On the other hand, all that comes to us when we regard our physical sense perceptions from a purely spiritual standpoint, was termed Apollo. Thus we find in ancient Greece, in the Apollo current of thought, the teaching of Zarathustra; and in the Dionysos current, the doctrine of mystical contemplation, side by side in contrast. In Greece they united and operated conjointly—the Zarathustran and the Mystical Methods, those methods which had been at their highest level, working separately, in the days of the ancient Indians.

Here we might say, that already in olden times these two thought currents were destined to commingle in the coming Grecian cults of Apollo and Dionysos, and thenceforward they would continue as one; so that in our present cultural period, when we raise ourselves to a certain spiritual understanding, we find them still unified and enduring.

It is very remarkable, and one of the many riddles which present themselves to the thinking mind, that Nietzsche in his first work, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, gave evidence of a vague suspicion that in the Grecian creeds of Dionysos and Apollo, the Mystical current meets the stream of scientific spiritual thought.

A further matter of interest lies in the fact, that Zarathustra actually taught his disciples to recognize in detail, the hidden workings of the Spirit in all material things, and from this starting-point the whole of his gifts to culture emanated. He emphasized that it was not sufficient for man merely to say:—‘There before us spreads a material world, behind which ever works and weaves the Divine Spirit.’ Such a statement might appear at first sight full of significance, it leads, however, only to a general pantheistic outlook, and means nothing more, than that some vague nebulous spirit underlies all material phenomena. Zarathustra, like all other great personalities of the past who were exalted and had direct contact with the Spirit-World, did not present these matters to his followers and the people in any such indefinite and abstract manner; he pointed out, that in the same way as individual physical happenings vary in import, so is it with the latent spiritual factor, it being sometimes of greater and sometimes of less moment. He further stated that the sun, regarded purely from the physical point of view as a member of the stellar system, is the source of all earthly phenomena, life, and activity, while concealed within is the centre of spiritual existence in so far as we are immediately concerned.

These things Zarathustra impressed earnestly and clearly upon his disciples, and, using simple words, we can picture him as addressing them somewhat as follows:—‘When you regard man, you must realize that he does not only consist of a material body—such is but an outer expression of the spirit which is within. Even as the physical covering is a manifestation in condensed and crystallized form of the true spiritual man, so is the sun which appears to us as a light-giving mass when considered as such, merely the external manifestation of an inner spiritual sun.’ In the same way as we term the human spirit element as distinguished from the physical, The Aura, to use an ancient expression, so do we call the all-embracing hidden spiritual part of the sun, The Great Aura (Aura Mazda); in contradistinction to man’s spiritual component, which is sometimes called the Little Aura.

Now, Zarathustra named all that lies hidden within and beyond man’s mere apprehension of the physical sun—‘Aura Mazda’ or ‘Ahura Mazdao’—and considered this element as important to our spiritual experiences and conditions, as is the physical sun to the wellbeing of plants and animals, and all that lives upon the face of the earth. There behind the physical sun lies the Spiritual Master—The Creator—‘Ahura Mazdao’ or ‘Aura Mazda’, and from ‘Ahura Mazdao’ came the name, ‘Ormuzd’, or, ‘The Spirit of Light’.

While the Indians mystically searched their inner being, in order to attain to Brahma—The Eternal—who shines outward as a point of light from within man’s essence, Zarathustra urged his disciples to turn their eyes upon the great periphery of existence, and pointed out that there within the body of the sun, dwells the great Solar Spirit—Ahura Mazdao—‘The Spirit of Light’. He taught them that, just in the same way as when man strives to raise his spirit to perfection, so must he ever battle against his lower passions and desires, against the delusive images suggested by possible deception and falsehood, and all those antagonistic influences within, which continually oppose his spiritual impulses. Thus must ‘Ahura Mazdao’ face the opposition of ‘The Spirit of Darkness’—‘Angra Mainyus’ or ‘Ahriman’.

We can now realize how the great Zarathustran conception could be evolved from experiences born of sensations and sense contents. Through these, Zarathustra could advance his disciples to a point where he could make clear to them that:—Within man there is a ‘Perfecting Principle’, which tells him that whatever may be his present condition this principle will work persistently within, and through it he may raise himself ever higher and higher; but at the same time there also operate impulses and inclinations, deceit and falsehood, all tending towards imperfection. This Perfecting Principle must therefore be developed and expanded, in order that the world may be destined to attain to wiser and more advanced states of perfection; it is the ‘Principle of Ahura Mazdao’, and is assailed throughout the whole world by Ahriman—‘The Spirit of Darkness’—who through imperfection and evil brings shadows into the light. By following the method above outlined, Zarathustra’s disciples were enabled to realize and to feel, that in truth each individual man is an image of the outer universe.

We must not seek the true significance of such teaching in theories, concepts and ideas; but in active vivid consciousness and in the sensations impressed when through it man realizes that he is so related to the universe that he can say:—‘As I stand here, I am a small world, and as such I am a replica of the Great Cosmos.’ Just as we have within us a principle of perfection, and another which is antagonistic, so throughout the universe is Ormuzd opposed by Ahriman. In these teachings the whole cosmos is represented as typical of a widespread human being; the forces of greatest virtue are termed Ahura Mazdao, while against these operate the powers of Angra Mainyus.

When a man realizes that he is in direct contact with the workings of the universe and the attendant physical phenomena, but can only apprehend the perceptual, then as he begins to gain spiritual experience, a feeling of awe may come over him (especially if he is materialistic in thought) when he learns through Spectrum Analysis, that the same matter which exists upon the earth is found in the most distant stars. It is the same with Zarathustranism, when man feels that his spiritual part is merged in that of the whole cosmos, and that he has indeed emanated from its great spirit. Herein lies the true significance of such a doctrine, which was not merely abstract in character, but on the contrary wholly concrete.

In this present age it is most difficult to make people understand (even when they have a certain sense for the spiritual that lies behind the perceptual) that it is necessary to a true and spiritually scientific view of the cosmos, that there be more than one central unity of spirit-power. But even as we distinguish between the separate forces in Nature, such as Heat, Light, and Chemical forces, so in the world of spirit must we recognize not merely one centralized power (whose existence is not denied) but we must differentiate between it and certain subservient uplifting forces, whose spheres of action are more circumscribed than are those of the all-embracing spirit. Thus it was that Zarathustra made a distinction between the omnipotent Ormuzd, and those spirit beings by whom he was served.

Before we turn to a consideration of these subservient spirit entities, we must draw attention to the fact that the Zarathustran theory was not a mere Dualism—a simple doctrine of two worlds—the worlds of Ormuzd and of Ahriman; but that it maintained that underlying this double flux of cosmic influence, is a definite unity—a single power—which gave birth to both The Realm of Light (Ormuzd) and to The Realm of Darkness (Ahriman). It is not easy to gain a right understanding of Zarathustra’s conception concerning this ‘Unity’ underlying Ormuzd and Ahriman. With reference to this point the Greek authors state that the ancient Persians worshipped, and regarded as a ‘Living Unity’, that which lay beyond the light, and which Zarathustra termed ‘Zervane Akarene’. How can we gain a comprehension of what Zarathustra in his teachings meant by ‘Zervane Akarene’ or ‘Zaruana Akarana’?

Let us consider for a moment the course of evolution; this we must regard as of such nature, that all beings tend towards greater and greater perfection. So that if we look into the future, we see more and more of the radiance from the Light-Realms of Ormuzd; but if we turn our eyes upon the past, we realize how the powers of Ahriman, which oppose Ormuzd, are circumstanced; and we then know that with the passing of time, these must be conquered and for ever ended.

We will now picture to ourselves that the path into the future and that into the past each lead to the same point; a conception which present-day man finds most difficult to grasp. Let us take as an example a circle; if we pass along the circumference from the lowest point in one direction, we come to the opposite point above, if, however, we go along the other side, we come to the same point. When we consider a larger circle, then the circumference is flatter, and we must traverse a greater distance in each case. We will now suppose a circle to expand ever more and more, then ultimately the path on either side becomes a straight line, and is infinite. But just before the circle becomes infinite we would reach the same point whether we went by the one path or the other. Why, then, should not the same happen when the circumference is so flattened that the periphery becomes a straight line? In this case the point at infinity on the one must be identical with that on the other, and therefore we must be able to travel to it, from the lowest point in one sense (say, positive), and return as if coming from the opposite (negative) direction. This means that when our conception is infinite, we have a straight line extending without limit on either side, but which is in reality the circumference of an infinite circle.

The abstraction given above lies at the basis of Zarathustra’s conception of what he termed Zaruana Akarana. Here, with regard to time, we look in one direction into the future, in the other into the past, and when we consider an infinite period time closes in upon itself as in a circle. This self-contained and infinite time circle is symbolically represented as a serpent eternally biting its own tail, and into it is woven upon the one side, The Power of Light, shedding upon us continually a greater and greater radiance; and upon the other, The Power of Darkness, becoming ever more and more profound. When we are midway, then is the light (Ormuzd) intermingled with the shadows (Ahriman); all is interwoven in the self-embracing infinite Flux of Time, ‘Zaruana Akarana’.

There is something more about this ancient cosmic conception; its basic ideas were treated seriously, there were no mere vague statements such as:—‘Without and remote from all that is material in this perceptual world, beyond those things which affect our eyes, our ears, and sense organs in general—abides The Spirit’. But it was definitely asserted, that in everything which could be seen and apprehended, therein could be discerned something of the nature of spirit signs, or a manifestation of the Spirit-World.

If we take a sheet of paper upon which are inscribed alphabetical characters, these may be combined into words; but we must first have learnt how to read. Without this ability no one could read about Zarathustra; for they would merely perceive certain characters which could only be followed with the eyes. Actual reading can only take place after it is clearly understood how to connect such characters with that which is within the soul. Now, Zarathustra discerned a written sign underlying all that was in the perceptual world, particularly in the manner in which the stars are grouped in the universe. Just as we recognize written characters upon paper, so did Zarathustra descry in the starry firmament something similar to letters, conveying a message from the Spirit-World. Hence, arose an art of penetrating into the World of Spirit, and of deciphering the signs indicated by the arrangement of the stars, and of finding a method of reading and construing from their movements and order, in what manner and way those spiritual beings that are without, inscribe the facts concerning their activities in space.

Zarathustra and his disciples had a paramount interest in these matters. To them it was a most important sign that Ahura Mazdao, in order to accomplish his creations and to reveal his message to the world, should (in the language of Modern Astronomy) ‘describe a circular path’. This fact was regarded as a sign traced in the heavens indicating in what manner Ahura Mazdao worked, and the relation which his activities bore to the universe as a whole. It is important that Zarathustra was able to point out that the constellations of the Zodiac, taken together as forming a closed curve in space, should symbolize a continuous and also retroactive time flux; and we can realize that there is indeed a most profound significance underlying the statement, that one branch of this time-curve stretches outward into the future, while the other leads backward into the remote past. Zaruana Akarana is that bright band of stars, later known as the Zodiac, that self-contained time-line ever traversed by Ormuzd, The Spirit of Light. In other words, the passage of the sun across the constellations of the Zodiac is an expression of the activity of Ormuzd; while the Zodiac itself is the symbol of Zaruana Akarana. In reality, Zaruana Akarana and The Zodiac are identical terms, just in the same way as are Ormuzd and Ahura Mazdao.

There are two special circumstances to be considered in this connection. First, when the passage of the sun through the Zodiac takes place while it is light, as in the summer. At such time the solar radiance falls full upon the earth, bringing with it the power emanating from those spiritual forces ever flowing outward from the Light-Realms of Ormuzd. That part of the Zodiac traversed by Ahura Mazdao in the daytime, or during the summer, denotes the manner in which He works and weaves unhindered by Ahriman. On the other hand, those Zodiacal constellations which lie far beneath the horizon—dark regions through which we might picture the passage of Angra Mainyus—are symbolical of the Kingdom of The Shadows.

We have stated that Zarathustra regarded Ormuzd as associated with the bright sections of the Zodiac (Zaruana Akarana), while he looked upon Ahriman as connected with the gloom. In what way do the activities of Ormuzd and Ahriman find expression in our material world? In order to understand this point we must realize that the effect of the solar rays is different in the morning from that at noon; varying as the sun ascends from Aries to Taurus, and again during its descent toward the horizon. The influence exerted is not the same in winter as in summer, and differs with every passing sign of the Zodiac. Zarathustra regarded the changing aspects of the sun in connection with the Zodiacal constellations as symbolical of the activities of Ormuzd proceeding from different directions, and from which came those spiritual beings that are both His servants and His sons, and who are ready at all times to execute His commands. These are the ‘Amschaspands’ or ‘Ameschas Pentas’, subservient entities, to each of whom is allotted some special duty.

While Ormuzd controls all active functions in the Light-Realms, the Amschaspands undertake that specific work which finds expression in the transmission of the sun’s light when in Aries, Taurus, Cancer, etc. But the true vital activity of Ormuzd is manifested in the full radiance of the sun, shining throughout all bright signs of the Zodiac, from Aries to Libra or Scorpio. Following the Zarathustran line of thought, we might say:—‘It is as though the evil powers of Ahriman came through the earth from those dark regions where abide his servants—his own Amschaspands—who are opposed to the good genii standing by the side of Ormuzd.’ Zarathustra actually distinguished between twelve different subservient spirit entities; six or seven on the side of Ormuzd, and five or six on that of Ahriman. These are regarded as typical of good or evil genii (Amaschas Pentas—lower spirits), according as to whether their influence comes with the sun’s rays from the bright Signs of the Zodiac, or emanates from those which are in gloom.

Goethe had the subservient spirits of Ormuzd in mind when he wrote the following words at the beginning of Faust in the ‘Prologue of Heaven’:

‘But ye, God’s sons in love and duty,
Enjoy the rich, the ever-living Beauty!
Creative Power, that works eternal schemes,
Clasp you in bonds of love, relaxing never,
And what in wavering apparition gleams
Fix in its place with thoughts that stand for ever!’²

(Trans: BAYARD TAYLOR)

From the above it is apparent that the conception which Goethe formed of ‘God’s sons’ as the servants of the Highest Divine Power, is similar to Zarathustra’s concept concerning the Amschaspands, of which, as already stated, he recognized twelve different kinds. Again, subservient to these Amschaspand entities, according to Zarathustranism, are yet lower orders of spiritual powers or forces, among which some twenty-eight separate types are usually distinguished. These are the so-called ‘Izarads’ or ‘Izeds’; the number of different classes into which they may be divided is, however, indeterminate, being variously estimated from twenty-four up to twenty-eight, and even as high as thirty-one. There is yet a third division of spiritual powers or forces, termed by Zarathustra ‘Ferruhars’ or ‘Frawaschars’. According to our conceptions, the Ferruhars have the least influence of any upon our tendencies and dispositions in the material world, and are regarded as that spiritual element which permeates the great macrocosm, and underlies all perceptual physical activity. They are the reality behind everything of which we are conscious and appears to us as merely external and material.

While we picture the Amschaspands as controlling the twelve forces which are at work during all physical effects engendered by the action of light, and the Izeds, as governing those which influence the animal kingdom, so do we consider the Ferruhars, in addition to possessing the quality above-mentioned, as spiritual entities having under their guidance the ‘Group-Souls’ of animals.

Thus did Zarathustra discern a specialized realm beyond this perceptual universe—a perfectly organized superperceptual world—and his concept was absolutely definite, and in no sense of the nature of an abstraction. Behind Ormuzd and Ahriman he pictured Zaruana Akarana, further the good and bad Amschaspands, below these the Izeds, and lastly the Ferruhars.

Man, as he is fashioned, is a replica in miniature of the great universe, and therefore all forces operative in the cosmos must be present in some manner within his being. Just as the benevolent powers of Ormuzd are expressed during that inner struggle to attain to perfection, and the unclean forces of Ahriman are in evidence while there is gloom and temptation, so do we find also the trace of other spiritual powers—those of the lower genii.

I will now make a definite statement, which when viewed from the standpoint of modern cosmic ideas, is liable to awaken bitter feeling, namely:—I assert that before long it will be discovered and recognized by external science, that a superperceptual element underlies all physical phenomena, and that latent spirit exists in everything that comes within the limits of our sense perceptions. Further, that science will be driven to admit, that in the physical structure of man there is much that is a counterpart of those forces which permeate and spread life throughout the whole universe, and which flow into the body, there to become condensed.

Let us go back to the Zarathustran Doctrine, which in many ways is similar to that of Spiritual Science. According to its concepts, Ormuzd and Ahriman are regarded as influencing mankind from without. Ormuzd being the source of inward impulses toward perfection, while Ahriman is ever in opposition. The Amschaspands also exert spiritual activity, if we consider their forces as being, so to speak, condensed in man, then it should be possible to trace and recognize their action to the point of physical expression.

In Zarathustra’s time, anatomy, as we understand it to-day, did not exist. Zarathustra and his disciples, by means of their spiritual insight, actually saw the cosmic streams to which reference has been made; they appeared to them in the form of twelve cosmic outpourings, flooding in upon man, there to maintain activity. Thus it came about that the human head was regarded by Zarathustra’s followers as a symbol of the inflowing of the seven good, and five evil, Amschaspands. Within man we have a continuance of the Amschaspand flux; how, then, is this flux to be recognized at this much later period? The anatomist has discovered that there are twelve principal pairs of brain nerves, which pass from the brain into the body. These are the physical counterparts, as it were, of the twelve condensed Amschaspand out-flowings, namely, twelve pairs of nerves of extreme potency in bringing about either the highest perfection, or the greatest evil. Here, then, we find reappearing in our present age, but transformed into material terms, that concept which had come to Zarathustra from the Spirit-World, and which he preached to his disciples.

There is, however, in all this a point of controversy. It is so easy for anyone in our day to maintain that the statements of Spiritual Science become wholly fantastical when it is alleged that Zarathustra, speaking of twelve Amschaspands, had in mind something connected with the twelve pairs of nerves which are in the human head! But the time will come when the world will gain yet another item of knowledge, for it will be discovered in what manner, and form the spirit, which permeates and lives throughout the universe, continues active in man.

The old Zarathustranism has arisen once again in our modern physiology. For in the same way as the twenty-eight to thirty-one Izeds are the servants of the Amschaspands, so are the twenty-eight spinal nerves subordinate to those of the brain. Again, the Izeds, who are present in the outer universe as a spirit flux, enter the human body, and their sphere of action is in those nerves which stimulate the lower soul-life of man; in these nerves they crystallize, as it were, and assume a condensed form. And where the Ized-flux, as such, entirely ceases, and the term ‘nerve’ can no longer be applied, is the actual centre where our personality receives its crowning touch. Further, those of our thoughts which rise slightly above mere cognition and simple brain action, are typical of the Frawaschars or Ferruhars.

Our present period is connected in a remarkable manner with the Doctrine of Zarathustra. Through his teachings and by means of his spiritual archetypes, Zarathustra was enabled to enlighten his people regarding those regions which spread beyond the perceptual world, while his imagery was ever as a flowing contact with that which lies hidden behind the veil. With reference to this great doctrine it is most significant that after it had acted as an inspiration to humanity for a long period, always tending to promote greater and greater effort in various directions of cultural progress—only to lose its influence from time to time—there should arise once more, in our day, a marked tendency toward a mystical current of thought.

It was the same with the Greeks after the two methods of approach to the Spirit-World had commingled, for they also, at times, showed a preference for either the mystical or the Spiritual Scientific thought current. It is owing to the modern predominating interest in mysticism that many people find themselves drawn towards the Indian Spiritual Science, or Method of Contemplation. Hence it is, that the most essential and deeply significant aspects of Zarathustranism—in fact, its very essence—hardly appear in the spiritual life of our time, although there is abundant evidence of the nature of Zarathustra’s concepts and his methods of thought. But all that lies at the very base, and is absolutely vital to his doctrine, is in a sense lost to our age.

When once we realize that in Zarathustranism is contained the spiritual prototype of so many things which we have rediscovered in the domain of physical research (numerous examples of which might be quoted), and of others that will be rediscovered later, then will a fundamental chord in our culture give place to one which will be founded upon the old Zarathustran teachings. It is remarkable that the profound attention which Zarathustranism paid to macrocosmic phenomena caused the world to recede, as it were, or appear of less moment; while in nearly all other beliefs with which a flood of mystical culture is associated, the outer world plays an important part, this is also the case in our materialism.

That great fundamental concept concerning two opposing basic qualities, and which recurs again and again throughout the religious doctrines of the world, we regard in the following manner; we consider it as symbolized by the antithesis of the sexes—the male and the female—so that in the old religious systems which were founded upon mysticism, the Gods and Goddesses were in reality, antithetical symbols of two opposing currents which flow throughout the universe. It is amazing that the teachings of Zarathustra should rise above these conceptions, and picture the origin of spiritual activity in so different a manner, portraying the good, as the resplendent, and the evil as the shadows.

Hence, the chaste beauty of Zarathustranism and its nobility, which transcends all those petty ideas which play so ugly a part in our time, when any endeavour is made to deepen man’s conception of spiritual life. Where the Greek writers state that the Supreme Deity in order to create Ormuzd, must also create Ahriman, so that He should obtain an antithesis; then, since Ahriman opposed Ormuzd, we have an example of how one primordial force is conceived as set against another. This same idea finds expression in the Hebrew, where evil comes upon the world through the woman—Eve—but we find nothing in Zarathustranism concerning ills that the world suffered through the antithesis of the sexes.

All those hateful ideas which are disseminated throughout our daily literature, pervading our very thoughts and feelings, distorting the true significance of the phenomena of disease and health, while failing to comprehend the intrinsic facts of life, will disappear, when that wholly different concept, the antithesis exhibited by Ormuzd and Ahriman—a conception so lofty and so powerful when compared with present-day paltry notions—is once more voiced in the words of Zarathustra, and enters to permeate and influence our modern culture. In this world, all things pursue their appointed course, and nothing can hinder the ultimate triumph of Zarathustran conceptions, which will, little by little, insinuate themselves into the life of the people.

When we look upon Zarathustra in this way, we realize that he was indeed a Spirit, who in bygone times brought potent impulses to bear upon human culture. That such was the case becomes evident, if we but follow the course of subsequent events which took place in Asia Minor, and later among the people of Assyria and Babylonia, on down to the Egyptian period, and further even to the time of the spreading of Christianity. Everywhere we find in different lines of thought something which may be traced back, and shown to have its origin in that Great Light, which Zarathustra set blazing for humanity.

We can now understand how it was that a certain Greek writer (who wished to emphasize the fact that some among the Leaders had always given their people instruction in matters that they would only require at a later period in their culture) should have stated, that while Pythagoras had obtained all the knowledge that he could from the Egyptians concerning the methods of Geometry, from the Phænicians concerning Arithmetic, and from the Chaldeans concerning Astronomy—he was forced to turn to the successors of Zarathustra, in order to learn the secret teachings regarding the relation of humanity to the Spirit-World, and to obtain a true understanding of the proper conduct of life. The writer who made these statements regarding Pythagoras further asserts that the Zarathustran method for the conduct of life leads us beyond antitheses, and that all antitheses can be considered as culminating in the one great contrast of Good and Evil, which opposing condition can be finally absorbed, only by the purging away of all evil, falsehood and deceit. For instance, the worst enemy of Ormuzd is regarded as that one which bears the name of Calumny, and Calumny is one of the outstanding characteristics of Ahriman. The same writer states that Pythagoras failed to find the purest and most ideal ethical practice, namely, the one directed toward the moral purification of man, among either the Egyptians, the Phænicians, or the Chaldeans; and that he had again to turn to Zarathustra’s successors, in order to acquire that lofty conception of the universe which leads mankind to the earnest belief that through self-purification alone may evil be overcome. Thus did the great nobility and oneness of Zarathustra’s teachings become recognized among the ancients.

We would here mention that the statements made in this lecture are supported in every case by independent historical research; and we should carefully weigh all assertions coming from the representatives of other sciences, and judge for ourselves, whether or no they are in accord with our fundamental concepts. For instance, take the case of Plutarch, when he said that in the sense of Zarathustranism, the essence of Light as it affects the earth, is regarded as of supreme loveliness, and that its spiritual counterpart is Truth. Here is a definite statement made by an ancient historian, which is in complete agreement with all that has been said. We shall also find as we proceed that many historical events become clear and understandable when we take into consideration the various factors to which we have drawn attention.

Let us now go back to the ancient Vedantic conception; this was based upon the mystical merging of man within his very being; but before he can attain to the inner Light of Brahma, he must meet with, and pass through, those passions and desires which are induced by wild semi-human impulses that are within him, and which are opposed to that mystical withdrawal within the spirit-soul, and into the eternal inner being. The Indian came to the conclusion that this could only be accomplished, if pending his mystic merging in Brahma, he could successfully eliminate all that we experience in the perceptual world which stimulates sensuous desires, and allures through colours and through sounds. Just so long as these play a part during our meditations, so long do we keep within us, an enemy opposed to our mystical attainment to perfection.

The Indian teacher said:—‘Put away from yourselves all that can enter the soul through the powers that are external; merge yourselves solely within your very being—descend to the Devas—and when you have vanquished the lower Devas, then will you find yourselves within the kingdom of the Deva of Brahma; but shun the realm of the Asuras, whence come those malignant ones who would thrust themselves upon you from the outer world of Maya; from all such you must turn away, whatsoever may befall.’

Zarathustra, on the other hand, spoke to his disciples after this fashion:—‘Those who follow the leaders among the people of the South can make no advance along the path which they have chosen, because of the different order of their search after those things which are of the Spirit; in such manner can no nation make headway. The call is not alone to mystic contemplation and to dreaming, but to live in a world which provides freely of all that is needful—man’s mission lies with the art of agriculture, and the promotion of civilization. You must not regard all things as merely Maya, but you must penetrate that veil of colours, and of sounds, which is spread around you; and avoid everything that may be of the nature of the Devas, and which because of your inner egoism, would hold you in its grasp. The region wherein abide the lower Asuras must be traversed, through this you must force your way, even up to the highest; but since your being has been especially organized and adapted to this intent, you must ever shun the dark realms of the Devas.’

In India, the teaching of the Rishis was otherwise, for they said to their followers:—‘Your beings are not suitably organized to seek that which lies within the Kingdom of the Asuras—therefore avoid this region and descend to that of the Devas.’

Such was the difference between the Indian and Persian culture. The Indian peoples were taught that they must shun the Asuras and regard them as evil spirits; this was because through the method of their culture they were only aware of the lower Asuras; the Persians, on the other hand, who found only low types of Devas in the Devas regions were adjured by their leaders thus:—‘Enter the Kingdom of the Asuras, for you are so constituted that you may attain even unto the highest of them.’

There lay within the impulse that Zarathustra gave to mankind a great fervour, which found expression when he said:—‘I have a gift to bestow upon humanity which shall endure and live throughout the ages, and will smooth the upward path, overcoming all false doctrines, which are but obstacles diverting man from his struggle toward the attainment of perfection.’ Thus did Zarathustra feel himself to be the servant of Ahura Mazdao, and as such he experienced personally the opposition of Ahriman, over whose principles his teachings should enable mankind to achieve a sweeping victory. This conviction he expressed in impressive and beautiful words, to which reference is found in ancient documents. These, however, were necessarily inscribed at a later date; but what Spiritual Science tells us concerning Zarathustra and his pronouncements comes from other sources. Throughout all his telling adjurations there rings forth the inner impulse of his mission, and we feel the power of that great passion which overcame him, when, as the opponent of Ahriman and the Principle of Darkness, he said:—‘I will speak! draw nigh and listen unto me, ye that come with longing from afar, and ye from near at hand—mark my words!—No more shall he, the Evil One, this false teacher, conquer the Spirit of Good. Too long hath his vile breath bemingled human voice and human speech. But now I will denounce him in the words which The Highest—The First One—has put into my mouth, the words which Ahura Mazdao has spoken. To him who will not harken unto my words, and who will not heed that which I say unto you—to him will come evil—and that, ere ever the world hath ended its cycles.’

Thus spoke Zarathustra, and we can but feel that he had something to impart to humanity, which would leave its impress throughout all later cultural periods. Those among us who have understanding and will but pay attention to that which persists in our time, even if only dimly apparent, who will note with spiritual discernment the tenor of our culture, can even yet, after thousands of years, recognize the echo of the Zarathustran teachings. Hence it is that we number Zarathustra among Great Leaders such as Hermes, Buddha, Moses, and others, about whom we shall have much to say in subsequent lectures. The spiritual gifts possessed by these Great Ones, and the position which they occupied among men, are indicated, and fitly expressed in the following words:—

‘God sends us Spirits that shine as stars,
From the spheres of eternal love.
May we behold that glorious light,
They reflect from the realms above.’³

• 1. the date of which has been placed at about 1200 B.C.
• 2. Doch ihr, die echten Göttersöhne,
  Erfreut euch der lebendig reichen Schöne!
  Das Werdende, das ewig wirkt und lebt,
  Umfass euch mit der Liebe holden Schranken,
  Und was in schwankender Erscheinung schwebt,
  Befestiget mit dauernden Gedanken.
• 3. Es leuchten gleich Sternen
  Am Himmel des ewigen Seins
  Die gottgesandten Geister.
  Gelingen möge es alien Menschenseelen,
  Im Reiche des Erdenseins
  Zu schauen ihrer Flammen Licht!

My dear friends! Today, we will first continue our reflections from yesterday and then see how we can further develop the matters touched on yesterday. Yesterday, I wanted to talk to you about the inner side of community building in the religious field. I would now like to move on to the second area, which you yourselves have identified as particularly important to you: to the cult.

It is absolutely true that without the inauguration of a certain cult with its so-called symbolism, the religious deepening of humanity cannot be brought about, and I would like to explain this to you with a few words, because one can only work within a field if one understands the conditions and forces involved.

You see, in more recent times, the whole process of human development in the civilized part of humanity has basically taken on an intellectual form, a form that makes mere concepts in their abstractness the content of consciousness. And such a thorough feeling has arisen from it that one can only gain real insights in this abstractness, that this feeling has passed over to actually only appreciate the abstract content of consciousness in a certain way. Now one can understand that this abstract content of consciousness had to be appreciated at a time when the assertion of the individual emerging from the whole human being was increasingly emerging as a human demand. After all, abstract content of consciousness presents us with something completely universal. One has the feeling that through abstract world comprehension one can bring all understanding of the world into the individual human being.

Where should our concepts reach? They should initially suffice to comment on that which presents itself to us in the sense world as perception, in the most diverse ways, and to find laws there, the so-called laws of nature or historical laws. But then this intellectual content also sets about forming hypotheses about that which is not perceived, partly such hypotheses that extend to that which is not perceptible in time and space, partly to that which is not perceptible for reasons of principle. The beginning and end of the earth, for example, is not perceptible in time and space. From the intellectualism of modern times we have received hypotheses about the origin of the earth and about the end of the earth arising out of physical and geological connections. We have hypotheses regarding the spatial, let us say, about the inner nature of the sun or other world bodies, such as the world nebula, as they are called, and so on. One usually does not consider that when one says that the sun is so or so constituted, that this is nothing more than a hypothesis, and one even believes that one has a physical result in this hypothesis. The physicists would be very astonished if they could perceive, could see, what really is at that point in space, where they put a kind of very thin gas out into space as a solar ball. In reality, there is not something comparable to our gases, not even to our ether, at that point; it is not just empty space at that point, but something that we describe as negative in comparison to the intensity of our empty space; it is a recess in space at the point where we speak of the sun. There is not only space emptied of matter, there is not even the intensity of the void that we usually call space in the abstract. There is less present at the point than space, and in this way we move from the physical to the spiritual. One can only speak of the sun in a spiritual sense.

I only mention this today to draw your attention to the way in which intellectualism, which is perfectly justified in the field of natural science, has taken hold of all fields in recent times. It then extends to the imperceptible, to the world of molecules and atoms, which, in principle, cannot be perceived for the simple reason that heat, light and sound are said to arise from the movements of these molecular and atomic structures, so that nothing perceptible is introduced into the atomic world. Something is hypothetically introduced that is supposed to be present.

Thus, intellectualism has spread over the temporal and spatial of the external world of space and time and over the unperceivable in principle; but it has also spread over everything that is historical and over everything that is religiously historical. If you follow the entire literature and scholarship of the Gospels, and indeed all of 19th-century biblical scholarship, it will become clear how this entire biblical scholarship gradually moved from a completely different kind of soul content to an intellectualistic grasp of the Bible and the Gospels. It can be said that by the end of the 19th century, so much intellectualism had been applied to the Gospel that there was actually nothing left of the Gospel even for theologians. It must be characteristic that this intellectualism has taken on those forms that it shows, for example, in the theologian Schmiedel, where we see that the personality of Christ is no longer inferred from what is in the Gospels, but a number of passages in the Gospel are sought where something detrimental is said about Christ Jesus, where, for example, it is said that he did not care about his mother and siblings. And from this small number of defamations, which are compiled about the personality of Christ Jesus in the Gospels, it is concluded that they must refer to something true, because one would not, if one wanted to invent something, have added such a defamation, but one would have invented hymns of praise.

Now you can see the depths to which the intellectual approach has sunk in its attempts to get at the Gospels at all. I mention this because it has emerged from the theological side, for what has been achieved by the non-theological side in terms of extravagance has, after all, reached the point of the monstrous. You only need to remember that there is extensive psychiatric research on the Gospels today, that we have literary works today that clearly express the view that one cannot understand what the Gospels actually contain and that describe the messages [in the Gospels] as abnormal things, as one would view things from a psychiatric point of view. It is even the case that the origin of Christianity is assumed to be a mental illness of Christ Jesus, which has had an infectious effect on all Christians. Thus, the origin of Christianity is derived from the mental illness of Christ Jesus, which he fell prey to.

It would be an understatement to say that any description is too strong when one wants to point out that the entire so-called intellectual life of the present, which moves in intellectualisms, must actually lead to the undermining of precisely the Christian-religious element, and with the greatest speed. The fact that this fact is not sufficiently examined is one of the great damages of our time. If one were to look at it, one would come to the conclusion that, above all, those who take religious life seriously must ensure that this religious life is wrested from intellectualism.

I do not want to dwell critically on the fact that in the last four centuries, through Protestantism itself, a great deal has been done to achieve this intellectualism in the religious sphere as well. More and more, perhaps unconsciously, one finds a pagan element in the cult and the symbolism. Now, what has prevented us from adhering more to the cult and to the symbolism does not lie in the feeling that we have something pagan in it, but rather it lies in the fact that we no longer have any sense for those forms of expression that lie in the cult and in the symbolism. Consider this: through intellectual comprehension of the world, man is led to believe that he can make sense of the whole world with the content of his soul, that he can bring everything into intellectual concepts. Therefore, the intellectual man feels in possession of the whole world when he has his intellectual concepts. It is precisely because man deceives himself into believing that he has grasped the entire content of the world, it is precisely through this universal element that man feels intellectually satisfied and believes that he no longer needs any other element to comprehend the world, to feel the world. It is understandable that intellectualism has been able to gain the upper hand in our time, because man believes that he can understand the world in intellectual terms. But because man is satisfied in this way, in that he seemingly gets the whole world into his ego, he loses the social connection with the rest of the world, and that which should live as a social being is atomized, atomized right down to the individual. We have already seen this in the youth movement in modern times, that simply by the prevalence of the intellectualist, people fall apart into individual atoms, so that everyone wants only their own religious belief. They are absorbed in saying that religion is a thing that cannot go beyond the human skin. That is what indicates the reasons why the universalistic intellectual life in particular fragments and atomizes religious life, so that the particular form of modern science must undermine religious life. And the strongest force for the destruction of religious life is actually present in those university and other educational theologians who have adopted the scientific thinking of our time in order to understand the religious, the facts of religion as such.

Not as much is being done to undermine religious life through the laity of today as through modern theology; and it is a pity that such efforts have not made more progress than those of Overbeck, which were set out in the extraordinarily significant book “On the Christianity of Our Present-Day Theology,” in which the case is made that the modern theologian is unchristian. Overbeck, the Basel church historian, who was a friend of Nietzsche and on whom he had a very deep influence, wanted to prove that modern theology is the most un-Christian, has completely thrown off Christianity and contributes most to the undermining of Christianity because it has become purely intellectualistic through the universal suggestion that intellectualism has exerted on the modern educated world. Until you realize that modern theology, as it is taught at the modern faculties, leads to the undermining of Christianity, you will not get the right impulse into your endeavors.

Now, what is at stake is that we learn again to progress to a form of experiencing the world other than the purely intellectual one, and the other form consists precisely in the pictorial, in that which can pass over into cult and into symbolism.

You see, when we set up the Waldorf School here – I would like to show you things from the perspective of the here and now – when we set up the Waldorf School here, the first thing that had to be done was to act more in line with the spirit of the times and to make it clear to the world that our aim in setting up this Waldorf School was not to found a school of world view. It is the worst slander against the Waldorf School when people outside say, and this is already being repeated as far away as America, that it exists to teach anthroposophy to children. That is not its purpose! It is not a school of world-view. What can be gained through anthroposophy can be incorporated into pedagogy and didactics. Only that which can be fathomed by anthroposophy should lie in the pedagogical treatment itself. Therefore, from the very beginning — because it cannot be any different as long as you have not yet worked — we have had a Catholic priest teach religious education to Catholic children and a Protestant priest teach religious education to Protestant children. Now, the Waldorf School was initially created for the children of the Waldorf-Astoria workers; they were the foundation. Many children of Social Democrats and dissidents came along. The question arose: should these children grow up without any religion? There was a certain kind of concern. But there were also parents who did not want their children to grow up without religion. So we were obliged to give some kind of anthroposophical religious education, just as we had Catholic instruction given to Catholic children and Protestant instruction given to Protestant children. And most children found it useful, at least I think so, isn't that right?

Ernst Uehli: By far the majority.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, by far the most children. On the other hand, there are a relatively large number of children who are taught Catholic religion, and the children taught Protestant religion are in the minority. Well, we couldn't help it, we certainly didn't want to take business away from the Protestant religion teacher, and at first we even thought it was unfortunate for our school when the Protestant religion teacher once said that he couldn't really make any progress because the children were gradually moving over to the Anthroposophical religion lessons. It was up to him to keep them. We couldn't help it if they ran over. We don't have anthroposophy as just any subject in the school curriculum, but just as the Catholic and Protestant religious education is brought in from outside. We have tried to get a methodology for it and so on. All this is, of course, in its infancy, because things that work with reality cannot be created overnight; it is something that can only come from practical, extensive experience, but it must be started with that. From an unbiased observation, the need arose – and this is important for our consideration yesterday – to add a cult to religious instruction, namely our Sunday activity, which two of your colleagues observed last Sunday. Of course, this is also something that is just beginning. So far, we have a ritual for such a Sunday activity — every Sunday — and a ritual for children who have reached the age of fourteen, the completion of elementary school, and who in this ritual first experience what is thought to be experienced through confirmation. But you have to look at it all as being at the beginning, but the necessity to move on to a kind of cult, to a kind of working through ritual, that has arisen entirely from the matter. And if you follow your matter with real inner participation, you will have no choice but to say to yourself: cult, ritual, symbolism must be added.

Because, you see, it is the case that all religious life must disappear if it cannot represent reality, if religious life is only supposed to be something that can be spoken of in such a way that everything can be expressed in intellectualized thought. Then this religious life cannot be cultivated at all. Something must be able to happen through religious experience; there must be processes that, as such, as processes, have not only an eternal significance [for man], but are something in world events.

And here we must admit that everything we intellectually grasp in our soul, everything that modern science recognizes as a scientific achievement – not what we form in our soul as living concepts , we gradually acquire during our childhood, and this then transforms itself in the course of our lifetime – but the intellectualized content, even if it extends to the most complex natural laws, is mortal with us.

Do not take this sentence lightly. That which is the intellectual content of the soul is, at best, only an image of the spiritual; it is mortal like the human body. For it is precisely the intellectual that is completely mediated by the body. All soul experiences that are mediated intellectually arise after birth and perish at death. That which is eternal in the soul comes only after the intellectual. So, no abstract concept goes through the gate of death with us, but only what we have experienced in life beyond abstract concepts. That is why many souls from the present population have to lead a long 'sleeping life' after death, because they were only involved in intellectuality and because intellectuality fades away after death and it takes a long time for a person to acquire a super-intellectual content, which he can then process for the next life on earth. It is a fact that much of the present life is lost to man in his overall development through intellectual life.

This is regarded as foolishness by our contemporaries today, at least by our theologians; but it is a proven spiritual-scientific result. The fact that our entire education today is based only on intellectualism, the fact that we are so proud of this intellectualism, means that we deprive the human being of immortal content to the same extent that we instill this mortal intellectualism into him from the most diverse points of view. You must take this to heart.

My dear friends, it is absolutely right to statistically count how many of a population are non-literate, how many can read and write in relatively early childhood. But if education is built only on intellectualism, as it is in today's schools, then this means killing the soul-spiritual and not awakening the soul-spiritual. This is how it must be for the earth. But on the other hand, a counterweight must also be provided. That is why we do not have an intellectual approach to teaching reading and writing in our pedagogy and didactics at the Waldorf School. Here, too, the child learns from the pictorial, from the artistic, precisely in order not to kill everything immortal. It learns by being given the letter out of the pictorial, the abstract out of the concrete pictorial, which is our letter today, in order at least not to take from the child what is still a real soul life. This pedagogy and didactics of the Waldorf school always emerges from the anthroposophical understanding of the whole of human life. And the strong hatred that is shown towards it shows how much people feel that here, once again, something is being addressed that has been extinguished in the outside world over the last three to four centuries – albeit to the detriment of the life of modern humanity. We should hardly be surprised that religious life has been dampened, because we have a science that simply can no longer talk about the immortal. And the further culture that has emerged shows even more clearly that science has become nothing but a bauble; a froth of thinking has shown itself in the general culture of humanity.

We have a word for “immortal” in the newer languages; but man has only done so out of his egoism, out of his desire to be eternal. We have a word for “immortal,” but we have no word for “to be unborn.” We do not have a word for “to be unborn” that can be used in everyday speech. But we would have to have that, as well as the word “immortal.” We see only one end of life when we speak of the eternal in the soul. And with this goes hand in hand the atomization, the fragmentation, the weaving of the intellectual into the individual life, where today it is even sought in the subconscious, as in the James School in America and so on. If we are serious about cultivating the religious, we must confront this with the power of the image, of action, of ritual in the best sense of the word. Just consider – I will show it with an example – what this ritual as such means.

I certainly do not want to do the opposite of the iconoclasts who wanted to eradicate images and the cultic stormers who wanted to eradicate cult, and I do not want to express the opposite of that here today. But I would like to use an example to show what the cult means.

Take the Mass offering. The Mass offering cannot, strictly speaking, be considered a Roman Catholic institution. It must not be, because the Mass offering goes back to ancient, pre-Christian times. It can be said, however, that the Mass offering was shrouded in the mysteries of the ancient cultic rites in the mysteries, that it has been greatly transformed over time; but as we see the Mass offering today in Roman Catholicism, it is just something that has been partially transformed from the Egyptian and Near Eastern mysteries.

And what was it then? What was that ritual that eventually developed into the Mass Sacrifice, the meaning of which only the most initiated Catholics really know, while the broad masses of Catholics have some idea of it? What was it that underlies the Mass Sacrifice?

It was an outward image of what is called initiation or ordination. It is absolutely so. If one follows the Mass sacrifice and disregards what has been added to the basic components – partly quite rightly, partly through misunderstanding – if one looks only at these basic components, then the Mass sacrifice is an outward pictorial expression of initiation or ordination.

The four parts are: the reading of the Gospel, the offertory, the consecration – transubstantiation – and communion. The essence of the Mass lies in these four parts.

What does the reading of the Gospels mean? It means the resounding, the revelation of the word into the community. This is clearly based on the awareness that the word only has real content when it is not discovered by man through intellectual work, but when man experiences the inspired word that comes from the spiritual world. Without this consciousness, without the awareness that the supersensible world is embodied in the word, the reading of the Gospel would not be a real reading. Thus, in the first part of the Mass Sacrifice we have the divinely glorified proclamation of the teaching. What the supersensible world gives to man in the sensual world, we have in the Gospel reading.

What the human being can give of himself to the supersensible world, what is attempted of him in the offering of the sacrifice, so to speak as a counter-gift, the real prayer, that comes before us figuratively in the offertory. The offertory, the sacrifice, symbolically expresses what a person can feel in his soul as a sense of consecration to the supersensible. This is said through the symbolic action of the offertory, in a sense in response to the gospel reading. This is the second part.

The third part, transubstantiation, the change, consists in the fact that it is symbolically represented that consciousness which develops in man when he feels the divine substance within him, when he feels the divine substance in his own soul. For the Christian, this transformation is nothing other than the expression of the Pauline saying: It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. He does not just sacrifice himself, he becomes aware that the supersensible lives in himself. This is what is meant by the image of transubstantiation. And it is always a beautiful and significant side effect of transubstantiation that, while the Holy Sacrament is being raised up over the chalice, the faithful are actually supposed to close their eyes and turn inward, so that they experience transubstantiation not through outward looking but through their innermost consciousness. It is also significant that the Holy Sacrament actually consists of the bread and the bread holder, which has a moon-shaped form, so that in the Sacrament Symbol, which envelops the Holy Sacrament (see drawing $.100), sun and moon are present in the picture, which clearly indicates that in the times when the sacrifice of the Mass was being developed in its original form, there was an awareness of the connection between Christ and the sun and between Yahweh and the moon. What the world has received in Christianity and what has been built on the lunar religion of Yahweh is fully expressed in this placement of the host on the lunar form, and it is truly a symbol of the confluence of the mortal in man with the immortal.

image

And the fourth part of the Mass is Communion, which is meant to express nothing other than this: after the human being has grown together with the supersensible, he allows his entire earthly being to be poured into union with the supersensible. This fourth part pictorially represents what the person to be initiated, the one to be initiated, also had to experience in the older and newer mysteries.

The first main section consists of learning to transform what one receives as knowledge and feeling for the world into an abstract form, so that one can say with inner honesty: In the beginning was the Word, and through the Word everything came into being. — I ask you, my dear friends, to consider how far modern Christianity has strayed from an understanding of the Gospel of John. Consider that today, in general, there is only the awareness that the Creator of the world is found in the Father God. God the Father, who is also confused with the Jewish god Yahweh, is regarded as the Creator God, whereas the Gospel says: “In the beginning was the Word, and all things came into being through Him; and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. — That which we have within us as something created is the creative, the word in the truest sense of the word, and one should actually have the idea of the Father God that he subsists in everything, and in the Son of God he has given the world that which signifies the creative of the world.

I only want to say this because the understanding of the person to be initiated has to advance to the fact that the word that is proclaimed sounds entirely from the supersensible, while our word that is currently in vogue sounds from the intellectual, from the transitory. That is the first act of initiation: that the content of the soul is formed into a word as a supersensible revelation, as a real event, an event that emerges from the Angelion All, from the sum of the spiritual world. What is raised up out of the spiritual world and takes on the form of a word in us is the first act of the sacrifice of the Mass. In the conscious speaking through itself one should become aware that this is a proclamation of the supersensible, and that it does not represent a proclamation of the sense world.

The second thing is that through sacrifice man enters into a real relationship with the supersensible. If we can find a way to hint at the sacrifice, that is, to hint at the counter-gift to the divine, then we actually have before us in all its many-sidedness what must surely be there. You see, in modern times Catholicism has allowed itself to become obscured. Modern Catholicism actually wants to receive everything from the Godhead and give nothing back to the Godhead.

Now, we did not want to go against the prejudice of today's world too much in our ritual [the Sunday service at the Waldorf School]. But we were obliged, simply in the question of the one who performs the sacrificial act, to address the child, asking whether it wants to strive for the Spirit of God, and in response: “Yes, I will seek Him, I will seek for the Spirit of God,” to give at least a hint in words of the real relationship. Something should happen, something should be said, when each child is asked whether he wants to seek the Spirit of God. We had to at least hint at the Lord's Supper [in our Sunday service], and the rest just has to come later.

Now, you see, in the third act, it becomes clear that the supernatural is not merely present, but that the human soul can connect with it. And in the fourth act of the Mass, during Communion, the fourth act of initiation is then depicted, which consists of man completely permeating himself with the supersensible, so that he feels himself to be only an external sign, an external world symbol, that he makes the word true: Man is the image of the Godhead.

The awareness of these connections has been so lost that today one can only point them out with certain difficulties. One can therefore say that in the sacrifice of the Mass – which of course cannot simply be taken over from Catholicism, but must be developed in the sense of our present time – one has before one's eyes that which so often presents the profoundly significant spiritual path of the human being in the image. And so it should be that we accompany important stages in life with such ritualistic acts, such as the transition from school to life, but that we also work with adults through ritual, that is, through the image, because the image works not only on the intellectual, but on the whole human being. If I am to grasp something intellectually, then I grasp it entirely within myself. When I stand before a picture, it goes much deeper into the layers of my humanity than the intellectual aspect does. And when what happens through the ritual enters into the members of a community, they experience something supersensible together, and what is atomized by the teaching material is synthesized in the act of worship. What is reproduced in the teaching material, if you put it in abstract terms, from intellectual forms of ideas, which leads to fragmentation, to analysis in the individual, is reunited, synthesized, when one tries to speak in images.

You see, in modern times only one community has actually learned to speak in images, but that is a community that abuses this symbolic, imaginatively inspired speech, namely Jesuitism. And you see, I must keep pointing out how, in Jesuit educational institutions, but precisely to the detriment of humanity, it is taught quite methodically to always summarize something when you have taught something.

I will give you a very vivid example, because I myself once experienced the tremendous significance, theoretically I might say, since I wanted to see for myself how the thing works. It was about a famous Jesuit pulpit speaker – it was ten years ago – he preached about the institution of Easter confession. He wanted to reduce to absurdity what the opponents of Catholicism say: that Easter confession, the demand for Easter confession, is a papal and not a supernatural institution. He wanted to reduce this to absurdity before his faithful. I also looked at it. If Klinckowström, that was the name of the Jesuit preacher, had wanted to teach his former audience in the abstract form in which one otherwise preaches, in this way, as one is accustomed to preaching in the Protestant area, he would not have achieved anything; he would not have achieved the slightest thing. He did it in the following way, by saying in summary: “Yes, my dear Christians, you see, when we say that the Pope has instituted the Easter confession, it is really as if we were saying the following: Imagine a cannon, and at the cannon stands the gunner; the gunner holds the fuse in his hand, and then the officer stands a little further away. What happens? The gunner holds the fuse, the officer gives the command; and at the moment when the officer gives the command, when the word of command sounds, the gunner pulls the fuse, the gun goes off, and through the powder in the gun, everything that happens when the gun is fired is produced.” “This whole congregation was like one soul when this image was vividly presented to them.” ‘Now,’ he continued, ”imagine that someone came and said that the gunner did everything, that everything actually happened through him. But he only pulled the fuse at the officer's command, and the officer could not have ordered the shot without the powder. Those who say that the Pope introduced the Easter confession go much further, because that would be the same as if someone claimed that the gunner, if he only pulls the fuse at the officer's command, invented the powder! It is just as wrong when people say that the Pope introduced the Easter confession. He was only present, he, as the representative of the transcendental world, pulled the fuse."

Everything was imbued with the truth of what Father Klinckowström proclaimed. It is not that this was due to the particularly happy disposition of this priest. You can see for yourselves that it is part of the Jesuit method of teaching to express everything in such images. There is even a work of literature today – why it has been published? I have not checked it; the Catholic Church will also have some kind of intention there, because it always has intentions -, in which it is described in detail how to move the index finger when speaking this or that word, how to move the hand when saying this or that. There are even drawings for this; there is a methodical work down to the smallest detail, a work that is incorporated into the picture. And one must just say: Why is no attempt made to develop that which is developed for the harm of people on the one hand, also for the good of people? Because it can also be developed for the good, it can and must also be developed for the good, the strength must come from the earnest spiritual intentions to transform the abstract into the pictorial, and this pictorial must be experienced with the community. In this way the soul of the community is uplifted, and only in this way is the sense of community truly established. The cultic service is what holds the community together; without it the community can only disintegrate. To oppose this on theoretical grounds is to start from prejudice.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that a friend of our cause, an Old Catholic pastor – as such, he reads the mass in German, in the national language, and performs other rituals in the national language – did not want to perform the rituals in the strange translation that one reads in many cases today. He prompted me to bring some of the practicable Catholic rituals into the form that was actually originally in them. Only through this does one see how the spiritual world in these things comes to life in many ways, and one sees what has been distorted since the time of Jerome.

Now, you need not think, as has often been said, that I am somehow tainted by Catholicism when I talk about the Catholic Church's worship. I just want to see things objectively and draw your attention to the fact that it is quite impossible to truly cultivate religious life without making the transition to worship, to speaking in the symbolum. No matter how well you know how to convince, how to work through intellectual presentation, in the religious field you will only achieve something if you can let the theoretically presented in your speech fade away into the symbolum in the appropriate places. You must experience the symbolum yourself as a truth, so you should only think of such symbolic representations that are really connected with what is real in the world.

But there are still many difficulties to be faced, and I want to draw your attention to them. Take for instance the following case: someone is supposed to imagine the physical becoming of a human being on earth. Yes, if you turn to science today with all the things it gives you about the female ovum, the male fertilizing cell, the growing out, the growing in of the fertilized ovum and so on, then despite the scientific achievements, despite the fact that one must admire what has been achieved through purely scientific thinking about such things, you do not get ideas that help you to grasp the being, but you get ideas that directly cover the truth piece by piece. You see, the most important component of the human, the animal, the organic in general, is protein. Compare the constitution of albumen with the constitution of any mineral substance in the world. It is so different that today, of course, the scientist says – and he is right to say so – the constitution of albumen is an extraordinarily complicated one, we cannot get at it, and we cannot find a bridge between any crystallized, inorganically constituted matter and what is present in albumen as a constitution. But, you see, today's science does not know that if we have any — I will draw it symbolically — inorganic form, which we can simply follow in this way (a), and we compare it with the protein constitution (b), then we initially have something that appears to be tremendously complicated; in all the substances of our food, everywhere in the organic, this seemingly complicated constitution fits in. We then say: the inorganic is more intricately constituted in the organic, and only then is the human body, for example, built up from this intricately constituted organic substance; this happens through cell division, through a certain configuration of the tissue, and so on. But the whole thing is, isn't it, nothing but nonsense. Because what really happens is the complete annihilation of all inorganic forms. The complexity of the protein consists in the fact that everything inorganic comes into chaos. The protein is always on the way to chaos, in order to dissolve the form corresponding to the inorganic and to transfer matter into chaos; and the matter that is most strongly transferred into chaos is that which is present in the fertilized egg cell. This is simply matter driven into chaos. The entire earthly natural law can no longer do anything with this chaos; it is eliminated. To have become albumen at any level means to be eliminated from the earthly natural law. And what is the consequence? That the extra-earthly natural law, the constellation of the planets, the whole extra-earthly world begins to act on this chaos in order to give this chaos a constitution again. Through the transmutation into protein, the matter enters into chaos, and thus becomes ready to receive again; not only to receive from the earthly, but to receive its constitution from the whole universe, from the cosmic. And in this consists the reproduction of the human head, which after all reproduces the vault of heaven.

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Of course, we will only have a true natural science when we go beyond these earthly things. The whole of natural science has become accustomed to deriving everything purely from the inorganic. Today, natural science is something that leads to everything dying, because natural science only accepts as valid for the intellect what can be researched in abstracto. At the moment when you have to think about the transition from that which can only be investigated in intellectual form to chaos, you have to stop thinking and start looking, and move on to a different kind of knowledge. And that is where the difficulty lies. For you see, intellectualism not only makes us into people who reject the pictorial, it even prevents us from getting out of the intellect and forming pictures ourselves. Once you have become completely intellectualized and abstract, you simply cannot do it!

The fact is that this intellectualistic culture of modern times has such great power over people that they all seem like someone who, as a little girl or even as a little boy, wants to learn to embroider in a Waldorf school and only manages to let the different threads run from top to bottom and from bottom to top; he can embroider, but he cannot create real pictures. He cannot do that. The soul activity of our modern culture, in which we have harnessed ourselves, presses so hard that no one has the spirit to be flexible enough to realize that in the egg white, everything is simply erased by these scientific results, and that matter is opened up to conception from the cosmos. This is what then points to the necessity of seeking religious renewal through anthroposophy. That is why I emphasized yesterday: Of course it is the case that we must also draw on those from today's preaching stand who come with an honest heart as so-called Protestants and who therefore reject what I have just discussed today. But the effective core on which everything should be built must actually be anthroposophists. For anthroposophy seeks to achieve what is sought in vain everywhere else: it seeks to lead to a true grasp of reality. Without having gone through this process ourselves, this coming out of the natural scientific comprehension of the world, which has already taken hold of theologians today, we will not be able to find symbolic images with which we can truly express ourselves before the believing community. And if one can approach this anthroposophical grasp of the world — you can follow it everywhere in my cycles —, at certain points one simply has to let it run out into the picture. And if you read my “Geheimwissenschaft” (Occult Science), in which I described the preliminary stages of the earth as the sun and moon, I was speaking only in images. When I say that something looks like a taste sensation, then a whole dozen of scientists like Dessoir, Oesterreich and so on cannot understand it, cannot do anything with it.

In the practical exercise of the ministry, anthroposophy is what is meant by inspiration, so that one can actually enter into the handling of the symbolic, the ritual and the cultic, and thereby have the possibility of forming a community. Otherwise one will only have the opportunity to speak to individuals. The formation of communities will never be achieved through the abstract in life.

I would like to present the matter so far and then continue it tomorrow and move on to the actual content of the sermon. We will be back tomorrow at 11 a.m., and I suggest that we also continue our discussion today about the other areas today at 7 p.m.

Now I would just like to say: Yesterday I suggested to the gentlemen from “Der Kommende Tag” that a kind of bridge should be created through “Der Kommende Tag” to what is to take place in your circle here. I have emphasized the most important thing, namely that this matter be financed, so to speak. However we think of our matter, it must be financed. It must lead immediately to the free formation of communities, even if this must be won primarily from the present church. I must say that I believe that if we work in a truly appropriate way, it could be possible to get so far in three months that the financing work will pay for itself. In other words, I think that there will at least be enough to pay for the financing work and to fill a position with someone who will start this work. “Der Kommende Tag” will agree to take care of these three months; and I believe that you have agreed to ask Dr. Heisler to take on this financing work. Initially, the matter will be on firm ground if Dr. Heisler takes it on. I am thoroughly convinced that when one has come as far as we have with such a matter, one cannot afford to wait long, because circumstances are pressing, and one often does not notice how strong the forces of decline are today, and how easy it can be to miss the boat altogether if one waits too long.

We would be much further along with the threefold order today if the matter had been properly grasped back in the spring of 1919. At that time, a cultural council was established on the basis of my cultural appeal. It was rightly imagined that people in office and dignity would also make the matter their own. They even took people in office and authority into consideration, and they worded the matter in such a way that they did not get too many goose bumps, because they wanted to appear realistic. But of course the people could not be kept in line. It is true that they could not be kept in line and that nothing helped. They will therefore be forced to turn to young people, to the younger generation, who have realized that the older generation has simply grown old and can no longer keep up. We must try not to lose any time. That is why I would like to say to you that we should try to build a bridge across, because I believe it is a legitimate feeling that, for this in particular, the financing, if it is done properly, cannot be too difficult. You will find people who are sympathetic to this, and I believe that Dr. Heisler's eloquence will find open doors if he limits himself in the next few months to persuading individuals to open the stock exchange or write the bills. Of course, you can't win people over with lectures. People won't give anything away there. You have to go to the individuals. He will have to see his task as spending all his time going to the individuals. The only unpleasant thing is that you are dismissed with words – but only with words, other cases have not yet occurred. There is no other way, you just have to accept it, and in the majority of cases you are not dismissed with words. For example, in the collection of the Swiss “Futurum AG,” I heard from all the gentlemen who were commissioned with the collection that a single instance of being thrown out with words had taken place; otherwise, people limited themselves to being extremely friendly and amiable and finding the matter extremely interesting, but just not opening the stock market. Some people then write a letter afterwards; of course, there is no need to answer that. Of course you have to realize that you will only achieve something in a small percentage of cases, but you just have to try. It's no different than having to work only towards selections, having to try a lot to have success in a few cases.

Would it perhaps be possible to discuss something else, or to pursue this further? Perhaps some of you have something to say about this. We will then extend the discussion this evening to include all three main topics that you mentioned yesterday.

Gottfried Husemann: I think we would like to talk about the extent to which we now have to prepare ourselves for the preaching profession, for speaking in a pictorial way. We cannot expect the university to prepare us for this.

Rudolf Steiner: Are you saying that something can be done in this direction? Positives, right? In these lessons I can only give the guidelines; of course I cannot go into individual points. To go into details requires at least a fortnightly course. So, one could certainly think along these lines, that if our circle has grown in the next few months, we will organize such a course, which will then give in a fortnight what is taught in the teaching institutions under the title 'symbolism', but which is actually nothing. Only in the Catholic Church faculty does symbolism still mean something. You may not yet see its inner structure quite clearly.

You can see this inner structure best from the facts. I have experienced that a large number of Catholic priests who held a position as a high school teacher - which was still quite common in Austria at the time - or who had read as a university lecturer not only at the theological faculty, but also at the philosophical and other faculties, that such Catholic priests - they were mostly religious who were later called modernists - have been reprimanded by Rome. Now I once spoke with a man who was tremendously significant in exegesis, and I asked how it was that he had been reprimanded by Rome for the content of his speech, which actually did not deserve a reprimand at all, while – if if one starts from the point of view from which the reprimand was issued, one had to say that Professor Bickell, who belonged to the Jesuits, went much further than just being an extreme liberal, but was persona grata in Rome. I told him that, and he replied: I am a Cistercian, and [in Rome] one expects of the Cistercians that the moment they no longer say what the content established by Rome is, they might then follow their convictions and gradually depart from Catholicism. — This is assumed with Cistercians. With the Jesuits, as with Professor Bickell, one knows that, however liberally they speak, they are loyal sons of Rome; they do not stray [from Rome]; one is quite certain about them, they are allowed liberalism, they may base their teachings on completely different things than on the doctrinal material.

The Catholic Church does not have this lack [of flexibility], so it is much more viable in its approach. For example, about forty years ago I once got into a conversation with a Catholic theologian who was a professor at the Vienna Theological Faculty and so learned that people said of him that he knew the whole world and three more villages into the bargain. He was a profoundly learned Cistercian. Even a Cistercian was able to discuss the subject matter in the following way. During the conversation, we came to speak about the [dogma of the] conceptio immaculata, and I said to him: Yes, you see, if you remain within Catholic logic, you can admit the immaculate conception, the conceptio immaculata Mariae. That is not the dogma of the immaculate conception of Jesus, which has always been there in the Church. But the immaculate conception, as it is claimed by Catholics on the part of St. Anne, that is, the ascent from the immaculate conception of Mary to the immaculate conception of St. Anne? If you use the same logic, you have to go further up through all the following generations. – Yes, he said, that doesn't exist, we can't do that, logic doesn't demand that. We have to stop at St. Anna; if we went further, we would end up with “Davidl,” and with Davidl we would have a bad time with the conceptio immaculata. –

Such words do not express a pure sense of truth. When the man speaks outside the Church, a completely different formulation of the truth impulse speaks, and that is present everywhere [in the Catholic Church]. The concepts are formed in such a way that they can be assimilated by the broad masses – they are not formed according to any kind of logic – that is what makes Catholicism so great. This cannot be approved of in any way, but it must be recognized. You have to know who you are dealing with.

It is the case, for example, that a real engagement with the world – in the sense of thinking, not only in an intellectualist sense, but in the sense of pure thinking, is engaged with the world – is sometimes present in Catholic priests to a certain extent. I have met many Catholic priests through the circumstances of my life. Among them was the church historian at the University of Vienna. The man was an extraordinarily interesting person, but very traditionally Catholic, so Catholic that he even admitted that he no longer goes out on the street when it is dark in the evening and the lanterns are not yet fully lit. When I asked him why he no longer walked on the streets, he said: “There you only see people in vague outlines, and in Vienna you also encounter Freemasons, and you can only see a Freemason in sharp outline because you can only pass him if you can clearly distinguish yourself from him.” You can be absolutely learned and steeped in all of theology and still have the opinion that it means something in the real world when you walk past a Freemason without rejecting him through the sharp outline. The auras merge, and it is not possible to have such a mishmash of Catholic priest and Freemason.

Ernst Uehli: The Catholic Church has worked very much with legends; and I think it is true that the Catholic movement has been very much supported by the legend. It is easy to imagine that a future church community could lead to a new formation of legends.

Rudolf Steiner: That is how it is. And if you read some of my lectures that I gave in Dornach, you will even find the attempt to express certain things that can now be expressed in legend form. I gave whole lectures in legend form; and I draw your attention to one thing. I once tried to characterize the essence of the arts. You cannot get into the essence of the arts with concepts; everything that is built up in the abstract remains external. If you want to depict such a thing, you have to resort to images. The booklet 'The Essence of the Arts' is presented entirely in images. And here again one is misunderstood. When I had spoken these words entirely out of my imagination, an old theosophist stepped forward and said, “Yes, so you have transformed the nine muses.” – Wasn't it? It was as far from my mind as anything could be to think of the nine muses; it all resulted from the necessity of the case. It was far from my mind to reheat old stories, but one could think of nothing else but that it was an abstract procedure.

So it must be said that the need to resort to images is definitely there again. For example, we still don't have an image for a very important thing. Consider the abundance of bull legends, bull narratives at the beginning of the 3rd millennium at the transition of the vernal point into the constellation of Taurus. Consider the legends of the Argonauts' journey when, in the pre-Christian 8th century, the sun entered the constellation of Aries. Now it is in the constellation of Pisces. This legend still has to be made up. We need a pictorial legend. Although the matter is already alive, we still have no legend for it. This imaginative element still needs to be developed. And so there are numerous other things that today only live in the abstract, that should be transformed into images from world events. This needs to be worked on. It is through this that we must find our way back to the world. Today, the world is actually only that which can be grasped intellectually. What is the world for today's human being? One could almost say: for the intellectual man of today the whole cosmos is nothing but rigid mathematics and mechanics. And we must again come to go beyond mere mathematics and mechanics, we must come to the imaginative, to the pictorial and also to the legendary.

We just have to realize that research such as that presented by my late friend Ludwig Laistner in his book 'The Riddle of the Sphinx', which is about sagas, myths and the formation of legends, can be of great help. I would like to emphasize that Ludwig Laistner knew nothing about spiritual science. I would just like to say that the book can help with research, although Laistner traces all myths and legends back to dreams. But it is interesting to follow how he does not seek the formation of legends in the insane way in which today's Protestant and Catholic researchers seek them, by saying to themselves: the ancient peoples made things up, they imagined the gods in a thunderstorm, and in the struggle of winter with summer. As if people had never known a peasant mind; the peasant mind never writes poetry. These people, to whom the poetry is attributed, are as far from poetry as the peasants are. It was all imaginative. Ludwig Laistner traces everything back to dreams; nevertheless, it is interesting [to read how he sees a connection between a person's inner experiences in the Slavic legend of the Lady of Noon and the legend of the] Sphinx in Greece. That is why the book is called “The Riddle of the Sphinx”. Legends must flow out of life, now in full consciousness. This is extremely important.

Berlin, January 2, 1905

Dear Mrs. Wagner!

A few weeks ago I was only able to briefly inform you that your affiliation to the Esoteric School can be realized. One enters this school as a “shravaka”, which is literally “listener” or “pupil”.

Now it is my duty to speak to you about the nature and significance of the school. You know that behind the entire theosophical movement stand highly developed beings whom we call “masters” or “mahatmas”. These exalted Beings have already traversed the path which the rest of humanity still has to travel. They are now working as the great “Teachers of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Human Feelings”. They are already active today on the higher planes, to which the rest of humanity will organize themselves in the course of the next developmental periods, or “rounds”. On the physical plane they work through their authorized “messengers”, of whom H. P. Blavatsky was the first, that is, for the Theosophical movement. The Masters neither found an outer organization or society nor preside over one. The Theosophical Society was brought into being by its founders (H. P. Blavatsky, Olcott and others) in order to promote the work of the Masters on the physical plane, but these Masters themselves have never influenced the Society itself as such. In its nature and leadership it is the work of people purely on the physical plane.

The situation is different with regard to the “Esoteric School”. It was founded by the Masters themselves and is under the direction of the Masters. All the knowledge and power that flows into the Theosophical Society flows to it through this school. Its members undergo their probationary period and ultimately attain direct communion with the Sublime Ones themselves. How long this process takes depends entirely on the devotees themselves. At first, each person cannot do more than promote the work of the masters with loyal devotion.

The Masters appointed Mrs. H. P. Blavatsky as the first “Head of the School.” The present head is our dear, esteemed Annie Besant.

The Shrâvaka should come to a point where reincarnation and karma are not just theory but certainties of life, and furthermore, where he recognizes the great mission of H.P. Blavatsky through himself. Nothing is imposed on anyone in the school; only self-knowledge is encouraged. Now there are four ways to travel the path of the Shrävaka. You will receive further information about these four ways very soon. I would ask you to go through them carefully with your dear husband and to let me know which of the four ways you intend to choose.

You can already consider yourself part of the school if you begin a meditation exercise on the day determined by the star constellation. I will describe this to you for the time being. It will be modified later.

For the time being, this exercise would consist of the following:

1. Early in the morning, before starting any other daily work, preferably before breakfast, if this is at all compatible with other family and other duties, the following should happen:

I. One should be completely awake, inwardly calm and collected. No external impressions should gain access to our inner being. We should also suppress the memory of all everyday experiences. Once we have established complete “inner silence”, we enter into the elevation to our higher self.

This is done by intensely repeating the following formula to ourselves:

Brighter than the sun
Purer than the snow
Is the Self,
The Spirit in my heart.
That Self am I; I am that Self.

Allow about five minutes for this.

II. This is followed by silent, introspective meditation on a sentence from one of the inspired writings. For this part of the meditation, you should spend four weeks reflecting on the sentence: “Steadfastness stands higher than all success”.

This sentence was given to us by the masters to impress upon us that we should never allow ourselves to be distracted or discouraged by any failure in our actions. A hundred failures should not deter us from doing - for the hundred and first time - what we have recognized as being right.

III. Then, after II. has lasted five minutes, there follows a further five-minute prayer-like devotion to that which is the highest, the most divine in us. It is not a matter of regarding this or that as divine, but of directing all our thoughts, feelings and will to that which we have always regarded as divine. This may be called by different names by different people. It is not important whether we call that to which we give ourselves, God, Christ or the “Master”, but it is the devotion itself.

This completes the three-part morning meditation, which lasts fifteen minutes.

2. In the evening before going to sleep, every student has to look back on their life during the day. The important thing is not to let as many events of the day as possible pass before our soul, but to do so with the most important thing. We ask ourselves: What can we learn from what we have experienced or done? In this way we make our life a lesson. We relate to ourselves in such a way that we learn from each day for each day. - In this way we take the past with us into the future and prepare our immortality. Then we end the day with the thought of dear fellow human beings who need our good thoughts.

It does not matter if the student falls asleep during this evening exercise. Then he will fall asleep with a tendency to develop upwards. And that too is good. Only the morning meditation must be done from beginning to end in a fully alert state. I only ask that you do the evening review in reverse, that is, starting with the events of the evening and then going back to the morning.

You can start with the meditation on one of the days between January 6 and January 20. You cannot start after this day. If you are unable to start during this period, you will not be able to start again until between February 6 and February 18. I cannot tell you today why this is so. But a time will come when it will be quite obvious to you.

I do not need to tell you anything else for the time being, since you have long since organized your life as a theosophist. Wine or other alcoholic beverages prevent development.

When we carry out what I have indicated, the “Exalted Masters” find access to our soul. They can help us and under their blessed influence we grow in strength, knowledge and confidence in life. Our dear Annie Besant emphasizes again and again that the Esoteric School is the “heart of the Theosophical movement”. And so it is. Believe me on this, dearest, most revered Mrs. Wagner: in this school, it is much less about learning and intellectual work and much more about loyal devotion to the Theosophical ideals. Love for spiritual life and, as a result, genuine great love for humanity leads to where we are meant to come. The study is nothing more than a means to an end. We should pursue it as far as we can each. But it is the theosophical attitude that makes the genuine E.S. disciple.

And with that, I welcome you as one of us in the name of the holy masters, at whose feet I place what I can, and against whose will I never want to consciously do anything in my life. Blessed are they, the exalted.

With warmest regards,

Dr. Rudolf Steiner

Please do not hesitate to ask me anything you need to know about E.S. I will set aside time in the future to answer E.S. messages.

Two sayings are given to pupils in Rosicrucian schools to support them in their meditations: Beware of drowning in your esoteric striving. Beware of burning in the fire of your own ego.

There's an outer and an inner way to strive towards the spiritual.

Everything around us is like a veil, like a cover before the spiritual that we must punch through to get to the spiritual behind it. But in which direction? This cover surrounds us on all sides, above below front back right and left. And inwardly, everything that we experience as joy, pain, etc., is like a veil, like fog that conceals the spiritual in us, and this spiritual is the same one that we find when we break through the outer cover.

So that mankind can evolve further and get into the spiritual there's always men from time to time who're more advanced than is permitted by the momentary stage of human development, and who have things to tell us about states of human evolution that reach far into the future. Such advanced beings must exist to lead men further. John, the writer of the Apocalypse, was such a man. When he wanted to write a revelation of the future, he told himself: If I write this book out of the whole surroundings in which I'm living here and now it'll be influenced by the self that's in my body, since I'm connected with everything around and in me. I must free myself from all of this. He had to place himself on something like a rock that served him as a firm support, on which he didn't wobble and wasn't influenced by anything that surged around and in him. And he moved himself to the evening to 9-30-395, to Patmos Island, as the sun had already disappeared under the horizon, though its effect could still be felt, and as the moon and stars appeared. The Virgin constellation was there in the western sky, irradiated by the last gleam of the sun that had set, with the moon under it. This picture is reproduced in one of the seals—the virgin with the radiating sun and the moon under her feet. Thus, all of these seals were produced out of deep mystical connections.

John broke through the cover that surrounds us in this one direction—that of Virgo. There are 12 of these signs. Seven of them are good—the ones reproduced in the seals; the other five are more or less dangerous. Just as John chose this particular point in time and space to become completely separated from himself and all temporal things around him, so a Rosicrucian pupil must acquire a firm foundation in himself. The best way to do this is to let theosophical teachings work on us. Our astral body and thereby our etheric body become expanded by listening to theosophical ideas. This is the effect on anyone who hears anything about theosophy But the effect on those who are inclined towards theosophy is different than on those who aren't. The former feel the etheric body's expansion and fill it up with theosophical teachings, by accepting them. The other feel an emptiness in their etheric body through its expansion because they don't accept these ideas and so don't fill the expansion. Then doubt and skepticism arise through this emptiness. Whereas with the first men, it's like a pouring of oneself into the universe, which they can't let go too far, for they'll get a feeling of hollowness, of not feeling at home in these widths of space, like a fish that's taken out of water and can't live in air, because its organs haven't adapted themselves to this changed element. When a theosophist devotes himself to the teachings and his astral body expands evermore, he loses himself in this unfamiliar element One must avoid drowning here. And this is possible if one studies theosophy seriously, takes it in, elaborates it, and grasps it with feeling, not just with thinking and will, but permeates it completely with feeling. One can only do this with great earnestness. One must gain a firm support within oneself—like John when he wanted to write the Apocalypse and he transported himself to Patmos Island at sundown of Sept. 30, 395.

The configuration of the sun, Virgo and moon on that evening can be checked astronomically, and this was done. From this materialistic science draws the conclusion: Therefore the Apocalypse was written at that time. And then we're told that science has ascertained this. That's the way science ascertains things.

On the inner path one finds all the joys and sorrows, pains and blissfulness that live in us. But all of this is attached to our lower, perishable ego This whole desire world surrounds us like a fog that covers the spiritual for us. It keeps us from seeing and noticing the spiritual. We must break through it to get to the spiritual. There are forces that approach an esoteric pupil to make this fog even denser. The fog gets even denser if we don't resist it. We must burn it to avoid burning in the fire of our passions. If we don't overcome this fog, if we don't resist its becoming ever denser through Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, we're prisoners, as occultists say. There actually are men today who are born with great capacities and reach certain stages very quickly, but are then completely wrapped up in such a fog by the adversarial powers that they can't get out. One calls this occult imprisonment.

Our desire world consists entirely of egoism. And we can only overcome this egoism in deep humility. Which thought can lead us to an over-coming of egoism? The thought that we already spoke about yesterday in the exoteric lecture, the thought that we killed Christ. We're murderers, yes, that's what we are. We can transform this fact, but only if we let Paul's words live and become truth in us, “Not I, but Christ in me.” We shouldn't kill the divine in us through egoism, through our life of desires, etc., we should let Christ live in us. We should begin to carry out this easy and yet so difficult thing in us with shivering earnestness.

We arose from the divine: Ex Deo nascimur. We should take all suffering upon us willingly and patiently with the thought that we killed Christ; we should devote ourselves to him completely and die in him: In Christo morimur. Then we'll be reborn, reawakened through the Holy Spirit: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. This verse sounds different exoterically than esoterically, but the difference is in only one word that's left out in the esoteric version. As we leave this word out and don't speak this word in shy reverence for what this word expresses, our feeling goes out to what is left unspoken in shy reverence.

Ex Deo nascimur
In … morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

This tells us that man arose from the spiritual; that he was originally contained in the spirit:

In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
The eyes of sense,
That through them I may see
The lights of bodies.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
Reason and sensation
And feeling and will,
That through them I may perceive bodies
And act upon them.
In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.
And I will incorporate into my spirit
The super-sensible eyes
That through them I may behold the light of spirits.
And I will imprint in my spirit
Wisdom and power and love,
So that through me the spirits may act
And I become a self-conscious organ
Of their deeds.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.

During the latter period, the German nationalists often expressed the view that they should come to an understanding with the clerical Germans in order to take joint action with them against their Slavic opponents where national issues were concerned. In doing so, the party formation of these opponents was kept in mind, in which strong political and religious differences were held together by the bond of common nationality. If the view were to become more widespread that we should use the fighting methods of our national opponents in the struggle for our national cause, we would find this very alarming. For it would show how little the profound contrast that exists between the national idea of the German and that of the non-German nationalities in Cisleithania is still being grasped.

The Germans are fighting for a cultural task that was given to them by their national development, and what they are up against in this struggle is national chauvinism. It is not our dear national ego, not the name that has come to us by chance of birth, that we have to defend, but the content that is linked to this ego, that is expressed by this name. We do not want to confront our opponents as what we were born as, but as what we have become in the course of many centuries of development. What do our opponents have to confront us with? Nothing but that they are also a nation. The empty national "I" that presents itself as pretentiously as possible and at the same time makes no claim other than that it is there. That is the hallmark of chauvinism as the German people have never known it. What is wrong with this narrow-minded national ego, which only wants to assert its own emptiness as much as possible and wants to know nothing of the whole world, when it allies itself with parties that would prefer to destroy the achievements of our European culture of the last centuries? With parties that are only national, it does not matter how the national self exists, whether it is at the level of education of the time or not, it only matters that it has as much space as possible for its inanity and as much validity as possible for its intellectual barrenness. Who will join the Germans, say the Slovenes, if they make it a condition that we should not close our minds to the level of education they have achieved and that we should erect a barrier to our national character in their education? We are more comfortable with the clerics, who demand nothing but submission to the Church, but leave our national pretensions completely free rein.

The hostility of the Slavic nations towards German education coincides with the hostility with which the Roman Church opposes modern culture, which is mainly supported by the Germans. Only those who have never set foot on the ground of historical observation can delude themselves into believing that there is a reconciliation between German character, German culture and the Roman Church. If circumstances may make it necessary for truces to occur at certain times, the opposites will always sharpen the weapons again. The deep trait of the German nature will never fail to bring forth the religious mission from its own interior at the same time as its culture. Indeed, one might say that everything the German does has the deeply religious imprint that lies in his character and which rears up powerfully when his conscience, his heart, is to be given direction from outside. The German always appears as a totality, and just as his other education is, so he also wants his religious conviction to spring from within himself. The German cannot need an international religion, he only understands his national religion. That is the reason why the German protests again and again against the shackles of Rome. But do not think that this spirit of protest lives only among Protestants, German Catholics and Old Catholics; it exists among all enlightened Germans, even if it is not outwardly displayed. For it is the protest of the German heart against foreign beings. Only those for whom Germanness has become indifferent, has sunk to an empty name, can place themselves completely at the service of this foreign being. It is of no use if peasant members of parliament recall their German ancestry from time to time if they have no idea of the spiritual ties that bind every true German to his people. It is not possible to unite with such a party as long as we do not want to lose ourselves, as long as we do not want to give up that which alone earns us the right to bear the German name. We do not want to achieve what we want to achieve through lazy compromises; we want to achieve it solely under the banner of the German idea. We do not want to give up our hundred-year-old traditions, we do not want to slap our entire national development in the face in order to gain a few questionable concessions from a government which, according to its own statement, can govern without the Germans, in association with an un-German party made up of born Germans. However, as much as the idea of such coexistence contradicts the healthy development of German party life and our national organization, it seems to be in constant expansion. The path that may be quite fruitful for our national opponents, the path of gaining as much as possible for each individual through mutual concessions, can never be a good thing for us Germans. For there can be no doubt in the mind of anyone who considers our circumstances objectively that the political basis on which Count Taaffe's government rests can never have any understanding of the tasks of the German people. Does anyone believe that a real government program can be made without the Germans in Austria? There are two kinds of government. One with a political program that sets the direction for the circumstances, and one on a case-by-case basis that seeks to maintain itself on the surface at all costs through diplomatic use of the political constellations that present themselves. What one calls a politician in ordinary life is also decidedly in favor of governing in the latter sense. And Count Taaffe is a not insignificant politician in this sense. And because he is, and because the Germans are only able to put up insufficient resistance to his external art of governing, hence their miserable situation. It does not occur to us to expect the Germans to devote the stirrings of their hearts to the art of diplomacy, but a little more political sense would be necessary. Above all, we must know which parties can make common cause with us and not give ourselves over to insubstantial political chimeras. There is so much in the turning away of Austria's non-German nationalities from German education that suits the clericals that the latter cannot be thought of turning away.

The "keeping afloat" through diplomatic arts without a guiding state idea cannot be without end; what is not borne by inner necessity, but only by the ambition of honor, must dissolve itself. Rumors keep surfacing that the Ministry of Education is drafting an Imperial National School Act, which is supposed to be such that Prince Liechtenstein can waive his application with a clear conscience. Mr. v. Gautsch, who only recently rejected any influence from the left or the right in the most self-confident language, must understand this. Certain wills will soon be broken in this regime, and men from it who still impressed with their energy last year have already become quite colorless today. In the meantime, it is up to the Germans to work on their national organization, to show false pleasures the door and to protest against rotten compromises, if such are represented within their own party.