The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The lecture presented here was given in Dornach on April 2, 1920, and is the 4th of 17 lectures in the series entitled: Healing of the Social Organism. It appears in the original German in Heilfaktoren Fuer den Sozialen Organismus, Bibliographic Nr.198, Dornach 1961. It is also known as: Easter, Festival of Warning, or Event at Damascus, or New Knowledge of Spirit. The translators are Dorothy S. Osmond, Alan P. Shepherd, and Charles Davy. Edited by, and with additional commentary by Frank Thomas Smith.

Ever since the early days of Christianity it has been the custom to draw a distinction between the festivals of Christmas and of Easter in that the Christmas festival has been made immovable, having been fixed at a point of time a few days after the 21st of December, the winter solstice, whereas the day of the Easter festival is determined by a particular constellation of the stars, a constellation of the stars which unites earth and man with the worlds beyond the earth. To-morrow will be the first full moon of spring and upon this full moon will fall the rays of the springtime sun, for since the 21st of March the sun has been in the sign of spring. When, therefore, men on earth celebrate a Sunday—a day, that is, which should remind them of their connection with the sun-forces—when the Sunday comes that is the first after the full moon of spring, then is the time to keep the Easter festival. Easter is thus a movable festival. In order to determine the time of the Easter festival, note must be taken each year of the constellations in the heavens.

Principles such as these were laid down at a time when traditions of wisdom were still current among mankind, traditions that originated from ancient atavistic clairvoyant faculties and gave man a knowledge far surpassing the knowledge that present-day science can offer. And such traditions were a means for bringing to expression man's connection with the worlds beyond the earth. They always point to something of supreme importance for the evolution [of] mankind.

The rigid point of time fixed for the Christmas festival indicates how closely that festival is bound up with the earthly, for its purpose is to remind us of the birth of the man into whom the Christ Being afterwards entered. The Easter festival, on the other hand, is intended to remind us of an event whose significance lies, not merely within the course of earth-evolution, but within the whole world-order into which man has been placed. Therefore the time of the Easter festival must not be determined by ordinary earthly conditions; it is a time that can be ascertained only when man turns his thoughts to the worlds beyond the earth. And there is deeper meaning still in this plan of a movable time for the Easter festival. It indicates how through the Christ Impulse man is to be set free from the forces of earth-evolution pure and simple. For through knowledge of that which is beyond the earth, man is to become free of the evolution of the earth, and this truth is indicated in the manner of dating the Easter festival. It contains a call to man to lift himself up to the worlds beyond the earth; it contains a promise to man that in the course of world-history it shall be possible for him, through the working of the Christ Impulse, to become free of earthly conditions.

To understand all that is implied in this manner of dating the Easter festival, it will be helpful to turn our minds to early secrets of the beginnings of Christianity, to some of those early mysteries which during a certain period of earthly evolution have become more and more veiled and hidden from the materialistic view of the world which arose at the beginning of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch and must now be vanquished and superseded. In order to see the whole matter in a true light it will be necessary first of all to consider the part played by the figure of St. Paul in the evolution of the Christ Impulse within the whole history of mankind.

We should indeed remind ourselves again and again what a great event in the evolution of Christianity was the appearance of the figure of St. Paul Paul had had abundant opportunity to inform himself, by external observation, of the events in Palestine that were associated with the personality of Jesus. All that came to his notice in this way in the physical world left Paul unconvinced; when these events in Palestine had come to an end in the physical sense, Paul was still an antagonist of Christianity. He became the Apostle of the Christians only after the event at Damascus, after he had experienced the very Being of the Christ in an extra-earthly, super-sensible manner. Thus Paul was a man who could not be persuaded of the meaning of the Christ Impulse by evidence of the physical senses, but who could be convinced only by a super-sensible experience. And the super-sensible experience that came to him cut deeply into his life—so deeply indeed, that from that moment he became another man. Nay, more: he became an initiate.

Paul was well prepared for such an experience. He was thoroughly acquainted with the secrets of the religion of the Jews; he was familiar with their knowledge and their conception of the world. He was thus well equipped to judge of the nature of the event that befell him at Damascus and to have a right view and understanding of it. The writings of Paul, as we know them, convey only a weak reflection of all that he experienced inwardly. But even so, when he speaks of the event of Damascus we can discern that he speaks as one who through this event attained knowledge of cosmic happenings lying behind the veil of the world of sense. From the very manner in which he speaks it is plain that he is fully able to understand the difference between the super-sensible world and the world of sense.

When, even externally, we compare the life of Paul with the earthly experience of Christ Jesus, we discover a strange and astounding fact which becomes intelligible to us only when with the help of spiritual science. We are able to survey the whole evolution of mankind. I have often drawn attention to the great difference in the development of the human soul in the several epochs. I have shown you how man has changed in the course of evolution through the Indian, Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Greco-Latin epochs, on to our own time. When we look back into the ancient past we find that man remained capable of organic physical development until an advanced age. The parallelism between the development of the soul and the development of the body continued until an advanced age; it is a parallelism that we can recognise now only in the three stages marked by the change of teeth, puberty and the beginning of the twenties. As far as outward appearance goes, mankind has lost the experience of such transitions in later life. In very ancient Indian times, however, men experienced a parallelism between the development of soul and of body up to the fiftieth year of life, in Persian and Egyptian times up to the fortieth year, and in Greco-Latin times up to the thirty-fifth year. In ordinary consciousness, we experience a like parallelism only up to the twenty-seventh year and it is not easy to detect even for so long as that. Now the Christ Impulse entered into the evolution of mankind at a time when men—especially those of the Greek and Latin races—experienced this parallelism as late as into the thirtieth year. And Christ Jesus lived His days of physical earthly life for just so long as the duration of the span of life which ran in a parallelism between the physical organisation and the organisation of soul and spirit. Then, in relation to earthly life, He passed through the gate of death.What this passage through the gate of death means can be understood only from the point of view of spiritual science; it can be understood only when we are able to look into super-sensible worlds. For the passage through the gate of death is not an event that can be grasped by any thinking concerned entirely with the world of sense.

As physical man, Paul was of about the same age as Christ Jesus Himself. The time that Christ Jesus spent in His work on earth, Paul spent as an anti-Christian. And the second half of his life was determined entirely by what came to him from super-sensible experiences. In this second half of his life he had super-sensible experience of what men at that time could no longer receive in the second half of life through sense-experience, because the parallelism between soul-and-spirit development and physical development was not experienced beyond the thirty-fifth year of life. And the Event of Golgotha came before Paul in such a way that he received, by direct illumination, the understanding once possessed by men in an atavistic way through primeval wisdom, and which they can now again acquire through spiritual science. This understanding came to Paul in order that he might be the one to arouse in men a realisation of what had happened for mankind through the working of the Christ Impulse.

For about the same length of time that Christ had walked the earth, did Paul continue to live upon earth—that is, until about his sixty-seventh or sixty-eighth year. This time was spent in carrying the teaching of Christianity into earth-evolution. The parallelism between the life of Christ Jesus and the life of Paul is a remarkable one. The life of Christ Jesus was completely filled with the presence and Being of the Christ. Paul had such a strong after-experience (acquired through Initiation) of this event, that he was able to be the one to bring to mankind true and fitting ideas about Christianity—and to do so for a period of time corresponding very nearly to that of the life of Christ Jesus on earth. There is a great deal to be learned from a study of the connection between the life lived by Christ Jesus for the sake of the earthly evolution of mankind, and the teaching given by Paul concerning the Christ Being. To see this connection aright would mean a very great deal for us; only it is necessary to realise that the connection is a direct result of the super-sensible experience undergone by Paul. [Rudolf Steiner here considers the "Christ Being" to be the spiritual being who entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth during the Baptism in the Jordan; and "Christ Jesus" to be Jesus of Nazareth plus the Christ Being. Ed.]

When modern theology goes so far as to explain the event at Damascus as a kind of illusion, as a kind of hallucination, then it is only a proof that in our day even theology has succumbed to materialism. Even theology has no longer any knowledge of the nature of the super-sensible world, and entirely fails to recognise man's need to understand the super-sensible world before he can have any true comprehension of Christianity.

It is good that we should confess today, in all sincerity, how difficult it is to find our way into the ideas presented in the Gospels and in the Epistles of Paul—ideas that are so totally different from those to which we are accustomed. For the most part we have ceased to concern ourselves at all with such ideas. But it is a fact that a person who is completely given up to the habits and ways of thought of the present day, is far from being able to form the right ideas when he reads the words of Paul. Many present-day theologians put a materialistic interpretation upon the event of Damascus, even trying to disprove and deny the actual Resurrection of Christ Jesus—while professing at the same time to be true Christians. Such persons themselves bear testimony that they have no intention of applying knowledge of the super-sensible to the essence of Christianity or to the event of the appearance of Christ Jesus in earthly evolution. The very fact that the figure of Paul stands at the summit of Christian tradition, the figure, that is, of one who acquired an understanding of Christianity through super-sensible experience, is like a challenge to man to possess himself of super-sensible knowledge. It is like a declaration that Christianity cannot possibly be comprehended without having recourse to knowledge that has its source in the super-sensible. It is essential that we should see in Paul a man who had been initiated into super-sensible, cosmic happenings; it is essential to see in this light what he laboured so hard to bring to mankind. Let us try in the language of the present day to place before our minds one of the things that seemed to Paul, as an initiate, to be of particular significance.

Paul regarded it of supreme importance to make clear to men how through the Christ Impulse an entirely new way of relating themselves to cosmic evolution had come to them. He felt it essential to declare: that that period of the evolution of the world which carried within it the experiences of the heathen of older times, had run its course; it was finished for man. New experiences were now here for the human soul; they needed only to be perceived.

When Paul spoke in this way, he was pointing to the mighty Event which made such a deep incision into the evolution of man on earth; and indeed if we would understand history as it truly is, we must come back again and again to this Event. If we look back into pre-Christian times, and especially into those times which possess to a striking degree the characteristic qualities of pre-Christian life, we can feel how different was the whole outlook of men in those days. Not that a complete change took place in a single moment; nevertheless the Event of Golgotha did bring about an absolute separation of one phase in the evolution of mankind from another. The Event of Golgotha came at the end of a period of evolution during which men beheld, together with the world of the senses, also the spiritual. Incredible as it may appear to modern man it is a fact that in pre-Christian times men saw, together with the sense-perceptible, a spiritual reality. They did not see merely trees, or merely plants, but together with the trees, and together with the plants they saw something spiritual. But as the time of the Event of Golgotha drew near, the civilisation that bore within it this power of vision was coming to an end. Something completely new was now to enter into the evolution of mankind. As long as man beholds the spiritual in the physical things all around him, he cannot have a consciousness which allows the impulse of freedom to quicken within it. The birth of the impulse of freedom is necessarily accompanied by a loss of this vision; man has to find himself deserted by the divine and spiritual when he looks out upon the external world. The impulse of freedom inevitably implies that, if man would again have vision of the spiritual, he must exert himself inwardly and draw it forth from the depths of his own soul.

This is what Paul wanted to reveal. He told how in ancient times, when men were only the race of Adam, they had no need to draw forth an active experience from the depths of their own being before they could behold the divine and spiritual. The divine and spiritual came to them in elemental form, with everything that lived in the air and on earth. But mankind had gradually to lose this living communion with the divine and spiritual in all the phenomena of the world of sense. A time had to come when man must perforce lift himself up to the divine and spiritual by an active strengthening of his own inner life. He had to learn to understand the words: “My kingdom is not of this world.” He was not to be allowed to go on receiving a divine and spiritual reality that came forth to meet him from all sense-phenomena He had to find the way to a divine and spiritual kingdom that could be reached only by inward struggle and inward development.

People interpret Paul today in such a trivial manner! Again and again they show an inclination to translate what he said into the language of this materialistic age. So trivial is their interpretation of him that one is liable to be dubbed fantastic when one puts forward such a view as the following concerning the content of his message. And yet it is absolutely true.

Paul saw what a great crisis it was for the world that the ancient vision, which was at one and the same time a sense-vision and a spiritual vision, was fading away and disappearing, and that another vision of the spiritual was now to dawn for man in a new kingdom of light, [Romans 13:12] a vision which he must acquire for himself by his own inner initiative, and which is not immediately present for him in the vision of the senses. Paul knew from his own super-sensible experience in initiation that ever since the Resurrection Christ Jesus has been united with earth-evolution. But he also knew that, although Christ Jesus is present, He can be found by man only through the awakening of an inner power of vision, not through any mere beholding with the senses. Should anyone think he can reach the Christ with the mere vision of the senses, Paul knew that he must be giving himself up to delusions, he must be mistaking some demon for the Christ.

This was what Paul was continually emphasising to those of his hearers who were able to understand it: that the old spiritual vision brings no approach to Christ, that with this old vision one can only mistake some elemental being for the Christ. Therefore Paul exerted all his power to bring men out of the habit of looking to the spirits of air and of earth. [Gal. 4:3,9] In earlier times men had been familiar with elemental spirits, and necessarily so, for in those times they still possessed atavistic faculties with which to behold them. But now these faculties could not rightly be possessed by man. On the other hand, Paul never wearied of exhorting people to develop within themselves a force whereby they might learn to understand what it was that had taken place, namely, an entirely new impulse, an entirely new Being had entered earth-evolution. “Christ will come again to you,” he said, “if you will only find the way out of your purely physical vision of the earth. Christ will come again to you, for He is here. Through the working of the Event of Golgotha, He is here. But you must find Him; He must come again for you.”

This is what Paul proclaimed, and in a language which at the time had quite another spiritual ring than has the mere echo left us in our translation. It sounded quite different then. Paul sought continually to awaken in man the conviction that if he would understand Christ, he must develop a new kind of vision; the vision that suffices for the world of sense is not enough. today, mankind has only come so far as to speak of the contrast between an external, sense-derived science, and faith. Modern theology is ready to admit of the former that it is complicated, that it is real and objective, that it requires to be learned; of faith it will allow no such thing. It is repeatedly emphasised that faith ought to make appeal to what is utterly childlike in man, to that in man which does not need to be learned.

Such is the attitude of mind which rejects the event of Damascus as unreal, preferring to regard it as a kind of hallucination that befell Paul. If, however, the event of Damascus was a mere hallucination—or I might just as well say, if the event of Damascus was what a great number of modern theologians would have it to be—then we ought also to have the courage to say: Away with Christianity! For Christianity has brought with it a belief that is absurd and senseless.

This would be the necessary outcome of the teaching of modern theology, if only people took it—first of all, seriously, and secondly, with courage. As a matter of fact they do neither. They shrink from having nothing but a merely external, sense-given science, and yet at the same time they deny the real, inner impulse of the event of Damascus, while still professing to hold fast to Christianity! It is precisely in such things that the soul-and-spirit sickness of our age comes to clearest expression; for a deep inner lack of truth is here laid bare. Truth would be obliged to confess: Either the event of Damascus was a reality, an event that can be placed in the realm of reality, then Christianity has meaning; or it was what it is asserted to be by modern theology, which wants always to associate itself with modern science; then Christianity has no meaning. It is important that people should face such conclusions, for there is no doubt we live in an age of severe testing. Through man's becoming inwardly untrue in regard to the very matters that are most sacred for him—for he ought no longer to call what he has, ‘Christianity’—through this, a tendency to untruth, often unconscious but no less destructive on that account, has taken hold of mankind. That is the real reason for the existence of this tendency. That is why this tendency to untruth is so closely interwoven with the events that will inevitably lead to decadence in the whole cultural life of Europe, unless people rethink these things in time and turn to spiritual knowledge.

And if we would turn to spiritual knowledge, it is emphatically not enough to rest content with looking at life in any superficial way; it is absolutely essential for us to take things in all their depth of meaning and to be ready to contemplate the necessity of mighty changes in our own time.

Again and again we must ask: What is a festival such as that of Easter for the greater part of mankind? It may be said of very many people that when they are in the circle of their friends who still want to gather together to keep the festival, all their thinking about Easter runs along the lines of old habits of thought; they use the old words, they go on uttering them more or less automatically, they make the same renunciation in the same formula to which they have long been accustomed. But have we any right today to utter this renunciation, when we can observe on every hand a distinct unwillingness to take part in the great change that is so necessary in our own time? Are we justified in using the words of Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me!” when we show so little inclination to examine into what it is that has brought such great unhappiness to mankind in the modern age? Should it not go together with the Easter festival that we set out to gain a clear idea of the destiny that has befallen mankind and of what it is that alone can lead us out of the catastrophe—namely, super-sensible knowledge? If the Easter festival, whose whole significance depends upon super-sensible knowledge—for knowledge of the senses can never explain the Resurrection of Christ Jesus—if this Easter festival is to be taken seriously, is it not essential that people should consider how a super-sensible character can be brought again into the human faculty of knowledge? Should not this be the thought that rises up in our minds today: All the lying and deception in modern culture is due to the fact that we ourselves are no longer in earnest about what we recognise as the sacred festivals of the year?

We keep Easter, the festival of Resurrection, but in our materialistic outlook we have long ago ceased caring whether or not we have a real understanding of the Resurrection. We set ourselves at enmity with the truth and we try to find all manner of ingenious ways of accepting the cosmic jest—for indeed it would be, or rather it is a jest that man should keep the festival of the Resurrection and at the same time put his whole faith in modern science which obviously can never make appeal to such a Resurrection. Materialism and the keeping of Easter—these are two things that cannot possibly belong together; they cannot possibly exist side by side. And the materialism of modern theology—that too is incompatible with the Easter festival. In our own time a book entitled “The Essence of Christianity” has been written by an eminent theologian of Central Europe, and is accounted of outstanding importance. Yet throughout this work we find evidence of a desire not to take seriously the fact of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus. There you have a true symptom of the times!

People must learn to feel these things deeply in their hearts. We shall never find a way out of our present troubles unless we develop understanding of the enmity cherished by the modern materialistically minded man towards the truth, unless we learn to see through things like this, for they are of very great significance in life today.

During the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch a new tendency has been at work, a tendency towards a scientific knowledge that is adapted to the power of human reason and judgment; and now it is time that this should go further and develop into a knowledge of the super-sensible world. For the Event of Golgotha is an event that falls absolutely within the super-sensible world. And the event of Damascus, as Paul experienced it, is an event that can be understood only out of super-sensible ideas. On the understanding of this event depends whether one can in very truth feel something of the Christ Impulse, or whether one cannot. The man of the present day is faced with a severe test when he asks himself: In the time that has been christened ‘Easter,’ how do I stand to super-sensible knowledge? For Easter should remind him, by the very way its date is determined, to look up from the earthly to what is beyond the earth. The man of modern times has left himself no more insight into what is beyond the earth than at most that which is given him in mathematics and mechanics, and now in spectro-analysis. These sciences are the groundwork upon which he tries to build up his knowledge concerning all that is beyond the earth. He no longer feels that he is himself united with those worlds, and that the Christ descended thence when He entered into the personality of Jesus.

Let me beg you to give these thoughts, which are so pertinent to our present problems, your full and earnest attention. I have often pointed out what a fine spiritual nature such as Herman Grimm must needs think of the Kant-Laplace theory. It is true, the theory has undergone some modification in our day, nevertheless in all essentials it is still the prevailing theory of the universe. It is said that the solar system has come out of a primeval nebula, and in course of mighty changes undergone by the nebula and its densifications, plants, animals and also man have come into being. And carrying the theory further, a time will come when everything on the earth will have found its grave and when ideals and works of culture will no longer send their voice out into the universe, when the earth itself will fall like a bit of slag into the sun; and then, in a still later time, the sun will burn itself out and be scattered in the All, not merely burying, but annihilating everything that is now being made and done by man.

Such a view of the ordering of the world must inevitably arise in a time when man wants to grasp that which is beyond the earth with mathematical and mechanical knowledge alone. In a world in which he merely calculates or investigates qualities of the sun with the spectroscope—in such a world we shall never find the realm whence Christ came down to unite Himself with the life of the earth! There are people today who, because they cannot get clarity into their thoughts, prefer not to let themselves be troubled with thinking at all, and go on repeating the words they have learned from the Gospels and from the Epistles of St. Paul, simply repeating by rote what they have learned, never stopping to think whether it is compatible with the view of the evolution of the earth and man that they acquire elsewhere. But that is the deep inward untruth of our time: men slink away into some comfortable dark corner instead of bringing together in their thought the things that essentially belong together. They want to raise a mist before their eyes so that they may not need to ‘think together’ the things that belong together. They raise a mist before their eyes when they keep a festival like Easter and are at the same time very far indeed from forming any true idea of the Resurrection of which they speak; for a true idea of it can only be formed with spiritual and super-sensible knowledge.

The only possible way in these days for man to unite a right feeling with Easter is for him to direct his thought in this connection to the world-catastrophe of his own time. For in very deed a world-catastrophe is upon us. I do not mean merely the catastrophe that happened in the recent years of the war, but I refer to that world-catastrophe which consists in the fact that men have lost all idea of the connection of the earthly with that which is beyond the earth. The time has come when man must realise with full and clear consciousness that super-sensible knowledge has now to arise out of the grave of the materialistic outlook. For together with super-sensible knowledge will arise the knowledge of Christ Jesus. In point of fact, man has no other symbol that fits the Easter festival than this—that mankind has brought upon itself the doom of being crucified upon the cross of its own materialism. But man must do something himself before there arises from the grave of human materialism all that can come from super-sensible knowledge.

The very striving after super-sensible knowledge is itself an Easter deed, it is something which gives man the right once more to keep Easter. Look up to the full moon and feel how the full moon is connected with man in its phenomena, and how the reflection of the sun is connected with the moon, and then meditate on the need today to go in search of a true self-knowledge which can show forth man as a reflection of the super-sensible. If man knows himself to be a reflection of the super-sensible, if he recognises how he is formed and constituted out of the super-sensible, then he will also find the way to come to the super-sensible. At bottom, it is arrogance and pride that find expression in the materialistic view of the world. It is human pride, manifesting in a strange way! Man does not want to be a reflection of the divine and spiritual, he wants to be merely the highest of the animals. There he is the highest. But the point is, among what sort of beings is he the highest? This pride leads man to recognise nothing beyond himself. If the natural scientific outlook on the world were to be true to itself, it would have the mission of impressing this fact again and again upon man: You are the highest of all the beings of which you can form an idea. The ultimate consequences of the point of view that sets out to be strictly scientific, are such as to make a man turn pale when they show him on what kind of moral groundwork they are based—all unconscious though he may be of it. The truth is, we are today living in a time when Christ Jesus is being crucified in a very special sense. He is being put to death in the field of knowledge. And until men come to see how the present way of knowledge, clinging as it does to the senses and to them alone, is nothing but a grave of knowledge out of which a resurrection must take place—until they see this, they will not be able to lift themselves up to experiences in thought and feeling that partake of a true Easter character.

This is the thought that we should carry in our hearts and minds today. We still have with us the tradition of an Easter festival that is supposed to be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. The tradition we have, but the right to celebrate such a festival—that we have not, who live in present-day civilisation.

How can we acquire this right again? We must take the thought of Christ Jesus lying in the grave, of Christ Jesus Who at Easter time vanquishes the stone that has been rolled over His grave—we must take this thought and unite it with the other thought which I have indicated. For the soul of man should feel the purely external, mechanistic knowledge like a tombstone rolled upon him; and he must exert himself to overcome the pressure of this knowledge, he must find the possibility, not to make confession of his faith in the words: “Not I, but the fully developed animal in me,” but to have the right to say: “Not I, but Christ in me.”

It is related of a learned English scientist [T.H. Huxley] that he said he would rather believe that he had by his own power worked his way up little by little from the ape stage to his present height as man, than that he had descended from a once ‘divine’ height, as his opponent, who could not give credence to the ideas of natural science, appeared to have done.

Such things only serve to show how urgent it is to find the way from the confession of faith: “Not I, but the fully developed animal in me,” to that other confession of faith: “Not I, but Christ in me.” We must strive to understand this words of Paul. Not until then will it be possible for the true Easter message to rise up from the depths of our hearts and souls and enter into our consciousness.

Today—since Dr. Trapesnikoff has ordered them—we will show you some pictures arranged from a different point of view than in our former lectures; more from the point of view of subject-matter. The pictures today will relate especially to the birth of Christ Jesus, the Adoration by the Shepherds and by the Three Wise Men, and finally the Flight into Egypt. Comprising an evolution through several centuries, they will bring before our souls, from another aspect, that which is living in the Old Christmas Plays of which we have been speaking in the last lectures. We shall thus be concerned today, not in the first place with the artistic elements, as such, but with the treatment of a certain theme in the history of Art, and I will therefore speak not so much of the evolution of artistic principles, but draw your attention to some other points of view which may be of interest in relation to these pictures. You will, however, bear in mind the general lines of development of Christian Art, which we have described in the past lectures of this series. You will observe the same great trend of evolution, as we pass from the artistic representations of the early Christian centuries into the times of the Renaissance. First you will see the more typical representations of an early time. These, as we have seen, were still under the influence of Revelations from the Spiritual World. Less concerned with naturalistic expressions of form and color, they try to reproduce the spiritual Imaginations, revealed out of the Spiritual World. Thenceforward you will see this Christian Art evolve towards Naturalism, that is, towards a certain reproduction of that which may be called reality from the point of view of the physical plane. As we follow the evolution of this Art, the sacred personalities stand before us in a more and more human form.

We shall first show some pictures relating more especially to the Birth of Christ. Then we shall show the Adoration of the Child by the Shepherds; indeed, these two, to some extent, will go together. The next series of pictures will deal mainly with the story of the Three Wise Men of the East—the Magi. Here I beg you to observe how the two streams evolve: the stream of St. Luke's Gospel, as we may call it, and that of the Gospel of St. Matthew. They are the streams which take their start from the two Jesus Children. Artistically, too, we can recognise the difference. The Adoration by the Shepherds—all that is more or less related to this theme—could best be understood (understood, that is to say, by the inner feelings) under the influence of what remained from those Northern Mysteries whose center, as I told you, was in Denmark. This stream is connected with all that related to the Birth of Jesus—springing forth, as it were, with Jesus, out of the earthly evolution, out of the spiritual beings that are bound up with the life of Nature.

In the Adoration by the Magi, on the other hand—the mission of the Three Wise Men from the East—we always find a direct expression of the “Gnostic” stream. Under the influence of the “Star”—which means, something that is made known out of the Cosmos—the Wise Men draw near to the Christ Who heralds His approach and develops in the Zarathustra Jesus. In all that is connected with the Adoration by the Three Wise Men, we have, therefore the Gnostic stream: the consciousness that the Christ-Event was a cosmic one; that a fertilisation of the Earth had taken place out of the Cosmos.

Our friends have been kind enough to put up here a drawing of the Three Wise Men. The picture is taken from an old Gospel Book. We see them looking up in adoration, that is, in quest of spiritual knowledge, by striving upward with all their inner being, and looking up to the Star wherein the Spirit Who shall liberate the Earth draws near.

1. Three Wise Men.

It may truly be said that this stream, which finds expression in St. Matthew's Gospel, was less and less understood in the further course of centuries. True, it also came to life, as you know, in the Old Christmas Plays. But the appearance of the Three Wise Men of the East cannot really be understood with the same understanding, as the appearance of Jesus to the Shepherds according to St. Luke's Gospel. For the latter is a simple understanding of the heart, of inner feeling; while the understanding which we must bring to bear on all that is connected with the Wise Men from the East must needs be of a “Gnostic” character. All that is signified by the Wise Men “following the Star” will only come into the consciousness of humanity again when—not the Gnosis this time, it is true—but anthroposophical Spiritual Science gains acceptance.

Finally, we shall show some pictures of the Flight into Egypt. This, too, is connected with the “Gnostic” Revelation concerning Jesus Christ. We cannot speak of it at great length today; we may return to it another time.

To begin with, it is important here, again, to realise that there is a certain underlying composition in all that the Gospels contain. The composition is always important. We need only faithfully follow the Gospel narrative. The Flight into Egypt appears in direct connection with the Mission of the Three Wise Men. It happens, as it were, on the basis of what was first undertaken by the Three Wise Men. This bears witness to the fact that the Gospel is taking into account the connection with all that was related about Egypt in the Old Testament. Moses was learned in the Wisdom of the Egyptians. Now we are told in the Gospel that the Three Wise Men of the East came to the birthplace of Christ Jesus, led by the Star which is really the Star of Christ. But it goes on to relate that something now had to take place which did not entirely accord, as it were, with the course of the Star; something which was not in the consciousness of the Wise Men themselves—for so the Gospel explicitly tells us. Here we are shown one of those cases where the astrological determination, as it were, of certain great events has to be broken through. How precisely the astrological determination corresponds to what is known of the historic facts—you could see this from the instance which we spoke of recently. Our friends drew up the Horoscope for that point in the course of Time which was indicated as the day of Christ Jesus's Death.

But we see that the Jesus Child, in whom the Zarathustra Soul was living, had to be taken out of the domain of this Star. He was taken into Egypt, and from Egypt He was then led back again into the realm of the Star. In this is contained the whole Mystery of the ebbing away of that ancient stream of evolution which had grown atavistic in the Egyptian Gnosis. The new Revelation had to enter once more into a certain union with the Old in order that it might free itself consciously.

These are the underlying Mysteries, and though they are little recognised, none the less they lie inherent in the composition. I may take this opportunity to point out once more, how important it is to pay attention to the composition when we read the Gospels. For the text is frequently corrupt and can only be read in its true form by those who are able to read with the help, if I may say so, of the Occult Text. Notably in the translations, naturally enough, the text is often quite unintelligible. But in the composition (compare my Lecture Cycle held in Cassel on the Gospel of St. John)—in the composition there is something which will strike any reader immediately, if he reads the Gospel carefully.

One more remark I would like to make, before we go on to show the pictures. The materialistic consciousness of our age has altogether lost the point of view which would indicate such inner connections as underlie the revelation to the Three Wise Men. Whatever goes by the name of Astrology today has fallen into the hands of utter dilettanti, who carry on all kinds of nonsense and abuses with it. Few people nowadays are in true earnest when they speak of that relation of the Earth to the Cosmos which finds expression in actual physical relationships—in the constellations of the Stars. On the other hand, for the official Science of today Astrology of whatever kind is a mere antiquated superstition.

Nevertheless, the knowledge of these things did not decay or die out absolutely until the 18th century. Even as late as the 18th century people still spoke of something which is of extreme importance if we wish to understand the deep, deep truths that underlie the appearance of the Three Wise Men. In the 18th century, those who had still preserved some knowledge of the old Initiations spoke of the significance of the physical constellations. But not only so: they also spoke of the significance of invisible constellations. Even in the 18th century it was expressly stated in certain circles who possessed Initiation Knowledge. “There are also Stars which only the Initiate can see.” This is a true statement, and this, above all, must be taken into account if we wish to understand why it was that “Imaginations” appeared to the Shepherds, while “Stars” appeared to the Three Wise Men. Such is the indication: The Revelation came to the Shepherds inasmuch as they still had dreamlike clairvoyance in the old atavistic sense. But the Wise Men of the East had their knowledge through the ancient Science that had been handed down. Through this they knew of the relation between the Cosmos, the Heavens and the Earth. Through this they knew—could calculate, as it were—what was drawing near.

Hence we can see in the evolution of these pictures—and you will now have opportunity to observe it for yourselves—we see, with all the transition to Naturalism, the pictorial representations growing less and less adequate to the theme of the Wise Men. For the Wise Men or Magi, the most ancient and typical representations are the most fitting. For the real truth that is intended in this story is lifted right out of the earthly domain. On the other hand, the representations of Jesus grow the more intimate and tender, the more naturalistic they become. For in this case the naturalistic quality is fitting. All that goes out to meet the approaching Christ from the physical plane—all that is connected, therefore, with the life of Nature—is naturally best portrayed by such means.

We will now go on to the pictures, first of the Nativity itself and of the Adoration by the Shepherds, and then of the Three Wise Men or Kings.

2. The Nativity. (mosaic) (Palermo, Chiesa della Martorana.)

In these old compositions, as you see, everything is conceived in typical form—based on the typical representations of the ancient Myths which came over largely from the East. In a most natural way the typical representations of the Myth grew into the representations of the Christian theme. The Orpheus type, for instance, the type of the Good Shepherd, was handed down from earlier representations of Myth or Cult or Ritual, and taken to represent the new impulse, the Christ event; and so it was with many another theme and composition.

3. A Page of the Biblia Pauperum. 1st Edition. (15th century) The Nativity, etc. (German Woodcuts.)

These early Bibles generally showed parallel representations from the Old and New Testaments. They bore in mind that the New Testament is the fulfilment of the Old; this idea is brought out again and again in these “Bibles of the Poor.” The Nativity, which interests us mainly now, is shown in the middle of the page.

4. The Nativity, 11th Century. (Limburg Monestary.)

This is at Cologne. Beneath is the Flight into Egypt; the two are together in this slide. Apart from this one, we shall show the Flight into Egypt at the end of the lecture. Here you have a beautifully naive conception of the Nativity. You will feel the connection of it with what is given in the old Christmas Plays with which we are familiar. Though the latter belong, of course, to a later time, nevertheless they are from earlier Christmas Plays which are no longer extant.

5. The Flight into Egypt. (Evangeliar of the 12th century. Cathedral of Cologne.)

It is interesting to see, all around the picture, representations of what was cosmically connected with the Event, showing how they were still aware of the spiritual relationships. And now we will take the same motif as it appears in the work of Niccola Pisano.

6. Niccola Pisano. The Nativity. (Baptistery at Pisa.)

7. Giotto. The Nativity. (San Francesco. Assisi.)

You see how the representations of the theme are gradually passing into Naturalism.

8. della Robbia. The Nativity. (Hamburg. Altarpiece.) (National Museum. Florence.)

9. Meister Francke. The Nativity. (Hamburg.)

This picture is at Hamburg; I remember having seen it there myself not long ago.

10. Philippo Lippi. The Nativity. (Cathedral at Spoleto.)

You really see how in the course of time Naturalism takes hold of it more and more.

11. Piero della Francesca. The Nativity. (National Gallery. London.)

Here we are in the fifteenth century once more; and we now go on to Correggio.

12. Correggio. Holy Night. (Dresden.)

We pass again to the more Northern Masters, whose names you know. First we have a work of Schongauer' s.

13. Martin Schongauer. The Nativity. (Alto Pinakothek. Munich.)

Most interesting to see the Italian and the Northern Masters one after the other. In the former you still find a stronger adherence to ideal types, while here there is more individualisation—creation out of inwardness of soul, as we have seen before. Down to the tiny feet, all is pervaded with feeling, albeit the artistic perfection is not so great as in the Southern Masters.

14. Herlin. Nativity from the Altar of St. George. (Museum at Nordlingen.)

We come now to the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, to Albrecht Dürer.

15. Dürer. The Nativity. (Alto Pinakothek. Munich.)

See how the Art is taken hold of here by all that I described to you—the working out of the element of light. It is most interesting to study this in Dürer.

16. Altdorfer. The Holy Night. (Berlin.)

Altdorfer was Dürer's successor in Nuremberg.

We shall now give a series of pictures relating mainly to the Adoration by the Shepherds. First, some older Miniatures from Bible and Gospel Manuscripts.

17. Nativity and Annunciation to the Shepherds. (Codex Egberti. Trier. 10th century.)

18. Nativity and Annunciation to the Shepherds, from Menologion of Basil II (Vatican. Rome. 11th Century.)

We go on to the Italian representations of the Adoration of the Child by the Shepherds.

19. Cimabue. Adoration by the Shepherds. (Assisi.)

With Cimabue, as you know, we find ourselves in the 13th century. We go on into the 15th and come to Ghirlandajo, the Master of whom we lately spoke.

20. Ghirlandajo. Adoration by the Shepherds. (Akademia. Florence.)

Another Master of the 15th century is Piero di Cosimo.

21. Piero di Cosimo. Adoration by the Shepherds. (Berlin.)

And now we come to the Art of the Netherlands, with which we are familiar.

22. Hugo van der Goes. Adoration of the Child. (Uffizi. Florence.)

23. Hugo van der Goes. Adoration of the Child. (detail.)

Finally we give two works by Rembrandt.

24. Rembrandt. Adoration by the Shepherds. (In the Lantern Light. Etching, about 1652.)

25. Rembrandt. Adoration by the Shepherds. (Alte Pinakothek. Munich.)

We now go on to the pictures representing the Adoration by the Three Wise Men. To begin with, an old Mosaic, of the 6th century.

26. Mosaic. Chiesa della Martotana. Palermo. Three Wise Men.

27. Mosaic. Sant Apollinare Nuovo. Ravenna.

In these older pictures the events are shown thoroughly in connection with the Spiritual World—remote from all Naturalism, lifted into a higher sphere.

28. Nativity and Adoration by the Wise Men. (Menologium Basilius. Vatican. 11th century)

29. Niccola Pisano. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Baptistery at Pisa.)

This is the famous Golden Gate at Freiberg, second half of the 12th century:

30. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Cathedral of Freiberg. The Golden Gate.)

31. Domenico Veneziano. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Berlin.) Formerly attributed to Pisanello (Vittore Pisano).

We go on to the 15th, to Stephen Lochner:

32. Stephen Lochner. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Cathedral of Cologne.)

The next is by Gentile da Fabriano, also of the 15th century.

33. Gentile da Fabriano. Adoration of the Child. (Florence.)

34. Fra Angelico. Adoration of the Kings. (St. Marco. Florence.)

Fra Angelico is as tender and lovely in this as in all other subjects.

35. Filippo Lippi. Adoration by the Wise Men.

Whichever subject it is, you see how Naturalism progresses. This is especially interesting when one follows the treatment of one and the same subject through the centuries.

36. Sandro Botticelli. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Uffizi. Florence.)

Now we come to the second half of the 15th century.

37. Ghirlandajo. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Spedale degli Innodenti. Florence.)

End of the 15th century:

38. Mantegna. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Uffizi. Florence.)

39. Giorgione. The Wise Men of the East. (Vienna.)

40. Giorgione. Adoration by the Wise Men. (National Gallery. London.)

41. Giovanni Bellini. Adoration by the Kings. (Layard Gallery. London.)

And now I ask you to call to mind once more the various Dutch and Flemish Masters of whom we have spoken in a former lecture. For we now have the same subject by

42. Rogier van der Weyden. Adoration by the Kings. (Alte Pinakothek.Munich)

43. Dieric Bouts. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Alte Piankothek. Munich.)

44. Adoration by the Wise Men, 15th centry, from the Brevarium Grimani.

We have spoken of the characte of these painters. The next is by the artist who worked in Bruges and died about 1523.

45. Gerard David. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Alte Pinakothek. Munich.)

And now the same theme treated by Leonardo.

46. Leonardo da Vinci. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Uffizi.Florence) And by his pupil,

47. Luini Bernadino. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Saronno.)

Going North again:

48. Dürer. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Uffizi. Florence.)

49. Brueghel. Adoration by the Wise Men. (Vienna.)

And finally, Rembrandt.

50. Rembrandt. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Buckingham Palace.)

And now we come to our last theme: the Flight into Egypt. First we have a painter of the late 15th and early 16th century.

51. Herrad von Lanndsberg. The Flight into Egypt.

52. Joachim de Patinir. Rest in the Flight. (Prado. Madrid.)

53. Correggio. Madonna della Scodella. (Parma)

The next, a little later.

54. Bernhard Strigel. The Flight into Egypt. (Stuttgart.)

Strigel painted also in Vienna, and died in 1528.

55. Albrecht Dürer. Resting on the Flight into Egypt.

56. Workshop of Albrecht Dürer. Resting on the Flight into Egypt.

Next is Hans Baldung or Hans Grun, going on into the 16th century.

57. Hans Balding (Baldung). Rest in the Flight. (Germanisches Museum. Nuremberg.)

58. Lucas Cranach. Rest in the Flight. (Berlin.)

Finally, Rembrandt:

59. Rembrandt. Rest in the Flight. (Etching.)

So much for today. Perhaps you will now take the opportunity to see at close quarters this impressive picture of the Wise Men which indicates so clearly the worship of the Star with the incoming of the Christ Jesus Soul.

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.

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.

It is difficult to communicate with someone who expresses himself differently than we do. To clarify our own spiritual secrets, it is important to measure our own thinking, feeling, and willing against the spirits of others.

The usual newer historical research does not even know how to determine the lifetime of Zarathustra; they place him in the time of the Buddha, the ancient Greeks place them 5000 years before Christ: as far back as possible or not very far back. Theosophy places him in pre-Asian culture, but his influence can be seen into Christian times.

All soul life has been greatly modified, and the development of what has come into being is now a satisfying study. Man's spiritual development would have to undergo the same investigation to shed light; one has to go back to earlier states of mind, where people became aware of a different environment than they are now. There was a kind of clairvoyant consciousness, an often misused word, an image consciousness. The images that go up and down in the usual forms mean little, they are a leftover remnant of a completely different state of consciousness. The earlier image consciousness can be related to the external reality in the spiritual world behind the sensory world, when the object consciousness was still in its infancy, of an intermediate world between waking and sleeping, through symbols that related to the real spiritual world.

A certain ability is achieved at the expense of another. We have to go back up, but to a form of clairvoyance imbued with intellectuality. First the intellect was lost. Myths, sagas, legends are the oldest records of ancient clairvoyance. The images of the gods in mythology were initially only images. There were two spiritual currents: one from ancient India, the other, more northern, from ancient Persia. These went alongside one another in the older millennia, flowing together in ancient Greek culture. That is why the pessimism of the ancient Indians is so characteristic. The ancient Indian found it uncanny when he saw spiritual beings behind external things. He called them asuras. The last impulse of this, which was therefore so significant, appeared in Buddha. Through an unspiritual tendency towards the inner, he was transported into Maya, and so he had to come out of it into Nirvana. Nirvana has nothing of what the senses offer. Nirvana is the last great call of the senses as this development of humanity is felt to be a descent. This too is shot through with pessimistic anti-reality muzzling.

In ancient Greece, this submergence was not felt in quite the same way. In the Dionysian culture, the Greeks felt what was not yet present in the culture transplanted to Greece from ancient India. Zarathustra developed precisely the opposite, the Persians wanted to lend a hand to direct reality, a transition to a new, joyful future for humanity. He had gained something new, new human soul forces. Zarathustra pointed out to the Persian people that the physical world is not only Maya. To him, the outer world was like the garment of a spiritual world, the sensual world like a carpet. The spiritual world lies behind the sensual world; the spiritual world is behind everything. This is not only meant as a pantheistic reference to spiritual wisdom, but as a concrete insight into the spiritual world. Behind the most important sensual reality, the spiritual importance is hidden. And just as the sun has its great aura, so does man have his small aura: Ahura Mazdao, later Ormuzd. He no longer finds the good through mere mystical insight. These are dying forces, therefore the devas are evil to him, the asuras are the right thing.

This reversal can be explained from the development of culture. Ahuras are the Indian Asuras. There is spirituality in and behind all sensuality, especially behind the center. The Greek Apollo is the Greek translation of the Mazdao culture. Both currents came together when the greatest impulse for humanity came, in Christ.

At that time, in Zarathustra's time, completely different signs were needed, a completely different writing to make sense of this. This ancient writing was in the heavenly bodies. Zarathustra attributed both contradictions to something higher. He needed symbols. During the day, the sun passes through part of the zodiac; the day sun is Ormuzd, the night sun is Ahriman. Ormuzd is associated with one half of the zodiacal signs and Ahriman with the other. There is a common basis for good and evil. In an ever-widening arc, the circle becomes flatter and flatter, finally becoming a straight line, infinity. A circle with an infinite diameter is a representation of the infinite passage of time. The past holds back, the future is for progress, uplifting. The entire zodiac is actually a line, imagined as a minimized circle. “Zaroana akarena” is the image of infinite time.

Thus, the writing in the stars represents what is in the spiritual world. Zoroaster is not an abstract spirit who only moves in generalities; that is why lower spirits are under Ormuzd. Today's man is comfortable and wants to ascend to the highest God right away. The six or seven Amschaspands were, as it were, messengers. Goethe mentions in his Faust: Sons of the gods, preserve the beautiful, and so on. It is the same. Ahriman also has five to six evil spiritual entities; that makes twelve in total.

Each constellation is an expression of one of the forces. Ormuzd, for example, works through [the] lion as a good disposition, through the ram as wisdom. In this way, the spiritual beings enter into people, as it were. But people are not as wise as their little finger, which knows that it is nothing without the whole organism. So the powers of the human soul enter into the person and continue in the person, becoming materially condensed in what is in the person. Thus, a person can be an Ormuzd or an Ahriman person. The new physiology, which dissects the human being, says [anatomically and physiologically]: twelve pairs of brain nerves emanate from the brain. Thus, the materialized twelve Amshaspands have been found again after millennia. Both ages join hands.

There are 28 to 31 Izeds, spirits that perform subordinate functions that are effective in the cosmos and in human nature. In the human head, these are the mental abilities [= the Amshaspands] and the abilities that emanate from the spinal nerves and, for all I care, return [the Izeds]. Then, in the Feroars, we see the spiritual archetypes that underlie everything else.

Plato says: All sensual things are based on archetypes. But here it is meant more abstractly. Plato speaks of the spiritual world, Zoroaster of the spirit world. But Plato still had a living feeling for today's views. Zoroaster saw in the outer light what is inner wisdom, as does spiritual science today.

Pythagoras learned from the Persians the correct attitude towards the spiritual and the moral world. This is quite different from the way it is in Egypt or in the Dionysian mysteries. There, the masculine and the feminine, Osiris - Isis, Apollo - Aphrodite, are valid. Such sexual opposites can be found everywhere. Even with the ancient Hebrews, Lucifer, evil, is indicated by the feminine. Only Zoroaster has it the other way around, taking the organic, moral contrast of good and evil in images, not from nature.

Therefore, Zoroaster must be important in the present day in order not to reduce everything to the opposites of the sexes, as it is today. Hence the scent that emanates from Zoroastrianism. Through purification, through moral cleansing, heroic, moral strength develops, not philistine morality like today's. The ancient Persian is not contemplative, he is hardworking, lays his hands on the treasures of the earth. Thus he becomes the companion of Ormuzd, who always wrestled with Ahriman. Such was the case with this simple cultured people. Through moral purification the obstacles are overcome.

I will speak, come and listen to what is highest in the world. I speak not of it with an evil tongue, but of the opposite. Listen to what I mean, otherwise you will hear bad things at the end of the world. – Thus speaks Zoroaster. It is not enough to study the Gathas literally; one should put oneself in Zoroaster's feelings and thoughts. This requires a sense of history. One should be grateful to Ahriman.

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.

When observing individual development, one should not limit oneself to human beings, because their development is only a special case in the whole of nature. Development is the change of day and night, everything that takes place in time, ebb and flow - a similar thing takes place everywhere in inanimate nature: changes in temporal events. What remains [in this changeable] is the law. In spring, the sun is in a certain constellation, that of Aries - on March 21. It was the symbol of the Logos – the ram or lamb is therefore the sign of the re-appeared solar Logos: the Lamb of God. Greek Argonaut saga: the rams, the sun god, is brought home. The sun follows the same law. What changes is the appearance and what allows the appearance to repeat itself in the same rhythmic play is the law.

But in a certain sense, the law also changes. Eight hundred years before Christ, the sun began to rise in Aries, earlier in Taurus; very slowly it moves on. Therefore, the Egyptians had the sacred bull ‹Apis›, also the Persians. As long as the sun moved in the sign of Taurus, it was worshiped like that.

Before that, the sun rose in Gemini, and we hear of its worship among ancient peoples, among the Persians, and also among the ancient Germans. About every two thousand years, the sun moves forward very slowly. So the law is relatively constant, but it also undergoes development. The law is the constant, the eternally changing is the phenomenon.

Let us now move from inanimate to animate nature. The individual plant continually dies, but the species emerges from the seed. Just as in inanimate nature the phenomena pass away and the law remains, so in animate nature the species is preserved and the individuals perish. This applies to the plant and animal world.

But here, too, the species remains and changes at the same time over the course of time: the tame city pigeon has developed from the rock dove. The essence of the species remains, but something changes. How did the species undergo this development? Through the external living conditions in which the species find themselves. The effect of the external on the internal changes the species. Everything that previously came upon a being as external circumstances subsequently becomes a process of further development in the being itself. The caves of Kentucky deprive the animal of its sight; the animal absorbs the darkness.

The sun would remain if other powerful celestial bodies did not continue to move it. Every being absorbs and then develops itself further. Every process of further development is therefore interaction. The animal develops itself in such a way that it provides for the next generation.

Let us now move up to the level of personality. It is capable of imagining and can therefore enter into a new type of living conditions and absorb spiritual impressions. It enters into a new, spiritual environment. Just as in the species, the process of further development is formed in the personality through the new spiritual conditions. Personality passes away like the phenomenon and the individual, and like the law and the species, individuality remains. It would be a violation of the law if it were otherwise, and so we understand reincarnation. The spiritual essence of the personality is absorbed from within by the living conditions, and develops further. This is the agreement of the law of reincarnation with that of the preservation of the species and the law.

When we follow the developing species, we observe the adaptation to external living conditions, which is then inherited. Adaptation and inheritance are the great laws that govern living nature. All inheritance is a transfer of acquired characteristics to the heirs. When I look at the pouter pigeon, I will only understand it if I go back to its ancestors and look for the causes that gave rise to its organs. The present formations must be sought in the activities of times gone by. What was previously an activity later becomes an organ. The same thing happens spiritually with the individuality. It adapts and passes on to the successor of the personality the individuality it has acquired in the spiritual realm. What is taken in through experience is furthered in the process of development.

Take the bean: it develops to the germ, everything else falls away, only the small part remains, and that dies off, only life itself with the species passes over to the offspring plant. Only the species remains, but when it became a germ, the bean species itself was still surrounded by a part of vegetable matter, which must also fall away. The developed plant is no longer the species, but it has something of the sheaths that the germ has to save. Only when everything has fallen away can it arise anew. It is a new incarnation. Just as in individuality, which is surrounded by all sheaths and can only incarnate when all remnants have fallen away. Man has even more sheaths; they must return to where they came from. Then his germ is free and single, in the world in which alone it can develop - to a new existence. Man belongs to the earth, without it he would be inconceivable. He can only exist under this atmospheric pressure; this also applies to the spiritual conditions. This is because he has developed into this earth, into its physical, astral and mental spheres, which are interwoven. The human being is constructed from these three spheres as an earthly human being. The individuality itself is only in the higher mind, which is not bound to the earth, but belongs to the solar sphere; the earth with its three spheres, but also the sun and all other planets, rests in it. So we still consist of a substance that does not change, the unwritten page in which the experiences are recorded.

We call the mental sphere, in so far as it belongs to the earth, “Rupa”, formed; the other, which extends, “Arup”, mental. This is where [the] individuality belongs. We are children of the sun in a certain respect, which is why we also call our teachers sun children.

Just as the plant slowly returns all the substances it has taken in to build itself, keeping only what is of the species, so the human being - individuality - retains only what is arupa, mental, in order to reincarnate. Arupa is the region that leads out of the earth into the general. Then it is the freed butterfly that can spread freely in the Arupa-Mental, then [gap in the transcript] it must return to experience anew.

When man has given up his physical, he also has to give back to the astral what has served his construction from there, then he lives in Kamaloka.

What he learns in this life becomes an inclination, it must develop in Arupa, then it will reach full development. Man is not only an earthling, but also a sun child through his belonging to the sphere. In the third race the spark was ignited. Where did this spark come from, which the Manasaputra brought? The first knowledge was not given earthly, but brought over from an earlier state; it is something that goes beyond the sphere of action; so it remains when these effects cease. Only by the fact that man is able to pass through Arupa does he remain, otherwise he would have to shatter. But in the same way, the progressive development of the spiritual is a law that applies to individuality.

The external becomes the internal, what is experienced externally becomes the inner principle of progress. What comes to the individuality becomes inner law. The stream of the macrocosm flows into the individual and thus becomes microcosm. Predispositions are the results of previous experience: our conscience is previous experience. Just as in the study of nature, we have to explain it; that is the law of karma: causation through the various incarnations. You have the cause for a present-day disposition in an earlier activity.

Vedanta: What you think today, you are tomorrow.

Reincarnation means: the preservation of the spiritual in the physical.

Karma means: what is first an activity later becomes a habit or trait.

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.

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.