The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Everything that enters into our work eventually crystallizes around the one point: to find union with the spiritual powers that advance humanity. From this point of view, the importance of the Christ-Being in the world has been spoken of here again and again. Today I would like to speak to you a few words that are intended to shape our ideas about this Christ-Impulse and its relationship to us humans ever more important. If we want to grasp the truth of this Christ impulse, we must be willing to reflect on many things. Nowadays, one hears the idea expressed here and there that everything schoolmasterly, pedantic, and didactic should be suppressed and that one should grasp the living life in art and world view. So many minds of the present express their fatigue towards everything didactic. It is only strange that as soon as matters of world-view are brought up, one always falls back into a longing for the didactic.

We have had to hear how Christ is spoken of as a world teacher; I once used the expression: “superhuman world schoolmaster”. Many feel comfortable when they can think that someone who had taught something had come into the world with Christ. In contrast to this, we have repeatedly emphasized the life character, the power character of the Christ impulse. Through what happened at the baptism in the Jordan, an entity found its way into earthly life by sharing the destiny of humanity for three years. Then it poured out into the earth aura and has been working there ever since.

When we look at this Christ event, we have to say that the event of Golgotha is a unique experience in the evolution of the earth. This has taken place once in relation to the evolution of the earth, but the Christ event was prepared in the spiritual world.

Although it is thoroughly wrong to think of the Christ-being as present in another body, one must nevertheless point to a preparatory event in the development of the world, namely to three preparatory events, preliminary stages of the event of Golgotha. They took place in supermundane, purely spiritual worlds.

I spoke of the two Jesus Children, the Solomon and the Nathan Jesus Child. The former bore within him the ego of Zarathustra. It passed over into the other Child and lived there from the twelfth to the thirtieth year. Then the shell was filled by the Christ-being. This Nathanic Jesus, he too is, this must be expressly mentioned, as he was born at the beginning of our era, in a human body for the first time properly embodied in the world. For the preliminary stages of his existence he lived in spiritual worlds. He was never properly embodied in a human body before. The relationship with Krishna was not a true embodiment, but a representative embodiment. When we visualize the being of this later Nathanian Jesus, we must look up to the angelic beings and can say: Before the Christ appeared on earth, he was not embodied, but three times present in the spiritual world, but in each of these three stages of existence, something similar to the event of Golgotha occurred again and again. We must therefore seek the preannouncement stages of Golgotha in the spiritual worlds. Each of these events has a deep significance for the whole life of people on earth. What we experience there is influenced not only by what happens within the physical earth, but also from the spiritual worlds. What was effected by the three preliminary stages was effected from the outside.

When humanity lived in the Lemurian epoch, the luciferic influence had already descended upon it. It sent its rays of power into human nature, as it were. The effect was inherent in this. Man had to develop differently then than if no luciferic influence had come. Man was, so to speak, infected with the luciferic impulse. We can say, on the basis of spiritual science, what this Luciferic influence has brought about. If it had remained as strong as in Lemuria, something would have happened to our human nature that would have placed it in great danger. What might be characterized as follows would have happened: the twelve sensory powers of the human being (for there are twelve) would have developed in such a way that the human being would have become supersensitive. While we now look at the red of the rose in such a way that it has an objective effect on us when we look at it, the red would then penetrate our eyes as if with pricks, and blue would suck at our vision. We would be supersensitive. It would be the same with hearing and all sensory perceptions of a human being. We would not be able to perceive anything without feeling pain or lust. Humanity was heading towards this through Lucifer. The beings of the higher hierarchies saw this. The Nathanic Jesus, as he later lived, was present in the spiritual world in the Lemurian period in an angelic being, and it was set before him to permeate himself with the Christ-being. While the sheaths were later permeated with the Christ-being, at that time the soul element of this angelic being was spiritualized by the Christ impulse. At that time the Christ Impulse already descended into the soul of the later Nathanian Jesus. This happened in the spiritual world, but the rays that proceeded from it spread over the earth and calmed the overly sensitive human senses, so that the danger was removed that people could only have beheld the sensual under pain and degrading lust. Thus we look at the first harbinger of the event of Golgotha and say to ourselves: We have become so with regard to our twelve senses because the Christ descended into the soul of the later Nathanic Jesus and appeased the human being of sense.

Then in Atlantean times, a danger came into human life again through the Ahrimanic influence gradually combining with the Luciferic influence. While in Lemuria the senses were in danger, now in the early days of Atlantia it was the vital organs and the etheric body of man that were in danger. These organs of an etheric body permeated by the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman would have developed in such a way that man would have taken on a form unworthy of a human being. Everything would have had to be done in such a way that man would have greedily pursued what was useful to him and could only have looked at what was not beneficial to him with disgust. Human life would have been a constant battle between greed and disgust. All the organs would have been so formed that man would have pounced in a degrading manner, like a wild animal, on what he had to absorb, and would have felt deeply degraded by disgust at what was not beneficial to him. That this did not happen is due to the second preliminary stage of the event of Golgotha. The danger was such that even in breathing, man would have drawn in the air with greed and would have expressed every flash of something unsuitable for him in a terrible way, with terrible outbursts of disgust. So it was the second time that this angelic being was imbued with the Christ impulse and thereby rays of strength entered the earth aura and calmed man's life.

Towards the end of the Atlantean period, the third preliminary stage developed. Once again, humanity was facing a great danger. Now, thinking, feeling and willing were to be brought into conflict with each other. The soul's expressions were to be made disharmonious, so that man could not have developed thinking, feeling and willing in an orderly way, but rather that these would have been in conflict with each other as if in madness. This was averted by the third preliminary stage. Once again the entity that later became Jesus of Nazareth imbued itself with the Christ impulse, and order and harmony were brought into the harmony of thinking, feeling and willing. This was still felt long after the Atlantean period. In the times that preceded our development of thought, the harbingers of an image that extends into our time but is not yet properly understood began to take shape. At the end of the Atlantean era, this soul, which later became Jesus of Nazareth, came into existence. This soul brought about an entity that always became master of the wildly storming affects, and triumphed over thinking, feeling and willing, which became a dense entity. Mankind pictured this in the image of St. George or St. Michael, the slayer of the dragon. This is the direct imaginative expression of the third forerunner of the event of Golgotha.

The Greeks, who in their imaginations brought to life what shone through from the mysteries of Atlantis, created an image of the being that was active in Atlantis. They worshipped in Apollo the spirit of which they imagined: this is He who is imbued with the spirit of the sun. They did not call it Christ, but the name is not important. In their sun worship they revered the third preliminary stage of the event of Golgotha and expressed this outwardly by seeking advice from the priests of Apollo in the most important matters. They knew, these Greeks, that what weaves in the earth aura is also woven into the secrets of existence, and how it has brought order to thinking, feeling and willing. They felt so connected to the earth that they said: What would have brought disorder to thinking and feeling and willing, if it had not been defeated by Apollo, rose up out of the earth in dense form. But Apollo brings order into it, so that instead of disharmony and madness in thinking, feeling and willing, wisdom emerges from the earth aura.

They looked towards the area where steam was rising from the earth, which they captured and stored in their sanctuary, and placed the priestess of Apollo over the opening through which he himself spoke in such a way that his wisdom was transformed into oracles, into advice for the concerns of those seeking this wisdom. Just as George and Michael appear in the picture, so Apollo appears in his sanctuary, pouring the prophecies of those who speak through him into the soul.

Oh, Christianity is ancient! It is not the name of Christ that matters. The service of Apollo honored Christ, the spirit of the sun, so that in this worship lies the consciousness of the third preliminary stage of the event of Golgotha. Then the time came when humanity faced a fourth great danger. In Lemuria, the physical body was in danger, then in Atlantia the etheric and astral organs. Now it was the I that was to come into disorder. This is preparing itself in such a way that at the time when the I was to take hold of man in Greek thought, it shows itself in a very peculiar phenomenon, that all conditions are present to bring disorder into the I. Only gradually will one understand how that which was to bring forth this I develops in Greek philosophy and so on. I have already tried to show how the I awakens. It can be seen from the study of philosophy, which culminates in the thought of Plato and Aristotle, how the I gradually comes into being. When Thales, Pherekydes of Syros, Anaxagoras first brought great thoughts into being, there was a parallel phenomenon that spread from Greece throughout the Greek world: there was the coming of the Sibyls parallel to the coming of the I. The Sibyls asserted themselves everywhere. Sometimes they spoke great wisdom for the future, but sometimes also madness. Everything that can throw the I into confusion, as the I must be thrown into confusion without the Christ Impulse, found expression in their prophecies. Two things were in preparation: Prophets, forerunners of the Christ Impulse, who, in the purity of their soul-searching, seek to absorb the young power of the Christ, and who, in their ordered life of thought, pass through what is weaving itself through the evolution of mankind. On the other hand, there are the Sibyls, who are at the mercy of the outer influences of the earth aura. In Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel in Rome, we are confronted with this contrast between sibyls and prophets. Michelangelo shows how the wind and other things work with the Sibyls, which are fundamentally connected with the earth, and shows that there was danger for the ego to become disordered with the Sibyls, and how the prophets work to calm this ego. Studying the prophets next to the sibyls in Michelangelo's paintings can lead us deep into many secrets. The forces that were at work through the Sibyls show how the human ego is inclined to fall into disorder on a fourth level. The order that the teaching of the prophets announces was established through the Mystery of Golgotha, the order of the ego forces in such a way that the human being's ego learned to feel more and more deeply: Not I, but the Christ in me. What would have contributed to the disorder of the ego in the Sibyls comes to the fore in an orderly way through the Christ impulse. Because the human ego must develop on earth, the event of Golgotha had to take place on earth; Christ had to permeate the body of Jesus, the real physical body, whereas in the preliminary stages an angel was inspired.

Thus Golgotha drew nearer to the evolution on earth. What Augustine says is deeply true: Christianity has always existed, only that now it is called Christianity. — In the time of Augustine there was a feeling that Apollo's servants were Christians, even if not in name. It was a veneration of the third, purely spiritual event. Thus Christ gradually approached the earth. In the devachan world was the first and second preliminary stage, in the astral world the third, and in the physical world the event of Golgotha.

But not as a teacher, but through his power did Christ penetrate into the earth aura. This must be emphasized again and again. If Christ had wanted to work only through what people could have understood of him, he would have been able to work little.

He entered evolution as a living entity. Human understanding must struggle to reach Him. In this way we see how the dogmatic disputes take place. Human judgment is still far from penetrating the Christ Impulse. The Christ Impulse works in the depths through the souls as a living power. We can trace this power. Let us look at an event that took place on October 28, 312. At that time, Constantine delivered a battle to Maxentius near Rome. Maxentius' army was four times as strong as Constantine's. Constantine won. Anyone who looks at history correctly says: The life of all of Europe would have been different if Constantine had not won. — It was a strange battle. It was not external strength that won, nor judgment. The battle was not fought with the help of the power of judgment. It was fought by each side according to subconscious impulses, into which the Christ impulse played. Maxentius consulted the Sibylline books. They told him: If you do not remain where you are, if you leave Rome, you will subjugate the great enemy of Rome. A dream also told him to leave Rome and fight outside the gates. He was securely entrenched in Rome. Human judgment did not decide what took place in this battle. The subconscious worked in the souls of Maxentius and Constantine. A dream revealed to Constantine that he should carry the symbol of Christianity before the army. Dreams decided the outcome of this battle, which decided the fate of Europe. Human judgment was not suited to bring about what was to be brought about, but the Christ impulse worked and confronted the four times weaker army of Constantine outside Rome with Maxentius. Through that which human beings cannot judge, the guidance of human affairs happened. This is significant for the whole guidance of human history.

The Christ Impulse worked in the subconscious of souls as a spiritual impulse. It worked in the same way later, when the map of Europe was once again given a completely different form. If at the decisive moment the Maid of Orleans had not stepped forward to the side of her king, the destiny of all Europe would have been changed. Again it was not the power of judgment, but the Christ impulse, which availed itself of a human instrument. It does not depend on our judgment whether one finds this good or bad.

I can show by another example how the Christ impulse works below the threshold of consciousness. It makes use of strange forms of revelation, strange to the materialist. When modern spiritual life approached, there was something in its development that would have caused materialism to stretch its arms much further over European life. If certain events had not occurred, it would have been possible that even in those souls that still felt spiritually, purely material conceptions would have arisen. The understanding for the Christ Impulse would have sunk so low in the preceding centuries that one would have doubted one's physical existence. Then it would have been much easier for Arthur Drews and others. It spread to the most distant regions of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, when there was a danger that people would no longer have any connection with the Christ Impulse. The mood was: Why should one believe that Christ lived? And so the same thing happened simultaneously in the most diverse places. In almost all parts of Europe, everywhere it was seen that through the most diverse human places, through villages and towns, not always the same, but always a different physical, human personality walked. The opinion spread that this human personality, which appeared in a particularly strange guise, was Ahasver, the eternal Jew, who had wandered the world since he rejected Christ. The rumor spread that there lived a man who could say from his own experience: I have seen Christ, he really lived. - In the most diverse places, this personality went through the villages, attended church services in a terrible state of mind, in very outdated clothing, and recounted the event of which he could bear witness. Bishops and abbots invited such personalities to banquets and organized festivities. These personalities always told them: We can strengthen your awareness that Christ walked the earth, because he passed me by, and because of how I treated him, I must now go through the world like this.

From what we learn in history, we have no idea how deeply what Ahasver told affected human minds a few centuries ago. There were always other personalities, but they saw, as in a retrospective of Ahasver, Christ passing by, so that they were believed. From them came the realization: Yes! He has lived, for he can

can tell about him. — Superficial people today may say: Should that have had such a great influence that it averted the danger that Christ would have been completely forgotten as an historical Christ? They do not know that such events went through the world that history has not recorded. That we are not completely mired in materialism today is a consequence of what emanated from these personalities. Today, “it could not happen.” In some places, Ahasver had thick calluses, peculiar clothing, long hair, yellowed skin, was tall and gaunt; in other places he was small, had a hump, but was always imbued with the consciousness of what the soul believed it had experienced at the moment when Christ passed before it.

This consciousness, this ability to look back into the Akashic Records and to identify with them to such an extent that they truly believed it, was instilled in numerous personalities. Today, all these Ahasueruses would end up in an asylum; at that time, they were instruments for strengthening spiritual life. Bishops and abbots were strengthened by them in the power of the Christian faith. The seed was sown in psychically inclined natures from spiritual worlds, to be able to look back to the event of Golgotha. The narrators then saw themselves in the picture through the peculiarity of their consciousness. That was a true, living contemplation of the event at Golgotha. Much more than in the human being's conscious mind, in which the power of judgment asserts itself, took place in the subconscious regions of the soul, which emanated from the Christ impulse. Today's materialistic man can easily scoff at such things. He will consider it a psychic epidemic and say: What can one give that comes from diseased souls? One would like to ask these materialists what they would say if someone became so mentally ill that psychiatrists locked him up in an asylum, but there, out of his enlightenment, he began to devise the air engine that people really have in mind as an idea? They would accept it from such a soul and not ask whether it comes from a diseased soul. Whether a soul is diseased is not a criterion, not an objection. The point is to examine the content of what comes from the soul. The worst thing about our material mind is that one appeals to secondary considerations, not to the power of truth.

If we survey the development of humanity, it will become clear to us that we have to understand the Christ impulse as a living force that works much more in the depths of the soul and makes use of physical means, more than what people understand. If it had remained limited to this, its influence would not have come far. But in our time, things are beginning to change, to the point that, little by little, what was the thought for the Greeks, with which at the same time the consciousness of the human ego was actually born, must have an effect in us. How does this thought assert itself today? One does not need to prove this with spiritual science, but with philosophy. In the centuries before the establishment of Christianity, beginning with Pherekydes and ending with Aristotle, thought begins to play a role in the evolution of the world. Thinking in images only begins in Greek life. This prepares the way for the actual consciousness of self. Then comes the Christ impulse. It works together with what has emerged as ego power. In our time, we see it in Hegelianism, which is indeed little noticed, but is a significant phenomenon of humanity, as Fege struggles with the thought that wants to grasp the whole world. Man develops in the world; he crowns development by filling the world with thought. He recognizes his environment through this. But thought can do two things: it can develop properly, which can be compared to the development of the germ into a flower, or the germ can be used for human food. Then it is torn out of its continuous flow. If it remains in its continuous flow, a new plant develops, and it is likely to give rise to life in the future. It is the same with human thought. It is said that we use it to create images of our environment. But to use it for such knowledge is as if we used germs for food. We drive the thought away from its current. But if it persists in its current, we do not use it for food, so to speak, then we let it live its own germ life, let it arise in meditation and inspiration, let it develop into a new, fruitful existence. That is the straight current for the thought. In the future, people will recognize that what has been regarded as knowledge of the world behaves like grain that does not develop into new grain but is driven out into a completely different current; but what we learn to know through knowledge of the higher world is thought that is philosophically grasped in freedom, that leads directly into spiritual life through meditation and concentration.

We have reached the point where it will be recognized that ordinary knowledge relates to supersensible knowledge in the same way that a grain of wheat used for food relates to a grain of wheat that is transformed into new grain. Inner knowledge of thoughts is what the future must bring. Philosophy in its old form has been overcome, has played out its role. It will be recognized that such knowledge must always be there, but must lead to a by-product of development. It will be recognized that the living thought, which is transformed into meditation and concentration, leads to spiritual knowledge of human nature and to knowledge of the spiritual world.

When we consider various phenomena in our spiritual life, many things may be noticed. Here we may say and discuss what would be misunderstood in the outside world. A man is regarded today as a great philosophical spirit who, in essence, limits his wisdom to repeatedly saying: Man must not stop at external knowledge, he must grasp the spirit. One could say that he repeatedly says, in different versions: Man cannot stop at mere external knowledge, he must grasp the spiritual within himself, must experience it within himself, it must not be grasped merely in concepts, it must become alive. He does not say what the spirit is, nothing is recognized. This is the hallmark of Eucken's philosophy. It does not lead to real spiritual knowledge. When thinking forms itself out of itself, it does not become an indeterminate spiritual experience, but it is rounded off in itself, and what we have come to know as the etheric body resonates with thinking. When thinking transforms itself into meditation, this thought will form and out of the human etheric body there is - the spiritual human being. Humanity is on the way out of philosophy and into a living spiritual knowledge.

We are on the right path. Those who understand this recognize their time, but real insight into these things cannot be gained without developing a holy awe of the knowledge that holds one back from applying the power of judgment one has everywhere. One must always want to prepare oneself for new knowledge, because the way the soul is, it is only good for a side current of knowledge. Only when it develops itself higher is it good for really entering the spiritual world. Only then do we understand our task within our community correctly when we feel, with all humility, how we are called to know something of this great re-evaluation of all concepts of knowledge that want to lead into the spiritual life. We want to remain very modest, but we can call some of those who are considered great minds today shallow talkers, because that is not derogatory criticism. What we need to do is to combine clear, strong and forceful judgment of what we are striving for with humility; to recognize that, in the grand scheme of things, we are only at the beginning, but our hearts can swell, our hearts can glow with joy at the thought of what we want to achieve, to which we want to devote our most intimate soul powers. I would like to appeal not only to your imagination, but also to the deepest powers of your heart, to that in your soul where your deepest feeling for the pulse of the times can be found. Then you will understand what is meant by the fact that such a speech is only intended to hint at what the leading powers of our time, the spiritual individuals, of whom we know that they are going through our time, are saying to us. We do not advance only by acquiring more and more concepts about what the spiritual world is. We must acquire them. But we only really advance by connecting something with each new idea that comes from the deepest part of our soul, so that this ever-increasing understanding can be proven to the leading powers of the time. We can feel them speaking to us from the most intimate depths of our souls. Long before we perceive this speaking as a warning, we can feel how our movement is supported by these spiritual guiding powers, of which we are the true heralds within our movement. This awareness should pour out like a true spiritual current over what we do.

Esteemed attendees! It is my responsibility today to conclude the lectures on the so-called Devachan plan or, as we have to call it in German, the spiritual realm. If you read about Devachan or the Land of the Spiritual Entities in theosophical books, you will find the description that this realm of the spiritual world is a realm of contentment, a realm of bliss. You are told that Devachan is the “land of delights,” the “land of happiness.” Well, honored attendees, it is very easy to misunderstand such a description and to imagine something quite wrong under these words. We must be clear about the fact that very many people do not know what the happiness of the spiritual realm is, that the vast majority of people seek happiness and satisfaction in things that are no longer found in Devachan. Even what people usually imagine in religious concepts as paradise, as a land of happiness and bliss, is still so closely tied to ideas of immediate sensual reality, to ideas taken from our physical environment, that we must not apply these ideas to the land of spiritual beings. What people hope for in terms of paradisiacal joys, what they call paradise, based on sensual perceptions, they already find before entering devachan, they find it in the fifth realm of Kamaloka, in the fifth realm of the fire of purification, and they find it precisely for the purpose of stripping away this tendency towards sensual pleasures and sensual desires. What the Indian, for example, imagines as paradisiacal hunting grounds, where he can indulge all his hunting desires, he finds already in the fifth realm of Kamaloka. But man must be cleansed of precisely that before he can enter the spiritual world. On the other hand, many people say that if they hear that none of what they experience here on earth as sensual reality remains in the spiritual realm, then the spiritual realm is nothing more than an illusion, a kind of dream that we dream between two incarnations. Both require a correction. The ideas that a person takes from their directly experienced reality need to be guided to completely different and higher ideas. One can gain a corresponding idea of what is actually meant by the land of delights, the land of bliss, what is meant by that deep intimacy and spiritual satisfaction that we experience between two incarnations, if one listens to what students of the great masters already know from their experience in this life.

Those who reach initiation in this life, experience something of this heavenly bliss, of this true spiritual satisfaction, through insight into the spiritual realm in this very life. You may ask: Is there or has there been something in our countries that is called initiation? Have there really been disciples in our Western culture who have been blessed with the highest vision that spiritual land has to offer? There has always been the possibility of receiving initiation in secret or occult schools. A current of occult wisdom came to Europe in the 14th century. This current, which is called the Rosicrucian current, was misunderstood by many; it must be misunderstood by all those who only get to know it from the outside. Only those who have been allowed to see through occult training should get to know it from the inside. When Christian Rosenkreutz brought the wisdom of the Orient to Europe, he founded schools in Europe where disciples were trained to reach the stages where vision in the Devachan, the vision of the higher secrets, became possible. Only those who have undergone training themselves know how to tell about it. All external research, everything that is written in books, cannot give you any information. Until 1875, the year of the founding of the Theosophical Society, these things were never spoken of at all, except in the most secret of teaching centers. It was only since 1875 that the Masters of Wisdom felt the duty to convey some of these deepest spiritual truths to mankind.

Initiations still take place today. However, they can only take place within the spiritual realm, the region I have described to you. Today, every person to be initiated must come to the Devachan plane to see these higher secrets for themselves. This forces me to give at least a small idea of how the person who receives the initiation on the Devachan plane feels and how he is transformed. What I have described to you of those highest entities that come from completely different worlds, first to enjoy their embodiment in Devachan and then to descend into the lower regions, into the three worlds, these entities can be seen by those who come for initiation in this field. When a person has attained initiation, he begins to gain a completely new faith, a completely new vision. He has truly become a different person. And what is not present at all for many people living around him, of which they never have an inkling, he sees with the spiritual eye.

Allow me to give you a brief summary of the creed that the initiate makes his own. You will recognize some of the phrases. All deeper truths have always come into the public domain and have been exoterically propagated in the public domain.

The person who is initiated gains a higher overview of what is happening here in our physical reality. He gains this higher overview by placing himself outside of this physical reality. While we live in the world of the senses, we are enclosed in the physical organization and can only see through our eyes, hear through our ears, and perceive through our other sense organs. We are dependent on what our senses convey to us. This is stopped by the higher training that the person to be initiated receives. Before the person to be initiated lies, I can only describe it, his own physical reality completely spread out. He sees himself objectively next to himself, and just as we look at any other object in the environment of our sensory reality, so we look at our own physical body when we are initiated. Our organism lies before us like our own corpse. But also our astral body, our desires, instincts, our whole sensual life of drives, lies before us, and we speak in the sense of the quoted Vedanta wisdom: “That is you”. We see ourselves completely objectively, with all our faults, with what we have achieved in life through the various incarnations. This is what is described to you as the passage through the gate of death, which every person to be initiated has to go through. He then no longer sees through the senses what he otherwise has around him in the sense world; he sees into the outer world from the spiritual plane, and not through the senses. But he also sees into the world of instincts, into the world of Kama, of passions, into the world where human drives are, into that which brings people into conflict and quarrel, what delights them and what gives them pleasure in this physical reality; there he sees into it as a pedestrian standing on a high mountain and looking into a mountain landscape.

And because he has risen above sensuality, because he has only a world of pure spirit around him, that is why he sees on the other side those entities that are spiritual in nature, and he perceives something of what is called divine wisdom. The divine essence itself is the Father-Spirit of all religions; no one can see him in his very own form. The Highest remains unrevealed, even to the opened spiritual eyes. But the initiate receives an idea of what creates and works in the world. He is led before the creating, divine powers. Then, for the first time, he utters the word out of conviction, out of direct contemplation, the word that was previously taught to him as a belief: [“I am Brahman”]. When the person to be initiated is now led through the narrow gate, where the physical and astral life is objectively shown to him, the word of the initiating priest is heard: To those who have, much will be given, and from those who have not yet, even that which they have will be taken away. — This is the initiation saying that is heard at the first gate of initiation. You will also find it in the Bible, like many a saying taken from Egyptian priestly wisdom. Those who have, are those who have already awakened to spiritual feeling and perception. But those who come to this gate without faith and without spiritual perception will also be deprived of their desire for spiritual knowledge. Woe to him who comes unworthily to this place, who has pushed his way in with curiosity; to him another voice is heard, which again has a symbolic meaning.

Man now experiences what universal spirit is, universal soul. We humans reflect on sensual things, but the spirit that lives in us, that we experience as thoughts within us, that forms the object of our reflection, is the same as the wisdom from which the world is built. We could not recognize the world with its laws if it were not built from these spiritual laws. Theosophy teaches that what lives in man as spirit, as manas, is essentially the same as what lives in the great universe, as Mahat. Man's manas draws wisdom from the manas of the universe, from Mahat. Or should a man believe that the laws we see operating in the heavens, by which the stars move, have meaning only in his mind? The Mahat of the starry sky is the element of intellect and reason out in the great world, and what you learn from it is manas, the element of intellect and reason of the small world.

Now the All-Spirit, the Universal Spirit, descends upon the initiate. The initiation priest speaks the words: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The person concerned, now an initiate, knows what the spirit of the world is. Then he can express his belief in the creative spirit of the world out of his own conviction and say: “I believe in the divine Father-Spirit, which has made the spiritual, which is also called the heavenly, and the physical, the earthly.” In the Christian creed it says: I believe in God, the almighty Father, who created heaven and earth. — And then one thing has become clear to man: that in truth and reality he himself has taken his origin from the same universal world spirit that confronts him here in the spiritual realm. He knows that he has descended into the depths of sensual-physical matter; but he also knows that he has descended from divine worlds and comes from the spirit. He knows that the spiritual essence he bears within him he has received from the very source of the divine Father-Spirit, that he is a ray from the sun of the divine Father-Spirit. He becomes aware of this as a real divine power, as something he experiences and of which he has direct certainty. He begins to gain a new faith in humanity. Humanity becomes for him the only begotten Son of God, the Son of whom he speaks in his creed: “I believe in the divine origin of humanity — in the God in man himself, as the Egyptian priestly wisdom expressed it — or in the Christ in man, who has descended from heavenly worlds. And then it becomes clear to him that before these times in the evolution of the earth had arrived, these times in which we now live, these times in which people perceive through their senses, in which their sensual urges cause them to act — it becomes clear to him that before man descended into this sphere of the senses, he was in another, in a purely spiritual sphere.

The disciple has now come to know the spiritual land, and he knows that this land was the land where man was in his time as the only begotten Son of God, he knows that man is born of virgin spiritual matter – Mary or Maya – and he knows that the spiritual man Christ descended into sensual matter, he knows that this spiritual man is contained in each of us and develops little by little through the various incarnations, he knows that this spiritual man lives surrounded by sensual corporeality, lives in the physical body. The things of the outer world impinge sensually upon our body and build up our eyes, our ears and the other sense organs. Within this bodily sensuality we live and let the world penetrate into us. Through the sense organs we look as through windows upon the outer world; we are enclosed in sensual matter and therefore limited by it.

Pure and spiritual is the Christ who enters into people; he is virgin spirit-matter. Now he has descended into the contracted, sensual matter. Those who speak esoterically call this the water or the sea. Thus it says, for example, in Genesis: “The Spirit of God hovered over the waters.” This means that the spirit hovers over matter. In Greek, this matter is also called “Pöntos Pyletös”, literally contracted sea. Man has moved into this contracted matter, which has formed his organs. Thus, the active being in the spiritual realm has become a being that passively receives impressions from outside through the sense organs: Man has become passive, a Pöntos Pyletös. This is the difference between beholding in the spiritual world and beholding in the world of the senses. If we want to have an object before us in the spiritual world, we first have the thought, and the spirit forms this thought in the spiritual world, that is, man finds the images for all creation in the spiritual world. In the sensual world, man perceives passively, having become passive. We have all become passive, as it were suffering in the contracted matter. That was the original confession of the Egyptian priesthood. This is the symbol that the Christ has descended to mankind, that he has taken on matter and become passively suffering in the contracted sea, in the Pöntos Pyletös. In the course of time this was transformed into Christianity, and because the word Pöntos Pyletös was thoroughly misunderstood, the misleading passage in the Christian creed arose, which reads: “suffered under Pontius Pilate,” which is nothing other than the quoted passage from the creed of the Egyptian priests. Man has become suffering; he is no longer active, but passive. This is the article of faith which in the Occult Symbol signifies the so-called Incarnation.

When the person to be initiated has realized what is meant by these profound truths, he then searches in the objective, sensory reality until he has become clear within himself that he can now descend into this sensuality in order to work out of duty and in devoted self-sacrifice within the sensual reality. When he has reached the point where he no longer seeks to satisfy the sensual drives, but uses them only to work within the sensual world, then he is an initiate, then he is initiated, then he has the firm certainty that he can see through the general cosmic justice. He used to live locked in the sensual world, and the riddle of birth and death, the riddle of eternal becoming, was unclear to him. Now it is clear to him that he is eternal and above birth and death. He sees that which is changeable and at the same time the eternal cosmic justice, which in theosophical language we call karma. He has become a sage in the justice of the cosmos, he can judge between life and death, or, as it is said by the Egyptian initiates, between birth and death. And now he believes in the exalted community of spirits freed from the body. We are only separated in the sensual world; in Devachan we are a community of spirits freed from the body. The Christian creed expresses this when it says: “I believe in the communion of saints.” The Christian Creed grew out of the esoteric confession of the Egyptian adepts, which speaks a very esoteric language. It is partly translated from misunderstood symbols, partly from esoteric sayings, which the candidates for initiation received as direct knowledge in the land of Devachan.

From this discussion, you will now have a somewhat clearer idea of what is meant by the land of delight and bliss. It is the delight of infinity, of eternal activity, of eternal work. Why can none of the things that oppress us in the physical world oppress us in Devachan? Devachan is a land of bliss not because we experience delights there that man desires and craves in his sensual world, but because we are free from the material, free from what craves for sensual desires, but also free from what limits us, and because it makes it possible for us to react to what would otherwise affect us from the outside. What limits us in the sensual world is removed, what can cause us pain is no longer there. For what causes pain? Because impressions are made on our astral body or on our physical body. We have discarded these bodies when we are in Devachan; the reason for the pain and the feelings of discomfort that we experience in the physical world has ceased to exist. Because no one can be selfish anymore, no one can demand selfish pleasures; because no one has an astral body anymore, one is free from anything that can oppress one's own personality. That is why devachan is known as the “land of bliss,” the “land of happiness.”

I said that in the third region of Devachan, all pain and sighing of the creature is revealed to us, that we can perceive all the pain and suffering that takes place here on earth, all the passions and desires. But we perceive it as we perceive the objects here in the sensual world – a perception that is not so strong and not so glaring that it causes us pain. It is also not like touching an object that has a high temperature, so that we burn ourselves – in short, we perceive without feeling selfish pain or personal pleasure. We see the totality of all pain and suffering, and as spiritual beings we feel that we have to help alleviate or reduce this pain. It makes no difference to us whether this pain or pleasure belongs to us or to others. Our personality has been stripped away; the pains are no longer personal. The cause for personal suffering to arise for us has ceased to exist. Because we are disembodied and thus free from everything that could oppress us, devachan is called the land of bliss. The bliss in devachan must therefore be described as being incomparable to anything that happens here in the sensual reality. Only he knows what these “delights” of Devachan mean who, as an initiate, has already had experiences here in this physical-sensual embodiment and has received knowledge and wisdom of this Devachan.

Everything we are told about the realm of Devachan comes from the experiences and direct observations and insights of such initiates who have learned to be actively engaged in spiritual existence themselves. They have also learned that it would be the greatest illusion to speak of the life in Devachan between two embodiments as an illusion. It is precisely the illusion that we regard the life in Devachan as an illusion, as a dream. And in fact, all real life comes from Devachan. And only because the task of earthly existence is to lead people in their spiritual activity down to the earthly world, the Christ must appear in man, in sensual embodiment. That is why, according to the saying of Plato, the great Greek philosopher, the soul of the world is laid out in the shape of a cross through the universe and stretched over the earthly body of the world. That is what Plato said. It is a symbol that the initiate knows in its deepest meaning.

Just as the instrument needs the tool, the workman, so our physical existence needs the spiritual world, so that the spiritual world can be the architect of the physical body. Just as a hammer would never have been invented without the influence of spiritual reflection, nor could it ever have been used by a being that had only physical powers and was incapable of reflection, so too could man not fulfill his task if he did not repeatedly ascend into the spiritual realm and draw strength from there to work in the material world. He ascends to the land where he receives knowledge of pure spirituality, where he learns how spiritual forces work without them becoming passive within the senses, where he learns to freely unfold his wings and work. Then he can in turn become embodied again, suffering in the contracted matter of earthly existence, in the Pöntos Pyletös. From incarnation to incarnation, man wanders; again and again he moves into the Pöntos Pyletös; again and again the spirit is crucified in matter.

The theosophist can never be materialistic – not even to the slightest degree – and see the whole of existence in the physical world. And especially when he is able to make his own observations in the spiritual realm, he will come to the realization that asceticism would be hostile to reality. What kind of task man has as a spiritual being becomes clear to us in the spiritual realm. The earthly world in which we live is our assigned place of residence during our present evolution. And what we bring from the spiritual realm, we should use to benefit this earthly world. So that we can work on this earth, we are provided with new assignments from the spiritual realm again and again between two incarnations. Dear audience, we have now covered the three worlds. Man lives in three worlds: the material world, the world of soul or astral world and the spiritual world or Devachan. In this existence man lives in all three worlds. Every material human being also contains a soul and a spirit. However, man is only conscious within the sensual, but the astral and spiritual man also work in him; the soul and the spirit are also effective in every human being. Man's consciousness awakens between two incarnations in Kamaloka, in the soul's country; then man becomes enlightened, he is awakened between two incarnations – according to the level of development, according to what he brings with him from this earthly incarnation — in Devachan, in the spiritual realm, in order to return to the astral world, to clothe itself with astral matter and to be incarnated again in the physical reality. That is the path, the pilgrimage of the human spirit.

The human being comes from the spiritual realm. It was originally virgin matter from which man, when he still lived in the pure spiritual realm, formed a body for himself. Long ago, another life on our earth preceded this earthly state of ours. Then men were still pure spirits, then only spiritual reality existed. Then man descended first into the astral existence, not yet to the physical reality. He was then still the Adam Kadmon, that “pure” entity in which the physical world of instincts did not yet exist.

Then came that which is so wonderfully and symbolically expressed in Genesis: “Jehovah formed man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life.” The spirit met with sense-proof matter and with that, at the same time, the whole existence of physical and sense reality. Until then, man had been in a kind of subconscious state. The waking consciousness that we have today, this mind through which we consider things and with which we orient ourselves in the physical world, only came to man with the descent into the sensual world; at the same time as the lower sensual reality, man received reason. This is again symbolically represented in Genesis as the snake; it bestows the earthly mind on humanity.

The lowest point in human development is that where birth and death take place, where the immortal part of man must always pass through the gate of death. This will be replaced in the next epoch, when man, similar to the preceding epoch, will only be an astral being; and then the last epoch will come, when man will only have a spiritual existence.

Thus, the contemplation of Devachan teaches us, like everything in the world, on a large and small scale, that everything is in a state of development, that all existence comes from the spirit, passes through the sensual reality, and then ascends to the spiritual again. Contemplation of this higher, spiritual realm shows us that what we call death, what we call decay, is nothing more than a temporary, almost illusory state of an epoch of the world, that it is not something that can last. The conviction, the clarity, the knowledge that man has come from higher realms and that he will go to higher realms again, that is what gives us the strength to gradually, as we progress in theosophy, feel everything that an initiate of early Christianity – Paul – felt and expressed with the words: “Death, where is thy sting?”

On the other hand, we should never disdain our earthly existence. Just as the bee carries honey into the beehive, so we have to suck the honey out of the earthly world and carry it up into the spiritual world. But we can only find our way if we know what the basic forces of our existence are. For this reason I have given the lectures on the Devachan region. There was only one thing that could have induced me to give these lectures, and I know that they can easily be misunderstood. The author of the theosophical textbook “Light on the Path” wrote:

And once you have recognized the truth, you must not keep it to yourself. — Anyone who has recognized the truth must not keep it to themselves. And anyone who feels called to speak it must speak it, regardless of how it is received. Higher than everything else is the call from the spiritual world, once we have heard it. This call awakens in us a consciousness that is completely different from all consciousness that we know from our sensual existence. And then, from the perspective of the spiritual realm, we can make a saying of Solomon our motto:

Therefore I begged for insight, and it was given to me.
I called upon the Most High, and wisdom was given to my spirit.
I value truth more than anything that
lives in the sensual world around me.

The wise man values wisdom more than all the sensual realms around him. That is why he tries to proclaim this wisdom. This is to justify what has moved me to speak about this subtle area of existence, although I know how these things can be misunderstood and how difficult it is to talk about them in a reasonably understandable language. But if we have felt this call, then, in the spirit of Solomon's wisdom, let us express it in the words:

Propter hoc optavi et datus est mihi sensus
et invocavi et venit in me spiritus sapientiae
et praeposui illam regnis et sedibus et divitias nihil esse duxi
in comparatione illius.

It's always necessary to give a new picture of what has to happen in meditation and of how one has to behave therein. When one sits down to meditate one should try to see to it that the room one is in is neither too hot nor too cold, so that one feels as few hindrances from the physical body as possible. The first thing that'll appear is a kind of inner unrest, as if things were pricking and crawling in our blood, so that one feels distracted by it; it can even become a rushing of the blood. Perhaps people who haven't experienced this will think that they're better meditators. But that isn't the case, for everyone must more or less experience this pricking in the blood, and it's actually a proof that one is on the right track, for one thereby becomes aware of something that one always likes to ignore in ordinary life. For the stabbing and pricking of the blood makes us aware of the egotism that we're still full of and that hinders us from getting into the spiritual world. This will hinder us from acquiring the necessary quiet, but with a strong continuation of meditation one will get so far that this prickling will no longer disturb us while it's present.

A kind of difficulty in breathing is a second hindrance that emerges in meditation. A moment comes when one feels as if breathing would stop, as if one had a thickening or constriction in the throat that takes one's breath away. This is something that anyone who tries to meditate will probably experience and it points to the untruthfulness that's still in us.

A third thing is that one can suddenly feel very weak during meditation and that sweat breaks out. This is the case in fat people. If the etheric body loosens itself here it has a kind of dense wall before it so that the meditator can't see through it, and further attempts to see spiritual beings will fail. Or one can feel very comfortable and light, as if one were in a kind of dream state. This indicates that we're not inclined to be sociable, and that we tend to lead a dreamy life on the physical plane. To counteract the egoism that can arise so strongly that one can feel very disturbed by it one could read the Lord's Prayer, the Sermon on the Mount or the beginning of John's Gospel and let them work in one. This will create quiet in us for awhile. What was given as the Fifth Gospel can also prevent a further increase in egotism.

The more seriously we develop ourselves as esoterics, the more we should develop a devotion in us and bring it towards higher beings such as angels. They need our esoteric striving and the study of theosophy as food for themselves. And to the extent that theosophy presses into us and we make it into a part of our own being, archangels can use it for the further development of single peoples and therefore for their own development.

There are three elements in evolution which must be differentiated: form, life and consciousness. Today we will speak about the different kinds of consciousness.

We can regard plants and lower animals as the means whereby higher beings extend their senses into the world in order to behold this world through them. Let us take our start from the sense organs of the plants. When we speak of these we must be clear that we are not only dealing with the sense organs of the single plants, but with beings in higher worlds. The plants are, as it were, only the feelers which are extended by the higher beings; they gain information through the plants.

All plants have cells, more especially at the root-tip but also in other places, in which granules of starch are to be found. Even in otherwise non-starch-containing plants, these starch granules appear at the root-tips. Members of the lily family, for instance, which otherwise contain no starch, possess these starch granules in the cells attached to the roots. These starch granules are loose and movable, and the important point is whether they are situated in one place or another.

Whenever a plant turns even slightly, one starch granule falls towards the other side. This the plant cannot stand. It then turns again in such a way that the granules come back to their right position. And these starch granules actually lie in a symmetrical relationship to the direction of the gravity of the earth. The plant grows upwards because it senses the direction of gravity. By observing the starch granules at the root-tips, we learn to recognise a kind of sense organ. This is for a plant the sense of gravity. This sense belongs not only to the plant, but to the soul of the whole earth, which orders the growth of the plant in accordance with this sense.

This is of primary importance. The plant takes its direction in accordance with gravity. Now if one takes a wheel, for instance a water-wheel, into which plants can be inserted, and turns the wheel together with the plants, another force is added to the force of gravity: a revolving force. This is now in every part of the plant, and its roots and stalks grow in the direction of the tangent of the wheel, in the direction of the tangential force, not the force of gravity. In accordance with this, the starch granules adjust their position.

Let us now consider the human ear. At first we have the outer auditory passage, then the tympanum, and in the inner ear the little auditory bones: hammer, anvil and stirrup—quite minute bones. Hearing depends upon these little bones bringing the other organs into vibration. Further in we find three semicircular membranous canals arranged according to the three dimensions. These are filled with fluid. Then we find, further within the ear, the labyrinth, a structure in the form of a snail shell, filled with very fine little hairs. Each of these is tuned, like the strings of a piano, to a particular pitch. The labyrinth is connected with the auditory nerve that goes to the brain.

The three semicircular canals are especially interesting. They stand in relation to one another in the three directions of space. They are filled with little otoliths, similar to the starch granules of the plant. When these are disturbed a person cannot hold himself erect or walk in an upright position. In the case of fainting the rush of blood to the head can cause a disturbance in the three canals. The sense of direction in man depends on these three semicircular canals. This is the same sense which in the plant, as sense of balance, is localised in the root-tips. What occurs in the root-tips is, in the human being, developed up above in the head.

In surveying the whole evolution: plant, animal, man, one discovers definite relationships between them. The plant is reversed in man. The direction of the animal lies midway between them. The plant has sunk its roots into the earth and directs its sexual organs upward towards the sun. If we turn the plant halfway round we have the animal. If we turn it right round we have man. That is the original significance of the cross;¹¹ plant kingdom, animal kingdom, human kingdom. The plant sinks its roots into the earth. The animal is the half-reversed plant. Man is the completely reversed plant. This is why Plato says: ‘The World Soul is stretched on the Cross of the World Body.’¹²

In the plant the organ of direction lies in the root-tips. In man it is in the head. What in man is the head, is the root in the case of the plant. The reason, why in man the sense of direction is connected with the sense of hearing, is that hearing is the sense which raises man into a higher kingdom. The last faculty to be attained by man is the faculty of speech. Again, speech is connected with the upright carriage, which without the sense of direction or balance would not be possible. The sound which man produces through speech is the active complement to the passive sense of hearing. What in the plant is simply a sense of orientation has become in man the sense of hearing, which bears within itself the old sense of orientation in the three semicircular canals, which are arranged in accordance with the three dimensions of space.

Every being possesses consciousness. This is also true of the plant, but its consciousness lies on the devachanic plane, on the mental plane. A diagram of the consciousness of the plant would have to be done in the following way:

The plants can also speak and answer us, only we must learn to observe them on the mental plane. There they tell us their own names.

Man's consciousness reaches down to the physical plane. Here his consciousness depends upon the same organ with which the plant is made fast to the earth. We first learn to know man in a true sense when we see how he produces speech and in speech the word ‘Ich’ (I). This ‘I’ has its roots in the mental plane. Without the faculty of uttering the little word ‘I’ we might regard the human form also as that of an animal.

The plant has its roots in the mental plane and man by means of his organ of hearing is an inhabitant of the mental plane. This is why we connect the ‘Es denkt’ (‘it thinks’) with speech. The ear is a higher development of the sense of direction. Because man in relation to the plant has reversed his position and turned again to the spirit, he has in the organ of hearing the old residue of the sense of direction. He gives himself his direction. These are therefore two opposite kinds of consciousness: the plant's consciousness on the mental plane and here the consciousness of man, who carries his being down from the mental world into the physical world. This earthly consciousness of man is called Kama-manas.

Each of the sense organs has a consciousness of its own. These different forms of consciousness, the consciousness of the visible, the audible, the sense of smell and so on, are brought together in the soul. The consciousness only becomes ‘manasic’ when its separate forms are gathered together in the centre of the soul. Without this integration man would fall apart into the consciousness of his organs. These were originally fashioned through the solar plexus, through the sympathetic nervous system. When man himself was a sort of plant, he too was not yet conscious on the physical plane. At that time the higher consciousness first developed the organs.

In a condition of deep trance the central consciousness is silenced. Then the separate organs are conscious and the person begins to see with the pit of the stomach and the solar plexus. Such a consciousness was possessed by the Seeress of Prevost.¹³ She describes correctly light forms which are however only to be observed by the consciousness of the organs. The lowest consciousness is that of the minerals. A somewhat more centralised consciousness, one more like the consciousness of present day man, is the astral consciousness. The development of consciousness in the whole astral body finds its expression in the spinal cord. Then a person perceives the world in pictures. Only those people whose physical brain does not operate have such a consciousness. Idiots, for instance, see the world in pictures; their soul life is analogous to dream life. They can only say that they know nothing of what is going on around them. Other beings in the world have a similar consciousness.

When someone develops astral consciousness, so that he experiences dreams consciously, he can undertake the following: Let us assume that we are in a position to develop this consciousness and imagine ourselves standing before the flower called Venus Fly Trap. If we gaze at it long enough and let it work upon us quite exclusively there comes the moment when we have the feeling that the centre of consciousness sinks down from the head and creeps into the plant.¹⁴ One is then conscious in the plant and sees the world through it. One must transfer one's consciousness, into the plant. Then one becomes aware of how things appear to the astral perception of this being. One then experiences this soul. A sensitive plant's consciousness is quite similar to that of an idiot; not a purely mental consciousness. Such a plant has brought consciousness down to the astral plane. Thus there are two kinds of plants; those which only have their consciousness on the mental plane, and those which have it also on the astral plane.

Certain kinds of animals also have a consciousness on the astral plane, which is likewise the plane of idiot consciousness. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky mentions especially certain Indian night insects, nocturnal moths. Spiders also have an astral consciousness;¹⁵ the delicate spider webs are actually spun out of the astral plane. The spiders are merely the instruments of astral activity. The ants too, like the spiders have a consciousness on the astral plane. There the ant heaps have their soul. This is why the behaviour of the ants is so precisely regulated.¹⁶

The minerals also have consciousness. This lies on the higher mental plane, in higher regions than that of the plant. Blavatsky calls it Kama-prana consciousness. Man too can later achieve this consciousness while retaining his present state of consciousness undisturbed. He then no longer needs to enter into a physical body, no longer needs to be incarnated. The stones are below on the physical plane and their consciousness is in the higher regions of the mental plane. The crystals are ordered from above. When a man is able to raise his consciousness to this level he then forms his physical body for himself out of the minerals of the world.

The three parts of the brain (thinking, feeling, willing) must later become completely separated. Then man's consciousness must be master of his brain, as in an ant heap a higher consciousness rules. But as in the ant heap, one can separate the workers, the males and females from one another, so, later, a complete separation into three parts can also take place in the brain. Then man becomes a planetary spirit, a creator who brings things into being. As the Earth Spirit builds the crust of the earth, so at that stage man also will build a planet. For this he must have a Kama-pranasic consciousness. Today he has only a Kama-manasic consciousness. This consists in the consciousness of the organs being saturated, impregnated with understanding (Manas). The consciousness becomes, as Blavatsky says, rationalised. The process of rationalisation is brought about during the ascent from animal to man. Organ-consciousness by itself can recognise the objective, but does not know the means whereby it can be achieved. Rationalised consciousness can direct the means. Blavatsky says quite rightly: ‘A dog, for instance, which is shut into a room has the instinct to get out, but he cannot do this because his instinct is not as yet sufficiently imbued with understanding to enable him to take the necessary steps; whereas man immediately grasps the situation and frees himself.’ We therefore differentiate with Blavatsky:

1. The organic consciousness possessed by the organs.
2. The astral consciousness possessed by animals, certain plants and idiots.
3. The kama-pranasic consciousness of the stones, also to be achieved later by man.
4. The kama-manasic consciousness, dependent on understanding.

In this way one must differentiate the members of the cross of world-existence.

The real meaning of the cross is infinitely deep. The old sagas also are pictures, drawn out of such depths. A great service was bestowed on the human soul by the sagas, as long as man in earlier times could understand their truths in his feeling life. An example of this is the old saga of the sphinx.¹⁷ The sphinx propounded the riddle: In the morning it goes on four, at mid-day on two and in the evening on three. What is that? It is man. To begin with, in the morning of the earth, man in his animal state went on fours. The front limbs were at that time organs of movement. He then raised himself to the upright position. The limb system separated off into two categories and the organs divided into the physical-sensible and the spiritual organs. He then went on two. In the distant future the lower organs will fall away and also the right hand. Only the left hand and the two petalled lotus flower will remain. Then he goes on three. That is why the Vulcan human being limps.¹⁸ His legs are in retrogression; they cease to have significance. At the end of evolution, in the Vulcan metamorphosis of the Earth, man will be the three-membered being that the saga indicates as the ideal.

• 11. This is described in more detail in a lecture 22.11.1907. ‘The plant is drawn with its direction vertically towards the earth, the human being also vertically directed away from the earth, the animal horizontal.’ St. John, Notes on 8 lectures. Lecture 7. (Typescript).
• 12. Plato, Timaeus Chapter 8.
• 13. Notes published by Justinus Kerner. Stuttgart 1828.
• 14. This is more clearly dealt with in lecture 4.
• 15. Described by H.P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 3.
• 16. See further in lecture 4.
• 17. The Sphinx (daughter of Chimaera and her son the hound Orthus)—a monster with the body of a hound, a woman's head, lion's claws, dragon's tail and wings—was sent to Thebes where she dealt out death and destruction by means of a riddle. She asked the unfortunate ones who confronted her: What creature goes on four legs in the morning, on two at midday and on three in the evening? Oedipus was the fortunate one who found the answer—man. Upon which she threw herself down from her rock. In the painting in the large cupola of the first Goetheanum the motif representing Greece also includes this Sphinx-Oedipus theme.
• 18. (In Latin Vulcanus, in Greek Hephaistos.) The god of fire and the forger of metals. He limped because twice Zeus, in anger, threw him out of Olympus. According to the original myth his smithy was in Olympus, but in later versions in volcanic regions.

If we wish to obtain a more exact knowledge of how Karma comes about, we must go back a certain way in the development of humanity. If we transpose ourselves back some thousands of years we find Europe covered with ice. At that time, the glaciers of the Alps forced their way right down into the low-lying plain of Northern Germany. The districts in which we now live were then cold and raw. Here dwelt a race of human beings who made use of extremely simple and primitive tools. If we go back about a million years we find in the same territory a tropical climate such as today is only to be found in the hottest districts of Africa. In some parts there were huge primeval forests in which lived parrots, monkeys, especially the gibbon, and elephants. We should however hardly have met in our wanderings in these forests anything approximating to present day human beings and not even to those of periods some thousands of years later. Natural science can prove from certain strata of the earth which arose between these two epochs the existence of a type of human being in whom the front part of the brain was not yet as developed as it is today and whose brow receded far back. Only the back part of the brain was developed. We go back further to times in which people did not yet know the use of fire and made their weapons by grinding pieces of stone. The natural scientist likes to compare this stage of humanity with that of savages or of a clumsy child. Remains of such human beings have been found in the Neandertal and Croatia. They have a skull similar to that of the ape and the finds in Croatia reveal that before their death they were roasted, thus proving that cannibals lived there.

Now the materialistic thinker says: We trace man back into the times in which he was still undeveloped and clumsy and assume that the human being has developed from this childish stage of existence up to the present stage of human culture and that this primitive man has evolved from animals bearing a similarity to man. In this theory of evolution therefore he simply makes a leap from primitive human beings to animals similar to man. The natural scientist takes for granted that the more perfect has always evolved from the less perfect. This however is not always the case. If for example we trace the human being back to childhood we do not come to greater imperfection for the child is descended from father and mother. That is to say we come to a primitive condition deriving from a higher condition. This is important, for it is connected with the fact that already at birth the child has the predisposition to a later stage of perfection, whereas the animal remains at the lower stage.

When the natural scientist has gone back to the stage at which man had no frontal brain and no intellect he should say to himself: I must assume that the origin of man is to be sought elsewhere.

Just as a child is descended from his parents, so all those primitive human beings are descended from others who had already attained a high degree of development. We call these human beings Atlanteans. They lived on that part of the earth which is now covered with the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlanteans had even less frontal brain, an even farther-receding brow, nevertheless they still possessed something which differed from later human beings. They still had a much stronger, more vigorous etheric body. The etheric body of the Atlanteans had not yet developed certain connections with the brain; these arose later. Thus over the head there was still an immense etheric head. The physical head was comparatively small and embedded in an etheric head of immense size.

The functions which people now carry out with the help of the frontal brain were carried out in the case of the Atlanteans, with the help of organs in the etheric body. By this means they could enter into connection with beings to whom today access is barred to us, just because our frontal brain has been developed. With the Atlanteans a kind of fiery coloured formation was visible, which streamed out from the opening of the physical head towards the etheric head. He had access to all sorts of psychic influences. A head of this kind, which thinks as an etheric head, has power over the etheric, whereas a head which thinks in the physical brain only has power over the physical, over the putting together of purely mechanical things. He can make physical tools, while someone who still thinks in the etheric can cause a seed to grow and bloom.

The Atlantean civilisation was still in close connection with the growth forces of nature, of the vegetation, a power which present day man has lost. For instance, the Atlantean made no use of steam power to bring vehicles into motion, but used the seed power (samenkraft) of the plants. With this he propelled his vehicles. Only from the last third of the Atlantean epoch, from the time of the original Semites until the time when Atlantis was covered with the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, did the frontal etheric head develop the frontal brain. Through this man lost the power of influencing the growth of plants and gained only the capacity of the physical brain, of intellect. With many things he now had to make a new beginning. He had to begin to learn mechanical work. In this he was like a child, clumsy and awkward, whereas before in developing the vegetable kingdom he had achieved great skill. It is necessary for man to pass through the stage of intelligence and then to regain what he could do earlier. At that time, higher spiritual beings had an influence on the unfree will; through the open etheric head they worked through the intellect.

Going still further back we reach the Lemurian Epoch. Here we come to a stage in human development at which the union of the maternal and paternal principles takes place for the first time. This etheric head naturally branches out into the astral body which surrounds the human beings with its rays ... [Gap in text ...]. If one had found the means of lifting the head with the astral body out of such a human being something quite peculiar would have occurred. He would thereby have lost the possibility of holding himself upright; he would have folded up. Just the opposite procedure was taken with man at that time and through this he gradually raised himself to the upright posture.

In the Lemurian Epoch, however, man was still at a stage at which he did not yet possess what we are assuming could be lifted out of him. In this earlier period he did not yet possess this etheric head with the astral body. At that time, they were not yet there. Man as he wandered over the earth was then really a being folded together. The two organs now used for work, the hands, were then turned backwards and formed additional organs of movement, so that he went on four legs. One must picture two people of the present day, man and woman, entwined in one another, think away the upper half of the body, leaving only the lower half there. The human being was actually male-female. He also had at that time an astral and etheric body, but not the one which he had later. This was a different astral body, that is, such a one as had reached its highest perfection on the Old Moon. There, on the Old Moon, the astral body together with the etheric body had acquired the capacity of developing a physical body which then had a crab-like form. The human being could stand on one pair of legs and make a kind of leaping movement.

This astral body with the etheric body was then of quite another nature. It had a form which was not entirely egg-shaped, but more like a bell which descended like a dome over the human being who went on all fours. The etheric body provided for all the life functions of this Lemurian human being. In his astral body he had a dull twilight consciousness similar to that of our dreams. His consciousness was however unlike the reminiscences inherent in our dreams, for he dreamt of realities. When he was approached by another human being unsympathetic to him, there arose in him a sensation of light which indicated what was unsympathetic.

Already on the Old Moon man had some slight power of using both his front limbs for the purpose of grasping, so that now the time came for assuming the upright posture. His other living companions were, in the Lemurian Age, of the nature of reptiles; animals of grotesque shapes who have left no traces behind them. The ichthyosaurs and so on are descendants of these animals. It is a fact that at that time the earth was inhabited by beings reptilian in character; human bodies too were reptile-like. When eventually this reptilian human being assumed the upright posture, the formation of the head, quite open in front, out of which gushed a fiery cloud, became visible. This gave rise to the tales about the winged serpent, about the dragon. Such was man's grotesque form at that time, reptile-like. The Guardian of the Threshold, the lower nature of man, frequently appears in a form of this kind. It represents the lower nature with the open formation of the head. At that time, the union took place between these forms on the earth and the other beings already described. The astral body with the head formation united with the winged-serpent body with its fiery opening. It was the fructification of the maternal earth with the paternal spirit.

In this way there proceeded the fructification with the Manas forces. The lower astral body merged with the higher astral body. A great part of the astral body, as it then was, fell away. One portion formed the lower parts of the human astral body, and the other newly acquired astral body, connected with the head, united with the upper parts of the human being. What was then peeled off abandoned this astral body which was bound up with the form of the winged-serpent; it could no longer have any further development on the Earth. It formed, as a conglomerate substance, the astral sphere of the moon, the so-called eighth sphere. The moon actually provides shelter for astral beings which have come into existence through the fact that man has thrown something off.

This union of the paternal spirit with the maternal substance was described in Egypt as the union of Osiris and Isis. From it came forth Horus. The merging of the serpent form with the etheric head, with the newly acquired astral body and head formation, led to the conception of the form of the sphinx. The sphinx is the expression of this thought in sculpture.

There were seven kinds or classes of such forms, all of which differed somewhat from each other, from the finest, approximating to the highly developed formation of the human form down to those which were utterly grotesque. These seven kinds of human forms had all to be fructified. One must conceive the descent of the ‘Sons of Manas’ in this pictorial way. Only then can one understand how the astral body of man came into existence. It is composed of two different members.

If we consider human development we shall find that the one part of the astral body is continually endeavouring to overcome the other half, the lower nature, and transform it. In so far as man today consists of astral body with etheric body and physical body, it is in fact only the physical body which in its present state is a product which has reached completion. In the case of the etheric body also there are two parts that seek to merge into one another.

Now when man dies he gives over to the forces of the earth his whole physical body, but the etheric body divides itself into two members. The one member is derived from the upper formation and this man takes with him. The remainder falls away, for over this he can exert no mastery; it came to him from outside. He can only exert mastery over it when he has become an occult pupil. This part of the etheric body therefore in the case of the ordinary person is given over to the etheric forces of cosmic space.

What clings to the person from that astral body which came with him from the Old Moon compels him to spend a period of time in Kamaloka until he has freed himself from this point as regards that particular life. Then he still has that part of the astral body which has found a state of balance; with this he makes his journey through Devachan and back to physical life. This is why one sees bell-like formations in astral space rushing about with terrific speed. These are the human souls again seeking incarnation. When here with us such a bell-like human being darts through astral space and an embryo in South America is karmically connected with it, this human bell must immediately be there. So these returning souls rush through astral space. This bell formation is reminiscent of those which appeared in the Lemurian Age, only it has already found its state of balance with the higher astral body. We know that the human being develops by working from the ego upon the three other bodies. The ego is nothing other than what worked at that time in a fructifying way; the upper auric part with the etheric head. The members which the human being has developed are the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body.

Upper Etheric or Mental body
Astral body as Buddhi
Astral body
Lower Etheric body
Physical body

The physical body has arisen through a transformation and ennobling of that serpent-like body which we meet with in the Lemurian Age. This was male-female. The present day human being is also male-female. In the case of a man the basis of the upper members is female, with a woman the basis of the upper etheric body is of male formation. So actually the physical nature of the human being is also male-female.

The etheric body consists of two members, that part of human nature which originally came over from the Old Moon and its opposite pole. They were at first not yet joined together; later they approached one another and became united. The one is the pole of animality, the other the pole of the spiritual. The pole of animality is called ‘etheric body’, the pole of the spiritual, ‘mental-body’. The mental body is materialised ether.

Between them is the astral body and this too has arisen out of the union of a duality. Fundamentally it is also a two-fold formation. We have to differentiate in it a lower and a higher nature. The higher nature was originally connected with the mental body. This part of the astral body which has its seat in the mental body—what therefore has come into it from above—is the other pole of the lower astral body. One of the characteristics of the lower astral body is that it has desires. The upper part has instead of these, devotion, love, the giving virtue. This part of the astral body is called Buddhi. The description here given of the human being is as seen in this way in the Cosmic Light. When man himself works into his sheathes it is different. The one portrays his cosmic structure, the other how he himself works into it.

Thus Buddhi is the ennobled astral, the Mental the ennobled etheric and the Physical has its opposite pole in Atma.

The library and study of Caaesius. Prevailing colour brown. Evening. First Capesius, then the Spirit Forms who are powers of soul later Benedictus.

Capesius (reading in a book):
‘By inward gazing on the Beingless,
And dreaming through the shadowy picture realm
Of thought, conformably to self-made laws:—
Thus erring human nature often seeks
To find the meaning and the goal of life:
The soul from its own depths would draw replies
To questions that concern the universe.
Yet such attempts are vain, illusory
E'en at the outset, and they lead at last
To feeble visions which destroy themselves.’

(Speaking as follows.)

Thus is portrayed in words of import grave
Through Benedictus' noble spirit-sight,
The inward life of many human souls.
Each phrase goes home destructive to my heart—
Unfolding truly mine own way and life
Until this day, with cruel vividness.
And should a god this very hour appear
Descending on me in a raging storm
And clad in wrath, yet could his threatening might
Not torture me with more appalling fears
Than do the Master's words, as strong as fate.
Long hath my life been, but its web displays
Nothing but pictures shadowy and dim
Which haunt my dreaming soul and fondly strive
To mirror truths of nature and of mind.
With this dream-fabric hath my thought essayed
To solve the riddles of the universe.
Down many a path my restless soul I turned.
Yet do I clearly see that I myself,
Was not the active master of my soul
When threads of thought along illusion's path
Spun themselves out to cosmic distances.

So that which I in my content beheld
In pictures, left me empty, led to naught.
Then came across my path Thomasius,
The youthful painter. He indeed strode on,
Upheld by truest energies of soul
To that exalted spiritual way
Which transforms human life, and makes to rise
From hidden gulfs of soul the energy
Which feeds the springs of life within ourselves.
That which awoke from out his inmost soul
Abides in every man. And since from him
I gained this revelation, I do count
As chief amongst the many sins of life
To let the spirit's treasure grow corrupt.

I know henceforth that I must search and seek
And nevermore allow myself to doubt.
In days gone by my vanity of thought
Could have enticed me to the false belief
That unto knowledge man aspires in vain;
And only failure and despair belong
To those who would lay bare the springs of life,

And were all wisdom to unite in this,
And were I powerless to reject the claim
That human destiny demands of man
That he shall lose his individual self
And sink into the gulf of nothingness,
Yet would I make the venture unafraid.

Such thoughts would be a sacrilege to-day,
Since I have learned I cannot win repose
Until the spirit treasure in my soul
Hath been unveiled to the light of day.

The fruits of work of lofty spirit-beings
Have been implanted in the human soul,
And whoso leaves the spirit seed to lie
Unheeded and decay, he brings to naught
The work divine committed unto man.
Thus do I recognize life's highest task;
Yet when I try to take one single step
Across the threshold that I dare not shun,
I feel my strength desert me, which of yore
Did pride itself on elevated thought,
And sought the goals of life in time and space.
Once did I reckon it an easy thing
To set the brain in action and to grasp
The nature of reality by thought.
But now, when I would search the fount of life
And comprehend it as in truth it is,
My thought appears as some blunt instrument;
I have no power, no matter how I strive,
To form a clear thought-image from the words of
Benedictus, though his earnest speech
Should now direct me to the spirit's path.

(Resuming his reading.)

‘In silence sound the depths of thine own soul,
And ever let strong courage be thy guide.
Thy former ways of thinking cast away
What time thou dost withdraw into thyself;
For only when thine own light is put out
Will spirit-radiance show itself to thee.’

(Resuming his soliloquy.)

It seems as though I could not draw my breath
When I attempt to understand. these words.
And ere I feel the thoughts that I must think,
Fear and misgiving have beset my soul.
It is borne in on me that everything
Which hitherto was my environment
Is crumbling into ruin, and therewith
I too am crumbling into nothingness:
An hundred times at least have I perused
The words which follow, and each several time
Darkness enfolds me deeper than before.

(Resuming his reading.)

‘Within thy thinking cosmic thought loth live,
Within thy feeling cosmic forces play,
Within thy will do cosmic beings work;
Abandon thou thyself to cosmic thought,
Experience thyself through cosmic force,
Create thyself anew from cosmic will.
End not at last in cosmic distances
By fantasies of dreamy thought beguiled.
Do thou begin in farthest spirit-realms
And end in the recesses of thy soul.
The plan divine then shalt thou recognize
When thou hast realized thy Self in thee.’

(Becomes entranced by a vision, then comes to himself and speaks.)

What was this?

(Three Figures, representing soul forces, float round him.)

Luna:
Abundant power is thine
For lofty spirit-flight;
Its sure foundation rests
Upon the human will.
Its temper hath been tried
By sure and certain hope.
It hath grown strong as steel
By sight of future times.
Thou dost but courage lack
To pour into thy will
Thy confidence in life.
Into the vast Unknown
Dare but to venture forth!

Astrid:
From cosmic distances
And from the sun's glad light,
From utmost realms of stars
And magic might of worlds,
From heaven's ethereal blue
And spirit's lofty power,
Win mightiness of soul;
And send its radiant beams
Deep down within thine heart;
That knowledge glowing warm
May thus be born in thee.

The Other Philia:
They are deceiving thee
This evil sisterhood;
They seek but to ensnare
By trickery and guile.
Thy gifts so seeming fair
Which they have offered thee
Will vanish into air
When thou wouldst hold them fast
With all thy human strength.
They lead thee on to worlds
Inhabited by gods,
Where thou wilt be destroyed
If thou mak'st bold to rise
Into their cosmic realm
With thy humanity.

Capesius:
It was quite plain that here some beings spake—
And yet it is most sure that no one else—
Beside myself—is present in this place.

So have I but held converse with myself
And yet that too seems quite impossible
For ne'er could I imagine such discourse
As here I listened to—

Am I still he was before?

(From his gestures it is plain he feels unable to reply ‘yes.’)

Oh! I am—I am not.

The Spirit-Voice of Conscience:
Thy thoughts do now descend
To depths of human life
And what as soul loth compass thee around
And what as spirit is enchained in thee,
Expands in cosmic depth,
From whose fulness quaffing
Mankind doth live in thought
From whose fulness living
Mankind illusion weaves.

Capesius:
Enough ... Enough ... Where is Capesius?
You I implore ... ye forces all unknown ...
Where is Capesius? Where is ... myself?

(Once more he relapses into a reverie.)

(Enter Benedictus. Capesius does not notice him at first. Benedictus touches him on the shoulder.)

Benedictus:
I learned that thou didst wish to speak with me,
And so I came to seek thee in thy home.

Capesius:
Right good it is of thee to grant my wish.
Yet it had scarce been possible that thou
Shouldst find me in worse case than now I am.
That I am not this moment on the ground
Prostrate before thy feet, after such pain
As even now hath racked my soul, I owe
To thy kind glance alone which sought mine own,
So soon as thou didst with thy gentle touch
Arouse me from the horrors of my dream.

Benedictus:
I am aware that I have found thee now
Fighting a battle for thy very life.
Since I have known full well this long time past
That thus it was appointed us to meet.
Prepare to change the sense of many words
If thou wouldst understand my speech aright,
And do not marvel that thy present pain
Bears in my language quite another name—
I call thy state good fortune.

Capesius:
Then indeed
Thou dost but heap the measure of the woe
Which casts me into gloom's abysmal deeps.
Just now I felt as if my real self
Had flown afar to cosmic distances,
And unfamiliar beings through its sheaths
Were speaking here. But this I took to be
Hallucination, spirit mockery,
And mourned that thus my soul could be deceived:
This thought alone kept me from breaking down.
Take not away my right thus to believe,
The only prop I lean on; tell me not
My fevered dreaming was good fortune; else
I shall be lost indeed.

Benedictus:
A man can lose
Nought else but that which keeps him separate
From cosmic being. When he seems to lose
That which in dreamy fantasies of thought
He misapplied to labours purposeless,
Then let him seek for what has gone from him.
For he will surely find it, and withal
The proper use to which it should be put
In human life. Mere words of comfort now
Were nothing more than clever play on words.

Capesius:
Nay—teachings that by intellect alone
Are comprehended, thou dost not impart.
Bitter experience has shown me this.
Like deeds which lead one on to lofty heights
And also cast one to abysmal depth,
Thy counsels pour a stream of fiery life
And also deathly chill into men's souls.
They work at once e'en as the nod of fate
And also as the storms of life and love.
Much had I sought and thought in earlier days
Before I met thee; yet the spirit's powers,
Creative and destructive, I have learned
Only since I have followed in thy steps.
The turmoil and confusion of my soul,
Caused by thy words, was evident when thou
Didst come within my chamber. Oft I felt
Much pain whilst reading in thy book of life,
Until to-day my cup of woe was full.
And so my agony of soul o'erflowed,
Spilled by thy fateful words. Their meaning swept.
O'er all my soul unrecognized, and yet
Like some elixir they revived my heart.
In such wise wrought they in the magic worlds
That all my clarity of sense was lost.
Then ghostly phantoms made a mock of me,
And words of import dark I seemed to hear
Issue from my distraught tormented soul.
I know that all the secrets thou dost guard
For human souls may not be written down,
But that the answer to men's doubts may be
Revealed to each according to his need.
So grant me that of which I stand in need;
For verily I must indeed be told
What robbed me of my senses and my wits
And compassed me with magic's airy spells.

Benedictus:
Another meaning hides within my words
Than that of the ideas which they convey;
They guide the natural forces of the soul
To spirit-verities their inward sense
Cannot be understood until the day
On which they waken vision in the soul
That yields itself to their compelling power.
They are not fruitage of mine own research;
But spirits have entrusted them to me,
Spirits well skilled to read the signs in which
The Karma of the world doth stand revealed.
The special virtue of these words is this,
Unto the source of knowledge they can guide.
Yet none the less it must be each man's task,
Who understands them in their truest sense,
To drink the spirit-waters from that source.
Nor are my words designed to hinder thee
From being swept away to worlds that seem
To thee fantastic. Thou. hast seen a realm
Which must remain illusion just as long
As thou dost lose thyself on entering it.
But wisdom's outer portal will be found
Unsealed to thine advancing soul so soon
As thou dost near it with self-consciousness.

Capesius:
And how can I maintain self-consciousness?

Benedictus:
The answer to this riddle thou shalt find
When, with awakened inner eye, thou dost
Perceive before thee many wondrous things,
Which shortly will be found to cross thy path.
Know that a test path been ordained for thee
By lords of fate and by the spirit-powers.

(Exit.)

Capesius:
Although their meaning is not clear to me
I feel his words at work within myself.
He hath appointed me a goal; and I
Am ready to obey. He doth not ask
For stress of thought; it seems that he desires
I should press forward with exploring feet
To find the spirit-verities myself.

I cannot tell how he was sent to me;
And yet his actions, have compelled my trust;
He hath restored me to myself once more.
So though at present I may not divine
The nature of the spell that shook me so,
I will not shrink from facing these events
Which his prophetic vision hath foretold.

Curtain whilst Capesius remains standing

As in Scene 7. An Egyptian woman is seen crouching by the wall. She is a previous incarnation of Johannes Thomasius.

Egyptian woman:
This is the hour in which he dedicates
Himself to serve the ancient holy laws
Of sacred wisdom,—and in doing this
He must forever tear himself from me.
From out those heights of light to which his soul
Progresses there must flash into mine own
The ray of death. When I am torn from him—
Naught doth remain for me in life on earth
But mourning—resignation—sorrow—death.

(Clinging to the wall.)

Yet though in this hour he abandons me
I, none the less, will stay close to the spot
Where he unto the spirit gives himself.
And if mine eyes are not allowed to see
How he loth tear himself away from earth,
Perchance 'twill be now granted in a dream
To linger disembodied by his side.

Part II

Inside the temple. The hall of initiation. The ceremony is performed on a broad flight of steps descending from the back to the front of the stage. The characters stand in groups below one another and on different steps. The drop-curtain goes up, disclosing everything in readiness for the initiation of the Neophyte, who is to be thought of as an earlier in-carnation of Maria; behind the altar and to the left of it stands the Chief Hierophant who is to be thought of as an earlier incarnation of Benedictus; on the other side the Recorder, an earlier incarnation of Hilary True-to-God; a little in front of the altar the Keeper of the Seals, an earlier incarnation of Theodora; in front, on the right side of the altar, the Impersonator of the Earth Element, an earlier in-carnation of Romanus, and with him the Impersonator of the Air Element, an earlier incarnation of Magnus Bellicosus; quite close to the Chief Hierophant, stands the Hierophant, an earlier incarnation of Capesius; on the left side of the altar the Impersonator of the Fire Element, an earlier incarnation of Doctor Strader, with the Impersonator of the Water Element, an earlier incarnation of Torquatus. In front of them Philia, Astrid, Luna and ‘the Other Philia.’ Four other priests stand in front of them. In front of all Lucifer to the left of altar and Ahriman to the right in the guise of sphinxes, with the cherubim emphasized in the case of Lucifer and the bull in the case of Ahriman. Dead silence for a while after the interior of the temple with its grouped mystics has become visible. The Keeper of the Temple, an earlier incarnation of Felix Balde, and the Mystic, an earlier incarnation of Dame Betide, lead the Neophyte in through a doorway on the right of stage. They place him in the inner circle near the altar, and remain standing near him.

The Keeper of the Temple:
From out that web of unreality
Which thou, in error's darkness named'st world,
The mystic hath conducted thee to us.
From being and from naught the world was made
Which to a semblance wove itself for thee.
Semblance¹ is good, when from existence viewed;
Thou didst but dream it in thy sembled life;
And semblance known by semblance disappears.
Learn, semblance of a semblance, what thou art.

The Mystic:
Thus speaks the guardian of this temple's door.
Feel in thyself the sore weight of his words.

The Impersonator of the Earth Element:
Beneath the weight of earth-life seize upon
The semblance of your being without fear.
That thou mayst sink into the cosmic depths
In darksome cosmic depths thy being seek.
Bind to thy semblance that which thou dost find;
Its weight will give thy being unto thee.

The Recorder:
Thou wilt not understand, as thou dost sink,
Whereto we lead, till thou hast heard his call.
We forge for thee the form of thy real self;
Perceive our work; else must thou lose thyself
As semblance in the cosmic nothingness.

The Mystic:
So speaks the guardian of this temple's words.
Feel in thyself the sore weight of his words.

The Impersonator of the Air Element:
Fly from the weight of earth-life which would kill
The being of thyself, as thou dost sink.
Fly from it on the lightness of the air.
In light of cosmic space thy being seek.
Bind to thy semblance that which thou dost find
Its flight will give thy being unto thee.

The Recorder:
Thou wilt not understand, as thou dost fly,
Whereto we lead, till thou hast heard his call.
We light for thee the life of thy real self;
Perceive our work; else must thou lose thyself
As semblance in the cosmic weightiness.

The Mystic:
So speaks the guardian of this temple's words.
Feel in thyself the uplift of his words.

The Chief Hierophant:
My son, thou wilt on wisdom's noble road
The mystic's counsel carefully obey.
Thou canst not see the answer in thyself;
For error's darkness still doth weigh thee down
And folly strives in thee for distant things.
Gaze therefore—on this flame which is more close

(The bright, quivering sacred flame flares up on the altar in the middle of the stage.)

To thee than is the life of thine own self,
And read thine answer hidden in its fire.

The Mystic:
So speaks the leader of this temple's rites.
Feel in thyself the ritual's holy power.

The Impersonator of the Fire Element:
Let all the errors of thine own ideas
Be burned in fire that this rite lights for thee.
Let, with thine errors, thyself also burn.
As flame of cosmic fire thy being seek;
Bind to thy semblance that which thou dost find;
Its fire will give thy being unto thee.

The Keeper of the Seals:
Thou wilt not understand why to a flame
We fashion thee till thou hast heard his call.
We cleanse for thee the form of thine own self
Perceive our work; else must thou lose thyself
As formless being in the cosmic sea.

The Mystic:
So speaks the guardian of this temple's seals.
Feel in thyself the power of wisdom's light.

The Impersonator of the Water Element:
Resist the flame-powers of the world of fire
That they may not devour thy being's might.
From semblance, being will not rise in thee
Unless the wave-beat of the cosmic sea
Can fill thee with the music of the spheres.
As wave in cosmic sea thy being seek;
Bind to thy semblance that which thou dost find;
Its waves will give thy being unto thee.

The Keeper of the Seals:
Thou wilt not understand why to a wave
We fashion thee till thou hast heard his call.
We build for thee the form of thine own self;
Perceive our work; else must thou lose thyself
A formless being in the cosmic fire.

The Chief Hierophant:
My son, by powerful exercise of will
These mystic counsels too thou must obey.
Thou canst not see the answer in thyself;
By cowardly fear thy power is still congealed;
Thou canst not fashion weakness to a wave
That lets thy note ring out amongst the spheres.
So listen to thy soul-powers when they speak;
And thine own voice within their words perceive.

Philia:
In fire cleanse thou thyself;—and lose thyself
As cosmic wave in music of the spheres.

Astrid:
Build thou thyself in music of the spheres;
In cosmic distances fly light as air.

Luna:
Sink with thy weight of earth to cosmic depths;
Take courage as a self in thy sore weight.

The Other Philia:
From thine own separateness withdraw; unite thyself
With all the forces of the elements.

The Mystic:
Thine own soul speaks thus in these temple halls;
Feel thou therein the guidance of the powers.

The Chief Hierophant (addressing the Hierophant):
My brother hierophant, explore this soul,
Which we are to direct to wisdom's path,
Down to its depths; tell us what thou dost find
Its present state of consciousness to be.

The Hierophant:
All hath been done that our rite doth demand.
The soul no more remembers what it was.
The web of semblance, spun on error's loom,
Opposing elements have swept away;
In elemental strife it doth live on;
Naught save its being hath the soul retained.
Now of this being it shall read the life
In cosmic words, that speaks from out the flame.

The Chief Hierophant:
O human soul, read now what through the flame
The cosmic word declares within thyself.

(A pause of considerable length ensues, during which the stage is darkened till only the flame and indistinct outlines of the characters are visible; at the conclusion of the pause the Chief Hierophant continues.)

And now from out the cosmic vision wake!
Declare what can be read from cosmic words!

(The Neophyte is silent. The Chief Hierophant, much alarmed, continues):
He speaks not. Doth the vision leave thee? Speak!

The Neophyte:
Obedient to thy strict and sacred rite
I sank into the being of this flame
To wait the sound of lofty cosmic words.

(The assembled mystics, the Hierophant excepted, show an ever-increasing alarm during the speech of the Neophyte.)

I felt that I could shake off from myself
The weight of earth and be as light as air.
I felt the loving tide of cosmic fire
Did bear me up on streaming spirit-waves.
I saw the body that I wear on earth
As other being stand outside myself.
Though wrapt in bliss, and conscious of the light
Of spirit round me, yet I could regard
Mine earthly sheath with longing and desire.

(Consternation all around.)

Spirits rayed light thereon from lofty worlds;
Like shining butterflies there hovered near
The beings who attend its active life;
The body by these beings bathed in light
Reflected sparkling colours manifold;
They shone close by, grew fainter further off,
And then were scattered and dispersed in space.
Within the being of my spirit soul
There lurked the wish that weight of earth should sink
Me down into my sheath, that I might feel
And learn the sense of joy within life's warmth.
So, diving gladly down into my sheath,
I heeded thy stern summons to awake.

The Chief Hierophant (himself alarmed, to the alarmed Mystics):
This is no spirit-vision; earth's desires
Escaped the mystic and as offering rose
To radiant spirit-heights;—O sacrilege!

The Recorder (angrily to the Hierophant):
This could not have occurred, hadst thou performed
The office granted thee as hierophant
As ancient holy duty did demand.

The Hierophant:
I did the duty in this solemn hour
Which those from higher realms did lay on me.
I did not think that which it is my place
To think, according to the ritual,
And which, proceeding from me, should appear
In spirit-working in the neophyte.
The young man therefore path declared to us
None other's thoughts but his own being's self.
The truth hath conquered. Ye may punish me
I had to do what ye perceived with fear.
I feel the times approach which will set free
The ego from the group-soul and let loose
Its own true individual powers of thought.
What if the youth escapes your mystic path
At present?—Later lives on earth will show
With clearest signs the kind of mystic way
Which destiny hath foreordained for him.

The Mystics:
O sacrilege;—thou must atone—and pay

(The sphinxes begin to speak one after the other as Ahriman and Lucifer; hitherto they have been as statues motionless; what they say is heard only by the hierophant, the chief hierophant, and the neophyte;—the others are full of excitement over the preceding events.)

Ahriman as Sphinx:
For my realm I must lay my hands upon
What here doth wrongly seek the way to light,
And in the darkness further foster it;
That it may bring forth spirit-qualities
Which later on will let it weave itself
With rightful meaning into human life.
But till it gains these spirit-qualities,
What in this holy service did appear
As earthly burden, this will serve my work.

Lucifer as Sphinx:
For my realm I will bear away what here
As spirit-wish in semblance doth rejoice;
T'will gladly shine as semblance in the light,
And thus in spirit dedicate itself
To beauty from which it is kept apart
At present by the burden of earth's weight.
In beauty, semblance into being turns,
Which later shall illuminate the earth,
Descending as the light which flies from here.

The Chief Hierophant:
The sphinxes speak—who were but images
Since e'er this rite by sages was performed.
Upon dead form the spirit now hath seized.
O Fate, thou dost sound forth as cosmic word!

(The other mystics, with the exception of the Hierophant and the Neophyte, are amazed at the words of the Chief Hierophant.)

The Hierophant (to the Chief Hierophant):
This holy mystic rite which we perform
Rath not importance for ourselves alone.
Fate's stream of cosmic evolution pours
Through word and deed of sacred priestly rites.

Curtain

• 1. N.B.—Dr. Steiner has also translated the word ‘schein’ by ‘glory’ in an old English sense; we have here adopted the word semblance.

There is no moment when one is not in the most excited suspense while reading Albert Steffen's drama “The Quadruped”. The tension has its nuances, but it is always there.

For those who approach drama artistically, the tension does not arise from the external plot in the naturalistic sense. It comes from a higher spirituality that permeates the entire drama. It touches on the unfolding of the secrets of the human soul, which cuts deep into the heart of anyone to whom they are presented in the way Albert Steffen does.

Albert Steffen is the most earnest artistic seeker of these secrets. But he is also their born connoisseur. He shapes them as an artist by allowing his own essence to prevail in the dramatic action that life gives him, an essence that does not live where the action takes place, but in a more spiritual world, which, however, is directly adjacent to the ordinary world everywhere. In this more spiritual world, people are rooted with their souls. If you do not see this world of “soul roots,” then what people accomplish in the life between birth and death basically remains an incomprehensible activity.

When people meet Albert Steffen, they get the impression that it is second nature to his soul to look into this hidden world when they meet him. He does not just take what people say at face value. For him, everything spoken is, in addition to “expressing” something, still a gesture of the soul, a movement of the spirit. If a person expresses what he thinks, feels and wills through what he says, then his speech reveals what he is, as a being that is spiritually inspired and filled with spirit. And Albert Steffen understands not only human speech in this way, but everything through which a person reveals himself.

And so what the characters in the drama do appears against the background of a spiritual world in which this action has its roots. It remains incomprehensible to the ordinary mind; and it is raised into a world in which the question of such comprehensibility loses all meaning, because in this world one does not “understand” but “behold”.

It is against this background that the “four-legged creature” appears. The being into which ancient dream-knowledge has placed the origin of man. The bull, which in its organization is close to the forces of the earth. Not to the actually earthly forces, but to those which the earth, as part of the cosmos, lays claim to for itself. — The lion, which is less earthy in its organization. In its entire structure, it is emancipated from the earthly, like the human soul itself. It is in the flesh what the soul is in a soul-like way. - The eagle, which represents the human “I” in its corporeality. What is spiritually revealed in the “I” is material in the eagle. But because the spirituality in its nature cannot be directly represented materially, the physicality appears dried up and horny in the formation of the head, plumage, feet and so on. These three beings, seen as spirit forms, work together and yet are independent again in a spiritual world that directly borders on the physical world of man. Their interaction conveys a fourth entity, which is to be understood as a kind of angel.

When the spiritual gaze turns to this “Quadruped”, it simultaneously sees the world's time before there were humans and before there were animals in their present form. There were beings of the same kind as the “Quadruped”. They had no physical existence; they lived in a spiritual-ethereal form of existence. From this form of existence, man developed upwards, the animal downwards. They look over from the most distant past, the Quadruped animals. They were there before man and physical animals came into being. But they are still there. They have not yet died out. They have only changed their inner form. They have become even more spiritual than they were. This has made them very far removed from the animal world. All the closer to the human. Behind this is the 'Quadruped'. Through the course of the world, the physical body has attained its present form. It has reached human stature. It cannot be essentially changed by misconduct or aberration. But the soul can. It can be seized at any time by the “Quadruped” and transformed into something subhuman. Then the person develops instinctual impulses that are inferior to those of animals because they are borne by the higher humanity that has been cultivated.

This “Quadruped”, magnificent, as a sphinx, created by the unerring ancient dream-knowledge; it stands again as a truth before the scientific demands of today's researcher of the spiritual world. But it also stands before the artistic human being who really gets life into the creative imagination. Albert Steffen is this artistic person, with a fantasy that, radiating brightness of its own, finds the reflection of true spirituality in poetic creation and brings it to life.

In his drama, the “Quadruped” is just as much an “active person” as the others who live in the physical body; but it does not appear as a “symbolic entity”, as a “spirit” or the like. You cannot see it in the physical world because it does not have the conditions to be seen there. But it is always there when the state of mind of the “acting persons” takes on a form through which the supersensible world, immediately adjacent to the ordinary one, can be perceived.

And in the perception of the state of mind of his dramatic persons in this direction, Albert Steffen is a master. He feels with absolute certainty for a person: now there is a feeling, a passion, a will in him that breaks through the thin walls of the spiritual world and causes spiritual events to appear behind the physical.

Thus the “Quadruped”, in the usual sense “invisible”, is nevertheless, in keeping with the nature of its own activity, an active person in Steffens' drama.

The two main characters are: Großmann, a human monster, and Christine, an angel of good will, but justified only in relation to the spiritual world. For her will must break at the conditions of the physical world.

Behind Großmann rules the “Quadruped”. Intellectually, he is a well-educated person. But everything that lives in his soul and can be experienced by him is subhuman. Christine, under the influence of the “Quadruped”, falls in love with this subhuman. Brutality is almost the first thing he shows towards her ever tender love. This does not prevent her in her love. Yes, it strengthens her in it. When she recognizes him as “evil”, she wants to release him from “evil” through the power of her love. Just as he seems to have fallen prey to “evil” for this physical world, so she is incapable of being dragged into “evil” by the nature of her soul. For in her lives just as much as the “Quadruped” from one side, so does “Christ” from the other. And Christ is the essence that transforms the influence of the “four-beast” so that it is not something subhuman that comes into effect in the human being, but something that lifts the soul above what the human being can otherwise reveal through physical descent, education, social context, etc.

Christine's father, Professor Sibelius, lives off the fortune that actually belongs to Christine. Her mother had a marriage with the professor that was arranged by fate but did not bring her happiness, and she left her physical existence mentally destroyed. Christine feels fully justified in leading her father to give Großmann part of the fortune that actually belongs to her, so that the man she wants to redeem in love can do something business-related with his great talent. Then, she feels, the rest will fall into place in the right way. Through the influence of her Christ-devoted heart, Großmann will be led up the path of genuine humanity.

It is achieved that Großmann can have an interview with Sibelius. Despite the fact that Sibelius has the strongest antipathy towards his daughter's fiancé, despite the fact that he must consider him to be a very bad person based on what he has heard about Großmann from others, it comes about that he gives him money at the end of the interview.

But the further consequence is that during this first visit, Grossmann prepares for the second visit, which takes place that same evening, during which he shoots the father in order to take possession of Christine's entire fortune.

In the man whom Christine wants to lead up the paths of good humanity through her love, she must see the murderer of her father. She only feels that he must experience this case in the inner life of a murderer; and his soul would rise precisely through this from the deep ruin in which it is interwoven.

Großmann, through his subhuman impulses, has such an effect on the police officers pursuing him that, instead of arresting him as the murderer, they apologize to him for the disturbance they caused by appearing at his home after the murder.

And Großmann has already managed, while this is happening, to divert all suspicion of the murder onto Christine herself. She is arrested as the murderer on his say-so.

Christine has also been following her Christ-devoted path since the murder. The depth of her experience leads her mind, which has become clairvoyant, in spirit to the place on earth where Christ's grave is still today, and where Christ still “rises” today for everyone who, by taking him into their heart, performs Christ's deeds in the world.

This is where Christina's soul comes together; this is also where the soul of the murdered Sibelius comes together. Through the resurrected Christ, the power to transform Großmann's soul is to be found.

What Albert Steffen presents here in the most vivid drama is of unspeakable depth. The ascent of the father's soul in understanding the spiritual world; the terrible struggle of what the beast with four legs can do in the human being, with the true, thoroughly Christianized humanity before the soul's eye of Christina; all of this breathes true spirituality and allows one to touchingly feel the connection of humanity with this spirituality.

And while Christine is doing her best to save Großmann's soul, which she can no longer save as an earthly man, Großmann's bicycle whizzes by. He is making off with everything he has brought with him. Sitting behind on the bike is the chambermaid from the hotel where Großmann was staying, who he persuaded to go with him after he had already brought her there, to help him divert the police's suspicions away from him.

Christine now has to go through everything that a daughter can face who is suspected of being her father's murderer and who, moreover, makes an incomprehensible impression on the doctor, prison director and prison chaplain due to her particular state of mind and her connection to the spiritual world.

The plot is resolved in terms of life on earth by Grossmann's descent into the realm of subhumanity. His jealousy of the hotel chambermaid has led him to maltreat her in the truest sense of the word. She is delivered to the hospital with the skin peeled off at the front of her head, and is dying. Christine is also in the hospital, since it is likely that her mental state will be determined.

Now Großmann stands revealed in all his wickedness; he has reached the pinnacle of what a person can achieve when driven into subhumanity by the demonic power of the beast, whose secret essence is profound. For whatever radiates from him can make a man a devil; it can also, spiritualized by the light of truth, lead him up to the noblest heights of humanity.

Grossmann hangs himself in his prison cell. He wants nothing to do with the salvation of his soul. He wants this soul to dissolve into the nothingness of the universe through his will, which has been seized by the devilish.

Once again we find ourselves before the earthly place where Christ rises for the hearts that seek him in the right truth, but where the Quadruped also manifests its devastating power. “From the cruciform crack emerges the primeval beast: from the beam on the right a lion's head, from the beam on the left a bull's head, from the upper beam an eagle's face. From the trunk a dragon body.” – The dragon body is seen when the ‘beast’ turns into the path of destruction; otherwise, when it walks the paths of humanity, one has the angelic form before one.

The soul of Großmann is sought by the “Quadruped” with great thirst. The soul of Christine's father appears again. She is asked to “judge”. But Christine, asked by her father to judge, says: “Not I, but Christ in me.” Then the lion's head disappears from the full form of the Quadruped. And the father continues to ask to “heal”. Christine calls the Christ in her heart again. The bull's head disappears. And so the eagle's face disappears as Christine calls upon the Christ to “liberate”, and so the dragon's body when she does the same, as the Father's spirit speaks of “love”.

Christ Himself is spiritually present where the spiritual battle is finally brought to a decision. And when the news comes that Grossmann has hanged himself in his cell, then as the last word of the drama, Christine, through whose invincible power of soul in the good the Christ is present, says: “He (Grossmann) has risen in my heart.”

I have often had to think about what Ibsen was trying to achieve in some of his plays. A number of his characters are surrounded by an undefined, ghostly presence. This is deeply moving in “When We Dead Awaken”. But there it all remains in an incomprehensible “mysticism”. Ibsen does not find the moment in the human soul when vision breaks through into the real spiritual world. Therefore, the spiritual in his dramas does not arise dramatically.

Albert Steffen has found this moment in his “Viergetier”. He has thus brought the drama back to where it once was when it had just escaped the mystery story.

Steffen's very spiritually concrete imagination has achieved this. No matter how much one may penetrate into spiritual worlds through spiritual vision, nothing comes before one's soul like Steffen's “Viergetier”; one becomes aware that there are still places in the universe where the imagination, born of pure spirit, can penetrate. For it is from such places that the earth-human figures that Steffen forms come. What is full of light in these places, that is what Albert Steffen shapes. But from such places also come the real spiritual beings that move so realistically between the earthly beings in Steffen's drama. What Ibsen reached for with his mind, but grasped at nothingness; Albert Steffen's imagination and spiritualized artistic sense has grasped it. And in the face of this feeling, anything that wants to criticize the imperfections of this work of literature must remain silent. What stands before us is so full of life in intention and design that Albert Steffen's dramatic creation appears in such perfection in the reader's imagination, which is responsive to the poet, that all other things, such as critical judgment, are brought to a self-evident silence. Where such merits are present, the opposite faults weigh as lightly as a feather. For these merits fill the soul completely. — And everything that I receive as an impression while reading will emerge in a particularly vivid way in the stage production. For the drama carries the substance of reality within it, which proves its truth in the stage setting. —

I wanted to say a few more words about the significance of the oldest parts of the Old Testament before moving on to other things. I have often told you that in interpreting the Old Testament, you come to a point where you can begin to take it more or less literally. Now, in the nineteenth century, we experienced an age that was as ill-suited as possible to comprehend something like the five books of Moses. Anyone who understands these five books of Moses will not only see an increase in their insight into the world, but also an increase in their inner appreciation and reverence for all the writings that speak to us, as something that is not only a human voice, but - let us leave this for the time being in an unspecified way - something that resonates down to us from higher spheres than the human spheres.

In fact, we could and perhaps will be able to go back to the origin, to the actual theories of such writings, to the first inspirers. But we do not want to do that today. We want to touch on a question that goes back to an historical fact, which admittedly cannot be established by the external means of literature today, but which will become quite clear once the theosophical movement has taken root. So, I would like to consider an historical fact first. At the time when Christianity had its first starting point, when Jesus of Nazareth lived, there was the school of Philo in the famous Alexandria. Among the manifold teachings that Philo gave, the most outstanding were those that he gave his students about the five books of Moses.

I note that one of these students was the evangelist who wrote the Gospel of John. So the spirit that lived in the Egyptian schools also lives in the Fourth Gospel. This interpretation required a very special spiritual quality, and Philo began by telling his students that the five books of Moses were not written to express what is told in them, but that this was only an outer garment to express deep inner human truths. Line by line, the Old Testament is to be understood as allegorical, symbolic of human inner processes, of such processes that also took place in time at the same time, that is, the processes took place in the hearts of the people for many hundreds of years, from the time when Abraham wandered in the Canaanite land until the time when the Jews were led into Babylonian captivity. There events took place that did not happen outwardly, but in the souls, which were, however, connected with historical events. But one does not understand the historical events if one does not bring them into connection with the inner happenings. Above all, the students entered into a mood in which the whole of the Old Testament appeared to them as a revelation of the inner human self.

I will give you a few examples in a moment. What I have told you was regarded by nineteenth-century scholars as mere myth, especially the explanations given by Philo. He still gave these in a very forceful manner in oral discourse. Everything that has come down to posterity from this has been regarded as an allegorical interpretation, to which nothing more can be added. In the nineteenth century, the aim was to remain on the physical plane and to examine the facts that arise for the historian. Even if the Bible was doubted in its chronology, even if it was no longer believed that the world was created 4000 years before the birth of Christ, at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Bible was still taken as a kind of historical document, as something that gave us information about historical events. The events that were narrated - even if they were inaccurately narrated - were taken as if they mattered. I am now talking from the point of view of external scholarly research. The other things that occurred in the occult realm were not noticed at all.

But something did result from the achievement of deciphering the cuneiform script. It turned out that what can be found in the stories of the Old Testament can also be found in the Babylonian legends and myths. In particular, they tell us of a creation of the world that is very similar to the biblical creation of the world. The story of the Fall of Man is also told in a very similar way in the Babylonian myth. The content of the significant seal impressions is significant. It is the impression that shows two people sitting under a tree with a snake. We have the Fall of Man depicted on a seal impression that is much older than the writings themselves. So in cuneiform writing we have the story of the Fall of Man, the salvation of humanity in a similar way to Noah and so on, so that it became clear that the view that the Old Testament was based on divine revelation, given directly to Moses by God, could no longer be maintained. It is self-evident that secular scholarship has concluded from this that the Jews did not receive these legends by revelation, but that they brought them down with them from their ancestral homeland at the time when they came down, and that they were then influenced from outside.

The further you get into the Old Testament, the clearer it becomes. You have to assume that what we are told about Joseph, who lived around the time of the pharaohs and who helped the Jews achieve a respected position in Egypt, is true. And it must also be assumed that there was also such a Moses.

At least you could feel that there would be a story together. In later times, historical records have again undermined the ground for purely historical research. We have documents that testify that in the time in which the story of Joseph took place, peoples whom we cannot describe otherwise than as Hebrews lived in the land of Canaan and that they turned to Pharaoh for support in a famine. These letters are written in the Babylonian language and addressed to the Egyptian pharaoh. From this it can be seen that the Babylonian language must have been highly regarded. The language of the educated at that time was the Babylonian language, as in earlier centuries with us it was the French language.

But something else has emerged. The person of Joseph has become highly doubtful. History has gradually eroded this figure. It has been established that a personality who was governor in a Jewish land is identical to Joseph, so that the story in the Bible corresponds to a governor who could not have experienced the story. At the court of the Pharaoh, he advocated for the Jews' petitions to the Pharaoh. So we would not have a Joseph who spoke for his people in the way it is written in the Bible, but who, as governor, took care of the Jews, and that they also made the Egyptian journey back then. Today it seems more questionable than ever that the Israelites' journey to Egypt really took place. It is quite impossible that the retreat under Moses could have taken place as it is told. It is said that the Jews went into the desert, and it is said as if no other peoples were there. But at that time, this area must have been inhabited by other peoples who would have fiercely resisted. If we understand all this literally, then everything is in the air.

Secular [historiography] has contributed to the dismemberment of the Bible. If the critic begins with his criticism, he sees himself standing before nothingness. The critic must end up saying, “I can't say anything.” It may be so, but it may also be otherwise – this is the conclusion that the secular critic must necessarily come to.

In this regard, I can only provide a sketch. However, if you were to go through the matter and look at it, you would find – as I have indicated – that the result can only be what I have indicated: higher criticism and absolute lack of results. This probably has the effect that one will ask oneself: Are the interpretations that Philo of Alexandria gave, that it is just a play on words, correct, or are the old documents perhaps written in the sense that Philo of Alexandria could still know, but which was later forgotten?

Not only in the first book of Moses, but also in the later books, an answer can be found if one examines it esoterically and if one asks oneself: Did it literally happen as it seems to be written there, or were the writers such who championed esotericism, were they spirits who, with what they outwardly presented, connected an inner meaning? The whole area that is involved and about which it is said that Abraham passed through it, that Abraham must have lived in it at the time that preceded a great invasion of the people, the area north of the Euphrates; Persia, India, but also Egypt, all these areas were full of occult schools. They were more or less left alone, especially until 2005 BC. But in the middle of the third millennium BC, great migrations of peoples took place. What is referred to as the Babylonian people also settled there around that time. In the past, there were even more peoples who knew what priestly rule meant.

In all these areas there were seven degrees of initiation. The first degree was the degree of the “ravens”. Initiates of this degree were those who ensured the connection between the outside world and the secret places. Hence the ravens are the scouts who bring news of the outside world to those inside the temple, from which they can find the opportunity to work. When the old Barbarossa asks from century to century whether the ravens are still flying around the mountain, this is nothing more than the occult interpretation of whether the connection with the outside world still exists.

In the second degree of initiation, those who could use the word were those who had learned so much that they were inspired by spiritual life. They were called the champions.

In the third degree of initiation were those who could work through action, who stood firm through their power. They were called the “lions”. A warrior is one who works through the word; he is also called a prophet. But those who have become lions work through action. Sometimes, however, their work remains more or less unnoticed. They are often not recognized at all.

Those initiated in the fourth degree were called the “occult” [those working inside the temple].

Those initiated in the fifth degree were called in each country according to the name of the [people] in question. In India they were called: “Man” - . He was only truly a man when he had risen to Manas. The Persians called them “Persians”; the ancient Chaldeans called them “Chaldeans.” The entire nation was called Chaldeans, but the initiated of the fifth degree were especially called that. That is why they were always confused, when the people and when the initiated priests were designated. The initiates of this degree were priests who studied astronomy and astrology.

The initiates of the sixth degree were universally called the “sun-runners”. Their life had become so rhythmic that it ran as regularly as the course of the sun. He would have caused confusion if he had deviated from his path, just as the sun would cause confusion if it ever stepped out of its orbit. The sun-runners were the ones who were called upon to rule the nations. The kings of Western Asia, Southern Asia and Egypt were prepared for this by being initiated in the sixth degree. In the governors of Egypt, we therefore find sun-walkers who had reached a high degree of development, who understood the secret language of the world, and who also understood how to live out the spiritual secrets. It was said of such people that they led a life like the sun and that the sun, moon and stars bowed down before them, just as the moon and stars bow down before the sun.

These solar walkers or solar heroes are told in the most diverse legends and myths. Hercules is nothing other than a solar hero. The twelve labors are the passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac. Jason is also such a solar walker who set out to bring the golden fleece from the rough land of the barbarians. Thus, you can find myths with solar heroes among different peoples. Scholars have often wondered why the heroes of the myths are so often depicted in similar ways. They have been surprised that the lives of Buddha, Hercules and Zarathustra, Osiris and Christ are so similar. If they had known that these were initiates of the sixth degree and that the life of a sun-runner was simply being told, then they would not have needed to wonder. Even the story of Christ is part of it, and it shows that these were real events in their lives, but that they were predetermined by their fellow brothers. Their course of life was mapped out thousands of years before. The life of a sun-runner was described before, because through thousands of years the life of such a hero has taken the same course.

I would like to draw your attention to the story of Joseph. Read it and listen to my suggestions for how you might teach it. Joseph's father, Israel, made him a colorful coat. Among the Persians, those initiated at the fifth degree were called “Persians,” while among the Israelites they were called “Israeb.” It was a real event that those initiated at the fifth degree bowed to those initiated at the sixth degree on a certain day. Joseph told his brothers about his dream in which the sheaves bowed down to him, whereupon the brothers said to him: “Should you become our king and rule over us?” But they did not understand everything. Now he spoke even more clearly by telling his brothers another dream: “Behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars bowed down to me.” Here Joseph spoke of the fact that he wants to be initiated in the sixth degree. - Let us throw him into a pit, said the brothers. The “pit” is the place of initiation. A “wild beast” has torn Joseph apart. The tearing of the earthly garments is the dying of the lowly. The story shows us that Joseph has grown up to become a sun-runner, a sun-hero.

Egypt was the place of those temples where the most highly initiated were. The seventh degree is the degree of the “fathers.” Abraham belonged to the fathers only in Chaldea. Moses could then also be initiated into the Egyptian mysteries through Joseph, and from this emerged what Moses spoke to his people.

This is a brief example of the kind of instruction that Philo gave his students. The scholars had no idea that these were spiritual processes, but believed that real historical events were being described. But now we also understand why there is nothing left for biblical criticism. It does not stick to the real content, which it lets slip through its fingers.

The Jews of the first Christian communities told the story of Jesus' initiation in a similar way. The key to this lies in the old commentaries that exist for the Bible and the Vedas.

[Spiritual processes that must be read esoterically are also the fairy tales, for example, “The Seven Little Goats.” - The outer criticism always lets the real content slip through; it takes the symbols as deeds. - The keys are not available to external scholarship; it does not know how to read such things.)

Next time, I will discuss one of the most significant stories that you have often heard, but whose inner meaning is as infinitely deep as hardly anything else – the story of Cain and Abel. On the one hand, we have Cain's murder, and on the other hand, the whole human race is derived from Cain. The great secret lies in Abel, who sacrificed the animals of the forest, and Cain, who sacrificed the fruits of the field.

A translation of the profound Indian poem "Bhagavad-Gita" by Franz Hartmann has recently been published. The poem reveals the deepest experiences that the chosen ones, the priestly natures of a sensible people, had in special states. As if in a dream, the solutions to those questions of life which, according to their disposition, they needed to answer, were revealed to these priestly natures. It was not through abstract thinking, which we Westerners have to rely on, but through mystical vision and intuition that these Oriental seekers of truth sought to achieve their goals. It would be in vain if we Westerners wanted to imitate them. Our nature is different from theirs; and therefore the way must be different by which we reach the summit of knowledge and the height of a free way of life. Theosophists do not think this way. They shrug their shoulders at the whole of European science; they smile at its intellectuality and rationality and worship the Oriental way of seeking truth as the only one. Oh, it is delightful to observe the superior expression when one enters into a conversation with a Theosophist about the value of occidental knowledge. "That is all external work"; the "rationalists only walk around a thing and look at its surface"; "we, on the other hand, live inside the thing; we even live inside God himself; we experience the Godhead within us". These are some of the phrases we hear. And you will hardly get away without being labeled a "limited intellectual" if you reveal in just a few words that you cannot think of the inferiority of Western science in the same way. But it is not a good idea to make such a confession so soon. Rather, I advise everyone who meets with a Theosophist to first of all place himself in complete faith and try to hear something of the revelations that such an enlightened person, full of oriental wisdom, experiences in "his inner being". For one hears nothing; nothing but phrases borrowed from Oriental writings, without a trace of content. The inner experiences are nothing but hypocrisy. It is cheap to take phrases from a literature that is, after all, profound and use them to declare the whole of Western cognitive work worthless. Theosophists have no idea of the depth, the inwardness of the science of the West, which supposedly belongs to the superficial mind, to external concepts. But the way in which they speak of the highest knowledge, which they do not have, the mystical way in which they present incomprehensible foreign wisdom, has a seductive effect on quite a few of their contemporaries. And the Theosophical Society is spread all over Europe, has its followers in all major cities; and the number of those who prefer to turn to the dark talk of experiencing the deity within rather than the clear, bright, conceptual knowledge of the Occident is not small. Theosophists benefit from the fact that they are able to maintain good relations with spiritualists and similar strange spirits. They also say of the spiritualists that they treat the phenomena of the spirit world externally, while they themselves only want to experience them inwardly, completely spiritually. But they do not refuse to go hand in hand with the spiritualists when it comes to combating the free science of modern times, which is based solely on reason and observation.