The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Verse for Thursday. My dear sisters and brothers! To protect ourselves against the raids of Lucifer and Ahriman we must know them and learn to distinguish between them. Lucifer is in mystical esoterics such as we find in Meister Eckhart, Ruysbroek, Tauler and Suso. Lucifer is in this pure devotion to the divine, in this pure, noble striving towards the spiritual in a good way, and one can say that he was pious in the souls of these mystics.

But as soon as a personal note flows into this pure striving and this devotion, as soon as a mystic would enjoy this, it would amount to a luciferic infringement. We must watch that nothing like this comes into our striving. It's relatively easy to be wakeful in mystical immersion, but more difficult in visionary perception. Lucifer is in this too. He puts all kinds of illusions before a mystic that are hard to distinguish from real visions. Something subjective gets mixed into all vision, for instance, someone sees certain apparitions, deceptive figures or the like repeatedly. One has to direct one's attention to this. One must be wakeful here also. If one sees eyes or faces or if one imagines them one isn't exposed to error as easily; one thereby gets the strength to ward off Lucifer. It's no reproach to say that bad qualities live in man's subconsciousness; they must be there, it's something that goes with earth life. A man may already have attained a certain degree of holiness, and yet drives are slumbering in his subconsciousness that would horrify him if he saw them. The greatest watchfulness and wakefulness must hold sway here also.

Lucifer is at work in all emotional and visionary things, in mystical immersion, also in all enthusiasm and in artistic activity, in what an artist creates and in what creates in the artist.

Some materialists may only express themselves in material things outwardly. Then if one has the good fortune to look into their souls one finds a deep religious striving, a longing for the divine. Lucifer is the instigator here also.

Ahriman works in everything that has to do with the will. He approaches us in everything that becomes manifest as gesture in words or writing, in everything that appears as mediumistic writing, whether it's acquired or natural, or if one feels compelled to write something. Whereas Lucifer brings about appearances of figures, heads of light, etc., that are created by a medium. If one feels that one is forced to write something one can counteract this by stopping and by not giving in to the inspirations that one thinks that one is feeling or perceiving; one opposes these whisperings with the firm will not to follow them. One acquires undreamed of forces in occult life through this effort of the will.

Ahriman is in what we say, in words that we form and transmit to other men. As soon as the ear hears sounds, the larynx emits sounds and words are put into writing Ahriman comes and hardens the sound, word or writing. That's why it's important to strengthen the soul and to check one's thoughts in the most subtle way.

Swedenborg's visions, dreams and world view are permeated with Ahriman and so is what Kant took from Swedenborg's writings.

People keep on asking: Should I think that what I see, hear or feel there is of importance? Is it true? Certainly one should attach importance to it, certainly it's true, every little thing in occult life is important and is true. The main thing is to know what's behind it. We should pay great attention to everything and watch and be awake. And we should acquire a certain tact so that we don't chatter about such experiences. One should try to find out whether Lucifer or Ahriman is at work in them. Something that can often happen to us is that as we're walking down the street we see someone in a vision and then a few minutes later we actually run into him. When we have this premonition of his coming we may have something to tell him, so we speed up our steps in order not to miss him. But this isn't permissible; we shouldn't use occult abilities for our own advantage in physical life.

If spiritists conjure up Goethe's spirit and thereby want to prove the soul's immortality, since they think that it's the soul as it's living now, then this might not be the case. It could be Goethe's soul as it was in say 1819 and that Lucifer is creating an illusion here. One has to press forward to Goethe's real soul, which has progressed, and then one has a real proof of immortality.

People often approach esoteric exercises with much frivolity. Some start to do them but soon stop due to laziness, half-heartedness, etc. But what breathing is for the body, meditations are for the soul. If one would stop breathing Ahriman would immediately intervene as the master of death. A soul must get to the point where it doesn't have to force itself to do meditations; it shouldn't want to live without them. One shouldn't wish and yearn to press into spiritual worlds before the soul is sufficiently strengthened. Quiet and peacefulness in the soul is the main condition. That's the only way that the soul can become strong enough to find the middle path between Lucifer and Ahriman.

That's very difficult, my dear sisters and brothers. But then we must remember what's said at the beginning of John's Gospel and later in chapter 8:12-14. When we stand in the tumult and chaos of the spiritual world and visions and figures come from all sides and we don't know how to get in or out and are torn this way and that, then we should place

In the beginning was the word

before our souls, or

I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.

Then everything will dissipate and we'll be able to see what's right and true. We should repeatedly place the rosicrucian formula

EDN
ICM
PSSR

before us in this sense. And also we will be increasingly able to find the right thing on this difficult path if we think of the simple but profound verse with which our esoteric lessons are closed: In the spirit lay the germ of my body ...

During my lectures, I often cited the thoughts of the fine-art writer Herman Grimm. I did so because in them I seemed to see one of the currents that emanated from Goethe in the last third of the nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth. It was a momentous event in my life when I came across the book in 1881 that contained the lectures on Goethe given by Herman Grimm in the winter semester of 1874/75 in Berlin. The book had the same effect on me as if something emanating from Goethe himself was still blowing through it into the time when Goethe's fiftieth anniversary of death was being experienced. Later, I found the explanation for what I felt at the time in the words that Herman Grimm added to the fifth edition of his book on Goethe in 1894: “In my youth I lived in a circle of people almost all of whom had been in personal contact with Goethe, and I counted myself among them, as if this privilege had been handed down to me.”

These Goethe lectures contain only thoughts that either form the conclusion of spiritual experiences or those that point to a worldview. The conclusion of experiences that took place among people who felt as if the shadow of Goethe was walking around in their circles when something decisive happened. Herman Grimm put into words, as it were, what the spiritual children of Goethe had acquired as a common soul-good over several decades. In the lectures, a personality spoke that said everything as only it could and yet conveyed the views of many. Everything was individual and unique, and yet it was something like the shared perception of a large number of people who saw it as a spiritual achievement of their time to live in the soul atmosphere of Goethe.

But I had another feeling while reading this book. I felt that Herman Grimm was only describing what Goethe experienced in his relationship with people. It seemed to me that even what was said in the lectures on Goethe's works was only a reflection of Goethe's dealings with the world. I said to myself: but Goethe had the hours in which he pursued the great riddles of existence artistically and cognitively, which are experienced in mental solitude. All this seemed to me to be mentioned in Herman Grimm's thoughts, but not present. My own studies of Goethe, however, were entirely on this side of Goethe's life. Therefore, I felt about the book that I was most intensely drawn to it, and that I even disliked it from another point of view. And often I said to myself: the core of Goethe's being is missing there; Goethe's experiences and works pass by like silhouettes.

But in these shadowy images there lived a special form of idealism that had emerged from the first half of the nineteenth century and shone into the second. It was an idealism that had the will not only to dream in thought but to spread into all of human life. An idealism that, through the way it was experienced, also considered itself proven, even irrefutable.

Herman Grimm thought and felt in this way. For me, this meant that I could not help but familiarize myself with everything Herman Grimm had written during my youth. Soon I saw how the perspective of a worldview formed the background of all his books and essays. I found this world view overwhelmingly magnificent on the one hand, and too lightly weighed on the other. Herman Grimm wrote books about Goethe, Michelangelo, Raphael, Homer, and essays on many other subjects. But all this comprises only details of a world-view which sees in the historical development of mankind, in the deeds of great personalities, the revelations of a kind of creative world-fantasy. This world-fantasy stands behind everything: in Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Raphael, Goethe it lived; and what these personalities gave to the world were the experiences they had with the creative world-fantasy.

It was clear to me: the universal imagination of which Herman Grimm spoke is one of the revelations of the spiritual world, which, as in nature, must be regarded as the actual reality in history as well. In Herman Grimm there lived an intense rejection of all historical views that did not come from the spirit. But he wanted to recognize the spirit only in the creative imagination. In my opinion, I had before me one of the most soulful professions of the spirit that could still be found in the second half of the nineteenth century, but which - in the sense of my essay “Anthroposophy and Idealism” in this weekly journal - nevertheless remained outside the gate of the actual spiritual world.

Since I felt that way, it was a second event in my life that was significant for me when I was able to meet Herman Grimm personally during my years in Weimar. I was lucky enough to be invited by him to lunch at the “Russischer Hof” in Weimar soon after this happened. I was his only guest. He had chosen a room for us two at the inn where there was no one else. The conversation was undisturbed. He spoke like someone who is aware of carrying within him a spiritual content that is firmly established and contains its own value, and that is intended to have an effect on younger people. He had an elegant attitude of mind down to the smallest details. Nothing of pathos came from his mouth. The effect of the significance that characterized everything he said came from the idiosyncrasy of his phrasing, which was more pronounced in conversation than it appears in his writings. He had nothing to teach; but he wanted to be able to be convinced that his expressed thoughts found a corresponding response in the listener. That was how he appeared to me, especially when I thought about the lunch I had with him and a walk I was also allowed to take with him alone. At lunch, the conversation turned to Homer, Gervinus, literary-historical method, Grillparzer, and much more. But again and again it touched on how the “history of national fantasy” was at the heart of his thinking and feeling. It was extremely moving to hear him explain that all his research was aimed at creating such a history. It was wonderful to hear him speak, and for me it was much too early when he said, with his sense of humor, which also expressed the seriousness with which he felt he was a bearer of a significant spiritual current, “Now, my dear Steiner, I will release you in mercy.”

In this description, I wanted to suggest how the work and personality of Herman Grimm lived in me when I cited his ideas as representing a striving for the spiritual world within the newer development of thought. It is the same with them as with those of “idealism,” which I tried to characterize in this weekly journal. Until recently, Herman Grimm was a personality for me who seemed to me to be still alive when I spoke of his thoughts. I quoted him as I did, in the knowledge that one could do so because he is a “contemporary”. But now I feel that one can no longer quote him. His thoughts have become “history”. People have experienced a lot in the last few years. The transition from “present” to “history” has been experienced more thoroughly than many other ages have been allotted.

I would like to talk about this transition in a further article.

In the previous essay, with reference to Herman Grimm's thoughts, I drew attention to the fact that today people are going through the transition from directly experienced “present” to “history” more intensely than in many other ages. This can be particularly noticeable when one looks at the description that Herman Grimm gives in his Goethe lectures of Goethe's entry into Rome. In observing the feelings that arise in Goethe's soul when he enters the “capital of the world” - in his own expression - a great world-historical perspective stands before Herman Grimm's mind. He traces the inner course of the human spirit back, from the present into the past. He finds that the man of the present can only reach back with full inner understanding to the time of Roman development. The Roman doers, the Roman thinkers and artists can still be understood in this way. For their expressions of life arise from a state of soul that, despite the development that has been undergone, has an inner affinity with the present one. But if one goes further back, there is a gulf before what has been handed down historically. The Greek personalities act out of impulses that are foreign to the present souls. When their story is told, one feels more in a fairytale mood than in the atmosphere of the rough reality that begins with Roman times and in which present-day people still breathe.

Alkibiades or Solon are in their historical element the pure fairytale figures in contrast to Caesar or Brutus, who are felt to be very down-to-earth.

Herman Grimm wrote a book about Homer's Iliad. He wanted to use the style and tone of the entire book to lead the reader into a realm that can be entered without hesitation, leaving the earthly ground and using the wings of fantasy. For in the life of the earth, according to Herman Grimm's opinion, today one no longer has the prerequisites for coming to this distant Greek land. One would become a greater fantasist if one wanted to reach Achilles or Agamemnon with ideas that are “really” called today than on the paths of the world-replicating imagination.

Herman Grimm wrote books about Michelangelo and Raphael. In them, he attempts to use the ideas that people in contemporary life have acquired to penetrate to the historical circles in which the Renaissance artists live. Grimm even takes an orientation that is gained from the present day as far back as Giotto and Dante. Yes, he goes back as far as Augustine; and it would have been natural for him to do so if he had spoken of the events of the Roman Republic. He stops at Greek history. There the spiritual ground on which Romanism has been led into the present must be abandoned; there one must enter into a fairy-tale mood.

With such sentiments, Herman Grimm looks to Goethe as he enters Rome. He believes that Goethe perceived Rome as the “capital of the world” because in this place he found most intensely expressed what the Roman era brought to humanity. This age, which was preceded by the age of Greek fairy tales and will be followed by the one that present humanity is just entering. Herman Grimm, in his own way, very strongly emphasizes how he feels himself at the dawn of this new age and how he judges Goethe's premonition of it. But here we come to the point where we feel quite clearly that we cannot carry Herman Grimm's thoughts into the present any more, any more than we could a short time ago. He believed he was touching on Goethe's feelings in Rome when he spoke of his own in the Goethe lectures as follows: “I myself believed I was still allowed to experience a very last glimmer of the sunset in which Goethe saw Rome.” “The Romans... are completely lacking in the fairytale-like. They have no trace of mythical descent and are understandable from the first moment as politicians, legal scholars, soldiers, officials, merchants. Their virtues and vices are openly displayed and without poetic gloss.” In contrast to this, Herman Grimm describes his feelings towards the Greeks as follows: “No matter how close Homer and Plato, even Aristotle and Thucydides, or Phidias and Pindar may appear to us, a small moon in the nail reminds us of something like ichor, the blood of the gods, of which a last drop flowed into the veins of the Greeks.”

But more powerfully than all this, which Herman Grimm says as if it were also a decisive statement about Goethe, his own words penetrate the soul today. Goethe looks at the artistic works that are accessible to him in Italy. Through them he seems to feel the essence of Greek art. And he expresses his belief that he has come upon the secret of this art by seeing how the Greeks, in creating their works of art, followed the same laws that nature itself follows, and which he wanted to follow. There is no urge in Goethe to move from the level of Roman earthly reality to a Greek fairy-tale world. Rather, there is the completely different urge to work one's way through the contemplation of Greek works of art to a higher, truer reality, to a spiritual reality of which even the fairy-tale-creating imagination is only a daughter.

Herman Grimm did not want to penetrate to this reality. Where he felt that he no longer had earthly reality under his feet, he wanted to float away into the realm of creative fantasy.

One feels: today one can no longer go along with this. One must enter into spiritual reality with soul forces that can be experienced as precisely as those that penetrate into the realm of natural existence. In doing so, one may quote Goethe's thoughts as if they were spoken in the present. Herman Grimm also spoke about Goethe in the way that the time was allowed to speak when it still believed that without a real spiritual vision it could bring humanity to recognize the mere ideas of the spirit. Herman Grimm was one of those who dreamt this dream most beautifully. He wanted to get by saying: “Everything Greek, right up to the most firmly established historical times, retains something fairytale-like for our gaze... Alkibiades is the pure prince of fairytales, compared to Caesar.” Today, we are no longer allowed to speak in this way. Reality on earth has become so harsh that anything spiritual, which we only see in fairy tales, is immediately consumed by it. Today we must recognize the essence of man in such depth that Alcibiades does not appear as a “fairytale prince”, but as real as Caesar, even if he comes from a different reality.

In a subsequent essay, I would like to elaborate on the idea that personalities like Herman Grimm remain alive for human observation precisely because they are viewed in the light of the “present” at the right moment and in that of “history”.

The tasks of the educator and teacher ¹ culminate in what he can achieve for the moral conduct of the youth entrusted to him. He faces great difficulties in this task within the elementary school education. One of these difficulties is that moral education must permeate everything he does for his students; a separate moral education can achieve much less than the orientation of all other education and all other teaching towards the moral. But this is entirely a matter of pedagogical tact. Because roughly formulated “moral applications” in all possible cases, even if they are still so forceful at the moment they are applied, do not achieve what is intended in the further course. - Another difficulty is that the child who enters elementary school has already formed the basic moral attitudes of life.

The child lives completely absorbed in its surroundings until the period around the seventh year, when it undergoes the change of teeth. One could say that the child is completely absorbed in its surroundings. Just as the eye lives in colors, so the child lives entirely in the expressions of life in its surroundings. Every gesture, every movement of the father and mother is experienced in a corresponding way in the child's entire inner organism. The brain of the human being is formed during this period. And during this period of life everything that gives the organism its inner character emanates from the brain. And the brain reproduces in the finest way what takes place through the environment as a revelation of life. The child's learning to speak is based entirely on this.

But it is not only the external aspects of the behavior of the environment that resonate in the child's being and imprint the character on its inner being, but also the spiritual and moral content of these external aspects. A father who reveals himself to his child through expressions of anger will cause the child to develop a tendency to express anger in gestures, even in the finest organic tissue structures. A timid and hesitant mother implants organic structures and movement tendencies in the child that cause the child to have a tool in its body that the soul then wants to use in a timid and hesitant way.

During the phase of life when the teeth change, the child has an organism that reacts spiritually and morally on the soul in a very specific way.

It is in this state, with an organism oriented towards the moral, that the child is received by the teacher and educator of the elementary school. If he does not see through this fact, he is exposed to the danger of imparting moral impulses to the child, which are unconsciously rejected by the child because it has the inhibitions of the nature of its own body to accept them.

The essential thing, however, is that when the child enters primary school, he has the basic tendencies acquired by imitating his environment, but that these can be transformed with the right treatment. A child who has grown up in an environment of violent temper has received its organic formation from it. This must not be left unnoticed. It must be taken into account. But it can be transformed. If one takes it into account, one can shape it in the second phase of childhood, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, in such a way that it provides the soul with the basis for quick-wittedness, presence of mind, and courage in those situations in life where such qualities are necessary. A child's organization, which is the result of a fearful, timid environment, can also provide the basis for the development of a noble sense of modesty and chastity. Genuine knowledge of the human being is therefore the basic requirement for moral education.

Those who educate and teach must, however, bear in mind what the child's nature requires for its development in general between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. (These requirements can be found in the pedagogical course I have outlined and described in this weekly journal and which Albert Steffen has now published in book form). The transformation of basic moral principles and the further development of those that must be regarded as right can only be achieved by appealing to the emotional life, to moral sympathies and antipathies. And it is not abstract maxims and ideas that appeal to the emotional life, but images. In teaching, one has ample opportunity to present images of human existence and behavior, and even of non-human existence and behavior, to the child's mind, by which moral sympathies and antipathies can be aroused. Emotional judgment of the moral should be formed in the period between the change of teeth and sexual maturity.

Just as the child, until the change of teeth, is devoted to imitating the immediate expressions of life in the environment, so in the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, it is devoted to the authority of what the teacher and educator say.

The significance of the educational impulse contained in such learning can be seen when one seeks the right relationship to the child after the first third of the second phase of life, roughly between the ninth and tenth birthdays, in true human insight. A most important point in life is reached there. One notices that the child, half unconsciously, is going through something essential in a more or less dark feeling. The ability to approach the child in the right way is of incalculable value for his or her entire later life. If we wish to express consciously what the child experiences in its dream-like feelings, we must say: the question arises in the soul: where does the teacher get the strength that I, believing in him with reverence, receive? As a teacher, one must prove before the unconscious depths of the child's soul that one has the authority that comes from being firmly grounded in the world order. With true knowledge of human nature, one will find that at this point in time some children need few words, spoken correctly, while others need many. But something decisive must happen then. And only the being of the child itself can teach what has to happen. And for the moral strength, moral security, moral attitude of the child, unspeakably important things can be achieved by the educator at this point in life.

If moral judgment has been properly developed with sexual maturity, it can be incorporated into free will in the next stage of life. The young person leaving elementary school will carry with them the feeling, from the psychological after-effects of their school days, that the moral impulses in social interaction with fellow human beings unfold from the inner strength of their human nature. And after sexual maturity, the will will emerge as morally strong if it has previously been cultivated in the rightly nurtured moral judgment of feeling.

• 1. Outline of a lecture for the “Artistic-Pedagogical Conference of the Waldorf School”, 25-29 March 1923.

Report in: Das Goetheanum, vol. 3, no. 5

Rudolf Steiner

Margaret McMillan and her work

When I arrived in England on August 4th for the two lecture series that were to take place in Ilkley and Penmaenmawer, Margaret McMillan's book 'Education through the Imagination', which was intended as a gift for me, was waiting for me. As soon as I had skimmed through the first few pages, I felt how well the book captured the mood in which I had to give my first lecture series. The series was intended to describe the art of education and teaching as realized at the Stuttgart Waldorf School. It was now a real pleasure for me to read this book. In order to find fruitful educational forces, it goes back from the expressions of life that reveal themselves on the surface of the child's human being to the deeper soul power of the imagination, which holds all of these together and illuminates and permeates them from within. It develops an awareness of how childlike thoughts are shadow images of this soul power and receive their actual life from it. It follows how the imagination flows into the child's emotional world, shaping it, and how it lives in the activity of the will.

By “imagination” I do not, of course, mean the soul power that has often been described in this weekly journal as the one through which one attains the first stage of supersensible knowledge, but rather its instinctive reflection, which works in every human mind and which is particularly in the child the bearer of the soul life. “The man in the street” does not think much of this wonderful thing. For him, ‘imagination is almost purely visionary, and someone who imagines is someone who sees things that are completely unreal.’ ”For the practical man, imagination is seen as a kind of weakness.” McMillan disagrees. She seeks a path from the manifest powers of the soul to the more hidden ones; and in doing so, she comes to say that the wonderful power of imagination is not only present in the creative minds of science and art, but that it also works as the actual driving force in everything that man does for everyday life. “It would be just as reasonable to say that light only shines on mountain tops as it would to say that creative power only resides in the souls of artists and scientists. It flows and burns... The brain of every adult and child is, in its own way, a world in which degrees of creative power reveal themselves.” As soon as a person grows beyond mere routine, the imaginative creative power sets in, which carries him through life as a thinking and active being.

In the child, whose activity has not yet become routine, imagination reveals itself as the true driving force of the soul. This is what the educator and teacher must turn to.

With a true educational genius, McMillan seeks to understand the peculiarities of the child's mind. The book is a treasure trove of the most precious observations of the child's soul and of educational instructions that are drawn from these observations. A chapter like “The child as artisan” can only be read with the deepest satisfaction.

After reading the book, I felt that the author could be understood very well by saying: Anyone who is able to penetrate into education and teaching in this way must also be able to follow the path I had to speak about on my lecture tour in Ilkley.

Therefore, I felt fortunate that this series of lectures was introduced by Margaret McMillan, the chairwoman, with her opening speech. She delivered this speech with all the beautiful enthusiasm that speaks so intensely from her, and wove this enthusiasm together with the other that she has for the education of the “poorest of the poor.” To hear this woman speak about the social aspect of educating the “children of the poor” is a great experience.

An even greater experience was to see her words put into action. Today I accepted McMillan's invitation to visit her care and educational institution in Deptford, near London. McMillan has taken three hundred children from the poorest classes of society, aged between two and twelve, and provided them with wonderful care. A dedicated, safe and caring team of educators work around McMillan. The children are brought to the institution in a state of complete neglect, literally pulled out of the dirt. Afflicted with rickets or tuberculosis, or with much worse ailments, emotionally dull, intellectually dormant, this is the state of the children who come to the home. And one sees the difference after the care has taken effect: intellectually active, emotionally happy, healthy, modest young human beings in the individual classes.

It is equally satisfying to see these children playing, learning, eating and resting after meals.

In one of the classrooms, a number of older children were gathered. Here, in a practical way, what is described in the book about the “child as an artist” developed. These children charmingly played scenes from Shakespeare's “Midsummer Night's Dream”. These little actors were full of soul and dramatic expression. This artistic teaching is done by McMillan himself.

The classrooms are simple, barrack-like structures with very thin wooden walls, set in a kind of garden in the middle of a miserable slum. You can get almost directly from the care rooms to the streets, where you see the children who are not lucky enough to be among the three hundred of McMillan.

This care facility is located on the site where Queen Elizabeth's royal household once lived. She herself lived in nearby Greenwich. Shakespeare seems to have played on the same site for this royal household, where today the little ones so charmingly present his work.

Next to this care facility is another house. A sanatorium for the children of the “poorest”. McMillan is the matron here. Six thousand children pass through this sanatorium each year.

There is a noble consecration over all of this. Margaret Mc Millan lost her dearly beloved sister “Rahel” in 1917. The nursing home is now dedicated to her memory. This woman's motto was: “Treat every child as if it were your own”. And you can feel Rahel Mc Millan's spirit in every room. Margaret McMillan lives entirely in this spirit in her powerful, loving work.

In the book “The Nursery School”, McMillan describes the life of her foster school. In the preface, there are beautiful sentences: “Every teacher is an explorer, an inventor, a leader in new methods; or he is a mere handyman, not a master”. McMillan is allowed to write these sentences.

The fact that she responded so positively to my recent educator course on the “Waldorf School” approach, as she did, fills me with the deepest satisfaction.

How does evolution take place? One has a sum of circles of existence that are internalized later. This is the case throughout the universe.

Let us now consider the development of man. His physical body is fully developed in the present race. But the astral body of man is at present in an undeveloped period. It must develop to the point where it has sensory organs, like the physical body. These sensory organs, which will allow man to live consciously on the astral plane, are called chakras. These are in the appendix today. One sits above the larynx and is called the sixteen-petalled lotus flower because of its shape. It is formed by the person speaking today. An organ on the higher plane arises from an activity on the lower plane. This is also referred to in the third verse of 'Licht auf den Weg'. This is a guide. All those words that contain criticism, judgment, rejection, and barbs directed outwards do not contribute to setting the wheel in motion. So only selfless speech can make this organ effective on the higher plane. So that it is not asceticism, withdrawal from the physical plane, that makes the theosophist, but working on it. When our service becomes sacrifice, the two-petalled lotus blossom on the forehead is set in motion.

Everything that is, is the result of activity or karma. — How did eyes come about? Man had to carry out an activity that led to the formation of the eyes. The now rudimentary pineal gland was a kind of heat organ, like a mobile eye, when the bodies were not yet glowing and man moved in a mist of fire. He used it to probe the environment and could perceive temperature differences in a wide circle. The result of this perception is the perception of such bodies that glow when heated. Then this organ receded and the two eyes formed as a result. The Cyclops saga is a reminder of this.

It is clear to us how grandiose the metamorphoses are that man has undergone: they must take place in such a way that the outer formation of form becomes inner strength.

We are in the fourth round. When man came over from the moon, he was generally Moon Pitri. He had brought dream consciousness to its highest development. This was unable to perceive an object that was outside. Such an object was not even there. For that to happen, one object would have had to be opposite the other. The first three rounds were such that everything was internal, man was secluded within himself. The Pitris carried all available matter within themselves, there were only humans. If man had kept the mineral kingdom within himself, he would never have developed. Therefore, he had to put it out of himself. In the first round, he separates everything he cannot use out of himself; by leaving behind a lower being, he rises up. That is a deep law of occultism.

During the second round, he populates his earth with the plant kingdom; during the third round, he leaves behind everything that is cold-blooded. Now that sleeps over into the fourth round as a germ. He goes through the arupa, rupa and astral state and enters the thinnest physicality. As he is, he could not become intelligent, he still has to shed one thing, and these are the warm-blooded animals, they are, so to speak, decadent, stunted people.

By the middle of the Lemurian period, development had progressed to the point where the following could occur. Until then, a being could emerge from another being; sexual reproduction did not exist. Back then, when all beings reproduced asexually, the earth was in a completely different state. Everything that was solid mass was dissolved at that time, liquid element. The change brought about what we call sexual reproduction. Sexuality is connected with hardening; one being could no longer produce another on its own, so even molluscs had to adapt to the new conditions.

How did sexuality arise? A measure of strength -<1> let's call it that — was necessary to bring forth a new being. This is not possible through hardening. 1 is split into 2, half of the force goes into reproduction, the other half is split off. One half condenses into the brain, becomes spiritual, and is thus ennobled reproductive force, the other half becomes more brutal as a result. These are the two poles.

The split-off power, the spiritual, could be fertilized by Manas and became the carrier of Manas. That is why symbols were taken from the sexual to symbolize the highest. When later races came, the pure symbols were misunderstood and also led to excesses. Material science, which only starts from the physical plan, has only seen this.

This spiritual power, before it reached the phase where we are today, went through many phases. At first, the imagination was much more imbued with full sensual ideas; it was not yet diluted enough to live as memory, and it had magical power, could have a reproducing effect with appropriate training. The merely sensual part of man was hardened in a rough way, and then the productive power took effect. He had to give this up to the extent that he developed higher. The memory was what developed during the Atlantean period, and the power of reason during the Aryan race. Thus, power waned at the expense of refinement.

The purpose of evolution is that a higher level develops while a lower one is left behind. Thus we have left behind the wild peoples from whom, erroneously, the cultural history derives us.

Now, after the higher animal kingdom has been rejected, we are in the middle of the fourth round. Man must gradually take up again everything he has previously rejected; he must redeem everything. In the astral state he will be able to do so. The entire extended higher animal kingdom consists of the passions that man has externalized. With the more powerful organs of the developed, purified astral body, he can take up the externalized power again and use it to elevate himself. That is the development of the three future globes. So that when our development is complete, the higher animal kingdom, which has a mineral structure, will no longer be; the whole mineral kingdom will be absorbed.

So during the fifth round, only the plant kingdom, the lower animal kingdom and man himself are there. He now absorbs the plant kingdom and the higher part of the lower animal kingdom. It is a different physical state, the mineral kingdom will not be, but the plant will have an even denser physical state. There is no volatilization into the ether, but a physicalization of the plant. It will be a growing skeleton with secretions of a plant-like nature. Certain substances that are still air today will be water in which germs can swell.

When the sixth round begins, only the animal kingdom will be there, and that will be the advanced, now lower, forms, and man. The animal kingdom will be absorbed. And in the seventh round, man will reach Godlikeness. God rests on the seventh day. Man is creator and develops to that maturity which is necessary to start a new development.

At that time, a mineral kingdom, a plant kingdom, and an animal kingdom had already developed. The animal kingdom extended up to man. This is, after all, a product of the earth. The kingdoms at that time were quite different from those of today.

The mineral kingdom still had an immediate life in itself. The moon was, so to speak, like a fruit in the physical state, a fruit full of juice. The firm shell inside, and outside the fruit parts, merge into the spiritual atmosphere. The firm shell was physical matter. The fruit, the mineral kingdom of the moon, grew mightily from the outside; juicy, abundant fertility of crystals and so on. The Egyptians spoke of the fertile and abundant Isis in this context.

The second was the plant kingdom, which grew like lush vegetation and differed only slightly from the growing crystals. The plants stretched their aerial roots out into this soft watery mass of the surrounding area, jelly-like with dissolved Kama in it. In the roots that the plant world extended, it not only absorbed air and light, but also Kama, which was dissolved in the dense air; so they had sensation, but not special sensation, but that of general life. Our Venus flytrap is still something of a memory. The earth had a general sentient life, and the plants were its organs.

The animal world was not yet as low as our present animal world, but essentially related to the surrounding Kama element, floating and only occasionally groping, like water people very much related to their surroundings; hence this dull dream-like consciousness, which does not lead them to say “I” to themselves. The dreamy man of the moon had an excellent perception of the astral. Our present seawater is a dilution of the jelly water of that time. But since the water is still related to the astral, even if not directly mixed as it was then, seafarers have justified visionary insights; the rejection of these is more superstition than recognition.

These beings could not yet say 'I' to themselves; the 'I's floated as mere thoughts in the surrounding sea of wisdom.

So we have: inside, a solid crust of vegetative metal and stone; then vegetation endowed with sensation; a layer of wisdom not yet condensed to the point of air, in which the 'I's lived. These were still to take embodiment on Earth itself. That is why the moon is also called the cosmos of wisdom. This layer of wisdom is cher a sphere that permeates everything, permeated with threads, and at the intersections something like a knot arises, that is an ego.

Thoughts run through the entire sphere, like a collective nervous system, a manasic network. This was the wisdom-filled process by which all intellectual activity on the moon took place. Like electric filaments without the wire mesh; this is “Fohav – the relationship of our thought to electricity, illegible]

They have basically the whole tetrad of man as the three lower kingdoms, but the lowest has not yet moved to the hard minerality. For the threads to be torn, it was necessary for the jelly mass to move to its outermost boundary. Man is nothing but the piece of nervous system torn out by hardening.

This moon vegetation and moon animal nature is much more glorious for external observation. For this animal nature is completely chaste, everything is regulated by the common manas, and they relate only through wisdom.

When the earth was created, we must imagine that each kingdom descended by one stage:

- The mineral loses life.
- The plant loses sensation.
- The animal loses manas.

But the Iche advance and surround themselves with the now physical earth matter. So that the Iche really go through all three states, which they have ruled from the outside. Now man has a mineral body, in the next round a plant body, in the sixth round an animal body.

What we have described as the lunar form was thus in the third round of the moon, because that was the actual state that mattered for the moon – as was the fourth round for the earth. Later, it flooded and absorbed the realms it had formed. So that they were in the plant, but as if they had shot into the germ. And on earth, man draws the life out of the mineral and leaves it as dead rock. From this, he forms his bone system in the fourth round; he was able to crystallize this out as the basis of his own life, leaving that of the mineral kingdom behind, lifeless – Adam and Eve, the Persian myth, Deucalion and Pyrrha.

Because the second round of plants is deprived of sensation, man formed his sentient muscle system. And because animals are deprived of general wisdom, he formed his special manas - and left animal nature without wisdom.

During the flooding of the moon round, the hardenings start to prepare themselves externally. The whole soft stone material forms skins around itself, the plants an epidermis, the animals even skins with bristles. So everything has the tendency to form covers, it is a cover-forming development.

If we imagine that the beings we have come to know as Lucifers delimit creation, being special, and form shells there on the moon, we see that they are thus the creators of being special and of freedom; and they naturally have the tendency to to form shells, so that when they emerge on earth, they are the creators of animals that are endowed with an external skeleton, and in the plant kingdom, of those that are not rooted in the earth but in the life element itself, such as mistletoe, the parasite plants.

During the first development of the Earth, all our animals were soft, but they have the tendency to create something solid inside, while on the moon, something solid was created on the outside.

If the moon spirits had continued their work, they would have created an earth that brings everything that exists in terms of wisdom and love and power to the outside in a wonderful work of art. A magnificent marble work would have been created. We owe the fact that art now exists on earth, that a part of it could be wrested from people, to the Luciferian principle.

turn of the vortex, when the earth had come so far that it began to harden. Lucifer is the god of external heroism, of beauty, of outer wisdom; he has still wrested it for humanity. Hence the contrast between mystical internalization and outer sense of beauty. This contrast can only be overcome at a very high level. Then the mystic loves life in beauty. The Theosophical Society must become more and more life-friendly because it is meant to spiritualize life, not alienate it from life.

This separation into male and female must be understood in such a way that it had much more significance at the beginning of the Lemurian race than later, when the characters of the male and female were more neutralized. The matter is more profound and is connected with the whole evolution. The two sexes are preceded by a bisexual humanity, in which each individual has both within himself; a hermaphroditic humanity. The oldest gods were always described as having two sexes. We still find it with the ancient Greeks. In the mystery temples there were only hermaphroditic figures. Even the Bible itself still contains a certain awareness of this, in that it suggests the separation of the sexes as the emergence of the two sexes from the bisexual. This is even more evident in the Persian myth.

At the time of the separation, all the powers of the human being were still more magical and direct than they are now, so that after the separation we find in the being two powers, separated into man and woman, still magical powers of soul. Those of the masculine must be described as powers more related to the will, and those of the feminine as powers related to the mind and memory. Thus mankind is divided. In Sanskrit, Iccha Shakti is the power more akin to the masculine; Kriya Shakti, that more akin to the feminine. Both powers are not present at all in the original form, in that in further development the female emotional power has become more similar to the male willpower.

The hermaphroditic humanity was the vehicle of the very first and most highly evolved Pitris, who were not yet able to incarnate into these gendered races, and therefore had the forces in physical bodies to express the human being in a dual way. These are the great Sons of the Fire Nebula, the Arhats. The best known is Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian. You see that these first Arhats grasped the moment when they had a humanity that could achieve the highest, because with the division into male and female, only a one-sided incarnation was possible, and this one-sided incarnation also had the effect that at first a part of the incarnating mature dhyanic natures did not incarnate at all. Only a part – but this was from the outset thrust into a strong one-sided development of humanity, because they could only see half of humanity – was dependent on the leading world powers. It is therefore not surprising that the advanced Pitris refused to incarnate. The consequence was a lower level of humanity next to the Arhats. Now the separation of the human animal and the animal human also arose. The difference was not very great, and the consequence was that humans and animals lived together, that they had sexual intercourse. Thus a certain stretch was continued, which would have come if no manasic fertilization had occurred.

What essentially occurred was a deterioration of the low human nature. Thus there was no karma for the Arhats.

Only now, because human nature has developed further, was it necessary to bring it higher again. Only in the middle of the sixth root race will humanity be as highly developed as the arhats were at that time, but with the passage through karma. What will be the difference? That the great hermaphrodites were perfect when these human beings reached the summit. But perfect under the direct guidance of God, led by the gods themselves. What comes from these arhats is therefore sacred. What they lack, however, is freedom. It is impossible for them to do evil. The purely humanly created arhats, without the intervention of supernatural powers, have overcome the freedom to do evil through their own strength.

What has humanity achieved then? It has absorbed the remaining individuals from the moon, redeemed the luciferic beings. And from this follows that great truth of the kinship of the higher nature of Lucifer with the lower nature of humanity.

This truth, that the development of humanity through karma has to be redeemed with the help of humanity, is the basis of Manichaeism, from which sects have always developed since then. These know that people now have to overcome evil through good in order to redeem it. There were sects of Cathars and Waldensians who directly called themselves . The sects are often systematic foundations of initiates, after they can work in the next incarnation in a much more conscious way among people.

That is the whole purpose of the development through the Lemurian, Atlantean and Aryan root races. Nothing else is karma than humanity's descent by a step lower than foreseen in the plan of human destiny - to redeem Lucifer, who therefore gave freedom to people.

In the male, the will was developed preferentially; it was more of a natural force in the soul. This was initially under the influence of the great hermaphrodites; and it was strictly forbidden for the feminine to participate in cultic acts. By contrast, the soul power developed in the feminine, and if we consider that Lucifer works on the soul through the detour of the humanly inferior, then woman was called upon to absorb the influence of the Luciferian principle.

And so humanity is divided between the male nature, which tends towards the strengthening of willpower, and the female nature, which tends towards the thoughtful contemplation of the soul. Through the cruel education of boys, the carnal was killed and the iccha-shakti power was released, which is akin to the rhythmic movements of the universe. Of all this, the calendar is now only a decadent memory.

The female education was more concerned with absorbing the whole meaning of the surrounding nature with the soul. Man was almost systematically made into a microcosm at that time. In a kind of somnambulistic dreams, she absorbed nature, all the plastic power, Kriya-Shakti, was there and had an immense effect on the offspring. The masculine and feminine gradually neutralized each other.

Thus we see that what religion is, namely a free worship of the divine, came into being under the influence of woman. The men seemed more like divine powers. [...]

Cain went into foreign lands and took a wife. This is meant to indicate that he took a female from the bisexual being at all. Cain mixed with something that was already a foreign sex. Adam “recognized his femininity, not another being, self-fertilization, that is how Abel came into being - and of course, Cain as well. Gradually, a contrast emerged between the general human race and that small group that was destined to merge into the Atlantean race. This was, of course, under the influence of women with a tendency towards free religious practice, singing, dancing - a kind of Dionysian cult. The men were fertilized by this soul element of the woman, while the soul element is fertilized by the will element of the man and thus neutralized; hence the striving of human nature towards something higher is always symbolized as a woman.

This is how humanity lived at the beginning of the Atlantean race. Only then was the Luciferic principle so strong that in the fourth sub-race it became seduction through black magic, and we have a kind of derailment of humanity.

There is a beautiful saying of Hegel's: The deepest thought is connected with the figure of Christ, the historical and external one. And the great thing about the Christian religion is that it is there for every level of education. It can grasp the most naive consciousness and at the same time it is an invitation to the deepest wisdom.

That the Christian religion is comprehensible for every level of consciousness has already been taught by the history of its development. To show that it calls for penetration into the deepest wisdom teachings of humanity in general must be the task of the theosophical school of thought - or of spiritual science in general, if it understands its task. Theosophy is not a religion, but a tool for understanding religions. It relates to religious documents in the same way that mathematical teaching relates to documents that have appeared as mathematical textbooks.

You can understand mathematics through your own mental powers, you can see the laws of space without regard to that old book. But once you have seen them and absorbed the geometric teachings, you will appreciate all the more this old book, which was the first to present these laws to the human mind. This is the case with Theosophy. Its sources [are not in the records, are not based on tradition. Its sources] are in the real spiritual worlds; there one has to find them and grasp them by developing one's own spiritual powers, as one grasps mathematics by seeking to develop the powers of one's intellect.

Our intellect, which serves us to grasp the laws of the sensory world, is carried by an organ, the brain. To grasp the laws of spiritual worlds, we also need appropriate organs. How have our physical organs developed? Through the agency of external forces: the forces of the sun, the forces of sound. Thus the eye came into being, and so did the ear - from neutral dull organs that initially did not allow the penetration of the sensory world and only opened slowly. In the same way, our spiritual organs will open when the right forces work on them.

What, then, are the forces that are now assailing our still dull spiritual organs? During the day, such forces penetrate the astral body of modern man that work against his development, that even kill those organs that he had before the bright consciousness of day had not yet opened up to him. In the past, man perceived astral impressions directly. The world around him spoke to him through images, through the expression of the astral world. Vivid, structured images, colors floated freely in space as expressions of pleasure and displeasure, sympathy and antipathy. Then these colors enveloped the surface of things, as it were, and the objects took on firm contours. That was when man's physical body became more and more solid and structured.

When his eyes opened fully to physical light, when the veil of Maya lay over the spiritual world, the astral body of the human being received impressions of the environment through the physical and etheric bodies, and then transmitted them to the ego, from where they entered the consciousness of the person. He was thus constantly occupied, constantly active. But what worked on him in this way were not plastic, malleable forces, corresponding to his own nature. They were forces that consumed him, killed him, in order to awaken his sense of self.

Only at night, when he immersed himself in the homogeneous, rhythmic spiritual world, did he regain his strength and was he able to restore strength to his physical and etheric bodies. From the conflict of impressions, from the death of the astral organs that used to work unconsciously in man, the life of the individual ego, the ego consciousness, had emerged. From life to death, from death to life. The serpent's circle was closed. Now, out of this awakened self-awareness, the forces had to come that rekindled life in the dead remains of earlier astral organs, forming them plastically.

It is towards this goal that humanity is moving, and it is being guided towards it by its teachers, its leaders, the great initiates, whose symbol is also the serpent. It is an education towards freedom, therefore a slow and difficult one. The great initiates could, so to speak, make the task easier for themselves and for people if they worked on the astral body at night, when it is free, so that they could imprint the astral organs on it, working on it from the outside. But that would then be an influence within the dream consciousness of the person, an intervention in his sphere of freedom. The highest principle of man, the will, would never come to fruition.

Man is led step by step. There has been an initiation in wisdom, one in mind, one in will. Genuine Christianity is the sum of all stages of initiation. The initiation of antiquity was the prediction, the preparation. Slowly and gradually, the newer man emancipated himself from his initiator, his guru. The initiation took place first in full trance consciousness, but equipped with the means to imprint into the physical body the memory of what had happened outside the physical body. Therefore, there was the necessity to also release the etheric body, the carrier of memory, together with the astral. Both plunged into the sea of wisdom, into Mahadeva, into the light of Osiris. This initiation took place in the deepest secret, in complete seclusion. No breath of the outside world was allowed to intrude. The human being was as dead to the outer life, the delicate germs were cultivated away from the blinding light of day.

Then the initiation emerged from the darkness of the mysteries into the brightest light of day. In a great, powerful personality, the bearer of the highest unifying principle, the word that expresses the hidden Father, that is His manifestation, that, by taking human form, therefore became the Son of Man and could represent all humanity, [a] unifying bond of all “I”s: In Christ, the Spirit of Life, the Eternal Unifier, the initiation of all humanity took place historically - at the same time symbolically - at the level of feeling, of the mind. This event was so powerful that it was able to have an effect on each individual who experienced it, even physically, to the extent of the appearance of the stigmata, to the point of causing intense pain. And all the depths of feeling were shaken up. An intensity of feeling arose that has never before flooded the world in such mighty waves.

In the initiation on the cross of divine love, the sacrifice of the self for all had taken place. The physical expression of the self, the blood, had flowed in love for humanity and worked in such a way that thousands pushed themselves to this initiation, to this death and let their blood flow in love, in enthusiasm for humanity. How much blood has been poured out in this way has never been emphasized enough, and people no longer realize it, not even in theosophical circles. But the waves of enthusiasm that flowed down in this pouring out of blood and rose up have done their work. They have become powerful sources of inspiration. They have matured man for the initiation of the will.

And this is the legacy of the Christ.

Let us take the standpoint of the universe and look at the world from the point of view of consciousness, life and being, or vice versa. Here, too, we have to distinguish between body, soul and spirit. Body would correspond to being, soul to life, spirit to consciousness. This also gives us a trinity.

If we take the body in a cosmic sense, Indian philosophy calls this Adi-Buddha = All-Body. Christian esotericism refers to the same thing as Kyriotetes - Empire. Indian philosophy refers to the All-Soul as Adi-Atma. Christian esotericism calls the same Dynamis-Power. Then All-Spirit: Indian AdiDeva, Christian esoteric: Exusiai - Revelation or Violence. So that from the standpoint of the microcosm we have to distinguish:

The gods circle the axis/staff 7x7 times, and the seven circles are the seven realms. However, each time the gods circle around, they move up one step, so that in the present mineral realm man is ruled by the light gods, but in the mineral realm of the next round he is already ruled by the power gods.

In all three, we have to distinguish seven levels, seven regions of the Adi-Buddha, then of the Adi-Atman - seven levels of living consciousness. - In the case of Adi-Deva, we also have to distinguish seven levels.

The 'day consciousness' reveals itself in the fourth round of the earth in the mineral kingdom, and from the outside the forces of light reveal themselves.

So, if we look at the three-part world from the point of view of the universe, we have bright day consciousness inside the mineral kingdom. When we look at the body, we see that it [gap in transcript] and what manifests itself in it are the forces of light.

When the light reveals itself on the physical plane, darkness must reveal itself with it, because the counter-forces of the realm oppose it and cause cloudiness.

On the plane of deception, the forces cannot reveal themselves other than in the twilight, so that the forces of darkness are necessarily opposed to the forces of light.

If we look at the formation of the Earth from this point of view, the forces of light and thus those of darkness are revealed first. Let us first consider the forces of light: Elohim.

Now, as one kind of force reveals itself, the earth passes through all the kingdoms: the first, the second and the third elemental kingdom, the mineral, the vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom.

Adi-Atma goes through seven stages, and these are called “planetary developments” or “chains.

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In each of these realms, seven stages are passed through. In each

round, seven globes again; these are the forces. An Atman has to go through 343 cycles to reach its goal.

7 x 7 - 7 stages of consciousness, 7 rounds, in each 7 globes.
Planetary development
Round development
Globe development
The forces of warmth used to be outside us, now they are within us.
1. The soul reaches 7 levels of consciousness. Each level of consciousness is called a “planetary chain”.
2. At each level of consciousness, the soul passes through all 7 realms - Buddhas. Each realm is called a 'round'. 3. In each round, one of the 7 different devas rules. Each type of deva government is a 'globe' or a 'planet'.

In Christian scriptures, the devas are called “angels of the ages”. The humans themselves are manifestations of the soul of the world in the mineral kingdom.

Before, before our earth came to the point of view that the Elohim revealed themselves on it, it was surrounded by a sea of warmth. Then we had an organ, the pineal gland, outgrown, it was also the one eye of the Cyclops; they were the people of fire. A great eye of warmth, with which he would swim around in this sea, which was then the earth, and perceive everywhere. That was the globe of warmth. Even earlier the globe of ether and before that the globe that was only life.

Returning to this state, we would arrive at the third round. During the third round, the various powers would appear seven times. Powers of warmth in the mineral kingdom. During the previous second round, the powers of fire ruled in the mineral kingdom.

1. The Arupa-Devas rule during the first round in the mineral kingdom.
2. The Rupa-, fire-Devas rule during the second round in the mineral kingdom.
3. The astral-Devas or warmth-spirits rule during the third round in the mineral kingdom.
4. The light-spirits rule during the fourth round in the mineral kingdom.
5. The Power Spirits rule during the fifth round in the mineral kingdom.
6. The Creative Spirits rule during the sixth round in the mineral kingdom.
7. The Divine Spirits rule during the seventh round in the mineral kingdom.

If we follow this, we have: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth” - Arupa-Devas emerged.

“The Earth was formless and empty” - It continues to develop from globe to globe.

“God separated the light from the darkness and called the light Day and the darkness Night.”

Description of the first round. The first round is the first day of creation; darkness is pralaya, which now passes over to the second round.

After the light spirits, the power spirits rule in the second round, and they are to pass over to the next round. “Then God made the firmament.”

When the third round is over, it dismisses its deities as creating spirits. The fourth round will dismiss godly spirits. Exactly the same as before, but now evolved. The fourth round is described in the Bible accordingly:

“Let lights be made” - light spirits, exusiai, elohim.

The fifth, sixth and seventh days represent the future.