The Rudolf Steiner Archive

One of the most remarkable descriptions of the human soul was provided by the English poet Richard Jefferies, who died in 1887, in his book “The Story of My Heart”. How can I process all the impressions and experiences within me in such a way that the powers of my soul are constantly growing? How can I transform all the pains and joys of existence within me in such a way that the life of my spirit becomes ever richer? Jefferies spent most of his life pondering these questions. Anyone who follows Ludwig Jacobowski's career as a poet will find that a similar basic drive can be observed in it. From his first appearance, with the collection of poems “Aus bewegten Stunden” (1889), to his last works, “Loki. Roman eines Gottes” (1898) and “Leuchtende Tage. Neue Gedichte” (1900), a passionate struggle to increase his mental powers and to grow his inner life can be seen in his development. Goethe once said to Eckermann: “In poetry, only the truly great and pure is beneficial, which in turn stands like a second nature and either lifts us up to it or spurns us.” Jacobowski felt himself to be both lifted up and spurned when he published his first poems at the age of twenty. “Kontraste” (Contrasts) is the first subtitle of this collection. Dissonances resound from the depths of his soul; he anxiously measures his strength against the ideals he dreams of. He is not one of those personalities who, as mere observers, let world events affect them as if they were not involved themselves. From his very own personal destiny, the destiny of all humanity presents itself to him. The experiences of his mind become symbols of the great struggles that humanity fights to balance the contradictions of life.

From the pain and deprivation of his emotional world, Jacobowski grew the courage of his will, which led him to feel a special joy in overcoming life. In his novel “Werther, the Jew” (1892) and his drama “Diyab, the Fool” (1895), the poet presents us with the true stepchildren of existence. Leo Wolff, the Jewish student at the center of the novel's plot, and Diyab, the son of the sheikh, are in similar situations in life, but they have different strengths of willpower, which nature has given them. In Wolff's case, a delicate and sensitive heart is confronted with a weak will, while in Diyab's case it is confronted with a strong will. This makes the former the loser and the latter the winner. Ludwig Jacobowski's psychological powers of observation can only be properly appreciated if it is taken into account that his aim is to show the influence that life has on a person's will. Wolff can only contrast his idealistic sensibilities and his lofty mind with the world; he is crushed by its wheels. Diyab is a man of will. To the extent that his heart is wounded, his will gains strength.

Wolff suffers from his father's ethical views and the prejudices directed against the young Jew. His father's financial speculations cost the teacher of his son, whom he adores, his fortune. The passion that he feels for the teacher's wife makes Wolff a deceiver of his father's friend. At the same time, it has a destructive effect on his beautiful love affair with the child of the people, who seeks release from the torments that her affection for the student has brought her by voluntarily taking her own life. The young man's willpower is not strong enough to guide him through the opposing currents into which life has thrown him, through the confusion into which his passions have thrown him. A genuinely humane spirit alienates him from the people to whom natural ties bind him; at the same time, these natural ties weigh like a lead weight on his life. By birth and by his way of thinking, he is repelled by the world and forced to turn to himself; but in the isolation of his soul he does not find the energy to shape his relationship to life on his own.

What a strong will can achieve in this direction is shown by Jacobowski in “Diyab, the Fool”. The son of the sheik is an outcast because he was born of a white mother. He is exposed to the scorn of his entire environment. But he is not affected by this mockery. He is superior to those who mock him. They know nothing of his innermost self. He hides it from them and plays the fool. They may mock him in this mask. But his own self grows outside in the solitude where the palm trees stand. There he lies between the grasses deep in the forest, living only for himself. Out there he cultivates his strength to the point where he later becomes the savior of the entire tribe, when those who had insulted him shrink back from the enemy. The strong-willed man put on the mask of a fool in order to be master of his fate. Behind this mask, however, the personality matured that takes revenge for the shameful treatment that she and her mother had to endure, and that conquers the throne of the sheikh and the beloved through boldness and strength. The artistic execution is absolutely equal to the train of thought of the two works. Ludwig Jacobowski has an open mind and a broad understanding of the great questions of existence. He is not only able to depict the individual fates of individuals, but also to artistically portray the great interrelationships of cultural development. In “Werther, the Jew”, the experience of the young Jew also symbolically expresses a great historical phase of a people's development. The individual is the representative of a rejuvenating Judaism that is struggling to break free from the prejudices and inherited habits of a tribe and to develop a universal human world view. Jacobowski's symbolizing art is particularly evident in the individual stories in the collection “Satan laughed and other stories” (1898). The first sketch, “Satan laughed”, shows how God takes control of the earth from the devil by creating man, his servant, but how the devil still manages to secure his influence. He catches the woman in his nets. A few characteristic lines are used here to symbolically suggest the demonic powers that lie hidden in human sexuality. The short stories in this collection show how an artist can express life with just a few lines, if these lines are characteristic.

Jacobowski's symbolic style reached its zenith in his book “Loki. Roman eines Gottes” (Loki. A God's Novel). The poet personifies the two powers that wage an unceasing battle in every human breast in the form of the battling gods. Goodness, love, patience, gentleness and beauty are on one side; hatred and defiance on the other. Maeterlinck has said that man is in all his parts a mystical accomplice of higher divine beings. Jacobowski seeks these beings in the depths of human nature and describes the eternal struggle between them, the scene of which is our soul. Man has a power within him that does not allow him to rest. When he believes he has found peace, when he thinks he has brought order into his existence, then this power suddenly appears and disturbs peace and order, in order to replace the old with the new and to remind us that the true essence of the world can only exist in perpetual becoming. It is true that within peace and order, good human qualities flourish; but it is equally true that the old good must be destroyed from time to time. Thus the actual driving force of the world appears as evil, which drives good out of its possession. The creative appears as an unwelcome intruder into existence. Jacobowski has contrasted it with the figure of Loki in relation to the Asen. Far from Valhalla, an Asin gave birth to this god. Terrible apparitions announce his entry into the world to the other gods. We do not know the mother or the father. He is a child of the gods' sin. This child grows up in pain and deprivation. The goddesses mistreat him and give him glacial milk, wolf's foam and eagle meat to eat. This being, who has grown up in a sphere of suffering, has one thing that all the other gods do not have: wisdom. Loki sees the future of the other gods. In this course of the “Gods' novel”, the connection between suffering and knowledge is expressed in a symbolic way. The Aesir live in happiness. They do not concern themselves with the driving forces of the world. Only those who are in pain from these driving forces look at them. They think about the reasons for this pain. This opens their spiritual eyes. Loki becomes the destroyer of the realm of the gods. He ruthlessly destroys Balder, the personification of love. He must hate him, because the becoming must always be the enemy of the persisting, of the carefree enjoyment of the moment. And from the ruins of the old realm of Balder, a new one arises, not ruled by Loki, but by a new god of love, Balder's son. The deepest conceivable tragedy lies in the figure of Loki. He is the eternal destroyer, necessary for the good elements to be constantly renewed, the demon of misfortune that happiness needs in order to exist. The creator who is never allowed to enjoy the fruits of his labor, the hatred that is indispensable to the existence of love: that is Loki.

Jacobowski poetically depicts the eternal conflict of world events in this “novel of a god”. All our wisdom cannot solve this conflict. For it is precisely this conflict that sustains life. We are enmeshed in it with our whole being. We recognize that it is there, and we must bow to the fact. Jacobowski also expressed this in the character of Loki. He knows the fate of all the other gods; only his own is unknown to him. Wisdom may recognize the whole world; it cannot see itself through; it can only live itself out, as it is driven by its demons.

Jacobowski's last collection of poems, his “Leuchtende Tage” (Shining Days), appeared shortly after this novel. Between this work and the “Bewegte Stunden” there are two more volumes of poetry: “Funken” (1890) and “Aus Tag und Traum” (1895). These collections are a reflection of all the struggles that led the poet to the high vantage point from which he sang the eternal secrets of the world in “Loki.”

Jacobowski's poetry reveals a beautiful relationship between this poet and nature. He has the ability to find the poetic and meaningful in the simplest things and processes. Unlike so many contemporary poets, he does not believe that the valuable can only be found in the rare, in the remote charms of existence. He becomes aware of it with every step he takes through life. The most ordinary things take on a poetic form for him.

The great world perspective that is Jacobowski's own also gives him the right view for the poetic representation of social conditions. The poets who seek their material in this area often see only a few steps ahead. Jacobowski's descriptions of big-city life and modern social phenomena grow out of the foundations of a more comprehensive worldview. In this sense, “Der Soldat, Szenen aus der Großstadt” (The Soldier, Scenes from the Big City) is a truly modern creation, in which the experiences of a person are described who is transplanted from the countryside to the big city and is destroyed there by fate. A legend, “The Four Robbers”, expresses a significant moral content in a simple form. This poetry speaks for Jacobowski's healthy imagination, which points everywhere to the ideal forces that hold “the world together at its core”, and yet never leaves the realm of fresh, immediate naturalness.

[ 1 ] We said that for the development of ‘inspired cognition’ one of the basic exercises is to banish from the consciousness pictures which have arisen in it in meditation or in the sequel to the process of meditation. But this exercise is really only a preliminary one to another. By the banishing we get to the point of visualizing the course of our life in the way our last survey demonstrated. We attain also to a view of the spiritual Cosmos in so far as this can express itself in etheric life. We receive a picture of the living etheric Cosmos projected on to the human being. We see how everything which we can call heredity passes on in a continuous process from the physical organisms of the ancestors to the physical organisms of posterity. But we see also how a repeatedly new effect of the etheric cosmos occurs for the facts of the etheric organism. This fresh effect from the etheric cosmos works in opposition to heredity. It is of a kind which affects only the individual man. It is specially important for the teacher to have an insight into these things.

[ 2 ] To progress in supernatural knowledge it is necessary to perfect the exercise of banishing the imaginative pictures more and more. Through it the energy of the soul for this banishing is continually strengthened. For at first we attain only to a review of the course of our life since birth. What we have there before us is indeed something psychic and spiritual, but at the same time it is not something which can be said to have an existence beyond the physical life of man.

[ 3 ] In continuing these exercises of inspiration it becomes clear that the power of obliterating the imaginative pictures grows ever greater, and later becomes so great that the whole picture of one's life's course can be banished from the consciousness. We then have a consciousness that is freed also from the content of our own physical and etheric human nature.

[ 4 ] Into this in a higher sense empty consciousness there then enters through a higher inspiration a picture of the psychic-spiritual nature as it was before man left the psychic-spiritual world for the physical, and there formed union with the body which exists through conception and the development of the embryo. We get a vision of how the astral and Ego-organization covers itself with an etheric organization which comes from the etheric Cosmos, and with a physical one which arises from the sequence of heredity.

[ 5 ] Only in this way do we acquire knowledge of the eternal inner being of man, which during his life on earth exists in the reflection of the soul's imagination, feeling, and Will. But we acquire also through it the idea of the true nature of this imaginative presentation; for in point of fact this is not present in its true shape within the limits of the earth-life.

[ 6 ] Look at a human corpse. It has the shape and the limbs of a man, but life has gone out of it. If we understand the nature of the corpse, we do not regard it as an end in itself, but as the remains of a living physical man. The external forces of Nature, to which the corpse is surrendered, can destroy it well enough; but they cannot construct it. In the same Way, from a higher stage of vision, one recognizes earthly human thought to be the dead remains of that living thought which belonged to man before he was transplanted from his existence in the spiritual, psychic world into his life on earth. The nature of earthly thought is as little comprehensible from itself as the form of the human organism is from the forces which work in the corpse. We must recognize earthly thought as dead thought, if we want to recognize it rightly.

[ 7 ] If we are on the way to such a recognition, we can then also completely see the nature of earthly will. This is recognized in a certain sense as a more recent part of the soul. That which is hidden behind the will stands to thought in the same relationship as, in the physical organism, the baby does to the old man on his deathbed. Only with the soul, babyhood and old age do not develop in sequence after one another, but exist side by side. [ 8 ] We see, however, from what has been explained, certain results for a Philosophy which intends to form its ideas only on the experience of life on earth. It receives as contents only dead, or at least, expiring ideas. Its duty therefore can be only to recognize the dead character of the thought-world and to draw conclusions from what is dead on the basis of something which was once living. Just so far as one keeps to the method of intelligible proof, one can have no other aim. This purely ‘intellectual’ Philosophy therefore, can lead to the true nature of the soul only indirectly. It can examine the nature of human thought and recognize its transitoriness, and so it can indirectly show that something dead points to something living, as the corpse points to a living man.

[ 9 ] Only ‘inspired cognition’ can arrive at a real vision of what is the true soul. The corpse of thought is again animated in a certain sense through exercises for this inspiration. We are not, it is true, transferred back completely into the condition that existed before life on earth began; but we bring to life in us a true picture of this condition, from the nature of which we can realize that it is projected out of a pre-terrestrial existence into a terrestrial one.

[ 10 ] By means of developing intuition by exercises of the Will it comes about that the pre-terrestrial existence which had in thought died out during the earth-life is brought to life again in the subconscious mind. Through these exercises man is brought into a condition by means of which he enters upon the world of the spiritual, apart from his physical and etheric organism. He experiences what existence is after the dissolution from the body; he is given a pre-vision of what really happens after death. He can speak of the continuity of the spiritual part of the soul after going through the gates of death.

[ 11 ] Again the purely intellectual conceptual Philosophy can attain to the recognition of the immortality of the soul only by an indirect way. As it recognizes in thought something that can be compared with a dead body, so in the will it can establish something comparable with a seed. Something that has life in itself, which points beyond the dissolution of the body, because its nature shows itself, even during life on earth, independent of it. So, since we do not stand still at thought, but use all soul-life as experience of self, we can reach an indirect realization of the everlasting nucleus of the human being. Further we must not limit our contemplation to thought, but subject the interchange of thought with the other forces of the soul to philosophical methods of proof. But still with all this we come only to experience the everlasting human nucleus as it is in the earth-life, and not to a vision of the condition of the human spirit and the human soul before and after it. This is the case, for instance, with Bergson's Philosophy, which rests on a comprehensive self-experience of what is evident in the earth-life, but which refuses to step into the region of real supersensible knowledge.

[ 12 ] Every Philosophy which remains within the sphere of the ordinary consciousness can reach only an indirect knowledge of the true nature of the human soul.

Cosmology if it is to be of a kind that the total human being is influenced through it, can be acquired only through the imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. Within ordinary consciousness it has only the testimony for the human soul-life that dies out and re-awakens like seed. From this fact it can formulate ideas based on unprejudiced observations which point to something Cosmic, and lay it open. Still, these ideas are only that which pours into the inner being of man from the spiritual Cosmos, and moreover reveals itself in a changed form within him. Philosophy indeed had in former times a branch called Cosmology. But the real subject matter of this Cosmology were ideas which had become very abstract, which had by tradition subsisted from old forms of Cosmology. Humanity had developed these ideas at a time when an old dream-like Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition still existed. They were taken out of their tradition and woven into the material of pure intellectual, logical or dialectic demonstration. Men were often quite unconscious of the fact that these ideas were borrowed; they were considered new and original. Gradually it was found that in the inner life of the spirit no real inner connection with these ideas existed. Therefore this ‘rational Cosmology’ fell almost completely into discredit. It had to give place to the physical Cosmology, built up on the nature-knowledge of the physical senses, which, however, to the unprejudiced eye, no longer embraced man in its scope.

A true Cosmology can arise again only when imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge are allowed their place, and their results applied to the knowledge of the universe.

[ 13 ] What has had to be said concerning Cosmology applies still more to knowledge of a religious kind. Here we have to build up knowledge which has its origins in the experience of the spiritual world. To draw conclusions concerning such experience from the subject-matter of ordinary consciousness is impossible. In intellectual concepts the religious content cannot be opened out but only clarified. When one began to seek for proofs of God's existence, the very search was a proof that one had already lost the living connection with the divine world. For this reason also no intellectualistic proof of God's existence can be given in any satisfactory way. Any theory formed from the ordinary consciousness alone is obliged to work into an individual system ideas borrowed from tradition. Formerly, philosophers tried to get also a ‘rational Theology’ from this ordinary consciousness. But this compared with the Theology based on traditional ideas suffered the same fate as ‘rational Cosmology’, only still more so. Whatever came to light as a direct ‘God-experience’ remains in the world of feeling or will, and in fact prevents the transition to any method of conceptual proof. Philosophy itself has fallen into the error of seeing in a purely historical religion religious forms which have existed and still exist. It does this from an incapacity to attain through the ordinary consciousness to ideas on a subject which can be experienced only outside the physical and etheric organism.

[ 14 ] A new basis for the knowledge of the religious life can be won only by a recognition of the imaginative, inspired and intuitive methods, and by the application of their results to this life.

[ 1 ] Comprehension of the facts stated by spiritual science is made easier, if in the ordinary life of the soul attention be given to that which gives rise to ideas capable of such enlargement and transformation that they gradually reach as far as the events and beings of the spiritual world. And unless this path be followed with patience we shall easily be tempted to picture the spiritual world too much like the physical world of the senses. Indeed, unless we follow this path we shall not be able to form a just conception of what is actually spiritual, and of its relation to man.

[ 2 ] Spiritual events and beings crowd in upon man when he has prepared his soul to perceive them. The way in which they announce themselves is absolutely different from the way in which physical beings and facts do so. But an idea of this entirely different way of manifesting may be gained if the process of remembering be called to mind. Let us suppose we had an experience some time ago. At a definite moment—from one cause or another—this experience emerges from the depths of psychic life. We know that what so emerges corresponds to an experience, and we relate it to that experience. But at the moment of remembrance there is nothing of the experience present but only its image in the memory. Now let us imagine an image rising up in the soul in the same way as does a picture of memory yet expressing, not something previously experienced but something unfamiliar to the soul. If we do this, we have formed an idea of the way in which the spiritual world first makes its appearance in the soul, when the latter is sufficiently prepared for it.

[ 3 ] Because this is so, one who is not sufficiently conversant with the conditions of the spiritual world will be perpetually bringing forward the objection that all “presumed” spiritual experiences are nothing else than more or less indistinct images of the memory, and that the soul merely does not recognise them as such and therefore takes them to be manifestations of a spiritual world. Now it should on no account be denied that it is difficult to distinguish between illusions and realities in this sphere. Many people who believe they have manifestations from a spiritual world are certainly only occupied with their own memories, which they do not recognise as such. In order to see quite clearly in this respect, it is necessary to be informed of those numerous sources from which illusion may arise. We may have seen, for instance, something only once and for a moment, seen it so hastily that the impression did not penetrate completely into the consciousness; and later—perhaps in a quite different form—it may appear as a vivid picture. We possibly feel convinced that we never had anything to do with the matter before, and that we have had a genuine inspiration.

[ 4 ] This and many other things make it quite comprehensible that the statements made by those who have supersensible sight appear extremely questionable to those unacquainted with the special nature of spiritual science. But one who pays careful heed to all that is said in my books, The Way of Initiation and Initiation and its Results, about the development of spiritual sight, will be put in the way of being able to distinguish between illusion and truth in this sphere.

[ 5 ] In this connection, however, the following should also be noted. It is true that spiritual experiences appear in the first place as pictures. It is thus that they rise out of the depths of the soul that is prepared for them. It is then a question of gaining the right relation to these pictures. They only have value for supersensible perception when, by the way in which they present themselves, they show that they are not to be taken for the facts themselves. Directly they are so taken, they are worth little more than ordinary dreams. They must present themselves to us like the letters of an alphabet. We do not look at the shape of the letters, but read in them what it is desired to express by their means. Just as something written does not call upon us to describe the form of the letters, so the images forming the content of supersensible sight do not call upon us to apprehend them as anything but images ; but by their own character they force us to look right through their pictured form and direct our soul's gaze to that which, as a supersensible event or being, is endeavouring to express itself through them.

[ 6 ] As little as a person on hearing that a letter contains news previously unknown can deny the possibility of this fact on account of the well-known character of the letters of the alphabet of which it is composed, so little can anybody object to clairvoyant pictures being formed out of well-known objects taken from ordinary life.

It is certainly true, up to a certain point, that the pictures are borrowed from ordinary life, but what is so borrowed is not the important thing to genuine clairvoyant consciousness. The important point is what lies behind and expresses itself through the pictures.

[ 7 ] The soul must, of course, first prepare itself for seeing such images appear within its spiritual horizon; but, besides this, it must carefully cultivate the feeling of not stopping short at merely seeing them, but of relating them in the right way to the facts of the supersensible world. It may be said positively that for true clairvoyance there is required not only the capacity for beholding a world of images in oneself, but another faculty as well, which may be compared with reading in the physical world.

[ 8 ] The supersensible world is at first to be looked upon as something lying wholly outside man's ordinary consciousness, which has no means of penetrating into that world. The powers of the soul, strengthened by meditation, first bring it into contact with the supersensible world. By means of these the pictures that have been described emerge from the wave of the soul's life. As pictures these are woven entirely by the soul itself. And the materials of which they are made are actually the forces which the soul has acquired for itself in the physical world. The fabric of the pictures is really nothing else but what may be characterised as memory. The clearer we make this to ourselves, in order to understand clairvoyant consciousness, the better. We shall in that case clearly understand that they are but images. And we shall also be cultivating a right understanding of the way in which the images are to be related to the supersensible world. Through the pictures we shall learn to read in the supersensible world. The impressions of the physical world naturally bring us much nearer to the beings and events of that world than the images seen supersensibly bring us to the supersensible world. We might even say that these images are at first like a curtain put up by the soul between it and the supersensible world, when it feels itself to be in contact with that world.

[ 9 ] It is a question of becoming gradually familiar with the way in which supersensible things are experienced. Through experience we learn by degrees to read the images, that is, to interpret them correctly. In more important supersensible experiences, their very nature shows that we cannot here have to do with mere pictures of memory from ordinary life. It is indeed true that in this connection many absurd things are asserted by people who have been convinced of certain supersensible facts, or at any rate think they have been. Many people, for instance, when convinced of the truth of reincarnation, at once connect the pictures which arise in their soul with experiences of a former earth-life; but one should always be suspicious when these pictures seem to point to previous earth-lives which are similar in one respect or another to the present one, or which make their appearance in such a way that the present life can, by reasoning, be plausibly explained from the supposed earlier lives. When, in the course of genuine supersensible experience, the true impression of a former earth-life, or of several such lives, appears, it generally happens that the former life or lives are such that we could never have fashioned them or have desired to fashion them in thought by any amount of thinking back from the present life, or out of any wishes and efforts in connection with it. We may, for instance, receive an impression of our former earth existence at some moment during our present life when it is quite impossible to acquire certain faculties, which we had during that former life. So far from its being the case that images appear for the more important spiritual experiences which might be memories of ordinary life, the pictures for these are generally such as we should not have thought of at all in ordinary experience. This tendency increases with real impressions the more purely supersensible the worlds become from which they issue. Thus it is often quite impossible to form images from ordinary life explanatory of the existence between birth and the preceding death. We may find out that in the spiritual life we have developed affection for people and things in complete contrast with the corresponding inclinations we are developing in the present life on earth; and we learn that in our earth-life we have often been driven to be fond of something which in the previous spiritual existence (between death and rebirth) we have rejected and avoided. Any memory of this existence which might be imagined to result from ordinary physical experiences must therefore necessarily be different from the impression we receive through real perception in the spiritual world.

[ 10 ] One who is not familiar with spiritual science will certainly make further objections against things being in reality as they have just been described. He will be able to say, for instance: “You are indeed fond of something, but human nature is complicated, and secret antipathy is mixed up with every affection. This antipathy to the thing referred to comes up in you at a particular moment. You think it is a prenatal experience, whereas it may perhaps be quite naturally explained from the subconscious psychic facts of the case.” In general there is nothing to be said against such an objection; and in many cases it may be quite correct. Knowledge of clairvoyant consciousness is not easily gained, nor is it without the possibility of objections. But just as it is true that a supposed clairvoyant may be mistaken and regard a subconscious fact as an experience of prenatal spirit-life, so it is also true that a training in spiritual science leads to a knowledge of self which embraces subconscious states of soul and is able to free itself from any illusions with regard to them. Here it need only be asserted that that supersensible knowledge alone is true which at the moment of cognition is able to distinguish what originates from supersensible worlds from that which has merely been shaped by individual imagination. This faculty of discernment becomes so developed by familiarity with supersensible worlds, that perception may in this sphere be as certainly distinguished from imagination, as in the physical world hot iron which is touched with the finger may be distinguished from imaginary hot iron.

There is nothing in the study of myths that leads so deeply into theosophical thinking as the Nordic saga poetry. If the European can think his way into it, he can find his way from there and penetrate ever deeper into the esoteric realms. An understanding of these sagas of Nordic myth can only be attained in advanced stages of life. The Nordic myths were essentially the subject of the Nordic mysteries. A distinction is made between Western European and Northern European mysteries. In Scandinavia and Russia there were the Drottenmysterien, in England and the West the Druid mysteries. Both mysteries have disappeared. “Druid means ‘oak’. The priest or sage in the Nordic world was called ”the oak.”

The replacement of the Nordic belief in gods is communicated to us in a beautiful mystery. In the conquest of the oak by Boniface, we see Christianity's struggle with the Druid mystery. The basic tenor of the Nordic mysteries is tragic. There is something tragic about all the myths of Central Europe and the North. The Twilight of the Gods represents the downfall of the Nordic world of gods. After their downfall, a new sun god, a new Baldur, is to assert himself. In the other, non-Nordic mysteries, there is always a hopeful and confident element.

What was experienced in advance in the mysteries was to be fulfilled. The Apocalypse predicts a future in which Christianity is to be fulfilled. In the Nordic myth, something different had been predicted. There, the downfall of the Nordic gods was experienced through Christianity. It is from this point of view that the new mystery must be understood, through the four stages.

The first step is that of the first Nordic sub-race of the fifth root race. In Central Europe, Christianity was spread among the fifth sub-race of the fifth root race. Four sub-races preceded this. The secret of the four sub-races is that they show how Christianity was to replace what preceded it in the fifth sub-race.

We now go back into a dark past, to the first sub-race of the fifth root race on Nordic soil. There were the Drotten initiations in the north at that time. In primitive temples, half nature, half building, a sacred tent was erected, in which two deities were depicted as ruling the world: Hu and Ceridwen. Hu is Osiris, Ceridwen is Isis, the human being is Horus. There were three degrees of initiation: first, [Eubaten]; second, bards; third, druids. Those who were initiated into the three degrees underwent a transformation such that, by awakening their higher abilities, they became the god Baldur. The mystic had to say to himself: “You must become the resurrected Baldur, who was killed by the god Loki.” Then the initiation mead was handed to him and the initiation ring was given. The mead is analogous to the Indian Soma drink.

In the Nordic initiation, the initiate was first made aware of the development of the Earth and the conditions that preceded it on the earlier planets. On Earth, we should learn until we go beyond the possibility of error. Our life will then be transformed into a kind of rhythm, in relation to only very bright mental activity.

Logical thinking has only gradually emerged from a developmental process. Later, a general human sense of morality will develop as logical thinking is developing now.

What is error on one planet is disease on the next. What remains error on Earth today will be disease on the next planet, to the same extent that the beings capable of error have been left behind. We would not have the harmonious organism today if this harmony had not been developed out of the chaos of the moon. We owe the wonderful organization of our body to the development of the moon. The illnesses that still exist in our time are what remained behind from the error present on the moon. This is what did not reach perfection in the development of the moon. That was the view of the Druid mysteries. For what was left behind, a plant was taken as the descendant of the moon's development. Our plants grow out of the mineral earth. The whole moon was a living being. The plants developed on this living being. There was no actual mineral kingdom, but only a stone plant kingdom and an animal kingdom that lies somewhere between today's plant and animal kingdoms.

Mistletoe was the symbol of what was left of the moon. It draws its nourishment from the living. It is the symbol of all entities and products that hold back or harm the earth. Loki, who still ruled on earth from the moon, had brought to earth what should have found its actual phase of development on the moon.

Baldur is the god of the sun, the bringer of all life, the active powers of the sun. Loki is his necessary opponent. Baldur was frightened by heavy dreams that were to come true afterwards. All creatures take an oath not to harm Baldur, except the mistletoe; no one can kill him, only the harmful in the development of the earth. That is why mistletoe is thrown from Hödur to Baldur. Hödur is the blind, mechanical necessity which must make use of what has been left behind earlier in order to overcome Baldur. That was one part of the mystery. The other part was that blind, mechanical necessity was overcome by the introduction of harmony through the Christ experience. In Christ a new Baldur must arise.

There was a society of twelve great initiates. A thirteenth was their leader. He was not yet ahead of the twelve others at that time. These initiates were called Sige or Sig. When he reached a certain age, he was able to surrender his individuality to a higher individuality, to receive a higher individuality within himself. This is one of the highest mysteries - in the case of Christ Jesus, the descent of the dove. Sig's individuality was replaced by the individuality of Odin or Wotan. This is the same one who had already lived as a great initiate at the time of the Atlanteans. During the downfall of the Atlantean race, what was then tropical Europe gradually became a cold, foggy realm. The remains of the Atlanteans emerged from the ice land. The emergence of Wotan is presented in such a way that initially the ice masses are there. From this, what comes across from the Atlantean world saves itself. The cow Audhumbla licks the ice masses.

Wotan goes through two incarnations, through Buri and Bör. Then he becomes Wotan because of the chela individuality of the chela Sig. Everything that was in the chela Sig becomes what is associated with the name Sig. In the first sub-race, it is Wotan, who is confronted by Hönir or Wile and Loki or We.

Wotan had to undergo a difficult test after he had incarnated. For nine days after he had been wounded on the side where the heart is located, he had to hang on the gallows. Then Mimir came and taught him the runic writing - a model of the Christ fact. Then came his resurrection. This was the initiation of the first sub-race of the fifth root race.

Wotan now presented the origin of mankind in the mystery itself. First our earth was created, but without the minerals and plants. Everything was contained in a great individuality, the giant Ymir. He was overcome by Wotan, Wile and We. From him - the Adam Kadmon - the whole earth was created. From his skullcap they made the vault of heaven and so on. It was the macrocosmic man. From him the gods form the earthly structures. Dwarves also emerge from the giant's body and live inside the earth.

From the plant people the three gods find, from Ask and Embla - from ash and elm - they shaped the physical man. The three gods build the shells of the people:

Wotan or Odin - Sthula sharira
Wile or Hönir - Linga sharira
We or Loki - Kama/Karana sharira

Wotan-Odin gave the spirit, Hönir-Wile gave life and the lawfulness, Loki-We gave warmth and color, the Kama.

This is how the human shells of the gods were constructed. The dwarf is the little human being who is actually the spiritual being. This was the spark that came to fertilize the human being from the middle of the Lemurian period, which will develop into Manas, Buddhi and Atma. The human ego must first develop in the depths, otherwise it would be immediately transformed into a rigid mineral by the sunlight.

The initiation for the second sub-race was as follows: Wotan is said to have the potion of wisdom, and the second sub-race is said to develop slowly up to the same stage. The wisdom is formed by the giant Suttung. He guards the potion of wisdom. The giant's daughter is Gunnlöd. Wotan cannot get to the potion of wisdom. Therefore, he transforms himself into a snake and enters the sanctuary of Gunnlöd. There he remains for three days. The snake is the self, endowed with wisdom.

What happened in the Lemurian period is now repeating itself. The three gods find the dwarf Andwari as Hreidmar's son, Pike and Otter. Otter has the shape of an otter. He is slain by Loki. The father is to receive the hide of the Otter, decorated inside and out with gold. This signifies the permeation of man with the gold of wisdom. Before that, the sthula sharira, the linga sharira and the karana sharira have been formed. Loki kills what was on earth before, the otter, and brings in wisdom, the gold.

Besides the other gold, there was also a golden ring. Before he came into our present earthly development, man was in completely different circumstances. At that time he did not receive the impressions through the gates of the senses. The ring signifies being locked up in the sensations of the senses, which make the self into a special being – the Nibelungen ring.

In the third sub-race, Wotan and those who belonged to him were initiated once more. He had brought the Cup of Wisdom into the home of the gods. There the potion or cup of wisdom was guarded by Mimir. He had the wisdom that led us forward. At the transition from the Lemurian race, man had only one eye through which he was not yet closed off from the outside world. With it he could perceive what was useful or harmful to him. When man closed himself through the ring of sensuality, this eye receded. The gift he now received had to be bought by a sacrifice. Wotan had to buy the new gift by sacrificing the cyclopean eye - not one of the other two eyes.

The Wälsungs and their descendants from Wotan, Sigmund, Sigurd, Siegfried, that is the race of the initiates within the fourth sub-race. In Siegfried the last of the initiations takes place. He conquers the dragon, that is, the lower nature. He now becomes invulnerable to everything lower. He purifies himself through catharsis, through the consciousness of the higher. He must pass through the fire of passion. In this way he acquires Brunhilde. He remains vulnerable only at the point where one carries the cross. It was said that the next initiate would not be vulnerable there.

In the old Norse mythology, King Atli – Atlanti – emerges from the Atlantean era. He is the great Atlantean initiate. He only shies away from the representative of the Christian initiate, the Pope.

Seven times seven metamorphoses have to be gone through to get from the beginning to the end of evolution:

7 states of conscious awareness 7 worlds or states of life 7 form states

The seven states of conscious awareness are

deep trance
dreamless sleep
dream state
waking state
psychic state
hyperpsychic state
spiritual state.

The seven worlds or states of life are

first elemental world
second elemental world
third elemental world
mineral world
plant world
animal world
human world.

The seven form states or metamorphoses of form are

In reality these seven globes or form states are not seven different globes but just one orb; this goes through seven successive states. Each state needs to be transformed into the next. To do this calls for a spirit which represents a specific sum of energy and takes the orb from one level to the next. Such a spirit is called ‘prajapati’. These sublime spirits, with their tremendous powers, were given that ability in earlier evolutions. They have a long learning stage behind them. This has made them into energies able to transform one orb into the next in the new universe.

These seven states of form are gone through in all seven worlds of life and in all seven states of conscious awareness. We can see now that anything they achieve in one cycle these spirits (prajapati) can also achieve in the others—on Earth, for example, on the Moon, and so on, so that states of the same kind can always be brought about by spirits of the same kind.

This happens with all cycles, on all seven planets. The prajapati of form exist once and for all; here they are the lowest prajapati that have to bring about the final transformation, coming into play whenever a transition becomes necessary.

The arupa and archetypal states differ markedly from the other five levels. The form state really begins on the rupa plane. There is as yet no form on the arupa plane, only the potential for it, and on the archetypal plane form gives itself its own form; it is all life there. Because of this the first and seventh states of form are really states of life, with the seventh always in the nascent (beginning to evolve) state of the first which is to follow, or where the seventh (archetypal) has become what was in the nascent state at the first.

The archetypal state of form is such that form has become life; on the arupic level form is still life. We therefore really have only 5 prajapati of form, for 2 of the 7 already belong to the higher prajapati of conscious awareness. We might say that stages of life and states of form are merely condensed states of conscious awareness, or perhaps the passive side of active awareness, or perhaps the actual negative aspect of the world view, with conscious awareness the positive aspect. The first and last of the prajapati of form states thus belong to the higher hierarchy of the prajapati of conscious awareness.

Every spirit also goes through the worlds of life. This brings us to the prajapati of the rounds, each of them controlling one world of life. Seven states of life are transformed one into the other by seven spirits. Each time we have completed the seventh round we are at a state corresponding to that of the first round, but at a higher level. The human being entered into Earth evolution with an awakening clear daytime conscious awareness; he is now developing this, and by the end of the seventh round the human being will have brought to full development the potential which he had in the first round, at the beginning.

These seven rounds are the seven days of creation in Genesis.⁷⁰ We are now in the fourth day. In the second chapter of Genesis we have a specific description of the fourth round—the creation of the human being, the time when this happened being the middle of the Lemurian age. It will only be on the seventh day that the human being will truly have developed in the image of God with regard to his physical, astral, mental and arupa bodies. Principles that were content by the end of Moon evolution, had become potential by the beginning of Earth evolution.

We can really only call six rounds ‘rounds of life’, for the seventh is a round of the next higher state of conscious awareness. As there are thus only six states of life there are also only six prajapati of life. We add one of the prajapati of life to the seven prajapati of conscious awareness, and then there are also two prajapati of form. We thus really have ten prajapati of conscious awareness, including the one which arranges the transition to the six prajapati of life, and two which arrange the transition to the prajapati of form. This gives us

10 prajapati of conscious awareness
6 prajapati of life
5 prajapati of form
or 10 + 6 + 5 = a total of 21 prajapati.

Stanza 4 of Dzyan in H. P. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine refers to this: Ten is called ‘The One from the Egg’⁷¹ = 0. From the egg (0), the 10 prajapati of conscious awareness, came first of all the first prajapati of life, followed by six other prajapati of life and five prajapati of form = 1065,⁷² or 21 (10 + 6 + 5, value of Jehovah).

Concerning the chakras of the astral body,⁷³ just as the human physical body has senses, so does the human astral body have senses. They lie in a row. One of them is above the larynx. They are called chakras, sacred wheels. They do not move in ordinary people, but in a seer they are mobile and rotate. The chakra above the larynx is essentially in a leaf form. All astral chakras are called ‘lotus flowers’. The one above the larynx is called the 16-petalled lotus flower. This wheel evolved gradually in human evolution. [See Fig. 9j It was only in the Lemurian race, in the middle of the Lemurian age, that ideation, the ability to think, gradually began to develop. Only the last Lemurian race had developed it to a reasonable degree. At that time, the first of the lotus petals shone out, and every race that followed added another, if development went normally:

• seven petals in the seven sub-races of the fourth root-race, the Atlantean race,
• seven petals in the seven sub-races of the fifth root-race, the Aryan race (five up to now, as we are in the fifth sub-race)
• one petal in the first sub-race of the sixth root-race.

Then all 16 petals of the ability to form ideas will light up.

From the third sub-race of the fourth root-race onwards, memory also developed. The memory current also changes over to the wheels in stages, through five sub-races of the fourth Atlantean root-race, through seven sub-races of the fifth root race and through four sub-races of the sixth root-race.

The average human being therefore has 13 petals of the ability to form ideas developed, and memory has reached its 10th petal. If memory, which started with the 4th petal of the ability to form ideas meets up with the stream of ability to form ideas, the chakra begins to rotate. In normally developed people this would be in the 4th sub-race of the 6th root-race. The wheel will then go round like a whirlwind. With each successive race the light will move on to another spoke in the wheel, or another petal of the lotus flowers.

The wheel will be finished with the first sub-race of the sixth root-race. At present, the average person still lacks three spokes, which are a dark void. The wheel has not one vortex, but two.

The second stream crosses the first. In the third sub-race of Atlanteans memory was added. Memory will continue until the fourth sub-race of the sixth root-race. After that it will be lost, having become superfluous.

When memory made its appearance in the fourth sub-race, illumination of the ability to form ideas had progressed as far as the fourth spoke; three sub-races were without memory. The last part of the memory stream meets with the other stream. In the fourth sub-race of the sixth root-race the wheel will finally begin to move. When the wheel is set in motion, the human being will give his word to the astral world. Anything he will say then will have an immediate effect on others. Thus another person will feel the kindness that is expressed in a word; he will feel every word.

The human manu of the sixth root-race, who will guide this race, being the first human manu,⁷⁴ will only be able to live with human beings when they have developed so far that they can talk to the master. They will only be able to do this when this chakra is wholly developed, when the human word goes over directly into the stream of the wheels. This would normally be in the fourth sub-race of the sixth root-race. Lagging behind would mean that not all 16 spokes develop. The individual would then not be able to speak in the presence of the master, with the result that he could not be guided by the master at this state in evolution. It is particularly important to develop this chakra, and that will depend on whether the human being gets out of the habit of wounding with his voice.⁷⁵

Human beings have 16 opportunities—in going through 16 sub-races—to develop this chakra. If they do not do so, they will follow the 16 ways of perdition through the word.⁷⁶

In the metamorphoses that follow, the [last petals of the 16-petalled lotus flower] are developed further, plastic, then in thought matter, then archetypally. In the following round the 16-petalled lotus flower will truly be a vegetative petal or leaf at the physical level. The spokes will then be real leaves, and the mineral element will have vanished altogether.

In the 7th root-race, the chakra will develop which is called the two-petaled lotus flower and lies between the eyebrows. (Fig. 9)

• 70. See Genesis (note 46).
• 71. See Special note in this volume
• 72. See esoteric lesson given in Hamburg on 14 March 1909 [in German] in GA 266/1.
• 73. In terms of a second, anterior vertebral column. See lecture given on 29 Sept. 1905 in #GA 93a, Foundations of Esotericism (note 13).
• 74. See Zur Geschichte und aus den Inhalten der ersten Abteilung der Esoterischen Schule 1904–1914, GA 264, S. 199 ff.
• 75. See note 65.
• 76. Also mentioned in the lecture given in Berlin on 23 December 1904 in The Temple Legend, see note 22.

Just as a person seeks like-minded people among his contemporaries for intimate thinking and feeling, so it also satisfies him to occupy himself with great minds of the past. The Theosophical worldview does not yet provide an opportunity for this – but people are beginning to occupy themselves with it. It is still a young spiritual movement.

One who comes as close as possible to the theosophical views is Paracelsus. He lived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and was a naturalist and physician. He combined in himself the wisdom and knowledge of his time and can still be a guiding light and teacher today. He has been unfairly criticized and slandered; he is said to have been a debauchee and to have enjoyed wine and the tavern more than his profession. But anyone who takes the trouble to study him recognizes in him the wisest and most intrepid champion of a high school of thought. He lived from 1493 to 1541, that is, at a time when the ideas of the Middle Ages began to give way to new views. Today's science does not yet understand him; it has so far been materialistic in direction; that too brought great things. Humanity had to limit itself to the external world. Today, when we are in the process of going far beyond doubt and ignorance, it is different. He lived by his motto: “No one should be another's servant, each should be a servant to himself alone.” According to this motto, he investigated everything that was accessible to him for the investigation of the spiritual foundations of things. But everything he investigated, he put at the service of medicine and the health care of mankind. His aim was to be of help.

What was the state of the art of healing at that time? It was completely under the influence of medieval pharmacology – Galen – and had degenerated. People tried to cure illnesses with trivial means, and he humorously describes how the doctors of the time only knew a few rules and applied them without understanding. Then Paracelsus decided to bid farewell to all this bookish wisdom. He wanted only one great teacher and to study him thoroughly: nature! She was to be his teacher and his teaching. The teacher should pass the nature exam. In doing so, he carried out this precept in the spirit of his motto. Lonely and independent, he went his way and sought to learn wherever he could learn something.

The doctor at that time had estranged himself from nature; but he had the instinctive feeling: there are secret relationships that humans and all of nature have to one another. He said to himself: “When humans develop in a wrong relationship, then they lose something of the more intimate relationship to nature.” When the cow seeks its food, it finds exactly what it needs. It has a more intimate relationship with the natural product - a bond - that it feels. The more man lives in stereotyped concepts, the more he loses the context. To feel something specific in every plant, in every mineral, is a gift. Man should not only see something shiny in gold, silver, and mercury.

Paracelsus assumes that the relationship between all of these and the human being can be found. Thus, his intuitive instinct distinguishes the power inherent in nature – and that is the healing power. We sense this power in the relationship between the sexes; it is something that attracts two beings to each other. Such attraction must exist between people and all natural products. This sympathy and antipathy cannot be taught by books; it comes only through the inner enlightenment of the soul.

You become a doctor by making yourself a different person and developing that power within you. Paracelsus gained this directly from nature; he wanted to get to know the relationship that man has with plants, trees, shrubs, with nature - and he listened to what his heart and soul said. He traveled far, to the south and to the north, and he said of himself: “I have never been afraid to learn, not even on the streets from vagrants.”

He gained a vast amount of experience for his medical profession. He was also filled with a certain pride, which was justified because he felt free and independent from his anxious predecessors when he said the proud words: “If you want the truth, follow me.” This is how he related to the surrounding nature. What had built up in him was a knowledge of man, which Theosophy has now to recapture.

In what we call the physical body, only a part, and indeed the lowest, of the human being can be seen. Theosophy calls the next higher link of the human being the etheric body. The same forces and substances as in this human body are also in animals, plants and minerals. Science is not aware of these finer forces because they are not just a product of chemical composition, nor is it aware that the etheric body exists before the physical body.

Before the etheric body, theosophy knows of another. Matter crystallizes out of itself into the physical body; comparable to how ice crystallizes out of water. The etheric body is the basic template. The astral body is the third link; this has formed the etheric body through its condensation. The astral body is the outer form for desires and instincts. The physical is created out of the spiritual and the soul.

Even higher is the “ego” of the human being, which is connected to the divine. The divine is the original, and this is also how Paracelsus views the world. He also initially speaks of the physical body. This is the seat of the animal life force, which the theosophist describes as the etheric body, whereas Paracelsus calls it the elementary body. Paracelsus was already using the term “astral body” to describe the third body; he also sometimes called it the sidereal body. He said: Within the physical body is the elementary body, within that is the sidereal body and within that is the divine spark. As an external human being, he is related to the elements: water, earth, air and fire. Through astral qualities, he is related to the worlds of the stars and through divine qualities to the invisible divine world. He needed a simile: Imagine an apple and its core, and you will say that the core of the apple has separated from the basic substance; the elementary body is in the apple flesh, the sidereal body in the core from the substance of the world of stars, and the innermost, divine, comes from the divine.

Paracelsus found threefold relationships within himself; first of all, to nature; furthermore, he had a fine relationship to the stars; he felt sympathetically attracted and antipathically repelled, and thus had relationships to the whole cosmos. Finally, however, he also felt divine relationships to everything divine in the wide universe. He said: The physical is built out of the spiritual, then it has separated itself from the spiritual. Do not seek the source of the disease in the elemental, but in the sidereal. Where there are symptoms of illness, relationships are not in the right proportion. Knowledge of disease involves three things: firstly anatomy, secondly astrology, thirdly knowledge of the divine forces, theology. Only in the totality of these three - that is, in the whole knowledge of the world - is the basis for understanding disease.

If Paracelsus needed a basis, he searched for the spiritual, for the invisible within the visible. When he observed the magnetic force in iron, how iron attracts or repels, he imagined the magnet to be composed of iron, attraction and repulsion.

Now he discovered that within the sidereal body there is something like [a] magnet. Therefore, he examined the magnetic forces and applied magnets to people. Wherever forces are destroyed in the human being, he sought to have a healing effect on them. Paracelsus called for the study of the higher worlds from the physician. Therefore, he was also concerned with the sleeping person and the world of dreams, and he observed what changes there. He painted a wonderful picture: the sleeping person with his physical and elementary bodies has been left by the astral body, and there it lives with the whole world of the stars and carries on the balancing star talk; that is why it has such a refreshing effect on the physical body. Thus the astral body receives the effect of the forces in the world of the stars.

Those who look so deeply into the workings of nature can also use spiritual means. From the starry sky, he knew how to get the things that worked on his sick. Today, one would speak of hypnotism. It is a mistake to believe that every idea has a healing effect; only certain ideas can have an effect; abstract concepts have no effect on the soul. Paracelsus used the word “imagination” and by that meant the transformation of the concept into an image. He believed that one should create entirely pictorial ideas and place very specific feelings into this image. Then the picture gains the power to affect the particular soul. Consider how Paracelsus, as a great healer of souls, affected the physical! He achieved nothing that occult schools do not aspire to. There, very specific exercises are done in which certain geometric figures, which make up a complete system, are placed before the soul of the person. Then the secret student has to evoke a certain feeling with a certain figure, and then what is called imagination develops.

Paracelsus formed a picture of how man relates to nature in a truly theosophical way. If he found that some kind of passion lived in a person, he sought the counter-image for this whole spiritual person outside in nature; thus nature became a mirror image for nature. The human passions, anger, rage, cunning - which are inwardly mental, are reflected in images of the animal world; and for everything that the etheric body builds up, there is a counter-image in the plant world. Paracelsus found the healing in that which is in harmony with the sick person. In nature, he saw, as it were, the human being laid out in compartments. He spoke a wonderful word: the whole of nature consists of individual letters and together these form the word “human being”. Of the insane, he said: the astral body is always healthy when it surrenders to the sidereal forces. But if the connection is clouded, then there are clouded rays. The soul is always healthy in the insane, it only shines through clouded rays.

I have only been able to give you a brief sketch of his penetrating research here. Goethe followed a similar line. He had recognized the relationship to nature. In “Faust”, where Faust encounters sublime nature, he has him say:

Exalted Spirit, thou gavest, thou givest me everything.
[Why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
Turn thy face to me in the fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature for a kingdom,
Strength to feel it, to enjoy it. Not
You only allow coldly amazed visitors,
granting me the gift of looking into their deep chests,
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
before me, and teach me my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.]

We will endeavour in contemplation to retrace the stages of man's evolution to the Logos by Whom this world was created.

Modern exoteric science goes back to the Stone Age—an epoch when man lived in caves, using shaped stones as his only instruments. His existence was primitive in the extreme, his horizon narrow, his thought limited to the search for food and means for defending his life.

Occult science leads us back beyond this Stone Age to the epoch of Atlantis. In those times, man's physical appearance was not at all the same as it is today. It is known that the brow of prehistoric man was not developed, for, in effect, the development of the brow and forehead runs parallel with the development of the brain and of thinking. In days of yore, the physical brain was much smaller than the corresponding ether-form which extended beyond it on all sides. In the course of evolution, the etheric and physical brains have become more or less equal in size. A certain centre in the etheric brain which is now inside the skull, was in the evolution of Atlantean man, this centre moved to the interior of the skull. It was a moment of cardinal importance, for as soon as man began to think, to be conscious of his own being and to say ‘I,’ he began to associate ideas and to calculate—which he could not do before. On the other hand, the earliest Atlanteans possessed a far stronger and truer memory. Their knowledge was based, not upon the relations between facts but on their memory of these facts. They knew, by their memory, that a certain event would invariably give rise to a series of others; but they did not grasp the causes of these facts, nor could they think about them. In addition to this powerful memory, they possessed another faculty—a mighty power of will. Today, man can no longer work directly with his will upon the life forces. He cannot, for example, hasten the growth of plants by an act of will. The Atlantean had this power and was, moreover, able to draw from the plants ether forces which he knew how to use. He did this instinctively, without the help of intellect and the faculties of logical reasoning which are associated today with what we call the ‘scientific mind.’ To the measure in which intellectuality, the faculty of reflective thought and calculation unfolded in the men of Atlantis, to that measure their powers of instinctive clairvoyance declined.

If we go still further back in the history of Atlantis, we come to a very remote period when expression through speech, that is to say, expression in articulate sounds, first became possible. This was the age when man began to walk upright, for speech and the expression of articulate sounds can only be a faculty of beings who stand upright.

Before the great Atlantean race, of which all European and Asiatic races were the offshoots, there existed another continent and other peoples, still nearer to the animal nature—the Lemurian race. Science only admits its existence as a hypothesis. Certain islands to the South of Asia and the North of Australia are, nevertheless, evidences of this continent; they are the metamorphosed remains of old Lemuria. The temperature of the Earth in those times was much higher than it is today. The atmosphere was vaporous, full of currents. In Lemuria, we find rudimentary human forms, breathing not through the nasal organs but through organs more like gills.

In the course of human evolution, organs are perpetually being transformed both as to character and appearance. Thus primitive man walked on four feet; he could not utter articulate sounds; he had no ears with which to hear. Movement in the semi-liquid, semi-gaseous element surrounding him was made possible by an organ which enabled him to float and swim. When the elements differentiated and man found himself on solid earth, this organ changed into the lungs, the gills into ears and the frontal parts of his structure into arms and hands—free instruments for action. Besides this, he began to utter articulate sounds—the words of speech.

This great transformation was of cardinal importance to man. In Genesis (II.7), we read: “And the Lord God ... breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” This passage describes the period when the gills once possessed by man changed into lungs and he began to breathe the outer air. Simultaneously with the power to breathe, he acquired an inner soul and with this soul, the possibility of inner consciousness, of becoming aware of the self living within the soul.

When man began to breathe air through the lungs, his blood was invigorated and it was then that a soul higher than the group-soul of the animals, a soul individualised by the Ego-principle, could incarnate in him to carry evolution forward to its fully human and then divine phases. Before the body breathed air, the soul of man could not descend to incarnation, for air is an element enfilled with soul. At that time, therefore, man actually inbreathed the divine soul which came from the heavens. The words of Genesis, in their evolutionary sense, are to be taken quite literally. To breathe is to be permeated with Spirit. This truth was the basis of the exercises given in ancient systems of yoga. These exercises were founded upon the rhythm of breathing, their purpose being to render the body fit to receive the impouring Spirit. When we breathe, we commune with the world-soul. The inbreathed air is the bodily vesture of this higher soul, just as the flesh is the vesture of man's lower being.

These changes in the breathing-process mark the transition from ancient consciousness which was merely a play of pictures, to consciousness as it is in our time. Sense perceptions are received from the body; consciousness has a purely objective character. Consciousness in pictures (imaginative) created its own inner content by means of an inherent, plastic force. The further we go into the past, the more we find the soul of man living, not within him, but around him. We reach a point when the sense-organs existed only in germ and when man merely received from external objects impressions which gave rise to attraction or repulsion, sympathy or antipathy. The movements of this being—whom we cannot really call ‘man’ in our sense of the word—were governed by these feelings of attraction or repulsion. He had no reasoning faculty and the pineal gland—an organ of cardinal importance in those times—was his only ‘brain’.

The existence of this imaginative consciousness is the answer to endless philosophical discussions on the objective nature and reality of the world and it is the refutation of all purely subjectivist philosophies, such, for instance, as that of Berkeley. Two poles of being and of life are essential to evolution. The ‘subjective universal’ becomes the objective universe; man proceeds, first, from the subjective to the objective and he will finally be led from the objective to the subjective by the development of Spirit-Self (Manas), Life-Spirit (Budhi), Spirit-Man (Atma).

Dream-consciousness is an atavistic survival of the picture consciousness of olden times. One quality of this picture consciousness is that it is creative. It creates forms and colours which do not exist in physical reality.

Objective consciousness is by nature analytic subjective consciousness is by nature plastic and has magical power. (This is indicated by the etymology of the word ‘image’). The subjective, plastic consciousness of man was thus superseded by objective, analytic consciousness. The procedure by which the soul (which, to begin with, enveloped man like a cloud) subsequently penetrated into the physical body, may be compared with that of a snail secreting its own shell and then shrinking back inside it. The soul first gave form to the body and then penetrated within this body, having prepared the organs of perception from outside. The power of sight with which the human eye is endowed today is the same power which once was exercised upon the eye from without, in order that it might take shape.

The change from outer to inner activity of soul is expressed by a hieroglyph. This is the sign of Cancer in the Zodiac, expressing a dual action or movement—one from without inwards, the other from within outwards.

The middle of the third (Lemurian) epoch was the time when the soul passed into its self-created dwelling place and began to ‘animate’ the body from within. Before this point of time we find an astral humanity indwelling a purely astral Earth. Before that again, man and Earth existed merely in a devachanic condition. There was as yet no picture consciousness. Cosmic thoughts poured into and through the being of man. His higher soul was still part and parcel of the whole Cosmos, participating in cosmic thought.

The further we retrace the parallel development of man and Earth, the more do we find them existing in a fluid, embryonic condition and the nearer to Spirit. Today, we have reached the lowest point on the curve of descent; man and Earth have reached the greatest degree of solidification and are about to re-ascend, through the action of individual will, towards the Spiritual.

What underlies this great process of evolution? Where was the home of human beings when, at the beginning, they existed merely in germ? Whence has man proceeded? Who created him? It is here that we must try to envisage a life and power of manifestation infinitely more sublime than all human, nay, than all planetary life. This power is the Logos.

In what does human and planetary life differ from the life of the Logos?—This question would seem to demand a flight into the unknown, into a universe of another order. And yet there are analogies which help us to understand or at least to divine something of the creative power of the Logos.

Let us try to envisage an all-embracing mind, a mind to which all earthly and planetary experiences are known. Such a mind could live through all and every form of evolution. But with this power alone, it could not rise beyond the point of the creation of man and of the planetary system. It would remain in the sphere of what can be and has been proved by man. Human intelligence cannot pass beyond this limit.

But we can rise to a consciousness other than that wherein our experiences are merely realised in the mind. There are certain states of creative activity in which the spirit of man can give birth to something new, something never seen before. Such, for instance, is the consciousness of a sculptor at the moment he conceives or sees in a flash the form of a statue before his inner eye. He has never seen a model, he creates his statue. Such too, is the consciousness of a poet who conceives a poem in one flash of inspiration, in creative, spiritual vision.

This creative power is not generated by any intellectual idea but rather by a spiritual sense,—Think of a hen sitting on its eggs. It is wholly given up to this brooding activity and is filled with a kind of warm, almost voluptuous pleasure in which there arises a dreamy pre-vision of the hatching of the little winged chicken. This bliss in the work of creation exists at every stage of cosmic life, and warmth pours from it. In the sphere of Cosmic Intelligence—which may be conceived as the world of thoughts accessible to the higher Self (Manas)—this warmth seems to pervade the whole universe, emanating from the creative life of soul (Budhi). We can divine the presence of a creative sphere in existence before our Earth and ‘brooding’ over it. This is to ascend from Spirit-Self to Life-Spirit, and from Life-Spirit to Spirit-Man.

The Ego or ‘I’ Principle of man is created by the third Logos.

We should try to conceive the power of the higher Ego as being suffused through the whole universe as a life-begetting warmth and then we reach the conception of the second Logos by Whom macrocosmic life is quickened and Who is reflected in the creative activities of the human soul.

The one primal source and centre of manifestation is the first Logos—the unfathomable Godhead.

In every age these three Divine principles have been represented in occultism by these three signs:—

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Report in the “Mitteilungen für die Mitglieder der Deutschen Sektion der Theosophischen Gesellschaft (Hauptquartier Adyar), herausgegeben von Mathilde Scholl”, No. IV/1907

At half past ten, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, the General Secretary of the German Section, opened the fourth ordinary General Assembly. The first item was the [the] determination of the votes. Represented were:

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Not represented: Bremen, Stuttgart I, Charlottenburg. Similarly, the section members who did not belong to a branch had not exercised their right to appoint representatives.

Mr. Selling was elected secretary. He read out the minutes of the General Assembly of October 22, 1905, which was approved by the Assembly.

Regarding Item II, the report of the General Secretary, Dr. Rudolf Steiner first warmly welcomes the members present in the theosophical sense and then says the following about the course of the movement in the past year:

"During my travels and lectures, it has become clear to me that the actual effective basis of our Theosophical movement does not lie in mere talk of universal love of humanity and the like, but that the real reason that drives most people to Theosophy consists in the desire to gain knowledge of the treasure of wisdom that is Theosophy. And this is entirely justified. Morality is the result of wisdom. Just as it is certain that the yearning to develop into a noble humanity lives in man, so it is certain that the worn-out phrases of duty and mere moral admonitions have proved ineffective. Just as a stove needs real fuel, not just admonition, to radiate warmth, so too must man receive such an impulse to act morally. This real firing is the occult wisdom.

Of course, there was no lack of resistance and obstacles of various kinds to the spreading of this wisdom. The opposition that arose in the process of bringing this wisdom out can be characterized as a lack of understanding on the one hand and complacency on the other. If many people do not want to know anything about what they do not see for themselves, it is certainly true that people do ask themselves: Can we understand these occult things with ordinary logic? But if they really wanted to look into it, they would soon see that the teachings of Theosophy contradict logic just as little as the teachings of ordinary natural science.

Others would like to participate in the ennobling of morals, but they want to remain in the same place where they are, they want to help with what they have already achieved. But Theosophy consists in the pursuit of self-perfection. To understand this, one needs tact, a sense of not being called upon to help, and the realization that one really has something to give.

Few scholars today still belong to the Theosophical movement, that is, few of those people who are convinced of the infallibility of their own views; for there can be nothing more infallible than today's science. Most of them are people who are in the prime of life, driven to the Theosophical movement by the longing for the powers that flow from the wisdom teachings. This longing for security and strength is growing despite all the resistance that lies in our time, as the gratifying increase in membership shows us. If scholarship is still dismissive, this should not make us unjust to the merits of that scholarship, but should spur us on to conquer the culture of the present and its scholarship for our theosophical movement. Under the influence of our present-day culture, almost all our scholars think much more materialistically than they themselves suspect.

As a symptom of the obstacles that this materialistic way of thinking poses to our views, I would like to point out a representation that a biologist who starts from the view that everything in the world is based on a materialistic foundation has recently given about the nature of movement. The scientist in question said that he could not imagine the deeper causes of the movement of a billiard ball other than that in the collision, very small particles of one ball were transferred to the other, thereby causing the movement. So, for a modern scientist, the problem of movement is presented as a kind of tiny passenger transferring from one train to another. In an age when such a materialistic view of life dominates science, it is understandable that a spiritual movement has a particularly difficult time.

Without going into all these things in any more detail, I would just like to emphasize that the Theosophical movement is the only movement that is built entirely on freedom.

However, it does not work without any authority; but authority is understood in a completely different sense than in the laboratory, where the only authority is the person who understands chemistry.

In contrast to all earlier intellectual movements that used external means of power to assert themselves – I am only recalling the Church here – the theosophical movement is a completely free movement that is built only on the spirit. Without invoking external powers for support, which would be a failure for any intellectual movement today, without propaganda in the usual sense, because the theosophical movement does not agitate, it presents itself. Everyone must approach it of their own free will. What it offers people is not an external organization, agitation in the sense of the old power organizations. In theosophy, it can only be about an organization to help people find what they are seeking within themselves. Without polemics, even without polemics against those who attack us, let us do positive work.

Sometimes we have been told that we should reject the attacks against us, so sometimes a correction is certainly necessary, but in general, everything can be recognized by its fruits. We want to do positive work that leads up to the higher worlds; fighting does not help anything, it can at best straighten something out on the physical plane. But on the higher planes, only positive work can help.

You have received a report about this year's international conference in Paris. The most important thing we brought home for the German Section is a great deal of work: preparing for the next conference in Germany. Next year we will welcome the representatives of the individual sections to Germany. Negotiations for the next conference are, after all, part of the program of today's general assembly.

In addition to the lectures that have been given everywhere, something new has been added: lecture cycles – not only in Paris but also in Leipzig and Stuttgart; one will soon begin in Munich. Such cycles are of great value; they allow the foundations of the Theosophical worldview to pass before the soul.

But we should also remember at this point the members who have left the physical plane this year. In particular, we would like to remember our esteemed member, Countess Brockdorff, whose unassuming but all the more admirable work at a time when few in Germany were willing to stand up for Theosophy. In honor of the deceased, we want to rise from our seats.

Over the past year, our movement has gained some excellent new members, in particular Ms. Wolfram from Leipzig. This deserves special mention because she is the kind of member the Theosophical Society could only dream of. Furthermore, I would like to announce that our long-standing and valued member Mr. Günther Wagner has decided to swap his residence in Lugano for one in Berlin in order to provide assistance here. With his help, we will be able to accomplish many things that have been left undone in recent years.

Let us hope that through the combined efforts of all, the Theosophical movement will flourish and develop in the coming year.

Miss von Sivers, as secretary of the German Section, then gives the following report on the course of Theosophical life in the past year:

There are 24 branches, compared to 18 in the previous year, and 3 centers: Regensburg, Elberfeld and Esslingen.

Eleven members have left and seven have died, while 232 have joined, compared to 131 in the previous year, an increase of 214. The total number of members is 591, compared to 377 in the previous year.

The names of the new branches are: Basel, Bonn, Bremen, Frankfurt a.M., Heidelberg, Munich II, St. Gallen. The DTG (Berlin branch) has disbanded.

The treasurer's report by Mr. Seiler follows.

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According to the auditor's report, Mr. Tessmar, the treasurer is discharged.

Fräulein von Sivers then read out and translated a welcoming letter from the English General Secretary, Miss Kate Spink.

Since there are no reports from delegates about work in the branches, the Secretary General remarked on this point that it is desirable that the branches should recognize it as their duty to publish such reports in Fräulein Scholl's “Mitteilungen”.

Thereupon, a new member of the board was elected to replace Mrs. Lübke, who joined the section in England because she moved there. Mrs. Wolfram from Leipzig was proposed and elected unanimously by acclamation.

Item III is the discussion about next year's congress of the Federation of European Sections. Dr. Steiner takes the floor and says something along the following lines: “The General Secretariat and the Board propose to hold the congress in Munich. The reasons for this are purely practical, since the appropriate forces for the long and demanding work are only available in Munich. Whitsun seems to be the most suitable time.”

In response to a question from Mr. Hubo as to how the organization of the congress was planned, Dr. Steiner said that all previous congresses should be seen as attempts. The task of the German congress should be to bring everything into intimate harmony with each other, so that works of art, music and speech interact and sound atmospherically with the rest of the arrangement - striving in its intended effect to recall the ancient mysteries. To this end, a performance of a mystery play is also planned. Whether all this can be realized depends, of course, on the circumstances. Dr. Steiner also announced that Miss Stinde has been elected as secretary of the International Congress Committee for this year, replacing Mr. van Manen, and that Countess Kalckreuth has been elected treasurer of the International Congress Committee. All inquiries from German members, including payments, are to be addressed exclusively to Miss von Sivers, and she alone will contact Miss Stinde.

The following have been elected as additional members of the German committee:

Miss Scholl,
Baroness von Gumppenberg,
Mr. Günther Wagner,
Mr. Arenson.

To cover the costs of the congress, which amount to between 4,000 and 5,000 marks, it is proposed that a list of voluntary contributions be circulated as soon as possible and that Mr. Selling be authorized to accept payments.

The Secretary General then requested the authority to greet the General Secretaries of the other Sections on behalf of the General Assembly. The meeting agreed.

Regarding Item IV, “Final settlement of the matter of the Library of the German Theosophical Society”, the General Secretary reported that the matter had taken a gratifying turn, namely that Graf Brockdorff had transferred all rights to the library to Mr. Günther Wagner. After a lengthy debate, Mr. Günther Wagner in turn transferred these rights to the German Section.

The General Assembly has passed the following resolution:

"The German Section takes over the library of the former German Theosophical Society on the basis of the transfer of the rights that Count Brockdorff held over it to Mr. Günther Wagner. The Section's Executive Board will act as a library commission and transfers to Mr. Günther Wagner the measures for the desirable installation of the library and its further administration.” At the request of Mr. Tessmar, Mr. Günther Wagner is appointed by the German Section as the lifelong custodian of the library in recognition of his generous actions.

Item V: Motions from the floor.

Mr. Hubo: The costs for the “Mitteilungen” should be covered by an annual contribution of 50 pfennigs per member.

Dr. Steiner notes that the proposal is not possible in this form because the previous year's General Assembly decided to make the mandatory delivery of the “Mitteilungen” free of charge. It might therefore be necessary to take the decision to increase the contribution. After a lengthy debate, in which members Scholl, Wolfram, Hubo, Ahner and Wagner took part, Mr. Hubo withdrew his proposal. Mr. Hubo then proposes: In view of the fact that the costs of the German Congress will amount to at least 4500 Marks, based on previous experience, voluntary subscriptions are required and a registration list is to be circulated immediately. It is pointed out once again that subscriptions can only be made to Fräulein von Sivers.

There is no material on the agenda for Item VI, “Miscellaneous”, whereupon Dr. Steiner closes the business part of the meeting and announces that the Theosophical part of the General Assembly will begin at four o'clock.

A subterranean rock-temple: a hidden site of the Mysteries of the Hierophants.

At the right of the stage, Johannes is seen in deep meditation.

Benedictus (in the East):
Ye, who have been companions unto me
In the domain of everlasting life,
Here in your midst I stand to-day to ask
The help of which I stand in need from you
To weave the thread of destiny for one,
Who from our midst must now receive the light.
Through bitter trials and sorrows hath he passed,
And hath in deepest agony of soul
Prepared the way to consecrate his life
And thus attain to knowledge of the truth.
Accomplished now the task assigned to me,
As spirit-messenger, to bring to men
The treasured wisdom of this temple's shrine.
And now, ye brethren, 'tis your sacred task
To bring my work to full accomplishment.
I showed to him the light that proved the guide
To his first vision of the spirit-world,
But that this vision may be turned to truth
Your work must needs be added unto mine.
My words proceed from mine own mouth alone,
But through your lips world-spirits do sound forth.

Theodosius (in the South):
Thus speaks the power of love, which bindeth worlds
And filleth beings with the breath of life:—
Let warmth flow in his heart that he may grasp
How by the sacrificing of that vain
Illusion of his personality
He doth draw near the spirit of the world.
His sight from sleep of sense thou hast set free;
Love's warmth will wake the spirit in his soul;
His Self from carnal covering thou hast drawn;
And love itself will crystallize his soul
That it may be a mirror to reflect
All that doth happen in the spirit-world.
Love too will give him strength to feel himself
A spirit, and will fashion thus his ear
That it can hear and know the spirit-speech.

Romanus (in the West):
Nor are my words the revelation
Of mine own self. Through me the world-will speaks.
And since thou hast thus raised unto the power
To live in spirit-realms the man to thee
Entrusted, now this power shall lead him forth
Beyond the bounds of space and ends of time.
To those realms shall he pass wherein do work
Creative spirits, who shall there reveal
Themselves to him; demanding from him deeds;
And willingly will he perform their work.
The purposes of those who mould the worlds
Shall fill his soul with life; there too the earth's
Primeval sources shall enspirit him;
World potencies shall there empower him;
The mights of spheres shall there enlighten him,
And rulers of the worlds fill him with fire.

Retardus (in the North):
From the foundation of the world ye have
Been forced to suffer me within your midst.
So must ye also to my words give ear
In your deliberations here to-day.
Some little time must surely yet elapse
Before ye can fulfil and bring to pass
What ye have set forth in such beauteous words.
No sign as yet hath come to us from earth
That she doth long for new initiates.
So long as this spot, where we council hold,
Hath not been trodden by the feet of those
Who, uninitiated, yet have power
The spirits to release from things of sense,
So long the task is mine to check your zeal.
First must they bring us message that the earth
Doth seem in need of revelations new.
For this cause hold I back your spirit-light
Within this temple, lest it may bring harm
Instead of health to souls that are not ripe.
Out of myself I give to man on earth
That faculty which lets the truths of sense
Appear to him the highest, just so long
As spirit wisdom would but blind his eyes.
Therefore let simple faith be still his guide
In matters of the spirit: let his will
Its hidden inspiration still receive
From dim desires which feel their way through life.

Romanus:
From the foundation of the world we have
Been forced to suffer thee within our midst.
But now at length the time hath run its course
That was allotted to such work as thine.
The world-will in me feels that they approach—

(Felix Balde appears in his earthly shape: the Other Maria as a soul form from out of the rock.)

—Who, unitiated, can release
The spirit from the outward show of sense.
No more 'tis granted thee to check our steps.
They near our temple of their own free will
And bring to thee this message, that they wish
To help our spirit labours, joined with us.
They found themselves till now not yet prepared
For union, since they clung to the belief
That seership must stand from intellect aloof.
Now have they learned whither mankind is led
By reason, which, when severed from true sight,
Doth err and wander in the depths of worlds.
They now will speak to thee of fruits which needs
Must ripen through thy power in human souls.

Retardus:
Ye, who unconsciously have forwarded
My work till now, ye shall still further help—
If ye will distant keep from all that doth
Belong unto my realm and that alone;
Then shall ye surely find a place reserved
For you to work as hitherto ye worked.

Felix Balde:
A power, which speaks from very depths of earth
Unto my spirit, hath commanded me
To come unto this consecrated place;
Since it desires to speak to you through me
Of all its bitter sorrow and its need.

Benedictus:
My friend, then tell us now how thou hast learned
The woe of world-depths in thine own soul's core.

Felix Balde:
The light that shines in men as learning's fruit
Must needs give nourishment to all the powers
Which serve world-cycles in the earth's dark depths.
Already now a long time have they starved
Well-nigh entirely reft of sustenance.
For that which grows to-day in human brains
Doth only serve the surface of the earth,
And doth not penetrate unto its depths.
Some strange new superstition now doth haunt
These clever human heads: they turn their gaze
Unto primeval origins of earth
And will but spectres see in spirit spheres,
Thought out by vain illusion of the sense.
A merchant surely would consider mad
A purchaser, who would speak thus to him:
‘The mists and fog, that hover in the vale,
Can certainly condense to solid gold;
And with such gold thou shalt be paid thy debt.’
The merchant will not willingly await
To have his ducats made from fog and mist;
And yet whene'er his soul doth thirst to find
Solution of the riddles set by life,
Should science offer him such payments then
For spirit needs and debts, right willingly
Will he accept whole solar systems built
Out of primeval world-containing fog.
The teacher who discovers some unknown
And luckless layman, who would fain presume
To heights of science or of scholarship
Without examinations duly passed
Will surely threaten him with his contempt.
Yet science doth not doubt that without proof
And without spirit earth's primeval beasts
Could change themselves to men by their own power.

Theodosius:
Why dost thou not thyself reveal to men
The sources of this light of thine, which streams
Forth from thy soul with such resplendent ray?

Felix Balde:
A fancy-monger and a man of dreams
They call me, who are well-disposed to me:
But others think of me as some dull fool
Who, all untaught of them, doth follow out
His own peculiar bent of foolishness:

Retardus:
Thou show'st already how untaught thou art
By the simplicity of this thy speech:
Thou dost not know that men of science have
Sufficient shrewdness to make just the same
Objection to themselves;—
And if they make it not they well know why.

Felix Balde:
I know full well that they are shrewd enough
To understand the objections I have voiced,
But not so shrewd as to believe in them.

Theodosius:
What must we do that we may forthwith give
The powers of earth what they do need so much?

Felix Balde:
So long as on the earth men only heed
Such men as these, who wish not to recall
Their spirit's primal source, so long will starve
The mineral forces buried in earth's depths.

The Other Maria:
I gather, brother Felix, from thy words,
That thou dost think the time hath now expired
When we did serve earth's purposes the best
By showing forth from depths of our own life
Though uninitiate, by wisdom's light
The living way of spirit and of love.
In thee the spirits of the earth arose
To give thee light without the lore of books:
In me did love hold sway, the love that dwells
And works within the life of men on earth.
And now we wish to join our brethren here,—
Who, consecrate, within this temple serve,—
And bring forth fruitful work in human souls.

Benedictus:
If ye unite your labour now with us,
Then must the consecrated work succeed.
The wisdom which I gave unto my son
Will surely blossom forth in him as power.

Theodosius:
If ye unite your labour now with us,
Then must the thirst for sacrifice arise.
And through the soul life of whoever seeks
The spirit-path, will breathe the warmth of love.

Romanus:
If ye unite your labour now with us,
Then must the fruits of spirit ripen fast.
Deeds will spring up, which through the spirit's work
Will blossom from the soul's discipleship.

Retardus:
If they unite their labour now with you
What shall become of me? My deeds will prove
Fruitless to those who would the spirit seek.

Benedictus:
Then wilt thou change to other forms of being:
Since now thou hast accomplished all thy work.

Theodosius:
Henceforth thou wilt live on in sacrifice
If thou dost freely sacrifice thyself.

Romanus:
Thou wilt bear fruit on earth in human deeds
If I myself may tend the fruits for thee.

Johannes (speaking out of his meditation, as in the previous scene):
The brethren in the temple showed themselves
To my soul-sight, in feature like
To men who in the world of sense I know.
Benedictus alone, was like himself in Spirit.
He who stood on his left seemed like that man
Who through the feelings only would draw nigh
The spirit-realms. The third resembled him,
Who doth but recognize the powers of life
When they show forth through wheels and outward works.
The fourth I do not know. The wife who saw
The spirit's light after her husband's death,
I recognized in her own inmost being.
And Felix Balde came just as in life.

The curtain falls slowly

The development undergone by woman during the Lemurian era qualified her for an important rôle on the earth in connection with the beginning of the next Atlantean Root-Race. This was ushered in under the influence of highly developed entities who were acquainted with the laws of the moulding of races, and who were capable of turning the existing forces of human nature into such courses as led to the formation of a new race. Later on, a special reference will be made to these entities. For the present suffice it to say that superhuman wisdom and power were immanent in them. They separated a small number of the Lemurian men and appointed them to become the progenitors of the subsequent Atlantean Race. The place chosen lay in the torrid zone. The men of this little clan attained, under their guidance, the mastery of Nature's forces. They were full of energy, and knew how to wrest from Nature treasures of many kinds. They knew how to cultivate fields and how to utilize their fruits. Through the training to which they had been subjected (compare previous chapter), they had become men of strong will. It was in woman, however, that the mind and the soul were developed, for it was in her that memory and imagination, and all connected therewith, were found to have been already fostered.

The leaders to whom reference has been made brought about an arrangement of the little flock into small groups, and to woman they entrusted the ordering and arranging of these groups. Women had acquired, by means of their memory, the faculty of utilizing for the future all the experiences that they had once known. That which had proved valuable yesterday was turned by them to present advantage; and they were clearly aware that it would likewise be useful to-morrow. The arrangements of the communal life came thus from women. Under their influence the notions of “good and evil” were developed. Through their reflective life they had acquired an understanding of Nature. Out of their observations of Nature grew the ideas according to which they guided the actions of men. The leaders arranged things in such wise that the will-power and superabundant energy of men were ennobled and purified by the “soul” in woman. Of course, all this is to be considered as at an elementary stage. The words of our languages are too apt to suggest ideas derived from contemporary life.

Indirectly, through the awakened psychical life of women, did the leaders develop that of the men. In the above-mentioned colony, the influence of women was therefore very great. They were consulted whenever it was desired to interpret the signs of Nature. The whole mode of their psychic life was, however, still such that it was ruled by the “secret” psychic powers of men. To give an approximate, if not quite adequate, conception of this state, one might speak of a somnambulistic perception on the part of these women. The secrets of Nature were revealed to them, and the impulses of their actions were imparted in a kind of higher dream-state. Everything to them was the expression of spiritual powers, and appeared in the form of psychic faculties and visions. They abandoned themselves to the mystic working of their psychic powers. They were prompted to their actions by “inner voices” or by that which was told them by plants, animals, and stones, the wind and the clouds, or the rustling of the trees.

From soul-conditions of such a kind arose that which may be called human religion. The psychic element in Nature and in human life came gradually to be reverenced and worshipped. Some women attained to special predominance, because they were able to interpret from certain mysterious depths the phenomena of the world. So it came to pass that with these women that which was within them transposed itself into a kind of Nature-speech. For the beginning of speech lies in something akin to song. The power of thought converted itself into that of audible sound. The inner rhythm of Nature resounded through the life of “wise” women. People gathered round such women, and their song-like utterances were felt as the expression of higher powers. Thus did divine worship take its inception among men. It would be an error to consider that there was any “sense” in the spoken word at that time. Only the sound, tone, and rhythm were felt. No one had any aim other than that of drawing strength into the soul from what was heard. The whole procedure was under the guidance of the higher leaders. They had inspired the “wise” priestesses with tones and rhythms in a manner which cannot be described here, and it was thus that women were able to affect the souls of men in such a way as to ennoble them. It may be said that it was altogether in this manner that the true soul-life was awakened.

The Âkâshic Records reveal what are in this respect scenes of much beauty. One of these shall be described. We are in a wood close to a gigantic tree. The sun has just risen in the east. Mighty are the shadows thrown by the palm-like tree across the cleared space round it. With her face to the east, and in a state of exaltation, we discern a priestess on a seat prepared of curious natural objects and plants. Slowly and in a rhythmic cadence flow from her lips certain wondrous sounds which are repeated again and again. Ranged in large circles, a number of men and women sit round her with dreamy faces, absorbing inner life from the sounds. Still other scenes may be witnessed. At another place, arranged in like manner, a priestess chants in a similar way, but her tones have in them something more mighty, more powerful, and the men around her move in rhythmic dances. For this was the other method by means of which the “soul” entered mankind. The mysterious rhythms which man had caught from Nature were imitated in the movements of his own limbs. Thus was it that man felt himself at one with Nature and with the Powers that ruled her.

The part of the earth on which was reared the germ of the coming human race was particularly adapted for this purpose. It was situated where the still agitated and stormy earth had more or less settled down. For Lemuria was greatly troubled by storms. The earth had not then reached its later density. The thin soil was everywhere undermined by volcanic forces bursting forth in smaller or greater streams. Mighty volcanoes were found nearly everywhere, and continually exercised a devastating activity. In all their arrangements men were accustomed to take this fiery agency into consideration. They even turned the fire to advantage in respect of their works and enterprises. The state of things was such that this natural fire could be turned to account in human labour just as is the case to-day with artificial fire. It was the activity of volcanic fire that also brought about the ruin of the Lemurian continent. The portion of Lemuria in which the Root-Race of the Atlanteans was to appear had, it is true, a hot climate, but nevertheless it was exempt, on the whole, from subjection to volcanic agency. Human nature could develop itself here more calmly and peacefully. The more nomadic life of former times was abandoned, and fixed settlements increased in number.

One has to remember that the human body was at this time still very plastic and flexible. It was still in a state of formation, in keeping with man's inner changes. At a recent era, for instance, men were still quite different as to their external appearance. The external influence of the country and of the climate continued to affect their form. But in the specified colony the body became increasingly an expression of the inner psychic life. This colony contained at the same time a species of men who were advanced, and of a finer external form. It should be said that the true human form was created by what had been clone by the leaders. The work was certainly very slow and gradual, but the progress began with the unfolding of the psychic life in man; and the still soft and plastic body adapted itself accordingly. It is a law of human development that the transforming influence of man on his physical body decreases with progress. Indeed, that physical body only acquired a fairly firm form through the development of intellectual power, and contemporaneously with the solidification of the stony, mineral and metallic formations of the earth, which were connected with this development. For in the Lemurian, and even in the Atlantean era also, stones and metals were far softer than they afterwards became. This is not in contradiction with the fact that there still exist descendants of the last Lemurians and Atlanteans who even now display forms no less solid than those of the later human races. These remainders had to adapt themselves to the altered conditions surrounding them, and consequently became more rigid. This is precisely the cause of their gradual extinction. They did not mould themselves from within, but their less developed inner nature was forced from without into rigidity and thereby brought to a standstill. And this standstill is truly a retrogression, for even the inner life deteriorated because it could not live itself out in the solidified external body.

Animal life displayed a still greater capacity for change. (Reference will be made later on to the kinds of animals present at the time of the earliest races, both as to their origin and also as to the appearance of new forms of animals during the subsequent history of men. Suffice it here to say that the existing animal species were in a state of constant transformation, and that new species continued to arise.) This transformation was naturally gradual. The reasons of the transformation lay, partly, in the change of domicile and mode of life. Animals had an extraordinarily quick capacity for adaptation to new conditions. The plastic body altered its organs with comparative quickness, so that, after a longer or shorter time, the descendants of a particular species well-nigh ceased to resemble their progenitors. It was also thus with plants, but in a more pronounced degree. The greatest influence on the transformation of man and animals was due to man himself, by his either instinctively bringing living beings into such surroundings that they assumed definite forms, or by attempting to produce changes by breeding. The transforming influence of man on nature was, at that time, incalculably greater than is the case at present, and this was especially the case in the colony described. For here this transformation was guided by the leaders in a manner which was not realized by men. So it came about that, when men went forth to found the various Atlantean races, they took with them highly advanced knowledge as to the breeding of animals and plants. The growth of civilization was, then, essentially a consequence of the knowledge which they had brought with them. Nevertheless it must be emphasized that these instructions were only instinctive in character, and in essence they still remained so among the first Atlantean races.

The predominance of the woman-soul, already indicated, is particularly strong in the last Lemurian epoch, and continues into the Atlantean era, when the fourth sub-race was in preparation. It must not, however, be thought that this was the case with the whole of mankind; but it holds true as regards that portion of the earthly population from which came forth, at a later period, the truly advanced races. This influence was most potent on all that is “unconscious” in, or about man. The acquisition of certain habitual gestures, the subtleties of sense perception, the feeling for beauty, a good deal of the sensitive and emotional life common to men in general, emanated originally from the soul of woman. It is not saying too much if we interpret the communications of the Âkâshic Records to this effect: “Civilized nations have a bodily structure and a bodily expression, as well as certain bases of the physically psychic life, which have been stamped on them by woman.”