The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I want to speak in a rather aphoristic way this evening about a subject which I consider of importance, especially at the present time.

Many of our studies have been concerned with the Christ Impulse, with the Impulse which since the Mystery of Golgotha has been working in the evolution of humanity. And this evening I want to speak of the Impulse itself and of its significance for evolution. It must be emphasised at the outset that the Christ Impulse is a difficult subject because if even an approximately adequate conception of it is to be acquired, the teachings still being given in the various Christian denominations must be left out of account. Perhaps you will ask: How can the Christ Impulse be studied at all if such teachings are to be entirely disregarded? How can we learn about the working of this Impulse from any sources other than the beliefs that have been held for centuries? The answer must be this.—Everyone will admit that it would be unfortunate if the effects of the Sun upon human beings living on the Earth were dependent upon some generally accepted teaching about the nature of the Sun. No matter what hypotheses are put forward, the effects of the Sun are quite evident. Science admits that it does not yet know precisely what electricity is, yet electricity is put to innumerable practical uses. Therefore it is certainly justifiable to speak of the effects of the Christ Impulse without believing that the study is in any way dependent upon what has been thought about Christ in the different centuries.

The Mystery of Golgotha, the penetration of the Christ impulse into the Earth sphere, into the evolution of humanity, took place in a particular epoch. The point of time at which it occurred has been determined with at least approximate accuracy, for our time-reckoning in the West is based upon it. What kind of epoch was it? We know that different civilisations have taken their course in the process of evolution—in the post-Atlantean era, the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Graeco-Roman and our own. One of the characteristics distinguishing these culture-epochs is that a different form of human understanding, human wisdom, existed in each of them. In the ancient Indian epoch, for example, men were possessed of penetrating insight into certain cosmic mysteries. In those times the etheric body was the most active member of man’s constitution. Then, as evolution proceeded, the etheric body receded more into the background and in the ancient Persian epoch the sentient body, the astral body, became predominantly active. In the Egypto-Chaldean epoch the sentient soul was predominant, in the Graeco-Latin epoch the intellectual or mind-soul, in our own epoch the spiritual or consciousness soul, and the epoch of the Spirit-Self lies in the future. Because different members of man’s constitution are predominantly active during the several epochs, individuals confront the world in each epoch with a different kind of understanding.

Now there is a certain striking and very illuminating fact in connection with the Graeco-Latin epoch. This was the epoch of the intellectual or mind-soul, and it lasted from the eighth century B.C., approximately from the time of the founding of Rome, until the fifteenth century A.D. Because the intellectual or mind-soul was developing during that epoch, the forces in individuals who were essentially typical of this function of soul-life became particularly important. This province of the soul was undergoing a special process of development for a little more than two millennia. Since the fifteenth century mankind has been living in the epoch of the development of the consciousness-soul. Not very much of this epoch has passed as yet, for not until the present century and two more centuries have taken their course will a third of the time appointed for the development of the consciousness-soul have elapsed. Quite different faculties will develop in man’s soul during the following epochs. Seven such epochs constitute the post-Atlantean age.

Let us now ask: Which of those epochs was least qualified to understand the Christ Being? Conceptions of the nature of man differed in all of them. The epoch least qualified to form adequate conceptions of the nature of Christ was the epoch of the intellectual or mind-soul, from the eighth century B.C. to the fifteenth century A.D. And the remarkable fact is that this is the very epoch when the Mystery of Golgotha took place!

If, to speak hypothetically, the Christ had appeared on the Earth in the days, let us say, of the holy Rishis of ancient India, there would have been widespread understanding of who He was. So too in ancient Persia, where men had been taught of the Sun Spirit. Had the Christ descended into a human body during that epoch men would have known that the Sun Spirit had come down into the body of a man on the Earth. And in the epoch of the Egyptian Temple Wisdom, something equivalent might still have been possible. But in the epoch when understanding of the nature of Christ was farthest from men’s reach—in that very epoch the Christ appeared on Earth.

It is not easy to add anything to this strange fact by way of illustration, for the conclusion to be drawn is that obviously hardly anything about the real nature of the Christ Being is to be found in the teachings formulated in that epoch and that understanding can therefore be expected only in later centuries.

Since the fifteenth century men may have begun to pride themselves on their intellectual acumen and to believe that in respect of an understanding of Christ better times have come with the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In a certain sense it is so, but in another sense it is not.

What is there to be said about the intellectual faculties of men of the present age, since the fif-teenth century? Generally speaking these faculties have in no sense become more spiritual than they were in earlier times. In a certain respect man’s life of soul has sunk still more deeply into matter—as indeed was necessary in order that the stage of the consciousness-soul might be attained. So we find that Spiritual Science—which before the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries was still a matter of remembrance, of recollection—fell into the background and materialism steadily increased. Spiritual Science blossomed in certain personages of the Middle Ages, reached a certain height as it were through the elemental forces working in individual mystics, and then receded. But from the eleventh and twelfth centuries onwards it is obvious that something else is beginning to appear. A symptom is that men attempt to ‘prove’ the existence of God. Only people with very strange ideas about the world could fail to recognise what that means. As a rule we try to ‘prove’ what we do not know or understand. We try to prove that someone has stolen when we did not actually see him commit the theft. And when men lost all inner experience of God, when they no longer knew by what paths to seek for the Divine, they set about trying to ‘prove’ the existence of the Divine. This is irrefutable proof that men were beginning to lose all knowledge of God. The fifth post-Atlantean epoch must necessarily be the epoch of materialism because since it began man has been obliged to view nature as presented to the senses and intellect; for only so can the Ego in its full power become conscious.

To understand what I mean, let us think back to the epoch of ancient Persia. In the epoch of ancient India it would have been still more clearly in evidence, and even in the Egyptian epoch it was still apparent to a certain extent. A man belonging to the ancient Persian civilisation would have been astonished that a cosmological system such as that of Copernicus should be derived from observation of the planetary movements.—I must here say something highly paradoxical.—A man in ancient Persia would have been very surprised if attempts had been made to teach him astronomy in anything faintly resembling its modern form. He would have said: Am I supposed to be so stupid that if I want to walk about, someone must show me how to do it? When the Sun is moving along its path through cosmic space, my soul accompanies it.—He knew this just as a man today knows which way he is going when his body moves. Out of his innate knowledge the ancient Persian drew a spiral corresponding exactly with the course of the Sun through cosmic space. In that epoch the human soul felt united with the Earth-soul and the path taken by the Earth was indicated by the Caduceus, the Staff of Mercury. Not until later was man thrust out of his spiritual environment so drastically that he was obliged to plan and calculate the path of the Earth, his own planet.

On the other hand, if man’s relation to the external world had remained at the earlier stage, he would never have been able to develop full self-consciousness. He would have lived through the Graeco-Latin civilisation-epoch, when intellect and soul-life in general would have been left to their own resources, as it were smouldering inwardly; a condition would have come about in which the soul has no longer any direct knowledge of its relation to the world but makes progress only in itself. It was necessary for the human soul to emerge from that condition too, and pass into the epoch of the consciousness-soul. Man was to learn to live altogether in his ‘I’, in his Ego. He was to disassociate everything external from his ‘I’ and cognise the world through logic alone. He was thrust out of the spiritual content of the world.

In the Graeco-Latin epoch the soul still contained the active intellectual principle which although it no longer experienced the happenings in the external spiritual world directly, nevertheless did still experience the Divine. In the modern age men lost the Divine! It would never have occurred to Aristotle to attempt to ‘prove’ the existence of the Divine. The intellectual or mind-soul still experienced the indwelling Divine, although it could offer no proof of Christ. Then from the fifteenth /sixteenth century onwards even that experience was lost. Nevertheless when this stage too is over man will be capable with his own powers of evolving a conception of the Divine.

From the fifteenth century, for four hundred years, the self-dependent human intellect has been unable to penetrate to the idea of the Divine. Something very strange has happened—and the fact that we commented upon it caused great offence. Immanuel Kant, the philosopher, lived in the eighteenth century. What happened to him was that he confused the particular nature of the human soul since the fifteenth century with the nature of the human soul in general. Hence he came to the conclusion that it is impossible for man, by means of his own powers, to acquire knowledge of the Divine. What he ought to have said was that this had been impossible only since the beginning of the fifteenth century. But as Lucifer had Kant firmly by the collar and had made him an arrogant individual, he believed that what he said applied to the whole human race!

It might be thought from this that the prospects of understanding the Christ Being are even less hopeful than in the previous centuries. But it is not so. Men have faculties of knowledge other than those they possessed in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and different, too, from the only faculties that are used today for grasping the nature of the Ego. The other powers of cognition lie more in the underground province of the soul and have to be drawn up from there. But a modern man does this only under coercion. As long as it was possible for the human soul at surface level to cognise the Divine, men did not make efforts to bring their deeper forces into action. But now, in our present time, as man can make no real approach to the Divine, reaction compels him to delve to greater depths within himself and to summon into activity forces other than those operating on the surface of the soul. Connected with this is the fact that we are approaching an age when an understanding of the Christ Being through the deeper forces in man’s nature is beginning-to take root.

A few days ago in Oslo I ventured to speak of a Fifth Gospel.¹ Through the Fifth Gospel information is given in addition to what is contained in the other four Gospels. The Fifth Gospel tells us still more of the nature of Christ. There can be no question of presumptuousness when this apparently new information about the nature of the Christ Being is given, for communications of this kind are made only when the times demand it. What has been said about the Christ Being here in Copenhagen, for instance, and printed in the booklet The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, and in various lecture-courses—this too belongs in a certain way to the Fifth Gospel. Such communications are made when the times demand that they shall come to the knowledge of men. If you think only of what was said in that booklet about the two Jesus children, you will agree that all the intelligence of our present age—consisting as it does of the forces operating on the surface of man’s soul—not only does not understand these things but rages against them when they are communicated.

We are on the threshold of a new conception of Christ. It will not be an intellectual understanding. People will certainly be able to grasp its meaning but it will be discovered through the more deeply lying forces of soul. When the eye of clairvoyance desires to have any prevision of the future of humanity in the next centuries, also of the next incarnations of individuals now living, it must be remembered that the forces operating on the surface of soul-life will become increasingly less effective. Mankind will feel more and more drawn to the revelations of the deeper forces of the soul.

Of the Graeco-Latin epoch it is rightly said that the nature of the human beings then living was inwardly whole, inwardly complete. Fundamentally speaking, this can no longer be said of even healthy souls today and will in future be less and less the case. If humanity in the future were to be taught only of matters accessible to the superficial forces of cognition, the life of soul would become increasingly barren, barren in a remarkable respect.

We have not yet reached the point when religious teaching is no longer given in schools, but already there are demands that only what is authenticated by science shall be taught. The demands made by people of this mentality will become so powerful an influence in outer life that very soon mankind will become dangerously superficial. Human beings today still learn to write, but in a future not far distant people will have to remind themselves of the fact that once upon a time hand-writing was a custom! A kind of mechanical stenography will become general—executed, furthermore, on machines. Mechanisation of life! I will indicate it by just one symptom. Think of a civilisation at its prime, when the historic truth will be unearthed that once upon a time there were human beings who wrote by hand. This historic truth will be unearthed just as we today unearth the contents of the Egyptian temples. Handwritten texts will be excavated as we excavate the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians. But a reaction of the life of soul against mechanisation will also take place. True as it is that in future times our handwriting will be no less a wonder than the Egyptian hieroglyphs are a wonder to us, it is also true that the souls of men will long once again for the direct revelations of the spirit. Outer life will become more and more superficial but the inner life will claim its rights.

People may scoff today at Spiritual Science but the materialists will eventually be forced to retreat before man’s cry of longing for the spiritual world. And so a real understanding of Christ will begin in times when the doors are open for spirituality, although admittedly through reaction against the conditions prevailing in external life.

Let us now consider still another aspect of the subject. Maybe the following picture will evoke an echo in your souls. We can think of the women who, according to the Gospels, seek for the body of Christ and find the grave empty. The Angel says to them: He whom ye seek is not here; He is risen! That is, He lives in the Spirit. The One for whom they were seeking in the physical world appeared subsequently to the Apostles, teaching them for a time as exceptional individuals who had responded to Him with a certain measure of understanding. Christ appeared to them as a spiritual figure. And in the spirit He moved through Greece, Rome, to the Germanic peoples, moved from East to West and then to the North. We shall not look for an intellectual, abstract or scientific interpretation of the Christ Being among the great Roman philosophers who speak of Him without understanding. Nor among the somewhat inarticulate Germanic peoples shall we find evidence of understanding. The souls of men are drawn to Christ but without intellectual understanding. He lives in their hearts, only in their hearts.

In the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries the picture is not of the women who go to the grave to seek for the body of Christ and do not find it. Whole hosts of European peoples feel urged to seek for the grave of Christ. This is the age of the Crusades. Men journey from the West to the East to find the grave where the women had once sought. And what do these hosts experience?—He for whom ye seek is not here!—Truth to tell they were seeking for something that was living in their souls, but they understood it so little that they journeyed to the East to look for the physical grave, and finally, after many disillusionments and sufferings, were destined to know: He whom ye seek is not here!—Where, then, was the object of their quest?

On the one side there are the journeys to the East and on the other side European Mysticism at its preparatory stages in Tauler and Meister Eckhart, reaching its prime later on in Jacob Boehme. There was the one for whom men had sought in the East and had not found. Thither He had gone, but His Presence took effect in a particular way. What is the most significant characteristic of this medieval Mysticism?

Eckhart, Tauler and the others do not claim to understand the Divine Being, the Christ, but they resolved to lead a life of piety in order to experience Christ in their souls. And the greater the intensity of this experience, the more deeply they longed to be permeated by the Divine, by the Christ, in the way suitable for their time. The Crusaders had experienced no more than this: He whom ye seek is not here!—What they were seeking came to life in the form of European mysticism.

We too are living in an epoch with very definite characteristics. Not only the peoples of Europe but also those of America participate in the remarkable conditions now prevailing. Let me give one striking example—from Berlin. On February 1st, 1910, a famous modern theologian came out with the following ‘ingenious’ utterance: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I challenge you to bring me a single sentence attributed to Christ Jesus which I cannot prove to have been current in pre-Christian spiritual life.”—That is an entirely typical attitude today. Evidence is brought forward in attempts to prove that the content of Christianity, including even the Lord’s Prayer, was previously in existence. The words of the theologian quoted are in complete conformity with the current attitude, and similar utterances will become more and more common. What kind of impression is made by the statement that all Christ’s sayings were already current before His coming?—I was once listening to an address by a very erudite scholar and a child happened to be present. Someone asked the child: “What have you been told?” His answer was: “He has told me nothing new. I already knew all the words!”—Theologians too are familiar with the words and detect nothing new resounding through them.

These things should really be self-evident but nowadays are invariably met with resistance. The attitude that a cultured individual may still have something to learn is seldom present but it is widely held that everyone is capable of judging according to his own standard. We have witnessed a striking exhibition of this attitude. When materialism came to the fore, theology began to eliminate all divinity from Christ Jesus and to speak only of the man Jesus, although acknowledging his superiority. This view became widespread in the nineteenth century and was given grotesque expression in Ernst Renan’s famous book, The Life of Jesus, published in 1863. He spoke of Jesus in wonderfully beautiful language but his description of the Lazarus miracle suggests that in reality no awakening of a dead man had taken place, that Jesus had simply allowed His followers to spread reports to this effect; hence the so-called miracle was in the nature of a swindle! Thus something resembling a chapter from a cheap novel has been inserted into an otherwise genuinely fine work. There seems to be no reason for Renan having written any words of reverence, for the figure he describes merits no particular veneration. But for half a century this was all accepted without thought and it is only one example from literature in which tribute is paid to Christ Jesus as a man—but simply as a man.

Now, however, it has been realised that a great deal of what is reported of Jesus Christ would be impossible if He had been a mere man—especially the assertion made by Jesus that He himself was the Christ—therefore more than a man. Many contradictions were found. Then, more recently, God—an imaginary God—was again substituted for man. Christ Jesus became a phantom, a fetish—but a limited fetish. This was a truly remarkable state of things! For centuries men had eliminated Divinity from Christ Jesus and had made Him a man, and now the Divinity made the manhood an impossibility. Such arguments will go on ad infinitum and there is ample evidence that we are taking a path along which understanding is beyond the reach of the forces at the surface of human nature. To put it differently.—In the twentieth century men have attempted a kind of crusade in search of the historical Christ Jesus. And once again the answer will be: He whom you seek is not to be found here!—Those who seek in this way for the historical man Jesus will no more be able to find Him than could the women at the tomb or the Crusaders who thronged thither. The Crusaders could not find Christ because they were not seeking for Him inwardly; nor can the modern crusaders find Him because they do not seek with the inner forces of the soul by which alone Christ can be found.

Within the stream of spiritual life a deepening of the forces of soul-and-spirit is in process. And whereas the spiritual forces lying at the surface will deny the Christ more and more insistently, deeper forces of soul will rise up and seek for Christ. Increasing numbers of people will see the Christ, who will appear in the etheric realm and will be found by those who are sensitive to this experience. We therefore speak of an etheric appearance of Christ in the twentieth century. Those who have this experience will have direct knowledge that at the moment when the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled the Christ Being entered in very truth into the Earth sphere and in ever greater numbers individuals will know with certainty who the Christ is.

Knowledge of Spiritual Science will deepen souls to such an extent that men’s vision will be awakened and the Christ revealed. A wonderful prospect opens for the eye of prophetic clairvoyance. The forces belonging to the superficial activities of the soul will become more and more ineffective and human beings born as time goes on will comparatively soon have finished with these surface-forces of their souls. An epoch reminiscent in a remarkable way of the Christ Event is approaching.

In the thirtieth year of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, Christ entered into him. A new life of soul began in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, for the Christ had taken the place of the Zarathustra-Ego which had departed from that body. That was at the beginning of our era. An epoch is now approaching when into increasing numbers of men from their thirtieth year onwards, knowledge of Christ—not Christ in His full reality—will penetrate as though through enlightenment. In the thirtieth year of the life of these men a new, all-embracing soul-life will begin because they will have vision of the Christ in His etheric form.

We understand our epoch in the sense of Spiritual Science when we realise what this prospect signifies. When the souls now living are again incarnated—and this will happen to many sooner than the normal period—numbers of individuals, from a particular age onwards, will feel through actual experience that something has penetrated into them of which they could previously have known only by having been informed of it. They will be able to say: I myself know through actual vision who Christ is; vision has enabled me to understand. When that time comes, efforts to prove the existence of Christ will cease, for the number of those who can testify to direct experience of Christ moving over the Earth as it Spirit Being, will constantly increase. Men will no longer search for the historic Christ.

There are two aspects to the picture of the future: On the one side barrenness will become more and more widespread owing to the activity of the superficial soul-forces; on the other side, as reaction against the barrenness, the soul-forces lying in the depths of man’s being will be evoked. We spread Anthroposophy in order that this shall be made known.

Men should not heedlessly allow impressions however faint to pass them by, for strong impres-sions are rare. As a result of the spread of true Anthroposophy the souls of men will not allow enlightenment, when it comes, to elude them, for if they do it would be beyond their reach for several incarnations. Other people, however, who make use of the superficial soul-forces will speak of those who have known enlightenment as fools or lunatics. A terrible beginning in this direction has already been made. Psychiatrists have already begun to investigate the problem of Christ Jesus. The Gospels are studied with the aim of discovering in Him symptoms of insanity! Such phenomenal occurrences should not be ignored; they should rather lead to the insight that Christ, who came into humanity in an age when He could least be understood, is working perpetually to prepare the understanding that will come in future ages.

A person who looks into the future should not generalise about it in abstract phrases. The future reveals two aspects: the aspect of barrenness of soul, of complete absorption in materialism, but also the aspect of the birth of a new spiritual world, not only in thoughts or in vision but in existence itself. For Christ will come to the side of men and be their counsellor. This is not a mere image. In actual reality men will receive the counsels they need from the Living Christ who will be their adviser and friend, who will speak to their souls just like someone who is physically near. If men needed a prophetic proclamation at the time when He was to appear in a human body, they need such a proclamation even more at this time, when He will come in an etheric form. What has now been said should be regarded as a preparatory announcement of what will and indeed must come to pass.

Have no illusion about the future. We are not giving way to illusion when we picture what outer, material life will be like in a future when handwriting will be spoken of in the same sense as we today speak of the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians. The last vestiges of a spiritual culture still survive, even today, for writing still expresses characteristics of the soul; but the traces of soul will soon have disappeared from external culture as completely as Egyptian culture has vanished from our ken. People will speak of many things which in our time are still imbued with soul, as of something belonging to a far distant past. But the same voice that will proclaim the existence in the past age of a kind of hand-writing, will proclaim out of spiritual knowledge that in the spirit the living Christ is again moving among humanity. Men will have to exchange the spirit of mere intellectual conjecture for the spirit of direct vision, of direct feeling and experience of the Living Christ moving as a reality in the spirit by the side of the souls of men.²

• 1. See, The Fifth Gospel. Seven lectures given in Oslo and Cologne in 1913. (Rudolf Steiner Press.)
• 2. See also The True Nature of the Second Coming. Rudolf Steiner. (Rudolf Steiner Press.)

Once again, I would like to sum up some of what has been presented here recently. We spoke about the external sense world in its relation to the inner world of the human being and I pointed out two things in particular. I stressed that the external sense world certainly must be understood as a world of phenomena and that it is a sign of the prejudices of our age not to interpret correctly this view of the world of phenomena. Certainly, here and there, a certain perception surfaces concerning the fact that the outer sense world is a world of phenomena, of appearances, not one even of merely material realities. Then, however, behind this world of external phenomena, one seeks for material realities, for example, for atoms and molecules, and the like. This search for atoms and molecules, in short, for any world of physical reality standing behind the world of phenomena, is just as if one were to seek for some kind of molecular materiality behind the rainbow that is obviously only an appearance, a phenomenon. This search for material reality in regard to the external world is something quite unfounded, as spiritual science points out from the most diverse directions. We have to understand clearly that surrounding us in what we perceive as the sense world is a world of phenomena, and we may not interpret the sense of touch differently from the other senses in regard to the sense world. Just as we see the rainbow with our eyes without searching for a material reality behind it, accepting it as appearance, so we must accept the entire external world as it is, namely, in the sense I depicted it decades ago in my introduction to the volume an color theory⁴² in Goethe's natural scientific writings. The question then is posed to us: What is it that really stands behind this world of phenomena? The material atoms are not behind it; there are spiritual beings behind it—there is spirituality. This recognition signifies a lot, for it means that we admit that we do not live in a material world but in one of spiritual realities.

When we as human beings turn to the external world this drawing representing, as it were, the boundary of our body—we have here the sense world and behind it the world of spiritual realities, spiritual beings (right side).

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Now, when we turn to the human interior, when we move from our senses inward, we have first of all the content of our world of conceptions, our soul world. If we call the sense world the world of sense phenomena, of sensory appearances, we have the world of spiritual phenomena when we turn from our senses inward (left). Naturally, in the manner in which they are present within us, our thoughts, our conceptions, are not realities, they are spiritual phenomena. Now, if we descend from this soul world still deeper into our inner being, it is all-important for us not to believe that we thereby arrive at a special, higher world, something that mystic dreamers presuppose. There, we actually come into the world of our organism, the world of material realities.

This is why it is important not to assume that by inward brooding one could discover something spiritual; there, we should seek for the constitution of the material human organism. One should not seek for all manner of mystical realities within oneself, as I have pointed out from a number of viewpoints. Instead, behind what pushes up into the soul and thus turns into a spiritual phenomenon, especially when one penetrates more and more deeply into oneself, we should seek the interaction of liver, heart, lungs, and other organs that mystics in particular do not like to hear mentioned. There we become acquainted with the essentially material element of our earthly existence. As I have often emphasized, many a person who believes he has encountered mystical realities by descending deeply into his inner being only finds what is given off by his liver, gall bladder and other related organs. Just as tallow turns into flame, so everything that liver, lungs, heart and stomach give off turns into mystical phenomena when it lights up into consciousness.

The important point is that true spiritual science guides the human being beyond any sort of illusion. Materialists cling to the illusion that they can find physical, material realities, not spiritual realities, behind the sense world. It is the illusion of mystics that when they descend into their own being, they can find, not the world of the material organization, but different kinds of special divine sparks, and such like.

In genuine spiritual science, it is important that we do not search for material substance in the outer world and do not seek the Spirit in the inner world, which initially appears as such through inward brooding.

What I have now said is of significant consequence for our entire world view. Bear in mind that from the time man falls asleep until he wakes up he is outside his physical and etheric bodies with his astral body and I. Where is he then? This is the question we must ask ourselves. If we assume that out there is the world described by the physicists, it makes no sense whatever to speak about an existence of the astral body or the ego outside the physical body. If we know, however, that beyond the sense world lies the world of spiritual realities, out of which the sense world blossoms forth, then we are able to imagine that the astral body and ego move into the spiritual world which lies behind the sense world. Indeed, astral body and ego find themselves in that part of the spiritual world that underlies the sense world. Thus, we can say that in sleep man penetrates into the spiritual world which is the basis of the physical world. Of course, upon awakening, his ego and astral body first penetrate his etheric being and then what constitutes the realm of the material organization.

Clear concepts of an anthroposophical world-view can only be attained if one is able to form intelligible ideas concerning such matters. For, above all, one will not succumb to the illusion of seeking the divine, or the spiritual underlying our human condition, behind the sensory surroundings. There, only that spiritual element is found which, out of itself, brings forth the sense world. As human beings we have our roots in the spiritual world, but in which spiritual world? We have our roots in the very spiritual world that we leave when incarnating into our physical body. We come from the spiritual world that we live in between death and a new birth; through birth or conception we enter this physical existence. The world we inhabit between death and a new birth, which we then leave, is a different spiritual world than this one [behind the sense world], although, because it is a spiritual world, it is related to the latter from which springs forth our sense world. We will not grasp the spiritual world of which we are speaking—I have described it in the lecture cycle, Inner Nature of Man and the Life Between Death and a New Birth,⁴³ namely, the spiritual world we experience between death and rebirth which creates and brings us forth—if we seek it behind the sense world. We will not take hold of it if we seek it within ourselves. There, we only discover the material element of our own organization. We can only grasp it when we leave space altogether. This spiritual world is not within space. As I have often emphasized, we can only speak about it when we base it solely on time, thinking of it as a world of time. Consequently, it goes without saying that all the descriptions we have about this world between death and rebirth can only be images, merely pictures. We must not confuse these pictures, in which we must of necessity express ourselves, with the realities in which we dwell between death and a new birth. It is vital that on the basis of the anthroposophical world-view we do not merely talk about all manner of fantastic things, depicting them in the ancient terminology which actually does not designate anything new. What matters is that we enrich our world of concepts and ideas when we try to send our thoughts into the world in which we live between death and rebirth. Thus we can acquire a most important concept that can also give rise to profound, albeit uncomfortable, reflection. It is this: When we have absolved the life between death and birth, we incarnate here in space. We penetrate into space out of a condition that is not spatial. Space has significance only for our experiences between birth and death. Again, it is important to know that when we pass through the portal of death, not only do we leave the body with our soul, we also leave space behind.

This concept was quite familiar to people until the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries A.D. Even a person like Scotus Erigena,⁴⁴ who lived in the ninth century, was fully conversant with it. Yet the modern age has completely lost the concept of the spirituality underlying human existence, within which the human being lives after death—as was thought then, only after death; today we must say: between death and rebirth we are outside space. The modern age is proud and arrogant regarding its thinking, yet it can actually think only of what is spatial, holding any and every thought in a spatial context. In order to conceive of spiritual matters, on the one hand, we must make the effort to overcome space within our thinking. Otherwise we will never reach the truly spiritual; above all, we will never attain to an even approximately correct natural science, much less a spiritual science. Particularly in our time it is infinitely important to become acquainted with these finer distinctions of spiritual-scientific knowledge. For, what we acquire through such concepts is not just any kind of world concept, any sort of thought content. The acquisition of a thought content is, after all, the very least we can achieve through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. For it is one and the same whether someone believes the world consists of molecules and atoms, or if he believes man consists of a physical body, a somewhat less dense etheric body, then something more nebulous and tenuous, the astral body, followed by whatever is next, say, a still finer mental body, or something even more and more rarefied; for one doesn't come anywhere near the etheric body by just thinking of something more rarefied. It is really the same thing whether one is a materialist picturing the world as atoms, or whether one harbors this coarsely materialistic conception that is the common factor of the so-called theosophical society teachings, or whatever they are called now. Something quite different is what really matters, namely, that we become capable of changing our entire soul constitution. We have to make every effort to think about the spiritual in a manner different from the one in which we are accustomed to think about the external sense world. We do not comprehend spiritual science if we conceive of something other than the sense world as being spiritual; we enter into spiritual science if we think about the spiritual in a different way than we think about the sense realm. We think of the latter in terms of space. We can think about the spiritual world in terms of time within certain limits, because we have to think of ourselves within this spiritual world. And we are in a certain sense spiritually conditioned by time, in that at a certain moment in time we are transposed from the life between death and rebirth into the life between birth and death.

As I have often indicated, it is this transformation of the state of mind that is so absolutely essential for mankind of today. For how did we become caught up in the calamities of the present? It is because, along with so-called modern progress, humanity has altogether forgotten to admit the spiritual into its conceptions. The theosophical teachings of the so-called Theosophical Society are actually the attempt to characterize spiritual facts in materialistic forms of thought, hence, to drive materialism all the way into the spirit. We do not attain to a spiritual concept merely by calling something spiritual, only by transforming our thinking to what is suited to the sensory realm.

Human beings do not live with each other only in purely spatial relationships that can be constructed by means of what has become the general thinking of natural science. We can no longer develop social concepts based on the present-day world view. The kind of thinking that humanity has become accustomed to owing to natural science cannot lead to a characterization of social life. In this way arise the aberrations we experience today as a variety of social ideologies that only come about because it is impossible to think realistically about the social problems based on the conceptions from which we proceed to regard something as right or wrong. Not until people are willing to penetrate spiritual science will it become possible again to think of the social life in the manner it has to be conceived if further decline is to be halted and, instead, progress is to ensue. The discipline brought about in us by spiritual science is more important than its content. Otherwise we shall finally reach the stage of demanding that spiritual matters be popularized, that is to say, that they be presented in coarsely sensory, realistic terms. Things that must be expressed in a certain manner if one doesn't want to fantasize but to speak of realities, as I have done in our anthroposophical presentations as well as in my book, Towards Social Renewal,⁴⁵ are found to be not graphic enough. Well, “graphic” is a word that has a peculiar connotation for people today. There are people today who have much to say about this longing of mankind to have everything presented in a crudely senseperceptible manner. This is true all over the world, not just in certain countries.

I found an interesting passage, for example, in a recently published book, Les forces morales aux Etats-Unis,⁴⁶ written by a French lady. It has the following subdivisions: l'eglise, l'ecole, la femme. The book contains an interesting little episode which demonstrates how, in certain quarters, one triel “graphically” to describe matters pertaining to man's relationship with the spiritual world. The author relates:

One evening a friend and I strolled down Broadway. I came to a church. A quick glance showed us the place was filled with men only. Offended by seeing this, we avoided moving further inside. A priest clad in a soutane saw us, approached and invited us to come in. Since we hesitated, he asked about our confession. “We are not Catholics,” I said. He urged us to enter the church and, index finger pointing upward, he said with conviction “Come here and listen to me. If, for instance, you wish to travel to Chicago, how would you go about it? You might go on foot, take a car, a boat, or travel by train. It stands to reason that you would choose the fastest and most comfortable means. In this case that's the train. Obviously, if you wish to get to the Garden of God you will choose the religion that will get you there in the fastest and safest way. That's the Catholic religion, which is the express train to Paradise.”

The Lady telling the story only concluded that she was so perplexed she did not think of telling him that he had forgotten the airplane in his graphic comparison, which he could have mentioned as a still quicker means of getting to Paradise.

You see, here was someone eager to counter people's prejudices, and he chose graphic conceptions. The description of the Catholic Church as the “express train to heaven” is a graphic image. It is indeed the tendency of our time to search for graphic images, meaning concepts that do not make any demands on people's thinking. It is precisely here that we must already discern the gravity of modern life which demands that we do away with such graphicness which turns into banality and triviality, thus pulling man down into materialism in regard to those matters that must be comprehended spiritually. Even in symptoms such as these we have to search for what is needed most in our age. It must be said again and again: Such symptoms cannot be ignored; we cannot afford to go blindfolded through the world, which is an organism asking to be understood by means of its symptoms. For these symptoms contain what we must comprehend if we wish to arrive at an ascent again from our general decline.

At this point, however, it is necessary to see a number of things in the right light. What has actually been produced from spiritual-scientific foundations in Towards Social Renewal truly has not been created out of some theory but out of the whole breadth of life, with the difference that this life is viewed spiritually. Mankind today cannot progress if people do not adjust to such a view of life.

I would like to put in here two points taken from life that once again showed me recently how necessary it is to lead humanity today to a life-filled comprehension of reality, but at the same time a spiritual comprehension of reality. Yesterday I read an article by a journalist whose name, so I am told, is Rene Marchand,⁴⁷ who, for a long time, was a correspondent for Figaro, Petit Parisien, and so on. He participated in the war on the Russian front, being a radical opponent of the Bolsheviks. He then had dealings with the general of the counter-revolution, becoming a follower of it. Overnight, he became converted to the idea of workers' councils, to Bolshevism. From an opponent of Bolshevism, so it says here, he turned into a protagonist, an unreserved supporter of the leadership and the ideology of workers' councils. Here is a man who belongs to the intellectual class, for he is a journalist, who, after all, lives with a deeper understanding of life, a deeper sensitivity for life, who dwells in the old traditions as do most of today's sleeping souls. It is interesting how such a person suddenly realizes: All this will assuredly lead to destruction!—and now the only goal worth aiming at for him appears to be Bolshevism! In other words, the man now perceives that everything that is not Bolshevism leads to ruin. I explained to you how Spengler described this.⁴⁸ Marchand sees only Bolshevism; initially, he believes that Bolshevism is merely a Russian affair. Then he discovers something quite different. He feels that Bolshevism is an international matter that must spread over the whole world. He says:

It now became clear to me that peace can only be restored when the people in all the countries freely take their destiny into their own hands. The principles, hitherto proclaimed by the bourgeois governments merely to deceive the masses, can only become reality when this new imperialism (that of the Entente powers) has in turn broken down.

He then relates how he has now arrived at the conviction that justice, unity, peace, and law will only rule when the world has become bolshevistic through and through; not till then will reconstruction be possible. This man now sees that all else leads to destruction. And basically he is quite correct in pointing out: If anything outside Bolshevism is to be cultivated further, it must turn into the dictatorship of the old capitalism, the Bourgeoisie and its trappings. It must become the dictatorship of people like Lloyd George,⁴⁹ Clemenceau,⁵⁰ Scheidemann,⁵¹ and so on. If one does not wish for this, if one does not want ruin, there is no other choice but the dictatorship of Bolshevism. He sees the only salvation in the letter.

In a certain sense this man is honest, more honest than all the others who see the approach of Bolshevism and believe they can oppose it with the old regime. At least Marchand sees that all the old ideas are ready to perish. A question arises, however, especially if one stands on spiritual scientific ground and experiences this; for a man like Rene Marchand is an exception. The question forces itself upon one's mind: Where has the man gained knowledge of all this? He has acquired such knowledge where most of our contemporaries have gathered it, namely, from newspapers and books. He does not know life. To a large extent, people living today know -life only from newspapers and books. Particularly the people in leading circles know life just from newspapers. Think of all that we have experienced in this regard through newspapers, by means of books! We have witnessed that a few decades ago people still formed their world conceptions by reading French comedies, that they knew the events occurring in a comedy better than what takes place in life. They ignored the realities of life and informed themselves by what they had seen on the stage. Later, we saw that people formed their view of life based on Ibsen, Dostoevsky, or Tolstoy. They did not know life; neither could they judge the books on the basis of life. Actually, people only assimilated the secondhand life printed on paper. From that they developed their slogans, founded societies for all manner of reforms without any real knowledge of life. It was a life which they knew only from Ibsen or Dostoevsky, or a life they knew in a manner that frequently could not help becoming quite obnoxious to a person when, in all the big cities of Europe, Hauptmann's “Weber” (weavers),⁵² for example, was being performed. The lifestyle of weavers appeared on stage. People with no idea of what transpires in life, having seen only its caricature on the stage, observing the misery of weavers on stage, and because it was a time of social involvement—began talking about all sorts of social questions, having become acquainted with these matters only in this way. Basically, they are all people who do not know life except vicariously from newspapers or books such as exist today. I have nothing against the books; one must be familiar with them, but one must read them in such a manner that through them one is able to perceive life. The problem is that we live in an age of abstraction today, abstract demands by political parties, societies, and so on.

This is why it is interesting for me to encounter, on one side, such a realistic man like Rene Marchand who, being a journalist, is simultaneously an oracle for many people. It does not even occur to him to ask if this Bolshevism really leads to a viable life style. For he really does not know life; he only exchanges what he has become acquainted with and finds headed for destruction, with a new abstract formula, with new theories. On the other side, I must now compare a letter I received this morning with these utterances of an intellectual. Somebody who is fully grounded in life, who has experienced precisely what can be experienced today in order to form an opinion of the social condition, wrote to me. He wrote that my book, Towards Social Renewal, had become a sort of salvation for him. This man, who has worked in a weaving mill, was thoroughly familiar with the practical aspects. One will only grasp what is meant with the book, Towards Social Renewal, when one judges it from the standpoint of practical life. It is a book depicting reality, but derived completely from the spiritual world, as must be the case with anything that is to serve life today. One will only know what is meant if one understands that every line, every word of this book is in no way theoretical, but taken straight from practical life; when one realizes that it is a book for those who wish to intervene actively in life, not for those who want to engage in socialistic chatter and babble about life.

It is this that causes one such pain, namely, that a book steeped in reality is called utopian by those who have no idea of reality. Those who have no inkling of the reality of life, being themselves addicted to literature, view even such a book that is truly taken from life as a piece of literature. Today, the “how” matters more than the “what.” Everything depends an our acquiring thought forms that are suitable tools for the comprehension of the spiritual life, for in reality spiritual life is everywhere. We have spiritual realities here in our surroundings as well as from beyond the sense world. It is out of these spiritual realities that social reconstruction must come about, not out of the empty talk appearing in Leninism and Trotskyism, which is nothing but the squeezed-out lemon of old commonplace Western views that have no power to produce any viable kind of social idea. One may well ask: Where are the human beings today who are prepared to comprehend life with the necessary intensity? We will never penetrate life if we are unwilling to view it from the spiritual standpoint. The life between birth and death will not be understood as long as one is not willing to comprehend the life between death and rebirth. If people are unwilling to resort to the spiritual life, they will either become complete materialists or intellectuals living in theories that only enable them to comprehend life after having had it dramatically presented by an Ibsen, a Dostoevsky, or another writer. What matters is that we interpret library presentations as a kind of window through which we look out upon life. This will be possible for us only if we perceive the spiritual world, the world of spiritual entities, behind the sense world; if we finally dismiss all the fantasies concerning atoms and molecules from which present-day physics wishes to construct a world for us. It would follow from these fantasies that the whole present world in fact really consists basically only of atoms and molecules, effectively eliminating all spiritual, and with it, moral and religious ideas. I will say more about this tomorrow.

• 42. See Note #4
• 43. Rudolf Steiner: Inner Nature of Man and the Life Between Death and a New Birth, GA 153 (London, Anthroposophical Publishing Co., 1959).
• 44. Scotus Erigena: 810–877 A.D. Translator of the writings by Dionysius Areopagita; author of “De divina praedestinatione,” “ De divisione naturae.” In 1225, the Vatican ordered all his writings burned.
• 45. See Note #13
• 46. Sophie Cheftele, “Les forces morales aux Etats-Unis (l'eglise, l'ecole, la femme),” Paris, 1920.
• 47. The source of this quote could not be found.
• 48. Rudolf Steiner: Oswald Spengler, Prophet of World Chaos, in GA 198 (New York, Anthroposophic Press, 1949).
• 49. David Lloyd George: 1863–1945, British statesman, prime minister from 1916 until 1922.
• 50. Eugene Clemenceau: 1841–1929, French statesman.
• 51. Philipp Scheidemann: 1865–1939, German secretary of state, later minister president.
• 52. Gerhart Hauptmann: 1862–1946, playwright; “Die Weber,” Berlin, 1892.

You will have seen, from what has been said so far, that in the explanation of natural phenomena we need to find a path leading beyond the intellectually mathematical domain. That we do not dispute the justification of a mathematical approach is implicit in the whole spirit of these lectures. But we were able sharply to define the point beyond which it is impossible to go with mathematical thought-forms, in the celestial spaces on the one hand, and in the realm of embryology on the other. We must hew out a path to other methods of cognition. It is the purpose of these lectures to show the scientific need of other methods.

I shall try to show that what is looked for nowadays merely by gazing outward into celestial space—whether with the unaided eye or with the help of optical instruments—needs to be put on a far wider basis, so that not only a part but the whole of man becomes the ‘reagent’ for a deeper penetration of the Heavens. Today I shall try, if not to prove, at least to indicate the validity of such a widening of method, by approaching the problem from quite another side. It may seem paradoxical in relation to our present theme, but the reason will soon become plain.

In studying the evolution of mankind on Earth we must surely find something within human evolution itself to guide us to the essential source of the celestial phenomena. For otherwise we should be assuming that what goes on in the Universe beyond the Earth is without influence on man,—on human evolution. No-one will make such an assumption, although admittedly the influences may be over-estimated by some and under-estimated by others. It will therefore be plausible—at least from a methodic point of view—to put the question: ‘Can we find anything in the evolution of mankind itself to indicate ways of access to the secrets of celestial space?’ Asking this question, we will take our start, not from Spiritual Science, but from the facts which anyone can gather for himself by empirical, historical research.

Looking back in the evolution of mankind in the realm where human thoughts, the human faculties of knowledge find expression, where, so to speak, the relation of man to the world takes on the most highly sublimated forms—we are led back, to begin with (as you may gather from my ‘Riddles of Philosophy’), only a few centuries into the past. Indeed I have often pointed to a certain moment during the 15th century, one of the most essential in the more recent phase of human evolution. The indication is of course approximate. We have to think of the period about the middle of the Middle Ages. Needless to say, we are referring only to what was going on within civilized mankind.

It is not generally seen clearly or sharply enough, how deep and incisive a change was then taking place in human thought and cognition. There has unfortunately for some time been a downright aversion—among philosophers especially—to a real study and appreciation of the epoch in European civilization which may be called the Age of Scholasticism. During that age, deeply significant questions came to the surface of man's life of knowledge. It one goes into them deeply enough, one feels that these questions did not merely spring from the realm of logical deduction—the form in which the Middle Ages used to clothe them—but from the very depths of man's being.

One need only recall what then became a fundamental question in human knowledge—the question of Nominalism and Realism. Or again, what it betokened in the spiritual development of Europe that attempts were made to prove the existence of God. There was for instance the so-called ontological proof of the existence of God. From thought itself—from the pure concept—men wanted confirmation of God's existence. Think what it means in the whole evolution of human knowledge. Something was stirring in the inmost depths of human being; in the philosophical deductions of the time it only found fully conscious expression. Men were perplexed as to whether the concepts and ideas, which man forms and puts into words, in some way stand for a reality, or whether they are merely formal summarizations of the external sensory data. The Nominalists regarded the general concepts which man creates for himself as a mere formal summary, having no significance for the external reality but only helping man to find his way about—to orientate himself in an otherwise confusing outer world. The Realists (an expression used in a rather different sense than today) declared that something real is to be found in general or universal concepts,—that in these concepts man in his inner life takes hold of something real,—that they are no mere convenient generalizations or abstractions from the world.

Often in more public lectures I have related how my old friend Vinsenz Knauer—a latter-day scholastic, though he would not have claimed to be one—showed himself very clearly, in his interesting work “The Central Problems of Philosophy, from Thales to Robert Hamerling”, to be thoroughgoing Realist. The Nominalists, he said, assert that the concept ‘lamb’ is nothing but a convenient generalization arising in the human mind; so too the concept ‘wolf’. Matter is only put together in a different way in the lamb and in the world. We only summarize it in the convenient abstraction, ‘lamb’ or ‘wolf’ as the case may be. Well, he suggested, try for some time to keep a wolf away from all other food and give it only lambs to eat, after the necessary lapse of time the matter in the wolf will be nothing but lamb, and yet it will not have lost its wolfishness. Therefore the wolf-nature, expressed in the general concept ‘wolf’ must be something real.

Now the fact that the so-called ‘ontological’ proof of God's existence could arise at all, bears witness to a deep and thorough going change then taking place in human nature. Quite a short time before, it simply would not have occurred to anyone within European culture to want to prove God's existence, for this was felt to be self-evident. Only when this feeling was no longer alive in men, did they begin to crave for proof. If you have living inner certainty about a thing, you do not want to prove it. But at that time something was slipping away from man, which until then had been alive in him quite as a matter of course, and the human spirit was thus led into quite other channels—quite other needs. I could adduce many another example, showing precisely at the highest levels of thought and knowledge (though you may take the word 'highest' with a grain of salt) what a deep stirring and rumbling was going on in human nature during that period of the Middle Ages.

Now we can surely not deny that there must be some connection between what is going on in the life of mankind and the phenomena in the Heavens beyond the Earth. In the most general sense, we must assume that there is some connection; what it is in detail, we shall discover in due course. Hence we may ask—we want to proceed very carefully, so we need only ask—‘How were these inner experiences which man on Earth was undergoing at that time, connected with the evolution of the Earth-plant altogether?’,—a question which may obviously lead us into realms beyond the earth. Was it perhaps a special moment in the evolution of the Earth a such? Is there anything that we can point to as a more definite criterion of what this moment was in human evolution?

We can indeed point to something of significance in this connection. There was another time which made a deep incision in the name regions of the Earth where in the Middle Ages these events were taking place in the most highly sublimated realm of human life the spiritual life of thought. The medieval time, when this deep moving and stirring of humanity took place, lies in the very midst between two end-points, as it were, in the scale of time. For European regions these ‘end-points’ do not represent the kind of times in which intense activity of human life and culture would be possible at all. In effect, if from this medieval moment, which I will call A (Fig. 1), we go backward and forward an equal length of time into a fairly distant past and future, we come to points of time representing a certain barrenness and death of civilization in the very regions where this deep stirring of human life was going on in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. About 10,000 years forward and 10,000 years back from this moment (A in Figure 1) we reach the maximum development of the Ice Ages in these very regions Ice Ages certainly would not allow of any outstanding development in human life and culture.

Surveying therefore the evolution of these European regions we find an Ice Age—a laying-waste of civilization—10,000 years before the Christian era, and we should find the same again 10,000 years after this time. The deep stirring of human life, of which we have been speaking, happened midway between two such barren epochs.

As I said just now, there is a certain reluctance to pay attention to this period in the development of philosophy—the 13th and 14th centuries;—it is not seen clearly and accurately for what it is. Yet if one has a feeling for the evolution of the life of knowledge in mankind, one is aware that to this day our philosophic history is influenced by the after-effects of what was stirring and rumbling in the life of mankind at that time. It showed itself in other domains of civilization too; it only came to expression most clearly and symptomatically in this phase of development of the life of thought and knowledge.

Now as you know, this phase of development—appearing about the middle of the Middle Ages—was an incisive one in European civilization. I have often spoken of it in anthroposophical lectures. It was an incision. Something was changed in the whole trend of human evolution. It had been beginning long before—in the 8th century B.C. We may describe it as a most intense development of human intellectuality.

Since then, in the life and civilization of mankind, we have been looking especially at the development of Ego-consciousness. All aberrations and all wisdom gained in the general life of humanity since that medieval time are really due to this Ego-development to the ever-growing elaboration of the consciousness of “I” in man. The consciousness of the ancient Greeks and even of the Latins (both the ancient Latins and their descendants, the Latin peoples of today) did not lay so much stress on the Ego. Even in language for the most part, in grammar and syntax, they do not pronounce the “I” so outspokenly, but still include it in the verb. The “I” is not yet so blatantly set forth. Take Aristotle and Plato, and above all the greatest philosopher of antiquity, Heraclitus. Throughout their work the Ego is not yet so prominent. The way in which they take hold of the world-phenomena with the intellectual reasoning principle is as yet rather more selfless. (Please do not over stress this, but in a relative sense the word ‘selfless’ may be used.) There is not yet so sharp a dissociation of the self from the world-phenomena as there tends to be in the new age—the Age of Consciousness in which we are now living.

Going still farther back—beyond the 8th century B.C.—we come into the Egyptian and Chaldean Age as I have called it (you will find the details in my “Occult Science”). Once again, the condition of the human soul was different. During this age—which like the others, lasted for over 2,000 years—man was not yet relating external phenomena to one-another by intellectual reasoning at all. He apprehended the world—the Heavens too—rather in feeling and direct sensation. It is mistaken and fruitless to approach what is still extent of the Astronomy of Egypt and Chalden with present-day intellectual judgments—the kind of judgment which we ourselves have inherited from the Graeco-Latin Age. We must achieve a certain metamorphoses or soul so as to enter into the quite different soul-condition then prevailing, where man took hold of the world in simple feeling and sensation (where the concept was not yet separated from the sensation).

Even in the realm of actual sensations or sense-impressions—as can be shown historically and philologically—they attached no great importance to the precise description of the blue and violet shades of color, whereas (they had a very keen sensation of the red and yellow regions of the spectrum. Indeed the sensation of the dark colors can be seen to have arisen simultaneously with the capacity for intellectual concepts.

The Egypto-Chaldean Age—from 747 B.C. about 2160 years into the past,—takes us to the beginning of the third millennium BC. Still earlier, say in the fourth or fifth millennium BC, we come into an age when man's whole outlook and mode of perception were so different from ours today that it is hard for us, without recourse to spiritual-scientific methods, to transplant ourselves at all into the way in which the man of that time was the world around him. It was not only a feeling and sensing,—it was a living with the outer happenings, being right in them. Man felt himself a part and member of all Nature around him, much as my arm, if it were conscious, would feel itself a member of my body.

Here therefore was an altogether different trend and quality in man's relation to the world. And if we go still farther back, we find this union of man with the surround world even more enhanced. In those very early times, civilizations were only able to develop where special geographical conditions made it possible. I mean the time described in my Occult Science as the Ancient Indian civilization—much earlier than the culture of the Vedas, which was but a later echo of it. The Ancient Indian epoch comes very near to the time when glacial conditions prevailed in our regions of the Earth. A culture like the Ancient Indian could only develop when such climatic conditions, more or less, as we enjoy in the Temperate zone today, extended to what is now the Equator. You can deduce it simply from the relative advance or retreat of the ice; tropical conditions did not come about in India until a must later time, when in more northerly regions the ice had receded.

We see therefore how the inner evolution of mankind undergoes modifications hand in hand with changing terrestrial conditions—changing conditions, that is to say, on the Earth's surface. Only those who take a very short-term view of mankind's evolution upon Earth will imagine that the scientific ideas we entertain today have any absolute validity—that we have now at last got through to the scientific truth, so to speak. To anyone who looks more deeply into these regions of the Earth which are today enjoying certain forms of cultural and spiritual life will at some future time inevitably be laid waste again; they will be desolate once more. From the past length of time you may reckon out how long ahead it will be till a new glacial age overtakes our present civilization. Moreover assuming that we can find some connection between the celestial phenomena and these facts of earthly evolution—the successive Ice-ages and the mid-point between them—this will lead on to a further insight. That which take place on Earth in the most highly sublimated realms of cultural life—in the life of thought and knowledge—will be related now not only to these changing conditions on the Earth itself, but to conditions in the outer Cosmos. Purely empirical reflection shows that man is what he is by virtue of conditions on the planet Earth and in the Universe beyond.

Once more then taking the facts empirically as is usual in Science, only with a somewhat wider range, our vision is extended until we recognize such a relationship as we have just been describing. Now in a sense, even in present time we can perceive how the quality and trend of human spiritual life is brought about by the relation between the Earth and the celestial bodies. In an earlier lecture it was pointed out how different the spiritual configuration of mankind tends to be in Equatorial and in Polar regions. Investigating this more closely, the different relation of the Earth to the Sun proves to be the determining factor. It makes man in the Polar regions less free of his bodily nature. Man in the Polar regions is less able to lift himself out of the bodily organism,—to pain free use and manipulation of his life of soul (As to the different mutual relations of Earth and Sun, there will be more in it than that, as we shall find in due course; but to begin with we can take our start from the conventional notions.)

We need only picture to ourselves how differently the men of Polar regions are taken hold of by something which in ourselves keeps more in the background. We of the Temperate zone have the quick alternation of day and night. Think how long this alternation becomes as you approach the Polar zone. It is as though the day were to lengthen out into a year. I told you of what works in the little child, deep in the bodily nature from year to year, from birth to the change of teeth, and of how the independent working of the life of soul, given up as it is to the quicker rhythm of the day, gradually frees and detaches itself from this more bodily working. This is not possible to the same extent in Polar regions. It is the yearly rhythm which will there tend to make itself felt. The emphasis is more on the bodily side. The human being will not wrest himself free to the same extent from what works within the body.

Think now of the scanty relics that have been preserved from the civilization of very early times,—that have survived the Ice Age. Then you will see that there were times in which a kind of ‘Polarization’ (giving the word its proper meaning in this context) extended right across the present Temperate zone, so that conditions were prevailing here not unlike those in the present Polar regions. You can use this comparison for what was working in the Ice Age; you can truly say: What is now pressed back towards the North Pole, extended then over a considerable part of the Earth. (Please keep this free of present-day explanations and ideas, for otherwise the pure phenomenon will be obscured. Take only the pure phenomenon as such.)

Conditions on the Earth today are such that we have the three types; the human beings of the Tropical, the Temperate and the Polar zones respectively. Of course they influence each other, so that in outer reality the phenomenon does not appear quite so purely. Nevertheless, what you here have in a spatial form—you find it again in time as you go backward. Going back in time, we come to a ‘North Pole’, as it were, in time—in the history of civilization. Going forward, we come to a Pole again. Remembering that the Polar influence on man is connected with the mutual relations between Earth and Sun. We must conceive that the change which has taken place since the Ice Age—the de-polarization, so to speak—is connected with a changed relation between Earth and Sun. Something must have happened as regards the mutual relation between Earth and Sun. What was it then? The facts themselves suggest the question. What is the source of this in the celestial spaces?

Consider it more nearly. Of course these things will be different in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, but the facts remain. We shall at most have to extend our picture, adapting it to the real facts. We can only take our start from the empirically given data. What is revealed then, if we approach the phenomena without preconceived ideas? The Earth and the events on Earth appear as an expression of cosmic happenings—cosmic happenings which manifest themselves in certain rhythms. Something that showed itself about the tenth millennium before the origin of Christianity, will show itself again about the eleventh millennium after. What is in between, will also in a sense be repeated. What we here have between the two Ice Ages, will undoubtedly have been there before—in former cycles. It is a rhythm; our attention is drawn to a rhythmic process.

And now look out into the celestial phenomena. To emphasize one fact especially, which I have often pointed to in my lectures, you have the following. (I will only characterize it roughly.) You know that the vernal point—where the Sun rises in spring-time gradually moves through the Ecliptic. Today the vernal point is in the constellation of Pisces; before, it was in Aries; still earlier in Tauraus,—that was the time of the cult of the Bull among the Egyptians and Chaldeans. Still earlier, it was in the constellation of Gemini, and then in Cancer; in Leo. This already brings us very nearly to the last Ice Age. Thinking it through to a conclusion, we know that the vernal point goes all the way round the Ecliptic, and that the time it takes is called the Platonic Year—the great Cosmic Year, lasting approximately 25,920 years.

A whole number of processes are comprised in these 25,920 years, involving among other things this rhythmic alternation on the Earth; Ice Age., intermediate period, Ice Age, intermediate period, and so on. At the time we spoke of, when there was that deep stirring of the spiritual life in mankind, the vernal point was entering the sign of Pisces. In the Graeco-Latin Age it had been in the sign of Aries, previous to that in Taurus, and so on. We get back to Leo or Virgo, more or less, during the time when glacial conditions prevailed over the greater part of Europe and in America too. Looking into the future, there will be another Ice Age in these regions when the vernal point reaches the sign of Scorpio. This rhythm is contained within what takes its course in 25,920 years. Although admittedly of vast extent, it is a true rhythm none the less.

Now as I have often mentioned, this rhythm is reminiscent—purely numerically—of another rhythm. If it is simply a question of rhythms and the rhythms are expressible in numbers, if the numbers are the same the rhythms too are the same. You know that the number of breaths man takes—in breathing and out breathing—is approximately 18 to the minute. Reckon out the number of breaths in a 24-hour day and you get the same number as before—25,920. Man therefore shows in his daily life the same periodicity, the same rhythm, as is revealed by the movement of the vernal point in the great Cosmic Year. Now it is in the day that man shows this rhythm. A day therefore, with respect to breathing, corresponds to the Platonic Year. The vernal point—connected as it is with the Sun—goes round apparently in 25,920 years. But there is also the apparent movement of the Sun through the 24 hour day, while man is taking 25,920 breaths. It is the same picture here as in the great Universe. If then there were a Being who breathed in and out once a year (a simple-minded hypothesis no doubt, but we will use it for comparison),—such a Being, if living long enough, would undergo in 25,920 years the same process as man does in a day. Man reproduces, as it were in miniature, what is manifested in the great cosmic process.

These things make little impression on the people of today, for they are not accustomed to look at the qualitative aspect of the world. Quantitatively, the mere rhythm appears less important. Therefore the scientists are out to find other relations between numbers than these that find expression in pure rhythms. They pay less heed to the latter: But in the epochs when man experienced more nearly the relation between himself and the Universe—when he felt himself more immersed in the phenomena of the Cosmos—these things made a deep impression on him. As we go back in the history of mankind—beyond the second or third millennium B.C.—we find great attention paid to the Platonic Year. I mentioned yesterday not to explain it, but by way of illustration—the ancient Indian Yoga system. Man entered deeply into a living inner experience of the breathing process, trying to make it conscious. In doing so there dawned upon him this relation between the rhythm that goes on in man—breathed, as it were, into man in a concentrated and contracted form—and the phenomena of the great Universe. Therefore he spoke of his own in- and out-breathing and of the mighty in- and out-breathing of Brahma, a single breath spanning an entire year, for which 25, 920 years are a day—a day of the Great Spirit.

I do not wish to make an unkind remark, my dear friends, but we do here begin to get some notion of the great distance which men at one time felt between themselves and the Spirit of the Macrocosm whom they revered. Man felt himself about as far beneath the Spirit of the Macrocosm as a day is beneath 25,920 years. It was indeed a great Spirit—a very great Spirit—whom man conceived in this way and whose relation to himself he experienced with due modesty. It would not be uninteresting to compare how great is the distance often felt by modern man between himself and his God. Does he not often conceive the Deity as little more than a slightly idealized human being?

This may not seem very relevant to our subject, but in fact it is. If we want to develop real means of knowledge in this sphere, we must find our way from what is merely calculable into quite other realms. Indeed our study of Kepler's Laws and all that followed from them showed how our very calculations, leading as they do to incommensurable numbers, impel us of their own accord into a realm beyond mere calculation.

I would like to say a few words about the color in which we have held our meetings here. There is good reason for this being red. When we see red on the outside, it forms its counter-image on the inside, because the eye has the tendency to create the greenish-blue from within when it sees red in front of it: this is the inner activity of the eye. With children, a great deal depends on how the body responds to external impressions. I refer here to what I said about the color red when we were discussing education. The eye responds to a red environment with a tendency towards green-blue activity, and this inner work is calming. Therefore, the color red in the environment has a calming effect on excited children. If you remember that later stages of human development always lead back to the childhood stage at a higher level, you will understand why the color was chosen for a place – which, even if it is not a place of initiation, should remind us of it through its symbols – that triggers the color in the child's body that is directed towards the sacred. It is not without reason that the Bible says: Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Our inner being must become as pure as the ether of the cosmos, which meets us in blue. The education for this is expressed in the red color of our environment. If red surrounds us externally, the contrary color lives within us. This explains the red in all esoteric cult sites, while exoteric sites, where the secret teachings are spoken of externally and in symbols, are blue. The Rosicrucian worldview expresses the esoteric in the color red. If the room is fully furnished in the sense of the Rosicrucian worldview, then blue arches should still rise above.

What do the two columns mean to the Rosicrucians? If one wants to explain these two columns standing here before us, one must start from the so-called Golden Legend. This says:

When Seth, the son of Adam – who had taken the place of Abel – was ready, he was allowed to gain an insight into Paradise, allowed to pass the angel with the sword whirling in the fire, into the place from which man had been expelled. There Seth saw something very special. He saw how the two trees, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge, entwined each other. Seth got three seeds from these two entwined trees, took them with him and put them in the mouth of his father Adam when he had died. A mighty tree then grew out of Adam's grave. This tree appeared to some who had psychic senses, as if it were glowing with fire, and this fire coiled itself for him who could see into the letters B, the first letters of two words that I am not authorized to pronounce here, but the meaning of which is: “I am who was, I am who is, I am who will be.” This tree divided into three limbs. Seth took wood from it, and it was used in many ways in the evolution of the world. A staff was made from it; the magic wand of Moses, legend says. It was the same wood that was used to form the beams of Solomon's Temple. They remained there as long as people understood the ancient secrets. Then the wood was thrown into a pond in which the lame and the blind were healed at certain times. After it had been taken out again, it formed the bridge over which the Redeemer passed as he made his way to the cross. And finally, so the legend goes, the cross itself, on which the Redeemer hung, was made from the wood of this tree, which had grown out of Adam's mouth after the seeds of the entwined trees of life and knowledge had been placed in his mouth.

This legend has a deep symbolic meaning. Remember the process, the transformation that the disciple must think of when he goes through the fourth stage of the Rosicrucian training: the production of the philosopher's stone. We remember that it has to do with a certain treatment of our red blood. Let us think of the significance of this red blood, not only because Goethe's saying, “Blood is a very special fluid,” points us to it, but because occultism has taught it at all times. The way this red blood appears is a result of breathing oxygen. We can only touch on this briefly. When we are now referred to such an important moment in the legend and in the Bible, to the re-entry of Seth into Paradise, we must remember what caused man to be driven out of Paradise. He was driven out of Paradise, man's ancient state in the bosom of the higher spiritual world, by the following, which is already hinted at in the Bible as the physical process that goes hand in hand with the descent. Those who want to understand the Bible must learn to take it literally. It says: “God breathed into the man the breath of life, and he became a living soul.” This breathing in of the breath was a process that is here expressed figuratively and that extended over millions of years. What does it mean?

In the development of mankind, in the formation of the physical body, there were times when there were no lungs in the human body, so that oxygen could not yet be inhaled. There were times when man more or less floated in liquid elements, when he had an organ, a kind of swim bladder, from which the lungs later developed. This swim bladder of the past has been transformed into the lungs, and we can follow the process of transformation. When we do this, it shows itself as the process that the Bible expresses with the image: “And God breathed into the man the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.” It was only with this breathing of the breath that the production of red blood became possible. Thus the descent of man is connected with the production of the red blood tree in his inner being.

Imagine that the human being stands before you and you can only follow the trickling of the red blood: you would have before you a living red tree. Of this the Christian esoteric says: It is the tree of knowledge. Man has usurped it, he has enjoyed the red blood tree. The erection of the red blood tree, which is the true tree of knowledge: that is sin. And God drove man out of paradise so that he would not also enjoy the tree of life. We have another tree in us, which you can imagine in the same way as the other. But it has red-blue blood. This blood is the stuff of death. The red-blue tree was implanted in man at the same time as the other. When man rested in the bosom of the Godhead, the Godhead in him was able to interweave what his life and his knowledge meant. And in the future lies the point in time when man, through his expanded consciousness will be able to transform the blue blood into the red blood; then he will have within himself the source for the blue blood tree to be a tree of life. Today it is a tree of death. In this image, there is both a retrospective and a prospective view! You see that in man a red blood tree and a red-blue blood tree are entwined. The red blood is the expression of the I, it is the lower part of the knowledge of the I. The blue blood is the expression of death. As a punishment, the blue blood tree was added to the red tree of knowledge as the tree of death. In the distant future, this tree of death will be transformed into the tree of life, just as it was originally a tree of life. When you imagine man as he stands before you, his whole life is based on the interaction of these two trees.

The fact that Seth was allowed to enter Paradise again means that he was an initiate and was allowed to look back on the divine-spiritual state where the two trees were intertwined. And he put three seeds of the entwined trees into Adam's mouth, from which a tree divided into three arose. This means: the tree that grows out of man, Manas, Buddhi, Atma, these three parts that make up the upper part of man, are found in him by nature. The legend thus indicates how the trinity of the divine is already present in the human disposition, even in Adam, how it grows out of him and how it is initially seen only by the initiate. Man must go his course of development. All the things that have taken place in the development of mankind and that lead to initiation are further expressed to us by the legend.

From the realization that the threefold tree rests within us, the tree of the eternal, which expresses itself in the words: “I am that was - I am that is - I am that will be!” we gain the power that moves us forward and gives us the magic wand. Hence Moses' wand. Hence the wood of the tree growing out of the seed is taken to build the temple of wisdom. Hence the cross is hewn out of it, that sign of initiation which signifies the overcoming of the lower limbs in man by the three higher ones.

Thus this legend shows how the initiate looks forward to a future state where the tree of knowledge - the red blood tree - and the tree of life - the blue-red blood tree - will be entwined, where they will intertwine in man himself. Now, the one who wants to develop inscribes in his heart what the two columns – the red column on the one hand, suggesting the red blood column; the blue-red, suggesting the blue blood column – want to tell us. Today, both are separate. Therefore, in the hall, the red column stands on the left and the blue-red column on the right. They want to challenge us to overcome the present state of humanity, to direct our path to the point where, through our expanded consciousness, they will intertwine in a way that is called: J-B. The red column is designated J, the blue-red column B.

The sayings on the pillars will help you to visualize the connection between the individual pillars. The words on the red pillar are:

In pure thought you will find
The Self that can sustain itself.

Transform your thoughts into images,
And you will experience creative wisdom.

Those who meditate on this will, through the power of their thoughts, instill in their red blood column the power that leads to the goal: the wisdom column.

The power needed for the life column is instilled when one devotes oneself to the thought that stands on the other, the blue column:

When you condense feeling into light,
You reveal the forming power.

You objectify the will into being,
Thus you create in the world's being.

Some words relate to knowledge, others to life. The formative power first “reveals” itself in the sense of the first saying; it only becomes “magical” in the sense of the second saying. The transition from mere cognitive power to magical action lies in the transition from the power of the saying on the first column to that of the saying on the second.

Thus you see how what these symbols, the two pillars, mean, is directly related to the ideals and goals of the Rosicrucian student. In some esoteric societies, these two pillars are also erected. The esotericist will always associate the meaning that has been attached to them.

The seven images that adorn the hall are symbolic expressions of very specific ancient wisdoms. They represent the so-called seven seals of ancient and ever-new wisdom. The Apocalypse of John also talks about it, and this apocalypse is also a kind of interpretation of an occult sign language. Those who study it will recognize these very seals in the visions of the writer of the Apocalypse.

Every letter, every color of the images means something. If we look at things in the right way and sense the context, then very specific feelings are triggered that can become the creators of inner strength. The point is that we are not dealing here with leather allegories, but with a living expression of what anyone [initiate] can experience as real facts on the astral plane.

The first picture is the man with the fire sword in his mouth. This sword – and this one move is crucial – is connected with a secret of development. Speech has always been compared to the sword. But this is not just a poetic image. In occultism, everything is to be taken literally. One must only understand it.

There is a certain mysterious connection between what lives in our language, what expresses itself through our larynx in our words, and today's lower human drives of reproduction. The human form is undergoing transformation. Some can already see on the astral plane today what will be physically available in the future. In such a picture, the seer sees a state that man will one day reach, as in the first of the seven. This picture is an astral one today. It expresses a state of evolution of the physical human body in the future.

If we want to imagine this state, we have to think of it in this way: through his present, lower reproductive power, man exercises a production in the involuntary and unconscious. Through the reproductive instinct he can bring forth forms filled with matter. Now there is another power in man that does not yet enable him to produce lasting forms: that is the power of his speech. By speaking here, I also produce something. If you follow what is happening in this room while I speak, you can follow oscillating air waves. These are nothing other than words set in motion: movement. In the distant past, such words set in motion were also what is expressed today in the reproductive life. What is condensed today was, when it was still spirit, a word set in motion. What man today can only do out of his word as movement will later become truly reproductive power. Imagine you were able to freeze my words in a moment, so that the solidified air waves would fall down. You would find a special form for each word: a different one for “and” than for “God” ; a shell shape, for all I care. When I say “God”, other forms would be there than when I say “and”. Occultism shows us that everything around us in the form of physical objects has really come into being in this way. The spirit of the Logos resounded into space and matter took shape; the rest is a process of solidification. What is around us today are formed words, condensed divine word. The forces within us are condensed divine forces. What was once created through the word is now being transformed into natural forms. Thus, in the course of evolution, the human larynx will become a reptile-reproducing organ. We will not only be able to create movements, but the larynx will become the true reproductive organ. What is language today will become the creator of its own kind. The larynx is the future organ of reproduction, elevated to spirituality; hence, in man, the parallel in sexual development and laryngeal development can already be seen. The transformation of the voice at sexual maturity points to the creative power that will one day develop from the human voice. The true power of reproduction will arise from speech, the conscious power of human beings to bring forth. And just as you know that we give the name fire spirits to the spirits who were our ancestors because they were related to fire as we are to air, so we will develop from an air spirit to a fire spirit again as we ascend. Not only will the one power flow from the larynx, but also the power of the fire spirits.

You can see this expressed in the first picture, in the fiery sword of the one who represents the eternal essence of man that continues through all incarnations. This eternal element in man is at the same time the divine creator. It is true that what passes through our incarnations as our eternal essence is of the same nature as that which created the sevenfold planetary series. Therefore, the man in his right hand holds the symbols of the seven planets.

The second picture shows the so-called apocalyptic animals: the lion, eagle, bull and human. We get an idea of them when we remember that the animal today does not have an ego soul like we do. The animal does not have its ego soul on the physical plane; the individual animal relates to the ego of a group like a limb of the human being relates to the whole ego. Therefore, we speak of group souls in animals, and if you investigate these group souls, you will find them on the astral plane. Now everyone will realize that man, in his evolution, has also gone through conditions where that which was on the physical plane did not yet have the I-soul. Man also went through conditions where he had a group soul. At the same time — which is called the Lemurian Age — that the soul descended into physical corporeality, the group soul transformed into the individual soul. In the distant future, man will again rise to the state of the group soul, only consciously, in a higher sense. The symbol for that higher group soul is the second picture. The unity in the distant future is represented by the outer forms of those group souls that humanity had in the past. These group souls, from which the human individual soul has emerged and to which it will return, are divided into four typical groups. These are four real astral groups. One is characterized by the group soul as it is still embodied today in rudiments of the soul of Taurus; the other as it develops in the soul of Leo; the third as in the soul of the bird; but the soul that elevated man, allowed him to enter into individuality, is called the human being. Man emerged from these four group souls and into them he will return. The group soul that is the most advanced, which is already individualized on the astral plane as a human soul, we see in the middle of the symbol. It is the Christ-soul, symbolized by the lamb. It complements the four other group souls.

Then you see here in the rainbow, which surrounds the whole in the seven colors, the creative world principle in a second form. It is the sevenfold creative principle that effectively underlay the inner, human path of evolution when man was still at that stage. And regarding the numbers I to XII, which can be read like the numbers on a clock on the colors of the rainbow, we must remember that the earth, moon and sun were once one body.

This unity is connected with conditions as shown here. This form of cosmic order was necessary for man to be a group soul. Our present time division is connected with the position of the world bodies. In that very distant past, when there was not yet an earth revolving around the sun, all time relationships must have been different. In those days there was no day and hour. The sun itself made its way, and there was a great cosmic clock face. This represented the places the sun passed through. The hour hand on our clocks passes the clock twice a day; so in that ancient cosmic calendar, the sun did not pass through the zodiac once, but twice, through a period of brightness and darkness. This double passage, this double passing through these stations, is called passing by the elder brothers of the cosmic order. They are the twenty-four elders of the Apocalypse. Hence a kind of world clock is arranged.

If we look at the distant future, you will see cosmic, future states expressed in the sixth picture, where man will have risen again in his outer form; we see that the earth and sun will be united and what is eliminated will be eliminated as a moon body. Remember that Goethe calls the highest thing the soul can strive for the eternal feminine. What overcomes the unusable substances in human nature is called feminine. When the earth has united with the sun, then man himself will be the sun-woman; man will have created the union. The unusable substance is represented as the moon, which is trampled underfoot. What must come out when the earth becomes the sun again is represented by the dragon. It will be overcome when the earth becomes the sun again.

The third image shows an open book, surrounded by bowls and angels blowing trumpets, surrounded by flowing light and colors.

The trumpeting angels express the harmony of the spheres. When one ascends from the astral plane to the devachan plane, one experiences the floating world of light and color of the astral plane being permeated by the harmony of the spheres. That which can be seen within the astral plane as floating light and color begins to resound, revealing itself as an expression of the essence of the mental plane. The Pythagorean school called this harmony the music of the spheres. Goethe also speaks of it when he says: “The sun sounds according to ancient ways...” and “The new day is already born sounding for spiritual ears!”

The bowls signify the so-called bowls of wrath, that is to say that the human being will have attained the spirit when he has overcome and transformed what is called wrath. All that is wrathful must be cast out; therefore the bowls of wrath are poured out.

The book is not intended to imply anything other than that man himself, in his development, if we know how to solve his secrets correctly, represents an image of the eternal evolution of the world. When he recognizes this, that man is an image of the evolution of the world, then he can read himself, he has become a book to himself. Then the moment will arrive of which it says in the Apocalypse that John must devour the book. This is explained in more detail in the next seal.

The two columns of the fourth picture represent the devouring red and blue blood tree. The cloud is the present-day air, which the larynx only controls. From this, the productive power of man, which creates into the solid, will arise in the future. Above the two blood columns, the initiated human being who has devoured the book will emerge. And man generates within himself the power that will transform the earth into the sun. This power is characterized in the face that is born out of the sun. When man has reached this stage, his vision is a vision into the astral world. This is indicated to you in the rainbow above the face of the sun. This rainbow indicates the power that man will have acquired when he himself becomes a cosmic creator being.

In the fifth picture we have a being that conquers the dragon. This is the future human being who will have completely subdued what is called the lower self. This is connected with cosmic conditions that arise when what is called Kama is trampled underfoot.

The state that will occur when this has happened is symbolized in the Holy Grail of the narrated image. The transparent cube below represents a transparent diamond cube made of pure carbon. When man has progressed to the point where he uses carbon itself to build his body - without the help of plants - he will create the cube. This cube of crystallized pure carbon is the best indication of the future state of man. Man will have progressed so far that he will not only recognize the three dimensions, but also the oncoming contra-dimensions: hence the three other dimensions meet the three in the mirror image. These counter-dimensions represent what man will one day achieve when he has overcome the physical in spirit. The serpents signify the upward development to the higher. This is indicated in the seal in violet-bluish coils as a luminous image. This luminous image of the serpent signifies the devoted nature of knowledge. Only this devoted nature can grasp the world spiral in the Caduceus, which will then be fiery, which winds itself out of pure knowledge. Then it transforms into the downward-pointing pure chalice. The chalice of the plant is today directed upwards, pure and chaste; in man it is the other way round. But the human chalice will again be chaste and will turn downwards - that is why the Grail is represented here as a chalice turned downwards. The pure man, the man who has become innocent, is represented by the dove. The rainbow indicates the sevenfold creative man.

Thus the entire evolution of humanity is indicated in the seven seals. Contemplation of such images is intended to evoke the feelings that we must gain and that themselves represent effective evolutionary moments.

The program book is inscribed with the signature of the Rosicrucian school: E.D.N. I.C.M. P.S.S.R. This means:

Ex deo nascimur
In Christo morimur
Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

The seven seals express the secrets of initiation; in the seven pillars, they are expressed in planetary terms. These pillars support the heavens, that is to say, all evolution. The capitals have their own specific meaning in all their individual features. If you feel vividly how the upper part slopes towards the lower, feelings are triggered in you that give an account of the currents in the respective states of these world bodies. The motifs of the first column have simple inclinations and curvatures. Contemplation of them evokes a feeling of the currents that permeated the Earth when it was embodied in its first state, which is called the Saturn state. That is why this is the Saturn pillar.

When you feel the progression of the motifs when looking at the second column – the lower part is structured like the ovary of a plant, and from above it is structured in such a way that it can become a calyx – feelings are triggered in you that correspond to the currents that flowed through the earth when it was in the sun state. That is why we speak here of the sun column. And so it is with the consideration of the third, fourth and further pillars. When one passes from one to the other, different currents of feeling develop again and again.

The first half of the evolution of the earth has its special peculiarity from the influence of Mars. Now, in the second half, it is under the influence of the power that the occultist sees emanating from Mercury. The evolution of the earth is therefore divided into the two halves of Mars and Mercury. If we now omit the volcanic state as a kind of octave of the Saturn state, the following series of states in the evolution of the earth emerges: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus.

In the Mercury column, the Saturn motif is interwoven with the Mercury motif. The snake staff emerges organically from what has gone before. It develops further. And as we delve into the motifs of the other capitals, we sense the earth currents that arise from further development. In the last one, we have the goblet shape again.

The secret of the seven planetary states of our earth has been incorporated into the names of the seven days of the week. They are: Saturday, Samedi, Samstag; Sunday; Monday, Monday; Martian Day: Mardi or Ziu, Tuesday; Mercury Day: Mercredi (Wednesday is a profane name); Jupiter Day: Jeudi, Thor, Donar, Thursday; Venus Day: Vendredi, Freya, Friday. The names of the days of the week are deeply symbolic. In their succession, we see something by which the initiates wanted to say: Remember that you have been placed in the living evolution of time. This is how the highest teaches us to understand the very nearest, that which is in our immediate surroundings.

The idea of the evolution of humanity was to be hinted at in the pillars. It is expressed as it has always been expressed in occult symbolism. The sites of occultism were symbolically structured and designed. One should see what lives in the soul in form, in image, in color. What lives in the soul should shine out to us from the outside, then one has worked in the sense of world evolution. Above all, it is our task to think selflessly about this great evolution. It will be fulfilled when we allow the inner life to flow into the outer life completely.

[Before the lecture Rudolf Steiner gives Instructions for the Christmas Conference and Reiterates his Proposal Regarding the Future Leadership of the Society. See GA 259]

We will utilise the last lecture before the Course which is to be given here, by bringing together what has been said about the various Mysteries belonging to this or that region of the Earth, and attempting to describe to you, at any rate from one point of view, the very nature and being of the Mysteries, in the form they took in the Middle Ages, approximately from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries.

I do not speak of this epoch because it is particularly complete in itself but because it can be used to show the form human striving was taking during that period in the most civilised parts of the Earth. The spiritual striving of that period is often described under the name of the Mysteries of the Rosicrucians. This designation is in a certain sense quite justifiable, but it must not be confused with the charlatan element we often meet in literature without realising how much charlatanry there is in the things of which we read. The name ‘Rosicrucian’ must direct our attention to that deeply earnest striving for knowledge which existed during these centuries in almost every region of Europe, Central, Western and Southern. We must realise that the figure of Faust as described by Goethe, with all his deep striving of soul, with all his earnest effort, is a later figure, no longer anything like as profound in soul as many a researcher to be found in the mediaeval laboratories. These are individuals of whom nothing reaches us by way of history but who nevertheless laboured earnestly during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. I spoke in the last lecture of the tragic note that predominates in the investigators of this epoch. The outstanding trait in them is the feeling that they must needs strive after the highest knowledge that can be creatively active in man; and yet they felt, not only that they could never reach this highest goal but that from a certain point of view the very striving after it gives ground for serious doubt.

I have said that we do not find among these scientists in their alchemical laboratories a knowledge that is ready-made and theoretical but a knowledge that is intimately connected with the whole human being, with the innermost feelings and deepest longings of the heart; it was indeed a knowledge of the heart.

What was its origin? You will most readily understand it if I try now to give you a picture of this tragic scepticism of the mediaeval investigators. Let me first direct your attention once again to the form taken by human cognition on the Earth in very ancient times.

The most ancient form of human knowledge, intimately bound up as it was with the life of the individual human being, was not of such a nature as to lead man to look up to the planets and perceive the grandeur and sublimity of their mathematical movements, such as men reckon out and devise today. At that time, each planet, as all else spread out in the Heavens, was a living being, and not only a living, but an ensouled being, nay even a being of spirit. Men spoke constantly of the families of the planets, of the families of the heavenly bodies, for they knew that just as there exists a blood-relationship between the members of a human family, similarly there exists an inner relationship between the members of a planetary system. There was an absolute parallel between what is to be found in man and what reveals itself outside in the Cosmos.

Let us take on region of the Earth as an example, and show from that the kind of knowledge man learned to acquire in the most ancient of the Mysteries when he looked up to the Sun. At that time there still existed Mystery-sanctuaries arranged with a specially prepared skylight, so that at certain definite times of day the Sun could be seen in a diminished light. Thus you must imagine the most important chamber in many an ancient Sun Temple with a skylight in the roof and the window filled with some kind of material—not glass in our modern sense but a material through which the orb of the Sun was seen in a dim light as of twilight at a certain time of day. The pupil was prepared in his soul to observe the solar orb with the right mood and feeling. He had to make his feeling receptive and sensitive, he had to quicken the inner perception of his soul, so that when he exposed it, through his eye, to the orb of the Sun, the latter made an impression on him of which he could form a clear idea in consciousness.

Now, of course, many people today look at the Sun through smoked glass, but they are not prepared in their power of feeling to receive the impression in such a way that it remains in their soul as a very special impression. The pupil in those ancient Mysteries, however, received a very definite impression of the dimmed solar orb after he had undergone long exercises beforehand. A man who was able once to have such an impression could truly never forget it.

With this impression the pupil also gained more understanding for certain things around him than he formerly had. Thus after he had been prepared by the majestic impression made upon him by the Sun, the special quality of the substance gold was allowed to work upon him; and through this Sun-preparation, the pupil actually came to a deep understanding of the quality of gold.

When one looks into these things, it is painful to realise the triviality of our modern consciousness, when we find in so many historical works the reason why this or the other ancient philosopher allocated gold to the Sun or gave the same symbol to gold and to the Sun. Man has no longer any idea that what was thus known in those olden times, proceeded from long exercises and preparations. A pupil who looked with his whole soul, who as it were steeped his sight in this dimmed light of the Sun, was thereby prepared to understand the gold of the Earth.

How then did he understand it? His attention awoke to the fact that gold is not receptive for that which constitutes for living organisms the breath of life, namely oxygen. Many, indeed most of the other metals are thoroughly receptive to oxygen, but oxygen does not affect or alter gold. This non-receptivity, this obstinacy of gold in the face of that in which man, as you know, has his very life, made a deep impression on the pupil of the ancient Mysteries. He received the impression that gold cannot directly approach life. Now neither can the Sun approach life directly; and the pupil learned that it is well that neither gold nor the Sun can directly approach life. For then he was gradually led to realise the fact that because gold has no relationship with oxygen, the breath of life, when it is introduced in a certain dose into the human organism, it has a quite special effect. It has no relation to the etheric body, no direct relation to the astral body; but it has a direct relation to what lies in human thinking.

My dear friends, just consider how far thinking is removed from life—especially in our modern age! A man can sit like a block of wood and think quite abstractly. He can even think quite livingly in an abstract way. But on the other hand, he cannot by thinking bring about any change in his organism. Man’s thought has become more and more powerless. But this thinking is set in motion by the Ego-organisation, and gold inserted in the right dose into the human organism, can bring back power to thought. It restores to the life of thought the power to work down into the astral body and even into the etheric body; thus through the working of gold man is quickened in his thinking.

One of the secrets of these ancient Mysteries was the secret of gold in connection with the Sun. This relationship between the substance gold and the cosmic working of the Sun was perceived by the pupil of these ancient Mysteries. In a similar way the pupil was led to experience the working of the opposite pole of gold. Gold is an impulse for the quickening of human thinking, so that human thought can work down as far as into the etheric body. But what would be the opposite pole of that?

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Ego-organisation, astral body, etheric body and physical body are the members of the human organism, and we may say that through gold the Ego-organisation becomes capable of working down into the etheric body. The etheric body can then go further and work upon the physical body, but gold brings it about that one can actually hold the thoughts in all their power as far as the etheric body.

Now what is the opposite pole of this? It is an activity that manifests itself when the breath of life—oxygen—is attracted by something in man or in nature. For as gold is obstinate in the face of oxygen, repels it, will have nothing to do with it, and has therefore no direct influence on the etheric body or on the astral body but only on the thought-world of the Ego-organisation—as gold repels oxygen, so carbon on the other hand has in man a direct affinity with oxygen.

We breathe out carbonic acid gas. We make it by uniting carbon with oxygen. And the plants require carbonic acid for their life. Carbon possesses the exactly opposite property of gold.

Now carbon played a great part in the very ancient Mysteries. They spoke on the one hand of gold as a very specially important substance in the study of man, and on the other hand of carbon. Carbon was called the Philosopher’s Stone. Gold and the Philosopher’s Stone were very important things in olden times.

Carbon appears on Earth in a variety of forms. Diamond is carbon—a hard carbon; graphite is carbon; coal is carbon; anthracite is carbon. Carbon appears to us in most diverse forms. Through the methods which were practised in the ancient Mysteries, men learned however to understand that there exist still other forms of carbon, besides those we find here on Earth. And in this connection the pupil in the Mysteries had to undergo another preparation. For besides the Sun-preparation of which I have spoken, there was also in addition the Moon-preparation.

Along with the ancient sanctuaries of the Sun Mysteries we find too a kind of observatory, wherein a man could open his soul and his physical vision to the forms of the Moon. Whereas in the Sun-training the pupil had to behold the Sun at certain times of day in a diminished light, now for weeks at a time he had to expose his eyes to the different forms which the orb of the Moon assumes by night. Gazing thus with his whole soul, the pupil received a definite inner impression, which gave him a new knowledge. Just as the soul by exposing itself to the Sun became endowed with the power of the Sun, similarly, by exposing itself to the phases of the Moon, the soul became endowed with the power of the Moon. Man now learned what metamorphoses the substance of carbon can undergo. On the Earth, carbon is coal or graphite or diamond or anthracite; but on the Moon that which we find here on the Earth as diamond or anthracite or coal—is silver; and that was the secret possessed in these ancient Mysteries. Carbon is silver on the Moon. Carbon is the Philosopher’s Stone, and on the Moon it is silver.

The knowledge that was impressed so profoundly on the pupil in the ancient Mysteries was this: any substance whatsoever is only what it seems in this one place, at this one time. It was sheer ignorance not to know that carbon is diamond, coal or anthracite only on the Earth. What exists on the Earth as diamond or graphite, on the Moon is silver. If we could at this moment dispatch a piece of ordinary black coal to the Moon, it would there be silver.

A vision of this radical metamorphosis was what the pupil attained in those ancient times. It is the foundation, not of that fraudulent Alchemy of which one hears today, but of the true Alchemy. This ancient Alchemy cannot be acquired by any such abstract means of acquiring knowledge as we have today. We observe things and we think about them. Alchemy could not be attained in that way at all. Today man directs his telescope to a certain star, he determines parallel axes and the like, and reckons and reckons; or if he wants to study a certain substance, he applies the spectroscope and so on. But everything that can be learned in this way is infinitely abstract compared with what could once be learned of the stars; and this ancient wisdom, this true astrology, could only be learned, as I explained in the last lecture, by establishing a real and living intercourse with the Intelligences of the Cosmos. That itself was attainment of knowledge, when man was able to hold converse, in his soul and spirit, with the Intelligences of the Cosmos.

What gold signifies for the human organism is connected with the secret of the Sun; and through exposing his soul to the Sun-existence, man thereby entered into relation with the Intelligences of the Sun. They it was who could tell him of the properties of gold. In like manner he entered into relation with the Intelligences of the Moon.

And man learned to know how the Intelligences of the Moon were themselves once in olden times the great Teachers of Earth-humanity, who taught on Earth the primeval wisdom. They were the same who today let their forces and impulses work from the Moon. They withdrew from the Earth at a certain time in evolution, and there on the Moon they founded, as it were, a colony after the Moon had separated from the Earth.

Thus those Intelligences who once lived on the Earth and are today the Moon-Intelligences have to do with this second secret, the carbon-silver secret. Such was the character of knowledge in ancient times.

Let me quote another example. As the pupil could receive impressions from the Sun or from the Moon, so by means of a still further preparation of soul he could also receive impressions from the other planets; and one of the secrets thus obtained was that relating to Venus. Venus is studied today through the telescope, and is regarded as being like any other star or planet. The human body, on the other hand, is studied by investigating, say, a section of the liver and then a section of the brain, and analysing them according to their cellular structure, just as though brain substance and liver substance were not radically different. And in the very same way a student will direct his telescope to Mercury, Venus, Mars, and so on, believing all of them to be composed of substances of a like nature. But in ancient times it was known that if a man were considering the Moon or the Sun, he was able to come to an idea of them by means of that which has direct relation to the physical Earth: the earthy, the watery, the airy, the fiery. And if he extended his observation in a spiritual way to the Moon, he came to the ether. If, however, he extended his observation to Venus, then he knew that he came into a spiritual world, a purely astral world. What we see as physical Venus is but the external sign for something which lives and has its being in the astral, in the astral light. Physical light is in the case of Venus something quite different from physical Sunlight, for instance. For physical Sunlight still has a relationship with what can live on the Earth as Earth-produced fight; whereas Venus-light—it is childish to think it is simply reflected Sunlight—Venus-light shines forth from the spiritual world. If the pupil exposed his soul to this light, he learned to know the Intelligences connected with Venus.

These were Intelligences who lived in continual opposition to the Intelligences of the Sun; and a great role was played in the ancient Mysteries by this opposition between the Intelligences of Venus and the Intelligences of the Sun. Men spoke, with a certain justification, of a continual conflict between them. There were starting-points of such conflicts, when the Venus Intelligences began to combat the Intelligences of the Sun. There were times of intensified conflicts, there were culminations, catastrophes and crises. And in that which lay between an attack and a catastrophe or crisis, you had, as it were, a section of that great battle of opposition which takes place in the spiritual world, and appears in its external symbol only in the astrological and astronomical relationships between Venus and the Sun. It worked itself out in successive phases. And no one can understand the inner impulses of history on Earth if he does not know of this conflict between Venus and the Sun. For all that takes place here on Earth in the way of conflict, all that happens in the evolution of civilisations, is an earthly picture, an earthly copy, of this conflict of Venus versus Sun.

Such knowledge existed in the ancient Mysteries because there was a relation between the human beings on the Earth and the Intelligences of the Cosmos.

Then came the epoch of which I have spoken, the epoch from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries a.d. The mediaeval investigators in their alchemical laboratories were no longer able to reach up to the Cosmic Intelligences. They could get only as far as the Nature Spirits. They made countless experiments—of which I gave you an instance in the last lecture, when I spoke of the transformation of oxalic acid into formic acid—countless experiments of such a kind as would reveal to them the divine working and weaving in the processes and things of Nature; but they could only do so inasmuch as they had prepared themselves in the right way through that spirit of piety of which I told you; then, through their experiments, the Nature Spirits spoke to them. Now let us realise quite clearly the position of such an investigator at that time.

He stood in his laboratory, and he could say: ‘I bring to my laboratory the substances, the retorts, the heating ovens, and I make various experiments. I put certain questions to Nature. And when I do this the Nature spirits enter my laboratory with their revelations. I can perceive them.’ This went on even as late as the fifteenth century. The Nature Spirits could still approach the Rosicrucian investigators who were prepared in the right way. But the Rosicrucian investigators knew that in ancient times investigators had not merely been able to reach the Nature Spirits, but could come in touch with the higher Cosmic Intelligences who spoke to them of the gold-secret connected with the Sun, of the silver-secret and the carbon-secret connected with the Moon, and of the important secrets of history connected with Venus, and so on. It is true they had records preserved from still older traditions, records that told them how there had once been this knowledge, but the records were not specially important for them; if one has once been touched by the spiritual, then historical documents are not so terribly important as they are for our modern materialistic age. It is really astounding to see how infinitely important it is to many people when some discovery is made such as the recent case when the skeleton of a dinosaurus was found in the Gobi desert. Of course it is an important find, but such discoveries are never anything but isolated, broken fragments; whereas in a spiritual way we can really enter into the secrets of the Cosmos. Historical documents were certainly not likely to impress those mediaeval investigators. It was in another way that the mediaeval alchemist acquired a knowledge of how man had once been able to attain this cosmic knowledge but that he could now reach only the Nature Spirits, the Spirits behind the Elements. It happened in this way. In moments when certain observations of Nature were made, or certain experiments performed, when these investigators were thus approaching the sphere of the Nature Spirits, then certain Nature Spirits were there present and told how there had once been human beings who stood in connection with the Cosmic Intelligences. That was the pain that gnawed at the heart of these mediaeval investigators! The Nature Spirits spoke to them of a former age when man had been able to come into connection with the Intelligences of the Cosmos. And the investigators had to say: ‘These Nature Spirits tell us of a past age now vanished into the abyss of human knowledge and human existence.’ Thus this gift of the mediaeval alchemist, his gift of access to the Nature Spirits, was really a doubtful one. On the one hand he approached the spiritual of Nature, the spiritual of air, and of water—he approached Gnomes, Sylphs and Undines in all their living reality. On the other hand, there were some amongst these beings who told him of things that overwhelmed him with despair, telling him how humanity had once been in connection not only with the Nature Spirits but with the Intelligences of the Cosmos, with whom the Nature Spirits themselves were still connected but whom man could no longer reach. That was the feeling of these mediaeval alchemists and it often came to expression in a far more sublime, a far more grandly tragic manner than we find in Goethe’s Faust, beautiful and powerful though it is!

The utterance which Faust addresses to the Moon, to the silver shining light of the Moon in which he would fain bathe, would have been made with much greater depth by the investigators of the Middle Ages when the Nature Spirits told them about the secret of carbon and silver, a secret which again is closely and intimately bound up with man. For what was it that man experienced in ancient times in this connection? He experienced not merely how gold is connected with the Sun, but how gold works in man, how silver and carbon work in man, and similarly how other metals related to the other planets work in man. In olden times man experienced these things in the circulation of the blood in his body. He experienced them in a conscious way. He felt the blood streaming and pulsing through his head, and at the same time he felt it as a picture of the whole Earth, this streaming of the blood through the head. And in that sphere where the head is not enclosed by bone, where it opens downwards towards the heart and the breast, he felt a copy in miniature of the rising up of the atmosphere from the Earth. Thus in what man learned from the Cosmos he recognised the metamorphoses that went on in his own organism; he could follow the planets as he passed through the various organs of the body. We find here a confirmation of the penetrating words of Mephistopheles, where he says, ‘Blood is a very special fluid’. For in its metamorphosis our blood reflects the magnificent metamorphosis from carbon to silver. It all lives in man’s blood.

Thus did the mediaeval investigator regard man’s loss of the knowledge of the Cosmic Intelligences as a loss of his own humanity. And it is in reality but a faint reflection of this experience that we find in Faust when he opens the Book of the Macrocosm and wants to rise to the Cosmic Intelligences, then shuts the Book again because he cannot do it, and contents himself with the Spirit of the Earth. We have here only a faint echo of the tragic mood we find in these mediaeval investigators, whose names even have not come down to us. They had to hear from the Nature Spirits, whose sphere they entered through their alchemical investigations, how there had once been a connection between man and the Cosmic Intelligences.

Now all this is very deeply linked with what had to develop in ancient Greece when it became necessary for the Mysteries of Samothrace, the Mysteries of the Kabiri, to be diluted and weakened down into the philosophy of Aristotle, which then played such an important role in the Middle Ages. All the time, below the surface of what we know as Aristotelianism, there continued to work powerfully, although tragically, right on into the fifteenth century what I have been able to sketch for you in this fragment out of those times.

Behind the Macedonian epoch lie two kinds of Mysteries. There lie the Mysteries that saw deeply into the secrets of the cosmic substances and their connections with the Cosmic Intelligences; and there lie, too, the Mysteries with which man began to descend from the Cosmic Intelligences to the Nature Spirits. Man’s vision was closed to those Cosmic Intelligences, but it was turned for that very reason to the Nature Spirits. That was the crisis which came to fulfilment at the time of Alexander and Aristotle. In all that happened at that time we can still see how the abstractions of Aristotle are rooted in the ancient Mysteries. Anyone who knows about the carbon-silver secret, and then reads the observations of Aristotle that have come down to posterity—his most important writings have not come down to us—but anyone who reads what is written there relating to the secret of the Moon, will at once understand the connection with those olden times.

These are things which will be illuminated in the lectures ² I now intend to give on the historical development of humanity from the standpoint of Anthroposophy.

• 2. Eight lectures given in Dornach, 24th to 31st December, 1923. English translation published with the title: World History in the light of Anthroposophy. (Rudolf Steiner Press.)

If we really grasp Spiritual Science, it gives us strength and confidence in life. How can we introduce it into our life so that it may help us to advance? Many people think that when they acquire knowledge in this sphere and accumulate spiritual truths it is not a help but a hindrance in a sound human life. Why, they ask, do we need all this knowledge of the spirit, why should we have to learn so much about the development of the earth and of a whole planetary system? Why do we need this at all? We are true theosophists, they say, when we strive to find the higher self within us and are enabled thereby to advance as human beings. There are others whose minds are more theoretical and who enjoy hearing of the different members of man's being, of the development of mankind through the different epochs of culture, and of the regular, numerical periods. They wish to learn of all these things as quickly as possible, noting down the most important truths in a few words and circulating them in a catechetical form. But we must affirm that neither of these notions correspond in any way to what Spiritual Science can mean to us, and does mean to those who have adopted the right attitude to life through It.

It is true that we must begin by learning that man consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an Ego. But it is a mistake to think that by enumerating them we know something of man's being for when we do this we merely schematise. We really know something about man only when this knowledge is applied to life. But this is impossible unless we realise that the essential thing is not only to know the names of these four members, but how they are connected within the human being. When we look upon a human being, it is essential to know how his etheric body is connected with his physical body, whether the etheric and astral body tend towards each other and seek a close connection, or whether they are loosely connected. A closer observation shows that the relationship between these members of the human being changes in the course of mankind's development on earth. In the past, this relationship was different and, in the future, it will be different from what it is to-day.

If we study the ancient Egyptian in the first thousand years of Egyptian culture, thus looking upon ourselves in past incarnations, we shall find in him a human being whose physical, etheric and astral bodies were loosely knit together. But when we consider a human being of the present time, we find instead a more intimate and a closer connection between his different members. And in future, this connection will become closer and closer. This explains why we have to pass through the different epochs of culture. When we say that man reincarnates so and so many times, we may also ask: Why does he reincarnate?—Because the connection between his enveloping members always changes, so that the human being whom we meet in the external world during the different epochs, also changes. When we were Chaldeans, we had a quite different bodily constitution from that of to-day, and in the future, we shall again be differently constituted. Because of these differences our experiences as human beings are different.

It is now essential to develop the right kind of thoughts regarding the true relation of man's inner nucleus passing from incarnation to incarnation, with its enveloping sheaths—the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body. In reality, ordinary science does not know anything about the deeper laws ruling from one incarnation to another. It deals only with what is external. It ignores even the deeper significance of the laws ruling the external sheath. We may convince ourselves of this by considering some of the connections accepted by ordinary science or rejected by it.

It is very interesting to note that for a long time science was inclined to ascribe free will to man. Yet I have pointed out to you that in many respects modern science denies the existence of free will. It refers us to external scientific research which tells us to observe the external course of life. For example, statistics can establish how many suicides occur in a particular place. A certain regularity may be ascertained in regard to these suicides. Statistics show that this occurs at certain regular intervals. A certain number of people is simply condemned to commit suicide. How is it possible then to speak of free will?—One might go still further by drawing attention to the technique of insurance calculations which formulate and reckon out how many of a certain number of people will still be alive after thirty years. This is expressed arithmetically. Death and birth are thus imprisoned within external laws of Nature. Ordinary science admits this. It will, however, be forced to admit very different things also, for it is already evident that certain facts are coming to the fore which will compel people to think in a spiritual-scientific way. Generally speaking, science is not readily inclined to accept new ideas. In this direction it follows a very strange habit. One can hear people declaiming that in the Middle Ages there were men who opposed Kepler's discoveries. The greatest efforts were needed before his teachings could assert themselves against the dark minds of his age. The very people who more than others now draw attention to this fact, are those who adopt the same attitude, not only towards Spiritual Science, but also towards scientific facts which force us in the present time to seek spiritual laws.

A physician in Berlin, for example, ascertained certain numerical connections which appear in the course of human life. This doctor, Fliess [Wilhelm Fließ (1858-1928)] by name, began to register the connections between births and deaths by following them up in different families. For example, a female member of a certain family died on a certain day. Her first grandchild was born 1428 days before her death, the second grandchild 1428 days after her death, so that in this case the grandmother's death lies symmetrically before and after the birth of a grandchild. In the space of 7 times 1428 days after her death, a great-grandchild was born. By following up this case, we come to definite numerical connections, which finally determine in a very wonderful way the relationship between cases of death and birth. Fliess ascertained this in many instances. But apparently modern science does not wish to recognise it, because it goes too much against its own direction.

Even improvements in health-conditions are based on numerical connections. When we compare the number of deaths through tuberculosis during a certain epoch, with the number of deaths of the preceding decades, we again find that this is regulated by certain numbers. Doctors say that by hygienic measures they have been able to diminish the cases of death through tuberculosis. But Fliess proved that this decrease can be reckoned out on the basis of arithmetical connections. This is most inconvenient to modern science, but in the end it will be forced to admit the existence of objective arithmetical laws. It will return to the sentence of Pythagoras: "Number is something which rules everything that weaves and lives". With our soul we calculate, but the higher Spirits made these calculations long ago and set into the course of life something that is in keeping with numbers. The Pythagorean saying, "In calling the world into being, God is a mathematician" seems to come into play. On the other hand, if this is so it would strengthen the attitude of ordinary science which denies that man's inner being has any share in the destiny of his life. For if birth and death are connected in such a way that the distance between them is equal to 7 times 1428 days, it is possible to calculate when we have to die and in that case our inner being really appears to be imprisoned within violent external conditions.

Apparently, we must renounce speaking of special laws which rule our inner being. External reasons may however be adduced which tell us that this isn't quite right after all. According to calculations, a certain number of suicides may indeed take place at a definite place, but is it possible to determine arithmetically what person will commit suicide? According to the theory of probability it is possible to calculate the probable duration of human life. But I do not think that anyone will admit that he will have to die on the day fixed by arithmetical calculation. These laws based on mathematical formulae are of no consequence to man's inner being.

But how do matters stand when Fliess proves that 1428 days lie between a case of death and two births? Does this prove anything in regard to the inner laws of our Ego? For it is impossible to recognise right away the connection between the inner nucleus of our being and the external course of life. How can we explain this with the fact that we follow Karma, that we must follow our inner Ego? This is not easy to grasp.

Let me explain this by an analogy—it is quite possible that two events, two strains, two facts connected with each other should follow completely different courses. Consider this: when you travel from Baste to Zurich you go by train. You consult the time-table to find out when your train leaves. You become, as it were, intimately connected with the figures. Your thoughts, your objectives and so on are dependent on them. (There are, of course, many other figures in the time-table). But is it not the case that alongside this sequence of facts there is another (sequence of facts) that has to do with the development of your soul: that you want to progress or "catch the train?" When you consult the time-table it tells you nothing about yourself—whether you are good or bad, wise or foolish and is of no importance for the soul's being. Similarly, the figures that result from the calculations of Fliess are of no importance for the Karma of our life. We catch a certain train in life, entering a definite stream controlled by laws which are connected with our inner being only through things that we ourselves bring about. We decide which train to catch. In the same way we have to decide, through the inner laws of our Karma, to enter a certain stream of life which is then determined by arithmetical laws.

I speak of these things because those who seek the spirit should more and more acquire a feeling that life is complicated; it is something that cannot be encompassed by slack, easy thoughts. Those who think that it is an easy matter to grasp the whole of life, and that a few sentences taken from Spiritual Science suffice for this, are very much mistaken. We must be willing to penetrate more and more into these connections. We should acquire a feeling which shows us that the thoughts that lie at the foundation of the world's structure, are also valid for the human being. If no connection whatever existed between external laws and human Karma, our whole life would fall asunder.

Two facts can prove this. In Spiritual Science we endeavour to make the best possible comparisons. In a certain way the numbers in the timetable are connected with practical life. Even though it does not concern the time-table whether or not you travel to Zurich, even though you do not see any connecting link with your journey, the time-table is nevertheless connected with human conditions. For men have compiled it in such a way as to correspond, not too awkwardly, to the conditions of life. It is adapted to human conditions of life in general. Something similar is the case with human Karma and the stream of life which it controls. The Beings of the Higher Hierarchies fixed the "time-table" in accordance with numerical conditions, which are then discovered in the regular numbers of statistics. Outwardly, these correspond to human conditions in general. When we reincarnate, we may have an easy or a difficult life. Not in every family do we come across the law according to which a grandchild is always born 1428 days before or after its grandmother's death. But when we consider that 1428 is divisible by 28, that it is equal to 51 times 28, then it is easier to understand this numerical connection. These calculations will not always give the number 1428, but as a rule we find a multiple of 28 between the death and the birth of any member of a family. The multiples may be 30, 17, 26 times 28, and so forth, but they will contain the number 28: this is included regularly.

In accordance with the time-table we have the possibility to catch different trains, and according to our Karma we may arrange life in an easy or a difficult way. I mention this to indicate how complicated these conditions really are.

I also wish to point out that a moral conclusion may be drawn from all these truths. This constitutes the immensely important element given by Spiritual Science. We may say: I live in this world and I find in it numerical connections which show me how external life is regulated. It required long periods of human cultural development before this was discovered. But how much do we really know of these regular laws? Here we must admit that we know very little indeed. Slowly and gradually we discovered something of this divine wisdom. But just as we discover the most beautiful and important facets of wisdom, the wisdom admonishes us to be humble; it shows us how little our thoughts are able to encompass life.

This will stimulate us to continue striving for the Light. This moral feeling, this reverence which we have for the wisdom contained in the universe, is what we may acquire, so that we become better human beings. We acquire this feeling towards wisdom, it takes hold of us, when we recognise how near it was to us during our life between death and a new birth. When we have to come down to a new earthly existence, we choose the train by which we travel, so that we may fulfil our Karma. It is then that we choose our family-ties. If someone were to ask us now which family would be the best for our present incarnation, we would have no idea. If we had to depend only on our own forces, we could not make the right choice.

Before our incarnation we are far wiser than afterwards for at that time we make the right choice. The feeling that now we are not cleverer than before we were born, cannot fill us with pride in regard to our own achievements. For during our existence between death and birth we were filled with other forces besides those we have the moment we step into physical existence.

When we enter physical life, the substances of the earth's realms pervade us and exist within our body. On laying aside the physical body when passing through the portal of death, the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies receive us and we share their substance during our existence between death and a new birth, even as here we share the physical substances of the earth. These physical substances assert themselves—for example, iron streams through our blood in accordance with external laws—and similarly the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies assert themselves between death and a new birth by working within us, and it is their wisdom which pushes us towards the right stream of life. The Beings of the Higher Hierarchies are filled with the wisdom which we need, even as we are filled with physical substance. Humility is therefore a justified feeling, it is the moral consequence of the knowledge that during our physical life we have absorbed only a very small portion of the mighty wisdom of those Spiritual Beings.

Between death and a new birth, we are embedded in the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. If we do not submit to them, this would be the same as trying to live on earth without taking in certain physical substances, such as hydrogen, oxygen, and so forth. It would be absurd to live without complete submission to the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. Those who bear in mind the fact that between death and birth we must completely surrender to the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies will ask themselves: What is the best preparation for that existence? And they will give themselves the following answer: The best preparation is to unfold, already during the present earthly life between birth and death, a feeling of devotion for the divine-spiritual world. If we are pervaded by the right feelings, the truths which we receive will change into feelings of devoted surrender. Humility and reverence for the spiritual world will then live in all our feelings.

If we begin to think and live in this way, we shall also discover the true balance in the environing world, for thoughts of this kind regulate and harmonize all our other feelings.

Many mistakes of the external world are brought into the spiritual-scientific movement; they are mistakes which do not come from Spiritual Science, but which are brought into it from outside. For example, a person may be diligent and active in the outside world, but his activity might be characterized by saying that he is ambitious and does too much; he ruins his forces and does not notice that he should observe certain limits in his work. When such a person enters Theosophy, he will come across quite different ideas from those which he had in the external world. But he also brings into Theosophy his own characteristic qualities. He may, for example, hear that a certain amount of study is needed for the soul's progress. He begins to study,—yet he should learn to notice how much he can really do in accordance with the forces allotted to him by his Karma; he should not pursue theosophical studies which surpass his strength. Also, if for example, he becomes a vegetarian he must ask himself whether it agrees with him or not. Otherwise he will ruin himself.

The disciple of Spiritual Science must maintain the right balance. He must know if he can really follow the strictest obligations. A calm and humble observation of his Karma, of his own capacities and forces, may be acquired by accepting in the right way what Spiritual Science can give us. Those who have advanced furthest in occultism, faithfully observe the rule of maintaining the right balance. Some people try to force matters, when external circumstances obstruct a real training; they strive with all their might towards the aim which they have in view, work spiritually like slaves to obtain an immediate answer to the problems which rise up. But those who have really progressed, never do this. First of all, the existence of a definite problem should be clearly envisaged, and then the disciple of Spiritual Science should ask himself: Are you at this moment capable of obtaining a full answer? Wait (he should say to himself) until the Beings of the spiritual world send 3ou this answer. A true disciple of the spirit if he has to strain and push at the outset will give up for the time being. He knows that he must wait, and he can wait because he is filled with the knowledge of the eternity of life and that Karma, which he never forgets, gives each man his due. Then comes a certain moment in which he obtains a strange inner hint ... it is then that the Powers of the spiritual world may give him an answer. Perhaps after many years, even after many incarnations. But it is characteristic of a right attitude to be able to wait, to practise patience, to unfold soul-harmony.

Those who allow themselves to be influenced in the right way by the teachings of Spiritual Science will learn to master their feelings and sensations, so that they are always able to maintain a harmonious balance. If we adopt this attitude, our Ego sends forces into the astral body, so that the astral body absorbs the truths which come from the spiritual world, in the same way in which a sponge absorbs the water into which it is dipped. Spiritual knowledge gradually passes over into the astral body, and the astral body is pervaded by it.

We live in an age in which it is necessary, and in which it will be more and more necessary, to pervade the astral body with spiritual wisdom. The times change more and more, and they change also in regard to the crossing of the threshold of death. In future epochs, when man again returns to the earth, his astral body if not imbued with spiritual knowledge will not find its way about the spiritual world and will be filled with darkness. But if it is filled with the truths which we now absorb, it will become a source of light and it will shed this light on its environment, thus perceiving the wisdom which we take in here on earth, in the light of the spiritual world.

If we now ask ourselves why this future light of the spiritual world does not yet exist, we may say: It has not yet come, because in the past a primordial wisdom existed which could be impressed on man without any effort on his part. It existed as an inheritance which man had received from the old Moon. With this inheritance he could penetrate into the spiritual world. This lasted until the Christian era, when man could no longer obtain spiritual wisdom in an immediate way. In the present time he must first fill his soul with spiritual-scientific truths, which will constitute the power enabling him to enter the spiritual world, guided by the light in his soul. Human conditions change from epoch to epoch.

Every form of occultism knows that a wisdom exists which came from the old Moon and was still active, in its last traces, during the 15th and 10th century A.D. When the human being entered the spiritual world, he could see the light, which shone without any effort on his part. But in the present time, the whole wisdom of the past, which existed as an old inheritance, may unite with the human soul, but the soul no longer shines when we cross the threshold of death. Only the wisdom which we take in through Christ, by saying, "Not I, but Christ in me", will become a shining light, when in future we cross the threshold of death. We therefore take in the Christianized Spiritual Science in order that our astral body may become a source of light and that we may lift it out, when we cross the threshold of death.

When we take in this Christianized Spiritual Science and fill our astral body with it, it does not remain mere wisdom, for it permeates our feelings. We then learn to know the life-conditions of the past planetary stages of Saturn, Sun, Moon, and finally of the earth.

If you penetrate livingly into the descriptions in my Occult Science, you will be able to feel that the description of Saturn has an entirely different note from that of other planetary conditions. In the description of Saturn, you will be able to feel that conditions there are described with a certain harshness. Your soul will feel it. And this is essential. The Sun-existence will be experienced as if it contained a blossoming, growing life, and in the description of the Moon you will feel a dark, melancholic note in the conceptions pertaining to it. A sensitive person will even be able to taste it, he will feel its flavour on his tongue.

Fools may object that there are discrepancies in the descriptions and that a uniform style was not maintained. But we should realise that these differences are essential, and why. We should know why a melody of three definite notes must re-echo in the words of these descriptions, and when we know this, we are able to transform this knowledge into feelings which we send out into the world. These feelings undergo a change. The wisdom absorbed by the astral body changes into a freely willed surrender to the conditions of the world, and this takes hold of our etheric body. If we are wise, we shall prepare the path for this. The forces which enable us to descend into our subsequent incarnations form the etheric body and pervade it. If during our earthly life we have filled our etheric body with genuinely devout feelings and it then dissolves in the universal All when we die, we hand over to the universe an etheric body filled with devoutness, an etheric body which may be of benefit to the whole world. If on the other hand we have not been devout, but materialistic, the etheric body which we lay aside after death will have a destructive and explosive effect when it dissolves in the universal ether. In the same measure in which we gain wisdom, we help not only ourselves, but indirectly the world also, by acquiring better forces. And in the same measure in which we unfold devout feelings, we help the world in a direct way, for devoutness is imparted to the whole world.

Spiritual Science is not only able to bestow wisdom and unfold devout feelings, but it also gives us confidence and makes us aware of the body's vital forces. The conscious connection with the spiritual world in itself gives us these vital forces.

Fichte was aware of this connection of forces. He, too, had this confidence in life, so that when speaking of man's being he was able to say: Because I know of my connection with the eternal and that my innermost being is rooted in the eternal, I have such confidence in life that I am able to say: I look up to you, ye rocks and mountains; fall down upon me, crush my physical body; clouds, cover up everything that constitutes my being; thunder, split up everything which pertains to me; I shall nevertheless defy your might! Life-confidence streams out of the consciousness that we are rooted in the spirit's eternal essence. Can a man thus rooted in the spirit's eternal essence ever grow weak? It is Spiritual Science which gives him his strength, constantly pouring into him something of this strength.

What happens with this life-confidence? Wisdom gives the astral body the power enabling us to overcome more and more the obstructing forces and gives the etheric body its right structure. But the force which streams into our body through the knowledge of our connection with the eternal, is confidence in life, which penetrates into the very forces of our physical body. Maya, illusion and deception withdraw from us, if we are equipped with these forces. It is an illusion to say that our physical body decays into dust when we die. No! The structure of our physical body, the way in which we formed it, is not an indifferent matter. If this confidence in all that is eternal lives in the physical body, we give back to the earth this confidence in life which we gained for ourselves. We strengthen the earth-planet with the forces acquired during our life. Through our physical body we give the world confidence in life. The decadent part of our physical body is only a Maya. When we trace the physical body beyond death, we see that the amount of confidence in life which we acquired during our earthly existence streams into the earth.

We thus strengthen our astral body, our etheric body and our physical body by wisdom, devoutness and in life-confidence, the best forces which we were able to develop as human beings for the whole evolution of the earth. In this way we work upon the planet earth and we acquire a feeling which shows us that man does not lead an isolated existence in the world, but that the forces which he unfolds within himself are of value to the whole world. Every speck of dust bears within it the laws of the universe; similarly every human being builds up or destroys the world by what he does or leaves undone. We may give something to the progressive process of the world, or deprive it of something, and we may crumble away from it by ignoring it, by failing to acquire confidence in life. These sins of omission contribute to the decay of our planet, whereas the wisdom, the devoutness and confidence in life which we acquired, help to build it up. We may thus gradually obtain an idea of the feelings which Spiritual Science can give us, when it takes hold of the whole human being.

Undated note with FM symbol
from the estate of Mathilde Scholl

in the documentation archive at the Goetheanum
(GoeA D.02 Scholl, Mathilde 005, No. 37, back; handwriting of Mathilde Scholl).

Eye of Dangma.¹ A the 3 higher principles / rays of the ego. light clouds: astral body / dark: etheric body, around it the physical.

Akasha Chaos

The two triangles symbolize humanity when it became male and female, the circle around it symbolizes the state when it was still male and female, a soft mass.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

• 1. Dangma: Tibetan, meaning “purified soul, seer, initiate, initiate”.

When I spoke here last time, I tried to tell something from the Fifth Gospel about the life of Jesus of Nazareth from the age of twelve to the time of John the Baptist in the Jordan. When I related the significant experience that Jesus of Nazareth had at a pagan place of worship, I showed how reading in the Akasha Chronicle allows us to see Jesus of Nazareth at this pagan place of worship, how he is impressed by the demons surrounding the altar. I will only briefly recall how he then fell as if dead, how he was transported into another world in which he was able to perceive the divine-spiritual secrets of the ancient sacred mystery teachings of the pagans. For in this way he was able to absorb within himself a living idea of what paganism once was and of what it had become in his time.

I already mentioned that during this time – that is, in this other state of consciousness at a pagan altar, which we talked about last time – he heard something like the proclamation from the spiritual world of words that expressed, as it was expressed in the ancient sacred teachings of the pagan peoples, what can be considered the secret of man's connection with the material, with the sensual-physical world. So he heard, as it were, from the spiritual worlds that voice to which the old pagan prophets had access. And what he heard there may be described as a kind of Cosmic Lord's Prayer. It expresses how the destiny of the human soul must take shape through the fact that man is united with earthly matter from birth to death. This cosmic Lord's Prayer, the later inversion of which became the earthly Lord's Prayer, was first made audible by me at the laying of the foundation stone in Dornach. I shall read it here again, for these words contain the primal teaching of pagan mankind. As far as possible I shall attempt to render them into German:

Amen
Evil reigns
Witnesses of the dissolution of egoism
From the guilt of others' self-interest
Experienced in daily bread
In which heaven's will does not prevail
Because man has separated himself from your kingdom
and forgot your name
you fathers in the heavens.

This is approximately what Jesus of Nazareth heard during his wanderings in pagan regions as the secret of man on earth in the sense of the ancient holy teachings. These words express truly profound mysteries of the evolution of humanity. This momentous hearing entered into Jesus' soul when he was approaching his twenty-fourth year, and from that time on he knew something that had once come down from the spiritual world in the ancient times of human development, which seemed so great and powerful to him that he said to himself, especially after he had had the impression described last time at the ruined old pagan place of worship: Now people are no longer here on earth to understand all this.

That was how he had come to know paganism. We have seen how, in the three successive epochs of his youth, he came to know the deepest depths of Judaism, the deepest depths of paganism, and also the deepest depths of Essene Judaism. We have seen how these realizations were, step by step, the source of the deepest suffering for him. For all three realizations led him to say: They could be there if the conditions were present in humanity to receive them; but these conditions cannot be created now.

That was the result of this life of Jesus. Thus the Fifth Gospel shows us that Jesus could say to himself, before he had taken up the Christ in himself: There has been an evolution of mankind, but in such a way that people have acquired abilities that have obscured the other abilities of primeval times, so that people are now no longer able to receive the revelations of the spiritual world as they took place in primeval times for Jews and Gentiles. But he had also been told, through his connection with the Essenes, that just as the Essenes came to a reunion with the spiritual world, only a small group, not all of humanity, could come to such a reunion. So this path also seemed impossible to him. Poor, poor humanity – it went through his soul – if the voices of the old pagan prophets were to sound to you, you would no longer understand them. If the voices of the old Jewish prophets were to sound to you, you would no longer understand them. But you cannot ever want to strive for this as humanity; only a small group can strive for this, and they do so at the expense of the rest of humanity.

What I am telling you in a few dry words was a painful reality of the soul in his life. He felt infinite compassion for all of humanity, the compassion he had to feel in order to mature and to be able to receive the essence of Christ within himself.

But before this happened, Jesus of Nazareth had another important conversation with the personality we know as his foster or stepmother. We know that the mother of the Jesus of Nazareth who had received the individuality of Zarathustra when he was twelve years old, that is to say, the real mother of this Jesus of Nazareth, had died soon after this Jesus child had received Zarathustra, who was embodied in the other Jesus child, so that her soul had long since been in the spiritual world. We also know from earlier lectures in past years that the father of the other Jesus, the Solomonic Jesus, had died, and that the two families of the two Jesus boys had become one family in Nazareth, within which Jesus was with his brothers and sisters and with the Zarathustra mother. We know that the father of Jesus of Nazareth died when Jesus was about twenty-four years old, after he had returned from a major journey, and that Jesus of Nazareth then lived alone with his mother, his foster or stepmother. In general, it must be said that this foster or stepmother only slowly but surely acquired a deep understanding of the mind for all the profound experiences that Jesus of Nazareth went through. In the course of the years, these souls, those of Jesus of Nazareth and those of the foster or stepmother, grew into each other.

In the first period after his twelfth year, he was also alone with his experiences in his family home. The other siblings actually only saw in his soul, which had to cope with its deep, painful experiences, a soul that was heading towards a kind of state of madness. His mother, on the other hand, found it possible to gain more and more understanding for this soul. And so it came about that the Jesus of Nazareth, in his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year, was able to have an important conversation with this mother, a conversation that was actually of the deepest effect, as we shall see shortly.

This conversation contained, in a kind of retrospective, everything that Jesus of Nazareth had experienced since the age of twelve. The Akashic Records show us how this conversation went. At first, Jesus of Nazareth spoke of the experiences that had taken place between the ages of twelve and sixteen or eighteen, and how he had gradually experienced within himself during this time what had once been the ancient Hebrew teaching, the ancient teaching of the Hebrew prophets. He had not been able to experience it in his surroundings through anyone, just as he had not been able to experience those words through anyone in his surroundings, which he had presented to the amazement of the scribes in their midst on the well-known occasion. But inspirations always arose in his soul, which he knew came from the spiritual world. The Hebrew teaching arose in him in such a way that he knew himself as the owner of this old Hebrew teaching, but for which there were no ears in his time. He was alone with this teaching. That was his great sorrow, that he was alone with this teaching.

His mother had a lot to say when he said: Even if the voices of the old Hebrew prophets were to resound today, there would still be no people to understand those voices. His mother said that, for example, Hillel was there, a great teacher of the law, and that Jesus of Nazareth also appreciated who Hillel was and what he meant for Judaism. I do not need to tell you what significance this Hillel had. You will find it sufficiently honored in Jewish literature. Hillel was a reviver of the most beautiful virtues and teachings of ancient Judaism, as well as a personality who, through his own way, brought about a kind of renewal of this ancient Judaism. But this was not because Hillel was a scholar, but because, through his actions and, above all, his feelings, desires and wishes, and in the way he treated people, he expressed how real wisdom of every kind works in the human soul, transforming the soul. What was especially praised in Judaism, but no longer properly understood in those days, was patience in dealing with other people. This was rightly attributed to Hillel. He had also attained the opportunity to work among the Hebrews in a remarkable way. He came from Babylon, but from a family that had been transplanted there by the Jews at the time of the captivity, and which traced its origin back to the family of David himself. In this way he had united within himself what he had been able to absorb from Babylonianism with the Hebrewness pulsating in his blood. And how this took shape in his soul is told in a meaningful legend.

Once, so it is said, when Hillel had just arrived in Jerusalem, the most important other Jewish scholars were gathered for all sorts of discussions, in which one could hear how pro and contra were spoken about the secrets of Jewish teaching. One had to pay a small amount to be able to attend such discussions. Hillel had no money, for he was very poor. “Despite the cold, he tried to climb a small hill in front of the house where the discussions were taking place to listen through the window to what was being said. For he could not pay for his entrance. It was so cold that night that he became stiff with frost, so that he was found stiff later that morning and had to be warmed up again to thaw. But by having gone through this experience, his etheric body had taken part in the whole discussion. And while the others themselves heard nothing but the abstract words that flew back and forth, Hillel had seen a world of wonderful visions that transformed his soul.

There were many more such events to tell. In particular, his patience was praised. This patience, it was said, was inexhaustible. And once, so it is even said, someone made a bet to exhaust Hillel's patience to the utmost, so that Hillel would become angry. The bet was on, and the one who wanted to make Hillel angry, that is, exhaust his patience, had the task of doing so. And he did the following. He went there when Hillel was preparing for what he had to teach on the Sabbath and was in his negligee, knocked on the door and shouted: 'Hillel, Hillel, come out! — Hillel asked: What is it? Oh, Hillel, come out, I have an important question for you! 'Hillel put on his robe, went out and said, “My son, what is it you want to ask me?” — So the person who had made the bet said to him, “Hillel, I have an important question for you. Why do some people among the Babylonians have such pointed heads? And Hillel replied: My dear son, you know that the Babylonians have such bad midwives, and so they are born under such unfavorable circumstances. That is why some people there have such pointed heads. Now go, your question has been answered. And Hillel went back into the house and prepared himself further for the Sabbath.

But after a short time, the same man came back and shouted as before: Hillel, Hillel, come out! – Hillel replied: What is it? – Oh, Hillel, I have an important question that needs to be answered immediately. – And Hillel came out again and said to the questioner: What is the question? — And the questioner replied: Oh, Hillel, please tell me why there are so many people in Arabia with eyes that are so narrow? — Hillel replied: In Arabia, the desert is so vast that you can only survive there if your eyes are adapted to the desert. That is why so many people in Arabia have squinted eyes. Now go, my son, for your important question has been answered. And Hillel went back into the house.

But it was not long before the man came back for the third time, again shouting: “Hillel, Hillel, come out! What is it? – Hillel, come out, I have an important question that needs to be answered immediately! – Hillel went out, and the man said: Oh, Hillel, please answer my question: Why do some people near Egypt have such flat feet? – And Hillel replied: My dear son, they have such flat feet because they live in marshy areas. They need feet as flat as those of some birds that live in swampy areas, and their feet have to be adapted to their environment. That is why they have such flat feet. Now go, my son, your question has been answered. — And he went back inside.

But after a few minutes the same man came back, knocked on the house again, but he had become sadder with every question, and he called out, even sadder than before: Hillel, come out! - And when Hillel came, he said: Oh, Hillel, I bet that I can make you angry. Now I have tried it three times with my questions. Tell me, O Hillel, what I must do so that I do not lose my bet!” But Hillel replied, ‘My son, it is better that you lose your bet than that Hillel should become angry. Now go and pay your bet!’

This is an example that is supposed to show the degree of patience that Hillel had achieved at that time in the eyes or opinion of his Jewish fellow residents. The impact of this man was also felt by Jesus of Nazareth. But he not only knew what Hillel had done, but he himself had heard in his soul the great Bath-Kol, that is, the voice from heaven, where the secrets, as they once resounded to the prophets, had risen to him in the depths of his soul from the divine-spiritual world. And he knew that even Hillel was only a very faint echo of what the ancestors of the Hebrews had once been ready for. But now the descendants of the ancient Hebrews were not even ready for the faint echo that sounded in Hillel's voice, much less for the great Bath-Kol.

All this weighed on his soul, and he shared it with his mother. He told her what he had suffered, how he realized more and more from week to week what the ancient sacred teachings of Judaism were, and how the descendants of the ancient Hebrews no longer had ears to hear what the words of the great prophets once were. And now his mother understood him, so that a deep understanding of his feelings and mind met his words.

And then he told of the event that happened to him after he had reached the age of eighteen and had gone out into Jewish and pagan areas. He told his mother how he had come to a pagan place of worship during his travels, but how the priests had fled. For a virulent disease had broken out among the population that could infect anyone. And when he came, he was seen, and like wildfire it spread that a very special person was coming. For it was peculiar to him that he, by his very appearance, as Jesus of Nazareth, made a special impression wherever he went. So the people of that area, whose greatest sorrow was that the pagan priests had abandoned them and their altar was no longer served, believed that a sacrificial priest was coming in Jesus of Nazareth who would perform their sacrifices again. They gathered in large numbers around the dilapidated altar. Jesus of Nazareth did not have the will to perform their sacrificial cult. But he saw the deeper reasons why those people suffered. He saw what could be expressed as follows:

At such sacrificial altars, legitimate sacrifices were once offered that were the outward expression of the ancient mystery revelations of those pagan regions. The mystery revelations were expressed in the cultic acts. And when such cultic acts were performed in ancient holy times – he now knew this through direct insight – and were performed with the right attitude by the priests, then the divine spiritual beings with whom the pagan people were connected took part. But little by little these sacrificial acts had declined, had degenerated, had become corrupted. The priests were no longer endowed with the right attitudes, and so it had come about that instead of the good old divine beings, demons ruled at such a place of worship. And it is in these demons that the reason lies why the population had to suffer. These demons now saw Jesus of Nazareth gathered together. They challenged his clairvoyant gaze, as it were, and he fell down, as if dead. And when he fell, the people realized that he had not come to perform the sacrifices at their altar again. They fled, and in that moment he saw the whole transition of the old pagan world of gods into the world of demons and recognized that these were the reasons for the suffering of this people.

But he was now also transported to those pagan times when the real revelations of the ancient holy teachings came down to people. He heard on this occasion what I read as the Cosmic Lord's Prayer. Now he knew how far removed the present, and also his present, humanity was from the old teachings and revelations, both in paganism and in Judaism. Only he had acquired what he had to learn about Judaism through the voice of the great Bath-Kol. Paganism, on the other hand, had revealed itself to him in a terrible vision. It had a completely different effect than an abstract message; it transformed his soul. So he knew that now there were no longer any ears to understand what once sounded for Judaism in the voices of the prophets, but also for the other, which once sounded for ancient paganism, now there were no longer any ears to understand it.

He now told his mother all this in moving words. Then he also told of his fellowship with the Essenes, especially what would have been difficult for him to understand if his mother had not already shown him such an understanding of mind: that he once saw Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing from the gates when he left an Essene meeting. He knew that the methods of the Essenes were impossible for the masses of people. It was indeed possible to achieve union with the divine spiritual world by means of these methods, but only by repelling Lucifer and Ahriman. Yet by doing this, Lucifer and Ahriman had all the more opportunity to flee to other people and push them further into the entanglements of earthly existence, so that they could not participate in the union with the spiritual world. Through this experience, then, Jesus of Nazareth knew: the Essene way cannot become a general human way either, because it is only possible for a small group of people. — That was a third painful realization in addition to the other two.

He told it in a very special way. Not only did his words go out to his mother, but the words flowed to his mother's heart like living beings. When the deep meaning of these words – the meaning steeped in suffering, but also in the deepest human love – flowed into her soul, the mother felt as if her soul was inwardly strengthened, as if it was being enlivened by a power coming from him and undergoing an inner transformation. That was how the mother felt. It is really as if everything that lived in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth had passed into the soul of the mother during this conversation. And it was the same for him. For here, looking into the Akasha Chronicle, something remarkable and mysterious reveals itself to us.

Jesus of Nazareth told his story in such a way that his words, as they escaped him and passed into the heart and soul of his mother, always took a piece of his own self with them. One could say: on the wings of his words, his own self went over to his mother, but without his actual self passing into the mother, who only felt animated by these words. For the remarkable thing happened now that through the effect of this conversation the soul of that mother, who was the physical mother of the Nathanic Jesus, came down from the spiritual world and connected with the soul of the stepmother or foster mother, so that from that conversation on in the soul of the stepmother or foster mother at the same time the soul of the real mother of the Nathanic Jesus lived. The soul of the stepmother or foster mother had received the soul of that other mother. What took place here was a kind of rebirth of virginity. This transformation, this penetration of the mother's soul with another soul from the spiritual worlds, makes a deeply, deeply moving impression when observed, when one sees how the stepmother or foster mother now continues to walk around only as a shell of the mother who spent the time from Jesus' twelfth to thirtieth year in the spiritual world.

There was now something in Jesus himself, as if he had given his ego to his mother, as if only his physical body, etheric body and astral body were living in him, as if governed by cosmic laws. And an inner urge arose in this threefold physicality of Jesus of Nazareth to go to the one whom he had met in the Essene community, who, like him, was not really an Essene but had been accepted into the Essene community, to go to John the Baptist. And then, as we know from the four other Gospels, during the baptism, the Christ-being descended into the body of Jesus of Nazareth, who had placed his I, with all its suffering and its entire being, into the conversation that had passed into the soul of his mother. This threefold body took on the Christ-being, which has often been described to you and which now lives in these three bodies in place of that other ego. And now this Fifth Gospel, which can be gained from the Akasha Chronicle, also speaks to us of the temptation that followed the conception of the Christ-being. Only this time, the Akasha Chronicle shows that the temptation arises in a different spirit. Again, I will try to tell what happens and how the scene of temptation unfolds.

So now we can say that Christ Jesus first faced Lucifer. And Lucifer actually asks the question, through that process, which the spiritual researcher can fully understand, and also in that form, which the spiritual researcher can understand. The question, which is reported in the other gospels, is a question of temptation that should speak particularly to pride: All the kingdoms you see around you – and Lucifer meant the vast realms of the astral world – shall be yours if you acknowledge me as your lord!

This question, posed at the right moment, at least to a human being, expresses the deepest temptation, for all the forces and impulses of pride and self-importance are released in the soul. Of course, it is not easy to imagine this if one only thinks of the astral world in abstract terms. But if one is in it, then the effect of the forces of this astral world, in which Lucifer speaks, on the whole constitution of man is so effective that all demons of pride are released in him with the same necessity as one becomes hungry if one has not eaten anything for four to five days. One cannot speak there in the harmless way of the physical plane: One should not let oneself be blinded by pride. — That is all very well for the physical plane, but it is no longer of the same value when the whole astral world assails the constitution of man. But the Christ Jesus withstood the temptation of Lucifer. This entity could not fall prey to pride. He rejected Lucifer.

I would like to make a small interjection here. It is generally easy to mix up the order when reading the Akashic Records. I believe that the order of the so-called temptation is as I believe it to be correct. However, it could be that it is reversed. I do not believe this, but I could not say that a later verification might not show the reverse order. Therefore, I would like to make it quite clear that I am telling you nothing other than what really happens in these communications from the Akasha Chronicle. Therefore, where there is uncertainty, I point out that a correction could be possible later.

So after the first Luciferic attack had been repulsed, Lucifer and Ahriman now appeared united. United, they posed the question to Christ Jesus of throwing oneself down deep into the abyss. This was a question posed to pride. This question was to be posed to pride, to the feeling of superiority over all fear, in a special way. Christ Jesus rejected the question. He could not be tempted by an appeal to his pride, which in this case meant his feeling superior to fear. Lucifer now had to give way, to let go of him.

Ahriman remained behind, and he asked the third question, which again in the Fifth Gospel corresponds to the question in the other Gospels, the question regarding the stones becoming bread. If the Christ really had the power, he should make the stones become bread. And behold: this question remained unanswered. Christ Jesus was not quite able to answer this question to Ahriman, and Ahriman did not leave completely defeated. This is certainly shown to us by the Akashic Records consideration of this matter. And Christ Jesus knew: with regard to Ahriman, there remains a remnant that cannot be overcome by such an inner spiritual process, but to which other things are still necessary.

I would like to try to explain this in a perhaps trivial way. But this will make it easier for us to understand what it is about. Ahriman is actually the lord of the world of material laws. When the Munich lectures of this year are printed, the whole world of Ahriman will be even more clearly understood. Ahriman is the lord of material laws, those laws which can only be spiritualized after the entire evolution of the earth has taken place, those laws that remain active, that remain effective. Ahriman is the rightful lord of material laws. If he did not abuse this dominion, did not extend it to something else, he would be a necessary being within the evolution of the earth. But what is written in the Cosmic Lord's Prayer applies: “Self-debt incurred by others, experienced in daily bread, in which heaven's will does not prevail.” It is true that man in his life on earth is bound to material laws, and that he cannot achieve the direct spiritualization of what comes from material laws by a mere inner, soul process, but that something external is necessary for this. Everything that is related to rich and poor is connected with this question. Everything that draws us into a social order so that we are under the yoke of laws that we can only spiritualize in the overall course of the development of the earth belongs in this category. And connected with this — as I said, I have to say something trivial, but the triviality is not meant that way — is that the social order is gradually dominated by what can be called money, the domination of money, which makes it impossible to live directly in spiritual laws. Everyone understands what is meant by such a thing. But because of the impossibility of making “stones into bread”, the impossibility of having the spiritual in matter directly, independently of the material, because of this impossibility and its mirror image, the domination of money, Ahriman has the domination. For socially, Ahriman also lives in money.

The question that remained unanswered for Ahriman had to lead to the ideal that the Christ Jesus would now pour out into the evolution of the earth and gradually work in the whole further evolution of the earth. This could not be settled merely on a soul level. The whole of the following evolution of the earth had to be permeated by Christ! The Christ had to merge with the evolution of the earth. Ahriman had the power to impose the necessity on the Christ to really connect with the earth. Therefore, he later imposed Judas, and through Judas he had the medium to really lead the Christ to his death. And through death, the Christ-being passed over into the earth-being. What Judas did was the question of Ahriman, which was not fully answered. The Lucifer temptation could be inwardly resolved by the soul. Every soul must resolve the Lucifer temptation within itself. Ahriman's nature is such that he will be overcome in the entire subsequent historical development of humanity, as people increasingly permeate and identify with the Christ-being.

One is indeed looking at a deep secret of historical development after the mystery of Golgotha when one considers this third question, which Ahriman did not fully answer, in the Akasha Chronicle. Everything lies therein. And the Christ now knew that He must completely unite with the earthly body, that He must truly become completely human.

This becoming human was now the source of further, three-year suffering. Because not immediately - so the observation of the Fifth Gospel in the Akasha Chronicle tells us - did the Christ-being become completely one with the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. In the beginning, when we see Christ Jesus walking on earth, we can see that the three bodies are indeed permeated by the Christ-being, but that this Christ-being is not completely within them, as another ego is within a person. For it is possible, and has taken place countless times, that the physical body of this Christ Jesus was somewhere or other, staying somewhere in solitude or with other people, but the Christ was far away, walking around the country as a spiritual being. Not always, when the Christ appeared here or there, appeared to one or the other apostle, was this spiritual being then present in the physical body of Christ Jesus. Even then He appeared in a spiritual body that was so strong that He was always felt to be a physical presence. According to the Fifth Gospel, what is spoken of as the disciples' being with Christ is not always a being in the physical body, but often only the visionary way of being together, rising to the level of physical presence.

This is the peculiar thing, that in the beginning there was indeed only something like a loose togetherness between the Christ and the body of Jesus of Nazareth. But this became more and more dense. More and more the Christ-Being had to sink into and unite with the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. But only towards the end of the three years did the Christ-Being and the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth become, so to speak, one unit, but only completely at the death on the cross, immediately before the death on the cross. But this uniting with the human body was a gradual, ever-increasing suffering. The all-embracing, universal spiritual being of Christ could only unite with the body of Jesus of Nazareth through unspeakable suffering. This suffering lasted for another three years.

When you see this, you really don't become sentimental, because the impression you get from the spiritual world has nothing to do with sentimentality. There is hardly any other impression that can be compared to the suffering of the Christ-being becoming one with the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. And one learns to recognize what a God had to suffer so that aging humanity could experience a new rejuvenation, so that man could become capable of completely taking possession of his ego.

This development was such that when individual disciples had already gathered around Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus was occasionally united with the disciples in the physical body, but as a spiritual being, of course, invisible to all except those with physical eyesight, so that only the disciples knew about him through the way he had united them with him, knew him among them.

But the Akashic research of the Fifth Gospel now reveals something very peculiar. Especially in the first period of the three years, Christ Jesus spoke very little. He worked. And he worked through his mere presence. I will come back to this later. Due to the special way in which the Christ-being was connected with the body of Jesus of Nazareth, effects emanated from him to other people that were otherwise not there in the development of the earth, and whose reflection is called a “miracle” with a very inappropriate or poorly understood word today. Such effects emanated from him through the composition of the being. More about this next time. But what I want to say now is something very peculiar.

You see the crowd of disciples walking around, and with some impressions you have the distinct feeling: Now the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth is also among the disciples. This is especially the case when Christ Jesus walks among his disciples in solitude. But often one also has the impression that the physical personality of Jesus of Nazareth is far away, but the disciples are aware that they are walking around and among them is the Christ Being. But it can speak through each of the disciples, alternately through one or the other. And while one or the other speaks, the whole physiognomy of the speaker is changed for the listeners from the people, as if hallowed, everything is different. One is always transfigured among them, and another always in the last days. The rumor had spread through the most diverse circumstances: there is someone who is stirring up the people, who is spreading something that the leading Jews of the time did not want. But no one knew who it was. It spoke once from this, once from that. Therefore, the Akasha Chronicle tells us, the betrayal of Judas was necessary.

I myself must confess: the question of why Judas' betrayal was necessary, why it is seriously necessary that someone who could know from among the disciples, through the Judas kiss as if pointing to them with his fingers: “This is the one!”, that actually always seemed a strange message, until I knew that it was really impossible to know which of them it was, because he could speak through anyone; so that even if he was among them in the flesh, you could not recognize it by the body. For each one could be mistaken for him, depending on whether he spoke through one or the other. And each one spoke! It was only when one who knew, when the Christ Jesus was really in the body among them, told the Jews: This is he! — only then could he be seized.

It was truly a phenomenon of a very special kind that took place at that time in the center of gravity, in the center of the evolution of the earth. I have spoken on various occasions, more theoretically, about how humanity experiences a descent and an ascent, how this Christ impulse once took hold within humanity, and at its center of gravity. There we get, so to speak, the impression of the essential significance of the Christ impulse for the evolution of the earth. We get the impression by characterizing the matter in such a way that we see what this impulse is for the development of the earth as a whole. I do not believe that if we now present, piece by piece, purely narrating, how the things present themselves to the eye, that the events, presented purely narrating, would make a lesser impression on our minds. I do not believe that anything of the significance attributed to the Christ impulse will be diminished when we see what Jesus of Nazareth experienced when Zarathustra was in his , how he grew with his suffering and all the goodwill that flowed from that suffering, so that the Zarathustra ego was bound to the words it spoke to the mother and left itself in these words. |

When we then learn how the Christ-being has sunk into this Jesus-being, which had become so free from itself through the conversation with the mother, how this Christ-being struggled with Ahriman and Lucifer, and how all that followed developed out of these sufferings, when we set forth these details, I believe they are in the fullest sense a confirmation of what results from spiritual research in broad lines. And as difficult as it is to speak unreservedly of these things, especially in the present, it must be considered a real obligation to give individual souls whatever will be more and more necessary for the development of souls towards the future. Therefore, I ask once again to accept and preserve these things with reverence.

Before coming to our main theme I want to make a brief addition to something that was said in the lecture yesterday. I spoke of the fact that really significant happenings in the evolution of humanity can be characterized by expressions derived front processes in the Cosmos. I also emphasized how impossible it is to speak intelligibly and adequately in the words of ordinary language about the great mysteries of existence.

The best way to characterize the deeply significant inter-action between Hermes and Moses, the two great pupils of Zarathustra, is to present it as a repetition, a re-enactment, of a cosmic process, viewed in the light of occult science.

In order to picture this cosmic process, let us again look back to the time when our Earth had separated from the Sun, when each with an independent centre was pursuing a further life of its own in the Cosmos. We can picture that in the far, far distant past, the substantiality of Earth +Sun formed a single whole, one great cosmic body which then divided into two. In saying this it must be remembered that other, parallel cosmic happenings—the splitting off of the other planets belonging to our solar system—are being left out of consideration here. For our immediate purpose the time sequence of these other severances need not be taken into account; it is enough to say that a separation once took place, as the result of which the Sun became an entity and the Earth another.

It must also be remembered that this separation took place in an age when the globe now called ‘Earth’ still contained within it the substantiality of the present Moon. Earth + Moon on the one side confronted Sun on the other. All the forces, both spiritual and physical, that had been at work before this separation, divided: the coarser elements, the coarser, cruder activities, remained with thc Earth, whereas the higher, spiritual-ethereal activities accompanied the Sun. We must picture to ourselves that for long ages Earth and Sun continued their evolution separately. To begin with, everything going forth from the Sun to the Earth was entirely different in character from the forces streaming from the Sun to-day. Earth-existence, Earth-life, was inward, enclosed, receiving little life from the Sun, little of what rayed down spiritually, taking physical expression, from the Sun.

In this first period of separation from the Sun, the Earth threatened to become barren, arid, mummified. And if the Moon had continued to remain in thc Earth the life that is present on our planet to-day would never have been possible. While the Moon was still contained in the Earth, the life pouring from the Sun could not be fully effective; this was only possible at a later time, when the Earth had separated from itself the substantiality of what is now Moon, and with it the spiritual Beings connected with the Moon.

But very much else is connected with the separation of the Moon from the Earth. It must be realised that everything we call life on our Earth to-day evolved by slow degrees, and Spiritual Science indicates the successive conditions or states of existence which made life possible. Previously there was the Old Saturn-existence, then the Old Sun-existence, then the Old Moon-existence, and finally our Earth-existence. The separation of the Sun and also the earlier union of Earth and Sun were therefore preceded by other, quite different evolutionary processes. And when the Earth began to exist in its present form, it was still united with the substance of all the planets that belong to our solar system and were not separated off until later—the process of separation and differentiation being brought about by forces previously operating during the three preceding evolutionary periods of Old Saturn, Old. Sun, Old Moon.

We know that during the Old Saturn-existence there was no matter, no substance, such as is present to-day; there were no solid bodies, no fluids, even no gaseous, vaporous or aeriform masses. Old Saturn was composed solely of warmth—differentiated warmth. We can therefore say: the body of ancient Saturn consisted of warmth only; everything evolved within the element of warmth. I need not emphasize here that one who ventures to make such a statement is fully aware of how impossible it is for modern physics to conceive of a body consisting solely of warmth; he is also aware that ‘warmth’ is for modern physics a state or condition only, not anything having the character of substance. However that may be, we are not concerned to-day with modern physics but only with the truth.¹

Evolution advanced from the warmth-body of Saturn to the next stage—the stage of Old Sun. There, as described in the book Occult Science, the warmth-body of Saturn densified. Some of the warmth remained, but the warmth-body densified, in part, to the gaseous, aeriform sate of Old Sun. The process was not only one of densification but also of rarefication—a development upwards, to light. Hence we can say: passing from the warmth-condition of Old Saturn to the stage of Old Sun, we have a cosmic body comprising air, warmth and light.

When the Old Sun-existence advanced to the stage of the Old Moon-existence which preceded that of our Earth, again there was densification and again rarefication. The fluid or watery condition was added to the gaseous, but a change also took place on the other side, in the direction as it wry or spiritualisation, etherealisation. During the Old Moon stage, not only was there light but also the sound-ether or chemical ether. What is here called sound-ether is not to be identified with what we call physical sound or tone. The latter is only a reflection of what is experienced by clairvoyant consciousness as the 'Harmony of the Spheres', as etheric sound or tone weaving as a living power through the Universe. In speaking of this ether and of this sound we are therefore speaking of something far more spiritual, far more ethereal than ordinary sound.

Densification to the solid state took place when Old Moon evolved to Earth. On Old Moon there were no solid bodies such as exist on Earth, where the solid condition came into existence for the first time. On the Earth, therefore, WC now have, on the one side, warmth, the gaseous and watery states, and solid bodies; and on the other side, light-ether, sound-ether, and then life-ether. Evolution on the Earth has reached this stage. Thus on the Earth there are seven elemental states or conditions, whereas on Old Saturn there was only the one state—that of warmth.

When our Earth emerged from the cosmic night at the beginning of its existence, when it was still united with the Sun and with the other planets, we must picture it living and weaving in these seven elemental conditions. But with the separation from the Sun something very remarkable took place.

Warmth and light are present for external life to-day since it is affected by the influences that stream from the Sun to the Earth and belong to the whole domain of sense-perception; but the sound-ether and the life-ether do not belong to this domain. The workings of the sound-ether manifest themselves only in chemical combinations and dissolutions, that is to say, in processes operating in material existence. What we call the working of the life-ether as it streams in from the Sun cannot be directly perceived by man in the sense that light is perceptible when through the senses he distinguishes light from darkness. The active workings or effects of life are perceived in living beings, but not the in-streaming life-ether itself. Hence science too is compelled to admit that life per se is a riddle.—

Thus the two highest kinds of etheric manifestation—the life-ether and the sound-ether—although they proceed from the Sun as extremely delicate emanations—are not directly manifest in Earth-existence. Although these emanations ray down from the Sun, they are hidden from ordinary perception. Yet in modern existence too, something corresponding to what lives in the sound-ether and life-ether is perceptible on the Earth in the inner nature of man. The direct influences and effects of the life-ether and the sound-ether (the harmony of the spheres) are not externally perceptible on the Earth, but what takes effect in the constitution of man is perceptible.

The easiest way in which I can explain this will be to re-mind you of the process of human evolution on Earth. In very ancient times and on into the Atlantean epoch, man was endowed with a faculty of clairvoyance enabling him to behold not only a material world as he does to-day but also the spiritual backgrounds of material existence. This was possible for man because in those ancient times there was an intermediate state between the waking consciousness that is ours to-day and what we call the sleeping state. In the waking state man perceived the things of the physical world of the senses; in the sleeping state to-day he neither perceives nor is aware of anything at all; he simply goes on living.—That at any rate is true of the great majority of people. If you were to investigate clairvoyantly man's life during sleep you would make startling discoveries—although only those people who look no deeper than the surface of things would be taken aback by them.

While man is asleep his astral body and Ego are outside his physical and etheric bodies. But it must not be imagined that astral body and Ego during sleep are like a misty cloud hovering in the vicinity of the physical body. What an inferior kind of astral clairvoyance sees in the form of a cloud and which we call the astral body, is only the very crudest beginning of what the human being reveals during sleep. If anyone were to regard this cloud-like formation near the physical and etheric bodies as the only phenomenon of importance he would simply be basing himself upon the lowest forms of astral clairvoyance. The truth is that during sleep man is a being of vast magnitude. At the moment of going to sleep, the inner forces in the astral body and in the Ego actually begin to expand over the whole solar system, to become part of it. From every direction man draws into his astral body and into his Ego forces which strengthen this life during sleep, and on waking he contracts into the narrower confines within his skin and pours into these what he has absorbed during the night from the whole solar system. That is why medieval occultists too called this spiritual body of man the ‘astral’ body, because it is united with the worlds of the stars and draws its forces from them. During sleep at night, then, man actually expands over the whole solar system.

What is it that permeates the astral body during sleep when it is outside the physical and etheric bodies? It is the weaving life of the harmonies of the spheres, forces that can otherwise operate only in thc sound-ether. Just as when a violin bow is drawn across the edge of a metal disc strewn with sand the vibrations pulsing through the air also pulsate through the sand and produce the well-known Chladni sound-figures, so do the harmonies of the spheres vibrate through the human being during sleep and bring order again into what has been cast into disorder during the day through his sense-perceptions. The weaving forces of the life-ether also permeate him during sleep, but he is entirely unaware of this inner life of his sheaths when he is separated from the physical and etheric bodies. In the normal state, man has the power of perception only when he again plunges down into the physical and etheric bodies, using the outer organs of the etheric body for thinking and those of the physical body for sense-perception.

But in ancient times there were intermediate states between waking life and sleep, states which can be induced to-day only by abnormal means and because of the dangers inseparable from such conditions, ought never to be induced. In Atlantean times, however, these faculties of perception that functioned normally in the intermediate states between waking and sleeping, enabled man to be transported into the domain of the forces living and weaving in the sound-ether and the life-ether. In other words: through clairvoyance in its old form, man was able in that distant past to be aware of what was being radiated to him by the Sun as the harmony of the spheres and the life that pulses through cosmic space—although the earthly effects of the sound-ether and the life-ether were perceptible only in living beings in the external world.

Such experiences gradually ceased to be possible; with the loss of the old clairvoyance the door closed against these perceptions and something different came into being, namely the inner power of cognition. Only then did man learn to reflect, to ponder, to cogitate. What we to-day call reflection about the things of the physical world, in other words an inner activity, began to develop only when the old clairvoyance was fading away. In the early epochs of Atlantis, man had no inner life such as he has to-day—an inner life of feelings, sentient experiences, thoughts and mental concepts, which actually constitute the creative impulse in culture and civilization. In the intermediate states between waking and sleeping his whole being was outpoured in a spiritual world and the material world of the senses seemed to be veiled in mist.

With the gradual disappearance of the old clairvoyance, external life increased in importance. A faint reflection of the harmony of the spheres and of the working of the life-ether was present in man's inner nature. But the reflection of the harmony of the spheres faded away to the same extent as man became inwardly aware of feelings and perceptions which mirrored the external world to him and constitute his inner life to-day. To the extent to which he felt himself an ‘I’, an Ego-being, his perception of the divine, all-pervading life-ether vanished from him. His condition had to be acquired at the cost of being deprived of certain aspects of external life. As an earthly being, man felt that the life he could no longer experience as streaming directly from the Sun was enclosed within him; and in his inner life to-day He has only a faint reflection of the sublime cosmic life, of the harmony of the spheres and the life-ether.

The development of man's faculty of cognition was also a kind of repetition of the Earth's own evolution. The Earth, when it separated from the Sun and became self-enclosed, would have hardened completely if all the substances left within it after the separation had been retained. The Sun's influence could not, to begin with, find entrance into the process of thc Earth's evolution and this state of things lasted until the Moon was separated from the Earth, together with all those substances and qualities that were making it impossible for the Earth to receive direct influences and forces from the Sun. Thus it was through having cast out the Moon that the Earth was able to receive the influences and forces of the now separated Sun. The Earth sent part of itself, the Moon, towards the Sun, in the opposite direction to that in which it had itself separated from the Sun, and the Moon then reflected back to the Earth the influences of the Sun, just as outwardly it reflects its light. The separation of the Moon from the Earth was an event of untold significance: the Earth had opened itself to the influences and forces of the Sun.

A cosmic event of this kind had necessarily to be re-enacted in the life of man as well. It was only when the Earth had long since opened itself to the workings of the Sun that the right point of time arrived for man to shut himself off from the direct influences of the Sun. The direct influences and forces of thc Sun were still active in the clairvoyance of Atlantean man. And just as there had come a time when the Earth began to harden, so too there came a time for man when he withdrew into his own inner nature, developed an inner life and could no longer receive the direct workings of the Sun. This process of the development of an inner life, when man could no longer be open to the Sun's influences and could receive only faint reflections within himself of the workings of the life-ether, the sound-ether, the harmonies of the spheres—this process lasted for long ages, right on into the post-Atlantean era.

In the earliest epochs of Atlantean evolution men had been directly aware of the Sun's influences. Then they shut them-selves off; and when these influences could no longer penetrate into them and their own inner life asserted itself strongly, it was only in the sacred Mysteries, through the practice of what may be called ‘Yoga’ that the spiritual powers of the pupils could be trained as it were to defy the normal conditions of Earth-existence and become directly aware of the workings of the Sun. Thus in the second half of the Atlantean epoch there were sanctuaries, appropriately called ‘Oracles’, where from among a humanity no longer able in a normal way to be aware of the direct workings of the sound-ether and the life-ether, pupils and dedicated disciples of the sacred wisdom were so trained that by first suppressing all perception through the senses, they could become aware of the manifestations of these higher ethers.

In places where genuine spiritual science was cultivated, this possibility actually remained in the post-Atlantean epoch—so persistently indeed that even external science, without understanding the meaning of it, has preserved a tradition originating in the School of Pythagoras to the effect that the harmonies of the spheres can become audible. But external science immediately turns anything of the nature of the harmony of the spheres into an abstraction—which of course it is not—and has no inkling of the reality. In the Pythagorean Schools the power to become aware of the harmony of the spheres was understood to be the re-opening of man's being to the sound-ether and to the divine life-ether.

It was Zarathustra or Zoroaster who had proclaimed with the greatest power and splendour that behind the Sun radiating its light and warmth to the Earth there is something which as the activity of the sound-ether and indeed of the life-ether is only feebly reflected in man's inner life. If we endeavour to translate his teaching into modern language, we can say that he taught his pupils as follows.—He said to them: When you look upwards to the Sun you are aware of the beneficial warmth and light streaming from it to the Earth; but if you develop higher organs, if you develop your faculty of spiritual perception, you can become aware of the Sun Being behind the physical Sun and its life; and then you become aware of the workings of the sound-ether and within these the essence of life!

Zarathustra spoke to his pupils of Ormuzd, or Ahura Mazdao, the great Sun Aura, as the spiritual reality behind the physical workings of the Sun. ‘Ahura Mazdao’ can therefore also be translated as the ‘Great Wisdom’ in contrast to the meagre wisdom evolved by men to-day. Man becomes aware of the Great Wisdom when he beholds the spiritual essence of the Sun, the great Sun Aura.

A poet, gazing back to the remote past in the evolution of humanity, was able to point in the following words to what the spiritual investigator knows to be a truth:

‘The sun-orb sings, in emulation,
'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round:
His path predestined through Creation,
He ends with step of thunder-sound.’
(Faust: Prologue in Heaven. Tr. Bayard Taylor)

Disciples of aestheticism regard this simply as euphony and quote it as an outstanding example of poetic licence. They have no inkling that a poet of Goethe's calibre is describing actual realities when he writes: ‘The sun-orb sings his ancient round’—that is to say, in the way known to ancient humanity, and known even to-day to one who is initiated.

Zarathustra had imparted this mighty truth to his pupils, particularly to the two among them who can be said to have been his most intimate disciples and were incarnated later on as Hermes and Moses. But Zarathustra gave the instruction on what lies behind the radiant body of the Sun in two quite different forms. The instruction given to Hermes enabled him to receive the influence streaming directly from the Sun. Moses, on the other hand, was inspired in such a way that he preserved the secret of the Sun-wisdom as though in a memory.

If in the light of what is said in the book Occult Science we picture the Earth after its separation from the Sun, and then the departure of the Moon-forces from the Earth after which the Earth opened itself to the Sun, we find Venus and Mercury between Earth and Sun. Dividing the whole space between Sun and Earth into three, we can say: the Earth separated from the Sun and sent forth the Moon towards the Sun. Then Venus and Mercury separated off from the Sun and came towards the Earth. Venus and Mercury, therefore, move from the Sun towards the Earth; the Moon goes from the Earth towards the Sun.

Conditions in the evolution of humanity reflect conditions in the Cosmos. The Sun-wisdom contained in the revelations of Zarathustra had been transmitted by him on the one side to Hermes and on the other to Moses. In Hermes there lived the Sun-wisdom radiating from the astral body of Zarathustra that had been transmitted to him; the wisdom living in Moses was like a separate planet that had still to develop towards what radiated directly from the Sun. Just as the Earth, by relinquishing the Moon, opened itself to the influence of ,the Sun, so did the wisdom of Moses open itself to receive the Sun-wisdom radiating directly from Zarathustra. And these two forms of wisdom, the Earth-wisdom of Moses and the Sun-wisdom of Zarathustra as imparted to Hermes, came into con-tact in Egypt, where the teachings of Moses encountered those of Hermes. What Moses had received from Zarathustra in the far distant past, he wakened to life within his own being and transmitted it to his people. We have to conceive of this as a process analogous to the emergence of the Moon-substantiality from the Earth.

The wisdom transmitted by Moses to his people can also be called Jahve- or Jehovah-wisdom—the name which, if rightly understood, epitomises it. We can also understand why old traditions speak of Jahve or Jehovah as a Moon God. This is frequently stated but is comprehensible only when these profound connections arc known. Just as the Earth cast out the Moon, sending it towards the Sun, so too the path of the Earth-wisdom of Moses inevitably led towards Hermes who possessed the direct wisdom of Zarathustra in the astral body that had been bequeathed. The wisdom of Moses, having made contact with Hermes, had then itself to evolve, and we have already described how its development continued until the age of David, when in David himself, the royal warrior and psalmist of the Hebrew people, Hermetic or Mercury-wisdom arose in a new form. We have also heard how the wisdom of Moses made still closer contact with the Sun-wisdom during the time of the Babylonian captivity, when Zarathustra himself, then bearing the name of Zarathas or Nazarathos, was the teacher of the Hebraic Initiates during the captivity. In the wisdom of Moses, therefore, we see a re-enactment of the cosmic process of the separation of Earth from Sun and of subsequent happenings on the Earth.

The wise men among the ancient Hebrews and all who were aware of these connections were filled with deepest reverence. They felt as though direct revelations were being vouchsafed to them from cosmic spaces and cosmic existence. And a personality such as Moses seemed to them to be a messenger of the cosmic Powers themselves. This they felt—and We too must feel something of the kind if we desire genuinely to understand ancient times. Otherwise, all our learning is no more than empty abstraction.

It was essential that what had streamed from Zarathustra and had been transmitted to posterity through Hermes and Moses should also evolve to a higher stage and appear again in a different, more advanced form. To this end it was necessary that Zarathustra himself, the Individuality who had previously bequeathed only the astral body and the etheric body, should be able to appear on the Earth in a physical body, in order that this too might be offered up. Here we have a beautiful illustration of progress. In his life in the very distant past, Zarathustra had given the impulse to post-Atlantean evolution in ancient Iranian culture. Then he bequeathed his astral body in order to inaugurate a. new form of culture through Hermes, and he bequeathed his etheric body to Moses. He had thus bequeathed two of his sheaths. Opportunity had now to be afforded him to offer up his physical body as well, for the great mystery of the evolution of humanity demanded the offering of the three bodies by one single individual. The third act still ahead of Zarathustra was the offering of the physical body, and this required very special measures of preparation. I have already indicated how the particular kind of life lived by the Hebrew people throughout the generations made possible the preparation of the physical body that could eventually be offered up by Zarathustra as his third great act. This preparation demanded that what elsewhere had been direct, outwardly oriented spiritual perception—the astral vision which in the Turanians had become decadent—should be trans-formed into an inner activity.

This is the secret of the Hebrew people. Whereas in the Turanians the forces inherited from ancient times produced organs of external clairvoyance, in the Hebrew people these forces turned inwards, organising the inner constitution of the body. Hence the Hebrews were the people destined to feel and to experience inwardly what during the Atlantean age men had seen outspread behind the single physical objects. Jahve or Jehovah—the name consciously uttered and proclaimed by the Hebrew people—was the ‘Great Spirit’ revealed to ancient clairvoyance behind all things and beings and now concentrated into a unity. And it is also indicated that in a very special way the progenitor of the ancient Hebrews had been endowed with this inner organic constitution.

Let me again repeat that the pictorial accounts of ancient happenings contained in sagas and legends are nearer to the truth than the picture of evolution pieced together by modern anthropological research from evidence provided by excavations and fragments of monuments. In most eases the old legends are corroborated by spiritual-scientific investigation. I say ‘in most cases’ and not ‘in all’ because I have not investigated every one of them; but it is very probable that the above holds good for all genuinely ancient legends. Thus when we enquire into the origin of the Hebrew people, we are led back, not to what modern anthropologists surmise, but to an actual progenitor named in the Bible. Abraham or Abram is a living figure and what the Talmud legend says of this original ancestor is true.

According to the story, the father of Abraham is a captain in the service of that legendary but nevertheless real personality called ‘Nimrod’ in the Bible (Genesis X, 8-9). It is announced to Nimrod by those who understand the signs of the times as revealed in dreams that many kings and rulers will be overthrown by his captain's son. Nimrod is seized with fear and orders that the child be killed. Such is the legend, and its truth is confirmed by occult investigation. Abraham's father resorts to subterfuge and presents another man's child to Nimrod. His own child, Abraham, is reared in a cave.—Abraham is the first in whom the forces formerly operating as the faculties of external clairvoyance turned inwards to become the powers that were to lead to inner consciousness of the Divine. This complete reversal of forces is indicated in the legend by saying that by thc grace of God the child was able to suck milk from the fingers of his own right hand during the three years he lived in the cave. This process of self-nourishment, in other words the penetration of the forces formerly used for the old clairvoyance into the inner constitution of man, is illustrated in a wonderful way in Abraham, the progenitor of thc Hebrew people.—If their real foundations are understood, legends of this kind are so convincing that we realise why old narratives could only convey in pictures what lay behind their contents. But these pictures were able to evoke feelings—even if not actual consciousness—of the great truths. And that sufficed in those ancient times. Abraham, then, was the first man in whom the faculties of divine wisdom, divine vision, were reflected inwardly in an entirely human form, as thought of the Divine. In actual fact, and as occult investigation will always insist, the physical constitution of Abram, or Abraham as he was called later on, was entirely different from that of everyone living around him. The organic constitution of other human beings was not such as would have enabled them to unfold inner activity of thinking through a special instrument. Thinking was possible for them when they were free of the body, when forces were activated in the etheric body; but they had not yet developed the instrument for thinking in the physical body itself. Abraham was actually the first in whom the physical instrument for thinking had been elaborated in the real sense. Hence—although this must not be taken too literally—he is not incorrectly called the inventor of arithmetic, the science dependent primarily upon the instrument of the physical body. Arithmetic is something that in its form, and because of its intrinsic certainty, comes near to clairvoyant knowledge, but it is essentially dependent upon a bodily organ.

Thus there is a deep and intimate connection between a faculty in which external forces had hitherto been used for clairvoyance and one which now made use of an inner organ for the activity of thinking. This is indicated when Abraham is spoken of as the inventor of arithmetic. He is therefore to be regarded as the first personality into whom was implanted the physical organ of thinking, the organ through which man, by means of physical thinking, could rise to actual thought of the Divine, whereas formerly it was only through clairvoyant vision that he could have any knowledge of God and of the Divine. All such knowledge in ancient times was the outcome of clairvoyance. To rise to the Divine through thought required a physical instrument and Abraham was the first into whom it was implanted. And as here it was a matter, of a physical organ, the whole relation of this thought or concept of the Divine to the objective world and to the subjective being of man was different from what it had formerly been, when a physical instrument was not involved.

The thought of the Divine had formerly been grasped through the wisdom preserved in the Mystery Schools and could be conveyed to one who had developed to the stage of being able to have perceptions in the etheric body, free from the organs of the physical body. But the only means for the transmission of a physical instrument to another human being is physical heredity. Thus if what was of salient importance for Abraham, namely the physical organ, was to be preserved on the Earth, it had to be transmitted from generation to generation through heredity. It is therefore understandable that the element of racial heredity, the transmission of this physical attribute through the blood flowing down the generations, was of very great importance in the Hebrew people.

But a physical attribute that appeared for the first time in Abraham, resulting from the crystallization and shaping of a physical organ for comprehension of the Divine—such an attribute had to be established. Transmitted by heredity from generation to generation, it penetrated ever more deeply into the nature and constitution of man and took firmer and firmer hold there as the effect of heredity grew progressively stronger. Hence we can say: it was necessary that what had been imparted to Abraham in order that the mission of the Hebrew people might be fulfilled, should reach greater perfection in the course of being transmitted from generation to generation through heredity. And in thc case of a physical organ this was the only possible means.

If the Individuality we have come to know as Zarathustra was to be provided with as perfect a physical body as possible—that is to say, a body containing an organ capable of grasping, in a human physical body, the thought or concept of the Divine—the physical instrument once implanted in Abraham had to be brought to the highest attainable degree of perfection; it had to be inwardly consolidated through heredity and to develop in such a way that a body suitable for Zarathustra might be produced, with all the qualities needed by him in his physical body. But a physical body that was to be of use to Zarathustra could not have developed to greater perfection by itself, separated from the rest of man's constitution; all the three sheaths, physical, etheric and astral, had gradually to be perfected through what physical heredity flowing down the successive generations was able to impart to them.

There is a certain law in evolution of which we have often heard in connection with the development of the individual human being. A particular period of this process is from birth until the sixth or seventh year of life, during which the main development is that of the physical body. The period of the development of the etheric body is from the sixth or seventh year until the fourteenth or fifteenth. The period of the development of the astral body is from then until the twenty-first or twenty-second year. Such is the law, based on the number seven, governing the development of the individual human being. The development of the outer sheaths of humanity in general through the generations is governed by a similar law and the deeper aspects of this process have still to be considered.

Whereas in the course of every seven years the individual completes a stage of development, until his seventh year that of the physical body, which becomes more and more perfect during this period—so the whole structure of the physical body of mankind in general, developing as it can do through the generations, reaches a certain completion after seven generations. But heredity works in such a way that the qualities transmitted do not pass from one human being to his nearest descendant in the immediately following generation; the salient qualities and attributes cannot be transmitted directly from father to son, from mother to daughter, but only from father to grandson—thus to the second generation, then the fourth, and so on. The number seven is basic in the process of heredity through the generations; but as every other generation is skipped, we have, in reality, to do with the number fourteen.

The special physical constitution established in Abraham could reach the peak of its development after fourteen generations. But for this process to take effect in the etheric body and the astral body as well, the development which in the case of the individual proceeds during the period from the seventh to the fourteenth year would have to continue through a further seven, or in reality, fourteen generations, and then through a still further period of seven (or fourteen) generations, starting from the fourteenth year in the case of the individual human being. In other words : the physical constitution established in Abraham, the racial progenitor, had to develop through three times seven or rather three times fourteen generations; the development had then taken place in all the three sheaths—physical body, etheric body and astral body. Thus the process of heredity through three times fourteen generations, i.e. through forty-two generations, made it possible for a man to receive in the physical body, etheric body and astral body in a state of perfected development, what had been imparted to Abraham in its first rudiments.

Thus after three times fourteen generations, beginning with Abraham, we find a human body impregnated with what had been present in Abraham in its earliest rudiments. Only a body of this kind was suitable for Zarathustra in his incarnation. This is also made clear by the writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew. In the table of generations, fourteen generations are expressly enumerated from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian captivity, and fourteen from the captivity to Jesus Christ. Through these three times fourteen generations—in the sequence of which one is always skipped—the complete development has been achieved of what was imparted to Abraham for the mission of the Hebrew people. This was now fully impressed into the principles of human nature and thence could arise the body needed by Zarathustra for his incarnation in the epoch when a completely new impulse was to be brought to mankind through him.

The wisdom underlying the beginning of the Gospel of St. Matthew is indeed profound. It is essential, however, to understand what is indicated by these three times fourteen generations. In the body that it was possible for Joseph to provide for Jesus of Nazareth there was contained the essence of what had been present, in its rudiments, in Abraham; this had streamed into the whole Hebrew people and could then be concentrated in a single instrument, in the sheath used by Zarathustra by whom the incarnation of Christ was to be made possible.

• 1. See Occult Science—an Outline, p. 21. From Rudolf Steiner's Preface to the first edition. (1909).

We cannot fully estimate the nature of man's being, as it appears at present, without fixing our eyes on extended periods through which he has passed in the course of his evolution. This will become evident when considering the facts described by me during recent days. Our souls undergo repeated earth-lives that are always separated from one another by the life between death and a new birth. In this manner our souls have passed through the most manifold periods of human evolution. By reflecting on these things, we shall clearly recognize that the nature of the human being can be comprehended only when we consider extended periods during which our souls have repeatedly lived on earth.

These matters have been discussed by me in previous Kristiania (Oslo) lectures, dealing with the sequence of evolutionary epochs, such as those that preceded and those that followed the Mystery of Golgotha. Today I wish to discuss this subject from a particular standpoint.

Mankind has undergone great changes in the course of its evolution. This fact is not sufficiently appreciated. People know that a Greek period existed, an Egyptian period, and other earlier periods. But, although they are aware of evolving culture-impulses, they believe that human beings in regard to their soul-life were just the same (at least, in historic ages) as they are today. This is not true. At a certain stage we come to a stop in this historic retrospect. We come to a long pause leading to a period which present-day scientists are very fond of describing as that of man's supposedly ape-like ancestors.

Mankind's evolution, however, was not in the least as people now imagine it. In order to understand the changes it has undergone, let us envisage the relatively great dependency, existing in the present age during the human being's first years of life, of the spirit and soul organism on the physical-bodily one.

You need only to consider the stage of early childhood until the change of teeth, and the extensive transformation accompanying the change of teeth which must strike every unprejudiced observer. The child's entire soul-constitution becomes different. We then find another life period lasting until puberty. We all know that at this age the development of spirit and soul is dependent on the development of the body. And, if we observe these things without prejudice, we notice the same dependence of spirit and soul on the body also at a later age lasting until the twenties, although today, in the time of youth movements (this is not said in a critical sense) it is just the young people who do not like to emphasize this dependence. Naturally, they consider themselves, at sixteen or seventeen, fully developed young women and young men; and those vaunting unusual mental faculties write newspaper articles at twenty-one. These young people would thus like to hush up the fact that their spirit and soul is greatly dependent on their bodily organism. At any rate, the present-day human being becomes more or less independent of the body once he has reached a certain age. A man in his twenties is an adult who does not feel himself as dependent upon his body as would a child were it to pass in full consciousness through the stages between change of teeth and puberty.

There was still a feeling in comparatively recent ages that the human being matured gradually. It was then clearly realized that the so-called apprentice had to be treated differently from the journey-man; and a master's rank could not be attained until relatively late in life.

As regards present-day man, however, it can be asserted that after a certain age, his spirit and soul are no longer greatly dependent on his body. Of course, on reaching a venerable age, we notice a renewed dependence on our physical organism. When the legs become shaky, when the face becomes wrinkled, when the hair becomes grey, we cannot then deny the influence of the body. This, however, is not ascribed to a genuine parallelism of body and soul. People of today feel that, even though the bodily forces decline, soul and spirit remain, and must remain, more or less independent of the bodily-physical. Yet this was not always the case. If we go back to earlier epochs of mankind's evolution, we find the human being even in his old age remaining as intensely dependent on his body as does a child's soul today remain dependent on its body between the change of teeth and puberty. And if we are enabled—not by external history, but by spiritual science—to go back to the first period of evolution after the great Atlantean catastrophe which caused a new configuration of the earth's continents, we come to what I called in my Occult Science the primeval Indian epoch. The human being then felt himself, even after having reached his fifties, to be just as dependent on the physical as the child's soul is dependent on the change of teeth, and the youthful person's soul on puberty. This means: Just as we experience today during childhood the ascending line of growth, so ancient man experienced, in his fifties, the descending line within spirit and soul. Then things happened in such a way that a man, on reaching his fifties, matured inwardly just by becoming older, in a similar manner as modern man matures on attaining puberty. And at that time, seven or eight thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha, human beings eagerly looked forward, during their whole life, to this stage of existence. For everyone could say to himself: Something will be revealed to me out of my bodily constitution that I could not experience in younger years, before I became forty-nine or fifty. Naturally, such an idea is bound to shock modern men most profoundly. You only need to think of a present-day man who is absolutely sure of being a finished product after reaching the twenties. What could be said if he had to wait until the age of maturity revealed something to him which he could not know before, which he could not feel, and experience before!

In ancient India, however, man's bodily constitution enabled him to feel, already in his fifties, something like a gradual separation of the physical body from spirit and soul. He felt more and more how the physical approximated, as it were, the corpse-like. And he felt in this estrangement of the physical body, in this approach of the physical body to the earth-elements, a liberation of spirit and soul. By considering the body merely as a garment, he felt its relationship to the earth, to all that would belong to earth after death. It was less amazing to ancient than to modern men that the body had to be discarded, delivered to the earth-forces. For ancient man passed slowly and gradually through this process of discarding the body.

This sounds paradoxical, because it implies the terrifying conception of having a physical body that is slowly becoming a corpse. Ancient man, however, did not think of his body as a burdensome object passing, as it were, into a kind of putrefaction. Instead, he thought of it as an independent sheath or shell which, even though becoming earth-like, was yet full of life. Yet the physical body, at the age of fifty, assumed a sheath-like, shell-like character.

This gradual becoming similar to the earth taught ancient man something that can be known today only through abstract science. The inner nature of metals, for instance, became known to him. At the age of fifty, he was instinctively able to differentiate between copper, silver, and gold. He felt the resemblance of these metals to his own organism gradually turning to earth. A rock-crystal called forth in him other feelings than furrowed soil. By aging, man gained wisdom concerning terrestrial matters.

This fact influenced primeval civilization. The young, looking up to the old, said to themselves: These ancients are wise. Once I have become as old as they are, I shall also be wise. Such an attitude caused a profound veneration and a tremendous respect for old age.

In those ancient days of mankind's evolution (the epoch of primeval India), a lofty civilization, connected with a wondrous veneration, a wondrous respect for old age, existed in a certain part of the world (not in that part, however, inhabited by men with receding foreheads, such as are excavated today by anthropologists). And we must ask ourselves: How did it actually happen that men passed through these experiences?

It did happen, because primeval man lived less intensively in his physical body than we do. Today man crawls into the very core of his physical body, the experiences of which he shares. Thus he feels himself to be identical, at one with his physical body. And we must undergo a common destiny with whatever is felt to be at one with us. Because, in those ancient times, men felt themselves more self-dependent within the physical body; because their thinking was more imaginative; because their feeling was like an inward weaving and living in the world of reality—for all these reasons their physical body from the beginning seemed to them like a sheath in which they were encased. This sheath began to harden as life drew near its end. A man in his fifties could feel how the body developed increasingly in accord with the outer world, thus becoming a mediator that could instill in him wisdom concerning the outer world.

The situation changed when civilized mankind of those days passed into the next age, called by me in my Occult Science the primeval Persian. Then a man in his fifties could no longer experience this dependence of his physical body upon the earthly. Instead, the aging physical body exerted a different influence on those still in their forties, from the forty-second or forty-third year to the forty-ninth or fiftieth. During these years, they participated intensively in the change of seasons. They experienced spring, summer, autumn, winter within their body. As it were, their body began to bud and blossom during spring and summer, and went into decline during autumn and winter. Human life took part in the seasons, the changing air-currents ...

And this perception of the changing air-currents, the changing seasons, was connected with another thing. Man felt that his speech was being transformed into something no longer belonging essentially to him. Just as the primeval Indian felt that, once he had attained the fifties, his whole physical body did not really belong to him, but more or less to the earth, so the primeval Persian felt that the body, by producing speech, belonged to the people around him. At fifty, a member of primeval Indian culture no longer said: I am walking. If expressing his own feelings, he would say: My body is walking. He did not say: I enter through the door; but instead: My body carries me through the door. For he experienced his body as something related to the outer world, to the earth. And, five or six millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha, a member of the Persian civilization felt that speech came forth by itself, that he had it in common with his whole surroundings. At that time, people all over the world did not live in such an international way as today, but as members of definite folk communities. They felt how speech became alienated from them; how, if expressing their real feelings, they could say: “It is speaking within me.”

It was really the case that people after attaining the forties expressed the following in a certain, very respectful sense: Divine-spiritual forces are speaking through me. And the human being also felt as if his breath did not belong to him any longer, but was dedicated to the surrounding world.

On reaching his late thirties, a member of the Egypto-Chaldaean culture—which lasted from the third or fourth millennium until the eighth or ninth pre-Christian century—had a similar feeling with regard to his thoughts, his mental images. The Egyptian or Chaldaean felt in his thirty-fifth year as if his mental images were connected with heavenly forces, the course of the stars.

As the primeval Indian, at the end of his life, felt the connection of his body with the earth, as the primeval Persian felt the connection of his speech, his breath, with the seasons and the surrounding world, so a member of ancient Egyptian, of ancient Chaldaean culture felt that his thoughts were directed by the course of the stars. And he felt how divine star-powers were interwoven with his thoughts.

In Egypto-Chaldaean culture, the human being felt this dependence of his thoughts upon heavenly powers until his forty-second or forty-third year. Subsequently no new element entered into human development. The primeval Persian, too, felt as if his thoughts had been given to him by the stars; but he attained, moreover, in his forties the relationship to speech that I have described. Likewise, the primeval Indian, from his thirty-fifth year, possessed this relationship to the star-powers. Therefore he considered astrology as something self-evident. In his forties, he also attained the dependence of speech upon his surroundings. In his fifties, moreover, he experienced how his physical body became objective, became shadow-like. He accustomed himself, as it were, to the dying, because dying had approached him already in his fifties. The soul was less firmly joined to the body. Hence outer conditions could bring forth these bodily changes. This fact was perceived by the soul, experienced by the soul. And thereby man, as he grew older, merged himself more and more with the world.

Then came the Graeco-Latin era, which lasted from the eighth pre-Christian century until the fifteenth post-Christian century, for until then, the echo of Graeco-Latin culture still resounded in all civilized countries. This marked the age when man felt himself until his thirties still dependent upon his physical body, but no longer dependent on the stars, the seasons, the earth. He felt himself firmly entrenched within his physical body. The Greek felt a concord, a harmony between the soul and spirit element and the bodily-physical. Only this bodily-physical element no longer separated itself from him. This is all very difficult to express, for we are prevented, by the customary and totally inadequate historical teaching given to us in school, from forming a conception of these changes in mankind's evolution.

There then came the time when the human being became connected with his physical body in such a way that his physical body was committed no longer to participate in the course of the universe directed by spiritual laws. Now man was completely bound to his physical body. Mankind did not reach this stage until the eighth pre-Christian century.

Thus a great transformation of mankind's whole evolution occurred in as far as it concerned civilized mankind. Although the human being on reaching the thirties felt himself still at one with his physical body, he no longer was separated from it. He felt himself united with his physical body. It could no longer unveil to him the world's mysteries. During this period, therefore, mankind attained an entirely new relation to death. At an earlier time, when the human being prepared himself for dying, as it were, by undergoing a separation from his physical body, this dying signified for him nothing but a transformation in the midst of life; for, in his fifties, he became familiar gradually with the process of dying. He experienced dying as a process which merged him, in a wisdom-filled and blissful way, with the universe. He experienced death as something guiding him into a world in which he had already lived during his earth-life. Death at that time was something entirely different from what it became later. It might be said: More and more the human being was confronted by the possibility that soul and spirit might participate in death.

Let us compare Hellenism with the primeval Indian epoch. In primeval India, the body gained independence. The individual was aware of being something else besides his body which became independent and sheath-like. He could not have possibly conceived the thought that death might be the end. Such a thought did not exist among human beings of the primeval Indian period. Only by degrees, and most decisively in the eighth pre-Christian century, did man say to himself (still out of an unconscious feeling, because he was unable to think about these things in a rationalistic way): My body dies; but, with regard to soul and spirit, I am at one with my body. No longer did he notice the difference between the bodily and the spirit and soul element.

The human being became dominated by a thought that terrified him when it first arose out of dark spiritual depths in the ninth or eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha. It was the thought: Might not my soul pursue the same path as my body—die, as my body dies?

This thought which in the primeval Indian epoch would have been totally inconceivable now came more and more to the fore. Out of this mood emerged words like those famous ones of the Greek hero: Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the shades.

This was the time when mankind nurtured a mood that grew in the right way towards the Mystery of Golgotha. For, what brought forth in ancient human beings the ability to preserve a freshness of soul which made it impossible for them to conceive that the soul might take the same path of death as the body?

This freshness of soul, this independence of soul with regard to feeling, was given to ancient man by this knowledge: I have had a life—for he could look into this life—which was pre-earthly; through it I passed with my soul and spirit before I descended to the physical world. While dwelling in this higher world, I was united with the exalted Sun-Being.

The ancient Mysteries had evolved a teaching which pointed out that man, in his pre-earthly existence, was united with the spirit of the sun, just as in earth-life his body is united with the physical light of the sun.

The teachers in the ancient Mysteries told the following to their pupils who, in their turn, told it again to others (they did not designate the exalted Sun-Being as the Christ, but He was the Christ, and we may therefore be permitted today to use this name): The Christ is a Being Who shall never descend to the earth. You, however, dwelt in your pre-earthly existence, before descending to earth, within spiritual worlds in communion with the Christ. And the force of the Christ has given you the faculty of making your soul independent of the body.

This instinctive memory of a pre-earthly existence was lost through the soul's increasing identification with its physical body. And, in the Greek epoch, earthly man could employ his instinctive consciousness-forces only by looking at physical life. The Greek was able to live such a harmonious earth-life, because his outlook into the divine worlds of the spirit had faded away. He was so successful in subduing the sensible-physical that the spiritual vanished more or less from his life's horizon. No longer did civilized men have a consciousness of the fact that before descending to earth, they dwelt in the presence of the exalted Sun-Being Who was later called the Christ. Now darkness encompassed those who looked at pre-earthly, prenatal existence. And thus arose the mystery of death.

What happened henceforth must be envisaged as something concerning not only mankind but also the gods. The divine-spiritual powers who sent the human being down to earth gave him the impulses towards the development that I have just described. Since his spirit and soul became increasingly merged with the physical body; since, as it were, his spirit and soul became identical with the physical, and since, therefore, the mystery of death confronted also the spirit and soul, the divine-spiritual powers who had sent the human being down to earth were threatened with the danger that he might be lost to the gods, that his soul, as well as his body, might die.

Yet man would never have become a free, independent being, had he not grown into his body during this epoch. Man could only become free in evolution if his view of the pre-earthly was dimmed. He was obliged to stand on earth—totally forsaken, as it were—within his physical body's abode. Thus his independent ego could radiate and gleam up.

For this shining forth of the independent ego can be best accomplished by the human being entering completely into his physical body. When man grows upward into the worlds of spirit and soul, his ego retreats; he is being merged with the objective element of spirit and soul. Man could become a free ego-being only if given the impulse by the gods to merge himself more and more with his physical body. He was thus, however, confronted by the mystery of death; for the physical body was bound to be claimed by death.

Now, if man's vision had not been awakened in another way, all of mankind on earth would have become more and more convinced that the soul and physical body were both dying together. And, if nothing else had happened; if history had continued its course in a straight line, all of us today would have come to the common conviction that the soul as well as the body are doomed to be laid in the grave.

At this point, the divine-spiritual powers decided to send down on earth the exalted Sun-Being, the Christ, in order that men, who no longer had any knowledge of their communion with the Christ during pre-earthly existence, could gain consciousness of their communion with the Christ after He had descended on earth and had shared on Golgotha and in Palestine their human destiny in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The God descended into the earthly world at the moment of mankind's world historic evolution when men had lost their feeling of communion with the Sun-Being beyond the earthly world.

Why did the Christ come down on earth? Because human beings, having fought their way to the attainment of complete ego-consciousness, needed Him on earth. Men had to experience the presence of a victor, who could die and resurrect himself—be the vanquisher of death.

In the course of history, this mystery had to be set before mankind at a time when man, no longer able to look back into pre-earthly existence, was granted a view of his communion with the giver of man's immortality, with the Christ. It is a divine event, and not merely for mankind, that the Christ was sent down on earth from higher worlds. For the human race would have fallen away from the gods, had they not sent down upon earth the loftiest among them, in order that He undergo a human destiny, a human existence, thus interweaving a divine event with earthly-human events and mankind's entire world evolution.

The Mystery of Golgotha cannot be comprehended unless we regard it not only as a human event, but also as a divine event. The fact must be grasped that something which could be envisaged previously only in the divine worlds could now be envisaged in the earthly world.

Possibly you might raise the objection: Not all men have become followers of the Christ; many do not believe in the Christ. Must all these have the opinion that at death their soul would be laid in the grave with the body?

This, however, is not the way in which the Mystery of Golgotha may be interpreted. It is valid through all the centuries preceding ours that the Christ, in His infinite compassion overflowing with grace, died not only for His immediate followers, but for all men in all ages, everywhere on earth.

All men on earth have been redeemed from the riddle of death by the Christ. At first, this deed did not touch human consciousness. It is natural, however, that some men were found who could consciously grasp the grandeur and significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. Yet the Christ did die and did rise as much for the Chinese, Japanese, and Hindus as for the Christians.

Just because since the fifteenth century human evolution must increasingly regard intellectualism as its highest soul-force, and just because this intellectual impulse will become more and more powerful in the future, have we approached an epoch when it is incumbent upon the earth's entire population to grasp, with its ever growing consciousness, what was brought forth by the Mystery of Golgotha.

Thus it will become necessary that the Mystery of Golgotha be penetrated by a knowledge that can be really understood by all men on earth.

In preceding centuries, Christianity developed in a way that still conformed to the peculiarities of ancient ethnic religions. Christian development had not yet attained universality. The Christian missionaries who went among the followers of other religions found little or no understanding, because the Christ was presented as a separate god who had the same qualities as those possessed by the ancient heathen folk deities. This was the manner in which Christianity had been disseminated. Why had Constantine, why Chlodvig, accepted Christianity?—Because they believed that the Christian god would be a more powerful helper than their former gods. They exchanged, as it were, their former gods for the Christian god. Hence the Christ had to take on many qualities of the ancient folk deities. These qualities have adhered to the Christ through the centuries.

In this way, however, Christianity could not become a universal religion. On the contrary, it had to retreat more and more before intellectualism. And we have seen, particularly in the nineteenth century, many a theological development which understood nothing whatsoever of the Christ-event in its super-sensible aspect. Here the desire was to speak only of Jesus, the man, although conceding that as man he towered above all other men. Yet, henceforth, the desire was only to speak of Jesus, the man, and not of Christ, the God.

We must, nevertheless, be able to speak again of Christ, the God, because this Christ, while undergoing His destiny through the Mystery of Golgotha, manifested to men on earth what He had formerly signified to them, before they had descended to earth from the high heavens.

Hence, we must state that the ancient folk religions were primarily local religions. People prayed to the god of Thebes, to the god on Mount Olympus. They were local deities who could be worshipped only in near-by places. Thus, from the beginning, these ancient faiths were bound to certain territories.

Later the local gods, who had their abode in a definite spot, were replaced by gods bound to the personalities of single men, of the guiding folk heroes. Yet a people's god was either a still living folk hero or his surviving soul, the ancestral folk soul. All religious faiths had a restricted character.

With Christianity, however, there appeared a world religion which bestowed a spiritual element upon the whole earth, just as the sun bestows a physical element upon the whole earth. The climate in the vicinity of Mount Olympus is different from the climate in the vicinity of Thebes; the latter, in its turn, is different from the climate in the vicinity of Bombay. If a religious faith nestles close to a locality, it cannot spread beyond this locality. The sun, however, sheds its light on all the earth's localities, shines upon all men as the same sun.

When, however, the human form was taken on by that God Whose physical reflection shone forth in the sun's radiance, then the human race received a God who could be accepted as God by all men on earth. If the possibility is found of penetrating the being of this Christ-Divinity, we shall be able to represent Him as the God acceptable to all mankind. Today we stand only at the beginning of anthroposophical teachings. As it were, we are still stammering the language of Anthroposophy. Yet Anthroposophy will continue to develop more and more. And a part of this development will consist in its capability of finding words to describe the Mystery of Golgotha—words of a kind that spiritual science can bring to the Hindus, the Chinese, to all men on earth; and which will elucidate the Mystery of Golgotha in such a way that the Hindus, the Chinese, the Japanese will be unable to reject what is told them concerning the Mystery of Golgotha.

For this purpose, we must attach a genuinely serious significance to all that represents Christian tradition. Throughout the centuries, people have subjected themselves more or less to the words of the Gospels. They have studied these Gospels in a way commensurate with their understanding of these ancient books. We have certainly no intention of speaking against the validity of the Gospels. Our cycles on each of the Gospels attempt to penetrate, by means of special anthroposophical interpretation, into the deeper meaning of these Gospels. Yet one thing must be said: Why is the passage at the end of one Gospel taken so lightly? There it is written: 1 have still many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. And why are the words of another Gospel not taken more seriously: And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth-cycles? For the Christ spoke the full truth. He could have said to men other things than those recorded in the Gospels. Only those Christ-words are recorded in the Gospels, for the understanding of which the men of that epoch—few in number—were ready. But mankind must become more and more mature in the course of earthly evolution. From the Mystery of Golgotha on, the Christ dwelt among men as the Living Christ, and not as the dead Christ. And He is still present among us. If we learn to speak His language, we shall recognize His presence; we shall recognize the truth of His words: And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth-cycles. And the anthroposophical world view desires to speak His language, His spiritual language. The anthroposophical world view desires to speak in such a way of nature, of all the beings on earth, of the starry sky and the sun that, by means of this language, the Mystery of Golgotha may be understood; that the Christ may be experienced as the One Who is ever present.

And, also after the Mystery of Golgotha, we may regard as Christ-words all that we have gained from the spiritual world; aided by that power which, through the Mystery of Golgotha, descended from heaven to earth. If as men we speak of the spiritual worlds, we may make true the word of St. Paul: Not I, but the Christ in me. For today we have entered an age in which we cannot even emulate the Greeks who, although feeling themselves still at one with their physical body, yet felt this physical body as something harmonious and independent. Today we penetrate at a still earlier age than the Greeks into that which underlies our physical body, thus separating ourselves from the spiritual around us. We can deepen our being only by seeking the union with the God Who descended from heaven to earth. And we can feel ourselves united only with that God Who entered the earthly sphere, because men on earth could no longer enter the heavenly sphere with their immediate and ordinary consciousness. By finding the Christ, we also find anew the approach to the super-sensible world; not now, however, by means of the physical body (this was the case in ancient times), but by means of heightened soul-power. And today, when the parallelism between the development of body and soul lasts only up to the age of twenty (later on it will last a still shorter period), this heightened soul-power can be attained alone by immersing ourselves, in the midst of the sensible events of earthly evolution, into the knowledge of a super-sensible event: the Mystery of Golgotha. Everything on earth took place in a sensible way. Only in the Mystery of Golgotha something super-sensible mingled with earthly events. And this can be understood only out of a super-sensible knowledge.

Hence the union with the Christ awakens in our human souls the powerful faculty of attaining a relationship to the super-sensible world—a relationship formerly attained by human beings through being connected with their physical body in such a way that the body could become sheath-like. Thus, feeling the approach of death before physical death occurred, they merged themselves with the spirit prevailing in their surroundings.

We must attain by means of the soul what could be attained, in earlier days, through the mediation of the body. For, although we admire in the highest degree what has been preserved of Indian writings—which did not originate, however, from the earliest primeval Indian epoch, but from a later period—although we admire what has been bequeathed to us through the glory of the Vedas, the grandeur of the Vedanta-philosophy, the radiant splendor of the Bhagavad-Gita, we must, nevertheless, recognize the fact that this could be attained in ancient times only because the body reflected to the human being, as he grew older, a certain spirituality. Ancient man was compensated for the waning of his physical existence, which set in after the thirty-fifth year, by having, as it were, the spirit pressing out of his body, as the latter became hard, withered and wrinkled. And this spirit was perceived by the human being. The great philosophical poems of ancient times were not composed by youths, but by patriarchs who had acquired wisdom. It resulted from what was given by the body. In the present stage of human evolution, which differs from the ancient ones, we must receive from the soul, as it grows more powerful, what was formerly contributed by the body. Our body becomes old. We must remain united with it. We cannot let the spirit emerge from this body, because we have utilized it since early childhood.

If we did not do this, we could never be free men. This must be accepted as our rightful earthly destiny. One fact, however, must be made clear to us: Our soul has to gain strength. Since the spiritual strength formerly corresponding to the waning body flows to us no longer we must attain it by strengthening our soul through our own effort. And we shall experience this strengthening of the soul by looking, in a genuine and living way, toward a great and powerful event: The divine event that took place as the Mystery of Golgotha in the midst of earthly life. In beholding the Mystery of Golgotha and becoming conscious that its after-effect is still dwelling among us, is still existing in the spiritual-super-sensible sphere, our spirit and soul become strengthened and approach the spiritual world anew.

The Christ has descended to earth in order that men, who no longer see Him in heaven by means of their memory, may be permitted to see Him on earth. Seen from today's viewpoint, this is what rightly places the Mystery of Golgotha before our spiritual eye.

The disciples, who had preserved a remnant of ancient clairvoyance, could still have the Christ as their teacher when He dwelt among them after the resurrection in the spiritual body.

Yet this power gradually fell away from them. And its complete disappearance is symbolically represented through the Festival of the Ascension.

The disciples sank into profound sadness, because they were forced to believe that the Christ was no longer among them. They had taken part in the event of Golgotha. Now, however, they had to believe that the Christ had moved away from their consciousness, that the Christ was no longer on earth. Thus they were plunged into deep sorrow, for they had seen the Christ-figure disappear in the clouds, that is, move away from their consciousness.

But every genuine knowledge is born out of sorrow, of suffering, of grief. True, profound knowledge is never born out of joy. True, profound knowledge is born out of suffering. And out of the suffering, which encompassed the disciples of the Christ at the Festival of the Ascension, out of this deep soul-anguish arose the Mystery of Pentecost. The disciples could no longer view the Christ by means of their outer, instinctive clairvoyance. But the force of the Christ unfolded within them. The Christ had sent to them the spirit enabling their soul to experience the Christ-existence in their innermost depths.

This experience gave meaning to the first Festival of Pentecost occurring in human evolution. The Christ, Who had disappeared from the outer, clairvoyant view still clinging to the disciples as a heritage of ancient evolutionary periods, appeared at Pentecost within the disciples' inner experience. The fiery tongues signify nothing but the arising of the inner Christ in the souls of His pupils, the souls of the disciples. Out of inner necessity, the Festival of Pentecost had to follow the Festival of the Ascension.