The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Occult training leads a man to freedom. He becomes the master of various beings who continually go in and out of his bodies by becoming their companion. These are phantoms in the physical body, ghosts in the etheric body, demons in the astral body and spirits in the ego. To learn to rule them a man must form a firm framework in the etheric body, just as there's a skeleton in the physical body. This framework for the etheric body is a pentagram with thinking in the head point, feeling in the arms and willing in the legs. One must also form a framework for the astral body, namely a hexagram with the head and heart points, two ears and two arms.

To arrive at this one must apply the following four principles: Learn to be silent and you'll get power; give up power and you'll get will; give up will and you'll get feeling; give up feeling and you'll get knowledge.

These are four stages to which a man ascends. Every suppression gives a certain power. If a man knows the spirits and beings who continuously rule and enslave him he no longer needs to be their slave. The first thing that a pupil must learn and do is pay attention to himself.

The reflection of wisdom is feeling
The reflection of love is will,
and the reflection of the ego is thought.

The reflection of sanguine is air.
The reflection of phlegmatic is water. The reflection of melancholic is earth. The reflection of choleric is fire.

In pre-Christian times, thinking was cultivated in humanity by Pythagoras and other sages and philosophers.

Feeling was cultivated in the Christian era by the mystics.

The Will is said to be developed in the Rosicrucian era – Theosophy.

The sacred sign is interpreted to us.

The Imagination would be presented as follows: a blue sea, the rays of light in gold, and the upper part of the clouds illuminated.

We call the fifth degree the high degree of the Rosicrucian cross, the fourth degree that of the order [Royal Arch] (shibboleth?).

The following is given to us as meditation. An effective image: Imagine a mountain and rocks of different stones in the sea, air above, earth and plants of all kinds, a fire in one place, a skull – a black raven whose eyes are fixed on the rose cross.

In which the Attempt is made to form an Idea of the Way in which Man beholds his Repeated Earth-Lives

[ 1 ] We are not really entitled to speak of dangers during the pilgrimage of the soul through supersensible worlds, when this pilgrimage is undertaken in the right way. The method would not lead to its goal if amongst the psychic instructions given there were those which created dangers for the pupil. The goal is rather to make the soul strong, to concentrate its forces, so that man should become able to bear his soul's experiences, which he has to go through when he wants to see and understand other worlds than the physical. [ 2 ] Moreover, an essential difference between the physical world and the supersensible worlds is that beholding, perceiving, and understanding are related to one another in quite a different way in the two worlds. When we hear about some part of the physical world, we have a certain right to feel that we can only arrive at a complete understanding of it through beholding and perceiving it. We do not believe we have understood a landscape or a picture until we have seen it. But the supersensible worlds can be thoroughly understood when with unbiased judgment we accept a correct description of them. In order to understand and to experience all the forces for the strengthening and fulfilment of life which belong to spiritual worlds, we only need the descriptions of those who are able to see. Real knowledge of those worlds at first hand can only be obtained by those who are able to investigate when outside their physical body. Descriptions of the spiritual worlds must always originate with the seers. But such knowledge of these worlds as is necessary to the life of the soul may be obtained through the understanding. And it is perfectly possible to be unable to look into supersensible worlds oneself and yet be able to understand them and their peculiarities, with an understanding for which the soul has under certain circumstances a perfect right to ask, and indeed must ask.

[ 3 ] Therefore it is also possible that we should choose our means of meditation out of the store of conceptions which we have acquired concerning the spiritual worlds. Such a means of meditation is by far the best and the one which leads us most safely to the goal.

Although such a notion may seem very natural, it is, however, not correct to believe that knowledge of higher worlds obtained through the understanding before attaining to supersensible vision is an obstacle to the development of such vision. The contrary is in fact more correct, namely, that it is easier and safer to arrive at clairvoyance with some preliminary understanding than without. Whether we stop short at understanding only, or go on to strive after clairvoyance, depends upon the awakening or non-awakening of an inner craving for firsthand knowledge. If such a craving is there, we cannot but look for every opportunity to start on a real personal pilgrimage into supersensible worlds.

The wish for an understanding of the higher worlds will spread more and more amongst the people of our day; for close observation of human evolution shows that from now onward human souls are entering upon a stage of development in which they will be unable to find the right relation to life without an understanding of supersensible worlds.

[ 4 ] When we have come so far on our soul's pilgrimage that we carry within ourselves as a memory all that we call “ourself,” namely, our own being in physical life, and experience ourselves instead in another, newly-won superior ego, then we become capable of seeing our life stretching beyond the limits of earthly life. Before our spiritual sight appears the fact that we have shared in another life, in the spiritual world, prior to our present existence in the world of the senses; and in that spiritual life are to be found the real causes of the shaping of our physical existence. We become acquainted with the fact that before we received a physical body and entered upon this physical existence we lived a purely spiritual life. We see that that human being which we now are, with its faculties and inclinations, was prepared during a life that we spent in a purely spiritual world before birth. We look upon ourselves as upon beings who lived spiritually before their entrance into the world of the senses, and who are now striving to live as physical beings with those faculties and psychic characteristics which were originally attached to them and which have developed since their birth.

It would be a mistake to say: “How is it possible that in spiritual life I should have aspired to possess faculties and inclinations, which now, when I have got them, do not please me at all?” It does not matter whether something pleases the soul in the world of senses or not. That is not the point. The soul has quite different points of view for its aspirations in the spiritual world from those which it adopts in the life of the senses. The character of knowledge and will is quite different in the two worlds. In the spiritual life we know that for the sake of our total evolution we need a certain kind of life in the physical world, which when we get there may seem unsympathetic or depressing to the soul; and yet we strive for it, because in the spiritual existence we do not prefer what is sympathetic and agreeable, but what is necessary to the right development of our individual being.

[ 5 ] It is the same with regard to the events of life. We contemplate them and see how we have prepared in the spiritual world what is antipathetic as well as what is sympathetic, and how we ourselves have brought together the impulses which cause our painful as well as our joyful experiences in physical existence. But even then we may find it incomprehensible that we ourselves have brought about this or that situation in life, as long as we only experience ourselves in the physical world. In the spiritual world, however, we have had what may be called supersensible insight which caused us to say: “You must go through that uncongenial or painful experience, for only such an experience can bring you a step further in your total development.” From the standpoint of the physical world only, it is never possible to decide how far one particular life on earth brings a human being forward in his total evolution.

[ 6 ] Having realised the spiritual existence that precedes our earthly existence, we see the reasons why in our spiritual life we have aimed at a certain kind of destiny for the ensuing terrestrial life. These reasons lead back to an earlier terrestrial life lived in the past. Upon the character of that earlier life, upon the experiences made and the capacities attained in it, depends the wish during the succeeding spiritual existence to correct defective experiences and develop neglected capacities through a new life upon earth. In the spiritual world you feel a wrong done by you to another human being to be a disturbance of the harmony of the world, and you realise the necessity of meeting that human being again on earth in the next terrestrial life, in order to be able to get into such relationship to him as to be able to repair the wrong you have done. During the progressive development of the soul the range of vision is widened over a whole series of earlier terrestrial lives. In this way you arrive through observation at a knowledge of the true history of the life of your higher “Ego.” You see that man goes through his total existence in a succession of lives upon earth, and that between these repeated terrestrial lives he passes through purely spiritual states of existence which are connected with his terrestrial lives according to certain laws.

[ 7 ] Thus the knowledge of repeated existences upon earth is lifted into the sphere of observation. (In order to avoid a frequently repeated mistake, attention is called to the following fact, more fully treated in other writings of mine. The sum total of a man's existence does not unfold itself in an endless repetition of lives. A certain number of repetitions take place, but both before the beginning and after the close of these quite different kinds of existence are found, and all this shows itself in its totality as a development inspired by sublime wisdom.)

[ 8 ] The knowledge of repeated terrestrial lives may also be reached by reasonable observation of physical existence. In my books Theosophy and An Outline of Occult Science, as well as in lesser writings of mine, the attempt has been made to prove reincarnation along such lines of reasoning as are characteristic of the modern doctrine of evolution in natural science. It is there shown how logical thought and investigation that really follow up scientific research (and its results) to its full consequences are absolutely bound to accept the idea of evolution, presented to us by modern science, in such a sense as to consider the true being, the psychic individuality of man, as something which is evolving through a sequence of physical existences alternating with intermediate purely spiritual lives. The proofs attempted in those writings are naturally capable of much further development and completion. But the opinion does not seem unjustified that proofs in this matter have precisely the same scientific value as that which in general is called scientific proof. There is nothing in the science of spiritual things which cannot be confirmed by proofs of that kind. But of course we must admit the difficulty is greater for spiritually scientific proofs to be acknowledged than proofs of natural science.

This is not on account of their less stringent logic, but because in the face of such proofs one does not feel those underlying physical facts, which make the acceptance of the proofs of natural science so easy. This has nothing whatever to do with the conclusiveness of the reasoning itself. And if we are capable of comparing with an unbiased mind the proofs of natural science with those given on analogous lines by spiritual science, we shall easily be convinced of their equally conclusive power. Thus the force of such proofs may also be added to that which the investigator of the spiritual worlds has to give as a description of successive terrestrial lives resulting from his own vision. The one side can support the other in the formation of a conviction of the truth of human reincarnation based simply on reasonable comprehension. Here the attempt has been made to show the way that leads beyond mental comprehension to supersensible vision of this reincarnation.

The Spiritual Science Movement has often, since its inception, been confused with various other tendencies in existence at the present time. It has been accused, in particular, of desiring to implant one or another of the Oriental spiritual influences—for example the Buddhistic—into western culture. For this reason, the subject of to-day's lecture should have a special interest for spiritual research, for it will present certain observations concerning the respective significance of Buddhism and Christianity from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.

Anyone who has made himself in some degree acquainted with the nature of Buddhism, will be aware how its Founder, Gautama Buddha, evaded all questions concerning the evolution of the world, and the foundations of human existence. He would not speak of these. He would speak only of the means by which mankind could enter into a form of existence that was satisfying in itself. Therefore, one cannot, to begin with, regard Spiritual Science, which never avoids these questions concerning the source and origin of existence and the great facts of evolution, as being similar to Buddhism. But since it is the case that a certain trend of thought which exists within this sphere of Spiritual Science, is being more and more identified with Buddhism, namely, the conception of repeated lives on earth for the whole of humanity, and also the conception concerning that which passes onward from life to life as spiritual cause and effect,—one may as well say at once that it is really astonishing that this idea of Reincarnation should be designated as ‘Buddhism.’

The function of Anthroposophy, or of Spiritual Science is not to acknowledge allegiance to any particular name, but only to what is capable of investigation as a Truth, unconnected in our day with any names whatsoever. The fact that the teaching of Reincarnation, or repeated lives on earth, is also to be found in the teaching of Gautama Buddha, although in an entirely different form, is analogous, where present day Spiritual Science is concerned, to the fact that elementary geometry is also to be found in Euclid; and just as little as it is justifiable to accuse every teacher of geometry of perpetrating ‘Euclidism,’ so is it equally unjustifiable to accuse Spiritual Science, when it makes the teaching of Reincarnation its own, of being ‘Buddhism’ just because similar concepts were also taught by Buddha.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out that Spiritual Science is the instrument which we must use in order to penetrate into and to test the source of every religion, whether it be the religion which is at the foundation of the whole of our European culture—Christianity, or whether it be Buddhism.

If we would now, in the sense of Spiritual Science, enter thoughtfully and deeply into the spirit of Buddhism, so as to be able to compare it with the spirit of Christianity, we shall do better if we do not at once turn to the great doctrines—which can so easily be interpreted in different ways—but rather try to construct a picture of the immense significance and far-reaching results of Buddhism from various symptomatic facts which concern its whole disposition and presentment. This can best be done if we consider first of all a Buddhist scripture which is held in high esteem; and that is the questions which were put by King Milinda to the sage Nagasena.

Here we are given a conversation which draws out the very spirit of the whole trend of Buddhistic thinking. The powerful, spiritually-minded King Milinda desires to question Nagasena, the sage. The King, who has never been at a loss in the presence of any sage because he always knew how to evade anything that was said in opposition to his own ideas, comes to Nagasena to speak with him about the meaning of the ‘Eternal,’—the meaning of the immortal part of human nature which passes onwards from incarnation to incarnation.

Nagasena asks the King:—‘How dids't thou come hither? on foot, or in a carriage?’ ‘In a carriage.’ ‘Well,’ said Nagasena, ‘let us now consider what a carriage, is. Are the shafts the carriage? No. Is the seat you sat upon the carriage? No. Are the wheels the carriage? No. Is the yoke the carriage? No. And thus,’ said Nagasena, ‘one can enumerate all the parts of the carriage, but all the parts are not the carriage. And yet, all that is there enumerated is the carriage, only the carriage consists of all the parts put together; it is no more than a name for that of which all the parts make one whole. If we consider it apart from its separate constituents, it is nothing but a name!’

The sense—and the object—of what Nagasena said is this: that one must turn one's gaze away from everything that the eye can behold in the physical world. Nagasena wished to point out that actually nothing exists in the physical world which in itself constitutes what is collectively designated by a name, in order that he may thus reveal the worthlessness and meaninglessness of all the physical-material constituents of things. And, so as to make his use of this example clear, Nagasena says: ‘It is thus also with all that constitutes Man, and which passes onward from one earth-life to another. Are the hands, and the legs, and the head that which goes from life to life? No! What thou doest to-day, what thou doest tomorrow, is it these things which go from life to life? No! What is it then, which collectively is Man? It is Name and Form. But then, it is even so with the name and form of a wagon. If we gather the different parts together, we have only a Name. There is nothing there in particular except the parts!’

So that we may observe this still better, there is yet another analogy which the sage Nagasena showed to King Milinda. The King said:—‘Thou sayest, O wise Nagasena, that of that which stands before me as Man, Name and Form pass from life to life. Is it then the Name and Form of the self-same Being that appears again in a new embodiment upon the earth?’

And Nagasena replied: ‘See now,—the mango-tree bears a fruit. A thief comes and steals the fruit. The owner of the mango-tree says: “Thou hast robbed me of my fruit,” but the thief answers: “It is not thy fruit. Thy fruit was that which thou didst plant in the ground! it has transformed itself. That which was growing upon the mango-tree simply bears the same name—it is not thy fruit!”’ And then Nagasena continued: ‘It is true that it bears the same name and form; but it is not the same fruit. Still, one can punish the thief in spite of that! And so,’ said the sage, ‘it is even thus with what reappears in a later life on earth in relation to what was there in earlier lives. It is like the fruit of the mango-tree which was planted in the earth. But only because the owner had first planted the fruit in the earth was it possible for a fruit to grow upon a tree. Therefore we must say that the fruit belongs to him who buried the first fruit in the earth. Thus it is with man; his deeds and his destiny are the fruit and the effects of his earlier lives. But what appears is new, as the fruit of the mango-tree is new.’

So Nagasena showed how what is once there in any one earth-life strives to reappear transformed, as effects, in later lives.

It is easier to gain a sensitiveness towards the whole spirit of Buddhistic teaching by such examples as this, than by a study of the main principles, for the latter can be interpreted in various ways. If we let the spirit of these analogies work upon us, we see clearly enough that the Buddhist desires to wean his adherents from the idea of what may be regarded as the separate individuality, the definite personality, and to point out above all things, that that which reappears in a new embodiment, is—it is true—the result of this personality, but that one has no right to speak of an uninterrupted ‘I,’ in the true sense of the word, as extending from one incarnation to another.

Now if we turn from Buddhism to Christianity, we can—though such a comparison has never been selected before—use this instance of Nagasena in the Christian sense, and represent it somewhat as follows.

Suppose we imagine that King Milinda and the Sage are reborn, and that the conversation takes place now. Were it fully dominated by the spirit of Christianity it would necessarily have to proceed as follows. Nagasena would say:—‘Behold the hand! Is this hand a man? No, the hand is not the man. For if there were only a hand, there would be no man. But if you cut the hand off a man's body, it dries up, and in three weeks' time there would be no hand left. Whence then is a hand a hand? By reason of a man! Is the head a man? No! Is the heart anything by itself? No! Because if we remove the heart from a man in a very short time it ceases to be a heart, and the man ceases to be a man. Therefore the heart is a heart by reason of the man; the man is a man by reason of his heart. And moreover, man is only man upon the earth because he possesses the heart as an instrument. So the living organism has parts, which in themselves are nothing, but are only something by reason of their co-existence within us. And when we consider what the separate parts are not, we find we have to fall back upon something which is invisible behind them, which rules them, holds them together and uses them as its instruments. And even when we behold all the separate parts together, still we have not found the Man himself, if we only look for him as the sum of the separate parts.’

And then Nagasena could look back upon the old analogy of the carriage, and could now say, speaking of course, out of the spirit of Christianity:—‘True it is that the shafts are not the carriage, for with the shafts alone thou coulds't not be conveyed. True it is that the wheels are not the carriage, for the wheels could not carry thee. True it is that the yoke is not the carriage, for the yoke could not carry thee. True it is that the seat is not the carriage, for that also could not carry thee! Though it is true that the carriage is only a name for the assembled parts, yet thou art not conveyed by the parts, but thou art conveyed by something that is not the parts, for by their means thou canst not travel.’

But by the ‘Name’ something particular is denoted. And thus we are led to something which is non-existent in any of the parts!

Hence arises the striving of the Buddhistic spirit away, so to speak, from what is perceived, in order to surmount it and to deny the possibility that anything particular attaches to what is seen. The spirit which imbues the Christian way of thinking—and this it is that concerns us—perceives the separate parts of a carriage, or of any other object, in such a way that the tendency is to turn from the parts to a recognition of the whole. And because of this difference between the Buddhistic and the Christian conception of things, remarkable consequences arise out of each of them.

Out of the Buddhistic, and this is the conclusion we are naturally led to from the foregoing indications, the following arises:—

A man stands before us. He is constructed out of several parts. This man busies himself in the world, and performs various actions. And while he appears thus before us, his Buddhistic attitude of thought causes him to feel the worthlessness and unreality of everything around him. But he is led to free himself from his attachment to nothingness, so that he may rise to a higher existence in reality; to turn away from all that his eyes behold, and from everything that he can gain. by means of all possible human knowledge. Away from this world of the sense-perceptions! For everything that it offers, when it is conceived only as Name and Form, reveals itself in all its emptiness! There is no truth in anything belonging to the physical world!

Now whither does the Christian conception lead us? It does not regard the separate parts as separate, but regards them in such a way that one indivisible unity and reality is perceived ruling among them. It regards the hand in such a way that it is seen to be a hand only because a man, using it as a hand, makes it a hand. Therefore here is something (a man) which as it stands before us, immediately and inevitably suggests that which stands behind it.

Hence, something quite different from the Buddhistic arises from this way of thinking, so that we can say as follows:—‘Here stands a man. That which he is by reason of his different parts, and by means of his acts, can only be, because behind it all there stands, as Man, a Spiritual Being, who not only brings the parts into movement, but performs all the separate acts. That which is revealed in the separate parts, and lives itself out in them, has poured itself into all that is visible of the man; it is that which, within what is seen, will reap the fruits of actions and be able to draw out of the world of the senses something that we may call an ‘event’ and carry it onward into a later incarnation upon earth. There—behind the external appearance—stands the Doer—a Doer who does not spurn the outer world, but so handles it that its fruits are taken up and carried into a future life.’

When we, as knowers of Spiritual Science, consider Reincarnation from the Buddhistic standpoint, we must express it thus:—that that of which man is the unified expression in his earth-life, has no value, for his deeds alone have their effects in the following incarnation; while in the light of Christianity, that which makes man a unity in his earthly life is the fullness of his Ego. That has value; and that it is which carries the fruits of one incarnation onward into the next.

Thus we can see that a certain quite definite configuration of thought, which is far more important than theories and principles, cleaves these two great world-conceptions most powerfully asunder. If we were less prone in these days to depend so much upon theories, we should find that we could far more easily arrive at an understanding of the main characteristics of various spiritual tendencies by turning our attention especially to their symptoms, to their methods of presentation. And that holds good both for the Buddhistic and the Christian conceptions. In the conversation described we have the very core of the Buddhistic conception as expressed by the great Founder of Buddhism himself. The theme of the present lecture is certainly not intended to develop a line of opposition against the Founder of the Buddhistic world-conception, but rather to portray his world-conception quite objectively and in, accordance with its true characteristics.

The Buddha-legend describes clearly enough, even though in pictorial fashion, what the Founder of Buddhism intended. We are told that Gautama Buddha was born the son of King Suddhodana, and that he was brought up in a royal palace where he was surrounded by everything that could possibly serve to ennoble human life. During his early years he was not allowed to know anything at all of human sorrow and pain, but he lived in the midst of happiness, and joy, and distractions of all kinds. Then we are told how one day, when he was twenty-nine years of age, he left the palace, and for the first time in his life was confronted by sorrow and pain and all the dark shadows of existence. It is described how he met an old, old man whose life was ebbing away, and above all how he saw a corpse. And it dawned upon him that life must after all be utterly different from all that he had experienced in the palace, where he had known nothing but joy, where disease and death had never come near him, and where he had learned to believe that life could never ebb away nor cease. And now he discovered that life embraced both pain and sorrow. Heavily indeed, did this discovery weigh upon the great soul of Buddha! Life contained pain, sorrow and death. He had seen it for himself in the sick man, the aged man, and the corpse. ‘What is the value of life?’ he cried to himself, ‘if it bears sickness, old age, and death within it!’ And out of that cry there arose at last the monumental teaching of Buddha on the Sorrow of Life, which he gathered together in these words: ‘Birth is sorrow! Old age is sorrow! Sickness is sorrow! Death is sorrow! All existence is filled with sorrow!’ And as he later elaborated this theme still further:—‘That we cannot always be united with those we love, that is sorrow. That we must be joined to that which we love not, is sorrow. That we cannot obtain, in every circumstance of life, what we desire, is sorrow.’

Sorrow is everywhere, no matter whither we turn our gaze. And if Buddha's use of the word ‘sorrow’ has not quite the meaning that is imparted to it to-day, still it is intended to express that man is everywhere, and at all times, a prey to everything that comes against him, that assaults him from without, and that he is unable to unfold any active forces to meet it. ‘Life is sorrow,’ said Buddha, ‘therefore we must seek the causes of sorrow.’

There then arose before his soul the picture of what he called ‘the thirst for existence.’ Since we look out upon the world and see that sorrow is everywhere, we are compelled to say: Man is bound to have sorrow if he enters into this world of sorrow; but what is the cause of his suffering? The cause is this: that he desires, that he thirsts to be incarnated in this world. The passionate longing to forsake the Spiritual World and enter into a physical body, and in it to become aware of the outer material world—that is the cause of this sorrow-filled human existence. Hence there is only one way to escape from sorrow, and that is by conquering the thirst for life. And this thirst for existence can actually be overcome when, according to the teaching of Buddha, men can learn to unfold within themselves the so-called ‘Eight-fold Path,’ which, so it is generally said, consists of right judgment, right discrimination, right speech, right deed, right living, right aspiration, right thinking, right contemplation.

Thus through the right attitude towards life, according to the great Buddha, there arises by degrees within men's souls something which destroys the passionate longing for existence, something which brings them so far that at last they are no longer compelled to descend into physical incarnation, but are liberated from an existence which is overwhelmed by sorrow.

These things, according to Buddha, constitute the Four Noble Truths: viz., the knowledge of sorrow; the knowledge of the causes of sorrow; the knowledge of the necessity for liberation from sorrow; and, lastly, the knowledge of the means of liberation from sorrow.

These are the Four Holy Truths which Buddha, after his enlightenment under the Bodhi-tree, gave out in the great sermon at Benares, about the fifth or sixth century before Christ.

Liberation from the pain of existence! That is what stands in the forefront of Buddhism, and it is that which makes it possible to describe the religion of Buddha as a ‘religion of redemption’ in the highest sense of the words; a religion of redemption from suffering; and since all existence is bound up with suffering, a redemption above all, from the continuance of rebirth. That is entirely in accordance with the type of the presentation of Buddhism which is embodied in the Nagasena conversations. For in the moment that human thinking, which embraces the outer world of the senses, beholds its worthlessness, when that which is a mere gathering together of parts possesses for the thinker only Name and Form; when nothing passes from incarnation to incarnation save the results of existence, then it must be said that ‘true’ existence is only attained when man is able to overcome and transcend everything that is to be found in the external world of the senses.

Now it is not correct—and this can be perceived even by the simplest method of observation—to say that Christianity is a ‘religion of redemption’ in the same sense as Buddhism. If we place Christianity in its correct relation to Buddhism, we can speak of it as a ‘religion of re-birth.’ For Christianity proceeds from the knowledge that everything which in its totality represents man in a single life, is fruitful, and these fruits have importance and value for the innermost being of man, and are carried over by him into a new life and brought, in that life, to a higher state of perfection than in the previous one. Everything that we experience and absorb in a single life always appears again and grows ever more and more perfect until it is revealed at last in its true spiritual form. What is apparently worthless in our existence, when it is taken hold of by the spiritual, has its resurrection in a degree more perfect than before ; is spiritually embodied. Nothing in existence is worthless, because it rises again if the spirit has entered into it rightly.

The thought-content of Christianity is a religion of re-birth, a religion of the resurrection of the Best that we have experienced; a religion wherein no single thing that is round about us is a ‘nothingness,’ but wherein all things are building stones for the completion of a great edifice that is to arise through the gathering together of everything spiritual from out of the world of the senses.

Buddhism is a religion of liberation from existence; while Christianity is the opposite, a religion of Rebirth upon a more spiritual level. This is revealed in the least as well as in the greatest of the forms of its presentation, no less than in its fundamental principles. And if we look for the actual reasons of this difference between the two religions, we can say that they arise out of the entirely opposite nature of the character of oriental and western culture.

There is a very radical difference between the method of presenting things that spring from the culture that gave birth to Buddhism, and the method that springs from that culture into which Christianity poured itself. It is possible to describe this difference quite simply. It lies in the fact that all true oriental culture, which has not been fertilised by the West, is non-historical; whereas western culture is historical. That is the ultimate root of the difference between the Christian and the Buddhistic conceptions. The Christian conception recognises that not only are there repeated lives on earth, but that history rules in them; that is to say, that what to begin with, can be experienced at a higher and more perfect stage, can continue to become more and more perfect throughout the course of the succeeding incarnations.

Where Buddhism sees the liberation from earth-existence in the ascent to Nirvana, Christianity sees, as the goal of its evolution, that everything engendered, everything achieved, in each single earth-life, ascends to ever higher and higher degrees of perfection until, spiritualised and transfigured, it consummates its resurrection at the end of the world.

Buddhism is non-historical, precisely in accordance with the character of its cultural origin. It is non-historical for the simple reason that it merely places the external world in opposition to mankind, who acts within it. The Buddhist says:—‘We look back at past incarnations, or forward to future ones, but we stand opposed to the outer world!’ He does not ask: ‘Is it possible that man, in earlier days, was differently placed as regards the world? or may be perhaps differently placed in the future?’ Christianity does ask that question. But the Buddhist arrives at the conception that the relationship of man to the world in which he is incarnated is an unchanging one; that driven as he is by the thirst for existence into a physical embodiment, he enters a world of sorrow no matter whether he had been compelled to an embodiment in the past, or whether he is so compelled in the present. Always it is sorrow that the world brings to him. Thus the incarnations succeed each other, and there is no idea of evolution being brought under its true aspect as an historical conception. Thus the conception is clear that fundamentally the Buddhist finds his Nirvana, his state of bliss, solely in the relinquishing of repeated lives on earth; and thus also he sees that the source of misery itself is the external world. He says: ‘It is inevitable that if thou abandonest thyself to the physical world, suffering must be thy lot; for suffering comes from thence.’

That is not Christian. The Christian conception is through and through an historical, sequential one. It does not concern itself with the non-historical relationship of opposition to the physical world. But it says:—‘As man passes from incarnation to incarnation he is indeed placed in opposition to a physical world. But if this world brings him sorrow, if it offers him what does not satisfy him, what does not fill him with an inwardly harmonious life, that does not arise from the fact that earthly existence as a whole is such that suffering is inevitable, but it comes because man himself has brought with him a false relation to the external world, and does not place himself rightly within it.’

Christianity, and the Old Testament also, point to a definite occurrence whereby Man evolved something within himself that causes him, through his inner life, to make the world his source of sorrow. Hence it is not the external world in which we are ‘made flesh,’ not that which enters through our eyes, and echoes in our ears which brings us sorrow; it is that which the human race once unfolded within itself which placed it in a wrong relation to this external world. And this was an inheritance which passed from age to age, so that mankind to-day still suffers pain. Thus Christianity points out that this state of things arose when humanity itself was at the beginning of its earthly existence. We can enlarge upon these two aspects of the foundations of both religions. Buddhism for ever emphasises that the ‘world is Maya, is Illusion!’ Christianity asserts: ‘It is true that, to begin with, what man beholds of the world is illusion; but that arises from man himself, who has so formed his organs of perception that his vision cannot penetrate to the Spiritual World. The outer world is not the illusion, but the human outlook is the source of the illusion.’ Buddhism says: ‘Gaze upon all the events that surround you! They are illusion. Behold what flashes in the lightning, it is illusion I What roars as thunder—it is Maya, it is the Great Deception!’ ‘Not so,’ would the Christian spirit reply: ‘But until now the human race has not found it possible to open—(in Goethe's words)—the “spiritual eyes and ears,” for these would reveal the outer world in its true form!’

No; it is not that we are surrounded by Maya, but that man is so imperfect a being that he cannot perceive the true form of the world. And so Christianity seeks, in pre-historic ages, the event that made the human heart become incapable of creating the true conception of the physical world. Therefore, through many incarnations of development, we have—in the Christian sense—to re-attain the state of spiritual sight and hearing before the true form of the outer world can be perceived. Repeated incarnations are, therefore, not meaningless, but they are the way towards the perception, in the light of the Spirit, of that from which the Buddhist would escape: i.e. the way to the finding of the spiritual within the physical. To overcome this world, which appears to us now as a physical one, to overcome it with something which man does not yet possess, but which he can attain as a spiritual reality; to overcome human Error which sees the world as Maya—that is the inner impulse of Christianity.

And so the Teacher of Christianity is not One Who says: ‘The world is the well-spring of sorrow! Escape from it to another that is utterly different—attain Nirvana!’ But Christianity sets before us as the mighty Impulse for the forward evolution of the earth, the Christ, Who pointed, in the strongest possible way, to the inner being of man, where from he could unfold the power to use every incarnation that he has upon earth in such a way that he can carry the fruits of it forward to his future incarnations through his own strength. Not to bring the course of his incarnations to a close and enter Nirvana, but to use all he can of them, to work further upon their results, so that he can spiritually experience Resurrection.

There we have the great distinction which makes Buddhism on the one hand a non-historical, and Christianity on the other hand, an historical conception. The Christian idea seeks in the ‘fall’ the origin and source of man's pain and sorrow; and in a ‘resurrection’ the healing of them. ‘You will not be freed from pain and sorrow by departing from earth-existence; but you will be set free when you correct the Error which gives you a false relation to the world. The source of sorrow is in yourselves! If you perceive aright, you will know that the outer world indeed and in truth melts away like mist in the sun, but all the deeds that you have done in the world, all your experiences, it will bring to a resurrection in the Spirit!’ This is Christianity as a ‘religion of Re-birth,’ a religion of Resurrection. And only thus can it be placed beside Buddhism. That is to say, only in the sense of spiritual-scientific thought can these two be compared, and their deepest impulses understood.

What has been indicated here can be verified in the minutest particulars. For instance, one can find in Buddhism something like the Sermon on the Mount. He that hears the Law—i.e. what Buddhism communicates as the Law—is blessed. He that can live with all creatures and does no evil towards them, is blessed. We can regard the Buddhistic beatitudes side by side with the Sermon on the Mount as it is given in the Matthew Gospel; but we must understand them aright. Let us compare them for a moment with what we find in St. Matthew. First we hear the mighty words: ‘Blessed are the poor in Spirit,¹ for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Here it is not only said ‘blessed are those who hear the Law,’ but another sentence is added: It is said, ‘Blessed are they who are poor in the Spirit, so that they must beg for the Spirit,—for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.’ What does that mean?

Now one can only correctly understand such a sentence when one brings the whole of the historically conceived teaching of Christianity before the mind's eye, and then one recognises that all human soul-capacities have passed through a ‘history,’—that they have all evolved. Spiritual Science clearly and truly understands the word ‘evolution’ in the sense that what is present to-day, was not always present. It tells us that what we possess to-day as our reason, our scientific thought, was not in existence in primeval times; but instead, there was present in humanity what might be called a dark, dim clairvoyance. Men did not come to their knowledge of external things in the way they do to-day, but something arose within them like an archetypal wisdom, far surpassing what we ourselves can achieve. Whoever knows history, knows that such a primeval wisdom existed. Though men did not know how to construct machines and railways, and rule the surrounding world by means of the forces of Nature, yet they had a knowledge of the divine-spiritual foundations of the world infinitely transcending our own. But it would be quite wrong to suppose that their knowledge was gained by thinking. On the contrary, it rose up in their souls as though bestowed upon them, as revelation, as dim inspirations rising within them without their co-operation, but so that they were there as real images of the Spiritual World, a really present archetypal wisdom.

Human progress, however, consisted in the fact that from incarnation to incarnation this shadowy clairvoyance, this wisdom, had to grow less and less, for it was necessary that it should be lost in order that man might learn at last to grasp the things of the world by his reason. In the future, man will be able to see clairvoyantly into the Spiritual World, and at the same time will possess the forms of his present knowledge.

To-day we are in an intermediate state. The old clairvoyance is lost, and what we now possess has been developed through long ages.

How has mankind arrived at a knowledge of the world through his reason, and from out of his own innermost self-consciousness? And when, more especially did self-consciousness appear?

It was at the time (though as a rule the evolution of humanity is not observed with such exactitude as this) in which Christ-Jesus came to the earth. At that time, humanity stood at a turning-point in evolution when the old clairvoyance had gone, and which was the starting-point of that which has brought about our greatest achievements. The entrance of Christ into the world-evolution was the turning point from the Old age to the New, from the old to the new world-conception! And there is, moreover, a technical expression for that stage of achievement which it was then possible for mankind to experience, when men had begun to know the outer world through their own self-consciousness; an expression which is used by John the Baptist when he proclaims that ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!’ That means: ‘The knowledge of the world in ideas and concepts is at hand.’ In other words: ‘Man is no longer directed to the old clairvoyance, but he must, from out of his own being, learn to know and investigate the world.’ The tremendous impulse for that which man had to gain by means of his own Ego, and not through the Grace of Bestowal, that was given by Christ-Jesus.

Thus, there are great depths of meaning hidden even in the first words of the Sermon on the Mount, which might well be expressed as follows. Humanity stands to-day at that stage when it is a ‘beggar for the Spirit.’ Previously, men possessed clairvoyant vision and could behold the Spiritual World. That is now lost. But a time is coming, through the power of the Ego, through the inner revelation of the Word, when men will find a substitute for the old clairvoyance. Therefore—‘blessed’ are not only those who in ancient times attained to the Spirit through dim inspirations, but also those are ‘blessed’ who have no clairvoyance, because to lose it is the course of their evolution. Oh!—they are not unblest, they who are beggars for the Spirit, because they are ‘poor in the Spirit’! Blessed are they, for theirs is that which is revealed to them by their own Ego, is that which they can attain through their own Self-consciousness!

And further: ‘Blessed are they that mourn’; for even though the outer world causes suffering by reason of man's wrong attitude towards it, yet the time has now come when man, if he takes hold of his Self-consciousness, and unfolds the forces inherent in his Ego, will know the remedy for his pain. He will find within himself the possibility of comfort. The time has come when external means of comfort have lost their individual significance, because the ‘ I ’ is now to find the healing balm within. Blessed are they who can now no longer find in the external world what was once to be found there. And in this sense also, the fourth beatitude is to be understood: ‘Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.’

The source of that righteousness which shall counterbalance the unrighteousness of the world, is now to be found in the Ego itself.

Thus Christ appears as the Guide to the human Self. The Guide who points directly to the Divine in Man, and therewith gives the indication—‘Take that which lives in Christ into your own inner self; then shall ye find the force necessary for carrying the fruits of earthly existence from incarnation to incarnation.’

To this also belongs an event which at first appears as a wholly painful one in the Christian doctrine, namely, the death of Christ-Jesus, the Mystery of Golgotha. This death has not the usual significance of other deaths. On the contrary, Christ reveals the truth that this death is to be the starting point for an immortal and unconquerable Life. It is not merely an event which releases Christ-Jesus from life, but it is an event passed through because it leads to an ascending process, and an eternal and infinite ‘living’ flows from it. This is something (and it was so accepted by those who lived in the first centuries after Christ) that will become more and more recognised when the understanding of the Christ Impulse will have grown greater than it is to-day. When that time comes, men will understand that, six hundred years before the Christian era, one of the greatest of human beings, leaving his palace and finding a corpse-finding Death—could conceive of it thus: ‘Death is sorrow!’ ‘Liberation from death is Redemption,’ and that he could have nothing to do with what lay under the dominion of Death.

Six hundred years pass, and we come to the time of Christ. And when yet another six hundred years have passed, a symbol is raised up for that which only the humanity of the future will understand. What is this symbol?

It is not a Buddha; it is not any ‘Chosen One.’ No—simple men passing by saw the symbol of the Cross, and upon the Cross, a dead body; and they did not say, ‘Death is sorrow!’ They did not turn away from it, but they saw in this dead body what became for them a bulwark of the eternal in life; they saw what conquers all Death, and points to the transcendence of earthly things.

The noble Buddha saw a corpse—and he turned from the material world with the judgment that all death is sorrow; while those men of simple nature who beheld the Cross and its dead burden did not turn away, but gazed upon it because they found in it a witness of the everlasting life that streams from the earthly death!

And so six hundred years before the Christian era, Buddha stands before the corpse; and six hundred years after the death of Christ, the simple man of the world beholds that symbol which expressed what had happened with the founding of Christianity.

Never in the whole history of human evolution has such a transformation taken place as this! And the more objectively these things are grasped, the more clearly will the great significance of Buddhism emerge.

We have shown how mankind once possessed a primeval wisdom, and how in the course of many incarnations, this wisdom gradually declined. The appearance of Buddha marked the close of the old development; it was a mighty world-historical indication that the ancient archetypal wisdom was lost. In the historical sense this explains the ‘turning away’ from life. Whereas Christ marks the commencement of a new development which sees this life as the source of the eternal. Hitherto, there has been no explanation of these immensely important facts of human evolution.

Therefore, and because these things are not yet understood, it sometimes happens that in our time there can be such beautiful and noble natures (as for instance, Theodor Schulze, who died at Potsdam in 1889) who, because they cannot find in any external concepts what truly fills their rich inner life, try to find satisfaction in Buddhism. And Buddhism reveals to them how, in a certain sense, the human being when he raises himself by developing his own inner forces above the world of the senses, can transcend his own nature. That, however, is only possible because the greatest impulse, the very essence of Christianity, is still so little understood.

Spiritual Science must some day become the means by which the core of the whole presentation of the Christ-Impulse can be more and more deeply penetrated. It is just the evolution-idea which Spiritual Science approaches so honestly that will lead humanity to an exact and intimate grasp of Christianity, so that Spiritual Science may rest in the hope that the rightly comprehended Christian teaching will be unfolded more and more as against that form of it which is incorrectly apprehended, and moreover, without any transplanting of Buddhism into our modern times. It would, in fact, be a very shortsighted policy that would seek to establish Buddhism in Europe! For anyone who knows the conditions of the spiritual life of Europe, knows that even those tendencies which are apparently ranged against Christianity, have borrowed from it its whole arsenal of weapons.

A Darwin, a Haeckel, would never have been possible—strange though this may sound—if it had not been for the educational systems of Christendom which alone made it possible for them to think the thoughts they did; if those particular forms of thought had not already been there which they, nourished in the Christian world, could then use, so to say, as weapons of offence against their own Mother. For what they and others, have to say, is often apparently directed against Christianity—that is, in the manner of its utterance. But the thoughts could never have been there without the Christian education. For this reason, a grafting of any oriental system upon our own culture would be of no avail; for it would oppose every condition of the spiritual life of the West. It is only necessary to think clearly about the fundamental teachings of the two religions.

If the spiritual life is sufficiently closely observed it will certainly be seen that because of the unclearness that exists about these things, there are souls who, feeling sympathy with Buddhism, and who stand even on the highest of philosophical watch-towers, would like to teach the ‘renunciation of existence.’

Such an one was Schopenhauer. The whole tenour of his life might be described as ‘Buddhistic.’ Thus when he says, for instance, ‘The image of the highest type of mankind stands before us in one whom we call a “saint” ... one who has overcome everything in life that the outer world can give; one who stands there merely as a physical body, who conceals nothing of the Ideal of the World-environment within him; who desires naught, who merely waits until the body itself is destroyed, so that every trace may be wiped out of all that connected him with this physical world; so that, renouncing what is of the earth, he annihilates earth-existence; so that at last, nothing remains that in life leads from desire to pain, from fear to terror, from enjoyment to grief.’

That is an interpolation of Buddhism into our western world. Such a thing happens because of our misapprehensions; because we do not understand clearly enough what the deepest impulses of Christianity are, and what its content and its form denote. What have we achieved through Christianity? If we regard the impulse alone, we have achieved just that which shows what intensity of cleavage can exist between Schopenhauer and one of the most significant personalities of our time. While Schopenhauer sees his ideal in some one who has overcome all enjoyment and pain that proceeds from the outer life, who merely exists waiting until the last threads that bind his physical body together are severed—we find the very opposite in Goethe's picture of the struggling Faust, who strides from desire to enjoyment, and from enjoyment to desire, who at length purges himself so that all his passions are transformed, and that which was to him the highest and holiest that can irradiate human life, became itself a passion. Such was Faust—who did not say ‘I wait until the last traces of my earth-existence are obliterated,’ but who proclaims the stupendous words: ‘The relics of my earthly sojourn are indestructible throughout the Æons of Time.’

That was how Goethe expressed in his “Faust” the meaning and spirit of what, in his old age, he once described to his secretary Eckermann: ‘At least you will admit, that the conclusion of “Faust,” where the redeemed soul ascends, was very hard to portray; so that in dealing with a subject so far above the earthly, and so transcending conception, I might easily have succumbed to mere vagueness, if I had not confined my poetical intentions within the sharp outlines of Christian and ecclesiastical figure and imagery, and so given them a healthy form and solidity.’

And so Faust is made to ascend a rung of the ladder of existence which has its origin in Christian symbolism—the step from the mortal to the immortal, from death to life.

In Schopenhauer we see unmistakable interpolations of the Buddhistic element into western thought-culture: ‘I wait till I have attained such perfection that with the death of my body the last traces of my earth-existence are obliterated!’ And he believed, also, that this world-conception would enable him to interpret the pictorial creations of Raphael and Correggio. Goethe, on the other hand, portrayed the upward-striving Individuality, that knew the sum-total of earthly achievements was permanent, was interwoven with Eternity: ‘The relics of my earthly sojourn are indestructible throughout the Æons of Time!’

That, indeed, is the true, the realistic, Christian impulse; for it leads to a re-awakening of earthly deeds as spiritual accomplishment. It is the re-awakening of the Best that can be achieved on earth. It is the Religion of Resurrection! It is in very truth a ‘realistic’ world-conception, which brings down out of spiritual heights, the loftiest content for existence into the world of the senses. Thus we can say that something like the light of a dawn shines out in Goethe—a self-comprehending Christianity of the Future, which, while acknowledging all the greatness and significance of Buddhism, yet negates its renunciation of earthly embodiments, and points upwards to a great acknowledgment of every single incarnation in the whole great sequence.

And so Goethe, in the sense of the true Christian of modern times, looks out over a past world from whose womb all have been born, and upon a present world wherein, if its true results are grasped, we achieve something which time cannot annihilate.

Thus, in linking mankind in true theosophical fashion with the Universe, he cannot do otherwise than forge the links on the other side which bind it to the true content of Christianity. He says therefore—

‘Wie an dem Tag, der dich der Welt verliehen,
Die Sonne stand zum Grusse der Planeten,
Bist also bald und fort und fort gediehen,
Nach dem Gesetz, wonach du angetreten.
So musst du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen,
So sagten schon Sybillen, so Propheten.’

By expressing in this way man's connection with the outer world, he is inevitably pointing to this: that as man is born out of the constellations of existence, he becomes, in the world, what is not only indestructible but what must ultimately consummate his resurrection in a form that is spiritual. And so he had to add these words to the rest—

‘Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstuckelt
Gepraegte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt!’

And we can also add.—There is neither any Power nor any Time that can annihilate what is achieved in Time itself and which ripens as Fruit for Eternity.

• 1. Dr. Steiner gives this sentence as ‘Blessed are those who are beggars for the Spirit.’

Today, we shall discuss in broad outline a chapter from the knowledge that the spiritual researcher can gain in the way characterized the day before yesterday. To an even greater degree than in yesterday's lecture, everything said today could be considered a kind of fantasy. After the discussions of the day before yesterday, however, it may well be assumed that what is to be presented today in the form of a simple narrative is to be regarded as a sum of research results that arise from the observation of the higher worlds. So today, simply told, is what man experiences when he progresses after death through the various worlds through which he is destined to go.

We shall begin at the point in a person's life when he is about to pass through the gate of death, when, in the way described yesterday, he discards his physical body and ascends into another, spiritual existence. What the human being experiences immediately after passing through the gate of death, after discarding the physical body, is what should be considered first.

The first impression that our astral body and our ego have after a person's death is that the person can look back on their life that has just passed, the one between birth and death, can look back on a comprehensive memory tableau. The individual events of the past life, which have long since vanished from the spiritual view, appear before the soul at this important turning point in life, so to speak, with all their details. And if we ask ourselves how such a thing is possible, we can at least make what presents itself to the clairvoyant eye comprehensible to ourselves by pointing to those all-too-familiar moments in life that those who have once been in mortal danger, such as a fall in the mountains or near drowning, tell us about. They say that in such moments their whole past life stood before their eyes as in a great painting. What is told in this way can certainly be confirmed by spiritual science.

But how is it that in such moments the whole of one's past life appears before one's eyes as in a great tableau? It is because that which one can see with one's physical eyes or grasp with one's physical hands, that is to say, what is called the physical body of man, is permeated and imbued with the etheric or life body. This is the second and already invisible link of the human being, which prevents the physical body in the time between birth and death from following the physical, chemical and laws implanted in it. This etheric or life body, this second body of man, is, so to speak, our faithful fighter against the disintegration of the physical body.

Now it may be understandable that for a physical eye, that for physical science, with the onset of death, the entire human being seems to succumb to this death; for that which passes through the gate of death, which then has those impressions that are to be described, that is only present for spiritual knowledge, only for a clairvoyant eye. But everything that exists only for spiritual knowledge must necessarily appear as nothingness to the physical eye.

You will see nothing in the eternal void,
not hear the step you take,
find nothing solid to rest upon.

Thus speaks Mephistopheles in Goethe's “Faust”. It will be like this forever. This description shows Mephistopheles to be the representative of a world view that focuses only on external, physical existence and sees nothing in everything that can be attained through knowledge beyond this physical existence. But he who has a presentiment and a realization that forces slumber in the human being, which can be developed so that spiritual worlds break into this human soul as light and color break into the operated eye of the blind-born, will also become eternal. This human soul, who has a presentiment of such higher knowledge, will reply to materialism with the words that Faust utters to Mephistopheles:

In your nothingness I hope to find the All.

Just as Faust hopes to find the All in the nothingness, so we too must go to the nothingness of the materialistic attitude and view if we want to grasp that which passes through the portal of death and then has its impressions when there are no longer any physical tools, no physical organs through which an external world can be mediated. This nothing of the materialist, this fundamental essence of human nature for the spiritual view, that is what this enormous tableau of memories presents, in which all the individual experiences of the last existence are included, and in a higher sense, are also included as after that shock that a person experiences when his life is in danger, when he is about to drown. What actually happens to a person when they face mortal danger? Due to the shock they have suffered, their etheric or life body has been loosened from their physical body for a short while. Now, however, this etheric or life body in humans - let it be explicitly stated: in humans - is also the carrier of memory, and in ordinary life, when this etheric or life body is connected to the physical body, then the physical body is a kind of obstacle, a kind of hindrance to the emergence of all the individual memories, all the individual mental images. But when the etheric or life body is lifted out of the physical body for a short while by such a shock, then the whole life appears in a memory painting before the soul, and we then have in such a person at the moment of drowning drowning we have a kind of analogy to what happens immediately after death, when the etheric or life body is released with all its powers, since the physical body is discarded at death.

This is the one experience that comes after the human being has crossed the threshold of death. But we must characterize it more precisely. This experience is quite peculiar. It is not that we experience the events of the past life exactly in the same way as we went through them in life. In life, the events of the day make an impression on us of pleasure, of joy, of pain, of suffering. They approach us in such a way that we have sympathy and antipathy for them. In short, these events stir our emotions, and also spur us on to exercise our will, our desire, in this or that way. All these things, our pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, our sympathy and antipathy, our interest in the outer phenomena of existence, all this is, for the time just discussed, as if extinguished in the human soul, and the memory picture stands there, truly like a picture. If we have a picture before us, a scene we imagine, where we would suffer terribly - we endure it objectively, neutrally, when it is presented to us in the picture. But so does the memory picture of the whole of life come to our soul: we experience it without the participation that we have otherwise had in life.

That is one thing. The other is that the human being now experiences something immediately after passing through the gate of death, which he has only become acquainted with to a very small extent between birth and death, if he has not become a spiritual researcher himself. In life we are always outside of things, outside of the entities that are around us. The tables, the chairs are outside of us, the flora spread over the field is outside of us. The impression immediately after death is as if our being would pour out over everything that is outside of us. We plunge into things, as it were, we feel at one with them. There is a feeling of the soul spreading and expanding, a merging with the things in the external environment as images. This experience lasts for different lengths of time, as spiritual research shows us with the methods we have been talking about; but in general it is a brief experience after death. Today, after more exact clairvoyant research on this subject, we can even speak of how long the time period is for each individual, depending on their individuality. You know that different people, in their normal state of life, can stay awake for different lengths of time, if need be, without being overcome by sleep. One person can keep awake for three, four, five days on my account, another can only do it for thirty-six hours, and so on. As long as a person on the average has been able to keep awake in the normal state of life without being forced down by sleep, so long, on the average, does this tableau of memories last. So it is to be calculated in days and is different for different people.

Then, when this tableau of memories has come to an end, when it has gradually faded, for it shows a gradual darkening, the person feels something like certain forces withdrawing within him and something that was previously in his nature being expelled. That which is expelled is now a second corpse of man, an invisible corpse; it is that in man which he cannot take with him from his etheric or life body through the following experiences in the spiritual world. While the physical body has already been rejected and returned to its physical substances and forces, the etheric or life body is now being pressed out and distributed into that world which we call the ether world, which in turn is a nothing for the one who can only see and think materialistically, but which interweaves and interlives everything for the one whose spiritual eyes are open. Now, however, something remains of this expressed etheric or life body, which can be described as an essence, as an extract of everything that has been experienced. It is, as it were, the experiences of the last existence between birth and death, crowded together into a germ, which now remain united with what the person is. So the fruit of the last life, compressed, remains.

So what does a person have in the further course of their after-death life? The person retains what we call the carrier of their ego, what we call their ego itself; but this ego is initially enveloped by what we have characterized as the third link of the human being after the physical and etheric or life body, this ego is enveloped by the astral body. We could say that the human being's astral body is the carrier of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain, of urges, desires and passions. All that twitches through our soul during the day as lust and suffering, as urges, desires and passions, the astral body is the carrier of it, and every night I and the astral body leave the physical and the etheric or life body of the human being, which remain in bed during sleep. Now, after death, we have united the ego and the astral body with that life essence, of which we could just say that it has been extracted as a fruit or germ from the etheric or life body. With these members of his being, the human being now continues his journey through the so-called soul world. If we want to understand what the spiritual view of the human being can reveal to us about this world, then we must first realize that it is the astral body that is the carrier of everything that is enjoyment, desire, interest in the things around us. Yes, the astral body is the carrier of all pleasures, desires, all pains and sufferings, even of the basest desires, the desires that are linked, for example, to our nutrition. The physical body is a structure of physical and chemical forces and laws. It is not the physical body that feels pleasure and enjoyment in relation to food and stimulants, that is the human being's astral body. The physical body only provides the tools so that we can procure such pleasures, which take place in the astral body. Now, anyone who has gained an understanding that the human being's astral body is something real, something actual, not just a function, a result of the interaction of physical and chemical processes, will not be surprised when it is said that at the moment of death, when the physical body is discarded, the astral body does not immediately lose its desire for the pleasures. Indeed it does not. Let us take a blatant case, for my sake, of a person who was a gourmet in life, who enjoyed delicious food. What happened to him at the time of death? He lost the opportunity – because he discarded his physical tools – to obtain the pleasures in his astral body. But the craving for these pleasures remained in his astral body. The result of this is that the person is now in the same situation with regard to these pleasures – albeit for different reasons – as he would be if he were in a place in the physical life where he suffers from burning thirst and there is nothing far and wide that can quench that thirst. After death, the astral body suffers from a burning thirst because the physical organs through which this thirst can be satisfied are not there. The tools have been laid aside, but the craving for these pleasures has remained in the astral body. The consequence of this is that man is now in the same situation with regard to these pleasures, the astral body suffers a burning thirst. In the astral body are still all those instincts, desires and passions that can only be satisfied by the physical tools. Therefore, it is understandable, simply from this logical consideration, what the spiritual researcher must say in this area: After discarding his etheric or life body, the human being goes through a time in which, with regard to his innermost being, he must unlearn all longings and desires that can only be satisfied through the physical tools of the physical body. This is the time of purification, of cleansing, during which all longings for anything in the astral body must be uprooted, longings that can only be obtained by man by putting his physical tools to work.

We will find it understandable that, again, depending on the individuality of the person, the time will vary that must be gone through for the sake of this purification, for the sake of this uprooting of desires that only go to the physical world. But the human being also undergoes this time in such a way that it does not merely count in days, but that, according to the research of the science of the next life, it takes up about one third of the life in the physical world that has passed between birth and death. It is understandable to those who are able to look more deeply that the time of purification takes up about a third of one's lifetime. If you look at human life, you find that this human life between birth and death clearly falls into three thirds. The first third of life is there for the human being's abilities and talents, which come into being through birth, to work their way through the obstacles of the physical world. There is a kind of ascending life in the first third. The human being gradually takes possession of his physical organs as a spiritual being. Then comes the next third of life, which lasts approximately from the ages of 21 to 42 on average. The first lasts until the age of 21. This second third of life takes up the development of all those powers that a person can unfold by interacting with his inner being, with his soul, with the outside world. By this time, he has already formed the organs of his physical and etheric or life body plastically, so he no longer has any obstacles in them. He is fully grown. His soul enters into direct relationship with the outer world. This lasts until the time when man must begin to draw again on his physical and etheric or life body, and this then happens for the rest of his life. Then man draws again, little by little, on what he has formed plastically in his youth. We have been able to point out the wonderful connection that exists between youth and old age. If during the time when the inner human being is plastically formed in the organs of the human being, if the human being acquires certain qualities, if during this time he has overcome various impulses of anger in his soul, if he has gone through what we call the feeling of devotion, then the effect of this comes to expression precisely in the last third of life. In the middle third, this goes on as in a hidden stream. And what we call 'conquered anger' comes to the fore in old age as 'just mildness', so that in conquered anger lies the cause of mildness. And from the mood of devotion that we cultivate in our younger years, at the end of our lives comes that quality that we see in people who can enter into a community and, without saying much, have the effect of blessing.

It is clear that a person's life is divided into three thirds. In the first third, the person works towards his physical body; in the last third of life, he feeds on his physical body again; in the middle third of life, the soul is, so to speak, left to its own devices. This middle period must, as it seems understandable, correspond to the period of purification after death. There the soul is free of the physical body and etheric or life body and is in a similar relationship to its spiritual environment as in the second third of life.

What the spiritual researcher is able to see, we can logically understand if we take a look at ordinary life. We can understand that the stated time is an average figure, and that for some people the time of purification will be longer, for others shorter. It will be longer for those who, with all their passions, are devoted to a purely sensual existence, who hardly know anything other than the satisfaction of those pleasures that are tied to the physical organs of the body. But for those who, in their ordinary lives, by penetrating into art, by knowledge, are already able to see the spiritual secrets of existence that penetrate through the veil of the physical, who, even if only intuitively, grasp the revelations of the grasp the revelations of the spirit through the veil of the physical, for him the time of purification will be shorter, because he will pass through the gate of death prepared for everything that can only come from the spiritual world as satisfaction.

So here we have a time that man goes through between death and a new birth, which differs essentially from the time immediately after death, which is counted in days. During this time, which is counted in days, we have a neutral memory tableau, in the face of which all our interest and participation fall silent. During the time of purification, however, we have everything in our soul that has drawn us to our experiences through longing for pleasure, through longing for desire. It is precisely our emotional life, our life of feeling, that is what takes place in the soul during this time of purification.

Now, however, spiritual research shows us a remarkable peculiarity of this time of purification. As strange as it sounds, it is nevertheless true: this time of purification runs from back to front, so that we have the impression that we are first going through the last year of our physical life, then the year before last, and then the third last. And so we live through our lives, purifying and cleansing ourselves, as in a mirror image, going through it in such a way that it appears as if it were going from death to birth, and at the end of the time of purification we stand in the moment of birth. First old age, then middle age, all the way back to childhood, we go through life.

Now no one should imagine that this is only a terrible time, only a time in which one experiences burning thirst and goes through longings. All this is certainly there, but it is not the only thing. We also relive everything that we have already gone through spiritually between birth and death, we also relive the good events of life in such a way that we have them before us again, as it were, in a mirror image. We will soon see what that is like by looking at this time even more closely. Suppose a person had died at the age of 60. Then he first experiences the 59th, then the 58th, the 57th year of life and so on; he only experiences everything backwards in a kind of mirror image. What remains is that we feel as if we are poured out over the things and beings of the world, as if we are in all beings and things in it. Now let us take the fact that in a life that lasted until the age of 60, we would have offended someone at the age of 40. So we relive twenty years at triple speed. When we arrive at the age of 40, we relive the pain that we caused the other person, but we do not experience what we went through at the time, but what the other person went through. If we have caused someone pain out of a sense of revenge or out of a surge of anger and then, after death, looking back, we come to that moment, we do not feel the satisfaction we experienced, but rather what the other person experienced. We are placed in his position in spirit. And so it is with everything we experience as we journey backwards in time. We relive all the good deeds we have done in life, the beneficial effects they have had on those around us.

We experience this with our soul, which feels as if it has been poured out into the whole environment. This is not without effect, but by experiencing everything, the person takes with them certain impressions from all these situations. We can characterize this as follows. But I would like to make it clear that these things can only be characterized comparatively with words, because you can understand that our words are coined for the physical world and are actually only applicable to this physical world in the right sense. If we use these words - and we could not otherwise communicate about all the mysterious worlds that open up to the spiritual eye - then we must be aware that these words only have an approximate meaning. What is being relived can only be characterized as follows: When a person perceives the pain he has caused another, when he relives this pain after death, he feels it as an obstacle to development. He says to himself in his soul: What would I have become if I had not caused this pain to the other? This pain is something that holds back my whole being from a degree of perfection that it could otherwise have achieved. And so the person says to himself in the face of everything he has spread in the way of error and lies, of ugliness in his surroundings: These are obstacles to development, something that I myself have placed in the way of my perfection. And from this a power is formed in the human soul, which leads to the fact that man in the state in which he now lives between death and a new birth, absorbs the longing, absorbs the will impulses to remove these obstacles from the path. That means that, step by step, we take on impulses in our backward migration to make amends in the next life, to balance out the obstacles we have placed in our own way.

Therefore, we must not believe that what we are going through is merely suffering. It is suffering and deprivation, and it is painful when we see all that we have caused ourselves loaded onto our own soul; but we experience it in such a way that we are glad to be able to experience it, because only through it can we absorb that strength that enables us to remove those obstacles from our path. And so all these impulses that we absorb during the time of purification add up, and when we go back to the beginning of our last life, there is a mighty sum that lives in us as a tremendous urge to make up for everything in a new life, in the following stages of existence, that needs to be made up for in the sense described. Thus, at the end of the time of purification, we are endowed with the strength to develop our will in the future in such a way that compensation is made for everything wrong, ugly, and bad that we have done. This is a power of which man can get some idea if, through wise self-knowledge, he familiarizes himself with the pangs of conscience it causes him when he thinks back to what he has done to this or that person. But all this remains merely a thought in life. It becomes a mighty creative urge during the time of purification between death and a new birth. And equipped with this creative urge, the human being now enters into a new life: the actual spiritual life.

If we want to understand this spiritual life that man enters after the time of purification, then we can do so in the following way. It is difficult to capture in words the very different experiences that the spiritual researcher has when he examines the life between death and a new birth, the very different essential impressions that cannot be compared to anything that the eye can see in the world of the senses and the brain-bound intellect can think, to capture it in the words of our language; but one can get an idea of what the spiritual researcher can experience as a new world through his insight into the spiritual world, in the following way. When you look around you and want to understand the world, when you want to understand what is around you, then you do this by thinking, by forming ideas of the things that are around you. It would be a logically absurd idea if someone were to think that you could scoop water out of a glass in which there is none. It would be just the same if you imagined that you could extract or scoop out of a world of thoughts and laws when there are no thoughts and no laws in it. All human knowledge, all human insight would be vain dreams, would be nothing but fantasy if the thoughts that we ultimately form in our minds did not already underlie things as thoughts, that things have sprung from thoughts. All those who believe that thoughts are only something that the human mind forms, that is not the basis of things as the actual forces of action and creation of things, should just give up all thinking altogether; for the thoughts that would be formed without corresponding to an external world of thoughts would be mere fantasies. Only he thinks truly who knows that his thinking corresponds to the outer world of thoughts and, as in a mirror, awakens the outer world of thoughts within us; he knows that all things originally sprang from this world of thoughts.

Thus, for us human beings, thought is the last thing we grasp of the things, but it underlies them as their first. The creative thought underlies the things, but the thoughts of men, through which man ultimately recognizes, differ in a certain, very significant respect from the creative thoughts outside. When you try to look into the human soul, you will say to yourself: however this human thinking may roam in the horizon of thoughts and ideas, as long as man thinks, as long as he tries to fathom the secrets of things through his thoughts, they will resemble something that is far removed from all creativity. That is the fateful quality of human thoughts, that they have lost the productive, the creative element that is contained in the thoughts that interweave and live through the world outside. Those thoughts that permeate the outside world are imbued with the element that first sprouts up in the human interior like a mysterious substratum of our existence. You know that your ideas, if they are to be transformed into will, must first be submerged into the depths of human existence, that the thought itself is not yet permeated by the will. But the thought that works outside in the world is permeated and interwoven with will. And that is precisely what is unique about the spirit, which objectively interweaves things outside, that it is creative. But through this it is no longer mere thought, through this it is spirit. The thought of human nature has come about through the will being pressed out of the spirit and this appearing like a reflex first out of man. To the spiritual eye, it is nowhere to be seen outside, separate from the creative.

Man enters into this spirit, which contains will and thought locked together in itself, as into a new world, when he has passed through his time of purification after death. And just as we live here in this world, which we pass through between birth and death, surrounded by the impressions of our senses, surrounded by everything our mind can think, so, as we are surrounded and enclosed by the physical world, so man is surrounded by the creative spiritual world everywhere after the time of purification. And he is within this creative spiritual world, he is part of it and belongs to it. This is also the first experience that occurs when the time of purification is over: man does not feel himself in a world that surrounds him with a horizon of things that he can perceive, but he feels himself inside a world where he is creative through and through. Everything that a person has taken in during their last life and even earlier lives, insofar as it has not yet been processed, and in particular everything that is in the described extract of their etheric or life body, everything that is left behind in his astral body, as that mighty impulse that wants to balance the obstacles that have been noticed, everything that is in man, he now feels it productively in himself, he now feels it creatively.

Now, life within productivity is something that is best described by the term bliss or beatitude. You can observe the blissful feeling at a comparatively lower level in everyday life when you see a hen sitting on an egg, hatching it. The warmth of bliss lies in the act of producing. In a higher sense, one can perceive this bliss of production when the artist can transform into the material world what has matured in his soul, when he can create. The whole human being is imbued with this feeling of bliss when passing through the spiritual world.

What does a person bring with them into the spiritual world? They bring with them everything they have gained in the way of fruits, of essence, from their last and other previous lives, which we could say the day before yesterday had come to our soul as an experience , but that in the life between birth and death, because he has a boundary at the physical and etheric or life body, the human being must first keep it within himself and cannot work it into his overall being. Now the physical and etheric or life body is no longer there, now he works in pure spiritual substantiality, now he imprints on it everything he has experienced in the last life, but which he could not work into himself because of the limitations of his physical and etheric or life body.

If we now concern ourselves with the length of time during which man productively works into the spiritual what he has gained in the last life, then we must ask ourselves above all: Does this law of repeated earthly lives, to which we have been pointed, have a certain meaning? Yes, it has a meaning, and this is shown by the fact that a person, after having gone through one incarnation, does not appear in a new life when he can undergo the same experiences again, but only when the earthly outer world has changed in the meantime so that he can undergo completely new experiences. Anyone who reflects a little on evolution will find that, even in physical terms, the earth's physiognomy changes considerably from millennium to millennium. Consider what it might have looked like here, where the city is now, at the time of Christ, how it was quite different, and how this patch of earth has changed since that time; and consider how what we call the moral, intellectual and other spiritual development of humanity has changed over the course of a few centuries. Consider what children absorbed during their first years of life a few centuries ago, and consider what they assimilate during their first years of life today. The earth changes its physiognomy, and after a certain time the human being can enter the earth again and everything is so changed that he can now experience something new. Only when the human being can experience something new, only then does he enter this world anew.

The time between death and a new birth is determined by the fact that when a person incarnates, say in any given century, he grows into very specific hereditary circumstances through the birth. We know that we cannot imagine the human core of being, the spiritual soul of the human being, as if it were added together from the qualities of the parents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents and so on. We have emphasized that just as the earthworm does not grow out of the mud, the human soul does not arise out of the physical. The soul arises out of the soul, as does the living out of the living. We have emphasized that this human soul points us back to a previous life and that it comes into existence through birth in such a way that it draws together the hereditary characteristics. But when we consider the soul, we must also realize that when we look back on a previous life, we carry with us from that earlier human life, through birth, those qualities that gradually unfold in the course of time between death and a new birth. We then take with us through the gate of death what we have newly gained between birth and death, what we have not yet been able to draw from a previous life. So that we now carry through the gate of death everything that has been gained bit by bit in the last life. We can now, when we go through life in the spirit between death and a new birth, only develop this in a new relationship if we do not depend on finding the inherited conditions that we had in the previous existence in this new existence. In a previous existence we had absorbed into our soul certain qualities of our ancestors. We would not encounter anything new in a new existence if we were to encounter the qualities of our ancestors in the same way. If we have embodied ourselves in a particular century, then, in order to be able to live out our lives in a new existence in this direction as well, we have to pass through the spiritual world until all those inherited qualities to which we previously felt drawn, and to which we would feel drawn for as long as they are present, have been lost. Our re-embodiment depends on those qualities that have been handed down through the generations having disappeared. So when we look up to our ancestors, we find certain qualities in our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and so on, which have been passed down through inheritance to our present existence. Now, after death, we enter the spiritual world. We remain there until all the qualities to which we felt attracted in this embodiment have disappeared in the line of inheritance. But that takes many centuries, and spiritual research shows that the time takes so many centuries that we can say, for example, that certain qualities are inherited from generation to generation. It takes about seven hundred years, then the qualities that are passed down from generation to generation have disappeared to such an extent that we can say: What we found in our ancestors at the time has evaporated. But now qualities must develop to such an extent that they again pass through seven hundred years. And we come to the point where we can indicate two times seven hundred years as the time - it is, of course, only an average figure, but it shows itself to spiritual research as the time that elapses between death and a new birth - until the soul enters into existence again through a new birth.

Now, above all, we must educate ourselves about the fact that everything that is already spiritual here on earth rises up into this spiritual world. We have just emphasized that what we take into our spirit is creative outside in the spiritual world. We have seen that we ourselves are in a certain way in this creative world with our creativity. This spiritual world, which is creative outside, is reflected in a certain way in our own soul. Insofar as our own soul experiences spiritual things, goes through a spiritual life, the spiritual-soul experiences of our inner being are also citizens of the spiritual world. Just as the spiritual world extends down into the physical world, so our spiritual world extends up into the general spiritual world. But this explains to us what spiritual research claims: That which is in man in relation to his various elements of being, that lays aside the outer covers, and what remains is the spiritual, and grows up into the productive spiritual world; it is also explained to us that the spiritual conditions, everything of the soul that takes place here in the physical world, lays aside the outer covers and lives up into the spiritual world. Let us take the love that a mother has for her child. This grows out of the physical world. At first it has an animalistic character. Sympathies connect mother and child, which are a kind of physical force effect. But then that which grows out of the physical world is purified, the love of the two beings is ennobled; this love becomes more and more soulful and spiritual. In death, everything that originates in the physical world is likewise cast off like the outer shells. But on the other hand, everything that is built up in this love in the soul and spirit within this physical human shell remains, just as the human inner self lives on into the spiritual world, so that the love between mother and child lives on in the spiritual world. There they find each other again, no longer limited by the barriers of the physical world, but in that spiritual environment where we do not have things outside us, but where we live and weave and are in things. Therefore, one must imagine that which reigns in the spiritual world as the result of the relationships of love and friendship established in the physical world; one must imagine them as being much more intimately connected than the bonds of love and friendship that are formed in the physical world. And it is absurd to ask whether we will see again after death those with whom we live in love and friendship in the physical world. We not only see them, but we live in them; we are, so to speak, poured out over them. And everything that is woven within the bounds of the sense world only acquires its true meaning when we grow up into the spiritual world with the spiritual part of it.

Thus we see the spiritualization not only of the human being, but of humanity in its noblest relationships in the spiritual realm that man passes through between death and a new birth. But it is also there that all the impulses that the human being has brought into the spiritual world are transformed into living archetypes. We saw that the human being entered the spiritual world with an essence of the etheric or life body, that is, with an essence of all the experiences he has had between birth and death. We see the human being entering the spiritual world with that mighty impulse that allows him to make amends for the wrongs he has done. The human being weaves this together into a spiritual archetype. And the time he spends in the spiritual world passes in such a way that this image is woven more and more so that it receives the fruits of the previous life and the urge, the will to make amends for the wrong, the ugliness he has done, more and more interwoven. And so, during that time, the human being is able, on the one hand, to plastically shape into the body that is made available to him for re-embodiment all the abilities he has acquired in previous lives, and, on the other hand, because he has woven into his original image has woven into his image the urge, the impulse to make good what he has done that was wrong, ugly, evil, attracted by circumstances that allow him to make up for this wrong, this ugliness that he has done. We enter into existence through birth with the will to enter into such circumstances that allow us to make up for imperfections in our previous life. Thus, through a hidden will, we seek out pain in appropriate cases when we have the unconscious realization, arising from our prenatal urge, that only by overcoming this pain can we remove certain obstacles that we have previously placed in our way.

Thus we see how the human being passes through the spiritual world, in which he can plastically develop his physical body even before the new birth. And now we also see how that which we have woven into our archetype is only gradually united with our life after birth. For he does not know life who believes that everything that develops in life in the way of abilities and soul powers already lies within the child. He who can truly observe life sees the human being entering existence through birth and sees how the human being only gradually finds himself in life, how in the early years the human being by no means already has within him what he can become. We can understand life much better if we say: Man only gradually unites with what he has woven as a spiritual archetype in the time between death and a new birth. Those who look at life without prejudice can see how, as a child, the human being is still surrounded by the spiritual atmosphere that he has woven for himself between death and a new birth, and how he gradually adapts to his own archetype, which he has not yet interwoven with the physicality that he brings with him at birth. While the animal is interwoven with its archetypal image from birth, we see the individual human being only gradually growing into the archetypal image that he has woven for himself through the repeated lives on earth up to this last one. And we understand the physical-sensual side of human life best when we grasp it in this way: we see it as the shell of an animal, an oyster, which we find by the wayside. As long as we want to understand it as merely assembled, out of mud, for example, we will not be able to understand this shell. But if we assume that what is shown layer by layer on the shell is secreted from the interior of an animal that has left this shell, then we understand the structure.

We do not understand the life of man between birth and death if we merely want to understand it from itself, if we want to understand it in such a way that we merely draw together what is in the immediate environment. We can say for a long time that man adapts to his environment, his people, his family. Just as little as we can understand the oyster shell without an oyster, we will not understand human life if we consider it to be formed only out of its immediate environment. It becomes clear and comprehensible, however, when we can assume that the human being comes from a spiritual and soul world and that in this spiritual and soul world he has processed the achievements, the essence, the fruits of previous lives, and that he has reshaped his new existence with the help of this processing. Thus, life itself can only be understood through that which lies above life; the physical world can only be understood through the spiritual and soul worlds.

This is the cycle of the human being through the world of the senses, soul and spirit. If we see the human being in this way, then we have, as it were, only a part of his complete life cycle in his physical-sensual life. And if we pursue it in the right way, our knowledge is not just a theoretical knowledge that tells us this or that like the external science, but it is a knowledge that shows us objectively how life between death and a new birth acquires meaning and significance, in that what we accumulate here is processed in a higher world. From such knowledge springs knowledge and willpower for life, springs meaning and significance, confidence and hope for life. We do not need to ascribe to such knowledge that we look bleakly into past lives, of which we might say: Now, it is claimed that we have caused our own pain. To the pain is added this bleakness! No, we can say to ourselves: This law is not only one that points to the past, but also one that points to the future, showing us that overcome pain is an increase in strength that we utilize in the new life, and the more we work, the more we have overcome pain, the stronger our strength will be. In the higher sense, one can only suffer in happiness; it is a fulfillment from past lives. Through pain we can develop strength, and the strength acquired by overcoming pain means an increase for the future life. And we will confidently pass through the gate of death, knowing that death must be brought into life so that this life can increase from level to level. This seems to justify the statement that Spiritual science in this sense is not just a theory, it is the sap and the strength of life, in that it flows directly into our entire spiritual existence, making it healthy and strong and vigorous. Spiritual science is that which confirms the words that must live in the soul of every spiritual researcher and indeed every person who has some inkling of the spiritual world, as words of truth, as guiding words for their ever-intensifying, healthy and powerful life, which sees an increase of strength even in overcoming pain. These words are confirmed:

Riddle upon riddle arises in space,
Riddle upon riddle runs in time;
Solution is brought only by the spirit,
Which seizes itself
Beyond the boundaries of space
And beyond the course of time.

It is most important for the present age and for the future of mankind to realize that our understanding of Christ Jesus and the Mystery of Golgotha is not dependent upon the findings of the external history that is accepted as scientific today. In order to acquire a knowledge of Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha that carries conviction and is susceptible of proof we must rather look to other sources than those of contemporary historical investigation, even when these sources are the Gospels themselves. I have often stated, and anyone who refers to the relevant literature can verify this for himself, that the most diligent, assiduous and painstaking research has been devoted to Gospel criticism or Gospel exegesis during the nineteenth century. This Gospel criticism has yielded only negative results; in fact it has served rather to destroy and undermine our faith in the Mystery of Golgotha rather than to confirm and substantiate it. We know that many people today, not from a spirit of contradiction but because, on the evidence of historical investigation they cannot do otherwise, have come to the conclusion that there is no justification on purely historical grounds for assigning the existence of Christ Jesus to the beginning of our era. This of course cannot be disproved, but that is of no consequence.

I now propose to discuss whether it is possible to discover other sources than the historical sources which may contribute to an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Before answering the question let us first examine a few facts of occult history.

In tracing the development of Christianity during the early centuries of our era we must bear in mind that it is difficult to comprehend this development unless we reinforce a purely historical enquiry with the findings of Spiritual Science. If we accept, purely hypothetically for the moment, the facts of spiritual-scientific investigation into this period, then a very remarkable picture unfolds before us. As we review this development during the early centuries we realize in effect that the Mystery of Golgotha has been fulfilled not only once—as an isolated event on Golgotha—but, in a figurative sense, a second time on the mighty panorama of history. When we study this period truly remarkable things are disclosed.

The Church of Rome has a tradition of continuity that is reflected in its Church history. This history describes the founding of Christianity, the early Church Fathers, the post-Nicene Fathers and the later Christian philosophers, and the formulation of the particular dogmas by Councils and infallible Popes and so on. History is seen as an unbroken chain, a uniform pattern of unchanging character. It is true that the early Church Fathers have been much criticized from certain angles. But on the whole people are afraid to reject them completely, for in that case the continuity would be broken. History proper begins with the Council of Constantinople in 869 of which I have already spoken. As I have said, history is represented as an unbroken chain, a continuous process. But if a radical gap is anywhere to be found in an apparently continuous process, then it is here. One can hardly imagine a greater contrast than the contrast between the spirit of the early Church Fathers and that of the post-Nicene Fathers and Conciliar decrees. There is a radical difference which is equally radically concealed because it is in the interest of the Church to conceal it. For this reason it has been possible to keep the faithful (today) in ignorance of what took place in the first centuries of the Christian era. Today, for example, there is no clear and reliable evidence, even from leading scholars, of how the Gnosis came to be suppressed. We are equally in the dark about the aims and intentions of such men as Clement of Alexandria, his pupil Origen and others (note 1), including Tertullian, because such fragmentary information as we possess is of doubtful provenance and is derived for the most part from writings of their opponents. For this reason, and because the most fantastic theories have been built on this fragmentary information, it is impossible to arrive at a reliable picture of the early Church Fathers.

In order to have a clear understanding of this problem we must turn our attention for a moment to the causes of this indefiniteness, to all that has happened so that the Mystery of Golgotha could take place a second time in history.

At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the ancient pagan cults and Mysteries were widespread. And they were of such importance that a figure such as Julian the Apostate was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries and a long succession of Roman emperors also received initiation, though of a peculiar kind. Furthermore, everything connected with the ancient pagan cults still survived. But these facts are usually dismissed today in a few words by contemporary historians. The events of that early period are portrayed in a very superficial manner; but this superficial portrayal may provide a sufficient justification in the eyes of many for speaking of a second Mystery of Golgotha. But people have not the slightest understanding of the inner meaning of those events.

From an external point of view one can say that in the early Christian centuries pagan temples, with their statues of a splendour and magnificence which are inconceivable today, were scattered over wide areas. These images (of the gods), even into their formalistic details, were a symbolic representation of all that had lived in the ancient Mysteries. Not only was there not a town or locality without abundant representations of symbolic art forms, but in the fields where peasants cultivated their crops were to be found isolated shrines, each with its statue of a God. And they never undertook agricultural work without first putting themselves in touch with those forces which, they believed, streamed down from the universe through the agency of the magic powers which resided in these images. The Roman emperors, with the support of bishops and priests, were concerned to destroy utterly these temples and shrines together with their images. We can follow this work of iconoclasm up to the time of the emperor Justinian in the sixth century. Countless edicts were promulgated ordering the ruthless destruction of these temples and shrines. During these centuries a wave of iconoclasm swept over the world that was unprecedented in the history of mankind; unprecedented because of the extent of the systematic destruction (note 2). Up to the time when St. Benedict with his own hands and the support of his workmen levelled the temple of Apollo on Monte Cassino in order to found a monastery dedicated to the service of the Benedictine Order on this site, and up to the time of the emperor Justinian, it was one of the foremost duties of the Roman emperors (who since Constantine had been converted to Christianity) to eradicate all traces of paganism. Edicts were promulgated whose apparent purpose was to arrest this work of destruction, but in reading them one receives a strange impression. One emperor, for example, issued an edict declaring that all the pagan temples should not be destroyed immediately for fear of inflaming the populace; the work of destruction should rather be carried out gradually, for the people would then accept it without demur.

All the terrible measures associated with this work of destruction are very often glossed over like so many other things. But this is a mistake. Whenever truth is in any way obscured, the path leading to Christ Jesus is also obscured and cannot be found. Since I have already spoken of this earnest love of truth, allow me to refer to a small incident which occurred in my early childhood and which I shall never forget. Such things are most revealing. Unless we wilfully blind ourselves we learn from the history of the Roman emperors that Constantine was not precisely a model of virtue, otherwise he would not have accused his own stepson, without any justification, of illicit relations with his own mother. The accusation was a pure fabrication in order to find a pretext for murder. Constantine first had his stepson murdered on this trumped-up charge and then the stepmother. These were simply routine acts with Constantine. Since however the Church was deeply indebted to him, official Church history is ashamed to portray him in his true colours. With your permission I should like to read a passage from my school text-book on the history of religion which refers to Constantine: “Constantine showed himself to be a true son of the Church even in his private life”—and I have already given you an example of this! “Though often reproached for his irascibility and ambition one must remember that faith is not a guarantee against every moral lapse and that Christianity could not manifest its redemptive power in him because, to the end of his life, he never partook of the Sacrament.” Now examples of this kind of whitewash are a commonplace. They demonstrate how seldom history displays a love of truth. And much the same applies to recent history. Here we find other distortions but we fail to detect them because other interests occupy our attention.

When we read the account of these Imperial edicts (relating to the destruction of the pagan temples) we are also informed that the Roman emperors expressly rejected animal sacrifice and similar practices which are alleged to have taken place in the temples. Now I do not intend to criticize or to gloss over anything, but simply to state the facts. But we must remember that “opposition to animal sacrifice” (from the entrails of which future events are said to have been predicted) was, in fact, a decadent form of sacrifice. It was not the trifling matter that history often suggests, but a profound science, different in character from that of today. The object of animal sacrifice—and it is difficult to speak of these practices today because we find them so revolting that we can only refer to them in general terms—was to stimulate powers which, at the time, could not be attained directly because the epoch of the old clairvoyance was past. Attempts were made within certain circles of the pagan priesthood to revive the old clairvoyant powers. This was one of the methods employed. A more satisfactory method of awakening this ancient atavistic clairvoyance in order to recapture the spirit of primeval times was to revive the particular form of sacrifice practised in the Mithras Mysteries and in the most spiritual form known to the Mysteries at that time. In the priestly Mysteries of Egypt and in Egyptian temples far more brutal and bloodthirsty practices were carried out. When we study the Mithras Mysteries by occult means we realize that they were a means to gain insight into the secrets of the forces operating in the universe through sacrificial rites that were totally different in character from what we understand by sacrificial rites today; in fact they yielded a far deeper insight into the secrets of nature than the modern practice of autopsy which only leads to a superficial knowledge. Those who performed these sacrificial rites in the correct way were able to perceive clairvoyantly certain forces which are present in the hidden depths of nature. And for this reason the real motives for these ritual sacrifices were kept secret and only those who were adequately prepared were permitted to have knowledge of them.

Now when we look into the origin of the Mithras Mysteries we find that they date back to the Third post-Atlantean epoch and so they were already decadent at the time of which we are speaking. In their purer form they were suited to the Third post-Atlantean epoch only. They had reached their high point in this epoch. Through the performance of particular rites they had the power, albeit in a mysterious and somewhat dangerous way, to penetrate deeply into the secrets of nature. The priest performed certain rites in the presence of the neophyte by which he was enabled to “decompound” natural substances (i.e. to resolve them into their constituent parts) in order thereby to arrive at an understanding of the processes of nature. Through the manner in which the fire and water in the organisms interacted on each other and through the manner in which they reacted upon the neophyte who took part in the sacrifice, a special path was opened up which enabled him to attain to a self-knowledge that reached down into the very fibres of his being and thereby arrive at an understanding of the universe.

By participating in these sacrificial rites man learned to see himself in a new light. But this knowledge made considerable allowance for man's weakness. Self-knowledge is extremely difficult to acquire, and these sacrificial rites were intended to facilitate such knowledge and enabled him to feel and experience his inner life more intensely than through intellectual or conceptual processes. He therefore strove for a self-knowledge that penetrated into his physical organism, a self-knowledge that can be seen in the souls of the great artists of antiquity, who, to a certain extent, owed their sense of form to an instinctive feeling for the forms and movements of nature which they experienced in their own organism. As we look back into the history of art, we find there was a time when the artist never dreamt of working from models; any suggestion of working from the model would have been unthinkable. We become increasingly aware that the artist portrayed his visual imaginations in concrete form. Visual imagination is virtually a thing of the past; we hardly dare mention it because words are inadequate to give any real indication of what we mean by it. It is incredible how much times have changed.

Now the Eleusinian Mysteries were a direct continuation of the Mithras Mysteries which were widely diffused at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, but at the same time they represented a totally different aspect. Whilst the Mithras Mysteries emphasized the attainment of self-knowledge through the physical organism, the Eleusinian Mysteries were quite different from those of the Mithras Mysteries. In the latter the neophyte was thrust deeply into himself; in the Eleusinian Mysteries his soul was liberated from the body so that he could experience outside the body the hidden impulses of the creative activity of nature and the spirit. Now if we ask what man learned from these Mysteries—from the Mithras Mysteries which were already decadent and from the Eleusinian Mysteries that had reached their high point towards the fourth century B.C.—if we ask what benefit man derived from these Mysteries, then the answer is found in the well-known injunction of the Delphic oracle: “Know thyself”. Initiation was directed to the attainment of self-knowledge along two different paths: first, self-knowledge through being thrust inwards so that the astral and etheric bodies were “condensed”, so to speak, and through the impact of the psychic on the physical, man realized: “Now you perceive yourself for what you are; you have attained self-awareness.” Such was the legacy of the Mithras Mysteries. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, on the other hand, he attained to self-knowledge through the liberation of the soul from the body by means of various rites which cannot be described in detail here. The soul thus came in contact with the secret power of the Sun, with solar impulses irradiating the Earth, with the forces of the Moon impulse streaming into the Earth, with the forces of stellar impulses and the impulses of the individual elemental forces—the warmth, air and fire forces and so on. The external elements streamed through man's soul (which had been withdrawn from the body) and in this encounter with the external forces he attained self-knowledge. Those who were aware of the real meaning of the Mystery teachings knew that man could attain to all kinds of psychic experiences outside the body, but he was unable to grasp concretely the idea of the ego. Outside the Mysteries the idea of the ego was a purely abstract concept at that time. Man could experience other aspects of the psychic and spiritual life, but the ego had to be nurtured through Mystery training and needed a powerful stimulus. This was the aim of the Mysteries and was known to the initiates.

Now as you know, there occurred at this time a kind of fusion between evolving Christianity and the Roman empire. I have already described how this arose and how, because of this fusion, the Church was anxious to suppress, as far as possible, those rites I have just described to you, to efface all traces of the past and to conceal from posterity all knowledge of the Mystery practices which over the centuries had sought to bring man, whether in the body or outside the body, in touch with those spiritual forces which help him to develop his ego consciousness. If we wish to make a more detailed study of the evolution of Christianity we must consider not only the development of dogma, but especially the development of ancient cults from certain points of view; this is of far greater importance than the evolution of dogma. For dogmas are a source of controversy and like the phoenix they rise again from their own ashes. However much we may imagine they have been eradicated, there is always some crank who comes along and revives the old prejudices. Cults are far easier to eradicate. And these ancient cults which, in a certain sense, were the external signs and symbols of Mystery practices were suppressed, so that it would be impossible to discover from the survival of ancient rites the methods by which man sought to come in touch with divine-spiritual forces.

In order to get to the bottom of the matter we must take a look at the chief sacrament of the Church of Rome, the sacrifice of the Mass. What is the inner significance of the Catholic Mass? In reality, the Mass and all that is related to it, is a continuation and development of the Mithras Mysteries, blended to some extent with the Eleusinian Mysteries. The sacrifice of the Mass and many of the related ceremonies is simply a further development of the ancient cults. The original ritual has been somewhat transformed; the sanguinary character which the Mithras Mysteries had assumed has been modified. But we cannot fail to note many similarities in the spirit of these two cults, especially if we appreciate certain details. For example, before receiving the Host the priest as well as the communicant must fast for a certain period. This detail is more important for the understanding of the Mystery in question than many of the issues that were so fiercely debated in the Middle Ages. And if the priest, as may well happen, neglects the order to fast before celebrating the Eucharist, then the Communion loses its meaning and the effect it should have. Indeed its efficacy is largely lost because the communicants have not been properly instructed. It can be effective only if suitable instruction has been given to the communicant on what he should experience immediately after receiving the “unbloody sacrifice (sic) of His Body and Blood”. But you are no doubt aware of how little attention is paid to these subtleties nowadays, how little people realize that communion must be followed by an inward experience, that one should experience an inner intimation, a kind of modern renewal of that stimulation which the neophyte experienced in the Mithras Mysteries. This is what really lies behind the Christian cult. And ordination was an attempt by the Church to establish a kind of continuation of the ancient principle of Initiation. But she forgot in many cases that Initiation consisted in giving instruction in the way to respond to certain experiences.

Now Julian's avowed object was to discover how the Eleusinian Mysteries into which he had been initiated were related to the Mysteries of the Third post-Atlantean epoch. What could he learn from these Mysteries? On this subject history tells us little. If we were to embark upon a serious study of how men such as Clement of Alexandria, his pupil Origen, Tertullian and even Irenaeus (note 3), to say nothing of the still earlier Fathers, derive in part from the pagan principle of initiation and came to Christianity in their own way, if we were to enter into the minds of these great souls, we should find that their concepts and ideas were informed by an inner vitality peculiar to them alone, that an entirely different spirit dwelt in them from that which was later reflected in the Church. If we wish to understand the Mystery of Golgotha we must catch something of the spirit of these early Fathers.

Now in relation to the great cultural manifestations men are fast asleep, and I mean this literally. They see the world as if in a dream and we can observe this at the present time. I have often spoken to you of Herman Grimm (note 4), and I must confess that when I speak of him today I am a different person from the person who spoke of him some four or five years ago. After nearly three years of War the decades before the War and the years immediately preceding the War seem like a golden age. All that has happened in those years seems centuries ago. Things have changed so much that one has the feeling that time has been infinitely prolonged. And in like manner the most important things pass unnoticed because mankind is asleep to them.

If today we try to grasp the ideas of ancient writers with the ordinary method of understanding—conventional academic teachers of course understand everything that has been transmitted to posterity—but if one is not one of these enlightened mortals, one may come to the conclusion that it is impossible to understand ancient Greek philosophers unless one has recourse to occult knowledge. They speak a different language; the language in which they communicate their ideas is different from that of normal communication. And this applies to Plato. Hebbel (note 5) was aware of this and in his diary he sketched the outline of a dramatic composition which depicted the reincarnated Plato as a Grammar School pupil who had read Plato with his master, but was unable to cope with Plato although he himself was the reincarnation of the philosopher. Hebbel wanted to dramatize this idea but never carried it out. Hebbel, therefore, felt that even Plato could not readily be understood; one needed further preparation. Understanding in the sense of the accurate grasping of ideas first began with Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. Philosophy before Aristotle is incomprehensible by normal human standards. This explains the many commentaries on Aristotle for, whilst on the one hand he is perfectly intelligible, on the other hand in the formation of certain concepts we have not advanced beyond Aristotle because in this respect he belongs to his age. It is impossible to adopt the thought-forms of another epoch; that is tantamount to asking a man of fifty-six to become twenty-six again in order to relive for a quarter of an hour his experiences as a man of twenty-six. A certain mode of thinking is only valid for a particular epoch and the peculiarity attaching to the thinking of a particular epoch is merely repeated time and time again. It is interesting to note how Aristotle dominated the thinking of the Middle Ages and how his philosophy was revived again by Franz Brentano (note 6) and precisely at this moment of time. In 1911 Brentano wrote an excellent book on Aristotle in which he elaborated those ideas and concepts that he wished to bring to the attention of our present epoch. It is a curious symptom of the Karma of our age that Brentano should have written at this precise moment of time a comprehensive study of Aristotle which should be read by all who value a certain kind of thinking. And let me add in addition that the book is eminently readable.

Now it was the fate of Aristotle's writings to have been mutilated, not by Christianity, but by the Church (though not directly), so that essential parts of his work are missing. Consequently these lacunae must be supplemented by occult means. The most important omissions refer to the human soul. And, in connection with Aristotle, I now come to the question posed by all today: how can I find, by means of inner soul-experiences, a sure way to open myself to the Mystery of Golgotha? How can I direct towards this end the practice of meditation described in my writings, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and elsewhere? To a certain extent Aristotle attempted on his own initiative to awaken within himself the inner experiences which those who pose this question must attempt to undertake. But, according to the commentators, whenever Aristotle is on the point of describing his method of meditation, he breaks off and is silent. It is not that he did not describe his technique, but that the later transcripts failed to record it, so that it was never transmitted to posterity. Aristotle had already embarked upon a specific path, the path of mysticism. He strove to find within his soul that which gives certainty of the soul's immortality.

Now if a man honestly and sincerely practises meditation for a time he will unquestionably attain the inner experience of the immortality of the soul because he opens the doors to the immortal within him. Aristotle never doubted for a moment that it is possible to experience within ourselves something which proclaims: I now feel something within me that is independent of the body and which is unrelated to the death of the body. But he goes even further. He strove to develop this deep inner experience which we know (when we become conscious of it) is connected with the body. He experienced quite definitely—but the passage has been mutilated or bowdlerized—that inner solitude which must be felt by all who wish to arrive at an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Mystical experience inevitably leads to solitude. And when this feeling of solitude overwhelms us we ask: “What have I forsaken that I have become so lonely?”, we shall be obliged to answer: “I have forsaken father, mother, brothers, sisters, I have forsworn the vanities of the world. I am emotionally detached from them.” Aristotle was aware of this. This inner experience can be felt by everyone, it can be systematically developed. In this feeling of solitude we come to realize that we have something within us that transcends death, something that pertains to the ego alone and is unrelated to the external world. Aristotle, too, realized that our contact with the external world is mediated through the physical organs. It is possible for man to experience himself in other ways, but the organs of the body are indispensable in order to experience the external world. Hence the feeling of solitude that overtakes us. And Aristotle realized, as everyone who follows in his steps must realize, that he had experienced his immortal soul which death cannot destroy. He was no longer attached to the finite and transient. “I am henceforth alone with myself” he said, “but my idea of immortality is limited; I realize that after death I shall know utter solitude, that through all eternity I shall be faced with the good and evil deeds that I have perpetrated in life and these will always be before my eyes, and this is all I can attain by my own efforts. If I wish to gain a deeper insight into the spiritual world I cannot rely on my own efforts alone; either I must receive Initiation or be instructed by Initiates.”

All this could be found in Aristotle's writings, but his successors were forbidden to transmit the knowledge. And because Aristotle anticipated this possibility he was regarded to a certain extent as a kind of prophet; he became the prophet of that which was not possible in his day, and which is different today from what it was in Aristotle's time. There is no need to appeal to history; we know from personal experience that times have changed.

Now let us turn our attention once again to this feeling of total solitude which assails us today, to this mystical experience which is completely different from the mystical experiences usually described. People often speak of them complacently and say: “God is experienced within myself.” That is not, however, the full mystical experience. In full mystical experience we experience God in total and utter solitude. Alone in the presence of God man experiences himself. And then he must find the necessary strength and perseverance to continue in this state of isolation. For this experience of solitude is a potent force! If we do not allow ourselves to be oppressed by solitude, but allow it to become an active force in us, then we meet with a further experience—these things of course can only be described, but everyone can experience them—we have the firm conviction that the solitude we suffer is self-created, that we have brought it upon ourselves. We create our gods in our own image. This solitude is not born with us, it is created by us, we ourselves are responsible for it. This is the second experience.

And this second experience leads to the feeling that we share direct responsibility for the death of that which is born of God. When man has suffered the dark night of the soul for a sufficient length of time the divine element in him has been slain by the all-too-human. This has not always been the case, otherwise evolution would have been impossible. There must have been a time when this feeling did not exist. At this moment man begins to feel that he shares responsibility for the death of the divine within him. If time permitted I could explain more fully the meaning of the slaying of the “Son of God”. Remember that mystical experience is not a vague, indefinite, isolated experience; it unfolds progressively; we ourselves experience the death of the Christ.

And when this experience has become a powerful force in us, then (I can express it in no other way) the Christ, the Risen Lord is born in us. For the Risen Lord, He who has suffered death, is first felt as an inner mystical experience and the reason for His death is experienced in the manner already described.

There are three degrees of mystical experience. To find the path leading to the sources of the Mystery of Golgotha is of itself not enough; something more must be added, something that has been grotesquely misrepresented, even concealed, at the present time. The only person who forcefully pointed out what had been concealed from mankind by the nineteenth century was Friedrich Nietzsche in his book On the Uses and Abuses of History. Nothing is more calculated to destroy our understanding of Christ than what is called history today. And the Mystery of Golgotha has never been more thoroughly misrepresented than by the objective historians of the nineteenth century. I am aware that anyone who criticizes the objective history of today is regarded as a fool. I have no wish to denigrate the painstaking philological and scholarly achievements of historical research, but however scholarly or however exact this history may be, it is a spiritual desert. It has no understanding of the things that are of vital importance to the life of man and to mankind as a whole. They are a closed book to modern history.

Perhaps I may be permitted to speak from personal experience in this field, for these things have personal associations. Since my nineteenth year I have been continually occupied with the study of Goethe but I have never been tempted to write a factual history of his life or even portray him in the academic sense, for the simple reason that from the very first I felt that what mattered most was that Goethe was still a living force. The physical man Goethe who was born in 1749 and died in 1832, is not important; what is important is that after his death his spirit is still alive amongst us today, not only in the Goethe literature (which is not particularly enlightened), but in the very air we breathe.

This spiritual atmosphere that surrounds us today did not as yet exist in the men of antiquity. The etheric body, as you know, is separated from the soul after death as a kind of second corpse, but, through the Christ Impulse that informs us since the Mystery of Golgotha, the etheric body is now preserved to some extent; it is not completely dissolved. If we believe—and I use the word belief in the sense which I defined in an earlier lecture—that Goethe is “risen” in an etheric body and if we begin to meditate upon him, then his concepts and ideas become alive in us, and we describe him not as he was, but as he is today. The idea of resurrection has then become a living reality and we believe in the resurrection. We can then say that we believe not only in ideas that belong to the past, but also in the living continuity of ideas. This is connected with a profound mystery of modern times. No matter what we may think, so long as we are imprisoned in the physical body our thoughts cannot manifest in the right way. (This does not apply to our feeling and will, but only to our thoughts and representations.) Great as Goethe was, his ideas were greater than he. That they were unable to rise to greater heights was due to the limitations of his physical body. The moment they were liberated from these limitations of the body and could be developed by someone who has sympathy and understanding for them, they are transformed and acquire new life. (I am referring here to the thoughts which persist to some extent in his etheric body, not to his feeling and will.) Remember that the form in which ideas first arise in us is not their final form. Believe therefore in the resurrection of ideas! Believe this so firmly that you willingly seek union with your forefathers—not with your forefathers to whom you are linked through ties of blood, but with your spiritual forefathers—and that you will ultimately find them. They need not be Goethes, they might equally well be a Smith or a Brown. Try to fulfil the injunction of Christ: do not cling to ties of consanguinity, but seek rather a spiritual relationship. Then the thought of resurrection becomes a living reality in your life and you will believe in resurrection. It is not a question of invoking incessantly the name of the Lord; what matters is that we grasp the living spirit of Christianity, that we hold fast to the vitally important idea of resurrection as a living force. And he who in this way draws support for his inner life from the past, learns that the past lives on in us, we experience in ourselves the continuity of the past. And then—it is only a question of time—the moment arrives when we are aware of the presence of the Christ. Everything depends upon our firm faith in the Risen Christ and in the idea of resurrection, so that we can now say: “We are surrounded by a world of spirit and the resurrection has become a reality within us.”

You may object, however, that this is pure hypothesis. So be it. Once you have had the experience of having been in touch with the thoughts of someone who has died, whose physical body has been committed to the Earth and whose thoughts live on in you, then a time comes when you say: “The thoughts that have newly arisen in me I owe to Christ; they could never have become so vitally alive but for the incarnation of Christ.”

There is an inward path to the Mystery of Golgotha; but one must first abandon so-called “objective” history which in reality is entirely subjective because it deals with surface phenomena and ignores the spirit. Many Goethe biographies have been written which set out to portray Goethe's life with maximum fidelity. In every case the authors, of necessity, stifle something in themselves. For Goethe's way of thinking has been transformed and lives on in a different form. It is important that we should grasp Christianity in the same spirit.

In short, it is possible to have a mystical experience of the Mystery of Golgotha—mystical in the true sense of the word. One must not be content with abstractions, one must be prepared to suffer through the inner experiences I have already described. And if the question is raised: how can I draw near to Christ? (it must be understood that we are referring to the Risen Christ), if we have the patience and necessary perseverance to follow the path indicated, we can be sure of finding the Christ at the right moment. But when we find Him, we must be careful not to overlook what is most important.

I said in an earlier lecture that Aristotle was a prophet and that Julian the Apostate inherited something of the same prophetic gift. Owing to the form which the Eleusinian Mysteries had assumed at that time, he could not discover their true meaning; he hoped to find the answer in the Mithras Mysteries. It was for this reason that Julian embarked on his Persian campaign. He wished to discover the continuity in the Mystery teachings, to find the connection between them. And because this was not permitted he was assassinated.

Now the early Church Fathers sought to experience the Christ after the fashion of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Whether we call them Gnostics or not—the true Gnostics were rejected by the Church, though Clement of Alexandria could justifiably be called a Gnostic—they had a totally different relation to Christ than later times. They sought to approach Him through the Eleusinian Mysteries and accepted Him as a Cosmic Being. They repeatedly raised the question: How does the Logos operate purely in the spiritual world? What is the true nature of the Being whom man encounters in Paradise? What is his relation to the Logos? Such were the questions which occupied the minds of the Gnostics’, questions that can only be answered by those who are familiar with the world of spiritual ideas. When we study the Eleusinian Mysteries (that were extirpated root and branch), it is evident that in the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha the Risen Christ was Himself present in the Mysteries in order to reform them. And we can truly say that Julian the Apostate had a deeper understanding of Christianity than Constantine. In the first place, Constantine had not been initiated and had only accepted Christianity in a superficial way. But Julian felt intuitively that Christ could only be found in the Mysteries. It was through Initiation that we must find the Christ; He would endow us with the ego which could not be granted us at that time because we were not ready to receive it.

It was a historical necessity that these Mysteries should be destroyed because they did not lead to the Christ. We today must find access to Hellenism once again, but without the aid of documents. Hellenism must be revived, not of course in its original form, otherwise it becomes the travesty that can be seen in the aping of the Olympiad, for example. It is not a question of aping Hellenism; I am not suggesting any such thing. Hellenism must be renewed from within and unquestionably will be renewed. We must find the path to the Mysteries once again, but within ourselves, and then we shall also find the path to the Christ.

Just as Christ was crucified for the first time on Golgotha, so He was crucified a second time through Constantinism. By suppressing the Mysteries, Christ, as a historical reality, was crucified a second time. For those acts of vandalism which lasted for centuries destroyed not only priceless treasures of art, but destroyed also man's experience of the spiritual world, the most important experience he could have. People had no understanding of what had been destroyed by this vandalism, because they had lost all sense of values. When the temples of Jupiter and Serapis were demolished together with their statues the mob applauded. “It is right to destroy them,” they said, “for it has been foretold that when the temple of Serapis is destroyed, then the Heavens will fall and the Earth will be plunged in chaos. The Heavens however have not fallen, nor has the world collapsed in chaos despite the fact that the Roman Christians have levelled the temple to the ground.” It is true that outwardly the stars have not fallen, nor has the Earth been plunged in chaos. But all that man had formerly known through the experience of the Sun initiation was extinguished. That majestic wisdom, more grandiose than the firmament of ancient astronomy, collapsed along with the ruins of the temple of Serapis. And this ancient wisdom, the last traces of which Julian still found in the Mysteries of Eleusis, where the spiritual Sun and the spiritual Moon had been revealed to him, this wisdom was lost forever. All that the men of ancient times experienced in the Mithras Mysteries and Egyptian Mysteries when, through sacrificial worship, they relived inwardly the mysteries of the Moon and the Earth as they are enacted in man himself when he came to self-knowledge through the “inner compression” of his soul—all this has collapsed in chaos. Spiritually, however, the Heavens had fallen and the Earth was plunged in chaos; for what was lost in the course of those centuries is comparable to the loss that we should suffer if we were suddenly bereft of our senses, when we would know neither the Heavens above nor the Earth beneath our feet. The loss of the ancient world is not the trivial episode recorded in history, but has far deeper implications. We must believe in the resurrection even if we are unwilling to believe that what has disappeared is lost for ever. This demands that we should be resolute in thought and have the courage of our convictions. We realize the imperative need today for the Christ Impulse to which I have so often referred in these lectures.

Through karmic necessity (a necessity from a certain standpoint only) man has for centuries been destined to live a life that was empty and purposeless, to live in a spiritual vacuum, so that through a strong inner urge for freedom he could find the Christ again and in the right way. But he must first rid himself of that self-complacency from which he so often suffers at the present time.

Sometimes this self-complacency assumes most remarkable forms. In the eighties, a Benedictine father, Knauer, gave a course of lectures in Vienna on the Stoics. I should like to read you a passage from one of these lectures. The leading representatives of the Stoic school of philosophy were Zeno (342-270), Cleanthes (331-232) and Chrysippus (282-209); the school therefore flourished several centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha. This is what Knauer says:

“In conclusion I should like to say in defence of the Stoics that they strove for a league of nations, embracing the whole of mankind, which would end war and racial hatred. I need hardly say that in this respect the Stoics rose superior to the often inhuman prejudices of their time—and even of later generations.”

A league of nations! I had to read the lecture again. Could it be that my ears had deceived me when I heard Woodrow Wilson and other statesmen talking of a league of nations? For here was the voice of the Stoics, but they said it far better because they had the power of the Mysteries behind them. The inner power which inspired their discourses is now lost, leaving but the shell behind. Only those historians who stand a little apart from the normal species of historian can sometimes see historical events in a new and different light.

And Knauer continued—I withdraw nothing of what I said recently about Immanuel Kant; but it is none the less remarkable that a capable philosopher such as Knauer should have said the following about the Stoa in the eighties:

“Amongst the more recent philosophers”—he is referring to the league of nations idea of the Stoa—“no less a person than Kant has revived this idea and declared it to be a feasible proposition in his treatise ‘On Perpetual Peace. A philosophical outline’, a work that has not received the recognition it deserves. The fundamental idea of Kant is both sound and practicable. He shows that eternal peace must become a reality when the ‘Great Powers’ introduce a genuinely representative system.” In Kant this idea is considerably emasculated, but today it has been still more emasculated so that it is a shadow of its former self. And this nebulous conception is now graced with the name “the new orientation”. And Knauer continues: “Under such a system the wealthy and propertied classes and the professional classes who are the chief victims of war will have the right to decide issues of war and peace. Our constitutions which are modelled on that of England are not genuine representative systems in Kant's opinion. They are dominated by party prejudice and sectional interests which are promoted by an electoral system that is based for the most part on statistical calculations and the counting of heads. The crux of Kant's argument is this: international law must be based upon a federation of independent States which have wide powers of autonomy.”

Is this the voice of Kant or the voice of the “new orientation”? Kant argues his case more vigorously, it is more firmly grounded. I do not propose to read you what follows, otherwise the worthy Kant would incur the displeasure of the censor.

What I have been discussing was the subject of a book by the American author Brook Adams (note 7), The Law of Civilisation and Decay, a study of the importance of evolutionary theory in human history. Brook Adams tried to account for the continual revival of old institutions and forms of life by certain peoples, for example, the revival of the Roman empire by the Teutonic peoples. Surveying the present epoch he finds many nations who have affinity with the Roman empire, but no indications of the peoples who will renew it—certainly not the American people, and in this he was perfectly right. This regenerative power will not come from without; it must come from within through the quickening of the spirit. It must spring from the soul and will only be possible when we grasp the Christ Impulse in all its living power. All these empty phrases one hears on every hand apply to the past and not to the present or future. All this empty talk with its everlasting refrain: “Yes, the old proverb is true: ‘Minerva's owl can only spread her wings in the twilight’ was valid for ancient times.” And to this we reply: “When nations had grown old they established schools of philosophy; they looked back in spirit to what they owed to instinct. Things will be different in the future, for this instinct will no longer exist. The spirit itself must become instinct and from out of the spirit new creative possibilities must arise.”

Reflect upon these words for they are of momentous importance: out of the spirit new creative possibilities will arise! The power of the spirit must work unconsciously within you. And this depends upon the idea of resurrection. That which has been crucified must arise again. This will not come to pass by passively waiting on events, but by quickening the spiritual forces within us, by quickening the creative power of the spirit itself.

This is what I wished to say on the subject of the Mystery of Golgotha at this particular juncture of time.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Clement of Alexandria (301–232 B.C.) was head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, a training school for catechumens. In the conflict between pistis (faith) and gnosis (knowledge) he favoured the latter and was close to the Gnostics in that he supported Platonism and the allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures. He believed in the idea of the “Disciplina Arcani”, the withholding of higher knowledge from those unfitted to receive it, which was common to all ancient Mystery teaching. Origen (A.D. 186–253) became head of the Catechetical School. Nurtured in neo-Platonism through the influence of Ammonius Saccus. Adjudged to be a heretic by the fifth Ecumenical Council. He accepted the theory of pre-existence, free will and the necessity of grace. He also used symbol and allegory in his exegesis. He wrote commentaries on nearly every work in scripture. His crowning work was Contra Celsum who attacked Christianity on moral and intellectual grounds. Book VI of Eusebius Ecclestical History is devoted to him. See also Appendix I in the perceptive commentary of A. P. Shepherd and Mildred Robertson Nicoll, in The Redemption of Thinking (Hodder & Stoughton).

Note 2. The systematic destruction of pagan temples began under Constantine. Out of expediency the emperors remained neutral in the conflict between Christian and pagan cults. But the Christian monks not only incited the populace to pillage, but were themselves the first to burn and pillage the temples and to ransack trophies, statues and anything of value. It was during the outburst of iconoclasm that the famous library in the temple of Serapis was destroyed in A.D. 391.

Note 3. Irenaeus, born in Asia, heard St. Polycarp in his youth. The date of his death is unknown. His chief work was Adversus Haereses, c.179, an attack upon the Gnostics and the principal heresies.

Note 4. Herman Grimm (1828–1901), son of Wilhelm Grimm who with his brother Jacob collected and edited the Nursery and Household Tales. Herman was an art historian who wrote works on Goethe, Dante, Shakespeare, Raphael and Michelangelo.

Note 5. Hebbel (1813–63), poet and dramatist. Tragedy, according to Hebbel arises out of conflict. Innovators, leaders of new movements, men of original mind, representatives of new principles, though they may lead to the amelioration of society, are doomed to destruction. This was the tragedy of Christ. The first and last representative of a movement, he declared, is either tragic or comic.

Note 6. Franz Brentano (1838–1917). An Austrian philosopher, ordained 1864, but was unable to accept the doctrine of papal infallibility and relinquished his clerical status. Professor of Philosophy in Wurzburg 1872 and taught at the University of Vienna 1874–95. Aristoteles and seine Weltanschauung (1911) was a re-assessment of Aristotelian philosophy. Brentano attempted to revise Aristotle's logic and psychology from the standpoint of empiricism. Brentano believed in the existence of a personal and immortal soul. (See D. Kraus, Franz Brentano, 1919, and H. O. Eaton, The Austrian Philosophy of Values, 1930.)

Note 7. Brooks Adams (1848–1927), also wrote The Dream and the Reality, 1917. Predicted that by the mid-twentieth century the two great Powers in the world would be America and Russia. American prosperity would contribute to the decay of American democracy because great wealth exercises power without responsibility.

[ 1 ] From the foregoing considerations it follows that it is impossible to prove, by analysis of the content of our observation, that our percepts are representations. This is supposed to be proved by showing that, if the process of perceiving takes place in the way in which we conceive it in accordance with the naive-realistic assumptions concerning the psychological and physiological constitution of human individuals, then we have to do, not with things themselves, but merely with our representations of things. Now, if Naive Realism, when consistently thought out, leads to results which directly contradict its presuppositions, then these presuppositions must be discarded as unsuitable for the foundation of a conception of the world. In any case, it is inadmissible to reject the presuppositions and yet accept the consequences, as the Critical Idealist does who bases his assertion that the world is my representation on the line of argument indicated above. (Eduard von Hartmann gives in his work Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie a full account of this line of argument.)

[ 2 ] The truth of Critical Idealism is one thing, the persuasiveness of its proof another. How it stands with the former will appear later in the course of this book, but the persuasiveness of its proof is nil. If one builds a house, and the ground floor collapses while the first floor is being built, then the first floor collapses, too. Naive Realism and Critical Idealism are related just as the ground floor to the first floor in this simile.

[ 3 ] For one who holds that the whole perceptual world is only representational, and, moreover, the effect of things unknown to him acting on his soul, the real problem of knowledge is naturally concerned, not with the representations present only in the soul, but with the things which lie outside his consciousness, and which are independent of him. He asks: How much can we learn about them indirectly, seeing that we cannot observe them directly? From this point of view, he is concerned, not with the inner connection of his conscious percepts with one another, but with their causes which transcend his consciousness and exist independently of him, whereas the percepts, on his view, disappear as soon as he turns his senses away from the things. Our consciousness, on this view, works like a mirror from which the pictures of definite things disappear the very moment its reflecting surface is not turned towards them. If, now, we do not see the things themselves, but only their reflections, we must obtain knowledge of the nature of the former indirectly by drawing conclusions from the character of the latter. The whole of modern science adopts this point of view, when it uses percepts only as an ultimate means of obtaining information about the processes of matter which lie behind them, and which alone really “are.” If the philosopher, as Critical Idealist, admits real existence at all, then his sole aim is to gain knowledge of this real existence indirectly by means of his representations. His interest skips over the subjective world of representations and pursues instead that which produces these representations.

[ 4 ] The Critical Idealist can, however, go even further and say, I am confined to the world of my representations and cannot escape from it. If I think a thing behind my representations, this thought, once more, is nothing but my representation. An Idealist of this type will either deny the thing-in-itself entirely or, at any rate, assert that it has no significance for human minds, i.e., that it is as good as non-existent since we can know nothing of it.

[ 5 ] To this kind of Critical Idealist the whole world seems a dream, in the face of which all striving for knowledge is simply meaningless. For him there can be only two sorts of men: (1) victims of the illusion that the dreams they have themselves woven are real things, and (2) wise men who see through the nothingness of this dream world, and who gradually lose all desire to trouble themselves further about it. From this point of view, even one's own personality may become a mere dream phantom. Just as during sleep there appears among my dream-images an image of myself, so in waking consciousness the representation of my own I is added to the representation of the outer world. I have then given to me in consciousness, not my real I, but only my representation of my I. Whoever denies that things exist, or, at least, that we can know anything of them, must also deny the existence, or the knowledge, of one's own personality. This is how the Critical Idealist comes to maintain that “All reality transforms itself into a wonderful dream, without a life which is the object of the dream, and without a spirit which has the dream; into a dream which hangs together in a dream of itself.” (Cf. Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen.)

[ 6 ] Whether he who believes that he recognizes immediate life to be a dream, postulates nothing more behind this dream, or whether he relates his representations to actual things, is immaterial. In both cases life itself must lose all scientific interest for him. However, whereas for those who believe that the whole of the accessible universe is exhausted in dreams, all science is an absurdity, yet for those who feel compelled to argue from representations to things, science consists in inquiring into these “things-in-themselves.” The first of these theories of the world may be called Absolute Illusionism, the second is called Transcendental Realism by its most rigorously logical exponent, Eduard von Hartmann.¹

[ 7 ] These two points of view have this in common with Naive Realism, that they seek to gain a footing in the world by means of an analysis of percepts. Within this sphere, however, they are unable to find any stable point.

[ 8 ] One of the most important questions for an adherent of Transcendental Realism would have to be, how the Ego produces the world of representations out of itself. A world of representations which was given to us, and which disappeared as soon as we shut our senses to the external world, might provoke an earnest desire for knowledge, in so far as it was a means for investigating indirectly the world of the I existing in itself. If the things of our experience were “representations” then our everyday life would be like a dream, and the discovery of the true facts like waking. Even our dream-images interest us as long as we dream and, consequently, do not detect their dream character. But as soon as we wake, we no longer look for the inner connections of our dream-images among themselves, but rather for the physical, physiological, and psychological processes which underlie them. In the same way, a philosopher who holds the world to be his representation, cannot be interested in the reciprocal relations of the details within it. If he admits the existence of a real Ego at all, then his question will be, not how one of his representations is linked with another, but what takes place in the Soul which is independent of him, while a certain train of representations passes through his consciousness. If I dream that I am drinking wine which makes my throat burn, and then wake up with a tickling sensation in the throat (cp. Weygandt, Entstehung der Träume, 1893) I cease, the moment I wake, to be interested in the dream-drama for its own sake. My attention is now concerned only with the physiological and psychological processes by means of which the irritation, which causes me to cough, comes to be symbolically expressed in the dream-picture. Similarly, once the philosopher is convinced that the given world consists of nothing but representations, his interest is bound to switch from them at once to the soul which is the reality lying behind them. The matter is more serious, however, for the Illusionist who denies the existence of an Ego-in-itself behind the representations, or at least holds this Ego to be unknowable. We might very easily be led to such a view by the observation that, in contrast to dreaming, there is indeed the waking state in which we have the opportunity to look through our dreams, and to refer them to the real relations of things, but that there is no state of the Self which is related similarly to our waking conscious life. Every adherent of this view fails entirely to see that there is, in fact, something which is to mere perception what our waking experience is to our dreams. This something is thinking.

[ 9 ] The naive man cannot be charged with the lack of insight referred to here. He accepts life as it is, and regards things as real just as they present themselves to him in experience. The first step, however, which we take beyond this standpoint can be only this, that we ask how thinking is related to perception. It makes no difference whether or no the percept, in the shape given to me, continues to exist before and after my forming a representation. If I want to assert anything whatever about it, I can do so only with the help of thinking. When I assert that the world is my representation, I have enunciated the result of an act of thinking, and if my thinking is not applicable to the world, then this result is false. Between a percept and every kind of assertion about it there intervenes thinking.

[ 10 ] The reason why, in our consideration of things, we generally overlook thinking, has already been given above (p. 24). It lies in the fact that our attention is concentrated only on the object about which we think, but not at the same time on the thinking itself. The naive consciousness, therefore, treats thinking as something which has nothing to do with things, but stands altogether aloof from them and contemplates them. The picture which the thinker constructs concerning the phenomena of the world is regarded, not as part of the things, but as existing only in men's heads. The world is complete in itself even without this picture. It is all ready-made and finished with all its substances and forces, and of this ready-made world man makes himself a picture. Whoever thinks thus need only be asked one question. What right have you to declare the world to be complete without thinking? Does not the world produce thinking in the heads of men with the same necessity as it produces the blossom on a plant? Plant a seed in the earth. It puts forth roots and stem, it unfolds into leaves and blossoms. Set the plant before yourselves. It connects itself, in your soul, with a definite concept. Why should this concept belong any less to the whole plant than leaf and blossom? You say the leaves and blossoms exist quite apart from a perceiving subject, but the concept appears only when a human being confronts the plant. Quite so. But leaves and blossoms also appear on the plant only if there is soil in which the seed can be planted, and light and air in which the leaves and blossoms can unfold. Just so the concept of a plant arises when a thinking consciousness approaches the plant.

[ 11 ] It is quite arbitrary to regard the sum of what we experience of a thing through bare perception as a totality, a whole, while that which reveals itself through thinking consideration is regarded as a mere accretion which has nothing to do with the thing itself. If I am given a rosebud to-day, the picture that offers itself to my perception is complete only for the moment. If I put the bud into water, I shall to-morrow get a very different picture of my object. If I watch the rosebud without interruption, I shall see to-day's state gradually change into to-morrow's through an infinite number of intermediate stages. The picture which presents itself to me at any one moment is only a chance segment out of an object which is in a continual process of becoming. If I do not put the bud into water, a whole series of states, the possibility of which lay in the bud, will not be evolved. Similarly I may be prevented to-morrow from observing the blossom further, and thus have an incomplete picture of it.

[ 12 ] It would be a quite unobjective opinion clinging to temporal features which declared of any haphazard appearance of a thing, this is the thing.

[ 13 ] It is no more legitimate to regard the sum of perceptual characteristics as the thing. It might be quite possible for a spirit to receive the concept at the same time as, and together with, the percept. To such a spirit it would never occur that the concept did not belong to the thing. It would have to ascribe to the concept an existence indivisibly bound up with the thing.

[ 14 ] Let me make myself clearer by another example. If I throw a stone horizontally through the air, I perceive it in different places one after the other. I connect these places so as to form a line. Mathematics teaches me to know various kinds of lines, one of which is the parabola. I know the parabola to be a line which is produced by a point moving according to certain well-defined law. If I analyse the conditions under which the stone thrown by me moves, I find the path traversed is identical with the line I know as a parabola. That the stone moves just in a parabola is a result of the given conditions and follows necessarily from them. The form of the parabola belongs to the whole phenomenon as much as any other feature of it. The spirit described above who has no need of the detour of thinking, would find itself presented, not only with a sequence of visual percepts at different points, but, as part and parcel of these phenomena, also with the parabolic form of the path which we add to the phenomenon only by thinking.

[ 15 ] It is not due to the objects that they appear to us at first without their corresponding concepts, but to our mental organization. Our whole being functions in such a way that from every real thing the relevant elements come to us from two sources, viz., from perception and from thinking.

[ 16 ] The nature of things has nothing to do with the way I am organized for apprehending them. The breach between perception and thinking exists only from the moment that I as spectator confront the things. Which elements do, and which do not, belong to the object, cannot depend at all on the manner in which I obtain my knowledge of these elements.

[ 17 ] Man is a limited being. First of all, he is a being among other beings. His existence belongs to space and time. Hence but a limited portion of the total universe can ever be given to him. This limited portion, however, is linked up with other parts on every side both in time and in space. If our existence were so linked with things that every world occurrence were also an occurrence in us, there would not be the distinction between us and things. Neither would there be any individual objects for us. All occurrences would then pass continuously one into the other. The cosmos would be a unity and a whole complete in itself. The stream of events would nowhere be interrupted. But owing to our limitations there appears as a single thing what, in truth, is not a single thing. Nowhere, e.g., is the particular quality “red” to be found by itself in isolation. It is surrounded on all sides by other qualities to which it belongs, and without which it could not subsist. For us, however, it is necessary to isolate certain sections of the world and to consider them by themselves. Our eye can seize only single colours one after another out of a manifold colour-whole, our understanding only single concepts out of a connected conceptual system. This separating off is a subjective act, which is due to the fact that we are not identical with the world-process, but are a single being among other beings.

[ 18 ] It is of the greatest importance for us to determine the relation of the beings which we, ourselves, are to the other beings. The determining of this relation must be distinguished from merely becoming conscious of ourselves. For this self-awareness we depend on perception just as we do for our awareness of any other thing. The perception of myself reveals to me a number of qualities which I combine into my personality as a whole, just as I combine the qualities, yellow, metallic, hard, etc., in the unity “gold.” The perception of self does not take me beyond the sphere of what belongs to me. Hence it must be distinguished from the determination of myself by thinking. Just as I link up, by thinking, any single percept of the external world into the whole world system, so I fit by thinking what I perceive in myself into the world-process. My self-perception restricts me within definite limits, but my thinking has nothing to do with these limits. In this sense I am a two-sided being. I am enclosed within the sphere which I perceive as that of my personality, but I am also the bearer of an activity, which, from a higher sphere, determines my finite existence. Our thinking is not individual like our sensing and feeling; it is universal. It receives an individual stamp in each separate human being only because it comes to be related to his individual feelings and sensations. By means of these particular colourings of the universal thinking, individual men are distinguished from one another. There is only one single concept of “triangle.” It is quite immaterial for the content of this concept whether it is grasped in A's consciousness or in B's. It will, however, be grasped by each of the two in his own individual way.

[ 19 ] This thought conflicts with a common prejudice which is very hard to overcome. The victims of this prejudice are unable to see that the concept of a triangle which my head grasps is the same as the concept which my neighbour's head grasps. The naive man believes himself to be the creator of his concepts. Hence he believes that each person has his private concepts. It is a fundamental demand of philosophic thinking to overcome this prejudice. The one uniform concept of “triangle” does not split up into a multiplicity because it is thought by many persons. For the thinking of the many is itself a unity.

[ 20 ] In thinking we have the element which welds each man's special individuality into one whole with the cosmos. In so far as we sense and feel (and also perceive), we are single beings; in so far as we think, we are the All-One Being which pervades everything. This is the deeper meaning of our two-sided nature: We see a simply absolute force revealing itself in us, which is universal. But we learn to know it, not as it issues from the centre of the world, but rather at a point of the periphery. Were the former the case, we should know, as soon as ever we became conscious, the solution of the whole world problem. But since we stand at a point on the periphery, and find that our own being is confined within definite limits, we must explore the region which lies beyond our own being with the help of thinking, which projects into us out of the general world-existence.

[ 21 ] The fact that thinking, in us, reaches out beyond our separate existence and relates itself to the general world-existence, gives rise to the desire for knowledge in us. Beings without thinking do not experience this desire. When they are faced with other things no questions arise for them. These other things remain external to such beings. But in thinking beings the concept rises up when they confront the external thing. It is that part of the thing which we receive not from without, but from within. To produce the agreement, the union of the two elements, the inner and the outer, that is the task of knowledge.

[ 22 ] The percept, thus, is not something finished and self-contained, but one side only of the total reality. The other side is the concept. The act of cognition is the synthesis of percept and concept. Only the percept and concept together constitute the whole thing.

[ 23 ] The preceding elucidation shows clearly that it is nonsensical to seek for any other common element in the separate beings of the world than the ideal content which thinking supplies. All efforts to look for another unity in the world than this internally coherent ideal content, which we gain by a thinking investigation of our percepts, are bound to fail. Neither a humanly personal God, nor force, nor matter, nor the blind will (Schopenhauer), can be accepted by us as the universal unity in the world. These principles all belong only to a limited sphere of our observation. Humanly limited personality we perceive only in ourselves; force and matter in external things. The will, again, can be regarded only as the expression of the activity of our finite personality. Schopenhauer wants to avoid making “abstract” thinking the bearer of unity in the world, and seeks instead something which presents itself to him immediately as real. This philosopher holds that we can never approach the world so long as we regard it as an “external” world. “In fact, the meaning for which we seek of that world which is present to us only as our ‘representation,’ [See footnote on page 55.] or the transition from the world as mere representation of the knowing subject to whatever it may be besides this, would never be found if the investigator himself were nothing more than the pure knowing subject (a winged cherub without a body). But he himself is rooted in that world: he finds himself in it as an individual, that is to say, his knowledge, which is the necessary supporter of the whole world as representation, is yet always given through the medium of a body, whose affections are, as we have shown, the starting-point for the understanding in the perception of that world. This body is, for the pure knowing subject, a representation like every other representation, an object among objects. Its movements and actions are so far known to him in precisely the same way as the changes of all other perceived objects, and would be just as strange and incomprehensible to him if their meaning were not explained for him in an entirely different way ... The body is given in two entirely different ways to the subject of knowledge, who becomes an individual only through his identity with it. It is given as a representation in intelligent perception, as an object among objects and subject to the laws of objects. And it is also given in quite a different way as that which is immediately known to everyone, and is signified by the word ‘will.’ Every true act of his will is also at once and without exception a movement of his body. He cannot will the act without perceiving at the same time that it appears as a movement of the body. The act of will and the movement of the body are not two different things objectively known, which the bond of causality unites; they do not stand in the relation of cause and effect; they are one and the same, but they are given in two entirely different ways—immediately, and again in perception for the understanding.” (The World as Will and Idea, Book 2, par. 18.) Schopenhauer considers himself entitled by these arguments to find in the human body the “objectivity” of the will. He believes that in the activities of the body he feels immediately a reality—the thing-in-itself in the concrete. Against these arguments we must urge that the activities of our body come to our consciousness only through self-perception, and that, as such, they are in no way superior to other percepts. If we want to cognize their real nature, we can do so only by a thinking investigation, i.e., by fitting them into the ideal system of our concepts and Ideas.

[ 24 ] Rooted most deeply in the naive consciousness is the opinion that thinking is abstract and empty of any concrete content. At best, we are told, it supplies but an “ideal” counterpart of the unity of the world, but never that unity itself. Whoever so judges has never made clear to himself what a percept apart from concepts really is. Let us see what this world of bare percepts is. A mere juxtaposition in space, a mere succession in time, an aggregate of disconnected particulars—that is how it appears. None of the things which come and go on the stage of perception has any perceptible connection with any other. The world is a multiplicity of objects of equal value. None plays any greater part in the nexus of the world than any other. In order to make obvious that this or that fact has a greater importance than another we must go to thinking. Without thinking fulfilling its function, the rudimentary organ of an animal which has no significance in its life appears equal in value to the most important limb. The particular facts reveal their meaning, in themselves and for other parts of the world, only when thinking spins its threads from Being to Being. This activity of thinking is one full of content. For it is only through a perfectly definite concrete content that I can know why the snail belongs to a lower type of organization than the lion. The mere appearance, the percept, gives me no content which could inform me as to the degree of perfection of the organization.

[ 25 ] Thinking contributes this content to the percept from the world of concepts and Ideas. In contrast with the content of perception which is given to us from without, the content of thinking appears inwardly. The form in which the latter first appears in consciousness we will call “intuition.” Intuition is for the content of thinking what observation is for the percept. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge. An observed object of the world remains unintelligible to us, until we have the corresponding intuition which adds that part of the reality which is lacking in the percept. To anyone who is incapable of finding the intuitions corresponding to the things, the full reality remains inaccessible. Just as the colour-blind person sees only differences of brightness without any colour qualities, so a person who lacks intuition observes only disconnected fragments of percepts.

[ 26 ] To explain a thing, to make it intelligible, means nothing else than to place it in the context from which it has been torn by the peculiar character of our organization described above. A thing cut off from the world-whole does not exist. Hence all isolation of objects has only subjective validity for our organization. For us the universe disrupts itself into above and below, before and after, cause and effect, object and representation, matter and force, object and subject, etc. What appears in observation, as separate parts, becomes combined, bit by bit, through the coherent, unified world of our intuitions. By thinking we fuse again into one whole all that we have separated through perception.

[ 27 ] The enigmatic character of an object consists in its separateness. But this separation is our own making and can be remedied again within the world of concepts.

[ 28 ] Except through thinking and perception nothing is given to us directly. The question now arises as to the significance of percepts within our line of thought. We have learnt that the proof which Critical Idealism offers for the subjective nature of percepts collapses. But the exhibition of the falsity of the proof is not, by itself, sufficient to show that the doctrine itself is an error. Critical Idealism does not base its proof on the absolute nature of thinking, but relies on the argument that Naive Realism, when followed to its logical conclusion, contradicts itself. How does the matter appear when we have recognized the absoluteness of thinking?

[ 29 ] Let us assume that a certain percept, e.g., red, appears in consciousness. To continued observation, the percept shows itself to be connected with other percepts, e.g., a certain figure, temperature, and touch-qualities. This combination I call an object in the world of sense. I can now ask myself: Over and above the percepts just mentioned, what else is there in the section of space in which they appear? I shall then find mechanical, chemical, and other processes in that section of space. I next go farther and study the processes which take place in the transition between the object and my sense-organs. I can find movements in an elastic medium, which have not the least in common with the percepts from which I started. I get the same result if I trace farther the transition between sense-organs and brain. In each of these inquiries I gather new percepts, but the connecting medium which binds all these spatially and temporally separated percepts into one whole, is thinking. The air vibrations which carry sound are given to me as percepts just like the sound itself. Thinking alone links all these percepts one to the other and exhibits them in their reciprocal relations. We have no right to say that over and above our immediate percepts there is anything except the ideal nexus of percepts (which thinking has to reveal). The relation of perceptual objects to the perceiving subject, which relation transcends the mere perceptible, is, therefore, purely ideal, i.e., capable of being expressed only through concepts. Only if it were possible to perceive how the object of perception affects the perceiving subject, or, alternatively, only if we could watch the building up of the perceptual complex through the subject, could we speak as modern Physiology, and the Critical Idealism which is based on it, speak. Their view confuses an ideal relation (that of the object to the subject) with a process of which we could speak only if it were possible to perceive it. The proposition, “No colour without a colour-sensing eye,” cannot be taken to mean that the eye produces the colour, but only that an ideal relation, recognizable by thinking, subsists between the percept “colour” and the percept “eye.” Empirical science will have to ascertain how the properties of the eye and those of the colours are related to one another: by means of what structures the organ of sight mediates the perception of colours, etc. I can trace how one percept succeeds another and how one is related to others in space, and I can formulate these relations in conceptual terms, but I can never perceive how a percept originates out of the non-perceptible. All attempts to seek any relations between percepts other than thought relations must of necessity fail.

[ 30 ] What then is a percept? This question, asked in this general way, is absurd. A percept emerges always as a perfectly determinate, concrete content. This content is immediately given and is completely contained in the given. The only question one can ask concerning the given content is, what it is apart from perception, that is, what it is for thinking. The question concerning the “what” of a percept can, therefore, only refer to the conceptual intuition which corresponds to this percept. From this point of view, the question of the subjectivity of percepts, in the sense in which the Critical Idealists debate it, cannot be raised at all. Only that which is perceived as belonging to the subject can be termed “subjective.” To form a link between that which is subjective and that which is objective is impossible for any real process, in the naive sense of the word “real,” in which it means a process which can be perceived. That is possible only for thinking. For us, then, “objective” means that which, for perception, presents itself as external to the perceiving subject. As subject of perception I remain perceptible to myself after the table which now stands before me has disappeared from my field of observation. The observation of the table has produced a modification in me which likewise persists. I preserve the faculty to produce later on an image of the table. This faculty of producing a picture remains connected with me. Psychology terms this image a “memory-idea.” Now this is the only thing which has any right to be called the representation [See Translator's Preface, p. ix.] of the table. For it corresponds to the perceptible modification of my own state through the presence of the table in my visual field. Moreover, it does not mean a modification in some “Ego-in-itself” standing behind the perceiving subject, but the modification of the perceptible subject itself. The representation is, therefore, a subjective percept, in contrast with the objective percept which occurs when the object is present in the field of vision. The false identification of the subjective with this objective percept leads to the misunderstanding of Idealism: The world is my representation.

[ 31 ] Our next task must be to define the concept of “representation” more nearly. What we have said about it so far does not give us the concept, but only shows us where in the perceptual field representations are to be found. The exact concept of “representation” will also make it possible for us to obtain a satisfactory understanding of the relation of representation and object. This will then lead us over the border-line, where the relation of human subject to object in the world is brought down from the purely conceptual field of concepts into concrete individual life. Once we know how to think of the world, it will be an easy task to adapt ourselves to it. We can only be active with full energy when we know the object belonging to the world to which we are to devote our activity.

Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918

[ 32 ] The view which I have here outlined may be regarded as one to which man is impelled as though by a natural force, as soon as he begins to reflect about his relation to the world. He then finds himself caught in a system of thoughts which dissolves for him as fast as he frames it. The thought formation is such that the purely theoretical refutation of it does not exhaust our task. We have to live through it, in order to understand the aberration into which it leads us, and to find the way out. It must figure in any discussion of the relation of man to the world, not for the sake of refuting others whom one believes to be holding mistaken views about this relation, but because it is necessary to understand the confusion to which every first effort at reflection about such a relation is apt to lead. One needs to gain insight into how to refute oneself with respect to these first reflections. This is the point of view from which the arguments of the preceding chapter are considered.

[ 33 ] Whoever tries to work out for himself a view of the relation of man to the world, becomes aware of the fact that he creates this relation, at least in part, by forming representations about the things and events in the world. In consequence, his attention is deflected from what exists outside in the world and directed towards his inner world, the life of his representations. He begins to say to himself: It is impossible for me to stand in relation to any thing or event, unless a representation appears in me. From this fact, once noticed, it is but a step to the opinion: All that I experience is after all only my representation; of a world outside I know only in so far as it is a representation in me. With this opinion, man abandons the standpoint of naive reality which he occupies prior to all reflection about his relation to the world. So long as he stands there, he believes that he is dealing with real things, but reflection about himself drives him away from this position. Reflection prevents him from turning his gaze towards a real world such as naive consciousness claims to have before it. Reflection turns his gaze only towards his representations; they interpose themselves between his own nature and a supposedly real world, such as the naive point of view believes it should affirm. Man can no longer look through the intervening world of representations upon such a real world. He must suppose that he is blind to such a reality. Thus arises the thought of a “thing-in-itself” which is inaccessible to knowledge.

So long as we consider only the relationship to the world into which man appears to enter through the life of his representations, we can hardly escape from this kind of thought. Yet one cannot remain at the point of view of Naive Realism except at the price of closing one's mind artificially to the desire for knowledge. The existence of this desire for knowledge about the relation of man to the world proves that the naive point of view must be abandoned. If the naive point of view yielded anything which we could acknowledge as truth, we could not experience this desire.

But mere abandonment of the naive point of view does not lead to any other view which we could regard as true, so long as we retain, without noticing it, the kind of thought which the naive point of view imposes on us. This is the mistake made by the man who says: I experience only my representations, and though I believe that I am dealing with real things, I am actually conscious of nothing but my representations of real things; I must, therefore, suppose that genuine realities, “things-in-themselves,” exist only outside the boundary of my consciousness; that they are inaccessible to my immediate knowledge; but that they somehow approach me and influence me so as to make a world of representations arise in me. Whoever thinks thus, duplicates in thought the world before him by adding another. But, strictly he ought to begin his whole thinking activity over again with regard to this second world. For the unknown “thing-in-itself,” in its relation to man's own nature, is conceived in exactly the same way as is the known thing of the naively realistic point of view.—There is only one way of escaping from the confusion into which one falls by critical reflection on this naive point of view. This is to observe that, inside everything we can experience through perception, be it within ourselves or outside in the world, there is something which does not share the fate of a representation interposing itself between the real event and the contemplating human being. This something is thinking. With regard to thinking we can maintain the point of view of Naive Realism. If we fail to do so, it is only because we have learnt that we must abandon it for other things, but overlook that, what we have found to be true for other activities, does not apply to thinking. When we realize this, we gain access to the further insight that, in thinking and through thinking, man necessarily comes to cognize the very thing to which he appears to blind himself by interposing between the world and himself the realm of his representations.—A critic highly esteemed by the author of this book has objected that this discussion of thinking stops at a naively realistic theory of thinking, as shown by the fact that the real world and the world of representations are held to be identical. However, the author believes himself to have shown in this very discussion that the validity of “Naive Realism,” as applied to thinking, results inevitably from an unprejudiced study of thinking; and that Naive Realism, in so far as it is invalid for other things, is overcome through the recognition of the true nature of thinking.

• 1. Cognition is transcendental in the sense of this world conception when it believes itself to be conscious that nothing can be asserted directly about the thing-in-itself, but makes (indirect inferences from the subjective which is known to the unknown which lies beyond the subjective (Transcendental). The thing-in-itself is, according to this view, beyond the sphere of the immediately cognizable world; in other words, it is transcendent. Our world can, however, be transcendentally related to the transcendent. Hartmann's theory is called Realism because it proceeds from the subjective, the ideal, to the transcendent, the real.

Nowadays, anyone who lectures on the Christ runs into quite a variety of viewpoints. These fall roughly into two main groups, and a speaker must take them into account, especially if he plans to talk on the subject in the sense intended for this evening's lecture. That is, in the same sense in which other questions and other problems have been dealt with here before. I am referring, of course, to the spiritual scientific or anthroposophical viewpoint.

The first group of views is one that bases itself firmly on the premise that Christ is a real force in life. This might be called the religious viewpoint, which all the Christian confessions share in common. We will find on closer study however that no matter how liberal and tolerant it may seem in some respects, it has little use for any but its own view of the Christ. The various proponents of the religious standpoint are simply unwilling to grant that any progress in thinking about Christ is possible.

The other viewpoint is also one held by thoroughly dedicated modern searchers after truth. In accordance with a certain scientific trend, it maintains that a study of the Christ event, of what is reported to have taken place in Palestine at the beginning of the Christian era, if pursued with the same reliable historical methods that are applied to the study of other events, does not bear out the assumptions made about the Christ.

We realize that this way of looking at things has long been gaining favor. We also know that in the course of recent centuries increasing emphasis has been laid on comparing the Gospels, and that the discrepancies people have discovered in them have forced them to conclude that the Gospels could not be taken as historical documents. After a long period of trying to distill a somewhat reliable picture of Christ Jesus from the Gospel accounts, there have come to be many people today, both in Germany and elsewhere, who cannot reconcile speaking of a historical Jesus or of a historical Christ Event with their scientific consciences.

So we find present day positions ranging all the way from a separating out of those facts in the Gospels that can be historically proven, to out-and-out rejection of the historical Christ Jesus. This has given rise to the opinion that, though Christ may still live today for religious-minded people who feel that their faith lifts them to Him, for an ever more rigorously developing science the Christ idea, the concept of Christ, must vanish entirely. Many people are presently convinced that the Christ force will not continue to play any role at all in future, though these same people do not by any means believe that the day will ever come when religion will be lost to humanity.

Certain facts of the time, however, make it seem unlikely that the belief I have referred to will be proven true, for we can note a strange phenomenon. In our day, it is by no means only the religious-minded and people of feeling, for whom the Gospels have shown themselves a source of uplift and of schooling, who speak of something in the nature of a Christ idea. Earnest, educated, truth-loving men are putting their whole souls into pointing to something that can only be identified as Christ. It is characteristic that the modern American freethinker, Ferguson, voicing what many of his contemporaries feel, can say that Christ is again “the pioneer of a new age” who will unite Europe and America and look with profoundest understanding into the soul of every human being—that He is the one and only right man for the present. Ferguson, a person otherwise famed for his free-thinking views, speaks of Christ exactly as though He went about from one man to the next wielding direct influence upon us. Freethinking spirits are thus beginning to feel the Christ Being directly related to modern humanity. Even though little attention is paid to it as yet, we will find that this tendency, this searching for a force that can only be called the Christ, will make sure headway. John Fiske, a man who did his utmost to further Darwinism in America, stated that all religions assert two basic truths. The first is that all things are related. This is a truth proclaimed by every religion, one that no thoughtful person can deny. The second truth is that what we call good and evil derives from forces external to the human spirit.

I quote these men expressly because they are both personalities whose whole thinking and feeling are firmly rooted in the present, but they do not rest satisfied with an external view of things. Instead, they have worked their way through to deeper forces of existence. The forces at work in the world are not just physical and chemical: they are also spiritual in nature.

For one who takes his stand on a spiritual-scientific view of the world, the concept of Christ just characterized appears to be merely a first dawn glimmering, a preparation for something quite different still to come. I hope I will not be misunderstood in speaking as I have of this preparatory, Twentieth Century form of the Christ concept. Spiritual science has to steer clear of any taint of sectarianism and other such attitudes because they simply do not belong to this age. The spiritual scientist takes the same attitude in speaking of what is to come in human evolution as does the natural scientist who predicts an eclipse of the moon or a transit of Venus: he is not assuming a prophetic role. There are forces in life that can be spiritually investigated in exactly the same sense that natural forces operative in the physical world can be investigated.

It will be helpful to gain a perspective on the past history of the Christ idea, which has indeed undergone tremendous changes through the centuries. If we follow it back to its origin, we come upon a strange fact of the early days. We find popular Christianity spreading through the regions ruled by Rome in a way that enables us to say that, while the old Roman culture developed among the upper levels of the population and then grew decadent, we see those on whom life left its mark, those whose lot it was to suffer, slowly and gradually finding their way into popular Christianity. Jesus of Nazareth is increasingly idealized, to the point that he is looked on as divine. The various confessions that made up this popular Christianity tended more to feeling than to thoughts and concepts. But alongside this popular form we find those most enlightened spirits of the time who concerned themselves with Christianity devoting their loftiest ideas, their most significant concepts, to answering the question, “Who, actually, is this Christ?”

Let us single out, from the abundance of answers given by these illumined spirits, one or two for consideration here.

In Gnosticism, a form of thought to which anthroposophy by no means advises returning but simply studies as a phenomenon of past history, we find many different shadings of certain lofty concepts, all centering in an attempt to grasp the Christ idea. In the main, it can be characterized by saying that this Gnosticism, this longing to grasp the Christ idea with the help of the Ioftiest concepts, is a most marvelous form of spiritual development. Of course, those who adopt the modern view that every last facet of humanness gradually evolved from nature's lower orders, from animals, and rose by stages from the most primitive to ever higher animal forms, are bound to consider the Gnostic doctrine a fantastic dream. But Gnostics, too, traced evolution back even further than does the modern natural scientist. They said that we find a period in ancient times in which all animals, even the highest, were present on the earth, and man could have seen them if he too had been there at that time. The Gnostics, however, had in mind a period of evolution in which the human kingdom had not yet appeared, but they did not conclude from this that men developed out of animals, but rather that they descended later from the spiritual world. They maintained that animals. plants and minerals had also descended from the spirit. had materialized out of spiritual realms, so that we have to ascribe a spiritual origin to animals, plants and minerals as well. But there was a period when man had not yet taken on physical form, a time when he was still waiting in the spiritual world for the moment when the earth provided certain other conditions such as would make human life possible here.

This does not mean that man was not in existence at that time. Man did exist: not, however, as a visible entity, but as a spiritual one. He lived in the spiritual environment of the earth, but had not yet descended onto it, for the conditions of that ancient time were not such as would have made human development possible. Thus, the Gnostics assumed that there was a most important moment, later than that of the descent of the other kingdoms when titan descended to the earth. It was the Gnostic conviction that if man had incarnated with the other lesser kingdoms, one all-important facet of his being, that is the capacity we know as free, independent human thinking would not have developed. In short, man would lack his true human ego that works front a central focus outward into the world and develops between birth and death. The animal's development is kept within certain limits, but man is capable of progressing in an entirely different way as a result of education and experience. In order to achieve this, said the Gnostic, man entered into a more intimate connection with the element of matter than he would have done if he had remained an unfree being, dependent, as the other creatures around him were on his endowment at birth. Man plunged more deeply into matter in order to become less dependent on what he brought into existence with him. Gnosticism held that this deeper involvement in matter took place at a certain moment in very early times, that is, the moment the Bible pictures as the Fall, meaning thereby the fall into matter just described. But by no means every impulse inherent in human nature was believed to have joined in that descent; instead, something of a superhuman element remained in the spiritual world. While mankind was experiencing all this, something that was part of man but did not accompany him in his descent because he plunged so deeply into physical embodiment stayed on in spiritual worlds. Thus, there was still present in the world above a part of man that had dwelt there when all humanity still lived as one in realms of spirit.

On the basis of these assumptions the Gnostics then proceeded to study the Christ Event. A certain moment, described in the Bible as the baptism by John, was of special interest to them. They felt that the human being whose development brought him to that baptism was indeed a most extraordinary man, but nevertheless just a human being. After he had been baptized, something occurred that is hard for modern minds to grasp. Perhaps we can think of it in the sense that many a person has had something happen to him at a certain moment about which he could only say that his whole life was changed in consequence. Many people date their lives from such a moment, feeling it to have been one in which they were spiritually reborn. This is something that can happen to any and every human being. If one pictures this experience raised to a unique and ultimate peak, one understands how the Gnostics felt about the baptism by John in the River Jordan. That element of humanness that had been part of man front the earliest beginnings of his race but which had been waiting in the spiritual world, now left that realm and made its way down to earth, to take up its abode in the unique human being, Jesus of Nazareth. For the next three years Jesus of Nazareth was not just a changed human being. He was one in whom that reserved element of humanness, held over from the very beginning of man's earth life, had come to dwell for the eventual fructification of humanity. In other words, Jesus of Nazareth became the bearer of the superhuman being, Christ for the three years of His earthly life. So the Gnostics held that what had hitherto dwelt in the spiritual world had come into a human body, like a seed planted in the earth. Like a planted seed, which must decompose in order to germinate, this spiritual impulse entering the earth had to pass away in order to spring, seed-like, into hundred-arid thousand-fold fruitfulness. This spiritual element had to pass through death exactly as a seed dies. Far from failing to bear, it poured itself into earth's spiritual-evolutionary stream, where it will be found living on in many kinds of fruiting.

So we find in the Gnostic doctrine a pre-history of mankind leading up to the moment of Christ's coming and a post-history following upon the Event of Golgotha. It is history centered in the living action of the Christ impulse as Christ enters into human souls. To the Gnostic, the Christ impulse was history indeed history's whole content and the source of its ongoingness. If this view sounds alien to the contemporary mind, it must be stated that precisely modern natural science, whose ideas are colored by materialism only now at the outset, will press forward ever more vigorously to an understanding and eventual grasping of the reality that underlay the Gnostic concept.

In order to show how close the present is to taking up again what Gnosticism offered, let me just point out the following—something that is of course only an elementary first step. Science has thought for a long time that it stands on a solid footing. Basing itself on a truly impressive Darwinism, it felt impelled to assert that everything human developed out of animal origins, and that the driving force behind that development was the “struggle for survival.” It said that all the various creatures were launched into life together, but fell to fighting, with the not too surprising result that, as time went on, the more perfect species got the better of the less perfect. Man was the final product of this perfecting process. “The survival of the fittest” became the slogan of the Darwinists. Now, however, researchers are finding themselves forced to adopt quite a different concept in their honest searching of facts. They are now saying that as we study man afresh and compare him with the most developed animals, we can by no means assume that he evolved in straight-line descent from these species. Instead, we have to trace him back to a primeval form no longer to be found upon the earth. These researchers now believe that such a primeval form once existed and that while man and animal both evolved front it, they did so in two different directions. Outstanding investigators have brought forth a further fact. They put the question: How could man develop as differently as he has when all the while animals, too, were evolving? Strange to say, they have not hit upon a “fight for survival.” They assume that man and his form were in a specially protected place where he could continue under the same conditions which originally brought forth that form, whereas all other creatures were caught up in a downward trend. Thus, man today is being traced back to an invisible primeval form that developed as it did because it was protected in a realm where man did not have to take part in a struggle to survive. These researchers subscribe to only one remaining fiction. They believe the protecting realm to have been a physically perceptible locality.

Gnosticism, too. assumes just such a primeval form. But instead of picturing it as having existed on the physical plane, it assigns it to the spiritual world, which was, in fact, able to afford it protection.

If one can conceive the idea that man was a late-corner to the earth, one can also conceive the following thought. Tracing the course of history, we find that a hitherto undivided human race split up into various nations and races and that many different confessions came into being, each shaped in accordance with the feeling of a particular group. In earlier times humanity was so constituted that a person could develop only what was implanted in him by virtue of belonging to a certain tribe. The spiritual force, however, the spiritual being that made man human in the first place, enables him to find the human being in his fellow man instead of what heredity has made of him. Man had to have this capacity restored to him. It was an impulse that could be taken up again only when humanity grew ripe for it.

So we encounter lofty and remarkable concepts of evolution in the first Christian centuries. It must be said that what we are witnessing in present-day natural science as the beginning of something that must eventually outgrow the Chrysalis stage, was already anticipated by the Gnostics in the grandiose conceptions reached by them as they thought about these matters. This could happen only because there is such a thing as evolution in man's history.

If we look back to a period that lies still closer to the time of man's descent to earth, we come upon a wholly different kind of soul life. Comparing it with the soul life of the present we must say that the latter is oriented toward a sense-based and brain-conditioned way of experiencing, whereas earlier times brought us a marvelous heritage of knowledge in the form of pictures. The fact that this heritage exists proves what spiritual scientific research also discovers to be true that human souls did not always perceive their surroundings as they do today, but were once clairvoyant. At that time man did not feel himself so involved with his own ego. Instead, he felt that he was part and parcel of everything around him. A dreamlike state of consciousness brought him into profound contact with the world about. Primeval man's way of knowing things was through a dreamlike clairvoyance that revealed their mysteries to him. His was an experience akin to dreaming as we know it today. Thus, it was possible for a humanity recently descended from spiritual heights to experience the secrets of the spiritual world in what may be called a clairvoyant dream-state.

Evolutionary progress meant, however, an ever-deepening descent of man into physical existence, accompanied by an ever further loss of that ancient clairvoyant capacity, though this need not be thought of as a tragedy. For if man had not lost his old clairvoyance he could never have advanced to the stage of free self-awareness that alone provided the basis for conscious personal experience.

The loss of the old clairvoyant insight that once gave access to secrets of the spiritual world came about gradually. Even when mankind had become thoroughly at home in the physical world, clairvoyant knowledge was still kept alive in sanctuaries that preserved the heritage of the ancient Mysteries, the treasure of wisdom that had come down to them through the ages. After the Christ Event had taken place and entered the stream of earth-evolution, the Gnostics still hoarded that age-old treasure of wisdom won by humanity's clairvoyant insight, and they formed their idea of Christ in accordance with it. Their concept may, therefore, be described as a reminiscence of knowledge gleaned in olden times, not as the product of free, conscious selfhood. They simply applied what men of ancient days had known to explain the Christ phenomenon. The period during which Gnosticism flourished coincided with the dimming of clairvoyant insight. This made it impossible for those who followed after. in the Middle Ages, to go on working with the heritage of Gnostic wisdom as a means of understanding Christ.

Instead, something else took the place of Gnosticism. We find people who lived in the centuries after its demise just as eager to grasp the Christ phenomenon, but wanting henceforth to rely on their own human powers of understanding, on a scientific approach. And we see the most enlightened spirits of the Middle Ages turning from Gnosticism to the teachings of Aristotle for the basis of their understanding of the Christ.

They found themselves forced to say that Aristotle's world conception brought them to a standstill at a certain point, that true spiritual understanding of the Christ was out of reach of human knowledge.

In one respect, however, the view of the world held in the Middle Ages rests on one of Aristotle's main ideas. Aristotle would never have thought of going as far as modern materialism has gone. When we look into his idea of the way soul and body work together, we do not find him subscribing to any such belief as that a man's inner life is conditioned by the heredity that comes to him from parents, grandparents, etc. His view was rather that every person born into the world is given a drop out of the ocean of divinity to unite with his body, that a soul-spiritual core always detaches itself front the universal spirit and enters human beings at their birth. But Aristotle, who was distinguished by a quality seldom met with in our day, that is, the habit of drawing the real consequences of his musing and investigating, does not stop at this point. He goes on thinking, and comes to believe that when a soul passes through the gates of death it does so as a now well- established entity, and as such ascends into the spiritual world. Though prior to birth it did not exist as a separate being, after death it lives on in the world of the spirit as an individual.

What kind of after-death experience does this soul now undergo, as Aristotle sees it? None whatever, since it lacks a body to make that possible. Now its sole content is the memory of its life on earth. It lives on in eternity looking back on its earth-life with the good and evil it has done, wholly given up to memory pictures.

Here, in Aristotle, may be found the origin of the doctrine of eternal punishment in hell. lt began in his concept and made its way into Catholic dogma during the Middle Ages. But let me say at once that it was not possible for Aristotle as a man of his time to do other than picture the soul as an unchanging entity doomed to gaze forever at its earthly deeds.

Modern spiritual science, anthroposophy, recognizes, of course, that the soul can do more after death than just look back as though in memory-pictures on its previous earth-life. It knows that the soul does not have to stay forever in that state. Instead, it sees man taking with him into the spiritual world as the finest fruit of his earth experience the possibility of transforming or building further on the good and bad deeds he committed here: nor does he stay forever in the spiritual world. Rather is he born again into a new incarnation and has opportunities to work out some karmic compensation for what he did or failed to do in previous lives. The soul passes through the gates of death taking with it the impulse to seek further incarnations for the sake of working out a balance. Aristotle could not accept such an idea because he had always thought that every birth meant a detaching of spiritual substance to form the soul. But spiritual science bears witness to the fact that our present lives derive from past incarnations.

So Aristotle may be said to have stood in the way of his own insight. He whom wise men of the Middle Ages called “the precursor of Christ in understanding nature,” did not get as far as the reincarnation concept. We see how he stopped short of the mark in regard to the question of immortality and how for him life's fruit was just eternal contemplation. The inevitable outcome of this was that people could not see into the spiritual world or gain any understanding of the nature of the Christ. For the thinking of the Middle Ages, Christ disappeared into the realm of belief which is closed to knowledge. The age-old tradition of Gnosticism was finally lost. Aristotle could not serve spiritual understanding of the Christ. Thus, a line came to be drawn between what can be known and what must remain a matter of belief. One consequence of Aristotelian thought that lived on was the idea of eternal suffering in hell.

It remained for people of more recent times to take the third step in a gradual weakening of faith. They have come to rely more and more on what can be grasped with the physical senses. The effect of this on the Christ concept has been to make Christ an ever less important figure and to render the prevailing idea of Christ more and more materialistic. Where Gnostics once assumed a spiritual principle, and where the Middle Ages in their turn experienced Christ in a mood of purest faith and devotion, the present sees at the beginning of the Christian era not a human being ensouled with a cosmic element but, increasingly, “the simple man of Nazareth,” a man more or less like any other human being. Nobody remembers anything of what the Gnostics had divined. People want to think of Christ in the same materialistic way they think about other historical events. The fact that they regard Him as a mere human being makes it necessary to apply the same methods to the study of His appearance that are generally applied in ordinary historical research.

It might have been recognized that the historical approach to the whole question is the easy way out because what could possibly be easier than to take the Gospels and show how they contradict each other! This reduces things to simplest terms. But then wouldn't the researchers have had to assume that their predecessors were the greatest dunces ever for having failed even to notice such obvious contradictions?

At any rate, the Gospels were certainly not taken as a schooling, a schooling that enables the soul to lift itself to spiritual perception of the Christ. So it is not surprising that history was pressed into service as a yardstick and that a movement has grown up, associated here in Germany with the theologian, Drews, that denies Christ completely. This happened at the very moment when spiritual science entered the contemporary scene.

Spiritual science bears witness to the fact just referred to, that human beings and what they carry within them are not products of a single life, but of many past lives. Man once lived wholly in the spiritual world. Then he left it to descend to earth, but he was to have more than one life in a physical body. When he had digested the fruits of an incarnation during an interval spent in the spiritual world, he descended again into physical embodiment. The law that pertains here has often been the object of our study. It teaches us how deeply involved man is in the whole ongoing process we call history. Life only begins to make real sense when we assume that we have all been living on the earth in order to take what was given us in the beginning, make it our own, and then go on developing with the march of the centuries toward ever greater perfection. A closer study of these matters brings something quite remarkable to light, to be described here as man's mission on the earth.

I must stress again today, as I have so often done before, that the consciousness that man has thus far developed has by no means reached its final form. Man can really take his development in hand: the right spiritual training can lift him to spiritual perception. That is quite within the realm of possibility if he schools his soul in meditation. Just as one can put oneself, by staring intently at a shining object, into a state where one is aware of nothing else (though this is not a recommended practice!), so do we achieve a single-minded, but in this case quite free condition, when we deliberately concentrate all our attention on some soul-spiritual content to the exclusion of all else. Then forces begin to ray out in our souls through which we attain what may be called a body-free condition. Such a person is then really able to say from experience, “I am no longer perceiving with my eyes or thinking with my brain. I am experiencing as a spiritual being, independent of a body, I perceive what lives and has its being in the spiritual world.”

This elevation to the level of spiritual perception can be achieved with proper schooling. The rigorous discipline that leads to it has been described in several of my books.

It is easier to enter the spiritual world if one has trained one's feeling life to avoid all sorts of over-excited and emotional states and reactions. A person who confronts the world with calmness and equanimity keeps unsquandered reserves of feeling alive within him. The spiritual light, which meditation kindles in us, radiates into such reserves. A person full of selfish demands will never make a disciplined spiritual investigator. But those who achieve real empathy with their fellow-men, who know what selfless love is, who are not absorbed exclusively in their own feelings, have a soul-surplus that can be charged with forces garnered from spiritual schooling. The light of clairvoyance is engendered in feeling that keeps itself free of egotism.

When a person has progressed to the point of being able to live in the spiritual world he can gradually learn to clothe his experiences in ordinary concepts. Handed on in that form, any healthy mentality can grasp them. It is no more necessary for everyone to be a spiritual investigator than for each of us individually to make laboratory tests to see whether what science says is true or not. Those charged with communicating the results of spiritual-scientific research do not shy away from commonsense thinkers. Really healthy minds readily see the truth of statements made by the spiritual investigator. The only people who dispute his findings are those who approach them filled with prejudice. This holds true in the case of spiritual science, which is the fruit of clairvoyant research. It enables human beings to gain access to a world of spiritual experience.

The insight that spiritual scientists can presently achieve by means of a heightened consciousness will—to some degree at least, and in certain fields f be attainable by all men in future. It will fall to the lot of Twentieth Century humanity to realize that the soul develops, that it passes through life after life in the course of earth's evolution, and in so doing absorbs from the various cultural epochs what each such epoch has to offer.

If one looks nowadays with a more than ordinarily perceptive eye at the human race all over the earth, one becomes aware that it possesses two human qualities that were simply not present in antiquity. This is a fact susceptible of proof. The two new qualities are commission and conscience, and they will go on developing more and more fully as man submits his soul-life to spiritual schooling. Compassion and conscience were new acquisitions at a certain point in evolution.

Much that is called compassion is not worthy of the term. True compassion is the capacity to forget oneself and enter another's being so completely that one feels his suffering as he feels it. One's own ego is quite forgotten in such fellow-feeling; one lives entirely in the other's experience. Suppose for a moment that nature were so to arrange matters that at the moment when a person freed himself from narrow self-concern he had the same experience morally that comes to him every day when he falls asleep. When he can no longer maintain control of his body and his brain ceases to serve his soul as its instrument and he goes to sleep, consciousness disappears. A person can, of course, also fall unconscious from compassion. But that would be egotistical in the extreme, for then he could not surrender himself wholly to another's feelings. In that sense, falling unconscious would amount to a moral failing, whereas compassion is one of the two means whereby a person breaks free of himself without losing consciousness. Conscience is the other. It speaks to our innermost being; the listener follows the bidding of a voice that penetrates to where his ego lives. He subjects the self to something larger than itself. Compassion and conscience are thus forces that man is presently engaged in developing. Consciousness will build further on the foundation of the forms that compassion and conscience have thus far taken, going on to develop the spiritual vision that was previously attainable only in abnormal states of consciousness. To say this is not to make a prophecy but to state a fact determined by strictly scientific means.

As he realizes what effect compassion and conscience have upon the human soul. Twentieth Century man will have a certain direct experience in a perfectly ordinary state of consciousness. He will understand something that might be put in the following way. We see that at birth man inherits something from his ancestors. Spiritual being though he is, he must incarnate physically in a given family and clothe himself in hereditary qualities. Long before we had such a thing as science, people were familiar with heredity, but they gave it an entirely different name. Their term for it was “original sin.” Anyone who understands what the Old Testament meant by original sin knows that the term conveyed a much fuller meaning than science has as yet ascribed to it because it applies to moral as well as physical qualities. Those in whom compassion and conscience have borne fruit will say, however, that although birth saddles us with predispositions that cannot be thrown off, we are also endowed with something that is not bound up with matter and that enables us to rise above ourselves and enter the spiritual world. There is one realm—the realm of one's own soul—where there will be direct spiritual vision. Human beings will affirm that although they are tied on the one hand to physical matter, on the other the soul harbors a radiant helper capable of lifting us beyond ourselves, it is a feeling that suggests the following comparison. Suppose there were someone who found it hard to believe that air everywhere surrounds us and fills every empty space. All he has to do to convince himself is to create a vacuum and observe how the air rushes into it. Just such an empty space is created in the soul by compassion and conscience, both of which detach us from our ego. Into that vacuum streams the spiritual entity whom we know as the Christ. This gives us personal experience of the fact that we can receive Christ into ourselves. Christ Who is present in the spiritual atmosphere just as air is present in the physical atmosphere and flows into every Space it finds empty.

On this high level, normal consciousness can indeed become spiritual vision, and no one who has this experience will consider it subjective. He will instead recognize that there must be such a possibility. He will realize that there was a time when it was still unknown and a moment when it became possible for the first time. He will be aware that what he is experiencing made its way down to earth from spiritual realms and united with it as the Christ impulse. This Christ impulse will inevitably come to be looked upon by Twentieth Century man as a force that entered earth evolution at a particular moment in time as a real historical event. That will usher in a period when it will no longer make sense to say that Christ is merely an idea. Instead, people will say that the Christ experience can be conceived as taking place only in this or that individual soul, just as philosophers maintain that there could be no such thing as color without eyes to perceive it. But colors do not owe their existence to perceiving eyes; the truth is rather that eyes are created by the light-world. The fact ought therefore to be stated thus: “No eyes without light.” It is equally true that without the historical Christ human beings could not experience Christ or the Christ-power within them. So they will know Christ to be a spiritual being and realize that this Being once actually lived on earth as a fact of history and sacrificed Himself to become one with the earth. They will be able to make their way into the spiritual world and discover Christ there.

Goethe often found just the right way of putting some fact or other, and perhaps we might borrow one of his sayings to express what we have been discussing here; it can serve us as a pointer. Goethe said that the eye was built by light to perceive the light: the eye was conjured forth by light from organs that were originally indeterminate. He goes on to make a further statement that calls attention to the impulse we harbor to discover God within us:

“Were not our eyes profoundly of the sun
How could they behold the light?
Were not our strength from God's own being won.
How could we feel so in Things divine delight.”

Just as the eye is conjured forth by light, so man's power to see God is conjured forth by God Himself as He lives and moves within and all about us. Those whose own Christ-likeness enables them to experience the Christ in beauty of feeling and insight will know that this is possible only because Christ once descended to earth and lived here, an historic figure. Just as the sun's light conjures forth eyes in human bodies so does the historic Christ conjure forth Christ-life in the souls of men.

“Unless the soul of man were Christ-like, how indeed could it experience the Christ? lf Christ had not lived as an historic figure how could man's soul ever come to know that most glorious feeling: feeling for the Christ?” Such will be the tenor of Twentieth Century comment. At the very moment when orthodox science reaches the point of denying Christ any historical reality, spiritual science will say without relying on documents that because man can experience Christ he knows that Christ did indeed live historically as a life-giving force, as the sun in that spiritual realm whence human evolution draws its nutriment.

As the fruit of yesterday's enquiries we learned that the Christ-Impulse, once it had worked through the person of Jesus of Nazareth, united with the evolution of the earth; and now its power within the earthly development of mankind is such that in our time it affects man in the same way as did formerly the procedure which is becoming ever more dangerous for human life—that of withdrawing the etheric from the physical body during the three and a half days of initiation. The Christ-Impulse actually affects human consciousness as powerfully as does an abnormal process of the above sort.

But you must realize that such a radical change needed time to take root in human evolution, that it could not appear from the start with such intensity; and it was therefore necessary to create a sort of transition in the resurrection of Lazarus. The deathlike state lasting three and a half days was still retained in the case of Lazarus, but you should clearly understand that this state differed from the one passed through by the old initiates. Lazarus' condition was not brought about artificially by the initiator, as was the case in former times, by withdrawing the etheric from the physical body through processes I am not at liberty to describe here. We may say that it came about in a more natural way. From the Gospel itself you can gather that Christ had associated with Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary before, for we read, “The Lord loved him”. This means that for a long time Christ Jesus had been exercizing a great and powerful influence on Lazarus, who had thereby been adequately prepared and developed. And the consequence was that in his case the initiation did not call for the artificial inducing of a three-anda-half-day trance, but that this came about of itself under the mighty impression of the Christ-Impulse. So for the outer world Lazarus was as though dead, so to speak, for three and a half days, even though during this time he experienced what was of the utmost importance; and thus only the last act, the resurrection, was undertaken by Christ.

And anyone who is familiar with what there occurred recognizes an echo of the old initiation process in the words employed by Christ Jesus: Lazarus, come forth.

The resurrected Lazarus, as we have seen, was John—or better, the writer of the John Gospel. It was he who could introduce the Gospel of the Christ Being into the world because he was, so to say, the first initiate in the Christian sense. For this reason we may safely assume that this Gospel of St. John, so badly abused by present-day research of a purely historical, critical, theological nature, and represented as a mere lyrical hymn, as a subjective expression of this author, will prove the means of insight into the profoundest mysteries of the Christ-Impulse.

Nowadays this Gospel of St. John constitutes a stumbling block for the materialists who carry on Bible research when they compare it with the other three, the so-called synoptic Gospels. The picture of Christ that arises before them out of the first three is so flattering to the learned gentlemen of our time! The pronouncement has gone forth, even from theological quarters, that what we are dealing with is the “simple man of Nazareth”. Again and again it is emphasized that one can gain a picture of Christ as perhaps one of the noblest of men who have walked the earth; but the picture remains merely that of a human being. There is even a tendency to simplify this picture as far as possible; and in this connection one hears it mentioned that after all, there have been other great ones as well, such as Plato and Socrates. The most that is admitted are differences in degree.

The picture of Christ yielded by the John Gospel is indeed a very different one. At the very beginning it is stated that what lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth for three years was the Logos, the primordial, eternal Word, for which we have also the term “eternal creative wisdom”. Our epoch cannot understand that in the thirtieth year of his life a man could be sufficiently developed to be able to sacrifice his own ego and receive into himself another being, a Being of wholly superhuman nature: the Christ, Whom Zarathustra addressed as Ahura Mazdao. That is why theological critics of this type imagine that the writer of the John Gospel had set out merely to describe his attitude to his Christ in a sort of lyrical hymn—nothing more. On the one hand, so they maintain, we have the John Gospel, and on the other, the other three; but by taking the average one can compound a picture of Christ as the “simple man”, while granting His historical eminence. Modern Bible critics resent the idea of a divine being dwelling in Jesus of Nazareth.

The akashic record discloses the fact that in His thirtieth year the personality we know as Jesus of Nazareth had, as a result of all He had experienced in former incarnations, achieved a degree of maturity that enabled Him to sacrifice His own ego; for that is what took place when, at the Baptism by John, this Jesus of Nazareth could make the resolution to withdraw—as an ego, the fourth principle of the human being—from His physical, etheric, and astral bodies. And what remained was a noble sheath, a lofty physical, etheric, and astral body which had been saturated with the purest, most highly developed ego. This was in the nature of a pure vessel which at the Baptism could receive the Christ, the primordial, eternal Logos, the “creative wisdom”. That is what the akashic record reveals to us; and we can recognize it, if we only will, in the narrative of the John Gospel.

But clearly it behooves us to consider what our materialistic age believes. Some of you may be surprised to hear me speak of theologians as materialistic thinkers, for after all, they are occupied with spiritual matters. But it is not a question of what a man believes or what he studies, but rather, of the method of his research, regardless of its content. Anyone who rejects our present subject or repudiates a spiritual world, who considers only what exists in the outer world in the way of documents and the like, is a materialist. The means of research is the important thing. But at the same time we must come to terms with the opinions of our age.

In reading the Gospels you will find certain contradictions. As to the essentials, to be sure—that is, as to what the akashic record discloses as essential—it can be said that the agreement among them is striking. They agree, first of all, in the matter of the Baptism itself; and it is made clear in all four Gospels that their authors saw in this Baptism the greatest imaginable import for Jesus of Nazareth. The four Gospels further agree on the fact of the crucifixion and the fact of the Resurrection. Now, these are precisely the facts that seem most miraculous to the materialistic thinker of today—and no contradiction exists here.

But in the other cases, how are we to come to terms with the seeming contradictions? Taking first the Evangelists Mark and John, we find their narratives commencing with the Baptism: they describe the last three years of Christ Jesus' activity—that is, only what occurred after the Christ Spirit had taken possession of His threefold sheath, His physical, etheric, and astral bodies. Then consider the Gospels according to St. Matthew and St. Luke. In a certain respect these trace the earlier history as well, the section which, within our meaning, the akashic record discloses as the story of Jesus of Nazareth before sacrificing Himself for the Christ. But at this point the contradiction seekers notice at once that Matthew tells of a genealogy reaching to Abraham, whereas Luke traces the line of descent back to Adam, and from Adam to Adam's Father: to God Himself. A further contradiction could be found in the following: According to Matthew, three Wise Men, or Magi, guided by a star, come to do homage at the birth of Jesus; while Luke relates the vision of the shepherds, their adoration of the Child, the presentation in the Temple—in contrast with which Matthew narrates the persecution by Herod, the flight into Egypt, and the return. These points and many others could be considered individual contradictions; but by examining more closely the facts gleaned from the akashic record, without reference to the Gospels, we can come to terms with them.

The akashic record informs us that at about the time stated in the Bible—the difference of a few years is immaterial—Jesus of Nazareth was born, and that in the body of Jesus of Nazareth there dwelt an individuality that in former incarnations had experienced lofty stages of initiation, had gained deep insight into the spiritual world. And it tells us something more, with which for the present I shall deal only in outline. The akashic record, which provides the only true history, reveals the circumstance that he who appeared in this Jesus of Nazareth had, in former incarnations, passed through manifold initiations, in all sorts of localities; and it leads us back to the fact that this later bearer of the name of Jesus of Nazareth had originally attained to a lofty and significant stage of initiation in the Persian world and had exercized an exalted, far-reaching activity. This individuality dwelling in the body of Jesus of Nazareth had already been active in the spiritual life of ancient Persia, had gazed up at the sun, and had addressed the great Sun Spirit as “Ahura Mazdao”.

We must thoroughly understand that the Christ entered the bodies of this individuality which had passed through the sort of incarnations mentioned. What does that mean? It simply means that the Christ made use of these three bodies—the astral, etheric, and physical bodies of Jesus of Nazareth—for fulfilling His mission. Everything we think, all that we express in words, that we feel or sense, is connected with our astral body: the astral body is the vehicle of all this. Jesus of Nazareth, as an ego, had lived for thirty years in this astral body, had communicated to it all that He had experienced within Himself and assimilated during former incarnations. In what way, then, did this astral body form its thoughts? It had to conform and amalgamate with the individuality that lived in it for thirty years.

When in ancient Persia Zarathustra lifted his gaze to the sun and told of Ahura Mazdao, this stamped itself into his astral body; and into this astral body there entered the Christ. Was it not natural, then, that Christ, when choosing a metaphor or an expression of feeling, should turn to what His astral body offered—of whatever nature? When you wear a grey coat you appear to the outer world in a grey coat; and Christ appeared to the outer world in the body of Jesus of Nazareth—in His physical, etheric, and astral bodies—and consequently His thoughts and feelings were colored by the images of the thoughts and feelings living in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. No wonder, then, that many an old Persian expression is reflected in His utterances, or that in John's Gospel we find an echo of terms used in the ancient Persian initiation; for the impulse that dwelt in the Christ passed over, of course, into His disciple, into the resurrected Lazarus. So it can be said that the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth speaks to us through John, in his Gospel.

No, it is not surprising that expressions should appear which recall the ancient Persian initiation and the form in which its ideas were presented. In Persia, “Ahura Mazdao” was not the only name for the spirits united in the sun: in a certain connection the term “vohumanu” was used, meaning the “creative Word”, or the “creative spirit”. The Logos, in its meaning of “creative force”, was first employed in the Persian initiation, and we meet it again in the very first verse of the John Gospel. There is much besides in this Gospel which we may understand through knowing that the Christ Himself spoke through an astral body which for thirty years had served Jesus of Nazareth, and that this individuality was the re-embodiment of an ancient Persian initiate. Similarly I could point to a great deal more in the John Gospel that would show how this most intimate of the Gospels, when using words associated with the mysteries of initiation, employs phrases reminiscent of Persia, and how this old mode of expression has persisted into later times.

If we now wish to understand the position of the other Evangelists in this matter we must recall various points that have already been established in the previous lectures. We learned, for example, that there existed certain lofty spiritual beings who transferred their sphere of action to the sun when the latter detached itself from the earth; and it was pointed out that their outer astral form was in a sense the counterpart of certain animal forms here on earth. There was first, the form of the Bull spirit, the spiritual counterpart of those animal natures the essence of whose development lies in what could be called the nutritional and digestive organization. The spiritual counterpart is naturally of a lofty spiritual nature, however inferior the earthly image may appear. So we have certain exalted spiritual beings who transferred their sphere to the sun whence they influenced the earth sphere, appearing there as the Bull spirits. Others appear as the Lion spirits, whose counterpart lives in animal natures pre-eminently developed as to their heart and organs of circulation. Then we have spiritual beings who are the counterparts of what we meet in the animal kingdom as eagle natures, the Eagle spirits. And finally there are those that harmoniously unite, as it were, the other natures as in a great synthesis, the Man spirits. These were in a sense the most advanced.

Passing now to the old initiation, we find that this offered the possibility of beholding, face to face, the exalted spiritual beings that had outstripped man. But the manner in which primitive men had to be initiated, in accord with the demands of those ancient times, depended upon the origin of their descent—that is, whether from Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus. Even in Atlantis, therefore, there existed oracles in manifold variety. Some had adjusted their spiritual vision primarily to the beholding of what we have described as the Eagle spirits, while others saw the Lion spirits, the Bull spirits, or the Man spirits: the initiation accorded with the specific traits of the candidate. This differentiation was one of the characteristics of the Atlantean age, and certain echos of it have persisted into our own post-Atlantean time. Thus you could find Mystery temples in Asia Minor, or in Egypt, where the initiation took a form that brought about the vision of the lofty spiritual beings as Bull spirits, or as Eagle spirits. And it was in the Mysteries that outer culture had its source.

The initiates who saw the lion form in the exalted spiritual beings conjured up in the lion body a sort of image of what they had beheld; but they saw as well that these spirits take part in the evolution of man. That is why they assigned a human head to the lion body, a concept that later became the sphinx.—Those who saw the spiritual counterparts as Bull spirits bore testimony to the spiritual world by introducing a Bull worship, which led on the one hand to the Apis Bull worship in Egypt, and on the other, to the worship of the Persian Mithras Bull; for everything we find in the way of outer cult usages among the different peoples derived from the initiation rites. There were initiates everywhere whose spiritual vision was focussed principally on the Bull spirits, others attuned primarily to the Eagle spirits, and so on. To a certain extent we can even indicate the differences in the various modes of initiation. Those initiated, for example, in such a way that the spiritual beings appeared to them in the form of Bull spirits were informed principally concerning the secrets connected with man's glandular system, with what pertains to the etheric principle. And there is still another branch of the nature of man into which they were initiated: the human properties that are firmly attached to the earth—welded to it, as it were. All this was grasped by those initiated in the Bull Mysteries.

Let us try to experience the soul mood of such initiates. From their great teachers they had learned, in effect, that man had descended from divine heights, that the primordial human beings were the descendants of divine-spiritual beings and that therefore they traced the first man back to his Father-God. Thus man came down to earth and passed from one earth form to another. These men were primarily interested in what was bound to the earth, as well as in all that men had experienced when they had thought of divine-spiritual beings as their ancestors.—That was the attitude of the Bull initiates. The Eagle initiates constituted a different case. These envisioned those spiritual beings who bear a most peculiar relation to the human being; but in order to understand this a few words must be said concerning the spiritual character of the bird nature.

Animals rank below human beings by reason of their inferior functions, and they represent, as you know, beings that solidified too early, having failed to retain the softness and flexibility of their body substance until such time as they might have been able to embody in human form. But in the bird nature we have beings that did not assume the lowest functions: instead they overshot the mark in the opposite direction. They failed to descend far enough, as it were; they remained in unduly soft substances, while the others lived in substances that were too hard. But as evolution continued, outer conditions compelled them to solidify; hence they hardened in a manner incompatible with a nature that had descended to the earth, being too soft. That is a rough description in untechnical terms, but it gives the facts. The archetypes of these bird natures are those spiritual beings who likewise overshot the mark, who remained in a substance too soft, and who consequently were carried, as it were, beyond what they might have become at a certain point of their development. They deviated from the normal development in an upward direction, while the rest diverged downwards. The middle position is in a certain sense occupied by the Lion spirits, as well as by the harmonious ones, the Man spirits, who grasped the right moment to incorporate.

We have already seen how the Christ event was received by those in whom there lived something of the old initiation. According to the nature of their specific initiation they had been able in the past to see into the spiritual world; and those who had received the Bull initiation—throughout a great part of Egypt, for example—were aware of the following: We can gaze up into the spiritual world, and therefore the lofty spiritual beings appear to us as the counterparts of the Bull nature in man. But now—so said those who had come in contact with the Christ impulse—now there has appeared to us in His true form the Ruler of the spiritual realm. That which we had always seen, that to which we had attained through the stages of our initiation, showed us a prefatory form of the Christ. In what was formerly revealed to us we must now see the Christ. Remembering all that we beheld, all that the spiritual worlds gradually disclosed to us, we can ask, Whither would it all have led us if at that time we had already attained to the requisite heights? It would have led us to the Christ.—An initiate of that type described the journey into the spiritual world in line with the Bull initiation; but he added. The truth it harbors is the Christ.—And a Lion or an Eagle initiate would have spoken similarly.

It was definitely prescribed in each of these initiation Mysteries how the candidate should be led up into the spiritual world, and the rites varied according to the manner in which he was to enter it. There were Mysteries of many different shades, especially in Asia Minor and in Egypt, where it was customary to guide the initiates in such a way as to bring them eventually to the Bull nature, or to a vision of the Lion spirits, as the case might have been. With this in mind let us now consider those who, as a result of many different kinds of initiations in the past, had become capable of sensing the Christ impulse, of comprehending Christ in the right way. Let us observe an initiate who had passed through the stages enabling him to behold the Man spirit. Such a one could say, The true Ruler in the spiritual world has appeared to me, Christ, Who lived in Jesus of Nazareth. And to what am I indebted for this? To my ancient initiation.—He knew the procedure that led to the vision of the Man spirit; so he describes what a man experiences in order to attain to initiation, or to understand the Christ nature at all. He knew initiation in the form prescribed in those Mysteries that led to the Man initiation. That is why the lofty initiate who dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth appeared to him in the image of the Mysteries he had gone through and knew, and he described Him as he himself saw Him.

That is the case in the narrative according to Matthew; and an old tradition hit upon the truth in connecting the Matthew Gospel with that one of the four symbols forming the capitals of the columns you see in this hall¹ and which we connote the symbol of the Man spirit. An ancient tradition associates the writer of the Gospel according to St. Matthew with the Man spirit, and that is because this writer knew, so to speak, the Man Mystery initiation as his own point of departure. You see, in the time when the Gospels were written it was not customary to write biographies as they are written today. What seemed essential to those people was the appearance of an exalted initiate Who had received the Christ into himself. The manner of becoming an initiate, the experiences he was destined to undergo, that was what they considered important; and that is why they ignored the external every-day happenings that appear so important to biographers of today. The modern biographer will go to any lengths to collect enough material. Once when Friedrich Theodor Vischer (”Schwaben-Vischer”) was indulging in a bit of sarcasm at the expense of modern biographies he hit on an excellent illustration. A young scholar set about writing his doctor's thesis, which was to be on Goethe. As a preparation he first assembled all the material he could use; but as there was not enough to satisfy him, he poked about in all the rooms and attics of the various towns where Goethe had lived, swept out all the corners, and even emptied the dustbins in an effort to find whatever might chance to be there, which would then enable him to write a thesis on The Connection between Frau Christiane von Goethe's Chilblains and the Mythologico-allegorico-symbolical Figures in the Second Part of Faust. Well, that is laying it on rather thick, but it is after all quite in the spirit of modern biographers. People planning to write on Goethe sniff about in all sorts of rubbish hunting material. The meaning of the word “discretion” is no longer known to them today.

But those who portrayed Jesus of Nazareth in their Gospels went about their descriptions quite differently. Everything in the way of external occurrences appeared to them negligible as compared with the various stages which Jesus of Nazareth, as an initiate, had to pass through. That is what they described; but each one did so in his own way, as he himself saw the matter. Matthew described in the manner of those initiated in the Man spirit. This initiation was closely akin to the wisdom of Egypt.

And now we can understand, too, how the writer of the Luke Gospel had arrived at his unusual representation. He was one of those who in former incarnations had achieved initiations leading to the Bull spirit, and he could describe what accorded with such an initiation. He could say, A great initiate must have passed through such and such stages—and he portrayed Him in the colors he knew. He was one of those who formerly had lived principally within the Egyptian Mysteries, so it is not surprising that he should stress the trait which represents, let us say, primarily the Egyptian character of initiation. Let us consider the author of the Luke Gospel in the light of what we have thus learned. He reasoned as follows: A lofty initiate lived in the individuality that dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. I have learned how one penetrates to the Bull initiation through the Egyptian Mysteries. That I know.—This special form of initiation was vividly before him. And now he continues: He Who has become so exalted an initiate as Jesus of Nazareth must have passed through an Egyptian initiation, as well as through all the others. So in Jesus of Nazareth we have an initiate who had undergone the Egyptian initiation.—Naturally the other Evangelists knew that, too; but it did not appear to them as of any special importance, because they had not known initiation from this aspect so intimately.

For this reason a certain journey undertaken by Jesus of Nazareth did not strike them as in any way noteworthy. I said in one of the first lectures that if a man had undergone an initiation in the past, something special happens to him when he reappears. Definite events occur resembling, in the outer world, repetitions of former experiences. Let us assume a man had been initiated in ancient Ireland: he would now have to be reminded, by some experience in his life, of this old Irish initiation. This could come about, for instance, by some outer event impelling him to travel to Ireland. Now, anyone familiar with the Irish initiation would be struck by the fact that it was Ireland and not some other country that the man visited; but no one else would see anything unusual in this journey. The individuality that dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth was an initiate of the Egyptian Mysteries, among others—hence the journey to Egypt. Who would be particularly struck by this Flight into Egypt? One who knew it from his own life; and such a one did describe this particular journey because he knew its significance. It is narrated in the Matthew Gospel because the writer knew from his own initiation what a journey to Egypt meant to a great many initiates of former times.

And when we know that in the writer of the Luke Gospel we are dealing with a man who was specifically conversant, through his knowledge of the Egyptian Mysteries, with the initiation that led to the Bull cult, we shall find truth in the old tradition that couples him with the Bull symbol. For good reasons—to explain which would require more time than is available at the moment—the Luke Gospel does not mention the journey to Egypt; but typical events are cited whose significance can be rightly judged only by one in close contact with the Egyptian initiation. The author of the Matthew Gospel indicates this connection of Jesus of Nazareth with the Egyptian Mysteries in a more external way, by means of the journey to Egypt; whereas the writer of the Luke Gospel sees all the events he describes in the spirit provided by an Egyptian initiation.

Now let us turn to the writer of the Mark Gospel. This Evangelist omits all the early history and describes particularly the activity of the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth during three years. In this respect his Gospel tallies completely with that of St. John. This writer passed through an initiation strongly resembling those of Asia Minor, even those of Greece—we can call them EuropeanAsiatic-pagan initiations—and at that time these were the most up-to-date. Reflected in the outer world, they all imply that one who is a lofty personality, initiated in a certain manner, owes his origin not only to a natural but to a supernatural event.

Consider that Plato's followers, those who were anxious to form the right conception of him, did not care particularly who his bodily father was. For them, Plato's spirituality outshone all else. Hence they said, That which lived in the Plato body as the Plato soul, that is the Plato who was born for us as a lofty spiritual being that fructifies the lower nature of man.—That is why they ascribed to the God Apollo the birth of the Plato who meant so much to them, the awakened Plato. In their sight Plato was a son of Apollo. Especially in these Mysteries was it customary to pay no particular attention to the earthly life of the personality in question, but to focus on the moment at which he became what is so often mentioned in the Gospels: a “divine son”, a “son of god”. Plato, a son of god—thus was he described by his noblest devotees, by those who understood him best. And we must realize what significance such a characterization of the Gods bore for the human life of such sons of god on earth. It was in this fourth epoch, as you know, that men adapted themselves to the physical sense world and came to love the earth. The old gods were dear to them because they could symbolize the fact that precisely the leading sons of the earth were “sons of the gods”. Those of them who dwelt on earth were to be thus designated.

One of these was the author of the Gospel of St. Mark, hence he describes only what occurred after the Baptism by John. The initiation this Evangelist had undergone was the one that led to a knowledge of the higher world in the sign of the Lion spirit; and an old tradition links him with the symbol of the Lion.

Now we will turn back to what we already touched on today, the Gospel according to St. John. We said that he who wrote the John Gospel was initiated by Christ Jesus Himself, hence he had something to give which contained the germ, so to say, of the efficacy of the Christ-Impulse, not only for that time, but for the far distant future. He proclaimed something that will remain valid for all time. This Evangelist was one of the Eagle initiates, those who had skipped the normal evolutionary stage. The normal instruction of that time was set down by the author of the Mark Gospel. All that reaches out beyond that period, showing the nature of Christ's activity in the distant future, all that transcends earthbound matters, we find in St. John. That is why tradition connects him with the symbol of the Eagle.

This shows us that a tradition associating the Evangelists with what may be called the essence of their own initiation is by no means based on mere fancy, but is born out of the depths of Christian evolution. One must penetrate in this way deep into the roots of things; then it becomes clear that the greatest, the most transcendent events in the life of Christ are all described in the same way, but that each of the Evangelists portrays Christ Jesus as he understands Him according to the type of his initiation. I indicated this in my book, Christianity as a Mystical Fact, but only in such a way as could be done for readers as yet unprepared; for it was written in the beginning of our spiritual-scientific development. Allowance was made for the lack of understanding, in our time, of occult facts proper.

We now understand that Christ is illuminated for us from four sides, each Evangelist throwing light upon Him from the aspect he knew most intimately; and in view of the mighty impulse He gave, you will readily believe that he had many sides. Now, I said that all the Gospels agreed on the following points: that the Christ-Being Himself descended from divine-spiritual heights at the Baptism by John, that this Christ-Being dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, that He suffered death on the Cross, and that He vanquished this death. Later we shall have occasion to examine this Mystery more closely. Today let us look at the death on the Cross in the light of the question: What feature of it is characteristic in the case of the Christ-Being? The answer is, we find it to be an event that created no distinction between the life that went before and the life that followed. The most characteristic feature of the death of Christ is that He passed through death unchanged, that He remained the same, that it was He Who exemplified the insignificance of death. For this reason all who could know the true nature of the Christ death have ever clung to the living Christ.

Considered from this point of view, what was the nature of the event of Damascus, where he who had been Saul became Paul? From what he had previously learned Paul knew that the Spirit first sought by Zarathustra in the sun as Ahura Mazdao, the Spirit later beheld by Moses in the burning bush and in the fire on Sinai, had gradually been approaching the earth; and he also knew that this Spirit would have to enter a human body. What Paul could not grasp, however, while he was still Saul, was that the man destined to be the Christ bearer should have to suffer the disgrace of death on the cross. He could only imagine that when Christ came He would triumph, that once He had approached the earth He would have to remain in all that pertained to it. Paul could not think of Him Who had hung upon the Cross as the bearer of the Christ.—That is the substance of Paul's attitude as Saul—before he became Paul. The death on the Cross, this humiliating death and all that it implied, was primarily what prevented him from recognizing the fact that Christ had really been present on the earth. What, then, had to occur? Something had to take place in Paul which at a certain moment would create in him the conviction: The individuality that hung upon the Cross in the body of Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Christ. Christ has been here on earth.—And what brought this about? Paul became clairvoyant through the event of Damascus; and then he could become convinced.

To the eye of the seer the aura of the earth appeared changed after the event of Golgotha: previously the Christ was not to be found there, but thenceforth He was visible in the earth's aura. That is the difference; and Saul reasoned: With clairvoyant perception I can verify the fact that He Who hung upon the Cross and lived as Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ Who is now in the earth aura.—In the aura of the earth he saw the Being first beheld in the sun by Zarathustra, Ahura Mazdao; and now he knew that He Who had been crucified had arisen. Now he could proclaim that Christ had arisen and had appeared to him, as He had appeared to Cephas, to the other brethren, and to the five hundred at one time. Thenceforth he was the apostle of the living Christ for Whom death has not the same meaning as for other men.

Whenever the Death on the Cross is doubted—that is, this particular manner in which the Christ died—anyone who is really informed on the subject will agree with another² Swabian who, in his Urchristentum, has assembled with the greatest historical accuracy everything that is indisputably related to what we know about it. In that connection Gfrörer—for he it was—rightly emphasized specifically the Death on the Cross; and in a certain sense we can agree with him when he says, in his rather sarcastic mode of expression, that when anyone contradicted him in this matter he would look him critically in the eye and ask whether there might perhaps be something wrong in his upper storey.

Among the most indubitably established elements of Christianity are this Death on the Cross and what we shall elucidate tomorrow: the Resurrection and the effect of the words: “I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” And these were the substance of Paul's message, hence he could say, “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” For him the

Resurrection of Christ was the starting point of Christianity. Not until our time have people begun again to reflect, so to speak, upon such things—not in circles where they are made the subject of theological disputes, but where the actual life of Christianity is involved. So the great philosopher Solovyev really takes entirely the Pauline standpoint in emphasizing that everything in Christianity rests upon the idea of the Resurrection, and that a Christianity of the future is impossible unless the concept of the Resurrection be believed and grasped. And after his own fashion he repeats Paul's utterance, “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” In that case the Christ impulse would be an impossible thing: there could be no Christianity without the risen Christ, the living Christ.

It is characteristic, and therefore worthy of emphasis, that certain isolated deep thinkers have come to recognize the truth of Paul's message solely by means of their philosophy, without benefit of occultism. If we devote some attention to such thinkers we realize that men are beginning to appear in our time who have a concept of what the future convictions and Weltanschauung of mankind will have to be, namely, that which spiritual science must provide. But without spiritual science even so profound a thinker as Solovyev achieved no more than empty conceptual forms. His philosophical paraphernalia resemble vessels for containing concepts; and what must be poured into them is something they indeed crave and for which they form the molds, but something they lack; and this can come only out of the anthroposophical current. It will fill the molds with that living water which is the revelation of facts concerning the spiritual world, the occult. That is what this spiritual-scientific Weltanschauung will offer its finest minds, those who already today show that they need it, and whose tragedy lies in their not having been able to obtain it. We can say of such minds that they positively yearn for anthroposophy. But they have not been able to find it.

It is the task of the anthroposophical movement to pour into these vessels, prepared by such minds, all that can contribute to clear, distinct, true conceptions of the most significant events, such as the Christ event and the Mystery of Golgotha. By means of its revelations concerning the realms of the spiritual world, anthroposophy or spiritual research alone can throw light on these events. Verily, it is only through anthroposophy, through spiritual research, that the Mystery of Golgotha can be comprehended in our time.

• 1. These two columns decorated the lecture hall in Kassel, together with a statue representing the Archangel Michael, by Professor Bernewitz.
• 2. The reference is to “Schwaben-Vischer”, mentioned earlier in this lecture.

What is it that has been the theme of our lectures during the last few days? We have been trying to bring to light again in the impressive pictures of Greek mythology, as the expression of an ancient wisdom, what in our own time we can come to know through Spiritual, or Occult Science; and we have certainly seen how much of what we come to know today in quite another way is to be found there as something quite obvious. When we realise this, especially when we discover that the deepest and most significant principles of knowledge, principles still today not fully recognised, were already expressed in pictorial fashion in this Greek mythology, our usual very superficial ideas about it are bound to be severely shaken.

The Greeks felt that what they hid in their Mysteries and associated with the figure of Dionysos was still deeper and more significant than all that they associated with the upper gods—with Zeus, Poseidon, Pluto, with Apollo, Mars and so on. For whereas they expressed pretty well everything which had to do with the upper gods exoterically, by means of the world around them, they veiled what had to do with Dionysos within the sanctity of the Mysteries, and only communicated it to those who had undergone a thorough preparation.

What then was the contrast between what the Greeks felt in their ideas about the upper gods, and what was withdrawn into the sanctity of the Mysteries? What was the fundamental difference? In their ideas about the upper gods, about Zeus, Poseidon, Pluto, Apollo, Mars and so on, they expressed everything of which one can become conscious through a deeper insight into the wonders of the world, a deeper insight into what takes place all around us and into the laws which govern it. But something essentially different was involved in what was associated with the figure of Dionysos; Dionysos had to do with the deepest vicissitudes of the human soul struggling for knowledge and for entry into the super-sensible worlds. The Mysteries associated with his name threw light upon the lot of the soul struggling for knowledge, living in the depths; they shed light upon all the testings which the soul had to undergo on its way.

If we would understand the figure of Dionysos and his connection with these tribulations, we must first give some thought to what modern Spiritual Science has to say about the human mind in the act of cognition. It might seem that modern man has abundant opportunity to become instructed as to what cognition really is. For the study of philosophy is accessible in all countries, and it is to this that we look to supply the answer to the question of how knowledge comes about. But from the standpoint of Spiritual Science philosophy has not been very successful in answering this question, and you can easily see why this is. So long as philosophy—the ordinary philosophy of the day—refuses to recognise the truth about the human being, that he consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, it can come to no viable theory of knowledge. For knowledge is bound up with the whole being of man, and unless the true being of man, his fourfold nature, is taken into account, the question as to what knowledge is will only be answered by the empty phrases which are so familiar in modern philosophy. Because of the limited time at our disposal I can of course only briefly refer to this, I can only say a few words about the nature of human knowledge. But we shall understand one another if we begin by asking how it is acquired as distinct from what it may signify.

You all know that the human being could never attain to knowledge if he did not think, if in his mind he did not carry on something akin to work in ideation or thinking. Knowledge does not come of itself. The human being has to undertake work within himself, he has to allow ideas to pass through his mind if he wants to know. As adherents of Spiritual Science we have to ask ourselves where in human nature those processes take place which we designate as ideation, as mental representation, and which lead to knowledge.

According to the materialistic illusion, the typical philosophic fantasy of today, knowledge comes about as a result of work carried out by the brain. Admittedly, work does take place in the brain in the act of cognition, but if we bear in mind that the main thing in knowledge is the work within the soul in the life of ideation, the question must arise: ‘Has the content of the process of ideation anything to do with the work which goes on in the brain?’ The brain is part of the physical body, and what constitutes the content of our life of ideation, what constitutes the work of our soul in ideation, in mental representation, which is what brings knowledge about, does not go as far as the physical body; that all takes place in the three higher members of the human being, takes place from the ego through the astral body down to the etheric body. As far as its content goes, you will find nothing in any element of our process of ideation which takes place in the physical brain. Thus, if we are talking expressly of the content, or of the activity of mental representation, we must attribute that solely to the three higher super-sensible members of the human being, and then we can ask ourselves what the brain has to do with all this that goes on supersensibly in the human being. The obvious truth upon which modern philosophy and psychology are based, that in the act of cognition processes do take place in the brain, has of course to be admitted, it cannot and should not be denied, but it is relatively unimportant. Nothing of the mental representation itself lives in the brain. What significance, then, has the brain, has the external bodily organisation in general, for knowledge, or let us say to begin with, for the life of ideation?

Since I must be brief, I can only indicate it pictorially. As regards what really happens in our souls in the forming of ideas and in thinking, the work of the brain has precisely the same significance as a mirror has for the man who sees himself in it. When you with your personality move through space, you do not see yourself—unless you meet a mirror; then you do see what you are, you see how you look. A man who claims that the brain thinks, a man who professes that the work of ideation, of representation, goes on in the brain, is just about as shrewd as the man who looks at a mirror and says: ‘I am not walking about out here, that is not me. I must get inside the mirror, that is where I am.’ He would soon become convinced that he was not in the mirror, but that the mirror was reflecting what was outside it. So it is with the whole of the physical organisation. What becomes evident through the work of the brain is the inward super-sensible activity of the three higher members of the human organisation. The mirror of the brain is needed in order that this activity may become evident to the human being himself, in order that through the mirror of the brain he may perceive what he is supersensibly; this is an inevitable result of our contemporary human organisation. If, as an earthly being today, man had not this reflecting bodily organism, primarily the brain, he would still think his thoughts but he would not be aware of them. The whole endeavour of modern physiology and a good deal of modern psychology to understand thinking is about as clever as looking into a mirror to find your own reality. What I have here said in a few words can be epistemologically and scientifically substantiated in the strictest manner. It is of course quite another question whether the argument would be at all understood. Experience indeed suggests the contrary. In however strictly logical a manner one argues today even with philosophers, they do not understand a mortal word, because they just do not want to go into these things. For in the outer world today there is still absolutely no will to tackle the most serious problems concerning the human faculty of cognition.

Let us take this diagram to represent the human physical bodily organisation. When we wish to express in correct diagrammatic form the human process of cognition, we have to say: ‘No part of what thinking is, nothing of the act of cognition, takes place anywhere within this external physical organism; it all takes place in the adjacent etheric and astral bodies and so on.’ It is there that all the thoughts which I have indicated diagrammatically by these circles are to be found. These thoughts do not enter into the brain at all—it would be nonsense to think that they do—they are reflected through the activity of the brain and thrown back again into etheric body, astral body and ego. And it is these images which we ourselves have first produced, and which are then made visible to us by the brain—it is these mirrored images which we see when as earthly men we become aware of what actually goes on in our soul-life. Within the brain there is absolutely no thought; there is no more of thought in the brain than there is of you in the mirror in which you see yourself.

But the brain is a very complicated mirror. The external mirror in which we see ourselves is simple, but the brain is tremendously complicated and of necessity a complex activity takes place in order that it can become the instrument, not indeed for producing thought but for reflecting it. In other words, before a single thought of a single earthly man could come into existence, there had to be a preparation. We know that this preparation took place during the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, and that in fine the present physical body, and with it the brain, is the result of the work of many spiritual hierarchies. So we can say that by the beginning of Earth evolution man on Earth was so formed that he could develop his physical brain to become the reflecting apparatus for what the human being really is, for the real man, who is at first only to be met with in the environment of this our physical bodily organisation. That is how we put it today, and it can surely be understood, at all events by an. audience of anthroposophists. Fundamentally this process of cognition we are examining is quite easy to understand.

What we today are able to understand in this way was felt by the ancient Greek, and therefore he said to himself: ‘There is concealed in this physical bodily organism, without man's having any direct consciousness of it, something of great significance. This physical organism is undoubtedly from the Earth, since it consists of the materials and forces of the Earth, but there is something secreted within it which can reflect back the whole life of the human soul.’ When the ancient Greek was directing his feeling upon the microcosm, upon man, he called this element—coming from the Earth and thus macrocosmic—this element which played a part in the constructing of the brain, the Dionysian principle; so that it is Dionysos who works in us to make our bodily organism into a mirror of our spiritual life.

Now if we apply ourselves to this purely theoretical exposition, if we enter into it, we can experience that the soul is being put to a first and very gentle trial; it is very slight, and since the organisation of present-day man is not tuned to the most delicate refinements, it usually passes unnoticed. These challenges will have to become ruder if the man of today is to feel them.

It is only when one is filled with enthusiasm for knowledge, when one looks upon the attainment of knowledge as a matter of life itself, that one feels what I am about to describe as a first tremendous challenge to the soul. It comes about when this very knowledge leads us on to recognise that the mighty word of wisdom ‘Know thyself’, resounds towards us out of primeval times. Self-knowledge, as the cardinal maxim upon which all other true knowledge turns, shines before us as a high ideal. In other words, if we want to attain knowledge in general, we must first endeavour to get to know ourselves, to get to know what we are. Now all our knowledge takes its course in the process of ideation. Our life of ideation, or mental representation, which reproduces for us all the things outside us, we experience in the form of mirrored image. The process does not penetrate at all into what we are as physical bodily organism; it is thrown back to us, and the human being can no more see into his own physical being than he can see what is behind the mirror. Moreover he does not penetrate into his physical organisation because his soul-life is completely filled by this process of representation. One is obliged to say: ‘Then it is quite impossible to learn to know oneself, one can come to know nothing but this process of ideation which has turned one into a reflecting apparatus. It is impossible to penetrate further, we can only reach as far as the frontier; and at the frontier the whole life of the soul is thrown back again, as a man's image is thrown back in a mirror.’ If an undefined feeling challenges us to know ourselves, we have to confess that we cannot do it, that it is impossible for us to know ourselves.

What I have just been saying is for most men of today an abstraction, because they have no enthusiasm for knowledge, because they are incapable of developing the passion which must come into play when the soul is confronted by its own absolute need. But imagine this realisation developed into feeling, and then the soul is faced with a hard task indeed: ‘You must attain something which you cannot attain!’ In terms of Spiritual Science that means that no knowledge which man can acquire by exoteric means will lead to any degree of self-knowledge.

From this springs the endeavour to press on by quite another path than that of ordinary knowledge to what the work of Dionysos within us is—to our own being. That has to take place in the Mysteries. In other words, something was given to man in the Mysteries which had nothing to do with the ordinary soul-life, that is only mirrored in our bodily organisation. The Mysteries could not confine man within the limits of exoteric knowledge, for that would never have enabled them to lead man into himself. Anyone determined to recognise only exoteric science would consequently have to say: ‘The Mysteries must have been pure humbug, for they only make sense on the assumption that something quite different from ordinary knowledge was cultivated in them, with the object of reaching Dionysos.’ Thus in the Mysteries we have to expect happenings of a kind which approach man in quite another way from all that man meets in ordinary exoteric life. This brings us directly up against the question: ‘Is there really any means of penetrating into what is ordinarily only a reflecting apparatus?’

I should like to begin from something seemingly quite unimportant. As soon as one takes the very first step in describing spiritual truths—truths which lead to reality and not to the maya of the outer world, not to illusion—one has to set about it in quite a different way from the way one sets about describing scientific or other matters in ordinary life. That is why it is so difficult to make oneself understood. Today men try to confine everything within the fetters which have been forged for modern science, and nothing that is not presented in this form is accepted as ‘scientific’. But with such knowledge it is impossible to penetrate into the nature of things. Hence in the lectures on Spiritual Science which are given here, a different style, a different method of presentation is used from the one to which ordinary science is accustomed; here things are so described that light is thrown upon them from several sides, and in a certain way language is taken seriously again. If one takes language seriously, one reaches what one might call the genius of language. In one of the earlier lectures of this course I said that it was not for nothing that in my second Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Soul's Probation, I used the word dichten for an original activity of the World Creator, or that in The Portal of Initiation I said of Ahriman that he creates ‘in dichtem Lichte’.¹ Anyone who appraises such words in the light of present-day usage will believe that they are just words like any other. Not at all. They are words which go back to the original genius of language, words which draw out of the language something that has not yet passed through the conscious human ego-life of ideation. And language has many instances of this.

In the book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, I have pointed out what a beautiful expression there still was in old German for what is indicated in an abstract way by geboren werden (to be born). When a man comes into the world today he is said ‘to be born’. In old German there was another expression for this. The human being was of course not conscious of what really takes place at birth, but the genius of language, in which Dionysos plays a part, reaching in this way right into the activity of mental representation as distinct from the mere reflection of it—the genius of language knew that, when the human being goes through the gate of death, then in the first part of the time between death and a new birth, forces are at work in him which he has brought with him from his previous life and which are the forces which caused him to grow old in that life. Before we die we become old, and the forces which make us old we carry over with us. In the first part of the time between death and a new birth these forces go on working. But in the second half of the life between death and rebirth quite different forces set in. Forces take hold of us which fashion us in such a way that we return to the world as little children, that we become young. The language of the Middle Ages hinted at this mystery, by not using merely the abstract phrase geboren werden but by saying: Der Mensch ist jung geworden (the man has become young). This is an extremely significant expression! In the second part of Goethe's Faust² we find this phrase: im Nebellande jung geworden. Nebelland is an expression for the Germany of the Middle Ages; it means no more than to have been born in Germany, but in this expression there lies an awareness of the genius of language, thus of a higher Being than man, who participated in the creation of the human organism. That one speaks of ‘Dichtung’ in German is based on awareness that the ‘Dichter’ brings together what is outspread in the world, condenses it. One day there will be a philosophy which is not so dry and prosaic, not so philistine as that of today, because it will enter into the living genius of language, which in the ego-man of today underlies his conscious life of ideation. Much has to be elicited from this genius of language if one wants to characterise the things of the spiritual world, which lie beyond what ordinary consciousness can grasp.

Thus another method of presentation has to be used in the description of spiritual things. Hence the strangeness which is bound to be felt in many descriptions of the higher worlds. When we speak of the spiritual worlds we already meet at the very outset with something which must have originated behind what the human being has in his consciousness. It has to be drawn from the sub-conscious depths of the soul. Moreover, if one does this today something is necessary which seems quite trivial but is nevertheless important. If one wants to describe spiritual-scientific things in their true sense, one must forego the use of the customary terminology. One has perhaps even to go so far as to acknowledge quite consciously: ‘If you reject the customary terminology then the professors and all the other intellectuals will say you have no proper command of language. They will find all manner of things to object to, they will find you lacking in clarity; they will carp at all sorts of things in the way in which Spiritual Science is expressed.’ One has to accept that quite consciously, for it is inevitable. One must face up to the fact that one will probably be looked upon as stupid, because one fails to make use of the customary ‘perfectly logical’ terms, which in a higher connection are the height of imperfection.

What I have pointed out to you as a small matter—or not so small—was in ancient Greece a necessity for the pupil of the Mysteries, and is still so today. In order to come to his full self, in order to penetrate into his inmost being, which otherwise is only reflected by his external bodily organisation, the pupil must divest himself of the usual conscious external method of acquiring knowledge. Superficial persons could of course immediately say: ‘But you claim that the human being always retains his common sense, and judges everything in the higher worlds in accordance with it; yet you now say that he must renounce normal external knowledge. Surely that is a contradiction!’ In reality it is quite possible to test the things of the higher spiritual worlds with common sense and intelligence while nevertheless withdrawing from that form of conscious knowledge to which we are accustomed in the outer world. Here our souls are once more faced by a severe ordeal. In what does this ordeal consist?

As things are today, it is the habit of the soul to think and to apply the judgments of common sense within certain moulds, namely in those forms which in the ordinary process of mental representation are taught by the external world. That is the normal thing. And now imagine some professor or other, who is learned in the science of the outer world—and within the forms appropriate to that kind of knowledge an exceptionally able thinker. People come and say: ‘You want to make yourself understood by that professor; he obviously knows how to think scientifically in the modern sense of the term, if he can't understand you, you must have said something it is impossible for anyone to understand!’ Well, there is no need to dispute that our professor has a sound common sense judgment for the things of the ordinary external world. But our subject matter is the things of the spiritual world, and it will not do for him to listen with that part of his soul which brings common sense to bear on the ordinary things of the external world; he would have to listen with quite a different part of his soul. It does not follow that his common sense will continue to accompany a man when he seeks to grasp anything other than the things belonging to the outside world. Those are the things for which common sense is adapted; and a man may well possess an understanding for those things—and yet it may leave him in the lurch when he comes to the things of the spiritual world.

What is required if we intend to penetrate into spiritual worlds is—not a critique of spiritual-scientific things conducted by the instrument of common sense, but that we should take our common sense along with us in our approach to them, and not lose it on the way from outer science towards inner, spiritual science. What matters is that the soul should be strong enough to avoid the experience so many people endure today. You could describe it like this. As long as it is only a question of external science, these people are paragons of logic, but when they hear of Spiritual Science, then they have to make the journey from information about external things to information about the spiritual world. And on this journey they generally lose their common sense. Then they fancy that, because they had it with them when they started, they must have had it later on too! It would be a bad mistake to conclude that it is not possible to enter into the things of the spiritual world with common sense. It is just that one must not lose hold of it on the way there.

What I have just put before you in a petty example was in a far higher sense a necessity for Greek pupils of the Mysteries, as it is for modern mystics also. They have to slough off completely as it were their normal consciousness, yet for all that they have to keep with them the sound common sense which goes with normal consciousness and then make use of it as an instrument for judgment in an entirely different situation, from an entirely different viewpoint. Without relinquishing his normal consciousness no one can become a mystic. He has to do without the consciousness which serves him well in the everyday world. And the challenge to the soul which emerges at this point, on the way from the customary outer world to the spiritual world, is that it should not lose its common sense and treat as nonsense what, if it has held on to its common sense, reveals itself as a deeper experience.

Thus the pupil in the Greek Mysteries needed to divest himself of all that he was able to experience in the outer, the exoteric, world, and this is also necessary for the mystic today. Hence the things of the world outside sometimes assume quite different names when they enter into the sphere of mysticism. When in my Rosicrucian play The Soul's Probation it is said of Benedictus that in his speech the names of many things are changed, that they even take on a completely opposite meaning, this is something of deep significance. What Capesius calls unhappiness, Benedictus is obliged to call happiness.³ Just as after death our life to begin with runs its course backwards and we experience things in backward order, in the same way we have to change the names of things into their opposites if we are speaking in the true sense of the higher worlds. Hence you can estimate what an entirely different world it was which the ancient Greeks acknowledged as the content of the holy Mysteries.

What was the meaning of Dionysos in these Mysteries? If you read the little book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, which is to be published within the next few days, you will see that in all ages there have been great teachers of mankind who have remained unseen, who only manifest themselves to clairvoyant consciousness. You will see that when the ancient Egyptians said, in answer to a question from the Greeks as to who their teachers were, that they were instructed by the gods, it was the truth. They meant that men who were clairvoyant were inspired by teachers who did not descend to Earth, but who appeared to them in the etheric sphere and taught them. I am not putting it fancifully, what I am saying is absolutely true! When in ancient Greece pupils were introduced into the Mysteries, after having undergone due preparation so that they did not take such things lightly, superficially—as is done today when they are discussed in abstract terms—they were then in a position to see within the Mystery the teacher who was not to be seen by physical eyes but was visible only to the inspired consciousness. The hierophants, who were to be seen with physical eyes were not the important people. The important Beings were those visible to clairvoyant consciousness. In the Mysteries with which we are concerned in these lectures, in the Dionysian Mysteries, the highest teacher of the pupils who were sufficiently prepared was in fact the younger Dionysos himself—that figure which I have already told you was a real one, he who was followed by a train of sileni and fauns and who made the journey from Europe to Asia and back again. He was the real teacher of the pupils in the Dionysian Mysteries. Dionysos appeared in an etheric form in the holy Mysteries, and from him it was then possible to perceive things which were not merely seen as mirror-images in normal consciousness, but things which welled forth directly from the inner being of Dionysos.

But because Dionysos is in us, the human being saw his own self in Dionysos, and learnt to know himself—not by brooding upon himself, as is so often recommended by people who know nothing of reality—but the way to self-knowledge for the Greek Mysteries was to go out of himself. The way to self-knowledge was not to brood upon himself and to gaze only upon the mirror-images of ordinary soul-life, but to contemplate that which he himself was, though he could not reach down to it in normal consciousness, to look upon the great Teacher. The aspirants looked upon the great Teacher, who was not yet visible when they entered into the Mystery, as upon their own being. In the world outside, where he was recognised merely as Dionysos, he made his journey from Europe to Asia and back, actually incarnated in a fleshly body; there he was a real man standing upon the physical plane. In the Mysteries he appeared in his spirit-form.

In a certain way it is still so today. When in the world outside the modern leaders of men go about in human garb, they are unrecognised by the world. When from the standpoint of Spiritual Science we talk about ‘The Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings’ people would often be surprised to know in what simple, unassuming human form these Masters are to be found in all countries. They are present on the physical plane. But they do not impart their most important teachings on the physical plane, but following the example of Dionysos of old, they impart them on the spiritual plane. And anyone who wishes to listen to them, to be taught by them, must have access to them not only in their physical bodies of flesh, but in their spiritual forms. In a certain way that is true today as it was in the Dionysian Mysteries of old. Thus one of the tests we have to undergo is to obey the exhortation ‘Know thyself’ by going out of ourselves.

But in the Dionysian Mysteries the soul was exposed to yet another test. I told you that the aspirants learned to know Dionysos as a spirit-form. In the Mysteries they were actually instructed by him, they learned to recognise him as a spirit-form governed entirely by what was most essential and most important in man's own nature, by what represented the human self firmly planted upon the Earth. When the Greek pupils directed their clairvoyant sight upon the figure of Dionysos, then this Dionysos seemed to them a beautiful, sublime figure, a noble external representation of humanity. Now just suppose that one of these pupils had left the Mystery Temple, after having seen Dionysos there as a beautiful, sublime human form. I expressly draw your attention to the fact that the younger Dionysos still remained a teacher in the Mysteries long after the real man, of whom I have told you that he journeyed from Europe to Asia and back again, was dead. If however one of these pupils had left the place where the Mystery was enacted and had encountered in the world outside the real Dionysos incarnated in the flesh, if he had met that human being who corresponded to the higher man whom he had seen in the Mystery, he would have seen no beauty! Just as today the man who has entered into the Mystery may not hope to see the figure which he had before him in sublime beauty in the spiritual world in the same august beauty on the physical plane, just as he must be clear that the physical embodiment of the spiritual form which he met in the Mystery is maya, is complete illusion, and conceals the sublime beauty of the spiritual figure, so that in the physical world it becomes in a way hideous—so it was in the case of Dionysos. And what tradition has given us as the external appearance of Dionysos, who is not represented as such a perfect divine form as Zeus, is in fact the image of the Dionysos who was manifested in the flesh. The Dionysos of the Mystery was a beautiful being; the fleshly Dionysos was not to be compared with him. Hence it is no good looking for the figure of Dionysos among the finest types of antique human beauty. He is not so represented by tradition, and we have in particular to think of those who constituted his followers as being hideous in appearance, like the satyrs and sileni.

What is more, we discover in Greek mythology something extremely remarkable. We are told something which is in fact the truth—that the teacher of Dionysos was himself a very ugly man. This person, Silenus who was the teacher of Dionysos himself, the aspirants in the Mystery came to know also. But Silenus is described to us as a wise individual. We need only recall that a great number of wise sayings are attributed to him, sayings which repeatedly stress the worthlessness of the normal life of man if it is only viewed from the outside in its maya or illusion. Then we are told something which made a great impression upon Nietzsche—we are told that King Midas asked Silenus, the teacher of Dionysos, what was best for man. The wise Silenus gave the significant but puzzling reply: ‘Oh, thou race of brief duration, the best would be for thee not to have been born, or since thou hast been born, the second best for thee would be swiftly to die.’ This saying has to be rightly understood. It is an attempt to indicate the relationship between the spirituality of the super-sensible world, and the maya, the great illusion, of outer life.

Thus, when we look at them in their physical human forms, these exalted beings are by no means beautiful—or at any rate they can only be regarded as beautiful in a different sense from that in which the late Greek period understood ideal beauty. We can in a way still idealise Dionysos in contrast to what he was as a man in the outer world. If we wish to contrast the form Dionysos assumed in the physical with the majestic splendour of the spiritual form which he revealed in the Mystery itself, there is nothing to stop us doing so. We are not obliged to think of him as ugly. But we should be wrong to think of the teacher of Dionysos, old Silenus, otherwise than as with an ugly snub-nose, and ears which stuck out, and anything but handsome. Silenus, the teacher of Dionysos, who was finally to hand over to man the archetypal wisdom in a form suitable for the human egoconsciousness—a wisdom which sprang from the deeper self of man—this Silenus was still closely akin to the life of Nature, which man in his present bodily form has really grown out of. The ancient Greek imagined that the present comeliness of the human being, from the point of view of external maya, had developed out of an old, ugly, human form, and that the type of the individuality who was incarnated in Silenus, the teacher of Dionysos, was not at all pleasing to look at.

Now as students of Spiritual Science it will not be difficult for you, from all I have said so far, to suppose that both in the younger Dionysos and in his teacher the wise Silenus, we have to do with individualities who have been of immense importance for the education of modern human consciousness. Thus when we cast about to find the individualities in the spiritual environment who—both for our own as well as for Greek consciousness—were and are momentous for what man has become, we find these two, Dionysos and the wise Silenus. These individualities are there in prehistoric times into which no history, no epic, goes back, but of which nevertheless the later history of the Greeks tells us, particularly in the epic tradition of its sagas and its myths. In these times both the wise Silenus and Dionysos were incarnated in physical bodies, performed physical deeds and died, as their bodies had to do. The individualities remained.

Now you know of course that in human history very much happens which is highly surprising to the man who only thinks abstractly; this is especially the case as regards the incarnation of human and other beings. Sometimes a later incarnation, although more advanced, may from the outside seem less perfect than an earlier one. In my second Rosicrucian Mystery Play, in the incarnation of the monk in the Middle Ages (Maria in modern times), I have been able to give just a very faint idea of the spiritual realities. Thus in history too the abstract thinker must sometimes be overcome with astonishment when he contemplates two successive incarnations, or at any rate incarnations which belong together. The younger Dionysos, who, I told you, allowed his soul to be poured out into external culture was nevertheless able at a specific time to gather himself together again as a soul in a single physical human body; he was born again, incarnated among men; but in such a way that he did not keep his old form but added to his outer physical form something of what had constituted his spirit-form in the Dionysian Mysteries. Both the younger Dionysos and his teacher, the wise Silenus, were reincarnated in historical times. Those initiated in the Mystery-wisdom of ancient Greece were fully conscious that these two had been born again; so were the Greek artists, who were stimulated and inspired by the Initiates.

Little by little such things have to be told if Spiritual Science is not to stop at platitudes, if it is to enter into the reality. Things which are true have to be told for the sake of the further evolution of humanity. The wise old teacher of Dionysos was born again, and in his further incarnation was none other than Socrates. Socrates is the reincarnation of old Silenus, he is the reincarnated teacher of Dionysos. And Dionysos himself, that reincarnated being in whom verily lived the soul of Dionysos of old, was Plato. One only realises the profound meaning of Greek history if one enters into what was known—not of course to the writers of external history—but to the Initiates who have handed down the tradition from generation to generation right up to today—knowledge which can also be found in the Akasha Chronicle. Spiritual Science can once more proclaim that Greece in its early period harboured the teacher of humanity whom it sent over to Asia in the journey conducted by Dionysos, whose teacher was Silenus. What Dionysos and the wise Silenus were able to do for Greece was renewed in a manner suited to a later age by Socrates and Plato. In the very time when the Mysteries were falling into decay, in the very time in which there were no more Initiates who could still see the younger Dionysos clairvoyantly in the holy Mysteries, that same Dionysos emerged as the pupil of the wise Silenus, he who had himself become Socrates—emerged as Plato, the second great teacher of Greece, the true successor of Dionysos.

One only recognises the meaning of Greek spiritual culture in the sense of ancient Greek Mystery-wisdom when one knows that the old Dionysian culture experienced a revival in Plato. And we admire Platonism in quite another way, we relate ourselves to it in its true stature when we know that in Plato there dwelt the soul of the younger Dionysos.

• 1. dichten = to compose, as author or a poet, to make literature; dicht = thick. In Ahriman's speech in Scene 4, he says: ‘Ich wirke diese Schönheit in dichtem Licht’—translated in the English version as ‘which charm I weave for thee in light condensed’.
• 2. Part II Act 2. Laboratory Scene. Spoken by Homunculus.
• 3. The Soul's Probation, Scene I.