The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Interchanging activity of Thoth-Hermes and Moses, as reflection of a cosmic process. The secret of the Hebrew people. Human thought the reflection of divine vision. The power of ancient clairvoyance passes into the inner organization of man. The law of numbers in respect of heredity in the sequence of generations

Before passing on to our main theme, I should like to make a slight addition to something mentioned yesterday. This was, that when human evolution, especially the most important events in our existence, are described, this can best be done in a language drawn from cosmic events. I showed how impossible it was to clothe these mighty mysteries in ordinary words, or to give any clear idea of the wonderful interchanging activities of Hermes or Thoth and Moses, the two great pupils of Zarathustra. We represent them best when we treat them as a repetition of cosmic events, accepting them altogether in the sense of Occult Science

Let us glance back in thought to the separation of the earth from its sun, after which each pursued its further life in the cosmos with an independent centre. In a primeval past the whole substance of earth and sun may be pictured as forming one whole, one great cosmic body, which later divided into sun and earth. Parallel to this, other cosmic events took place, namely, the separation of the other planets of our solar system. These need not be considered here; for our present purpose it is sufficient to consider such a separation as the Sun forming the one centre, and the Earth the other.

In those remote times, it must be remembered, the earth still contained the substance of the present moon, so that really the sun and the earth-moon confronted one another. All the spiritual and physical forces that had existed as one heavenly body were now divided—the coarser elements, the denser, grosser activities, remaining with the earth, the finer, more spiritually-etheric ones, going out with the sun. It must be realized that for long ages the earth and sun continued each to develop its separate life, and that what streamed from the sun towards the earth was quite different from what comes from it to-day. There was at first a kind of earthly existence and earthly life of an inward nature, secluded, contracted, and receiving little from the life of the sun—little of that which spiritually (though expressed physically) streams from the sun to the earth to-day. The earth, in this first period of the separation between sun and earth, experienced a drying-up, hardening, mummifying process. If this had continued, if the earth had retained the moon within it, the human life of to-day would never have evolved. As long as the earth contained the moon within it, the life of the sun could not fully manifest its activities. This it could only do later when the earth had parted with the moon and its substance, and the spiritual moon-beings. But something else was bound up with the separation of moon and earth.

We must clearly realize that life on the earth has evolved very slowly and gradually. The stages of this evolution are described in Occult Science: first, the existence of ancient Saturn, then that of the ancient Sun, followed by that of the ancient Moon, and lastly that of the Earth. What has just been described as the separation of the sun from the earth or the earlier union of sun and earth was preceded by all these other evolutionary states which were of a quite different kind. When the earth first came into existence in its present form, it still had united with it the substances of all the planets of our solar system, these only differentiated from the earth later, which differentiation was the result of forces active during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods of existence.

Now we know that during the ancient Saturn existence, matter or substance, as it is to-day, did not exist; neither solid bodies, fluid, nor watery bodies, misty, nor even gaseous nor atmospheric bodies, existed on Saturn. In its whole composition Saturn consisted merely of warmth it was nothing but differentiated warmth. Saturn had a body of heat, and everything that developed upon it was within this element of warmth. It is hardly necessary to repeat that such a statement is not made without recognition of the attitude of modern physics, which regards the existence of a body consisting solely of heat as an impossibility. Heat to modern physics is a condition, not a substance but our concern here is not with modern physics, but with truth.

Evolution continued from the heat body of the Saturn-evolution, and passed on to the next state, that of the ancient Sun. As described in my book, Occult Science, the heat body now in part condensed to the gaseous vapoury condition found on ancient Sun, and a part of it became more rarefied, evolving upwards towards light, where there was not only a process of condensation but one of rarefication. Passing on from the condition of ancient Saturn to that of the ancient Sun, we find a globe containing air, heat, and light. At the next stage, that of the ancient Moon, a further densification took place, and a further rarefication, a densification, on one hand, to water, and a rarefication, on the other, to sound-ether or chemical-ether.

This sound-ether is not what we are aware of in physical sound, which is but its reflection. Sound-ether is known to clairvoyant perception as the harmony of the spheres, the etheric tone which lives within and permeates all space. It is something much more spiritual, more etheric, than ordinary sound.

From the condition of ancient Moon, evolution passed on to that of the earth. Here condensation to solid matter took place for the first time, and also a corresponding rise to life-ether. So on the earth there was now warmth, gaseous or atmospheric bodies, watery or fluid bodies, and solid bodies; and on the other hand light-ether, sound-ether, and life-ether. All this has come to pass in the evolution of the earth. While on Saturn there was but one condition—the middle one, that of warmth—on the earth there are seven elemental conditions.

We must picture the earth as living and weaving within these seven conditions of elemental life when at the beginning of its present existence it emerged from cosmic night, wherein it was still one with the sun and the other planets. With its separation from the sun, something very remarkable took place.

Among the influences and conditions streaming to-day from the sun to the earth, and affecting external life, we certainly find heat and light, but among these influences which belong to the world of sense-perception, the externalization and manifestation of sound-ether and life-ether do not belong. This is also the reason why the activities of sound-ether are only manifested in the chemical combinations of material existence. What we call the forces of life-ether streaming down as they do from the sun, cannot be perceived directly by sense perception, that is, by the means employed by man to distinguish between light and darkness. Life is perceived by him in its results, in living beings; he cannot see the downward streaming life-ether directly. Hence science is forced to state that life, as such, remains a riddle.

So we find that the two highest etheric manifestations, life-ether and sound-ether, though proceeding directly from the finest substances of the sun, are not directly perceptible on earth. We have here something which, though proceeding from the sun, is hidden from ordinary perception. Yet, even under present conditions, there is something corresponding to what lives in sound and life-ether; something in man's inner being that is perceptible. Though the direct effects of these life-ethers and sphere harmonies are not seen, what is at work on the whole constitution of man is perceptible.

This can be explained most simply by referring to man's evolution on earth. It is known to Spiritual Science that in ancient times, down to the Atlantean age, man was gifted with direct clairvoyance, and beheld not merely the world of the senses, but also the whole spiritual background of physical existence. This was possible because for the man of those times there was an intermediate condition between our present-day waking consciousness and our sleeping consciousness. When awake, man perceives the physical world of the senses when asleep, nothing is perceptible—at least to the majority. Man then merely lives. But the spiritual investigator makes strange discoveries about the life of man during sleep, discoveries especially strange to those who only regard life externally. During sleep the astral body and ego of man are outside his physical and etheric bodies, but these should not be pictured as resembling a nebulous cloud floating near the physical body. That which is compared to a ‘cloud’ and is apparent to lower astral clairvoyance, and is sometimes called the ‘astral body,’ is merely the coarsest, first beginnings of what is revealed of a human being during sleep. If this cloud is accepted as the whole of what can be seen, then it is certainly viewed from the lowest form of astral clairvoyance. The reality of man's being during sleep extends to far distances. The fact is that at the moment of falling asleep, the inner forces in the astral body and ego begin to expand over the whole solar system; they become part of the solar system. From the whole of this solar system the man draws into his astral body and ego during sleep, forces for the strengthening of his life and on awakening, when he again passes within the confines of his own physical body, he bears with him what he has absorbed during the night from the solar system.

It was because of this that mediaeval occultists named this spiritual body of man, the astral body; for it is associated with the world of the stars whence it draws its forces. So we can say that during the night man is actually extended over the whole solar system.

What is it that permeates our astral body while we sleep? It is the music of the spheres. The sphere-harmonies live and move within the human astral body when at night man is outside his physical and etheric sheaths; harmony which otherwise can only be found in the sound-ether. As a metal disc, on which sand has been scattered, responds to the vibrations in the air when it is struck by a violin bow, disclosing in the sand what are known as the Chiadnic sound-forms, so man trembles and pulsates nightly in response to the sphere-harmonies, which bring form and order into what, through his sense-perceptions, he has brought into disorder during the day. And that which lives in the life-ether is also active in man during sleep, but he is quite unaware of this inner life of his sheaths when separated from his physical and etheric bodies. Normally he is only conscious when he plunges down again into his two lower sheaths, and can use the external organs of his etheric body for thought, and those of his physical body for sense-perception.

But in ancient times there were intermediate conditions between waking and sleeping which can only be induced to-day by abnormal means; and these ought never to be employed in ordinary life, for they are fraught with danger. In Atlantis these intermediate conditions of perception were evolved normally. Through them man was able to place himself within that which lived and moved in the harmony of the spheres and the life-ether. In other words, the man of ancient times, through his clairvoyance, could perceive the harmony of the spheres streaming to him from the sun, and life as it pulsates through space, even though the sphere-harmonies were only manifest in the earthly effects and life was only perceptible in living beings. The possibility of this experience gradually diminished. With the closing of the door on the old clairvoyance, these revelations disappeared, but something else appeared in their place—the capacity for inner knowledge and the inner powers of understanding. All that in waking life is called contemplation and the thought connected with sense-perception—the whole of the individual inner life—began to evolve with the disappearance of clairvoyance. The inner life of to-day, our feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and ideas, which are fundamentally the origin of all that is creative in our civilization, were not yet possessed in the earliest Atlantean times. Man lived in the intermediate states between sleeping and waking, poured out into a spiritual world, and the sense-world he beheld as in a mist; he lived entirely without the power of human understanding, or any inner reflected images of external life.

With the gradual disappearance of the old clairvoyance, external life came more and more into prominence. Slowly something developed in man's nature that was a feeble reflection of the harmony of the spheres and the activities of the life-ether. In the same measure as man became inwardly aware of feelings and perceptions reflecting the outer world and forming his inner life as it is to-day, the music of the spheres sounded ever more faintly to him. As his realization of himself, of his ego-hood became clearer, his perception of the divine life-ether filling all space became fainter. Present conditions had to be paid for by the loss of a certain part of what had been man's outer life. As earthly being he felt life enclosed within himself, he ceased to feel it streaming to him from the sun; and in his inner life there remains to-day but a faint reflection of that mighty cosmic life, of sphere-harmony and life-ether.

What gradually evolved as human understanding was like a recapitulation of the earth's evolution. When separated from the sun, the earth would have become enclosed within itself and hard, had it retained all the substances left within it. The influences of the sun could not penetrate at first into the development of the earth they failed to do so until the moon had separated from it. In ‘Moon’ we must recognize those rejected substances that made it impossible for the earth to receive the direct influences of the sun. By ejecting the moon, the earth really opened her whole nature and being for the first time to the influences of the sun, from which she had been parted. She sent part of her being back towards the sun, in the opposite direction to that from which she had herself gone forth from it, and this part—the moon—reflects back the sun-nature to the earth as outwardly it reflects its light.

The separation of the moon from the earth must be regarded as an event of the greatest importance; it was a voluntary opening of the earth to the influences of the sun. This cosmic event had now to be enacted again in the life of humanity. A long time after the earth had thus opened herself to the reception of the sun-forces, the moment arrived when man himself had to be cut off from these forces.

By means of their clairvoyance, the direct solar influences could still be perceived by the Atlanteans; but just as at a certain stage in its evolution the earth began to harden, so a time came when man withdrew within himself and began to develop an inner life of his own. Like the earth, he became unable to open himself to the direct influences of the sun. The process of developing an inner life by ceasing to be susceptible to solar influences, and only of developing in himself what was a faint reflection of the activities of the life-ether and sound-ether, continued for long into post-Atlantean times. Direct perception of the solar forces, which was characteristic of the early Atlanteans was eventually lost. As the effects of these forces could no longer penetrate to the consciousness of mankind, his inward life continued blossoming more and more. Then came the time when it was only in the Mysteries that man's spiritual powers could be developed. There, by means of Yoga, a pupil of the Mysteries could be withdrawn from earthly conditions and made directly aware of the solar influences. Therefore, during the second half of the Atlantean period what were rightly called ‘Oracles’ appeared. They were places where a class of people, who no longer perceived the activities of the higher ethers normally, were received as pupils and trained, in sacred wisdom. Here, through training, they learnt to suppress mere sense-perceptions and to become conscious of the revelations of the sound-ether and life-ether. The power to do this was preserved in the true centres of occult science. Indeed, the possibility of this endured so powerfully that even external science, without understanding it, still retains a tradition from the school of Pythagoras that one can hear the harmony of the spheres. Science, ignorant however of what the true ‘Harmony of the Spheres’ was, has changed it into a mere abstract idea. The pupils of Pythagoras understood as the power to perceive the harmony of the spheres, the actual reopening of a man's being to the tone-ether and the divine life-ether.

Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, was the first who taught in the most sublime way that behind the activities of the sun streaming to the earth as light and warmth, there was something else, something which as the activity of sound-ether and life-ether is feebly reflected in the inner life of man. Were we to translate his teaching into modern words, it might read: ‘When you look up to the sun you are aware of its beneficial warmth and light flowing down to earth; but when you have evolved higher organs, when you have developed spiritual perception, you will behold the Being of the sun Who lives behind the physical sun. You will then perceive the activities of sound, and within these the meaning of life!’ This, the first thing of a spiritual nature to be perceived behind the physical activity of the sun, was described by Zarathustra to his pupils as Ormuzd, or Ahura Mazdao, the mighty aura of the sun.

Therefore Ahura Mazdao is sometimes translated as ‘The Great Wisdom,’ to distinguish it from the little wisdom evolved by men to-day. Man perceives ‘The Great Wisdom’ when he perceives the spiritual being of the sun, the great sun aura.

‘The sun-orb sings, in emulation,
‘Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round:
His path predestined through Creation,
He ends with step of thunder-sound.’

FAUST—Prologue in Heaven.

In these words a poet, gazing back into the ancient days of human evolution, refers to what is a fact to the spiritual investigator. But the ‘resounding’ of the sun is to some people not a fact but a pleasing fancy, a poetic licence. They do not realize what a poet, in the sense in which Goethe was a poet, really is. He describes reality when he says, ‘The sun-orb sings his ancient round,’ that is, as ancient humanity heard it, and as it still sounds to-day for those who are initiates. Truths such as these were given by Zarathustra to his pupils, and above all to his two most intimate disciples, those who later incarnated as Hermes and Moses. But to each he gave a separate and different instruction concerning the sun aura. Hermes was instructed in a way that led him to remain within the influence that emanated directly from the sun: Moses was inspired so that he retained the secret of the sun-wisdom as in a memory.

If, in accordance with occult science, we picture the earth after her separation from the sun and the moon, and see her opening her being to greet the sun, we have in Venus and Mercury that which stands in between the sun and the earth. If we now divide the whole space between the sun and the earth into three parts, we might say: The earth parted from the sun; she then thrust out from her the moon towards the sun, then Venus and Mercury separated from the sun and came towards the earth. We have to see therefore in Venus and Mercury, something which approaches the earth from the sun, and in the moon, something that approaches the sun from the earth.

The conditions of human evolution are thus seen to resemble the conditions of cosmic relationships; they reflect them as in a mirror. If we regard the teaching of Zarathustra as ‘sun-wisdom,’ which he imparted, on one side to Hermes, and on the other to Moses, then because Hermes had received the astral sheath of Zarathustra, the wisdom which dwelt in him may be likened to the streaming out of the sun-wisdom; while the wisdom that lived in Moses was, as it were, cut off, like a separate planet of wisdom, and had to go through a further development before it could receive those outpourings coming directly from the sun.

Just as with the moon's departure the forces of the earth opened to receive those coming from the sun, so the wisdom of Moses opened to receive the direct sun-wisdom as it streamed from Zarathustra. These two, the earth-wisdom of Moses, and the sun-wisdom of Zarathustra as given to Hermes, met in Egypt; where the teaching of Moses came into contact with that of Hermes. The wisdom developed by Moses, which he acquired through being separated from Zarathustra, might be compared with the throwing-off of the moon-substance by the earth. The wisdom he imparted to his people can also be called the wisdom of Jahve or Jehovah, for when rightly understood this name is like a resumé of the whole Moses-wisdom. Accepted in this sense you can understand why, according to ancient tradition, Jehovah is called the Moon Deity. This fact is to be found in many records, but is only comprehensible when we begin to realize these far-reaching connections.

As the earth thrust what it contained within it as moon, towards the sun, so the earth-wisdom of Moses had to go out to meet that of Hermes, who possessed in his astral sheath the direct wisdom of Zarathustra, and afterwards had to carry on its own evolution.

It has already been explained how after the meeting with Hermes, Mosaic wisdom continued to develop up to the time of David, and how a revised form of Hermetic or Mercury-wisdom appeared in the kingly warrior and divine singer of the Hebrew people. And we have seen how once more the content of the teaching of Moses came in touch with the sun-element during the Babylonian captivity when the reincarnated Zarathustra or Nazarathos taught the initiates among the Hebrews.

So in the course of the development of the wisdom of Moses we have to see a repetition of cosmic events; the separation of the earth from the sun and all its subsequent development. Such correspondences were regarded with deep veneration and awe by the wise men of the Hebrew race, and by all, who had understanding. They felt something like a direct revelation streaming towards them from cosmic spaces and cosmic life. To them, a personality such as Moses seemed like a messenger from the cosmic powers themselves. They felt him to be this, and as such he must be regarded by us if we would rightly understand these ancient times, otherwise it all remains an empty abstraction.

It was supremely important that the wisdom of Zarathustra, which had developed through Hermes and Moses, should evolve further and afterwards appear at a higher stage and in another form. In order that this might come to pass, Zarathustra, the individuality who had already offered up his astral and etheric bodies, had himself to appear again in a physical body, so that this might also be sacrificed. What he thus experienced was an ascent, a beautiful ascending progress. First, in very ancient times, Zarathustra lived in his own being and gave the impulse to post-Atlantean civilization in ancient Persia and Iran; he then sacrificed his astral body so that through Hermes the next civilization might be established, and to Moses he bequeathed his etheric body. These two sheaths he had already sacrificed. An opportunity for the sacrifice of his physical body had yet to come, for the great mystery of human evolution demanded that one individual should sacrifice his three bodies. The sacrifice of the physical body required special preparation, and to this end the physical body of Zarathustra had to be specially prepared.

I showed in the last lecture how, through the peculiar life of the Hebrew people, this special physical body had been in preparation for many generations. This was then offered up by Zarathustra as his third great sacrifice. In order that this could happen it was necessary that all the force formerly employed by the Hebrew people for direct spiritual perception, the forces that had fallen into decadence among the Turanian peoples, should be turned inwards and become inwardly constructive. This is the secret of the Hebrew people. While among the Turanians the ancient forces, lingering as an heirloom, served to prepare external organs of clairvoyance, in the Hebrews they turned inwards and organized their inner physical nature, so that this people was chosen to perceive and feel inwardly what in Atlantean times had been seen behind the different objects of the sense-world. Jehovah, as he was consciously named by the Hebrews, focussed to a single point, was the ‘Great Spirit’ who was seen by an earlier clairvoyance, behind all things and all beings. I also showed how the progenitor of the Hebrew people—as Father of the race—had been endowed with this inner organization in a very special way.

I have often remarked, and may well repeat it again, that myths and legends, telling in a pictorial way of long-ago events, come nearer the truth than many results of modern anthropological investigations which piece together tales of the origin of the world drawn from recent excavations and fragmentary remains. For the most part ancient legends are corroborated by the facts of Spiritual Science. I say, ‘for the most part,’ for I have not investigated them all, though the content of all really old legends is probably true. Research into the origin of the Hebrew people leads us, not to the conjectures of modern anthropological research, but to an original progenitor, to the Father of the Hebrew race mentioned in the Bible. Abram, or Abraham, is a real figure, and what the Talmud legends relate of him is true. We are told in these legends that the father of Abraham was a captain in the service of that legendary but real person, described in the Bible as Nimrod. To Nimrod it was foretold, by those who could read the signs of the times in dreams, that the son of his captain would dethrone many kings and rulers. Nimrod was afraid when he heard this, and ordered that his captain's son should be killed. After presenting another man's child, not his own, to Nimrod, the father of Abraham fled; his own child was reared in a cave. Occult investigation confirms this legend; it contains the truth. It indicates that Abraham was actually the first to turn inward the powers formerly used in external clairvoyance and transform them into organizing forces which led to an inward consciousness of God. This reversal of the whole sum of forces is indicated in the legend which tells that during the three years the child dwelt in the cave it sucked milk, by the grace of God, from the fingers of its own right hand. This self.. nourishment, this turning inwards of the forces formerly used in ancient clairvoyance, and the employment of them for organizing man inwardly, is explained to us wonderfully in the story of Abraham, the ancestor of the Hebrew people. Such legends, when experienced profoundly, have a powerful effect, making us realize that the ancient teachers of mankind could communicate true wisdom in no other way than by images. Such images were able to give rise, if not to a consciousness, yet to a feeling, for these mighty events, and this was sufficient for those ancient times.

Abraham was thus the first to develop the inward reflection of divine wisdom, of divine perception in a truly human way, as human thoughts concerning the Godhead. Abram, or Abraham as he was called later, had actually a different physical organization from other men living at that time. This is always insisted upon by occult investigation. The men around him were neither capable of nor organized for forming thoughts inwardly, by means of a special instrument. They could form thoughts when free of the body, through the forces of their developed etheric bodies, but they had no instrument for the formation of thoughts within the physical body. Abraham was the first to develop such an instrument; hence he is not wrongly called the inventor of arithmetic—though this statement must naturally be taken cum grano salis—as arithmetic is pre-eminently the science of physical thought. Arithmetic, on account of its inner certainty, approaches closely to clairvoyant knowledge; but it is dependent upon a physical organ.

Thus we have here a deep inward connection between the external forces, employed until then for the purpose of clairvoyance, and those now employed by an inner organ, for thought. This is what is referred to when Abraham is described as the inventor of arithmetic. He must be regarded as the man in whom the physical organ of thought was first implanted, that organ by which man was able to raise himself through his physical thinking to the contemplation of divinity. Before this time men could only learn of God and of divine existence through clairvoyance. In order that they might rise in thought to the divine, a physical instrument was necessary, and this organ was implanted for the first time in Abraham. The fact that thoughts had now to be apprehended through a physical organ, meant that the whole relationship of these thoughts concerning divinity to the objective world, and to the subjective nature of man, was completely changed.

Formerly, thoughts concerning God were conceived in the divine wisdom of the Mystery Schools, and from there were passed on to others able to receive them, that is, to those who had been freed from the organs of the physical body and rendered capable of etheric perception. There is but one way of passing on a physical instrument from one to another: through physical descent. In order that a physical organ of such importance as that possessed by Abraham could be preserved, it had to be propagated through physical inheritance from one generation to another. It can be easily realized why the handing down of this physical attribute through the blood of the race mattered so much to the Hebrew people. The organ, that in the first place had been shaped and crystallized in Abraham for the comprehension of divinity, had to be established. As it was handed down from generation to generation, it entered ever more deeply into human nature, and it grasped this the more deeply, the more it was inherited. For a physical organ can only be perfected when through inheritance it is passed on from one generation to another.

If he whom we have learnt to know as Zarathustra was to have the most perfect body possible (and this means a body with a physical organ capable of becoming an instrument for the conceiving of thoughts of God), the physical instrument implanted in Abraham had to be brought to the highest degree of perfection. It had to be so fully established and developed inwardly through inheritance that a fitting instrument could be evolved for Zarathustra. The development of such a perfect physical body through inheritance, inevitably meant the perfection not only of one but of the other sheaths as well, the etheric and the astral sheaths. They too had to be perfected through inheritance.

Now there is a certain fixed law in evolution which has often been described. From birth to his seventh year is a very special time in the development of man—in it he develops his physical body; from the seventh to the fourteenth–fifteenth, his etheric; and from then to the twenty-first—twenty-second year, his astral body. The evolution of the individual man is expressed in a law that is governed by the number seven. A similar law exists for the evolution of humanity as a whole, and affects the outer sheaths of men as they pass from one generation to another. The more profound working of this law will be considered later.

Whereas the individual man undergoes a stage of evolution every seven years and as the physical body becomes more perfect during the first seven years, so the whole structure of the physical body improves throughout the generations until the seventh generation, when it attains a certain state of perfection. But qualities are not transmitted directly from a man to his next descendant inheritance does not work in this way, but from father to grandson. Important qualities do not pass directly from father to son, or mother to daughter, but to the second generation, then to the fourth, and so on. Inheritance is of necessity connected with the number seven, but as every other generation is missed, it is really the number fourteen that has to be considered. It was only after fourteen generations that the physical qualities implanted in Abraham could reach perfection.

If the etheric and astral bodies were to be associated with this advance, their evolution had also to continue through seven, or rather, fourteen generations, in the same way as the etheric and astral bodies of the single individual evolves from the seventh to the fourteenth year, and from the fourteenth to the twenty-first. This means, therefore, that the physical organization which had been implanted in Abraham, the father of the race, had to pass through three times seven (or rather three times fourteen) generations, for not until then could it completely lay hold of the physical, etheric and astral bodies. After forty-two generations it was possible for a man to have developed perfectly in his physical, etheric and astral bodies, the aptitude first received by Abraham. Only such a body as this would be suitable for Zarathustra. This is the fact given out by the writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew. In his table of descent, he points expressly to this by enumerating fourteen generations from Abaham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian captivity, and fourteen from the captivity to Christ. During this long period the mission of the Hebrews, which began with Abraham, reached full development; by then it had been indelibly impressed on the different principles of the people of the race, so that from them a body meet for Zarathustra could be found in an age when something entirely new was to be revealed to men.

From such profound depths as these the Gospel of Matthew has its beginning—depths that can only be realized when they are understood. We must recognize that in the story of these three times fourteen generations we are shown that in the body inherited from Joseph by Jesus of Nazareth there dwelt the essence of what in its first beginnings existed in Abraham; that this essence then spread from him through the whole Hebrew people, and was then concentrated in a single instrument—in a single sheath. This was the sheath for Zarathustra, in which the Christ could incarnate.

The last lecture began by speaking of the distinctive character of St. Mark's Gospel. It became clear that here, almost more than in the other Gospels, we can find in indications drawn from the deepest Christian mysteries, an opportunity to penetrate into many profound secrets and laws of the evolution of Man and of the Cosmos.

I had originally thought that during the winter it would be possible to make important and intimate references to matters of which we have not yet heard in our Movement, or perhaps better said, to matters at spiritual levels we have not yet reached. But we shall have to abandon this original plan for the simple reason that the Berlin Group has grown in numbers so astonishingly in recent weeks that it would now not be possible to make everything properly intelligible. We take it for granted that in mathematics and science some grounding is necessary if we want to reach a certain grade; and the same holds good to an even greater extent in the case of Spiritual Science. Later on, therefore, we shall have to consider how to present the parts of St. Mark's Gospel which are not suitable subjects for so large a Group.

In any attempt to understand a text such as that of the Gospel of St. Mark we must keep clearly in mind the factors which have influenced the evolution of humanity. I have always emphasised as a very general, abstract truth, that in all ages there have been certain leading figures among men who, because they were connected in some way with the Mysteries and with the spiritual, supersensible worlds, were in a position to implant into evolution certain impulses for its further progress. Now there are two main and fundamental ways in which a man can establish relationship with the supersensible worlds. One of these ways can be illustrated by the case of Zarathustra, the great Leader of mankind of whom I shall shortly be speaking in a lecture for the public. The other way in which such Leaders of men establish relationship with the spiritual worlds can be envisaged if we think of the characteristic features of the path followed by the great Buddha. These two outstanding figures differ widely in the whole manner of their work and activity.

What Buddha and Buddhism call contemplation or meditation ‘under the Bodhi tree’—a symbolic expression for a certain mystical deepening of Buddha's consciousness—is a path by which the human Ego can penetrate into its own, inmost being. This path, opened up in so glorious a way by the Buddha, is a descent of the ‘I’ into the depths, into the abyss, of its own nature.

You will get a clearer idea of what this means if you remember that we have followed the evolution of man through four stages. Three of these stages have been concluded and we are living now in the fourth. The first three evolutionary periods were those of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon, the fourth being that of the Earth proper. In the first three periods man's physical, etheric and astral bodies were brought into existence and in the present stage of Earth-evolution his ‘I’, or Ego, is developing as an integral member of his constitution. We have described the human being from various points of view as an ‘I’ enveloped in three sheaths—the astral sheath, the etheric sheath and the physical sheath, deriving respectively from the three previous evolutionary periods of Old Moon, Old Sun and Old Saturn.

At his normal stage of development to-day man has no consciousness of his astral, etheric or physical bodies. You will naturally insist that he is certainly conscious of his physical body. But that is not so. For what is normally regarded as man's physical body is an illusion, a maya. What is taken to be the physical body is the product of the interworking of the four members of man's constitution: physical, etheric and astral bodies, and the ‘I’. As the product of this interworking the physical body is visible to the eyes and can be touched by the hands. If you want to see the physical body as it really is, you must isolate it, as in a chemical analysis, by separating off and disregarding the ‘I’ and the astral and etheric bodies. But present conditions of earthly existence make this impossible. Although you may think that it happens whenever a man dies, this is not correct. What a man leaves behind at death is not his physical body, but a corpse. The physical body could not exist under the laws which come into operation after death has taken place for these laws do not properly belong to it; they belong to the external world. If you follow these thoughts through to their conclusion you will have to agree that what is usually called man's physical body is the complex of laws by which the physical body is created within our mineral world, just as their own laws of crystallisation create, let us say, quartz or emerald.

The physical body of man functions as an organism in the mineral-physical world and this is the sense in which it is always spoken of in Spiritual Science. What we know of the world to-day is nothing but the result of what the senses perceive, and such perception is only possible in an organism in which there is an Ego, an ‘I’. The superficial methods of observation now in vogue presume that an animal, for example, perceives the external world exactly as man perceives it through his senses. But this is a misguided view and people would be much astonished if—as will inevitably happen one day—they were shown how a horse, or a dog, or some other animal, pictures the world. If a picture were painted of the environment as perceived by a dog or a horse it would be very different from a man's picture of the world. We could not perceive the world as we do if the ‘I’ did not pour itself over the surrounding world, filling the sense-organs—the eyes, the ears, and so on. Only an organism in which an ‘I’ is present can perceive the world as man perceives it, and the outer human organism is itself an integral part of this picture. We must therefore conclude that what is usually called the physical body of man is only a result of our sense-observation, not the reality.

When we speak of physical man and of the physical world around him it is the ‘I’ that is viewing the world, with the help of the senses and the brain-bound mind. Hence man knows only that over which his ‘I’ extends, that which belongs to his ‘I’. As soon as the ‘I’ cannot be present there is no longer any perception of the world-picture—in other words, man falls asleep. There is no picture of the world around him and he loses consciousness.

Wherever you look, your ‘I’ is bound up at every point with what you are perceiving; it is poured over the perception so that in reality you can know only the content of your ‘I’. A normal man of modern times is aware of the content of his ‘I’ but he is not aware of his astral, etheric and physical bodies into which he penetrates every morning, for when he wakes he has no perception of his astral body. He would indeed be horrified if he had, for his astral body displays the sum-total of all the urges, desires and passions accumulated in the course of successive lives on Earth. Nor does he perceive his etheric body—there again he could not endure the sight. When he penetrates into his own intrinsic nature—into his physical, etheric and astral bodies—his attention is at once deflected to the external world; and there he sees what beneficent Divine Beings spread over the surface of his vision in order to safeguard him from descending into the core of his inner nature—an experience which he could not endure.

Therefore when we speak of this in terms of Spiritual Science, we rightly say that the moment a man wakes in the morning he passes through the portal of his own being. But at this portal stands a Watcher, the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold, who does not allow him to penetrate into his own being but diverts him immediately to the external world. Every morning a man meets this Lesser Guardian. Knowledge of him comes to anyone who, on waking, consciously passes into his astral, etheric and physical sheaths. And in the mystical life it is only a question of whether this Lesser Guardian benevolently dims our consciousness of our own inner being so that we cannot descend into it, diverting our ’I’ to the environment, or whether he allows us to enter through the portal into our own nature and being. The mystical life consists essentially in passing the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold and entering into our inmost self.

In the case of the great Buddha, what is described symbolically as ‘sitting under the Bodhi tree’ is nothing else than this descent into the inner core of being through the portal that is otherwise closed. Buddhism describes what the Buddha had to experience in order to complete this descent. The narratives are not mere legends but presentations of deeply felt truths, profound realities experienced by the soul.

The experiences encountered by the Buddha in descending into his inmost nature are described as his ‘temptations’. In his account of these temptations Buddha speaks of beings—even those he loves—who draw near to him the moment he attempts the mystical descent; they urge him to some particular activity, for instance, to practise exercises which would lead him astray. We are told that the figure of the mother of Buddha appears to his spiritual vision and urges him to practise a false kind of asceticism. It was not, of course, his real mother; indeed his temptation consisted precisely in the fact that at the first stage of his developing vision, what appeared to him was an illusion, a mask. Buddha resisted this temptation and then a host of demonic figures appeared, who are described as the cravings one experiences in hunger and thirst or as passions, urges, pride, arrogance, vanity, ambition. All these forms confront him—but how? They still lurked in his astral body, in his astral sheath, but in his stronger moments, as he sat in meditation ‘under the Bodhi tree’, he had already overcome them. This temptation of the Buddha shows us in a wonderful way how all the forces and powers of our astral body produce their effect because through the downward trend of evolution in our successive incarnations, we have steadily deteriorated. In spite of the sublime height to which he had risen, the Buddha still saw the demons which tempt the astral body and at the final stage of attainment he had perforce to conquer them.

When a man descends through the region of the astral body, through temptations, into the physical and etheric bodies—when, that is to say, he really gets to know these two members of human nature, what does he find? Our attention must here be called to experiences connected with the descent. In the course of his incarnations on the Earth, man has been able to do severe damage to his astral body, but less damage has been caused to his etheric and physical bodies. The astral body is injured by all lower urges, by every form of egoism in human nature—envy, hatred, selfishness, arrogance, pride, and so on. A normal man of to-day cannot do much more in the way of injury to the etheric body than through lying or at most through unconscious error. But even so, only a part of the etheric body can sustain injury. A certain part of the etheric body is so strong that however hard a man might try to injure it, he would be unable to do so; it would always resist. Through his individual powers a man cannot descend deeply enough into his own nature to be able to injure the etheric or the physical body. It is only in the course of repeated incarnations that the faults for which he is directly responsible have an effect upon these bodies and then they appear as illnesses, defects and dispositions to illness in the physical body. But a man cannot work directly from his individuality upon his physical body. A cut finger or a bodily infection is not the result of any activity of the soul. In the course of his incarnations man has become capable of working upon the astral body and part of the etheric body; but upon his physical body he can work indirectly only, never directly.

Hence we can say that when a man descends into the region of the etheric body upon which he still has some direct influence, everything that is part of him from his successive incarnations becomes manifest. By sinking into the depths of his own being, a man finds the way to his incarnations in the near or more distant past. And when the descent is as intense and complete as it was in the case of the great Buddha, this vision of the incarnations extends farther and farther.

Man was originally a wholly spiritual being. In course of time sheaths gathered around this spiritual being. Man was born out of the spirit, of which everything external is a condensation. Hence through penetrating into his own being he finds the way to the spirit of the universe. This descent into the sheaths enfolding the physical body is a path leading to the spiritual texture of the universe, enabling man to see how the physical has been built up in the course of his incarnations. And when he can go far enough back into the past, to the times when with his primitive clairvoyance he was in a certain respect one with the spiritual world, he then had direct vision of that world.

In tradition—which again is not merely legendary—we learn of the stages reached by the Buddha as he penetrated through his own being. Of these stages he himself says: When I had attained the stage of Illumination—that is to say, when he could feel part of the spiritual world—I beheld that world outspread before me like a cloud; but as yet I could distinguish nothing in it, for I was not yet perfect. I advanced a step further and then not only could I see the spiritual world outspread like a cloud but I could distinguish particular forms. But still I could not see what the forms actually were, for I was not yet perfect. Again I ascended a step and now not only could I distinguish the spiritual Beings but I could also recognise what order of Beings they were.—This process continued until the Buddha beheld his own archetype which had passed down from incarnation to incarnation, and could see its true relationship with the spiritual world.

This is the one way, the mystical way; it is the descent through a man's own nature and being to the point where the bounds beyond which lies the spiritual world are broken through. It is by following this path that certain leading Individualities acquire the powers they need in order to give an impetus to the evolution of humanity.

Very different is the path by which men such as the original Zarathustra came to be leaders of mankind. If you will recall what I have said about the Buddha, you will realise that having become a Bodhisattva in his earlier incarnations he must already have risen through many stages. Through the illumination known as ‘sitting under the Bodhi tree’—an expression which must be understood in the sense I have indicated—a man can develop vision of the spiritual worlds and rise to great heights through the faculties of his own Individuality. But if humanity had always been obliged to depend upon leaders of this kind only, the progress that has actually been made would not have been possible. There were leaders of a different type altogether, of whom Zarathustra was one. I am not speaking now of the Individuality of Zarathustra but of the ‘personality’ of the original Zarathustra, the herald of Ahura Mazdao. If we study such a personality at the point where he stands in world-history, we realise that this is not a human being who has risen through his own intrinsic merits. On the contrary, he is a personality who has been chosen to be the bearer, the sheath, of a spiritual Being who cannot himself incarnate in the flesh, who can only send his illumination into and work within a human sheath.

In my Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation, I have indicated how at a certain point of time, when it is necessary for world-evolution, a human being is inspired by a higher spiritual Being. This is not poetic imagery but a poetical presentation of an occult reality.

The personality of the original Zarathustra was not one which through its own merits had reached as lofty a stage of development as that attained by Buddha; the personality of Zarathustra was chosen to be the abode of a higher Being and was filled with living spirituality. Such personalities were chiefly to be found in the early, pre-Christian civilisations which had arisen throughout Europe, in North-Western and Mid-Western Asia but not in the other civilisations which spread through Africa, Arabia and Asia Minor, into Asia. In these latter territories the predominant mode of Initiation was the one I have just described as having been achieved in its highest form by the great Buddha. Taking Zarathustra as a particular example among the peoples of the Northern stream, I shall now speak of the mode of Initiation which was to be found, too, in our own part of the world. Three or four thousand years ago this was the only kind of Initiation that it was possible to attain.

The personality of Zarathustra was chosen in somewhat the following way to be the bearer of a higher Being who was not himself actually to incarnate. It was decreed by the higher worlds that into this child there was to descend a divine-spiritual Being who when the child matured could work in him, make use of his brain, his faculties and his will.—To this end the circumstances of the life of such a human being must be quite different from those otherwise prevailing in the development of an ordinary individual. The happening I shall now briefly describe must be thought of as belonging to the whole life of such a human being, not confined to the physical realm of sense. Although the symptoms will not be perceptible to the ordinary senses, it will be clear to anyone with finer powers of observation that from the very beginning there is evidence of conflict between the soul-forces of such a child and the external world; that in this child there is a will and an inner driving power at variance with what goes on in the environment. But such is the destiny of a personality thus filled with a divine-spiritual Being. He grows up as a stranger, for those around him have no insight or feelings which would help them to understand him. Generally there are only very few—perhaps only one—with any inkling of what is developing in such a child. On the other hand, conflicts with the world around will easily arise and in such a case what I described to you in the story of the temptations accompanying Buddha's descent into his own being, will take place at an earlier age of life.

In the normal way the individuality of a human being is born into the sheaths provided by his parents and his people. These sheaths do not always entirely conform with the individuality and on this account such men feel a certain dissatisfaction with destiny. A conflict of such force and intensity as was associated, for example, with Zarathustra, could not be endured by an individuality developing in the normal way. When a child such as Zarathustra is observed clairvoyantly he will be found to have feelings, faculties and forces of thought which will be quite different from those developing in the people around him. Above all it will be evident—it is in fact always evident but it passes unheeded because little attention is paid nowadays to the life of soul-and-spirit—that those around such a child know nothing about his real nature; on the contrary, they feel an instinctive hatred of him; they can make nothing of what is developing within him. There is no sharper conflict visible to clairvoyance than that between a child born to be a saviour of mankind and the storms of hatred that are unleashed around him. This is inevitable, for it is just because such a child is different that the great impulses can be given to humanity. Similar stories are also told about personalities other than Zarathustra.

The story goes that as soon as he was born, Zarathustra could smile—something that is usually not possible for several weeks. We are told that Zarathustra's smile came from his consciousness of the harmony of the world. The smile was said to be the first sign of the difference between this child and all the others around him.

There is a second story, to the effect that an enemy, as it were another Herod, named Duransarun, lived in the region where Zarathustra was born and that when the birth of the child was divulged to him by Chaldean Magi, he tried to kill the infant with his own hands. The legend tells that as he raised the sword his arm was paralysed and he was obliged to give up the attempt.—These are pictures of spiritual realities which could have been revealed only to supersensible consciousness. We are further told how this enemy of the infant Zarathustra then caused him to be carried by a servant out into the desert to become the prey of wild beasts. But when a search was made it was found that no wild beast had touched the child and that he was sleeping peacefully. This attempt having also failed, the child's enemy caused him to be laid where a herd of cows and oxen would pass and trample him to death. Instead, so the legend tells, the first beast took the child between its legs, carried him off and set him down when the whole herd had passed by. The same thing was repeated with a herd of horses. And the enemy's final attempt was to expose the child to wild animals robbed of their young. But when the parents sought news of the child they found that again the animals had done him no harm: indeed according to the legend he had been suckled by the ‘heavenly cows’.

These indications are to be understood as showing that through the presence of the spiritual Being, of the Individuality who passes into such a soul, very special forces are called into play. Such a child is brought into disharmony with his environment. This is necessary in order that evolution may be given an upward impetus. Disharmonies are always inevitable if there is to be real progress towards perfection. It must also be realised that these forces help to bring such a child into his destined relationship with the spiritual world. But how does the child himself experience all these conflicts?

Try to think of this penetration of a man's soul into his own being, as an awakening. When the soul can experience the physical body and etheric body it achieves the development we saw in the Buddha. But now imagine going to sleep in full consciousness. As things are to-day, a man loses consciousness when he goes to sleep and the Void engulfs him. But if he were to retain consciousness he would be surrounded by a spiritual world into which his being pours. But here again there are obstacles. When we go to sleep, before the portal through which we must pass there also stands a Guardian. This is the Greater /Guardian of the Threshold, who denies us entrance into the spiritual world as long as we are not ready for it. The reason for this is that if without being inwardly strong enough we attempt to pour our Ego over the spiritual world into which we pass on going to sleep, we face certain dangers.

The dangers are these.—Instead of perceiving objective reality in the spiritual world we should perceive only the effect of the fantasies which we ourselves take into that world; we take into it the worst that is in us—everything that is not in keeping with truth. Hence any premature entry into the spiritual world would mean that instead of reality, a man would see grotesque, fantastic images and forms, said by Spiritual Science to be a sight that does not belong to his humanity. Whereas if he had objective vision of the spiritual world he would reach a higher stage and would see what is human. It is always a sign that what are seen are fantasies if on rising into the spiritual world, animal forms appear. These animal forms are indications of our own irresponsible play of fancy; they appear because inwardly we have not a firm enough foundation. Faculties in us which at night are unconscious must be strengthened if we are to have a really objective vision of the outer spiritual world. Otherwise we see it subjectively and we take our fantasies into it. They do, of course, accompany us, but the Guardian of the Threshold protects us from sight of them. To be surrounded by animal forms which attack us and try to force us into error as we ascend into the spiritual world is all a purely inner process. To enter the spiritual world safely we need only develop greater and greater strength.

When an infant such as the Zarathustra-child is filled by a higher Being the little body is naturally immature and has to develop to maturity. The organic system of intellect and sensory activity is also disturbed. Such a child is in a world in which he may truly be said to be ‘among wild beasts’. I have often emphasised that in descriptions of this kind the historical and pictorial elements represent two aspects of the same thing. The happenings take place in such a way that when the spiritual forces work from outside in the form of hostility, as in the case of the Zarathustra-child, they are personified in the figure of King Duransarun. Everything also exists in archetype in the spiritual world and the external events correspond to what is taking place in that world. It is not easy for the modern mind to grasp such a thought. If we say that the events occurring around Zarathustra have significance in the spiritual world, people think that they cannot be real. If we show that the events are authentic history, we then incline to regard the personality concerned as being no more highly developed than anyone else. Thus the liberal theologians of to-day tend, for instance, to regard the figure of Jesus of Nazareth as on a par with, or not greatly excelling, what they may picture as their own ideal. It disturbs the lazy materialism of men's souls if they have to picture a really great Individuality. There must not be anything in the world superior to the professor or theologian seeking to attain his own ideal! In dealing with great events, however, we are concerned with something that is both historical and symbolic; the one aspect does not exclude the other. Those who do not understand that external events have a significance other than their surface appearance will never grasp their essential reality.

The soul of the infant Zarathustra was actually exposed to great dangers; but at the same time, as the legend relates, the ‘heavenly cows’ stood at his side to succour him and give him strength.

Similar stories can be found over the whole area from the Caspian Sea, through our own region, and into Western Europe, in connection with all great founders of world-conceptions. Such personalities, without having risen to lofty heights through their own development, are indwelt by a spiritual Being in order to become leaders of men. There were a number of such traditions among the Celts. It is related of Habich, an important figure in Celtic religion, that he too was exposed to dangers and suckled by heavenly cows; that he was attacked by hostile animals who had to give way before him. The descriptions of the perils confronting Habich, the Celtic leader, read just as if extracts had been made from the seven ‘miracles’ of Zarathustra—for Zarathustra is to be regarded as the greatest personality among leaders of this kind. Certain features of his miracles are to be found all through Greece and on into the Celtic regions of the West. As a well-known example you have only to think of the story of Romulus and Remus.

This is the second way in which leaders of mankind arise. Certain deeper features of the two great streams of culture in the post-Atlantean epoch have now been characterised. After the great Atlantean catastrophe, one of these streams of civilisation spread and developed through Africa, Arabia and Southern Asia; the other spread in a more Northerly course through Europe, to Northern and thence to Central Asia. There the two streams united; and the outcome is our post-Atlantean culture. The Northern stream had leaders such as I have described in the figure of Zarathustra; in the Southern stream, on the other hand, there were leaders of the type revealed in its loftiest form by the great Buddha.

If you now recall what you already know about the Christ-event, you will want to understand what really happened at the Baptism by John in the Jordan. As in the case of all the leading figures and founders of religious thought in the Northern stream—of whom Zarathustra had been the greatest—a diving-spiritual Being, the Christ, descended into a human being. The process was the same but carried out at the highest level. Christ descended into a human being in his thirtieth year, not in his childhood, and the personality of Jesus of Nazareth was specially prepared for this event. In the Gospels the secrets of both types of leadership are shown us in synthesis, in harmony with each other. Whereas the accounts of the Evangelists St. Matthew and St. Luke are mainly concerned to show how the human personality into whom the Christ entered had been evolved, the Gospel of St. Mark describes the nature of the Christ Himself, the element in this sublime Individuality which could not be confined within the human vehicle. That is why the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke describe with wonderful clarity a story of temptation different from that related by St. Mark. He is describing the Christ who had entered into Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel of St. Mark relates the story of temptation which occurs in other cases already in childhood—the encounter with wild animals and the help given by spiritual powers. Thus it can be regarded as a kind of repetition of the Zarathustra-miracle when St. Mark's Gospel narrates in simple and impressive words: ‘And immediately the spirit driveth him into the solitude (wilderness) ... and he was with the wild beasts; and the Angels’—that is, spiritual Beings—‘ministered unto him.’ St. Matthew's Gospel describes a quite different process, one which seems like a repetition of the temptations of Buddha, that is to say the tests and allurements confronting the soul of a man who is penetrating into his own inner being.

The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke describe the path taken by the Christ when descending into the sheaths He received from Jesus of Nazareth. St. Mark's Gospel describes the kind of temptation which the Christ was obliged to undergo when He confronted the environment—as happens with all great founders of religion who had been inspired from above by a spiritual Being. Christ Jesus experienced both these kinds of temptation, whereas earlier leaders of humanity had experienced only one. Christ united in Himself the two ways of entering the spiritual world.—That is the all-important point. What had formerly taken place in two separate streams into which smaller streams then flowed, was now united in one.

It is only from this point of view that we can understand the apparent or real contradictions in the Gospels. The writer of St. Mark's Gospel had been initiated into Mysteries which enabled him to describe the temptation presented in his Gospel, namely the encounter with wild beasts and the help of spiritual Beings. St. Luke was initiated into the other aspect. Each of the Evangelists writes of what he knew and understood. Hence their Gospels present different aspects of the events in Palestine and of the Mystery of Golgotha.

In all this I have been wanting to indicate from a point of view we have not hitherto adopted, how we have to understand the course of the evolution of humanity and the intervention of particular Individualities: whether those who rise from the rank of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha, or those whose significance lies not so much in themselves as in what has come down into them from above. It is in the figure of Christ alone that these two types unite; and it is only when we know this that we can rightly understand the Christ.

It will now be clear why incongruities are apparent in mythical personalities. When we are told that one of them behaved in a matter of right or wrong as, for instance, Siegfried behaved, someone will certainly protest that after all, he was said to have been an Initiate! But in the case of a personality such as Siegfried, through whom a spiritual Being was working, the individual development is not a factor that comes into consideration. Siegfried may well have had faults. What really mattered was that an impetus should be given to the evolution of humanity, and for this purpose it was a question of choosing the most suitable personality. The same standard cannot be adopted universally and Siegfried cannot be judged as you would judge a leader arising from the Southern stream of culture, for a figure such as Siegfried differs radically in character and type from men who penetrate into their own inner self.

It can therefore be said that the leading figures belonging to the Northern stream are permeated by a spiritual Being who drives them out of themselves, enabling them to rise into the Macrocosm. Whereas in the Southern cultures a man sinks into the Microcosm, in the Northern stream his being pours into the Macrocosm and in this way he comes to know all the spiritual Hierarchies, as Zarathustra came to know the spiritual essence of the Sun.

We may therefore sum up all that has been said, as follows.—The mystical path, the path of the Buddha, leads to such depths in a man's inmost being that in breaking through to them he comes into the spiritual world. The path of Zarathustra draws a man out of the Microcosm and his being is diffused over the Macrocosm so that its secrets become transparent to him. The world has as yet little understanding of the great spirits whose missions are to unveil the secrets of the Macrocosm. There is very little understanding, for example, of the essential nature and being of Zarathustra. And we shall find how greatly what we have to say of him differs from what is usually said at the present time.

This again is a digression intended to convey to you the intrinsic character of St. Mark's Gospel.

(Given at the conclusion of the General Meeting of the German Section of the Theosophical Society)

May I once more make it known¹ that I intend to hold a lecture tomorrow morning about certain contemporary occult questions connected with Freemasonry. And that will take place, following an ancient occult practice, separately for men and for women. The lecture for men will take place at ten o'clock; for women at half past eleven. Perhaps you may ask why this custom is retained, since—only through the theosophical view of things—it will become superseded. That will become clear through the content of the lecture. I would also like to say that the Besant Branch² will have its regular meeting tomorrow evening at eight o'clock.

Now I would like to speak about the relationship of occultism to the theosophical movement and about a few other connected questions. On that topic, it is very often debated whether the theosophical movement, and the Theosophical Society in particular, should be an occult movement, or whether it must be kept distinct from all occultism.

The theosophical movement as such, in so far as it expressed in the Theosophical Society, cannot be an occult movement. An occult movement is based on different assumptions from those which can find expression in the Theosophical Society. There have been occult societies in all periods. One thing above all else has been necessary for them; namely, that, on account of the whole manner of their endeavours, they have some kind of hierarchy in their Organisation. That means that the members of such a society, of such a brotherhood, were ranked by degree. Every degree, from the first up to the ninetieth, had its quite specific task. In each degree there were quite specific tasks. Nobody could be promoted to a higher degree until he had fulfilled the tasks of the lower one.

I can only indicate very broadly why that is so. We must then speak only generally about the tasks of such occult brotherhoods. The honoured friends will understand me all the better today, who have so often heard me speak about such things. Occult brotherhoods are the guiding brotherhoods of mankind. They have the task of preparing the things of the future. Everything which is to happen in the future is indeed preparing itself now, is finding its expression now, as an idea, as a plan, and will then be realised in the future. Even when you consider the development of the human race on the outward physical plane, you would then find that things which later find fulfillment were much earlier in the bud as ideas, bursting to find expression in the minds and souls of leading personalities and individualities. Take the steam engine for example: you will find, if you trace the matter back, how the steam engine developed itself from the simplest facts; how the pan filled with boiling water already contained the idea of the steam engine, which then developed itself from this simplest form to the most complicated mechanism.

These are however trifles compared with the great structure of humanity that we confront. The most important matters are based on much greater and more significant perspectives. They presuppose that what is to happen in the far distant future is already, in a specific way, being prepared today. How can anything happen in this way? Through it being in one's grasp today already to introduce forces into the world which will take effect in the future. Whatever is going to take place here on the physical plane in the future has prepared itself on the astral and Devachanic plane, long before its physical manifestation; so that the forces bringing about really distant future events can be identified in the higher planes and worlds. However, man cannot satisfactorily influence the future unless he prepares the effect in the light of a knowledge of the influencing forces. Man is a self-aware creature, and has to take his destiny into his own hands. Therefore, there have always been advanced Brothers of our human race, who can see not only on the physical plane but also on higher planes.

Let us seek to conceive what it means to have foresight on higher planes. Let us suppose you have water in a pond. You can foresee that the pond will become frozen if the temperature falls, so that skating and so on will be possible. In a similar way do we have [foresight] with the relationship of the so-called astral plane to the physical plane, that is to the world in which we are involved. If therefore one follows events on the astral plane one could then in fact see what will be, in a later period, with the help of astral happenings, as if it were a thickening of them. And so one can watch those astral events which subsequently step forth, solidified, on the physical plane. Physical events are nothing else than such thickened occurrences which have already taken place in the higher worlds.

An example: throughout antiquity there were mysteries. These had the task of receiving individual men and initiating them into the secrets of existence, or—as John of the Apocalypse says—showing what must ‘shortly,’ that is to say in the future, come to pass. In the precincts of such temples, the pupils who were to be received into the first degree were instructed. Now there was a further instruction for each successively higher level of development in the pupils. The first stage was for the candidates to purify their astral bodies. This meant that they did not merely embrace the ordinary bourgeois ethic; the bourgeois ethic was the preliminary requirement, what was then involved had to be followed in the strictest performance of duty. For, as the pupil progressively advanced to higher ideals, passing beyond the passions and instincts of ordinary life to yearnings above human pettiness, so purifying his sympathies and antipathies that the great world-embracing affairs of the human race became his own—as he reached out beyond himself in his feelings and perceptions, then he was on the way to completing what one calls the purification of the astral body. Then he was allowed to work upon the denser bodies. He was allowed to work upon his etheric body, and was no longer restricted to reshaping the soft, flexible and compliant astral substance of his soul and spirit bodies, but was allowed to work on his etheric body. He was then what is called a Chela. Such a Chela is one who acknowledges not only higher duties, who has undertaken not only enough purification to make humanity's duties his own, but is so advanced that he has outgrown the lower and higher affairs of individual nations and even of individual creeds. His gaze is now addressed to the life of the whole of humanity. And through his by now thoroughly structured etheric body he becomes a participant in the great affairs of the building of the earth. To do all this, the following must happen.

The Chela has to immobilise all the forces which hinder his work on his etheric body. If you have a human being before you, he has indeed a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body. The Chela has refined his astral body, and is allowed to work upon his etheric body. What happens when the astral body has been purified? What then penetrates the etheric body?—that which is organised in the astral body. The things which live in the astral body stamp themselves on the etheric body. The more you work at your astral body, the more you can redress its defects; the astral substance is thin and soft, you can always bring it back into balance again. However, if a person has begun to develop his etheric body as a Chela, then these qualities stamp themselves on the etheric body, and that is much more permanent. The man who made his earthly defects permanent would thereby become dangerous as a member of humanity. Hence the constant stress on necessary purification. The etheric body is stamped by the forces that work on it. Think of it separated from the physical body, it would then have quite a different elasticity. If it is fixed in [the physical body] this is held in by the form; but so long as it remains there, it is at first too weak to stamp into itself what has undergone catharsis as astrality.

Therefore throughout ancient times the following had to be done. One had to set aside those forces which impeded the elasticity of the etheric body. That was achieved by bringing the whole physical body into a lethargic condition. The human being lay down, and the etheric body was drawn out of the physical body. While the physical body lay as if dead, the astral body came to be formed by its autonomous forces. That is the entombment, the [body] concerned being kept in a lethargic state for three to three and a half days. And then he could work on the etheric body. And then, after he had formed his etheric body in conformity with his astral body, he returned into his physical body. He had thus awakened an inner life in himself; he was one of the resurrected and was given a new name.

This was a transaction on the astral plane. Everything which I have described took place on the astral plane; the physical body had nothing to do with it. This event repeated itself in all the ancient mysteries. Every initiate knew it. Now imagine it densified, translated down into the physical plane, so that something [physical] has happened, through this event, which had previously only happened astrally; analogous to, for example, your having a piece of ice where you had water before. Many such astral events must combine, must flow together, for the physical thickening eventually to become possible. Through this means the Mystery of Golgotha became historically possible, it could be translated down on to the physical plane, in that, through the appearance of Christ, things happened on the physical plane which previously had happened over and over again on the astral plane. We learn to conceive, through this example, how the future is actually prepared in the occult brotherhoods.

If we were now to ask ourselves: what then is really happening here?—then we should answer: One can certainly comprehend a great deal in thought, in ideas. But ideas have no real existence. An idea is nothing more than what has been brought down from higher planes to the physical plane. What man thinks about [something] is however the most ineffectual aspect, since this is only extant on the physical plane. It is different when such an idea is brought face to face with something which also originates from the higher spheres. Take as an example Pythagoras's teaching about the music of the spheres³ as he imparted it to his pupils. Philosophers try to make the occult music of Pythagoras out to be quite a simple notion. Reason could easily grasp it. But what was important [for Pythagoras] was that the pupil only approached this [subject] when his soul, his disposition had been prepared for it. Thus it is impossible to explain the deeper meaning of Raphael's Sistine Madonna to anyone who has no feeling for pictures which originate in the astral. One has to raise heart and soul up to it. What leaves one cold as an idea, appears in the picture as artistically full of life, as divine universal thinking, as something the divine forces followed in creating the world—and a simple line becomes something holy! Thought, by twining itself around a divine element, is brought face to face with divine influence. Thus, what matters in this sort of training is to prepare man step by step, as he is able to approach the great world thoughts, as he receives them. Then he will gradually combine with that influencing but otherwise occult power that penetrates these great world thoughts and which is already preparing, on the astral plane, the future of the physical plane. If the leading brother of mankind perhaps has pupils who follow such spirit-filled ideas, then these will be a force which also helps him forward in his work for the outward world; great centres of spiritual activity will spring up. You see, therefore, that what I have called occultism really has very much to do with the progress of humanity. And in our times we have a quite particularly important task. Let us seek just to indicate, in a few words, how we have come to this our task.

We are within the great Root Race of humanity, which has peopled the earth, since the land on which we now live rose up out of the inundations of the ocean. Ever since the Atlantean Race began slowly to disappear, the great Aryan Race has been the dominant one on earth. If we contemplate ourselves, we here in Europe are thus the fifth Sub-Race of the great Aryan Root Race. The first Sub-Race lived in the distant past in Ancient India. And the present-day Indians are descendants of that first Sub-Race, whose spiritual life is still extant in the ancient Indian Vedas.⁴ The Vedas are indeed only echoes of the ancient culture of the Rishis. At that time there was of course no writing yet—there was only tradition. Then came the second, third and fourth Sub-Races. The fourth Sub-Race adopted Christianity. Then, halfway through the Middle Ages, we see that the fifth Sub-Race formed itself, to which we and the neighbouring nations belong.

The ancient Indians of the first Sub-Race lived under conditions different from ours, and were also basically organised differently. Even the modern descendants, the Indians of today, are essentially differently organised from our European races. He who, as an occultist, investigates the difference finds that, in the ancient Indian people, the etheric body was much less closely fettered to the physical body, had not so totally submerged itself in the physical body, and that it was much easier to influence it from the astral body. The corollary of that is that the Indian race can easily transfer something from the astral to the etheric body, can easily work on the etheric body. That signifies no less than that the Indian can more easily attain to certain higher perceptions through occult training. The easier it is for the etheric body to be influenced through the astral body, the easier it is to work into the etheric body with pictures, without abstract concepts. And the easier it will be for someone who undergoes yoga training in the astral to come into contact with higher realms through pictorial concepts. These work into the etheric body, which is still pliable. One does not have to work with harsh concepts, since one can work upon the soul of an Indian person with very straightforward pictorial images; and he will [thereby] be able to arrive at very high stages of development.

The human race has undergone change through the various Sub-Races. Our etheric body is today much more strongly under the influence of the physical body than was the case with the ancient Indians. And thus it comes about that we have to work much harder and more inwardly in order to influence the etheric body. We cannot grasp half-dreamlike concepts. We must subject everything to rigorous concentration, we must work upon our inner being by strongly concentrating our soul in the purely super-sensible, not merely by means of imaginative concepts. Such a concept which brings about a strong concentration of our inner being, can then influence the etheric body fettered to the physical body much more strongly. For the astral body to be able to work upon the etheric body, it had in earlier times to be drawn out of the etheric [physical?] body. Nowadays, however, the etheric body can be influenced by the astral body even inside the physical body. Were we to make the same experiment that was customary in the ancient Mysteries, and induce a state of lethargy, we would then be in a position to influence the etheric body. But when the earthly consciousness, the mobility of thought, returned, what the astral body had imprinted on to the etheric body would immediately be erased again. We have to influence the etheric body very strongly if we want it to retain what we have impressed upon it. The occult task has become different today and is now more inward.

Thus you see also how great differences arise in the course of time in the successive occult schools. The yoga system of the Indians is something different from the instruction of the Rosicrucians. The Rosicrucian teaching takes into account what I have just explained. But something else still crops up. For such a step forward to be able to occur at all, the reasoning power had to be influenced. The reason was exerted much more than hitherto, and could then develop its process of transference towards comprehending the super-sensible. In more recent times, therefore, much more was learnt in concepts; more importance was ascribed to the development of reason and to the ability to conceptualise abstractly.

Just compare the transubstantiation in culture between the ancient Indian age and our own. In ancient India you have high intuition and very little outward expression of civilisation; nowadays, in our time, it is the other way round. The consequence is that even the position of occultism has become something quite different; the consequence is that much of what was formerly kept secret has today become a matter of common knowledge. Many, many such perceptions and concepts were formerly guarded within the occult brotherhoods, and people only came near to these things if their whole hearts had been transformed. Today this no longer lies in the hands of the occultist. Much of what was formerly reserved for the later stages of instruction must now be acknowledged as having been revealed in the culture of the outward world. The initiate in the mysteries must reckon with that. And so many of the truths which had been taught in the occult schools were perforce gradually disseminated on the physical plane.

Even what is taught in present-day elementary schools would deflect us from the spiritual, if occult backgrounds did not come into play from another side. In earlier times the pupil knew that behind what he received in school and in the academic world as precepts, there was something still higher, and that he himself might perhaps one day attain this higher knowledge. He knew that he was a cell in a spiritual organism. Today, in the democratic world, one receives many concepts which do not lead to such an insight. Therefore to the structure of outer democratic knowledge the apex of the pyramid has, as it were, to be added. The elementary knowledge of the powers hidden in the world had now been imparted; the apex was missing still, which would lead to a spiritual view of the world. To provide this, a world-embracing movement had to be founded. The theosophical movement was conceived as such. Hence, in certain brotherhoods, it was resolved, as the popularisation of the hitherto secret knowledge went still further and further, to share with the world as much as was necessary of the underlying secrets, in order to bring the knowledge of the outer world into harmony with the all-embracing occult knowledge of the brotherhoods.

We have here arrived at the point where we can see the connection of the theosophical movement and the Theosophical Society with occultism. The theosophical movement is no occult movement, no occult brotherhood, for it is formed on a democratic basis by which each member is as worthy as the next. Nevertheless, it is another matter if one is to understand the Theosophical Society's task. The Society's task is on the physical plane. If one wishes to grasp it fully one must be able to see into the higher worlds. But the point is not that the theosophist is already able to see into higher worlds, but that, within the movement, occult forces are indeed being developed, so that the Theosophical Society can be a place from which occultism can emanate and come to be discussed. It is a different question, whether a society is an occult brotherhood, or whether it says to itself: We are, indeed, no occult brotherhood, but, in our society, occultism comes to be discussed.

Today, when basically the whole of mankind longingly gazes towards the higher worlds without finding the way there, yet another installment of occult knowledge must be popularised in a form appropriate for them. And the occultism within the Theosophical Society has this task. Spiritual movements have always had a fruitful influence on cultural development, even on the physical plane. Its outward expression is nothing else than the realisation on earth of what has been spiritually prepared. What difference is there, if we contemplate, for example, the works of Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci? In these works you have something spiritual conjured up on to the wall in colour and form; the picture is permeated with what first lived in the soul of the artist as something spiritual. The spiritual preceded its subsequent expression as a manifestation in the material world.

And the materialistic external culture is only the copy of the materialistic tendency in mankind's inner convictions. The purely materialistic urban culture has spread itself throughout civilised countries since 1850. We can see the great things that it has achieved on the physical plane, but we also see what it has been unable to achieve. In the realm of art, for instance, no really new style has been evolved, with one exception, and that is the style of the department store. This is something which, in relation to our outward civilisation, is inwardly real. All else, what has been inherited from the past, has no relation to the present. Only if we have formed a society whose members are seized by a spiritual power such as that which used to live in Christianity, and as it still lives as a longing in the best Christian souls, and can be won back again, then we will again have a spiritual culture. And such a culture will again produce artists in all spheres of life. Only let theosophy live in the souls of men and it will flow out of those souls again as style, as art, it will be visibly and audibly there. The world can again be an outward expression of the spiritual, if this can already be brought to life in such a society today.

In this sense the Theosophical Society could help to shape the culture of the distant [future]. If we are together, we must be clear that we are the cells that have to combine to create a future culture. In our souls, those powers will be prepared which will so transform the future world that it will be a physical copy of our present state of mind and outlook on life. Everything which is now revealed and manifest, was once occult. Just as electricity is a revealed force today, so it once used to be an occult force. And what is still occult today is destined to become a motive force for the future. Exactly as our human body has been prepared in advance millions of years ago by forces which are all around us, so a higher body is preparing itself in us today, a body of the future; however, this body of the future will only become ours in a far-off time.

Let us briefly trace the path of our evolution. What used to be there? A dim dream-like human consciousness, mirroring a world very different from our own; men had a dreaming awareness. And even when their communal existence developed, they had no parliament for the exchange of opinions; they had nothing of that kind. Everything was merely mirrored in the consciousness which was developing in man. As for present-day bodily organs, how did they originate? Through those forces having worked upon man. Just as the animals in the dark caves of Kentucky lost their ability to see⁵ because they did not use it, so too, what we possess in the way of eyes and ears was organised by outward forces. These were formed by the forces of sound and of light, and evolved out of our organism. Our spiritual organism of the future will be evolved out of what lives in us today. Those things which stand before us as the expression of our spiritual culture, the churches and so on, the works of culture which bring beauty and truth to us, these will impress themselves in the higher members of our being. And when one day these unfold themselves towards a self-developing life, then what lives in the outward culture as beauty and truth will rise up in our inner being. What eyes and ears perceive now, these will be the stones for building and organising a higher future. If we contemplate the world from this point of view, then man's inner being takes on a totally different meaning.

Here we are confronted with a fact that can explain in a simple way what is called yoga, or inner training. From the words I have spoken, you will be able to gather that the forces which have created the world, that are working and creating in the world, were formerly taken from our inner being. What is in me today was formerly outside me: that is the fundamental thought in occult training. Before our physical body existed, our etheric body was already there. Again, our etheric body is a structure which has been formed by our astral body. And that is the starting point of the yoga training. Whoever engages in yoga training descends into his etheric body, and knows that he will find forces in it which constructed it once, millions of years ago. The physical body slowly developed itself out from the basis of the etheric body.

I can only describe broadly how the descent into the etheric body takes place. Certain currents exist in the etheric body which are the precursors of the physical bodily organs. The nervous system, the nerves themselves, the sympathetic [nervous] system which extends into the back, the ganglia of the sympathetic nervous system, these are parts which were developed etherically in primeval times. That is a process which took place in the remote past. Then, after man had progressed further and further, there came a time when, within his body—which already contained within it the potentiality to develop the physical nervous system—a structure developed which gave man the ability to develop his inner bodily warmth, which prepared him for warm blood. That, again, is a later structure from the etheric body, which then was already strongly influenced by the forces of the astral body. And out of what we subsequently find to be the basic structure of the brain, the spinal column formed itself, again out of the etheric body, as the other pole of the etheric body, which on the one hand developed towards the brain, and on the other hand towards the inner warm blood. That happened in the past. It was not only natural forces that worked on this development of man, but also higher spiritual beings.

When the yogi descends step by step into his etheric body he penetrates into the times gone by in which his spiritual archetypal form was influenced by these forces and beings, times when what lives in us today was produced. When a person thus descends into life, he can then reach that point once again in his descent. He descends from the head down into the lower parts of the body, which were formed in the most ancient times, and then goes back into the head. That is a description, if only a sketchy one, of the path of occult perception. More can be imparted in the occult schools. The pupil of mystery wisdom thus developed the ability to look back into past epochs; so the time comes when he is able to undertake his occult pilgrimage. He attains to this by means of a special exercise through which he overcomes his own personal self and thereby ceases to be a small fettered ego. Only then can he accomplish his ascent into the universe. Once again he descends into the ocean of the past, taking the world forces with him. Then, taking the ascending curve, he can slowly retrace point by point the way that he has thus traveled. Slowly, gradually, the person learns to proceed [further] down into the ocean of his formative forces, and at length he arrives at a point near to [his] origin. Thus must it have been for the person in whom an eye first evolved, with which to direct his gaze into the universe. Then, for the pupil, the flowing together of his ego with the great universal ego blossoms. And now he must learn to say to the little ego: I am not thou.

It is an important moment when he realises what this means: I am not thou. That is a moment when a person begins to understand that in nature there are higher forces than thought, that there is something outside of him, which cannot be expressed in contemporary thought, but which brings it about that two people, both able to speak on the same thing, can in the case of one of them talk clearly but be dull, whereas the other's speech is vibrant with the warm light that will create the future.

When the pupil is this far, he can learn now in another way than has hitherto been possible for him. He thereby experiences something very special. A spiritual being confronts him in the super-sensible world: he meets that individuality with whom he was once, formerly, very close. It is a great and significant mystery, when particular stages of our existence recapitulate themselves. We rise consciously from Manas to the higher forces; we once descended from spiritual worlds, and at that time this same being implanted something in us, whom we now meet again at the level corresponding to that point in the past at which he was with us. It is the teacher, the so-called guru. Long ago we met him for the first time; we now meet him again, when we can grasp consciously what he implanted into us at that time, and was received by us unconsciously. And if we descend still further we meet with the spirits who shared in our creation aeons ago. We meet with the Twelve Spirits: the Spirits of Will, the Spirits of Wisdom, the Spirits of Form, the Spirits of Movement, the Spirits of Personality or of Egoism, the Spirits of Warmth or Fire, the Spirits of Dusk or Twilight, and so on. All of this offers itself to our spiritual sense through this descent into the universe, through this pilgrimage. And this alone makes it possible for us to gaze into the future, makes it possible to anticipate what ‘shortly’—as the writer of the Apocalypse puts it—will happen.

That is the task of occultism. It is to be discharged, because that discharge is necessary. There are movements in plenty which are idealistic, which are ethical. But the movement called theosophy distinguishes itself from the others, in that occultism consciously comes to expression in this movement.

With that, the connection between occultism and theosophy is made clear. The Theosophical Society can never want to be an occult brotherhood. What must give it the strength to fulfil its task, what must give it life, can only be the things that emanate from occultism. Therefore the Theosophical Society will thrive if the cultivation of occult teaching and occult life is understood. That is stiff not a demand that the members themselves should be occultists. But if the Theosophical Society were to forget that this blood pulses in it, then it might remain an interesting society, but what was intended for it by the sublime powers who assisted at its birth would not be achieved.

Whoever understands this will never want to take away the Theosophical Society's occult character. All the same, whoever thus belongs to the Theosophical Society will be brought into a two-sided situation. He must necessarily give an ear to the side whence flow the occult truths, on the other hand he must turn his attention to the exoteric life of the Society. These aspects must be kept strictly apart; they must never be mixed together. When one talks about the outward Theosophical Society, one must never, however, even mention the occult personalities who stood over its inception. The powers who live on the higher planes and who live for the sake of mankind's evolution, outside of the physical body, never interfere in these affairs. They never impart anything other than impulses. Whenever we are engaged, in a practical way, in extending the Theosophical Society, the great individualities whom we call the Masters are standing at our side; we may turn ourselves to them and allow them to speak through us. When it concerns the propagation of occult life, it is the Masters who speak. When it only concerns the Organisation of the Society then they leave it to those who are living on the physical plane. That is the distinction between the occult current and the framework of the theosophical organisation. Allow me to express the difference between what flows as inward spiritual stream and what manifests through individual personalities, as it can perhaps best be expressed: When it concerns spiritual life, then the Masters speak; when it only concerns Organisation, since error is possible, the Masters are then silent.

• 1 . The first announcement was most probably given during the General Meeting of the German Section which had taken place beforehand.
• 2 . The then name of the Berlin Branch which held its usual evening meetings.
• 3 . The principle teaching of Pythagoras (ca. 580–500 B.C.) was that the universe was conceived in the form of a harmoniously ordered whole (the harmony of the spheres).
• 4 . Veda (Sanskrit word for ‘sacred knowledge’). The Vedas are the complete collection of the oldest religious documents of the Hindus, written in Sanskrit, to which a supersensible origin has been attributed. They contain a comprehensive literature which was handed on by word of mouth for many ages. The Vedic manuscripts are divided mainly into the following: 1. the Sanhitas; 2. the Brahmanas; 3. the Aranyakas and Upanishads. The Sanhitas are the anthologies of songs, sacrificial formulae and magical incantations. Four such anthologies are distinguished, usually referred to simply as ‘the four Vedas.’
• 5 . This example is often cited by Rudolf Steiner. The phenomenon of the rudimentary organs was first observed in the American caves. See: Darwin's Origin of Species, Chapter 5, ‘The Laws of Mutation.’

If we wish to study the development of Germanic Scandinavian history and the spiritual impulses therein described, it will be necessary first of all to keep in mind the fundamental character of its mythology; and your attention was drawn in the last Lecture to the fact that this Germanic Scandinavian mythology, notwithstanding its many points of similarity to other mythologies and concepts of the gods, is nevertheless something quite unique. It is true that a very far-reaching fundamental kernel of mythological ideas extends over all the Germanic peoples and tribes in Europe so that, even far to the South, a uniform view of mythology, and on the whole a similar understanding of those relationships is possible. There must at one time have been a similar understanding of the unique character of the Germanic Scandinavian mythology throughout all the countries in which this mythology, in one form or another, was outspread. That which the mythologies of the Germanic Scandinavian peoples have in common, is very different from the essentials of the Greek mythology, to say nothing of the Egyptian; so that all that is similar in the Germanic mythology is interrelated, and is at the same time widely divided from what is the essential in the Greek and Roman mythology. But it is not at the present day easy to understand this essential element, because—on account of certain preconceived ideas, (to, speak of which here would lead us too far)—there is to-day a certain longing, a certain desire, simply to compare the religions of the various peoples with one another. There is at the present time great enthusiasm for comparative religion and comparative mythology, but it is a domain in which it is possible to do most foolish things. What happens as a rule when a person compares the mythologies and religions of the various peoples with one another? He compares the external details in the stories of the gods and tries to prove that the figure of one particular god appears in one mythology, and it appears in a like manner in another, and so on. To one who really knows the facts under consideration this comparing of religions is a most disquieting tendency in our present-day science, because everywhere only the mere externals are compared. The impression made by such comparisons of religions on one who knows the facts is somewhat as though someone said: ‘Thirty years ago I made the acquaintance of a man; he wore a uniform made in such and such a way, blue trousers, a red coat and such or such a covering on his head, and so on.’ And then he quickly goes on to say: ‘Then twenty years ago I became acquainted with a man who wore the same uniform, and ten years ago I met another who also wore the same uniform.’ Now if the person in question were to believe that because the men with whom he became acquainted thirty, twenty, and ten years ago wore the same uniform, they could be compared with one another as regards their essential nature, he might make a great mistake, for a person of quite different character might be wearing that uniform at those different times; and the essential thing is to know what sort of man is in the uniform. This comparison may seem far-fetched, and yet it is the same when in comparative religion one takes Adonis and compares him with Christ. That is comparing merely the outer uniform. The apparel and the qualities of the Beings in the various legends may be very similar, or even alike, but the point is to know what divine spiritual Beings are clothed in them; and if completely different Beings are in Adonis and in Christ, then the comparison has only the value of a comparing of the uniform. Nevertheless this comparison is extremely popular at the present day. Therefore in many cases it is not of the least consequence what the science of comparative religion, with its entirely external methods, can at the present time bring to light. The point is rather, that one should learn to know to some extent, from the differentiation of the Folk-spirits, the manner in which this or the other people arrived at its mythology or other teachings regarding the Gods, or even at its philosophy.

We can scarcely understand the fundamental character of the Germanic Scandinavian mythology, unless we touch once more upon the five successive ages of civilization in the post-Atlantean epoch. These five ages of civilization were brought about by the migrations which took place from the West to the East, so that after this migration was finished, the most mature, so to speak, the most advanced human beings passed into Indian territory and there founded the sacred primeval Indian civilization. Later, nearer our own age, the Persian civilization was founded, then the Egyptian-Chaldæan-Babylonian, then the Græco-Latin civilization, after which followed our own.

The essential nature of these five civilizations can only be understood when one knows, that the men who played a part in them, the Angels, the Folk-souls or Archangels, and Spirits of the Age were all quite different from one another in the ages that are past. To-day we shall pay special attention to the way in which the human beings who took part in these civilizations differed from one another. For instance, the men who in old India founded the ancient Indian civilization—which then acquired a literary form in the Vedas and the later Indian literature—were fundamentally different from the Græco-Latin peoples, they were even different from the Persian, from the Egyptian-Chaldæan, and most of all from those peoples who were growing up in Europe in preparation for the fifth age of civilization of the post-Atlantean epoch. In what way did they differ? The entire structure of the human beings who belonged to the ancient Indian peoples was absolutely different from that of the inhabitants of all the countries lying further West. If we wish to form an idea of what this difference consisted in we must realize that the peoples of ancient India had advanced very far in human evolution before they received the ‘I’. As regards everything else in human evolution they had made very great progress. A long, long human development lay behind them, but they had passed through it in a sort of twilight. Then the ‘I’ entered in,—the consciousness of the ‘I’. Among the Indians this came comparatively late, at a time when the Indian people was already to a certain extent mature, when it had already gone through what the Germanic Scandinavian peoples still had to go through when they already possessed their ‘I’. You must keep that well in mind.* The Germanic Scandinavian peoples had to experience, with their fully-developed ‘I’, what the inhabitants of ancient India had passed through in a dull state of consciousness, without the ‘I’ being present.

[* EDITORIAL NOTE: The Ego of the West awoke earlier and in a lower state of evolution. The old Indian took longer to develop the Ego, and remained longer in a state of dim clairvoyance, during which time he developed a richer soul life, and therefore awoke at a higher state than the Westerner, but this fact prevented the Easterner from interesting himself at the time of Christ in the Angels and individual Spirit, the Christ. The Indian obtained the subjective Ego long before the objective Ego. See further elucidation in Lecture 9.]

Now what was the nature of the development which humanity could undergo in the post-Atlantean epoch? In the old Atlantean epoch human beings were still endowed with a high degree of dim clairvoyance. With this old dim clairvoyance they saw into the divine spiritual world, they saw the events which took place in that world. Now transfer yourselves for a little while into the ancient land of Atlantis before the migrations towards the East had begun. The air was still permeated with water-vapor and clouds of mist. But the soul of man was different too. He could not yet even distinguish the various external sense-perceptions from one another; at that time it was as though he found the spiritual contents of the world spread out around him like a spiritual aroma, a spiritual aura. Thus there was a certain clairvoyance, and man had to get away from this clairvoyance. This was brought about by the action of the forces into whose domain the human beings came when they migrated from the West to the East. In the course of these migrations many different soul-developments took place. There were peoples who, during their wandering towards the East, at first slept as it were through the stepping-forth out of the old clairvoyance, and had already reached a higher stage of development while their ‘I’ was still in a dull state. They went through various stages of development, and yet their ‘I’ was still in a dull, dreamy condition. The Indians were the farthest evolved when their ‘I’ awoke to full self-consciousness. They were already so advanced that they possessed a very rich inner soul-life, which no longer showed any of those conditions that were still experienced for a long time by the peoples of Europe. The Indians had gone through those conditions a long time before. They awoke to self-consciousness when they were already furnished with spiritual forces and spiritual capacities by means of which they could penetrate to a high degree into the spiritual worlds. Hence all the work and activity of the various Angels and Archangels upon the human souls, and their exertions to lift them out of their old dim states of clairvoyance, had become a matter of complete indifference to those among the Indian people who had advanced. They had not directly observed the work of the Archangels and Angels and of all those spiritual Beings who worked particularly in the Folk-spirit. All that had been accomplished in their souls, their astral and etheric bodies, at a time when they were not consciously present. They awoke when their souls already possessed a very high degree of maturity; they awoke when the most advanced among them could, by going through a slight development, already read again in the Akashic Record all that had formerly taken place in the evolution of humanity; so that they gazed out into their surroundings, into the world, and could read in the Akashic Record what was taking place in the spiritual world, and what they had gone through in a dull, dim state of consciousness. They were unconsciously guided into higher domains; they had, before their ‘I’-consciousness awoke, acquired spiritual capacities that were much richer than the soul-capacities of the Western peoples.

Thus the spiritual world could be directly observed by these men. The most advanced among those who led the Indian people had arrived so far that, at the time when their ‘I’ awoke, they actually no longer needed to observe how human development sprang forth, so to speak, from the Spirits of Form or Powers, but they were more intimate with the Beings we call the Spirits of Motion or Principalities, and those above them, the Spirits of Wisdom. They were especially interested in these. The spiritual Beings beneath these were on the other hand Beings in whose domain they had already been formerly, and who were therefore no longer of such particular importance to them. Thus they looked up to what later on they called the sum-total of all the Spirits of Motion and of all the Spirits of Wisdom, to that which was later described by the Greek expressions: Dynamis and Kyriotetes. They looked up to these and called them ‘Mula-Prakriti’, i.e., the sum-total of the Spirits of Motion; and ‘Maha-Purusha’, the sum-total of the Spirits of Wisdom, that which lives as if in a spiritual Unity. They could attain to this vision because those who belonged to this people awoke to the consciousness of their ‘I’ at such a late stage of development. They had already gone through what the later peoples still had to look at with their ‘I’.

The peoples belonging to the Persian civilization were less highly developed. Through their peculiar capacity of cognition, and because their ‘I’ awoke at a lower stage, they were able to occupy themselves particularly with the Beings of the Powers or Spirits of Form. With these they were especially familiar; they could in a certain respect understand them, and they were pre-eminently interested in them. The peoples belonging to the Persian communities awoke one stage lower than did the Indians, but it was a stage which the peoples of the West had still to reach, still had to work up to. Hence the Persians were acquainted with the Powers or Spirits of Form, whom they thought of collectively as ‘Amshaspands’. They were the radiations which we know as Spirits of Form or Powers, and which, from their point of view, the peoples of the Persian civilization were specially well able to observe.

We then come to the Chaldean peoples. They already possessed a consciousness of what we know as Primal Forces, as directing Spirits of the Age. They were aware of the Beings who should be understood as Primal Forces, as Spirits of Personality.

In another way again the peoples of the Græco-Latin age also had a certain consciousness of these Primal Forces or Spirits of Personality, but in their case there was also something else, and that was what may lead us a little further in our studies. The Greeks were a little nearer to the Germanic peoples. But still in them the ‘I’ awoke at a higher stage than it did in the Germanic Scandinavian peoples. That which in the Northern peoples was still experienced as being the work of the Angels or Archangels, was not experienced directly by the Græco-Latin peoples; but they still possessed a distinct recollection of it. You must therefore think of it thus, that the difference between the Germanic and the Græco-Latin peoples is, that the latter still had a recollection of how the Angels and Archangels had taken part in their soul-life which they had developed within them. On the whole they had not experienced this very clearly; they had gone through it while still in a state of dim consciousness. But now it came up within them as a remembrance. The creation of the whole world, the way in which the Angels and Archangels, both normal and abnormal, played a part in the human soul was known to the Greeks. What they had gone through was in their souls as a mighty memory-picture. Now memory is much clearer, it has more distinct outlines than what one is still living through. It is no longer so fresh, no longer so young; but what appears as memory, as remembrance, has sharper contours; sharper outlines. The influence or impulse of the Angels and Archangels on the human soul was among the Greeks awakened in the memory in firm, sharp outlines. That is the Greek mythology. If we do not look at it thus, if we only compare one name with other names that appear elsewhere, if we do not take the special forces into consideration and realize what the figures are that appear as Apollo and Minerva and so on, then we are only making a superficial study of comparative religion, we are merely comparing the uniforms. The important point is, the way in which they saw in those days.

After we have realized this, we shall admit that the Greeks built up their mythology from memories. The Egyptians and Chaldeans had only a dark, dim recollection of the action of the world of the Angels and Archangels, but they could look into the world of Primal Forces. It was just as though the Egyptians and Chaldeans were beginning to forget something. In the Persian mythology or sacred teachings we find a complete forgetting of the world of the Angels and Archangels, but on the other hand they could look into the world of the Powers or Spirits of Form. That which is to be found in Greek mythology had been forgotten by the Persians and completely forgotten by the Indians. They saw the whole process over again in Akashic Records and created pictures of the earlier occurrences out of their own knowledge, which, however, was a divine knowledge, obtained by more highly developed spiritual powers. From this you will also recognize that just for those very peoples of the East it would be particularly difficult to understand the Western spiritual life. It is for this reason that the peoples of the East closed themselves to Western spiritual life. They will certainly accept the Western material civilization, but the spiritual culture of the West—unless they come to it indirectly through Spiritual Science—remains more or less closed to them. They were already at a high stage at a time when there was as yet no Christ Jesus upon earth. He only came in the fourth post-Atlantean age of civilization. That is an event which could no longer be grasped by means of the forces which had developed out of the Indian people. For that one also required forces which were connected with a rather lower position of the ‘I’, in which it was in more subordinate soul-forces.

In the Germanic and Scandinavian countries the action of the Angels and Archangels in the human souls did not exist as a recollection, but in such a way that, even at the time when Christ Jesus walked upon earth, the people could still see that this work was going on, they could perceive that they participated in the affairs of the Angels and the Archangels who were still working in their souls.

The Græco-Latin peoples could in these experiences of the soul, remember something they had gone through formerly. This the German peoples lived within, it was their own direct personal concern. Their ‘I’ had wakened at the stage of existence when the Folk-spirits and those spiritual Beings who even yet are under the Folk-spirits, were still at work in their souls. Hence these peoples were nearest to that which we know as the events that took place in old Atlantis.

In old Atlantis man looked up to the spiritual Powers and spoke of a sort of Unity of the Godhead, because he really looked up with direct perception into the old primal states of development of humanity. At that time one could still see, as it were, the ruling of the Spirits of Wisdom and the ruling of the Spirits of Motion, and this again was observed later by the old Indians in the Akashic Records. These peoples of the West had raised themselves about one stage higher than this standpoint, so that they experienced in the immediate present the transition from the old vision to the new. They looked into a weaving and life of real spiritual Powers, at a time when the ‘I’ was not yet awake. But at the same time they saw the ‘I’ gradually awaking and Angels and Archangels setting to work in the soul. They perceived this direct transition. They had a remembrance of an earlier weaving and an earlier life, of a time when they saw everything in an ocean of mist, as it were, and when out of this sea of mist there came forth to them what we have learnt to know as the divine spiritual Beings immediately above man. The old gods, those who were active before the gods intervened in the life of the human soul, who could then be seen, and with whom men felt themselves united, those Divine Beings who were active in a very far-distant past, in the time of old Atlantis, were called Vanas.

Man then passed on further from the old Atlantean epoch, and saw the weaving of the Angels and Archangels, whom they called the Asa. Those were the Beings who as Angels and Archangels busied themselves with the ‘I’ of man, which then awoke at its lowest stage; those Beings were placed at the head of these peoples. What the other peoples of the East slept through,—viz., seeing how the soul worked its way up by means of the various forces which were bestowed upon it by the normal and abnormal Angels and Archangels,—had to be gone through by the peoples of Europe beginning from the lowest stage; they had to be consciously present, in order that these soul-forces might gradually develop.

Thus, therefore, the figures of the gods, which placed themselves before the souls of the Germanic Scandinavian peoples, were the figures of the gods who worked directly upon his soul, and that which he could observe by direct perception, as the development of the human soul out of the cosmos, that was something which he directly experienced. He did not look back in remembrance at the manner in which the souls worked themselves into the bodies, he saw this more as though it were just happening then. It is his own evolution and he with his ‘I’ is present in it. He understood this down to the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries after Christ. He had preserved a comprehension of how the soul-forces gradually formed themselves, crystallized themselves into the body. At first he gazed upon the Archangel Beings who worked in his soul by giving him what were to become his soul forces, and he found there as the most predominant of these Archangels, Wotan or Odin, and he saw him at work upon his soul, he saw how he worked into his soul. What did he see there? How did he perceive Wotan or Odin? What did he recognize him to be? As what did he learn to love him, and above all to understand him? He learned to recognize him as being one of those Archangels who once upon a time reached the point of renouncing the ascent to higher stages. He learned to know Odin as one of the abnormal Archangels, as one of the great Renouncers of antiquity, who had assumed the office of an Archangel when undertaking the important mission of working into the souls of men. The Germanic Scandinavian experienced Odin in his activity at a time when he still went about the work of inoculating speech into the souls. The manner in which Odin himself worked upon his peoples in order to make speech possible to them has been preserved in a wonderful way It was described as a divine initiation. The way in which Odin gained the power to endow the souls of the Germanic and Northern peoples with languages is thus described Odin, before he had acquired this capacity, had gone through what is represented to us as the initiation by means of the Potion of the Gods, that divine Potion which once upon a time in the primeval past belonged to the giants. This Potion contained not merely abstract wisdom, but it represents to us the wisdom which expresses itself directly in sound. Odin at his initiation obtained power over the wisdom which expresses itself in sound, he learned how to use it when he went through a long initiation which lasted nine days, from which he was then released by Mimir, the ancient bearer of Wisdom. Thus Odin became Lord of the power of Speech. It was for this reason that the later sagas trace the language of the poets, the language of the skalds, back to Odin. The art of reading runes, which in olden times was thought of as being much more closely related to speech than the later kind of writing, was also traced back to Odin. Hence the way in which the soul—indirectly, through the etheric body, whilst making itself at home in the physical body—acquired speech through the corresponding Archangel, is expressed in the wonderful stories related about Odin.

In the companions of Odin we have similar Archangels: HSnir who gave the imaginative faculty, and LSdur who gave that which still touches the race most closely, the color of the skin, and the character of the blood. In these two Beings we have Archangels, belonging more to the normal side, so to speak. To the abnormal side belong the Beings appearing as Villy and Ve. These are Beings who work still more intimately, within the soul, as I explained in the preceding lecture. But the ‘I’ which is itself at an abnormal stage of evolution, where it is present even when the subordinate soul-powers are being developed, feels itself to be intimately related to an abnormal Archangel. Odin is not perceived as an abnormal Archangel, but rather as one whose remaining behind is somewhat like the way the Western souls remained behind, who experience more consciously in their ‘I’ that which remained behind when the migration through those countries took place,—whereas the Eastern souls passed beyond certain stages of soul-life, before they decided to awake. Hence there lived above all in the souls of the Germanic Scandinavians all that is bound up with those agitating and working Archangel-forces of Odin, which are at work in the primitive depths of the soul-life.

Whereas we have said that it is the Angels who carry down into the individual human beings that which the Archangels bring about, so also an ‘I’ which awakes at such an early elementary stage of soul-life, is above all interested in having the affairs of the Archangels carried into it, as it were. Hence the Germanic Scandinavians have an interest in an angelic figure who possesses special power, but who at the same time is closely related to the separate human being and his individuality. That angelic figure is Thor. Thor can only be recognized by knowing that in him one must recognize a Being who might indeed have been very advanced if he had evolved himself normally further, but who made the renunciation comparatively early, and remained behind at the stage of the Angel, in order that at the time when in the course of the soul's evolution the ‘I’ should awake, he might become Guide in the soul-world of the Germanic Scandinavian countries. What one feels so directly in Thor as being related to the individual human ‘I’ is, that that which was to be carried into every single ‘I’ from the spiritual world, could actually be so carried in. If we bear this in mind we shall also better understand many things that have been handed down. For us it is a question of being able to understand these individual Gods correctly. The Germanic Scandinavian man perceived and experienced this imprinting of the soul into the body. He was present when the ‘I’ membered itself into the body and took possession of each single human being.

Now we know that the ‘I’ pulsates in the blood of the physical body and that everything within corresponds to something without, everything microcosmic to something macrocosmic. The work of Odin who gave speech and Runic Wisdom, who worked indirectly through the breathing, corresponds to the movements of the wind outside in the macrocosm. The regular penetration of the air through our respiratory organs, which then transforms the air into word and speech, corresponds in the macrocosm outside to the movements and the currents of the wind. Just as it is true that we must feel the ruling of Odin within ourselves in the transforming of air into words, so it is true also that we must see him ruling and working in the wind outside. But one who still possessed the old Germanic Scandinavian capacities, to which especially belonged a certain degree of clairvoyance, really saw this. He could see Odin everywhere ruling in the wind, he saw how he formed speech by means of his breath. This the Northern man perceived as unity. Just as that which lives in us and organizes our speech,—that is to say, in the way speech existed among the Scandinavians,—just as that presses through into the ‘I’ and produces the pulsation of the blood, so does that which organizes itself into speech correspond outside in the macrocosm to thunder and lightning. Speech is there before the’I’ is born. Hence the ‘I’ is everywhere felt to be the son of that Being who gives speech. In the imprinting of the separate ‘I’ Thor is specially concerned, and that which in the microcosm corresponds to the event in the macrocosm, is the pulsation of the blood. That therefore which outside in the macrocosm corresponds to the pulsation of the blood in man, is what as thunder and lightning goes through the sighing winds and weaving clouds. That again is seen by the Germanic Scandinavian in his clairvoyance as unity, and he sees that the movement of the wind, the flashing of the lightning outside is inwardly connected with the weaving of the air he breathes in. He sees how that passes over into the blood and then causes the ‘I’ to pulsate. That is looked upon as a material occurrence at the present day, but it was still an astral one to the Germanic Norseman. He saw the inner relationship of fire and lightning, with that which goes through the blood. He felt the pulse-beat in his blood and he knew that it was the beating of the ‘I’; he knew: ‘That which thus beats I am able to perceive, and I shall be able to perceive it again in a little while;’ but he did not notice the outer material event. All that was clothed in clairvoyant perception. He perceived that which caused his pulse to beat and made him return again and again to the same places, as being the act of Thor. He felt the Thor-force in his ‘I’ as the constant returning of the hammer of Thor into the hand of Thor, he felt the force of one of the most powerful Angels that had ever been known and revered, because he was a mighty Being who was seen to have remained behind at the Angel stage.

The way in which the spiritual force holds the physical body together, is expressed in the Germanic Scandinavian mythology where it says, that the ‘I’ is that which, when the soul and body are woven, holds them both together. The Germanic Scandinavian man sees the weaving of the body and soul, from within; and later on he still understands the way in which, coming from the astral, his inner being unites itself with him; he understands how the inner answers, so to say, to the outer. He could also understand when Initiates told him how the world forms itself into man.

Then he understood how to go back to the earlier stages, to that which was told him about the events which represent the relation of the Angels to the Archangels, to the earlier stages when man was born out of the macrocosm in a physical-spiritual way. He was able to see how the individual human being was built up out of the macrocosm and how he rests in it.

He sought in the macrocosm for those occurrences which take place microcosmically in such a way, that out of the human North, out of the cool domain of the spirit, are woven the thoughts of man, and that from thence the human body is supplied with the twelve brain-nerves in the head. He sees this process which microcosmically have become the twelve brain nerves. He sees the weaving Spirit in what he calls ‘Nebelheim’ or ‘Niflheim’ (Home of Mist), he sees the twelve brain-nerves of man; he sees how that which comes from the human South, from the heart, works towards that which comes down from above; he seeks for it outside in the macrocosm and understands when he is told that it is called ‘Muspelheim’.

Thus even in the Christian centuries he still understood how to comprehend the microcosm from the whole macrocosm; and one can go back still further for him, by showing how man gradually originated out of the macrocosm as an extract of the whole world. He is able to look back into that time and he can understand that these events have a past, which he himself can still see as a working of Angels and Archangels into his soul. He can perceive that these events have a past, and the conceptions which he thus acquires are what we meet with in what is known as the old Germanic Scandinavian Genesis, as the origin of humanity from the entire macrocosm.

Where the Germanic Scandinavian Chaos begins, in Ginnungagap, is about the time when the earth begins to form itself anew after it has gone through the three earlier states, Saturn, Sun and Moon, when it emerges again from pralaya, when the kingdoms of nature are not yet differentiated, and men are as yet quite spiritual beings. Then the man of the North understands how the later conditions formed themselves out of that one.

Now it is interesting to see how in the Germanic Scandinavia mythology events which took place in those times, are depicted in pictures of imaginative form, events for which we, in our anthroposophical teachings, only make use of riper expressions, viz., concepts instead of those former pictures. The events which took place when the sun and moon were still united, are described to us. The going forth of the moon is described, and how evolution then passes over into what later becomes ‘Riesenheim’ (Home of Giants). Everything which existed during the Atlantean epoch is described to us as a continuation of what had happened formerly and which were the affairs of the Germanic Scandinavian people themselves.

I only wanted to-day to give an idea of how the Northern ‘I’ awoke while it was still at a lower stage of evolution, and how the Northern man looked into the Folk-soul, into the soul of Thor and so on. I wanted to call forth a feeling of how the ‘I’ was then present, of how it was able to acquire a direct interest in the inweaving of still higher Beings, who, however, came from quite another quarter than those we find among Eastern peoples. We shall tomorrow try to find access to the more remote parts of the Germanic mythology. We shall recognize how those remote parts are precursors of that which dwells in the Folk-souls, and we shall see what is the nature of our Western Folk-souls.

We have seen that we come closer to the profound meaning of the Gospel of St. John when we seek to approach it from various sides, and yesterday we were able from a certain point of view to indicate one of the most significant mysteries of this Gospel. In order that we may gradually reach a complete understanding of the mystery presented yesterday, it will now be necessary to consider the advent of Christ-Jesus in our postAtlantean period. We have gathered together the most varied material in order that we might trace the evolution of the human being and within it the Christ Principle. Today we shall try to understand why, just at this point of time in our evolution, the Christ appeared as a human being walking upon the earth and we shall in this way form a connection with what we have already heard in part in the last lectures. Now we shall have to consider especially the evolution of our humanity in the post-Atlantean period.

We have repeatedly stated that at a time very far in the past our forefathers dwelt out there in the west in a region now occupied by the Atlantic Ocean. Our forebears dwelt upon old Atlantis. In the lecture of the day before yesterday we were able to call attention especially to the external bodily appearance of these our Atlantean forefathers. We have seen that the physical body, visible now to the external human sense organs, only slowly and gradually reached the present density of flesh which it now possesses. We said that not until the last part of the Atlantean period did men bear some resemblance to their present form. Even toward the last third of the Atlantean period they were still essentially very different creatures from the men of today, although to the external senses they appeared much the same. We can best make clear what progress the human being has made, if we compare him in his present state with any of the existing higher animals. However highly developed the animal may be, it must now be clear for various reasons how the human being differs essentially from the animal. We find that upon the physical plane or in the physical world, every animal consists of physical body, ether or life body and astral body; that these three parts compose its animal being in the physical world.

You must not imagine that only what is physical exists in the physical world. It would be a great mistake if you were to seek all that is etheric or in fact all that is astral only in the super-sensible world. It is true you can see only what is physical with the physical senses in the physical world, but that is not because only what is physical exists here. No, the ether and astral bodies of the animals are present in the physical world and the clairvoyantly endowed person can see them. It is only when he wishes to reach the real ego of the animal that he can no longer remain in the physical world; he must then mount into the astral regions. There the group-soul or group-ego of the animals is to be found and the difference between the human being and the animal consists in the ego of the former also being present here below in the physical world. This means that here in the physical world, the human creature consists of a physical, ether and astral body and an ego, although the three higher members, from the ether body upwards, are only perceptible to clairvoyant consciousness. This difference between the human being and the animal is expressed clairvoyantly in a certain way. Let us suppose that a person endowed with clairvoyance is observing a horse and a man. Extending beyond the horse's head, which is lengthened out to a muzzle, he finds an etheric appendage. This etheric head protrudes beyond the physical head of the horse and is magnificently organized; these two do not coincide in the horse. But he finds that in the human being of the present, the etheric head corresponds almost exactly in form and size to the physical. Clairvoyantly observed, the elephant makes an extremely grotesque appearance with its extraordinarily huge etheric head; it is, indeed, etherically a very grotesque animal. In the human beings of the present, the physical and etheric heads coincide and in form and size they are very nearly alike. This, however, has not always been the case. We find it so only in the last third of the Atlantean period. The ancient Atlanteans' etheric head protruded far beyond his physical head, then by degrees these two grew together and it was in the last third of the Atlantean period that the physical and the etheric heads exactly coincided. In the brain, near the eyes, there is a point which coincides with a very definite point in the etheric head. These points were apart in ancient times; the etheric point was outside of the brain. These two important points have drawn together and only when this occurred did the human being learn to say “I” to himself. Then appeared what we yesterday called the “Consciousness Soul.” Through the coincidence of the etheric and physical heads, the appearance of the human head changed very greatly, for the head of the ancient Atlantean was still very different in appearance from the head of present human beings. If we wish to understand how the present evolution became possible, we must consider a little the physical conditions in ancient Atlantis.

If you had been able to walk through ancient Atlantis, out there in the west, you would not have been able to experience the conditions of rain, fog, air and sunshine that we have now in our present earth. At that time mists pervaded especially the northern regions, west of Scandinavia. Those human beings who lived in ancient Atlantis, in the region where Ireland now stands and even further to the West, never saw rain and sunshine as separate phenomena as is now the case. They were always immersed in mist and only with the Atlantean Flood did the time come when the fog banks separated from the air and were precipitated into the ocean. You might have searched through the whole of Atlantis and you would not have found that spectacle which is now well known to you all as an extraordinary phenomenon of nature; it would have been impossible to discover a rainbow. That is only possible through a separation of rain and sunshine such as can now exist in the atmosphere. On Atlantis before the Flood, you would have found no rainbow. Only gradually, after the Flood, did this phenomenon appear, that is, it became a physical possibility. If after having received these communications of Spiritual Science, you recall that the memory of the Atlantean Flood is preserved in the various sagas and myths of the Deluge and that after the Deluge, Noah came forth and first saw the rainbow, then you will get some idea of how literally and profoundly true the religious documents are. It is a fact that human beings first saw a rainbow after the Atlantean Flood. These are the experiences which can be had by one who acquaints himself with occultism, and then bit by bit learns to understand how literally the religious documents must be taken. Of course one must first learn to understand the alphabet.

Towards the end of the Atlantean period, the external and internal human conditions proved to be most favorable in a certain region of the earth's surface which was in the vicinity of present Ireland. This region is now covered with water. At that time the conditions there were especially favourable and in this region the most highly gifted of the Atlantean races developed, a race that was especially endowed with the capacity to rise to an independent human self-consciousness. The leader of this people, which in Spiritual Science literature is usually designated the ancient Semites, was a great initiate who sought the most highly developed individuals of this people and migrated with them to the east through Europe as far as Asia into a region occupied now by the present Tibet. Thither migrated a relatively small but spiritually very highly developed fraction of the Atlantean peoples. Toward the end of the Atlantean period, it so happened that gradually the westerly portions of Atlantis disappeared and became covered by the sea. Europe in its present form gradually arose. In Asia, the great Siberian regions were still covered with extensive bodies of water, but, especially in the south of Asia, there were regions of land which had already appeared, differently formed, however. Some of the less advanced of the great mass of people joined with this germinal group which migrated from west to east. Many went with them a long distance, others not so far. But the peopling of ancient Europe came about for the most part through the migrations of great hordes of people out of Atlantis who settled there. Other great groups of people who had been driven from other parts of Atlantis, even some from ancient Lemuria, had come into Asia at a still earlier period and now encountered each other during this migration. Thus peoples variously endowed and of very different spiritual capacities settled in Europe and Asia. The small number who were led by that great spiritual individuality, Manu, settled there in Asia in order to foster the greatest possible spirituality. From there streams of culture flowed out into the various regions of the earth and among the various peoples.

The first cultural stream flowed down into India, and through the impulse given by the spiritual mission of that great individuality, Manu, there developed what we may call the ancient Indian civilization. We are not speaking now of that Indian culture of which we have only echoes in those wonderful books of the Vedas, nor are we speaking of what has been handed down to posterity as tradition. Previous to all that can be known of this external culture, there existed a much more glorious and more ancient culture, that of the ancient Holy Rishis, those great teachers who in the far distant past gave to mankind the first post-Atlantean civilization. Let us transplant ourselves into the souls of the people of this first post-Atlantean cultural stream. This was the first really religious human culture. Those Atlantean cultural periods which preceded this one were not religious cultural epochs in the true sense of the word. Religion is, in fact, a characteristic of the post-Atlantean age. You will ask, why is this the case?

Let us see how Atlanteans lived. Since the etheric head was still outside of the physical head, the ancient hazy clairvoyance was not yet completely lost. Therefore, at night, when the Atlantean was outside of his physical body, he could look into the furthest reaches of the spiritual world. Although during the day—when he dipped down into his physical body—he saw physical things here in the physical world, at night he still saw, to a certain degree, the regions of the spiritual world. Transfer yourselves now for a moment into the middle or first third of the Atlantean period. What was the condition of the human being then? He awakened in the morning and his astral body was drawn into his physical and ether bodies. At that time the objects of the physical world were not yet so sharply and clearly contoured as they are now. When a city is enveloped in fog, and you observe the lanterns in the evening as though surrounded by an aura of color with undefined edges and streams of color, you have in this a picture of how things appeared at that time on Atlantis. The outlines were not clearly defined, but it was like seeing the lanterns in the mist. Hence, there was likewise no such sharp division between the clear day-consciousness and the unconsciousness of the night as appeared after the Atlantean period. During the night the astral body slipped out of the ether and physical bodies, but since the ether body still remained partly united with the astral body, there were always reflections of the spiritual world; the human being could always have a hazy clairvoyance, could live within the spiritual world and could behold about him spiritual beings and spiritual activities. The scholars who sit in their studies say that the common people have composed, for example, the Germanic myths and sagas out of their folk phantasy. Wotan and Thor and all the other gods were only personifications of nature forces. There are complete mythological theories which deal in this way with the folk creative phantasy. When one hears such a thing, it is easy to believe that such a learned individual is like the Homunculus in Goethe's Faust, born out of a retort, who had never seen a real human being. For anyone who has really observed the people, it is not possible to speak in this way of the creative folk imagination. The legends of the gods are nothing less than what remains of actual events which people of earlier ages really beheld clairvoyantly. This Wotan really existed. During the night human beings wandered about among the gods in the spiritual world and knew Wotan and Thor there as well as they knew people of flesh and blood like themselves here upon the earth. What primitive people of that age beheld, for a long time dimly and clairvoyantly, has now become the content of myth and saga, especially of those of the Germans.

People who at that time migrated from west to east into the regions later called Germany were those who had retained, more or less, some degree of clairvoyance and who were still able at a certain time to perceive in the spiritual world. And simultaneously with the migrations of that greatest of initiates and his followers into Tibet, whence he sent forth the first cultural colony into India, initiates who fostered the Spiritual Life in the Mysteries were left behind everywhere among the people of Europe. Mysteries existed among these people, the Druid Mysteries, for example, but men no longer have any knowledge of them—for what is recounted is merely fantastic rubbish. It is a significant fact that at that time when the higher worlds were mentioned among the Druids or among the peoples of the regions of western Russia and Scandinavia where the Mysteries of the Trotts existed, there was always a large number who knew of these spiritual worlds. When they spoke of Wotan or of the incidents that occurred between Baldur and Hodur, they were not talking of something wholly unknown to them. There were many who had themselves experienced such incidents in special states of consciousness, and those not having the experiences themselves heard it from their neighbour in whom they had confidence. Wherever you might have gone in Europe, you would still have found vivid memories of what existed on Atlantis. What did exist there? Something one might call a natural, living companionship with the beings of the spiritual world, with what is today called Heaven. The human being continually entered into the spiritual world and lived there. In other words he needed no special religion to point out to him the existence of a spirit-land. What is the meaning of “religion?” It signifies union, union of the physical world with the spiritual. At that time the human being needed no special means of union with the spiritual world, because for him it was a world of natural experience. Just as there is no need now for anyone to impart to you a belief in the flowers of the field or in the beasts of the forest, because you see them with your own eyes, so similarly the Atlanteans “believed” in the gods and spiritual beings, not through religion, but because they experienced them. As human evolution progressed, mankind acquired a clear day-consciousness. It was in the post-Atlantean age that people acquired this clear waking consciousness and they gained it by renouncing their ancient clairvoyant consciousness. It will be theirs again in the future in addition to the present clear day-consciousness. For our ancestors here in Europe, the sagas and myths often aroused memory-pictures of the distant past. One might ask, what was the nature of these most developed human beings? Strange as it may sound, these highly developed individuals whom the leader guided eastward into Tibet were for the most part advanced, because they had lost their ancient, dreamlike consciousness. What does it signify to progress from the fourth over into the fifth root-race? It means becoming day-conscious; it means losing the ancient clairvoyance. The great initiate and guide led away the members of his little group in order that they might not have to live among people who were still at the stage of the ancient Atlanteans. Among the first, only those could be guided into the higher worlds who had been trained artificially, who had gone artificially through an occult training. It may be asked, what did the people of the first post-Atlantean epoch have left of that ancient relationship with the spiritual, divine world? Only the longing for the spirit world, the door to which had been closed. They felt that there had been a time—for they heard it in their sagas—when their forefathers had gazed into the spirit world, had lived there among spirits and gods and had discovered themselves in the midst of deep spiritual realities. “Oh, could we but experience this too!” they said and out of this longing the ancient Indian way of initiation was created. This method of initiation arose out of the longing for what was past and caused the pupil to lose, for a time, the clear day-consciousness which he had acquired in order that he might force himself back in consciousness to his former state. “Yoga” is the method of the ancient Indian initiation which, through its technique and exercises, restored what had been lost in a quite natural way.

Imagine, for example, an ancient Atlantean whose ether head protruded far beyond his physical head. When the astral body withdrew, a large part of the ether head was still united with it, therefore what it experienced could be imprinted upon the ether body and thus he became conscious of his experiences. When, in the last part of the Atlantean period, the ether part of the head was drawn wholly into the physical head, the astral body left the ether body entirely each night. Thus in the ancient initiations, the teacher had to try to draw out the ether body of his pupil by artificial means; in other words, the pupil had to be brought into a sort of lethargic condition, into a kind of death-like sleep which lasted about three and a half days. During this time the ether body protruded from the physical body and was loosened from it. What the astral body then experienced was impressed upon the ether body. Then when the ether body was re-drawn into the physical body, the pupil knew what he had experienced in the spiritual world.

That was the ancient method of initiation, the Yoga initiation, by means of which the pupil was lifted out of the world wherein he found himself in order to be transported back again into the spiritual world. And the cultural mood which resulted from this kind of initiation found its echo in the later Indian culture. It was this mood that gave rise to the words: Truth, Reality, Being exist only in the spiritual world, in that world into which a person enters when he lifts himself out of the physical sense-world. Here he is in the midst of the physical world, surrounded by the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. But what surrounds him is not reality, it is only an outer semblance; he lost the reality ages ago and now lives in a world of appearance, of illusion, of Maya!

The world of the physical, therefore, was the world of Maya for the ancient Indian civilization. We must comprehend this, not as a dull theory, but in accordance with the cultural mood itself—in accordance with the feelings of the people themselves of that time. When the ancient Indian wished to be especially holy, the world of illusion became worthless to him. This physical world became to him an illusion; the true world existed for him when he withdrew from the physical, when through Yoga he was permitted to live again in the world in which his forefathers still lived during the Atlantean period.

The significance of further evolution consists in the human being of this post-Atlantean period becoming gradually accustomed to value the physical world which is allotted to him, according to its worth and meaning. The second epoch, the next step after the ancient Indian period, is also a pre-historic cultural epoch which is named after the people who later lived in the region of Persia; we designate it the primitive Persian civilization. However, we have not the later Persian civilization in mind, but a pre-historic culture.

The second period differs very essentially in its mood, in its feeling-content from the primeval Indian period. It became more and more difficult to loosen the ether body during initiation, but it was still possible and in a certain way it was always done even up to the time of Christ-Jesus. But there was one thing these men of the primitive Persian civilization had attained; they began to appreciate Maya or illusion as something of value. The ancient Indian was happy when he could flee from illusion. For the Persian, it became a sphere of activity. It is true, illusion still continued to appear to him as something hostile, something which must be overcome. Later this gave rise to the myth of the battle between Ormuzd and Ahriman in which the human being allied himself with the good gods against the power of the gods of evil existing in matter. Out of this, the mood of that age was created. The Persian was still not fond of this physical “reality” (Maya), but he no longer fled from it like the ancient Indian; he worked upon it and considered it a stage upon which he could be active, a place where there was something that must be overcome. In this second cultural stage, a step in the conquest of the physical world had been made.

Then came the third cultural stage. We are now approaching closer and closer to historical times. This cultural period is designated in Occult Science the Chaldaic – Babylonian – Assyrian – Egyptian civilization. All these civilizations were founded by colonies sent out under the guidance of great leaders. The first colony founded the civilization of the ancient Indians, the second founded what we have just described as the ancient Persian cultural centre and a third cultural stream travelled still further to the west and laid there the foundation of the Babylonian – Chaldaic – Assyrian – Egyptian civilization. Thus an important step was taken in the conquest of the physical world. To the Persian it still seemed like an intractable mass which he had to manipulate if he wished to work in it with those Beings whom he considered the good Spirits of the true Spiritual Reality. He had now become more familiar, more intimate with physical reality. Just consider the ancient Chaldean astronomy. It is one of the most extraordinary and tremendous creations of the human spirit of the post-Atlantean age. There you see how the course of the stars was explored, how the laws of the heavens were examined. The ancient Indian would have looked out at this heaven and said: The course of the stars with its laws is not worth the trouble to investigate! To the people of the third cultural epoch it was even then very important to penetrate into these laws. To those belonging to the Egyptian civilization, it was of special importance to examine the earthly relationships and to develop the science of geometry. Maya or illusion was explored and physical science came into being. Men studied the thoughts of the gods and felt that they must make a connection between their own individual activity and what they found inscribed in matter as the script of the gods. If you were to investigate spiritually the earlier conditions of Egyptian political life, you would gain a concept of a political organism very different from any that people of the present day can possibly imagine. The individualities who directed and guided those political states were wise men who knew the laws governing the course of the stars, of the movements of the cosmic bodies, and at the same time they knew that everything in the cosmos must mutually correspond. They had studied the course of the stars and knew that there must be a harmony between what was taking place in the heavens and what was happening upon the earth. According to the events in the heavens they decreed what, in the course of time, is to occur on earth. Even in the earliest part of the Roman period (the fourth cultural epoch) there still existed the consciousness that what transpires upon the earth must correspond to what is happening in the heavens. For long periods in the ancient Mysteries it was known at the beginning of a new epoch what events would transpire in the following period. It was known through the Mystery-wisdom, for example, at the beginning of Roman history that a period would follow in which the most varied historical events would be enacted and that they would take place in the region of Alba Longa. For anyone who can read it, it is clear that a deeply symbolical expression is suggested here and that it was, so to say, priestly wisdom that laid out or planned the civilization of ancient Rome. “Alba Longa” was the long priestly garment. In these ancient regions the future historical events were in this way laid out—if we may be allowed to use a technical expression. They knew that seven epochs must follow one after another in succession. The future was divided according to the number seven and an outline of the future history was foretold. I could easily show you how prophetic historical plans were concealed in the story of the seven Kings of Rome which had already been inscribed in the Sibylline Books even as early as the beginning of the Roman epoch. In those days people knew that they had to live through what was written there and on important occasions they consulted the Holy Books. This then accounts for the holy and mysterious character of the Sibylline Books.

Thus humanity of the third cultural epoch worked Spirit into Matter, permeated the outer world with Spirit. There are countless historical evidences of this concealed in the development of the epochs of this third cultural stream—this Assyrian – Babylonian – Chaldean – Egyptian civilization. Our own age can be understood only when we know the important relationships which exist between that age and our own. I should like now to call attention to one of the relationships between these two epochs, in order that you may see how wonderfully things are connected for anyone who can penetrate more deeply into them and who knows that what is called egotism and utilitarianism has now reached its culmination. Never before was a cultural epoch as purely egotistic and unidealistic as our own and it will become even more so in the near future. For, at the present time, spirit has descended completely into a materialistic civilization. Tremendous spiritual forces have had to be employed by men in the great discoveries and inventions of the new age, that is, of the nineteenth century. Just think, for instance, how much spiritual force exists in the telephone, in the telegraph, in the railroads, etc.! How much spiritual force has been materialized, crystallized in the commercial relationships of the earth! How much spiritual energy it requires to cause a sum of money to be paid, let us say in Tokyo, by means of a piece of paper, a cheque written here in this place! Thus one may ask: Does the use of this spiritual force mean spiritual progress? Whoever faces the fact must acknowledge the following: You build railroads indeed, but they carry, practically, only what you need for your stomachs; and when you yourself travel, you do so only because of something that has to do with your physical needs. Does it make any difference from the standpoint of Spiritual Science whether we grind our own corn with a few stones or obtain it from a distance by means of the telegraph, ships, etc.? A tremendous spiritual force is employed, but it is used in an entirely personal sense. What then will be the meaning of what men thus negotiate? Apparently not Anthroposophy, in other words, not spiritual realities. When the telegraph and steamships are used, it is in the first place a question of how much cotton will be ordered to be sent from America to Europe, etc.; in other words it is a question of something that has to do with personal needs. Mankind has descended to the profoundest depths of personal necessity, of physical personality. But just such an egotistic, utilitarian principle had to come sometime, because through it, the ascending course of all human evolution will be facilitated. What has happened to cause the human being to attach so much importance to his own personality, thus causing him to feel himself so much a separate individual? And, moreover, what was it that prepared him for this strong feeling of self in his life between birth and death?

In the third period of civilization a most important preparation was made for this, in the desire to retain the form of the physical body beyond death in the “mummy,” in the wish to prevent the dissipation of the form of the body by embalming it. Thus, this holding fast to the separate individuality became imprinted upon the soul in such a way that now it appears again in another incarnation as the feeling of personality. That this feeling of personality is so strong today is the result of the embalming of the body in the Egyptian period. So we see that in human evolution everything is correlated. The Egyptians mummified the bodies of the dead in order that people of the fifth epoch might have the greatest possible consciousness of their own personality. Certainly, profound mysteries exist within human evolution.

Thus you see how the human being has gradually descended deeper and deeper into Maya and has permeated matter with what he is able to achieve. In the fourth cultural period, the Greco-Latin age, he placed his inner being out in the external world. Thus you see in Greece how he objectified himself in matter and form. He concealed his own form in the figures of the Grecian gods. In Aeschylos there still resounds, in dramatic form, men's desire to convert their own individuality into artistic form. They step out upon the physical plane and create a copy of themselves. In the Roman period men created an image of themselves in the institutions of the State. It is a sign of the greatest dilletantism when one traces what is now called Jurisprudence back beyond the Roman period. What existed previously is, in concept, something quite different from Jus or “Justice,” “Right” (Recht), for the concept of the human being as an outer personality, the concept of human rights did not exist prior to that time. In ancient Greece there was the Polis, the little municipal state, and men felt themselves as members of it. It is difficult for people to enter into the consciousness of the Greek epoch. In the Roman epoch, the path into the physical world had been trod so far that the individual human personality—as a Roman citizen—appears also as possessing rights. Everything progresses by stages and we shall trace in detail how the personality emerges by degrees and how at the same time the physical world is being conquered more and more in the progress of history, and how the human being is plunging deeper and deeper into matter.

Our own epoch is the first after the Greco-Latin; in other words, it is the fifth epoch of the post-Atlantean age. There will follow after it a sixth and a seventh epoch. The fourth, the Greco-Latin, is the middle period, and during this middle period, Christ-Jesus came upon the earth. This event was prepared for within the third post-Atlantean epoch, because everything in the world has to be prepared beforehand. The third epoch made ready for that greatest of all events which was to be enacted upon the earth during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch at a time when men had progressed far enough in their feeling of personality to step outside themselves and create their gods in their own image. In the art of the Grecian period, men created a world of gods after their own image. They repeated this in the form of the State. An understanding of physical matter was reached even to the degree of the union of Maya (the world of illusion, matter) and Spirit. This is the moment when men also attained an understanding of personality. You will comprehend that this was also the time when they were able to understand God as a personal manifestation, the time when the spirit belonging to the earth also progressed to the point of becoming a personality. Thus we see how in the middle of the post-Atlantean civilization God Himself appeared as a man, as a separate personality. When we see how in Greek art the human being fashioned an image of himself, we may say: What happened in the middle of the post-Atlantean civilization appears to us as an image. When we pass from the Greek to the Roman period and observe the types of human beings of the great Roman Empire, does it not actually seem as though the Greek images of the gods had descended from their pedestals and were walking about in their togas? One can fairly see them!

Thus the human creature had progressed from the time when he felt himself as a member of the Godhead to a feeling of himself as a personality. He could comprehend as a personality even the Godhead Itself which, embodied in the flesh, had descended and dwelt among men.

It has been our desire here to picture to our souls the reason for the appearance of Christ-Jesus just at this period of human evolution. How this mystery developed further, how in the earlier evolutionary periods it shone forth prophetically, and how it works prophetically into the distant future, we shall consider next time.

Through occult study, undertaken in the appropriate way, it is possible in our time to learn, as it were, what might be called the Fifth Gospel. If you turn your souls to some of what has been said over the years in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha, you will also have encountered, among some of what has been said to explain the four Gospels, something that is not in the Gospels as a message about the life of Christ Jesus. From the series of facts mentioned in this regard, I will mention only the story of the two Jesus boys. But there are many other things that can be found today in the purely spiritual records and that are important for our time. It is so important for our time that it seems desirable for the prepared souls to get to know it little by little. For the time being, however, what is told from these sources must remain within our circle. But it may nevertheless be understood as if it were destined to pour into the souls of our present time in such a way that one receives a much more vivid picture of the work of Christ Jesus than has been possible until now.

If you take what I said in the introduction to the first lecture, you will have gathered from it the impression that in our time a much more conscious grasp of the figure of Christ Jesus is necessary than was the case for earlier times. If it should be objected that it would be contrary to the Christian development to bring forward something new about the life of Christ Jesus, then it is only necessary to recall the end of the Gospel of John, where it expressly says that in the Gospels the things that have happened are only partially recorded, and that the world could not bear the books that would be necessary if everything that has happened were to be recorded. From such things one can receive the courage and strength to actually do what is necessary in an age to present new facts about the life of Christ Jesus. And one can know from such things that it is only narrow-mindedness when something is said against such a presentation.

Now I would like to recall what I have often stated here in this place: that at the beginning of our era two Jesus children were born. We already know this, and we also know that the one of the two Jesus boys was born in such a way that the I, the spirit-being of Zarathustra, was embodied in him, and that this Jesus boy then lived with this spirit-being of Zarathustra until about the age of twelve, until that the point in time that the Gospel of Luke describes in such a way that the parents led Jesus to Jerusalem, then lost him, and that he was found among the scribes, to whom he interpreted the teachings in a way that amazed them and the parents, and which they themselves were called to interpret. I have drawn attention to the fact that this scene, as described in the Gospel of Luke, in reality indicates that the ego of Zarathustra, which had lived for about twelve years in the one Jesus child, moved over into the other Jesus child, now also twelve years old, , who until then had been of a completely different nature; so that we now have that Jesus-child who comes from the Nathanic line of the house of David, and who did not have the Zarathustra-ego within him until the twelfth year, but from now on has it within him.

It is now possible, by means of what I have often spoken of and which can be described as reading in the Akashic Records, to gain further insights into the life of the Jesus child, now endowed with the Zarathustra ego. In doing so, one can distinguish three periods in the life of this Jesus. The first period extends roughly from the age of twelve to eighteen, the second from eighteen to twenty-four, and the third from about the age of twenty-four to the moment marked by the baptism of John in the Jordan, that is, to around the age of thirty.

Let us imagine that this Jesus, who was now twelve years old and had the Zarathustra ego within him, presents himself before the scribes of the Israelite people as an individual who has an elementary knowledge of the essence of Jewish doctrine and the essence of ancient Hebrew law, and that he is able to speak about it in an appropriate way. So this ancient Hebrew world lived in the soul of that Jesus-child. All that had come down in the way of knowledge about the relation of the Hebrew people to their God, which is usually understood as the proclamation of the God of the Hebrew people to Moses, lived in him. If we speak in sketchy terms, we can therefore say: A rich treasure from the holy teaching of what was in the Hebrew people lived in Jesus; and with this treasure, with this knowledge, he lived, doing his father's trade, in Nazareth, devoted to what he knew so well, processing it in his soul.

Now the Akasha Chronicle research shows us how, for him, what he knew in this way became a source of various mental doubts and mental pains, how he felt, especially in the deepest sense, more and more thoroughly and with severe inner struggles of the soul , how once, in quite different times of human evolution, a grandiose proclamation, a grandiose revelation flowed down from the spiritual worlds into the souls of those who, endowed with quite different soul powers, could receive such a teaching. It was especially brought home to the soul of Jesus that there had once been people with quite different soul powers who could look up to the revealing spiritual powers and understand in a completely different way what was revealed there than the later generation to which he himself belonged, the derived one, which had less soul powers to lead up in order to process what had once been led down. Often the moment came when he said to himself: All this was once proclaimed, one can still know it today; but one can no longer grasp it as fully as those who received it at the time grasped it. And the more of this was revealed to him inwardly, the more of it he was able to grasp in his soul, as he now received it when he stood before the Jewish scribes and interpreted their own law to them, the more he felt the inability of the souls of his time to find their way into what was ancient Hebrew revelation. Therefore, the people, the souls of his time, the peculiarities of these souls of his time seemed to him like the descendants of people who had once received great revelations, but who could no longer reach up to this revelation. What had once been brightly and warmly drawn into these souls, he could often tell himself, now faded, and in many ways seemed dull, while the souls had felt it in the deepest sense before. This is how he felt about much of what now emerged more and more in his soul through inspiration.

This was the life of his soul from the age of twelve to eighteen, that she penetrated deeper and deeper into Jewish teaching, and could be less and less satisfied by it, yes, that it caused him more and more pain and suffering. It fills the soul with the deepest tragic feeling when one considers how Jesus of Nazareth had to suffer because of what had become of an ancient sacred teaching in a later generation. And often, as he sat there quietly dreaming and pondering, he said to himself: “The teaching once descended, the revelation once given to men; but now men are no longer here to comprehend it! This sketchily characterizes the spiritual mood of Jesus of Nazareth. This was at work in the contemplation of his soul in those moments that remained to him during the time he spent as a craftsman, as a carpenter or joiner in Nazareth.

Then came the time from the age of eighteen to twenty-four, when he traveled around in nearby and somewhat more distant areas. He not only touched places in Palestine, but also outside Palestine, while working in his trade in a wide variety of places. During these years, in which the human soul, so freshly surrendered, absorbs much from its surroundings, he got to know many people and many human attitudes, and learned how human souls lived with what remained for them as an ancient and sacred teaching, that is, with what they could understand of it. And it is understandable from the outset that on a mind that had been through six years of what I just told, all the inner joys, sufferings, and disappointments weighing on the soul, had to make a very different impression than on the minds of other people. Every soul was a mystery for him that he had to solve; but every soul was also something that told him that it was waiting for something that had to come.

Among the various regions he touched, there were also some that belonged to the paganism of that time. One scene in particular made a deep impression on us, gleaming out of the spiritual painting of his wanderings inside and outside Palestine during the period from his eighteenth to his twenty-fourth year. There we see him arriving at a pagan place of worship, a pagan place of worship such as was built to the pagan gods under this or that name in Asia, Africa and Europe. It was one of those places of worship whose ceremonies were reminiscent of the way in which they were also practiced in the mysteries, but there they were practiced with understanding, whereas in these pagan places of worship they had often degenerated into a kind of external ceremony. But there was one such place of worship that Jesus of Nazareth came to that was abandoned by its priests, where the cult was no longer practiced. It was in a region where people lived in need and misery, in sickness and toil; their place of worship was abandoned by the priests. But when Jesus of Nazareth came to this place of worship, the people gathered around him, the people who were often plagued by illness, misery and need, but who were especially plagued by the thought: This is the place where we once gathered, where the priests sacrificed with us and showed us the effect of the gods; now we stand before the abandoned place of worship.

A peculiar trait in the soul of Jesus comes to the spiritual observer. On other walks, it could be seen that Jesus was received everywhere in a very special way. The basic mood of his soul spread something that had a mild and beneficial effect on the people in whose circles he was able to stay. He traveled from place to place, worked here and there in this or that carpenter's workshop, and then sat with the people with whom he talked. Every word he spoke was understood in a special way, because it was spoken in a very special way; it was imbued with the mildness and benevolence of the heart. Not so much the what, but the how, cast something like a magic spell over the souls of men. Everywhere warm relations were formed with the wanderer. They did not take him like any other person; they saw something special shining from his eyes, and they felt something special speaking from his heart.

And so it was as if in the people who stood around their altar in hardship and misery and need and saw a stranger had come, as if in every soul the thought had come to life: a priest has come to us who now wants to perform the sacrifice at the altar again! That was the mood that surrounded him, caused by the impression his arrival made. It was as if he had appeared to the heathens as a priest who would perform their sacrifice again.

And behold, as he stood there before the assembled crowd, he felt, at a certain moment, as if he had been transported, as if he had been brought into a special state of mind – and he saw something terrible! He saw, at the altar and among the crowd that was gathering around him in ever greater numbers, what can be called demons, and he recognized what these demons meant. He recognized how the pagan sacrifices had gradually developed into something that magically attracted such demons. And so, when Jesus came to the altar, not only the people had come, but also the demons that had gathered at the altar during the earlier sacrifices. For this he recognized: that although such pagan sacrifices originated from what could be done in the old pagan times and at good places of worship to the true gods, insofar as they were recognizable for the pagan times, but that these sacrifices had gradually fallen into decline. The secrets had degenerated, and instead of the sacrifices flowing to the gods, these sacrifices and the thoughts of the priests attracted demons, Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, which he now saw around him again, after he had been transported to a different state of consciousness. And when those gathered around him had seen how he had been transported into this other state of consciousness and had therefore fallen, they fled. But the demons remained.

In a more urgent way than the decline of the old Hebrew teaching, the decline of the pagan mysteries had thus come before the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. From the age of twelve to eighteen, he had experienced within himself how that which was once given to humanity so that it warmed and enlightened the soul could no longer work and thus led to a certain desolation of the soul. Now he saw how the old beneficent workings of the gods had been replaced by demonic workings of a Luciferian and Ahrimanian kind. He saw the decay of paganism in what he had spiritually perceived around him. Imagine these experiences of the soul, this way of learning what had become of the influence of the old gods and of people's intercourse with the old gods; imagine the feeling that is produced in this way: humanity must thirst for the new, for it becomes wretched in its soul if nothing new comes!

And Jesus of Nazareth had, after the demons had, so to speak, beheld him and then followed the fleeing man, a kind of vision, a vision of which we shall speak again, in which the process of human development resounded to him from the spiritual heights in a special way. He had the vision of what I will share in a future lecture, which is like a kind of macrocosmic Lord's Prayer. He felt what had once been proclaimed to humanity in the pure Word, as pure Logos.

When Jesus of Nazareth returned home from this journey, it was around the time – as spiritual research suggests – that the father of Jesus of Nazareth had died. In the following years, from the age of twenty-four until the time marked as that of John the Baptist in the Jordan, Jesus of Nazareth became acquainted with what can be called the Essene doctrine and the Essene community. The Essenes were a community that had set up their headquarters in a valley in Palestine. The central headquarters was in a remote location. But the Essenes had branches everywhere; there was also something of a branch in Nazareth. The Essenes had set themselves the task of developing a particular way of life, a particular spiritual life, which was to be in harmony with the external life, whereby the soul could develop to a higher point of view of experience, whereby it could come into a kind of community with the spiritual world. In certain degrees one ascended to that which the Essene community wanted to give its members, its co-confessors, as the highest: a kind of union with the higher world.

The Essenes had thus developed something that was intended to cultivate the human soul in such a way that it could grasp what could no longer be grasped through the natural course of human development: the ancient connection with the divine spiritual world. The Essenes sought to achieve this through strict rules that also applied to their external way of life. They sought to achieve this by strictly withdrawing, as it were, from contact with the external world. Such an Essene had no personal property. The Essenes had come together from all possible parts of the world at that time. But anyone who wanted to become an Essene had to give up what possessions he had to the Essene community; only the Essene community had possessions, property. So if someone in a particular place owned property and wanted to become an Essene, he handed over the house and whatever land it included to the Essene community. This meant that the community had property in a wide variety of places. There was a peculiar principle in the Essene community that would certainly cause offence today, given our views, but which was necessary for the Essenes to achieve what they wanted. They cultivated the life of the soul by devoting themselves to a pure life, a life of devotion to wisdom, but also a charitable life of love. Thus, wherever they went - and they wandered around the world to fulfill their task - they performed good deeds. Part of their teaching was healing the sick. They practiced healing everywhere in the manner of that time. But they also did a lot of material charity. And there that principle was in force, which cannot be imitated in our present social order, and probably should not be imitated: an Essene could support anyone he considered in need, but not a family member.

The goal of the Essenes was to perfect the soul in order to reconnect it to the spiritual world. This goal was designed to keep the temptations of Ahriman and Lucifer from approaching the soul of the Essenes. We could also characterize the Essene ideal by saying that the Essene tried to keep away from himself everything that can be called Luciferic and Ahrimanic temptations. He tried to live in such a way that what is Ahrimanic drawing down into sensuality, into the outer world, into materialistic life, could not approach him at all. But he also tried to live a life of bodily purity so that the temptations and temptations arising from the soul could not affect this soul. So he tried to lead such a life that Lucifer and Ahriman could not reach the Essene soul.

The way Jesus of Nazareth developed led to a relationship with the Essenes that would not have been possible with any other person, and would not have been possible at all in the years I am talking about here, if he had not become an Essene himself. Jesus of Nazareth was even allowed to enter the most sacred and lonely rooms at the central place of the Essenes, as far as that was at all possible within the strict rules of the Essene order, and was allowed to hold conversations with the Essenes that they otherwise only held among themselves. In the process, he was able to familiarize himself with the deepest rules of the Essenes. Thus he came to know how the individual Essene felt and strove and lived, and above all, he learned to feel – and this is something of what it comes down to – what existed as the furthest possibility for a soul of his time, to penetrate again through perfection to the ancient sacred revelation. He came to know all of this.

One day, when he left the Essene assembly, he had a momentous experience. As he went out of the gate of the secluded Essene dwelling, he saw two figures fleeing from either side of the gate, and he sensed that they were Lucifer and Ahriman. And more often this was repeated to him like a similar vision. The Essenes were, after all, a very numerous order of people. They had their settlements everywhere in the way I have described. Therefore, they were also respected as such in a certain way, although they led their social life in a very different way than the other people of that time. The cities they visited made special gates for them; because the Essene was not allowed to go through a gate where there was a picture on it. If he wanted to enter a city and came to a gate where there was an image, he had to turn back and enter the city at a different place where there was no image. This played a certain role in the entire system of the Essene doctrine of perfection, because it was the case that nothing of a legendary, mythical or religious nature was allowed to be depicted in the image. The Essene wanted to flee from the Luciferian aspect of pictorial impulses. So it was that on his wanderings, Jesus of Nazareth came to know the imageless Essene communities. And again and again, at these imageless Essene communities, he saw how Lucifer and Ahriman had placed themselves there as invisible images where visible images were frowned upon. These were significant experiences in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

What did these significant experiences lead to for him in connection with the numerous conversations he was able to have with the Essenes, who had attained a high level of perfection? It led to something that was again extremely depressing, deeply, deeply depressing for his soul, which caused him endless torment and pain. It occurred to him that he had to say to himself: Yes, there is a strictly closed community; there are people who strive to get in touch with the spiritual powers, with the divine spiritual world, in the present. So there is still something among people in the present that seeks to regain this connection. But at what cost? The fact that this community of the Essenes led a life that other people could not lead. For if all men had led the life of the Essenes, the life of the Essenes would not have been possible. And now a connection occurred to him that had an extremely depressing effect on his soul: Where do Lucifer and Ahriman flee to, he said to himself, when they flee from the gates of the Essenes? They flee to where the souls of other people are! So that is what humanity had come to: a community that had to separate itself if it wanted to find a connection to the divine spiritual world. And because they set themselves apart, because they set themselves apart in such a way that they can only develop in their entire social cohesion by excluding other people from themselves, they condemn other people, only to sink all the deeper into what they, this Essene community, fled. The fact that the Essene community rose meant that the others had to fall all the more! Because the Essene led a life in which Lucifer and Ahriman could not come into contact with him, Ahriman and Lucifer were able to come to the other people precisely by tempting and enticing them.

That was Jesus of Nazareth's experience with an esoteric order. What could be experienced in his time with Jewish law had already been experienced in his soul in earlier years. What the pagan cults of his time had come to, he had also experienced in his soul in earlier years, when the world of demons had come before his soul at a significant moment. Now he had to experience at what cost humanity of his time had to seek its approach to the divine-spiritual secrets of the world. Thus we live in a time – that came bitterly before his soul – in which those who seek the connection with the Divine-Spiritual must do so in close community and at the expense of other people. Thus we live in a time in which the cry of longing for such a connection with the Divine-Spiritual World can become all people's. That had weighed heavily on his soul.

And as this lay so heavily on his soul, he once had a spiritual conversation with the soul of the Buddha within the Essene community. The whole way of life of the Essene community was very similar to the way of life that Buddha had brought into the world. And Jesus saw himself face to face with Buddha and heard himself saying of Buddha: 'The path that I have given to mankind cannot bring the connection with the divine spiritual world to all people; for I have founded a teaching that, if it is to be understood and experienced in its higher aspects, makes necessary such a separation as is contained in this teaching. With the utmost clarity and force, Jesus of Nazareth realized that Buddha had founded a teaching that presupposes that, in addition to those who profess the innermost part of this teaching, there must be other people who cannot profess this innermost part. For how could Buddha and his disciples have gone with an offering bowl in hand and collected alms if there had not been people who could have given them alms? He now heard from Buddha that his teaching was not one that every person in every situation in life could develop.

The possibilities for development that existed in his time were experienced by Jesus of Nazareth in the three periods of his life before his baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist. He did not experience them in the way that one learns something, but in the way that one experiences something when one comes into direct, very close contact with these things. He had come into very close contact with the ancient Jewish law when it had flashed up in him in an inspirational way, and he had been able to experience within himself something like an echo of the revelations that had been made to Moses and the prophets. But he had also been able to experience how it was no longer possible for a soul of his time, with the physical organization of that time, to fully grasp these things. Different times had come than those in which one could fully absorb the ancient Jewish law. And how the decline of the pagan mysteries had brought about the demonic world, he had also experienced through the closest contact, through an experience in the supersensible world, in which he had summoned not only the people who had been plunged into need and misery by the ruined place of worship, but also the demons who had gathered around the sacrificial site instead of the good old pagan powers. And how it was impossible for man, in spite of the demands of the coming time, to learn anything of the deepest secret knowledge of the Essene order, he had experienced during the six years before the baptism of St. John.

What one gains in this area from the contemplation of the Akasha Chronicle is the realization that here, through inner spiritual experience, something has been suffered that could never have been suffered by any other soul on earth. Perhaps there is not full understanding in our time for this very word that I have just spoken. Therefore, I would like to interject something here. In the further course of the messages from the Fifth Gospel, I will have to explain how these sufferings increased tremendously in the time between John the Baptist's baptism in the Jordan and the Mystery of Golgotha. Our time could easily object: But why should such a high soul suffer at all? Because our time has strange ideas about these things. And when I come to discuss the full depth of Jesus' suffering and, later, of Christ's, I must draw your attention to many misunderstandings that arise.

I have already mentioned several times, including here, that a book by Maurice Maeterlinck has recently been published, “On Death”, which should be read for the sake of seeing how absurdities such a person, who has otherwise also written good things in the field of spiritual life, can write. Among many absurdities, Maeterlinck's book also asserts that a spirit that has no body cannot suffer because only a physical body can suffer. From this Maeterlinck draws the conclusion that a person who has left his body cannot suffer in the spiritual world. Anyone who thinks like this could easily come to the conclusion that the Christ-being, after it had entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth, could not suffer. Nevertheless, I will have to describe next time the deepest suffering of the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

It is certainly strange how a person with sound reason can believe that a physical body can suffer. After all, only the soul in the physical body can suffer, because the physical body cannot have pain and suffering. What pain and suffering is, is located in the soul-spiritual part of a body, and physical pain is precisely that which is caused by irregularities of the physical organism. Insofar as the physical organism is an organism, they are irregularities. You can have a strained muscle in it and so on; but the physical body, the physical organization, does not suffer, even if matter is dragged from one place to another. Just as a straw bag cannot suffer when the straw is thrown around, so a physical body cannot suffer. But because a spiritual-soul being is in the body, the spiritual-soul part suffers from the fact that something is not as it should be. So it is the spiritual-soul part that suffers; and it is always the spiritual-soul part. And the higher the spiritual-soul stands, the more it can suffer, and the higher it stands, the more it can suffer from spiritual-soul impressions.

I say this so that you can try to form an impression, a feeling, of how the Zarathustra essence suffered during these years from the experience that the old revelations have become impossible for what the human soul needs in modern times. First of all, there was the infinite suffering that confronts us, which cannot be compared to any suffering on earth, when we look at the part of the life of Jesus of Nazareth that we are considering today in the manner of the Akasha Chronicle.

At the end of the period that I last characterized, Jesus of Nazareth had a conversation with his mother. This conversation with the mother was decisive for what he now undertook: the path to the one with whom he had already entered into a kind of relationship through his relationship with the Essene order, which he undertook as a walk to John the Baptist. I will talk about this conversation with the mother, which is then decisive for what follows in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, next time.

Let me say in conclusion today: consider the messages of this Fifth Gospel as something that is given as well as it can be given, because the spiritual forces of our time require that a number of souls know about these things from now on. But also consider what is given with a certain reverence. For I have already mentioned here how wild the external spiritual life in Germany became, even among the most honest thinkers, at the moment when a publication was first made only about the two Jesus children. Such things, which are taken from the spiritual world, which come directly from spiritual research, the public outside our movement cannot yet tolerate them at all. And the things come to meet one in the most varied ways, which are perceptible like a wild passion, and which want to ward off something that comes out of the spiritual world like a new proclamation. It is not necessary that through careless chatter these things be also belittled and ridiculed, as has happened to the story of the two Jesus children, for these things should be sacred to us.

It is actually not at all easy to talk about these things in the present, precisely in view of the fact that these things are most strongly resisted. And basically it is, after all, what I have often characterized: the infinite laziness of the human soul in our time, which does not want to go into the details of spiritual research and therefore does not want to gain any insight into the possibility of coming to such things. It is already the case in the present that, on the one hand, the longing for revelations from the spiritual world lies hidden in the depths of the human soul, and that, on the other hand, the conscious part of the human soul in our time becomes most passionately negative when such revelations from the spiritual world are spoken of.

Consider the words I said at the end of today's reflection and take them as a guide to how we want the things we speak about in the Fifth Gospel to be taken.

If we now speak a great deal about the social problem that is disturbing our times, it is because the essential thing for us—in addition to what is naturally of particular importance to our contemporaries as such in this problem—is that really the ultimate practical solution of this problem is intimately connected with the fundamentals of Spiritual Science, and therefore those interested in Spiritual Science have a special inducement to regard this question from out of a Spiritual Scientific standpoint. For you see it is urgently necessary that understanding should be aroused in the widest circles for what are the impulses behind the social movement. On the other hand, however, these circles are little prepared to look into the matter fundamentally, to concentrate their gaze on the fundamentals. By degrees a certain comprehension must ray out from those interested in Spiritual Science into the sphere of the social movement, and for this it is necessary to make ourselves acquainted with certain fundamental facts without knowledge of which there can be no real grasp of the social problem. There can be no doubt that the unconscious and subconscious play an enormous part in human social life. What is at work in the social life comes ultimately from what people think and feel, and, according to the impulses of their characters, what they will. But in the age of the development of the consciousness soul this becomes increasingly individual. People become more and more different in their thinking, feeling and willing: this is the task of the epoch of the development of the consciousness soul. Therefore much will spring from subconscious sources in human relationships to flow into the social movement which, begun half a century ago, has today reached a culmination and will spread farther and farther afield making enormous demands of the people. What emerges today are primarily chaotic demands. In place of these, clearer and clearer conceptions and better and better will impulses must appear. It was because these clear conceptions and good impulses of will did not exist that mankind fell into the present catastrophe and this catastrophe will become immeasurably greater. For one cannot say that real goodwill exists extensively in regard to this question. What exists is something like a yielding to what seems to be inevitable. One would willingly give them a morsel now and again, for fear that otherwise their mouths might water. But what must appear in a really deep social understanding? That must live in the hearts of men and must become an essential part of our schooling.

Something of this kind can be attained only when at least a certain number of people on earth, really out of knowledge of human nature, out of knowledge of the relation between physical and the superphysical worlds, cultivate a deeper understanding for these problems than most people can develop by reason of our present superficial culture.

Yesterday you saw how matters stand with what plays its part in the whole man's life as language. Now just think what part, on the other hand, language plays in men's international operation throughout the world. Consider how manifold are the varied feelings and will impulses depending upon languages. Consider again how infinitely much that is not clear in such things prevails among men. Today let us spend a little time on speech. As I mentioned yesterday we had three periods of evolution to come in the post-Atlantean period of human evolution. We live in the fifth, the sixth will follow, to be followed in turn by the seventh. As we saw yesterday, on turning our attention to the development of language, till now we, as earthly men, have developed a certain inclination to abstract, unimaginative thinking. What must be evolved before the end of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is the imaginative conception, Imagination. It is mankind's special task in this fifth post-Atlantean period to develop the gift of Imagination. I beg of you not to confuse what I am discussing here with those matters set out in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. In that book it is the individual man who is being considered. It is a matter of the esoteric development of the individual man. What I am now considering is the social life of people. The folk genius cultivates imagination. Each one of us must seek his own Imagination for esoteric development: but the folk genius cultivates the Imagination from which must come the common spiritual culture of the future. An imaginative spiritual culture must be developed in the future. Now we have reached, so to speak, the culminating point of abstract spiritual culture, that spiritual culture which everywhere works towards abstraction; from out of that there must be developed a culture with imaginative conceptions. Our culture must be interpenetrated not with thoughts abstractly expressed but with imagery such as we have for example in our group, the Representative of mankind between the luciferic as the one pole and the ahrimanic as the other. And many people will have to tell themselves, more and more people will have to tell themselves, that what really has to do with spiritual life is not to be expressed in abstract thoughts. One should not always be pondering about abstract thoughts, but it is right and living in the right way in the human heart to express oneself through pictures. The life of Imagination in common is what must come.

In the sixth post-Atlantean period a kind of Inspiration of the folk genius should be especially cultivated, out of which should blossom such ideas of rights as will be felt as a kind of gift for the life on earth. The life to be developed in the rights-state is, as I recently pointed out, such a one as is opposed to all life of the Spirit, indeed it is its opposite. When earthly life takes its source healthily and not unhealthily, the principles of rights gradually accepted as such will be felt as gifts from the spiritual world. They will be felt as gifts that come down to the folk genius through Inspiration to rule earthly life, not in a human arbitrary manner, but in the sense of a great spiritual leadership. One could say that it is just through this Inspiration experienced by the folk genius that Ahriman will been enchained. Otherwise an ahrimanic being would be developed over the whole earth.

The last epoch will have to cultivate Intuition. Only under the influence of this Intuition can the whole economic life be developed which men can see as their ideal economic life. But the curious thing is that from now on one cannot so separate things in the more or less abstract way that I have written them up on the board:

V. Imagination
VI. Inspiration
VII. Intuition

You see one can quite well speak of the early Indian epoch, the early Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean, the Graeco-Latin period, an periods existing as such with need limits, in each of which were developed a very distinctive way of life. In the future that will no longer be possible; than the forces at work in civilization will be mingled. Thus the Intuition which will appear in the seventh epoch is already at work in the fifth, Inspiration is active in the fifth, Imagination is not fully acquired in the fifth but will reach its final stages only in the later periods. All these things happen interconnectedly; they are not so strictly separated. So that it is already necessary for men to work towards what should be achieved in the Imaginative life, and in the life of Inspiration and that of Intuition. But externally man must distinguish between the things that are forced into overlapping in time. The life of spirit which has as its prime task for the future to develop the imagination must be cultivated in the emancipated spiritual organisation. The life of Inspiration which will give the folk genius principally the conceptions of rights must be evolved in the separated state. And the Intuitive life, strange as it may appear, must be evolved in the economic life. These spheres must in their externals be kept separate, as has been shown you from various points of view.

You will see deeper into thee different members if you pay attention to what I have been putting forward in regard to language. You see, language is apparently something homogeneous. You regard language as something homogeneous and men feel it to be so. But it is not so. Language is something quite different with respect to the soul-spiritual life of mankind from what it is in respect to social life in the rights state, and again it different in respect to the economic life.

Let us try to characterize what is very difficult to describe. In regard to language think first of poetry. You have often heard the remark how much the man of every sphere of culture when he is a poet (and who is there who is not something of a poet!) is indebted to language. Language is much more creative than is believed. Language contains great and powerful mysteries; the genius of language is something tremendously creative. That is why within the sphere of language the purely humanly creative so seldom emerges: this is noticed only by those who with deep devotion study the evolution of the peoples. In one incarnation men usually remain bound only to a certain epoch, and so have nothing definite to go upon or passing judgment rightly on what I am now meaning. We Germans, for example, nowadays speak now and then with some modifications of meaning; but in so far as we use the uniform educated, we all speak differently from what was customary in the 18th century. Whoever follows attentively the literature of that century until the last third of the century will soon notice that. For the language we use in common as ordinary educated German speech is a result of Goethean creation and of those who are connected with Goethe's creative work: Lessing, Herder, Wieland, Goethe, and to a certain degree Schiller too. A great part of our verbal education did not exist before the time of these spirits! Take the Adelung dictionary, written comparatively recently, and hunt therein for many things which are now current: you will not find them! To a great extent the period which produced Goetheanism was created in language and we lived in what was formed in this way. There you see the individually creative playing into genius of speech as such. In poets one can even speak at that time of creation of the highest order: what follows as epigone is often drawn from the language itself.

So I have often said that when one sees through these things a facile language often strikes one, a dressed-up poetic performance of no distinction. What originally pulses from one's innermost soul is often much more awkward than what is the result of no great poetic gift, but produced by a certain profession of speech, by beautiful verse and the like. It is the same with the other arts. But one must pay attention to such things if one wants to have a concept of how there is a life in the language itself in which we are involved. In penetrating more deeply into this language the possibility will open out for an imaginative feeling and perception. Nowadays there is very much that fights against this learning of the imaginative from speech, because since languages have recently become international, men have with a certain justification acquired many languages, or at least several, up to a certain point. This acquisition of several languages has not yet driven the deeper aspect of the matter to the surface, but actually only the superficial. What the Imagination then brings about—what has to do with perception—has not yet been brought to the surface. Nowadays he who has acquired several languages becomes a slave to the dictionary for a slave to any other handbook that has to do with the languages in question. And so one has to accustom oneself to the horrid unreality that a word in another language that one finds in a dictionary for, say, a word from one's own language is taken to mean exactly the same. In regard to something I shall speak of next, it does certainly mean the same, but it does not do so where inner experience is concerned.

Take the following, for example: in German we say Kopf, in French tête, in Italian testa, and so forth. What does this show? Recall the human head and the head of an animal Kopf for the same reason that we speak of a cabbage as a Kohlkopf; because of its roundness, it's spherical form. So he who as a German calls the head Kopf is: it's so with regard to its form. Tête and testa signify something which testifies, which gives testimony. Thus there are quite different points of view from which one can indicate a member of the human organism. Fuss (foot) is a German word which is connected with Furt (ford), with the Furche (furrow) we make in walking over the ground; that is the point of view from which we as Germans indicate that part of the human organism; pied is the setting down, the indication of something placing itself on the ground: something quite different! The significance of words proceeds from various points of view. And this impulse to describe the same things from different backgrounds is the impress of a subconscious in the character of peoples that is not generally noticed.

But now consider, you have to do it not just with physical human beings walking about on the physical earth, but with men altogether; you are studying the whole relation to the dead. What is actually characteristic in the matter stands out particularly there. The dead have no sense for this dictionary interpretation of words, but for what is imaginative they have the deepest understanding. But should one form one's thoughts so that one gets the shade of meaning from the spoken sounds, the dead receive at once the imaginative form thus produced. When the German word for the head Kopf is used, the dead have the experience of roundness. When the same word is used in a Latin language he has the experience of what is testified. But this stigmatizing, this mere characterizing, this abstract relating to some single organ or other is not experienced by the dead; what he experiences with the deepest significance passes unnoticed by the man of today with his abstract thoughts. So that in his soul man has a special relation to language. The relation the soul has to whine which is actually far more inward than man's ordinary, everyday relation to language. The soul inwardly feels a difference when one describes a foot by being sent on the ground, or by the fact that a mark, a furrow, is made. The soul feels that; while externally and in the abstract man experiences only the relation of the word to the single organ in question. In its experience of speech the soul is inwardly in much the same condition as when it is disembodied. And what is generally experienced as the only meaning of speech in ordinary life really lies like an outer layer on the surface of speech. A true poet, for example, is just a man who has a fine feeling for the inwardness of language, a finer feeling than others. That man is a real poet who is alive to the imaginative in language, just as an artist is fundamentally not simply one who can paint or sculpt but one who can live in color and form.

These are matters which we must make our own from now on into the future. Without them the further progress of mankind in a favorable way is impossible, for the life of the Spirit would become barren, and mankind would be able to evolve hardly more than an animal existence unless an understanding for such things can be awakened. It is a peculiar fact that when one follows closely how children are born, how they developed in the early years, first babbling, then gradually learned to speak, in the way they learn there mingles into the child's learning to speak a heritage brought down from the experiences that have been going through in the spiritual world before they came down to earth; mingled with it is what the mother, father or nurse contributes to the child's learning to speak. He who can bring a fine observation to bear in this sphere will have surprising experiences from the child who is learning to speak. He will only be able to understand these surprising things when he can make the assumption that a child is actually bringing from the spiritual world some disposition that it mingles with what comes to his speech from outside. In the inward experience of language that human being is living in accordance with what he brings from the spiritual world. But that is the only thing in language that is really spiritual. Actually the one element and language is this inner experience, which we have because we bring with us certain impulses out of the spiritual world.

The other is that language is a mere medium for making oneself understood. Everything that goes on between men as men comes into consideration in it as a means of making themselves understood. We speak with one another so that the one knows what the other wishes to tell him. They are the inwardness of speech is not of account—there a certain convention applies. The point is that we do not think that when someone speaks of a table he means a chair, or when speaking of a chair he means a table. For that men here on the earth merely need a mutual understanding; that deeper, inward feeling for language does not come into it. At the present time this way of understanding language in which language is employed merely as a means of making ourselves mutually understood is actually all that is really experienced. For present day mankind language is not much more than the means by which they understand each other. Today it comes to few to listen to the mysterious inner impulses behind language so as to hear the divine powers as they make themselves known through this very language. There are some personalities today who have noticed that language has an inner life of its own; but among all those who have noticed it this perception arises in a certain whimsical way as, for example, with the poet Hofmannsthal, even the impudent Karl Kraus in Vienna who asserts that it is not feed himself who writes his sentences but that he simply listens to what the language wants to write. He may indeed listen to what the language which is to write, but only as men do who feared what comes from the spiritual world colored by their own emotions, here one-sidedly and falsely—that is shown by his dreadfully impudent writing, as language would never have inspired him. But as we were saying, individuals do already note this communicating by means of speech comes from other worlds and that must be cultivated if one is to find the way to the life of Imagination.

That moment will be of social significance for it is something binding men in a social bond. The common speech, which brings a common imagination, is something that will provide a social deepening. Language as a means of mutual copper hedging could also do that at need—but it is then externalized; as a mere means of communication it depends very much upon convention. Hence the externalizing of the soul's life nowadays, so that language is used really just to gossip with others so that no one knows what the other is thinking. You can indeed say a good deal against this: since so many do not think, some of us know when a statement is made what the other is not thinking! Well now—we understand each other.

Thus in language we have something that particularly points to the life of the Spirit, the life in the spiritual organism: something in language—that is to say, be nearly informative in language which alone comes into consideration today when people take up a dictionary, and because the word means one thing in one language and in another something else, it is simply a question of an external understanding, what lies deeper is not taken into account: whether the one describes something from this impulse, the other from that! There is of course an enormous difference in the soul life, whether by the word Kopf something round, that is the form, is to be understood, as most noun formations in German are plastic imagination, or whether, as in Latin languages, most noun formations originate in the stepping forth of man, how he places himself into the world, not by perception that by placing himself into the world. Great mystery is lie hidden in language.

With regard to the life of economics, we might be deaf and dumb and yet ultimately be able to carry on an economic life. The animals do so. Indeed, in economic life language is so to speak a stranger, a real stranger: we employ speech in the economic life because we happened to be speaking human beings; but we can conduct business in a foreign land, the language of which we do not know, we can buy anything, do everything possible. Men do not need the language at all for the life were language is a complete foreigner. The real inner spiritual element of language is present in the life of the Spirit, the element of language is already externalized in the life of rights—in the economic life everything that language means to man is utterly lost. Yet the economic life, as I have already pointed out, is what, fundamentally, can be the preparation for the life after death. How we conduct ourselves in the economic life, what feelings we unfold in that life, whether we are men who willingly helped another in a brotherly way, or whether we enviously gobble up everything for ourselves, depends upon the fundamental constitution of our soul, is essentially the mute preparation for many impulses which will be developed in the life after death. We bring with us a heritage from the life before birth which, as I described, comes to expression in what a child carried into all that it learns from nurse or mother. We bear with us out of life a mute element which springs up from the brotherliness unfolded in the economic life, and which develops important impulses in the life after death.

It is well that in the economic life language is such a foreign element that even if deaf and dumb we could develop the economic life. For by that means this subconscious soul like is developed that can be carried further when man has gone through the gate of death. Should man gave himself up altogether to what he experiences in his soul, to what can be expressed between man and man, should we, as men, not be able to serve one another without having to speak, we should be able to carry with us little into the world in which we are to live when we have passed through the gate of death.

On the other hand, my dear friends, it is extraordinarily difficult to discuss the pressing demands of the present-day social movement, for these demands are so many economic concerns for mankind. And for language for describing the economic concerns is actually non-existent. Our concepts indeed are not of the least use for discussing the social question. In Europe we should perhaps be able to discuss the social question in quite a different way it in our language we had with the Oriental has in his. There the decadence comes out only in the character of the people; that in their language are spiritual impulses enabling them to show as in gestures what has to be discussed about the social life—whereas we Europeans actually feel that every possible thing should always, as we think, be expressed in plain words. But this is not possible. We have to acquire the feeling that in speaking we are simply producing sound-gestures, hinting at things. Today it is practically only for interjections that man develops a real inwardness in regard to sound-gestures; a little, as I showed yesterday, for verbs; a mere touch of it for adjectives—none for nouns. The latter are completely abstract; and hence are not understood at all by the dead. There are blanks for them when we want to make ourselves understood and express things in language. So it is necessary, in order to make oneself understood by the dead, to transform what one has to say into real gestures, into real pictures, not to try to speak to the dead in words, but always to think better and better in pictures in the way I described yesterday.

Now I must say again and again what an aid to this experiencing in pictures is that part of eurhythmy that we now wish to bring back as visible speech. To perform eurhythmy is to transform what is spoken into the corresponding rhythmical movement, into gesture, and so on. But we must learn to do the opposite as well, to regard as a kind of speech what is set visibly before us. We must learn that what we customarily only looked at as something to say to us: morning says to us something different from what the evening says, and midday speaks differently from the night, and the leaf of a plant glistening with pearly dew says something different from a dry plant leaf. We must again learn the language of all nature. We must learn to penetrate through the abstract perception of nature to a concrete perception of nature. Our Christianity must be widened through a permeation, as I said yesterday, by a healthy paganism. Nature must again become something to us. It is the peculiarity of human evolution in the epoch of the fifth post-Atlantean period up to the present that we have become more and more indifferent towards nature. Certainly men still have a feeling for nature, they like being with nature, they are able to appreciate nature aesthetically, artistically. But they cannot soar to the heights of experiencing the inward life of nature, so that nature speaks to them as one man speaks to another. This is however essential if Intuition is again to play a part in human life. Before the end of the three epochs of which we have been speaking, men must, if they are to evolve healthily, developed a kind of personal relationship to all the details that connect them with nature. Today we can say in the abstract that by eating sugar you strengthen your sense of ego; and by eating less sugar you weaken your sense of ego; that tea dissipates the thoughts, and is the drink of diplomats, the dispenser of superficiality; that coffee is the drink of journalists, setting thoughts logically one after another—which is why journalists haunt coffeehouses, diplomats have tea parties, and so on; all this we can think in the abstract out of the nature of things: but human beings will come to develop in their way a healthy relation to everything that gives them such a relation to the whole of nature as today the animals instinctively possess. The animals know quite well what they eat; originally in their naive condition men also knew it; they have forgotten, unlearned it; and must regain the connection. There are people today—I have often mentioned it—curious people who when at the table have scales of which they weigh out how much meat and so on they should eat, because the dietitians have calculated the amount! In this abstract relations that man develops to the world all sound attitude to the world is lost.we must regain—if you will allow me to put it so—the experiencing of the spirit of sugar, tea, coffee, salt, and all those other things with which we are related through our organism: we must again learn to have these experiences. In this spirit today man experiences in the most abstract way. He feels something when he says “I am a mystic, I am a Theosophist.” What is that? It is a man feeling the divine ego with his own ego, feeling the macrocosm in the microcosm; the divine man within us that can be felt, can be lived . . . and all that that implies. They are of course the greyest, the vaguest, of abstractions. But today it is believed that there is no way out at all from these abstractions. Men nowadays do not look for this concrete experiencing with the whole world. What seems a great thing to men today is the thoughtless chatter of the experience of the God within. They think it very strange when one tells them that they should experience the God in sugar, tea, or coffee, or what not, yet this is really experiencing with the outer world: for the human experience of the external world is gross and materialistic unless something spiritual and the can be foundation of this material existence.

This feeling, for example, that existed in the second post-Atlantean period when everyone in the old Persian civilization felt when he ate anything how much light he took into himself along with it—son was ready to give up its light and in eating food light was also eaten—everyone felt how much light he was taking in: this feeling was an experience in ancient times which must return at a higher stage of consciousness. You see, these ideals naturally appear to be distant; but really they are not so far as people think from what man today holds to be most essential. For on looking into these things one approaches nearer and nearer and more concretely what is common to all mankind. It is just where there is veneration and penetration of nature that there will increasingly arise what sets up even the economic life that seems to us today so material, this dumb economic life, as a member of the divine world order. We shall then realized that the social organism, if it is to be sound must be threefold. It must have the spiritual organization because it is into this, above all, that we carry what we bring with us from the life before birth; it must have the economic organization because in it there must mutely developed what we bear with us through the gate of death, and what will be our impulses after death; and separate from both these, it must have the life of the rights-state because in this sphere above all is imprinted what is valid for this earthly life. Illustrated diagrammatically—here is earthly life, and raying into it, as it were, what we bring with us out of pre-earthly life (yellow arrows); and again we develop in this life what we bear out again (yellow). Here where I have drawn a red line the spiritual is within from the outset, it comes chiefly through language or the like. And here, where I have drawn a blue line, after death the spiritual rays out through the impulses we have absorbed in the economic life (yellow arrows). This in the middle, drawn in brown, is rayed through, as it were, laterally by the spiritual (yellow). The life of rights as such is entirely earthly, but is rayed through laterally. So that Inspiration, which should restrain Ahriman, should be active in the life of rights. We must advance to conceptions of rights, which are really taken from the life of the spirit, and which are really initiation conceptions.

But how can the things of which I have spoken today be straightaway made understandable to wider circles of present-day mankind? They cannot. For what the spiritual-scientific element would need to permeate the whole of the education and culture of the times. Otherwise it would not continue into the future. Therefore the healing of our social life is intimately bound up with the extension of a real understanding for spiritual knowledge. Certainly on the one hand there will gradually arise in people who have the goodwill accept social ideas the urge to receive the spiritual as well. For the most part, however, there are those who struggle against it, who preferred to remain fixed in those things of which I had to say yesterday that they were antipathetic to the children who for some years have been coming out of the spiritual world into life on earth. It is indeed pitiful to see how few people are inclined really to learn from the events;; how very much men today continue to exhibit ideas that they formally had before it became evident that the world that lives in the ideas as driven mankind into the frightful catastrophes of the time. At this juncture mankind should acquire a certain feeling of responsibility and an understanding of these things, and actually also see to the utmost extent these needs of the time. Just think—and this must be said of very many—how people today are fixed fast in egoism and how much cause one might have today to disregard one's own person and turned one's gaze to the great question of mankind. They are so overpoweringly great, these questions of the day, that if one is a sensible person one should scarcely have time to attend to the most limited personal destinies if these individual destinies could not be made fruitful for the great questions for time which already live in the womb of the evolutionary epochs of mankind. One could wish that men would take note of the great discrepancy between the futility of personal destiny today, and they reality that comes to light in the overpowering human problems of the day. One cannot understand the spiritual science in its reality, at least have no understanding of it at the present time, if one has no comprehension and accommodating spirit for these great human problems. Much is now only beginning to unfold: but it is precisely those who attach themselves to a movement for spiritual knowledge who should strive for a specially active understanding of what is being enacted to a wide extent in the social movement of the present day, and what, as can again be seen from today's indications, as wider horizons than is generally thought.

Tomorrow the conclusions that can be drawn from what has been set before you yesterday and today.¹

• 1. See: The Social Question (NSL 101)

Our studies of the last few days will have made it clear to you that it is altogether impossible to look upon the configuration of the spatial Universe and its movements in the way that is adopted by modern science. For not only is the Universe regarded as entirely separate from Man, but even the separate celestial bodies, which appear to our sight as disconnected from each other, are each treated as being isolated, and then in their isolation their effects upon each other are observed. It comes to the same thing as if, for example, we were to study the human organism by examining first an arm and then a leg, in order afterwards to understand the complete organism from the way in which the single members work together. But the fact is, it is not possible to comprehend the human organism by studying its individual members; but all investigation of the body of man must have its starting point in the whole, from which we can then proceed to the separate parts.

The same applies to the solar system, and also to the solar system in its relation to the whole visible stellar Universe. For the Sun, Moon, Earth and other planets are only parts of the whole system. Why should the Sun, for instance, be considered as an isolated body? There is absolutely no reason why we should imagine the Sun to be merely just where we see it, limited by the boundaries within which our eyes perceive it. In this connection the philosopher Schelling was quite correct when he declined to ask the question, ‘Where is the Sun?’ with any other meaning than ‘Where is his influence felt?’ If the Sun acts upon the Earth, the effects of such activity must belong of necessity to the sphere of the Sun; and it is very wrong to extract a part from a whole and study that part by itself. But this is the very thing the modern materialistic conception of the Universe has set out to do, and its influence has grown stronger and stronger ever since the middle of the fifteenth century. This it is against which Goethe always fought, when he was alive, in his labours in the realm of natural science, and against which all true followers of his science must also fight. Goethe found himself compelled to draw attention to the fact that we must not study Nature without Man, without keeping in mind the relation of Nature to Man. The study of natural phenomena outside Man must have its basis in the understanding of the nature of Man.

The following example will show you the value of some of the assertions made by modern Astronomy. Modern Astronomy endeavours, with the use of all manner of arguments, to speak of an elliptic path of the Earth around the Sun; asserting that this motion was in the first place initiated by that tangential propulsion of which I spoke yesterday in connection with the gravitational attraction of the Sun. But Astronomy cannot, and does not, deny the fact that when speaking of attraction, not only does the Sun attract the Earth, but the Earth must also attract the Sun. This, however, obliges us to conclude that we cannot speak of a revolution in an elliptical path of the Earth around the Sun, for if the attraction be mutual we cannot have a one-sided motion of the Earth around the Sun, but both of them must revolve round a neutral point. In other words, this revolution cannot take place in a manner that would allow us to look on the Sun's centre as the pivot, but the pivot must be a neutral point situated between the centre of the Sun and the centre of the Earth. In telling you this I am not raising objections to Astronomy, I am merely telling you what you can find for yourselves in astronomical books. Thus we are compelled to admit the existence—somehow or other—of a pivot between the two spheres.

Our Astronomy, by way of consoling itself, maintains that this pivot or point lies within the Sun itself. Both Earth and Sun, then, revolve around this point. And so, once again, we get no direct revolution of Earth round Sun, but the Sun also revolves, revolving however around a point lying within itself. Thus exoteric Astronomy has come so far as to assume as pivot a point that is not the centre of the Sun, but lies in the line connecting Sun and Earth, yet still within the Sun. But now we are confronted with another difficulty. The size of the Sun has first to be calculated. (The truth of the above assumption depends upon the calculated size of the Sun.) Upon the result of such calculation is built a conclusion which must of course possess a certain limited validity (the calculations being made from evidence of the senses), but which need not necessarily be the criterion by which we judge the real being of what lies behind nature's phenomena.

Thus it is necessary to keep a strict eye upon modern Astronomy, as well as on other sciences, in order to discern the places—and they are numerous—where science over-reaches itself, and gets into difficulties.

This difficulty cannot be settled by studying the outer aspect of the phenomena; we can only arrive at a true result by examining the Universe in its relation to Man. We must, in the first place, take note of the previously explained connections between the Universe and Man; and then we must add a good many other facts, before we can produce a perfectly true world-picture. We have said before that we must imagine, first of all, ordinary ponderable matter—matter that can be weighed. Light we cannot weigh; it does not belong to the realm of ponderable matter, neither does warmth (heat). First then, we must imagine the ponderable, then we must set over against this the ether. We said it is wrong to consider the Sun as consisting of ponderable matter like the matter of the Earth. The Sun is something which is actually less than space—so to speak, a ‘hollowing out’ of space; it is something that sucks in, in contradistinction to the pressure of ponderable matter.

And we have to do not only with an aggregation (in the Sun) of this absorbent ether in the outer Universe, but also with the fact that this ether is distributed far and wide, Everywhere we find, coexisting with the force of pressure, the absorbent force. We ourselves carry this force of suction in our own etheric bodies.

With this we completely exhaust all that we call Space. Pressure and Suction—these two, we find in Space. But not only do we possess our physical body, composed of ponderable matter which it assimilates and again expels, not only have we also an etheric body, composed of absorbent ether, but we have in addition an astral body—if we may use the term ‘body’ in this connection. What does the possession of this third body imply? It means that we have within us something that is no longer spatial, though it has a certain relation to space. This relationship can be proved when we realise that during waking hours the astral body interpenetrates the etheric and physical bodies. But the etheric body acts very differently when we are awake and when we are asleep. A different relation is established between the etheric and physical bodies when we wake, and this is caused by the astral body. It is active, and works upon the spatial, though it is not itself spatial. It brings order and organisation into the correlations of space. This organising activity of the astral body within us takes place also in the outer Universe, where it manifests in the following way.

Try for the moment to consider Space alone, and out of the whole visible Heavens, let us consider the regions that are indicated by the Zodiac. I do not intend here to deal in detail with the several Zodiacal signs, but let us consider the directions to which we look in the heavens when we turn, for instance, towards Aries (Ram), in the Zodiac; then Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. All we have to note, in the first place, is that the space that lies before us as our visible Universe is divided in this way. The signs merely indicate the division, in so far as each of them denotes the boundary of a certain section of Space.

Now we must not imagine that these directions of space can be treated in such a manner that one might say: ‘There is empty space, and I just draw a line somewhere into it’.

There simply does not exist such a thing as mathematics calls ‘Space’; but everywhere are lines of force, directions of force, and these are not equal, they vary, they are differentiated. We can distinguish between these twelve regions by realising that if we turn in the direction of the sign Aries, the force we experience is a different one than it would be had we faced the sign Libra or Cancer. In each direction the force differs. Man will not admit this, as long as he lives merely in the world of the senses; but as soon as he ascends to the Imaginative life of the soul, he no longer experiences the directions in space as the same when facing Aries or Cancer, but feels their influence upon him as greatly differentiated.

To give you a parallel, I might put before you the following. Imagine that you arrange round you a circle of twelve persons in such a manner that those most sympathetic to you occupy one part of the circle, then come the less sympathetic, until on the other side you have all those who are antipathetic to you. (We are not, imagining the degree of sympathy or antipathy to result from any personal emotion; it may be merely a matter of outward appearances.) Now if you turn round within the circle, twelve pictures pass before your vision and at the same time you experience a graduated series of differentiated sensations. Man becomes aware of such a series of sensations if, after attaining to Imaginative perception, he moves around within the Zodiac. A similar gradation of sensation, a similar gradation of vision is produced in him, and it takes place within him the moment he escapes from the indifference of ordinary sense-existence. So when we are dealing with these various sections of space there is no sameness, for we must realise that each of these directions exerts a different influence upon us.

You see, here comes to light a fact intimately connected with the whole evolution of Man. Had he remained at the stage of the old consciousness, the atavistic picture-consciousness, he would still experience strongly the actuality of this differentiation in the various sections of the heavens; he would have been conscious of a sensation of sympathy towards one direction of Space and antipathy towards another. Man has however been extricated from this play of forces by which at one time he was consciously surrounded, and he has been extricated from it just through the fact that his present organisation has placed him into the sense-world. But that Man is really organised in accordance with cosmic laws can even now be proved, and by quite external experiments, if attention is paid to certain phenomena. For it is by no means mere nonsense to say that certain sicknesses can be cured more quickly if the bed of the patient is placed in the direction of East to West. It is no superstition but a fact capable of definite proof. But this is not intended as a recommendation to each of you to place your bed in a certain position! I have had so many experiences in this direction, that I feel it necessary to interject here a word of warning! It once happened to me in Berlin, for instance, that at the end of an anthroposophical discourse. I laid a certain emphasis upon the fact of being able to put on my galoshes when it was raining, without sitting down, saying that this could be done by first standing upon one leg and then upon the other, and I added ‘And one ought to be able to stand upon one leg!’ This was taken by some anthroposophists in such a way that I found upon returning from London to Berlin, that members of the Anthroposophical Society there were being recommended, as esoteric training, to stand upon one leg for a short time at midnight! Many assertions made about us have just as good a foundation. Time and again things of this sort get said and then find their way into this or that newspaper article by the pen of some well- or ill-disposed person—generally the latter. So I repeat, I have no wish at all to recommend you each to place his bed in one particular position. Nevertheless, this fact and many others show that even today, in the inner or subconscious part of his being, Man still stands in a certain relation to these exterior spatial differentiations, into which he has been placed.

Now through what means does Man possess these relationships? He possesses them through his astral body, which establishes these relations. They are only possible to him because through his astral body Man is a denizen of an astral world, a world which though acting upon Space is not itself spatial. We only conceive the Zodiac in its full meaning when we treat it as the representative of the astral world beyond.

And now, without having regard to present-day astronomical theories, let us examine these phenomena which appear to our sense of vision. We know that either actually or apparently the Sun passes through the Zodiac in various ways; in its daily course, in its yearly course, and again in its course through the Platonic year, through the precession of the equinoxes. This points to the fact that the effects upon us of that absorbent ether ball called Sun vary greatly, as they come from the different directions of Space. At one time the Sun's workings impinge upon us from a part we call Aries, at another time from a different section and so on.

Taking the case of an inhabitant of our own part of the globe, we can see that at any given time he has facing him one half of the Zodiacal signs, while the other half is obscured by the Earth. In other words, we are so placed in relation to this differentiation of Space, that we are turned directly towards the one part of the Zodiac while between the other and ourselves stands the Earth. Obviously this has nothing whatever to do with either an actual or an apparent motion; it is a simple fact that at any given moment we face one part of the Zodiac, while the other part is intercepted by the Earth. Now please try to imagine these sections of space with our Earth obscuring some of them. What does it signify for us? It is plain that the one half will influence us directly, the other not directly, but rather, shall I say, through its absence. At one time we have the direct working of these differentiated regions of space, at another time the working of their absence, the effect, as it were, of their non-presence. This fact is something which is active within us and enables us to some extent to bring into a kind of relationship that which is working directly upon us and that which is absent, from whose direct influence we are removed. For it opens up another possibility.

Let us say, from the direction of the Sign Cancer proceeds a certain kind of influence. This would be opposed by an influence from Capricorn, but the latter is taken away, is intercepted. Consequently I have in me the influence of Cancer and opposed to it the intercepted Capricornian influence; the influence of Cancer is thereby in a sense left in me, put into my hands, as it were. Of course, that which is absent cannot act upon me in the same way as that which is present; but I gain a certain influence as regards the Sign that acts upon me by reason of the opposition to its intercepted antithesis. Through the fact that I stand upon the Earth the celestial influences become quite different to what they would be, were I hovering freely in Space and directly exposed to them all.

I want you to note this point specially, and then you will realise that you cannot simply say: Above us we have the Signs Aries, Pisces, Aquarius, etc., and below Libra, Virgo, and so on, but you will have to conceive the whole as an organisation, with yourself harnessed into it. And as you progress, on account of the Earth's revolution, from sign to sign you are being carried through all these direct influences in turn. Here at one point, the Scorpio influence was taken away from you, and there at another point you have been carried into it. An analogy is the taking of food; you were hungry, the food was not there within you, but after the meal the food is present within you. The Scorpio influence was absent here, but at this other point became active. And so we form connections with the surrounding Cosmos as we come into different relations with it through the movement of the Earth. But is Man conscious of these varying influences, while yet on the physical plane? No, he is not; we have seen that the physical world takes him away from them. But the moment he withdraws with his astral body and Ego from his physical and etheric bodies, he finds himself within these forces; they act directly and strongly upon him. These extra-earthly, heavenly influences then make onset upon that part of Man which is no longer connected with the physical and etheric; they act upon it as powerfully as food upon the physical body. It is just this descent into the physical that is the cause of Man's withdrawal from these outer influences. We may therefore consider the astral body as being in a sense part of the celestial, and not of the terrestrial Universe, for when, together with the Ego, it is outside the physical body, we have to co-ordinate it to the non-terrestrial influences.

By considering the matter in this way, we are gradually brought to the conclusion that Man becomes receptive to these celestial forces in so far as he ceases to act through the organs of his physical body—that is to say, when he is, through this non-activity, more or less in a state of sleep. Man as a child is always more or less asleep, therefore the child is much more receptive to the celestial influences than the man. As he grows up he works his way further and further into earthly conditions. During childhood, all that is within the skin is still plastic and in a state of formation. The formative powers become less and less active with the years, until, at a considerably later point in life, they become very small indeed. This shows that the inner physical formation-process stands in a certain relation to the movements and configurations to the outer celestial Universe. But the part of our being which, as far as consciousness is concerned, remains in a continual state of sleep—such as our heart-activity, our digestive processes, etc.; in fact, all the inner physical processes—all this part of our being remains under the influences of the super-physical during the whole of our life. (These processes are induced in the same way as is the process that goes on when I take a step forward consciously, only they are all directed inward instead of outward.)

Let us take a characteristic example. By means of the inner movements of the intestines the chyme is propelled further on its path. These are internal movements within the boundary of the human skin, and therefore, as we have said, dependent upon what is beyond the Earth. Fundamentally, Man as Man is dependent only upon the terrestrial, upon ponderable-terrestrial matter, in all that affects him from outside his skin. But the moment any outer act or circumstance is translated into activity within the skin, then there begins in his organism an activity that is related to the super-sensible.

When you take a piece of sugar into the palm of your hand, you feel its weight physically, you raise it to your lips; the process is still physical. But as soon as you dissolve it on the tongue and it enters the sphere of taste, it no longer remains within the scope of Earthly processes but becomes subject to extra-Earthly forces.

In order to find the working of the extra-Earthly, we must penetrate into what is enclosed within the human skin. This will lead you to the realisation of the fact, that while you go about in the world, bearing round with you, as it were, your whole man, you are in the realm of the Earthly. But as soon as you come within, even only within the physical organisation, you are no longer in the realm of the Earthly, but have entered a sphere dependent upon extra-Earthly forces. You can easily prove for yourselves the fact that within you resides something that is not merged into earthly existence, if you carry your memory back to the oft-repeated fact, that the human brain floats in the meningeal fluid. If this were not the case, the pressure of the brain upon the organs placed on the floor of the skull would crush all the blood vessels. Any text book dealing with such matters will tell you the weight of the brain. If your choice is a ‘Bischoff’, you will notice he asserts that the female brain is much lighter than that of a male, which assertion was rendered absurd later on, to the delight of the ladies, when it was found upon examination, that the brain of Bischoff himself proved to be a good deal less in weight than the lightest of the female brains examined by him. This is only by the way, as an example of the general value of human judgements.

The human brain however, possessing as it does a considerable weight—at least 1,200 to 1,300 grammes—does not exert a pressure in anything like accord with its actual weight, but only, as we might say, a weight of comparatively few grammes, because of the upward pressure of the meningeal fluid. You remember the law of Archimedes, according to which the weight of an object is reduced by the weight of the water it displaces. Therefore the pressure of the brain is equal to only a few grammes because it floats in fluid. Had it a tendency to press downwards with its full weight, Man could not use his brain for thought. It overcomes its weight because it floats in fluid. We do not think with the matter of the brain, but with that which withdraws itself from the matter, with the upward striving forces, with that which grows beyond the Earth. And we must follow this out into all parts of Man's organisation. Just as we withdraw ourselves inwardly from the forces of terrestrial gravity in the case of the weight of the brain (exteriorly, of course, this is impossible, the brain upon the scales shows its full weight, even while within us), so do we similarly sever ourselves from earthly physical and chemical forces of other kinds.

What enables us to sever ourselves from these forces? It is the Ego and the astral body. As soon as these act upon the etheric and physical bodies in such a way as to withdraw the etheric from the physical, the absorbent force is then absent, and only ponderable matter remains. The ponderable matter is not part of the Earth, for the Earth does not retain it in its original form, but destroys it. The Earth-forces do not contain in them that which gives to Man his form. That is not difficult to comprehend, for we have seen that we sever ourselves inwardly from the Earth-forces. With all that is in him through his astral body and Ego, man is related to forces that are active beyond the Earth.

Our next question must be: What is the nature of this relation? To ascertain this, we must in a certain way study the whole quality and nature of Man. We find in the first place his complete form or figure. I do not mean by this the form which I would draw if I were to make a sketch of him, but the whole configuration, the whole formation of Man. It would include, e.g. the fact that the eyes are placed in the face, and the heels on the feet; for this is part of the inner configuration of Man in accordance with law.

Expressionistic painters may assert that Man could be drawn in such a way that his toe takes the place of his nose, or that one eye is placed here and the other in his hand. Yes, there really are such people, but they only show how little inner relationship they have with the world. We have indeed these days progressed so far in materialistic thought as to be able to depict single things separately, when they really belong together with the whole and ought not to be depicted each for itself.

We have therefore first Man's complete form; and this, as you know very well, is not produced as a figure is produced that is, for instance, carved in wood, but is formed from within. We cannot even re-carve any part that does not happen to meet with our approval. The human form is modeled by forces residing in the periphery and they are forces from beyond the Earth. Therefore when we contemplate a human form, we are looking at a product of the extra-earthly.

Secondly we can distinguish in Man, apart from his form, all that comes under the category of internal motion. Take, for instance, the blood and the other bodily juices; these possess internal motion. This also is produced from within; it is, so to speak, situated even deeper in Man than his form. The latter presses forward to the periphery, while internal motion takes place entirely within; and it is again a process that stands in relation with the world that is beyond the Earth.

Thirdly, the activity of the organs. Organs such as the lungs, liver, spleen, etc., are responsible for activities within Man, and it is these activities I will name as the third thing we find in Man. This need not cause you any surprise, rather should it lead you to seek the reason.

Consider for example, an important organ, namely, the heart, of which I have recently spoken repeatedly. We realise that in a certain sense, the heart has been welded together.

By following up Embryology, we find how the heart is gradually welded together or piled up, as it were, by the blood circulation, and is not a primary form. This is verified by Embryology. And it is the same with other organs. They are the results of these circulations, rather than the causes of them. Within the organs the circulation comes to a standstill, it undergoes a kind of metamorphosis, and proceeds further in a different way. To illustrate the idea, let us say we have a stream of water falling over a rock. It throws up a variety of formations and then flows on. These formations are caused by the forces of equilibrium and motion at this place. Now imagine that suddenly all this were to petrify; a skin would be formed like a wall, then the rest would flow on again, and we should have an organic structure formed. We should have the current going through the structure coming out again and flowing on further in an altered form. You can imagine something like this in the case of the flow of blood, as it circulates through the heart. I can only indicate these things here. They are well grounded, but here only an indication of them can be given.

Although the organs in the manner of their formation depend upon the flow of inner forces, yet they are something in the inner part of Man that again comes into relation with what is outside. We have here something which, as you can see from an example I will give, stands in closer relation with the Earthly; through these organs we are brought from the interior into contact with the exterior.

Take the case of the lungs. The lungs are organs, but they are at the same time the basis of respiration. As the instrument for the transmutation of inhaled oxygen into exhaled carbonic acid, the lungs form a relation with something that has significance for Man, but yet exists outside him in the realm of the Earthly. In this way we return, as it were, to the terrestrial environment by way of the organic activities. The moment we overstep, through organic activity, the boundary of our skin, we are outside, in the terrestrial sphere. You see, all these processes that take place entirely within us, the formation and regulation of fluidic movements, etc., stand in a relationship with the extra-earthly; whereas when we come to the organs we again approach the terrestrial. Here we have the union of Heaven and Earth in Man. The lungs are built up by the extra-Earthly, but what they do with the oxygen brings them into relation with the Earthly. And now, when Man takes up still more earthly substances and receives them into his organism, he comes into immediate contact, through the process of metabolism with the truly Earthly.

Thus we can study man from four different points of view: Complete Form, in so far as this is built up from within outwards; Internal Motion, Organic Activity and Metabolism. If we study the complete form, which is entirely constructed by inner forces, we find that it has the least connection of all with the Earthly. This point will be further explained tomorrow. We only begin to gain an understanding of the connection when we relate, as we shall do tomorrow, the complete form of Man to the Zodiac. The inner motion, the circulation of the blood, lymph, etc., can only be conceived in their reality, when related to our planetary system. And when we come to the activity of the organs, we are already approaching the terrestrial.

I gave you the example of the lungs, which, in respect to their internal construction, are formed by extra-terrestrial forces, but where they come into relation with oxygen, are in relation with the air. Other human organs come into relation with water, others again with heat, etc. Therefore, in studying the activity of the organs, we come into contact with the Elemental world—with fire, water, air. Only when our observations are centred upon actual assimilation, or metabolism, are we in the sphere of the Earth. The Elemental world is that which encompasses the Earth as the sphere of water and of air, and only when we encounter the process of metabolism, do we approach the relation of Man with the Earth itself.

In this way we can discover Man's relation to the Universe that surrounds him:

And now consider, if we understand the form of Man in all its nature and conditions, and find the possibility of tracing it back to the Zodiac—that is, to the world of fixed stars—then and then only are we able to form, from Man, an idea of all that is visible to us in surrounding space; for it cannot be investigated by mechanical or mathematical means, but only through a knowledge of the complete form of Man. Neither are planetary motions to be examined merely by means of a telescope. With a telescope one finds their positions—setting it first to one star and then to the other, finding the angle, and in this way discovering the positions. What is actually present in the processes of the Planet-World is something that is formed from within outwards. It is by a study of the activities in the saps and juices in Man that we shall learn to understand the planetary activities. Similarly, if we comprehend our own organic activities, we shall also understand what goes on in the Elemental world; and when we are able to understand what happens in Man in the moment when earthly substance is introduced into his metabolic system, we shall possess the key to the Earth activities, and be able to separate them spatially from all extra-earthly activities.

It is indeed the case that much of the legitimacy, the secrets of the world's existence, has been obscured in the consciousness of humanity by the misunderstandings that I discussed yesterday and the day before yesterday in relation to the conception of the polar opposites of Ormuzd and Ahriman. Above all, it is only through this that modern materialism has become possible, which fills humanity with the awareness that there are contradictions all around us that are being investigated by today's conventional science and from which the universe will gradually be able to be understood. A simple consideration can teach that in this way an understanding of the universe can never be possible. For just think back to some things that I explained here a few weeks ago and put them in the right perspective for yourself. Remember how those people who are considered to be natural scientists today actually only refer to the human being insofar as the human being is a corpse after his death. That which of the remaining natural laws, of the remaining natural processes, permeates the human being after he has become a corpse, can initially be explained according to the usual natural laws. But what lives in man between birth and death already resists these natural laws. And if we were to judge not according to prejudice but according to reality, we would have to say: Between birth and death, and actually from the time of his first embryonic development, man fights against that which is governed by natural laws as we understand them in our science today.

Take the surrounding nature and everything that physics, chemistry, physiology, biology and so on say about this nature today, visualize all that is said about nature and then think of man as he lives between birth and death, then you will say to yourself: This whole life is a struggle against the realm that is ruled by these natural laws. It is only because the human organization, as it were, wants to know nothing about these natural laws, fights them, that man is human between birth and death.

From this, however, you can already see that if human becoming is to be placed in the universe, in the cosmos, it is necessary to assume different laws, a different kind of becoming for the universe. Thus, with our present laws of nature, we present a world in which man, and even plants and animals, are not included. But today we want to consider only the human being in relation to the rest of nature. Man is not included in the nature that today's science dominates. Indeed, with every breath, man rebels against this nature, of which this science speaks.

Nevertheless, we can speak of the Cosmos, of the Universe, because man also comes forth from the bosom of this Cosmos, just as he stands before us as a physical human being. But then we must think of this cosmos as being of a different nature from what we have in mind when we speak in terms of today's science. We will be able to form a concept of what is actually meant by the above if we bring to mind the following fact, established by spiritual science.

Let us consider the moment when a person dies, whether young or old. The corpse remains behind. We can compare this process, and it is more than a comparison, with the sloughing of a snake or the shedding of the shell of a young bird. The corpse is shed, and what is shed is taken up by the laws of nature, which we have in mind with today's science, just as, for example, the snake skin is taken up by the outer laws of nature when it is shed and no longer follows the snake's laws of growth. That which becomes a corpse is taken up by the laws of the earth. But between birth and death, one has the human form, the human shape. This dissolves, it ceases to exist. In a sense, the corpse still has this shape, but it only has it in imitation, so to speak. It still imitates this shape. The shape of the corpse is no longer the same as the one we have during our life between birth and death. For it is characteristic of this shape that the person feels it, that the person can move with it; this shape has a certain sum of strength that unfolds when the person moves. All that is gone when only the corpse is still present. That which actually gives the corpse its shape has gone from the corpse, but that already disappears when the person has just died. The person does not take that with them. They take their etheric body with them for some time – we will ignore that for the time being – but in any case, they do not take with them what their physical form, their physical shape is. In a sense, he loses this physical form. To put it more precisely, if one were to follow the movements and activities of a person after he has left his body and passed through the gate of death, one would find different movements and impulses than those of the physical form.

So what is actually there in the physical form ceases to be visible to the outer eye when the person has passed through the gate of death. The corpse has only had this form, and it still retains it. It loses it little by little, it is no longer its own. Just as if you – if I may use a rough comparison – have a pot shape and put it over the dough of the cake: the cake then also has the shape, but it is not part of the pot shape, and you cannot say that the cake you then have has this shape from its own material; no, it has received it from the pot that was put over it. And just as the cake retains the shape of the pan when you remove the pan, so the corpse retains the shape of the human being when that shape is removed. But this form itself, which is actually the form with which we walk around, ceases when the human being passes through the gate of death. However, the fact that we have this form, that this form can develop out of the laws of the world, just as a crystal develops out of the laws of the world, is inherent in the laws of the world. So we may ask ourselves: What becomes of this form? And here spiritual scientific research gives us the answer: That which is spirit continues to nourish and sustain itself from the Hierarchy, which we call the Archai, the Primordial Foundations. So we can say: Something passes from the human form into the realm of the Archai.

It is indeed the case that the physical form we receive at birth and discard at death comes from the realm of the archai, the primal depths, the primal forces, that we actually have our physical form because we are enveloped by a spirit from the realm of the archai. We are immersed in a spirit that came from the realm of the archai, which in turn withdraws what it has lent us during our life.

You see, it is something else that makes you realize how you actually belong to the whole cosmos. It is already the case that, so to speak, the archai extend their feeler horns. If that is one of the archai, it extends its structure: this forms the human form, and only then is the human being inside. You can only imagine your existence within the cosmos correctly if you imagine yourself, so to speak, clothed in an outgrowth of the archai. If you now imagine that man, like me, has also dealt with this in these days - in the Lemurian period, as a being such as the earth man is, only emerging and only gradually taking on this form, then you get in what can be provided as a description, as I have given it in “Occult Science in Outline” of the transformation of the human form — just recall how I described it in the account of the Atlantean world — you get the description of what the archai actually do. You get a description of how the archai work from their realm down into the earthly realm, how they metamorphose the human form. This metamorphosis of the human form from the Lemurian period to the time when the human form will disappear from the earth is something that is constituted and shaped from the realm of the archai. And as the archai work on the human being in this way, they simultaneously bring forth that which is truly the spirit of the age. For this spirit of the age is intimately connected with the shaping of human beings, in that, as it were, their skin is given a certain form. The spirit of the age essentially resides in the very outermost sphere of human perception. And if one understands the working of these archai, then one also understands how not only human forms change, but also how the spirits of the age change in the course of earthly existence.

Now you know that in the order of the hierarchies behind the archai lie the spirits of form, the exusiai (see list on page 236). If you look up from the earthly existence of what constitutes the human being to its form, to what is inherent in the entire planet from its beginning to its end, then you will see something more comprehensive in terms of external cosmic law than that which already contains the human form. For, do we not have, when we describe the evolution of the earth, first an echo of the old Saturn time, we call this the polaric epoch; we have an echo of the old sun time, the hyperborean epoch, an echo of the old moon time, the lemurian epoch. Then comes the actual Earth time, the first Earth time, the Atlantean epoch, and now we live in the post-Atlantean epoch. Man has only just developed in his form. The Earth must have more comprehensive laws than those that express themselves in the part of the Earth's development in which man in his present form, or rather in the metamorphoses of his present form, is possible. We must look back to the first beginning of the Earth, when man had not yet attained his form, when he was still present as a spiritual-ethereal being, and we must look forward to that which will also yet happen on Earth, when, after a series of millennia, human beings will have disappeared from the Earth as physical beings. Then the physical earth will continue to exist for a time, yes, it will even be inhabited by people, but no longer in visible human forms, but as etheric beings.

If we take this whole shaping of the earth, including the human being, but going beyond the human being: if we embrace the laws, of which our present natural laws are really only the very smallest part, with the spiritual view, then we have in them that which belongs to the realm of the Exusiai. From the realm of the Exusiai the earthly has been formed in the same way as the human being has been formed from the realm of the elemental forces, the human being together with all that must be in the earth so that the human being can come into being at all. So that we can say: the earthly form passes, when it once dissolves, into the realm of the Exusiai.

If we now consider the second link in the human being, the human etheric body, it is also the case that we may not address it as our complete property at all, but just as the physical form actually belongs to the realm of the Archai and we are clothed in an outgrowth of the realm of the archai, so we are clothed in relation to our etheric body in an outgrowth of the realm of the archangels, the archangeloi. So that we can say: When we go through the gate of death, we still retain this etheric body for a short time. We know that it then dissolves, but its dissolution does not mean that it disappears into nothingness, but rather that it returns to the realm of the archangeloi. They, in turn, lay claim to it; they lower, as it were, a part of their being to the earthly human realm and thereby constitute the human etheric body for the duration of its life. We can therefore say: something passes from the human etheric body into the realm of the archangeloi.

And with regard to the astral body, it is certainly the case that there is a similar relationship to the realm of the Angeloi, the angels, as there is to the realm of the Archai with regard to the physical form and to the realm of the Archangeloi with regard to the etheric body. We do not have our astral body entirely of our own either. It is an evagination of the angelic beings. So that we can say: From the human astral body, something passes over into the realm of the Angeloi at death. We also have our astral body like a garment of our being from the realm of the Angeloi. So you see how, by having a physical human form, an etheric body, and an astral body, we are actually embedded in the realms of the next higher hierarchies. And by participating in the laws of the earth, by walking around on earth as human beings, by developing a will, by developing actions on earth, in short, by participating in the laws of the earth, we also participate in the realm of the exusiai, the spirits of form, the elohim.

But here a significant moment occurs. When you look at your physical form in the state in which you are asleep: when your body is in bed, it has its form; you will find this form again in the morning. This form is certainly not dissolved at all, and so one cannot say that the physical body is a corpse, that it is merely a cast like a pot, but the form is really there. So that the archai, by participating in this form, are constantly connected with what is present on earth as a physical being. Likewise, the archangeloi are connected with the human etheric body. But the situation is different with regard to the human astral body. This human astral body is by no means connected with the physical human form from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up; this astral body is, so to speak, in a completely different environment from falling asleep to waking up than from waking up to falling asleep. And the point is that while the archaic principle is inevitably connected with the physical form from birth to death, and the archangelic principle with the etheric being, it is the case with the angelic principle, with the angel principle, that it must, so to speak, accompany the human being from one state to another and back again. This principle of the angeloi, this essentiality of the angeloi, must, as it were, accompany the path into the state of sleep and back again.

You see, a new element arises when we speak of the angelos. And in fact, it depends on the person themselves – on their attitude, on their inclination of their entire emotional world to the spiritual world – whether the angel accompanies them when they leave their physical body and etheric body to enter the state of sleep. It goes with children, but with a person who has reached a certain maturity, it actually depends on the person's disposition, on whether the person has an inner affinity with the angel in his soul. And if this affinity is not present, if the person believes only in the material, if the person harbors only thoughts of the material, the angel does not go with him.

Because if you imagine the fully developed human being (see illustration on page 234), the earth as the result of the exusiai (outer red), the human physical body as the result of the archai (inner red), the human etheric body as the result of the archangeloi (yellow), the human astral body as a result of the work of the angeloi (blue), if you can imagine all this, you can say: as long as the human being is awake, the angel is in the bosom of the archangels, the archai, the exusiai, in short, the higher spiritual beings. When a person leaves their physical body and etheric body, and if they leave with a materialistic attitude, then the angel would indeed deny its own realm, its affiliation with the archangels, the archai, the exusiai, if it were to go with them. You see, here we enter a realm in which human thinking is decisive for an important event, for an important fact within human life, for the fact of whether or not a person is present during the angel's visit in his sleep.

Today, we cannot say: Well, if angels exist, we do not need to believe in them when we are awake, because when we are asleep, they will take care of us. No, they do not go with us when they are denied during the day! This is something that leads very deeply into the secrets of human existence and at the same time shows you how a person's disposition is just as much a part of the whole cosmic order of things as, let us say, a person's blood circulation is a part of what external natural science overlooks or actually does not overlook.

Man himself, with his ego and the prospect of becoming an independent being, is then included in the whole. But man only acquired this sense of self in the course of his earthly existence. And he came to it slowly. And if we go back to ancient times, when there was the so-called instinctive clairvoyance of mankind, then people did not yet have this sense of self at all. When these ancient inhabitants of the earth had their special insights, these instinctive insights, then these were actually not their own insights, because this I was not yet awakened at all. It surrendered to what the angel thought, to what the archangel felt, to what the arche wanted. It lived in the bosom of these entities. Today we look back on the wonderful ancient wisdom. But it is not human wisdom at all, basically, but a wisdom that came to Earth through the Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi, who clothed human beings and entered human souls through this ancient wisdom, which much higher beings actually possessed and appropriated before the Earth became Earth. And man must acquire his own wisdom with the help of his angel, to whom he should be connected in mind. We are now approaching this time. And now, in this period that has now begun, when man has awakened the ego more and more, man was, if he did not pull himself together through his own resolve, so to speak abandoned by what the angel, the archangel, thought in him.

But because man was abandoned by these angels, he only then really came into contact with earthly existence. And this coming into contact with earthly existence is what, on the one hand, makes man free, but it is also that which causes the necessity for man to now strive up out of his strength to that which makes the higher hierarchies possible, to live with man in his consciousness. We must strive to receive thoughts again that enable the angels to live with us. These are thoughts that we can only receive through the imagination of spiritual science. And when we again orient our whole feeling towards the world through receiving such thoughts, then we can again reach up into the realm of the archangeloi. Now, when a person wakes up and returns to their physical body, they are in danger of not even realizing that they have an etheric body and that the substance of the archangeloi rules in this etheric body. They must first learn this again. And they must learn that the primal forces, the archai, rule in their physical form. He must learn to understand the moment of falling asleep and the moment of waking up.

For man came out of the realm of the higher hierarchies by advancing to his ego, by experiencing this ego. He became an independent being. But as a result, he entered into another realm, the realm of Ahriman. The I goes, and now especially in an awakened state, into the realm of Ahriman.

The earthly form enters the realm of the Exusiai
Something passes from the human form into the realm of the Archai
Something passes from the human etheric body into the realm of the Archangeloi
Something passes from the human astral body into the realm of the Angeloi
The I goes into the realm of Ahriman (Maja of Ahriman).

The danger of falling into the realm of Ahriman was most acute around 333 BC, before the Mystery of Golgotha. This is the time when people began to rely on mere intellect and mere logic. Then the Mystery of Golgotha occurred and soon took root in humanity. And from the year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha, the time began when man must consciously strive into the realm of the higher hierarchies.

Admittedly, because of the onset of intellectualism in the 15th century, he has not yet risen again from the realm of Ahriman. But by living in the intellect, and not in reality, he actually lives in the image, he lives in maya. And that is his good fortune. He does not live in the real realm of Ahriman, but in the maya of Ahriman, in mere appearance, in the sense in which I have explained this in recent days. Through this he can in turn turn back. But he can only do so out of freedom. Because it is Maya, we live in images; the whole intellectualistic culture is only an image. Since that time, since 333 BC, it has been placed in the freedom of man to strive upwards. The Catholic Church tried hard to prevent this; it must finally be overcome in this direction. Man must strive upwards to the spiritual worlds.

333 BC
333 AD
= 666

If you add these two numbers together, you get 666. That is the “number of the beast”, where man was most exposed to really sinking into the realm of the animals. But of course he remains exposed to it, even after the year 333, when he, after the Maya of Ahriman has occurred, does not strive upwards. So it is a matter of the fact that by sailing into the realm of Ahriman as far as its Maja, we have thereby become free beings. No providence, no world wisdom could withhold from us sailing into the realm of Ahriman, otherwise it would have left us unfree.

But consider, it is one thing for man to acquire a spiritual attitude and thereby keep his astral body connected to the Angelos when he is asleep, but quite another for man to acquire no spiritual attitude, in which case the Angelos does not accompany the sleeping person, for then man brings with him from sleep that which is the inspiration of Ahriman. And it is indeed the case that in the present epoch man's whole materialistic way of thinking, his whole being filled with materialistic thoughts, is emerging with ever greater rapidity from the sleeping state of man. Man can protect himself against the fact that he again and again brings with him from his sleep that which condemns him to materialism, that is, to being connected with the earth, to becoming matter, to mortality in his soul; he can only prevent it by permeating himself with the attitude that fills him when he absorbs spiritual-scientific concepts. The state of sleep is therefore in itself something that slowly brings about materialism. But Ahriman also makes other efforts to distance man from his angel, and these conditions are becoming more and more frequent. In 1914 they were particularly bad, where people were numbed by Ahrimanic forces, where their consciousness, their straight consciousness, was taken from them, so that they came into states where the angel was not present and where therefore the Ahrimanic influences became great. That was why I told so many people in 1914: one should not believe that, for example, the correct view of the origin of the war in 1914 could ever be seen from external documents. In the past, something could be discovered from the documents in the archives. What happened this time happened more spiritually, from the spiritual world, and a large part of those people who were involved at the time did not do so with their full consciousness, but were led over by Ahrimanic forces into a paralysis of consciousness, where the realm of the Angeloi did not participate. If we want to understand our time, we must look at the influence of the spiritual world in this time. This is absolutely necessary.

But there are many other ways in which we are striving today, which come from Ahrimanic sources, to detach people, so to speak, from their connection with the realm of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai and so on, to draw people to the Ahrimanic, to draw the whole of culture to the Ahrimanic. Just think how often one hears today – I have said this over and over again, mentioned it for many years – when someone has once again told a lie, a whopper of a lie: But he believed what he said, he said it to the best of his knowledge and belief. — Yes, that changes just as little about the objective fact as it changes something when you stick your finger in the flame to the best of your knowledge and belief; no providence will help you that you do not burn your finger when you stick it in to the best of your knowledge and belief. In the cosmic context, invoking one's best knowledge and conscience is of little help either – and it would be sad if it were otherwise. Man does not have the freedom to tell untruths out of best knowledge and conscience, but man has the obligation to take care that what he says is true. He must stand in such a relationship to the world that what he entertains as thoughts is born out of the world, and does not live in him alone, cut off from the world. If what one says to the best of one's knowledge and belief is not true, one can only realize it when one says it, in isolation from the world. For if anyone writes: There is a group in the world that has Luciferic characteristics above and Ahrimanic traits below. And when others claim, as they repeatedly do, that he has said it to the best of his knowledge and belief, this means that through such an attitude Ahriman is declared to be the ruler of the world. For the one who makes such an assertion has the obligation to convince himself whether or not what he says is true! And it is an Ahrimanic influence when even jurisprudence has been taken over by it today, when one does not strictly prosecute someone who has been accused of telling a lie, and says that he did it in good faith, in this or that good faith. This good faith is something that is precisely the Ahrimanic seduction and temptation in the worst sense. There is basically no word more tempting and seductive than this one of good faith. Because this good faith is the lazy person's friend for the most indolent of humanity, who does not feel the obligation, when asserting something, to first convince themselves whether it is true or not, whether something corresponds to the facts or not.

And anyone who seriously wants to fight against the spread of Ahriman, to fight in a concrete way, must fight against this: Something has been said in good faith - must be fought against in the first place; for by invoking good faith, man cuts himself off from the objective world context. That which lives in us in such a way that we consider ourselves authorized to assert it must also agree with the world context; it must not merely correspond to us; for whatever else is in the external world is abandoned by angels, is at the mercy of Ahriman. And all that is asserted as untruth in good faith is something that most powerfully drives people into the Ahrimanic, that draws them into the Ahrimanic with a strong rope. And the appeal to good faith in the case of untruths is today the best means of delivering world civilization into the hands of the Ahrimanic entity.

You see, if you look into what actually constitutes the world, then you have to understand something like this. But you don't just have to fantasize in generalities like the mere nebulous mysticism of angels, archangels, archai and so on, and stick to theories. You have to go to the world where it is concrete. For it is indeed the case that people lose the support of the world of the angels by lying down on the lazy bed of good faith for that which they have not tested and which they nevertheless assert.

These things show how what flows out as an attitude is connected with real life, with directly real life, and how it permeates us with spiritual scientific truths and insights. And these spiritual scientific truths and insights must send their power down into the details of life.

It is precisely this that makes many people so angry about what spiritual science is: that spiritual science is not just another theory like the other worldviews, but that it is something living, that it demands of people, above all, to overcome such laziness - laziness in both senses of the word - as this, which lies in asserting good faith when representing untruth. People do not like this, and excuses are rife everywhere: so-and-so claimed something in good faith. As a result, our science, especially historical science, is thoroughly corrupted. For you can easily imagine that such people, who go before the world with mere assertions of the caliber I have told you about, do not deserve any credence, even if they claim anything else, if they for example, somehow represent external science; then one must first check whether he has copied it from someone else who still belonged to the better generation, where one still felt inwardly obliged to what one wrote. And when you see how people today officially imitate these Frohnmeyers, then you will see how great the trust in official science and its representatives can be! But it is most important that these things are looked into. And one would very much wish for a following for spiritual science that would be truly imbued with the fact that today a serious commitment is needed to insights that will bring about a strong change in the world. Because today it does not work with small things.

This is what one would like to see: that Anthroposophy could acquire an enthusiastic following that would be passionate about realizing it. Over in the building, I mentioned that today, from the side where the lies can be counted by the dozens, a new, sensational, that is, scandalous, brochure is being announced. These people are at work. Why? Because out of their bad feelings of the soul they can feel strongly enthusiastic. They can lie enthusiastically. We must get used to being able to advocate the truth with equal enthusiasm, otherwise we will not be able to advance with civilization, my dear friends!

Anyone who looks around the world today must be clear about the fact that the path back to the hierarchies must be seriously sought, out of the Ahrimanic embrace. But this means that we have to look at the details. Time and again, when some nefarious opponent comes along and throws this or that into the world, even our own followers still come and say: We still have to examine whether this or that was done out of this or that weakness. In the Anthroposophical Society, unfortunately, there is always a yearning to accuse those who speak the truth much more than to accuse opponents who would like to trample all truth into the mud from the depths of their souls. As long as it is still the custom in the Anthroposophical Society itself to repeatedly have compassion for the lie, we will not move forward.

It must be said again and again from time to time that we must recognize the lie as a lie; for it is into the lie that Ahriman slips, and it is mostly the lie that, when it has been told, refers to good faith, to the best of one's knowledge and belief. I have given you enough examples where this good faith, this best knowledge and conscience, is invoked. But examine the facts and see this Ahrimanic influence of so-called good faith, which even plays a constant role in our jurisprudence, so that one can say that humanity has been seized by Ahriman even in jurisprudence. These are the things that must be seriously considered. If the Anthroposophical Society is to be what it wants to be, then it must be imbued with a fervent sense of truth, because today that is identical with a fervent sense of humanity's progress. Everything else is only filled with the will that leads into the forces of decline and drives ever further into them.

What I am saying today is not just another of those truisms, but something that individual people need to know, because the signs of the times demand it.

Notes A by Camilla Wandrey All degrees

My dear sisters and brothers!

Every human being has the potential for occult abilities in the depths of his soul. The teacher, to whom the human soul entrusts itself, does nothing other than to awaken these sleeping, unconscious soul powers, to gradually raise them into consciousness and thus to give the soul the opportunity to penetrate deeper and deeper into the secrets of the world, of the macrocosm, and to recognize its relationships to the microcosm, the human being, more and more. For those disciples who begin to make progress in occult knowledge, it is good practice to converse, so to speak, with the sense organs of their body.

For example, I could imagine holding a dialogue with my eyes. Of course, the consciousness of the eye is different from the consciousness that the whole person has. A person looks up at the sun; with consciousness, he allows the essence of the sun or the moon and the starry sky to take effect on him through his sense organs. But the eye itself cannot consciously see the sun, moon or starry sky. However, it can consciously see animals, plants - in fact, everything on earth. But it cannot consciously rise to the starry sky.

Man stands on the earth and looks up to the firmament, but not to heaven, for the eye cannot see it consciously. The only heaven to which the eye can rise is the earth. The earth is the same for the eye as heaven is for man.

Now someone might object: Yes, but we do see the starry sky through the eye. Yes, but only because the I in man is within it. It is the I that looks up at the starry sky and admires its splendor and magnificence. The eye alone cannot see it consciously.

The eye is connected to the rest of the human organism through the optic nerve. It is, as it were, rooted in the human being through this optic nerve. As a creature of the Earth, the human being stands on the Earth. They are connected to the entire Earth organism, and the occultist sees how the entire head of the human being is something like an eye through which the Earth spirit looks up to the firmament, and that the rest of the human body is, in a sense, something like a root through which they are connected to the interior of the Earth. When you look at the head and the rest of the human organism in this way, the human form only then takes on meaning.

Now you know that among the lower animals there are quite a number of insects that have not just one eye, but many eyes: the compound eyes. And so the earth spirit also has many, many eyes: these are the heads of the people through which the earth spirit looks up into the cosmos, and each person is a facet of the earth spirit's eye. And the earth spirit looks up to the sky through people with such intensity that it creates an imprint in the brain of the human child arriving on earth as soon as it is born. You will find a more detailed description of this in 'The Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and of Humanity'.

And just as the human being carries his sense organs with him on his physical body, so too does the earth have its sense organs - and these are the human beings.

And the earth also thinks. How does it think? - The human being on earth initially thinks through the medium of his brain. The brain of the earth is the animals with their group souls. One could say: they form the entire nervous system of the earth, so that the higher animals form the brain, the lower ones the spinal cord and the solar plexus nervous system, the vegetative system. And the earth lives and breathes and also nourishes itself through the plant world.

And finally, what gives it the firm structure that the human body has in the bone system is what we see in the mineral kingdom.

Thus the earth spirit lives in its physicality. And the earth spirit looks up to heaven so that it is not separated from the universe, its home, by man and what man does on the surface of the earth. This earth spirit naturally has a different consciousness from that of humans; its gaze is freer, more unrestricted, and streams out into the vastness of the firmament when it looks up through its compound eyes: the heads of humans. Do not believe, my dear sisters and brothers, that it is ever held back by the hard skull. He, the spirit of the earth, sees through physical matter; it does not exist for him, it is transparent to him. He looks up to heaven, which is the home of the Christ, who has united with our earthly body since the Mystery of Golgotha.

If we think this through, we can say: It is the Christ who looks up through me to his true home: heaven. Not I, not my earthly self beholds heaven – but the Christ in me.

Let us, my dear sisters and brothers, look at this occult truth from yet another perspective: let us consider the state of sleep. We know that the astral body and the ego are outside the physical and etheric bodies. They are then in the spiritual world, in the world of hierarchies. And through them – while the human being is not present with his consciousness at first – the hierarchical worlds that act upon us have an effect on the human being and on the earth. We human beings, when we immerse ourselves in this spiritual fact, can know with reverence: spiritual beings feel, want, and even think through me: the hierarchies that rule over me. Through me, they send their feeling horns down into the physical world during the state of sleep, so to speak.

And for this they use my soul-spiritual, which is separated from the physical-etheric. This can give us as earth people the certainty that we, with our soul-spiritual, are members of the higher hierarchies.

My dear sisters and brothers, let us increasingly imbibe the following thoughts: through our physical and etheric sense organs, we human beings are of the earth, through which the Christ gazes up to the firmament, to the heaven that is His true home. And let us also feel how the spiritual hierarchies work through our astral body and our ego down to earth. Let us become more and more aware of how we are embedded through our human existence in the activity of all spiritual beings working on world evolution.

If we stop at this point in our human consciousness, we can know: here is where spiritual science becomes religion.

Often, my dear sisters and brothers, I have emphasized that we are living in a significant time in human development. In all modesty, however, we may know and feel that if we carry such soul content within us in all seriousness and dignity, we are called to form a select band within the rest of humanity. We are called to first receive the treasures of the spirit, which are to flow to humanity little by little for its salvation, and to spread them ever further.

At the turn of the millennia, the luciferic and ahrimanic beings are particularly at work, and something very significant will happen to many and more and more people in the last decade of the twentieth century. This is already being prepared. Care is taken for people from the spiritual world so that they grow towards this event. In the next higher world, a fact will take place from now until the end of our century and further into the following millennia: Man will transform himself inwardly in a very natural way, so that he will imbue his soul with a light that gradually emanates from the human being himself and will illuminate the Christ-form within the etheric world. And the more this inner light develops in man, the more the etheric form of Christ will become visible in the coming centuries. This introduces a completely new event that will have an effect on the Christ-development of humanity.

We may know, my dear sisters and brothers, Through what the earth spirit, in union with the Christ, accomplishes by looking into the heavens through our human head, and through what the hierarchies achieve by looking down into the earthly world through our soul and spirit, this inner light is kindled in us human beings when we become aware of these cosmic-earthly facts through meditation. With this inner light we perceive – as in an image that arises through us – the etheric Christ. The Christ has left his home, the world of the hierarchies, with which he was connected before the Mystery of Golgotha. And he has sacrificed himself into the earth.

The spiritual hierarchies must rediscover the Christ in the process of becoming earth. And they will find him again through the light that human souls ignite within themselves, as has been described to you, my dear sisters and brothers.

This light has been a factor in the development of the universe since the very beginning. It is a factor in the fact that at some point people will be proclaimed as instruments of the gods to help with the evolution of the earth through this inner light. And we are now approaching this point more and more. And by you, my dear sisters and brothers, being allowed to receive these secrets of the world, as is the case in today's lesson, you are called upon to help with the evolution of the world.

Now there are two spiritual entities that want to prevent this: the one entity - Lucifer with his hosts - is striving to prevent people from feeling like spiritual and soulful organs of the spiritual hierarchies. He seeks to fill people with other false ideas, teaching them ideas and desires that create error after error in the soul. One can truly say: He makes man obsessed with all kinds of false soul stuff.

In contrast, Ahriman seeks to present something as reality to man that, spiritually speaking, is nothing but maya, nothingness. He seeks to keep man always in a state of blindness that covers the true light from him. Just as a person is blinded when looking at the sun, so Ahriman seeks to blind him on earth by spreading out the colorful carpet of the sensual world in seductive colors, teaching him that this is the only true reality and thus covering the spiritual reality behind this carpet from the person. Blindness of men on earth, that is the mission of Ahriman.

Take, for example, the Copernican system, which entered into the cultural development at the dawn of modern times. It should not be denied that it has its justification for a certain period of time, but it is equally impossible to deny that it has great contradictions and deficiencies, as it is taught to young people today. But now, in the future, the urge will arise in many people to recognize these deficiencies and to penetrate to the truth. More and more people will clearly recognize how many errors it contains.

Ahriman will always try to darken [people's view], Only recently a book came flying onto my desk that can only be read by someone with a mathematical education. In this book, the author seeks with great ingenuity to prove that the earth is not spherical or lenticular, but that it represents an elongated surface. One can see in such a way how Ahriman leads the battle in an ingenious way against the thinking of truth in man.

Spiritual science shines into this web of error. Through it the most profound thoughts of truth of the gods are imparted to man, so that he can extricate himself from the web of error of Ahriman; and it shows the soul how it can be filled with the strong warmth of the love of the Christ for the world, which snatches it from all egoism and all selfish revelry in untrue sentimentalities that Lucifer produces in the soul. All religions have been based on sentimentality and egoism. People were told: If you behave as shown in it, then you have the right to expect this or that reward.

My dear sisters and brothers: spiritual science gives the true religion, which is also knowledge. A completely egoism-free religion that calls on people to work with the gods. And it is a necessity that it be given today.

In the cycle of time, a thousand years will soon have passed again. We are thus approaching a most significant event, which is already beginning to cast its shadows - ever more clearly perceptible - ahead of itself. Before the year 1000, people feared the approaching end of the world. Today, it will happen more and more that we grow into a time in which the luciferic and ahrimanic forces will receive a tremendous, ever more knowledgeable power. Yes, they will take hold of human souls in such a way that they will put their physical powers at the service of Ahriman and Lucifer in many, many people. More and more people will be possessed by demons of Lucifer and Ahriman. And they will believe that they are right. In their blindness, they will not even notice in whose service they are: for the devil does not notice the little people when he holds them by the collar.

But to whom will these people be unfaithful? They should be called upon to place their occult physical powers, as we have learned today, at the service of the world as a whole - to become servants, co-workers of the World Spirit!

The occultist must blush with shame before the World Spirit when he looks at such souls possessed by the adversaries - knowing what mission these souls have become unfaithful to: the mission to be instruments of this World Spirit in such a way that he can maintain his connection with the Christ-Spirit, can work with the Christ so that his sacrifice may find fulfillment.

This is what true occultism is given to us for today. To study it means nothing other than to gradually train ourselves to become a self-aware tool of the World Spirit.

Notes from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede, volume 1

If we continue to develop our occult abilities, we will be able to penetrate ever deeper into the secrets of the world, of the macrocosm in its relationship to the microcosm, to the human body. For those who are beginning to make progress in the occult, it is good to converse with their sense organs.

For example, I could imagine holding a conversation with my eye. Of course, the consciousness of the eye is different from the consciousness that the human being has. The eye cannot consciously see the sun or the moon or the stars, but it can consciously see animals, plants, in fact everything on earth. However, it cannot raise itself up to the starry sky. Man stands on the earth and looks up at the firmament. The eye is something like this in man, but the heaven to which the eye alone can raise itself is the earth. The earth is the same for the eye as heaven is for man.

Now someone might object: Yes, but we do see the starry sky through the eye! - Certainly, but only because the human ego is behind it; the eye alone could not see it consciously. And just as the eye is connected to the rest of the human organism through the optic nerve, through which it is, so to speak, firmly rooted in the human being, so the head of the human being is the eye through which the earth spirit looks up to the firmament, and the rest of the human being is, so to speak, the root through which it is connected to the interior of the earth. It is only in this way that the human form acquires meaning.

Among the lower animals, there are quite a number – the insects that have not just one eye, but many eyes, the compound eyes. So the earth spirit also has many eyes, namely the heads of the people, through which he looks up into the cosmos, and every person is a facet of the eye of the earth spirit. And the earth spirit looks so intensely through the human being to the sky that it is already imprinted in the human brain at the moment of birth! This has been pointed out in the book “The Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and Humanity.

And the earth also thinks. How does it think? The group souls of the animals are the brain of the earth; one could say that they form the entire nervous system of the earth, for the higher animals form the brain, the lower ones the spinal cord and the solar plexus, the so-called vegetative nervous system.

And the earth lives and breathes and also nourishes itself, namely through the plant world. And finally, what gives it its solid structure, like our skeletal system, is the mineral kingdom.

The earth spirit looks up to heaven through the human being so that it is not separated from the universe. Of course, the earth spirit has a completely different consciousness than the human being; its view is freer, more unrestricted, the hard skull, for example, would not be an obstacle for it. He looks up to heaven, which is the home of the Christ, who has united with the earth spirit since the Mystery of Golgotha.

It is the Christ who, through me in me, looks up to his true home, heaven. Not I, but the Christ in me! We must also look at it from another point of view.

We know that during sleep the astral body and I are outside the physical and etheric bodies. They are then in the spiritual worlds, and through them the higher hierarchies work downwards on man and on earth. We must feel: the spiritual hierarchies feel, will, and even think through me, so to speak, they stretch their feeler horns down into the physical world.

Through our soul and spirit we are members of the higher hierarchies.

Let us increasingly imbue ourselves with the thought that we humans are the sensory organs through which the Christ looks up to heaven, his true home; but let us also feel how the spirits of the higher hierarchies work through our souls down to earth, how we are embedded in the higher hierarchies through our being. At this point, spiritual science becomes religion!

It has often been emphasized that we are living in momentous times. In all modesty, we can feel that we are a select group called upon to first receive the treasures of the spirit and then spread them further. And precisely because the luciferic and ahrimanic entities are always particularly active around the turn of the millennium, something very significant will happen for many: Through the work of the earth spirit, united with the Christ, as he looks up into the heavens through us humans - we perceive this as the etheric Christ; and in the image that arises, the spiritual hierarchies, with whom the Christ was united, must recognize him in his earthly incarnation!

Two spiritual entities seek to hinder the development of man. He who wants to prevent us from feeling ourselves as soul organs of the spiritual hierarchies is Lucifer. Instead, he seeks to fill man with other, false ideas. You can really say he makes him obsessed with all kinds of secular and spiritual stuff.

Ahriman, on the other hand, seeks to deceive man by presenting as reality that which is only Maya. When man is blinded, when he looks at the sun, Ahriman also seeks to blind him on earth by spreading the colorful carpet of the sensual world before him in seductive colors, hiding the spiritual reality behind it. The mission of Ahriman on earth is to blind man on earth.

Take, for example, the Copernican system, which entered the cultural development at the dawn of modern times. It is not to be denied that it has its good, but just as little is to be denied that it, as it is taught into the youthful age, also shows its great contradictions and deficiencies. More and more in the future, the urge will arise in many people to eliminate these deficiencies. More and more people will clearly recognize how many contradictions it shows, as far as their view is not darkened by Ahriman. Just recently a book arrived on Dr. Steiner's desk that can only be read by someone with a mathematical education. The author attempts to prove that the Earth is an elongated surface. This is not correct, but it is not as absurd as one would like to believe.

Only spiritual science can shed light on this, because it conveys the thoughts of the gods. That is why it will be the religion of the future. All religions so far have been based only on selfishness

and sentimentality. People were told: If you do this and that, you will receive such and such a reward. This true religion, which is also knowledge, is a religion completely free of egoism. And it had to be given now, because in the time cycle, another one thousand years will soon have passed. There is no longer the fear that the end of the world is near, as there was in the year 1000, but it will become more and more apparent that around the turn of this century, these luciferic and ahrimanic forces will assume ever greater power. More and more people will put psychic powers at their service and be possessed by Lucifer and Ahriman without realizing it, because the devil never feels the people, even when he has them by the collar.

The occultist must blush with shame before the World Spirit when he looks at such souls possessed by Lucifer, knowing what mission these souls have become unfaithful to, namely to be an instrument of the World Spirit so that he can maintain his connection with the Christ Spirit.

That is why true occultism is given to us today, and to study it, to study it seriously and devotedly, means nothing more than to train oneself to become such a tool of the world spirit.

Record C by Alice Kinkel For all degrees

One good way to develop the occult powers of perception is for a person to speak with his senses. We know that in all things, consciousness of various degrees is revealed. Spiritual beings also live behind our senses, but our senses have a different consciousness than that of a human being; they see the world differently than we do. If a person talks to his eye (an occultist can do this with any of his senses), this eye will tell him something that may sound paradoxical: the eye does not see a starry sky as a human being does, it knows of no sun or moon, but it does tell us about something like a heaven. This heaven is the earth with what appears on its surface. We see the sky above. The eye sees the earth below as heaven, and the eye sees this when it is awake. When it is asleep, it would say: My heels, the back of my knee, now perceive what the eye previously saw when awake. The illuminated part of the earth (for the eye, the sky) seems to have slid backwards, behind the eye. The eye perceives our body as its earth. How embedded the eye is in our body. And so embedded, stored in the earth, is the human being. For just as he stands on the earth, he is the sensory organ of the earth.

We are the eye of the earth as humanity. Every human being is an eye of the earth. The earth has many eyes. Just as there are lower animals that have compound eyes, so every human being is a facet of the eye of the earth. The earth has a different consciousness than humans. The spirit of the earth looks out through us as its sensory organs into the heavens, perceiving differently than we do; but it looks so intensely, with such power, that it leaves an imprint of its power in the sensory organ. Just as the physical eye would be blinded if it looked so intensely into the light that an imprint of the power were to arise in the eye, so the earth can bear this strong power. A bony covering, such as our skullcap is, does not prevent it from looking through. And it looks out into space so intensely through the human being at his birth that the human being shows an imprint of the whole starry sky in his brain.

We are the sensory organs of the earth. But our earth also thinks. Its brain and nervous system are the animals of the earth. The higher animals are its brain, the lower ones its spinal cord and solar plexus. And its thoughts are the group souls of the animals. They are also invisible, like our thoughts. The earth also breathes and feeds itself; and these are the plants of the earth. And just as the bone system underlies our body, so the mineral underlies the earth.

[And just as we stand on the earth, we are embedded in it, just as the eye is embedded in the brain. And just as the optic nerve continues into our brain and connects further with our body, so we are the eye of the earth, with which it looks out into space.

Just as the consciousness of the eye is a dreaming one, graduated in sleep, so our consciousness in relation to that of the earth, which is a much brighter one, is also a dreaming one. We can feel like the optic nerve of the earth, growing out of it into the sky. To know ourselves as a sensory organ of the earth is necessary for the future. We are the chosen ones for this knowledge. In all modesty and humility, we want to tell ourselves that. The Christ is the spirit of the earth. Through us, as his sensory organ, he looks out into his home in the heavenly realms: it is not I who looks out, but the Christ in me.

What is proclaimed from the pulpits about Christ can be understood as an atavistic world view, and is directed only at our egotism and sentimentality. But our karma leads us, so to speak, to proclaim a new world view. We are at the starting point of it. This twentieth century, the last century before the year 2000, will need more and more people who know that they are meant to become sense organs for the Christ. What does such knowledge trigger in us? Reverence and deep devotion, true religiosity.

Spiritual science must bring this new world view. That is why we are now receiving it as a gift from the higher worlds. It addresses the greatness of the human being by telling him: You human being [you are destined to become a sense organ for the Christ]...

But it will be difficult to feel and know that we are the sense organs of the earth. Because this awareness will always darken us and not want to let Ahriman arise. He will want us to think and speculate and philosophize about what man is when we cannot feel ourselves as the sense organ of the earth. And the time until the end of the earth will be just long enough for him to hold back people on earth. They would have become so accustomed to the earth that he could then lead them into his realm, that he could establish his kingdom. Because he wants to keep us from knowing that we are an organ of the earth, that is why we are so difficult to understand in the world. More and more confusion.

But our organization is such that at night we leave our physical and etheric bodies here, and the astral body and the ego go into the spiritual world. But we as souls can feel ourselves at night, projecting from the spiritual worlds into the physical world, like horns of feeling stretching out from ourselves into this world, widening more and more. As a soul being, feeling at night that embodies the will of the hierarchies, as they want to see man on earth. As a soul, we are the will, feeling and thinking of the gods. To feel this is even more difficult than to know oneself as a sense organ of the earth. For Lucifer will repeatedly cloud our clear consciousness of this and will present demonic things in front of it, so that people become obsessed with all kinds of spiritual stuff and say to themselves: You should not work on earth with the physical instrument of the body, but with your spiritual powers. That is Lucifer who says that.

It is uncomfortable to have to think again and again in spiritual science, to have to reflect again and again on the thoughts of the gods; because that is what we are doing. It is more comfortable to say to oneself: you don't need any of that, you have all of that in spiritual powers. These are demons, and people will become more and more obsessed by them. The blinding of the human being as an organ of the senses of the earth, that is what Ahriman wants. Being obsessed comes from Lucifer. Why we are being told this, we must ask our karma. We are the ones to whom this is said and we vow loyalty, firm and true loyalty to that to which we have committed ourselves; for the temple is no bauble, but the most sacred thing for us, to which we want to be loyal.

If what has been said is received by our hearts as warmly as it has been given, then we will find the right way, despite all difficulties, to know ourselves by day as the sense organ of the Christ and by night to feel ourselves as the feeling of the hierarchies, which say: The Christ was with us in the spiritual world; he took leave of us in the Mystery of Golgotha; he entered into the earth, and we must feel him down there through the souls of men. A sign that the hierarchies feel the Christ will be when people see the etheric Christ, and this must always be the case in the last century of the second millennium and in the first centuries of the third millennium. Today, many people are confused. For the adversaries of the Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman, will be unleashed around the year 2000, and there will be great confusion. But we should feel that we are the ones who know: Through me, the Christ looks into the spiritual worlds, and my etheric vision is the feeling of the hierarchies of the Christ (on earth) in the earth. He who knows the connections must blush before the good advice of the world spirits, the true light gods, when he sees how all kinds of spiritual stuff, demons, are mistaken for the true spiritual world.

We must know that we are placed in the struggle between Ahriman and Lucifer with the true light gods.

[“I am the eye of the earth with my physical body.

And with my soul, I am the tool for the activity of the gods.”]

Notes D by Unknown

Something very important that we should awaken in ourselves more often in meditation is a kind of conversation with our senses. Take the eye, for example. The eye does not see as we see the sky above us with the sun, moon and stars, but we have to imagine that we are the microcosm of the earth for the eye, and the surrounding world is for the eye what the sky is for us. The eye is as if in a dreaming consciousness, not as we are in a bright daytime consciousness. And at night, when we sleep and close our eyelids, the eye sinks into a deep, dreamless sleep, and it is as if the upper half were dark and could only be seen through the hollow of the heel and knee, just as the sun disappears behind the earth for people on the other side of the world in the evening.

Just as the eye is the sensory organ of the human being, so the human being is the sensory organ of the earth, only that the earth has many eyes, just as there are animals that have what are known as compound eyes. And our head is to the earth what the eye is to us. The powers with which the earth looks out into the cosmos are so strong that they penetrate the firm skullcap and look at the cosmos and the sky. The starry sky is imprinted in our brain, and right at birth a certain part of the starry sky is imprinted in our brain. We must endeavor, in humility and modesty, to provide the best possible organ of vision for the spirit of the earth, through which it can look up into the cosmos.

But the earth also needs breathing and nourishment, just like humans. The plant world is there for this purpose, supplying the earth with substances and forces from the cosmos.

And the earth can think too. What is achieved through the human brain, spinal cord and nerves is done for the earth by the animal world. The higher animal world corresponds more to the human brain, the lower to the nerves and the extended marrow. It is the group souls of the animals through which the earth thinks.

The earth's bone system is in the mineral kingdom.

The spirit of the earth is the Christ, who, through us as the earth's sensory organ, looks up to the higher hierarchies from which he came and which he left to connect with the earth. And we must increasingly make ourselves the appropriate tool and seek to develop the abilities slumbering within us so that we can see the etheric Christ in the last century of the second millennium. Then we will also make ourselves a tool for the high gods of light, who will look up to the Christ through us, whom they have been seeking on earth since he left his true home. This realization will lead us to true religiosity, not what is proclaimed to us from the pulpits by the priests. There, appeals are made to people's selfishness and sentimentality to awaken religiosity. They are told: Your sins will be punished, your good deeds will be rewarded.

Just as the eye is implanted through the nerves and is connected to the human organism, so is our head, the eye of the earth, connected to the earth through our physical body. Our body is like the nerve that attaches to the eye and integrates it into the human organism.

We should consider ourselves, in all humility and modesty, to be the select few of people who, in the last century of the second millennium, are to hear this wisdom and these truths first. For they must now flow into humanity. We should not sink into the mire of the swamp, but rise up to the world of light.