The Rudolf Steiner Archive

World evolution and human evolution always go hand in hand, and one who goes to an esoteric school must take his age into account. But since one is connecting oneself with evolution's eternal values through an esoteric training something went through an Egyptian mystery school, for instance, that's of lasting importance for a pupil, namely words that can work on a modern just as well s they did back then. Such words from the past are the following: I arrived at the portal of death; I got to know the four elements; I saw the sun at midnight; I got close to the upper and lower Gods. I returned to the outer world.

What does “I arrived at the portal of death” mean? In our meditations we'll gradually start to feel like a double personality, where we no longer feel that our I belongs to what we previously identified with our ego—the physical body. When a man dies, it's only natural that he no longer looks upon his physical body as something that belongs to him. But he must already attain this through his training. If a man had developed in the way that the good Gods wanted, he would have directed his body from outside. For instance, if a man had wanted to travel from one city to another, he would have directed his body there from outside through a magical will impulse. His body would have been like a weight that belonged to him. We can make this clear to ourselves if we suppose that a Mars dweller was suddenly placed on earth, and the first man whom he met was carrying a weight in each hand. Since the Mars dweller had never seen a man before, he might think that the two weights were grown together with the body. Likewise, we think that we are grown together with our body too much. But if we train ourselves properly, we'll increasingly get the feeling that our ego is splitting and that one part of it is directing the other from outside. As we come in contact with sublime, creative beings with our I that's lifted out—which we should humbly feel to be grace—it may happen that we increasingly identify this I with the sublime beings. For we have no idea of how permeated we are by pride and vanity. However, there's a good way to counteract this vanity.

When men's predecessors on earth, the Elohim, appeared, how did they do this? They didn't vainly bask in their glory. The Bible tells us that they created and that they then looked at their deeds and saw that they were good. So we should look at the deeds of our ego, at what the ego has achieved; then we'll see how bad everything still is. Let's take our handwriting. This is an expression of our ego, a part of us that we place outside. Now man would be so vain as to think that his handwriting was very beautiful. And if a man looks at many of his achievements more closely, he will find them rather deficient.

Now what does “I got to know the four elements” mean? The first element in which man was created was warmth. And in earth evolution it was really intended that a man was supposed to send streams of warmth into his body from outside. The heat of summer and winter's cold that he now experiences in his body as a single man he was, as it were, supposed to feel as his ego streaming towards him from outside. He was supposed to feel that this ego was connected with all other egos The fact that warmth has moved into our blood is Lucifer's deed. Air is the second element with which we're closely connected. We should really have the feeling that we are the air that's outside there, that we stream into the body with every breath to re-enliven it. Instead of this, we feel that air is something that comes to us from outside, and we give it back as something that kills. Ahriman comes towards us in this lethal air.

We only identify ourselves with the solid and fluid elements in us—the physical body and its blood. But we should identify ourselves so little with our respective personality that even if we get to know our previous incarnations, we only look upon these as through stations. We should never say that we were this or that personality. For thereby, we combine our eternal I with something perishable.

(Rudolf Steiner's version of the Egyptian verse above:

I went up to the boundary of death
I crossed Proserpina's threshold.

And after I had gone through all the elements
I came back again.

At midnight I saw the sun
Radiating with bright, white light.

I stepped before the lower and upper Gods, face to face
And prayed to them from close up.

There is a “holiest of holies” in man which we may designate as his self-consciousness. Those who see this in the right way, have no difficulty in perceiving that this word “self-consciousness” expresses at the same time the true meaning of human life. Self-consciousness is the capacity for transmitting the knowledge that One is an EGO.

You may clearly obtain an idea of this if you bear in mind that there is one name in the whole language which fundamentally differs from all the others: it is the word “I”. Anyone can designate the table, but, “I” is a designation which can only be applied individually to one's own self. To every other person one is a “you”. Never can the word “I” resound from outside, if it is to designate my own being. Spiritual science has always experienced this.

In the Jewish religion, for instance, when speaking of man's inner being, it was referred to as the unspeakable name of God. For the Hebrews said: When the “I” is to be pronounced, it must resound from the central point of our being. No being outside can utter this name: A kind of shudder therefore passed through the whole congregation when the priest uttered the word JAHVE, “I am the I am”. The God within man begins to speak—this is the pure, original, meaning of the Jewish name of God. You will also learn to know other names, but they all stand in some kind of relationship to this one name.

With this word “I,” we designate the fourth member of man's being. Through the Ego, and from this centre, man works upon the other members of his being, upon his astral body, etheric body and physical body. No matter how far we go back into the history of human development, we find that man always possessed these four members, and it is this which distinguishes him from the animals.

Let us now form an idea of the relationship between developed and undeveloped men in regard to these four members. Consider under this aspect one of the most savage men, who eats up his fellow-men, and compare him with an average European, and the latter again with a highly developed individual—Goethe, for example, or Schiller, or Francis of Assisi. The savage blindly follows the instincts and passions contained in his astral body. He has an Ego, but this Ego still lives completely under the sway of the astral body. An average man of the present time is already able to distinguish good and evil, and this is due to the fact that he has worked upon his astral body. He has worked upon it and even transformed certain instincts into so-called ideals. Man reaches an ever higher stage of development the more he transforms his astral body through his Ego. The modern average European has transformed a good part of this astral body. An individuality such as Schiller or Goethe has already transformed the greater part of the astral body. But a human being who has subjugated all his passions through his will, as for instance, Francis of Assisi, has an astral body which is entirely transformed by his Ego, there is nothing left in this astral body which is not completely under the sway of the Ego.

That part of the astral body which man has been able to transform, we designate as “Manas” or “Spirit-Self”. This is the fifth member of his being. We may then say: The Ego contains the seed for the transformation of the astral body into Manas, Spirit-Self,

Now man has the possibility to transform not only his astral body, but also his etheric body, so that the Ego also becomes the sovereign of the etheric body. But you must realise that this is a far more difficult and slower work. The difference between the transformation of the astral body and of the etheric body is the following:—

Consider what you knew when you were eight years old, and what you have learned since your youth! The bearer of all these transformations is the astral body. Consequently it changes essentially every day through the external impressions which you take in. But this is not the case with the etheric body. If you wish to have an idea of this imagine the following:—If you were a choleric child at the age of eight, you will probably still lose your temper even to-day. Only a few people succeed in transforming themselves to such an extent as to change also their habits, inclinations, temperament and character. This does not in any way contradict what I have explained above. The astral body is indeed connected with pleasure and pain and the other sensations, but when these have become habitual and so-called character traits, then they are rooted in the etheric body; and if we wish to transform these habits, then the etheric body must be transformed, for it is the bearer of every habit and character-trait.

I have frequently compared the transformations of astral body and etheric body with the progress of the minute and second hands of the clock.

Later on we shall speak of the development of the more advanced pupil. He is not a pupil in the meaning of ordinary life, not only one who learns something. Undoubtedly, such a pupil must also learn a lot, but far more important than learning, is the above-mentioned work upon the etheric body: He must succeed, for instance, in transforming a choleric disposition into gentleness of character. Spiritual science in particular gives him indications for this.

He who succeeds in transforming from one day to the other at least one of his habits, that is to say, some quality of his etheric body, has attained a high stage of development. Such a transformation of the etheric body should go hand in hand with the other things which the disciple of occult science learns. But even if a man knows nothing of such a training, he nevertheless transforms his etheric body of his own accord—though slowly and gradually, and throughout many incarnations And that part of his etheric body which he has been able to transform, we designate as Budhi, or Life-Spirit, which constitutes the sixth member of human nature.

Then there is the stage lying far, far above the others, upon which man learns to work upon his physical body and to transform it. That part of his physical body which he has learned to control, we designate as Atma, or Spirit-Man. It is the seventh member of his being. Atma is connected with the German word “atmen”, to breathe, for the process of transformation goes out from the breathing process.

We can only form an idea of what it means to control one's physical body consciously, through the Ego, if we bear in mind how little we really know of our physical body. This knowledge has nothing to do with the assertions of modern anatomy concerning man's physical body. Long before modern anatomy existed, there were ancient teachings, which of course were not known publicly, but which contained a knowledge concerning man's inner being. This knowledge enabled the wise men of ancient times to follow, for instance, the currents of life and of the blood, and they were thus able to observe themselves inwardly, to observe the physical body and all its organs. When we shall have reached this stage of development, not one portion of our body will move without the conscious participation of our will. This is the transformation into Atma, the Spirit-Man.

Now someone might object: The Physical body is the lowest member of human nature; how is it possible that its transformation should constitute the highest member? Just because the physical body is the lowest member, man's highest effort is needed in order to gain control over this body. The transformation of the physical body is intimately connected with the acquisition of power over forces which permeate the whole cosmos. And the sway over these cosmic forces is what we designate as magic.

Man's true inner nature thus consists of seven parts. But those seven parts are completely intermingled. A true idea of this intermingling can only be obtained if we compare it with the seven colours of the rainbow, which are all contained in the light of the sun. Even as the light consists of these seven colours, so man consists of his seven members.

Let us now consider the significance of this structure of man's being in connection with the knowledge of man's whole life-path. Yesterday we learned to know the nature of sleep. The physical body and the etheric body lie in the bed; respiration and blood-circulation remain, as life-expression of the etheric body, but everything pertaining to the astral body is lifted out of the physical body and the etheric body together with the Ego.

When death arises, something else appears, in contrast to this. Whereas the physical body and the etheric body remain united throughout the life between birth and death, death separates the etheric body also, and not only the astral body, as in sleep, from the physical body. But the physical body is so complicated (let us bear in mind yesterday's explanations) that it must decay, if obliged to rely upon its own forces.

Let us now observe clairvoyantly the human being after death: Before us lies only the physical body, and above it soar, the astral body and the etheric body ... Immediately after death, the deceased human being experiences a peculiar manifestation: At the moment of death, the course of his whole life appears in the field of human memory, like a spread-out picture. Every event, even the most insignificant, passes before him in the form of an image. This is the natural result of the fact that the etheric body, besides having the above-mentioned quality of preventing the decay of the physical body, is also the bearer of memory. As soon as it loses its first task, it devotes itself intensely to this second task. Since every event in life, whether, pleasure or suffering, is connected with joy or pain, owing to the permeation of the etheric body with the astral body, now that the astral body is also severed from him, man experiences those memory pictures, that is to say, he experiences his whole past life, without any sensations or feelings, as if it were a great panorama.

As long as the etheric body remains connected with the physical body, the instrument which it must use, the brain renders our memories incomplete; we only retain fragments of life impressions in our memory. The deficiency of the physical brain is responsible for this, but as soon as the etheric body becomes emancipated from the physical brain, it can remember everything.

An analogy may even be found in ordinary life, during the shock which one experiences, for instance, at the moment of drowning, or crashing, etc. This is simply due to the fact that at such a moment the etheric body becomes forcefully severed from the physical body, which also takes place, for example, in a slight degree when an extremity falls asleep (pins and needles), or in hypnosis. In the case of a hypnotized person, the clairvoyant can see his etheric body hanging out at both sides of the head. Materialistic physiology objects that in hypnosis there is a physical change in the blood, but people simply mix up cause and effect.

Man's first experience after death is therefore this retrospection of his past life, which differs in length, but averages about three and a half days.

Then comes a second kind of death, when the etheric body completely severs itself also from the astral body, so that a kind of etheric corpse remains behind. But this corpse soon dissolves, more or less quickly in each individual case, and becomes part of the universal cosmic ether. Yet it does not dissolve altogether; a kind of essence remains from the past life. The Ego takes this essence along with it; it is an imperishable treasure, which remains for all the subsequent incarnations. After every incarnation a new leaf is added, so to speak, to the proceeding one. In Theosophy this essence of the etheric body is called the Causal Body, and the quality of the causal body determines the way in which the future incarnations take place.

Now the astral body remains alone ... What is the difference between this condition, in which it is severed from the other members, from the physical body and the etheric body, and that of sleep, in which it also remains alone? The forces which it had to use during sleep in order to elaborate and improve the physical body, have now become emancipated, through the fact that the physical body has definitely been laid aside. The astral body now uses those forces for its own self and is conscious of this. In this state of self-consciousness the astral body now passes through a time which can be understood best of all if we consider the following:—

Imagine that you are enjoying a specially tasty dish—you eat it and enjoy its taste. This pleasure is not rooted in the physical body, but in the astral body, but it can only arise because it has the required organ, namely a tongue and a palate. Thus the physical body supplies the instrument for the gratifications of the astral body.

Now, what takes place after death, when the physical body has been discarded? The instrument is lacking, the transmitter of enjoyment, but the astral body has not lost the longing and desire for some special pleasure. Now imagine this state as vividly as possible. It resembles the condition of a man who is thirsting in the midst of a desert. After death the astral body still feels the desire for certain enjoyments, in the same measure in which it was accustomed to feel this during the past life on earth, and for this reason the time after death is for so many people a time of unsatisfied desires.

This condition is named Kamaloka (Kama means desire, and locus place). It is the same condition which we find described in many myths—for instance, the tortures of Tantalus, or purgatory. Of course, this condition is not only a torturing one; it tortures us until the astral body has lost the habit of desiring enjoyments. The more needs the astral body feels during physical life the longer does this condition of Kamaloka last.

But you may gather from the above, that according to the quality of these needs experienced by a human being during his past life on earth; the astral body may encounter in Kamaloka experiences which are not only torturing, but under circumstances very good and pleasant. The astral body will, for instance, feel pleasure in every moment of joy given to him by Nature and its beauty. In order to experience this enjoyment of Nature and its beauty, we must indeed have eyes to see, but beauty is something that transcends the physical, and therefore this condition is in Kamaloka the source of increased enjoyment. These things produce great joys and wonderful experiences even during the Kamaloka period.

Thus we may render this Kamaloka time more beautiful by emancipating ourselves from purely physical enjoyments. If you consider this, you will be able to understand several things in life, for instance, everything which constitutes art. The more ideal art is, the more the ideal essence manifests itself through art, the stronger and the more uplifting will, be the influence of the work of art, an influence transcending physical life. The Spirit is the real element of art. The materialistic short-sightedness, alone has led to naturalism in art.

After passing through this Kamaloka period, we therefore reach the stage where we have lost the habit of physical enjoyments, and this means that we must now pass through an entirely different condition. The soul now discards all those parts of the astral body which man, that is to say, the Ego, has not yet transformed. The discarded astral sheath now constitutes the third corpse which we leave behind.

Now that the Ego has united itself with that which it has gained from the other bodies—viz. with the above-mentioned essence of the etheric body and with that of the astral body—it passes on to the Spirit-realm. There it lives until the time of a new birth.

We shall speak of this tomorrow. To-day I only wish to emphasize once more that all these spiritual worlds exist continually round about us, and not in a “Beyond”, which is spatially separated from us. One who can look into the spiritual worlds can at any time perceive the above-mentioned corpses, as shadows or spectres. It is these corpses which so frequently intrude themselves in spiritistic seances. But if such an astral corpse is mistaken for the individuality in question, it is just as foolish a mistake as that of taking the physical corpse for the living human being, Thus the astral corpse frequently reveals very ridiculous traits, for it possesses the very qualities which the Ego has discarded.

When someone has concerned himself for a time with the conception of the world presented by Spiritual Science, and then allows the various ideas and thoughts and items of knowledge that he gains from it to work upon him, manifold questions arise, and he becomes more and more of a spiritual scientist by linking such questions—which are really questions of feeling, of the heart, of the character, in short, of life in general—with spiritual-scientific ideas. The nature of these ideas is such that they do not only satisfy our theoretical, scientific curiosity but shed light upon the riddles of life, upon the mysteries of existence, and they bear fruit in the real sense only when we no longer merely reflect about and feel their import, value and meaning, but learn under their influence to look differently at the world around us. These ideas should warm us inwardly, should become impulses, forces of heart and soul within us. And this is increasingly so when the answers received to certain questions give rise to new questions, when those answers in turn become questions followed by new answers, and so on. In this way progress is made both in spiritual knowledge and in the spiritual life.

A fairly long time will still have to pass before it will be possible to speak of the more intimate aspects of spiritual life in public lectures, but within our own Groups the time when this can be done should be coming nearer and nearer. It is therefore inevitable that new members may be taken aback or even shocked when they hear certain things; but, after all, we should make no progress in our work if we could not pass on to discuss more intimate questions of life on the basis of spiritual-scientific investigation and knowledge. Therefore—although misunderstandings may arise in those of you who have been concerned with the spiritual life for only a comparatively short time—we will consider certain of these more intimate facts of spiritual knowledge again to-day.

Without doubt an earnest question will arise in us when we think about the idea of reincarnation, of many earth-lives, not merely as an abstract theory, but when we ponder deeply on the meaning and implications of this fact of the spiritual life. The significant answer given by reincarnation will be followed by new questions and we may ask, for example: If the human being lives many times on earth, if he returns again and again in new incarnations, what is the deeper meaning of this?—The usual answer is that by passing many times through life we ascend higher and higher, experiencing the results and fruits of earlier earth-lives in later ones, and thus making progress. But that is still a rather general, abstract answer. It is only through more exact knowledge of the whole purpose of earthly life that we are able to fathom the significance of repeated incarnations.

If a man were to keep returning to an earth that did not change but remained essentially the same, there would not really be much to be learnt through successive incarnations. These incarnations are important because, as we pass through each of them, we can learn new things, have new experiences on the earth. Over short periods of time this is not so clearly perceptible, but if, as Spiritual Science enables us to do, we survey long periods, it becomes obvious that the epochs of our earth differ essentially from each other in character, and that we are continually passing through new experiences. But something else, too, must be realised—that these changes in the life of the earth itself must be taken into account. If in a particular epoch of earthly existence we neglect the opportunity of experiencing and learning what that epoch has to offer, then, although we return in a subsequent incarnation, we have missed something, we have not assimilated what we ought to have assimilated in the previous epoch. The result is that in the next epoch we are unable to make proper use of our forces and faculties.

Speaking still in a quite general sense, it can be said that in our epoch something is possible on earth, indeed over almost the whole globe, that was not possible in the earlier incarnations, for example, of men now living. Strange as it may seem, there is a certain, indeed a great significance in this. It is possible in the present incarnation for certain numbers of people to come to Spiritual Science; that is, to assimilate the findings of spiritual investigation which are available in the domain of Spiritual Science today. The fact that a few human beings come together and receive the knowledge discovered by spiritual investigation may of course be regarded as of no importance, but people who hold this view do not understand the significance of reincarnation, nor that certain things can be learnt only during one particular incarnation. If they are not learnt, something has been missed and will be lacking in the following incarnations.

This above all must be realised: What we learn to-day in Spiritual Science becomes part of our soul, and we bring it with us when we descend again into the next incarnation.

Let us now try to grasp what this means for the soul. Reference will have to be made not only to a great deal that will already be known to you from other lectures and from your own reading, but to many facts of the spiritual life that are more or less new or still quite unfamiliar to you. It is necessary first to go back, as often before, to earlier epochs in the evolution of humanity and of the earth. We are living now in the fifth epoch following the great Atlantean catastrophe. This epoch was preceded by the fourth, the Greco-Latin epoch, when ideas and experiences of paramount importance of life on earth originated among the Greek and Latin peoples. This fourth epoch was preceded by the Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian-Egyptian period, this by the original Persian and this in turn by the ancient Indian. In a still more distant past we come to the great Atlantean catastrophe by which an ancient continent extending over the area of the present Atlantic Ocean was destroyed. This continent of ancient Atlantis was gradually swept away and the solid earth on which we are now living received its present configuration. In still earlier epochs preceding the Atlantean catastrophe, we come to the civilisations and forms of culture developed on Atlantis by the Atlantean races. And these conditions were preceded by still earlier ones.

A survey of what is told by history—it does not, after all, go very far back—may easily give rise to the belief (although this is quite unfounded even for shorter periods) that conditions of existence on our earth were always the same as they are to-day. That is by no means so, for there have been fundamental changes—most marked of all in man's life of soul. The souls of those sitting here to-day were incarnated in bodies belonging to all these epochs of earth-evolution and they absorbed what it was possible to absorb in each of them. In each successive incarnation the soul has developed different faculties. Although during the Greco-Latin epoch the difference was perhaps not quite as extreme, in the epoch of ancient Persia and even more so in that of ancient India, our souls were entirely different from what they are to-day. They were equipped with faculties of another kind altogether in those olden times and lived under entirely different conditions. And now, in order that what follows may be thoroughly understood, we will visualise as clearly as possible the nature of our souls after the Atlantean catastrophe, when they were incarnated, let us say, in the bodies that could have existed on earth only at the time of the ancient Indian civilisation-epoch. It must not be imagined that this civilisation was to be found only in India itself—it was merely that in those days the Indian peoples were of prime importance. The forms of civilisation differed all over the earth, but they bore the stamp of the instructions given for the ancient Indians by the Leaders of humanity.

When thinking of the nature of our souls in that epoch it must be realised at once that knowledge of the kind possessed by men of the modern age was then quite impossible. There was as yet no consciousness of the self, no ego-consciousness as clear and distinct as that of today. The fact that he was an ego hardly entered a man's consciousness. True, the ego, the “I”, was already within man as a power, a force, but knowledge of the ego is not the same thing as the power or activity. Human beings lacked the inwardness belonging to their nature to-day, but instead of it they possessed faculties of quite another kind—faculties we have often referred to as those of ancient, shadowy clairvoyance.

When we study the human soul during waking life in those times we find that it did not really feel itself as an ego; an individual man felt himself to be a member of his race or tribe, of his folk. In the sense that the hand is a limb or member of the body, the single “I” or ego stood for the whole community of the racial stock and the folk. Man did not feel himself to be an individual “I” as he does to-day; he experienced the ego as the folk-ego, the tribal ego. During the day he did not really know that he was a man in the real sense. But when evening came and he went to sleep, his consciousness was not completely darkened, as it is to-day; the soul was able, during sleep, to be aware of spiritual facts—for example, of spiritual facts and happenings in its environment of which the dream to-day is a mere shadow, in most cases no longer representing their full reality. Men had such perceptions at that time and they knew: There is indeed a spiritual world. The spiritual world was a reality to them, not as the result of logical reasoning, not through anything needing proof, but because every night, even if in dim, dreamlike consciousness, they were actually within the spiritual world. But that was not the essential. As well as sleeping and waking life, there were also intermediate states during which man was neither completely asleep nor completely awake. In those states, ego-consciousness was diminished even more than by day, but on the other hand the perception of spiritual happenings, the dreamlike clairvoyance, was essentially stronger than at other times during the night. Thus there were intermediate states in which men had, it is true, no ego-consciousness, but were clairvoyant. In such states a man was as if transported, entirely unaware of his separate identity. He did not know: “I am a man”. But he knew with certainty: “I am a member of a spiritual world, and I know that it is a reality for I behold it.” Such were the experiences of human souls in the days of ancient India. And in the Atlantean epoch this consciousness, this life in the spiritual world, was even clearer; indeed very, very much clearer ... We therefore look back to an age when our souls were endowed with a dim, dreamlike clairvoyance which has faded away by degrees in the course of the evolution of mankind.

If our souls had remained at the stage of this ancient clairvoyance, we could not have acquired the individual ego-consciousness that is ours today; it would not have been possible for us to realise: We are men. We were obliged so to speak, to exchange our consciousness of the spiritual world for ego-consciousness, “I”-consciousness. In the future we shall have both at the same time; we shall all attain that state in which clairvoyance functions in the fullest sense while ego-consciousness is maintained intact—as can only occur to-day in one who has trodden the path of Initiation. In the future it will again be possible for everyone to gaze into the spiritual world and yet to feel himself a man, an ego.

Picture to yourselves once more what has taken place. The soul has passed from incarnation to incarnation; once it was clairvoyant, then later on the consciousness of becoming an ego grew clearer and clearer and it was increasingly possible for the soul to form its own judgments. As long as a man still has clairvoyant vision of the spiritual world and does not feel himself to be an ego, he cannot form judgments or reason with the intellect. The latter faculty developed steadily but with every succeeding incarnation the old clairvoyance faded. The states in which man was able to gaze into the spiritual world became rarer; he penetrated more and more deeply into the physical plane, developed logical thinking and felt himself to be an ego.

We can therefore say that in very ancient times man was a spiritual being, for he lived in direct intercourse with other spiritual beings as their companion; he felt his kinship with beings to whom he can no longer look up to-day with normal senses. As well as the world immediately surrounding us there are, as we know, still other worlds, peopled by other spiritual beings. With his normal consciousness to-day man cannot see into these worlds, but in earlier times he lived in them, both during the night-consciousness of sleep and in the intermediate state of which we spoke. He lived within these worlds, in communion with these other beings. Normally, this is no longer possible for him to-day. He was, as it were, cast out of his home—the spiritual world—and with every new incarnation became more firmly established in this earthly world.

In the sanctuaries for the cultivation of the spiritual life, in domains of learning and in the sciences where such things were still known, account was taken of the fact that man had incarnated in these different epochs of earth-evolution. Men looked back to a very ancient epoch before the Atlantean catastrophe, when human beings lived in direct communion with the Gods or spiritual Beings, and when their inner life of feeling and sentient experience was naturally quite different. You can well imagine that this was so in an epoch when the soul was fully aware of being able to look up to the higher Beings, knowing itself to be a member of that higher world. In considering these facts we will remind ourselves that we can learn to speak and think today if we grow up among human beings, for such faculties can be acquired only through contact with men. If a child were to be put on some lonely island to-day and grew up without having any contact with human beings, he would not develop the faculties of thinking and speaking.

This shows that the evolution of any being is to some extent dependent upon the species of beings among whom it grows up and lives. That this has an effect upon evolution can be observed in the case of animals. It is well known that if dogs are removed from conditions where they are in contact with human beings to places where they have no such contact, they forget how to bark: as a rule the descendants of such dogs cannot bark at all. Something does, then, depend upon the kind of beings among which a being grows up. You can therefore imagine that for the same souls to live among modern men on the physical plane is a different matter from having lived at an earlier time among spiritual Beings in a spiritual world into which normal vision to-day does not penetrate. The impulses man developed when living among men and those he developed when living among Gods were quite different.

Higher knowledge has always recognised these things, has always looked back to that ancient time when men were in direct contact with divine-spiritual Beings. And the effect of this contact was that the soul felt itself a member of the divine-spiritual world. But this also engendered impulses and forces in the soul that were still of a divine-spiritual nature—divine-spiritual in quite another sense from that which applies to the forces of the soul to-day. When the soul felt itself a member of the higher world, there spoke out of this soul a will that also sprang from the divine-spiritual world—a will of which it might rightly be said that it was inspired, because the soul was living among Gods.

Higher knowledge speaks of this age when man was still united with the divine-spiritual Beings as the Golden Age, or Krita Yuga. It is an age of great antiquity, the most important period of which actually preceded the Atlantean catastrophe. Then came an age when men no longer felt their connection with the divine-spiritual world as strongly as during Krita Yuga, when :they no longer felt that their impulses were determined by their life with the Gods, when their vision of the spirit and the soul was already clouded. Nevertheless, there still remained in them a memory of their life with the spiritual Beings and the Gods.

This memory was particularly distinct in ancient India. It was very easy in those days to speak about spiritual things; one could have directed men's attention to the outer, physically perceptible world and yet regard it as maya or illusion, because men had not been having these physical perceptions for so very long. So it was in ancient India. Souls then living no longer beheld the Gods themselves, but they still beheld spiritual facts and happenings and spiritual Beings of lower ranks. Only a comparatively small number of men were still able to behold the sublime spiritual Beings, and even for these men the former living communion with the Gods was already much less intense. The will-impulses from the divine-spiritual world had already disappeared. Nevertheless, a glimpse into spiritual facts and happenings was still possible, at all events in certain states of consciousness: in sleep and in those intermediate states to which reference has been made.

The most important facts of this spiritual world, however, which in earlier times had been experienced as immediate reality, were now there in the form of a kind of knowledge of truth, as something that the soul still knew with certainty but which was now operative only in the form of knowledge, as a truth. Men still lived in the spiritual world, but in this later age the realisation of its existence was not as strong as it had formerly been. This period is called the Silver Age, or Treta Yuga.

Then came the epoch of those incarnations when man's vision was more and more shut off from the spiritual world, when his whole nature was directed to the outer sense-world and firmly consolidated in that world; inner ego-consciousness, consciousness of manhood, became more and more definite and distinct. This is the Bronze Age, or Dvapara Yuga. Man's knowledge of the spiritual world was no longer as sublime or direct as in earlier times, but something at least had remained in humanity. It was as if in men of the present day who have reached a certain age there were to remain something of the jubilance of youth ... this is past and over but it has been experienced and known and a man can speak of it as something with which he is familiar. Thus the souls of that age were still in some degree familiar with experiences leading to the spiritual worlds. That is the essential characteristic of Dvapara Yuga.

But then came another age, an age when even this degree of familiarity with the spiritual world ceased, when the doors of the spiritual world closed. Men's vision was more and more confined to the outer material world and to the intellect which elaborates the sense-impressions, so that the only remaining possibility was to reflect about the spiritual world—which is the most unsatisfactory way of acquiring knowledge of it. What men now actually knew from their own experience was the material-physical world. If they desired to know something about the spiritual world, this was possible only through reflection. It is the age when man was most lacking in spirituality and therefore established himself firmly in the material world. This was necessary in order that he might be able by degrees to develop consciousness of self to its highest point, for only through the sturdy resistance of the outer world could man learn to distinguish himself from the world and experience himself as an individual. This age is called Kali Yuga, or the Dark Age.

I emphasise that these designations—Krita Yuga, for example—can also be applied to longer epochs, for before the Golden Age man experienced and participated in still higher worlds; hence all those earlier ages could be embraced by this name. But if, so to speak, demands are kept moderate and one is satisfied with the range of spiritual experience described, the periods can be divided in the way indicated. Definite time periods can be given for all such epochs. True, evolution progresses slowly and by degrees, but there are certain boundary-lines of which it can be said that prior to them such-and-such conditions of life and of consciousness predominated, and subsequently, others.

Accordingly, in the sense first spoken of, Kali Yuga began approximately in the year 3101 B.C. Thus we realise that our souls have appeared repeatedly on the earth in new incarnations, in the course of which man's vision has been more and more shut off from the spiritual world and therefore increasingly restricted to the outer world of the senses. We realise, too, that with every incarnation our souls enter into new conditions in which there are always new things to be learnt. What we can achieve in Kali Yuga is to establish and consolidate our ego-consciousness. This was not previously possible, for we had first to be endowed with the ego.

If in some incarnation souls have failed to take in what that particular epoch has to give, it is very difficult for the loss to be made good in later epochs. Such souls must wait a long time until the loss can in some respect be counterbalanced. But no reliance should be placed upon such a possibility.

We will therefore picture to ourselves that the result of the doors being closed against the spiritual world was of fundamental and essential importance. This was also the epoch of John the Baptist, of Christ Himself on earth. In that epoch, when 3,100 years of the Dark Age had already elapsed, a fact of salient importance was that all human beings ,then living had already been incarnated several times—once or twice at the very least—in the Dark Age. Ego-consciousness had been firmly established; memory of the spiritual world had faded away, and if men did not desire to lose their connection with the spiritual world entirely, it was essential for them to learn to experience within the ego the reality of the spiritual world. The ego must have developed to the stage where it could be certain—in its inmost core at least—that there is a spiritual world, and that there are higher spiritual Beings. The ego must have made itself capable of feeling, of believing in, the spiritual world.

If in the days of Christ Jesus someone had voiced the truth in regard to the conditions then prevailing, he might have said: In earlier times men could experience the kingdom of heaven while they were outside their ego in those spiritual distances reached when out of the body. Man had then to experience the kingdoms of heaven, the kingdoms of the spiritual world, far away from the ego. This is no longer possible, for man's nature has changed so greatly that these kingdoms must be experienced within the ego itself; the kingdoms of heaven have come so near to man that they work into his very ego. And it was this that was proclaimed by John the Baptist: The kingdoms of heaven are at hand!—that is to say, they have drawn near to the ego. Previously they were outside man, but now they are near and man must grasp them in the very core of his being, in the ego. And because in this Dark Age, in Kali Yuga, man could no longer go forth from the physical into the spiritual world, it was necessary for the Divine Being, Christ, to come down into the physical world ... Christ's descent into a man of flesh, into Jesus of Nazareth, was necessary in order that through beholding the life and deeds of Christ on the physical plane it might become possible for men to be linked, in the physical body, with the kingdoms of heaven, with the spiritual world. And so Christ's sojourn on earth took place during a period in the middle of Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, when men who were not living in a state of dull insensibility but understood the nature of the times could realise: The descent of the God to men is necessary in order that a lost connection with the spiritual world may be established once again.

If at that time no human beings had been able to find a living link with Christ in their hearts and souls, the connection with the spiritual worlds would have been gradually lost; the kingdoms of heaven would not have been received into the egos of men. It might well have happened that if all human beings living at that crucial point of time had persisted in remaining in darkness, an event of such momentous significance would have passed them by unnoticed.

The souls of men would have withered, gone to waste, decayed. True, even without Christ they would have continued to incarnate for some time still, but they would not have been able to implant in the ego the power that would have enabled them to find the link with the kingdoms of heaven. The event of the Appearance of Christ on the earth might everywhere have passed unnoticed—as it did, for example, in Rome. It was alleged in Rome that a sect of sinful people were living in some out-of-the-way, sordid alley, that among them was a wicked spirit calling himself Jesus of Nazareth and inciting them by his preaching to all kinds of villainous deeds. At a certain period that was all that was known in Rome of Christ! And you may possibly also be aware that Tacitus, the great Roman historian, wrote in a similar vein about a hundred years after the events in Palestine.

Thus it was by no means universally realised that something of supreme importance had taken place: that the Divine Light had shone into the darkness of earth and that it was now possible for men to be brought safely through the Kali Yuga. The possibility of further evolution for humanity was ensured because there were certain souls who understood what was at stake at that point of time and knew what it signified that Christ had been upon earth.

If you were to transfer yourselves in thought to that time, you would realise that it was quite possible to live without knowing anything at all of the advent of Christ Jesus on the physical plane—it was quite possible to live on earth without having any consciousness of this most momentous event.

Would it not also be possible to-day for something of infinite importance to take place without men being aware of it? Might not our contemporaries fail to have the slightest inkling of the most important happening in the world at the present time? It might well be so. For something of supreme importance is taking place, although it is perceptible only to the eyes of spirit. There is a great deal of talk about periods of transition; we ourselves are actually living in a very important one. And its importance lies in the fact that the Dark Age has run its course and a new age is beginning, when slowly and by degrees the souls of men will change and new faculties will be developed.

The fact that the vast majority of men are entirely unaware of this need not be a cause of surprise, for it was the same when the Christ Event took place at the beginning of our era. Kali Yuga came to an end in the year 1899 and we have now to live on into a new age. What is beginning is slowly preparing men for new faculties of soul.

The first indications of these new faculties will be noticeable in isolated souls comparatively soon now, and they will become more clearly apparent in the middle of the thirties of this century, approximately in the period between 1930 and 1940. The years 1933, 1935 and 1937 will be particularly important. Very special faculties will then reveal themselves in human beings as natural gifts. Great changes will take place during this period and biblical prophecies will be fulfilled. Everything will change for souls who are living on earth and also for those who are no longer in physical bodies. Whatever their realm of existence, souls are on the way to possessing entirely new faculties. Everything is changing—but the happening of supreme importance in our time is a deeply incisive transformation of the faculties of the human soul.

Kali Yuga is over and the souls of men are now beginning to develop new faculties. These faculties—because this is the purpose of the epoch—will of themselves draw forth from souls certain powers of clairvoyance which during Kali Yuga had necessarily to be submerged in the realm of the unconscious. A number of souls will experience the strange condition of having ego-consciousness but at the same time the feeling of living in a world essentially different from the world known to their ordinary consciousness. The experience will be shadowy, like a divination, as though an operation had been performed on one born blind. ... Through what we call esoteric training these clairvoyant faculties will be attained in a far better form. But because human beings progress, they will appear in mankind in their very earliest beginnings, in their most elementary stages, through the natural process of evolution.

But it might very easily happen—indeed, far more easily now than at any earlier time—that men would prove incapable of grasping this event of such supreme importance for humanity, incapable of realising that this denotes an actual glimpse into a spiritual world, although still shadowy and dim. There might, for example, be so much wickedness, so much materialism on the earth that the majority of men would show not the slightest understanding, and regard those who have this clairvoyance as lunatics, shutting them up in asylums together with those whose minds are obviously deranged. This point of time might pass men by without leaving a trace, although to-day we too are letting the call of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, and of Christ Himself, again resound: A new epoch is at hand when the souls of men must take a step upward into the kingdoms of heaven.

The great event might very easily pass without being understood by men. ... If between the years 1930 and 1940 the materialists were to say triumphantly: True, there have been a number of fools but no sign whatever of the expected great event ... this would not in the least disprove what has been said. But if the materialists were to win the day and mankind were to overlook these happenings altogether, it would be a dire misfortune. Even if men should prove incapable of perceiving them, great things will come to pass.

One is that it will be possible for men to acquire the new faculty of perception in the etheric world—a certain number to begin with, and they will be followed by more and more others, for mankind will have 2,500 years during which to develop these faculties in greater and greater perfection. This opportunity must not be missed. If it were, this would be a tragic misfortune and mankind would then be obliged to wait until a later epoch in order to retrieve the lost opportunity and subsequently to develop the new faculty. This faculty will consist in men being able to see in their environment something of the etheric world which hitherto they have not normally been able to see. Man now sees only the human physical body, but then he will be able to see the etheric body at least as a shadowy picture and also to perceive the connection between deeper happenings in the etheric world. He will have pictures and premonitions of happenings in the spiritual world and find that in three or four days’ time such happenings take place on the physical plane. We will see certain things in etheric pictures and know that tomorrow or in a few days’ time this or that will happen.

These faculties of the human soul will be transformed. And what is associated with this? The Being we call the Christ was once on earth in the flesh at the beginning of our era. He will never come again in a physical body, for that was a unique event and will not be repeated. But He will come again in an etheric form in the period indicated. Men will learn to perceive Christ inasmuch as through this etheric sight they will grow towards Him. He does not now descend as far as the physical body but only as far as the etheric body; men must therefore grow to the stage where He can be perceived. For Christ spoke truly when He said: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the days of earth.” He is present in our spiritual world ... and those especially blessed can always see Him in this spiritual, etheric world.

A man who was convinced with particular intensity through such perception, was Paul—in the vision at Damascus. But this etheric sight will develop in individual human beings as a natural faculty. In days to come it will be more and more possible for men to experience what Paul experienced at Damascus.

We are now able to grasp quite a different aspect of Spiritual Science. We realise that it is a preparation for the actual event of the new Appearance of Christ. Christ will appear again inasmuch as with their etheric sight men will raise themselves to Him. When this is understood, Spiritual Science is disclosed as the means of preparing men to recognise the return of Christ, in order that it shall not be their misfortune to overlook this event but that they shall be mature enough to grasp the great happening of the Second Coming of Christ. Men will become capable of seeing etheric bodies and among them, too, the etheric body of Christ; that is to say, they will grow into a world where Christ will be revealed to their newly awakened faculties.

It will then no longer be necessary to amass all kinds of documentary evidence to prove the existence of Christ; there will be eye-witnesses of the presence of the Living Christ, men who will know Him in His etheric body. And from this experience they will realise that this is the same Being who at the beginning of our era fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha, that He is indeed the Christ. Just as Paul at Damascus was convinced at the time: This is Christ! ... so there will be men whose experiences in the etheric world will convince them that in very truth Christ lives.

The supreme mystery of the age in which we are living is the Second Coming of Christ—that is its true nature. But the materialistic mind will in a certain sense appropriate this event. What has now been said—that all the data of genuine spiritual knowledge point to this age—will often be proclaimed in the years immediately ahead. But the materialistic mind corrupts everything to-day, and what will happen is that this kind of thinking will be quite incapable of conceiving that the souls of men must advance to the stage of etheric sight and therewith to vision of Christ in the etheric body.

Materialistic thinking will conceive of this event as a descent of Christ in the flesh, as an incarnation in the flesh. A number of persons in their boundless arrogance will turn this to their own advantage and announce themselves to men as the reincarnated Christ. The near future may therefore bring false Christs, but anthroposophists should be so fully prepared for the spiritual life that they will not confuse the return of Christ in a spiritual body, perceptible only to higher vision, with a return in a physical body of flesh. This will be one of the most terrible temptations besetting mankind and to lead men past this temptation will be the :task of those who learn through Spiritual Science to rise in the true sense to an understanding of the Spirit, who try not to drag spirit down into matter but to ascend into the spiritual world themselves. Thus we may speak of the return of Christ and of the fact that we rise to Christ in the spiritual world through acquiring the faculty of etheric vision.

Christ is ever present, but He is in the spiritual world. We can reach Him when we rise into that world. All anthroposophical teaching should be transformed within us into an indomitable will not to allow this event to pass unnoticed but in the time that remains to us gradually to educate human beings who will be capable of developing these new faculties and therewith to unite anew with Christ. Otherwise, before such an opportunity could again arise, humanity would have to wait for long, long ages ... indeed, until a new incarnation of the earth. If this event of the return of Christ were to be overlooked, the vision of Christ in the etheric body would be restricted to those who are willing to fit themselves for such an experience through esoteric training. But the really momentous fact of these faculties being acquired by humanity in general, by all men, of this great event being understood by means of faculties developing naturally in all men ... that would be impossible for long, long ages.

Obviously, therefore, there is something in our age that justifies the existence and the work of Spiritual Science in the world. Its aim is not merely to satisfy theoretical needs or scientific curiosity. To prepare men for this great event, to prepare them to take their rightful place in the epoch in which they live and with clarity of understanding and knowledge to perceive what is actually present but may pass men by without being brought to fruition—such is the aim of Spiritual Science.

It will be of the utmost importance to recognise and understand this event of Christ's Appearance, for it will be followed by other events. Just as other happenings preceded the Christ Event in Palestine, so will those who prophetically foretold His coming follow Him after the time referred to, after He Himself has become visible to mankind again in the etheric body. The preparers of His coming will be recognisable in a new form to men who have experienced the new Christ Event. Those who lived on earth as Moses, Abraham and the Prophets will be recognisable once again. And it will be known that just as Abraham preceded Christ as a preparer, he also takes over the mission, after Christ's coming, of being a helper in His work. Thus a man who does not sleep through the event of supreme importance in the immediate future gladly finds his way into fellowship with all those who, as the Patriarchs, preceded the Christ Event; he allies himself with them. The whole choir of those to whose level we shall thus be able to rise is again revealed. The one who led mankind downwards to the physical plane appears again after Christ and leads men upwards again, unites them again with the spiritual worlds. [See the following lecture.]

Looking far back into the past we come .to that point of time in the evolution of humanity of which we say: from then onwards humanity descends farther and farther away from the spiritual world into the physical world. Although the following picture also has its material aspect, it can nevertheless be used here. In earlier times man was a companion of spiritual Beings and because his spirit lived in the spiritual world he was a son of the Gods. But the soul, descending ever more deeply into bodily incarnation, participated to a constantly increasing extent in the outer world. The son of the Gods within man took delight in the daughters of the earth, that is to say in those souls who were drawn to the physical world. This in turn means: the human spirit, in earlier times charged through and through with divine spirituality, sank down into physical materiality, became the spouse of the brain-bound intellect and by it was entangled in the web of the physical world of sense. And now the human spirit must re-ascend along the path by which the descent was once made and become again a son of the Gods. The human spirit which had become the son of man would perish in the physical world ifthis son of man were not to climb upwards again to the Divine Beings, to the light of the spiritual world, finding delight in times to come in the daughters of the Gods. It was necessary for the evolution of mankind that the sons of the Gods should unite with the daughters of men, with the souls who are fettered to the earth, in order that as the son of man the human spirit should learn to master the physical plane. But it is necessary that the human being of the future, the son of man, shall take delight in the daughters of the Gods, in the divine-spiritual light of wisdom with which he must unite in order then to grow upwards again into the world of the Gods.

The will of man must be fired by the divine wisdom, and the most powerful impulse for this will be if to those who have truly prepared themselves the sublime ether-form of Christ Jesus becomes perceptible. To a man in whom natural clairvoyance has developed this will be like a Second Coming of Christ Jesus, just as the etheric Christ appeared as a spiritual Being to Paul. Christ will appear again to men when they realise that they must use to this end the faculties with which evolution itself will equip the human soul.

Let us therefore use Spiritual Science not merely to satisfy our curiosity, but in such a way that it will make us worthier to fulfil the great tasks and missions devolving upon the human race.

Answer given by Dr. Steiner to questions asked in connection with the foregoing lecture

When light has been thrown, as it has been today, upon mysteries of a more intimate kind, let us not treat them as thoughtlessly as certain subjects are wont to be treated to-day, but realise that Anthroposophy must be for us something altogether different from a theory. The teaching has, of course, to be given; for how would it be possible to rise to thoughts such as have been voiced to-day if they could not be received in the form of teaching? The essence of this teaching, however, is that it does not remain as such but is re-moulded in the soul into qualities of heart and character, into an entirely different attitude of mind, making different men of us. The teaching should guide us how to make the right use of our incarnations so that in the course of them we can develop into something quite different.

I have tried not to say a word too much or too little and have therefore given only fleeting indications of matters of great moment. But What has been said is of significance not only for the souls who will be incarnated on the physical plane in the period from 1930 to 1940 but also for those who will then be in the spiritual world between death and a new birth; souls work down from the spiritual world into the world of the living, even though the latter may know nothing of it. Through the new Christ Event, this communion between souls who are incarnated here on the physical plane and souls already in the spiritual world will become an increasingly conscious communion. Active co-operation between human beings in incarnation and spiritual beings will then be possible; this should already have been indicated when it was said that the Prophets appear again among men on the earth.

You have therefore to conceive that when these great times arrive in the future there will be a more conscious mutual co-operation between men in the physical world and in the spiritual world. This is not possible to-day because of the absence of a common language. Here in the physical world the only words men use in their languages designate physical things and physical conditions. The world in which human beings live between death and a new birth is quite different from the world immediately surrounding us, and they speak a different language. The Dead can take in only what is spoken in the sense of Spiritual Science—nothing else. Therefore in Anthroposophy we are cultivating something that will be more and more intelligible to the Dead and we are speaking also for those who are living between death and a new birth.

Humanity is passing into a new era when the strength of the influences from the spiritual world will steadily increase. The great events of the immediate future will be perceptible in all worlds. Those, too, who are living between death and a new birth will have new experiences as the result of the new Christ Event in the etheric world. But if they made no preparation in themselves while on earth, they would no more understand the event than would men incarnated on the earth, unless these had prepared themselves to respond in the right way. It is essential for all souls now incarnated—no matter whether they will then still be in physical incarnation or not—that .through the assimilation of anthroposophical truths they should prepare themselves for these important future events. If they fail to receive into their earthly consciousness what Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science has to give, they will have to wait for a new incarnation in order to have the possibility here on earth of assimilating the corresponding teachings. For there are things that can be experienced and learnt only on earth.

Hence it is said that in the spiritual world there is, for example, no possibility of knowing death—and it was necessary for a God to descend into the physical world in order that He might die. Knowledge of what the Mystery of Golgotha is can be acquired in no other world in the way that is possible in the physical world. We have been led down into the physical world in order to acquire something that can be acquired only there. And Christ came down to humanity because it was only in the physical world that He could reveal to men—could enable them to experience in the Mystery of Golgotha—something that, having let its fruits ripen in the spiritual world, carries those fruits onward. But the seeds must be laid down and spread abroad in the physical world.

Golden Age—Krita Yuga—about 20,000 years
Silver Age—Treta Yuga—about 15,000 years
Bronze Age—Dvapara Yuga—about 10,000 years
Dark Age—Kali Yuga—about 5,000 years
Our Age embraces a future 2,500 years

It may seem at first and it seems so to many people, as if that what one calls clairvoyant forces in the true sense of the word through which the beings and processes of the spiritual worlds can be recognised, as if the human being does not have these clairvoyant forces in the everyday life at all, or as if he develops nothing at all of these forces in his soul in the everyday life. However, it is not that way. The clairvoyant forces are not such forces which are quite strange to the human being living in the everyday life. This is not the case, but that we have to develop so that we can behold in the spiritual worlds what we must bring out of the deep subsoil of the soul in order to find the path into the spiritual worlds, this already exists in a certain soul activity also for the everyday life of the human being.

These are the moral impulses of the human being. A really moral action, a really moral impulse arises from the same abilities of the soul which lead to clairvoyant abilities by means of a corresponding development. Indeed, for the everyday life the matter is different because everything that the human being is doing comes from his physical nature or from that which he has acquired for and by means of his physical nature in the course of life. If the human being develops desires if the human being does this or that what he is determined by his education or his other conditions of life, then it is the body from which the impulse comes. But there are real impulses in the human life which do not come from the body with which only the soul deals if the human being grasps these impulses: these are the moral impulses. A really moral action is that to which the body is called for help, indeed, so that one gets a mental picture of the moral action, but the impulse of the moral action is in the psycho-spiritual which is really independent of the bodily. One will never be able to define moral with the help of mere philosophy, and it is just the typical of philosophy, provided that it wants to be moral philosophy, that it does not come to a correct, satisfying definition of moral if it does not position itself on the ground that the human being is able to experience his psycho-spiritual in himself independently of his body.

We know that human life is composed of moral, less moral and immoral actions and impulses. The difference which exists between moral and immoral actions appears only to the esoteric consideration in the true light. The human being goes in his smallest life cycle, in that time of twenty-four hours, into the sleeping state. This sleeping state means that the ego and the astral body go out basically from the physical and etheric bodies and live then beyond this physical and etheric bodies. Not yet everything is said with it if I say that the ego and the astral body leave the physical and etheric bodies. But you have also to realise that the ego and the astral body, while they leave the etheric and the physical bodies, are taken up in the spiritual worlds which prevail in the supersensible around us. We go into the supersensible worlds with our ego and astral body. If we have had a moral impulse during the day, during our waking state and have accomplished a moral action, then the following is true: we must be taken up with our ego and astral body by the spirits of the next higher hierarchies, by the spirits, which we count to the hierarchy of the angels, of the archangels et cetera. These take us up; we go into them as it were in the sleeping state.

As well as we live in the body during the day, we live inside the beings of the higher hierarchies during sleep. That has to be clear to us. If we have accomplished a moral action, if we have had a moral impulse, then it is possible for the beings of the next higher hierarchies—according to the spiritual cosmic laws—to take up our ego and our astral body with our moral impulses or that which of our moral impulses has remained in our soul. If we have committed an immoral action or have had an immoral impulse, we cannot come with this rest, with that which was formed by the immoral impulse in us into the beings of the higher hierarchies during sleep. That really remains behind, is pushed back which is immoral in us, it is pushed down again into the physical nature. The result of the fact is that everything that we bring as an after-effect of morality into the spiritual worlds during sleep does not have an effect on our physical and etheric bodies, because it is taken away from them.

An immoral idea, an immoral impulse, an immoral action, however, becomes something that is pushed back into the etheric and physical bodies and this has an effect on them. That is why the results of immoral actions can work in the physical and etheric bodies during sleep, from falling asleep up to waking. In this regard, it is really easy to recognise what I have often emphasised in my talks that language has a miraculous genius that it works ingeniously. If we speak of guilt, there just this German word “Schuld” (also meaning debts) signifies infinitely exactly this what it concerns. We pay what we owe to the spiritual world with our moral actions, but we remain guilty to the spiritual world of that which we must leave behind in our bodies, our immoral thoughts, our immoral impulses, our immoral actions.

Take now the following into account: if we spent our life in such a way that we would only perceive the things of the outside world and think about them, the processes even in our physical body would be quite different than they are. Because we not only think and perceive, but we also remember the thoughts, perceptions and experiences. What we think, imagine, feel goes down into our etheric body, but the etheric body imprints it again into the physical body. And that what the etheric body creates like impressions in the physical body this is memory. If we remember something of former experiences in the later life, this means: we bump our astral body, which is connected then with the etheric body, on that what like an impression, as a seal impression has remained in our physical body. The materialistic idea is childish: as if a recollection sits in the brain here, another there, as if it is tinned thus. This is not true, but any recollection has an impression which corresponds basically to the whole head and still some other parts of the human figure, and the recollections are in each other, not side by side as a childish materialistic idea supposes it.

This activity of remembering is based on the fact that our astral and etheric bodies can cause impressions in our physical bodies. It is really the same activity which takes place externally when we write down something. If we look at the notes, then that what we have in our soul, of course, does not have the slightest resemblance to the signs we have on the paper. On the paper are signs of any form, but by that what we do then from it, while we are induced to bring back to life again that in the soul which we have written down, a spiritual process takes place. It is the same also with memory. What remains in us does not have more resemblance in principle with that which appears in the soul while remembering, than that which stands on the paper, with that what appears in the soul if we read it again.

Clairvoyantly beheld, the matter is like that: let us suppose that somebody remembers something that he has gone through once. What lights up then in his physical body, is a mark which is a copy of the human figure from the head and a piece below in any way. These are marks. Every mark is different which appears in the memory, but these are marks. The soul only makes with the help of the marks what we experience, while we remember. This is really a subconscious reading what appears as memory. If natural sciences progress a little further and investigate the physical processes, they will be a help to spiritual science, while they will show that that what remains in the body must really be submitted by the soul to a process which is similar to the reading in the soul in principle. Memory is a real subconscious reading. This is a regular activity of the human soul, this remembering.

However, if we send down results of immoral impulses, thoughts or actions into our body while falling asleep, we do not remove immoral impulses from our physical body. Something similar thereby happens as it happens usually regularly in memory. The work on the physical body imprints itself there. If now the human being wants to fall asleep and his ego and astral body want to go out from his physical and etheric bodies, this process begins. What he must leave behind there imprints itself like memories imprint themselves, and then there come the pangs of conscience which appear there. This is the real process of the pangs of conscience. Thus they are reflected from that what the matters cause as impressions in our physical body and also in the etheric body. This remains then.

Because these pangs of conscience remain as the regular memories do and attain strength, they appear then as self reproaches in the further life. This is the important matter that we really succeed in seeing that the moral action is a real process that it is not only something abstract, but that this moral action is handing up that into the spiritual worlds what we here act on earth. Because we hand over the results of our moral behaviour to the higher hierarchies, they also remain in certain respect in these higher hierarchies. What we cannot take with us what works then in the physical and etheric bodies remains here on earth; this is in the earth process. If the human being has gone through the gate of death, he must always look back at it, and while he always looks back at it, the impulse must originate in him to put it away from the earth process. The working out of karma between death and a new birth is based on that.

We take the results of our moral impulses in our karma with us, but while we bring them into spiritual worlds during sleep, they also make impressions there. We can say that the angels, the archangels, also the spirits of personality then have the moral impulses. What do they do with them? These moral impulses, which are now in the spiritual world, are the real fertilising germs for the later earth periods. Not only that we keep these results in our karma, but we bring the impressions up, and in the coming earth epochs the spirits of higher hierarchies bring them down again. These results of the moral impulses are the fertilising germs for the human inventive thinking, for the human thinking generally in later earth epochs. Imagine that an epoch of the earth evolution is quite immoral, so that no impressions of moral impulses are brought to the spiritual worlds. Then an epoch would follow in the earth evolution when the human beings would think of little for the life on earth when the human beings would have few ideas and concepts when they have no means to imprint and stimulate their soul-lives.

So we stand with our moral impulses in a real process of the universe. Hence, spiritual science which shows us such a matter is suitable to increase our responsibility, to make our responsibility more vigorous, because we thereby notice only what it means to be moral or immoral in human life. Being immoral means to take its life germs away from the earth, to incorporate them into the physical earth process in which they become then germs of destruction for the next earth epochs, because they are also preserved there, of course, because nothing gets lost. Then they extinguish that what should live vividly as a soul element. Suppose that a bigger crowd of people would decide that they would live immorally in a certain epoch. Then a later epoch poor in thoughts would be thereby caused, and the souls would come down to the earth and find no ideas there, they would have a desolate life.

It is now possible that we take up not only the contents of moral in our knowledge. If we do not take up that in our effective knowledge, we obliterate the earth. But we need and we have the possibility to take up something different in our soul development, and this is the knowledge of the supersensible. Basically, the earth never was completely without supersensible knowledge. We know that humankind received a certain inheritance of clairvoyant capacities, also of clairvoyant knowledge in olden times. It is not long ago that the aftermath of this clairvoyant knowledge was there on earth. We also know that we live in the time when this clairvoyant knowledge is drawing to an end since centuries, but must be replaced by the clairvoyant knowledge gained consciously. We live in this important time. We have yesterday made ourselves aware that the fifth culture-epoch and those who are its bearers have a vocation to gain clairvoyant knowledge consciously for the souls. The fifth culture-epoch will not come to an end, before a certain sum of clairvoyant knowledge has grasped a relatively big part of humankind. Herder's saying is true that enlightenment will spread over the earth.

Any knowledge we acquire from the only sensory outside world, all the thoughts we have only as after-images of the sensory outside world cannot be brought directly by us into the spiritual world, while we sleep. It is true, the thoughts, the ideas which we have reach to the beings of the higher hierarchies up to a certain degree—just with the exception of the immoral impulses. However, that rises up which we acquire as pictures of the outside world up to a certain degree into the spiritual world. But it does not rise up very far, not at all to the sphere of the archangels. So that the human being—if he fills himself with ideas only which come from the sensory world—can bring that which he gains as ideas of the sensory world not very far into the spiritual worlds. The supersensible ideas we experience in ourselves are brought far into the spiritual worlds. Just those beings who belong to the hierarchy of the archangels get, as it were, the impressions of them and carry them over into later times. That of supersensible knowledge which the human egos and astral bodies carry up into the spiritual worlds is used later for the earth evolution.

It does not form, like the moral impulses, the fertilising germs, the stimulating element, but the germs for that which we call the earth progress. Refusing supersensible ideas by an age means the condemnation of a coming age to make no progress in the earth evolution. He who refuses the supersensible ideas restrains the progress of coming epochs as far as he is concerned. If any nation became quite materialistic, this materialism of a whole nation would condemn the earth to a standstill in its development—of course up to a certain degree because the other peoples would not have to reject the supersensible ideas. We see again how the acquisition of supersensible ideas is significant in the earth process itself. Causes and effects are connected in the whole earth process that way. Those human beings who are, as it were, consciously materialists in our present are ahrimanically enticed beings, enticed by the ahrimanic spirits, because Ahriman is very interested in restraining the regular progress.

We see again how spiritual science is able to increase the feeling of responsibility of the individual human soul to the world as a whole. We see spiritual science snatching us from our selves and making us members of the whole human process, that spiritual science is basically an unselfish activity of the human soul.

In a certain respect, any living in supersensible ideas is a reproduction of the moral life. Hence, there is nothing more disturbing for the knowledge of the supersensible worlds than filling the human soul with immoral impulses. That is why it is deeply founded to demand a kind of moral thinking in the most eminent sense as a preparation of the esoteric development. The fifth epoch has the task to make consciously sure that spiritual knowledge fills the human beings, so that during the rest of the post-Atlantean age the progress of humanity is not restrained, so that really a progress can take place in humanity. If we have to ascribe the natural ability of spiritual knowledge in the most eminent sense just to the Central European peoples after all our discussions during the last days, it must be clear to us which significance the further existence, the undisturbed development of the Central European culture has.

If we now are able to see the horizon of the European life only a little bit by means of that which we have mentioned, what does it present to us? The life of the higher hierarchies is connected with the life of peoples. You need only to study the series of talks about the development of the folk-souls which was held once in Kristiania (Oslo), which is especially important to study in our present time. You need only to call it in your mind and you will see how the archangels intervene in the national life; how generally this national life unfolds in the cooperation of the higher hierarchies with that what happens here on earth. If we look at an individual human being, we know that his ego-development takes place only slowly and gradually. Indeed, in the tender childhood, from the time up to which one remembers, the ego-consciousness begins. But this ego becomes increasingly mature, advances in his development. In our time big mistakes are there concerning this ego-development. There is too little a consciousness of the fact that such an ego-development takes place in life. Thus one can experience that today greenhorns regard themselves to be mature to judge everything because they do not know that one has to attain a certain age to judge certain matters, because the ego thereby reaches a certain maturity only.

As it is in the individual life of the human being, it is also in the life of peoples. We must only take the following into consideration if we want to understand the life of peoples in relation to the individual human life on the physical plane. The individual human being matures concerning to his ego-development. Because he grows increasingly mature, he also learns to take a better overview of the outside world. What we know about the outside world if we have attained twenty, twenty-five years, and what we can know if we spend life substantially if we have worked through ten years more. For such matters just the spiritual scientist has to get a feeling. There is the ego in its relation to the external world, to its surroundings.

The beings of the higher hierarchies behave differently. These beings of the higher hierarchies have the same relationship to our egos as we have to the matters of the outside world. The matters and beings of the mineral, plant and animal realms are objects for us. For the beings of the higher hierarchies, for example, our egos are objects. The relationship of the beings of the higher hierarchies to our egos is not that of perception as we have it to the outside world. Their volition rather penetrates our egos, their volition works on our egos.

Those archangels who have to lead the peoples have the same relationship to the egos, to the individual human beings of the people as we have concerning the perception of matters of the outside world. We are the objects for these archangels. What is an outside world for us, we are as human beings for the archangels, only that it is more a process of perception with us and more a process of will with the archangels. But concerning this process of will the archangel also experiences a development. This archangel goes through a maturation of his soul exactly the same way, now not concerning his ego, but concerning deeper forces of his soul. He experiences a development through which he attains another relation to the individual human beings of his nation; as well as we attain another relation to our environment with a more mature ego.

Let us take, for example, the archangel to whom the guidance of the Italian people has been transferred in the course of history. This archangel has had such a relation to the Italian people for a long time that he has, actually, worked with his will basically on the higher parts of the soul. In the further course this archangel had an effect not only on the higher parts of the soul, but also on the lower ones, on the passions, on the impulses of the soul which are still connected with the body. Thus the development of the archangel goes on: at first, he has more an effect on the soul as such, in the later course he becomes more and more powerful and works on those parts of the soul which are more connected with the body.

We can give for the Italian people that the archangel experienced a condition of his development in 1530 which can be characterised in such a way that one can say: he has worked more on the real soul, now he starts impregnating the soul more with his will, in so far as it penetrates the body. The Italian people, really, starts now to let itself go concerning its appearance, to develop its national character so surely. Study the history of the Italian people before the mentioned time—about the middle of the 16th century,—then you see that there the archangel still worked on the internal soul qualities of the Italian people; that then the external national character formed in the most remarkable sense, as we know it today. Before this point in time—and such a point in time exists for any people—the whole soul-life of a people is still alive. It is still possible then that the soul-life of the people can take on this or that quality. The qualities are not yet coined so strongly. After this point in time, when the archangel has developed his will relations to the deeper qualities of the soul, the people's character becomes rigid; it penetrates the bodily qualities. The time begins when one can hardly approach the people with anything that does not correspond to the national character. It becomes nervous at once if anybody comes with anything that does not lie completely in the national line or current.

One can really give this point in time in the historical development of the French people correctly. All these statements are approximate, of course, but this time is for the French people about 1600, in the beginning of the 17th century, and for the English people in the middle of the 17th century, in 1650.

If you go back before this time, to the Middle Ages, you see how much the peoples of Europe still have in common, and how with the single peoples the development of the national character begins at the points in time which I have given. The archangel experiences a development so that one can say: his forces were even weaker before that, so that he was only able to work on the soul, on the inside. The forces grow stronger after that, he can stretch his forces up to the physical. He thereby causes the sharply distinctive national character. Single phenomena appear quite comprehensible to you if you have such matters for the historical consideration. Imagine that in the time in which the English people had their Shakespeare the national character had not yet been enclosed in this way, so that just the English people are no longer able to understand Shakespeare. This comes from the fact that the archangel enclosed it with a distinctive national character. This will give a real historical consideration of the future when one does no longer start, as it was the case so often in the 19th century, from the assumption that ideas have an effect in history. A human being can have ideas, but ideas cannot work as forces in history. The angels, archangels and archai can have ideas, but ideas must always come from beings. The whole historical consideration of the 19th century, in so far as it speaks of ideas in history, is a spook, because it is based on the faith that ideas develop, can freely move in the continuous current of time.

We can now put the question: what about the German people? Was there a point in time at which the archangel attained a certain level?—Yes, such a point in time happened. But the German people differ from the other peoples to a certain degree. We know that the soul of the human being consists of sentient soul, intellectual soul or mind-soul, and consciousness-soul. You can gather this from the talks on the folk-souls that the archangel of the Italian people preferably wants to gain power in the sentient soul, that of the French people in the intellectual soul or mind-soul, that of the British people in the consciousness-soul, and that of the German people in the ego which extends its power to the three soul members. Hence, the relation of the archangel to the individual egos of the German people is also another than with the western peoples.

There was already a point in time when the archangel of the German people intervened in the physical life or in the lower soul-life, in so far as it seizes the physical. This is the time approximately between 1750 and 1830. If one studies the matters once quite rationally, one will get wonderful explanations about the course of the national development. If anybody got involved only to look at the really great, magnificent difference which is there in the German life in the human beings of the 19th and 20th centuries and the human beings living two hundred years ago, then he would see how immense this difference is. In those days, the archangel intervened in the national character of the German people, as well as the archangels intervened in the other peoples at the points in time which I have given. But, one would like to say, he stopped again, he did not transform the physical constitution so vigorously, as thoroughly as it happened with the other peoples. Hence, it has even happened that the second half of the 19th century took such a course that this German people have really taken up everything imaginable from the other peoples unconsciously.

This has led to tragic conflicts in our days. Think only once that Ernst Haeckel is an Englishman in his whole world view, in so far as he has based his world view on science. He is completely an Englishman, because he has taken up English thought-forms. Everything that he thinks is influenced by the English being. He starts from Darwin, from Huxley. He regards Spencer as his philosophical God. While one cannot really translate a book of Hegel or a book of spiritual science into English, one can translate Haeckel very easily into English, of course. You may be surprised about me saying this, because you know that spiritual-scientific books are translated into English. But what you read in the books, you read this only approximately in the English translations. One can never really translate, for example, the sentence which is essentially¹ and with everything that developed in the German being following Master Eckhart. You cannot translate this sentence correctly into English: “In dem Gemüte lebt das Fünklein, in dem sich in der Menschenseele die Weltseele offenbart.” “The little spark lives in man's feeling nature in which the world-soul reveals itself to the human soul.” It is impossible to translate it really into English, because for that what is experienced in the word “Gemüt” does no translation exist. Also the original dictum by Hegel cannot be translated into English which is almost the foundation stone of German idealistic philosophy: “Sein und Nicht-Sein vereinigen sich zur höheren Einheit im Werden.” “Being and Not-Being coalesce to Becoming as the higher unity.” Of course, one can translate everything, but the translation cannot report what is experienced in such a sentence.

The German language has the special peculiarity that it still allows certain liquidness. Imagine how infinitely easy it is to say if anything is translated into English or French: this is wrong; one does not say this that way!—We Germans must not develop the bad habit to say that something is wrong, but we must keep our language liquid—this is spoken radically, of course. Study our cycles, there you will see how I always struggled to form new words, also forms which formulate the words from within. This comes, for example, from the fact that the archangel of the German people stopped the sharp stamping again. He has only made an attempt, as it were, to sharply coin the national character during almost one century, and has then released the people again.

That means a lot. But this must be that way, because the German people have a vocation to transform their idealism to lively spiritual knowledge. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, who are attacked today, created a thinking which is indeed not already spiritualism, nor spiritual science which is, however, the seed of spiritual science which guides you really to spiritual science, so to speak, if you meditate it thoroughly. However, the German national character must still remain liquid, must make really possible that one says: somebody is an Italian, somebody is a Frenchman, and somebody is an Englishman. However, somebody becomes a German! The archangel has only made an attempt with the German people to form the national character. In the same way to be national or chauvinistic as the West-European peoples are, this would be an untruth with the German; he is not able to do this at all—one is able to do everything, of course, but then it is not commensurate with the real being of the German.

The relations of the Russian people are quite different. Its archangel is connected with the individual egos of the people in a different way than with the West-European and Central European peoples. The archangels of the West-European peoples work with their rays of will, with the Italian people on the sentient soul, with the French people on the intellectual soul or mind-soul, with the British people on the consciousness-soul, with the German people on the ego. However, the folk-soul of the Russian people does not work on the souls at all. It hovers as it were over the people like a cloud, and the soul can only have a premonition of it and long for it. It has still remained a group soul as it were. There is no intimate interaction of the folk-soul with the individual human egos. You can get no more tragic, more serious impression than when you are present at a Russian-orthodox service, in which the human egos of those, who take part in it as believers, are almost completely eliminated.

There is something impersonally universal that does not seize the individual personality. There is nothing in this service that appeals to the human nature. This is an immediate expression of the fact that the Russian soul has not awoken at all to that stimulation which is due to the interchange of the individual ego with the folk-soul. Everything is a little bit rigid and stereotyped, as if spirituality comes from unknown worlds and turns to something rigid and stereotyped, in the performances just as in the icon painting. There we stand before something quite different as it is the case in Western Europe. There we stand before the fact that the archangel has not got ready at all to intervene in the national element. Hence, the national element is for the Russian more a soul dream. The Russian always talks of the “really Russian human being,” and the Russian writers talk of it. But it is a soul dream which is emphasised in particular, because the folk-soul is not incorporated into the human beings, because the Russian has a longing for a super-personal folk-soul.

You have to look into these deep secrets, and then you understand how the European cultural regions stand facing each other. I never think, of course, to see the cause of the present events directly in this facing each other of the cultural regions. Nevertheless, you must do that indirectly. In particular, you must be aware of the fact that the torch of the current war is a powerful mark to familiarise ourselves with that which weaves and reigns within the spiritual life of Europe.

We look up to beings of the higher hierarchies; we see these beings of the higher hierarchies also developing. Whereas we develop our egos as individual human beings, we see these developing in such a way that they get more and more power to penetrate the ego with their will. First they still keep far away from this ego, overshadow it from above like in the case of the Russian people. Then there is a more intimate overshadowing and living together at the same time as it is with the German people. Then they add the intransigent national character to the individual human beings like it is the case of the three characterised West-European peoples. You can derive from that in which condition this modern life of the human development is. Have a look only once at the Central European history and you will find—if you refrain from Russia where the relations are quite different,—you will find that the life of the West-European peoples and in certain way also of the Central European peoples is similar, that a European internationalism is there. Then we see a new time dawning in the individual peoples from the 14th century on. With this dawning we see the peoples being seized by distinctive national characters. At the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, we see the German people getting just as much of national character that the German feels as it were what a national character is, but not so much that he is taken up in the solidified national character. One will find that that lies in the disposition of the German nature that the German does not need to be taken up in the national character; that it really has a deep sense when Fichte² says: everything that wants freedom of the human soul-being, everything that strives for the universally human, that belongs to us.

There is a possibility of free development of the Central European or German character. However, something is contained in that which leads immediately to the insight that the West-European peoples have to take this national character—or fluid national character—of the German people into account. I say, something like the fluid national character of the German can lead to the tragic just in our time. Think of Ernst Haeckel once again. We have seen that he was influenced by the English so deeply in the second half of the 19th century—because the development of the national character was released again. And today? The man who bears, actually, the whole English nature in himself has thrown words of the strongest hatred against the English people. He stood at the head of those who sent back their English certificates, medals and honourings. It would be so much more important that they would send back the materialistic Darwinism, the materialistic Newtonism, everything that came from them. In this regard, we have to learn to really understand us, to see the matters objectively and without national hatred.

It was a kind of a spiritual prelude when some years ago the splitting had to take place between our anthroposophical movement and the Anglo-Indian coloured theosophical movement. It had to take place. Those who have a vocation to develop the spiritual element cannot go along with the materialistic view of a Christ re-embodied in the flesh. It had to come out among us that the return of Christ will really be the return of the etheric Christ. It has often been said that and could also be heard out of Theodora's mouth in my first mystery drama.³ Indeed, now we read in an English-theosophical magazine—I tell no fairy tales to you, the president of the society herself expressed it—that the warfare of the Germans shows now what was, actually, behind the theosophical German undertaking at that time, because it appears now that we would have taken amiss, actually, on theosophical field that the president Annie Besant has always stood up for the peace prince, who did his best for Europe, Eduard VII. We would have looked at this already with immense aversion, and, therefore, we would have sent our agents to England who should there talk about theosophy in our sense to get the theosophists in our hands. If we had succeeded, the president tells in the English theosophical magazine, to penetrate at that time so far that we would have got the complete, as she says, “rich administrative machinery” of the Anglo-Indian theosophy—never have we wanted this, of course,—our intention would have been carried out to bring the poison of our views to India and to gain influence on the British government from there. Then our intention would have been executed to induce the British people to acknowledge the German supremacy over England on this way!—This is the representation which is given now in English-theosophical magazines to the theosophists there.

Now look at the truth. We have to realise it, because we cannot think about these matters in a dreaming way. The truth is, for example, that that which I wrote in my book Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Life is written out of the kind as spiritualism lives in the Central European cultural current. The book was translated into English straight away, and at that time one said to us there—to me at least—that the whole theosophy is contained in this book. Now we could say: well, if people think in London that the whole theosophy is contained in this book, they can go along with us.—But each step we undertook was nothing but an expression of the Central European developing spiritualism.

Some months before the outbreak of this war, it touched me still peculiarly—today I am allowed to mention this—that some of our ladies who do eurythmy drove to London to give there a course. The eurythmy has pleased. This is all right, it shall please human beings. But one does not notice that this eurythmy is the spiritual counter pole of the materialistic sport; the fact that on one side Europe is flooded completely by materialism and sport brings materialism into the movement of human beings, which serves the amusement of the people, the addiction to make oneself healthy which is quite materialistic, whereas with us each movement is the expression of the spiritual, corresponds exactly to that which is Central European spirituality. We work on this ground and let grow up the fruits of the spiritual development from this ground. How did just the sport intervene in the second half of the 19th century in Germany! How finer sport activities have then also—I believe, a method was especially that of Dalcroze supersensible human being.

This eurythmy is based on the following principles: we have an organ through which the etheric body acts immediately, so that the physical becomes an image of the etheric. This is the case when we are speaking. Not the whole physical, but the air becomes an image of the etheric. The sounding word in the air, the kind how the air swings, is a direct expression of the etheric. If one seizes that what lives in the sound, in the word and spreads it over the whole etheric body and lets the hands and feet and everything of the human being be moved, like in speaking and singing the air is moved in the etheric body, then one has eurythmy. Since eurythmy is a speaking of the whole human being, so that one makes use not only of the moving air but of the human organs.

Such a matter shows you that the intervention of spiritual science in the modern civilisation is intended as something universal and extensive. To understand the nerve of the thing we have just heard something of which one does not think today. I have given these both talks within this small circle by means of which I wanted to stimulate the sensation in you to look at that what spiritual science intends for the whole human life universally. If I succeeded in doing so, it would be already enough. Since the task of spiritual science is not really fulfilled if we learn single theoretical concepts. The task of spiritual science is fulfilled if it intervenes in everything, in every life, and spiritualises this life. It is inevitable in our fifth culture-epoch within that nation to which this task is assigned to cause spiritualisation, to understand these matters, to cause a sense of responsibility concerning development. It is easy to criticise the human development, rather easy. However, this does not concern, because the matters which happen happen with necessity, even if they counter that which as it were the good progress intends with the human beings. In a certain respect, we must have and let have something in our culture that counters this good progress, actually.

Among these various matters which belong to it, for example, this is that we start to maltreat our children from tender age on because of our present cultural point of view, as one says, for the sake of progress. One does not know it, but one maltreats them. Since there is basically nothing more countering the human nature than to let start the children from the seventh year already learning the school objects and to teach them as pupils as one does it presently. One would really experience something especially advantageous if one grew up quite differently and such matters that are taught already in the seventh year would be taught only in the ninth or tenth years. Mind you, that I do not say this intending that it should not happen, because the general cultural progress demands it, it must be like that. But the counter pole must be created. And particularly while we maltreat the etheric bodies of the children terribly on one side because we have certain types of school lessons because we stamp something into them for which they are good in no way during these years, we must create eurythmy as a counter pole and supply just that what is eurythmy for the children, so that their etheric bodies have the balance in these movements indigenous to them.

Eurythmy will become something that is quite general, since the development does not arrive at its destination advancing unilaterally, but advancing in contrasts. One must always create the counter pole, assert the counter pole. Development moves in contrasts. And against the maltreating of the etheric body as a result of the present-day school lessons a counter pole must be created, in making the etheric body malleable, causing natural movements of it in the sense, as it is attempted in the first rudiments of our eurythmy. Thus something is connected that many call even today “our eurythmy” with that which I have to call the universal character of our spiritual movement.

If we see, on one side, how that intervenes in the ramifications of the external life how deeply it can penetrate us, on the other side, that the depths of the Christ Impulse combine with that which we gather in spiritual science, then we have the universal character of spiritual science from the highest knowledge down to the lowest. And even more than on some other things it depends on the fact that we get a sensation of this universal character of spiritual science. I must say, it belongs to the provisionally most serious sensations and feelings that the present destiny-burdened events are not felt as something more significant that they do not make stronger impressions on our contemporaries. Since apart from all that which one can notice externally these destiny-burdened events is a warning sign, a warning sign not to keep to that which the last centuries have brought up as materialism in humankind, a warning sign to turn on the developmental way of humankind. What is experienced in blood and death should be felt, as if it was sent from the gods to earth, so that it teaches us how necessary spirituality is for the further development of humankind.

It is really a pity, for example, when we experience in these times that people hold talks, also write articles in which they say: may it come soon again, the time when again the free interchange of the peoples takes place, as it has taken place before. Otherwise, the Germans could labour under the delusion to come back again to the metaphysics of Fichte and Hegel, to develop metaphysical impulses again.—Even in these destiny-burdened days one fears that in the longings of the human beings something of metaphysical impulses could come in again. The metaphysical impulses shall be aroused in these months again. Since in how many cases we see—to the grievous experience of the mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers and other human connections -an unaware confidence in the significance of the supersensible going like a magic breath through our world. Shall thousands and thousands go through death willing to make sacrifices, and the human beings will then keep on preaching that the human life is enclosed between birth and death when peace is on our earth again? Then the sacrificial deaths would be offered for nothing, because these sacrificial deaths arise—even if for many not clearly—from the steady confidence that these deaths is the aurora of a new time. He who goes into death on the battlefield wants to confirm something different by his death than this: my body ends here.—Which futility would it be to fill the European earth with corpses in our time if the materialistic world view even had a grain of justification? We have to write this into our souls above all. Those, who survive this time who live in the time when peace is there again, betray the dead if they do not work on the spiritualisation of the human development. Not to work on the spiritualisation of humankind signifies nothing but to say to those who have gone through blood and death: you died for nothing.—If materialism is right, they all died for nothing.

The spiritual scientist has to penetrate himself completely with this sensation. I read just during these days again that there are people today—and in the 19th century these people became more and more numerous—who state: it was a prejudice of St Paul that he said, if Christ did not rise, then our words and our faith would be “null and void.” But this saying by Paul⁵ is true. Since through that what happened as a result of the Mystery of Golgotha, the human soul was appointed again to have forces, which lead it to the spiritual world. We have spoken of these forces. But our time calls to us clearly: the deaths of so many people would be null and void if materialism were right. If materialism were right, they all would have died in vain.

If we penetrate ourselves with such thoughts, those who offered to give up their forces to the big human progress in a death which occurred at the blossoming human age will receive their forces increasingly from the thoughts which go up from our souls. If human souls turn that what they can have of spiritual thoughts and sensations, the collected forces from above, the unused etheric forces will meet, as I also said yesterday at the end, the human spiritual thoughts and cause a new age. That is why I close with the words today which gave us the feeling sense of standing in our time as spiritual scientists:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. Master Eckhart: ~1260–1327, mystic
• 2. seventh address in Addresses to the German Nation
• 3. The Portal of Initiation
• 5. St. Paul: 1 Corinthians 15:14

Munich, March 7, 1909

It is now my task to speak to the various groups about the more intimate aspects of reincarnation and various matters related to it because deep inside we must become more and more familiar with this subject matter and allow it to penetrate our being. In this context, we will also have to say a few things about the significance of the topic for the life of all humanity. Although we will also little by little discuss relevant questions of importance to the present age, we shall have to take very ancient times as our starting point. This is necessary because the method of inquiry in Spiritual Science differs from that employed by other theories of life or by the disciplines studying social problems. We in Spiritual Science treat the facts of life first in a general way, and then we elaborate on the details.

First of all, we express our world view in the most elementary sense through the statement that the human innermost core—an individual's divine ego—continues to develop from one life to another in successive incarnations. In the second instance, however, such a statement covers the question of reincarnation only in a very elementary way, and that is why we now want to speak about these things in greater detail and in a more intimate sense. Just saying that the ego of a human being hurries from one incarnation to another is not enough; there are many other phenomena connected with the subject of reincarnation, and only a discussion of how they are related to life itself will shed the right light on the issue. Let us begin to characterize reincarnation from this point of view by looking back into ancient times.

We have often talked about the fact that humanity must consider its ancestors to have come from ancient Atlantis, a former geographical region situated between what is today Africa and Europe on the one hand and America on the other. All the souls that are present today had already been incarnated in Atlantis, but in bodies that were in part considerably different from the ones we are accustomed to seeing. The Atlantean humanity had its own special form of leadership, and the soul-forces—indeed all the faculties—of the Atlanteans differed greatly from those of human beings. Hence, leadership as we know it today was nonexistent. In Atlantis, for example, there were no churches, ceremonial centers, or schools in the modern sense, but there existed an intermediate institution between ceremonial center and school; that is what we call the mystery sanctuaries or centers. Leadership of the Atlanteans with respect to learning and the conditions of external life was vested in these sanctuaries, and one could say that the spiritual leaders were at the same time kings of the Atlantean tribes. Initiates, whose mission can be circumscribed by a word of later coinage, by the word oracle, imported knowledge and exercised leadership in the mysteries. We therefore designate the great centers of Atlantean culture as the “Atlantean Oracles.”

We have to get a clear understanding of the function of these oracles. They had to impart knowledge to human beings about the spiritual world behind the physical world. Knowledge such as this is different from ordinary knowledge in many ways; to stress only one difference, spiritual knowledge is not confined to space as is our present knowledge of the physical world. Anyone who, for example, knows about the mysteries of Mars also knows a great deal about the spiritual mysteries of the entire universe. All the heavenly bodies of our solar system are interconnected, and as such they are the exterior expression of spiritual beings. The individual who knows these spiritual beings also knows the forces that are at work from one planet to another as well as in the spiritual world during the time between death and rebirth. And so it was the primary task of one oracle in Atlantis to transmit and proclaim to human beings the mysteries of Mars, whereas the primary task of another was to communicate the mysteries of Jupiter, and so on; and these compartmentalized insights made it possible to lead certain sections of the population. We shall speak about the reason for this at another occasion since our task today is a different one.

The Atlanteans were divided into groups, and part of the whole developmental process was that one group of human beings had to be governed especially by the forces that could be acquired through the knowledge of Mars. Other groups had to be governed by the forces acquired through the knowledge of Venus, or Mercury, and so on. In ancient Atlantis there were actually human beings alive whom we could call “Jupiter People” or “Mars People,” and there were seven oracle centers because the populace in ancient Atlantis was divided into seven groups according to racial characteristics. The names applicable to these oracle centers corresponded to the names of the planets, but they were assigned to the oracles at a later time. The leadership of, and supreme sovereignty over, all other oracles was vested in what we may designate as the Atlantean Sun Oracle. Whatever oracles existed in the post-Atlantean periods—in Greece, Egypt, Asia, all were successors of the Sun Oracle in Atlantis. This is true also for the Apollo Oracle in Greece. The initiate who headed this Sun Oracle was the guardian of the deepest mysteries of our solar system. Together with his subordinates, he was called upon to investigate the nature of the spiritual life on the sun itself. His role was to proclaim to Atlantean humanity the secrets of the whole planetary system and to exercise supreme authority over the other oracle centers.

A very special task devolved on the Initiate of the Sun Oracle. It was to guide humanity in such a way that when the great catastrophe culminating in the submergence of Atlantis was over, the human race would be able to propagate and establish what we have often discussed as the postAtlantean cultures. Specifically, the task of the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle was to prepare human beings during the Atlantean time in such a way that they could enter the ancient Indian, Persian, Egypto-Babylonian-Hebraic, and Graeco-Roman cultures. To put it differently, the Great Initiate had to see to it that enough suitable soul material was available for these cultural epochs.

We must now inform ourselves a little about the task of this Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle. What were the essential features of Atlantean culture? Certainly it was quite different from later cultures. In ancient Atlantis, an individual belonging to the highest level of cultural life—the levels at which today's great leaders in, say, scholarship, art, industry, or commerce can be found—was one who possessed extraordinary clairvoyant faculties and who was especially skilled in the use of magical powers. The qualities usually attributed to a leader or to a scholar were nonexistent in those days, or they were known only in the most primitive form. But although modern arithmetic, counting, logical reasoning, and intellectual deduction were unknown to the Atlanteans, they did possess primitive clairvoyant faculties and powers with which they could pierce into the spiritual worlds. Without the modern ego-consciousness, the Atlanteans saw into the spiritual world, and those whose vision was the most penetrating became the pillars of Atlantean culture. We have already stressed that the Atlanteans were able to manipulate certain inner forces of nature, for example the seed forces of plants; they propelled their vehicles with them, just as we utilize coal to propel our vehicles.

To repeat, the leaders of the Atlantean culture were not the people who tried, as the leaders of our time try, to unlock the secrets of the universe with their intellectual powers; rather, the leading individuals in Atlantis were those who excelled as clairvoyants and magicians. And those human beings who had the first rudimentary inkling about arithmetic, counting, logical reasoning, and intellectual deduction were in a certain sense despised because of their simplicity and were not considered as belonging to the aristocracy of cultural life. But it was precisely those human beings who possessed the very first rudimentary knowledge of the aforementioned skills and who were the most lacking in clairvoyant and magical powers whom the Great Leader of the Sun Oracle gathered from all regions. Yes, he assembled the most simple and, in a sense, the most despised people of ancient Atlantis—those who had first developed intellectual capacities. But those who were then at the highest level of cultural life and who were the acknowledged masters of a dimmed clairvoyance were not suitable material to be led through and beyond the great Atlantean catastrophe. No, the call of the Initiate went out to the simple people.

Incidentally, it may be said that we are living in an epoch today when a similar call is once again going out to humanity. To be sure, this appeal is what is appropriate for today, a time when humanity sees only what is in the physical world. The call to humanity issues from unknown depths of the spirit, depths that humanity will gradually become acquainted with, asking that humanity prepare itself for a new culture of the future, which will be permeated with clairvoyant powers. As with Atlantis, a catastrophe will occur, and afterwards a new culture imbued with spiritual capacities will arise, and it will be linked to what we call the idea of the universal brotherhood of humanity.

But today, as in Atlantean times, the call cannot go out to those who stand at the highest levels of cultural life because they will not understand. The Atlantean clairvoyants and magicians, who were in a way destined to die out with their culture, occupied a position similar to that of people in contemporary life who occupy the highest positions in the realms of scholarship and external industrial life—the great inventors and discoverers of our time. No matter how much the present leaders feel there is still to be done, they nevertheless occupy the same position as their Atlantean counterparts. Contemptuously they look down on those who are beginning to feel something of the spiritual life to come. The consciousness of this fact must be awakened in the soul of anyone whose cooperative efforts in the theosophical workshops are to be strengthened. When leading representatives of modern culture look contemptuously down at these small circles, those who are participating diligently in the preparation of future conditions must say to themselves that the intellectual giants of today cannot be counted on to lead the way in this task. It is precisely the people who are held in contempt because they are not considered to have reached the heights of contemporary erudition who are being assembled today, just as the leader of the Sun Oracle once gathered around him the simple of Atlantis. These disdained people are being assembled to prepare the dawn of a new culture whereas erudition of the modern form will bring about the twilight of our culture. This is mentioned in passing to fortify those who have to endure and hold their own against the attacks of the people who consider themselves to be on the cutting edge of contemporary culture.

The Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle gathered his simple people in a region approximately to the west of present-day Ireland. Now we have to get a clear picture of the situation. It took Atlantis a long, long time to come to its end. Great masses of people were continually moving from the West toward the East. In the various regions of Asia, Europe, and Africa there were tribes who had arrived at different times and had intermingled. Then the Great Leader of the Sun Oracle took His small group of chosen people and made His way to Central Asia, where he established a colony from which the currents were to emanate that would later found the post-Atlantean cultures. However, in addition to His simple people, the Great Leader has taken something else with Him. And here we arrive at one of the chapters of human evolution, the truth of which we can comprehend only if we draw on the inner assurance gained by a steadfast engagement in Spiritual Science.

The Great Leader inspected, as it were, the other oracle centers for the purpose of finding in them the most notable initiates. Now there is a certain method by means of which “spiritual economy,” as it may be called, can be put into practice. As you know, it is quite correct to say that the etheric body dissolves after a human being has died; what remains is an extract, and that is taken along. But the extract is only the elementary truth, which must be modified as one advances to higher levels of spiritual knowledge. It is not the case that the etheric bodies of all human beings are dissolved in the universal ether. Etheric bodies such as those possessed by the most notable initiates of the seven Atlantean Oracles are valuable. The spiritual achievements of these initiates were woven into their etheric bodies, and it would be against the principle of spiritual economy if the etheric bodies of the great initiates had simply been dissolved. They were to be preserved as prototypes for a later time, and it was incumbent upon the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle to preserve the etheric bodies of the seven greatest initiates for this purpose. While leading His small group of simple people to Asia, He carried the etheric bodies of the seven most significant initiates of Atlantis with Him. Such a thing is possible through the methods that had been developed in the mystery centers. You have to visualize this as purely a spiritual process and not in the way as if one could wrap up etheric bodies and put them into boxes for safekeeping. What is certain, however, is that etheric bodies can be preserved for later times.

Over in Asia, the following happened. The simple people around the Leader propagated from one generation to another. Above all, these people had a tremendous devotion to and affection for their Great Leader. Their education was guided with wisdom and insight so that after many generations certain things occurred through one of the methods worked out in the mystery centers. Such methods are employed behind the scenes of external life, and we shall presently see how they take effect. Today's lecture will be the first in a series of several lectures designed to explain some of the details.

When a human being is descending to a new incarnation, he must envelop himself again with a new etheric body. Now, through the methods alluded to above, it is perfectly possible to weave into this new etheric body an old one that was preserved. And so after a diligent educational process, when the time had come, there were to emerge from the immigrants and their descendants seven individuals whose souls at their birth were sufficiently prepared to have the preserved etheric bodies of the seven greatest initiates of the Atlantean Oracles woven into their own etheric bodies. Thus, the preserved etheric body of the most important Saturn initiate was woven into that of one of the individuals gathered around the Great Leader of the Sun Oracle, the etheric body of the Mars initiate into another, the etheric body of the Jupiter initiate into a third, and so on. Hence the Great Leader of the Sun Oracle had seven individuals whose etheric bodies were interwoven with those of the most important initiates of the ancient Atlantean Oracles.

If you had met these seven individuals somewhere in everyday life, you would have found them to be simple human beings, for they were not the reincarnated egos of the Atlantean initiates; they were merely simple human beings possessing the new faculties of the post-Atlantean era. Their egos were not much different from the egos of those who became the bearers of the first primitive and simple culture immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe. What made them different was that their etheric bodies contained the forces of the seven great Atlantean initiates, so we are dealing here not with a re-embodiment of the ego, but rather of the etheric bodies of these great initiates. Thus we see not only that the ego but also that the second member of the super-sensible constitution—the etheric body—is capable of reincarnation. The seven individuals from among the followers of the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle were inspired human beings simply by the fact that they had received these etheric bodies containing the forces and powers of the Atlantean era. At certain times their etheric bodies were capable of letting the forces stream into themselves that unveiled the mysteries of the Sun, Mars, Saturn, and so forth. Hence they appeared to be inspired individuals, but their utterances certainly exceeded anything their astral bodies or egos were able to understand.

What these seven inspired individuals taught from various parts of the world sounded like a wonderful harmonious choir, and after the seven had been united in the Lodge of the Seven Rishis, they were sent to India to inspire that country's ancient culture. Much that was profound in this culture has been preserved in a magnificent form in the Vedas,²⁷ and just as many wonderful ideas that give testimony to the deeply scientific nature of Indian culture have been preserved in the Upanishads,²⁸ in the Vedanta philosophy, and so on. However, the teachings of the ancient Holy Rishis, given in times when nothing was recorded, far exceed in beauty anything conveyed to us by the Indian scripts. What was written down in later times is at most a faint echo, for no records were kept of the primeval, sacred culture inspired by the Rishis; everything they taught was transmitted in a spiritual way through the mysteries.

We are interested today in learning how etheric bodies can be reincarnated, how the legacies of the ancient Atlantean epoch were transmitted by the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle into the post-Atlantean era, and how they were then carried into the first culture of that era—into the resplendent Indian culture.

The mysteries of the Sun Oracle itself could not be directly revealed in ancient India, and that is why the seven Rishis spoke of a Being beyond their cognitive reach. They spoke of a Being who is the Leader of the Sun and directs its forces to the earth; they spoke of Vishva-Karman as a Being beyond the range of their knowledge. Vishva-Karman is none other than the Christ who was to appear later and whose coming had already been proclaimed in the ancient Indian culture.

The most important disciple of the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle to receive the secrets of the Sun's essence was Zarathustra, who was subsequently to establish the second post-Atlantean culture. He was not the Zarathustra history talks about however. It was customary in ancient times that the successor of a great teacher or humanity took the name of his esteemed predecessor. No document contains any reference to the Zarathustra of whom we are now speaking; only his last successor is mentioned in history books. Yet it was the original Zarathustra who founded the primordial Persian culture and who was the first to point out to his Persian peoples that the sun not only possesses physical energy but also spiritual power that streams down to earth. In his endeavor to awaken in his people a realization of this truth, Zarathustra's argument was as follows: If we direct our eyes to plants and everything else around us that contains life, we have to ask ourselves what we would be without sunlight. But together with the physical sunlight, a spiritual force also streams down to earth under the direction of a great sublime Being. Just as a human being has his or her physical body and an aura—we call it the small aura—so the sun has its physical body and its aura. Ahura Mazdao, the “great aura,” consists of the group of great sun beings and their leader. Zarathustra spoke of this Ahura Mazdao, or Aura Mazdao—the Great Aura—and proclaimed the power of the sun aura by which the flow of evolution was made possible. However, Zarathustra also proclaimed that the forces of Ahriman would oppose the Sun Being. This then is what can be said about the external teachings of Zarathustra, but there is more to be said about him.

Zarathustra had some close disciples whom he initiated into the great mysteries of the world. We shall mention two of them in this context. To begin with the first, Zarathustra communicated to him all the wisdom necessary to bring about clairvoyance in the astral body, as well as the ability to perceive in one's present time frame simultaneously everything that is happening and all the mysteries spread out in both physical and spiritual space. To the second disciple Zarathustra transmitted what one might call the power to read the Akasha Chronicle, and this is nothing less than the clairvoyant power of the etheric body enabling the human being to perceive the successive phases of evolution in time. Thus, one disciple received the ability to perceive simultaneous events, and the other the vision of the Akasha Chronicle to perceive successive events that could lead to an understanding of the evolution of the earth and sun. By imparting these faculties to these disciples, Zarathustra had a profound effect on the continuation of culture in the postAtlantean era.

The first disciple was reincarnated as the great individual who was to inspire and inaugurate the new currents of Egyptian culture, the being whom we know by the name of Hermes or Hermes Trismegistos. Through processes that are known, the astral body of Zarathustra was transmitted to Hermes so that he could proclaim the message of the higher worlds and their mysteries and incorporate them into Egyptian culture. Thus by processes we will gradually learn to understand, the astral body of Zarathustra was preserved and was transmitted to one disciple when he was born again as Hermes. Hermes wore Zarathustra's astral body as if it were a garment.

The other disciple was also reincarnated, and in him everything was meant to be revealed that is presented to the earth in the Akasha Chronicle. Since the etheric body of Zarathustra was to be woven into that of a disciple, a very special event had to take place to make this possible. The forces of the new etheric body somehow had to be illuminated in the disciple for his awakening. The Biblical story relates to us in a beautiful and marvelous way what this special event was. Allow your souls to visualize how it had to unfold.

You must first realize that this reborn disciple of Zarathustra possessed his own astral body and ego, and he was now to have the etheric body of Zarathustra woven into his soul. As a small child, he first had to feel how the forces of the etheric body of Zarathustra became active in him, and he had to feel this before the powers of judgment could be activated by his own astral body and before his own ego was able to interfere. So the special event that had to take place was some sort of initiation. The forces of Zarathustra's etheric body had to be awakened in this reborn disciple when he was a very small child, that is before his own individual development could come into play. For this reason, the child was placed into an ark of bulrushes that was then put into the water, so that he was completely cut off from the rest of the world and was unable to interact with it. That is when the forces of Zarathustra's etheric body that had been woven into him germinated and, as we said earlier, became illuminated.

I am sure you know by now that this reborn disciple of Zarathustra was none other than Moses. The Biblical story about his abandonment is really a presentation of that profound mystery behind the scenes of the external world dealing with the preservation of Zarathustra's etheric body and its reawakening in Moses. And this is how Hermes and Moses were able to guide the post-Atlantean culture through its recorded stages.

After hearing about these examples of the reincarnation of etheric bodies and of an astral body, we know it is insufficient to speak only of the reincarnation of the ego. Rather, the other members of the human constitution that we have become acquainted with—the etheric body and the astral body—can also be reincarnated. It is a principle of spiritual economy that what has once been gained cannot perish, but is preserved and transplanted on the spiritual soil of posterity. However, what we have described can be accomplished in another way. We shall see from an example that there are still other methods whereby the past is transported into the future.

You will remember a personality mentioned in the Bible: Shem, a son of Noah and progenitor of the Semitic people. Occult research confirms that there is an individual behind Shem that must be regarded as the tribal individuality of all Semitic peoples. When a number of human beings are to descend from a particular progenitor, a special provision must be made for this in the spiritual world. In the case of Shem, the provision was that an etheric body was specially woven for him from the spiritual world, which he was to carry. This enabled him to bear in his own etheric body an especially exalted being from the spiritual world, a being who could not otherwise have incarnated on earth because it was incapable of descending into a compact physical body. This being was capable of incarnating only by virtue of the fact that it could now enter the etheric body of Shem. Since Shem had his own physical, etheric, and astral body, as well as his ego, he was first an individual in his own right. Beyond that, however, he was an individual whose etheric body was interwoven with the etheric body of another high being of the spiritual world, specially prepared for the purpose of founding a nation, as characterized above. If clairvoyant perception had confronted Shem, it would have seen Shem himself, but with a second entity extending out of him like a second being, yet still united with Shem's etheric body. This higher being was not Shem, but it incarnated in Shem—the human being—for a special mission. Unlike ordinary human beings, this higher being did not undergo various incarnations, but descended only once into a human body. Such a being is called an avatar. An avatar does not feel at home in the world as a human being would; he descends but once into this world for the sole purpose of carrying out a certain mission.

The part of a human being that is indwelled by such an avatar being acquires a special character in that it is able to multiply. When a grain of seed is sown into the ground, the stalk grows from it, and the grain is multiplied into the ears of grain. In the same way, the etheric body of Shem multiplied into many copies, and these were woven into all his descendants. That's what happened, and thus the copies of the etheric body that had been specially prepared in Shem as the prototype were woven into the etheric bodies of his direct descendants.

But this etheric body of Shem was later used in yet another way. How this was done can best be placed before our souls by the visualization of an analogy. You may be a highly cultured European, but if you want to acquaint the Hottentots with your culture, you simply must learn their language. By analogy, the exalted beings that descend to earth to guide humanity must weave into themselves the forces by which they will be put into a position to communicate with human beings on earth. Now in the later phase of the evolution of the Semitic people, it became necessary that a very exalted being descend to earth in order to communicate with them and provide an impetus to their culture. Such a being was the Melchizedek of Biblical history who, as it were, had to "put on" the preserved etheric body of Shem—the very etheric body that was still inhabited by an avatar being. Once it was woven into him, Melchizedek was able to transmit to Abraham the impulse necessary for the continued progress of Semitic culture. Here, then, we have become acquainted with another unique way in which an etheric body develops in a particular human being and is subsequently allotted to a specially selected individuality for the fulfillment of a mission.

Such examples can be found up to the most recent times, and as we trace them, we gradually realize the truth of what occultism is able to say today about this subject matter. Occultism conveys to us that most human beings living at present no longer have etheric or astral bodies that were originally woven anew from the general fabric of the world Almost every human being has in his or her etheric and astral body a fragment that has been preserved from ancient times because the principle of spiritual economy is at work preserving useful elements for repeated utilization.

Let us mention two more examples from the modern age that can illustrate to us how mysteries are at work from one epoch to another. The first example is related to the personality who is discussed in my book Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nicholas of Cusa. He called one of his writings De docta ignorantia, a Latin title that can be translated “Learned Ignorance”; yet it contains more erudition than many a book claiming to contain learned knowledge. There were certain reasons for the title. If you read other writings by Nicholas of Cusa, you will find that a prophetic presentation of the Copernican picture of the universe is woven into them in a curious way. Those who read carefully cannot fail to recognize it. Yet it was not until the time of Copernicus that the world was mature enough to accept this view of the universe in its actual form. Investigation into the connection reveals the following: One of the members of Cusa's super-sensible constitution contained an ancient individuality of the highest rank, and that made it possible for the astral body of Nicholas of Cusa to be preserved and then to be woven into the astral body of Nicholas Copernicus. The wisdom once possessed by Nicholas of Cusa could, as it were, be resurrected in Copernicus, and that is an example of how the astral body has reincarnated.

The second example deals with Galileo, who has been immensely important for modern thought, as many of you who have thought about the matter know. Without him, there would have been no physics in the modern sense because the whole mode of thinking in terms of physics today must be attributed to Galileo. Every schoolboy today will read in the most elementary books of Galileo's law of inertia, of continuity, which indicates that a body in motion tends to continue its movement until it encounters an obstacle. Thus, if we throw some object, it will travel forward by its own momentum until it is stopped by an obstacle or outer force. This is how we think today, and this is what children in school learn from their textbooks. However, people living before Galileo thought in a different manner. They thought that if a stone were thrown, its flight could not continue unless the air drove or pushed it from behind. So we see that the laws of falling bodies, of the pendulum, and of simple machines are all derived from Galileo.

Galileo received his insights through a certain inspiration. I need only to remind you of how he discovered the law of the pendulum by observing the swinging lamp in the Cathedral at Pisa—a stroke of genius. Many people had walked past this lamp without noticing a thing, but when Galileo observed it, the fundamental laws of mechanics dawned on him. A human being who can be inspired in such a profound way has an etheric body of enormous richness; to allow it to perish would contradict the law of spiritual economy.

It is for this reason that Galileo's etheric body too was preserved and reappeared after a comparatively short period of time in an individual whose achievements were also to be of great significance. It was woven into a personality who grew up in a remote peasant village in Russia, ran away from his parents, and journeyed to Moscow. The great talent of this young man became apparent very soon, and he rapidly absorbed the knowledge of his day in the schools of Russia and Germany, so that he had soon encompassed the total of the general knowledge available in the culture of his time. All he had to do was to accumulate the knowledge developed on earth since he had died—in his etheric body—as Galileo. And then this very same person became, so to speak, the founder of the whole classical literature movement in Russia, creating lasting literary treasures practically out of the void. But more than that, he also provided important stimuli to every scientific discipline related to physics and chemistry, and particularly to all areas of mechanics. This individual was none other than Michail Lomonosov, whose achievements and reforms were possible only because the etheric body of Galileo had been woven into him. Galileo died in the middle of the seventeenth century, and Michail Lomonosov was born early in the eighteenth century with Galileo's etheric body, representing one of those intimate reincarnations where a member of the super-sensible constitution of the human being other than the ego is reincarnated. Such things lead us toward a deep understanding of the entire evolutionary process and of many other factors that have developed in the course of time, leading to the conditions prevailing at present.

The greatest avatar on earth was Christ Himself, who lived for three years in the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. Because Christ lived in the three bodies of the super-sensible constitution of Jesus of Nazareth, it was possible for the latter's etheric and astral bodies, and of the ego too in a lesser degree, to multiply in the same way as we have discussed it before. After the Mystery of Golgotha and as a result of the wonderful laws of spiritual economy, quite a few copies of the astral body and of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth were present as archetypes in the spiritual world. If an avatar enters a human sheath, the essence of the host is dispersed into many replicas. In contrast to the copies of Shem's etheric body, the copies of the astral and etheric bodies of Jesus of Nazareth had another special characteristic. The copies of Shem's etheric body could be implanted only into his own descendants whereas the copies of the etheric body and the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth could be implanted into all human beings of the most diverse peoples and races. A copy of the archetypal astral and etheric bodies of Jesus of Nazareth could be implanted in anyone who through his or her personal development had become ready for this transfer, no matter what race such an individual belonged to. And we see how in this subsequent evolution of Christendom, strange developments take place behind the external historical facade, and only such developments can render the external course of events intelligible.

Now, how did Christianity spread? We can say that in the first few centuries the dissemination of the idea of Christianity depended on what happened on the physical plane. In this era we see that Christianity is decidedly propagated through everything that lives on the physical plane. The Apostles stressed the fact that the propagation of Christianity was based on direct physical perception of eyewitnesses. "We have laid our hands into His wounds" was a statement of proof that the Christ had walked on earth in a human body. In other words, the stress was put on anything on the physical plane that could serve as documentation for the development of Christianity. Time and again during those first few centuries, it was asserted that those who had been disciples of the Apostles themselves were responsible for the continuing propagation of Christianity, and it was emphasized that they had known the immediate followers of the Lord Himself. So we see that people in this era relied, as it were, on eyewitness reports, and this continues in a still deeper sense up to the time of St. Augustine, who said: “I would not believe in the truth of the Gospels if the authority of the Catholic Church did not compel me to do so.” Why, then, did he believe? Because it was his conviction that the visible Church has propagated the Gospel on the physical plane from one decade and from one century to another. However, in the following centuries, from the fifth to the tenth, Christianity was propagated in a different way. Why and how? It is instructive to learn the answer to this question if we are interested in following the spiritual progress of human evolution.

You can visualize the method of propagation in this next period by considering, for example, the Old Saxon gospel epic entitled Heliand. In this work, a kind of initiate presents his readers with his version of the Christ idea and with his perception of the Christ-Being. The Heliand, the Savior, presented by this Saxon initiate is a super-sensible being. Yet, He is portrayed not within the context of the events in Palestine, but rather as a prince of a Germanic tribe. The disciples are individuals from Germanic lands, and the whole of Christianity is clothed in Central European imagery. Why was this done? It was done because the initiate who wrote the Heliand at the suggestion of Louis the Pious had clairvoyant faculties, so that he was able to see Christ in a way similar to Paul's perception of Christ at Damascus. Through the event at Golgotha the Christ-Being had united Himself with the astral body of the earth, thereby infusing His power into the aura of the earth; and when Paul became clairvoyant, he could clearly perceive: The Christ is present! Paul did not allow himself to become a believer merely on the strength of what was reported to have happened in Palestine. Only after he had seen the being that was woven into the earth with his own eyes did he change from Saul to Paul. In a similar vision, the Risen Christ, the eternal Christ living in the spiritual world after Golgotha, was revealed to the writer of the Heliand, and He was more important to him than was the historical Christ of Palestine. And so he presents Him in another setting because the spiritual Christ was more important to him than was the external image of the Christ. You may want to ask why the author of the Heliand was able to communicate such an image from clairvoyant perception. He was able to do this because a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into his own etheric body. This was the case because during these centuries—starting with the fifth or sixth and ending with the ninth or tenth century—the etheric bodies of those who were destined to do something for the advancement of Christianity were interwoven with a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, and one of these special individuals was the writer of the Heliand.

Since there were many others who had a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their own etheric body, we can readily see that human beings in these centuries lived in imaginations that were closely related to the events in Golgotha. All those who created the original artistic portrayals of the Savior on the cross and of Mary with the Jesus Child had been inspired to do pictorial representations of anything connected with the event in Golgotha by one and the same thing: a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into the etheric body of each of these individuals. If the paintings of the events in Golgotha seemed like representations of a type, this points to the fact that all the artists were clairvoyant; what they created was then transmitted to posterity by the forces of tradition. In these early centuries, not all the inspired individuals destined to propagate the idea of Christianity were, of course, artists. Take, for example, John Scotus Erigena,²⁹ the scholastic philosopher, who in the days of Charles the Bald wrote the famous De Division Naturae. He, too, had a copy of the etheric body of Jesus woven into his own etheric body.

If human beings were born during the period from the fifth to the tenth centuries who had a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their own etheric bodies, human beings living in the period from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries received copies of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth rather than copies of His etheric body. Only by considering this fact do we fully understand some of the important personalities of that time. How will a personality whose own astral body is interwoven with a copy of the astral body of Jesus appear to the outside world? After all, the ego of Jesus is not incarnated in such an individual; each personality retains his or her own ego. Ego judgment can cause many an error to creep into the life of such an individual; but because the copy of the great prototype has been woven into his or her astral body, devotion, all the feelings, everything in short that permeates and weaves through this astral body will come to the fore as the intrinsic essence of the astral body, even though it may perhaps be at variance with the ego itself. Think of Francis of Assisi. There you have a personality into whose astral body a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven. You may have found many extremes in the biography of Francis of Assisi, and if you did, you should consider that they were caused by his ego, which was not on the same level with his astral body. But the moment you study his soul under the assumption that his ego was not always capable of making the right judgments about the wonderful feelings and the humility contained in the astral body, then you will understand him. A copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth was reincarnated in Francis of Assisi, and this was the case with many individuals of that time—Franciscans, Dominicans, and all other personalities of that time who will be intelligible only when studied in the light of this knowledge. For example, one of those personalities was the renowned St. Elisabeth of Thüringen.

And so what has happened in the external life of our existence becomes fully intelligible only when we see how spiritual impulses are conveyed in each era and how they are propagated in the course of time.

When Christ incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, something like an imprint of the ego was made in the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. When the Christ-Being entered the astral body, we can easily conceive that something like a replica of the ego could be produced in the surrounding parts of the astral body. This copy of the ego of Christ Jesus produced many duplicates that were preserved, so to speak, in the spiritual world. In the case of a few individuals who were to be prophets for their own age, something was woven into their ego. Among them were the German mystics who proclaimed the inner Christ with such fervor because something like a copy of the ego of Christ was incarnated in them—only a copy or image of Christ's ego, of course. Only human beings who prepare themselves gradually for a full understanding of the Christ and who understand through their knowledge of the spiritual worlds what the Christ really is, as He surfaces time and again in ever changing forms during the course of human evolution—only those human beings will also gradually gain the maturity necessary to experience Christ in themselves. They will be ready to absorb, so to speak, the waiting replicas of the Christ-Ego, ready to absorb the ego that the Christ imprinted in the body of Jesus.

Part of the inner mission of the universal stream of spirituality is to prepare human beings to become so mature in soul that an ever-increasing number of them will be able to absorb a copy of the Ego-Being of Christ Jesus. For this is the course of Christian evolution: first, propagation on the physical plane, then through etheric bodies, and then through astral bodies that, by and large, were reincarnated astral bodies of Jesus. Now the time is at hand when the ego-nature of Christ Jesus will increasingly light up in human beings as the innermost essence of their souls. Yes, these imprinted copies of the Christ Jesus individuality are waiting to be taken in by human souls—they are waiting!

And now you see from what depths the universal stream of Spiritual Science flows into our souls. Spiritual Science is not a theory, not the sum total of concepts given merely for the intellectual enlightenment of human beings; it is a reality, and it intends to offer realities to the human soul. Those who wish to gain a spiritual understanding of Christianity and experience it within themselves will strive to make a personal contribution so that either in the present or in a later incarnation a copy of the Christ Jesus individuality can be woven into their own egos. A person who understands the true, inmost essence—the actuality—of the universal stream of Spiritual Science will prepare himself or herself not just for knowledge, but rather for an encounter with actual reality. You must develop a feeling that we in our world movement are not concerned with the mere communication of theories, but rather with preparing human beings to accept facts. We are also concerned that human beings receive what is waiting in the spiritual world and what they have the power to receive, provided they prepare themselves for this task in the right way.

• 27. The Vedas are the oldest scriptures of Hinduism. The Veda is the literature of the Aryans who invaded NW India about 1500 B.C. and pertains to the fire sacrifice central to their religious beliefs.
• 28. The Upanishads constitute the last section of the Hindu Veda and are said to have been composed around 900 B.C. As the wellspring of Hindu speculative and religious thought, they became the basis for the later schools of Vedanta. “Vedanta” literally means “The end of the Veda” and refers to how the Upanishads are to be taught and interpreted.
• 29. John Scotus Erigena (c. 810–c. 877) was an Irish scholastic philosopher.

A lecture published in The Golden Blade, 1990. Also known as: The Influence of the Planets on Man, The Ego and the Sun, or Atomism. It is the thirteenth of seventeen lectures in the volume Perspectives on Humanity's Development.

The civilisation of the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch—the period of the development of the Mind Soul in humanity—was directed from the Greek Mysteries. In other words: the indications upon which the culture of the human mind was based issued from the Mystery-Sanctuaries which existed here and there in Asia Minor and Southern Europe. Now the secret of man's connection with the Sun was an essential part of these Mystery-teachings. From the book Theosophy we know that the Ego lights up within the Intellectual or Mind Soul and enters into possession of its full, inner force during the age of Consciousness, or Spiritual Soul.

Now because the Ego of man was destined from a certain point of view to be awakened during the age of the culture of the mind or intellect, it was quite natural that the Mysteries of that age should have been concerned with the secrets of the Sun and their connection with the human Ego. In the book Riddles of Philosophy it is said that the Greek's life of thought consisted in an actual perceiving of the outer world. The Greek's thought was at the same time a perception, just as we today have a perception of colours or sounds. The thoughts and conceptions of the Greek were not brought into being merely by inner activity of the soul, but they were born as it were from the objects themselves. In this respect Goethe's thinking undoubtedly possessed qualities in common with Greek thought. This is quite clear from his famous conversation with Schiller. Schiller stated that Goethe's conceptions were not perceptions, but ideas, and to this Goethe retorted that he actually saw his ideas before him, that he perceived them objectively.

The life of thought in Greece was associated with a very definite inner experience which arose when men looked at the world around them. They regarded the substance of the ideas which thus lit up before them as being the creation of the Sun. With the rising Sun they beheld the appearance in space of the life of ideas, and this life of ideas passed away again with the setting Sun. Men have now quite lost the faculty of perceiving and experiencing spirituality in the world around them. When the Sun rises they see only the phenomena of light and colour which there appear. And it is the same when the Sun sets in the red glow of evening. The Greeks felt that the world of ideas came to them at sunrise and passed away from them at sunset. They felt that in the darkness of the night they were bereft of the world of ideas. And when they looked at the sky, which seems to us to be blue, but for the colour of which the Greeks used a word which simply meant “darkness”, they felt that their world of ideas came to an end at the boundaries of visible space. Beyond this world of space the Greek divined the existence of other worlds—the worlds of the thoughts of the Gods, which he connected with light. These worlds seemed to him to be concentrated in the living Sun, and to withdraw during the night into the spaces of the dark firmament. Without some insight into this entirely different world of perception and experience, we cannot understand the further evolution of man's life of soul. This faculty of inwardly living perception functioned for a certain period of time, but then the most advanced representatives of the human race, those who still received their training in the Greek Mysteries, began to feel that their power to perceive the spiritual radiations from the living Sun in cosmic space was waning, and they saw salvation in the Mystery of Golgotha, inasmuch as the impulse coming from the Mystery of Golgotha made it possible for them to rekindle the light within their own being. And they tried now to experience the light by entering in spirit into the events connected with the Mystery of Golgotha.

Now the intellect alone can give us no real knowledge of what has really come to pass in the life of humanity through the ages. A great and far-reaching metamorphosis took place in man's life of soul and must never be forgotten when we are studying the course of evolution. We who have been living in the era of the development of the Consciousness Soul since the beginning of the fifteenth century have in our inner, intellectual activity, only a shadowy reflection of the spirituality which pervaded the life of the mind in the fourth Post-Atlantean period of civilisation. And the task before us is to awaken a faculty of the soul which will quicken in this shadowy intellect of ours a living understanding of the universe. The shadow-intellect that is characteristic of all modern culture has fettered man to the Earth. He has eyes only for earthly things, particularly when he allows himself to be influenced by the claims of modern science. In our age it never occurs to man that his being belongs, not to the Earth alone, but to the Cosmos beyond the Earth. Knowledge of our connection with the Cosmos beyond the Earth—that is what we need above all to make our own.

We take earthly life today as the basis of our ideas and concepts and build up a conception of the Universe in line with the conditions of this earthly life. But the picture of the Universe thus arising has been evolved by simply transferring earthly conditions to the world beyond the Earth. By means of spectro-analysis and other methods—admirable as they are in their way—a conception of the Sun has grown up which is really modelled wholly upon earthly conditions. Everyone is familiar with the appearance of luminous, incandescent gas, and this picture is then transferred to the Sun in the heavens. But we must learn to think of the Sun in the light of Spiritual Science. The Sun which the physicist believes to be a luminous body of gas out in cosmic space is spiritual through and through. The Sun receives the cosmic light and radiates it to the Earth, but the Sun is not physical at all. It is spiritual in its whole nature and being. The Greek was right when he felt that the Sun was connected with the development of his Ego, for the development of the Ego is associated with the intelligence and the faculty of forming ideas. The Greek conceived the rays of the Sun to be the power which kindled and quickened his Ego. His was still aware of the spirituality of the Cosmos, and to him the Sun was a living being, related to the human Ego in an absolutely concrete way. When a man says ‘ I ’ to himself, he experiences a force that is working within him, and the Greek, as he felt the working of this inner force, related it to the Sun. The Greek said to himself: Sun and Ego are the outer and inner aspects of one and the same being. The Sun out there in space is the Cosmic Ego. What lives within me is the human Ego.

As a matter of fact, this experience still comes to those who have a deeper feeling for Nature. The experience is not nearly as vivid as it was in the days of Greece, but for all that it is still possible to become aware of the spiritual forces indwelling the rays of the Sun in springtime. There are people here and there who feel that the Ego is imbued with a new vigour when the rays of the Sun begin to shine down upon the Earth with greater strength. But this is a last faint echo, an outward shell of an experience that is dying out altogether in the abstract, shadowy intellectualism prevalent in every branch of civilised life today. The task before us is to begin once again to realise and understand the connection of the being of man with super-earthly existence.

If we study and compare many things that are to be found in anthroposophical literature, we shall be able to understand the way in which the Sun is related to the Ego, and we shall also realise that the forces which stream down to the Earth from the Sun and from the Moon are entirely different in character and function. In a certain respect, Sun and Moon stand in polar antithesis. The forces streaming from the Sun enable the human being to become the bearer of an Ego. We owe to the rays of the Sun the power which moulds the human form into an image of the Ego. The forces which determine the human form from outside, even during the period of embryonic life, are the active forces of the Sun. While the embryo is developing in the mother's body, a great deal more is happening than modern science dreams of. Modern science is of the opinion that the forces all originate from the fertilised germ, but the truth is that the human embryo merely rests there in the body of the mother and is given form by the Sun forces. These Sun forces are, of course, associated with the Moon forces which are also working but in a different way. The Moon forces work above all in the inner, metabolic processes. We may therefore say: the Sun forces give form to the human being from outside. The Moon forces radiate outwards from within the metabolic process; they are centrifugal forces. This does not contradict the fact that these Moon forces are working, for instance, in the shaping and moulding of the human countenance. The Moon forces stream out from a centre in the metabolic system and work as it were by attraction upon the forming of the human face, differentiating the features, but there is an interplay between these Moon forces and the Sun forces. The organism that is connected with procreation is subject to the Sun forces. The whole being of man is involved in this way in the interplay between the forces of the Sun and the forces of the Moon.

A distinction must be made, however, between the Moon forces that work in the inner processes of metabolism in man, and the forces that originate in the metabolic processes itself. The Moon forces stream into the metabolic process, but this metabolic process has forces of its own as well. And these are earthly forces. The substances and forces in the vegetable and other foodstuffs work in the human being by virtue of their own inherent nature. They work here as Earth forces. Metabolism is primarily an outcome of the working of Earth forces. If the substances of the foodstuffs were merely to unfold their own forces within the human organism, there would be nothing but a chaotic play of forces in man. The fact that these forces work without intermission to renew and upbuild the being of man, is due not to the Earth at all, but to the Moon. The human being is shaped from within outwards by the Moon, and from without inwards by the Sun. Because the rays of the Sun are received through the eye into the head-organisation. The Sun forces work within the organism as well, but for all that they are still working from outside.

And so on the one hand the development and evolution of the Ego of man is dependent upon the forces of the Sun. Without the Sun, man could not be an Ego being living on the Earth; on the other hand there could be no such thing as propagation, there could be no human race without the Moon. It is the Sun which places man as an individual on the Earth, and it is the Moon that charms down the human race to Earth—the human race conceived here as one whole. The human race as the physical product of the generations is a product of the Moon forces which have worked in the generative process. As an individuality, however, man is the product of the Sun forces.

If, therefore, we want to understand the human being and the human race as a whole, we cannot do so by studying merely those conditions which obtain on the Earth alone. The efforts of geologists to understand the being of man by investigating the nature of the Earth are all in vain. Man is not primarily a creation of the Earth. He receives his shape and form from the Cosmos; he is an offspring of the world of the stars, above all of Sun and Moon. From the Earth are derived only those forces which are contained in the substances of the Earth. These forces work outside the human being and also within him when they are introduced into his organism either through eating or drinking. But within the organism they are received into the realm of forces of a super-earthly nature.

The processes that take place within the human being are by no means an affair of the Earth alone. They are through and through an affair of the world of stars. This is the kind of knowledge that we must struggle to reach once more.

Think of the human being as he stands there before us in his physical body. This physical body takes in the foodstuffs from the outer world and the forces of the foodstuffs continue to work within the body. But the physical body is permeated by the astral body and in the astral body the Moon forces are actively at work. The Sun forces too play into the astral body. The etheric body is there in the middle, between physical and astral body.

When we study the forces of foodstuffs, we find that, to begin with, they are active in the physical body and are then taken hold of by the astral body in which the influence of Sun and Moon are working. But between the physical body and astral body the etheric body is fulfilling its functions. The forces in the etheric body come, not from the Earth but from all directions of cosmic space. The products of the Earth, the substances which exist in the solid liquid or aeriform condition, are taken in by the human being and worked upon by the forces of Sun and Moon. But forces streaming in from all directions of cosmic space are also working in the human organism. The forces contained in the foodstuffs themselves come from the Earth, but from cosmic space the etheric forces stream in. These etheric forces also take hold of the foodstuffs and work upon them in such a way that they become inwardly responsive to light and also to warmth. We say, therefore: the human being is part of the Earth because he has a physical body. His etheric body relates him to the whole environment of the Earth. Through his astral body he is involved in the weaving forces of Sun and Moon.

Now these influences of the Sun and Moon in the astral body are modified and differentiated in a high degree as they work upon the ‘upper’ man. By ‘upper’ man I mean, in this case, the part of the organism that is encircled and permeated by the bloodstream which passed upwards from the heart in the direction of the head. The ‘lower’ man, then, comprises the other part of the organism—that part which lies below the heart.

Thus we have the upper part of man, including the head and everything that is organically connected with the head. The formation of this part of the organism is dependent, mainly, upon the Sun's influences. Its most important period of development is during embryonic life. The Sun's influences work upon the embryo in a very special way, but these influences continue to be active when the human being is born and is living in the physical world between birth and death. The astral influences working upon that part of the human organism which lies above the heart—speaking very roughly, for it would be necessary to go into more precise detail if we were describing the blood circulation—these astral influences are then modified by the influences of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars.

The planet Saturn circles round the Sun and sends forces to the Earth. These forces of Saturn work in the whole astral body of man, but above all in the part of the astral body which corresponds to the ‘upper’ man. They stream into the astral body, pervade it, and are the essential factor in bringing about a proper connection between the astral body and the physical body. When, for instance, a man cannot sleep properly, that is to say, when his astral body will not leave or come down again properly into his etheric and physical bodies or in some other way is not rightly connected with the physical body—this is due to an irregularity in the working of the Saturn forces. In other words, Saturn is the heavenly body which, by way of the human head, promotes and is responsible for setting up the proper relation of man's astral body to his etheric body and his physical body. And it is the Saturn forces too which mediate the connection of the astral body to the Ego, because of Saturn's relation to the Sun. Saturn's relation to the Sun is expressed in space and time inasmuch as Saturn accomplishes its orbit around the Sun in a period of thirty years.

In the human being, the relationship of Saturn to the Sun is expressed in the connection of the Ego with the astral body and in the way in which the astral body is membered into the whole human organism. The connection of Saturn with the upper part of the astral body was regarded as a factor of great importance in ancient times. In the Egypto-Chaldean period, three or four thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Teachers and Sages of the Mysteries judged a human being according to his relation to Saturn—which was revealed by the date and time of his birth. For these Sages knew quite well that the position of Saturn in the heavens at the time of man's birth enabled his astral body either to function regularly or irregularly in his physical body. Knowledge of these influences played a very important part in olden days. But the onward progress of evolution is denoted precisely by the fact that in our age, which, as you know, began in the fifteenth century, we have to become free of these forces and influences.

Please do not misunderstand me This does not mean that Saturn is not working in us nowadays. Naturally the Saturn forces work in us, just as they worked in the Ancients, but we must now learn to make ourselves free and independent of them. And do you know how we can make ourselves free? Nothing is worse than to give oneself over to the shadowy intellectualism of our age. If we do that, the Saturn forces run riot within us and give rise to the so-called nervous troubles that are so very prevalent in our time. When a man suffers from ‘nerves’ as we say, it is because his astral body is not properly connected with his physical organisation. This lies at the basis of the morbid nervous symptoms which are so common nowadays. Our striving should be to unfold real vision, to attain Imagination. If man can achieve nothing better than the forming of abstract concepts and ideas, nervous symptoms are bound to increase in severity, because this intellectual activity tends to alienate him from the influences of Saturn, which are still at work within his being. His astral body will be torn away from his nerves, and he will be driven more and more into a state of nervous tension and excitability. The nervous complaints of our age must be recognised in their cosmic aspect, for they are caused by an irregular working of the Saturn forces.

Just as Saturn works chiefly in the upper part of the astral body and in the whole astral body inasmuch as the astral body is connected with the organism as a whole through the nervous system, so is Jupiter active in thinking.

When a man thinks, one part of his astral body is active. It is pre-eminently the Jupiter forces in the astral body which strengthen the thinking faculty, and Jupiter is responsible for permeating the human brain with astral forces.

Now the influences of Saturn continue throughout the whole of man's life. The beginning of a human life may really be said to consist of the first three periods of ten years. This is the period of growth, for as a matter of fact the activity of the growth forces does not wholly cease until after the thirtieth year. And our whole life and our health depend on how our astral body has developed during the thirty years. Saturn needs thirty years to complete its orbit around the Sun and this has its exact parallel in the life of man.

The development of the faculty of thinking takes place essentially during the first twelve years of life. Again we find the parallelism in the orbit of the planet Jupiter.

Just as Jupiter has to do with thinking, so has Mars to do with speech.

Mars works upon a still smaller part of the astral body than that with which Jupiter is concerned in connection with the thinking of man. And the development of the forces which finally express themselves in speech, is dependent upon the working of Mars within our being. Man learns to utter the first sounds of speech in a period which corresponds approximately to half the time required by Mars to complete its orbit around the Sun.

We see, then, that the development of faculties situated primarily in the region of the human head is connected with the Saturn forces, the Jupiter forces, and the Mars forces. The forces of the three outer planets, therefore, work on within the astral body through the life of man. The Sun is connected more directly with the Ego, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars are concerned respectively with the behaviour and functioning of the astral body in the human organism, with the faculty of thinking and with the faculty of speaking.

The Sun is connected with the Ego. And then we come to the inner planets, as they are sometimes called, the planets which are nearer the Earth and lie between the Earth and the Sun, whereas Saturn, Jupiter and Mars lie on the other side of the Sun. The forces of these inner planets are likewise connected with the being of man. We will take Mercury to begin with.

Like the Moon, the centre, from which the Mercury forces work, lies in the inner being of man, and it is only in connection with the forming of the human countenance that Mercury works from outside. The Mercury forces work in the part of the human organism that lies below the region of the heart. From there these Mercury forces stream into the human organism. The working of the astral body in the breathing and circulatory functions of the human organism is regulated by Mercury. Mercury acts as the intermediary between the astral body and the rhythmic processes in the being of man. The Mercury forces act as the intermediary between the astral body and the rhythmic functions in the human organism. Because this is so, the Mercury forces intervene, as do the Moon forces, in the metabolic processes as a whole, but only in so far as the metabolic process is subject to rhythm and reacts in turn upon the rhythmic functions.

We come next to Venus. Venus works pre-eminently in the etheric body of man. The cosmic forces chiefly active in the etheric body, therefore, are those of Venus.

Then we come again to the Moon. The Moon forces in the human organism work in polar antithesis to the Sun forces. From within outwards the Moon forces lead substance over into the realm of the living and are therefore connected with procreation. The Moon stimulates not only the inner, reproductive processes of the organism, but the procreative process as well. Thus we have:

You see now in what way processes in the human organism are dependent upon the Cosmos. On the one side man is bound up with the earthly forces through his physical body. And on the other side he is bound up with his whole cosmic environment through the etheric body. The cosmic forces, however, work in different ways in his being as we have heard. This differentiation originates in the astral body in which the forces of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Moon are contained. By way of the Ego, the Sun works in man. Suppose that as the result of his earlier incarnations a man has within his being forces which predestine him to be a thinker in the earthly life upon which he is entering. He prepares for his descent to the Earth and—since Jupiter takes a definite time to complete his orbit—he will choose a moment for his birth when the rays of Jupiter pour directly down upon him.

In this way the heavenly constellations provide conditions into which a human being may be born—conditions which are determined by his previous earthly lives.

In the age of the Consciousness Soul, of course, it is the task of man gradually to make himself free of these conditions. But he must free himself from them in the right way.

In speaking of the Saturn influences, I said that it is a question of trying to replace shadowy intellectualism by real Imagination. In the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds indications are given which, if they are followed, can make us independent of the cosmic forces, although none the less these cosmic forces continue to work in our being.

Man is born on Earth into conditions determined by a constellation in the heavens, but he must equip himself with forces which make him independent of this constellation. It is to this kind of knowledge—a knowledge of man's connection with the Cosmos beyond the Earth—that our civilisation must attain. Man must learn to realise that the forces of heredity described by modern science are not the only forces at work in his organism. To imagine such a thing, my dear friends, is the purest nonsense. It is pure nonsense to think that the maternal organism contains those forces which are then transmitted by heredity and so build up a heart, a liver and the other organs. There would be no heart in the human organism if the Sun did not build it into the organism of man, neither would there be a liver if Venus did not place it into the organism. And so it is with each single organ. Their presence in the human organism is due to the working of cosmic forces.

These are the things that humanity must once again learn to understand. Man must realise that the mysteries of his being cannot be explained by a science which deals merely with earthly phenomena. Around man live other creatures—and they too are not merely creatures of the Earth. It appears, to begin with, as if the minerals were entirely earthly in their nature. But in the minerals, too, changes have taken place which were due to the forces working in the cosmic environment of the Earth. The crystallised forms of the metals are all due to the play of forces from beyond the Earth. The metals were given shape and form at a time when the Earth's forces were not yet working in their full strength, but when cosmic forces were working in the Earth. The healing forces contained in the minerals, above all in the metals, are connected with the way in which these metals were formed within the Earth by the working of cosmic forces.

In the first epoch of Post-Atlantean times, when the ancient Indian civilisation was at its prime, man felt and knew himself to be a citizen of the whole wide universe. Although he had not yet developed the forces which modern humanity is so proud to possess, he was in the true sense of the word, MAN. By the time of the Chaldean epoch, however, man's attention had already begun to be diverted from the Sun. He had become a kind of amphibium—a creature who is thankful when the rays of the Sun pour down upon it, and when it need not always be confined to its dark burrows in the pound. But in our time one cannot say that man even resembles a creature like the mole, for he is really much more like an earthworm who has eyes at most for what has first been sent out into space from the Earth and comes back again as rain. This is really all that men see in the way of forces from beyond the Earth. But this the earthworms also see! In his materialism today man has become an earthworm. He must rise above this earth state, but he can only do so by realising and knowing his connection with the Cosmos beyond the Earth.

Our task therefore, is to raise ourselves above the earthworm state into which our civilisation has fallen, and bring a new spiritual life into being.

We should never confuse things with words, especially with slogans. If we understand the enrichment of one's own self as egoism, we would have to place egoity in a category to which it belongs. [If we strive for the enrichment of our own self, we must first deal with human nature and here I come first to the ego, which can assert itself in various ways in the three human bodies.] I have often spoken to you about our four bodies. The ego within is just another name for the self. It permeates the three bodies with its substantiality, asserting itself in them with varying degrees of force.

With regard to the physical body, man does not have it at his discretion to rein this ego, which asserts itself more firmly within him than it should. It does not work. Why does it do that? Because at some point in his development, man has experienced an influence in the Lemurian period, the Luciferic influence. Man is permeated by the Luciferic entities. This asserts itself in all three realms of the body. [Later, man will succeed in acting on all three bodies; now he only succeeds in acting on his astral body, on his desires and passions.] You know that man is increasingly able to rework the bodies. Today he has this in his hands with the astral body. It is more difficult with the etheric body. And with the physical body [he has no influence at all], but that lies in the distant future. It will only become possible through the occult development of the breathing process, [in which he develops “Atma” within himself, which happens through a special breathing]. The part of the etheric body that we are reworking [develops “Budhi” within itself, and now that it can act on its astral body, it develops “Manas”. These influences are transformations of the different bodies. The influence that took place at that time through satanic entities is designated as “serpent,” and through this influence on man, the I of man was brought to stronger activity. If today the I asserts itself more strongly in the physical body than it would be without the satanic influence in the Lemurian time – serpent in Paradise – then man can do nothing. Lucifer brings the I to a more intense effect in the physical body. The first thing that came about as a result is death. Death is the direct consequence of a strengthened I. [And death will no longer come when the influence of the luciferic beings is overcome.]

What would have happened without Lucifer? We only need to describe what man would be like. He would grow old, but would begin to soften his muscles and bones through the powers of the soul, detach parts, gradually sweat out material parts. He would thus be able to attract other matter and rebuild the body. There would be a transformation that would take place consciously, a beneficial process. [He is not yet able to do that, and that is why death occurs, to dissolve the matter.] Death has occurred due to the densification of the bone system. [There would be no illness if the power of the ego were not working so strongly.] This inability to dissolve one's own matter, that is death. When the earth will have reached the end of its development, it will undergo a metamorphosis. It is different now because of the solidification by Lucifer. Through his influence, illness comes. Man has no influence on this at the moment. In the processes that should take place like dissolution and composition, and now do not take place that way, the cause of the illnesses predominates. The daytime thinking is a continuous dissolution of substances in the brain. [During the night, the dissolved parts are reassembled by the spiritual world.] The night is there to send forces from the spiritual world. [Somehow there must be balance in the breakdown and construction.] In the moment when not so much is built in at night as is dissolved during the day, the disease is there. The disease can only occur because there is an ego in the organism that is exerting itself too strongly.

Now, in the etheric body, how is the activity [through a too strongly acting ego]? It asserts itself through the possibility of error on the one hand and of lies on the other. Man is subject to error because the ego works too much in the etheric body, not in harmony with the outside world. Now, and the lie? When we lie, this thought form is formed as a real fact, and in the spiritual world there arises what we call an explosion in the physical world. If the I did not merge in the etheric body, the person would know that what is not in accordance with the truth, with reality, causes destruction, an explosion. We have to take this into our karma, destroying our life's journey until we have balanced it again. A liar destroys as much in his karma as bomb explosions in the physical world. Lies and errors are caused by the ego asserting itself too strongly in the etheric body.

The astral body is filled with what is called selfishness and egoism because the I goes beyond the measure of assertion. We must be clear about this when we study selfishness in the astral body. The astral body consists of a sentient body and a sentient soul. We must distinguish this exactly. The sentient body is of an astral nature, but built up from the outside during the lunar period. Now, in the sentient body, the substance of the sentient soul is secreted at a subconscious level. What the sentient body is, that is quite all right with humans. Therefore, they have the ability to properly perceive their environment. Schopenhauer [only retained the idea]: the world as an idea. [He said:] Without the eye there is no light. But it is also true that without light there is no eye. This is because physical light is completely flooded with astral light, and that is what the eye has developed [from the human being]. So it is the astral that brings out and then chisels out the astral in the human being.

[First, the astral senses are developed through the influx of astral substance.] This is how we come into harmony with the outside world. If we only had the sentient body, we would be soulless creatures, [we would see with the eye] but without joy; [the outside world would only be reflected in us]. But now we have the sentient soul in addition. In the sentient body, the 'I' will be able to be a little stronger than the correct measure would have been without the influence of Lucifer. [The influence of the Luciferic entities asserts itself in the sentient soul; it does not reach the sentient body.] This has an effect in the sentient soul. Then the discord arises. That is egoism. When the I constricts the forces of the sentient soul too strongly, then egoism arises. The sentient body also takes in beautiful impressions, but the sentient soul cannot rejoice in them. The world gives the colors. The sentient soul should pour itself into what the sentient body gives. He who finds the possibility of going out of himself so far as to embrace the world strengthens his ego. This egoism is healthy because it is rich in content. All beings should do this.

When the rose adorns itself, it also adorns the garden.

Schiller says:

Are you seeking the highest, the greatest? The plant can teach you. What it is without will, be you the willing one – that's it!

Angelus Silesius:

The rose has no why,
it blossoms because it blossoms;
it pays no attention to itself,
does not ask if it is seen.

The person who develops their own abilities as much as possible will serve their fellow human beings the most. Not leaving any of our inner powers undeveloped leads us to salvation. [But in the pursuit of developing our powers as much as possible,] there is a danger of falling into destructive selfishness, but without that, human beings could not develop any freedom. And so, for some, selfishness can lead to good fortune, while for others it can lead to disaster. Plants are prevented from growing beyond measure. When a blossom is at its most beautiful, it has brought forth its own essence. At the moment when there is a danger of its ego being emphasized, of its selfhood developing, the pollen arrives and the blossom must merge with the germ and die. This law also applies to a certain extent to human beings. When they create harmony between the sentient soul and the sentient body, they also experience that the moment they harden and do not pour themselves out into the world, they wither away. There are people who create harmony between what flows into the soul and what it experiences. They are then harmonious. This must be the aim of education. But people in whom the I is too active in the sentient soul, without balance in the outer life, where the inflow and outflow are not in harmony, these people become desolate. They cannot feel anything, not even in front of a work of art. This is the secret of what happens in egoism. People must find a way to become inflamed by the impressions of nature, [to learn to feel something when confronted with works of art]. The physician should put himself in the place of what the soul experiences; [an inner feeling must penetrate even into external movements, for example, when doing gymnastics]. He must be able to take joy in his surroundings; that is a spiritual person.

In other areas, we must establish this harmony, for example, in the knowledge of ourselves. We must find harmony in our knowledge of ourselves. “Know thyself” is often misunderstood. To reconcile our true self with knowledge of the world is self-knowledge, and it is part of the education of the human being to achieve that self-knowledge, which is selfless; to achieve justified selflessness so that the ego can pour itself out into the world again. Just don't brood! That hardens us. Self-knowledge is something that leads us to flourish. Otherwise we wither away as misfits, as pale envious people. If we seek the God only in us, we place ourselves in discord with the world. If we seek him in world knowledge, [we work outwardly], then there is a restorative equilibrium in our will impulses. This is an important law in relation to what we want. For nothing works as long as it remains within us, but only when it emerges from us. Then it works for our benefit when it [from outside] meets us in the mirror. These are the best conceivable deeds: to put out into the world what has been done. They are the invigorating ones. [A person can enrich his ego as long as the advancement of his own ego invigorates him.] The best deeds of the egoist, done for his own sake, do not further him. The moment egoism goes beyond a certain degree, it stifles the soul. Many are unsatisfied and desolate; many egoists live in withering. Egoism, overshooting its goal, turns against the egoist himself. When man crosses the boundary in the development of his ego, he becomes desolate. The egoist lives in withering. This would be more apparent if man did not live in an external society. We are interrelated, we human beings, and so the egoist does not bear the effects of his egoism alone; someone else must bear them too. For the egoist himself, this only expresses itself in karma.

“Wilhelm Meister” deals with the problem of the egoist. What does Wilhelm Meister want? Nothing other than to make his individuality as rich and perfect as possible. That is why he leaves his profession for the profession in which he expects the greatest freedom, so that everything can have an effect on him from the outside. Goethe shows where Wilhelm Meister's error has led him. He knew that there is a spiritual law. Goethe himself called humanity the great individual and so on. He said: Wilhelm Meister is a pretty poor fellow. But there is a guiding force in man that always leads him to do the right thing. That is the great law of karma, which does not allow us to do foolish things without making us do sensible things in the next life. It has been severely criticized that Goethe allows the secret guidance to be noticed. No one can see more in another person than he or she is. Thus, modern biographers depict Goethe as a philistine – [Engel is a grotesque, outrageous interpreter of Goethe]. In 1780, Goethe became a member of the Masonic Lodge “Duchess Amalie” – a symbol of spiritual leadership.

The best explanation of “Hamlet” is in “Wilhelm Meister”. In the “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul”, Susanne von Klettenberg reveals herself – almost word for word – as a reflection of her development. During her illness Makarie brooded as much as possible within herself, but her inner nature sought the outer world again within her own inner being, found contact with divine beings in her own nature, and enjoyed this pre-mystical life. She attained a high level. Her healthy nature pushed beyond this and came to the question [through an important event]: Is God only within? Then her gaze turned to Palestine, to Christianity. Christ became man, went through everything to the point of death. When she thoroughly understood this, she said: 'In every flower, the deity reveals itself from within to the world.' Now she lives with the event of Golgotha. Susanne von Klettenberg gave Goethe a significant push for his inner development. He never stopped.

The “apprenticeship years” were completed under Schiller's criticism. The “travel years” were created under peculiar circumstances. It turned out that the typesetter printed faster than Goethe could write; and in the beginning, he helped out with things he had written earlier: St. Joseph, Man of 50, Melusine and others. In the end, he could not keep up, so he gave it to Eckermann to revise. This is how the “Wanderjahre” came about. But it should be considered that everything Goethe wrote is full of the highest wisdom [and it is a concise excerpt of his own development]. Each one signifies a stage in his own development, a stage in Goethe's development. Thus life flows like a composition, if only it is taken up in the right way and can have an effect on individuality. Much has emerged from Goethe's development. Take the “Pedagogical Province”: the boys have three gestures. [Signs of] insight into the effect of the symbols. [There are three religious levels.] The best of the three religious categories: [a gesture upwards, downwards, towards one's own kind symbolizes real reverence for the highest, for those below us, and for our own kind.] Upwards, Goethe calls the first direction of reverence, the second to one's own kind, then reverence downwards. What is below us has also come from God. Then we have reverence for religion because the divine has descended. As the student immerses himself in what the gesture shows, the gesture should draw itself into his soul. The boys are dressed differently. Why? To develop their individuality, they should choose the colors themselves.

The conclusion shows how the self expands to embrace the whole world in Makarie, who looks inwardly at the laws of the stars – she has an astronomer at her side – and takes her measurements from the solar system. Selfless knowledge that is absorbed into the world – where Goethe subtly describes the entire intuitive life of such clairvoyant beings. At the end of “Wilhelm Meister”, the occult view of the world is described in Makarie, because Goethe wants to describe the unfolding of the self.

Thus, in 'Wilhelm Meister', Goethe shows the self rising from stage to stage, becoming richer and richer as the self grows into the world problem. In order for the human being not to lead to death, the shell must tear. The work is true and genuine.

A common thread in all religions of the past is the idea that if a person wants to live a harmonious life, they must first fight a certain battle within themselves. If they do not want to do this, that is, fight this inner battle, then this is reflected as disharmony and conflict in the outer world. [This idea is based on a lower level of knowledge. The power of knowledge tells us:] If the individual human ego is to be able to develop, man must become master over desires and passions in his astral body. The battle that must arise between the ego and the lower nature must be fought and won within, otherwise man will come into conflict with the outer world. This is symbolically depicted by the ancient Hebrews in the story of Cain's fratricide. Behold, what man attains when he does not slay the evil passions, the brother in his soul, with his good member. This fight - what is described to us in Cain and Abel - must take place in the soul, otherwise it will express itself outwardly. That was the one admonition. The other related to the deeper knowledge, which we call occult clairvoyance. ]

For in the religious records, deep symbols often hide in the events described. Everything that emerges on the physical plane has always been a reality first on the astral plane. The same thoughts that we find in the story of Cain we find in another people, in a different form, based on the deeper knowledge that clairvoyance gave to other peoples of the Orient. In order for a person to be able to work as an initiate in a particular direction in the world, they must first come into harmony through initiation. And this brings us to a very important chapter in the initiation myths of the ancient religions.

We know that the human being consists of four bodies, the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego, which have gradually developed in the course of evolution. In the Lemurian period, when only the physical and etheric bodies had developed, the potential for the ego body already existed, although this was only to emerge in humans after the end of the Atlantean period. At that time, a close connection arose between the ego and the physical body on the one hand, and between the astral body and the etheric body on the other.

The physical body has arisen out of the spirit of the cosmos; just as water is condensed into ice, so the physical body is spirit compressed. If we want to find the origin of man and understand the physical body, we must seek the spirit in the cosmos.

The physical body is a crystallization of the father principle of the cosmos. Based on this fact, a person inherits everything related to the physical body from the father, from the paternal grandparents.

The ego is closely connected to the physical body, which is why the human being inherits its entire structure from the father. The ego is dependent on certain properties of the physical body and its effectiveness is inhibited when the physical abilities are weak. Only through the physical body can the ego express itself here [on earth].

The etheric body, in turn, has crystallized out of the mother principle of the cosmos; the qualities associated with it are therefore inherited from the mother's side, from the grandparents on the mother's side. The same is true for astral abilities, which are also inherited from the mother's side due to their close connection with the etheric body.

[This is the secret of inheritance: the formative, shaping comes from the maternal, because the etheric crystallizes out of the mother principle of the cosmos. Because the I is more closely connected with the physical, the I-structure of the human being inherits from the father line; the astral, on the other hand, with the etheric, more from the mother principle. The self comes from previous incarnations, but it relies on the particular characteristics of the physical body to express itself. If our physical body is weak, for example, the self will show itself to be less courageous.

People who had insight into the laws of the spiritual world emphasized this, even if they did not express it in the same way. Goethe, for example, says: “From my father I have the stature, the serious way of life, from my mother the cheerful nature, the desire to tell stories.” If we apply this rule correctly, we will understand much of what we encounter in the relationship between children and parents. Artists and poets, whose qualities have their roots in the astral, usually inherit their talent from their mother's side.

When a person wants to work in the world as an initiate, a new behavior arises in them, a change in the relationship between the bodies. Above all, the physical body must lose its power over the person. Whether the initiate wants to develop into a seer, a magician or something else, he must first of all fight with all his might against the physical body within him, kill the physical body within him. In the old world view, this is symbolically expressed with the words: Kill the father principle in you - that is, the physical body - and unite with the mother principle. Only when we have overcome the physical can we unite with the etheric principle, that is, with the mother principle. When we have conquered the physical life in us, we begin to live with the organs of the etheric body, we begin to see and hear with spiritual eyes and ears. The person who kills the father principle unites with the mother principle.

At the time of initiation, there was a terrible danger in this fact, especially in the times when people did not take the old strict rules so literally. The clairvoyant person in prehistoric times had to know what he was dealing with. Because when an immature person, whose ego was not developed or whose astral body was not pure, had overcome the physical and united with the mother principle, his fate in the world became truly tragic. The disharmony that he should have fought and overcome within himself now manifests itself in the outer world, where his thoughts become real images.

In Oedipus, we have an example of a person who became astral clairvoyant by means that were not entirely pure. His astral vision was darkened, so that he could not see and could not penetrate to the spiritual. Oedipus did not understand the oracle's words that he should become an initiate, but that he should first kill his father and marry his mother, because he was not pure enough within, he did not understand what was meant by an initiate. In his drama, the poet presented the experiences within as events in the physical world.

The consequences of a degenerated, imperfect initiation are reflected in the drama of Oedipus as well as in the fratricide of Cain. Oedipus robs himself of his sight - a symbol that the old initiation is coming to an end. The same idea is expressed symbolically in the story of the “born blind”. Through the old initiation, people had become blind to the outer world; with the old art of clairvoyance, people could no longer rise to the spiritual world. Instead of clarity and development, the old path now only led to darkness and confusion. In Oedipus, who deprived himself of his sight, we see how the old, degenerated destiny of initiation is fulfilled.

With Jesus, a new light was to rise over humanity, and initiation was to take on a new form. People had become blind to the physical world and the forces that underlie it. But initiation was to take on a new form, and a new light was to rise over humanity. With the ego, a new impulse was to be given, and this impulse was to open the eyes to the new light that had come into the world. In Jesus, the declining old world was to be united with the ascending new one. How the old darkness, the old spirituality, disappeared before the rising light, before Jesus, and how they accomplished their last deed in this ascending light, is not told in the Gospels, but it has always been described in the esoteric-Christian schools of initiation.

[Just as in the fratricide of Cain, the unresolved conflict between the astral body and the ego is acted out in the drama of Laius and Jokaste: the unpurified initiation.] This legend, which contains a profound truth, goes as follows: Once upon a time in Asia there was a married couple who had no children. Then the oracle announced that they would have a son, but that they would be forced to bury him, because he would kill his father and marry his mother after killing his brother. He would possess all the spirituality in the world, but be in disharmony with everything and everyone in the outer world. Naturally, the parents did not want to have a child that would bring so much misfortune upon themselves and others, but due to their own weakness, they bore him anyway. They abandoned the child on the island of Scarioth, where the queen found him and took him in because she had no children of her own. Later, however, she had a son, and the adopted child felt neglected and killed his brother. So he had to flee and was taken in by Pilate. There he came into conflict with a neighbor, an old man, killed him and married the old man's wife. Later he learned that he had killed his father and married his mother. So he fled from there too and was taken in by him who is full of mercy, by Christ Jesus. This man was Judas Iscariot.

This legend is an expression of the entire old worldview; the father principle or the conquering of the physical body and the union with the mother principle have been an inner reality in the past.

The soul had matured in the process, but as the ego developed, the clairvoyance gradually faded, and darkness and confusion in relation to the outer world took its place, and this darkness contributed to the death of the new rising light. How the old world view was able to kill the new light, and how the latter was nevertheless able to triumph in the struggle and transform outer disharmony into harmony by spiritualizing everything - all this is presented in the Gospel of John.

This Gospel is a wonderful composition even from a purely external, technical point of view. As if written by a true artist, it shows in a single continuous progression from the wedding at Cana to the resurrection of Lazarus how Jesus' soul and spiritual powers grew to the same extent that his physical body died inch by inch, and how the dying of the body, which began at baptism, was intimately connected with the so-called miracles that Jesus performed. For the conquest of the lower nature had to appear as a dying on the physical plane. This was a symbolic expression of the fact that the father principle, the physical life, had been overcome.

This is also indicated by the fact that Jesus' physical father was dead. The union with the mother principle is symbolically represented in the relationship between Jesus and his stepmother, who experienced a new birth at Jesus' baptism, in that the pure, spiritualized etheric and astral body of his own mother incorporated herself with her. From Jesus' words to her at the wedding of Cana, it is clear that he felt the bond between them: “What is going on here between you and me? How gloriously I feel the motherly forces in me, how gloriously my forces combine with yours, that is, with the forces of the All-Mother! In a purely spiritual way, the old principle of initiation asserts itself here. The physical body is dying. Through the soul bond that connects it to the Mother, it connects to the etheric forces, and so the physical body becomes a source of healing effects. That this happened at a wedding also has its great symbolic significance.

The sign that Jesus performed at Cana was related to the ancient principle of initiation, albeit in a new form. It was a direct effect from soul to soul through a power of love that was heightened to the highest degree, which was transferred from his own soul to the others and had an effect on them, so that even their sense of taste was changed and the water in their mouths tasted like wine. And this was not an illusion, but the water had the same effect on the guests as if it were wine. The materialist, who believes in nothing but matter, would demand a chemical analysis above all, but for the spiritually developed person, on the other hand, the chemical reaction is merely Maya and a consequence only of transferred spiritual power. Here the question was not one of mere suggestion, but the effect of what was drunk was in every way the same as that of wine.

But did Jesus want to encourage people through this sign to use wine as a mere stimulant? Some Bible scholars believe so and describe the transformation of water into wine as symbolic of Jesus' mission to transform the tasteless, insipid water of the Old Testament into the fresh wine of the New Testament. But if they interpret this passage, they have not understood an important word. When Jesus' mother points out to him that there is no wine, he replies, “My hour has not yet come,” that is, the hour when Christ should actually work.

Like all great leaders and role models, the Christ had to bide his time. People need a transitional period if they are to accept something new. Spiritual forces are at work in all matter, and so the wine also had to fulfill its mission.

Some nations never drink wine, while others use it as an offering in their religious services. In the ancient mysteries, wine was not used, but from a certain point in time it was used in the sacrificial offerings of the cult of Dionysus and then spread throughout the world with this cult.

In the most ancient times, the blood bond was the only thing that united people with each other, and this was much stronger than it is now. But when the ego power was to develop, a physical means was needed to love the spirits and to bring together people who were not united by blood ties. Wine was useful for this purpose, and that was its mission in the past. But on the Mayan plan there is nothing that is absolutely good, everything has only one task to fulfill, either in the physical or the psychic realm. What was once necessary for development and was a good becomes harmful when that time is over and it is no longer needed. At the time of Jesus, this mission of wine was fulfilled. The ego was developed, and through the use of wine, the old clairvoyance had gradually been made impossible. Jesus' sign at Cana symbolically expresses this truth. But this mission of wine, to bring people together and to elevate the spirits so that the physical body becomes an instrument for spiritual forces, was to be carried out thereafter by purely spiritual means. Jesus drinks water Himself and also gives water to the guests, but He gives it such power that it acts on them like wine. Thus a new form, a new power, was given to the old cult of Dionysus. The sign at Cana also points to times to come. In our days, the use of wine is harmful. If we look at the cult of Dionysus in this way, we also find the profound content of the Gospels. For the Gospels speak not only to the naive and ignorant, but also to the highly developed person.

The deeper one penetrates into them, the more one will find there, and future generations will find in them a never-ending source of knowledge and development. And the deeper people penetrate into the spiritual world, the better they will understand these documents that have come down to us from the world of angels. In the seven signs reported at the beginning of the Gospel of John, we find how the individuality of Jesus grows step by step and becomes more spiritualized. And in the later part we find a practical guide for our own development.

In the foregoing lectures we have tried to gain some idea of the most important figures in the Gospel of St. Luke. Although far-reaching conceptions of the facts underlying this Gospel have been acquired, it still remains for us to follow the further development of the central Being of our Earth—Christ Jesus Himself.

To begin with it will be necessary to recall that Christ Jesus, as He is afterwards described in the Gospel of St. Luke, was born—or rather His physical body was born—as the Nathan Jesus of the House of David. At about his twelfth year there passed into the body of this child the Ego once incarnated in the Being who had been the inaugurator of the ancient Persian civilization. Thus from the twelfth year onwards, the Ego of Zarathustra was living in the body of the Nathan Jesus, and we must now follow the development of this Being more closely, bearing in mind something for which our previous studies have prepared us.

We know that in normal cases the first and second septenaries of human life are important periods of development; a third period follows, from puberty (the fourteenth year) to the twenty-first year; another from the twenty-first to the twenty-eighth and again another from the twenty-eighth to the thirty-fifth year. These divisions of time are not, of course, to be taken so pedantically that they are thought to end exactly at the ages specified, but when the second dentition takes place an important transition in the development of the human being occurs, approximately at the close of the seventh year.

This transition does not come about suddenly, but gradually, during the period of the change of teeth. During the other periods too, the process is a gradual one. As is described in greater detail in my book >The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy, the close of the seventh year is marked by a spiritual occurrence which in some respects resembles physical birth: a kind of etheric birth then takes place. In the fourteenth year, at puberty, there is an astral birth: the astral body of the human being becomes free. If followed with close attention and with the eyes of spirit, the development of the human being shows itself to be a very complicated process. Ordinary observation fails to notice many important differences in human life—differences which also become evident in more advanced years. It is usually thought that from a certain point of time onwards, few if any changes take place in the human being, but this idea arises from very rough and ready observation. The truth is that closer scrutiny can perceive certain differences taking place even in the later years of human life.

When the physical environment of the mother's body is abandoned at birth, the part of the human being then born is really his physical body only; what comes to the fore during the first seven years is the physical body. In various lectures on the education of children the great importance of this knowledge for the teacher has been emphasized. Then, when the etheric sheath has been discarded, the etheric body is set free. Again, in the fourteenth year, when the astral sheath is discarded, the astral body is set free. Strictly speaking, however, the constitution of the human being cannot be fully understood unless the organization indicated in my book Theosophy is taken as a basis. There you will find that a further distinction is made in the soul-elements of human nature. Immediately connected with the life-body (etheric body) is what is called the sentient (astral) body which does not become completely free as regards the outer world until about the twenty-first year. Then what is called the sentient soul becomes gradually free. At the twenty-eighth year the intellectual or mind-soul (Gemütseele) becomes free, and later the spiritual soul (or consciousness-soul). This applies, to the human being of to-day. Observation of human life guided by spiritual science clearly reveals these stages of development. The great leaders and leading figures of humanity have also known why the thirty-fifth year is so important. Dante was aware why he made particular mention of his thirty-fifth year as the time when he had the visions set down in his great poem. At the very beginning of the Divine Comedy there is an indication to this effect. At the age of thirty-five man's being has progressed to the point where the can make full use of the faculties dependent upon the sentient (astral) body, the sentient soul and the intellectual or mind-soul.

Those who have spoken of man strictly in accordance with the process of evolution in the West have always recognized this classification. In Orientals the periods are not exactly the same. Hence in the case of Oriental civilization it was quite correct not to make the same classification as in the West where it has always been the right one. The Greeks, for instance, merely used different words to express what now concerns us. When speaking of the element of soul in man, they began with what we call the life-body (etheric body) and called it ‘treptikon’; for what we call the sentient (astral) body they used the very expressive word ‘aisthetikon’; our sentient soul they called ‘orektikon’; the intellectual or mind-soul, ‘kinetikon’, and the most precious possession now being acquired by man, the spiritual soul, they called ‘dianoetikon’. Such is the development of the human being when considered in detail.

Owing to certain conditions that will become clearer to us to-day, the development of the Nathan Jesus was somewhat accelerated—a fact also rendered possible because in those regions puberty was reached at an earlier age.

In the case of the Nathan Jesus there were very special reasons why the change usually occurring in the fourteenth year should take place in the twelfth. So too the other changes connected with the twenty-first, twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years came about in his nineteenth, twenty-sixth and thirty-third years respectively. This indicates in broad outline the development of the central Figure of our Earth.

It must be borne in mind that up to the twelfth year the physical body was that of the Nathan Jesus, but that after the twelfth year the Ego of Zarathustra was living in that body. What does this mean? It means that from the twelfth year onwards, this mature Ego was working upon the sentient (astral) body, the sentient soul and the mind-soul of the Nathan Jesus, elaborating these members in a way possible only to an Ego of great maturity—an Ego that had undergone the destinies of the Zarathustra-Individuality through many incarnations. We therefore meet with the wonderful fact that the Ego of Zarathustra passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus in the twelfth year of life and elaborated the faculties of the soul to the highest degree of excellence. Thus there developed a sentient body able to gaze into the Cosmos and experience something of the spiritual nature of Ahura Mazdao; there developed a sentient soul able to harbour the knowledge and wisdom based on the teaching concerning Ahura Mazdao; and there developed a mind-soul able to apprehend, to formulate in intelligible concepts and words, that which men had hitherto been able to acquire only through spiritual currents flowing into them from outside.

The Nathan Jesus, having within him the Zarathustra-Ego, lived on until his thirtieth year was approaching. The event that had occurred when he was twelve, when his inmost nature was filled with a new Egohood, now took place again—but this time on an infinitely more sublime, more universal scale. Towards the thirtieth year the Zarathustra-Ego had accomplished its work in the soul of the Nathan Jesus; the faculties of this soul had been developed to the highest possible degree and the mission of the Zarathustra-Ego was thus fulfilled. Having instilled into the soul all the faculties he had acquired through his own previous incarnations, Zarathustra could declare: ‘My task is now accomplished!’—and a moment came when his Ego left the body of the Nathan Jesus.

The Zarathustra-Ego had lived in the body of the Solomon Jesus until the twelfth year. No further development in earthly existence would thereafter have been possible for this boy. Because the Zarathustra-Ego had gone out of him, his development came to a standstill at the point reached at that time, although exceptional maturity had been attained owing to the presence of such a highly advanced Ego. Anyone observing the Solomon Jesus-child would have found him prematurely advanced to a conspicuous degree; but from the moment the Zarathustra-Ego left him he came to a standstill and could make no further progress. And when—comparatively soon—the mother of the Nathan Jesus died and the spiritual part of her being was translated into the spiritual world, she took with her what was of eternal value and formative power in the Solomon Jesus child. This child also died—at about the same time as the mother of the Nathan Jesus.

It was an etheric sheath of utmost value which then left the body of the Solomon Jesus. As we know, the development of the etheric body takes place mainly between the seventh year of life and puberty. This was an etheric body that had been worked upon and elaborated by the forces of the Zarathustra-Ego. In normal human existence, when the etheric body leaves the physical body at death, everything that is of no eternal use is discarded and the human being takes with him a kind of extract of the etheric body. In the case of the child of the Solomon line the etheric body was of eternal use in the fullest possible sense and the whole life-body of this child was taken by the mother of the Nathan Jesus with her into the spiritual world.

Now the etheric body forms and shapes the physical body of man and it is not difficult to realize that there was a very deep connection between this etheric body of the Solomon Jesus which had been translated into the spiritual world, and the Zarathustra-Ego; for this Ego and etheric body had been united until the twelfth year of earthly life. And when the Zarathustra-Ego left the body of Jesus of Nazareth, the power of attraction between this Ego and the original etheric body in the Solomon Jesus asserted itself. The maturity of the Zarathustra-Ego was such that a further passage through Devachan was unnecessary and after a comparatively short time this Ego was able, in conjunction with his former etheric body, to build up a new physical body. This resulted in the birth of the Being who thereafter appeared again and again, always with relatively short intervals between physical death and rebirth; whenever this Being left the physical body at death, he soon appeared again on the Earth in a new incarnation. Having sought and found the etheric body he had once relinquished in the circumstances indicated, this Being went on his way through history as the ‘Master Jesus’, becoming, as you can well imagine, the great helper of those who have endeavoured to understand the Event of Palestine. Thus it was the Zarathustra-Ego, Zarathustra himself, who having found his etheric body again began to move through the evolution of mankind as the Master Jesus, incarnating again and again to give guidance and direction to the spiritual stream of Christianity. He is the Inspirer of those who strive to understand Christianity in its living growth and development; within the esoteric schools he inspired those whose perpetual duty it was to cultivate the teachings of Christianity. He stands behind the great spiritual figures of Christianity, ever teaching what the great Event of Palestine signifies.

Having indwelt the body of the Nathan Jesus from the twelfth to the thirtieth year, the Zarathustra-Ego was hence-forth outside that body and another Being descended into it. This happened, as all the Gospels relate, at the Baptism by John in the Jordan, when an Ego of untold sublimity entered into the Nathan Jesus in place of the Zarathustra-Ego. In the lectures on the Gospel of St. John,¹ attention was drawn to the fact that ‘baptism’ in those olden days was something very different from the mere symbol which it became later on. It was also enacted differently by John the Baptist. The body of one who was baptized was completely submerged in the water. You know from preparatory lectures that a definite experience may be connected with such a happening. Even in everyday existence it may happen that when a man is in danger of drowning, or sustains a violent shock, a tableau of his life hitherto appears before him. This is because something that otherwise takes place only after death, occurs momentarily: the etheric body is lifted out of the physical body and is freed from its power. This happened to most of those who were baptized by John, and in a very special way to the Nathan Jesus. His etheric body was drawn out—and during that moment the sublime Being we call the Christ descended into his body.

Thus from the time of the Baptism, the Nathan Jesus was filled with the Christ Being as is indicated in the words contained in the earlier Gospel records: ‘This is my well-beloved Son; this day have I begotten Him!’—meaning: the Son of Heaven, the Christ, is now begotten—begotten of the all-pervading Godhead and received into the body and whole constitution of the Nathan Jesus who had been prepared to receive the seed from heavenly heights. ‘This is my well-beloved Son; this day have I begotten Him!’—These were the words contained in the earlier manuscripts and this is how they ought still to stand in the Gospels. (Luke III, 22.)

Who is this Being who united at that time with the etheric body of the Nathan Jesus?

The Christ Being cannot be understood if we think of Earth evolution alone. The Christ is the Leader of those spiritual Beings who left with the Sun when it separated from the Earth and established for themselves this higher sphere of action in order to work upon the Earth from outside. If we think back to the pre-Christian period of Earth evolution, from the time of the separation of the Sun until the appearance of Christ, we must say: When men looked up to the Sun with mature faculties they would have recognized the truth of what Zarathustra taught, namely that the light and warmth streaming from the Sun are but the physical vestment of the spiritual Beings behind the Sun's light; for behind the physical phenomena are hidden the spiritual rays of power which stream from the Sun to the Earth. The Leader of all the Beings who send their beneficent influences from the Sun to the Earth is He who was later called Christ. In pre-Christian times, therefore, this Being was not to be sought on Earth but on the Sun. And Zarathustra rightly called Him ‘Ahura Mazdao’, saying in effect: ‘On the Earth we do not find the Light-Spirit; but when we look up to the Sun we behold the spiritual Being—Ahura Mazdao—who has his habitation there. The light that streams to us is the body of the Sun-Spirit, Ahura Mazdao, even as the human physical body is the body of the human spirit. But in the course of great happenings in the Cosmos this sublime Being drew ever nearer to the Earth-sphere; His approach could be perceived more and more distinctly by clairvoyance, and was unmistakable when in the flame of lightning on Mount Sinai the revelations came to Moses, the great forerunner of Christ Jesus.

What did these revelations to Moses signify? They signified that the Christ Being, while approaching the Earth, was revealing Himself—in reflection to begin with—as if in a mirror-image. Let us consider, in its spiritual aspect, the process in evidence at every full Moon. When we look at the full Moon we see the rays of the Sun in reflection. It is sunlight that streams towards us, only we call it moonlight because we see it reflected by the Moon. What Being did Moses behold in the burning bush and in the fire on Sinai? He beheld the Christ! But just as the sunlight is not seen directly but reflected from the Moon, so did Moses see the Christ in reflection. And as we call the sunlight ‘moonlight’ when we see it reflected from the Moon, Christ was called at that time, Jahve, or Jehovah. Jahve or Jehovah is the reflection of the Christ before He Himself appeared on Earth. Christ announced Himself thus indirectly to a humanity as yet unable to behold Him in his immediate reality, just as the sun-light manifests itself through the rays of the Moon in the otherwise dark night of full Moon. Jahve or Jehovah is the Christ—but seen as reflected light, not directly.

The faculties of human cognition and perception were to come within nearer and nearer range of the Christ. Having previously manifested His presence to the Initiates from the Cosmos, He was now Himself to tread the Earth for a season as a man among men. But this could not come to pass until the right time had arrived. That Christ is a reality has always been known wherever men have steeped themselves in the wisdom of the world, and because He has revealed Himself in so many different ways He has been called by diverse names. Zarathustra called Him ‘Ahura Mazdao’ because He revealed Himself in the raiment of the Sun's light. The great Teachers of humanity in ancient India during the first period after the Atlantean catastrophe—the holy Rishis—had known full well of this Being, for they were Initiates. They knew too that in their epoch He was beyond the range of earthly wisdom and would be accessible to it only later on. Hence it was said that this Being was beyond the sphere of the seven Rishis. ‘Vishva Karman’ was the name given to Him. The Rishis taught of the Being whom they called ‘Vishva Karman’ and Zarathustra called ‘Ahura Mazdao’. Vishva Karman and Ahura Mazdao were two of the names for this Being who was gradually approaching the Earth from heights of spirit, from cosmic realms.

But preparation had to be made in the evolution of humanity to ensure the existence of a body fit to receive this Being. It was necessary for a Being such as had lived in Zarathustra to mature from incarnation to incarnation in order that in a body as pure as that of Jesus of Nazareth he could bring the faculties of the sentient body, of the sentient soul and of the mind-soul to the degree of perfection that would render this human being fit to receive into himself so sublime a Being. Such preparation had to be made. Before a sentient soul and a mind-soul could be adequately developed it was necessary that an Ego should first have undergone the many experiences and destinies of Zarathustra and then transform the faculties present in the Nathan Jesus. This would not have been possible at any earlier time, for the Nathan Jesus-child had to be worked upon not only by the Zarathustra-Ego but also by the lofty spiritual power we have characterized as the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. From the child's birth until his twelfth year this power worked chiefly from outside. But the Bodhisattva himself had had first to become Buddha before he was able to develop in himself the spiritual body, the Nirmanakaya, wherewith to work upon the Nathan Jesus during this period of his life. At the time of the incarnation in the course of which he was destined to become Buddha he had not yet acquired this power; the Buddha-life had first to be lived through.

Some day, when humanity understands what deep wisdom has been preserved in many ancient legends, it will be found that everything deciphered from the Akashic Chronicle is contained in a wonderful way in those legends. We are told, and rightly told, that in ancient India too, men were taught of Christ as a cosmic Being beyond the sphere of the seven holy Rishis. The Rishis knew that He dwelt in lofty spiritual regions and was only gradually approaching the Earth. Zarathustra too knew that he must turn his gaze from the Earth to the Sun; and the ancient Hebrews, because of the faculties and attributes indicated in the last lecture, were the first people to whom the proclamation of the Christ Being in His reflection could be made.

We are also told in a legend how the Bodhisattva, when about to become Buddha, came into spiritual contact with Vishva Karman—the Being who was later called Christ. The legend relates that when his twenty-ninth year was approaching the Bodhisattva made his famous exit from the palace where he had been strictly guarded and fostered. Then he saw, first, an old man, then a sick man, then a corpse, thus becoming gradually aware of the miseries of life. Then he saw a monk who had forsaken this life with its accompanying phenomena of old age, sickness and death. Thereupon—so it is related in this profoundly true legend—he resolved not to leave the palace immediately but to return once more. But during this first departure from the palace—so runs the legend—he was invested from spiritual heights with the power which the Divine Artificer, Vishva Karman, who appeared to him, sent down to the Earth. The Bodhisattva was invested with the power of Vishva Karman, of Christ. Thus for the Bodhisattva, Christ was a Being outside—not yet united with him. At that time the Bodhisattva too had nearly reached his thirtieth year but he could not then have made it possible for Christ to be received in the fullest sense into a human body. He had first to become sufficiently mature, and this stage was attained through his Buddha-existence. And when, later on, he appeared in the Nirmanakaya, his task was to make the body of the Nathan Jesus—in which he was not himself embodied—fit to receive Vishva Karman, the Christ.

In this way the forces in earthly evolution had worked in concert to bring about the great Event. It is now on our lips to ask: What is the relationship of Christ, of Vishva Karman, to Beings such as the Bodhisattvas, of whom the Bodhisattva who afterwards became Buddha was one?

This question brings us to the threshold of one of the greatest mysteries of Earth evolution. Generally speaking, it will be difficult for the feelings and perceptive faculties of men at the present time to have even an inkling of what lies behind this mystery. The mission of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha was to incorporate into humanity the principle of compassion and love. Twelve such Beings are connected with the Cosmos to which the Earth belongs. The Bodhisattva who became Buddha in the fifth/sixth century B.C. is one of these Twelve, all of whom have specific missions: Just as the mission of this particular Bodhisattva was to bring to the Earth the teaching of compassion and love, the other Bodhisattvas too have their missions which must be fulfilled in the different epochs of Earth evolution. Gautama Buddha's connection with the mission of the Earth is especially close inasmuch as the development of the moral sense is precisely the task of our own epoch—from the time when the Bodhisattva appeared five to six centuries B.C. to the time when the Bodhisattva who succeeded him in that office will live on Earth as the Maitreya Buddha. That is how Earth evolution advances; the Bodhisattvas descend and have to incorporate into evolution from time to time what constitutes the object of their mission.

A survey of the whole of Earth evolution would reveal that there are twelve such Bodhisattvas. They belong to that great community of Spirits which from time to time sends one of the Bodhisattvas to the Earth as a special emissary, as one of the great Teachers. A Lodge of twelve Bodhisattvas is to be regarded as the Lodge directing all Earth evolution. The concept of ‘Teacher’ familiar to us at lower stages of existence can be applied, in essentials, to these twelve Bodhisattvas. They are Teachers, the great Inspirers of one portion or another of what mankind has to acquire.

Whence do these Bodhisattvas receive what they have to proclaim from epoch to epoch?—If you were able to look into the great Spirit-Lodge of the twelve Bodhisattvas you would find that in the midst of the Twelve there is a Thirteenth—one who cannot be called a ‘Teacher’ in the same sense as the Bodhisattvas, but of whom we must say: He is that Being from whom wisdom itself streams as very substance. It is therefore quite correct to speak of the twelve Bodhisattvas in the great Spirit-Lodge grouped around One who is their Centre; they are wrapt in contemplation of the sublime Being from whom there streams what they have then to inculcate into Earth evolution in fulfilment of their missions. Thus there streams from the Thirteenth what the others have to teach. They are the ‘Teachers’, the ‘Inspirers’; the Thirteenth is himself the Being of whom the others teach, whom they proclaim from epoch to epoch. This Thirteenth is He whom the ancient Rishis called Vishva Karman, whom Zarathustra called Ahura Mazdao, whom we call the Christ. He is the Leader and Guide of the great Lodge of the Bodhisattvas. Hence the content of the proclamation made through the whole choir of the Bodhisattvas is the teaching concerning Christ, once called Vishva Karman. The Bodhisattva who became Buddha five to six centuries before our era was endowed with the powers of Vishva Karman. The Nathan Jesus who received the Christ into himself was not merely ‘endowed’ but ‘anointed’—that is to say, permeated through and through by Vishva Karman, by Christ.

This mystery was portrayed in a symbol or in a picture wherever men had an inkling of the great secrets of evolution or acquired knowledge of them through Initiation. In the little known, enigmatic Trottic Mysteries of Northern Europe before the coming of Christianity, an earthly symbol of the spiritual reality of the Lodge of the twelve Bodhisattvas was created. Those who were Teachers were always associated with a community of twelve. It was for the Twelve to proclaim the message and there was a Thirteenth who did not teach but who through his very presence radiated the wisdom which the others received. This was the picture on Earth of a heavenly, spiritual reality. Again, in Goethe's poem Die Geheimnisse² where the poet has given an indication of his Rosicrucian inspiration, we are reminded how Twelve sit around a Thirteenth who is not necessarily a great Teacher. Brother Mark, in his simplicity, is himself to be addressed by the Twelve as the Thirteenth—when the former Thirteenth shall have left them. He is to be the bringer, not of teaching, but of the spiritual substance itself. And it was the same wherever an inkling or actual knowledge of this lofty spiritual fact existed among men.

The Baptism by John in the Jordan marked the point of time in the evolution of humanity when this heavenly ‘Thirteenth’—as spiritual substance itself—appeared on the Earth. This was the Being of whom all others—Bodhisattvas and Buddhas—had had to teach, and for whose descent into a human body such stupendous preparations had been necessary. That is the mystery of the Baptism in the Jordan. The Being is He who is described in the Gospels: Vishva Karman, Ahura Mazdao, or the Christ as He was called later on when in the body of the Nathan Jesus. As Christ, this Being was to tread the Earth in human form for three years, a man among men, within that purified terrestrial Being who up to his thirtieth year had undergone all the experiences of which we have heard in these lectures. The Being formerly hidden in the light- and warmth-giving rays of the Sun streaming down from the Cosmos, the Being, that is, who had gone with the Sun when it separated from the Earth, now descended into the Nathan Jesus.

We may now ask another question: Why was the union of this Being with the evolution of humanity on the Earth so long postponed? Why had He not descended at an earlier time to the Earth. Why had He not penetrated before into a human etheric body, as He did at tlhe Baptism by John in the Jordan?

This will be intelligible to us if we grasp the nature of the happening described in the Old Testament as the ‘Fall into Sin’. During the epoch of ancient Lemuria, certain beings insinuated themselves into the human astral body—they were beings who had remained at the stage of Old Moon evolution. The human astral body was permeated at that time by the Luciferic beings and this is presented pictorially as the Fall into Sin in Paradise. Because these forces penetrated into his astral body, man became more deeply entangled in the things of the Earth than would otherwise have been the case. Had he not been subject to the Luciferic influence he would have been less deeply entangled in earthly matter. Consequently he descended to the Earth earlier than was originally intended. Now if nothing else had intervened, if nothing had taken place except what has just been indicated, the Luciferic forces anchored in the human astral body would have taken effect in the etheric body as well. But it was essential for the cosmic Powers to take special measures to prevent this. In the book Occult Science—an Outline³ the subject is dealt with from a different aspect. Man might not remain as he was after the Luciferic forces had penetrated into his astral body. He had to be protected against the effect of the forces upon his etheric body. This end was achieved at that time by making it impossible for him to use the whole of his etheric body, part of it being removed from his arbitrary control. If this beneficent deed of the Gods had not been accomplished, if man had retained power over the whole of his etheric body, he could never have found his right path through Earth evolution. Certain parts of the human etheric body had at that time to be withdrawn in order to be preserved for later times. Let us try to picture what this means.

Man's physical body—as everything else that is physical—is composed of the elements also to be found in the world outside: the ‘earthy’ or solid, the ‘watery’ or fluid, and the ‘airy’ or gaseous. The etheric realm begins with the first state of ether—the ‘fire-ether’ or simply ‘fire’. Fire or warmth, regarded by modern physics merely as motion and non-substantial, is the first state of the ether. The second is the ‘light-ether’, or simply ‘light’. And the third state—sound, tone, or number—is one that is not revealed to man in its original form at all; it is only a reflection, as it were a shadow of this ether that can be perceived in the physical world as tone or sound. Behind external ‘sound’, however, there lies something of a finer etheric nature, something spiritual. Physical tone or sound is a mere phantom of spiritual tone, of ‘sound-ether’ or also ‘number-ether’. The fourth etheric realm is the ‘life-ether’—that which underlies actual ‘life’.

As physical man is constituted to-day, everything that is of the nature of soul expresses itself in his physical and etheric constitution, but is also connected with certain etheric substances. What we call ‘will’ expresses itself etherically in what we call ‘fire’. Anyone who is at all sensitive to certain sentient experiences will be aware that there is justification for saying that the will, which expresses itself physically in the blood, lives in the fire-element of the etheric; physically, the will expresses itself in the blood, that is to say in the movement of the blood. What we call ‘feeling’ expresses itself in the part of the etheric body that corresponds to the light-ether. Because this is so, a clairvoyant sees the will-impulses of a man flashing like flames through his etheric body and raying into his astral body; and he sees the feelings as forms of light. But the thinking that is experienced by man in his soul as his own, and expressed in words, is only a phantom of thinking—as you will readily believe, because physical sound too is only a phantom of something higher. Words have their organ in the sound-ether; our thoughts underlie our words; words are forms of expression for thoughts. These forms of expression fill etheric space inasmuch as they send their vibrations through the sound-ether; ‘tone’ or ‘sound’ is only the shadow of the actual thought-vibrations. The inner essence of all our thoughts, that which endows our thoughts with meaning (Sinn), actually belongs; in respect of its etheric nature, to the life-ether itself.

Meaning (Sinn).................... Life-Ether
Thinking ..........................Tone- or Sound-Ether 

 Feeling............................Light-Ether 
 Will ..............................Fire-Ether
................................... Air
................................... Water
................................... Earth

In the Lemurian epoch, after the onset of the Luciferic influence, of these four forms of ether only the two lower (light-ether and fire-ether) were left at the free, abitrary disposal of man; the two higher kinds of ether were withdrawn from him. That is the inner meaning of the passage where it is said that when, as a result of the Luciferic influence, men had become able to distinguish between good and evil (pictorially expressed as eating of the ‘Tree of Knowledge’), the ‘Tree of Life’ was kept out of their reach. That is to say, the power freely and arbitrarily to penetrate the thought-ether and the sense-ether (‘meaning’-ether) was withdrawn from them.

The conditions of man's development were therefore necessarily as follows. His will was given into his power to assert as his ‘personal’ expression; the same applies to his feelings. Both feeling and will are at man's personal disposal. Hence the individual character of the world of feeling and the world of will. This individual character, however, ceases immediately we pass from feeling to thinking—yes, even to the expression of thoughts, to the words on the physical plane. Whereas each man's feeling and will are personal, we immediately come into something universal when we rise into the realm of words and the realm of thoughts. No one individual can form thoughts that are his alone. If thoughts were as individual as feelings we should never understand one another. Thus thought and ‘meaning’ (Sinn) were withheld from the power of arbitrary human will and preserved for the time being in the world of the Gods, in order not to be given to man until a later time. Everywhere on the Earth, therefore, we can find individual men with individual feelings and individual impulses of will; but thinking is uniform everywhere and language is uniform among the several peoples. Where there is a common language, there reigns a common Folk-Deity. This sphere is withheld from the arbitrary power of man, remaining for the time being a field into which the Gods work.

When Zarathustra, with his pupils around him, spoke of the realm of spirit, he could say: ‘Out of heaven there streams down warmth, or fire; out of heaven there streams down light. These are the vestments of Ahura Mazdao. But behind these vestments is hidden that which has not yet descended but has remained above in spiritual heights, casting only a shadow in the physical thoughts and words of men.’ Behind the warmth and light of the Sun is hidden that which lives in tone or sound, in meaning, manifesting itself only to those who are able to see behind the light that which is related to the earthly word as the heavenly Word is related to the part of Life that was withheld for the time being from humanity. Hence Zarathustra said: ‘Look upwards to Ahura Mazdao; see how He reveals Himself in the physical raiment of light and warmth. But behind all that is the Divine, Creative Word—and it is approaching the Earth!’

What is Vishva Karman? What is Ahura Mazdao? What is Christ in His true form? The Divine, Creative Word! Hence in Zarathustra's teaching the momentous communication is made that he was initiated in order not only to apprehend in the light the Being he called Ahura Mazdao, but also the Divine, Creative Word, Honover—which was to descend to the Earth and for the first time did descend into an individual etheric body at the Baptism by John. The Divine-Spiritual Word which had been preserved since the Lemurian epoch came forth from ethereal heights at the Baptism by John and entered into the etheric body of the Nathan Jesus. And when the Baptism was completed, what was it that had happened? The Word had become Flesh!

What had Zarathustra, or those who had knowledge of his Mysteries, proclaimed? As seers they had proclaimed the ‘Word’ that is hidden behind the warmth and the light. They were ‘servants of the Word’. And the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke recorded what the ‘seers’ proclaimed—those who had become ‘servants of the Word’.

This example again shows us that the Gospels must be taken literally. What had been withheld from men for so long because of the Luciferic influence, became flesh in a single personality, descended to the Earth and lived on the Earth. Hence this Being is the great prototype of all those who by degrees will understand His nature. Our wisdom on Earth must follow the lead of the Bodhisattvas, whose unceasing task it is to proclaim the Thirteenth among them. All spiritual science, all our wisdom, all our knowledge, must be devoted to understanding the nature of Vishva Karman, of Ahura Mazdao, of CHRIST.

• 1. Lecture-Course entitled: The Gospel of St. John in relation to the other Gospels, especially to the Gospel of St. Luke.
• 2. See the lecture entitled The Mysteries. Given at Cologne, 25th December 1907.
• 3. See pp. 185–6 in the 1963 edition.

Kristiania (Oslo), May 16, 1909

Today we shall stress more the occult side of yesterday's observation. The four post-Atlantean cultures somehow had to reflect the great cosmic events in the souls of human beings as they had happened in historical sequence. However, beginning with the thirteenth or fourteenth century of our cultural epoch, such a reflection no longer took place because the external events in human evolution must be traced to more profound reasons.

We know that the etheric bodies of the great Atlantean initiates had been preserved for the Seven Holy Rishis, and we also know how the etheric and astral body of Zarathustra had been woven into those of Moses and Hermes. At any time the possibility existed that such etheric bodies, which had been cultivated and prepared by the initiates, could be further used in the spiritual economy of the world. But other things took place as well. For especially important personalities, such etheric bodies are formed in the higher worlds. When somebody was especially important for the mission of humanity, an etheric body or an astral body was woven in the higher worlds and was then imprinted on this personality.

This is what happened in the case of Shem who indeed has something to do with the whole tribe of the Semites. A special etheric body was coined for such a tribal ancestor, and Shem became a sort of dual personality by this process. It may sound fantastic to the modern mind, but a clairvoyant would see a personality like Shem as he would see an ordinary human being with his or her aura; but then also in such a way as if a higher being that extends down from higher worlds completely filled his etheric body and as if the aura became a mediator between this personality and the higher world. Residing in a human being, such a divine being, however, has a very special power: it can multiply such an etheric body, and the multiplied etheric bodies then form a web that is continually woven into the descendants. Thus the descendants of Shem received an imprint of the copy of his etheric body. However, the Mystery Centers kept not only the multiplied copies but also the etheric body of Shem himself. Any personality that was meant to receive a special mission had to use this etheric body if it wanted to be able to communicate with the Semitic people, similar to the way in which a very educated European would have to learn the language of the Hottentots if he wanted to communicate with them. Therefore, the personality with a special mission had to bear within himself the real etheric body of Shem in order to be able to communicate with the Semitic people. Such a personality, for example, was Melchizedek: he could show himself to Abraham only in the etheric body of Shem.

We now have to ask ourselves something. If it is only now, in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, possible for us to develop an understanding for Christianity, what was the situation in the remainder of the Graeco-Latin era, which lasted into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries? A mysterious, occult process took place. Christ lived only three years in the sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth, who was such a sublime individuality that He was able to leave the physical world at the age of thirty when the dove appeared over His head so that He could enter the spiritual world. Since the Christ-Individuality lived in the physical body, it filled out the three highly developed bodies of Jesus. Invisible to the physical eye, they were now multiplied as had formerly been the case with the etheric body of Shem so that the copies of the etheric and astral bodies of Jesus of Nazareth were available from the time he died on the cross. This has nothing to do with His ego; it passed into the spiritual world and has repeatedly reincarnated itself afterward.

We see how Christian writers in the first few centuries after the Christ-Event still worked on the basis of an oral tradition that was transmitted by the disciples of the Apostles, who set great value on a direct, physical transmission of the Christ-Event. However, this would not have been a sufficient building block for later centuries, and that is why a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into especially eminent heralds of the Christian message beginning with the sixth and seventh centuries. One such herald was Augustine, who in his youth had to go through tremendous struggles. However, only when the impulse of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth came to work in him in a significant way did he begin to become engaged in Christian mysticism of his own initiative. His writings can be understood only in this light. Many other personalities in the world, such as Columban,⁴⁰ Gallus,⁴¹ and Patrick,⁴² carried within themselves such a copy of Jesus's etheric body and were therefore in a position to spread Christianity and built a bridge from the Christ-Event to the succeeding times.

By contrast, we see human beings whose astral body received the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Such a personality was Francis of Assisi. When we look at his life from this point of view, we will understand it in quite a few ways. His qualities of humility and Christian devotion will become especially clear to us when we tell ourselves that such a mystery lived in him. In the time from about the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries such human beings became the heralds of Christianity by the very fact that the astral body of Jesus was woven into their own astral body. Hence, they received Christianity by virtue of Grace.

Although the ego of Jesus of Nazareth left its three sheaths at the baptism of John, a copy of this ego remained in each of them similar to the imprint a seal leaves behind. The Christ-Being took possession of these three bodies and of that which remained as the imprint of the Jesus-Ego. Beginning with the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, something like an ego copy of Jesus was woven into human beings who began to speak of an “inner Christ.” Meister Eckhart and Tauler were individuals who spoke from their own experience like an ego copy of Jesus of Nazareth.

There are still many people present who carry within themselves something like the various bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, but these are now no longer the leading personalities. Increasingly we can see how there are human beings in the fifth epoch who must rely on themselves and on their own ego and how such inspired people have become a rarity. It was therefore necessary that a spiritual tendency develop in our fifth epoch to ensure that humanity would continue to be imbued with spiritual knowledge. Those individualities who were capable of looking into the future had to take care that human beings in the times to come would not be left simply to rely on their human ego only. The legend of the Holy Grail relates that the chalice from which the Christ Jesus took the Last Supper with his disciples was kept in a certain place. We see in the story of Parsifal the course of a young person's education typical for our fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Parsifal had been instructed not to ask too many questions, and his dilemma arose from his following those instructions. That is the important transition from the traditional to more modern times: in ancient India and later with Augustine and Francis of Assisi the student had to live in a state of the highest degree of passive devotion. All these humble people allowed themselves to be inspired by what was already alive in them and by what had been woven into them. But now things changed in that the ego became a questioning ego. Today, any soul that accepts passively what is given to it cannot transcend itself because it merely oberves the happenings in the physical world around it. In our times the soul has to ask questions; it has to rise above itself; it has to grow beyond its given form. It must raise questions, just as Parsifal ultimately learned to inquire after the mysteries of the Grail's Castle.⁴³

Spiritual investigation today begins only where there is questioning, and the souls today that are stimulated by external science to ask questions and to search are the Parsifal souls. And this has led to the introduction of Rosicrucian education—that much maligned mystery school of thought—that accepts tradition gratefully but does not accept traditional wisdom blindly. Yet that which today constitutes Rosicrucian spiritual orientation has been investigated in the higher worlds directly with the spiritual eye and with the means the student himself has been instructed to utilize This has not come about simply because this or that is written in old books or because certain people believed one thing or another. Rather, the Rosicrucian spiritual method proclaims wisdom that has been investigated today. It was gradually prepared in the Rosicrucian schools that were founded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as a result of the work of an individuality by the name of Christian Rosenkreutz.

This accumulated wisdom can today be proclaimed as Spiritual Science. This is so because today it is no longer possible to instill in human beings what is to inspire them from the inside without their having a hand in the process. Today people who feel that Spiritual Science speaks to their hearts must approach it through their own free will, through their own free impulse, and through the fact that they feel enlivened by spiritual knowledge. Hence we need not attempt to stir up an interest in Spiritual Science.

Through this theosophical-Rosicrucian orientation of the spirit, we again bring close to ourselves what is still present in the copies of Jesus of Nazareth's ego. Those who prepare themselves in this manner will pull into their souls the copy of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth so that they become like imprints of a seal, and it is in this way that the Christ- Principle finds its way into the human soul. Rosicrucianism prepared something positive, and since anthroposophy is meant to become life, the souls that absorb and truly accept it will gradually undergo a metamorphosis. To accept anthroposophy within yourself means to change the soul in such a way that it is able to come to a true understanding of the Christ.

The anthroposophist makes himself or herself a living recipient of what was given to Moses and Paul in the JavehChrist-Revelation. It is written in the fifth letter of the Apocalypse that the people in the fifth cultural epoch are those who can really absorb the things that will be quite obvious for the cultural period of the Philadelphia community. The wisdom of the fifth cultural period will open as a flower of love in the sixth period.

Today mankind is called upon to accept into itself something new, something divine, and thereby to undertake again the ascent into the spiritual world. The Spiritual Scientific teaching of evolution is being imparted not because people are supposed to put their blind faith into it, but because mankind is supposed to reach an understanding of it through its own powers of judgment. This teaching is being directed to those who bear the core of the Parsifal nature within themselves. And it is not being proclaimed just in special places or to a special group of people, but human beings from all of humanity will come together to listen to the call of spiritual wisdom.

• 40. Columban (545–615) was an Irish missionary.
• 41. Gallus was a sixth-century Irish-Scotch missionary.
• 42. Patrick (c. 384–c. 460) was an English missionary.
• 43. Steiner is referring to the German courtly epic Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach (about 1200/10). The Frenchman Chretien de Troyes was the author of the first great artistic treatment of the theme; in his unfinished poem “Percivale” finds the Grail and heals the king. Wolfram's story is drawn from Chretien's model but is much more spiritualized in its triadic structure: innocence, fall, salvation. The Simpleton Parsifal is educated as a knight who knows proper courtly behavioral codes, one of them being not to ask too many questions. This attitude causes him to be expelled from the Grail's Castle, and only after he has undergone a second, Christian phase of education does he know how to express his charity by asking the appropriate question of the ailing king.