The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A truth, intimately united with human aspiration and for centuries closely associated in the human heart with the festival whose modern symbol is the Christmas tree, is expressed in the words that have resounded ever since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and that must be impressed still more deeply into the evolution of the earth. This truth, which has shone down through the ages, is associated with the words, et incarnatus est de spiritu sancto ex Maria virgine (and is born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary).

Most of the people of today seem to attach just as little significance to these words as they do to the Easter mystery of the Resurrection. We might even say that the central mystery of Christianity, the resurrection from the dead, appears to modern thought, which is no longer directed to the truths of the spiritual world, just as incredible as the Christmas mystery, the mystery of the Word becoming flesh, the mystery of the virgin birth. The greater part of modern humanity is much more in sympathy with the scientist who described the virgin birth as “an impertinent mockery of human reason” than with those who desire to take this mystery in a spiritual sense.

Nevertheless, my dear friends, the mystery of the incarnation by the Holy Spirit through the Virgin begins to exert its influence from the time of the Mystery of Golgotha; in another sense it had made itself felt before this event.

Those who brought the symbolic gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the babe lying in the manger knew of the Christmas mystery of the virgin birth through the ancient science of the stars. The magi who brought the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh were, in the sense of the ancient wisdom, astrologers, they had knowledge of those spiritual processes that work in the cosmos when certain signs appear in the starry heavens. One such sign they recognized when, in the night between December 24 and 25, in the year that we today regard as that of the birth of Jesus, the sun, the cosmic symbol of the Redeemer, shone toward the earth from the constellation of Virgo. They said, “When the constellation of the heavens is such that the sun stands in Virgo in the night between December 24 and 25, then an important change will take place in the earth. Then the time will have come for us to bring gold, the symbol of our knowledge of divine guidance, which hitherto we have sought only in the stars, to that impulse which now becomes part of the earthly evolution of mankind. Then the time will have come for us to offer frankincense, the emblem of sacrifice, the symbol of the highest human virtue. This virtue must be offered in such a way that it is united with the power proceeding from the Christ Who is to be incarnated in that human being to whom we bring the frankincense.

“And the third gift, the myrrh, is the symbol of the eternal in man, which we have felt for thousands of years to be connected with the powers that speak to us from starry constellations; we seek it further by bringing it as a gift to him who is to be a new impulse for humanity; through this we seek our own immortality, in that we unite our own souls with the impulse of the Christ. When the cosmic symbol of world power, the sun, shines in the constellation of Virgo, then a new time begins for the earth.”

This was the belief held for thousands of years, and as the magi felt compelled to lay at the feet of the Holy Child the wisdom of the gods, the virtues of man, and the realization of human immortality, symbolically expressed in the gold, frankincense, and myrrh, something was repeated as a historical event that had been expressed symbolically in innumerable mysteries and in countless sacrificial rituals for thousands of years. There had been presented in these mysteries and rituals a prophetic indication of the event that would take place when the sun stood at midnight between December 24 and 25 in the sign of the Virgin, for gold, frankincense, and myrrh were also offered on this holy night, to the symbol of the divine child preserved in ancient temples as the representation of the sun.

Thus, my dear friends, for nearly two thousand years the Christian words, “incarnatus de spiritu sancto ex Maria virgine” have resounded in the world, and so it has been ever since human thought has existed on the earth. In our times we can now present the question, “Do human beings really know to what they should aspire when they celebrate Christmas?” Does there exist today a real consciousness of the fact that, out of cosmic heights, under a cosmic sign, a cosmic power appeared through a virgin birth—spiritually understood—and that the blazing candles on the Christmas tree should light up in our hearts an understanding of the fact that the human soul is most intimately and inwardly united with an event that is not merely an earthly but a cosmic earthly event? The times are grave, and it is necessary in such serious times to give serious answers to solemn questions, such as the one raised here. With this in mind we will take a glance at the thoughts of the leading people of the nineteenth century to see whether the idea of Christ Jesus has lived in modern humanity in such a way as to give rise to the thought: the Christmas mystery has its significance in the fact that man wills to celebrate something eternal in the light of the Christmas candles.

Firstly we will take the words of a writer, Ernst Renan, who has given much study to the personality of Jesus and who has tried to give a picture of Christ Jesus out of the consciousness of the nineteenth century. We will listen to some of the voices of leading thinkers of the nineteenth century. Ernst Renan regarded the cities of Palestine with his physical eyes in true materialistic fashion. He desired to awaken in his own soul, from a materialistic standpoint, a picture of the personality known through the centuries as the Redeemer of the world. This is what he says:

“A beautiful outer nature tended to produce a much less austere spirit—a spirit less sharply monotheistic, if I may use the expression—which imprinted a charming and idyllic character on all the dreams of Galilee. The saddest country in the world is perhaps the region round about Jerusalem. Galilee, on the other hand, was a green, shady, smiling district, the true home of the Song of Songs, and the songs of the well-beloved. During the months of March and April the country forms a carpet of flowers of an incomparable variety of colors. The animals are small and exceedingly gentle—delicate and lively turtle doves, blue birds so light that they rest on a blade of grass without bending it, crested larks that venture almost under the feet of the traveler, little river tortoises with mild, lively eyes, storks with grave and modest mien, which, laying aside all timidity, allow man to come near them, seem almost to invite his approach.”

Ernst Renan never tires of describing this idyll of Galilee, so remote from the world's historic events, so as to make it seem natural that in this idyll, in this unpretentious landscape, with its turtle doves and storks, those things could happen that humanity for centuries has associated with the life of the Savior of the world.

So, my dear friends, that truth from which the earth received its meaning, the truth toward which humanity has looked for centuries, is attractive to a thinker of the nineteenth century only as an idyll with turtle doves and storks.

Ernst Renan proceeds, “The whole history of infant Christianity has become in this manner a delightful pastorale. A Messiah at the marriage festival, the courtesan and the good Zaccheus called to his feasts, the founders of the Kingdom of Heaven like a bridal procession—that is what Galilee has boldly offered and what the world has accepted.”

This, my dear friends, is one of the voices of the nineteenth century. Let us listen now to another, the voice of John Stuart Mill, who also desires to find his way from the consciousness of the nineteenth century to the being whom humanity for hundreds of years, and to the prophetic mind of man for thousands of years, has recognized as the Savior of the world.

John Stuart Mill says, “Whatever the rationalist may destroy of Christianity, Christ remains, a unique figure as different from his predecessors as from his successors, and even from those who enjoyed the privilege of his personal instruction. This estimate is not diminished if we say the Christ of the Gospels is not historical, for we are not in a position to know how much of what is worthy in Him has been added by His followers, for who among His disciples, or their followers, has been able to think out the speeches ascribed to Jesus, or to imagine a life and personality such as is portrayed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fisher-folk from Galilee, nor even St. Paul, whose whole character and inclination are of quite another kind, nor the early Christian writers. The kind of words that could be added and inserted by a scholar can be seen in the mystical part of the Gospel of St. John, who borrowed words from Philo and the Platonists of Alexandria and put them into the mouth of the Savior, who said many things about Himself of which not the slightest trace appears in the other Gospels. The East was full of people who could have stolen any number of such sayings, even as the many sects of the Gnostics did in later times. The life and teachings of Jesus, however, bear the stamp and impression of such profundity and personal originality that, if we deny ourselves the expectation of finding scientific exactitude, the prophet of Nazareth is placed in the foremost rank of venerated people of whom the human race may boast, even in the estimation of those who do not believe his divine inspiration. As this extraordinary spirit was equipped with the qualities of the greatest reformers and martyrs who have ever lived on earth, we cannot say that religion has made a bad choice” (Made a choice! We even choose in the nineteenth century!) “that religion has made a bad choice in setting up this man as an ideal representative and leader of humanity; also it would not be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better way of giving concrete expression to the abstract laws of virtue than to accept Christ as the model for our way of living. If, finally, we admit that even for the skeptic there remains the possibility that Christ was actually the person He said He was—not God; He never made the slightest claim to that; He would have seen in such a claim as great a blasphemy as would the people who judged Him—but the man expressly entrusted by God with the unique mission of leading humanity to truth and virtue, we may surely conclude that the influences of religion upon character, which would remain after the rationalistic critic had done his utmost against religion, are worthy of retention and, though they may lack direct proof as compared with other beliefs for which better evidence exists, the greater truth and correctness of their morality more than compensate for this lack.”

There we have the picture that the rationalists of the nineteenth century, by denying their own spirit, have given to that being whom humanity for centuries has recognized as the Savior of the world. Let us hear another voice, the voice of the international spirit, Heinrich Heine, and what he has to say:

“Christ is the God whom I love most, not because He is a God by inheritance, whose Father was God who had ruled the universe from time immemorial, but because He had no love for courtly, ceremonial display, although He was born the prince of heaven; I love Him because He was no aristocratic God, no panoplied knight, but a humble God of the people, a God of the town, a good citizen. Verily if Christ were not a God, I would choose Him for one and would much rather listen to Him, the God of my choice, than to a self-decreed, absolute God.”

“Only so long as religions have to struggle with each other in rivalry, and are more persecuted than followed, are they beautiful and worthy of veneration, only then do we see enthusiasm, sacrifice, martyrs, and palms. How beautiful, holy, and loveable, how heavenly sweet was the Christianity of the first centuries, as it sought to equal its divine founder in the heroism of His suffering—there still remained the beautiful legend of a heavenly God who in mild and youthful form wandered under the palms of Palestine preaching human love and revealing the teaching of freedom and equality—the sense of which was recognized by some of the greatest thinkers, and which has had its influence in our times through the French Gospel” (of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity).

Here we have this Heine Creed which regarded Him, whom humanity for centuries has recognized as the Redeemer of the world, as worthy of praise because we ourselves would have chosen Him, in our democratic fashion, even if He had not already held that exalted position, and because He preached the same Gospel as was preached later, at the end of the eighteenth century. He was therefore good enough to be as great as those who understood this Gospel.

Let us take another thinker of the nineteenth century. You know that I think very highly of Edward von Hartmann. I mention only those whom I do admire in order to show the manner in which the thought of the nineteenth century about Christ Jesus expressed itself.

“We see,” says Edward von Hartmann, the philosopher, “that the spiritual faculties of Jesus could not have achieved such good results without the magic of an impressive and loveable personality. This personality was endowed with unusual oratorical power, but His quiet majesty and personal tenderness must have been extraordinarily charming to his followers, not only to the men but to the women who made up so large a part of his following, in which prostitutes (Luke 7:37), married women of high rank (Luke 8:3), and young maidens of all classes mingled without discrimination. They were mostly eccentric persons, the epileptic, hysterical, or crazy, who believed themselves to be healed by Him. It is a well-known fact that such women are very prone to project or individualize their religious emotions and enthusiasms onto the person of an attractive male whom they proceed to make the center of a cult. Nothing is more obvious than that these women were of such a kind, and that even if they did not awaken in Jesus the idea of His Messiah-ship, yet it was so nourished by their adoring homage that it struck deep roots. According to modern psychological and psychiatrical opinion it is not possible for healthy religious feeling to flourish in such unhealthy soil, and today we would advise any religious reformer or prophet to shake off such elements in his following as much as possible, for they would merely end in compromising both him and his mission.”

Yet another voice I wish to quote, the voice of one of the principal characters in a romance that exercised a wide and powerful influence during the latter third of the nineteenth century over the judgment of the so-called “educated” humanity. In Paul Heyse's book, Die Kinder der Welt, the diary of Lea, one of the characters in the book, is reproduced. It contains a criticism of Christ Jesus, and those who know the world well will recognize in this judgment of Lea's one which was common to large numbers of human beings in the nineteenth century. Paul Heyse has Lea write, “The day before yesterday I stopped writing because an impulse drove me to read the New Testament once again. I had not opened the New Testament for a long time; it had been a long time since its many threatening, damning, and incomprehensible speeches had estranged and repelled my heart. Now that I have lost that childish fear, and the voice of an infallible and all-knowing spirit can be heard, since I have seen therein the history of one of the noblest and most wonderful of human beings, I have found much that greatly refreshed and comforted me.

“But its somber mood again made me depressed. What is more liberating, gracious, and comforting than joy in the beauty, goodness, and serenity of the world, yet while we are reading this book (the New Testament) we hover in a twilight of expectation and hope, the eternal is never fulfilled, it will only dawn when we have struggled through time; the full glory of joy never shines, there is no pleasantry, no laughter—the joy of this world is vanity—we are directed to a future that makes the present worthless, and the highest earthly joy of sinking ourselves deep in pure and loving thoughts is also open to suspicion, for only those can enter heaven who are poor in spirit. I am such a one, but it makes me unhappy to feel so, yet at the same time if I could break through this limitation I should no longer be what I am, thus my salvation and blessedness are not certain, for what transcends me is no longer. And then this mild, God-conscious man, in order to belong to the whole human race, departed from his own people with such strange hardness that he became a homeless one—it had to be so, but it chilled my feeling. Everything great that I had formerly loved, even when shrouded in majesty, was yet happily and comfortably linked with my being by ties of human need.”

Here you see the New Testament represented as it had to be if it was to provide satisfaction to such a typical person of the nineteenth century. Thus she says that everything great that she had formerly loved, even when shrouded in majesty, was yet happily and comfortably linked with her being by ties of human need. Because the New Testament contains a power that cannot be described in these terms, therefore, the Gospel failed to meet the needs of a person of the nineteenth century.

“When I read the letters of Goethe, of the narrow home life of Schiller, of Luther and his followers, of all the ancients back to Socrates and his scolding wife—I sense a breath of Mother Earth, from which the seed of their spirit grew, which also nourishes and uplifts mine own which is so much smaller.” Lea thus finds herself more drawn even to characters like Xanthippe than to the people of the New Testament, and this was the opinion of thousands and thousands of people in the nineteenth century.

“But this picture of a world forlorn alarms and estranges me, and I am unable to justify it by any belief that everything is guided and ordered by God.”

It is fitting, my dear friends, to ask in these grave times what is really the attitude of soul of people today with regard to the candles they burn at Christmas? For this attitude of soul is a complex of such voices as we have just examined and that could be multiplied a hundred or thousand fold. But it is not fitting in serious times to ignore and disregard the things that have been said about the greatest mystery of earthly evolution. It is much more fitting today to ask what the official representatives of the many Christian sects are able to do to check a development that has led human beings right away from an inwardly true and genuine belief in that which stands behind the lights of Christmas time. For can humanity make of such a festival anything but a lie, when the opinions just quoted from its best representatives are imposed upon that which should be perceived through the Christmas mystery as an impulse coming from the cosmos to unite itself with earthly evolution? What did the magi from the East desire when they brought divine gifts of wisdom, virtue, and immortality to the manger, after the event whose sign had appeared to them in the skies during the night between December 24 and 25 in the first year of our era? What was it these wise men from the East wished to do? They wanted, by this act, to furnish direct historical proof that they had grasped the fact that, from this time onward, those powers who had hitherto radiated their forces down to earth from the cosmos were no longer accessible to man in the old way—that is, by gazing into the skies, by study of the starry constellations. They wished to show that man must now begin to give attention to the events of historical evolution, to social development, to the manners and customs of humanity itself. They wished to show that Christ had descended from heavenly regions where the sun shines in the constellation of Virgo, a region from which all the varied powers of the starry constellations proceed that enable the microcosm to appear as a copy of the macrocosm. They wished to show that this spirit now enters directly into earthly evolution, that earthly evolution can henceforth be understood only by inner wisdom, in the same way as the starry constellations were formerly understood. This was what the magi wished to show, and of this fact the humanity of today must ever be aware.

People of today tend to regard history as though the earlier were invariably the cause of the latter, as though in order to understand the events of the years 1914 to 1917 we need simply go back to 1913, 1912, 1911, and so on; historical development is regarded in the same way as evolution in nature, in which we can proceed from effect to impulse and in the impulse find the cause. From this method of thinking, that fable convenue which we call history has arisen, with which the youth of today are being inoculated to their detriment.

True Christianity, especially a reverent and sincere insight into the mysteries of Christmas and Easter, provides a sharp protest against this natural scientific caricature of world history. Christianity has brought cosmic mysteries into association with the course of the year; on December 24 and 25 it celebrates a memory of the original constellation of the year 1, the appearance of the sun in the constellation of Virgo; this date in every year is celebrated as the Christmas festival. This is the point in time that the Christian concept has fixed for the Christmas festival. The Easter festival is also established each year by taking a certain celestial arrangement, for we know that the Sunday that follows the first full moon after the vernal equinox is the chosen day, though the materialistic outlook of the present time is responsible for recent objections to this arrangement.

To those who wish, reverently and sincerely, to tune their thoughts in harmony with the Mystery of Golgotha, the period between Christmas and Easter is seen as a picture of the thirty-three years of Christ's life on earth. Previous to the Mystery of Golgotha, with which I include the mystery of Christmas, the magi studied the heavens when they wished to investigate the secrets of human evolution or any other mysterious event. They studied the constellations, and the relative positions of the heavenly bodies revealed to them the nature of events taking place upon earth. But at that moment in which they became aware of the important event that was happening on earth, by the sign given to them through the position of the sun in Virgo on December 24 and 25, they said, “From this time onward the heavenly constellations themselves will be directly revealed in human affairs on the earth.”

Can the starry constellations be perceived in human affairs? My dear friends, this perception is now demanded of us, the ability to read what is revealed through the wonderful key that is given us in the mysteries of the Christian year, which are the epitome of all the mysteries of the year of other peoples and times. The time interval between Christmas and Easter is to be understood as consisting of thirty-three years. This is the key. What does this mean? That the Christmas festival celebrated this year belongs to the Easter festival that follows thirty-three years later, while the Easter festival we celebrate this year belongs to the Christmas of 1884. In 1884 humanity celebrated a Christmas festival that really belongs to the Easter of this year (1917), and the Christmas festival we celebrate this year belongs, not to the Easter of next spring but to the one thirty-three years hence (1950). According to our reckoning, this period—thirty-three years—is the period of a human generation, thus a complete generation of humanity must elapse between Christmas festivals and the Easter festivals that are connected with them. This is the key, my dear friends, for reading the new astrology, in which attention is directed to the stars that shine within the historical evolution of humanity itself.

How can this be fulfilled? It can be fulfilled by human beings using the Christmas festival in order to realize that events happening at approximately the present time (we can only say approximately in such matters) refer back in their historical connections in such a way that we are able to perceive their birthdays or beginnings in the events of thirty-three years ago, and that events of today also provide a birthday or beginning for events that will ripen to fruition in the course of the next thirty-three years. Personal karma rules in our individual lives. In this field each one is responsible for himself; here he must endure whatever lies in his karma and must expect a direct karmic connection between past events and their subsequent consequences.

How do things stand, however, with regard to historical associations? Historical connections at the present time are of such a nature that we can neither perceive nor understand the real significance of any event that is taking place today unless we refer back to the time of its corresponding Christmas year, that is 1884 in this case. For the year 1914 we must therefore look back to 1881. All the actions of earlier generations, all the impulses with their combined activity, poured into the stream of historic evolution, have a life cycle of thirty-three years. Then comes its Easter time, the time of resurrection. When was the seed planted whose Easter time was experienced by man in 1914 and after? It was planted thirty-three years before.

Connections that reach over intervals of thirty-three years are essential for an understanding of the time rhythms of historic evolution, and a time must come when people in the holy time that begins with Christmas Eve will say to themselves, “What I do now will continue to work on, but will arise as outer fact or deed (not in a personal but in a historic sense) only after thirty-three years. Furthermore, I can understand what is happening now in the events of the outer world only by looking back across the thirty-three years of time needed for its fulfillment.”

When, at the beginning of the 1880's, the insurrection of the Mohammedan prophet, the Mahdi, resulted in the extension of English rule in Egypt, when at about the same time a war arose through French influence between greater India and China over European spheres of control, when the Congo Conference was being held, and other events of a like nature were taking place—study everything, my dear friends, that has now reached its thirty-three years fulfillment. It was then that the seeds were sown that have ripened into the events of today. At that time the question should have been asked: what do the Christmas events of this year promise for the Easter fulfillment thirty-three years hence? For, my dear friends, all things in historic evolution arise transfigured after thirty-three years, as from a grave, by virtue of a power connected with the holiest of all redemptions: the Mystery of Golgotha.

It does not suffice, however, to sentimentalize about the Mystery of Golgotha. An understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha demands the highest powers of wisdom of which the human being is capable. It must be experienced by the deepest forces that can stir the soul of man. When he searches its depths for the light kindled by wisdom, when he does not merely speak of love but is enflamed by it through the union of his soul with the cosmic soul that streams and pulses through this turning point of time, only then does he acquire insight and understanding into the mysteries of existence. In days of old the wise men who sought for guidance in the conduct of affairs of human beings asked knowledge of the stars, and the stars gave an answer; so, today, those who wish to act wisely in guiding the social life of humanity must give heed to the stars that rise and set in the course of historic evolution. Just as we calculate the cyclic rotations of celestial bodies, so must we learn to calculate the cyclic rotations of historic events by means of a true science of history. The time-cycles of history can be measured by the interval that extends from Christmas to the Easter thirty-three years ahead, and the spirits of these time-cycles regulate that element in which the human soul lives and weaves in so far as it is not a mere personal being but is part of the warp and woof of historic evolution.

When we meditate on the mystery of Christmas, we do so most effectively if we acquire a knowledge of those secrets of life that ought to be revealed in this age in order to enrich the stream of Christian tradition concerning the Mystery of Golgotha and the inner meaning of the Christmas mystery. Christ spoke to humanity in these words, “Lo! I am with you always even to the end of the world.” Those, however, who today call themselves His disciples often say that; though the revelations from spiritual worlds were certainly there when Jesus Christ was living on earth, they have now ceased, and they regard as blasphemous anyone who declares that wonderful revelations can still come to us from the spiritual world. Thus official Christianity has become, in many respects, an actual hindrance to the further development of Christianity.

What has remained, however? The holy symbols, one of the holiest of which is portrayed in the Christmas mystery—these constitute in themselves a living protest against that suppression of true Christianity that is too often practiced by the official churches.

The spiritual science we seek to express through anthroposophy desires, among other things, to proclaim the great significance of the Mystery of Golgotha and the mystery of Christmas. It is also its task to bear witness to that which gives to earth its meaning, and to human life its significance. Since the Christmas tree, which is but a few centuries old, has now become the symbol of the Christmas festival, then, my dear friends, those who stand under the Christmas tree should ask themselves this question, “Is the saying true for us that is written by the testimony of history above the Christmas tree: Et incarnatus est de spiritu sancto ex Maria virgine? Is this saying true for us?” To realize its truth requires spiritual knowledge. No physical scientist can give answer to the questions of the virgin birth and the resurrection; on the contrary, every scientist must needs deny both events. Such events can only be understood when viewed from a plane of existence in which neither birth nor death plays the important part they do in the physical world. Just as Christ Jesus passed through death in such a way as to make death an illusion and resurrection the reality—this is the content of the Easter mystery—so did Christ Jesus pass through birth in such a way as to render birth an illusion and “transformation of being” within the spiritual world the reality, for in the spiritual world there is neither birth nor death, only changes of condition, only metamorphoses. Not until humanity is prepared to look up to that world in which birth and death both lose their physical meaning will the Christmas and Easter festivals regain their true import and sanctity.

Then, and only then, my dear friends, will our hearts and souls be filled with inner warmth of tone, fortified by which we shall be able again to speak to our little ones, to speak to them even in earliest childhood, of that Child who was laid in the manger, and of the three wise men who brought to him their gifts of wisdom, virtue, and immortality. We must be able to speak of these things to children, for what we say to the child about the Christmas mystery will be celebrated by him as an Easter festival, it will reappear in his life when he has lived through thirty-three years. For in historical evolution the responsibilities of humanity are such that one generation can only express as Christmas impulse those forces that the next generation will experience as Easter impulse. If we could realize this with consciousness, my dear friends, one generation would think of its successor in the following way: in the Christmas star I teach you to receive into your soul as truth that which will arise as the Easter star after thirty-three years. If we were conscious of this connection of the present generation and its successor, each one of us could say, “I have received an impulse for work that extends far beyond the limits of the day, for the period between Christmas and Easter is not merely the weeks that lie between these festivals but is really a period of thirty-three years; this is the true cycle of an impulse that I have implanted in the soul of a child as a Christmas impulse, and that after thirty-three years will arise again as an Easter impulse.”

Such things, my dear friends, should not encourage pride in mere theoretical knowledge; they achieve value only when they are expressed in practical deeds, when our souls become so filled with conviction concerning them that we can do nothing but to act according to their light. Only then is the soul filled with love for the great being for whom the deeds, in this light, are done; then this love becomes a concrete thing, filled with cosmic warmth, and quite distinct from that sentimental affectation that we find today on all lips but that has led, in these catastrophic times, to some of the greatest impulses of hatred among humanity. Those who for so long have talked about love have no further right to speak of it when it has turned to hate; to such persons falls rather the duty of asking themselves, “What have we neglected in our talk of love, of Christmas love, that out of it deeds of hatred have developed?” Humanity, however, must also ask, “What must we seek in the spiritual world in order to find that which is lost, that love that rules and lives warmingly in all beings but is only real love when it wells up from a vital understanding of life.”

To love another is to understand him; love does not mean filling one's heart with egotistical warmth that overflows in sentimental speeches; to love means to comprehend the being for whom we should do things, to understand not merely with the intellect but through our innermost being, to understand with the full nature and essence of our human being.

That such a love, springing from deepest spiritual understanding, may be able to find its place in human life, that desire and will should exist to cherish such love, may still be possible in these difficult times for him who is willing to tread again the path of the magi to the manger. He may say to himself, “Just as the wise men from the East sought understanding to find the way, the way of love, to the manger, so will I seek the way that will open my eyes to the light in which the true deeds of human love are performed. Just as the magi surrendered their faith in the authority of the starry heavens, added to their knowledge of the stars their sacrifice of this knowledge, and brought the union of immortality with this stellar wisdom to the Christ Child on that Christmas night, so must humanity in these later times bring its deepest impulses of soul as sacrifice to that being for whom the Christmas festival stands as the yearly symbol. Inspired by such a consciousness, the Christmas festival will again be celebrated by humanity sincerely and truly. Its celebration then will express not a denial but a knowledge of that being for whom the Christmas candles are lit.”

As you know from the spirit of our anthroposophical work over the years, our work is not based on a striving for sensations. Instead, we want to calmly examine the facts of spiritual life that are important in our lives. It is not by speaking of what lies on the surface of daily life that we serve our age spiritually, but by gaining knowledge of life's larger connections. Our individual lives are closely connected with the great events of existence, and only when we judge our own life on the basis of the greatest phenomena of life can we assess it rightly. That is why we have tried in the last three years to deepen our fundamental views in relation to universal questions. We spent the first four years in this first seven-year cycle in the existence of the German Section of the Theosophical Society establishing our views and insights. From what you heard in the various lecture cycles, you will have realized that the lectures on the Gospels are part of the work of these last three years. Those lectures not only helped us understand the contents of the Gospels, but also showed what we can learn from them about human nature. Today, we will talk more about how the Gospels can be applied to our personal lives.

Conventional science is less and less willing to consider the Gospels historical documents about the greatest individuality ever to intervene in human evolution, Christ Jesus. The attitude toward the Gospels in the first Christian centuries and even in the Middle Ages was quite different from what it has become in modern times. These days, the Gospels are indeed seen as four mutually contradictory documents, and nothing seems more natural than to ask how they can be considered historical records when they contradict each other as much as they do in giving an account of what happened in Palestine at the beginning of our era.

Now, if people did not love to overlook the most important things, their thinking would inevitably have to lead them to the following realization. They would have to admit that it does not really take much to see that the Gospels contradict each other in our modern sense of the word. One could say that even a child can see the contradictions. But we could also add that nowadays the Gospels are available to everybody, and everybody can read them. However, before the invention of printing, they were not available to all people but were read only by a few people. These few were spiritual leaders. The content of the gospels was then taught to other people in a way they could understand. Now we have to ask if those few people who read the gospels, the spiritual leaders, were really such tremendous fools that they did not realize what every child can see these days, namely, that the gospels contradict each other.

When we investigate this matter, we soon notice that people's whole world of feeling toward the Gospels was different in the past. Today it is the critical intellect, trained in outer sensory reality, that has a field day with the Gospels. It has no problem at all finding the intellectual contradictions there; this is, after all, child's play.

How, then, did those leaders of spiritual life, who were reading the Gospels, come to terms with these contradictions? On account of the Gospels, people in ancient times had a tremendous reverence we can't even imagine today for the great Christ event. Indeed they felt that precisely because they had four Gospels they should revere and appreciate the Christ event all the more. This is because these early readers of the Gospels thought quite differently than we do today. Modern readers are no cleverer than somebody who photographs a bouquet of flowers from one angle. Then he has a picture of the bouquet and shows it around. People look at it and remember the picture, thinking they now have a clear idea of what the bouquet looked like. But then someone takes a picture of the same bouquet from another angle and gets quite a different picture. He also shows it to everyone but now people say it cannot possibly be the same bouquet because the two photographs contradict each other. And if the bouquet is photographed from all four sides, the four pictures will not be at all similar; yet they will be four pictures of the same thing.

This was how the early readers of the four Gospels felt. They believed the four Gospels are four different representations of one event, each taken from another point of view. They provide a complete picture of the event precisely because they are not alike. It is only when all four sides are combined that a complete idea of the event in Palestine emerges. People back then felt they had to look up to the Christ event with even more humility precisely because it was presented from four perspectives, for clearly this event is so great that it cannot be understood if it is presented from only one point of view. They felt they had to be grateful to have four Gospels describing this event from four points of view. However, they saw they had to understand how these four different points of view originated. Then they could develop an idea of what the individual can derive from the four Gospels.

What we call the Christ event is a tremendous, mighty event in the spiritual evolution of humanity. What place does that event in Palestine have in this evolution? We can say that everything humanity had previously experienced spiritually merged in this event in Palestine and from then on continued in one common stream. For example, the ancient Hebrew teaching, as it is recorded in the Old Testament, is one part of this common stream. It flowed in as the event in Palestine took place. Another stream proceeded from Zarathustra. This, too, entered into Christianity, which then flowed through the world as a kind of mainstream. Likewise, what we might call the oriental spiritual stream, which found its most significant expression in Gautama Buddha, also joined the one great mainstream. All these various streams are now contained in Christianity. You do not learn what Buddhism is nowadays from people who warm over the teachings of Buddha from 600 B.C. Those teachings have flowed into Christianity. Likewise, you do not learn what Zarathustrianism really is from people who want to explain its nature on the basis of ancient Persian documents. For the one who taught in ancient Persia what was recorded in these ancient documents has evolved further. He has let his contribution to the spiritual life of humanity flow into Christianity, and we will have to look for it there.

To get a clear picture of the facts, let us consider how these three streams, Buddhism, Zarathustrianism, and the ancient Judaic stream, flowed into Christianity. To understand how Zarathustrianism flowed in, we should remember that the individuality we call Zarathustra was the great teacher of the second post-Atlantean epoch who first taught among the ancient Persians and was then incarnated again and again. Through each incarnation he ascended higher and higher, and finally he appeared around 600 B.C. as a contemporary of Buddha. He appeared in the secret schools of the ancient Chaldean-Babylonian culture and was the teacher of Pythagoras, who had gone to Chaldea to perfect himself. Then this Zarathustra, who in 600 B.C. was known as Zarathas or Nazarathos, was reborn at the beginning of our era to parents called Joseph and Mary, as described in Saint Matthew's Gospel. This child of Joseph and Mary, the so-called Bethlehem parents, was one of the two Jesus children born at the beginning of our era. Thus, we see the individuality who was the bearer of Zarathustrianism—one of the significant streams mentioned above—transplanted to ancient Palestine.

This was not the only spiritual stream that was to revive and in a new form flow on in Christianity. Many different things had to come together to bring this about. For instance, Zarathustra had to be born in a body so organized that it was possible for him to develop further the faculties he had acquired through ascending from incarnation to incarnation. We must keep in mind that no matter how highly developed an individuality is, if it descends into an unsuitable body because it cannot find a suitable one, this individuality cannot express his or her soul-spiritual faculties because it lacks the necessary physical instruments. It takes a certain kind of brain to express such faculties as Zarathustra possessed. That is, he had to be born into a body that had inherited the qualities making it an appropriate instrument for such faculties. Thus, the Jesus child described in Saint Matthew's Gospel had to have a high soul-spiritual organization in his reincarnating I, which would allow him to have the powerful effect that was necessary, and he also had to have a perfect physical organization, which was inherited, for his soul to be born into. Zarathustra had to find a suitable physical brain.

This perfectly adapted physical organization was the contribution of the ancient Hebrews to Christianity. A suitable physical body for Zarathustra, a body with the most perfect imaginable physical instruments, had to be created in the Hebrew people through purely physical heredity. This had to be prepared far back in the past through many generations so that the right qualities were passed on and then inherited by the body that was born at the beginning of our era.

Let us look at how this life flowed into the mainstream of our present spiritual life. Just as we have seen the mission of Zarathustra in relation to Christianity, so we will now find out about the mission of the ancient Hebrews. Here I must tell you that the more spiritual-scientific research progresses, the more it has to admit that the Bible, not outer cultural history, is right. What cultural history digs up appears childish in comparison with what is written in the Bible and what only needs to be read properly to be understood. For spiritual science the Bible is more correct than historical research. For example, it is true that Judaism descended, in a sense, from a common forefather called Abraham or Abram. It is indeed absolutely correct that as we trace the generations back into the past, we come to a forefather who was endowed with very special powers by the spiritual world. What were these powers? To understand what special capabilities were given to Abraham, we must recall various things we have already spoken about here.

As we have said, when we look at ancient times, we find that people had other faculties of soul than we have today; these can be called a kind of dim clairvoyance. Back then, people could not look at the world in the self-confident, intellectual way we do, but they were able to perceive the spiritual around them, spiritual phenomena, facts, and beings. Since this seeing took place in a state of dimmed consciousness, it was like a living dream, but a dream that had a vital connection to reality. This ancient clairvoyance had to become weaker so people could develop our modern way of thinking and our intellectual culture.

Human evolution is a kind of education through which the various faculties are gradually developed. For example, in our present way of seeing, we perceive, let's say, a flower without seeing its astral body winding all around it. The ancients, however, still saw the flower and its astral body. We had to be trained in our modern perception that sees objects with the sharp contours of the intellect; this training required that the ancient clairvoyance vanish. Now, there is a certain law that prevails in spiritual evolution. According to this law, every capacity humanity acquires must have its beginning in one individuality. Faculties that are to become common to a large number of people must first appear in one person. Thus, the faculties having to do with reasoning not related to clairvoyance, with evaluating the world by measure, number, and weight—faculties that aim not at seeing into the spiritual world but at understanding sensory phenomena—were first implanted by the spiritual world in the individuality known as Abraham or Abram. He was chosen to be the first to develop the powers that are especially bound to the physical brain. It is not for nothing that Abraham is called the discoverer of arithmetic, that is, of the capability to quantify the world and calculate it according to measure and number. In a sense, he was the first of those in whose soul the ancient dreamy clairvoyance was extinguished and whose brain was prepared so that the faculty using the brain as instrument could become effective. Thus, the mission given to Abraham was a significant and profound one.

Now this faculty that had been given to Abraham in rudimentary form was to become more and more perfect. As you can imagine, everything in the world must develop, and the ability to perceive the world through the physical brain was no exception. This faculty was developed through being transmitted from Abraham to the succeeding generations. However, something different had to happen in this case than is usual when a mission is passed on from the older generation to the younger. After all, other missions, especially the greatest ones, were not connected to a physical instrument, the physical brain.

For example, let us look at Zarathustra. He gave his disciples a higher, more advanced clairvoyant vision than other people had. It was not bound to a physical instrument but was transmitted from teacher to pupil. The pupil then in turn became a teacher and gave this higher clairvoyant vision to his pupils, and so on. Abraham's mission, however, was not a teaching or method of clairvoyant perception but something bound to the brain. Thus, it could be transmitted to later generations only through physical inheritance. The mission given to Abraham depended on being transmitted physically from one generation to the next, that is, the perfected organization of Abraham's brain had to be inherited by his descendants generation after generation. Because Abraham's mission consisted in perfecting the physical brain, the latter became more and more perfect from generation to generation. In other words, the mission of Abraham depended on procreation for its gradual perfection in the course of physical evolution.

There was yet something else connected with this contribution of the ancient Hebrew people, and we will understand what it was when we consider people in other civilizations who had dim clairvoyance. We can ask how they received what was most important to them, what they revered most in all the world. They received it as inspirations that lit up within them. They did not have to do research as we do. Nowadays, we establish sciences by investigating the world outside us, by experimenting and deducing laws from the external facts. The ancients did not gain their knowledge in this way; rather, it lit up within them as an inspiration like a flash of lightning. They received their knowledge in their inner being; their souls had to give birth to it within them. They had to turn their gaze away from the outer world in order to allow the highest truths to blossom forth within them as inspirations.

This was to become different for those who derived their mission from Abraham. Abraham had to bring to humanity precisely the results of observation and reasoning. When people in those civilizations that were built on ancient clairvoyance looked up to the highest, they felt, “I am grateful to the God who reveals himself to me within me. I turn my gaze away from the outer world, and the Godhead is most present to me when, without looking at the outside world, I let his inspirations light up within me.”

However, the descendants of Abraham were to renounce inspirations coming from within themselves and prepare themselves to turn their gaze to the world around them. They were to observe what is revealed in air and water, in mountain and plain, and in the starry world, and to ponder how all things exist side by side. They were to connect external things with one another and to gain an all-embracing thought from this. When they condensed what they saw in the outer world into one single thought, they called what the outer world told them Yahweh or Jehovah. They were to receive the highest through a revelation that speaks through the outer world.

In contrast to what other peoples were to contribute, the mission of the Abrahamic people was to give humanity what came as revelation from outside. Therefore, the instrument of spiritual life had to be inherited so that its organization was appropriate for the revelations from outside, just as earlier the inner powers of soul had to be adapted to the revelations from within.

Let us look at what happened when the clairvoyants of ancient times yielded to revelations from within themselves. They turned their gaze away from the outer world because what was revealed there could tell them nothing about the spiritual world. They even turned their gaze away from the sun and stars and listened only to what was within. There, a great inspiration about the secrets of the world was revealed, and they had a picture of the structure of the cosmos. What these ancient clairvoyants knew about the stars and their movements, about the laws of the starry world, and about the spiritual worlds was not acquired through external observation. Rather, the ancients knew something about Mars, Saturn, and so on because they had revealed themselves within these people. The laws of the universe, which are inscribed in the stars, were also inscribed within the human soul and revealed themselves there in inspirations. Just as the laws of the universe, which rule the stars, were revealed in the soul, so the laws that rule the world were now to be revealed to the Abrahamic people through outer reasoning and deduction—that is, those laws had to be grasped through outer revelation.

For this purpose, heredity had to be guided in such a way that the brain could acquire the qualities enabling it to perceive the right relationships between things. This wonderful lawfulness was implanted into the predispositions transmitted to Abraham, predispositions that developed through the generations in such a way that their organization corresponds to the great cosmic laws. The brain had to be transmitted so that its inner capabilities and its structure developed like the laws of numbers in the stars in the universe. This is why Jehovah said to Abraham, “You will see generations descend from you that will be ordered and arranged in accordance with the numbers of the stars in the heavens.” The generations following Abraham were to be arranged in harmonious numerical relationships just as the stars in the sky are ordered in harmonious relations. In other words, these generations were to bear within them laws that are like the laws of the stars in the heavens.

In the heavens, there are twelve constellations. An image of this was to appear in the twelve tribes of descendants of Abraham so that the faculties that were implanted in rudimentary form in Abraham could be carried down through the generations. In the organic structure of this people, developing further from age to age, an image was to be created of number and measure in the heavens. In one Bible translation this is rendered as, “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore.” In truth, however, the passage should read, “Your descendants shall be grouped regularly in their blood relationships so that their arrangement is an image of the laws of the stars in the heavens.” The Bible is profound, but the way it is presented these days is colored by the modern view of the world. Thus, we read, “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore,” while a true translation would be, “Your descendants shall be so regularly grouped that, for example, twelve tribes will arise that correspond to the twelve constellations.”

Thus, the individual characteristics had to express that the Abrahamic people was to realize that their mission was a gift from outside, not something that came to life within them. They had to know that what they have to bring to the world is given to them from the outside. The Bible wonderfully expresses that Abraham's mission comes to him from outside in contrast to the old revelations that were given from within. What was this mission? Abraham's mission was to provide what flows through the blood up to the time of Christ Jesus. The entire spirituality of a certain stream had to be placed into this. It was to work as if it came as a gift from outside. Abraham had to give to the world the ancient Hebrew people. That was his mission.

If this people was to be in keeping with this mission, it had to be given to Abraham as a gift from outside. Abraham had a son, Isaac, and he was asked to sacrifice this son, as the Bible tells us. As Abraham was about to carry out the sacrifice, his son was given back to him by Jehovah. What was Abraham given there? The entire Hebrew people descended from Isaac. If Isaac had been sacrificed, it would not have come into being. Thus, the whole Hebrew people was given to Abraham as a gift. The sparing of Isaac wonderfully expresses the nature of this gift. It was Abraham's mission to father the Hebrew people, and with Isaac he received it as a gift from Jehovah.

This is how profound the stories in the Bible are; all of them correspond in their impressive details to the inner character of the progressive development of humanity. The Old Testament Hebrews gradually had to relinquish the ancient clairvoyance that continued within the other civilizations. This clairvoyance was connected to faculties coming from the spiritual world, which were designated according to their nature by expressions taken from the names for the constellations. The last faculty to be given up in exchange for the gift of the Hebrew people was connected with the sign of the Ram. Therefore, a ram was sacrificed in place of Isaac. This is the external expression of the sacrifice of the last clairvoyant power, making it possible for Abraham to receive the Hebrew people as a gift. The Hebrews were chosen to develop the faculties for observation of the outer world. Nevertheless, every new development contains also atavistic remnants of earlier things. That is why everything that was not purely in the blood and still recalled ancient clairvoyance had to be excluded for the sake of the transmission of the new outer-directed faculties. Thus, the Hebrews always had to exclude what came as an inheritance from other peoples.

We come now to a subject that is difficult to discuss because it contains a truth far removed from modern thinking. Nevertheless, it is a truth, and those who have worked for a while in anthroposophical groups may be able to accept a truth that is foreign to the conventional modern thinking. We must be aware that certain classes of people in ancient times retained their earlier faculties into later ages, especially faculties related to knowing. Clairvoyant powers lived in human souls, and people were closely connected with spiritual beings who revealed themselves in their souls. In certain people, who were the products of the decline of these ancient times, there developed ultimately a lower form of this connection to the spiritual world around them. While the actual clairvoyants were connected with the whole universe through spiritual intuition and inspiration, those who were part of the process of decline and who developed this connection to the spiritual in a phase of decadence were actually lower types of people. They were not independent because their I was undeveloped, and at the same time their clairvoyant faculties were already declining. Such individuals appeared throughout history, and in them we can see the relationship between certain physical organs and the clairvoyant organs.

Now we arrive at the truth that will sound strange to you. What we call ancient clairvoyance, this lighting up of the cosmic secrets within human souls, had to enter the soul somehow. We have to picture this as streams flowing into human beings. The ancients did not perceive them, but when these streams had occurred and lit up within them, people perceived them as their inspirations. In other words, certain streams flowed into people from their environment; in later periods these streams were transformed. In the distant past, these streams were purely spiritual, and clairvoyants could perceive them as purely astral-etheric streams. But later these purely spiritual streams dried up, as it were, and condensed to etheric-physical streams. What became of them? They developed into hair. Our hair is the result of these ancient streams. The hair on our body was formerly spiritual streams that flowed from outside into human beings. Our hair is nothing else but dried up astral-etheric streams.

Such facts are preserved only where the old truths have been retained externally in writing or through tradition. In Hebrew the characters for the words “hair” and “light” are approximately the same because people were conscious of the kinship between the light streaming in astrally and hair. In general, the greatest truths are contained in ancient Hebrew literature in the words themselves.

So, we can say human evolution is progressive. However, in those people whose ancient faculties were declining the incoming streams changed and dried up, but no new faculties appeared to take their place. Those people were connected with the new in an old way, yet unconnected because the streams were dried up. Such people were very hairy, while those who developed further were less hairy because new powers replaced those that later condensed into hair.

It will take a long time for science to arrive at these significant truths. Nevertheless, they can be found in the Bible. The Bible is far wiser than our science, which is still at the stage of a child beginning to learn his ABC's. Read the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob was the one who progressed a step further and developed the new faculty; Esau, on the other hand, remained at an earlier stage, and compared to Jacob he was a simpleton. When they were presented to their father Isaac, their mother had covered Jacob with false hair to make Isaac confuse his younger son with Esau. This shows us that the Old Testament Hebrews still had retained something that was inherited from other cultures and that had to be discarded. Esau is cast out, and what was to live on as sense-based reasoning is transmitted through Jacob. Here, what had remained in a retarded form was expelled in Esau. Similarly, the ancient clairvoyant faculties, an atavistic inheritance, appeared in Joseph, who was consequently expelled by his brothers to Egypt. Joseph had dreams through which he could interpret the world—this faculty was not to be developed in the mission of the Abrahamic people. Therefore, Joseph was cast out and had to go to Egypt.

There we see how a stream evolved in the Hebrew people that is built on the blood relationships of generations and from which the remnants of the old inheritance are gradually expelled. It was the special faculty of the ancient Hebrews to turn what is inherited down through the generations into a more and more perfect instrument so that finally a body could be produced that could be the instrument for Christ who would incarnate in it. If the Hebrews could no longer receive revelations from within, they had to receive them from without. They had to receive through external revelation even those things other peoples received through direct inspiration. That is, the Jews, led by Joseph, had to go to a people that still possessed the old inspiration. There, Joseph was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries, and the Jews attained through external means the knowledge they needed about the spiritual worlds. They even received their moral laws from the outside rather than as something lighting up within them. After they had assimilated what they had to take in from outside, they returned to Palestine.

We must now show how the Hebrews gradually developed from generation to generation so that finally the body of Jesus could be produced, and the ancient Hebrew stream flow into Christianity. Remember our discussion of the development of rudimentary characteristics in individuals. The life of an individual can be divided into periods of seven years. The first period, in which the physical body simply builds its forms, extends from birth to the change of teeth at the age of seven. The second period, in which the etheric body is active in growth and forming, continues until puberty. The forms are defined until the age of seven and the already-defined forms are then enlarged. From fourteen to twenty-one the astral body is especially predominant, and at twenty-one the true I is born and becomes independent. The life of the individual runs its course in certain periods until the birth of the human I.

In the same way the gifts of the people that was to provide a body for the most perfect I had to develop gradually. What takes place over years in an individual, however, develops in a people over generations. Each successive generation must further develop the characteristics of the preceding one. To explain the occult reasons for this would lead us too far afield, but you might recall a quite ordinary phenomenon. Just remember that certain qualities are inherited not directly, but skip a generation. For example, it is the grandson who resembles the grandfather in those characteristics. It was the same in the inheritance of qualities in successive generations of the Hebrews; every other generation was skipped.

What is one period of seven years in an individual's life corresponds in the successive generations of a people to two periods or fourteen generations. We can therefore say the Hebrews developed in twice seven or fourteen generations, which corresponds to the period from birth to the change of teeth in the individual. The following period corresponds to that between the change of teeth and puberty and again comprises twice seven generations. A third period of twice seven generations corresponds to the years between fourteen and twenty-one, when the astral body is especially prominent. It was then possible for the I to be born in the Hebrew people after three times twice seven or three times fourteen, that is, forty-two generations.

To describe the body that became Zarathustra's instrument, I had to show how the seed given to Abraham developed through thrice fourteen generations so that the I could be born, just as in the individual the I is born into the threefold corporeality after thrice seven years. The writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel shows this. He describes thrice fourteen generations—the generations from Abraham to David, from David to the Babylonian Captivity, and from the Babylonian Captivity to the birth of Jesus. Here, from the profundity of knowledge Saint Matthew's Gospel points to the mission of the Hebrews, showing how the forces were gradually developed that made it possible for the perfect I attained by Zarathustra to be born in a body produced by this people.

Looking at the destiny of the Hebrews, we find that the Babylonian Captivity occurred at the period when the individual, after the age of fourteen, prepares for life, when the hopes of youth to be realized later take root. The Babylonian Captivity was the time when the astral body of the Hebrews developed, and what gives this astral body its impulse in the final fourteen generations of the forty-two was implanted into it then. That is why the Hebrews were led into the Babylonian Captivity where, six hundred years before our era, Zarathas or Nazarathos was incarnated as the teacher in the Mystery schools of the Babylonians. There, the most prominent Hebrew leaders came in contact with Zarathas, the great teacher of that era. Zarathas joined them and became their teacher. From him the Hebrew leaders received the impulse that, in their last fourteen generations, prepared them for the birth of Jesus.

History as we know it then unfolded, and we see the writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel take into account a law in the spiritual sphere that will be recognized more and more as significant for all life. This is the law that whatever has happened earlier is repeated at a higher stage. This is expressed in science in a somewhat distorted form in the axiom that what occurs at a lower stage of the species throughout long epochs is repeated in brief in each individual. The writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel shows this in a magnificent way by saying that the I of Zarathustra was to incarnate in a body that was gradually developed within the Abrahamic people.

Abraham proceeded from Ur in Chaldea, the place where Babylonian civilization originated, through Asia Minor to Palestine. Through the dreams of Joseph, his descendants were led farther south to Egypt, and after they had received the Egyptian impulse, they returned to Canaan. This was the fate of the whole people. First, they were led through Canaan to Egypt, and then back again to Canaan. This fate of the whole people was to be repeated in brief. After all that had originated in Abraham had been developed, after the sheaths had been prepared, Zarathustra's I again took Chaldea as its point of departure. His spirit was connected with Chaldea, and in his last incarnation he was the Mystery teacher there.

What path does Zarathustra's soul take when it incarnates in Bethlehem? He had remained connected with the Magi, who had been initiated in the Chaldean Mystery schools. They remembered that they had heard him say he would reappear and that his soul, which had always been called “the golden star,” would proceed at a particular time to Bethlehem. When the time came, they followed the path his soul took, thus repeating the path of the Old Testament Hebrews. As Abraham traveled the road to Canaan, so this star, the soul of Zarathustra, also followed it. The three Magi followed the star of Zarathustra, and he led them to the place where he was born into the body from the Abrahamic people that was destined for him. Thus, the I of Zarathustra repeated in spirit the path Abraham had taken to Palestine.

The Old Testament Hebrews then had to seek the way to Egypt. They were led there by Joseph's dreams. Now the I that was born in the Jesus-child of Bethlehem was led through the dreams of another Joseph to Egypt along the same path the Abrahamic people had followed earlier. Zarathustra's I repeated in Jesus' body the ancient Hebrews' destiny, going first to Egypt and then returning to Palestine. Here, we have a recapitulation in spirit through the I of Zarathustra, reflecting the earlier fate of the Hebrews.

Based on his knowledge of the spiritual law that what appears at a higher stage is a brief repetition of what has occurred earlier, the writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel faithfully describes all this. How profoundly these Gospels record the event that inaugurated our era! That event is so great that the four evangelists found that each of them could only describe it from his own standpoint. Each of them has described this event according to his own limited powers. When we see someone from one of four sides, we get only one picture, and only by combining mutually contradictory pictures do we get an overall idea of the person. Similarly, the writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel described what he knew through initiation about the law of thrice twice seven, the law of forty-two, and about the preparation of the body for the great I of Jesus of Nazareth. Through his initiation, the writer of this gospel knew the Mysteries according to which Jesus’ body was prepared as the mission of the Hebrews. The writer of Saint Luke's Gospel described, on the basis of his initiation, how the stream of the Buddha flowed into Christianity. The other evangelists have described the event on the basis of their initiations. The event they recorded is so profound that we must be grateful to find it described from the point of view of four initiates.

Today I just wanted to mention a few details of the spiritual origin of Christianity to show how our knowledge of the world and of humanity grows when we study this greatest of human events. I wanted to give you an idea of how deeply this event should be taken and how the Gospels really are when we know how to read them.

[The first part of the text is missing.]

When the selfless stream in two cyclic outpourings returns to its starting point and matter dissolves again, nothing has happened except that it has been enriched as it returns to its origin. It is only by taking in and overcoming the selfish stream that the selfless stream will develop such powerfully vibrant strength that it will have to go beyond itself, that is, beyond the cosmic circle which is the first encounter of the two streams. Something new will be born as selflessness disintegrates, a new region, called forth from it: para nirvana, which is negative matter, for, in contrast to matter, which is held within the cosmic circle due to attraction, it spreads outside it. It helps to understand the process if you think of a pendulum swing. The pendulum, swinging forward, will immediately swing back again, and unless there are obstacles in its way it will swing so hard that it goes beyond its starting point, just as a cart rolling forward cannot stop suddenly but must continue to roll on for some distance.

Following this preparation and the evolution of matter in stages, the material constituents for the creation of planets would be produced, but planetary life could not yet arise. Thus the Logos could not remain in para nirvana; it had to go back, and on the way back created the mahapara nirvana region. From here, the Logos had to make a sacrifice and begin the cycle through matter again, so that other life might arise—apart from itself but out of itself.

All life in manifold forms has arisen from oneness, the one Logos. The manifoldness lies hidden within it, as yet unseparated, undifferentiated. As the Logos becomes recognizable, perceiving itself as self, it emerges from the absolute, from the state of no differentiation, and creates the non-self, its mirror image, the second Logos. It ensouls this mirror reflection and gives it life; it is its third aspect, the third Logos.

The first Logos, the undifferentiated, with life and form in oneness within it, would thus have to be seen as the Father. Time began with its existence; it separated off its mirror reflection, the form, the feminine, which it filled with its life—the second Logos; and this ensoulment gave rise to the third Logos as Son, enlivened form. Thus all religions thought of their god in threefold form—as father, mother and son. Thus Uranos and Gaia, maternal earth; Chronos, time, came from her womb as son; Osiris, Isis and Horus, and so on.

The sacrifice of the Logos is: The spirit descends into matter, ensouls its mirror reflection, and with this the world of living forms is given its existence, with all of them living separate existences and going through the cycle of evolution, to be at one with the Logos again as individual entities that have reached the highest level of development, with the Logos receiving the riches of experience through them. If it had not poured itself out to give life to all these forms, there would be no independent growth and development. All movement, all genesis, would have no life of its own; it would merely move and stir according to the god’s directions.

Just as a human being is interested only in what is unknown to him, in the individual aspect of the human being, whilst anything he is able to calculate and understand leaves him indifferent, so the Logos, too, can take delight only in life that develops independently, life that comes forth from it, for which it sacrifices and gives itself.

There began the process of the evolution of matter, in which the qualities of the essence are reflected and effective, until these mirror reflections begin their own activity as separate forms, gradually making matter more and more spiritual and ensouled, until it will again be one with the entity atman, budhi, manas ... [gap]

First of all the cosmic foundation was created when the two qualities—selfishness and selflessness of the first Logos—came together. Through the second stream in this, guided by harmony, atomistic essence was created. This enveloped itself in mother substance, which was already extant, and the creation of atoms ensued.⁸⁴ These atoms, with their outer shells of varying density, step by step created the matter which could then serve the second Logos, the mirror reflection of the first, as a medium to give its mirror reflection over to it. The second Logos then flowed into this matter, which on its first, nirvana level was so subtle in consistency that it could flow through it without hindrance and without being changed. It then entered into the budhi region; here it was stopped, and even though selflessness is so strong in this region that it does not seek to hold the Logos fast in its realm, it does lay claim to it for its whole cosmos. Here the Logos’ sacrifice began; the voice, the sound came forth from it: it wanted to enliven matter with its spirit, that its thoughts should exist as independent forms. This realm, where divine thought became sound and voice,⁸⁵ in the budhi sphere, was the divine realm of the Middle Ages. Enveloped in budhi, the Logos then flowed into the mental region, which consisted of the arupa and rupa levels; the world of divine thought poured in, with exemplary ideas surging and mingling. Here the exemplary idea was created of what later would be separate entity, still resting in the Logos in the budhi sphere. This arupa level of the mental sphere was Plato’s world of ideas, the world of medieval rationality. At the arupa level these ideas assumed their first configurations. As divine genii they began their separate existence, floating and interpenetrating still, being entities of a like kind. It was the medieval realm of heaven.

These spiritual entities then entered into the astral sphere; here, enveloped in denser matter, sensation awoke from touch; only now did they feel themselves to be separate entities, sensing the separation. It was the elemental world. Following descent to the ether sphere this sensation was pushed from the inside to the outside, it swelled up, expanded and grew because of the etheric vegetative power, and was then enclosed by physical matter and crystallized, for here the selfish principle was still seeking with all its power to be set limits. Sentience is thus shut up in the mineral world, with the divine ideas sleeping in sublime peace in the virginal rock. Stone—a frozen divine thought: ‘The stones are dumb. I have put the eternal creator word into them that it may lie hidden; virginal and bashfully they hold it enclosed within them.’⁸⁶ This is an ancient druid saying, a prayer. In medieval times, ether and physical world or mineral world were called microcosm or small world.

Streaming in, the Logos surrounded itself with progressively denser vestments until it learned to define its limits firmly in rock. Stones are dumb, however, unable to reveal the eternal creator word. The rigid physical shell had to be cast off again; it remained behind in its world, whilst the crystalline forms in their soft ether vestment were able to expand, growing from the inside, that is, able to live. For life was growth; stone became plant. Ascending further the Logos also shed this ether vestment and came to the sphere of astral sensation. Here, activity developed through interaction between touch and sensory perception; sentient animal existence configured itself in a living way out of sentience and active will. It then gradually developed its organs of perception, with the impetus from outside acting inwards as sensation. The types evolved. On transition into the mental realm this sentience perceived itself, and the human level was reached with self-awareness.

From the cosmic point of view the Logos would descend most deeply into matter on streaming into the mineral world and begin its ascent on casting off the first outer vestment. From the human, anthroposophocentric point of view, which the ancient druids held, among others, the spirit resting in the chaste rock would be a sublime level of existence. Untainted by selfish intent, the stone obeys only the law of causality. For human beings on the lower mental level of development, which is where we are now, the rock would be a symbol for higher development. Going through lower kamic passions and errors we would develop to an etheric plant existence, living and growing from inside in a selflessly self-evident way, later to live in our causal body, untouched by anything external, resting in ourselves, pure spirit, just as the crystallized spirit rests enclosed in the rock.

The second Logos as mover and quickener of matter, in which it is enclosed, has only come as far as the lower mental sphere. The sentient animal has in self-awareness reached the human level of existence. It is able to relate the outside world to its individual nature, perceiving itself. Thus far, nature led and guided the human being; here it leaves him alone and in freedom. The further development of the human being now depends solely on his will. He must make himself the vessel, shedding the outer vestment of the lower mental sphere, so that he may now receive the inflow of the first Logos, just as a seed opens and waits for the impregnation without which it will not be able to grow and bear fruit.

The first Logos is the eternal principle in the universe, the unalterable law according to which the heavenly bodies move in their orbits; it is the basis of all things. Individual forms are subject to annihilation and change. We perceive colours through our ability to see that may look different to a different ability to see. The solid external object, held together in its specific form by its parts, may vanish at a particular degree of heat. Its parts may dissolve, but the law according to which it came into existence will remain; it is eternal. Thus the whole universe moves according to eternal laws. The first Logos flows in it, spread abroad. The human being must rise to it with his will. He must develop the selfless lower inner sense organ (antahkarana) in himself. In pure contemplation he must perceive this eternal, unalterable law in all that is transitory, must learn to distinguish between anything that is transitory, having assumed a particular form, and the core of his being, must take what is seen into himself as thought and guard it. He thus gradually comes to know the unreal nature of the world of phenomena. Thought becoming real to him, he gradually ascends to the arupa level, living in the world of pure thought. Multiplicity dissolves for him, merging into oneness, he feels at one with the universe. He will then have risen so high that he is able to receive the inflowing first Logos directly, as intuition. It was not a single soul, however, which thus came to the single individual. No, it was the All Soul, the soul of Plato and others in which he had a part, coming to be at one with them in his thoughts. Step by step the higher human being evolved from the kamic one.

At the turning point where the human being was thus meant to ascend in freedom, using his will, he needed guidance. In the third race of the fourth round, in the Lemurian age, the sons of manas therefore descended, letting themselves be incarnated to serve as guides. The simple process of counting, of understanding number, initiated mental development, thus separating the thinking human being from the animal which was merely sentient.

• 84. See ref. 68.
• 85. See also the two esoteric lessons given in Berlin on 18 December 1906 and Hamburg on 11 February 1907 in Aus den Inhalten der esoterischen Stunden GA 266/1. These concepts were also used in early Christian Gnosis, see G. R. S. Mead, note 81.
• 86. The formula may be found in Rudolf Steiner’s Rosicrucian and Moorish ritual. See Zur Geschichte und aus den Inhalten der erkenntniskultischen Abteilung der Esoterischen Schule 1904–1914, GA 265.

The verses in St. Mark's Gospel which we were endeavouring to elucidate in the last lecture are followed by remarkable words in many ways similar to those found in the other Gospels, although their full significance can best be studied in that of St. Mark. The words are to the effect that after the Baptism and the experiences in the ‘wilderness’, Christ Jesus went into the synagogue and taught the people there.

The sentence is usually translated: ‘And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught as one that had authority, and not as the scribes.’—To a man of the present age, however orthodox a believer in the Bible, this sentence conveys little more than that His teaching was powerful and impressive—unlike that of the scribes. But in the Greek text the sentence translated ‘as one that had authority and not as the scribes', is: ὴν γαρ διδἁσχῳv αὐτοὐς ώς ἐξουαίχν ἕχων, χαὶ οὐχ ώç οί γραμματῑç

(ēn gar didamaskōn autous hōs exusiān echōn, kai ouch hōs hoi grammateis)

If we try to grasp the meaning of this significant passage we shall be led a step further towards understanding the secrets of Christ's mission. I have already called your attention to the fact that like other genuinely inspired writings, the Gospels are not easy to understand and that to grasp their real meaning we must bring together all the thoughts and ideas about the spiritual world acquired in the course of many years. Such ideas alone can give us insight into what is meant when it is said in the Gospel that He taught in the synagogue as one of the Exousiai, as a Power and Revelation, and not as those who are here called: γραμματῑç (scribes).

To understand a passage such as this we must remind ourselves of what we have learnt about the higher, supersensible worlds. We have learnt that man, as he lives in our world, is the lowest member of a hierarchical Order, that his place is at the lowest step of the ladder of this Order. Immediately above him in the supersensible world, at the first level, are the Beings called in Christian esotericism, Angeloi, Angels. They are the supersensible Beings of the rank immediately above man, who influence his life. Above them come the Archangeloi or Archangels, then the Archai or Spirits of Personality; then the Exousiai, Dynameis and Kyriotetes, and finally the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim.

Thus above man there are nine ranks of hierarchical Beings. And we shall now try to picture how these different supersensible Beings intervene in human life.

The Angeloi are the Beings who as messengers of the spiritual world to the individual man in his life on Earth, are nearest of all to him. They exercise a perpetual influence upon the destinies of individuals on the physical plane. The Archangeloi are spiritual Beings whose activities embrace a wider sphere. They are the Beings whom we may call ‘Folk-Spirits’, who regulate and guide the affairs of whole groups of peoples. When a man of the present day speaks of a ‘Folk-Spirit’ he thinks, purely in terms of number, of so many thousands of individuals who happen to populate the same territory. But in Spiritual Science we mean by a Folk-Spirit the actual Folk-Individuality, not such and such a number of people but a real individuality just as we speak of an individuality in the case of a single man. The spiritual guidance of a whole Folk lies in the hands of the Archangelos. All these higher Beings are supersensible entities having their own spheres of activity. The Archai, Spirits of Personality or the ‘Primal Beginnings’, are again different from the Archangeloi or Folk-Spirits. If we speak of the French, the German, the English Folk-Spirit and so on, this points to different regions of the Earth. But there is something that is common to all men to-day, at least to all Western peoples, and affords them a basis for mutual understanding. In contrast to the single Folk-Spirit we speak here of the Time-Spirit: there is a Time-Spirit in the period of the Reformation, another in our own day. The Time-Spirits, the Archai, rank above the individual Folk-Spirits, and are the leaders of successive epochs.

At a still higher level we come to the Exousiai. They are supersensible Beings of an essentially different order. To form an idea of how the Beings of these still higher Hierarchies differ from the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai, let us remind ourselves that there is no essential difference between a member of one Folk and a member of a different Folk as regards his outer, physical make-up and what he eats and drinks. It cannot be said that, except as regards soul and spirit, the peoples differ essentially from each other. The guiding spiritual Beings (the Time-Spirits) of the successive epochs are concerned with things of the soul and spirit only. Man does not, however, consist only of soul and spirit. It is the human astral body that is essentially influenced by whatever is of the nature of soul and spirit. There are also denser members of man's being which do not differ greatly from each other as far as the activities of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai are concerned. But creative influences are exercised upon these denser members of man's nature by spiritual Beings belonging to ranks from that of the Exousiai upwards. Language and current modes of thought belong to the sphere of the Folk-Spirits and the Time-Spirits—Archangeloi and Archai. But men are also influenced by the light and air and climate of a particular region. One type of human being thrives below the Equator, another in the regions nearer to the North Pole. We shall not agree with a German professor of philosophy whose view, presented in a very widely read book, was that civilisations of essential importance would have to develop in the Temperate Zone because the human beings responsible for such culture would freeze at the North Pole and scorch at the South Pole! But we can certainly speak of the different effects of food upon human beings living in different climates. External conditions are by no means without influence upon the character of a people—for example, whether they live in mountain valleys or on plains. We see there how the forces of nature penetrate into and affect the whole of man's constitution. Knowing from Spiritual Science that supersensible Beings are active in all the forces of nature and work upon men through these forces, we can make a distinction between Archai and Exousiai, and say: The Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai influence man through what concerns the soul and spirit only—language, current modes of thought, ideas, and so on, but they do not work through the forces of nature; their operations do not directly affect the etheric body or the physical body, which are the lower members of man's organism.

On the other hand, spiritual Beings from the rank of the Exousiai upwards work not only upon man but also in the forces of outer nature; they are the ‘Directors’ as it were of air and light, of the different ways in which foodstuffs are produced in the kingdoms of nature. They are the Beings who hold sway in these kingdoms of nature. The phenomena of thunder and lightning, rain and sunshine, how one kind of foodstuff grows in one region, other kinds in another, in short the whole ordering of earthly conditions we ascribe to spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies higher than the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. We see the effects of the activity of the Exousiai, for example, in the light that works upon us as well as upon the plants, not only in the invisible effects which are the manifestations of the Time-Spirits.

Let us now consider what it is that civilisation gives to men, what they have to learn in order to make progress. Every individual has at his disposal what is yielded by his own epoch, but also, to a certain extent, the fruits of earlier epochs. Now it is only what derives from the lowest Hierarchies up to and including the Time-Spirits that can be preserved as history and be taught and studied as such. What streams directly from the kingdoms of nature cannot be preserved in tradition. Nevertheless, men whose powers of knowledge enable them to penetrate into the supersensible worlds can pass beyond the Time-Spirits to still higher forms of revelation. Such revelations are recognised as belonging to a realm higher than that of the Time-Spirits, as having greater weight than anything deriving from the Time-Spirits, and as affecting men in a very special way. Every rational human being should ask himself now and then whether his soul is affected more profoundly by what can be learnt from the traditions of the several peoples and Time-Spirits of historical epochs, or by a glorious sunrise, which is a direct manifestation of nature and of the supersensible worlds. Individuals may well become conscious that a sunrise in all its glory can stir the soul infinitely more deeply than all the science, the learning and the art of the ages. Suppose we have been deeply moved by the works in the Italian Galleries of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and others, and later on climb some Swiss mountain and contemplate the spectacle there presented, we shall be vividly conscious of what nature can reveal. We shall ask: Who is the greater artist: Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, or the Powers who have painted the sunrise to be seen from the Rigi?—And the answer can only be that wonderful as are the achievements of men, what comes before us as a revelation of divine-spiritual Powers is far greater.

Now when the spiritual leaders of mankind, the Initiates, appear before the world, their teachings are not based upon or drawn from tradition but flow from original sources, and their revelations are like the revelations of nature herself. What is merely repeated by others can never have an effect as powerful as that of a sunrise. Compared with what tradition has handed down of the teachings of Moses or Zarathustra and what the Time-Spirits and Folk-Spirits have communicated through forms of external culture, the effect made by nature herself is far the greater. It was only when the revelations of Moses and Zarathustra sprang from immediate experience of the supersensible worlds that their effect was as powerful as that of the revelations of nature. The wonderful thing about these original revelations to mankind is that they are like the revelations of nature herself. We should remember here that the Exousiai are the lowest Hierarchy of Beings who work in the forces and powers of nature.

What, then, was experienced by those who were gathered in the synagogue when Christ Jesus came among them? Hitherto they had been taught by the ‘Scribes’, by men who were cognisant of what the Time-Spirits and Folk-Spirits had communicated. To such teaching the people were accustomed. But now there came One who did not teach as the Scribes taught, whose words seemed like a revelation from the realm of the supersensible powers in nature, in thunder, or in lightning. Knowing that the higher the rank of the Hierarchies the greater are their powers, we can understand in all their depth these words in the Gospel of St. Mark.

If we can feel the supersensible reality behind the creations of men such as Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and others of their calibre, we can still glimpse in the relatively small number of pictures that have come down to us, something of the original inspiration. Great works of art, works of spiritual genius, are always echoes of what was originally revealed. And if we can perceive something of what Raphael, for example, expressed in his pictures, or form a living idea of the work of Zarathustra, we shall be able to hear something of what comes from the Exousiai.

But in the teachings given in the synagogues by the Scribes, that is to say, by men whose knowledge stemmed from the Folk-Spirits and Time-Spirits, there was nothing that could even faintly echo direct revelations of nature. Hence these words in St. Mark's Gospel are an indication that in men living in those days an inkling was beginning to dawn that something entirely new was speaking to them; that through this man who came among them something revealed itself which was like a power of nature herself, like one of the supersensible Powers behind the phenomena of nature. Men began gradually to divine what it was that had entered into Jesus of Nazareth and was symbolised in the Baptism by John. The people in the synagogue were very near the truth when they said: When he speaks it is as though the Exousiai were speaking, not merely the Archai, the Time-Spirits, or the Folk-Spirits.

It is only through knowledge of Spiritual Science that we shall be able again to instil a full and living content and meaning into the barren abstractions abounding in modern translations of the New Testament, and to realise what is involved when efforts are made to penetrate to the core of the Gospels. Generations must pass before there can be any prospect of fathoming, even approximately, the deep meanings which our own times can dimly surmise. Actual investigation of a great deal in the Gospels will be possible only in the future.

Fundamentally, what the writer of St. Mark's Gospel wished to present was an elaboration of the teaching of Paul, one of the first to recognise the nature and essential being of the Christ through direct supersensible perception. We must understand what Paul actually taught and what he experienced through the revelation that came to him on the road to Damascus. Although the event is described in the Bible as a sudden revelation, those conversant with the real facts know that this kind of illumination can come at any moment to one who is striving to reach the spiritual world and that as a result of his experiences he becomes a changed man. And in the case of St. Paul it is abundantly evident that through the revelation at Damascus this was what happened.

Even a superficial study of the Gospels and of the Pauline Epistles will make it clear that St. Paul regards the Event of Golgotha as the central point of the whole evolution of humanity and that he links this Event directly with what is described in the Bible as the creation of Adam, the first man. St. Paul's teaching is to somewhat the following effect: The being we must call the spiritual man, the real man, of whom in the world of maya there is only an illusory image, came down in ancient Lemurian times to this world of illusion, facing the experiences he was to undergo in the flesh during successive incarnations. He became man in the form assumed throughout the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs and in post-Atlantean times until the coming of Christ. Then came the Event of Golgotha.

Paul was unshakably convinced after his vision near Damascus that in the Event of Golgotha something occurred that was exactly comparable with the descent of man into the flesh. For therewith the impulse was given gradually to overcome those forms of earthly existence into which man had entered through Adam. Hence Paul calls the Being who appeared in the Christ, the ‘new Adam’, whom every man can draw to himself through union with Christ.

Thus from Lemurian on into pre-Christian times we have to see the gradual descent of man into matter—whether we call him Adam or by some other name. Then he was given the power and the impulse to ascend again so that he might eventually return, enriched by the fruits of earthly existence, to the original, spiritual state that had been his before he descended into matter.

Now if we are to understand the essential meaning of evolution, we must not ask: Could man not have been spared this descent into matter? Why was it necessary for him to pass through different incarnations in order to re-ascend into the state that was his at the beginning? Such questions could spring only from complete misunderstanding of the spiritual meaning of evolution. For man takes with him from Earth-existence all the fruits of his experiences and is enriched with the content of his incarnations—a content that was not previously his.

Think, hypothetically, of a man descending and passing through his first incarnation: there he learns certain things. In his second incarnation he learns more; and so on through all the incarnations. Their course, to begin with, is one of descent: man becomes more and more deeply entangled in the physical world. Then he begins an ascent and can rise to the extent to which he receives the Christ Impulse into himself. One day he will find his way again into the spiritual world; but he will then take with him whatever he was able to acquire on the Earth.

And so Paul sees in the Christ the central point of the whole process of man's earthly evolution, the power that gives him the impulse to rise into the supersensible world enriched with all the experiences of life on the Earth.

But from this standpoint, how does Paul regard the sacrifice on Golgotha, the actual Crucifixion? It is not easy to relate to our modern ideas the way in which St. Paul—and also the writer of St. Mark's Gospel—understood the sacrifice on Golgotha, this most essential fact of human evolution. Before this can be attempted we must familiarise ourselves with the thought that man as he stands before us is a Microcosm, and we must study all the implications of this fact.

Two periods of development, each very different from the other, are apparent in man's life between birth and death in every incarnation. In various ways I have already called attention to the difference between the two periods—for our study of Spiritual Science is more systematic than people usually imagine. One of these periods lies between birth and the point at which an individual's memory begins. If you follow your memories back, you reach a certain point beyond which they cease. You were already in existence then and may have heard from your parents or relatives about your doings; hence you have some knowledge of them but you yourself remember nothing beyond a certain point of time. Normal remembrance breaks off at this point, the most favourable age for which is somewhere about the third year of life. Before that point of time a child is highly impressionable. Just think how much is taken in during the first, second and third years of life; yet modern man has no remembrance at all of how the impressions were made.—Then follows the period through which the thread of memory runs continuously.

We must pay careful attention to these two periods of development for they are very important in man's life as a whole. We must observe the development of the human being closely and accurately and avoid the prejudiced views of modern science. The facts of science confirm what I have to say, but we should not attach too much weight to biased views that deviate widely from the truth. Close observation of man's development makes it evident that his life as an individual in society is conditioned by whatever forms part of the thread of memory which begins, approximately, in the third year. Within the span of this thread of memory lies every principle by which we consciously direct our life; it embraces whatever rules of conduct we consciously accept as worthy to be followed. Our Ego has no consciousness of what lies before this point; of that, nothing finds its way into the thread of our conscious life.

Thus before our conscious life begins there are certain years during which our relation with the surrounding world is quite different from what it is later.

The difference is radical. Penetrating observation of a child before the period back to which memory extends when he is older, would show that in those first years he feels himself to be within the universal, macrocosmic, spiritual life. He does not separate or isolate himself from that life but feels part and parcel of the whole environment. He even speaks of himself as others do. He does not say: ‘I want’, but, ‘John wants’. It is only later that he learns to speak of himself as ‘I’. Modern child psychologists pick holes in this explanation but the truth is not controverted by their arguments which are just evidences of their lack of insight. In his earliest years a child still feels part of the world around him; it is only at the point from which his memories begin that he gradually detaches himself from his environment as an independent being.

It can therefore be said that the principles a man may accept for the guidance of his life and the whole content of his consciousness belong to the second phase of development beginning at the point of time referred to. In the first phase he has a quite different relation to the environment; he feels much more closely connected with it. The only way to understand this thoroughly is to imagine what would happen if the form of consciousness which has produced this feeling of direct connection with the surrounding world in early childhood were to remain in later years. If that were the case human life would take a very different course. Man would not feel so isolated; even in later years he would feel himself to be an integral part, a member, of the Macrocosm, the Great World. As things are he loses his feeling of oneness with the Great World and believes himself to be isolated from it. In ordinary life this isolation comes into a man's consciousness in an abstract form only, for instance, in his egoisms, or in a tendency to shut himself off more and more within his own skin. The view that man's life is enclosed within his skin is complete nonsense. Whenever he exhales he becomes part of the outer world for the breath previously indrawn is now outside. Man's picture of himself is pure maya but his form of consciousness makes this inevitable. Human beings nowadays are neither particularly inclined nor indeed mature enough to understand karma. If, for instance, anyone gets his windows broken he is apt to take this as an offence directed against himself, and he is annoyed by it because he feels himself to be an isolated being. But were he to believe in karma he would feel related to the whole Macrocosm and would know that in point of fact it is we ourselves who have broken the windows. For in truth we are interwoven with the whole Cosmos and it is sheer nonsense to imagine that we are enclosed by our skin. But it is only in very early childhood that this feeling of oneness with the Cosmos exists; in later life it is lost at the point to which memory reaches.

It was not always so. In earlier times, by no means very long ago, the consciousness belonging to early childhood extended, in some degree at least, into the later years of a man's life. This was in the times of the ancient clairvoyance; and with it went a very different kind of thinking and a different way of expressing facts. This is an aspect of human evolution about which the student of Spiritual Science must be quite clear.

When a male child is born nowadays he is simply regarded as the son of his father and mother: and if he has no birth or baptismal certificate bearing the names of his parents to identify him as a citizen, nothing is officially known about him and in certain circumstances his very existence is questioned. To the modern mind a human being is simply the physical offspring of his father and his mother.

This was not how people thought in a past not so very far distant. Scholars and researchers to-day do not, however, know that in earlier times not only was men's thinking different but the content and implications of the words and designations used were different. Hence interpretations of ancient legends do not convey their real meaning. We are told, for instance, of Orpheus, a Greek singer. I refer to him because he belongs to the period several centuries before the rise of Christianity. We may think of him as the one responsible for the organisation of the Greek Mysteries. This fourth post-Atlantean epoch of which he was an important figure in the opening stage, was a preparation for the Christ Event and what humanity was to receive through it. Thus in Greece Orpheus was the great Preparer.

If a man of the modern age were to encounter a figure such as Orpheus, he would simply say: he is the son of such-and-such a father and such-and-such a mother—and science might possibly look for inherited characteristics. There is, for example, a bulky tome in which all the hereditary characteristics of Goethe's families are set forth in an endeavour to present him as the sum-total of those characteristics. That is by no means how people thought in the days of Orpheus. The man of flesh and his physical attributes were not what really mattered to them. The essential qualities were those that enabled Orpheus to be the leader and organiser of pre-Christian Greek culture—certainly not the physical brain or nervous system. The essential thing was the fact that he had within him—in his own field of experience—a quality derived from the supersensible world and united with the material-physical element provided by his personality. The eyes of the Greeks were directed, not to the physical figure of Orpheus descending from father and mother, perhaps also from grandfather and grandmother; this figure was more or less unessential, being merely the outer expression, the sheath. The essential element was what had descended from a supersensible source and had united with a material entity on the physical plane. Hence a Greek would have said to himself: When Orpheus is before me, the fact that he descends from a father and a mother need hardly be taken into account; what is of importance is that his soul-qualities, which have made him what he is, stem from the supersensible, from a supersensible reality which has never hitherto had anything to do with the physical plane; a physical-material element has here been able to unite with the supersensible reality in his personality.—And because the Greeks regarded a purely supersensible quality as the hallmark of Orpheus, they said he was the offspring of a Muse, the son of Calliope, not of a physical mother but of a supersensible reality which had never had any previous connection with the physical and material.

But as the son of Calliope and nothing more than that, Orpheus could have given expression only to manifestations of the supersensible world. In keeping with the nature of the age in which he lived, it was also his mission to give expression to what would be of service to physical life in that epoch. Hence he was not only a mouthpiece for the Muse, for Calliope, as in much earlier times the Rishis were merely mouthpieces for supersensible Powers, but his own life gave expression to the supersensible in such a way that the physical world also was important to his life. His teaching was connected with and suited to the climate of Greece, to what was part of outer nature in Greece—and so Orpheus was made the son of Oeagrus, the Thracian River-God.

This shows us that to the Greeks what mattered most in their view was what was living in Orpheus’ soul. In those days men were characterised by the quality of their souls, by their spiritual value, not, as in later times, by saying: he is the son of so-and-so, or, he comes from such and such a town. It is very interesting to see how deeply involved the Greeks felt in the destiny of a man such as Orpheus, who descended on the one side from a Muse and on the other from a Thracian River-God. Unlike the ancient prophets, Orpheus was subject not only to supersensible influences but to material influences as well—to all the influences exercised by the physical-material world.

Now we know that man consists of several members: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego, the ‘I’. A man such as Orpheus, descended from a Muse—you now know what that means—was still able to see into the spiritual world; but on the other hand, his capacity for experiencing the spiritual world was weakened by the life he led on the physical plane as the son of his father, the Thracian River-God.

The Leaders in the second and third post-Atlantean culture-epochs who became mouthpieces for utterances of the spiritual worlds were able to perceive their own etheric body separated from the physical. In the civilisations where ancient clairvoyance prevailed—and it was the same even among the Celts—when a man was to be made aware of something he was called upon to communicate to his fellow-men, it was revealed to him in this way: his etheric body emerged from the physical body and became the bearer of forces which streamed down into it. If those who proclaimed the utterances of the spiritual worlds were men, their etheric bodies were female and they consequently saw in female form whatever communicated messages to them from the spiritual worlds.

Now it was also the purpose of the legend to show that although Orpheus was in direct contact with the spiritual Powers, as the son of a Thracian River-God there was always the possibility that he would be unable to retain what was revealed to him through his own etheric body. The more thoroughly he made himself at home in the physical world and lived his life as a son of his country, the more did his power of clairvoyance recede. The story relates that Eurydice, the transmitter of his revelations, his soul-bride, was torn away from him through the bite of an adder—a picture of his human failings—and carried off to the underworld. He could win her back only by passing through an Initiation.—Whenever we are told of a journey into the underworld, an Initiation is meant.—In order to win back his bride, Orpheus must pass through an Initiation. But he was already too closely enmeshed in the physical world. He had indeed acquired the capacity to make his way into the underworld, but on his return, when his eyes again encountered the sunlight, Eurydice vanished from his sight. Why was this? It was because on seeing the sunlight he did something that was forbidden him: he turned and looked back. That is to say, he disobeyed a strict command given him by the God of the underworld, namely, that physical man, living on the physical plane, must not look back beyond the point of time I have indicated, to the period of the macrocosmic experiences of childhood; if these experiences were to penetrate into the consciousness normal in later life, they would give rise to clairvoyance in its ancient form. Hence the command of the God of the underworld that no man may seek to penetrate the mysteries of childhood, to remember where the Threshold is fixed.—But this was what Orpheus did, and he consequently lost the faculty of clairvoyance.

Something of great delicacy and subtlety in connection with Orpheus is set before us in this story of the loss of Eurydice. One consequence is that man is sacrificed to the physical world. With a nature still deeply rooted in the spiritual he is also, partially, the sort of being which it is his destiny to become on the physical plane. And so all the forces of the physical plane press in upon him and he loses Eurydice, his own innocent soul—which it is the fate of modern man also to lose. These forces tear Orpheus to pieces; in a sense, he is sacrificed.

What is it, then, that Orpheus experienced as representative of the transition between the third and fourth epochs of post-Atlantean culture? In the first place he experienced the stage of consciousness which the child leaves behind—the connection with the Macrocosm. This does not pass over into his conscious life and therefore in his essential being man is torn to pieces and killed by life on the physical plane which in the real sense begins at the point of which we have been speaking.

And now keep in mind this man living on the physical plane; he is normally able to remember back only to a certain point of time; beyond this lie the three years of earliest childhood. With this thread of memory he is so enmeshed in the physical plane that, in his own being, he cannot endure it and he is torn to pieces. Thus it is with the true spirit of man to-day—here is a proof of how deeply he is enmeshed in matter. This is the spirit which in Pauline Christianity is called the ‘Son of Man’. Here is a concept which you must grasp—the concept of the Son of Man who can be found in a human being onwards from the point in his life to which his later memory extends, and includes everything he has acquired from the civilisation around him. Keep this ‘man’ in your mind, and then picture to yourselves what he might become if there were added to him all that presses in upon him from the Macrocosm in the first three years of his childhood. This could be a foundation only, because at that stage the developed human ‘I’ is not yet present. But if it did merge into the consciousness of a developed ‘I’, we should witness a happening comparable with what took place at the Baptism in the Jordan at the moment when the Spirit descended from above into Jesus of Nazareth: the three innocent years of early childhood merged with the rest of the human being. That is the immediate fact. And the consequence was that this innocent childhood-life, as it sought to develop on the physical Earth, could evolve for three years only—as is indeed always the case—and then met its end on Golgotha. It could not merge with what man becomes at the point in time from which in later life his memory normally begins.

Think what it would be like if; in one man, we saw mingled together all the interconnections with the Macrocosm which show themselves dimly and indistinctly in the early years of childhood but which cannot really light up in the child because he is as yet without Ego-consciousness. Think further, and picture to yourselves how, if the reality did dawn in this way in a later consciousness, something would take shape which has its origin, not in man's own nature but in the depth of those cosmic worlds out of which we are born. If you think of all this you will get an idea of the meaning of the words spoken in connection with the event portrayed as the descent of the Dove: ‘This is my beloved Son; this day have I begotten him.’ That means: Here the Christ is incarnated, begotten, in Jesus of Nazareth, born in him at the moment of the Baptism by John. In the Christ there was present, in its highest form, the consciousness otherwise belonging only to the early years of childhood; now, mingling with it, there was feeling of oneness with the Cosmos which a child would feel if it could be fully aware of its experiences during the first three years. In that case there would be still another meaning in the words: ‘I and the Father’—that is, the cosmic Father—‘are one’.

If you ponder deeply about these things you will get an inkling of what was experienced by St. Paul as a first, basic element in the revelation near Damascus and finds expression in the beautiful words: ‘Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven.’ Among many meanings of this saying there is the one indicated by St. Paul: Not I, but Christ in me—the Christ, that is, who has a macrocosmic consciousness such as a child would have if it could somehow combine the consciousness belonging to the first three years with the Ego-consciousness of later life. In the normal man of to-day these two forms of consciousness are separate: indeed they must be separate, for they are incompatible. Nor were they any more compatible in Christ Jesus Himself; after those three years, death was bound to supervene and to occur in the circumstances as they actually were in Palestine. These circumstances were not matters of chance but came about because these two lived within each other: the Son of God (which is man from the moment of his birth until the development of the Ego-consciousness) and the Son of Man (which is what he is after Ego-consciousness has been attained). The events which then culminated in the happenings in Palestine were the outcome of the living together of the Son of God and the Son of Man.

The whole world is under the impression of Kaiser Wilhelm's passing. It almost seems as if the whole of non-German politics is celebrating until the glorious prince is led to his grave. Even in the Orient, there is no movement on the Bulgarian question; Sofia has wisely given no reply to the Grand Vizier's telegram and, determined to maintain its present position, is awaiting further action by Russia or Turkey. Prince Ferdinand apparently feels completely secure on his throne and can count on the devotion of his people. After the failure of the Ghika project, the Romanian ministerial crisis found its simplest and best solution in the reappointment of Bratianu. In the Italian parliament, Crispi answered an interpellation from the radical side concerning the attitude of the kingdom to the Bulgarian question by saying that Italy, if it did not want to deny its own history, could never allow a people striving for freedom and independence like the Bulgarians to be oppressed by foreign despotism. In France, the latest Boulanger hype - individual districts wanted to elect the radical "savior of democracy" as a deputy - has fizzled out like all previous demonstrations that had Boulanger as their focal point. In Russia, the devaluation of public values and the armament for war continued; there was already half-loud talk of the imminent outbreak of state bankruptcy. The Austrian House of Representatives discussed the Catechist Law, but the general interest throughout Austria, as in the other states, is only focused on the events in Berlin. To squeeze them into the space of a short weekly review is simply impossible and could only detract from the force and solemnity of it. We must therefore refrain from doing so. Only one thing may be mentioned in particular, namely that the serious bereavement affecting Germany has given renewed cause to emphasize the solidarity between the allied Central European empires. This found particular expression in a brief exchange of dispatches between Prince Bismarck and Count Kalnoky. What else can we say? Emperor Wilhelm has died! His great son succeeded him under the name of Frederick IIIL! He has issued a proclamation to his people and at the same time a letter to the Imperial Chancellor containing the principles which the new Emperor and King has laid down for his government policy. These two mighty documents, which form an everlasting monument to history, must not be missing from any journal that wants to serve the German people. And that is why we are publishing them in full, even though our readers are undoubtedly already familiar with them. Such words should be preserved and cherished and read again and again in every German home. They read:

To my people!

The emperor departed from his glorious life. In the much-loved father, whom I mourn, and for whom My royal house mourns with Me in deepest sorrow, Prussia's loyal people lost its glorious king, the German nation the founder of its unification, the resurrected empire the first German emperor! His noble name will remain inseparably linked with all the greatness of the German fatherland, in whose new foundation the enduring labor of Prussia's people and princes has found its finest reward. By raising the Prussian army to the height of its serious profession with never-tiring patriotic care, King Wilhelm laid the sure foundation for the victories of German arms won under his leadership, from which national unification emerged; he thereby secured a position of power for the empire that every German heart had longed for until then, but had hardly dared to hope for.

And what he had won for his people in a fierce, sacrificial struggle, he was destined to consolidate and beneficially promote through the long peace work of arduous years of rule. Resting securely in its own strength, Germany stands respected in the council of nations and desires only to rejoice in the peaceful development of what it has won. That this is so, we owe to Kaiser Wilhelm, his unwavering loyalty to duty, his unceasing activity dedicated solely to the good of the Fatherland, supported by the unwavering devotion to sacrifice demonstrated by the Prussian people and shared by all German tribes. All rights and duties associated with the crown of My House have now passed to Me, and which I am determined to faithfully exercise in the time that may be granted to My government according to God's will.

Pervaded by the greatness of My task, it will be My whole endeavor to continue the work in the sense in which it was founded, to make Germany a haven of peace and to cultivate the welfare of the German land in agreement with the allied governments, as well as with the constitutional organs of the Empire such as Prussia.

I place my unreserved trust in my loyal people, who have stood by my house through centuries of history in both good and difficult times, because I am convinced that on the basis of the inseparable connection between prince and people, which is which, regardless of any change in the life of the state, forms the imperishable heritage of the Hohenzollern dynasty, My crown will always rest just as securely as the prosperity of the country to whose government I am now called, and to which I vow to be a just and, in joy and sorrow, a faithful king.

May God give me his blessing and strength for this work, to which my life is henceforth consecrated.

Berlin, March 12, 1888 Frederick III

My dear Prince!

At the start of My government, I feel the need to address you, the longstanding, much-tried first servant of My Lord Father, who rests in God. You have been the faithful and courageous advisor who has given form to the goals of his policies and ensured their successful implementation. I am, and My House remains, deeply indebted to you. You therefore have a right to know, above all, what are the points of view which should determine the attitude of My Government.

The constitutional and legal systems of the Empire and Prussia must above all be consolidated in the reverence and customs of the nation. The upheavals caused by frequent changes in state institutions and laws must therefore be avoided as far as possible. The promotion of the tasks of the imperial government must leave untouched the best foundations on which the Prussian state has hitherto rested securely. In the Empire, the constitutional rights of all allied governments are to be respected as conscientiously as those of the Imperial Diet; but equal respect for the rights of the Emperor is to be obtained from both. It must be borne in mind that these reciprocal rights are to serve only to elevate the public welfare, which remains the supreme law, and that newly emerging, undoubted national needs must always be fully satisfied. I see the necessary and surest guarantee for the undisturbed promotion of these tasks in the undiminished preservation of the country's military strength, My tried and tested army and the flourishing navy, to which serious obligations have arisen through the acquisition of overseas possessions. Both must be maintained at all times at the level of training and the perfection of the organization which has established their fame and which ensures their continued efficiency.

I am determined to lead the government in the Empire and in Prussia in conscientious observance of the provisions of the Imperial and State Constitutions. These were founded by My ancestors on the throne in wise recognition of the unavoidable needs and difficult tasks to be solved in social and state life and must be respected on all sides in order to be able to exert their power and beneficial effectiveness.

I want the principle of religious toleration, which has been held sacred in My House for centuries, to continue to be a protection for all My subjects, whatever religious community and creed they belong to. Each one of them is equally close to My heart. After all, all of them have equally proven their full devotion in the days of danger.

In accordance with the views of My Imperial Father, I will warmly support all endeavors that are likely to raise the economic prosperity of the various classes of society, to reconcile their conflicting interests and to mitigate unavoidable grievances to the best of my ability, without creating the expectation that it is possible to put an end to all the ills of society through the intervention of the state.

I consider the care given to the education of young people to be closely linked to social issues. If, on the one hand, higher education must be made accessible to ever wider circles, then it must be avoided that serious dangers are created by half-education, that life demands are awakened which the economic forces of the nation cannot satisfy, or that the educational task remains unconsidered through the one-sided pursuit of increased knowledge. Only a generation growing up on the sound foundation of the fear of God in simple morals will possess sufficient power of resistance to overcome the dangers which, in a time of rapid economic movement, arise for the whole through the examples of highly exalted lifestyles of individuals.

It is My will that no opportunity be missed to influence the public service to counter the temptation to disproportionate expenditure. Every proposal for financial reform is assured of My unprejudiced consideration in advance, unless the time-honored thriftiness of Prussia allows the imposition of new burdens to be avoided and previous requirements to be eased.

I consider the self-government granted to larger and smaller associations in the state to be beneficial; on the other hand, I put it to the test whether the right of tax imposition granted to these associations, which is exercised by them without regard to the burden emanating simultaneously from the realm and the state, may not disproportionately burden the individual. In the same way, it will have to be considered whether a simplifying change in the structure of the authorities would not appear permissible, in which the reduction in the number of employees would make it possible to increase their salaries.

If we succeed in maintaining the foundations of state and social life, it will give me particular satisfaction to see the blossoming of German art and science, which is so abundant, develop to its full potential. For the realization of these intentions of mine, I am counting on your devotion, which you have so often demonstrated, and on the support of your proven experience.

May it be granted to me to lead Germany and Prussia to new honors in peaceful development with the unanimous cooperation of the imperial organs, the dedicated activity of the people's representatives and all authorities and through the trusting cooperation of all classes of the population.

Unconcerned about the splendor of glorious deeds, I will be satisfied if one day it can be said of my government that it has been benevolent to my people, useful to my country and a blessing to the empire.

Berlin, March 12, 1888

Your well-wishing Frederick III

From the three foregoing lectures, it should have become somewhat clear that in the Gospel of St. John the truths of Spiritual Science can be found again. However, it must be very clear that in order to discover these truths, it will be necessary to weigh every word thoroughly. In fact the important thing in a consideration of this religious document is that the true, exact meaning be perfectly understood, for as we shall see in particular instances everything in it has the deepest possible significance. Moreover, not only the wording of special passages is of importance, but something else must be considered and this is the division, the composition, the structure of the document. As a matter of fact, people no longer have the right feeling for such things. Authors of the past—if I may so designate them—introduced into their works much more of an architectural structure, much more of an inner arrangement than is usually imagined. You need only to recall from among them a relatively modern poet, Dante, to find this confirmed. Here we see that the Divine Comedy is architecturally composed of parts based upon the number three. And it is not without meaning that each division of Dante's Comedia closes with the word “Stars.” This I mention only to suggest how architecturally ancient writers constructed their works, and especially in the great religious documents we should never lose sight of this architectural form, because in certain cases the form signifies a very great deal. To be sure, we must first discover this meaning.

Here at the end of the 10th Chapter of this Gospel of St. John we should recall the following verse, which we should keep clearly in mind. In the first verse we read:—

And many came to him and said:

John performed no miracles, but all that he said of this man is true.

This means that we find in this verse of the 10th Chapter, an indication that the testimony given of Christ Jesus by John is true. He expresses the truth of this testimony in very special language. Then we come to the end of the Gospel and there we find a corresponding verse. Here we read in the 24th verse of the 21st Chapter:—

This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true!

Here at the end of the entire Gospel, we have a statement that the testimony of the one who reported these things is a true one. The coincidence that something very special is being said, here and there, by means of some particular word, is never without significance in ancient writings and just behind this coincidence is concealed something very important. We shall proceed with our considerations in the right manner if we direct our attention to the reason for this.

In the middle of the Gospel of St. John a fact is presented which, if not understood, would render this Gospel incomprehensible. Directly following the passage in which these words are introduced as confirmation of the truth of the testimony of John the Baptist stands the chapter concerning the raising of Lazarus. With this chapter the whole Gospel falls into two parts. At the end of the first part it is pointed out that the testimony of John the Baptist should be accepted for everything that is maintained and affirmed concerning Christ Jesus and at the very end of the Gospel it is pointed out that all that follows the chapter on the raising of Lazarus should be accepted on the testimony of the Disciple whom we have often heard designated as “the Disciple whom the Lord loved.” What then is the real meaning of the “raising of Lazarus?”

Let me remind you that following the narration of the raising of Lazarus there stands an apparently enigmatical passage. Let us picture the whole situation:—Christ Jesus performs what is usually called a miracle—in the Gospel itself it is called a “sign”—namely, the raising of Lazarus. And subsequently we find many passages which attest that “this man performs many signs,” and all that follows indicates that the accusers did not wish to have intercourse with Him because of these signs. If you read these words, whatever their translation (this has already been referred to in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact), you would need to ask:—What is really at the bottom of it all? The raising of some one provoked the enemies of Christ Jesus to rise up against Him. Why should just the raising of Lazarus so provoke these opponents? Why does the persecution of Christ Jesus begin just at this stage? One who knows how to read this Gospel will understand that a mystery lies hidden within this chapter. The mystery concealed therein is, in truth, concerned with the actual identity of the man who says all that we find written there. In order to understand this, we must turn our attention to what in the ancient Mysteries is called “initiation.” How did these initiations in the ancient Mysteries take place?

A man who was initiated could himself have experiences and personal knowledge of the spiritual worlds and thus he could bear witness of them. Those who were found sufficiently developed for initiation were led into the Mysteries. Everywhere—in Greece, among the Chaldeans, among the Egyptians and the Indians—these Mysteries existed. There the neophytes were instructed for a long time in approximately the same things which we now learn in Spiritual Science. Then when they were sufficiently instructed, there followed that part of the training which opened up to them the way to a perception of the spiritual world. However, in ancient times this could only be brought about by putting the neophyte into a very extraordinary condition in respect of his four principles—his physical, ether and astral bodies and his ego. The next thing that occurred to the neophyte was that he was put into a death-like sleep by the initiator or hierophant who understood the matter and there he remained for three and a half days. Why this occurred can be seen if we consider that in the present cycle of evolution, when the human being sleeps in the ordinary sense of the word, his physical and ether bodies lie in bed and his astral body and ego are withdrawn. In that condition he cannot observe any of the spiritual events taking place about him, because his astral body has not yet developed the spiritual sense-organs for a perception of the world in which he then finds himself. Only when his astral body and ego have slipped back into his physical and ether bodies, and he once more makes use of his eyes and ears, does he again perceive the physical world, that is, he perceives a world about him. Through what he had learned, the neophyte was capable of developing spiritual organs of perception in his astral body and when he was sufficiently evolved for the astral body to have formed these organs, then all that the astral body had received into itself had to be impressed upon the ether body just as the design on a seal is impressed upon the sealing-wax. This is the important thing. All preparations for initiation depended upon the surrender of the man himself to the inner processes which reorganized his astral body.

The human being at one time did not have eyes and ears in his physical body as he has today, but undeveloped organs instead—just as animals who have never been exposed to the light have no eyes. The light forms the eye, sound fashions the ear. What the neophyte practiced through meditation and concentration and what he experienced inwardly through them, acted like light upon the eye and sound upon the ear. In this way the astral body was transformed and organs of perception for seeing in the astral or higher world were evolved. But these organs are not yet firmly enough fixed in the ether body. They will become so when what has been formed in the astral body will have been stamped upon the ether body. However, as long as the ether body remains bound to the physical, it is not possible for all that has been accomplished by means of spiritual exercises to be really impressed upon it. Before this can happen, the ether body must be drawn out of the physical. Therefore when the ether body was drawn out of the physical body during the three and a half days deathlike sleep, all that had been prepared in the astral body was stamped upon the ether body. The neophyte then experienced the spiritual world. Then when he was called back into the physical body by the Priest-Initiator, he bore witness through his own experience of what takes place in the spiritual worlds. This procedure has now become unnecessary through the appearance of Christ-Jesus. This three and a half day death-like sleep can now be replaced by the force proceeding from the Christ. For we shall soon see that in the Gospel of St. John strong forces are present which render it possible for the present astral body, even though the ether body is still within the physical, to have the power to stamp upon the etheric what had previously been prepared within it. But for this to take place, Christ-Jesus must first be present. Up to this time without the above characterized procedure, humanity was not far enough advanced for the astral body to be able to imprint upon the ether body what had been prepared within it through meditation and concentration. This was a process which often took place within the Mysteries; a neophyte was brought into a death-like sleep by the Priest-Initiator and was guided through the higher worlds. He was then again called back into his physical body by the Priest-Initiator and thus became a witness of the spiritual world through his own experience.

This took place always in the greatest secrecy and the outer world knew nothing of the occurrences within these ancient Mysteries. Through Christ-Jesus a new initiation had to arise to replace the old, an initiation produced by means of forces of which we have yet to speak. The old form of initiation must end, but a transition had to be made from the old to the new age and to make this transition, someone had once more to be initiated in the old way, but initiated into Christian Esotericism. This only Christ-Jesus Himself could perform and the neophyte was the one who is called Lazarus. “This sickness is not unto death,” means here that it is the three and a half day death-like sleep. This is clearly indicated.

You will see that the presentation is of a very veiled character, but for one who is able to decipher a presentation of this kind it represents initiation. The individuality Lazarus had to be initiated in such a way that he could be a witness of the spiritual worlds. An expression is used, a very significant expression in the language of the Mysteries, “that the Lord loved Lazarus.” What does “to love” mean in the language of the Mysteries? It expresses the relationship of the pupil to the teacher. “He whom the Lord loved” is the most intimate, the most deeply initiated pupil. The Lord Himself had initiated Lazarus and as an initiate Lazarus arose from the grave, which means from his place of initiation. This same expression “Whom the Lord loved” is always used later in connection with John, or perhaps we should say in connection with the writer of the Gospel of St. John, for the name “John” is not used. He is the “Beloved Disciple” to whom the Gospel refers. He is the risen Lazarus himself and the writer of the Gospel wished to say:—“What I have to offer, I say by virtue of the initiation which has been conferred upon me by the Lord Himself.” Therefore the writer of the Gospel distinguishes between what occurred before and what occurred after the raising of Lazarus. Before the raising, an initiate of the old order is quoted, one who has attained a knowledge of the Spirit, one whose testimony is repeatedly announced to be true. “However, what is to be said concerning the most profound of matters, concerning the Mystery of Golgotha, I myself say, I the Risen One; but only after I have been raised, can I speak concerning it!” And so we have in the first part of the Gospel, the testimony of the old John—in the second half, the testimony of the new John whom the Lord Himself had initiated, for this is the risen Lazarus. Only thus do we grasp the real meaning of this chapter. These words are written there because John wished to say: I call upon the testimony of my super-sensible organs, my spiritual powers of perception. What I have related I have not seen in the ordinary physical world, but in the spiritual world in which I have dwelt by virtue of the initiation which the Lord has conferred upon me.

Thus we must attribute the characterization of Christ-Jesus, which we find in the first chapters of the Gospel of St. John as far as the end of the loth Chapter, to the knowledge which might be possessed by any one who had not yet, in the deepest sense of the word, been initiated through Christ-Jesus Himself.

Now, you will say: “Yes, but we have already in these lectures listened to profound words about Christ-Jesus as the incarnated Logos, the Light of the World, etc.” It is no longer surprising that these profound words concerning Christ-Jesus were spoken even in the very first Chapters, for in the ancient Mysteries, Christ-Jesus, who was to appear in the world at a future time, in other words, the Christ, was not perhaps an unknown being. And all the Mysteries point to One who was to come. For this reason the ancient initiates were called “prophets” because they prophesied concerning something that was to take place. Thus the purpose of initiation was to let it be clearly understood that in the future of mankind the Christ would be revealed, and in what he had already learned at that time, the Baptist found the truth which made it possible to state that He, who had been spoken of in the Mysteries, stood before him in the person of Christ-Jesus.

How all this is connected and what the relationship was between the so-called Baptist and Christ-Jesus will become clearer to us if we answer two questions. One of these questions is the following:—What was the position of the Baptist in his own age? The other leads back to the explanation of various passages at the beginning of the Gospel.

What was the position of the Baptist in his own age? Who, in fact, was the Baptist? He was one of those who—like others in their initiation—had received indications of the coming Christ, but he was represented as the only one to whom the true mystery concerning Christ-Jesus had been revealed, namely, that He who had appeared was the Christ Himself. Those who were called Pharisees or were designated by other names saw in Christ-Jesus some one who in fact opposed their old principles of initiation, one who in their eyes did things to which they in their conservatism could not accede. Just because of their conservatism they said:—We must adhere to the old principles of initiation. And this inconsistency of constantly speaking about the future Christ, yet never admitting that the moment had arrived when He was really present, was the reason for their conservatism. Therefore when Christ-Jesus initiated Lazarus, they looked upon it as a violation of the ancient Mystery-traditions. “This man performs many signs! We can have no intercourse with him!” According to their understanding, He had betrayed the Mysteries, had made public what should be confined within their secret depths. Now we can see how to them this was like a betrayal and seemed to be a valid reason for rising up against Him. From that time, because of this, a change takes place; the persecution of Christ-Jesus begins.

How did the Baptist represent himself in the first chapters of this Gospel? In the first place, as one who was well acquainted with the Mystery-truths of the Christ Who was to come; as one who knew very well that the writer of the Gospel of St. John himself could repeat all that he, the Baptist, already knew, having become convinced of its truth through what we are now about to learn.

We have heard what the very first words of the Gospel mean. We shall now consider for a moment what is said there about the Baptist himself. Let us present it once more in the best possible translation. Thus far we have only heard the very first words:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was a God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through It and save through It was not anything made that was made.

In It was Life and Life was the Light of men.

And the Light shone into the darkness but the darkness comprehended it not.

There was a man; he was sent from God, bearing the name John. The same came as a witness in order to bear witness of the Light that through him all might believe.

He was not the Light but was a witness of the Light.

For the true Light which lighteth every man should come into the world.

It was in the world and the world came into being through It, but the world knew It not.

It entered into individual men (that is, the ego-men); but individual men (the ego-men) received it not.

But they who received it could reveal themselves as Children of God.

They who trusted in His name were not born of the blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man—but of God.

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we have heard His teaching, the teaching of the once born Son of the Father filled with Devotion and Truth.

John bare witness of Him and proclaimed clearly: He it was of whom I said:—He will come after me, who was before me. For He is my forerunner.

For out of His fullness have we all received Grace upon Grace. For the law was given through Moses, but Grace and Truth came through Jesus-Christ.

Hitherto hath no one beheld God with his eyes. The once-born Son, who was in the bosom of the Universal-Father, has become the leader in this beholding.

These are the words which give again approximately the meaning of those first verses of the Gospel of St. John. However, before we come to their interpretation, we must add something else. How did John describe himself? You will remember that people were sent to discover who John the Baptist was. Priests and Levites came to him to ask him who he was. Why he gave the foregoing answer, we have yet to discover. Just at present we shall only consider what he said.

He said, “I am the voice of one calling in solitude.” These are the words which stand there. “I am the voice of one calling in solitude.” “In solitude” stands there quite literally. In Greek, the word eremit signifies the “solitary one.” You can then understand that it is more correct to say, “I am the voice of one calling in solitude,” than “I am the voice of one preaching in the wilderness.” We shall better understand all that is presented in the opening words of the Gospel, if we call to mind John's own characterization of himself. Why does he call himself “the voice of one calling in solitude?”

We have seen that in the course of human evolution, the true Earth-mission is the evolution of love, but that love is only conceivable when it is given as a voluntary offering by self-conscious human beings. We have also seen that the human being little by little gains control of his ego and that slowly and gradually this ego sinks into human nature. We know that the animal, as such, has no individual ego. If the individual lion were able to say “I” to itself, the individual animal would not be meant thereby, but the group-ego in the astral world. All lions would say “I” to this group-ego. Thus whole groups of animals of like form say “I” to the supersensibly perceptible group-ego in the astral world. The great advantage human beings have over the animals is that of possessing an individual ego. The latter, however, only evolved by degrees, for human beings also began with a group-ego, with an ego belonging to a whole group of individuals.

If you were to go back to ancient peoples, to ancient races, you would find that originally human beings were everywhere formed into little groups. With the Germanic peoples you would not need to go very far back. In the writing of Tacitus it is quite evident that the German thought more of his whole tribe than of himself as an individual. The individual felt himself more as a member of the Cheruskian or of the Sigambrian tribe than as a separate personality. Therefore he partook of the fate of the whole tribe and when an individual member or the entire tribe received an affront, it did not matter who was the avenger.

Then in the course of time it happened that individual personalities gave up their tribal membership, and this resulted at last in the breaking up of the tribes so that they no longer held together. Human beings also evolved out of this group-soul characteristic and little by little they developed to a point where they could experience the ego in their own individual personalities. We can only understand certain things, especially religious documents, when we understand this mystery of the group-souls, of the group-egos. For those peoples who had come already to a certain conception of the individual ego, there still always existed a greater ego that spread out not only over groups living contemporaneously in a certain place, but also far beyond these groups. Human memory at the present time is of such a character that the individual remembers only his own youth. But there was a time when a different kind of memory existed, a time when the human being not only remembered his own deeds but also those of his father and of his grandfather as though they were his own. Memory reached out beyond birth and death as far as the blood relationship could be traced. The memory of an ancestor whose blood, as it were, flowed down through generations was preserved for centuries in this same blood, and a descendant or offspring of a tribe said “I” to the deeds and the thoughts of his forebears as though to himself. He did not feel himself limited by birth and death, but he felt himself as a member of a succession of generations, the central point of which was the ancestor. For what held the ego together was the fact that the individual remembered the deeds of the fathers and of the grandfathers. In ancient times this had its outer expression in the giving of names. The son remembered not only his own deeds but also those of his father and of his grandfather. Memory extended far back through generations and all that the memory thus encompassed was called in ancient times, for example, Noah or Adam. The individual human beings were not meant by these names, but the egos which for centuries had preserved the memory. This mystery was also concealed behind the names of the Patriarchs. Why did the Patriarchs live so long? It would never have occurred to the people of ancient times to denominate an individual human being by a special name during his life between birth and death. Adam was looked upon as a common memory, because the limits of time and space in ancient days played no part in the giving of names.

By degrees the human individual ego slowly freed itself from the group-soul, from the group-ego. The human being came gradually to a consciousness of his own individual ego. Formerly he felt his ego in his tribal membership, in the group of human beings to whom he was related through the blood tie, either as to time or space; hence the expression, “I and Father Abraham are one,” which means one ego. The individual felt himself safe within the whole, because a common blood ran through the veins of all of the members of his particular people. Evolution progressed and the time became ripe for individuals right within their race to feel their own separate egos. It was the mission of the Christ to give to human beings what they needed in order that they might feel themselves secure and firm within their separate individual egos. In this way we should also interpret those words which can be so easily misunderstood namely, “He who does not deny wife and child, father and mother, brother and sister, cannot be my disciple!” We must not understand this in the trivial sense of instruction to run away from the family. But it means that every one should feel that he is an individual ego and that this individual ego is in direct union with the Spiritual Father who pervades the world. Formerly a follower of the Old Testament said, “I and Father Abraham are one,” because the Ego felt itself resting within the blood relationship. At that moment this feeling of oneness with the Spiritual Father-Substance had to become independent; no longer should the blood relationship be a guarantee of membership in the whole, but the knowledge of the pure Spiritual Father-Principle in whom all are one.

Thus we are told in the Gospel of St. John that the Christ is the great bestower of the Impulse which gives to men what is needed to make them feel themselves forever within their own separate, individual egos. This is the transition from the Old Testament to the New, for the old had always something of a group-soul character in which one ego felt itself associated with the others, but in reality never felt either itself or the other egos. Instead, it experienced the folk or tribal ego within which they all had a common shelter.

What must be the feeling of an ego that has become so matured that it no longer feels the connection with the other individual personalities of the group-soul? What must have been the feelings of the individualized ego in a period in which it could be said: “The time is now past when union with other persons, union with all egos belonging to a group-soul can be felt as an actual life-reality; first, however, One must come who will give the spiritual Bread of Life to the soul from which the individual ego may receive nourishment.” This separate ego had to feel itself solitary and the forerunner of the Christ was compelled to say: I am an ego that has broken away, that feels itself alone, and just because I have learned to feel solitary, I feel like a prophet to whom the ego gives real spiritual nourishment in solitude. Therefore the herald had to designate himself as one calling in solitude, which means the individual ego isolated from the group-soul calling for what can give it spiritual sustenance. “I am the voice of one calling in solitude.” Thus we hear again the profound truth:—Each human individual ego is one wholly dependent upon itself; I am the voice of the ego that is freed, seeking a foundation upon which it, as an independent ego, can rest.—Now we understand the passage, “I am the voice of one calling in solitude.”

In order that we may accurately understand the words of the Gospel, we shall need to familiarize ourselves a little with the way names and designations were then usually given. The giving of names at that time was not so abstract and devoid of meaning as it is at present, and if the exponents of biblical documents would only consider a little how much is expressed in this way, many trivial interpretations would never come to the light of day. I have already pointed out that when the Christ said, “I am the Light of the World,” He really meant that He was the first to give expression to the “I AM” and was the Impulse for it. Therefore in the first chapters wherever “I AM” is to be found, it must be especially emphasized. All names and designations in ancient times in a certain sense are very real—yet at the same time they are used in a profoundly symbolical manner. This is often the source of tremendous errors made in two directions. From a superficial point of view, many say that according to such an interpretation a great deal is meant symbolically, but with such an explanation in which everything has only a symbolical meaning, they wish to have nothing to do, since historical, biblical events then disappear. On the other hand, those who understand nothing at all of the historical events may say:—“This is only meant symbolically.” Those, however, who say such things, understand nothing of the Gospel. The historical reality is not denied because of a symbolic explanation, but it must be emphasized that the esoteric explanation includes both, the interpretation of the facts as historical and the symbolic meaning which we ascribe to them. Of course, if anyone sees only the prosaic external facts, namely, that a man was born somewhere, at some particular time, he will not understand that this man is something more than just a person with a particular name whose biography can be written. But whoever knows the spiritual relationship will learn to understand that besides being born in some particular place this living human being is also a symbol of his age and that what he signifies for the evolution of humanity is expressed in his name. It is something symbolic and historical at the same time, not simply the one or the other. This is the important thing in a true interpretation of the Gospel. Therefore in almost all of the events and allusions, we shall see that John—or the author of the Gospel bearing his name—really has a super-sensible perception; he sees at one and the same time the outer events and the manifestation of deep spiritual truths. He has in mind the historical figure of the Baptist; he is considering the historical figure. But the true historical figure is for him at the same time a symbol for all men who were in ancient times called upon to receive the imprint of the Christ Impulse upon their egos, a symbol for those into whose individual egos the Light of the World might shine, although they had just started on the path. It was not, however, a symbol for those who in their darkness were not yet able to apprehend the Light of the World. What appeared as Life, Light, and Logos in Christ-Jesus, has always shone in the world, but those who were first to become matured did not recognize it. The Light was always there, for had it not been there, the germ of the ego could not possibly have come into existence.

Only the physical, ether and astral bodies of the present human being existed within the Moon Evolution; there was no ego in them. Only because the Light became transformed into that light which now shines down upon the earth did It have the power to enkindle the individual egos and to bring them gradually to maturity. “The Light shone in the darkness but the darkness could not yet comprehend it.” It entered into the individual human being—right into the human ego—for an ego-humanity could not have come into existence at all, had not the Light been rayed into it by the Logos. However, ego-humanity as a whole did not receive It, but only certain individuals, the initiates. They raised their souls to the spiritual worlds and they always bore the name, “Children of God,” because they possessed knowledge of the Logos, of the Light, and of Life and could always bear witness of These. There were certain ones who already knew of the spiritual worlds through the ancient Mysteries. What was present there in these initiates? It was the eternal human living within them in full consciousness. In the mighty words, “I and the Father are one,” they felt, in fact, I and the great Primal Cause are one! And the most profound thing of which they were conscious, their individual ego, they received not from father and mother but through their initiation into the spiritual world. Not from the blood nor from the flesh did they receive it, nor from the will of father or mother, but “from God,” which means from the spiritual world.

Here we have an explanation of why it was that although the majority of mankind had already received the rudiments of an ego-being they could not as individuals receive the Light which had only descended, in fact, as far as the group-ego. Those, however, who received the Light—and they were few, indeed—could by means of it make themselves “Children of God.” Those who put their trust in the Light were through initiation born of God. This gives us a clear picture. But in order that all men might perceive the living God, with their earthly senses, He, the Christ, had to appear upon earth in a way that made it possible for Him to be seen with physical eyes; in other words, He had to take on a form of flesh, because only such a form can be seen with physical eyes. Prior to this, only the initiates could perceive Him through the Mysteries, but now He took on a physical form for the salvation of every soul. “The Word or the Logos became flesh.” Thus the writer of the Gospel of St. John links the historical appearance of Christ-Jesus together with the whole of evolution. “We have heard His teaching—the teaching of the once-born Son of the Father!” What manner of teaching is this? How were other men born?

In the ancient times in which the Gospels were written, those who were born of the flesh were called “twice-born.” They were called twiceborn—let us say—because of the intermingling of the blood of father and mother. Those who were not born of flesh and did not come into existence through a human act or through the mingling of blood, were “born of God,” that is to say, they were “once-born.” Those who were previously called “Children of God” were always in a certain sense the “once-born” and the teaching about the Son of God is the teaching of the “once-born.” The physical man is “twice-born,” the spiritual man is “once-born.” You must not understand it to mean born into (hineingeboren)—no, “once-born” (eingeboren) is the antithesis of “twice-born” (zweigeboren). These words point to the fact that besides the physical birth, the human being can experience also a spiritual birth, namely, union with the Spirit, a birth through which he is “once-born,” a child or a son of the Godhead.

Such a teaching had first to be heard from Him who represented the Word-made-Flesh. Through Him this teaching became general—“this teaching of the once-born Son of the Father, filled with Devotion and Truth.” Devotion is the better translation here, because we have to do not only with being born out of the Godhead, but also with continued union with It, with the removal of all illusions which only come from being “twice-born” and which surround men with sense-deceptions. On the contrary it is a teaching, the truth of which is substantiated by Christ-Jesus Himself, living and dwelling among men as the incarnated Logos.

John the Baptist called himself—literally interpreted—the forerunner, the precursor, the one who goes before as herald of the ego. He designated himself as one who knew that this ego must become an independent entity in each individual soul, but he also had to bear witness of Him who was to come, in order that this be brought about. He said very clearly, “That which is to come is the ‘I AM,’ which is eternal, which can say of Itself, “Before Abraham was, was the I AM.” John could say, “The I (the ego) which is spoken of here existed before me. Although I am Its forerunner, yet It is at the same time my Forerunner. I bear witness of what was previously present in every human being. After me will come One Who was before me.”

At this point in the Gospel very significant words are spoken:—“For of His Fulness have we all received grace upon grace.” There are men who call themselves Christians, who pass over this word, “Fulness,” thinking that nothing very special is meant by it. “Pleroma” in Greek means “Fulness.” We find this word also in the Gospel of St. John: “For from the Pleroma have we all received grace upon grace.” I have said that if we wish really to understand this Gospel, every word must be weighed in the balance. What is then, Pleroma, Fulness? He alone can understand it who knows that in the ancient Mysteries Pleroma or Fulness was referred to as something very definite. For at that time it was already being taught that when those spiritual beings manifested themselves who during the Moon period evolved to the stage of divinity namely, the Elohim, one of them separated from the others. One remained behind upon the Moon, and thence reflected the power of Love until humanity was sufficiently matured to be able to receive the direct Light of the other six Elohim. Therefore they distinguished between Jahve, the individual God, the reflector, and the Fulness of the Godhead, “Pleroma,” consisting of the other six Elohim. Since the full consciousness of the Sun Logos meant to them the Christ, they called Him the “Fulness of the Gods” when they wished to refer to Him. This profound truth was concealed in the words:—“For out of the Pleroma, we have received grace upon grace.”

Now let us continue by transplanting ourselves back into the age of the group-souls, when each individual felt his own ego as the group-ego. Let us now consider what kind of a social organization existed in the group. As far as they were visible human beings, they lived as individuals. They felt inwardly the group-ego, but outwardly they were individuals. Since they did not yet feel themselves as separate entities, they were also unable yet to experience inner love to its fullest extent. One person loved another because he was related to him through blood. The blood relationship was the basis of all love. First those related by blood loved each other and all love, as far as it was not sex-love, sprang from this blood relationship. Men must free themselves more and more from this group-soul love and proffer love as a free gift of the ego. At the end of the earth evolution, a time will come for mankind when the ego, now become independent, will receive into its inner being, in full surrender, the impulse to do the right and good. Because the ego possesses this impulse, it will do the right and the good. When love becomes spiritualized to such a degree that no one will wish to follow any other impulse. than this, then that will be fulfilled which Christ-Jesus wished to bring into the world. For one of the mysteries of Christianity is that it teaches the seeker to behold the Christ, to fill himself with the power of His image, to seek to become like Him, and to follow after Him. Then will his liberated ego need no other law; it will then, as a being free in its inner depths, do the good and the true. Thus Christ is the bringer of the impulse of freedom from the law, that good may be done, not because of the compulsion of any law, but as an indwelling Impulse of Love within the soul. This Impulse will still need the remainder of the Earth period for its full development. The beginning has been made through Christ-Jesus, and the Christ figure will always be the power which will educate humanity to it. As long as men were not yet ready to receive an independent ego, as long as they existed as members of a group, they had to be socially regulated by an outwardly revealed law. And even today men have not, in all things, risen above the group-egos. In how many things in the present are men not individual human beings, but group-beings? They are already trying to become free, but it is still only an ideal. (At a certain stage of esoteric discipleship, they are called the homeless ones.) The man who voluntarily places himself within the cosmic activities is an individual; he is not ruled by law. In the Christ Principle lies the victory over law. “For the law was given by Moses, but Grace through Christ.” According to the Christian acceptation of the word, the soul's capacity for doing right out of the inner self was called Grace. Grace and an inner recognition of truth came into being through the Christ. You see how profoundly this thought fits into the whole of human evolution.

In earlier ages, those who were initiated developed higher spiritual organs of perception; previously no one ever saw God with physical eyes. The once-born Son who rests in the bosom of the Father is the first who made it possible for us to behold a God in the way we see a human being upon earth with the physical earthly senses. Previously God had remained invisible. He revealed Himself in the super-sensible world through dreams or in other ways in the places of Initiation. Now God has become an historical fact, a form in the flesh. We read this in the words: “Before this no one had beheld God. The once-born Son who dwelt in the bosom of the Universal Father became the guide to this perceiving.” He brought mankind to the point where it could behold God with earthly senses.

Thus we can see how sharply and clearly the Gospel of St. John points to the historical event of Palestine and in what exemplary and concise words which must be accurately weighed in the balance if we wish to use them for an understanding of Esoteric Christianity.

Now we shall see in the following lectures how this theme is further developed and at the same time how it is shown that the Christ is not only the guide of those who are united with the group-soul, but how He enters into each individual human being and endows the individual ego itself with His Impulse. The blood-tie indeed remains, but the spiritual aspect of love is added to it, and to this love which passes over from one individual, independent ego to another, He gives His Impulse.

Day by day, one truth after another was revealed to the neophyte in the course of his initiation. A very important truth is always disclosed, for example, on the third day. Then it is that one learns fully to understand that there is a point in the evolution of the earth when physical love, bound up with the blood, becomes ever more spiritualized. This point of time is the event which demonstrated the transition from a love dependent upon the blood-tie to a spiritualized form of love. In significant words Christ-Jesus makes reference to this when He says: “A time will come which is my time, a time when the most important things will no longer be accomplished by men bound by the tie of blood, but by those who stand alone by themselves. This time however is yet to come.” The Christ Himself who gave the first impulse, says on one important occasion that this ideal will sometime be fulfilled, but that His time is not yet come. He prophetically points to this when His mother stands there and asks Him to do something for mankind, hinting that she has the right to induce Him to an important deed for humanity. He then replies, “What we are able to do today is still connected with the blood bond, with the relationship between thee and me, for My time is not yet come.” That such a time will come when each must stand alone is expressed in the narrative of the Marriage at Cana when the announcement: “They have no wine,” was answered by Jesus with the words: “That is something that has still to do with thee and me, for My time is not yet come.” Here we have the words, “between thee and me” and “My time is not yet come.” What stands there in the text refers to this mystery. Like many others, this passage also is usually very roughly translated. It should not read: “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” but: “This has to do with me and thy blood relationship.” The text is very fine and subtle, but comprehensible only to those who have the will to understand it. But when, in our age, these religious documents are repeatedly interpreted by all kinds of people, one would like to ask, have those who call themselves Christians then no feeling for all this, that they make the Christ utter the words, incorrectly translated, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?”

In much that today calls itself Christianity which rests upon the teaching of the Gospel, we are inclined to ask, Do they really possess the Gospel? The important thing is that they should first possess it. And with such a profound document as the Gospel of St. John every word must be weighed in order that its proper value be recognized.

The great transformation that I have characterized here from a variety of angles and that has taken place in the spiritual development of humanity over the course of the last centuries, not only has the intellectual, the theoretical character of knowledge changed, but what has changed also has an influence on the whole human soul life, and thus on the whole human life in general. In order to understand this, one can imagine the following. Of course, what is shown in individual symptoms, which emerge more or less clearly when one wants to understand the actual foundations of life, must be shown in characteristic forms of expression of life.

We have often referred to what were places of knowledge in ancient times of human development. They were the mystery centres. These mystery sites were, to a large extent, shrouded in human veneration. When speaking of mysteries and mystery beings, it was said that through what was practiced in the mysteries, something most important for humanity on earth was present. Everything meaningful in human life was thought to radiate from the mysteries. It was said, in a sense, that If there were no mysteries among people, people on earth would not be able to be what the gods wanted them to be!

So people looked at the mysteries with a feeling of the highest reverence and the most intimate respect, and at the same time they looked at them with a feeling of gratitude, knowing that they gave them what makes it possible to be on earth what the gods want to make of people. One need only compare this with the way in which people look at educational institutions today, and one will find nowhere that tremendous warm devotion. In many cases, one even finds a feeling that, once one has necessarily settled for what comes from the educational institutions, one is glad to be free of them. But in any case, even if one does not look at this extreme, one still knows that one does not actually get from the educational institutions what seems necessary to one inwardly as a human being for one's actual humanity, what makes one a human being. No matter how much theoretical reverence one may have for what is gained in chemical laboratories, biological institutes, legal educational institutions, and even philosophical schools, one will not have the feeling: You are aware of your humanity because there are chemical laboratories, biological institutes, legal educational institutions, and even philosophical seminars.

You cannot say that – even if these educational institutions are perhaps shrouded in a certain theoretical atmosphere – all the warm feelings of reverence of people in the widest sense gravitate towards these educational institutions.

In any case, it will not be all that often that a student, for example, who is preparing a paper for a university seminar and who then, in this way, gives of himself intellectually, feels that he is doing so imbued with his whole elementary humanity as a mystery schoolboy once felt when he had passed one of the stages of practice.

But on the other hand, man needs something that brings him into contact with something worthy of worship here on earth, from which he feels the divine emanating. But if we compare this nuance, which I would call more cultural-historical, with what actually underlies it, let us go back, say, to the times when, in the Near East, two or three millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha, mystery-like educational institutions existed: In these mystery-like educational institutions, the natural science of the time was studied, if one can call it that. They studied the starry sky, the nature of the stars, the movements of the stars, the appearance of the stars at certain times, and so on. Today one imagines that this study of the starry sky in those days may have been somewhat fantastic. It was not. It was done with at least the same, if not much greater, methodical care as mineralogy, geology or biology are done today.

But what did they say to each other when they studied the nature of the starry sky? They said to each other: If you know the nature of the starry sky, then you know something about the nature and destiny of man on earth. The study of the starry sky culminated in the fact that knowledge about the fate of man and entire peoples on earth could be gained from the constellations of the stars.

One did not look up at the starry sky with a merely theoretical intention, but rather one said to oneself: If you know the relationship of Saturn to the sun or the relationship of Saturn to a sign of the zodiac at the moment when a man is bidden or where he accomplishes an important deed in life, then you know how the heavens have placed man on earth, you know to what extent man is a creature, a son of the heavens. You study what you study about heaven in order to understand what guides you in your life on earth. Everything that was acquired as knowledge about the nature of heaven was aimed at man. All knowledge was actually permeated by something thoroughly human. And whatever man did on earth, he felt it in connection with what he could study in the heavens. We can take an example from, say, a human artistic activity. When people in ancient times took up poetry or music, they drew on the inspiration that came to them from the heavens.

I have mentioned it often: Homer does not say, to use a poetic phrase “Sing, O Muse, of the wrath of the Peleid Achilles,” but because he was aware that he was not speaking something that came to him from human arbitrariness, but he speaks something that the heavens whisper to him. And anyone who was in any way musically active on earth reproduced through the sound of earthly instruments what he believed he had heard in the spaces of heaven in the music of the spheres. Man felt quite distinctly in the way he was active on earth, in the way he cooperated with other people on earth, in the way he founded communities on earth, that he experienced the impulses of will that radiated from the vastness of the universe down to earth and which he explored according to his knowledge of the starry sky, that he acted as a human being here on earth according to these intentions of heaven.

One would like to say: everything that was science, art and religion in those ancient times flowed into human weaving and working. For religion, science and art were indeed a unity, a unity that ultimately radiated into man, so that man might feel himself on earth as the being the gods wanted him to be.

This mood lasted as long as man had a spiritual insight into the heavens, as long as he allowed a spiritual to be conveyed to him in the being, in the course of the stars and in the appearance of the stars, which, so to speak, flowed through the knowledge of the stars to him on earth so that he could realize it on earth.

Today, astrology is a word that does not have a good ring to it. However, if we imagine it in the old sense, it takes on a better sound. Man looked up at the stars, and from the stars the Logos revealed itself to him, which in turn worked through his thoughts, through his imagination, through his language here on earth. Man himself, when he set his speech organs in motion, practiced that which, in the formation of sounds, made the secrets of the heavens resound here on earth again. The Logos, which is the reason that prevails in the human race, appeared as the efflux of the starry world. Astrology: what happened here on earth appeared as an image of the archetype, which one experienced through astrology.

If we look at our insights today, we see how these insights are gained through sensory observation of the earthly. Even when studying astronomy today – I have already discussed this yesterday – it is only the reflection of earthly knowledge up into the heavens. Today's human being acquires sensory knowledge. He does indeed stand in the world differently than he used to. I have characterized this different standing in these lectures here recently. I said: Today's intellectual man, with his abstract concepts, but also with what his freedom is, which is only possible with the development of abstract-intellectual concepts that do not force man, that also give him moral imperatives that arise from his individuality, as I have described in my Philosophy of Freedom, as I have described in my Philosophy of Freedom, only comes into the evolution of mankind at the time when that consciousness, which originated in astrology and presented man as a being executing the intentions of the gods on earth, had ceased to exist. This human being, with his intellect and his sense of freedom, is a creature cut off from the heavens. He has truly become the earth's hermit and acquires his knowledge here on earth. And the way in which he acquires his knowledge also explains the interest with which he clings to these insights.

In ancient times, it would have been inconceivable to see a duality between religion and scientific knowledge. When scientific knowledge was acquired, it was such that it gave one an immediate religious feeling, that it showed one the way to the gods, that one could not help but be a religious person in the right sense if one had acquired knowledge.

Today one can acquire the whole wide range of popular knowledge: one does not become a religious person from it. I would like to know who becomes a religious person today by becoming a botanist, a zoologist, a chemist! If he wants to become a religious person, he seeks the religious in addition to knowledge. Therefore, we seek places of worship in addition to knowledge, and are often even convinced that knowledge leads us away from religious paths, that we must seek other paths that in turn lead us to the religious. And yet, here too, we have repeatedly had to emphasize the importance of newer insights. We had to point out that these newer insights are absolutely necessary for modern man and for the further development of humanity. But when man today places himself in the world with his intellectualism, with his sense of freedom, he is already developing here on earth that which the older man, who, if I may express it in this way, had a sense of heaven , only developed after death.

When we describe the moments after death for today's man, we describe how the person in the picture looks back at first on his life by separating his etheric body from himself. We then describe how he reviews his life in a subsequent period. For older times, life after death had to be described in such a way that people were told: That which you can only attain here through a higher revelation, an intellectualistic view of the world, will appear to you after death. That which you are to achieve here on earth can only exist as an ideal; you will be a free human being after death. — That is what they told older people. The true human being comes when one has passed from this physical world into the spiritual world. That is what they said in ancient times. But what people experienced only after death in ancient times, looking back on earthly life, intellectualism and a sense of freedom, for which all earthly life was preparation, has already been introduced into the life between birth and death by the modern human being. Here on earth, he becomes an intellectual being, here on earth he becomes a being with a sense of freedom.

But for this, he must acquire something on earth in sensory knowledge and in the combination of his sensory knowledge that is initially far removed from his interests. No matter how long we explore through the telescope that which we today explore of the starry worlds: humanly we do not feel inwardly warmed and inwardly enlightened by it. Expeditions are being organized by astronomers and naturalists to prove Einstein's ideas. But no one expects the observations that are being made to be as close to directly elementary human nature as one would have expected from the astronomers of the ancient Babylonian or Assyrian cultures. The modern insights give us a tremendous difference: the lack of interest in values. It may be extremely interesting when this or that biological discovery is made today, but one does not say: By making this or that biological discovery, man comes closer to the divine-spiritual being that he carries in his soul. It is to this divine spiritual being, which he bears within his soul, that man wants to come closer through a separate religious interest.

Nevertheless, today we do not have the right concept of the way in which an older humanity has come to knowledge, even in later times. One need only think of the momentous experience of fate when a man like Archimedes, while bathing, discovered the Archimedean principle and exclaimed, “I have found it!” Just such a single insight was something that one felt as if one had looked through a window into the secrets of the universe.

This warm-heartedness towards knowledge was certainly not present when the X-rays were discovered, for example. One could say that today's relationship to what knowledge provides is more that of gaping open one's mouth than of inward soul rejoicing. That makes a human difference! And this human difference must be borne in mind for the development of humanity.

Something very remarkable emerges from all this. For centuries now, modern people have been experiencing in their lives what they used to have only after death: intellectual comprehension of the world and the consciousness of freedom. But they have not even really noticed it. That is the remarkable thing, that modern humanity has not even really noticed something that it has received from heaven into earthly life. The emotional world has not grasped it at all, the elemental in the human world. One would almost say that it has a bitter aftertaste for humanity. Humanity does not look at the pure thought the way I have tried to look at it in my “Philosophy of Freedom”, where one would rather sing hymns to it than dissect it. And the consciousness of freedom has led people to all sorts of tumultuous things, but not to the realization that something has descended from heaven to earth. Not even the fundamental power of modern human development has been felt purely humanly. Where does that come from?

If you answer this question, then you also answer one of the most important questions of human existence in general. In ancient times, man acquired his knowledge by looking up at the sky, seeking the Logos there, that which the gods spoke to man through the starry sky and the nature of the stars. All that man did here on earth was illuminated by the content of the Logos, and this content was in turn fetched from the stars. Human life would have been meaningless if it could not be given a purpose through knowledge of the stars.

Now, in a very similar sense, everything we acquire internally as knowledge is actually nothing. We acquire it by allowing ourselves to be constrained to botany, zoology, biology, physiology, etc., and at most we allow ourselves to be moved by ambition, by an insight into the necessity of being able to eke out our lives on earth, to all of this. Again, this is a radical statement, but in a sense it borders on reality. For those who attach great ideals to things today, there is still a certain illusionary element through which they reinterpret the matter into an ideal. At least, people who could associate a meaning with the word: I pray a chemical formula. Yes, one must indeed express an important cultural-historical fact, even if it is negative, in such a form!

It takes a Novalis, with his deep and at the same time youthfully enthusiastic knowledge, to feel something like: I pray in the dissolution of a differential equation. Our ordinary mathematicians do not feel very prayerful when they reveal the secret of a differential equation. That which is self-evident, that with knowledge the whole person is engaged at the same time, the whole person feels their indebtedness to the divine, this self-evident fact is not at all self-evident to today's humanity. It is much more natural for those who are rising to the highest achievements of knowledge to be glad when they have the exams behind them so that they do not have to go through these things again. The joy of going through the stages of the mysteries: you don't notice much of that in modern people who go through the exams. At least it is extremely rare for someone today to speak with the full ancient mystery seriousness of that intimate divine deed that this or that professor has done by giving him a dissertation topic and putting him in the position to now pass through the waters of holiness while working on this dissertation topic! But this would be the normal, the obvious!

If you just think about it, you have to say: Yes, down there is the earth with its many things (see drawing page 70, white and green). These many things have been seen by the old cognizers. But they only believed they had grasped them in the right sense by looking up at the stars and bringing down the rays from the stars, which illuminated everything for them in the right way (red).

These ancient cognizers sought the reflection of the starry world in earthly life (lower red), otherwise all that I have indicated below would have seemed worthless to them. Today we pay no attention to what is above, but study what is below. We study it in countless details. When we have surrendered to some kind of knowledge oriented here or there, we have many details in our heads. But the evaluation of these details becomes somewhat indifferent to life, and with it also a certain lack of interest in the high, elementary human. Especially in the actual spiritual realm, this becomes conspicuously apparent.

Vöscher, the Swabian, has already ridiculed how indifferent to a universal human consciousness that becomes, which is to be overcome today, if one wants to struggle up to knowledge, by saying that one of the most “significant” treatises on the subject of modern literary history would be one on the connection between the chilblains of Frau Christiane von Goethe and the symbolic-allegorical figures in the second part of Faust! Why could a dissertation not be written about this connection, as is done about many other things? The methodology that is applied, the human interest that is involved, is, after all, no different in quality from when someone writes a treatise – and this does happen – about the thought lines in Homer's poetry! Yes, we really do acquire knowledge about what people only considered worthy of knowledge after they were able to illuminate it from the knowledge of heaven.

We do not have the knowledge of heaven. We do not look at the copper by looking up at Venus, we do not look at the lead by looking up at Saturn, we do not look at the primeval man by looking up at the constellation of Aquarius, and we do not look at that which passes over into certain inner impulses of human nature in the animal nature of the lion by looking up at the constellation of Leo, and the like. We bring down from the heavens nothing that can explain the earthly to us, but we turn our gaze to the wide-ranging, scattered details of the earth alone.

We need something that brings us valences into the individual, that leads us to see again what someone saw when he saw some earthly object illuminated from the heavens. We have knowledge of many things, but we need a unified knowledge that can radiate into all the individual fields of knowledge and give the individual fields of knowledge value. That is what anthroposophy wants to be.

Just as people once looked to the heavens in astrology to explain the earth, anthroposophy wants to see in people what they have to say about themselves, so that from there everything we about minerals, animals, plants, about man, about everything that can be known in addition to what is scattered, will be illuminated by anthroposophy.

And just as man once looked up at the heavens to understand his life on earth , so the intellectually liberated human being must learn to know himself, so that he can look beyond the moment of death, when he steps out into a spiritual world, and where the gods will look down on what he brings them, what radiates from him. For he should already have become human on earth, whereas before he only became human after death.

How he has become human will be shown through the power he has gained from pure human consciousness. And this pure human consciousness is to be given to him through that which radiates from anthroposophy to everything else, which man on earth can know, but also what man on earth can accomplish.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” thus in the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. Man has brought down the Logos from the revelation of the gods in the heavens.

But the Word was made flesh, and not only dwelt among us, but continues to dwell among us. The Logos has become flesh. What was once sought in the heavens must now be sought in man. For the Logos was once rightly sought in the Father-God; in our time the Logos must be sought in the Son-God.

But man finds this Son-God in his elementary meaning when he makes Paul's word true: “Not I, but Christ in me,” when he comes to know himself. All anthroposophy aims to delve deep into the human being. When ancient times delved deep into the human being, what did they find? At the bottom of human nature, the luciferic powers. If modern man delves deep enough into himself, he will find the Christ. This is the other side of the turnaround from older to newer times. With intellectualism and the consciousness of freedom having descended from heaven to earth, and with the Christ having united with humanity on earth, man finds the Christ in the depths of his own being, if he descends deep enough; while older people have found the Luciferian spirituality precisely by going deep enough.

This was also the message that an older student body in the mysteries was to understand particularly clearly: delve down into the human being as it is on earth, and at the bottom of your own soul you will ultimately find that which you must recoil from in terror: the powers of Lucifer. Therefore, look up at the moment of death; only when you have passed through the gate of death do you become a true human being. There you will be saved from what you find at the bottom of your soul here on earth: the luciferic powers.

That was the experience of death in the ancient mysteries. That was why they had to look to the realization, to the depiction of the moment of death in the mysteries, these ancient mystery students.

The modern human being should take on that which has become his: intellectualism and the consciousness of freedom. If he accepts them worthily, so that he permeates all other earthly knowledge and all other deeds with what wells up out of pure human consciousness, as anthroposophy wills, then he finds the Christ-powers at the bottom of his soul. Then he says to himself: Once I looked up at the constellation of the stars to fathom human destiny on earth; now I look at the human being and thereby learn to recognize how this human being, having already on earth become imbued with the humanity of the Christ-substance , shines out to the universe, and how it shines up to the heavens as the star of humanity after passing through the portal of death.

This is spiritual humanistics, which can take the place of the old astrology. This is what instructs people to look in the same way at what the human being can also reveal in himself as Sophia - Anthroposophia - as the stars once revealed themselves as Logia. But this is also the consciousness with which one must imbue oneself. And there one then learns the world significance of the human being. From there one learns to recognize that world significance of the human being that first allows us to study the physical body, which then allows us to study the formative forces or etheric body. But I will mention just one example: If you study the human physical body in the right way, by looking at it from the point of view of anthroposophy, you learn how the human physical body can follow its own forces. When it follows its own forces, it is constantly striving to become ill. Yes, what exists down there in the human being as the physical body is actually in a constant effort to become ill. And if we look up from the physical body to the etheric body, we have in the etheric body the totality of those forces of the human being that are constantly in the effort to restore the sick person to health. The pendulum swing between the physical body and the etheric body is aimed at constantly maintaining the center between the pathological and the therapeutic. The etheric body is the cosmic therapist, and the physical body is the cosmic pathogen.

And we could speak just as well for other areas of human knowledge. And in speaking thus, we say to ourselves: When we are confronted with an illness, what must we do? We must somehow, through certain healing constellations, call upon the etheric body to heal. Ultimately, all medicine does this: somehow call upon the etheric body of the person to heal, because it is the healer. If we approach the ether body in the right way in a person who can be made healthy, if we seek what can come to him from the ether body in terms of healing powers according to his general human destiny, then we are on the way to healing him.

But I will talk about that tomorrow. I will speak about this latter chapter, which has been discussed in connection with today's discussion, tomorrow.

This lecture cycle is to deal with the being of man from a particular point of view. Two years ago the physical nature of man was discussed from the viewpoint of anthroposophy; last year, in the lectures on psychosophy, our subject was the nature of the human soul; this year we shall discuss the spiritual nature of man. Today's lecture will be in the nature of a preparatory introduction.

Contrasting as it does with current usage, our division of the totality of the human being into his physical, soul and spiritual nature might attract notice, but within the realm of spiritual science there is naturally nothing startling about this. In fact, it is our aim to bridge by means of these lectures the gap between spiritual and external science.

Outside the circle of spiritual science, as you know, the total nature of man is thought of as consisting of but two parts, the bodily-physical and the psychic. In the realm of recognized science it is not customary nowadays to mention the spirit. Indeed, following certain premises, the result of reverting to the threefold organization of man (body, soul and spirit), as did the catholicizing Viennese philosopher, Günther, in the nineteenth century, raised scientific misgivings and also the blacklisting, in Rome, of Günther's interesting books. This was done because as early as 869, at the eighth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople, the Catholic Church, in contradiction to both the Old and the New Testaments, had abolished the spirit. It had guided the development of dogmatism in such a way that the organization of man was permitted to comprise body and soul only. Curiously enough, this catholic development has persisted into our present science. If we seek to ascertain from history why scientists admit only body and soul we find but one reason. In the course of time the spirit has been forgotten; the habits of thought prevalent in certain circles have lost the ability to accept the spirit along with the soul of man.

These lectures must draw attention to the links connecting us with what exists as psychology because, by studying what has just been said, we will be able to understand that there exists no authentic doctrine of the spirit—unless in Hegel's philosophy, and even that cannot properly bear the connotation, because it is really a doctrine of the soul.

The strange disappearance of the concept “spirit” from our present-day habits of thought becomes intelligible by considering the work of the most important investigator of the soul. Precisely in the work of this man, whose views come closest to the teachings of pure, scientific theosophy on the subject of the soul, we can see why present thought habits prevent us from arriving at the idea of the spirit. I refer to Franz Brentano, the distinguished psychologist whose standpoint approaches that of theosophy. He wrote a curious book, that is, he set out to write a curious book, a psychology. The first volume of this appeared in 1874, entitled Psychology from the Standpoint of Empiricism. The second volume was promised for the autumn of the same year, and the others were to follow in rapid succession, but this first volume remained the last; no further ones appeared. Now a new edition of a part of this first volume has been published under the title A Classification of the Faculties of the Human Soul, appearing simultaneously in Italian and German, and an appendix has been added.

In view of the promise contained in the first volume of this book, we, especially as anthroposophists, must deeply deplore the fact that its continuation never materialized. There is a definite reason for this, however, which is readily discerned by the spiritual scientist. It is clear to anthroposophical thinking that the thought habits of modern science prevented a continuation of that first volume. Brentano prided himself on proceeding from a purely methodic standpoint, on investigating the soul quite in accordance with modern scientific methods. Out of the spirit of present-day methods of investigating the soul a doctrine of the soul was to be evolved. When we find, among many other matters, a discussion of the problem of immortality, the fact that no sequel was forthcoming must indeed be painfully felt from the anthroposophic standpoint. I consider the book and its fate extraordinarily symptomatic of our present time. Brentano promised to deal with the immortality of the soul, and when we realize that, although he could not prove the fact of the immortality of the soul, he could at least prove that a man is justified in cherishing the hope of immortality, we are faced anew with the pity of his failure to get on. Only the first book was achieved, and it contains no more than a sort of demonstration of methodic psychology and a statement of the author's analysis of the human soul. Later we shall come back to the reasons why this book could not have had a sequel.

In order to show the links with modern science I must allude, in this introductory lecture, to the classification of psychical activity as set forth in the new edition of Brentano's work. In contrast to the current classification—thinking, feeling, and willing—Brentano offers another, the three members, visualization, reasoning and the phenomena of love and hate, or emotion. You will notice that in a certain way this classification suggests what was said in the lectures on Psychosophy, though the latter drew from another source entirely. It is not necessary to mention the meaning of visualization again, nor, in view of what we have to say here in an introductory way about Brentano's psychology, need we go into it in detail, because the concept “visualization” is one that we have established as the becoming conscious within the soul of the content of our thought. Any thought content lacking all emotion and brought about by a conclusion concerning something objective would be a visualization.

Now, reasoning is distinct from visualization. Reasoning is called a concatenation of concepts, for example, the rose is red. But Brentano says this definition does not cover reasoning; that on the contrary, when uttering the sentence, “the rose is red,” either you have really said nothing in particular, or else you have said something else in an obscure way, “the red rose is”—that is, there exists, among other things, the actual presence of a red rose. This interpretation contains much that is correct, as even a superficial examination of your own soul life will show. Whether I call to mind “rose” and “red,” or whether I connect the concepts, makes no material difference but there is an essential difference when I do the same thing in connection with cognition: a rose is. In that case I have done something that is not exhausted in visualization but that determines something in relation to reality. The moment I say, “The red rose is,” I have determined something. “The rose is red” tells nothing more than that in some man's soul the concepts “rose” and “red” have met. Nothing has been said about anything except the content of thought. But “the red rose is” determines something. According to Brentano, this is reasoning. You do not transcend visualization until you have expressed what constitutes a conclusion. It is not possible here to go into the extraordinarily ingenious evidence offered by Brentano.

Next, Brentano distinguishes the emotions, or phenomena of love and hate. Here again we have something more than mere conclusions. To say, “the red rose is,” is not the same as a feeling I may have in connection with a rose. Those are phenomena of the soul that can be grouped under the head of emotions. They are not objects; something is told about the experiences of the subject. On the other hand, Brentano does not discuss the phenomena of will because he does not see enough difference to warrant him in assuming stirrings of the will as distinct from other emotions. What you desire (will)¹ you desire (will) with love, and the willing is represented in connection with the phenomenon of hate by not-willing (not-desiring). You cannot undertake to separate the phenomena of will from the mere phenomena of love and hate and from those of visualization.

It is extremely interesting to note that so keen a thinker, in setting out to describe the soul life, should have classified it in this way. This classification has its origin in the fact that here, for once, is a man who took seriously the customary habit of ignoring the spirit. Others in a certain way mixed into the soul life what properly pertains to the phenomenon of the spirit, resulting in the creation of an ambiguous being, a sort of soul-spirit, or spirit-soul. All sorts of activities could be imputed to this spirit-soul. Brentano, however, made a serious attempt to answer the problem of what comprises the soul when considered wholly by itself. He took seriously this inclination to differentiate soul and spirit clearly. He was sufficiently astute to decide what features of the current concept of the soul would be unaccounted for if one disregarded the spirit. Had Brentano continued the work, it would have been interesting to note the dilemma he would have encountered. Either he would have seen that somewhere he must come to a dead end because somewhere the soul must enter into a relationship with the spirit, or he would have had to admit the necessity for advancing from the soul to the spirit.

Let us consider, as an illustration, the two extreme members of Brentano's classification: visualization, and the phenomena of love and hate. To begin with, visualization, in his doctrine, is what goes on in the soul. It determines nothing because, if something is to be determined, reasoning must enter in. That would imply that in visualization we could not emerge from the soul; that we could do so only in reasoning, not in visualization. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that in Brentano's system the phenomena of will coincide with the emotions. No psychologist such as Brentano can discover anything in the soul but phenomena of love and hate. That is true as long as we limit our observation to the soul: when we like something, we want (will) it. But in passing from the soul to reality in its entirety, we see that the relation of the soul to the outer world is not exhausted with the soul's emotional experiences. It is a different matter when the soul emerges from itself and passes over to willing. Advancing from mere emotions to willing is a step we must take out of the soul, not one that is consummated within the soul. However strongly emotions may grip us, they in no way affect the outer world. Within the soul we find only emotions.

That is the way visualization looks in such systems of psychology as Brentano's, like something confined within the soul, something unable to enter reality; emotions are pictured as something not rooted in will but exhausting themselves in the psychic premises of will. We shall see that the spirit enters in exactly where Brentano's characterization leaves off, and that visualization would indeed be exhausted at that point were it not for the bridge leading from the soul to the spirit. On the other hand, we shall find that wherever the actual transition is made from the emotions to the will, the spirit enters in. You see, then, that a blind alley was encountered during the last decades at exactly the point where spiritual-scientific research must step in if any progress is to be made. That was inevitable.

Passing on to something else, we find exactly what threads lead from modern scientific psychology to spiritual science. The same man whose work we have been discussing, Franz Brentano, occupied himself throughout a long scholarly life with Aristotle. It is a strange coincidence that just recently a book by Brentano on Aristotle has appeared, a presentation by this psychologist of his research in Aristotle, Aristotle and his Philosophy. Now, Brentano's standpoint is not Aristotle's, but in a certain respect he is close to him, and he has admirably presented Aristotle's doctrine of the spirit. A third book by Brentano appeared at the same time, Aristotle's Doctrine of the Origin of the Human Spirit.

It will be worthwhile to devote a little time to that work as well, because Brentano is not only the most interesting psychologist of our time but a man who knows his Aristotle, and in particular, Aristotle's doctrine of the spirit. Aristotle has given us a doctrine of the spirit that contains nothing whatever of what could be termed Christian concepts. It summarizes, however, all that was achieved in its field by Western culture in the last centuries preceding the birth of Christianity—achieved in such a way that in the fourth century B.C. it was possible for Aristotle to think scientifically about the relation of the spirit to the soul.

We can clearly read between the lines that with regard to the main issues Brentano does take the same stand as Aristotle. Therefore, by studying Brentano's relation to the Aristotelian doctrine of the spirit, we can infer to what extent the present-day non-spiritual-scientific doctrine of the spirit is justified in transcending that of Aristotle. It is extraordinarily interesting today to compare the Aristotelian and the spiritual-scientific doctrines of the spirit, in so far as they are strictly scientific.

I will sketch the former for you. Aristotle speaks unequivocally of the spirit in its relation to the soul and the body of man. He speaks of the spirit as of something superadded to the body and the soul out of spiritual worlds. Thus far Brentano does not depart in any way from Aristotle's standpoint because, like the latter, he is constrained to speak of the spirit as of something superadded to the human body and soul. Therefore, when a human being enters physical existence through birth, we are not dealing, in the Aristotelian sense, with something that is exhausted with the line of descent, but with hereditary traits. The soul element appears as something that weaves through the body and holds it together, but it is not thus exhausted in what man inherits from his ancestors in the way of body and soul, for spirit is added to it. When the human being appears upon the physical plane, the body and soul elements combine with the spiritual. According to Aristotle, the spirit as such is wholly absent when the human being enters physical existence. Instead, the spirit is an original creation of the Divinity, directly added out of the spiritual world to what is born of the father and mother. Thus Brentano's most recent book contains the clear definition, “When a human being enters existence he is created by father, mother, and the God. What pertains to soul and body is born of the father and mother, and some time after conception the spiritual element is added by the God.”

In view of this premise, that the spirit is given to man through actual creation (creatio), it is interesting to follow Aristotle's views on immortality. According to Aristotle, spirit-man had previously not existed at all; the God creates him. Neither for Aristotle nor for Brentano does this imply that the spirit ceases to be when soul and body pass through the portal of death. On the contrary, this spirit that has been created remains in existence after death, and although it had been specially created for this individual human being, it passes over into the spiritual world. It is further interesting to note that Aristotle, and really Brentano as well, follows the course of a human life through the portal of death and then has that which was created by God for the individual live on in a purely spiritual world. In Aristotle there is no thought of a return to a physical embodiment, so we are not dealing here with reincarnation.

Consider that what Aristotle sets up as the prerequisite of the birth of a man in one incarnation—an original creation of spirit—must occur at every incarnation because reincarnation would not be a new creation. This alone suffices to show that the doctrine of reincarnation would conflict with his doctrine of creation. Now, it is a curious point, and one that must be considered in studying Brentano's conclusions about Aristotle, that Aristotle arrives at no view of the life of the spirit after death, other than that the spirit finds itself in a rather theoretical situation because all activity that Aristotle is able to discuss presupposes the physical world and physical corporeality. The spirit, even the eternal God-Spirit, really plays only the part of an onlooker, so that in Aristotle's philosophy nothing of the specifically spiritual tie comes into consideration, other than the contemplation of life from birth to death. According to Aristotle, the soul must look to this one life of today and base all future progress on it, so what remains is the spirit looking back after death upon this one life. In one case the spirit may thus see its insufficiencies and its virtues; in another, an excellent life; in a third, possibly a life of lies and crime. Upon this it bases its further development in the spiritual world.

That is the way in which the spirit, in the Aristotelian sense, would carry on after death. We must ask ourselves, however, what unprejudiced thinking will have to say about such a doctrine of the spirit. Aristotle makes it clear that his life on earth is not a mere existence in the vale of tears, but that it is of great significance and importance. True, a good deal of what Aristotle imagines as the future progress of the soul remains vague, but one point is quite definite: that this one earth life has profound meaning later on. Had the God created the spirit-man without having him incarnate, he might have created the spirit in such a way as to enable it to continue its development. But within Aristotle's meaning that would not have been a complete development. Unmistakably, Aristotle considers a physical incarnation important, one of the aims of the Divinity being to introduce man into a physical body. It is inherent in Aristotle's view that it is not the Divinity's intention merely to create the spirit as such, but rather, to create it in such a way that further progress demands the garb of a physical earth body. Born with the spirit-man at the moment of his creation is the aim to attain to an earthly body. A divinely created human spirit that would not demand incarnation in a human body is unthinkable.

Now imagine a spirit looking back upon physical existence and let us say it finds the physical life of man imperfect. What must arise in this disembodied human spirit, according to Aristotle? Naturally, the longing for another physical incarnation. The spirit must feel this longing, otherwise it would have completely missed its purpose for, since the spirit needs incarnation in order to perfect itself, it must feel the longing for it. Therefore, it is quite impossible to speak, in Aristotle's sense, of a single effectual incarnation unless it were a perfect one; that is, a complete step in the development of the spirit.

Now consider this strange arrangement made by the God, as Aristotle sees it. We have the creation of the human spirit that belongs in the physical body and leaves it at death. Yet, if we think consistently along Aristotle's line of reasoning, in passing over, it carries with it the longing for a physical body without being able to obtain one. Since Aristotle does not assume reincarnation, it follows that the soul would have to live on with a longing for a new incarnation. Aristotle's doctrine calls for reincarnation but does not admit it. Nor can it be admitted, as we shall see, from another angle of Aristotle's doctrine.

We are dealing here with the shrewdest doctrine of the spirit, apart from that of spiritual science. It is a doctrine that continues to loom into modern thought, as in Brentano, in which unprejudiced thinking teaches us that the spirit, created by God and delivered into the earthly world, is equipped with a longing for incarnation. Thus we see how the Aristotelian doctrine, gleaming across the millennia and based upon a scientific foundation, is still capable of exerting a deep influence. We also see the need to transcend Aristotle if we would provide scientific substantiation for reincarnation. In dealing with the doctrine of the spirit we are at a turning point. Only spiritual science, by offering scientific evidence of reincarnation, can transcend Aristotle, but this scientific authentication has never before been achieved. That is why, basically, we are at the turning point regarding the doctrine of the spirit. Through spiritual-scientific research we can advance beyond Aristotle in a genuine and fundamental way and offer scientific demonstration of reincarnation.

Brentano arrived at an inherently incomplete doctrine of the soul, Aristotle at an inherently contradictory doctrine of the spirit. It is important to observe that so shrewd a man as Brentano could not get beyond Aristotle in dealing with the spirit, and that his doctrine of the soul came to a halt because he left the spirit out of account. We shall find the common root of these two cases in the fact that, even from the standpoint of modern science, it is impossible to arrive at an unequivocal view of life if spiritual-scientific research be rejected. Spiritual science alone leads to a satisfying, uncontradictory philosophy.

• 1. In addition to “willing,” wollen can also mean “desiring” or “wanting,” even “wishing” at times. Such interesting double meanings can be explained but not translated, so it remains for the reader to keep the explanations in mind whenever the terms recur.

In order to arrive at a view of the world fitting for today, we need wider horizons than those available to mankind in this materialistic age. This applies especially in connection with spiritual science, and I have already referred to this necessity repeatedly in the preceding lectures. By wider horizons I mean that to comprehend today's world, and in particular human events, we shall have to have recourse to concepts which originate in spiritual science. The fact that the greater part of humanity has so far rejected such wider conceptual horizons in relation to all fields of life and knowledge is connected with the karma of the present time.

With these wider concepts in the background we can characterize one aspect of our life by saying that, objectively, evolution has outdistanced mankind in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today's events most thoroughly demonstrate this situation. One of the most prominent events of the age of materialism is material progress, that is, progress involving all the things that can be accomplished in the world by material means. This material progress is served by the sciences of the age of materialism. And it is especially typical of these sciences that they are growing ever less and less interested in the spiritual world; they strive more and more to become a mere summation of concepts and ideas which can be applied to external material phenomena.

The course of this development finds its strongest expression in the most external of all material matters: mechanical procedures. Factories, industry, machines, these things have attained the highest degree of perfection during this age of materialism. And it is in the very nature of these things that progress in these fields has been non-national—you could say, international; it is world progress. For whether a railway or something similar is built in England, Russia, China or Japan, the laws which have to be taken into account, the knowledge needed, are the same everywhere, since everything is accomplished in accordance with mechanical requirements which are detached from man. In these fields an international principle has indeed taken hold in the widest possible manner.

Over the years, during our lectures on spiritual science, we have often said, in connection with one aspect or another, that there is a body on the earth, a body which is spread over the whole earth. This body needs a soul, and this soul should be equally international. Spiritual science was claimed to be this soul, for it comprises knowledge which is not bound up with any particular individual or group on the earth but can be understood by every single person, wherever he may be, just as physical things in external, material culture—such as a railway or a locomotive—can be understood. We have often stressed that a blessing and salvation for human evolution can only come about if the development in the bodily realm is accompanied by a development in the realm of soul and spirit. For this to take place it would be necessary for people to make just as much effort to understand spiritual matters as external circumstances force them to make—they would far rather be forced than use their freedom—to understand the demands of material progress. So far this has not happened, but it will obviously have to come about as human evolution proceeds. However long it is delayed, it must happen in the end. However much disastrous karma is conjured up because human beings do not want to make the effort, it will happen in the end, for what is to happen will indeed happen.

It is because material progress has run ahead of the good will for spiritual knowledge that mankind has been outdistanced by this material progress and everything it contains by way of passions and urges in human souls. Externally this shows most emphatically in the fact that it is not ideas which strive towards harmonious co-existence of human beings on earth—in other words, not Christian ideas—which are uppermost, but those which, in utmost excess, divide mankind and lead back to cultural periods which one might suppose to have been long overcome. The monstrous anomaly lies in the way nationalism was so forcefully able to take hold of the nations as they lived side by side in the nineteenth century. This shows that in their soul development human beings have not kept pace with material progress.

When people at last come to accept spiritual science on a wider scale, not only in theory but as a fulfilment of their total soul need, then they will, of necessity, have to arrive at different concepts. And such different concepts will help them to comprehend things which cannot possibly be comprehended by materialistic thinking as it is at present. Some matters can only be understood on the basis of corresponding ideas. But, like anything else, ideas must live in order to grow, which means they need soil in which they can flourish. And the soil in which ideas can flourish is nothing other than an attitude of soul prepared by spiritual science. Were materialistic progress to continue its development along the lines of the nineteenth century, people would grow ever poorer in ideas. Put simply: No ideas suitable for comprehending the world would occur to people. Any thoughts they might have about the world could only be stimulated by means of experiments, or by what they could see with their own eyes. The modern insistence on experimentation is nothing other than a paucity of ideas. If the present trend were to continue, mankind would grow ever poorer in ideas. But since a certain intensity of spiritual life is necessary, since human beings must develop some degree of intensity in certain impulses, they will have to discover these impulses in other sources if they cannot find them in the substance of ideas.

When was there an age brimming over with ideas, an age when genuine ideas flourished? You could say that a particularly characteristic and fruitful age was the period extending from Lessing to German Romanticism, to Novalis, or even to the philosophical idealists, among whom we can count Schopenhauer in addition to Hegel and Schelling, as well as those I have quoted in my book Vom Menschenrätsel as being the philosophers who sounded a universal resonance which has since died away during the age of materialism. Ideas were truly abundant then. Hence the contempt in which that time is held today! Look at it, so rich and pregnant with ideas, ideas seeking to fathom nature and the evolution of mankind throughout history! Today we gather ideas from the spiritual world about human evolution, about the various post-Atlantean periods and the impulses belonging to them, knowledge which has only become fitting in the present age. Yet just look how close this is to that fertile idea brought forward by Schelling, Hegel, Novalis, Franz von Baader—though it originated with Jakob Böhme. They said that human evolution passed through a period of history—this was as much as they could see without the help of spiritual science—a first period of history in which the principle of God the Father ruled. This was the period characterized in the Bible by the Old Testament and the heathen religions. They called it the Age of the Father. This was followed by the Age of the Son, during which the idea of the Mystery of Golgotha was to become embedded in mankind. Finally, as an ideal for the future, they saw the Age of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, which they also called the Age of John, for they believed that not until then would the great impulses of the John Gospel be realized.

How infinitely meaningful is such an idea, compared with the desolate, unfruitful talk of human evolution, which is nothing but an abstract idea, in which what follows after is added to what came before as if it were just another link in a chain. How profound by comparison is Schelling's ‘theosophy’ which he developed on from Jakob Böhme! This ‘theosophy’ of Schelling attains such lofty heights that, by comparison, the later thoughts of theologians represent a steep decline. Schelling fights his way through to the realization that what matters in Christianity is not so much its doctrine. This doctrine is seized upon by modern progressive theology as if Christ Jesus were no more than a teacher. What matters for Schelling is not the doctrine, but the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha. We must look up to the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha, the fact of the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ Jesus.

In similar vein we could quote a great many superior, far-reaching ideas originating at that time. With what is the existence of such far-reaching ideas connected? Those who were inspired by such ideas have something in common: They are not narrow-mindedly nationalistic. Their standpoint is that of someone whom they would have called a ‘citizen of the world’. I do not know whether this can be understood today, when so many expressions have become empty phrases. How far removed from anything narrow-mindedly nationalistic is, for instance, a spirit such as Goethe! How far removed from anything narrow-mindedly nationalistic is such a work as Goethe's Faust! Never mind what its origins were. Of course Faust can only stem from the culture of Central Europe. But in the form it has achieved as a poetical work at the hands of Goethe it would be absurd to ask Faust to show you his birth certificate. Yet this absurdity has become a reality, a fact, in our time. Everything that is happening today is, fundamentally, simply a denial of the heights once reached by mankind in such a work as Goethe's Faust. Yet such a work shows us that mankind could have progressed further than is the case today, or indeed than will be the case in the near future.

I have told you, however, that the human soul needs a certain degree of intensity in its impulses. If it cannot reach up to ideas, it will take this intensity from elsewhere, from obscure, unconscious soul forces, from forces that rush up from the spirit of the blood. Fundamentally, nationalism is nothing other than a consequence of the lack of ideas. Mankind's primary need now is the will to rise up to ideas. But it has to be said: if this is to succeed, something else will be needed, too: namely, an understanding for the element of grace which can come from the spiritual world. For it is not possible to win through to the spiritual world from a starting-point of a limited sum of preconceived opinions. The spiritual world can only be reached by keeping the soul open for whatever wants to enter in, by desiring not merely to judge, but also day by day to enrich one's ability to judge.

So to begin with it is above all necessary that insight should take hold of human beings. We live in the age which is to grasp hold of the consciousness soul. So this age must strive for insight. But insight can only come about in ideas that span the world; for insight to come about, reality must be filled with ideas. Yet, especially with regard to the most recent events, our age is thoroughly disinclined to accept ideas. An abstract concept, however logical, however convincing, is not an idea. An idea must be born of living reality. Nowadays we see hardly any ideas come into being. Instead we are surrounded by an insistence on abstract concepts. Ideas can, however, become slogans—though if they do, not much damage can be done, because human souls cannot work in slogans that are related to ideas; their absurdity becomes too obvious. But abstract concepts are different. Abstract concepts can become slogans in a very intense way, and their meaning is so obvious because they refer basically to things that are close at hand. So human beings, who are so wary of taking in anything far-reaching, seize on them greedily. But abstract concepts do not have a basis in reality. There are great numbers of them all around us today, but those who can see beyond what is immediately obvious know that their powerlessness is all the greater.

One of the many abstract ideas ruling us today is that of eternal peace. In the way this is handled it is an entirely abstract concept which does not spring from a living understanding of reality, and yet it appears to those who do not desire to widen their horizons as something entirely convincing. These people say: The various states—and they do not wonder whether this expression ‘the various states’ has any reality—ought to create an inter-state organization, something that stretches across the entire world and is constructed after the pattern of a single state. Furthermore, something called ‘inter-state law’ is to be established. The idea is beautiful and so everybody finds it convincing. The various states are to commit themselves to keep the peace and they must also create legal norms which can centain their various mutual interests. All very nice! It would be equally nice if, to heat a room, all we needed was the abstract concept of warmth instead of having to light the stove. It is irrelevant whether an idea is nice, or convincing. For what could be more convincing than the thought that our need for stoves and the like really means that nature is a terrible despot!

It is irrelevant whether an idea corresponds to the feeling that it is nice or, perhaps, humane. What matters is whether an idea grows out of reality. But to aim for ideas which grow out of reality it is first of all necessary to study reality. Any narrow-minded brain—excuse the expression—can come up with nice programmes for states to follow in order to achieve peace. But such a brain cannot attain to ideas which correspond to reality and are born out of reality. It does not even feel that the spiritual world is a reality with its own laws, though this is considered a matter of course as far as the material world is concerned. People think the world can be set to rights by means of a few sentences. They have no feeling for the fact that the world is a reality in which all kinds of real impulses work in contrast to one another. And by becoming intoxicated with programmes made up of abstract ideas, they prevent the world from entering into the realities.

Sometimes a fruitful, genuine idea is expressed in the same words as a living idea; what matters is that we should be moved by the way it lives. Today, however, something that is alive appears to people as something utterly paradoxical. Thus, over the course of the nineteenth century, and also in the twentieth century, in various parts of the world the idea of disarmament was born, the idea of limiting militarism. This is a nice idea, but it must not remain abstract if it is to become fruitful! It must take account of reality. For this to happen, reality must be studied. It is all very well to meet somewhere and say: All countries must disarm. This is quite easy, especially as the idea is convincing. But either none of them will actually do so, or some of them will not do so. And even if they all did so, they would very soon start to rearm again if the initial impulse is not truly alive. But if you try to point out only those impulses which are truly fruitful, you are in danger of being considered by most people to be utterly foolish, for these days what is most sensible is considered to be most foolish. When I say ‘sensible’ in this connection I mean that which is most in tune with reality.

As I said, the idea of disarmament, the idea that all militarism should gradually be dismantled, is a good idea. But it will never be possible to realize it by reaching a formal conclusion about it in some committee of representatives from all states. It can only become reality if a corresponding reality takes hold of it. What do I mean? How can disarmament be achieved? Yes, it is necessary to be very concrete in one's expressions. It is indeed a fact that at a number of points during the nineteenth century it could have been possible to draw closer to the thought of disarmament and transform it into a real idea. How, for example?

Supposing someone had had the idea before the year 1870? How could it have been realized? Before 1870 a step could have been taken towards the idea of disarmament, a step which would have been very fruitful for mankind. But now I have to say something that today would be regarded as utterly foolish: No approach to the idea of disarmament could have been made by means of some kind of treaty between the various states! This is totally fruitless, however nice it may sound. It would, however, have been fruitful if a particular state, one that was in a position to do so, had begun to disarm, had made disarmament a reality for itself. To do this, people would have had to be capable of reckoning with realities.

Let us now look at a few states in Europe in order to point to what is a reality. Can Russia disarm? Certainly not just like that, for beyond Russia lies Asia, and if Russia were to disarm she would have no defences against the invading peoples of Asia, who would most certainly not disarm. So for Russia disarmament is out of the question. There was no German Reich before the year 1870, but how about the entity that did exist at that time? Could it have disarmed? On the eastern border there would have been a state that was not in a position to disarm, so it follows that here, too, disarmament would have been impossible. But there is one state which could have disarmed, thus setting a wonderful example and at the same time bringing into reality in modern times what it is always trumpeting forth with words—and that is France. Before 1870, France was in a very good position to disarm, and in consequence the war of 1870 would never have taken place. Even since then, as regards Europe—not the colonies—France would still have been in a position to proceed with disarmament at any time. This would have been a beginning, and attention could then have been turned to the East.

Obviously, those whose thinking is abstract will object: Ought France to have exposed herself to the danger of attack by Germany? There would have been no such danger, because if a country becomes involved in a war, the cause is invariably the fact that it is capable of war, that is, that it practises militarism. It can be forced to practise militarism. But no country which does not practise militarism would be attacked if its neighbours had no interest in attacking it. Switzerland, of course, has never been in a position to do without militarism. You cannot apply the conditions of one situation to those of another. Equally you may not say in the abstract that Germany would in any case have coveted Alsace-Lorraine. This is nonsense. Why should she have coveted Alsace-Lorraine under any circumstances? Bismarck said that to annex Alsace-Lorraine merely because some of the population were German was an impossible and crazy academic theory! The only reason there has ever been is one of military security. For so long as France is a military power in possession of Alsace, you can reach Stuttgart more quickly from France than you can from Berlin. The only reason there has ever been for attaching Alsace to the German Reich is that of achieving military protection on the western frontier. This may seem to be a paradoxical idea at first, but for our abstract thinking, which is the twin brother of materialism, realities do indeed appear to be paradoxes.

If you picture to yourselves that France started to disarm before 1870, you will begin to realize just how much could have been set aside, if only thinking at that time had been based on reality. By considering such ideas, a thinking based on reality could be greatly expanded. Naturally, ideas based on reality do not always come to fruition, for the simple reason that other impulses might be stronger. But this says nothing against reality. A flower will grow entirely in accordance with its own real laws. But if a cartwheel flattens it, it cannot develop. Our thinking must be true, and if an idea fails to come to fruition at some point, this is of itself no proof that it was not based on reality.

This is what I wanted to say about saturating ideas with reality. It is as pointless to have a wonderful idea about some machine, if you lack the mechanical knowledge with which to construct it, as it is to have all sorts of ideas about states and the like if you are incapable of gaining insight into the real impulses, which in this case could be attained through an understanding of the spiritual realm, the spiritual world. This, then, is one of the points to be made: the saturation of ideas with reality.

The other concerns the extent of the horizon, the will to extend one's view to wider horizons. In the last lecture I read to you some of the judgements on the nature of the German people expressed by someone who is, after all, an important personality, judgements which he expressed in a long novel about recent times, which caused a very considerable stir. But all these judgements derive from a narrow horizon, an attitude of not wanting to look further than a few inches beyond the end of one's nose. Living with such narrow horizons brings about disharmony in the world. You can have the most beautiful ideas about the peaceful co-operation of the nations, but if your horizons are narrow, then those beautiful ideas will stand for nothing, or at most will work destructively. For what you really think, has the opposite effect of what you are saying with your beautiful ideas. The important thing is to make for reality. One reality which faces us at the moment is what—in our idle way of expressing ourselves—we call the present war. In reality it is no longer a war, though in some ways it can still be compared with events which in the past were described as wars. This war came about, of course, as a result of the most varied impulses, but to gain insight into them we simply have to form ideas which are based on reality.

The time which should be used for working on ideas based on reality is used today instead to show that the world in most recent times has forgotten everything that took place during human history up to the time when today's tragic events commenced. Of course it is reasonable to talk in connection with such events of all sorts of horrors and atrocities. But these ought to be taken for granted if you consider the experiences of mankind throughout history. Such things really ought not to be used to deafen us in relation to more profound matters with which we are faced and the recognition of which could alone bring people to a point of view that is fruitful.

Let us today turn to something which can easily be recognized by anyone who grasps matters externally, on the physical plane, but which is illuminated more clearly if it is considered in conjunction with ideas put forward in the lecture cycle on the folk souls. Among the various causes which have led to today's tragic events, there are a number which could become increasingly clear – to those also who consider the external world by itself – if only people would be willing to extend their horizons. The British Empire possesses one quarter of the entire land surface of the globe. The British Empire and France and Russia together possess one half. A coalition between Russia, France, the British Empire and America would account for approximately three quarters of the earth's land surface. So there would be one quarter left over. This figure ought of itself to speak volumes to those who work with reality. Let us, however, look at that quarter which is contained in the British Empire.

Here we have, to start with, the quite small territory covered by England, Scotland and Ireland. England, Scotland and Ireland by themselves in no way constitute the British Empire. To speak of these three territories is to speak of a region of the world which gave birth to that great man Shakespeare and also to incomparable thinkers and, in earlier times, great statesmen. Only good aspects are to be found. All that we find here is supremely suited to play a great role in the fifth post-Atlantean period. What we do not find is the British Empire: namely, those three island regions attached to Europe, together with all that can be called their colonies in the widest sense. Especially in recent decades the impetus for the whole development of this British Empire comes from the relationship of the motherland to the colonies. You can discover what endeavours are being made thus to shape the relationship between the motherland and the colonies.

What the British Empire is striving for is a close-knit relationship between the motherland and the colonies. I have told you about the application of occult forces, and it is these forces that are being used to achieve this goal. If these forces were allowed to work in their own region, no possible harm could come of them. But if the goal is something egoistic, whether for an individual or a group, then their effects cannot but be harmful. It is not at all easy to achieve this relationship between motherland and colonies. Those who imagine that world peace can be achieved by means of programmes and an interstate organization obviously have no idea what forces have to be used in reality to achieve a welding of the British motherland to her colonies in a way that will create the kind of totality which suits the British Empire. At the basis of this endeavour is what they there call imperialism. This is what has always been striven for in recent times, though out of entirely materialistic impulses—but this is what has been striven for. Every means that might serve this idea has been found acceptable from a certain point of view. It was necessary for the British Empire to achieve closer links with its colonies. To make this possible an impulse was needed that would steal into people's hearts and turn their minds towards something they would not otherwise have found acceptable. It is with this that the war in Europe is connected, for out of the mood of this war certain impulses will arise which the British Empire needs in order to create a uniformity between the motherland and her colonies. For those who study the processes of the physical plane it is not only interesting but extremely important to note how all those who think along abstract lines have been mistaken with regard to what I am saying.

Read what these ‘clever’ people wrote while this war was approaching—I mean clever in the sense in which I frequently use this word. They all reckoned with a defection here and a revolt there and another there, if war were to break out. But nothing of the kind has happened—indeed, the exact opposite has come about. If people's thoughts had been based on reality they would have said: If the British Empire wants to draw its colonies closer together, if it wants to generate impulses there which will tend towards going along with the motherland, then it needs a war, and this war is the means to that higher, so-called end desired by the state. And wherever such thoughts are thought, the end sanctifies the means.

Now is the moment when this fact should become particularly obvious to people. Speaking at present about the evolution of the British Empire, we should always take two significant streams into consideration. The one is the more or less puritanical stream—this word only describes one element of it, though probably correctly—which comes into its own in all that is excellent in the British nation. This puritanical stream was to a great extent dominant in British politics right up to the nineties of the nineteenth century. But during the nineties a change came about, when the imperialistic stream became stronger and more important than the puritanical stream.

Certain people had a good feel for the approach of imperialism—indeed, it is remarkable how good this instinct was. Let me draw your attention to a curious incident which shows rather clearly how these things are linked. While we were in London, shortly before the founding of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, Mrs Besant was then by no means the person she later became. As you know, she always had the tendency to be whoever she had to be, depending on which influences had a hold over her. She was extremely popular in the circle of those who were called the theosophists in London at that time. Anyway, there were various sides to her. At that time—it was the beginning of the century—she gave a lecture on theosophy and imperialism. The imperialistic impulses were developing rapidly. Mrs Besant's line of argument was rather against imperialism. And we could see how, from that moment onwards, she was finished in London, even among those who were then theosophists. A few personal friends stood by her, but everybody else was through with her because she had dared to say something against imperialism. In such things are revealed the forces which, if you can penetrate them, bring you to the point at which you can see how things are interconnected at a higher level.

Until quite recently a remnant of the puritanical element was still at work in England. Though politics were being led by puppets, marionettes, there was nevertheless something puritanical about these marionettes, about Asquith and Grey. This had to be removed so that the impulses I was speaking about could come into their own; and what now came was the most willing marionette of all with regard to everything I have described to you. But there is nothing puritanical left. Let us look first at the negative side: the cynical rejection of the idea of peace with the hypocritical justification that it is being rejected because what is wanted is peace. Nowadays the craziest things can be said with impunity and without being taken amiss. That is the negative side. On the positive side we have an event of the greatest imaginable importance: the gathering of colonial ministers, which is one of the first actions of this man who has been placed by a negative miracle in one of the highest positions in the world. At last the public is beginning to notice what is going on. But the public did not notice until it had had its nose rubbed in it, whereas those who live in ideas based in reality have seen it clearly for some time.

It is impossible to find your way about in the realm of reality if you have no inclination to accept genuine ideas. Only then can you look at the world in such a way: You see something which you consider is insignificant; then you see it again, and yet again and still consider it insignificant; but on the fourth and fifth occasion you realize that it is important because it is a significant symptom of future events. Not everything is equally important, but you have to have a sense for what is important, and this sense can only be gained if you take into your soul those impulses which can only come about on the basis of spiritual science.

In the last few days somebody handed me a most interesting essay by a very popular British writer who is now a journalist. He is connected with the military, and in everything he writes he reveals how he is linked with the threads that are being spun. The essay he wrote recently in The London Magazine is significant enough. It was handed to me, as they say, by chance. But there is no chance in such occurrences. It is most interesting what this military author, linked as he is with the threads that are guiding events, has to say about the current situation:

‘Our people had, and have, the will to conquer ... In that grand spirit the war has been fought, and the memory of our unquenchable determination to conquer will be the noblest heritage that we shall bequeath to our successors, the sons and daughters of England and of her glorious Dominions ... We shall have a million square miles of German colonial territory in our hands. We shall have many million veteran officers and men. We shall have greater naval predominance than before. The world will possess indubitable proofs that our Empire is one and indivisible, that its spirit is unconquerable, and that the martial qualities of the race are worthy of its glorious past ... We have all the moral and material attributes of power on a scale hitherto undreamed of ... But the war will end one day, and then how shall we stand? Taking Army, Navy, and resources together, we shall be the first military Power in the world.’

Is not a peculiar impression given when someone believes so urgently that he must fight against ‘militarism’ and then states what a lofty ideal it is to be the predominant military force in the world!

‘We shall be recognised as the mainstay of the Alliance.’

This ought to be read in France.

‘We have taken the leading part in the Alliance, and the leadership of Europe belongs to us of right.’

Now he takes Kipling's words, ‘We have the ships, the money and the men’, and makes them his own.

‘... and if Parliament would vote supplies for a couple of years and then adjourn sine die, most of us would be content.’

Such things are an expression of those impulses and instincts which are connected with the strings that are being pulled. They may be observed entirely objectively, without taking sides in the way in which no doubt well-meaning, though short-sighted, patriots tend to take sides. Why should such things not be observed? They are objective facts! The impulses that live in mankind are objective facts which historical events bring to the fore.

While it is essential for us here to avoid taking sides at all costs, it is equally important, especially in lectures, to strive to speak with the utmost objectivity. As you will see, as soon as you speak with the utmost objectivity, the facts themselves provide you with proof.

It is impossible to gain an understanding of the world without being willing to take note of facts. This so-called answering note from the Entente, this New Year's Eve gift to the world—my dear friends, it is unlikely that a document composed as this one is will be found again however far you search in history, and this applies both to the basis on which it is written and to the way it is set out and composed. What is written there will have the direst consequences, yet the best way to read it is to skip every single sentence and to realize: Nothing that appears in writing in this document matters! What matters is that behind it there stands what I have been describing to you, and that it is this that is the aim. Of course nobody would dream of saying so in a note. And if you ask whether it can be achieved by means of negotiations, the answer is, obviously, No. Of course such a thing cannot be achieved by means of peace negotiations. It can only be achieved by creating guarantees, and guarantees are contained in dominance. Guarantees mean that the one who wants the guarantees is the only one who can decree what they shall be and that all the others no longer have any say in the matter, and all this is brought about by the interrelationships of power. At present there is a long way to go before this can be achieved. But to live under the illusion that this is not the goal would mean a great lack of responsibility towards the sense for truth that human beings ought to have.

Let nobody suppose that what I have said is directed against the British people, for I make a distinction between this British people and those who pull the strings—if I may use this expression—those who stand behind the events in the way I have frequently described. Neither is it necessary to identify oneself with such impulses, though obviously it cannot be my task to prevent someone from doing so. Also, I shall not prohibit, either in thought or feeling, anyone within our Movement from identifying with such impulses. But let such a one say what is true and not that he is identifying himself with the ideal of the rights of small nations and the like. Let him be clear that he desires to dominate the world. Then we shall be understanding one another in the realm of truth, and that is what matters. We shall make progress if human beings are true. If they say what is really true, we shall make progress. However terrible the truth may be, it will get us further than what is untrue. This is what we should inscribe on our hearts. We make better progress with this than with what is untrue.

Obviously, it would be foolish to imagine that a world power could be moved by all kinds of persuasion or by all manner of propositions to give up its aims. Obviously, it would be foolish to adopt an attitude of high-handed morality and apply all kinds of moral yardsticks. I told you the story of the Opium Wars expressly to turn you away from moral yardsticks. What matters is to speak the truth, to say what is true. It would be far better for the world—though not for those who pull the strings—if we could all say baldly and cynically: This is what is wanted.

This, then, is the meaning in this particular field, of our guiding line and goal: ‘Wisdom lies solely in truth’.

To examine the standpoints from which various seekers after the spirit in earlier epochs took their start has a certain importance at the present time. It is important not only because ill-intentioned and dilettante opponents of Spiritual Science maintain that many things have simply been taken over from ancient traditions, but above all because the knowledge of what can be discovered to-day from the original spiritual sources is clarified when we compare it with the faculties possessed by mankind in earlier times, and with the different kinds of quests for knowledge of the spirit in epochs of evolution when men's consciousness was essentially instinctive in character. In order to indicate something in this direction I want to speak to-day of how Christ-Jesus has often been brought into conjunction with one who was His contemporary—Apollonius of Tyana.¹

The two figures have in a certain sense been confused, and endeavours have been made to compare, in a quite unhistorical way, the life of Apollonius of Tyana with that of Christ-Jesus. Such a comparison does, admittedly, bring to light a fairly considerable number of external, biographical details where similarity is shown. We know that in the Gospel narratives of Christ-Jesus there is much that for the modern mind falls within the concept of "miracle", and the biographies of Apollonius of Tyana also tell of all kinds of miraculous deeds performed by him. The way in which such things are expounded today, however, simply shows what superficial ideas prevail about the evolution of humanity. These stories of healing of the sick and similar happenings, called "signs" in the Gospels, are connected with a stage of human evolution altogether different from the one in which we are living to-day. The psychic influence of one man upon another, even man's psychic influence upon the inorganic environment, has waned greatly in the course of time as far as ordinary life is concerned, and when we are told of such happenings at the beginning of the Christian era, one who has inner understanding knows that what men in those times were able to demonstrate was viewed altogether differently from things of a similar nature that may happen to-day. Quite different premises must be the starting-point in our times, premises that must be created through spiritual- scientific knowledge.

If we want to understand the Gospels rightly, we must not by any means place the main value upon the stories of the miracles but we must realise that stories of miracles performed by a man of outstanding moral eminence were in those times accepted as a simple matter of course. No difference whatever in this respect was assumed to exist between one such as Jesus of Nazareth, in whom dwelt the Christ, and a man such as Apollonius of Tyana.

Let us understand one another clearly.—What is narrated about such men and is to-day called a "miracle" was taken as a matter of course. Nothing of special importance was meant to be conveyed by such narratives. And when modern theology is at pains to deduce the divine nature of Christ-Jesus from the fact that He performed miracles, this theology only shows that its standpoint is not truly Christian—apart altogether from the fact that such a conception runs counter to historical reality. With Christ-Jesus the essential thing is never the actual performing of the miracle, but always that which is disclosed to us through the stories of the miracles. The important point to emphasise always is that when men of earlier times strove to work wonders, they had recourse to a lower force of the Ego, whereas Christ-Jesus worked out of the force of the Ego itself. We should not rightly understand the Lord's Prayer if we were to explain its existence by saying that, the single sentences are already to be found among earlier peoples and that it is therefore ancient. Anyone who compares these earlier forms of the sentences in the Lord's Prayer with the Lord's Prayer itself, will realise that with the Lord's Prayer the essential thing was that what had formerly been expressed in a way which did not point to the Ego, should now be expressed in a way which did point to the Ego.²

We should not therefore go in search of the similarities with Christ-Jesus recorded in these particular biographical data. It is natural, of course, that similarities should appear in narratives concerned with the performing of miracles—that is to say, happenings that are now called miraculous. Account must be taken of something altogether different if we are to be clear as to how a figure such as Apollonius of Tyana stands in relation to Christ-Jesus. And the first thing to notice is the following:—

Of Apollonius of Tyana it is told how in his childhood and growing years he showed evidence of great gifts; how he participated in the very highest kinds of instruction available in those days, as for example the teachings that had grown out of the Pythagorean School. But then it is further narrated that in order to acquire knowledge, Apollonius of Tyana set out on long journeys; we are told of these journeys, first of those less distant and then of his far journey to the sages of India. We hear how he learnt to admire and venerate these sages, and how through them he pressed forward to certain wellsprings of knowledge. Then we are told how he returned, inspired by what he had witnessed among these Indian sages, and taught in manifold ways again in Southern Europe. It is also said that he went to Egypt, and how, having first absorbed in the North of Egypt all that was accessible there, he found it very insignificant, compared with the wonderful wisdom he had encountered among the Indians. He journeyed up the Nile towards its sources, and also to the centres of the so-called Gymnosophists—the community of wise men who, after the Brahmin sages of India, were the most deeply venerated in those times. But we are told that Apollonius was already so steeped in Indian wisdom that he could distinguish between it and the lesser wisdom possessed by the Gymnosophists of Egypt. He returned from Egypt and went on various other remarkable journeys; in Rome he was persecuted, thrown into prison, and so on.

Now the fact of paramount interest to us is that these great journeys undertaken by Apollonius of Tyana are always associated with the widening and extension of his own wisdom. His wisdom increases all the time through his contact with the wisest men in the world of his day. He travels from place to place, seeking out those who were in possession of the greatest wisdom at that time.

In this he is to be distinguished from Christ Jesus, whose sojourn on earth is spent in a comparatively small area, who utters what He has to say to mankind entirely from the inmost essence of His Being, who has to speak, not of wisdom to be found in the surrounding earthly world, but of what He has brought down to the earth from worlds beyond the earth.

Attempts have actually been made to ascribe journeys to India to Christ-Jesus as well, but that is all sheer dilettantism. The essence of the matter is that two beings stand in contrast to one another in the same epoch: on the one side, Christ-Jesus, who speaks only out of the super-earthly; and on the other, Apollonius of Tyana, who gathers what is actually to be found on the earth, although through his own great gifts he is able to absorb it into his very soul. That is the fundamental and significant difference, and those who do not perceive it fail to understand what the existence of these two personalities signifies for a later age.

Now certain matters associated with the person of Apollonius of Tyana point to features characteristic of very early times. I am speaking now of times long before the Mysteries, times, therefore, of great antiquity in human evolution. Something of these characteristics remained in the days of a later humanity, and we shall see how Apollonius of Tyana comes across what has thus remained, both among the Indian sages, the Brahmins, and among the Gymnosophists in Egypt. But we understand the point in question quite clearly when in spiritual-scientific historical research we go back to very early times, and Apollonius of Tyana himself, according to his biographers, points to it in emphatic words. He asserts that the well-nigh immeasurable wisdom he encountered among the Indian sages is bound up with the influences from beyond the earth which stream down upon men inhabiting a particular-region of the earth. This is an indication that man is not exposed to earthly influences alone.

It is easy to study these earthly influences, although in the case of the human being they are now being thrown into the background by others. There are, however, certain lower organic creatures which take on, purely through metabolism, the colouring of what they consume. In such creatures we can perceive exactly how the products of metabolism give them their colouring and other characteristic qualities. I have spoken to you of how, in the sense of Scholastic philosophy, Vincent Knauer, my old friend from the Benedictine Order—that is to say, he, not I, was in this Order—stressed that what is contained in the spiritual substance of a concept is still a reality vis-à-vis the purely material form of existence, the material object. In line with the Schoolmen, he said: If a wolf could be segregated and fed only with lamb's flesh for a very long period, the wolf would not become a lamb, although he would then consist only of lamb's flesh. For Vincent Knauer this proves that in the wolf, in its form and configuration—that is to say, in what the concept "wolf" embraces—there is something other than matter, for in respect of matter the wolf would be a lamb if he had eaten only lambs. But the wolf does not become a lamb.

In the higher animals, then, things are somewhat different from what they are in the very low organic creatures; even in their colouring these creatures make manifest the influences of their metabolism. The influences of metabolism in man are even less marked than they are in the wolf; if it were otherwise, the people living in districts where a great deal of paprika is consumed would have yellow complexions, and it is common knowledge that, at most conditions resembling jaundice and the like set in when certain substances are eaten. To a high degree man is already independent of the influence of earthly metabolism. But today, in the age of materialism—which in truth has not only a theoretical but an absolutely real basis—he is less open to the influences of the world beyond the earth than was formerly the case. And ancient Indian wisdom has its essential source in—to put it summarily—the particular way in which the rays of the sun stream down upon the land of India. The angle at which the rays stream down is not the same there as it is in other regions. This means that the extra-earthly, the cosmic, influences upon man are different from those elsewhere. And if a man of ancient India had spoken entirely according to his own consciousness, then—if he had had any knowledge at all of what Europe is—he would have said something like this: Over there in Europe the people can never attain to any wisdom, for the sun does not stream down upon them in such a way as to make this possible; they can't help being tied down to what their metabolic processes cook up from earthly substances. Over in Europe there can be no talk of wisdom. The men there are an inferior breed, half-animal, for they have none of the sunlight that is essential if anyone desires to be a wise man.—This, in effect, is what an ancient Indian would have said if he had spoken at all about these things. Because of his special relationship to the downstreaming rays of the sun, he would have spoken about the rabble living in Europe very much as a man of to-day speaks about his domestic animals. Not that he would have had no love for these inferior human beings. A man may greatly love his domestic animals, but he will not regard them as his equal in spiritual capacity.

By this I want only to indicate that the earlier wisdom native to man was dependent upon the earthly locality. This is also connected with something else. In earlier epochs, this condition of dependence was the cause of differentiation in humanity to a far greater extent than was the case later on. Differentiation in the human race arose directly settled peoples left their place of abode, somewhere or other, and went to other regions. Then they changed psychically, even physically. The differentiation in evidence all over the earth is connected with this. And so what came to expression through a man of antiquity was essentially what he received from his earthly surroundings, when he absorbed these influences of the earth into himself. We can therefore say: In olden times man was a true sage only if he lived in a place on the earth where it was possible to become wise. For this reason the men of old were in a certain sense right to seek out such places. If, in a similar way a man were to believe nowadays that wisdom is restricted to somewhere in Asia, this would prove only that he is not living abreast of his times—that is to say, of modern times. True, there are curious people who even to-day are always talking about specially favourable localities on the surface of the earth. In the sense of genuine spiritual knowledge these things are dilettantism, but when we go back to very early times we must think of a man who was truly wise being dependent upon his place of abode.

What kind of man, then, is Apollonius of Tyana? Apollonius of Tyana has the urge to become a wise man on earth, in spite of the fact that his home is not in such places as the region near the sources of the Nile where the Gymnosophists lived; for this was also a place where wisdom could be acquired in great abundance. He had within him the urge to become wise, and therefore he set out on travels—as once upon a time Pythagoras had done, in the same situation.

So we see how Apollonius of Tyana is, in a certain sense, a man who seeks over the earth's expanse for that which satisfies the inner needs of the human being and leads him to the attainment of spirituality. For the times to which what I have just said about man's dependence on an earthly locality very specially applies—these times continued on, more or less in echoes only, into the days of Apollonius of Tyana. Something of what ancient India had once been still survived there, and of this Apollonius of Tyana acquired knowledge. But to men representative of a more modern age he was already an example of one who is obliged to seek in particular localities for what in the highest sense can be human wisdom; he is prompted, however, to seek it by distant journeyings.

The Mystery of Golgotha stands before us here, pointing the way to the new phase in the evolution of humanity. And we can say: Because in Jesus of Nazareth there dwelt the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth was that Being of the earth who has set the standard for this quest—a quest that is no longer dependent upon locality. On this account, Apollonius of Tyana and Christ-Jesus are in utter contrast. Apollonius, as a contemporary of Christ-Jesus, is someone who, in respect of his human makeup, no longer lives in the age of antiquity, but already in a new era. But in this new era human life cannot do without the Christ Impulse. The Christ Impulse comes from Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth and Apollonius of Tyana stand at the two poles of humanity at the beginning of our era.

Here we have an indication, of what it is that has come into humanity through Christ-Jesus. It is important above all for us to grasp what I referred to in the lecture yesterday,³ that what has entered into humanity comes to expression in the Resurrection-thought. The Resurrection-thought affirms that what binds man to the earth need not lead to his perishing, but that when he takes the Christ Impulse into himself he can find something within his being that raises itself out of and above the earthbound. What rends and agonises the heart in the picture of the Man of Sorrows on the Cross is in reality the forces that are inculcated by earth-existence into the human body, and therewith into man's being as a whole. In contemplating the Crucified One, the face drenched in suffering and the body wracked with agony, we find the very deepest expression of what earthly existence can stamp into the human being. But if we look upwards to what should be seen above the Cross, to the Resurrected One, then we become aware of that which can perpetually be resurrected in man, can rise above that which contains the earth-forces only, thus revealing to us that man's nature is cosmic, that the earth impregnates its forces only into one part of his being, but that out of these forces there can rise what is in truth the cosmic element in him.

These are the things that must be realised in connection with the Resurrection-thought, especially in our day when we are striving for the resurrection of spirit-knowledge. The Resurrection-thought must above all help us to grasp that in earlier times there existed an instinctive wisdom, truly great and essentially linked with man's eternal being. But the wisdom in these olden times had always an element of suggestion in it, an influence that came over a man, in which he did not live with the freedom inherent in his real being. In all the ages of antiquity there was relatively little expression of man's own will. But it is paramountly the will that must be developed in the epoch of earth-evolution following the Mystery of Golgotha. In respect of his will, the man of ancient time lived in a state of dullness. But the will must be permeated with wisdom, with the force contained in ideas, with spirituality. Upon this, everything depends. Hence above all things it is necessary that the Christ Impulse shall draw into man's will—only this must be understood in the true sense. From the present time onwards into the future, the unfolding of the will is particularly essential. Man must become more and more conscious in respect of his will. In the general life of civilisation to-day we experience merely the reaction that is generated by convenient adherence to old conceptions, the reaction against the development of the will. At the present time men would do anything rather than develop the will; they have a downright hatred of it.

• 1. The following passage occurs in Lecture III of the Course From Jesus to Christ, given by Rudolf Steiner in Carlsruhe, October, 1911.
  
  "Apollonius of Tyana is an individuality who went through many incarnations, who had acquired lofty powers and who reached a certain climax in his incarnation at the beginning of our era. Note carefully.—The individuality of whom we are speaking, and who in past ages had had many incarnations, is he who lived in the body of Apollonius of Tyana, and had therein his earthly field of action . . . And be-cause we know that a human individuality takes part in the building of his human body, that the latter is not simply a duality but that the human being works upon the form his body takes, we have to say: The body of this individuality was built up by him into a certain form purposely for his own use. This we cannot say in reference to Christ-Jesus. The Christ came in the thirtieth year of the life of Jesus of Nazareth into the physical body, etheric body and astral body; the Christ therefore had not from childhood built up for Himself this body. The relationship is quite different between the Christ-Individuality and the body, and the Apollonius-individuality and his body…"
  
  See inter alia: Emil Bock, The Three Years, chapter I "Apollonius of Tyana and Jesus of Nazareth"; and G. R. S. Mead, Apollonius of Tyana, the philosopher-reformer of the first century A.D.
  
  The only complete Life of Apollonius of Tyana is by Philostratus, an Athenian of the third century A.D. This work is quoted by Emil Bock, and exists in English translation.
• 2. See Lecture IX of the Course The Gospel of St Matthew, pp. 139-44. Dr Steiner quotes from the German translation of the book by J. M. Robertson, Christianity and Mythology, Part III, The Gospel Myths, pp. 415-21, where arguments are adduced in an attempt to show that the sentences contained in the Lord's Prayer were derived from pre-Christian Jewish sources. But these older versions do not contain the sentence: "Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven"—which implies the activity of the Ego itself. In pre-Christian times, men experienced the Father God as the ground of existence while they were in a state of suppressed consciousness. But with the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth, the experience was henceforward to take place in full consciousness. "Christ Jesus inaugurated an evolution in human nature based on the retention of the full Ego consciousness. He inaugurated the initiation of the Ego…” p. 144.
  
  The terms used by Owen Barfield in his recent book Saving the Appearances, to depict the evolution of human consciousness, are very illuminating in this connection.—Whereas the old, pre-Christian sentences still assumed "Original Participation", the Gospel version of the Lord's Prayer points to "Final Participation".
• 3. This lecture, entitled Spirit Triumphant, is included in the Easter volume of the series The Festivals and their Meaning, p.62.