The Rudolf Steiner Archive

From: “Ludwig Jacobowski in the Light of Life”

A deep insight into human nature prompted Ludwig Feuerbach to make the significant statement: “God is the manifest inner being, the expressed self of man, the confession of his innermost thoughts, the public confession of his love”. It is the trait in the human soul that this sentence describes that led Ludwig Jacobowski to write the “Novel of a God” when he wanted to portray the dark forces that rule at the bottom of the mind. In doing so, he set himself a task that naturalistic art is bound to fail in. All the individual actions, moods and thoughts of a person seem to point to a struggle in his soul that accompanies him from the moment he becomes conscious until his death. No matter what course the individual events that bring a person to life take, the fundamental struggle always arises anew. It is impossible to depict this struggle in all its magnitude, in its overwhelming scope, if one limits oneself to the reproduction of real facts and real human characters. One would then only be able to show symptoms of this struggle. A personality like Ludwig Jacobowski had to feel this way. For him, it was a matter of constantly deepening his inner life. He wanted to descend into the deepest pits of his own inner being. There he had to encounter the two fundamental forces of the mind that pull people back and forth and mysteriously determine their fate. The one force contains: kindness, love, patience, benevolence, beauty, the other: hatred, hostility, savagery, ugliness, resentment. Anyone who is honest with themselves must admit that there is something of all these elements within them. And the course of world history shows a demonic war that these forces wage, as they emerge from the breast of the individual and guide the destinies of people and nations. The imagination of the poet must go beyond reality if it is to depict the eternal struggle of these powers. From the Nordic pantheon, Ludwig Jacobowski took the superhuman figures he needed to portray the primal demons of the human soul. But the characters that the Nordic sagas had invested in their deities were no more than a starting point for him. He freely developed them in such a way that he could say how modern man feels about the primal struggle that is hinted at.

Balder, the mildness and beauty that has become a god, and Loki, the friend of destruction, are the mythological figures through which Jacobowski was able to express his thoughts poetically. Their fates within the Nordic world of gods became the “apparent inner self” in his novel, the “expressed self of man”. One must point out two main characteristics of Jacobowski as a person if one wants to understand why he was so successful as a poet in his “Loki”: one, the power of plastic creation, and the other, an enchanting lyrical swing. To a great extent, the poet has solved the task of creating mere soul forces so that they do not appear as shadowy allegories, but rather as vivid personalities. This fact is understandable when one knows that these powers of the soul truly detached themselves from his inner being like independent personalities, like demonic entities, and always accompanied him. They played such a role in his life that he felt them like figures that guided him, with whom he held dialogues, and even with whom he fought. And this struggle was so intense that it confused all his feelings, that it stirred up all his passions. The latter circumstance explains the subjective element with which he describes and which naturally sought a lyrical form of expression.

Human nature has within it both the element of selfless devotion and ruthless selfishness. The love of which Goethe says: “No self-love, no self-interest lasts, before its coming they have shrunk away, we call it being pious,” this love has to fight a difficult battle against selfishness, which also appropriates love, according to the words of Max Stirner: “I love people because love makes me happy.” I love because I feel good when I love. In human life, good is followed by evil as a necessary complement. Balder, the all-embracing love, the sun of existence, cannot exist without Loki, selfishness, darkness. Life must proceed in opposites.

It does not seem easy to portray Loki as a sympathetic character. Can one feel sympathy for selfishness, for the desire to destroy? Jacobowski was able to show Loki's character in a sympathetic light, because he knew that good is not only good, but also finite, limited in its goodness. However, the source of the world holds infinite possibilities. A Balder must not seize power. He may spread an immeasurable abundance of good; he must not settle permanently. He must give way to a subsequent Balder who brings new good. One may lament the downfall of good, for one must feel this downfall as an injustice. But this injustice must happen. A power is necessary that destroys good so that new good can arise. The new good needs the destroyer to come into being. Balder needs Loki. And Loki, like the best of gods, can lament that he has to kill Balder; but he kills him out of necessity, and in doing so prepares the way for Balder's son. This is the deeply tragic aspect that Jacobowski has brought out in the character of Loki. It is Loki's fate to be bad, so that new good can always enter the world.

Thus Jacobowski's “Loki” has grown out of a philosophical view of life. And just as a philosophical understanding of life cannot harm man in his full, all-round activity, so the “Novel of a God” is not impaired in its poetic value by the fact that it is steeped in a world of philosophical ideas. Robert Hamerling said of his “Ahasver”: “Overarching, towering, mysteriously spurring and driving, accelerating the crises, standing behind the striving and struggling individuals as the embodiment of the balancing general life – that is how I imagined the figure of Ahasver.” And this is how Jacobowski imagined the character of his Loki. The overarching, superior nature of the philosophical ideas gives the constantly plastic characters and the vividly described events of the poem the character of a higher reality, without robbing them of the ordinary one.

One night, the Ases are terrorized by a terrible dream. Things never seen before are happening in the sky. Odin, the father of the gods, is awakened from his sleep. He sees his wife Frigg's bed unoccupied. Black mist rises from the bed. When the Ase rises to look for his wife, she is lying there with drops of sweat on her forehead and breathing heavily, as if she had just returned from a long journey. The other Ase experience similar things. In the morning they share their strange experiences with each other. Only Urd, the goddess of fate, can know what the mysterious events mean. But she cannot be asked, for her mouth only speaks when she is not asked. Urd's messenger, the black mountain falcon, announces that an Aesir child has been born this night. The mother is an Aesir, but Urd does not know who. Nor does she know who the father is. The Aesir women should take turns in nursing the child. It should be called “Loki”. Thus a being is placed in the world of the gods, sprung from it itself, but as a child of sin, the sin of the gods.

High up in the north, far from Valhalla, this child of sin grows up. Frigg, Odin's wife, has made a bed for him in a hut. And every day an Asin has to go to the distant hut to look after the little god. When Frigg was with him for the first time, the child smiled sweetly. But the goddess beats the boy. He learns to forget how to laugh. All the Asinnen mistreat the uncomfortable offspring of the gods. He is fed with glacier milk, wolf's foam and eagle meat. He is to atone for his sinful origin. This origin has made him an enemy of the entire world of gods. Through their treatment, the Asinnen plant the hostile attitude in him.

Soon they no longer bother about the boy. An elven old woman, Sigyn, continues to care for him in a motherly way. He grows up under her protection. He becomes a strong, serious being. The Asinnen have driven all cheerfulness out of him. He has to work hard to gain food from the earth. This is a mystery to him, and he asks Sigyn whether all beings have to create the bread of life in the sweat of their brow. The old woman's reply encompasses the feelings of all those who are burdened and weighed down, the anxious question that the disinherited must ask themselves at all times: “O wise world of the Ases! Some walk above the air and the sun, reaching into the lovely air to the right and to the left and grasping firm fruits and heavy stalks. And the others crawl laboriously over chasms and cliffs; and their hands tear at the rough earth, empty and only moist from their own sweat.” The god of the disinherited must therefore become Loki, and his feelings towards the other Ases are those of the joyless life burdened with toil towards the effortless, joy-producing happiness.

Loki sets out to meet the beings of his own kind who live in the sun of happiness. When he enters their circle, it becomes clear that he possesses something that they all have to do without, something that the one burdened with pain has over the one who enjoys undeserved happiness: true, supreme wisdom. Loki knows the future of the other gods, which remains hidden from them.

The happy man lives in the eternal present. He enjoys the moment, and it is far from his mind to ponder the causes that bring him the happiness of the moment. The one who is pained by the wheels of the world's course asks about their eternal play. From these questions, he gains insight into the course of things. Wisdom is born out of pain and privation. It makes one strong and hard against carefree dullness. Goethe once called (according to “Riemers Mitteilungen”) “dullness” the “beautiful, magical veil that places nature and truth in a more secret light”, and in the poem “To Fate” he praises this “dullness” with the words: “You have met the right measure for us, wrapped us in pure dullness, so that we, filled with the power of life, hope in the lovely presence of the dear future.” But Goethe also found a guiding principle for the other side of life: “Only he who must conquer it daily deserves freedom as well as life” (“Faust”, Part 2). Loki's life had to be conquered by himself from the very beginning. The path to wisdom leads through pain. That is why he also robs those who walk it of selfless love. Those who have not earned their fate through pain can give themselves selflessly. Those who have acquired their own through pain are all too easily reminded of their own suffering by the carefree happy. This is the case with Loki. He does not know love that is born of dull happiness. This love, which comes from the realm of the gods' joy, lives in Balder. But even the connoisseur of pain cannot close his mind to the power of this love. He must recognize its value. Loki trembles before this love, which he must appreciate, despite the fact that fate has denied it to him. He must confront Balder as an enemy; but he can only do so with the bitter feeling that he is fighting something great. The wisdom that comes from pain must thus give birth to new pain.

Why must the knowing Loki hate Balder, who lives in sweet ignorance but is full of love? Loki's wisdom ends before this question. For Loki's own fate is wrapped up in the answer to this question. And this fate of his is as unknown to him as it is to the other gods, but he sees through it with clairvoyance. What is destined for the other deities is open to his wisdom; what the dark powers have in store for him, this wisdom stops short of.

That is the fate of knowledge: it creates a new riddle by solving other riddles. But with happiness it robs us of our impartiality. That is why the happy believe that knowledge can only come from sin. Balder and Loki are always fighting in our soul. We could be completely happy if we were just pleasure-seekers. But then we would have no judgment of our happiness. We would have a joyful life, but one that would be like a dream. It is only through deprivation and misfortune that we learn what happiness is. But at the same time, they rob us of happiness along with insight.

It is a deep feature of Jacobowski's poetry that only two beings love Loki: Balder, the epitome of all happiness, and Sigyn, the elven old woman. Balder can do so because he does not know hatred, and Sigyn because she does not demand requited love. In the saga, Sigyn is a loving wife who naturally wants to be loved in return. In Jacobowski's poetry, she is a being who looks at the world and its happiness with sublime irony. She is equally distant from and close to Sigyn's hatred and love, because for her they are in the distance to which wisdom has pushed her. She is concerned that undeserved happiness should not become overpowering. That is why she cherishes and cares for the advocate of the disinherited in Loki.

The fight for a mere principle could not carry us away as Jacobowski's novel does. This fight would have to have something frosty about it if Loki were the opponent of the gods, just because he is supposed to represent the negating powers within the world plan. Loki does not fight alone for a general cause; he also fights for his own cause. Balder deprives him of the most beloved, the adored woman. And it is precisely from this personal misfortune of Loki that Balder's happiness springs. That Nanna becomes Balder's wife, not Loki's, completes the latter's happiness and thus that of the other Ases. “Nanna and Balder... These two names made the gods of Valhalla tremble with delight. Light came to light, sun to sun, and the love of the two shielded the glorious world of the gods from the fiends of darkness and the giants in icy Jötumheim better than enormous walls of rock and iron. Their name was like a shimmering breastplate and a deep-sounding shield. Misfortune struck against it, but the armor shone on, and the shield sounded deep, as if the blow had been struck with a light willow wand.»

The gods not only enjoy their undeserved luck, they have also stolen Loki's luck. This gives his opponents a personal coloration and personal right. The weaknesses in the lives and characters of the gods, the imperfections in the world they control: Loki uses everything to make life difficult for the Ases. “Loki's Pranks” describes the war of destruction that he wages against his divine enemies. Odin and Thor's way of life is thwarted by these pranks, so that divine omnipotence and strength must give way before the scorn that the wisdom disguised as cunning pours over them. Loki destroys the institutions in the human realm that the gods look upon with favor, indeed, on which they live: he does so with superior mockery. He protects the oppressed; he shakes the slaves from their stupor, so that the “holy”, the “divine” world order betrays its imperfection. The power of the gods over the children of earth is shattered by Loki's cleverness. He brings shame to the realm of the gods itself. Freya, the most beautiful of the Ases, loves the enemy of the Ases. It is precisely this love that Loki uses to bring the bitterest scorn upon Valhalla. He becomes the devil; he has Freya's love exposed by ugly dwarves.

The wildest of Loki's works is the destruction of Baldur and the realm in which only those people live who live according to Baldur's sense. It is the kingdom of a people “in which never a fist was raised against a foreign head, never a lewd word was attached to a maiden's footsteps, like dirty sand to wet heels, never a red gold ring or a brownish amber necklace awakened impure desire. There the stalks shot freely into the air, and clouds and winds, rain and sun, pressed to the mercy of being able to spread their abundance of blessings over Balders land. In the illuminated air, the noblemen strode along, their stately heads proudly raised, their golden locks cascading over their broad shoulders; and their wives walked beside them, their foreheads clear and calm, their gentleness softly illuminated by their eyes.” Loki brings ruin to this land. For everything that reminds people of Balder and his being is to be destroyed. Loki leads the people of the land, where hunger reigns, against the noblemen in Balders territory. The sons of Balders fall under the mighty blows of the oppressed. A dog is placed on Balders throne. “The noblemen bow their heads low before the snarling animal, one after the other, their faces white as linen in the field when the early sun licks over it. Then the women approach. The bright golden hair falls from their round heads and piles up next to the throne, then children again, wailing and weeping over the shame, and they rub their foreheads bloody on the ground out of shame."

With that, Loki has fulfilled his task. Balder and all that belongs to him has been overcome. The other Aesir have also followed Balder into the realm of the dead. But Loki cannot remain the victor. A youth steps out from among the sons of Balder, who are paying homage to the beast. The beast pushes itself down from the throne, glides to the ground and licks the youth's foot. Loki must confess: “Woe to you and to me. This is Balders son. The Lord and King!”... Far out Loki threw himself “into the field, so that his head struck against stones. But he did not pay attention to it. He cried incessantly: “This is Balders son! Balder is not dead! Balder lives, ... eternally like me ..., stronger than me ..., Balder, the sun son! ... Woe to me! ...

Thus the “Novel of a God” ends in the great mystery of the world, which encloses existence and becoming in a riddle. The creative is eternal. And the creative eternally produces its counterpart: destruction. We humans are enmeshed in this course of the world. We live the world's riddle. The creative is eternally right, and so is destruction. Balder and Loki belong together like creation and destruction. Creation is an usurper. But it is its fate that it must have destruction at its side. Balder needs Loki; and Loki must be evil so that new Balders can always arise in the eternal game of the world.

Jacobowski has built his poetry on the basis of great questions of world view. Through it, he has shown how deeply he himself has been gripped by the eternal riddles of existence. One must have seen the threatening abyss of life before one in order to have accomplished a rescue attempt such as the “Novel of a God.”

Yesterday we tried to characterise the path to Christ that can still be taken today, as it could especially in earlier times, by exoteric means. We will now touch briefly on the esoteric path—the path which leads to Christ in such a way that he can be found within the super-sensible worlds.

First of all we must note that this esoteric path to Christ Jesus was also the way of the Evangelists, of those who wrote the Gospels. For although the writer of the John Gospel had himself witnessed many of the events he describes—as you can see from the lecture-cycle on this Gospel—his chief object was not merely to relate what he remembered, for this applies only to those minute, exact details which surprise us in his Gospel. The great, majestic, crowning features of the work of redemption, of the Mystery of Golgotha, were drawn by the writer of this Gospel from his clairvoyant consciousness also. Consequently, although the Gospels are really revived Mystery rituals—this is shown in my Christianity as Mystical Fact—they are so because the writers of the Gospels, following their esoteric path, could procure for themselves out of the super-sensible world a picture of the events in Palestine which led to the Mystery of Golgotha. Ever since the Mystery of Golgotha up to our own times, a person who desired to come to a super-sensible experience of the Christ-Event had to go through the stages which you will find described in earlier lecture-cycles as the seven stages of our Christian Initiation: The Washing of the Feet; The Scourging; The Crowning with Thorns; The Mystic Death; The Burial; the Resurrection; the Ascension. Today we will make clear to ourselves what the pupil can attain by going through this Christian Initiation.

First of all, one essential point. As you can convince yourselves by reading the lectures on this subject, Christian Initiation is very different from the incorrect method of Initiation described in the first lecture of this course. In Christian Initiation certain feelings which belong to humanity in general are first invoked, and they lead to an Imagination of the Washing of the Feet. Thus the picture of this in the John Gospel is not the first thing to be imagined; the aspirant begins by trying to live for a long time with certain feelings and perceptions. I have often characterised this by saying that the person concerned should gaze upon the plant, which grows out of the mineral ground, takes into itself the materials of the mineral kingdom, and yet raises itself above this kingdom as a higher being than the mineral. If the plant could speak and feel, it would bow down to the mineral kingdom and say: ‘Certainly I was destined within the economy of the Cosmos to attain a higher stage than you, Mineral, but you give me the possibility of existence. In the order of beings you are certainly a lower being than myself, but I have to thank you for my existence, and I bow myself in humility before you.’ In the same way the animal would have to bow down to the plant, although the plant is a lower being than the animal, and say: ‘I thank you for my existence; I acknowledge it in humility, and I bow myself before you.’ And so would each being that climbs upwards have to bow down to the other standing below, and also he who has risen by way of a spiritual ladder to a higher level must bow down to the beings who alone have made this possible for him.

A person who permeates himself with the feeling of humility in regard to the lower, who thoroughly incorporates this feeling in his own being and lets it live there for months, perhaps even for years, will see that it spreads itself out in his organism, and so pervades him that he experiences a transformation of this feeling into an Imagination. And this Imagination corresponds exactly to the scene represented in the John Gospel as the Washing of the Feet, where Christ Jesus, who is the Head of the Twelve, stoops to those who stand here below Him in the order of the physical world, and in humility acknowledges that He thanks those who are below Him for the possibility of his higher ascent. He acknowledges before the Twelve: ‘As the animal thanks the plant, so do I thank you for what I was able to become in the physical world!’ A person who permeates himself with this feeling comes not only to an Imagination of the Washing of the Feet, but also to a quite pronounced feeling, as though water were washing over his feet. This can be felt for weeks: it shows how deeply imbued our human nature is with such universal human feelings, which nevertheless can raise man above himself.

Further, we have seen that we can go through the experience which leads to the Imagination of the Scourging when we place the following vividly before us: ‘Much suffering and pain will meet me in the world; yes, from all sides suffering and pain may come; no one escapes them. But I will so steel my will that suffering and pain, the scourgings that come from the world, may do their worst; I will stand upright and bear my fate resignedly, as it comes to pass. For had it not come to pass as it has done, as I have experienced it, I should not have been able to reach the height I have attained.’ When the person in question makes this a matter of his perception, and lives within it, he actually feels something like sharp pains and woundings, like strokes of a scourge against his own skin, and the Imagination arises as if he were outside himself, and was watching himself scourged according to the example of Christ Jesus. In line with this example one can experience the Crowning of Thorns, the Mystic Death, and so on. This has often been described.

What is attained by a man who thus seeks within himself to experience first the four stages, and then, when his karma is favourable, the others also, making in all seven stages of Christian Initiation? From the foregoing description you can gather that the whole scale of feelings we go through ought to strengthen us and give us power, and ought to make us into quite another nature, so that in the world we feel ourselves standing strong, powerful and free, and also capable of every act of devoted love. In Christian Initiation, this ought in a deep sense to become a second nature to us. For what has to happen?

Perhaps it has not yet occurred to all those of you who have read the earlier elementary cycles, and so have met with Christian Initiation in its seven stages, that owing to the intensity of the experiences which must be undergone, the effects go right into the physical body. For through the strength and power with which we go through these feelings, it really is at first as if water were washing over our feet, and then as if we were transfixed with wounds. We actually feel as if thorns were pressing into our head; we feel all the pain and suffering of the Crucifixion. We have to feel this before we can experience the Mystical Death, the Burial, and the Resurrection, as these also have been described. Even if we have not gone through these feelings with sufficient intensity, they will certainly have the effect that we become strong and full of love in the right sense of the word. But what we then incorporate can go only as far as the etheric body.

When, however, we begin to feel that our feet are as though washed with water, our body as if covered with wounds, then we have succeeded in driving these feelings so deeply into our nature that they have penetrated as far as the physical body. They do indeed penetrate the physical body, and then the stigmata, the marks of the bleeding wounds of Christ Jesus, may appear. We drive the feelings inwards into the physical body and know that they develop their strength in the physical body itself. We consciously feel ourselves more in the grip of our whole being than if the impressions were merely in the astral body and etheric body. The essential thing is that through a process of mystical feeling we work right into our physical body; and when we do this we are doing nothing less than making ourselves ready in our physical body to receive the Phantom that went forth from the grave on Golgotha. Hence we work into our physical body in order to make it so living that it feels a relationship with, an attractive force towards, the Phantom that rose out of the grave on Golgotha.

And here I would make an incidental remark. In Spiritual Science one must accustom oneself to becoming acquainted with cosmic secrets and cosmic truths gradually. Anyone who is not prepared to wait for the relevant truths will not make good progress. Of course people would like to have Spiritual Science all at once, preferably in one book or in one course of lectures. But that cannot be so, as you will see from an example. How long is it since in earlier lectures Christian Initiation was first described? You heard that such and such takes place, and that the individual, through the feelings which affect his soul, works right into his physical body. Everything said in those earlier lectures was intended to provide some elements for understanding the Mystery of Golgotha, and now for the first time it is possible to describe how an individual, through the requisite exercises of feeling in the course of Christian Initiation, makes himself ripe to receive the Phantom which rose from the grave of Golgotha. We had to wait until the union of the subjective with the objective could be found; and for this many preparatory lectures were necessary. Even today there are many things that can be indicated only as ‘half truths’. Anyone who has patience to continue with us—whether in this or in another incarnation, each according to his karma—will have seen how he could advance from the description of the mystical path in the Christian sense to the description of the objective fact, and so to the real meaning of this Christian Initiation, and he will see also that still higher truths will be brought to light from out of Spiritual Science in the course of the coming years or the next age. Thus we see the aim, the goal, of Christian Initiation.

Through what has been characterised as Rosicrucian Initiation, i.e. what an individual can have of it as Initiation today, the same thing in a certain sense is also attained, only by somewhat different means. A bond of attraction is formed between the individual, in so far as he is incorporated in a physical body, and that which arose as the real prototype of the physical body from the grave of Golgotha. Now we know from previous lectures that we are at the starting-point of a world-epoch in which we must expect an event that will not take place on the physical plane, as did the Event of Golgotha, but in the super-sensible world; an event which nevertheless stands in a close and true connection with the Event of Golgotha. The latter was designed to give back to man his real physical force-body, the Phantom which had degenerated from the beginning of the Earth-evolution, and for the giving back of it a series of events on the physical plane had to occur; but for that which is now to happen an event on the physical plane is not necessary. An incarnation of the Christ-Being in a human body of flesh could take place only once in the course of the Earth-evolution. When people announce a repetition of the incarnation of this Being, it simply means that the Christ-Being is not understood.

The event now to come, which can be observed only in a super-sensible world, has been characterised in the words: ‘Christ becomes for men the Lord of Karma.’ This means that in future the ordering of karmic transactions will come about through Christ. Ever more and more will men of the future feel: ‘I am going through the gate of death with my karmic account. On one side stand my good, clever, and beautiful deeds, my clever, beautiful, good, and intelligent thoughts; on the other side stands everything evil, wicked, stupid, foolish and loathsome. But He who in the future will have the office of Judge for the incarnations which will follow in human evolution, in order to bring order into this karmic account of men, is the Christ!’ And truly we have to picture this in the following way:

After we have gone through the gate of death, we shall be incarnated again in a later period. We shall then have to encounter events through which our karma can be balanced, for every man must reap what he has sown. Karma is a just law. But what the karmic law has to fulfill is not there only for individual men. Karma does not only balance the accounts of each Ego, but in every case the balancing must be arranged so as to be in the best possible accord with the concerns of the whole world. It must enable us to give all possible help to the advancement of mankind on earth. For this we need enlightenment, not merely the knowledge that the karmic fulfillment of our deed must come about. The fulfillment can take a form which will be either less or more useful for the general progress of humanity. Hence we must choose those thoughts, feelings or perceptions which will pay off our karma and at the same time serve the collective progress of mankind. In the future it will fall to Christ to bring the balance of our karma into line with the general Earth-karma and the general progress of humanity. And this happens principally in the time between death and a new birth. But it will also be prepared for in the epoch of time we are now approaching, before whose door we stand, because men will more and more acquire the capacity for a special experience. Very few are capable of it now, but from the middle of this century onwards, through the next 1,000 years, more and more people will have the following experience.

A person has done this or that. He will feel constrained to reflect on his action, and something like a dream-picture, arising in his mind, will make a quite remarkable impression on him. He will say to himself: ‘I cannot identify this as a recollection of something I have done, yet it feels like an experience of my own.’ Like a dream-picture it will stand there before him, closely concerned with him; but he cannot recall that he has experienced or done it in the past. If he is an anthroposophist he will understand the matter; otherwise he will have to wait until he comes to Anthroposophy and learns to understand it. The anthroposophist will know: ‘What you see as an apparent consequence of your actions is a picture that will be fulfilled in the future; the balancing of your actions is shown to you in advance.’ We are at the beginning of an epoch in which men, directly after they have committed a deed, will have a premonition, a feeling, perhaps even a significant picture, of how this deed will be karmically balanced.

Thus, in closest connection with human experience, enhanced capabilities for humanity will arise during the coming epoch. These capabilities will give a powerful stimulus to human morality, and this will signify something quite different from the voice of conscience, which has been a preparation for it. The individual will no longer believe: ‘What I have done will die with me.’ He will know quite exactly: ‘My action will not die when I die; it will have a consequence which will live on with me.’ And there is much else that the individual will know. The time during which the doors of the spiritual world have been closed to men is nearly over. Men must again climb up into the spiritual world. Their awakening capacities will enable them to participate in the spiritual world. Clairvoyance will always be different from this participation. Just as there was an ancient dreamlike clairvoyance, so will there be a future clairvoyance that is not dreamlike, the clairvoyance of people who know what they are doing and what it signifies.

Something else, too, will come about. The individual will know: ‘I am not alone. Everywhere there are spiritual beings who stand in a relationship to me.’ Men will learn to communicate with these beings and to live with them. And in the next three thousand years the truth that Christ is acting as Karmic Judge will become apparent to a sufficiently large number of people. Christ Himself will be experienced by men as an etheric Form. Like Paul before Damascus, they will know quite intimately that Christ lives, and is the Source for the reawakening of the physical prototype we received at the beginning of our evolution, and need if the Ego is to attain full development.

If through the Mystery of Golgotha something happened which gave the greatest impetus to human evolution, on the other hand it came at the time when the human mind, the human soul, were in their darkest condition. There were indeed ancient periods of evolution when men could know with certainty, because they had an ancestral memory, that the human individuality goes through repeated earth-lives. In the Gospels the teaching of repeated earth-lives is apparent only when we understand the Gospels and can discern traces of it there. That was the time when men were least fitted to comprehend this teaching. In the later times when men sought for Christ along the path indicated yesterday, everything had to take the form of a childlike preparation. Men could not then be made acquainted with experiences concerning reincarnation; they were not ripe for it and it would only have led them into error. Christianity had to develop for nearly 2,000 years without being able to indicate the teaching of reincarnation.

We have shown in these lectures how different it was in Buddhism, and how in Western consciousness the thought of repeated earth-lives arises as something self-evident. Certainly, many misunderstandings still prevail; but whether we take this idea from Lessing or from the psychologist Drossbach, we become aware that for the European consciousness the teaching of reincarnation concerns humanity at large, whereas in Buddhism the individual regards the question of how he goes from life to life, how he can free himself from the thirst for existence, as concerning only his personal inner life. The Oriental makes what is given to him as teaching about reincarnation into a path of individual redemption, whereas for Lessing the essential question was: ‘How can the whole of humanity move forward?’ According to Lessing, we must distinguish successive periods of time within the progressive development of humanity. Something new is given to humanity in each epoch. We see from history that new civilising actions keep on emerging in the course of human development. How could one speak of the evolution of the whole of humanity, says Lessing, if a soul lived in only one epoch? Whence could the fruits of civilisation come if human beings were not born again, if what they had learnt in one epoch were not carried over into the next, and its fruits into the following epoch and so on?

Thus for Lessing the idea of repeated earth-lives is not only a concern of the individual soul. It concerns the whole course of earthly civilisation. And in order that an advanced civilisation may arise, a soul which lives in the nineteenth century must carry over into its present existence whatever it had previously gained. For the sake of the earth and its civilisation, human beings must be born again. That is Lessing's thought. But in this thought of reincarnation as concerning all mankind the Christ-Impulse has been at work, woven into it. For the Christ-Impulse makes everything a man does or can do into an action of universal relevance, not something that touches him only as an individual. He only can be Christ's disciple who says: ‘I do it for the least of the brethren, because I know Thou feelest as though I had done it for Thee.’ As the whole of humanity is bound up with Christ, so does he who confesses Christ feel that he belongs to all mankind. This thought has worked into the thinking, feeling, and perception of the whole human race. And when the idea of reincarnation reappeared in the eighteenth century, it appeared as a Christian thought. And although Widenmann treated reincarnation clumsily, in an embryonic way, yet in his prize essay of 1851 his thought of reincarnation is permeated by the Christian impulse. He devotes a special chapter to showing the connection between Christianity and the teaching of reincarnation.

It was necessary in human evolution that souls should first accept the other Christian impulses, so that the thought of reincarnation might come to our consciousness in a ripe form. And indeed this thought of reincarnation will so connect itself with Christianity that it will be felt as something that leads a person on through successive incarnations. We shall understand how individuality, which is completely lost according to the Buddhist view—as we saw from the conversation of King Milinda with the sage Nagasena—first receives its true content by becoming permeated with Christ. We can now understand why the Buddhist view, about 500 years before the appearance of Christ, lost the human Ego, while retaining the teaching of successive incarnations. We have reached a time in which the human organism must understand, accept, permeate itself with the thought of reincarnation. For the progress of human evolution does not depend on what teachings are promulgated or find a new foothold. Other laws come into consideration, and they do not depend upon ourselves.

In the future human nature will develop certain powers which will have the effect that the individual, as soon as he has reached a certain age and has become properly conscious of himself, will have the feeling: ‘There is something in me which I must understand.’ This feeling will take hold of men more and more. In past times, even when human beings were fully aware of themselves, the consciousness which is now to come did not exist. It will express itself somewhat as follows: ‘I feel something within me which is connected with my personal ego. Strangely, it will not fit in with all that I have come to know since birth.’ One man will understand what is at work here; another will not. A man will understand it if he has carried the teachings of Spiritual Science into his life. Then he will know: ‘What I am now feeling is foreign to me, because it is the ego that has come over from earlier lives.’ This will oppress the heart, will cause fear and anxiety, in those who cannot explain it by repeated earth-lives. These feelings, which are not merely a theoretical uncertainty but a starving, a cramping, of life, will disappear through the perceptions given to us by Spiritual Science, which tell us: ‘You must think of your life as extended over earlier earth-lives.’ Then men will see what it means for them to experience the connection with the Christ-Impulse. For it is the Christ-Impulse which will give life to the whole retrospective view, the whole perspective of the past. A man will feel: ‘Here was this incarnation; there, that one.’ Then he will come to a time beyond which he will be unable to go without clearly understanding: ‘The Christ-Impulse was then on earth!’ Incarnations will be followed further back to a time when the Christ-Event was not yet there. This illumination of the retrospective view through the Christ-Impulse will be needed by men for their assurance in the future, as a necessity and a help which can flow into later incarnations.

This transformation of the human soul will derive from the Event which begins in the twentieth century and may be called the second Christ-Event, so that those persons in whom higher faculties have awakened will look upon the Lord of Karma. Some of you may say that when the Christ-Event of the twentieth century takes place, many of those now living will be with those who have fallen asleep, will be in the time between death and a new birth. But whether a person is living in a physical body, or in the time between death and a new birth, if he has prepared himself for the Christ-Event, he will experience it. The vision of the Christ-Event does not depend on whether we are incarnated in a physical body, but the preparation for the Christ-Event does so depend. Just as it was necessary that the first Christ-Event should take place on the physical plane in order that the salvation of man could be accomplished, so must the preparation be made here in the physical world, the preparation to look with full understanding, with full illumination, upon the Christ-Event of the twentieth century. For a person who looks upon it unprepared, when his powers have been awakened, will not be able to understand it. The Lord of Karma will then appear to him as a fearful judgment. In order to have an illuminated understanding of this Event, the individual must be prepared. The spreading abroad of the anthroposophical world-conception has taken place in our time for this purpose, so that men can be prepared on the physical plane to perceive the Christ-Event either on the physical plane or on the higher planes. Those who are not sufficiently prepared on the physical plane, and then go unprepared through the life between death and a new birth, will have to wait until, in the next incarnation, they can be further prepared through Anthroposophy for the understanding of Christ. During the next 3,000 years the opportunity will be given to men of going through this preparation, and the purpose of all anthroposophical development will be to render men more and more capable of participating in that which is to come.

Thus we understand how the past flows over into the future. When, for example, we recall how the Buddha permeated the astral body of the Nathan Jesus-child, we see how the activity of the Buddha forces continued after he himself no longer needed to incarnate again on earth. And when we remember how influences not directly connected with the Buddha worked on in the West, we see how the spiritual world penetrates the physical.

All this preparation is connected with the fact that men are always drawing nearer to an ideal which dawned in ancient Greece, an ideal formulated by Socrates: that when a man grasps the idea of the good, the moral, the ethical, he feels this idea as so magical an impulse that he becomes capable of living in accordance with it as an ideal. Today we are not so far advanced that this ideal can be realised; we are only so far on that in certain circumstances a man may very well form a concept of the good; he may be very clever and wise, and yet he need not be morally good. The direction of inner evolution, however, is such that the ideas we hold of the good will immediately become moral impulses. That is the intent of the evolution we shall experience in the approaching times. And the teachings given on earth will increasingly be such that in the course of future centuries and millennia human speech will come to have an effect unimaginably greater than it has now or ever had in the past. Today in the higher worlds anyone can see clearly the connection between intellect and morality; but as yet there is no human speech which works so magically that when a moral principle is stated, it sinks down into a man as a new idea, so that he perceives it as directly moral, and cannot do otherwise than act upon it as a moral impulse. After the next 3,000 years it will be possible to use a form of speech that could not now be entrusted to our heads. It will be such that everything intellectual will at the same time be moral, and this moral element will penetrate into the hearts of men. During the next 3,000 years the human race must become as though permeated with magical morality. Otherwise men would not be able to bear such an evolution; they would only misuse it.

For the special preparation of an evolution of this kind we must look at a much slandered individuality who lived about a century before our era. He is mentioned, though certainly in a distorted form, in Hebrew writings as Jeschu Ben Pandira—Jesus the son of Pandira. From lectures once given in Berne, some of you will know that this Jeschu Ben Pandira worked in preparation for the Christ-Event by training pupils, among whom was one who became the teacher of the writer of the Gospel of Matthew. Jeschu Ben Pandira, a noble Essene figure, preceded Jesus of Nazareth by a century. Jesus of Nazareth Himself only went among the Essenes, whereas Jeschu Ben Pandira was altogether an Essene.

Who was Jeschu Ben Pandira?

The successor of that Bodhisattva who in his final earthly incarnation had risen in his twenty-ninth year to be Gautama Buddha was incorporated in the physical body of Jeschu Ben Pandira. Every Bodhisattva who rises to the rank of a Buddha has a successor. This oriental tradition corresponds exactly with occult research. The Bodhisattva who worked at that time in preparation for the Christ-Event was re-embodied again and again. One of his re-embodiments is fixed for the twentieth century. It is impossible to speak here more exactly concerning the re-embodiment of this Bodhisattva; something, however, can be said about the way in which such a Bodhisattva may be recognised.

Through a law which will be demonstrated and explained in future lectures, it is a peculiarity of this Bodhisattva that when he reappears in a new embodiment—and he always reappears thus in the course of the centuries—he is quite dissimilar in his youth from what he comes to be in his later activities. At a quite definite point of time in the life of this Bodhisattva, something like a revolution, a great transformation, always takes place. To express it more in detail, in some place or other there is a more or less gifted child, in whom it is not noticeable that he has to do anything special in preparation for the future evolution of humanity. Occult research confirms that no one during his childhood and youth gives so little sign of what he really is as he who is to incorporate a Bodhisattva. For at a certain point of time in his life a great change comes over him. If an individuality from the remote past—Moses, for example—is incorporated, it is not the same with him as it was with the Christ individuality, to whom Jesus of Nazareth left the sheaths. In the case of a Bodhisattva there certainly will be something like an exchange, but the individuality remains in a certain sense, and the individuality who comes from the remote past—as patriarch or another—and is to bring new forces for the evolution of humanity, descends, and the human being who receives him experiences an immense transformation. This transformation occurs particularly between the thirtieth and thirty-third years. It can never be known beforehand that this body will be taken possession of by the Bodhisattva. The change never shows itself in youth. The distinctive feature is precisely that the later years are so unlike the youthful ones.

He who was incorporated in Jeschu Ben Pandira—the Bodhisattva who was repeatedly reincarnated, and who succeeded Gautama Buddha—has prepared himself for his Bodhisattva-incarnation so that he can reappear and rise to the Buddha dignity exactly 5,000 years after the illumination of Gautama Buddha under the bodhi-tree. Here again occult investigation fully agrees with oriental tradition. So, 3,000 years from now, this Bodhisattva, looking back on all that has happened in the new epoch, and looking back on the Christ-Impulse and all that is connected with it, will speak in such a way that his speech will make into a reality what has just been characterised: intellectuality will become directly moral. The future Bodhisattva, who will place all that he has at the service of the Christ-Impulse, will be a Bringer of the Good through the Word, through the Logos. He will speak in a language as yet possessed by no man, but a language which is so holy that he who speaks it can be called a Bringer of the Good. This also will not show itself in his youth, but approximately in his thirty-first year he will appear as a new man, and will yield himself up as the one who can be filled with a higher individuality. The experience of one single incarnation in the flesh holds good only for Christ Jesus. All Bodhisattvas go through various successive incarnations on the physical plane. This Bodhisattva, 3,000 years hence, will have advanced so far that he will be a Bringer of the Good, a Maitreya Buddha, who will place his Words of Goodness at the service of the Christ-Impulse, which a sufficient number of men will by then have made part of their lives. The perspective of the future development of man tells us this today.

What was necessary so that human beings could come gradually to this epoch of evolution? This we can make clear as follows.

If we wish to make a graphic picture of what happened in ancient Lemuria for the earth-evolution of man, we can say: That was the time when man descended from Divine Heights: it was ordained for him that he should develop further in a certain way, but through the Luciferic influence he was cast down more deeply into matter than he would have been without that influence. Thereby his path in evolution became different.

When man had gone downwards to the lowest stage, a powerful impetus in the upward direction was required. This impetus could come about only because in the higher worlds the Being whom we designate as the Christ-Being had formed a resolution which He would not have needed to take for His own evolution. For the Christ-Being would also have attained His evolution if He had taken a path far, far above the path that men were pursuing. He could have passed by, so to speak, far above the evolution of humanity. But if the upward impulse had not been given, human evolution would have been compelled to continue on its downward path. The Christ would have had an ascent, but humanity a downfall. Only because the Christ-Being had taken the resolution to unite Himself at the time of the Events of Palestine with a man, to embody Himself in a man and to make the upward path possible for humanity—only this could bring about the Redemption of humanity, as we may now call it: redemption from the impulse brought by the Luciferic forces and designated symbolically in the Bible as ‘original sin’, the Temptation by the Serpent and the original sin that was its consequence. Christ accomplished something that was not necessary for Himself.

What kind of Act was this?

It was an act of Divine Love. We must be quite clear that no human feeling is capable of realising the intensity of love that was needed for a God to make a decision—a decision He had no need to make—to work upon earth in a human body. Thereby, through an act of love, the most important event in human evolution was brought about. And when men grasp this act of love by a God, when they try to grasp it as a great ideal in contrast with which every human act of love can be but small, then, through this feeling of utter disproportion between human love and the Divine Love needed for the Mystery of Golgotha, they will draw near to the building up, to the giving birth within them, of those Imaginations which place before our spiritual gaze the momentous Event of Golgotha. Yes, verily, it is possible to attain to the Imagination of the mount on which the Cross was raised, that Cross on which hung a God in human body, a God who out of his own free will, out of Love, accomplished the act whereby the earth and humanity could reach their goal.

If the God who is designated by the name of the Father had not at one time permitted the Luciferic influences to come to man, man would not have developed the free Ego. With the Luciferic influence, the conditions for the free Ego were established. That had to be permitted by the Father-God. But just as the Ego, for the sake of freedom, had to become entangled in matter, so then, in order that the Ego might be freed from this entanglement, the entire love of the Son had to lead to the Act of Golgotha. Through this alone the freedom of man, the complete dignity of man, first became possible. For the fact that we can be free beings, we have to thank a Divine Act of Love. As men we may feel free beings, but we may never forget that for this freedom we have to thank this Act of Love. Then, in the midst of our feeling, the thought will arise: ‘You can attain to the value, the dignity, of a man; but one thing you may not forget, that for being what you are you have to thank Him who has brought back to you your human prototype through the Redemption on Golgotha.’ Men should not be able to lay hold of the thought of freedom without the thought of Redemption through Christ: only then is the thought of freedom justified. If we will to be free, we must bring the offering of thanks to Christ for our freedom. Then only can we really perceive it. And those who consider that their dignity as men is restricted when they thank Christ for it, should recognise that human opinions have no significance in face of cosmic facts, and that one day they will very willingly acknowledge that their freedom was won by Christ.

What we have been able to do in these lectures is not very much for gaining a closer understanding of the Christ-Impulse, and of the whole course of human evolution on earth, from the standpoint of Spiritual Science. We can only bring together single building-stones. But if the effect upon our souls is something like a renewed stimulus to further effort, to further development along the path of knowledge, then these stones will have done their work for the great spiritual temple of humanity. And the best we can carry away from a spiritual-scientific study such as this is that once more we have learnt something towards a certain goal, that we have again somewhat enriched our knowledge. And our high goal is this: that we may know more exactly how much we still need to know. Then we shall be more and more permeated with the truth of the old Socratic saying: ‘The more a man learns, the more he knows how little he knows.’ But this conviction is good only when it is not a confession of passive, easy-going resignation, but testifies to a living will and effort towards an ever-extending knowledge. We ought not to acknowledge how little we know by saying, ‘Since we cannot know everything, we would rather learn nothing; so let us fold our hands in our lap.’ That would be a false result of spiritual-scientific study. The right result is to be more and more inspired to further striving; to regard every new thing learnt as a step towards the attainment of yet higher stages.

In these lectures we have perhaps had to say much about the Redemption-thought without often using the word. This Redemption-thought should be felt by a seeker after the spirit as it was felt by a great forerunner of our Spiritual Science: that it is related and entrusted to our souls only as a consequence of our striving after the highest goals of knowing, feeling and willing. And as this great forerunner connects the word ‘Redemption’ with the word ‘striving’ and has expressed it in the line, ‘Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, den können wir erlösen’—‘He who never gives up striving, he it is whom we can redeem’—so should the anthroposophist always feel. The true Redemption can be grasped and felt and willed in its own realm only by someone who never gives up.

May this lecture-cycle—which has been specially laid upon my heart, because so much has to be said in it concerning the Redemption-thought—be a stimulus to our further endeavours; may we find ourselves ever more and more united in our endeavours, during this incarnation and in later ones. May this be the fruit which comes from such studies. With this we will close, taking with us as a stimulus the thought that we must continually exert ourselves, in order that we may see what the Christ is, on the one hand, and on the other may draw nearer to Redemption, which is being set free not merely from the lower earth-path and earth-fate, but free also from everything that hinders man from attaining his dignity as man. But these things are written down truly only in the annals of the Spiritual. For the script that can be read in spiritual realms is the only true writing. Let us therefore strive to read the chapter concerning the dignity of man and the mission of man, in the script where these things stand written in the spiritual worlds.

Often one still confuses the Theosophical Society with the Buddhist world view. On occasion I ventured to remark in these monthly meetings that at the Theosophical Congress in Chicago in 1893 the Indian Brahman G. N. Chakravarti himself said that also for him theosophy has brought something absolutely new or at least a complete renewal of the world view. At that time he expressed that any spiritual world view, also of his people in India, has given way to materialism, and that it was the Theosophical Society which renewed the spiritual world view in India.

From that one can already conclude that we did not get theosophy from India, as well as one has to admit, on the other hand, if one follows the theosophical movement, as it has developed in last decades, that it has tried more and more to explain all other religious systems that it has tried more and more to bring the core of truth to light not only of the more oriental, but also of the western religions.

Today it is only my task to outline the way how true, real theosophy is to be found in the really understood Christianity, or rather, it is my task to characterise the standpoint of the Theosophical Society compared with Christianity.

The theosophical movement wants to be nothing else than a servant of Christianity. It wants to serve trying to extract the deepest core, the real being from the Christian denominations. Thereby it expects to take nothing away from anybody who is attached to Christianity whose heart is connected with Christianity. On the contrary, those who understand the theosophical movement know that just the Christian can receive a lot that many disputes, which have today taken place everywhere in the Christian confessions, must disappear if the true core, which can be, nevertheless, only a core, comes to the fore.

Of course, I cannot exhaust this big topic in great detail and comprehensiveness, and, hence, I ask you to make do with few lines which I am able to give. But it is time to give this just now what I am able to give.

Our present is not a time which likes to rise to the lively spirit. Indeed, there are ideals at which the human beings look up, and they speak a lot of ideals, but that they could realise the ideals that the spirit could be active and that it is the task to recognise it, the 19th and the beginning 20th centuries do not want to know. Our time thereby differs quite substantially from the time of the great spirits who developed Christianity originally following the founder of Christianity. Go back to the early times of Christianity, possibly to Clement of Alexandria, and you will find that at that time all scholarship, all knowledge was there only to understand one matter: to understand how the living word, the light of the world could become flesh. Our time does not like to rise to such heights of the spiritual view. As well as we have limited ourselves with regard to the scientific view to see the purely actual what the eyes see what the senses can perceive, also the confessions are really full of such materialistic views. Just the representatives of such materialistic views will believe to understand the confession best of all. They do not know how strongly unconsciously materialistic thoughts have taken place there. Let me only give a few examples.

The 19th century has tried to put up with Christianity in serious work. One went to work critically above all and tried to investigate the documents in strictly scientific way, to which extent historical-actual truth exists in them. Yes, “actual” truth, this is that which also religious scholars strive for today. To the letter one investigated in every way whether the one or the other evangelist says the pure, actual truth what could have really occurred what could have taken place before the eyes of the human beings once. It is the object of the so-called historical-critical theology to investigate this. We see how under these tasks the image of the God Who became flesh has taken on a materialistic colouring gradually. Let me state something that always preoccupies those who search for truth.

David Friedrich Strauss started during the thirties of the 19th century to historically investigate the actual core of the Gospels. After he had tried to make clear what such a core of historical truth is, he tried to outline a picture of Christianity independently. Now this picture which he outlined is really out of the spirit of his time, out of the spirit which could not believe that once something could have been realised in the world that outshines humankind by far, something that comes from the heights of spirit, something that is born out of the real spirit. What did David Friedrich Strauss find? He found that the real Son of God cannot present himself in a single personality. No, only the whole humankind, the human kind, the type can be the real representation of God on earth. The struggle of the whole humankind, symbolically understood, is the living God, but not a single individual. All the stories about the person Jesus Christ that formed in the times in which Christianity came into being are nothing else than myths which the imagination of the peoples created.—The Son of God evaporated to a divine ideal with David Friedrich Strauss as a result of his endeavours to show the Son of God as the struggle and striving of the whole humankind.

Now, look around in the Gospels, look in the Christian confessions—you never will find a certain word in them, and you will nowhere find a certain idea with Jesus: the idea of the ideal human being in the way as Strauss formed it. One does nowhere find the human type, thought in the abstract. This is characteristic that the 19th century has come to an image of Jesus from an idea which Jesus did never suggest nor express in his life.

Also still others tackled this task bit by bit to verify the content of the Gospels critically. I cannot give you examples of the different phases; this would go too far. But during the last years a word was often said which shows how little sympathetic it is to our time to look up to God, to the spiritual being, which should have found fulfilment in a personality, in similar way as in the first Christian century when all scholarship, all wisdom, all knowledge was to be used to understand this unique phenomenon. A word was said there, and this word is: the simple man from Nazareth. One dropped the concept of God. One wants—this is, finally, the trend which is included in these words—one wants to accept this personality which stands at the beginning of Christianity only as a human being and wants to understand everything that one regards as dogma as imagination floating in the clouds. One wants to remove everything and consider the personality of Jesus only as a human being, who is of a higher rank, indeed, than the other human beings who is, however, a human being among human beings who is equal in certain respects to the other human beings. Thus also the theologians want to pull down the image of Christ to the field of the purely actual.

These are two extremes which I have demonstrated, on the one side, the concept of God evaporating the image of God, presented by David Friedrich Strauss, on the other side, the simple man from Nazareth, which contains nothing but a doctrine of general humanness. This is basically nothing else than what also those can accept who want to know nothing at all about a founder of Christianity.

We have also seen adherents of a general moral philosophy working out that Jesus basically had and taught the same moral philosophy as it is preached today by the “Society for Ethical Culture.” They believe to raise Jesus if they show that already before the 19th century people have born witness to that which we got from Kant’s speculation or from the Enlightenment.—However, in truth we deal with doctrines which were once the highest mystery, and the contents of this wisdom were only given to those who had risen to the heights of humanity.

Do we ask ourselves, are we still anyhow on the ground of the Gospels if we take the one or the other of these concepts of Christ? Today I cannot explain why I do not share the view of many of the learnt theologians that the fourth Gospel should be less significant than the three other ones. Somebody who checks the procedure clearly sees no reason why the St. John’s Gospel—which just raises us so much—was deposed, so to speak, because one strove for real facts.

One believes that the three Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke show more the human being, the simple man from Nazareth, while the John’s Gospel demands to recognise the Word that became flesh in Jesus. Here the unaware wish which lives in the souls was the father to the thought. If, however, the John’s Gospel is less entitled to authenticity, it is impossible to keep up Christianity. Then we cannot say anything about the Christian doctrine of the personality of Jesus than that he is the simple man from Nazareth. But nobody, neither I nor others who look into the old confessional writings can say anything different as those who spoke originally of Christ Jesus, really spoke of the God Who had become flesh, of the higher spirit of God which manifested itself in Jesus of Nazareth.

It is the task of theosophy to show how we have to understand “the Word became flesh” used by John above all. You do not really understand the other Gospels if you do not take St. John’s Gospel as basis. What the other evangelists tell is getting bright and clear, if you add the words of St. John’s Gospel as an interpretation, as an explanation.

I cannot describe in all details what leads to any statement I make today. But I can at least point to the central issue which is indecent to the materialistically minded theologian. Already the story of the birth belongs to it which says that Jesus should not be born like other human beings. David Friedrich Strauss also had this as an objection to the truth of the Gospels.

What did the higher birth mean? It becomes clear to us easily if we understand St. John’s Gospel correctly. The first sentences of this Gospel, the real message of the Word that became flesh are: “In the beginning the Word already was. The Word was in God’s presence, and what God was, the Word was. He was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; without him no created thing came into being.” It is said that the Word was always there in other way that it finds fulfilment, however, in this externally visible personality. We hear then that through the same Word, or we say, through the spirit of God who lived in Jesus, the world itself came into being. “In him was life, and that life was the life of mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never mastered it. There appeared a man named John. He was sent from God, and came as a witness to testify the light, so that through him all might become believers. He was not himself the light; he came to bear witness to the light.”—What should come to Jesus Christ? But immediately we hear that it was already there. “He was in the world; but the world, though it owed its being to him, did not recognize him. It came to his own, and his own people would not accept him. But to all who did accept him, to those who put their trust in him, he gave the right to become children of God, born not of human stock, by the physical desire of a human father, but of God.”

Here you have the meaning of the Word that became flesh in a fairly right translation giving the gist and at the same time the meaning of the saying: “Christ is not born of human stock.” The “Word” was there always, and every single human being should bear Christ in his inside, in his primal beginning. In our heart we all have claim to Christ. But while this living Word, Christ, should have room in every single human being, the human beings have not perceived him. It is this just what is shown us in the Gospel that the word existed forever that the human being could accept it and did not accept it. It is said to us that single human beings accepted it. Always were there single human beings who waked up the living spirit, the living Christ, the living Word in themselves, and those who called themselves Christians did not come into being from the blood, from the desire of the flesh, from human will, but always from God.

This finally throws the right light on the St. Matthew’s Gospel. Now we understand why the birth of Christ is called “from God.” This refutes best of all what David Friedrich Strauss wants. Not the whole human genus was able to accept Christ in itself; although he was for the whole human genus and for the whole humankind. Now somebody should come who once showed the whole fullness of the infinite spirit in himself. This personality thereby got his unique significance for the first Christian teachers who understood what was there. They understood that it concerns neither an abstract, shadowy concept nor a single human being in its reality, but really the God-Man, a single personality in the fullness of truth.

That is why we can understand that all those who proclaimed Christ in the first times of the good news stuck not only to the teaching and to the actual person, but above all to the view of the God-Man that they were convinced that He whom they had seen was a lofty real God-Man. Not the teaching held the first Christians together, not that what Christ taught; it was not that through which the first Christians thought to be connected with each other.—Already only this contradicts those who wanted to replace Christianity with an abstract moral philosophy. However, then they are no longer Christians.

It was not a matter of indifference who brought this teaching to the world, but its founder had really become flesh in the world. Hence, in the beginning of Christianity one attached less value to proofs than to the living memory of the Lord. This is always emphasised. It is the personality, the God-imbued personality who holds the biggest communities together.

Therefore, the first Church Fathers say to us again and again that it is the merit of the historical event from which Christianity made its start. We have the information from Irenaeus that he himself still knew people who had for their part still known apostles who had seen the Lord face to face. He emphasises that the fourth pope, Pope Clement I, had still known many apostles who had also seen the Lord face to face. This is fact. And why does he emphasise this? The first teachers wanted to speak not only about the teaching, not only about logical proofs, but they wanted above all to speak about the fact that they themselves saw with their eyes that they perceived with their hands that which entered the world from above; that they were not there to prove something, but to bear witness to the living Word. However, this was not the personality who one could see with eyes, perceive with senses.

Not that personality who announces the first teaching of Christianity is that who could then be called the simple man from Nazareth. One single word of an indeed significant witness must speak for the fact that something higher forms the basis. One cannot emphasise this word of Paul enough: “If Christ was not raised, our faith and message is null and void.” Paul calls the risen Christ the basis of Christianity, not the Christ who walked in Galilee and Jerusalem. The faith would be null and void if Christ had not risen. The Christian is null and void if he cannot bear witness to the risen Christ.

What did they understand by the risen Christ? We can also learn this from Paul. He says it to us clearly on what the confession of resurrection is based. Everybody knows this; everybody knows that Paul is, so to speak, a posthumous apostle that he had the appearance of Christ to thank for his conversion to Him who did not stay long since on earth. Only the theosophist can truly recognise this appearance of a lofty spiritual being. Only he knows what an initiate, like Paul, means, if he speaks of the fact that the risen Christ appeared to him as a living being. Paul says to us even more, and we have to take this to heart. He says to us in I Corinthians 15: 3-8: “First and foremost, I handed on to you the tradition I had received: that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas and afterwards to the Twelve. Then he appeared to over five hundred of our brothers at once, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, and afterwards to all the apostles. Last of all he appeared to me too; it was like a sudden, abnormal birth.”

He equated his experience with that on which the higher faith of the other apostles was based. He equated it with the appearance of Christ that the apostles had generally received after He had died. We have to do it with a spiritual appearance which we have to imagine not in shadowy way, as shadowy ideal, but as reality, as the theosophist imagines the spirit; with an appearance of the spirit which is not physical, indeed, but real and more real than any external, sensory reality. If we keep this in mind, we realise that it cannot be different at all, as that one has to do it during the first Christian centuries with the Word that became flesh that the God-Man is not the simple man from Nazareth, but the higher spirit of God which fulfilled itself. If we look at this, we stand completely on the ground of theosophy. Perhaps, nobody is more to be called a theosophist in the true sense of the word than the preacher of the miracle of resurrection: the apostle Paul. No theosophist would deny that the apostle Paul is a lofty initiate, one of those who know what it concerns.

I have still to emphasise one matter, and this is that one not allowed to pull down this sublime appearance, which stands there as a unique one in the world, to the materialistic world view; the fact that the way of understanding the founder of Christianity is not found in the regions where only “simple men” where only ideals are, but that it must lead up to the lofty spirit of Christ. The first Christians did this; they wanted to go this way to understand the living Word.

Now you can say that you believe that everything has changed bit by bit, and this is well founded. Only because in the course of the centuries the factual sense has developed that the human being learnt above all to train the senses to arm them with instruments, he has progressed in the knowledge of the external world. But this enormous progress of international trade and communication, penetrating the starry heaven with the Copernican world view, penetrating the smallest living beings with the microscope, they all brought us, as any thing throws its shades, their negative sides too. They brought us particular ways of thinking, which stick to the real, to the sense-perceptible. Then it has happened that in the most natural way of the world this kind of thinking turning only to the purely sensory has become habit that it has also approached the highest religious truth and tried to understand the spirit and its contents as the naturalist tries to understand the external nature with his senses.

The materialistic naturalist can still imagine the ideals at most which contain abstractions. Then he speaks of truth, beauty, goodness which should be realised in the world more and more. He imagines shadowy ideas. He can still rise to “simplicity” in the human imagination, but to something even higher, to seizing real spirituality this scientific sense cannot progress with his way of thinking instilled for centuries. These habits of thinking have arrived at their top height. As everything that has formed unilaterally needs a supplement, the justified materialistic sense needs the spiritual deepening on the other side. It needs that knowledge which raises us to the heights of spirituality. Theosophy wants this raising to the spirit and its reality. Therefore, it wants to stick to that about which one does not speak in materialistic views, but which rises to the highest levels of human knowledge. From there is to be understood what it means that the Word became flesh, what it means to conceive the spirit out of the divine in the human body.

Christ could not always express frankly what he meant. You know the word: he spoke to the people in parables; however, if he was together with his disciples, he explained these parables to them.—Where did this intention of the founder of Christianity come from to speak two languages, so to speak? The simple comparison can say it to us. If you need any object, a table, you do not go to anybody but to somebody who knows how to make a table. If he has made it, you did not claim to have made the table yourself. You admit calmly to be a layman of making tables. However, people do not want to admit that one can also be a layman with regard to the highest matters that the simple reason, which is, so to speak, in the natural state, must climb the top heights first. The longing has arisen from that to pull down this highest truth to the level of the general human reason. But just as we know as laymen of making tables if a table is good how we have to use it, we know if we have heard the true whether it speaks to our hearts whether our heart can use it. But we must not claim to be able to produce the knowledge from our hearts, from our simple human minds. The differentiation which was forever made in old times between priests and laymen arose from this view. We deal with priest sages in ancient times and with the loftiest truth which was not proclaimed outdoors in the streets but in the mystery sites.

The highest truths were only explained to those who were sufficiently prepared. Those who were rich of spirit heard them because they are the deeper truths of the world, the human soul and God. One had to become an initiate, and then a Master, and then one got the concept, the immediate image of that which the highest wisdom contained. It was in such a way that wisdom had flowed into the mystery temples for centuries. Outdoors, however, there stood the crowd and got nothing to hear as that what the wisdom of the priests thought to be good for them. The gap had become bigger and bigger between the priesthood and the laymen. Initiates are those who knew the wisdom of the living God. One had to go up many steps, until one was led up to the altar at which one was informed what the wisest men had explored and revealed of the wisdom of the living God.

That was the custom for centuries. Then there came a time, and this is the time of the origin of Christianity when on the big scene of world history as a historical fact that took place before the eyes of the world, for all human beings which had only taken place before those who were rich of spirit, for those who were initiated into the mysteries. Only those who beheld the secrets of existence in the mystery temples could come in ancient times to real salvation, according to the view of the priest sages. However, in the founder of Christianity the higher compassion lived to go another way with the whole humankind and also to let become blessed those who did not behold there that is they could not penetrate into the mysteries, those who should be led only by the weak feeling, only by faith to this salvation.

Thus a new confession, good news had to sound according to the intentions of the founder of Christianity which speak in other words than the old priest sages had spoken; a message which is spoken out of the deepest wisdom and the immediate spiritual cognition which could find response in the most simple human heart at the same time. Hence, the founder of Christianity wanted to bring up disciples and apostles for him. They should be initiated into the mystery if there were stones that mean human hearts, to strike sparks out of them. Thus they had to experience the highest that is the victory of the Word. He spoke to the people in parables; but when he was alone with the disciples, he explained the parables to them.

Let me only give a few examples how Christ tried to enkindle the living Word how he wanted to knock life out of the single human hearts. We hear that Christ leads his disciples Peter, James and John up to the mountain and that he experiences a transfiguration there before the eyes of his disciples. We hear that Moses and Elijah were at both sides of Jesus.

The theosophist knows what the mystic term means: going up to the mountain. One has to know such expressions, know competently, exactly as one has to know the language, before one is able to study the spirit of a nation. What does it mean: leading up to the mountain? It means nothing else than to be led into the mystery temple where one can get through beholding, through mystic beholding the immediate conviction of the eternity of the human soul, of the reality of the spiritual existence.

These three disciples had to get an even higher knowledge than the other disciples by their Master. They had to get the conviction here on the mountain above all that Christ was really the living Word that had become flesh. Therefore, He appears in his spirituality, in that spirituality which is elated above space and time; in that spirituality for which “before” or “after” do not exist in which everything is present. Also the past is present. The past is essential there, when Elijah and Moses appeared beside the presence of Jesus. The disciples now believe in the spirit of God. But they say: nevertheless, it is written in the scriptures that Elijah comes and announces Christ before He comes.

Read the Gospel now. These are really the words which follow that which I have told. They are significant to the highest degree: “Elijah has already come, but they failed to recognize him, and did to him as they wanted.”—“Elijah has already come;” we keep these words in mind. Then you read further: “Then the disciples understood that he meant John the Baptist.” And before: “Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone of the vision until the Son of Man had been raised from the dead.” We are led into a mystery. Christ considered three disciples only worthy of experiencing this mystery. Which is this mystery? He informed that John is the reincarnated Elijah.

Reincarnation was taught within the mystery temples at all times. Christ has informed his close disciples about no other than this occult theosophical teaching. They should get to know this teaching of reincarnation. However, they should also get the living Word which must come from their mouths if it is invigorated and spiritualised by conviction, until something different would enter. They should have the immediate conviction that the spirit has risen. If they have this behind themselves, they should go out into the world and strike the sparks out of simple hearts which have been kindled in them. This was one of the initiations, this was one of the parables that Christ gave and explained to his confidants.

I give another example. The Communion is also nothing else than an initiation, an initiation into the deepest meaning of the entire Christian teaching. Somebody who understands the Communion in its true meaning understands the Christian teaching in its spirituality and in its truth only. It is risky to express this teaching which I want to report to you now, and I probably know that it can experience attacks from all sides because it is contradictory to the letter. The letter kills, the spirit brings back to life. Only laboriously one can ascend to the insight of the true meaning of the Communion. You do not hear about that in detail today, but allow me to suggest that which belongs to the deepest mysteries of Christianity, actually. Christ gathers his apostles to celebrate the installation of the bloodless sacrifice with them. We want to understand this.

To clear the way to us to understand this event, let us once come back to another fact which is little attention paid to and which should show us how we have to understand the Communion. We hear in the Gospel that Christ passed a blind-born man. And those who were around asked Him: “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” Christ answered: “It is not that he or his parents sinned, but he was born blind, so that God’s power might be displayed in curing him.” Or better: “so that God’s way of ruling the world becomes obvious.” The words “God’s way of ruling the world” justify that he is born blind. Because neither he sinned in this life nor his parents, the cause has to be looked for somewhere else. We cannot stop at the single personality and not at the parents and forefathers, but we have to regard the inside of the soul of the blind-born as something eternal, we have to be clear in our mind to look for the cause in the souls existing before, in those souls which have experienced the effect of a former life. What we call karma is suggested here, not expressed. We hear immediately why it is not expressed. Christ lived in a surrounding in which the doctrine prevailed that the sins of the fathers are avenged in the children and grandchildren. The sins of the fathers are expiated in children and grandchildren. This doctrine does not correspond to the view which Christ expressed towards the blind-born. If anybody sticks to the doctrine that it can only be the sin of the fathers that there is guilt and atonement only within the physical world, then he has to suffer for the deeds of his fathers.

This shows us that Christ raises his adherents to a quite new concept of guilt and atonement, to a concept which had nothing to do with that which takes place in the physical world, to a concept which cannot be valid in the sense-perceptible reality. Christ wanted to overcome the old concept of sin, the concept which fixes to physical heredity and physical facts. Was it not such a concept of guilt which keeps to the physical-actual which formed the basis of the old offerings? Did they not go, the sinners, to the altar and did offer their expiatory sacrifices, was it not a merely physical event to take off the sins? The old sacrifices were physical facts. But in the physical reality, Christ taught, one cannot look for guilt and atonement. Therefore, even the highest; the spirit of God, the living Word, can become enslaved by the physical reality up to death by which Christ became enslaved without being guilty. Any external offering cannot align with the concept of guilt and atonement. The Lamb of God was the most innocent; it is able to do the sacrificial death.

With it should be testified on the scene of history to the whole world that guilt and atonement do not have their embodiment in the physical reality, cannot exist in the physical reality, but has to be looked for in a higher region, in the region of spiritual life. If the culprit only made himself liable to prosecution in the physical life if the culprit only needed to make sacrifices, the innocent lamb on the cross would not have to die. Christ took the sacrifice of the cross on Himself; so that the human beings are released from the belief that guilt and atonement are found in the sense-perceptible reality that it should be a result of the externally inherited sin. That is why He really died for the faith of all human beings to bear witness to the fact that the consciousness of guilt and atonement is not to be searched for in the physical consciousness. Therefore, everybody should remember this: even the sacrifice on the cross does not matter, but if the human being rises above guilt and atonement to search for the cause and effect of his actions in the spiritual region, and then only he has reached truth. Therefore, the last sacrifice, the bloodless offering is also the proof of the impossibility of the external sacrifice at the same time, so that the bloodless offering is established, so that the human being has to seek for guilt and atonement—the consciousness of the connection of his actions—in spiritual realm. This one should remember. Therefore, the sacrificial death should not be considered as that on which it depends, but the bloodless spiritual sacrifice, the Communion, should replace the bloody sacrifice. The Communion is the symbol that guilt and atonement of human actions live in the spiritual realm. However, this is the theosophical teaching of karma that everything that the human being has caused anyhow in his actions has its effects according to purely spiritual laws that karma has nothing to do with physical heredity. An external symbol of that is the bloodless offering, the Communion.

But it is not expressed in words in the Christian confession that the Communion is the symbol of karma. Christianity just had another task. I have already indicated it. Karma and reincarnation, the concatenation of destiny in the spiritual realm and reincarnation of the human soul were deep esoteric truths which were taught inside of the esoteric temples. Christ, like all great teachers, taught his adherents in the inside of the temple. Then, however, they should go out into the world, after the strength and the fire of God had been kindled in them, so that also those who could not behold could believe and become blessed.

Therefore, he called his disciples together, immediately in the beginning, to say to them that they are not only teachers in the spiritual realm, but that they should be something else. This is the deeper sense of the first words of the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit; the kingdoms of Heaven are theirs.” If it is correctly translated one can understand how it is possible to come to knowledge out of living beholding. Now, however, the poor in spirit should find the ways to the spirit, to the kingdoms of Heaven because of their simple hearts.

The apostles should not talk about the highest knowledge outdoors; they should dress this knowledge in simple words. But they themselves should be perfect. Therefore, we see those who should be bearers of the Word of God teaching a truthful theosophy, spreading a truthful theosophical teaching. Take and understand the words of Paul, understand the words of Dionysius the Areopagite and then Scotus Eriugena who taught in his book De divisione naturae (On the Division of Nature) the sevenfold nature of the human being like all theosophists, then you know that their interpretation of Christianity was identical with that of theosophy. Theosophy wants to bring to light again nothing else than what the Christian teachers taught in the first centuries. It wants to serve the Christian message; it wants to explain it in spirit and truth. This is the task of theosophy toward Christianity. Theosophy is there not to overcome Christianity but to recognise it in its truth.

You need nothing else than to understand Christianity in its truth, then you have theosophy in its full size. You do not need to turn to another religion. You can keep on being Christians and need to do nothing else than what real Christian teachers did: ascending to exhaust the spiritual depths of Christianity. Then also those theologians are disproved who believe that theosophy is a Buddhist doctrine, but also the belief is disproved that one should not recognise the deep teachings of Christianity ascending to the heights but pulling down to the depths. Theosophy can only lead to better and better understanding of the mystery of incarnation to understand the word which, in spite of all rationalistic denials, is in the Bible. Who sinks in the Bible cannot bear witness to rationalism, to David Friedrich Strauss and those parroting him. He can bear witness solely to the word which Goethe said who saw deeper into these matters than some other. He says: nevertheless, the Bible remains the book of books, the world book which—understood correctly—must become the Christian aid to education of humankind in the hand not of the wise guys but of the wise human beings.

Theosophy is a servant of the Word in this regard, and it wants to produce the spirit that is willing to ascend to the founder of Christianity; to produce that spirit which does not have only human, but cosmic significance, that spirit which had understanding not only for the simple human heart, which moves in the everyday, but such a deep understanding just for the human heart because He beheld into the depths of the world secrets. There is no better word to show this, as a word which is not, indeed, in our Gospels, but has come down in another way. Jesus with his disciples passed a dead dog which had already started to rot. The disciples turned away. But Jesus looked at the animal with pleasure and admired his nice teeth.

This parable may be paradoxical; however, it leads us to the deeper understanding of the being of Christ. It is a testimony that the human being feels the word living in himself if he passes no thing of the world without understanding if he knows how to become engrossed and to sink in everything that is there and cannot pass anything apparently disgusting, without tolerance without practicing understanding. This understanding allows us to look into the smallest and raises us to the highest, to which nothing is hidden which passes nothing which allows everything to come close in perfect tolerance. It carries the conviction in its heart that really everything is “flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood” in any form. Somebody who fought his way to this understanding only knows and understands what it means: the living spirit of God was realised in one single human being, the living spirit of God Who created the universe.

This is the sense which the theosophist wants to animate again. That sense which, by the way, had not completely become extinct during the past centuries, that sense which does not look for the criterion of the highest from the average mind, from a subordinated point of view but above all it tries to raise itself and to develop the highest knowledge because it is convinced: if it has purified itself, has spiritualised itself, the spirit bows down to it. “If Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you, you are still lost forever.” The great mystic Angelus Silesius said this. He also knew what a teaching means, if it becomes the highest knowledge if it becomes life. Jesus said to Nicodemus: somebody who is born again who is born from above speaks that which he says no longer only from human experience, he expresses it “from above.”—He speaks words like Angelus Silesius has spoken them at the end of the Cherubinic Wanderer: “If you want to read more, go and become yourself the word and the being.”

This is the demand which somebody makes who speaks out of the spirit. You should not listen to him, not to his words only, but let evoke in yourself what speaks out of him.

To such a word, to such good news Jesus chose those who said there: that which was there from the beginning, the eternal world law, what we have seen with own eyes, what we have felt with hands of the word of life we preach this to you.—It was He Who was a single human being, and lived in the word of the disciples at the same time.

But he still said one matter of which theosophists must be aware above all that He not only was there in the time in which He taught and lived, but the important word came down us: “I will be with you always, to the end of time.” Theosophy knows that He is with us that He can stamp our words today as well as at that time, that He can inspire our words that He can also lead us today like at that time that our words express that which He is Himself. However, theosophy wants to prevent one thing. It wants to prevent that one must say: He has come, He is there, but they have not recognised Him. The human beings wanted to do with Him as they wished.—No, the theosophist wants to go to his own sources. Theosophy should raise the human beings spiritually to spirituality, so that they recognise that He is there, so that they know where they have to find Him, and that they hear the living Word from Him who said there:

Also known as The Present Crisis in Man's Development and The Science of the Spirit, Education, and the Practical Life. From: Lectures on Spiritual Essence and Its Working. Lecture 13 of 18 from the volume: Man's Responsibility for World Evolution through His Spiritual Connection with the Planet Earth and with the Stars Above.

The times in which we live are so earnest that at present it is not in any way appropriate to think of personal matters. Allow me, first of all, to express briefly my heartfelt thanks to your esteemed president for her kind words and then to pass on to what I believe I must tell you, for it is a long time since we saw one another in Holland.

The times in which we live and its conditions are much more earnest than most people of the present are consciously aware of.

Here we can speak of these conditions of our times from those standpoints which result from a long study of the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. We know that we live in an epoch whose characteristic peculiarity began to be evident in the 15th century. It was then that it slowly began to develop its peculiarities. Those who are initiated into the spiritual conditions of human evolution and can therefore have an insight into this course of development, know that the second half of the 19th century indicates a specially low point of human evolution in the modern and particularly in European culture. This low point may be characterised as the rise of a particular inthrust of egoism in all branches of civilised humanity, an egoism of a kind that was never there before. This wave of a special course of development then sent its ramifications into the 20th century, and now these ramifications undoubtedly continue to hold mankind under their spell.

In saying that a wave of egoism came over the whole modern civilisation, I do not speak trivially of what one generally defines as egoism, but I speak of egoism in a special sense, into which we shall penetrate a little in the course of this morning's considerations, and in a way that will be evident to those who are initiated in the true mysteries of more recent human evolution.

We already know the members constituting human nature. We know that the soul-members of human nature have been engaged for a long time in a special process of transformation, in a special course of development. We know that when we go back to very ancient times of human evolution we have to do with a particular forming of man's etheric body, during a very old time of development in India; a particular forming of the astral body then began, and a certain intermediate course of development took place during that epoch of European development which began about the year 747 in the south of Europe and which closed in the first thirty years of the 15th century. That time was the beginning of that epoch of human evolution in which we are still living. In the year 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha, began that phase of human evolution in which the so-called intellectual and understanding soul (Verstandes und Gemütsseele) unfolded. Everything that humanity still prizes to-day as Greek culture; developed through the fact that at that very time the intellectual or understanding soul was in an ascending line of development. However, while the wonderful Greek culture was unfolding, that which we call intellectual or understanding soul was in an ascending line of development. It had not yet reached its climax. For such points are always in a certain way times of probation for the evolution of humanity. For the sake of their development, the Greeks had to pass through what one might call the youthful freshness of the intellectual or understanding soul. The Greek culture, so much admired by posterity, came into being out of this youthful freshness of an intellect that was not yet permeated by egoism, out of this youthful freshness of the human understanding. Of the characteristics pertaining to the intellectual soul, the Latin and Roman culture then took over something that was in a descending line of development and decadent. Those who have a deeper comprehension for that which lived in Roman culture know: There the intellect already reaches its culmination; there the intellect rises to a high point. On that account the Romans developed such abstract ideas; on that account the Romans developed something that did not as yet exist in the whole ancient East, that did not even exist, in the sense known in Europe, in the Greek culture: The Romans developed the ideas of jurisprudence, the juridical concepts.

To-day we consider the world very superficially and we translate our thoughts on “Jus”, on jurisprudence, which, in reality are the outcome only of the Roman intellectual soul, into something which we assume to have already existed in the ancient East, for instance in Hammurabi, and so forth. But that is not the case. The Decalogue, the Ten Commandments as well as the contents of other documents of that time, were, after all, something quite different from that which constitutes our modern juridical concepts. These are something abstract, something that is no longer so close to the human soul. Everything that thus constitutes the development of the intellectual soul reached its climax during a period in the civilisation of Europe which has really been studied very little from an external historical standpoint, although it is extraordinarily important and significant for those who wish to study human evolution in the meaning of spiritual science.

That striking year to which we can draw attention as being specially significant for European development is the year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha. The year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha is the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. It is that point of time when a fluctuating knowledge of the universe lived in Europe simultaneously with a fluctuating knowledge of humanity. These had nothing of the penetrating character of the knowledge of the universe that the Greeks still possessed and no proper comprehension of man's inner world.

We find instead that man sways either towards the longing for an extensive knowledge of the universe, or towards the longing for self-knowledge, knowledge of his own self. The human soul of the European peoples indeed passed through a great deal during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Roman life was then entering into its decay; it bequeathed to European humanity nothing but its language; it left behind its more or less fundamental material of culture. The life of humanity thus entered the second half of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, lasting up to the 15^th century, when our present epoch began.

From the preceding epoch, in which most of us in some way passed through one or more earthly lives, we brought over—partly through physical heredity, but particularly through the fact that we ourselves formerly were those incarnated souls—into the fifth post-Atlantean epoch the inheritance of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and we took over this inheritance. This inheritance of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch lives in everything that constitutes our present civilisation.

We worked the intellect, the thinking, into our consciousness soul. That means a great deal. At the beginning of the fifth epoch, the consciousness soul enabling man to really permeate, really grasp his ego, first took hold of his thinking, his life of representations and his intellect. Humanity thus became intelligent and clever, but clever within the consciousness soul; within the evolution of humanity, this implies the finest possible elaboration of EGOISM.

We should not only rebuke this epoch of egoism, we should not only fall upon it with criticism, but in spite of the fact that it brings with it so many temptations and leads man into great soul-dangers and even into external danger, we should recognise this age of egoism as the one in which ego-consciousness comes to the fore with special incisiveness.

Man can thus take into himself a real feeling of freedom. This feeling of freedom is something that none of us possessed in our previous incarnations, in the earlier epochs of human evolution. We had to pass through egoism, that presents so many temptations, in order to reach that longing for freedom which is the prerogative of modern humanity. One of the most important things in Anthroposophy is the knowledge that we had to take in something in order to climb over an important stage in human evolution: the stage leading to the DEVELOPMENT OF FREEDOM. For this very reason we should be aware that this crossing over is connected, with many temptations, with many dangers of humanity, both soul-spiritually and bodily. A knowledge going in the direction of Anthroposophy must enable us to take in fully the feeling of freedom, but at the same time to ennoble it, to permeate it again with a spiritual knowledge of the universe, which—in spite of the now existing mature ego-feeling, mature ego-consciousness—induces mankind to solve tasks that are not only egoistic tasks, but tasks pertaining to the whole evolution of humanity, indeed to the evolution of the whole earth, to the evolution of the whole universe.

In this connection we are now facing a great turning point in the whole civilisation of more recent times. The time of probation has indeed come! Great tasks confront mankind. But the recognition of these tasks is extremely difficult and is rendered still more difficult through the fact that we have just passed through the age of the great egoism.

We say that we sleep from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. That is right. We are then in a state of dulled consciousness. Most of you know sleep only in its negative aspect, that it dulls consciousness. Yet we do not judge the waking state in the same way. The time of being awake, the time from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, was really quite different in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. To-day people believe that they are awake in the same way in which, for instance, the people living about the time of the Mystery of Golgotha were awake. That is not the case. Their whole soul-constitution was different. Man was then awake in a different way. He was much more strongly conscious of his body.

You see, modern man really knows very little indeed of his bodily processes. The Greeks, not the Greeks of a later time, but the Greeks of the pre-Socratic and pre-Platonic times, still knew a great deal of the processes of their own body. For example, the really cultured Greek looked up to the sun. From the sun he received the light. He received at the same time a feeling that he was drawing in something etheric, that the light was being led on into his inner being. And when he was thinking, he said: The light, the sun thinks within me. The Greek of pre-Socratic times still felt this in a living way. He did not think so abstractly about thinking as we do to-day. He thought: The sun thinks within me: it allows its light to be drawn in by me. The light that shines upon the things outside, that makes the things outside visible, is active within me, by reflecting itself, as it were, within its own being, so that thoughts spring up in me. For the Greek, the thoughts within him were the light of the sun. At the same time, they were for him that element which lived in the macrocosm thanks to the influence of divine-spiritual beings. At the same time, they were for him that which really raised him to the Divine, above his ordinary dignity as a human being. He felt himself lifted above the earthly, when he thus experienced the sun's light within him as thinking. And when a particularly cultured Greek ate, he indeed considered his food, in which he took in something that he did not receive directly from the sun, but that came from the earth, as a necessity of life, yet at the same time he felt himself changing into the food, that became he himself, as it passed through his mouth, his oesophagus and digestive organs. He felt that he was one with the food, in the same way in which he felt that he was one with the sunlight. While he was digesting, he felt the earth's gravity. He felt, as it were, similar to the serpent, that he did not as yet highly appreciate, but that he still observed rather timidly—the serpent that twists away from the earth and digests in a particularly visible way, after having swallowed its food. That is how the Greek experienced what went on in his body: whether he experienced what was thinking within him as the sun's bright light, or whether he experienced within himself what chained him to the earth; i.e. the taking in of food. Through the intimate way in which his understanding was connected with his body the Greek felt with particular energy that which also lived within him as physical human being. You may also deduce this from the following:

When we paint human beings to-day in the ordinary way, as numerous painters of the present generation have done year after year, decade after decade in painting portraits, we really lie. We look at people outwardly and believe that then we bring forth something of what we experience. It is not true at all that we can experience something in that way! We could experience it only if we were able to conjure up within us the whole way of identifying ourselves feelingly with the whole of Nature as human beings, as it was the case with the Greeks. First of all, we must learn this anew, along an entirely different path than that of the Greeks.

Since the middle of the 15th century, we have acquired in an abstract-theoretical way a soul-constitution that no longer allows us to really penetrate livingly into our body, but that lives instead in concepts that do not stand visibly before us, because we have conquered thinking for the egoity, for the ego. We should realise this. And we should realise that we must once more take in spirituality from an anthroposophical spiritual science, so that the ego may once more be filled with something, and so that that which really lives within us may once more—but now in a different way—enter our life: that which the Greeks experienced in an immediate, elemental way; but that could not continue.

When the Greek walked, he walked as if led by a necessity of Nature, like the lightning flashing through the clouds, or the rolling thunder! He knew nothing whatever of freedom, but he knew man! Indeed, he knew more about man than we think he did. For instance, he knew how to coin words clearly indicating that man still knew something of the connection between the soul-spiritual and the bodily-physical. The Greek words, or those derived from the Greek, indicate even to-day far more than those based on our therapeutic or pathological conceptions, that are no longer able to understand anything. Hypochondria for instance, means cartilaginosity of the abdomen. It is a name that the Greeks found through their full knowledge of the fact that in hypochondric people the activity of the soul-spiritual gives rise to cartilaginous formations in certain parts of the body. These names mean far more than modern men suppose, and more than can in any way be grasped through modern medicine, with its abstract way of thinking, even though it experiments, dissects, etc. We must first take up again everything that is real, that once more enables us to have an insight into the world! It is the task of a spiritual scientific deepening to reach once more real facts, realities.

You see, during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, in which the human beings passed through what constitutes, as it were, a physical self-knowledge, an insight into the human body, during that time—one might say approximately, during the first third of that time, occurs the greatest event of the earth's evolution: the Mystery of Golgotha.

What is the condition of the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred?—The further we go back, the more we find in ancient times—in the Greek epoch, the Egyptian-Chaldean, the Persian and the ancient Indian epoch—this immediate knowledge of the whole human being. Then, this knowledge of the whole human being disappears. The last remains of that knowledge may be found at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha appeared. Something of that instinctive, ancient knowledge of man still existed at that time. For instance, the personalities described in the Gospels as the Apostles, or the Disciples of the Lord, still possessed something of that old instinctive knowledge, which lived in their souls altogether instinctively, not clearly. Others too possessed such a knowledge. At that time it was to a great extent decadent, but at any rate it still existed. It was dying away, burning out, but enough remained of that ancient knowledge to enable a great number of men of that time to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha accordingly. This is particularly evident when the apostle Paul entered the evolution of the times, the apostle Paul who was initiated by divine powers and to whom the spiritual world became visible.

All this gave rise to conditions of time which still enabled man to understand the Mystery of Golgotha in a certain naive, instinctive way. Many people had already entered a later phase of development. Particularly the cultured Greeks and the cultured Romans had concepts that were already far too abstract in order [to] grasp the Mystery of Golgotha in a really living way. Yet certain people had preserved the last remains of an old clairvoyant knowledge, particularly clairvoyant traditions, and they were still able to grasp that a super-earthly power, the Christ, had connected Himself with an earthly man, Jesus of Nazareth.

The year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha, was, as it were, the year in which last stragglers of those who were still able to have a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha could be found in Europe. But these stragglers could not understand it, for instance, through our anthroposophical spiritual science, for this did not, of course, exist at that time. They grasped it through an old knowledge that had remained from the Gnosis, and such like. A certain spiritual knowledge still existed. An ancient human inheritance lived in the human soul and this enabled man to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha.

What has remained of the Mystery of Golgotha? Intellectual traditions!—The Gnosis became theology, a mere logical way of grasping the divine. Theo-Logy: a mere logical way of grasping the divine, no longer a contemplation of the divine!

Since the year 333, the capacity of contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha in a direct way became more and more decadent, until the fateful time of the 9th century, when, in the year 869, the Eighth General Oecumenic Council at Constantinople gave out the dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and spirit, but that it is instead a Christian's duty to acknowledge that man consists only of body and soul, and that the soul possesses a few spiritual qualities. At that time, the trichotomy, as it was called, the only possible knowledge of the human being, according to which man consists of body, soul and spirit, was done away with dogmatically, and a dogma was enforced, according to which a Christian who truly believes must acknowledge that man only consists of body and soul.

Modern philosophers frequently state that their philosophy is based on an unprejudiced knowledge, and they speak on the one hand of the body, and on the other of the soul. They speak of the spirit in a very phraseological manner at the most, for they do not know the spirit. They would only know it, if they recognised the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. The “impartial philosophy” that is now being taught to such an extent—what is it, in reality?—It is the result of the dogma pronounced by the Eighth Oecumenic Council in the year 869.

We must see through this. We must be quite clear that when the modern civilisation arose, and even in the second half of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, it was considered as dangerous to speak of the spirit and to draw attention to it. But at the present time it is necessary that we should draw mankind's attention to the spirit,—the spirit that has been declared to be the devil for a long, long time, within the civilisation of Europe! After the year 333, nothing but traditions remained of the old Christological knowledge—nothing but traditions!

Everything that constitutes art shows us even more clearly that it has remained tradition! Observe, for instance, Cimabue's paintings; there you will see a world that took on a completely different aspect in Giotto's paintings. In Cimabue's paintings lived something that may also be seen in Dante, something that could no longer be experienced by the human beings of a later time! Later on, this living within a spiritual world, that may still be seen in Cimabue, ceased. Later on, it was a hypocrisy to paint a golden background, but for a Cimabue this was quite natural. And now observe a Russian icon; it is not in any way painted after a model, for it is something in which the old traditions are still alive, traditions that come from a clairvoyance still existing at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and enabling man to understand the Mystery of Golgotha.

Then came the time in which the traditions were maintained by using external instruments of power. And then came the 19th century, in which the ordinary soul-activity that brought forth such significant results in natural science and technology, was also applied to theology. But what became of theology through this? Christ-Jesus, the incarnation of a Being that does not belong to the earthly became “the simple man of Nazareth,” looked upon indeed as the most perfect man, but not as the bearer of a super-earthly Being. Theology became naturalistic. The more our modern theologians look upon Jesus of Nazareth as a human being, the less they feel induced to pursue Christological ideas, and the happier they are! Even in theology they do not wish to rise beyond the description of the man, Jesus of Nazareth, they do not wish to rise to an understanding of Christ as a super-earthly Being that dwelt in the man, Jesus of Nazareth.

To-day, those who have an insight into world-events from a spiritual standpoint, must see many things differently from the way in which they are judged by people who only see them outwardly. Central Europe, that is now passing through such a tragic destiny, was able—among other things which cannot be discussed here—to accept Adolf Harnack as a great scientist; the very man who reached the point of saying that God the Son should not be included in the Gospels! They should be read, he says, in such a way as to find in them only the man, Jesus of Nazareth, and this man's teachings concerning God the Father. Harnack's theology was intended to do away with our feelings of reverence for the spirituality of Christ. The theology which Harnack established in Central Europe really signifies the negation of Christianity, the denial of Christianity; it signifies the setting up of a world-conception clearly stating that we do not wish to have anything to do with the spirituality of Christ. It is significant to observe what has thus swept over modern humanity, with the result that the most distorted views now exist concerning the most important ideas of human life.

To-day we know what sleep is, from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. Yet we do not, as a rule, observe the other kind of sleep, in which we live from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, when we walk about in our everyday life, steeped in illusions and dreams in regard to its most important facts. Indeed, in these modern times, we do not only sleep when we lie in our bed at night (this is actually the better kind of sleep), but we are also asleep in the sphere of egoism, when we lock ourselves up in our inner being, unwilling to know our human body and, at the same time, unwilling to progress to a spiritual self-knowledge. We sleep another kind of sleep during the time from falling asleep to waking up.

In order to understand this, we must indeed observe the nature of sleep from the moment of falling asleep to that of waking up. What does then take place with the human being? Why does the modern intellect believe that as far as the human constitution is concerned sleep is the same for modern man as it was for the ancient Greeks?—The Greeks were not awake in the same way as we, and the Egyptians even less so, nor did they sleep as we do. This soul-constitution in particular should be studied for every epoch of time.

When, during sleep, the human soul, that is to say, the ego and the astral body, loosens itself from the physical and etheric bodies that remain lying on the bed—where does the soul, that is the ego and the astral body, really dwell while we are asleep?

Superficial explanations that a cloud may be seen hovering over the physical body (which is quite true, as far as an altogether external form of clairvoyance is concerned), do not suffice. This is not sufficient, for we must observe what takes place inwardly. We must observe what the soul really experiences from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. In these modern times, the human soul then passes through experiences that are also lived through by the souls that are not as yet incarnated on the earth. Consider the following: Take a case that came to my notice just now, before I began my lecture: A daughter was born to an anthroposophist; one year ago, this little girl lived in the spiritual world as body and soul, and has since then made the endeavour to descend to the physical world. All those decades, that make us so much older than this little newly born girl, during all those years it lived in the spiritual world. And while we were asleep, we lived from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, in the world in which the little girl dwelt before conception, or birth. That is the world in which we dwell, when we are asleep, and there, the souls that are not yet incarnated pass through many experiences. While we are asleep, we pass with them through the fifth post-Atlantean age and through events resembling their own experiences.

From the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, we live, on the other hand, in a world that we sleep away during our waking life; we live in everything that we inherited from our past earthly existences. We live together with what has remained behind from ancient India, Persia, or Egypt; we live with what we have experienced spiritually here on earth, and this is cramped together egoistically in our inner being. We bring it along with us into our present incarnation. During the day, we live with all these things, and sleep away the present. Indeed, the present contains many things that can only be grasped spiritually. We cramp ourselves egoistically in ideas that come from the past and adhere to them obstinately even in our language, in our speech. Languages contain a great store of ancient crystallized wisdom. Yet we rebel against any kind of influence that may be exercised upon our souls by this ancient store of wisdom. For instance, to-day we use the words “Messer”, knife, or “Schere”, scissors. When we use the word “Schere”, scissors, we do not as a rule think that it comes from a kind of “Scheren”, or shearing, that is announced in every barber's shop! And when we use the word “Messer”, knife, we do not think that it is really based on a moral idea, for it is connected with “Maass”, measure, and “Zumessen”, to mete out, or cut to measure. When a knife was used in ancient times, it was really used to “mete out” a gift for someone. A store of wisdom lies crystallized in the words we use, and this ancient spiritual life that is contained in the words now uttered so thoughtlessly, lives in the depths of our being. Whenever we speak, we really experience the life of ancient epochs.

Spiritually, we pass through ancient epochs of the earth, from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, but we pass through them in a sleeping condition. And from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, we pass through events that are connected with the descent of human souls to their life on earth.

You see, these are realities, these are truths. These realities should be well impressed upon us, if we do not only wish to become acquainted with the forces of decay, but also with the forces of growth and progress. It would be so much better if, before going to sleep in the evening, a greater number of people were to do other things than those which they are accustomed to do! Consider what many people generally do, as last thing, before they go to bed! Yet a modern man should say to himself: I wish to enter the world that contains the forces of growth and progress, it is the world in which I can experience those forces that lead the human souls down to the earth, a world in which I can experience those forces spiritually.

From the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up we experience the forces pertaining to the future. For that reason, we should have a kind of craving for the teachings that speak of a spiritual world and that enable us to be conscious of the experiences of souls that are in a condition (but consciously) resembling that of souls who are asleep here on earth. The impulses for the progress of civilisation, for the healing of civilisation, must come from that world! The spiritual, political and economic impulses that should unfold as healing powers for our civilisation must come from that world! It is necessary, at the present time, that we should once more acquire the possibility of grasping the Mystery of Golgotha, of grasping it in a spiritual way.

What is the essential, or let us say, one of the essential things (for there are, of course, many essential things in it), in the Mystery of Golgotha?—That a God, a super-earthly Being, took up His abode in the man, Jesus of Nazareth. Beings of His kind have one characteristic quality: they cannot die. All those Beings of the higher Hierarchies, described in my “OCCULT SCIENCE”, the Angels, Archangels, etc. up to the highest Beings, the Cherubim, Seraphim, etc. do not die (read the description of their life's course in my books), they do not die as men die. What did Christ take upon Himself, Christ Who came from the higher Hierarchies?—He died within a human body. You see, here we have significant forces that pass over into the evolution of humanity upon the earth, Christ died in a human body; he passed through the experience of death, an experience unknown to the other gods who are connected with the earth. Up to the year 333, it was still possible to grasp this truth to a certain extent. Now we must learn to grasp it anew! We should grasp anew that a super-earthly Being shared with us the experience of death, thus passing over into the development of the earth. Yet at the same time we should have the great modesty of recognising that the experiences of this Being highly surpass what can be experienced through the soul-constitution of a human being.

The Christ descended from worlds where death is unknown. What Beings serve the Christ?—Among those who serve Him, there is not one who could make the same sacrifice, not one who could have come down to the earth, in order to pass through death. Beings that belong to the hierarchy of the Angeloi, right up to the higher Hierarchies, Beings connected with the evolution of the earth, are Christ's servants. We cannot perceive them, if we do not rise to a super-earthly knowledge of the higher Hierarchies. Through a knowledge of the spiritual worlds we should seek that which leads us to Christ. Spiritual science is needed above all in order to attain a new knowledge of Christ. For Christ is here, upon the earth, and He is surrounded by the world of the higher Hierarchies. Man's great temptation in modern times is the modern natural science with its great triumphs and its admission of purely external forces of Nature. Yet behind all these forces of Nature live the spiritual Beings! The assertions of natural science are certainly right, nevertheless the spiritual Beings that serve Christ live behind the forces of Nature, thinking and directing them. Christ lives in everything that constitutes the development of the earth. Super-earthly Beings serve Him—but these super-earthly Beings can only be recognised through spiritual science. Consequently an extremely important task evolves upon spiritual science: the renewal of Christianity.

All this shows you that to-day we cannot pursue spiritual science merely as a personal concern. To-day spiritual science concerns civilised humanity as a whole. Through an inner necessity, spiritual science was from the very beginning pursued in the circle that afterwards obtained the name of “Anthroposophical Society”, in a different way than in the Theosophical Society. The whole constitution of the Theosophical Society had, from the very outset, a sectarian character, something that reckoned with the egoism of modern times. Anthroposophy therefore had the task of taking into account the consciousness of modern times, that which constitutes the external culture of humanity, and of pouring into it the results of a spiritual manner of contemplation. Little differences and strifes are of no importance whatever in the face of such a task. It was essential for me to maintain the purity of a spiritual movement that reckons with the whole science of modern times. Whether this or that person may or may not accept one or the other truth, is of no importance to me. Even though the whole world may abuse spiritual science and criticize it, I do not consider this as essential, for the essential thing is that the spiritual science that I advance should really harmonize fully, with the modern, scientific mentality, with the moral conscience of modern times. For this reason, I had to publish my “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” before revealing the truths of Karma. I have often listened with great pain to theosophists who said: If this or that man suffers, if he suffers socially and belongs to a lower class or caste, it is his Karma and he has deserved it. This interpretation of the idea of Karma corresponded to the egoistical requirements of men who lived in the 19th and 20th century. Yet they did not think that we do not only live through our present life on earth, but that we shall also live through a future life. To-day we should not always look back on what we once possessed in past lives on earth, but we should also consider that in future lives on earth we shall be looking back on what we are passing through now—and this will then be an entirely new experience. Freedom fully harmonizes with the idea of Karma ... Everything that appears in the account-book of life is karmically connected.

You see, if I reckon up the debit and credit sides of destiny and strike the balance, I obtain life's balance; but this does not entail that the single items are subjected to the necessity of Nature. Just as the single items of a commercial account book do not depend on diligence, and so forth, and finally enable us to strike a balance, so freedom can very well be connected with the idea of Karma. We should not adopt an easy fatalistic idea when advancing the view of Karma as a fully justified idea. Spiritual science should therefore be in full harmony also with the conscience and the moral attitude of modern humanity. For that reason it was necessary to work more extensively with spiritual science, also during the time in which the catastrophe broke out in regard to everything that has been caused by the egoism of modern humanity, both soul-spiritually and physically.

Would it have been honest and straightforward to continue preaching that spiritual science can help mankind, and yet advance no social ideas at a time when social requirements became as urgent as they are to-day? Would human love not have progressed in the direction of a social knowledge? Shall we content ourselves with declamations on human love? Or should we not rather progress to real social impulses?

The fact that we can only see Christ's ministering spirits, clearly when we look into the spiritual world, is a result and a fundamental knowledge of spiritual science, a result of what I have told you to-day concerning waking and sleeping, concerning sleeping wakefulness and the awakening from sleep through spiritual science. Spiritual science will also enable us to grasp once more the Mystery of Golgotha, in accordance with a modern mentality. And as a result, spiritual science must not restrict itself to some sectarian group, but if must be brought out into the world in the best possible way, according to our capacities and to our place in life! The centre at Dornach was not intended to be a sectarian centre, but one that renders fruitful every branch of science and life, social life and artistic life. Anthroposophy and its spiritual science must become a concern of the great masses of humanity, although its most important things and that which penetrates into the innermost depths of our heart, awakening our inner forces, are pursued within the narrower circles of our Groups. There, in those Groups, we gather forces, in order to develop a certain higher knowledge, which we must first take in there. It is a knowledge that must be developed, for to-day we live in a time in which mankind really does not know what it is seeking; it sleeps away the most important things of life. Nevertheless it is a time in which mankind seeks after a new knowledge of the spirit! Let us feel this deeply, as pioneers, I might say, of a spiritual renewal—as Anthroposophists.

For that reason I so warmly wish that also the Groups in Holland might pursue an earnest, diligent and untiring study of the knowledge that can be obtained in our movement, from out the spiritual worlds. I warmly wish that our Groups should study diligently. These studies should constitute the point of departure for bringing out Anthroposophy into the world—and each one must do this in his own way—so that mankind's longings may be satisfied through a spiritual contemplation directed towards Anthroposophy. For that reason, let us grasp the nature of the longings of modern man. Let us not think that we become materialistic, when we spiritualize matter! And let us clearly realise that mankind would face a great misfortune, if it fails to obtain the true knowledge that is able to avert that misfortune.

The Eighth Oecumenic Council of the year 869 drove away from human knowledge the contemplation of the spirit. Those who have an entirely materialistic mentality seek to prepare the next stage: they also wish to eliminate the soul and to establish the general dogmatic knowledge that man only consists of the body. Certain devilish initiates are now excogitating means of educating the human being materialistically, of preparing him materialistically as a body; they seek to attain their end not by means of psychic influences, but by means of ingredients and substances taken from Nature. They plan an experimental psychology and seek to adopt principles that are not those of the Waldorf School (for the Waldorf School principles are spiritual protests against modern materialism), and they already undertake all manner of experiments in order to test man's capacities. This is but a preliminary stage of what they really aim at. The child is no longer to be educated psychically, but with the aid of external, material means, so that its capacities may develop in a bodily way. Thus man would gradually become an automaton, unless we bear in mind at the right moment that the path that led to the elimination of the spirit must not be continued in the direction of the elimination of the soul as well. We must instead follow the opposite direction of the Eighth Oecumenic Council; we must once more follow the path enabling us to find the spirit anew, and to cultivate in human life, in every sphere of practical human life, only what we can discover through the spirit.

This is what I wish to implant into your souls, what I wish to implant into your hearts, my dear friends, after our long absence. Cultivate spiritual science first of all as a concern of the heart, in the way in which it should be cultivated individually, so that we may progress. Cultivate what you have thus taken in, and then bring it out to humanity in every sphere of life, bring out what you have thus taken in! You will then gradually find the path enabling you, in the present difficult and earnest time of probation, to do the right thing for humanity, according to your place in life.

The ancient Hebrew consciousness of God. The secret of the development of a people, as image of cosmic development. Principal and subsidiary currents in the preparation for the Christ-event

WE have shown that the Hebrew people had received from Abraham a physical organ, enabling them to acquire, through sense knowledge, not merely an inkling, but, as far as was possible, a real knowledge of divine spiritual things. Knowledge of the divinely spiritual there is and has been at all times and in all places. But this, what might be called eternal knowledge of the divine, was reached through initiation into the Mysteries, or at least on the path to initiation.

A distinction must be made between that knowledge of the spiritual worlds acquired by special training or initiation, and that which is normal for any age, and arises as its special mission for human evolution.

In this way the astral clairvoyance prevalent throughout the Atlantean period was normal for that age, but for the age in which the Hebrews flourished an external, exoteric knowledge of the spiritual world was normal, and was gained with the aid of a special physical organ. As already indicated, the people of Abraham arrived at this knowledge in such a way that their innermost being seemed to be dissolved within divine existence. Inner knowledge, or the comprehension of divinity in man's innermost being, became possible through this special physical organ.

But this comprehension of the divine did not make it immediately possible for men to say: ‘I descend into my own inner being, I strive to comprehend as deeply as I can my own inner nature; there I find the drop of divine spiritual existence giving me an understanding of what permeates the external world.’ This first became spiritually possible through the entrance of Christ into human evolution. The possibility of experiencing the divine was first given to the Hebrew people through their Folk-spirit, in which each felt himself not as a single individual but as a member of the whole people; he then felt he belonged through his blood to the whole line of generations, he felt the Divine or Jehovah-consciousness lived in his Folk-consciousness.

In the terms of Occult Science it would be inaccurate to describe the God Jehovah by saying, ‘He is the God of Abraham;’ but we must say, ‘He is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and ofJacob—the Being Who passes from generation to generation, and Who reveals Himself through individual men in the consciousness of the race.’ The Christian perception shows a great advance over this. What the ancient Hebrew perception attained only through meditating on the Folk-spirit, by sinking within the Spirit flowing through the generations, Chistian recognizes in each single individual. I Abraham might have said; ‘In that I am chosen to be the founder of a people whose descendants will spread over the earth, a God will live in the blood flowing through the generations Whom we hold to be the most supreme, and Who reveals Himself to us in the consciousness of our people.’ This was the consciousness normal for that time.

This special form of knowledge was different from the higher knowledge of the Spirit that had been preserved in the Mysteries throughout all ages. In Atlantis, astral-etheric clairvoyance could perceive the divine-spiritual background of existence. By developing their inner life men could there attain knowledge through the Mysteries or Oracles. Even during the period when the Hebrew type of consciousness was normal, men who trained in certain sanctuaries could rise to the perception of the divine. But this was done when outside the body, not within it, as was the way of the people of Abraham. A man could rise to the perception of the eternal divine Spirit by enhancing the eternal in himself. Thus it is easily realized that one thing was necessary to Abraham. He had learnt, in a way peculiar to himself, and by means of a physical organ, to know the divinely spiritual, and in this way he had learnt to recognize the God Who guides the universe. If he were to enter with vivid comprehension into the whole course of evolution, it was of the greatest importance that he should recognize in the God Who revealed Himself in the Folk-consciousness of the people, the same God, Who had been recognized in the Mysteries of all ages as the Creative Deity. Abraham had to be quite certain of the identity of his God with the God of the Mysteries. Certainty of this was brought home to him through a very special revelation.

To understand this certainty one fact of human evolution must be kept in mind. In my book, Occult Science, reference is made to the ancient Atlantean Initiates, the ‘Priests of the Oracles’—what they were called is of little consequence—and I said there that the Sun-Initiate was the head of all the Atlantean Oracles, and must be distinguished from the initiates of the lesser Oracles, those of Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, etc. He was the great leader of those people who carried culture from the West to the East, from Atlantis to Central Asia, and founded post-Atlantean civilizations. This great Initiate, for such he was, withdrew into the secret sanctuaries of Central Asia. It was he who made it possible for those mighty sages, the Holy Rishis, to become the teachers of their race and it was this great and mysterious Initiate who imparted initiation to Zarathustra. The initiation given to Zarathustra differed, however, from that imparted to the Rishis, for their missions were different. The initiation given to the Rishis enabled them, after the further development of their inner being, to declare as from themselves, the mighty secrets of existence. They became the great guides and leaders of the pre-Vedic Indian culture. Though developed by artificial means, the initiation of the Rishis was yet to them something which strongly resembled the old Atlantean clairvoyance. Each of the seven Rishis received his training separately, each had his own appointed region, and each his separate mission, just as each Oracle had its own sphere of influence. Yet, when any one of the seven gave forth knowledge of the primal wisdom of the world, he spoke with the voice of the whole collegium. The great Sun-initiate, who brought the ancient Atlantean wisdom from the West to the East, bestowed it upon the Rishis in a special manner so as to enable them to develop post-Atlantean civilization. He gave the ancient Atlantean wisdom to Zarathustra in a different form, so that he could speak as I have already indicated.

The Rishis declared ‘To reach divinity men must regard everything around them, all that is presented to their senses, as Maya or illusion; they must turn away from the outer world and direct their glance inwards then a quite different world will appear from that which is before them.’

Thus the ancient Indian Rishis taught that by turning away from the deceptive world of illusion and developing their inner life, men could rise to divine spiritual spheres. Zarathustra taught otherwise. Instead of turning away from external manifestations and regarding them as Maya he said: ‘This Maya or illusion is the revelation, the true garment, of Divine Existence; our duty is not to turn from it but to investigate it and to see in the physical light of the Sun an external garment within which Ahura Mazdao lives and moves.’

Thus in a certain sense the standpoint of Zarathustra was the opposite to that of the Rishis. The most significant fact of post-Indian culture was that what man gained through his spiritual and mental activities had to be impressed upon the outer world. It has already been shown how Zarathustra passed on his best possessions to Moses and Hermes. In order that the wisdom of Moses might be fruitful and bear seed in the right way, this seed had to be implanted in the race that had Abraham for its progenitor. Abraham was the first who acquired the organ through which the Jehovah consciousness could be evolved, but he had to realize that the God who spoke in him through his physical powers of comprehension, spoke with the same voice as the eternal all-pervading God of the Mysteries; only that He revealed Himself to Abraham in a more restricted manner, that is, in a way Abraham was able to understand.

For such a mighty Being as the great Atlantean Sun-initiate it is not immediately possible to speak in comprehensible words to those living in some age who have a special mission. A Being so exalted—one who in his own individuality leads an eternal existence, and of whom it has been rightly said (indicating his eternal nature)—that he was without name or age, without father or mother—such a great guide of human existence could only reveal himself; to those whom he sought, by assuming a form that could bring him in contact with them. Therefore in order to give Abraham the appropriate illumination, the individual who had been the teacher of the Rishis and of Zarathustra, assumed a form in which he was clothed in the etheric body of a forefather of Abraham—this was the etheric sheath of Shem, the son of Noah—a forefather of Abraham. In the same way as the etheric garment of Zarathustra had been preserved for Moses, this etheric body of Shem had persisted, and was used by the great Sun-initiate so that he might make himself known to Abraham. The meeting of Abraham with the great Initiate of the Sun-Mysteries is described in the Old Testament. It is the meeting of Abraham with the King, the Priest of the Most High God, Melchisedek or Malekzadik. This meeting of Abraham with the great Sun-initiate is of the greatest, the most universal importance. Lest his presence might overwhelm Abraham this great Being only showed himself in the etheric body of Shem, the ancestor of the Semitic race. Most significantly something is here hinted at in the Bible which is, unfortunately, seldom understood; it refers to whence that something came which Melchisedek was in a position to impart to Abraham.

What could Melchisedek give to Abraham? He could impart to him the secret of the Sun-existence which sprang from the same source as the revelations prophetically foretold, in the first place, by Zarathustra. Naturally, these could only be comprehended by Abraham in his own way. Let us picture the facts told by Zarathustra to his chosen pupils. He spoke to them of Ahura Mazdao who dwelt spiritually behind the sunlight, and said: ‘Behold, behind the sun is something not yet united with the earth, but which will one day stream forth into earthly evolution and descend to earth.’ We must realize that Zarathustra could here only be prophesying of the Sun Spirit, the Christ, of Whom he said, ‘He will come in a human body.’ If we accept this, we must also accept the fact that still deeper revelations of the Sun Mysteries had to be given to those whose mission it was to prepare for the incarnation of Christ on earth. This took place when Zarathustra's own instructor came in contact with Abraham, and the outpouring of power that came from him emanated from the same source as that which came from Christ. This is indicated symbolically in the Bible, where it says: ‘When Abraham met Melchisedek, the King of Salem—this priest of the most high God brought to him bread and the juice of the grape.’ Bread and the juice of the grape were dispensed on another occasion. In the same way as bread and wine were to become the expression of the Mystery of Christ in the institution of the Last Supper for those who believed in Him, this mystery was expressed here also. The similarity of the two sacrificial acts is described with such clearness that it shows that Melchisedek drew from the same source as the Christ.

Thus an indirect outpouring of that which was destined to come to earth at a later period took place through Melchisedek. This influence was to have direct results on Abraham, the great preparer of what took place later. The result of Abraham's meeting with Melchisedek was that he now had some understanding that the outpouring of power he felt stirring within him and which he referred to as Jehovah—the highest to which his thought could rise—had the same origin as the consciousness of the Initiates—the highest wisdom attainable by man—and that it emanated from the mighty God Who fills all worlds with life and movement. This was the new consciousness that dawned in Abraham. He now knew that in the Hebrew blood, passing down from generation to generation, there actually flowed something that could only rightly be compared with what clairvoyant vision beheld when it reached forth to the mystery of existence, and understood the language of the cosmos.

I have already said that in the Mysteries the secrets of the cosmos were expressed in a language of the stars, that the teachers there made use of words and images derived from the constellations. In the movements of the stars, in their relative positions one to another, they saw pictures by means of which they sought to express man's spiritual experiences when he raised himself to what was divinely spiritual.

What did the Mystery wisdom read in the starry script? It read there the secrets of the Godhead, of Him Who lives and weaves in and through the world. The disposition of the stars was a visible expression of this Godhead. Raising his eyes to the firmament man would say, ‘There God reveals Himself; and the way in which He makes Himself known is indicated in the order and harmony of the stars.’ Thus according to this conception, the God of the universe revealed Himself through the stars. If this God was to manifest in a special way in the mission of the Hebrew people, He must do so in accordance with the plan set forth in the starry courses of the heavens. This means that in the blood of the generations, which was the external instrument for the manifestation of Jehovah, a similar ordering should obtain as that expressed in the ordering of the stars. In the line of descent from Abraham, there had to be something which in the course of generations would be a reflection of the starry script. Accordingly, it was promised to Abraham, ‘Thy descendants shall be ordered as the stars in Heaven,’ this is the true rendering of the statement usually given as, ‘Thy descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in Heaven,’ which only refers to the number of the descendants. The statement is not concerned with the numbers but indicates how the same order should rule in Abraham's descendants as was found in the grouping of the stars—the language of the gods.

People looked up to the Zodiac; and in the position of the planets to the Zodiac, constellations were expressed in which they found a language expressing the deeds of the gods. The close connection existing in the Zodiac and in the relation of the planets to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, had to be expressed in the descendants of Abraham. Thus, in the twelve sons of Jacob, and in the twelve tribes of the Hebrew people, we have the reflection of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. As the language of the gods finds expression above in the twelve starry signs, so Jehovah is manifested in the blood flowing through the generations of the twelve tribes that descended from the twelve sons of Jacob. What was ordered within the constellations of the Zodiac we designate by the names of the planets as Venus, Mercury, Moon, Sun, etc., and that which throughout the ages played a special part in different periods of the life of the Hebrew people we have compared with the course of the planets through the Zodiac. For instance, we showed how David, the kingly singer, has to be compared with Hermes or Mercury; and the period of the Babylonian captivity, that is, the form the manifestation of Jehovah assumed through the entrance of a new impulse six hundred years before our era, with the planet Venus.

It had to be indicated to Abraham, for instance, that the position in the race held by such a personality as David, was on parallel lines with that of Mercury in the Zodiac. The tribe of Judah corresponding to the constellation Leo, the entrance of David into that tribe in the course of Jewish history, corresponded in the cosmos to the occultation of Leo by Mercury.

In every detail—in the descent, in the conferring of the kingly or priestly dignities, in the struggles and victories of one or other of the tribes, in the whole history of the Hebrew people we can see what corresponds to the occultation of the several constellations in outer space. This lies in the significant words: ‘Thy descendants shall be ordered in accordance with the harmony of the stars in Heaven!’ We must not only see in documents that are founded on occultism the trivialities usually seen there, but we must recognize their profound depth.

When studied in this way we see that order did in fact exist in the sequence of the generations as related in the Gospel of Matthew; and that the Evangelist shows us the unique composition of the blood of that body which the individuality of Zarathustra assumed in order that he might be the means by which the manifestation of Christ on earth could be brought to pass.

Let us therefore ask: What was attained in the course of the forty-two generations from Abraham to Joseph? What was attained was, that in the last of the generations a blending of the blood in accordance with the laws of the stars—as taught in the Holy Mysteries—had been accomplished. In this blending of the blood necessary to the Zarathustra individuality for the accomplishment of his great work, there was an inner order and harmony that corresponded to one of the most beautiful and significant arrangements of the stellar system. The blending of blood, prepared throughout many generations for the reincarnating Zarathustra, was therefore a reflection of the whole cosmos.

All this is to be found in that great original Scripture, which, if I may venture to say so, lies before us in weakened form in the Gospel of Matthew. It is based on the profound mystery of the development of a people as the reflection of a cosmic development. This was felt by those who first knew something of the mighty Mystery of Christ. To them it already seemed that in the blood of the Jesus of Nazareth of Whom this Gospel tells, they could perceive a reflection of the Spirit that rules the whole cosmos. They gave expression to this Mystery in the words: In the blood which is to be the abode of the Ego of Jesus of Nazareth lives the Spirit of the whole cosmos. Therefore, if this physical body is to be born, it must be an image of the Spirit of the whole cosmos, the Spirit ruling the whole world.

This was the original form of expression. It declared the power inherent in the blended blood of Zarathustra—of Jesus of Nazareth—to be the power of the Spirit of our whole universe—even that Spirit, who, after the separation of the sun from the earth, brooded over and permeated the development of that which had separated itself out in the course of worldly evolution.

From the lectures given in Munich, referred to above, it was shown that the words of Genesis, ‘B'raschit bara Elohim eth haschamajim v'eth h'areths,’ must not be translated lightly according to modern methods which have lost touch with the ancient meaning. If their true meaning is sought, it must be given as follows: ‘In everything that came over from the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, the thought of the Elohim brooded in cosmic activity; in all that manifested outwardly, as in all that stirred inwardly. Darkness reigned over all this. But permeating it and brooding over it, filling it with warmth, as a hen broods over its eggs, was the Creative Spirit of the Elohim, Ruach.’

The Spirit that brooded there was the same, in every respect, as the Spirit that created the harmonious order which finds expression in the starry constellations. The original Initiates of the Christian Mysteries recognized in the blending of the blood of Jesus of Nazareth an image of the work accomplished by the Ruach-Elohim throughout the universe. Therefore they said of the blood which was thus prepared for this Great Event that it was ‘created by the Spirit of the Universe,’ the Spirit who is described in the opening chapter of Genesis as ‘Ruach’ in that most important passage beginning—‘B'raschit bara Elohim ...’

This holy meaning, a meaning far beyond the usual trivial rendering, lies at the root of what is called ‘the Conception out of the Holy Spirit of the Universe.’ It lies at the root of the saying, ‘She who gave birth to this Being was filled with the power of the Spirit of the Universe!’ We need but sense the full greatness of such Mystery to know that the fact presents something infinitely higher than the exoteric idea of the ‘immaculate conception.’

References to two things in the Bible will suffice to deflect the mind from the usual trivial explanation of the immaculate conception and lead it to the recognition of the true point of view. One is, why should the writer of the Gospel of Matthew give the whole line of descent from Abraham to Joseph if he wished in any way to show that the birth of Jesus of Nazareth was unconcerned with the sequence of the generations? He is very careful to tell how the blood of Abraham passed down to Joseph. What sense would there be in saying that this blood had no connection with the blood of Jesus of Nazareth? The other fact that must be taken into consideration is that ‘Ruach-Elohim,’ who, in the Bible, is called the ‘Holy Spirit’ or ‘Holy Ghost’ is of the feminine gender in the Hebrew language.

This point we will consider later. For the moment let it only awaken within us a feeling for the grandeur of the idea which lies at the very root of this Mystery.

The Event taking place at the beginning of our era, and only known to the wise men who were initiated into the secrets of the Universe, found expression first in the Aramaic language, in an ancient document upon which the Gospel of Matthew was based. It can be proved, not only by occult means, but by philological investigation, that this document, which is the foundation of the Gospel of Matthew, existed as early as the year 71 A.D. The true origin of this Gospel is given in my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact. Here, however, as we are concerned with Occult Science not Philology, reference need only be made to one thing in the literature of the Talmud, which is fully confirmed by Jewish erudition. In this literature it is stated that Rabbi Gamaliel II. was involved in a lawsuit with his sister about a legacy from his father, who died fighting against the Romans in the year 70 A.D. We are told that the Rabbi Gamaliel II. appeared before a judge who was a Jewish Christian. Such individuals existed in the courts ofjustice established for the Jews by the Romans. In this case a strange thing happened. Rabbi Gamaliel contested with his sister his father's inheritance; he declared before the judge, who knew something of Christianity, that according to Jewish law, the son only and not the daughter could inherit, and therefore he was the sole inheritor. The judge, stating that in the circle in which he practised the Thora was set aside, said that since Gamaliel sought justice and judgment from him he could not give it merely according to Jewish law, but according to the law set up in its stead. The Rabbi's only way now was to bribe the judge. He did so, and the following day the judge made a citation that was in reality a plagiarism from the original Aramaic script of the Matthew Gospel. He said, ‘Christ did not come into the world to break the law of Moses, but to fulfil it.’ He thought to stifle the pangs of conscience for deflecting the law in Gamaliel's favour by saying that he judged nevertheless according to the Christian doctrine.

From this we know that in the year 71 there existed a Christian document containing words found to-day in the Gospel of Matthew. This is, therefore, an external proof of the existence of the Aramaic document, or part of it, from which the Gospel is derived.

The results of occult investigation have still to be given, but the above has been mentioned to show that when seeking the aid of external Science, it is not wise to consider every other kind of literary evidence and yet ignore the Talmud literature, as is often done—for the latter is of great importance for what one can know of these things exoterically. Thus there is good external justification for placing the Gospel of Matthew comparatively early, and regarding its compilers as men not far removed in time from the events of Palestine. It is even externally certain that it would have been impossible at that time to deny that Jesus Christ had lived, and to say: He of whom we speak, did not live at the beginning of our era. Half-a-century had not yet elapsed, so that men were still able to speak to eye-witnesses who would not state what could not be proved. Exoterically these things are of importance, and we only mention them in confirmation of the esoteric view.

We have seen how, through cosmic mysteries, a body had been prepared in the course of human evolution, as it were, from the filtrated blood of the Hebrew people and how into this body, in which the great initiate Zarathustra incarnated, the order of the Universe itself had entered. It is of this Zarathustra-individuality and none other that Matthew speaks.

It must not be imagined that what we have described out of the profoundest Mysteries of earthly evolution was perceived as clearly by everyone. Even to contemporaries this was deeply veiled, and was only comprehended by a few Initiates. Hence the deep silence is comprehensible concerning all that could then be disclosed about the greatest event in human evolution. If the historians of to-day turn to their records and find these records silent, it should not occasion surprise; such silence is entirely natural.

Having explained the greatest event of our evolution from the side of Zarathustra, it is well that we should now consider another stream of influence preparatory to this great Event. Very many things took place immediately before and immediately after the Christ Event in human evolution. Preparation had been made for it a long time in advance. Just as it was prepared for externally in the sending forth of Moses and Hermes by Zarathustra, and by the work of Meichisedek on the outer sheath of Jesus of Nazareth in the Sun-Mysteries, it was prepared for in another way through what might be called a ‘neighbouring stream’ to the main great current. This ‘neighbouring stream’ was slowly prepared in centres of which external history informs us when dealing with those people described by Philo as the Therapeutze. The Therapeuta were members of a secret sect who sought the purification of their souls by inward paths, trying to drive out what had been debased in them through external intercourse and external knowledge, and to raise themselves to pure spiritual spheres. An offshoot of this sect, among whom this neighbouring stream of culture was carried still further, were the Essaers or Essenes. All the people who were united in the sects of the Therapeutae and Essenes were under a certain common spiritual guidance. They are briefly described in my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact. If you would know something of this spiritual guidance exoterically, you need only recall the lectures given last year on the Gospel of St. Luke. The Mystery of Gautama Buddha, as given exoterically in Oriental literature, was there dealt with, and we explained that he who seeks to become a ‘Buddha’ must in the course of evolution first become a ‘Bodhisattva.’ We explained further that the individual known to history as the ‘Buddha’ had previously been a Bodhisattva. He was a Bodhisattva until the twenty-ninth year of his physical existence, during which time he lived as the son of King Sudhodana. It was only in his twenty-ninth year, through inner soul-development, that he evolved from a Bodhisattva to a Buddha. There is a long sequence of Bodhisattvas in human evolution, and he who attained Buddhahood six hundred years before our era is one of these Bodhisattvas who guided human evolution. An individual who rises from the dignity of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha does not again incarnate in a physical body on earth.

It was explained in the course of the lectures referred to above how Buddha was manifest at the birth of the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke in that he united himself with the etheric body of him who is known as the Nathan Jesus; and it was shown that this is a different Jesus from the one spoken of in the first part of the Gospel of Matthew.

The attainment of Buddha-hood by the son of King Sudhodana must be regarded as the close of an ancient evolution. It was in fact the same stream of evolution as is connected with the Holy Rishis of India. As soon as a Bodhisattva attains Buddha-hood a successor always appears in his place. This is mentioned in an ancient Indian legend where it tells that the Bodhisattva, before he came to earth as the son of King Sudhodana when he was to attain the dignity of Buddha-hood, and while still in spiritual realms, passed on his Bodhisattva crown to his successor.

Ever since that time there has been a successor to the Bodhisattva who then attained Buddha-hood; and the new Bodhisattva, who continued working as such, had a special task for human evolution. The task appointed to him was to guide spiritually the movement then making itself felt among the circles of the Therapeutac and the Essenes. There his influence worked. In the follower of Gautama Buddha we have to recognize the spiritual guide of the Essenes. During the reign of King Alexander Jannai (circa 125-77 B.C.), this Bodhisattva sent a particular individual to lead the Essenes; he was, therefore, the leader of the Essenes about a century before Christ. He is well known to occultism and to the external literature of the Talmud. Thus, a century before our era, before the appearance of Christ on earth, there was an individuality, who has nothing to do with the Jesus of the Luke-Gospel and nothing to do with the Jesus of the Matthew-Gospel, who was a guide and leader in the Essene Community. He is known under the name of Jesus, the son of Pandira, Jeschua ben Pandira. Jewish literature has fabricated many things regarding this individual, and these fables have recently been revived. He was a great and noble personality, and must not be confused, as is done by some students of the Talmud, with Jesus of Nazareth, the subject of these lectures. We recognize this Essene forerunner of Christianity in Jesus, son of Pandira, and we know that he was stoned to death by those who, at that time, saw blasphemy in the teachings of the Essenes. After being accused of blasphemy and heresy he was stoned and hanged on a tree, so that this disgrace might be added to the punishment already inflicted. This is an occult fact, and is also to be found in the literature of the Talmud.

In this Jeschua ben Pandira we have to recognize a personality under the protection of the Bodhisattva who succeeded the Bodhisattva, son of Sudhodana, who later became Buddha. The matter is absolutely clear; we have to recognize here a kind of preparation, a neighbouring stream to the main stream of Christianity, springing from the successor of that Buddha. He is the present Bodhisattva who will one day become the Maitreya Buddha, and who sent his messenger among the Essenes to bring that to pass which will be described in the succeeding lectures.

Thus we have to seek the name ‘Jesus’ in the individual of Whom the Gospels of Matthew and Luke speak; but we have also to seek it a hundred years before our era in the circle of the Essenes, in that noble personality regarding whom all that the Talmud literature relates is calumny; who was accused of blasphemy and heresy, stoned, and hanged upon a tree.

The Mystery of Golgotha for which I have already prepared the ground in recent lectures will be the subject of our enquiry today.

Let us recall the main points for consideration. I mentioned on the last occasion that in order to arrive at a true understanding of the world we must study the tripartite division of the cosmos and man in the light of the three principles of body, soul and spirit. It is most important to be aware of this fact at the present time, especially in the field of Anthroposophy. I should like to remind you that this idea of trichotomy forms the central theme of my book Theosophy. No doubt you have all read this book and will know that this idea forms the nucleus of the whole book. I quote the relevant passage:

“The spirit is eternal; the body is subject to life and death in accordance with the laws of the physical world; the soul-life which is subject to destiny mediates between these two (body and spirit) during life on Earth.”

Now at the time of the publication of this book I felt it was necessary to define clearly this idea of trichotomy. For by laying special, even decisive emphasis upon this idea we are really in a position today to understand the cosmos and at the same time to understand the central event of our Earth evolution—the Mystery of Golgotha.

In my last lecture I spoke of the solid body of opposition we encounter today when we set out to study both cosmos and man in the light of the threefold principle of body, soul and spirit, not simply as something of secondary importance, but as the central theme of our study. I have shown how the idea of the spirit was lost in the course of the spiritual evolution of the West. I mentioned that the idea of the spirit was proscribed by the eighth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople and that this proscription not only influenced the development of religious ideas and sentiments, but left a deep impression upon the thinking of recent times. In consequence there are few modern philosophers who are able to distinguish clearly between soul and spirit. And even amongst those who imagine themselves to be objective, one encounters everywhere the dogmatic assertion, stemming from the eighth Ecumenical Council, that man consists of body and soul alone. He who is familiar with the spiritual life of the West, not only as it is reflected in the more superficial realms of philosophy, but as it has implanted itself in the thinking and feeling of all men, even of those who have not the slightest interest in philosophical ideas, sees everywhere the effects of the proscription of the idea of the spirit. And when, in recent times, a tendency developed to draw upon certain aspects of the wisdom teaching of the East as a corrective to Western teachings, the borrowings were presented in such a light that one would scarcely suspect that the cosmos and man are founded on the threefold principle of body, soul and spirit. For in the division of man into gross body, etheric body and astral body, derived purely from astral observation, Sthula Sharira, Linga Sharira—Prâna as it was then called—Kâma, Kâma-Manas and the various other divisions introduced from the East—in all these divisions which are an arbitrary collocation of seven principles, there is no indication of what should be regarded of vital importance, namely, that our “Weltanschauung” should be permeated with this idea of trichotomy.

There is no doubt that this idea of man's threefold nature has been suppressed. The spirit, it is true, has often been a focus of discussion today, but the discussions are little more than empty words. People are unable to distinguish nowadays between mere words and realities. Hence many expositions are taken seriously which are little more than a farrago of words, such as the philosophy of Eucken.

We cannot understand the essential nature of the Mystery of Golgotha if we decide to reject the tripartite division of man. As I pointed out in my last lecture, the abolition of the spirit was first decreed by the eighth Ecumenical Council, but preparations had been underway for some time. The ultimate abolition of the spirit is connected with a necessary stage in the spiritual evolution of the West. We shall perhaps be able to approach the Mystery of Golgotha most easily from the standpoint of the tripartite division of man if we recall how Aristotle, the leading representative of Greek thought, envisaged the soul. The Middle Ages were also dominated by Aristotelian philosophy and though people are unwilling to admit it, modern thought still draws upon the concepts of the Middle Ages. Furthermore, the later evolution of thought was already anticipated in Aristotle a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, and it was with the help of his ideas that the leading minds of the Middle Ages sought to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. These things are of paramount importance and we must really make an effort to investigate them with an open mind.

What was Aristotle's conception of the human soul? I will tell you as briefly as possible the Greek view of the soul as presented by an enlightened mind such as Aristotle. His conception of the soul—and we have here the views of the most famous European of the fourth century B.C.—was roughly as follows.

When an individual incarnates he owes his physical existence to his father and mother. But he owes only his physical inheritance to his parents. The whole man, according to Aristotle, could never come into being solely through the union of father and mother, for this whole man is endowed with a soul. Now one part of the soul—let us remember that Aristotle distinguishes two parts of the soul—is tied to the physical body, expresses itself through the body and apprehends the external world through sense-perception. This part of the soul arises as a necessary by-product of man's parental inheritance. The spiritual part of the soul, on the other hand, the “Active Reason” as Aristotle calls it which participates through intellection in the spiritual life of the Universe, in the “nous”, is immaterial and immortal and could never come into being through parental inheritance, but solely through the participation of God—or the “Divine” as Aristotle calls it—in the procreation of man through the parents.

It is thus that the whole man comes into existence. The whole man is born of the co-operation of God with the father and mother, and it is most important to realize that Aristotle understands the word “man” in this sense. From God man receives his spiritual soul or “Active Reason” as Aristotle calls it. This “Active Reason” which comes into being with each individual through Divine co-operation, evolves during life between birth and death. When man passes through the gate of death the physical body is given over to the Earth, and, with the body, the lower part of the soul, the “Passive Reason” in Aristotelian terminology, which is associated with the physical organism. The spiritual part of the soul, the “Active Reason”, on the other hand, subsists according to Aristotle, and when “separated, appears just as it is”, withdraws to a world remote from the phenomenal world and enjoys immortality. Now this immortal life is such that the man who performed good deeds whilst in the body is able to look back upon the fruits of his good deeds, but cannot change the karma of his past actions. We only understand Aristotle aright when we interpret his ideas as implying that through all eternity the soul looks back on the good or evil it has wrought.

In the nineteenth century especially, scholars were at pains to grasp this idea, for the style of Aristotle is economical to the point of obscurity. In his controversy with Eduard Zeller, the late Franz Brentano [original note 1] endeavoured throughout his life to gather every scrap of evidence which could throw light upon Aristotle's conception of the relationship between the spiritual part of man and the whole man. Aristotle's views passed over into the philosophy which was taught throughout the Middle Ages down to recent times and which is still taught in certain ecclesiastical circles today. Franz Brentano, who was actively interested in these ideas, in so far as they stemmed from Aristotle, came to the following conclusion.

The mind of Aristotle which, by virtue of its inherent disposition towards reflective thought transcended the limitations of materialism, could not have subscribed to the notion that the spiritual part of the soul was in any way material or could have evolved from man's parental inheritance. There were only two possible ways therefore, Brentano thought, in which Aristotle could envisage the soul. On the one hand, to accept the idea that the spiritual part of the soul was a direct creation of God working in conjunction with the parental inheritance, so that the spiritual part of the soul arose through Divine influence upon the human embryo and that this spiritual part did not perish at death, but entered upon eternal life. What other possibility was open to Aristotle, Brentano asks, if he rejected this idea? And he believed that Aristotle was right to accept this idea. There was only a second possibility; a third did not exist—and this was to admit not only the post-existence, but also the pre-existence of the soul before birth or conception. Now Brentano realized clearly that once we admit the possibility that the soul exists before conception then we are forced to concede that the soul does not experience a single incarnation only, but undergoes successive incarnations. And since, in later life, Aristotle rejects palingenesis, i.e. reincarnation, he had no option but to accept creationism, the doctrine that the soul is created ex nihilo with each embryonic life. This accepts post-existence, but denies pre-existence. Franz Brentano who had been a priest may be regarded as one of the last representatives of the positive side of Aristotelian scholastic philosophy. He thought it was eminently reasonable on the part of Aristotle to reject the doctrine of reincarnation and to recognize only creationism and post-existence.

And this view, despite its many modifications, forms the core of all Christian philosophy in so far as this philosophy rejects the idea of reincarnation. It is a strange phenomenon, both touching and tragic, to see how such an eminent scholar as Franz Brentano, who had resigned from the ministry, resolutely strove to clarify his ideas about creationism and yet could not bridge the gap which separated him from the doctrine of reincarnation. What was the reason for this? It was evident that, despite his profound erudition, despite the vigour and acuity of his mind, the door to the spirit was closed to him. He could never attain to the idea of the spirit or recognize the spirit as separate from the soul. It is not possible to attain to the idea of the spirit without accepting the idea of reincarnation. The idea of reincarnation is inseparable from the idea of the spirit. In Aristotle's day the idea of the spirit had already begun to decline. In the key passages of Aristotle's writings we observe that when he touches upon the question of preexistence he becomes obscure or ambiguous.

All this is connected with something of the greatest importance, something which carries profound implications, namely, that a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha man had entered upon a stage of evolution when something akin to a mist shrouded the soul whenever the spirit was mentioned. This mist was not so dense then as it is now, but the first signs of the corruption of man's thinking in matters of the spirit were already manifest at that time. And this is connected with the fact that in the course of time mankind had undergone an evolutionary process. Over the centuries man's soul had changed and was no longer the same as it had been in primeval times. Because man possessed atavistic clairvoyance in those remote times he had direct experience of the spirit. He could no more doubt the existence of the spirit than he could doubt the existence of the phenomenal world. It was simply a question of the degree of spiritual perception he could attain. That it was possible to find the path to the spirit in past ages was never in doubt. Nor was there ever any doubt that during the life between birth and death the spirit dwelt in the souls of men so that by virtue of this spiritual endowment the human soul could participate in divine life. And this conviction which was founded on an immediate awareness of the spirit was at all times expressed in the cult of the Mysteries. It is a remarkable fact that one of the earliest Greek philosophers, Heraclitus, speaks of the Mysteries in such a way that we realize he is aware that in olden times they were of immense importance to mankind, but that they had already fallen into desuetude. Thus enlightened Greeks had already begun in the fifth century B.C. to speak of the decline of the Mysteries.

Rites of various kinds were enacted in the Mysteries, but it is only the central idea of these Mysteries which is of particular interest to us today. Let us dwell for a moment on this central idea of the Mysteries as they were practised up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and as late as the reign of the Emperor Julian the Apostate. In recent times attention has been called to the anti-Christian nature of many aspects of these Mystery Cults. It has been pointed out that what we know as the “Easter Legend”, the keynote to the Passion, the Death and Resurrection of Christ, can be found everywhere in the Mysteries. And the conclusion drawn from this was that the Christian Easter Mystery was simply a transference of the ancient pagan myth and ritual cults to the Person of Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed these legends and rites were so alike that many no longer questioned their identity and said: “What the Christians say of Christ, that He suffered, was crucified and rose again, that His resurrection gave promise of hope and salvation for man—all these Christian ideas are to be found in the Mystery Cults!” Pagan usages, they claimed, had been collected together, fused into the “Easter Legend” and transferred to the Person of Jesus of Nazareth.

Indeed in recent times people have gone even further. Strangely enough, even in the sphere of orthodox Christianity—one need only recall certain (Protestant) sects in Bremen—there was no longer any interest in the historicity of Jesus. They said that the various Mystery cults and legends had been collected over the years and had been centralized, so to speak, and that in the early Christian community the Christ legend had been developed out of them. I recall a discussion which took place here in Berlin a few years ago. During the tragic years of recent times past events have become unreal and seem a distant memory, although the discussion took place only a few years ago. In the course of this discussion the official representatives of Christianity declared that the real issue was not the historical Jesus, but simply the “Idea of Christ” which arose in the primitive Christian community through the impact of divers social impulses.

Now in studying the pagan Mystery cults there is always a dangerous temptation to compare them with the Christian Easter Mystery. Let me illustrate this by a faithful description of the Phrygian Easter festivals. In addition to the Phrygian festivals I could also cite other festivals for these were equally widespread. In a letter to the sons of Constantine, Firmicus (note 1) gives the following account of the Phrygian Easter festival. The statue of the God Attis was bound to the trunk of a fir tree and carried round in solemn procession at midnight. Then the sufferings of the God were re-enacted. At the same time a lamb was placed at the foot of the tree. At dawn the resurrection of the God was proclaimed. Whilst on the previous night when the God was bound to the tree and seemingly given over to death the multitude broke out in wild lamentations as was customary during the ritual; now, when the resurrection of the God was announced at sunrise the lugubrious chants were suddenly transformed into wild outbursts of joy. The statue of the God, Firmicus tells us, was buried elsewhere. During the night when the melancholy dirges reached their climax, a light shone in the darkness and the tomb was opened. The God had risen. And the priest addressed the assembled populace in these words: “Take comfort, ye faithful, for the God is saved and ye too will be saved.”

There is no denying that these religious festivals, celebrated untold centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, show great similarity to the Easter Mystery of Christianity. Because this idea was so attractive many believed that these ideas of the suffering, death and resurrection of the God were widespread and had been, to some extent, welded into a unity under Christian influence and transferred to Jesus of Nazareth.

Now it is important to understand the real origin of these pagan, pre-Christian rites. They date far back into the past and sprang from those profound and original insights into the nature of man and his relation to the cosmos as revealed through atavistic clairvoyance. Of course at the time when the Phrygian festivals were celebrated, people did not understand their real meaning any more than the Freemasons of today understand the significance of the rites they practise. None the less all these ceremonies date back to a time when an ancient wisdom, a grandiose knowledge of the universe and man existed, a knowledge which is exceedingly difficult to understand today. Remember that not only is man dependent upon his environment in relation to his physical body, but that his spirit and soul also are an integral part of his environment. He draws on his environment for his ideas and representations, they become routine responses, second nature to him and for various reasons he cannot escape them. Therefore with the best will in the world it is difficult to understand certain knowledge which, for reasons I have already mentioned, has been lost in the course of the spiritual evolution of mankind.

The natural science of today—there is no need to repeat my admiration for its achievements, though I harbour certain reservations about it—is concerned only with the superficial aspect of things. It can make only a minimal contribution to an understanding of their true nature. It is true that science has made great advances in certain spheres—but it all depends upon what one understands by “great advances”. The invention of wireless telegraphy and many other discoveries which are important contributions to our life today are certainly deserving of admiration. But, one may ask, where does that take us? If we were to pursue this question we should come face to face with what is forbidden territory today. Modern science naturally considers the primordial wisdom, the last corrupt remnants of which survived in the Mystery cults I have mentioned, to be sheer folly. That may well be. But what is foolishness in the eyes of men may often be wisdom in the sight of God.

True insight into the nature of the universe and man discloses amongst other things—I propose today to emphasize those aspects which are important for an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha—a certain conception of the human organism which modern science regards as the height of absurdity, i.e. that the human organism is fundamentally different from the animal organism. (I have already mentioned many of these differences, but today I will confine myself to the difference which bears upon the Mystery of Golgotha.) When we make a serious study of the animal organism in the light of Spiritual Science we find that it bears within it the seeds of death. In other words, spiritual investigation, when applied to the animal organism recognizes that, by virtue of its constitution, this organism must inevitably suffer death, that it disintegrates and finally returns to the mineral kingdom. The death of an animal is not something mysterious and inexplicable. When we study its organism we realize that, for the animal, death is as natural to it (i.e. the organism) as the need for food and drink. That death is a necessity for the animal lies in the nature of its organism.

This is not the case with man, for his organism is differently constituted. Here we touch upon a sphere that must remain a total enigma to modern science. When we study the human organism in the light of Spiritual Science we find nothing in the human organism itself which suggests that death is inevitable. We must accept death in man as something he experiences and which cannot be explained, for, originally, neither man nor his physical organism were made for death. The fact that death occurs in man from within cannot be explained from the being of man itself. The inner being as such provides no explanation of death.

I realize that this view will be regarded as folly by the scientific pundits of today. Generally speaking it is extremely difficult to arrive at an understanding of these problems for they touch upon profound mysteries. And even today, if we wish to understand these problems we can only treat of them after the fashion of Saint-Martin [original note 2] in his book Des Erreurs et de la Vérité. In an important passage, when speaking of the evolutionary consequences that follow from a supernal event that took place in the spiritual world before man first incarnated on the physical plane, he wrote the following words which will be readily understood by everyone who is familiar with such matters:

“However much I may desire to enlighten you, the obligations I have undertaken do not permit me to comment in any way upon this subject; and furthermore, I, for my part, would rather blush for man's transgressions than speak of them.”

For Saint-Martin is here alluding to a transgression committed by man before his first incarnation on Earth. He was forbidden to speak of this openly. But today we are in a position to speak of many things that Saint-Martin could not discuss in his time—not because mankind has progressed since that time, but for other reasons. But if we were to discuss a truth such as “man is not intended to die”, together with all the relevant factors, we would have to touch upon matters which may not be disclosed today. Man is not born to die and yet he dies! These words express something which is obviously an absurdity to the pundits of modern science, but which, to those who seek to penetrate to a true understanding of the world, must be reckoned amongst the most profound mysteries.

This realization that man was not born to die and yet dies, lies concealed in those ancient Mysteries, including the Attis Mysteries which I have already mentioned. Man looked to the Mysteries for an answer to this enigma that man was not born to die and yet dies. Now why were the Mysteries celebrated? They were celebrated in order that man should be reminded afresh each year of something he wished to hear, something he wished to experience and realize within his soul. He wished to be reassured that the time had not yet come when he would have to face the inexplicable problem of his death. What did the neophyte hope for from the Attis Mysteries? He had the instinctive feeling that a time would one day come when mankind would seriously have to face the reality of death which remained an enigma. But this time had not yet come. And whilst the priest celebrated the death and resurrection of the god, man felt reassured and consoled, for the time had not yet come when he would have to come to terms with the reality of death.

It was common knowledge in ancient times that the event described in the first chapter of Genesis, and which is understood symbolically today, referred to a reality. The men of ancient times knew this instinctively. It was modern materialism that first outgrew the instinctive feeling that the temptation of Lucifer referred to an actual occurrence. On this question the materialist interpretation of Darwin, which is intellectually so perverse, is very far removed from the truth. This crude, perverted thinking believes that by a gradual and continual process over long periods of time man has developed from animal ancestry. In such a materialist hypothesis the story of the temptation can have no place. For only a “brow villanous low” could believe that an archetypal ape or guenon [original note 3] could have been tempted by Lucifer!

Instinctively men knew at the time of the Mysteries that the story of Creation concealed a “fact” that had once been common knowledge. They felt that man, as originally created, was not mortal. And because of this “fact” they felt that something had entered into his physical organism and had corrupted it and so opened the doors to mortality. Man became mortal through a moral defect, through what is called original sin. I will recur to this later. Man became mortal, not after the fashion of other forms of organic life, not as the inevitable consequence of natural law, but through a moral defect. The soul was the seat of his mortality.

The animal soul as species-soul is immortal. It incarnates in the individual animal which is mortal in virtue of its organism. The species-soul (or group-soul) relinquishes the animal organism which is subject to death without having undergone any transformation. From the outset the nature of the animal organism is such that, as individual organism, it is ordained to die. This does not apply to the human organism to the same extent. In the case of the human organism, the species-soul or group-soul which lies at the root of this organism is able to manifest in the individual man, and as independent human organism ensures him immortality. Man could only become mortal through a moral act originating in the soul. In a certain sense man had to be endowed with a soul before he could become mortal. The moment one treats these ideas as abstractions they become meaningless. We must endeavour to attain to a concrete knowledge of spiritual realities.

Now in ancient times—and also in the period shortly before the Mystery of Golgotha—men never doubted for a moment that the soul brought death to man. The soul has evolved through the ages. In the course of this evolution the soul has progressively corrupted the organism and in consequence has worked destructively upon the organism. Man looked back to ancient times and said to himself: A moral event took place in olden times and its effect upon the soul is such, that whenever the soul now incarnates, it corrupts the body. And because it corrupts the body man can no longer live between birth and death in a state of innocence. In the course of hundreds and thousands of years the condition of the soul has grown progressively worse and the body has suffered continuous corruption! Thus it is increasingly difficult for man to find his way back to the spirit. The further evolution advances, the more the body is corrupted by the soul and the more the seeds of death are sown in the body. And a time must come when it will no longer be possible for man, once he has lived his alloted span, to find his way back to the spiritual world.

In ancient times it was this moment that was anticipated with fear and dread. Men felt that, after countless generations a generation would arise whose souls would so corrupt the body and sow the poisonous seeds of death that man could no longer reclaim his spiritual heritage. And this generation will one day appear, they said. And they wanted to be reassured whether this fatal moment was drawing near, and to this end the Attis rites and similar ceremonies were enacted. At the same time they sought to discover whether the souls of men still had so much of divine plentitude that the time had not yet come when these souls had abandoned their divine heritage and could no longer find their way back to the spirit. Great importance therefore was attached to the words of the priest when he said: “Take comfort, ye faithful; the God is saved, your salvation is assured!” With these words the priest wished to indicate that God was still active in the world; that the souls of men had not yet severed all connection with the divine. The priest sought to comfort the people saying: “The resurrection of the God is ever renewed. The God is still within you.”

When we touch upon these questions we become aware of the deep, unplumbed depth of feelings and emotions which were once characteristic of a particular epoch in the evolution of man. Today man has not the slightest inkling of the inner conflicts with which these men of earlier times had to wrestle. Though they may have been totally illiterate and have known nothing of what we call culture today, yet they could not escape these feelings. And in the Mystery Schools which preserved the old traditions derived from ancient clairvoyant insight the neophytes were told that if evolution were to continue unchanged, if the effects of original sin were to be prolonged, then a time would come when the souls of men would turn from God to a world of materialism of their own creation, and would progressively corrupt the physical body and rapidly hasten the process of death. These souls would remain earthbound and be relegated to the limbo; they would be lost. But since these Schools still preserved a knowledge of the spirit, the knowledge of the trichotomy of man still survived. What I am speaking of at the moment, the seminaries, applied to the soul and not to the spirit. For the spirit is eternal and follows its own laws. From their spiritual insight people knew that the soul would be relegated to the limbo, but the spirit would reappear in ever repeated Earth-lives. A time in the evolution of the world was approaching when the spirits of men would incarnate anew and would look back upon the lost Paradise which once had existed on Earth. Souls would be lost, never to return. Spirits would reincarnate in bodies which they would activate after the fashion of automata. And the way in which this was done would be neither felt nor experienced by the soul.

But what, on the other hand, were the feelings bf those who were drawn to the Christian Easter Mystery? They felt that unless the Earth received a new impulse, then, in future incarnations, man would be born without a soul. They awaited something that Earth evolution could not achieve of itself, something that was destined to enter earthly life from without, namely the Mystery of Golgotha. They awaited the incarnation of a Being who would save the souls of men from death. There was no need to save the spirit from death, but it was imperative to save the soul. This Being who entered Earth evolution from without by incarnation in the body of Jesus of Nazareth was recognized as the Christ who had come to save the souls of men. Men were now able to unite spiritually with the Christ, so that through this union the soul loses its power to corrupt the body and all that they had lost since the Fall could gradually be recovered. That is why the Mystery of Golgotha must be regarded as the central point in human evolution. From the “Fall” until the Mystery of Golgotha man experienced a progressive decline of his spiritual forces. The forces of corruption had increasingly invaded his soul and threatened to make man an automaton of the spirit. And from the Mystery of Golgotha until the end of the Earth cycle all that was lost before the Mystery of Golgotha will gradually be retrieved once more. Thus, at the conclusion of Earth evolution, the spirits of men will incarnate in the physical body for the last time and these bodies will once again be immortal. It was in expectation of this redemption that men understood the Mystery of Easter.

Before this could be realized it was necessary to overcome the power which had caused the moral corruption of the soul; and this power was overcome by the decisive event on Golgotha. How did the early Christians who still possessed occult knowledge understand the last words of Christ on the Cross? They were living in expectation of an external event that would bring to an end this corrupting influence of the soul. The cry of Christ on the Cross “It is finished” was a sign to them that the time had now come when the corrupting power of the soul was a thing of the past. It was a miraculous event fraught with vast and unsuspected mysteries. For tremendous questions are involved when we think about the Mystery of Golgotha. When we pursue our studies further we shall find that it is impossible to think of the Mystery of Golgotha without also thinking of the Risen Christ. The Risen Christ—that is the essential. And in one of his most profound utterances St. Paul says: “If Christ be not risen then all our faith is vain.” The Risen Christ is unique to Christianity and is inseparable from Christianity. The death of Christ is also an integral part of Christianity. But how is this death portrayed? And how must it be portrayed? An innocent man was put to death, He suffered and died. Those who crucified Him clearly bear a heavy burden of guilt, for He who died was innocent. What was the significance of this guilt for mankind? It brought them salvation. For had Christ not died upon the Cross mankind could not have been saved. In the Crucifixion we are confronted by a unique event. The death of Christ on the Cross was the greatest boon bestowed upon mankind (cf. John XI, 49–52). And the heaviest guilt that mankind has taken upon itself is this, that Christ was crucified. Thus the heaviest guilt coincides with the greatest good fortune.

The superficial mind no doubt will pay little attention to this. But for those who probe deeper, this question is fraught with profound mystery. The most heinous crime in the history of the world proved to be the salvation of mankind. Now we must understand this enigma, or at least try to understand it, if we are to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha. And the key to the solution of this enigma is found in the exemplary words spoken by Christ on the Cross: “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” The right understanding of these words provides the answer to the cardinal question: Why did the most heinous crime become the source of the salvation of mankind?

If you reflect upon this you will realize that one must take into account the trichotomy of man in order to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. For Christ died in order to redeem the souls of men. He reclaims the souls of men that would have been lost but for His advent. Morality would have vanished from the Earth and the spirit inhabiting a body that reacted mechanically would have been the victim of necessity in which morality has no place. Mankind would have been unable to have psychic experiences. The mission of Christ was to bring man back to God. It is not surprising, therefore, that three centuries before Christ, Aristotle, a most enlightened Greek, failed to understand the nature of the soul and its relation to the spirit at a time when the crisis of man's soul was at hand. There were many discrepancies in Aristotle's view of the soul since he could not have known of the coming of the Saviour, and it is not surprising therefore that his views of the soul were illogical. How is one to account for the fact that the erroneous conceptions of Aristotle concerning the relationship of soul and spirit persisted so long? The significance of Christ for the souls of men is that He demonstrates once again that man is a threefold being of body, soul and spirit and that an inner relationship exists between objective events and moral events. And we shall never fully understand this relationship unless we accept the idea of the trichotomy of man.

If we wish to arrive in some measure at an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha we must penetrate to the inmost recesses of the human soul. In the present lecture I have only been able to offer an introduction to this theme. I believe that it is our immediate concern to speak of these things at the present time. We must take advantage of this Easter festival to enquire more closely into these matters in so far as it is possible today. Perhaps it may be possible thereby to awaken in us much that may one day be a seed that will only mature in future time. For it is only gradually that we come to realize that we are living in an age when there are many things we cannot fully comprehend. This is evident from the difficulty men experience today in developing a clear and conscious understanding of events that are imminent. Unfortunately it is not possible to indicate, even briefly, how one should understand in clear consciousness the painful event of which the people of Europe, or at least of Central Europe, have only recently been informed. [original note 4] Today we are only half aware of these things.

I only wanted to touch upon certain questions today in order to relate them in my next lecture to the Mystery of Golgotha.

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Original Notes:

Note 1. See Note 6, Lecture Eight.

Note 2. See Note 3, Lecture One.

Note 3. guenon—a female monkey.

Note 4. The outbreak of the Russian Revolution.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Firmicus. His full name was Julius Firmicus Maturnus. A Sicilian priest of the fourth century. The reference is the “De errore profanorum religionum” A.D. 347. (German translation by A. Müller, 1913.)

My dear Friends! Circumstances have worked out in such a way that numerous friends found it possible to come to today's class and shall probably also be present for further sessions, friends who were not present at previous sessions of the class, and it is not possible, therefore, simply to proceed in the way that was indicated when we met the last time. Also, the repetition of the class lessons need prove to be no hardship for those members of this esoteric school who have participated in earlier sessions, for the content of this esoteric school is of such a nature that it should again and again be brought before the soul. This is on point for those for whom today's session is a repetition, as the repetition, just because it is a repetition, also signifies a continuation.

For all those, however, who are here today for the first time, it signifies something else. It signifies an acquaintance with the beginning of the esoteric path.

It is true that even those who are far advanced along the esoteric path find special fruitfulness for their further striving in returning again and again to the beginnings. Returning in this way to the beginning is at the same time always an entering upon a new and further step. This is the way we wish to look upon these lessons which are now to be given. So, for the sake of those members who are here today for the first time, the nature and significance of this school shall be set forth once again in an introductory manner.

When the impulse for the Christmas Conference manifested itself here in this hall through the spiritual laying of the Foundation Stone of the Anthroposophical Society on Christmas Day, it was then indeed the fact, as I said yesterday, that an esoteric impulse was from then on to flow through the entire Anthroposophical Society, an esoteric impulse which could indeed already be observed in everything that has been undertaken since Christmas in the Anthroposophical Society. The kernel of this esoteric activity of the Anthroposophical Society must henceforth be the esoteric school, specifically the esoteric school which, arising out of the whole character of Anthroposophy, now has to replace what was previously attempted as the so-called Independent College of Spiritual Science, which one cannot claim to have been successful.

This failure took place at a time when I did not yet personally have the responsibility for the conduct of the Anthroposophical Society and also did not have the task of permitting those who wished to try something to go ahead and try it. This kind of thing should not occur again in the future. It was in accordance with the nature of what formed itself out of the Christmas impulse, an impulse with which I was united, that the Free School of Spiritual Science, with its various sections, should constitute the esoteric kernel of all that was once again intended to become effective as esoteric activity within the Anthroposophical Society.

An esoteric school, however, is not founded in the earthly realm. An esoteric school is only truly present when it is the earthly reflection of what is founded in the supersensible worlds. It has frequently been discussed in Anthroposophical meetings of that in the rulership within the hierarchy of archangels, who have wielded authority over human spiritual life in sequence, it was the Archangel Michael who took on this guidance of spiritual life in the last third of the nineteenth century. It has also been pointed out that Michael's guidance has a very special importance in spiritual life, within the spiritual development of human life on earth.

It is certainly so in human evolution that life in this evolution is guided by seven successive archangels, by seven archangels who together constitute the substance of the rulership of the planetary system to which sun, earth and moon also belong. The impulse radiating out from each of these archangels extends over a period of three to four hundred years. Taking our start from the archangel under whose impulse the spiritual life of mankind stands at the present time, taking our start from Michael, we presently have the archangel who has the spiritual force of the sun within him in everything which he does, in everything that he nurtures.

He was preceded three to four hundred years back, reckoning back three to four hundred years from the last third of the nineteenth century, Michael’s rulership was preceded by the rulership of the archangel Gabriel, who predominantly bears Moon forces in his impulses.

Preceding still further back, we come to those centuries where there was a kind of revolt, especially among those who were the main carriers of civilization, a revolt during medieval times against spiritual activity and spiritual beings. This was due to the rulership of Samael, who bears Mars forces in his impulses.

Going even further back, we come to that epoch in which a medically oriented alchemy flowed deeply into spiritual life under the rulership of the Archangel Raphael, who bears Mercury forces in his impulses.

Retracing our steps still further, we come ever nearer to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, although not quite reaching it, and we find the rulership of Zachariel,¹ who bears Jupiter forces in his impulses, and then the rulership of Anael,² who bears Venus forces in his impulses, at a time quite close to the Mystery of Golgotha. Then we come to the time in which the radiance of the Mystery of Golgotha confronted a profound spiritual darkness pervasive on the earth under the rulership of Oriphiel,³ who bears Saturn forces in his impulses.

Then we return again to the former rulership of Michael, in which a concurrence of world-wide, cosmopolitan impulses took place in Alexandrianism, in Aristotelianism, which up to that time had been brought to mankind through the Greek mysteries and spiritual ways and beings of the Greeks. By means of Alexander this was carried over into Asia and North Africa, so that the life of spirit that had arisen in a small territory streamed out over the whole of the civilized world at that time. For it is precisely this which characterizes a Michael Age, that what has flowered at an earlier time in a single locality radiates out in cosmopolitan fashion over the other parts of humanity.

So, one always returns, when one has completed a cycle of all the various archangels, to the same archangel. We could go yet further back through another sequence of Gabriel, Samael, Raphael, Zachariel, Anael, and Oriphiel, and we would arrive once more at a Michael age. And we will find that after the Michael age which now streams down upon us, there will again follow an era of Oriphiel.

And so, my dear friends, we should be aware that Michael impulses live in characteristic fashion in all that is to take place at the present time as spiritual activity and spiritual substance. But this is a more important Michael epoch than were the preceding ones. I merely wish to draw your attention to this fact.

What is essential in this regard is that when at Christmas the Anthroposophical Society was placed in the service of esoteric spiritual life, this esoteric school, the esoteric kernel of the Society, could only come into existence if it were founded by that spiritual power to whom is entrusted the responsibility for the guidance of the present epoch of mankind's history. We live in this esoteric school as in an esoteric school founded by Michael, the spirit of our time. We live in an esoteric school that has been rightly founded, for this school is the Michael school of the present time.

So, my dear friends, you only conceive what is spoken in this school properly if you are conscious that what is spoken here is entirely what the Michael stream itself wishes to bring to mankind. Michael-Words are all the words spoken in this school. Michael-Will is everything which is willed in this school. Michael-Pupils are you all, when you take your places rightly within this school. Only when this consciousness lives within you is it possible for you to take part in the right way in this school, to participate in this school with the right mood and attitude of heart and mind, to know and feel that you are not merely members of what steps forth in the world as an earth institution, but what steps forth as a heavenly institution.

Furthermore, it is understood that each person who becomes a member of this school is beholden, is pledged⁴ to nurture the school. It is a unique aspect of the Christmas Foundation impulse of the Anthroposophical Society that a character of complete openness has impressed itself on this Society. As a result, nothing further is required of one who becomes a member of the Anthroposophical Society than that he receives from the Society what flows within the spiritual movement of anthroposophy. One undertakes no further obligations when one becomes an adherent of anthroposophy. The obligation to be a decent human being is, of course, understood.

It is another matter when one seeks to enter this school. In this case, in regard to all that emerges out of the whole spiritual spirit, out of the occult spirit of this school a member of this school will take on a nurturing-pledge⁵ to be a worthy representative of Anthroposophical enterprises before the entire world, with all of one’s thinking, feeling, and willing. One can be a member of this school in no other way.

The decision whether or not one is a worthy member of this school rests solely in the hands of the leadership of the school. The leadership of the school must take seriously, however, the specific duties which it takes on. The leadership of this school is accountable only to the spiritual powers, to the Michael power itself, for the various things that it does. The leadership, however, must take seriously the point that whoever belongs to the school must be a worthy representative of the concerns of Anthroposophy before the world. This entails that the leadership of the school must insist that membership be taken up seriously in the utmost sense. The leadership must therefore make clear to whomever cannot meet this seriousness, that that person’s membership cannot continue.

That this will be taken seriously, my dear friends, you may see from the fact that in the short time this school has existed, in twenty cases already, it has been necessary to exclude members for a period of time. Strict rules of this kind will have to be maintained. One may not play around with genuine esoteric matters, for they must be handled with utmost earnestness. In this manner straightforwardly through this school earnestness can stream into the movement of Anthroposophy, which is absolutely necessary for it to flourish in true spirituality.

These are the introductory words which I had to convey to you.

If you, I am speaking now to those who are present here for the first time, if you receive the words which are spoken as genuine messages from the spiritual world, as genuine Michael words, then you will take your places here in the only way that is right for you to do so.

Let us first bring before our souls those words which sound forth to man when he looks out with unprejudiced perception upon all that surrounds him in the world, in the world above, in the world around him, and in the world below. We may look out to the silent world of the minerals, to the sprouting, springing realm of the plant kingdom, to the mobile realm of the animals, to the pensive realm of the human being on earth, we might turn our glance out to the mountains, to the seas, to the rivers, to the bubbling springs, we might gaze up to the moving clouds, to thunder and lightning, we might gaze up to the shining sun, to the glimmering moon, to the twinkling stars. From all around, when a person opens his heart, when he is able to hear with soulful ears, there sounds forth confronting him the admonition, which also rests within the words which I have now to utter:

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds.
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

And when we allow the sense and spirit of these words to work upon us, we feel the longing to seek those wellsprings from which our actual human nature flows. To understand these words completely means to seek out in earnest longing the path which leads to those waters from which flows the beingness of the human soul, to seek the origin of human life.

This will come to you, my dear brothers and sisters, in accordance with the disposition of your karma. But the first step will be a contemplative understanding of the esoteric path. This esoteric path will be portrayed in Michael words here in this school. The path will be portrayed in such a way that each human being can walk it, that no one is obliged to follow it, but rather that it can initially be understood, for this understanding is itself the first step. Therefore, there will flow forth in mantric words what Michael has to say to humanity at the present time. These mantric words are at the same time words for meditation.

Once again, the effect of these words in meditation will depend on the karma of each individual soul. The first thing is to acquire an understanding that just from the spoken mantric words a longing for human self-awareness springs forth, directing the mind to the wellsprings of human existence-awareness. O Man, know yourself! Yes, this longing must grow inwardly. We must seek for the wellspring that lives in the human soul, which is our intrinsically human existence.

We must first look out upon the world as given around us. We must look out and into all that is present for us in small things and into what is grandiose. We observe the silent stone, the earthworm, we observe whatever grows and creeps and lives around us in the realms of nature. We gaze out to the mighty twinkling, glistening stars. We hear the rolling thunder. If a person becomes an ascetic, he does not have the perspective to fathom the riddles of the intrinsic nature of a human being, nor when one despises what lives as a worm in the earth, what twinkles in the vault of the heavens, nor when one despises outward sense appearance and seeks for an abstract, vague, inwardly chaotic path, but rather, only when one develops a direct deep feeling for all that creeps, lives, and endures in the tiniest worm, when one develops a feeling for the majesty of what shines down upon us from the stars, when one can feel beauty, truth, purity, sublimity, extraordinary greatness, and majesty in all that enters through our senses and becomes perception. When one can stand upright as an observant human being and can hear from plants, stones, animals, stars, clouds, seas, springs, and mountains, when one can hear and grasp majesty and greatness and truth and beauty and radiance from everything surrounding him, then a person says to himself with full depth and intensity, “Certainly great, powerful, majestic, and magnificent is all that crawls, as do the worm on the earth, that sparkles and shines above, as the stars do in the heavens, but your being, O Man, is not among them.” You are not in all that of which your senses initially bear witness.

Then one turns one's questioning, riddle-laden glance toward the far distances. From this point forward the esoteric path will be described in imaginations. One turns one's glance toward the far distances. Something in the nature of a path comes into view, a path that leads to a black, night-bedecked wall, which reveals itself as the beginning of profound darkness. We stand there, surrounded by the majesty of sense existence, marveling at the majesty and splendor and radiance of sense existence. Not finding there our own being, our gaze is directed toward the boundary of sensory appearance. But there looms black, night-bedecked darkness. In our heart, however, something says to us, “Not here, where sunlight gleams back to us from all that grows and moves and lives, but rather over there, where night-bedecked darkness confronts us, there are the wellsprings of intrinsic human existence. From there must come the answer to the question, “O Man (O Mensch), know yourself!”

So we go cautiously to confront the black darkness and become aware of the first being whom we come up against, who stands there where the black night-bedecked darkness begins. Like a previously unnoticed cloud formation, it draws itself together, becomes humanoid, not weighed down with gravity, yet with human likeness. With earnest, deeply earnest gaze it meets our questioning glance. This is the Guardian of the Threshold. Between the sun-filled, light-reflecting surroundings of man and that night-bedecked darkness, there is an abyss, a deep, yawning abyss. At the abyss the Guardian of the Threshold confronts us. We designate him just so for a reason, as follows.

Of course, every night in sleep the human being’s “I” and astral body is certainly in that world which now appears to imaginative cognition as black, night-bedecked darkness. One is unaware, as one’s soul senses are not yet opened, one is unaware of living and moving in the midst of spiritual beings and spiritual conditions from falling asleep until awakening. If one were to experience awareness without further preparation what may be experienced there, one would be utterly crushed. The Guardian of the Threshold protects us, which is why he is called the Guardian of the Threshold. He protects us from crossing the abyss unprepared. We must obey his admonitions if we wish to follow the esoteric path. He wraps the human being in darkness every night. He guards the threshold, so that the human being, falling asleep, shall not pass over unprepared into the spiritual, occult world.

There he stands, when we have sufficiently taken this to heart, when we have immersed our soul in it. There he stands, directing his admonition to us, that everything in our physical surrounding is beautiful, but that our own being is not to be found in all this beauty, that we must seek beyond the yawning abyss of existence in the region of night-bedecked, black darkness, that we must wait until it grows dark here in the sunlit, light-gleaming realm of sense-perceptible brightness, until it becomes bright for us there, where for the present there is only black darkness.

It is this that the Guardian, with earnest words, puts before our souls. We are still standing a certain distance before him. We gaze out and take in his admonishing word, which resounds from the distance.

Where on grounds of earth, color upon color,
Life stirring reveals itself,
Where out of stuff of earth, form on form,
All without life takes shape,
Where feeling creatures, strong in will,
Delight in the warm glow of their existence,
Where you yourself, O Man, derive
Bodily existence from earth and air and light:

There you enter your own being’s
Deep, night-bedecked, cold inner darkness;
You’d ask within the dark expanse
Never, who you are and were and will become.
For your true existence the day dims
To the night of the soul, to darkness of spirit;
And you turn yourself, soul-searching,
Unto the light, that from darknesses strengthens,

This is the first admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold, that first admonition which says to us that beautiful and great and sublime as our sense-world surroundings are, this world gleaming with light illuminated by the sun is for the being of man just a sort of darkness, that we must search there where the darkness is, that this darkness becomes light for us, so that the nature of a human being may be confronted and illuminated for us out of this darkness, so that out of this darkness the human riddle may be resolved. Then the Guardian of the Threshold continues.

And from darknesses clarifies itself
(Revealing you in counterpart,
Yet also portraying you as parable,
Earnest spirit-word in ethereal realm,
Audible to your heart, forcefully effective),
The bringer of spirit-premonitions to you,
He who alone can illuminate your way;
Before him spread the sensory fields,
Behind him yawns the deep abyss.
And from his fields spirit dark,
Hard by the yawning chasm of existence,
Rings forth the ancient might of his creator-word:
See, I am the only door to inner knowing.

[The mantra was written on the blackboard; heading and last line was underlined.]

Where on grounds of earth, color upon color,
Life stirring reveals itself,
Where out of stuff of earth, form on form,
All without life takes shape,
Where feeling creatures, strong in will,
Delight in the warm glow of their existence,
Where you yourself, O Man, derive
Bodily existence from earth and air and light:

There you enter your own being’s
Deep, night-bedecked, cold inner darkness;
You’d ask within the dark expanse
Never, who you are and were and will become.
For your true existence the day dims
To the night of the soul, to darkness of spirit;
And you turn yourself, soul-searching,
Unto the light, that from darknesses strengthens,
And from darknesses clarifies itself

The continuation of this sentence follows after a few lines, but first we have a clause in parentheses:⁶

(Revealing you in counterpart,
Yet also portraying you as parable,
Earnest spirit-word in ethereal realm,
Audible to your heart, forcefully effective),

This concludes the parenthesis. Now we continue the sentence. “And from darknesses clarifies itself.,

The bringer of spirit-premonitions,

(the Guardian of the Threshold himself)

to you,
He who alone can illuminate your way;
Before him spread the sensory fields,
Behind him yawns the deep abyss.
And from his fields spirit dark,
Hard by the yawning chasm of existence,

Rings forth the ancient might of his creator-word:
See, I am the only door to inner knowing.

Then it is the Guardian himself, who after having conveyed this first admonition, sense light as darkness, darkness as light, now directs our attention to those feelings and senses that can now begin to rise with primeval power out of our soul. He, the Guardian, gives expression to them, as he allows his glance to grow yet more earnest, more earnest yet, as he stretches his arm and his hand toward us in admonishment, in warning, and utters these further words:

From the wide expanse of the beings of space
Who in the light experience existence,

We feel ourselves drawn into making a few steps toward the Guardian; we approach nearer to the yawning abyss of existence.

From the onward tread of the course of time
Which in creating finds itself expressed,
From the depths of the feeling heart,
Where in one's self the world is born anew:
There sounds in speech filled with soul,
There shines in thoughts filled with spirit,
The from godly healing forces
Through world forming powers,
Welling working word of existence-awareness:
O Man, know yourself!

It is different whether initially the word sounds forth to us from sensory beings, if we understand correctly, “O Man, know yourself,” or whether it now sounds forth at the fearful abyss of being out of the mouth of the Guardian of the Threshold himself. One and the same word, yet two different ways of being taken hold of by it! All of these words are mantric, are there to be meditated, are the sort of words that stimulate capacities in the soul to draw nearer to the spiritual world, if they are able to inflame the soul. [The mantra was written on the blackboard. The heading and the last line were underlined.]

The Guardian at the Abyss

From the wide expanse of the beings of space
Who in the light experience existence,
From the onward tread of the course of time
Which in creating finds itself expressed,
From the depths of the feeling heart,
Where in one's self the world is born anew:
There sounds in speech filled with soul,
There shines in thoughts filled with spirit,
The from godly healing forces
Through world forming powers,
Welling working word of existence-awareness:
O Man, know yourself!

While the Guardian speaks these words, we have approached the yawning abyss of being. It goes deep down. There is no hope that we can cross over the abyss with the feet given to us on earth. We need to be freed from the weight of earthly, we need the wings of the spirit to cross over the abyss. Just there however, just as he has beckoned us to the edge of the abyss of being, the Guardian makes us aware that at this time of our inner self, before it has been refined and purified, of how it actually is in the present, of how we are entirely given over to hate toward the spiritual world, to mockery of the spiritual world, to lack of courage and to fear of the spiritual world. Just there the Guardian makes us aware of this self of ours that wills there, that feels there, that thinks there in its threefold configuration as willing, feeling and thinking, of how this self of ours is actually constituted today, is formed by the age in which we live. This we must first come to recognize before we can become aware of our god-implanted true self in true, genuine self-awareness.

As the three beasts, one after another, are drawn out of the abyss, they appear to us as seen by the eternal godlike healing powers, the will of a person, the feeling of a person, the thinking of a person. As one after the other, willing, feeling, and thinking in their true form emerge out of the abyss, the Guardian speaks in clarification. We stand fast at the abyss. The Guardian speaks. The beasts rise. The Guardian:

Yet you must beware the abyss;
Lest your beasts within devour
You, if in heedless haste you pass me by;
They are in you throughout this age of man,
As foes of knowing placed within.

Behold⁷ the first beast, the crooked back,
The bone-locked head, the withered body,
Dull blunt blue is its skin;
Your fear of spirit-creator-being
Produced this monstrous foe in your willing;
Your courage of knowing alone overwhelms it.

Behold the second beast, it bares its teeth,
Contorts its face, and lies in scornful mockery,
Yellow with grayish cast is its body;
Your hatred of spirit-revelation
Produced this weakling in your feeling;
In your fire of knowing it must be tamed.

Behold the third beast, with split mouth,
Glazed eye, and slouching attitude,
Dirty red its form appears to you;
Your doubt in spirit-light-dominion
Produced this spectral form in your thinking;
The work of knowing must weaken it.

Only when you subdue the three,
Will wings of your soul grow,
To soar across the deep abyss
That severs you from fields of knowing,
For which your yearning heart,
Healing-seeking, would hallow itself.

I will write these mantric verses on the blackboard next time.

Having learned this from the mouth of the Guardian one returns in memory to the beginning. There stands once more before the soul what all beings say, that are in our surroundings, if we understand them rightly, what all beings said to man in the most distant past, what all beings say to man in the present day, what all beings will say to the human being of the future:

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds.
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

These are the words of the Michael School. When they come to be spoken, the spirit of Michael waves and weaves through the room in which they come to be spoken. And his sign is the very sign, that in his presence may confirm his presence. [The Michael sign was drawn on the blackboard.]

Then Michael leads us into the true Rosicrucian School that would reveal the secrets of man's own true being in the past, in the present, and in the future through the Father God, the Son God and the Spirit God. And then, impressing the seal on the words “rosae et crucis” the words may be spoken

Ex Deo Nascimur
In Christo Morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus

accompanied by the signs of Michael's seal, which are, for the first words, “Ex Deo Nascimur” [The lower seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.], for the second words, “In Christo Morimur” [The middle seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.], and for the third words, “Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus” [The upper seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.], whereby, as we speak the words “Ex Deo Nascimur,” confirming them through the seal and signs of Michael, we feel, “I honor the Father” [Overlying the drawn lower seal gesture was written the words:]

I honor the Father

As we speak “In Christo Morimur” we feel with this sign, “I love the Son.” [Overlying the drawn middle seal gesture is written the words:]

I love the Son

As we speak “Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus” we feel with this sign, “I unite with the Spirit.” [Overlying the upper seal gesture is written the words:]

I unite with the Spirit.

That is the meaning of the signs. Michael's presence becomes confirmed by his seal and signs. [The Michael sign was made. Then the gestures of the three seal signs were made, and at the same time the words were spoken:]

Ex Deo Nascimur
In Christo Morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

Only those who are authorized members of this School may possess the mantric words which have come to be written on the blackboard, that is, those who have received the blue membership card. No one else may possess these words. Of course, anyone prevented from attending one or other of the Lessons may also receive them, as well as those who live too far away to attend. So long as they are members of the school, they may receive them from others who are also in this school.

In each case, however, permission must be sought before the mantras are passed on. Not the one who wants to receive the mantras but the one who wants to pass them on must ask either Frau Dr. Wegman or myself for permission. This is not merely an administrative matter. Every time a mantra is passed on permission must first be sought either from Frau Dr. Wegman or from me. The mantras may not be sent through the post, but only handed on personally.

• 1. Whom Steiner also referred to as Uriel
• 2. Also known elsewhere as Haniel
• 3. Also known elsewhere as Cassiel
• 4. Pflichten: Pfleger is cognate with pledgers, those who are pledged to care for others, to guardian, to nurse, and more than just to nourish, but to nurture. Pfleger are care-givers or nurturers. Pflichten as a verb is to care for, to nurture.
• 5. Verpflichtung
• 6. Zwischensatz
• 7. schau is a combination of behold and show (with which it is cognate) and is active and willful.

In connection with what I said yesterday about our Appeal, I should like to emphasise again that in man's present conditions of life everything depends upon arousing, in as many people as possible, a right social understanding. You must not forget that the way the relations in life have recently developed has brought a great part of the civilised world into a state of chaos such as is only occasioned by what arises out of human souls. As the situation is at present, external means cannot greatly help mankind, whether this is in the form of laws or in the form of outward administration of the economic life. In individual States it is possible, of course, that for a time things may go on, but it would be a mistake to think conditions in these individual States can permanently remain as they are in the midst of the developing social upheavals encompassing all mankind. Help can come only when an understanding of the social relations is cultivated in men's souls.

What I have put in rather a complicated form can also be said more simply. We may say that what is now a striving for disorder will first take an orderly direction when men show themselves capable of producing order. They will be so only when they arrive at a real social understanding from which man today—of whatever party—stands very far removed. It is the most imperative task to spread this understanding. It is a fact of the utmost importance that what is agitating the souls of many millions of the proletariat is something very different from what lives in the souls of their leaders. The leaders have for the greater part inherited the bourgeois attitude to life, which they try to apply to the conditions of proletarian life adorned with a few flourishes of the agitator. This is an essential fact with which we act in accordance only when deciding to work above all for social understanding. Even when external conditions of life have to be recognised as being in still greater confusion and error than formerly, nevertheless the assumption that something can be attained by muddling through would be false. What modern man lacks is social understanding. And this lack is due to the whole of human thinking, feeling and willing having developed in recent times without being applied to this understanding. It is remarkably limited even in the many people today whose social impulses are strong.

Do not think that this social understanding needs some specially comprehensive and far-reaching knowledge for its development. That is not of any consequence; the point is that in contemporary mankind there is lacking even the elementary basis for such an understanding. People's thoughts are very different from those needed for grasping the most primitive social questions.—It is quite right today that attention should be given above all to finding a way to avoid the abstract sentimental concepts at present pacifying so many. It is widely believed that it is possible today to deal with the social problem from some kind of ethical or religious standpoint. This possibility does not exist. Today one cannot just preach religion or ethics, however excellent. This may just warm the feelings and, in an egoistic sense, have some effect. Concepts, however, must be made capable of gripping hold of the everyday affairs of human beings.

Infinitely much depends today on acquiring this understanding. I have said that men today in whom social impulses are flashing up have very often only primitive concepts. Many in leading circles as well as among the proletariat imagine that a simple reassortment of social levels can bring about real change;—for example, if those who were at the top, ministers and secretaries of State were to fall and those who were formerly proletarians were to rise, in effect, if there were a re-levelling. It would be quite a mistake to fancy that things could be changed thus. Many have this idea however much they may protest. Befogged by the outlook of some party or another they are unconscious of holding these views. It is a question, however, of coming quite simply to a clear understanding of the threefold social organism, often dealt with here and also in many public lectures. It is a question of every detail in social measures being so developed that they comply with the necessity inherent in the threefold order. Whether measures have to be taken to build a railway, either under a private company or the State, or a decision is to be made about the ways and means for paying an undertaking on some occasion (I am not speaking of labour-power but of undertakings) it is always a matter of carrying out the measures in the threefold direction, in accordance with the independence of the spiritual life, of the political life of rights and of the economic life. You can of course ask how this or the other should happen. But at the stage where the matter now stands those are for the most part the wrong kind of questions. The spirit living in the threefold order can perhaps be described like this, to take an example: What is the best system of taxation? Now today the important thing is not to think out a system of taxation but to work towards the threefold order. When this threefold membering of the social organism becomes more and more an actuality the best system of taxation will arise through this threefold activity. It is a matter of establishing the conditions under which the best social organisation can originate. Someone or other ruminating over what would be best is not of importance and is not in accordance with reality. But imagine that one of you were a genius, such a genius as has never before been seen in human evolution, and were therefore in a position to think out the best possible system of taxation. But what if you were to stand alone with your magnificently thought-out system and the others refused it, wanting perhaps something less good but anyhow not yours? You see it is not a matter of thinking out the best, but of finding what men as a whole would accept as a basis on which to do their best.

It is true that you may say here: One must begin somewhere. The threefold State must be set up even though men appear unwilling to accept it. That is something different, for there it is not a matter of what men can wish for or not, such as a system of taxation, but of what fundamentally all men would want were they to understand it. If you find the right way you can make it intelligible to them, for subconsciously men want it to be realised during the coming decades throughout the civilised world. That is not merely thought-out, but seen to be what men are wanting. And it is not because they lack the desire that countless men reject it, but because being still full of prejudices, they work in opposition to this matter, which in future will be fully realised. The essential thing is to pay heed to what is primary. The primary is that for which, in a longer or shorter period, understanding can be awakened when once the hindrances to this understanding have been removed. Naturally there are always leading personalities who stand in the way. These personalities are not to be convinced; they must first break their heads against the obstacles they meet. And there will be many such obstacles. On this account if at first the affair does not go as one had imagined, it need not be labeled a failure. Things of this sort must be prepared for. Something must be there when what is now brought about in a mistaken way will have led to an absurd situation, when much that now appears in the world is no longer there—just as the German princes are no longer there, who in 1913 never dreamed they would have disappeared by 1919—when what so many people now applaud is gone, then something on which they can fall back must at least be there in people is heads and hearts. Preparation must be made, the ground must be ready. When once you have penetrated long and deeply enough into this threefold membering of the spiritual life, the economic life and the political life, then the need will arise in you to have a more fundamental understanding of all this. This understanding is absolutely essential, otherwise even when spoken with all possible goodwill what is said will have no connection with reality. The social organism is subject to definite laws in the same way as the natural human organism. You gain nothing by acting against these laws even on grounds of principle. You can at best lead men into a blind alley.

Now do not say: Where is human freedom when man finds himself in a social organism with fixed laws? You might as well ask whether a man can be free when daily he has to eat. It does not make him free to refrain from eating. Things subject to certain laws—even men themselves—have nothing at all to do with the problem of freedom, just as little as our not being able to grasp the moon has to do with our freedom.

To gain a social understanding it is advisable for us to be in the position to go back to fundamentals, to primaries, rather than let our understanding remain bogged in secondaries or tertiaries, which are subsequent phenomena. We may give this example from a certain condition of life—a man needs a definite minimum, let us say in money—since we have converted our values into money—in order to support life. This subsistence minimum can be spoken of as referring to some special condition of life. But we can so speak of it that we say something apparently extremely obvious on the one hand, on the other, what is complete nonsense. I will try to make this clear to you by an example. Taking given conditions of life in any part of the world you may perhaps say with feeling that a manual worker needs so and so much as a subsistence minimum, otherwise he would be unable to live in the particular community. This can seem quite an obvious idea. But how is it then, in accordance with what has been assumed here, when this is not realisable within a certain social organism? The question that must first of all be answered is: What then if the realisation of this is impossible?

To reflect upon the matter thus is not the primary thinking I have represented. Thought out in the abstract, the subsistence minimum demanded does not lead us to fundamentals but ties us down to what is secondary, what appears as a mere consequence. To attain social understanding we have to be in a position to enter into fundamental things. It is fundamental to cultivate a practical view as to how there can be a subsistence minimum in accordance with conditions of life in the social organism. In this case I mean by ‘practical’ such a view that would result in humanly possible social conditions and social community life. This is the primary.

And now one comes to certain conceptions very unpopular with a great part of present-day mankind, because the basic teaching that should work towards such things, and really guide them in this direction, has been neglected. Men need to realise that even to be half-educated one should not merely know that three times nine is twenty-seven; one should also know, for example, what it is that we call ground-rent. I ask you, how many people today have any clear idea of what ground-rent is? But without considering the social organism in connection with such things, no human progress can be made.

The wrong-headed conceptions men hold today are due to confusion in this sphere. Ground-rent, which can be reckoned according to the productivity of a piece of land in a certain district, yields a certain sum for a State-bounded area. The land tapes its value according to its productivity, that is, in accordance with the way or the degree in which it is put to rational use in relation to the whole economy. It is very difficult today for anyone to gain a clear concept of this simple land value, since in the modern capitalistic economic life interest on capital, or capital in any form, has confused the whole picture of ground-rent, and the true concept of its economic value for the people has been blurred by phantoms in the form of mortgage law and the system of stocks and shares. Strictly speaking, everything has been forced into conceptions that are impossible and false. Naturally a true conception of ground-rent cannot be acquired in the twinkling of an eye. But think of it simply as the economic value of the land in some territory, with regard to its productivity. Now there exists a necessary relation between this ground-rent and subsistence what I have referred to as a subsistence minimum. There are many social reformers and social revolutionaries today who dream of the wholesale abolition of ground-rent, who believe, for example, that ground-rent will be done away with by all land being nationalised or communalised. Essentials, however, are never changed by a mere change of form. Whether a whole community owns the land or it is owned by a number of individuals makes no difference to the existence of ground-rent. It is simply obscured and takes on other forms. Ground-rent as I have defined it is always there. Take the ground-rent of a certain district and divide it up among the individual inhabitants, then you will get as quotient the only possible subsistence minimum. This is a law as definite and unalterable as a law of Physics. It is a primary fact, something fundamental, that in a social organism in reality no one deserves more than is yielded by the ground-rent being divided among the total population. What can be earned further arises through coalitions and associations in which conditions are established where one individual can acquire more value than another. But not a whit more can pass into the movable property of an individual man than what I have here indicated. From this minimum, which really exists everywhere even though the real conditions are obscured, arises all economic life in so for as it applies to an individual's movable property. It must have arisen from this basic fact. Hence it is that one starts not from something secondary but from this primary fact. This primary fact may be compared to any other, for example to a primary fact also valid for the economic life, that on a certain territory there is only a certain amount of raw product. Naturally you may think it desirable to have more of this raw product and to be able just to reckon how much more might be had from this land. But the raw product does not allow of any arbitrary increase; that is a primary fact. And it is a primary fact in the same way that, in a social organism, in reality nothing more can be earned through work—however hard this work may be—than can be yielded by the quotient I mentioned. As I said, all surplus is acquired through human coalition.

The social and political administration can be in contradiction to these facts. Therefore it is necessary to bring all organising thought into the direction that facts take. Man can find satisfaction only when these things are thoroughly understood. Then the organising factor, the thinking that has taken on reality, is brought into line with what the nature of the social organism demands, and other thinking adjusts itself to it, so that it cannot happen that one thinking considers itself prejudiced by the other. That is what lies as a law at the basis of the true life of the social organism. Right thinking, realistic concepts on such matters can be gained—as I showed by the example of the relation of a subsistence minimum to ground-rent—only when you make your start on the basic principles of the threefold order. For only under its influence is it possible for men to create measures by which human life in common on any given territory can be developed really productively. Life will develop most productively when it goes in a direction that accords with law and not in the opposite direction. Thus it is a matter of living in time with the social organism.

It is necessary to be quite clear about this—that you will never gain insight into the fundamentals of the Threefold Order by observing life externally, any more than observation of any number of right-angled triangles will give you the Pythagorean theorem. But once known it can be applied to any real right-angled triangle. It is the same with these fundamental laws. Once grasped correctly in accordance with reality, they can be of universal application. And in addition you have from the basis of Spiritual Science the opportunity to grasp the necessity of the Threefold Order. Consider what can be given through it—the life of earthly spirituality, if I may so call it, art, science, religion and also, as already mentioned, civil and criminal law; that is one sphere. The second is the political association of men and is concerned with man's relation to his fellows. And the third is the economic life, concerned with man's relation to the lower man, what man needs in order to raise himself to his true manhood. The Threefold Order has to do with these three spheres. Man should be established in the social organism in accordance with these three members; he must be so established. For the three members have each a quite distinct origin in regard to the human being as such. All life of the spirit on earth—and what I now say counts for our own age—is a kind of echo of what man lived through in the life before his descent through birth into physical existence. In that life the human being lived as a spiritual individual in a spiritual relation to the higher hierarchies, with those disembodied souls who were in the spiritual world and not at the time incarnated on earth. What man develops here as spiritual life, be it in devotion to religious practice or life in a religious community, be it in activity in the arts, or as a judge passing sentence on those of his fellowmen found guilty, everything lived out in this spiritual life has its origin in the forces acquired by man when, before he entered physical existence through birth, he lived with the higher hierarchies in the spiritual worlds. Here you must distinguish between life lived in common with other men in accordance with individual destiny, and that lived with others in accordance with what I have just described. In earthly existence we come into individual relations with one or other of our fellow-men. These relations depend upon our individual karma, and either trace back to earlier lives on earth or point to those coming later. But among these individual relations between human beings you must distinguish those, for example, that arise from belonging to a certain religious community. For in a religious community you think or feel as a number of other men do. Or suppose a book is published. Men read the book, take up thoughts from the book, and thus enter into a community. Spiritual life on earth, whether having to do with the bringing-up of children, education, or anything else of the kind, consists in our coming into relation with people and developing a life in common with them, in order thereby oneself to make spiritual progress. All that, however, is experiencing relationships in which, before descending into spiritual life on earth, we were in a quite different form. It has nothing to do with individual karma but with what was prepared during life in the spiritual world in the time lived through between death and a new birth. Thus, one has to seek the source of what I have called the spiritual sphere, in the life passed through by man before he prepared to descend. through birth into earthly existence.

Then there comes what is experienced simply by living on earth between birth and death. We grow into this life by degrees. When as an infant we enter into this existence through birth, we still bear—if I may make a foolish comparison—much of the egg-shell of the spiritual world around us, though it is not hard. The child is very spiritual in spite of its main task being the development of its physical body. In its aura there is much of the spiritual; what it brings with it is very nearly akin to the spiritual life on earth. Gradually, however, it enters more and more deeply into the life that belongs entirely to the time between birth and death.

Now the sources of the life of the political state are found in this life not chiefly concerned with the spiritual. The political state has to do only with what man experiences between birth and death. Therefore nothing should be involved in it save what concerns us as beings between birth and death in our mutual relations as man to man. If the state involved itself in anything other than what concerns the public life of rights between birth and death, if it spread its wings over Church and School, for example, well—in the places where there were people with a faculty for judging such things it used to be said: “There the Prince of this world holds his unjust sway!” Nothing belongs to all that is the object of state-organisation except what has to do with the life between birth and death.

The third member is the economic. This economic life, which we are obliged to lead because we eat and drink, clothe ourselves and so on, forces us as human beings to descend into the subhuman. It chains us to something beneath the level of our full humanity. By having to concern ourselves with life economically, by having to dive down into economic life, we experience something which, when observed socially, has more in it than is usually thought. In so far as we stand in the economic life we cannot live in the spiritual nor in the life of rights, but must plunge below the human level. But just by this plunging into the subhuman we take into ourselves something that thus has an opportunity to develop. Whereas in the economic life we are active and higher thoughts must be silent and even the human mutual relations play in only from another sphere, there is worked in our subconscious then what we then carry with us into the spiritual world through the gate of death. Whereas in the spiritual life on earth we experience the echo of what we lived through before our descent to earth, and in the life of rights of the political state experience only what lies between birth and death, in the economic life, into which we cannot enter with our higher self, something is being prepared that is also spiritual and carried by us through the gate of death. People would like the economic life to exist only for the earth. But this is not so. Just through our plunging down into the economic life something is prepared for us as human beings that is again connected with the supersensible world. Therefore no one should think of holding the economic life too lightly. However strange and paradoxical it may seem, this external materialistic life has a certain connection with the life after death. So that in actual fact, for anyone who knows man, the three spheres fall asunder—the purely spiritual sphere points to life before birth; the political sphere of the State points to life between birth and death; the economic life points to life after death. It is not in vain that we cultivate fraternity in the economic life. In all that we develop as brotherliness in the economic sphere lie the foundations and preliminary conditions of life after death. I am giving you only a first brief indication of how the threefold membering of the nature of the human being gives the spiritual scientist in these three distinct spheres the differentiation necessary for social life.

It is a particular characteristic of Spiritual Science that, when we come to deal with it, we find it directly practical. It sheds light on the life around us, and at the present time men have no other possibility of getting light on the real relationships of life than by in some way accepting spiritual knowledge. Thus it is desirable that those who are interested in the Anthroposophical Movement should let the light of their understanding ray out to others; for the Anthroposophist it is relatively easier to penetrate these things with insight. He knows something of life both before and after birth, for example, from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, and this shows him the necessity for the threefoldness in life from this point of view. This necessity can indeed be seen today. But we shall gain a deeper, more comprehensive insight if we have the anthroposophical basis of which I have been speaking here.

In the course of the last centuries how much has been spoken in a sentimental way, when men have held forth, for instance, about universal moral teaching and the like, and religion has been kept as far as possible apart from external daily life. We are now at a point of time when we have to develop concepts that can penetrate right into daily life and do not just extend to the promise of salvation or to the demand “Children love one another”. They do not do it in any case when they do not have to or when other business is on hand. The concepts we develop must have sufficient driving force to enable us really to understand our present-day complicated economic life. Thus, simply through knowledge of the nature of man we are shown the necessity for the sound social organism to be threefold.

It must become clear to as many people as possible today that this is the very foundation-stone of a new structure. just to prate about the spirit is, as I was saying yesterday, perhaps more harmful just now than the materialism which, beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, has up to now continued to spread. For mere talk of the spirit, mere sighing after the spirit, mere worship of the spirit, no longer meet the needs of our epoch. In our epoch it is fitting that we realise the spirit, that we give the spirit the possibility of living in our midst. Today it does not suffice just to believe in the Christ; it is essential that men should now manifest the Christ in their deeds, in their work. This is the important thing. If man develops sound thinking and perceiving in this sphere, these sound thoughts and perceptions will flow into another sphere as well. Consider how a great many of the present official representatives of one or other of the Christian faiths speak today of Christ. But if asked: Why is He whom you call Christ, the Christ? they can give only a fictitious answer, what is indeed an inner lie. Many modern theologians talk of Christ, but were you to ask them: How does your concept of the Christ-being differ from your concept of the Jahve-God, the one God, weaving and creating throughout the universe? they would have no answer to give.

The great theologian Harnack, in Berlin, has written a book on The Being of Christianity. What he describes as the Being of Christianity is the Jehovah of the Old Testament, with all Jehovah's characteristics. It is inwardly a lie to describe Jehovah as Christ, And it is thus with hundreds, nay thousands, of those preaching Christianity today; they are simply preaching God in general, the God of Whom we can say ex Deo nascimur. Christ is discovered only when one has experienced a kind of new birth. We need only be healthy human beings to have to recognise the God of Whom we say ex Deo nascimur; for to be an atheist is in reality to be ill. But one can speak of the Christ only when in the life of soul one has experienced a kind of re-birth, in the way this happens in the present cycle of human evolution. For this, it is not enough that man is simply born as a human being.

Man as he is born today is necessarily full of prejudices; that is the nature of present-day man. And if we remain as we are born we carry these prejudices with us through life; we live in one-sidedness. We can save ourselves only by having inner tolerance, by being able to enter into the opinions of others even when we think them wrong. If we can bring a deep understanding for the opinions of other souls even when considering them mistaken, if we can take what the other thinks and feels in the same way as we take what we think and feel ourself, if we adopt this faculty of inner tolerance, we may overcome these prejudices due to the human cycle in which we were born. We then learn to say: What you have understood in this the least of my brethren, you have understood of me. For Christ did not speak to men in this way only at the time when Christianity began, but has made good His word “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of earthly time”. He still continues to reveal Himself. Once Be said: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto Me”. Today He tells men: What you understand with inward tolerance in the least of your brothers, even when he is mistaken, you have understood of Me, and I will let you overcome your prejudices when you convert those prejudices into tolerant reception of what others think and feel.—That is one thing; that, in regard to thinking, is the way to come to Christ. Then Christ can so permeate us that we not only have thoughts about Him but Christ can live in our thoughts. This, however, is only achieved in the way I have just described.

And secondly, in regard to the will. In youth the human being is sometimes idealistic. This is an inherent idealism and we have it simply by being born as human beings. Today, in this era, this idealism belonging to mankind is not enough. We now need a quite different kind—an idealism to which we educate ourselves; we do not have it simply by becoming human beings but by making an effort. It is this kind of idealism we need. We need the idealism we have ourselves acquired. It then becomes the idealism that will not vanish with youth, it will keep us young and idealistic throughout our life. If through training we make an idealism our own, then, on the basis not of logical law but of the law of reality, we bring to bear the driving force to place ourselves actively into the social organism in accordance with the very purport of this organism, instead of acting egoistically as an individual man. No one today who does not train himself to this self-acquired idealism will gain a true social understanding. The ex Deo nascimur is innate. The way to Christ is found on the one hand through supersensible thought, on the other hand through the will. It comes through the thought by our being convinced beforehand that nowadays we are born as men full of prejudice and must overcame our prejudice by tolerantly listening to the opinions of others, thus gaining right judgment. Where the way of the will is concerned, this will only be fired socially in the right way today when we have this self-acquired idealism, the idealism we drive into ourselves through our own activity. That is re-birth. And what we have found when we as men have gained it for ourselves leads us to the Christ. Not the God of Whom we say Ex Deo nascimur may we describe as Christ, for that is inwardly untrue. That God was known in the Old Testament. When we as men shall have transformed ourselves in life in the two directions mentioned, we shall clearly see the distinction between the God Who is pure Father and the God Who will then speak to us. For this God is the Christ.

Modern Theology actually speaks very little about this Christ. This Christ must eater men as a social impulse. What many people say today of Christ is intrinsically untrue. Now such things are not to be looked into as people today subtly present them, taking them logically, point by point. As I once told you recently, there is an understanding in accordance with reality different from one that is merely external and logical. But when man has developed in himself what I have called a re-birth, then human thinking will be brought near Christ, and we shall learn to think and feel as we must think and feel if, for the benefit and salvation of man, we are to place ourselves into human society. We shall also learn to think and feel rightly in other matters by thinking and feeling rightly on these fundamental things. From this, however, the spiritual life of modern mankind has travelled terribly far. And the reason is that this spiritual life has been absorbed by the political State. Man's spiritual life must be freed from the political State to become fruitful and full of impulse for human evolution. Otherwise all thinking will be dislocated and from this dislocation false realities will be created.

I have already referred to Wilson's definition of freedom. For anyone who has some understanding of philosophy it is not very important how a statesman of the day defines freedom. It is important, however, as symptom of what lives in a men when he has thoughts about freedom. Now Wilson says: We call free what adapts itself to certain conditions so that it can still move freely. Thus we say when in a machine the piston can move freely, when it does not knock against anything but can move without impediment—we say the piston runs free. Or a ship moves forward freely which is so built that it runs before the wind. If it run against the wind it is hampered and not free. So man is free when he fits in with the conditions of the social mechanism. There, then one can only speak of the social mechanism.

It is not very important that thoughts such as these live in a head and are realised; the importance lies in what is realised being experienced in such thoughts. Then one knows whether this is sound or the opposite of sound. The thinking is quite dislocated; and why? Now you need only reflect on the following with the experience you have gained from Spiritual Science: when you fit into the external conditions of your life, when your life is running according to this adapting oneself to conditions without impediment, then you are free, free as a ship is free when running with the wind. But man does not stand thus in the whole world: For if indeed the ship running before the wind does run freely, it must, however, sometimes also be able to stop. And that is just what is very important for man—that he can sometimes turn round and take his stand against the wind, so that he not only fits in with circumstances but can also adapt himself to what is within him. One cannot think of anything more foolish, more absurd, than Wilson's definition of freedom, for it is opposed to human nature and the very reverse of what lies at the basis of true freedom. If we compare a man with a ship running freely before the wind, we must also compare him with a ship that having run in a certain direction and not needing to go further, can turn to face the wind. For if a man has to proceed only in accordance with external conditions, he is naturally free in them but not in himself. We have completely lost sight of the human being today in our observation of the world and of life. He has dropped out of our considerations concerning life and the world. But he must once more be given a place in the world. [ Note 01 ]

This has its exceedingly serious side; here it is seen only as a symptom but it has a most serious side. For today the human being is placed into the social organism in such a way that really he is only running with the wind, and the capitalist ordering of economy has particularly destined the proletariat only to run with the wind, never to be able, as a rest, to stop and face the wind. In a public lecture in Basle I said that within the capitalist. economic system the capitalist uses only the labour of the workers; in a healthy social organism the capitalist must use the workers' leisure also. Abstract capitalistic capital needs only labour-power. Capital that, under the threefold order, will give back to men their purely human driving force will also use the leisure of the workers, the leisure indeed of all mankind. For that, capital must be placed into the social organism, it will know how it is to be sustained by the social organism and how it must in return sustain the organism.

It is a question of the proletariat being able to save their labour-power so as to be capable of taking part in the spiritual life; and it is a question of the will being there to allow the worker sufficient leisure, to leave him sufficient labour-power, that of himself he can join in this spiritual life. The bourgeois economic order has allowed a deep cleft gradually to arise. What it produces spiritually is valid only for this bourgeois order and is out of touch with proletarian life.

Capitalism has brought things to the point where only labour-power is considered and not the leisure of the proletariat. Today these matters still seem abstract. It should be so no longer, for upon understanding these things rightly depends the sound human evolution both of the present and the future.

Now I have once again given a few indications as to the relation to social life of some of the fundamental tenets of Anthroposophy. It would be very desirable if such a spiritual movement as ours should, as a little social organism in itself, cease this unhealthy separation—developed to man's hurt by appalling bourgeois concepts—of the economic life from the spiritual, and should seek health by permeating the concepts of practical life with the concepts of Spiritual Science. The social organism must so organise its different members that there will no longer be men who cut off coupons and in this coupon-cutting become nothing less than slave-drivers, since for the coupons they cut off, a number of people, with whom they have no connection, have to perform hard work. Afterwards the coupon-cutters go to Church and pray God to be saved, or they go to a meeting and talk theoretically about all sorts of beautiful things; but they have no conception of the foolishness of living such an abstract spiritual life that they can seek, on the one hand, a connection with a God, and on the other hand share in slave ownership and the exploitation of labour by this coupon-cutting. They separate these things in a way that is not salutary by not attempting to discover the salutary. This is what is in question, what has been neglected and what must be changed: this separation between the religion and ethics that float in a cloud-cuckoo-land, and the external life thoughtlessly pursued in the form given it today by an unsound social organism. Above all it must be recognised that the misfortunes of the present-day have come about through this separation by the bourgeoisie of the abstract from the concrete. If efforts are made to drive out all that shows itself in an unsound and sectarian form, it is in just such a movement as ours that there can be a first setting-up of a kind of small social organism that is sound. In our Anthroposophical Movement there is nothing from which we have had to suffer more than the repeated appearance of a tendency towards sectarianism. Without noticing it people strive towards some kind of separation. But Anthroposophy must be the reverse of sectarian. It will then meet the subconscious and unconscious contemporary demands which truly do not run to creating sects, but cultivate something that develops out of the whole man for all men and out of all men for the whole man.

Just consider how you, in your own souls, can get away from sectarianism. In countless souls today sectarianism lives like something atavistic, an unhealthy inheritance, because the will does not exist to carry the true life of the spirit into the conditions of external life. Only through such sectarian sentimentality could it happen that the Appeal of which I spoke yesterday should meet with the reproach that it was just from this direction that mention of the spiritual had been expected! But I have never been able to refer to the spiritual in the sense of these enthusiasts. When, in the beginning of the nineties, there spread in America the Adler-Unold Ethical Movement, I opposed it with all my might, because a movement for ethical culture was to be founded based on nothing, and connected with nothing in life, but a desire to give out ethical maxims. The understanding of life, life in its fundamentals, is what contemporary men need, not the fashioning of phrases as to how things should be done. In regard to the social organism, the threefold order is above all something to be studied fundamentally, investigated and given consideration, something to be taken deeply to heart, so that it may be mastered in the same way as the multiplication table is mastered.

Notes:

1. See lecture 13.1.23 (Anthr.Qtly VI.1.)

Report in “The 17th May”, April 11, 1908

It was the Theosophical Society that had prompted him to speak about this subject, and it was from a Theosophical point of view that he wished to consider it.

The theosophical movement is hardly more than thirty years old, and yet it has now long since taken deep roots in the intellectual life of the present.

Nevertheless, most people misunderstand the theosophical movement. In many circles, theosophy is seen as a renewal of ancient, childish ideas about the world and existence in general – ideas that, in their eyes, naturally contradict all current science.

Others, in turn, see in Theosophy a new religion that is to replace the old ones. This, however, is also not correct. Theosophy is nothing but a new scientific method. Just as every branch of modern science has its scientific method, so does Theosophy. Theosophy is not a new religion. Theosophy is a tool, an instrument to help humanity to penetrate into the world of the spirit, into the spiritual foundation on which the physical world is built. However, religions are also a revelation of the spirit, and if Theosophy is to accomplish its task, it must also be in harmony with the core of all religions. And now an attempt should be made to consider the connection that exists between the Christian religion and in particular the Gospel of John, and Theosophy. This document in the New Testament is not held in high regard in our day. Modern people have virtually lost all understanding.

For a long time, we have been so busy with all kinds of historical research back and forth about the origin of this gospel and the context, or rather, the difference between this and the three other gospels, that the actual spirit of the work has almost disappeared.

The three Gospels in the New Testament describe Jesus Christ in vivid images, how he behaved, taught and healed, and laid the foundation for our own Western culture.

The Gospel of John, on the other hand, has its own special way of reporting on Christ and his act of redemption.

Mark, Luke and Matthew tell, and want to tell, of what happened in Palestine at the time – telling of the great historical drama that was played out at the great arena of life.

The fourth gospel, however, wants to give a picture of Christ and of the Christ idea as it grows in the human heart. Like a powerful hymn writer, the author of the Gospel of John describes the Christ, the wonderful ideal man, how he transforms and recreates the human heart.

This fourth gospel, as already mentioned, has been completely lost for many people. But if Theosophy is to rise to its great task, it must bring precisely this fourth gospel closer to people's hearts.

Listen to the introductory words. Everyone knows these monumental words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

It has been said that this introduction is purely philosophical and must have been written by a philosopher – that the author of the Gospel of John thus differs from the three other gospel writers in that he would have been well acquainted with all contemporary science.

But this opinion is not well founded. It is strange that someone should have come up with such thoughts through something as simple and straightforward as these introductory words. Whoever wrote the fourth gospel was truly not influenced by any particular philosophy. He just told the story in a completely different and intimate way. That is why it was said that this gospel was written by the apprentice whom the master loved the most, that is, understood him best.

The Gospel of John is the deepest, most spiritual account we have of the Christian mysteries, the account of the task of Christ, the mission of Christ here in the world. But if one is to understand this mission, one must look a little at all of humanity, for one's calling is most closely related to it.

If one single word is to be named for the path of development that the human race has followed on earth, then that word is love. Another aspect of this same love is wisdom. Wisdom and love are one.

One need not look far to realize that wisdom is the fundamental law in the world.

Consider a plant, a flower. How wonderfully cell upon cell is built until the whole plant stands there with leaf and blossom and fruit. Consider the bees. How wonderful their dwellings are. No building in the world, built by hands, can measure up to this.

And when you look at the human body and see how each limb has been given its appropriate task, how the skeleton supports the body with the greatest possible strength in the smallest possible space, and see how every thing in the human body is gloriously conceived and laid out, then you understand in truth that the human body is, as it were, crystallized wisdom.

Yes, wisdom is the primary law of the whole world. Not only on this earth, but in all the kingdoms of the world.

In human life, the law of wisdom changes and becomes a law of love that permeates everything. And here on earth we can see how this law of love has gradually transformed people.

The form of love that humanity knew exclusively in times long past was the blood bond, the love between those who were closely related by blood. It was the sex drive, the tribal bond, the feeling of the national community, which would be the first form of love. In and through the kinship bond, people learned their first lesson in loving others. How deep the roots of this primitive form of human love go can be seen from all the legends and myths, and from the tragic and sad fate that befalls those who marry into a foreign family or tribe.

As a modern person, it is difficult for us to find our way in these old circles of ideas. We have developed an individual ego, an independent sense of person. Each of us perceives that we hide our own self, our own self-awareness, in our innermost being.

But it was not so in the old days. If someone in those times had said “I”, they would have meant their gender, their relatives. Over time, the boundaries have been pushed further and further out. It would be the people, the national community, that has now become the higher unity into which the individual is absorbed. And this has found its most peculiar expression in the national feeling of the Old Testament. The Jew felt himself to be one with his people. For him, it was considered that he belonged to the entire line of his ancestors: father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so on down to the patriarch Abraham. The higher self of the Jew would be the people itself, if all these long lines were relatives by blood. He thought something like this: My life has an end, but in the blood that flows in the family, I live again. This is how people in all nations, in all the peoples of the earth, thought.

Only a few individuals think differently. For them, the whole human race, all creatures on earth, are relatives and blood friends. They have enough love in them to embrace the whole earth.

This small group are the “initiates”, who together form a school, the so-called mysteries.

What is the purpose of these mysteries? Truly, they should be a school where people learn to rise to a higher self-awareness.

When we speak of initiates, we mean people who have freed themselves from all earthly fetters, who have detached themselves from everything they used to love about sensual things. And in this way they have developed higher senses and powers within themselves.

Man is not just a body, but a complex being. And every single person has the ability to develop senses other than the physical ones.

Everyone is familiar with the alternation between sleep and wakefulness. When you fall asleep, your self-awareness fades away, at least for the time being. Pain, pleasure, all the thousands of composite feelings that fill our days disappear, because the soul, the self-awareness, has left the body and is gone until it descends back into the physical body in the morning. And in the evening, when the body sleeps, the soul goes out again; man is only spiritually human during this time, and all sensual things fade away.

Imagine a man who is blind, blind from birth. Everything the world possesses of light and color is not there for him because he has no organ with which to receive it.

But if someone with good eyesight were to describe to such a man all the wonderful things he sees, and if the man were to say that he is a poet, a dreamer, and that things like light and color do not exist, we would truly call that nonsense. We would know better.

And if the eyes of someone born blind were somehow opened, we could say that this person had been initiated into light, colors, and radiance.

So it is in the spiritual world. In the physical world we have our eyes open, but in the other worlds, in the spiritual world, we grope around blindly. In those worlds, almost all people are blind. They have no senses, no eyes, no ears.

These spiritual worlds are certainly there, but if people are to receive knowledge of them, the eyes of those who are blind must be opened, that is, they must be “initiated” or taught to acquire organs of perception themselves that are adapted to these worlds. In the old mysteries, there would be special methods for developing the soul in such a way that it would acquire spiritual senses. And when it had received these and descended again into the physical body, it could remember and make use of what it had learned and experienced in the spiritual worlds. In ancient times, anyone who wanted to become an initiate had to submit completely to a leader – the master. This master himself was a master who had long since been initiated and could therefore bear witness from his own experience to what he had seen and heard in those spiritual worlds. One such master was the Christ. His mission on earth was to draw all of humanity under the law of love. He had come to teach people that they no longer needed to cling to their gender or their people if they were to escape damnation. He taught them to rise above the sense of gender—up to a Father other than Father Abraham, up to the God hidden in their own innermost soul. Love of one's own sex and love of one's own people should be elevated to love of all people, to love of all living creatures in the world. In the past, love was particular, fragmented and divided, bound to a particular sex, people or nation. And the various mysteries or initiations of the peoples were always only for this one people. Hermes, Zarathustra, Buddha were masters and founders of faith, each for his own people. The old pagan mysteries taught people to develop the “self”, to build themselves up into spiritual human beings. But each of them was confined to his own people. They did not go beyond the feeling of nationality. But they served to prepare the world for the greatest event that has taken place so far, the coming of Christ into the world.

For with Christ it is different. He did not establish a popular religion, a popular faith; but a religion for all people. Christ is the one who was destined to teach the world, to expand popular love so that it encompasses the whole human race. He is the one who brought out the mysteries and gave them to everyone.

And this is particularly evident in the Gospel of John. If we read the introductory words correctly, we see that in the background of all physicality there is a spiritual world of origin, the divine Father-thought. And when Christ says, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), then with this Father he means precisely this divine spark, which is the breath of life in every human soul.

And through Christ, every soul has received an impulse, a revival, to release the eternal in human nature.

In the age of the Old Testament, the Jew alone had the blood bond to cling to – union in Abraham's bosom was his only hope if he wanted to escape damnation.

Jesus, on the other hand, is said to have said: “In my Father's house are many rooms.” (John 14:2) It is precisely this that matters: to break away from these family ties. “Whoever does not renounce father and mother is not worthy of me” (Luke 14:26; Matthew 19:29), he says.

No blood ties apply anymore, only the eternal father principle in every human soul. The Old Testament has been expanded by Christ and has been perfected in the Gospel of John. But even in the old scriptures, one need not search in vain for the same idea: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) and so on. If you compare these words with the introductory words of the Gospel of John, you understand the connection between the physical and the spiritual world. The words in Genesis concern the external material world, the words in the Gospel of John deal with the new creation that is needed in our own soul. The Gospel of John is therefore not just a book like other historical documents, but an initiation book, a book that should be brought to life for the soul. Above all, it is a book of devotion, a book of meditation. And every human soul that wants to be a disciple of Christ must live through these events itself, must go through them itself.

Christ had become the impulse, the driving force, for the individual soul to free itself. From now on, wisdom was to be drawn not only in the mysteries, for the few alone. It was no longer necessary to surrender to a “master” if one wanted to be initiated. Christ brought the Christian mysteries to all those who could accept them. The event at Golgotha is a great event in the world, and the blood that flowed there gives the impulse, releases forces that should lead the whole world to seek God in their own souls.

That is why Christianity is the greatest of all religions and can live longer than any of the others. And the Gospel of John is the very cornerstone of this teaching of Christ.

When we consider how Karma works,¹ we always have to bear in mind that the human Ego, which is the essential being, the inmost being, of man, has as it were three instruments through which it is able to live and express itself in the world. These are the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body. Man really carries the physical, etheric and astral bodies with him through the world, but he himself is not in any one of these bodies. In the truest sense he is the Ego; and it is the Ego which both suffers and creates Karma.

Now the point is to gain an understanding of the relationship between man as the Ego-being and these three instrumental forms—if I may call them so—the physical, etheric and astral bodies. This will give us the foundation for an understanding of the essence of Karma. We shall gain a fruitful point of view for the study of the physical, the etheric and the astral in man in relation to Karma, if we consider the following.

The physical as we behold it in the mineral kingdom, the etheric as we find it working in the plant kingdom, and the astral as we find it working in the animal kingdom—all these are to be found in the environment of man here on Earth. In the Cosmos surrounding the Earth we have that Universe into which, if I may so describe it, the Earth extends on all sides. Man can feel a certain relationship between what takes place on the Earth and what takes place in the cosmic environment. But when we come to Spiritual Science we have to ask: Is this relationship really so commonplace as the present-day scientific conception of the world imagines? This modern scientific conception of the world examines the physical qualities of everything on the Earth, living and lifeless. It also investigates the stars, the sun, the moon, etc.; and it discovers—indeed it is particularly proud of the discovery—that these heavenly bodies are fundamentally of the same nature as the Earth.

Such a conception can only result from a form of knowledge which at no point comes to a real grasp of man himself—a knowledge which takes hold only of what is external to man. The moment, however, we really take hold of Man as he stands within the Universe, we become able to discover the relationships between the several instrumental members of man's nature, the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body and the corresponding entities, the corresponding realities of Being, in the Cosmos.

In regard to the etheric body of man, we find spread out in the Cosmos the universal Ether. The etheric body of man has a definite human shape, definite forms of movement within it, and so on. These, it is true, are different in the cosmic Ether. Nevertheless the cosmic Ether is fundamentally of like nature with what we find in the human etheric body. In the same way we can speak of a similarity between what is found in the human astral body and a certain astral principle that works through all things and all beings out in the far-spread Universe.

Here we come to something of extraordinary importance, something which in its true nature is quite foreign to the human being of to-day. Let us take our start from this. (A drawing is made on the blackboard). We have, first, the Earth; and on the Earth we have Man, with his etheric body. Then in the Earth's environment we have the cosmic Ether—the cosmic Ether which is of the same nature as the etheric in man. In man we also have the astral body. In the cosmic environment too there is Astrality. Where are we to find this cosmic Astrality? Where is it? It is indeed to be found, but we must first discover—what it is in the Cosmos that betrays the presence of cosmic Astrality; what it is that reveals it. Somewhere or other is the Astrality. Is this Astrality in the Cosmos quite invisible and imperceptible, or is it, after all, in some way perceptible to us?

In itself, of course, the Ether too is imperceptible for our physical senses. If I may put it so, when you are looking at a small fragment of Ether, you see nothing with your physical senses, you simply see through it. The Ether is like an empty nothingness to you. But when you regard the etheric environment as a totality, you behold the blue sky, of which we also say that it is not really there but that you are gazing into empty space. Now the reason why you see the blue of the sky is that you are actually perceiving the end of the Ether. Thus you behold the Ether as the blue of the heavens. The perception of the blue sky is really and truly a perception of the Ether. We may therefore say: In that we perceive the blue of the sky we are perceiving the universal Ether that surrounds us.

At first contact, we see through the Ether. It allows us to do so; and yet, it makes itself perceptible in the blue heavens. Hence the existence for human perception of the blue of the sky is expressed in that we say: The Ether itself, though imperceptible, yet rises to the level of perceptibility by reason of the great majesty with which it stands there in the Universe, revealing its presence, making itself known in the blue of the vast expanse.

Physical science theorises materialistically about the blue of the sky; and for physical science it is indeed very difficult to reach any intelligent conclusion on this point, for the simple reason that it is bound to admit that where we see the blue of the sky there is nothing physical. Nevertheless men spin out the most elaborate theories to explain how the rays of light are reflected and refracted in a peculiar way so as to call forth this blue of the sky. In reality, it is here that the super-sensible world begins already to hold sway. In the Cosmos the Supersensible does indeed become visible to us. We have only to discover where and how it becomes visible. The Ether becomes perceptible to us through the blue of the sky.

But now, somewhere there is also present the astral element of the Cosmos. In the blue sky the Ether peers through, as it were, into the realms of sense. Where then does the Astrality in the Cosmos peer through into the realms of perceptibility? The answer, my dear friends, is this.

Every star that we see glittering in the heavens is in reality a gate of entry for the Astral. Wherever the stars are twinkling and glittering in towards us, there glitters and shines the Astral. Look at the starry heavens in their manifold variety; in one part the stars are gathered into heaps and clusters, or in another they are scattered far apart. In all this wonderful configuration of radiant light, the invisible and super-sensible astral body of the Cosmos makes itself visible to us.

For this reason we must not consider the world of stars unspiritually. To look up to the world of stars and speak of worlds of burning gases is just as though—forgive the apparent absurdity of the comparison, but it is precisely true—it is just as though someone who loves you were gently stroking you, holding the fingers a little apart, and you were then to say that it feels like so many little ribbons being drawn across your cheek. It is no more untrue that little ribbons are laid across your cheek when someone strokes you, than that there exist up there in the heavens those material entities of which modern physics tells. It is the astral body of the Universe which is perpetually wielding its influences—like the gently stroking fingers—on the etheric organism of the Cosmos. The etheric Cosmos is organised for very long duration; it is for this reason that a star has its quality of fixity, representing a perpetual influence on the cosmic Ether by the astral Universe. It lasts far longer than the stroking of your cheek. But in the Cosmos things do last longer, for there we are dealing with gigantic measures. Thus in the starry heavens that we perceive, we actually behold an expression of the soul-life of the cosmic astral world.

In this way, an immense, unfathomable life, yet, at the same time, a soul-life, a real and actual life of the soul, is brought into the Cosmos. Think how dead the Cosmos appears to us when we look into the far spaces and see nothing but burning gaseous bodies. Think how living it all becomes when we know that the stars are an expression of the love with which the astral Cosmos works upon the etheric Cosmos—for this is to express it with perfect truth. Think then of those mysterious processes when certain stars suddenly light up at certain times,—processes which have only been explained to us by means of physical hypotheses that do not lead to any real understanding. Stars that were not there before, light up for a time, and disappear again. Thus in the Cosmos too there is a “stroking” of shorter duration. For it is true indeed that in epochs when divine Beings desire to work in an especial way from the astral world into the etheric, we behold new stars light up and fade away again.

We ourselves in our own astral body have feelings of delight and comfort in the most varied ways. In like manner in the Cosmos, through the cosmic astral body, we have the varied configuration of the starry heavens. No wonder that an ancient science, instinctively clairvoyant, describes this third member of our human organism as the “astral” or “starry” body, seeing that it is of like nature with that which reveals itself to us in the stars.

It is only the Ego that we do not find revealed in the cosmic environment. Why is this? We shall find the reason if we consider how this human Ego manifests here on the Earth, in a world that is in reality threefold,—physical, etheric and astral. The Ego of man, as it appears within the Universe, is ever and again a repetition of former lives on Earth; and again and again it finds itself in the life between death and a new birth. But when we observe the Ego in its life between death and a new birth, we perceive that the Etheric which we have here in the cosmic environment of the Earth has no significance for the human Ego. The etheric body is laid aside soon after death. It is only the astral world, that shines in towards us through the stars that has significance for the Ego in the life between death and a new birth. And in that world which glistens in towards us through the stars, in that world there live the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies with whom man forms his Karma between death and a new birth.

Indeed, when we follow this Ego in its successive evolutions through lives between birth and death and between death and a new birth, we cannot remain within the world of Space at all. For two successive earthly lives cannot be within the same space. They cannot be within that Universe which is dependent on spatial co-existence. Here therefore we go right out of Space and enter into Time. This is actually so. We go out of Space and come into the pure flow of Time when we contemplate the Ego in its successive lives on Earth.

Now consider this, my dear friends. In Space, Time is still present, of course, but within this world of Space we have no means of experiencing Time in itself. We always have to experience Time through Space and spatial processes. For example, if you wish to experience Time, you look at the clock, or, if you will, at the course of the sun. What do you see? You see the various positions of the hands of the clock or of the sun. You see something that is spatial. Through the fact that the positions of the hand or of the sun are changed, through the fact that spatial things are present to you as changing, you gain some idea of Time. But of Time itself there is really nothing in this spatial perception. There are only varied spatial configurations, varied positions of the hands of the clock, varied positions of the sun. You only experience Time itself when you come into the sphere of the soul's experience. There you do really experience Time, but there you also go out of Space. There, Time is a reality, but within the earthly world of Space, Time is no reality. What, then, must happen to us, if we would go out of the Space in which we live between birth and death and enter into the spacelessness in which we live between death and a new birth? What must we do? The answer is this: We must die!

We must take these words in their exact and deep meaning. On Earth we experience Time only through Space—through points in Space, through the positions of spatial things. On Earth we do not experience Time in its reality at all. Once you grasp this, you will say: “Really to enter into Time we must go out of Space, we must put away all things spatial.” You can also express it in other words, for it is really nothing else than—to die. It means, in very deed and truth: to die.

Let us now turn our eyes to this cosmic world that encircles the Earth—this cosmic world to which we are akin both through our etheric body, and also through our astral body—and let us look at the spiritual in this cosmic world. There have indeed been nations and human societies who have had regard only to the spiritual that is to be found within our earthly world of Space. Such peoples were unable to have any thoughts about repeated lives on Earth. Thoughts about repeated lives on Earth were possessed only by those human beings and groups that were able to conceive Time in its pure essence, Time in its spaceless character. But if we consider this earthly world together with its cosmic environment, or, to put it briefly, all that we speak of as the Cosmos, the Universe; and if we behold the spiritual manifest in it, we are then apprehending something of which it can be said that it had to be present in order that we might enter into our existence as earthly human beings; it had to be there.

Unfathomable depths are really contained in this simple conception,—that all that to which I have just referred, had to exist in order that we as earthly human beings might enter this earthly life. Infinite depths are revealed when we really grasp the spiritual aspect of all that is thus put before us. If we conceive this Spiritual in its completeness as a self-contained whole, if we consider it in its own purity and essence, then we have a conception of what was called “God” by those peoples who limited their outlook to the world of space alone.

These peoples—at any rate in their Wisdom-teachings—had come to feel: The Cosmos is woven through and through by a Divine element that is at work in it, and we can distinguish from this Divine element in the Cosmos that which is present, on the Earth in our immediate environment, as the physical world. We can also distinguish that which, in this cosmic, divine-spiritual world reveals itself as the Etheric, namely that which gazes down upon us in the blue of the sky. We can distinguish as the Astral in this divine world, that which gazes down upon us in the configuration of the starry heavens.

If we enter as fully as possible into the situation as we stand here, within the Universe, as human beings on this Earth, we shall say to ourselves: “We as human beings have a physical body: where, then, is the Physical in the Universe?” Here I am returning to something which I have already pointed out. The physical science of to-day expects to find everything which is on the Earth existing also in the Universe. But the physical organisation itself is not to be found in the Universe at all. Man has in the first place his physical organisation: then in addition he has the etheric and the astral. The Universe on the other hand begins with the Etheric. Out there in the Cosmos the Physical is nowhere to be found. The Physical exists only on the Earth, and it is but empty fancy and imagination to speak of anything physical in the far Universe. In the Universe there is the Etheric and the Astral. There is also a third element within the Universe which we have yet to speak about in this present lecture, for the Cosmos too is threefold. But the threefoldness of the Cosmos, apart from the Earth, is different from the threefoldness of the Cosmos in which we include the Earth.

Let these feelings enter into our earthly consciousness, the perceiving of the Physical in our immediate earthly dwelling-place; the feeling of the Etheric, which is both on the Earth and in the Universe; the beholding of the Astral, glistening down to the Earth from the stars, and most intensely of all from the Sun-star. Then, when we consider all these things and place before our souls the majesty of this world-conception, we can well understand how in ancient times, when with the old instinctive clairvoyance men did not think so abstractly, but were still able to feel the majesty of a great conception, they were led to realise: “A thought so majestic as this cannot be conceived perpetually in all its fullness. We must take hold of it at one special time, allowing it to work on the soul in its full, unfathomable glory. It will then work on in the inner depths of our human being, without being spoilt and corrupted by our surface consciousness.”—If we consider by what means the old instinctive clairvoyance gave expression to such a feeling, then out of all that combined to give truth to this thought in mankind in olden time, there remains to us to-day the institution of the Christmas Festival.

On Christmas Night, man, as he stands here upon the Earth with his physical, his etheric and his astral bodies, feels himself to be related to the threefold Cosmos, which appears to him in its Etheric nature, shining so majestically, and with the magic wonder of the night in the blue of the heavens; while face to face with him is the Astral of the Universe, in the stars that glitter in towards the Earth. As he realises how the holiness of this cosmic environment is related to that which is on the Earth itself, he feels that he himself with his own Ego has been transplanted from the Cosmos into this world of Space. And now he may gaze upon the Christmas Mystery—the new-born Child, the Representative of Humanity on Earth, who, inasmuch as he is entering into childhood, is born into this world of Space. In the fullness and majesty of this Christmas thought, as he gazes on the Child that is born on Christmas Night, he exclaims: “Ex Deo Nascimur—I am born out of the Divine, the Divine that weaves and surges through the world of Space.”

When a man has felt this, when he has permeated himself through and through with it, then he may also recall what Anthroposophy has revealed to us about the meaning of the Earth. The Child on whom we are gazing is the outer sheath of That which is now born into Space. But whence is He born, that He might be brought to birth in the world of Space? According to what we have explained to-day, it can only be from Time. From out of Time the Child is born.

If we then follow out the life of this Child and His permeation by the Spirit of the Christ-Being, we come to realise that this Being, this Christ-Being, comes from the Sun. Then we shall look up to the Sun, and say to ourselves: “As I look up to the Sun, I must behold in the sunshine that Time, which in the world of Space is hidden. Within the Sun is Time, and from out of the Time that weaves and works within the Sun, Christ came forth, came out into Space, on to the Earth.”

What have we then in Christ on Earth? In Christ on Earth we have That, which coming from beyond Space, from outside of Space, unites with the Earth.

I want you to realise how our conception of the Universe changes, in comparison with the ordinary present-day conception, when we really enter into all that has come before our souls this evening. There in the Universe we have the Sun, with all that there appears to us to be immediately connected with it—all that is contained in the blue of the heavens, in the world of the stars. At another point in the Universe we have the Earth with humanity. When we look up from the Earth to the Sun, we are at the same time looking into the flow of Time.

Now from this there follows something of great significance. Man only looks up to the Sun in the right way (even if it be but in his mind) when, as he gazes upwards, he forgets Space and considers Time alone. For in truth, the Sun does not only radiate light, it radiates Space itself, and when we are looking into the Sun we are looking out of Space into the world of Time. The Sun is the unique star that it is because when we gaze into the Sun we are looking out of Space. And from that world, outside of Space, Christ came to men. At the time when Christianity was founded by Christ on Earth, man had been all too long restricted to the mere Ex Deo Nascimur, he had become altogether bound up in it, he had become a Space-being pure and simple. The reason why it is so hard for us to understand the traditions of primeval epochs, when we go back to them with the consciousness of present-day civilisation, is that they always had in mind [Space], and not the world of [Time]. They regarded the world of [Time] only as an appendage of the world of [Space].²

Christ came to bring the element of Time again to men, and when the human heart, the human soul, the human spirit, unite themselves with Christ, then man receives once more the stream of Time that flows from Eternity to Eternity. What else can we human beings do when we die, i.e. when we go out of the world of Space, than hold fast to Him who gives Time back to us again? At the Mystery of Golgotha man had become to so great an extent a being of Space that Time was lost to him. Christ brought Time back again to men.

If, then, in going forth from the world of Space, men would not die in their souls as well as in their bodies, they must die in Christ, We can still be human beings of Space, and say: Ex Deo Nascimur, and we can look to the Child who comes forth from Time into Space, that he may unite Christ with humanity. But since the Mystery of Golgotha we cannot conceive of death, the bound of our earthly life, without this thought: “We must die in Christ.” Otherwise we shall pay for our loss of Time with the loss of Christ Himself, and, banished from Him, remain held spell-bound. We must fill ourselves with the Mystery of Golgotha. In addition to the Ex Deo Nascimur, we must find the In Christo Morimur. We must bring forth the Easter thought in addition to the Christmas thought. Thus the Ex Deo Nascimur lets the Christmas thought appear before our souls, and in the In Christo Morimur the Easter thought.

We can now say: On the Earth man has his three bodies, the physical, the etheric and the astral. The Etheric and Astral are also out there in the Cosmos, but the Physical is only to be found on the Earth. Out in the Cosmos there is no Physical. Thus we must say: On the Earth—physical, etheric, astral. In the Cosmos—no physical, but only the etheric and the astral.

Yet the Cosmos too is threefold, for what the Cosmos lacks at the lowest level, it adds above. In the Cosmos the Etheric is the lowest: on the Earth the Physical is the lowest. On Earth the Astral is the highest; in the Cosmos the highest is that of which man has to-day only the beginnings—that out of which his Spirit-Self will one day be woven. We may therefore say: In the Cosmos there is, as the third, the highest element, the Spirit-Selfhood.

Now we see the stars as expressions of something real. I compared their action to a gentle stroking. The Spirit-Selfhood that is behind them is indeed the Being that lovingly strokes,—only in this case it is not a single Being but the whole world of the Hierarchies. I gaze upon a man and see his form; I look at his eyes and see them shining towards me; I hear his voice; it is the utterance of the human being. In the same way I gaze up into the far Spaces of the world, I look upon the stars. They are the utterance of the Hierarchies,—the living utterance of the Hierarchies, kindling astral feeling. I gaze into the blue depths of the firmament and, perceive in it the outward revelation of the etheric body which is the lowest member of the whole world of the Hierarchies.

Now we may draw near to a still further realisation. We look out into the far Cosmos which goes out beyond earthly reality, even as the Earth with its physical substance and forces goes down beneath cosmic reality. As in the Physical the Earth has a sub-cosmic element, so in Spirit-Selfhood the Cosmos has a super-earthly element.

Physical science speaks of a movement of the Sun; and it can do so, for within the spatial picture of the Cosmos which surrounds us, we perceive by certain phenomena that the Sun is in movement. But that is only an image of the true Sun-movement—an image cast into Space. If we are speaking of the real Sun it is nonsense to say that the Sun moves in Space; for Space itself is being radiated out by the Sun. The Sun not only radiates the light; the Sun creates the Space itself. And the movement of the Sun is only a spatial movement within this created Space. Outside of Space it is a movement in Time. What seems apparent to us—namely, that the Sun is speeding on towards the constellation of Hercules—is only a spatial image of the Time-evolution of the Sun-Being.

To His intimate disciples Christ spoke these words: “Behold the life of the Earth; it is related to the life of the Cosmos. When you look out on the Earth and the surrounding Cosmos, it is the Father whose life permeates this Universe.³ The Father-God is the God of Space. But I make known to you that I have come to you from the Sun, from Time—Time that receives man only when he dies. I have brought you myself from out of Time.⁴ If you receive me, you receive Time, and you will not be held spell-bound in Space. But you find the transition from the one trinity—Physical, Etheric and Astral—to the other trinity, which leads from the Etheric and Astral to Spirit-Selfhood. Spirit-Selfhood is not to be found in the earthly world, just as the Earthly-Physical is not to be found in the Cosmos. But I bring you the message of it, for I am from the Sun.”

The Sun has indeed a threefold aspect. If one lives within the Sun and looks down from the Sun to the Earth, one beholds the Physical, Etheric and Astral. One may also gaze on that which is within the Sun itself. Then one still sees the Physical so long as one remembers the Earth or gazes down towards the Earth. But if one looks away from the Earth one beholds on the other side the Spirit-Selfhood. Thus one swings backwards and forwards between the Physical and the nature of the Spirit-Self. Only the Etheric and Astral in between are permanent. As you look out into the great Universe, the Earthly vanishes away, and you have the Etheric, the Astral and the Spirit-Selfhood. This is what you behold when you come into the Sun-Time between death and a new birth.

Let us now imagine first of all the inner mood of a man's soul to be such that he shuts himself up entirely within this Earth-existence. He can still feel the Divine, for out of the Divine he is born: Ex Deo Nascimur. Then let us imagine him no longer shutting himself up within the mere world of Space, but receiving the Christ who came from the world of Time into the world of Space, who brought Time itself into the earthly Space. If a man does this, then in Death he will overcome Death. Ex Deo Nascimur. In Christo Morimur. But Christ Himself brings the message that when Space is overcome and one has learned to recognise the Sun as the creator of Space, when one feels oneself transplanted through Christ into the Sun, into the living Sun, then the earthly Physical vanishes and only the Etheric and the Astral are there. Now the Etheric comes to life, not as the blue of the sky, but as the lilac-red gleaming radiance of the Cosmos, and forth from the reddish light the stars no longer twinkle down upon us but gently touch us with their loving effluence.

If a man really enters into all this, he can have the experience of himself, standing here upon the Earth, the Physical put aside, but the Etheric still with him, streaming through and out of him in the lilac-reddish light. No longer now are the stars glimmering points of light; they are radiations of love like the caressing hand of a human being. As we feel all this—the divine within ourselves, the divine cosmic fire flaming forth from within us as the very being of man; ourselves within the Etheric world and experiencing the living expression of the Spirit in the Astral cosmic radiance, there bursts forth within us the inner awakening of the creative radiance of Spirit, which is man's high calling in the Universe.

When those to whom Christ revealed these things had let the revelation sink deep into their being, then the moment came when they experienced the working of this mighty concept, in the fiery tongues of Pentecost. At first they felt the falling away, the discarding of the earthly-Physical as death. But then the feeling came; This is not death, but in place of the physical of the Earth, there now dawns upon us the Spirit-Selfhood of the Universe. “Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.”

Thus may we regard the threefold nature of the one half of the year. We have the Christmas thought—Ex Deo Nascimur; the Easter thought—In Christo Morimur; and the Whitsun thought—Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

There remains the other half of the year. If we understand that too, there dawns on us the other aspect of our human life. If we understand the relationship of the physical to the soul of man and to the superphysical—which contains the true freedom of which man is to become a partaker on the Earth,—then in the interconnection of the Christmas, Easter and Whitsun festivals we understand the human freedom on Earth. As we understand man from out of these three thoughts, the Christmas thought, the Easter thought and the Whitsun thought, and as we let this kindle in us the desire to understand the remaining portions of the year, there arises the other half of human life which I indicated when I said: “Gaze upon this human destiny; the Hierarchies appear behind it—the working and weaving of the Hierarchies.” It is wonderful to look truly into the destiny of a human being, for behind it stands the whole world of the Hierarchies.

It is indeed the language of the stars which sounds towards us from the thoughts of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide; from the Christmas thought, inasmuch as the Earth is a star within the Universe; from the Easter thought inasmuch as the most radiant of stars, the Sun, gives us his gifts of grace; and from the Whitsun thought inasmuch as that which lies hidden beyond the stars lights into the soul, and lights forth again from the soul in the fiery tongues of Pentecost.

Enter into all this, my dear friends! I have told you of the Father, the Bearer of the Christmas thought, who sends the Son that through him the Easter thought may be fulfilled; I have told you further how the Son brings the message of the Spirit, so that in the thought of Whitsun man's life on Earth may be completed in its threefold being. Meditate this through, ponder it well; then for all the descriptive foundations I have already given you for an understanding of Karma, you will gain a right foundation of inner feeling.

Try to let the Christmas, Easter and Whitsun thoughts, in the way I have expressed them to you to-day, work deeply and truly into your human feeling, and when we meet again after the journey which I must undertake this Whitsun-tide for the Course on Agriculture—when we come together again, bring this feeling with you, my dear friends. For this feeling should live on in you as the warm and fiery thought of Pentecost. Then we shall be able to go further in our study of Karma; your power of understanding will be fertilised by what the Whitsun thought contains.

Just as once upon a time at the first Whitsun Festival something shone forth from each one of the disciples, so the thought of Pentecost should now become alive again for our anthroposophical understanding. Something must light up and shine forth from our souls. Therefore it is as a Whitsun feeling, to prepare you for the further continuation of our thoughts on Karma, which are related to the other half of the year, that I have given you what I have said to-day about the inner connections of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide.

• 1. From February until September, 1924, with intervals of visits to other towns and countries, Rudolf Steiner was giving at Dornach the great series of 49 lectures on Karma, subsequently produced in four volumes now available in English translation. The present lecture was given very shortly before the Whitsun Festival and deals with its specific significance for the problem of human destiny with which the Karma lectures deal.
  
  Lecturing as he was to Anthroposophists, Dr. Steiner begins at once with the fundamental fact of the three ‘bodies’ at work in the human organism. A full exposition of this is to be found in the book Theosophy, chapter I.
• 2. The bracketed words were transposed in the translation. Error brought to our attention by to Lucas Dreier
• 3. Cp. Paul: “God that made the world and all things therein, being Lord of heaven and earth, giveth to all life and breath and all things, and is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being.” Acts XVII, 24–28.
• 4. “Time,” as here used, is what we usually designate as “Eternity”, i.e. a continuous, unbroken time-experience. What we usually call “Time” is our spatialised concept of real Time, separate successional events, measured by spatial changes.