The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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

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

And many came to him and said:
John performed no miracles, but all that he said of this man is true.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was a God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through It and save through It was not anything made that was made.
In It was Life and Life was the Light of men.
And the Light shone into the darkness but the darkness comprehended it not.
There was a man; he was sent from God, bearing the name John. The same came as a witness in order to bear witness of the Light that through him all might believe.
He was not the Light but was a witness of the Light.
For the true Light which lighteth every man should come into the world.
It was in the world and the world came into being through It, but the world knew It not.
It entered into individual men (that is, the ego-men); but individual men (the ego-men) received it not.
But they who received it could reveal themselves as Children of God.
They who trusted in His name were not born of the blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man—but of God.
And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we have heard His teaching, the teaching of the once born Son of the Father filled with Devotion and Truth.
John bare witness of Him and proclaimed clearly: He it was of whom I said:—He will come after me, who was before me. For He is my forerunner.
For out of His fullness have we all received Grace upon Grace. For the law was given through Moses, but Grace and Truth came through Jesus-Christ.
Hitherto hath no one beheld God with his eyes. The once-born Son, who was in the bosom of the Universal-Father, has become the leader in this beholding.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My dear friends,

We have been considering the human being's relation to the Guardian of the Threshold and have led our souls step by step to see what our relation is to the Guardian of the Threshold on the path of knowledge. Today we intend to enliven the situation of standing before the Guardian in order to advance a step further in this esoteric consideration.

I will repeat what has been considered in the previous lessons regarding this situation. Man leaves the physical world in which he develops his normal consciousness. He realizes that although this sensible-physical world can be wonderful, joyful as well as painful and full of suffering, it can also be majestic—and that he has every reason to consciously be a part of it. But he also realizes that he can never know himself if he merely directs his attention and his feelings to this physical world. He must say to himself: As wonderful as it is, with all its amazing variety of colors and forms, what I myself am, what my origin and being are, cannot be found in the scope of this environment.

Nevertheless, from all sides the words resound as the most important task in the life of the human being: O man, know thyself!

And it also becomes clear that in normal life we are protected from entering unprepared into the world which is the world of his real being. And the Guardian of the Threshold is the one who protects us from consciously perceiving his environment when we are sleeping at night, for what we would then perceive, unprepared, would be such a terrible shock that we would not be able to lead a normal human waking life.

The Guardian of the Threshold also makes it clear to us that he—the Guardian of the Threshold—is the true, the real gateway to the spiritual world.

Thus the person realizes that before he enters the kingdom of knowledge, he comes to an abyss, which at first seems bottomless. The support of the physical world ends here. He cannot cross it. One can only cross this abyss by freeing oneself from the physical, when one—symbolically speaking—“grows wings”, in order to cross the abyss as a psychic-spiritual being.

But the Guardian of the Threshold calls forth to him how to beware of the abyss, especially to be aware of the beasts which rise up as spiritual figures from this abyss, that one should realize that these beasts are the outer reflections of impure willing, feeling and thinking—that they first must be overcome. And in a graphic image one sees how his willing, feeling and thinking appear in three animals—one ghastly, one horrid to look at, and so forth.

Then the Guardian of the Threshold shows us how thinking, feeling and willing can strengthen themselves after having consciously determined to overcome the beasts. To enter the spiritual world, to visualize the spiritual world, we need to develop situation-meditations, in order to feel how the cosmos speaks to us, how the hierarchies speak to us, how at first everything foretells what awaits us there in the spiritual world.

And from what has entered our souls through the mantras, we will realize ever more that the human being must become different when he crosses the abyss, when he wishes to live into what is beyond the abyss. We will realize ever more: Here on earth we associate with the beings of the three nature kingdoms and with men; beyond we associate with disembodied souls and with the spirits of the higher hierarchies. It is a different kind of relating, which requires a different state of mind. [original: Seelenverfassung = soul-constitution].

It is again the task of the Guardian of the Threshold to strongly indicate how the human being must comport himself when faced with the fact that when he crosses the abyss and experiences something of the reality of the spiritual world, he must do so with a completely different state of mind.

The person will realize that two states of mind can be a reality within him: the one on this side of the abyss with normal consciousness; and the one beyond the abyss, outside the physical and etheric bodies—the state of mind in the purely spiritual world.

When the difference between these states of mind appears, great dangers await him, dangers which appear at first to be slight deviations from the normal state of mind which are always present within the psyche, but which are pathological deformities when carried to an extreme. Of course it must be emphasized: When the journey to the higher worlds is undertaken as it is carefully described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, in many shorter works which have appeared in anthroposophical circles, and in the second part of my An Outline Of Occult Science, then aberration from the normal condition of the mind cannot occur, not even in the slightest degree. The person will cross into the spiritual world in the full consciousness of normal human understanding, first in knowledge and also through initiation. But he must know how, in two ways, he may lose the everyday capacity for understanding, which holds him securely to life, if he does not adhere to the right guidelines into the spiritual world.

Here on this side of the threshold we are standing on the earth, on the solid earthly elements. The ground is beneath our feet, it is our support. Around us is the watery element, which also participates in the formation of our own bodies. In ordinary life this watery element cannot support us, but it interpenetrates us, transforms itself into our blood. It is contained in our growth, in our forces of nutrition. We breathe the air. The airy or gaseous element is all around us. Warmth is all around us: the warmth ether, the fourth element.

In ordinary life they are separate from each other. Where there is solid earth there is not water; where there is water there is not air; where there is air there is not water. Only fire—warmth—interpenetrates all. It is the only thing which interpenetrates everything.

The moment we leave the physical body—also with the first push, my dear friends—this separation of the elements ceases. We enlarge ourselves, we expand, and at the same time we are in earth, water, fire, air. We can no longer distinguish them from each other and the individual attributes of these four elements have ceased to exist. The earth is no longer our support, for it is no longer solid. The water no longer forms us, for its formative force has ended. Once in the spiritual world it is as though we were dissolving, as ice melts in warm water, for we have become one with the water. We could not float in it, for that would mean that we were still separate from it. The blood is no longer a separate element in the blood vessels, but our blood becomes one with the all-pervading watery element of the universe. And air: it ceases being the formative breathing force in us. Warmth ceases to enkindle us to an I, and make us feel that we are a Self within the warmth. It all ends. We must meet this ending of the differentiation between earth, water, air and fire in the right frame of mind.

Imagine that we have already flown over the abyss. We have arrived on the other side, my dear sisters and brothers. The Guardian of the Threshold calls out to us, we should turn around again and face him.

Imagine it vividly, my dear sisters and brothers. The person has arrived on the other side, where the truths and knowledge of the spirit will be revealed to him. He stands on the other side. The Guardian of the Threshold invokes him to turn around in order to receive the advice he needs now that he has been touched by the state of mind which is on the other side of the threshold, where one lives within the four elements: in earth, water, air, fire.

He encounters there—pardon the trivial expression, my dear sisters and brothers—the illusion of being in love with release from the solid earth, from the formative water force, from the creative force of air, from the selfhood awakening force of warmth; he feels delight in spiritual beatitude, dedicated to it and wishes to remain in this state of spiritual beatitude. It overcomes him because the Luciferic temptation is approachng him. Depending on his karma, he can be more or less susceptible to this temptation. If he is so susceptible that he is utterly in love with the experience of dissolving into earth, water, air and fire, the luciferic forces will apprehend him and he will no longer leave this state of mind. He succumbs to the danger of continuing in this state of mind when he returns to everyday life.

The Guardian of the Threshold must call out to him: You may not do that. You may not succumb to Lucifer. You may not merely feel the delight of bliss in dissolving in earth, water, fire, air. When you return to the physical world you must again take on the state of mind of ordinary consciousness; otherwise in the future you will be an unstable person in the physical world.

That is the luciferic danger, that upon return from the spiritual world, from beyond the threshold, one becomes an unstable, confused person, no longer versed in the ways of the world, a dreamer who confuses dreaming for idealism and who is contemptuous of ordinary consciousness. That you must not do. And the Guardian of the Threshold urgently admonishes us that we must resolve to live in the world, be it the earthly, be it the spiritual, in the way which corresponds to each.

But the Guardian of the Threshold adds a second admonishment: that when we cross over with separated thinking, feeling and willing, we must pay attention to what extent earthly inclinations are still present in this thinking, feeling and willing.

The person may be inclined to fixate on his experiences on this side of the threshold because of having the earth's support, and cross the threshold in a materialistic state of mind, cross with the congealed formative forces of water. If so, he can be plagued by earthly arrogance and say to himself: In life on earth I breathed, inhaled that breath from which the Father-God once created the human soul, human life. I can also do that if only I am freed from earthly limitations.

But if the person wants to bring over into the spiritual world what he has of creative divine force through his breath, he will succumb to the Ahrimanic temptation. Then he will not be able to return, because before he does so he will become faint. He will be more or less unconscious. His consciousness will be paralyzed. Because his consciousness has been paralyzed, he more or less becomes an instrument of the Ahrimanic powers in the spiritual world.

Although today humanity is crudely hardened by materialism, since the beginning of the Michael age it is almost being dragged over into the spiritual world by spiritual life itself. And what it means when the ahrimanic powers seize humanity when its consciousness is paralyzed, though otherwise in a fully waking state, has been amply demonstrated, my dear friends, by the outbreak of the great [first] World War.

When this World War broke out, I said to many people: The history of this war can not be written from the physical plane alone. Documents alone do not speak the truth, because of the thirty or forty men in Europe who directly participated in the outbreak of the war, many of them had dimmed consciousness at the decisive moments. They became instruments for the ahrimanic powers on this side. So that much of what happened during this war was instigated by the ahrimanic powers. The war can only be written about in an occult way.

What is seen—in many respects modified on this side of the threshold—in many leading personalities at the outbreak of this World War, can be observed in those who preserved the habits of the mind and carried them over beyond the threshold and whose consciousness became paralyzed, muted, and they became instruments of the ahrimanic powers.

It must be perfectly clear that the human being may not carry over to this side the state of mind applicable to beyond the threshold, and that he may not carry over to the other side the state of mind applicable to this side. Rather must he develop a strong inner human consciousness for each domain—for this side and for beyond the threshold.

That applies to all four elements in the Guardian of the Threshold's admonition. We shall now work on these admonitions in meditation.

So let us imagine, my dear sisters and brothers, that you are standing on the other side of the threshold. The Guardian beckons. You look at his face. At first he calls out to you, admonishing:

Where is the earth's solidity which supported you?

We no longer have it. But the inner heart is motivated to give an answer. But this heart can be innerly motivated in a threefold way to an answer from the cosmos.

It can be motivated from the Christ and his power. Then it answers:

I abandon its foundation—the earth's solidity, that is—as long as the spirit supports me.

That is the correct attitude, that I abandon the earth's support as long as the spirit carries me in the spirit-domain, as long as I am out of the body. But the heart can also be motivated by Lucifer. Then it answers:

I feel rapture, for from now on I do not need its support.

That is how one speaks with arrogance, with pride, as though he also does not need the support when he returns to the physical world.

Or the heart can be motivated by Ahriman. Then it answers:

I will hammer it down even harder—the support—with the spirit's power, and bring it over with me.

No one should recoil from meditatively calling to mind again and again all three answers in order to freely choose the first one. For he must feel: the inner self tends to waver to Lucifer, and to Ahriman. One must keep this in mind during meditation.

For the earth element the meditation must therefore contain:

[The first part of the mantra is written on the blackboard. (Writing is always shown in italics).]

1) The Guardian—speaks—Where is the earth's solidity, which supported you?

The Human heart must answer. If it is motivated by Christ, it answers:

Christ: I leave its foundation as long as the spirit supports me.

If the soul is motivated by Lucifer, it answers:

Lucifer: I feel rapture, for from now on I do not need its support.

Now the heart omits “as long as” if it wants to replace the temporal with the eternal, which transforms the sentence. If the heart is motivated by Ahriman, it answers:

Ahriman: I will hammer it down even harder—the support—with the spirit's power.

In order that the soul fully dedicate itself to what is coming, we have the Guardian of the Threshold's second admonition, which is related to water's formative force. This formative force of water forms the solid organs in us from the liquid elements. All that we consume for nourishment must first become liquid, from which the organs are formed. All our sharply contoured organs are formed out of the liquid element. This formative force terminates once we tread the realm beyond the threshold. The Guardian warns us that this is the case. He calls to us once we stand on the other side of the Threshold facing his stern countenance:

[The second part of the mantra is written on the blackboard.]

Guardian: Where is the water's formative force which pervaded you?

The person answers if he is motivated in his heart by Christ:

My life extinguishes it, as long as the spirit forms me.

Christ: My life extinguishes it (“it” is the formative force), as long as the spirit forms me.

Again, modestly, “as long as” is used.

Now, when one is over there, out of the body, the spirit is beginning to form.

If the soul is motivated by Lucifer, it leaves out “as long as” and forms the sentence in a prideful, arrogant way:

Lucifer: My life melts it away—what is extinguished can be re-kindled; what melts remains melted—so I am released from it.

If the soul is motivated by Ahriman, it answers:

Ahriman: My life solidifies it, so I transfer it to the spirit-realm.

Observe, my dear sisters and brothers, how everything in mantric verses is innerly certain and meaningfully formed. Here [in the first verse] is: “I leave”, “I feel”, “I will”. The “I” speaks in the answer. In the second verse the I no longer speaks egocentrically, but it says: “My life”: “my life dissolves”, “my life melts”, “my life solidifies”. It is all appropriate to reality if correctly spoken in the spirit. The carelessness in formulating sentences, which is common in the physical realm, may not be brought over into the spirit-realm. In the spirit-realm all that is spoken must be precise and exact.

You must understand, my dear friends, the reality that this Esoteric School is not established by human will, but by the spiritual world, as I said at the beginning. Everything given here in the Esoteric School of the Goetheanum is only spoken through my lips, but is dictated by the spiritual world. It must be that way in every legitimately existing esoteric school—also in the present and in the immediate future, as it was in the ancient holy Mysteries. And this Esoteric School is the true Michael- School, the institution of those spiritual beings who possess the inspiration of Michael's cosmic will.

In respect to air, the Guardian of the Threshold speaks again, warningly: Where is the air's stimulating force which awakened you?—awakened you to existence.

Just as Jehovah formed a feeling being from a merely living being by means of living breath and the stimulating power of air, so can a human being become a feeling being through the stimulation exercised on his senses by the outer world. What, though, are the senses?

My dear sisters and brothers, the senses are nothing other than differentiated breathing organs. Eye, ear—all are refined breathing organs. Breathing expands to all the senses. As it lives in the lung, it lives in the eye. Except that in the lungs it combines with carbon, and in the ears with highly rarefied silica. Carbon dioxide is formed in the organism. [He draws on the blackboard: “Kohlensäure” = carbon dioxide (red)] In the senses, very fine silicic acid is formed [“Kieselsäure” = silicic acid, yellow.]

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Man lives downward by converting oxygen to carbon dioxide. He lives upward into the zone of his sense-nervous system by combining oxygen with silica, forming very fine silicic acid. [green]. So we live in a way that when breath turns to blood, it generates carbon dioxide; when breath passes around the senses it generates silicic acid—downward and outward through breath: carbon dioxide; toward the senses and back from the senses to the breathing process in very fine doses of silicic acid.

The Guardian of the Threshold calls to us about all that is in the air:

Where is the air's stimulating force, which awakened you?

He who is motivated in his heart by Christ answers:

My soul breathes the air of heaven—no longer the air of earth, the air of heaven—as long as the spirit surrounds me.

The heart motivated by Lucifer answers:

My soul regards it not in the spirit's rapture.

The heart motivated by Ahriman answers:

My soul absorbs it, that I may learn divine creation.

As Jehovah once created with air, the ahrimanically-minded absorbs the air in order to carry it over to the spiritual world.

The Guardian speaks to the human being:

[The third part of the mantra is written on the blackboard:]

Guardian: Where is the air's stimulating force, which awakened you?

The heart motivated by Christ speaks:

Christ: My soul breathes the air of heaven, as long as the spirit surrounds me.

The heart motivated by Lucifer speaks:

Lucifer: My soul regards it not in the spirit's rapture.

The heart motivated by Ahriman speaks:

Ahriman: My soul absorbs it, that I may learn divine creation.

About fire, the warmth element, the Guardian now speaks the last of his element-words, warning the human not to lose himself in the warmth element as it is experienced in physical earthly existence, but also not to carry it over to the spiritual world.

Beforehand, my dear sisters and brothers, I want to draw your attention to the ascending direction:

“I” the human being says at first.

“My life” the human being says.

“My soul” says the human being.

Now the Guardian speaks warningly about the fire element:

[The fourth part of the mantra is written on the blackboard:]

Guardian: Where is fire's cleansing—or purification—which ignited your I?

Our I lives in what pervades us as warmth, as fire. In these esoteric classes, my dear sisters and brothers, I have already indicated once that his solid element remains in man's unconscious, the liquid element also, although one does feels pleasure at being in the liquid element; when sated or hungry, he also feels the liquid element's attributes. Man already feels the air element in his soul: he finds breathing difficult when the air's composition is not right and with breathing difficulty, angst. Warmth is something in which the human being feels completely immersed. He accompanies his cold and warm states with his whole I. Fire ignites the I.

The heart motivated by Christ answers:

Christ: My I blazes in God's fire, as long as the spirit ignites me.

Man does not need earthly-material warmth when the spirit enflames or ignites: the I blazes in divine fire, not in earthly warmth, not in earthly fire.

But the heart motivated by Lucifer answers:

My I has the force of flame through the spirit's solar power.

In immense pride the I—ensnared by Lucifer—wants to usurp for itself the fire element that comes from the sun, instead of only for the time the spirit sets it ablaze—keep it forever, never give it away.

Lucifer: My I has the force of flame through the spirit's solar power.

The heart motivated by Ahriman answers as though it wants to keep for itself the fire it had captured on earth and carry it over to the spiritual world—to master the spiritual world with the I-fire of the physical world.

Ahriman: My I has its own fire, which ignites through self-enfoldment.

The I wills not to blaze in the spirit, but to develop its own fire.

There is again an ascending direction in the formulation:

The person first says “I”:

I leave

I feel

I will

He then becomes more objective in that what is in him refers to “My”:

My life extinguishes

My life melts

My life solidifies.

He goes more within, what is within makes him objective:

My soul breathes

My soul cares not

My soul absorbs it.

Now he delves deeper into himself. And—note the difference, my dear sisters and brothers—before only “I” was said. Now the “I” becomes objective: “My I”, as though it were another, as if one were to speak of the other as a possession. One is more outside of the physical body—which disposes one to speak so egoistically of the “I”—and speaks:

My I

as of an object. That is the correct speech here.

One gets to know this way of speaking in all its intensity, my dear sisters and brothers, when one speaks with souls who have passed through the gates of death and have been a while in the spiritual world. They never say “I”, but they say “my I”. I have not yet heard a dead person say “I” after death, at most only shortly after death. But after a certain time after death they always say “my I”, for they see the I with the eyes of the gods. They become completely objective. It is characteristic. Therefore, an enunciation from a dead person who has been dead a long time can never be true if he says “I” and not “my I”. So the soul speaks this “my I” here in the fourth place when standing before the Guardian of the Threshold.

That, my dear friends, is the wonderful conversation at the threshold between the Guardian of the Threshold and the human being. It is distinctive. And this distinctiveness is really present when one stands before the Guardian of the Threshold in this situation. When one practices the meditation of this dialog in the right way, as has been described here, one must be able to intuitively hear it. Therefore, we meditate these words correctly, which have come to you here today as mantric words, my dear sisters and brothers, when in a sense we hear ourselves speaking the words after the Guardian has been heard in our souls. Thus we meditate first hearing the Guardian of the Threshold four times as I, II, III and IV, as earth, water, air and fire; then as when we let our own soul answer, but in such a way that first we hear the answer innerly ensouled by Christ, the second answer as the voice of the tempter, the third answer as the voice of the inflated materialistic Ahriman-spirit, which approaches the human being with the desire to carry the mineralized human being into the spiritual world.

Therefore, to end this esoteric lesson today, the way this is to be meditated resounds in us:

Where is the earth's solidity, which supported you?

I leave its foundation, as long as the spirit supports me.

I feel rapture, for from now on I do not need its support.

I will hammer it down even harder with the spirit's power.

Where is the water's formative force which pervaded you?

My life extinguishes it, as long as the spirit forms me.

My life melts it away, so I am released from it.

My life solidifies it, so I transfer it to the spirit-realm.

Where is the air's stimulating force, which awakened you?

My soul breathes the air of heaven, as long as the spirit surrounds me.

My soul regards it not in the spirit's rapture.

My soul absorbs it, that I may learn divine creation.

Where is fire's cleansing, which ignited your I?

My I blazes in God's fire, as long as the spirit ignites me.

My I has the force of flame through the spirit's solar power.

My I has its own fire, which ignites through self-enfolding.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Imagine an animal in which one group of organs is highly developed. This is not possible unless another group is less developed. We see this principle of correlation everywhere in nature. The most diverse things come into consideration, not spatial relationships, for example, as one might object with the elephant. Goethe says it well: “Something can be added to no part without something being taken away from another.”

The entire seven-round formation of the earthly planet has the purpose of bringing the human being to recognize itself in the outside world. We have the task of entering into mutual exchange with the outside world through the senses, mind and other activities.

For this we need a nervous system that absorbs and forms a central point: the spinal cord. We could not feel pleasure and pain, not through interaction with the outside world, through perception alone. Cognition must be added to pleasure and pain. Cognition of the cause of pleasure and pain is impossible without a nervous system. The nervous system did not exist in the lunarian epoch, although pleasure and pain were felt even more finely. The lunarian epoch developed what became the bed of the nervous system: the skeleton. Pain lived dull in the astral consciousness without perception. Nature forms more completely in the lunarian epoch without using the strength of its budget on the nervous system. Now the law of correlation enters here.

The purpose of the earthly epoch is to form the nervous system, and the knowledge of the external world that is thereby imparted is to be carried over to the other epoch. For this purpose of forming the nervous system, the organs must be trained in such a way that they become subservient, aligned with it; education must be rebuilt. Three rounds had to be used to repeat what had happened earlier. Kama must be suppressed in order to develop knowledge and perception. Lungs and heart were developed in such a way that pleasure and pain could be felt in a sophisticated way; subjectively raised to the highest possible level. Now they had to be suppressed to such an extent that perception and knowledge were developed – certain parts were suppressed in order to put the others at the service of the others. These extracted parts formed the mineral kingdom in the first round. Growth and reproduction, the vegetable kingdom, were also more complete in the lunar epoch; these were expelled in the second round. We had this within us earlier, but now we could not cope with it and so we expelled it, leaving it to the elemental spirits.

Then we had to release the animal kingdom and leave it to its own devices in order to be able to form the human kingdom. To develop our nervous strength, we had to work with a different kind of strength on the material that he had in abundance - the abundance of astral life, of pleasure and pain that he was still allowed to experience in the lunar epoch. Man had to externalize some of the lion's rage, for example, so that the power that overcomes it remains behind for other purposes - cosmic guilt! We have withdrawn the taming power in order to form a power capable of cognition; thus we owe our human height to the withdrawal of a power which would otherwise have organized Kama. So that this Kama remains unorganized, it would be nonsense to speak of guilt in the context of the furious struggle for existence among animals. Let us continue the thought in earthly development; the ascetic must give and thereby replace what he withdraws.

The devotional nature of man could therefore not emerge in the lunar epoch - the empires existed in a completely different way - the lowest became the eighth sphere, which is now scattered.

Man now has the spiritual part of the animal that was still in him at that time, so that we do not have to imagine man directly as an animal in the lunar epoch. It was the highest flowering of passion, while now its degeneration appears in the animal. So back then there was no “good and evil for passion; that is only a characteristic of our epoch. Only now can it become evil because a power has been withdrawn from it and it has been pushed down.”

Now reason, which used to be guided, begins to be left to its own devices and sometimes lapses into atavism; in the Atlanteans, development was in their midst. In our fifth race, we have somewhat passed the low point, and relapses occur: an unconscious memory of good and evil that lay beyond consciousness. For example, Nietzsche's philosophy. It was right at a time when there was no philosophizing, but this power to guide passion was – that is why evil appears as a displaced good. It is disharmonious because it is out of place at the moment. Now what had the educational instinct back then is out of place. “Whoever says there is an evil in itself blasphemes God,” says the Bible. ‘Why do you call me perfect, only the Father is perfect.’

So there is no such thing as an evil in itself, evil is only the misplaced good. Only he who takes the power to rule by overcoming can be a ruler.

Emil Bock: There are a number of technical questions regarding the Mass and other services, namely: Should the Mass be spoken freely or read? — What role should freely composed speeches play in the rituals? — At what point should the sermon be in the Mass and what should its length be within the Mass? — Then the question has been raised as to how to arrive at a new selection of sermon texts. What role should congregational singing play? ¹

Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, we will first address the question: can the new mass also be read or is a free recitation possible with it and with the other acts? What needs to be said first is this: I naturally had to present the essence of the mass to you and essentially had to present the texts for the four main sections. In a complete mass, the idea is that certain parts and the whole structure of the mass are constructed in a similar way – as I will show – to the sequence of breviary prayers. So you have the complete text of the mass, varying according to the time of year. However, the main things always remain the same, so that if you have to say Mass, you will have to refer to the Missal, which is of course available, and according to common usage there is actually no other way of saying Mass than reading it. Of course, it is perfectly conceivable to know the Mass by heart, but it is not usually done. There is basically no real reason to think that it would be necessary to either read the mass or recite it by heart. It says here: Is the new mass also to be read or is extemporaneous delivery to be aimed for with it and with the other acts? — Extemporaneous delivery is not necessary for the other acts either; it can be read quite well. It is always very nice when our Waldorf school celebrant delivers the free speech in essence, but I have rarely seen anything in the Roman Catholic Church that was part of the liturgy delivered freely.

The next question: the meaning and use of church music in the mass. - Well, an ordinary silent mass can certainly be performed in such a way that one is only dealing with a kind of reading, but originally a mass is actually associated with the recitative of the text, so that at the real liturgical mass one is dealing with a recitation of the mass according to notes. In the missal, you will therefore also find notes if the mass is to be celebrated in a truly liturgical manner. So the text itself is to be read in a recitative-like manner, but in addition, the mass is to be thought of as thoroughly musical, so that in a truly solemn mass, the motifs can also be set to music and the organ music, as well as other music and singing, should play a role.

Regarding the question of congregational singing, choral singing, antiphony: these things, congregational singing, choral singing, antiphony, should not actually disappear from the action; on the contrary, they should be further developed. Congregational singing as such is essentially designed to increase the sense of community, just as the musical and vocal element should not be underestimated. We are too accustomed to regarding language merely as a means of expressing something. When we speak as we are accustomed to doing today, language is essentially only suitable for expressing abstract or sensual things, but it is not really an instrument for expressing the supersensible. You will notice when I express in my lectures that which is to be expressed directly through language as supersensible, that I then try to shape the language and approach a matter from different sides. Rhythm, musicality in general, and the musical-thematic element in particular, is what actually leads us into the supersensible world. In a poem, the prosaic, literal content is basically not what one should look at if one wants the artistic element. Recitation and declamation — I always say this with reference to our eurythmy performances — is completely misunderstood today. The art of recitation and declamation does not lie in emphasizing the content of the prose, but in bringing in the rhythmic and musical and musical-thematic, and thus basically also in the painting of the sound and so on. We should therefore work towards ensuring that this treatment of language and this elevation of the linguistic to song, to the musical, should not only not disappear, but should be developed more and more.

A participant: Could we not already have a new selection of sermon texts, even if it is only for half a year, that would specifically correspond to the situation from a spiritual science point of view, given to us by Dr. Steiner?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, it is not quite so easy to put together a collection of sermon texts in this way. But apart from that, it does not seem to me to be something desirable in the end, that such prescribed sermon texts are handed out. It would perhaps even be good, I think, if you want to build community in such a way that not only the individual communities build community, but that you build a community of pastors, if you were to swear, by some means to be agreed upon, never to adhere to such prescribed sermon texts. By doing so, you would make a significant contribution to revitalizing what you are actually supposed to do. Because you can be quite sure of this: anyone who needs prescribed sermons, who absolutely must have them, should actually be considered a bad preacher, and anyone who can write their own sermons but still likes to use a sermon text as a leader is forgetting how to preach and becoming lazy. It is really a matter of understanding the sermon in a different way, which is not how I have often seen it. You see, in preaching, it is important to be familiar with the Christian doctrine, but also to have a certain command of symbols and images, in the sense that I mentioned last week, and in this way to actually do the work in such a way that you can draw on what can enliven the sermon. Of course, one cannot expect everyone to speak about everything under inspiration, but one must at least strive for the following kind of preparation for preaching: the point is to have the text as such, but one should actually have found it alive, so that the task is then to address the topic; then the preparation should be a kind of meditation. It should consist in devotion to the subject, not in the elaboration of the individual word, but in devotion to the subject. If we really develop this devotion to the subject, then we grow much more together with the matter than if we try to chisel out the word and the like.

Of course, there are all sorts of gradations. Dr. Rittelmeyer recently told the story of how two preachers once discussed whether they delivered their sermons under inspiration. One said: “Well, I deliver all my sermons under inspiration.” The other said, ‘No, I don't do that anymore; the only time I waited for the Holy Spirit was when He said, ’You're a lazy slut!'

Now, these things are of course different according to human abilities. But it is certainly true that we learn to do our preaching better and better if we do it the way I have just indicated.

The next question: The word of Jesus: Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God. This saying should be considered in connection with another Bible saying, namely, “Be ye good, as your heavenly Father is good.” You see, these two sayings are only really understandable in context, although they seem to contradict each other. Why, no one is good but God alone. But now, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

Now, if you want to grasp the aspiration, the tendency in man that leads to the good – and with regard to the good, of course, the Christ must be the guide – if you want to understand this tendency, this leading to the good, then you must really grasp that the idea that one can be good impairs being good through and through. Nothing detracts so much from real goodness or at least from the pursuit of goodness as the opinion that one can achieve the good. The good is something that man can only aspire to by presenting it in such a way that, to a certain extent, the model of goodness is unattainable for him. While Christ actually wants to awaken the mood of striving for the good with such words, He presents it in such a way that one should not call Him good, but that one should call the origin of the world good as united in God, thus in Father, Son and Spirit, but not Him as He walks around on earth, even if He lives and is inspired by Christ. He rejects the idea of simply calling that which is walking around on earth good, no matter how strongly it is inspired by the spiritual, because only the pursuit of the good actually constitutes the good, and one cannot truly pursue the good if one does not move it away from oneself into an objective.

Therefore, subjective ethics, the autonomy of ethics, subjective autonomous ethics, is never really a real instruction for the good. So let us understand this connection of the two sayings: Man should strive for a perfection as the Father in heaven is, but never imagine that he can be good. Only the Almighty God is good. So it is a practical instruction for the practice of good deeds. You see, this is a very broad subject. It becomes especially clear when people want to have an explanation of what is called repentance for sins in religious practice, especially in Catholic religious practice. Repentance for sins very often has an extremely selfish coloring, and people should be instructed to bring this selfish tendency out of repentance. What does the feeling of repentance often consist of? It consists in wanting to have been a better person than one actually was. This “wanting to be a better person than one actually was” contains something that, in essence, contradicts a morality imbued with Christ. One must, in essence, take responsibility for one's sins and not want to be considered a better person than one really was. Repentance only makes sense if it strives for an unprejudiced recognition of one's imperfections, if one is inclined to reproach oneself for the full severity of one's imperfections, and if this full recognition gives rise to the resolve — but one that leads to action — to abandon these imperfections. Thus, the essence must lie in the soul's work for itself in the future. Repentance is the intention to discard these imperfections through a precise realization of them. In practice, this can be seen as a teaching that arises from such sayings as the one quoted here.

Another question: could we learn something about textual corruption in the New Testament? Yes, I am not sure what is actually meant by this, if not what I have already discussed in various ways. But perhaps the questioner would be so kind as to say what he actually means.

A participant: For me, it was simply a matter of perhaps getting a few more examples from which one can see even more clearly from which source and with which intention this corruption of the text was undertaken.

Rudolf Steiner: I could, of course, look for specific examples. In general, I would just like to say this: I do not think that much can be gained by looking for intentions behind the corruption of the text. The corruption of the text has basically come about through a more or less self-evident development of humanity. Over time, the fully substantive, most ideal, spiritual substances for the words are simply lost, and the things that can still be fully felt in one generation are basically already pushed towards the words in the next generation. This is how corruptions arise, and they are the most important ones. You can still study this today. You see, today, when we do not have such, I would like to say, inwardly living text in the individual branches of science, we notice exactly the same thing in some of them, if we take a little what in any science tends towards a world view, as was the case with Haeckel, in whom the scientific tends towards a world view; that satisfied him in the highest sense. Even a student of Haeckel, just any student, who simply takes over the subject, who reads what Haeckel himself observed, can no longer have the same thing in the words and can no longer find satisfaction in the world view. And then there are the many descriptions that are given today of embryology, from the first germ cell back to the first. People believe, of course, that by reading about things they can form some idea of them, but very few of those who have written books have had any kind of direct experience of what they are describing; they have only seen pictures. For example, there are very few specimens of the earliest stages of the human germ cell, and even fewer people have been able to see them. Producing such a specimen is, of course, a very difficult matter.

So we can observe the removal of the word from the thing in external science when it is to become a world view; and it is actually this removal of the word from the thing that essentially matters. I would like to say that this is precisely the historical aspect of text corruption. It is the case, for example, that almost all of the oriental texts cannot be used, as can the biblical text if it is taken as we usually have it. It is good to occasionally ask ourselves how what we have today as a text should actually force us to search for a living text. Of course, it will take a lot of work and effort to create the text of the Gospels in such a way that it can apply to the present day. For you, it is enough to first understand that the search for the text is absolutely necessary, and I think that with what I have presented here, you will often come to understand something like this earlier, and if you take the whole of anthroposophy, you will perhaps find a kind of key to understanding in anthroposophy, at least to begin with. Take, for example, such a sentence – I will pick out something, it is not easy, without preparation, to find a characteristic example – take the eighth verse of the seventh chapter of Paul's Letter to the Romans – you of course know the context: 'Sin, seizing the opportunity, aroused through the commandment all kinds of covetous desires in me, for without the law sin is dead.'

Now, I do believe that many people think they understand such a statement without further ado. But those who sense something quite profound in such a statement and believe that one really has to go deeper than the interpretation that is often given in a very superficial sense are better off. Because people look at you very strangely when you tell them that something like this has to be taken literally. And the literal interpretation of such a sentence always has a very definite consequence, my dear friends. It has the consequence that normal people today — anthroposophists are not considered normal, but rather crazy — think of you as anarchistic. It is then difficult to make them understand that they must also consider the Apostle Paul an anarchist, because the fact is that the sentence says nothing less than: Sin will not be present if, for example, you abolish state laws. Abolish all state laws, and then there can be no sin. Where there are no state laws, there is no sin. — Let us say, for example, in a flock of sheep, we have no laws, and there is no sin. So when we look after a herd of sheep or a herd of cows, when we look after those creatures that live together in nature simply out of instinct, without intellectually formulated laws being present, then we cannot speak of sin. Sin arises, that is, it shows itself, reveals itself, at the same moment that the law is given, and sin is only the other pole of the law. Sin is thus revealed through the law. But it is not merely a one-sided effect, but rather there is a reciprocal effect; the law produces sin in that human nature works against it. And whereas the animal has no laws, and so can indeed abandon itself to instinct, man's actions are inconceivable as sinful if the law is there. Only when instinctive life is permeated by the power of Christ, which stands as far above nature as instinct stands below nature, is there again that relationship which needs no law. So take this here (see drawing on the board) as the level of the law, any law; that which lies below it in terms of instinct has no law. Where there is law, there is sin. Sin absolutely accompanies the law; but that which lies so far above it is what arises in us as a spiritual-soul impulse through the Christ. There we stand above the law and hold the Christ within us. Then we may dispense with the law. To dispense with the law altogether — that is what people consider to be true anarchism.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

But that is exactly what the Apostle Paul meant. He meant that the law is overcome by the body of Christ. I must confess that an example such as this makes it particularly clear to me that today the actual living aspect of Christ's activity is not even considered, because otherwise one would see with full seriousness that the Christ actually had to present the law as that which is to be gradually overcome by him. Not abolished, but overcome, should be the law that is accompanied by sin. It would not be enough just to say what I have just said, but we must go further. We must also realize that the Apostle Paul spoke from a consciousness that also contained the following: He asks himself: Is the law — which can only ever be grasped in abstractions — enough? Is the law enough to banish sin? No, it is not enough to banish sin. Socrates might have believed that the doctrine of virtue was enough, but it is not enough to know what is right; rather, there must be a Christ-power present that counteracts sin, whereas the law can do nothing but make sin recognizable. It makes no sense whatsoever to think of the law in any other way than that it makes sin recognizable. This verse 8 should be translated as I always try to translate it: The tendency to sin was brought about by the legal prohibition, because where there is no law, sin as such cannot be alive. If only the law—the 13th verse should read—if only the law existed about what is good, I would still fall prey to moral death, because only through the law should sin become recognizable. And so on.

Another example: Now then, my brothers, by living in Christ, we are not obliged to the flesh, for he who lives in the flesh alone must perish. But if you receive the Spirit within you and overcome the flesh, you may live, for all who bear the living Spirit within them are destined to be children of the Godhead.

Of course, someone can come today and say that such a translation would be tendentious. But in this sense, one must strive to find the original text of the Gospel, and one will see that there is still truly great in it. But the rule of the spiritual-scientific method is that one must also really produce the text and also allow that to flow into the interpretation, which one can gain by producing the original text.

Now, there is still the question here: The Saints and the Belief in Saints, Invocation of Spiritual Entities. — It is obviously meant to convey the significance of invoking spiritual entities. Now, the fact is that, according to modern consciousness, one cannot, of course, limit oneself to saints established by some church, without one's own conviction leading one to do so. One can therefore only speak in relation to those Christian ancestors whose particular personal value one has recognized. As far as these are concerned, one cannot but say that leaning towards them in order to work in the sense of their power does indeed have a certain meaning, that it gives strength. It must not go so far as to somehow impair the basic feelings one has towards the Divine, towards the Christ, through these things. In the Catholic Church, the veneration of saints often takes on the character of idolatry. This is what must naturally be avoided.

Now comes the question of the immaculate conception of Mary. — Here it is really a matter of truly understanding the Gospel in relation to these things. Let us first take the Gospel of Matthew: “Now the birth of Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together in the flesh, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. But Joseph, her lover, that is, her beloved, who was a righteous man and did not want to accuse her of evil, decided to treat the whole matter as a secret.

This is more or less what was translated into the sentences that are usually found at this point today. So it actually means: Joseph, who understood how to live in the sense of righteousness – you could also say – wanted to treat the whole thing as a mystery. As he was visualizing this in his mind, the image of an angel appeared to him, and the angel said to him: Joseph, son of David, consider Mary your wife, for what is happening is happening through the determination of power in the sense of the Holy Spirit. Call the son she will bear Jesus, for it will be he who will take away the burden of sin from men.

Of course I have to tell you the truth about such things, because there is no other way, but some of you may be shocked by what has to be said as the truth in this case. You know that I have described the time on Earth that lies roughly behind the year 8000. What is concluded in today's geology through analogies and all sorts of things is pure nonsense compared to reality. We have received many fairy tales, but the strongest fairy tales are the things that geologists tell about the Alluvial, Devonian, Tertiary, Silurian, and so on; especially when they get into calculating numbers, then things are certainly interesting, but somehow a realistic thinking is not in it at all. It is sometimes downright funny how that true science deals with such things. For example, there are physicists today who calculate what the earth will be like in a million years, if we imagine certain physical analogies. They then describe, for example, how egg white, if spread on a wall, will glow wonderfully. But on an earth where egg white glows so wonderfully, humans will no longer be able to exist, everything would be extinct. I might say, people always take isolated little facts and then paint the rest of the picture around them. But things are not really like that. When they are seen in the light of spiritual science, they look quite different.

If we go back further than 8000 years, we come to a certain catastrophe on Earth, which I always call the Atlantean catastrophe. Before this catastrophe, the distribution of land and water was essentially different in the areas that we now call the areas of Western civilization. Where the waves of the Atlantic Ocean are today, Atlantis was above. Much of present-day Europe was sea and alluvial land, as was still the case with a large part of America. We are dealing here with the old Atlantis, but in this old Atlantis the physical conditions of life on earth were essentially different from what they were later, after this catastrophe had passed. The conditions were such that, for example, the air was always present with a certain greater intensity in a watery state; man could not have lived there with a substance with which he lives today. In relatively recent times man was still endowed with a substance very similar to the present-day fish substance. And when we come more to the beginning of Atlantis or even to the middle, man was such that he could not be seen better with physical eyes than the transparent jellyfish of the sea. Man was therefore relatively quite different from how he is presented by those who today believe they are pursuing exact science. But he was also different in soul. You know that when spiritual science traces development back, it must go back to about the eighth century BC. That is around the time of the founding of Rome. Until then, we can follow the age in which the intellectual soul or soul of mind was developed. But there was a time when the human soul was very different. The remains of it are still present in a few writings, but these are little understood because people no longer understand this remarkable development of the sentient soul, which was much more directed towards an understanding of the extra-sensory than of the sensory present on earth. If we go back to after the fifth millennium, we come to the time when a culture prevailed that can no longer be compared to today's at all - in my “Occult Science” I called it the ancient Persian culture - and we then come back to the ancient Indian culture and with this to the eighth millennium BC. There we approach the Atlantean catastrophe and then return to Atlantean civilization. However, the use of this word is particularly unusual, because the development of the soul was still a completely, completely different one. For example, it is quite true of ancient Atlantis that, in the case of procreation, there could never have been any awareness of the act in humans, that is, in the human ancestors. Procreation had always been carried out in complete unconsciousness; at most, in the later days of Atlantis, what had happened began to be experienced in the imagination, but this was essentially subjectively colored. But all these things are preserved in the image atavistically, only one must not grasp them roughly, but one must be clear about the fact that these things must be grasped extremely delicately. So the one who wrote the Gospel of Matthew rejected the idea that at that time feelings of procreation had somehow flowed into Mary, and he also rejected the idea that they were present in Joseph. Those who do not know that such things were a natural possibility until the fourth century of the Christian era and that it only stopped then cannot understand this matter even in its outward meaning. So we are dealing with a pure, immaculate procreation because it was unconscious. This is not a means of providing information, but, as I said before, you may or may not be shocked by it, but that is just the way it is. In Atlantis, it was taken for granted that one never spoke otherwise than that the children of men were sent by the gods, and that still extends into the post-Atlantean period and lives on in legends and myths. I advise you to study the Hertha legend in all its profound significance. There is something tremendously significant about the way in which this Hertha saga is connected with the whole spiritual development of humanity in this direction. It is shown how Hertha appears at a certain time of year, [...]² But the slaves who serve her are immediately thrown into the sea, must be killed. The man became aware of the act of procreation earlier than the woman, and those who had become aware of it in this age – this is hinted at in this saga – even had to be killed. These things must be handled with great delicacy; one must not hint at them with crude concepts. One must know something about the development of mankind, then one will be far removed from belferting like Haeckel, who says that the immaculate conception, which is asserted in the Gospel, is an impudent mockery of human reason. Human reason as such has nothing to do with the immaculate conception; according to what man justifiably calls human reason, the immaculate conception could of course not exist in the grossest sense. Yes, of course, people talk about it today as if it were a mystery, even though the words are by no means appropriate: Joseph, who was a righteous man, decided to treat the whole matter as a mystery. — No consideration is given to what led to this sentence, namely that Joseph wanted to direct the whole matter, which has happened, precisely into the mystery, that is, into what can only be perceived in the spirit, thus into what can be perceived in innocence; he really wanted to make a mystery out of it.

The concept of a miracle, as it is often understood today, is not mentioned at all in the Gospels. Rather, the Gospels are concerned with a time when the effect of soul on soul and thus from body to body was much more intense than it is today, and when, let us say, miracles are mentioned, we must understand that this is said entirely from the factual world of the time. These are the things that we must take into account when considering the Gospels. In my cycles on the Gospels, you will find numerous examples of how the concept of a miracle, as understood today, is not present in the Gospels at all. What is a miracle, as it is understood today? I have tried to reveal the resurrection of Lazarus in my book 'Christianity as a Mystical Fact'. If you read there how the so-called miracle of Lazarus is revealed, you will find that it is only possible to penetrate the mystery through supersensible cognition, but that one must simply penetrate the mystery through it.

Miracles are — I do not say this out of some kind of prejudice, but I can say this from the real knowledge of the facts — miracles are what arise in the consciousness of modern man. A miracle is a process that today's man no longer understands, but that could have taken place in the course of human development as a process. It is only because things are no longer understood that they are thought to be miracles. On the one hand, people today help themselves by thinking of things as miracles, but on the other hand, they help themselves by extending what has taken place over the course of a few millennia to 20 million years, whereby the funny thing is that with respect to geological periods, one [researcher] differs from the other by the trivial fact that one calculates some period as being 20 million years in the past, while the other calculates it as being 200 million years in the past. It is only that they are not noticed because one is usually taught only from one side. If you read about some geological period, Devonian or Alluvium, and according to some teaching 20 million years are claimed for their length, then you do not immediately read another geological writer, but you may read it only after ten years, and when he then writes that this geological period dates back 200 million years, then you have long forgotten the other. These things abound in humanity, and today, in all seriousness, everything should be paid attention to. And so, when faced with a mystery such as the Immaculate Conception, it is necessary to understand things in the right way. I have already told you that in addition to the actual dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, [the Catholic Church has also] established [the dogma of] the Immaculate Conception of St. Anne, and of course this should go further back, but that is not possible; I have already spoken about this.

Perhaps we can discuss one or two more questions, because some of you are leaving, so that we cover as much as possible. [Here is the question from Pastor Neuhaus:] The Roman concept of transubstantiation is different from that in Dr. Steiner's new mass formula. Would you (to Pastor Neuhaus) perhaps be so kind as to comment personally.

Constantin Neuhaus: The consecration, the transubstantiation formula, which is in your mass formula, is: Receive with the bread my body, receive with the wine my blood. And in my opinion, these words can only be understood in the sense of Lutheran theory, that the body and blood are expressed symbolically, while the Roman Catholic Church assumes actual transubstantiation, the disappearance of the substance of the bread, and in return the substance of the body of Christ is given. I would ask for a little clarification, but perhaps the question is only interesting for Catholics.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, I don't know why you have concluded from the formula I gave this morning that the matter is as you assume.

Constantin Neuhaus: I think that yesterday, when you said mass, the actual consecration formula was the following: Receive my body with the bread. Now Thomas Aquinas did expound this doctrine, that the substances do change in transubstantiation. That has also become part of the people's consciousness. So according to the teaching of Thomas Aquinas, there is no bread at all, only the accidents, only the form of bread... In your mass it says: Receive my body with the bread.

Rudolf Steiner: Is your question based on the fact that I used the expression “with the bread my body”, “with the wine my blood”?

It is, of course, necessary to bear in mind that linguistic usage itself determines what needs to be said. It is not the case that when a Roman Catholic theologian wants to explain transubstantiation philosophically, he needs to explain that the accident is not inextricably linked to the substance. Therefore, you will find in the approved Catholic philosophies that when the concepts of substance and accident are discussed, the corresponding chapter concludes by stating that it is indeed possible to connect the concept of accident with the fact that substance changes and becomes a different substance through the accident. That is the case there. So it is only necessary to understand the matter philosophically for those who want to find their way into the Catholic version. I have expressly pointed out that I have met Catholic priests who have taken everything possible back to Aristotle to help them to understand transubstantiation at all as something conceivable.

Now, you have seen how I meant today how necessary it is to formulate the words in such a way that one can grasp the correct meaning with the sentence. It is something else to simply formulate the sentence “This is my body” or “Receive with the bread my body”. In fact, there is actually no difference, but for today's people it is more vivid to feel the matter if one does not give them direct preparatory instruction in the way that it is actually only treated in the approved Catholic philosophies in the discussions about substance and accident. Perhaps such arguments are also present among the Old Catholics, but in any case they are modeled on the Roman Catholic scholastic philosophies.

If you simply stipulate: This is my body – hoc est corpus mei – then you can cause all the misunderstandings that you could possibly encounter. People don't understand that. But let me present the following image: Let us say I have a friend; I received a note from this friend saying that he had had a son, but due to some obstacles I was unable to see him for three or four years, until the boy could already walk. Now my friend brings him to me, since the opportunity has arisen, and as he enters through the door he says: “Take, I show you my son” or ‘Receive this, this is my son.’

With these words, ‘with what I bring you I show you my son,’ a perfectly possible figure of speech is given to modern man, for I really show him the body when I say: Receive with the bread my body. It is not possible to express it in any other way [that the body is received] than in connection with the bread, not the substance of the body, of course, but that which in the bread passes over into the communicant. It is not a matter here of discussing the concept, but merely of whether the formulation is useful. This formulation was chosen simply to make it clear to today's people — who do not want to get involved in the abstraction that the accident can separate from the substance — with the formula: If I show him something and he sees bread on the outside, then that is not ordinary bread, but it is the body of Christ. That should already be in the formula. This, of course, eliminates the second part of your question: “What is the sacrificial character of the Mass according to Dr. Steiner?” — That is something, as I said, that I wanted to avoid with my formula. Merely this phenomenon, which I have characterized, that the host acquires an aura, that the transformation also becomes outwardly visible, I wanted to express that in some formula that can be grasped more vividly. But I can hardly imagine that the Lutheran interpretation could be heard in this and that it could be taken as the Lutheran view. What must be avoided, of course, is the kind of nonsense that prevails there. I ask you, what does the communicant of today basically imagine, if he has not studied scholasticism, what is actually at the root of it? What does the person imagine today, who communicates as a Catholic or receives the communication, that transubstantiation takes place in the sacrifice of the Mass? What does he really imagine? He may imagine many things. But what does he really imagine?

Constantin Neuhaus: I am of the opinion that the well-informed Catholic has a certain clarity. Because in Catholicism, this point is emphasized to such an extent that the Catholic says to himself: when I communicate, I receive not only the smell and taste of the bread, but also the essence of Christ. He believes that he understands something about communion, and it is remarkable that even primary school children struggle with the concept of transubstantiation. For example, I have to teach in a totally Protestant area, and I experienced just when I had to give communion lessons and was very much concerned with the fact that this point of accident and substance has already been somewhat understood even by children.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, to a certain extent that is true, certainly. I think it is true that these things are right, and it lives in Catholicism. But can one really say that what lives in this way, for example when it is emphasized in Catholicism, leads to a possible clear conception? I have actually hardly found such clear ideas, and I have met theologians with great capacities and discussed a lot with them. I admit that the discussions are very lively, but the great liveliness stops when you enter the theological faculty. As long as you are a second-year student, you admit that you can have a say without getting close to the matter with a real idea. But then, when they enter the theological faculty, people usually become quieter, and I have met an extraordinary number of those who have resigned themselves to not understanding the subject at all. Isn't it true that it is relatively easy to discuss with someone who is not very far along in the formation of such concepts, but with the trained theologians, the discussion will take on a completely different form. I must confess that a conversation I had with one of the most important theologians at the Vienna Theological Faculty about the nature of Christ, which is connected with everything that led up to it, will remain significant to me for a long time. He simply said when I tried to develop my idea of Christ: “Now we come to a point where I need concepts that I am forbidden to think.”

Yes, that is what must be brought into the formulation of the matter and what underlies it: that one takes the process of transubstantiation as a real one, that something does indeed happen through transubstantiation; then it is something different from merely getting stuck in the formalities. I have, after all, characterized in detail what happens there. I have characterized how the process that takes place there is the outer process for an inner developmental process, how it is, so to speak, the polar opposite of it. So I have tried to characterize the matter from the real, and I had to do that because I believe that the concepts I have given here cannot actually be encompassed in any way by the traditional concepts. But that will be the case if a religious renewal is based on anthroposophy. Then it is impossible that one can be required, for example, by anthroposophy itself to lean towards a Catholic or a Protestant or any other confession, but one must just recognize the matter.

Constantin Neuhaus: All this makes a lot of sense to me and I personally like it, because I don't really understand the term transubstantiation either. But the term transubstantiation implies that something is transubstantiated, and I think that what is at issue then is that the substances actually change.

Rudolf Steiner: Because of the use of the word transubstantiation? It is quite right that the word transubstantiation is used, of course, in reference to the word that was mainly used in the tradition of the Mass. It is just a common word that has been taken historically [from tradition]. But I believe that I mainly used the word when I wanted to approach the historical tradition of the Mass in the sense of Catholicism. I believe that I have said “conversion” when I meant the real process. When I myself developed these things, I believe that I used the word “conversion”. But if I say, for example, “I was in a church in Italy and saw the aura after transubstantiation,” then I can of course say that, because the expression “transubstantiation” applies there. But I would never want to force it, because it is quite natural that the expression can be used to characterize a situation. I believe that for those who have been sitting here, the term “transubstantiation” is something perfectly common.

Constantin Neuhaus: Is the sentence in 1 Corinthians 11:30, “Therefore many of you are weak and sickly, and many sleep,” connected with illness and healing through Communion?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, it is not true that today the two concepts of sin and illness, of sanctification and healing, are very far apart because we have an abyss between the moral world order and the physical world order. But it is absolutely the case that these concepts actually belong together, so that one must say that sin is, in physical terms, quite literally illness, and the healing process is a process that takes place within the soul. At most, one could perhaps take offense at the fact that one process looks more like an objective one and the other more like a subjective one.

Constantin Neuhaus: I remember that it is said: Receive the body of the Lord, which preserves you from sickness of body and soul. There is a connection with the healing of the soul through Communion. Now I wanted to point out the passage in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 28: “But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.” Now it continues: “For he who eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he does not discern the Lord's body from common food. For this reason many are sickly among you, and many sleep.” Is there also a connection here?

Rudolf Steiner: I have already hinted at this. I once said: One must, of course, be aware that someone who, let us say, comes from a weak constitution to a very healthy area, which the robust person experiences as a delight, may be ruined by this healthy area. That means that the unprepared person, that is, the one who does not approach healing in the right way, is, well, I would say, destroyed, is ruined by being given something as a cure that can only help him when he can experience it in the right way. That is it. Basically, there is only a slight difference between illness and death. We are constantly dying. We begin to die the moment we are born, and the moment of dying, of actually dying – what one calls dying – is really nothing more than, I would say, the integral of all the differentials of dying between birth and death. We collect all the individual deaths in every moment of our lives. That is what must be considered right away, that in such a sentence “therefore many are sick among you and a part have fallen asleep” the same cause is present, depending on one's state. Because dying is only quantitatively different from being sick. We experience as illness that which is partial dying, if these are partial dying processes that intervene only in such a way that we can overcome them. We experience them as death if we cannot overcome them.

• 1. Editor's note: The questions were apparently submitted to Rudolf Steiner in writing, because he reads them again in the course of the following remarks.
• 2. The transcript contains a gap here. For more on the Hertha saga, see Rudolf Steiner's lecture of December 21, 1916 in the volume “Zeitgeschichtliche Betrachtungen” 1. Teil, GA 173.

[ 1 ] Something like A veil of secrecy conceals the manner whereby spiritual needs were satisfied for those within the older civilizations who sought a deeper religious and cognitive life than was offered by the religions of the people. We are led into the obscurity of enigmatic cults when we inquire into the satisfaction of these needs. Each individual who finds such satisfaction withdraws himself for some time from our observation. We see that the religion of the people cannot give him what his heart seeks. He acknowledges the gods, but he knows that in the ordinary conceptions of the gods the great enigmas of existence are not disclosed. He seeks a wisdom which is carefully guarded by a community of priest-sages. He seeks refuge in this community for his striving soul. If the sages find him mature they lead him step by step to higher insight, in a manner hidden from the eyes of those outside. What happens to him now is concealed from the uninitiated. For a time he appears to be entirely removed from the physical world. He appears to be transported into a secret world. And when he is returned to the light of day a different, entirely transformed personality stands before us. This personality cannot find words sufficiently sublime to express how significant his experiences were for him. He appears to himself as though he had gone through death and awakened to a new and higher life, not merely figuratively, but in highest reality. And it is clear to him that no one can rightly understand his words who has not had the same experience.

[ 2 ] Thus it was with those persons who through the Mysteries were initiated into that secret wisdom, withheld from the people, and which shed light upon the highest questions. This “secret” religion of the elect existed side by side with the religion of the people. So far as history is concerned, its source fades into the obscurity where the origin of peoples is lost. We find this “secret” religion everywhere among ancient peoples insofar as we can gain insight concerning them. The sages of these peoples speak of the Mysteries with the greatest reverence. What was concealed in them? And what did they reveal to one who was initiated into them?

[ 3 ] The enigma becomes still more puzzling when we realize that at the same time the ancients regarded the Mysteries as something dangerous. The way leading to the secrets of existence went through a world of terrors. And woe to him who tried to reach them unworthily. There was no greater crime than the “betrayal” of these secrets to the uninitiated. The “traitor” was punished with death and confiscation of property. We know that the poet Aeschylus was accused of having brought something from the Mysteries to the stage. He was able to escape death only by fleeing to the altar of Dionysus and producing legal evidence that he was not an initiate.²

[ 4 ] What the ancients say about these secrets is rich in meaning and can be variously interpreted. The initiate is convinced that it is sinful to say what he knows and also that it is sinful for the uninitiated to hear it. Plutarch speaks of the terror of those about to be initiated, comparing their state of mind to a preparation for death. Initiation had to be preceded by a special mode of life. This aimed at bringing sensuality under the control of the spirit. Fasting, solitary life, mortification and certain exercises of the soul served this purpose. The things to which man clings in ordinary life were to lose all value for him. The whole course of his experience and feeling had to take a different direction. There can be no doubt about the meaning of such exercises and tests. The wisdom to be offered to the neophyte could produce the right effect upon his soul only if he had previously changed his lower world of experience. He was inducted into the life of the spirit. He was to behold a higher world. He could find no relationship to this world without previous exercises and tests. Everything depended just on this relationship. Whoever wishes to understand these things correctly must have known by experience the intimate facts of the life of cognition. He must know by experience that two widely divergent relationships are possible in relation to what is offered by the highest cognition. The world surrounding man is his real world at first. He feels, hears and sees its processes. Because he perceives them with his senses he calls them real and thinks about them in order to gain insight into their connections. On the other hand, what rises in his soul is not real to him at first in the same sense. It is “mere” thoughts and ideas. At most, he sees in them pictures of material reality. They themselves have no reality. One cannot touch them; one cannot hear nor see them.

[ 5 ] Another relationship to the world exists. A person who clings at all costs to the kind of reality described above, will hardly grasp it. It enters the lives of certain people at a certain moment. Their whole relationship to the world is reversed. They call truly real the images which arise in the spiritual life of their soul. They assign only a lower form of reality to what the senses hear, touch and see. They know they cannot prove what they say. They know they can only recount their new experiences. And they know that in recounting them to others they are in the position of a man who can see and who imparts his visual impressions to one born blind. They undertake the communication of their inner experiences, trusting that they are surrounded by others, who, although their spiritual eye is still closed, have a logical understanding which can be strengthened through the power of what they hear. They believe in humanity and wish to open spiritual eyes. They can only offer the fruits their spirit itself has gathered; whether another sees the fruits depends upon whether he has comprehension for what is seen by a spiritual eye.^c4 Something existing in man at first prevents him from seeing with the eyes of the spirit. First of all he is not here for this purpose. He is what his senses represent him to be, and his intellect is only the interpreter and judge of his senses. These senses would fulfill their mission badly if they did not insist upon the truth and infallibility of their evidence. From its own point of view, an eye must uphold the absolute reality of its perceptions, otherwise it would be a bad eye. The eye is quite right, so far as it goes. It is not deprived of its rights by the spiritual eye. This spiritual eye allows us to see what the material eye sees, but in a higher light. Nothing the material eye sees is denied. But a new radiance, hitherto unseen, shines from it. Then we know that what we first saw was but a lower reality. We see this still, but it is immersed in something higher, in the spirit. Now it is a question of whether we experience and feel what we see. Whoever is able to bring living experience and feeling to the material world only, will regard the higher world as a Fata Morgana or as “mere” phantasy-images. His feelings are directed entirely toward the material world. When he tries to grasp spirit images, he seizes emptiness. When he gropes after them, they withdraw from him. They are “mere” thoughts. He thinks them; he does not live in them. They are pictures, less real to him than fleeting dreams. Compared with his reality they are like images made of froth which vanish as they encounter the massive, solidly-built reality of which his senses tell him. It is a different matter for the person whose experience and feelings with regard to reality have changed. For him that reality has lost its absolute stability, its unquestioned value. His senses and his feelings need not become blunted. But they begin to doubt their absolute authority; they leave space for something else. The world of the spirit begins to animate this space.

[ 6 ] At this point a dreadful possibility exists. A man may lose his experience and feeling of direct reality without finding any new reality opening before him. He is then suspended in a void. He seems to himself dead. The old values have disappeared and no new ones have taken their place. The world and man no longer exist for him. This is by no means a mere possibility. At some time or other it happens to everyone who wishes to attain higher cognition. He reaches a point where to him the spirit interprets all life as death. Then he is no longer in the world. He is beneath the world—in the nether world. He accomplishes the—journey to Hades. It is well for him if he is not submerged. It is well for him if a new world opens before him. Either he disappears, or is confronted by a new self. In the latter case a new sun and a new earth appear to him. Out of spiritual fire the whole world has been reborn for him.

[ 7 ] Thus the initiates describe what happened to them through the Mysteries. Menippus relates that he journeyed to Babylon in order to be taken to Hades and brought back again by the successors of Zoroaster. He says that on his travels he swam across the great water and that he passed through fire and ice. We hear that the mystics were terrified by a drawn sword and that “blood flowed.” We understand such sayings when we know the point of transition from lower to higher cognition. We ourselves have felt how all solid matter, all the material world, has dissolved into water; we have lost the ground from beneath our feet. Everything we had previously experienced as living has been killed. The spirit has passed through material life as a sword pierces a warm body; we have seen the blood of sensuality flow.

[ 8 ] But a new life has appeared. We have climbed up from the nether world. The orator Aristides relates, “I thought I touched the god and felt him draw near, and I was then between waking and sleeping. My spirit was so light that one who is not ‘initiated’ cannot speak of it nor understand it.” This new existence is not subject to the laws of lower life. Growth and decay do not affect it. Much may be said about the eternal, but one's words will be “but sound and smoke,”³ who does not speak of the same thing as those who speak of it after the journey to Hades. The initiates have a new conception of life and death. Now for the first time they are entitled to speak about immortality. They know that whoever speaks of immortality without the knowledge gained through initiation does not understand it. The uninitiated attribute immortality only to something which is subject to the laws of growth and decay. The mystics did not desire to gain the mere conviction that the kernel of life is immortal. In their view, such a conviction would be worthless. This is because they believed the non-mystic simply does not have the eternal living within him. If he were to speak of the eternal, he would speak of nothing. The mystics seek the eternal itself. They must first awaken the eternal within themselves; then they can speak of it. Therefore Plato's severe saying has full reality for them: Whoever is not initiated is submerged in the mire,^c5 and he alone enters eternity who has experienced mystical life. Only in this way can the words in the fragment from Sophocles be understood:

“Thrice happy they, who, having seen these rites,
Then pass to Hades: there to these alone
Is granted life, all others evil find.¹

[ 9 ] Are not dangers described in speaking of the Mysteries? Is it not robbing men of happiness, of the most valuable part of life, to lead them to the gate of the nether world? Terrible is the responsibility incurred by such an act. And yet, may we shirk this responsibility? These were the questions the initiate had to ask himself. In his opinion his knowledge was to the soul of the people as light is to darkness. But in this darkness dwells innocent happiness. The mystics were of the opinion that this happiness should not be interfered with wantonly. For what would have happened in the first place had the mystic “betrayed” his secret? He would have spoken words, nothing but words. Nothing at all would have happened through the experiences and feelings, which should have evoked the spirit from these words. For this, preparation, exercises, tests and the complete change of sense-experience would have been necessary. Without these, the hearer would have been flung into emptiness, into nothingness. He would have been deprived of what gave him happiness without being able to receive anything in exchange. It might be said that one could not have taken anything from him. For certainly mere words could not change his life of experience. He could only have experienced reality through the objects of his senses. One could have given him nothing but a dreadful, life-destroying apprehension. This could be regarded only as a crime.^c6 The above is no longer fully valid today for the acquisition of spiritual cognition. The latter can be understood conceptually because modern man has a capacity to form concepts which the ancients lacked. Today people can be found who have cognition of the spiritual world through their own experience; they can be confronted by others who comprehend these experiences conceptually. Such a capacity for forming concepts was lacking in the ancients.

Ancient Mystery wisdom is like a hothouse plant which must be cherished and cared for in seclusion. To bring it into the atmosphere of everyday conceptions is to put it in an element in which it cannot flourish. It withers away to nothing before the caustic verdict of modern science and logic. Let us therefore divest ourselves for a time of all the education we have received through the microscope, telescope and the ways of thought derived from natural science; let us purify our hands which have become clumsy and have been too busy dissecting and experimenting, so that we may enter the pure temple of the Mysteries. For this a truly unprejudiced mind is necessary.

[ 10 ] For the mystic, everything depends primarily upon the frame of mind in which he approaches what he feels to be the highest, the answers to the enigmas of existence. Particularly in our time, when only things pertaining to physical science are recognized as deserving cognition, it is difficult to believe that for the highest things, everything depends on a frame of mind. Cognition thereby becomes an intimate concern of each personality. For the mystic, however, it is so. Tell someone the solution of the world-enigma! Hand it to him ready-made! The mystic will consider it nothing but empty sound if the individual does not confront this solution in the right manner. The solution is nothing in itself; it disintegrates if it does not kindle in his feeling the particular fire which is essential. Let a divine being approach you! It may be nothing or everything. Nothing, if you meet it in the frame of mind in which you confront everyday things. Everything, if you are prepared and attuned to it. What it is in itself is a matter which does not concern you; the point is whether it leaves you as you were or makes a different man of you. But this depends solely on you. You must have been prepared by the education and development of the most intimate forces of your personality so that what the divine is able to evoke may be kindled and released in you. What is brought to you depends upon the reception you prepare for it. Plutarch has given an account of this education; he has spoken of the greeting the mystic offers the divine being who approaches him: “For the god addresses each one of us as we approach him here with the words ‘Know Thyself,’ as a form of welcome, which certainly is in no wise of less import than ‘Hail;’ and we in turn reply to him ‘Thou art,’ as rendering unto him a form of address which is truthful, free from deception and the only one befitting him alone, the assertion of Being. The fact is that we really have no share in Being, but everything of a mortal nature is at some stage between coming into existence and passing away, and presents only a dim and uncertain semblance and appearance of itself; and if you apply the whole force of your mind in your desire to apprehend it, it is like unto the violent grasping of water, which, by squeezing and compression, loses the handful enclosed, as it spurts through the fingers; even so Reason, pursuing the exceedingly clear appearance of every one of those things that are susceptible to modification and change, is baffled by the one aspect of its coming into being, and by the other of its passing away; and thus it is unable to apprehend a single thing that is abiding or really existent. ‘It is impossible to step twice in the same river’ are the words of Heraclitus, nor is it possible to lay hold twice of any mortal substance in a permanent state; by the suddenness and swiftness of the change in it there ‘comes dispersion and, at another time, a gathering together;’ or, rather, not at another time nor later, but at the same instant it both settles into its place and forsakes its place; ‘it is coming and going.’ Wherefore that which is born of it never attains unto being because of the unceasing and unstaying process of generation, which, ever bringing change, produces from the seed an embryo, then a babe, then a child and in due course a boy, a young man, a mature man, an elderly man, an old man, causing the first generations and ages to pass away by those which succeed them. But we have a ridiculous fear of one death, we who have already died so many deaths, and still are dying! For not only is it true, as Heraclitus used to say, that the death of fire is birth for air, and the death of air is birth for water, but the case is even more clearly to be seen in our own selves: the man in his prime passes away when the old man comes into existence, the young man passes away into the man in his prime, the child into the young man, and the babe into the child. Dead is the man of yesterday, for he is passed into the man of to-day; and the man of to-day is dying as he passes into the man of to-morrow. Nobody remains one person, nor is one person; but we become many persons, even as matter is drawn about some one semblance and common mold with imperceptible movement. Else how is it that, if we remain the same persons, we take delight in some things now, whereas earlier we took delight in different things; that we love or hate opposite things, and so too with our admirations and our disapprovals, and that we use other words and feel other emotions and have no longer the same personal appearance, the same external form, nor the same purposes in mind? For without change it is not reasonable that a person should have different experiences and emotions; and if he changes, he is not the same person, he has no permanent being, but changes his very nature as one personality in him succeeds to another. Our senses, through ignorance of reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be is.”⁵

[ 11 ] Plutarch often shows himself to be an initiate. What he portrays for us here is an essential condition of the life of a mystic. Man acquires a wisdom by means of which his spirit sees through the illusory character of material life. Everything the material nature regards as existence, as reality, is plunged into the stream of evolving life. And man himself fares the same as the other things of the world. He disintegrates before the eyes of his spirit; his totality is dissolved into parts, into transitory phenomena. Birth and death lose their distinctive significance; they become moments of coming into existence, and decay like everything else which happens. The highest cannot be found in connection with growth and decay. It can only be sought in something truly lasting, which looks back to what has been and forward to what is to come. To find what looks backward and forward is a higher stage of cognition. It is the spirit, which is revealed in and through the material world. This spirit has nothing to do with material growth. It does not come into existence nor decay in the same manner as do sense phenomena. Whoever lives only in the world of the senses has this spirit latent within him; whoever sees through the illusory character of the world of the senses has it as a revealed reality within him. Whoever achieves this insight has developed a new organ within him. Something has taken place in him, as in a plant which at first has only green leaves and then puts forth a colored blossom. Certainly, the forces through which the flower developed were already latent in the plant before the blossom came into existence, but they became reality only when this latter took place. Divine spiritual forces also are latent in the purely material man, but they are a revealed reality only in the mystic. Therein lies the transformation that has taken place in the mystic. By his development he has added something new to the existing world. The material world has made a material man of him and then left him to himself. Nature has fulfilled her mission. Her potential connection with the forces working within man is exhausted. But these forces themselves are not yet exhausted. They lie as though spellbound in the purely natural man, awaiting their release. They cannot release themselves; they vanish into nothing if man himself does not grasp them and develop them further, if he does not awaken to real existence what slumbers hidden within him. Nature evolves from the least to the most perfect. Nature leads beings by an extensive series of stages from the inanimate through all forms of life up to material man. Man in his material nature opens his eyes and becomes aware of himself in the material world as a real being, capable of transforming itself. He still observes in himself the forces out of which this material nature is born. These forces are not the object of transformation because they gave rise to the transformation. Man bears them within himself as an indication that something lives within him, transcending his material perception. What may come into existence through these forces is not yet present. Man feels something light up within him which has created everything, including himself; and he feels that this something will spur him to higher achievement. It is within him; it existed before his material appearance, and will be there after it. Through it he has come into being, and he may grasp it, and himself participate in his creation. Such feelings lived in the ancient mystic after initiation. He felt the eternal, the divine. His deeds will become a part of the creative activity of the divine. He may say to himself: I have discovered a higher “I” within me, but this “I” surpasses the boundaries of my material growth; it existed before my birth, it will exist after my death. Creatively this “I” has worked throughout eternity; creatively it will work in eternity. My material personality is a creation of this “I.” But it has incorporated me within it; creatively it works in me; I am a part of it. What I am now able to create is something higher than the material. My personality is only a medium for this creative force, for this divine, within me. In this way the mystic experienced his apotheosis.

[ 12 ] The mystic named the force thus kindled within him, his true spirit. He was the result of this spirit. It seemed to him as though a new being had entered him and taken possession of his organs. This was a being which stood between his material personality and the Sovereign Power of the cosmos, the Godhead. The mystic sought his true spirit. He said to himself, I have become man in the great natural world. But nature has not completed her task. I myself must take over this completion. However, I cannot do this in the gross realm of nature to which my material personality also belongs. Whatever can develop in this realm has developed. Therefore I must escape from this realm. I must continue to build in the sphere of the spiritual, where nature has stood still. I must create for myself a breathing space which cannot be found in outer nature. This breathing space was prepared for the mystics in the Mystery temples. There the forces slumbering within them were awakened; there they were transformed into higher creative spirit-natures. This transformation was a delicate process. It could not endure the rough elements of the outdoors. When the process was completed, through it man had become a rock grounded in the eternal, able to defy all storms. But he was not permitted to believe that he could communicate his experiences in their direct form to others.

[ 13 ] Plutarch informs us that in the Mysteries “it is possible to gain the clearest reflections and adumbrations of the truth about the daemons.”⁶ And from Cicero we learn that “those occult Mysteries ... when interpreted and explained prove to have more to do with natural science than with theology.”⁷ From such communications we see clearly that for the mystic there existed a higher insight into natural science than the religion of the people could give. Moreover this shows that the daemons, that is, the spiritual beings, and the gods themselves required explanation. Beings are approached who are of a higher nature than the daemons and gods. And this is in the nature of Mystery wisdom. The people pictured gods and daemons in images taken entirely from the world of material reality. Surely one who could penetrate the essence of the eternal was bound to lose confidence in the eternalness of such gods! How could Zeus, as the people pictured him, be eternal when he had the characteristics of a mortal being?—One thing was clear to the mystic: man attains his idea of the gods in a different manner from his ideas about other things. An object in the external world compels me to form a definitive idea of it. In contrast to this the formation of ideas of the gods has something free, even arbitrary, about it. The compulsion of the external world is lacking. Reflection teaches us that with the gods we imagine something for which there is no external control. This puts man into a state of logical uncertainty. He begins to feel that he is the creator of his gods. He even asks himself: How do I come to transcend physical reality in my world of ideas? The mystic must devote himself to such thoughts. The doubts which then beset him were justified. He could think to himself: Let us simply look at all these ideas of the gods. Are they not similar to the creatures we meet in the world of the senses? Has not man created them by mentally adding or subtracting this or that quality essentially belonging to the world of the senses? The barbarian who loves hunting creates a heaven for himself in which the most glorious hunts of the gods take place. The Greek peoples Olympus with divinities having their prototype in the reality which is well known to him.

[ 14 ] The philosopher Xenophanes (575–480 B.C.) referred to this fact with crude logic. We know that the older Greek philosophers were absolutely dependent on Mystery wisdom. This will be demonstrated in relation to Heraclitus in particular. For this reason the saying of Xenophanes can be accepted without reservation as a conviction based on mystic knowledge. He says:

[ 15 ] “But men have the idea that gods are born,
And wear their clothes, and have both voice and shape.
But had the oxen or the lions hands,
Or could with hands depict a work like men,
Were beasts to draw the semblance of the gods,
The horses would them like to horses sketch,
To oxen, oxen, and their bodies make
Of such a shape as to themselves belongs.”⁸

[ 16 ] Through such insight man may become doubtful of everything divine. He may reject the legends of the gods and acknowledge as reality only that which his material perceptions compel him to acknowledge. But the mystic did not become such a doubter. He understood that the doubter was like a plant which said to itself: My colored blossom is vain and worthless, for I am complete in my green leaves; what I add to them only increases the illusory appearance. But neither could the mystic remain content with the gods thus created, the gods of the people. If the plant could think, it would understand that the forces which had created the green leaves are also destined to create the colored blossom. And it would not rest until it had investigated these forces for itself in order to see them. So it was for the mystic in relation to the gods of the people. He did not deny them nor declare them to be vain, but he knew that they were created by man. The same natural forces, the same divine elements which work creatively in nature also work creatively in the mystic. In him also they engender ideas of the gods. He wishes to see this force which is creating gods. It is not like the gods of the people; it is something higher. Xenophanes also indicates this:

[ 17 ] “One God there is, 'midst gods and men supreme;
In form, in mind, unlike to mortal men. ”⁹

[ 18 ] This God was also the God of the Mysteries. He could be called “a hidden God,” for nowhere—so it was thought—is He to be found by the purely material man. Direct your gaze outward toward objects; you find no divinity. Exert your intelligence; you may understand the laws by which things come into existence and decay, but your intellect shows you nothing divine. Saturate your fantasy with religious feeling; you can create pictures of beings which you may take to be gods, but your intellect dissects them for you, for it proves to you that you yourself created them, and borrowed the material for their creation from the material world. Insofar as you, as intellectual man, consider the things about you, you must deny the gods. For God is not there for your senses or intellect, which explain material perceptions. God is magically concealed in the world. And you need His own force in order to find Him. This force you must awaken within yourself. These are the teachings which a neophyte of ancient times received. Then began for him the great cosmic drama in which he was engulfed alive. This drama consisted of nothing less than the release of the spellbound God. Where is God? This was the question the mystic put before his soul. God is not, but nature is. He must be found in nature. In nature He has found an enchanted tomb. The words, “God is Love,” are grasped by the mystic in a higher sense. For God has carried this Love to its uttermost. He has given Himself in infinite Love; He has diffused Himself; He has divided Himself into the manifold variety of natural things; they live, and He does not live in them. He rests in them. He lives in man. And man can experience the life of God in himself. If he is to let Him come to cognition he must release this cognition creatively in himself. Man now gazes into himself. As a hidden creative force, as yet unincarnated, works the divinity in his soul. In this soul is a place where the spellbound divinity can come to life again. The soul is the mother who by nature can conceive the divinity. If the soul is fructified by nature it will give birth to a divinity. Out of the marriage of the soul with nature a divinity will be born. This is no longer a “hidden” divinity; it is revealed. It has life, perceptible life, and walks among men. It is the released spirit in man, the offspring of the spellbound divinity. It is not the great God, who was, is and will be, but it can be taken as His revelation in a certain sense. The Father rests in concealment, the Son is born to man out of his own soul. Thus mystic cognition is a real event in the cosmic process. It is the birth of an offspring of God. It is an event as real as any other natural event, only on a higher level. This is the great secret of the mystic, that he himself creatively releases his divine offspring, but he also prepares himself beforehand to acknowledge this divine offspring created by himself. The non-mystic lacks the experience of the father of this offspring. For this father slumbers under a spell. The offspring appears to be virginally born. The soul appears to have borne him without fructification. All its other offspring are conceived by the material world. In their case the father can be seen and touched. He has material life. The divine offspring alone is conceived of the eternal, hidden Father—God Himself.

• 2. Aeschylus was acquitted by the Areopagus on a charge of revealing the Eleusinian Mysteries. When charged with betraying the Mysteries, he replied, “I said the first thing which occurred to me.” Cf. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea III, 1. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata II, 14: “Aeschylus, who divulged the Mysteries on the stage, was acquitted when being tried in the Areopagus on his showing that he had not been initiated.”
• c4. It is said above that those whose spiritual eyes are opened can behold the realm of the spiritual world. It should not, however, be concluded from this that a logical judgment about the results of initiation can be formed only by one who himself has “spiritual eyes.” These are necessary only for research. When the results of the research are communicated, everyone can understand who allows his intelligence and unprejudiced sense of truth to speak. Such a person also can use these results in life and gain satisfaction from them without as yet possessing “spiritual eyes” himself.
• 3. Goethe, Faust, Part I, 3456–3458: Feeling is all in all;
  Name is but sound and smoke,
  Beclouding Heaven's glow.
  —Priest translation, 1941, p. 101
• c5. The “sinking into the mire” of which Plato speaks must also be interpreted in the sense of the previous comment.
• 1. Sophocles, Fragment 719.”
• c6. What is said about the impossibility of communicating teachings of the Mysteries refers to the fact that they cannot be communicated in the form in which the initiate experiences them to anyone who is unprepared. But they always have been communicated in the form in which they could be understood by the non-initiate. For example, the myths provided the ancient form for communicating the content of the Mysteries in a generally comprehensible manner.
• 5. Plutarch, Moralia, De E apud Delphos, 392 A–E. (The E at Delphi, 17 and 18.)
• 6. Plutarch, Moralia, De defectu oraculorum, 417 C. (The Obsolescence of Oracles, 14.)
• 7. Cicero, De natura Deorum I, 119.
• 8. Xenophanes, Elegaic Poems 14, 15.
• 9. Xenophanes, Elegaic Poems (On Nature) 23.

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.”

The evolution of Art in Middle Europe up to the time when Dürer and Holbein entered this stream of evolution is one of the most complex problems in the history of Art. Especially in Dürer's case—to speak of all the elements that culminate in him, we have to deal with a whole series of interpenetrating impulses. Another difficult problem is the relation of this artistic evolution to that other one, the culmination of which we considered a short while ago: the Italian Renaissance, the great masters of Italy.

Needless to say, we can do no more than emphasise a few salient points. To understand what is really important in the evolution of this European Art, we must realise, above all, the existence of a peculiar talent, a peculiar activity of fancy, of imagination which had its mainsprings in Middle Europe. I mean that Central Europe which we may conceive extending approximately from Saxony to Thuringia, to the sea, to the Atlantic Ocean. Peculiar impulses of artistic fancy or imagination proceed from this region of Middle Europe. As impulses of fancy they go back into very olden times. In a certain way they were undoubtedly at work even at the time of the first spread of Christianity in the more Southern regions. These Northern impulses of the imagination stand in clear contrast to those of a specifically Southern nature. The difference is not easy to characterise, but we may describe it somehow thus: the Southern impulses of imagination are rooted in a certain power of perception for the quiet form, the form at rest, inasmuch as form, and color too, spring forth from deeper manifestations which lie hidden, in a certain sense, behind what is directly, physically perceptible. Accordingly, whatsoever the Southern imagination seeks to reproduce in Art, it tends rather to raise it above the level of the individual. It tends to raise the Individual into the Typical, the Universal, into a realm where the more special, earthly and human qualities will melt away. It is a striving to reveal how something that lies beneath the outer objects works into their forms and colors. This impulse of imagination also evolves a certain tendency to come to rest in the well balanced composition—placing the figures side by side in certain mutual relationships—a power of composition which, as you know, reaches its highest eminence in Raphael.

The Mid-European impulse of artistic fancy is of a very different kind. Tracing it back into the oldest time, we find that to begin with it makes no immediate effort to take hold of the form as such, or to achieve a restfulness of composition. Its interest is in the quick event which it portrays; it seeks to express what comes from the soul's impulses, to portray how the living Will of man expresses itself in gesture and in movement—not so much in the well-measured Form that is appropriate to human nature, but in the gesture in which the soul itself is living, in which it seeks to find expression itself as in its own sign or token. Such is the Northern impulse of artistic fancy. He who is sensitive to these things will always feel through it the working of ancient runes, where twigs or treetrunks or the like were thrown together, to express something through their positions as they fell. The sign or token, and the inner life which it contains underlies this kind of imagination, which is able, therefore, to unite itself far more with the individual expression of the soul's life; with all that springs directly from the Will-impulse of the soul. Little is left to us of what was there in olden times,—I do not mean so much as finished works of Art but as ideas of human life and cosmic processes. All this was exterminated root and branch with the spread of Christianity. Little is left of what wls contained in the old Paganism. Once more, I do not mean perfect works of plastic Art—nor will I say symbolical—but rather sign-like representations of their ideas about the world and life. If more of these things had been preserved, even the outer world would feel how the essential thing in the Northern Art is this imagination working more from within outward—from the impulses of Will and not contemplative vision. This imagination, working forth from the impulse of the Will, must be regs.rded as the fundamental note in all the cultural life that spread from the North towards the South. And, I may say, more than is generally realised, spread out in this direction. The time will come when men will see and unravel how much of these Northern impulses lies hidden, above all, in the art of the Renaissance. It is hard to recognise in the finished and extant works of Art, whether of the North, or of the South, or Spain, the true nature of the impulses that they contain. For these impulses flowed together from many quarters. Consider, for instance, all that is living in the famous “Last Supper” of Leonardo da Vinci in Milan. Compare it with the earlier pictures of the Last Supper which were derived more purely from the Southern spirit. See what dramatic life and movement he has expressed in the relations of the several figures, see the individual characters of soul which shine out of these faces. Then you will realise, working in all this, a Northern impulse that spread mysteriously towards the South. Something is here poured out, needless to say, poured out into the purely Southern imagination—albeit correspondingly toned down—which we observe again in quite another sphere in Shakespeare. For Shakespeare's figures are certainly born out of the Northern Spirit. They always express the individual human being himself, they no longer contain what comes, as it were, out of the Supersensible, using the human figure and human action like a mere instrument for its expression.

But we may go still further, my dear friends. Strange though it may sould today, if we observe Michelangelo's wonderful foreshortenings in the Sistine Chapel we cannot but realise, even in this element of movement, an impulse coming from the North. These impulses were but submerged and overlaid by Southern ones. We can see a special instance of this process in Raphael, whose imagination, growing up amid the loneliness of the Umbrian Hills, had remained, after all, more or less purely Southern. All that Raphael observed in Leonardo, in Michelangelo—influenced as they were by Northern impulses—all this he took and rounded off and ‘classicised’ if I may put it so, into his marvellous composition.

These are a few bare indications of profound problems, which if we cannot master we do not understand the medieval Art at all. For the same reason, more than elsewhere we find in the oldest extant medieval Art the expression of the word itself in signs quite naturally wedded with the plastic arts. The artistic elaboration of letters into exquisitely printed miniatures, in the biblical works created in Europe at that time, give us a feeling of something absolutely natural. In the oldest period of Christian culture we find the monks—all of whom undoubtedly absorbed Mid-European impulses—decorating their litanies and other books in this way, causing the letters, as it were, to blossom forth into miniature paintings. This was no mere external habit. It sprang straight from the feeling of an inner connection between sign and picture. The sign or token wedged its way into pictorial description, as it were. Now the ‘sign’, once again, is a direct expression of the human Will, the human life of soul. Here, therefore, we have the natural transition from that which seeks expression in sentences and words to that which flows into the painted miniature or into the sculptured ivories with which they decorate the covers of their books. Truly, in all these things there blossomed forth something that was afterwards no longer there for Mid-European Art. In every case these miniatures reveal a creation with inner life and impulse of the soul, combined with a certain naivete, a certain uncouth simplicity in respect to what the South could reproduce with such abundant skill; I mean, what lives in the Form itself, in the Form that belongs to the pure human nature before the movement and mobility expressing the individual life of the soul, works from within and pours itself into the nature of these forms. Take any of these miniatures in the old Bibles. Again and again you will see it is the artist's impulse to express, albeit through the traditional biblical figures, what he himself may have experienced in soul. A guilty conscience, for example—all such experiences of the soul are expressed magnificently in the older Mid-European miniature painting. This, as I said, is combined with great uncouthness in point of Form; I mean that human form to which man himself, through his own individuality, does not contribute, but in which the Divine and spiritual being that underlies all Nature is revealed.

Now the impulse which I have just characterised rayed out again and again from Middle Europe, and as it did so it lost itself in what was raying outward meantime from the South. It lost itself, for instance, in the spread of Christianity and Romanism. Moreover, that which rayed out from Middle Europe was fertilised in turn from the South. All that was gained from the South by way of mastery of Form and of Color, too, inasmuch as it manifests the underlying spirituality of nature, all this entered into the flower of the Northern impulse. Thus did the several impulses grow into one another, layer upon layer, interweaving.

Evolution, therefore, did not take place continuously but more or less by sudden starts. Again and again we feel impelled to ask: What would have evolved if, instead of these sudden impacts, there had been a continuous process of evolution? We have the following feeling, for example (though, needless to say, these are mere hypotheses); What would have been the outcome if that which was contained, during the early Carolingean and Ottonian periods, in the miniatures and sculptured ivories above described, had been enabled to evolve straightforwardly to a great Art? What actually took place was very different; the Romanesque and Classical carried forward on the advancing wave of Christianity, poured itself out into all this, bringing with it in architecture and in sculpture, the impulse of Form which we described just now—the Southern impulse. Then were the Northern impulse of movement and expression, and the Southern of form and color wedded to one another (though when I speak of color in the Southern impulse I must qualify once more:—Color as the manifestation of the underlying Spiritual that is expressed in Nature, not of the individual).

But there was yet another thing. We may say that with the decline of the Ottonian period the first Northern impulse came to an end. The classical and Romanesque grew into it, spreading into the tributary valleys of the Rhone and Rhine. Into these regions especially, but further afield as well, a Classical impulse found its way. The two impulses coalesced and attained their height towards the 12th and 13th centuries. Then from the West emerged another impulse, which had been preparing in the meantime. Once more, then, the impulse of contemplative Vision—the Southern impulse, properly speaking,—was wedded in mid-European Art with that impulse of movement which, as I described just now, sprang essentially from the element of Will. But meanwhile in the West a different impulse was preparing, and grew into the union of the other two, till from the 12th and 13th centuries it was completely interwoven with the united impulse which I characterised just now, raying outward from the basins of the Rhone and the Rhine. This other impulse, prepared in the West, also resulted from the flowing together of two distinct impulses. It appears in the sublime forms of the Gothic. Truly, in Gothic Art once more two impulses have come together. The one is carried thither from the North. It contains, if I may describe it so, a practicality of life, a cleverness in skill and understanding, a certain realism. It comes to Europe on the Norman waves of culture. The other impulse comes from Spain, and more especially from Southern France. Thus we have coming from the North an element of intelligence, utility and realism (but we must not confuse this with the later realism; this early realism sought to understand the Universe, the Cosmos, and wanted to see all earthly things in their connection with the heavenly). From the South, on the other hand, and concentrated most of all in Southern France, there came what we may describe as the mystical element, striving upward from the earthly realm and reaching up to Heaven. Hence the peculiar nature of the Gothic, for these two elements have grown together in it, a mystical element and an intellectual. No one will understand the Gothic who cannot see in it on the one hand this mystical element which, concentrated in the South of France, grew especially in the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries. It brings into the Gothic Art that mysterious quality of striving upward from below, while united with it, on the other hand, there is an element of cool intelligence and craftsmanship, which is never absent from the Gothic. The sublime upward striving of the Gothic forms is mystical; their interlacings, and ingenious relationships come from another quarter, adding to the mystical element the height of craftsmanship.

Thus in the Gothic the one side and the other are peculiarly united. These impulses which poured themselves into the Gothic flowed over again from the West, notably in the 12th and 13th centuries, to permeate once more the artistic creation of Mid-Europe.

But we must bear in mind another thing in this connection. It is true that in the natural course of civilisation there was always a tendency for things to interweave with one another, layer upon layer; for every impulse always tends to spread. The Classical element of Form is interwoven, for example, in the works proceeding from the Gothic. But this is only the one tendency. In Middle Europe there always remained a certain impulse of revolt which is especially to be observed in Art. Again and again, this impulse tends to bring out a strong element of Will and Movement and expression. Thus, after all, that which flows inward, both from the South and West, is ever and again more or less repelled, pushed back again. In Middle Europe they felt the Classical and in later times even the Gothic as a foreign element.

What is it, essentially, that they feel as a foreign element? It is that which in any way tends to blot out the individuality. They feel in the Roman and Classical something that is hostile to the individual. Nay, in later times they even feel in the Gothic an element beneath which the individual must groan and soffocate. In the artistic life especially, there is in Middle Europe the mood which afterwards finds expression in another sphere, in the Reformation,—a mood already voiced by spirits such as Tauler or Valentin Weigel. Perceiving how the Gothic and the Classical wedged their way into the Mid-European principle and completely overwhelmed it, we must say that in the centuries before Dürer, the Mid-European principle as such, in its own impulses, failed and fell and was unable to come forth, being overwhelmed by the other. Yet it lived on; in thoughts and feelings it was always present. It is the same element which speaks so eloquently out of the subsequent conceptions of Nature, seeking to unite with bold intelligence Heaven and Earth—seeking to comprehend all other things by laws discovered also on the Earth.

But in the heart of it all something quite different is holding sway; it comes to expression very beautifully in the words of Goethe's Faust. Imagine Faust in his study, which we may naturally conceive in Gothic forms. He has studied all that we might describe as Romanism and Classicism, Over against it all he sets the human individuality—the self-supporting individuality of man. Yet how does he contrast it? To understand how Faust opposes the human individuality to all these things in the midst of which he finds himself, we must realise that to this day there thrives almost unnoticed, in Middle Europe, something that unites this country most wonderfully with the East. When today we read or hear of the part that was played in the primeval Persian culture by light and darkness—Ormuzd and Ahriman—we take these things too abstractly. We fail to realise how the men of earlier ages stood in the midst of real and concrete forces. Real light, real darkness, in their mutual interplay, were a direct real experience to the men of former days; and this experience stood nearer to the impulse of Movement and enpression than to the Southern one of Form and composition, where things are placed in quiet balance side by side.

In the creative weaving of the World, light and darkness weave together. Influences of light and dark ray out upon all that lives and moves on Earth, as man and animal. Through light and shade, and through their mutual enhancement to the world of color, we feel the connection between the inner expression of the soul of man that flows into his movements, and something Heavenly and Spiritual which lies far nearer to this human impulse of movement than anything the Southern Art is able to express. Man walks along, man turns his head. With every step, with every turning of the head, new impulses of light and shade appear. When we study this connection between light and movement we enter into something which, as it were, links earthly Nature with the elemental. In this interplay of elemental with earthly Nature the man of Middle Europe lived with a special intensity whenever he could rise to creative fancy. Hence, though the fact has scarcely been observed as yet, color arises very differently in Middle Europe than it does in the South. Color, in the Southern Art, is color driven outward from the inner nature of the being to the surface. That which arises from the artistic imagination of Mid-Europe is cast on to the surface by the interplay of light and darkness; it is color playing over the surface of things. Many things as yet imperfectly realised will only be understood when we perceive this difference in coloring; when we perceive how on the one hand the color is cast on the object and plays over its surface, while on the other hand it surges from within the object to the surface. The latter is the Southern Art of color. Color in Mid-European art is color cast on to the surface, springing from the interplay of light and shade, glistening forth out of the weaving and willing of the light and darkness. As all these things interpenetrate, layer upon layer, the several impulses are not so easily perceived; yet they decidedly exist.

This impulse in Mid-Europe is connected in its turn with what I would call the magical element which we find in the old Persian civilisation. For the interplay of light and shade—light and darkness—is deeply connected with the ancient Persian wisdom of the Magi. Here we have the mysterious manifestations of the life of soul and spirit, as it works at the same time in man himself and in the elemental weaving of the light and shade that play around the human being. It is as though his inner being entered into a hidden relationship with the light and shade that play around him, and with the glistening life of color that springs from light and darkness. This is a thing that lies forever in the element of Will; it brings the quality of magic into connection with the feelings of the soul. And man himself, through this, comes into relation with the elemental beings—those beings who, to begin with, manifest themselves within the elements. Therefore Faust, having turned away from all the philosophic, medical, legal and theosophical studies coming to him from the South, gives himself up to magic. But in doing so he must stand firm and secure within himself. He must not be afraid of all the influences in the midst of which a man is placed when he would stand firm on his own personality alone. He must have no fear of Hell or of the Devil, he must march firmly on through light and darkness. Think how beautiful this feature is: Faust himself working and weaving in the wondrous twilight of the morning! Think how the play of light and darkness enters the famous monologue of Goethe's Faust. It is a wonderful artistic inspiration, intimately connected with the Mid-European impulse. It is equally a poem or a painting, out of the very depths of the Mid-European principle.

Here, again, we have a connection between Man and the naturalistic life and being of the Elements. This is a trait that also played its part in Mid-European conception of the Christian tradition coming upwards from the South. Like a perpetual rebellion, this element wedges itself in; this element by which Mid-Europe is akin to Asia, to an ancient Asiatic civilisation.

All these different influences play into one another; and now into the midst of all this evolution, Albrecht Dürer, an absolutely unique figure in the history of Art, comes upon the scene. Born in 1471, he died in 1526.

I have studied Dürer again and again, as an individual figure, it is true, but placed as he is in the whole context of Mid-European culture, I could never understand him in any other way. Through the infinite and countless channels whereby the unconscious life of the human soul is connected with the life and civilisation around him, Dürer is related to his environment.

We see him at an early age in his portrait of the Jungfer Furlegerie (above) bringing out the light and shade of the figure, modelling this most wonderfully. Here we already recognise the working of the impulse I described just nau. Here and throughout his life, Dürer is particularly great in expressing what arises from the above-described experience and sympathy of man with elemental Nature. He brings this element into all that he absorbs from biblical tradition. At the same time, he has great difficulty in adapting himself to the Southern element. We might say, it is a right sour task for him. How different in Leonardo's case: It seems perfectly natural to Leonardo to take up the study of anatomy and physiology, and so receive into his faculty of outward vision uhat was formerly given to a more occult sensitiveness, as I explained in the last lecture. For Dürer it is a sour task—this study of anatomy, this studious mastery of the forms in which the Divine and spiritual, transcending the individual human being, comes to expression in the human figure. It does not come natural to him to make these studied forms his min, so as to re-create the human figure, as it were, after the pattern first created by God. That is not Dürer's way. His way is rather this: to trace in all existing things the inner movement, the impulse of Will; to follow up uhat brings the human nature into direct connection with all things moving in the outer world,—with light and shade and all that lives therein. This is Dürer's kingdom. Hence he always creates out of the element of movement, whereto his oun original artistic fancy is directed.

Is it not perfectly natural for the everyday, workaday things of human life to have found their vay into the evolution of these impulses? An Art which mainly seeks to express the Divine that works in man, the Universal type that transcends the human individual,—such an Art will of its own inherent impulses be less inclined to portray uhat in the everyday life of man stamps itself upon his form and figure,—from his everyday calling, from the familiar experiences of his life. In the Mid-European Art, on the other hand, this element plays a great part, and in this respect a special impulse proceeded from the districts which we now call the Netherlands. Thence came the practical impulse, if I may call it so, permeating the artistic imagination with all that is stamped upon the human being by the familiar reality of earthly things, so that in his gestures, nay, his form and mien and physiognomy, he grow, together pith this earthly kingdom.

Such impulses flowed together in Mid-Europe, in ways most manifold; and only as we disentangle them (Which would require, of course, far more than these few abstract sketches), do we come to true understanding of what is characteristic in Mid-European Art. We shall still have to bring out many a single point; for these things cannot all be said, we can but hint at them.

We will now begin with the period when the Classical impulse grew together with the Mid-European. We shall see some of the sculptured figures in the Cathedral at Naumburg in Germany, representing individual human beings of that time.

Especially in these sculptured works, you see most beautifully combined on the one hand, the perfect striving for expressiveness of soul, and on the other hand the relatively perfect mastery of form which they had absorbed by this time from the South. You will see this especially in these sculptures of the Cathedral at Naumburg, belonging to the thirteenth century. At that time the Mid-European feeling had grown together in Mid-Europe with the power of form which they received from the Classical. While on the other hand, the same Mid-European feeling blossomed forth in the creations of Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eichenbach. Remembering that this was the time which brought to the surface these great poets, we shall have before us a clearer picture of the stream of civilisation which was then flowing over Central Europe.

Wonderfully, in this work, you see the life of the soul poured out into the facial expression.

Intensely individual expressiveness of soul, not in the least immersed in any Universal type, is here united with a high technique of Form—a faculty which, as I said, they had received from the South.

We will now turn to works derived more out of the Gothic thinking. We will show some sculptures from the Cathedral at Strassburg.

These figures are far more adapted to the surrounding architecture than the ones we saw just now. The expression is still most decidedly determined from within, but the forming of the figures is also called forth by the surrounding architecture. We observe this feature even more if we go further West.

It is characteristic of that time to represent the Church as the power that overcometh. Again and again you will find these motifs of conquered demons or the like.

The Church is represented in the figure of this woman.

Please impress upon your minds not only the head with its peculiar expression, but the whole gesture of the figure. We will show the Church once more so that you may compare and see the wonderful contrast of the soul's life expressed in the two figures, Synagogue and Church.

As a further instance of the working-together of Southern and Mid-European impulses, we will now give some examples of the School of Cologne. The Cologne Master of uncertain identity, often known as the Master Wilhelm, combines great delicacy of form and line with tender intimacy of expression, as you will see in the following:

Observe, too, the lower figures, see how the forms are created out of movement and gesture. The following well-known picture of the Virgin in the Cologne Museum is by the same Master.

I beg you to observe, in all the following pictures, how these Masters love to express the life of the soul, not only in facial expression and in gesture, but especially in the whole forming of the hands. That epoch, more than any other, was working at the perfection of the hands, in relation to the inner life. I mention this especially because it is brought to a great height in Dürer who with the greatest joy portrays all that the soul can bring to expression in the hands.

In this Cologne Master, we truly see a pure permeation of the Southern element of Form with Mid-European expressiveness of the soul. We will now go on to the Master who came from Constance to Cologne, in whom the element of expression rebels once more against the element of Form, albeit this later Master learnt very much from his predecessor—from the creator of the last two pictures.

I refer, of course, to Stephen Lochner, who, deeply rooted as he is in the Art of expression, if I may say so, adapts himself with a certain revolutionary opposition to what he learns in Cologne from the former Master and his pupils.

Here, then, ye have the works of Stephen Lochner following on those we showed just now. However closely he adapts himself to them, we see in him a new beginning—once more, a fresh creation from within. He came to Cologne in 1420. He who became more or less his teacher there—the Master of the “Veronica” and of the “Madonna of the Sweet Pea”—had died about 1410. In 1420 Stephen Lochner came to Cologne.

A wonderful picture by Stephen Lochner: Mary in a bower of roses. Observe the immense mobility of the figures and the attempt to bring movement into the picture as a whole. We can only reproduce it in light and shade; far more is expressed in the coloring. See the mobility that comes into the picture by the spread veil, out of which God the Father looks down on the Madonna and the Child. See how every angel does his task,—what movement this brings into the whole picture. The picture grows into a composition born out of the very movement. In the Southern impulse you have composition born of restfulness; movement comes into it only when the Northern impulse is added. Here, in this work of Stephen Lochner's, everything is inner movement from the outset.

We will now show some examples of the work of another Master—one who received strong impulses from Flanders, from the West. The Western impulses are clearly visible in him. I refer to Martin Schongauer, who lived from 1420 to 1490. Here you will see the same artistic tendency, combined, however, with the Western impulse from Flanders.

You see how this brings in a far more realistic element.

This essentially visionary picture is conceived most realistically and with great individuality. It is, indeed, an extraordinarily true Imagination which enables the artist to embody in such realistic figures the human passions, the content of a temptation. Side by side with the human figure he places that which lives as a reality in the astral body when temptation comes upon us.

Here, again, you have a temptation of Saint Anthony. This one, however, is by Grünewald, who lived from 1470 to 1529. In Grünewald you will admire more or less the culminating point of all that flowed together in the preceding efforts. Real individual expression is combined with great technical power. Grünewald, in many respects, is far more influenced by the Southern imagination than Schongauer. It is most interesting to compare the two “Temptations,” Their subject is the sable. We might even conceiyg,them as the Temptation which came to him on the one day in the former picture, and that which comes on the following day in this one The point is not the detailed subject but the artistic treatment as such which shows, undoubtedly, a higher perfection in this artist than in the forMer.

This is the central picture in the famous Isenhaimer Altar, now at Colmar. Observe, to the very smallest detail, how the characterisation always flows from the expression. Even the little animal down here partakes in the whole action. Study the flowing of the soul into the hands.

One wing of the Isenheimer Altar. Another temptation of St. Anthony, also by Matthias Grünewald.

This is the other wing of the same Altar:

Next is the Predella of the Isenheimer Altar. The representation of character in these works of Art is perfect in its kind.

Also a part of the same Altar-piece.

This, then, is Master Grünewald who represents in a certain respect the very summit of what we have seen coming over, evolving more and more, from the thirteenth century into the fifteenth, and on into the sixteenth.

We will now pass on to a different element, where with comparatively less technical ability (for in these last pictures the technical ability is very great) we find a nee effort to express what I called just now the “rebellion” in individual characterisation. We will pass on to Lucas Cranach, who, though with far less ability, brings out the expressiveness and inner life of the soul with revolutionary impulse. He shows how the soul finds outward expression even in the everyday, workaday life of man. In Lucas Cranach this impulse is especially active.

Here you have the purest Reformation mood, although it is a Madonna,—it is the mood of the Reformation through and through. To a high degree, the human element outweighs all other considerations. Look at the figures, both of Mother and Child, and you will see that this is so.

An individual human being is painted here to show how he reveres the Christ. A personality with both feet on the ground, he expresses as a deliberate Will-impulse of the soul the reverence he feels for the Christ. The whole conception shows how this very soul comes to expression in the human feeling. The man's identity is known, it is Albrecht von Brandenburg.

We now come to the most eminently mediaeval artist, Albrecht Dürer.

More in the period of his youth.

Study once more the hand; observe how the very hair is arranged to bring out the effects of light and darkness.

Here you have Dürer's Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Spirit. The conception is truly born out of the whole spirit of the age—a conception reaching far beyond all thought, and yet in some way it was mastered by that time. The conception is here worked out in Dürer's way, with his wonderful drawing. Study it carefully, and you will see how everywhere, even in his drawing, he is aiming at the light and shade, and arranges the composition accordingly.

For a definite reason we will now once more show Raphael's famous picture known as ‘Disputa,’ which is familiar to you all.

You know what is characterised in this picture: Below, the College of Theologians engaged in the study of the truths of Theology; and there bursts into this gathering the Revelation of the Trinity; Father, Son and Spirit. !le see three stages, as it were: the Spiritual Beings rising ever higher,—those who have passed through the Gate of Death, those who are never incarnated. We see the composition of the figures down below arranged quite in the Southern way; the fundamental conception of the picture is expressed in a restful composition, the various figures balanced side by side; the very movement flows into this state of rest. Now let us return again to Dürer's ‘Holy Trinity,’ painted almost at the same time as this.

Compare this composition with the other. Once more you have three stages, but the composition here arises out of movement. It is wonderfully contrasted with the other, the Southern composition created almost simultaneously with this. The picture is in Vienna, the coloring is very beautiful. It is quite untrue to suggest that in creating this composition Dürer was influenced in any way by anything he had received from the South. On the contrary, the Southern painters can frequently be shown to have been influenced by Northern compositions—if not by Dürer's own. Indeed, in one instance it can be historically proved:—

For his Crucifixion (undoubtedly a later picture), Raphael had Dürer's drawings before him. Needless to say, we make no such assertion in this case; but the idea that Dürer himself was influenced must be rejected. The motif lay in the whole spirit of the time; it existed in the widest circles, and this work of Dürer's is thoroughly a product of the Mid-European impulse.

Here we see Dürer, too, as a master in characterisation. The picture represents Jesus among the Doctors of the Law, but needless to say, the heads of the characters are surch as the artist saw around him in his own environment.

This is the famous picture of the four Apostles. The excellence of the picture lies in the sharp characterisation of the difference of the four Apostles, in temperament and character.

This is the center-piece of the ‘Paumgartner altar.’

I have inserted this picture because it shows Dürer's conception of movement,—movement proceeding directly out of the human being.

This is the famous picture of the Christian knight, or, as it is often called: ‘Ritter, Tod und Teufel,’—the Knight, Death and the Devil. Observe how entirely this picture is a product out of the age. Compare it with the passage from ‘Faust’ to which I just now referred.

“Tis true, I am shrewder than all your dull tribe, Magister, doctor, priest, parson and scribe; Scruple or doubt comes not to enthral me, Neither can devil nor hell now appal me.”

There you have the character who will fear neither Death nor the Devil, but go his way straight forward through the world. So, indeed, he must be represented—the Christian knight who has revolted thoroghly against all the doctors, masters, scribes and priests that have encumbered him. He has to go his way through the world alone, fearing neither Death nor the Devil that stand across his path. He leaves them on one side, and perseveres on his way. ‘The Christian Knight’ this picture should be called. Death and the Devil stand in the way; he marches over them, passes them by unfalteringly. The same mood of the time, out of which the monologue in Goethe's "Faust" is consciously created, comes to expression in this picture by Dürer.

Look at this thoroughly medieval room. The composition is born purely out of the light and darkness, and it is consciously intended so. Look at the light that floods the room. Placed into the light, there is the dog asleep, getting least light of all, more or less in the shade. Then the lion, as it were, a creature of more [?ill; he seems to be dreaming, and there is much light on his face. The contrast of the two animals is intentionally thus expressed in their relation to the light that falls upon them. And now contrast with these St. Jerome himself. On him the light is also falling, but at the same time he seems to ray it back again out of himself. Man and animal—saint and animal—are contrasted simply by being placed in the light. So, too, the skull. Dog and lion, saint and skull; the whole composition is ordered with respect to the light and shade.

It is like a very history of evolution, magnificently expressed by placing the different figures thus into the light. It is one of the greatest qualities in Dürer to bring out with such creative power mthe inherent force of composition that lies in the interplay of light with different objects and living creatures. Of course, the main figures do not alone make up the composition. But we must especially adraire in this picture the bringing out of the force of composition which lies inherent in the light and shade.

Of course, you must not take such a statement as beyond cavil, but this picture seems placed into the world for the express purpose of showing what Dürer intended in his treatment of light and shade, his power of composition out of light and darkness. As if to show what he intends, he puts together the angular body of the polyhedron and the round sphere. In the sphere he shows how light and darkness work together; he lets the light fall on the sphere in a quite peculiar way. Having studied the distribution of the light on the sphere, you may proceed to observe how the effects of light expressed in the folds of the garment correspond to those of the spherical surface. Dürer lets them fall in such a way as to express in the arrangement of the folds all that comes to expression by way of light and shade on the simple surface of the sphere. Now let us go on to the polyhedron, and compare this in turn. According to the angle of the surface, it is light, half-dark, quite dark, and brilliantly illumined. Then he sets down a being of more fleeting form, once more in order to portray the falling of the light upon the surfaces, even as he showed it in the polyhedron. So that in every place you have the question: What says the light to this object? What says the light to this being? You may compare the effect of light and shade in every case as in the Polyhedron and in the sphere. In this picture Dürer has created a work of immense educational value. You cannot do better than use this picture if you want to teach the art of shading. Up here, to the right of the bat that carries the word, ‘melancholia,’ he lets a source of light appear—something that is self-luminous, in contrast to the reflected light expressed on all the other surfaces.

(At this point some one interposed the question: Has the picture any deeper meaning?)

Why should this not be deep enough? Why look for any deeper meaning? If you only study the magical and mysterious qualities of light in space, you will find in this a far deeper meaning than if you set to work with symbolic and mysterious interpretations. Such interpretations lead us away from the true domain of Art. Even if deeper meanings can be seen in it—as, for instance, in the table of planetary figures on the right, and other things of that kind,—it is far better simply to associate these things with the character and setting of the time. It was natural in that age to put such things as these together. But we do better to remain within the sphere of Art than to look for symbols. I even think there is considerable humour in this picture, inasmuch as the title (somewhat amateurishly translated, I admit) may be intended to convey, as a more humorous suggestion, the words, ‘black colouring.’ What he really meant with the word ‘Melancholia’ was something like ‘black coloring.’ In a rather hidden way (though, as I said, this is a little amateurish) the word may well be held to designate ‘black coloring’ or ‘blackness.’ That, at any rate, is far more likely than that it was intended to express some profound symbol. Dürer was concerned with the artistic treatment—the plastic quality, the forming of the light. Please do not think there is no depth in this plastic treatment of the light; do not look out for artificial symbolical interpretations. Is not the world deep enough if it contains such light-effects as these? They, indeed, are far deeper than any mystical contents we might hunt for in this picture because it happens to be entitled ‘Melancholia.’

We now pass on to Holbein, an artist essentially different from Dürer. Born in Augsburg, he then lives in Basle, and afterwards loses himself—disappears, as it were,—in England. He is a realist in an especial sense. Even where he creates a composition, he carries his strong realism into the clement of portraiture. At the same time he strives to express what I referred to just now; the things of everyday in the life of the soul. I beg you to observe how the milieu, the calling, the whole environment in the midst of which a man is living, is stamped upon his soul and character. Holbein expresses this in a wellnigh extreme way; he seeks to draw it forth out of the soul, creating the whole human being out of the very time in which he lives.

Here, again, you have the same motive. An actual human being of the time (it is the Burgomaster of Basel, Herr Mayer, with his family) is shown worshipping the Madonna. This picture is in Darmstadt. There is a very good copy in Dresden, so good that for a long time it passed as a second version by Holbein himself. Here you will see the extreme realism of Holbein, whereas in Dürer there are those elements which we tried to characterise before—quite universal elements. I'm sorry we have no slides of Holbein's ‘Dance of Death.’ Perhaps we may show these another time, for Holbein is especially great in his treatment of the motif of Death:

In conclusion, I will show you something which, while not in direct connection with the other, belongs, nevertheless, to the same artistic context.

This sculpture of the Madonna, which is in Nuremburg, reveals to perfection what the Mid-European art could achieve in gesture and tenderness of feeling. It is by an unknown artist. You must imagine this Madonna, opposite her, perhaps, St. John, a great Cross with the Christ in the center; for this Madonna of Nuremberg belongs undoubtedly to a Crucifixion group. Here you have the very flower of German Art in the 16th century or perhaps a little later. Much of the tenderness in the Madonnas which we showed today will be found again in this one, especially in the unique posture.

We have tried to show you, my dear friends, all those things which, seen in the connection I have tried to indicate, bring out in clear relief the individuality of Dürer. One only learns fully to recognise Dürer when one considers him in connection with the time—his own time and the time before him. More than is generally imagined, there lives in Dürer the greatness of that impulse which led, in another sphere, to the assertion and rebellion that we associate with Faust. In Dürer, indeed, there lived, artistically speaking, a goodly piece of Faust.

You will get a real feeling of the time in which Dürer lived and out of which he was born, if you take such pictures as his ‘St. Jerome,’ his ‘Melancholia,’ and his ‘Christian Knight,’ and many another, and compare them with the mood that goes out from the first monologues of Goethe's Faust—which must, of course, be placed in the whole setting of the time, even as Goethe himself intended it. Nay, more, you could compare Dürer's ‘St. Jerome’ with certain actual pictures of Faust and you would find a real connecting link. When I spoke of Dürer's creating out of light and shade, I certainly did not mean it in a banal sense. Needless to say, anyone who wishes to imitate some fragment of reality can work out of the light and shade. This is one of the most characteristic features in Dürer, while on the other hand he also has in him the longing for individual characterisation which is so remarkably expressed in his ‘Heads of Apostles.’

We have thus tried to bring before you a few of the important points in the old Christian Art. On the next occasion we shall refer to some others which entered the main stream here or there. Then we shall see the whole in its totality.

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.

[ 1 ] My dear friends! It is important that the question which we had yesterday and actually have been considering during the past days from the side of Anthroposophy, we now approach from a religious side, but again I don't want to do it through definitions and explanations but in a more concrete way. It is important in fact, as you have probably already sensed, to find a way which must come out of religious experience. What belong to religious experiences are the reality of prayer and the reality of the examination of the word, first becoming visible for us in the examining of Gospel words. We will have to draw on the more inner elements of religious life, but we will adhere to these two, prayer and the examination of Gospel words, through examples that are far better than concepts.

[ 2 ] Regarding prayer, my dear friends, one can from a religious standpoint say that a person who does not pray in our present time, cannot be a religious person. Certainly such a statement can be doubted from this point of view, but we don't want to enter into an abstract discussion but approach from a positive point of view, and this must always have some or other basis. So I would like to start from a kind of religious axiom, which for many can consist in feeling that without the possibility of praying it is not an inner religious experience, because in prayer a real union with the Divine must be sought, which interweaves and rules the world. It is important now to examine prayer.

We need to be clear that despite the general human differentiation in humanity, the care of a spiritual life also appears, according to the varied callings of different people. If prayer is also certainly something general and human, one can say that a special prayer is then again necessary for those who want to be teachers in the field of religious life, and this will bring us to the Breviary absolving. We want to speak about all these things because they are for you, namely young theologians, of imminent seriousness for the tasks that you are to set yourself, I'm not saying now, but which you can set yourself according to the demands of the time.

[ 3 ] Regarding prayer, in order to reach clarity, I want to speak about the Lord's Prayer and inner experiences of the Our Father. It is important that we may not take our starting point today from experiences of ancient Christianity by examining the Lord's Prayer or bringing it to life inwardly; our basis must be about contemporary man, because we want to speak about the Lord's Prayer in a general human way. Yet one must be aware of the following. Let's accept we will start to say the Lord's Prayer according to the style in which we say the first sentence: "Our Father who art in Heaven." It is important what we feel and experience in such a sentence and what we can feel and experience with other sentences of the Lord's Prayer, for only then will this prayer become inwardly alive. What we are talking about here, in fact, first of all, is to have something like an inner perception of such a sentence, not really just something that appears in the symbols of the words, but something that lives in us in real words. The heaven is basically the entire cosmos and we make it perceptible when we say "Our Father in Heaven" or "Our Father who art in the Heavens" or "Our Father, You are in the Heavens," so that in saying these words they are permeated with the spirit; we are turning towards the spirit. This is the perception of what we need to visualize, when we say such a sentence as "Our Father in the Heavens." Such a similar experience is what we need with the words "Your kingdom come," because within us there needs to be, more or less as an intuitive feeling, the question: What is this kingdom? If we are Christians, we will gradually, in our striving, approach a perception of this kingdom—or expressed more appropriately, the kingdoms—and be reminded of what was mentioned yesterday, we are reminded of Christ's words which sound and ends in "the kingdoms of heaven." Already in the 13th chapter of Matthew's Gospel, the Christ wants to speak to the people on the one hand and to the disciples on the other, about what the kingdom of heaven is. There has to be something lively about the phrase "Your kingdom" or "May Your kingdom come to us." When will the right thing come to life in us? The right thing will only become alive in us when we take such a sentence not as a thought, but when we make it alive as if we actually hear it within us, as if we apply what I have more than once spoken to you about recently. A path must be made from the concept to the word, because there is quite a different kind of inner experience when we, without outwardly saying the words, inwardly not only hold an abstract concept, but a lively experience of the sound, in whatever language it might be.

The entire Lord's Prayer becomes, so to speak, reduced out of the specificity of language, also when we in some or other language not only imagine the thought content but what is contained in the sound. This was stressed much more in earlier times regarding prayer, that the sound element becomes inwardly alive, because by the sound content becoming alive within, the prayer is transformed into what it should be, as an interactive conversation with the Divine. Prayer is never true prayer unless there is an exchange with the Divine, and for such an interactive conversation with the Divine, the Lord's Prayer is suited in the most immanent form because of its structure. We are so to speak outside of ourselves when we speak such sentences as "Our Father who art in the Heavens" or "Let Your kingdom come." We forget ourselves the moment we really make these sentences audible and alive within us. In these sentences we erase ourselves to a large extent simply by the content of the sentences, but we take hold of ourselves again when we read sentences of a different structure or make them inwardly alive. We take hold of ourselves again when we say: "hallowed be Your name." It is then actually a lively exchange with the Divine, because it transforms itself immediately as an inner deed in "hallowed be Your name."

On the one hand we have the perception that in "Our Father who art in Heaven" nothing is happening unless the sentence is thoroughly experienced. By us directing ourselves to inner listening, it enlivens our inner hearing for the name of Christ, like it did in pre-Christian times when the Jahve name had caused it, in the sense of what I had mentioned earlier about the beginning of the St John's Gospel. If we utter the sentence "Our Father who art in Heaven" within us in the right way in our time, then Christ's name mingles into this expression, then we inwardly give the answer to what we experience as a question: "Let this name be sanctified through us/ be hallowed by your name."

[ 4 ] You see, it takes prayer to live correctly into the Lord's Prayer; it takes on the form of an exchange with the Divine, even so when we in the right way experience the perception "Your kingdom come." This kingdom can't primarily be taken up in the intellectual consciousness; we can only take it up in the will. Similarly, when we lose ourselves with the sentence "Your kingdom come to us" we discover, taking hold of ourselves, that the kingdom, when it comes, works in us, that the actual Divine will happens in the heavenly kingdoms, and therefore also where we are on earth. You see, you have an exchange with the godhead in the Lord's Prayer.

[ 5 ] This conversational exchange prepares you firstly to have inner dignity in relation to the concerns the earth, and to bring it into a relationship with what has happened in this exchange, by connecting that to earthly relationships. Obviously to some of you it might appear that when I say "Hallowed by Your name" there's an enlivening of the Christ name. However, my dear friends, it is precisely here where the Christ Mystery lives. This Christ Mystery will not really be recognised for as long as St John's Gospel is not really understood. At the start of St John's Gospel, you read the words: "All things came into being through the Word and nothing of all that has come into being was made except through the Word." By ascribing the creation of the world to the Father God, you go against St John's Gospel. In the St John's Gospel you hold on to what you take as sure, that everything which exists as the world had been created through the word, thus in the Christian sense through the Christ, through the Son which the Father had substantially created, had subsisted, and that the Father has no name but that His name is actually that which lives in Christ. The entire Christ Mystery lives in these words: "Hallowed be your name" because the name of the Father is given in the Christ. We will still speak about this enough on other occasions, but I wanted to refer to it today, how in prayer a real inner conversational exchange with the Divine should be contained in the prayer itself.

[ 6 ] Now we can go further and say: Nothing is given to us from the natural world merely by taking our daily food, our bread. We take our bread from nature with the conditions which I've mentioned; by our digestive processes, through regenerative processes we become earthly man on the earth, but that can't really live in us because life in God is different, the life of God lives in the spiritual world. After we have entered into a conversation with the Divine in the first part of the Lord's Prayer, we can now out of this mindset which has permeated us within, release the negative and say positively: "You give us our bread, which works in our everyday life, today." With this it means: what has been nature's processes and work in us as processes of nature, this is what should, through our consciousness, through our inner experience, become a spiritual process. In this way our mindset should be transformed. We should become capable of forgiveness towards those who have done something to us, who have caused damage. We would only be able to do this when we become conscious of how much we have damaged the Divine spiritual, and therefore should ask for the right mindset in order for us to handle what we have become guilty of, in the right way; we can only do this if we have become aware that we are continuously doing harm to the Divine through the mere nature of our being, and continuously need the forgiveness of those beings towards whom we have become guilty.

[ 7 ] Now we can add the following, which is again an earthly thing, something which we want to link to the first thing we have related to: "Lead us not into temptation," which means: Let our connection to You be so alive that we may not experience the challenge to merge with mere nature, to surrender ourselves to mere nature, that we hold you firmly in all our daily nourishment. "But deliver us, from the evil." The evil consists of mankind letting go of the Divine; we ask that we are freed and let loose from this evil.

[ 8 ] When we ever and again have such experiences of the Lord's Prayer as our foundation, my dear friends, then we deepen the Lord's Prayer actively towards an inner life, which enables us to create the mood and possibility in us which allows us not only to act from one physical human to another physical human but that we act as one human soul to another human soul. In this way we have brought ourselves into a connection of the Divine creation in others, and we learn through this, what it is to experience such words as: "The least thing you have done to my brothers, you have also done to Me." In this way we have learnt to experience the Divine in the earthly existence. However we must in a real way, not through a theory, but in a real way turn away from worldly existence because we become aware that earthly existence, as it was first given to mankind, is actually no real worldly existence but an existence stripped of the Divine, and that we will only have a real worldly existence after we have turned ourselves to God in prayer, having created a link to God in our prayer.

[ 9 ] With this, my dear friends, the most elementary steps, the stairway, can lead to the conscious awakening of religious impulses in human beings. These religious impulses had to a certain extent been instilled in the human beings since primordial beginnings, but it concerns becoming aware of these impulses within, and that can only happen when a real exchange with the Divine in prayer comes about. The first meaningful discovery which one can make about the Lord's Prayer is that within its inner structure lies the possibility for a person to directly, with understanding, enter into a conversational exchange with the Divine. That is only a beginning, my dear friends, but it is so, however, that in the beginning, when it is really lived through, it is taken further and just when the question is taken religiously, it concerns wanting to find in our experience of the first steps, the strength to continue with the next steps through our own inner being.

[ 10 ] It is quite different to speak from the point of view of knowledge than it is to speak from the religious viewpoint. When one speaks from the side of knowledge, one deals mainly with the content; when one speaks about Anthroposophy as a religious element, my dear friends, then we need to pay attention to Goethe's words: Not What we think, but more How we think!—and for this reason I said yesterday, Anthroposophy inevitably, as is its character, leads to a religious experience, it flows into a religious experience through the How, how its content is experienced. However, when one speaks from the religious angle, it is necessary now not to look first at What it is which lies in the spread ahead of us, but that one goes out from this How, one comes from the human subject, one has to illuminate this human subject.

When you have found the attitude of prayer, you can now go to the other side and find it in the reading of the Gospels as well. The meaning the Gospels have for religious development, we will of course still speak about. In any case, real Christians need to remain within inner childlike feelings today in order to understand the Gospels in a believable way, also without criticism. When as a theologian he applies criticism, he has to, because he comes from the Christian angle, be able to understand the Gospel without criticism. At least he must firstly become strong in his experiences of the Gospels, and then, armed with this strength, he only then applies criticism. That's actually the basic damage in Bible criticism and actually in the Gospel criticism of the 19th Century; people are not initially religiously strengthened before they apply criticism to the Gospels. As a result, they have arrived at a Gospel criticism which is nothing other than done in the modern scientific sense. Nothing is more clearly felt regarding this modern scientific sense, my dear friends, than the Gospel words of St Matthew 13, for in Matthew 13, I could say, the pivotal point of the whole chapter are words which encloses a mystery, and that perhaps in the entire evolution of Christianity it could never have been felt more deeply by religious people than today, when they come up against the world. It is in the words: He answered and said: for you it is possible, to understand the mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven, but for those, whom I've just mentioned, the people around, it is not so.—To this an actually deep puzzle is connected: To him who has it, more will be given ... but he, who does not have it, nothing will be given: what would have been given to him, the little he has, will be taken from him.—These are extraordinarily deep words. Perhaps nowhere else in the evolution of Christianity can these words of giving and taking be so deeply felt—when one can really feel in a religious way towards the world and people—how just today, science has taken over nature and in the widest circles gained ever more authority; accepted to take away everything which could give the possibility of being able to spiritually hear with his ears or see with his eyes. This is not what man is supposed to do, in the scientific sense. Spirit should be obliterated in the sense of science, in the mood of our modern times. When we speak in the same way as modern theology speaks to people who are raised in scientific terms, we take away that little which they could have in religious feeling. When we counter what is done in the Faculty of Philosophy with what is done in enlightened theology today, we remove the last bit of what is religious.

[ 11 ] This needs to be felt, experienced in deep profundity, because the mood of the time is such has made it necessary for theologians to eradicate the religious. It is very necessary that we listen in a lively way to these words of the Matthew Gospel. However, this leads us to the next question: How can we discover the truth content, the vital content of the Gospel in the right way? We must find the correct way so that we can find the truthfulness also in the details of the Gospel and with this truthfulness directly illuminate the content of our lives. You see, in the way I'm saying this, I'm formulating my words in a particular way. I'm thinking of Paul's' words "Not I but Christ in me" and see how it should be spoken now in relation to the understanding of the Gospels, and when the word is within the heart of truth: "Not I, but Christ in me," the Christ said, in order to align the people in the right direction: "I am the way, the truth and the life."—We may express the words of Paul, "Not I but Christ in me," and then we will approach the Gospel in a way which leads to the right way to access the truthfulness and through this find the vital content in the Gospels. We have to climb up to a certain level in order to bring to life Paul's words: "Not I, but Christ in me." We must try to ever and again let it be spoken out, when we want to understand the Gospel. My dear friends, if Christ had spoken in the theologians of the 19th Century, then quite a different theology would have resulted, than it did, because a different Gospel view would have resulted.

[ 12 ] Having indicated the first steps to experiencing it further and continuing with the Matthew 13 Gospel, I would like to say a bit more. I stress clearly that this is the start of something we need to continue within ourselves, and here I want to again call your attention to the words "Think what? Think more how!"

By taking the 13th chapter of St Matthew's Gospel as our example, we must understand the situation: as soon as we approach the Gospel, we must renounce intellectualism and find our way into the descriptive element. Let us go straight away into the descriptive element and let's look at the verses leading up to this, in the verses 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 of the 12th chapter. These indicate how Christ Jesus is addressed: "See, your mother and our brother stand outside and want to talk to you"—and how he lifts his hand and points to his disciple and says: "Behold, in those souls live my mother and my brothers."—We want to go even deeper into these words, but first we need to clarify the situation. What we bring with us through birth into this life, the feeling which one can in the profoundest sense refer to as a child-like feeling, or as a brotherly feeling, this which we receive through the utmost grace, this is what is referred to here. Immediately the transition can be made towards which the most important aspect of Christianity is to lead; that we learn to extend, as best we can, the child-like, the brotherliness, to those souls with whom we have a spiritual connection. Wrong, it would be completely wrong, to feel this is somehow negative, when it is felt that only in the very least would that which lies in the childlike and brotherly feeling would be loosened and put in the place which lies in the feelings to the disciples. This is not what it is about, but it is rather about the human feeling lain into mankind as brotherhood, firstly only found in nature, therefore in that which we are born into this world as our first grace, in the feelings to our parents, to those we are bound through blood. We place ourselves positively towards it, and what we find in it, we carry over by ensouling it, towards all those with whom we want to have a Christian connection and want to live in a Christian community.

[ 13 ] This is what comes over into the 13th chapter of the Matthew Gospel. With it we are immediately in a starting position. If we take the content from the 53rd to 58th verses of the St Matthew's 13th chapter of the Gospel, and lead it over to the following, then we find that the greatest importance is the Christ Jesus now returns to his hometown, and through the experience of being in his hometown, express the words which appear in the 57th line of the 13th chapter: He says: "A prophet is nowhere less accepted than in his hometown and in his own house." The 58th verse now continues with the line: "And he was not able to do many deeds of the spirit there, for the sake of their unbelief." When we understand this situation, we are immediately led to see how Christ Jesus stands amidst people who have not understood the words: "Behold, in those souls live my mother and my brothers."

They failed to understand these words; as the words were not understood in their time; they also don't lead the way to Christ Jesus. The way to Christ Jesus has to be looked for. At this point it is indicated in the Matthew Gospel which people would find the way and who would not be able to find it, but also, how it can be found. We really need to understand that for those who are unable to ensoul the feelings of blood relationships given through grace to mankind, would not be able to find the way; those who only want to be part of their fatherland and not part of God's land, will not be able to find their way to Christ Jesus. So we are placed between two concrete experiences in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 13, and out of this situation we must expect that in this 13th chapter of Matthew's Gospel the relationship between the folk and Christ Jesus is stated, and how Christ Jesus as such can be discovered again by the folk.

[ 14 ] Let's enter more deeply into this situation. Already in the first sentence we are drawn more intimately into the situation. It is important firstly, to be able to enter right into it. You are already standing in it if you take what leads up to it and away from it; it is important to stand completely within it: "On the day of Saturn Jesus left his home and sat down at the lake."—If this is read without a lively engagement and purpose, then the 13th chapter of Matthew's Gospel is not actually being read. First of all, what is happening there is on the day of the Sabbath, the day of Saturn. We will discover, my dear friends, that the enfolding of the liturgy is found throughout the year but it is not indifferent regarding how a priest applies the Gospel; we will see that the Gospels are placed in the course of the year in such a way that people can find a connection in the Gospel to what can be experienced in nature, otherwise you will not really give the words of the Gospels their correct inner power.

[ 15 ] We will still talk about the details of the year's liturgy, but we need to get closer to these things. If you look at it spiritually, the 13th chapter of Matthew's Gospel speaks about the end of the world, that means the earthly world, and it is clearly indicated that it will happen in the manner of the prophecy. In the 35th verse it says: "That it might be fulfilled, that which is spoken by the prophet, who says: I want to open my mouth in parables and speak about the mysteries of the world's primordial beginning."—Here in the 13th chapter the end of the world should be spoken about. Christ Jesus chose the Sabbath because earlier people turned to it when they wanted to understand the beginning of the world, to compare it to the truths about the end of the world. The reception of these words needed an inner peace, it is indicated directly by the time setting. The effort of the preceding days must have taken place for man must be in need of rest in order to understand what would be said in the 13th chapter of Matthew's Gospel. He goes out of his home because he has something to say which goes further out than what can be said at home; this is the immediate recovery of verses 53 to 58. At home he couldn't have said anything. The writer of the Gospel is aware of indicating this in conclusion. You can't get close to the Gospel if you don't have the precondition that every word of the Gospel carries weight; it can't be indicated outwardly, you must try to let it enter into your inner life.

"He sat down beside the lake." You only realize what it means to sit beside the lake, how we are led in the wide world of experiences, when you sit at a lake and you are led away from everything which binds you to the earth. With the sensation of airspace, we already have too much abstraction which escapes us. Of course, experiences in the air spaces of the spirit leads us away from what chains us to the earth, but as human beings there is firstly something which escapes us.

[ 16 ] We now have him sitting down beside the lake. Here he now gathers the folk, and speaks to them of the Kingdom of Heaven, in parables. The disciples start to understand that when Christ Jesus speaks to the people in the way in which he addressed the disciples, in the examination of the parables, then people would also be deprived of what they have, at least. He could give the people nothing if he gave them the solutions to the parables. So what does he have to do first of all? To start off with, he should not speak of a spiritual world content, but firstly speak about world content, spread out before the senses. He needs to speak about the grain seed, leading them through every possibility in the destiny of the kernel. He must lead them to the possibility that the seed can't develop roots, or only weak roots, or hardly any roots, and can be lamed by opposing forces to fully develop its roots.

[ 17 ] My dear friends, you need to understand that you must speak in this way to people, because people first need to become inwardly alive towards what is usually thoughtlessly passed by. Their souls need to be lit up for the observation of the outer world. The soul remains dead and un-kindled if what lies externally, is not stirred up in inner words. People go thoughtlessly and wordlessly through the world. They look at the seed, which wilts. They see the seed which bears fruit, but they don't connect their seeing in such a way that it becomes alive as an inner seeing, an inner hearing. Only when we have transformed the experience of outer world into an inner image, only then do we have what can become preparation. The soul needs to be kindled by the external, the soul needs to revive itself in the external world. If you speak only about the meaning of nature, then you will firstly be speaking to deaf soul ears and blind soul eyes, and you will also take away the least which people have. You only give them something when they understand that you are speaking to their soul, speaking to their soul in the same way as Christ Jesus could speak to the disciples, having enlivened their souls through their participation in his life. The soul needs to be stirred, made to come alive towards the outer world and only after this enlivening is accomplished can you speak to the souls regarding interpretations placed before them as parables of nature. In this sense you link people initially to natural processes and try to transform the natural processes into images. Enliven everything which you can experience around you, imbue it in a sunny way.

From the moment we wake up in the morning, to the evening when we bring ourselves to rest, we are surrounded by sunshine. As unprepared individuals we have at first no inkling of what surrounds us in sunlight, which floods around us. We see sunlight reflected on single items, we initially see colours mirrored, but whether this imbuing sunshine floods through us as human beings experiencing colour, particularly activated and enlivened, we have no inkling of. We simply find ourselves in light from waking to going to sleep, and then we turn in a moonlit night to the moon, with open human hearts, and see how it is surrounded by stars that accompany it, and now return to the first experience which we could have that when you look at the sun, just when it is most lively with its light flooding around you, your eyes become blinded. The intensity of sunlight is so strong that it could, without hesitation, change eyes into suns.

If I look at the moon, then the moon throws the sunlight back to me, it sends the light back in such a way that I can take it in. The dazzling sunlight takes away the discretion. This discretion only remains while I'm looking at moonlight. The rays of the sun have such a majestic intensity that they do not have to rob me of my discretion when I turn towards them. I can turn to them when they are given again by the moon. How can I make this into an inner experience? I may and can, as a human being, unite myself with what the moon returns to me; I may, when I place it as a symbol in front of myself, have something with which I can unite myself. I can, with what I encounter in the moonlight, make myself an image with which I can unite myself. In other words, I may make an image of the sun, which has presented itself through the moonlight, and that is the Host, which I may consume. However, there is something so intense, so majestically great, that I can't be allowed to expose it immediately.

When I imagine this in images, I must present it in another way. I must determine a relationship which is not only visible as a similarity, and place it there, by becoming the nourishment for what the journey is allowed to become (the Host) surrounded with that which may only be looked at, with the monstrance (receptacle of the Host) [a drawing is done on the blackboard] and I have my relationship to the world born out of a dualistic comparison, a twofold kind, which I make into a kind of image with the inclusion of the monstrance. In the nourishment for the way, in the Host I have something with which I can unite. In what surrounds the Host I have an image of the weakened rays of the sun. Through communion there must appear in me what appears in the experience of the weakening, which I sense in moonlight, which I couldn't feel as a direct sun process, otherwise I would be blinded. In between both these is the communion: I place myself in the world context.

What the sun and moon have to say to one another, this is what is found in human beings, the human being stands right in it and enlivens it through communion.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[ 18 ] So you can see, further than just the mentioned comparison, it is distilled into a symbol which can be experienced. If it is experienced in the right sense, that means, experienced in a way as one does with others, with the full understanding of the words "And he pointed over to his disciple and said: See, that is my parent and my brother," then to a certain extent the human community is placed within the sense of these words, then one works towards community building and this teaching, how community building can be achieved, we will discover again when we move forward in the interpretation of Matthew 13.

[ 19 ] My dear friends, it is from inner knowledge—which an anthroposophical overview can give of human evolution—it is from my complete conviction that it would be especially bad for the present if we were to ignore the signs of the times today in order not to want to surrender to them. Just think, just when you allow your soul to look at Matthew's Gospel 13, you notice the following: the Catholic Church remains primarily fixed at the symbolism; what appeared in their community building was tied to the symbolism, the symbolism which lets you experience the kingdoms of the heavens. It didn't occur to anyone during the first centuries of Christianity's propagation, to speak about patience, that people could wait, and so on. I am obliged to say this. They were completely filled with the need for action, because they found the efficacy of symbolism and contribution of the symbol itself, as community building. They found within the symbolism what Christ wanted to indicate through the words which record the seven parables of the kingdom of God. They wanted through the symbolism make ears to hear and eyes to see before they started with the proclamation; you are standing within the living world of symbolism.

[ 20 ] Today we are standing in a completely changed time. We read in Matthew's 13 Chapter that initially explanations of the parables would only be given to the disciples. This we can't do today. It would be impossible today because the Gospels are in everyone's hands and the meaning of the parables can be read by everyone. We really live in a completely changed time. We don't really notice this at all. We must in a new way understand what the Matthew Gospel Chapter 13, contains. In the sense of our time, we must consider the structure of Matthew 13. Firstly, we have Christ sitting in front of the people, he delivers the parables to them about the kingdom of heaven, and from the 36th verse it is written: "Then Jesus left the people and came home, and his disciples approached him and said: Explain the parable of the weeds on the fields. And he explained it to them."

Let me clarify this situation completely. Firstly, the Christ speaks to the people in parables, which are clothed in outer events. He points to these parables for his disciples. He utters during these explanations meaningful words of mystery, which I have tried to bring closer to you. After he has returned home and spoke to his disciples about the parables of the weeds, he spoke to them about a number of other parables—about the treasure in the field, the priceless pearl, and some of the discarded fish found in the fishnet. Thus, he spoke about other parables to the disciples, after he had left the people. This all belongs to this situation: in the Gospels everything is important. We also have—let us place this clearly before our souls—the Christ at the lake, sitting in front of the people, telling them about the parables, then turning away, turning to the disciples, leading them into the situation in which he utters important mystery words, speaking to them alone away from the people, explaining the parables with the help of other parables, then, after he had again led them to the spirit-godly revelations, he asks if they had understood. Their answer is "Yes." Now the very next conclusion is—because everything else is just an introduction—: "Having been initiated into the scriptures you will conduct yourselves like a man who is master of his house, who takes out of his treasure that which he has experienced, but that part of what he has experienced which he has filled with life inwardly, so that he can add something new to it and then be able to present it to his listeners."

[ 21 ] I wanted to show you the way towards understanding Matthew 13, and tomorrow we will speak further about the content of truth and content of life, which can be found in this way in the Gospels. I have only indicated as an insertion how symbolism is found in this way in a central symbol from which certainly everything has to be believed, my dear friends, that it should also become a central symbolism for those who want to bring it into the ritual in pastoral care. What is needed is something visible as a symbol, which is more than just a product of nature, and for this, words are necessary which are enlivening; and action is necessary which is more than a mere action of nature. In the context of our civilization today we have dead words, not enlivened words. We only have actions, also human actions, which only contain nature's laws. We have neither living words, nor actions permeated by Divine will. To both of these we need to come through prayer and in reading the Gospels on the one hand and real fulfilling of the ritual on the other hand.

More about this tomorrow.

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.