The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Let us call to mind the point of time when, in the middle of the Lemurian Race, man raised himself up to spirituality. Now for the first time fructification with the Spirit, with the Monad became possible. Gradually, out of the chaotic Earth, through what had been separated off from man, the other beings had been formed which lived on the Earth as his companions. Man had developed a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body. The astral body had become purified and was just at that time adapted to receive Manas, Buddhi, Atma.

On the Earth everything developed quite gradually, so that mankind, still without intellect or possibility of speech, arose out of the uncoordinated Earth mass. Now we ask: How did this come about? A plant too does not grow out of nothing. A seed must be planted into the Earth. This was also the case with the people who were there at that time. The human being too had grown up out of the Earth and for this a seed had to be there on the Earth. Once a similar being had already existed. This seed-man had arisen on the Old Moon. From there he passed over in the seed condition, went through a Pralaya and then appeared once more on the Earth.

The development of the Earth had three preliminary stages: (Old Saturn, Sun and Moon). In the first three Earth Rounds these stages had a short recapitulation. In the First Earth Epoch the Saturn existence was repeated, in the Second Epoch the Sun existence and in the Third Epoch the Moon existence. It was only in the Fourth Round that the actual Earth existence emerged and then man had reached a somewhat higher stage than on the Old Moon. There he had not yet reached separate development, he had not yet become sufficiently purified to receive the Monad. On the Moon the astral body was still wild and passionate. On the Earth he had still to purify himself in order to be able to receive the higher principles. This purification was completed in the middle of the Lemurian Age.

The last human beings during the Old Moon existence are our physical forefathers. On the Earth they now developed somewhat further. The Earth-men of the pre-Lemurian Age are the actual descendants of the inhabitants of the Moon. This is why we call the inhabitants of the Moon the Fathers or Pitris of Earth-Men. These Earth-Men were as yet unable to use their front limbs for work. They were of animal-like form having a certain great beauty. Their substance was much softer than the physical matter of today: it was very much softer than what we now find with the lower animals. They were irradiated and an inner fire shone through them. When human beings were going through an earlier stage of evolution, they were still more beautiful and nobler in their form.

During the Age which preceded the Lemurian Age, we have the Hyperborean Age on the Earth, that of the Sun Men, of the Apollo-Men. They were formed out of a still nobler and even more delicate substance. Then we go still further back to the very first Race, to the Polarian men. At that time they lived in the tropical polar climate, a Race which was able to attain to special heights through the fact that a remarkable and great help had been granted them. The most beautiful of the Moon Pitris descended to the Earth. The Polarian human beings were very similar to four-footed animals, but they were formed out of a soft, pliant substance similar to a jellyfish, but much warmer. The human beings with the best forms, consisting of the noblest components, received at that time help of a special nature, for beings were still connected with the Earth who had earlier reached a higher stage.

All esotericism recognises that the Sun was first a planet; it only later became a fixed star. The sequence of stages that the Earth has passed through is: Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, Earth. When the Sun was itself a planet, then everything which is now on the Moon and Earth was still in the Sun. Later Sun and Moon separated themselves from the Earth.

Let us think back to the time of the Old Sun. Then everything which now lives on the Earth, dwelt on the Sun. The beings were then quite differently formed, having only a physical body, much less dense than it is now, and an etheric body. Man's whole way of life was plant-like. The beings lived in the light of the Sun. Light came to them from the centre of their own planet. They were totally different from present-day man. In comparison with present-day man the Sun-man stood upside down and the Sun shone upon his head. Everything connected with reproduction developed freely on the other side. Man at that time stretched his legs, so to say, into the air. The plant has remained at this stage, its roots are in the earth and it stretches its organs of reproduction, stamens and pistil, into the air (plant). This Sun-man developed in seven different stages. His direction on the planet is the same as the growth of the plant on the Earth. Then, with the third incarnation of the Earth he became a Moon-man. He bent over, the vertical becoming the horizontal (animal). The tendency towards a spine developed. The symbol for this is the Tau = T. On the Earth he turns completely round. For this the symbol is the Cross. The symbolism of the Cross depicts the development from the Sun, through the Moon to the Earth. On the Earth the symbol of the Cross was attained by the addition of the upper vertical member above the T. This developed further in the bearing of the Cross on the shoulders.

The Sun-men too had attained a certain high development. There were also Sun Adepts, who had progressed further than the other Sun-men. They passed over to the Moon. There also they had the possibility of being on a higher level than the Moon-men, and they developed to quite special heights. They were the forefathers of the Earth-men, but had hastened much further ahead. When now in the second Epoch of the Fourth Round the Hyperboreans lived in their soft forms, these Sons of the Sun were in position to incarnate and they formed a particularly beautiful Race. They were the Solar Pitris. Already in the Hyperborean Epoch they created for themselves an upright form, completely transforming the Hyperborean bodies. This the other human beings were unable to do. In the Hyperborean Epoch the Solar Pitris became the beautiful Apollo-men, who in the Second Race had already attained the upright posture.

In the Old Sun everything was contained which was later extrapolated as Moon and Earth. All life and all warmth streamed up from the centre of the Sun. Then, in the next Manvantara (the Old Moon) the following took place: Out of the darkness of Pralaya the Sun emerged. A part of the Sun substance had the urge to detach itself. At first a kind of biscuit formation developed.

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Then the one part severed itself completely and the two bodies continued side by side as Sun and Old Moon. The Sun retained the possibility of emitting light and warmth. The Old Moon retained the power of reproduction. It was able to bring forth again the beings who had been on the Sun, but they had to be dependent on the Sun for light and warmth. Because the Old Moon itself possessed no light, the beings had to orientate themselves towards the Sun. All plants therefore completely reversed their position on the Old Moon. The animals turned half round and human beings also only turned halfway; but to compensate for this they received on the Moon the astral body, Kama, and thereby, developed warmth from within outwards.

The Kama was at that time still an essentially warming force. This is why the human beings did not already then turn themselves completely towards the Sun. Life was in the darkness. The Old Moon also circled round the Sun, but not as our Earth does today. The Moon rotated around the Sun, in such a way that only one side was turned towards it. A Moon-day therefore lasted as long as a half year does today. Thus on the one side there was an intense heat and on the other side an intense cold.

On the Old Moon the predecessors of man again went through a certain normal development. But there were also Moon Adepts who hastened on in advance of the rest of mankind. At the end of the Old Moon evolution these Pitri beings were much more advanced than the rest of humanity, just as the Adepts are today.

Now for the first time we reach the actual Earth evolution. In the next Pralaya which followed the Moon evolution, the Moon fell back into the Sun. As one body they went through Pralaya. When the Earth eventually emerged out of the darkness the whole Sun-mass was united with it. In that epoch the first or Polarian Race began. Then the previous Sun-Men, in accordance with conditions at that time, were able to form this specially favoured species, the Sons of the Sun, because the Sun was still united with the Earth.

During the Hyperborean Period the whole again divided. One part severed itself and the Earth emerged out of the Sun. It is at this point that the Kant-Laplace theory is relevant. The earth was in a nebulous condition coinciding with the Kant-Laplace theory. The outer appearance seemed like the rings around Saturn. Now the second or Hyperborean Race evolved. Gradually the seeds of the Moon-Men appeared on the Earth, the Pitris in various degrees of perfection. They all still had the possibility of reproducing themselves through self-fertilisation.

A second severance followed. With the Moon everything connected with self-reproduction departed from the Earth, so that there were now three bodies: Sun, Earth, Moon. Then the possibility of self-fertilisation ceased; the Moon had drawn out what made this possible. Then the Moon was outside and there were beings who were no longer able to reproduce themselves; thus in the Lemurian Age the two sexes originated.

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Such forms of evolution take their course only under the special guidance of higher beings, the Devas, in order to further evolution in a certain way. The leader of this whole progression is the God who in the Hebraic tradition is called Jahve; Jehovah. He was a Moon-God. He possessed in the highest sense of the word, the power that had developed on the Moon and accordingly he endeavoured to develop mankind further in this direction. In the earthly world Jahve represents that God who endows beings with the possibility of physical reproduction. Everything else (intellect) did not lie in the Jahve-Intention. If Jahve's intention alone had continued to develop, the human being would eventually have ceased to be able to reproduce himself, for the power of reproduction would have become exhausted. He would then only have been concerned with the creation of beautiful forms, for he was indifferent to what is inward, intellectual. Jehovah wished to produce beautifully formed human beings, like beautiful statues. His intention was that the power of reproduction should be continued until it had expended itself. He wanted to have a planet that only bore upon it beautiful but completely motionless forms. If the Earth had continued its evolution with the Moon within it, it would have developed into a completely rigid, frozen form. Jehovah would have immortalised his planet as a monument to his intention. This would doubtless have come about had not those Adepts, who had hastened beyond the Moon evolution now come forward. It was just at this time that they made their appearance. They had already developed on the Moon intelligence and the Spirit which we first developed on the Earth. They now took the rest of humanity into their charge and rescued them from the fate which otherwise would have befallen them. A new spark was kindled in the human astral body. Just at that time they gave to the human astral body the impetus to develop beyond this critical point. Jahve could now save the situation only by altering his manner of working. He created man and woman. What could no longer be contained in one sex was divided between the two sexes.

Two streams now existed, that of Jahve and that of the Moon Adepts. The interest of the Moon Adepts lay in spiritualising mankind. Jahve, however, wished to make of them beautiful statues. At that time these two powers contested with one another.

Thus on the Earth we have to do with a force having the power of self-reproduction; Kriya-shakti. This power is only present on the Earth today in the very highest Mysteries. At that time everyone possessed it. Through this power man could reproduce himself; he then became divided into two halves with the result that two sexes came into being on the Earth.

Jehovah withdrew the entire power of self-reproduction from the Earth and placed it in the Moon side by side with the Earth. Through this arose the connection between the power of reproduction and the Moon beings. Now we have human beings with a weakened power of reproduction, but not yet having the possibility of spiritualising themselves. These were the predecessors of present-day man. The Moon Adepts came to them and said: You must not follow Jehovah. He will not allow you to attain to knowledge but you should. That is the Snake. The Snake approached the woman, because she had the power to produce offspring out of herself. Now Jehovah said: Man has become like unto ourselves, and brings death into the world and everything connected with it.

‘Lucifer’ is the name given to the Moon Adepts; they are the bestowers of human intellectuality. This they gave to the astral and physical bodies; had it been otherwise the Monads would not have been able to enter into them and the Earth would have become a planetary monument to Jehovah's greatness. By the intervention of the Luciferic principle human independence and spirituality were saved. Then Jehovah, so that man should not be completely spiritualised, divided the self-reproduction process into two parts. What would have been lost however if Jehovah had continued his work alone will reappear in the Sixth Root-Race, when man will have become so spiritualised that he will regain Kriya-shakti, the creative power of reproduction. He will be in the position to bring forth his own kind. In this way mankind was rescued from downfall.

Through Jehovah's power man carries within himself the possibility of rigidifying. When one observes the three lower bodies we find that these bear within them the possibility of returning to the physical condition of the Earth. The upper parts: Atma, Buddhi, Manas, were only able to enter into human beings because the influence of the Snake was added. This gave man new life and the power to remain with the earthly planet. Reproduction however became bisexual and thereby birth and death entered into the world. Previously this had not happened.

When man, by working out of the spirit, transmutes the physical body, he conquers death. The separate forces exhaust themselves when they take on special forms. The force enters into the form with ever increasing density and hence life in the Lemurian Age had to receive a new impulse, which was brought about by the turning around of the Earth Globe. The axis of the Earth was gradually turned. Previously there was a tropical climate at the North Pole; later through the turning around of the Earth axis the tropical climate came into the middle region. This change proceeded with comparative rapidity but lasted nevertheless for perhaps four million years. [Rudolf Steiner later revised his time scale of earthly evolution to much shorter periods. Ed.] Four million years were needed by the Moon Pitris in order to turn the axis of the Earth. At that time the Moon Pitris development was already much further on than that of present day man.

Thus at that time the two sexes developed from the unisexual human being. In the beginning among the unisexual human beings there were very retarded individuals, but also those who were very far advanced. Only a small part of the Earth was a fitting dwelling place for the descending Monads. Then it was that human beings divided into two sexes. This had taken place earlier with the animals. Side by side with human beings there existed male and female animals. Very grotesque forms were able to live on the quite differently constituted Earth. They were also able to fly. They bore within them the future promise of what human beings possess today. Esoteric religions call human beings able to bring forth their own kind Bulls. (Certain animal symbols are related to this.) The Bull is a symbol of fertility; previously came the Lion, the symbol of courage, and before this the Eagle. In the vision of Ezekiel,⁶¹ referring to those earlier times, the animals have wings because they could raise themselves above the earth. Man only appeared later.

Thus we have the human being as he evolved from the unisexual into the bisexual state, and together with him bisexual animals, male and female. It was only through the Lunar Pitris that man became mature enough to have a body capable of receiving the Monads. The latter however selected only the most highly developed examples and evolved a noble human form; only these had to be withdrawn completely from intercourse with anything around them, otherwise the beautiful bodies would have been lost. It was only then that the body formed itself in accordance with the Monad. The other forms which were less advanced failed to satisfy the descending Monad; hence they poured only a part of their spiritual force into the imperfect human bodies and the third stream utterly refused to incarnate. Because of this there existed very poorly endowed human bodies and also others quite devoid of spirit.

In the middle of the Lemurian Age we find the first Sons of the Fire Mist; these incarnate in the fiery element, which at that time surrounded the Earth. The Sons of the Fire Mist were the first Arhats.⁶² Then there arose the other two kinds. In the first Lemurian human race those who had received only a small spark were little adapted to forming a civilisation and soon went under. On the other hand those who had received absolutely nothing found full expression for their lower nature. They mingled with the animals. From them proceeded the last Lemurian races. The wild, animal instincts lived in wild animal-like human forms. This brought about a degeneration of the entire human substance.

Had all human beings been fructified with Monads, the whole human race would have greatly improved. The first evil arose through the fact that certain Monads refused to incarnate. From this, through intermingling, deterioration set in. In this way the human being suffered an essentially physical degradation. Only in the Atlantean Age did the Monads regret their previous refusal; they came down and populated all mankind. In this way arose the various Atlantean races.

We have now reached a time when something happened to bring about the deterioration of the Earth. The wholesale deterioration of the races brought this about. It was then that the seed of Karma was planted. Everything that came later is the result of this original Karma; for had the Monads all entered into human forms at the right time, human beings would have possessed the certainty of animals, they could not have been subject to error, but they would not have been able to develop freedom. The original Arhats could not go astray; they are angels in human form. The Moon Adepts however had so brought things about that certain Monads waited before incarnating. Through this the principle of asceticism entered into the world—reluctance to inhabit the Earth. This discrepancy between higher and lower Nature arose at this time. Because of it man became uncertain; he must now try things out, oscillating from one experience to another, in an attempt to find his way in the world. Because he had original Karma, his own further Karma came about. Now he could fall into error.

The intention was that man should attain knowledge. This could only be brought about through the original Karma. The Luciferic Principle, the Moon Adepts, wanted to develop freedom and independence to an ever-greater degree. This is very beautifully expressed in the saga of Prometheus:⁶³ Zeus will not allow human beings to get fire. Prometheus however gives them fire, the faculty of developing ever higher and higher. By so doing he condemns man to suffering. Man must now wait for the coming of a Sun Hero, until the Principle of the Sun Hero in the Sixth Race will make him able to develop further without Luciferic knowledge. Those endowed with this higher degree of advancement are like Prometheus, they are Sun Heroes.

We have thus learned to know a two-fold order of human beings: those who succumbed to the Jehovah Principle, the bringing of perfection to the physical Earth, and also spiritual human beings who were becoming more highly developed. Jehovah and Lucifer are engaged in an unceasing battle. It is the intention of Lucifer to develop everything upwards, towards knowledge, towards the light. In Devachan the human being can bring a certain degree of advancement to the Luciferic Principle. The longer he remains in Devachan the more of this can he develop. He must pass through as many incarnations as are necessary in order to bring this Principle fully to perfection.

Thus there exists in the world a Jehovah Principle and a Lucifer Principle. If the Jehovah Principle alone were to be taught, man would succumb to the Earth. If the teaching of reincarnation and karma were allowed to disappear entirely from the Earth we should win back for Jehovah all the Monads and physical man would be given over to the Earth, to a petrified planet. If however one teaches reincarnation and karma, man is led upwards to spiritualisation. Christianity therefore made the absolutely right compromise, and for a period of time did not teach reincarnation and karma, but the importance of the single human existence, in order that man should learn to love the Earth, waiting until he is mature enough for a new Christianity, with the teaching of reincarnation and karma, which is the saving of the Earth and brings the whole of what has been sown into Devachan. As a result, in Christianity itself there is conflict between the two Principles: the one without reincarnation and karma, the other with this teaching. In the former case, everything which Lucifer could bring about would be taken from human beings. They would actually drop out of reincarnation and turn their backs on the Earth, becoming degenerate angels. In that case the Earth would be going towards its downfall. Were the hosts of Jehovah to be victorious on the Earth, the Earth would remain behind as a kind of Moon, as a rigidified body. The possibility of spiritualisation would then be a missed opportunity. The battle in the Bhagavad Gita⁶⁴ describes the conflict between Jehovah and Lucifer and their hosts.

It might still be possible today for the teaching of Christianity without reincarnation and karma to prevail. Then the Earth would be lost for the Principle of Lucifer. The whole earth is still a battlefield of these two principles. The principle that leads the earth towards spirituality is Lucifer. In order to live in accordance with this Principle one must first love the Earth, one must descend on to the Earth. Lucifer is the Prince who reigns in the kingdom of science and art, but he cannot descend altogether on to the Earth: for this, his power does not suffice. Quite alone, it would be impossible for Lucifer to lead upwards what is on the Earth. For this, not only is the power of a Moon Adept necessary, but of a Sun Adept, who embraces the universality of human life, not manifesting only in science and art. Lucifer is represented as the Winged Form of the Dragon; Ezekiel describes him as the Winged Bull.

Now there came a Sun Hero, similar to those who appeared in the Hyperborean Epoch, represented by Ezekiel as the Winged Lion. This Hero, Who gave the second impulse, is the Christ, the Lion out of the tribe of Judah. The representative of the Eagle will come only later; he represents the Father Principle. Christ is a Solar Hero, a Lion-Nature, a Sun Pitri.

The third impulse will be represented by an Adept who was already an Adept on Saturn. Such a one cannot as yet incarnate on the Earth. When man is not only able to develop his higher nature upwards, but working creatively is able to renounce completely his lower nature, then will this highest Adept, the Saturn Adept, the Father Principle, the Hidden God, be able to incarnate.

• 61. See Note 51.
• 62. ... given as explanation of the 7th Stanza of Dyzan in Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine.
• 63. See lecture 7.10.1904 in Greek and Germanic Mythology (Typescript).
• 64. In 1912 – 13 Rudolf Steiner gave two lecture cycles on this subject: ‘The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul’ and ‘The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita’

Ladies and gentlemen!

Eight days ago today I tried to present Heraclitus on the basis of the Greek Mysteries, because it seems to me beyond doubt that this personality and his world view can only be understood from this point of view. I mean that if one has before one such a personality from the [transition from the sixth to the] fifth century before our era and has only a series of fragmentary sayings from his life at one's disposal, and if one then tries to form a picture of the world view of this personality, and if one looks at this world view from the point of view that one gains when one starts from ordinary philosophy, and finds that one does not know what to do with this world-view, whereas with the contemporaneous, earlier and later Greek philosophers one is very well able to penetrate to a deeper understanding without further, deeper insights, this must make one suspicious, and one must look for the source elsewhere than in the source of reflection and pure science. I have said that the source that provides us with the conviction that Heraclitus has drawn from the immense depths of the Hellenic world view is nothing other than what Heraclitus implies when he says: 'If one looks around and sees the Mystery Being with the eyes of the layman, it might appear that the Mystery Being contains nothing special, contains nothing other than a cult of the lust for life, of the pleasure of the senses, a cult of the urge for the continual rejuvenation of existence. - There is no doubt that the god Dionysus was worshipped by the masses as nothing other than the god of the effervescent lust for life. If we look at Nietzsche, this Dionysus deity appears to us in a serene and profound way, but only in the form in which the researcher of Greek culture can see it. You can see what ideas you can gain [about the] god Dionysus if you don't delve deeper.

I would like to say a few words about Nietzsche's conception of the god Dionysus. For the first time, he and his friend Erwin Rohde, the [philologist], [fought] the view [prevailing] throughout the nineteenth century that it was the people of childhood who lived in eternal serenity, for whom the whole life of the day ran like a game. They fought this view of the Greeks because they saw that this absorption in beauty, this search for playful activity, rested on a deeper foundation. This is how Nietzsche came to understand Greek tragedy, the Greek work of art, not as it had been understood until Rohde, but in a completely different way. Until Nietzsche, the saying was not understood in the right way: The worst thing that could happen to man is that he lives at all; and the best thing would be that he is not born at all. But since he is born, it is best to die. - It is to the credit of Rohde and Nietzsche that they have correctly understood this saying and understood Greekism in this way. It is not pessimism. Nietzsche called his first work "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music" because music is only a symbol for beauty, for the conception of the world as a work of art. Together with Rohde, Nietzsche understood that even the Greek could not find satisfaction in everyday life, but that he also had to rise above his unsatisfactory existence. This is why Nietzsche says that he wanted to see it as an urge not to perceive the world as it appears to us, but as a work of art. And the world as we see it with the Greeks is to be endured as such. He perceived life, the everyday, as a tragedy. And then you can only bear it if you see it in the mirror image [of art]. What the world is as a work of art is that which is intended to console us about the world of everyday life. Nietzsche understands this service as the cult of Dionysus. For Nietzsche, the urge for the life of appearance, of reflection, was the Dionysian urge. Nietzsche's entire urge to live emanates from here, and it continues to develop in him later. The idea of the eternal return [of the same] is not to be confused with the idea of reincarnation. If you put Nietzsche's idea together with that one, it looks very dull. Nietzsche says that everything that is taking place here before our eyes has already happened an infinite number of times and will happen an infinite number of times. Nietzsche developed the idea of the eternal return of the same from his own life. This is a specifically Nietzschean form of the urge to live. This Nietzschean idea is a subsequent construction, which he gained from the observation of externalities.

But if we start from the point we emphasized last time, that the cult of Dionysus can only be understood if we know that the Greeks also worshipped [Hades], the god of death, the underworld, in him, then we also get an idea of what to think of Heraclitus, who was deeply initiated into the meaning of the mystery cults and had the concept of the mystery cults themselves, which enabled him to give an image of those great truths that later reappear in our German mystics, in all those who were at all capable of living within the mystical world of imagination. Thus death is also the root of all life, which is also expressed in the saying of Jakob Böhme: "He who does not die before he dies, perishes when he dies." What I am about to say should lead us into what the Greek cults wanted. This is not easy to say in a nutshell.

What we can say in words about what lies at the heart of this is what we find in Aristotle. It is not a question of knowledge that can be expressed, but of having stood in the cults in order to have experienced these truths for oneself. We also know that the people who taught the mysteries said that those who were initiated into the mysteries were freed from all destruction, that they were partakers of an eternal life, that they praised initiation as the highest happiness of their lives. Plato does the same. And this would be recognized by anyone who was able to grasp his doctrine of ideas - which, however, is something quite different from what it is usually taken to be. So what are those who were initiated? Aeschylus was the predecessor of the Greek tragedians. Aeschylus was accused of betraying the Greek mysteries. The betrayal of the mysteries was punishable by death. He was also condemned. He could only save himself by proving that he had not been initiated into the mysteries at all. What does this mean now? Is this [story] to be taken as it is told to us? Was he really not initiated into the mysteries? Anyone who knows how to interpret such a tradition will see that this [story] is not a [story], but has an allegorical meaning. The whole [story] that he was accused of having betrayed the mysteries and then provided proof that he was not initiated at all is to be taken as an allegory. What does it mean that Aeschylus was actually highly versed in the Mysteries and, as far as we can know about this wisdom, was initiated? And what does it mean that he proved that he was not initiated? He has shown that what he said was not mystery wisdom at all, that it did not refer to mystery wisdom. The Aeschylus who was initiated could not reveal anything. The wisdom of the Mysteries could not be betrayed. One could say something about the wisdom of the Mysteries to this or that person. But anyone who doesn't start to really get into it hears words but doesn't understand their meaning.

Aristotle is not talking about this or that truth, but that those who participate in the mystery cults live these mysteries and absorb them as wisdom. Then it reveals itself as the greatest secret that could be transmitted to them, that what can be sought is nothing other than man himself. He is the highest and at the same time the deepest; he is that which reveals itself to the participant in the secret teaching. It is now a matter of presenting what it means: ["Man, know thyself!"].

We will stick to the external tradition. There is also a tremendous amount to learn from it. We cannot participate directly in the mysterious, at least not in the way it was understood when the Greeks spoke of the mystery being man. This teaching, it was said, was a corrupting truth. It was seen as destroying everything that existed in the Greek truths of faith. That is what is being emphasized. It should not be brought to the people because it was likely to overthrow all the old deities. We hear that something is being done which was capable of destroying the whole world of gods.

Now, let us stick to the mystery truths. If these are supposed to have been capable of destroying this religious world of the people, this world of the gods, then they had to have some relation to it. They could have appeared and had to have some relationship, and they did have a relationship. If we are clear about the relationship between mysteries and religious ideas, we can start from our most trivial concepts within our own worldview.

We always hear that humans anthropomorphize, humanize the processes in their environment. There is no other way. It is said that pagans humanize thunder and lightning, that they see the alternation of day and night as a battle between the gods, that they imagine that the gods are only related to each other in the same way as humans. This humanizes nature. Man humanizes it. When we progress to scientific ideas, we can't help it. We often don't even know that we are doing this.

The natural scientist will not present the sun as a light [deity]. He has sifted ideas. But they have become so refined that he no longer realizes that he is on the level of pagan mythology. Let us take the idea of impact as an example. Atoms collide in space. This looks very scientific, very advanced. But if we go back to the impact of two bodies, it is nothing other than a humanization. We transfer our subjective power to the being outside us, [even] if we are [often] not clear [about it] and no longer keep present how we have taken the ideas from nature. All this is not merely a crude description, a crude enumeration of what the eye sees: A ball rolls this far and hits another one there, then this one stops and the other one rolls. If you go just one step further, then you have humanized nature, then you have done the same as the pagan "researchers". We have such humanizations before us in natural science. Man puts his own nature out into the world as pure fact. We must hold fast to the fact that in pagan religion and in scientific ideas, when we speak of the outer world, we speak of nothing other than digging our own inner life into the outer world and this into our inner world and then seeing the whole inner and outer world come towards us as harmony. So if we want to make the outer world understandable and worthy of worship, that is our inner world.

All that I have said about the humanization of the outer world lies in religion, is what I have called the "conception of the great mass and what man wanted to get beyond. Is what Heraclitus wanted something else? It is something that stands in a certain contrast to the point of view of the world view [of the great masses]. The Mysteries are something quite different, something exactly opposite to the exoteric religions, which view the world in the way I have just described. The Mysteries begin with simple truths, with simple insights, so that what I have just said also applies to them. I mean that the simple truth, whether it be primitive religion or science, arises from the confluence of the spiritual and the material, from what lies subjectively within us and from what lies outside. Man must

realize this first truth. If he feels this truth, then he must ask: How do I see that which I seek as truth from the ideas in its pure form? At this preliminary stage I have humanized the world for myself. Now I must see in its purity that which I have contaminated in myself with real existence, with that which exists in the outer world.

Now the great cliff begins, that it is now possible that you try to get out of the world view filled with the content of the world of legends, but that you see nothing at all. This is because people tell themselves that they see nothing other than the gray, the abstract, the general. Just as someone whose eyes are not suitable for seeing colors sees the world grey in grey, i.e. not in colors, so it is with someone who has passed the first stage and still wants to retain a content, even if he no longer uses his senses, his eyes and ears to help him.

So the really big question is this - and a personality like Heraclitus has to ask it: If I renounce everything I have through the senses, do I still have any content at all? And if so, then it cannot be sensory content, but only spiritual content. This gift is called intuition, genius, grace and so on. But the basic level is this, the ability to experience something when the entire external world, which is perceived with the eyes and ears, is no longer there.

This is a correct understanding of the word: experiencing knowledge. - To experience means not to have gained knowledge through external sensory impressions, not even through religious ones, but to allow spiritual knowledge to light up within oneself, to be reborn from within into a state of consciousness which is higher than the everyday one and which at the same time has the effect that it has swallowed up the ordinary state of consciousness, that it is no longer there, but is reborn on a higher level. He is spiritually reborn, and that is a purely inner state of consciousness. But if he then [has gained such a] state of consciousness, then he must go through the same process again, he must

go through the process from the outer worldview to the inner worldview again, he must be born again. And when this has taken place, then he is no longer born as a human being, but at the higher level, where the human being is no longer an individual being, but is aware of what shines above every single thing, shines above everything - and that this light is a light, of which Heraclitus says: Now I know everything. - He did not mean to say that he knows all the details, but only that he has reached a state of consciousness where not the personal human being but the eye of the primordial human being sees.

We therefore have to distinguish three stages: 1. the ordinary world consciousness, interspersed with sensory perceptions, 2. the consciousness that is also still sensual, but which has fought down the sensual, 3. the purely spiritual consciousness, in which man still sees what is extinguished and intertwined; all perception has become one with the all-perception. - Heraclitus and his comrades had these three states in mind, had them in mind as lived states that they had actually experienced.

How do we imagine these purely internally experienced states? We have to think of them in a completely different way than in space and time. We can no longer say: this is this person and this is that person. In this third state of consciousness, there is no talk of multiplicity, but only of the all-consciousness that lives - and sees - in each individual.

Heraclitus and his comrades also have this experience in the ordinary ideas of the people, in the ordinary world view. But the ordinary world view now relates to these inner experiences in the opposite way to how these inner experiences used to relate to the outer processes in the world. When Heraclitus and his comrades (those who had these experiences) came to the people, they were confronted with the doctrine of the gods as we find it in Hesiod and Homer. They spoke of the existence of gods. They spoke of Uranos and that he had a wife, Gaea, and that this pair of gods was then replaced by Kronos and Rhea - not without them

defeating them. The third pair of gods is Zeus and Hera, because Zeus was saved and defeated his father Cronus. So we see a series of Greek gods and goddesses. They form the content of the Greek consciousness of the gods. This consciousness of the gods relates to the inner experience of the myths in the same way as the outer facts relate to the inner facts. While the external facts are lifted up so that they merge with the spiritual ones, [the myths] are created by the fact that all this gradually comes up and is only projected out into the world and that then nothing else is reflected in the experiences of the gods than the inner experiences.

Uranos and Gäa are the first consciousness. It was swallowed up by the second consciousness, by Kronos and Rhea. And the third is the general world light that shines in man, which has its outer projection in Zeus and Hera, who let all the earlier generations of gods sink into night. Just as the individual consciousness sinks into the night, so do they. Just as the individual consciousness is immersed in the outer world, so they are immersed in the inner world. Exactly the opposite process occurs. Therefore the doctrines of the gods first appear as something that is not known to those who have them before them only as doctrines of the gods, just as those who dream do not know the origin of the dream, but only know the dream. He who only sees the dream images would rightly consider them to be reality. He who lives only in the outer projection can take them for reality. And rightly so. But anyone who has seen through them and sees that they are nothing more than projections will no longer regard them as realities.

This is why the Mystery Being is a meaningful allegory. The world of the gods is dead to the mystic. The mystery cult represents the twilight of the gods. The outer concept of the gods is an inner state of consciousness. What burns away the outer conception of the gods and allows it to reappear as a purely spiritual state of consciousness, this primal element of the world is what Heraclitus also knew, it is what he and his contemporaries called the "fire" that causes the great world conflagration. The twilight of the gods consists of everything being burnt in order to dissolve it and allow it to reappear on a higher level.

When we look at our inner state of consciousness, we always have two things in front of us. First, we have to consider the content of what lives within us; and then we have to focus our attention on that which absorbs the content. In other words: We have to distinguish between the spiritual that is absorbed by us and is always reborn at a higher level, and the power that stands behind this activity of giving birth and rebirth. We have spirituality on the one hand and consciousness on the other. We have to distinguish between the world and the senses that grasp this world, and then the senses reborn in the spirit and the consciousness itself. Consciousness itself and that which is at the highest level of consciousness are the same thing that is seen. At the highest level they are one and the same. We always have to distinguish between these two powers, these two potencies. That which forms the content, which fills the consciousness, and that into which this content must submerge and through which it is reborn.

The Greek world of the gods also has a personification, a clear expression, for this inner process, for this division of spiritual life into two potencies. Otherwise we would have to wonder why this world of Greek gods always places the goddess next to the god, for example Gäa next to Uranos. If we stick to external mythology alone, we cannot find a real reason for this. But we must not imagine the matter so superficially. We must be clear about the fact that when we project the inner consciousness into the outer world, the fact that we are dealing with two different forces, with two potencies, enters our consciousness as that which is [devoured] and that which is reborn. This fact is expressed in the two sexes, in Uranos and Gäa, Kronos and Rhea, Jupiter or Zeus and Hera. The feminine in mythology means nothing other than consciousness. A woman, when she appears in mythology, signifies consciousness.

The masculine signifies that which is absorbed by consciousness. The feminine is always the driving force. The female is what saves Zeus. Likewise, consciousness is the actual driving force, it is what brings about the various successive states. Now we will also understand why the deepest mystery, the symbol of the deepest mystery, which was offered to those initiated into the Mysteries, presents itself as the human being. This is nothing other than the highest level of development of consciousness. Then he has answered this "Know thyself" for himself. Therefore, the human being must also be regarded as the symbolic solution to the riddle of the world. And this person who confronts him is no longer bisexual, but unisexual. It is exactly the same as with the content of consciousness and the consciousness that has always confronted him as bisexual. Just as the latter then presents itself as unisexual, so there is no longer any separation in consciousness, but rather, to put it in the words of Meister Eckhart, that what sees and is seen is one and the same. The primal being sees itself. It only has to do with itself. In this, the highest solution to the riddle of the world presents itself as a being that is male and female at the same time.

These are the various clues that clearly show us that [in the Greek doctrine of the gods] we are dealing with a projection of inner states of consciousness. In addition, there is the myth of Dionysus, which has made its way along various paths. In Egypt in particular, we are dealing with the Osiris and Isis myths. However, we cannot go into details here. Dionysus is the son of Persephone. Persephone is the daughter of Demeter - these are nothing other than states of consciousness; [Dionysus] is overcome and dismembered by the Titans. Only the heart is saved. Zeus revives the heart. The limbs of Dionysus, Persephone's brother, are buried, and from them humans are born. So we see that this myth unites man with the supreme deity, i.e. with nothing other than his consciousness. Persephone is a daughter of Demeter and she is a daughter of Kronos. A higher state of consciousness emerges from the lower state of consciousness. This presents itself to us in Demeter. In Persephone an even higher level of cognition presents itself to us. From this highly developed stage emerges the consciousness of man, the answer to the question "Know thyself". But this answer is such an immense gulf, presents itself as so incomprehensible that man cannot bear it, that man first fragments the man he comprehends, that is, that he seeks to comprehend man in the general world consciousness.

From the general world consciousness, from the phenomena of nature, he first builds the human being again. He must first bury this first man, who handed him the questions, in the world and must then build the younger Dionysus from the entire world consciousness. In this way, Zeus rescues him from the old man's substance. This expresses nothing other than the various experiences, the various transformations that are expressed in individual Greek myths. Thus we now understand why the knowledge of the Greek mystery world would have meant the death of external popular ideas.

We must also realize that only those who could go through this inner state of consciousness were mature enough to overcome the gods. You had to experience Dionysus yourself, be dismembered yourself and collect the pieces in order to put the younger Dionysus back together again. To hand this over to the one who stands on the outer standpoint would have been poison for him and thus for the great crowd. It would only have taken something from her that could not have been replaced. If the gods had been taken from her, she would have been left with absolutely nothing. Nothing else would have given her other ideas of gods, other commandments. Aeschylus' statement shows us this: "It is impossible to speak of the [mysteries] and to guess or reveal anything about things. - The mysteries, he says, are only a communication of things that can only be experienced, not expressed in words. What one expresses in the mysteries is a projection of the inside outwards. That was the urge to recognize man, the illumination of the great question "Know thyself", since man's greatest enigma was man.

At the same time, this was connected with the great destruction of this basic conception of man, this dissection and dismemberment of Dionysus in the world, the gathering of him and his rebirth on a higher level of existence. If one has such an understanding, then many things become comprehensible that otherwise sound like empty words and cannot be understood. Everything must be understood as a fact. One of the most difficult tasks in life is to bring the details back together. This is nothing other than what the Greek mystics expressed with the words: [gap in transcript]

[Answer to question:]

And what Goethe expresses in his "Faust" is almost the same: "Everything transient is only a parable." [Goethe] means nothing other than that the world of sensory existence is only a parable for those who embark on the path to a higher consciousness. This world is perishing. "The inadequate, here it becomes [event], the indescribable, here it is done", that is, that which cannot be described but must be experienced, here it is done. A special light then falls on the final words of the Chorus mysticus: "The eternal feminine draws us in." The eternal feminine means nothing other than the upper state of consciousness, consciousness itself. And in the whole of Greek mythology, this drawing from one consciousness to another was represented under the image of the goddess, under the image of the woman. Goethe expresses this drawing towards with these words. Thus, the stage of Heraclitus leads him to the Mystery Being, and to have gained the stage of Heraclitus means for him to have gained the first stage to the Mystery Being itself.

He believes he has shown that when Heraclitus says: The world came into being from fire - this means nothing other than: The world originated from the Mystery.

Through Paracelsus we have a transition.

Nicolaus Cusanus is the forerunner of modern world views. At the same time, he had a deep understanding of the world.

The opposites always dissolve at the next higher level. All knowledge is: annihilation in order to be reborn at a higher level. The whole process is illuminated again from behind, as it were. Those who lose themselves in the sciences flutter away too easily.

Heraclitus did not have as much to overcome as Paracelsus.

Fichte overcame pantheism and thus arrived at an inner view.

Schelling also had this. His "Mythology" is the most important work we can read today.

In the "Theologia Deutsch", the language has become old.

By taking our start from what was said yesterday, we shall be able to come nearer to the fundamental questions of Christianity and to penetrate into its essential nature. We shall see that only by this means can we see into the heart of what the Christ-Impulse has become for the evolution of humanity and what it will become in the future.

People are always insisting that the answers to the highest questions must not be complicated; the truth must be brought directly to each person in the simplest way. In support of this they argue, for example, that the Apostle John in his last years expressed the quintessence of Christianity in words of truth: ‘Children, love one another.’ No one, however, should conclude that a person who simply pronounces the words, ‘Children, love one another’, knows the essence of Christianity and of all truth for men. Before the Apostle John was entitled to pronounce these words, he had fulfilled various preconditions. We know it was at the end of a long life, in his ninety-fifth year, that he came to this utterance; only by then, in that particular incarnation, had he earned the right to use such words, Indeed, he stands there as a witness that this saying, if it came from any chance individual, would not have the power it had from him. For he had achieved something else, also. Although the critics dispute it, he was the author of the John Gospel, the Apocalypse, and the Epistles of John. Throughout his life he had not always said, ‘Children, love one another!’ He had written a work which belongs to the most difficult productions of man, the Apocalypse, and the John Gospel, which penetrates most intimately and deeply into the human soul. He had gained the right to pronounce such a saying only through a long life and through what he had accomplished. If anyone lives a life such as his, and does what he did, and then says, as he did, ‘Children, love one another!’ there are no grounds for objecting to it. We must, however, be quite clear that although some things can be compressed into a few words, so that these few words signify very much, the same few words may also say nothing. Many a person who pronounces a word of wisdom which in its proper setting would perhaps signify something very deep, believes that by merely uttering it he has said a very great deal.

The writer of the Apocalypse and of the John Gospel, in his greatest age, could speak the words ‘Children, love one another!’ out of the essence of Christianity, but the same words from the mouth of another person may be a mere phrase. We must gather matters for the understanding of Christianity from far a field, so that we may apply them to the simplest truths of daily life.

Yesterday we had to approach the question, so fateful for modern thought: What are we to make of the physical body in relation to the four-fold being of man?

We shall see how the points brought out yesterday in looking at the differing views of the Greeks, the ancient Hebrews and the Buddhists will lead us further towards understanding the nature of Christianity. But if we are to learn more concerning the fate of the physical body, we must first take up a question which is central to the whole Christian cosmic conception; a question which lies at the very core of Christianity: How it is with the Resurrection of Christ? Must we not assume that for the understanding of Christianity it is essential to reach an understanding of the Resurrection?

To see how important this is, we need only recall a passage in the first Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, (I Corinthians 15:14–20):

If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life we who are in Christ have only hope, we are of all men most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
(Quotations from the New Testament are in the Revised Standard Version, 1946.)

We must remember that Christianity, in so far as it has extended over the world, began with Paul. And if we are disposed to take these important words seriously, we cannot simply pass them over by saying that we must leave the question of the Resurrection unexplained. For what is it that Paul says? That the whole of Christianity has no justification, and the whole Christian Faith no meaning, if the Resurrection is not true! That is what is said by Paul, with whom Christianity as a fact of history had its starting-point. And it means that anyone who is willing to give up the Resurrection must give up Christianity as Paul understood it.

And now let us pass over almost two thousand years and ask people of the present day how, according to the requirements of modern culture, they stand with regard to the question of the Resurrection. I shall not now take note of those who simply deny Jesus entirely; it is naturally quite easy for them to be clear regarding the question of the Resurrection. If Jesus never lived, one need not trouble about the Resurrection. Leaving such persons aside, we will turn to those who about the middle or in the last third of the nineteenth century had accepted the current ideas of our time—the time in which we are still living. We will ask them what they think, in conformity with the whole culture of our day, concerning the question of the Resurrection.

We will take a man who has gained great influence over the way of thinking of those who consider themselves best informed—David Friedrich Strauss. In his work on Reimarus, a thinker of the eighteenth century, we read: ‘The Resurrection of Jesus is really a shibboleth, concerning which not only the various conceptions of Christianity, but the various world-philosophies and stages of spiritual evolution, are at variance.’ And in a Swiss journal almost of the same date we read: ‘As soon as I can convince myself of the reality of the Resurrection of Christ, this absolute miracle, I tear down the modern conception of the world. This breach in what I believe to be the inviolable order of Nature would make an irreparable rent in my system, in my whole thought-world.’

Let us ask how many persons of our present time who, according to the modern standpoint, must and do subscribe to these words, would say, ‘If I were obliged to recognise the Resurrection as historical fact, I would tear down my whole system of thought, philosophical or otherwise.’ Let us ask how should the Resurrection, as historical fact, fit in with a modern man's outlook on the world.

Let us recall something indicated in my first public lecture on this subject, that the Gospels are to be taken first and foremost as Initiation writings. The leading events depicted in the Gospels are fundamentally Initiation events—events which had formerly taken place within the secret places of the temples of the Mysteries, when this or that person, who had been deemed worthy, was initiated by the hierophants. Such a person, after he had been prepared for a long time, went through a kind of death and a kind of resurrection. He had also to go through certain situations in life which reappear for us in the Gospels—in the story of the Temptation, the story set on the Mount of Olives, and other similar ones. That is why the accounts of ancient Initiates, which do not aim to be biographies in the usual sense, show such resemblance to the Gospel stories of Christ Jesus. And when we read the history of the greatest initiates, of Apollonius of Tyana, or indeed even of Buddha or Zarathustra, or the life of Osiris or of Orpheus, it often seems that important characteristics of their lives are the same as those narrated of Christ Jesus in the Gospels. But although we must grant that we have to seek in the Initiation ceremonies of the old Mysteries for the prototypes of important events narrated in the Gospels, on the other hand we see quite clearly that the great teachings of the life of Christ Jesus are saturated throughout with individual details which are not intended as a mere repetition of Initiation ceremonies, but make it very plain that what is described is actual fact. Must we not say that we receive a remarkably factual impression when the following is pictured for us in the Gospel of John XX:1–10:

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran, and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’ Peter then came out with the other disciple, and they went towards the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first; and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and he went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkins, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ Saying this, she turned and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus.

Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew,

‘Rabboni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her,

‘Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’

Here is a situation described in such detail that if we wish to picture it in imagination there is hardly anything lacking—when, for example, it is said that the one disciple runs faster than the other, or that the napkin which had covered the head was laid aside in another place, and so on. In every detail something is described which would have no meaning if it did not refer to a fact. Attention was drawn on a former occasion to one detail, that Mary did not recognise Christ Jesus, and we asked how was it possible that after three days anyone could fail to recognise in the same form a person previously known. Hence we had to note that Christ appeared to Mary in a changed form, or these words would have no meaning.

Here, therefore, a distinction must be kept in mind. First, we have to understand the Resurrection as a translation into historic fact of the awakening that took place in the holy Mysteries of all times, only with the difference that he who in the Mysteries raised up the individual pupil was the hierophant; while the Gospels indicate that He who raised up Christ is the Being whom we designate as the Father—that the Father Himself raised up the Christ. Here we are shown that what had formerly been carried out on a small scale in the depths of the Mysteries was now and once for all enacted for humanity by Divine Spirits, and that the Being who is designated as the Father acted as hierophant in the raising to life of Christ Jesus. Thus we have here, enhanced to the highest degree, something which formerly had taken place on a small scale in the Mysteries.

That is the first point. The other is that, interwoven with matters which carry us back to the Mysteries, there are descriptions so detailed that even today we can reconstruct from the Gospels the situations even to their minute particulars, as we have just seen in the passage read to you. But this passage includes one detail that calls for particular attention. There must be a meaning in the words, ‘For they did not as yet know the Scripture, that He must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes.’ Let us ask: Of what had the disciples been able so far to convince themselves? It is described as clearly as anything can be that the linen wrappings are there, but the body is not there, is no longer in the grave. The disciples had not been able to convince themselves of anything else, and they understood nothing else when they now went home. Otherwise the words have no meaning. The more deeply you enter into the text, the more you must say that the disciples who were standing by the grave were convinced that the linen wrappings were there, but that the body was no longer in the grave. They went home with the thought: ‘Where has the body gone? Who has taken it out of the grave?’

And now, from the conviction that the body is not there, the Gospels lead us slowly to the events through which the disciples were finally convinced of the Resurrection. How were they convinced? Through the fact that, as the Gospels relate, Christ appeared to them by degrees, so that they could say, ‘He is there!’, and this went so far that Thomas, called the Doubter, could lay his finger in the prints of the wounds. In short, we can see from the Gospels that the disciples became convinced of the Resurrection through Christ having come to them after it as the Risen One. The proof for the disciples was that He was there. And if these disciples, who had gradually come to the conviction that Christ was alive, although He had died, had been asked what they actually believed, they would have said: ‘We have proofs that Christ lives.’ But they certainly would not have spoken as Paul spoke later, after he had gone through his experience on the road to Damascus.

Anyone who allows the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles to work upon him will notice the deep underlying difference between the fundamental tone of the Gospels as regards the understanding of the Resurrection, and the Pauline conception of it. Paul, indeed, draws a parallel between his conviction of the Resurrection and that of the Gospels, for in saying ‘Christ is risen’, he indicates that Christ, after He had been crucified, appeared as a living Being to Cephas, to the Twelve, then to five hundred brethren at one time; and last of all to himself, Paul, as to one born out of due time, Christ had appeared from out of the fiery glory of the Spiritual. Christ had appeared to the disciples also; Paul refers to that, and the events lived through with the Risen One were the same for Paul as they had been for the disciples. But what Paul immediately joins to these, as the outcome for him of the event of Damascus, is his wonderful and easily comprehensible theory of the Being of Christ.

What, from the event of Damascus onwards, was the Being of Christ for Paul? The Being of Christ was for him the ‘Second Adam’; and he immediately differentiates between the first Adam and the second Adam, the Christ. He calls the first Adam the progenitor of men on Earth because he sees in him the first man, from whom all other men are descended. For Paul, it is Adam who has bequeathed to human beings the body which they carry about with them as a physical body. All men have inherited their physical body from Adam. This is the body which meets us in external Maya, and is mortal; it is the body inherited from Adam, the corruptible body, the physical body of man that decays in death. With this body men are ‘clothed’. The second Adam, Christ, is regarded by Paul as possessing, in contrast to the first, the incorruptible, the immortal body. Paul then affirms that through Christian evolution men are gradually made ready to put on the second Adam in place of the first Adam; the incorruptible body of the second Adam, Christ, in place of the corruptible body of the first Adam. What Paul seems to require of all who call themselves true Christians is something that violates all the old conceptions of the world. As the first corruptible body is descended from Adam, so must the incorruptible body originate from the second Adam, from Christ. Every Christian could say: ‘Because I am descended from Adam, I have a corruptible body as Adam had; but in that I set myself in the right relationship to Christ, I receive from Him, the second Adam, an incorruptible body.’ For Paul, this view shines out directly from the experience of Damascus. We can perhaps express what Paul wishes to say by means of a simple diagram:

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Here we have (x, x ...) a number of people at a given time. Paul would trace them all back to the first Adam, from whom they are all descended and by whom they are given the corruptible body. According to Paul's conception, however, something else is possible. Just as human beings can say, ‘We are related because we are all descended from the one progenitor, Adam,’ so they can say, ‘As without any action of ours, through the relationships of human generation lines can be traced back to Adam, so it is possible for us to cause something else to arise within us; something that could make us different beings. Just as the natural lines lead back to Adam, so it must be possible to represent lines which lead, not to the corruptible body of the fleshly Adam, but to the body that is incorruptible. Through our relationship to Christ, we can—according to the Pauline view—bear this incorruptible body within us, just as through Adam we bear the Corruptible body.’

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There is nothing more uncomfortable for the modern consciousness than this idea. For looking at the matter quite soberly, what does it demand from us? It demands something which, for modern thought, is really monstrous. Modern thought has long disputed whether all human beings are descended from one primeval human being, but it may be allowed that all are descended from a single human being who was the first on earth as regards physical consciousness. Paul, however, demands the following. He says: ‘If you desire to be a Christian in the true sense, you must conceive that within you something can arise which can live in you, and from which you can draw spiritual lines to a second Adam, to Christ, to that very Christ who on the third day rose from the grave, just as all men can trace lines back to the physical body of the first Adam.’ So Paul demands that all who call themselves Christians should cause something within them to arise; something leading to that entity which on the third day rose out of the grave in which the body of Christ Jesus had been laid. Anyone who does not grant this cannot come into any relationship with Paul; he cannot say he understands Paul. If man, as regards his corruptible body, is descended from the first Adam, then, by receiving the Being of Christ into his own being, he has the possibility of having a second ancestor. This ancestor, however, is He who, on the third day after His body had been laid in the earth, rose out of the grave.

Let us clearly understand that Paul makes this demand, however displeasing it may be to modern thinkers. From this Pauline statement we will indeed approach the modern thinker; but one ought not to have any other opinion concerning that which meets us so clearly in the Pauline writings; one ought not to twist the meaning of something so clearly expressed by Paul. Certainly it is pleasant to interpret something allegorically and to say it was meant in such and such a way; but all these interpretations make no sense. If we wish to connect a meaning with the Pauline statement we are bound to say—even if modern consciousness regards it as superstition—that, according to Paul, Christ rose from the dead after three days.

Let us go further. An assertion such as this, made by Paul after he had reached the summit of his initiation through the event of Damascus—the assertion concerning the second Adam and His rising from the grave—could be made only by someone whose whole mode of thought and outlook had been derived from Greek thought; by one whose roots were in Greece, even if he were also a Hebrew; by one who in a certain respect had brought all his Hebraism as an offering to the Greek mind. For, if we come closer to all this, what is it that Paul really declares? Looking with inner vision on that which the Greeks loved and valued, the external form of the human body, concerning which they had the tragic feeling that it comes to an end when the individual passes through the gate of death, Paul says: ‘With the Resurrection of Christ, the body has been raised in triumph from the grave.’ If we are to build a bridge between these two world-outlooks, we can best do it in the following way.

The Greek hero said from his Greek feeling: ‘Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the land of shades.’ He said this because he was convinced that the external form of the physical body, so highly cherished by the Greeks, was lost for ever in passing through the gate of death. On this same soil, out of which this tragic mood of intoxication with beauty had grown, Paul appeared, he who first proclaimed the Gospel to the Greeks. We do not deviate from his words if we translate them as follows: ‘That which you value above all, the human bodily form, will no longer be destroyed. Christ is risen as the first of those who are raised from the dead! The Form of the physical body is not lost, but is given back to humanity through the Resurrection of Christ!’ That which the Greeks valued most highly was given back to them with the Resurrection by Paul the Jew, who had been steeped in Greek culture. Only a Greek would so think and speak, but only someone who had become a Greek with all the preconceptions derived from his Jewish ancestry. Only a Jew who had become a Greek could speak in this way; no one else.

But how can we approach these things from the standpoint of Spiritual Science? For we have reached the point of knowing that Paul demands something which thoroughly upsets the calculations of the modern thinker. Let us endeavour from the standpoint of Spiritual Science to get nearer to what Paul demands. Let us collect what we know from Spiritual Science, so as to bring an idea to meet Paul's statement.

When we review the very simplest spiritual-scientific truths, we know that man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and Ego. If now you ask someone who has studied Spiritual Science a little, but not very thoroughly, whether he knows the physical body of man, he will be sure to answer: ‘I know it quite well, for I see it when a person stands before me. The other members are supersensible, invisible, and one cannot see them, but the physical human body I know very well.’ Is it really the physical body of man that appears before our eyes when we meet a man with our ordinary vision? I ask you, who without clairvoyant vision has ever seen a physical human body? What is it that people have before them if they see only with physical eyes and physical understanding? A human body, but one consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and Ego. And when a man stands before us, it is as an organised assembly of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and Ego. It would make as little sense to say that a physical body stood before us as it would if, when giving someone a glass of water, we were to say, ‘There is hydrogen in that glass.’ Water consists of hydrogen and oxygen, as man consists of physical, etheric and astral bodies, and Ego. Their assemblage is visible, just as water is, but the hydrogen and oxygen are not. Anyone who said he saw hydrogen in the water would be obviously mistaken. So is anyone who thinks he sees the physical body when he sees a man in the external world. What he normally sees is not a physical human body, but a four-membered being. He sees the physical body only in so far as it is permeated by the other members of the human being. And it is then changed in the same way that hydrogen is changed when it is permeated with oxygen in water. For hydrogen is a gas, and oxygen also; from the two gases united we get a liquid. Why should it be incomprehensible that the man who meets us in the physical world is quite unlike his single members, the physical, etheric and astral bodies and the Ego, just as water is quite unlike hydrogen? And so he is! Hence we cannot rely upon the Maya which appears to us as the physical body. We must think of the physical body in a quite different way if we want to draw nearer to its nature.

The observation of the physical human body, in itself, belongs to the most difficult clairvoyant problems, the hardest of all! Suppose we allow the external world to perform on man the experiment which is similar to the disintegration of water into hydrogen and oxygen. In death this experiment is performed by the great world. We then see how man lays aside his physical body. But does he really lay aside his physical body? The question seems absurd, for what could be clearer than the apparent fact that at death man lays aside his physical body? But what is it that he lays aside? It is something no longer imbued with the physical body's most important possession during life: its Form. Directly after death the Form begins to withdraw from the dead body. We are left with decaying substances, no longer characterised by the Form. The body laid aside is composed of substances and elements which we can trace also in Nature; in the natural order of things they would not produce a human Form. Yet this Form belongs quite essentially to the physical human body. To ordinary clairvoyance it seems evident that at death a person simply discards these material substances, which are then handed over to decay or burning, and that nothing of the physical body is left. The clairvoyant then observes how after death the Ego, astral body, and etheric body remain connected during the person's review of his past life. Then he sees how the etheric body separates itself, how an extract of it remains, while the main portion dissolves in one way or another into the general cosmic ether. It does indeed seem that the person has laid aside his physical body, with its substances and forces, and then, after a few days, the etheric body. When the clairvoyant follows the person further through the Kamaloka period, he sees how an extract of the astral body goes with him during the life between death and a new birth, while the rest of the astral body is given over to the cosmic astrality.

So we see that physical, etheric and astral bodies are laid aside, and that the physical body seems to drain away completely into materials and forces which, through decay or burning or some other form of dissolution, are returned to the elements. But the more clairvoyance is developed in our time, the clearer will it be that the physical forces and substances laid aside are not the whole physical body, for its complete configuration could never derive from them alone. To these substances and forces there belongs something else, best called the ‘Phantom’ of the man. This Phantom is the Form-shape which as a spiritual texture works up the physical substances and forces so that they fill out the Form which we encounter as the man on the physical plane. The sculptor can bring no statue into existence if he merely takes marble or something else, and strikes away wildly so that single pieces spring off just as the substance permits. As the sculptor must have the ‘thought’ which he impresses on the substance, so is a ‘thought’ related to the human body: not in the same way as the thought of the artist, for the material of the human body is not marble or plaster, but as a real thought, the Phantom, in the external world. Just as the thought of the plastic artist is stamped upon his material, so the Phantom of the physical body is stamped upon the substances of the earth which we see given over after death to the grave or the fire. The Phantom belongs to the physical body as its enduring part, a more important part than the external substances. The external substances are merely loaded into the network of the human Form, as one might load apples into a cart. You can see how important the Phantom is. The substances which fall asunder after death are essentially those we meet externally in nature. They are merely caught up by the human Form.

If you think more deeply, can you believe that all the work of the great Divine Spirits though the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods has merely created something which is handed over at death to the elements of the Earth? No—that which was developed during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods is not the physical body that is laid aside at death. It is the Phantom, the Form, of the physical body. We must be quite clear that to understand the physical body is not an easy thing. Above all, this understanding must not be sought for in the world of illusion, the world of Maya. We know that the foundation, the germ, of this Phantom of the physical body was laid down by the Thrones during the Saturn period; during the Sun period the Spirits of Wisdom worked further upon it, the Spirits of Movement during the Moon period, and the Spirits of Form during the Earth period. And it is only in this period that the physical body received the Phantom. We call these Spirits the Spirits of Form, because they really live in the Phantom of the physical body. So in order to understand the physical body, we must go back to the Phantom.

If we look back to the beginning of our Earth-existence, we can say that the hosts from the ranks of the higher Hierarchies who had prepared the physical human body in its own proper Form during the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods, up to the Earth period, had from the outset placed this Phantom within the Earth evolution. In fact the Phantom, which cannot be seen with the physical eye, was what was first there of the physical body of man. It is a transparent body of force. What the physical eye sees are the physical substances which a person eats and takes into himself, and they fill out the invisible Phantom. If the physical eye looks upon a physical body, what it sees is the mineral part that fills the physical body, not the physical body itself. But how has this mineral part found its way into the Phantom of man's physical body? To answer this question, let us picture once more the genesis, the first ‘becoming’, of man on Earth.

From Saturn, Sun and Moon there came over that network of forces which in its true form meets us as the invisible Phantom of the physical body. For a higher clairvoyance it appears as Phantom only when we look away from all the external substance that fills it out. This is the Phantom which stands at the starting-point of man's Earth existence, when he was invisible as a physical body. Let us suppose that to this Phantom of the physical body the etheric body is added; will the Phantom then become visible? Certainly not; for the etheric body is invisible for ordinary sight. Thus the physical body as Phantom, plus etheric body, is still invisible to external physical sense. And the astral body even more so; hence the combination of physical body as Phantom with the etheric and astral bodies is still invisible. And when the Ego is added it would certainly become perceptible inwardly, but not externally visible. Thus, as man came over out of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods, he was still visible only to a clairvoyant. How did he become visible? But for the occurrence described in the Bible symbolically, and factually in occult science, as the entry of the Lucifer influence, he would not have become visible. What happened through that influence?

Read what is said in Occult Science. Out of that path of evolution in which his physical, etheric and astral bodies were still invisible, man was thrown down into denser matter, and was compelled under the influence of Lucifer to take this denser matter into himself. If the Lucifer force had not been introduced into our astral body and Ego, this dense materiality would not have become as visible as it has become. Hence we have to represent man as an invisible being, made visible in matter only through forces which entered into him under the influence of Lucifer. Through this influence external substances and forces are drawn into the domain of the Phantom and permeate it. As when we pour a coloured fluid into a transparent glass, so that the glass looks coloured, so we can imagine that the Lucifer influence poured forces into the human Phantom, with the result that man was adapted for taking in on Earth the requisite substances and forces which make his Form visible. Otherwise his physical body would have remained always invisible.

The alchemists always insisted that the human body really consists of the same substance that constitutes the perfectly transparent, crystal-clear ‘Philosopher's Stone’. The physical body is itself entirely transparent, and it is the Lucifer forces in man which have brought him to a non-transparent state and placed him before us so that he is opaque and tangible. Hence you will understand that man has become a being who takes up external substances and forces of the Earth, which are given off again at death, only because Lucifer tempted him, and certain forces were poured into his astral body. It follows that because the Ego entered into connection with the physical, etheric and astral bodies under the influence of Lucifer, man became what he is on earth and otherwise would not have been—the bearer of a visible, earthly organism.

Now let us suppose that at a certain point of time in life the Ego were to go out from a human organism, so that there stood before us physical, etheric and astral bodies, but not the Ego. This is what happened in the case of Jesus of Nazareth in the thirtieth year of His life. The human Ego then left this cohesion of physical, etheric and astral bodies. And into this cohesion the Christ-Being entered at the Baptism in Jordan. We now have the physical, etheric and astral bodies of a man, and the Christ-Being. The Christ-Being had now taken up His abode in a human organism, as otherwise the Ego would have done. What now differentiates this Christ Jesus from all other men on Earth? It is this: that all other men bear within them an Ego that once was overcome by Lucifer's temptation, but Jesus no longer bears an Ego within Him; instead, He bears the Christ-Being. So that from this time, beginning with the Baptism in Jordan, Jesus bears within Himself the residual effects that had come from Lucifer, but with no human Ego to allow any further Luciferic influences to enter his body. A physical body, an etheric body, and astral body—in which the residue of the earlier Luciferic influences was present, but into which no more Luciferic influence could enter—and the Christ-Being: thus was Christ Jesus constituted.

Let us set before us exactly what the Christ is from the Baptism in Jordan until the Mystery of Golgotha: a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body which makes this physical body together with the etheric body visible because it still contains the residue of the Luciferic influence. Because the Christ-Being had the astral body that Jesus of Nazareth had had from birth to his thirtieth year, the physical body was visible as the bearer of the Christ. Thus from the time of the Baptism in Jordan we have before us a physical body which as such would not be visible on the physical plane; an etheric body which as such would not have been perceptible; the astral body which makes the other two bodies visible and so makes the body of Jesus of Nazareth into a visible body; and, within this organism, the Christ-Being.

We will inscribe firmly in our souls this four-fold nature of Christ Jesus, saying to ourselves: Every person who stands before us on the physical plane consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and Ego; and this Ego is such that it always works into the astral body up to the hour of death. The Christ-Jesus-Being, however, stands before us as One who had physical body, etheric body and astral body, but no human Ego, so that during the three years up to his death he was not subject to the influences that normally work upon human beings. The only influence came from the Christ-Being.

Some time has passed since we met here, and the opportunity to discuss a number of things with you after such a long while gives me the profoundest pleasure. Behind, us lie extremely grave times, difficult times, of which the gravity is certainly felt, though in wider circles it is still insufficiently understood. It is true to say that people who have experienced the second decade of the twentieth century have gone through more than is otherwise experienced over a span of centuries. We are asleep in our souls if we fail to notice how everything to do with human evolution is different now than it was ten years ago. The whole great turnabout that has taken place will no doubt only be fully realized by mankind at large after some time has passed. Then we shall come to see how the events that took place so catastrophically at the surface of life reach deep down into the roots of human souls, and how what has happened came about in the first instance as errors of soul affecting the widest circles of mankind. Not until the decision is made to seek in human souls the true reasons for this great human misfortune will it be possible to reach a real understanding of this time of trial undergone by mankind. Then also an attitude will develop towards a spiritual stream such as Anthroposophy which will differ from that prevailing at present.

This anthroposophical spiritual stream wants to give to mankind the very thing that has been lacking over the last three, four, five hundred years, the thing whose lack is so intimately bound up with the wretchedness of culture and civilization we have experienced and are experiencing. Both the greatest and the smallest matters and events in the world come out of the spiritual realm, out of life in the spirit. Universal questions face mankind today, questions which can only be tackled out of the depths of spiritual life, yet they are being dealt with in the most superficial manner all over the world. There is no possibility of seeing what it is that is struggling to rise up from the depths of human soul- and spiritual life. Yet it is just this possibility which Anthroposophy wants to bring to mankind.

Today I shall speak out of the realm of the anthroposophical world view about some intimate aspects of human soul- and spiritual life. Then, from the point of view this will give us, perhaps we shall be able to conclude with a brief consideration of some recent historical events.¹ Anthroposophical spiritual science wants to speak about those worlds which for the moment are hidden from external sense perceptions and also from the intellect which is attached to these sense perceptions. It wants to speak primarily about everything connected with the eternal aspect of the human soul. We say of the realms into which this anthroposophical world view wishes to penetrate that they can only be reached if human beings step over the threshold of consciousness. What is meant is that the step over the threshold must be taken consciously, if knowledge about these super-sensible realms is to be gained. For human beings step unconsciously over the threshold every time they go to sleep. We say of the threshold we cross daily, in connection with going to sleep and waking up, that it is guarded by the Guardian of the Threshold. In doing so we speak of a spiritual force known by the spiritual researcher to be as real as are the human beings we meet. We speak of the Guardian of the Threshold because in the present phase of mankind's development human beings really do need to be protected in their consciousness from crossing unprepared into the spiritual realms.

It is quite remarkable that something which human beings have to value above all else, something to which they belong with the deepest roots of their existence and without which they would lack true human worth, namely the spiritual world, has to be hidden from them at the moment. This is profoundly linked to the whole purpose of human evolution. Human beings would not be able to achieve their true nature during the course of evolution if they did not themselves have to work for and win the strength with which to approach the spiritual world. If unearned grace alone were to allow them to step over the threshold, then perhaps they would be lofty spiritual beings, but they would not be human beings in the true sense of the word. They would not be beings who win their way towards their own value. For to be a true human being in the universe means to be the instigator of one's own worth. To step over the threshold unprepared would lead to a kind of burning up of the human being, a kind of extinguishing of the human being. However, what spiritual science has to say about man's relationship to the spiritual world can certainly be grasped by normal understanding. It is quite possible to understand what has to be said about this out of the foundations of spiritual science.

Observe how someone sinks into a kind of unconscious state on going to sleep. Out of this unconscious state individual waves rise up into the world of dreams as though from the depths of the ocean. Even for those who are free of any kind of superstition or nebulous mysticism, this dream world is mysterious, enigmatic, and it has to be sensed as belonging to the inmost being both of the world and of man's existence. So the period human beings spend between going to sleep and waking up is a kind of lowered consciousness out of which is revealed the picture world of dreams. And even if we only follow the dreams in an external manner, we still have to say: They contain picture echoes of that life which is not only given to us through our sense perceptions by way of our intellect, but also through our feelings. But they contain that otherwise familiar world in a way that is different. On the whole, they do not contain any abstract thoughts; they change everything into pictures. While the sense-perceptible world we know has a certain coherence and order which satisfies our understanding, so that everything has its place in space and time, dreams appear to shake everything up. Events which took place yesterday are mingled with others which happened decades ago. Dreams impose an order on things that differs from the order of space and time into which we look with our daytime consciousness.

Examining dreams more closely, we find that what is missing in them is our power of thinking. On waking up we feel that we step from dreamless sleep into the world in which human ideas and thoughts arise. We feel that we pour the picture world of dreams into our bodily nature. And as we do so our body sends out the power of thought which once more brings order into what the dreams have jumbled up. Our body takes us in hand when we wake up; our body gives us the power of ideas, and in dealing with this power we become fully awake. Then the world of dreams fades and its place is taken by the world of thoughts and ideas in the normal order of place and time.

Those who pay attention to these phenomena can observe in ordinary life how something, at first indeterminate, slips into our bodily nature. They can also understand this to the point where they can say: The power of thoughts is given to me by my body when I plunge down into it with my soul- and spirit-being. This everyday observation will bear out what Anthroposophy has to say: The ideas and thoughts we know in ordinary daily life are bound to our external physical body, which remains in bed at night when our being of spirit and soul steps over the threshold into another world. As consciousness is extinguished it leaves behind at the threshold the power and capacity to form a world of thoughts in the ordinary way. What steps over the threshold is whatever the human soul contains by way of feeling and will.

This content of feeling and will resembles the sleeping state even during ordinary day consciousness. We are properly awake only in our thoughts and ideas. Just think how dark is all that lives in our feelings, and how utterly obscure is everything living in our impulses of will. If we try to gain an idea of how we accomplish even the simplest decision of will, then what takes place in our muscles and bones when we put an idea into realization remains as obscure as our sleeping state. First we think: I lift my arm. Then we see our arm rising up. Nothing but impressions. The mysterious processes that take place remain as hidden from our consciousness as sleep itself. What we take with us across the threshold is, basically, something that is asleep and dreaming, even in our waking state. The dream pictures are no clearer than the feelings which attach to our world of thoughts and ideas. The forms in which soul life expresses itself—in the waking state through feelings and in the sleeping state through dreams—differ, but our life of feeling is no clearer than the pictures of our dreams. If it were clearer, we would lead an extraordinarily abstract life. Consider how we speak quite rightly of cold, sober thoughts and glowing feelings! But what lives in our feelings remains in a kind of darkness similar to that of our dream pictures.

When we go to sleep we carry our feelings over the threshold, and it is our feelings which, in a way, even light up to some extent in our dream pictures. We also carry our will into that world; it is as deeply asleep during our daytime as it is when we sleep. So we can say that what carries human beings through the threshold of consciousness is the feeling and will element of their soul being. Feeling and will belong to sleep consciousness. The life of thoughts and ideas and also a part of the life of feelings—because dreams light up—belong to the waking consciousness of daytime; they lie on this side of the threshold. We speak of the Guardian of the Threshold because it is necessary, at their present stage of consciousness, that human beings do not step consciously but unprepared over the threshold which they cross unconsciously every time they fall asleep. When we come to recognize the forces within which human beings find themselves on the other side of the threshold, we also learn to experience why they have to be guarded—prevented by a Guardian, by something which watches over them—from stepping unprepared over the threshold into the spiritual world.

When we enter the world beyond the threshold it certainly looks very different at first glance from what we have been in the habit of expecting. However, if we enter after having undergone sufficient preparation, it gradually changes and we come to new experiences, different from those we encountered initially, which are bewildering even for those who enter the spiritual world after some preparation. For what is it that appears to us first in the spiritual world? Forces, beings, are what first appear to us. And they behave—I cannot express it otherwise—in a very inimical manner towards the ordinary world of sense perceptions. As we step over the threshold into the spiritual world we are met with a burning, scalding fire which seeks to devour everything the world of sense perceptions has to offer. We enter, without a doubt, the world of destructive forces. This is the first sight that meets us on the other side. From the facts as they are I want to give you an idea of what it is like when we first step over.

Look at the human physical body which clothes us from birth to death. Now look, first with regard to the physical body, at the moment in which the human being approaches death and steps across the threshold. Looking simply at the world of space we find that, after the individual has crossed the threshold, the physical body appears externally much the same as it did before. But very soon we notice that this physical body, which has maintained its natural form for decades, is dissolved, destroyed by the forces of the external world, the external cosmos. It is the destiny of this body that it should be dissolved, destroyed by the forces of the cosmos. Simply by looking without prejudice at the fact, once the soul has departed, the body is destroyed and dissolved by the forces of nature, we must become convinced that between birth and death something not belonging to the world of sense perception lives in it which prevents its destruction. For if it belonged to this same world it would destroy the body instead of preserving it. If people would only take account of this obvious fact they would not find it so difficult to enter into anthroposophical spiritual science. There is the corpse; the external forces of nature destroy it. If what we bear within us were of a kind with the forces of nature it would destroy this body all the time. These simple thoughts are for ever disregarded.

Now bear in mind that we are permanently surrounded by a world which destroys our physical body. The moment our body is deserted by our soul it is destroyed. When we leave this body on going to sleep, we enter the world which destroys our corpse. This we have to come to recognize [Gaps in the shorthand report.]. We enter the world of destructive forces when we go to sleep, and yet this is the spiritual world. Why? Those who expect to find something beyond the threshold which resembles what is to befound here in the physical world of the senses are simply expecting to find another physical world beyond the threshold. But if spirit is to be found there, then the physical world of sense perceptions cannot also be there. What we experience there will have to be forces which have the inclination to destroy the physical world of the senses. This we experience in full force when we cross the threshold consciously. We experience with full force that in this spiritual world we find what is for ever inclined to destroy the physical world.

Now if we were to cross the threshold unprepared and unguarded, we should like it very much in that world—if I may put it simply. Especially would our lower instincts be most satisfied, and we would grow into this world we immediately meet, this world of destructive forces; we would become the allies of these destructive forces. We would no longer want to share in the work of maintaining the physical world which surrounds us. We have to learn to love this physical world as one which is filled with wisdom, in order to be well prepared to enter into the spiritual world. Before taking up our place, so to speak, at the side of the creators, we have to learn to love their creation and thoroughly understand that the world as it has been created has not been brought forth meaninglessly by divine, creative forces. In order to enter well prepared into the spiritual world we must first have thoroughly understood the meaning of earthly life. Otherwise on waking up every morning we would return to the world of sense perceptions filled with a terrible hate for this world and with an urge to destroy it. Simply out of the necessity of human existence we would wake up full of hate and anger if we spent the time between going to sleep and waking up in a state of consciousness such as that.

You can pursue this train of investigation further by looking at dreams in an unprejudiced way. Dreams are filled with terribly destructive forces. What comes to the surface in the form of dream pictures destroys every shred of logic. Dreams say: That's it, logic is finished, I don't want any logic! Logic is for the external world of sense perceptions; there it dogmatically arranges everything. Away with logic—a different world order is what is required! That is what dreams say. And if they were not only strong enough to caress our brain but were also able to submerge themselves into our whole body, then they would seize not only our logical instincts but also all our other instincts and our emotional life. Just as they destroy logic, so would they also destroy the whole life of physical human beings. We should be reluctant to enter once more into our physical body, and in doing so we would gradually destroy it. Because what lives in dreams is overcome by what meets it from the body, it comes about that logic is only destroyed momentarily. This can be observed in every detail. What continues during sleep are the forces which belong to our rhythmic system. Breathing continues, heartbeat and pulse continue. But thoughts cease, the will ceases. What belongs to our middle region continues, though in a subdued form. The moment the pulse grows a little weaker in the brain, dreams rush in and set about destroying the forces of the body—of logic—until these forces of the body once more overcome the dreams as the pulse gains in strength.

When it is a matter of really understanding these forces Anthroposophy knows very well how to be materialistic. Materialists do not really know how to be materialistic because they do not know how the spiritual realm works together with the physical. They fail to notice how the spirit enters into the physical and there continues to work. It is most interesting to observe how the spirit enters in and first wants to make itself felt and destroy logic. For then the forces of the physical body, its powers of thought and ideas, enter the fray and overcome it again. Dreams are rendered harmless to physical, earthly life. If you consider this properly you will gain deep insight into the relationship between waking and sleeping, for it shows that we have to remain aware of our spiritual origin, that we have to sink down again and again into sleep, but that on the other hand, in the present stage of our evolution, we have to be prevented from following in full consciousness what takes place in the state we enter between going to sleep and waking up.

We live on our earth. It is, in the first instance, a physical and a cosmic creation. A time will come when this earth will suffer death by fire. It will go through actual physical fire when the forces of destruction will seize hold of every earthly form, not only the corpses. Spiritual forces are leading this earth towards this death by fire, spiritual forces which are connected with the earth and which we meet in the first stage into which we enter when we step past the Guardian of the Threshold into the spiritual world.

Let us consider what we have gained with regard to stepping through the portal of death. Our physical body is entirely discarded. Our spirit and soul element now enters the spiritual world in such a way that it straight away develops the wish to return to the physical body. The element of spirit and soul, once it has laid down the physical body, can now begin to form a thought life without the physical body. While it lived in the body it was too weak to endure the forces of destruction. Now, as it passes through the portal of death, it has to be strong enough not to yearn for a return to the physical body. Since it no longer remains unconscious but, instead, enters a genuine consciousness as it passes through the portal of death it has to take up a certain kind of thought life, for only in the life of thoughts is it possible to become really conscious. This is the tremendous difference between crossing the threshold on going to sleep and passing through the portal of death. When we go to sleep our thought world is merely damped down until it returns when we re-enter our physical body on waking up. When we die we take up the thought life with our soul and spirit element without the mediation of our physical body. What does this mean?

Human beings would never return to their physical body in the morning if they knew the spiritual world, if they had grown to be part of it and did not have the wish, which is in them unconsciously, to return to their physical body, that is, to the physical world. Wishes, however, are something which is not connected with clear consciousness but which damp down this clear consciousness into a twilight. Human beings return to their body in the morning because of a wish, but it is these very wishes, pulling towards the physical body, which damp down their thought world. So they only find their thought life once again when they have returned to their body. But, in death, wishes have also died. Human beings enter the world-thoughts. As beings of spirit and soul they now have a thought life, but if they were to enter death entirely unprepared they would enter the same world as the one we enter when we go to sleep in the evening. To express this in extreme terms we have to say: If human beings enter death unprepared they find themselves in a terrible situation; for they have to watch what happens to their physical body. Their physical body is pulverized in the world-all, for if we do not cremate the body then it is cremated by the cosmos. And human beings would have to watch this happening if they were unprepared.

What is the consequence of this, and what has to happen so that human beings see not only destruction after death, so that they live not only in the midst of destructive forces? By absorbing spiritual content, by developing a world view which is consistent with the spirit, they must carry an inward relationship with the divine, spiritual world through the portal of death. If they are aware solely of a physical, material world, then they certainly enter after death in a state of terrible unpreparedness into the world of destructive forces as though into a world of scorching flames. But if they fill themselves with ideas and thoughts about the spiritual world, then the flames become the birthplace of the spirit after death so that they see not destruction alone; in the falling away of earthly dust from their human orbit they see the spirit rising up. No one should say what ordinary materialistic ideas are so prone to saying: I can wait until death comes to me! No, we must bear our consciousness of the spiritual world with us through the portal of death. Then with our soul and spirit we can overcome the destructive cosmic forces which take over our body, so that our element of spirit and soul rises up with new creativity above the destruction.

I am telling you this on the basis of anthroposophical spiritual science, but you have all, surely, heard of the fear experienced in former times in a sense of doom with regard to death, a sense of doom about which the Apostle Paul² taught when he spoke about man's soul being saved from falling a prey to death. In former times people knew that they could not only die physically with their corpse, but also spiritually with their soul. Human beings dislike speaking about the possible death of their soul. When speaking of death Paul does not mean physical death. He means something that can happen because physical death wants to lead on to the death of soul and spirit. Human beings must become aware once more that they have to do something during their physical earthly life in order to join their consciousness to their soul and spirit, so that these may carry something through death, in order that the spirit may arise for them out of the devouring flames which are always present after death.

Considerations like this must make it clear that to live within the whole universal order is an immensely serious matter. No view of the world is worthy of the human being if it does not lead through inner strength to a world of moral values, if it does not put before our souls the utter seriousness of life. To speak of physical and chemical forces building up the earth and of living creatures and, finally, man developing along the way, is not merely a one-sided world view; it is a world view which ignores the seriousness of life and which arises, actually, simply out of human laziness. A world view, on the other hand, which achieves a proper attitude to the spirit, leads to a seriousness about life because it puts before the soul the possibility that on passing through the gate of death the human being might become united with the forces of destruction. Throughout their physical life human beings are given the opportunity to prepare themselves suitably, because every evening as they go to sleep they are shielded from seeing the world of destructive forces to which they are related. They are given time to take in something that can guide them through the portal of death in a manner which enables them to discern the spirit within the forces of destruction. It is impossible to overemphasize the fact that feelings and perceptions about life must follow as a matter of course from a world view, and that a world view must not be allowed to remain mere abstract theory but must become something living, something which seizes hold of feelings and will. Civilized mankind must wrestle again for a world view such as this. Then, once more, what is imperishable will be seen within everything perishable; and, furthermore, out of everything that does not pursue its course egoistically within man it will be possible to push forward to eternity and immortality.

From this point of view look at life as it is carried on today. And do not take offence when someone who has to speak honestly is forced to say such disagreeable things. Look, for instance, at religious education. What is it built on? On egoism! Because people want to live beyond death, immortality—the possibility of going through death consciously—is spoken about. People long for this, and so to satisfy them—because it is disagreeable to appeal to knowledge—knowledge is omitted and mere belief is called into play. In this way, human egoism alone is approached, human egoism that wants to see what it will be like after death, instead of waiting till it happens. What it is like before birth is not found to be interesting. This can only be learnt through knowledge. Indeed, eternity—what comes after death and what stretches back beyond conception—can only be found through knowledge.

Even our language shows that we only have a half knowledge about the eternity of man. We speak only about immortality, ‘undyingness’. What we need in addition is a word denoting ‘unbornness’. Only when we can grasp both will we finally understand the eternity of the human being. Right down into language, human beings of our time have abjured their links with the spiritual world. These links must be found once more. If they cannot be found it will betotally impossible to carry on living in a proper way, and today's culture and civilization could fall into absolute decline.

In Stuttgart we have founded the Waldorf school³ and Waldorf education. All sorts of things are said about this. Recently somebody said: Why does Waldorf education take so little account of fatigue in the children? Fatigue ought to be carefully studied nowadays. In so-called experimental psychology it is pointed out with pride how children tire after repeating unconnected words or following lessons about a sequence of subjects. And then it is said: Waldorf education is not up to date because it does not take the fatigue of the children into account. Why is this? The Waldorf school does not speak much about fatigue. But it does speak about how children ought to be tended and educated after the change of teeth, namely by basing the education mainly on the rhythmic system—which means that the artistic element is cultivated, since this is what stimulates the rhythmic system. Abstract writing comes later, and abstract reading later still. Demands are made, not of the head but of the artistic realm. But those who work with children only at those things which make demands on the head will, of course, have to reckon with fatigue. When, however, we make claims on the rhythmic system, on the artistic element, then we are justified in asking: Does our heart tire throughout life? It has to go on beating, and we have to go on breathing. So Waldorf education need not concern itself too much with fatigue because it aims to educate children in a way which tires them very little. Experimental education has arrived at a system which tires the children dreadfully; by its very method it brings about this tiredness. [Gaps in the shorthand report.] Waldorf education is concerned with body, soul and spirit, and account is taken of what comes from the spiritual and soul worlds to unite with the body and what departs again at death. Anthroposophy is the very thing which can help us to understand the material, physical realm.

What is most lively of all in the child? Its brain activity! From the brain the forces which mould the whole body stream out. These are most lively until the change of teeth. At the change of teeth this moulding capacity is transferred to the system of breathing and heart, and until puberty this is what we have to work with, which means that artistic work, not theoretical work, is what is required. Between the seventh and the fourteenth year the muscles are formed inwardly in a way which is adapted to the rhythmic system. Not until the fourteenth year approaches do soul and spirit take hold of the whole human being, and it is interesting to observe how until this moment the muscles have taken their cue from heartbeat, pulse and breathing. Now, through the sinews, they begin to make friends with the bones, with the skeleton, and to adapt themselves to external movements. You should learn to observe how young people change at this age. [Gaps in the shorthand report.] The process starts from the head; the soul element grows further and further towards the surface of the human being and takes hold of the bones last of all; it fills the whole human being and uses him up, making friends ever more closely with the forces of death, until these forces of death win through to victory at the moment of death.

Anthroposophical spiritual science follows up the spiritual processes right into the minutest detail, showing how they become immersed in material life and how they take hold of the whole human being, starting with the head. Not until knowledge such as this is taken into account, will it become possible to educate people properly once again. We need intellect and understanding so that we may find freedom, but they drive away the certainty of our instincts. A friend of mine was quite a nice person when we were young. Later in life he invited me to visit him. I had never partaken of a midday meal with scales and weights on the table. My friend first weighed everything he ate! By his intellect he had discovered how much he needed in order to maintain his body, and this exact amount was what he ate. Intellect drives out instincts in small things, but also on a larger scale. Now it is necessary for us to find our way back to them. A sure sense for life, a firm stand in life, is needed once more. This is found by seeking our eternal element within the temporal sphere; we need to understand how the eternal finds its place in the temporal. This is what our contemporary civilization needs.

Such things must be treated on a global scale. No account is taken these days of the contrasts that exist between people of the West and people of the East. External matters are broached in an external manner; congresses are called to discuss ways of balancing out the world's difficult situation, but no account is taken of the fact that East and West can only achieve economic balance if they have trust in one another. Asians will never be able to work together properly with the West if they cannot understand each other. But understanding can only come about through the soul. Understanding out of the soul is needed for the economic realm in the world; and understanding out of the soul can only be achieved through a deepening of soul life.

This is why today the most intimate matters of individual soul life are at the same time matters of worldwide import. Comprehension of what the world today needs, in external public matters too, will not be achieved unless an effort is made to listen to what the science of the super-sensible has to say, for the world has changed during the course of evolution. The human race, in particular, has changed.

Looking at the span of human evolution, let us turn to that event without which the whole of human and earth evolution would have no meaning: the Mystery of Golgotha. In this Mystery of Golgotha something divine entered into the conditions of the earth by means of an earthly body. Christ entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth in order from then on to work with the earth. The earth would have perished, would have decayed in the world order, if a new fructification had not been brought about by the entering-in of the Christ. You know also that in the distant past an instinctive knowledge, a primeval wisdom, existed, of which only remnants remained in western civilization at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Enough remained, however, to make it possible for the Mystery of Golgotha to be at least instinctively comprehended for four centuries. In the early centuries of Christianity the understanding of the super-sensible significance of the Mystery of Golgotha was such that the leading Christian teachers knew about the entering-in of Christ, the Sun Spirit, into the human being, Jesus of Nazareth.

Who today has a living awareness of what it means to ask whether the human being Jesus of Nazareth bore two natures, a human one and a divine one, or only one? Yet in the early Christian centuries this was a vital question, a question which had a bearing on life. There was a vivid awareness of how, coming from the cosmos, the Christ Spirit had united with Jesus; two natures in one personality; God in man.

You have often heard that the fourth post-Atlantean period lasted from 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha to about 1413 after the Mystery of Golgotha. In the first third of the fifteenth century intellectualism proper began. Now, we look at physical forces, we calculate, we study physics, but we no longer know that spiritual forces are at work out there, that the spirit which was known in earlier times really exists out there. Look at this fourth post-Atlantean, period lasting from 747 BC until 1413 AD. If you halve this period you come to a point that lies in the fourth century AD, the point when the wisdom which still contained a spiritual comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha finally faded away. From then on, intellectual discussion was all that took place. And finally, as the fifteenth century approached, the human intellect became the sole ruler of human civilization. Because of this, anything that represented a living connection between the human being and the Christ was drawn more and more into merely materialistic human thinking. In the most advanced theology in the nineteenth century the Christ was entirely lost, and the most enlightened view was taken to be that of Christ as nothing more than the ‘man of Nazareth’. If we can really feel this in all its gravity, we cannot but develop a yearning to find the Christ Being once again. And this yearning to find Christ once more is what the anthroposophical world view wants to satisfy with regard to the major global questions. In Central Europe people are particularly well prepared for this, as all kinds of symptoms show.

One of Western Europe's great thinkers, Herbert Spencer,⁴ wrote about education in a way which pleases materialists very much. He said that all education is useless if it does not educate human beings to educate others. On what does he base this? He says: The greatest achievement in a human being's life is to beget other human beings. So therefore education must also be greatly important. From one point of view western thinking is correct. But what does an eastern thinker say? Out of the eastern spirit, something very ancient still lives in Vladimir Soloviev.⁵ For western culture, primeval wisdom has disappeared. In the East it remains as a feeling. Soloviev still bears something of true Christian wisdom. Here in Central and Western Europe we have only a God-consciousness. There is virtually no knowledge of the Son. Harnack,⁶ for instance, speaks of God in a way which makes it seem as though Christ, the Son, has no place in the Gospels. Consciousness of the Father, consciousness of God, is all that is left. What is said of the Son must also be said of the Father. But Soloviev still has something of the Christ-consciousness, and when he speaks it can sometimes be felt as if we were listening to the old Church Fathers from before the time of the Council of Nicaea.⁷ Even the titles of his works are quite different. For instance there is a treatise on ‘Freedom, Necessity, Grace and Sin’. You would be unlikely to find a treatise on grace or sin written by one of the western philosophers—Spencer, for instance, or Mill, or Bergson, or Wundt! No such thing exists in the West; it would be quite unthinkable and indeed is not to be found.

The eastern philosopher, though, still speaks like that, saying: Alife given to man on earth, a life in which there was no striving for perfection in truth, would not be a genuinely human life. It would be valueless, as indeed would the striving for perfection in truth, if human beings had no part in immortality. Such a life would be a fraud on a global scale. Thus speaks Soloviev, the eastern philosopher. And he goes on: The spiritual task of man only starts when he reaches puberty. This is the very opposite of what Spencer says! Spencer makes the begetting of offspring the goal of development. For the eastern philosopher, development only begins at that point. It is the same with every matter, including questions of economic life. This is how the western economist speaks today, without having any sense for what eastern people feel about economic life. Today's major questions require consideration on a historical scale, and we ought to realize that the great misfortune of mankind in the second decade of the twentieth century, the great challenge and the great trial, is that involving considerations of this kind. An entirely different treatment of life must rise up out of the depths of the soul. The great questions of life, those that lie beyond birth and death, must come to play a part in ordinary human life. The questions of the present time must be illumined by the light of eternity, otherwise people will hasten from congress to congress and sink ever further and further into misfortune.

• 1 . There are numerous gaps in the shorthand report of this lecture. The conclusion has been omitted. It deals with contemporary questions and covers virtually the same ground as Lecture One (Soloviev, Bismarck, Robespierre).
• 2 . For example: 1 Corinthians, 15.
• 3 . The Free Waldorf School, Stuttgart, was founded by Rudolf Steiner in 1919. The education of the children was to be in harmony with the knowledge of the human being as revealed by anthroposophical spiritual science.
• 4 . Herbert Spencer, 1820-1903. Education: Intellectual, Moral and Physical, 1861.
• 5 . Lecture Two, Note 1
• 6 . Adolf von Hamack, 1851-1930. Theologian and historian.
• 7 . 19 June 325. Establishment of the creed of identity of Son (Jesus Christ) and Father.

If we want to understand the migrations of the fifth post-Atlantic races, we must be aware that it is difficult to see clearly in this chaos. Descendants of all previous races have settled here, and we are already working in the fourth [root] race with a population that is spreading out in a radiating manner, as it were, and is itself mixed with descendants of other races. In the fifth race, the situation is most complicated. Everywhere we find remnants of populations that once already had a culture. As far as we look at the peoples of the southern Asian continent, we have remnants of the ancient Lemurian population. In the interior of Australia, their descendants can still be found. In western and northern Asia, in Central Asia and southern Europe, we find remnants of the fourth Atlantic epoch. This is the soil into which the branches of the fifth post-Atlantic epoch sink. So here we have the result of two currents: the Lemurian-Aryan on the one hand, and the Atlantean-Aryan on the other. All these cultures, however, have absorbed an even older one; Siberia, Scandinavia, northern Russia, China even have remnants of the Hyperborean culture. These mixtures are difficult to unravel. Let us try to trace the course of the Aryan cultural impact.

From a point in Central Asia, near the Gobi and Khamo deserts, this cultivation spread outwards in a radius. It was a decidedly priestly culture that prepared a spiritually highly educated race to enter the chaos of nations, to send out colonies from which new civilizations would arise. This small tribal people emerged from the fifth sub-race, the Ursemites of the fourth Atlantic epoch. We must bear in mind that these Ursemites were given their specific task, which is expressed in the Law of Manu, to offer to people in the broadest sense what is expressed in the words of Jesus: 'The kingdom of God does not come with external gestures, but the kingdom of God is among you'. Everything that came before was only a preparation for this point in time. It was what became the guiding tendency of Christianity: the sanctification of the personality, the full descent to the physical plane. This mission first had to be carefully prepared.

From the very beginning, the Manu in the root race placed very little emphasis on what goes beyond birth and death in man. These teachings had played an important role in the past and were now slowly dying out to gradually disappear. The Manu of the fifth post-Atlantic epoch wanted to lead people down to the physical plane in order to understand the physical heart, brain, and lungs. So these teachings, which went beyond birth and death, slowly faded in the first three post-Atlantic cultures. For even a Manu cannot direct fate and events as he wills, but must accomplish everything in accordance with the great laws of nature. Two things were available to him: the culture that still existed from the Lemurian population in southern Asia, and the remnants of the Atlantean culture in Africa. He sent his colonies there with initiated priests. Some to India, others to Africa. He gave them the teaching of non-reincarnation, the teaching [about life] between birth and death. In fact, the oldest Vedas contain nothing of what goes beyond birth and death. He said to himself: “Peoples who know nothing about reincarnation are coming together with those who have a precise knowledge of it. The result will be the right one.

In Egypt, they came together with the Atlanteans, who did not have such a sharp doctrine of reincarnation. For while the last Lemurians had trained them to the highest degree, it had already been distorted by the Atlanteans; with them, everything had come to a head in memory; the memory of the Atlanteans was so sharp that it outweighed everything else, that all that was physical lived in them through inheritance. So in this first excerpt we have two branches: the Indo-Aryans and the Hamites.

In India, the immigrating Indo-Aryans, who came with the old teaching of the word revealed by God - Veda word - took up the doctrine of reincarnation, and in Brahmanism we have what comes out so beautifully as the doctrine of reincarnation. This was brought about by the Manu. Meanwhile, the subjugated Lemurians became pariahs, and the Indians became the four castes. This is the principle of the initiates: the blending of the new with the old, here the powerful manasic spirituality with the doctrine of reincarnation.

In the Hamitic branch – Noah's three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth – the doctrine of reincarnation receded somewhat. It was less clear on the surface. The Egyptians placed more emphasis on the preservation of corpses. The inheritance system was more emphasized, which places the main value on physical continuity. The value of the individual life was emphasized and already transformed the ancient Rishi doctrine. A less decided doctrine of reincarnation mixed here with the doctrine of personality.

The second migration consists in the fact that a new branch was sent out, as it were. We can follow it if we first look eastward to the Medes and Persians and then to the tribe that passed through Chaldea and found its historical expression in the migrations of Abraham - from Ur in Chaldea. On the one hand, the tribe that went west also came into contact with the remnants of the Atlantic culture, namely with the fourth sub-race of the Atlanteans, the Turanian population, who had been engaged in agriculture.

Thus a peculiar mixture arises. Grafted onto that Turanian branch was the practice of magic – and it had to be grafted on firmly! From here came the teachings of the Medes and Bactrians. Here the first Zarathustras were active, endeavoring to use the external techniques of magical time in the service of external culture. The result is a mighty flourishing of agriculture and viticulture; in them we have the revival of the old magical skills.

A colonist branch goes further west and came across remnants of the undrawn Ursemites of the Atlantean race, and these form what is called the ancient Semitic tribe: Chaldeans, Babylonians, Phoenicians, Arabs. They form a new Semitic culture.

The most significant events occurred first among the Medes and Persians. They are contained in an ancient saga that has undergone many transformations and finally comes to us in the form of Cyrus: King Astyages had a daughter, Mandane, who married not a Mede but a Persian. The father dreamt that a tree was growing out of his daughter's womb. The dream was interpreted to mean that the Persian tribe would overshadow the Median tribe. The ancient saga of Cyrus has a uresoteric meaning. Cyrus represents the agricultural Persians in contrast to the non-agricultural Medes, and the [peasant] signifies that agriculture will win out: ancient culture will pass to the farmers.

How this came about can be seen from the institution of the Persian character. Physically strong they should become. There were no Lemurians here; the Atlanteans had prepared the ground for the development of personality. The Persians emphasized personal virtues above all. It is a remarkable trait that they had lessons in telling the truth; this was a main subject for boys, along with gymnastic exercises. And that is very important. They were preparing for what would lead to personal prowess reaching its peak.

Now we come to the point where the original Semitic element mixed with the new. Priest-Rishis migrated over and found decadent Old Semites and also decadent Akkadians. Thus the Manu formed a new branch by combining his immigrants with the decadent Semites, those who had developed arithmetic during their Atlantean heyday. What emerged from this was the Chaldean wisdom. [...] Astrology, astronomy, the observatories, the calendar, weights and measures emerged. The immigrants who had encountered the Akkadians, the ancient trading people, were used to create new colonies in this mixture. These were the Phoenicians.

Another excerpt followed: A colony of Rishis with followers went over to Europe. Here he found the old Hyperborean element, and in the south the Atlantic one. The Hyperboreans had already mixed with the Atlanteans; so only a small remnant of them remained. In the south, Hyperborean was almost non-existent. Here, on the soil of ancient Greece, the Pelasgian population arose with a kind of nature service that is reminiscent of Egyptian practices in many ways; only here it is more of a local cult instead of an ancestral cult: we find sacred trees, sacred caves; it is more closely tied to nature. There was a belief that the sacred is more closely tied to the place than to the tribe - Zeus of Dodona and others. The physical place becomes sacred. That was the new formation.

In Italy, too, a mixture of ancient Atlantean and Rishi culture is being brought into the physical plan again. Here, what had developed in the Atlanteans as a social being and as an attachment to technical culture penetrated: in the social legislation and technical skill of the Etruscans.

In the north, the mixture of Hyperborean and Rishi culture gave rise to the new formation of Celtic culture. What was found was an Atlantean-Hyperborean culture that was of little use. A new influence had to be given, and the result is the Celtic mixture with the Druid culture. This has so much spirituality because it absorbed the highly spiritual, which went beyond the spirituality of the Atlantic and Lemurian. Because it had the Hyperborean element in it, the Celtic could not quite withstand it and was absorbed by the later cultures.

We now come to the third sending forth. It is very complicated. It goes partly into what was previously prepared by the first two. We have preserved it in the representations of different peoples. Wherever the strong, powerful people are already in the foreground in the traditions. Thus, above all, a group of initiates went west and fertilized the already fertilized pre-Semitic element once again. Because it is about summarizing everything that was originally poured into the great idea of state-building. The result of this third sending out according to this poetry is Genesis, the Old Testament.

Another dissemination was the one that went to Asia Minor and formed what is preserved in Trojan culture and its daughter cultures, one of which is Albalong culture. These initiates had the task of taking over state formation as soon as it suited the various peoples.

We have thus become acquainted with three groups of initiates, the first of which had the task of creating the religious culture, the second of creating the material cultural basis - Persia - and the third of forming the state and consolidating the passions. This happens in forms adapted to the different peoples, as in Troy, or Alba Longa, or the theocratic state of Palestine. But essentially these were only preparations, made with peoples who were not called to form states. Among the people who were most called upon to carry the spiritual out onto the physical plane through their culture, the formation of states was least successful: the Greeks are above all the people of art. The highest personal thing brought out onto the physical plane: that is art. The initiate of the third group - in the case of the Greeks - is the hero, the strong man.

Over there in Asia, the peoples had already mixed repeatedly. And those who had received the highest legislation, the Jews, had mixed so much that they had already become hypertrophied. In contrast, in Europe, in central Italy, there had been a simpler mixture. We find a very strong Atlantic element there. The Etruscan colony had cooperated with Alba Longa, the priest state, and brought about Rome. Here there was simple racial formation and a great deal of Atlanticism in it. The two traits were enough to establish what is called the Etruscan-Roman culture, with the priestly influence that had to lead to the institution of the Pontifex Maximus. The conditions were simple, and so the people of the Roman Republic emerged, who developed personal bravery purely for themselves. The Roman citizen, the cives, was the fully-fledged human being who felt entirely as a personality. The Greeks had to feel themselves above all as wise men and artists. When they cultivated what most emerges from the personality, oratory and law, they had to perish. Private law and oratory, eloquence, were only developed to perfection in Rome. The Greek first sensed [...] and then developed the perfect personality by representing it in his gods. The Roman represents in his person the perfected personality as a citizen, as a real human being. The works of Greek sculptors, so to speak, arise in the Romans and come to life.

Thus, in Rome something was being prepared that the Lodge of the Initiates could use to give a further impetus. The highest peak of spiritual life had to be taken for this purpose. This could only be found where most spiritual impacts had occurred, namely in the Near East. There spirit was grafted onto spirit:

1. The self-impact: the fifth sub-race of the Atlantians Ursemites on the first sub-race of the Aryan population.
2. The move into the area of the Euphrates and Tigris.
3. The patriarchal period - the time of the heroes.
4. The theocracy.

This wonderful mixture is expressed in all branches of intellectual life. The new influence there could only come from a personality who came from far away, not from their own country.

The lodge carefully selected the family from which an initiate was to come. The old Rishi culture had prepared, foretold the initiate who must now come. It was written in the Sibylline books.

Thus, in secret, away from Judaism, in Galilee, the Messiah of the fourth sub-race was being prepared. There in Galilee, Judaism had never gained a firm foothold; it had not penetrated there. The Galileans are very mixed in racial character. It was important that He should have nothing of the Galilean, that He should come as from the hidden. That is why the apocrypha tell of him as being a son of his mother, and speak of his unchaste birth. This was Jesus of Nazareth, the Galilean. He was initiated to the third degree of a disciple. Now it was a matter of making him the highest initiate for everything that was to be realized on the physical plane. This was done by taking possession of the whole personality by another, who represents the whole fifth root race, by the Christ. In the Greco-Latin culture, the whole fifth post-Atlantic epoch emerged, and this is symbolically represented in the descent of the dove. If one wanted to express the truths at issue here, one could only choose the highest form.

The Manu said to himself, “I will make the fourth sub-race into a union of all the previous impacts and endow it with the spirit of the entire fifth root race. The Christ can do this, who is the actual impact of the entire fifth root race. The Manu prepared it, and Christ, as it were, entered into what had been prepared. The revelation of the actual secret of the fourth race was to take place. Earlier it had only been prepared, the highest initiates had seen it, the others prepared. That was the darkness into which the light came.

If we survey the development, we have results that are prepared by the fact that the first three sub-races are gradually educated to become personalities - until in the fourth the most profound part of the personality is seized, as the equality of all people before God.

Initiates who were sent out were not begotten by the father and mother of the race in question. They were sexless everywhere.

This is really said in the Gospel of John:

He came to that which is His own, but His own did not receive Him. And as many as received Him, to them He gave power to become the sons of God, even to those who believe in His name: <5>they were born, not of flesh and blood, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Christ is the inwardly divine principle; he must pour himself into forms and takes the form of the law from the theocratic state, from Judaism. The Jews could not accept the new forms, they already had their own; that was the highest. But He had to accept them, step by step He had to emerge onto the physical plane. So He expressed His wisdom through the wisdom of ancient Judaism. Now this wisdom had to be understood. This wisdom could be understood where the physical plane had already been conquered, where philosophy existed. That is why the first church fathers came from the Greeks. In their philosophy, they had developed the ability to understand that which emerged on the physical plane. When the will emerged in the personality, they could also understand this personality.

The people who had formed a Zeus, who had incarnated a God in their art of sculpture, could also understand the idea of an incarnated God. This idea could only come to life through the Roman people. The human being who had formed the personality could have this idea. That was the Roman.

The Christ Himself is formed in the Jewish people, He is understood through Greek gnosis and the Greek apostles: Paul and the Greek evangelist John. But all this could not have led to the spread of Christianity on the physical plane, but at most to an understanding. The Romans, who adopt Greek culture, destroy Jerusalem, go to Asia, become Christians.

So:
The Jews form Christ.
The Greeks understand Christ.
The Romans become Christians.

Therefore, Christianity spread only after the destruction of Jerusalem and has a specifically Roman form. In Rome, the physical vessel for the Christ had already been prepared, namely the state, which was already founding the empire, and the priest who could administer it, the Pontifex Maximus. This brings us to the fourth sub-race. We have seen that it was carefully prepared. The fifth sub-race is still in the process of being formed.

We have reached the summit or center. The following teachers are therefore those who have to preserve what has been created in order to apply it again on the particular physical. It is a matter of some initiates specifying these summits for the individuals. Thus we have preserved the Christian tradition in the Brotherhood of the Holy Grail. Christianity is constantly degenerating and degenerating. So it is a matter of continually giving new impetus from what is called the Mount Montsalvatsch, the Grail. These impacts take on a different character. Again, it is the Rishis who experience the actual teaching in a Christian way and only ever want to protect original Christianity from degeneration.

In this way, the most diverse attempts at regeneration have been made. The first attempt can be traced back to an initiate who cannot yet play a historical role because this is still prehistory. However, he is mentioned in legend. He is the German apostle Boniface. He is the source of the original form in which Christianity came from Ireland to Germany, with a mixture of Druidic culture, Indian influence, and the impact of Dionysius the Areopagite.

A new influence was given and a new possibility created by the initiate known as Lohengrin. This initiation proceeded from a very complicated point of view, as all initiations become complicated. For it was necessary to connect the original Christianity, which had developed continuously from Dionysius the Areopagite through Scotus Eriugena up to scholasticism and mysticism. This current could indeed have an effect on peoples through preaching; but gradually it had been lost to the people because it went to the highest heights of thought. Therefore, a fertilization had to be brought from the original spiritual element. A high point had been reached, but it was also an impasse, and in order to have an effect on the initiate Lohengrin, a new fertilization from the Orient had to be brought about through the crusades. The essential thing that emerged from this is the Knights Templar, the actual messengers of the Holy Grail. They build a place of wisdom at the site of Solomon's Temple and after they are prepared there, they become servants of the Holy Grail, are initiated there by the Grail. This happens at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and is prepared in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Now we are in the preparatory stage of the fifth sub-race, the Germanic-English. From the Temple service we can see that it is about the application of Christianity to a new race. The service of the Temple Knights prepares for the transition of Christianity to full externality [...] in Christianity, which later leads to Protestantism. This helps us to understand the actual confession of the Knights Templar and their secret cult. They said to themselves: The Christ represented by the Western Church means nothing to us, because he is the Christ on the cross. But we proclaim the Christ who walked in Jerusalem and received initiation from the Baptist; our teachers about Christ are therefore not church teachers and church fathers, but John the Baptist, the initiator himself. Therefore, the main ceremony consisted of spitting out the crucifix symbol of Western worship and the unconsecrated wafer. This symbolized the contempt of Roman Christianity, the one that had developed into Catholicism, and it was prepared to turn away from Catholic Christ back to evangelical Christ. That was one principle. Another was:

1. We again accept the belief in the elementary forces of the world.
2. We believe that the destinies of men are a result of the interrelationships of the stars and that man himself is born out of the great interrelationships of the stars, the laws of nature.

Out of these two principles the culture of the Anglo-German race has developed: the religious-Protestant on the one hand, the scientific of the physical world on the other.

But this was only the vessel. The content came in a roundabout way

through the Moors. So here we have a Semitic influence again. There were five Semitic influences that provided the content. The mold was always prepared.

The Rosicrucians guarded the common basis of what diverged into a purely secular science and a materialistic religion. They were the ones who wanted to hold together. The Rosicrucians essentially studied evolution in the concrete within the fifth sub-race, prepared social legislation and will be the actual leaders of the sixth sub-race.

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | Y | Z

A

Absoluteness. When predicated of the UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE, it denotes an abstraction, which is more correct and logical than to apply the adjective "absolute" to that which can have neither attributes nor limitations.

Adam Kadmon (Heb.) "Archetypal man, Humanity. The "Heavenly man" not fallen into sin. Kabalists refer it to the Ten Sephiroth on the plane of human perception." In the Kabala Adam Kadmon is the manifested Logos corresponding to our third Logos, the unmanifested being the first paradigmic ideal man, and symbolizing the universe in abscondito, or in its "privation" in the Aristotelean sense.

The first Logos is "the light of the World," the second and the third, its gradually deepening shadows.

Adept (Lat. adeptus). In Occultism, one who has reached the stage of initiation and become a master in the Science of Esoteric Philosophy.

Aether (Gr.) With the Ancients, the Divine luminiferous substance which pervades the whole universe; the "garment" of the Supreme Deity, Zeus, or Jupiter. With the Moderns, Ether, for the meaning of which, in physics and chemistry, see Webster's Dictionary, or some other. In Esotericism, AEther is the third principle of the Kosmic Septenary, matter (earth) being the lowest, and Akasa, the highest.

Agathon (Gr.) Plato's Supreme Deity, lit. "the good." Our ALAYA or the Soul of the World.

Agnostic. A word first used by Professor Huxley, to indicate one who believes nothing which cannot be demonstrated by the senses.

Ahankara (Sans.) The conception of "I," self-consciousness or self-identity; the "I," or egoistical and mayavic principle in man, due to our ignorance which separates our "I" from the Universal ONE-Self. Personality, egoism also.

Ain-Soph (Heb.) The "Boundless" or "Limitless" Deity emanating and extending. Ain-Soph is also written En-Soph and Ain-Suph, for no one, not even the Rabbis, are quite sure of their vowels. In the religious metaphysics of the old Hebrew philosophers, the ONE Principle was an abstraction like Parabrahm, though modern Kabalists have succeeded by mere dint of sophistry and paradoxes in making a "Supreme God" of it, and nothing higher. But with the early Chaldean Kabalists Ain-Soph was "without form or being" with "no likeness with anything else." (Franck's Die Kabbala, p. 126.) That Ain-Soph has never been considered as the "Creator" is proved conclusively by the fact that such an orthodox Jew as Philo calls "creator" the Logos, who stands next the "Limitless One," and is "the SECOND God." "The Second God is in its (Ain-Soph's) wisdom," says Philo in Quaest et Solut. Deity is NO-THING; it is nameless, and therefore called Ain-Soph — the word Ain meaning nothing. (See also Franck's Kabbala, p. 153.)

Alchemy, in Arabic Ul-Khemi, is as the name suggests, the chemistry of nature. Ul-Khemi or Al-Kimia, however, is really an Arabianized word, taken from the Greek chemeia from chumos "juice," extracted from a plant. Alchemy deals with the finer forces of nature and the various conditions of matter in which they are found to operate. Seeking under the veil of language, more or less artificial, to convey to the uninitiated so much of the Mysterium Magnum as is safe in the hands of a selfish world, the Alchemist postulates as his first principle, the existence of a certain Universal Solvent in the homogeneous substance from which the elements were evolved; which substance he calls pure gold, or summum materiae. This solvent, also called menstruum universale, possesses the power of removing all the seeds of disease out of the human body, of renewing youth, and prolonging life. Such is the lapis philosophorum (philosopher's stone). Alchemy first penetrated into Europe through Geber, the great Arabian sage and philosopher, in the eighth century of our era; but it was known and practised long ages ago in China and Egypt. Numerous papyri on Alchemy, and other proofs that it was the favourite study of Kings and Priests, have been exhumed and preserved under the generic name of Hermetic treatises (see Tabula Smaragdina). Alchemy is studied under three distinct aspects, which admit of many different interpretations, viz.: the Cosmic, the Human, and the Terrestrial.

These three methods were typified under the three alchemical properties — sulphur, mercury, and salt. Different writers have stated that these are three, seven, ten and twelve processes respectively; but they are all agreed there is but one object in Alchemy, which is to transmute gross metals into pure gold. But what that gold really is, very few people understand correctly. No doubt there is such a thing in Nature as transmutation of the baser metal into the nobler; but this is only one aspect of Alchemy, the terrestrial, or purely material, for we see logically the same process taking place in the bowels of the earth. Yet, besides and beyond this interpretation, there is in Alchemy a symbolical meaning, purely psychic and spiritual. While the Kabalist-Alchemist seeks for the realization of the former, the Occultist-Alchemist, spurning the gold of the earth, gives all his attention to and directs his efforts only towards the transmutation of the baser quaternary into the divine upper trinity of man, which when finally blended, is one. The spiritual, mental, psychic, and physical planes of human existence are in Alchemy compared to the four elements — fire, air, water, and earth, and are each capable of a three-fold constitution, i. e., fixed, unstable, and volatile. Little or nothing is known by the world concerning the origin of this archaic branch of philosophy; but it is certain that it antedates the construction of any known Zodiac, and as dealing with the personified forces of nature, probably also any of the mythologies of the world. Nor is there any doubt that the true secrets of transmutation (on the physical plane) were known in the days of old, and lost before the dawn of the so-called historical period. Modern chemistry owes its best fundamental discoveries to Alchemy, but regardless of the undeniable truism of the latter, that there is but one element in the universe, chemistry placed metals in the class of elements, and is only now beginning to find out its gross mistake. Even some encyclopedists are forced to confess that if most of the accounts of transmutation are fraud or delusion, "yet some of them are accompanied by testimony which renders them probable. By means of the galvanic battery even the alkalis have been discovered to have a metallic basis. The possibility of obtaining metal from other substances which contain the ingredients composing it, of changing one metal into another . . . must therefore be left undecided. Nor are all Alchemists to be considered impostors. Many have laboured under the conviction of obtaining their object, with indefatigable patience and purity of heart, which is soundly recommended by Alchemists as the principal requisite for the success of their labours." (Pop. Encyclop.)

Alexandrian Philosophers (or School). This famous school arose in Alexandria, Egypt, which city was for long ages the seat of learning and philosophy. It was famous for its library, founded by Ptolemy Soter at the very beginning of his reign (Ptolemy died in 283 B. C.) — a library which once boasted 700,000 rolls, or volumes (Aulus Gellius), for its museum, the first real Academy of Sciences and Arts, for world-renowned scholars, such as Euclid, the father of scientific geometry; Apollonius of Perga, the author of the still extant work on conic sections; Nicomachus, the arithmetician: for astronomers, natural philosophers, anatomists such as Herophilus and Erasistratus; physicians, musicians, artists, etc. But it became still more famous for its eclectic, or new Platonic school, founded by Ammonius Saccas in 173 A. D., whose disciples were Origen, Plotinus, and many other men now famous in history. The most celebrated schools of the Gnostics had their origin in Alexandria. Philo-Judaeus, Josephus, Iamblichus, Porphyry, Clement of Alexandria, Eratosthenes the astronomer, Hypatia, the virgin philosopher, and numberless other stars of second magnitude, all belonged at various times to these great schools, and helped to make of Alexandria one of the most justly renowned seats of learning that the world has ever produced.

Altruism, from Alter, other. A quality opposed to Egoism. Actions tending to do good to others, regardless of self.

Ammonius Saccas. A great and good philosopher who lived in Alexandria between the 2nd and 3rd centuries of our Era, the founder of the Neo-Platonic School of the Philalethians or "lovers of truth." He was of poor birth and born of Christian parents, but endowed with such prominent, almost divine goodness as to be called Theodidaktos, the "God-taught." He honoured that which was good in Christianity, but broke with it and the Churches at an early age, being unable to find in Christianity any superiority over the old religions.

Analogeticists. The disciples of Ammonius Saccas (vide supra) so called because of their practice of interpreting all sacred legends, myths, and mysteries by a principle of analogy and correspondence, which rule is now found in the Kabalistic system, and pre-eminently so in the schools of Esoteric philosophy in the East. (Vide "The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac," by T. Subba Row in "Five years of Theosophy.")

Ananda (Sans.) Bliss, joy, felicity, happiness. A name of a favourite disciple of Gautama, the Lord Buddha.

Anaxagoras. A famous Ionian philosopher, who lived 500 B. C., studied philosophy under Anaximenes of Miletus, and settled in the days of Pericles, at Athens. Socrates, Euripides, Archelaus, and other distinguished men and philosophers were among his disciples and pupils. He was a most learned astronomer, and was one of the first to explain openly that which was taught by Pythagoras secretly — viz., the movements of the planets, the eclipses of the sun and moon, etc. It was he who taught the theory of chaos, on the principle that "nothing comes from nothing," ex nihilo nihil fit — and of atoms, as the underlying essence and substance of all bodies, "of the same nature as the bodies which they formed." These atoms, he taught, were primarily put in motion by nous (universal intelligence, the Mahat of the Hindus), which nous is an immaterial, eternal, spiritual entity; by this combination the world was formed, the material gross bodies sinking down, and the ethereal atoms (or fiery ether) rising and spreading in the upper celestial regions. Ante-dating modern science by over 2,000 years, he taught that the stars were of the same material as our earth, and the sun a glowing mass; that the moon was a dark uninhabitable body, receiving its light from the sun; and beyond the aforesaid science he confessed himself thoroughly convinced that the real existence of things, perceived by our senses, could not be demonstrably proved. He died in exile at Lampsacus, at the age of seventy-two.

Anima Mundi (Lat.) The "Soul of the World," the same as Alaya of the Northern Buddhists; the divine Essence which pervades, permeates, animates, and informs all things, from the smallest atom of matter to man and god. It is in a sense "the seven-skinned Mother" of the stanzas in the Secret Doctrine; the essence of seven planes of sentiency, consciousness, and differentiation, both moral and physical. In its highest aspect it is Nirvana; in its lowest, the Astral Light. It was feminine with the Gnostics, the early Christians, and the Nazarenes; bisexual with other sects, who considered it only in its four lower planes, of igneous and ethereal nature in the objective world of forms, and divine and spiritual in its three higher planes. When it is said that every human soul was born by detaching itself from the Anima Mundi, it is meant, esoterically, that our higher Egos are of an essence identical with It, and Mahat is a radiation of the ever unknown Universal ABSOLUTE.

Anoia (Gr.) is "want of understanding folly"; and is the name applied by Plato and others to the lower Manas when too closely allied with Kama, which is characterised by irrationality (agnoia). The Greek agnoia is evidently a derivative of the Sanskrit ajnana (phonetically agnyana), or ignorance, irrationality, and absence of knowledge.

Anthropomorphism. From the Greek Anthropos, man. The act of endowing God or the gods with a human form and human attributes or qualities.

Anugita (Sans.) One of the Upanishads. A very occult treatise. (Vide Clarendon Press series "The Sacred Books of the East.")

Apollo Belvidere. Of all the ancient statues of Apollo, the son of Jupiter and Latona, called Phoebus, Helios, the radiant, and the Sun — the best and most perfect is the one of this name, which is in the Belvidere Gallery in the Vatican, at Rome. It is called the Pythian Apollo, as the god is represented in the moment of his victory over the serpent Python. The statue was found in the ruins of Antium in 1503.

Apollonius of Tyana. A wonderful philosopher born in Cappadocia about the beginning of the first century; an ardent Pythagorean, who studied the Phoenician sciences under Euthydemus, and Pythagorean philosophy and other subjects under Euxenus of Heraclea. According to the tenets of the Pythagorean school he remained a vegetarian the whole of his long life, ate only fruit and herbs, drank no wine, wore vestments made only of plant fibres, walked barefooted and let his hair grow to the full length, as all the Initiates have done before and after him. He was initiated by the priests of the temple of AEculapius (Asclepios) at AEgae, and learnt many of the "miracles" for healing the sick wrought by the God of medicine. Having prepared himself for a higher initiation by a silence of five years, and by travel — visiting Antioch, Ephesus, and Pamphylia and other parts — he repaired via Babylon to India, alone, all his disciples having abandoned him as they feared to go to the "land of enchantments." A casual disciple, Damis, whom he met on his way, accompanied him, however, on his travels. At Babylon he got initiated by the Chaldees and Magi, according to Damis, whose narrative was copied by one named Philostratus one hundred years later. After his return from India, he showed himself a true Initiate in that the pestilence, earthquakes, deaths of kings and other events, which he prophesied, duly happened.

At Lesbos, the priests of Orpheus got jealous of him, and refused to initiate him into their peculiar mysteries, though they did so several years later. He preached to the people of Athens and other States the purest and noblest ethics, and the phenomena he produced were as wonderful as they were numerous, and well authenticated. "How is it," inquires Justin Martyr, in dismay, "how is it that the talismans (telesmata) of Apollonius have power, for they prevent, as we see, the fury of the waves, and the violence of the winds, and the attacks of wild beasts; and whilst our Lord's miracles are preserved by tradition alone, those of Apollonius are most numerous, and actually manifested in present facts?" (Quest. XXIV.) But an answer is easily found to this, in the fact that, after crossing the Hindu Koosh, Apollonius had been directed by a king to the abode of the Sages, whose abode it may be to this day, and who taught him their unsurpassed knowledge. His dialogues, with the Corinthian Menippus, give to us truly the esoteric catechism, and disclose (when understood) many an important mystery of nature. Apollonius was the friend, correspondent, and guest of kings and queens, and no wonderful or "magic" powers are better attested than his. Towards the close of his long and wonderful life he opened an esoteric school at Ephesus, and died at the ripe old age of one hundred years.

Archangel. Highest, supreme angel. From the two Greek words, arch, "first," and angelos, "messenger."

Arhat (Sans.), also pronounced and written Arahat, Arhan, Rahat, etc., "the worthy one"; a perfected Arya, one exempt from reincarnation; "deserving Divine honours." This was the name first given to the Jain, and subsequently to the Buddhist holy men initiated into the esoteric mysteries. The Arhat is one who has entered the last and highest path, and is thus emancipated from rebirth.

Arians. The followers of Arius, a presbyter of the Church in Alexandria in the fourth century. One who holds that Christ is a created and human being, inferior to God the Father, though a grand and noble man, a true adept, versed in all the divine mysteries.

Aristobulus. An Alexandrian writer, and an obscure philosopher. A Jew who tried to prove that Aristotle explained the esoteric thoughts of Moses.

Aryan (Sans.) Lit., "the holy"; those who had mastered the Aryasatyani and entered the Aryamarga path to Nirvana or Moksha, the great "fourfold" path. They were originally known as Rishis. But now the name has become the epithet of a race, and our Orientalists, depriving the Hindu Brahmans of their birthright, have made Aryans of all Europeans. Since, in esotericism the four paths or stages can only be entered through great spiritual development and "growth in holiness," they are called the Aryamarga. The degrees of Arhatship, called respectively Srotapatti, Sakridagamin, Anagamin, and Arhat, or the four classes of Aryas, correspond to the four paths and truths.

Aspect. The form (rupa) under which any principle in septenary man or nature manifests is called an aspect of that principle in Theosophy.

Astral Body. The ethereal counterpart or double of any physical body — Doppelganger.

Astrology. The science which defines the action of celestial bodies upon mundane affairs, and claims to foretell future events from the positions of the stars. Its antiquity is such as to place it among the very earliest records of human learning. It remained for long ages a secret science in the East, and its final expression remains so to this day, its esoteric application only having been brought to any degree of perfection in the West during the lapse of time since Varaha Mihira wrote his book on Astrology, some 1400 years ago. Claudius Ptolemy, the famous geographer and mathematician who founded the system of Astronomy known under his name, wrote his Tetrabiblos, which is still the basis of modern Astrology, 135 A. D. The science of Horoscopy is studied now chiefly under four heads, viz.: (1). Mundane, in its application to meteorology, seismology, husbandry. (2). State or Civic, in regard to the future of nations, Kings, and rulers. (3). Horary, in reference to the solving of doubts arising in the mind upon any subject. (4). Genethliacal, in connection with the future of individuals from birth unto death. The Egyptians and the Chaldees were among the most ancient votaries of Astrology, though their modes of reading the stars and the modern methods differ considerably. The former claimed that Belus, the Bel or Elu of the Chaldees, a scion of the Divine Dynasty, or the dynasty of the King-gods, had belonged to the land of Chemi, and had left it to found a colony from Egypt on the banks of the Euphrates, where a temple, ministered by priests in the service of the "lords of the stars," was built. As to the origin of the science, it is known on the one hand that Thebes claimed the honour of the invention of Astrology; whereas, on the other hand, all are agreed that it was the Chaldees who taught that science to the other nations. Now Thebes antedated considerably, not only "Ur of the Chaldees," but also Nipur, where Bel was first worshipped — Sin, his son (the moon), being the presiding deity of Ur, the land of the nativity of Terah, the Sabean and Astrolater, and of Abram, his son, the great Astrologer of Biblical tradition. All tends, therefore, to corroborate the Egyptian claim. If later on the name of Astrologer fell into disrepute in Rome and elsewhere, it was owing to the frauds of those who wanted to make money of that which was part and parcel of the Sacred Science of the Mysteries, and who, ignorant of the latter, evolved a system based entirely on mathematics, instead of transcendental metaphysics with the physical celestial bodies as its upadhi or material basis. Yet, all persecutions notwithstanding, the number of adherents to Astrology among the most intellectual and scientific minds was always very great. If Cardan and Kepler were among its ardent supporters, then later votaries have nothing to blush for, even in its now imperfect and distorted form. As said in Isis Unveiled (I., 259), "Astrology is to exact astronomy, what psychology is to exact physiology. In astrology and psychology one has to step beyond the visible world of matter and enter into the domain of transcendent spirit."

Athenagoras. A Platonic Philosopher of Athens, who wrote an apology for the Christians in 177 A. D., addressed to Marcus Aurelius, to prove that the accusations brought against them, viz., that they were incestuous and ate murdered children, were untrue.

Atman, or Atma (Sans.) The Universal Spirit, the divine monad, "the seventh Principle," so called, in the exoteric "septenary" classification of man. The Supreme Soul.

Aura (Gr. and Lat.) A subtile invisible essence or fluid that emanates from human, animal, and other bodies. It is a psychic effluvium partaking of both the mind and the body, as there is both an electro-vital and at the same time an electro-mental aura; called in Theosophy the Akasic or magnetic aura. In R. C. Martyrology, a Saint.

Avatara (Sans.) Divine incarnation. The descent of a god or some exalted Being who has progressed beyond the necessity for rebirth, into the body of a simple mortal. Krishna was an Avatar of Vishnu. The Dalai-Lama is regarded as an Avatar of Avalokiteswara and the Teschu-Lama as one of Tson-Kha-pa, or Amitabha. These are two kinds of Avatars: one born from woman and the other "parentless" — Anupadaka.

B

Beness. A term coined by Theosophists to render more accurately the essential meaning of the untranslatable word Sat. The latter word does not mean "Being," for the term "Being" presupposes a sentient consciousness of existence. But as the term Sat is applied solely to the absolute principle, that universal, unknown, and ever unknowable principle which philosophical Pantheism postulates, calling it the basic root of Kosmos and Kosmos itself, it could not be translated by the simple term "Being." Sat, indeed, is not even, as translated by some Orientalists, "the incomprehensible Entity"; for it is no more an "Entity" than a non-entity, but both. It is as said absolute BENESS, not "Being"; the one, secondless, undivided and indivisible ALL — the root of nature both visible and invisible, objective and subjective, comprehensible and — never to be fully comprehended.

Bhagavat-Gita (Sans.) Lit., "the Lord's Song," a portion of the Mahabharata, the great epic poem of India. It contains a dialogue wherein Krishna — the "Charioteer" and Arjuna his chela have a discussion upon the highest spiritual philosophy. The work is pre-eminently occult or esoteric.

Black Magic. Sorcery; necromancy, or the raising of the dead and other selfish abuses of abnormal powers. This abuse may be unintentional; still it has to remain "black" magic whenever anything is produced phenomenally simply for one's own gratification.

Boehme (Jacob). A mystic and great philosopher, one of the most prominent Theosophists of the mediaeval ages. He was born about 1575 at Old Diedenberg, some two miles from Gorlitz (Silesia), and died in 1624, being nearly fifty years old. When a boy he was a common shepherd, and, after learning to read and write in a village school, became an apprentice to a poor shoemaker at Gorlitz. He was a natural clairvoyant of the most wonderful power. With no education or acquaintance with science he wrote works which are now proved to be full of scientific truths; but these, as he himself says of what he wrote, he "saw as in a Great Deep in the Eternal." He had "a thorough view of the universe, as in chaos," which yet opened itself in him, from time to time, "as in a young planet," he says. He was a thorough born mystic, and evidently of a constitution which is most rare; one of those fine natures whose material envelope impedes in no way the direct, even if only occasional, intercommunication between the intellectual and spiritual Ego. It is this Ego which Jacob Boehme, as so many other untrained mystics, mistook for God. "Man must acknowledge," he writes, "that his knowledge is not his own, but from God, who manifests the Ideas of Wisdom to the Soul of Man in what measure he pleases." Had this great Theosophist been born 300 years later he might have expressed it otherwise. He would have known that the "God" who spoke through his poor uncultured and untrained brain was his own Divine Ego, the omniscient Deity within himself, and that what that Deity gave out was not "what measure he pleased," but in the measure of the capacities of the mortal and temporary dwelling IT informed.

Book of the Keys. An ancient Kabalistic work. The original is no longer extant, though there may be spurious and disfigured copies and forgeries of it.

Brahm (Sans.) The student must distinguish between the neuter Brahma, and the male Creator of the Indian Pantheon, Brahma. The former Brahma or Brahman is the impersonal, Supreme, and uncognizable Soul of the Universe, from the essence of which all emanates, and into which all returns; which is incorporeal, immaterial, unborn, eternal, beginningless and endless. It is all-pervading, animating the highest god as well as the smallest mineral atom. Brahma, on the other hand, the male and the alleged Creator, exists in his manifestation periodically only, and passes into pralaya, i. e., disappears and is annihilated as periodically. (Vide infra.)

Brahma's Day. A period of 2,160,000,000 years, during which Brahma, having emerged out of his Golden Egg (Hiranya Garbha), creates and fashions the material world (for he is simply the fertilizing and creative force in Nature). After this period the worlds being destroyed in turn by fire and water, he vanishes with objective nature; and then comes

Brahma's Night. A period of equal duration, in which Brahma is said to be asleep. Upon awakening he recommences the process, and this goes on for an AGE of Brahma composed of alternate "Days" and "Nights," and lasting for 100 years of 2,160,000,000 each. It requires fifteen figures to express the duration of such an age, after the expiration of which the Mahapralaya or Great Dissolution sets in, and lasts in its turn for the same space of fifteen figures.

Brahm-Vidya (Sans.) The knowledge or Esoteric Science about the true nature of the two Brahmas.

Buddha (Sans.) "The enlightened." Generally known as the title of Gautama Buddha, the Prince of Kapilavastu, the founder of modern Buddhism. The highest degree of knowledge and holiness. To become a Buddha one has to break through the bondage of sense and personality; to acquire a complete perception of the real Self, and learn not to separate it from all the other Selves; to learn by experience the utter unreality of all phenomena, foremost of all the visible Kosmos; to attain a complete detachment from all that is evanescent and finite, and to live while yet on earth only in the immortal and everlasting.

Buddhi (Sans.) Universal Soul or Mind. Mahabuddhi is a name of Mahat (q. v.); also the Spiritual Soul in man (the sixth principle exoterically), the vehicle of Atma, the seventh, according to the exoteric enumeration.

Buddhism is the religious philosophy taught by Gautama Buddha. It is now split into two distinct churches: the Southern and Northern. The former is said to be the purer, as having preserved more religiously the original teachings of the Lord Buddha. The Northern Buddhism is confined to Thibet, China, and Nepaul. But this distinction is incorrect. If the Southern Church is nearer, and has not, in fact, departed, except perhaps in trifling dogmas, due to the many councils held after the death of the MASTER from the public or exoteric teachings of Sakyamuni, the Northern Church is the outcome of Siddharta Buddha's esoteric teachings which he confined to his elect Bikshus and Arhats. Buddhism, in fact, cannot be justly judged in our age either by one or the other of its exoteric popular forms. Real Buddhism can be appreciated only by blending the philosophy of the Southern Church and the metaphysics of the Northern Schools. If one seems too iconoclastic and stern, and the other too metaphysical and transcendental, events being overcharged with the weeds of Indian exotericism — many of the gods of its Pantheon having been transplanted under new names into Thibetan soil — it is due to the popular expression of Buddhism in both churches. Correspondentially, they stand in their relation to each other as Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. Both err by an excess of zeal and erroneous interpretations, though neither the Southern nor the Northern Buddhist clergy have ever departed from Truth consciously, still less have they acted under the dictates of priestocracy, ambition, or an eye to personal gain and power, as the later churches have.

Buddhi-Taijasi (Sans.) A very mystic term, capable of several interpretations. In Occultism, however, and in relation to the human "Principles" (exoterically), it is a term to express the state of our dual Manas, when, reunited during a man's life, it bathes in the radiance of Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul. For "Taijasi" means the radiant, and Manas, becoming radiant in consequence of its union with Buddhi, and being, so to speak, merged into it, is identified with the latter; the trinity has become one; and, as the element of Buddhi is the highest, it becomes Buddhi-Taijasi. In short, it is the human soul illuminated by the radiance of the divine soul, the human reason lit by the light of the Spirit or Divine SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.

C

Caste. Originally the system of the four hereditary classes into which Indian population was divided: Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Shoodra — (a) descendants of Brahma; (b) warrior; (c) mercantile, and (d) the lowest or agricultural Shoodra class. From these four, hundreds of divisions and minor castes have sprung.

Causal Body. This "body," which is in reality no body at all, either objective or subjective, but Buddhi the Spiritual Soul, is so-called because it is the direct cause of the Sushupti state leading to the Turya state, the highest state of Samadhi. It is called Karanopadhi, "the basis of the cause," by the "Taraka Raj" Yogis, and in the Vedanta System corresponds to both the Vignanamaya and Anandamaya Kosha (the latter coming next to Atma, and therefore being the vehicle of the Universal Spirit). Buddhi alone could not be called a "Causal body," but becomes one in conjunction with Manas, the incarnating Entity or EGO.

Chela (Sans.) A disciple. The pupil of a Guru or Sage, the follower of some Adept, or a school of philosophy.

Chrestos (Gr.) The early gnostic term for Christ. This technical term was used in the fifth century B. C. by AEschylus, Herodotus and others. The Manteumata pythocresta, or the "Oracles delivered by a Pythian God" through a pythoness, are mentioned by the former (Cho. 901), and Pythocrestos is derived from chrao. Chresterion is not only "the test of an oracle," but an offering to, or for, the oracle. Chrestes is one who explains oracles, a "prophet and soothsayer," and Chresterios, one who serves an oracle or a God. The earliest Christian writer, Justin Martyr, in his first Apology, calls his co-religionists Chrestians. "It is only through ignorance that men call themselves Christians, instead of Chrestians," says Lactantius (lib. IV., cap. VII.). The terms Christ and Christians, spelt originally Chrest and Chrestians, were borrowed from the Temple vocabulary of the Pagans. Chrestos meant, in that vocabulary, "a disciple on probation," a candidate for hierophantship; who, when he had attained it, through Initiation, long trials and suffering, and had been anointed (i. e., "rubbed with oil," as Initiates and even Idols of the Gods were, as the last touch of ritualistic observance), was changed into Christos — the "purified" in esoteric or mystery language. In mystic symbology, indeed, Christes or Christos meant that the "way," the Path, was already trodden and the goal reached; when the fruits of the arduous labour, uniting the personality of evanescent clay with the indestructible INDIVIDUALITY, transformed it thereby into the immortal EGO. "At the end of the way stands the Christes," the Purifier; and the union once accomplished, the Chrestos, the "man of sorrow" became Christos himself. Paul, the Initiate, knew this, and meant this precisely, when he is made to say in bad translation, "I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you" (Gal. iv., 19), the true rendering of which is, " . . . . until you form the Christos within yourselves." But the profane, who knew only that Chrestos was in some way connected with priest and prophet, and knew nothing about the hidden meaning of Christos, insisted, as did Lactantius and Justyn Martyr, on being called Chrestians instead of Christians. Every good individual, therefore, may find Christ in his "inner man," as Paul expresses it, (Ephes. iii., 16, 17) whether he be Jew, Mussulman, Hindu or Christian.

Christ (see CHRESTOS).

Christian Scientist. A newly-coined term for denoting the practitioners of a healing art by will. The name is a misnomer, since Buddhist or Jew, Hindu or Materialist can practise this new form of Western Yoga with like success if he can only guide and control his will with sufficient firmness. "Mental Scientists" is another rival school. These work by a universal denial of every disease and evil imaginable, and claim, syllogistically, that since Universal Spirit cannot be subject to the ailings of flesh, and since every atom is Spirit and in Spirit, and since, finally, they — the healers and the healed — are all absorbed in this Spirit or Deity, there is not, nor can there be, such a thing as disease. This prevents in nowise both Christian and Mental Scientists from succumbing to disease and nursing chronic diseases for years in their own bodies just like other ordinary mortals.

Clairaudience. The faculty — whether innate or acquired by occult training — to hear things at whatever distance.

Clairvoyance. A faculty of seeing with the inner eye or spiritual sight. As now used, it is a loose and flippant term, embracing under its meaning both a happy guess due to natural shrewdness or intuition, and also that faculty which was so remarkably exercised by Jacob Boehme and Swedenborg. Yet even these two great seers, since they could never rise superior to the general spirit of the Jewish Bible and Sectarian teachings, have sadly confused what they saw, and fallen far short of true clairvoyance.

Clemens Alexandrinus. A Church Father and voluminous writer, who had been a Neo-Platonist and a disciple of Ammonius Saccas. He was one of the few Christian philosophers between the second and third centuries of our era, at Alexandria.

College of Rabbis. A college at Babylon; most famous during the early centuries of Christianity, but its glory was greatly darkened by the appearance in Alexandria of Hellenic teachers, such as Philo-Judaeus, Josephus, Aristobulus and others. The former avenged themselves on their successful rivals by speaking of the Alexandrians as Theurgists and unclean prophets. But the Alexandrian believers in thaumaturgy were not regarded as sinners and impostors when orthodox Jews were at the head of such schools of "hazim." There were colleges for teaching prophecy and occult sciences. Samuel was the chief of such a college at Ramah; Elisha, at Jericho. Hillel had a regular academy for prophets and seers; and it is Hillel, a pupil of the Babylonian College, who was the founder of the sect of the Pharisees and the great orthodox Rabbis.

Cycle (Gr.) KUKLOS. The ancients divided time into endless cycles, wheels within wheels, all such periods being of various durations, and each marking the beginning or end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical or metaphysical. There were cycles of only a few years, and cycles of immense duration, the great Orphic cycle referring to the ethnological change of races lasting 120,000 years, and that of Cassandrus of 136,000, which brought about a complete change in planetary influences and their correlations between men and gods — a fact entirely lost sight of by modern astrologers.

D

Deist. One who admits the possibility of the existence of a God or gods, but claims to know nothing of either, and denies revelation. An agnostic of olden times.

Deva (Sans.) A god, a "resplendent" Deity, Deva-Deus, from the root div, "to shine." A Deva is a celestial being — whether good, bad or indifferent — which inhabits "the three worlds," or the three planes above us. There are 33 groups or millions of them.

Devachan (Sans.) The "Dwelling of the Gods." A state intermediate between two earth-lives, and into which the Ego (Atma-Buddhi-Manas, or the Trinity made one) enters after its separation from Kama Rupa, and the disintegration of the lower principles, after the death of the body, on Earth.

Dhammapada (Sans.) A work containing various aphorisms from the Buddhist Scriptures.

Dhyana (Sans.) One of the six Paramitas of perfection. A state of abstraction which carries the ascetic practising it far above the region of sensuous perception, and out of the world of matter. Lit., "contemplation." The six stages of Dhyan differ only in the degrees of abstraction of the personal Ego from sensuous life.

Dhyan Chohans (Sans.) Lit., "The Lords of Light." The highest gods, answering to the Roman Catholic Archangels. The divine Intelligences charged with the supervision of Kosmos.

Double. The same as the Astral body or "Doppelganger."

E

Ecstasis (Gr.) A psycho-spiritual state; a physical trance which induces clairvoyance, and a beatific state which brings on visions.

Ego (Lat.) "I"; the consciousness in man of the "I am I," or the feeling of I-am-ship. Esoteric philosophy teaches the existence of two Egos in man, the mortal or personal, and the higher, the divine or impersonal, calling the former "personality," and the latter "individuality."

Egoity (from the word "Ego"). Egoity means "individuality" — indifferent — never "personality," as it is the opposite of Egoism or "selfishness," the characteristic par excellence of the latter.

Eidolon (Gr.) The same as that which we term the human phantom, the Astral form.

Elementals, or Spirits of the Elements. The creatures evolved in the Four Kingdoms, or Elements — Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. They are called by the Kabalists, Gnomes (of the Earth), Sylphs (of the Air), Salamanders (of the Fire), and Undines (of the Water), except a few of the higher kinds and their rulers. They are rather the forces of nature than ethereal men and women. These forces, as the servile agents of the occultist, may produce various effects; but if employed by elementaries (Kamarupas)— in which case they enslave the mediums — they will deceive. All the lower invisible beings generated on the fifth, sixth, and seventh Planes of our terrestrial atmosphere are called Elementals — Peris, Devs, Djins, Sylvans, Satyrs, Fauns, Elves, Dwarfs, Trolls, Norns, Kobolds, Brownies, Nixies, Goblins, Pinkies, Banshees, Moss People, White Ladies, Spooks, Fairies, etc., etc.

Eleusinia (Gr.) The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most famous and the most ancient of all the Greek mysteries (save the Samothracian), and were performed near the hamlet of Eleusis, not far from Athens. Epiphanius traces them to the days of Iacchos (1800 B. C.) They were held in honour of Demeter, the great Ceres, and the Egyptian Isis; and the last act of the performance referred to a sacrificial victim of atonement and a resurrection, when the Initiate was admitted to the highest degree of Epopt. The festival of the Mysteries began in the month of Boedromion (September), the time of grape-gathering, and lasted from the 15th to the 22nd — seven days. The Hebrew Feast of Tabernacles — the feast of ingatherings — in the month of Ethanim (the seventh) also began on the 15th and ended on the 22nd of that month. The name of the month (Ethanim) is derived, according to some, from Adonim, Adonia, Attenim, Ethanim, and was in bonour of Adonai, or Adonis (Tham), whose death was lamented by the Hebrews in the groves of Bethlehem. The sacrifice of "Bread and Wine" was performed both in the Eleusinia and during the Feast of Tabernacles.

Emanation (The doctrine of) is in its metaphysical meaning opposed to evolution, yet one with it. Science teaches that, physiologically, evolution is a mode of generation in which the germ that develops the foetus pre-exists already in the parent, the development and final form and characteristics of that germ being accomplished by nature; and that (as in its cosmology) the process takes place blindly, through the correlation of the elements and their various compounds. Occultism teaches that this is only the apparent mode, the real process being Emanation, guided by intelligent forces under an immutable LAW. Therefore, while the Occultists and Theosophists believe thoroughly in the doctrine of Evolution as given out by Kapila and Manu, they are Emanationists rather than Evolutionists. The doctrine of Emanation was at one time universal. It was taught by the Alexandrian, as well as by the Indian philosophers, by the Egyptian, the Chaldean, and Hellenic Hierophants, and also by the Hebrews (in their Kabala, and even in Genesis). For it is only owing to deliberate mistranslation that the Hebrew word asdt was translated "angels" from the Septuagint, while it means Emanations, AEons, just as with the Gnostics. Indeed, in Deuteronomy (xxxiii. 2) the word asdt or ashdt is translated as "fiery law," whilst the correct rendering of the passage should be, "from his right went (not a fiery law, but) a fire according to law," viz., that the fire of one flame is imparted to and caught up by another — like as in a trail of inflammable substance. This is precisely Emanation, as shown in Isis Unveiled. "In Evolution, as it is now beginning to be understood, there is supposed to be in all matter an impulse to take on a higher form — a supposition clearly expressed by Manu and other Hindoo philosophers of the highest antiquity. The philosopher's tree illustrates it in the case of the zinc solution. The controversy between the followers of this school and the Emanationists may be briefly stated thus: The Evolutionist stops all inquiry at the borders of 'the unknowable'; the Emanationist believes that nothing can be evolved — or, as the word means, unwombed or born — except it has first been involved, thus indicating that life is from a spiritual potency above the whole."

Esoteric. Hidden, secret. From the Greek Esotericos — "inner," concealed.

Esoteric Bodhism. Secret wisdom or intelligence, from the Greek Esotericos, "inner," and the Sanskrit Bodhi, "knowledge," in contradistinction to Buddhi, "the faculty of knowledge or intelligence," and Buddhism, the philosophy or Law of Buddha (the Enlightened). Also written "Budhism," from Budha (Intelligence, Wisdom) the Son of Soma.

Exoteric (Gr.) Outward, public; the opposite of esoteric or hidden.

Extra-Cosmic, i. e., outside of Kosmos or Nature. A nonsensical word invented to assert the existence of a personal god independent of or outside Nature per se; for as Nature, or the Universe, is infinite and limitless there can be nothing outside it. The term is coined in opposition to the Pantheistic idea that the whole Kosmos is animated or informed with the Spirit of Deity, Nature being but the garment, and matter the illusive shadows, of the real unseen Presence.

Eurasians. An abbreviation of "European-Asians." The mixed coloured races; the children of the white fathers, and the dark mothers of India, and vice versa.

F

Ferho (Gnostic). The highest and greatest creative power with the Nazarene Gnostics (Codex Nazaraeus).

Fire-Philosophers. The name given to the Hermetists and Alchemists of the Middle Ages, and also to the Rosicrucians. The latter, the successors of Theurgists, regarded fire as the symbol of Deity. It was the source, not only of material atoms, but the container of the Spiritual and Psychic Forces energising them. Broadly analysed, Fire is a triple principle; esoterically, a septenary, as are all the rest of the elements. As man is composed of Spirit, Soul, and Body, plus a four-fold aspect; so is Fire. As in the works of Robert Flood (de Fluctibus), one of the famous Rosicrucians, fire contains — Firstly, a visible flame (body); secondly, an invisible, astral fire (soul); and thirdly, spirit. The four aspects are (a) heat (life), (b) light (mind), (c) electricity (Kamic or molecular powers, and (d) the synthetic essences, beyond spirit, or the radical cause of its existence and manifestation. For the Hermetist or Rosicrucian, when a flame is extinct on the objective plane, it has only passed from the seen world into the unseen; from the knowable into the unknowable.

G

Gautama (Sans.) A name in India. It is that of the Prince of Kapilavastu, son of Sudhodana, the Sakhya King of a small territory on the borders of Nepaul, born in the seventh century B. C., now called the "Saviour of the world." Gautama or Gotama was the sacerdotal name of the Sakya family. Born a simple mortal, he rose to Buddha-ship through his own personal and unaided merit; a man — verily greater than any God!

Gebirol. Salomon Ben Jehudah, called in literature Avicebron. An Israelite by birth, a philosopher, poet and kabalist; a voluminous writer and a mystic. He was born in the eleventh century at Malaga (1021), educated at Saragossa, and died at Valencia in 1070, murdered by a Mahomedan. His fellow-religionists called him Salomon, the Sephardi, or the Spaniard, and the Arabs, Abu Ayyub Suleiman-ben ya'hya Ibn Dgebirol, whilst the Scholastics named him Avicebron (see Myers' Quabbalah). Ibn Gebirol was certainly one of the greatest philosophers and scholars of his age. He wrote much in Arabic, and most of his MSS have been preserved. His greatest work appears to be The Megoy Hayyim, i. e., The Fountain of Life, "one of the earliest exposures of the secrets of the Speculative Kabbalah," as his biographer informs us.

Gnosis (Gr.) Lit. "knowledge." The technical term used by the schools of religious philosophy, both before and during the first centuries of so-called Christianity, to denote the object of their enquiry. This spiritual and sacred knowledge, the Gupta Vidya of the Hindus, could only be obtained by Initiation into Spiritual Mysteries of which the ceremonial "Mysteries" were a type.

Gnostics (Gr.) The philosophers who formulated and taught the "Gnosis" or knowledge. They flourished in the first three centuries of the Christian Era. The following were eminent: Valentinus, Basilides, Marcion, Simon Magus, etc.

Golden Age. The ancients divided the life cycle into the Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron Ages. The Golden was an age of primeval purity, simplicity and general happiness.

Great Age. There were several "Great Ages" mentioned by the ancients. In India it embraced the whole Maha-Manvantara, the "Age of Brahma," each "Day" of which represents the Life Cycle of a chain, i. e., it embraces a period of Seven Rounds (vide "Esoteric Buddhism," by A. P. Sinnett). Thus while a "Day" and a "Night" represent, as Manvantara and Pralaya, 8,640,000,000 years, an "age" lasts through a period of 311,040,000,000,000; after which the Pralaya or dissolution of the universe becomes universal. With the Egyptian and Greeks the "Great Age" referred only to the Tropical, or Sidereal year, the duration of which is 25,868 solar years. Of the complete age — that of the Gods — they said nothing, as it was a matter to be discussed and divulged only at the Mysteries, and during the Initiation Ceremonies. The "Great Age" of the Chaldees was the same in figures as that of the Hindus.

Guhya Vidya (Sans.) The secret knowledge of mystic-mantras.

Gupta Vidya (Sans.) The same as Guhya Vidya. Esoteric or secret science, knowledge.

Gyges. "The ring of Gyges" has become a familiar metaphor in European literature. Gyges was a Lydian, who, after murdering the King Candaules, married his widow. Plato tells us that Gyges descending once into a chasm of the earth, discovered a brazen horse, within whose opened side was the skeleton of a man of gigantic stature, who had a brazen ring on his finger. This ring when placed on his own finger made him invisible.

H

Hades (Gr.), or Aides, the "invisible," the land of shadows; one of whose regions was Tartarus, a place of complete darkness, as was also the region of profound dreamless sleep in Amenti. Judging by the allegorical description of the punishments inflicted therein, the place was purely Karmic. Neither Hades nor Amenti were the Hell still preached by some retrograde priests and clergymen; and whether represented by the Elysian Fields or by Tartarus, they could only be reached by crossing the river to the "other shore." As well expressed in the "Egyptian Belief," the story of Charon, the ferryman (of the Styx) is to be found not only in Homer, but in the poetry of many lands. The River must be crossed before gaining the Isles of the Blest. The Ritual of Egypt described a Charon and his boat long ages before Homer. He is Khu-en-na, "the hawk-headed steersman." (See Hell.)

Hallucinations. A state produced sometimes by physiological disorders, sometimes by mediumship, and at others by drunkenness. But the cause that produces the visions has to be sought deeper than physiology. All such, particularly when produced through mediumship, are preceded by a relaxation of the nervous system, generating invariably an abnormal magnetic condition which attracts to the sufferer waves of astral light. It is these latter that furnish the various hallucinations, which, however, are not always, as physicians would explain them, mere empty and unreal dreams. No one can see that which does not exist — i. e., which is not impressed — in or on the astral waves. But a seer may perceive objects and scenes (whether past, present or future) which have no relation whatever to himself; and perceive, moreover, several things entirely disconnected with each other at one and the same time, so as to produce the most grotesque and absurd combinations. But drunkard and seer, medium and adept see their respective visions in the astral light; only while the drunkard, the madman, and the untrained medium, or one in a brain fever, see, because they cannot help it, and evoke jumbled visions unconsciously to themselves without being able to control them, the adept and the trained Seer have the choice and the control of such visions. They know where to fix their gaze, how to steady the scenes they wish to observe, and how to see beyond the upper outward layers of the astral light. With the former such glimpses into the waves are hallucinations; with the latter they become the faithful reproduction of what actually has been, is, or will be taking place. The glimpses at random, caught by the medium, and his flickering visions in the deceptive light, are transformed under the guiding will of the adept and seer into steady pictures, the truthful representation of that which he wills to come within the focus of his perception.

Hell. A term which the Anglo-Saxon race has evidently derived from the name of the Scandinavian goddess, Hela, just as the word ad, in Russian and other Slavonian tongues expressing the same conception, is derived from the Greek Hades, the only difference between the Scandinavian cold Hell, and the hot Hell of the Christians, being found in their respective temperatures. But even the idea of these overheated regions is not original with the Europeans, many people having entertained the conception of an under-world climate; as well we may, if we localise our Hell in the centre of the earth. All exoteric religions — the creeds of the Brahmans, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Mahomedans, Jews, and the rest, made their Hells hot and dark, though many were more attractive than frightful. The idea of a hot Hell is an afterthought, the distortion of an astronomical allegory. With the Egyptians Hell became a place of punishment by fire not earlier than the 17th or 18th Dynasty, when Typhon was transformed from a God into a Devil. But at whatever time they implanted this dread superstition in the minds of the poor ignorant masses, the scheme of a burning Hell and souls tormented therein is purely Egyptian. Ra (the Sun) became the Lord of the Furnace, in Karr, the Hell of the Pharaohs, and the sinner was threatened with misery "in the heat of infernal fires." "A lion was there," says Dr. Birch, "and was called the roaring monster." Another describes the place as "the bottomless pit and lake of fire, into which the victims are thrown" (compare Revelation). The Hebrew word gai-hinnom (gehena) had never really the significance given to it in Christian orthodoxy.

Hermas, an ancient Greek writer, of whose works only a few fragments now remain extant.

Hierogrammatists (Gr.) The title given to those Egyptian priests who were entrusted with the writing and reading of the sacred and secret records. The "scribes of the secret records" literally. They were the instructors of the neophytes preparing for initiation.

Hierophant. From the Greek Hierophantes, literally "he who explains sacred things"; a title belonging to the highest adepts in the temples of antiquity, who were the teachers and expounders of the Mysteries, and the Initiators into the final great Mysteries. The Hierophant stood for the Demiurge, and explained to the postulants for Initiation the various phenomena of creation that were produced for their tuition. "He was the sole expounder of the exoteric secrets and doctrines. It was forbidden even to pronounce his name before an uninitiated person. He sat in the East, and wore as symbol of authority, a golden globe, suspended from the neck. He was also called Mystagogus." (Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, IX., F. T. S., in The Royal Masonic Cyclopoedia.)

Hillel. A great Babylonian Rabbi of the century preceding the Christian Era. He was the founder of the sect of the Pharisees, a learned and a saintly man.

Hinayana (Sans.) The "Smaller Vehicle"; a Scripture and a School of the Buddhists, contrasted with the Mahayana, "The Greater Vehicle." Both schools are mystical. (See Mahayana.) Also in exoteric superstition, the lowest form of transmigration.

Homogeneity. From the Greek words homos, "the same"; and genos, "kind." That which is of the same nature throughout, undifferentiated, non-compound, as gold is supposed to be.

Hypnotism (Gr.) A name given by Dr. Braid to the process by which one man of strong will-power plunges another of weaker mind into a kind of trance; once in such a state the latter will do anything suggested to him by the hypnotiser. Unless produced for beneficial purposes, the Occultists would call it black magic or sorcery. It is the most dangerous of practices, morally and physically, as it interferes with the nerve fluids.

I

Iamblichus. A great Theosophist and an Initiate of the third century. He wrote a great deal about the various kinds of demons who appear through evocation, but spoke severely against such phenomena. His austerities, purity of life and earnestness were great. He is credited with having been levitated ten cubits high from the ground, as are some modern Yogis, and mediums.

Illusion. In Occultism everything finite (such as the Universe and all in it) is called Illusion or Maya.

Individuality. One of the names given in Theosophy and Occultism to the human Higher Ego. We make a distinction between the immortal and divine and the mortal human Ego which perishes. The latter or "Personality" (personal Ego) survives the dead body but for a time in Kama Loka: the Individuality prevails for ever.

Initiate. From the Latin Initiatus. The designation of anyone who was received into and had revealed to him the mysteries and secrets of either Masonry or Occultism. In times of antiquity they were those who had been initiated into the arcane knowledge taught by the Hierophants of the Mysteries; and in our modern days those who have been initiated by the adepts of mystic lore into the mysterious knowledge, which, notwithstanding the lapse of ages, has yet a few real votaries on earth.

Iswara (Sans.) The "Lord" or the personal god, divine spirit in man. Literally Sovereign (independent) existence. A title given to Siva and other gods in India. Siva is also called Iswaradeva, or sovereign deva.

Iu-Kabar Zivo, Gnostic term. The "Lord of the AEons" in the Nazarene system. He is the procreator (Emanator) of the seven holy lives (the seven primal Dhyan Chohans or Archangels, each representing one of the cardinal virtues), and is himself called the third life (third Logos). In the Codex he is addressed as the Helm and Vine of the food of life. Thus he is identical with Christ (Christos) who says: "I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman." (John xv. 1.) It is well known that Christ is regarded in the Roman Catholic Church as the "Chief of the AEons," as also is Michael, "who is as God." Such also was the belief of the Gnostics.

J

Javidan Khirad (Pers.) A work on moral precepts.

Jhana (Sans.) or Jnana, Knowledge: Occult Wisdom.

Josephus Flavius. A historian of the first century; a Hellenized Jew who lived in Alexandria and died at Rome. He was credited by Eusebius with having written the 16 famous lines relating to Christ, which were most probably interpolated by Eusebius himself, the greatest forger among the Church Fathers. This passage, in which Josephus, who was an ardent Jew and died in Judaism, is nevertheless made to acknowledge the Messiaship and divine origin of Jesus, is now declared spurious both by most of the Christian Bishops (Lardner among others) and even by Paley (see his Evidence of Christianity). It was for centuries one of the weightiest proofs of the real existence of Jesus, the Christ.

K

Kabbalah (Heb.), or Kabbala. "The hidden wisdom of the Hebrew Rabbis of the middle ages derived from the older secret doctrines concerning divine things and cosmogony, which were combined into a theology after the time of the captivity of the Jews in Babylon." All the works that fall under the esoteric category are termed Kabalistic.

Kamaloka (Sans.) The semi-material plane, to us subjective and invisible, where the disembodied "personalities," the astral forms called Kama Rupa, remain until they fade out from it by the complete exhaustion of the effects of the mental impulses that created these eidolons of the lower animal passions and desires. (See Kama Rupa.) It is the Hades of the ancient Greeks and the Amenti of the Egyptians — the land of Silent Shadows.

Kama Rupa (Sans.) Metaphysically and in our esoteric philosophy it is the subjective form created through the mental and physical desires and thoughts in connection with things of matter, by all sentient beings: a form which survives the death of its body. After that death, three of the seven "principles" — or, let us say, planes of the senses and consciousness on which the human instincts and ideation act in turn — viz., the body, its astral prototype and physical vitality, being of no further use, remain on earth; the three higher principles, grouped into one, merge into a state of Devachan (q. v.), in which state the Higher Ego will remain until the hour for a new reincarnation arrives, and the eidolon of the ex-personality is left alone in its new abode. Here the pale copy of the man that was, vegetates for a period of time, the duration of which is variable according to the element of materiality which is left in it, and which is determined by the past life of the defunct. Bereft as it is of its higher mind, spirit and physical senses, if left alone to its own senseless devices, it will gradually fade out and disintegrate. But if forcibly drawn back into the terrestrial sphere, whether by the passionate desires and appeals of the surviving friends or by regular necromantic practices — one of the most pernicious of which is mediumship — the "spook" may prevail for a period greatly exceeding the span of the natural life of its body. Once the Kama Rupa has learnt the way back to living human bodies, it becomes a vampire feeding on the vitality of those who are so anxious for its company. In India these Eidolons are called Pisachas, — and are much dreaded.

Kapilavastu (Sans.) The birthplace of the Lord Buddha, called the "yellow dwelling," the capital of the monarch who was the father of Gautama Buddha.

Kardec, Allan. The adopted name of the Founder of the French Spiritists, whose real name was Rivaille. It was he who gathered and published the trance utterances of certain mediums and afterwards made a "philosophy" of them between the years 1855 and 1870.

Karma (Sans.) Physically, action; Metaphysically, the LAW of RETRIBUTION; the Law of Cause and Effect or Ethical Causation. It is Nemesis only in the sense of bad Karma. It is the eleventh Nidana in the concatenation of causes and effects in orthodox Buddhism; yet it is the power that controls all things, the resultant of moral action, the metaphysical Samskara, or the moral effect of an act committed for the attainment of something which gratifies a personal desire. There is the Karma of merit and the Karma of demerit. Karma neither punishes nor rewards; it is simply the one Universal LAW which guides unerringly and, so to say, blindly, all other laws productive of certain effects along the grooves of their respective causations. When Buddhism teaches that "Karma is that moral Kernel (of any being) which alone survives death and continues in transmigration" or reincarnation, it simply means that there remains nought after each personality, but the causes produced by it, causes which are undying, i. e., which cannot be eliminated from the Universe until replaced by their legitimate effects, and so to speak, wiped out by them. And such causes, unless compensated during the life of the person who produced them with adequate effects, will follow the reincarnated Ego and reach it in its subsequent incarnations until a full harmony between effects and causes is fully re-established. No "personality" — a mere bundle of material atoms and instinctual and mental characteristics — can, of course, continue as such in the world of pure spirit. Only that which is immortal in its very nature and divine in its essence, namely, the Ego, can exist for ever. And as it is that Ego which chooses the personality it will inform after each Devachan, and which receives through these personalities the effects of the Karmic causes produced, it is, therefore, the Ego, that Self, which is the "moral Kernel" referred to, and embodied Karma itself, that "which alone survives death."

Kether (Heb.) "The Crown, the highest of the ten Sephiroth; the first of the supernal Triad. It corresponds to the Macroprosopus, Vast Countenance, or Arikh Anpin, which differentiates into Chokmah and Binah."

Krishna (Sans.) The most celebrated Avatar of Vishnu, the "Saviour" of the Hindus and the most popular god. He is the eighth Avatar, the son of Devaki, and the nephew of Kansa, the Indian Herod, who while seeking for him among the shepherds and cowherds who concealed him slew thousands of their newly-born babes. The story of Krishna's conception, birth and childhood are the exact prototype of the New Testament story. The missionaries, of course, try to show that the Hindus stole the story of the Nativity from the early Christians who came to India.

Kshetragna, or Kshetragneswara (Sans.)Embodied Spirit in Occultism, the conscious Ego in its highest manifestations; the reincarnating Principle, or the "Lord" in us.

Kumara (Sans.) A virgin boy or young celibate. The first Kumaras are the seven sons of Brahma, born out of the limbs of the god in the so-called Ninth Creation. It is stated that the name was given to them owing to their formal refusal to "procreate" their species, and thus they "remained Yogis" according to the legend.

L

Labro, St. A Roman Saint solemnly beatified a few years ago. His great holiness consisted in sitting at one of the gates of Rome night and day for forty years, and remaining unwashed through the whole of that time, the result of which was that he was eaten by vermin to his bones.

Lao-Tze (Chin.) A great Sage, Saint, and Philosopher, who preceded Confucius.

Law of Retribution (vide Karma).

Linga Sharira (Sans.) "Astral body," i. e., the aerial symbol of the body. This term designates the doppelganger, or the "astral body" of man or animal. It is the eidolon of the Greeks, the vital and prototypal body, the reflection of the man of flesh. It is born before man and dies or fades out with the disappearance of the last atom of the body.

Logos (Gr.) The manifested deity with every nation and people; the outward expression or the effect of the Cause which is ever concealed. Thus, speech is the logos of thought; hence, in its metaphysical sense, it is aptly translated by the terms "Verbum," and the "Word."

Long Face. A Kabalistic term, Areekh Anpeen in Hebrew; or "Long Face"; in Greek, Macroprosopos, as contrasted with "Short Face," or Zeir Anpeen, the Microprosopos. One relates to Deity, the other to man, the "little image of the great form."

Longinus, Dionysius Cassius. A famous critic and philosopher, born in the very beginning of the third century (about 213). He was a great traveller, and attended at Alexandria the lectures of Ammonius Saccas, the founder of Neoplatonism, but was rather a critic than a follower. Porphyry (the Jew Malek or Malchus) was his pupil before he became the disciple of Plotinus. It is said of him that he was a living library and a walking museum. Towards the end of his life he became the instructor in Greek literature of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. She repaid his services by accusing him before the Emperor Aurelius of having advised her to rebel against the latter, a crime for which Longinus, with several others, was put to death by the Emperor in 273.

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Macrocosm (Gr.) The "Great Universe" or Kosmos, literally.

Magic. The "great" Science. According to Deveria and other Orientalists, "Magic was considered as a sacred science inseparable from religion" by the oldest and most civilised and learned nations. The Egyptians, for instance, were a most sincerely religious nation, as were, and are still, the Hindus. "Magic consists of, and is acquired by, the worship of the gods," says Plato. Could, then, a nation which, owing to the irrefragable evidence of inscriptions and papyri, is proved to have firmly believed in magic for thousands of years, have been deceived for so long a time? And is it likely that generations upon generations of a learned and pious hierarchy, many among whom led lives of self-martyrdom, holiness and asceticism, would have gone on deceiving themselves and the people (or even only the latter) for the pleasure of perpetuating belief in "miracles"? Fanatics, we are told, will do anything to enforce belief in their god or idols. To this we reply: — In such cases Brahmans and Egyptian Rekhget-amens or Hierophants, would not have popularised the belief in the power of man by magic practices, to command the services of the gods: which gods are in truth but the occult powers or potencies of Nature, personified by the learned priests themselves, who reverenced only in them the attributes of the one unknown and nameless Principle. As Proclus, the Platonist, ably puts it: "Ancient priests, when they considered that there is a certain alliance and sympathy in natural things to each other, and of things manifest to occult powers, and discovered that all things subsist in all, fabricated a sacred science from this mutual sympathy and similarity. . . . and applied for occult purposes both celestial and terrene natures, by means of which, through a certain similitude, they deduced divine natures into this inferior abode." Magic is the science of communicating with, and directing supernal supramundane potencies, as well as commanding those of lower spheres; a practical knowledge of the hidden mysteries of nature which are known only to the few, because they are so difficult to acquire without falling into sin against the law. Ancient and mediaeval mystics divided magic into three classes — Theurgia, Goetia and Natural Magic. "Theurgia has long since been appropriated as the peculiar sphere of the Theosophists and metaphysicians," says Kenneth Mackenzie. "Goetia is black magic, and 'natural' or white magic has risen with healing in its wings to the proud position of an exact and progressive study." The remarks added by our late learned brother are remarkable: "The realistic desires of modern times have contributed to bring magic into disrepute and ridicule. . . . Faith (in one's own self) is an essential element in magic, and existed long before other ideas which presume its pre-existence. It is said that it takes a wise man to make a fool; and a man's idea must be exalted almost to madness, i. e., his brain susceptibilities must be increased far beyond the low miserable status of modern civilisation, before he can become a true magician, for a pursuit of this science implies a certain amount of isolation and an abnegation of self." A very great isolation certainly, the achievement of which constitutes a wonderful phenomenon, a miracle in itself. Withal, magic is not something supernatural. As explained by Iamblichus, "they, through the sacerdotal theurgy, announce that they are able to ascend to more elevated and universal essences, and to those that are established above fate, viz., to god and the demiurgos: neither employing matter, nor assuming any other things besides, except the observation of a sensible time." Already some are beginning to recognise the existence of subtle powers and influences in nature, in which they have hitherto known nought. But, as Dr. Carter Blake truly remarks, "the nineteenth century is not that which has observed the genesis of new, nor the completion of old, methods of thought"; to which Mr. Bonwick adds, that "if the Ancients knew but little of our mode of investigation into the secrets of Nature, we know still less of their mode of research."

Magic, Black (vide supra). Sorcery, abuse of powers.

Magic, Ceremonial. Magic, according to Kabalistic rites worked out, as alleged by the Rosicrucians and other mystics, by invoking Powers higher spiritually than Man, and commanding Elementals who are far lower than himself on the scale of being.

Magic, White, or "Beneficent Magic," so called, is divine magic, devoid of selfishness, love of power, of ambition or lucre, and bent only on doing good to the world in general and one's neighbour in particular. The smallest attempt to use one's abnormal powers for the gratification of self makes of these powers sorcery or Black Magic.

Mahamanvantara (Sans.) Lit., the great interludes between the Manus — the period of universal activity. Manvantara here implies simply a period of activity as opposed to Pralaya or rest — without reference to the length of the cycle.

Mahat (Sans.) Lit. "The Great One." The first principle of Universal Intelligence and consciousness. In the Puranic philosophy, the first product of root-nature or Pradhana (the same as Mulaprakriti); the producer of Manas the thinking principle, and of Ahankara, Egotism or the feeling of "I am I" in the lower Manas.

Mahatma (Sans.) Lit., "Great Soul." An adept of the highest order. An exalted being, who having attained to the mastery over his lower principles, is therefore living unimpeded by the "man of flesh." Mahatmas are in possession of knowledge and power commensurate with the stage they have reached in their spiritual evolution. Called in Pali Rahats and Arthas.

Mahayana (Sans.) A school of Buddhistic philosophy; lit., the "Great Vehicle." A mystical system founded by Nagarjuna. Its books were written in the second century B. C.

Manas (Sans.) Lit., the "Mind." The mental faculty which makes of a man an intelligent and moral being, and distinguishes him from the mere animal; a synonym of Mahat. Esoterically, however, it means, when unqualified, the Higher Ego or the sentient reincarnating Principle in man. When qualified it is called by Theosophists Buddhi-Manas, or the spiritual soul, in contradistinction to its human reflection — Kama-Manas.

Manasaputra (Sans.) Lit., the "Sons of Mind" or mind-born Sons; a name given to our Higher Egos before they incarnated in mankind. In the exoteric though allegorical and symbolical Puranas (the sacred and ancient writings of Hindus), it is the title given to the mind-born Sons of Brahma, the Kumara.

Manas Sutratma (Sans.) Two words meaning "mind" (Manas) and "Thread Soul" (Sutratma). It is, as said, the synonym of our Ego, or that which reincarnates. It is a technical term of Vedantic philosophy.

Manas Taijasi (Sans.) Lit., the "radiant" Manas; a state of the Higher Ego which only high metaphysicians are able to realize and comprehend. The same as "Buddhi Taijasi," which see.

Mantras (Sans.) Verses from the Vedic works, used as incantations and charms. By Mantras are meant all those portions of the Vedas which are distinct from the Brahmanas, or their interpretation.

Manu (Sans.) The great Indian legislator. The name comes from the Sanskrit root man to think, MAN really standing only for Swayambhuva, the first of the Manus, who started from Swayambhu, the Self-Existent, who is hence the Logos and the progenitor of mankind. Manu is the first legislator — almost a divine being.

Manvantara (Sans.) A period of manifestation, as opposed to Pralaya (dissolution or rest); the term is applied to various cycles, especially to a Day of Brahma — 4,320,000,000 Solar years — and to the reign of one Manu — 308,448,000. Lit., Manuantara — "between Manus." (See Secret Doctrine, Vol. 11, p. 68, et seq.)

Master. A translation from the Sanskrit Guru, "Spiritual teacher," and adopted by the Theosophists to designate the Adepts, from whom they hold their teachings.

Materialisations. In Spiritualism the word signifies the objective appearance of the so-called "spirits of the dead," who re-clothe themselves occasionally in matter; i. e., they form for themselves out of the materials at hand found in the atmosphere and the emanations of those present, a temporary body bearing the human likeness of the defunct, as he appeared when alive. Theosophists accept the phenomenon of "materialisation," but they reject the theory that it is produced by "Spirits," i. e., the immortal principles of disembodied persons. Theosophists hold that when the phenomena are genuine — which is a fact of rarer occurrence than is generally believed — they are produced by the larvae, the eidolons, or Kamalokic "ghosts" of the dead personalities. (See "Kamaloka" and "Kamarupa.") As Kamaloka is on the earth-plane and differs from its degree of materiality only in the degree of its plane of consciousness, for which reason it is concealed from our normal sight, the occasional apparition of such shells is as natural as that of electric balls and other atmospheric phenomena. Electricity as a fluid, or atomic matter (for Occultists hold with Maxwell that it is atomic), is ever, though invisibly, present in the air and manifests under various shapes, but only when certain conditions are present to "materialise" the fluid, when it passes from its own on to our plane and makes itself objective. Similarly with the eidolons of the dead. They are present around us, but being on another plane do not see us any more than we see them. But whenever the strong desires of living men and the conditions furnished by the abnormal constitutions of mediums are combined together, these eidolons are drawn — nay pulled down from their plane on to ours and made objective. This is necromancy; it does no good to the dead, and great harm to the living, in addition to the fact that it interferes with a law of nature. The occasional materialisation of the "astral bodies" or doubles of living persons is quite another matter. These "astrals" are often mistaken for the apparitions of the dead, since, chameleon-like, our own "elementaries" along with those of the disembodied and cosmic Elementals, will often assume the appearance of those images which are strongest in our thoughts. In short, at the so-called "materialisation seances," it is those present and the medium who create the peculiar apparition. Independent "apparitions" belong to another kind of psychic phenomena.

Materialist. Not necessarily only one who believes in neither God nor soul, nor the survival of the latter, but also any person who materializes the purely spiritual; such as believe in an anthropomorphic deity, in a soul capable of burning in hell fire, and a hell and paradise as localities instead of states of consciousness. American "Substantialists," a Christian sect, are materialists, as also the so-called Spiritualists.

Maya (Sans.) Illusion; the cosmic power which renders phenomenal existence and the perceptions thereof possible. In Hindu philosophy that alone which is changeless and eternal is called reality: all that which is subject to change through decay and differentiation, and which has, therefore, a beginning and an end, is regarded as MAYA — illusion.

Mediumship. A word now accepted to indicate that abnormal psycho-physiological state which leads a person to take the fancies of his imagination, his hallucinations, real or artificial, for realities. No entirely healthy person on the physiological and psychic planes can ever be a medium. That which mediums see, hear, and sense, is "real" but untrue; it is either gathered from the astral plane, so deceptive in its vibrations and suggestions, or from pure hallucinations, which have no actual existence, but for him who perceives them. "Mediumship" is a kind of vulgarised mediatorship in which one afflicted with this faculty is supposed to become an agent of communication between a living man and a departed "Spirit." There exist regular methods of training for the development of this undesirable acquirement.

Mercavah, or Mercabah (Heb.) "A chariot. The Kabbalists say that the Supreme, after he had established the ten Sephiroth — which, in their totality, are Adam Kadmon, the Archetypal Man, used them as a chariot or throne of glory in which to descend upon the souls of men."

Mesmerism. The term comes from Mesmer, who rediscovered this magnetic force and its practical application toward the year 1775, at Vienna. It is a vital current that one person may transfer to another; and through which he induces an abnormal state of the nervous system that permits him to have a direct influence upon the mind and will of the subject or mesmerized person.

Metaphysics. From the Greek meta, beyond, and physica, the things of the external material world. It is to forget the spirit and hold to the dead letter, to translate it beyond nature or supernatural, as it is rather beyond the natural, visible, or concrete. Metaphysics, in ontology and philosophy is the term to designate that science which treats of the real and permanent being as contrasted with the unreal, illusionary or phenomenal being.

Microcosm. The "little" Universe meaning man, made in the image of his creator, the Macrocosm, or "great" Universe, and containing all that the latter contains. These terms are used in Occultism and Theosophy.

Mishnah (Heb.) Lit., "a repetition" from the word Shanah, "to repeat" something said orally. A summary of written explanations from the oral traditions of the Jews and a digest of the Scriptures on which the later Talmud was based.

Moksha (Sans.) The same as Nirvana; a post-mortem state of rest and bliss of the "Soul-pilgrim."

Monad. It is the Unity, the ONE; but in occultism it often means the unified duad, Atma-Buddhi, — or that immortal part of man which incarnating in the lower kingdoms and gradually progressing through them to Man, finds thence way to the final goal — Nirvana.

Monas (Gr.) The same as the Latin Monad; "the only," a Unit. In the Pythagorean system the Duad emanates from the higher and solitary Monas, which is thus the First Cause.

Monogenes (Gr.) Literally, the "only-begotten"; a name of Proserpine and other gods and goddesses, as also of Jesus.

Mundakya Upanishad (Sans.) Lit., the "Mundaka esoteric doctrine." A work of high antiquity; it has been translated by Raja Ram Mohun Roy.

Mysteries (Sacred). They were enacted in the ancient temples by the initiated Hierophants for the benefit and instruction of candidates. The most solemn and occult were certainly those which were performed in Egypt by "the band of secret-keepers," as Mr. Bonwick calls the Hierophants. Maurice describes their nature very graphically in a few lines. Speaking of the Mysteries performed in Philae (the Nile-island), he says: — "It was in these gloomy caverns that the grand mystic arcana of the goddess (Isis) were unfolded to the adoring aspirant, while the solemn hymn of initiation resounded through the long extent of these stony recesses." The word "mystery" is derived from the Greek muo, "to close the mouth," and every symbol connected with them had a hidden meaning. As Plato and many of the other sages of antiquity affirm, these mysteries were highly religious, moral, and beneficent as a school of ethics. The Grecian Mysteries, those of Ceres and Bacchus, were only imitations of the Egyptian, and the author of "Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought" informs us that our own word "chapel or capella is said to be the caph-el or college of El, the solar divinity." The well-known Kabeiri are associated with the mysteries.

In short, the Mysteries were in every country a series of dramatic performances, in which the mysteries of Cosmogony and nature in general were personified by the priests and neophytes, who enacted the parts of various gods and goddesses, repeating supposed scenes (allegories) from their respective lives. These were explained in their hidden meaning to the candidates for initiation and incorporated into philosophical doctrines.

Mystery Language. The sacerdotal secret "jargon" used by the initiated priests, and employed only when discussing sacred things. Every nation had its own "mystery" tongue, unknown to all save those admitted to the Mysteries.

Mystic, from the Greek word mysticos. In antiquity, one belonging to those admitted to the ancient mysteries; in our own times, one who practises mysticism, holds mystic, transcendental views, etc.

Mysticism. Any doctrine involved in mystery and metaphysics, and dealing more with the ideal worlds than with our matter-of-fact, actual universe.

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Nazarene Codex. The Scriptures of the Nazarenes and of the Nabotheans also. According to sundry Church Fathers, Jerome and Epiphanius especially, they were heretical teachings, but are in fact one of the numerous Gnostic readings of cosmogony and theogony, which produced a distinct sect.

Necromancy. The raising of the images of the dead, considered in antiquity and by modern occultists as a practice of Black Magic. Iamblichus, Porphyry and other theurgists deprecated the practice no less than Moses, who condemned the "witches" of his day to death, the said witches being often only mediums, e.g., the case of the Witch of Endor and Samuel.

Neoplatonists. A school of philosophy which arose between the second and third century of our era, and was founded by Ammonius Saccas, of Alexandria. The same as the Philalethians, and the Analogeticists; they were also called Theurgists and by various other names. They were the Theosophists of the early centuries. Neo-Platonism is Platonic philosophy plus ecstasy, divine Raj-yoga.

Nephesh (Heb.) "Breath of Life, Anima, Mens Vitae, appetites. The term is used very loosely in the Bible. It generally means Prana, 'life'; in the Kabbalah it is the animal passions and the animal soul." Therefore, as maintained in theosophical teachings, Nephesh is the Prana-Kamic Principle, or the vital animal soul in man.

Nirmanakaya (Sans.) Something entirely different in esoteric philosophy from the popular meaning attached to it, and from the fancies of the Orientalists. Some call the Nirmanakaya body "Nirvana with remains" (Schlagintweit), on the supposition, probably, that it is a kind of Nirvanic condition during which consciousness and form are retained. Others say that it is one of the Trikaya (three bodies) with "the power of assuming any form of appearance in order to propagate Buddhism" (Eitel's idea); again, that "it is the incarnate avatara of a deity" (ibid.)Occultism, on the other hand, says ("Voice of the Silence") that Nirmanakaya, although meaning literally a transformed "body," is a state. The form is that of the Adept or Yogi who enters, or chooses, that post-mortem condition in preference to the Dharmakaya or absolute Nirvanic state. He does this because the latter Kaya separates him for ever from the world of form, conferring upon him a state of selfish bliss, in which no other living being can participate, the adept being thus precluded from the possibility of helping humanity, or even devas. As a Nirmanakaya, however, the adept leaves behind him only his physical body, and retains every other "principle" save the Kamic, for he has crushed this out for ever from his nature during life, and it can never resurrect in his post-mortem state. Thus, instead of going into selfish bliss, he chooses a life of self-sacrifice, an existence which ends only with the life-cycle, in order to be enabled to help mankind in an invisible, yet most effective, manner. (See "Voice of the Silence," third Treatise, "The Seven Portals.") Thus a Nirmanakaya is not, as popularly believed, the body "in which a Buddha or a Bodhisattva appears on earth," but verily one who, whether a Chutuktu or a Khubilkhan, an adept or a Yogi during life, has since become a member of that invisible Host which ever protects and watches over humanity within Karmic limits. Mistaken often for a "Spirit," a Deva, God himself, &c., a Nirmanakaya is ever a protecting, compassionate, verily a guardian, angel to him who is worthy of his help. Whatever objection may be brought forward against this doctrine, however much it is denied, because, forsooth, it has never hitherto been made public in Europe, and therefore, since it is unknown to Orientalists, it must needs be a "myth of modern invention" — no one will be bold enough to say that this idea of helping suffering mankind at the price of one's own almost interminable self-sacrifice, is not one of the grandest and noblest that was ever evolved from the human brain.

Nirvana (Sans.) According to the Orientalists, the entire "blowing-out," like the flame of a candle, the utter extinction of existence. But in the exoteric explanations it is the state of absolute existence and absolute consciousness, into which the Ego of a man who had reached the highest degree of perfection and holiness during life, goes after the body dies, and occasionally, as is the case of Gautama Buddha and others, during life.

Nirvanee (Sans.) One who has attained Nirvana — an emancipated Soul. That Nirvana means something quite different from the puerile assertions of Orientalists, every scholar who has visited India, China, or Japan, is well aware. It is "escape from misery," but only from that of matter, freedom from Klesha, or Kama, and the complete extinction of animal desires. If we are told that Abhidharma defines Nirvana as "a state of absolute annihilation" we concur, adding to the last word the qualification "of everything connected with matter or the physical world," and this simply because the latter (as also all in it) is illusion or Maya. Sakyamuni Buddha said in the last moments of his life: — "the spiritual body is immortal." (Vide "Sans.-Chin. Dict.") As Mr. Eitel, the scholarly Sinologist, explains it: "The popular exoteric systems agree in defining Nirvana negatively as a state of absolute exemption from the circle of transmigration; as a state of entire freedom from all forms of existence, to begin with, freedom from all passion and exertion; a state of indifference to all sensibility" — and he might have added "death of all compassion for the world of suffering." And this is why the Bodhisattvas who prefer the Nirmanakaya to the Dharmakaya vesture stand higher in the popular estimation than the Nirvanees. But the same scholar adds that "Positively (and esoterically) they define Nirvana as the highest state of spiritual bliss, as absolute immortality through absorption of the Soul (Spirit rather) into itself, but preserving individuality, so that, e. g., Buddhas, after entering Nirvana, may re-appear on earth — i. e., in the future Manvantara."

Noumena (Gr.) The true essential nature of Being as distinguished from the illusive objects of sense.

Nous (Gr.) A Platonic term for the Higher Mind or Soul. It means Spirit as distinct from animal-Soul, Psyche; divine consciousness or mind in man. The name was adopted by the Gnostics for their first conscious AEon, which, with the Occultists, is the third logos, cosmically, and the third "principle" (from above) or Manas, in man. (Vide infra, "Nout.")

Nout (Eg.) In the Egyptian Pantheon it meant the "One-only-One," because it does not proceed in the popular or exoteric religion higher than the third manifestation which radiates from the Unknowable and the Unknown in the esoteric philosophy of every nation. The Nous of Anaxagoras was the Mahat of the Hindus — Brahma, the first manifested deity — "the Mind or spirit Self-potent." This creative principle is the primum mobile of everything to be found in the Universe — its Soul or Ideation. (Vide "Seven Principles" in man.)

O

Occultism. See OCCULT SCIENCES.

Occult Sciences. The science of the secrets of nature — physical and psychic, mental and spiritual; called Hermetic and Esoteric Sciences. In the west, the Kabbala may be named; in the east, mysticism, magic, and Yoga philosophy. The latter is often referred to by the Chelas in India as the seventh "Darshana" (school of philosophy), there being only six Darshanas in India known to the world of the profane. These sciences are, and have been for ages, hidden from the vulgar, for the very good reason that they would never be appreciated by the selfish educated classes, who would misuse them for their own profit, and thus turn the Divine science into black magic, nor by the uneducated, who would not understand them. It is often brought forward as an accusation against the Esoteric Philosophy of the Kabbala, that its literature is full of "a barbarous and meaningless jargon," unintelligible to the ordinary mind. But do not exact Sciences — medicine, physiology, chemistry, and the rest — plead guilty to the same impeachment? Do not official scientists veil their facts and discoveries with a newly-coined and most barbarous Graeco-Latin terminology? As justly remarked by our late Brother, Kenneth Mackenzie, "to juggle thus with words, when the facts are so simple, is the art of the Scientists of the present time, in striking contrast to those of the seventeenth century, who called spades spades, and not 'agricultural implements.'" Moreover, whilst their "facts" would be as simple, and as comprehensible if rendered in ordinary language, the facts of Occult Science are of so abstruse a nature, that in most cases no words exist in European languages to express them. Finally our "jargon" is a double necessity — (a) for describing clearly these facts to one who is versed in the occult terminology; and (b) for concealing them from the profane.

Occultist. One who practises Occultism, an adept in the Secret Sciences, but very often applied to a mere student.

Occult World. The name of the first book which treated of Theosophy, its history, and certain of its tenets. Written by A. P. Sinnett, then editor of the leading Indian paper, the Pioneer, of Allahabad, India.

Olympiodorus. The last Neoplatonist of fame and celebrity in the school of Alexandria. He lived in the sixth century under the Emperor Justinian. There were several writers and philosophers of this name in pre-Christian as in post-Christian periods. One of these was the teacher of Proclus, another a historian in the eighth century, and so on.

Origen. A Christian Churchman, born at the end of the second century, probably in Africa, of whom little, if anything, is known, since his biographical fragments have passed to posterity on the authority of Eusebius, the most unmitigated falsifier that has ever existed in any age. The latter is credited with having collected upwards of one hundred letters of Origen (or Origenes Adamantius), which are now said to have been lost. To Theosophists, the most interesting of all the works of Origen is his "Doctrine of the Pre-existence of Souls." He was a pupil of Ammonius Saccas, and for a long time attended the lectures of this great teacher of philosophy.

P

Panaenus. A Platonic philosopher in the Alexandrian school of the Philalethians.

Pandora. In Greek Mythology, the first woman on earth, created by Vulcan out of clay to punish Prometheus and counteract his gift to mortals. Each God having made her a present of some virtue, she was made to carry them in a box to Prometheus, who, however, being endowed with foresight, sent her away, changing the gifts into evils. Thus, when his brother Epimetheus saw and married her, when he opened the box, all the evils now afflicting humanity issued from it, and have remained since then in the world.

Pantheist. One who identifies God with nature and vice versa. If we have to regard Deity as an infinite and omnipresent Principle, this can hardly be otherwise; nature being thus simply the physical aspect of Deity, or its body.

Parabrahm (Sans.) A Vedantin term meaning "beyond Brahma." The Supreme and the absolute Principle, impersonal and nameless. In the Veda it is referred to as "THAT."

Paranirvana. In the Vedantic philosophy the highest form of nirvana — beyond the latter.

Parsees (or Parsis). The present Persian followers of Zoroaster, now settled in India, especially in Bombay and Guzerat; sun and fire worshippers. One of the most intelligent and esteemed communities in the country, generally occupied with commercial pursuits. There are between 50,000 and 60,000 now left in India where they settled some 1,000 years ago.

Personality. The teachings of Occultism divide man into three aspects — the divine, the thinking or rational, and the irrational or animal man. For metaphysical purposes also he is considered under a septenary division, or, as it is agreed to express it in theosophy, he is composed of seven "principles," three of which constitute the Higher Triad, and the remaining four the lower Quaternary. It is in the latter that dwells the Personality which embraces all the characteristics, including memory and consciousness, of each physical life in turn. The Individuality is the Higher Ego (Manas) of the Triad considered as a Unity. In other words the Individuality is our imperishable Ego which reincarnates and clothes itself in a new Personality at every new birth.

Phallic Worship, or Sex Worship; reverence and adoration shown to those gods and goddesses which, like Siva and Durga in India, symbolise respectively the two sexes.

Philadelphians. Lit., "those who love their brother-man." A sect in the seventeenth century, founded by one Jane Leadly. They objected to all rites, forms, or ceremonies of the Church, and even to the Church itself, but professed to be guided in soul and spirit by an internal Deity, their own Ego or God within them.

Philalethians. (Vide "Neoplatonists.")

Philo-Judaeus. A Hellenized Jew of Alexandria, a famous historian and philosopher of the first century, born about the year 30 B. C., and died between the years 45 and 50 A. D. Philo's symbolism of the Bible is very remarkable. The animals, birds, reptiles, trees, and places mentioned in it are all, it is said, "allegories of conditions of the soul, of faculties, dispositions, or passions; the useful plants were allegories of virtues, the noxious of the affections of the unwise and so on through the mineral kingdom; through heaven, earth and stars; through fountains and rivers, fields and dwellings; through metals, substances, arms, clothes, ornaments, furniture, the body and its parts, the sexes, and our outward condition." (Dict. Christ. Biog.) All of which would strongly corroborate the idea that Philo was acquainted with the ancient Kabbala.

Philosopher's Stone. A term in Alchemy; called also the Powder of Projection, a mysterious "principle" having the power of transmuting the base metals into pure gold. In Theosophy it symbolises the transmutation of the lower animal nature of man into the highest divine.

Phren. A Pythagorean term denoting what we call the Kama-manas, still overshadowed by Buddhi-Manas.

Plane. From the Latin Planus (level, flat), an extension of space, whether in the physical or metaphysical sense. In Occultism, the range or extent of some state of consciousness, or the state of matter corresponding to the perceptive powers of a particular set of senses or the action of a particular force.

Planetary Spirits. Rulers and governors of the Planets. Planetary Gods.

Plastic. Used in Occultism in reference to the nature and essence of the astral body, or the "Protean Soul." (Vide "Plastic Soul" in the Theosophical Glossary.)

Pleroma. "Fulness"; a gnostic term used also by St. Paul. Divine world or the abode of gods. Universal space divided into metaphysical AEons.

Plotinus. A distinguished Platonic philosopher of the third century, a great practical mystic, renowned for his virtues and learning. He taught a doctrine identical with that of the Vedantins, namely, that the spirit soul emanating from the One Deific Principle was after its pilgrimage on earth reunited to it. (Vide Theosophical Glossary.)

Porphyry (Porphyrius). His real name was Malek, which led to his being regarded as a Jew. He came from Tyre, and having first studied under Longinus, the eminent philosopher-critic, became the disciple of Plotinus, at Rome. He was a Neo-Platonist and a distinguished writer, specially famous for his controversy with Iamblichus regarding the evils attending the practice of Theurgy, but was, however, finally converted to the views of his opponent. A natural-born mystic he followed, like his master Plotinus, the pure Indian Raj-Yoga system, which, by training, leads to the union of the soul with the over-soul of the universe, and of the human with its divine soul, Buddhi-Manas. He complains, however, that in spite of all his efforts, he reached the highest state of ecstasy only once, and that when he was sixty-eight years of age, while his teacher Plotinus had experienced the supreme bliss six times during his life. (Vide "Porphyry," in the Theos. Gloss.)

Pot Amun. A Coptic term meaning "one consecrated to the god Amun," the Wisdom-god. The name of an Egyptian priest and occultist under the Ptolemies.

Pragna, or Prajna (Sans.) A term used to designate the "Universal Mind." A synonym of Mahat.

Pralaya (Sans.) Dissolution, the opposite of Manvantara, one being the period of rest and the other of full activity (death and life) of a planet, or of the whole universe.

Prana (Sans.) Life Principle, the breath of life, Nephesh.

Protean Soul. A name for Mayavi rupa or thought-body, the higher astral form which assumes all forms and every form at the will of an adept's thought. (Vide "Plastic Soul" in the Theos. Gloss.)

Psychism. The word is used now to denote every kind of mental phenomena, e.g., mediumship as well as the higher form of sensitiveness. A newly-coined word.

Puranas (Sans.) Lit., "the ancient," referring to Hindu writings or Scriptures, of which there is a considerable number.

Pythagoras. The most famous mystic philosopher, born at Samos about 586 B. C., who taught the heliocentric system and reincarnation, the highest mathematics and the highest metaphysics, and who had a school famous throughout the world. (See for fuller particulars, Theos. Gloss.)

Q

Quaternary. The four lower "principles in man," those which constitute his personality (i.e., Body, Astral Double, Prana or life, organs of desire and lower Manas, or brain-mind), as distinguished from the Higher Ternary or Triad, composed of the higher Spiritual Soul, Mind and Atman (Higher Self).

R

Recollection, Remembrance, Reminiscence. Occultists make a difference between these three functions. As, however, a glossary cannot contain the full explanation of every term in all its metaphysical and subtle differences, we can only state here that these terms vary in their applications, according to whether they relate to the past or the present birth, and whether one or the other of these phases of memory emanates from the spiritual or the material brain; or, again, from the "Individuality" or the "Personality."

Reincarnation, or Re-birth; the once universal doctrine, which taught that the Ego is born on this earth an innumerable number of times. Now-a-days it is denied by Christians, who seem to misunderstand the teachings of their own gospels. Nevertheless, the putting on of flesh periodically and throughout long cycles by the higher human Soul (Buddhi-Manas) or Ego is taught in the Bible as it is in all other ancient scriptures, and "resurrection" means only the rebirth of the Ego in another form. (Vide Theos. Gloss.)

Reuchlin, John. A great German philosopher and philologist, Kabbalist and scholar. He was born at Pfortzheim in Germany, in 1455, and early in youth was a diplomat. At one period of his life he held the high office of judge of the tribunal at Tubingen, where he remained for eleven years. He was also the preceptor of Melancthon, and was greatly persecuted by the clergy for his glorification of the Hebrew Kabbala, though at the same time called the "Father of the Reformation." He died in 1522, in great poverty, the common fate of all who in those days went against the dead-letter of the Church.

S

Sacred Science. The epithet given to the occult sciences in general, and by the Rosicrucians to the Kabbala, and especially to the Hermetic philosophy.

Samadhi. The name in India for spiritual ecstasy. It is a state of complete trance, induced by means of mystic concentration.

Samkhara. One of the five Buddhist Skandhas or attributes. (Vide "Skandhas.") "Tendencies of mind."

Samma Sambuddha. The sudden remembrance of all one's past incarnations, a phenomenon of memory obtained through Yoga. A Buddhist mystic term.

Samothrace. An island in the Grecian Archipelago, famous in days of old for the mysteries celebrated in its temples. These mysteries were world-renowned.

Samyuttaka Nikaya. One of the Buddhist Sutras.

Sanna. One of the five Skandhas, or attributes, meaning "abstract ideas."

Seance. A term now used to denote a sitting with a medium for sundry phenomena. Used chiefly among the spiritualists.

Self. There are two Selves in men — the Higher and the Lower, the Impersonal and the Personal Self. One is divine, the other semi-animal. A great distinction should be made between the two.

Sephiroth. A Hebrew Kabalistic word, for the ten divine emanations from Ain-Soph, the impersonal, universal Principle, or DEITY. (Vide Theos. Gloss.)

Skandhas. The attributes of every personality, which after death form the basis, so to say, for a new Karmic reincarnation. They are five in the popular or exoteric system of the Buddhists: i.e., Rupa, form or body, which leaves behind it its magnetic atoms and occult affinities; Vedana, sensations, which do likewise; Sanna, or abstract ideas, which are the creative powers at work from one incarnation to another; Samkhara, tendencies of mind; and Vinnana, mental powers.

Somnambulism. "Sleep walking." A psycho-physiological state, too well known to need explanation.

Spiritism. The same as the above, with the difference that the Spiritualists reject almost unanimously the doctrine of Reincarnation, while the Spiritists make of it the fundamental principle in their belief. There is, however, a vast difference between the views of the latter and the philosophical teachings of Eastern Occultists. Spiritists belong to the French School founded by Allan Kardec, and the Spiritualists of America and England to that of the "Fox girls," who inaugurated their theories at Rochester, U. S. A. Theosophists, while believing in the mediumistic phenomena of both Spiritualists and Spiritists, reject the idea of "spirits."

Spiritualism. The modern belief that the spirits of the dead return on earth to commune with the living. (See "Spiritism.")

St. Germain (Count). A mysterious personage, who appeared in the last century and early in the present one in France, England and elsewhere.

Sthula Sharira. The Sanskrit name for the human physical body, in Occultism and Vedanta philosophy.

Sthulopadhi. The physical body in its waking, conscious state (Jagrat). This term belong to the teachings of the Taraka Raj Yoga School.

Sukshmopadhi. The physical body in the dreaming state (Svapna), and Karanopadhi, "the causal body." This term also belongs to the teachings of the Taraka Raj Yoga School.

Summerland. The fancy name given by the Spiritualists to the abode of their disembodied "Spirits," which they locate somewhere in the Milky Way. It is described on the authority of returning "Spirits" as a lovely land, having beautiful cities and buildings, a Congress Hall, Museums, etc., etc. (See the works of Andrew Jackson Davis.)

Swedenborg (Emanuel). A famous scholar and clairvoyant of the past century, a man of great learning, who has vastly contributed to Science, but whose mysticism and transcendental philosophy placed him in the ranks of hallucinated visionaries. He is now universally known as the Founder of the Swedenborgian sect, or the New Jerusalem Church. He was born at Stockholm (Sweden) in 1688, from Lutheran parents, his father being the Bishop of West Gothland. His original name was Swedberg, but on his being ennobled and knighted in 1719 it was changed to Swedenborg. He became a Mystic in 1743, and four years later (in 1747) resigned his office (of Assessor Extraordinary to the College of Mines) and gave himself up entirely to Mysticism. He died in 1772.

T

Taijas (Sans.) From tejas "fire"; meaning the "radiant," the "luminous," and referring to the manasa rupa, "the body of Manas," also to the stars, and the star-like shining envelopes. A term in Vedanta philosophy, having other meanings besides the Occult signification just given.

Taraka Raj Yoga (Sans.) One of the Brahmanical Yoga systems, the most philosophical, and in fact the most secret of all, as its real tenets are never given out publicly. It is a purely intellectual and spiritual school of training.

Tetragrammaton (Gr.) The deity-name in four letters, which are in their English form IHVH. It is a kabalistical term and corresponds on a more material plane to the sacred Pythagorean Tetraktys. (See Theos. Gloss.)

Theodidaktos (Gr.) The "God taught," a title applied to Ammonius Saccas.

Theogony. From the Greek theogonia, lit., the "Genesis of the Gods."

Theosophia (Gr.) Lit., "divine wisdom or the wisdom of the gods." [For a fuller explanation of such words as "Theosophy," "Theosophists," "Theosophical Society," etc., vide the Theos. Gloss.]

Therapeutae, or Therapeuts (Gr.)A school of Jewish mystic healers, or esotericists, wrongly referred to, by some, as a sect. They resided in and near Alexandria, and their doings and beliefs are to this day a mystery to the critics, as their philosophy seems a combination of Orphic, Pythagorean, Essenian and purely Kabalistic practices. (See Theos. Gloss.)

Theurgy (from the Greek theiourgia). Rites for bringing down to earth planetary and other Spirits or Gods. To arrive at the realization of such an object, the Theurgist had to be absolutely pure and unselfish in his motives. The practice of theurgy is very undesirable and even dangerous in the present day. The world has become too corrupt and wicked for the practice of that which such holy and learned men as Ammonius, Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus (the most learned Theurgist of all) could alone attempt with impunity. In our day theurgy or divine, beneficent magic is but too apt to become goetic, or in other words Sorcery. Theurgy is the first of the three subdivisions of magic, which are theurgic, goetic and natural magic.

Thread Soul. The same as Sutratma, which see.

Thumos (Gr.) A Pythagorean and Platonic term; applied to an aspect of the human soul, to denote its passionate Kamarupic condition: — almost equivalent to the Sanskrit word tamas: "the quality of darkness," and probably derived from the latter.

Timaeus (of Locris). A Pythagorean philosopher, born at Locris. He differed somewhat from his teacher in the doctrine of metempsychosis. He wrote a treatise on the Soul of the World and its nature and essence, which is in the Doric dialect and still extant.

Triad or Trinity. In every religion and philosophy — the three in One.

U

Universal Brotherhood. The sub-title of the Theosophical Society, and the first of the three objects professed by it.

Upadhi (Sans.) Basis of something, substructure; as in Occultism — substance is the upadhi of Spirit.

Upanishad (Sans.) Lit., "Esoteric Doctrine." The third Division of the Vedas, and classed with revelations (Sruti or "revealed word"). Some 150 of the Upanishads still remain extant, though no more than about twenty can be fully relied upon as free from falsification. These are all earlier than the sixth century B. C. Like the Kabala, which interprets the esoteric sense of the Bible, so the Upanishads explain the mystic sense of the Vedas. Professor Cowell has two statements regarding the Upanishads as interesting as they are correct. Thus he says: (1) These works have "one remarkable peculiarity, the total absence of any Brahmanical exclusiveness in their doctrine. . . . They breathe an entirely different spirit, a freedom of thought unknown in any earlier work except the Rig Veda hymns themselves; and (2) the great teachers of the higher knowledge (Gupta Vidya), and Brahmans, are continually represented as going to Kshatriya Kings to become their pupils" (chelas). This shows conclusively that (a) the Upanishads were written before the enforcement of caste and Brahmanical power, and are thus only second in antiquity to the Vedas; and (b) that the occult sciences or the "higher knowledge," as Cowell puts it, is far older than the Brahmans in India, or even of them as a caste. The Upanishads are, however, far later than Gupta Vidya, or the "Secret Science" which is as old as human philosophical thought itself.

V

Vahan (Sans.) "Vehicle," a synonym of Upadhi.

Vallabacharyas Sect (Sans.), or the "Sect of the Maharajas;" a licentious phallic-worshipping community, whose main branch is at Bombay. The object of the worship is the infant Krishna. The Anglo-Indian Government was compelled several times to interfere in order to put a stop to its rites and vile practices, and its governing Maharajah, a kind of High Priest, was more than once imprisoned, and very justly so. It is one of the blackest spots of India.

Vedanta (Sans.) Meaning literally, the "end of all knowledge." Among the six Darsanas or the schools of philosophy, it is also called Uttaramimansa, or the "later" Mimansa. There are those who, unable to understand its esotericism, consider it atheistical; but this is not so, as Sankaracharya, the great apostle of this school, and its populariser, was one of the greatest mystics and adepts of India.

Vidya (Sans.) Knowledge, or rather "Wisdom Knowledge."

Vinnana (Sans.) One of five Skandhas; meaning literally, "mental powers." (See "Skandhas.")

W

Wisdom-Religion. The same as Theosophy. The name given to the secret doctrine which underlies every exoteric scripture and religion.

Y

Yoga (Sans.) A school of philosophy founded by Patanjali, but which existed as a distinct teaching and system of life long before that sage. It is Yajnawalkya, a famous and very ancient sage, to whom the White Yajur Veda, the Satapatha Brahmana and the Brihak Aranyaka are attributed and who lived in pre-Maha-bharatean times, who is credited with inculcating the necessity and positive duty of religious meditation and retirement into the forests, and who, therefore, is believed to have originated the Yoga doctrine. Professor Max Muller states that it is Yajnawalkya who prepared the world for the preaching of Buddha. Patanjali's Yoga, however, is more definite and precise as a philosophy, and embodies more of the occult sciences than any of the works attributed to Yajnawalkya.

Yogi or Yogin (Sans.) A devotee, one who practises the Yoga system. There are various grades and kinds of Yogis, and the term has now become in India a generic name to designate every kind of ascetic.

Yuga (Sans.) An age of the world of which there are four, which follow each other in a series, namely, Krita (or Satya) Yuga, the golden age; Treta Yuga, Dwapara Yuga, and finally Kali Yuga, the black age — in which we now are. (See Secret Doctrine for a full description.)

Z

Zenobia. The Queen of Palmyra, defeated by the Emperor Aurelianus. She had for her instructor Longinus, the famous critic and logician in the third century A. D. (See "Longinus.")

Zivo, Kabar (or Yukabar). The name of one of the creative deities in the Nazarene Codex. (See Isis Unveiled.)

Zohar (Heb.) The "Book of Splendour," a Kabalistic work attributed to Simeon Ben Iochai, in the first century of our era. (See for fuller explanation Theos. Gloss.)

Zoroastrian. One who follows the religion of the Parsis, sun, or fire-worshippers.

Periodical Re-Births

Enq. You mean, then, that we have all lived on earth before, in many past incarnations, and shall go on so living?

Theo. I do. The life-cycle, or rather the cycle of conscious life, begins with the separation of the mortal animal-man into sexes, and will end with the close of the last generation of men, in the seventh round and seventh race of mankind. Considering we are only in the fourth round and fifth race, its duration is more easily imagined than expressed.

Enq. And we keep on incarnating in new personalities all the time?

Theo. Most assuredly so; because this life-cycle or period of incarnation may be best compared to human life. As each such life is composed of days of activity separated by nights of sleep or of inaction, so, in the incarnation-cycle, an active life is followed by a Devachanic rest.

Enq. And it is this succession of births that is generally defined as re-incarnation?

Theo. Just so. It is only through these births that the perpetual progress of the countless millions of Egos toward final perfection and final rest (as long as was the period of activity) can be achieved.

Enq. And what is it that regulates the duration, or special qualities of these incarnations?

Theo. Karma, the universal law of retributive justice.

Enq. Is it an intelligent law?

Theo. For the Materialist, who calls the law of periodicity which regulates the marshalling of the several bodies, and all the other laws in nature, blind forces and mechanical laws, no doubt Karma would be a law of chance and no more. For us, no adjective or qualification could describe that which is impersonal and no entity, but a universal operative law. If you question me about the causative intelligence in it, I must answer you I do not know. But if you ask me to define its effects and tell you what these are in our belief, I may say that the experience of thousands of ages has shown us that they are absolute and unerring equity, wisdom, and intelligence. For Karma in its effects is an unfailing redresser of human injustice, and of all the failures of nature; a stern adjuster of wrongs; a retributive law which rewards and punishes with equal impartiality. It is, in the strictest sense, "no respecter of persons," though, on the other hand, it can neither be propitiated, nor turned aside by prayer. This is a belief common to Hindus and Buddhists, who both believe in Karma.

Enq. In this Christian dogmas contradict both, and I doubt whether any Christian will accept the teaching.

Theo. No; and Inman gave the reason for it many years ago. As he puts it, while "the Christians will accept any nonsense, if promulgated by the Church as a matter of faith . . . the Buddhists hold that nothing which is contradicted by sound reason can be a true doctrine of Buddha." They do not believe in any pardon for their sins, except after an adequate and just punishment for each evil deed or thought in a future incarnation, and a proportionate compensation to the parties injured.

Enq. Where is it so stated?

Theo. In most of their sacred works. In the "Wheel of the Law" (p. 57) you may find the following Theosophical tenet: -"Buddhists believe that every act, word or thought has its consequence, which will appear sooner or later in the present or in the future state. Evil acts will produce evil consequences, good acts will produce good consequences: prosperity in this world, or birth in heaven (Devachan). . . in the future state."

Enq. Christians believe the same thing, don't they?

Theo. Oh, no; they believe in the pardon and the remission of all sins. They are promised that if they only believe in the blood of Christ (an innocent victim!), in the blood offered by Him for the expiation of the sins of the whole of mankind, it will atone for every mortal sin. And we believe neither in vicarious atonement, nor in the possibility of the remission of the smallest sin by any god, not even by a "personal Absolute" or "Infinite," if such a thing could have any existence. What we believe in, is strict and impartial justice. Our idea of the unknown Universal Deity, represented by Karma, is that it is a Power which cannot fail, and can, therefore, have neither wrath nor mercy, only absolute Equity, which leaves every cause, great or small, to work out its inevitable effects. The saying of Jesus: "With what measure you mete it shall be measured to you again" (Matth. vii., 2), neither by expression nor implication points to any hope of future mercy or salvation by proxy. This is why, recognising as we do in our philosophy the justice of this statement, we cannot recommend too strongly mercy, charity, and forgiveness of mutual offences. Resist not evil, and render good for evil, are Buddhist precepts, and were first preached in view of the implacability of Karmic law. For man to take the law into his own hands is anyhow a sacrilegious presumption. Human Law may use restrictive not punitive measures; but a man who, believing in Karma, still revenges himself and refuses to forgive every injury, thereby rendering good for evil, is a criminal and only hurts himself. As Karma is sure to punish the man who wronged him, by seeking to inflict an additional punishment on his enemy, he, who instead of leaving that punishment to the great Law adds to it his own mite, only begets thereby a cause for the future reward of his own enemy and a future punishment for himself. The unfailing Regulator affects in each incarnation the quality of its successor; and the sum of the merit or demerit in preceding ones determines it.

Enq. Are we then to infer a man's past from his present?

Theo. Only so far as to believe that his present life is what it justly should be, to atone for the sins of the past life. Of course — seers and great adepts excepted — we cannot as average mortals know what those sins were. From our paucity of data, it is impossible for us even to determine what an old man's youth must have been; neither can we, for like reasons, draw final conclusions merely from what we see in the life of some man, as to what his past life may have been.

WHAT IS KARMA?

Enq. But what is Karma?

Theo. As I have said, we consider it as the Ultimate Law of the Universe, the source, origin and fount of all other laws which exist throughout Nature. Karma is the unerring law which adjusts effect to cause, on the physical, mental and spiritual planes of being. As no cause remains without its due effect from greatest to least, from a cosmic disturbance down to the movement of your hand, and as like produces like, Karma is that unseen and unknown law which adjusts wisely, intelligently and equitably each effect to its cause, tracing the latter back to its producer. Though itself unknowable, its action is perceivable.

Enq. Then it is the "Absolute," the "Unknowable" again, and is not of much value as an explanation of the problems of life?

Theo. On the contrary. For, though we do not know what Karma is per se, and in its essence, we do know how it works, and we can define and describe its mode of action with accuracy. We only do not know its ultimate Cause, just as modern philosophy universally admits that the ultimate Cause of anything is "unknowable."

Enq. And what has Theosophy to say in regard to the solution of the more practical needs of humanity? What is the explanation which it offers in reference to the awful suffering and dire necessity prevalent among the so-called "lower classes."

Theo. To be pointed, according to our teaching all these great social evils, the distinction of classes in Society, and of the sexes in the affairs of life, the unequal distribution of capital and of labour — all are due to what we tersely but truly denominate KARMA.

Enq. But, surely, all these evils which seem to fall upon the masses somewhat indiscriminately are not actual merited and INDIVIDUAL Karma?

Theo. No, they cannot be so strictly defined in their effects as to show that each individual environment, and the particular conditions of life in which each person finds himself, are nothing more than the retributive Karma which the individual generated in a previous life. We must not lose sight of the fact that every atom is subject to the general law governing the whole body to which it belongs, and here we come upon the wider track of the Karmic law. Do you not perceive that the aggregate of individual Karma becomes that of the nation to which those individuals belong, and further, that the sum total of National Karma is that of the World? The evils that you speak of are not peculiar to the individual or even to the Nation, they are more or less universal; and it is upon this broad line of Human interdependence that the law of Karma finds its legitimate and equable issue.

Enq. Do I, then, understand that the law of Karma is not necessarily an individual law?

Theo. That is just what I mean. It is impossible that Karma could readjust the balance of power in the world's life and progress, unless it had a broad and general line of action. It is held as a truth among Theosophists that the interdependence of Humanity is the cause of what is called Distributive Karma, and it is this law which affords the solution to the great question of collective suffering and its relief. It is an occult law, moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings, without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way, no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as "Separateness"; and the nearest approach to that selfish state, which the laws of life permit, is in the intent or motive.

Enq. And are there no means by which the distributive or national Karma might be concentred or collected, so to speak, and brought to its natural and legitimate fulfilment without all this protracted suffering?

Theo. As a general rule, and within certain limits which define the age to which we belong, the law of Karma cannot be hastened or retarded in its fulfilment. But of this I am certain, the point of possibility in either of these directions has never yet been touched. Listen to the following recital of one phase of national suffering, and then ask yourself whether, admitting the working power of individual, relative, and distributive Karma, these evils are not capable of extensive modification and general relief. What I am about to read to you is from the pen of a National Saviour, one who, having overcome Self, and being free to choose, has elected to serve Humanity, in bearing at least as much as a woman's shoulders can possibly bear of National Karma. This is what she says: —

"Yes, Nature always does speak, don't you think? only sometimes we make so much noise that we drown her voice. That is why it is so restful to go out of the town and nestle awhile in the Mother's arms. I am thinking of the evening on Hampstead Heath when we watched the sun go down; but oh! upon what suffering and misery that sun had set! A lady brought me yesterday a big hamper of wild flowers. I thought some of my East-end family had a better right to it than I, and so I took it down to a very poor school in Whitechapel this morning. You should have seen the pallid little faces brighten! Thence I went to pay for some dinners at a little cookshop for some children. It was in a back street, narrow, full of jostling people; stench indescribable, from fish, meat, and other comestibles, all reeking in a sun that, in Whitechapel, festers instead of purifying. The cookshop was the quintessence of all the smells. Indescribable meat-pies at 1d., loathsome lumps of 'food' and swarms of flies, a very altar of Beelzebub! All about, babies on the prowl for scraps, one, with the face of an angel, gathering up cherrystones as a light and nutritious form of diet. I came westward with every nerve shuddering and jarred, wondering whether anything can be done with some parts of London save swallowing them up in an earthquake and starting their inhabitants afresh, after a plunge into some purifying Lethe, out of which not a memory might emerge! And then I thought of Hampstead Heath, and — pondered. If by any sacrifice one could win the power to save these people, the cost would not be worth counting; but, you see, THEY must be changed — and how can that be wrought? In the condition they now are, they would not profit by any environment in which they might be placed; and yet, in their present surroundings they must continue to putrefy. It breaks my heart, this endless, hopeless misery, and the brutish degradation that is at once its outgrowth and its root. It is like the banyan tree; every branch roots itself and sends out new shoots. What a difference between these feelings and the peaceful scene at Hampstead! and yet we, who are the brothers and sisters of these poor creatures, have only a right to use Hampstead Heaths to gain strength to save Whitechapels." (Signed by a name too respected and too well known to be given to scoffers.)

Enq. That is a sad but beautiful letter, and I think it presents with painful conspicuity the terrible workings of what you have called "Relative and Distributive Karma." But alas! there seems no immediate hope of any relief short of an earthquake, or some such general ingulfment!

Theo. What right have we to think so while one-half of humanity is in a position to effect an immediate relief of the privations which are suffered by their fellows? When every individual has contributed to the general good what he can of money, of labour, and of ennobling thought, then, and only then, will the balance of National Karma be struck, and until then we have no right nor any reasons for saying that there is more life on the earth than Nature can support. It is reserved for the heroic souls, the Saviours of our Race and Nation, to find out the cause of this unequal pressure of retributive Karma, and by a supreme effort to re-adjust the balance of power, and save the people from a moral ingulfment a thousand times more disastrous and more permanently evil than the like physical catastrophe, in which you seem to see the only possible outlet for this accumulated misery.

Enq. Well, then, tell me generally how you describe this law of Karma?

Theo. We describe Karma as that Law of re-adjustment which ever tends to restore disturbed equilibrium in the physical, and broken harmony in the moral world. We say that Karma does not act in this or that particular way always; but that it always does act so as to restore Harmony and preserve the balance of equilibrium, in virtue of which the Universe exists.

Enq. Give me an illustration.

Theo. Later on I will give you a full illustration. Think now of a pond. A stone falls into the water and creates disturbing waves. These waves oscillate backwards and forwards till at last, owing to the operation of what physicists call the law of the dissipation of energy, they are brought to rest, and the water returns to its condition of calm tranquillity. Similarly all action, on every plane, produces disturbance in the balanced harmony of the Universe, and the vibrations so produced will continue to roll backwards and forwards, if its area is limited, till equilibrium is restored. But since each such disturbance starts from some particular point, it is clear that equilibrium and harmony can only be restored by the reconverging to that same point of all the forces which were set in motion from it. And here you have proof that the consequences of a man's deeds, thoughts, etc. must all react upon himself with the same force with which they were set in motion.

Enq. But I see nothing of a moral character about this law. It looks to me like the simple physical law that action and reaction are equal and opposite.

Theo. I am not surprised to hear you say that. Europeans have got so much into the ingrained habit of considering right and wrong, good and evil, as matters of an arbitrary code of law laid down either by men, or imposed upon them by a Personal God. We Theosophists, however, say that "Good" and "Harmony," and "Evil" and "Dis-harmony," are synonymous. Further we maintain that all pain and suffering are results of want of Harmony, and that the one terrible and only cause of the disturbance of Harmony is selfishness in some form or another. Hence Karma gives back to every man the actual consequences of his own actions, without any regard to their moral character; but since he receives his due for all, it is obvious that he will be made to atone for all sufferings which he has caused, just as he will reap in joy and gladness the fruits of all the happiness and harmony he had helped to produce. I can do no better than quote for your benefit certain passages from books and articles written by our Theosophists — those who have a correct idea of Karma.

Enq. I wish you would, as your literature seems to be very sparing on this subject?

Theo. Because it is the most difficult of all our tenets.

Some short time ago there appeared the following objection from a Christian pen: —

"Granting that the teaching in regard to Theosophy is correct, and that 'man must be his own saviour, must overcome self and conquer the evil that is in his dual nature, to obtain the emancipation of his soul,' what is man to do after he has been awakened and converted to a certain extent from evil or wickedness? How is he to get emancipation, or pardon, or the blotting out of the evil or wickedness he has already done?"

To this Mr. J. H. Conelly replies very pertinently that no one can hope to "make the theosophical engine run on the theological track." As he has it: —

"The possibility of shirking individual responsibility is not among the concepts of Theosophy. In this faith there is no such thing as pardoning, or 'blotting out of evil or wickedness already done,' otherwise than by the adequate punishment therefor of the wrong-doer and the restoration of the harmony in the universe that had been disturbed by his wrongful act. The evil has been his own, and while others must suffer its consequences, atonement can be made by nobody but himself.

"The condition contemplated . . . . in which a man shall have been 'awakened and converted to a certain extent from evil or wickedness,' is that in which a man shall have realized that his deeds are evil and deserving of punishment. In that realization a sense of personal responsibility is inevitable, and just in proportion to the extent of his awakening or 'converting' must be the sense of that awful responsibility. While it is strong upon him is the time when he is urged to accept the doctrine of vicarious atonement.

"He is told that be must also repent, but nothing is easier than that. It is an amiable weakness of human nature that we are quite prone to regret the evil we have done when our attention is called, and we have either suffered from it ourselves or enjoyed its fruits. Possibly, close analysis of the feeling would show us that that which we regret is rather the necessity that seemed to require the evil as a means of attainment of our selfish ends than the evil itself."

"Attractive as this prospect of casting our burden of sins 'at the foot of the cross' may be to the ordinary mind, it does not commend itself to the Theosophic student. He does not apprehend why the sinner by attaining knowledge of his evil can thereby merit any pardon for or the blotting out of his past wickedness; or why repentance and future right living entitle him to a suspension in his favour of the universal law of relation between cause and effect. The results of his evil deeds continue to exist; the suffering caused to others by his wickedness is not blotted out. The Theosophical student takes the result of wickedness upon the innocent into his problem. He considers not only the guilty person, but his victims.

"Evil is an infraction of the laws of harmony governing the universe, and the penalty thereof must fall upon the violator of that law himself. Christ uttered the warning, 'Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee,' and St. Paul said, 'Work out your own salvation. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' That, by the way, is a fine metaphoric rendering of the sentence of the Puranas far antedating him — that 'every man reaps the consequences of his own acts.'

"This is the principle of the law of Karma which is taught by Theosophy. Sinnett, in his 'Esoteric Buddhism,' rendered Karma as 'the law of ethical causation.' 'The law of retribution,' as Mdme. Blavatsky translates its meaning, is better. It is the power which

"'Just though mysterious, leads us on unerring /Through ways unmarked from guilt to punishment.'

"But it is more. It rewards merit as unerringly and amply as it punishes demerit. It is the outcome of every act, of thought, word and deed, and by it men mould themselves, their lives and happenings. Eastern philosophy rejects the idea of a newly created soul for every baby born. It believes in a limited number of monads, evolving and growing more and more perfect through their assimilation of many successive personalities. Those personalities are the product of Karma and it is by Karma and re-incarnation that the human monad in time returns to its source — absolute deity."

E. D. Walker, in his "Re-incarnation," offers the following explanation: —

"Briefly, the doctrine of Karma is that we have made ourselves what we are by former actions, and are building our future eternity by present actions. There is no destiny but what we ourselves determine. There is no salvation or condemnation except what we ourselves bring about. . . . Because it offers no shelter for culpable actions and necessitates a sterling manliness, it is less welcome to weak natures than the easy religious tenets of vicarious atonement, intercession, forgiveness and death-bed conversions. . . . In the domain of eternal justice the offence and the punishment are inseparably connected as the same event, because there is no real distinction between the action and its outcome. . . . It is Karma, or our old acts, that draws us back into earthly life. The spirit's abode changes according to its Karma, and this Karma forbids any long continuance in one condition, because it is always changing. So long as action is governed by material and selfish motives, just so long must the effect of that action be manifested in physical re-births. Only the perfectly selfless man can elude the gravitation of material life. Few have attained this, but it is the goal of mankind."

And then the writer quotes from the Secret Doctrine:

"Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, every man is weaving, thread by thread, around himself, as a spider does his cobweb, and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable law of compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations. When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the network of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny. . . . An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that, nevertheless, it guards the good and watches over them in this as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer — aye, even to his seventh re-birth — so long, in short, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the infinite world of harmony has not been finally re-adjusted. For the only decree of Karma — an eternal and immutable decree — is absolute harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward or punish ourselves according to whether we work with, through and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that harmony depends, or — break them. Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony, instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those ways — which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate; while another sees in them the action of blind fatalism; and a third simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to guide them — would surely disappear if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause. . . . We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is not an accident of our lives, not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life. . . . . The law of Karma is inextricably interwoven with that of reincarnation. . . . . It is only this doctrine that can explain to us the mysterious problem of good and evil, and reconcile man to the terrible and apparent injustice of life. Nothing but such certainty can quiet our revolted sense of justice. For, when one unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him and observes the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one sees honour paid to fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her favours by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbour, with all his intellect and noble virtues — far more deserving in every way — perishing for want and for lack of sympathy — when one sees all this and has to turn away, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one's ears ringing and heart aching with the cries of pain around him — that blessed knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men as well as their supposed Creator. . . . . This law, whether conscious or unconscious, predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in eternity truly, for it is eternity itself; and as such, since no act can be coequal with eternity, it cannot be said to act, for it is action itself. It is not the wave which drowns the man, but the personal action of the wretch who goes deliberately and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws that govern the ocean's motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plants and creates causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects, which adjustment is not an act but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original position, like a bough, which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour. If it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say it is the bough which broke our arm or that our own folly has brought us to grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty, like the god invented by the Monotheists. It has not involved its decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man, nor shall it punish him who dares to scrutinize its mysteries. On the contrary, he who unveils through study and meditation its intricate paths, and throws light on those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to their ignorance of the labyrinth of life, is working for the good of his fellow-men. Karma is an absolute and eternal law in the world of manifestation; and as there can only be one Absolute, as one Eternal, ever-present Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as atheists or materialists, still less as fatalists, for Karma is one with the Unknowable, of which it is an aspect, in its effects in the phenomenal world."

Another able Theosophic writer says (Purpose of Theosophy, by Mrs. P. Sinnett): —

"Every individual is making Karma either good or bad in each action and thought of his daily round, and is at the same time working out in this life the Karma brought about by the acts and desires of the last. When we see people afflicted by congenital ailments it may be safely assumed that these ailments are the inevitable results of causes started by themselves in a previous birth. It may be argued that, as these afflictions are hereditary, they can have nothing to do with a past incarnation; but it must be remembered that the Ego, the real man, the individuality, has no spiritual origin in the parentage by which it is re-embodied, but it is drawn by the affinities which its previous mode of life attracted round it into the current that carries it, when the time comes for re-birth, to the home best fitted for the development of those tendencies. . . . . This doctrine of Karma, when properly understood, is well calculated to guide and assist those who realize its truth to a higher and better mode of life, for it must not be forgotten that not only our actions but our thoughts also are most assuredly followed by a crowd of circumstances that will influence for good or for evil our own future, and, what is still more important, the future of many of our fellow-creatures. If sins of omission and commission could in any case be only self-regarding, the fact on the sinner's Karma would be a matter of minor consequence. The effect that every thought and act through life carries with it for good or evil a corresponding influence on other members of the human family renders a strict sense of justice, morality, and unselfishness so necessary to future happiness or progress. A crime once committed, an evil thought sent out from the mind, are past recall — no amount of repentance can wipe out their results in the future. Repentance, if sincere, will deter a man from repeating errors; it cannot save him or others from the effects of those already produced, which will most unerringly overtake him either in this life or in the next re-birth."

Mr. J. H. Conelly proceeds —

"The believers in a religion based upon such doctrine are willing it should be compared with one in which man's destiny for eternity is determined by the accidents of a single, brief earthly existence, during which he is cheered by the promise that 'as the tree falls so shall it lie'; in which his brightest hope, when he wakes up to a knowledge of his wickedness, is the doctrine of vicarious atonement, and in which even that is handicapped, according to the Presbyterian Confession of Faith.

"By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting death.

"These angels and men thus predestinated and foreordained are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. . . . As God hath appointed the elect unto glory. . . . . Neither are any other redeemed by Christ effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.

"The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin to the praise of his glorious justice."

This is what the able defender says. Nor can we do any better than wind up the subject as he does, by a quotation from a magnificent poem. As he says: —

"The exquisite beauty of Edwin Arnold's exposition of Karma in 'The Light of Asia' tempts to its reproduction here, but it is too long for quotation in full. Here is a portion of it: —

Karma — all that total of a soul
Which is the things it did, the thoughts it had,
The 'self' it wove with woof of viewless time
Crossed on the warp invisible of acts.
* * * * *
Before beginning and without an end,
As space eternal and as surety sure,
Is fixed a Power divine which moves to good,
Only its laws endure.
It will not be contemned of anyone;
Who thwarts it loses, and who serves it gains;
The hidden good it pays with peace and bliss,
The hidden ill with pains.
It seeth everywhere and marketh all;
Do right — it recompenseth! Do one wrong —
The equal retribution must be made,
Though Dharma tarry long.
It knows not wrath nor pardon; utter-true,
Its measures mete, its faultless balance weighs;
Times are as naught, to-morrow it will judge
Or after many days.
* * * * *
Such is the law which moves to righteousness,
Which none at last can turn aside or stay;
The heart of it is love, the end of it
Is peace and consummation sweet. Obey."

And now I advise you to compare our Theosophic views upon Karma, the law of Retribution, and say whether they are not both more philosophical and just than this cruel and idiotic dogma which makes of "God" a senseless fiend; the tenet, namely, that the "elect only" will be saved, and the rest doomed to eternal perdition!

Enq. Yes, I see what you mean generally; but I wish you could give some concrete example of the action of Karma?

Theo. That I cannot do. We can only feel sure, as I said before, that our present lives and circumstances are the direct results of our own deeds and thoughts in lives that are past. But we, who are not Seers or Initiates, cannot know anything about the details of the working of the law of Karma.

Enq. Can anyone, even an Adept or Seer, follow out this Karmic process of re-adjustment in detail?

Theo. Certainly: "Those who know"can do so by the exercise of powers which are latent even in all men.

Who Are Those Who Know?

Enq. Does this hold equally of ourselves as of others?

Theo. Equally. As just said, the same limited vision exists for all, save those who have reached in the present incarnation the acme of spiritual vision and clairvoyance. We can only perceive that, if things with us ought to have been different, they would have been different; that we are what we have made ourselves, and have only what we have earned for ourselves.

Enq. I am afraid such a conception would only embitter us.

Theo. I believe it is precisely the reverse. It is disbelief in the just law of retribution that is more likely to awaken every combative feeling in man. A child, as much as a man, resents a punishment, or even a reproof he believes to be unmerited, far more than he does a severer punishment, if he feels that it is merited. Belief in Karma is the highest reason for reconcilement to one's lot in this life, and the very strongest incentive towards effort to better the succeeding re-birth. Both of these, indeed, would be destroyed if we supposed that our lot was the result of anything but strict Law, or that destiny was in any other hands than our own.

Enq. You have just asserted that this system of Re-incarnation under Karmic law commended itself to reason, justice, and the moral sense. But, if so, is it not at some sacrifice of the gentler qualities of sympathy and pity, and thus a hardening of the finer instincts of human nature?

Theo. Only apparently, not really. No man can receive more or less than his deserts without a corresponding injustice or partiality to others; and a law which could be averted through compassion would bring about more misery than it saved, more irritation and curses than thanks. Remember also, that we do not administer the law, if we do create causes for its effects; it administers itself; and again, that the most copious provision for the manifestation of provision for the manifestation of just compassion and mercy is shown in the state of Devachan.

Enq. You speak of Adepts as being an exception to the rule of our general ignorance. Do they really know more than we do of Re-incarnation and after states?

Theo. They do, indeed. By the training of faculties we all possess, but which they alone have developed to perfection, they have entered in spirit these various planes and states we have been discussing. For long ages, one generation of Adepts after another has studied the mysteries of being, of life, death, and re-birth, and all have taught in their turn some of the facts so learned.

Enq. And is the production of Adepts the aim of Theosophy?

Theo. Theosophy considers humanity as an emanation from divinity on its return path thereto. At an advanced point upon the path, Adeptship is reached by those who have devoted several incarnations to its achievement. For, remember well, no man has ever reached Adeptship in the Secret Sciences in one life; but many incarnations are necessary for it after the formation of a conscious purpose and the beginning of the needful training. Many may be the men and women in the very midst of our Society who have begun this uphill work toward illumination several incarnations ago, and who yet, owing to the personal illusions of the present life, are either ignorant of the fact, or on the road to losing every chance in this existence of progressing any farther. They feel an irresistible attraction toward occultism and the Higher Life, and yet are too personal and self-opinionated, too much in love with the deceptive allurements of mundane life and the world's ephemeral pleasures, to give them up; and so lose their chance in their present birth. But, for ordinary men, for the practical duties of daily life, such a far-off result is inappropriate as an aim and quite ineffective as a motive.

Enq. What, then, may be their object or distinct purpose in joining the Theosophical Society?

Theo. Many are interested in our doctrines and feel instinctively that they are truer than those of any dogmatic religion. Others have formed a fixed resolve to attain the highest ideal of man's duty.

The Difference Between Faith and Knowledge; Or, Blind And Reasoned Faith

Enq. You say that they accept and believe in the doctrines of Theosophy. But, as they do not belong to those Adepts you have just mentioned, then they must accept your teachings on blind faith. In what does this differ from that of conventional religions?

Theo. As it differs on almost all the other points, so it differs on this one. What you call "faith," and that which is blind faith, in reality, and with regard to the dogmas of the Christian religions, becomes with us "knowledge," the logical sequence of things we know, about facts in nature. Your Doctrines are based upon interpretation, therefore, upon the second-hand testimony of Seers; ours upon the invariable and unvarying testimony of Seers. The ordinary Christian theology, for instance, holds that man is a creature of God, of three component parts — body, soul, and spirit — all essential to his integrity, and all, either in the gross form of physical earthly existence or in the etherealized form of post-resurrection experience, needed to so constitute him for ever, each man having thus a permanent existence separate from other men, and from the Divine. Theosophy, on the other hand, holds that man, being an emanation from the Unknown, yet ever present and infinite Divine Essence, his body and everything else is impermanent, hence an illusion; Spirit alone in him being the one enduring substance, and even that losing its separated individuality at the moment of its complete re-union with the Universal Spirit.

Enq. If we lose even our individuality, then it becomes simply annihilation.

Theo. I say it does not, since I speak of separate, not of universal individuality. The latter becomes as a part transformed into the whole; the dewdrop is not evaporated, but becomes the sea. Is physical man annihilated, when from a foetus he becomes an old man? What kind of Satanic pride must be ours if we place our infinitesimally small consciousness and individuality higher than the universal and infinite consciousness!

Enq. It follows, then, that there is, de facto, no man, but all is Spirit?

Theo. You are mistaken. It thus follows that the union of Spirit with matter is but temporary; or, to put it more clearly, since Spirit and matter are one, being the two opposite poles of the universal manifested substance — that Spirit loses its right to the name so long as the smallest particle and atom of its manifesting substance still clings to any form, the result of differentiation. To believe otherwise is blind faith.

Enq. Thus it is on knowledge, not on faith, that you assert that the permanent principle, the Spirit, simply makes a transit through matter?

Theo. I would put it otherwise and say — we assert that the appearance of the permanent and one principle, Spirit, as matter is transient, and, therefore, no better than an illusion.

Enq. Very well; and this, given out on knowledge not faith?

Theo. Just so. But as I see very well what you are driving at, I may just as well tell you that we hold faith, such as you advocate, to be a mental disease, and real faith, i.e., the pistis of the Greeks, as "belief based on knowledge," whether supplied by the evidence of physical or spiritual senses.

Enq. What do you mean?

Theo. I mean, if it is the difference between the two that you want to know, then I can tell you that between faith on authority and faith on one's spiritual intuition, there is a very great difference.

Enq. What is it?

Theo. One is human credulity and superstition, the other human belief and intuition. As Professor Alexander Wilder says in his "Introduction to the Eleusinian Mysteries," "It is ignorance which leads to profanation. Men ridicule what they do not properly understand. . . . The undercurrent of this world is set towards one goal; and inside of human credulity . . is a power almost infinite, a holy faith capable of apprehending the supremest truths of all existence." Those who limit that "credulity" to human authoritative dogmas alone, will never fathom that power nor even perceive it in their natures. It is stuck fast to the external plane and is unable to bring forth into play the essence that rules it; for to do this they have to claim their right of private judgment, and this they never dare to do.

Enq. And is it that "intuition" which forces you to reject God as a personal Father, Ruler and Governor of the Universe?

Theo. Precisely. We believe in an ever unknowable Principle, because blind aberration alone can make one maintain that the Universe, thinking man, and all the marvels contained even in the world of matter, could have grown without some intelligent powers to bring about the extraordinarily wise arrangement of all its parts. Nature may err, and often does, in its details and the external manifestations of its materials, never in its inner causes and results. Ancient pagans held on this question far more philosophical views than modern philosophers, whether Agnostics, Materialists or Christians; and no pagan writer has ever yet advanced the proposition that cruelty and mercy are not finite feelings, and can therefore be made the attributes of an infinite god. Their gods, therefore, were all finite. The Siamese author of the Wheel of the Law, expresses the same idea about your personal god as we do; he says (p. 25) —

"A Buddhist might believe in the existence of a god, sublime above all human qualities and attributes — a perfect god, above love, and hatred, and jealousy, calmly resting in a quietude that nothing could disturb, and of such a god he would speak no disparagement, not from a desire to please him or fear to offend him, but from natural veneration; but he cannot understand a god with the attributes and qualities of men, a god who loves and hates, and shows anger; a Deity who, whether described as by Christian Missionaries or by Mahometans or Brahmins,* or Jews, falls below his standard of even an ordinary good man."

*Sectarian Brahmins are here meant. The Parabrahm of the Vedantins is the Deity we accept and believe in.

Enq. Faith for faith, is not the faith of the Christian who believes, in his human helplessness and humility, that there is a merciful Father in Heaven who will protect him from temptation, help him in life, and forgive him his transgressions, better than the cold and proud, almost fatalistic faith of the Buddhists, Vedantins, and Theosophists?

Theo. Persist in calling our belief "faith" if you will. But once we are again on this ever-recurring question, I ask in my turn: faith for faith, is not the one based on strict logic and reason better than the one which is based simply on human authority or — hero-worship? Our "faith" has all the logical force of the arithmetical truism that 2 and 2 will produce 4. Your faith is like the logic of some emotional women, of whom Tourgenyeff said that for them 2 and 2 were generally 5, and a tallow candle into the bargain. Yours is a faith, moreover, which clashes not only with every conceivable view of justice and logic, but which, if analysed, leads man to his moral perdition, checks the progress of mankind, and positively making of might, right — transforms every second man into a Cain to his brother Abel.

Enq. What do you allude to?

HAS GOD THE RIGHT TO FORGIVE?

Theo. To the Doctrine of Atonement; I allude to that dangerous dogma in which you believe, and which teaches us that no matter how enormous our crimes against the laws of God and of man, we have but to believe in the self-sacrifice of Jesus for the salvation of mankind, and his blood will wash out every stain. It is twenty years that I preach against it, and I may now draw your attention to a paragraph from Isis Unveiled, written in 1875. This is what Christianity teaches, and what we combat: —

"God's mercy is boundless and unfathomable. It is impossible to conceive of a human sin so damnable that the price paid in advance for the redemption of the sinner would not wipe it out if a thousandfold worse. And furthermore, it is never too late to repent. Though the offender wait until the last minute of the last hour of the last day of his mortal life, before his blanched lips utter the confession of faith, he may go to Paradise; the dying thief did it, and so may all others as vile. These are the assumptions of the Church, and of the Clergy; assumptions banged at the heads of your countrymen by England's favourite preachers, right in the 'light of the XIXth century,'" this most paradoxical age of all. Now to what does it lead?

Enq. Does it not make the Christian happier than the Buddhist or Brahmin?

Theo. No; not the educated man, at any rate, since the majority of these have long since virtually lost all belief in this cruel dogma. But it leads those who still believe in it more easily to the threshold of every conceivable crime, than any other I know of. Let me quote to you from Isis once more (vide Vol. II. pp. 542 and 543) —

"If we step outside the little circle of creed and consider the universe as a whole balanced by the exquisite adjustment of parts, how all sound logic, how the faintest glimmering sense of justice, revolts against this Vicarious Atonement! If the criminal sinned only against himself, and wronged no one but himself; if by sincere repentance he could cause the obliteration of past events, not only from the memory of man, but also from that imperishable record, which no deity — not even the Supremest of the Supreme — can cause to disappear, then this dogma might not be incomprehensible. But to maintain that one may wrong his fellow-man, kill, disturb the equilibrium of society and the natural order of things, and then — through cowardice, hope, or compulsion, it matters not — be forgiven by believing that the spilling of one blood washes out the other blood spilt — this is preposterous! Can the results of a crime be obliterated even though the crime itself should be pardoned? The effects of a cause are never limited to the boundaries of the cause, nor can the results of crime be confined to the offender and his victim. Every good as well as evil action has its effects, as palpably as the stone flung into calm water. The simile is trite, but it is the best ever conceived, so let us use it. The eddying circles are greater and swifter as the disturbing object is greater or smaller, but the smallest pebble, nay, the tiniest speck, makes its ripples. And this disturbance is not alone visible and on the surface. Below, unseen, in every direction — outward and downward — drop pushes drop until the sides and bottom are touched by the force. More, the air above the water is agitated, and this disturbance passes, as the physicists tell us, from stratum to stratum out into space forever and ever; an impulse has been given to matter, and that is never lost, can never be recalled! . . .

"So with crime, and so with its opposite. The action may be instantaneous, the effects are eternal. When, after the stone is once flung into the pond, we can recall it to the hand, roll back the ripples, obliterate the force expended, restore the etheric waves to their previous state of non-being, and wipe out every trace of the act of throwing the missile, so that Time's record shall not show that it ever happened, then, then we may patiently hear Christians argue for the efficacy of this Atonement,"

and — cease to believe in Karmic Law. As it now stands, we call upon the whole world to decide, which of our two doctrines is the most appreciative of deific justice, and which is more reasonable, even on simple human evidence and logic.

Enq. Yet millions believe in the Christian dogma and are happy.

Theo. Pure sentimentalism overpowering their thinking faculties, which no true philanthropist or Altruist will ever accept. It is not even a dream of selfishness, but a nightmare of the human intellect. Look where it leads to, and tell me the name of that pagan country where crimes are more easily committed or more numerous than in Christian lands. Look at the long and ghastly annual records of crimes committed in European countries; and behold Protestant and Biblical America. There, conversions effected in prisons are more numerous than those made by public revivals and preaching. See how the ledger-balance of Christian justice (!) stands: Red-handed murderers, urged on by the demons of lust, revenge, cupidity, fanaticism, or mere brutal thirst for blood, who kill their victims, in most cases, without giving them time to repent or call on Jesus. These, perhaps, died sinful, and, of course — consistently with theological logic — met the reward of their greater or lesser offences. But the murderer, overtaken by human justice, is imprisoned, wept over by sentimentalists, prayed with and at, pronounces the charmed words of conversion, and goes to the scaffold a redeemed child of Jesus! Except for the murder, he would not have been prayed with, redeemed, pardoned. Clearly this man did well to murder, for thus he gained eternal happiness! And how about the victim, and his, or her family, relatives, dependents, social relations; has justice no recompense for them? Must they suffer in this world and the next, while he who wronged them sits beside the "holy thief" of Calvary, and is for ever blessed? On this question the clergy keep a prudent silence. (Isis Unveiled.) And now you know why Theosophists — whose fundamental belief and hope is justice for all, in Heaven as on earth, and in Karma — reject this dogma.

Enq. The ultimate destiny of man, then, is not a Heaven presided over by God, but the gradual transformation of matter into its primordial element, Spirit?

Theo. It is to that final goal to which all tends in nature.

Enq. Do not some of you regard this association or "fall of spirit into matter" as evil, and re-birth as a sorrow?

Theo. Some do, and therefore strive to shorten their period of probation on earth. It is not an unmixed evil, however, since it ensures the experience upon which we mount to knowledge and wisdom. I mean that experience which teaches that the needs of our spiritual nature can never be met by other than spiritual happiness. As long as we are in the body, we are subjected to pain, suffering and all the disappointing incidents occurring during life. Therefore, and to palliate this, we finally acquire knowledge which alone can afford us relief and hope of a better future.

The secret behind the mystery of Golgotha is one of the most profound secrets in world evolution. We will need to go back through millennia in earth evolution and let occult wisdom illumine it. It is true that the things Christ Jesus has done should be understood by ordinary people, this does not go against delving more deeply into the mystery of Golgotha. For complete understanding of this, the greatest phenomenon on earth, we must, however, enter into the depths of mystery wisdom.

In this session we'll therefore be concerned with going deeply into mystery wisdom so that we may understand how such a thing as the mystery of Golgotha could happen. We need to remember that when the Christ appeared on earth something happened that truly brought a major change in human history. We'll understand this most easily if we consider the question as to who Christ Jesus really was. For the occultist, this question has two parts. We have to distinguish between the individual who lived in Palestine at that time and lived to the age of 30, and what then became of this individual.

Jesus became the Christ in his thirtieth year. In ordinary people, only small parts of the astral body, ether body and physical body have become manas, buddhi and atman,⁷¹ or spirit self, life spirit and spirit human being. Jesus of Nazareth was a third-degree chela. His bodies were thus at a high level of purification. Complete cleansing, sanctification and purification had been achieved in his astral body, ether body and physical body. When a chela has gone through these three purification stages in his three bodies he is able at a given time in his life to give up his I. In the thirtieth year, the I of Jesus left the three bodies and went over into the astral world, leaving three sanctified bodies on earth that had been hollowed out by the I, as it were, so that there was room in them for a higher spirit. The I of Jesus of Nazareth thus made the great sacrifice in his thirtieth year of offering his purified bodies to the Christ spirit. The Christ filled those three bodies. After this time we refer to him as Christ Jesus, who walked on this earth for three years and did great things in the body of Jesus.

To understand who the Christ was we must go back a long way in the evolution of the earth and of humanity. Before it became earth, the earth was the ancient Moon. This is not the same as our present moon, which is just a piece of earth that has split off. Before the earth became Moon it was Sun, and before that, Saturn. We thus have to understand that milliards of years ago a body existed in cosmic space that was ancient Saturn. A planet evolves through a number of incarnations. Before our earth was earth, it existed as Saturn, Sun and Moon. Let us first of all go the Sun. There the ‘fire spirits’ were at the level which human beings have reached on earth today. They did not look the way present-day human beings look, however. Those sublime spirits went through their human stage on the Sun under completely different conditions than people do on earth today. On the Moon, another group of spirits went through the human stage—the lunar pitris, Moon spirits, who are now at a higher level than human beings. In Christian esotericism they are called angeloi or angels. Man only became ‘man’ on earth. The lunar pitris are one stage higher than man, and the fire spirits above them are at a very high level of evolution.

We now come to the earth, to the condition of the Lemurian race who lived on a continent between present-day Asia, Africa and Australia. Physical entities then existed on earth that were higher than today's animals and less developed than today's human beings. They created a kind of housing or case, a dwelling place. They would have grown decadent if they had not been inseminated by higher spirits. It was at that time that souls finally entered into the human physical body. Those souls then prepared what was later to become the human body. The physical housings of human bodies were on earth, and higher spirits let soul substance flow into these from the worlds of spirit. This soul principle was still connected with the worlds of spirit. It was like water, drops of which were poured into a number of vessels. The spirits who poured out the soul principle were those who had completed their human stage on the Moon, the Moon spirits. They were now one level higher than human beings and able to pour part of their essence into humanity, so that this might develop further (Fig. 1).

A relationship existed between all these souls, for they came from a community of spirits. All those who had received a drop each from a communal spirit showed great similarity. In the past, members of a tribe would have souls showing such similarity. Later it was nations, for instance the whole Egyptian, the whole Hebrew nation. They had souls that came from a common source.

The Moon spirits had given human beings the spirit self in man. This made man an I, someone with self-awareness. There was something, however, which the Moon spirits could not give, only a single, communal spirit that was even higher and had completed its human stage on the Sun was able to do this—a fire spirit. Many such fire spirits had developed on the Sun and were sublime spirits on earth. One such fire spirit was called upon to pour out his essence over the whole of humanity. A communal spirit was there for the whole earth, and this was able to pour out the element of the Sun spirits or fire spirits, the buddhi or life spirit, doing so over the whole of humanity with all its members. But in the Lemurian race and in Atlantean times human beings were not yet ripe to receive anything from this Sun spirit. Looking at the akashic record of that time one finds that strangely enough, human beings consisted of physical body, ether body, astral body and spirit self. The spirit self was, however, still very tenuous. The buddhi or life spirit was present around every individual but this could only be seen in astral space. In astral space every individual had such a buddhi surrounding; but this buddhi, being around the outside of the human being, was not yet ripe to enter into him (Fig. 2).

The whole of this fire spirit, the common source spring of all the sparks of spirit for human beings, had entered into the physical body, ether body and astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. That is the Christ, the unique divine spirit that does not exist in any other form on earth. It entered into Jesus of Nazareth so that those who felt connected with Christ Jesus were given the strength to receive the buddhi into themselves. The coming of the Christ meant that the potential began to be there for receiving the buddhi. John called this the divine creator-word. The divine creator-word is the fire spirit who poured his sparks into human beings.

The following then happened. The Moon spirits made it possible for communal tribes to exist among humanity. The Christ was a single spirit for the whole earth, so that people were united in a family that encompassed the whole earth. Before, differences had existed between people in that different Moon spirits poured out their drops over the earth. Now humanity became one through the powers that came from Christ Jesus. The principle that came to the earth with Christ Jesus is one that unites human beings.

When the Christ spoke of the day of judgement, his words were: ‘When the son of man shall come in his glory’—meaning ‘when the drops of the Christ will all have flowed into human beings, when all people have become brothers’—‘he shall say to those on his right hand, Come, you are the blessed of my father, inherit the realm prepared for you from the foundation of the world! For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink.’⁷³ There will then be no difference between people except for good and evil.

He said to his disciples: ‘Inasmuch as you have done it for one of the least of my brothers, you have done it for me.’⁷⁴ This means that Christ Jesus was referring to the time when the drops he had poured will have been received by human beings in such a way that anyone seeing another person knows that the same substance lives in both of them. The strength needed to make it at all possible for the buddhi to be called awake in human beings came from the life of the Christ on earth. We must therefore see the Christ as the spirit of community here on earth.

If we were able to look down on the earth from a distant star and do so through millennia, we would discover a moment in time when the Christ was influencing the earth in such a way that all astral matter was penetrated by the Christ. The Christ is the earth spirit, and the earth is his body. Everything that lives, sprouts and grows on earth is the Christ. He is in every grain of seed, in all trees and in everything that grows and sprouts on earth. The Christ therefore had to say, as he pointed to the bread: ‘This is my body’.⁷⁵ And he had to say of the juice of the grape—it was not fermented wine at the last supper—‘This is my blood’.⁷⁶ for the juice of the fruits of this earth is his blood. Because of this human beings also had to appear to him to be walking about on his body. He therefore also said to his disciples after the washing of the feet: ‘He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.’ This must be taken literally, considering that the earth is the body of the Christ. It is exactly because he has made himself the bearer of earth evolution that a distant spirit would be able to see that more and more of his spirit is entering into human beings—the substance of Christ Jesus entering into every individual human being. In the end that spirit would see the whole earth transformed, bearing people who have been godded⁷⁷ through the Christ. Anything that has not taken part in this godding is set aside as evil. It has to wait for a later time when it may develop and become good. Before the coming of the Christ, all nations on earth had mysteries. In the mysteries it was shown what was to happen in future. The pupils went through long preparations to prepare them for entombment. The hierophant would then be able to take the pupil to a higher state of consciousness, a kind of deep sleep. In earlier times, conscious awareness always had to be suppressed if the divine was to appear in the human being. The soul would be taken through the regions of the spiritual world, and after three days the individual would be restored to life by the hierophant. He then felt himself to be a new person. He would be given a new name. He would be called a son of God.

In the mystery of Golgotha this whole process happened outwardly on the physical plane. Before, the pupils would be enlivened with a spark of the Christ spirit, and they would be told: one day there will be one who will make it possible for all human beings to be christed. That one will truly be the word become flesh. You can only know this for three days, when you'll be walking through the realms of the heavens. But there will be one who always walks through the heavenly realms, and he will take the realms of heaven with him into the physical world.

The experience which an initiate had on the astral plane was to be presented on the physical plane by the Christ. It was the experience that the divine word had been there from the beginning, pouring its drops out over human beings, though the I-people were not yet able to take it in. This is what John tells us, John who proclaimed the I-human being, who was christed, who had taken the Christ into himself. That is the meaning of the ‘word’ in John's gospel. He spoke of the word that was on the earth from the very beginning:

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was a god.

This was with God in the beginning.

All that exists has come into being through it, and nothing that has come into existence has done so except through it. In it was life, and life was the light of mankind. And the light shone into the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.

There came to be a man, sent by God, and his name was John. He came to witness, that he bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him.

He was not the light, but a witness of the light.

For the true light, that illumines all men, was to come into the world.

It was in the world, and the world came into being through it, but the world did not know it.

It came into individual human beings (it came to the I-people); but the individual human beings (the I-people) did not receive it.

Those who did receive it were able through this to reveal themselves to be children of God.

Those who believed in his name were born not of the blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the human will, but were born of God.

And the word has become flesh and dwelt among us and we have heard his teaching of the son at one with the father, full of devotion and truth.

The word ‘devotion’ in verse 14 meant the same to John as ‘buddhi’; truth is ‘manas’, wisdom, the ‘spirit self’.

John bears witness to him, saying clearly: This was the one of whom I said: after me will come the one who was before me, for he has preceded me.

Out of his fullness we all received grace upon grace. For the law has been given through Moses, but grace and truth entered into existence through Jesus Christ.

No one has ever had sight of God. The once-born son who was within the father of the world, he has come to be the leader in this beholding.

Every initiation into the mysteries of the spirit pointed to this coming of the Christ. This initiation was given in the yoga sleep, the Orphic sleep, the Hermes sleep. When the initiate woke again in his body, when he was able to hear and speak again, using physical senses, he said the words which in Hebrew were ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!’ meaning 'my God, my God, how you have raised me up high!'

That was the initiation known in ancient Judaism. The initiate would be in the higher worlds for three days and experience the whole progress of future human evolution, what was to come for him in human evolution. In the perceptions he had during the three days, the future stages for humanity were not as a rule seen in abstract form but every stage was represented by an individual. The initiate would perceive twelve people. They represented the twelve stages of inner development. Powers of soul thus appeared before him in the form of human individuals. At a given moment the initiate would see a particular scene. He would see his own individual nature taken to the stage where the whole of humanity is filled with buddhi, meaning that it will be christed. He would see himself in the God, with the powers of soul ranged behind. Immediately behind him stood John, the final figure who indicates that he had reached completion. He would see himself transfigured in a state he would achieve when he had reached completion; his powers of soul personified, with John the final stage of completion, proclaiming the Christ stage. In the yoga sleep those twelve figures would then make a group, gathering for the "mystic communion, as it was called. This would be as follows. The human being sitting surrounded by the powers of soul would say to himself: these are at one with me; they have taken me through earth evolution. I have walked with the feet of these apostles. The communion meal means that the twelve powers of soul are at one with the human being.

Completion or perfection is reached when the lower soul qualities drop away and only the higher ones remain. Humanity will no longer have those lower powers in time to come, an example being the power of reproduction. John's very power of soul will have brought it about that those powers are then lifted up into the loving heart. Rivers of spiritual love will flow from it. When the Christ is in us, the heart is the organ which is most powerful in us. The lower power of soul will then have been raised from the lower abdomen to the heart. Every initiate experienced this as the mystery of the heart. It came to expression in the words ‘my God, my God, how you have raised me up high!’

With the coming of Christ Jesus, the whole mystery, the whole experience, was brought to realization in the physical plane. Brotherhoods existed in Palestine at that time that had evolved from the old Essene order. They would have such a communion meal as a symbol for the mystic last supper. The term ‘to eat the Easter lamb’ is a general term for what happened at Easter. Jesus sat down at table with the twelve and instituted the communion meal with the words: ‘At the end of earth evolution all people will have received what I have brought to the earth; then this will be true: this is my body, this is my blood.’ He then said: ‘One of you will betray me.’⁷⁸ Egotism, lower desire, is the betrayer. The disciple whom the Lord loved knew this, for he lay against his lap. For as long as this power is there, it will kill—sexual reproduction and death are mutually conditional. This power which now lies in the sexual element ascends higher in the body—to the heart. The disciple shows this in the gospel by moving up to the heart. Just as it is certain that it is lower desire which is the betrayer, so it is certain that the lower power of soul is raised higher. ‘One of the disciples lay in the lap of Jesus—he then lay against the breast of Jesus.’⁷⁹ This signified that all the lower powers, all egotism, had been raised to the heart. Jesus then repeated the words ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!’ for his disciples. ‘Now the son of man has been glorified and God glorified in him.’

What happened in the mysteries was the same as what later happened on Golgotha. Under the cross stood the disciple whom the Lord loved, who had lain in his lap at the last supper and has been raised to the breast. The female figures, his mother, his mother's sister Mary and Mary Magdalene, were also there. It does not say in John's gospel that the mother of Jesus was called Mary but that his mother's sister was called Mary. His mother was called Sophia.

John baptized Jesus in the river Jordan. A dove came down from heaven. That was a moment of spiritual insemination. The mother of Jesus who was inseminated here—who is she? The chela Jesus of Nazareth, divesting himself of his I at this moment, the highly developed manas, was inseminated, with the buddhi entering. The highly developed manas which received the buddhi was wisdom, Sophia, the mother, who was inseminated by Jesus' father. The name Mary, the same as Maya, is the name of ‘mother’ in general. In the Bible we read: The angel came to her and said: ‘Hail to you, sweetest one. Behold you will be fruitful and bear a son. The holy spirit shall come upon you and the power of the highest shall overshadow you.’⁸⁰ The holy ghost is the father of Jesus; the dove that flew down inseminated the Sophia who was in Jesus.

The text should thus be read to say: ‘By the cross stood Sophia, the mother of Jesus.’ He spoke to this mother, saying: ‘Woman, this is your son.’ He had himself transferred the Sophia who had been in him to John. He made him the son of Sophia, saying: ‘This is your mother.’ ‘From now on you must acknowledge divine wisdom to be your mother and dedicate yourself solely to her.’ What John has written was this divine wisdom, Sophia, embodied in the gospel of John itself. He received the knowledge from Jesus himself, and was authorized by the Christ to transfer the wisdom to the earth.

The greatest spirit on earth had to be incarnated in a body. This body had to die, to be killed, the blood had to flow. This means something special. Wherever the blood is, there is the self. If all the old self-communities were to end, then selfhood, which has its seat in the blood, had to be sacrificed on one occasion. All individual egotisms flowed away with the blood of Christ on the cross. The blood of tribal communities became the blood of all humanity when the blood of Christ was sacrificed at that time.

Then again something happened which an astral observer would have noted in the astral atmosphere. The earth's whole astral atmosphere changed at the moment when he died, and events were possible that would never have been possible before. Sudden initiation—like that of Paul—would never have been possible before. It has become possible because with the flowing of Christ's blood the whole of humanity became a communal self. At that time the self flowed from the blood of Jesus' wounds. Only the three bodies remained on the cross and were later given new life by the risen Christ. At the moment when the Christ left the body, the three bodies were so strong that they were themselves able to say the words which the transfigured human being would speak after his initiation: ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!’

Those words would have shown all those who knew something of the mystery wisdom that this was a mystery. A minor change made to the Hebrew text has given us the words we read in the Bible: ‘Eli, Eli, lama asabthani!’ This means: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’

• 71. These are oriental terms also used in theosophy. Current reference works do not use capital initial letters, and I have followed this, since it feels right to keep capitalization for proper nouns and adjectives derived from them. The reference works also consistently give ‘atman’ rather than ‘atma’, which may be similar to the problem we have with 'mantra' and ‘mantram’. Main reference works consulted: Microsoft Bookshelf 1995; The Cambridge Encylopedia, Cambridge University Press 1990; G. de Purucker, Occult Glossary, Pasadena CA: Theosophical University Press 1972. Translator.
• 72. See Steiner R. The God of the Alpha and the God of the Omega (in GA 109), lecture given in Berlin on 25 May 1909. Tr. D. Osmond. Anthroposophical Quarterly 1962. The term ‘the last of the Zarathustras’ means, according to Rudolf Steiner, that this was the last of a number of incarnations for an individual who always bore the name Zarathustra.
• 73. Matthew 25: 31, 34-5.
• 74. Matthew 25: 40.
• 75. Matthew 26: 26.
• 76. Matthew 26: 28.
• 77. Word creations by Rudolf Steiner.—Translator
• 78. John 13: 21
• 79. John 13: 23, 35. The Luther translation uses ‘on the breast’ in both verses, the King James version has ‘bosom’ in verse 23, and 'breast' in verse 25. The Greek original has ‘ἐν τῷ κόλπῳ’ in verse 23 and ‘ἀναπεσὼν ἐκεῖνος οὕτως ἐπὶ τὸ στῆθος τοῦ Ἰησοῦ’.
  Translator's comment. The Greek κόλπῳ (kolpōs) has a number of meanings, including ‘gulf, bay’, and basically refers to something that bulges out into something else. We know from Homer's Greek that it referred to a fold of the overgarment people wore that would hang over the belt, being thus between chest and belt. It was widely used as a kind of pouch in which to keep things. One can thus see how confusion may arise. Ref. Bauers Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament.
• 80. Luke 1:28,31,35

The Mystery of The Ego

Enq. I perceive in the quotation you brought forward a little while ago from the Buddhist Catechism a discrepancy that I would like to hear explained. It is there stated that the Skandhas — memory included — change with every new incarnation. And yet, it is asserted that the reflection of the past lives, which, we are told, are entirely made up of Skandhas, "must survive." At the present moment I am not quite clear in my mind as to what it is precisely that survives, and I would like to have it explained. What is it? Is it only that "reflection," or those Skandhas, or always that same EGO, the Manas?

Theo. I have just explained that the re-incarnating Principle, or that which we call the divine man, is indestructible throughout the life cycle: indestructible as a thinking Entity, and even as an ethereal form. The "reflection" is only the spiritualised remembrance during the Devachanic period, of the ex-personality, Mr. A. or Mrs. B. — with which the Ego identifies itself during that period. Since the latter is but the continuation of the earth-life, so to say, the very acme and pitch, in an unbroken series, of the few happy moments in that now past existence, the Ego has to identify itself with the personal consciousness of that life, if anything shall remain of it.

Enq. This means that the Ego, notwithstanding its divine nature, passes every such period between two incarnations in a state of mental obscuration, or temporary insanity.

Theo. You may regard it as you like. Believing that, outside the ONE Reality, nothing is better than a passing illusion — the whole Universe included — we do not view it as insanity, but as a very natural sequence or development of the terrestrial life. What is life? A bundle of the most varied experiences, of daily changing ideas, emotions, and opinions. In our youth we are often enthusiastically devoted to an ideal, to some hero or heroine whom we try to follow and revive; a few years later, when the freshness of our youthful feelings has faded out and sobered down, we are the first to laugh at our fancies. And yet there was a day when we had so thoroughly identified our own personality with that of the ideal in our mind — especially if it was that of a living being — that the former was entirely merged and lost in the latter. Can it be said of a man of fifty that he is the same being that he was at twenty? The inner man is the same; the outward living personality is completely transformed and changed. Would you also call these changes in the human mental states insanity?

Enq. How would you name them, and especially how would you explain the permanence of one and the evanescence of the other?

Theo. We have our own doctrine ready, and to us it offers no difficulty. The clue lies in the double consciousness of our mind, and also, in the dual nature of the mental "principle." There is a spiritual consciousness, the Manasic mind illumined by the light of Buddhi, that which subjectively perceives abstractions; and the sentient consciousness (the lower Manasic light), inseparable from our physical brain and senses. This latter consciousness is held in subjection by the brain and physical senses, and, being in its turn equally dependent on them, must of course fade out and finally die with the disappearance of the brain and physical senses. It is only the former kind of consciousness, whose root lies in eternity, which survives and lives for ever, and may, therefore, be regarded as immortal. Everything else belongs to passing illusions.

Enq. What do you really understand by illusion in this case?

Theo. It is very well described in the just-mentioned essay on "The Higher Self." Says its author:

"The theory we are considering (the interchange of ideas between the Higher Ego and the lower self) harmonizes very well with the treatment of this world in which we live as a phenomenal world of illusion, the spiritual plane of nature being on the other hand the noumenal world or plane of reality. That region of nature in which, so to speak, the permanent soul is rooted is more real than that in which its transitory blossoms appear for a brief space to wither and fall to pieces, while the plant recovers energy for sending forth a fresh flower. Supposing flowers only were perceptible to ordinary senses, and their roots existed in a state of Nature intangible and invisible to us, philosophers in such a world who divined that there were such things as roots in another plane of existence would be apt to say of the flowers, These are not the real plants; they are of no relative importance, merely illusive phenomena of the moment."

This is what I mean. The world in which blossom the transitory and evanescent flowers of personal lives is not the real permanent world; but that one in which we find the root of consciousness, that root which is beyond illusion and dwells in the eternity.

Enq. What do you mean by the root dwelling in eternity?

Theo. I mean by this root the thinking entity, the Ego which incarnates, whether we regard it as an "Angel," "Spirit," or a Force. Of that which falls under our sensuous perceptions only what grows directly from, or is attached to this invisible root above, can partake of its immortal life. Hence every noble thought, idea and aspiration of the personality it informs, proceeding from and fed by this root, must become permanent. As to the physical consciousness, as it is a quality of the sentient but lower "principle," (Kama-rupa or animal instinct, illuminated by the lower manasic reflection), or the human Soul — it must disappear. That which displays activity, while the body is asleep or paralysed, is the higher consciousness, our memory registering but feebly and inaccurately — because automatically — such experiences, and often failing to be even slightly impressed by them.

Enq. But how is it that MANAS, although you call it Nous, a "God," is so weak during its incarnations, as to be actually conquered and fettered by its body?

Theo. I might retort with the same question and ask: "How is it that he, whom you regard as 'the God of Gods' and the One living God, is so weak as to allow evil (or the Devil) to have the best of him as much as of all his creatures, whether while he remains in Heaven, or during the time he was incarnated on this earth?" You are sure to reply again: "This is a Mystery; and we are forbidden to pry into the mysteries of God." Not being forbidden to do so by our religious philosophy, I answer your question that, unless a God descends as an Avatar, no divine principle can be otherwise than cramped and paralysed by turbulent, animal matter. Heterogeneity will always have the upper hand over homogeneity, on this plane of illusions, and the nearer an essence is to its root-principle, Primordial Homogeneity, the more difficult it is for the latter to assert itself on earth. Spiritual and divine powers lie dormant in every human Being; and the wider the sweep of his spiritual vision the mightier will be the God within him. But as few men can feel that God, and since, as an average rule, deity is always bound and limited in our thought by earlier conceptions, those ideas that are inculcated in us from childhood, therefore, it is so difficult for you to understand our philosophy.

Enq. And is it this Ego of ours which is our God?

Theo. Not at all; "A God" is not the universal deity, but only a spark from the one ocean of Divine Fire. Our God within us, or "our Father in Secret" is what we call the "HIGHER SELF," Atma. Our incarnating Ego was a God in its origin, as were all the primeval emanations of the One Unknown Principle. But since its "fall into Matter," having to incarnate throughout the cycle, in succession, from first to last, it is no longer a free and happy god, but a poor pilgrim on his way to regain that which he has lost. I can answer you more fully by repeating what is said of the INNER MAN in ISIS UNVEILED (Vol. II. 593): —

"From the remotest antiquity mankind as a whole have always been convinced of the existence of a personal spiritual entity within the personal physical man. This inner entity was more or less divine, according to its proximity to the crown. The closer the union the more serene man's destiny, the less dangerous the external conditions. This belief is neither bigotry nor superstition, only an ever-present, instinctive feeling of the proximity of another spiritual and invisible world, which, though it be subjective to the senses of the outward man, is perfectly objective to the inner ego. Furthermore, they believed that there are external and internal conditions which affect the determination of our will upon our actions. They rejected fatalism, for fatalism implies a blind course of some still blinder power. But they believed in destiny or Karma, which from birth to death every man is weaving thread by thread around himself, as a spider does his cobweb; and this destiny is guided by that presence termed by some the guardian angel, or our more intimate astral inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the man of flesh or the personality. Both these lead on MAN, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable law of compensation and retribution steps in and takes its course, following faithfully the fluctuating of the conflict. When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the net-work of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny. It then either fixes him like the inert shell against the immovable rock, or like a feather carries him away in a whirlwind raised by his own actions."

Such is the destiny of the Man — the true Ego, not the Automaton, the shell that goes by that name. It is for him to become the conqueror over matter.

The Complex Nature of Manas

Enq. But you wanted to tell me something of the essential nature of Manas, and of the relation in which the Skandhas of physical man stand to it?

Theo. It is this nature, mysterious, Protean, beyond any grasp, and almost shadowy in its correlations with the other principles, that is most difficult to realise, and still more so to explain. Manas is a "principle," and yet it is an "Entity" and individuality or Ego. He is a "God," and yet he is doomed to an endless cycle of incarnations, for each of which he is made responsible, and for each of which he has to suffer. All this seems as contradictory as it is puzzling; nevertheless, there are hundreds of people, even in Europe, who realise all this perfectly, for they comprehend the Ego not only in its integrity but in its many aspects. Finally, if I would make myself comprehensible, I must begin by the beginning and give you the genealogy of this Ego in a few lines.

Enq. Say on.

Theo. Try to imagine a "Spirit," a celestial Being, whether we call it by one name or another, divine in its essential nature, yet not pure enough to be one with the ALL, and having, in order to achieve this, to so purify its nature as to finally gain that goal. It can do so only by passing individually and personally, i. e., spiritually and physically, through every experience and feeling that exists in the manifold or differentiated Universe. It has, therefore, after having gained such experience in the lower kingdoms, and having ascended higher and still higher with every rung on the ladder of being, to pass through every experience on the human planes. In its very essence it is THOUGHT, and is, therefore, called in its plurality Manasa putra, "the Sons of the (Universal) mind." This individualised "Thought" is what we Theosophists call the real EGO, the thinking Entity imprisoned in a case of flesh and bones. This is surely a Spiritual Entity, not Matter, and such Entities are the incarnating EGOS that inform the bundle of animal matter called mankind, and whose names are Manasa or "Minds." But once imprisoned, or incarnate, their essence becomes dual: that is to say, the rays of the eternal divine Mind, considered as individual entities, assume a two-fold attribute which is (a) their essential inherent characteristic, heaven-aspiring mind (higher Manas), and (b) the human quality of thinking, or animal cogitation, rationalised owing to the superiority of the human brain, the Kama-tending or lower Manas. One gravitates toward Buddhi, the other, tending downward, to the seat of passions and animal desires. The latter have no room in Devachan, nor can they associate with the divine triad which ascends as ONE into mental bliss. Yet it is the Ego, the Manasic Entity, which is held responsible for all the sins of the lower attributes, just as a parent is answerable for the transgressions of his child, so long as the latter remains irresponsible.

Enq. Is this "child" the "personality"?

Theo. It is. When, therefore, it is stated that the "personality" dies with the body it does not state all. The body, which was only the objective symbol of Mr. A. or Mrs. B., fades away with all its material Skandhas, which are the visible expressions thereof. But all that which constituted during life the spiritual bundle of experiences, the noblest aspirations, undying affections, and unselfish nature of Mr. A. or Mrs. B. clings for the time of the Devachanic period to the EGO, which is identified with the spiritual portion of that terrestrial Entity, now passed away out of sight. The ACTOR is so imbued with the role just played by him that he dreams of it during the whole Devachanic night, which vision continues till the hour strikes for him to return to the stage of life to enact another part.

Enq. But how is it that this doctrine, which you say is as old as thinking men, has found no room, say, in Christian theology?

Theo. You are mistaken, it has; only theology has disfigured it out of all recognition, as it has many other doctrines. Theology calls the EGO the Angel that God gives us at the moment of our birth, to take care of our Soul. Instead of holding that "Angel" responsible for the transgressions of the poor helpless "Soul," it is the latter which, according to theological logic, is punished for all the sins of both flesh and mind! It is the Soul, the immaterial breath of God and his alleged creation, which, by some most amazing intellectual jugglery, is doomed to burn in a material hell without ever being consumed (being of "an asbestos-like nature," according to the eloquent and fiery expression of a modern English Tertullian), while the "Angel" escapes scot free, after folding his white pinions and wetting them with a few tears. Aye, these are our "ministering Spirits," the "messengers of mercy" who are sent, Bishop Mant tells us —

"...to fulfil
Good for Salvation's heirs, for us they still
Grieve when we sin, rejoice when we repent;"

Yet it becomes evident that if all the Bishops the world over were asked to define once for all what they mean by Soul and its functions, they would be as unable to do so as to show us any shadow of logic in the orthodox belief!

The Doctrine is Taught in St John's Gospel

Enq. To this the adherents to this belief might answer, that if even the orthodox dogma does promise the impenitent sinner and materialist a bad time of it in a rather too realistic Inferno, it gives them, on the other hand, a chance for repentance to the last minute. Nor do they teach annihilation, or loss of personality, which is all the same.

Theo. If the Church teaches nothing of the kind, on the other hand, Jesus does; and that is something to those, at least, who place Christ higher than Christianity.

Enq. Does Christ teach anything of the sort?

Theo. He does; and every well-informed Occultist and even Kabalist will tell you so. Christ, or the fourth Gospel at any rate, teaches re-incarnation as also the annihilation of the personality, if you but forget the dead letter and hold to the esoteric Spirit. Remember verses I and 2 in chapter xv. of St. John. What does the parable speak about if not of the upper triad in man? Atma is the Husbandman — the Spiritual Ego or Buddhi (Christos) the Vine, while the animal and vital Soul, the personality, is the "branch." "I am the true vine, and my Father is the Husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away . . . As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the Vine — ye are the branches. If a man abide not in me he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered and cast into the fire and burned."

Now we explain it in this way. Disbelieving in the hell-fires which theology discovers as underlying the threat to the branches, we say that the "Husbandman" means Atma, the Symbol for the infinite, impersonal Principle, while the Vine stands for the Spiritual Soul, Christos, and each "branch" represents a new incarnation. (During the Mysteries, it is the Hierophant, the "Father," who planted the Vine. Every symbol has Seven Keys to it. The discloser of the Pleroma was always called "Father.")

Enq. But what proofs have you to support such an arbitrary interpretation?

Theo. Universal symbology is a warrant for its correctness and that it is not arbitrary. Hermas says of "God" that he "planted the Vineyard," i. e., he created mankind. In the Kabala, it is shown that the Aged of the Aged, or the "Long Face," plants a vineyard, the latter typifying mankind; and a vine, meaning Life. The Spirit of "King Messiah" is, therefore, shown as washing his garments in the wine from above, from the creation of the world. (Zohar XL., 10.) And King Messiah is the EGO purified by washing his garments (i. e., his personalities in re-birth), in the wine from above, or BUDDHI. Adam, or A-Dam, is "blood." The Life of the flesh is in the blood (nephesh — soul), Leviticus xvii. And Adam-Kadmon is the Only-Begotten. Noah also plants a vineyard — the allegorical hot-bed of future humanity. As a consequence of the adoption of the same allegory, we find it reproduced in the Nazarene Codex. Seven vines are procreated — which seven vines are our Seven Races with their seven Saviours or Buddhas — which spring from Iukabar Zivo, and Ferho (or Parcha) Raba waters them. (Codex Nazaraes, Vol. III., pp. 60, 61.) When the blessed will ascend among the creatures of Light, they shall see Iavar-Xivo, Lord of LIFE, and the First VINE. (Ibid., Vol. II., p. 281.) These kabalistic metaphors are thus naturally repeated in the Gospel according to St. John (xv., 1).

Let us not forget that in the human system — even according to those philosophies which ignore our septenary division — the EGO or thinking man is called the Logos, or the Son of King of Soul and Queen of Spirit. "Manas is the adopted Son of King — and Queen —" (esoteric equivalents for Atma and Buddhi), says an occult work. He is the "man-god" of Plato, who crucifies himself in Space (or the duration of the life cycle) for the redemption of MATTER. This he does by incarnating over and over again, thus leading mankind onward to perfection, and making thereby room for lower forms to develop into higher. Not for one life does he cease progressing himself and helping all physical nature to progress; even the occasional, very rare event of his losing one of his personalities, in the case of the latter being entirely devoid of even a spark of spirituality, helps toward his individual progress.

Enq. But surely, if the Ego is held responsible for the transgressions of its personalities, it has to answer also for the loss, or rather the complete annihilation, of one of such.

Theo. Not at all, unless it has done nothing to avert this dire fate. But if, all its efforts notwithstanding, its voice, that of our conscience, was unable to penetrate through the wall of matter, then the obtuseness of the latter proceeding from the imperfect nature of the material is classed with other failures of nature. The Ego is sufficiently punished by the loss of Devachan, and especially by having to incarnate almost immediately.

Enq. This doctrine of the possibility of losing one's soul — or personality, do you call it? — militates against the ideal theories of both Christians and Spiritualists, though Swedenborg adopts it to a certain extent, in what he calls Spiritual death. They will never accept it.

Theo. This can in no way alter a fact in nature, if it be a fact, or prevent such a thing occasionally taking place. The universe and everything in it, moral, mental, physical, psychic, or Spiritual, is built on a perfect law of equilibrium and harmony. As said before (vide Isis Unveiled), the centripetal force could not manifest itself without the centrifugal in the harmonious revolutions of the spheres, and all forms and their progress are the products of this dual force in nature. Now the Spirit (or Buddhi) is the centrifugal and the soul (Manas) the centripetal spiritual energy; and to produce one result they have to be in perfect union and harmony. Break or damage the centripetal motion of the earthly soul tending toward the centre which attracts it; arrest its progress by clogging it with a heavier weight of matter than it can bear, or than is fit for the Devachanic state, and the harmony of the whole will be destroyed. Personal life, or perhaps rather its ideal reflection, can only be continued if sustained by the two-fold force, that is by the close union of Buddhi and Manas in every re-birth or personal life. The least deviation from harmony damages it; and when it is destroyed beyond redemption the two forces separate at the moment of death. During a brief interval the personal form (called indifferently Kama rupa and Mayavi rupa), the spiritual efflorescence of which, attaching itself to the Ego, follows it into Devachan and gives to the permanent individuality its personal colouring (pro tem., so to speak), is carried off to remain in Kamaloka and to be gradually annihilated. For it is after the death of the utterly depraved, the unspiritual and the wicked beyond redemption, that arrives the critical and supreme moment. If during life the ultimate and desperate effort of the INNER SELF (Manas), to unite something of the personality with itself and the high glimmering ray of the divine Buddhi, is thwarted; if this ray is allowed to be more and more shut out from the ever-thickening crust of physical brain, the Spiritual EGO or Manas, once freed from the body, remains severed entirely from the ethereal relic of the personality; and the latter, or Kama rupa, following its earthly attractions, is drawn into and remains in Hades, which we call the Kamaloka. These are "the withered branches" mentioned by Jesus as being cut off from the Vine. Annihilation, however, is never instantaneous, and may require centuries sometimes for its accomplishment. But there the personality remains along with the remnants of other more fortunate personal Egos, and becomes with them a shell and an Elementary. As said in Isis, it is these two classes of "Spirits," the shells and the Elementaries, which are the leading "Stars" on the great spiritual stage of "materialisations." And you may be sure of it, it is not they who incarnate; and, therefore, so few of these "dear departed ones" know anything of re-incarnation, misleading thereby the Spiritualists.

Enq. But does not the author of "Isis Unveiled" stand accused of having preached against re-incarnation?

Theo. By those who have misunderstood what was said, yes. At the time that work was written, re-incarnation was not believed in by any Spiritualists, either English or American, and what is said there of re-incarnation was directed against the French Spiritists, whose theory is as unphilosophical and absurd as the Eastern teaching is logical and self-evident in its truth. The Re-incarnationists of the Allan Kardec School believe in an arbitrary and immediate re-incarnation. With them, the dead father can incarnate in his own unborn daughter, and so on. They have neither Devachan, Karma, nor any philosophy that would warrant or prove the necessity of consecutive re-births. But how can the author of "Isis" argue against Karmic re-incarnation, at long intervals varying between 1,000 and 1,500 years, when it is the fundamental belief of both Buddhists and Hindus?

Enq. Then you reject the theories of both the Spiritists and the Spiritualists, in their entirety?

Theo. Not in their entirety, but only with regard to their respective fundamental beliefs. Both rely on what their "Spirits" tell them; and both disagree as much with each other as we Theosophists disagree with both. Truth is one; and when we hear the French spooks preaching re-incarnation, and the English spooks denying and denouncing the doctrine, we say that either the French or the English "Spirits" do not know what they are talking about. We believe with the Spiritualists and the Spiritists in the existence of "Spirits," or invisible Beings endowed with more or less intelligence. But, while in our teachings their kinds and genera are legion, our opponents admit of no other than human disembodied "Spirits," which, to our knowledge, are mostly Kamalokic SHELLS.

Enq. You seem very bitter against Spirits. As you have given me your views and your reasons for disbelieving in the materialization of, and direct communication in seances, with the disembodied spirits — or the "spirits of the dead" — would you mind enlightening me as to one more fact? Why are some Theosophists never tired of saying how dangerous is intercourse with spirits, and mediumship? Have they any particular reason for this?

Theo. We must suppose so. I know I have. Owing to my familiarity for over half a century with these invisible, yet but too tangible and undeniable "influences," from the conscious Elementals, semi-conscious shells, down to the utterly senseless and nondescript spooks of all kinds, I claim a certain right to my views.

Enq. Can you give an instance or instances to show why these practices should be regarded as dangerous?

Theo. This would require more time than I can give you. Every cause must be judged by the effects it produces. Go over the history of Spiritualism for the last fifty years, ever since its reappearance in this century in America — and judge for yourself whether it has done its votaries more good or harm. Pray understand me. I do not speak against real Spiritualism, but against the modern movement which goes under that name, and the so-called philosophy invented to explain its phenomena.

Enq. Don't you believe in their phenomena at all?

Theo. It is because I believe in them with too good reason, and (save some cases of deliberate fraud) know them to be as true as that you and I live, that all my being revolts against them. Once more I speak only of physical, not mental or even psychic phenomena. Like attracts like. There are several high-minded, pure, good men and women, known to me personally, who have passed years of their lives under the direct guidance and even protection of high "Spirits," whether disembodied or planetary. But these Intelligences are not of the type of the John Kings and the Ernests who figure in seance rooms. These Intelligences guide and control mortals only in rare and exceptional cases to which they are attracted and magnetically drawn by the Karmic past of the individual. It is not enough to sit "for development" in order to attract them. That only opens the door to a swarm of "spooks," good, bad and indifferent, to which the medium becomes a slave for life. It is against such promiscuous mediumship and intercourse with goblins that I raise my voice, not against spiritual mysticism. The latter is ennobling and holy; the former is of just the same nature as the phenomena of two centuries ago, for which so many witches and wizards have been made to suffer. Read Glanvil and other authors on the subject of witchcraft, and you will find recorded there the parallels of most, if not all, of the physical phenomena of nineteenth century "Spiritualism."

Enq. Do you mean to suggest that it is all witchcraft and nothing more?

Theo. What I mean is that, whether conscious or unconscious, all this dealing with the dead is necromancy, and a most dangerous practice. For ages before Moses such raising of the dead was regarded by all the intelligent nations as sinful and cruel, inasmuch as it disturbs the rest of the souls and interferes with their evolutionary development into higher states. The collective wisdom of all past centuries has ever been loud in denouncing such practices. Finally, I say, what I have never ceased repeating orally and in print for fifteen years: While some of the so-called "spirits" do not know what they are talking about, repeating merely — like poll-parrots — what they find in the mediums' and other people's brains, others are most dangerous, and can only lead one to evil. These are two self-evident facts. Go into spiritualistic circles of the Allan Kardec school, and you find "spirits" asserting re-incarnation and speaking like Roman Catholics born. Turn to the "dear departed ones" in England and America, and you will hear them denying re-incarnation through thick and thin, denouncing those who teach it, and holding to Protestant views. Your best, your most powerful mediums, have all suffered in health of body and mind. Think of the sad end of Charles Foster, who died in an asylum, a raving lunatic; of Slade, an epileptic; of Eglinton — the best medium now in England — subject to the same. Look back over the life of D. D. Home, a man whose mind was steeped in gall and bitterness, who never had a good word to say of anyone whom he suspected of possessing psychic powers, and who slandered every other medium to the bitter end. This Calvin of Spiritualism suffered for years from a terrible spinal disease, brought on by his intercourse with the "spirits," and died a perfect wreck. Think again of the sad fate of poor Washington Irving Bishop. 1 knew him in New York, when he was fourteen, and he was undeniably a medium. It is true that the poor man stole a march on his "spirits," and baptised them "unconscious muscular action," to the great gaudium of all the corporations of highly learned and scientific fools, and to the replenishment of his own pocket. But de mortuis nit nisi bonum; his end was a sad one. He had strenuously concealed his epileptic fits — the first and strongest symptom of genuine mediumship — and who knows whether he was dead or in a trance when the post-mortem examination was performed? His relatives insist that he was alive, if we are to believe Reuter's telegrams. Finally, behold the veteran mediums, the founders and prime movers of modern spiritualism — the Fox sisters. After more than forty years of intercourse with the "Angels," the latter have led them to become incurable sots, who are now denouncing, in public lectures, their own life-long work and philosophy as a fraud. What kind of spirits must they be who prompted them, I ask you?

Enq. But is your inference a correct one?

Theo. What would you infer if the best pupils of a particular school of singing broke down from overstrained sore throats? That the method followed was a bad one. So I think the inference is equally fair with regard to Spiritualism when we see their best mediums fall a prey to such a fate. We can only say: — Let those who are interested in the question judge the tree of Spiritualism by its fruits, and ponder over the lesson. We Theosophists have always regarded the Spiritualists as brothers having the same mystic tendency as ourselves, but they have always regarded us as enemies. We, being in possession of an older philosophy, have tried to help and warn them; but they have repaid us by reviling and traducing us and our motives in every possible way. Nevertheless, the best English Spiritualists say just as we do, wherever they treat of their belief seriously. Hear "M. A. Oxon." confessing this truth: "Spiritualists are too much inclined to dwell exclusively on the intervention of external spirits in this world of ours, and to ignore the powers of the incarnate Spirit." (Second Sight, "Introduction.") Why vilify and abuse us, then, for saying precisely the same? Henceforward, we will have nothing more to do with Spiritualism. And now let us return to Re-incarnation.

The spiritual science movement has not developed in our time as the wilful action of an individual or of someone or other. It has to do with the whole of human evolution and as such must be considered to be one of the most important cultural impulses. To gain insight into this mission of the spiritual science movement we need to enter into the past and future life of humanity. Individuals have gone through a process of evolution from the time when they first came down out of the keeping of the godhead and became individual souls, and humanity as a whole has also gone through a process of evolution.

Just consider the differences, the changes and development to be seen in the earth's surface through the millennia—how thoroughly everything has changed. ‘Humanity’, as we are wont to call it, is only the outcome of the ‘fifth root race’, as it is called. A different, earlier humanity preceding it was the fourth root race whose continent, Atlantis, lay somewhere between present-day Europe and America. Our forebears on Atlantis looked very different. They also had a completely different civilization. The ancient Atlanteans did not have a fully developed rational mind and way of thinking but were instead provided with subtle, somnambulant clairvoyant powers. Logic, rational thinking capable of making connections, science and art as we know them today did not exist in ancient Atlantis, for human beings then had a very different way of forming ideas, thinking and feeling. They would not have been able to make connections, calculate, count or read the way we do today. But somnambulant clairvoyant powers of the spirit lived in them. They were able to understand the language of nature, what God said to them in the lapping of the waves, what the woods were murmuring, and what the subtle scents of flowers brought to expression. They understood this language of nature and were in harmony with all nature. No legislation, no jurisdiction then served to make neighbour communicate with neighbour. No, the Atlanteans would go outside and listen to the sounds of the trees and the wind and they would tell them what they should do.

The memory of ancient Atlantis or Niflheim [home of mists] has survived most beautifully in folk legends such as the Nibelungenlied¹⁰⁵ which have never been works of fiction produced at random. The word Nibel or Nifl indicates that the Rhine and all the rivers in the area are waters remaining from the masses of mists in ancient Atlantis. The wisdom that has survived from Atlantis is referred to as the treasure that lies hidden in the waters. We must also look for the nursery of the ancient adepts in that continent. Individuals went there who had the abilities needed to become pupils of the great minds we now call the ‘masters of wisdom and of the harmony of inner feelings’.¹⁰⁶

The location of the adept school, which had its flowering during the fourth sub-race on ancient Atlantis, must be sought in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Pupils were taught in a very different way there than they are today. It was then possible to have a tremendous influence go from one human being to the other with the power that still lay in words at that time. Today, a little bit of feeling for the inner, spiritual, occult power of words still survives among the people. You simply cannot compare the power words have today with the power they had at that time. It was something quite tremendous. The word in itself would awaken powers in the pupil's soul. A mantra such as we have it today does not have anything like the power which words had at that time, when they were not so full of thoughts. Powers of soul would arise in the pupil under the influence of those words. We might call it human initiation through the language of nature, with tremendous power. A definite language was then also spoken by burning substances such as incense.

The connection between the teacher's and the pupil's soul was much more direct in that place. Any written signs existing at the adept school of ancient Atlantis imitated natural processes. They were drawn in the air with the hand, and had an effect, also a lasting effect, on the mind and spirit of the people at that time. They would awaken powers in the soul.

Every race thus has its mission in human evolution. The mission of our own, the fifth main or root race, is to bring the manas element into the four elements of human nature, that is to awaken insight and understanding by means of concepts and ideas. Every race has its mission. The mission of the Atlantean race was to develop the I. Our own, the fifth root race of the post- Atlantean period, has to develop manas, the spirit self.

The achievements of Atlantis did not perish with it. The most important elements of everything that existed in the adepts' nursery was kept by a small core group of people when they left. This small group, guided by Manu, went into the area where the Gobi desert is today. There they recreated the earlier civilization and teaching, but now more for the thinking mind. The earlier powers of spirit were transformed into thoughts and signs. From there, from this centre, the different lines of civilization then went out like radii, like rays. First of all the wonderful, most ancient pre-Vedic civilization, where the wisdom that came streaming in was for the first time transformed into thoughts.

The second civilization to arise from the ancient adept school was the most ancient Persian civilization. The third was the Chaldean and Babylonian civilization with its wonderful star wisdom, the magnificent knowledge its priests had. The fourth civilization to come into flower was the Graeco-Latin with its personal colouring, and finally our own developed as the fifth. We are moving towards the sixth and seventh. I have thus identified our mission in human evolution. It is to transform into thoughts, to bring right down to the physical plane, the cosmic wisdom which has existed as such until now.

When an ancient Atlantean listened for the note that lay between the sounds he could hear around him, he would hear the name of something he had perceived to be the divine: Tao. In the Egyptian mysteries this note was transformed into thoughts, writings, signs—the Tao sign, the Tao books. Everything that exists as knowledge, writings, thought only came into the world in post-Atlantean times. It could not have been written down before, for it would have been beyond human understanding. We are now in the middle of manas development. Our race works to take cultivation of the intellect, and at the same time also of egotism, to its extremes. We may certainly say, even if it does sound grotesque: ‘There has never been so much power of understanding and so little inner vision in the world as there is now.’ Thought is furthest away from the inner essence of things, far removed from inner spiritual vision.

When a priest on Atlantis wrote signs in the air, the effect of this would above all be an inner experience in the pupil's soul. In the fourth, the GraecoLatin period, the personal aspect was more to the fore. The Greeks developed personal art. In Rome, the personal element came into government affairs and so on. In our time we live with egotism, a dry personal element, a dry intellect. It is, however, our mission to grasp the occult in the purest thought element. Grasping the spiritual in this, the finest distillate of the brain, is the true mission of our age. To make this thought so powerful that it will have something of an occult power—that is the task we have been given so that we may do what is needed for the future.

Massive fires destroyed ancient Lemuria, massive floods ancient Atlantis. Our own civilization will also perish, and this will be through the war of all against all—this lies before us. Our fifth root race will perish because of egotism taken to its extreme. But a small group of people will out of the power of thought develop the power of buddhi, life spirit, and take it on into the new civilization. Everything that is productive in the human being will grow and grow until his individual nature has risen far enough to reach the summit of freedom. Every individual will have to find a kind of guiding spirit in his inmost soul in our time, buddhi, the power of the life spirit. If we were to go into the future being able to take in civilization impulses only the way it has been done in earlier times, we would move towards humanity shattering into fragments.

What is it that we have in our present age? Each wants to be his own master. Egotism, selfishness is going to extremes. A time is coming when no authority will be accepted other than authority people are able to accept of their own free will, so that its power will base on freely given trust. The mysteries based on the power of the spirit are called ‘mysteries of the spirit’. The future mysteries built on a basis of trust, on the power of trust, are called ‘mysteries of the father’. We bring our civilization to its conclusion with them. This new impulse, the power of trust, must come, otherwise we shall shatter into fragments and shall have a general ego-based and egotistical civilization.

In the times of the mystery of the spirit, based on a power, authority and might of the spirit that did have its justification, individual great sages had wisdom in their possession. They could only initiate people who had gone through severe trials. We are now moving towards a future that will hold the mysteries of the father and have to make every effort to see that every individual is wise. Will this help against egotism and being shattered? Yes! For human beings can only be united if they gain the greatest wisdom, a wisdom in which there are no personal vagaries, opinions or standpoints but one common view. If people were to continue in the way of being different, having points of view, and so on, they would again and again go their separate ways. The most sublime wisdom, however, always creates the same view for all people. True wisdom is one wisdom that brings all people together again in the greatest possible freedom, with no coercion or authority. As the members of the great white brotherhood¹⁰⁷ are always in harmony among themselves and with humanity, so will all human beings be united in this wisdom at a future time. This wisdom alone will create the true idea of brotherhood. The mission of the science of the spirit therefore need be no more than to guide humanity towards this idea, now in the unfolding of the spirit self, later of the life spirit. The great goal of the spiritual science movement is to make it possible for human beings to be free and truly wise. Its mission is to let this truth and wisdom flow into human beings.

In the modern movement for a science of the spirit, one began with the most elementary teaching. Much that is important has been unveiled in the years since the movement started, and even more important things will be gradually unveiled. The work of the movement is therefore to let the wisdom of the great white brotherhood that had its origin in Atlantis flow out gradually. Such work has always been preceded by a long period of preparation. The great and unique event of the coming of Christ Jesus was thus prepared for by all the work of the founders of religions—Zarathustra, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras. All their teaching had the same goal—to let wisdom come to human beings, though always in the form most appropriate for the people concerned. And it is not what the Christ said that was really new. The really new thing that came with the coming and teaching of Christ Jesus was that Christ Jesus had the power to bring to life everything which until then had only been teaching.

Through Christianity, humanity has gained the power that all may be united in acknowledging the authority of Christ Jesus and yet be utterly individual, and that human beings can unite and be brothers in their faith in Christ Jesus, his coming, his divinity. Between the mysteries of the spirit and those of the father we thus have the mysteries of the son, with the school of St Paul its planting site, the school put in the care of Dionysius the Areopagite. The school had its flowering under him, for Dionysius taught those mysteries in a very special way, whilst Paul spread the teaching exoterically.

Let us now provide an explanation from another direction, so that we may understand what it means to say: the mysteries of the father are coming. The teachers of the ancient Atlantean adept school were not human beings but spirits higher than man. They had completed their development on earlier planets. And these teachers, coming from ancient planetary evolutions, taught the mysteries of the spirit to a small select band. In the mysteries of the son, Christ Jesus himself would appear as the teacher on special occasions. He, too, was a teacher who was not human but a god. It will not be until we have the mysteries of the father that the teachers will be humans. Individuals who have developed faster than the rest of humanity will be the true masters of wisdom and of harmony. They will be called the fathers. In the mysteries of the father, therefore, the guidance of humanity will be no longer in the hands of spirits who have come down from other worlds, but in the hands of human beings themselves. This is the important point.

To prepare people to be a core group for this goal, to prepare them for a common wisdom, for authority based on trust, and to develop understanding, initially for a small core group of people—that is the mission of the science of the spirit. The evolution of material civilization reached its high point in the 19th century. This was the time when the science of the spirit first came into the world. A counter impulse to materialism, going in the opposite direction, toward the spirit, was created by this means and therefore existed. The science of the spirit is nothing new, nor the spiritual scientific movement—it merely continues what was there before. Materialism, egotism cause humanity to shatter into fragments, with individuals seeing only their own interests. Wisdom must bring human beings together again who have been separated by this. In utter freedom, with no coercion, people are brought together in wisdom. That is the mission of the spiritual scientific movement in our time. We must clearly understand that we need to gain wisdom in very real terms. We all know the story of the stove whose mission it is to get the room warm. We may present this to the stove in the most moving words, asking it to get the room warm, but it will not do so. It is only if we turn it on that it can fulfil its mission. And so there is little point in just talking about brotherhood and love of one another. Insight alone will take us closer to our goal. For every individual and for humanity as a whole, the road to wisdom, to brotherhood, can only be found through insight.

We have now considered this road, going through three kinds of mysteries. Science of the spirit must make it possible for a small core group of people to understand what has been said, so that understanding may come alive in the masses in the sixth race. This is the mission which the science of the spirit must accomplish. A small part of the fifth root race will anticipate evolution; it will spiritualize manas and unfold the spirit self. The greater part, however, will reach the summit of selfishness. The core group which develops the spirit self will be the seed for the sixth root race, and the ones who are most advanced among them, the masters who have come from the ranks of humanity, as we call them, will then guide the human race. This is the goal of the movement for spiritual insight.

• 105. Middle High German epic poem from the early 13th century, based on the legends of Siegfried and the Burgundian kings.
• 106. Rudolf Steiner was referring to highly evolved individuals who are of the greatest possible importance to humanity. 'These sublime entities have already followed the path which the rest of humanity still has before it. They now work as the great 'teachers of wisdom and of the harmony of man's inner feelings/ (From a letter to a member, Berlin 2 January 1905). See also Rudolf Steiner/Marie von Sivers Correspondence and Documents 1901–1925 (GA 262). Tr. C. von Arnim. London and New York: AP & RSP 1988.
• 107. In one set of lecture notes it says ‘of the white lodge’.