The Rudolf Steiner Archive

All festivals have a living meaning in Theosophy, which is also recovered for the materialistic worldview. People today have become accustomed to the conventional. Yet we can recognize that ancient wisdom has called the Theosophical worldview.

Our ancestors were endowed with different gifts; there was still a living connection with the sources of existence from which we ourselves come and to which we return. Easter had taken on a new form through Christianity. It is the most venerable festival among all peoples. But Easter is not only a festival since the times of Christianity; it existed much earlier. The goal that was striven for could be attained in the mysteries; that which was to come to consciousness was composed in the resurrection of faith. Empedocles describes it with the words: “When you leave the body and swing yourself to the free ether - to the resurrection faith - you will be an immortal spirit, having escaped death.

[That which passes through all of humanity as a collective consciousness and is expressed in its greatest representatives is summarized in the Christian belief in resurrection.

This is most strikingly and mysteriously found in the Easter faith in the mysterious places [of the mysteries. Where the sun gains power, victory over all obstacles of nature, there I must lead you. We are led to the ancient pyramids of the Egyptians, to the places of the Rishis. There has not been a single great spirit who did not believe in resurrection. Plato, Pythagoras, Giordano Bruno, Nicholas of Cusa drew from this belief in resurrection, and it gave them strength. The victory of the spirit over matter in the lowlands of the body? That is the belief from the cult of sacrifice of ancient mysteries. The soul conquers the body. In spring, the sun gains new strength, then it achieves victory over all obstacles in nature. The ancient Indian Rishis did not instruct, but they made new people. Only those who, through outstanding qualities, testified to the spirit in the outside world, were admitted to Easter. Man had to practise virtue, develop his intellectual powers and clarity of mind. He had to become so pure, so virtuous that one could say he had spiritualized himself to such an extent. Those who were found good by the priests were admitted to Easter, which is the festival of the knowledge and transformation of man's nature. It was to be made clear to them what happened to mystics.

We look at the body of man, only a part of it can be perceived with eyes. But we still have the etheric body, which is not quite like the physical body. When we look at the physical body, the space is filled with the second body, the etheric body, and the third, the astral body, [which surrounds and penetrates the physical body like a swirl of mist]. They both surround the physical body, and within it dwells the fourth, the [the ego of the] human being.

Let us consider the human being. He has only to do with his self-knowledge and his astral body, but this can be purified. - When we look at an undeveloped person, his etheric and astral body expresses the lower suffering, it rages through him. In a person who is aware of their moral duty, compassion for people arises; in this case, the colors green, bluish, violet, and reddish appear. Green is the color of thinking activity. Bluish violet is a sign of devotion and all [similar] feelings. The red coloration indicates desire. Orange-yellow means ambition.

The clairvoyant can recognize the level that a person has reached. When the undeveloped person begins to purify his thoughts, red hues appear. Through many incarnations, a person becomes astral within himself, he cultivates and refines himself. When a person is the creator of his astral body, he has triumphed over death. If a person is not yet the master of his astral body, then the physical and astral bodies dissolve in the cosmic mist. At death, the soul is dissolved again into the universe. The etheric body also dissolves. Why do the bodies dissolve? Because man has not yet power over his bodies. What a person has worked on in his astral body is eternal. What he has experienced in terms of purification during his physical existence, he takes with him, and in the new embodiment he brings these experiences with him again. The etheric body is the carrier of life; during life in the physical, the physical body is the ruler. Man cannot easily become the ruler over the life principle. Man knows nothing about the laws that take place in the body - blood, kidneys. All these processes are contingent on life. All physical processes affect the etheric body. Only when a person is liberated from the bodies does he begin the path of life.

For the chela, it is different: when one has undergone a transformation through the mysteries, one's etheric body does not disappear. The chela learns to work on his etheric body. He who begins to work on his etheric body, who has experienced initiation, will gain mastery over his etheric body. Man must work on his etheric body just as he worked on his physical body and his astral body before. When the disciple experiences the “die and become” in the secret schools, he has gained control over his astral body. The chela will conquer death because he has submitted to the mysteries. The chela is made insensitive to his physical body - it no longer exercises control over the chela; the body has then become soft and pliable.

It is a symbol that the mystic receives a new name because he belongs to the higher worlds. Thus the mystic appeared before his fellow human beings as a messenger, and what now appeared to him was an image of what surged within him.

The chela heard the music of the spheres with the vibrations of the universe; it was his own perception. He had experienced immortality. For three days the chela had to work on himself, then he could step before men as a messenger, a prophet. Then he had experienced within himself the mysterious life, the great word of the Logos, the spiritual sounding, ringing and vibrating of the universe: “When you leave the body and swing yourself to the free ether, you will be an immortal spirit, having escaped death!” Empedocles.

During the three days, such mystics had lived in the coffin of the living spirit of immortality. They had conquered death because they had animated their etheric body. It is not for nothing that one speaks of solar heroes, they are those who control their etheric body. Solar heroes exist in all religions. The sun that we see is only a part of the whole sun. One speaks of the sun as the “sounding” one, which sends us life; it is the victory over darkness, the victory over matter. When the chela has become a solar hero, he says, “I have seen the sun shine at midnight.” He sees the sun through the solid matter of the earth. This is not just to be understood figuratively; the sun is a role model for the hero who has learned to control his etheric body.

Goethe's “Faust” I, Prologue in Heaven: “The sun resounds in the brother spheres in the old way of song contest.” And in “Faust” II: “Listen, listen to the storm of the hours, the new day is already being born for the ears of the spirit.” Everywhere where initiation has taken place, one speaks of “sounding.

The word that Christianity gives us: “Blessed are those who believe, even if they do not see,” is intended to emphasize the way in which man has experienced initiation. Aristides, after experiencing initiation, says, “I feel the approach of the Godhead, my hand has touched it.” - Sophocles: “The truth of immortality is recognized only by those who are initiated.” Those who had not yet been able to be initiated hoped for the future life. It would be unthinkable for a slave to endure the hardships of his lot if he could not say to himself: Today I am a slave, but in the next life I will be a king.

Initiation is granted to all people; a character is formed from this awareness. Such a person is also called a “poor person” because he no longer possesses life; the kingdom of God had been absorbed into his inner being. Blessed are those who believe, even if they do not see. This saying will become clear to us when we recognize in the Easter Mystery a point in time that had not yet arrived before the appearance of Christ. That is what happened in Damascus: Saul became Paul. Who would have experienced that before Christ-Jesus was there! No one could have experienced it – unless they had gone to the mystery schools. All the teachings taught the same thing. But that is not what is important, what matters is that Christ was on earth.

[Krishna,] Hermes, Moses, Zarathustra, Buddha and all the other [honorable teachers] could say of themselves, “I am the way and the truth.” But Christ could say, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

Therefore, no teaching was left behind. What is significant is that Christ lived. He had truly appeared. What permeated the mystic when he had conquered death had become flesh. The Logos had become flesh and had lived among us. The word, which otherwise only sounded to the initiate, had become flesh. Until now, only the priests had experienced it in the mystery temples. What was to become clear to all people later. That Christ lives had to take place in the world.

Outside in the world, on the historical stage, something has happened that took place in the depths of the mysteries and cults; what the individual was only allowed to see became an event that took place before everyone's eyes. The initiate knew the word that was spoken.

What took place as a historical event had previously been prophetically indicated. The prophetic coincided with what had taken place; it was now a proof of immortality, it was not just faith. The cross, which earlier only the disciple had seen, was now erected before everyone's eyes. Faith arose in Saul without him entering the mystery schools. What the mystery school student had to gain through training arose in him.

The Simplon and St. Gotthard tunnels would not have been possible if a Leibniz and a Newton had not lived before.

All limit the belief of mystical facts – now the divinity incarnated itself. So the life of Christ Jesus had to take place as a fact if such an event, which was to convert Paul, could take place. – That is why I called my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”.

That is the vision of the Paschal Mystery – it is not just that one speaks of the “humble man of Nazareth”, but it comes down to the fact that Christ Jesus lived, that he appeared in the flesh. It is the same as what lay at the basis of all people before humanity descended into density. That was the Fall of Man at the time the world was founded. Then the Word underlies what was there before the world was, and what will be there when all outer wisdom has perished. Paul first utters the word . Fichte says, “Fall upon me, all of you, rocks, and destroy me... for I am stronger than you when I fulfill my destiny.”

That was the experience in the mystery schools: the initiate penetrated through sensuality, he experienced that the Logos was there before the world was founded. He beheld the sounding Logos, he beheld life, he had attained the free ether. What he absorbed in the mysteries, what penetrated him, was the Word, which was there before the world was founded. (The whole world is based on the Word, the divine Logos. This Word was there before the world was.) When the initiate was made holy through to immortality, then the Word lived in him.

“My Father has loved me before the foundation of the world...”, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Composition of the Sun and the Moon. Astral body – lunar body.

The Easter faith should give us the strength to live towards the great Easter festival, which is born out of the deepest wisdom. These are events that defeat the dark existence and have content for all who are imbued by them. When the human being is illuminated by the light of the Easter faith, the victory over the darkness becomes tangible. The Easter festival is the victory of the light over the darkness.

The sun gains new strength in spring, reviving in man, victory over the lunar body.

Anyone who wants to know the origin of the Catholic Mass must trace it back historically to the mysteries. Mysteries are places of worship in which higher knowledge is not only taught and acquired, but in which the phenomena in question are also demonstrated. The mysteries have taken on a particularly popular form in the currents of worship that came from Persia and Egypt. It is from these that the mass has emerged.

Anyone who wanted to gain knowledge of higher worlds before the appearance of Christ had to be accepted as a student in a secret school. He first had to learn how the world and man came into being. He was introduced to an examination of the origin of the world and the significance of man within the world. He was taught how the divine world spirit has taken shape everywhere. Minerals, plants, animals and so on were seen as formations of the world spirit. Man is a confluence of all that is in the world. Paracelsus once said: All entities of the world are letters, and man is the word in which all these are found. Man is the microcosm in the macrocosm.

The disciple was taught how the Divine Being splits into many details, only to be reunited in man. The disciple was allowed to experience this splitting of the Divine and the return to man.

Man has brought low desires, passions and instincts into the world. The lower animal forms are decadent products of man. Everything that is expressed in animals by lower passions has been brought into the world by man. An original state of the world was as we now see it realized in the mineral world. The gem has no desire, no craving, no wish; the gem is chaste and undemanding. If you imagine the other entities with the same chaste and undemanding nature, you have the ideal of the secret disciple. He had to awaken in him the feeling: You must become again as pure, desireless creation, which has emerged so chaste from the hand of the Creator. He sacrificed everything lower - that was the “catharsis”, the purification of instincts, desires, passions - this corresponds to the “sacrifice” or “oblatio” in the Mass, the second part of the Mass.

The first part is the proclamation or the “Gospel”, where the message of the dissolution of the world spirit in nature is imparted, the intellectual insight into how the world has come into being. This is followed by the second part, the sacrifice. The secret disciple had to have the will to retrace the path to the original chaste form of creation. When he was ready for this, he was admitted to the actual mysteries. In the Egyptian mysteries, he then had to spend three days alone in a locked room and was placed in a state of consciousness in which he could have higher types of perception. He now experienced the descent of the god into the world and the distribution in the world of souls or the astral world, after he himself was ready to sacrifice himself in a similar way.

He first experienced an image that was clear to him through a sure realization: This was once you, in the time when you were still without drives and passions, when you were still without desire. He saw his own image in the distant past, a human image on a higher level. The second was that he saw how this human image on a higher level gave rise to a male human image, whose face shone like the sun. This was Osiris. He saw the emergence of Osiris from the primeval man, surrounded by a radiant aura. From the second image, the present form was then created after a second entity had been separated - Isis - and Horus, the present human being, was born. Now he was an awakened soul.

In the present human being, when he lies asleep, one has first the physical body, then the etheric body and further on the actual aura that lifts out of the sleeping person. The person is in his aura; he has then left his physical body. In the depths of the temple mysteries, the secret disciple consciously experienced the described states in the astral body. He was then a “transformed, a ”consecrated one. He who is transformed in this way perceives the light phenomena of the lower beings.

This process was the third step of the mysteries, the ‹transformation› of man into his astral form. Then the secret student had realized: Just as you have seen the Osiris, you were once like that too; you were astral and then became physical; a second time you should plan to become embodied. By free decision the soul should return to the physical body. When he came out of the mysteries again, he should consciously carry the physical body with him. Now he also received a new name. He felt that this was his eternal name. Each of us has such a name, which he carries in all his incarnations. The initiate carried this eternal name. He had voluntarily incarnated in his body. The human being now speaks “I” to his own body. But the initiate knew that he is not the same as his body. He carries his body on his back. Such a one is crucified in his body; he is the one crucified in matter. Now he steps out and consciously does all the things he used to do unconsciously. This union with the body was called 'communion', the fourth process in the mysteries. He who is thus transformed and reunited with his body is a true initiate.

Now Christ appeared on earth. This appearance of Christ on earth meant that what had previously taken place in the mysteries now took place before the world in physical space. In the past, individuals had gone through the mysteries. All this had now become a historical event, a real historical event in the sacrificial death of Christ Jesus. Now Christ Jesus has established a memorial in remembrance of these mysteries. Those who joined Christ no longer needed to look. To look means to “look into a mystery”. Those who were to come to inner knowledge no longer had to learn to look through the mysteries. They could remain with the external sign. This external sign has a deeper meaning.

The three highest members of the human being are Atma, Budhi and Manas. In the past, when one spoke of “man”, one spoke of Atma, Budhi and Manas. At that time everyone believed that each life was only one in a long series among many, and that it was a life earned. Man was steeped in this. At the same time, there was something about the personal life that man basically looked beyond. He did not attach great value to it.

The task of the first two millennia after Christ was to educate humanity for the higher self through KamaManas. The personal life should be taken seriously and with grandeur. Man spends about two millennia in Devachan. During this period, all of humanity will pass through an incarnation in which value is placed on the personal.

Christ went with Peter, James and John to the mountain - that is, to the sanctuary. This was the introduction to devachanic vision. There they saw Moses and Elijah beside Jesus. 'El' - in 'Elijah' - means 'the way', Moses is called 'the truth' - the moral truth - and Jesus is 'life'. Jesus says to his disciples: 'Elijah has appeared again. John was this Elijah. He told them further: But do not tell until I reappear. They should not speak of the doctrine of reincarnation until he would come back in a new world cycle. For two millennia, the world should get to know the value of the personal. That which runs through from one incarnation of man to another is the finer matter of man, the water, the spiritual. This is also referred to in: “The Spirit of God brooded over the waters,” the waters - the people. The impersonal man is symbolized by the water.

Wine is the symbol for the personal man. Christ transforms the water into wine. He transformed an impersonal religion into a religion of the personality. Just as water turns into wine, so does the impersonal nature of man turn into the personal. He who can grasp the teaching of reincarnation and wants to rise above personality must abstain from wine. He who enjoys wine will never arrive at an understanding of what is impersonal in man.

The lower body should be ennobled and glorified, which is why Christianity should live without the doctrine of reincarnation for two millennia. Christ had appeared to sanctify the personality. As a sign that Christ had taken upon himself the entire sacrifice that used to take place in the mysteries, Christ instituted the sacrifice of the Mass. In it, the mystery act was repeated in an outward sign.

The external action of the Mass is as follows: the priest goes to the altar with the altar boy. First there is a preparatory act, the 'relay prayer' and the 'Kyrie Eleison'. The deeper Mass consists of four parts: 'Gospel', 'Sacrifice' - Oblatio, 'Transformation' and 'Communion'.

During the “Gospel”, a passage from the Gospels is read. This takes place on the right side of the altar. The actual altar is built so that it faces east. The priest stands on the north side. Here he reads the message. This refers to the fact that the human being in the first root race, the polaric one, was also in the north, from where he descended more and more into matter.

The second part of the mass is the 'oblatio' or 'sacrifice'. The priest sacrifices what represents the higher man, just as man used to sacrifice himself. The chalice is the outer symbol for the human heart. What we have in our hearts represents something future; it is less developed now, but contains the spiritual. When man no longer thinks in matter but in the spiritual, then the heart will be the organ of thought. Today the heart is still personal. The wine in the chalice represents the personal. The wafer signifies the brain. Bread and wine are now transformed into the higher nature, into Christ Himself.

The sacrifice brings about the transformation of man. This act is spoken softly so that only the priest himself can hear it. This is an allegorical indication that the truly divine in man is something that he only speaks to himself. Every human being can only say “I” to himself. This is why the Jewish secret doctrine could only let the name be pronounced with particular shyness, the name Yahweh, which is the actual “I” within. That is why the words in the offertory are spoken half in silence and half murmured. That is why the third part, the consecration, is the sacrifice of the Mass.

All this shows that something in the external nature stands as a symbol for what the divinity itself is. In the coarser matter and in the finer matter, the divinity is represented. The bread and the wine, body and blood. At the moment when the consciousness is fully awakened that we are dealing with transformed matter, then on the altar we have in the host a matter such as it is in our brain, and in the wine a matter such as it is in our heart - in the blood.

The priest breaks the host in a certain way, into a certain number of pieces, namely nine:

1. Corporatio = embodiment
2. Nativitas = birth
3. Circumeisio = circumcision
4. Apparitio = appearance
5. Passio = suffering
6. Mors = death
8. Gloria = glory
9. Regnum = kingdom

These nine parts represent the transformed human being, who participates in the higher. These are the nine parts of the human being. The parts that the human being experiences within his personality are 1 to 7, and 8 and 9 extend beyond the personality, which is why they are placed next to it.

Thus, in communion, man unites with his seven-part nature and strives for 8 and 9: 'Gloria' and 'Regnum'. This is accompanied by the Lord's Prayer. First, the Paternoster refers to the existing God of heaven, then to “Thy name”, the name of God, the Logos, who became flesh in Christ, and then to “Thy kingdom”. The whole thing is a parable for the existing world. Man should understand his communion with the existing world. Only the human being who came out of the mysteries understood the world. This is expressed in the Paternoster.

On particularly festive occasions, the procession also includes the 'Sanctissimum', that is the consecrated monstrance containing the Holy Body. At the top of the monstrance is a sun-like rounding with rays, the rounding rests in a half-moon shaped cover. This is also how Osiris and Isis were depicted. The union of Isis and Osiris is represented by the words 'Sanctissimum' above the altar, a symbol of the time when the sun still enveloped the moon.

No priest who is not ordained or authorized to wear the stole may read the sacrifice of the Mass. The stole is the actual priestly garment. The priest first wears a skirt, then the “alba, a shirt-like garment with a belt, then a symbolic garment, then the stole, which is crossed over the chest, and over that the casul.

The stole is the actual insignia of priestly dignity. Therefore, when he wears the stole, he feels like a servant of the church. He is no longer allowed to proclaim his own opinion. He keeps his personal opinion to himself; he says to himself that it could be wrong, and he proclaims what has been believed for thousands of years.

The new era led everything spiritual into the material in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. People learned to judge the world according to material conditions. After Galileo and Copernicus, all attention was drawn down to the physical plane. Everything was conditioned by karma. As a later religion, Protestantism no longer had any understanding for the sacrifice of the Mass. When we see and hear the Mass celebrated with full understanding, we have before us the last reflection of the consecration performed in the ancient Egyptian pyramids.

The physical man emerged from the solar man Osiris; he shall become the solar man again. He has unconsciously descended from the height of the sun; consciously he shall ascend to it again. Solar heroes are those who walk with such certainty on their spiritual path as the sun on its orbit. These solar heroes have reached the sixth degree of initiation. The degrees of initiation for the Persians were: first a raven, second a secret, third a warrior, fourth a lion, fifth a Persian, sixth a solar hero - solar runner -, seventh a father.

What we have said so far about the Gospel of St. John has taken us deeply into the essence of Christianity, and has shown us what profound mystical power lies hidden within this Christian document. We have seen that it should not be read like a report of outer events, or an historical account, but a script engraved by life, so that every sentence re-lived, transforms something in us.

We have followed the seven stages of spiritual ascent in the life of St. John. Today we will add something which goes even deeper. A few examples will show that I have not forced an arbitrary meaning on the gospel, but that by means of occult teaching we are able to understand many things that otherwise would remain dark and unintelligible. First I will remind you of the seven stages of initiation which existed at the time of the birth of Christianity.

In the last lecture we came to know the Christian initiation, but it was not Christianity that first made initiation possible. At all times, ever since there were men as we know them on earth, it was possible to become an initiate—to ascend to higher stages of human existence. Through Christianity all these things became more inward. Since Christianity has provided us with such documents as the John Gospel—which only needs to be allowed to work and live in us—one can achieve much, and rise to spiritual heights. There were no such documents in pre-Christian times available. One had to be introduced into hidden mystery temples, or centres, and according to the various peoples, the lower stages of initiation differed. In the higher stages national peculiarities were of no account, and they were the same for all peoples even in much older times.

I would like to describe the seven stages of initiation as they were practised in the Persian Mithras cult. It was a form of initiation that was cultivated in the whole of Asia Minor, in Greece and Rome, and even as far as the Danube basin it was practised far into the Christian era. For a long time it was possible to go through these stages even in the hidden cultic centres and temples in Egypt which were often built into the solid rock. They were only accessible to those who came to know them as morally advanced pupils and initiates after strict tests. The first grade was the “Raven”. As a raven the neophyte carried the knowledge acquired in the outer sense world into spiritual life. The idea of the raven has lingered in myths and sagas. There are the Ravens of Wotan, the ravens of Elijah, and in the German Barbarossa saga ravens are the intermediaries between the emperor under a spell in the mountain and the outer world. In the Mithraic mysteries “Raven” signified a grade of initiation.

The second grade was that of the “Occult One”. This was the name for someone who had already received some important occult secrets.

The third grade was that of the “Fighter”. These were initiates who felt their higher self to the extent that they understood sayings such as one finds in the second part of “Light on the Path”.¹ Only an initiate of the third grade can understand such sayings. This does not mean that the ordinary person cannot reach a certain comprehension. Everyone has a higher self, and if one is able to abnegate one's lower self and make it a servant of the higher self then one can say in a certain sense: “Though thou fightest thou art not the fighter”. But it is not until one has reached a particular stage of initiation that one really knows what this sentence signifies. What one formerly considered as higher interests become mere subsidiary interests, mere servants of the fighter.

The fourth grade was achieved when complete inner harmony and calm, equilibrium and strength are gained. This grade was called that of the “Lion”. Such an initiate had so developed the occult life in himself that he could represent the occult not only with words but with deeds.

Meanwhile the consciousness of a person who has passed through these four stages of initiation extended further and further. He identified himself with ever larger groupings of people. All these names have a hidden meaning. For instance, the expression, “The Occult One”. What is a human being as we see him in front of us? He is what is in him. As a Raven an initiate of the first grade—he tries to overcome what is only in him. Then his interests become wider. What people around him are, what they feel and what they will, becomes his own feeling and his own will. The terms were coined in times when there were still communities which were kindred enlarged families. How did one regard such a family? One said they were members of a soul-family tracing right back to a common ancestral pair—members of a hidden ego.

An initiate of the second grade, an “Occult One”, had so ennobled his ego that it became the ego of his community; he made their interests his own. The occult entity of a human community was able to live in him. When the ego of such a human community became the ego of an individual initiate then this community became his dwelling place. The “Fighter” fought for the larger community. In ancient Palestine one designated as a “Lion”, he who had raised himself up to encompass the consciousness, the ego, of a whole tribe. The “lion” of the tribe of Judah is the term applied to someone who had reached such a stage of initiation that he bore within himself the ego of the whole tribe.

The initiate of the fifth grade had so overcome his personality that he could take up the folk-soul. The folk-spirit lived in him. In Persia such an initiate was called a “Persian”. In Greece one would have called him a “Grecian”, if it had been the custom. What does this grade signify? For him everything individual has vanished and his consciousness has become one with the whole. This constitutes a higher state of consciousness.

Today it is different. Because of the splitting up of all communal groups we meet with quite different stages of initiation. But at the time of the birth of Christianity it still had a meaning when one spoke of souls initiated to the fifth grade. You can verify this in the John Gospel. Take the first chapter, verse 45:

“Philip findeth Nathanael and saith unto him: We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the Prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said unto him: Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him: Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and saith of him: Behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile!”

Nathanael is here acknowledged as an initiate of the fifth grade. This means that he had learned to know what for us men is the essence of life, the Tree of Life. Earlier in life one tastes of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. One partakes of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge the moment one is able to say “I” to oneself. When the higher, the spiritual, in man awakens it can happen that God has to protect man. Jehovah was concerned lest man, after having eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, should also eat of the Tree of Life before he was ready for it. The initiate of the fifth grade learns what relieves this concern and what raises one beyond all death and all that is transitory. This is the spiritual element.

How can the spiritual element become established in man? For someone who has penetrated more deeply into Theosophy it is something which flows through the whole world. For him whose vision is able to penetrate into higher worlds, all that is, to begin with, a stage of inner development even on higher planes, is expressed at first on the astral plane as a picture. When a person has reached the fifth grade of initiation he always sees a picture on the astral plane, which formerly he had not seen—the picture of a tree, a finely branched, white tree. This picture on the astral plane, which is to be taken as a symbol of the fifth grade of initiation, is called the Tree of Life. He who had reached this point is said to have sat under the Tree of Life. Thus Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree and Nathanael under the Fig Tree. These are terms for the picture on the astral plane. What is seen are reflections of inner—even bodily inner things. The Bodhi Tree is but the astral mirror image of the human nervous system. He who through initiation is able to direct his gaze inward, sees his inner life, even his bodily inner life, projected, reflected into the outer astral world. So you see what is intended in this chapter of the John Gospel.

Nathanael is addressed as one who knows. It is implied: We understand each other. “Jesus said unto him, ‘Before that, Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.’” This means, we are brothers of the fifth grade of initiation. It is a recognition between initiates. “Nathanael answered and saith unto him, ‘Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel.’” You see the recognition is complete. Jesus answered him, and said that it will become apparent that he is more than an initiate of the fifth grade. He said, “Because I said unto thee I saw thee under the fig tree, thou believest; thou shalt see greater things than these.”

I would also like to draw your attention to the conversation with Nicodemus, which you will find in the third chapter. There we have the significant words, “Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.” What does it mean to be born anew and to see the Kingdom of God? It means to have awakened the higher self, to be born so that the eternal core of one's being is awakened. What does it mean to enter the kingdom of heaven? It means to see not only the reflection of Devachan here on earth as we see it through our physical eyes, but to see this realm directly itself. He alone can do this who has not only been born for this physical world, but is born a second time.

Take what I have used as a comparison, but one which is more than a comparison. Take it literally. To be born means to proceed from an embryo to a stage at which one perceives the outer world with the senses. If one does not pass through an embryonic stage one can never be ready to be born. Those who know this stage also know that ordinary life is an embryonic stage for the higher life. This leads us deep into the meaning of ordinary life. It could be quite easy for someone who directs his gaze towards the spiritual world to become convinced that there is such a world and that man is a citizen of it. He could then proceed to disregard the physical world and to believe that one cannot depart from it quickly enough, and that one should mortify the flesh, the sooner to reach the spiritual world. This shows ignorance. It is as senseless as if one would not allow the human embryo to mature but would bring it into the world at two months, and expect it to live there. Likewise for the higher world, one has to develop to become mature. Such is he who has developed his higher self. The physical world is the school. He who has developed his ego here is ready to enter the kingdom of heaven, which means to be born again. Man has to go through birth and death ever and again, until he has gained his full maturity in order to enter the spiritual world itself, so that he no longer needs physical organs. Thus we have to realise that everything we do by means of our eyes, ears and other senses is work done for the higher life.

Certainly, we have, frequently said that man must develop higher senses, that he must develop the chakrams or holy wheels, which enable him to enter the spiritual world and see it. But how does he come to obtain these holy wheels? Through his work on the physical plane. Here is the place of preparation. Our work here prepares the organs for a higher world. As the human being is prepared in the mother's body, so in the body of the great world mother—where we are while leading our physical life—is prepared what is necessary to make it possible for us to see and act in higher worlds. One is perfectly justified to speak of a higher world and to value it higher than our lower world, but we should only use these terms in a technical sense. All worlds are, basically, equally valid expressions of the highest principle, in different forms. We should not despise any world. In this way we learn to relate ourselves rightly towards both the lower and the higher worlds. This is the requirement for entering into the third chapter of the John Gospel.

It must be understood that Jesus speaks to Nicodemus of a genuine rebirth, and that, above all, he wishes to remind him that looked at in this way, the ordinary, everyday life must be reborn as a higher life and recognised as such. He who reads this chapter really carefully will see that this is what is meant.

Many circles lay it against Theosophy that it teaches reincarnation—the gradual maturing of humanity through rebirth and repeated earth lives. It is said that Christianity knows nothing of this teaching of reincarnation. But actually in the John Gospel there is a clear indication that when he spoke intimately with his disciples, Jesus taught reincarnation. For instance, one can only make sense of the ninth chapter (the healing on the Sabbath of the man born blind) if one bases it on the idea of reincarnation. One must remember that he spoke in the language current at that time. In Greece it was then usual to speak of the power that permeates man's innermost being and leads it forward. For the Greeks and all other peoples of that time, the power that made man into man and caused him to develop was God. An outer God, a God in the next world, was unknown in those days. Therefore one called what lived in man, the God in man. Thus if one spoke of the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, it was the higher self that was meant. One can only understand the Old Testament if one appreciates this conception of God. Jesus too speaks of the God living in man when talking intimately to his disciples: “His disciples asked him, saying, ‘Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.’”

These three sentences speak clearly enough. Neither had he sinned in his physical body, nor had his parents; therefore the Jewish law that God will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children unto so and so many generations does not hold good. But the works of God in man shall be made manifest, i.e. the self in man that passes through all his incarnations. These words which Jesus spoke to his disciples could not be clearer. You know the orthodox explanation. Think, if someone meant what is supposed to be said here: The glory of God should be made manifest in a blind person. This presumes that it was arranged that someone should be blind so that Jesus could heal him and the glory of God be made manifest. Can this be reconciled with true Christianity? No. Christianity would be morally degraded. Interpreted theosophically, this image carries a truly beautiful and noble meaning.

It was always so when Jesus spoke intimately with his disciples. That it was so, is especially revealed in the scene known as the transfiguration. It is, however, not in the John Gospel. We find it in the seventeenth chapter of St. Matthew and in the ninth chapter of St. Mark. In St. John it is not to be found. The only reference that could have any relation to it is the passage in the twelfth chapter, verse 28: “‘Father glorify thy name.’ Then came there a voice from heaven saying, ‘I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.’” And further in verse 31: “‘Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto me.’ Thus he said, signifying what death he should die. The people answered him, ‘We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever, and how sayest thou: the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?’ Then Jesus said unto them, ‘Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.’”

We find the transfiguration scene in all the evangelists except St. John. This is significant. Let us clarify the meaning of this scene. What takes place? Jesus goes with three disciples Peter, James and John—up a mountain: this means into the inner sanctuary where one is initiated into higher worlds and where one also speaks in occult language. Then it is said: the master took his disciples up into a mountain—it means that he went to that place where he expounded the parable to them. The disciples were carried up into a higher state of consciousness. They saw then that which is not transitory but eternal. Moses and Elias appear and Jesus himself with them. What does this mean? In occult science the word Elias means the same as El—the goal, the way. Moses is the spiritual scientific word for truth. By the fact that Elias, Moses and Jesus appear you have the fundamental Christian truth: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. Jesus himself says—this is a fundamental Christian mystical truth—“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” (John, ch. 14, v. 6)

The important thing is that here the eternal is shown as against the temporal, and the disciples see into a world which lies beyond this world. Afterwards they said to the master, “All this should only have come to pass once Elias has come again.” Thus they spoke to him as though reincarnation was taken as a matter of course, as also in many other passages in the gospels. John asked, “Art thou Elias come again?” Then answered the master, “Elias is indeed come again—John the Baptist is Elias. But the people did not recognise him. Say it unto no man until I come again.” Here we have the general, religious, profound truth of reincarnation uttered in the intimate conversation between the master and his disciples. At the same time it is set down as a testament: “Say it unto no man until I come again.” This coming again refers to a much later time, the time when all men will recognise Christ through their higher comprehension. When this comes about then will He reappear to them.

Thus time is being prepared through the theosophical world conception. Christ will reappear in the world. The doctrine of reincarnation and karma as a generally accepted idea was to be laid aside until this time. At that time people should know nothing of reincarnation and karma, so that they were obliged to take the life between birth and death as something of particular value and importance. Humanity had to pass through all stages of life experience. Up to the time of Christ, reincarnation was generally accepted. Life between birth and death was only a passing episode. But then man had to learn to take life on earth as something important. An extreme form of this teaching was the dogma of eternal punishment and eternal reward. This is an extreme form. What mattered was that each human individuality, each “God-man”, should pass through one incarnation in which he knew nothing of reincarnation and karma and in which he appreciated the vital importance of life between birth and death.

If you read theosophical books you will find that the time between the two incarnations is fifteen to eighteen hundred years. This is about the same length of time as between the birth of Christ, and the present day. Those living then, appear again today. Because of this they are able again to accept the new teaching. Therefore, the theosophical outlook was really prepared on Mount Tabor by Christ Jesus. If we look at world history in broad lines, we should not think that we are dealing either with truth or with error which we can censure. It is not a question of absolute truth or error, but of what is right for man at any given time. If I sat here with a group of boys no more than ten years old, and set about teaching them higher mathematics, I would be teaching them truth and yet it would be folly. I must give a person what he needs, at any given stage of his development. It is not right for us today to say in retrospect, that the Christian teaching contained errors. No. In order to master the physical plane, one had to take this one life seriously. Certainly, the priestly sages of Chaldea taught great spiritual truths. They brought down a vast knowledge of the spiritual world, but they used the most primitive tools, and did not know how to use the forces of nature in everyday life. The physical plane had first to be mastered. To do this, man's whole life of feeling must be directed towards it. Christianity had to prepare mankind to master the physical world. This was decreed, it is the testament from Mount Tabor. What lies behind this declaration is something wonderful.

If one penetrates deeper, one will find more and more. If we want to understand religious documents which came down to us from times which had true knowledge of spiritual life and not a materialistic way of thinking, we must realise that the mode of thought was so different, that if one spoke of man, one spoke in a completely different way.

Now I must tell you something which though easy to understand intellectually, is difficult for the man of today to grasp with his whole soul. The time when the gospels were written was the dawn of Christianity. One used names then in a way which I will now explain. One did not look to the outer physical man, but one saw something higher, the spiritual, shining through it. A name was not used as it is today, it had a significance. Suppose someone was called James (Jacobus). James really means water. Water is the spiritual scientific term for the soul element. If I call somebody James, I say that his soul shines through his body. With this, I signify that he belongs to the watery element. If I give the name James to an initiate, he is to me the symbol for water (Hebrew—Jam). James is nothing but the technical name for an initiate who especially governs the force of water in its occult sense.

Thus were the three disciples who were taken up to Mount Tabor called by their initiate names: James means water, Peter stands for earth, or rock (Hebrew—Jabascha), John signifies air (Ruach). Thus, John means he who has attained the higher self. This leads us deep into the secret doctrines. Transport yourself back into the time when man only possessed the lower principles—the third Root Race, the Lemurian epoch. Mankind did not then breath air, he breathed through gills. Lungs and breathing through lungs developed later. This process coincided with the impregnation by the higher self. Air is, according to the hermetic principle, the lower which represents the higher—the higher self. If I call somebody John (Johannes), then he is one who has awakened his higher self, who governs the occult forces of air. Jesus is the one who governs the occult forces of fire (Nur). Thus you have in these four names, the representatives of earth, water, air and fire. They are the names of the four who ascended Mount Tabor.

Think of these four together on the Mount of Transfiguration. There you have at the same time, the initiates who govern the four elements: fire, water, air and earth. What happened? It was made manifest spiritually that through the appearance of Jesus, the whole power of the elements was renewed in such a way that the life pulsing through the elements passed through a new, important phase of its development. This is the transfiguration seen occultly. If somebody goes through the transfiguration in this manner, if he has within himself the stages of water, earth and air, and even rises to the forces of fire, then he is a reawakened one, someone who has gone through the crucifixion. Thus, in the case of the other evangelists, this scene is but a preparation for the deeper initiation scene of the crucifixion itself. In the John Gospel, everything is already prepared. The preparatory scene does not appear, only the death on the Mount of Golgotha. Jam, Nur, Ruach, Jabascha—INRI—this is the meaning of the words on the cross.

One can go deeper and deeper into the religious texts and never finish learning. Sometimes when one hears an explanation like this it sounds forced. But every step that leads you deeper will furnish evidence that it is not forced. Superficial explanations seek to avoid the “depths” purposely. But there are depths in these writings. Those who know something can always say to themselves: probably there is much more in it, I have still much to learn. This is the attitude of reverence that we can bring to religious texts.

This reverence is of the utmost importance, for it will become strength in us drawn from the depths. There is one important sentence that I can only touch on. In chapter 19, verse 33,we find: “But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was dead already they brake not his legs ... ” and in verse 36, “For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.” You know that this reminds one of a passage in one of the books of Moses (Exodus 12:46). Rightly understood, it has a deep meaning. It is deeply symbolical, but I can only touch on it.

If you look around the world you will have to admit that man as he is now incarnated in the flesh has no power over life, nor over what stands, above life. He is only master of the lifeless inorganic forces. Man cannot oblige a plant to grow, or to grow faster. He would have to acquire occult power, to do so. Far less is he able to master what is higher than life forces. What he is able to control is the lifeless outer world. There, he exerts his mastery in everyday work over the materials with which nature provides him. He creates works of art, pictures of the Almighty, but he cannot breathe life into them. He can only copy life. He cannot awaken an intimation of life in the lifeless, even in the most sublime Christian works of art. This is so because man has enfolded his astral and etheric forces in the solid, dense physical body. Thus he came to have this relation to the outer world—to be master only of the lifeless. The higher forces which are not tied to the physical must be awakened, and then man will again be able to master life. As it is, he can only control physical forces, and not life itself.

This is connected with the fact that the human body which was once soft and pliable has now become more and more solid. If you go back in evolution you will see that man has changed very much. In Lemurian times he had no skeleton. This was formed later. The bones were the last things to appear in the human organism. He will have them until he has spiritualised himself again, until he has awakened again his inner forces and learned the lesson which he can only learn in this dense body with its hard skeleton. Christ Jesus is that spirit whose cosmic mission it was to be incarnated in just such a body in order to show man the way out of this world into a higher world. He is the leader and guide into the higher world. That which has to find its way into the higher world is symbolised by the solid human skeleton. As long as man had not reached the stage of having a hard skeleton, he did not need a Messiah. But for this present epoch he needs the Messiah, the Redeemer.

Thus it is evident that the forces in Jesus which are connected with the higher world do not concern present day humanity. We can express it by calling the skeleton the exterior; water, the etheric body; blood, the astral body; and then the spirit. *[First Epistle of John, ch. 5, v. 8, (literally) “And there are three that bear witness: the spirit and the water and the blood.”] Therefore blood and water can flow from the body of Christ. These are of no import for the present cycle of human development. On the other hand, that which supports the whole, which leads man upwards to the throne of the Eternal, what he needs in order to learn the lesson, that must be kept uninjured. This is the skeleton, the symbol for the lifeless in nature. Through this skeleton, Christ is connected with the present cycle of man's development. This is what must be kept intact until such time as man shall have reached higher stages. We can follow this back to the corresponding passages in the Books of Moses. But this can be done some other time.

Today I wanted to add something which will have shown you that the John Gospel is inexhaustible, and how full it is of strength and life. As we take it in and absorb it, it gives us strength and life. This is why this gospel is the leading scripture for those who wish to penetrate deeper and deeper into theosophical Christianity. If theosophy is to work for Christianity it is from this, above all, that it must start. But clearly, if I were to explain the John Gospel in its entirety to you, I should have to take the whole winter. I should have to take it sentence by sentence and then you would see how deep are the words ascribed to John, i.e. to him whose very name indicates that he is a herald of the higher self. He is the representative of air, and master of the higher forces, who, from the perception of the higher self, wrote his Gospel according to St. John.

It would be futile and in vain, to attempt to fathom, or criticise this gospel with the powers of the ordinary intellect. In our time the intellect has achieved great things, but the John Gospel is not written for the intellect. Only he who has overcome the intellect and is able to lead it to the heights of spirit power as John did, can understand his gospel. Theosophy would be quite wrong to undertake an intellectual critique of this John Gospel. Instead, it should immerse itself in it, in order to understand it. Then we should see that a new spirit of Christianity—not only the spirit of the past, but a future Christianity, can proceed from the John Gospel. We will become aware of the deep truth of one of the most beautiful and profound sayings of Christ. Out of his mouth we are told that Christianity is not something that has merely lived in the past, but that the same power still lives today. True it is what Christ said: I am with you always, even unto the end of time.

• 1. “Stand aside in the coming battle, and though thou fightest, be not thou the warrior.” Light on the Path, Mabel Collins, Theosophical University Press. Pasadena, California, 1971.

All the knowledge that is brought to people in theosophical literature naturally comes from one source. To the question “How do you get it?”, the answer must be: Yoga is the path to higher knowledge, and to participation in the higher worlds in general. “Yoga” means union with the divine source of existence, with the spiritual sources of the world. The one who practises yoga is called a yogi, that is a person who seeks to develop within himself the abilities and powers to penetrate into the spiritual worlds.

There is a great difference between the man who has grasped the idea of Yoga and he who seeks to acquire knowledge today. The latter seeks to bring as much of the outer world as possible into his own mind. The yogi, on the other hand, seeks out all the sources of knowledge that come from spiritual life itself. He starts from the fact that there is development, that man's development, as it is now, is a stage, and that there are forces and abilities slumbering within him that still have to come out, and that if we bring them out, we can truly enter into higher worlds. If you want to become a yogi, you must acquire an unconditional belief in the upward development of the human being, not a blind faith, but the active belief that you can move upwards, that you can develop forces that have not yet been expressed. But this cannot happen overnight. Yoga is a path that consists in many ways of renunciation, and it must be sought with patience and perseverance. It is very difficult for people in today's cultural life to achieve yoga. That is why the theosophical movement was necessary. When Subba Rao was asked how long it takes to achieve initiation, he said: “It can take seventy incarnations, sometimes only seven, for some it takes seventy years, for some seven years, and there may be people who achieve it in seven days, and some even in seven hours.

Of course, it depends on the level of maturity of a person. A person may be further along than he or she realizes. Internally, a person can already be empowered to exercise his or her will and mind in the spiritual world. It may be that someone in a previous incarnation was much further along than he has come today. Perhaps in this incarnation, due to the conditions of the physical body, what was already within him could not come out; now the previously attained powers must be brought out through the powers of the present life. For example, someone might have been a wise priest with magical abilities. This would now have to be brought out in the later incarnation through the powers of that incarnation. Perhaps the brain development in the later incarnation is not so far advanced as to make this possible. It could also be that other forces are missing, perhaps love and kindness; then the earlier forces cannot be brought out again. That is why it takes less time for one person and more time for another to reach initiation. It is a matter of exploring what is already within us by creating the most intimate inner life possible.

The concept of yoga must be removed more and more from everything external and tumultuous, and it must be realized that yoga will happen in the seclusion of the innermost life. Above all, it should be kept in mind that higher spiritual qualities should never be developed without strengthening the character at the same time. Imagine a yellow and a blue liquid mixed together, then a green liquid would result. Just as the yellow and blue liquids, when mixed, produce a green one, so the spiritual and physical powers of man are united. When the spiritual nature is extracted, the physical nature remains behind, so to speak, as a sediment. Much depends on the two natures being mixed [correctly]. It is because the higher nature is connected with the lower nature that man is a particular man. In yoga training, the higher nature is drawn out, and all those qualities that are bad in man come to the fore if absolute character development does not go hand in hand with it. If you aspire to yoga, you have to be prepared for the strangest things to happen in your life. These are the temptations of Saint Anthony. If you seriously begin with yoga exercises, then you have to be prepared for all sorts of things to come out of the lower nature. Some people who were truthful before start lying, cheating, becoming unreliable in character. This happens when the strictest sense of yoga training is not required of students to constantly strengthen their character. Opportunities for wrongdoing then arise as if by magic. That is why all genuine yoga schools first look at the development of morality. Annie Besant repeatedly says to Westerners: spiritual training without moral elevation of character can only lead to wrong paths.

Yoga consists of raising certain things that a person otherwise does unconsciously into consciousness. A person usually performs the breathing process unconsciously; the yogi raises it from the subconscious into consciousness. The yoga training that places the greatest emphasis on the breathing process from the outset, the Hatha Yoga training, only leads to a certain point of development; then it breaks off. It does not go further than the realization of the astral. From the very beginning, one should not follow the Hatha Yoga path, but the Raja Yoga path. This path regards a process such as the breathing process as part of a larger whole. It also involves bringing the things that we previously performed unconsciously into consciousness. We pay no attention to a large part of our thought processes. We have to learn to follow our inner thought process with attention. We can do this by bringing about complete calm within us in relation to the outside world. Then we have to bring thoughts into this calm ourselves and focus our attention on a particular

thought. It is best to devote ourselves to thoughts that contain a force. This conscious immersion in a thought is called meditation. What matters is to live intimately with a thought. You can meditate with a specific valuable thought content. You have to rest completely on it in all silence. You could also do it with an everyday thought, for example with the thought “table” and realize what that is. Most people do not realize what a table is, namely that a weight mass is distributed over several legs. You can search to understand the concept of the table in a contemplative way.

Look at certain pictures by great painters [...]. With some, you feel satisfied when you see floating figures, but with others you feel no satisfaction at all. With some pictures, you feel that the painter literally lived within the figures, while with others you feel that he only saw the figures from the outside.

A European man of culture will find it very difficult to immerse himself in such a concept for a long time. But the real yogi must immerse himself more and more in the concept. As we live inwards, forces develop in our soul that were not there before. When we rest in a concept with the soul, then these forces come out. You have to have the reins in your hand and look at your soul life in such a way that you always have the reins in your hand. A good preparation for this is this quiet resting in thought. The thoughts of life call the inner soul to the most diverse affects. You have to learn not to be led by the soul forces, but to lead them. You have to learn to strengthen your inner self more and more so that you can hold back an outburst of anger, so that you can hold back hatred. We have to get all our affects and passions under control so that nothing gets out of hand with us. We have to achieve complete mastery and restraint of our inner self. This is achieved through quiet devotion to the thought.

To meditate, it is necessary: first, to fix a thought in itself; second, to identify with the thought; third, to remain within it for a while. You have to enter into a thought, for example, the concept of the table, and identify the will with it. Then Samadhi occurs, which is immersion in the object.

The regulation of the breathing process is connected with such training of thought. If this alone is tackled from the beginning, it is Hatha Yoga. If it forms part of the other training, it is Raja Yoga. The yogi must observe certain times for breathing, and then he enters into a rhythmic life. The seven degrees of the Persian initiation are based on this: Ravens, Occult, Strugglers, Lions, Persians, Sun-runners, Fathers. Those who had come so far as to make their lives completely rhythmic were called Sun-runners. In this way, the human being integrates himself into the whole rhythm of nature. The sun returns to the same point every year. Everything happens rhythmically with it. Everything in life is based on rhythms. If a person wants to achieve something, he must bring rhythm into his life. The plants and animals are connected to the seasons in a very specific way. In the human being, everything is initially subject to the arbitrariness of the astral body, and this makes his life unrhythmic. This brings disorder into his life. He must now make it rhythmic again.

If I meditate every day at a certain hour, for example at seven o'clock in the morning, I bring rhythm into my life. But if I meditate at ten o'clock or at some other time instead of at seven o'clock, then the rhythm is disturbed. Even if a person decides to say a prayer every day at seven o'clock in the morning, again at noon and before going to bed, then these are three fixed points that bring rhythm into our lives. Part of the rhythmization of life is also the rhythmization of the breathing process. This is connected with very deep things that exist between man and the universe. Plants and humans belong together in a certain way. The human being inhales oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide; the plant does it the other way around. Throughout evolution, there is a connection between the nature of plants and that of human beings. The plant grows rhythmically according to natural laws. It is still completely chaste because it does not yet have the astral life within it. On the one hand, it is higher than the human being, but on the other hand, it is lower. As an ideal, it stands before man. Man must become similar to it by rhythmizing the breathing process. When one inhales and holds the breath longer, one develops carbonic acid in oneself, and thus approaches the nature of plants.

When the yogi gradually begins to consciously live in what he had previously done unconsciously, then new worlds open up around him. He then experiences new worlds. If we were asleep, we would not hear the most glorious music. So, at first, man is a sleeper in relation to the spiritual worlds. And just as waking up is like waking up to melodies, there is a waking up in the spiritual world through the breathing process. When you consciously enter into the breathing process, imaginative knowledge begins. Ordinary seeing is material knowledge. Imaginative knowledge consists in our ability to evoke images that are not mere visions, but that are grounded in the very basis of existence. Even when you look at the ordinary world, you basically only have images. Everything in the external world is an image. The images of the external world correspond to material knowledge. The images that arise through the yoga process are stimulated internally, stimulated in the right way.

What matters in this whole world, which then arises in us, is that it is inwardly true. That is the difficulty in the yoga training. As long as a person has personal desires, he cannot easily distinguish truth from untruth in this world. Hence the need to become selfless. In the Pythagorean schools, people were made to understand: You can only learn about life after death when you are completely indifferent to whether you live after death or not. All personal aspiration is eliminated in relation to this one question. When personal desire is eliminated, where imagination is needed, then truth is expressed in imagination.

The third stage is the stage of rational will. Here you also learn how the truth is made, the will by which something is willed. The fourth stage is the stage of intuition. The yoga training is about reining in everything that is in us: desire, urge, craving and passion. As long as we do not control this, truth makes us illusory. Above all, absolute inner calm, patience, endurance and steadfastness are required in the practice of yoga.

Certain character traits are essential. We must never lose our harmony with our surroundings, otherwise our progress will be at an end. If the smartest person fell asleep and then woke up on Mars, he would be unable to use his abilities on Mars. He would be considered insane there. All madness is a lack of harmony with the environment; then you can't get ahead if that happens. Not a drunken person should you become, as Plato says, but a sober person, and in no way neglect your everyday duties. This is absolutely necessary for the practice of yoga.

Then it is important to develop humility. Only under the influence of the highest humility can one speak correctly of the experiences in the higher worlds. A very high degree of humility must go hand in hand with the yoga training. The oriental disciple can easily gain a sense of respect and appreciation for the teacher. In this case, it is very important. The deepest trust in the teacher is necessary for the yoga training because one must have a fixed point. In a sense, the yoga student leaves the whole rest of the world. His relationship to the world changes. All things then take on a new meaning.

He becomes alien to his surroundings. He must transform all things. A certain spiritual alchemy takes place with him. He must now do everything out of an inner sense of duty. He treats everything from a new point of view. The way he relates to things changes completely. In a sense, the person becomes estranged from his surroundings. If he does not develop full strength of character, he can easily lose touch with his environment.

The fixed point for the yoga student was always the teacher, who was a point of reference for him, whom he calls his guru, whom he regards as the embodiment of the deity in man. In reality, divine beings do exist in higher human natures. It seems obvious to the Oriental that a higher being lives in the guru. This is not the case in the West. If someone seeks a yoga training in the West, then he will also find the opportunity to reach his goal in the West.

The greatest evil in yoga training would be impatience. But you overcome that when you recognize reincarnation and karma as realities. We must live with the feeling that we actually see this present life between birth and death as one among many.

In a transcript by Anna Rebmann, the following table is attached:

Automated Translation

The Sermon on the Mount is usually not appreciated in its full depth because many people understand it to be a sermon that the Lord is said to have preached to the people. But in reality it is not addressed to the people, but “spoken on the mountain”. This means: in the intimate sanctuary, where the secrets of religion are shared.

With the people, Jesus speaks in parables, but when he is alone with his disciples, he explains many things to them. “On the mountain means in the mystery”. The most important teaching “on the mountain is that which is called the ‘transfiguration’. There Jesus talks to his disciples about reincarnation. He tells them: John the Baptist is Elijah, they just did not recognize him. There on the mount of transfiguration, time and space were overcome for the disciples James, Peter and John; they saw beings who were no longer incarnated: Moses and Elijah. “Eb means the goal, the path. ”Moses means the truth; in the middle is Christ - the life. So the disciples saw before them: the path, the truth and the life.

When reading this scene, we find that the disciples speak a significant word. In the path of discipleship, three stages are distinguished. The first stage is that of the homeless man, the second stage is that on which man builds “huts” in the spiritual world. The disciples were at this stage at that time, so they said: “Here let us build huts.

Jesus had taken the three disciples, who were on the second level of fellowship, with him into the mystery. Everything that is spoken “on the mountain” means that we are dealing with an intimate revelation to the disciples. It says:

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and his disciples came to him. [Matt. 5:1]

Even if we understand this sentence only literally, we can see that it is not a sermon to the people. He went away with his disciples. We are therefore dealing with an intimate teaching that is only to be spoken before the familiar disciples. These are then in turn to teach the others who are outside.

The Sermon on the Mount speaks of two worlds. From this we can learn how the sensual and the supersensual relate to each other. Man must first slowly and carefully get used to judging things when entering other worlds. In the astral world, everything appears as a mirror image, even with numbers. For example, 364 is 463 in the astral world. What happens in a certain direction here in the world appears in the astral world as a mirror image. People who develop clairvoyance through pathological conditions tell of terrible animals that pounce on them. These are the lower passions of man; they appear in the astral world in the mirror image. What comes from man comes back to him in the astral. The passions come towards him as figures from outside. This is an example of how the inner self appears in the mirror image when we perceive it in the higher world. Every thing, everything here in the sensual world, has a real mirror image in the supersensible world. The very first sentence of the Sermon on the Mount points this out. We must bear in mind that language is more spiritual than we think.

The word 'blessed' is related to the word 'soul'. This is also the case in Greek. 'To be blessed' means to bring the soul to full development. Just as 'holy' is related to the words 'whole', 'healthy' and 'pure'. The Holy Spirit is the healthy Spirit, who is completely pure. Blessed is he who has developed his soul, who has ascended to the supersensible. Bit by bit, the Lord explains to his disciples how they become blessed, how they ascend.

The first Beatitude says:

Blessed are they that mourn, and weep, and make themselves clean; they shall have joy of God. [Matthew 5, 3]

That means that the Kingdom of Heaven is within themselves. This is the profound connection between the material and supersensible worlds. Those who long for the spirit will find the reflection of their striving within themselves, the Kingdoms of Heaven. This is the natural connection between our striving and the reflection, the Kingdoms of Heaven. Nothing can happen in the sensual world that does not have its counterpart in the supersensible world. If we disdain the spirit, the spirit flees. If we strive for the spirit, the reflection flows towards us. Thus Christ always explains the connections to his disciples.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted [Matthew 5:4]

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth [Matthew 5:5]

Those who have not developed within themselves what is called meekness, who are irascible, cannot have the necessary counter-image, namely the kingdom of the earth, for themselves. One should not try to enter the kingdom of heaven without first having redeemed the kingdom of the earth and then bringing it with one into the kingdom of heaven. We are here on earth to redeem and deify everything that is on earth. Just as the bee flies over the fields, collecting honey from the flowers and carrying it into the beehive, so the soul flies over the world to gather experiences and bring them into the realm of heaven. We must learn to let the world come to us and let it work in us. If we absorb everything, if we show gentleness and full fertility to the earth, it will also bring us something.

Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness, for they will find satisfaction within themselves.

[Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. [Matt. 5:7]]

Just as the north and south poles necessarily belong together, so the one link of the sensual world and the other in the supersensible world necessarily belong together.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

God reveals Himself only to pure hearts. A person who is incapable of purifying his heart from all the impressions flowing to him from the sense world cannot experience the counter-image in his heart. When the heart is pure of sensual and memory material, then it can see God. But that which is full of sensual and memory material excludes the Godhead. There is the image and the counter-image: the pure heart – the Godhead.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be children of God by themselves.

When Jesus wanted to explain this to his disciples, he said: There are children of God and children of men. The children of God want to remain children of God; the children of men want to become children of God. The children of God are also called the descendants of Abel, the children of men the descendants of Cain. The descendants of Abel did not descend to the greatest human labor and toil; they accept what comes from God, even blood, and bring it to God as a sacrifice.

The children of men have descended lower. They must sacrifice from what they themselves have gained through their labor. Therein lies a profound contrast in the spiritual life of man. The children of Abel were generally priests who want to draw from the trancelike inspiration that takes what God gives and sacrifices it to him. God has ignited in us the trance-like, unconscious inspiration. On the other hand, there is a fully conscious wisdom that man acquires during his journey on this earth. Cain's children are the people who conquer this wisdom. If people had remained Abel's children, they would have been led by the hand of divine naturalness; but God wanted to let them be free. They have to become Cain's children. This initially led to a lack of peace. This led to Cain killing his brother. The children of Cain must develop peaceableness within themselves again, and then they will become children of God through themselves again. This is a sentence that, above all, refutes the basic view of those who believed that the old Abel principle should be revived. They say: People are not meant to be able to become children of Abel again once they have been children of Cain. That is why the Jesuit order wants to keep humanity in its dullness with the divinity. He wants to fight evil by not giving people the opportunity to become free. The Jesuit order almost contradicts this sentence that people can become children of God again through themselves, and believes, however, that they are acting in the spirit of Jesus. Ignatius of Loyola said: We do not want to let people descend so low. The good should be preserved at the expense of the light.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Here we see the opposite of what is said in the first sentence. Begging for the spirit comes from the person themselves. Here we find that which works from the outside; there the mirror image is formed within, which works against it. It becomes ever clearer to us that this basic tendency lies in the Sermon on the Mount. We thereby gain a deeper understanding of what Christ gives to his disciples “on the mountain, in the mystery.”

If we look at the seemingly radical sentences from this point of view, we can understand this. In the sensual world, we are separate from each other. In the moment when we feel ourselves in the supersensible world, we are one. Only in the sensual world are we many. We believe that our physical skin is a boundary. However, we are not separated from each other by it. That is an illusion. We go beyond that and are connected to each other. In truth, we are intertwined. When we intuitively grasp this on an emotional level, we will come to a different understanding of our fellow human beings. We will feel when our fellow human being directs his anger at us, when in truth it is we ourselves who are directing the anger at us. If we imagine a bond between soul and soul, we feel that the separation ceases to exist and we feel that we have no right to perceive the intention of another person as if it did not belong to us.

Jesus wanted to make it clear to his disciples that external justice is not what matters, but empathy for the soul of the other person. He says:

You have heard that it was said: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. [Matt 5:38-39]

But I say unto you: Love your enemies, so that you may understand that you are one. [Matt. 5:44-45]

So it should not be “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”, but I must feel responsible for what the other person does. This is where thinking in the supersensible should come into play.

If anyone demands my coat and I feel at one with him, I will not hesitate to give him everything. If my coat is his coat, then my cloak is also his cloak. I will not go one mile with him, but two. That it is I who live completely in the other, that is what Christ expresses here. We must think supernaturally, completely free from sensuality.

But if your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. [Matthew 5:29]

Man has desires; he can satisfy them only through the physical organs. The possibility of satisfying these desires depends on the physical organs. Kamaloka arises from the fact that when a person dies, he still has desires for what only the physical organs can offer him. He must first get used to no longer using sensual organs. We should use our senses here in this world in such a way that we draw the spiritual out of things with the help of our senses. As we behold the sensual, we should continually lift ourselves up to the spiritual. To the same extent we prepare ourselves for devachan. This is what Christ means when He says:

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body be cast into hell. [Matt. 5:29-30]

If the right eye tempts you to remain in the sensual, then free yourself from what the eye clings to. Of course, this does not mean physically plucking it out.

Every sentence of the Sermon on the Mount implies a profound mystery wisdom about how the sensual and the supersensible are connected. Here Jesus explains the essence of Kamaloka to his disciples, and further teaches them: Man should never abuse the supersensible for sensual purposes. The Godhead should never be forced to do something that is not within the cosmic laws themselves. We should not bring down the supersensible sphere, but rise to the supersensible world. There is a great temptation, for example in spiritualism, to want to see the manifestations of the spiritual world. Man wants to bring down the spiritual world instead of developing upwards. The truth of spiritualism cannot be denied, but the method is attacked. We do not want to interfere with the transcendental sphere through our sensual sphere.

Christ emphasizes the perniciousness of the oath, because one should not interfere with the transcendental; one should not pull down heaven to confirm earthly matters.

Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is His footstool.

If you want to have the supernatural, you should rise to the supernatural. No one should touch the supernatural laws. Not my will, but yours be done.

We should not have the rights that the tax collectors have. We should know that the great unity reigns between “mine” and “yours”.

For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Do not even the tax collectors [...]? [Mt 5,46]

You shall be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

You shall act consciously, out of the supersensible world.

The conclusion of the speech also contains profound occult aspects. Many believe that they have come to the truth through all kinds of arts. However, it is not only a matter of acquiring the higher powers, but also of putting them at the service of humanity. It is not so easy to preserve that which must be preserved when man rises to higher powers. One can make very definite observations in the case of people who develop their higher powers and do not at the same time also raise their character to higher levels. They then easily become more imperfect than before.

Let us suppose that one has a solution of two substances, for example a red and a blue liquid mixed together; it would be a mixed color. In the same way, in everyday life, man is a mixture of his lower and higher nature. As man usually is, the higher nature prevents his lower nature from coming to evil, radical excesses. By interweaving the higher and lower soul, we are protected from such radical excesses in ordinary life.

Higher development means the withdrawal of the higher soul from the lower. Thus the higher soul is revealed; but the lower soul is then left to its own devices. In occult higher development, we have the higher nature, but also the lower nature – each on its own. That is why the lower nature comes out completely in people who develop occultly. Therefore, it is necessary to develop character, morality, and full self-control alongside occult development. The morality prevailing on earth is the solid rock floor on which we must rest. If we do not build on it, we build on sand. Jesus says:

Many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not acquire the higher ability of prophesying?' [Matthew 7:22]

It would be strange if Christ wanted to call all those who have acquired this ability “evildoers.” He is speaking here of those who, along with higher abilities, have not also acquired higher morals.

Whoever hears my words...

– by this he means his teachings, which he gave them; one should absorb them with the supersensible consciousness – at the end it says:

The people were horrified at his teaching.

When Jesus had finished his teaching, a commotion was heard in the innermost part of the temple, in the Holy of Holies, signaling that a revolt had broken out among the people outside. This took place outside the temple. The people had not heard the Sermon on the Mount; the last sentence has no relation to the others. Christ-Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount only for his disciples, in order to express the entire character of the supersensible world to his disciples. They were to become his apostles through his communicating his most intimate intentions to them in the holy of holies. Through this knowledge their words, which they spoke before the world, were inspired.

We have let two Christmas plays pass before our soul. We may perhaps raise the thought: Are the first and second Christmas plays dedicated in the same sense to the great human cause that is so vividly before our soul these days? The two plays are fundamentally different, quite different from each other. One can hardly imagine two plays that are more different and yet are dedicated to the same subject. When we consider the first play, we see in all its parts the most wonderful simplicity, childlike simplicity. There is depth of soul, but it is breathed through and lived through everywhere with the most childlike simplicity. The second play moves on the heights of outer physical existence. It is immediately associated with the thought that the Christ Jesus enters the world as a king. He is confronted with the other king, Herod. Then it is shown that two worlds open up before us: the one that, in the good sense, develops humanity further, the world that Jesus Christ serves, and the other world that Ahriman and Lucifer serve, and which is represented by the devilish element. A cosmic, a cosmic-spiritual picture in the highest sense of the word! The connection between the development of humanity and the writing on the stars is immediately apparent. Not the simple, primitive clairvoyance of shepherds, which finds a “shine in the sky” that can be found in the simplest of circumstances, but the deciphering of the writing on the stars, for which all the wisdom of past centuries is necessary and from which one unravels what is to come. That which comes from other worlds shines into our world. In the states of dreaming and sleeping, that which is to happen is guided and directed; in short, occultism and magic permeate the entire play.

The two plays are fundamentally different. The first one comes to us, one may truly say, in childlike simplicity and innocence. Yet how infinitely admonishing it is, how infinitely sensitive. But let us first consider only the main idea. The human being who is to prepare the vessel for the Christ enters the world. Its entrance into the world is to be presented, to be demonstrated, that which Jesus is for the people into whose circle of existence he enters. Yes, my dear friends, this idea, this notion, has by no means conquered those circles so readily, within which such plays have been listened to with such fervor and devotion as this one. Karl Julius Schröer, of whom I have often spoken to you, was one of the first collectors of Christmas plays in the 19th century. He collected the Christmas plays in western Hungary, the Oberufer plays, from Bratislava eastwards, and he was able to study the way in which these plays lived and breathed among the people there. And it is very, very significant when you see how these plays were handed down from generation to generation in handwritten form, and how, not when Christmas was approaching, but when Christmas was approaching in the distant past, those who were found suitable for this in the village prepared to perform these plays. Then one sees how closely connected with the content of these plays was the whole annual cycle of life of the people in whose village circles such plays were performed. The time in the mid-19th century, for example, when Schröer collected these plays there, was already the time when they began to die out in the way they had been played until then. Many weeks before Christmas, the boys and girls in the village who were suitable to represent such games had to be found. And they had to prepare themselves. But the preparation did not consist merely of learning by heart and practicing what the play contained in order to represent it; rather, the preparation consisted in the fact that these boys and girls changed their whole way of life, their external way of life. From the time they began their preparations, they were no longer allowed to drink wine or consume alcohol. They were no longer allowed to fight on Sundays, as is usually the case in the village. They had to behave very modestly, they had to become gentle and mild, they were no longer allowed to beat each other up, and they were not allowed to do many other things that were otherwise quite common in villages, especially in those times. In this way, they also prepared themselves morally through the inner mood of their souls. And then it was really as if they were carrying something sacred around in the village when they performed their plays.

But this only came about slowly and gradually. Certainly, in many villages in Central Europe in the 19th century there was such a mood, the mood that at Christmas these plays were something sacred. But one can only go back to the 18th century and a little further, and this mood becomes more and more unholy. This mood was not there from the beginning, when these games came to the village, not at all from the beginning, but it only emerged and established itself over time. There were times, one does not even have to go back that far, when one could still find something different. There you could find the village gathering here or there in Central Europe, and a cradle in which the child lay, in which a child lay, not a manger, a cradle in which the child lay, and with it, indeed, the most beautiful girl in the village – Mary must have been beautiful! – but an ugly Joseph, an ugly-looking Joseph! Then a scene similar to the one you saw today was performed. But above all: when it was announced that the Christ was coming, the whole community appeared, and each person stepped on the cradle. Above all, everyone wanted to have stepped on the cradle and rocked the Christ Child, that was what it was all about, and they made a tremendous racket, which was supposed to express that the Christ had come into the world. And in many such older plays, there is a terrible mockery of Joseph, who has always been depicted as an old man in these times, who was laughed at.

How did these plays, which were of this nature, actually come into the people? Well, we must of course remember that the first form of the greatest, most powerful earthly idea, the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, was the idea of the savior who had passed through death, of the one who, through death, won for the earth what we call the meaning of the earth. It was the suffering of Christ that first came into the world in early Christianity. And to the suffering Christ, after all, sacrifices were offered in the various acts that took place in the cycle of the year. But only very slowly and gradually did the child conquer the world. The dying savior first conquered the world, only slowly and gradually did the child conquer it. We must not forget that the liturgy was in Latin and that the people understood nothing. Only gradually did people begin to see something more in the sacrifice of the Mass, which was fixed for Christmas, besides the sacrifice of the Mass that was celebrated three times at Christmas. Perhaps not without good reason – if not for him personally, then for his followers – the idea of showing the mystery of Jesus to the faithful on Christmas night is attributed to Francis of Assisi, who, out of a certain opposition to the old forms and spirit of the church, held his entire doctrine and his entire being. And so we gradually, slowly see how the believing community at Christmas should be offered something that was connected with the great mystery of humanity, with the coming down of Christ Jesus to earth. At first, a manger was set up and figures were merely made. It was not acted out by people, but figures were made: the infant Jesus and Joseph and Mary – but in three dimensions. Gradually, this was replaced by priests dressing up and acting it out in the simplest way. And it was only in the 13th or 14th century that the mood began to develop within the communities that could be described as people saying to themselves: We also want to understand something of what we see, we want to penetrate into the matter. And so people began to be allowed to play individual parts in what was initially only played by the clergy. Now, of course, one must know life in the middle of the Middle Ages to understand how that which was connected with the most sacred was at the same time taken in such a way as I have indicated. At that time it was entirely possible out of a sense of accommodation, so that the village community, the whole community, could say: I too rocked a little with my foot at the cradle where Christ was born! — out of the accommodation of this mood. It could be expressed in this and in many other ways, in the singing that accompanied it, which at times intensified to the point of yodeling, in all that had taken place. But that which was alive in the matter had in itself the strength, one might almost say, to transform itself out of a profane, out of a profanation of the Christmas idea, into the most sacred itself. And the idea of the child appearing in the world conquered the holy of holies in the hearts of the simplest people.

That is the wonderful thing about these plays, of which the first was one that was not simply there as it now appears to us, but became so: piety first unfolding in the mood out of impiety, through the power of that which they represent! The Child had first to conquer hearts, had first to find entrance into hearts. Through that which was holy in Itself, It sanctified hearts that at first encountered It with rudeness and untamedness. That is the wonderful thing about the developmental history of these plays, how the mystery of Christ still has to conquer hearts and souls piece by piece. And tomorrow we will take a closer look at some of what has been conquered step by step. Today I would just like to say: it is not without reason that I noticed how admonishingly even the simplest thing is presented in the first game.

As I said, slowly and gradually that which came into the world with the mystery of Christ entered into the hearts and souls of human beings. And it is actually the case that the further one goes back in the tradition of the various mysteries of Christ, the more one sees that the form of expression is an elevated one, a spiritually elevated one. I would like to say that the further back one goes, the more one enters into a “cosmic utterance”. We have already incorporated some of this into our reflections, and in the previous Christmas lecture I showed how Gnostic ideas were used to understand the deep mystery of Christ. But even if we follow this or that even in the later periods of the Middle Ages, we find that, as late as the Middle Ages, something is present in the Christmas poems of that time that was later absent: an emphasis on the early Christian idea that Christ descends from the heights of the spirit. We find it in the 11th and 12th centuries when we bring such a Christmas carol before our soul:

The honor of the incarnate Son of God
Is proclaimed by the heavenly hosts, rejoicing and exulting;
And loudly resounds from the shepherd's mouth
The joyful tidings.

“Glory in the highest! And peace on earth!”
So it resounds in solemn song;
With wonder it is seen by men today,
What never happened before.

The heavens shine brightly with a new star;
Guided by it, from afar come
the wise men, and greet with delight
the sight of them.

With him, truth has now been born anew.
What was lost through sin has been replaced;
In the light of grace, the fruits of blessing
Bloom more gloriously.

The punishment of the past has now been revealed,
Since this fruit has sprung from the earth,
Which grants us life and refreshment,
And nourishes forever.

He has come, clothed in our flesh,
The good shepherd who tends all nations;
He has dwelt, like us, in pilgrim huts,
Suffered for us.

Hail then to the earth that saw his light!
Through him for time and eternity beglücker,
Consecrate everyone to him, the Savior, thanks and love
With pure impulses.

Help us, Christ, to fulfill Your law ourselves,
Through You, let us succeed in doing good deeds,
So that one day, the crown of eternal life
will also reward us!

Such was the tone that resonated from those who had still understood something of the cosmic significance of the mystery of Christ.

Or there was another Christmas poem from the middle of the Middle Ages, a little later than the Carolingian period:

The Son of God, begotten from eternity, the invisible and without end,

Through whom heaven and earth were built, and all that dwells there was created,

Through whom the days and hours of the course pass by and return;

Whom the angels in the heavenly castle always praise in fully harmonious singing,

Has, free from all original sin, clothed himself with a weak body,

Which he took from Mary, the Virgin, to destroy the guilt of the first father Adam,

As well as the lust of the mother Eve.

Today's glorious day of lofty splendor testifies that now the son,

The true sun, dispelled the old darkness of the world with the beam of light.

Now the night is illuminated by the light of that new star,

Which once amazed the sky-wise gaze of the magicians,

And see, that glow shines for the shepherds, who were dazzled

By the lofty radiance of the heavenly inhabitants. O Mother of God, rejoice, for at your birth you are attended by a host of angels,

Singing God's praises. O Christ, you are the only Son of the Father, who for our sake took on the nature of

man. Please revive your own, who are imploring you here.

O Jesus, hear the pleas of those whom you have deigned to take care of, so that you, O Son of God, may share your divinity with them.

This is the tone that, I would say, sounds from the heights of more theologically colored scholarship down to the people.

Now we also hear a little of the sound that rang out at Christmas from the people themselves, when a soul was found that expressed the people's feelings:

He is powerful and strong,
who was born to win,
That is Saint Knist.
yes, praise be to thee in all that is, Niewan the deep
because of his great arrogance
so hell became his portion.

In hell is Michael out of place
who has his home there,
Your sun never shines so brightly,
the moon does not help him,
Only the bright stars,
yes, he has to see everything,
yes, he would love to be in heaven so much.

In heaven there is a house,
a golden gate opens therein,
the windows are the pearls of pity,
which adorn our little house
with precious stones:
no one enters there,
he is cleansed of all sins so pure.

He who gladly goes to church
and stands there without sinning,
may well live joyfully,
he will be given
the angels' common lot,
if he so desires:
in heaven, life is so pure.

I have long served
alas a man
Who walks around in the darkness
and has sworn an oath at my wrongdoing,
His reward is evil.
Help me, Holy Spirit,
to free myself from his delusion.

That is the prayer that the simple man said and understood. We have read the descent, now we have the ascent.

I will try to reproduce this 12th-century Christmas carol so that we can see how the simple man also grasped the full greatness of Christ and related it to the whole of cosmic life:

He is mighty and strong, who was born at Christmas. This is the Holy Christ. Everything that is there praises him, except for the devil, who, through his great arrogance, was sent to hell. There is much filth in hell – “much” is the old word for great, mighty – there is much filth in hell. He who has his home there, who is at home in hell, must realize: the sun never shines there, the moon does not help, nor do the bright stars. There everyone who sees something must say to himself how nice it would be if he could go to heaven. He would very much like to be in heaven. In the kingdom of heaven stands a house. A golden path leads to it. The columns are marble, that is, made of marble, adorned with precious stones. But no one enters there who is not completely pure from sin. Anyone who goes to church and stands there without envy may well have a higher life, for there are always young ones, that is, when he has finally ended his life. Remember, I once introduced the word “younger” from the ether body here. Here you have it in the vernacular! So when he is given “young” to the angelic community, he can certainly wait for it, because in heaven life is pure. — And now he who prays this Christmas carol says: I have unfortunately served a man who walks around in hell, who has developed my certain deed. Help me, holy Christ, to be released from his captivity, that is, to be released from the prison of the evil one. So that is in the language of the people:

He is mighty and strong
Who was born at Christmas...

With the teaching of the Resurrection as I have indicated it, with the teachings of the Lost Word and the Word that has to be found again, with certain cultic activities as they are customary in such occult brotherhoods, how is it possible with all that to be able to work upon the human soul in a quite special way? How does that happen? To understand this I must first draw your attention to how one works upon the human soul in this 5th post-Atlantean period. All the strivings of mankind which proceed to exclude certain things in this 5th post-Atlantean period which were natural to human beings earlier.

Let us take an example of something which does not lie very far back, a natural scientific work by Albertus Magnus from the 13th, 14th century. You will see that the way which he regards nature is quite strange to present day man. Why is that? Man at that particular time absolutely reckoned with all that which as nature surrounded him. Even if he did not speak of beings, nevertheless, he was aware of certain elementary forces, forces of a spiritual etheric nature. The essential aspect of modern perception is that everything is thrown out of human ideas which cannot be seen with the senses; anything of a spiritual etheric nature is eliminated. Only when one presupposes that such books as those of Albertus Magnus in the 13th century do reckon with the fact that overall there are still spiritual forces in our physical environment, then you understand them. The significant thing in the modern scientific age which not only exerts its influence upon natural scientific conceptions but exerts its influence upon all human thinking right into the simplest mass of people, is the characteristic that man, in the first place, takes in that which falls into the realm of his sense from the external world. When someone from today's external academic world speaks of esthetics, artistry, sociology and even history and calls those spiritual science, they are incorrect because you can only call that which is spirit, that which does not occur in the sense world, spiritual science. However, as far as today's history goes, everything is concerned with what has occurred in the sense world. thus you do not deal with a spirit science but in truth with a sense science. The characteristic of our 5th post-Atlantean period is in the first place to take up into our ideas that which is only given to us by the external sense nature.

Since this 5th post-Atlantean period is precisely there in order, in a certain connection, to develop materialism and, as it were, to throw out human all that which does not come in from the sense world man can devote himself to an external world which excludes the elementary forces for 2000 years; through that fact man can acquire the possibility of completely developing his freedom, of developing an actual spiritual activity out of his own inner being. The spreading out of materialism in this, the first third of the 2000 year period, depends upon the fact that we are standing just at the beginning of this epoch, but the flood of the senses has fallen, as it were, over mankind and man has not yet been able to drive the spiritual out of his inner being; and the spiritual must come out to produce a real spiritual science.

Now, the previous period, the Greco-Latin Period, had a different task. The etheric-spiritual could still be perceived in the environment and was also able to work upon men after they perceived it. One also worked from human beings to human beings in such a way that one was still predisposed to the fact that the elementary spirit wove around them just as the atmosphere does around us. In these 2,160 years which preceded our 5th post-Atlantean period, the human body was first prepared to become a tool for our present thinking, of purely grasping of external sense reality. The work which was done upon man during this Greco-Latin period was something which went more on his body. This work formed his body so that in our present epoch we are able to think about that which is imparted to us by the sense world. Thus, one did not teach people in the way things are presented today where the human beings can come to their own conclusion as to whether they will accept the teachings or not. No. In this Greco-Latin period, the task was to impart forces to human beings which would work directly upon the physical body. Today man does not want his physical body influenced in any way and correctly so. It belongs to the characteristic of our soul that we should not work directly upon our body, but only upon our soul nature. Everything also is not permissible magical working. But a working which today is impermissible was valid for the Greco Latin period and belonged to it. The bodily tool of the human being was, as it were, much more flexible, more soft and then one could still work upon it. The physical body has now become much harder and whenever teaching occurs, it must be imparted to the soul.

However, if you want to enter straight-forwardly into the still softer body of the human being, you cannot do that with things that are acquired from the purely external sense world. The Greco-Latin epoch did not have as its task to fill man with the content of our natural science. If you gave them Copernican astronomy or Darwinism instead of preparing the soft physical man for the 5th post-Atlantean period, you would have absolutely dried them up, you would have formed them in a false way. Therefore you had to have a quite different science at that time and that is the science which instead of photographing the external world as our present day science does, instead of that you give symbols; and instead of the experimenting as is done today, you give cults or sacramental aspects, then with the sacramental aspects, with the cults, with symbolic mythical presentations, one is able to take hold of quite another region of the human being than with that which today occurs in our present Copernican natural scientific Darwinistic world conception.

Now those brotherhoods which I previously indicated, still maintained the ancient symbolism, the sacramentalism, the cult activities, and these push into our age and are able to work in the way in which I described. They work especially upon one member of the human nature, upon that member which in our time should not be worked upon. However, when you use symbols, sacramentalism, cults, that works deeper into man, that works into the etheric body, which means that you directly influence the whole disposition of the thought direction of man. If you rely upon people absorbing symbols and cults from their environment, that works into the ether body and brings the thinking into a certain direction. This is usually the situation in these occult brotherhoods of which I have already spoken.

However, another type of occult brotherhood which follow the same thing but in another way understand how to work much more deeply into the human forces. The Jesuit Orders belong to such occult brotherhoods. Jesuitism absolutely rests upon occultism. I once told you about that in a lecture cycle in Karlsruhe, where I described the exercises which the students had to do in order to become Jesuits. These exercises rest upon the fact that the human being who takes part in the cult, instead of being affected in his ether body, these things take hold of his astral body. All Jesuit educational training goes toward giving the Jesuit forces which enable him to present his works or actions in such a way that he is able to steer himself, I might say, into the astral impulses of man.

Jesuits can work in places when they are not present there. There are certain channels in human life through which one can work, so the Jesuits can even work in those places where they are not allowed to exist. I will give you an example of how Jesuitism performs when it is able to work in an unhindered way and follow its impulses; when the Jesuit can execute everything which his methods are adapted for in order to work into the astral body of man. We have a very fine example precisely at the turning point of the 4th to the 5th post-Atlantean period in the establishment of the Jesuit State in Paraguay.

In 1610 this Jesuit State was founded in Paraguay. Now, how did this happen? My dear friends, you know that after America was discovered, European civilized mankind went to America as a result of their lust for gold, etc., and they felt very happy there. However, the original people were not very happy. There is much written about the so-called civilized European treatment of these original Americans. However, in a domain in South America, Paraguay, a large number of Jesuits appeared one day with the decided intention of handling the Guaranies, an indian tribe in Paraguay, better than the Europeans handled the original indians of North America.

Naturally the Jesuits did not know the language of the Guaranies nor had the Indians the Latin of the Jesuits. What did these Jesuit Fathers do? Well, they traveled on the rivers by boat to the wild regions where the Indians lived, and they played beautiful music and mixed all sorts of things into this music which they knew very well from their training. This was able to spread itself out between the waves of the sound and the music in order that one could produce a certain type of cult or sacrament. The consequence was that the Indians, of their own accord, came together in great numbers and the Jesuit Fathers had gathered many Indians from different regions in a short time. They entered single villages and organized these villages in a way which produced a state. Therefore, the State of Paraguay arose in the year 1610.

Churches were built, a church was built at a place called San Savarius, for example and was able to hold 4000 to 5000 human beings. Everything in this Jesuit State was strongly regulated, regulated, however, so that above all you have the permeation of the cult. They had musical stimulations in the smallest settlements—not influences but stimulations, suggestive stimulations. The cult occurred. The time was thoroughly divided up; everything the people did, all their actions were regulated according to the ringing of church bells. A bell rang for one activity, then a bell rang for another activity. They did not allow the people to wake up in the morning, wash themselves and then go to work in the fields, for example. No. The church bells rang and people knew that the day begins. They arose, then gathered in the village square and listened to music. Either the picture of the Holy Virgin or some other saint stood in the middle of the square; the Jesuit priests had already imparted certain explanations about them to these Indians. When they had gathered together, a divine service was held. The people looked up to the heavens in prayer; then they formed a procession and carried the picture of the Holy Virgin Mary or saint in front of them and traveled in this way to the fields. After enough work had been done, they again took hold of the picture and went in a procession back to the market place. The people were then released by the sound of the church bells. The cult permeated all activities; even the work done in the fields was accompanied by cult activities for which certain definite Jesuit Fathers had been trained. Everything was permeated by the cult activity. Therefore we see that the whole inter-working between the Jesuit Fathers and the Indians was such that it went directly into the astral body. All the astral bodies of these Indians were prepared in a corresponding way and the whole Jesuit State in Paraguay was permeated by an astral aura which was a consequence of the symbolism, the sacramentalism, the cult which the Jesuits directed exactly the way they wanted it; they became quite proficient at it.

Just imagine that you are concerned here with wild Indians who actually had done nothing other than hunt and so on, before that time. Now what did one achieve? In a short time these Indians became very intelligent, actually intelligent in the sense of the Jesuits. These people could accomplish all that was necessary in a short time. This Jesuit State caused a great deal of resentment among the other Europeans, so the Jesuits established an army. They gathered this army together in a short time whole officers were partly Indian and partly European. It successfully repelled a blockade that was established by England against Paraguay.

Now the Guaranies learned to produce muskets and canons, also musical Instruments such as organs, certain painting techniques, stone sculpture that was so good that every Spanish Church would have liked to have had one. Just imagine this astral aura in which all this was immersed. Those who actually had the direct interaction with the Indians, those who showed them what they had to do were intermediaries set up by the fathers. These Jesuit Fathers, however, separated themselves off from the Indians; they directed them through other people. The only time they were seen was when they were dressed in their beautiful gold robes and were surrounded by incense when directing the ceremonies at the Mass. Therefore these Jesuit fathers were looked up to as gods.
All this was accomplished because the Jesuits knew how to work directly into the astral body. But, the moral condition of this Jesuit State was actually not too bad. Whenever punishment had to be meted out, the Jesuit Fathers took care that those people on whom the punishment was to be inflicted, agreed with the fact that they deserved the punishment.

Now, something else was accomplished by these Jesuits. They examined the problem of how much work was needed, they then arranged the situation so that the Indians would work for two days to produce all that they needed for themselves that week. Then they worked an additional two days to produce what was needed by the Jesuits and this was then given over to the State. So you see how the Jesuits set up the work schedule lasting four or five days; Sunday the people could rest and also attend the ceremonies. With this sort of situation the Jesuits could build up a fairly good economy. It certainly was not a capitalistic economy. However, the Europeans who were in the beginning of capitalism did not like this Jesuit State with their sort of economy. Therefore on July 22, 1768, a large number of calvary regiments appeared and captured the Jesuits and put an end to this Jesuit State. This Jesuit State had lasted from 1610 until 1768 and developed the sort of activity which I have just described.

I wanted to tell you this in order to show what one can reach when one develops methods which are able to penetrate into the astral body. Naturally these methods were more easily applied to the Indians than they would be to other races, because these Indians were, relatively speaking, primitive people. The further back we go into human evolution the more one is able to work upon the astral body and ether body of man. And these wild Indians had maintained something of their earlier susceptibility; they still retained above all the ability of being able to be worked on through their physical body. One would work first upon the astral body, then the astral body in its vibrations
would work down upon the physical body and the physical body was the one that was actually affected. When speaking to a European, you send words to his ear; his brain however vibrates according to the whole education in which he has been placed. This was not so with the Indians. There one worked into the astral body and the astral body then took the brain with it. Through the musical and other cult handlings, these Indians were taken hold of by all the vibrations which went out from these ceremonies. etc. They were, in the main, only members in a common astral aura, but we Europeans have it better, because our heads are much thicker and not as easily influenced.

You cannot work upon highly cultivated people in Europe in the way I just described; however, there is a possibility of working in a lesser way upon the ether body and astral body of man and this would then carry into the physical body by way of the vibrations. All this is the working in of the ahrimanic method, ahrimanic forces which weave in invisibly among us and have their own methods as compared with these which the Jesuits used in the State of Paraguay in the 17th and 18th century. One could work upon the astral body of these Indians as their physical body was soft. Now, one must work differently; one must take into consideration the fact that you influence the thinking of man as such, that it is very important that one is not able to work into man's thought directions in such a way that man does not notice it. I am not saying that human beings do that. No, but ahrimanic beings do it through human beings. These human beings are tools for the ahrimanic beings. So many people believe that when they acquire some judgment, that they have arrived at their decision out of their own conviction. It might be correct in a superficial way, but you can see that it is not correct when you go deeply into the situation and then the situation changes itself. Today people have the opinion that they do not believe in authority. They will not take anything up from authority, but they do not realize how things are able to steal into their soul; they do not notice that.

Now, how does this occur? Thinking habits develop themselves in the course of time in a scientific direction; in other words, people today conclude things because science says so. Science is their authority. They get their ideas from some mysterious place, but they do not know what goes on in this mysterious place. This mysterious place is the universities. That which they get from all this goes into the thought patterns of mankind. People think they are using their own independent judgment, but actually this is a good opportunity for Ahriman to allow his forces to flow in, because Ahriman cannot enter into conscious life, into a really conscious life. If a person maintains good control of his consciousness, Ahriman cannot enter. However, when one is not awake and alert, then Ahriman can insert himself in the stream of our thought habits and one is little protected from this sort of working, particularly if you have been trained to look upon science as your authority since early childhood. These streams are there and are the streams which can mix themselves into the thought habits of men in an ahrimanic way and produce an opinion in human beings that this is something of a scientific nature that that forms the direction of judgment.

Now, if you will forgive me for being humorous, I will relate something to you which an exact philological person has written as an extensive thesis which was published in the Prussian Yearbook. In this thesis he investigated whether he could find proof that the Greeks suffered from lice in the same way that mankind suffers today. And he investigated the whole of Greek literature from Homer right up to Aristophanes to see what role lice played there. This is quite humorous; however he was very serious. This thesis was developed in a very strongly scientific way and it can be found in the Prussian Yearbook. This sort of thing can show you exactly what is going on underneath the present life. These are much more important than one can, in the first place, imagine.

It is very important to know that in our time we need a spiritual scientific stream, this stream which is feared by those people who are under the authority of their thought habit patterns. You see, spiritual science provides human beings with a knowledge which one is unconsciously afraid of. Hence a scientific connection such as ours, for example, strives to develop these feelings of brotherhood at the side of the spreading of spiritual science. This must be the necessary counter-picture, otherwise the passions would be released. However, on the other side it is necessary to look into the configuration of many men in our time in order to evaluate things.

One always has to develop a certain rule in this domain, which, I might say, is compared with the preservation of privacy. You know very well that if you were to find a letter addressed to someone else, you would not think of looking into it. In a similar way one should not want to look into the soul life of someone else unless there is a very special reason for it. There can be a special reason when, for example, one sees a certain personality who has this or that significance for his contemporaries; then one must penetrate into his soul with the means available to spiritual science to illuminate this personality for his contemporaries. For example, the case I mentioned earlier of Herr Lowenstein who had a type of psychology dealing with the announcement of marriage and emphasized the fundamental character of that which is truly scientific. Nevertheless, he spreads the most absolute nonsense, trivial stuff, tries to cloak it with the scientific. We must then talk about his soul life. Nevertheless you must know that the soul of the human being is a very, very complicated thing. And you cannot learn about man unless you are prepared to enter into complications.

Just remember that if we look at the human being and put aside man's upper members—he has four members. The physical body, for example, can still have something of the flexibility of the 4th post-Atlantean period, however, at the same time it can have a good receptivity for all that is produced by the thought life of the present time. Thus a man can appear who has the following properties. He has an organism which on the one side goes back to the leftover qualities of the Greco-Latin period; however, at the same time he can have a head which is able to take up the thoughts of our present age and reproduce them again, share them, talk about them, lecture about them with a very sharp sense. That can absolutely be present. You can consider such a person to be very intellectual, very clever, but besides that, he can be very weak-minded because of the special quality of his soft body of which I have spoken as a hangover of the Greek period. When you know that man is a complicated being, then there is no contradiction when you say: This person is weak-minded and he is also clever at the same time. Spiritual science is something which casts a certain light in order that we may be able to find our way properly through mankind's complicated relationships of the present time.

I told you that a man can have a body which can be influenced as was a Greco-Latin body; hence his body has not reached the development of our present corporeal nature. Nevertheless at the same time one can take into himself all the ways of judgment which are appropriate to our present age, and he can thus be a very clever man; one can be a weak head and at the same time a very clever man. However, one does not need to work as a clever man in the culture of our present age in order to stand with the spiritual life at present, but one needs to be very sharp in order to take up the thought forms of the present and the to have a body as I have just described. There you have the phenomenon of a journalist of the present who reaches into and influences future decades in a wide-spread way. We are talking about Maximillian Hardenz. You know what forces work in our present age and you have to know how today's public opinion is created and how one can lead all this back to human nature. You have no means to know about this if you do not enter into the knowledge of man who proceeds from spiritual science. Only through that are you preserved from being taken up by that stream that I have described which produces those thought habits that make people believe that they are not succumbing to authority. However, they believe everything that is in this newspaper called the Zukuft (sic).

At least we do not live in those regions in which people such as the Indians just described live, those Indians who looked up in reverence to the priests in their golden mass robes surrounded by incense. No. That we do not do, but we have other altars. What are our altars? The newspapers and things of that sort are what we look up to. The chaotic thing is people who are supposed to have developed away from authority have it working more strongly in them. Indeed, my dear friends, the difficulties which spiritual science has in order to be able to penetrate into life in the way she must, are not really small, because spiritual science must be able to take hold of the different domains of life. And one must be able to work gradually from one domain to the other.

In our spiritual science we have developed an art of Eurythmy. You may think what you like about it; however, it is very important that it should be brought to people in a very worthy way. Just a few days ago we read that one of our members, yes one of our members, appeared in Munich; a very skinny human being who recited poems, then disappeared and donned white hose and cloak—this is all described in the newspaper. He reappeared and the audience burst out laughing. Then this fellow made all sorts of contorted movements, recited further while moving a veil which he held in his hand. He then disappeared and reappeared again in a blue costume with yellow things hanging all over it and the audience laughed at him. Nevertheless, he went right an reciting. This whole thing was done by one of our members under the title of “The Recitation Art of Eurythmy”. Our Eurythmy has been brought into the public and made a laughing stock, so much so that an article appeared in the Munich paper entitled “Eurythmy and Other Diseases of the War”. From all this you can see how difficult it is to lead spiritual science over into life, because those who work with us do not have the proper spirit. It is very necessary, my dear friends, that we be much more earnest than we have been up to now, to be able to realize the significance of our spiritual scientific movement. Of this we shall speak further.

If one wants to understand the deeper meaning of such significant works as the Apocalypse, then one must gain a deep insight into the structure of the world and the entire development of the world. Therefore, for the time when I could not be present, I asked Miss von Sivers to discuss the theory of evolution, the theory of the development of the various worlds that are somehow related to our Earth, here for a few hours. It has become clear that the way in which the development has been presented here has been seen as something individual. (It has happened entirely in line with my intentions, in which I have conducted research into it myself.)

Before we can make any kind of useful progress in the Apocalypse - which we may approach again soon, where you will see what depths are contained in it, in esoteric Christianity in general - we must first become clear about certain concepts of our solar and planetary system. Therefore, I myself will make some insertions about the development of our planet and our solar system. We are now going to tackle some very difficult parts of theosophical or mystical teachings, and so I have to say a few words in advance about how you should approach such material.

Above all, be aware that the Apocalypse is one of the most important and profound works in the world, containing the greatest of secrets. And also be aware that explaining the Apocalypse is an extremely difficult task, because there can be so little preparation for such an understanding at the present time. Hardly any explanation of the Apocalypse was given in Europe during the nineteenth century. Only now, after a long time, are we able to speak of the Apocalypse again. Be aware that the explanation of the Apocalypse as we give it is related to the very deepest secrets, and that you are hearing something in our time that was closed to man through the course of spiritual development and through the general course of the world. One must be lenient with oneself if not everything can be clear and transparent from the beginning. It is not possible for the difficult to be clear from the start.

The final explanation of the Apocalypse is one of the deepest secrets of initiation, and the veil that can be lifted today is already extraordinarily deep. We could not move on if we did not include some information about the world system with which our Earth is connected.

In connection with the matters that have been discussed in my absence, I would like to send some advance information. Miss von Sivers has presented the development of the earth and the sun in a way that I am able to present. However, the views of the various occult researchers in this field are only seemingly opposed. You must not believe that if something seems to contradict itself, that is a real contradiction. So if Mr. Schouten believes he has found a contradiction between what has been presented here and what he knows from our esteemed comrade Leadbeater, then of course it requires a kind of illumination on the whole, how to understand such things; we will discuss this in detail. Above all, please note that no practical mystic claims to be presenting a universally valid dogma. Neither Leadbeater nor I make such a claim. Each presents what he is able to present as the results of his observations. And please do not interpret what is presented here as anything other than a story that someone tells about what he has experienced. It can be discussed, it makes no claim to dogmatic value, they are not tenets. At first one might object: If different researchers in this field contradict each other, how can one ever arrive at clarity? But that is not the case. If you read travel descriptions of the most diverse regions, you will see how different even these descriptions are. And the observations of occult researchers are just as varied as these observations. With some understanding, which is difficult in this area, one always, without exception, comes to exactly the same results. There is never any real contradiction between two occult researchers if they both proceed in the necessary objective manner, really working with all the means of occult research.

However, one might not even realize the way in which research in this field comes about at all. I would like to speak here first of all about the case that has been discussed here, namely the case that constitutes a point of difference - not in the rest of esotericism, but in the younger current that has found expression in the Theosophical movement [as in Sinnett, Leadbeater and Blavatsky]. The theosophical movement is actually a very young movement compared to the occult movement. It was founded in 1875. But occultism is thousands of years old. In Europe, there were the same teachings as those brought by Theosophy; Theosophy also existed in Europe, only in the eighteenth century it receded somewhat because materialism did not allow these things to be spoken of. Materialism is something that has a scaring effect on the sacred science of occultism.

Within the theosophical movement itself, an apparent contradiction arises with regard to this teaching of the development of our earth. When the great teachers of the theosophical movement, whom we call the masters, first shared some of the secret knowledge with European students, so-called lay chelas, it was actually this European lay student, our revered friend Sinnett, who wrote the first effective book, Esoteric Buddhism, based on the master's teachings. There was a great deal that was unclear to this lay disciple. This was to be expected, for all European thinking differs quite significantly from the way an actual occultist, an actual esoteric, thinks. A person who is equipped with European cultural concepts - and you must not forget that the modern human being grows up entirely in the prejudices of the present day - easily misunderstands what the esotericist is saying because he translates it into his concepts, which are derived from materialism. Thus there was a certain initial disparity when the exalted master gave the first teachings to Sinnett through the mediation of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky about the development of our earth.

Our Earth has reached our present state after having passed through a very different state, and it will change again into a different state when it has gone through this present state. We can express this by saying that the Earth is undergoing transformations. The first Theosophists illustrated these three metamorphoses - the state of our earth that preceded the present one, the present state and the one that follows - by drawing three spheres, which were also called globes.

The esotericist does not refer to what rock and metal complexes are as “earth”, but rather he also refers to what belongs to the earth: the mineral world, the plant world, the animal and human world. Then we have to imagine this earth as emerging from an earlier state. You don't have to imagine it like the present earth either, but rather imagine the earth at that time in a much finer matter, not at all in a physical matter, but in a matter that can be imagined something like what we call the human astral body, which envelops and permeates the human being in the form of a cloud. The Earth at that time consisted of such matter. This state has condensed to our present physical state. That is why it was called the astral globe preceding our Earth. The following one, into which our Earth will transform, is again similar to this state in terms of matter; it is also astral. In contrast to the astral globe, the third globe is called the plastic globe, because if you look at the earth in this astral state, it appears undifferentiated to you, a mass in which you can distinguish many fewer entities than in the third globe.

Above all, you will see the difference when you look at people. People are present on all three globes. On the first globe, people were in such a state that they were completely dependent on the external forces acting on them. People in our time, on our physical earth, have their hands, their legs, they can walk, can move, can move their mouths - today, all of this is at their own discretion. This was not yet present to the same extent on the astral globe; at that time, man was still much more of an automaton. He reproduced what external forces stimulated in him. He moved his hands because external stimuli affected him. He was at the mercy of external stimuli. This has changed, man has become more independent on the globe we call our earth. And that will be even more different when we will be on the third, the plastic globe. The physical body has disappeared, the earth is in dissolution, darkness has fallen. Then the human being will not only be able to move his limbs, but he will be able to shape his own form at will, so that the human being – while he has a permanent physiognomy today – will not be able to hide his feelings through his physiognomy. In his outer appearance, he will give an immediate impression of what lives within him. We will be able to extend our hands, not just move them. Man will be able to form himself plastically from within. His form will be the result of what lives within him. Life will express itself more in form.

These three stages of development are not the only ones that our earth goes through. This astral globe was preceded by another, and the plastic one will be followed by another. While here [on the astral globe] the entities we are dealing with – including human beings – are in a substance that is equivalent to our astral body, here [on the globe that preceded the astral one] the human being and all entities, in fact the whole earth, are in a matter that is equivalent to the mental aura, the thinking body of the human being. On this globe, everything is dependent on external stimuli. But that does not appear in our astral matter. What lives here can never be seen, not even with the senses of a clairvoyant. There is only sound, which the 'clairaudient' can perceive. Everything is spiritual sound. The spiritual sounds buzz around on this globe in confusion and are the same as the intermingling colors on the astral globe. It is a globe that is called the Rupa globe. This is the form that we know on our Earth in the physical state in the air waves. So is the infinitely fine matter of which our thoughts are formed. Only thought-matter was present on earth at that time when it was in that state. This globe gradually passed into the astral globe through condensation. 'Rupa' means form.

Man will be in a similar state again when he has gone through the plastic state. On the plastic globe, passions and feelings express themselves extremely vividly, while here [on the intellectual globe] in the higher state, everything is expressed in tones. This sound world in which the person will live will be quite different from the sound world of the descending line of the Rupa globe. When the clairvoyant moves within this globe and perceives the entire sound world, he perceives something similar to what you hear when you are sitting in a hall in which a symphony is being played, but it is purely spiritual and is not heard with physical ears. While you perceive something like a symphony descending [on the rupa globe], you perceive words ascending [on the intellectual globe], an articulated sound world with the expression of the world of thoughts and ideas living in man.

These two globes are each preceded by another – one descending, one ascending. These are the Arupa globes. They are formless. The people in those days were such that in this whole world, which is even finer than the Rupa world, nothing lived except individual sounds, with a very specific timbre. These individual tones, which did not yet harmonize, which did not yet form into melodies, but lived as individual tones, were very substantial. Among these beings were individual basic essences of plants and animals, and above all, every human being, as he is today, was already present as a tone. Each person at that time had a different tone. This makes the human being a being that is different from all others. This tone, with a very specific coloration, is the human being again when he arrives at the globe, which we will call the archetypal globe. There the human being is again a tone, but from this tone everything that he has experienced resounds. It is a tone [of great abundance] from which the whole rich experience of the human being resounds. It is difficult to visualize this, but as I said, it can be imagined in such a way that this [on the Rupa globe] is a poor tone, while [on the archetypal globe] this is a tone that speaks of everything that a person has gone through at the various stages of development.

If you follow this, you will have an idea of how the earth transforms into its various states. A group of related metamorphoses is called a planetary chain. The term is not entirely accurate because it is a schematic drawing. If I were to design the drawing in such a way that it better reflected the facts, I would have to draw all the spheres in a single place. We do not have a succession of new spheres appearing one after the other, but a transformation.

This first Arupa sphere condenses, and out of it arises the state of the Rupa sphere. From this arises the astral sphere, and this then condenses to such an extent that the earth is formed from it. And then the following would come, but in such a way that I would have to draw all of this on top of each other. You may only understand the drawing as a schematic one. So we are dealing with seven successive transformations that the planet undergoes.

Initially, it was mistakenly imagined that transformations do not take place, but that there are seven spheres distributed in space and that life passes from one globe to the next.

This is not a problem if that is how you imagine it at first, because it is difficult to get the ideas right at such a high level anyway. And so it does no harm to speak of a wave of life flowing from globe to globe.

It is different that the following idea has been created by the master's first message. It has been thought that the wave of life flows from one globe to the other. In relation to the globes - at least in relation to two of them - ideas have crept in as if the first and third globes correspond to Mars and Mercury.

The master explained after further inquiry that Mars and Mercury have nothing to do with the development of humanity on Earth. For the occultist, this is an absolute impossibility, because Mars and Mercury are physical globes, but the others are not physical. Mars and Mercury are in the same physical state as the Earth, so they also have the physical form of a planetary chain like the Earth.

So Mars is the physical representative of a planetary chain just like our Earth. It is the same with Mercury. Later, more and more researchers came to us who were not only able to follow these things from what the masters told them, but who also learned from their own observations. They learned the methods. This view can be somewhat misleading about the facts.

There are methods by which the clairvoyant can transport themselves back to the astral globe and also forward to the plastic globe, the globe “Three”. When you place yourself in the state of astral clairvoyance and direct your thoughts to the point where the astral globe must be found, then you can see what it was like when our animals, plants and minerals were in this position. You can see it clearly before you. When you place yourself in such a state, in the state of an astral clairvoyant, you are not only united with, not only in the astral world you have visited, but you are also in the astral worlds that are related to the one you have visited, that are therefore in the same state. One is present in all cosmic bodies that are in the same state. In this respect, clairvoyants perceive space and time in exactly the same way. They make no distinction at all. When one projects oneself back to the globe that preceded our Earth, when one is on the planet, one is also on all planets that resemble the state of the Earth at that time. The clairvoyant is then actually on those planets that today belong to the planets of our solar system and are in this state. Not all planets are in the same state. Mars is physically today, but it is only at the stage of development at which our Earth was at the time when it was going through the astral state. The Earth was then able to solidify, to become physical. Today's Mars is in this position. It is at the stage of the third globe, but not astral, but physical. Now one can perceive what is present in this state. If you place yourself in this state of Mars, then you are not only on our Earth, but also on Mars.

So now you can study the present state of Mars clairvoyantly, and you may make an interesting discovery. What you could otherwise only observe astrally, in cloud formations, you can observe on Mars today. It is as if it had suddenly turned to stone. So when we examine Mars, we may feel almost as if we had left this Mars some time ago. [A person today, here on our Earth, has never lived on Mars.] We were, however, in an astral form when we left it. Today's Mars looks as if man had left it and come over to Earth. This is the interesting problem, which can lead one to believe that one once lived on Mars. This astral globe “One” should not be confused with Mars.

Mercury is further advanced in its development than our Earth. It has already reached the state that people will have reached when we have astral plasticity. The beings of Mercury can endure the physical state. Earth people will undergo this state on an astral plastic globe. But Mercury gives us an idea of what man will become when he is on a plastic globe. For them, plasticity is compatible with the physical state. [So there is a relationship]. But the planets themselves have their chains, and only through their stages of evolution can it appear as if the development on Earth has something to do with them. The beings that live on Mercury and Mars are not human-like. They undergo completely different evolutions. People can only be physical on the physical Earth, while the Martians can be physical with the qualities of the astral human, and the Mercury beings are plastic on the physical globe, which people can only be on the plastic globe.

Thus we have completed what we call the planetary chain, namely the planetary chain of our earth. This planetary chain emerged from another planetary chain. Next time I will show how our earth developed out of another planet, just as we had the lunar epoch in the past. What remained of that epoch is contained in our present moon. Our present moon is not the earth's predecessor, it is only a condensed physical piece of it, a slag, so to speak. When we say that the beings of the earth developed from the moon, it is not entirely accurate, but within the limits of what I have said, it is quite correct. We will get to know a somewhat similar seven-part chain during this lunar epoch, so that we can say: Before the earth came into its sevenfold structure, it developed in the sevenfold structure of the lunar epoch. This sevenfold lunar epoch is characterized by the fact that people at that time did not yet have the bright consciousness of the mind that people have today, but rather a consciousness similar to a dream trance. This is the echo of the earlier dull consciousness.

Furthermore, we are dealing with a planet that can no longer be found in our space. This planet has become what the sun is today, through various intermediate phases. That is why the sun is a planet in the old esotericism. Esotericism does not mean the physical sun, but the father of our physical sun. Next time I will explain the sun predecessor of the earth.

Our Earth has therefore passed through one, two, three globes of seven links each and is now in the fourth globe of the chain, which also has seven links, making 28 links in total. In the future, it will pass through three more links that will be similar to Jupiter and Venus and so on. The next link in the chain, which will contain highly developed human beings, a planet that is not in a physical state, we will still get to know, and finally we will be able to pursue the actual goal of our earth development.

So there are still three globes to come, each with seven members, equal to 21 members, so that we have 7 x 7 members, that is 49 metamorphoses that we have to go through. These 49 metamorphoses are not written down by the esotericist in the same way as by the modern man. [Esotericism does not use the decimal system, but the system of seven.] 66 does not mean 66 to the esotericist, but [6 x 6 =] 36; according to the system of seven, that makes: 7 x 7 = 49. Thus you can understand what it means when the esoteric writes 77. For him, this does not mean 77, but 7 x 7 = 49 metamorphoses. On each planet there are seven root races. So we have seven chains, each with seven planets or globes, and each globe with seven root races, which makes a total of 343 states. This number plays a certain role in the Secret Doctrine. In the early days, the matter was very poorly understood. The relationship with the master is such that one solves the problem oneself, and then receives the answer from the master, whether it is right or not.

Further notes, presumably on a question-and-answer session regarding the lecture of January 30, 1905

When you look at the Earth from the outside, it appears to be a sphere with a green undertone. [The Earth has a green base color.] While it is relatively easy to examine the earlier stages, it is difficult to see the later ones. The Akashic Records do not speak to this, they only provide the intentions. In science, there are similar methods for looking back and for looking ahead. If a scientist has hydrogen and oxygen and an electric current, he knows that water will result.

The astral globe of our Earth is completely re-materialized astral globe – only more elaborate. The astral world has already prepared birth and death.

The Moon has a very dense physical body. It also has something similar to an astral body. It relates to the Earth as the negative photographic plate relates to the positive. Everything that appears joyful on Earth is a very sad thing when it appears on the Moon. Everything there means just the opposite. It is impossible for the psychic vision to see the astral matter. With the psychic power of the Earth, one does not see the astral sphere of the Moon. When one studies the operations performed during karmic investigations into the karma of people, one enters the region where one can perceive something of this moon itself.

The number 666 means 216 - 6x6x6. The most perfect state, the seventh, is missing from the Apocalypse.

[666 is the number of the beast, and this number is obtained by crossing out the two upper globes of each chain. These two upper globes are those of the deity. A chain is a round.]

It is difficult to say anything about the time of the next catastrophe, because the one who knows about it cannot say anything. Our fifth race will perish through the struggle of everyone against everyone. One cannot say anything about the timing. One must also not talk about numbers. Perhaps something can be said about this in the course of the lecture series. We are, after all, in a time when things are developing extremely quickly. The nineteenth century in the astral means as much as the previous millennium. It is progressing at an ever faster pace. This can also be observed in the root races. Towards the end of the cycles, life is greatly accelerated.

The Bible calls the seventh state on the intellectual globe bliss. In India it is called Devachan. The seventh state is always a state of bliss, only in quite different degrees on the different planets.

During the whole course of our lectures, you have seen what our position is in relation to the document called the Gospel of St. John, standing as we do upon the foundation of Spiritual Science. You have seen that it is not a question of gaining out of this document some particular truths about the spiritual world, but of showing that, independent of all human and other documents, it is possible to penetrate into that world, just as anyone wishing to learn mathematics at present does so independent of every original document by means of which, in the course of human evolution, different branches of mathematics have first been communicated. What, for example, do those students know who begin to study elementary geometry, acquiring it by means of their own faculties from geometry itself, what do they know of the geometry of Euclid, of the original document in which this elementary geometry was presented to the world for the first time? If the student has first learned geometry by means of his own faculties, he can judge and appreciate better the nature and meaning of the original documents. This should show us more and more that those truths which deal with this spiritual life can be gained out of the life of the spirit itself. If a person has found these truths for himself and then is directed to the historical documents, he finds in them again what he already knows. In this way he acquires a right and true human valuation of them. We have seen in the course of these lectures, that the Gospel of St. John really loses nothing in value by this method; we have seen that the respect for and appreciation of documents do not become less for anyone standing upon the foundation of Spiritual Science than for those who have stood entirely upon the foundation of such documents. Indeed, we have seen that we find again in the Gospel of St. John the most profound teaching concerning Christianity, a teaching which we can also call the teaching of Universal Wisdom. We have also seen that only when we have grasped this profound meaning of the Christian teaching, can we understand why the Christ had to enter into human evolution just at a definite time at the beginning of our era.

We have seen how humanity developed in the post-Atlantean age. It has been pointed out that the original Indian civilization was the first great post-Atlantean cultural epoch after the Atlantean Flood; that the characteristic of this original Indian civilization was that the souls of men were filled with longing and memory. We have characterized memory and longing by saying that they consisted in the preservation of living traditions from an epoch of human evolution ante-dating the Atlantean Flood. At that time, quite in conformity with their nature and inner being, men existed in a kind of nebulous, clairvoyant state in which they could gaze into the spiritual world, thus becoming acquainted with it through personal experience and knowledge, just as men of the present time are acquainted with the four kingdoms of nature, the mineral, plant, animal and human kingdoms. We have seen that prior to the Atlantean Flood, there existed as yet no such sharp distinction as we have today between the states of consciousness during the day and the night. At that time, when the human being sank into sleep at night, his inner experiences were not so unconscious and dark as they are now, for when the images of day life submerged, those of the spiritual life emerged, and he was then in the midst of the things of the spirit world. In the morning, when he again dipped down into his physical body, the experiences and realities of the divine-spiritual world sank into darkness, and around him arose the images of present reality, images of the present mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. The sharp distinction between the unconsciousness of the night and day waking-consciousness appeared only after the Atlantean Flood, that is to say, in our post-Atlantean age. Then, in a certain sense, as far as direct perception is concerned, men were cut off from spiritual reality and were more and more placed outside in purely physical reality. All that remained was the memory of the existence of another kingdom, a kingdom of spiritual beings, and united with this memory was the soul's longing to rise again by means of some exceptional condition into the regions out of which it had descended. Those exceptional conditions were only granted to a few chosen people—the initiates—whose inner faculties had been awakened in the Mystery Places enabling them to gaze into the spiritual world; to those others who were not able to do this, these initiates were able to give information about that world and testify to its reality. In the original Indian cultural period, Yoga was the process by which men were able to revert to the ancient nebulous, clairvoyant state of consciousness. When certain exceptional natures were initiated, they became, as a result, the leaders of mankind, witnesses of the spiritual world.

Under the effect of this longing and memory within this original Indian, pre-Vedic civilization, that soul-mood was particularly developed which regarded physical reality as Maya or illusion. These primitive Indian people said that actual reality exists alone in the spiritual world into which we can be reinstated only by means of an exceptional condition, through Yoga. This world of spiritual beings and processes is the true one. What is seen with the eyes, is unreal, is illusion, Maya. That was the first religious fundamental experience of the post-Atlantean age, and Yoga was the first form of initiation of this period. In fact there was yet no comprehension of the true mission of the post-Atlantean age. For it was not the mission of humanity to consider the reality, which we call physical existence, as Maya or illusion and then to flee from it and become foreign to it. Post-Atlantean humanity had another mission, that of conquering more and more the physical reality, of becoming master of the world of physical phenomena. But it is also quite comprehensible that men, now for the first time transferred to this physical plane, should in the beginning consider as Maya or illusion what previously had hardly emerged within the spiritual reality, but what was now all that they were able to perceive. This attitude toward reality could never have continued. This understanding of the physical reality as an illusion could not remain the vital nerve of the post-Atlantean period. And we have seen that postAtlantean humanity, in the different cultural epochs, conquered bit by bit the connection with the physical reality.

In that period of civilization which we designate the ancient Persian—the periods which history knows as the Persian and Zarathustrian periods are the last echoes of what is meant here—in that second period, we saw mankind taking the first step toward growing out of the ancient Indian principle and conquering physical reality. Still nowhere was there a fondness for sinking into the physical reality, also there existed nowhere anything like a study of the physical world. There was, however, more of this in the Persian period than in the ancient Indian period. We get a reverberation of the mood that looks upon physical reality as illusion in what has survived in later epochs of ancient Indian civilization. Yet our present civilization could never have arisen out of that Indian culture. All the wisdom of that period turned its gaze away from the physical world and directed it upward toward spiritual worlds which existed as a memory. The study of physical reality and its elaboration seemed to them futile, therefore the actual Indian principle could never have brought forth a science serviceable to our earthly world; it could never have produced that mastery of the laws of nature which forms the foundation of our present civilization. This could never have sprung from ancient India, for why should one seek to learn to know the forces of a world resting only upon illusion! If this was changed in the Indian cultural period also, it was not because of something flowing out of itself, but was due to subsequent foreign influences.

For the ancient Persian civilization, the external, physical reality exists as a sphere of activity. It was looked upon as the expression of a hostile Deity, but the hope arose that with the aid of the God of Light this substantial field of reality might be penetrated, that it might be changed into something permeated by spiritual powers and good divinities. Thus the adherents of the Persian civilization already sensed somewhat the reality of the physical world. It is true they still considered it the realm of the God of Darkness, but for all that, they always hoped that they might be able to incorporate within it the forces of the good gods.

Humanity then passed over into that period of civilization which found its historical expression in the Babylonian-Assyrian-Chaldaic-Egyptian culture and we have seen how it happened that the starry heavens were no longer Maya to these people of the third epoch, but something whose written characters could be read. In all that still seemed a Maya to the Indians in the course and splendour of the stars, the Persian saw an expression of the resolutions and purposes of divine-spiritual beings. They gradually accustomed themselves to the idea that outer reality is not illusion but a revelation, a manifestation of divine-spiritual beings. Then in the Egyptian civilization, men began to apply what they read in the stars to the divisions of the earth. Why was it the Egyptians became the masters of Geometry? It was because they believed that through thought, which subdivides the earth, matter can also be controlled, and that matter, which can be grasped by the human spirit, is easily transformed. Thus gradually a later humanity permeated this material world—looked upon at first as only Maya—with the spirit, and this spirit also gradually emerged within the inner soul life of the human being.

We have seen, in fact, that only in the later Atlantean age, humanity had reached the point where it could experience the ego or the “I AM.” For as long as men beheld spiritual images, they knew that they themselves belonged to the spiritual world, that they were themselves images among other images. Then came a comprehension of the spirit within the depths of the human being. Let us now consider, in connection with what we have partially reviewed today, the evolution of the inner nature of men.

As long as the human being of the Atlantean period looked outward with a kind of dream-like, clairvoyant consciousness he did not really give much attention to his own inner nature. The inner world, which is encompassed by the ego or the “I AM,” was not yet delineated in sharp contours. In proportion as the outer spiritual world disappeared, men became conscious of their own inner world of the spirit. In the ancient Indian civilization there still existed in the individual an extraordinary attitude of soul toward his own spiritual life. People said: If we wish to penetrate into the spiritual world, to raise ourselves above illusion, we must lose ourselves in the spiritual world, we must obliterate as much as possible the “I AM” and become absorbed into the All-Spirit, into Brahman. Thus especially in ancient initiation, it was a matter of a loss of personality. An impersonal absorption into the spiritual world is what distinguished the most ancient form of initiation. This was no longer so, for example, in the third epoch of civilization, for right up to that time the human self-consciousness had by degrees been developing stronger and stronger. The human being became continually more and more conscious within the inner part of his ego being. By developing a fondness for the physical matter about him, by deepening his knowledge of it by means of the laws which the human spirit had thought out, but which had not been acquired in any sort of shadowy dream-state, he became gradually more aware of his ego, until this consciousness of personality reached a certain high point in the ancient Egyptian civilization. In this awareness of the personality, there was present something else that appeared at the same time inferior and as though now bound to the physical world and absorbed into it, something that had no possibility of acquiring a connection with that from which the human being had been born.

If we wish to grasp the whole course of events, we must picture to our souls two fundamental soul-moods in human evolution. We must remember how humanity of the Atlantean and ancient Indian periods longed to strip off personality. The Atlanteans were able to accomplish this, and they took it for granted that they would each night strip off their personality and live in the land of the spirit. The Indians could do this, because their principle of initiation led them, by means of their Yoga, into what was impersonal. To repose in the universal divine substance was their desire. In a later branch of the human family, this reposing within the universal was preserved in the consciousness of being united with preceding generations. It remained in the consciousness of the people that they had been born out of a line of ancestry, and an individual human being felt himself united through the blood with generations as far back as his earliest ancestor. This was the mood which grew out of that ancient soul-mood of feeling oneself spiritually sheltered within the divine-spiritual substance. Thus it happened that those human beings who had passed through a normal evolution began in the third cultural epoch to feel themselves as individuals, yet, at the same time, knowing that they were sheltered within the whole, within the divine-spiritual, that they belonged through the blood relationship to the entire line of forefathers, and that God lived for them in the blood flowing down to them through the generations. We have seen how a certain degree of perfection of this mood had been developed within those people who composed the followers of the Old Testament. “I and Father Abraham are one,” means that the individual felt himself preserved within the whole line of descent back to Abraham. That was, in general, what constituted the fundamental mood of all normally developed races of the third cultural period. However, only to the followers of the Old Testament was it predicted that there existed something spiritually more profound than the Divine Fatherhood that ran through the blood of successive generations. We have already called attention to that great moment in human evolution when this was prophesied. When Moses heard the voice calling unto him saying: “When thou wouldst proclaim My Name, say that ‘I AM’ hath said it unto thee!”, then here for the first time sounds forth the knowledge and manifestation of the Logos, of the Christ. Here for the first time, for those who could comprehend, was prophetically proclaimed that in God there existed something that not only had to do with the blood relationship, but that in Him there existed something purely spiritual. What ran through the Old Testament was like a prophecy. Who was it, in fact, who at that time in a prophecy revealed His name to Moses? We must now dwell a little on this question. Here again we have a passage which the commentators of the Gospel consider very superficially, not recognizing the fact that one must examine these records as thoroughly as possible.

Who was it who announced His name prophetically, to Whom the name “I AM” must be given? Who was it? We find the answer, if with earnestness and dignity we properly grasp a certain passage of the Gospel. It is the passage which we find in the 12th Chapter, beginning with the 37th verse. Here Christ-Jesus points to the fulfilment of the words of the Prophet Isaiah, to the prophecy with its reference to the fact that the Jews would not believe in Christ-Jesus. Jesus Himself refers to Isaiah:

He hath blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, that they should not see with their eyes nor understand with their hearts and be converted and I should heal them.

These things said Isaiah when he saw His glory and spake with Him.

Isaiah spake with Him! With Whom did Isaiah speak? Reference is made here to the passage in Isaiah 6: 1 which reads:

In the year that the King of Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up and His train filled the Temple.

Whom did Isaiah see? This is clearly told here in the Gospel of St. John. He saw the Christ! He was always to be seen in the spirit and now you will no longer find it incomprehensible when Spiritual Science points out that He whom Moses saw, who proclaimed the words “I AM” as His name, was the same Being who then appeared upon the earth as the Christ. The actual Spirit of God of antiquity is none other than the Christ. We are now at a point in this religious record which is very difficult to understand, especially for those who do not go at it properly. This passage must be clearly understood, particularly because with the words Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the most extraordinary confusion has arisen. It is a fact that exoterically these words have always been used in the most manifold ways in order that the real esoteric meaning might not be directly evident. When, according to ancient Judaism, the “father” was mentioned, the physical father whose blood flowed down through the generations was meant. When they spoke of Him who revealed Himself spiritually, as Isaiah spoke of the “Lord,” they were referring to the Logos of which the Gospel of St. John speaks. The writer of this Gospel means nothing more nor less than that the One who could always be perceived in the spirit became flesh and dwelt among us!

When it has become clear to us that in a certain sense the Christ was also spoken of in the Old Testament, we shall understand what place the ancient Hebrew peoples have held in our evolution. The ancient Hebrew-principle grew out of the Egyptian civilization. It stands out in bold relief against the background of the Egyptian principle.

Thus we see how the normal course of human evolution progressed as it was described yesterday. The first cultural period of the postAtlantean age is the ancient Indian, the second the ancient Persian, the third the Babylonian-Assyrian-Chaldaic-Egyptian civilization; then follows the fourth, the Greco-Latin and the fifth which is our own present cultural epoch. Before the fourth epoch began, that people which with its traditions provided the soil for Christianity emerged out of the third epoch like a mysterious branch. When we summarize all that we have been hearing in these lectures, we shall find it much more comprehensible that the appearance of the Christ had to take place in the fourth era.

We have already emphasized the fact that in the fourth epoch the human being had reached the point where he objectified his own spirituality, his own ego and had placed it out in the world. We perceive how gradually he permeated matter with his own spirit, with his ego-spirit. We behold the works of the Greek sculptors, and dramatists and see how they have presented, embodied before the soul, what they call their own soul qualities. Later, in the Roman period, we see how the human being also becomes conscious of what he is, and we see how he established this in the outer world as “Justice” (Jus), although a distorted Jurisprudence disguised it. For the deeper students of Jurisprudence, it is clear that real justice, which considers the human being its subject, first arose in this fourth cultural epoch. At that time the people had become conscious enough of their own personality to feel themselves for the first time as real citizens of the State. Even in the Greek period, the individual felt himself as a member of the whole municipal State. This was more important to an Athenian than to be an individual man. But to say “I am a Roman” or “I am an Athenian” meant two very different things. For to say, “I am a Roman” meant that, as an individual human being, as a citizen of the State, he had an importance, he had a will. Thus it could also be proven that the origin of the concept of a “testament” first became possible in this epoch, for this is a Roman concept. Only at that time did the human being make his will so personal, so individualized, that he wished to be active in it even beyond death. The things which Spiritual Science has to say harmonize even in the details with the actual facts.

The human being gradually reached the point of permeating matter with his spirit and this increased as time went on. The fourth epoch was that in which he thoroughly incorporated into matter what he comprehended with his spirit. In the Egyptian Pyramids you can see how spirit and matter are still wrestling with one another, how what had been grasped by the spirit had not yet fully expressed itself in matter. In the Greek Temple is expressed the complete turning point of the postAtlantean age. For one who understands a little of this, there is no more significant, no more perfect architecture than the Greek which is the purest expression of the inner characteristic of space. The pillars are considered wholly as supports, and what rests upon them is felt as something that must be supported, something that presses down. The supreme, emancipated concept of space is here in the Greek Temple carried to its ultimate conclusions. Few people have subsequently felt the concept of space in this way, yet there have been those who could have felt it, but they felt it pictorially. Let anyone test the space in the Sistine Chapel. Stand at the rear wall which bears the great picture of the Last Judgment, and look up. You will see that the rear wall rises obliquely upward. It inclines thus because the architect felt the concept of space, but did not think it so abstractly as others. Therefore this wall stands there so marvellously at an angle. This means that he no longer experienced the concept of space as did the Greeks. There is an artistic sense which feels the mysterious measure concealed in space. To sense it architecturally does not mean to sense it by means of the eyes, but by means of something else. People easily believe today that right is the same as left, above the same as below, forward the same as backward. If one would only consider the following: There are pictures in which three, four or five angels can be seen floating about. They can be painted in such a way that one would be right in thinking that they are in danger of falling at any moment. They can likewise be painted by someone who has developed the right sense for space, in such a manner that there is no possibility of such a thought arising; they could not fall because they mutually support each other. We then have the dynamic relationships in space pictorially represented before us. The Greeks had it architecturally before them. They experienced the horizontal not alone as line, but as the force of pressure and they experienced the pillar not only as a block of something, but as supporting power. This feeling-with-the-lines-of-space means, “feeling the living Spirit in the act of geometrizing.” That is what Plato meant when he used the tremendous expression, “God geometrizes continually.”

These lines really exist in space and the Greeks built their Temples in accordance with them. What was in reality a Greek Temple? From necessity it was the dwelling-house of their God. It was something quite different from the Church of the present day. The present Church is a place for preaching. The God Himself dwelt within the Greek Temple. The people were only present incidentally when they wished to be with their God. One who understands the forms of the Greek Temple, experiences a mysterious connection with the God dwelling within it. There, in the columns, and in what rests upon them, is to be seen not only what the human being has fashioned in imagination, but something that his God would have thus made, had He wished to create a dwelling place for Himself. This was the climax of the permeation of Matter with Spirit.

Let us now compare a Greek Temple with a Gothic Church. Nothing derogatory of the Gothic is intended, for from another point of view the Gothic Church stands upon a still higher level than the Greek Temple. In a Gothic Church you can see that what is expressed in its form cannot possibly be thought of or felt without the presence of the devotional congregation. In the arched forms of the Gothic there exists something (for one who can experience it) which can only be expressed in the following words: If the devotional congregation were not within, and the hands were not placed together in the form of an arch, the whole would be incomplete. The Gothic Church is not only the dwelling-house of God, but it is at the same time the meeting place for people who are praying to God. Thus, in a certain sense, mankind again over-stepped the zenith of its own evolution. We see how all that degenerated which the Greeks felt in line, column and beam in such a remarkable manner through their sense of space. A column which does not support, but which is there only as a decorative motif, was for the Greek feeling no column at all. Everything in human evolution is in perfect accord. The Greek cultural period was the most beautiful expression of the interpenetration of humanity's consciousness discovered within itself, and of what was felt as the Divine in outer space. The human being had wholly coalesced with the physical sense-world in this epoch.

It is nonsense when modern scholars wish to obscure what was felt in earlier ages. From the Spiritual-Scientific point of view, we look upon the fourth epoch of the post-Atlantean age as an epoch in which the human being harmonized perfectly with his environment. That age—in which he seemed to coalesce with the outer reality—was alone qualified to understand that the Divine is able to appear in an individual man. All earlier epochs would have understood almost anything more easily than this. They would have felt that the Divine was much too exalted and sublime to appear in a physical human form. It was just this physical form against which they desired to guard the Divine. Therefore, “Thou shalt make no image” had to be announced to just that people whose mission it was to grasp the idea of God in His spiritual form. Out of concepts such as these, this people evolved and out of its womb was begotten the idea of the Christ, the idea that spirit was to appear in the flesh. For this mission was the Jewish people chosen and within it, in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the Christ Event had to occur.

Thus for the Christian consciousness, the whole of human existence falls into a pre-Christian and a post-Christian period. The God-Man could only be comprehended by the human being at a certain time. Thus we see how the Gospel of St. John connects in full consciousness and in its ideas, with what was—to use a trivial expression—precisely in conformity with the times, with what had its origin directly in the consciousness of the age. Consequently it happened wholly of itself, that the thought imagery, through which the writer of the Gospel tried to grasp the greatest event in cosmic history, seemed to him best expressed in the forms of Greek thought, as it were, like something inwardly related. And gradually the whole Christian feeling grew into these thought forms. We shall see how something like the Gothic had to appear during the progress of evolution, because Christianity was, as it were, called upon to lead evolution again beyond the material. Christianity could arise only at a time when men were not yet so deeply immersed in matter that they were likely to overestimate its worth; when they were not yet plunged so deeply into matter as is the case in our age, but were still able to spiritualize it and to penetrate it.

Thus the birth of Christianity appears as something positively necessary in the whole spiritual course of human events. If we desire to understand what form Christianity should gradually assume, understand what form was prophesied for it by such an individuality as the writer of this Gospel, we must take under consideration, in the next lecture, certain essential and important concepts.

It has been shown that everything must be taken literally, but that first the alphabet must be really understood. It is not without significance that the name of John appears nowhere in the Gospel and that John is always spoken of as the “Disciple whom the Lord loved.” We have seen what mystery lies hidden behind this fact, a mystery of profound significance.

Now we shall consider another expression, one that makes it directly possible for us to make a connection with the subsequent evolutionary periods of Christianity. The manner of speaking of the “Mother of Jesus” in the Gospel, is usually overlooked. If the ordinary, average Christian were asked: who was the Mother of Jesus? he would reply: “The Mother of Jesus was Mary?” And many indeed will believe that there is something in the Gospel of St. John to the effect that the Mother of Jesus was called Mary. But nowhere in this Gospel is there anything to indicate that the Mother of Jesus was called Mary. Wherever reference is made to her, she is quite intentionally called just the Mother of Jesus. The meaning of this we shall learn later. In the chapter on the Marriage in Cana, we read: “and the Mother of Jesus was there;” and further on, it says: “His Mother saith unto the servants.” Nowhere do we find the name “Mary.” And when we meet her again in the Gospel of St. John, when we see the Saviour upon the Cross, we read:

“There stood by the Cross of Jesus, His Mother, and His Mother's sister Mary, the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.”

It is clearly and definitely stated who stood by the Cross. The Mother was there, then her sister who was the wife of Cleophas and who was called Mary, and Mary Magdalene. Whoever thinks about it at all, must say to himself: It is extraordinary that the two sisters are both called Mary? That is not customary in our day. It was also not customary at that time. And since the writer of the Gospel calls the sister, Mary, it is clear that the Mother of Jesus was not called Mary. In the Greek text, it says clearly and distinctly: “Below stood the Mother of Jesus, and His Mother's sister Mary who was the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.” For a proper understanding the question arises: “Who was the Mother of Jesus?” Here we touch upon one of the most important questions in the Gospel of St. John: “Who was the real father of Jesus, and who was His mother?”

Who was the father? Can this question be asked at all? Not only can it be asked according to the Gospel of St. John, but also according to St. Luke. For it would show an extraordinary absence of thought not to see that at the Annunciation it was proclaimed:

The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also, that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

Even in the Gospel of St. Luke it is pointed out that the father of Jesus is the Holy Spirit. This must be taken literally and those theologians who do not recognize it cannot really read the Gospel. Thus we must ask the great question:—How does all this harmonize with what we have heard in the words, “I and the Father are one,” “I and Father Abraham are one,” “Before Abraham was, was the I AM?” How can we bring into harmony with all this, the undeniable fact that the Evangelist sees the Father-Principle in the Holy Spirit? And what must we think about the Mother-Principle, according to the Gospel of St. John?

In order that you may come tomorrow properly prepared in spirit to formulate these questions, your attention should also be called to the fact that a sort of series of generations is presented in the Gospel of St. Luke; that we are told that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist; that He began to teach in His thirtieth year and that He was the son of “Mary and Joseph, who was the son of Eli,” etc., and there follows the whole line of generations. If we trace this succession, we see that it goes back to Adam. Then follows something extraordinary; here we find the words: “who was the son of God.” Just as the generations are traced back from son to father in the Gospel of St. Luke, so is the succession traced back from Adam to God. Such a passage must be taken very seriously! Now we have gathered together the questions which should lead us tomorrow directly into the very center of the Gospel of St. John.