The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Berlin, February 15, 1909

You will have been able to see from the one lecture given here on the more complicated question of reincarnation that the spiritual scientific view of the world continues its progression. Hence, what in the beginning could be presented as elementary truths is undergoing a metamorphosis, so that gradually we rise to ever higher truths. It is therefore correct to present general cosmic truths in their initial stage in as simple and elementary a form as possible. Thereafter, however, it is also necessary to advance slowly from the simple ABC's to the higher truths, because you will agree that through these higher truths we gradually attain what Spiritual Science intends to give us: the opportunity to understand and penetrate the very world that surrounds us in the sentient—the physical—sphere. Now it is true that we have a long way to go in our ascent before we shall be able to somehow draw the connecting links in the spiritual lines and forces that exist behind the world of the senses. But you will agree that this or that phenomenon in our existence has become clearer and easier to explain just by what we have been discussing in the last few lectures. So today we want to advance a little in this specific area and again take as our subject matter the more complicated questions of reincarnation—of reembodiment.

Above all, we want to see clearly that there are differences among the beings who occupy leading positions in the human evolution of the earth. We have to distinguish such leading individualities in the course of human evolution who, as it were, developed from the beginning with humanity on this earth as it exists, but with the important distinction that they progressed more rapidly. We might put it this way: If we go back in time to the most ancient Lemurian Age, we find the most varied stages of development among the human beings then incarnated. All the souls incarnated at that time have been repeatedly reincarnated—reembodiedduring the successive Atlantean and post-Atlantean periods. The speed with which these souls developed varied. Some souls are alive that developed relatively slowly as they went through various incarnations; they still have long distances to traverse in the future. But then there are also those souls who have developed rapidly and who, one might say, have utilized their incarnations in a more productive way. They are now on a high plane of soul-spiritual development, one that will be reached by normal human beings only in the far-distant future. But as we dwell on this sphere of soul life, we can nevertheless say this: No matter how advanced these individual souls may be, however far they may tower above normal human beings, yet within our earthly evolution they have made a journey similar to the rest of humanity, except that they have advanced more rapidly.

In addition to these leading individualities, who in this sense are like other human beings but stand on a higher plane, there are also other individualities—other beings—who have not gone through various incarnations as have the other human beings in the course of human evolution. We can visualize what lies at the bottom of this when we tell ourselves the following: There have been beings in the time of the Lemurian evolution under consideration—beings who no longer needed to descend into physical embodiment as the other human beings just described. They were beings capable of accomplishing their development in higher, more spiritual realms who did not need to descend into corporeal bodies for their further progress. However, in order to intervene in the course of human evolution, such beings can nevertheless descend vicariously into corporeal bodies such as our own. Thus it can happen that such a being appears; if we test it clairvoyantly in regard to the soul, we cannot say, as we can of other human beings, that we trace it back in time and discover it in a previously fleshly incarnation, then trace it farther back and find it again in another incarnation, and so on. Instead, we will have to admit that in tracing the soul of such a being back through the course of time, we may not arrive at an earlier fleshly incarnation of such a being at all. However, if we do, it is only because the being is able to descend repeatedly in certain intervals in order to incarnate vicariously in a human body.

Such a spiritual being who descends in this way into a human body in order to intervene in evolution as a human being is called an “avatar” in the East; such a being gains nothing from this embodiment for himself and experiences nothing that is of significance for the world. This, then, is the distinction between a leading being that has emanated from human evolution and beings whom we call avatars. The latter reap no benefit for themselves from their physical embodiments, or even from one embodiment to which they subject themselves; they enter a physical body for the blessing and progress of all human beings. To repeat—an avatar being can enter a human body just once or several times in succession; but when it does, it is then something different from any other human individuality.

The greatest avatar being who has lived on earth, as you can gather from the spirit of our lectures here, is the Christ—the Being whom we designated as the Christ, and who took possession of the body of Jesus of Nazareth when he was thirty years of age. This Being, who did not come into contact with our earth until the beginning of our era, was incarnated for three years in a body of flesh and has since that time been in contact with the astral, i.e., the spiritual, sphere of our super-sensible world; this Being has a unique significance as an avatar being. Although other, lower avatar beings can reincarnate several times, it would be in vain for us to seek the Christ-Being in an earlier human embodiment on earth. The difference between the Christ and the lower avatars does not lie in the fact that the latter incarnate repeatedly, but that they derive no benefits for themselves from their earthly embodiments. Human beings give the world nothing; they only take from it. By contrast, these beings only give; they take nothing from the earth. To gain a perfect understanding of this idea, you have to distinguish between such a lofty avatar being as the Christ and lower avatar beings. Such avatar beings can have the most varied missions on earth; and in discussing one of those missions, we want to avoid speculative language and take a concrete case as an illustration for such a mission.

You all know from the ancient Hebrew story of Noah that a large part of post-Atlantean, post-Noah humanity traces its ancestry back to the three sons of Noah—Shem, Ham, and Japhet. It is not our purpose today to elucidate what Noah and these three tribal ancestors represent in other respects. We simply want to elucidate here that Hebrew literature, speaking of Shem as one of Noah's sons, traces the whole tribe of the Semites back to him as its ancestor. A genuinely occult perception of such a matter, of such a story, is always grounded in deeper truths. Those who are able to conduct occult research into such things know the following about Shem, the ancestor of the Semites.

When such a personality is destined to become the forefather of an entire tribe, care must be taken from his birth—and even earlier—to insure that he can become such a forebear. Now, what preparations were necessary to ensure that an individuality such as Shem could indeed become the forefather of a whole people or tribal community? In the case of Shem it was done by giving him a quite specially prepared etheric body. We know that when human beings are born into this world, they structure around their individuality an etheric or life body, along with the other members of their being. A special etheric being must somehow be prepared for the ancestor of a tribe because it has to be, as it were, the prototype of an etheric body for all the descendants in succeeding generations. And so it happens that we have in such a tribal individuality a typical etheric body, a prototype as it were. Because of blood relationship in successive generations, the etheric bodies of all descendants of the tribe are in a certain sense copies of the ancestor's etheric body. Thus, every Semitic person's etheric body had something like a copy of Shem's etheric body woven into it. Now, by what means is such a condition brought about in the course of human evolution?

Let us look at Shem more carefully. We find that his etheric body received its archetypal form because an avatar had woven himself into it. It was not such a high avatar that we can compare him with other avatar beings, but still a lofty avatar descended into his etheric body. This avatar individuality was not connected with Shem's astral body nor with his ego, however, but was woven into his etheric body alone. From this example we can study what it means when an avatar being partakes in the constitution and composition of a human being. What does it mean, then, when a human being who, like Shem, has the mission to be the ancestor of a whole people should in a way have the essence of an avatar woven into his body? It means that every time the essence of an avatar is woven into the soul of a fleshly being, any one member—or even several members—of the super-sensible constitution of this human being are capable of being multiplied and split into many parts.

The fact that an avatar being was interwoven with Shem's etheric body made it possible for countless copies of the original to come into being and to be woven into all the human beings who became the descendants of this ancestor in subsequent generations. Thus, the descent of an avatar being is, among other things, significant in that it contributes to the multiplication of one or several members of the being who is animated by the avatar. As you can see from this, an especially precious etheric body was present in Shem, an archetypal etheric body, prepared by an exalted avatar and then woven into Shem so that it could descend in many copies to all those who were destined for consanguinity with him.

As we have already said in a previous lecture, a spiritual economy exists by virtue of the fact that something of special value is preserved and carried over into the future. We have heard not only that the ego reincarnates but also that the astral body and the etheric body are capable of doing the same. Aside from the fact that countless copies of Shem's etheric body came into being, his own etheric body was also preserved in the spiritual world because it could later be useful in the mission of the Hebrew people. Remember that all the peculiarities of the Hebrews had originally come to expression in this etheric body, and if at any time something of special importance was to happen to them—if one of them should be assigned a special task or mission, then this could be best accomplished by an individual who bore the etheric body of the ancestor within himself. As a matter of fact, an individual bearing the etheric body of Shem later played an important part in the history of the Hebrew people. We have here indeed one of those wonderous complications in the evolution of humankind that can explain so much to us. We are dealing here with an exalted individuality who, as it were, was compelled to condescend in order to be able to speak to the Hebrews in a comprehensible manner and to give them the strength necessary for a special mission. By analogy, if an intellectually advanced individual had to speak to a primitive tribe, he would have to learn its language, but this does not mean that the language in question would elevate him personally; all the individual would have to do is to take the trouble of acquainting himself with the language. In this same way, an exalted individuality had to make a strong personal effort to become one with Shem's etheric body to be able to give a definite impulse to the ancient Hebrew people. This personality was the very Melchizedek¹² you find in Biblical history. In a way, he wore Shem's etheric body so that later he could give Abraham the impulse that you find so beautifully in the Bible. What was contained in the individuality of Shem was multiplied because an avatar being was incarnated in it, and all this became interwoven with all the other etheric bodies of the Hebrews. In addition, Shem's own etheric body was preserved in the spiritual world so that it could be borne at a later time by Melchizedek, who was to give the Hebrews an important impulse through Abraham.

This is how finely interwoven the facts behind the physical world are, facts that are needed to elucidate to us what happens in the physical world. Only by being able to point to such facts of a spiritual nature that are behind the facts of the physical world do we learn to interpret history. History can never become comprehensible through considering physical facts alone.

Now, if the descent of an avatar being affects the soul-spiritual components of the human being in that he or she becomes the bearer of the avatar's soul, and if this results in multiplication and transmission of the archetypal copy onto others, then this phenomenon becomes especially significant with the appearance of Christ on earth. Because the avatar essence of Christ lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, it became possible not only that the etheric body but also that the astral body and even that the ego were multiplied innumerable times; by ego, I mean the “I” as an impulse that was kindled in the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth when Christ entered his threefold sheath. However, foremost in our consideration is here the fact that the etheric and astral bodies could be multiplied because of the presence of the avatar being.

Now, one of the most significant turning points in human history was the appearance of the Christ principle in earthly evolution. What I have told you about Shem is actually typical and characteristic of pre-Christian times. When an etheric or an astral body is multiplied in this way, the copies of the original are usually transmitted to those people who are related by blood to the ancestor who had the prototype. Hence, the copies of Shem's etheric body were transmitted to the members of the Hebrew tribe, but when the Christ Avatar Being appeared, all this was changed. The etheric and astral bodies of Jesus of Nazareth were multiplied and the copies preserved until they could be used in the course of human evolution. However, they were not bound up with this or that nationality or tribe. But when in the course of time a human being appeared who, irrespective of nationality, was mature and suitable enough to have his own etheric or astral body interwoven with a copy of the etheric or astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, then those bodies could be woven into that particular person's being. Thus we see how it became possible in the course of time for all kinds of people to have copies of the astral or etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their souls.

The intimate history of Christian development is connected with this fact. What is normally described as the history of Christian development is a sum of entirely external occurrences. It is for this reason that far too little attention is given to what is most important—the distinction of actual periods in Christian development. Anyone who can look more deeply into the developmental progress of Christianity will easily perceive that the manner in which Christianity was disseminated was different in the first few centuries from that of later centuries in the Christian era. In the first few Christian centuries the dissemination of Christianity was, in a way, bound up with everything that could be gained from the physical plane. We need only look at the early teachers of Christianity to see how they emphasized physical memories, physical connections, and everything that had remained in a physical state. Just consider how Irenaeus,¹³ a man who contributed so much in the first century to the dissemination of Christian doctrine in various countries, stressed that memories should extend back to those who had listened to the disciples of the Apostles. It was important to prove through such physical recollections that Christ Himself had actually taught in Palestine. It was specially emphasized, for example, that Papias¹⁴ himself had sat at the feet of the Apostles' disciples. Even the places were shown and described where such personalities had sat—people who could still be cited as eyewitnesses to the fact that Christ had lived in Palestine. The physical progress in memory was what was especially emphasized in the first few centuries of Christianity.

How much stress remained on everything that was physical can be seen from the words of the old St. Augustine¹⁵ living at the end of this era, who said: “Why do I believe in the truths of Christianity? Because the authority of the Catholic Church compels me to do so.” To him, the physical authority's telling him that something exists in the physical world was the important and essential thing. The determining factor for him was that a corporate body had preserved itself within which one personality is linked back to another until one arrives at one who, like Peter, was a companion of Christ. Hence, we can see that in the dissemination of Christianity during the early centuries, it was the documents and the impressions of the physical plane to which the greatest importance was given.

All that changes after the time of St. Augustine and into the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. It was then no longer possible to appeal to living memories or to consult the documents of the physical plane because they were too far removed from the present. Something entirely different was present in the whole mood and the disposition of the human beings, especially the Europeans, who were then embracing Christianity. It was the feeling, the direct knowledge, of the existence of Christ, of His death on the cross, and of His continuing life. From the fourth and fifth up to the tenth and twelfth centuries, a large number of people would have considered it foolish to be told that they could doubt the events in Palestine because they knew better. People like these were especially common in European countries, and they had always been able to experience inwardly in miniature a kind of Pauline revelation, that is the experience through which Saul became Paul on the road to Damascus.

What made it possible for a number of people in those centuries to be able to receive revelations about the events in Palestine that were in a sense clairvoyant? It was possible because the multiplied copies of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth had been preserved and were in these centuries woven into the etheric bodies of a large number of people who wore these multiplied copies as one would wear a garment. Their etheric body did not consist entirely of the copy of Jesus' etheric body, but it had had woven into it a copy of the original. There were indeed human beings in those centuries who were able to have such an etheric body and who could thereby have an immediate knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ.

All this, however, had the effect that the Christ image was no longer associated with the externally historical and physical transmission of the story. The highest degree of such disassociation is evident in that wonderful literary work of the ninth century, the Heliand.¹⁶ This poem was written down by a seemingly simple Saxon in the time of Louis the Pious, who reigned from 814–840. The Saxon's astral body and ego could not match what was in his etheric body because the latter had had woven into it a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. This simple Saxon priest, the author of the poem, was certain from immediate clairvoyant vision that the Christ existed on the astral plane and that He was the same Christ who had been crucified at Golgotha! And because this was a direct certainty for him, he no longer needed to resort to historical documents or to physical mediation in order to know that the Christ does exist. Therefore, he describes the Christ detached from the whole Palestinian setting and from the peculiarities of the Jewish character. This poet, then, depicts the Christ as if He were something like a leader of a Central European or Germanic tribe, and he describes those who surround Hirn as His followers—the Apostles—as if they were vassals of a Germanic prince. The entire external scenery has been changed, but the structure of the events and the essential and eternal aspects of the Christ figure remain the same. This poet did not have to hold rigidly to historical events when he was speaking of the Christ because he had a direct knowledge of Him that was built upon a foundation as important as a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. What he had acquired as immediate knowledge, he draped with a different external setting. Even as we have been able to describe this writer of the Heliand poem as one of the peculiar personalities who had a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into his own etheric body, we can find other personalities in this period who also carried a copy within themselves. We see, therefore, that the most important things take place behind the physical occurrences and that these things can explain history to us in an intimate way.

If we continue to trace Christian development, we come to the period from about the eleventh or twelfth up to the fifteenth century, and it is here that we discover an entirely different mystery that now carried evolution forward. If you remember, first it was the memory of what had taken place on the physical plane, followed by the etheric element being woven into the etheric bodies of the pillars of Christianity in Central Europe. But later, from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, it was numerous copies of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth that became interwoven with the astral bodies of the most important pillars of Christianity. In those days the human beings had egos capable of forming extremely false ideas about all sorts of things, yet in their astral bodies a direct force of strength, of devotion, and of the immediate certainty of holy truths was alive. Such people possessed deep fervor, an absolutely direct conviction, and also in some circumstances the ability to prove this conviction. What sometimes must strike us as being so strange especially in these personalities is that their ego development was not at all equal to that of their astral bodies because the latter had copies of the astral body of Jesus Christ woven into them. Their ego behavior often seemed grotesque, but the world of their sentiments, feelings, and fervor was magnificent and exalted.

Francis of Assisi,¹⁷ for example, was such a personality. We study his life and cannot, as modern people, understand what his conscious ego was; yet we cannot help having the most profound reverence for the richness and range of his feelings and for all that he did. This is no longer a problem once we adopt the perspective mentioned above. He was one of those who had a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their own astral bodies, and this enabled him to accomplish what he did. Many of his followers in the Order of the Franciscans, with its servants and minorites, had such copies interwoven with their astral bodies in a similar fashion.

All the strange and otherwise mysterious phenomena of that time will become lucid and clear to you as soon as you set this mediation in world evolution between that time and previous times properly before the eye of your soul. The important distinction that must be made for these people of the Middle Ages is whether what was woven into their souls from the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth contained more of what we call the sentient soul, more of the intellectual soul, or more of the consciousness soul. This distinction is important because, as you know, the astral body must be envisioned as containing, in a certain sense, all of these three components, as well as the ego, which it encompasses. What was woven into Francis of Assisi was, as it were, the sentient soul of Jesus of Nazareth, and the same is true in the case of that remarkable personality Elisabeth of Thüringen, who was born in 1207.¹⁸ Knowing this secret of her life will enable you to follow the course of her life with your whole soul. She, too, was a personality who had a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into her sentient soul. The riddle of the human being is solved for us by means of just such knowledge.

If you know that during this time the most diverse personalities had sentient soul, intellectual soul, or consciousness soul woven into them as copies of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, you will above all comprehend that little understood and much maligned science that has become known as scholasticism.¹⁹ What tasks did the scholastics set for themselves? They set out to find, on the basis of judgment and intellect, verifications and proof of those phenomena for which historical links and physical mediation did not exist and which could no longer be known with the direct clairvoyant certainty possible in previous centuries through the interwoven etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. These people set themselves the task by saying: Tradition has communicated to us that the Being known as Jesus Christ has appeared in history and that, in addition, other spiritual beings of whom religious documents bear witness have intervened in human religion. Then, from the intellectual soul, that is from the intellectual element of the copy of Jesus Christ's astral body, they set themselves the task of proving with subtle and clearly developed concepts all that their literature contained as mystery truths. Thus arose the strange science that attempted what was probably the most penetrating intellectual venture ever undertaken in the history of human thought. One may think of the content of scholasticism as one wishes, but for several centuries this school of thought developed the capacity of human reflection and thus put its imprint on the culture of the time. Scholasticism accomplished this by an extremely subtle discernment between and outlining of various concepts. As a result, between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries the school implanted into humanity the capacity to think with acute and penetrating logic.

The special conviction that Christ can be found in the human ego arose among those who were imbued more strongly with the copy of the consciousness soul of Jesus of Nazareth, because the ego functions in the consciousness soul. Because these individuals had within them the element of consciousness soul from the astral body of Jesas of Nazareth, the inner Christ rose resplendent within their souls, and through this astral body they came to know that the Christ within them was the Christ Himself. These were the individuals whom you know as Meister Eckhart,²⁰ Johannes Tauler,²¹ and all other pillars of medieval mysticism.

Here you see how the most diverse manifestations of the astral body, multiplied by the fact that the exalted Avatar Being of the Christ had entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth, continued to work in the following age and brought about the real development of Christianity. This is an important transition in other respects as well. We have seen how humanity in the course of its evolution was otherwise dependent upon having incorporated within it these copies of the Jesus of Nazareth Being. In the early centuries people had existed who depended entirely on the physical plane; then in the following centuries there were human beings who were susceptible to having the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their own etheric bodies. Later, human beings, one might say, became more oriented toward the astral body, and that is how the copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth could now be incorporated into them. The astral body is the bearer of judgment, and it was the human capacity to judge that was awakened between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries.

This awakening of the astral body can also be observed in another phenomenon. Before the twelfth century, the depths of mystery contained in the Holy Communion were especially well understood. It was not widely discussed, but rather was accepted in a manner that enabled a human being to feel everything that was contained in the words, “This is My body and this is My blood.” Christ meant with these words that He would be united with the earth and become its planetary spirit. And because flour is the most precious thing on earth, bread became for human beings the body of Christ, and the sap flowing through plants and vines became to them something of His blood. Through this knowledge, the value of the Lord's Supper was not diminished but was, on the contrary, enhanced. People in the early centuries felt something of these infinite depths, and they continued to do so up to the time when the power of judgment was awakened in the astral body. It was only then that disputes began about the meaning of the Lord's Supper. Just think about the discussions about the meaning of the Lord's Supper among the Hussites, Lutherans, and the dissenting Zwinglians and Calvinists.²² They would not have been possible in earlier times when people still had an immediate, direct knowledge of the Lord's Supper!

Here we see verified a great historical law that should be of special significance to the spiritual scientist: As long as people knew what the Lord's Supper was, they did not discuss it. They began to discuss it only after they had lost direct knowledge of it. Let us consider the fact that people discuss a particular matter as an indication that they do not really know it. Where knowledge exists, knowledge is narrated, and there is no particular desire for discussion. Where people feel like discussing something, they have, as a rule, no knowledge of the truth. Discussion begins only when there is a lack of knowledge, and it is always and everywhere the sign of decline regarding the seriousness of a subject matter when discussions about it are to be heard. Discussions portend the decline of a particular trend. It is very important that time and again in Spiritual Science we learn to understand that the wish to discuss something should actually be construed as a sign of ignorance. On the other hand, we should cultivate the opposite of discussion, and that is the will to learn and the will to gradually comprehend what is in question.

Here we see an important historical fact verified by the development of Christianity itself. But we can also learn something else when we see how, in the centuries of Christianity characterized above, the power of judgment, this keen intellectual wisdom, is further developed. Indeed, when we focus our attention on realities and not on dogmas, we can learn how much Christianity has accomplished since its inception. Take scholasticism. What has become of it when we look not at its content, but perceive it as a means of cultivating and disciplining our mental faculties? Do you want to know? Scholasticism has become modern natural science! The latter is inconceivable without the reality of medieval Christian science. It is not only that Copernicus was a canon and Giordano Bruno²³ a Dominican, but that all thought forms with which natural objects have been tackled since the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are nothing but what was developed and nurtured by the Christian science of the Middle Ages from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries. There are people today who look up passages in scholastic books, compare them with recent findings of natural history, and then say Haeckel and others aver something entirely different. Such people do not live in reality but in the world of abstractions! Realities are what matters! The work of Haeckel, Darwin, DuBois-Reymond, Huxley,²⁴ and others would all have been impossible had the Christian science of the Middle Ages not preceded them. These modern scientists owe their mode of thought to the Christian science of the Middle Ages. That is the reality, and it is from that science that humanity has learned to think in the true sense of the word.

But there is more. Read David Friedrich Strauss²⁵ and try to observe his mode of thinking. Try to realize what his chain of reasoning is: how he wants to present the entire life of Jesus of Nazareth as a myth. Do you know where the keenness of his thinking comes from? He gets it from the Christian science of the Middle Ages. Everything used today to combat Christianity so radically has been taken over from the Christian world of learning in the Middle Ages. Actually, today there cannot be an opponent of Christianity of whom it could not easily be shown that he would be unable to think as he does had he not learned his thought forms from the Christian science of the Middle Ages. If one considered that fact, one would indeed look at world history as it really is.

What, then, has happened since the sixteenth century? Since that time the human ego has increasingly come into prominence and with it human egotism, and with egotism, materialism. Everything that the ego had absorbed and acquired was gradually unlearned and forgotten. Human beings now were compelled to limit themselves to what the ego could observe and to what the physical sensory system was able to give to the ordinary intelligence. That is all the ego could take into its inner sanctuary. Culture since the sixteenth century has become the culture of egotism.

What must now enter into the ego? Christian evolution has passed through a development in the physical, etheric, and astral bodies and has made its way as far as the ego. Now it must take into this ego the mysteries and secrets of Christianity itself. Following a time when the ego learned to think through Christianity and then apply the thoughts to the external world, it must now become possible for the ego to become a Christ-receptive organ. This ego must now rediscover the wisdom which is the primordial wisdom of the Great Avatar, of Christ Himself. And how is this to be done? It must be done through a more profound understanding of Christianity through Spiritual Science. Having been carefully prepared through the three stages of physical, etheric, and astral development, the inner organ would now have to open itself to its human host so that he or she could henceforth look into the spiritual environment with the eye that the Christ can open for us.

Christ descended to earth as the greatest avatar being. Let us view this in the right perspective and try to look at the world as we would be able to do after we have received the Christ into ourselves. Then we would find the whole process of our world evolution illuminated and pervaded by the Christ Being. That is to say, we would describe how the physical body of human beings originated on Old Saturn,²⁶ how the etheric body made its appearance on Old Sun, the astral body on Old Moon, and the ego on the Earth. Finally, we would find how everything tends toward the goal of becoming ever more independent and individual in order to incorporate into the evolution of the earth the very wisdom that passes from the Sun to the earth. In a way, Christ and Christianity must become the perspective center of a cosmic view for the liberated ego.

So you see how Christianity has gradually prepared itself for what it is to become. In the early centuries the Christian received Christianity with his physical ability to cognize truth, later with his etheric capacity, and throughout the Middle Ages with his astral capacity to cognize truth. Then Christianity in its true form was repressed for a while until the ego had been trained by the three bodies in the course of Christian evolution. But after this ego had learned how to think and direct its vision to the objective world, it is now mature enough to perceive in all phenomena of the objective world the spiritual facts that are so intimately linked with the Central Being, the Christ. Thus, the ego is now capable of beholding the Christ everywhere in the most diverse manifestations as the foundation of the objective world.

Here we stand at the point of departure for spiritual-scientific comprehension and perception of Christianity, and we begin to understand what a task and mission has been assigned to our movement for spiritual knowledge. In so doing, the reality of this mission becomes evident to us. Just as the individual human being has a physical, an etheric, and an astral body in addition to his or her ego, so it is with the historical development of Christianity, and both continue to rise to ever more lofty heights. We might say Christianity, too, has physical, etheric, and astral bodies, as well as an ego—an ego that can even deny its origin as it does in our time. To be sure, an ego can become egotistic, but it still remains an ego that can receive the true Christ Being into itself, thereby rising to ever higher stages of existence. What the human being is in particular, the great world is in its totality; and that includes its historical evolution.

If we look at the matter in this way, a perspective of the far-distant future opens itself before us from the spiritual-scientific point of view, and we know this perspective can touch our hearts and fill them with enthusiasm. More and more it becomes clear to us just what it is we have to do, and then we realize that we are not groping in the dark. This is so because we have not devised ideas that we intend to project into the future in an arbitrary fashion, but we intend to harbor and follow only those ideas that have been gradually prepared through centuries of Christian development. It is true that only after the physical, etheric, and astral bodies had come into existence could the ego make its appearance; now it is to be developed little by little to spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man. By the same token, modern human beings with their ego form and present thinking, could have developed only from the astral, etheric, and physical form of Christianity. Christianity has become ego. Just as truly as this was the development of the past, so it is equally true that the ego form of humanity can appear only after the astral and the etheric forms of Christianity have been developed. Christianity will develop on into the future. It will offer humanity far greater things, and the Christian development and way of life will arise in a new form. The transformed astral body will appear as the Christian spirit self, the transformed etheric body as the Christian life spirit. And in a radiant perspective of the future of Christianity, spirit man shines forth before our souls as the star toward which we strive, illuminated and glowing throughout with the spirit of Christianity.

• 12. Melchizedek was the king of Salem and “Priest of the Most High God,” who blessed Abraham after the defeat of Chedorlaomer (Genesis 14:18-20) and who was later to typify the priesthood of the future Messiah (Psalms 110:4; Heb. 5-7).
• 13. St. Irenaeus (c. 125-c. 202) was a Greek theologian, Bishop of Lyons in 177–78, and the first Father of the Catholic Church to systematize Christian doctrine.
• 14. Papias was a second-century Christian theologian and Apostolic Father of the Church.
• 15. St. Augustine (354–430) was the Bishop of Hippo in what is now Algiers and one of the four Latin fathers. His famous book The City of God is a justification of Christianity against pagan critics, and his Confessions is a classic of Christian mysticism.
• 16. Heliand, the title of the epic (c. 825) is an Old Saxon word for German Heiland = the Savior. The poem had 5,983 lines and was written in alliterative verse.
• 17. The Italian St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) was one of the greatest Christian saints and founder of the Franciscan Order.
• 18. Elisabeth of Thüringen (1207–1231), the young widow of a German margrave who had died on a crusade in 1227, chose a life of poverty, humility, and charity and became the typical saint of the late Middle Ages.
• 19. Scholasticism was the school of thought in the Middle Ages in which theology and philosophy were conjoined. The German term Scholastik normally designates this medieval school of thought, whereas Scholastizismus, the linguistic equivalent of the English term, is used exclusively to denote sophistry and casuistry.
• 20. Meister (Johannes) Eckhart (c. 1260–1328), a Dominican-trained German theologian and the most profound of the German medieval mystics, was probably the first writer of speculative prose in German.
• 21. Johannes Tauler (1300–1361) was a German Dominican mystic and a disciple of Meister Eckhart.
• 22. The Hussites advocated communion in both kinds, i.e., both wine and bread, for laity as well as priests. Lutherans believed that a change takes place by which the body and blood of Christ join with the bread and wine. This principle of consubstantiation was rejected by the Zwinglians who saw only symbolic significance in the communion. Finally, the Calvinists believed that Christ was spiritually, but not physically, present in the Sacrament.
• 23. Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was a noted Italian philosopher and mystic who, although a member of the Dominican Order in his youth, was in constant opposition to religious orthodox schools. He was tried by the Inquisition for heresy and burned to death.
• 24. Ernst Haeckel (1834–1932) was a renowned German zoologist and, like the English naturalist Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882), developed a theory of evolution. Emil DuBois-Reymond (1818–1896) was a famous physiologist in Berlin. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) was an English biologist and writer.
• 25. David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874) was a philosopher and theologian whose writings mark a turning point in the critical study of the life of Jesus. In his main work, The Life of Jesus (2 vols, 1835–36), Strauss applied the “myth theory” to the life of Jesus and denied all supernatural elements in the Gospels.
• 26. (Old) Saturn, (Old) Sun, and (Old) Moon are names for former evolutionary forms through which the Earth has passed. The reader is referred to An Outline of Occult Science (Anthroposophic Press, 1972), for a thorough discussion of this topic.

My task of to-day and of tomorrow will be to show you the path into the spiritual worlds which has been followed ever since the 14th and 15th century, particularly in the so-called Occult Training, and which is the most suitable path for modern people. But it will be easier for us to understand the essential points if we first cast a glance over the future development of humanity.

We have already spoken of the course of human development through the Stages of Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth. Those who are only accustomed to think in accordance with present-day conceptions will find it difficult to understand that it is possible to know something about the future course of evolution: But you must bear in mind that certain great laws which are now active, will also exercise their activity in the future, and those who know these laws can therefore cast a glance into the future.

In the sphere of physical reality no one doubts that things can be foretold,—for example, lunar and solar eclipses and other astronomical phenomena can be calculated in advance, far into the future. In the sphere of physical reality there is no doubt as to this. And everybody knows that when certain substances are mixed in a retort, scientists can foretell the result. This is a prophecy relating to external sensory facts, and these things can be foretold because the laws which influence the substances are known.

Similarly we learn to know through spiritual science the laws which govern the course of human life, so that it is possible to foretell what will take place in the future.

An objection might now be raised which has been advanced by the thinkers of every epoch: “It is impossible to speak of human freedom if future events can be foreseen!” But here people confuse the capacity of looking into the future with predestination. In every philosophy you will therefore come across the strangest observations, for all philosophers were unable to make this distinction. Jacob Böhme was the only exception!

Let me now give you an example to make things clearer to you. Let me compare time with space. Imagine yourself standing here, and two people in the street, outside. You can see what these two people are doing, for you are watching them from a distance. But are you able to influence their actions, in view of this fact? No, you are simply looking at them, and these two people act in perfect freedom. You can determine nothing in their actions through the fact that you are looking at them. Now imagine a clairvoyant who observes what will take place in the future. He merely sees this, and he does not in any way influence the events. If these events could be influenced, if they were, so to speak, predestined in the present, there would be no pre-vision. But we can only grasp the difference between predestination and prevision if we ponder over this problem for a long tune.

I do not intend to describe to you what the Earth will be like when it shall have reached the Venus and the Jupiter stages; instead, I wish to tell you something which will give you an idea of man's future development; I wish to explain to you something which comes from the oldest Christian Mysteries, which originates from the Christian School of the true Dionysius; it was a teaching which was always taught in the Christian esoteric schools.

The following comparison was taken as a starting point:—I am now speaking to you. Yell can hear my words; you hear the thoughts which were, to begin with, in the depths of my soul; you hear thoughts which would remain concealed to you were I not to express them in sounds. But you could not hear my words, if the air did not exist between us. Whenever I utter a word, the air in the space around us is set into motion; whenever I speak, I cause the whole volume of air around me to vibrate, it vibrates in accordance with the words which I pronounce. Let us now proceed further: Imagine that you were able liquefy the air, and then to render it solid. Air can be liquefied; you know that water can exist in the form of steam and that this air becomes liquid when it cools; and then the liquid can become a solid block of ice. Imagine now that I pronounce the word.“God” into the air; a form would fall down, for instance, the form of a shell; if the sound-vibrations could render the air solid. And another wave of sound would fall down as a solid form if I pronounce the word “World”. A crystallized form of air would correspond to every word I utter, and you would be able to perceive these crystallized forms.

This example was in fact advanced in the Christian schools. First of all we have the spoken word, and then this word becomes a solid form, but before it became solid, it existed as an inner thought. Now the early Christian imagined the following: The creative process in the universe resembles the creative process which takes place in space, when we speak. The creative proceeded from the idea of things and then the Godhead expressed these ideas in the form of words uttered out into space. Everything which appears to us outside in the form of plants, minerals, etc. is the crystallization of God's utterances. It is possible to imagine everything dissolved into tone-vibrations of the Divine Cosmic Word. “Whatever I see before me, is the crystallization Word of God!” said the Christian. And on a certain wy he made a distinction between the “Father in Concealment”, Who had not yet expressed Himself, the “Word” or the Son, Who resounds through space, and the crystallized Word, the “Revelation”.

This enables us to understand in a deeper sense the beginning of the Gospel of St. John:—“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the very beginning with God. Everything was made by Him, and except through Him was nothing made that was made.” Everything that was made, was made by the Word! We should take things as literally a possible, then we can easily recognise the creative element of the Word, or the Logos. In the Christian meaning, the Word or the Logos stands in the second place. “Logos” should only be translated with “Word”, for this means that at the foundation of everything which exists in the created world lies the unuttered creative Word; it then resounded as spoken Word, and this is the origin of every existing thing. If we go far back into times we could hear animals, plants, minerals, and men, resound through the cosmic spaces as “Word”—even as you now hear my own words—for in those remote, times, the air had not yet cooled down to such extent as to enable words to take on solid form.

Let us bear this in mind, for then we can say to ourselves: Once upon a time, the Word was ,creative. Men are now beginners in an activity which was once carried out by their ancestors, the Gods, who stood above them. Once upon a time, the Gods created the world by uttering their words into the cosmic spaces, and this creative activity gave rise to the created world round about us. The forces of procreation in the vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms are but, a metamorphosis of the former creative Word of God. We still bear within us a higher and a lower nature. The greatest perfection has been reached by that part within us which is endowed with sex, whereas our larynx contains the first stage of a new procreative power. Whenever we pronounce words, we are at the beginning of an activity which will one day become procreative. At present we are only beginners in an activity which was once carried out by the Gods. A new form of procreation will replace the old one. The larynx is now able to form words but in the future it will become an organ of procreation, a generative organ, which will produce more and more condensed and higher forms. The larynx can now mould forms of air, but in future it will give rise to real beings. When the earth shall have reached the Jupiter stager the Word will have creative power in the mineral kingdom, and during the Venus stage it will be able to produce plants. Thus the course of development will proceed, until man will be able to procreate himself through the Word.

The present form arose, when man first sent the air streaming through his lungs through sounds. But in future stages of the earth's development, the words, the mere words which we now tell each other, will have a lasting form. And finally, the larynx will become man's generative organ, through which he will procreate himself in purity without the intromission of sex.

This shows us the future aspects of human development, and the predisposition of the human larynx. Indeed, an enigmatic phenomenon can show you how intimately the larynx is connected with certain stages of development: When a boy reaches puberty, his voi0e breaks, it undergoes mutation. The human larynx is at the beginning of its development, whereas sexual life is at the end of its development. This shows us the intimate connection of certain things in Nature. In sexual life we are confronted by something which is dying off; the larynx, the word, on the other hand, will in the future become man's generative organ.

We might indicate many other examples showing how the human being will gradually develop organs which now exist in a rudimentary form—for instance, the organs which now constitute his breathing system, but which really form part of the heart system.

The training which was introduced into Europe since the 14th century in fact anticipates future conditions of human evolution and it enables us to follow a speedier course of inner development than the ordinary one. The training which is called the Rosicrucian training is the one most suited to modern men. In a certain sense, Rosicrucianism has not a good reputation among men who have only heard of it now and then. If we could rely on the statements made in books, and on what scientists know about Rosicrucianism, then it would indeed be the swindle which it is reputed to be! But those who judge Rosicrucianism by these sources do not know real Rosicrucianism, but a mere swindle!

But let us now consider Rosicrucianism in it s true form; it arose through an individuality concealed under the name of Christian Rosenkreutz, who gave rise to the Rosicrucian Movement in the year 1459.¹

I expressly remark that what I an telling you now is only to be taken as an example, in the same way in which I spoke to you yesterday of the Christian. training. Let me therefore indicate right away the seven chief points of Rosicrucian training. The sequence of these stages is not the same for all, but let me point them out to you, for they come into consideration for everyone who passes through the Rosicrucian training.

The first thing is what we call Study; the second is what we call the Appropriation of Imaginative Knowledge; the third, the Appropriation of the Occult Writing; the fourth, the Preparation of the Stone of the Wise; the fifth stage is called Conformity of the Small World, the Microcosm, with the Large World, the Macrocosm. ² The sixth stage is the Penetration into the Life of the Macrocosm and the seventh is what we the Divine Blissfulness.

The Rosicrucian path leads in the surest and profoundest way to a knowledge of Christianity. The Christian path of training is more suited for those who can abide in faith and who can awaken their feeling life within them, in the manner described to you yesterday. But the Rosicrucian path is for these people who can connect the truths of Christianity with the truths relating to the external world This above all, will enable them to protect Christianity against every attack from outside. Christianity is a world-conception of such profundity that our wisdom will never suffice to grasp it fully. The path of Rosicrucian training is the most suitable one for modern men.³

If we follow a train of thought which has nothing in common with the sensory world, we pursue study in the Rosicrucian meaning. What is designated as “thinking in free thoughts” is only known to the civilisation of the west, through geometry, the Christian-Gnostic schools therefore used the name “mathesis” for the designation of things connected with the higher truths, with God and the higher world, for such truths had to be grasped independently of everything pertaining to the sensory world, even as mathematics must be grasped independently of all sensory impressions. A circle drawn with chalk is most imperfect, a real circle can only be conceived in thoughts; thought alone is able to grasp everything that can be learned in connection with the circle. Through mathematics we learn to think of the circle independently of the senses; we construct it in thought, with the aid of the triangle built up spiritually, whose angles equal to 180 degrees.

It is somewhat uncomfortable to have to think without the support of external sensory objects, and for the majority of men there is no other field of study in this direction than spiritual science. In my first lecture I told you that the knowledge contained in spiritual science can absolutely be grasped through logic. But clairvoyance is needed if anyone wishes to investigate these truths. Logic suffices, however, for the understanding of the truths contained in spiritual science.

Our materialistic age could only invent the calculating machine, which teaches us to form thoughts which are not independent of the senses: A child, above all, should learn to grasp things independently of sensory impressions. Thee influence of spiritual science will therefore be of greatest value in education: Spiritual science is an excellent training for the development of a thought activity independent of the senses. Everything which I have told you in connection with Saturn, the Sun, and the various members of the human beings relates to things which cannot be, seen; they must be grasped through thought, independently of the senses. No one should, however, believe that he can train himself unless he first grasps these truths theoretically. The advantage of such truths is that they do not exist for the senses, so that they can transmit us a way of thinking which goes beyond sensory life. For many people it is sufficient at first, to penetrate into the truths which theosophy describes in connection with facts which cannot be grasped through the senses. These truths constitute, the kind of thoughts which were always explained to the pupils of the Rosicrucian Schools, and the truths were well impressed upon them.

If we now wish to proceed, we can find a good means of a Training in Thought in my books “Truth and Science” and “The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity”. These books are merely a gymnastic in a form of thinking which is independent of the senses. Generally speaking, you will find that in other books it does not make much difference if the thought- contained in one sentence is transferred to another one. But in the above-mentioned books no thought can be transferred to another place. These books have arisen in such a way that my own person merely, gave this thought-structure the opportunity to take on a sensory form. It was necessary to yield to these thoughts, so that they could arise of their own accord, continue of their own accord. Those who are willing to penetrate more deeply into these thoughts, devoting themselves to this study for, say, half a year (this is not easy, but the effort entailed is the very best way of tackling ) those who can read these books to the very end, have drawn out of their inner being a dormant force.

The second stage is Imagination, or the Imaginative Knowledge, which is entirely under the influence of Goethe's beautiful words: “All transient things are but a symbol”. Only those who have acquired a firm, sure thinking, should enter this second stage. For they might easily fall into delusive fancies without a firm foundation of thought. Consequently, the first condition is to have a clear head; nothing can protect us more against mistakes than a clear way of thinking.

In the widest meaning, imagination might be characterized by observing everything which surrounds us in the following Manner:—Observe the face of a human being; you see upon it creases and wrinkles,which come and go; you do not only describe these lines, but you designate them as smiles or sorrow. A man's smile reveals to you his happy disposition of mind. You do not only deduce an inner truth from something which you see outside, but this outer perception is for you a real symbol of that man's inner life or else you see a tear falling; you are not only a physicist who observes that tear in accordance with the law of gravity, but you know that that falling tear is the expression of the soul's inner sadness. Thus everything which you see outside on a person's countenance becomes for you the expression of the soul's inner mood. The Rosicrucian pupil learns to feel that everything which he sees outside is similarly the expression, let us say, of the Earth-Spirit, a certain plant, for, example the meadow-saffron, really appears to him as the expression of the mourning life of the earth. Even as a smiling countenance reveals to him the soul's happy mood, so the flowers become an expression for the earth's happy or sorrowful mood.

Goethe did not only wish to convey an external image when the Earth-Spirit in “Faust” speaks:

“In Lebensfluten Tatensturm,
Wall ich auf und ab,
Webe hin und her
Geburt und Grab,
Ein ewiges Meer,
Ein wechselnd Weben,
Ein glühend Leben,
So schaff ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit,
Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid.”

In the floods of life,
in the storm of action,
I surge up and down,
I weave to and fro!
Birth and the Grave;
An eternal ocean,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
Thus I work on the whirring loom of Time
And weave the Godhead's living garment.

For Goethe, the Spirit of the Earth gradually becomes something that lives in the earth; he acquires a soul-spiritual connection with the whole surrounding Nature.

Let me now explain to you more in detail one of the moods which can be found in Nature.

We have a Rosicrucian pupil walking across the fields. He sees the tiny pearls of dew upon each plant. This reminds him of the ancient “Neflheim, the “Land of Mists”, where the air was filled with a dewy mist and where the human beings had quite a different connection with Nature than they have now. The Rosicrucian pupil who is thus walking over the meadows and who perceives the pearls of dew upon the plants says to himself: In the ancient Land of Mists this was once dissolved in the atmosphere. And within his soul rose up a deeply concealed memory of the Atlantean age.

Imagination was specially cultivated among the pupils of the medieval Rosicrucian Schools, and als0 among the pupils of the Holy-Grail. Since I cannot express myself in any other way, let me now convey to you in the form of a dialogue some of the truths which were taught in these Schools.

The teacher said to his pupil:—“Behold the plant: see how it springs out of the ground, opening its calyx with the organs of fructification; see how the sun's rays come down upon it and open the blossom, so that the fruit can ripen”. The Rosicrucian pupil, and also the pupil of the Holy Grail, had to conjure up before their soul this image, this idea.

Now there is something very significant, even in materialistic science, whenever a plant is being compared with the human being. You must, in that case, take the plant's root as corresponding to the human head, whereas the flower corresponds to man's generative organs, to the which he shame-facedly conceals. In the plant the root corresponds to the human head. Man is a reversed plant, the animal is a half reversed pant. Rosicrucianism therefore says: Behold the plant: Its root is in the ground and its organs of fructification are chastely turned towards the sun's ray. Behold the animal: Its spine is horizontal ... and then behold man: There you have a complete reverse, a complete transformation. In the cosmic process of evolution the plant, the animal and man are symbolized by the Cross! The Cross is the plant, the animal and man.—Now you will be able to understand Plato's words: The soul of the universe hangs upon the Cross of the universe.—the soul of the universe, the cosmic soul which permeates everything, is stretched out upon the plant, the animal, and man.

Now it was impressed upon the Rosicrucian student: “Behold the plant: In its kind, it is lower than you, for it is not endowed with consciousness and with the power of thinking; but its substance is pure and chaste; it turns its calyx towards the sun; its organ of reproduction is turned without any passion towards the sun's ray, the holy spear of love. But physical substance has become permeated with passion. Now think of the future ideal—a purified substance, producing itself in purest chastity,” And his attention, was drawn towards the larynx, where man shall one day have attained the purity and chastity of the flower's calyx. “Think of the plant's calyx, which is devoid of passion. It develops through passion, but it will become pure again and reproduce itself chastely, by allowing itself to be fructified by the spiritual ray of the sun, by the Holy Spear of Love.” A prototype of this “holy spear of Love” is the spear which pierced the heart of Christ-Jesus upon the Cross.

Yesterday we have seen that this blood which streamed out of the Redeemer's wound banished egoism from the earth. The spear which pierced him is therefore a foreboding of that higher spear, the sun's ray in a spiritual form. And the Holy Grail indicates the chalice of humanity which develops out of the larynx, and which will be the purified generative organ of the future, as is the case to-day in the plant.

This is the deeper meaning of the Holy Grail, which was brought to the knowledge of the Rosicrucian students and of the disciples of the Holy Grail when they had reached the imaginative stage. Now compare the vision which you obtain through these images—the plant's calyx, sex filled with passion, the Holy Grail. the passionless chalice—compare this with the dry, intellectual concept supplied by modern science; this will show you the difference between imagination and mere intellectual thought: the whole cosmic process must be grasped in images! This is important, for the more intellectual concepts which we have to-day are not creative; but if these concepts are added to an image, then the images will become creative. This was felt in past times, and it should be considered in the education of the child.

Let me now discuss an actual problem. To-day people say so easily: What nonsense our elders taught us children, by telling us the story of the stork! Children should be told the truth.

If our descendants will treat us as we treat our forefathers, they will also laugh at us and say: Our forefathers thought that that the human being arises through a physical act!—And they will look back upon the time when this was explained to children in a spiritual way. In ancient times, when the story of the stork arose, also adults believed in it, for they knew that when a human being is born, his soul descend a from the spiritual world; and so they always connected birth with the descent of a winged being. You may even find this again in nursery-rhymes, for instance in the following one:

Flieg, Käfer, flieg!
Dein Vater ist im Krieg!
Deine Mutter ist im Pommerland
Pommerland ist abgebrannt;
Flieg, Käfer, flieg!

Fly, Beetle, fly!
Your father is in the war.
Your mother is in Pommerland,
Pommerland is burnt to ashes!
Fly, Beetle, fly!

This “fly, beetle” is meant as an image for the human soul, because a faint knowledge still existed of the astral world, from where the souls fly down into the physical world. And what is “Pommerland”? “Pommer” is the sane word as “Pommerle” which means a small child, so that “Pommerland”, or “Pommerleland”, is the Land of babies, where the mother goes to-fetch her baby. Such things must simply be explained in the light of the spiritual world. If you bear in mind that the image of the stork bringing babies is really an image for a spiritual process—reincarnation—you will realise how immensely important it is that certain things should first be grasped in the form of pictures; if the child is first taught to look upon the image of the spiritual process, he will develop an entirely different frame of mind enabling him to listen reverently even to the description of the physical process.

If you know that the stork is an image for the descending soul, you, yourself will once more believe in the stork! Your words can wing a child's fancy, if you understand the truth underlying an image; in that case a mysterious fluid will stream out of it and pass over to the child. This applies to every image. Children can thus be taught everything.

How can you deal with the problem of life after death? Lead the child to a butterfly's cocoon and tell him: Even as the butterfly flies out of its cocoon, so the soul flies out of the body when we die, but we cannot see this. If you really believe in this, you will be able to convince the child that when the butterfly leaves its cocoon, this is, upon a lower stage, the same as when the soul leaves the body. If spiritual science enables us to dive down again into the spiritual world, so that living images rise up in human hearts, education will change altogether; then the child will no longer be taught dry intellectual facts which coarsen his soul. We should not pull things down to a grotesque or comic sphere but we should realise instead what important things lie at their foundation.

The third thing which must be acquired for the paving of the “path” is the Learning of the Occult Writing. This does not consist in learning a writing, as is the case in ordinary life. The letters of the alphabet may indeed ba traced back to occult images but they are not by a long way an occult writing. In occult writing we must penetrate into the real great cosmic forces which are active in the universe. And all that we write down, must be so that one process of development passes over into the next. Take a plant: It bears seeds; in the seed you have the starting point for a new plant. But if you could really investigate the process, you would find that nothing of the old plant passes over into the new plant. In reality, the old plant perishes completely in regard to its substance; while the new plant builds up its form from entirely new substances—all that passes over into the new plant is a kind of movement. Here you have some sealing wax and there a seal: you press the seal into the wax. Of the seal itself nothing has gone over into the wax, only the form remains.—This is the case in every process of development. When it perishes the old substance merely supplies the opportunity for a new form to arise in accordance with the old form. This is designated

with two inter-twining spirals which do not meet. Such a transition existed after the Atlantean epoch of culture; this epoch disappears and a new one arises in the Indian epoch of culture; also this must be designated with two spirals. I have already told you that in the year 800 A.D. the sun rose in the sign of Aries; before that in the sign of Taurus; further back in the sign of Gemini and still further back in the sign of Cancer. The Greco-Latin age, containing the seeds of our present epoch, coincided with the time when the sun rose in the sign of Aries; the preceding civilisation; the Chaldean-Assyrian-Egyptian one, coincided with the time when the sun rose in the sign of Taurus; before that we have the Persien culture; when the sun rose in the sign of Gemini; and the ancient Indian culture developed itself when the sun stood in the sign of Cancer. It was then that the sign of Cancer; two inter-twining spirals was first written down.

Thus I might explain to you each sign of the Zodiac according to its true meaning. These signs were formed out of Nature, they are an expression for the forces and laws which are active outside, in Nature. If we learn to know the occult signs we begin to go outside ourselves; we penetrate into the mysterious foundations of Nature.

Thus I have given you some indications 0n the first three stages of the Rosicrucian path: Study, Imaginative Knowledge, and the Acquisition of the Occult Writing.

To-morrow we shall discuss the other stages, beginning with the Preparation of the Stone of the Wise.

• 1. See lecture 5 of Life Between Death and a New Birth.
• 2. See Macrocosm and Microcosm. Soul Problems, Life Problems, Spiritual Problems.
• 3. See The Path of Knowledge and its Stages

[ 1 ] On December 2, 1900, Ludwig Jacobowski was torn from a busy and hopeful life by a sudden death. Only those who were so close to him that he spoke to them about his ideas and plans in the last days of his life will have any real idea of what was carried to his grave. For one always had to make an addition to everything he had achieved. He made it himself. He was only satisfied with himself when he saw great tasks ahead of him. A twofold belief animated him. One was that life is only worth living if one's personality is restlessly enhanced in its efficiency; the other was that man does not belong to himself alone, but to the community, and that only he who is as useful to others as he can be deserves his existence. Under the influence of such sentiments, he continually widened the circles of his activity. It was a beautiful moment for him and for others when he spoke of what he was about to do. The way he spoke always inspired the belief that he would achieve what he wanted. He did not shy away from any obstacles. Not those that lay within him, nor those that he encountered along the way. There are few people who work so hard on themselves to enable themselves to accomplish their tasks. He had the highest confidence in the foundation of his being. But he never believed that it would be easy for him to work this reason out of himself. He could look back with the deepest satisfaction on the work he had done to work his way up to what he had become. But he probably never felt this satisfaction in itself, but only because it gave rise to the feeling that his working power would be equal to any obstacle in the future. Above his desk hung a piece of paper with core sayings. The Goethe sentences were also written on it:

No sooner are you safe from the grossest deception,
Hardly are you master of the first child's will,
You think yourself superhuman enough,
Fail to fulfill the duty of man! How much are you different from others?
Know yourself, live in peace with the world!

[ 2 ] The essence of his thinking and feeling is expressed in these sentences. Seeing life as a duty was part of his innermost nature. For he lived with this attitude from childhood. It is as if he had already felt as a boy: spare yourself no work, for you will one day demand much of yourself as a man, and woe betide you if you have not made yourself resilient!

[ 3 ] Ludwig Jacobowski was born on January 21, 1868 in Strelno in the province of Poznan, the third son of a merchant. He spent his first five childhood years in the small district town, a few miles from the Russian border. In April 1874, his parents moved to Berlin. The boy first attended the Luther Boys' School here. There he was a diligent, ambitious pupil. This remained the case when he entered the sexta of the Louisenstädtische Oberrealschule, but things changed from the quinta onwards. His diligence had diminished and he did not enjoy his lessons very much. He had to be returned to the Luther Boys' School. An eye operation that had to be performed on him at that time and the fact that he had to attend a language school because of a speech impediment had a profound influence on the boy's basic mood. The feeling that he had to work his way through a rough, brittle surface was richly nourished during this time. Such sensations caused him countless gloomy hours. A remnant of these hours probably never left his soul. But such feelings were always accompanied by the opposite pole: you have to steel your will, you have to replace out of yourself what fate has denied you. For him, dejection was always just the soil from which his almost unlimited energy grew. When he was twelve years old, he lost his mother. Fate ensured that his life was built on a serious foundation. In his twentieth year he also had to follow his father to the grave; he saw two brothers die in the prime of life. His determined will and his courage to face life grew again and again out of his dark experiences. Goethe's words "Over graves forward" were also among those that could be read on the note above his desk.

[ 4 ] A complete transformation took place in the boy when, from about the age of thirteen, he began to immerse himself in the treasures of German intellectual life. It is indicative of the idealistic trait of his soul that he felt drawn to Schiller's creations with true fervor during this time. Thus he created for himself the objects of his interest, which he had initially been unable to find at school. When he returned to the Louisenstädtische Oberrealschule, he joined the ranks of the good pupils more and more. He had now found his own way to gain understanding from the outside world. In the top class he had reached the point where he was exempted from the oral Abitur examination on the basis of his good written work. He passed this exam on September 30, 1887.

[ 5 ] The friendship with a boy who died as a senior secondary school student had a great influence on Ludwig Jacobowski's development. This was a gifted boy who developed significant mathematical abilities in particular. This friendship was a good counterbalance to Jacobowski's more purely literary intellectual interests. An understanding of genuine, even exact scientific rigor, which remained with him for life, was planted in Jacobowski at that time. As a result, he always had an open mind for the great achievements of natural research and their far-reaching significance for the entire thinking and feeling of modern mankind. Throughout his later life, he was devotedly faithful to the memory of his childhood friend who had died at an early age. "I am once again erecting a poetic monument to him," were the words I heard from him, accompanied by an indescribable look of gratitude.

[ 6 ] The extent of Ludwig Jacobowski's interests can be seen in the course of his university studies. He was enrolled in Berlin from October 1887 to October 1889, then in Freiburg i. Br. until Easter 1890. He initially attended lectures on philosophy, history and literary history. The circle soon expands. Cultural history, psychology and national economics were added. One can see how a main inclination increasingly emerges. He wanted to understand the development of the human imagination. Everything was driven by this fundamental interest. In 1891, he earned his doctorate in Freiburg with a treatise: "Klinger and Shakespeare, a contribution to the Shakespearean romance of the Sturm und Drang period." It is clear from the concluding sentences what shape his ideas had taken. "Literary history should finally stop praising and blaming. Both belong to a romantic period of criticism. Modern criticism - the first traces of which can be discovered in France with Sainte-Beuve, Taine and others - has to live beyond "good and bad", beyond "praise and blame". Psychological understanding is the only and first thing that criticism can achieve. That is why Klinger's dependence on the great Briton to understand psychologically must be understood as something naturally necessary. And judgments against necessities of a psychological nature are decidedly superfluous and wrong. Therefore, when Hettner says that Klinger saw in Shakespeare "a license for everything strange and outlandish, for everything crude and crude", this judgment must be rejected outright. Klinger only saw in Shakespeare a model of genius. His impressionable, receptive nature, supported by an excellent memory, had to store up, process and reproduce a large number of Shakespearean motifs. In this psychological "must" lies an aesthetic justification of his dependence on Shakespeare."

[ 7 ] From then on, Jacobowski's thinking was focused on the laws of the development of the human spirit. He also carried within him the conviction that poetry arises from a necessity deeply rooted in the human soul. This drew him to the study of folk poetry. He looked everywhere at the primitive cultures of primitive peoples and savages to see how poetry necessarily arises from the imaginative and emotional life of man. From such studies he gained a deep understanding of what truly deserves to be called poetry. One of his peculiarities was that everything he studied scientifically immediately penetrated his feelings and gave him a firm judgment. It was highly enjoyable to listen to him when he showed from the smallest details of a poem to what extent something was really poetic or not. He assumed that in the most developed art poetry the characteristics that can be perceived in the most primitive poetry are repeated. This is not to say, however, that Jacobowski based his own artistic work or even his aesthetic judgment on reflection. For him, knowledge was completely compatible with the originality, even naivety, of creation and feeling.

[ 8 ] In his twenty-first year, Ludwig Jacobowski was already able to publish a volume of poems entitled "Aus bewegten Stunden" (Pierson, Dresden and Leipzig 1889). It is the reflection of a youthful life that was richly wrestled with pain and deprivation, that was driven back and forth between gloomy moods and joyful hopes. A great striving, a life of beautiful ideals that struggles uncertainly and anxiously for form and language. Genuinely youthful poems, but which emerge from a serious mood. One thing is striking about these poems that is deeply characteristic of the poet. He is almost completely free from the passing trends of his surroundings. The day with its buzzwords, the prevailing trends of the literary cliques have no influence on him. Even if he does it in a youthful way, he struggles with ideals that are higher than those of his contemporaries. He is not one of those strikers who, with nothing to support them, immediately count themselves a new epoch of intellectual life.

[ 9 ] These were difficult times for the young man before and after completing his university studies. He also worked in the family's shoe factory at the time. Between business activities were the hours in which he wrote his verses, in which he devoted himself to his studies on the origins and development of poetry. Nevertheless, his first volume of poetry was followed a year later by a second, "Funken" (Pierson, Dresden 1890), and in the same year a magnificent work appeared on "Die Anfänge der Poesie, Grundlegung zu einer realistischen Entwickelungsgeschichte der Poesie" (Dresden 1890). Gustav Theodor Fechner's work in the field of aesthetics had made a deep impression on Jacobowski. He saw this thinker's "Vorschule der Ästhetik" as a fundamental work for all future aesthetic studies. In his opinion, Fechner had taken these studies out of the sphere of arbitrary ideas and placed them on the solid ground of reality. The laws of artistic creation should not be derived from speculation, but from the scientific and psychological observation of human nature. In an essay entitled "Primitive Narrative Art", Jacobowski expressed his views in this regard with the following sentences: "Only recently has psychology learned to look around at wild tribes and children. Let us hope that aesthetics and poetics will follow suit. The beginnings have already been made, but there is still much to be done to recognize the aesthetic functions of the child. Let us hope that time will also bring us ripe fruit in this area. Only then will it be possible to clarify the entire germs of poetry, from which the most glorious tree grew in the paradise of the earth ... For a history of the development of poetry it is always of value to follow attentively the products of the childlike soul as well as the study of primitive peoples." Starting from such points of view, Jacobowski wrote a series of essays on the history of the development of poetry. These include: Fairy Tales and Fables of the Basuto Negroes. Supplement to the Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung, ii1. March 1896. Arab folk poetry in North Africa. Supplement to the Vossische Zeitung, March 10, 1895. Stories and songs of the Africans. Magazin für Literatur, 1896, No. 30 and Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung, July 24, 1896, as well as supplement of the Vossische Zeitung, October 1896. Das Weib in der Poesie der Hottentotten. Globus, Vol. 70, 1896, No. ir and f. - When Karl Bücher's "Arbeit und Rhythmus" then appeared, Jacobowski welcomed in this book a beautiful fruit of the standpoint that he himself had made his own in the history of the development of poetry.

[ 10 ] Everything Jacobowski undertook in this field he regarded as preparatory work for a great work on a realistic history of the development of poetry. He was tireless in collecting material for this work. He was intensively occupied with cultural-historical studies, from which the genesis of poetic creation was to emerge before his eyes. In particular, he was thoroughly familiar with the cultural-historical research of the English. He left behind a wealth of notes on the lives of primitive people. In such works he developed an incomparable diligence, and in the processing of the material he was characterized by a comprehensive sense and unerring judgement. The friends he had in the early nineties were of the opinion that his real talent lay in this field and that he would one day achieve great things as a scholar. - He himself pursued these matters with devoted love and perseverance, with the intention of one day attempting a fundamental work on the "History of the Development of Poetry". However, this scholarly activity did not initially form the focus of his work.

[ 11 ] In this center stood his own poetic achievements. It was for their sake that he wanted to live first and foremost. He never doubted for a moment that he was a poet at the core of his being. Whether this core would penetrate through a hard shell, however, may well have often been an anxious question before his soul.

[ 12 ] Jacobowski's soul was moved back and forth between two extremes. A strong, indomitable will was in him alongside a soft, sensitive mind, in which the processes of the outside world with which he came into contact left sharp traces. And it was his vital need, in the noblest sense of the word, to feel the value of his personality. Anything that got in his way in this direction caused him the deepest resentment. Imagine him with such a disposition in the nineties amidst the brutal outbursts of an anti-Semitism that was simply incomprehensible to finer natures. And imagine his idealistic way of thinking at a time when he saw nerdiness, crude struggles for base goods, frivolous play with sacred feelings becoming more and more insolent every day. His first novel "Werther, the Jew", published in 1892 (Pierson, Dresden), tells in powerful words what moods were stirred in him by the sight of such goings-on. He wrote it in the midst of hardship and true anguish.

[ 13 ] Wolff suffers from his father's ethical views and the prejudices directed against the young Jew. His father's money speculation deprives his son's teacher, to whom he is truly devoted, of his fortune. Wolff's passion for the teacher's wife turns the young man into a deceiver of his father's friend. At the same time, this same passion destroys his beautiful bond of love with a child of the people, who seeks redemption in voluntary death from the torment that his affection for the student has brought him. The young man's willpower is not strong enough to show him the way through the contrasts into which life throws him and through the confusion into which his own passions have plunged him. His sense of humanity alienates him from the people to whom the natural ties of life bind him. At the same time, these ties weigh heavily on him. The world pushes him back because of his affiliation with people whose faults he himself deeply detests. - Jacobowski allows the fate of the modern Jew to be reflected in this individual fate. The novel is written with heart_ blood. It contains a psychology whose object of study was his own bleeding soul. One might criticize the novel for being written by a young man who has not found the peace and time for objective observation of the soul, because the experiences of his own soul are still striving too hard to find expression. One might also say that Jacobowski's artistic talent for composition was not yet great at the time. One thing must be conceded: we are dealing with the document of a human soul whose tragic undertones must speak to every heart that is not hardened against the suffering of an idealistic mind. Such a heart is compensated for all the faults of the narrative by the profound truth with which a personality unreservedly expresses one side of his nature. - Anyone who was close to Jacobowski knows this side of his nature. It was the side against which the energy of his will had to fight again and again. One can speak of a highly heightened sensitivity towards everything that was directed against the justified claims of his personality to full respect and recognition from his fellow man. At the same time, he had a rare need to share in everything that was worth living for. His devotion to people, his absorption in the outside world instilled in him a constant fear that he might lose himself. Jacobowski is not Werther. But the fate of Werther is one that Jacobowski had to constantly protect himself against. When he wrote "Werther", the possibility of becoming a Werther was clearly before his eyes. That is why the novel is a confrontation with himself.

[ 14 ] A person who has put as much into a work as Jacobowski did into his "Werther" cannot be indifferent if he encounters a deaf fellow world. There was no sign of any recognition of his undoubtedly honest intention and equally undoubted talent. One can sympathize with the pressure that this lack of success exerted on the young poet. Later, when he spoke of those days, he honestly admitted how he had suffered from this lack of success. He was not one of those immodest natures who never doubted their own talent. Encouraging recognition would have been very valuable to him at this time. One may attribute the fact that his poetic work now briefly took a back seat to a strong preoccupation with political issues to the fact that he lacked such recognition. However, his involvement in political issues was not one that was lost in the interests of the day. He always considered the political in connection with the development of culture. The last decade of the nineteenth century was only too suitable for presenting the most diverse questions to sharp minds with a broad horizon. The repeal of the Socialist Law gave the social movement a powerful outward appearance in its cultural significance. The old parties had disintegrated; their ideas and their momentum were no longer equal to the ever-advancing development. Old, reactionary powers believed that their time had come. Slogans and dark instincts began to exert an effect on the wider masses that had not been thought possible for a long time. One of these dark instincts, the anti-Semitic one, particularly caught Jacobowski's attention. It hurt him deeply in his most personal feelings. Not because he was attached to Judaism with these feelings. That was not the case at all. Rather, Jacobowski belonged to those who had long outgrown Judaism in their inner development. But he was also one of those who tragically had to feel the doubts that were cast on such outgrowth out of blind prejudice.

[ 15 ] However, these blind prejudices were only a partial phenomenon. They were part of a powerful current that was increasingly becoming a sum of reactionary ideas. It was believed that an ideal basis for this current could be created by infusing the prevailing world views with Christian ideas anew. The buzzword "practical Christianity" dominated people's minds. And the idea that the state had to be built on Christian foundations seemed to exert a powerful attraction. - This prompted Jacobowski to examine such views. His extensive "Study" on the "Christian State and its Future" (Berlin 1894, published by Carl Duncker) is a result of these debates. His preoccupation with cultural-historical problems provided a solid basis for the "Study". He carefully examines the influence of the church on the states. He lets history speak its important verdict on the extent to which the Church has intervened in the development of Western humanity. And in order to recognize the moral foundations of the state, he examines the changes in the moral concepts of various peoples. The conclusion he comes to can hardly be doubted by those with insight: "The end of the Christian state is a fact for the insightful parties in Germany, against which its appointed representative, the conservative party, will run up a storm in vain. The compelling logic of history has always been stronger than the limited individual wishes and special interests of political parties. And so it is a fact that the Christian state is crumbling more and more in all European states." In the second part of the "Study", Jacobowski pursues the present-day approaches to new foundations of social order: the national, ethical state, the free Christian community, the free ethical community. He conducts a stimulating investigation into the viability of the various young ideals of the future. - Because of the youth of these ideals, such a debate cannot produce a real result. "No one knows who will replace the "Christian state", no one knows whether this replacement will take place under peaceful conditions." For Jacobowski himself, however, the study was of great importance. Through it, he had gained what he could not have lived without, according to his entire disposition: he had acquired an understanding of the world around him.

[ 16 ] The struggle with the environment is also the problem that he makes the subject of a dramatic work in 1894. He wrote "Diyab, the Fool, Comedy in Three Acts" in a short space of time, from April to June of that year. Just as "Werther" represents one side of Jacobowski's nature, his emotional world, "Diyab" represents his willpower, which repeatedly asserts itself against all currents. The "Werther" is based on the more or less unconscious feeling: I have to defend myself against these manifestations of my nature; in the "Diyab", the feeling may speak in the same way: this is how I have to relate to the outside world if I want to make my way. - The sheikh's son, Diyab, was born of a white mother and is therefore regarded as an outcast. The scorn of the whole neighborhood follows him. He saves himself from this mockery by fleeing into the solitude of his inner self, thereby rising above all the mockery of the world around him. He becomes superior to those who mock him. They know nothing of his innermost self. He hides this from them and plays the fool. They may mock him in this mask. But his own self grows outside in the solitude where the palm trees are. There he lies among the trees of the forest, living only himself and his plans. He cultivates his powers to a strength that will later make him the savior of his tribe. Those who mocked him in the past then shrink back from the power of the enemy, and he, the outcast, overcomes them. The strong-willed man only put on the fool's mask so that he could make his fortune unrecognized by others. Behind the fool's mask matures the personality that takes revenge for the treatment meted out to her and her mother, the personality that conquers the throne of the sheikh and the beloved through boldness and strength.

[ 17 ] "Diyab" is not written with a bleeding heart like "Werther", but with a beating heart. It was written at a time when Jacobowski was just finding himself. An inner security breaks through, which protects him from the kind of disgruntlement that followed the limited external success of his "Werther". - From this time onwards, a new period in Jacobowski's endeavors can be assumed. There is also a change in his lifestyle. He broke away from a friend, a lyricist, who was very successful as soon as he appeared on the scene. Jacobowski undoubtedly owed much to this friendship. The criticism that all his achievements received from this side was a constant incentive for self-discipline. He only ever remembered this childhood friendship with gratitude. But it had to end if Jacobowski wanted to find himself completely. The feeling that he needed spiritual solitude, complete dependence on himself, led to Jacobowski's estrangement from his friend.

[ 18 ] The collection of poems "From Day and Dream" (published by S. Calvary, Berlin 1895) is a kind of conclusion to his first creative period. Jacobowski's three lyrical collections are a faithful reflection of all the struggles of his third decade of life. The striving for simplicity, for a popular art form is a fundamental trait of his poetry. A genuine idealism is expressed in atmospheric images that seek vividness and plasticity. A certain symbolic way of imagining things often pervades. The processes of his own soul are symbolized by events in nature. While in the first poems of his youth the intellectual still predominates, later a full view of reality increasingly comes to the fore. At first, it is the poet's own inner self that preoccupies him:

From the day's pleasure and pain
The universe weaves a lullaby,
That draws into tired human hearts,
Bringing sweet peace,
When the soul never approaches
The divine image of truth
Wrapped in the night.

[ 19 ] Afterwards, our poet struggles to shape the outside world. He makes nature speak. He personifies reality. He holds a dialogue with it. The secrets of nature's workings and his own world of emotions intertwine. Poems such as the delicate "Forest Dreams" in "From Day and Dream" stem from this kind of interaction:

The sun spreads its blessing
Like a golden carpet
. Woodruff perfumes the paths,
And redthorn scatters its blossoms.
Only sunshine and sky blue
Shimmer through the cool canopy of leaves.
The peregrine falcon with a bright cry
Keeps me awake on soft moss.
Now he has fallen silent in the sultriness,
I dream sleepily to myself
And dream that in the fragrant puddle
I myself am stalk and blossom...

[ 20 ] Deeply rooted in Jacobowski's nature was always a firm belief in the harmony of the universe, in a sun in the course of every human destiny. It was probably only this belief at the center of his soul that helped him overcome many a bleak moment in his personal destiny. He suffered greatly from these personal experiences, but there was something in his outlook on life that always worked like light. He would not have been able to appreciate himself as he wanted to if he had not felt the strength within himself to bring light into his darkness. So he steeled this strength and worked on himself incessantly. And this work constantly gives him new hope, lifts him above moods, as expressed in the poignant "Why?" in "Out of Day and Dream":

... When I awoke to the first day of summer,
The dark night was already waiting outside.
I looked up at the golden sunlight,
The gray rain cloud shifted in front of it;
And I stretched out my child's hand, rejoicing
To the rose bush that was all in bloom,
Then thorns warded off my exuberance,
And from joy the red blood ran...

[ 21 ] The melancholy cycle "Martha" in "Aus Tag und Traum" points deep into the poet's soul. It encompasses an elegiac undertone that trembled in Jacobowski's heart until his death. A sudden death in 1891 had snatched his childhood sweetheart away from him. From then on, the memory of her was one of the images he returned to again and again. The departed woman lived on in his heart in the most tender way. She was like a presence to him in hours of sadness and joy. It was a lasting loyalty of a very special kind that he retained for her. When he spoke of her, his voice changed. You had the feeling that he sensed her presence. Then you were not alone with him. That's what made all the poems about his childhood sweetheart so intimate.

[ 22 ] His preoccupation with political issues had earned Jacobowski a position with a newspaper and in an association that kept material worries at bay in the last years of his short life. Those who had dealings with him could only praise his diligence and hard work in this position. When one considers that his occupation in this position took him out of his literary work every day anew, then one cannot marvel enough at the sum of what he nevertheless achieved in the literary field. The number of novellistic sketches he wrote is large, and his activity as a critic was extensive. Characteristic of him is the position he took towards his shorter novellistic works. He wrote a large number of such sketches in the mid-nineties. He saw them as works in which he was developing his style as a narrator. The moment he was ready to take on larger works, working on such sketches lost its appeal for him.

[ 23 ] As a critic, Jacobowski is characterized to an outstanding degree by his ability to completely immerse himself in the achievements of others, to immediately feel the core of a foreign personality from their creations. Anything doctrinaire is far removed from him as a critic. His judgments always stem from a fresh, original feeling. You can see everywhere that he is fully involved in what he is talking about. Ultimately, he does not want to judge at all, but only to understand. His pleasure is not in condemning, but in recognizing. One reads with particular pleasure the remarks in which he justifies his approving judgments with his own warmth. - Anyone who wanted to follow Jacobowski's work as a critic closely would see how this man was intensely involved in the intellectual life of his time, how he drew his circles of interest in all directions.

[ 24 ] A collection of sketches has been found in Jacobowski's estate, which he was preparing to publish in book form in 1898. They were to bear the title: "Stumme Welt. Symbols". The collection is indicative of his way of thinking and his entire inner life at this time. When you read through the sketches, you get the impression that Jacobowski was called to be the poet of the modern naturalistic world view. The new understanding of nature initially seems to have something unpoetic and sober about it. Its penetration into the purely natural processes, its commitment to pure, unadorned reality seems to frighten away the poetic imagination. Jacobowski's "Silent World" proves the opposite. He had completely settled into the scientific confession. He was imbued with the greatness of the view that sprouts from his immersion in the eternal, iron laws of the universe. Darwinism and the doctrine of evolution were dear to his heart. It is true that they tore apart the veil that once enveloped nature. But what emerges from behind this veil is not as devoid of poetry for those who are able to see, as people with a conservative outlook would like to claim. The marvelous laws of matter and forces give birth to poetic images that are in no way inferior in grandeur to the images of earlier imaginary worlds that were transferred from the human soul into nature. Modern man no longer wants to let nature speak in a human way. The whole mythical world of spirits is silent when the ear, educated in naturalism, listens to the phenomena of nature. The eternal cycle of matter and forces seems to be a "silent world". But whoever knows how to make this "silent world" speak can hear completely new, wonderful secrets, mysteries of nature whose harmonious music would be drowned out by the former loud voices of anthropomorphic world views. Jacobowski wanted to depict this music of the "silent world" in his collection of sketches.

[ 25 ] The new view of nature rightly invokes Goethe as the progenitor of its ideas. And for those who delve into Goethe's scientific writings, the phenomena of the world become letters from which they learn to read and understand the plan of the cosmos in a new way. Many people read Goethe far too superficially. Jacobowski was one of the few who sought to gain a proper position vis-à-vis Goethe. He treated everything relating to Goethe with a holy shyness. He knew that one grows if one retains the belief that one can always learn something new from Goethe. He immersed himself in Goethe's view of nature at an early age. But even in the last days of his life he could still be heard saying: now I am beginning to understand Goethe. He realized how Goethe could be a guide when it came to making the "silent world" speak. He then did not have the volume published. New approaches emerged from the basic idea that holds the sketches together. A cosmic poem was to grow out of it. He wanted to allow his spirit to mature in order to imbue the seemingly deified world with new life, to conjure up new mysteries from the cosmic processes. The epic of the mysteriously revealed workings of the eternal forces of nature was to be called "Earth". It is not for the editor of the estate to pass judgment on the germ-like sketches of a comprehensive thought to be published as "Stumme Welt" (2nd volume of the estate). I only considered it my task to communicate the poet's intentions.

[ 26 ] It seems that Jacobowski initially saw his profession as a poet in the development of his imagination in the direction he had taken in the "Silent World". This is probably also the reason why he did not initially regard the field of drama, which he had entered so promisingly in "Diyab", as one in which his individuality could fully come into its own. Certainly, like others, he also thought of ultimately living out his artistic intentions in dramatic forms. But his strict self-criticism demanded restraint from him in every field until the moment when he felt he had reached the highest level in the respective sphere according to his ideals. In 1896, he completed a drama in four acts: "Homecoming". It is set in the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War in central Germany. It is intended as a portrait of the times on a grand scale. After completing the work, the poet heard a wide variety of opinions from those he shared it with. These judgments ranged from bright, unreserved enthusiasm to complete disagreement. Jacobowski initially left the drama in his desk. He waited to see what he himself would say about it at a later point in its development. In the months before his death, the work became worthwhile to him again. He would probably have reworked it. As he was no longer able to do so, it must form part of his estate in its original form. One gets to know the poet from it at a certain time in his life. It will have to be judged from this point of view.

[ 27 ] The stories "Anne-Marie, ein Berliner Idyli" (S. Schottländer, Breslau 1896) and "Der kluge Scheikh, ein Sittenbild" (S. Schottländer, Breslau 1897) belong to a transitional stage in Jacobowski's development. They show him in his striving for plasticity, for the vividness of the figures. Reading them, it is as if one senses the resignation he imposed on himself. His larger ideas were already living in his soul at that time. In order to give them shape, in order not to lose himself in their schematic form, he had to give his epic style juice and strength. He did this with more or less unpretentious stories.

[ 28 ] The symbolizing aspect of his art is then clearly revealed in the collection of stories "Satan laughed, and other stories" (Franz Wunder, Berlin 1897). One need only consider the basic idea of the first tale, which gave the collection its name, to realize what the main feature here is. God has taken away the devil's dominion over the earth by creating man. Yet the devil secures his influence by seizing the woman. The demonic powers of sexual life are symbolically outlined in a few characteristic strokes.

[ 29 ] In the year 1899, the poet appeared with a work of art that is entirely based on this symbolizing principle, his "Roman eines Gottes: Loki" (J. C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf.). It is fair to say that Jacobowski's various inclinations flow together like branches of a great river in the creation of this work. His urge to eavesdrop on the popular imagination and to understand its quiet weaving led him to take the external plot from the figures and events of Germanic mythology. His observation of social life led him to focus on Loki, the "disinherited god", the revolutionary of the world of the gods. The psychology of man, who can only assert himself through the strength of his inner self, through his strong will, and that against adversity from all sides, made the Loki figure particularly appealing to Jacobowski. Werther and Diyab in one person, but more Diyab is Loki. He is this, as Jacobowski himself wanted to be Diyab.

[ 30 ] No real process, even if it were given in idealistic art form, could have expressed what the poet wanted to say. The eternal struggles of the human soul are before his eyes. The struggles that take place in the deepest recesses of the mind. Place and time, all accompanying phenomena are almost indifferent here. The action must be lifted into a higher sphere. May the individual events that life brings to man have this or that tragic or joyful outcome: they all bear the hallmark of an eternal struggle. "God created man in his own image, which presumably means that man created God in his own image." This is a famous statement by Ludwig Feuerbach. One could expand on it and say: if man wants to represent the deepest processes of his inner being, then he must transform the life of his soul into the life of the gods; the primal battles in the depths of his chest are embodied in the battles of the gods. Because Jacobowski wanted to depict such primal battles, his novel became that of a god. These primal battles take place between the two souls that dwell in each breast, between the soul that gives rise to goodness, love, patience, kindness and beauty, and between the other, from which come hatred, enmity and rage. Balder and Loki face each other in incessant war in every human mind. Hamerling expressed the thought that describes what lived in him when he wrote his "Ahasver" as follows: "Overarching, towering, mysteriously spurring and driving, accelerating the crises, standing behind the striving and struggling individuals as the embodiment of the balancing general life, that is how I imagined the figure of Ahasver". Jacobowski often emphasized in his conversations that he thought of his "Loki" as so "overarching", so "towering", so "standing behind the striving and struggling individuals as the embodiment of the balancing general life".

[ 31 ] The poet's intentions are revealed most clearly by a trait in Loki's character. Jacobowski has always assured us in conversation that we can only fully understand him when we know how to interpret this trait in the nature of his hero of the gods. Loki, the god born far from Valhalla, the child of the gods' sin, who grows up in pain and deprivation, who does not know his mother or his father: he has something over all the other gods. Happiness and eternal joy are theirs. He has pain and torment. But he has the gift of wisdom before them. He knows the future of the other gods, which is hidden from them. They live, but they do not care about the driving forces on which their lives depend. They do not know where these driving forces are leading them. It is not happiness that opens the mind's eye, it is not joy that makes you clairvoyant, but pain. That is why Loki sees into the future. But there is one thing Loki does not know. He must hate Balder, the god of love. He does not know the reason for this. For his own fate is locked up in it. This also remains hidden from him. This is the point at which Jacobowski's most secret intentions are revealed. Loki's wisdom ends before the question: why must the knowing Loki hate the ignorant but love-filled Balder? This, however, points to the fate of knowledge. It is the greatest riddle to itself.

[ 32 ] No summary or even a judgment is to be given here about "Loki". Only the poet's intentions are to be told, as he gladly communicated them in conversation about the work he loved so much. He felt that with "Loki" he had made a huge leap forward on his path of development. He had come to believe that the affirmative forces within him would triumph. Clarity about everything negative in human destiny was what he sought above all, and what he had achieved in himself through his "Loki" poetry. Beauty, goodness and love are the perfect things in the world. But perfection needs destructive forces if it is to fulfill its full task. Loki is the eternal destroyer that is necessary for the good elements to renew themselves, the demon of unhappiness that happiness needs, the evil spirit of hatred from which love stands out. The creator who is never allowed to enjoy the fruits of his creations, the hatred that creates the ground for all love: that is Loki. - The person who seeks the truth finds the destructive urges of life at the bottom of his soul. The demonic forces of Loki oppress him. They cloud the bright days of life, the moments of happiness. But one understands, one only feels the shining days in their true power when they stand out from the Loki mood. With such feelings in the background, Jacobowski has brought together his poems from the years 1896 to 1898 under the title "Leuchtende Tage" (J. C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf. 1900). They are imbued with a luminosity that arises from a dark background, but which makes life all the better for it.

[ 33 ] The fact that he was able to appear before the world with "Loki" and the "Shining Days" brought about an inner transformation in Jacobowski. Only now did he have the feeling that he could approve of his own achievements. He now had the confidence in himself that his strict self-criticism was in harmony with his own creations. An inner balance came over him. The future became ever brighter. He had found himself and his belief that "our stars" would redeem him. If you look at the pictures of the poet from the successive stages of his life, you can also see the expression of his inner transformation in his facial features. A sense of security, of harmony, appears more and more. Jacobowski had to fight many a battle with life before he really reconciled himself with it.

[ 34 ] The certainty, the unity of character also stimulated his urge to work. He was a man who only knew himself to be happy in his work. He saved the contemplative, the solitary, reflective contemplation only for life's moments of celebration. He wrote his "Loki" in a few weeks, in 1898, in Tyrol, as he was detached from the contexts in which life placed him. His poems were only written when his inner self lifted him above reality. Within this reality itself, however, he was compelled to contribute to the spiritual life of his time to the best of his ability. His work on "Zeitgenossen", which he published together with Richard Zoozmann in 1891 and which, however, only had a short existence, arose from this urge. He found a field for this urge when he was able to take over "Gesellschaft" in 1897, the journal that had served the spirits longing for a new era of literary life since the mid-1980s. Jacobowski's need for the all-round cultivation of intellectual interests characterized the volumes that appeared under his editorship. He wanted to honestly serve true cultural progress with all the means at his disposal. Nothing was excluded that could contribute to this goal. It is natural that a pronounced individuality, such as Jacobowski was, had to give a magazine edited by him a strongly personal touch. At the same time, however, he was aware of the editor's duty to allow personal inclinations to recede into the background. And above all, he knew the duty to pave the way for young talents to enter the public eye. He had the courage to evaluate what was not yet recognized. In such evaluation and recognition, he was selfless and very confident in his judgment. He was unique in his concession to every legitimate aspiration. As many as sought his advice, his help: all found him helpful. He did an unspeakable amount of work in silence. And he knew how to do everything with nobility. - You got to know him in all the goodness of his nature through small traits.

[ 35 ] One such small trait is recorded here. He was chairman of the "Neue Freie Volksbühne" for a short time. It was during a summer outing of the members of this association. Jacobowski was in charge of the plays that were organized outdoors. It was heart-warming to see how he romped and jumped with the children, how he took part in the race and how he was even the first to reach the finish line, despite the fact that quite good runners were obviously taking part. And how he then found the right way to hand out the small prizes to the children.

[ 36 ] Jacobowski found inner satisfaction in an enterprise that he launched in 1899 with his "New Songs by the Best Recent Poets for the People". In a booklet for ten pfennigs, he offered a selection of the best creations of contemporary poetry. He soon heard evidence of the usefulness of his enterprise from all sides. The little booklet was received everywhere. He was always happy to tell people how lucky he was with it. He carefully collected everything he heard about the effect. He wanted to write a brochure based on his experiences about the interest in true poetry in the widest circles of the people. For in all this he had a great perspective. He wanted to counteract the bad taste, crudeness and wildness of the people. Stupid ragamuffins and silly jokes were to be replaced by true poetry. He repeatedly said: "I have made the attempt. I would have unreservedly confessed to the public that the first step had failed if that had been the case." But he was able to describe this first step as a thoroughly successful one. The continuous booklets he began to publish under the title "Deutsche Dichter in Auswahl fürs Volk" (German Poets in Selection for the People), also at ten pfennigs (in Kitzler's publishing house, Berlin), were to serve the same purpose. Two booklets, "Goethe" and "Heine", were published a long time ago, the third, "Grimms Märchen", was ready when he died and was published a few weeks after his death. He worked tirelessly in every direction to make the ideas expressed in these publications fruitful. He also intended to publish a collection of poems for the army. In an interesting essay that he published in the "Nation", he spoke out about the current type of poetry and songs that are prevalent in military life. In such plans, which served charitable aims in the ideal sense, he possessed an admirable strength and a happy handling.

[ 37 ] In connection with his folkloristic studies and his efforts to promote folk culture is the publication of his collection "Aus deutscher Seele. Ein Buch Volkslieder" in 1899 (J. C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf.). He wanted to bring to life the folk poetic treasures piled up in numerous books in libraries. He says of these treasures in his foreword: "Their content, because it is insufficiently disseminated, gives way to the flat street songs of the big cities and the miserable sentimentalities of stupid operettas. So it seemed to me that the time had come, as far as the strength of an individual and the understanding of my poetic ability would allow, to publish a collection which, arranged according to aesthetic criteria, would present to the German people anew some of the truly valuable and glorious songs from the jumble and confusion of the accumulated mountain of songs." - Jacobowski was able to describe "Aus deutscher Seele" as "the result of these considerations and the fruit of many years of the most intimate occupation with the wonders of the German folk soul and folk poetry".

[ 38 ] The idea of making important "questions of the present and outstanding phenomena of modern culture" accessible to wider circles in a form they liked came from Jacobowski's plan to publish a collection of small writings - in booklets of 32 to 8o pages - in an informal series. Three such booklets were published in 1900 under the title "Freie Warte, Sammlung moderner Flugschriften" (J.C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf.). They are: "Haeckel und seine Gegner" (by Dr. Rudolf Steiner), "Sittlichkeit!?!" (by Dr. Matthieu Schwann), "Die Zukunft Englands, eine kulturpolitische Studie" (by Leo Frobenius). These and the titles of the writings that were to appear in the near future show how comprehensively Jacobowski thought of the task he had set himself. The following were also announced: "Das moderne Lied", "Die Erziehung der Jugend zur Freude", "Schiller contra Nietzsche", "Hat das deutsche Volk eine Literatur?", "Der Ursprung der Moral". The pamphlet "Hat das deutsche Volk eine Literatur?" ("Do the German people have a literature?") was written by Jacobowski himself. In it, he wanted to talk about the experiences that led to his Volkshefte and similar endeavors, and also about the results of such undertakings.

[ 39 ] Another link in Jacobowski's efforts to serve his time was the publication of an "Anthology of Romantic Poetry" under the title "The Blue Flower". Together with Friedrich von Oppeln-Bronikowski, he published this collection of Romantic poetry from the end of the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century in 1900. The 400-page volume begins with works by Herder and ends with one by the Prince of Schönaich-Carolath. Jacobowski added an essay "On the Psychology of Romantic Poetry" to the "Introduction" compiled by Fr. von Oppeln-Bronikowski. He believed he was doing the best service to the urge of the time to move from naturalism to a kind of neo-romanticism by collecting the pearls of romantic art.

[ 40 ] The qualities of Jacobowski, through which he worked directly from person to person, the stimuli that could emanate from him in this way, came to fruition in a literary society that he had founded with a few friends in the last period of his life. Every Thursday in the "Nollendorf-Kasino" in Kleiststraße, he gathered an artistically and literarily stimulated circle under the name "Die Kommenden". Younger poets had the opportunity to present their creations here, and important questions of art or knowledge were dealt with in lectures and discussions. Artists of all kinds visited the society, which met here informally every week, and Ludwig Jacobowski was constantly striving to come up with new ideas to make the few evening hours they spent here enjoyable for the guests. He had also made plans to compile artistic booklets with the performances from these evenings. The first was in progress when he died. It was completed by his friends after his death and published in his memory with contributions from his estate. The "Kommenden", who still meet every week, faithfully cherish the memory of their founder.

[ 41 ] An external cause led Jacobowski to write a short social drama in one act, "Work", at the end of 1899. Axel Delmar had conceived the plan of dramatically depicting the more important turning points in the development of Germany in a centenary play comprising five one-act plays, to be performed at the "Berliner Theater". Wichert, Ompteda, G. Engel, Lauff and Jacobowski were the five poets. The latter had the task of dramatizing the social thinking and feeling of the present, the most important cultural phenomena at the end of the century. One does the "work" an injustice if one attributes a tendency to it and judges it accordingly. The aim was merely to illustrate how social trends are reflected in different social classes and people.

[ 42 ] In the last months of his life, a painful experience that shook Jacobowski to the depths of his soul found poetic expression in a one-act verse drama entitled "Glück" (Happiness) (J.C.C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden in Westf. 1901). It will only be possible to talk about this experience at a later date. He himself hinted at the mood from which the drama was written in the verses preceding "Zum Eingang":

It was like dying when I lived it!
It was a comfort to me when I wrote it!
Who ever trembled in the same affliction,
Accept it and love it!

[ 43 ] Some of the poems in this estate come from the same mood. "Happiness" in dramatic form has come naturally to the poet from the Syriac poems in which he has set down the moments of a tragic experience. These lyrical poems from the last period, united with all the poetry he has produced since the publication of his "Shining Days", appear here as an estate. With regard to the compilation of the poems, the points of view which the poet himself observed in his "Shining Days" have been retained. The headings of the individual sections of the volume of poems are therefore the same as in the "Shining Days". The sharp character that Jacobowski's soul life has taken on in recent years made this section desirable. A second volume will bring together all the sketches he himself compiled in a booklet entitled "Stumme Welt". He did not allow it to appear independently because he wanted to develop the plan in a larger form later and, under the title "Earth", work up the ideas on which the "Silent World" was based into a cosmic poem in a grand style. He considered it necessary to immerse himself deeply in the natural knowledge of the new age before he could begin his great work. A deep inner conscientiousness and shyness prevented him from tackling this fruitful idea too early. He was not destined to carry out the project, which would probably have revealed what Jacobowski's deepest inner self held. A third volume was to contain the above-mentioned drama "Homecoming". A series of "ideas" that are characteristic of Jacobowski's thinking and personality are added to the second volume as an "appendix". As small as their number is, they clearly show the depth of his outlook on life and his humor, as well as the ease of judgment he had towards certain things. They prove that he was one of those people who knew that not everything must be measured with the same yardstick, but that different things must be measured with different yardsticks.

We are dealing with a progressive development of our planet. The purpose of our Earth is to develop this consciousness within us. Each planet goes through metamorphoses of seven successive levels of consciousness:

[1. Trance consciousness
2. Deep sleep consciousness
3. Dream consciousness
4. Wakefulness consciousness]
5. Soul consciousness
6. Oversoul consciousness
7. Spiritual consciousness

We have now established the [seven] metamorphoses of the father principle. Each of these seven metamorphoses of the father principle now undergoes seven principles in itself. Seven times seven.

Now we come to the son principle:

1. Elemental kingdom
2. Elemental kingdom
3. Elemental kingdom
4. mineral kingdom
5. plant kingdom
6. animal kingdom
7. human kingdom = 49 metamorphoses

Each of these 49 metamorphoses undergoes seven transformations, and the transformations through the spirit principle.

Each realm undergoes the seven powers once. For example, plant consciousness undergoes the seven powers once through the seven realms and seven times seven – each realm seven times the powers.

su>run The father metamorphoses seven times in seven levels of consciousness. All – plant – animal – human [gap in the transcript]

Puruscha: The Father metamorphoses seven times in seven stages of consciousness: All-consciousness - plant consciousness - animal consciousness - human consciousness - soul consciousness - oversoul consciousness - spirit consciousness.

Pakriti: The son metamorphoses seven times at each of these levels: first elemental realm, second elemental realm, third elemental realm, mineral realm, plant realm, animal realm, human realm.

Mahat: The mind metamorphoses seven times in each realm: Divine Spirit, Fire Spirit, Warmth Spirit, Light Spirit, Power Spirit, Creative Spirit, Blissful Spirit.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

The way the realms are arranged in the individual levels of consciousness, however, makes us think as we describe them.

On the first planetary chain, the forces of light rule the first elemental realm in the fourth round. That is a fixed point. On the second chain or level of consciousness, the forces of light mainly rule the second elemental realm in the fourth round. On the third chain or level of consciousness, the forces of light rule the third elemental realm, and on the fourth, our level of consciousness, the forces of light rule the mineral realm. This is important because the rulers are not always the same. During each round, all seven forces are experienced, but not in the same way. On the moon, the mineral kingdom was ruled by the forces of warmth, -— previously by the forces of fire, on the first / gap in the transcript] by the forces of life. When Mars completed its fourth stage, its mineral state, its angel of orbital period was the divine spirit. Consciousness was an all-consciousness. When the beings arrived in the mineral kingdom, they were ruled by divine spirits.

On the first globe (arupa), the power spirit rules.
On the second globe (rupa), the creator spirit rules.
On the third globe, the blessed spirit rules.
On the fourth globe, the divine spirit rules.
On the fifth globe, the fire spirit rules.
On the sixth globe, the warmth spirit rules.
On the seventh globe rules the spirit of light.

Because this goes in a circle, Mars concludes with the highest development of light. Now he has developed light to the highest degree; the second planet begins. And what he has conquered in the previous one, he carries over. Now he shines and is called esoterically: the sun. Now he has during his

the creator spirit,

the blessed spirit,

the divine spirit. Now the sun reveals itself during its mineral state as fire, the plants are cooked. - Now it continues:

Fire
Warmth
Light
Strength

and hands over the power to the moon, and the power becomes that which permeates the moon, therefore it organizes [gap in the transcript] the moon period begins with creative spirit, develops arbitrariness, man arises as pleasure and pain.

Arupa stage – blissful mind
Rupa stage – divine mind
Astral stage – fire mind
Mineral stage – warmth

Warmth is revealed on the moon while it is physical.

The earth begins with

Arupa stage – Divine spirit
Rupa stage – Fire spirit
Astral stage – Warmth spirit
Physical stage – Light spirit

We are ruled by the light spirit, which is why the sun shines for us.

Now it depends on when a certain stage of Pitri is reached. Imagine you remain behind, a certain constellation of the stars comes, in which violence has a different relationship to the realm; the spirit to the son in another relationship, and that is decisive, as we are in our state of development. That is esoteric astrology. He must know at which level the Pitri stands and what the relationship between father and son is.

This is also the danger of the higher development of man: he comes out and into other cosmic influences. - He practices black magic by being carried away and coming into another sphere of influence. - Look at the diagram:

Each time we have seven kingdoms that go through certain stages of development. These are the son principle; hence 343 states, but only after every 49 states - so that every time a person has gone through 49 states, they have a particular turning point in their development. Something special is revealed to them. They enter a new series of 49. The Son reveals Himself. The human being becomes more inward-looking. The kingdom principle is evoked through the Son, and so the Son, Christ, reveals Himself. So Christ appears each time.

Our Christ is the one. And when the experience of Christ is fully realized within a person, they have undergone the 172nd metamorphosis. After the 343rd metamorphosis, they have returned to the Father. This is why Christ can say: “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

There are
343 human stages
49 Christs
7 Fathers.

Our Christ was the twenty-fifth; in every kingdom the Son reveals Himself once. 49 times in a planetary development. The Father reveals Himself in the constellation.

On our Earth it is the fourth, on the planetary chain the twenty-fifth.

7 x 49 = 343. The Son reveals Himself every 49th time.

49
49
49
343
21
172 stages of development
3
171 171

We can only understand the Apocalypse if we accept the fundamental nature of Christianity as a mystical fact. This fundamental nature is contained in the words: “Blessed are they that have believed, not seen.” What once took place in the interior of the crypts has now been carried out into the arena of world history itself. The old mystery was revealed in Christianity: that which is a mystery at one time becomes manifest at another. The content of ancient mystery books is reproduced in the Gospels; the record of future events is contained in the Apocalypse of John.

Anyone who wants to understand the spirit of such writings must, above all, know how religions work.

Today, there is a widespread belief that the simple word contains the truth, and there is an aversion to elevating the spirit. Nothing should be said against the simplicity of the word: but the inner strength from which such speech flows springs from the highest heights of the spirit. Not everyone could speak of the revelations of the highest regions. The church father had the strength, the power of the [gap in the text]

A destiny seen in mystery is described to us in the apocalypse. A lower initiation is enough to see beyond one root race, a higher one is necessary to see beyond many. To create an apocalypse, the third degree of chelaship is necessary. In the realm of highly developed astral vision, the destiny of a root race unfolds before us. From the fourth chapter on, the Apocalypse is devachanic vision. He who wrote the Apocalypse overlooked the period up to the middle of the Lemurian race and the future until sexuality ceased. The higher experiences are no different from each other. Never do two initiates report in different ways. The initiates of all times spoke as the apocalyptic did. In the Apocalypse, the author speaks from the Christian point of view.

Let us look back at the formation of the races.

Before the Lemurian race, there was a development of humanity that was quite different. The etheric body had not yet solidified; it did not walk on the ground, but floated through the etheric earth itself. Its organs were luminous. Man incarnated in fiery clouds at the beginning of the Lemurian race. The esotericist describes that transition from fine to physical matter, those beings that developed into physical density, as the eagle state of man. The eagle is therefore the human being who has developed from the ether to physical matter.

In the Atlanteans, man had a strengthened life force, he could control prana, use the seed power. During the present race, for about thirteen million years, he has only mastered physics. Later he will regain control over the etheric body and the astral body.

This second stage, in which man still has control over the etheric body, is symbolized by the lion man.

For the Aryan, who has descended completely into the physical, the symbol is the bull.

Three very definite successive stages of humanity are thus designated.

The symbolic language is understood by everyone who has learned it; they know what is meant by the special signs.

A frequently used character is two interlocking triangles: an eagle at the top, a lion on the left, a bull on the right; in the middle, a human face. This means that there is a triangle below that characterizes past conditions. The three angles therefore remain initially [gap in the text]

In the middle is the inner man, the actual permanent essence. These are the four natures, through which man is actually human, can be seen in the two intertwined triangles.

These three animals appear wherever the development of the human being is discussed. But in the Apocalypse of John, there is still another way of speaking. The apocalyptic overcomes the veils that separate him from the earlier stages. In order to be able to see himself back, the earlier organs must be enlivened. He must draw animals that see and look. Eye, all eye.

The future stages can only be grasped by someone who has an eye for the ascent, the use of the higher bodies. Now we are in the stage of the purely physical mind. This mind requires a certain moral teaching and a certain religion. In essence, the individual must seek his fortune at the expense of the other. Those who strive for the higher must already rise above the rest. In the occult school, there are three words that describe the new age. These are:

Brotherly love: the love of community as a moral ideal.

Pneumatology: the doctrine of the spirit and the spiritual as the decisive thing: scientific ideal.

Free religious principle: self-authority in religious matters.

This will be the sixth race.

A well-known occult law is that in certain time cycles, what has happened before will be repeated. The eagle, bull and lion were repeated in the first three sub-races. The fourth sub-race is referred to as “human”. In it, Christianity emerged.

The people of the first sub-race, the Indian people, had expressed the culture of thought, the highest deification of thought. They had to repeat in brief what the Lemurians had experienced. The Lemurians were people of feeling; the Indians thought in feelings; what thought radiates in feelings we find in the old Vedic culture - thought takes hold of feelings in the Indian. In cultures where thought is served more by memory, we have the culture of heroes, the long catalogs that have led to memory. Much was noted. And from the notes of the ancient Persians, the Magi, the Chaldeans, the calendar books were created. From them developed astronomy, astrology, technology, mathematics, and so on.

Thus man came to the race where he understood what it means: in man himself, the god has come to life.

The first race could fall away most easily. The feeling is not yet strong enough for the thought to really internalize.

Every day that one delves deeper into Vedanta-Alchry is a source of new admiration. On the other hand, the most abject idolatry that the people have fallen into confronts us. But the great virtues of people always have the greatest dark sides as well. The Apocalypticist seeks to make us understand this phenomenon by using the example of the community of Ephesus, symbolized by the sect of the Nicolaitans; it is intended to show us how, in the fifth root race, the most external lives alongside the highest.

Let us visualize how the early Christians viewed their Christianity.

“There are three that begat it on earth, and three in heaven.” Atma, Buddhi, Manas. Father, Son and Spirit.

To speak of the Father would have been rejected by the early Christian. He believed he could only recognize the Father through the Son, through the Word: “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

The highest that man can aspire to is thought, the mental. It is characteristic of man on earth that he lives in three worlds at once: the spiritual, the soul and the physical - but only in the physical consciously.

The highest for all religions was the world-creative will. When man, through the will, wants to express the thought, then it is first through the word. The word is the expression of the spirit through the will. Thus the Christian said: The Father expressed his spirit in the world through the power of the word. This is the second person of the Trinity, the third is the Holy Spirit, and He is expressed in the Word. The world is the embodiment of the Spirit and came into being through the Word of God, as the vibration of air comes through human speech. This Word is to be thought of as the Second Person, as the highest Being, much more personal than a human individuality. This highest being became man for the first Christians in the one whom they recognized as the proclaimer of the Gospel. He who does not understand this, he who wants to dispute the Word made Flesh, cannot place himself in the frame of mind of the first Christians. That the Christian has risen to devachanic vision is clear to him who knows how to read the Gospel.

The Christ-life has something essentially different from the Buddha-life, and this was understood by the first initiates. Time is suspended, the past is present: such is devachan. At the transfiguration of Christ the three disciples are uplifted to devachanic vision.

Here we have something that we do not have in the Buddha life. Buddha became luminous... here it concludes. The Christ life begins its most significant epoch with this fact. Thus the first Christians said: “We well understand the pre-announcement of this, which is fulfilled in the present, through the old religions... But blessed are those who believe, not see.

What had previously been achieved by beholding the great truths of the world in the interior of the crypts could now be experienced by those who merely believed. The mystery was brought out into the open world arena. The cross of Golgotha is the same act, erected before all eyes. The ancient mystery doctrine had to be brought to the world in a popular form. A step has been taken that leads further than the old religions.

I would like to continue today with my reflections on the Apocalypse. Anyone who wants to understand the full meaning and spirit of a work of writing such as the Apocalypse must, above all, realize how religions work and how Christianity worked in its early days, that is, what forces made it possible for Christianity and other religious systems to pour out this mighty and magnificent life of the spirit over humanity.

Today, the belief is all too widespread that the simple, plain word that everyone can understand must actually contain the truth, and there is a certain “tendency” today against the elevation of the spirit to the heights of thought, to the heights of supersensible vision - thus a “dislike”. We often hear even theologians say: anything that cannot be clothed in the simplest words that every person can understand without fail, that cannot be of much use to the truth. Those who think this way will not be able to understand the full meaning and spirit of a work of writing such as the Apocalypse is, and as the mystical Gospel of John already is. Admittedly, nothing should be said against the correctness of the saying that the truth must be proclaimed in simple words, because whoever wants to proclaim the truth must find the ways to be able to speak to the simplest hearts. He must find the words to speak to those who stand on the heights of science, culture and education, as well as to those who are referred to by the expression “simple man from the people”. But the power, the inner power, cannot find expression in the simple, plain word. This power comes from the highest heights of spiritual life. In its early centuries, Christianity also had mystery initiation sites where not only simple words, not only generally understandable things were proclaimed, but where the revelation of the highest spiritual vision was proclaimed, which in the Gospel of John reaches up to the regions where space and time have no meaning. Not every outsider could then speak of these revelations of the highest regions. The church fathers and teachers of the first centuries then found the very popular, simple word through which they found access to the uneducated. They themselves had the power, the authority of spiritual proclamation from the highest heights of spiritual life. And something like that is also implied in the Apocalypse as if by itself. You only need to read the most important passages in the Apocalypse with understanding and you will find that what has been brought down from the heights of the spirit is set in a world picture, that a world picture has been designed from it.

I, John, who am also your brother and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and power of Jesus Christ, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. [Rev 1,9-10]

With this he expressed that he was on the “island of Patmos” - he meant a mystery place - and had received this revelation. And in the Spirit he had received it. And in other places he speaks differently. At the beginning of chapter four, he says:

After this I looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven; and the first voice that I had heard speaking like a trumpet said, 'Come up here, and I will show you what-after this shall take place.

The first three chapters contain what I have already tried to outline in the last lesson. But then the fate of the root race that will replace ours is described. Therefore, the Apocalypse distinguishes precisely between the two types of vision, inspiration and intuition. This is necessary if one wants to proclaim the one and the other. A low intuition is enough to reveal the destinies of a root race, but a higher intuition is needed to see what happens after this root race of ours, for example, when the sixth and seventh root races have emerged. This cannot be seen in the way of seeing that underlies the first three chapters; it can only be seen when one ascends to devachan. The destiny of a root race can never be revealed to us in the realm of highly developed astral vision. That is why John says that he heard the voice in spirit. Until the end of the third chapter of the Apocalypse, we are dealing with higher astral vision; from the fourth chapter on, we are dealing with devachanic vision. The initiates of all times speak as the apocalypticist speaks.

There is only one thing in the Apocalypse that is different from the other profound initiation texts. In the Apocalypse, the point of view is different. The theologian John speaks in the Apocalypse as a Christian, from a Christian point of view. Therefore, anyone who wants to read the Apocalypse with the right sentiment, with the right feeling, must completely identify with the confession, and above all with the very human confession, not just with the theologian's confession. They must identify with the feeling of a highly initiated Christian, with the feeling that a Christian has when the full power of Christian revelation has taken hold of him. One must know this.

A significant word can be found in the first letter of John:

There are three witnesses on earth: blood, water and the Spirit.

And there are three witnesses in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit. [1 John 5:7-8]

To the theosophist, these three principles that give birth in heaven are known as Atma, Buddhi and Manas. The Christian calls the principles that underlie the world: Father, Word and Holy Ghost. To speak about the Father would have been rejected by the Christian of the first centuries, because

No one comes to the Father except through me. [John 14:6]

And the one who spoke these words is the great Christian Master himself, the one through whom Christianity itself came into the world. I now speak entirely in the spirit of an initiated Christian of the first period. He believed in the Father, and he believed that he could not get to know him other than through the word.

And what was the word? Only a weak idea can be given to the uninitiated of what the initiated Christian of the first time calls the word, and that is through a comparison. The highest that man can rise to is the thought, the mental. Man always rises through the thought to the life in Devachan. He lives in Devachan, he is just not aware of it. That is the characteristic of the earthly human being that he lives in three worlds at the same time: in the physical world, in the astral world and in the devachanic world. But he is only conscious in the physical world. The highest expression that exists in the world was, for all religions, including the first Christian religion, the world-creative will. And if the Christian says anything at all about the Father, it is solely that the Father is the world-creative universal will. When man wants to express the highest that lives in him, the Devachanic, the thought, through the will, that is, through the world-creative principle, it happens first through language. In man, the word is the enunciator of the spirit through the will. And so the first Christian said: Everything that our world is is conceived in the highest sense through the word - but now through the word that came into being through the highest world-creative will. Just as man expresses his highest through the power of the will to the word, so the Christian says: The Father expressed His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, through the power of the word. That is why it also says in the Gospel: “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made.

The Third Person is the Holy Spirit. He is to the universe what the spirit of the individual human being is to that human being. This Spirit descends in the Word of the world. If a Christian wanted to visualize this, he would say to himself: Just as a person speaks, how his word resounds into the air, setting the air in motion in waves, and how his thought thus lives on in the waves of the air, and the word is the embodiment of the human spirit, so the world is the embodiment of the word of God.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. [John 1:3]

This also means that the actual fundamental principle is the highest that man can embody in the world, that is the word. And this word is referred to as the second divine person or as the Son of God, as the highest being, not as an abstract, pantheistic image of the world soul, but as a being much more personal and individual than the human personality, the human individuality. It must be firmly held that we are dealing with a supreme being and that the word is an expression of the supreme being through which the whole universe, like man, can see with eyes, hear with ears, and comprehend with the mind. For the first Christian, this has become man in the one whom he recognizes as the proclaimer of the gospel.

Thus, for the first Christians, the event in Palestine had a cosmic value. He who walked in Palestine was not a man like the other men for the first Christians. He was for them the Word made flesh, that which can see with eyes, hear with ears, and comprehend with the mind in the whole universe, and this infinite being in the form of a human being. Those who do not understand it this way, who want to quibble about the incarnate God, about this Word of the incarnate God, who do not see it as the incarnation of God in Jesus, cannot put themselves in the shoes of the first Christians.

He was a unique personality. The gospel expresses this in a magnificent, wonderful, and powerful way. That the Christ ascended to the devachanic vision is clearly expressed in the gospel for those who can read these things.

But in order to fully understand Christianity, I ask you to consider one thing. We have a great similarity in what we call the narrative of the life of Jesus and in what we call the narrative of the Buddha's life. This similarity in the proclamation, this similarity of the years of apprenticeship and so on has been emphasized in many ways. Where this similarity comes from is known to the mystic, because he knows that such a life is repeated at certain periods of humanity. But the Christ-life has something else, something essentially different from the Buddha-life, and that was understood by the first Christian initiates. If you follow the Jesus-life, you come to a point that is described as the Transfiguration. Jesus went with his disciples Peter, John and James to the mountain and was transfigured, he became radiant from within, and Moses and Elijah hovered on either side of him. The disciples then received significant revelations. This indicates an extremely important moment. Moses and Elijah appear at the side of Christ Jesus. Time is suspended, the past is present. This is how it is in devachan. Here in the physical world we have space and time. In the astral world we have only time. But the devachanic world is without time and space. Moses and Elijah, who have long since passed away, are immediately present. This means that at the transfiguration the three disciples Peter, James and John were raised to devachanic vision.

Starting from this transfiguration, we can see what is important: it is the actual sacrificial death, the suffering, dying and sacrificial death, that is, what you do not have in the Buddha-life. Buddha went out with his disciple Ananda and became radiant. When you see this scene depicted in the Buddha-Life, you see it in a different form; that depends on popular opinion. But in the last moment we have the transfiguration. Buddha's Life concludes with the transfiguration. The Jesus-Life begins its really significant epoch only with this fact. This indicates what the Christ wanted to say about all the old religious systems of the preceding sub-races of the fifth root race. The Christ wanted to say: We do understand the prediction of what came through the Gospels in the preceding religious systems, we do recognize that in the old mysteries the Word of Truth was taught and given. But there is one thing that has come into existence only through Christianity, and that is expressed by the key-word: “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” – That is the great, the world-historic significance of Christianity in its Gospel.

What was once accomplished in the mystery temples, closed off from the world, for a select few through initiation, through beholding the great truths of the world in the interior of the mystery crypts, should also be able to become and become so inwardly free and elevated in soul, even those who do not go so far as beholding, but who can only believe. Therefore, in Christianity, what used to take place in the secrecy of the mysteries, the highest, the mystery in which man himself passes through the gate of death to rise again in a higher life, this deepest mystery secret, which an uninitiated person cannot understand in its true meaning, was moved to the great horizon of world existence. What took place in Palestine took place as a historical, real fact, which occurred in all its details as previously the mystery acts inside the mystery sites. In the mysteries, sacrifices and sacrificial deaths were repeatedly performed. The ancient mystery teachings had to be brought to the world in a popular form. But with that, a further step has been taken through Christianity, a step in the conception of an initiate of the first Christianity, a step that leads people beyond the stage that the old religions could have given them.

Who were the teachers of the old religions? They were the teachers of humanity. What they taught was what mattered. The teachings of Buddha, Zoroaster, Confucius, Hermes, Pythagoras, Laotse, [Socrates, Plato] - it was the words themselves that mattered. They stood, as it were, on a high mountain, and from there they proclaimed the highest, the holy word. But something else was possible. It was possible for this word itself to descend and take on human form, and for once it was not what was proclaimed that mattered, but what was lived, lived in the deepest sense of the word. The goal was there. In ancient times, the path was indicated to our fifth root race. In addition, there were the teachings and commandments of the old religious founders, of Laotse, Confucius, Moses, and Buddha – their truths. But then the Word itself came down in the form of flesh and lived among us. And the threefold Word became true:

I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

And so the Christian disciple and the initiate saw in his founder the 'way', the 'truth' and the 'life'. In a profound saying the Christian disciple has indicated what I have said. All the founders of ancient religions were regarded as embodied angels, messengers of the Godhead. 'Angel' means nothing other than messenger of the Godhead. But now there came One before Whom the angels covered their faces in reverence and lay down at the feet of the Mystic Lamb, the feet of God made flesh. That is the mystery, that in the incarnate Lamb a deeper descent to men, a life with men, can be seen. From the mountain the ancients proclaimed the Word. But Christ descended into the valley and lived as a human being among humans. He did not command what should be done, he did not say what is true, but he showed by the way he lived that the word had been realized. In this, the Christian saw his religion distinguished from the other religions. This also placed him at the center of what the Christian initiate has to proclaim as an apocalypse or secret revelation. Why the Incarnate Word is also called the “Lamb” is what we will discuss next time.

It will have become clear to us that we must place this Lamb at the center of the Apocalypse, and that through this Lamb alone the future of humanity can be proclaimed. In the fourth chapter of the Apocalypse, when man is led up, when heaven is open, the truths of the beyond are proclaimed to him. This is the mystical Lamb who breaks the seals of the world. There the transfigured flesh meets. Hence the question: What revealed itself to you when you stepped beyond the mere height of Christian vision? Then the mystical Lamb revealed itself to him. The devachanic world opened up to him, and with it the possibility of revealing the actual secret that must be revealed when the time is fulfilled, when the seventh sub-race of our fifth root race is over and a new race of humanity with a new stage of development is about to begin.

Thus we have described in the Apocalypse the fate of the fifth sub-race and the beginnings of a new world order, which is described with three key words: 'pneumatology', 'community life' built on love, and 'moral teaching'. This world announces itself in the world secret, which is revealed through the seven seals that are opened by the one who, by going among men, made this secret possible in the first place, and who will fulfill it when the time has come for our root race to mature, to pass over into that world and reach that stage of evolution that is designated by these three words. The content of the Apocalypse must be drawn from such depths. This is not to say that true Christianity can only be drawn from these heights. But it must be imbued with fire, and this fire can only be won by man if he draws strength from higher vision, and the result of higher vision in the Christian sphere is precisely the Apocalypse.

Every religion must deal with the question of the origin of evil. Where does evil, imperfection come from? This is a question that the teachers of all major religions have repeatedly dealt with and answered. It must be asked because one imagines that the divine origin must be the perfect one. If the world emerges from the divine, the question naturally arises: how can something good give rise to something evil? Why does the perfect allow something imperfect?

One must grasp the essence of evil in the right way and then pour out the necessity. A picture: piano workshops, in which there is a perfect piano maker who not only has the highest technical skill but also works with love in making the pianos. We will not find anything imperfect within the workshop. When we bring a piano to the concert hall and a virtuoso sits down at it, something perfect will come again. Each in his own place performs perfectly. But if, let us say, the piano-maker were too enthusiastic and hammered away while the virtuoso was playing, this activity, performed in the wrong place, would produce something imperfect. We shall find that this image can be applied everywhere if we go a little deeper.

Let us imagine the task on the moon as similar to, but different from, earthly development. The faculty of imagination was not present, nor were any of the mental faculties that develop in human beings. Dream consciousness was present, but its task was to build the animal organs of man. The animal body was formed and developed into semen. But they were predisposed on the moon and developed as they must be if they are not the bearers of a spinal cord and a brain. Therein lay the difference in the formation of the organs. A bone structure can be different if it does not need to taper to a spinal cord and skull capsule. In order for all this to be developed in seven rounds, each with seven globes, the dream consciousness had to be the regulator of all animal organs. If it was to fulfill its task completely, it had to take special care to carry out the formation that lay below the sphere of brain formation. Great wisdom was needed, but no bright consciousness, generic wisdom. This tremendous wisdom had to take great care with the plastic formation of each organ. Everything that had been achieved at that time had been achieved and also overcome. But how differently was the Pitris formed?

Let us imagine a retarded Pitri now transferred to the earthly career. He has the tendency to catch up on what was neglected at that time and would take great care to apply everything to the satisfaction of lower organs. Such Pitri natures are partly in the human organism, partly as seducers in the astral, they want to hold back the human organs. They have not found the right connection, they cannot slip into the earthly shell and buzz around people, seducing them, wanting to keep them in the lower service, which was higher service on the moon. This backward activity contradicts earthly activity; and evil has arisen from this perfection being placed in the wrong place.

The development proceeds in such a way that lessons must be learned, that one cannot be automatically pushed into the path; this can lead to peculiarity. Because world development proceeds in space and time, the displaced perfection gives rise to imperfection.

If we follow the great stream of the development of consciousness, it is clear and perfect; but now it must live out in space and time and is now intertwined in particularity, that is, different developmental currents push into each other and then stand next to each other at different levels of development; in this way, things interact that would be perfect in the right place, and yet, when they interact, they create an imperfection.

Therefore, no being in space and time can claim perfection, only the divine origin is perfect.

Christian esotericism calls this perfect origin of all beings the “Father”. “Call me not good, for no one is good except the Father.” Be perfect, as your Father is perfect, strive to seek your ideal in the Father, that is, in the spaceless and timeless.

But is it not contradictory to the concept of the Godhead to allow evil despite space and time? If we think that all other beings are there for our sake, that we have separated the realms from us, we will say: Actually, it only depends on the development of the human being, because they are there for our sake. We have to accept

Evil in the sense we know it only exists in earthly development. To what extent is it justified in the divine primordial law? Could the human world be without evil? The question arises as to how the guiding entity relates to the human being. It could give him the bound route for life, in which case the deity would be omnipotent but the creatures powerless. This is impossible if the deity wanted creatures that are its image. If the deity wanted to divest itself, it had to create mirror images, give the creatures the possibility to develop out of themselves. The freedom of their being / gap in the transcript] In the love of God lies the complete divestment of God.

First we have the guiding deity, then the mirror images and the life within them – sat; still in abundance, not yet divested; devotion – ananda – and merging with the creature – chit. This is the relationship of the divine essence to the creatures.

Without freedom, beings in God's image are not possible; but with freedom, the necessity arises that beings can also err.

In earthly development, beings are thus given one of the highest powers, that of love. A being that has a predetermined path could not do good out of itself, freely out of love. A free being does it out of love. Thus God created beings in self-sacrificing love and gave them the opportunity to return life in free love. That is why the cosmos of the earth, in contrast to all others, is called that of love. Acting out of love is its task.

Yoga means striving for union with the source of divine truth. The one who strives for this is a yogi. A yogi must lead a certain way of life; in so doing, he seeks to open the source of truth within himself. Certain things that a yogi must strive for cannot be carried out in our [Western] life. But that doesn't make them any less true. Sometimes it is better to renounce than to not renounce in terms of development. For example, every killing takes a person back in development. The Hindu strictly adheres to this. He would not kill vermin, for example. But within our Western way of life, one cannot adhere to such a rule, even if it remains true.

Man achieves union with the primary source of divine truth by purifying his three bodies more and more.

In the Christian mystery, the mystic says to himself: “I should achieve union - the unio - with the Holy Spirit, the Word or the Son and the Father.” This is achieved by purifying the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body.

When the astral body is purified, then man can unite with the Holy Spirit.

If we want to form thoughts about the world, then there must be thoughts in it. The whole world must carry within it the plan that one subsequently thinks. The [creative] world thought is called the “Great Architect” by the Freemasons and the “Holy Ghost” by the Christians.

If you look at the world, you will find wisdom. The whole world, down to the last detail, is built by this wisdom. For example, a bone is so wisely [built] from infinitely fine beams that no engineer could even begin to imagine it. Everywhere you look, you will find the wisdom of the world, which we extract in our everyday thinking and in science. The ordinary person does not consider how to organize his actions so that they fit into the plan of the world. The yoga student transforms his drives; he consciously follows the laws of logic. Thus, his astral body no longer works against his ego, but his ego illuminates his astral body. In this way, he achieves catharsis. Then he becomes one with divine wisdom; this is the union with the divine spirit. Our astral then unites with the spirit of the world. This can only be achieved in stages, by going through certain meditations. He tries to live within himself by devoting himself in a certain way to exercises according to the instructions of experienced people.

The religions strive to fill man with thoughts that are independent of space and time. Our everyday thoughts are largely produced by the environment in space and time. Just think about how many of our thoughts have arisen from the fact that we live at a certain time, under certain circumstances, in a certain place, in a certain environment.

The union with the Holy Spirit or the World Tree Master is the first step of yoga that transforms our animal nature into a life of virtue. Man then imprints the eternal in the world through his actions, if he regularly, even if only a few minutes a day, occupies himself with thoughts of eternity. Even if the actions of the meditator and the non-meditator appear the same on the outside, everything that comes from a meditator has a completely different effect because something of the general world spirit flows into his actions.

The etheric body must also be transformed. It is also worked on alongside during the transformation of the astral body. The astral body can be transformed through great, ideal feelings, through immersion in great truths; but this does not go beyond the soul. But working on the etheric body goes beyond the soul. To achieve this, a person must study those things that are related to their external nature, for example, temperaments. Usually one of the temperaments prevails in a person. The melancholic person lets little affect himself from the outside, but he is very attached to these effects. The phlegmatic person also lets little affect himself, but he is not very attached to these effects. In the case of the choleric person, there is a strong influence [from the outside] and also a strong after-effect. In the case of the sanguine person, one also sees strong impressions, but no after-effects.

Only when we know ourselves well in this way can we begin to educate our temperament. The yogi must bring harmony to the four temperaments. This already reaches down into the etheric body. Much has been achieved by the person who, for example, is able to curb his attention through self-education. Much has been achieved by the person who has become a level-headed person out of an irascible person. (Usually, a person gives up the temperament he was born with even at death). One must delve into the way the temperaments work. The yogi studies them and also applies them. He is constantly striving to educate the missing aspects of his being. If you have managed to change your temperament, you have achieved a lot. If a person who is hot-tempered becomes harmonious in one lifetime, it is much more significant than if a person was harmonious all his life. With every change in lifestyle, a person acquires a bit of vitality. Some people cannot stand “working on their temper. But if he can endure it, he gains vitality and becomes younger at the same time. This also applies to the physical when he changes his way of life. If he can endure it, if he can successfully make such a fundamental change to himself several times, then he will also grow older in years, he will then become younger. This intervention in the inner being is a real rejuvenation process.

The etheric body is the carrier of life, [and when the human spirit works into this etheric body, it supplies it with spiritual powers, rejuvenating powers].

The yogi must regulate the life functions; he must do what evolution demands. Those who want to understand how to nourish themselves as yogis must take into account the connections with nature to some extent.

This also applies to their food.

We can observe various currents in the historical development of humanity. In the period from Augustine to Calvin, the inner life of Christianity attained great depth in mysticism. External science, on the other hand, stood still. It was an involution of science and an evolution of the mystical life. Then, starting with Copernicus, there began an involution of the mystical life and an evolution of science. Now an evolution of the mystical life has begun again. Thus life swings back and forth. Man has gone through such congestions and forward movements in his evolution. The first great congestion occurred when man entered into the Saturn existence. He came from a different development. He could have undergone a one-sided high development without this, but he would not have been able to reach the earth. The sun existence is then a progress of development; the moon existence is a congestion. The earth existence is an equilibrium.

On Saturn, man was a mineral being; that was a congestion. On the sun, he was vegetable; that was a furthering. On the moon, there was another congestion, and on the earth, the equilibrium. There, man must choose for himself whether he wants to remain in the congestion or whether he wants to develop further into new stages of existence. Everything that is animalistic, that originated on the moon wave, signifies a retrogression. Everything that is on the sun promotes progress. That is why eating plants has a beneficial effect. In contrast, animal food contains inhibiting lunar power. This is how man brings himself back.

Initially, as the earth developed, humans first repeated the earlier conditions on earth. There is a great difference between what is warm-blooded and what is cold-blooded in the animal kingdom. Warm-blooded animals are created by Kama working from within. Passion, or Kama, produces warm blood. In fish, on the other hand, Kama works from the outside as the World Kama. The fish egg is hatched by the sun. This is the case with all cold-blooded animals. The warm-blooded animals are the ones most closely related to humans. For those who aspire to purify their Kama, it is a good exercise to abstain from all warm-blooded animals. If they eat a piece of meat, they eat the whole animal. The Kama of the animal is undivided in every single piece of meat.

Before man had reached the stage of becoming warm-blooded, he warmed his body from the outside. In the case of lower animals, kama also acts from the outside. A fish is the expression of the whole world kama. When you eat a fish, you eat the whole world kama with it. He [man] then basically works against evolution because he associates himself with the blockages from the outside. He fraternizes with something that is tremendously inhibiting. It is similar with the consumption of eggs. They are shaped by the general Kama. With them, one absorbs the general Kama.

Favorable for the yogi, on the other hand, is everything that grows directly in the sun: grains, fruits, and so on. Less favorable is what thrives in the moldy earth, under the earth, including everything onion-like and garlic-like. Potatoes are also not among the beneficial things. The potato is a stem transplanted into the earth, a shoot from an older plant that grew above the earth. It only migrated into the earth with the later development of the earth. The leek-like plants grew on the moon, firmly rooted in the living things within. Mistletoe is also a harmful plant, a parasite. Some plants are just as harmful as lower animals, snails and so on.

[Mistel, which still today parasitically takes root on living things, is a remnant of the moon; also mushrooms that thrive on soil that still contains living things.

There are two natures in man, a lower and a higher one.

[So wrote Goethe:]

Two souls, alas! dwell in my breast:
The one wants to separate from the other:
The one, in its crude love of pleasure
Clings with clinging organs to the world,
The other forcibly lifts itself from the dust
To the realms of high ancestors.

Everything that belongs to the formation of warm blood, flesh, muscles, and bones is of a lower nature. Flesh, muscles, and bones are something that has hardened from the development on the moon. The development on earth should be an upward development. Therefore, man should only enjoy what is connected with it.

Everything in the animal that is connected with life itself, that belongs to the animal's life process, is beneficial, for example milk and everything that is prepared from it. From the occult point of view, milk, cheese and so on have a beneficial effect because they belong to the beneficial life process of the animal.

[Milk is therefore beneficial, also because animals give it up voluntarily. Some seek a substitute for meat, especially those who live as vegetarians because they do not want to kill. They eat plants that contain substances similar to those found in animals: they eat legumes. However, these are detrimental to occult development. They originate from the moon in that they are embedded in a shell. This separates them from the sun's energy and they tend towards hardening. Therefore, they are not favorable for occult development. Their consumption often has dire consequences. They make the dream life impure, it becomes desolate and confused. This can often be observed in vegetarians. But the vision of the higher worlds should begin with the vision in dreams. It is therefore desirable that this vision only allows pure, beautiful images to arise.

Roots also tend towards hardening. In contrast, anything that is bathed in sunlight is beneficial: flowers, leaves, fruits.

From the mineral kingdom, anything that separates out of mineral solutions as a sediment is harmful, for example, all salts. These should be avoided if possible.

Wine has only existed since the Earth cycle. It would have been impossible earlier. Everything that has the composition of alcohol disappears again in the future. Two thousand six hundred years ago, wine was a great rarity. Eight hundred years before Christ, the consumption of wine began. In the past, it was something extraordinarily rare. Eight hundred years before Christ, a new world cycle begins, the fourth sub-race of the fifth root race. In the previous races, the consumption of spirits played a minor role. In the first races, it was completely out of the question for them to drink wine. They knew that those who consume wine cannot go beyond the four principles that nature has given them. He cannot purify the astral body to such an extent that the manasic develops. The ancient Indians knew this; only the later Persians knew something about the enjoyment of wine. The enjoyment of wine was only really introduced in the fourth sub-race. In this race, man was to refrain from the higher principles. [His earthly personality was to emerge and be purified through man's own work.] He should purify his earthly personality. It was the education in Kama-Manas, the resurrection of the fleshly, the personal in Kama-Manas [- Noah - Melchizedek -]. In Christianity, the education of man was to emphasize the personality, the one life between birth and death. It was still natural for the Egyptian slave to return one day. The teaching of reincarnation and karma had to be excluded for a time, so that the valuable part of the personality, of Kama Manas, could come out. This is physically achieved by drinking wine. In Christianity, drinking wine is permitted.

Water is really the drink of him who wants to look up into the higher worlds, wine is the drink of him who does not want to look up into the higher worlds. The yogi must therefore refrain from drinking wine, because only then can he truly grasp the higher worlds. When a person begins to work on his etheric body, he must take himself in hand in this way.

The work on the astral body takes place, as it were, within the soul. The work on the etheric body is done by acting on the temperament and purifying the physical body. When man forces the etheric body under the power of his ego, then man becomes such that he absorbs into himself what works as [spiritual] substance in the world plan.

[Part of proper thinking is being able to reason logically. Coffee has the same effect in the digestive tract and on thinking [...]. It causes logically ordered thinking, but in a dependent way [...]. If a person wants to think independently, they must free themselves from the craving for coffee.

Erratic, unstable thinking is correlated with tea. It has a dispersing effect on the upper levels.

The question is what kind of person we should become. The organs that we have in common with predators should disappear; the organs that plants require should develop. Man should eat food that comprehends the meaning of his becoming. Not too much, but not too little protein either. Legumes contain too much protein. Those who eat them are overwhelmed by a lower mode of thinking. The vegetarian must at the same time acquire a spiritual mode of thinking. Comprehend nature in its becoming! [...]

The significance of the Lord's Supper: to move from the nutrition of dead animals to that of dead plants. This is to be replaced by a nutrition that does not kill the life in the plants [...]. At the end of the fifth cultural epoch, no animal products will be consumed anymore. Through Christ, the physical body is being killed in the entire human race. In the middle of the sixth root race, there will be no more physical bodies. Then the human being will be ethereal. Then the human being will produce mineral nutrition in the laboratory.

At the end of the Atlantean era, everything that produces egoism will be done. In the sixth cultural epoch of the fifth root race, the I will again come to higher development. Meditation:

I break the pride of the Philistines
And tear the bloody flesh from their mouths
And the abominations from their teeth
Surely your King will enter with you.
He is just, full of victory and humility
And he rides on a donkey
On a young foal of the she-donkey.

Hosiana [...]

The Lord will help him
Like precious stones they will
Rise up on his soil.
For what good things do they have
And what beauty do they have:
Grain that makes the young men [...]
And must [...]
That makes the maidens bloom.

[Sach 9,6-17]

Blood of plants, which retains vegetative blood and milk. ([Soma] was an intoxicating drink among the Indians made from rice).]

Thought is the substance that flows to us through becoming word. [Through the word, one person can communicate to another what lives substantially in each of them as thought.] The air wave is only the form for this substance. Imagine this applied to the world. At first, everything there is in outer forms: minerals, plants and animals. The divine word corresponds to the outer world. This divine Word resounds in the world, and the forms of things arise.

In the divine soul rests the hidden Father-thought. Then it streams out as the divine Word [the second Logos]; then the divine Word becomes the forms of things. We understand the spirit as the form of things; but the Word itself is within the forms. [It is also in the human form.] The union with the Word, which the yogi strives for, takes place during the transformation of the etheric body. [The yogi strives to experience the Word of the creative deity in the living currents of his etheric body.] Then he becomes a chela. Then he hears the Logos resounding in all things with his etheric body. This is the union with the Son.

The third stage is the union with the Father. This is the stage of mastership. [Then man can himself continue to build upon his physical body.]

The great principle the yogi has in view is one: the union with the Father. He says to himself: In so far as you become similar to the Godhead, you approach the Godhead.

[This happens first through the purification of the astral body. Through this, he achieves the unio mystica, the union with his divine self. Then he strives further. He experiences union with the Son by experiencing world thinking and world feeling through his transformed etheric body. And finally, the last thing is that man experiences union with the Father and thus consciously works on his physical body. That is the great perspective, the work of the human being for the future of the human race.

Supplement from the transcript by Camilla Wandrey

Thus, yoga is the path to higher knowledge, and also 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 yogi develops the powers within themselves to penetrate into these worlds of origin. He seeks the sources of knowledge that come from spiritual life itself. Anyone who wants to become a yogi must, without fail, acquire a belief in the higher development of the human race. This is not a blind faith, but an active belief that it is possible to go beyond the present state of the human race, that forces within human nature can be developed that have not yet been expressed and are waiting to be developed. Yoga is a path that consists largely of abstinence and requires patience and endurance. In today's cultural life, it is indeed difficult to achieve yoga. That is why the theosophical movement was necessary.

One may ask how long it takes to achieve yoga. That depends on the person striving for yoga. It can take incarnations, it can take seventy years, seven years; there are people who achieve it in seven months, seven weeks, even in seven hours. It depends on the stage of existence at which a person finds himself. Often he can be further than he realizes. He may already be inwardly capable of exercising his willpower and mental powers in higher worlds. It may also be that someone in a previous incarnation was much further along than he has come today. In this life, it may not have emerged through the conditions of physical life, which was already within him. The previously acquired powers must then be brought out again through the powers of the present life. For example, someone may have been a wise priest with a magical will, and this would now have to be brought out in a later incarnation. But perhaps the brain development in the later incarnation is not so far advanced as to make this possible. Perhaps other powers are also lacking. Perhaps love and kindness are missing. Then the earlier powers cannot be brought out again, and it takes longer for some people and shorter for others until yoga is achieved.

Above all, it is necessary to develop an inner life that is as intimate as possible, in order to explore what is within us. We must distance the concept of yoga more and more from what is externally tumultuous. Yoga must take place entirely in the seclusion of the inner life.

Higher spiritual qualities should never be developed without strengthening the character at the same time. Just as a blue liquid and a yellow liquid, when mixed, produce a green liquid, so are the spiritual and physical powers of man united. When the spiritual is brought out, the physical nature remains behind, as it were, as a sediment. Much depends on these remaining properly mixed. It is through this that man becomes a particular man, that this higher nature is connected with the lower nature. In the yogi, the higher nature is withdrawn, and all those qualities that are bad in man then come to the fore if absolute character development does not go hand in hand with it. If you strive for yoga, you must always be prepared to face the strangest things in life. These were, for example, the temptations of St. Anthony. When you seriously begin to do yoga exercises, you have to be prepared for the lower nature to come out. Some people who have been truthful up to that point begin to lie, to cheat, to become unreliable. This happens if the yoga student is not required in the strictest sense to constantly strengthen his character. That is why the greatest emphasis is placed on the development of morality in the old, genuine yoga schools. Annie Besant says: spiritual training without morality can only lead to wrongdoing.

The yoga training consists of bringing certain things that a person would otherwise do unconsciously into consciousness. In this way, the student brings the unconscious breathing process into consciousness. The Hatha Yoga training places the greatest emphasis on this process from the outset. However, it only leads to a certain point in development. It breaks off at the realization of the astral. That is why man should not follow the path of Hatha Yoga, but that of Raja Yoga. This leads the disciple, if followed correctly and with earnestness and perseverance and devotion, into the highest spiritual worlds. In the Raja Yoga school, a process such as the breathing process is seen as part of the whole. Many other things that we do unconsciously must be brought into consciousness.

The thought process is largely ignored. We must learn to follow the inner process of thinking with attention. This is only possible through complete calmness towards the outside. No thought from the outer world must be in the soul. And then we must bring thoughts into this calmness ourselves and focus all our attention on a specific thought.

It is best to devote yourself to a thought that contains strength. To consciously devote yourself to such a thought in complete outer seclusion, to immerse yourself completely in it, that is meditation. The disciple must repeatedly live intimately with such thoughts, resting completely on them in all silence. It is difficult for a European man of culture to immerse himself in such a concept for a long time. But the yogi must do so. In this way he develops powers in his soul that were not there before. These powers arise from the unconscious depths of the soul when we rest so quietly in ourselves in a thought. The thoughts of ordinary life call upon the soul for various emotions. But one must learn not to be led by the soul's powers, but to lead them. One must learn to hold back an arising outburst of anger. We must maintain complete mastery and control over our inner selves. This is achieved through this silent devotion to thoughts that contain forces.

Each exercise requires a counter-exercise to prevent one-sided overdevelopment from leading to deformity – as in gymnastics. The so-called secondary exercises are very important.

For meditation it is necessary:

1. To fix a thought of strength in the soul - concentration.
2. To identify oneself with the thought.
3. To remain in it for a time in complete calm.

The regulation of the breathing process is connected with such training of thought. If it is tackled alone, it is Hatha Yoga; if it is a part of the other training, it is Raja Yoga. The seven degrees of the Persian initiation are based on this: Raven, Occultist, Warrior, Lion, Persian, Sunrunner, Father.

Sun runners were those who had made their lives a very rhythmic one. In this way, the human being integrated his thinking, feeling and soul life into the natural process. Everything in nature lives in rhythm: the sun, the moon, the wandering stars go or come in a certain rhythm. Plants and animals are connected to the seasons in a very specific way. Everything that lives outside lives in rhythm; life is based on rhythm. In the case of human beings, however, everything has become arbitrary, the arbitrariness of the astral body. It makes life unrhythmic. The human being must make it rhythmic again, because rhythm generates strength and life. Therefore, the yogi must meditate every day at a certain hour.

If he meditates at seven o'clock today and tomorrow at eleven o'clock, then again one day not at all, the rhythm is disturbed. But if you decide to say a prayer every day at seven o'clock, then one at twelve o'clock and another one before going to bed, then these are fixed points that bring rhythm into your life. Part of the rhythmization of life is the rhythmization of the breathing process. This is connected with the deep things that exist between a person and the whole universe.

In a sense, plants and human beings belong together. Human beings breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. In the case of plants, it is the other way around. They release oxygen and, from the carbon dioxide that human beings exhale, they form their bodies by retaining the carbon. Apple trees, for example, need children to play around them. There is a connection between plants and human nature. The plant grows rhythmically according to natural laws. It is chaste through and through, since it does not yet have astral life within it. Thus, on the one hand, it is higher than man, but on the other hand it is lower. It stands as an ideal before the yogi. He must become similar to it by rhythmizing the breathing process.

The yogi knows that one day the human being will be able to absorb the plant existence within themselves, to carry out within themselves the process that they now leave to the plant. This means that he will retain the carbon in himself and consciously build his body with it. Man will develop an organ in himself through which he will prepare oxygen for himself, so that he does not need to take it from plants. He combines this oxygen with carbon to form carbonic acid and then stores the carbon in himself again. In this way he will later build his own body structure, as plants do today. His body will consist of transparent, clear, soft carbon. In this way he transforms his body into the “philosopher's stone”. This is a future perspective that the yogi already anticipates today through his rhythmic breathing process, which he carries out according to the instructions of his teacher. He breathes in rhythmically and holds his breath for longer. In this way, one develops carbon in oneself – and thus approaches the nature of plants by using it to build one's body. The yogi gradually unites with the divine source of existence, becoming a co-creator of the world. He experiences new worlds.

When we sleep, we cannot hear the most beautiful music. It is there; we do not perceive it. In this way, the human being is asleep with respect to the higher worlds. And just as there is waking up to the melodies of this world, there is waking up in the spiritual world through the rhythmic breathing process.

When you consciously invest your entire soul life in the breathing process, then imaginative knowledge begins. Ordinary life brings us material knowledge through the senses of the physical body. Imaginative knowledge consists in our being able to awaken images in the soul that are not mere visions, but that are grounded in the source of existence. The outer world also only stimulates images in our soul, ideas that correspond to it. Images that arise through the yoga process stimulate the inner being in the right way. In the right way, that is to say: truthfully. They correspond to the truth that permeates the world and is wisdom. But to do that, a person must be true within. That is the difficulty in the training of yoga. As long as a person has personal desires, he cannot distinguish truth from untruth in the higher world. That is why there is a constant need to become selfless, to renounce everything personal.

The Pythagorean disciple was told: Only when a person is no longer concerned about whether he is still alive or not, can he learn something about life after death. All personal desires must be eliminated. When personal desire is eliminated within, wisdom expresses itself and the wisdom that permeates the world can shine in. Man then comes to imaginative knowledge.

The third stage is that of the rational will; and the fourth stage is that of [intuition]. The third stage involves the complete restraint of what is in us as desire, urge, craving, passion, through the strengthened will. As long as one does not completely master this, one only makes the truth illusory.

One must develop absolute inner calm, patience, endurance, steadfastness. One must never lose the indispensable harmony with one's surroundings. If the wisest person were to fall asleep here, he could not receive anything there with his wisdom. He would be considered insane. All madness is a lack of harmony with one's surroundings. Then one cannot progress when that happens. One should not become a drunken person, but a sober one, says Plato, and that applies to the person who strives for yoga. He must not neglect his daily duties in any way. This is absolutely necessary for the practice of yoga. And in this it is important to develop modesty. Only under the influence of the highest modesty can one speak of the higher worlds in the right way. An inner high degree of humility must go hand in hand with the yoga training. The oriental student has an easier time in the respect and esteem of other people; the western student has a harder time of it. But a lot depends on this. It is also necessary to have the most profound trust in the teacher. This is necessary because one must have a fixed point. The yoga student, in a sense, leaves the whole rest of the world. His relationship to the world changes, is reversed, so to speak. All things take on a new meaning. He becomes alienated from his surroundings, all things change; a certain spiritual alchemy takes place in him. Now he must do everything the physical world demands of him out of a certain inner sense of duty. He must find a completely new point of view towards it. If the yogi does not develop full strength of character in this, then he can easily lose touch with his surroundings. That is why the teacher is the fixed point for him. In the East, the guru regards the teacher as the embodiment of the divine in man. In reality, divine beings are truly present and active in the higher human nature that the teacher must have developed. It seems obvious to the Oriental that there is a higher being in the guru. This is not the case in the West. When someone in the West undergoes the yoga training, they also find the opportunity to reach their goal through their inner trust in the teacher.

If I may indicate in a few words the point at which yesterday's considerations culminated, I would like to say that out of them the possibility should come to light for every man, through a deepening of his being, through a trust in the spiritual worlds, of causing to rise within him a soul-mood, a soul-disposition, which will say to him: “Into man flow not only the things which are in the periphery of the earth, not only those things which stem from the evolution of the earth itself, but it is possible for man to tune his soul in such a way that he receives out of the spiritual worlds helping forces which flow into him, which produce an equilibrium between the single egoistic I and the totality of his organization—if that possibility offers itself which has flowed into the earth-mission.” Whoever can attain this trust in this inflow from the spiritual worlds, no matter what he calls this inner event, this inner experience, has lived through the personal Christ-experience inwardly. The remainder of this matter will reveal itself to us if today we start by considering the third path to Christ, the path of initiation.

With the path through the Gospels, and the path through inner experience, we have the two paths to Christ which are accessible to every man: I say expressly—to every man. But to the path of initiation there belongs a certain preparation, as should be understandable to everyone. In our time this requires us to go deeply, in a real and not merely theoretical way, into the true, genuine spiritual science which, at least in our present time, must always be the point of departure, if we wish to understand what the way of initiation is. Regarding the essence of initiation it would be well to give a few introductory remarks in a certain direction. You see, initiation is the highest which man can achieve in the course of the Earth-evolution, for it leads man to a certain understanding, to a real insight into the secrets of the spiritual world. What occurs in the spiritual worlds is really the content, the object, of initiation, and a real knowledge, an immediate perception, of events in the spiritual worlds is attained on the path of initiation. When initiation is characterized in this way, something very special must strike everyone who lets this characterization work on his soul. This is really to say, fundamentally, that initiation is—allow me the expression—a super-religious way. The religions which in the course of human epochs have spread over the surface of the earth, and which still prevail among men, all of these, in so far as they are great religions, and in so far as we study them at their points of origin, were originally founded upon initiation, by initiates. They have flowed out of what great initiates have been able to give to men. But the religions were given in such a form that, in their contents, men received what was suitable to the time in which they lived, to the race to which they belonged, even to the region of the earth in which they lived.

Now today we live in a very special epoch of human evolution, and it is just the task of spiritual science to understand that we live in a special time. The way in which among our contemporaries spiritual science can be brought forth and spread, this was nowhere possible in past times. Anthroposophy as such could not be publicly taught. Only in our time do we begin to teach anthroposophy. The religions were once the channels through which the secrets of initiation were to be allowed to flow into mankind; to be allowed to flow in a manner suitable at a given time to a given group of men. But today we are in a position to give through anthroposophy something which is not adapted to a single race, to a single region, to a single group of men, but which can bring to every man, no matter where he finds himself on earth, something of those secrets of existence, for knowledge of which souls are yearning and which souls must have if hearts are to be strong for work on earth. But this already shows that through anthroposophy something is to be given which takes a standpoint higher than the religious standpoints were, or still are where these religious standpoints continue to be accepted. In a certain way anthroposophy is that which must propagate the secrets of initiation in a universal human way, whereas in the various ancient religious systems of the earth the secrets of initiation were always announced in a special manner, in a different way, adapted to the particular human group.

What follows from this? It follows that we find the most varied religions spread out over the earth, all of which point back to this or that founder. We find first the Krishna religion, leading back to Krishna; second, the Buddha religion, leading back to Buddha; third, the ancient Hebrew religion, leading back to Moses; and we find Christianity, leading back to Jesus of Nazareth. The religions having all flowed out of initiation, we must be quite clear that we cannot today take the position taken by the philosophers of religion who consider themselves “enlightened.” The philosophers of comparative religion have a secret outlook on religions; they regard them all either as false or as childish stages of human development. But we, as anthroposophists, since we learn to know that the religions are only different formulations of the truths of initiation, are in a position to grasp the true and not the false in the various religious systems. We do justice to all the religious systems in comparison with one another. We regard them as equally justified revelations of the great truths of initiation.

And from this follows something terribly important for practical feeling and practical activity. What is this important thing? That out of the anthroposophical mood will proceed complete understanding, hearty respect, and full recognition of the core of truth in all religions; and that those who, out of an anthroposophical attitude, reflect on the world and its course of development, will respect the truths of the various religious systems. There will be the highest esteem and respect. Yes, my dear friends, from the anthroposophical spiritual stream will result the following for the various religious confessions on earth: A man will go to the adherents of any religious system, and he will not think himself able to graft on to them, or inoculate them with, other confessions. Much rather will we go to them and, out of our own religious faith, discern what there is of truth in their faith. And a man who is born in a region where a particular religion holds sway will not, on account of this religion, intolerantly reject all other religions, but he will be able to approach them on the basis of what, as truth, is contained in the different religions. Let us take an example. Such an example can be grasped only by those who, in the depths of their soul, take seriously the anthroposophical attitude and all that must follow from a knowledge of the fundamental conditions of initiation. Let us assume that an Occidental has grown up within Christianity. He will perhaps have learned to know Christianity through having taken into himself the great truths of the Gospels. Perhaps he has already attained also to what is called the path to Christ Jesus through inner experience; perhaps in his inner experience he has already experienced the Christ. Let us assume that he now becomes acquainted with another religion, Buddhism for example. From those who stand within the sacred truths and knowledge of Buddhism, he learns to know something which is an annoyance to the materialistic Occidental but which we anthroposophists can understand: He learns to know that the founder of this religion, after having lived through many incarnations on earth as a Bodhisatva, was reborn as the son of King Sudhodana; he learns to know that in the twenty-ninth year of his life as Bodhisatva he rose to Buddha, and that with this rising to Buddha there is given in this religion—since it stems from initiation—the one great truth which is valid not only for Buddhism but for all men, and which is acknowledged by every initiate and by all men who understand Buddhism; he learns to know that the adherent of Buddhism says justly: “When the Bodhisatva becomes Buddha in a human incarnation, then this incarnation which the Buddha has to go through on earth is the last. Then he does not come back again in a human body.”

To one who stands within Buddhism it would be acutely painful, if it were asserted that the Buddha would return again in a fleshly body. Such an adherent of the Buddha would be deeply distressed, if anyone were to dispute this truth, saying that the Bodhisatva who became a Buddha could again at some time appear upon the earth in a physical body. But we anthroposophists recognize the truth in the religions; we take the position of seeking the truth of the various religions and not their error. So we go to those who understand Buddhism and we learn to know—or learn out of initiation to know—that it is true that that individuality who lived as Bodhisatva on earth and became a Buddha has since that time reached spiritual heights from which he need not again descend to this physical globe. From that moment on, if we stand on the ground of the doctrine of reincarnation, we shall no longer thrust upon the Buddhist the assertion that the Buddha could reappear in a physical body. Genuine knowledge will create an understanding for every form of religion proceeding out of initiation. We respect the religious forms which have been developed on earth, in that we recognize the truth which they have to give. Yes, my dear friends, I acknowledge as frankly and honestly as the strictest Buddhist this truth, that the Bodhisatva who was on earth and rose to Buddha reached therewith a height of human development which made it possible for him no longer to descend to earth. This is what we call having an understanding for the various forms of religion on the earth.

Let us take the opposite case: That an adherent of Buddhism should make his way to anthroposophical knowledge. Either out of a real knowledge of Christianity or out of the principle of initiation, he would allow it to become clear to him that in another region of the earth there is another form of religion, and that those who understand this religion are quite clear about the following: That there once lived a personality who really belonged to no nation, least of all to the Occident, and that from his thirtieth to his thirty-third year there lived in this personality that impulse, that force of the spiritual life, to which we pointed yesterday; to which, in their Vishvakarman, the seven holy Rishis also pointed; to which, in his Ahura-Mazdao, Zarathustra also pointed; to which, as their Osiris, the Egyptians also pointed; and which the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period named Christ. But that is not the point: The point is to recognize in Christ that which lived as an impulse for three years in the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, that which was not previously present on earth, that which descended from spiritual heights into the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, that which in this personality went through the Mystery of Golgotha, and that which as such a Christ-impulse is a once-appearing impulse for the earth and is not connected with any ordinary incarnation of mankind; that which was thus once present as Christ and can never return in any man, but will come, as the Bible says, in the clouds of heaven—meaning that as a spiritual revelation it will show itself to men. This is a Christian avowal.

Now, one who stands within Buddhism, imbued with theosophical earnestness and theosophical dignity, will have to recognize that he must pay attention to and respect this Christian avowal just as the Christian must respect his. The Buddhist who has risen to theosophy and takes it seriously will say: “Just as you as a Christian approach with trust the teaching that the Bodhisatva who became a Buddha will no more return to the earth, just as it seems to me fitting that you know that the Buddha cannot return, so I as a Buddhist acknowledge that what you call Christ cannot return in a physical incarnation, but as a once-appearing impulse lived only for three years in a physical human body.”—If in anthroposophy we find the reciprocal understanding of the religions in such a way that the initiation-principle can penetrate into man's heart in such a way that one man shall not impose an alien opinion on others, then we produce an understanding which unites men over the whole earth, we establish peace between the single religions on earth.

In Christianity the founder of the religion is Jesus of Nazareth. The Christian initiation-principle is concerned with the religion's founder, Jesus of Nazareth, only as with a fact, as with a fact which can be examined by occultists as a fact. With the same love, with the same care, as are used in examining the life of Buddha or of another founder of a religion, the life of Jesus of Nazareth is examined by those who are acquainted with the principle of religion. How this life of Jesus of Nazareth appears from the standpoint of pure occultism you will find described in my pamphlet: The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind. But the true Christian initiation-principle concerns itself with recognizing Christ, with the way to Christ. And this Christian religious principle was preparing for many years what was just now described as a principle of peace for the whole earth, in that it clearly does not proceed from the founder of a religion as such, but from a fact which occurred once in the world.

That is the basic difference between Christianity and the other religions. What the initiation-principle which leads to Christ has as a task in the world is different from the cultures which have proceeded from the other religious principles. What the Christian initiation-principle has as a task within the world-mission proceeded from a fact, from an event, not from a personality. This will be understandable if we mention first some preliminary conditions. We can put forward a single sentence, a single statement, and we have then characterized, although externally, the starting point of esoteric Christianity, of Christian initiation: It is the death which was experienced in the uniting of Christ with Jesus of Nazareth. The fact of this death, which we call the Mystery of Golgotha, is what should be understood through the principle of Christian initiation. Now, a true understanding of this death can be won only if we make quite clear to ourselves the mission of death within our earth-evolution. Yesterday we pointed out that frailty, infirmity, illness, and death are connected with the lack of harmony between our Ego, permeated by the Luciferic principle, and our organization. Death, after all, is connected with the Luciferic principle, and that in a very special way. It would be an entirely false idea if we were to assume that Lucifer brought death. Lucifer did not bring death, he brought what we can call the possibility of error (also of moral error), the differentiation of men into races, and the possibility of freedom. Lucifer brought these things. If only what Lucifer brought had been efficacious in mankind, if nothing had been opposed to him, then this Luciferic principle would have led to the point where mankind would have fallen out, would have broken out, of the progressive divine evolution. Man would indeed have spiritualized himself, but in an entirely different direction from that to which the progressive divine evolution led. To retain mankind within this divine evolution, to prevent mankind's being lost for the divine evolution, a particular arrangement had to be set up: Man had to be continually reminded of what the consequences are if he misuses the possibility of error and of freedom. All illness, frailty, infirmity, and death are reminders that man would have to estrange himself from the progressive divine evolution if, in addition to having the Luciferic freedom, he were healthy and full of energy. Thus illness, infirmity, and death are not gifts of Lucifer, but gifts of the good, wisdom-filled divine powers, who have therewith set up a dike against the influences of Lucifer.

Thus we must say that all that confronts us in the world as continuous human tribulation coming from outside, as illness and death, is there in order that we men may remain fettered to earth-existence until we have an opportunity to make amends; in order that we may have an education which will adapt us to our organization. We suffer in order that out of our suffering we may gain experience and find an equilibrium between our Lucifer-permeated Ego and our divinely-permeated organization. Our organization falls away from us repeatedly, until we have completely imbued ourselves, in our Ego, with the laws of the evolution which is progressive in a divine sense. Every death is therefore a point of departure for something else. Man cannot die without taking with him that which gives him the possibility of sometime overcoming death in his successive incarnations. All our pains are there in order that out of suffering we may gain the experience of how we must adapt ourselves to our progressing divine organization. This question, however, cannot be discussed apart from its connection with all of evolution.

We can study such a thing especially well if we examine occultly the connections between man and the next lower kingdom, the animal kingdom. We know that in the course of evolution man has always inflicted pain on the animals, that he has killed the animals. One who learns to know the Karma of human life often finds it highly unjust that the animal, which does not reincarnate, should suffer, should bear pain, and even, in the case of the higher animals, should go through death with a certain consciousness. Should no Karmic compensation take place here? Naturally, the human being has to make a Karmic compensation in Kamaloka for the pain which he inflicts on animals, but I am not speaking of this now; I am speaking of the compensation for the animals. Let us make one thought clear: If we consider human evolution, we see how much pain man has strewn over the animal kingdom and how many animals he has killed. What do these pains and these deaths mean in the course of evolution?

Occult study shows us that every pain which is inflicted on a pain-feeling being other than man, every death, is a seed for the future. Animals, as they are willed by the progressive divine evolution, are not destined to have incarnations like man. But, if a change comes into this wisdom-filled world-plan, if man intervenes and does not leave the evolution of the animals to be as it would have been without man, what happens then? Now, you see, occult research teaches us that every pain, every death, inflicted by man on the animals, will return and arise again, not through reincarnation, but because pain and death have been inflicted on the animals. This pain and suffering call up animality again. These animals on which pain has been inflicted will arise again, though not in the same form; but that which feels pain in them, that comes again. It comes again in such a way that the sufferings of the animals are compensated, so that to every pain its complementary feeling is added. These pains, these sufferings, this death, these are the seed which man has sown; they return in such a way that to every pain its contrary feeling is added in the future. To use a concrete example: When Earth is replaced by Jupiter, the animals will not appear in their present form, but their pains and sufferings will awaken the forces for the feeling of pain. They will live in men, and will embody themselves as parasitic animals in men. Out of the sensations and feelings of these men, out of their pains, the compensation will be created. This is the occult truth, which can be stated objectively and unadorned even if it is not pleasant to the man of today. Man will one day suffer this, and the animals will have, in a certain well-being, in a pleasant feeling, the compensation for their pains. This already happens slowly and gradually in the course of present-day earth-life, no matter how strange this seems. Why are men plagued by beings which are really neither animals nor plants, but stand between the two, by bacilli and similar creatures, which feel a well-being when man suffers? They have brought this upon themselves in earlier incarnations through inflicting pain and death on animals. For the being, though not appearing in the same form, feels this across time and feels the compensation for its pains in the suffering which man must undergo. Thus all the pain and suffering in the world are positively not without consequences. It is a seed from which proceeds what is caused by pain, suffering, and death. There can be no suffering, no pain, no death, without causing something which springs up later on.

Let us consider in this light the death on Golgotha, which followed from the uniting of Christ with Jesus of Nazareth. The first thing which becomes clear to anyone who goes through the requisite initiation is that this death on Golgotha was no ordinary death on earth, no ordinary human or other death. Persons who do not yet believe in the super-sensible can form no conception of this death on Golgotha. For even externally this Mystery of Golgotha has something very strange, something from which man has much to learn. This is that no historical writings tell of the Mystery of Golgotha, and the critics of the Gospels assert that the Gospels are in no way authoritative as historical documents. Principles of initiation are applied to that which was not written out of historical observation. What happened on Golgotha can still be perceived today by initiates, can still be seen today in the Akashic Record by people who undergo initiation. The writers of the Gospels also wrote only out of the Akashic Record; an event is described for which the original writers of the Gospels never thought of calling in the aid of perceptions on the physical plane. So strong was then the consciousness that one had to do here with something which stood in relation to the super-sensible worlds, and that the most important thing was to gain a relation to the super-sensible worlds. Out of the sense-world no right relation to these events can be won. What happened becomes clear through initiation. One could say that at the beginning of our era there lived a man, Jesus of Nazareth; that in the 30th year of his life he experienced a certain change through the reception of the Christ, and that after three years he was crucified. This would signify an event for the progressive history of mankind. If this were said, it would be the opposite of what the initiate learns to know; it would be an affair of men on earth, no matter how spiritualized it might become. With the initiation-principle, this is not the point.

Fundamentally, it might be said—but you must not misunderstand me—radically, it might be said that, at first glance, what happened on Golgotha was not an event which concerned men in so far as they are on the physical plane. At first glance! Not in the way in which it is related: A man once lived, Jesus of Nazareth, at the beginning of our era, who in the 30th year of his life experienced a certain change through the reception of the Christ, and was then crucified in his 33rd year—not so is the initiation-truth of Christianity told. It must be stated entirely differently.

It must be stated approximately thus: One who is to be initiated into the Christian principle learns the following: Before this Earth there was a Moon-condition. During this Moon-condition the Luciferic beings remained behind. These Luciferic beings developed further, alongside the progressive divine spiritual beings. In the Lemurian time Lucifer drew near to men, injected himself into the human earth-evolution, and brought about what was characterized yesterday. Thus Lucifer was inside the whole human development. Had human evolution continued in this way with Lucifer, it would gradually have happened that the mission of the Earth would not have reached its goal; man would have dried up, the human Ego would have separated from, would have broken out of, the divine spiritual evolution. On the old Moon a series, so to speak, of beings belonging to the super-sensible worlds learned that Lucifer had become rebellious, that he had taken up a position hostile to them. Thus the gods were compelled to see that Lucifer had become the adversary of the progressive divine development.—One can at first completely ignore all that concerns man in this. Let us consider all this as the affair of the gods and of their adversaries, the Luciferic beings, and let us consider mankind as a creation of the gods. This was the situation.

Now, there is a certain peculiarity in the spiritual, in the super-sensible, worlds. One thing is not present there which is present on the earth; death, in all its forms, is not found there. In the super-sensible worlds one transforms oneself, but one does not die. Metamorphoses, not birth and death, are present there. For example, the group-souls which are in the super-sensible worlds do not die; they transform, metamorphose themselves. Birth and death do not exist there, where the effects of the physical world have never reached. Only where the traits of the physical world have already been transmitted to a certain extent to the beings of the spiritual world, there is something which may be regarded as analogous to death, as with the spirits of nature; but we cannot go into this today. In the real super-sensible world there is no birth or death, only transformation, metamorphosis.

For the divine spiritual beings who may be designated the creators of men, birth and death do not come into consideration. Lucifer also does not incarnate himself as a human being in the physical world. He works in man through man; uses men as his vehicle, as it were. Thus we have to do with the gods and with the Luciferic beings, who look down, so to speak, upon their creations. Had evolution continued in this way, had nothing happened in the world of the gods, then the intention of the gods for men would never have been fulfilled; Lucifer would have thwarted the plan of the gods. The gods had to make a sacrifice—that was their concern—they had to experience something which was related to their sphere in such a way that it really could not be experienced by gods if they remained in their own sphere: They had to send from their own ranks down to the physical plane a being who experienced something which otherwise gods in the spiritual worlds cannot experience. The gods had to send the Christ down to earth to do battle with the Luciferic principle. In the course of time, when the time was fulfilled, the gods, whom we group together under the name of the divine Father-world, sent down the Christ in order that he should learn to know the unending pains of men, which mean something entirely different for a god from what they mean for a man. Therewith the gods entered the earth-sphere to do battle with the Luciferic spirits. A god had to suffer death on the cross, the most disgraceful human death, as Paul especially emphasizes.

We were allowed, once in the Earth's development, to be witnesses—because we looked as through a window into the spiritual worlds—of an affair of the gods.

Previously—so says the initiation-principle—man was compelled under all circumstances to rise into the divine-spiritual worlds in order to take part in the initiation-principle. The initiation-principle stands before the whole of mankind in the Mystery of Golgotha, an event which is at the same time sensible on the physical plane (if men would only see it) and super-sensible, a true affair of the gods. This is the essential thing, that a god once went through death, as a counterpoise to Lucifer, and that men were allowed to look on. This is what the initiation-principle gives as Christian wisdom, and this is the real origin of the faith that to men, as men, something can flow as a force which can take them beyond the earth-sphere and beyond death; because once the gods settled their affair on earth and allowed men to look on. Therefore that which streams out from the Mystery of Golgotha is something universally human. And if every pain, every suffering, every death has its effect (even those inflicted by men on animals) so does this death also have its effect. This death was a seed sown by the gods; it was something which remained bound up with the earth, and has remained bound up with it ever since, remained bound up with it in such a way that every man, through trust, through love for the spiritual worlds, will find it. He does find it!

The initiate knows that this is so; the believing-trusting man feels that from the spiritual worlds help can come to him for his striving, if he can only develop enough belief and trust. This will develop itself in a very definite way.

There were those who were contemporaries of the Egyptian initiates. Through initiation these initiates had made quite clear to their pupils the whole tragedy of the conflict of the gods with Lucifer, by setting before men symbolically in their mysteries the Osiris-Set myth. Just yesterday we considered what feelings the Osiris-Set myth called forth in the Egyptians. There lived the divine-spiritual to which men wished to attain; this was called Osiris. But on earth the human being cannot unite himself with Osiris; he must first go through the gate of death. On earth Osiris could not live; he was immediately dismembered; this was not the place for what was incarnated in Osiris. The last culture epoch before the Graeco-Latin looked up to Christ, to the Osiris-principle, as to a Beyond. Then came the Greek time, which was so deeply imbued with the feeling that it was better to be a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shades. In the time in which this was still felt in Greece, in the time of the old heroes, men felt the whole discrepancy between the Ego, permeated by the Luciferic principle, and the progressive human organization. Men felt then that the fourth post-Atlantean culture period ran its course in such a way that they had to crowd in a great deal of what man can experience just here on earth. Thence the abnormal, the singular, in this period. In no other time do so many remarkable series of incarnations occur as in this fourth period. Men had to do a great deal here on earth, because they now looked more on this world than on the worlds beyond, as the third culture epoch had still done. The Greeks did not prize this incorporation into Osiris; they were more occupied with cramming as much as possible into the human incarnations, they wanted to get as much as possible out of the incarnation. Thence the remarkable fact that Pythagoras, the great initiator of a certain line of Greek culture, in an earlier incarnation had fought as a Trojan hero on the side of the Trojans. He himself says that he was a Trojan hero, mentioned in Homer, and that he recognized himself as an enemy of the Greeks because he recognized his shield. When Pythagoras says that he had been Euphorbos, anthroposophy teaches a full understanding of this assertion. The Greeks, even the greatest among them, laid especial value on what the single physical incarnations meant for them.

But the fourth post-Atlantean period had also to lead men to feel the spiritual worlds in their full significance, for in that time fell the Mystery of Golgotha. At the time when men in Greece were prizing the outer world most, there occurred in an unknown corner of the world the Mystery of Golgotha; on the earthly stage, where otherwise men carry out their human affairs, the gods carried out their own affairs.

Just as the Egyptian learned to look up to death when he thought of his Osiris, so man learned to know, in the fourth post-Atlantean period, how a contemporary religious form was present, in which lived the impulse which could bring to men the feeling that in this physical world something takes place which is really an affair of the gods; that there takes place the living refutation of that which the Greeks had until then believed—“Better to be a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shades.” For now the Greeks learned to know him who, as a king, had descended from the realm of the gods, and, as a beggar, had lived out his destiny on earth among men. That was the answer to the feeling of the fourth past-Atlantean period. But this is also that complex of feelings from which the rays for the future earth-development can proceed. The Egyptian had looked up to Osiris, who for him was the Christ, in order to unite himself with him after death; in the fourth post-Atlantean period man looked upon the Mystery of Golgotha as the contemporary act which taught men that in the physical world an event had taken place which was an affair of the gods.

We are living in the fifth post-Atlantean period. In our fifth post-Atlantean period men will add the great teachings of Karma to the other teaching, they will learn to understand their karma. In our fifth post-Atlantean period, human beings are experiencing the third act which follows consistently after the Osiris act and the act of the Mystery of Golgotha. They will learn to grasp the idea: “I am placed on earth through birth; my destiny is on earth; I experience joy and sorrow; I must understand that what I experience as joy and sorrow does not approach me in vain, that it is my Karma, and that it comes to me because it is my Karma, my great educator. I look upon that which was before my birth, which placed me in this incarnation, because this, my destiny, is necessary for my further development. Who sent me hither? Who will continue to place me on this earth, into my destiny, until I have discharged my Karma? I shall owe this to the Christ that men can ever more be called to suffer their destinies, until they have discharged their Karma on earth.” Therefore Jesus of Nazareth, out of whom Christ spoke, could not say to men; “Try to escape as fast as possible out of the physical body”...but he had to say to men: “I will place you into your destinies on this earth so long as you have not discharged your Karma. You must discharge your Karma.” Men will learn as we approach the future that they were united with Christ before birth, that they have received from him the grace of discharging their old Karma in the incarnations.

Thus did the men of the fourth post-Atlantean period look up to Jesus of Nazareth as the bearer of the Christ. Thus will the men of our time learn that the Christ will reveal himself ever more supersensibly, and will govern more and more the threads of Karma in the affairs of the earth. They will learn to know that spiritual power as that destiny which the Greeks could not yet recognize, which will bring men to the point of discharging their Karma in the most fitting way in the successive incarnations. As to a judge, as to a lord of Karma, men will look up to the Christ in the succession of incarnations, when they experience their destiny. Thus men will stand in such a relation to their destiny that they will be stimulated increasingly to deepen their souls, until they can say to themselves: “This destiny is not allotted to me through an impersonal power, this destiny is allotted to me through that with which I feel myself related in my inmost being. In Karma itself I perceive what is related to my being. My Karma is dear to me because it makes me better and better.” Thus one learns to love Karma, and then this is the impulse to know the Christ. Men first learned to love their Karma through the Mystery of Golgotha. And this will continue further and further, and men will learn more and more that under Lucifer's influence alone the earth would never have been able to reach its goal, that the evolution of mankind would have had to become more and more corrupt without the Christ.

But Christianity does not look upon the Christ as a personality, as the founder of an abstract religious system. In our present time the founder of a religion, in accordance with the demands of our time, only brings about discords. Not from a personality does the Christian initiation proceed, but from a fact, from an impersonal act of the gods which took place before the eyes of men. That is why this secret of Golgotha, this event which took place at the beginning of our era and from which went forth the seed of this unique death, the seed from which now grows man's love for his destiny, for his Karma, has been transmitted to mankind in a special way.

We have seen that the death which man inflicts on animals has a certain consequence. The death on Golgotha works as a seed in the human soul which feels its relation to the Christ. So was it with the Mystery of Golgotha: The One died, and just as a single seed is laid in the earth, in order that it die and spring up in the field, and that there be an increase of that which proceeded from the one seed, so the death of a god was realized on the cross. The seed was strewn on Golgotha, the soil was the human soul; what springs up are the relations of man to the super-sensible Christ, who will never more disappear from the evolution of the earth, who will always appear to men in the most varied ways. As men were able to see him physically in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, so will they be able to raise themselves to see in the near future an etheric Christ-image; they will see the Christ as Paul saw him.

That which is contained in the Christian initiation was preserved in the symbol of the Holy Grail; it was brought into that community which imparts the Christian initiation. For those who receive the Christian initiation what is said here is not an abstract theory, not an hypothesis, but a fact of the super-sensible worlds. The cultivation of the Christian initiation was entrusted to those who were the guardians of the Holy Grail, and later to the fosterers of the community of the Rose Cross. What proceeds from the Christian initiation should, according to its whole nature, work impersonally. Everything personal should be excluded therefrom; for the personal has brought only quarrels and strife into humanity, and will do this increasingly in the future. Therefore it is a strict rule for those who, symbolically speaking, serve the Holy Grail or, speaking literally, serve the cultivation of the Christian initiation, that none of those who have a leading part of the first order to play within the brotherhood of the Holy Grail or the community of the Rose Cross—neither they nor those who live in their surroundings—may speak of the secrets which they know and which work in them, before the passage of one hundred years after their deaths. There is no possibility of learning the complete truth about a leading personality of the first order until one hundred years have passed after his death.

This has been a strict law within the Rosicrucian community since its foundation. Exoterically, no one knows who is a leader in the Rosicrucian community until one hundred years have passed after his death. Then what he has given has already passed over into humanity, has become the objective property of mankind. Thus everything personal is excluded. Never will it be possible to point to a personality in an earthly body as a carrier of the Christian mystery. Only a hundred years after the death of such a personality would this be possible. This is a law which all the brothers of the Rose-Cross well observe. Never will a Rosicrucian brother point to a living personality as a leader of the first order in relation to that which, as Christian initiation, should flow into humanity. In ancient times one could point prophetically to those who would come: The prophets were preceded by their forerunners, their prophets, and these prophets pointed to the founders of religions who should come later; in the time of Jesus of Nazareth the contemporaries, for example the Baptist, pointed to him who was their contemporary; but the spiritual organization of mankind, after the Mystery of Golgotha, of necessity became altered in such wise that it can no longer be the prophet's way to point to a personality who will come or who is already present. On the contrary, a person who was a bearer of the Christian mystery, of that spiritual fact which is tested by the hearts of men, will first be pointed out a hundred years after he has passed from the physical plane through the gates of death.

All these things do not happen out of human caprice, but because they must happen. They must happen because humanity now stands before a time when love, peace, and understanding must spread in the process of the development of mankind. But they will spread only if we learn to take impersonally what is present, if we learn to champion the truth-containing element which has been given to mankind in the course of human evolution. Never more shall we, if as Occidentals we meet a Buddhist, seek to make him a Christian through persuasion or compulsion; for we believe that what has been given to him, and is the deepest thing in his religion, will surely lead him to the Christ. We believe above all things in his own truth; we will not injure the feelings of the Buddhist by saying it is not true that the founder of his religion, after he had lived among men as a Bodhisattva, has as a Buddha no expectation of further physical incarnations. Thereby we establish peace between the religious confessions. In this way, in the future the Christian will understand the Buddhist, and the Buddhist will understand the Christian. The Buddhist who will understand Christianity will say: “I understand that the Christian makes his religious principle something impersonal, an impersonal fact, the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha, an affair of the gods which man may watch and through which he may receive what can connect him with the divine.” No reasonable Buddhist will come to the Christian and say that the Christ can be incarnated in a physical body. On the contrary he would see in this a transgression of the true religious principle. And so no new discord-producing confession with a religious leader of a personal sort will be brought into the world, but the initiation principle itself with its peace, its harmony, its way of producing understanding, will meet all religions with vivifying understanding, and will not wish to force the truth of one religion upon another. As the Oriental Buddhist would answer to the Occidental who said to him that the Buddha could appear in a fleshly body: “Then you do not understand the matter, you do not know what a Buddha is” so would the Buddhist who had grasped the true heart of Christianity, and who stood for spiritual knowledge in earnestness and dignity, reply to one who should speak to him of a Christ incarnated in the flesh: “You do not understand Christianity if you believe that the Christ comes again in a physical body; you understand Christianity just as little as one understands Buddhism who believes that the Buddha would appear in a fleshly body.” What the Christian, if he is an anthroposophist, will always grant to the Buddhist; this will the Buddhist, if he is an anthroposophist, always grant also to the Christian. And so with every adherent of every religious confession of the earth. Thus will anthroposophy bring the great and understanding union, the synthesis of the religious confessions on the earth.

I wanted to say a few more words about the significance of the oldest parts of the Old Testament before moving on to other things. I have often told you that in interpreting the Old Testament, you come to a point where you can begin to take it more or less literally. Now, in the nineteenth century, we experienced an age that was as ill-suited as possible to comprehend something like the five books of Moses. Anyone who understands these five books of Moses will not only see an increase in their insight into the world, but also an increase in their inner appreciation and reverence for all the writings that speak to us, as something that is not only a human voice, but - let us leave this for the time being in an unspecified way - something that resonates down to us from higher spheres than the human spheres.

In fact, we could and perhaps will be able to go back to the origin, to the actual theories of such writings, to the first inspirers. But we do not want to do that today. We want to touch on a question that goes back to an historical fact, which admittedly cannot be established by the external means of literature today, but which will become quite clear once the theosophical movement has taken root. So, I would like to consider an historical fact first. At the time when Christianity had its first starting point, when Jesus of Nazareth lived, there was the school of Philo in the famous Alexandria. Among the manifold teachings that Philo gave, the most outstanding were those that he gave his students about the five books of Moses.

I note that one of these students was the evangelist who wrote the Gospel of John. So the spirit that lived in the Egyptian schools also lives in the Fourth Gospel. This interpretation required a very special spiritual quality, and Philo began by telling his students that the five books of Moses were not written to express what is told in them, but that this was only an outer garment to express deep inner human truths. Line by line, the Old Testament is to be understood as allegorical, symbolic of human inner processes, of such processes that also took place in time at the same time, that is, the processes took place in the hearts of the people for many hundreds of years, from the time when Abraham wandered in the Canaanite land until the time when the Jews were led into Babylonian captivity. There events took place that did not happen outwardly, but in the souls, which were, however, connected with historical events. But one does not understand the historical events if one does not bring them into connection with the inner happenings. Above all, the students entered into a mood in which the whole of the Old Testament appeared to them as a revelation of the inner human self.

I will give you a few examples in a moment. What I have told you was regarded by nineteenth-century scholars as mere myth, especially the explanations given by Philo. He still gave these in a very forceful manner in oral discourse. Everything that has come down to posterity from this has been regarded as an allegorical interpretation, to which nothing more can be added. In the nineteenth century, the aim was to remain on the physical plane and to examine the facts that arise for the historian. Even if the Bible was doubted in its chronology, even if it was no longer believed that the world was created 4000 years before the birth of Christ, at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Bible was still taken as a kind of historical document, as something that gave us information about historical events. The events that were narrated - even if they were inaccurately narrated - were taken as if they mattered. I am now talking from the point of view of external scholarly research. The other things that occurred in the occult realm were not noticed at all.

But something did result from the achievement of deciphering the cuneiform script. It turned out that what can be found in the stories of the Old Testament can also be found in the Babylonian legends and myths. In particular, they tell us of a creation of the world that is very similar to the biblical creation of the world. The story of the Fall of Man is also told in a very similar way in the Babylonian myth. The content of the significant seal impressions is significant. It is the impression that shows two people sitting under a tree with a snake. We have the Fall of Man depicted on a seal impression that is much older than the writings themselves. So in cuneiform writing we have the story of the Fall of Man, the salvation of humanity in a similar way to Noah and so on, so that it became clear that the view that the Old Testament was based on divine revelation, given directly to Moses by God, could no longer be maintained. It is self-evident that secular scholarship has concluded from this that the Jews did not receive these legends by revelation, but that they brought them down with them from their ancestral homeland at the time when they came down, and that they were then influenced from outside.

The further you get into the Old Testament, the clearer it becomes. You have to assume that what we are told about Joseph, who lived around the time of the pharaohs and who helped the Jews achieve a respected position in Egypt, is true. And it must also be assumed that there was also such a Moses.

At least you could feel that there would be a story together. In later times, historical records have again undermined the ground for purely historical research. We have documents that testify that in the time in which the story of Joseph took place, peoples whom we cannot describe otherwise than as Hebrews lived in the land of Canaan and that they turned to Pharaoh for support in a famine. These letters are written in the Babylonian language and addressed to the Egyptian pharaoh. From this it can be seen that the Babylonian language must have been highly regarded. The language of the educated at that time was the Babylonian language, as in earlier centuries with us it was the French language.

But something else has emerged. The person of Joseph has become highly doubtful. History has gradually eroded this figure. It has been established that a personality who was governor in a Jewish land is identical to Joseph, so that the story in the Bible corresponds to a governor who could not have experienced the story. At the court of the Pharaoh, he advocated for the Jews' petitions to the Pharaoh. So we would not have a Joseph who spoke for his people in the way it is written in the Bible, but who, as governor, took care of the Jews, and that they also made the Egyptian journey back then. Today it seems more questionable than ever that the Israelites' journey to Egypt really took place. It is quite impossible that the retreat under Moses could have taken place as it is told. It is said that the Jews went into the desert, and it is said as if no other peoples were there. But at that time, this area must have been inhabited by other peoples who would have fiercely resisted. If we understand all this literally, then everything is in the air.

Secular [historiography] has contributed to the dismemberment of the Bible. If the critic begins with his criticism, he sees himself standing before nothingness. The critic must end up saying, “I can't say anything.” It may be so, but it may also be otherwise – this is the conclusion that the secular critic must necessarily come to.

In this regard, I can only provide a sketch. However, if you were to go through the matter and look at it, you would find – as I have indicated – that the result can only be what I have indicated: higher criticism and absolute lack of results. This probably has the effect that one will ask oneself: Are the interpretations that Philo of Alexandria gave, that it is just a play on words, correct, or are the old documents perhaps written in the sense that Philo of Alexandria could still know, but which was later forgotten?

Not only in the first book of Moses, but also in the later books, an answer can be found if one examines it esoterically and if one asks oneself: Did it literally happen as it seems to be written there, or were the writers such who championed esotericism, were they spirits who, with what they outwardly presented, connected an inner meaning? The whole area that is involved and about which it is said that Abraham passed through it, that Abraham must have lived in it at the time that preceded a great invasion of the people, the area north of the Euphrates; Persia, India, but also Egypt, all these areas were full of occult schools. They were more or less left alone, especially until 2005 BC. But in the middle of the third millennium BC, great migrations of peoples took place. What is referred to as the Babylonian people also settled there around that time. In the past, there were even more peoples who knew what priestly rule meant.

In all these areas there were seven degrees of initiation. The first degree was the degree of the “ravens”. Initiates of this degree were those who ensured the connection between the outside world and the secret places. Hence the ravens are the scouts who bring news of the outside world to those inside the temple, from which they can find the opportunity to work. When the old Barbarossa asks from century to century whether the ravens are still flying around the mountain, this is nothing more than the occult interpretation of whether the connection with the outside world still exists.

In the second degree of initiation, those who could use the word were those who had learned so much that they were inspired by spiritual life. They were called the champions.

In the third degree of initiation were those who could work through action, who stood firm through their power. They were called the “lions”. A warrior is one who works through the word; he is also called a prophet. But those who have become lions work through action. Sometimes, however, their work remains more or less unnoticed. They are often not recognized at all.

Those initiated in the fourth degree were called the “occult” [those working inside the temple].

Those initiated in the fifth degree were called in each country according to the name of the [people] in question. In India they were called: “Man” - . He was only truly a man when he had risen to Manas. The Persians called them “Persians”; the ancient Chaldeans called them “Chaldeans.” The entire nation was called Chaldeans, but the initiated of the fifth degree were especially called that. That is why they were always confused, when the people and when the initiated priests were designated. The initiates of this degree were priests who studied astronomy and astrology.

The initiates of the sixth degree were universally called the “sun-runners”. Their life had become so rhythmic that it ran as regularly as the course of the sun. He would have caused confusion if he had deviated from his path, just as the sun would cause confusion if it ever stepped out of its orbit. The sun-runners were the ones who were called upon to rule the nations. The kings of Western Asia, Southern Asia and Egypt were prepared for this by being initiated in the sixth degree. In the governors of Egypt, we therefore find sun-walkers who had reached a high degree of development, who understood the secret language of the world, and who also understood how to live out the spiritual secrets. It was said of such people that they led a life like the sun and that the sun, moon and stars bowed down before them, just as the moon and stars bow down before the sun.

These solar walkers or solar heroes are told in the most diverse legends and myths. Hercules is nothing other than a solar hero. The twelve labors are the passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac. Jason is also such a solar walker who set out to bring the golden fleece from the rough land of the barbarians. Thus, you can find myths with solar heroes among different peoples. Scholars have often wondered why the heroes of the myths are so often depicted in similar ways. They have been surprised that the lives of Buddha, Hercules and Zarathustra, Osiris and Christ are so similar. If they had known that these were initiates of the sixth degree and that the life of a sun-runner was simply being told, then they would not have needed to wonder. Even the story of Christ is part of it, and it shows that these were real events in their lives, but that they were predetermined by their fellow brothers. Their course of life was mapped out thousands of years before. The life of a sun-runner was described before, because through thousands of years the life of such a hero has taken the same course.

I would like to draw your attention to the story of Joseph. Read it and listen to my suggestions for how you might teach it. Joseph's father, Israel, made him a colorful coat. Among the Persians, those initiated at the fifth degree were called “Persians,” while among the Israelites they were called “Israeb.” It was a real event that those initiated at the fifth degree bowed to those initiated at the sixth degree on a certain day. Joseph told his brothers about his dream in which the sheaves bowed down to him, whereupon the brothers said to him: “Should you become our king and rule over us?” But they did not understand everything. Now he spoke even more clearly by telling his brothers another dream: “Behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars bowed down to me.” Here Joseph spoke of the fact that he wants to be initiated in the sixth degree. - Let us throw him into a pit, said the brothers. The “pit” is the place of initiation. A “wild beast” has torn Joseph apart. The tearing of the earthly garments is the dying of the lowly. The story shows us that Joseph has grown up to become a sun-runner, a sun-hero.

Egypt was the place of those temples where the most highly initiated were. The seventh degree is the degree of the “fathers.” Abraham belonged to the fathers only in Chaldea. Moses could then also be initiated into the Egyptian mysteries through Joseph, and from this emerged what Moses spoke to his people.

This is a brief example of the kind of instruction that Philo gave his students. The scholars had no idea that these were spiritual processes, but believed that real historical events were being described. But now we also understand why there is nothing left for biblical criticism. It does not stick to the real content, which it lets slip through its fingers.

The Jews of the first Christian communities told the story of Jesus' initiation in a similar way. The key to this lies in the old commentaries that exist for the Bible and the Vedas.

[Spiritual processes that must be read esoterically are also the fairy tales, for example, “The Seven Little Goats.” - The outer criticism always lets the real content slip through; it takes the symbols as deeds. - The keys are not available to external scholarship; it does not know how to read such things.)

Next time, I will discuss one of the most significant stories that you have often heard, but whose inner meaning is as infinitely deep as hardly anything else – the story of Cain and Abel. On the one hand, we have Cain's murder, and on the other hand, the whole human race is derived from Cain. The great secret lies in Abel, who sacrificed the animals of the forest, and Cain, who sacrificed the fruits of the field.