The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] The mystic sought forces and beings within himself which are unknown to the human being as long as he clings to the ordinary attitude towards life. The mystic puts the great question about his own spiritual forces and laws that transcend the lower nature. A man of ordinary views of life, bounded by the senses and logic, creates gods for himself; or when he realizes that he has made them, he repudiates them. The mystic knows that he creates gods, he knows why he creates them, he has discovered the natural law that makes man create them. It is as though a plant suddenly became conscious and learned the laws of its own growth and development. As it is now, it develops in serene unconsciousness. If it knew about the laws of its own being, its relation to itself would be completely changed. What the lyric poet feels when he sings of a plant, what the botanist thinks when he investigates its laws, would hover about a conscious plant as an ideal of itself.

This is the case of the mystic with regard to his laws, to the forces working within him. As one who knew, he was forced to create something divine beyond himself. And that is the attitude the initiates: took toward that which the people had created beyond nature; that is, toward the world of popular gods and myths. They wanted to penetrate the laws of this world of gods and myths. Where the people beheld the form of a god, or conceived a myth, they looked for a higher truth.

Let us take an example. The Athenians had been forced by the Cretan king Minos to deliver up to him every eight years seven boys and seven girls. These Were thrown as food to a terrible monster, the Minotaur, When the mournful tribute was to be paid for the third time, the king's son Theseus accompanied it to Crete. On his arrival there, Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, became interested in him. The Minotaur dwelt in the labyrinth, a maze from which no one could extricate himself once he was within it. Theseus Was anxious to deliver his native city from the shameful tribute. For this purpose he had to enter the labyrinth into which the Minotaur’s booty was usually thrown, and kill the monster. He undertook the task, OVercame the formidable foe, and succeeded in regaining the open air with the aid of a ball of thread which Ariadne had given him.

The mystic had to discover how the creative human mind comes to weave such a story. Just as the botanist watches the growth of plants in order to discover its laws, so did the mystic watch the creative spirit. He sought for a truth, a nucleus of wisdom, where the people had invented a myth.

Sallust discloses to us the attitude of a mystical sage towards a myth of this kind. “We might call the whole world a myth,” he says, “which contains bodies and things visibly, and souls and spirits in a hidden manner. If the truth about the gods were taught to all, the unintelligent would disdain it, because of not understanding it, and the more capable would make light of it. But if the truth is given, veiled in a myth, it is assured against contempt and serves as a stimulus to philosophic thinking.”

[ 2 ] When the truth contained in a myth was sought by an initiate, the latter was conscious of adding something to what existed in the consciousness of the people. He was aware of being above that consciousness, as a botanist is above a growing plant. Something was expressed which was different from what was present in the myth-consciousness, but it was looked upon as a deeper truth, symbolically expressed in the myth. Man is confronted with his own sense-nature in the form of a hostile monster. He sacrifices to it the fruits of his personality, and the monster devours them and continues to do so till the conqueror (Theseus) awakes in man. His knowledge spins the thread by means of which he finds his way again when he repairs to the maze of sensuality in order to slay his enemy. The mystery of human cognition itself is expressed in this conquering of sensuality. The initiate knows that mystery. It points to a force in human personality unknown to ordinary consciousness, but nevertheless active within it. It creates the myth, Which has the same structure as mystic truth. This truth finds its symbol in the myth.

What, then, is to be found in the myths? In them is a creation of the spirit, of the unconsciously creative soul. The soul follows well-defined laws. In order to create beyond herself she must work in a certain direction, At the mythological stage she does this in images, but these are built up according to the laws of the soul. We might also say that when the soul advances beyond the stage of mythological consciousness to deeper truths these bear the same stamp as did the myths, for one and the same force was at work in their formation.

[ 3 ] Plotinus, the philosopher of the Neo-Platonic school (204–269 A.D.), speaks of this relation of mythical representation to higher knowledge in reference to the priest-sages of Egypt. “Whether as the result of rigorous researches, or whether instinctively when imparting their wisdom, the Egyptian sages do not use for expressing their teaching and precepts written signs which are imitations of voice and speech, but they draw pictures, and in the outlines of these they record in their temples the thought contained in each thing so that every picture comprises knowledge and wisdom and is a definite truth and a complete whole, although there is no explanation nor discussion. Afterwards the contents of the picture are extracted from it and expressed in words, and the cause is found why it is as it is, and not otherwise.”

[ 4 ] If we wish to find out the relation between mysticism and mythical narratives we must see what attitude there is toward the latter in the views of those who knew their wisdom to be in harmony with the methods of the Mysteries. We find such harmony in Plato to the fullest degree. His explanations of myths and his application of them in his teaching may be taken as authoritative (cf. p. 65 et seq.). In the Phedrus, a dialogue on the soul, the myth of Boreas is introduced. This divine being, who was seen in the rushing wind, one day saw the fair Orithya, daughter of the Attic king Erechtheus, gathering flowers with her companions. Seized with love for her, he carried her off to his grotto. Plato, through the mouth of Socrates, rejects a merely rationalist interpretation of this myth. According to such an explanation, an outward, natural occurrence is poetically symbolized in the narrative. A hurricane seized the king's daughter and hurled her from the rock. “Interpretations of this sort,” says Socrates, “are learned sophistries, however popular and usual they may be... For anyone who has pulled to pieces one of these mythological forms must, to be consistent, elucidate sceptically and explain naturally all the rest in the same way... But even if such a task could be accomplished, it would in any case be no proof of Superior talents in the one carrying it out, but only of facile wit, boorish wisdom, and snap judgment... Therefore, I leave on one side all such inquiries, and believe what is generally thought about the myths. I do not examine them, as I have just said, but I examine myself to see whether I too may perhaps be a monster, more complicated and therefore more disordered than the chimera, more savage than Typhon, or whether I represent a more docile and simple being, to whom some particle of a virtuous and divine nature has been given.”

We see from this that Plato does not approve of a rationalistic and merely intellectual interpretation of myths, This attitude must be taken in conjunction with the way in which he himself uses myths as a means of expression. When he speaks of the life of the soul, when he leaves the paths of the transitory and seeks the Eternal in the soul where images borrowed from sense-perception and reasoning thought can no longer be found, then Plato has recourse to the myth. Phedrus treats of the Eternal in the soul, and the latter is portrayed as a car drawn by two horses winged all over, and driven by a charioteer. One horse is patient and wise, the other wild and stubborn. If an obstacle comes in the way of the team, the troublesome horse takes the opportunity to impede the docile one and defy the driver. When the car arrives where it has to follow the gods up the celestial steep, the intractable horse throws the team into confusion. Upon the strength or weakness of the stubborn horse depends the possibility of the good horse conquering it, and of the team overcoming the obstacle and reaching the supersensible realm. So the soul can never ascend without difficulties into the kingdom of the Divine: Some souls rise more to the vision of Eternity, some less. The soul that has seen the world beyond remains unscathed until the next journey. One that, on account of the intractable horse, has seen nothing must try again on the next journey. These journeys signify the various incarnations of the soul. One journey signifies the life of the soul in one personality. The wild horse represents the lower nature, the wise horse the higher nature; the driver, the soul longing for union with the Divine.

Plato resorts to the myth in order to describe the course of the eternal soul through her various transformations. In the same way he has recourse, in other writings, to the myth, to symbolical narrative, in order to portray the inner nature of man which is not perceptible to the senses.

[ 5 ] Plato is here in complete harmony with the mythical and allegorical manner of expression used by others. For instance, there is in ancient Hindu literature a Parable attributed to Buddha:

[ 1 ] A man very much attached to life, who seeks senSuous pleasures and would not die under any circumStance, is pursued by four serpents. He hears a voice commanding him to feed and bathe the serpents from time to time. The man runs away, fearing the serpents. Again he hears a voice, warning him that he is pursued by five murderers. Once more he escapes. A voice calls his attention to a sixth murderer who is about to behead him with a sword. Again he flees. He comes to a deserted village. There he hears a voice telling him that robbers are shortly going to plunder the village. Continuing to flee he comes to a great expanse of water. He feels his position very unsafe, so out of straws, sticks, and leaves he weaves a basket in which he is able to reach the other shore. Now he is safe, he is a Brahmin.

[ 1 ] The meaning of this parable is that the human being has to pass through the most various conditions before attaining to the Divine. The four serpents represent the four elements, fire, water, earth, and air. The five murderers are the five senses. The deserted village is the soul that has escaped from sense-impressions, but is not yet safe when alone with herself; for if her lower nature takes hold of her, she must perish. Man must construct for himself the boat which is to carry him from one shore, the sense-nature, over the flood of the transitory to the other, the eternal, divine world.

[ 1 ] Let us look at the Egyptian mystery of Osiris in this light. Osiris had gradually become one of the most important Egyptian divinities; he supplanted other gods in certain parts of the country; and a significant cycle of myths formed round him and his consort Isis.

[ 1 ] Osiris was the son of the Sun-god, his brother was Typhon-Set, and his sister, Isis. Osiris married his sister, and together they reigned over Egypt. The wicked brother, Typhon, sought to kill Osiris. He had a chest made which was exactly the length of Osiris' body. At a banquet this chest was offered to the person whom it exactly fitted. This was Osiris and none other. He lay down in the chest. Typhon and his confederates rushed upon him, closed the chest, and threw it into the river. When Isis heard the terrible news she wandered far and wide in despair, seeking her husband’s body. When she found it, Typhon again took possession of it, and dismembered it into fourteen pieces which were scattered in many and various places. Numerous tombs of Osiris were shown in Egypt. In many Places, up and down the country, parts of the god, Osiris, were said to be buried. Osiris himself, however, @me forth from the nether-world and vanquished Typhon. A beam shone from him upon Isis, who in consequence bore a son, Harpocrates or Horus.

[ 1 ] And now let us compare this myth with the view of the universe taken by the Greek philosopher, EmPedocles (490–430 B.C.). He assumes that the one Primordial being was once divided into the four eleMents, fire, water, earth, and air, or into the multiplicity of being. He presents two opposing forces, love and Strife, which within this world of existence bring about 8towth and decay. Empedocles says of the elements:

[ 1 ] They remain ever the same, yet by uniting their forces
Become transformed into men and the numberless beings besides.
These are now joined into one, love binding the many together;
Now once again they are scattered, dispersed through hatred and strife.

[ 1 ] What, then, are the objects in the world from Empedocles' point of view? They are the elements in various combinations. They could only come into being through the breaking up of primeval unity into the four natures. This primordial unity was thus poured into the elements. Anything confronting Us is part of the outpoured Divinity. But this Divinity is hidden in the object; it had first to die that objects might come into being. And what are these objects? Mixtures of divine constituents effectuated by love and hatred. Empedocles says this distinctly:

[ 1 ] See, for a clear demonstration, how the limbs of a man are constructed,
All that the body possesses, in beauty and bloom of existence,
All joined together by love are the elements there forming one.
Hatred and conflict come after, and fatally tear them asunder,
Once more they wander alone, on the desolate confines of life.
So it is with the bushes and trees, and the water-inhabiting fishes,
Wild animals roaming the mountains, and birds swiftly borne by their wings.

[ 1 ] Clearly it was Empedocles’ belief that the sage finds again the divine primordial unity, hidden in the world by a spell, and entangled in the meshes of love and hate. But if man finds the Divine he must himself be divine, for Empedocles takes the point of view that only like recognizes like. This conviction of his is expressed in Goethe’s lines:

[ 1 ] “If the eye were not of the nature of the sun, how could we behold light? If divine force were not at work in us, how could divine things delight us?”

[ 1 ] These thoughts about the world and man, transcending sense-experience, were found by the mystic I the myth of Osiris. Divine creative force has been Poured out into the world; it appears as the four elements; God (Osiris) is killed. Man is to raise him from the dead with his cognition, which is of divine Nature, He is to find him again as Horus (the Son of God, the Logos, wisdom), in the opposition between strife (Typhon) and Love (Isis). In Greek form Empedocles expresses even his fundamental conviction by means of thoughts that suggest myth. Love is Aphrodite and Strife is Neikos. They bind and unbind the elements.

[ 1 ] The portrayal of the content of a myth in the manner followed here must not be confused with a merely symbolical interpretation of myths, and still less with an allegorical one. This is not intended. The symbols forming the content of a myth are not invented symbols of abstract truths, but actual soul-experiences of the initiate. He experiences the images with his spiritual organs of perception just as the normal man experiences the mental images of physical things with his eyes and ears. But just as a mental image is nothing in itself, if it is not aroused in perception by an outer object, so the mythical image is nothing unless it is excited by real facts of the spiritual world. Only, in regard to the physical world man is at first outside the stimulating causes, whereas he can experience the images of myths only if he is within the corresponding spiritual occurrences. In order, however, to be within them, he must have gone through initiation, as the ancient mystics had always believed. Then the spiritual occurrences within which he is perceiving are, as it were, illustrated by the myth-images. Anyone who cannot take the mythical element as an illustration of real spiritual occurrences has not yet attained to the understanding of it. For the spiritual events themselves are supersensible, and images reminiscent of the physical world are not themselves of a spiritual nature, but only an illustration of spiritual things. One who lives merely in the images lives in a dream. Only the one who has come to the point of sensing the spiritual element in the image just as he senses a rose in the physical world through the conception of a rose, really lives in spiritual perceptions. This is the reason why the images of myths cannot be unequivocal. On account of their illustrative character the same myths may express several spiritual facts. It is therefore not a contradiction when interpreters of myths sometimes connect a myth with one spiritual fact and sometimes with another. From this standpoint we are able to find a thread to conduct us through the labyrinth of Greek myths. Let us consider the legend of Heracles. The twelve labors imposed upon Heracles appear in a higher light when We remember that before the last and most difficult of these he seeks initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries. He is commissioned by King Eurystheus of Mycenæ to bring the hell-hound Cerberus from the infernal regions and take it back there again. In order to undertake the descent into hell, Heracles had to be initiated. The Mysteries conducted the neophite through the death of perishable things, that is, into the nether world; and through initiation they rescued his eternal principle from perdition. As an initiate he could vanquish death; as an initiate he overcomes the dangers of the nether-world. This justifies us in interpreting his other ordeals as stages in the inner development of the soul, He overcomes the Nemæan lion and brings him 1o Mycenæ. This means that he becomes master of purely physical force in man; he tames it. Afterwards he slays the nine-headed Hydra. He overcomes it with firebrands and dips his arrows in its gall, so that they become deadly. This means that he overcomes lower knowledge derived through the senses. He does this through the fire of the spirit, and from what he had gained through the lower knowledge he draws the power to look at lower things in the light that belongs to spiritual sight. Heracles captures the hind of Artemis, goddess of the chase: everything nature offers the human soul Heracles makes his own: His other labors may be interpreted in the same way. We cannot here trace out every detail and only wish to show how the general sense of the myth points to inner development.

[ 1 ] A similar interpretation is possible of the expedition of the Argonauts. Phrixus and his sister Helle, children of a Bœotian king, suffered much at the hands of their stepmother. The gods sent them a ram with a golden fleece, which bore them through the air. When they passed over the straits between Europe and Asia, Helle was drowned. Hence the strait is called the Hellespont. Phrixus came to Aeëtes, King of Colchis, on the east shore of the Black Sea. He sacrificed the ram to the gods and gave its fleece to the King, who had it hung up in a grove and guarded by a terrible dragon. The Greek hero Jason undertook to fetch the fleece from Colchis in company with other heroes, Heracles, Theseus, and Orpheus. Aeëtes laid heavy tasks upon Jason in his effort to obtain the treasure, but the king’s daughter Medea, who was versed in magic, aided him. He subdued two fire-breathing bulls. He ploughed a field and sowed it with dragon’s teeth from which armed men grew up out of the earth. On Medea’s advice he threw a stone into their midst, whereupon they killed each other. Jason lulls the dragon to sleep with a charm given him by Medea and is then able to obtain the fleece. He leaves with it to return to Greece, Medea accompanying him as his wife. The king pursues the fugitives. In order 1o detain him, Medea slays her little brother Absyrtus and scatters his severed limbs into the sea. Aeëtes stops to collect them, and thus the pair are able to reach Jason’s home with the fleece.

[ 1 ] Each of these incidents requires a deep elucidation. The fleece is something belonging to man, and infinitely precious to him. It is something from which he was sundered in times of yore, and for the recovery of which he has to overcome terrible forces. This is true of the Eternal in the human soul. It belongs to man, but man is separated from it by his lower nature. Only by overcoming the latter, by lulling it to sleep, can he recover the Eternal. This becomes possible when his own consciousness (Medea) comes to his aid with its magic power. Medea is to Jason what Diotima, as a teacher of love, was to Socrates, (cf. p. 72). Man’s own wisdom has the magic power necessary to attain the Divine after having overcome the transitory. From the lower nature there can only arise a lower human principle, the armed men who are overcome by spiritual force, the counsel of Medea. Even when man has found his Eternal, the fleece, he is not yet safe. He must sacrifice part of his consciousness (Absyrtus). This is exacted by the physical world which we can only apprehend as a multiple (dismembered) world. We might go still deeper into the description of the spiritual events underlying the images, but it is only intended here to indicate the principle according to which myths originate.

[ 1 ] Of special interest, when interpreted in this way, is the legend of Prometheus. He and his brother Epimetheus are sons of the Titan Iapetus. The Titans are the offspring of the oldest generation of gods, Uranus (Heaven) and Gæ (Earth). Kronos, the youngest of the Titans, dethroned his father and seized control of the world. In return, he and the other Titans were overpowered by his son Zeus, who became the chief of the gods. In the struggle with the Titans, Prometheus was on the side of Zeus. By his advice, Zeus banished the Titans to the nether-world. But in Prometheus there still lived the Titan spirit: he was only half a friend to Zeus. When the latter wished to exterminate men on account of their arrogance, Prometheus espoused their cause, taught them the art of numbers writing, and other things that lead to culture, especially the use of fire. This aroused the wrath of Zeus against Prometheus. Hephaistos, the son of Zeus, was commissioned to create a female form of great beauty whom the gods adorned with every possible gift. She was called Pandora, the all-gifted one. Hermes, messenger of the gods, took her to Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus. She brought him a casket as a present from the gods. Epimetheus accepted the present although Prometheus had warned him against receiving any gift from the gods. When the casket was opened all sorts of human ills flew out. Hope alone remained, and this because Pandora quickly closed the box. Hope has, therefore, been left to man as a doubtful gift of the gods. By order of Zeus, Prometheus, on account of his relation to man, was chained to a rock in the Caucasus. An eagle perpetually gnaws his liver, which is constantly renewed. He has to pass his life in agonizing loneliness till one of the gods voluntarily sacrifices himself, that is, gives himself up to death. The tormented Prometheus bears his sufferings steadfastly. He had been told that Zeus would be dethroned by the son of a mortal woman unless Zeus consented to wed her. It was important for Zeus to know this secret. He sent the messenger Hermes to Prometheus in order to learn something about it. Prometheus refused to divulge anything.—The legend oF Heracles is connected with that of Prometheus. In the course of his wanderings Heracles comes to the Caucasus. He slays the eagle that was devouring the liver of Prometheus. The centaur Chiron who cannot die, although suffering from an incurable wound, sacrifices himself for Prometheus, who is thereupon reconciled with the gods.

[ 1 ] The Titans are the force of will, proceeding as nature (Kronos) from the original universal spirit (Uranus). Here we must think not merely of will-forces in an abstract form, but of actual will-beings. Prometheus is one of them, and this characterizes his nature. But he is not altogether a Titan. In a certain sense he is on the side of Zeus, the Spirit who enters upon the rulership of the world after the unbridled force of nature (Kronos) has been subdued. Prometheus is thus the representative of those worlds that have given man the progressive urge, half nature-force, half spiritual force: will. The will points on the one side towards good, on the other towards evil. Its fate is decided according as it leans toward the spiritual or the perishable. This fate is that of man himself. He is chained to the perishable, the eagle gnaws him, he has to suffer. He can reach the highest only by seeking his destiny in solitude. He has a secret, which is that the Divine (Zeus) must marry a mortal woman (human consciousness bound up with the physical body), in order to beget a son, human wisdom (the Logos) that will deliver the deity. By this means consciousness becomes immortal. He must not betray this secret until an initiate (Heracles) comes to him and eliminates the power that was perpetually threatening him with death. A being half animal, half human, a centaur, is obliged to sacrifice itself to redeem man. The centaur is man himself, half animal, half spiritual. He must die in order that the purely spiritual man may be delivered. That which is disdained by Prometheus (human will) is accepted by Epimetheus (mind, intelligence). But the gifts offered to Epimetheus are only troubles and sorrows, for the mind clings to the transitory and perishable. Only one thing is left—the hope that even out of the perishable the Eternal may Some day be born.

[ 1 ] The thread running through the legends of the Argonauts, of Heracles, and Prometheus, holds good in Homer’s Odyssey. The method of interpretation here may seem forced; but on closer consideration of everything which has to be taken into account, even the sturdiest skeptic must cease to doubt. Most startling of all must seem Odysseus’ report that he, too, descended into the nether-world. Whatever we may think about the author of the Odyssey in other respects, it is impossible to imagine his representing a mortal descending to the infernal regions without bringing him into relation with what the journey into the nether-world meant to the Greek world conception. It meant the conquest of the perishable and the awakening of the Eternal in the soul. It must therefore be conceded that Odysseus accomplished this, and thereby his experiences and those of Heracles acquire a deeper significance. They become a delineation of the non-sensuous, of the soul’s progress of development. Furthermore, the narrative in the Odyssey iS not in the manner demanded by a series of outer events. The hero makes voyages in enchanted ships. Actual geographical distances are dealt with in most arbitrary fashion. It is not in the least a question of what is physically real. This becomes comprehensible if the physically real events are only related for the sake of illustrating a spiritual development. Moreover the poet himself says at the opening of the book that it deals with a search for the soul: “O Muse, sing to me of the man full of resource, who wandered very much after he had destroyed the sacred city of Troy, and saw the cities of many men, and learned their manners. Many griefs also in his mind did he suffer on the sea, although seeking to preserve his own soul, and the return of his companions.”

[ 1 ] We have before us a man seeking for the soul, for the Divine, and his wanderings during this search are narrated. He comes to the land of the Cyclops. These are uncouth giants with only one eye, and that in the centre of the forehead. The most terrible, Polyphemus, devours several of Odysseus’ companions. Odysseus himself escapes by blinding the Cyclops. Here we have to do with the first stage of life’s pilgrimage. Physical force or the lower nature has to be overcome. It devours any one who does not wrest from it its power, who does not blind it. Odysseus next comes to the island of the enchantress Circe. She changes some of his companions into grunting pigs. She also is subdued by Odysseus. Circe is the lower mind-force that cleaves to the transitory. If misused, it may thrust men down even deeper into bestiality. Odysseus has to overcome it. Then he is able to descend into the nether-world. He becomes a mystic. Now he is exposed to the dangers that beset the mystic on his progress from the lower to the higher degrees of initiation. He comes to the Sirens Who lure the passer-by to death by sweet magic sounds. These are the forms of the lower imagination, which are at first pursued by one who has freed himself from the power of the senses. He has achieved freedom of Action for his spirit, but not initiation. He pursues illusions from the power of which he must break loose. Odysseus has to accomplish the awful passage between Scylla and Charybdis. The neophite wavers between spirit and sensuousness. He cannot yet grasp the full significance of spirit, yet sensuousness has already lost its former value. All Odysseus’ companions perish in a shipwreck; he alone escapes and comes to the nymph Calypso, who receives him kindly and takes care of him for seven years. At length, by order of Zeus, she dismisses him to his home. The mystic has arrived at a stage at which all his fellow-aspirants fail; he alone, Odysseus, is worthy. He enjoys for a time, which is defined by the mystically symbolical number seven, the tranquility of gradual initiation. Before Odysseus arrives at his home he comes to the isle of the Phaaces, where he meets with a hospitable reception. The king's daughter gives him sympathy, and the king himself, Alcinous, entertains and honors him. Once more does Odysseus approach the world and its joys, and the spirit that is attached to the world, Nausicaa, awakes within him. But he finds the way home, to the Divine. At first, nothing good awaits him at home. His wife: Penelope, is surrounded by numerous suitors. Each one she promises to marry when she will have finished weaving a certain piece of fabric. She avoids keeping her promise by undoing every night what she has woven by day. Odysseus is obliged to vanquish the suitors before he can be reunited with his wife it peace. The goddess Athene changes him into # beggar so that he may not be recognized on his entrance to his home; he then overcomes the suitors: Odysseus is seeking his own deeper consciousness, the divine powers of the soul. He wishes to be united with them. Before the mystic can find them he must overcome everything which sues for the favor of that consciousness. The band of suitors springs from the world of lower reality, from perishable nature. The logic applied to them is a spinning of fabric which is always undone again after it has been spun. Wisdom (the goddess Athene) is the sure guide to the deepest forces of the soul. It changes man into a beggar, that is, it divests him of everything of a transitory nature. Wholly steeped in Mystery wisdom were the Eleusinian Festivals, celebrated in Greece in honor of Demeter and Dionysos. A sacred road led from Athens to Eleusis. It was bordered with mysterious signs intended to bring the soul into an exalted mood. In Eleusis there were mysterious temples served by families of priests. The dignity and the wisdom bound up With this dignity were inherited in these families from 8eneration to generation.¹ The wisdom that qualified for service was the wisdom of the Greek Mysteries. The festivals, which were celebrated twice a year, presented the great world-drama of the destiny of the Divine in the world, and of that of the human soul. The lesser Mysteries were observed in February, the greater in September. With the festivals, initiations were connected. The symbolical presentation of the cosmic and human drama formed the final act of the initiations of the mystics that took place here.

[ 1 ] The Eleusinian temples had been erected in honor of the goddess Demeter. She was a daughter of Kronos. She had given Zeus a daughter, Persephone, before his marriage with Hera. Once while at play, Persephone was carried away by Pluto, god of the nether-world. Demeter wandered far and wide over the earth, seeking her with lamentations. Sitting on a stone in Eleusis, she was found by the daughters of Keleus, ruler of the place. In the form of an old woman she entered the service of his family, as nurse to the queen’s son. She wished to endow this boy with immortality, and for this purpose hid him in the fire every night. When his mother discovered this she wept and lamented. Henceforth the bestowal of immortality was impossible. Demeter left the house. Keleus then built a temple. The grief of Demeter for Persephone was limitless. She spread sterility over the earth. The gods had to appease her in order to prevent a great catastrophe. Thus Zeus induced Pluto to release Persephone into the upper world, but before letting her go he gave her a pomegranate to eat. This obliged her to return periodically to the nether-worldHenceforward she spent a third of the year there, and two-thirds in the world above. Demeter was appeased and returned to Olympus; but at Eleusis, the place of her suffering, she founded the cult which should keep her fate in remembrance.

[ 1 ] It is not difficult to discover the meaning of the myth of Demeter and Persephone. That which lives alternately above and below is the soul. The immortality of the soul and her perpetually recurring transformation by birth and death are presented in pictures. The soul derives from the immortal—Demeter. But she is led astray by the transitory and is even condemned to share its destiny. She has partaken of the fruits of the nether-world: the human soul is satisfied by the transitory, therefore she cannot permanently live in the heights of the Divine. She has always to return to the realm of the perishable. Demeter is the representative of the being out of which human consciousness arose; but we must think of it as the consciousness capable of coming into being through the spiritual forces of the earth, Thus Demeter is the primordial essence of the earth, and her endowment of the earth with the Seed-forces of the fruits of the fields points to a still deeper aspect of her being. This being wishes to give man immortality. Demeter hides her nursling in the fire by night. But man cannot bear the pure force of fire (the spirit) . Demeter is obliged to abandon the idea. All she can do is to found a temple service through which man can participate in the Divine to the extent of his ability.

[ 1 ] The Eleusinian Festivals were an eloquent confession of the belief in the immortality of the human soul. This confession found pictorial expression in the Perscphone myth. Together with Demeter and Persephone, Dionysos was commemorated in Eleusis. Just as Demeter was worshipped as the divine creatress of the Eternal in man, so in Dionysos the ever-changing Divine in the world was venerated. Dionysos, the god, poured into the world and torn to pieces in order t0 be spiritually reborn, (cf. p. 74) had to be worshipped together with Demeter.²

• 1. Instructive information about the organization of these sanctuaries will be found in Karl Bötticher's Erginzungen zu den letzten Untersuchungen auf der Akropolis in Athen, Philologus, Supplement, vol. III, part 3.
• 2. A brilliant description of the spirit of the Eleusinian Mysteries is found in Edouard Schuré’s book, Sanctuaires d’Orient. Paris, 1898.

Anyone walking down the street today among the Christmas trees that have been put up might easily be led to believe that the Christmas tree itself is something very old. But it is precisely the Christmas tree that allows you to see the change in people's customs and traditions, because the Christmas tree, which is now found in almost every home, is not even a hundred years old. A century ago, you would not have been able to walk down streets occupied by Christmas trees. You would also look in vain in the poetry of a hundred or a hundred and twenty years ago for a song, for a poem that sings of the Christmas tree. But that should be a striking phenomenon for you, because the Christmas tree is something that has been sung about by poets in the time when it was once there. It is a very new phenomenon, something that only became common in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Christmas tree as a symbol of Christmas only appeared around 1800, but Christmas itself is ancient, not just Christian. It was celebrated in the same way in all times of which we can have historical knowledge.

In Christianity itself, Christmas has only been taken as a symbol of the birth of the Christian Redeemer since the fourth century AD. In no way was December 25 celebrated as the birthday of the founder of Christianity in the first centuries of Christianity; it was only in the fourth century that it was understood as such. But a festival was celebrated in the Roman Empire during this time, a festival was also celebrated at the same time by the ancient Celtic and Germanic peoples and with a similar idea already in ancient Egypt and in many other areas. What was celebrated there was something else; it was only in the fourth century of our era that it was linked to the birthday of the founder of Christianity.

Now one could conclude from this that the Christian church would have done something that would historically go against all tradition, and would have wanted to correct something with it, so to speak. But that is not the case. Anyone who truly understands the meaning of Christmas recognizes the ancient wisdom that lies hidden in such a festival. Festivals such as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are nothing more than dates, dates inscribed in time by our ancestors, with whom they showed us, their descendants, how they understood the relationship between the world and man and the great mysteries of existence. Whoever knows how to decipher the writing that has been laid down for us in the great festivals, whoever knows how to decipher the hieroglyphs that time itself presents to us, will glimpse into the deep and meaningful mysteries of all human becoming. I said – and we will see in a moment in which sense this applies – that Christmas has been celebrated since the time when we have history. The times about which we know historical documents go back to the third sub-race of the fifth root race. The times of our own sub-race, in which physical science and physical culture have developed, go back to the fifteenth or sixteenth century. This was preceded by another race, and this goes back to the ninth or eighth century BC, to the times when Homer was singing his poems to the Greeks. This period tells us about the feelings and deeds of the fourth sub-race that preceded us.

Then we come back to the even older times, but these already lead us back to the gray antiquity, to the time of ancient Babylon and Assyria, to the ancient times of the Jewish people, to the times when the Egyptian priests preserved their wisdom and only brought it to the people in an exoteric way. Then the historical tradition ceases. What has been handed down to us from Persian history was only recorded much later. What is communicated to us as the sublime religion of ancient India, what is recorded in the Vedas and in the Vedanta philosophy, these are late records compared to the times in which the great thoughts of the ancient Indian Rishis, which they received directly from the divine spirits themselves, flowed through them to humanity. Thus we look back from the time in which we ourselves live, and which will last for a long time yet, to the Greco-Roman epoch, which is transformed into Christianity, and then to the epoch in which the Egyptian priests were active. But then the paths become lost. Only those who can follow history in other ways can know anything about ancient Persia. We are led even further back into the times that only the occultist can see.

Now, if you want to understand the Christian festival, you have to look back in time to the point where a new wisdom was taught to newly emerging humanity for the first time. We have come back to the time when the ancient Atlantean civilization disappeared due to the tremendous flooding of a large continent and a new human civilization - to which the epochs I have already enumerated belong - was established. A completely new way of thinking and feeling has emerged with this new humanity. Nothing of the actual culture of the Atlanteans, let alone of the even older culture of the Lemurian peoples, who once lived in ancient times and perished in a fire, has been preserved directly. However, what humanity has once gone through must be gone through again briefly when a new turning point in development has been reached. Thus the first sub-races of the fifth root race were destined to briefly repeat three important epochs in the development of humanity.

In ancient India, the wise Rishis looked back to those times when humanity was still at a very different stage, to those times when there was not yet a male and a female

sex, when man was still a unity. Then they looked back to that great unity in the human race, to that primeval man Adam, who is also called Adam Kadmon in various secret teachings, who was man and woman at the same time. They expressed that primal unity of humanity in a spiritual way by hinting at the supreme world being with the indefinite sacred name Brahman. Brahman is originally that out of which, as out of the All, out of the divine ground of unity, all manifoldness has emerged. On the earth itself, this unity was only present for man in a certain way in the times when there was not yet male and female, in the times when the diversity that we have now did not yet exist. What we are confronted with here is a reflection from the spirit of the great Indian Rishis: the divine Primordial Unity of man, the pre-human Adam Kadmon, in whom there was still peace, spirit, clarity and harmony; he speaks from the Vedic word as it flowed from the lips of the Indian Rishis. This was the first epoch of our human race after the great flood. It was not yet the case that there was talk on our earth of a trinity, of a threefold divine person. People only spoke of a primal unity, of Brahman, in which everything is contained, from which everything originates.

Then there came a time when the Persian Zarathustra priests, the wise men of the Parsees, looked back to that epoch when man, of both sexes, was born out of fire, when that man was born who represents a dual, a twofold. And with the birth of man out of the fire, something came into our earthly world that had not been there before; only then did evil come into the world. Evil did not exist in the human sense before the origin of the sexes. These originated in the middle of the Lemurian period. And good and evil have only existed since that time. Good and evil filled the last Lemurian period and the first Atlantean period.

It is interesting to research, according to the spiritual documents called the ‹Akashic Records›, how these two forms of humanity express themselves. In the next issue of the magazine “Lucifer - Gnosis” you will find an explanation of how the duality in man unfolds, how, when man really appeared in two sexes, man's soul and man's physical willpower were initially distributed among the sexes. Even those who today, as occultists, decipher the wonderful records that have been preserved for us in the Akasha Chronicle may be amazed at how fundamentally different the masculine and feminine appeared on our Earth in those early times, because it is so different from our present-day conception. Woman initially developed the soul, under the guidance of the wise leaders of humanity; man developed the will element. This is how a duality of will and soul arises. They face each other in the Atlantic epoch in the two sexes of humanity. Because soul came into the physical body and thereby into humanity, evil came into humanity. And because our humanity had to repeat that epoch, which is characterized by the difference between good and evil, the fire religion, the Parsee religion, the doctrine of Ormuzd and Ahriman emerged. This precedes our history as a Persian cultural period.

The concept of “good and evil” lived on in the religion of Zarathustra. At that time, there was no talk of a trinity. This came only later, at about the time when our historical documents begin. The Akasha Chronicle does not report a trinity in prehistoric times. It was only when people knew how to distinguish between good and evil that they were forced to look to a third party. And so we see the mediator, in the form of the mediator, in the form that most clearly presents itself to us in the so-called Mithras mysteries, which spread from Persia across the whole world. We see the mediator, the reconciler, the redeemer of humanity from evil, the guide from evil to good.

In these ancient times, one must always see in the earthly an image of the divine, an image of what has taken place in the great vault of heaven. If you look at the zodiac, you will see that in this zodiac the signs of Cancer, Gemini, Taurus and Aries or Lamb follow one another. According to certain laws, the sun, or rather the sun's vernal point, advances, so that in ancient times the sun rose in spring in the sign of Cancer, later in the sign of Gemini, still later in the sign of Taurus, and still later in the sign of Aries or the Lamb. Around the time of the eighth century before the birth of Christ, the sun had reached the constellation of Aries or the Lamb in the celestial vault. Now, in our cultural era, it enters the constellation of Pisces.

Depending on what happens in the spiritual realm, what happens on earth takes shape. You are familiar with the sign of Cancer, but its true significance is not always known. This sign of Cancer must be understood; then one will also understand how it points to the dawning of a completely new era. They are two intertwined spirals or two intertwined vortices. When something important happens in the world, when one stage of development is replaced by another, when something completely new enters the world, then two such vortex movements intertwine. In this one vortex you have the end of the Atlantean culture, and in the other you have the beginning of the Aryan culture. Our ancestors saw the outer sign for the rise of the new Aryan culture in the sky above. Then, in later times, the sun entered the sign of Gemini. Gemini is a sign for good and evil; Gemini is the sign of the zodiac that dominated Persian thinking. Then the sun enters the sign of Taurus. This brings us to the third sub-race; it has the worship of the bull, the Egyptian Apis, in Babylonia the service of the bull, and finally in what was later to become Persia the bull sacrifice, the service of Mithras. Man brought the bull sacrifice down from heaven because it was marked there.

The fourth sub-race, which saw the rise of Christianity, begins with the sun entering Aries. An important saga – the bringing of the ram skin by the Greek hero Jason – indicates this important turning point in history. And a further important turning-point is indicated by the sacrifice of the mystic Lamb on the cross. This is the historical expression of the mystery that is indicated by the fact that the Sun, the ruler of the world, has reached the point in the vault of heaven that is signified by the Lamb or the Ram.

But now we have to understand this whole development in the right way. After the duality of good and evil, the trinity appears in human consciousness. This occurs in various religions. We only need to get to know it in what we know in the different countries around the Mediterranean as the Mithras mysteries. Let us look at one of these mystery temples. For those who only participate in the lesser mysteries, a symbolic act takes place. For those who are allowed to participate in the greater mysteries, the same thing takes place as a fact in the astral realm. I can only speak about the lesser mysteries of the Mithras service. The symbolic bull becomes visible. The mediator, the god, rides on it. He then holds the bull's nostrils shut and plunges his sword into its side. A snake comes, a scorpion; above the head of Mithras one sees a bird, and above the whole group, on one side, one sees the genius with a lowered torch and, on the other side, with a raised torch, which symbolizes the sun on its course through the vault of heaven.

Human life, as it was experienced in the consciousness of that time, is thus presented to us. Man had come to seek redemption within himself, the third divine principle, which leads him away from evil and can reconcile evil with good. Evil is the passions, that which pulls man down to earth, all the way to what is symbolized by the bull. But what can lead man up to the higher self, what appears as the immortal, is the mediator who has killed the lower being when he symbolically thrusts the sword into the bull's loins. Thus, as mediator between good and evil, that is, in the third sub-race, a trinity in the divine appears, and with that, humanity has grasped what is called Atman-Budhi-Manas in theosophy. The moment the mediator appears, the mystical secret is fulfilled: the trinity in the consciousness of man awakens.

Thus man was led through the human realization of unity, duality and trinity to Atman, Budhi, Manas. Atman or the spirit is the unity that man is able to perceive within himself when he has developed to it. Budhi or the spirit of life will express itself in man in that evil will be overcome by good, that duality will on the one hand purify the lower instincts or desire and on the other hand reconcile the higher so-called fire instincts or love, in that all evil will be consumed in the fire of love. Manas or the spirit self is the spiritual principle that already governs human development. Just as the Messiah, the redeemer, creates unity in the world, leading from disharmony to harmony, so duality dissolves through the trinity, in which evil is overcome by good.

Thus the human race had come so far that it saw its entire destiny in the trinity. But it sees fate in this trinity as imposed on people as an eternal world order. Man looks up to the threefold aspect of the Godhead, beholds a divine trinity in the world and sees himself as dependent on this divine trinity. He truly experienced that this divine Trinity descended directly to him in a human brother. This was the great event at the beginning of our era. For human consciousness, the Trinity has become something completely new as a result.

But we can only understand the deeper meaning of Christmas if we understand the mediator in the right way. From unity, duality has developed, from duality, chaos, from which harmony is to develop again. This harmony can only develop if the mediator creates this harmony. This harmony can only find expression in an eternal lawfulness, and this eternal lawfulness found its symbolic expression - in the time when the Mithras service originated - in the fact that an image was seen in man himself, this creating the eternal world harmonies of the world law.

In the same mysteries that I have already mentioned here, in the secrets of the Persian religion, you will find a sevenfold initiation for those who were admitted to the sacred secrets. The first degree included those who learned about the very first secrets: this was the degree of the “ravens”, as the symbolic name indicates. The second degree was that of the Occultists. The third degree was that of the fighters or for sacred truth. The fourth degree was that of the so-called Lions, and the fifth degree was that of the Persians. Only the latter was regarded as a full Persian, in whom the consciousness of the highest spiritual in man had awakened, which we call Manas. He in whom this had awakened could be called a fifth-degree initiate, and he was called a Persian. He was a member of a nation in the truest sense of the word. He represented the destiny of his people. And if he was initiated one degree higher, he no longer represented the personality of his people, but that of all mankind. He then represented not the karma of a people, but of all mankind, insofar as it had developed from the middle of the Lemurian race and further into the fifth root race. Then such an initiate was called a sun runner or a “sun hero.” All those whom you find in the books as solar heroes are none other than such initiates of the sixth degree. Then came the “Father”; he was connected with the evolution of the future of humanity.

What does the name Sunrunner mean? If you could look back into the primeval times of our solar system, you would see that this solar system emerged from the struggle of thermal chaos, and that harmony itself has established itself in our world of disharmony, that peace and the laws have developed out of discord and disharmony. But how did they come about? They came about like this: The sun has such a regulated course that we cannot even imagine that the sun could deviate from its path for a moment; our world is so firmly grounded in harmony that the sun is firmly determined in its direction by its path through the world, that nothing can bring it out of this direction. In this course of the sun across the vault of heaven, the ancient Persian initiate saw his own inner destiny in the sixth degree. The sun of his own inner being, the sun of his spirit, had to shine so firmly for him that he could not deviate from the path of good and wisdom any more than the sun could deviate from its path. A person who had reached the sixth degree of initiation had to be so imbued with this lawfulness that he could not possibly deviate from his path; then he was a solar hero, a sun-runner.

All the earlier degrees of initiation had no other purpose than to give the human being this inner security, this inner sun-likeness. Thus, the person who knew something of these mysteries saw a deep harmony between human destiny and the path of the sun across the vault of heaven. The sun – so he said – causes the days to grow shorter and shorter, nature to die towards autumn, everything to withdraw into the interior. And when we approach the time that is celebrated today as Christmas, a new turn occurs: the light emerges, the days become longer in nature, nature can awaken again. The birth of the light – that was the moment celebrated since the times when it was said that the light is the symbol of revelation in the world and in man. So that in the East all peoples of our root race regarded the light as the garment for the wise ordering of the world. In the light they saw the garment for world wisdom. When we direct our eyes into the universe, light appears, harmoniously and firmly imprinted, in the stars outside. In reality, the spirits of wisdom reveal themselves through the light that the ancient religions saw as the garment of wisdom in the world.

Thus the trinity appeared to the ancient religions, that they first celebrated unity, primordial wisdom, then duality, light and darkness, and finally, as a trinity, also the enlightened man, the teacher and mediator, Mithras.

But mankind could not attain salvation in the sense of this consciousness until the consciousness of this universal harmony was born out of human hearts themselves. That which lives outside in the world as light, as the birth of light, must at the point in time we are now approaching arise in the human heart itself. The external mystical fact that has taken place is the founding of Christianity. In Christ, that which has been present on our earth from the very beginning, but which has remained hidden from humanity throughout the ages we have just spoken of, has appeared. During this time, humanity has gradually repeated those three stages. But now a new point of view, a new high point can be reached: the light can be reborn. Just as after the light grows weaker and weaker as we approach autumn, and then, when we come to the winter solstice, the light is reborn, so too was the savior, the Christ, born to humanity in the fourth sub-race. He is the new solar hero who was not only initiated in the depths of the mystery temples but appeared before the world, so that even those who do not see can be blessed by believing! It was therefore a natural consequence that when it was realized that the Divine can descend to the level of personality, one could at that moment replace the birth festival of the Light with the birth festival of the solar hero of the fourth post-Atlantean race.

This happened in the fourth century of our fourth sub-race. What had never been there before was now there, namely, the possibility that man could give birth to the light within himself. He could do so because the light principle had been incarnated in a human being for the first time. With this happening, the winter solstice festival was necessarily associated with Christmas. The entire significance of the preceding sub-races is determined and established with the transfer of the celebration of the birth of Christ to the winter solstice festival. At first, wisdom and light appeared to people from outside, but now the light was to be brought forth from within the human heart. Christ was to be born within man himself. Therefore, the event also had to take place in Palestine, a mystical event and an historical fact.

We are therefore dealing with a historical event, and that is precisely the great mystery that is so little understood: that what happened in Palestine happened literally as it is described in the Gospel of John, and that at the same time it is a mystical fact. Those who do not understand the event in this way do not yet understand it at all. But if you understand it that way, then you will also understand why from this moment on God is to be imagined as a personality, and that the Trinity, which had been imagined differently before, is to be imagined in the form of three divine persons. Christ had now become a person, and with that the proof was delivered that the divine can be realized in man. With that a firstling had appeared on earth, in whom the divine once dwelt. And this could henceforth become a lasting, an undestroyable ideal for mankind.

All the earlier great teachers of wisdom - the Egyptian Hermes, the ancient Indian Rishis, the Chinese Confucius, the Persian Zarathustra - they spoke the word of the divine, they were the great teachers. With Jesus, who was the Christ, the divine itself walked on earth in a living form for the first time. Before that, we only had the way and the truth on earth. Now we have the Way, the Truth, and the Life. That is the great difference between the earlier religions and Christianity, that the latter is the fulfillment of the former, that in the case of Christ we are not dealing with a teacher of wisdom – for teachers of wisdom are also present in all other religions – but with a human personality who must at the same time be venerated as a divine personality. This is why the disciples' message is so important: “We have laid our hands in his wounds, we have heard his message.” This is also why they relied on appearances, on direct sensory impressions; that one should not just listen to the word, but also look at the personality. And this is also the reason for the conviction that he was the world solar hero in a completely unique way. If we grasp this, we also understand that the old festival of the winter solstice used to mean something different from today's Christmas. In Egypt we find Horus, Isis and Osiris, the archetype of what also lives in Christianity. In ancient India we have the birth of Krishna from the Holy Virgin. Everywhere we find echoes of this myth. But what is important about Christianity is what I have just mentioned: the fact that not only the trinity, but the tetrad has become sacred, that the sacred has descended to the personality. Before that, the sacred was divine and enthroned at an inaccessible height above human beings. The old teachers of wisdom, the holy Rishis, revered it as the indefinite, unutterable Brahman; the old Zarathustra disciples saw it in the duality of good and evil; in Egypt, as already mentioned, it is the triad of Isis, Osiris and Horus. But that the Divine dwelt among men, that it became personality, that was the secret of the fourth sub-race. This is the most important event of our human epoch, that Christmas, which has always represented the birth of an initiate, now represents the birth of the greatest solar hero, the Christ Himself. Thus we see the necessity of these two things resonating in the course of the world. If we look at the fourth sub-race and compare it with the point in time at which we ourselves stand, then we see the divine having moved down even further. And it has taken on a peculiar form in our present time, a form that one must understand if one wants to fully decipher the Christmas festival. Go back to the fourth sub-era, to the twelfth or thirteenth century: everywhere you will find full understanding of the real personality of Christ among those who know it; this personality of Christ is so comprehensively described that, for example, in the poetry of 'Heliand', German conditions are transferred to the Christ. The Christ stands so firmly within humanity that the conditions of other countries can be related to his redemptive deed. He is so firmly rooted in humanity as a whole as a personality. But then a different mood sets in. There is a certain shaking of faith in this archetype of humanity. Something occurs that is a step forward on the one hand, but on the other hand a much larger circle of humanity enters into the further evolution of Christianity. But in return, people cease to understand that the center of his thinking, feeling and willing can lie in the individual personality of Christ. There are fewer and fewer people who dare to say that it is not the doctrine but the personality of Christ that is at issue. Finally, it dissolves altogether into the worship of the abstract ideal, which one thinks only spiritually and towards which man strives. In the time of the first sub-race it was Brahman, in the time of the second it was light and darkness, in the time of the third it was the Trinity. Then, in the time of the fourth sub-race, this Trinity had descended and become a person. The personal aspect descended even further, to the level of mere intellect, which has dissolved the human personality and is only worshipped as an abstract ideal.

In our fifth sub-race, however, the moment that must still come is already approaching, and it must bring us faith in the new initiates, in the 'Fathers'. Those initiated in the seventh degree are called the Fathers, and in the spiritual scientific world view we speak of the realization of the Masters, because it is not just one, but because it will be the Masters to whom man will look in gratitude and adoration as the great leaders of humanity. Thus the fifth sub-race connects us with our future. And so this fourth sub-race appears to be placed right in the middle of the great process we are going through, the process of Advent, that is, of the three preceding races, of which the three-week Advent is a reflection, because in a short time people will once again go through the process of how, in earlier times, the light dawned at Christmas time. Then comes the life in the light. That is why Christmas is not something temporary for Christians either, not a commemoration of what has passed; because the Christmas antiphon is not: Christ was born, or Christ was born, but it says: Today Christ was born. Today is always spoken of. That is important and significant. Today is spoken of in the sense that Christ Himself spoke: 'I am with you until the end of days'. This is something that stands before us anew every year and reveals to us the connection between man and heaven. It shows us that what has taken place in heaven must also take place in man. And just as the sun could not deviate from its orbit by a single inch without causing confusion, so too must man keep to his path. He must achieve that inner harmony, that inner rhythm, which is given to him by Christ, who was incarnated in Jesus and who will work in the Fathers, whose guidance man must follow in the times of the future.

This is the connection between man and heaven: the sun should not only move unerringly in the sky and gain new strength at the winter solstice, it should also bring about a birth of light from deep within in man, a resurrection, a solar heroism of the fifth root race. Hence the Christmas saying: “Gloria in excelsis deo et in terra pax”, “Peace on earth to those of good will”. Inner peace will also bring humanity's evolution into a rhythmic process, just as the sun has brought its own process into a regular rhythm. In the sun we have an image of the eternal cycle of the cosmos. It has overcome chaos within itself and brought it to peace. In this sense, Christmas is a festival of peace, from which the mood of peace and harmony should also radiate. Then it is celebrated in the right way, when the power of peace and harmony radiates from this festival. With the Christmas bells, not only the sounds of the Church resound, but the sounds of all striving humanity, which is working and has worked on present-day culture and its further development, ever since the Earth with its spirituality rose again from the great frost.

What the preceding races longed for as their future was born into the fourth post-Atlantean sub-race. And what the three following races must strive for, that resounds from the Christmas sounds. The harmonies of the heavens truly speak to us when we understand what Christmas expresses. Every festival of the year is so firmly grounded in ancient wisdom.

It is no coincidence that these festivals have been set, they have not sprung from arbitrariness, but are drawn from the deepest wisdom of the world, and those who can truly understand and celebrate them with full understanding will find in them the scriptural characters of ancient wisdom for what has happened from the beginning and will happen in the future. In this way the festivals take on a new meaning; they cease to have the conventional significance that they have for many people. To read the great truths of the world is to celebrate the great world festivals in the right spirit. With the heart, with the mind, with the soul you read the primal truths of heaven when you celebrate the great world festivals. Then they are truly celebrated out of the spirit, then they are something for humanity again.

Spiritual science is not mere abstract thought, not a tangle of dogmas. It has a great task and a world mission to revive what humanity has forgotten, to strike the fire out of what has been given to us by our ancestors. Then human selfishness will also cease. They will learn to live in the unified spirit of the world. This is the wisdom that, among many other things, emanates from spiritual science, and it is practical in a good sense; it gives us inner support and secure hope. And that is why the spirit of peace and spiritual confidence that emanates from the Christmas festival can inspire those who strive for spiritual knowledge in their innermost being.

The exalted spiritual leaders of humanity once prescribed this festival for us in primeval times. Let us visualize this as genuine Christmas wisdom at the end of this hour: Advanced human brothers are the leaders of the spiritual movement, advanced human brothers who were already present at the beginning of the fifth root race when the great world festivals were established, and who, as the great teachers of humanity, are still revealing such truths to us today. They do not give us the wisdom teachings out of speculation, out of their own opinion, but because they were there when the things were revealed. They have prepared the peace that shall one day flow over humanity, and they have composed the holy scriptures in the festivals, from which we shall read the message of peace, the message of inner soul bliss, which we shall regain through spiritual science. If we live in the spirit of the masters of harmony, then we live more and more towards the great ideal that they themselves exemplify to us. Spiritual science reminds us of those exalted leaders of humanity when we are seized by the Christmas spirit, which speaks to us of peace and of the sacrifices of the great masters. This peace flows into the future of humanity. We see it completely surrounded by the splendor of this spiritual light and the harmony of feelings. In this glory in which they appear to us, we recognize them as the fathers who lead us towards the future. We follow in their footsteps, and out of our own soul is born a life that is immersed in peace, in harmony and unity - in that harmony that is an image of the sun's path around the world.

The birth of peace at Christmas time is a reflection of the sun's passage around the celestial vault. This is taught by the wise magicians, the great masters, and spoken by those who not only have blind faith in these masters, but who also know and say out of their full knowledge: the masters they are, and the spiritual world movement under the guidance of the masters is the great and lofty peace movement that leads people to that world harmony in which human souls will live with the same harmonious regularity and imperturbability with which the sun moves through the worlds, showing us the way to the radiant beauty of the spiritual sun.

Yesterday I made two observations drawn from the science that we must call the science of Initiation, and I should like to remind you of them, for we shall need them as a connecting link. First, I said that the truths, the deepest truths, relating to the Mystery of Golgotha must by their nature be of the kind that cannot be substantiated through external historical evidence perceptible to the senses. Anyone who sets out by an external historical route to find a proof of the facts concerned with the Mystery of Golgotha, in the same way as historical evidence is sought for other facts, will be unable to discover it, for the Mystery of Golgotha is meant to relate itself to mankind in such a way that access to its truths is finally possible only by a supersensible path. If I may put it rather briefly—where the most important event in earthly existence is concerned, men are intended to accustom themselves to approaching it by supersensible means, not through the senses.

The second thing I said yesterday is that man, with the understanding he possesses according to his development as an earthly being, is never able, right up to his death, to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha through his own understanding developed within the sense-world. I went on to say: It is only after his death, during the time he spends in the supersensible world, that there develops in man the understanding, and the forces for that understanding, which can fully make clear the Mystery of Golgotha. Hence I stated yesterday something which will quite naturally be held up by the external world as an absurdity, a paradox. I said that even the contemporaries of Christ were unable to reach such an understanding until the second or third century after the Mystery of Golgotha, during their life beyond the threshold; and that what has been written about the Mystery of Golgotha in those centuries was inspired by men who had been contemporaries of it and, from the spiritual world, from the supersensible world, had an inspiring influence on the writers of that period.

Now there is an apparent contradiction to this in the fact that the Gospels are inspired writings (as you may gather from my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact; they are inspired writings of Christianity. The inspired Gospels, therefore, could give expression to the truth about Christianity only because—as I have often emphasised—they were not written out of the primal nature and being of man, but with the remnants of atavistically clairvoyant wisdom.

What I have said here about the relation of mankind to the Mystery of Golgotha is drawn from the science of Initiation. If in this way something has been given out of supersensible knowledge, the question may well be asked: How does it appear when compared with the facts of external historical life? Hence at the beginning of this lecture to-day I want to put forward, as a particularly characteristic case—at first only as a question which should receive an answer by the end of our studies to-day—a typical ecclesiastical author of the second century. I might just as well—but then naturally I should have to give the whole treatment a different form—choose some other writer of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, or any other. But I am choosing one who is often mentioned—Tertullian. With regard to the personality of Tertullian I should like to ask how the external course of Christian life is related to the supersensible facts of which I was speaking yesterday, and have repeated in essence to-day.

Tertullian is a very remarkable personality. Anyone who hears the ordinary things said about Tertullian—well, he will hardly get beyond the knowledge of Tertullian that is generally current. He is said to have been the man who justified belief in the being of Christ, in the sacrificial death and the resurrection, by saying, Credo quia absurdum est—“I believe because it is absurd,” because no light is thrown upon all this by human reason. The words, Credo quia absurdum est, are not to be found in any of the other Fathers of the Church; they are pure invention, but they are the source of the later opinion about Tertullian that has been held, often dogmatically, right up to the present day.

When, on the other hand, we come to the real Tertullian—there is no need to be an actual follower of his—then the more exactly we get to know his personality, the more we respect this remarkable man. Above all we learn to respect Tertullian's use of the Latin language, the language which expresses the most abstract way of human thinking, and had come in other writers of his time to exemplify the thoroughly prosaic character of the Romans—Tertullian makes use of it with a true fieriness of spirit. Into his style of treatment he brings temperament, brings movement; he brings feeling and holy passion. Although he is a typical Roman who expresses himself as abstractly as any other Roman about what is often called reality—and although in the opinion of people versed in the Greek culture of that time he was not a particularly well educated man—he writes with impressiveness, with inner force, and in such a way that while using the abstract, Roman language, he became the creator of a Christian style. And the way in which Tertullian himself speaks is impressive enough. In a kind of apologia for the Christians he writes in such a way that one seems to be listening directly to the speech of a man in the grip of a holy passion.

There are certain passages where Tertullian is defending the Christians who, when they are accused under a procedure very like torture, do not deny but testify that they are Christians—testify to what they believe. And Tertullian says of them: In all other cases those who are tortured are accused of denying the truth; in the case of the Christians it is the reverse; they are declared infamous when they testify to what is in their souls. The aim of torturing is not to force them to speak the truth, which would be the only sense in torture; the aim is to force them to say what is untrue, while they continue to speak the truth. And when out of their souls they testify to the truth, they are looked upon as malefactors.

In short, Tertullian was a man with a fine sense of the absurd in life. He was a subtle observer who had already identified himself with what had developed as Christian consciousness and Christian wisdom. So it is really significant when he makes such a statement as: You have familiar sayings; very often you say out of immediate feeling in your soul: “God be with you,” “It is God's will,” and so on. But that is the belief of the Christians: the soul—if only unconsciously—is confessing itself to be Christian.

Tertullian is also a man of independent spirit. He says to the Romans, to whom he himself belongs: Consider the Christians' God and then reflect upon what you are able to feel about true piety. I ask you whether what you as Romans have introduced into the world is in keeping with true piety, or whether true piety is what the Christians desire? Into the world you have brought war, murder, killing (said Tertullian to his fellow-Romans); that is precisely what the Christians do not want. Your sanctuaries are blasphemies (so said Tertullian to the Romans) because they are trophies of victory, and trophies of victory are signs of the desecration of sanctuaries. ... Thus spoke Tertullian to the Romans. He was a man of independent feeling. And turning to the ways of Rome he said: Do men pray when they instinctively look up to the sky, or when they look up to the Capitol? Thus Tertullian was in no way a man entirely merged in the abstractions of Rome, for he was permeated with a lively sense of the presence in the world of the supersensible.

Anyone who speaks on the one hand with the independence and freedom of Tertullian, and at the same time out of the supersensible—such a man is very rare, even in those days when the supersensible was nearer than it later came to be. And Tertullian was more than merely rational. To declare that “when the Christians say what is true, you claim them to be malefactors, whereas men should be claimed as malefactors only if when tortured they say what is untrue ...” certainly that was rational, but it was also courageous. And Tertullian said other things, too, for instance: When you Romans look up to your Gods, who are demonic beings, and really put questions to them, you will receive the truth. But you do not want to receive the truth from these demonic beings. If an accused Christian is confronted by someone who is possessed by a demon, and out of whom the demon speaks, and if the Christian is allowed to question it in the right way, the demon will admit that it is a demon. And of the God whom the Christian acknowledges the demon will say—though with fear: “That is the God who now belongs to the world!” Tertullian does not call on the evidence of Christians alone, but also on that of demonic beings, saying that they will confess themselves to be demons if they are simply questioned, questioned fearlessly; and that, just as it is described in the Gospels, they will acknowledge Christ-Jesus to be the true Christ-Jesus.

At all events we have here a remarkable personality who, as a Roman, confronts his fellow-Romans in the second century. This personality strikes us especially when we consider his relation to the Mystery of Golgotha. The words spoken by Tertullian concerning the Mystery of Golgotha are approximately these: The Son of God is crucified. Because this is shameful, we are not ashamed. The Son of God has died; this is easy to believe because it is foolish. Tertullian's words are: Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est. It is credible, perfectly credible, because it is foolish. Thus: God's Son has died; this is perfectly credible because it is foolish. And He has been buried, He has risen again; this is certain, because it is impossible. From the words, Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est, the other untrue words have originated: Credo quia absurdum est.

Let us rightly understand what Tertullian says here about the Mystery of Golgotha. He says: The Son of God is crucified. If we men contemplate this crucifixion, because it is shameful we are not ashamed. What does he mean? He means that the best that can happen on earth is bound to be shameful, because it is the way of man to do what is shameful and not what is excellent. Were anything declared to be a most splendid deed, says Tertullian, a most splendid deed brought about by man, it could not be the most excellent event for the earth. For the earth the most excellent deed will indeed be one that brings shame to men, not fame—this is Tertullian's meaning.

To continue: “The Son of God has died. This is perfectly credible because it is foolish.” The Son of God has died; it is quite credible because human reason finds it foolish. Were human reason to pronounce it sensible it would not be credible, for what is found sensible by human reason cannot be the highest; it can never be the highest thing possible on earth. For human reason with its cleverness is not so high that it can arrive at what is highest; it arrives at the highest when it is foolish.

“He has been buried and has risen again. It is certain because it is impossible.” As a natural phenomenon it is impossible that the dead should rise again; but according to Tertullian the Mystery of Golgotha has nothing to do with natural phenomena. Were anything to be counted as a natural phenomenon, it would not be the most valuable thing on earth. What has most value for the earth can be no natural phenomenon and must, therefore, be impossible in the kingdom of nature. It is just on this account that He has been buried and has risen again, and it is therefore certain because it is impossible.

I should like to put Tertullian before you, with these words of his just quoted from his book, De Carne Christi, as a question. I have tried to describe him, first as a free, independent spirit, secondly as one who in man's immediate surroundings perceives the demonically supersensible. But at the same time I quoted three propositions of Tertullian's on account of which all clever people must look upon him really as a simpleton.

In matters of this kind it is certainly remarkable how one-sidedly people judge. When they put forward a proposition as false as Credo quia absurdum est, they are pronouncing judgment on the whole man in accordance with it. It is, however, necessary to take the three propositions—which certainly are not at first glance intelligible, for Tertullian is not to be easily understood—to take them first together with his complete awareness of the inter-working of the supersensible world into the human environment.

And now we want to bring before our souls something which in some measure is suited to spread light over the Mystery of Golgotha from another point of view. I have in mind two phenomena about which I said a few words during our studies of the day before yesterday. These two phenomena in the life of mankind are, first, the phenomenon of death, and secondly the phenomenon of heredity—death which is connected with the end of life, and heredity with birth. Where these are concerned it is important to have a clear insight into human life and the being of man. From all that I have been describing to you for some weeks you will be able to gather the following.

When man looks around with his senses at his environment and wishes to grasp the world of the senses with his understanding, then among the phenomena of the senses he encounter? also the phenomena of inheritance, for to a certain extent the characteristics of forefathers can be traced in their descendants, who are subject to the unconscious working of these inherited forces. Things connected with the mystery of birth, all the various inherited characteristics, are often studied without our knowing it. When, for example, we are learning about folklore, we are always speaking about inherited characteristics without noticing it. We cannot study a people without seeing all that we are studying in the light of inherited characteristics. When you speak of a particular people—of Russians, for example, of Englishmen, of Germans—you are speaking of qualities belonging to the realm of heredity, qualities the son acquires from the father, the father from the grandfather, and so on. The realm of heredity, connected as it is with the mysteries of birth, is indeed a wide realm, and when talking about external life we are often speaking of the facts and forces of heredity without being aware of it.

The fact that the mystery of death plays into the life of the senses is indeed constantly before us at the present time; it needs no reiteration. But if we look back over the human faculty for knowledge, something different becomes apparent. We see that this facility is adapted for grasping a great deal in the natural order, but it regards itself as sovereign and wants to grasp in terms of the natural order everything found therein.

Now this human faculty for knowledge is never adapted for grasping either the fact of heredity, which is connected with birth, or the fact of death. And so it turns out that the whole of man's outlook is permeated by false concepts, because it assigns to the sense-world phenomena which indeed are manifest in the sense-world but in their whole being are of a spiritual nature.

We count human death—it is different with animals and plants, as I have shown—we count human death among the phenomena taking place in the sense-world, because that is what it appears to be. But with this we get nowhere in learning about human death. It would never be possible for a natural science to say anything about the death of human beings; for on those lines we arrive merely at exchanging our whole human outlook for a delusion, with the facts of death mixed into it everywhere. We learn something about the truth of nature only when we omit death, and omit also inherited characteristics. A typical feature of human knowledge lies in its becoming corrupted, becoming mere appearance, because it claims to be able to deal with the entire world of the senses, including death and birth. And because it mixes death and birth into its whole outlook, its outlook concerning the world of the senses is falsified. We shall never perceive what man is as a sense-being if we ascribe to the sense-world the inherited qualities, which are indeed connected with death. We corrupt the whole picture of man developing along his normal straight line—I have told you of three streams, the normal straight line and the Luciferic and Ahrimanic side-streams—we corrupt the whole picture of mans development if we ascribe birth and death to his essential being in so far as he belongs to the world of the senses.

That is the strange situation in which we find the human faculty for knowledge! Under the guidance of nature itself this faculty is driven to thinking falsely because, were it able to think in accordance with truth, it would have to separate off from nature a picture of human life in which there was no heredity and no death. We should have to rule out death and heredity, paying no attention to death and birth, making our picture without them—then we should have a picture of nature. Inherited characteristics and death have no place in Goethe's world-outlook. They do not come into it and are not in keeping there. It is indeed the special characteristic of Goethe's world-outlook that you are unable to fit death and heredity into it. It is so good just because death and heredity have no place there, and that is why we can accept it as a true picture of the reality of nature.

Now up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha people still thought about death and heredity out of certain spiritual depths, and more in conformity with nature. The Semitic peoples looked upon inherited characteristics as a direct continuance of the working of the God Jahve. They eliminated everything connected with heredity from nature, seeing it as the direct working of Jahve—for as long, at least, as the Jahve-outlook was properly understood. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, signified the continued working of inherited characteristics.

On the other hand, the Greek outlook—though in its decadence it had little success—sought to grasp something in the nature of man that lived in him between birth and death but had nothing to do with death. The Greeks sought to raise out of the sum-total of phenomena something with which death had no power to interfere. They had a certain horror of the very idea of death. Just because they concentrated on the realm of the senses, they had no wish to understand death; for they instinctively felt that when the human gaze is directed purely to the world of the senses—as it was with Goethe—death becomes a stranger. It is not in keeping with the sense-world; it is foreign to it.

But now there arose other outlooks, and the alteration in certain ancient outlooks appeared most typically among the leading peoples and individuals at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was approaching. Men increasingly lost all ability to look into the spiritual world in the atavistic way; and so they came more and more to believe that birth and death, or heredity and death, belong to the world of the senses. Heredity and death—they do indeed play their part, very palpably, in the world of the senses, and men came more and more to the view that heredity and death belong there. This view wormed its way into the whole of man's outlook. For centuries prior to the Mystery of Golgotha the whole human outlook was permeated by the belief that heredity and death have to do with the world of the senses. Thereby something very, very remarkable came into being. You will understand it only if you allow the spirit of what I have been telling you in the last few days to work upon you in the right way.

Now the fact of heredity was easily seen by observing how it figured among the phenomena of nature, and it was thought to be a natural phenomenon. Increasingly the belief gained ground that heredity is a natural phenomenon. Every fact of this kind, however, evokes its polar opposite: in human life you can never cultivate a fact without that fact evoking its opposite. Man's life runs its course in the balancing of opposites. A basic condition of all knowledge is the recognition that life runs its course in opposites, and a state of balance between opposites is all we can strive for. What, therefore, was the consequence of this belief that heredity has its place among natural phenomena and belongs to them? The consequence was the bringing of the human will into terrible discredit; and this took the form—because its opposite developed—of bringing into the human will a fact belonging to the past, a fact we know in Spiritual Science as the influence of Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits. And the effect on the soul of looking for heredity among the phenomena of nature was so potent that it led irresistibly to a moralistic world-outlook. For out of this misunderstanding of heredity its opposite came into being—the belief that once through the human will something had happened which went on to permeate the world as “original sin.” It was precisely through the introduction of heredity into the phenomena of nature that this great evil originated—the placing of “original sin” into the moral realm.

In this way human thinking wasted astray; it was unable to see that the way original sin is generally represented is blasphemy, terrible blasphemy. A God as conceived by the majority of people, a God who permits out of pure ambition, one might say, what happens in Paradise—according to the usual telling of the story—a God who does not do this with intentions of the kind described in the book Occult Science, but in the way usually described, would be no God of the heights. And to attribute this ambition to God is blasphemy. Only when we come to the point of not setting inherited characteristics in a moral light, but seeing them as a physically perceptible fact in a supersensible light; only when we relate them to the supersensible without any of this moral interpretation; when in the supersensible light we decline to fit them into a moral world-picture in the manner of rabbinical theology—only then do we come properly to terms with this matter.

Rabbinical theology will always give an elaborate intellectual interpretation of what are manifest in the world of the senses as the forces of heredity; but we should school ourselves through a spiritual outlook to discern the spirit in the inherited characteristics found in the sense-world. That is what it really comes to. And the essential thing is for you to see that, but for the Mystery of Golgotha, mankind would by then have reacted to the point of denying the spirit because people would have ceased to recognise the spirit in the inherited characteristics within the sense-world; for men have increasingly replaced the conception of the spirit by rabbinical and socialistic interpretations.

A tremendous amount is involved when a man is constrained to say: You understand nothing about the sense-world if you are not prepared for those phenomena which, because of their spiritual connections, do not really belong there. We must point to the connections of heredity with spiritual perception, supersensible perception. When the intellect takes hold of the realm of the senses, which is itself permeated with a spiritual, supersensible element, and turns it into a realm of morality, intellectually measurable—that is the spirit to which the spirit of Christ, the spirit of the Mystery of Golgotha, stands opposed. I mean this with reference to heredity and to death.

Certainly the Church Fathers were able to verify that even among the heathen there were many who were convinced of immortality. But what was involved in this? Only in ancient times had it been truly recognised that in the world of the senses death is indeed a supersensible phenomenon. By the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the prevailing outlook had been corrupted by an acceptance of death as an experience of the sense-world; and thereby the forces of death were extended over the rest of that world. Death has to be looked upon as a stranger in the sense-world. Only then can a genuine science of the natural order arise.

A further element came in with the reflections of various ancient philosophers on immortality. They turned to the immortal in man. They were right in doing so, for they said: Death is there in the world of the senses. But they said it out of a corrupted world-outlook; for otherwise they would have been impelled to say: Death is not there in the world of the senses; only in appearance does it enter there. Out of their corrupted world-outlook they said that death is in the sense-world. ... And they gradually pictured the sense-world in such a way that death had a place there. In consequence, all other things are corrupted ... it goes without saying that everything else goes wrong when death is given a place in the sense-world. When this was said out of a corrupted world-outlook, other things too had to be said, for instance: We must turn to something in opposition to death, to something of a supersensible nature that opposes death. And indeed, because in the last days of antiquity and out of a corrupted world-outlook people turned to an impersonal spirituality, this world of spiritual immortality—even when called by some other name—was the Luciferic world. What people call something is unimportant; what matters is the active reality behind the picture in their minds. And in this case the reality was the Luciferic world. Even if the words sounded different, these philosophers of late antiquity had in all their interpretations said nothing but: “As souls approaching death we want to take flight to Lucifer, who will receive us, so that immortality will be ours. We die into the kingdom of Lucifer.” That was the true meaning of their words.

I have told you about the forces that prevail in human knowledge, as a result of all the conditions I have described—well, these forces have remnants which can be seen still active to-day. For what must you admit if you take in earnest the words I have spoken to-day out of Initiation-wisdom? You will have to say: Man has his origin and his end. Neither may be understood with the human intellect that serves to understand nature; for by introducing birth and death into the sense-world, where they do not belong because they are strangers, we arrive at a false outlook about both the supersensible and the sensible. Both are corrupted—the comprehension of the spirit and the comprehension of nature. And what is the consequence? One consequence for example, is this: there is an anthropology which traces the origin of man to very primitive ancestors, and it does so quite scientifically and very cleverly. Go through these anthropological writings which trace men back to primitive ancestors, who are portrayed as though the characteristics which still belong to savage peoples were the starting-point of the human race. Scientifically, this opinion is quite in order, but the conclusion which should be drawn from it is the following: Just because it is scientifically in order to believe that birth and death belong to the world of the senses—on that very account it is false; on that account the real origin of man was different. When Kant and Laplace thought out their theory, they built it up from natural science. On the surface there is nothing to be said against it—but things were different for the very reason that the Kant-Laplace theory is correct from the standpoint of natural science. You arrive at the truth if, both for man's beginning and his end and for the origin and end of the earth, you acknowledge the opposite of what holds good for natural science in its present-day form. What Anthroposophy has to say about the origin of the earth will be all the more in accordance with the truth, the more it contradicts what can be said by a natural science that is correct in the sense of to-day.

Hence Anthroposophy does not contradict the natural science of to-day. It allows validity to natural science, but, instead of extending it beyond its boundaries, it shows the points where supersensible perception must come in. The more logical Anthroposophy is, the more correct will it be in respect of the present natural order, which is necessary for man and inherent in him, and all the more will it refrain from saying what is not true concerning the origins of man's existence and of the earth. And the less natural science divines what death really is, the more will it indulge in fantasy where death is concerned. But without the Mystery of Golgotha it would have been human destiny to think unavoidably out of a corrupted world-outlook about the most important things. For this did not depend at all on human will or human guilt; it depended entirely on human evolution.

In the course of his evolution man simply came to regard as his real being the combination of flesh, blood and bones in which he found himself. An Egyptian of ancient days, in the older and better period of Egypt, would have thought it terribly comic had anyone maintained that what walked around on two legs, and consisted of blood, flesh and bones, was really man. These things, however, do not depend upon theoretical considerations; they cannot be spun out of rumination. Gradually it came to seem natural for a man to accept as himself a form consisting of flesh, blood and bones—a form which in truth is a reflection of all the Hierarchies. So much error was spread abroad on these matters that, curiously enough, those very individuals who were led to see the error blundered into a still greater one.

Certainly there were some who arrived at the idea—but in an Ahrimanic-Luciferic way—that man is not just flesh and blood and bones. They now said: “Well, if we are something better than this combination of flesh, blood and bones, we will despise the flesh; we will look upon the human being as something higher and rise above this man of the senses.” But this image of flesh, blood and bones, together with the etheric and astral bodies, as seen by man is an illusion; in reality it is the purest likeness of the Godhead. As I have explained, the error we have been talking about is not an error because we ought to be seeing the devil in the world; but it is an error to identify ourselves with physical nature because in our own world we

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should be seeing God in us. It is also false to say: I am a quite high being, a tremendously high being, a tremendously lofty soul ... and everything around me is inferior and ugly (see blue in diagram, I). It is not like that. This is how the matter really is: There are the kingdoms of the higher Hierarchies, all divine Beings (diagram, II); they have considered it to be their divinely-appointed aim to give shape to a form that is in their image (blue circle). This form presents itself outwardly as the visible human body. And into this form, which is a copy of the Godhead and is shamefully belittled when looked upon as something inferior, the Spirits of Form have planted the human ego, the present soul—the youngest of man's members, as I have often said (the point in the blue circle.)

If the Mystery of Golgotha had not come about, man would have been able to gain only false conceptions about heredity and about death. And these false conceptions would have become ever more exaggerated. At present they appear at times in an atavistic way (as in many socialistic groups to-day an atavistic world-outlook prevails), so that death and birth are reckoned as phenomena of the senses. It would have been a necessity in man's further evolution for the door of the supersensible to be altogether closed to him. And what he could find of the supersensible within the sense-world—heredity and death—would have betrayed him, coming in a treacherous way to say: “We are of the senses” ... whereas they are not. Only by refusing to believe in a nature that shows us death and birth in a false light shall we reach the truth—such is the paradoxical way in which man is placed into the world.

There had to be planted into man something to bring equilibrium into his evolution—something able to lead him away from the belief that heredity and death are phenomena of the senses. Something had to be put before him to show clearly that death and heredity are not phenomena of the senses, but are supersensible. For this reason the event that gives man the truth about these things must not be accessible to his ordinary forces, for these are on the road to corruption and have to be set right by a powerful counter-shock. This counter-shock was the Mystery of Golgotha, for it entered human evolution as something supersensible, and so it gave men the choice—either to believe in this supersensible event, approaching it in a supersensible way but now consciously, or to succumb to those views which must result from regarding death and inherited characteristics as belonging to the world of the senses.

Hence two facts that are inseparable from a true view of the Mystery of Golgotha are those which form, as it were, its boundaries: namely, the Resurrection, which cannot be understood independently of the Virgin Birth—born not in the way that makes birth a delusive fact few mankind, but born in a supersensible way and going through death in a supersensible way. These are the two basic facts that have to act as boundaries to the life of Christ Jesus. No-one understands the Resurrection, which is meant to stand in opposition to the false idea that death belongs to the world of the senses—no-one understands this truth who does not accept its correlate, the Virgin Birth, the birth that is a supersensible fact.

Men wish to understand these truths, and modern Protestant theologians want to understand them in terms of theology, with the ordinary human intellect. But the ordinary human intellect is but a pupil of the sense-world, and, moreover, of a corrupted view of the sense-world which has arisen since the Mystery of Golgotha. And when they cannot understand these truths they become followers of Harnack, or something of the sort; they deny the Resurrection, while talking round and about it in all sorts of ways. And as for the Virgin Birth—well, they look upon that as something no reasonable being can even discuss.

Nevertheless, with the Mystery of Golgotha is intimately connected the metamorphosis of death—in other words, the metamorphosis of death from a fact of the sense-world into a supersensible fact; and the metamorphosis of heredity means that what the sense-world reflects in an illusory way as heredity, connected with the mystery of birth, is changed in the supersensible into the Virgin Birth.

However much that is erroneous and inadequate may be said about these things, man's task is not to accept them without understanding them. His task is to acquire supersensible knowledge, so that through the supersensible he can learn to grasp these things, which cannot be understood in the sense-world. If you think of the various lecture-courses in which these things have been spoken of, if you think particularly of the content of what I have given as the Fifth Gospel, [ Seven lectures given in Christiania (Oslo) from October 1st to 6th, 1913.] you will discover a whole series of ways by which these things may be understood, but understood supersensibly only. For it is right that, as long as the intellect of the student keeps to the realm of the senses, in accordance with the outlook of to-day, these facts cannot be understood. It is just when the most sublime facts of earthly life are such that they are unintelligible to the intellect of the student of the sense-world—it is just then that they are true. Hence it is not surprising that the science of Initiation is opposed by ordinary science, for it speaks of things which—just because they do not contradict true natural science—must contradict a natural order derived from a corrupted view of nature. Theology, too, has largely fallen a victim to this corrupted view of nature, though in a different direction.

When you take the other matter of which I was speaking yesterday, that only after death is man able to come to a right conception of the Mystery of Golgotha, then, if you reflect a little, you will no longer find it inconceivable that through the gate of death man enters a world where he cannot be tricked into thinking that death belongs to the world of the senses, for he sees death from the other side—I have often described this—and from this other side he learns increasingly to study death. And by this means he becomes ever more fitted to contemplate the Mystery of Golgotha in its true form. Thus we have to admit that had the Mystery of Golgotha not come about (but what is said in this connection can be understood only through supersensible knowledge), death would have taken possession of man. Evil also would be in the world, and wisdom also. But since men through their evolution had to fall into a corrupted view of nature, they were bound to have a false view of death. In wishing for immortality they turn to Lucifer, and in wishing to turn to the spirit they fall victim to Lucifer. If they do not turn to the spirit they become like dumb animals, and if they do turn to the spirit, they fall into Lucifer's grip. Looking to the future implies a wish to be immortal in Lucifer; looking towards the past means interpreting the world in such a way that inherited characteristics, which are supersensible, are viewed in terms of morality, thereby inventing the medieval blasphemy of original sin.

A real devotion to the Mystery of Golgotha is a protection against all these things. It brings into the world a true conception of birth and death, gained on a supersensible path. By a true conception of this kind men should be healed from the effects of the corrupted conception. Thus Christ Jesus is the Healer, the Saviour. And therefore—because men have not chosen to follow a corrupted conception of the world because they are good for nothing, but have come to it through their evolution, through their nature—therefore the Christ works healingly; therefore He is not only the Teacher but the Physician of mankind.

These things must be pondered—as I have said and must always repeat, they can be discerned only through supersensible knowledge—but if we are to ask ourselves: What kinds of knowledge could be reached by the souls who inspired such a spirit as Tertullian in the second century?—we must look to the dead who were perhaps contemporaries of Christ Jesus and have thus inspired Tertullian. Certainly, since there was much corrupted knowledge in the world, many things came through in distorted, clouded colourings. If, however, through the words of a Tertullian we hear the inspiring voices of the contemporaries of Christ, we shall understand how Tertullian was able to say such words as: “God's Son has been crucified. Because it is shameful, we are not ashamed of it.” Through a corrupted outlook men were bound to fall into shame; that which gives greatest meaning to the earth is manifest in human life as a shameful deed. “God's Son has gone through death. It is perfectly credible because it is foolish”—Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est. Precisely because it is foolishness by any criterion that man can reach with his ordinary intelligence up to the end of his physical life—for that very reason it is true in the sense of what I have been telling you to-day. “He is laid in the grave and has risen again; this is certain because it is impossible”—because within the corrupted phenomena of nature it does not happen.

When in the supersensible sense you take Tertullian's words as being inspired by Christ's contemporaries, who by that time had long been dead, you may say: Certainly Tertullian has absorbed all this, just in the way he could do in accordance with the constitution of his soul! ... But you will be able to divine how he came to be so inspired. Indeed, such a source was accessible only to a man who with his inner knowledge was so firmly grounded in the supersensible that he referred to demons being witness to the Divine, just as he spoke of human witnesses. For Tertullian spoke of how the demons themselves say they are demons and recognise the Christ. That was the preliminary condition for Tertullian being able to lay hold of what was given him through inspiration.

For those who incline to be Christians in a false way, there is something very disconcerting, thoroughly disconcerting, here. For just think, if even demons tell the truth and point to the true Christ, the demons might ultimately be questioned by a Jesuit—someone or other whom the Jesuit maintained was possessed by demons might be impelled by these demons to speak about the real origin of the Jesuits' Christ, and the demon might then say to the Jesuit: “Yours is not the Christ; the Christ of that other is the true one.”—You can understand the Jesuitical fear of the spiritual world! You can see how alarming it is to be exposed to the possible danger of being disowned in some corner of the spiritual world! Then someone might call Tertullian as witness for the Crown and might say: “Now see here, my dear Jesuit, the demon says himself that your God is a false God—and Tertullian, whom you have to recognise as a bona fide Church Father, says that demons tell the truth about themselves and about the Christ, just as the Bible states.” In short, the matter becomes very ticklish as soon as it is admitted by the supersensible world—even though in an unorthodox form—that demons witness to the truth. For even were we to cite Lucifer, he would not say what is untrue about the Christ! But it might leak out that something else is untrue about the Christ.

Now the truths of Initiation often sound different from what human beings find it convenient to acknowledge. Certainly this leads to things going rather criss-cross when to-day an endeavour is made to introduce Initiation truths to the external world—especially when they have to be introduced into the midst of immediate reality. Yes, as soon as the field is open for statements coming from the supersensible, some very remarkable conflicts may arise—when these statements are opposed by others which owe nothing to the supersensible!

This can often be applied to ordinary life. It has brought me a certain satisfaction that a suggestion I made really to myself during my lectures—and things I say during lectures I give out as my own conviction, with no intention of compelling others to accept them—this suggestion has been followed up, and our Building, out of all the conditions experienced at the present time, has been called the “Goetheanum.” And even if this has been with the assistance of certain supersensible impulses, it seems to me to be both right and good. But if I am asked by anyone for the reasons from an intellectual standpoint—as though I ought to count them all up on my fingers—if I am asked to give all the reasons for this, I should appear to myself a prodigious Philistine if I were to count up all the reasons for what has been felt out of a deep necessity—all the reasons for and against would seem to me like sheer hair-splitting.

One is often in this situation precisely when ascribing supersensible impulses to the will. People often say: “I don't understand this, I can't grasp what it means.” But is it terribly important whether you or anyone else grasps what a thing means? For what does this grasping (begreifen) mean? It really means putting a matter in the light where repose the thoughts which for decades a person has found comfortably suitable for himself. Otherwise its meaning is no different from what people call “understanding.” What people themselves call understanding often signifies very little where truths revealed from the spiritual world are concerned. Just in the most supersensible spheres—where truths are not mere theory but are meant to seize upon the will, to strike into the world of deeds—just here there is always something rather questionable when people ask intellectually: Why, why, why is this so? Or: How is this or that to be understood? In this connection we ought to accustom ourselves to finding for certain things belonging to the supersensible world an analogy—but only an analogy—with recognised facts of nature. If you leave here and a dog bites you and you have never before had a dog bite you, I don't know whether you will ask, Why has it bitten me? Or, How am I to understand it?—For what sort of connection has it with the intellect! You will simply relate the facts. So it is with certain supersensible things—we simply relate the facts. And there are many such things, as you can gather from what I have told you to-day—that in the sense-world there are two apparent events which conceal their real meaning: human death and human birth, which bring the supersensible into the world of the senses and are strangers in that world. They disguise themselves as sense-phenomena and in that way they extend their disguise over the rest of nature, so that the rest of nature also is bound to be seen in a false light by human beings to-day.

Thoroughly to understand these things, to absorb them thoroughly into our own approach to knowledge, is one of the future demands that will be made on human life. The Time Spirits will make this demand especially on those who are seeking knowledge for the future and wish to bring active will-impulses into some particular sphere. Particularly must the spiritual branches of culture be taken in hand—theology, medicine, jurisprudence, philosophy, natural science, even technics and social life, even politics—yes, truly, politics, even that strange creature! Into all this, those who understand the times ought to introduce the fruits of Spiritual Science.

Today I would like to speak about Genesis again, but in a different sense. I would like to provide some concepts that will enable you to gradually take Genesis literally. To do that, I would first like to refer to a passage in the Epistle of John. You will find a very interesting passage in the fifth chapter of the first Epistle of John, verses 7-8:

There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear record in earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood: and these three are one.

In these words, you have a differentiation of the three upper and three lower principles, as they are to be understood in the sense of Christian esotericism, of Gnosticism. That is the Father, Atma; that is the Word, Budhi, the Creative, the Spirit permeating the whole world; and thirdly, Manas or Mahat, the Holy Spirit. Holy is the Word, which means: not yet subject to the physical. Atma, Budhi, Manas are meant by these three in heaven generating.

In addition to these three, there are the three spiritual elements in man. The spiritual elements are in the entire Jewish Kabbalah, going back to the original books of Moses, and in Christian esotericism: blood, water and spirit. One must only first be clear about what Jewish esotericism means by 'blood'. It is the lowest link of the soul, what we in theosophy call the astral - not our physical blood. Jewish esotericism believes that the movement of blood comes from the astral body, and that is correct. All influences that not only go directly through the soul but also affect something physical are called blood in Jewish esotericism. It is the active, the driving force. We only call the red juice that flows through the body blood.

The second is 'water'. In every kind of secret language, 'kama' is everywhere water. These are the feelings, the passions, the desires, and so on. And now I will tell you why it is called water. You have to familiarize yourself with the idea that today's humanity is accustomed to imagining many things in a more materialistic way than was the case in earlier times. If you imagine an old kabbalist, he saw in this water not only the flowing element, but also a parable. And he came to it in the following way. He said to himself: In the water live those animals which we must consider to be the original ones. From the liquid element originally emerged the animal world: sea animals, jellyfish, amphibians. These then went out of the water onto the land. Nowhere did passions and feelings arise than from the water. It was only later that land emerged, and then what is more highly organized also emerged. The soul, the feeling of pleasure and pain, emerged from the water. Water was the element that gives rise to pleasure and pain in man. That is why he called water the source of what is pleasure and what is pain.

We distinguish the lower soul, which makes the blood surge. The blood is the actual, deeper soul. Where we feel pleasure and displeasure, the actual inner pains, he calls that the water, because he derives this soul element from the water.

Then comes the thinking soul, the spirit. We therefore have the sentient soul, the inner soul, then the reasonable soul, the rational soul, and thirdly the consciousness soul, the higher soul, the part of the soul in which the spirit shines into the soul.

Now the Jew said to himself: Where soul arises, there is soul. The Jew therefore saw in the sea and everywhere where the liquid element was, a parable for the soul. Only because people have unlearned to see the soul do they see the outer physical water.

The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus can give us further insight here.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes and whither it goes. So is every one that is born of the Spirit.” [John 3:1-8]

This is how Jesus wants to make him understand. Because Nicodemus was a minor Mahatma, a master in those days, he said to him: Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Man is born of the mother from blood; he must be reborn from water and the Spirit. What is born of blood is blood, what is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you a teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?” [John 3:9-10]

Now we can also take the first words of Genesis in the right sense. The first verse can be translated as follows:

In the beginning God begot his karma as heaven and earth.

The concept of creating, as we understand it, is not present in the ancient languages. The Latin word creare means “to create”, but it comes from the Sanskrit word kr, which in turn comes from karma; so it means “to create”, and the sentence means:

The karma of God begins to flow.

Our development on earth was preceded by the development in which the world of Kama, the world of instincts, desires and passions, was able to develop to the highest level it could reach, which in the lunar epoch constituted the actual content of the beings. It had developed to the highest degree. The human beings who are now living in the earthly world have intellect. Our ancestors did not think; they only felt what they had to accomplish. Thinking is what is given to the earth to develop. We have a feeling that stands below thinking. We do not follow feeling directly; we let it be regulated by thought. It is put on the right track by thinking. The inhabitants of the moon could give themselves up to their feelings. They did not need to think about the affairs of their lives. They felt directly what they had to do. This emotional life, which lived in all beings, developed there to an infinite height. Today, when intellectual life is important, we no longer have any idea of the infinite tenderness and kindness and the magnitude of this emotional life. These beings that developed on the moon were elevated to the level of divinity. The masters who developed on the moon were pure wisdom that flowed from feeling. These Masters joined together in great fraternities in those days, and they formed one great unity when the Moon was fading away. Everything had merged into one great unity. This divine Being, who was, so to speak, the pinnacle of the lunar epoch, is addressed in Genesis as God - Yahweh or Jehovah. Here, God is nothing other than the pinnacle of the development of the Moon. Yahweh is a Moon deity and is also called a Moon deity by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. She may have emphasized it a little too strongly, but it is so. The great Entity, which had developed the emotional life to the highest degree, that was Jehovah or Yahweh. What came over from the Moon - Kama in its highest perfection, water in its highest perfection, the flood - developed in two directions. On the one hand, it condensed and took on matter, the blood; on the other hand, it diluted and took on spirit. Above, it brightened in the spirit, below, it dawned in the blood. Thus, Yahweh differentiated. The primal water begets heaven, its spiritual pole, on the one hand, and the earth, its physical, material pole, on the other.

So what was the situation? Imagine that the Kama water comes over, the spirit is up, the physical, the blood, is down. The earth was chaotic, the blood was disorderly. Nothing but a confused and wildly intermingling physical-material. That was the one pole.

The earth was formless and chaotic, and darkness was over the face of the deep. Darkness was below the waters, darkness was in the deep. And over these waters was the spirit. The water was the middle. The spirit floated above the Kama waters like an aura.

Be very clear about what this aura is. We have already spoken about it. The physical body is not an aura, and what lives in the physical body is also not an aura, because you can see that with physical eyes. The mind is not an aura either. Only the soul provides an aura; everything that is of a spiritual nature provides an aura. This aura is influenced by the body from within or by the mind from without. Therefore there are three auras: the one clouded by the body, the one illuminated by the spirit and the actual glowing soul light. The one is the area through which the body is reflected in the soul, the other is the area through which the spirit is reflected in the soul. Now you are clear about how the spirit of God hovers over the waters or over the soul, and that the Kama is thereby illuminated by the spirit. The spirit does not have to be light. But when the spirit enters the aura, it intensifies the light.

And God said, “Let there be light!” [Genesis 1:3]

This means: Let the reflection of the spirit arise in the waters.

I would like the first three sentences of Genesis to be taken literally. It is not a matter of interpreting these sentences, but of thinking of the right thing to say with the words. For water: Kama, for God: the most highly developed that came from Kama from the lunar epoch. “This is my blood” - it is the same as what flows in the earth.

The Genesis is derived from the writings of the Egyptian temple mysteries. These had two great [moral] books. One was the Book of the Microcosm, the other was the Book of the Macrocosm. The latter described how the great cosmos is created from water through the word. The former, the Book of the Microcosm, was the Book of the Perfect Man. Both were completely parallel descriptions. It must be implied that man is a microcosm. Only someone who was initiated could have achieved this.

The Master initiates those He loves. The miracle of Lazarus is an initiation. That is why it is also said of Lazarus: 'He whom Jesus loved.

The Gospel of John begins with the same words: “In the beginning was the Word.”

Only then can the great books of the world be understood if one has the confidence that every word is only understood when one really goes deep into things and only objects to things as late as possible. That is the trust we need, because we must have trust in the great books of the world. This is what we must gradually learn again through the theosophical movement: to take these books literally.

"Mountain is the keyword for higher truths, for initiations. Jesus went up the mountain with his disciples when he saw the people. In the Holy Scriptures, we become familiar with the authority with which they were written. We recognize them as masterpieces when we see how everything fits together beautifully and how what we have gained through our masters since the last third of the nineteenth century provides the key to understanding these great books.

Our thoughts, feelings and desires move in two directions and lead us to two ideas of what is constantly around us, the transitory, and what man longs for, the eternal, about which he hopes for enlightenment, which he seeks to unravel because it appears to him as the riddle of life.

The truth that man seeks has been the same at all times; but people are not always the same; and so, at all times, depending on the development of humanity, the answers to the questions about truth have been given differently. The school of thought that wants to give us the answer to the question about the eternal in a way that is appropriate today is called the theosophical one. It has come to fruition in the last four decades.

What people usually understand by knowledge is connected with place and time; and the one who accepts this is the perishable human being. But the deeper core of human nature does not recognize through the senses. It recognizes that which has validity everywhere and at all times. Religions want to give people knowledge of that which is not bound to place and time. And the purpose of religion is to establish the connection between the human and the eternal. Theosophy is the realization of this inner man, of his essential core. Theosophy is not the realization of something other than what is around us, but only of another part of it. Suppose a blind man had been happily operated on in this room. The same objects are still there as before, but now with completely different revelations for him. In a similar way, through Theosophy, man learns about the same things as before – about people, plants, animals and minerals – but he learns different characteristics about them. Just as the operation is there to make the same object visible to the eye of the blind, so Theosophy is there to point out a different aspect of things, to show him new spiritual and psychological characteristics of things. They appear to him in other, more intimate relationships to people and to the whole of the rest of the world. In this way, the human being is uplifted, and the objects take on a new meaning for him. Theosophy is a knowledge of the immortal part in man. What the immortal essence of man is, what the essence of the God-man is, we can gauge from the words of Goethe:

If the eye were not sun-like,
How could the sun behold it.
If the power of God did not lie in us,
How could we be enraptured by the Divine.

The eye must meet the sunbeam; likewise, the inner strength of the soul must meet the flowing strength of the Godhead. The mystics have expressed this in their own way; for example, Angelus Silesius, with the words:

If Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you, you will still remain eternally lost.

The realization through the eternal core of our being is a different kind of knowledge than that gained through our senses and mind. We therefore distinguish different kinds of human nature, depending on whether the human being is eternal or perishable. Usually, man is perceived as a very unified being. You can see the human being with your eyes, he is perceptible to your senses like a mineral. But even if the anatomist cuts up the corpse, he only experiences what he can see with his eyes and touch with his hands. The human being he observes is no different from inanimate nature on the outside. Physical and chemical processes also take place in his body. This human being is the same as the minerals; somewhat more complicated, but the same as the rest of the physical world in itself.

But this is not the whole of man, but only the very first part of man. Thus there is a difference between the other physical bodies and the human body. If we copy a human being and cut off the hand of this imitation, it remains a hand; if we cut it off the real human being, it withers; my hand only has the possibility of existing with me. Without me, it is no longer a hand. A doctor will object: “That's quite natural, because there is no blood circulating in it anymore.” But the question is: Why does my hand need blood and the other doesn't?

And so we come to the second link of the human being; the whole body is a living thing, unlike the crystal. Such beings, from which a piece is taken and yet remains the same, are called “living beings”. We humans also have this life body, which holds the individual parts together; and we call this life body the ether body. For the theosophist, it is just as real as the physical body. And just as we have the physical body in common with all minerals, we have the etheric body in common with all plants. Man is a plant; he grows and reproduces, for these qualities are dependent on the etheric body.

Even more essential than this is the third link. In the same space as the physical body and the etheric body, there is a sum of pleasure and pain - a sum of instincts and drives, thoughts and perceptions that can be cut through just as easily as the physical and etheric bodies. For centuries, this third body has been called the astral body. We have it in common with all animals. Man is thus a being that unites all three kingdoms of nature - minerals, plants, animals - within himself. Goethe recognized this, and Schiller documented it with the most beautiful words in his first letter to Goethe:

For a long time now, although from a considerable distance, I have observed the course of your mind and noted the path you have mapped out with ever-renewed admiration. You seek what is necessary in nature, but you seek it in the most difficult way, from which every weaker force will guard itself. You take all of nature together to get light on the individual; in the totality of its manifestations, you seek the explanatory ground for the individual. [Letter of August 23, 1794]

A naturalist from the beginning of the nineteenth century, Lorenz Oken, calls the human being an extract harmonized from all the properties of the animal kingdom. Paracelsus, the great physician of the Middle Ages, says: What is spread out in individual letters is united in the human being; one must spell out the whole of nature, then one can put oneself together like a human being.

Thus we have minerals, plants, animals in the physical body, etheric body and astral body in man according to his threefold nature.

Subtle natures recognize a fourth; so Jean Paul, who says of himself: As a young boy, I once stood in front of a barn. Then suddenly a completely new thought came to me: You are a self, and it felt like I had looked into the past of my being.

When we name things, we find that each thing has its own special name, as a table, chair, bench, a name with which everyone can identify the subject. Only humans have a name that they can pronounce only for themselves; can give themselves. The deep spirits of religion always develop this feeling. That is why the Jews called the unpronounceable name of God, Yahweh, I. I cannot grasp my I from the outside, only from the deepest inside. In my inner being, God announces himself in my soul. This I holds everything else together, and the work of the I on the other three bodies is world development. The I dominates all animal nature within itself and ennobles it.

When Darwin once came to an area where man-eaters lived, he told them that it was not good to eat people. He was told in reply how he could know that. Since he had never tasted human flesh, he could not judge whether it was good or bad. By “good” and “bad”, the savage understood only the pleasant and unpleasant. The knowledge that eating people is improper has developed through the work of the I on the astral body. In the beginning, the desires are raw, but the I refines them by plowing through the astral body - the body of desires - in such a way that it is made into the creature of its own I. I then no longer follow my instincts, but what my I - my duties - prescribe to me. We call such an astral body, which is completely transformed, the fifth link Manas. Today's man has partially reached this stage. When he has worked through the entire astral body, he becomes ripe to also work through his etheric body. If he succeeds in doing this, he has reached the sixth stage, Budhi, and can finally work on the physical body from the Budhi plan. When he has mastered the physical body, his whole being - Atma - is awakened in him.

Thus we have the human being in its sevenfold nature: four lower limbs and finally three higher ones, which the human being develops himself. The astral body is also partly the result of the work of the ego.

What happens when a person dies? Here we have the physical body before us. Death and sleep have been compared; but sleep is something else, a state in which a person is temporarily not at all what he actually is. What makes the sleeping person different from the ordinary one? The physical and chemical processes - digestion and the other life processes - take place just as they do when we are awake; pleasure and pain are forgotten. If we prick the sleeping person, they do not feel it until they wake up. In the sleeping person, the physical and etheric bodies - or life body - are in front of you. The astral body, the body of desire, is not present, otherwise the sleeper would also feel pleasure and suffering. The I with the astral body is gone. Sleep is therefore a release of the astral body - the body of desire. Sleep is initially interrupted by dreams. But dreams are not like waking experiences. We distinguish three types of dreams:

First: memories of everyday life, reminiscences. Second: perceptions from the environment, but in a special way. We may see the lamp, but not how it is placed. The ticking of a clock next to our bed may sound like the clatter of horses in the dream - expressed symbolically. Secondly, the dream is a creator of symbols. For example, a farmer's wife dreams that she is walking from the village to town, entering the church to listen to the sermon. The pastor in the pulpit raises his hands. His hands transform into wings. Suddenly, instead of speaking, he begins to crow, just as the rooster outside has crowed. This is the figurative way in which dreams work and create. The astral body is the great symbolizer, it transforms the crowing of the cock into a symbolic image.

Thirdly, the nature of dreams is characterized by remnants of the experiences of the astral body when it is released from the physical body and dwells in another world - the astral world. Dreams can be developed, instead of being chaotic, they can be induced with great regularity.

Death: When a person dies, something else happens; not only does the astral body detach itself, but it also takes the ether body with it. The sleeping person is alive, but the dead person is no longer alive because he has lost the ether body - the life body. After some time, the ether body is given to the rest of the ether world. Then only the astral body with the ego remains. It consists of two parts: what has not been worked through and what the person has already worked into it. Everything that is lent from the outside must be given up after death; and the animalistic is given up in the Kamaloka period - astral world. In this world the task is set to cast off the cover, which one has not cultivated; then one still possesses what one has purely worked out of one's ego.

Kamaloka is followed by Devachan, the place where all that is divine lives, namely the ego and what it has deified of its astral body. There the human being becomes mature to return to this earth again, and what he needs here, he must take on in the new life. He ennobles his astral body more and more in the new life. He can only do this if he gets a new ether body. This re-taking of the lower limbs leads to reincarnation. What a person has worked into his astral body is eternal; what he must discard is transitory, namely, what he has not yet plowed through. When he has worked through his entire astral body, he must also - at a higher level - work through his etheric body. We call such a person a chela.

The Wisdom Teaching differentiates between the mere cultural man and the chela. In ancient Greece, there were schools where not only the great culture was taught, but also chelas - initiates - were formed. One required of such a person that he had undergone a catharsis - purification, cleansing. Only then are the Budhi and the Christ awakened. The difference between the civilized man and the chela is as follows in death: When a chela dies, his etheric body no longer dissolves in the world ether, but as much of it remains as the I has worked into it. The chela will find his etheric body again afterwards to occupy it upon re-embodiment; while the civilized man gets a new one.

What religions prescribe, for example, has an effect on the etheric body: true piety. Letting inner wisdom take effect preserves the etheric body. Books that offer inner wisdom include: [“The Book of Divine Consolation”]; sentences from “The Imitation of Christ”; in the “New Testament”, the Gospel of John contains awakening sentences from the thirteenth chapter onwards that awaken the inner being, eternal power within man. In “Light on the Path” – written by Mabel Collins – every sentence is awakening. The following four sentences are particularly strengthening etheric power:

Before the eye can see, it must wean itself from tears.
Before the ear can hear, its sensitivity must fade.
Before the voice can speak before the masters, it must unlearn woundedness.
And before the soul can stand before them, the blood of its heart must moisten its feet.

Another means is the seeking of worldly truths. Knowledge and wisdom have an effect on the astral body. - Delving into the works of beauty - Raphael's Madonnas. Allowing beauty to flow into oneself has an effect on the astral body. The chela transforms this work into a conscious one. When the chela has worked through his etheric body, he then has to work on getting his physical body under his control.

By working on my astral body, I become a nobler person - wiser and better - and as such I can urge others to ennoble themselves. This is an effect from person to person; the good and wise person will exert a more beneficial influence than the opposite. The etheric body has its ability not only in the physical world, but also in the world of thought. Through imagination, through thoughts, one can influence others. I can send the thoughts of my soul to others. Speaking and admonishing are working in the physical world. Likewise, effects can be practiced in the supersensible world to the extent that the etheric body is worked through and dormant forces are awakened. By pursuing the thoughts into the tool, one makes the forces of the physical body supermundane. This ideal is Atma - or as the Christian says: communion with the Father.

Those who work on themselves in this way reach into the eternal. The stone disintegrates and is absorbed by the earth; the plant also gives its physical body to the earth and its etheric body to the cosmic ether. Like the mineral, man gives his physical body to physical matter, and like the plant, he gives his etheric body to the cosmic ether.

The astral body gradually dissolves in the Kamaloka, but not what has been worked through. Something remains. Man makes himself immortal through what he has worked into his body; he creates a core of his being.

The physical body is broader than the astral body; it does not have such a part that is bad. Take, for example, a thigh bone. It is not a compact mass, but - when viewed under a microscope - a wonderful framework that no engineer could construct. No beam is stronger than it needs to be. No architect could build something like this - it is constructed out in the cosmos. The human heart, with all its fibers, the entire physical body, is such a product of divine order.

The astral body is constantly attacking the physical body. The heart is good. Now the astral body – the body of desire – comes along with wine, tea and other stimulants and disturbs its normal beat. It takes a long time for the astral body to become as wise as the physical body. But then it can work on its etheric body. When the etheric body is also wise, the physical body is worked on; in the future it will strengthen the physical body. But who is working in the physical body today? The Godhead; it is working on the limbs of human nature, on which man does not yet work himself. Let us go back to the example of the cut-off hand. The hand can only exist on the body; removed from it, it withers. Likewise, if I were to be lifted just a few miles above the earth, I would wither away like the severed hand. From this it follows that as a physical human being I am bound to the place where I am placed. Just as I cannot consider the hand by itself, I cannot consider the human being without the earth. Man is not a body in itself, but a part of the whole earth organism. He can only exist with the properties that the earth offers. For example, he could not exist at a temperature of two hundred degrees Celsius. Just as our organism is enlivened by the soul, so is the whole earth organism enlivened by the earth soul.

The 'spirit of the earth' in Goethe's 'Faust' is not a phrase, but truth. Those who awaken the etheric body within themselves can associate with higher spirits, like Goethe, to whom the earth spirit reveals itself:

In the floods of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
Waving to and fro!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life
Thus I create at the whirling loom of time
And work the living garment of divinity.

The physical body is a link in the planetary organism. The etheric body is a link in the planetary ether. In the etheric spirit lives the spirit, which is called Budhi or, in Christian terms, 'son'; in the physical body lives the 'father spirit'. Through the astral body, through the etheric body and the physical body we come to God. The 'spirit' is astral, which, when it is well purified, we call the 'Holy Spirit'. In the etheric body we have union with the Son. In the physical body we find the Father-Spirit, the Spirit of planetary life.

All religions are based on such truths. Theosophy wants to awaken these truths. The theosophical worldview wants to give the seeking souls points of reference. Man has arisen from the eternal. If he can do nothing about brain molecules, he can do a lot about his thoughts; and we conquer the lower natures by bringing them closer to the divine.

Man must develop various abilities in the succession of the ages. In ancient India, that to which only the chela can look back is enclosed in the poetry of the “Veda”. In European regions, similar to the Veda, sacred knowledge was laid down by the Druids - holy men, great teachers. The “Edda” is the same as Veda.

In Buddha, the same wisdom teachings appear in a different way. Buddha becomes Wotan in the Germanic: 'Boda' becomes 'Wota', 'Wota' becomes 'Wotan'. Thus we have the same key to German mythology. In the Hebrew secret doctrine we have the 'I' - the 'Jao' - 'Jehovah'. In Christianity, the Christ.

Eternity is taught by the Spirits of Wisdom.

Later there came a time when the physical world was conquered [...]. This conquest of the physical world has caused the spiritual world to recede. This is why Theosophy is now stepping in to replace the rampant materialism with something spiritual. In the past, the various religions taught according to the needs of the individual peoples. Today, materialism has enveloped the entire globe; therefore, the spiritual must also embrace the whole world. Mankind on earth must become a spiritual whole. This is the goal of Theosophy. Just as people understand each other everywhere in the material world, just as a check passes through the whole globe as a common currency, truth and wisdom should become common currencies everywhere. That people everywhere learn to understand each other and exchange their thoughts as a cheque is exchanged for money, that is our goal – and that is why the call for brotherhood among people is the first that the Theosophical Society makes. The last few centuries have conquered temporal goods. Culture has added layers to the earth's crust that bear witness to its evolutionary process. Only in the uppermost layers do we find human remains. Millions of years further on, and everything we are working on now will also form a layer around the globe and provide a uniform cultural history. Theosophy works for the future, in which not only the material, but also the eternal, the immortal, will embrace the whole universe. That is why it places such great value on the core of brotherhood.

In the same way that people understand each other in material terms, they will also understand each other in spiritual terms in the future, when they awaken the eternal, because the eternal is revealed in the soul. Through the eternal that is within us, the eternal is first revealed – and from the transient to the eternal, that is the path prescribed for us by theosophy.

That which awakens on a plane merely subjectively can work on that plane, but not perceive. Mineral has awakened – subjectively on the physical plane.

What awakens subjectively and objectively on a plane can act and perceive on that plane.

A person has awakened:

on the physical plane – subjectively and objectively
on the astral plane – subjectively
on the mental plane – subjectively

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The physical plane is only there for the human being because he has awakened subjectively and objectively on it.

If he awakens objectively on the astral plane, then the whole world of desires will have an objective existence, as the whole physical world has now.

If he awakens objectively on the mental plane, then everything that is now merely the world of thoughts will be an objective world of its own.

Man's evolution consists of a succession of successively objective worlds.

1. Physical world objective: physical existence
2. Astral world objective: Kamaloka existence
3. Mental world objective: Devachan existence

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Earth: physical, astral, manas
Devachan: mental, budhi, atma

Development consists in the continuous transformation of the subjective into the objective or of the law into reality. Dharma in karma.

The function is realized in form.
The hand is the result of work.
The eye is the result of light.

Function is existence in action conceived.
Development in progress is called: Dharma
Gets through its activity from its environment the organs for its future.

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Karma is the Dharma crucified in matter.

Karma is the manifest Dharma and must work because it carries the unmanifest part of Dharma locked within itself.

Dharma is at the same time the transcendence of being.

Self-knowledge means to recognize the level of one's being in the right sense; then self-knowledge serves the Dharma.

Self-knowledge is the realization of the degree of imperfection of each individual.

Following the law in the sense of true self-knowledge is Dharma.

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Dharma takes on matter and is active in matter.

Father: the being-beyond
Mother: the evolving being
Son: that which comes into being through the power of being-beyond.

Dharma is the creative principle, it is the continuous intervention of being in existence. Karma is the dharma crucified in matter. As long as karma has not become dharma, it must incite action.

Ideal: the state of an entity that has revealed all its dharma and thus burned its karma.

Nirvana. Nirvana is the nothingness of karma because all dharma has been revealed.

In the great cosmic context, the earthly cosmos is called the cosmos of divine love, the preceding cosmos is the cosmos of wisdom, and the following one is the cosmos of divine fire. Apart from these three states, it is quite difficult for the seer's eye to see forward or backward.

In this cosmic development, too, a kind of parallelism with human development can be observed. The cosmos that preceded the lunar cosmos is called the cosmos of divine omnipotence. This would be preceded by the cosmos of being. The sixth is the cosmos of divinity, the seventh the cosmos of being. In Sinnett's “Esoteric Buddhism” you will find a term that always remains unexplained: the so-called eighth sphere.

We would then have to distinguish between the earthly sphere, then the three that precede it, and the three that follow it. Let me explain a cosmic law to you by describing what a cosmos looks like at the end of its development. During its development, it develops seven rounds and seven races. What happens when existence or wisdom enters the pralaya and is to be pushed over into the next epoch? The sum total would enter into a germ and pass over into the new cosmos. During the transition from one cosmic development to the next, a certain result is sent to the pralaya and the rest remains. The remainder of our former cosmos is the Moon. The forces in and upon it also belong to it. It is surrounded by cosmic forces. It will be the same when the Earth passes into its next state. All the Kama and Kama-Manas present will be purified in the higher Manas. The future inhabitants will have a more active sense of sight. There will be an astral seeing of the subhumanly developed and an astral seeing of the superhumanly developed. The astral seeing of the moon people was undifferentiated compared to our seeing. The seeing of future people will be even more differentiated.

The rest, the eighth sphere, is therefore still present in the seven other cosmic spheres. It is the case that the moon with the Kama mass forms our eighth sphere. The moon is connected with the chemical development of the human being, with the development of the embryo and with the whole of sexual life. The foundations for this are laid in the lunar epoch. The physical body of the human being is prepared wisely long before. The instinctual life must be prepared in such a way that it can express itself as it manifests on earth. The instinctual life must feel hunger, and the physical body must be such that the hunger instinct is stimulated. The stimulus to hunger comes from the astral sphere. The effect is seen in the physical body.

The dual sexuality only occurs in the fourth round. Before that, it does not exist. I remind you of Adam-Kadmon. In nature as such, the dual sexuality is not intended. It does not really need it. We know that dual sexuality is not necessary for reproduction. Today there are many beings that do not have dual sexuality. One being emerges from the other. Nature only accommodated the higher mental plan. It worked in the direction of creating beings that were as differentiated as possible. After two thousand years, a human being would not find a significantly different body, but rather a mixture between father and mother character traits. This results in a greater mixture of qualities. Physical development is only the other pole of mental development; it is the mirror image.

The Moon, still clothed with all lunar epochs, is constantly endeavoring to draw man back to the lunar epochs. It is therefore constantly working in man to stop him in his striving for the higher Manas.

The moon separates (top of right figure). The forces that black magicians are able to extract are contained in this section. The great astral body of our Earth, before the physical body of the Earth is formed. (bottom of right figure)

Mars is represented as a preceding planet, Mercury as a following planet in “Esoteric Buddhism”. Mars is in a state that is still astral. Mercury is in a state that is already astral again; but it is difficult to distinguish.

Every human being still has powers that come from the eighth sphere. That is why people always oscillate between Kama and Manas.

It is well known that the Gospel of St. Mark begins with the words: “This is the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

A man of today who seeks to comprehend this Gospel of St. Mark is at once, in the very first words, faced with three riddles. The first is to be found in the words: “This is the beginning.” The beginning of what? How can this beginning be understood? The second is: “the beginning of the Gospel ...” In an anthroposophical sense, what does the word “Gospel” mean? The third riddle we have often spoken of: the figure of Christ Jesus Himself.

Whoever is seriously seeking for knowledge and a deepening of himself must recognize that mankind is evolving and progressing. For this reason what we may call the understanding of any revelation is not fixed once and for all, or confined to any particular epoch. It progresses, so that anyone who attaches a serious meaning to the terms “evolution” and “progress” must necessarily believe that as time goes on, mankind's deepest problems will be ever better, and more thoroughly and profoundly, understood. For something like the Gospel of St. Mark, as we shall demonstrate by means of these three riddles, a certain turning point in our comprehension has been reached only at the present time. Slowly and gradually, but distinctly, there has been prepared what can now lead us to a real understanding of the Gospel and enable us to understand that “the Gospel begins.” Why is this the case?

We need only glance back a little to what filled human minds a comparatively short time ago and we shall see how the very nature of comprehension may, indeed must, have altered in relation to a subject like this. If we go back further than the nineteenth century, we shall find that in the eighteenth and seventeenth centuries we approach ever closer to a time when those persons whose spiritual life was at all concerned with the Gospels had to start from a very different basis of comprehension than that of the man of today. What could an ordinary man of the eighteenth century say to himself if he wished to place himself in the general line of the evolution of humanity, and was not one of the few who were connected in some way with an initiation or some occult revelation—assuming that he had assimilated within himself everything offered by external exoteric life? Even the most cultivated man, one who stood on the highest pinnacle of the culture of his age, could not look back on more than three thousand years of the life of mankind; and one thousand of those years was before the Christian era and nearly lost in misty dimness. The other two thousand years since the founding of Christianity were not yet quite completed. He might look back three thousand years, shall we say? When one looked back at the earliest of these millennia one was confronted with a completely mythical, dim, prehistoric epoch of humanity, the age of old Persia. This, and what still remained of the knowledge of the ancient Egyptian epoch, preceded what “actual history” related, which began only with Hellenism. This Hellenism, to a certain extent, formed the foundation of the culture of this age. All those who wished to look more deeply into human life started with Hellenism; and within Hellenism appeared all that Homer, the Greek tragedians, and all the Greek writers have written concerning the primeval history of this people and their work for mankind.

Then one sees how Greece began to decline, how it was stifled by Rome, though only externally. Generally speaking, Rome overcame Greece only politically, while in reality it adopted Greek culture, Greek education and Greek life. It might be said that politically the Romans conquered the Greeks, but spiritually the Greeks conquered the Romans. During this latter process, while Hellenism was conquering Rome spiritually, it poured into Rome through hundreds and hundreds of channels what it had itself acquired. From Rome this streamed forth into all the other civilizations of the world, while during this time Christianity streamed more and more into the Greco-Roman civilization and was to a large extent transformed when the northern Germanic peoples took part in the spreading of the Greco-Roman Christian culture. With this intermingling of Greece, Rome, and Christianity, the second millennium of the world's history passed away, which to the men of the eighteenth century was the first Christian one. Then we see the beginning of the second Christian millennium, the third historical civilization of man. We see how everything goes on apparently in the same way, although, if we have deeper insight, we shall see that in this third millennium everything is really different. Two figures only need be cited, a painter and a poet, who, although they appear some two centuries after the end of the millennium, nevertheless show how something essentially new began for Western civilization with the second Christian millennium, something which these two men carried further. These two figures are Giotto and Dante.¹ Giotto as painter and Dante as poet represent the beginning of all that followed, and what they gave was embodied in later Western cultures. Those were the three thousand years that could at that time be surveyed.

Then came the nineteenth century. Only someone who can look more deeply into the whole formation of the culture of the age is able now to perceive all that took place in the nineteenth century, and how for that reason everything had to become different. It is all contained in the minds and souls of men, but only a very few can as yet understand it.

The perspective of the man of the eighteenth century went back only to Hellenism; the age before that was somewhat nebulous. What happened in the nineteenth century—and this is little appreciated or understood today—is that the East played its part in the culture of the West, indeed very intensely so. This intervention of the Oriental influence in its own peculiar way is what we must bear in mind when considering the transformation that took place in the civilization of the nineteenth century. This penetration by the Orient threw light and shade upon everything that poured into the culture and will increasingly do so. For this reason a new understanding was required concerning things that up to that time humanity had regarded in a different light.

If we wish to choose single figures and individuals who have influenced the culture of the West, in whom we could find nearly everything that a man felt in his soul at the beginning of the nineteenth century if he concerned himself with spiritual life, we may mention David, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe,² who was just beginning to penetrate into life. Future historians writing of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries will be very clear about one thing, that the intellectual and spiritual life of that era was determined by these five figures. There lived then, more than anyone can imagine now, even in the most delicate stirrings of the soul, what we may call the feelings and truths of the Psalms. There lived also fundamentally what is to be found in Homer as well as what took such magnificent form in Dante; then, even if it did not live in Shakespeare himself, there was what is nevertheless so beautifully expressed by him in the form in which it now lives in men of modern times. Added to this is the striving of the human soul after truth which Goethe expressed in Faust, something that in reality lived in every human soul in such a way that it was often said, “Every man who seeks the truth has something of the Faust nature in him.”

To all this there was added a quite new perspective, which extended beyond the three thousand years covered by these five persons. It came in ways that are at first quite unfathomable by external history. This was the first entry of an inner Orient into the mental and spiritual life of Europe. It was not only that to the poems of those writers mentioned earlier was added what was given in the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita, nor the fact that by learning to know these Eastern poems a different emotional nuance about the world was aroused, differing fundamentally from that of the Psalms or from what is to be found in the poetry of Dante or Homer, but something appeared in a mysterious manner which became ever more visible during the nineteenth century. One name alone will suffice, a name which made a great stir in the middle of the nineteenth century, and this will convince us that something came from the East to Europe along mysterious paths. We need but mention the name of Schopenhauer. In Schopenhauer what is it that strikes you most of all, if you leave aside the theoretical elements of his system? Isn't it the content of feeling and sentiment that pervades his whole thought? In the profound relationship between this nineteenth century man and the Oriental-Aryan mode of thought and feeling, in every sentence we might say, in the emphasis of feeling in Schopenhauer, lives that which we might call the Eastern element in the West; and this passed on to Eduard von Hartmann³ in the second half of the nineteenth century.

This penetrated along mysterious paths, as we have just said. We gradually come to better understand these mysterious paths when we see that in the course of the developments of the nineteenth century a complete transformation, a metamorphosis of all human thinking and feeling took place—not however in only one part of the earth but in the intellectual and spiritual life of the whole earth. As to what took place in the West, if anyone would take the trouble, it would be enough to compare anything written about religion, philosophy, or any aspect of spiritual life with something that belongs to the eighteenth century. He will then see that a complete transformation took place, that all the questions regarding the highest riddles asked by mankind had become more vague, that men were striving to formulate new questions, to look for new sentiments and modes of perception, that nothing belonging to religion and what it formerly gave to man could still be given through it to the human soul in the same way. Everywhere there was a longing for something deeper and more profoundly hidden in the depths of religion.

This was not true of Europe alone. It is characteristic of the beginning of the nineteenth century that all over the civilized world men, through an inner urge, were compelled to think differently. If we wish to form a more exact conception of what we are discussing, we must see that there was a general convergence of the peoples and their folk cultures and folk beliefs, with the result that people belonging to entirely different creeds began in the nineteenth century to understand each other in a quite remarkable way. We shall quote a characteristic example which lies at the heart of what we are trying to indicate. In the thirtieth year of the nineteenth century, a man appeared in England who was a Brahmin, an adherent of what he considered to be true Brahminism, that is, the Vedanta teaching. Ram Mohun Roy, who died in London in 1836, exercised a great influence on those of his contemporaries who were interested in such things, and made a great impression. The remarkable thing about him was that on the one hand he stood there as a reformer of Hinduism, though a misunderstood one, while on the other hand everything he said could be understood by all Europeans who were familiar with the advanced thought of their age. He did not put forth ideas that could be understood only through orientalism, but ideas that could be understood by ordinary human reason.

What was Ram Mohun Roy's attitude? He said something along these lines, “I live in the midst of Hinduism, where a number of different gods are worshipped. If the people of my country are asked why they worship these gods, they say, ‘it is our custom, we know nothing else. It was done by our fathers and their fathers before them.’ And because the people were influenced in this way,” Ram Mohun Roy continued, “the crassest idolatry became the rule, an appalling idolatry which disgraces the original greatness of the religion of my fatherland. There once was a belief that, although partly contradictory, is to be found in the Vedas. It is the purest form of human thought, and it was brought into the Vedanta system by Viasa.”

This was the belief professed by Ram Mohun Roy. For this reason he had not only made translations from various incomprehensible idioms into the languages that are understandable in India, but he also made extracts of what he considered the correct teaching and spread them among the people. What was his intention when he did this? He thought he recognized behind all that comes to expression in the various gods and all that is worshipped in the different idols a pure teaching of a primal divine unity, the spiritual God who lives in all things but can no longer be recognized in the idols. This God must once more penetrate into the minds of men. When this Indian Brahmin spoke in detail about what he believed to be the correct Vedanta teaching, the true Indian creed, it did not sound strange. To those who understood him rightly, it was as though he preached a kind of rational belief that can be attained by everyone who by using his rational mind turns to the universal unitary God. And Ram Mohun Roy had followers: Rabindranath Tagore and others.⁴ One of these followers, and this is especially interesting, gave a lecture in 1870 about Christ and Christianity. It was indeed extraordinarily interesting to hear an Indian speak about Christ and Christianity. The actual mystery of Christianity was quite remote from the Indian speaker—he did not touch upon that at all. From the whole course of the lecture we can see that he is quite unable to grasp the fundamental fact that Christianity does not proceed from a personal teacher but is founded on the Mystery of Golgotha, a world historical fact, on death and resurrection. But that which he can grasp and is so clear to him is that in Christ Jesus we have a figure of tremendous significance, one that is of importance to every human heart, a figure that must stand there as the ideal figure for the whole history of the world. It is remarkable to hear this Indian speaking about Christ and to hear him say, “If a man goes deeply into Christianity, he will see that Christianity must, even in the West, go through a further evolution, for what the European brings to my fatherland as Christianity does not appear to me to be the true Christianity.”

We see from the examples quoted that it was not only in Europe that people's minds began to look behind the religious creeds, but also in distant India. It is true also of many parts of the earth where minds began to awake, and men approached in a new way and from an entirely new point of view something they had possessed for thousands of years. This metamorphosis of souls in the nineteenth century will be fully perceptible only in the course of time. Only in later times will history recognize that impulses of this kind, although apparently affecting only a few people, streamed through thousands of channels into our hearts and souls, so that today all those who participate in any way in spiritual life have them within their souls. This had to result in a total renewal. All older questions were transformed, and a new kind of understanding came into being in relation to all views that had hitherto been held. So it is that in the world, even today such questions are already taking on a greater profundity. What our spiritual movement desires today is the answering of these questions.

This spiritual movement is convinced that these questions cannot in their present form be answered by the old traditions, by modern natural science, or by that conception of the world which reckons only with the factors of modern natural science. Spiritual science, research into the spiritual worlds, is necessary. In other words, mankind today, in accordance with the whole trend of his evolution, must ask questions that can be answered only through super-sensible investigation. Quite slowly and gradually there have emerged from the spiritual life of the West things that are once more in harmony with the most beautiful traditions that have come over from the East. You know that we have always stressed the fact that the law of reincarnation comes out of Western spiritual life itself, and that it need no more be taken as something historical coming from Buddhism than for example Pythagorean doctrine needs to be taken over from historical traditions. This has always been emphasized, but the fact that the idea of reincarnation arose in modern souls formed a bridge which extended across the three thousand years of which we have been speaking (during which the doctrine of reincarnation was not the center of thinking) to the figure of Buddha. The horizon, the perspective of the evolution of mankind, was extended beyond the three thousand years. This gave rise to new questions, which can be answered only through spiritual science.

Let us begin with the question to which the beginning of this Gospel of Saint Mark gives rise, this Gospel which begins with the words, “the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” Let us remember that these introductory words are immediately followed not only by a characterization of a passage of the old prophets but by the announcement of Christ by John the Baptist. This proclamation was stated by him in such a way that it may be comprised in these words: “The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of the divine is extending over the whole earth-existence.” What does all this mean?

Let us endeavor with the light that modern spiritual science can give us to view retrospectively those past ages in the center of which is contained “the fulfillment.” Let us try to understand what it means that “an old era is completed and a new one is beginning.” We shall best be able to understand this if we first turn our attention to something belonging to more remote times and then consider something belonging to the modern era; between the two lies the Mystery of Golgotha. Let us take something before the Mystery of Golgotha and then something later, and then endeavor to enter deeply into the difference between the two epochs, so that we may recognize how far the old epoch had been completed and a new one begun. In this way we shall not enter into abstractions or definitions, but consider the concrete.

I should like you to turn your attention to the first millennium of human evolution, as it was thought to be in earlier times. There in the remotest period of this first millennium stands the towering figure of Homer, the Greek poet and singer. Hardly more than the name remains to mankind of him to whom are ascribed those two great poems which are among the greatest accomplishment of mankind: the Iliad and the Odyssey. Scarcely more than his name is known, and in the nineteenth century doubts were cast even on that—but we need not dwell any further on that now. The more we know of the figure of Homer, the more we admire him. For a person who studies such things, the characters created by Homer whom we meet in the Iliad and the Odyssey seem more alive than all the purely political figures of Greece. Many different people who have studied Homer over and over again have said that because of the precision of his descriptions and his manner of presentation he must have been a doctor. Others say he must have been an artist, a sculptor, or a craftsman. Napoleon admired the way Homer described tactics and strategy; still others think he must have been a beggar wandering through the land.

However all this may be, it certainly does demonstrate the unique individuality of Homer. Consider one of his characters, Hector. If you have any time available, you ought to study the figure of Hector in the Iliad—how plastically he is described so that he stands as a complete personality before us; how we see his affection for his paternal city, Troy, his wife Andromache, his relationship to Achilles, and to his armies; and how he commanded them. Try to call up this man before your minds, this man who possessed all the tenderness of a husband, and who clung in the ancient way to his home city of Troy, and who suffered such disillusions as only really great men can. Remember his relation with Achilles. Hector, as presented by Homer, is a towering figure from very ancient times, a man of great all-embracing humanity, for of course what Homer is describing belongs to a period well before his own, in the darkness of the past. Hector stands out above all the others, all those figures who seem mythical enough in the eyes of modern men.

Now take this one figure. Skeptics and all kinds of philologists may indeed doubt that there ever was a Hector at all, in the same way as they doubt the existence of Homer. But anyone who takes into consideration what may be understood from a purely human viewpoint will be convinced that Homer describes only facts that actually occurred. Hector was a living person who strode through Troy, and Achilles and the other figures were equally real. They still stand before us as personages of real earthly life. We look back to them as people of a different kind from ourselves, who are difficult to understand but whom the poet is able to bring before our souls in every detail. Now let us place before our souls a figure such as Hector, one of the chief Trojan commanders, who is defeated by Achilles. In such a personage we have something that belongs to the old pre-Christian age, something by which we can measure what men were before the time when Christ lived on earth.

I will now draw your attention to another figure, a remarkable figure of the fifth century B.C.: the great philosopher Empedocles,⁵ who spent a large part of his life in Sicily. It was he who was the first to speak of the four elements, fire, water, air, and earth, and who said that everything that happens in the material realm caused by the mingling and disintegration of these four elements results from the principles of love and hate ruling in them. It was he also who by his activity influenced Sicily by calling into being important political institutions, and he went about trying to lead the people into a life of spirituality. When we look back to Empedocles we find that he lived an adventurous as well as a deeply spiritual life. Perhaps the truth of what I am about to say will be doubted by some, but spiritual science knows that Empedocles went about in Sicily not only as a statesman, but as a magician and initiate, just as Hector, as depicted by Homer, walked in Troy. In order to characterize the remarkable attitude of Empedocles toward the world the fact confronts us—and it is true and no invention—that in order, as it were, to unite himself with all existence around him, he ended by throwing himself into Mount Etna and was consumed by its fire. In this way a second figure of the pre-Christian age is presented to our souls.

Now let us consider such figures as these in accordance with the methods of spiritual science. First of all we know that these individualities will appear again; we know that such souls will return to life. We shall not pay any attention to their intermediate incarnations but look for them in the post-Christian era. We then see something of the change brought about by time, something that can help us to understand how the Mystery of Golgotha intervened in human evolution. If we say that such figures as Hector and Empedocles appeared again, we must ask how they walked among men in the post-Christian era. For we shall then see how the intervention of the Mystery of Golgotha, the fulfillment and beginning of a new age, worked on their souls. As serious anthroposophists assembled here together we need not shrink from the communications of true spiritual science, which can be confirmed by external facts.

I should now like to turn your attention to something that took place in the post-Christian era, and perhaps again it may be said that the person concerned was a poetical personage. But this poetical personage can be traced back to a real individuality who was once alive. I direct your attention to the character created by Shakespeare in his Hamlet. Anyone who knows the development of Shakespeare, insofar as it can be known externally, and especially someone who is acquainted with it through spiritual science, will know that Shakespeare's Hamlet is none other than the transformed real prince of Denmark, who also lived at one time. I cannot go into everything underlying the historical prototype of the poetical figure of Hamlet, but through the research of spiritual science, I can offer you a striking example of how a man, a spirit of ancient times, reappears in the post-Christian era. The real figure underlying Hamlet, as presented by Shakespeare, is Hector. The same soul that lived in Hamlet lived in Hector. It is just by such a characteristic example as this, and the striking way the two different souls manifest themselves, that we can interpret what happened in the intervening time. A personality such as that of Hector stands before us in the pre-Christian age. Then comes the intervention of the Mystery of Golgotha in human evolution, and the spark it kindled in Hector's soul causes a figure, a prototype of Hamlet, to arise, of whom Goethe said, “This is a soul that is unable to deal with any situation and is not equal to its position, who is assigned tasks but is unable to fulfill them.” We may ask why Shakespeare expressed it in this way. He did not know. But anyone who can investigate the connections through spiritual science knows that behind these things forces were at work. The poet creates in the unconscious; before him stands, so to speak, first the figure which he creates, and then, as in a tableau of which he himself knows nothing, the whole individuality with which the figure is connected. Why does Shakespeare choose particular qualities in Hamlet and sharply emphasize them, qualities that perhaps Hamlet's own contemporaries would not have noticed? Because he observes them against the background of the era. He feels how different a soul has become in its transition from the old life to the new. Hamlet, the doubter, the skeptic, who has lost the ability to cope with the situations with which he meets in life, the procrastinator and waverer, this is what Hector, once so sure of himself, has become.

Let me direct your attention to another figure of modern times, who was also first presented to mankind in a poetic picture, in a poem whose protagonist will certainly live on in humanity for a long time to come when for posterity the poet, like Homer or Shakespeare, no longer is in existence. About Homer we know nothing at all, and about Shakespeare we know very little indeed. What the various compilers of notes and biographers of Goethe have written will long since have been forgotten. In spite of the printing press and other modern inventions, what interests people in Goethe at the present time will likewise have been long forgotten. But large as life, and modelled from life, there will stand the figure of Faust which Goethe has created. Just as men today know nothing of Homer, so will they some day know but little of Goethe (which will be a good thing); but they will know much about Faust. Faust again is a figure who, as he is presented to us in a literary form by Goethe, can be recognized as one brought to a certain conclusion by Goethe. The poetical picture refers back to a real sixteenth century figure who lived then as a real person, though he was not as Goethe described him in his Faust. Why then did Goethe describe him in this way? Goethe himself did not know. But when he directed his attention to the traditional Faust that had been handed down to him, a Faust with whom he was already acquainted through the marionettes of his boyhood, then the forces that stood behind Faust, the forces of his previous incarnation, the forces of Empedocles, the old Greek philosopher, worked within him! All these radiated into the figure of Faust. So we might say, since Empedocles threw himself into Etna and united himself with the fire-element of the earth, what a wonderful spiritualization of pre-Christian nature mysticism was accomplished in fact in the final tableau of Goethe's Faust, when Faust ascends into the fire- element of heaven through Pater Seraphicus and the rest. Slowly and gradually a totally new spiritual tendency entered into the deeper strivings of men. Already some time ago it began to become evident to the more profound spirits of mankind that, without their knowing anything about reincarnation or karma, when they were considering a great comprehensive soul whom they wished to describe from the depths of their inner life, they found themselves describing what radiated over from earlier incarnations. Although Shakespeare did not know that Hamlet was Hector, he nevertheless described him as such, without being aware that the same soul had lived in both of them. So too Goethe portrays his Faust as though Empedocles with all his peculiarities were standing behind him, because in his Faust there lived the soul of Empedocles. It is characteristic that the progress of the human soul should proceed in this way.

I have mentioned two characteristic figures, in both of whom we can perceive that when great men of earlier times reappear in a modern post-Christian age, they are shaken to the very depths of their souls and can only with difficulty adjust themselves to life. Everything that was within them in the past is still within them. For example, when we allow Hamlet to work upon us, we feel that the whole force of Hector is in him. But we feel that this force cannot come forth in the post-Christian era, that it then meets with obstacles, that something now works upon the soul that is the beginning of something new, whereas in the figures of antiquity something was coming to an end. So do these figures stand plastically delineated before us; both Hector and Empedocles represent a conclusion. But what is working on further in mankind must find new paths into new incarnations. This is revealed with Hector in Hamlet and also with Empedocles in Faust, who had within him all the abysmal urges toward the depths of nature. Because he had within him the whole nature of Empedocles, he could say, “I will lay aside the Bible for a time and study nature and medicine. I will no longer be a theologian.” He felt the need to have dealings with demonic beings who made him roam through the world leaving him marveling but uncomprehending. Here the Empedocles element had an after-effect but was not able to adjust itself to what a man must be after the new age had begun.

I wanted to show you through these explanations how in well-known souls, about whom anyone can find information, a powerful transformation shows itself, and how the more deeply we study them the more perceptible this becomes. If we inquire what happened between the two incarnations of such individualities, the answer always is the Mystery of Golgotha, which was announced by the Baptist when he said, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdoms of the spirit, or the kingdoms of heaven, are passing over into the kingdom of man.” Yes, the kingdoms of heaven did indeed powerfully seize the human kingdom, but those who take this in an external sense are unable to understand it. They seized it so powerfully that the great men of antiquity, who had been in themselves so solid and compact, had to make a new beginning in human evolution on earth. This new beginning showed itself precisely with them, and lasted until the end of the old epoch, with the Mystery of Golgotha. At that time something that had been fulfilled ebbed away, something which had presented men in such a way that they appeared as rounded personalities in themselves. Then came something that made it necessary for these souls to make a new beginning. Everything had to be transformed and altered so that great souls appeared small. They had to be transformed into the stage of childhood, for something quite new was beginning. We must inscribe this in our souls if we wish to understand what is meant at the beginning of the Gospel of St. Mark by the words “a beginning.” Yes, truly a beginning, a beginning that shakes the inmost soul to its foundations and brings a totally new impulse into human evolution, a “beginning of the Gospel.”

What then is the Gospel? It is something that comes down to us from the kingdoms we have often described, where dwell the higher hierarchical beings, among whom are the angels and archangels. It descends through the world that rises above the human world. So do we gain an inkling of the deeper meaning of the word Gospel. It is an impulse that descends through the realms of the archangels and angels; it comes down from these kingdoms and enters into mankind. None of the abstract translations really covers the matter adequately. In reality the word Gospel should indicate that at a certain time something begins to flow in upon the earth which formerly flowed only where there dwell the angels and archangels. Something descended to earth that shook the souls of men and shook the strongest souls most. It is here noted that this was the beginning, and the beginning has a continuation. The beginning was made at that time, and we shall see that fundamentally the whole development of humanity since then is a continuation of that beginning when the impulse began to flow down from the kingdom of the angeloi, or what we call the “ev-angel” or Gospel.

We cannot seek or investigate deeply enough if we wish to characterize the different Gospels. We shall see that especially the Gospel of St. Mark can be understood only if we understand in the right way the evolution of humanity with all its impulses and all that has happened in the course of it. I do not wish to describe this externally, but to characterize actual souls, showing how it is only the recognition of the fact of reincarnation, when it becomes a matter of real research, that can bear witness to the progress of such souls as those of Hector and Empedocles. Only in this way can the deeper significance of the Christ Impulse be brought before our souls. Otherwise we may discover beautiful things, but they will all be superficial. What lies behind all the outer events in the history of the Christ Impulse is discovered only when we can throw light upon life through spiritual research, so that we can recognize how a single life passes not only in its separate phases but also in the sequence of incarnations. We must look upon reincarnation as a serious matter and apply it to history in such a way that it becomes an element that gives life to it. We shall then perceive the working of the Event of Golgotha, the greatest of all impulses. It is especially in souls that this impulse, which we have described often enough, will become visible.

• 1. Giotto di Bondone (c. 1266–1337), Florentine painter and architect, noted especially for his frescoes on the life of St. Francis.
  
  Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321, Italian poet, author of the Divine Comedy.
• 2. David, second king of Israel, ruled about the beginning of the first millennium B.C. Many of the most beautiful Psalms were attributed to him, and it was their influence of which Rudolf Steiner was evidently thinking in this passage.
  
  Homer, Greek poet who lived probably in the 8th century B.C., author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
  
  Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749–1832. German poet, author of Faust.
• 3. Schopenhauer, Artur, 1788–1860. German philosopher, author of The World as Will and Idea.
  
  Hartmann, Eduard von, 1842–1906 German philosopher, author of The Philosophy of the Unconscious.
• 4. Ram Mohan Roy, 1772–1836, founder of the Brahmo Samaj.
  
  Tagore, Rabindranath, 1861–1941. Indian poet and philosopher, winner of Nobel Prize for Literature, 1913.
  
  One of these followers—reference is to Keshab Chandra Sen, 1834–1884.
• 5. Empedocles of Agragas, c. 495–435 B.C., Greek philosopher.

My dear Theosophical friends! The Theosophical movement does not want to create a sect, it does not want to be a sectarian movement, it does not want to found any new religious system, nor does it want to oblige anyone to follow certain dogmas or doctrines, nor does it even want to cause anyone to believe in such doctrines. All the teachings that we spread and represent are only a means to deepen life itself.

Many misconceptions about the theosophical movement have been spread. It is believed that Theosophy is a doctrine, a system of dogmas, a philosophy, a religion, and on the basis of such views, some believe that they will be alienated from their worldview if they devote themselves to Theosophy. This is not the case, and it is not in the plan of those who brought the theosophical movement into being. On the contrary, the theosophical movement is supposed to be one that makes it possible to fully understand what in life is called science or religion, depending on the circumstances into which one is born and which one recognizes as one's own. Just as we survey the phenomena of nature and learn to understand them only by delving more deeply into them, so we also learn about the phenomena of human life only by delving more deeply into them. The various religious systems, the various scientific systems and also the various philosophical worldviews are phenomena of human spiritual life. They show man their exterior. The theosophical movement wants to lead people deeper into the essence of the actual spiritual phenomena. Therefore, no one should believe that they will be estranged from their religious beliefs or scientific convictions if they become Theosophists. Our Theosophical Society is also active in India, and the Indian Brahmins have found that the old depth of their own ancient wisdom has been restored to them through the theosophical movement. At the Congress of Religions in Chicago, the Indian Brahmin Chakravarti emphasized that his people, like other peoples, had fallen into materialism, had strayed from the high spiritual world view that came from the ancient rishis, and that the theosophical movement, by delving into this ancient wisdom, has taught the Indian people again the infinite depth that is revealed when the Hindu or Buddhist religious system is understood in its true essence and not merely on the surface.

Likewise, we can penetrate deeper and deeper into that mighty world view system that we know as the ancient Hebrew system, as that of the ancient Jews. I would like to say that this wisdom is written down in the Old Testament only in broken rays. But the Old Testament nevertheless reveals itself to those who delve into it with a theosophical understanding as a wisdom of extraordinary depth.

Above all, I would like to emphasize that Christianity, the Christian worldview itself, can be fully understood and explored through the theosophical method, through the theosophical life. This Christianity, which for centuries has been the one that has shown countless people the way to their highest goal, this Christianity, which today is still for countless people what they seek in life, what comforts them in death, we certainly understand this Christianity too, when we get to know it as it is presented to us through the various means of the different churches. But, my dear Theosophical friends, Christianity is something that one can delve into and delve into more and more, and each degree of delving always brings us teachings of infinite depth from within Christianity itself. There is no degree of delving that does not bring us ever new things from the depths from which the greatest Christian wisdom springs.

Above all, no one needs to become estranged from his Christianity by becoming a theosophist. Today, for those who might be led astray from Christianity by modern science – by the scientific endeavors of the present and also by the criticism that theological science itself has practiced on this Christianity – today the way to understand Christian truths again is solely and exclusively the theosophical one.

If we look back to the Middle Ages – no one can conjure up the Middle Ages again – but if we look at it psychologically, but not externally like today's psychology, then we will see what passed through the souls of people back then, then we understand what kind of spirituality passed through the souls of people back then, then we understand we realize that they did not have Christian dogmas, but that they more or less sensed what had been expressed by the Christian mystics – they sensed something of the glimmering of the Christ-being, as expressed in the saying of Angelus Silesius: “And if Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you, you would be lost forever.” — It is the same with Meister Eckhart when he demands that man should have experienced the nature of Christ within himself, because only then can he understand what the event in Palestine really means.

For centuries, people have had their emotional and spiritual guidance for experiencing the Christian essence in the Gospel of John, in the Gospel that we call the fourth, in the Gospel that which adheres – seemingly rigidly from today's point of view – to the fundamental Christian truth that the great teacher who once walked in Palestine – Christ Jesus – was the true God-man, that in him the divine principle of our universe became flesh. Today, the saying at the beginning of the Gospel of John is criticized above all from the point of view of so-called man. The enlightened person can hardly connect any meaning with the opening words of the Gospel of John. He does not know what it is supposed to mean: the word - the word that is God at the same time.

Go where the leaders of humanity were, and you will find that the pinnacle of effectiveness was spent understanding, grasping what it means: the Christ has come into the world. That was the yearning of the researchers, to understand what lies in these words. Then, in the times when it was taken for granted that a Christ had lived, that a Christ had been working through the centuries, medieval theology also believed in it, and the theologians did not even remotely think of doubting the true nature of the real Jesus. They all endeavored to build extensive scientific systems that contained the revealed truths, which were simply accepted as they were and as they were prescribed by the church; they were content with interpreting them.

We have the so-called period of scholasticism and, in a slightly different form, mysticism. We have the time when it was established that a Christian can only be a Christian by feeling connected, feeling a living connection with Christ Jesus. Those who sought to reach the summit of the spirit strove to awaken the Christ within themselves, the life and the essence. They lived the profound saying of Goethe, understood in that time:

If the eye were not sunlike,
The sun could never behold it.
If the God-owning power did not lie in us,
How could we delight in the divine?

The spiritual eye must first be made capable of finding God in the outer world. At that time no one would have felt entitled to make statements about the historical Christ Jesus without first having understood the nature of the Christ, without having studied Christology. Just as today no one feels called upon to judge about lightning and thunder without having studied physics, so at that time no one felt called upon to judge about Christology without having studied it.

Something else came up that ties in with the name of the Rosicrucians. This movement is similar to Theosophy. It strove to understand the various religions, but especially Christianity, in their depths. These Rosicrucians differ from us in that we appear openly before the people and communicate to them what we have learned ourselves, while the Rosicrucians worked in secret. But what they wanted to achieve was to make people understand what Christology is. They were inwardly convinced and knew that one can comprehend the phenomena only when one has experienced within oneself the nature of Christ Jesus.

I would like to emphasize one fact of the Rosicrucian movement. Every Rosicrucian had those who wished to become disciples practise one thing above all others. He demanded of the external disciple, who had yet to enter the sanctuary and who only wanted to approach the teachings within the Rosicrucian sanctuary, that he inwardly absorb the Gospel of John, chapter 13. This was the basic principle of this occult training. And anyone who had emerged from the Rosicrucian movement and tried to grasp everything that was there would experience something that not everyone can experience when they delve into the Gospel of John in the sense of what we call “meditation”. They experience a multitude of occult powers, so that the one who places himself under the influence of these sentences undergoes a metamorphosis. He experiences within himself a repetition of the mystery that Jesus exemplified for us. You can relive the life of Jesus point by point, from the washing of the feet to the crucifixion and resurrection, on the basis of the Gospel of John - not through the concepts that are there, but through the occult forces hidden in the concepts.

Just as something cannot be made clear by mere theory, so the Rosicrucians could not merely expound it to anyone. They allowed their disciples to experience it. And there were not a few such disciples in the nineteenth century who experienced real wounds on themselves.

Then there came a time when they knew that these things were more than abstract symbols, that they were to be taken literally. Before one has realized this, one does not know what this gospel is about, one does not know what is hidden in it. So those who wanted to lead their students to Christianity through the occult tried to do so through the Gospel of John. But at the same time they were convinced that the one who is gifted – that is, the one who has developed the corresponding power – is able to release forces in his community when he speaks, even if the community is unaware of it. Public preaching was based on this. In the churches of the Middle Ages, there was still some understanding of this occult side. But even in more recent times, there was still a magical, occult power in the Gospel of John. It was not for nothing that Luther made the Gospel of John his favorite gospel. He knew what it meant, even if he and his friends were not all occultists. But every person experienced a purification that led him to an understanding when he lived with a chapter, so that he sought to live through sentence after sentence, that he did not dwell on a verse for days but for weeks and months, began to love it, began to live with it, so that it filled his whole being without him having to neglect the duties of his outer life.

In the course of modern development, this has changed. Without saying anything against the modern heads of the church, it must be emphasized that the relationship of the religious person to the religious leader has become essentially different in modern times. Look at the figures [of religious leaders] in the Middle Ages up to our century: they were filled with true faith and with sacred secrets and views; they taught through inner experiences. The people who listened to them knew that someone was speaking who spoke from deep knowledge. They were not people who believed in authority. They sensed that something was alive within the religious leader, which flowed through his words, but which cannot be expressed in an abstract and intellectual way. It was more in the words of community life.

This changed in more recent times. The whole way of looking at the world became different. People no longer understood anything like what I said about the Gospel of John today; they no longer knew that there were hidden sides to the gospel. More and more, the Gospels were taken as a scientific object, as a pure object of methodical, historical research. And so, over time, we see a theology emerging that offers a truly tragic history with its research into the Gospels.

Now let me give a brief overview of what today's theology knows about the value and truth of the Gospels. What is taught at the university today wants to be a science like any other. It is no longer the case, as it was even a hundred years ago, when a Schleiermacher still spoke to the educated with the full power of the orator. Today, the word of the gospel is often used for money, but the actual leaders have subjected the gospel to a theology, to a science, which has become tragically peculiar to the gospel.

The first thing to be dropped is precisely this Gospel of John. You all know that a Christian learns about the founder of his religion, about the one from whom the teaching originated, about the Christ himself, through the Gospels. A Christian lets the Gospels work on him. In the Gospels, he is told about the teachings of Christ Jesus, about the teachings and deeds. Through the centuries, what has been told has been accepted because one was convinced of the actual fact that Jesus lived. No value was placed on whether or not they [the Gospels] contradict each other in detail; one sought to deepen one through the other. Whatever they may have done in different ways, the focus was still on the only figure of this God-man. And the Gospels were suitable for leading to this. The wording of the Gospels was not important. It was only in the nineteenth century that the Gospel was examined under the microscope, as is the case with every other work of man. The first question the learned theologians asked themselves was: To what extent can the Gospels be records of the Jesus who lived in Palestine? Are they records that prove the accuracy of the teachings? The objective reality of Jesus of Nazareth was the basis for the research of the nineteenth century. Now the question arose: Can the Gospels be historical records like other historical records? More and more it has been shown that the Gospels were written when Christianity had already begun. No scholar today would take the position that they were written in the first century of our era. It has been found that they were written only later.

The question that interests us most is this: if you compare the gospels and see that the individual evangelists directly contradict each other in their statements, how can we understand these statements as a record of Jesus? What can we do with it when Mark speaks differently than John and Matthew, differently than Mark and Luke? As it became more and more apparent that the gospels contradict each other, it became important to examine whether other testimonies, testimonies and reports from historians, could be found. The result was – as is well known – that no such documents exist. Neither the information Josephus gives us nor that which Tacitus gives us confirms anything about a Jesus of Nazareth.

Protestant theology places little value on Christian tradition. But it is there. And Irenaeus emphasizes that he had known apostles who had known the Lord. But these are traditions that cannot be considered historical. In short, all we have to shape a biography of Jesus are the Gospels. So one had to ask oneself: “What do the Gospels testify to?” Because everything else was found to be worthless.

The next realization was that the Gospel of John reports something quite different in many ways than the other three Gospels. They know that they are called “after” Matthew, “after” Mark, “after” Luke and “after” John. Above all, more and more emphasis was placed on the fact that the image of Jesus of Nazareth, as it emerges from the Gospel of John, is different from that of the other evangelists. Here are some basic features: the Jesus of John's Gospel is understood as God made man. He is the one who does things that can only flow from divine power itself. These are miracles of omnipotence. This gives a different picture than the other evangelists. It gives the picture that he portrayed Jesus as the one who feels within himself that he is God, that he is the God who came into the world to hold people fast to this belief in God.

The gospel of John also differs from the other gospels in its external appearance. We are never told that the mother of Jesus and the disciples were standing at the cross. There are many other points in which it radically differs from the others. That is why it was decided to exclude the gospel of John when it came to the biography of Jesus. The gospel of John is considered to be a confessional writing that cannot claim to be anything other than a hymn-like song. For modern theology, the gospel of John is not considered a historical document. Matthew, Mark and Luke show more agreement among themselves than these three gospels show with the gospel of John. These three gospels are called the synoptic gospels and their authors the synoptics. What is in Mark is to a high degree in all three synoptic gospels. Matthew is therefore the one that could be deleted, and you would find everything in Mark and Luke again. There is nothing in Mark that is not also in Matthew and Luke. Therefore, the gospel of Mark is considered the original. It is also written in very old Greek. Therefore, the researchers pointed out that the Gospel of Mark should be regarded as the first. So the Gospel of Mark was accepted as the first, and the others accordingly took from what Mark said. In Matthew and Luke, there are elements that are not in Mark, so-called “words of the Lord, core sayings, because they come from Christ Jesus. They agree in Matthew and Luke. Since they agree, one can only assume that they come from the same source. These words of the Lord are said to be based on a Greek source, a collection of wisdom proverbs from which they were inserted into what they copied from Mark. The agreement between Matthew and Luke is great, but the layout is quite different. So they could not have copied from each other, but they could have had a common collection of sayings as a basis.

So what do we have? First, the Gospel of Mark, which mainly tells of the deeds of Jesus, starting with the baptism. Second, the Gospel of Matthew and third, the Gospel of Luke. The corresponding words of the Lord were always added to the deeds. But then there is something special about each of the two, Matthew and Luke, that is not found in any of the others. Matthew has insertions that have a distinctly Jewish character. It is this that Matthew has for himself, so that it is to be regarded as a gospel that was intended for the Jewish community. Luke wrote more for others, namely for the poor and the oppressed. Therefore, the entire Gospel of Luke, as far as the words of the Lord and the material of Mark are not considered, gives the impression that it was written for the poor and from a heart full of mercy.

Theology has therefore created strange images. First, that the Gospel of John is out of the question altogether; then, that Matthew and Luke each have something special, and that each can be decisive to a certain extent for the true facts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. But where do the words of the Lord come from? There must have been a Greek collection of sayings that were added to the Gospels. Historical research cannot determine the question of where they come from. It is impossible for it to say where this collection of sayings comes from. So we are led back to Mark again. So you have the Gospel of Mark and then the collection of sayings. As for what Matthew and Luke have to say, it could be said that it goes back to Jesus and is a retelling of his deeds, but we cannot prove it. It may be based on true facts, but that is not necessarily the case. Similarly, what is referred to as the words of the Lord may go back to Jesus, but we do not know. And so we are led back to the Gospel of Mark. It recounts deeds, but they are of a peculiar kind. What does modern theology say about this? It says: Let us examine the facts. We find that Mark narrates in a way that someone would have narrated if they had heard it themselves or been an eyewitness. Mark speaks of a work. But then he strings the things together in such a way that this stringing together of the individual facts is an artistic composition. That he has strung the facts together in the way he could best put them together, much like a poet puts the details together to form a whole work. The story itself is the composition of Mark – the facts could be tradition. But they are told in such a way that they have a very general character. – Mark is telling facts that have a general character. We see, then, that the composition is the work of Mark. But the facts are such that he says, for example, “Christ did this or that,” but in such a way that only three or four disciples see it and are not allowed to share it. It is difficult to get the Jews to believe in Jesus. Therefore, Mark seeks to frame the work in such a way that it became understandable to Christians why the Jews found it so difficult to believe in Jesus.

We find two things – so the modern theologian says: firstly, that Jesus is not understood. And this is explained by the fact that Mark makes it difficult for the Jews to understand Jesus. When Jesus performs miracles, he forbids those who have seen it to tell it. The modern theologian is baffled by this. The modern theologian only admits: There must have been some secret tradition here, but it only existed between Jesus and his chosen ones. The modern theologian cannot do anything with this.

We have a tradition that Mark the Evangelist was a disciple of Peter, who recorded what Peter said. There is no doubt that Peter did not write, but that he generally taught Jesus' doctrine and particularly emphasized soaring above earthly facts, so that the copyists were unable to describe anything local. This leads us to a later time when the gospel of Mark was written. A long span of time separates us from the oldest gospel, from the real Jesus. We do not know what we can deduce from the original gospel about the Jesus of Nazareth. We cannot construct a biography of Jesus' life from it.

The only thing that theology believes is to gain a clue to an oldest piece of the Gospel of Mark. This is a passage contained in the 13th chapter:

But when they lead you and deliver you up, do not worry about what you are to say, or how you are to defend yourselves. But whatever is given you at the time, that speak. For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.

And brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father child; and children shall rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death.

And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

But when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing where it should not (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains. And let him that is in the house not come down into the street, neither enter into his house, to take any thing out of his house. And let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment. [Mk 13,11-16]

From this point, modern theology believes that it could have been written immediately under the impression of the impending destruction of Jerusalem. There must be something here that is old, so old that we could place it in the time before the destruction of Jerusalem. It is said to have been a pamphlet, a flyer, to warn people and tell them how to behave when this event occurred. Mark may have used this flyer and incorporated it into his gospel.

Yet another passage is of particular importance to the modern theologian. This is a passage in Luke, chapter 11, verse 48:

Thus ye bear witness and consent to the deeds of your fathers: for they killed them, and ye build their tombs.

If you read this passage in Matthew, chapter 10, verse 15, the comparison is very interesting:

Truly I say to you, it will be more bearable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that city.

In Matthew it is a saying of Jesus, in Luke it is a quotation. Therefore, the wisdom of God is speaking. The latter must therefore come from a source that is called the “wisdom of God.” Theology assumes that it was a collection of sayings, a collection of wisdom proverbs from which the theologian quoted and taught by saying, “Thus speaks the wisdom of God.” Matthew does things differently. The so-called words of the Lord are traced back to the collection of sayings by modern theologians.

Take a rough overview of the sketchiness that is necessary and compare it with what remains of scholarly gospel research. – Nothing remains. The Gospel of John is eliminated, Matthew and Luke are traced back to the collection of sayings. The collection of sayings can be traced back to Greek sources and cannot be followed further; we lose the thread. Mark can only have been written long after Jesus. Therefore, the modern theologian says: We cannot gain anything from the gospel. We cannot gain a biography of Jesus, we cannot gain what Jesus taught, we cannot gain what he taught about the intermediate court and the kingdom of God. Modern people say that the gospels tell us nothing about any of this. And what they tell us cannot be decisive in the sense of materialistic science.

I call this research into the Gospels a tragic story. You see, you have measured the Gospel by the standards of external science, and now the whole truth - as a result of research - is not there.

This indicates a very different point of view today between the believer and the theologian than was previously the case. In the past, the believer looked up to the theologian, who only proclaimed the truth of the Gospels. He was the authority. Even Harnack's book, which caused such a stir, is based on this modern theology. Today, believers face the theologian who does not know what is in the words of the Gospels, but can only say: I am unable to say scientifically what the founder of Christianity taught, whether he lived at all, and so on. - Science has produced a completely negative result in this direction. From this you can see that it is quite difficult for those who rely on Christianity [of the theologians] to build on it. If you believe the theologians whose science says that, you may begin to waver.

So it must be considered a new source of wisdom, hypothetically, when the theosophical movement now again delves into the Gospel of John and tries to bring the Gospel of John back to true understanding. The theosophical movement does not depend on riding Buddhist dogmas forever. They are only means, dogma is only a means. Today a movement is being born out of the bosom of the Theosophical Society that will bring a true understanding of Christianity, of the gospel hidden in the gospels, which is not understood in the ordinary sense.

Those who have experience may speak about it. I myself can hint at it with a few words, by saying that I have titled my new book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”. I have not written this book from historical sources, I have deliberately written it without any historical source. I have left the historical sources alone and relied only on the occult sources. This book is written from the Akasha Chronicle, one might say. If you look at things from the point of view that Annie Besant has adopted in the book 'Esoteric Christianity' and that I have adopted in the book 'Christianity as Mystical Fact', then things take on a completely different effect. Next time I will show you what a completely different picture we get. This science will lead us from a different point of view to the greatest possible depth, to the revival of Christian truth. A parallel current is striving for this revival, and it is first of all the revival of the Gospel of John that is at stake. These great words, with which I would like to conclude today – in a translation that is reasonably accurate – will be understood again next time, when I will start from them again.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

In this was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.

There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.

He came for a witness, to bear witness about

the Light, that through him all might believe.

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

The true Light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

It was in the world, and the world was made through it, yet the world did not recognize it.

It came to the individual people [up to the I-people], but the individual people [I-people] did not accept it. But those who accepted him [it] could reveal themselves as children of God through him.

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

And we have heard his teaching; the teaching of the only son of the Father, full of devotion and truth.

Those who understand these words correctly will see that research can only find the right word from this understanding. One should not find fault with the word. And we want to understand this word again, the greatest word:

And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us.

The inventor has an idea in his head – for example, of the clock – then he searches for equipment. When the clock is ready, he knows how it is made, he has knowledge of the clock. The idea has preceded, [followed] by the execution in physical fact. The idea was drawn from the mental plan, then transferred to the physical plan. Let us assume that the watchmaker has died. Another, in order to imitate the clock, must take it piece by piece and then study the laws in order to form others. So first there is contemplation, then the idea is derived in order to form. So there are two ways of creating knowledge: where the idea originally lies or where it is derived from contemplation.

In the cosmic, everything is based on the idea. We call it 'Mahat', the universal spirit, after which all physical things are composed. The beings who are in place of the watchmaker cannot yet work on the physical plane. 'Dhyanis', they have the ideas for the physical plan, they would teach others, like the inventor, if he had not died immediately.

Two types of teaching: the original type of teaching, that the purely spiritual natures - dhyanis - immediately transfer the ideas into the mental, of the preceding race; a teaching by direct transmission of intuition. The first people were thus taught as one is taught by the creators; later as one is taught by those who have learned from objects of the physical plan. A remnant of this kind of direct influx is also contained in nature. The way beavers build their dams today, in such a way that an engineer could not build a better one with all his ingenuity. The beaver has this kind of receptivity in a degenerated state. There was a time when people also received wisdom and built their dams in this way. Lake Moeris, no longer in existence, but once artificially built in Egypt, with a sewage system that could not be invented today. Mankind was once more capable, but in a different way, in that they could not record it in mathematical forms in abstract, but in symbolic forms. An immediate flowing in of the Mahat; a drawing out of the physical plan Manas from Mahat.

Today, one has to carefully calculate how to lay beams; at that time, he could do more in terms of teaching; the direct telepathy from person to person - an influx of will into the pineal gland. Among ancient peoples, there are still similar institutions that seem senseless: [Couvade,] the husband's childbed. The opinion that this has a correspondingly favorable meaning for the child comes from the time when the psychic powers were still vividly active, so that the psychic processes on the part of the man worked just as the physical processes did on the part of the woman. [Couvade:] a resting, concentrating of the father's psychic powers for the good of the child.

There is a descent, a different kind of transmission of knowledge and will, and it must be reclaimed from below. No reception was needed from the senses at that time to receive Mahat; so the leader of the race does not need a refined organ of the mind, but the third eye. This is the organization of the human lion. He is more differentiated; spirituality on the one hand, animal nature on the other.

The teaching from below begins – spirituality has become coarser. It begins with the feeling; Mahat begins to penetrate from the outside. Through the senses, the world mind flows in. This makes the outer impression a reason for him to reflect. His mind is still very limited, a first stirring; the human being who then stands at the highest level, the leader, will read the writing of the world spirit everywhere, but he does not yet have memory. This dwarfish spirit, who looks up at the firmament - and deduces astrology from the impressions of his senses - is symbolized as an avatar, by the dwarf: the first looking at Mahat from the mind. One forgot immediately, but saw to the bottom, not pondering, thinking, but looking.

Astrology and alchemy, the refraining from the object, what it has for laws.

1. So first Mahat comes from outside through sensation, develops inside.

2. Through the imagination, where he holds on to the sensation through memory; man will only receive Mahat when he approaches it through the imagination.

This has two stages, namely the absorption of Mahat in the imagination.

The development of Rama: first the Rama of the center and secondly that of the developed imagination.

The next thing is that the person is already forming concepts.

For example, belladonna: the concept is formed on the basis of external experience. Belladonna is not edible; concept: where there is such a substance, the object is not edible.

Avatar – Krishna, who fills the world with ideas that apply to the physical plane, can be applied everywhere, are tailored for him, although they are far above him.

After man has grown to the point of forming ideas, wisdom reveals itself again, the source of the ideas from which the world flowed. He perceives the idea itself: the Buddha as a guide, suitable for a humanity that lives entirely on the physical plane, but is already ascending to spirituality.

Mythology, the starry sky viewed by the sage, populated, degenerates into idolatry and rises on the other side as a doctrine of ideas.

The purity of the Bhagavad Gita, imbued with ideas and leaving mythology, degenerates into mysticism on the one hand and rises to wisdom on the other – descending to complete materialism and mechanism, ascending to Christianity.