The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Good morning, gentlemen! I will now continue with the considerations we have begun. Don't you see the situation quite clearly: over there in the east is Asia. In ancient times, people came over from Asia to Europe, to Greece, directly along a whole series of islands. So the thing was like this (it is drawn): here Asia ended; here it went over to Africa; there was the Nile, of which I have spoken to you a lot. Here is Greece, here is the Adriatic Sea, and here is Italy, here then the island of Sicily. So there would be a lot of islands here, Samos, Rhodes, Cyprus and so on, and on these islands one came from Asia over to Greece. Here is Greece, here is the Roman Empire, today's Italy.

Now you have to remember the following, gentlemen. You see, in Greece, from about the year 1000, 1200 BC, one might say, everything I have told you about developed, and through that people learned to look at the world. But already, one might say, from the 4th, 3rd century BC, the rule in Greece was gradually lost, and it passed to Rome. After all, that was the capital. The way it happened was that in the most ancient times more and more Greeks, those who were more or less dissatisfied in Greece, emigrated and settled here, both in Sicily and here in southern Italy. As a result, over a period of half a millennium, four to five hundred years, Greek culture spread across the sea, so that southern Italy and Sicily were then called: Greater Greece. Even the ancient Greek homeland was referred to merely as Greece, and the other was referred to as Great Greece. It was not just the dissatisfied who turned to it, but people went there like the great philosopher Plato, who wanted to found a model state there. And actually the most important people who created the culture lived in southern Italy. And it must be said that in southern Italy, here in the south, there was a refined, educated life, while from above the brutal rule later called Romanism spread.

You know that the original population of Rome came into being in a very strange way: all the scoundrels in the surrounding area were summoned by the chiefs, of whom Romulus is particularly well known, and All the scoundrels in the area were summoned to Rome, and with them the first Roman robber state was originally formed. It is then that the robber mentality was continued under the first Roman kings. But very soon, under the fourth and fifth kings, the settlement and immigration of a northern tribe, the Etruscans, became established. These were again people, one can already say so, who then mixed with the descendants of the robbers, and through this again a human trait was introduced into the Roman culture. But all that which Rome later established as world domination, and which has been passed down to our time in the form of mankind's desire for power, actually comes – and we should have no illusions about this – from this original colony of scoundrels, which was founded on the seven hills of Rome. Only that everything possible has been poured over it; the thing has of course been terribly refined, but one does not understand the thing, how it was done later, if one does not know that an original robber colony had been gathered together from the forests. And all the lust for power and the like that spread throughout Europe and still play such a great role today came from this. In Rome, too, what then increasingly intertwined the church with secular rule was formed. And that is how the times of the Middle Ages came about and so on.

Now, you see, the Mystery of Golgotha happened at the beginning of our era. Roman rule was established, as I have described to you now, in the 8th century BC. So at that time, seven centuries after the establishment of Roman rule, this rule had spread far and wide, forming entire areas all the way over to Asia. Even where the Mystery of Golgotha took place, Roman rule was everywhere. The Jews living in Palestine, among whom Jesus of Nazareth appeared, were also under Roman rule. After all that we have said about the Mystery of Golgotha, it will be good to also take a little consideration of what has actually happened on the Italian peninsula since ancient times.

It is a fact that one must say: Europe actually only understands that which goes back to Roman times. Our so-called educated people have always studied Greek, but very little of Greek culture has actually been understood in Europe. You see, it is now very interesting that one hundred years after the Mystery of Golgotha took place, one of the most important Roman writers, namely Tacitus, writes a single sentence about Christ Jesus in his extensive historical works! This Tacitus described the ancient Germans, the ancestors of the Germans, in a way that could no longer be written at all later, for example, a hundred years after the Mystery of Golgotha. In his writings, there is only one sentence about Christ Jesus, which is: “The so-called Christ founded a sect among the Jews and was then executed according to court judgment.” That is all that the educated Roman Tacitus said, a hundred years after Christianity was founded in Palestine! So you can imagine: the ships went back and forth continuously, all kinds of trade relations developed, and in Rome, a hundred years later, no more notice was taken of Christianity than that a sect had been founded and the founder had been executed after a proper legal judgment!

Now, it must be added that, although the Roman Empire cannot yet be called a state – the correct concept of the state did not actually arise in Europe until the 16th century – but I would like to say that the state ethos is already there. Actually, what later became the state ethos had grown out of Romanism. So one can say: Tacitus was already so imbued with such a state ethos that the most important thing about Jesus Christ seemed to him to be that he was executed according to the proper judicial judgment. That is one thing.

But then you must also consider that Christianity was not at all what it later became. It originally had a truly free spirit. And it can be said that there were the most diverse views, all of which found expression only in that they saw something special in Christ Jesus; but otherwise they held the most diverse views.

Now, gentlemen, you will only understand what actually came into the world with Christ Jesus, and why it was necessary in the end that I pointed out to you how the earthly environment has an influence on the earth, even in language, you will understand it only when I now attempt to show you how Christianity has actually formed as a doctrine, as a view, as a world view, as a view of life, and how the Christ Jesus has intervened in this formation of Christianity. It is something very special to see: there in Jerusalem, Christianity is being founded; a hundred years later, the most educated Roman does not know more about it than what I have told you! But now people are constantly migrating from Asia through Africa to Italy. And beneath the surface, I might say, of what is considered humanity in Rome, this Christian sect is spreading. And when Tacitus wrote what I have told you, the Christians, as they were called, had long since spread among the people in Rome, who were not bothered by a noble Roman.

But what did they do with the Christians? Yes, you see, the descendants of Romulus, the robber, had also arrived at a point in time where they had become “properly educated”. Namely, their education consisted of building large arenas, among other things; there, fights with wild animals took place. There was a great desire to throw those who were not considered part of humanity in the Roman sense to the wild beasts and to enjoy watching them being devoured after they had first had to fight with them. That was a 'refined' enjoyment, for example. Now, the despised sect of Christians was particularly suited to being eaten by wild animals, when people in Rome thought the way I have indicated to you; they were also particularly suited to being covered with pitch so that they could be set on fire and then used as torches in the circus. But the Christians found ways to live anyway. And they could achieve this by holding their ceremonies and so on without being noticed. They spread what they thought was right for the purpose of spreading it underground, in the catacombs. Catacombs are wide spaces under the earth. In these wide spaces under the earth, the Christians buried the dead they loved. There were graves, and services and religious ceremonies were held on the graves. It was a custom at that time to hold religious services over the graves. That is why you can still see today, when you look at an altar in a Catholic church, that it is actually a tomb (it is drawn) and inside there are, for example, so-called relics, the bones of saints and so on. In the earliest times, the altar was actually a real tombstone, and the religious services were held on it. But under the ground, in these catacombs, the Christians in the first centuries were able to hide what they had done.

And if you look a few centuries later, the picture changes quite significantly. Here is what happened. You see, the Romans, in the first centuries after the founding of Christianity, were sitting at the top and enjoying themselves as I have told you, and down in the catacombs were the Christians. After a few centuries, the Romans had disappeared and the Christians took over the world. Whether they did better or worse, we will discuss on another occasion; but they took over world domination. And that is precisely what has done the greatest harm to Christianity, that it has become associated with world domination; for religious life can tolerate less and less in world history the amalgamation with the external state and world domination.

The matter is now the following: The formation of Christianity, the participation of Christ Jesus in the formation of Christianity, can only be understood if one knows what religious life, which permeated everything in the ancient times, was like. I have already told you: in the ancient times there existed the so-called mysteries. Well, you see, the mysteries were – if I were to use a modern word, one would say they were institutions – the mysteries were the institutions where everything that a person could learn was learned. But at the same time they were the religious and artistic institutions. All spiritual life emanated from the mysteries. And learning in the most ancient times was not the same as it is today. What is learning like today, after all? Learning today is like this, isn't it, that you are drilled in high school or in secondary school; afterwards you go through university years, and you have not become a different person as a result. But in the mysteries, there you became a different person. There you had to gain a different relationship to the whole world. In the mysteries, there you had to become wise. Today, through the institutions that exist in the world, no one becomes wise at all; at most, they become learned. But two things are compatible, and two things are incompatible: wisdom and stupidity do not go well together, but erudition goes very well with great stupidity. So that's one thing: in the ancient mysteries, people were made wise; they became people who were imbued with the spiritual. You became a person who could take the spiritual seriously. And you had to go through seven stages. Only a few people reached the highest level. These seven stages had names that you first had to understand in order to know what the people at these stages had to do.

If you translate what the one who was first initiated into the mysteries had to do, you come up with the term “raven”. So the first level were the so-called ravens. So anyone who was initiated into the mysteries became a raven. What did the raven have to do? Well, the raven had to mediate between the outside world and the mysteries. Newspapers didn't even exist back then. The first newspapers only came about thousands of years later, when the art of printing had been invented. Those who had the mysteries as their teaching profession had to be taught by trustworthy people whom they could send out and who observed the world. So you could also say that the ravens were simply the trusted representatives of those who were in the mysteries. And you had to learn to be a real trusted representative first. Today many people are employed as trusted representatives, especially in parties and so on, but you wonder if these trusted representatives are always trustworthy! Those who were employed here - in the mysteries - as ravens were only considered trustworthy after they had been tested. Above all, they had to learn to take what they saw very seriously and to report it truthfully in the mysteries. So in those days one also had to learn what truth actually means in the human being. It is certainly true to say that people in ancient times were not less dishonest than people are today. But today dishonesty is introduced everywhere, whereas in those days one first had to learn to be a truthful person. And this had to be acquired by being a raven, a trusted messenger of the mysteries, for years.

The second step, however, is something that is quite unappealing to today's man: the second step is that of the so-called “occult”. Occult means hidden, secret. They were no longer sent out, but now had to learn something over a period of time, something that modern people do not like to learn, namely, silence. And that was one of the teaching levels in these old mysteries, learning to be silent. Yes, it may seem quite grotesque to you, quite ludicrous, that one had to remain silent for at least a year, or even longer! But it is true. You learn an enormous amount through silence; you learn an awful lot through silence. Today, that is no longer feasible. Because think if it were imposed in our schools – which would really be quite useful for attaining wisdom – on young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty to remain silent for a year instead of joining the military, then they would indeed become terribly wise through this silence! But that is no longer feasible today. However, something else is feasible. Of course, you can't get people out of the habit, they don't want to be silent today, they want to prattle on, and every person knows everything very well, and when you meet a person today, above all they have what is called a point of view. Everyone has a point of view. Of course everyone has a point of view; but from each point of view the world also looks different, and that is nothing new to anyone who knows life, it is quite natural: if you stand here, this mountain looks different than if you were to stand over there. It is the same in the spiritual life. Everyone has their point of view and everyone can see something different. And when a dozen people are together, well, today, of course, they have thirteen opinions! That is not necessary. But that they have twelve points of view is not surprising; it is just that it should not be taken as so important. But each person usually takes their own point of view very seriously, terribly seriously! But in the early days, people in the mysteries had to remain silent about what they were to learn; they were only allowed to listen. In the occult, they could only be called 'listeners' because they had to listen. Today, those who come to our universities are no longer called 'pupils', but rather, by leaving out the 'to', 'listeners'. But often they are no longer listeners, but chatterers. And some people consider chatting with their friends to be much more important than listening in the lecture halls. Sometimes even listening is no longer something that engenders particular seriousness. That was the second stage. Then people could learn silence. And in silence it becomes particularly clear – and this is connected like cause and effect – that the inner being of the human being begins to speak to him. That is where the person comes to it. Imagine you have a basin of water; if you now attach a hose and drain the water that is in the basin, then the water just runs away – if it is not a spring but just a basin – and there is nothing left in it. And so it is when a person constantly prattles: everything flows out with the words, nothing remains inside. The ancients realized this, and that is why their listeners were initially instructed to remain silent. So after people had developed an appreciation for the truth, they learned to remain silent; only then did they learn to remain silent.

And the third stage was that which, if translated, could be called the “defenders”. Now people were allowed to start talking. Now they were allowed to defend the truth they had learned in the mysteries through silence. In particular, they were obliged to defend the spirit. The word “defense” is precisely one that can already be used for this third stage. Those who belonged to this third degree must know enough so that what they could say about the spiritual had weight, real weight. So one could not just talk about the spiritual in these mysteries, but one had to have learned it first and become a real defender. Then one ascended to the fourth degree.

The fourth level can be translated as “lion”. That is how it is usually translated. It would be even better to translate it as “sphinx”. Sphinx is a word that roughly means having become a spirit oneself. Of course, you still walk around with a human body, but you behave among people as gods behave. The ancients did not make any great distinction between men and gods, but in the mysteries one gradually became a god. That is the much freer point of view of the ancients. The moderns, yes, they see the gods standing above humanity everywhere. But that was not the view of the ancients. Today one says: Well, man comes from the ape. The famous naturalist Du Bois-Reymond even went so far as to say that there was once a giant leap in the development of nature between the ape and man, a giant leap even in the enlargement of the brain. The brain suddenly became larger than in the ape. You see, it is a strange statement from a modern scholar! Because one would actually have to assume that if he says that the brain of modern man is much larger than that of the ape, he would have dissected the ape and would know how large its brain was. But if you read up on it again, you will find that these scholars had to say: the ape has not yet been discovered in reality! – So the famous naturalist Du Bois-Reymond spoke about that which has not yet been discovered, which no one has yet seen: the ape, which has a much smaller brain than humans. This is the kind of “conscientiousness” that characterizes science today. And people do not even think that the famous naturalist Du Bois-Reymond is talking about something he has never seen, but they think: Oh, that's the famous naturalist, he knows everything! - because today humanity is much more gullible than the ancients were.

Now, the ancients certainly had the opinion that man can develop to the point of divine consciousness.

The one who was at the fourth level, who was a sphinx, no longer spoke like a defender of the third level, but spoke in a language in which he expressed himself in such a way that it was actually difficult to understand him; one had to think first about how to understand him. It is difficult for today's man to form a conception of this language, which was spoken by the Sphinxes, because he no longer looks at the matter correctly, as it was looked at there. But still in the Middle Ages, for example still in the 17th century, so that is only two hundred years back, there was still something present as a tradition of that language. For example, two centuries ago there were so-called Rosicrucian schools. There, too, certain initiates spoke in a language that was somewhat veiled and that had to be studied first; they spoke in a pictorial language. And so, for example, two centuries ago you can still find a picture - this may interest you - that was intended to explain something to people everywhere. This image was (it is drawn): a human figure with a lion's head, and here next to it a human figure with an ox's head. Among the people who were to be taught, it was said that the relationship between these two beings was expressed by “the being with the ox's head, the being with the lion's head” - they meant man and woman. But they did not speak the two words man and woman, but said: the being with the ox head - and meant the man; and they said: the being with the lion head - and meant the woman, because they saw something in the relationship between ox and lion that was the relationship between man and woman. Today, of course, this seems quite paradoxical and funny to people, but it has been preserved as tradition. And the sphinxes used animal names everywhere to express more clearly and characteristically what lives in man. And in such a language, you see, with which one spoke more out of the spiritual, the sphinxes then spoke. So they were already such that they spoke more out of the spirit.

But then came the fifth stage. In the fifth stage there were those human beings who had the obligation to speak only out of the spirit. Now, depending on whether they belonged to this or that nation, they were called “Persians” or “Indians” or “Greeks”. In Greece it was only the real Greeks. Because they said to themselves: Yes, when someone belongs to a people, they have their private interests, they want this or that, they want something different from someone who belongs to a different people! Only when they have reached the fifth level do they no longer want something special, but what the whole people want; that is also in their interest. He has become like the spirit of the people. In other words, he has become a spirit of the people. These spirits of the people were, in fact, in the ancient mysteries, even in Greece, very, very wise people. They did not think: If something comes, I will stand my ground and have my point of view, I know everything. They prepared themselves for a long time, even though they had already ascended to the fifth level, through exercises to help them reach a judgment in any matter. You see, if someone is a statesman today, well, then an interpellation may be brought before the Reichstag, and then he has to answer. Just imagine if that were done as it was in the past! If the person who had to answer said, “I must first withdraw from the world for eight days, come completely to myself in order to have an opinion about it.” Well, I would like to know what the parties in the Reichstag would say, say, to Mr. Stresemann or to other bodies, if an interpellant were to get the answer, In order to give a mature judgment on what you have asked me, I must first withdraw for eight days! But that was the case back then. Because in those days people believed in the spiritual world, and they knew that when you are in the hustle and bustle of life, the spiritual world does not speak; the spiritual world only speaks when you can withdraw. Of course, you then develop the ability to withdraw even when you are in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the world; but you first have to learn that. And once you had learned it, in the old days you ascended to the sixth level.

The sixth step was that the person no longer had an earthly point of view at all, not even that of the people, but said to himself: “I am a ‘Greek’; my brother initiate over there in the fifth step in Assyria is an ‘Assyrian’; the one further over there is a ‘Persian’. But that is a one-sided point of view. The sun comes over from Persia to Greece; it shines over us all. And so those who were initiates in the sixth degree no longer wanted to learn from what a people says, but they wanted to learn from what the sun says. They became “sun people” - no longer earth people, but sun people. You see, such sun-men sought to investigate everything from the standpoint of the sun. What was done in those days, people today have no conception of, because people today know nothing of the secrets of the world.

If you want to have an insight into such things, then you have to consider the following, for example. Some time ago a man came to me who said: “A strange book has been published, in which it is proven that the Gospels are written according to a numerical code. Namely, if there is any word in the Gospel, let us take the ‘primal beginning’ in the Gospel of John: ”In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God», then if you divide the word, and you get out, any division is twice as long as the other, and each word has a numerical value: there is a word where the numerical value is 50, then 25, another word, 50, another word, 25. And you can calculate what kind of word must be in a certain place.

Now it is interesting, gentlemen, to see how such things are true. So let us take, for example, any word, let us say - I will make it clear to you with a word still used in German -: let us take the word Eva. Now let us assume that the E has the same value as one, the v as two, the a as three. Let us assume that this is the case. In ancient times, every letter had a numerical value; it was not just a letter, but it was known that if, for example, you had an L, that L meant this or that number. You can still see how the numerical values are included in the Roman letters:

I = one, V = five, X = ten.

they are also letters, but the letters have numerical values.

Let's take as an example – it's not right with 1, 2, 3 for Eve, but as an example to make it clear, we can take it that way.

1 2 3 = Eve

is the mother of all life. Now let's turn it around:

3 2 1

Yes, then we get the word Ave, which means the end of life. Going in opposite directions, read in reverse from the back:

Going in opposite directions, read in reverse from the back:

1 2 3 = Eva; 3 2 1 = ave

So, if you change the numbers, you can find how numbers and letters match everywhere.

And so there is a numerical key. And one can say: Now let us look at the first line of the Gospel of John. These are the numbers. Let us look at the second: the numbers are only rearranged, and the fact that they are rearranged means something. - You see, people today are very surprised at such things. But, gentlemen, I knew a man named Louvier who tackled the “Sphinx”: “The riddle is solved”; he applied Goethe's “Faust” to this numerical relationship, and it was also true. Goethe did not think at all about using any numerical law to write his “Faust”. But it is true nevertheless, because in every piece of poetry there is something numerical in it. But if you endeavor to say something to someone and I endeavor to use a numerical key, then I can also apply it to what you say; that is already inherent in the speech itself. There is already a spiritual element in what you say. And that, gentlemen, is the extraterrestrial: that is what the influence of the sun gives. That is why these sun people have researched the secrets of the sun. The pyramids, for example, were certainly not built just to be royal tombs, but the pyramids had very specific openings to which the sunbeam could only come at a very specific time of the year. The sunbeam has described a figure on Earth. These people have observed this figure and have been inspired by it. In this way they explored the secrets of the life of the sun. So a person who had become a sun person could say that he no longer followed earthly things at all, but followed the sun. And then, when he had been a sun person for a while and had taught people what was extraterrestrial, he was elevated to the dignity of “father”. That was the highest honor, and only a few attained it. These were the ones who had matured completely, who were obeyed and followed. They were obeyed because they had grown older, because by the time one had passed through these seven stages, one had truly grown older, and they were obeyed because they had wisdom of life and, in addition, wisdom of the world.

Mysteries:

1. Raven
2. Occult: listener
3. Defender – Defense of the Spirit
4. Sphinx
5. Greeks: Spirit of the people
6. sun people
7. Father

Now, gentlemen, just imagine that Christ Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, did live in a time when, over in Asia, people still knew something about these mysteries. And it was still known, for example, that there were people who proclaimed solar wisdom. And what Jesus of Nazareth wanted was that people could no longer be enlightened only in the mysteries, but outside of the mysteries, that it could be made clear to people: What the sun does to people is also already within people, is within every person. And that is the most important thing about Christ Jesus, that He is the Sun-Truth and that He teaches the Sun-Word, as it was called, as something that is common to all people.

Now you only have to consider the great difference between the Christ Jesus and the other sun people. If you do not grasp this, you will never come to an understanding of the mystery of Golgotha. Because, you see, this is the way it is: what did one have to do in ancient times to become a sun person? One had to become a raven first, then an occultist, a defender, a sphinx, a folk soul - then one could ascend to a sun person. There was no other way. One had to be initiated into the mysteries. What did Jesus of Nazareth do? He was baptized, according to the custom of the Jews of that time, in the Jordan; and on this occasion, that is, after he had not been initiated into the mysteries, the same wisdom that otherwise belonged to the sun-men came to him. What could he say? He could say: This wisdom has come to me from the sun itself. He was therefore the first to enter into a relationship with heaven without the mysteries. What did he say, who had been a sun-person in the mysteries, when he looked up at the one who had stood on the seventh step? He said: “Behold, this is the Father.” He stood on the altar in a white robe, in the priestly vestments. That was the Father. That was the “Father” among those who had gone through these various stages in the mysteries. The Christ Jesus had not gone through this in the mysteries, but had received it from the Sun itself. That is why he said, “My Father is not on earth” - he meant, not in the mysteries - “but my Father is above in the spiritual world.” He thus pointed first to the Father in the spiritual world in the most eminent sense. So the Christ Jesus wanted to point out to people, who had previously received all spiritual from the earth, to the sources of the spiritual in the extraterrestrial itself. That is why people have always misunderstood what the Christ Jesus actually meant. Because, you see, it was said, for example, that the Christ Jesus taught that the earth would now perish, as it was said, and that a spiritual millennial kingdom would come very soon. Today's clever people, who in their cleverness sometimes also want to be benevolent towards the ancients, and also want to be benevolent towards Jesus, say: Well, that's what Jesus adopted from his time; he was also a child of his time and adopted it.

But all the things that people talk about are nonsense, because the millennial kingdom has really come - it just didn't look the way people in the world imagined it would, but the thing was like this: in ancient times, through the way I have described it to you, people had gained ideas about the spiritual world, and had also had experiences. That was the custom in ancient times, when people were different. That ended in the time when Christ Jesus lived, and people had to find the spirit in a different way. The spirit had to be found directly. That is what Christ Jesus did. And if Christ Jesus had not done what he did, then humanity would have completely degenerated. Life would have become meaningless. This does not contradict the fact that in later times, precisely through many Christian institutions, much that was senseless came about; but that was not originally natural in it. And people would have become dull. The mysteries would have perished just as they did there; but people would have known nothing of what was taught in the mysteries. Because, take now the old sun-man. What did they say about the sun man? They knew that he knew what came from the standpoint of the sun; he was dead to earthly life. When they spoke of the sun man, they meant someone who was dead to earthly life. And that is why, before a sun-man was initiated into the mysteries, a ceremony was always performed that imitated death and burial. And Christ Jesus outwardly presented death and burial before the whole world; and what happened at the death of Christ was, before all the people of the world, only a repetition of what had always happened in the cultus through the mysteries. Only in those days it was a mystery secret, and then it stood at Golgotha before the whole world. You see, it was really the case with the solar man that he had died to the earth. But through this he was also in between, between the setting world of death and the world of resurrection, the world of the eternal.

Sometimes things remind you of the old things, of which you can no longer understand the meaning. Imagine, for example, that a canonization is taking place in Rome. Someone is being canonized in Rome. It is a great ceremony when someone is canonized after dying hundreds of years ago. How does this ceremony take place? This ceremony takes place in such a way that first the Advocatus Dei, the divine defender, appears. He emphasizes all the good qualities of the person to be canonized. And then the so-called Advocatus diaboli, the devilish accuser, appears; he emphasizes all the bad qualities that the saint had. And then a decision is made between these two – I do not want to say that it is always a fair decision, but a decision is made. This ceremony is still being carried out today. When someone, like the Maid of Orleans, for example, is canonized, then the devil's advocate and the devil appear. Between the one who represents all that is good and the one who represents all that is evil, stands the saint himself, spiritually. You know that the image of Golgotha is always depicted with Christ Jesus on the cross in the middle, with the two so-called robbers, they are called robbers, next to him. But the strange thing is that Christ says to one of them: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” So he goes up, and the other goes down. These are Lucifer and Ahriman - devil and devil.

And so it was with the old solar man. He made the acquaintance of Lucifer and Ahriman, of that which wants to draw man up into the spiritual world, so that he becomes entirely spiritual – which is also not suitable for man – and of that which wants to bring man down to the earthly, which again is not suitable for man, because man belongs in the intermediate stage.

And so, through the Mystery of Golgotha, what used to be only implicit in the mysteries, and was only carried out figuratively, because one did not really die, is now standing before the whole world. One became a father there. The Christ really dies. But He says: My spirit does not die; it goes to the Father, because the Father now does not work down here as the Primordial Father, but works in the spiritual world. This view has come entirely out of the Mysteries. And if one wants the concept of the Father, one must seek it in the old Mysteries. Only then does one understand correctly how Christianity was actually formed.

Now, you see, gentlemen, all that I have described to you was very common over there in Asia. It was still part of the foundation of Christianity. The Greeks knew very little about it because they built the outer culture. And only the Romulus people, who descended from a colony of scoundrels, knew nothing about it at all; they only knew external world domination. They only knew external world domination so well that the Roman Caesars, the Imperators, even behaved externally as initiates; but it was at a time when the mysteries had already fallen into decline. For example, there was a Roman Caesar of the very first imperial period, his name was Caligula. Now, you see, a German historian once wanted to describe the German Kaiser Wilhelm in the 1890s; but you couldn't, because it wouldn't do; you would have been locked up if you had written it down! So the good man wrote a little book called 'Caligula'. He described the Roman Caligula, but every trait applied to Wilhelm II! Everyone who understood such things knew: Caligula is our Wilhelm II; it could only be done that way. This Caligula was at the same time an initiate, because everything had already become external. Of course, what the ravens had to do when it was not taken very seriously could be understood from what the princes also did. So Caligula had become a sun person, but of course only on the outside, like someone who, let's say, is a “general” who puts on military robes at the age of five or six. So Caligula had become an initiate. He had only taken the outward appearance. But he was even supposed to initiate others! During a ceremony, the story happened to him where the symbolic blow is struck with the sword at one of the sphinxes, that he actually killed the person concerned with the sword! But of course that didn't bother Caesar at all. With the Romans, everything had become so externalized that they no longer understood any of it inwardly. No wonder they couldn't understand Christianity at all.

And so Christianity in Rome passed to the secular ruler. In the times when Christianity came to Rome, there was the secular ruler who, however, saw himself as a god – of course, because one became a god when one was an initiate. Augustus was seen as a god; his successors as well. But in addition, there was the Pontifex Maximus, the “great bridge builder”. That was the spiritual ruler. But he had gradually become a shadow in Rome, had no significance, and the only significance was the worldly ruler. So it was, of course, more in line with a people who had the Romulus as their ancestor, who had gathered together all the scoundrels from the surrounding area. And now, you see, it was precisely through Rome that Christianity was secularized.

And that is what I wanted to tell you today about the outer form of Christianity. Next time, next Wednesday, I will discuss the inner form, how the sun really influenced Jesus.

[ 1 ] My dear friends! Today we need to pursue what we had started yesterday, by adding details to some of the requests. Above all questions, as difficult as they may be—be it in the religious sense, or anthroposophic sense—will be those related to knowledge which reaches into the future. Such knowledge into the future can only be understood if one is able to discuss all prerequisites for such knowledge, so to speak. You know, of course, that outer materialistic science also has certain knowledge of the future which is quite possible.

[ 2 ] Solar and lunar eclipses can be predicted to the second, and these predictive calculations depend upon having a definite insight into the details of the phenomena. In outer materialistic science it relates to this insight of the context of the phenomena being hidden, because it is presented in formulae; the formulae are learnt and one no longer really knows where they came from; they actually originate from observations made in the very same area to which they are applied. Nobody would be able to calculate the solar and lunar eclipse predictions if solar and lunar eclipses were not originally observed, forming a basis for observation and formulas obtained from these, which now continue as based on the belief of a regularity applied to these phenomena. The psychological process which takes place here is far more complicated than one is often aware of today. Things start becoming particularly complicated if they are not applicable only to outer, spatial mechanical or mathematical kinds of laws, but if they deal with what happens inwardly, in the intrinsic sense, in the course of the world. Because these questions are based on the prerequisites of modern consciousness they can barely be studied, that's why we find modern Bible explanations—and the priest must also be a Bible explainer—so difficult, like chapter 13 of the Mark Gospel and everything relating to this chapter. Besides that, in later translations this particular chapter has become extraordinarily difficult to understand because it relates to circumstances which have become the most corrupt.

[ 3 ] Now I would like, before I proceed into the situation of this chapter, to say something about the predictions in the Christian sense. You have the feeling that within the development of Christendom there had already been, especially in olden times, references to future events, and future events of the most important kind had already played a major role. You also get the feeling that present day people hardly believe such indications, and that they actually can hardly reckon with such indications being anything but illusion. One always gets the feeling, when such things do happen—in modern language use it would be called prophesy—that something else must play along, other than real knowledge of what will happen in the future. You must however make yourself familiar with it, it is after all also present in our time, in the time of intellectualism—and rightly so in this time—it has eradicated certain traditional, inherited, atavistic clairvoyance. There are clairvoyant people of the older kind who are still serving certain theorists, also of the 19th century, as examples from which they wanted to prove the existence of a supernatural world they could not experience for themselves. We only need to consider such a type of prediction, then we will see—quite equitably, whether we believe it or not—what is actually meant. Such cases could happen, and it has, if I take it as typical, and still occurred numerous times in the course of the last century, whereas in the present time it shows a certain decline. Such abilities are still common in country people. It could happen that someone sees in an advantageous moment in a dream, how he, riding a horse, falls and hurts himself. Such seeing is certainly a sight into the future and one can, even by being careful, find out everything with all the scientific chicaneries that exclude an influence on following events, one cannot speak otherwise but admit a true looking into the future exists. This is something which had been recorded by the most earnest theorists everywhere, up to the middle of the 19th century. You can find this writing originating from otherwise quite serious natural scientists from the first half of the 19th century, discussed in numerous journals. As I've said, whoever observes people today must see that such atavistic abilities have gone backwards and become drowned out by intellectual life; a condition which completely excludes looking into the future.

[ 4 ] Now, as we've said, we must at least familiarise ourselves with such abilities which can be called looking into the future, abilities present in ancient times and certainly understood in the surroundings of Christ Jesus, when he spoke in a certain way about the future. In order not to be misunderstood, I want to call your attention straight away to something else. When you take literature which appears as Christian literature according to the actual Gospels, according to the letters of Paul and others, of direct disputes attributed to the disciples, and you take the later literature of the so-called church fathers—under 'church father' it is meant those who were still students of disciples or at least scholars or the apostles not too long ago—when you take the literature of the church fathers, then you will often discover three characteristics.

The first characteristic is that these writings have become dried up of an actual living understanding for the Old Testament. You will clearly notice how everywhere in these writings, up to the "Shepherd of Hermas," the craving comes to the fore to depict the Old Testament intellectually, in this case interpreting it allegorically, therefore it is pulled out of a real encounter to a mere concept, into what is, so to say, intellectual. The restyling of concepts into allegory puts up with the tradition of the Old Testament as a tradition of facts, told as facts—in reality these are to be understood through the intellect. That is the first essential characteristic. [ 5 ] The second essential characteristic is that the Second Coming of the Christ is clearly mentioned everywhere in the writings, that is to say, exactly what is referred to in the 13th chapter of Mark's Gospel in the most delicate sense of the word. It was certainly, one must admit, the belief in the entire spirit of the church fathers' writings from the 4th century that the Second Coming of Christ can be predicted in the near future. They called people's attention to how the old world would fall apart and how the Christ would reappear, and added to this, the imagination was created that Christ would appear in a similar way, in the most wonderful way, strolling over the earth, as it had been the case before.

[ 6 ] The third element in the writings of the church fathers is what actually contributed a great deal to the church doctrine. Everywhere a kind of legal element developed, a warning to obey the bishops, the dogmas, to submit to the constitution in the developing church. So everywhere something was taking place which one could be referred to as this: To the believers it was said that they will fall into bad luck if they develop anything which comes from within themselves, while they are searching for a religious path.—The religious path given by the church's constitution and the legal constitution, which ordered obedience to the church, was something that has continued particularly in Catholicism to the widest extent, which even as an experience today can still oppose one very forcefully.

[ 7 ] I once, for example, had a conversation in Rome with a priest brought up in quite the Jesuit manner—it was very hard, to get this conversation going—indicating all the sources which gave him the basis of his teaching and also showing the way in which he was to arrive at the teaching content. He pointed out that one then had the written words containing the dogmatic church content, and those were all things which needed no proof, they simply had to be believed, in as far as dogma was concerned. He pointed out that only interpretation was allowed, one was not to criticise or prove anything in the Gospels, while reading them again and again; one had the church tradition which flowed into the breviary, and then one had a living example of the life of the saints.

[ 8 ] The former could not very well form the subject of a discussion involving this cleric because one had to admit that what the Catholic Church wanted to protect was presented in such an ingrained sense, that there was no way around it. But the latter, the relationship of the Catholic clerics to the saints, that of course is something which creates certain difficulties even with the Catholic clergy when they think about it, and here an objection could be used. Saints are fixed personalities valued by the church for their faultless manner in their direct, vital relationship to the supersensible worlds, either through the understanding of how they had found the revelation out of the supersensible world through their inner experience, or that they performed deeds which can only be understood through accepting these deeds as having been performed with divine assistance.

You may know that such a canonization in the Catholic Church requires a very detailed ceremony, preceded by the exact determination of how the relevant person lived and what he thought, a process which should not last years, but centuries. Further, this examination must end with a ceremony which exist of all those who come forward, who have something well founded to present regarding the living exchange the personality has in relation to the divine, and to some extent always enter into what is said in such a way, that the so-called Advocatus diaboli, the representative of the demonic world, who has to refute everything that the other side has to say for the relevant canonisation, is brought to attention. So there will be an extensive trial, at which the being who should be regarded as the Diabolus, the devil, will have on the other side, the Christ representative, for the Christ-like will always be drawn into the discussion with the devilish representative, when a saint is to be recognised.

[ 9 ] Now of course I could have interrupted this conversation with him, regarding the church always admitting to the possibility of lively exchanges with the divine, so that supersensible experiences were possible. It is however the dogma of the Catholic Church that such supersensible experiences which could take place, are devilish and that they must be avoided, one must be forced to flee from them. Of course, it is certainly the Catholic Church's dogmatism which says that all of Anthroposophy is objectionable from the basis that it claims to touch on insights in the supersensible worlds. For this reason, Anthroposophy is rejected because such an insight can only be arrived at with the help of the Devil; it is therefore evil. That is something which is judged by the Catholic Church as quite necessary, quite consistent. Things are already such that they must not be blurred. Whoever thinks reconciliation between Anthroposophy and the Catholic Church can without further ado be brought about, is mistaken. The Initiate knows, for the Catholic Church to be consequent from their side, it will regard Anthroposophy as devilish, and more than ever, the Catholic church today has allowed such consequences to become its custom.

[ 10 ] As an answer from the priest I received his claim that any exchange with the supersensible worlds may in no way be wished for; if it happens in this world it must be made clear that the divine principle has been besieged by the devil.—So, I said to him: If you now have such an exchange with the supersensible worlds, would you consider that as devilish?—He answered: Yes, he has on his side the talent to merely work with literature of the saints in order to know that something like that exists; but he doesn't desire to become a saint himself.—This is now the last sentence which would be expressed by these people, this person also did not express it because if he did, then the last sentence would be that he says: To regard me as a saint, the church has the right to wait for two to three centuries.

[ 11 ] We can draw all kinds of conclusions from this. You could for example connect all kinds of evil thinking habits to it which is relevant particularly at present, when someone says that everything which can be said about the causes of the war, one would only really know about after decades when all the archives have been combed through. If you have any sense for reality you would know that in a couple of decades everything would be so blurred that no truth would be discovered in the archives in order to determine something as some tradition, and you would know that one, I could call it, very insidious step could renounce what has been said out of the consciousness of the present. This is also something which must be considered more deeply, but it only belongs in parenthesis here: I only want to draw your attention to it, that with the proclamation of a saint, waiting for such a long time, things in question could have become thoroughly blurred, and you can have insight into the Catholic Church's extraordinarily difficult burden towards its real progress.

[ 12 ] These three characteristics you will find in post apostolic literature during the first four centuries: the allegoric explanation of the Old Testament, the reference to the Second Coming of Christ and the destruction of the old world, and the admonition of obedience to the superiors. We need to focus our present interest primarily on the middle one, the reference to the Second Coming of Christ, because to this reference we need to link line 6 of the 13th chapter of the Gospel of Mark: Many will come as though they came in my name and say: I am he, and will lead many astray.—In this chapter you find a remarkable reference; many will come and appear in the name of Christ, and they will forthwith be referred to one or another person who also designate themselves as Christ. Here you see something extraordinary. On this basis it is extraordinary to see—I will speak more closely about these things but I'm leading up to it—that already at this point in the Mark Gospel the reference is linked to the view of the church fathers of the post apostolic time. By presenting it thus, that the Christ will reappear in this way, it is at the same time the fulfilment of the prophecy that tempters will come who all want to be designated as Christs; and this is what also happened in the first centuries, in this sense many came to the fore, who actually referred to themselves as Christ. An astonishing amount of literature has been lost in the first centuries—these things can actually only be found through spiritual science.

[ 13 ] So we must say - and I have expressly spoken about it—if we look at the totality of facts, the Christian church fathers lived in a misunderstanding of the Gospels, perhaps even a really bad misunderstanding of the Gospels. When we actually bring our feelings into the Gospels, as I have shown you yesterday, when we really with our whole heart and entire soul find ourselves with ever more wonder towards the Gospels, then we would find it inordinately difficult to find our way with our intellect to the first church fathers. We discover with the first church fathers that we relatively early come to the end of understanding because the Gospel itself leads us into immeasurable depths, and we very clearly experience that in a certain way we actually feel uncomfortably touched when after our wonder at the Gospels we now turn to something which appeared in the church fathers.

[ 14 ] Now, this leads us on to something else. Later we will talk about the justification of prophecy but now we want to find our way into the situation in terms of contemporary history and so it appears to me, that if we want to understand the 13th chapter of Mark's Gospel, before anything else, we need to pose this important question: Can the fulfilment of the prophecy be asserted from a correct pursuit of the facts? Surely you first need to be able to understand in what way the prophecy should be fulfilled, and then you could ask, what are the facts? Then, isn't it true, that with something like the destruction of Jerusalem it is easy to raise a question, but when it comes to the destruction of the world which we are still expecting, and regarding the coming of the kingdom of God, modern thought only has information that it still has not happened, that under all circumstances it must have been an illusion, that you had in all cases to do with false prophesies; and then you only have the choice to either interpret these things out of the Gospels, or to follow what the first church fathers did with the Old Testament through allegorizing, or even to do anything as long as it is abstract. All of this is being done against the total feeling which is necessary in relating to the Gospels, which does not arise here. The most important question seems to me to be the impact of the prophecy, because that helps towards understanding the process of prophecy.

[ 15 ] I tell you, my dear friends, for me, the destruction of the world and the coming of the kingdom of God have simply already been fulfilled. We must swing around to look at the world in such a way that we learn to represent this statement as having been fulfilled. Towards this we certainly must penetrate more deeply with spirit into the words of Christ Jesus, as opposed to what usually happens.

[ 16 ] Those who were around Jesus knew exactly, just as the poor shepherds in the fields knew in their inner sight: Christ had arrived. They still knew precisely that the entire life of human beings on earth would have been different in ancient times and it would become something different at this historical moment, even if little by little. Gentle feelings are still around at present, but only gentle feelings. I have such a quiet feeling about it but that must be trained in an intensive manner, for example, as found in the art historian Herman Grimm, and perhaps it will interest you to look into something like this as well because psychologically it leads to what we need to attain, little by little.

The art historian Herman Grimm had roughly the following view: when we go back with our examination of history, from our time to the Middle Ages and further back to the migration of peoples, back to the Roman empire, we still may have the possibility to understand the history. We have such feelings today, we could say, through which we can understand the roman imperial age and roughly the roman republic. We are still capable today, to understand this. When we go back into Greek history with the same kind of soul understanding then we enter into the highest form of illusion if we believe we can understand an Alkibiades, Sophocles, Homer or someone similar. Between grasping the Roman world and the Greek world there is an abyss, and what has been inherited from the Greek world, so Herman Grimm says, is basically a fairy tale; here starts the world of fairy tales, a world into which we no longer can enter with our present day understanding. We must be satisfied with the inherited images presented to us, but we must take these in a general sense as a world of fairy tales, without intellectual understanding.—It still has a soft echo of something which human beings need to create; an inner feeling towards the historical development of mankind.

[ 17 ] This sensitivity of feeling will of course become completely distorted by those whose opinions are according to modern evolutionary theories, which simply go back from the present and consider modern human beings as the most perfect now than what was initially achieved. Here one arrives at a perspective from which one no longer can understand those who were around Christ. One also understands why, out of what soul foundations, such experiences and imaginations of today have become clothed in the scientific view when for instance you look at the answers the imminent thinker, Huxley, gave an archbishop; his words are quite understandable according to the modern perspective. The archbishop said the human being descended from this divine being; the godhead placed him without sin in the world, and that's who has descended into the present human condition.—This archbishop's opinion couldn't but let Huxley reply to this sentence with: I would surely be ashamed as a human being if I have descended so far from my divine origin, but I can be very proud from my animal standpoint of how far I have worked towards who I now am.—

Here you can precisely see the moral impulses entering into what we call objective science. The need to revert to moral impulses is everywhere for those who tinker with science, if this tinkering it is to be believed.

[ 18 ] You must be very clear about the ancient human being before the time of Christ, the heathen person, who without sin, was aware that everywhere, when he observed nature or when he looked into human life, he encountered the divine and nature simultaneously. In the rock spring he didn't just hear the rushing sound we hear today, but he heard what he perceived and interpreted as the voice of the divine. In every animal he saw something that had, so to speak, been brought about from a supersensible world, but despite its deep fall from the supersensible world, if one really understands it, still totally leads back to the contemplation of this supersensible world. In this way the ancient people could not imagine the supersensible world without the divine, being part of it.

[ 19 ] In Judaism, quite an intense feeling came to the fore. It was this: In whatever form or way the divine appears, man may not claim himself to also have the divine appearing in himself in a perfect form, but only at most as an inspiration, but not in its complete form. This was something the orthodox Jew didn't even want to touch in his thoughts; that which he still permitted for the rest of nature, that everywhere the divine may be revealed, and what he considered facts in his Old Testament, this he didn't allow to happen in people. For the surrounding heathen world, for the old way of observation, it was self-explanatory that the mineral kingdom, the plant and animal kingdoms were consequentially built on one another, and so, just like the rest of nature was divine, so also the human being is an incarnation of the divine. At the same time thousands had a firm belief that the human being was ever more losing the possibility through his outer life, to realize God within.

So, it had been an original human ability to create the divine within, but people gradually lost this ability. Those who surrounded Christ experienced that the divine, which had been in humanity earlier and which also appeared in the outer world, this divine element no longer could appear in humanity; it was given to the earth, it appeared everywhere through the Son of God but stopped appearing in mankind and can no longer appear in human children. It must come once again from elements outside the earth so that the last incarnation of the divine, which actually becomes a new time, can catch up, but it must come from outside—if I might express myself roughly—from the stock out of that which the earth had originally loaned.

[ 20 ] From this point of view—knowledge, at that time, my dear friends, was filled with feeling, which as such took place in immediate experience—from this point of view those around Christ looked on with feeling at that which had invaded the Roman Empire and was now being fulfilled in Asia. What was this, which was accomplished through the invasion of the Roman Empire into Asia? You need to look at what actually penetrated the consciousness of that time. The ongoing war was at that time outer events which in their final dependency were also derived from divine will. However, this was not the most important aspect; the most important thing was that those who sat on the thrones were Roman Caesars who through religion presented themselves as incarnations of gods, and that, as lawful. Caesar Augustus was according to law a recognised incarnation of the godhead. Some Caesars tried, through ceremonies which had been fulfilled in ancient times, to bring about a ritual action which was so close to human truths, to inner human truths, that the Caesars could allow these ceremonies to be fulfilled but transformed into earthly existence, in order for the divine to actually act, for the divine to be made real.

Penetration of these secret divine mysteries into the world can perhaps not be more strongly symbolized than through relating the story of (the Roman Emperor) Commodus, (son of Marcus Aurelius) when he searched for initiation and allowed the ceremony to be fulfilled, because the ceremony also included the symbolic slaughter of an uninitiated person; at his mystery initiation a man was really killed, murdered. In brief, one felt that by this penetration of the Roman Empire, the divine disappeared, and the divine is presumed to be that, thus in the presumption of the divine there is an incarnation of the ungodly, for man must incarnate into something. The divine was not incarnating, it had stopped, so if the divine was not incarnating then in meant the ungodly was incarnating, the enemy of the divine. You could interpret it as you wish, but you will only be right if you understand that those who surrounded Christ Jesus, had said: In the Roman Empire, which is spreading in the world, is the incarnation of the enemy of the divine.

[ 21 ] This is elementary, this is truly a discerning feeling and discernment in Christianity for those who were around Christ Jesus. Never again, from the Christian point of view, would that which had developed further as a dependence on the Roman Empire, be seen as anything other than an earthy bound realm, an empire of the world in opposition to the realm of Heaven. This means in other words: this world which existed then, the divine world, perished, it went under due to the Roman Empire. The downfall was accomplished in the first three centuries up to the middle of the 15th century, as I've mentioned to you. The downfall was accomplished. It is a perished world that now exists, a world that is no longer divine, a world that only gives news of the divine. One must turn to the last, who had become the first, to the divine incarnation of Christ in Jesus, who through his own power gave the possibility, through the handling—if I could use such an expression—through the handling of that which is associated with the fulfilment of the Holy Spirit in one, not by nature, but in a direct way to reach the divine-spirit world, which one can also find in nature when one has found the following of Christ Jesus through the spirit.

The world is coming to an end. The Christ is no longer coming as an earth dweller, but out of the clouds, out of the cosmos he will come again. In this way he comes to everyone who has the awareness of what was meant by the world before, which perished with the Roman Empire.

[ 22 ] My dear friends! It is an unpleasant truth for those who want to be within today's consciousness; they don't know what to do about it; it is an unpleasant truth certainly for those who from an erroneous view want to apologize for Christianity before the present time. It is an extraordinary chapter in the involvement of today's world when people come and say Christianity is impractical, Christianity is something which allows escape from the world, Christianity has a mystical atavistic element which makes it unworldly. Then others come along who want to excuse Christianity by discussing away what some are saying who considered the world in a strong spiritual light and who still have a relationship to the world. The excuse is given that things don't need to be understood, they are really not meant so badly regarding fleeing from the world and with it coming to an end, it has continued its progress from the first centuries up to now; the world is just and anything some fanatical priest or fanatical pastor claims about the downfall of the world from God, is really not so seriously meant, it has only come about through the Catholic influence; one must wipe it out.

In brief, my dear friends, the largest part of pastoral and theological work exists in this. Place your hand on your heart and learn through it, feel out of your heart what I have said regarding the necessity for the renewal of Christianity, for the Christian impulse, because the biggest part of what is being preached and discussed exists in the continuous retreat from the recognition of gross intellectualism and the piecemeal eradication of everything out of Christianity, which actually should be understood in a profound way through strong thinking, through such a powerful thinking that the world finds God through Christ, and when God has been discovered through Christ, which can also become practical because in the discovery of the divine, the divine grasped in thought, the godless world can be included to bring about the re-introduction of the divine.

[ 23 ] These powers must be carried in those of you who today want to speak about the renewal of Christianity, you must be able to say: Yes, today we have to look at the divinized world which started with the Roman Empire and goes back to the Roman Empire; but in this world we must not look for the divine. The world, however, can't remain without the divine. We must grasp that which does not come from the earth, something—speaking symbolically—which comes from the clouds, in a spiritual manner. We must find the Kingdom of Heaven in the place of the divinized earth kingdom. The Kingdom of Heaven has opened up and is to be found; and for this reason, we must be there to bring the divine into our earthly world. The downfall of the earth has taken place and continues to happen more and more. When we look at this earthly realm, we are then looking at the heavenly realm which Jesus Christ has brought. You must see, my dear friends, the realm of Heaven spiritually. We must see its arrival; we must be able to feel the fulfilling of what Christ meant when he spoke about the coming of his kingdom, the kingdom which he had to bring into the world and which does not speak out of nature; when it can however work into nature, then one can speak about this kingdom. This is primarily the feeling he stimulated in those who directly surrounded him. This is also what we must strive for in our words, when we really want to speak about these things.

[ 24 ] We see how it is stated in about the first 3 sentences of the Mark Gospel: After Christ left the temple—the temple in which one also heard something within the outer world of the divine—one of his disciples says to him: 'Look, what magnificent stones, and wonderful buildings.' Jesus however said to him: 'You see only the large buildings. There will not be one stone left on top of another, without man taking part in the process of destruction because from now on, all of the outer, ungodly world begins to become a world of destruction.' And he went away and spoke intimately. On the Mount of Olives, he spoke either intimately by himself through teaching people how to pray, or he spoke only to his most intimate disciples, to Peter, James, John and Andrew. To Peter, James, John and Andrew he only spoke about spiritual events as observed from the perspective of divine realms in contrast to destructive events in the world facing destruction.

[ 25 ] You see, I'm neither speaking allegorically, nor symbolically. If you felt that way, you would be putting it in my words. I'm speaking directly out of the situation experienced as it occurred, by me trying, certainly in the words of current speech, to indicate these things. I ask you to now take note of the situation. In order to experience the content of the 13th chapter of St Mark we are taken up the Mount of Olives. It ends with the word: "Awake!"—immediately followed by us being taken to the Last Supper—we are led to the first impetus for the coming of the divine kingdom through Christ placing it in front of us.

[ 26 ] Tomorrow we will continue speaking about it. What I'm saying to you is quite new, by addressing our current consciousness. I certainly want to speak honestly, as these things present themselves to me, because I believe that by only pointing to the very first elements can one come to a true and honest conviction of what is necessary today.

If anybody reads a popular book, about astronomy, for example, then probably above all because he wants to inform himself about the mysterious facts of the universe. He finds his satisfaction, perhaps in such a book if the information makes sense to his reason, sensation, and feeling. He also tries perhaps to penetrate into the matters as far as it is possible to convince himself of such truth, such knowledge, visiting popular talks in which one makes experiments or observatories, laboratories et cetera. However, in any case, one fact remains in force. The human being who reads such things has to assume that still other human beings exist who have these abilities with particular research methods, with particular scientific and technical schooling.

Who reads Haeckel's Natural Creation History may possibly say to himself, yes, this makes sense to my intellect, to my reason and to my feeling.—However, he also becomes aware of the fact that it requires a lot of work to ascertain these facts only. Then maybe he assumes that there is a little group of human beings which deals with the finding of such facts. In quite a similar way, a big part of humanity probably behaves towards other writings which want to bring facts of another field home to the human being, namely towards the so-called religious scriptures.

It is no other relation than that I have just described. Also towards the religious scriptures, the human being asks himself at first, does this speak convincingly to my sensation, emotions, and reason?—Also here, he assumes or assumed in past times at least just as for the external, sensuous facts, which we possibly get to know from the Natural Creation History by Haeckel or from popular representations of astronomy, who know the methods, have the key to ascertain these facts. Thus, the human being also assumed concerning the religious documents that there are single human beings who are able not only to read this truth but also to ascertain it. He assumed that there are single human beings who have the key of them and know methods how one can convince oneself of them directly. Briefly, one has to demand from the religious scriptures, as from any other representation of facts that they come from knowledge, from immediate experience.

The human being assumes that there are single people who ascertain the described sensuous facts using telescopes, microscopes, biological and other methods of investigation. Concerning the communications that are included in the religious documents we must also assume that there are human beings who know the methods to penetrate by the experience into the field, which is described in the religious scriptures. Just as in the Natural Creation History the field of the sensuous facts and in the popular talks the field and the facts of astronomy are portrayed, the field of the supersensible, the invisible, the spiritual is portrayed in the religious scriptures. If we who do not research have to offer the same trust, the same confidence to the religious scriptures, we must assume also that there are single persons in the world who made it their particular task to collect experiences in the world of the supersensible, which forms as spiritual causes the basis of the sensuous world. The human being is not allowed to behave differently towards the representation of a natural creation history and the representation of a supersensible creation history.

Not the behaviour of the human beings towards these matters is different, only the fields are different about which the concerning writings tell. With it, one says that there must be knowing people who are able to ascertain the facts in the religious scriptures. Indeed, up to a certain degree this consciousness has got lost just in our time. Just as it would be of little use if anybody were not able to assume that researchers exist behind the popular scientific representations, also it would not make much sense basically if we did not assume that researchers are behind the statements of the religious scriptures. It is the task of theosophy or spiritual science today to renew and animate the consciousness that there is also a research in the supersensible fields. Spiritual science wants nothing else than to evoke the consciousness in the larger circles again that it is in such a way as I have said it now.

One often translates the word theosophy saying that theosophy is knowledge, wisdom of God. This translation is not right; at least it does not describe what theosophy wants. Knowledge of God is something that the theosophist has in mind as an inkling at first, as something that signifies the last purpose of all knowledge. As little as we already have awareness of all means and abilities of knowledge, just as little as we are allowed to say that we can have a comprehensive or final knowledge of the divine primal ground of the universe today. Humanity develops, advances, also its abilities of knowledge. Perhaps, even the most advanced people cannot form an idea of the insights into the mysterious worlds of existence the human being can get on this way. We have to absolutely realise that European civilised human beings have another concept of divinity than, for example, the so-called savages of Africa or the barbarians who invaded the Roman empire from the north at the beginning of the Middle Ages.

We have to assume that a usual educated person also has another idea of the divine being than Goethe had. Thus, we can also imagine that the human being advances further, that abilities develop in him compared with which Goethe's intuitive and imaginative strength was undeveloped. There we can have an inkling how much more elated and more magnificent the concept of God of those human beings will be than ours are. We can say that we exist, work, and live in Him; however, the knowledge of Him can never be completed. Therefore, theosophy does not think that it wants to be knowledge of God. Theosophy is that knowledge, namely, which attains the deepest, innermost being of the human being, in contrast to the usual, everyday knowledge that acquires the external, sensuous, transient nature of the human being.

Let us realise once: we see colours, light, we hear tones, smell and taste, seize objects, feel heat, cold, and so on, everything with the help of our outer senses. We can also imagine that for anybody who has no ear no sounding world, but a dumb world is around him, for anybody who has no eyes no luminous, no colourful world but a dark one exists. All that is only a summary of that which the human being can perceive with the senses. However, the senses consist of material forces that are handed over to the earth again. What we perceive with them is also something transient. With it, we have realised the transient human being. The physicist shows us that a time comes when the earth is dispersed in countless atoms in which it does no longer exist. Then also no colours, lights, tones, the present forms of minerals, plants and animals exist, the human form itself does no longer exist.

Thus, we have characterised the extent of the transient in the human being. What this transient human being recognises is everyday science, is our official science. With it, I say nothing against this official science. However, this whole science is nothing else than preoccupation with transient matters. However, there is still another possibility to look at the world, namely with those abilities in the human being which are imperishable. The human being bears an imperishable core in himself.

The human being bears an imperishable core that we find in ourselves by introspection, by self-observation to a new existence in the times when the earth is dispersed. He carries this imperishable core to other worlds, and carries that which he recognised as the fruit of this life on earth to another world. What the divine core recognises is the content of spiritual science. Theosophy is not knowledge of other matters of the human being but knowledge of the other part of the human being. Hence, theosophy or spiritual science does not come from such people who want to rise with the usual reason, with the usual senses to a consideration of the spiritual from the sensuous, but from such people who have woken the abilities slumbering in the human being and are thereby able to investigate the supersensible, the imperishable. The usual science considers plants, animals, and human beings according to their usual qualities as they present themselves to the senses. In addition, the spiritual research looks only at that which surrounds us in the world. However, it looks at it with other forces and other abilities and, hence, gets to know the everlasting and imperishable qualities of the things. This is theosophy.

Such researchers who have woken such abilities in themselves are able to ascertain the supersensible facts independently which the confessions communicate. As well as the naturalists ascertain in the laboratory and on the observatory using the strength of the senses and their instruments what you can then read in the popular books, the researchers of the supersensible ascertain by their own experience what was communicated to humanity in the religious documents. In the same sense as we speak of the scientific laboratories and astronomical observatories as research sites, in the same sense we speak of spiritual research sites. We call this spiritual research site—the term does not matter—the Lodge of the Masters of Wisdom.

Because all wisdom must be based on a common origin, because all those who are in a spiritual relationship to these teachers are penetrated and irradiated by that wisdom, all researches also go back to the spiritual primary source. They go back, to the big brotherhood of the most advanced sages who have recognised what those religious documents announced from own observation by the means of spiritual research. You may call this basis of all religions the “spiritual laboratory of humanity,” or the “great White Lodge,” it is the same. Now we know what it means. As any popular book goes back to something that has really been investigated anywhere, each of the great religions goes back to that which was investigated in the spiritual sense in this laboratory of the white brotherhood of humanity. Those who founded the religions were great, excellent individualities who experienced the lessons and instructions of that brotherhood in this big spiritual laboratory. They were introduced into the spiritual life, which forms the basis of all phenomena, and were then sent from there to the various peoples to speak to them in their language and according to their characters.

One taught a uniform ground of knowledge, an ancient truth in that spiritual laboratory, and it is possible that those who advance further by internal development learn the methods of research and can use them as Haeckel and other naturalists used the sensuous methods. It is possible that these find access to the researchers of the spiritual laboratory, that they get to know from which central site the great sages came who went to the south and the west, and brought the great messages to humanity. It is possible that they find the way to those from whom they can learn how all that has come about.

The ancient religious teachers were sent out from the same site, the great founders of a religion who brought the first messages to India the echo of which the European researchers admired so much when they faced the wisdom, which is contained in the old Brahmanism. The same site of wisdom sent out the various Buddhas who brought their messages to the single members of the Asian religions. It sent out the Egyptian Hermes, too, who founded that marvellous religion about which anybody said to Solon (~640-~560 B.C., Athenian statesman, lawmaker and poet): what you know is like the knowledge of children compared with the wisdom of our initiates.

Pythagoras (~570-~495 B.C., philosopher, and mathematician) came out of it, the great teacher of the Greek people. That man came out of it who illuminates the future, whose religion becomes more and more comprehensive and spiritual, Jesus himself. There we have the spiritual connection, and we see how the different religions point back to the central site where the loftiest human wisdom is cultivated. Who looks at the different religions can convince himself that their qualities point to such a central site. Our materialistic cultural researchers have also often recognised resemblances of the different confessions. Zarathustrism, the ancient Indian culture, Buddhism, even the religion that lived in the old America contain all components in which marvellous accordance exists. However, one has believed that this accordance comes from external reasons. One has not penetrated deeply enough because one had lost the key of it. Who gets involved, however, really in the core of truth of the religions can obtain the conviction concerning the religions that the accordance cannot come from the outside, but that it arises from a common core of wisdom, and that they were differently organised considering the single peoples and the different epochs.

If we look at Asia, we still find the remnants of an ancient religion at first, which one cannot understand, actually, as religion in the modern sense. We find this religion in the strange culture of the Chinese. I do not speak about the religion of Confucius, not about that which spread as Buddhism in India and China, but I would like to speak of the remains of the ancient Chinese religion, of Taoism. This religion points the human being to Tao.

One translates Tao as the way or the goal, the destination. However, one gets no clear idea of the being of this religion if one simply sticks to this translation. For a big part of humanity, Tao expresses and already expressed the highest to which the human beings could look up. They thought that the world, the whole humanity would attain it once, the loftiest that the human being bears in himself as a seed and that develops once as a ripe flower from the innermost human nature. Tao signifies a deep, concealed soul ground and an elated future at the same time. Somebody who knows what it concerns not only pronounces it but also thinks of it with shy reverence. Taoism is based on the principle of development. It says, what is around me today is a stage, which will be overcome. I must be clear in my mind that this development in which I am has an aim that I develop to an elated aim and that a force lives in me that urges me to arrive at this destination Tao.

If I feel this big strength in myself and if I feel that with me all beings strive for this goal, then this strength is to me the steering force which blows from the wind against me, which sounds towards me from the stone, which shines towards me from the flash, which sounds towards me from the thunder. It appears in the plant as force of growth, in the animal as sensation and perception. This force produces form by form repeatedly up to that elated goal by which I recognise myself as one with the whole nature, which streams into me and streams from me with every breath, which is the symbol of the loftiest developing spirit that I feel as life. I feel this force as Tao.—One did not speak in this religion of a transcendent god at all, one did not speak about anything that is beyond the world, but of something that gives strength to the progress of humanity.

The human being felt Tao intensely when he was still connected with the divine original source, in particular in the Atlantean age. Our ancestors still had no such advanced reason, no such intelligence like the modern humanity. In return, however, they had a more dreamlike consciousness, an instinctively ascending imagination and their life of thought was in such a way that they were almost innumerate. Imagine the dream life, but increased, so that it makes sense and is not chaotic, and imagine a humanity from whose souls such pictures arise that announce the sensations which are in the own soul, which echo everything that is external round us. One has to imagine the soul world of these prehistoric human beings quite unlike ours. The human being today strives for forming thoughts and images of the environment as exactly as possible. However, the prehistoric human being formed symbolic images, which appeared in him full of life.

If you face a person today, you try above all to form an idea of him whether he is a good or a bad, a clever or a silly person, and you try to get an idea very soberly which corresponds to the external human being. This has never been the case with the prehistoric Atlantean. A picture arose in him, not a rational concept. If he faced a bad human being, a picture arose in him, which was vague and obscure. However, this perception did not become a concept. Nevertheless, he acted on this picture. If he had a bright, beautiful picture before himself, which appeared dreamlike in his soul, then he knew that he could trust in such a being. He got fear of a picture if it arose in black, red, or brown colours in him. He did not yet grasp realities with reason and intellect, but they appeared as inspirations. He felt as if the divinity working in these pictures was also in him. He spoke of the divinity, which announced itself in the blowing of the wind, in the whispering of the woods and in the pictures of his soul life if he felt the urge to look up to an elated human future. He called this Tao.

The present human being who replaced this ancient humanity relates to the spiritual powers differently. He has lost the strength of the immediate beholding, which was more vague and twilighted than ours in certain respects. He has attained the developmental stage of the intellectual and rational ideation, which is higher in certain respects, however, also lower in certain respects. The modern human being thereby outranks the prehistoric human being because he owns a sharp, pervasive intellect; but he is no longer feeling the lively connection with the divine Tao forces of the world. That is why he has the world as it reveals itself in his soul, and on the other side his intelligence. The Atlantean felt the pictures living in him. The modern human being hears and sees the external world. These two things, outside and inside, are opposing each other, and he is no longer feeling the connection of both.

This is the great sense of the human development. Since the land masses have risen again, after the floods of the oceans had flooded the continents, since that time humanity longs for finding the connection of inner soul life and external sensuous world again. That is why the word religare (Latin)—religion is justified. It means nothing else than to combine again what was connected once and is separated now, the world and the ego. The different forms of the confessions are nothing else than the means, than the ways taught by the great sages to find this connection again. Therefore, they are formed so differently to become understandable in this or that form to the human beings of any cultural level.

The ancient Indian had an excessively growing plant world around himself, which made him dreamy in his soul and did not make it necessary to produce external tools and external culture. He had to get religion in another form than the modern human being. If the human being lives quietly, other images appear in his soul, than if he works with coarse tools and must be technically active. The external nature is different in the different areas of the earth, and the inner soul life of the human beings is different, too. Because the connection should be sought by the different religions, it is only a matter of course that the masters had to determine the way of finding the connection differently for different peoples and different times.

The first way to determine this connection, to look for the ancient Tao of Atlantis, is the religion of the ancient India. This received the instructions of the holy Rishis, great initiates in ancient times whose elated teachings still go on sounding in the marvellous Vedic poems and in the Vedanta philosophy of the ancient Brahmans, which extends to the loftiest levels of human understanding. It was announced to humanity in broad outlines there that there is something that as a uniform world ground serves everything as a base. One called it Brahman, Parabrahman, Bhagavad and so forth.

What we find in the Vedas, which are only an echo of the original old teachings, shows us how great and stupendous and, at the same time, how sublime the concepts were by which that subtle spirituality attempted to reach the divine original source of being. One could circumscribe it as follows: once the spiritual hosts assembled round the original being and asked it who it was, and it said, I am not that who I am if I am able to define myself by anything other than by myself. If you define a thing, you look for a higher concept. You define the single animal beings, the lion, the eagle, the dog, the wolf, while you change over to the superior concepts of the cat species, the dog species, the bird species et cetera. You define the single winds, while you change over to the general concept of wind. Thus, anything in the world has its name that indicates what stands above it. I, however—the Brahman said to the spirit hosts—I have no name which stands above me. I am the I-am.

From this original source, the human being started; he shall come to it again. There was also development in the ancient India. Development was the magic word by which the human being felt his destination. There must have been anything, as the confession says, that leads to the point on which the human being stands today. Once there must have been a longing that leads him from the divine origin down into this world, to the necessary stage on which we stand today. As true and inevitable as it was that there was such a yearning and desire which leads into the world, as true it is that there must be a force that leads the human being again out of it, so that he brings the fruits of this world back again to the divine original source. This force is the overcoming of the desire by the divine desires, the purification of the destinations by the divine destination.

Now it was something else that was felt as a religion than in the ancient times of which we have spoken. Now, it was no longer the god who revealed himself to the inside, now it was the god revealing himself from the outside, because the human being had to create an abyss between himself and the outside world. The word obviously replaces the immediate life and the sheer strength, and Veda means nothing else than “word.” By this word, advanced, wise human beings announced the origin and destination of the human being, which forms the basis of the universe. One had another idea of this word in ancient times than today if one speaks of the word.

I would like to try to give you an idea of that which one felt speaking of the Veda, of the Logos, and later of the Word. The human being gives names to the things. He says, this is this and that is that. However, if his mouth names the things, it is no arbitrariness, but these are the same names, which once the divine original soul of humanity pronounced from itself and thereby created the things. The human being sees the things and pronounces the names afterwards. However, once the original soul spoke the names first and according to the word, the things formed. This is why there an original soul was in the ancient times, which expressed the words of creation. The words became things and the human soul afterwards found the words out of the things, which the god had put into them.

It revived the sleeping words out of the things. The human being behaved to the divinity this way where one had religious sensation, the sensation towards the word, which lived with the ancient Indians really. Therefore, the opinion combined with the word that there are human beings who are able to look deeper into nature and the being of the world, who are able to directly echo in their words and announce what once the divinity breathed out of itself into the world. One perceived such human beings as initiates. The ancient Indian considered his Rishis not as usual human beings, but as such beings who had reached the level of immortality already in the physical body and live not in the sensory world, but with their souls in the higher heavenly world and have contact with the gods, with the spiritual beings who form the basis of the world. While one looked up at the human beings who had developed the Tao in themselves in this way, one was aware that every human being would also attain this stage once.

The doctrine of rebirth, of the repeated return was combined with it. Buddha did not speak out of his imagination but out of his perception when he spoke to his believers and said, I see back at one, two, three, four, ten, hundred lives.—He spoke of these hundred lives as the human being speaks of one life. In these many lives, he obtained everything that enabled him to speak no longer about the experience of the sensuous world, but about the experience of the supersensible worlds and to bring the message of these supersensible worlds to humanity. This supersensible knowledge is an original component of all religions.

If we put ourselves once again in the peoples feeling the Tao. They not only tried to unite in the religion with the divine, but they also considered themselves as embodiments, as covers of the divine. This was their immediate consciousness. There were human beings who could not think correctly; they were not as clever as we are, but had a direct consciousness that they surrounded a divine core as a fruit surrounds the pit. They saw and felt this core, and they looked through it at the past and the future. They thereby felt the doctrine of reincarnation in themselves.

At that time, the immigrants found such a consciousness. At that time, the ancient Indian teachers who gave the first Brahma culture to the Indians still found a lively view of re-embodiment. Hence, all religions, which started from this site, have the teaching of reincarnation. One felt the Tao in its different creation of human activity. It is only a matter of course that the human being of our period who has separated his soul life from the big external powers could not overlook so many lives, but only saw that he represented this limited soul life. From every next stage, which extends northbound then—starting from the ancient Persian religion—the consciousness of the fact disappeared that the human soul is a cover around the core reincarnating forever. The consciousness confined itself to the zenith between birth and death and to how within birth and death “religare“, religion, has to be sought for. There one felt the contrast of a duality instead of the unity for the first time.

Whereas the Taoist human being of the Atlantean age felt his connection with the original source vividly, and the Brahmanic human being still tried to rouse the Brahman, which is thought outside and within the human being as the same, the human being felt a certain duality, a dualism in Persia first. He felt that which has originated from the human being, as an inside and outside, as an original ground and present human figure. He looked up to the original ground from which everything had risen round him, he looked up to the word from which plant, animal, and human being had arisen according to the physical figure. However, he still felt something else: he felt that anything was therein that did not be in accordance with the original harmony that has to become only again like the original divine. He felt the latter as renunciation from the original divine. He faced the contrast, the duality of light and darkness or of male and female. They represent the original ground and that which expects the human soul in the material compression. This is the second level of human development.

The third stage faces us in the prehistorical and historical Egypt; it is preserved for us as the Book of the Dead. There the human being felt a third aspect besides the duality. He saw a light, the sun, illuminating the earth and saw it penetrating this with its beams and enlivening the seeds and beings slumbering in the earth, and saw how the primal ground had to be fertilised. We find this triad original ground, conception, new life, symbolised as Osiris, the sun, the god of light; as Isis, the matter, and as Horus, the life developing from it. These were three Egyptian divinities. The triad appears here. This triad becomes a basic core in all later confessions.

As trinity the divinity faces us in the confessions where it is called Father, Word and Holy Spirit—Isis, Osiris, Horus—atma(n), buddhi, manas. We find the triad everywhere in the religions now. We have recognised the reason. It faces us with pictures or words in Asia, in Egypt with the priests, but also in the Greek-Roman world, with Augustine, then as nuances in the Middle Ages.

If we have got a bigger perfection in the future, that strength will have appeared as a forming one to which we owe our existence and which works today as a concealed primal ground of the being in us. One felt this as the divine, the inexpressible of the human being that is identical with the first essential component of the tripartite world. One felt then what lives in the human being, what strives for this highest as the word active in the present, the son, who originated from the father who rests unutterably in him. As true as this Father's ground forms the future, more perfect human being, he created the developing son, the buddhi, the second human member, which is not yet perfect but is the reason why we strive for perfection. This is the second being. Also in the past this original ground worked. As well as the sensuous human being was created by the universal primal ground in the past, also that which has already assumed and given off shape in him has something that has likewise arisen in the past from the primal ground and is already developed now.

Let us look at the universe, how it makes itself perceptible as colours, tones, smells and tactile sensations, it streamed from the inexpressible primal ground. In such respect, we may call this primal ground, which appears to us, the creatures, spirit, also in the Christian sense. However, the creation of the world is not finished. The world is a germ, something that has a soul that has the impulse of the future in itself. This is the son. Hence, one called this striving the Word, Veda, Edda. The third one is a strength in us that becomes discernible in the future in us: the Father's ground of all being deep set in any of our souls.

Feeling this vividly means feeling the trinity, making it the being of the entire internal imagination. Persona (Latin) signifies mask or external figure, cover. Hence, the religion shows this core of truth, which I have just explained, in three different masks, in three persons. God has three different persons. That means that he appears in three different masks: Spirit, Word, and Father. With it, we have touched that confession at the same time that then led to Christianity. If you understand this really, you find this truth also expressed in it. If you correctly understand the deepest Gospel, that of John, you find the same consciousness of religare, of the connection with a higher consciousness that appeared in human form. It is the teachings of the incarnate Logos, the incarnate divinity, the present divinity that lives in brotherliness with both forms of the divinity, with the active Spirit coming from the past, working in the present, and the Father creating in the present into the future. Thus, the Son originated from the Father, is connected with the Spirit at the same time, and that is why the Son is the great preannouncement that will lead to the Father.

The words no one comes to the Father except by me (John 14:5), by the divine essence of the present, point to this. He says that he sends the Spirit again, the essence of that which is already in the world. As true as Christ said, I will be with you always, to the end of time (Matthew 28:20), it is also true that he will come again that the whole Christianity has been a preparation of the new figure. The Spirit is there provisional, the knowledge, the science, the religions were taught provisionally as they were taught in the past. The religious documents were preserved to us and now the theologians try to interpret them and to teach according to them. This is the way now theology works in place of wisdom. Theosophy means wisdom and truth, theology means the doctrine of wisdom and truth. As well as theology originated from spiritual science, theology has to go back to spiritual science.

I have often drawn your attention to the condition of former research, and that then a reversal took place. Once one trusted in the books of the old sages, in Plato, Aristotle and others at all sites where one taught. Researchers were not there, but interpreters. I have that strange time in mind about which theology tells that one could no longer understand later when one learnt to read in the book of nature. The confidence in the written was almost absolute. If, for example, a naturalist had stated that the nerves do not start from the heart, but from the brain, one said, nevertheless, Aristotle says differently, and Aristotle is right, although one saw the demonstrated phenomena. Today in wide sections of the population, the consciousness does not yet exist that there is a key that there are research sites and research methods that ascertain the facts of the spiritual worlds as the observatories or the laboratories ascertain the facts of the sensuous world.

Since thirty years it has been announced again that there is such a thing like a spiritual central site of humanity, and with it the theosophists say nothing more unbelievable, than if Haeckel says: this is in that and this way.—If Haeckel argues anything, we assume that he has found the proofs of it in his research. We assume also that the statements in the religious documents were proved by the facts to be true, and that there are persons among us which themselves can go back again to the sources. Theosophy or spiritual science means drawing the attention to the spiritual researchers and to the central site. It speaks again from experience about the matters of the supersensible, as those did who originally created the religious documents, from their inner experience. As well as 400 years ago, the natural sciences experienced a revival, theosophy or spiritual science should today signify a revival of the immediate spiritual research.

Thus, we are put in the necessity to return to that core of truth, which I tried to outline from the Tao up to the appearance of the great saviour of humanity. I wanted to generate awareness of the relation of spiritual science to the central point, the core of truth in the different religions. Those who have not yet approached spiritual science maybe come again to hear more. However, some may also say that it is a kind of neo-Buddhism, a new religion, something oriental; it wants to bring in something foreign to our world. However, this is not the case; this would not be spiritual-scientific. Only those speak in such ways who do not have the will to listen to that which spiritual science says. The aspiration of spiritual science is to look for the core of truth in our external confessions, to go back to the sources from which the books existing today were created. It is necessary to go back to the facts, then the books are better understood, then new life flows in humanity.

Christianity is to be understood as a religion that has to prepare humanity for the future, as the religion of the Son by which one finds the Father on the same ways. At the same time, it is one of the most important tasks of spiritual science to get this religion across. Therefore, it searches for the core of truth in all religions to find it in our own. We recognised that religion originated not from childish images, but from the highest wisdom, from spiritual research. However, we also learnt that one can abreast with science and be, nevertheless, a religious person. If this knowledge finds an echo again, the lively feeling awakes for that which one of the theosophists, Goethe, called into the world more than hundred years ago like a program, like a beautiful and marvellous saying to humanity. I would like to close with this saying today, confessing that there can be no true science, no deeper human observation, which shows the religious truth as something childish; and that all religions contain as a core of our highest destination:

Who has science and art,
Has religion, too;
Who does not have both,
Should have religion.

The last lecture dealt with the subject of how the Christ Impulse will unfold in future times, and also, of course, in our own epoch. We heard that sheaths will weave themselves as it were around the Christ Impulse: Wonder into an Astral Body; feelings of love or Compassion into an Ether-Body; the power of Conscience into what corresponds to a Physical Body. Thereby that Ideal Being Whose “ I ”—the Christ Impulse Itself—passed into the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha, will reach completion in the course of the time still remaining to Earth-evolution. The fundamental character of the future Ideal of humanity was described in one of its aspects and the present lecture will endeavour to add yet another, different picture.

The Christ Impulse came, so to say, in the middle of the epoch following upon the great Atlantean catastrophe. This epoch may be said to extend from the time of the Atlantean catastrophe to the next great catastrophe of which you may read in the lectures on the Apocalypse. (Nuremburg, 1908.) In the middle of this period, the most important of all events in Earth-evolution takes place—the coming of the Christ Impulse. As the last lecture indicated, it is not necessary to turn our eyes to Palestine in order to realise that something of the highest importance was taking place at that time in Earth-evolution. We have only to study the Graeco-Latin epoch of culture, lying as it does in the middle of the Post-Atlantean period, and recall one of its characteristic features; this again can be compared with a similar feature in the preceding Third epoch and in our own epoch.

The essential and fundamental character of a Greek Temple has often been described. Its form stands there as a complete, self-contained, independant whole, even when it is not actually before our eyes, even when we conceive of no human being anywhere near it. Inside a Greek Temple, human beings always seem to be a disturbing element; they do not really belong to it, they do not belong inside it. For what, in reality, is a Greek Temple? We can only understand it in its whole form and structure, if we think of it as the dwelling-place of a living, invisible God who has come down to the physical plane. That is the reason why every Temple is dedicated to one particular God. And when we picture the God in the Temple—with no human beings present—the God for whom a dwelling-place has been built on Earth ... then we have grasped the “idea” embodied in the Greek Temple. Human beings really have no place there. This was the idea underlying the whole architecture of a Greek Temple. Such architecture could only arise in an epoch when the Divine Spiritual was known to pervade all existence on the physical plane. Men whose paths appeared to be everywhere steeped in the Divine could feel all the depth of meaning contained in words uttered by one of themselves: “Better it is to be a beggar in the Upper World than a king in the realm of the Shades!” ... that is to say, in the world lying on the other side of the Gate of Death. It was the period when human beings experienced, in greatest intensity, their union with the physical plane and with the Spiritual pervading the physical plane.

Let us compare a Greek Temple with a building of the same character in the preceding epoch—and with buildings which, in our own epoch, indicate its fundamental attitude and trend. Think of an Egyptian Temple, even of the Pyramids: they become intelligible only when we see them as expressions of man's aspiration to the Divine—to the Divine Godhead who has not yet descended to the physical plane. In the architecture of the Egyptian time, every line, every form, expresses the striving of man towards the Divine-Spiritual. But these mysterious and deeply symbolical buildings indicate in themselves that men must have undergone preparation before the architectural forms could help them to find the way to the Divine-Spiritual. They needed preparation: they must have reached the first stage of Initiation. The same applies to the architecture of Asia Minor. In our own epoch, Gothic architecture gives the keynote. This is an occult fact. It is impossible to have the same conception of a Gothic Cathedral as of a Greek Temple; for a Gothic Cathedral is incomplete without the congregation of believers. It is simply not complete without the human beings within it! All its forms seem to convey that they are there to receive the prayers of the believers—the “believers,” in contrast to the “Initiates” in ancient Egypt. Anyone who can discern what these things mean, realises from the course taken by the evolution of Form from the Egyptian Temple, through the Greek Temple, to the Gothic Cathedral, that the impulse leading to the unfolding of the human “ I ” entered at a certain point into the process of earthly existence. Wherever we look we can perceive how the Christ Impulse lays hold of man, leaves its stamp and signature upon all happenings, all development, and it seems grotesque when philosophical or theological thought declares that acceptance of such an Impulse rests upon the basis of historical records. It does not rest upon any historical record whatever, but simply and solely upon a discerning, clear-sighted observation of human evolution; for no matter where we look, we see that development follows the same course as that revealed in Architecture. The Initiate who alone was capable of understanding the architectural forms of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch—the Third Post-Atlantean epoch—knew that he must raise himself above the level of ordinary manhood: then and only then could he ascend into the region of Divine Spiritual life. The Initiate of the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch knew that in the physical world he was living together with the Divine, but he had very little connection with what the Greeks called the World of Shades, because by that time man had descended more deeply into physical existence. And when the Gods did not mingle with men in the Temples, the Greeks felt no connection with that other world.

Since the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch these conditions have changed—changed in the sense that it is possible now for every single soul to find the path to the Divine-Spiritual. It is extremely important to realise this for it is the most concrete expression of the fact that in ancient times men were much nearer to the Spiritual in their consciousness, in their knowledge and in their life of soul. Then came the descent to the physical plane and now there must be a gradual re-ascent. We are living in the age when the re-ascent must be undertaken consciously—whereas, to begin with, the Christ Impulse worked unconsciously in men.

Our own epoch is a kind of recapitulation of the Egypto-Chaldean period. Of the Graeco-Latin epoch there is no recapitulation, for it lies in the middle of the seven consecutive periods. The Third epoch is being recapitulated, in a certain form, in our own age; the Second epoch, that of ancient Persian culture, will be recapitulated in the Sixth epoch by which our own will be followed; and in the far distant Seventh epoch, before a stupendous catastrophe, the First epoch, that of ancient Indian culture, will be recapitulated—not, of course, in the same form, for the recapitulation will everywhere bear the imprint of the Christ Impulse.

A certain consciousness existed, especially in olden times, of what has come to pass in the evolution of mankind. Olden times, of course, were paramountly conscious of the descent of humanity, the descent to the physical plane from the heights of Divine-Spiritual existence. But for every process there must be preparation. There had been preparation, too, for the Impulse given by the Mystery of Golgotha in the Fourth epoch—the Impulse for the re-ascent. This Impulse had its “forerunners”—in Elijah, John the Baptist and others. But consciousness of the fact that mankind has descended from Divine-Spiritual existence and in the future must re-ascend into the worlds of Divine Spirit, was present not only in the culture which eventually made its way into the West; evidences of such consciousness are to be found in every civilisation.

A very widespread and characteristic idea finds expression in the traditions of practically all the peoples—an idea which may, it is true, have very ramified applications, but can finally be associated with a definite and specific tradition. It is a tradition upon which there has been much reflection and upon which occult knowledge alone can shed light, namely, the tradition of the “Flood.” Much that is connected with this tradition refers, of course, to far earlier times, but the following is brought clearly to light by occult investigation. Nearly all the peoples who have left reliable historical records or legends refer to the Flood as having taken place about three thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha; that is the period indicated by the legends. There is not enough time today to explain why this last Flood which was supposed to have occurred three thousand years before our era, cannot be taken to indicate a great physical catastrophe or deluge. Obviously it does not refer to the Atlantean catastrophe, for that took place very much earlier. The “Flood,” therefore, must mean something entirely different. Yet the fact should not be lost sight of that the traditions of all the peoples in question place the Flood in the fourth millennium before our era. Although the dates vary a little, they tally in the main essentials.

At this point I will ask you to remember that in the First Post-Atlantean epoch, when the Holy Rishis were the great teachers of men, culture was inspired, paramountly, by the human ether-body; during the ancient Persian epoch, culture was inspired by the astral body, the sentient body; in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch by the sentient soul; in the Graeco-Latin epoch by the mind or intellectual soul; in our present epoch by the consciousness soul (or “spiritual soul”). And now the time is approaching when the powers of the Spirit-Self will gradually be imbued into culture. In that development proceeded in this way, the experiences arising in man's life of soul underwent deep and far-reaching change. Just think of it. The picture of the world presented to a man of the earliest Indian epoch, of which even the Vedas have no knowledge, received its essential character and stamp from the working of the ether-body. Through the ether-body man cannot direct his gaze to the outer world in the way that is customary in our time. His perception, his picture of the world cannot be as they are today; where the forces of the ether-body are in operation, everything arises from within. A man of today can only have an idea—dim and lifeless at that—of perception which derives from the ether-body, when he recalls the character of his dreams. But the dreams and visions through which, during the ancient Indian epoch, one human being became known to another, were living and real in the very highest degree. To imagine that when one human being met another, the outer perception of him was the same as it is today, would be quite erroneous. The man of ancient India saw pictures—but in those times the other human being physically before him was enveloped in an auric cloud, shrouded in a kind of mist. The character of perception was altogether different compared with perception as it is at the present day, these pictures, although full of the greatest spiritual import, were blurred and hazy. The forces streaming down from Cosmic Space, from the world of the stars—it was these forces that were seen in such clarity and brilliance in those ancient times. In the Second Post-Atlantean epoch the power to look outwards gradually unfolded but, strangely enough, the faculty for gazing into the great Cosmic Spaces remained. Whereas perceptions of the world below were still hazy and without definition, the ancient Persian gazed with lucid clarity into the world of the stars. It is therefore intelligible that Zarathustrianism should point directly to Cosmic Space, to the light of the Sun, to “Ahura Mazdao” or Ormuzd. This was because the astral body was paramountly active. By the end of the ancient Persian epoch, the faculty of looking outwards into the physical world was already in its preparatory stage. The impulses leading to perception as it is in our day have been developing for long, long ages. Thus the impulse to look out into the physical world was gradually instilled into man, leading him to the entirely new mode of perception which began to light up by slow degrees.

When the ancient Persian epoch was drawing to its close and the next period was glimmering like a dawn of the future, men felt: “We shall no longer be able to experience with such intensity the Divine heritage that has come to us from the olden days of Atlantis, when with their power of inner, clairvoyant vision, men lived in communion with the worlds of Divine Spirit ” ... The gaze was turned back to the past. What mattered most for these men were their remembrances in which living pictures arose like dreams—dreams of how the Gods had fashioned the world through the ages of Lemuria and Atlantis. They felt that these remembrances were withdrawing, were fading away from humanity and that conditions were approaching when man must work with a faculty which tells him of the outer world, clouds the bright light of the inner world of the Spirit, and compels him to look from within-outwards, if he is to master the external world. This age was drawing nearer and nearer. Those who had the deepest, clearest perception of the dawn of the new epoch were men who at that time were the knowers and sages in ancient India. They felt it in the form, as it were, of a Divine Impulse, compelling the human being to think for himself, through inner activity, about what confronts him in the physical world to which he was descending. Picturing this Impulse as a Divine Being, the successors of the first, very ancient Indian culture—those who were living now during the Second Post-Atlantean epoch—called this Being “Pramathesis.” These men felt: “The God Pramathesis is drawing near, snatching human beings away from the guidance given by the ancient Gods; God Pramathesis is causing the disappearance of all that ancient clairvoyance revealed concerning the world and is forcing man to look outwards into the physical plane. Darkness is creeping over the world of the ancient Gods. A time is approaching when in their life of soul men will no longer be able to gaze into the world of the Gods, but when their eyes will be turned to the outer world. Kaliyuga, the ‘Black Age’ is approaching; the bright age of ancient Divinity is giving place to the age when the Gods of old withdraw. It is the age inaugurated by the God Pramathesis!”

Kaliyuga was said to begin at a time which lies 3,101 years before our own era; this is the time of the “Flood” according to Indian tradition. For it was said that the Flood coincides with the coming of Kaliyuga, and Kaliyuga was conceived to be the offspring of the God “Pramathesis”.

Kaliyuga broke in upon the world, reaching its close in our own age. Now that the ascent to the spiritual world must begin, a spiritual science has come to mankind. Kaliyuga began 3,101 years before our era, and ended in the year 1899 A.D. That is why 1899 is a year of such importance. The re-ascent to the spiritual worlds—this must be the ideal of the future.

The age preceding the onset of Kaliyuga was, however, an age characteristic of the ancient Persian epoch when the old remembrances rose up within man via the astral body. Now he was to turn to the world outside. This was a great and epoch-making transition. In the case of many human beings it came about in such a way that for a time all vision departed from them and darkness spread over their souls. This condition of darkness did not last for long periods, actually only for weeks. But men passed into this condition of sleep, and many never came out of it. Many of them perished and only relatively few were left in widely scattered regions. There is not enough time today to describe the conditions actually prevailing at that time. It can only be said briefly that owing to so large a number of human beings having succumbed, conditions were dark and sinister in the extreme and at only a few scattered places did men awaken from the great spiritual deluge that spread over their souls like a sleep. This condition of sleep was felt by most souls as a kind of “drowning” and by only a few as a re-awakening. And then came the “Black Age,” the age devoid of the Gods.

Were these things known to other human beings on the Earth? They were indeed. To our astonishment we find widespread evidence of knowledge among the peoples that a deluge had submerged the consciousness of men and that in the Third Post-Atlantean epoch, through the development of the sentient soul—in other words, outward-turned vision—an entirely new power must have been inaugurated. The Indians divined this when they said: Kaliyuga is the offspring of Pramathesis. And what did the Greeks say? In Greece, “Pramathesis” becomes, “Prometheus”—which is exactly the same. Prometheus is the brother of Epimetheus. The latter represents one who still “looks back” into ancient times. Epimetheus is the one whose thoughts turn backward; Prometheus sends his thoughts forward, to the world outside, to what takes place there. Just as Pramathesis has his offspring in Kaliyuga, so, too, Prometheus has his offspring. The Greek form of “Kaliyuga” is “Kalion.” And because the Greeks felt it to be the age of Darkness, the “ d ” is prefixed and the word becomes “Deukalion”—which is really the same word as “Kaliyuga.” This is not ingenious fancy, but an occult fact. It is clear, therefore, that the Greeks possessed the same knowledge as the Indian sages. This is quoted merely as an example, indicating that in their conditions of old clairvoyance, knowledge of these truths came to men and they were able to express them in majestic pictures. The Greek legend tells how, on the advice of his father Prometheus, Deukalion builds a wooden chest; in this he and his wife Pyrrha alone are saved from destruction, when Zeus proposes to exterminate the human race by a deluge. Deukalion and Pyrrha land on Parnassus, and from them issues the new human race. Deukalion is the son of Prometheus—and in the intervening period comes the flood, denoting among manifold peoples, a condition of consciousness.

These wonderful pictures which have been preserved in the traditions of so many of the peoples, show us how truths concerning the evolution of mankind have survived among them.

As men lived on gradually into the age of Kaliyuga, into the Third Post-Atlantean epoch, the ancient clairvoyant knowledge faded away. We who have to recapitulate the Third epoch, must bring this kind of knowledge to life once again, but in an entirely new form. The lecture given a fortnight ago (The Idea of Reincarnation and its Introduction into Western Culture) dealt with this subject. Western culture, the beginnings of which were mingled with the ancient Hebrew culture, has to concentrate primary attention on the single personality living on the physical plane between birth and death; Western culture cannot focus its main attention on the Individuality who passes through the different epochs, but concentrates upon the existence of the one personality, whose life between birth and death runs its course on the physical plane, not in the higher worlds. Now that Kaliyuga has come to an end, consciousness must be imbued with the forces necessary for the further evolution of the human race; what was lost during Kaliyuga must be raised again from the depths. Our eyes must be directed more and more to the onflowing life of the Individuality. I have spoken of a series of lives in the West—Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, Novalis—and have shown how by the addition of knowledge derived from the spiritual worlds, we can perceive the continuous thread of the soul, the onflowing life of the one Individuality in Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, Novalis.

In our Movement, development of this insight must be a conscious aspiration, for it is a necessity in the evolution and culture of the Earth. No progress would be possible by the mere continuation of the old experiences, the old knowledge. I have emphasised often enough all that it means for the minds of men to enrich and make fruitful the heritage of ancient times by means of the new knowledge now available. It must, however, be realised that just as the transition from life inspired by the astral body to a spiritual life of soul, primarily in the sentient soul, was fraught with deep significance, so, now, we must work our way from life in the consciousness soul to life in the Spirit-Self. I have intimated how this will take place by saying that during the next three thousand years, an increasing number of human beings will experience the Appearance of the Christ Impulse, will be able to experience the Christ Impulse in the spiritual worlds. But actual realisation of the influences streaming in from the spiritual world will have to unfold in greater intensity in the times lying ahead of us. It will not suffice to know, in theory, that “generally speaking” the human being lives on after death; man's whole picture of life must carry the sure conviction that when the human being passes through the Gate of Death, he lives on still, death being merely a transition. We must realise, not as a theory, but as actual knowledge, that while a human being is alive, he works upon us physically, through his body; after his death he works spiritually, out of the spiritual world, upon our physical world. He is present in very truth. We must learn to see life in the light of such a fact and to reckon with what it involves.

Suppose it is our task to educate children.—Anyone acquainted with these things is well aware that to educate children who up to their twentieth year still have parents living, is a very different matter from having to educate children whose fathers died when they were four or five years old. When education is taken in deep earnestness, and the individuality of the child really studied (it is not a matter of speculation!)—especially in the case of a child whose father is dead, we shall often discern that there is something unusual at work here, something we cannot, at first, quite get hold of. Moreover we shall not succeed in getting to the root of it, if we adopt the modes of thought drawn from materialism. But here and there the thought may occur: “Here is a strange current of the times. Most people regard those who belong to it as fools; but it may be worth while to find out what these Theosophists have to say about the destiny of human beings after death. The Theosophists tell us that although human beings discard their physical bodies at death, the content of their life of soul, their hopes, aspirations and so forth, live on, and are not inactive. Indeed they are often more active after death than when the human being was living on the physical plane, enclosed in his body” ... Those who speak like this, have paid attention to the results of spiritual research and will realise that the father is working upon the child from the spiritual world; moreover that he has definite hopes and longings which make their way into the life of the child! With this knowledge, success may come where it was not possible before, and we know how to deal with sympathies and antipathies which may express themselves in the child. To succeed with children we need to know more than that the air affects them, and that when the air is chilly they may catch cold. We must have knowledge of the influences playing from the spiritual world into the physical, and of the form they take.

These things are still regarded as nonsense, but the time is not far distant when the very facts of life will compel people to take account of them and to reckon with what endures in the form of live and potent impulses after human beings have passed through death. Not until then will the concrete reality contained in the spiritual conception of the world be grasped.

Naturally, these influences from the spiritual world are not at work in the case of children only; influences also come from individualities in the spiritual world who were connected with human beings at a later age of life. To begin with, a man may be quite unaware of these influences. (Again I am not inventing but telling you of actual observations, confirmed by spiritual investigation.) After a time a man may say to himself: “I do not know why I am impelled to this or that action, why I have this impulse; something is urging me to think quite differently now, about certain things.” Subsequently he may have a very striking dream. Little heed is paid to things of the kind nowadays, but men will gradually become aware that it is not the “form” but the content of the dream that is of importance. From this you may conclude that if Edison had made his discoveries in a dream, they would have been just as effective! Suppose a man dreams that some unknown person comes to him, someone he cannot even think of as an acquaintance, indeed cannot place at all. This person comes into his life of dream and various things happen ... Finally he realises that this person whom he cannot recall, who died perhaps fifteen years before, is working into and influencing his life. Whereas previously he felt that certain impulses were urging him on, he is now fully aware that these impulses, in the form of a dream-picture, are working into his night-consciousness. This is often characteristic of the connection between impulses within us and influences working upon us in the shape of dreams. Such experiences will become increasingly familiar.

And now, in conclusion, let us see how they will become familiar.

Suppose someone today reads one of the many biographies of Raphael. He will get the impression that in a certain respect Raphael stands there as a phenomenon, complete in himself, giving forth the highest and best that was in him, but so enclosed within his particular sphere of work that it is difficult to imagine him rising still higher or transcending the level he had actually reached. And again: Raphael's creative genius seems to have been alive in him from the the very beginning ... On the subject of its phenomenal manifestation in Raphael's early boyhood the biographies have nothing to say. And why?

The biographies give the information that Raphael's father was Giovanni Santi who, among other activities, was also a writer; he died when Raphael was eleven years old, but before his death he had placed the boy under the tuition of a painter. It is also known that Giovanni Santi was himself a talented painter but that there was something in him which he could not bring to expression. We feel that there was something in the soul of Giovanni Santi which did not make itself manifest because his outer nature frustrated it. He died when the boy Raphael was eleven years old. From the very way in which Raphael develops we can discern the source of the powers which enabled him to reach maturity and perfection so rapidly they are the influences playing into him from his father, forces coming from the spiritual worlds. Anyone who tries to write a true biography of Raphael in the future will have to emphasise the point that Giovanni Santi, the father of Raphael, died in 1494, when the boy was only eleven years old. Giovanni Santi was a distinguished man, who during his life on Earth aspired to great things. And his aspirations continued when, living on without frustration in the spiritual world, he was sending down to his beloved son—in the form of delicate and intimate spiritual influences—forces which his own constitution had prevented him from bringing to expression in the physical world.

To say this is no disparagement of Raphael's genius, for the ground must naturally have been there. We know that he was the reincarnation of John the Baptist and had only to receive into himself those forces which it was his particular mission to bring into manifestation at that time. Thinking of this, we can perceive the interplay between the spiritual world and the physical plane. Future study of the life of Raphael will have, at every turn, to concern itself with the influences which poured from the Spiritual into the Physical. Then we shall have a picture of “wholeness”—of forces working around us, through us, in us. Thus will spirituality again be instilled into culture. But it must not surprise us if those who are unwilling today to listen to any suggestion of the introduction of spirituality into culture, are contemptuous of this spiritual conception of the world; for it is something completely new. It is a dawning of the new power of the Spirit-Self. And a time will come—I ask you to write this deeply into your souls—when men will think of the materialistic culture which is now on the way to its close, as they once thought about the age preceding the Flood, yearning and longing for the future culture which, when it came, was something wholly and essentially new. Theosophists, however, should not merely strive for this ideal in theory, but receive it into their very souls; they should regard it as their good Karma to know about the course of human evolution and therewith of human culture.

These things will have to be pondered over for a time, because I am not yet in a position to say exactly when the next lecture can take place.¹ But we know well that time is required to make Spiritual Science an integral force and impulse in our hearts and minds; and we know, too, that it is part of spiritual development not only to understand the truths but actually to unfold all that the great ideas born from a spiritual conception of the world can say to our hearts.

• 1. Between the date of this lecture and the next of the series (18th June, 1912), Dr. Steiner had given two lectures in Copenhagen: On the Meaning of Life, 23rd and 24th May, 1912; three lectures in Norrköping: Anthroposophical Ethics, 28th and 29th May, 1912; and two lectures in Christiania: Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy, 2nd June to 12th June, 1912.

[Ladies and gentlemen!]

In the previous lectures I have endeavored to show the components of which Christianity is composed. I would now like to note again that I am only trying to present Christianity in the way in which it can be understood as a mystical-theosophical doctrine. I will try to show that the narrative that is before us, on the one hand in the three Gospels, in the Synoptics—Matthew, Mark and Luke—and on the other hand in the Gospel of John, but then also specifically in relation to the Christian doctrine, as we have it in the various creeds of the Western Christian churches—I will try to show how this doctrinal content is nothing other than a result of the so-called Egyptian initiation, the Egyptian initiation process to which every individual who wanted to ascend to a theosophical worldview had to submit.

This is summarized and described as a single historical event, as the life, suffering and death of an individual, a saviour, not as a process to which every human being is subjected. These initiation processes, which were different in degrees, are dumped on a single personality and summarized, merged into a single process. That is what I endeavored to show.

I endeavored to show how the matter has become a historical event. I do not see the initiation process as an allegory. I want to repeat Leadbeater's words here, not as an opinion of mine, but as a theosophically established fact: "Then it happened that one of the most monstrous misunderstandings dawned over the spiritual horizon of the old world, which then spread from there over the whole human race. This allegorically contained the descent of the Logos, which, however, was not an allegory at all, but the bodily descent. Nothing could be more misleading" and so on.

Now that we know what the inner spiritual content was that was handed down to people and was incorporated into people in the initiation process, we see it permeated by a philosophy, with the Philonic philosophy, and then again as a creed, as an external view of life with the therapists and Essenes. In these strange soul-seekers and God-seekers we find on the one hand the preparation and on the other the philosophical deepening by Philo. So, having seen where what we have seen in Jesus of Nazareth comes from, it is up to us to see how Jesus of Nazareth, this personality we are dealing with, takes up his mission himself, how Jesus of Nazareth fits into this whole thing.

Based on the various studies I have made of the Church Fathers, the Gnostics and so on, I have come to the conclusion that it is quite impossible to get away with the view of current theology. [Bunsen] wrote about the Gospel of John. The confession of this scholar corresponds pretty much to the theosophical one, but must be modified somewhat, as it follows here.

The Gospel of John is either a communication from eyewitnesses or a revelation. Those who stand on the standpoint of exoteric Christianity, which is the standpoint of the sensory perceptibility of the personality of Jesus, must base themselves on this sensory appearance. But if one stands on the positive Christian standpoint, then one must have the view [Bunsen's] about the Gospel of John, which concludes something like this: If the Gospel of John is a myth, then there is no historical Christ, and without this the whole of Christianity is a delusion, the worship of God is a hoax, the Reformation a crime.—You see, this scholar cannot get over two things: either the Gospel of John is valid for us, or it is not. If it is regarded as something that was devised afterwards or something similar, then the basic idea, the basic essence of Christianity cannot be upheld.

We have to think of the Gospel of John in relation to the others. From the relationship of John's Gospel to the other Gospels we will get an idea of how this personality [of the evangelist] has positioned himself in relation to the foundation of Christianity. We all know that in the Gospel of John a passage is quoted from which it emerges that the one from whom the messages of the Gospel originate is to be regarded as an eyewitness, as one who was present at the events and knows how to write about them, how to describe them, as one who was chosen to grasp the Master's teachings most deeply.

Note the final passage: "But what is this?"—"If I will that he remain until I come."—"This disciple will not die." The one of whom it is said, "I will that he abide till I come", is the disciple who testifies of these things. He has written this and we know that this "testimony is true." [May] we find the opportunity, through mystical-theosophical immersion, to [understand] the words of this final passage of John's Gospel in such a way that they show themselves to us in the right light.

We must realize that the first three Gospels, when we go through them, show us a very different view of Christianity than the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John shows us a much more spiritualized view of Christianity. One cannot but come to the conclusion that the Gospels emerged from two spiritual currents. Firstly, from what they heard from the Master himself, whom we are dealing with here; and secondly, from what they associated with it. From sentence to sentence, from verse to verse, we can distinguish between the true, deeper teachings, spiritual Christianity, and what has been linked to it. The three authors of the synoptic gospels relate what they heard from the Master and what they took over from the old views, from Judaism. They lived in traditional Judaism and have drawn many ideas from it. Some of these ideas are confirmed to them. But in their blood lives the idea of the Messiah, through whom the Jewish people were to regain their power and glory. They have thrown these two things together, and we must definitely keep these two things or currents apart. This work will also show us which passages of the first three Gospels do not have corresponding passages in the Gospel of John.

First and foremost, we must mention the one important fact that we have no passages in the Gospel of John for various passages in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. In chapter 24, verses 32-33 of the Gospel of Matthew it says:

"Learn a parable from the fig tree. When its branch now becomes lush and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, know that the kingdom of God is near."

These words, which are found in the Synoptics, have no corresponding passage in the Gospel of John. The parable of the fig tree symbolizes the decline of Judaism and the rise of the new teaching. This passage could easily be taken to mean that a world order, as it lives in the exoteric teaching, would be replaced by a new purely earthly world order. As I said, I believe that individual passages of this kind can be understood in this or that way, more or less deeply. [However, we may well assume that the "Master" of Nazareth is concealed in these words, if they are understood in the right way.] Let us take another passage, Matthew chapter 16, verse 28:

"Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

This passage is found in all three synoptics, but not in John. These words shed a deeply meaningful light on the relationship of John's gospel to the others. John is referred to [by the disciples] as the one—[not] by Jesus himself—who does not die. "This disciple does not die." But Jesus does not say, "He does not die," but rather, "I want him to remain until I come." John was Jesus' favorite. He was seen as the one who would not die before the Messiah came. So when John wrote the Gospel, he refuted the external fact—not outwardly—but John did not die before he saw the kingdom of God coming. So what was previously said in the earlier gospels, for example in Luke, was actually fulfilled in John:

"The children of the world are free and will be free. But those who are resurrected will neither be free nor let themselves be free. They are like angels and children of God." [Luke 20:34-36]

There is again no place in John for this. John is therefore described as the one who experiences the resurrection, in which there will no longer be talk of people with earthly bodies, but of people who will be like angels.

[The end of John's gospel was written after John had written his gospel]. And it all sounds like a jubilant song throughout the gospel. John does not need to report on these prophecies, he had a much more significant event to report on. He had experienced the hour that is said to come like a thief in the night, which only the Father—according to Jesus' own words—knows about.

John did not have to tell of a prophecy, but of an experience. Therefore, he only had to describe a fact. He only had to say: What Jesus predicted has been fulfilled in me; I have experienced the new kingdom and the spiritual resurrection. He could therefore say that the kingdom had really come. Therefore, the relationship of the Gospel of John to the three earlier ones is that of the spiritual view as opposed to the view of the three synoptics, which is saturated with Jewish elements.

When the times are fulfilled, he can say:

"Verily I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it is alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates it will keep it until eternal life." [John 12:24-25]

John had recognized this. He had recognized the word of the Master: "The kingdom will come, and I have nothing to proclaim to you but what must be fulfilled in you. He who believes in me does not believe in me, says the Master. He has true faith who does not believe in me, but in the one who sent me.—It can only be born in each one of you, prompted and inspired by me. "And he who sees me sees the one who sent me."—[The Father] has built into me what I am to say and do.

"Truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do, and he will do even greater ones, because I am going to the Father." [John 14:12]

It is clear that the Master who spoke this did not teach: I am one with the Father.—Rather, he taught: I am sent by the Father to teach you the path that can lead you to infinity, to teach you to do works that lead to infinity.—It would make no sense at all to say that he is able to take away sin from the other, whom he himself says will do greater works than I.

We stand before a great awakener who has shown the disciples the path. So we see in the Master an initiator who led his disciples along a certain path, and we see how everyone wanted his Master's words to be understood. They should continue to have an effect like powers behind which there is a deeper meaning. Then the higher powers will arise in human souls. Some will experience the kingdom of God, especially the favorite disciple John. And when he had experienced it, he let out a shout of joy that he had recognized the truth. That's when he wrote his gospel. He had understood what it meant to follow Christ. He had understood what it meant to really be a Christian. He had understood that you can only get on the path that Christ has laid out if you celebrate the resurrection in your spirit.

"He who loves his life will lose it, but he who hates it will not lose it." [John 12:25]

Jakob Böhme says:]

"He who does not die before he dies, perishes when he dies."

[Goethe says]:

"And as long as you do not have this, this dying and becoming, you are only a gloomy guest on the dark earth."

This is the relationship between the Gospel of John and the three synoptic gospels. John understood how to grasp the word not exoterically, but esoterically as a story of consciousness.

We also understand how John set out his esoteric view right at the beginning of this Gospel, as if to show that his teaching can only be interpreted in an esoteric way. It speaks of the building of the temple in three days. Jesus speaks of the temple of his body. [When John has Jesus speak of the temple, he has him speak of the relationship between the divine and the worldly.] He has him speak of a parable, of something that symbolically expresses that the divine power descended to the material in order to then find its way back to the divinity. John wants everything he says to be understood esoterically.

We will see what it means why John is called the true eyewitness who has to confirm what he has seen as a witness.

The existence of Christianity depends on the Gospel of John. Christianity had to admit that it was a mere spiritual conception when the predictions were not fulfilled. This explanation can be found among the shallow enlighteners. With John we will still see the kingdom of God come, or so they thought. But even with John, we would not have experienced it, and so we would inevitably have arrived at a spiritual view. What was meant was the esoteric view of Christianity. The kingdom of God will come unexpectedly. Watch and pray so that you do not miss out when the kingdom of God comes. When he tells us about experiencing the coming of the kingdom, we have to admit that John understood what the Master was saying. He knew that it was something spiritual that the Master was telling him and not an exoteric view of Judaism.

Now I would like to lay another foundation that will lead us to the deeper, the more spiritual side of Christianity. I would like to point out facts that are basically simple but are usually ignored. We have seen that at the time when Christianity was spreading, there were the Therapeutae in northern Egypt and the Essenes in Palestine, and we have come to know the teachings and also the way of life of the Essenes. The Essenes undoubtedly exerted a profound influence on the teachings of early Christianity with all their views. And if we go through the gospels that have been handed down to us as synoptic gospels, if we hold them up to ourselves, then you will see that in the individual synoptic gospels we are definitely dealing with teachings that have their origins in the Essene sect.

One example of this is the tenth chapter of Matthew:

"But go and preach, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. You have received it freely, give it freely. You shall not have gold or silver or brass in your belts. Nor shall you have a bag to carry away, nor two coats, nor shoes, nor a stick. For a laborer is worthy of his food." [Mt 10:7-10]

These words become particularly interesting when we combine them with a passage from the Jewish historian Josephus, where the way of life of the Essenes within their community formation is described as follows. "They do not have one city. In fact, everyone lives in many cities. The house of every friar is open to them as their own. So they go to live with people they have never met before, as if they had known them for a long time. They do not change clothes or shoes, they do not buy and sell among themselves. Each gives and takes what he has and needs."

If we compare this passage with this and further compare it with the passage in Luke, ninth chapter:

"And he called the twelve together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases, and sent them forth to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick. Take nothing for your journey, neither staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money. Nor shall any man have two coats, shoes or a staff. For a laborer is worthy of his food." [Luke 9:1-5]

We see that the way of life Josephus describes to us is the one that Jesus recommends the disciples to adopt. At the same time, we know that among Jews such a way of life cannot originate from Judaism. This is therefore a reproduction of Essene teachings. He speaks to them as one of the Essene community who was striving to spread Essene life among his disciples.

But there are many other things we can compare. There is one fact that we also know about the Essenes. They did not take part in the Jewish sacrificial service. They did send sacrificial animals to the temple to pay tribute to the political power, but they themselves did not go to the Jewish temple. They did not participate in the Jewish religion insofar as it was represented by the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They themselves had stone halls in which their teachers taught the doctrines, but there too we find the teachings that we find in the Gospel of John. There we hear talk of the temple and know that this refers to the body of man. And then again the sense of togetherness, the community feeling of the Essenes. The Essenes considered it idolatry to have a temple other than this one.

We could take a whole series of passages from the Essaean teachings. The Essenes had an aversion to the sacrifices of the Jews because they saw the body of man and mankind as the temple of God. We encounter this in the Gospel of John. We can also find in the Pauline letters that Essene influences were at work and that the body should be understood as the temple of God.

We also find strange allusions in various writers of the first century, which we can hardly explain, which are taken for granted and for which the first Christian writers no longer have any real feeling because they no longer know their origin. We are told that Christians do not turn their faces to the Temple of Jerusalem at morning prayer, as the Jews do, but to the rising of the sun. The Christian church writers take it for granted that Christians turn their faces to the east. The Essenes did not sacrifice to Judaism. They did not turn their faces towards the temple in Jerusalem, but towards the east. From here to Jakob Böhme's book "The Dawn", to "Faust", where he admires the dawn, all these ideas lead back to the old Essene idea of turning the face to the east in prayer.

Another thing. In Clement of Alexandria we find an omission about the clothing of the first Christians. We hear that the colorfulness of clothing corrupts people, promotes opulence, because it stimulates the lust of the eyes. But those who are pure are permitted to wear white, uncolored clothing. This passage regarding the wearing of white garments can also be traced back to the customs of the Essenes among the first Christians.

Then baptism with water and the Lord's Supper are also descendants of genuine Essene customs. The Essenes baptized with water; they knew no other sacrifice than the communal meal. In the sacrifice that Jesus instituted, we see nothing other than the Essene meal that we see the Essenes celebrating every Sabbath.

Then there is the idea of the holiness of the oil, which led to a sacrament and the anointing with oil. It corresponds entirely to the view of the Essenes. They believe that anointing with oil is a mystical act that gives mystical power to the person to whom it is given. The peculiar shyness towards oil in our time can definitely be traced back to an Essene view and can only be understood from this perspective.

And now, in order to bring this consideration of the relation of Essaeanism to Christianity at least to a certain conclusion, and thereby to have gained a basis for the consideration of the Master himself, I would like to point out-what might at first appear to be an allusion-namely, some ancient communications which we find in writers of the first Christian centuries.

In particular, I would like to point to a passage in Eusebius, to an old tradition from the brother of Jesus, James. We have not received these messages directly, but in a roundabout way. We are told that he led a special kind of lifestyle. This is then described to us in more detail. It is none other than exactly the way of life that Philo describes to us of the Essenes. He lived like them. We can only understand this whole narrative if we assume that such a way of life was a matter of course for the Essenes. We see Jesus himself speaking to his disciples as if he wanted to give them instructions like those given everywhere in the Essaean community. John the Baptist baptized in the spirit of the Essaean community. The first Christian teachings and views were like those of the Essenes.

Furthermore, we find a clear awareness of personalities who exerted a deeper influence on the first Christianity. In Epiphanius we find a new passage that seems more significant to me than many others. We read there: In the beginning all Christians were called "Nazirites, but for a short time they had the name [Judeans] before the term "Christians" came into use at Antioch.—So here we have a hint, which we will explore further, of how there was an awareness there that the Christians, or Christians as they were called, were nothing other than a continuation of the Essenes. We are therefore dealing with the first times of our era and with the view that in Palestine the Essene influence within Judaism grew and grew and developed into a new religious current. We have the awareness that the Essenes were the first Christians and then the later ones took the name Christians.

Now there is a testimony [on which everyone can form their own opinion], but which should not [go completely unnoticed]. It is clear that there were Essenes. That cannot be denied. It is also clear that they had a great influence on Christianity. We hear about Pharisees and Sadducees in the New Testament. The entire New Testament contains not a word about the Essenes. The writers of the first centuries, even Philo, contain nothing about the Christians. We have nothing, we read nothing there about a Christianity and in the first writings of Christianity nothing about the Essenes. That is an important fact. This fact cannot be explained other than by the simple fact that the first to write in the spirit of Christianity were aware that they were only speaking of others, not of themselves. This explains why the first Christians did not use the name of the Essenes and Philo did not use the name "Christians". They spoke of others, but not of themselves.

If we live in any time and hear that something is said about this or that person, we must think to ourselves that he has told us this, but he will not speak of himself in such detail. We will become convinced that he is not talking about himself, but that he is this third party. So we can conclude that at that time there was an awareness that Essenism and Christianity were one and the same. And this will open up the source of Christianity for us next time.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of Space
Into the ocean-being of the Spirit.
Practise Spirit-recollection
In depths of soul,
Where in the strength sublime
Of world-creative life
Thine own I grows to full being
In the I of God.
Then in the being of the World of Man
Thy Life will be true.

For the Father-Spirit of the Heights
Reigns in the depths of the World, begetting life.
Spirits of Strength!
May there ring forth from the Heights
The call that is re-echoed in the Depths,
Saying:
From the Divine springeth Mankind.
Spirit-beings hear it in East and West and North and South:
May human beings hear it!

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which guides thee through the rhythm of the Ages
Into the feeling of thine own Soul-being.
Practise Spirit-meditation
In the balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of cosmic evolution
Unite thine own I
With the I of the World.
Then in the working of the Soul of Man
Thy Feeling will be true.

For the Christ-Will in this horizon's Round
Reigns in the rhythms of the World, blessing the soul.
Spirits of Light!
May there be kindled from the East
The flame that is moulded by the West,
Saying:
In Christ Death becomes Life.
Spirit-beings hear it in East and West and North and South:
May human beings hear it!

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the well-springs of Eternity
Unlocks for thee the Thoughts of the World.
Practise Spirit-penetration
In restfulness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of God
Grant light of cosmic being
To thine own I
For free and active Will.
Then in the spiritual founts of Man
Thy Thought will be true.

For the Cosmic Thoughts of the Spirit
Reign in the being of the World, praying for light.
Spirits of Soul!
May there ascend from the Depths
The prayer that is heard in the Heights,
Saying:
In the cosmic Spirit-Thoughts the Soul awakes.
Spirit-beings hear it in East and West and North and South:
May human beings hear it!

At the turning-point of time,
The Spirit-Light of the World
Entered the stream of Earthly Evolution.
Darkness of Night
Had held its sway;
Day-radiant Light
Poured into the souls of men:
Light that gave warmth
To simple shepherds' hearts,
Light that enlightened
The wise heads of kings.

O Light Divine!
O Sun of Christ!
Warm Thou our hearts,
Enlighten Thou our heads,
That good may become
What from our hearts we would found
And from our heads direct
With single purpose.

—George Adams (1927)

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs,
Which bear thee through the world of space
Into the ocean of spirit being:
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in empowering
World-Creator-Being
Thine inmost I
In God's own I
Takes being,
And thou shalt truly live
In human world-all being.

For the Father-Spirit of the heights reigns
In the depths of the world, begetting being;
Ye Spirits of Strength,
Let out of the heights ring forth
What in the depths finds its echo,
Speaking thus:
Out of the Godhead is created mankind.

This is heard by the Spirits in East, West, North, South;
May human beings hear it!

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the pulse of heart and lung,
Which leadeth thee through the rhythm of time
Into the feeling of thine own soul being:
Practise spirit-communing
In the soul's fine balance
Where the on-surging,
World-Evolving Deeds
Thine inmost I
With the World's own I
Unite,
And thou shalt truly feel
In human soul inner-working.

For the Christ-Will reigns in the spheres encircling us
In the rhythms of the world, shedding grace upon souls;
Ye Spirits of Light,
Let from the East be enkindled
What through the West takes on form.
Speaking thus:
In Christ death becomes life.

This is heard by the Spirits in East, West, North, South;
May human beings hear it!

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the quiet of the head
Which from out eternal foundations
Lays open before thee the world-all thoughts:
Practise spirit-beholding
In thought, stilled through,
Where the eternal aims of the gods
Cosmic-Being's-Light
On thine inmost I
For thy free willing,
Are shedding,
And thou shalt truly think
In human spirit foundations.

For the Spirit's World-All Thoughts reign
In the being of the world, light-beseeching.
Ye Spirits of Soul,
Let out of the deeps be entreated
What in the heights may be heard,
Speaking thus:
In the Spirit's World-All Thoughts the soul awakens.

This is heard by the Spirits in East, West, North, South;
May human beings hear it!

At the turn of time
Cosmic-Spirit-Light descended
Into earthly stream of being;
Darkling night
Had run its course;
Day-clear light
Streamed within human souls;
Light
That enwarms
The humble shepherds' hearts;
Light
That enlightens
The wise heads of kings.

God-given light,
Christus-Sun,
Enwarm
For us our hearts,
Enlighten
For us our heads,
That good may be
What we
From our hearts do found,
What we
From our heads
Direct with single will.

—Arvia MacKaye Ege

Soul of Man!
You live within the limbs,
Which bear you through the world of Space
Into the ocean-being of the spirit:
Practise spirit-remembering
In depths of soul,
Where in the sovereign
World-Creator presence
One's own I
Within God's I
Gains Being;
And you shall truly live
In cosmic Being of Man.

For the Father-Spirit of the heights holds sway
In the depths of worlds begetting existence:
Ye Spirits of Power
Let from the heights ring out
What in the depths is echoed;
This resounds:
From the Divine mankind has Being.
This the spirits hear in east, west, north, south.
May men hear it.

Soul of Man!
You live within the beat of heart and lung,
Which leads you through the rhythms of Time
Into your own soul-nature's weaving feeling:
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the on-surging
Deeds of world-becoming
One's own I
And I of world Unite;
And you shall truly feel
In the soul-working of Mon.

For the Will of Christ in all around holds sway
In the world rhythms bestowing grace on souls:
Ye Spirits of Light
Let from the east flame up
What through the west takes form;
This resounds:
In Christ death becomes life.
This the spirits hear in east, west, north, south.
May men hear it.

Soul of Man!
You live within the resting head,
Which from the grounds of eternity
Reveals the universal thoughts:
Practise spirit-beholding
In the calm of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's light
On one's own I
Bestow
For will in freedom;
And you shall truly think
In spirit-foundations of Man.

For the Spirit's cosmic thoughts hold sway
In world Being beseeching light:
Ye Spirits of Soul
Let from the depths be entreated
What in the heights finds hearing;
This resounds:
In the Spirit's cosmic thoughts the soul awakes.
This the spirits hear in east, west, north south;
May men hear it.

At the turning of the times
Cosmic Spirit Light descended
Into the earthly stream of Being;
Darkness of night
Had run its course;
Day-bright light
Shone forth in human souls;
Light
That warms through
The humble shepherds' hearts;
Light
That illumines
The wise heads of kings.

Godly Light,
Christ-Sun,
Warm through
Our hearts,
Illuminate
Our heads,
That may be good
What we
From hearts would found,
What we
Would from our heads
Guide in true-aimed willing.

—By Richard Seddon

In the evolution of mankind, as I have recently been showing, inner spiritual connections prevail, which send their influences through the soul of man. I showed this in relation to Goethe's endeavours in his Faust, where he relates Faust to the impulse of the fifth post-Atlantean age by associating him with Mephistopheles, an Ahrimanic power. I then tried to show how Faust had to dive down into the impulses of the fourth post-Atlantean age, which I tried to describe in their real essence. All this is necessary, so that there takes place in the soul of Faust a conscious interpenetration of that which prevails unconsciously in human souls by virtue of the laws of evolution.

I said that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—our epoch—will have to do with the great and significant life-question of Evil,—the mastery of Evil in all directions. Human beings will have to learn to know all that the soul must rouse and bring forth within itself in order partly to overcome the powers of Evil, partly to transmute them into impulses of Good. All this has arisen on the foundation of the impulses of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, which had to do especially with the problem of Birth and Death,—a problem which it had received as heritage from Atlantean time. We need only turn our gaze to the Christ-Impulse itself, entering in as it did in the first third of the fourth post-Atlantean period. This period began with the founding of Rome in the year 747 before the Birth of Christ. Thus, of the 2160 years of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, 747 years had to run their course before the main impulse—the Christ-Impulse could enter in, as indeed it did precisely in this fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Has not the Christ-Impulse to do with the great and important question that summons into the evolution of mankind problems of Birth and Death in their supersensible significance? How much discussion, how much thought and feeling has there not been on Christian soil about the Birth of Christ! How infinitely significant a part is played by the Death of Christ! In the Birth and Death of Christ we see most pregnantly this wrestling of the soul of man with the problem of Birth and Death. It was a wrestling in the soul, because the same struggle had already been there in a more elemental, in a more physical form in the great Atlantean epoch. Notably in the fourth civilisation-epoch of Atiantis-in the middle of Atlantean time, and as an after-effect in the fifth period also,—forces connected with Birth and Death were subject to the power of individual human beings. I have already described some aspects of this fact. Forces there were in the Atlanteans—forces that could be developed and that had influence on Birth and Death in a far more than merely natural degree. The good and evil forces in the human being had a far-reaching influence upon the health and sickness of their fellowmen, and thereby also upon Birth and Death. In Atlantean time one saw an actual connection between the things one did as human being and what took place in the so-called “course of Nature,” as Birth and Death.

In post-Atlantean time—in the fourth civilisation-epoch of post-Atlantean time—this problem of Birth and Death was transplanted more into the region of the soul. But in our epoch, in the fifth, human beings will have to grapple with the forces of Evil in an elemental way, just as they did with Birth and Death in Atlantean time. Notably through the quite different mastery over the forces of Nature, the impulses of Evil will work into the world on a grand scale, in a gigantic way. In the resistance which human beings will have to summon forth from spiritual depths, the opposite forces—the forces of Good—will have to grow. And in particular, already during the fifth epoch it will be possible for men to bring Evil over the Earth, by exploiting the force of Electricity, which will assume far greater dimensions than hitherto. Even directly out of the force of Electricity itself, Evil comes over the Earth.

We need to place these things before our consciousness. He who desires to receive the spiritual impulses will then find points of resistance; he will find the starting-points for those impulses which must evolve by the very resistance of Evil. It is difficult as yet to speak in any detail in this connection; for in the widest spheres as yet, these details touch on interests of human beings which they do not wish to have molested. In this respect, human beings are divided. On the one hand are those who suffer greatly, because they cannot clearly realise how they are interwoven with World-Karma; how they simply must take part in this thing or that, and cannot become abstractly pious all at once. On the other hand are those who in many ways are caught up in this World-Karma of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. They would rather not hear of what is really contained in the impusles that are going through the world, for it is often to their interest to represent as constructive the very impulses that are destructive. We have described, how since the last third of the nineteenth century there have been working among human beings those Beings whom I characterised as fallen Spirits of Darkness—Beings of the hierarchy of Angeloi. In the fourth post-Atlantean period, these Beings were still ministering members of the good, progressive Powers. They served in the creation of those orders which, as I told you, are derived out of the blood-relationship of men. Now they are in the realm of men, and as Angel-beings who have remained behind, they work into the inner impulses of human beings, to make effective in a retrogressive way—and thereby in an Ahrimanic way—all that which is connected with relationships of blood and clan, nation and race. Thereby they work to mar and to hinder those other social structures of mankind which should now arise out of quite other foundations than for example the bonds of blood, of family and race, clan and nation. To-day a very serious beginning of the work of these Spirits consists precisely in the abstract emphasis that is laid on the principle of Nationality. This abstract emphasis on Nationality, this setting up of programmes on the foundations of a national principle, is among those endeavours which we must attribute to the Spirits of Darkness who will stand far nearer to man—who will approach man in a far more intimate way—than did the backward Spirits of the fourth post-Atlantean period. The latter belong to the hierarchy of Archangeloi. Precisely this will be the significant aspect of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. These Beings who stand immediately above the hierarchy of Man—these Angel-beings—are able to approach the individual human being very nearly and intimately. They do not merely approach the groups. The individual will believe that he is representing things out of his own personal impulse, where in reality—for we can truly put it so—he is possessed by the kind of Angel-being of whom we have been speaking.

Let us once more make clear to ourselves, what was the nature of the efforts of the backward retrogressive Spirits of Darkness of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. For we shall then be more able to understand what is the nature of their efforts in our present, fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, as I have told you, it was the normal thing to build all the social structure of humanity upon the bonds of blood—blood-relationship. During that time—that is, during the Graeco-Latin civilisation-epoch—the Ahrimanic-Luciferic backward Beings rebelled precisely against the bonds of blood. They were the inspirers of that rebellion which wanted to loosen human beings from blood-kinship. You can derive it even from the general teachings of Spiritual Science. And above all, it was in a sense the descendants of individualities who in the Atlantean time had still been working in a magical way,—it was the descendants of these, who as rebelling individualities, became the “Heroes” in the recapitulation of Atlantean time, in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. I beg you now to observe how the Graeco-Latin epoch met these rebel-beings. For in that time, after all, there was still the wise guidance of mankind out of the Mysteries. They did not say to human beings: “Avoid these rebel natures! Avoid the Ahrimanic, Luciferic spiritual Beings!” They did not say this to them; they knew that it lay in the wise plan of cosmic evolution to place these Beings where they were and to use them. It is a weakness of many people to-day, when they hear of Lucifer and Ahriman, to explain: “For Heaven's sake, let us avoid them!” As though they could avoid them! I have often spoken of this. Knowledge was brought to the human beings of the fourth post-Atlantean time in the form in which it had to be at that time. The influence of the good Gods was there in the bonds of blood. Human beings gave themselves up to it, in the mutual love which was founded in the blood-relationships (for so it was at that time; to-day it must be more purely spiritual.) Yet, for the sake of progress, rebellions always had to take place. This way of cosmic evolution had to be explained to the people in myths and legends. To the Initiates they were communicated in another form—in a way more similar to the way in which these truths are being taught to us to-day. But in the widest circles, human beings of that time would not have been ready to receive the explanations of the myths. Therefore the exoteric myths were told to them. In these, however, deep significant truths of evolution lay concealed.

Let us consider an outstanding myth, connected with the very thing I have just been placing before you. It tells how an oracle prophesied to Laius of Thebes at his betrothal with Jocaste. It prophesied that from this union a son would be born who would become his father's murderer and live in incest with his mother. Laius did not let this deter him from the contemplated union; but when the son was born, he pierced his heels and had him exposed on Mount Cithaeron. To a shepherd the boy became entrusted. The shepherd's wife called him Oedipus on account of his pierced heels. You know how the story goes on. The boy Oedipus grew up; his talents developed. At an early age his soul was beset by doubts concerning his descent, for his companions drew his attention to many things. Then the Delphic Oracle pronounced an important saying, painful to study nowadays, if you can study it in its whole context. The saying is: “Avoid thy home-country; otherwise thou wilt become thy father's murderer, thy mother's husband.” This was said to Oedipus.

Now he was under a complete illusion. He did not know who his father and his mother really were. He could not but think Corinth, where he had grown up, his home. At last he wandered from Corinth in order not to bring about disaster there by killing his father and marrying his mother. But the very fact that he set out and took the way to Thebes became his doom. On the way he met a chariot in which his father Laius was travelling with a companion. A conflict arose; he killed his father and continued on his way to Thebes, and his first deed was, as you know, to solve the Riddle of the Sphinx. So we hay e Oedipus placed in the very fullest way into the evolutionary nexus of the fourth post-Atlantean age. For in a certain sense the Riddle of the Sphinx—the Riddle of Man—belonged to the fourth epoch. Oedipus was one of those who knew. Far from replying to the Sphinx: “I am reluctant to unveil a higher secret”; he solved the secret. Something was thereby implanted in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. It was an impulse that worked on and on, and in which Oedipus played an essential part. For we Wright speak for many hours about the solving of the Riddle of the Sphinx by Oedipus; but we need not do so to-day. To-day we will only make clear that this deed reveals him as a characteristic Hero of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch.

Now he went on to Thebes, married his mother, whom of course he did not hold to be his mother, and was comparatively happy—till a plague arose. At length it was the seer Tiresias who revealed the truth. Jocaste, suddenly knowing herself tobe the wife of her son, killed herself by suffocation. Oedipus blinded himself and was driven away by his own sons. Another one, Theseus, then protected him in the Grove of Attica until his death, and he was buried in Attic soil. We need only call to mind the Oedipus-drama up to this point.

What does it represent? It represents an individuality—the Oedipus individuality—taken out of the blood connection, growing up outside the bonds of blood and then transplanted back again into the blood-connection, to his own detriment. We have before us no mere subjective rebel against the bonds of blood, but one who by the very laws of Nature becomes a rebel against the bonds of blood and thereby kindles and enflames them even against himself.

Look through the Greek mythology, and you will often find such human beings—Heroes who are placed into the blood-relationship in such and such a way, but who are then exposed so that they undergo their evolution outside the blood-relationship. Through the very fact that they are removed from the old order, from the normal order, they then bring in quite other impulses of evolution. Such an Hero is Oedipus; such too is Theseus who protects him in the wood of Attica.

No wonder if in ancient Greece they could not tell the people who was really behind these Heroes! They could not tell them that they were the great rebels, who were none the less necessary in the wise course of World-evolution. Think, for example, of Theseus himself. Here, too, it was an oracular saying that reached the ears of his father, so that he had his son educated far away. The mother, who had given birth to Theseus far from his father's home, was told: When the youth grows up so that he can wield a certain sword, then and then only let him return. Here again, Theseus is removed, transplanted away from the blood-connection. He too has to solve important riddles of the fourth post-Atlantean time. You know the legend of how he liberated Athens from the tribute of the youths who had to be sacrificed to the Minotaur, and of how he saved himself by means of Ariadne's thread. Theseus became the protector of Oedipus; yet Theseus is the very one who carries Helena away when she is ten years old, and keeps her in hiding. Theseus is brought into close connection with Helena.

Deep evolutionary riddles of the fourth post-Atlantean age are concealed beneath these things. The Court lady of the sixteenth century naturally had no more inkling of them than to exclaim: “From her tenth year onward she was nothing worth.” Yet in this line again, Goethe is hinting at sometning deeply significant. Goethe was well aware that that which stands behind Helena is in reality worthy of reverence, even as Faust revered her. But with regard to Helena of all people, the worst forces of calumny have been at work. Mankind might learn from such things; it can very easily happen that that which is worthy of true recognition—that which perhaps is highest—can be the most calumniated!

I only wished to point this out, to show how Helena herself stands in mysterious connection with those individualities who were the rebels of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and who at that time had the task—for the wise guidance of the Universe—to break through the blood-relationship.

How does it stand with Paris, who is presented to us by Goethe in the Invocation Scene—forgive the trite expression, I do not mean it trivially—as Faust's competitor or rival? How does it stand with Paris? Here too we are told; he was the son of Priam and of Hecuba, and his mother had a dream when she was pregnant with him. In this case it began not with an oracle but with a dream—albeit a dream containing deeper wisdom. It prophesied to Paris' mother that she would give birth to a burning torch that would set fire to the city of Troy. Therefore the parallel legend tells also of an oracle which announced to the father that this his son would serve in Troy's destruction. Whether for the one reason or the other, the father had Paris exposed. Paris, therefore, was also among those who were put outside the blood community. He was brought up in Parion, far from the bonds of blood; and it was there that there took place what the legend tells: how Eris assigned the apple to the most beautiful, and how Paris was called upon by the Goddesses, Hera, Pallas and Aphrodite, to determine which of them was the fairest. It was even said that Hera promised Paris Asia, that is the ruler- ship over the Earth, for ‘Asia’ at that time signified the rulership of the entire Earth. Pallas Athene promised him fame in battle; Aphrodite the fairest of women. Paris gave Aphrodite the prize of beauty.

Nov the great Song of Homer describes how significantly Paris thereby entered into the whole course of the affairs of Greece. In Paris himself we have an individuality rebelling against the bonds of blood. He takes Helena out of the Grecian bonds,of blood and tries to transplant her to Troy. He wants to break the bonds of blood. These things are always connected in this way; in the Greek Hero-legends we always see how there is placed into the midst of evolution that which is meant to break the bonds of blood. For the bonds of blood—in themselves strong, mighty and powerful—they are the thing that really brings about the social structure in that time.

There is one question which can come before us very clearly in this field, and it shall occupy us now for a few minutes. Someone might easily raise the following question: How does it stand with human freedom if such important deeds as the rape of Helena by Paris are accomplished by something taking place in the Spiritual World above, as in this case the rivalry of the three Goddesses? The human being then appears as the mere tool to execute what is not only prepared, but actually worked-out, in spiritual realms above. Now in a certain sense we must truly say: That which takes place through human beings here below is the reflected image of what happens in the Spiritual World. This is a point where the great riddle of freedom mightily knocks upon the doors of human knowledge. Are we really automata, who by their actions reveal the mere reflected image of what happens in the Spiritual World above? And again, how would the Spiritual World, which is the guide and leader in all that happens,—how would the Spiritual World stand there if, so to speak, it had nothing to do, if it were actionless? Two things must be understood: First, the universal course is really led and guided by spiritual forces, spiritual Powers; and nothing happens that does not happen down from the Spiritual World. And the second is, that the human being has Free Will. The two things seem diametrically opposite. We are here touching a great riddle, a problem that gives men very much to do, and they can never get beyond it lightly. For it is truly so: If we look up into the Spiritual World, what the Gods do there represents the deeds of Gods; and the human beings here below carry out the impulses of Gods. So indeed it is. How then can human beings be free?

Let me now place these problems before you with a few brief strokes. Of course one can only indicate a little of this problem at a time. Let us assume therefore: Up yonder are the three Goddesses with the conflict that is taking place among them. As a result of their conflict, there comes clown on to the Earth the impulse that proceeds from these their actions. We need not consider for our present purpose how these actions are in turn connected with still higher Hierarchies. That which takes place up yonder takes place with absolute Necessity; and as to that which Paris does, this also happens because the three Goddesses above have had this conflict with one another. How then is any freedom possible for Paris? It is practically out of the question, you will say. Yet it is not. For the ray falls down, as it were, on to the Earth; and here on Earth there is not one whom it can reach, but there are many. Assume, for example, that there are an hundred. Ninety and nine do not do the deed; the hundredth does it. Here in effect once more the Mystery of Number plays its part. These things are always confused. Paris does the deed, it is true, but the point is that Paris only becomes fully Paris inasmuch as he finds himself prepared to put himself in the very place where this impulse was able to he fulfilled. In short, the Gods would have found another one if Paris had not done it; and in that case the legend would be told of another.

It is through Number that you will come to the solution of this Riddle of Freedom. And if so be, at any given point of time, among the hundreds who stand here below no one is found, then the Gods wait till one arrives. He then accomplishes what the Gods place before him. Be that as it may, Paris it is who has accomplished the deed. It does not mar his freedom in the very least, for he could perfectly well have left the deed undone. Think of this aspect of the problem of Number, and you will find that the divinely necessary, wisdom-filled guidance of the Universe stands not in contradiction to human Freedom. Needless, to say, this does not exhaust the problem of freedom; this again is only a part.

You see, therefore, how in the total evolution of mankind the Heroes of ancient Greece, of whom we are told that they were exposed in childhood, are of great significance. And you may also call to mind (you will find it in one of my lectures; I do not know, I may even have said it several times) there is a similar legend of exposure in connection with Judas. Of Judas Iscariot we are also told that he was put out in his youth. This is a typical feature; it signifies in the language of myth and legend the entry of the rebel Powers, who rebel against the bonds of blood of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch.

Now the region out of which these impulses proceeded in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch is the region wherein the Archangel-Beings rule. Therefore the narratives are always such that the human being stands rather remote from the influences that take place out of the Spiritual World. Either it is an oracle that brings the message from the Spiritual World, or else it is the direct intervention of the World of the Gods Themselves. Helena, you know, is a daughter of Leda and Zeus; here too the Spiritual World works in directly. In our time it is the dark and backward Angel-Beings, and they naturally work through a far more intimate intercourse with human beings. I have already told you, if one would discuss or even only hint at many things that are connected with this working of the Dark Powers since the last third of the nineteenth century, one treads on very thin ice indeed! But you can tell from the whole context; the seeking of social structure through the bonds of blood, which was the right and normal evolution for the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, represents, where it remains behind in the fifth epoch, one of those impulses with which the human beings of this epoch will have to battle. We must however add another thing which I have also told you. Something entirely new is now occurring. The fourth post-Atlantean epoch—its wrestling with Birth and Death—was a repetition of Atlantean time. Now something new makes it appearance—something created directly out of Maya or Illusion. Yet this Illusion we must also understand; we must only understand it rightly. It goes without saying, Maya was always there. As I explained in the essay which you will shortly be able to read in the Reich, in relation to the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, all consciousness originates out of Illusion. Yet since the fifth post-Atlantean epoch began, Illusion is present in a more than usual degree. Illusion will appear increasingly in this form:—Human beings will give themselves up to illusions. Illusions there always were, but they were always connected with other powers in the third post-Atlantean epoch, with the forces of “elective affinity”; in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch with the forces of Birth and Death; in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch with the forces of Evil. Illusion, Maya itself, will be seized upon by Evil. Moreover, it will all be permeated by that element of which I have also told you—by cleverness, intelligence.

It sounds paradoxical when one asserts that it is good for men that they can learn to know all these things. But the fact is, the human being can only come to spiritual freedom by growing strong against resistance. This, one can readily see.

Moreover, precisely that which is connected with the number Five is always connected in this way with the unfolding of Evil. Human beings will have to accustom themselves to one thing: to regard the inrush of the forces of Evil as an inrush of very laws of Nature, forces of Nature. Then they will learn to know them, and they will know what lives and moves in the very depths of things. We must not regard Evil from the outset as one would, who in the fulness of his egoism merely wanted to get away, to flee from it. We cannot do so. But we must penetrate it with consciousness; we must learn to know it,—really learn to know it. Above all, in our time already a force is preparing in the realm of human beings,—a force which tends to create illusions that are harmful and destructive. I will give you a little example of one such illusion. In giving this example, once again I do not wish in any way or in the very least to take sides in one direction or the other; I simply wish to give you an example of this entry of Illusion.

Assume that a politician appears upon the scenes to-day, wishing to speak out of his inmost impulse of his own attitude to the wheel of the world—to the various things that are being said and done to-day, from one quarter or another. Suppose that this politician found occasion to express himself about the part that is being played in the events of our time by the British State system (I say the State system; for with the nations themselves we are not concerned in this connection) and by the hidden powers that are behind it,—powers of which we have often spoken. Assume that a politican feels called upon to speak of this. He wishes to make plain how he considers that a right relationship to the British impulses can be established.

Suppose now that such a politician were to say the following. Suppose he were to say: It would be an unfriendly action against the Power that rules the Sea, to paralyse or lessen its superiority. What would you say? This politician notes the fact that there is a Power that rules over the Sea. One must take some attitude towards it. Since, after all, this Power rules the Sea, it would be an unfriendly act, he says, to hinder its development. Therefore one should refrain from such unfriendly action.

What could one say of such a politician? I think the very least that one could say would be that he stands for a policy of Power—Machtpolitik. Is is not so? Wherever the Power is, in that direction let us turn. This, at the least, seems to emerge from his words. But to-day one does not say so. One does not take one's stand in such a case and frankly say: “I stand for a policy of Power; I will attach myself to the Power which happens to have power.” But on the contrary one says, one defines it thus: “I stand for Right and Freedom and for the Independece of Nations.”

One says these two things side by side. One says that one stands for Right and Freedom of the Nations, and directly side by side with this, one says: “Let us above all attach ourselves to the particular Power which has the power, and commit no unfriendly act in relation to it.”

You see from this how human beings involve themselves in illusions. For I have here put before you the case of the Swedish politician Branting. He, a neutral politician, is the man who spoke in this way. That is the way one carries on a neutral policy, of course. I do not say it as a reproach or to take sides with one or another party. I say it as a pure description of how such things must take their course to-day. One is enthusiastic, needless to say, for Right and Freedom of the Nations, and yet—one stands for a such a policy. One does not confess that one stands for it for the simple reason that one can do no other,—that would be the truth,—but on the contrary one says that one stands for it inspired by the impulses of Right and Freedom for all Nations.

With such things as these we must indeed concern ourselves. It is not enough for anyone to give himself up to the fairy-tales that are going through the world to-day; we must take these things into our consciousness. Only by this means is it possible to attach oneself to the real impulses of evolution which I have described. No age was ever so little enlightened about itself as is the present. No other age stands in such dire need of enlightenment about itself. Think only how proud it was of its great progress in every kind of human thought. Why, they had even succeeded in finding impulses for Social Science, out of Natural Science! I have often spoken to you of the science of social life.

Think for a moment, what is so often said in official quarters to this day on educational and social questions, questions of right and justice and so forth. Try to transplant yourself into the frame of mind in which these people bring forward their supposed infallible truths, while at the same time they would suppress absolutely everything that resounds from any other quarter. Part of what modern humanity believed thus fondly, has led to the event that through the impulses of this humanity,—impulses of Illusion upon the one hand, of Nationality upon the other—five million human beings have been consigned to death during two years and three to three-and-a-half million have been permanently wounded. It was so after two years, and now, considerably more than three years have elapsed. This is only the consequence of the false thoughts that were entertained,—thoughts in which illusion was allied with destructive power. From many another thing that is spoken nowadays about education or questions of right and justice, similar consequences will evolve if it goes on in this way, uninfluenced by spiritual life and being. For in the last resort everything depends on this. To kindle the spiritual forces in the consciousness of mankind is an absolute need for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Our criticism of the opposite, materialistic opinion is but a part of the zeal with which we call to life the spiritual impulses within us. This is the thing that matters. Whatever has to happen among men must also be undertaken by men. If we have made ourselves ready to take our stand where the ray falls, the ray will come in good time; of that you may be certain. This preparation, this making-ready, can, however, only take place through the community. It will be for the individual human beings, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, only so far as the ideas are concerned; but it will depend on the understanding with which communities will receive these ideas.

Hold to this thought, my dear friends.

The Würzburg professor of theology Dr. Herman Schell published a book entitled "Catholicism as a principle of progress" (Würzburg 1897). This title struck me as a protest against ideas to which I had become accustomed many years before. I remember that in my youth a sentence uttered by the famous Cardinal Rauscher in the Austrian Herrenhaus made a lasting impression on me. He said: "The Church knows no progress". This sentence always seemed to me to be inspired by a truly religious spirit. And it still seems so to me today. If I were a devout Catholic, I would probably take every opportunity to prove and defend this sentence. I would then say, like the Church Father Tertullian, that man no longer needs to be inquisitive after divine truth has been revealed to him through Jesus Christ. I would swear by the words of St. Thomas Aquinas that the doctrine of salvation is contained in Holy Scripture, and that reason can do nothing but use its powers to find human evidence for these eternal truths of Scripture. I would consider the freedom of thought to be a paradoxical idea, for I could hardly associate any meaning with the idea of free thought if I had to assume that reason must ultimately end up in revelation. I must confess that a believing Catholic who does things differently initially appears to me as a problem, as a big question mark. Professor Herman Schell was also such a question mark for me at first. While I was reading his book, the problem took on a more definite form. It became a psychological task. I found that in the professor's mind ideas were in perfect harmony which I had hitherto assumed to be a complete contradiction. Thus our author says: "Freedom of thought is really an ideal in so far as it means freedom from all prejudices, and remains an ideal as long as the greatest danger to judgment and to progress is the bias of prejudice. Freedom of thought means nothing other than the endeavor to break and keep out all those influences on thought which have no right to truth, because they are not facts or not actually founded, because they are only imaginations, habits of thought, false and superficial interpretations of sensory impressions or other communications, such as historical documents or religious source writings." The professor knows quite well what conclusions must be drawn from this sentence of his when it comes to different modern world views. He proves to materialism, to monism, that they are based on judgments that the mind does not examine because it has become accustomed to them, because it has become biased by living in them. "Materialism has no sense for the factual world of inner experience and the spirit; only the tangible is considered a fact. Monism does not want to accept any cause of the world that is distinct from the world and a supramundane personality: that is its dogma."

But I would now like to ask the Catholic professor what he would say if it turned out in the forum of free thought that any of the basic Christian dogmas had to be dropped? It seems to me, recalling the contents of the book, that the author has no sense of such a possibility. It is as if he were of the opinion that thought cannot arrive at anything other than the Christian truths of salvation. He wants to promote knowledge, but he is convinced that this promotion cannot consist in abandoning the essential doctrines of the Church, "beginning with the personality of the Creator and the personal immortality of the soul and ending with the historical revelation of God". If thought is to be truly free, it must also have the opportunity to penetrate to a world view which derives the order of things from powers other than a personal God, and which knows nothing of personal immortality and historical revelation. Whoever presents these doctrines of faith from the outset as goals to which thinking must come, speaks as a Catholic; but he cannot possibly make himself the defender of free thinking. This can only be its own guideline and set its own goal. For even if it is hindered by the recognition of the facts from an arbitrary flight into the fantastic, the interpretation, the explanation of the facts still depends on it. Thought is the ultimate determining factor. For Christian theology, however, it must be important to interpret the phenomena of the world in such a way that the interpretation agrees with the content of revelation. As our author also says: "The ideal that guides theological research is the conviction that the equation between correctly understood revelation and correctly interpreted reality can be established." Free thinking sails out into the unknown when it sets out in search of the truth. It does not know where the boat will drift. It only feels within itself the strength and courage to arrive at a satisfying view on its own. Catholic theology knows exactly what the realization is that thinking must arrive at. Schell knows this, because he says: "The ideal of theological science is to trace faith back to demonstrable facts and to convincing principles and reasons for proof."

The question now arises for me: How is it possible that a logically trained person like Herman Schell can unite the two assertions: thinking must be free, and: this free thinking must provide the proof that the Catholic belief in revelation is unconditionally true? This question seems to me to be a psychological one. I would like to solve it in the following way. The modern theologian is educated in the belief in divine revelation. His upbringing makes it impossible for him to doubt the truth of revelation. But alongside the divine truth of salvation, he also learns about modern science with its fruitful research methods. He gains respect for this fruitfulness. At the same time, he feels weak in the face of the achievements of the modern spirit. Only strong minds will presume to fight against this feeling; and they will also succeed in suppressing it. They will remain faithful to the true faith, to the true sentiments of their fathers, namely the Fathers of the Church, and will speak out courageously: The Church knows no progress. The others will unite black and white and, like Schell, say: "Catholicism means the covenant of peace between reason and faith, between research and revelation, without degrading and humiliating the Logos: For Christianity is the religion of the Spirit and the Logos! The true spirit of religion and holiness is only that spirit which proceeds from the word of truth." This is how those who feel a sense of shame - perhaps dormant in their unconscious - when they are seen as an opponent of progress speak.

The word "progress" has a suggestive effect on today's educated people, be they theologians, scholars, politicians, etc. How rare are the people who are proud to think "anti-progressively". Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the opponents of progress: "Progress is merely a modern idea, that is, a false idea. The European of today remains in his values deeply inferior to the European of the Renaissance; further development is by no means with any necessity increase, intensification, intensification." These sentences are found in one of the most anti-Christian books that has ever been written. But they are in a book written by a truly independent spirit. The book "Catholicism as a Principle of Progress", however, was devised by a mind that is dependent on two sides: on the spirit of true Catholicism and on a false shame that prevents it from denying the claims of anti-Catholic science. It must be described as Catholic in the true sense of the word when the author says: "Catholic is a name that does not merely designate the central church and conservative Christianity in its firmly organized world existence from time-honoured tradition, but a name that expresses a high principle, a God-given task: To realize the kingdom of God in spirit and in truth among all peoples, and indeed through all peoples and national characters, and thus to carry out Christianity in the Church really whole and full,genuine and true. " UnCatholic, however, and only out of reverence for anti-Catholic science, it is said: "The concept of God of arbitrary omnipotence, which manifests its supreme ruling power precisely in the most frequent possible breaking of the laws of nature and the mad chaos of uncontrollable forces, has no basis in reason and cannot be scientifically proven. Only God as the omnipotent realization of the perfect spiritual life, as the eternal omnipotence of infinite wisdom and holiness itself, can be proven to be an indispensable truth in the face of unbelief and makes all superstition unacceptable from the ground up." This sentence strikes me as if it had been spoken by a Haeckelian, not a professor of Catholic theology in Würzburg. A God as the realization of the perfect spiritual life, as the epitome of wisdom and holiness, is something quite different from the personal God of the Catholic, who can, however, break through the laws of nature. This is what the Gospels teach. And a completely anti-Catholic spirit speaks from the words: "Is there any need for a separate principle that everything concerning faith and the goal of life must be mediated by the personal reason and freedom of a reasonable man, by his serious examination of conscience? That is self-evident!" Yes, it is self-evident. But for an unchristian way of thinking. Anyone who takes these words seriously must refuse to bind his thinking with doctrines of faith that are fixed from the outset. But in doing so, he ceases to think catholic.

For the modern thinker, minds like Professor Schell only have a psychological interest. You can learn from them how the most contradictory ideas can live side by side in one head. The example given is particularly instructive because it is typical of a large number of modern theologians and because it shows how little logical training is able to combat the power of human emotions. The mind of the Catholic theologian is certainly trained logically. But what good is all logic if contradictory feelings and emotions develop their power from two sides. Logical thinking then becomes sophistry, which deludes the thinker into believing that things that are eternally hostile to each other can live side by side in the deepest peace.

Today we'll consider the functions ascribed to some spiritual entities known as luciferic spirits. We'll find that they have some strange connections with humanity. Our starting point shall be the fact that the science of thinking, of reflection, goes back no further than 800 or 900 years before Christ. Anyone who studies the history of philosophy knows that it began with Thales,¹³⁸ who lived in about 600 BC and once predicted a solar eclipse on the basis of his nature studies. This was something highly unusual at the time. The philosophy of western logic only came with Aristotle. Before that no doctrine existed about thinking, for thinking itself, abstract rational thinking, only began to dawn in 600 - 800 BC. Seeds of it were already there in the Atlantean race. We do, of course, know that the Chaldeans, ancient Egyptians and other Orientals knew astronomy, but this came from the deeper roots of clairvoyance.

The rational mind thus only developed half a millennium before Christ, and this had to do with changes in the form of relationships and marriage. These used to be very different from the way they are today. Scientists have established that even among the savage tribes of America the relationship between cousins is much more complex than it is with us. Thus the Iroquois call cousins on their father's side brothers and sisters but not those on their mother's side, the reason being that men who are of the same age in a family could have all women of the same age for their wives. One would thus know exactly who a child's mother was, but not its father. The Iroquois still see family relationships in this way today. It needs occult knowledge to give the right explanation for this. We know that things happened in 800 - 900 BC which indicate that marriage among blood relations changed to become marriage outside the family. Before, the head of a family was the father of the tribe. These ways still survived among the ancient Germans at a much later time, when people in Africa and in Mediterranean countries were already marrying outside the family. In medieval times the transition to marrying outside the family was glorified in legends such as the Gudrunlied¹³⁹ In his Germania, Tacitus wrote of ancient German tribes having one ancestor. Later this custom ceased, and in the Gudrunlied kings go to distant countries to look for wives. In the Siegfried legend¹⁴⁰ we have a description of the way the new order rose in opposition to marriage between blood relations. The marriage of Siegmund and Sieglinde was rejected by the goddess Frigg, wife of Odin. Odin established the principle of marriage outside the tribe. This was introduced at different times among different peoples, but there is a strange connection between the transition to this principle and the emergence of rational thinking. An occult thesis is that marriage outside the tribe kills part of the ether body—the forebrain comes to life, whilst the ancient clairvoyance, which was enhanced by intermarriage, dies away. People began to take a rational view of things. Today humanity has adapted to marriage outside family and tribe, just as in earlier times it was adapted to intermarriage. The latter has a harmful effect on the mental faculties of the children, and above all on the sense organ connected with the development of intellectual faculties, the eye. This is why intermarriage often results in blindness. Mental faculties only improve with marriage outside the family.

This physiological fact is closely linked with human evolution. It was necessary to prepare for the coming of the Christ. Could this have come about under different conditions? It brought love of one soul for another, with one soul influencing the other. Love among blood relations had to be overcome first. Nations will altogether only be ripe to receive Christianity once they have overcome love among blood relations. The initiates of ancient Egypt always came from the same family, for many generations. The earlier wisdom was intuitive by nature, which becomes all the more evident the further one goes back in human evolution. Reflection based on the intellect is connected with the basis of Christianity.

Let us now consider how the gods related to human beings. As evolution progresses, human beings will be gods, and the gods have also gone through a form of human evolution, different from our own, on other planets, but certainly something similar. Those who are at a higher level evolve on the basis of those who are at a lower level—man and animal live on the plant, this in turn on the mineral. There could be no gods if it were not for human beings. The relationship between them is of the same kind. What do the gods need of us? They feed on our love. The division into two sexes developed. The true meaning of nectar and ambrosia, food for the gods, is the love between man and woman. This reflects an occult truth.

Between the gods and human beings are spirits who did not complete their evolution at the same time as the gods, remaining behind, as it were, in the school of evolution. These are the luciferic spirits. They have fanned a higher level of spiritual independence into life in human beings. They taught them to rise against the gods, developing the part in them that does not feed the gods. Lucifer therefore appears as the serpent in the story of paradise, and Jehovah's punishment is that human beings shall bear their children in pain.¹⁴¹ The cohorts of Lucifer continued to influence intellectual development. Anything they did not achieve earlier, they made up for when marriage outside the family became the custom. The old law established order among human beings. Lucifer was set free 800 or 900 years before Christ, and the inner powers of the soul then began to unfold. The Christ came as the representative of the new order. The external law was given on Sinai, the inner law, grace, is given to those who have been set free by the Christ. That is how humanity progresses—the luciferic principle had to develop more and more in them.

Outer science is to be made free through theosophy, with knowledge deepened to become wisdom. The name Lucifer suggests the principle of independence. This is why Mrs Blavatsky¹⁴² gave that name to her first journal, and we have done the same, to make the principle known. Differences between nations will wear off more and more, and the first sentence in the principles of the Theosophical Society will come into force: to be the core for human brotherhood.¹⁴³ Love among blood relations will be progressively overcome and people will look more for soul relationships. Souls will find one another across vast distances. The further development and transformation of the rational mind will bring a new form of clairvoyance in future. Overcoming sexual love will at first mean isolation. The chela has to be uprooted—the great overcoming of all feelings of relationship—that is the function of the luciferic principle.

Questions and answers

(Questions not recorded)

The Indian caste system is based on knowledge of karma. The clairvoyant guides of the Indian nation foresaw the destined caste of an individual so that each was born into the appropriate caste. As the intellect develops with people marrying outside the family, conscious clairvoyance will develop and by the end of the sixth sub-race people will be organized in moral castes. With the next sub-race, all love between blood relations will vanish. The gods will be deprived of food and withdraw progressively from humanity, moving on to higher stages of evolution. Human beings will be guided by their masters, who have risen from the ranks of humanity, as it were, but have consciously evolved more quickly. These divine guides do not need human love to feed them, and sexual love will thus come to an end.

If the luciferic principle had not come into effect, the earth would gradually have become a cinder, like the moon, dead and desolate. This should not happen, and man himself will prevent it, reshaping the earth. When human beings first appeared, the earth was not as it is today. In Lemuria there were no dead, rigid metals and rocks; everything was flowing, rivers of metals flowed through the mountains, which we can still see quite clearly today. The miners who are in intimate touch with the inner earth know this, which makes them the best spiritualists. Many plants were still animals then, and milk, the food for man, flowed freely. In our infancy we go through this stage again unconsciously. We must, however, return to this form of taking nourishment in a conscious way. This is why it was said: ‘Unless you become as little children.’¹⁴⁴ Milk and a plant-based diet call up occult powers of healing, and future physicians will have to feed themselves in this way, that is, eat all the things that reach out for the sun. Indian physicians immunize themselves against snakebite by letting snakes bite them. They are then able to heal snakebite in others. Our food will be mineral by nature. Physiological initiates already live on a mineral diet. There are different kinds of initiates—those who teach wisdom, and among others those who work on improving the blood of humanity, the physiological initiates. They need not be specially clever in other directions, but their feeling for physiology is highly developed. We should only eat the parts of plants and animals that do not contain their vital energies—not their roots, therefore, nor meat, but fruit and milk and leaves. Anything that grows above ground, thriving in the sun and eaten by cows, is the right food. Minerals that form deposits should not be eaten, that is, no salts, only water. Physiological occultists watch over the blood transition to the next race.

In the last century, since Frederic the Great, we have developed ten times as fast as in the thousand years from Charlemagne to Frederic the Great, and evolution will continue to speed up in this way. The sixth sub-race is developing in Russia. Non-belief is a great obstacle to development.

Mercury is the body of some great spirits, one of which incarnated in Gautama Buddha.¹⁴⁵

In the course of evolution, man will govern his body from the outside, carry it with him like a snail its shell, in a way, work on it and transform it. This is something he is already doing in his sleep today.

• 138. Thales ... Aristotle, see Steiner R. The Riddles of Philosophy (GA 18). Tr. F. C. A. Kölln. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1973.
• 139. Middle high German epic.
• 140. Siegfried (Sigurd), folk hero of early and medieval German mythology. His legend provided the source material for several epics, among them the Vblsungasaga and the Nibelungenlied.
• 141. Genesis 3: 16
• 142. Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, née Hahn (1831–91), Russian theosophist. Founded the Theosophical Society with Henry Steel Olcott in New York in 1875. Her journal Lucifer first appeared in 1887
• 143. First objective of the Theosophical Society: 4To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood ofhumanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour? Proceedings of 2nd Annual Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society, p. 5.
• 144. Mark 10: 14; Matthew 18: 17.
• 145. Steiner R. The Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature (GA 136), lecture given in Helsingfors on 13 April 1912. Tr. unknown. Vancouver: Steiner Book Centre 1981.

All the prayer formulas and words of wisdom that have come down to us from the great religions contain many of the profound secrets of existence. Only we have to understand that all the different religions had prayer but differed in so far as with some of them prayer took more the form of meditation, as it is called, whilst Christianity and some other religions had prayer in the true sense, as we know it today. Meditation is above all part of Oriental religions. It means to enter deeply into a spiritual content, and this is done in such a way that by entering deeply into this the individual concerned finds himself in accord with the worlds divine and spiritual ground and origin. Please understand me rightly. Some religions give their members formal meditations, which may be prayer-like formulas into which people enter deeply, so that they become aware of the stream of divine and spiritual life present in their souls, giving themselves to the divine ground and origin of the spirit at such moments. The formulas are essentially based on thoughts, however. Basically speaking, Christian prayer is no different, only the content is more based on inner responses and feelings. A Christian enters into the essence of the divine that streams through the world more by way of inner responses and feelings.

It should not be thought, however, that Christian prayer has always been, or indeed can be, taken the way it often is today. There is an exemplary Christian prayer in which Christ Jesus himself showed, as clearly as anyone can possibly show, what the mood of a Christian should be in prayer. It is simply this: ‘Father, if it can be done, let this cup pass away from me, but not my will but your will be done.’¹⁰³ Let us consider these words. In the first place it is a genuine petition―to let the cup pass, but at the same time wholly given up to the will of the divine spirit: ‘But not my will but your will be done.’ This mood, where we let the will of the divine spirit be alive in us as we pray, giving ourselves up to it, not wanting anything for ourselves but letting the divine spirit have its will in us, this mood must be present as an undertow, the basic note in our prayer if it is to be Christian.

It is quite clear that with this it is impossible to have an egotistical prayer. It is also impossible for other reasons to offer an egotistical prayer to God, for then one of us would ask for rain, his neighbour for sunshine, and both would be asking for purely egotistical reasons, not to speak of situations where two armies face each other about to do battle and each asks that it may be victorious, which is of course quite impossible. But if there is a basic mood of ‘not my will but your will be done’, we can ask for anything, for we are then giving ourselves up to the will of the divine spirit. I would like to ask for this, but I leave it to the divine spirit to decide if it shall come to be or not.

That is the basic mood of Christian prayer, and it is in this aspect that the most comprehensive, most universal prayer of Christian tradition arose—the Lord's Prayer, which tradition says was taught by Christ Jesus himself. It is indeed one of the most profound prayers in the world. Today we are no longer able to know the profound depths of the Lord's Prayer in its original language. But the thoughts it contains are so tremendous that it does not lose anything in any language.

When you consider the prayers of other nations, you will find prayers to have been of the kind I have characterized wherever religions are in their prime, have reached their peak. However, once the religions had come down in the world those prayers assumed a character that was no longer entirely right. They have become magic formulas, means of idolatry. At the time when Christ Jesus taught his people to pray, many, many such magic formulas were in use, all of them having had profound meaning at their origin. Such magic incantations would always refer to things people liked in outward ways, asking for things in an egotistical way governed by personal wishes. The lord taught that Christians should not pray like that. That kind of prayer has to do with superficial things. A Christian should say his prayer in seclusion, that is, in his inmost soul, the part of it where the human being can make the connection with the divine spirit. We must understand, of course, that something lives in every human being that may be compared to a drop from the ocean of the divine, that there is something in every human being that is like God. It would be wrong, however, to think that a human being in himself is like God. When we say: something in the human being is like God, this does not mean the human being himself is equal to God, for a drop taken from the ocean is the same as the ocean in substance, but it is not the ocean. And so the human soul is a drop from the ocean of the divine, but it is not God, and just as the drop can unite with its own substance when you pour it into the sea, so does the soul, being a drop of divinity, unite with its God in a spiritual way during prayer or meditation. This union of the soul with its God is called ‘to pray in private’ by Christ Jesus.

As a first step we have characterized the mood of Christian prayer, the Christian human mood needed for this prayer. We can now contemplate the contents of the Lord's Prayer itself. The words were that the Lord's Prayer is the most comprehensive prayer. You will therefore feel the need, as I do, to take a very comprehensive look at the world in order to understand the Lord's Prayer. We'll have to take a long roundabout route to understand it. We need to consider the nature of the human being from a particular point of view. You know that we do this the way it has been done in spiritual research through the ages. Let us briefly consider it once more.

When we have a human being before us, we have first of all the physical body which has its substance and forces in common with all minerals and seemingly lifeless products of nature. But this physical human body is not the only thing we have in the space before us, which is what materialists may think; it is only the lowest principle of human nature. The next principle we discern is the ether body or life body of the individual, and this he has in common with the plants and the animals, for every plant, every animal and every human being must call the chemical and physical matter into life; they cannot give life to themselves. The third principle is the astral body, the bearer of pleasure and pain, drives, desires and passions and the notions we have in everyday life. Man could not have any of these if it were not for the astral body. He only has it in common with the animals. Animals, too, feel pleasure and pain, have drives, desires and passions, and so they also have this body. And so the human being has his physical body in common with the seemingly lifeless minerals, and his ether or life body with all things that grow and reproduce themselves, the whole plant world. He has his astral body in common with animal nature. Then he has one more thing and this is something that takes him beyond the three natural worlds of this earth, making him the apotheosis of creation. This is the fourth principle of his essential nature.

We find it if we give the matter a little thought. There is one name that differs from all others. You cannot say ‘I’ to anyone else. To everyone else I am a ‘you’, and everyone else is a ‘you’ to me. ‘I’ is a name the meaning of which can only arise in the inner soul itself. It can never come to you from outside if it refers to you yourself. People who lived with the more profound religions always knew this, at all times, and they would therefore say: ‘When the soul begins to give this name to itself inwardly, the god in man begins to speak, the god who speaks through the soul.’ The name ‘I’ cannot come from outside, it has to arise in the soul itself. This is the fourth principle of human nature.

Occultists of the Hebrew faith called this ‘I’ the name of God that may not be spoken. ‘Yahweh’ actually means ‘I am’. Whatever interpretation scholars lacking inner knowledge may give, in reality it meant ‘I am’, and that is the fourth principle of the essential human being. These are the four aspects that make up man in the first place. We also call them the four members of man's ‘lower’ nature.

Now to understand the whole nature of man you will have to go back a little in human evolution. This takes us to many different peoples that preceded us—ancient German and central European development, the Graeco-Latin and Chaldean peoples, Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Hebrews, the Persian peoples and all the way back to the people with whom our present civilization started, the Indians. They, too, had ancestors but those lived somewhere quite different, on the continent which now is the bottom of the sea between Europe and America, on Atlantis. This was washed away by tremendous floods, the land went down in a mighty natural event that lives on in the myths and legends of all nations as the Flood.

But even Atlantis was not the earliest civilized land on earth. Going back a long way we come to the region where man developed his present-day form, a land that lay more or less between today's Indochina, Australia and Africa. This was ancient Lemuria, a land where conditions were very different from those we know today. People do not usually realize how great and comprehensive the changes have been that occurred on earth in the course of human evolution. There we come to a time when man's lower nature did already exist. Creatures consisting of the four members—physical body, ether body, astral body and I-nature—went about on earth then. They were organized at a higher level than the highest animals of today, but they were not yet human—animal-humans, but definitely not like today's animals. Our animals are degenerate descendants that have developed from those animal-humans by lagging behind and by involution. Something very special happened among those animal-humans which lived at that time.

They were ripe at that time to receive the power into them which is our higher power of soul. We might put it like this: lower human nature united with the human soul at that time. This human soul had until then rested in the keeping of the godhead, being an inherent part of the godhead itself. Up above, therefore, in the realm of the spirit, there was the divine spirit, and down below were the fourfold human forms, which had been maturing up to this point and were now ready to receive droplets of this divine spirit. We can get an idea of what happened then by using a picture. Think of a glass of water. You take a hundred tiny sponges and try gradually to take up a drop of the water with each of these sponges. You then have a hundred drops which previously had been completely one with the water and are now distributed among one hundred small sponges. This is a simple image to show you how the process of ensoulment went at that time. Until then the soul had rested within the great universal divine spirit like a drop in our glass of water. The physical human forms then acted the way our small sponges do. Droplets of the spirit separated out from the universal divine substance; they became individual, and as souls were like drops in those enveloping forms. They then began to develop the human being as he is today, an entity with soul and body. Those souls incarnated for the first time then. Afterwards they went through many, many incarnations, developing their human body into the form it has today. The event which happened at that time, however, was that parts of the divine principle united with the lower members of human nature. They progressed with every incarnation, became more perfect with every incarnation, to reach a certain culmination at a future time.

We call this part of higher nature which came in as a power at that time, changing lower nature and in the process of change rising to a higher level itself, the core of man's essential nature: spirit self, life spirit and spirit man, or manas, buddhi, atman. These are the elements of the divine spirit through which man gradually transforms his lower into his higher nature, step by step. With his power of manas he restructures the astral body, with buddhi the ether body, and with the power of atman he restructures the physical body. He has to transfigure them all, making them spiritual, if he is to reach the goal of his evolution one day. And so we once had four members—physical body, ether body, astral body and I—and at that time were then given the seed potential for higher development which is really something that flows from the highest spirit—the threefold higher nature of man, the divine core of our being, the divine potential in man. We can look at this higher part of human nature in two ways. One is to say: that is the higher nature of man, and man is developing towards it in the course of evolution. Or we consider it to be part of the divine spirit from which it has come, the divine element in the human being. A Christian will primarily consider it in this second way, and we are going to do this as well now and see if we can discern the essence of these higher powers in human nature. We'll start with the highest principle, the element which in man is called the power of atman. What I am going to tell you now is not some kind of external definition, for I want to characterize the true nature and essence of this higher principle of human nature. The principle that becomes power of atman is, in so far as it is a power that comes from the divine spirit, will-like by nature. Think of your own powers of will, of the part in you that is able to will, and you have a shadowy reflection, a shadowy picture of the element that comes from the power of atman, from the divine. The human will is the human being's least developed power today. The will is, however, able to develop more and more, until the time comes when it reaches its culmination and is able to achieve what is known in all religions as ‘the great offering’ or ‘the great sacrifice’.

Imagine yourself standing before a mirror and looking into it. Your image is exactly like you in every aspect of your physiognomy, your gestures; it is like you in everything, but it is a dead image of you. You stand in front of it as a living entity and come face to face with your dead image which is like you in everything except for your livingness, your substance and content. Imagine now that your will has developed to the point where it would be capable of deciding to give up your own existence, your own essential nature and give it over to your mirror image. You would then be able to sacrifice yourself wholly, so that your mirror image may be given your life. Such a will is said to ‘emanate’, to let its own essence go. It is the highest development of the will, known to Christians as the ‘divine will of the father’.

The human will, then, is today the least developed of our soul powers. It is, however, in the process of developing such power that it will be able to achieve ‘the great sacrifice’. That is the true nature of the potential which lies in the power of atman—will-like nature in so far as it is an out-flowing of divine essence.

Let us now consider the second principle of man's higher nature—the buddhi or life spirit—looking at it as an out-flowing of the divine spirit, which is the view taken in Christianity. You will find it easiest to get an idea of it if you now consider not the power that flows out to give life to the mirror image but to the mirror image itself. In the mirror image the original being is perfectly repeated; it is the same, and yet not the same. If you apply this to the world, to the whole universe—how the divine world will in one point is reflected in all directions.

Think of a hollow sphere, as it were, that is reflective inside. The one point inside is reflected inwards infinitely many times. Everywhere, in infinite recapitulation, the divine world will; mirror images everywhere, aspects of the divine.

Look at the cosmos, the universe like this, as a mirroring of the infinite world will. The divine world will is not in any one entity that exists but is it reflected everywhere in infinitely many ways. The mirroring of the godhead—with the godhead remaining at the point where it is but at the same time giving life to every point in which it is reflected by making ‘the great sacrifice’―that is the ‘kingdom’ in Christian terminology. And this term ‘the kingdom’ refers to the element which in man is the buddhi. If you consider the universe with regard to the creative, productive principle that flows from the divine origin, then the element that comes immediately next to the atman is the buddhi, the divine spark. As a ‘kingdom’ it is universal and cosmic.

And let us now turn our attention from this to the details of the kingdom. We first considered it as a whole. Now we come down to detail. In what way do we distinguish the one from the other? With the ‘name’, as it is called in Christian terminology. Each is given a name, and that is how distinction is made between the many different things, the individual aspects of the kingdom. To a Christian, the ‘name’ is something which is often called the ‘idea’, the particular nature of a thing. Just as an individual person is distinguished from another by name, so the name is felt to be such that it also holds part of the mirrored divine essence. A Christian has the right relationship to this name if he understands that every aspect of the kingdom is an out-flowing of the divine, and knows with every bite of bread that it is an out-flowing, a mirror and a part of the godhead. A Christian should clearly understand this in relation to even the least of things. In human nature, the individual spirit brings it about that each becomes an individual compared to others. What the name is in the kingdom, man has in his individual spirit self or manas because he is a separate part of the godhead, has a separate name, a name which for each individual goes through all incarnations.

So we now have this threefold nature before us as an out-flowing of the divine spirit, and in this sense atman is the will of the godhead, buddhi or the life spirit the kingdom of the godhead, and manas or the spirit self the name of the godhead.

Let us now consider the four lower members of human nature, beginning with the physical body, which is the lowest. It has the same material substances and forces as outer physical nature, but is also constantly converting those substances and forces. These move in and out of the human physical body, and its very existence depends on their moving in and out. It can only continue by continually renewing and changing itself using the outer physical substances. It forms a whole with the rest of physical nature. Just as you cannot cut off this finger and have it remain what it is—it will shrivel up as soon as you separate it from the rest of the body and is what it is only because it is part of the whole organism—so you cannot separate the physical human body from the earth and have it remain as it is. Man thus is an entity that is connected with the elements of the earth. Physical substances and forces move in and out, and this makes him such that he can only maintain his essential nature through them. This characterizes the physical body.

The second member is the ether or life body. Here we must understand that it is the principle which calls the merely physical substances and forces to life. It bears the powers of growth and reproduction, the signs of life altogether, and also something entirely different—all the qualities of the human being that are of a more lasting nature than his short-lived drives, desires and passions. What makes him different from them? If you want to grasp this difference, think back to the time when you were eight years old. Think of everything you have learned since then, all the concepts and ideas, experiences and events that have enriched your soul—it is a tremendous amount. But now you need to think about something else, and that is how slowly, at a snail's pace, something else is going. Remember that you had a violent temper as a child, and consider if this temper does not still come through at times, with your inclinations or your temperament still largely the same. All this has not changed as much as your experiences have. You might compare the things you learn, experience, with the minute hand of a clock, and the changes in character, temperament and habit with the hour hand. This difference exists because the former are sustained by the astral body, whereas the latter, which move so slowly, are sustained by the ether body. If your habits change, that is a change in your ether body. When you have learned something, it is a change in your astral body.

For someone who becomes a pupil of genuine occultism in the higher sense, training is not a matter of external learning, for all occult training takes place in the ether body. You therefore have done more for your actual occult training if you have managed to change just one deep-rooted character trait than if you have gained any amount of external knowledge. Distinction is therefore made between the exoteric, which is sustained by the ether body, and esoteric, which is what the ether body needs. The ether body also sustains memory as a quality, not as the memorizing of things. If your memory is to get clearer, for instance, this involves changing the ether body; if it gets less good, this is a change in the ether body, a change in your power of memory. Something else is also of infinite importance for us. The way human beings are now, they live in two directions. Each belongs to a family, a tribe, nation and so on, and has certain qualities in common with others, qualities that relate him to that context. French people have different ones from Germans, these again others than the English, and so on. They all have certain tribal characteristics in common. But apart from this each has his own individual characteristics, and with these goes beyond nation or tribe, becoming an individual person. You are part of a community because of particular qualities of the ether body. The ether body has the qualities through which you are a member of a nation, a race, and humanity as a whole. But to find the things that take you outside this community, you have to look to the astral body. This makes people individual.

A person's whole life in the community therefore depends on his ether body finding the right balance with the ether bodies of the people with whom he has to live. If it cannot find it, the person cannot live in that community, something will go wrong and he'll be on the outside. The human ether body thus has the task of adapting to other ether bodies. The astral body gives the individual aspect; it must above all live in such a way that the person does not commit personal sins. The astral body goes astray in one direction or another because of personal sins; those are the failings of the astral body. Being out of harmony with the community, those are failings of the ether body. When esoteric Christians were accurate in their use of words they would call the failings of the ether body ‘trespass’ or ‘fault’, something that upsets the balance in relation to others. A failing of the astral body, which arises from one's individual nature, was called ‘falling into temptation’. The astral body is subject to temptation in its drives, passions and desires. It falls into error by falling to temptation within itself. That was the distinction made between ‘fault’ and ‘falling into temptation’ in esoteric Christianity.

Now to the fourth member of the essential human being—the I. We spoke of the physical body, which exists on the basis of metabolism, exchange of substances; the ether body, which may have committed faults; the astral body which may fall into temptation. Now the I. It is the very source and origin of self-seeking, of egotism. It was the I which brought it about that the element which was at one in the great divine spirit has entered into many individuals. It was due to the I that it fell away from oneness and entered into individual. Christian gnosis therefore considered the I to be the actual origin of egotism and selfishness. For as long as the individual entities were at one in the godhead, they could not go against one another. They could only do this when the ‘I’s had become separate. Before, they could only will as the godhead willed. This way of developing in opposition to others which is egotism is called the failing of the I, and in Christian tradition the moment when this soul descends into the body is exactly defined as the Fall, biting into the apple. The actual failing of the I is called ‘evil’. The failing of the fourth member thus is evil. Only the I can fall into evil, and this came about when the bite was taken of the apple. In Latin, the word malum means both ‘apple’ and ‘evil’.

So, to sum up once more, the physical body is the same as the physical elements all around it and sustains itself in the continual exchange of substances and forces, in metabolism. The ether body is the principle which maintains the balance with other members of the community; it may commit faults. The astral body, which should not fall to temptation, and the I, which must not fall victim to egotism, to evil.

This fourfold principle unites with the threefold higher principle which is the divine core of being:

Think of prayer as the human being uniting himself with the godhead, doing so in seclusion. The original concept in Christendom was that the soul was seen as divine, a droplet from the ocean of the godhead. And this soul must plead that it may return again to its origin. This origin of divine human nature is given the name ‘father’. And the goal towards which the soul strives, where it will be united again with the principle that is called the ‘father’, is the devachan or heaven.

And now we think of the prayer of prayers—an appeal that individual human nature may find the way to divine father-nature.

This prayer had to plead that the three higher principles of human nature might be able to develop, ask that the ‘will’, the highest out-flowing of the divine, might come to realization in man; that the second principle of divine nature, the ‘kingdom’, might spread in the human being; that the third principle, the ‘name’, might be felt to be holy. This would therefore relate to the three higher principles, the divine nature in man. And for the four lower members of human nature one would ask: let my physical body be given the substances it needs to sustain itself. Let the ether body find the balance between its fault and the fault of others, so that it may live in harmony with the others. The prayer would have to be a plea that temptation would not drag down the astral body, and that the I might not fall into the evil that flows from egotism.

In a prayer of prayers, you must ask to be united with the father. You should do this in such a way that the individual aspects of your sevenfold nature are there before you in your prayer:

‘Our father, who are in heaven.’

You first invoke the father, then make the petitions that relate to the three higher principles:

‘Hallowed be your name, let your kingdom come to us.’

‘Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’

Then the four petitions that relate to the other four members of the essential human being:

‘Give us today our daily bread.’

‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’

That is coming to terms with the people among whom we live.

‘Lead us not into temptation.’

Our astral body.

‘But deliver us from evil.’

Meaning from any out-flowing of egotism.

The seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer thus relate to the evolution of sevenfold human nature. From the depth of wisdom, going beyond the human being, the Lord's Prayer has been given to Christians as a Christian prayer, and in it lies everything that is known about the human being in theosophy. You only have to understand it and you have the whole of theosophical wisdom, in so far as it relates to man.

Prayers that do not just have a short-term effect but take hold of human souls through millennia, lifting up human hearts, have all arisen from the most profound wisdom. No such prayer has ever been given by someone putting together beautiful or uplifting words at will. They have been taken out of the most profound wisdom, for this alone gives them the power to influence human souls through millennia.

The objection that a simple mind will know nothing of this wisdom is pointless. The mind does not need to know any of this, for the power of the Lord's Prayer comes from that wisdom, and this influences human beings even if they do not know about it.

It merely has to be understood in the right way. Someone sees a plant and is delighted by it. Even the most naive mind will be delighted, though it knows nothing of the divine wisdom that lies in the plant. It is the same with the great prayers. You need not know the wisdom, and yet the prayer will have the power, the wisdom, the ability to lift us up, the sanctity of prayer. It may be born out of the greatest wisdom, but what matters is not to know that wisdom but to experience its power.

It is only in our time that the possibility exists to discover the things which Christ Jesus put into prayer and know again the power he put into it, especially the Lord's Prayer. It has been taken from the greatest depths of wisdom and knowledge about man and his sevenfold nature, and because of this it is great and powerful for even the simplest of minds, and even more uplifting for someone who is also able to gain the wisdom that lies in it. And it does not lose any of its power in the process, a power it has always had, touching us deeply and lifting our spirits. For the whole of theosophy, divine wisdom, lies in the Lord's Prayer.

The lord often spoke to the multitudes in parables. But when he was alone with his disciples he would explain the parables to them, for they had to gain the strength from the wisdom-filled explanation of the parables that would make them his messengers, make them know the means by which he himself gained the magical power that would make his work have the influence it was to have for millennia.

So this is something that can help us enter into the meaning of the Lord's Prayer.

• 103. Matthew 26: 39.