The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We have arrived at an important point in our studies—a sort of climax—hence we may expect to encounter various difficult passages in elucidating the Gospels. I may therefore be permitted at the beginning of these expositions, to preface the continuation of what was said yesterday with a short survey of the salient features thus far treated.

We know that the nature of mankind's development was essentially different in remote times from what it is today, and we know that the human being shows an increasingly different form as our retrospect reaches farther and farther back to earlier conditions. It has already been mentioned that from our own time, which we may call the Central European cultural epoch, we can look back successively to the Greco-Latin time, to the Egypto-Chaldean period, and then to the era in which the ancient Persian people was led by Zarathustra. Beyond that we arrive at the remote Indian civilization, so very different from ours; and that brings us to a period of cultural evolution that followed immediately upon a great and mighty catastrophe. This cataclysm, running its course in tempestuous events in the air and in the water element, led to the disappearance of that continent which mankind had inhabited before the Indian civilization—ancient Atlantis, situated between Europe-Africa, and America—and to the migration of its people, westward to America and on the other side to the lands of Europe, Asia, and Africa, which had gradually taken on their present configuration. This Atlantean age, especially in the early part, produced human beings who were very differently constituted in respect of their soul from present-day mankind; and what interests us primarily in human evolution is precisely what pertains to the soul, for we know that everything corporeal is a result of psychospiritual development.

What was the nature of the soul life in this ancient Atlantean age? We know that at that time human consciousness was very different from what it became later, and that in a certain respect man had an archaic clairvoyance, but that he was not yet capable of any pronounced self-consciousness, of ego-consciousness. This is achieved only by learning to distinguish oneself from outer objects, and people of that time were not quite able to do this.

Let us imagine for a moment what would happen in our time if we were unable to distinguish ourselves from our surroundings—let us consider the matter in a concise way. Nowadays we ask, Where are the confines of my being? And with a certain justification we answer, from our present-day standpoint, The confines of my human entity are where my skin divides me off from my surroundings. People imagine that they consist only of what their skin encloses, and that everything else is made up of outer objects which they perceive and from which they distinguish themselves. They believe this because they know that if some part is removed from within their skin they are no longer a complete human being, nor can be. From a certain standpoint it is quite correct to say that if you cut off a piece of a man's flesh he is no longer a whole human being.

On the other hand, we also know that we inhale air with every breath; and to the question, where is this air, the answer is, all around us—everywhere where our environment makes contact with us: that is the air we will have within us in the next moment. Now it is outside us, now in us. Cut off this air, remove it, and you can no longer exist. You are less whole than you would be if the hand within your skin were cut off. So the truth of the matter is that we are not bounded by our skin. The surrounding air is part of us, it enters and leaves us, and we have no right arbitrarily to fix the skin as our boundary.

If people would come to understand this—it would have to be arrived at theoretically, as perception provides no means of observing it—it would lead them to ponder on matters not forced upon their attention by the outer world itself. If a man were at all times able to see the air current passing into him, spreading, being transformed, and passing out again, it would never occur to him to say, This hand is more a part of me than the air I inhale. He would count the air as part of himself, and would suspect hallucinations if he fancied himself an independent being capable of existing without his environment.

No such delusion could exist for the Atlantean, for his observation clearly showed him a different state of affairs. He saw the objects in his environment not in sharp outline, but surrounded by colored auras. He did not see a plant as we see it, but more as we see the street lamps on a foggy autumn evening: everything was surrounded by a great colored aura. That was because there is spirit—spiritual beings—in and among all things of the outer world, which the dim clairvoyance still existing at that time enabled the Atlantean to perceive. As the fog fills the space between the lights, so there are spiritual beings everywhere in space. The Atlantean saw these spiritual beings just as you see the fog, hence they constituted for him a kind of vaporous aura investing all outer objects. These themselves were indistinct; but because he saw the spirit he also saw everything of a spiritual nature that streamed in and out of him. And for the same reason he saw himself as a component of his whole environment. He saw currents flowing into his body from all sides, currents you cannot see today. Air is merely the densest substance that enters us: there are far more tenuous ones. Man has lost the power of discerning spirit because he no longer has the old dim clairvoyance; but the man of Atlantis saw the spiritual currents streaming in and out, just as your finger, were it conscious, would see the blood coursing through it and would know that it must wither if it were torn off. Just as the finger would feel, if conscious, so the Atlantean felt himself to be a member of an organism. He felt the currents streaming in through his eyes and ears, and so forth; and he knew that if he were to force himself out of their reach he could not remain a human being. He felt as though poured out into the whole outer world.

The man of Atlantis saw the spiritual world, but he could not distinguish himself from it: he lacked anything like a strong ego sense—self-consciousness in its present meaning. The opportunity to develop this was provided by the fading from his view of all that had emphasized his dependence upon his environment. The cessation of that awareness enabled him to develop his self-consciousness, his egoity, and to do this was the task of post-Atlantean man. After the great Atlantean catastrophe people were organized in such a way that the spiritual world receded from their consciousness, and that they gradually learned to see the outer physical world of the senses ever more clearly and distinctly. But nothing that evolves in the world takes place all at once, but step by step; it proceeds slowly and gradually; and thus the old dim clairvoyance vanished slowly and by degrees. Even today, under given conditions, it is still found as an old heritage in certain people and in mediumistic natures. Something that had reached its climax in a certain era gradually becomes extinct. In the earliest period of postAtlantean times, ordinary people still retained a great deal of the gift of clairvoyance; and what these people saw in the spiritual world was continually supplemented, expanded, and animated by the initiates who were guided to the spiritual world by the methods described in an earlier lecture, and who thus became the messengers of what in former times had been seen to a certain extent by all men.

Better than any external historical research, legends and myths—especially those linked with the oracle sanctuaries—have preserved for us what is true of those old times. In the oracle temples specially selected people were thrown into abnormal states—a dream state, or mediumistic state, as one might say—by reducing them to a consciousness state duller and darker than the ordinary waking state. They were in a condition of diminished consciousness, where they were surrounded by outer objects which, however, they did not see. This was not clairvoyance as it had once existed, but an intermediate state, half dreamlike, half in the nature of clairvoyance. Now, if information was sought concerning certain particular circumstances in the world, or the right mode of procedure in some special matter, the oracles were consulted; for in them was to be found the dim clairvoyance as a heritage of the ancient faculty.

At the beginning of his evolution, then, man was endowed with wisdom: wisdom streamed into him. But this wisdom gradually dwindled away: and even the initiates in their abnormal states—of for they had to be led into the spiritual world by the withdrawal of however, those who were not only initiated in the old sense, but who had advanced with the times and were prophets of the future, realized that a new impulse was indispensable for humanity. An ancient heritage of wisdom had been bestowed upon mankind when it descended from divine-spiritual heights, but it became ever more obscured. In the beginning all men possessed it, then but the few who were thrown into special states of consciousness in the oracles, then only the initiates, and so forth.

The day must come—thus spoke the old initiates who knew the signs of the time—in which this ancient heritage will have dwindled to the point where it is no longer capable of leading and guiding humanity; and this would mean that man would fall a prey to uncertainty and doubt in the world. It would express itself in his willing, his acting, and his feeling. And with the gradual dwindling of wisdom men would become their own unwise leaders: their ego would wax increasingly strong, so that with the recession of wisdom every individual would seek truth in his own ego, would develop his own feelings and will—every man for himself—and men would become ever more isolated, more alienated from each other, and they would understand each other less and less. Since each wants his own thoughts—thoughts that no longer flow out of a unified wisdom—none can understand the other's thoughts; and human feelings, no longer guided by universal wisdom, must eventually come into mutual conflict, as must also human actions. All men would act, think, and feel in opposition to each other, and ultimately mankind would be split up altogether into an aggregation of quarrelling and fighting individuals.

And what was the outer, physical sign that appeared as the expression of this development? It was the transformation mankind experienced in the blood. In very ancient times, as we know, endogamy was customary: people married only within the blood-related tribe. But this custom yielded increasingly to exogamy: the blood of mutually alien tribes became mixed; and that explains the decrease, the dwindling, of the heritage deriving from a remote past.

Let us once more recall Goethe's words which we quoted yesterday:

“My father gave my build to me,
Toward life my sober bearing.
From mother comes my cheerful heart,
My joy in storytelling.”

We connected this assertion with the fact that what the etheric body comprises derives from the maternal element, as handed down from generation to generation, so that every man bears in his own etheric body the legacy of the maternal element, and in his physical body, that of the paternal element. Now, by reason of consanguinity the inheritance, perpetuating itself from etheric body to etheric body, was very potent, and from it derived the old faculty of clairvoyance. The offspring of endogamy inherited with the related blood the old capacity for wisdom in the etheric body. But as blood became more and more mixed—as a result of increasing intermarriage among tribes—the possibility of handing down the ancient wisdom diminished; for as we said yesterday, human blood gradually altered, and the mixing of different bloods obscured the ancient wisdom more and more.

In other words, the blood—bearer of inherited maternal attributes—became ever less fitted to transmit the old faculty of clairvoyance. It simply developed in such a way that people became ever less able to see into the spiritual world. Physically considered, therefore, human blood altered in a manner to render it increasingly incapable of bearing the old wisdom that once had guided man so surely, falling instead more and more into the opposite extreme, becoming the bearer of egotism—that is, of a quality that leads men, as egos, to individual isolation and mutual antagonism. And for the same reason it gradually lost its power of uniting men in love.

We are, of course, still involved in this process of deterioration taking place in the human blood because, in as far as it has its origin in an ancient epoch, it will follow its lingering course to the end of Earth evolution. Therefore an impulse was needed in humanity capable of counteracting this condition. Through consanguinity men would have been led into error and misery, as the old wise men tell us in legends and myths, Men could no longer rely on the legacies of an ancient wisdom: even the oracles, asked for information and advice, divulged only what led to savage conflicts and quarrels. The oracle had foretold, for example, that Laios and Jocasta would have a son who would kill his father and wed his mother. Nevertheless, in the face of this legacy of oracle wisdom, nothing could at that time prevent the blood from falling more and more a prey to error: Oedipus does kill his father and does wed his mother. He commits parricide and incest.

What the old sage meant was this: Once upon a time men possessed wisdom; but even had it been preserved, the development of the ego must inevitably have proceeded, and egotism would have grown so strong that blood would rage against blood. Blood is no longer fitted to lead men upwards when it is guided only by the ancient wisdom. And thus the clairvoyant initiate who gave us the original picture of the Oedipus legend wished to set up a warning for mankind, saying: That is what would happen to you if nothing came to supersede the old oracle wisdom.—And in the Judas legend there is preserved even more clearly an indication of what the old oracle wisdom would have led to. Judas' mother, too, was prophetically told that her son would kill his father and wed his mother, thereby conjuring up untold misery; and it all came to pass in spite of the foreknowledge. This means that the primeval, inherited wisdom is not capable of saving man from the abyss into which he must fall unless a new impulse reaches mankind.

If we now look more closely into the causes of all this we must ask, Why was it inevitable that the ancient wisdom should become unfitted to dominate humanity? The answer to this question can be found by examining nature carefully the origin of the old wisdom in its relation to mankind I have already indicated that in the old Atlantean age a connection existed between the physical body and the etheric body of man that differed greatly from the later relation. In regard to two of the principles of man's nature it can be said that the physical and etheric bodies are so related that they approximately coincide, especially in the region of the head; but this is only the case in our own time. Looking back to the Atlantean period we find the etheric head protruding far beyond its physical counterpart: the etheric body extended past the physical body, particularly in the head region. Now, in the Atlantean epoch human evolution proceeded in such a way that the outline of the physical and of the etheric body became more and more coincident, especially in the head: the etheric body kept withdrawing into the physical body, thereby naturally altering this member of the human being.

That, then, is the essential feature of this phase of human evolution: the etheric body of the human head withdraws more and more into the physical aspect of the head until the two come to coincide. Now, as long as the etheric body was outside the physical head it was subject to conditions quite different from the subsequent ones: it was in touch, on all sides, with currents, with other spiritual beings; and the substance of what thus streamed in and out provided the faculty of clairvoyance in Atlantean times. So the capacity for clairvoyance was due to the incomplete coincidence of the physical and etheric bodies in the head region, a condition admitting from all sides currents endowing the etheric head with clairvoyance. Then followed the time when the etheric body withdrew into the physical body. In a certain way—not completely—it tore itself away from these currents; it began to cut itself off from the currents which had provided the capacity for clairvoyantly penetrating the wisdom of the world. Conversely, when in the old initiations a man's etheric body was withdrawn, his etheric head became interpermeated once more with the surrounding currents, and clairvoyance set in again.

Now, had this contact between the etheric body and the outer world been severed at one stroke, in the middle of the Atlantean age, the old clairvoyance would have vanished far more rapidly than was actually the case. No remnants of it would have remained for the post-Atlantean time, nor would mankind of a later age have retained any recollection of it. As it occurred, however, man preserved a certain contact with the outer currents. And something else took place as well: this etheric body that had cut itself off from the currents of its environment retained, nevertheless, certain remnants of the former capacity for wisdom. Keep well in mind that at the end of the Atlantean epoch, after man had drawn his etheric body into himself, there remained in it a sort of fund, the residue of what had once come to it from without—a small saving, if I may use the term: as if a son had a father, the father is earning money, and the son draws upon him according to his needs. In the same way, man drew upon his environment for all the wisdom he needed, up to the time when his etheric body severed the connection. Keeping to our simile, let us now assume that the son loses his father, there remains for him but a certain portion of his father's money, and he earns nothing to add to it. In time he will come to the end of it and have nothing left. That is the position in which the human being found himself. He had torn himself loose from his father-wisdom, had added nothing to it through his own endeavor, and subsisted on it into the Christian era—indeed, even now he is still living on his inheritance, not on anything he has earned. He lives on his capital, so to speak. In the earliest part of post-Atlantean development a bit of the capital was still left, though without his having himself earned the wisdom: he lived on the interest, as it were, and occasionally requested an additional sum from the initiates. But ultimately the coin of ancient wisdom lost its currency; and when it was given to Oedipus it no longer had any value: this old wisdom did not save him from the most frightful transgression, nor did it save Judas.

That is what took place in the course of human evolution. How did it come about that man gradually exhausted his capital of wisdom? Because in the past he had given access to two kinds of spiritual beings: the Luciferic beings, and later, as a consequence of these, the Ahrimanic or Mephistophelean beings. These prevented him from adding, by his own labor, to the store of old wisdom, for they acted upon his being as follows: the Luciferic beings tended to corrupt his passions and feelings, while the Ahrimanic, the Mephistophelean beings were more concerned with outwardly distorting his view of the world. Had the Luciferic beings not intervened in Earth evolution, man would have developed no such interests in the physical world that drags him down beneath his true status; and if, as a result of the Luciferic influence, the Mephistophelian, the Ahrimanic, the Satanic beings had not taken a-hand, man would know, and would always have known, that underlying every object of the senses there is spirit, and he would look through the surface of the sense world upon the spirit. But Ahriman infused into human observation something like a dark smoke cloud that prevents penetration to the spiritual. Through Ahriman's agency man is enmeshed in lies, in maya, in illusion.—These are the two beings that prevent man from earning any increment to the store of ancient wisdom once bestowed upon humanity; and as a consequence, this heritage has dwindled away and gradually become wholly useless.

Nevertheless, in a certain other respect evolution held to its course. During the Atlantean time the human etheric body merged with the physical body; and it was man's misfortune, so to speak—his fate—to be forced to experience the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman in his physical body in this physical world just at a time when he was God-forsaken, as it were. The result was that the old heritage of wisdom became useless precisely by reason of the influence of the physical body, of living in the physical body. How did this happen? Formerly man did not live in the physical body: he gathered his wisdom from his father's treasury, so to speak—from the ancient fund of wisdom. His source of supplies was outside his physical body, because he himself was outside it in respect of his etheric body; and this source finally dried up. In order to augment his fund of wisdom, man would have needed a treasury in his own body. But this he did not have; and consequently, in default of an inner source of wisdom, there remained less and less of it in his etheric body every time he abandoned his physical body at death. After every death, every reincarnation, the sum of wisdom in his etheric body was less: the etheric body became ever poorer in wisdom.

But evolution advances; and just as in the Atlantean age evolution was such that the etheric body withdrew into the physical body, so future development will proceed in such a way that man will gradually emerge again from his physical body. Whereas in a former age the etheric body kept drawing into the physical—ever deeper, up to the coming of Christ—the time then arrived in which the course of evolution changed. At the moment in which Christ appeared the etheric body began to retrace its course; and already in our present time it is no longer as closely bound to the physical body as it was when Christ was present on earth. And as a result the physical body has become even denser than before. The human being, then, is moving toward a future in which his etheric body will increasingly protrude, and in time it will extend as far as it did in the Atlantean epoch.

Here we can pursue our simile a bit further. If the son, who had formerly lived on his father's fund, spends it all and earns nothing additional, his prospects will become increasingly dismal. But if this man now has a son of his own—that would be the grandson—the latter will not be in the same position as his father. The father at least inherited something and could go on spending, but there remains nothing at all for the grandson, nor does he inherit anything: for the time being he is left with nothing whatever. And in a certain way that describes the course of human evolution. When the etheric body entered the physical, bringing along a supply of divine wisdom from the treasury of the Godhead, it still provided wisdom for its physical body. But the Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits prevented all augmentation of this wisdom in the physical body—contrived that none should be added. When now the etheric body begins to emerge again it takes nothing with it from the physical body, and the consequence is that if nothing else had intervened man would be heading for a future in which his etheric body, though belonging to him, would contain no vestige of wisdom or knowledge. And with the complete desiccation of the physical body the etheric body would be destitute as well, for nothing could be drawn from the dried-up physical body. Therefore, if the physical body is not to desiccate in that future period, the etheric body must he provided with strength, with the strength of wisdom. Before emerging from the physical body the etheric body should have been endowed with the power of wisdom. Within the physical body it must have received something it can take out with it. Then, when it emerges—provided it has acquired this wisdom—it can react on the physical body, giving it life and preventing its desiccation.

The future evolution of humanity can take one of two courses, of which one is as follows: Man develops without Christ. In this case the etheric body could bring with it nothing from the physical body, because it had received nothing from it: it emerges empty. But conversely, the etheric body cannot animate the physical body, having nothing to give: it cannot prevent the attrition, the withering, of the physical body. Man would gradually forfeit all the fruits of his physical life: they could furnish nothing out of his physical body, which he would therefore have to abandon. But the very purpose for which man descended to earth was to acquire a physical body in addition to his other principles. The germ of the physical body originated in an earlier period, but without its actual formation man would never fulfill his mission on earth. But the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman have entered the picture; and if man acquires nothing in his physical body, if his etheric body withdraws again with nothing to take with it—having even used up the old store of wisdom—then the earth's mission is doomed: the mission of the earth within the universe would fail of fulfillment. Man would carry over nothing into the future but the empty etheric skull which had been abundantly filled when he originally brought it into earth evolution.

But now let us suppose something were to occur at the right moment which would enable man, as his etheric body emerges again, to provide something for it, to animate it, to penetrate it with wisdom as of old: the etheric body would continue to emerge just the same; but now, endowed with new life, new strength, it could employ these for vitalizing the physical body. It could send power and life back into it. But the etheric body itself must first possess these: it would first have to receive this strength and life; and if it succeeds in this the fruits of man's earth life are saved. The physical body will then not simply decay, but rather, this corruptible physical body will assume the configuration of the etheric body, the incorruptible; and man's resurrection, with the harvest reaped in his physical body, is assured.

An impulse had thus to come to the earth through which the exhausted treasure of ancient wisdom might be replenished, through which the etheric body might be endowed with new life, thus enabling the physical element—otherwise destined to corruption—to put on the incorruptible and to become permeated by an etheric body capable of rendering it immortal, of rescuing it from Earth evolution. And that is what Christ brought mankind—this pervasion of the etheric body with life. The transformation of the human physical body that would otherwise be doomed to death, its preservation from corruption, its ability to wear the incorruptible—all this is connected with the Christ. Life was infused into the human etheric body by the Christ impulse—new life, after the old had been spent. And looking into the future, man must tell himself: When my etheric body will ultimately have emerged from my physical body, I should have developed in such a way that it is wholly saturated by the Christ. The Christ must live in me. In the course of my earth development I must by degrees completely permeate my etheric body with the Christ.

What I have just described to you are the deeper processes that elude outer observation. They constitute the spiritual principle underlying the physical evolution of the world.

But what outer form did all this have to take? What was it that entered the physical body through the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings? The tendency to decay, to dissolution—in short, the tendency to die. The germ of death had entered the physical body. Had no Christ come, this death germ would have developed its full power only at the end of Earth evolution, for then the etheric body would be for all time powerless to reanimate man; and at the completion of Earth evolution, that which had come into being as human physical body would fall into decay and the earth's mission itself would end in death. Whenever we encounter death today we can discern in our present life a portent of the universal death that would occur at the end of Earth evolution. Mankind's ancient heritage dwindles but slowly and gradually, and the possibility of being born again and again, of passing from incarnation to incarnation, is due to the life fund originally given man on his way. As regards his purely external life in the successive incarnations, the possibility for life to exist would not be fully exhausted before the end of Earth evolution; but as time goes on the gradual extinction of the race would manifest itself. This would occur piece by piece, and the physical body would continually wither. Had the Christ impulse not come, man would perish member by member as Earth evolution approached its termination.—At present the Christ-Impulse is but at the beginning of its development: only by degrees will it make its way among men; and only future epochs will reveal—and continue to reveal to the very end of Earth evolution—the full significance of Christ for humanity.

But the various human activities and interests have not all been affected alike by the Christ impulse. There are today many such that have not been touched by it at all, that must await a future time. I will give you a striking example of one whole sphere of human activity which at present has not been influenced by the Christ impulse at all. Toward the end of the pre-Christian epoch—say, in the 6th or 7th Century before our era—the primeval wisdom and power were on the wane in so far as human knowledge was concerned. In connection with other phases of life that wisdom long retained a fresh, young forcefulness; but it declined most noticeably in the matter of knowledge. From the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries B. C. there remained something that may be termed the remnant of a remnant. Were you to hark back even to the Egypto-Chaldean wisdom, not to say that of ancient Persia or India, you would find this wisdom everywhere permeated by true spiritual vision, by the fruits of primeval clairvoyance; and for those endowed to a lesser degree with this faculty the reports of the clairvoyants were available. Such a thing as science other than one based on clairvoyance never existed in the Indian and Persian epochs, nor in still later times; even during the early Greek period there was no science without a basis of clairvoyant research. But then the time approached when this fading clairvoyant research was lost to human science, and for the first time we witness the rise of a human science devoid of clairvoyance—or at least, a science from which clairvoyance was gradually cast out.

Clairvoyance vanishes, as does faith in the revelations of clairvoyants; and during the 6th or 7th Century before the appearance of Christ we see established something we can call a human science, from which the fruits of spiritual research are increasingly eliminated. And this becomes ever more the case: in Parmenides and Heraclitus, in Plato and even in Aristotle—everywhere in the writings of the old naturalists and physicians—you can find ample confirmation that what is known as science was originally permeated by the results of spiritual research. But spiritual science steadily deteriorated and decreased. In connection with our psychic capacity, our feeling and willing, it still endures; but as regards our thinking it is vanishing.

Thus with respect to human thinking, to thinking in terms of science, the influence of the etheric on the physical body had already begun to wane when Christ appeared. Everything of that sort comes about gradually, step by step. Christ came and gave the impulse; but naturally not everyone accepted it at once, and particularly was it rejected in certain spheres of activity. In others it was received, but in the field of science it was positively spurned. Examine for yourselves the science that prevailed in the time of the Roman empire. Look it up in Celsus, where you can read all sorts of rubbish about Christ. This Celsus was a great scholar, but he understood nothing whatever about human thinking as affected by the Christ impulse. He reports:

“There is said to have lived at one time in Palestine a couple known as Joseph and Mary, with whom the sect of Christians originated. But what is told about them is all superstition. The truth is that the wife of this Joseph was once unfaithful to her husband with a Roman captain named Panthera; but Joseph did not know the identity of the child's father.”

That was one of the most popular accounts of the time; and if you follow our contemporary literature you will realize that certain people of the present have not advanced beyond the standard of Celsus. Certainly there are fields in which the Christ-Impulse can take root but slowly, but among those now under discussion it has to this day found no foothold at all. There is one part of man we see withering: it is in the human brain; but when it shall have been influenced by the Christ-Impulse it will revive science in a very different form. Strange as that may sound in this age of scientific fanaticism, it is nevertheless true. That part of the brain assigned to scientific thinking is moving toward a slow death. This illustrates the gradual disappearance of the ancient heritage from scientific thinking. Aristotle still possessed a relatively large store of it, but we see science gradually being drained of it; and science, by reason of the accumulation of external data, will become God-forsaken in respect of its thinking, having nothing left of the old fund. And we see further how it is possible that, no matter how powerfully we experience the Christ, we can no longer establish any contact between the Christ-Impulse and what mankind has achieved in the way of science.

We have tangible evidence of this. Suppose that a man of the 13th Century had been profoundly affected by the Christ-Impulse and had said: We have the Christ-Impulse; like a flood of mighty new revelations it streams to us from the Gospel, and we can permeate ourselves with it.—And suppose further that this man had made it his mission to create a connecting link between science and Christianity: even as early as the 13th Century he would have found nothing in the current science that could have been used for the purpose. He would have had to hark back to Aristotle. Only by collaborating with Aristotle, not with 13th-Century science, would he have been able to interpret Christianity. Science simply became increasingly incapable of making any contact with the Christ principle; hence the 13th-Century scholars had to revert to Aristotle, who still possessed something of the old legacy of wisdom and could thus provide concepts capable of correlating science and Christianity.

But as science grew richer in data and observations it became ever poorer in ideas, until finally the time came when all concepts emanating from the old wisdom disappeared from it. Even the greatest men are, of course, children of their era as far as their scientific activity is concerned. Galileo, for example, could not think from an absolute background, but only as his age thought; and his greatness consists precisely in his having established God-forsaken thinking as such—pure mechanistical thinking. An important revulsion in thought set in with Galileo: the most commonplace phenomena treated by modern physics had quite a different explanation after Galileo's day from what they had previously. Say, someone throws a stone. Today we are told that the stone retains its motion until the latter is counteracted by the influence of another force, the force of inertia. Before Galileo's time a different opinion was held: people were convinced that if the stone was to keep moving it would have to be propelled—something active must be behind it. Galileo taught people to think in an entirely new way, but in a way implying that the world is a mechanism; and the ideal striven for today is a mechanical, mechanistic explanation of the world with the complete elimination of all spirit. And the reason for this is that those portions of the human brain, of the thought apparatus, which constitute the organ of scientific thinking, are already so shrivelled as to be no longer able to infuse new life into concepts, with the result that the latter become more and more poverty-stricken.

One could easily show that science, for all the isolated facts it keeps accumulating, has not enriched the life of mankind by a single concept. Note well that observations are not concepts! Do not imagine that such things as Darwinism and the like have provided humanity with concepts. That is something that others have done—not the scientists, but men who tapped quite different sources. Goethe was such a man: he enriched man's fund of ideas from altogether different sources; and consequently the scientists consider him a dilettante.

The fact is that science has not grown richer in ideas. Far more alive, loftier, grander are those of antiquity. The Darwinian concepts are like squeezed-out lemons: Darwinism merely collected the results of observation and then linked them with poverty-stricken concepts. This trend in science points clearly to the process of gradual death. In the human brain there is a part that is withering, and this is the part that in our time functions in scientific thinking. The reason for this is that the portion of the human etheric body which should animate this shrivelling brain has as yet not grasped the Christ-Impulse. No life will flow into science until the Christ impulse enters the portion of the human brain that is intended to serve science. That is a fact based on the great cosmic laws. If science continues in this way it will become poorer and poorer in concepts, and gradually these will vanish. And increasingly numerous will be the scientists who keep lining up their data, and who will be frightened out of their wits when someone begins to think. Nowadays it is a sore trial for a professor to discover a bit of thinking in a doctor's dissertation submitted to him by some candidate.

But we now have an anthroposophy, and this anthroposophy will increasingly clarify the Christ-Impulse for mankind, thereby imbuing the etheric body with ever more life—with such a wealth of it, in fact, that the etheric body will be able to restore flexibility to that rigid portion of the brain which is responsible for the present trend of scientific thinking. That is an illustration of the manner in which the Christ-Impulse, having in time laid hold on mankind, will reanimate the dying members of the body. The future of the race would see the withering of more and more members; but the flowing in of the Christ-Impulse will increase proportionately with the dwindling of each part; and by the end of the Earth evolution all the parts that would otherwise have perished will be revivified by the Christ-Impulse, which will have saturated the whole etheric body: the human etheric body will have become one with the Christ-Impulse.

The first impetus for this gradual revitalization of mankind, for the resurrection of humanity, was given at a particular moment during a scene most beautifully described in the Gospel of St. John. Think of the Christ as coming into the world a wholly universal Being, and commencing His great work by means of an etheric body completely saturated with His spirit—for the transformation brought about in the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth enabled it to animate even the physical body. At the moment in which the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, in Whom the Christ now dwelt, became completely a life giver for the physical body, the etheric body of Christ is seen transfigured. And the writer of the John Gospel describes this moment:

Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

The people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered.

What is said is that those who stood by heard thunder; but nowhere does it say that anyone who had not been duly prepared had heard it.

Others said, An angel spake to him.

Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes.

Why? That what had taken place might be understood by all who were near. And Christ clarifies the event:

Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

In that moment Lucifer-Ahriman was cast out of the physical body of Christ. There stands the great example which in the future must be realized by all mankind: through the Christ-Impulse the obstacles placed by Lucifer-Ahriman must be cast out of the physical body; and man's earth body must be so vitalized by the Christ-Impulse that the fruits of the earth's mission may be carried over into the time that is to follow this earth epoch.

Shortly before the beginning of the present century, Rudolf Steiner arrived in Berlin to assume the post of editor of the well-known Magazin für Litteratur which had been established by Joseph Lehmann in 1832, the year of Goethe's death. Steiner was well qualified for this position, having already edited and written commentary on the natural scientific writings of Goethe for the Kurschner and the Weimar Editions of Goethe's works, a task for which he had been originally recommended by the celebrated Goethe scholar, Karl Julius Schröer, under whom Steiner had studied at the University of Vienna. Steiner also had edited the works of Schopenhauer and Jean Paul Richter for the well-known Cotta Library of World Literature series. Steiner's work as a writer for various periodicals in Vienna, Weimar and Berlin included observations on current affairs, reviews of books and plays, and comment on scientific, social, and philosophical developments.

As an author in his own right, Steiner had already produced his Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, Theory of Knowledge in Goethe's Conception of the World, in 1886 at the age of twenty-five. In this book he revealed his comprehensive grasp of the deeper implications of Goethe's way of thinking. During his Weimar residence while working at the Goethe-Schiller Archives as a free collaborator on the Weimar Edition of Goethe, Steiner developed lines of thought which he later expressed in his Goethes Weltanschauung, Goethe's Conception of the World, published in 1897. These two works, together with his introductions and commentary on Goethe's scientific writings, established Steiner as one of the outstanding exponents of Goethe's methodology.

In 1891 Steiner received his Ph.D. at the University of Rostock. His thesis dealt with the scientific teaching of Fichte, and is evidence of Steiner's ability to evaluate the work of men whose influence has gone far to shape the thinking of the modern world. In somewhat enlarged form this thesis appeared under the title Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, Truth and Science, as the preface to Steiner's chief philosophical work, Philosophy of Spiritual Activity as the title of the English translation of this book.

Steiner's contact with the circle of Friedrich Nietzsche led to his work in the Nietzsche Archives and Library. Out of the profound impression the ideas of Nietzsche made upon him, he wrote his Friedrich Nietzsche, Ein Kämpfer gegen seine Zeit, now published for the first time in English translation as Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom, as a part of the Centennial Edition of the Major Writings of Rudolf Steiner, 1861–1961.

With Steiner's arrival in Berlin, his lecturing activity which had begun years before in Vienna, and had been continued in Weimar, was extended and increased. Eventually this work was to occupy the major portion of his time, and was to take him on repeated lecture tours throughout Western Europe. These journeys extended from Norway, Sweden, and Finland in the north to Italy and Sicily in the south, and included several visits to the British Isles. From about the turn of the century until his death in 1925, Steiner gave well over 6,000 lectures before audiences of most diverse backgrounds and from every walk of life.

Steiner's written works, which eventually included over fifty titles, together with his extensive lecturing activity, brought him into contact with increasing numbers of people in many countries. The sheer physical and mental vigor required to carry on a life of such broad, constant activity is sufficient to mark him as one of the most creatively productive men of our time.

The present book, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age, is a fruit of Steiner's lecturing activity. The substance of it was contained in a series of lectures he gave in Berlin beginning just after Michaelmas in 1900, when he was thirty-nine. Steiner wrote later, “By means of the ideas of the mystics from Meister Eckhart to Jacob Boehme, I found expression for the spiritual perceptions which, in reality, I decided to set forth. I then summarized the series of lectures in the book, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age.”

The term mysticism, as Steiner uses it in this book, is a further development of what Goethe indicated in his aphoristic description of mysticism in relation to poetry and philosophy. “Poetry,” said Goethe, “points to the riddles of nature, and tries to solve them by means of the image. Philosophy directs itself to the riddles of reason, and attempts to solve them by means of the word. Mysticism considers the riddles of both nature and reason, and seeks to solve them through both word and image.”

This book is significant in the life-work of Rudolf Steiner because it is a first result of his decision to speak out in a direction not immediately apparent in his earlier, more philosophical writings, mentioned above. Here—particularly in Steiner's Introduction—is to be found a vitally fundamental exposition of the science of the spirit, embracing the path of spiritual knowledge suited to the needs and capacities of modern men and women. This subject occupied Steiner increasingly during the whole of the first quarter of this present century, and to it he devoted his entire talents as lecturer and writer.

Rudolf Steiner indicated that the present book is not intended to be a history of mysticism. It deals with a problem that had occupied him for decades, and which today has become a cardinal concern of all mankind: the impact of modern scientific thinking upon the experiences of man's inner, spiritual life. In the conflict between reason and revelation which reached its climax in the nineteenth century, but which had its origins in much earlier times, Steiner saw the seed of a still greater conflict to come, a conflict which involves humanity's struggle against the sub-human in modern technical developments.

It is now generally realized that the impact of the atomic age challenges man's inner convictions, his spiritual striving, and ultimately his ability to live a truly satisfying life.

In this book Steiner tells how eleven men whose lives bridge the four centuries from the Gothic time to the mid-seventeenth century, solved the conflict between their inner spiritual perceptions and the world of individual freedom, invention, and discovery then coming to birth. He explains the positive contribution of their ideas to an understanding and preservation of the humanity of modern men and women in face of contemporary events.

In order that the reader may better appreciate Steiner's presentation of the leading thoughts of these men, a brief sketch of their times and their life stories is given in the following pages.

The period covered by the lives of the men whose ideas are discussed in this book links such diverse personalities as Dante Alighieri, who expressed the strivings of the Age of Faith in his Divina Commedia, and George Fox, whose experience of the inner light established the spiritual path of the Society of Friends in a century of skepticism and growing materialism. Great changes in human thinking took place in these four hundred years. The world of chivalry and knighthood, of pious hermit and wandering minstrel, of religious pilgrimage and miracle play, so characteristic of the medieval time, gave way to the new learning, the humanism, the centralized governments, the scientific investigation, the expanding horizons, both physical and mental, of the Renaissance. And no single part of human life was untouched by the change. In the political, religious, social, intellectual spheres the Renaissance worked its wonders, and the dream of the Middle Ages awakened to the glorious colors of the dawn of a new world.

The transformation in men's minds included a break with their former way of looking at the earth beneath their feet, at their fellow-men, and at the blue vault arching over their heads. From a conception of nature that saw the animate in everything—even in stones—new systems of classification, ways of analysis, of explanation, based more and more upon the evidence of the physical senses, and less and less upon folk-lore and tradition, came into being. The new cosmopolitanism, the recovery of the art and philosophy of ancient Greece, the breaking up of old parties and practices in the social and political life led ultimately to man's growing consciousness of himself, and of his intrinsic worth as a being among other beings. The discovery of the shape of the earth, the rebirth of geographic learning lost in the dimness of forgotten ages, finally brought men to think of the possibility of worlds beyond this world, of whole solar systems beyond ours, and the word infinite began to assume a new importance. In the genius of language is revealed the momentous change that took place in these centuries. One need only recall that to the medieval mind the word reality referred exclusively to spiritual, heavenly things, to see how far-reaching was the change that occurred at the dawn of the modern world.

Today, when modern technical developments have extended their sphere of activity to include interstellar space, and space travel is regarded as a rapidly approaching accomplishment, one can recall that to men of the Middle Ages even the high places of the earth itself were regarded with reverence as dwelling-places of Divinity. Medieval man disliked even to approach high mountains, and to climb them would have required a daring inconceivable to him. As Ruskin said, “Men of the Middle Ages believed that mountains were agreeable things enough, so long as they were far away.”

With the rise of the new thinking of the Renaissance, however, men began to lose their awe of high mountains, and one of the pioneer mountain climbers was Petrarch, the Italian poet. With his brother Gherado, Petrarch climbed Mount Ventoux, a six thousand foot peak near Avignon, on April 26, 1336. All seems to have gone well until at the summit Petrarch discovered that the very clouds of heaven were beneath his feet. Overcome with excitement not unmixed with concern, he took out of his pocket a copy of Augustine's writings he always carried with him. Opening the book at random his eye fell upon a sentence which struck through him like lightning, for it sternly warned man never to lift his head out of the dust of earth, but always to remember his entire subservience to his Maker. Deeply moved, Petrarch descended the mountain filled with secret shame that he had had the temerity to trespass upon a place denied man by the teaching of the Church Fathers.

As men of the Middle Ages believed the mountains to be sacred, so they also regarded the human body as something set apart as the dwelling-place of man's immortal soul. Therefore to them the anatomical studies practiced by Renaissance investigators like Leonardo da Vinci would have seemed blasphemous in the highest degree.

As Renaissance man learned to take possession of the earth with his thinking, he reached out to embrace its far places physically as well. The age of discovery and exploration was followed by a period of conquest and colonization.

Parallel with the humanistic impulses of the Renaissance ran the current of the Reformation, with the accompanying strife and violence of the Counter-Reformation. Finally, as the four centuries covered by the lives of the men considered in this book drew to a close, strong national states emerged, with cultural, political, and social activities closely interrelated.

The year Meister Eckhart was born, Louis IX, known to posterity as Saint Louis of France, leader of the last Crusade, died. When Angelus Silesius died, the Grand Monarque, Louis XIV, destined to rule France for seventy-two years, was thirty-nine years of age, in the full strength of his manhood.

From the foregoing can be seen that the period covered by the lives of these men is the time when humanity, particularly in the Western world, evolved into a condition of consciousness in which the things of the sense world dominate all other considerations, in contrast to the preceding age, when the things of the spirit prevailed to such an extent that no sacrifice of earthly things was considered too great if, for example, it would enhance the miraculous, heaven-aspiring glory of a rising Gothic cathedral.

1.

In year 1260 while Marco Polo was on his way to China thus giving birth to new East–West relationships, and Niccolo Pisano was calling deathless beauty to life in his sculpture in Pisa, Johannes Eckhart was born in the little Thuringian village of Hochheim near Gotha, in Germany. His father was a steward in a knight's castle, hence Johannes' boyhood was passed in the midst of the then fading pageantry of medieval life.

Eckhart was born in the time of transition between the end of the Hohenstaufen rule and the beginning of the reign of the Austrian Hapsburgs in Germany. The one hundred and sixteen years of Hohenstaufen rule (1138–1254) was probably the most interesting period in medieval Germany, and its influence was still active during Eckhart's boyhood, though the last Hohenstaufen had died six years before Eckhart's birth.

This was an age of great contrasts. On the one hand were men of strong, vigorous mind, filled with love for all that the world contained of beauty and adventure. On the other were men whose character was equally strong, but whose lives were spent in a continual struggle of rejection of the world and all its gifts. These were the years when these two opposed attitudes toward the world began a conflict which was to lead to the Renaissance in Germany, and at last to the Reformation. Typical of the Hohenstaufen rulers was Frederick II, considered the most brilliant of all German kings. He was a lover of poetry, art, literature, and was a most capable ruler as well. Crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle in July, 1215, Frederick combined the traditional knightly ideals with worldly activity. The rule of the Hohenstaufens corresponded with the golden age of the German Minnesinger, and was a time of architectural development, which included many beautiful churches as well as the famous castle of the Wartburg.

At about the age of fifteen, around the year 1275, Eckhart entered the Dominican monastery at Erfurt, where he remained for nine years in preparation for the priesthood. He completed his studies in the year that Philip IV, known as “the Fair” began his fateful reign in France.

From Erfurt, Eckhart went to Cologne to take the studium generale at the Dominican institution where the eminent scholastic, Albertus Magnus was a leading teacher until his death in 1280. Through his instructors at Cologne, Eckhart came under the influence of Albertus Magnus' ideas, as well as those of Thomas Aquinas, whose work had advanced Scholasticism to a place of first importance within the Dominican Order.

The year 1300 was famous as the Year of Jubilee proclaimed by Boniface VIII, whom Dante criticized by placing him in the Inferno during the Pope's lifetime. In this same year Eckhart is mentioned as “Brother Eckhart, Prior of Erfurt, Vicar of Thuringia” in Dominican records. He was now in his fortieth year, and about this time he produced a little book which bears the charming title, Daz sint die rede der unterscheidunge, die der Vicarius von Düringen, der prior von Erfort, bruoder Eckehart predier ordens mit solichen kinden hete, diu in dirre rede frâgten vil dinges, dô sie sâzen in collationibus mit einander, These are the Instructions which the Vicar of Thuringia, Prior of Erfurt, Brother Eckhart of the Preaching Order, gave for those of his flock who asked him about many things as they sat together at the evening meal.

At this time Eckhart was sent to one of the colleges in Paris, where he frequently entered into disputation with Franciscans in defense of Dominican points of view in theology. In his disputations he had to defend the writings of Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus against any charges of heresy which the Franciscans chose to bring forward against them.

Thirteenth century Paris was a place of great attraction for scholars, and was the center of European cultural life. Over one hundred fifty years before, Pierre Abèlard had written of his intense desire to visit Paris, the city where logical argumentation, beloved by the medieval scholarly mind, had been raised to the level of a fine art. John of Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres, eminent as a humanist long before the Renaissance, the secretary and counsellor of Thomas Becket of Canterbury, whose assassination he witnessed and whose life he recorded, loved Paris for its generous supply of food, the gaiety of its inhabitants, their appreciation of culture and religion, and the atmosphere of scholarship he found there. He summed up his feelings about Paris in the exclamation, “Indeed the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it!”

Years later Eckhart described his Paris activities in terms which perhaps explain why the Franciscans cherished no particular liking for him. With regard to his disputations with the Franciscans, Eckhart said, “When I preached at Paris, I said, and I dare repeat it now, that with all their learning the men of Paris are not able to conceive that God is in the very least of creatures, even in a fly!”

Words like these help one to understand Eckhart's popularity with the public of his time. For above all, Eckhart wished to reach the man in the street, the humble peasant, the shepherd from the mountains, the charcoal burner from the forest, the simplest of the simple, rather than the scholar in the cloister. Therefore he used colloquial German in all his writings and discourses rather than the usual theological Latin. Thus the German language was enhanced by the writings of this Dominican, just as the Italian language was enriched by his contemporary, Dante Alighieri.

Eckhart was always conscious of his indebtedness to the other great Dominicans who had preceded him, and although he did not follow their learned forms in his sermons and books, he never failed to recognize their superiority in learning. For example, his frequent quotations in his oral and written discourse were invariably introduced by the words, “A Master says,” and the “Master” almost always meant Thomas Aquinas, whom he looked upon as a spiritual father. Though his genius for adapting learned, subtle arguments to simple, aphoristic form resulted in his being understood by the every-day mind, nevertheless this ultimately led to the condemnation of his teaching as heretical.

In 1302, the year after the famous Duns Scotus became professor of theology at Oxford, Eckhart received the Licentiate and Master's degree from the University of Paris. Ever since then he has been known as Meister Eckhart.

At this time Boniface VIII, who had been informed of the brilliant preaching of this Thuringian Dominican, invited Eckhart to Rome to defend the cause of the papacy against the attacks of the French king, Philip the Fair, which were soon to result in the “Babylonian Captivity” of the Popes at Avignon.

In 1304, the year of the birth of Petrarch, Eckhart was appointed provincial of the Dominicans for Saxony. Three years later he was appointed vicar-general for Bohemia, at the moment the arrest and terrible persecution of the Order of the Knights Templar began in France under the direction of Philip the Fair, and with the passive agreement of the French-born Pope, Clement V, who in the meanwhile had succeeded Boniface VIII in the papacy.

This was a busy period in the life of Meister Eckhart. His burden of administrative work in the service of the Church and of his Order was increased by his activity as a writer. At this time he composed one of his best-known works, Das Buch der Göttlichen Tröstung, The Book of Divine Comfort, supposedly written to bring consolation to Agnes, daughter of the King of Hungary, whose mother and sister-in-law died and whose father was murdered—all within the space of a few years.

The Book of Divine Comfort opens with an enumeration of the three kinds of tribulation Eckhart conceives may happen to one: damage to external goods, to friends near one, to oneself, bringing “disgrace, privation, physical suffering, and mental anguish” in their train. As “comfort” in the midst of such tribulation, Eckhart sets forth “certain doctrines” from which he derives “thirty teachings, any one of which should be enough to comfort.” Whether the suffering of the Queen of Hungary was assuaged by Eckhart's effort in her behalf is not known, but the book brought Eckhart himself considerable tribulation, for it is his one work most strenuously attacked by the Inquisition. This book is evidence of Eckhart's careful study of the famous classic born in the twilight of the ancient Roman world, De Consolatione Philosophiae, The Consolations of Philosophy, by Boethius, loved by Alfred the Great, who translated it into Anglo-Saxon; by Chaucer, who was to translate it into English before 1382; by Queen Elizabeth, who rendered it in the English of her time, and by many others. Aside from its theological teachings, his Book of Divine Comfort shows Eckhart's appreciation of Boethius and other classical writers.

The constant travel necessitated by his administrative work brought Eckhart into contact with people and events in central, southern and western Germany, in France, and in Italy. As a result, it is natural that the heads of the Order felt that Meister Eckhart was the ideal man to assume the post of Superior of the entire Dominican Province in Germany. However, a certain conservatism within the Order itself, apparently based on fear of Eckhart's skill as an orator and disputant, his broad knowledge of places, and familiarity with the ways of men in all walks of life prevailed, and his nomination was never finalized.

In 1318, the year that Dante completed his Divina Commedia, Eckhart seems to have reached the summit of his development as a preacher. He was in Strassburg at this time, where he served as a preacher and prior. Two years later, in 1320, at the age of sixty, Eckhart received a most important honor: he was called by the Franciscan, Heinrich von Virneberg, Archbishop of Cologne, to assume a professorship in the college there. However, the brightness of this distinction was not long to remain undimmed. Already in the shadows the agents of the Inquisition waited, listening, watching, preparing for the day when this eloquent preacher of the Gospel, this scholar and author, so beloved by the common people who flocked to his sermons, would overstep the limits of prescribed dogma. And it was not long before they believed that they had evidence sufficient to convict him of heresy.

By 1325 several charges had been brought against Meister Eckhart in letters addressed to the Superiors of the Dominican Order at its headquarters in Venice. A few months later, the Archbishop of Cologne who already had had sufficient trouble with so-called “mystical societies” which had sprung up along the Rhine in areas under his jurisdiction, decided that heresy certainly could not be allowed to set foot within the precincts of the college itself. Therefore he agreed that the moment had arrived when charges against this too-popular preacher should be laid before the Inquisition. However, a Dominican managed to obtain the task of investigating Meister Eckhart, and naturally it did not take long for the former to report that he found his fellow-Dominican entirely without guilt or taint of heresy.

But the matter did not stop there. Perhaps sensing that if Franciscans had undertaken the examination things might have turned out differently, the Archbishop called in two experts in heresy, the Franciscans Benherus Friso and Peter de Estate. They were given the task to thoroughly examine Eckhart's writings and the reports of his sermons. It was not long before an extensive list of “errors” in doctrine had been assembled, and Eckhart in turn replied by means of his famous Rechtferigungsschrift, Defense.

On January 24, 1327 Eckhart was required to answer the charges brought against him before the court of the Archbishop of Cologne. About three weeks later he preached in a Cologne church in defense of his ideas, and said that if there were any errors of faith in his writings or sermons, he would retract them gladly, for he certainly considered himself no heretic, and he appealed to Rome, as he was entitled to do under the rights of his Order. However, on February 22, Eckhart was informed that his application to Rome had been refused.

On March 27, 1329 Pope John XXII issued a bull describing certain of Meister Eckhart's teachings as contrary to church dogma. But Eckhart was no longer alive to know of his condemnation as one who had been led astray “by the father of lies, who often appears as an angel of light.” This official fiat would doubtless have seriously shaken the soul of one whose life had been devoted to a defense and practise of the tenets from which that organized power had drawn its life-breath.

2.

When Meister Eckhart was forty years of age, Johannes Tauler was born in the city of Strassburg in the Papal Jubilee year of 1300, two years before the death of the painter, Cimabue. At the age of fifteen he entered the Dominican monastery where Eckhart was professor of theology. One can imagine the effect of the older Dominican teacher upon the impressionable mind of the young student, who well may have listened to those evening mealtime conversations Eckhart brought together in the little book mentioned above. Eventually Tauler entered the Dominican college in Cologne not long before Eckhart was named professor in that institution.

The year 1324 saw the climax of a struggle between Louis IV, king of Germany, and Pope John XXII, which had been increasing steadily for nearly a decade. Fearing that the German king's policy of personal ambition would lead to a weakening of the papal position in France as well as Germany, the Pope called upon the German ruler to abdicate, saying that no one could rightfully wear the German crown who did not have the Pope's express approval to do so. Louis angrily refused, with the result that the Pope declared him deposed and excommunicate. Therefore, in this year 1324, Strassburg, along with other cities and towns of Germany, was placed under a papal interdict.

But the times were against the Pope and his French ally, Charles IV, whom he hoped to see on the German throne. The German princes condemned in no uncertain terms the papal interference in German affairs, and the Electors sided with the princes. This attitude was also shared by many of the clergy in Germany, for despite the papal ban, church services continued in some places, and the sacraments were administered to the people.

Johannes Tauler was among those in Strassburg who refused to discontinue their priestly functions of celebrating the Mass and preaching to their congregations. With great courage, in defiance of both papal ban and agents of the Inquisition, he said, “While the Church can refuse us the sacrament externally, nobody can take away the spiritual joy of our oneness with God, and nobody can rob us of the privilege of taking the sacrament spiritually.”

In 1339, the year before the birth of Geoffrey Chaucer in London, Tauler left Strassburg for a journey which was to have important results for his life work. On his travels he came into contact—particularly in Basel—with Swiss and German members of the famous group of mystics called the Gottesfreunde, The Friends of God.

The struggle for power between rival rulers in Germany, together with the interdict of the Pope, brought great hardship to the people. Some areas of the country were not freed from the papal ban for as much as twenty-six years, and the people were in great distress for lack of spiritual help and consolation.

Abnormal natural phenomena also began to appear, as though the forces of Nature had joined with spiritual and temporal rulers to make the lot of men as hard as possible. Torrential rains repeatedly destroyed the crops, just before harvest time. The rivers rose in devastating floods several years in succession, making spring planting difficult if not impossible. The winters were severely cold, so that men and animals suffered exceedingly. As a consequence, a series of famines swept the countryside, taking, dreadful toll of human life.

Convinced that they were living in the “last days” of the earth, men saw in all the events around them the fulfillment of prophecies of the Apocalypse of John. During these years southern Germany and Switzerland were visited by repeated earthquakes, one of which shook Basel with such force that the city was reduced to a heap of ruins. In the heavens appeared “signs and wonders” prophesied by the Scriptures: mysterious lights flashed upon the skies, men reported strange conditions of cloud and mist, and the stars seemed about to cast themselves upon the earth.

Visited by these dire external events, harassed by doubt and insecurity on every side, men withdrew more and more into themselves, seeking the sources of piety and devotion in their hearts. Lacking spiritual consolation from the church, suffering the desolation wrought by food and famine, sword and fire, the people sought the essential truths of life in their personal experience. And in their search for the verities of existence, men reached out to one another in fraternal love and a spirit of true humanity.

Thus the Friends of God came into being. It was a free association of human beings in the sense that it was not a sect, had no dogma, no common form of religious devotion or practice, no common political outlook. The only desire the Friends of God shared in common was to strengthen one another in their living relationship with God and the spiritual world. They established “brotherhood houses” as retreat centers in certain areas where a number of the Friends of God were living.

One of the outstanding figures among the Friends of God was the wealthy banker of Strassburg, Rulman Merswin. His story is somewhat typical of that of many another layman who found himself drawn to the Friends of God. Born of a good family of Strassburg in 1307, Rulman Merswin was a man of business and high moral and ethical principles. By the time he was forty, due to his business acumen he had amassed a considerable fortune, and had married the daughter of one of the leading families of Strassburg. But although he had everything to give him pleasure, he was far from happy, and just after his fortieth birthday he decided that the time had come for him to take leave of the world, to devote himself and his wealth to the service of God, and to live as a celebate. His wife joined him on his mystical path. A few months later, on the day of Saint Martin, November 1l, 1347, Merswin was walking in his garden in the evening, meditating on the way he and his wife had chosen, when suddenly he experienced a tremendous feeling of exaltation so that, as he later described it, it was as though he was whirled round and round his garden for sheer joy. But as quickly as the mood of exaltation came upon him, it left, and he slipped into a condition of despondency bordering upon despair. He began severe ascetic disciplines with the thought that these might relieve his inner struggle, but no light came.

At this time Johannes Tauler became his confessor, and Merswin told him of his suffering and his ascetic practices. Tauler at once forbade him to continue his self-imposed tortures, saying, “We are told to kill our passions, not our flesh and blood.” Merswin obeyed, and only a short while later a Friend of God came to him and led him forward on the road to the spirit. He learned to depend quietly upon the guidance of the spirit alone, to subject himself to no code or rule of conduct, but to cultivate true humility, to seek anonymity, to cease self-assertion, to regard himself as a “captive of the Lord,” to preserve the calmness of his soul like a stainless mirror, to attach less and less importance to himself in a worldly sense, and to think of himself only as “a hidden child of God.”

On October 9, 1364 Rulman Merswin had a dream in which he was told that a most important man would shortly visit him, and that in three years he would purchase land which would make a home of peace and rest for the Friends of God in Strassburg. Not long after this, Merswin was visited by a mysterious man whose name is most intimately connected with the whole story of the Friends of God. Called simply, “The Friend of God from the Oberland,” he was long identified with the famous Nicholas of Basel, a noted Friend of God, who suffered martyrdom at the stake in Vienna for his convictions. Others have identified him with Rulman Merswin himself, as a sort of “double,” while others believe that he never lived at all, but was a kind of ideal portrait of what the true Friend of God should be.

In any case, The Friend of God from the Oberland visited Merswin and told him that he had had a dream that Merswin would establish a retreat for the Friends of God at Strassburg. Merswin told him that he himself had had the same dream, and the Friend of God from the Oberland told him to wait quietly, to listen for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and that at the end of three years he would know what was to be done.

In the Ill River near Strassburg was a little island called daz Grüne Woerth, The Green Island. In the twelfth century a convent had been established there, but had long since been deserted and had fallen into ruins. Early in October, 1367, just three years after his dream and his talk with the Friend of God from the Oberland, Merswin was walking by the river and saw the little island. Suddenly the realization flashed through him that this was the place he was to buy, that here he was to establish a house for the Friends of God. He promptly sought out the owner, paid him five hundred ten silver marks as the purchase price, and soon the convent building was repaired and a little chapel was constructed. Finally, on November 25, 1367 Merswin opened the house of the Friends of God on the Green Island, which became the center of a group of laymen who wished to live a purely mystical, religious life but without subjecting themselves to any external rule or official religious Order. Five years later Merswin completed arrangements whereby the group was acknowledged as a branch of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, and the place became known as “The House of Saint John of the Green Island.” Not long after this Merswin's wife died, and he spent his remaining years on the Green Island, devoting himself to the Friends of God who came there from far and near. Rulman Merswin died in the House of St. John of the Green Island on July 18, 1382. Four days after his death a sealed chest was opened which had been discovered in his room. Inside was a collection of manuscripts and letters, many of them in an unknown handwriting, giving details of instructions and advice by the Friend of God from the Oberland.

One of these manuscripts contained The Story of the Master of Holy Scripture, later included in a collection titled, The Great Memorial. According to the Story of the Master of Holy Scripture, the Friend of God from the Oberland one day arrived at a great city where a famous preacher was expounding the Bible to crowded and enthusiastic congregations. The Friend of God attended the sermons each day for five days. At the conclusion of the fifth day, he sought out the preacher and asked, “Reverend Sir, will you preach tomorrow on a theme I would suggest to you?” The clergyman agreed, and asked what the subject should be. The Friend of God from the Oberland replied, “How to attain the highest degree of spiritual life.”

The preacher delivered a brilliant exposition the next morning. Starting from the Gospels he branched out into the Church Fathers, dipped deep into Dionysius, and concluded with a tremendous display of erudition. The congregation was enthralled by his words, but at the end of the service the theologian saw the Friend of God walk away silently and alone, with head bowed as though in deep thought.

The next day the Friend of God went to the clergyman and gave him a scathing criticism of the sermon, even saying that if that was the best he could do, then he was not capable of teaching about the spiritual life at all. The preacher's anger knew no bounds, but suddenly an inner voice told him to calm himself and to listen to the stranger's words. Having regained possession of himself once more, he quietly asked the Friend of God what help he could give him. Then the layman gave the Master of the Holy Scriptures twenty-three sentences, saying, “These are the ABC of religion; master these, and events will show their worth.” The theologian withdrew from active service and spent a long time in meditation and prayer. His power of preaching left him, so that he could hardly speak an intelligible sentence, let alone deliver a whole sermon. His congregations deserted him; everywhere he was scorned and ridiculed.

After two years he was led by an inner voice which told him to enter the pulpit to preach during the service. Quietly he did so, noting the scorn and derision on the faces of the people as he faced them. For a long moment there was silence, then suddenly without any premeditation at all he gave out as his text, “Behold the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him!” And the spiritual power which flowed with his words was so great that it is said that forty persons fainted from sheer excitement and joy.

Tradition has long connected the “Master of Holy Scripture” with Johannes Tauler, and indicates that this is the account of his meeting with the Friend of God from the Oberland. Tauler became intimately acquainted with leading Friends of God in many places on his travels, and was deeply impressed with their way of life. As he said in a sermon at about this time, “The theologians of Paris study great tomes and turn over many pages, but the Friends of God read the living Book where everything is life.”

Among the Friends of God whom Tauler met were Henry of Nordlingen, one of the outstanding representatives of the mysticism of the time, Hermann of Fritzlar, and two pious nuns, Christina Ebner, prioress of the Engelthal Convent near Nuremberg, and Margaretha Ebner, of the Convent of Maria Medingen in Swabia. One of the letters from the famous correspondence between Henry of Nordlingen and Margaretha Ebner is dated 1348, and asks that she “Pray for Tauler, who lives as a matter of course in the midst of great trial and testing because he teaches the truth and lives in conformity with it as perfectly as a preacher can.”

Having visited Friends of God in many places during his seven years' absence from Strassburg, Tauler was convinced that a layman has tasks to perform which basically are as spiritually important as those of the clergy. In one of his sermons Tauler reflects the religious-social spirit he had found in the way of life of the Friends of God: “One can spin, another can make shoes, and all these are gifts of the Holy Ghost. I tell you, if I were not a priest, I would esteem it a great gift that I was able to make shoes, and I would try to make them so well that they would be a model to all.”

One of the documents which has come down to us from the Friends of God is a public announcement which probably originated in Strassburg, and may have been written by Rulman Merswin himself. It was copied and recopied, and was circulated very widely in southern and western Germany during Tauler's lifetime. It is of interest because it gives a picture of the kind of appeal which was made to the public by the Friends of God in the latters' search for others who might be minded to join them:

“All those in whom the love of God or the terror brought about by the dreadful calamities of the present wakens a wish to begin a new and spiritual life, will discover great advantage in withdrawing into themselves every morning when they waken, in order to consider what they will do during the day. Should they find any evil thought in themselves, any purpose which is contrary to the divine will, let them give it up and cast it aside, to the glory of God. In the evening, upon going to bed, let them consider how they have spent the day. Let them recall what deeds they have done, and in what spirit they have performed them. If they discover that they have done any good, let them thank God, and give Him the glory. If they discover they have done evil, let them take the blame for it themselves, and lay the fault on nobody else, and let them deeply repent before God, saying to Him, ‘O Lord, be merciful to me, and forgive all my sins of this day, for I sincerely repent, and I firmly intend from now on with Thy help, to avoid sinning.’”

In 1348 Strassburg was visited by the Black Death. All who could leave the city fled before the dread disease, and soon few except the sick were left behind. Even relatives, nurses and physicians left for fear of the pestilence. But among those who stayed in the city to care for the sick, to comfort the dying, and to bury the dead, was Johannes Tauler.

Week after week, month after month, this fearless Dominican stood in his pulpit in defiance of papal ban and the Black Death and bore witness to the truth that was in him. In one of his sermons He pointed out that “In all the world God desires and requires but one thing: that He find the noble ground he has laid in the noble soul of man bare and ready, so that He may do His noble divine work therein.” Hence it is necessary that men “let God prepare their ground, and give themselves wholly to God and put away the self in all things.”

But Tauler had no illusions about the trials that await man on his path of purification, on his way to the spirit: “When our heavenly Father determines to grace a particular soul with spiritual gifts, and to transform it in a special way, He does not purge it gently. Instead, He plunges it into a sea of bitterness, and deals with it as He did with the prophet Jonah.”

He knew that “No teacher can teach what he has not lived through himself,” and he continued his work at Strassburg against all odds, encouraging others by his Christianity in action. He had said, “Never trust a virtue which has not been put into practice.” Now he was practicing the virtue of a Friend of God, the virtue of devotion to his fellow-men. It is no wonder that Luther was to write of him, “Never in either the Latin or German language have I found more wholesome, purer teaching, nor any that more fully agrees with the Gospel.” Tauler's words were tried and purified in the fire of personal experience.

It is related that the Friend of God from the Oberland gave Tauler two prayers which he was to use every morning and evening. They are significant examples of the spirit which animated the mystical striving of the Friends of God. “In the morning you are to say, ‘O Lord, I wish to keep from all sin today. Help me to do everything I do today according to Thy divine will and to Thy glory, whether my nature likes it or not.’ In similar fashion every evening you are to say, ‘O Lord, I am a poor, unworthy creature. Be merciful to me, forgive my sins, for I repent of them and sincerely desire Thy help that I may commit no more.’”

Tauler's writings have great appeal even today because of their freshness, their closeness to everyday life, their common sense. They are not primarily Scholastic speculations like much of Eckhart's writing, but are nearer to the vigorous directness of the Reformers. Although Tauler loved, as he described it, “to put out into the deep and let down the nets” into the world of study and meditation, at the same time he cautioned that such “spiritual enjoyments are food of the soul, and are only to be taken for nourishment and support to help us in our active work.” This thought was echoed in the spirit of the Reformation.

In the years following the Black Death and the papal ban, Tauler continued to make Strassburg the center of his work. He kept up his correspondence with many of the Friends of God, especially with Margaretha Ebner. His services were crowded, and his sermons were held in the highest regard by his congregations.

On the fifteenth of June, 1361 in the Convent of Saint Nikolaus in Strassburg, Johannes Tauler died at the age of sixty-one. Tradition relates that for him the moment of death was an experience of pure joy, for as he said in one of his last sermons, “Eternity is the everlasting Now.”

3.

Linked with the name of Johannes Tauler as a Friend of God and a continuer of the work of Meister Eckhart is that of yet another Dominican, Heinrich Suso. Suso was born in 1295, five years before the birth of Tauler, in the town of Ueberlingen on the Lake of Constance. When he was still a small boy his parents decided he should study for the Church, and his preparatory education began at Constance, and was continued at Cologne, where he came under the influence of the teaching of Meister Eckhart.

Suso has revealed himself in his autobiography as a deeply emotional man, with a very unusual gift of expression. In his “glowing, vivid language,” as it has been described, Suso pictures his mystical experiences in great detail, in contrast to the silence in which many other mystics have shrouded their strivings.

At about the age of eighteen, in 1313, the year Boccaccio was born in Florence, Suso entered a monastery in Constance. There he voluntarily subjected himself to the most severe ascetic ordeals. He centered his affection in an ideal which he personified under the name of the Eternal Wisdom. He relates how this figure appeared before him and said, “My son, give me your heart.” He took a knife and cut deep into his chest the letters of the name Jesus, so that the scar-traces of each of the letters remained all his life, “about the length of a finger-joint,” as he says.

Suso once saw a vision of angels, and asked them in what manner God dwelt in his soul. The angel told him to look within. He did so, and as he gazed he saw that “his body over his heart was as clear as crystal, and in the center sat tranquilly, the lovely form of the Eternal Wisdom. Beside her sat, filled with heavenly longing, the servitor's own soul, which, leaning lovingly toward God's side, and encircled by His arms, lay pressed close to His heart.” Suso wrote his autobiography in the third person, and referred to himself as “the servitor of the Divine Wisdom,” much as Swedenborg in a later century was to refer to himself in his writings as “the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Heinrich Suso took the expression, “No cross, no crown,” with terrible literalness. He imposed fearful penances upon himself, and consumed sixteen long years in cruel austerity. For example, he relates how he donned a hair shirt, and bound himself with a heavy iron chain, but at length he had to give these up, since the loss of blood they occasioned was too much for his strength to bear. Instead he fashioned a crude night-shirt which he wore next to his skin this garment he sewed a series of leather straps in which sharp tacks were fitted to that they pierced his skin with his slightest movement. Later he made a cross of wood as tall as himself, and the cross-beam the length of his outstretched arms. Into this he drove thirty nails, and wore the cross fastened to his bare back, the nails pointing into his flesh. He bore this instrument of torture for some eight years, day and night. Finally, after sixteen years of agony, Suso had a vision at Whitsuntide in which he was assured that God no longer wished him to continue his austerities. Only then did he abate the severity of his asceticism, and threw his instruments of self-torture into a running stream near the monastery.

In his autobiography Suso relates that one time he prayed that God would instruct him how to suffer. In response, he had a vision of Christ on the cross in the likeness of a seraphic being with six wings. On each pair of wings the legend was inscribed, “Receive suffering willingly; Bear suffering patiently; Learn suffering in the way of Christ.”

The result of this almost unbelievable “receiving, bearing, learning” of suffering was a man whose gentleness and calm, lyric beauty of speech won hearts to his teaching. The fires of affliction had nearly consumed him to ashes, yet, phoenix-like, his spirit rose anew in a sweetness of expression and a grandeur of soul which one could scarcely resist. In 1335, the year Giotto began his work on the Cathedral at Florence, Suso set out on his wanderings through Swabia as a traveling preacher. He advanced the spiritual teachings of Eckhart, but through his mystical fervor they were permeated by a newness, a spontaneous grace and a transcendent beauty. And something of this spirit which was reborn in Suso comes down to us today in his autobiography, issued in 1365, which has established itself as a unique work of its kind, and as “one of the most interesting and charming of all autobiographies.” Suso's preaching was especially popular among the nuns of the convents he visited. Their hearts were deeply impressed by the obvious, overwhelming sincerity and fervor of his manner and words.

Heinrich Suso's writings are among the classics of mysticism. His first work, Das Büchlein der Wahrheit, The Little Book of Truth, was written in Cologne in 1329, and springs directly from the mystical teachings of Meister Eckhart. Somewhat later, in Constance he wrote of the more practical aspects of mysticism in his Das Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom. This book has been called “the finest fruit of German mysticism.”

Something of the romanticism of the troubadour of the Ages of Faith, the charm of days gone by, the sad evanescence of the dream of chivalry and the heroic ideals of knighthood lives in the mystical expressions of Suso. He develops a mood of gentleness, of tender, delicate imagery which sets him apart from all the other men whose lives we are considering here.

Concerning his books, Suso wrote, “Whoever will read these writings of mine in a right spirit can hardly fail to be stirred in his heart's depths, either to fervent love, or to new light, or to longing and thirsting for God, or to detestation and loathing of his sins, or to that spiritual aspiration by which the soul is renewed in grace.” These words gain “fearful symmetry,” to use Blake's phrase, when we recall that they were written by one who, for example, had practiced such abstinence in eating and drinking, that often as he stood with his brother monks in choir at Compline, when the holy water was sprinkled over the group during the service, he opened his parched mouth toward the aspergillum in the hope that even a single drop of water might cool his burning thirst. Such a man can write about “longing and thirsting” as very few who have walked this earth have been able to do.

About 1348, his wandering in central and southern Germany having come to an end, this love-inspired Swabian poet-knight of the spirit, singer of the glories of Eternal Wisdom, settled at last in Ulm on the river Donau. There he died on the Day of Damascus, the anniversary of St. Paul's first mystical vision of the Risen Christ, January 25, 1366, at the age of seventy-one.

Through the Dominican stream the Scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas came to Meister Eckhart in the form of ideas which he shaped and fashioned into aphoristic expression by means of his remarkable powers of thinking; in the hands of Johannes Tauler Scholasticism was transformed into Christian action, into practical deeds of will; in the golden warmth of his loving, devoted heart Heinrich Suso bathed Scholasticism in a lyric splendor of poetic imagery so that it became a thing of transcendent, eternal beauty.

4.

Jan van Ruysbroeck was born in the little village of Ruysbroeck on the Senne between Brussels and Hal in 1293, the year after the death of the English Franciscan philosopher and scientist, Roger Bacon. When Jan was eleven years old he decided to run away from home in order that he might more completely dedicate himself and his life to God. He went to the house of his uncle, Jan Hinckaert in Brussels, and asked if the latter would undertake to educate him to the service of God. The uncle, who was a Canon of the Church of Saint Gudale in Brussels, arranged that the boy would live in his home and study with his friend, the learned priest, Franc van Coudenberg, and himself. Eventually Jan took the four year course in the Latin School of Brussels, and from there he attended the well-known theological school in Cologne.

At the age of twenty-four Jan van Ruysbroeck was ordained a priest, and was appointed chaplain to his uncle in Brussels. His life for the next two decades seems to have been that of a dedicated pastor, who served his congregation to the best of his ability, but was not otherwise particularly distinguished, at least externally.

However, as Jan van Ruysbroeck's fiftieth birthday approached, he had a remarkable experience. He felt that the time had come when he was to withdraw from active work in the world, and that he was called to devote himself entirely to spiritual matters. At about the same time his uncle was deeply confused and depressed one day, and an inner voice directed him to go into the church. As he did so, he saw that a visiting missionary priest had just mounted the pulpit to preach to the congregation. Now the uncle knew that this priest had a serious speech defect. To the uncle's astonishment, as the missionary opened his mouth, the words flowed out in a river of eloquence! At this, the preacher turned to where the uncle was standing and said, “This miracle has happened for the sake of that man standing there, in order that he will repent and turn to God.”

In similar manner, van Coudenberg also had a spiritual experience, and was filled with the deep desire to live a more dedicated life.

At Easter, 1343 the three men resigned their work in Brussels and went deep into the forest of Soignes where they found a deserted hunting-lodge called Grönendal, The Green Valley. The place had not been used for over a generation, and the men set to work to make a home for themselves there, and soon had built a chapel. Others joined them, and before long a small community had developed.

After about six years the community decided to take on the rule and habit of the Augustinian canons. And the moving spirit was Jan van Ruysbroeck himself, who was as devoted to practical tasks as he was to spiritual matters. Whether it was necessary to repair a stove, load a manure cart, discuss deep problems of theology, or nurse the sick, he was always ready and cheerfully willing to do whatever was to be done.

The fame of the little forest community spread, and visitors came from far places to see the life that was being lived there. One day two young priests, theological students from the University of Paris, arrived and asked to speak with Jan van Ruysbroeck. They wished his advice concerning their spiritual development, and begged that he would help them to find the way to the spirit, and would speak with them about the condition of their souls. His reply was to the point: “You are as spiritual as you have the desire to be, that is all.” They were somewhat annoyed at the abruptness of his words, and turned away. At once he spoke to them in a loving tone: “My very dear children, I said your spirituality was what you wish it to be so that you would understand that your spirituality is entirely in proportion to your good will. Then enter into yourselves; don't ask others about your progress. Examine your good will, and from that alone you will discover the measure of your spirituality.”

One of the guests at Grönendal was Johannes Tauler, who was much impressed with the life he saw there. In turn, Tauler doubtless told Jan van Ruysbroeck about his experiences with the Friends of God.

In 1378, the year after Gregory XI condemned John Wycliffe, translator of the Vulgate into English, as a heretic, the famous lay-preacher, Gerard Groote visited the community of Grönendal and had many conversations with Jan van Ruysbroeck.

Gerard Groote was born in the town of Deventer, about sixty miles from Amsterdam in 1340. His parents were wealthy, and at the age of fifteen Gerard was sent to the University of Paris. In three years he was given his Master's degree, and then was called to teach at Cologne, where he was soon advanced to the position of professor of philosophy, and also received important appointments of a civil nature.

One day Groote was standing with a crowd watching a game in a Cologne square when a modestly dressed stranger, with a serious, sincere face approached him and spoke to him softly: “Why are you standing here? You ought to become another man.” Soon after this incident Groote fell seriously ill, and his life was despaired of. However, when matters were at their worst, he recalled the words of the stranger, and at once promised Heaven that he would do everything in his power to become “another man” if he was allowed to regain his health. Groote recovered, and not long after was sought out by his former teacher from the University of Paris, Henry de Kalkar, who for some years had been the prior of a Carthusian monastery near Deventer. This dedicated man had come to Groote, impelled by an inner urge to call the latter to a new life.

Groote retired from the world, and dedicated himself to the pursuit of spiritual things. Eventually the time came when his studies entitled him to be ordained a priest. This he refused, and refused repeatedly to the end of his life.

In 1379 Groote sensed a spiritual call to go out into the countryside as an itinerant lay-preacher. The Bishop of Utrecht granted him a license as a preacher, allowing him to speak anywhere in his diocese.

According to all accounts Groote was a speaker of marked excellence. He differed radically from other preachers of his time in that he never threatened his hearers with punishments of hell nor sought to bribe them with the bliss of heaven. He spoke simply and directly to them of the love of God, the great way of salvation, the search for the good, and always about the wonderful possibilities of a life lived in consonance with God. He spoke only from his personal experience, never used any Latin phrases in his discourses, and employed only the simplest, most direct forms of expression. The result was that for five years people flocked to hear him wherever he went.

In the course of his wanderings Groote visited Grönendal, and was deeply impressed by everything he saw, and most of all by the entirely practical attitude toward life which Jan van Ruysbroeck manifested. The result was that Groote was inspired to form a community, a kind of Christian brotherhood, which would be bound by no permanent vows as were monks, but would consist of individuals who freely chose to live together in poverty, chastity, obedience, simplicity and piety, holding all possessions in common as the early Christians had done, and working together to earn their own livelihood.

Groote was soon surrounded by a group of men who enthusiastically wished to take up this life, and who took the name, “The Brotherhood of the Common Lot” or “the Common Life.” The first community house was established at Deventer, and was called a “brother house.” Soon “sister houses” for women were also established. Groote loved books, and therefore he freely gave his fortune for the purchase of rare books which the brothers and sisters copied by hand—this of course was before the invention of the printing press—and the money received from the sale of these volumes was used for the maintenance of the communities. The Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life mingled freely with the world, and soon came to be recognized everywhere in Holland, Belgium and in the German Rhine valley by their plain grey habit and their simple, unassuming manners. Their life was devoted to the care of orphan children, the spreading of knowledge through the sale of books that they copied, and in the teaching of reading and writing to adults. Their method of instruction of children was based on practical life, and was directed toward moral and spiritual improvement. They taught the children under their care to earn a living, but never encouraged them to enter a profession which would give them undue wealth.

Jan van Ruysbroeck's last days were spent quietly in the community at Grönendal, and many stories were told of his remarkable spiritual development. For example he was missing one day, and at last was found sitting beneath a tree in the forest, sunk in deep meditation, while according to the tale, the tree itself was surrounded by a heavenly brightness of shimmering colors.

He knew the force of directness in conversation. A man once tried to draw him out on the subject of the dreadful wickedness in the world. His only remark was, “What we are, that we behold; and what we behold, that we are.”

Like all mystics, he loved animals and flowers, and his greatest earthly joy was in the song of the birds of the forest. His death took place in 1381, the year of the outbreak of the Peasant Revolt in England under the leadership of Wat Tyler, and the priest, John Ball. Stories tell how at the moment of his death, the bells of the churches in neighboring villages began to toll all by themselves, and how after several years when his corpse was exhumed it showed no decomposition, but gave off a sweet odor which healed the sick who were brought near.

Gerhart Groote survived Jan van Ruysbroeck by three years Meanwhile, a young man had joined the circle of the Brotherhood of the Common Life who is known as the author of one of the most important books of devotion in the world. His name was Thomas a Kempis, and his Imitatio Christi, Imitation of Christ, is a classic which has inspired men throughout the centuries since it first appeared. Thomas also was the biographer of Gerhard Groote, and his impression of the Brotherhood of the Common Life was, “I never before recall having seen men so devout, so full of love for God and their fellow-men. Living in the world, they were altogether unworldly.”

At the conclusion of Thomas' Life of Gerhard Groote is a collection of aphorisms which he attributes to the latter as among the basic teachings of the Brotherhood of the Common Life: “Conquer yourself. Turn your heart from things, and direct your mind continually to God. Do not for any cause allow yourself to lose your composure. Practice obedience, and accept things that are difficult. Continually exercise yourself in humility and moderation. The further one knows himself to be from perfection, the closer he is to it. Of all temptations, the greatest is not to be tempted at all. Never breathe so much as a word to display your religion or learning. Nothing is a better test of a man than to hear himself praised. Above all, and first of all, let Christ be the basis of your study and the mirror of your life.”

Years after the deaths of Jan van Ruysbroeck and Gerhard Groote, a twelve-year old boy was brought to the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer, and was placed in the school there. Destined to be one of the most important figures of the Reformation period, Desiderius Erasmus, became famous for his modesty, his temperance and wisdom. These qualities are no doubt traceable to the early training he received at the hands of the Brethren of the Common Life. Erasmus of Rotterdam advised moderation and tolerance, even when the opposite qualities ran high, as for example in his famous letter in reply to the Pope's invitation to come to Rome in order to advise him on how to deal with Luther and his followers: “You ask me what you should do. Some believe there is no remedy but force. I do not believe this, for I think there would be dreadful bloodshed ... If you intend to try prison, lash, stake and scaffold, you do not need my help ... Discover the roots of the disease and clean them out first of all. Punish nobody, but let what has happened be considered as a visitation of Providence, and extend a general amnesty to all.” Had the moderation counselled in this letter, typical of the spirit of the Brotherhood of the Common Life, been followed, how different might the course of history have been!

5.

In 1401, when Ghiberti's Baptistry doors, “worthy to be the gates of Paradise,” were first shown to the admiring eyes of his fellow Florentines, and the English Parliament decreed that all proven heretics were to be burned at the stake, Nicolas Chrypffs was born at Cusa on the Moselle River. Nicolas was to be known as “the last great philosopher of the dying Middle Ages,” and was to fling wide the doors of men's minds to the concept of a universe which is infinite. As a student he made a brilliant record in his study of law and mathematics at the renowned University of Padua, and followed this with a course in theology at Cologne where, as we have seen, he was preceded by Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, van Ruysbroeck, and Groote. Eventually Nicolas became Archdeacon of Liege at about the time that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen.

The Council of Basel, which had convened intermittently since 1417, was beginning its last ten years of existence when Nicolas attended its sessions in his official capacity as Archdeacon of Liege, in 1437. These sessions took place at the time when Cosimo de Medici was making preparations for the opening of his famous Platonic Academy in Florence, the institution renowned as a center of the revival of the learning of the classical world.

Shortly after his attendance at the Council of Basel, Nicolas was sent to Constantinople to try his efforts toward the solution of one of the most vexing problems of the time, the reunion of the churches of East and West. His work at Basel and Constantinople attracted the attention of the Pope, so that in 1440 Nicolas was sent to Germany as papal legate at a very critical moment in the relations between Germany and the Church of Rome.

When Nicolas arrived in Germany, Frederick, Duke of Styria was chosen king to rule as Frederick IV. Just at that time the Council of Basel had appointed an “anti-pope,” called Felix V, in opposition to Pope Eugenius IV. In the fact that soon after his election, Frederick decided to extend his influence to the support of Eugenius in opposition to the Council of Basel, one perhaps can see the fruit of the work of Nicolas of Cusa as papal legate in Germany.

It also seems something more than coincidence that in 1448, when Frederick IV and Pope Nicolas V signed the Concordat of Vienna, by which the German church was firmly rebound to Rome, Nicolas of Cusa was raised to the rank of Cardinal. Two years later he was appointed Bishop of Britten.

The reactionary character of the Concordat of Vienna made impossible any reform of conditions within the German church. The clergy in Germany who had hoped for some easing of the repressive measures of the papacy, were doomed to disappointment. On the other hand, the Concordat of Vienna was one of the principal links in the chain of events that finally culminated on All Saints' Day, 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, and the German Reformation became a fact.

The sixteen years (1448–1464) of the Cardinalate of Nicolas of Cusa coincide with remarkable developments in the social and cultural life of the Western world. The year 1452 is notable as the year of the birth of two men of marked divergence of outlook. The first was Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican monk, leader of the reaction against the Renaissance, the dogmatic eschatologist from Ferrara, who as “dictator of Florence” held a brief sway over the minds and bodies of men of his time. Also in 1452 was born the genius of the Renaissance, the archetype of the “new man,” the very incarnation of the spirit of progress, of universality, of investigation, of freedom from traditionalism and conservatism—Leonardo da Vinci. At this same time a host of the world's most famous Greek scholars left Constantinople in fear of the advancing Turks under Mohammed II, who finally took the city the following year, which also marked the end of the Hundred Years' War in Western Europe.

In 1454, as a kind of picture of things to come in the field of technical development and invention, Johannes Gutenberg issued his first texts printed with movable type, and before two more years were completed, published his edition of the Vulgate Bible at Mainz. 1456 is notable as the year the Turks captured Athens and subsequently all Greece, thus marking the end of the last vestiges of classicism remaining in that country.

Pico della Mirandola, famous Renaissance scholar and writer, collector of precious books and manuscripts, master of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Chaldee and Arabic, student of the mysticism of the Kabbalah and other mystical writings, was born in 1463. The following year, on the 11th of August, Nicolas of Cusa died, renowned as a distinguished prince of the Church, and as a diplomat traveling in the service of the Pope.

Today Nicolas of Cusa is remembered for his cosmological conceptions, his originality and breadth of thought, and his courage as a thinker at a time when the rationalized dogmatic system of Scholasticism was breaking down in face of the impact of the new age. As the famous French mathematician and philosopher, Renè Descartes was to write nearly two hundred years after Nicolas' death, “The Cardinal of Cusa and several other theologians have supposed the world to be infinite, and the Church has never condemned them for it. On the contrary, it is thought that to make His works appear very great is one way to honor God.” Nicolas of Cusa's work was appreciated by such men as Giordano Bruno, philosopher, poet, and martyr, Johannes Kepler, the astronomer, and Descartes, to name but a few. The courage necessary for a thinker to grasp the implications of the new age was present in Nicolas of Cusa, and the scope of his investigations in the world of thought is evidence of his importance and stature.

6.

The year 1487 is regarded by some as the year of the beginning of the Renaissance. By others it is remembered as the time the Portuguese navigator, Bartholomeu Diaz, sailing along the African coast on a voyage of exploration, discovered the Cape of Good Hope and thereby opened the passage to India and China. Still others recall that this was the year of the birth of one Henry Cornelius, generally known as Agrippa of Nettesheim, in the city of Cologne on September 14, 1487. His family was honored for its service to the royal house of Hapsburg, but little is known of his childhood and youth.

Like others whom we have considered, Henry Cornelius studied at the University of Cologne. He also learned eight languages, and passed some time in France while still a young man.

In 1486, the year before Henry Cornelius was born, the son of Frederick IV, whom Nicolas of Cusa had supported in signing the Concordat of Vienna, came to the throne of Germany as Maximilian I. The latter was heir to great areas of Austria, was administrator of the Netherlands, and not long after he came to the throne of Germany he united the country, and through the marriage of his son Philip to the heiress of the Spanish kingdoms, his influence soon spread to that country as well. Thus Maximilian exercised a power in Europe as had no German ruler for centuries.

While he was still a young man, Henry Cornelius was appointed secretary in the service of Maximilian, and his life of travel and adventure began almost at once. However, the life of the battlefield and he court did not suit him, and not long afterward we find him at the University at Dôle as a lecturer on philosophy. This appointment was made in 1509, the year that Erasmus wrote his Chiliades adagiorum, by which his reputation as an author was established.

But Henry Cornelius' lectures did not long escape the attention of the Inquisition, and he went to England on a diplomatic mission for Maximilian as the result of an attack made upon him by the monk, John Catilinet who was lecturing at Ghent. In London Henry Cornelius was a welcome guest in the home of Dr. John Colet, friend and later the patron of Erasmus, student of the teachings of Savonarola, former lecturer at Oxford, at that time dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. In his later life, Colet was to preach on the occasion of Wolsey's installation as Cardinal, and was to become chaplain to Henry VIII. He did much to introduce the humanist teachings of the Renaissance into England, and was an outspoken opponent of auricular confession and the celibacy of the clergy of the Catholic Church.

After his return to the Continent, Henry Cornelius went to Italy with Maximilian on one of the latter's expeditions against Venice. During his stay in Italy in 1512, the year the Medici were recalled to Florence, and Martin Luther was made a Doctor of Theology, he attended the Council of Pisa as a theologian. This council had been called by a group of Cardinals in opposition to militaristic plans of Pope Julius II who had laid the cornerstone for the new basilica of St. Peter's in Rome six years before.

In all, Henry Cornelius remained in Italy about seven years, and they were a very eventful time, for they coincided with some of the most important events of the Renaissance period. In these years the Aldine edition of Plato appeared in Venice, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince, a landmark in the history of political thought, and Erasmus published his New Testament in Greek. Julius II died during this period, and Giovanni de Medici, made Cardinal at fourteen, now became Pope Leo X, whose famous exclamation, “Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it,” set a pattern for the Renaissance, while his permission to sell indulgences for the benefit of the construction of St. Peter's led to the upheaval of the Reformation.

Henry Cornelius was active as a physician during his first years in Italy, first in the household of the Marquis of Monferrato, later in that of the Duke of Savoy. In 1515 he accepted an invitation to lecture at the University of Pavia on one of the works of the ancient world beloved by the adherents of the new learning of the Renaissance, the Pimander of Hermes Trismegistus. This was the year when Sir Thomas More wrote his Utopia, and Leonardo da Vinci left Rome for the last time enroute to his three year exile and death in France.

The university lectures on the Pimander were suddenly broken off as a result of the victorious advance into Italy by the armies of Francis I of France. Henry Cornelius returned to Germany, and in 1518, the year Zwingli began the Reformation among the Swiss, he was appointed town advocate of Metz. But he was not left in peace for long. First, the death of Maximilian at the beginning of 1519 and the subsequent election of Charles V, King of Spain, Naples, Sicily, ruler of the Netherlands, Austria, Burgundy, and of dominions in the New World, to be ruler of Germany brought changes in the life of Henry Cornelius. Second, a woman was tried in Metz for witchcraft. In his position as town advocate Henry Cornelius went to her defense, with the result that he became involved in a serious controversy with one of the most dreaded agents of the Inquisition, the notorious Nicholas Savin. Finally, in 1520, the year of Magellan's voyage around the world, of the death of the painter, Raphael, and of Luther's burning of the papal bull, Henry Cornelius quietly left Metz for Cologne, where he remained in discreet retirement for about two years.

He appeared in public life once more, first in Geneva, afterward in Freiburg, where he practiced as a physician. In 1524, a year before Tyndale's English translation of the New Testament appeared, he went to Lyons to accept a post as physician to Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I. But the unsettled times—now accentuated by the terrible sack of Rome by the armies of Constable Bourbon in 1527—caused him to relinquish the position in favor of some post further north which might offer greater security for his study and work.

That Henry Cornelius was considered an able scholar is evidenced by the fact that at about this time he was offered the opportunity to participate in a disputation concerning the legality of the divorce action between Henry VIII of England and Catherine of Aragon, which was then taking place. However, he accepted an offer to be archivist and historian to Charles V, which Louise of Savoy obtained for him.

The death of Louise of Savoy in 1531 weakened his position, and in addition to all of the other ferment of the time, the news that Henry VIII had declared himself “Supreme Head of the Church of England” only increased the uncertainty of conditions. Henry Cornelius also had published several works which had attracted the attention of the Inquisition, and for a time he was imprisoned in Brussels. However, despite the publication of his De occulta philosophia, Concerning Secret Science, written about 1510, printed in Antwerp 1531, which the Inquisition did their best to prevent, Henry Cornelius was able to live for some time at Cologne and Ronn under the personal protection of the great Hermann von Wied, Archbishop of Cologne, who recognized and appreciated his remarkable qualities as a scholar and man.

At the very end of his life, while he was visiting Paris, Francis I had him arrested on the strength of a report that he had spoken badly of the reputation of the queen mother. The charge was proven false and he was released after a brief imprisonment, but the strain of the experience was too great for him to bear, and he died suddenly at Grenoble on February 18, 1535 at the age of forty-nine. His death took place in the same year as that of Sir Thomas More, and five years after that of Erasmus.

Henry Cornelius was married three times, and was the father of a large family of children. His memory—despite attacks on his reputation and teachings by the Inquisition long after his death—has been kept alive through the years because of his writings, mainly his De occulta philosophia. A man of unusual courage and in some ways a kind of universal genius, Henry Cornelius was typical of the men whose lives spanned the period that opened the way to the modern age.

7.

Columbus had reached America on his western voyage; Lorenzo de Medici had died in Florence; the Spaniard, Rodrigo Borgia, along with his mistress and children now inhabited the Vatican as Pope Alexander VI, whose frankly pagan orgies were more fitting to the later Roman emperors than to the Vicar of Christ upon earth; and in the little Swiss town of Einsiedeln in Canton Schwyz, the local physician, illegitimate son of a Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, was in turn the father of a son whom he named Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim. Later the son himself chose the name by which he is known to history—Paracelsus.

The boy's early education was in the hands of his father; at the age of sixteen he entered the University of Basel. However, his restless nature and his independent thinking made formal study most unattractive to him, and he determined to seek an education in his own way.

About this time he heard of the great Benedictine scholar, Johannes Trithemius, originally Abbot of the Monastery of Wurzburg, later of Sponheim near Kreuznach. The Abbot of Sponheim was celebrated for the remarkable library he had collected, for his studies in cryptography, for his writings on history, and for his researches in alchemy and related sciences. This same Abbot of Sponheim had greatly influenced Henry Cornelius in the latter's work on his De occulta philosophia.

Paracelsus decided to apply to the Abbot of Sponheim for the opportunity to study science with him. He was accepted, but the association did not last very long. Led by a desire to learn more about the nature and properties of minerals first-hand, he went to the Tyrolean mines owned by the famous merchant-administrators and bankers to the German Emperors, the Fuggers.

Paracelsus felt at home among the miners. He soon came to the conviction that what he gained through direct observation was the best education of all. He learned about the processes involved in mining operations, the nature of ores, the properties of mineral waters, and the stratification of the rocks of the earth. Meanwhile he came to know the home life of the miners, studied their illnesses and the types of accidents to which they were most prone. In brief, from his experiences in the mines he concluded that formal schooling is not education in the mysteries of nature. He was convinced that only by reading the book of nature first-hand and through personal contact with those who work with nature can one come to anything like truly natural scientific knowledge.

This point of view followed Paracelsus throughout his life, and colored his relationships with those scholars with whom he came into contact. He based his work entirely on the results of his own observation and experience, and not on theories acquired from others.

Paracelsus wandered over a great part of central Europe in order that he might come to a direct personal knowledge of things. He once said that the physician must read the book of nature, and that to do so he must “walk over its pages.” He came to the conclusion that since the temperaments, constitutions and activities of different peoples are different, the diseases from which they suffer must also be different. Therefore he believed that it was incumbent upon the physician to know other peoples as the key to understanding his own.

The summation of Paracelsus' method of study is contained in his questions, “From where do I obtain all my secrets, from what authors? It would be better if one asked how the animals have learned their skills. If nature can teach irrational animals, can it not much more teach men?”

In all, Paracelsus spent nearly a full decade in his wanderings in search of knowledge. At the end of his travels, while the mass of information he had gathered lacked order and coherence, there is no doubt that here was a man whose experiences, observations of peoples, places and events, as well as knowledge of the elements and processes of nature gave his words and deeds the weight of direct evidence. His superiority to his contemporaries was unquestionable.

When Paracelsus returned to Basel in 1527 he was appointed city physician, and also was made professor of physic, medicine, and surgery at the University. He undertook to give a course of lectures in medicine, but the latter provoked a storm of protest because they were so unconventional, as might have been expected from one holding his views on education. First of all, Paracelsus lectured in German, not Latin, which was unheard of in academic circles of the time. Then his lectures were composed of statements derived from his experience, and presented his own methods of cure, based upon his personal points of view. But worst of all to the traditionalists, Paracelsus' lectures dealt with cure of the diseases current among the peoples of Europe in the year 1527, and not only did not include comment on the classic medical texts of Galen or Avicenna, an accepted part of every medical lecture worthy of the name, but they attacked these sacrosanct authorities and ridiculed those who followed their teachings. Above all, Paracelsus plead for a medical practice which met the needs of the time, which followed the results of direct observation, and which did away with the ignorance and greed of physicians which hid behind a mask of pompousness and reliance upon the dicta of men who had been dead for centuries.

Paracelsus also was hard at work proving the practical worth of his knowledge in curing the sick. His success was phenomenal. Maladies previously considered incurable were healed quickly and efficiently by his methods. Case after case which had been given up by other physicians of Basel and the surrounding towns, was brought to him and cured. For two or three years Paracelsus' reputation spread far and wide. Never before had such a physician practiced in Basel!

But this success did not last. At first, his learning, derived from his practical experience, his appeal to the common sense of his hearers, captured the imagination of his students. His successful practice was proof of the correctness of his teaching, and all opposition based on traditionalism was pushed aside.

Slowly, however, the tide began to turn; the waters of opposition gathered their strength. No single detail escaped the vigilant eyes of his enemies; nothing was too insignificant to throw into the scale against him. There was the matter of his having no degree; the conservatives demanded that he be forced to prove his qualifications before continuing his teaching and practice. And his prescriptions were a source of annoyance to the pharmacists of Basel, for Paracelsus had worked out his own system of drug compounding, which differed radically from that generally employed by other physicians. Therefore the apothecaries attacked Paracelsus, because he did not use their products as did the Galenists. On the other hand, Paracelsus requested the city authorities to keep close watch on the purity of the drugs sold in Basel, to be certain that the apothecaries really knew their work, and, above all, to be watchful of the commercial relationships between the apothecaries and physicians.

At last the day came for which the enemies of Paracelsus had long been waiting. Among his patients was one Canon Cornelius von Lichtenfels, who had called upon Paracelsus for professional aid when his own physician had given up his case. Although he had promised to pay Paracelsus' fee in the event of a cure, von Lichtenfels now refused to do so. Eventually the matter was taken into a court of law, where the judges found in favor of von Lichtenfels. Noted for his quickness of temper and outspokenness, Paracelsus candidly told the judges his opinion of them, their conduct of the case, and their method of administering the law. When he left the court, Paracelsus' friends advised him to leave Basel without delay, for his enemies would surely see to it that he be severely punished for his speech before the justices. Paracelsus took this advice, and departed from Basel in haste.

Once again Paracelsus resumed his wandering life. For a brief time he remained in Esslingen, then went to Colmar, but the pinch of poverty drove him from town to town in search of work. Twelve years were passed in these journeyings, Paracelsus never remaining in one place for more than a year.

Finally, in 1541 when Paracelsus was forty-eight, he received an invitation which seemed to be the fulfillment of his longing for a permanent home where he could pursue his work undisturbed and in peace. Archbishop Ernst of Salzburg offered Paracelsus his protection if the latter would come to that city and take up his professional activities there.

But Paracelsus was in Salzburg only a few months when he died at almost the same time Michelangelo completed his painting of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel at Rome.

Even the reports of Paracelsus death reflect the efforts of his enemies to defame him. One tale recounts that his death was caused by a drunken brawl in which he was a participant. A report with sinister implications tells that Paracelsus did not die a natural death, but was thrown over a steep cliff at night by assassins in the employ of the apothecaries and physicians, whose vengeance followed him through all his years of exile.

One of Paracelsus' most far-reaching concepts is that of Signatures, that is, the idea that each single part of the microcosmic world of man corresponds with each single part of the macrocosmic world outside man. This leads directly to his teaching concerning Specifics. He realized that the latter were not to be discovered in the labyrinth of often fantastic nostrums and combinations of substances prescribed in the writings of the Galenists. Through careful observation extending over many years, Paracelsus concluded that mineral, plant and animal substances contain within themselves what he called “active principles.” It was his conviction that if a method of purification and intensification could be discovered whereby these substances could be caused to release their “active principles,” the latter would be infinitely more efficacious and safer in producing a cure than would their crude and often dangerous originals.

Paracelsus died before he could discover the method which could unlock the potency, the healing power latent in mineral, plant and animal substances. This problem was not solved until two and a half centuries later when another physician, Samuel Hahnemann, discovered a method of so handling mineral, plant and animal substances that their innate healing powers were enhanced and made available to a medical practice in line with the highest ideals of cure envisioned by Paracelsus. This method of preparation of substances and the manner of their selection and administration to the sick, Hahnemann called Homeopathy.

The first of Paracelsus' extensive works was published in Augsburg in 1529, memorable as the year when the Reformers' presentation of a protest to the Diet of Spires won them the name of Protestants. Throughout the extensive writings of Paracelsus, repeated again and again in every one of the more than two hundred separate publications of his works which appeared between 1542 and 1845, a single theme is to be observed: The life of man cannot be separated from the life of the universe; therefore, to understand man, understand the universe; to understand the universe, understand man. Only upon such an understanding—universal in its scope—Paracelsus believed a medical art worthy of the name could be built. To the proclamation of such a goal of medicine he devoted his life.

In one of his writings, Paracelsus says, “There is a light in the spirit of man ... by which the qualities of each thing created by God, whether it be visible or invisible to the senses, may be perceived and known. If man knows the essence of things, their attributes, their attractions, and the elements of which they consist, he will be a master of nature, of the elements, and of the spirits.”

Robert Browning expressed Paracelsus' thoughts in the well-known lines:

“Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, what'er you may believe.
There is an inmost center in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception—which is truth,
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and, to KNOW,
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.”

8.

Eight years before the death of Paracelsus, Valentine Weigel was born at Naundorff, near Grossenheim in the district of Meissen. This year 1533 was also the year of the birth of Montaigne, the skeptic, of the completion of the rape of Peru by the most notorious of all Spanish conquistadores, Francisco Pizarro, of the proclamation of Anne Boleyn, soon to be the mother of Elizabeth, as Queen of England by Henry VIII, and of the final preparation of Luther's complete German Bible which was published the next year.

The details of Weigel's childhood are obscure, but in course of time he received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees at the University of Leipzig. He continued his studies at the University of Wittenberg until 1567, three years after the death of Michelangelo. In that year he was ordained a Lutheran pastor and was called to the church at Zschopau, not far from Chemnitz in eastern Germany. His life was passed entirely in this place, and he continued as pastor of this church until his death in 1588, the year the English defeated the Spanish Armada.

While the external events of Weigel's life are few and somewhat unimpressive when compared with some of the biographies discussed thus far, his inner development and his dedication to his pastoral tasks are very remarkable. He is remembered as a loving, devoted man, a true shepherd of his flock, a man whom all his parishioners loved, and who loved them in return.

Twenty-one years after the death of their pastor, his parishioners came to know that in addition to the Valentin Weigel they knew, another man, as it were, had been active all the years in Zschopau. This was Valentin Weigel, student, mystic, and author.

Weigel had long been a close student of the writings of Paracelsus, whose work he deeply admired, but whose fate he was determined not to share. Therefore while he studied and wrote a great deal during his lifetime, he never revealed his interest in mysticism to anyone, and left instructions that his writings were not to be published until sometime after his death. So while Pastor Weigel stood in his pulpit and preached to his flock Sunday after Sunday without interruption for twenty-one years, he never shared his most cherished interests and convictions with them.

Weigel was well acquainted with the works of Eckhart and Tauler and also with such classical mystics as Dionysius and the Neo-Platonists. But with all his study he recognized that the ultimate truth of things is not acquired from without, but is to be found within each man. He wrote, “Study nature, physics, alchemy, magic, and so on, but it is all in you, and you become what you have learned.”

In 1609, twenty-one years after Weigel's death, the year Henry Hudson sailed up the river that now bears his name, Weigel's book that was to greatly influence English mystics after its translation into English in 1648, was published. It bore the title, Von den Leben Christi, das ist, vom wahren Glauben, Of the Life of Christ, that is, of True Faith, and one of its outstanding passages is, “Faith comes by inward hearing. Good books, external preaching, have their place; they testify to the real Treasure. They are witnesses to the Word within us. But faith is not tied to books; Faith is a new birth, which cannot be found in books. The one who has the inner Schoolmaster would lose nothing of his salvation, even though all the preachers should die and all books be burned.”

When one considers the theological ideas prevailing in his time, one of Weigel's interesting concepts deals with the location of heaven and hell. In an age when basically materialistic descriptions of heavenly wonders were contrasted with equally materialistic portrayals of hellish tortures, and men were assured by their pastors that these were definite places, Weigel's conviction, which probably he never voiced from his pulpit, is surprisingly modern. He wrote that “Heaven and Hell are in the soul of man, after all; both Trees of the Paradise, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, as well as the Tree of Life, flourish in the human soul.” (See Weigel's Erkenne dich Selbst, Know Thyself)

Like Luther and others, Weigel prized and edited the little book, Theologia Germanica, or The Golden Book of German Theology, as Henry More called it, and spoke of it as “A precious little book, a noble book.” Weigel also loved the sermons of Johannes Tauler because “they testify to the experience of the Heavenly Jerusalem within us.”

For Weigel, the immanence of the spiritual world was a profound conviction, born of his personal experience. His expression of this is one of the classic statements of mysticism: “God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.”

9.

Jacob Boehme was born on April 24, 1575 in the little German village of Alt Seidenberg on a hillside south of Goerlitz, near the Bohemian border. Jacob was the fourth child of his parents, of old German peasant stock, noted for their honesty and devoutness. The Boehme family were staunch Lutherans, and the children were brought up according to the family faith. Jacob was a sickly child, and was not thought strong enough to work in the fields. Therefore his childhood summers were spent watching the herds, and in winter he received the rudiments of reading, writing, simple arithmetic and a little Latin. His favorite reading was his Bible, which he carried with him in the fields, and came to know as few other men have.

When he was fourteen, his father apprenticed him to the village cobbler for three years, since it was clear that Jacob's health would never permit him to be a farmer. In 592 Jacob Boehme began his journeyman's wanderings.

Abraham von Franckenberg, whom we shall meet again as the friend of Johannes Scheffler (Angelus Silesius), knew Jacob Boehme, and described the latter's appearance in these years: “Jacob's body was worn and plain. He was short, with low forehead, wide temples, his nose slightly crooked, his eyes grey, lighting up at times like the windows of Solomon's Temple. He had a short beard, somewhat thin, a slight voice, but very gentle in conversation. His manner was modest, mild and humble. He was of patient heart, and his spirit was lightened by God beyond anything to be found in nature.”

In the chapter in this book dealing with Jacob Boehme, Rudolf Steiner relates the famous story of the stranger and the pair of shoes, which took place during Boehme's apprentice days, sometime before 1599. In May of that year Boehme was officially made a citizen of Goerlitz, became established as a master shoemaker there, and soon afterward married Catherina Kuntzsch, daughter of a butcher of Goerlitz, by whom he had four children.

In the year 1600, when Jacob Boehme was twenty-five, he had the remarkable spiritual experience which Rudolf Steiner mentions in this book. Boehme saw the sunlight reflected on the surface of a polished pewter dish, and it was suddenly as though he could penetrate into the most secret depths of the universe, could probe the secrets of nature, and could fathom the essential being of everything in creation. This is comparable to Paracelsus' observation: “Hidden things which cannot be perceived by the physical senses may be discovered by means of the sidereal body, through whose organism we can look into nature just as the sun shines through a glass.”

Boehme later explained his spiritual experience or “illumination” in the introduction to his book, Aurora: “In a quarter of an hour I observed and knew more than if I had attended a university for many years. I recognized the Being of Beings, both the Byss and Abyss the eternal generation of the Trinity, the origin and creation of this world and of all creatures through the Divine Wisdom. I saw all three worlds in myself: first, the Divine World; second, the dark world and the source of fire; third, the external, visible world as an outbreathing of the inner or spiritual worlds. I also saw the fundamental nature of evil and good, and how the pregnant Mother, the eternal genetrix, brought them forth. My experience is like the evoking of life in the presence of death, or like the resurrection from the dead. My spirit suddenly saw all created things, even the herbs and grass, in this light. I knew who God is, what He is like, and the nature of His Will. Suddenly in that light my will was seized by a mighty impulse to describe the Being of God.”

For ten long years after this spiritual experience, to which Boehme referred repeatedly throughout the remainder of his life, he meditated on his vision. He came to believe that what he had to tell others was entirely unique with him, and that his mission was to purify Christianity, which he thought had become corrupt once again. He had no use for theology born of reason, nor for creeds and dogmas established on purely intellectual foundations. He was convinced that only one's personal experience of the reality of the spiritual world can enable one to overcome evil and advance into genuine knowledge of the spirit.

In 1610, the year when Galileo discovered the satellites of Jupiter by means of the newly-invented telescope, Jacob Boehme knew that the moment had come when he could write down an account of what he had seen a decade before: “To write these things was strongly urged upon my spirit, however difficult they might be for my outer self to understand, and for my pen to express. Like a child beginning school I was compelled to start my work on this very great Mystery. Within myself I saw it well enough, as in a great depth, but the describing and explaining of it seemed impossible.”

Boehme wrote in the early morning before he went to his cobbler's bench, and in the evening after he returned home from his work. And at last, after two years of diligent effort, Jacob Boehme produced his Aurora one of the masterpieces of mystical literature.

That Boehme knew that the twenty-six chapters of his Aurora are not easy to read, and are not for everyman, is clear from his words: “If you are not a spiritual overcomer, then let my book alone. Don't meddle with it, but stick to your old ways.” “Art was not written here, nor did I find time to consider how to set things down accurately, according to rules of composition, but everything followed the direction of the Spirit, which often hastened so that the writer's hand shook. As the burning fire of the Spirit hurried ahead, the hand and pen had to follow after it, for it came and went like a sudden shower.”

Handwritten copies of the manuscript were made by Carl Ender von Sercha, Boehme's friend and student. Sercha believed that in Boehme's work a prophecy of Paracelsus had been fulfilled, which announced that the years between 1599 and 1603 would bring about a new age for mankind, a time of “singing, dancing, rejoicing, jubilating.” Therefore many who heard of Boehme's remarkable spiritual experience when he had, to use his own words, “wrestled in God's presence a considerable time for the knightly crown ... which later, with the breaking of the gate in the deep center of nature, I attained with much joy,” believed that in him the words of Paracelsus had come true.

Their enthusiasm, however, was not universally shared. A copy of the manuscript of Aurora fell by chance into the hands of the Lutheran Pastor Primarius Gregorius Richter of Goerlitz. After the clergyman read the pages that John Wesley was later to describe as “sublime nonsense, inimitable bombast, fustian not to be paralleled,” and the celebrated English Bishop Warburton characterized as something that “would disgrace Bedlam at full moon,” he went to his pulpit the next Sunday and poured out his indignation upon Boehme's work. Among the congregation that morning sat Jacob Boehme himself, listened quietly and without a shadow of emotion to the stern denunciations of his pastor. Afterward he went to Richter and attempted to explain the passages of Aurora to which the latter took most violent exception. But the clergyman would have neither Boehme nor his book, asked the town council to expel Boehme from Goerlitz. His effort failed, but the justices warned Boehme that since he was a shoemaker, he must abandon writing and stick to the trade for which he was licensed. Boehme, who had said, “In Yes and No all things consist,” accepted their injunction, and entered upon still another time of silence. This period lasted from 1612, the year the King James Version of the English Bible was issued, until 1619, when a Dutch ship landed in Jamestown, Virginia, with the first African slaves to be sold in North America.

Meanwhile, Boehme's fame was spreading as more and more people read the manuscript copies of his Aurora, which were circulated by his admirers. Among the latter were the physician of Goerlitz, the learned Dr. Tobias Kober, the director of the Elector of Saxony's chemical laboratory at Dresden, Dr. Balthazar Walther, the nobleman Carl Ender von Sercha, and the Paracelsus student, who was to be Boehme's biographer, Abraham von Franckenberg.

Again and again these men urged Boehme to ignore the order of the magistrates of Goerlitz, and to continue his writing, but he consistently refused. However, early in 1619 their urgings met with success, and Boehme resumed his writing, and continued with increasing zeal during the following years. As he wrote, “I had resolved to do nothing in future, but to be quiet before God in obedience, and to let the devil with all his host sweep over me. But with me it was as when a seed is hidden in the earth. Contrary to all reason, it grows up in storm and rough weather. In the winter, all is dead, and reason says, ‘Everything is ended for it.’ But the precious seed within me sprouted and grew green, oblivious of all storms, and, amid disgrace and ridicule, it has blossomed into a lily!”

Through all the following years Boehme remained faithful to his original conviction that everything he wrote was not the fruit of his own intellectual creativeness, but was the gift of the spiritual world. In 1620, the memorable year of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth, he said, “I did not dare to write other than as I was guided. I have continued writing as the Spirit directed, and have not given place to reason.”

Boehme was one of those people who suffer much from the enthusiasm and admiration of their friends The latter were responsible for the attack by Pastor Primarius Richter, because of their circulating copies of Aurora, as we have seen. Again, toward the end of 1623, Boehme's friend, Sigismund von Schweinitz published three small works of Boehme, the first of the latter's writings to appear in print. Immediately the enemy in the person of clergyman Richter attacked Jacob Boehme, and once again complained to the magistrates of Goerlitz. This time, since he had broken their injunction against his writing, they ordered Boehme to leave town.

Before receiving the sentence of the magistrates, however, Boehme had been invited to visit the Court of the Elector of Saxony in Dresden. Therefore, early in May the shoemaker, exile from Goerlitz arrived in Dresden to attend “a conference of noble people,” as he described it.

Boehme was fast becoming famous. The second attack upon him by Pastor Primarius Richter was known widely, and the sale of his writings, which were rapidly appearing in print, steadily increased. He was convinced that in only a short time “the nations will take up what my native town is casting away.” He regarded the invitation to the Elector's Court as an opportunity to defend his works before some of the leading theologians and scholars of his time, and he was right.

His devoted student, Dr. Balthazar Walther, had arranged that Boehme was to be a guest in the home of Dr. Benedict Hinckelmann, Walther's successor as director of the Elector's laboratory, and the court physician. Boehme's reception in Dresden was all that his most devoted friends could have desired. He was entertained with consideration and appreciation, and found that important members of the court circle had studied his writings, and welcomed this opportunity to discuss them with him. One of the prominent noblemen of the Elector's household, Joachim von Loss, invited Boehme to visit his castle in order that they might have conversation together. Major Stahlmeister, chief master of horse to the Elector, did everything possible to inform the Elector favorably concerning Boehme's work.

Finally, at the request of the Elector, Boehme was examined orally by six eminently learned doctors of theology, and by two mathematicians. As a contemporary account describes it, “The illustrious Elector found great satisfaction in Boehme's answers. He asked Boehme to come to him privately, spoke with him, extended many favors to him, and gave him permission to return to his home in Goerlitz.”

At the conclusion of his visit, which lasted nearly two months, Boehme left Dresden, his teachings at least partly accepted. He did not return directly to Goerlitz, but visited three of his noblemen friends on the way. At the home of one of them he was taken ill, and as soon as possible, he hastened home to Goerlitz, where his friend and physician, Dr. Tobias Kober undertook his care. It was not long, however, before Dr. Kober, realizing that Jacob Boehme's death was near, arranged that he should receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper after he had made a confession of faith. This was done on November, 15 1624.

It was nearly two o'clock in the morning of the following Sunday that Jacob Boehme asked his son, Tobias, “Do you hear that beautiful music, my son?” Tobias replied that he did not. Then Boehme said, “Open the door then, so we can hear it better.” He inquired as to the hour, and when he was told that it was not yet three o'clock, he replied, “Then my time has not yet come.”

With the first faint touches of Aurora on the eastern sky, Jacob Boehme spoke words of farewell to his wife and children, and with a smile of joyful expectancy on his face, breathed out his spirit with the words, “Now I go to Paradise.”

A great crowd of the everyday people of Goerlitz, the shoemakers, tanners, craftsmen, along with devoted students of Boehme's writings, attended his funeral. The pall-bearers were shoemakers of Goerlitz, and the funeral service was conducted by the Lutheran clergyman who succeeded Richter. On the tombstone of porphyry are inscribed the words, “Jacob Boehme, philosophus Teutonicus.”

Jacob Boehme once described life as “a curious bath of thorns and thistles,” and his experience witnessed the truth of his words. But all the difficulties of his comparatively short life of forty-nine years were more than compensated by his vision of the greatness of man and of man's destiny. As he wrote, “Man has a spark of the spirit as a supernatural gift of God, to bring forth by degrees a new birth of that life which was lost in Paradise. This sacred spark of the divine nature within man has a natural, strong, almost infinite longing for that eternal spirit of God from which it came forth. It came forth from God, it came out of God; therefore it is always in a state of return to God. All this is called the breathing, the quickening of the Holy Spirit within us, which are so many operations of this spark of life, tending toward God.”

10.

In 1548, the year Michelangelo was made chief architect of St. Peter's in Rome, Giordano Bruno was born beneath the shadow of Mount Vesuvius in the little village of Cicala near Nola. His boyhood was passed in the midst of earthquakes, plagues and famine, while robbers and outlaws frequented the hills and fields of his native countryside. His father was a soldier, and the boy was named Philip.

At the age of fifteen he was enrolled in the Dominican monastery in Naples, the same cloister where Thomas Aquinas had lived three hundred years before. There he was given the name Giordano, which had been the name of one of the intimate companions of St. Dominic himself.

For nearly thirteen years he studied in this monastery, and became learned in the works of the ancient philosophers, particularly of Plotinus and Pythagoras. He was of an independent spirit, and gave considerable concern to his censor on this account. For example, he removed the saints' pictures from his cell, leaving only the crucifix on the wall. When he discovered a monk reading The Seven Joys of Mary, he advised him to read something more rational. He also questioned points in the Church dogma such as the Transsubstantiation, the Trinity, and the Immaculate Conception. At an early age he was deeply impressed with the scientific writings of Copernicus, and after some twenty years of reading them recalled that the force of their teaching still worked strongly upon him.

The teachings of the Neo-Platonists and of Nicolas of Cusa formed the basis of his own philosophy, and during his early years he wrote considerable poetry as well.

In 1572, when Bruno was twenty-four, he took holy orders, read his first Mass, and began to perform the other priestly functions. About this time he took some of his companions into his confidence, and frankly told them some of the questions he entertained on matters of Church dogma. They lost no time in informing their superiors, and soon the Holy Office of the Inquisition reprimanded Bruno sharply. Plans were made to bring him before a court of the Inquisition, but Bruno secretly left Naples and went to Rome, where he stayed in the Della Minerva Monastery.

However, he was not long left in peace. Fra Domenico Vito, provincial of the Order, charged him with heresy, and orders for his arrest were sent to Rome. Letters from friends informed Bruno that soon after his departure from Naples his books which he had hidden, had been discovered, including works by Chrisostom and Hieronymous, with notes by Erasmus. Bruno's situation was very serious, and he left the monastery, divested himself of his Dominican habit, and wandered over the Campagna in the vicinity of the ruins of Hadrian's villa dressed as a poor beggar, which indeed he was. These events occurred in 1576–1577, at about the time of the birth of the painter, Peter Paul Rubens.

Now began Bruno's years of wandering, during which he sought to make known the new teachings about the universe as set forth by Copernicus. He also continued his own writings, creating philosophical masterpieces and poetic works of unusual mystical depth and content. He took passage in a ship bound for Genoa, but was unable to land because of the plague and civil war. Therefore he stopped at Noli, on the Riviera, where he taught boys grammar and delivered lectures on the work of Copernicus, the plurality of worlds, and the shape of the earth. But this was too much for the local clergy, and once again Bruno wandered to Turin, where he hoped to obtain an opportunity to lecture in the University through the celebrated patron of scholars, Duke Emmanuele Filberto. However, the latter was under the influence of the Jesuits, and once again Bruno was denied the post he sought.

Bruno reached Venice after traveling across northern Italy from Turin, but here too he found that the deadly plague had done its work as in Genoa, and a large part of the inhabitants—including the painter Titian at the age of ninety-nine—had died. However, Venice was the center of the publishing activities of Italy, and Bruno braved the plague in order to have some of his work printed there. Shortly afterward he visited the Dominicans at Padua, and “they persuaded me to wear the habit again, even though I would not profess the religion it implied, because they said it would help in my travels to be thus dressed. And so I put on the white cloth robe and the hood which I had kept by me when I left Rome.”

When Bruno arrived in Geneva, the Marchese Galeazzo Carraciola, nephew of Pope Paul IV, also a refugee from persecution by the church, and a member of the Calvinist Protestant religion, befriended him. The Marchese asked him to cease wearing the Dominican habit and to assume the usual dress of the lay scholar, and Bruno did so, never again wearing a religious habit. During his stay in Geneva, Bruno found himself in trouble with Antoine de la Faye, a member of the Academy, because he took exception to one of the latter lectures, and attacked some twenty points in it. Bruno was arrested and imprisoned for a short time, and after his release was informed that he must either adopt Calvinism or leave the city.

Shortly after this Bruno entered France, visiting Lyons and afterwards Toulouse. In the latter place he received his Doctors degree, and held the position of professor of philosophy in the university for two years, lecturing to appreciative hearers on astronomy and general philosophical subjects. But again the clergy interfered with his work, and he left Toulouse for Paris, where he arrived in 1581.

Henry III, king of France, had heard of Bruno's great gifts as a lecturer, and of his unusual learning, eloquence and memory. Therefore he wished to appoint Bruno to the faculty of the Sorbonne, but before doing so, it was necessary for Bruno to confess and attend Mass as a professing Catholic. Bruno fearlessly and uncompromisingly refused, and so greatly did his honesty and sincerity impress the king that the latter allowed him to assume the position without regard to his scruples concerning religion.

The Paris lectures of Giordano Bruno were based on his study of the famous treatise, the Ars Magna, which Raimon Lull, the eminent Majorcan author, Arabic scholar, mystic, educational reformer, and traveler, had written in 1275. In addition, Bruno discussed logic, general philosophy, astronomy, the symbolism of Pythagoras, and the teachings of Copernicus.

After two years' teaching in Paris, Bruno was offered the post of secretary to Michel de Castelnau, sieur de Mauvissiere, ambassador to England. Bruno found London in a ferment of excitement, since attempts had recently been made on the life of Queen Elizabeth. Added to this were constant rumors that the Spanish were preparing to launch a massive invasion attempt against the coasts of England, and after Bruno had been in England for about a year, these rumors were confirmed by accurate information that a great Armada was gathering in the Tagus with designs upon England.

But politics, rumors of invasion, and tales of military exploit did not interest Bruno. He visited Oxford, and was disappointed with what he found there. From the time he first landed in the country, he had been repelled by what he considered the brutality of English manners in contrast with those he had known in Italy and France. In Protestant Oxford Bruno found a narrowness and sectarian dogmatism entirely foreign to the ideas of objective freedom he believed should prevail among scholars. The presence of the distinguished Polish Prince Johann a Lesco at Oxford was the occasion for a debate in which Bruno defended his new cosmology based on the teachings of the Polish Copernicus, against a group of theologians. Bruno won easily, but was soon forbidden to continue his lectures in Oxford.

While Bruno found the manners of the British distasteful, and the attitude of the Oxford scholars hopelessly bigoted, in the person of the Queen he found something to admire. He was frequently invited to private conversations with Elizabeth, who was always happy when she could display her knowledge of Italian, and who appreciated Bruno's learning and charm. In London, Bruno met the brilliant statesman, Sir Philip Sydney, to whom he dedicated one of his works, Lord Bacon of Verulam, and other prominent figures of the Elizabethan court. Bruno's duties at the embassy apparently were not arduous, since he seems to have had time to mingle with the court, to form acquaintances with the leading men of the time (there is a tradition that he met Shakespeare in the printing shop of Thomas Vautrollier), to hold lectures at Oxford, and, most important for posterity, to devote himself to writing.

In 1584 while Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition in Virginia was taking place, and the plot involving Mary Queen of Scots was fast coming to a head, Bruno wrote his two most famous metaphysical works, De la Causa, Principio, ed Uno, and D l'Infinito, Universo, e Mondi.

Early in 1585, with the plans for an English invasion of the Netherlands taking shape, and the raids on the Spanish American coasts by Sir Francis Drake making certain a crisis with Spain, the French ambassador decided he should return to France for a time. Therefore Bruno left England, probably not too unwillingly, though the years of his English residence were among the most productive and happiest of his life.

Bruno's ideas were found acceptable to the superiors of the college of Cambrai, and he found a temporary place among the lecturers there. However, his outspokenness brought him into trouble, for he prepared a thesis of one hundred twenty articles, in which he attacked the philosophy of Aristotle. His works and teaching evoked enthusiasm such as had not been witnessed in academic circles in France since the times of Abèlard. Bruno's theses were printed by permission of the censor, and the debate on them was held on May 5, 1588, at Whitsuntide.

At once after his triumph, Bruno left France for Germany, where he hoped to find freedom to lecture. In Marburg he was disappointed, but in Wittenberg he was welcomed, and found the atmosphere congenial to his creative activity. There he produced several more written works.

In 1588, with Europe ablaze with the tale of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and with it the hope of Philip II to crush English Protestantism under the tread of invading Spanish Catholic armies, Bruno decided to visit Prague. From there he went to the university at Helmstadt where he remained for a year, but at the end of that time was driven out by the attacks of Boethius, Lutheran Rector of Helmstadt. Bruno decided to go to Frankfort, where he hoped to prepare and publish several works, but he was not allowed to enter the city. Instead he found refuge in a Carmelite cloister just outside the city, through the kind assistance of the famous publishers, Wechel and Fischer. In the cloister he worked with feverish haste, and produced a number of works which were published. The Prior of the monastery recalled Bruno as “a man of universal mind, skillful in all sciences, but without a trace of religion.”

During this period—when he wrote his Seven Liberal Arts—the Frankfort Fair took place, and many publishers from foreign countries were present. There Bruno met the Venetian booksellers, Bertano and Ciotto, and it was the latter who took Bruno's writings to Venice. There these were found by a young nobleman, Giovanni Mocenigo, who read them with great interest, and inquired for details about the author.

Sometime later, when Bruno was in Zurich a letter reached him from the young Mocenigo, inviting him to visit him in Venice, promising him safe conduct for the journey. As soon as Bruno's friends heard of the invitation, they urged him not to accept it, for they feared for his safety at the hands of the Inquisition. But Bruno brushed their fears aside. He had confidence in this young nobleman, a member of one of the finest and most honorable families of Venice. Therefore, Bruno crossed the Alps and descended into Italy, arriving in Venice in October, 1591.

The first months after Bruno's arrival were filled with scholarly activity. He began to tutor the young Mocenigo, and also lectured privately to German students at Padua, where he was soon to be followed by Galileo. Bruno frequented the Venetian philosophical and literary societies, and was welcomed in the home of Andrea Morosini and of his student Mocenigo. Finally, after some time Bruno decided that he would like to return to Frankfort in order to publish some of his works there. But this was not to be.

From the moment he had arrived in Italy the spies of the Inquisition were on his track, and Giovanni Mocenigo cooperated with them. And now that Bruno wished to leave the country, Mocenigo had him arrested, and thrown into the prison of the Inquisition. He was charged with many heresies, most serious being his teaching of the infinity of the universe.

Bruno was kept in the prison at Venice for nine months, and at the end of that time was taken in chains to the Bridge of Sighs, and was conveyed through the lagoons to Ancona, where he remained until he was taken to Rome. After torture and solitary confinement at Ancona, Bruno was turned over to the Roman Inquisition, and for seven years he experienced the terrors of the prison of the Holy Office. To the last he refused to give up his beliefs, and defied his opponents in all they brought against him. On February 9, 1600 Bruno was excommunicated with the cries of “Anathema.”

On February 6th in the Campo dei Fiori, a Roman flower market, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake. He was hardly fifty years of age, and his body showed signs of dreadful torture. With his head erect, his eyes showing full consciousness, he walked unassisted to the stake.

Rudolf Steiner said in a lecture on January 12, 1923, “The flaming pyre in which Giordano Bruno was put to death in the year 1600 was an outer sign of a most significant phase of inner development ... The flames in Rome are a glorious memorial in history, as Giordano Bruno himself indicated. While he was burning, he said, Something will come into being. And what was destined to come into being, what drew forth the cry, You can put me to death, but not through centuries will my ideas be able to be put to death,—that is precisely what must live on.”

11

Shortly after the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, in the year Virginia became a royal colony, with governor and council appointed by the British crown, and two years after New Netherlands was established as a Dutch colony in America, Johannes Scheffler was born in the German city of Breslau in Silesia, in 1624, the year Jacob Boehme died. When Johannes was five, his mother enrolled him and his brother at the Elizabeth Gymnasium in Breslau, shortly before her death. At the age of nineteen Johannes Scheffler matriculated at the University of Strassburg, where he intended to study medicine and law. After a year at Strassburg, he entered the University of Leyden and remained there two years. While he was at Leyden Scheffler discovered the works of Jacob Boehme, which had been published at Amsterdam in 1642. As he expressed it, “When one is in Holland, all sorts of things come one's way.”

From Leyden, Scheffler went to the greatest medical school at that time, the University of Padua, where he received his degree of Doctor of Medicine and Philosophy in 1648.

At about this time he wrote in the album of one of his fellow students, Mundus nihil pulcherrimum, The world is a very beautiful Nothing. In 1649 Johannes Scheffler was appointed Court physician to the strict Lutheran Duke Sylvanus Nimrod at Oels in Württemberg. Shortly before Scheffler arrived in Oels, the town of four thousand inhabitants had been reduced to less than two thousand, due to an action which had been fought there in the Thirty Years' War. The cattle had been killed, crops destroyed, houses ruined, and even the castle of the Duke was slightly damaged.

At the same time that Scheffler came to Oels, an older man also arrived in the town. He had been born there fifty-six years before, and was destined to play an important role in the life of Scheffler. This man was Abraham von Franckenberg, whom we have already met as the friend and biographer of Boehme; as Scheffler's friend he was to guide the latter on his spiritual path.

Years before, von Franckenberg had given over his estate to his eldest son, and had reserved only two small rooms in the house for himself, where he studied and lived. During the plagues which swept over the district from time to time, he was of great help to the sick. It was at a time of plague that he met Jacob Boehme, and eventually printed the latter's writings at his own expense. Von Franckenberg studied Kaballa, alchemy, the works of Giordano Bruno and Copernicus, with the single aim of solving the secrets of the science of nature. Because of his studies von Franckenberg was attacked by the Lutheran clergy, and finally left Oels in 1641, and went to Danzig where he lived for eight years as the guest of the famous astronomer, Helvelius. From Danzig he returned to Oels in 1649. When he was asked by the Duke if he was a Catholic, a Lutheran, or a Calvinist, von Franckenberg answered, “I am the heart of all these religions.”

Johannes Scheffler was attracted to von Franckenberg at their first meeting, and soon the young physician became the devoted student of the older scientist. Long hours were spent by the two of them in von Franckenberg's little rooms discussing Boehme, alchemy, astronomy, the mystics of medieval times, and so on. Two and one-half years after their meeting, von Franckenberg died, and bequeathed many of his precious books and manuscripts to Scheffler. Among these works, which Scheffler referred to as “a real pharmacy of the soul,” were the Theologia Germanica, the writings of Boehme, Weigel, Paracelsus, Bruno, Tauler and Rulwin Merswin. One volume of this collection is preserved, and bears the date 1652 inscribed on the flyleaf, and in the handwriting of Scheffler, the words, “From my faithful friend, Abraham von Franckenberg.” Another volume from this collection also contains extensive notations in Scheffler's handwriting.

Shortly after von Franckenberg's death, Scheffler decided to write a book composed of passages from his favorite mystical authors. This he intended to issue as a New Year gift volume. As a matter of course the printer submitted the book to Christoph Freytag, court chaplain and censor. Freytag struck out long passages, and not only refused to give his imprimatur, but also declined to so much as speak with Scheffler about it. This was a turning-point in Scheffler's spiritual life. He realized that the Lutheran church could no longer be his religious home. He resigned his post, left Oels immediately, and returned to Breslau.

Among the writers whom Scheffler had quoted in his book, many were Catholic. Now he began to read Catholic books more and more, spending some months in Breslau in thorough study of them. On June 12, 1653 Johannes Scheffler embraced the Roman Catholic faith.

As Abraham von Franckenberg had been a strong influence in Scheffler's life at one point, now a second man exerted a powerful effect upon him. This was Sebastian von Rostock, born the son of a poor ropemaker, now the vicar general of the diocese of Breslau. As a simple parish priest in the village of Niesse he had witnessed the hardships of the Thirty Years' War. For example, when the Lutheran armies rounded up many Catholics and imprisoned them in buildings, he risked his life by climbing in the windows to give them spiritual consolation. One day while he was walking through the forest, he was set upon by a Lutheran cavalryman. He drew his sword, which all men, clergymen or not had to wear at that time for self-protection, returned the attack, and killed his opponent. However, the instant the cavalryman fell from his horse, von Rostock rushed to him in order to give him absolution that he might die in a state of grace. In the Catholic Counter-Reformation of 1653–1654, von Rostock was extremely severe on the Lutherans, with the result that over two hundred fifty churches were returned to Catholic use in Silesia alone.

At this point, however, von Rostock wished to have some proof that Lutherans were finding it possible to embrace the Catholic faith without pressure or force. Therefore the free conversion of the celebrated former court physician, Johannes Scheffler, was precisely the example he was looking for. He sought out Scheffler, who by this time had decided to change his name. First he adopted the name of Johannes de Angelis, a Spanish mystic of the sixteenth century, calling himself Johannes Angelus. But he discovered that there existed a certain Protestant doctor of theology, Johannes Angelus of Darmstadt, so he added “Silesius” from his birthplace, calling himself Johannes Angelus Silesius, by which he is known to posterity.

Sebastian von Rostock invited Angelus Silesius to his palace, and after talking with him arranged that the Austrian Emperor, Frederick III would give him the title of Court physician, but without either duties or salary. Nevertheless the title alone gave Angelus Silesius good reputation in Catholic circles particularly. More important, however, is the fact that von Rostock give his imprimatur to Angelus Silesius' Geistreiche Sinn und Schlussreime, Witty Sayings and End-Rhymes, which, when it was reprinted in 1674 was given the name by which it has since become famous, Cherubinischer Wandersmann, The Cherubinean Wanderer. The book was approved in July, 1656, but was not published until 1657, the year before the birth of the English composer, Henry Purcell. In 1674 Angelus Silesius' collection of some two hundred poems was published under the title, Heilige Seelenlust, oder geistliche Hirtenlieder der in ihren Jesum verliebten Psyche, Holy Ecstasies, or Sacred Shepherd Songs in Adoration of Jesus. From this collection, several poems were eventually included in the Lutheran hymnal, and today are among the best-loved hymns of the Protestant church.

Angelus Silesius became extremely zealous in developing the activities of the Catholic church in Breslau. Now a Franciscan priest, he organized the first Catholic procession held in Breslau for well over a century. And to drive the lesson home to observers, Angelus Silesius himself carried the cross and wore the crown of thorns in the procession. The next twelve years were a period of intense controversy, for in that time Angelus Silesius wrote and published some fifty-five attacks on Protestantism, most of them extremely bitter. Finally he was persuaded to give up this activity by the superior of his Order.

In 1664 Angelus Silesius was appointed marshal and counsellor to Sebastian von Rostock, who meanwhile had become Prince-Bishop of Breslau. Seven years later the Prince-Bishop died suddenly, and a sadness settled upon Angelus Silesius which did not leave him until death.

Just as Sebastian von Rostock had appeared after the death of Abraham von Franckenberg, now a third man befriended Angelus Silesius. This was Bernard Rose, Abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Grüssau, and Vicar General of the Cistercians in Silesia. Abbot Rose was a man of great strength, kindness of heart, a stern disciplinarian in his monastery, and a firm supporter of the Counter-Reformation. The monastery of Grüssau was located about fifty miles from Breslau, and was noted for its hospitality to all who knocked at its gates.

Angelus Silesius was received with warmth and kindliness at Grüssau. He found understanding, support, and comfort, of inestimable value to him, since now he was a dying man. The months he lived at Grüssau were spent in writing, meditation, and prayer. There he completed his last work, the Ecclesiologia, which he dedicated to Abbot Bernard Rose, his friend. The last three months of Angelus Silesius' life were marked by severe suffering, but through it all he was able to maintain an attitude of inner calm, of lofty spiritual vision, and of clear consciousness. He died on July 9, 1677, and to the last moment of his life he never ceased to manifest the spirit of love and peace which had settled upon him during his severe illness. In his last days Angelus Silesius repeated again and again, “Tranquillity is the best treasure that one can have.”

In the Loggia di San Paolo on the south side of the square, opposite the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence is a famous terra cotta relief created by Andrea della Robbia sometime around 1492. Influenced by a work of Fra Angelico, it depicts the historic meeting between St. Francis and St. Dominic. When one contemplates what is represented there, one is reminded of the Scripture, “Mercy and truth are met together.” An Italian, whose life-work was centered in a love which is ever merciful, embraces a Spaniard, whose striving for truth was expressed in knowledge of the eternal spirit.

Rudolf Steiner once observed that “External events, which at first glance seem to be trifling occurrences in the course of history, are deeply and inwardly rooted in the evolution of mankind.”

In this sense, this artistic creation, fashioned at the moment of emergence of the modern world, portraying the meeting of the founders of two great streams of spiritual aspiration which arose in the Middle Ages, bearing the classic Platonic and Aristotelian impulses into later times, expresses their significance in the development of mankind.

The series of eleven men around whom this book is created, begins with Meister Eckhart, a Dominican, and concludes with Angelus Silesius, a Franciscan. Midway between the two Rudolf Steiner places Henry Conelius, Agrippa of Nettesheim, typical of the “new man” of the Renaissance: scholar, courtier, diplomat, physician, master of the “new learning” which came to the fore at the dawn of the modern age. Between the Dominicans, for whom the ideal picture of the world was embodied in the word Order, and the Franciscans, for whom the essence of creation was expressed in the word Love, Rudolf Steiner has placed the figure whom he calls “a protagonist for a genuine science of nature.”

In the lives of these eleven men is united the progressive unfoldment of ideas and events at a moment of supreme importance in the course of man's life on earth. Their struggles, tensions, and resolutions epitomize the historical process as it unveiled itself in the important development then taking place in the evolution of humanity. In their life-experiences we see the birth-pangs of the appearance of a new stage in the life of mankind—the dawn of the modern age.

We have spoken about various legends which contain esoteric truths in the pictures which they present. These were given to man in this form at a time when he was not mature enough to receive the truths directly. These pictures took hold of man's ‘causal’ body—that part of man which bore the germ of his future Higher Manas—and thus made him ready to understand the truths directly in a future incarnation.

I would like now to show one such legend as this which dates back only a few centuries and is still extant today in many versions. It is the following.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century¹ a personality appeared in Europe who had been initiated into certain secrets in the East. This was Christian Rosenkreutz.² By the time this incarnation of Christian Rosenkreutz had come to an end, he had initiated about ten other people into such matters as he himself had learned through initiation—in so far as this was possible among Europeans at that time. This small brotherhood called itself ‘Fraternitae Rosae Crucis’, the Brotherhood of the Rose Cross. This small group of people then gave a certain legend to a larger, more exoteric fraternity, through whom it then became generally known to the world.

Christian Rosenkreutz himself had revealed certain deep secrets of the Mysteries to those people who were sufficiently prepared to receive them. But, as I said, there were not more than ten in this small circle, consisting of initiated Rosicrucians. What was taught by Christian Rosenkreutz could not be imparted to many people, but it was embodied in a kind of myth.³ Since it was first given out in the fifteenth century, it has often been repeated and explained in the various brotherhoods. It was told in larger brotherhoods, but was interpreted only in intimate circles.

This is the approximate content:

There was a time when one of the Elohim created a human being whom he called Eve. That Elohim united himself with Eve and she gave birth to Cain. After this, another Elohim, named Yahveh, created Adam. Adam also united himself with Eve and from this union came Abel.

Thus we see that Cain is a direct descendant of the gods, but Abel is a descendant of Adam and Eve who are human.

Now the myth proceeds:

The sacrifices which Abel made to Yahveh were pleasing to him, but the sacrifices brought by Cain did not please him because the birth of Cain was not ordained by him. The result was that Cain committed fratricide. He killed Abel and for this he was excluded from communion with Yahveh. He went away into distant lands and founded his own race there.

Adam again united himself with Eve and from this union came Seth, also mentioned in the Bible, who took over the role of Abel. Thus we have two generations of mankind: the race of Cain, who was a descendant of Eve and one of the Elohim, and the other race which had human parentage and was brought into existence at the command of Yahveh.

Among the descendants of Cain are all those who have been creators of art and science, as, for instance, Methuselah, the inventor of the Tau script, and Tubal-Cain, who taught the use and working of metal ores and iron. In this line of descent, stemming from the Elohim, were all those who trained themselves in the arts and sciences.

Hiram also descended from the race of Cain, and he was the inheritor of all that had been learned by the others of his line in technology and art. He was the most significant architect we can imagine.

Out of Seth's line came Solomon, who excelled in everything which came from Yahveh. He was endowed with the wisdom of the world and all the attributes of calm,clear, objective wisdom. This wisdom can be expressed in words which go straight to the human heart and can uplift a person, but it is unable to produce anything tangible of a technical nature, in art or science. It is a wisdom which is a directly inspired gift of God and not attained from below through human passions welling up from the human will—that would be the wisdom pertaining to the sons of Cain, a legacy of the other Elohim, not Yahveh. They are the hardworking industrious ones who seek to accomplish everything through their own efforts.

Solomon now decides to build a temple and calls upon Hiram, the descendant of Cain, to be his master builder. It was at the time when Balkis, the Queen of Sheba, was visiting Jerusalem because she had heard of the wisdom of Solomon. And she was certainly impressed and charmed by the exalted and clear wisdom and beauty of the King when she first arrived, and when he made love to her she consented to be his bride. Now she heard about the temple which was being built and she desired to make the acquaintance of the master builder, Hiram. When she first met him she was captivated merely by his glance. As a result, a certain mood of jealousy arose between Hiram and Solomon and the latter wished to do something or other against Hiram, but he was dependent upon him for the completion of the temple.

Now came the following: The temple was almost complete. Only one thing was still lacking, which was to have been Hiram's masterpiece; that was the Molten Sea, which was to represent the ocean cast in bronze and was to have adorned the temple. All the necessary mixtures of ores had been prepared by Hiram in a most wonderful manner, ready to be cast. Now, however, three apprentices got to work, whom Hiram had found so lacking in skill that he had been unable to promote them to become masters. They had therefore sworn to be revenged on him and desired to prevent the casting of the Molten Sea. A friend of Hiram, who got to know about these plans, confided them to Solomon, so that he should prevent their realisation. But Solomon, through jealousy, did nothing to stop them, because he wished to destroy Hiram. The result was that Hiram had to look on while the whole casting disintegrated due to the addition of a wrong ingredient in the mixture by the three apprentices. He tried to quench the bursting flames by pouring water over them, but this only made matters worse. Just as he was on the point of despairing about the work ever being completed, Tubal-Cain, his ancestor, appeared to him and told him that he should not hesitate to cast himself into the fire, as he was invulnerable to the flames. Hiram did as he was advised and came to the centre of the earth. He was led by Tubal-Cain to Cain, who there resided in a condition of pristine divinity. Hiram was thus initiated into the Mystery of Fire and into the secret of bronze casting, receiving from Tubal-Cain a hammer and a Golden Triangle which he was able to carry with him as a pendant round his neck. Then he returned and was able to complete the casting of the Molten Sea and to put everything in order again.

Hereupon the Queen of Sheba consented to become Hiram's bride. He, however, was set upon by the three apprentices and murdered. But before he died, Hiram managed to throw the Golden Triangle into a well. As no one knew where he had disappeared, a search was made. Even Solomon was afraid and was anxious to find out what had happened. It was thought that the ancient Master Word could be betrayed by the apprentices, and therefore another one was devised. The first word to be spoken when Hiram was discovered should be the new Master Word. At last Hiram was found and was able to utter a few last words. He said: ‘Tubal-Cain had promised me that I shall have a son who will be the father of many descendants who will people the earth and bring my work—the building of the Temple—to completion.’ Then he pointed to the place where the Golden Triangle was to be found. This was then collected and brought to the Molten Sea and both were preserved together in the Holy of Holies. They are only to be discovered by those who can understand the meaning of the legend of the Temple of Solomon and its Master Builder Hiram.

Now we shall proceed from the recounting of the legend itself to its interpretation.

This legend portrays the destiny of the third, fourth and fifth Post-Atlantean cultural epochs. The Temple is the Temple of the Occult Societies, that is to say, what is being built up by the whole of mankind belonging to the fourth and fifth cultural epochs. And the Holy of Holies is the place where these Occult Societies have their abode. The latter are aware of what is meant by the Molten Sea and the Golden Triangle.

We are dealing, therefore, with two races of mankind: with those who, like Solomon, are in possession of divine wisdom and with those of the Race of Cain, who are conversant with fire and know how to make use of it. This fire is not physical fire, but the fire of wishes, desires and instincts which bums in the astral world.

Who, then, are the Sons of Cain? In the sense of this legend, the Sons of Cain are the sons of those Elohim who, during the Moon Epoch, were a little retarded in their role of Elohim. We are dealing with Kama, astrality, during the Moon Epoch. This Kama, or fire, was penetrated with wisdom at that time. But there were two kinds of Elohim. The one kind of Elohim did not remain static with the union of wisdom and fire; they went further. And during the creation of man they were no longer filled with desires and so they were able to endow their creation with calm and clear wisdom. That is the essential Jahve—or Jehovah—religion, the wisdom of which is quite without personal desire. The other Elohim, those in whom wisdom was combined with the fire of the Moon Epoch, created the Sons of Cain.

Therefore, in the case of the Sons of Seth, we find representatives of the religious type of human being with detached wisdom, and in the case of the Sons of Cain, we find those who possess an impulsive nature, who are capable of flaring up and showing enthusiasm for wisdom. These two types are creative within all races of mankind and in all periods of history. Out of the desire life of the Sons of Cain, all arts and the sciences originate; out of the Seth-Abel current, all detached piety and wisdom, lacking enthusiasm, has its origin.

These two types were always present and continued thus until the fourth Post-Atlantean cultural epoch.

Then came the founding of Christianity. Through it, the earlier piety, which had been bestowed on mankind from above, became passionless and detached, and was merged with the element which came to the earth through Christ—Christ, who is not only the incarnation of wisdom, but who is also love itself, a supreme being who has so purified his astral body or Kama that it has been changed into Buddhi. A pure flowing Kama which seeks nothing for itself, but turns every passion into unending devotion towards the things outside itself, is inverted Kama. Buddhi is Kama which has been changed into its opposite.

A higher kind of piety is thereby being prepared among those who are of the pious type, the Sons of Wisdom. This new kind of piety can also develop enthusiasm. It is Christian piety, which was prepared during the fourth Post-Atlantean cultural epoch. This whole stream is not yet in a position to unite with the Sons of Cain, however; they remain adversaries. Were Christianity to take hold of human beings too quickly, they would certainly become filled with love, but the individual human heart would not become involved. It would not be a piety springing from freedom. Christ would not be born within man as his brother, but only as the ruler. It is therefore necessary that the Sons of Cain are active throughout the whole of the fifth Post-Atlantean period. They are active in their initiates who build the temple of all mankind, constructed out of worldly art and worldly science.

This worldly element becomes more and more evident in the history of the fourth and fifth cultural epochs, thus making manifest the entire development of world history at the physical level. And alongside this worldly stream of materialism, the personal element of egoism is involved, which leads to the War of All against All. Even though Christianity had come into the world, it was, in a sense, a secret shared by a few. But it made people of the fourth and fifth cultural epochs aware that everyone is equal in the sight of God. That is a basic principle of Christianity, but it cannot be completely understood by man on earth so long as he is enmeshed in materialism and egoism.

The French Revolution drew its conclusion from this Christian doctrine in a worldly sense. The spiritual conception that all are equal in the sight of God was changed into the purely earthly precept that all men are equal here on earth. That is couched in even more physical terms today.

Before the outbreak of the French Revolution a personality appeared to Madame d'Adhemar,⁴ the lady-in-waiting of Marie-Antoinette, who prophesied all the important events of the coming strife, in order to warn against them. It was the Count of St. Germain,⁵ the same as he who, in a former incarnation, had founded the Rosicrucian Order. He subscribed to the view that mankind at that time must be led in all tranquillity from a worldly view of life to a truly Christian culture. Worldly powers, however, desired to gain freedom for themselves by material violent means. Christian Rosenkreutz foresaw the French Revolution as a necessary consequence of this, but warned against it. He, Christian Rosenkreutz, in his incarnation in the eighteenth century, as guardian of the innermost secrets of the Molten Sea and the Golden Triangle, appeared with the warning that mankind should develop slowly. But he also saw what was to happen.

That is the course taken by mankind's evolution during the fourth and fifth Post-Atlantean epochs when seen esoterically. The temple of mankind's earthly culture, the great Temple of Solomon, has already been built, but what is to crown it must still remain a secret. That could only be brought into being by an initiate. That initiate was misunderstood, betrayed, killed. The secret may not yet be revealed. It remains the possession of a few initiated Christians. It is sealed up in the casting of the Molten Sea and in the Golden Triangle. It is the same as the secret belonging to Christian Rosenkreutz, who was present in a very highly evolved reincarnation prior to the birth of Christ, and who gave utterance to a remarkable saying at that time.

Let me describe in a few words how this Christian Rosenkreutz came to repeat a certain saying at the time of the outbreak of the French Revolution. He said: ‘For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.’⁶ This was said by him long before it was said by Hosea and written down. It stems, however, from Christian Rosenkreutz.

This saying: ‘For they have sown the wind, and shall reap the whirlwind’, is the leading thought for the fourth and fifth cultural epochs and can be rendered in the following way: ‘Mankind shall be made free. The incarnated Buddhi will unite himself with this your freedom and make you equal in the sight of God, but the spirit (‘wind’ means spirit = Ruach) will first become a whirlwind (the War of All against All).’

At first Christianity had to appear as the Christianity of the Cross, which had to develop through the earthly sphere, through the physical plane. But the crucifix was not the symbol of Christianity from the beginning. It was when Christianity became political that the crucified Son of God was introduced, the Son of God suffering on the Cross of the World Body.⁷ It has remained thus to outward sight throughout the rest of the fourth epoch, and will continue to do so during the whole of the fifth epoch of our present Post-Atlantean cycle.

To begin with, Christianity is bound up with the purely materialistic culture of the fourth and fifth epochs, and the true Christianity of the future, which possesses the secret of the Molten Sea and the Golden Triangle, only exists secretly.⁸ This Christianity has another symbol—no longer that of the crucified Son of God, but the Cross encircled by roses. This will become the symbol of the new Christianity of the sixth Post-Atlantean epoch. Out of the Mystery of the Brotherhood of the Rose Cross will arise the Christianity of the sixth cultural epoch, which will recognise the significance of the Molten Sea and the Golden Triangle.

Hiram is the representative of the initiates among the Sons of Cain belonging to the fourth and fifth epochs. The Queen of Sheba is the soul of humanity—every female character denotes the soul in esoteric terminology. She has to choose between the detached piety which does not concern itself with worldly conquest, and the masterful wisdom which is achieved through the overcoming of earthly passions and desires. She is the representative of the true human soul, taking her position between Hiram and Solomon and uniting herself with Hiram in the fourth and fifth epochs, because he is still engaged in building the Temple.

The Molten Sea is what is created when the appropriate amounts of water and molten metal are cast. The three apprentices do it wrongly, and the casting is destroyed, but when the mysteries of fire are revealed to Hiram by Tubal-Cain, he is thereby enabled to unite water and fire in the proper way. This brings the Molten Sea into being. This is what the secret of the Rosicrucians is. It is brought about when the water of calm wisdom is united with the fire of the astral world, with the fire of passion and desire. A union must be brought about which is ‘of bronze’, that is to say, is lasting and durable. It must endure into the next epoch, when the secret of the sacred Golden Triangle is added to it; the secret of Atma, Buddhi and Manas. This Triangle, with all which it entails, will form the content of the renewed Christianity of the sixth cultural epoch. That is being prepared by the Rosicrucians and then what is symbolised by the Molten Sea will be united with a knowledge of reincarnation and karma. That is the new occult teaching which will be united again with Christianity. The higher self of man, composed of Atma, Buddhi and Manas, will become an open secret when the man of the sixth epoch has become ripe enough to receive it. Christian Rosenkreutz will then no longer be required to give warning, but everything which signified strife on the outer plane will be resolved in peace through the Molten Sea and the sacred Golden Triangle.

That is the course which world history will take in the future. What was disseminated by Christian Rosenkreutz in the Temple Legend through the Brotherhood, the Rosicrucians have made into their task: to teach not merely religious piety, but also science in an external way; not merely knowledge of the outer world, but knowledge of spiritual forces, too, and from both directions to go forward into the sixth Round of evolution.

• 1 . At the beginning of the fifteenth century ...
  In the original notes this was given as fourteenth century. Rudolf Steiner sometimes reckoned centuries as the Italians do (Quattrocento = fifteenth century). In a handwritten document from 1907, however, Rudolf Steiner writes: ‘In the first half of the fifteenth century Christian Rosenkreutz. ...’ etc. (Letters and Documents 1901–1925).
• 2 . Christian Rosenkreutz is a personality of the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, not considered historical by modern investigators, who became known through two legendary anonymous writings: Fama Fratemitatis and Confessio Fraternitatis, published in Cassel in 1614 and 1615 respectively, in which it is stated that Christian Rosenkreutz was of German aristocratic descent and lived from 1378 to 1484. The name first became known through an anonymous handwritten document of 1604, which appeared in 1616 under the title: Chymische Hochzeit: Christian Rosenkreutz, Anno 1459, whose author, Johann Valentin Andreae, was declared by Rudolf Steiner to have been inspired by Christian Rosenkreutz himself. According to Rudolf Steiner, Christian Rosenkreutz was a real historical personality.
  
  See: A Commentary on the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, Michael Press, 1965. Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, E. Foxcroft translation of 1690, Camphill Village Trust, 1969. A Christian Rosenkreutz Anthology, compiled and edited by Paul M. Allen, Rudolf Steiner Publications, Blauvelt, New York, 1968. The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. A Commentary by E.E. Pfeiffer, The Mercury Press.
• 3 . It is worth noting that Rudolf Steiner here attributes the origin of the Temple Legend to Christian Rosenkreutz in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but he never mentions how it came to be transferred to the Freemasons. Among Freemasons themselves its origin remains obscure. It is generally accepted that it arose in the eighteenth century, because that is the time of its first appearance in literature. Even though it is suspected that it formed a part of masonic knowledge at an earlier period, this cannot be proved from documents. For this lecture, too, Rudolf Steiner seems to have made use of the account given by Charles William Heckethorn in his Secret Societies, viz: Quotation from Vol. I. Book VIII, Ch. 1.
  
  The Legend of the Temple
  
  Ancestry of Hiram Abiff.
  
  Solomon, having determined on the erection of the Temple, collected artificers, divided them into companies, and put them under the command of Adoniram or Hiram Abiff, the architect sent to him by his friend and ally Hiram, King of Tyre. According to mythical tradition, the ancestry of the builders of the mystical temple was as follows: One of the Elohim, or primitive genii, married Eve and had a son called Cain; whilst Jehovah or Adonai, another of the Elohim, created Adam and united him with Eve to bring forth the family of Abel, to whom were subjected the sons of Cain, as a punishment for the transgression of Eve. Cain, though industriously cultivating the soil, yet derived little produce from it, whilst Abel leisurely tended his flocks. Adonai rejected the gifts and sacrifices of Cain, and stirred up strife between the sons of the Elohim, generated out of fire, and the sons formed out of the earth only. Cain killed Abel, and Adonai pursuing his sons, subjected to the sons of Abel the noble family that invented the arts and diffused science. Enoch, a son of Cain, taught men to hew stories, construct edifices and form civil societies. Irad and Mehujael, his son and grandson, set boundaries to the waters and fashioned cedars into beams. Methusael, another of his descendants, invented the sacred characters, the books of Tau and the symbolic T, by which the workers descended from the genii of fire recognised each other. Lamech, whose prophecies are inexplicable to the profane, was the father of Jabal, who first taught men how to dress camels' skins; of Jubal, who discovered the harp; of Naamah, who discovered the arts of spinning and weaving; of Tubal-Cain, who first constructed a furnace, worked in metals, and dug subterranean caves in the mountains to save his race during the deluge; but it perished nevertheless, and only Tubal-Cain and his son, the sole survivors of the glorious and gigantic family, came out alive. The wife of Ham, second son of Noah, thought the son of Tubal-Cain handsomer than the sons of men, and he became progenitor of Nimrod, who taught his brethren the art of hunting, and founded Babylon. Adoniram, the descendant of Tubal-Cain, seemed called by God to lead the militia of the free men, connecting the sons of fire with the sons of thought, progress, and truth.
  
  Hiram, Solomon, and the Queen of Sheba.
  
  By Hiram was erected a marvelous building, the Temple of Solomon. He raised the golden throne of Solomon, most beautifully wrought, and built many other glorious edifices. But, melancholy amidst all his greatness, he lived alone, understood and loved by few, hated by many, and among others by Solomon, envious of his genius and glory. Now the fame of the wisdom of Solomon spread to the remotest ends of the earth; and Balkis, the Queen of Sheba, came to Jerusalem, to greet the great king and behold the marvels of his reign. She found Solomon seated on a throne of gilt cedar wood, arrayed in cloth of gold, so that at first she seemed to behold a statue of gold with hands of ivory. Solomon received her with every kind of festive preparation, and led her to behold his palace and then the grand works of the temple; and the queen was lost in admiration. The king was captivated by her beauty, and in a short time offered her his hand, which the queen, pleased at having conquered this proud heart, accepted. But on again visiting the temple, she repeatedly desired to see the architect who had wrought such wondrous things. Solomon delayed as long as possible presenting Hiram Abiff to the queen, but at last he was obliged to do so. The mysterious artificer was brought before her, and cast on the queen a look that penetrated her very heart. Having recovered her composure, she questioned and defended him against the ill will and rising jealousy of the king. When she wished to see the countless host of workmen that wrought at the temple, Solomon protested the impossibility of assembling them all at once; but Hiram, leaping on a stone to be better seen, with his right hand described in the air the symbolical Tau, and immediately the men hastened from all parts of the works into the presence of their master; at this the queen wondered greatly, and secretly repented of the promise she had given the king, for she felt herself in love with the mighty architect. Solomon set himself to destroy this affection, and to prepare his rival's humiliation and ruin. For this purpose, he employed three fellow-craftsmen, envious of -Hiram, because he had refused to raise them to the degree of masters, on account of their want of knowledge and their idleness. They were Fanor, a Syrian and a mason; Amru, a Phoenician and a carpenter; and Metusael, a Hebrew and a miner. The black envy of these three projected that the casting of the brazen sea, which was to raise the glory of Hiram to its utmost height, should turn out a failure. A young workman, Benoni, discovered the plot and revealed it to Solomon, thinking that sufficient. The day for the casting arrived, and Balkis was present. The doors that restrained the molten metal were opened, and torrents of liquid poured into the vast mould wherein the brazen sea was to assume its form. But the burning mass ran over the edges of the mould, and flowed like lava over the adjacent places. The terrified crowd fled from the advancing stream of fire. Hiram, calm, like a god, endeavoured to arrest its advance with ponderous columns of water, but without success. The water and the fire mixed, and the struggle was terrible; the water rose in dense steam and fell down in the shape of fiery rain, spreading terror and death. The dishonoured artificer needed the sympathy of a faithful heart; he sought Benoni, but in vain; the proud youth perished in endeavouring to prevent the horrible catastrophe when he found that Solomon had done nothing to hinder it.
  
  Hiram could not withdraw himself from the scene of his discomfiture. Oppressed with grief, he heeded not the danger, he remembered not that this ocean of fire might speedily engulph him; he thought of the Queen of Sheba, who came to admire and congratulate him on a great triumph, and who saw nothing but a terrible disaster. Suddenly he heard a strange voice coming from above, and crying, “Hiram, Hiram, Hiram!” He raised his eyes and beheld a gigantic human figure. The apparition continued: “Come, my son, be without fear, I have rendered thee incombustible; cast thyself into the flames.” Hiram threw himself into the furnace, and where others would have found death, he tasted ineffable delights; nor could he, drawn by an irresistible force, leave it, and asked him that drew him into the abyss: “Whither do you take me?” “Into the centre of the earth, into the soul of the world, into the kingdom of great Cain, where liberty reigns with him. There the tyrannous envy of Adonai ceases; there can we, despising his anger, taste the fruit of the tree of knowledge; there is the home of thy fathers.” “Who then am I, and who art thou?” “I am the father of thy fathers, I am the son of Lamech, I am Tubal-Cain.”
  
  Tubal-Cain introduced Hiram into the sanctuary of fire, where he expounded to him the weakness of Adonai and the base passions of that god, the enemy of his own creature whom he condemned to the inexorable law of death, to avenge the benefits the genii of fire had bestowed on him. Hiram was led into the presence of the author of his race, Cain. The angel of light that begat Cain was reflected in the beauty of this son of love, whose noble and generous mind roused the envy of Adonai. Cain related to Hiram his experiences, sufferings, and misfortunes, brought upon him by the implacable Adonai. Presently he heard the voice of him who was the offspring of Tubal-Cain and his sister Naamah: “A son shall be born unto thee whom thou shalt indeed not see, but whose numerous descendants shall perpetuate thy race, which, superior to that of Adam, shall acquire the empire of the world; for many centuries they shall consecrate their courage and genius to the service of the ever ungrateful race of Adam, but at last the best shall become the strongest, and restore on the earth the worship of fire. Thy sons, invincible in thy name, shall destroy the power of kings, the ministers of the Adonai's tyranny. Go, my son, the genii of fire are with thee!” Hiram was restored to the earth. Tubal-Cain before quitting him gave him the hammer with which he himself had wrought great things, and said to him: “Thanks to this hammer and the help of the genii of fire, thou shalt speedily accomplish the work left unfinished through man's stupidity and malignity.” Hiram did not hesitate to test the wonderful efficacy of the precious instrument, and the dawn saw the great mass of bronze cast. The artist felt the most lively joy, the queen exulted. The people came running up, astounded at this secret power which in one night had repaired everything.
  
  One day the queen, accompanied by her maids, went beyond Jerusalem, and there encountered Hiram, alone and thoughtful. The encounter was decisive, they mutually confessed their love. Had-Had, the bird who filled with the queen the office of messenger of the genii of fire, seeing Hiram in the air make the sign of the mystic T, flew around his head and settled on his wrist. At this Sarahil, the nurse of the queen, exclaimed: “The oracle is fulfilled. Had-Had recognises the husband which the genii of fire destined for Balkis, whose love alone she dare accept!” They hesitated no longer, but mutually pledged their vows, and deliberated how Balkis could retract the promise given to the king. Hiram was to be the first to quit Jerusalem; the queen, impatient to rejoin him in Arabia, was to elude the vigilance of the king, which she accomplished by withdrawing from his finger, while he was overcome with wine, the ring wherewith she had plighted her troth to him. Solomon hinted to the fellow-craftsmen that the removal of his rival, who refused to give them the master's word, would be acceptable unto himself; so when the architect came into the temple he was assailed and slain by them. Before his death, however, he had time to throw the golden triangle which he wore round his neck, and on which was engraven the master's word, into a deep well. They wrapped up his body, carried it to a solitary hill and buried it, planting over the grave a sprig of acacia.
  
  Hiram not having made his appearance for seven days, Solomon, against his inclination, but to satisfy the clamour of the people, was forced to have him searched for. The body was found by three masters, and they, suspecting that he had been slain by the three fellow-craftsmen for refusing them the master's word, determined nevertheless for greater security to change the word, and that the first word accidentally uttered on raising the body should thenceforth be the word. In the act of raising it, the skin came off the body, so that one of the masters exclaimed “Macbenach!” (the flesh is off the bones!) and this word became the sacred word of the master's degree. The three fellow-craftsmen were traced, but rather than fall into the hands of their pursuers, they committed suicide and their heads were brought to Solomon. The triangle not having been found on the body of Hiram it was sought for and at last discovered in the well into which the architect had cast it. The king caused it to be placed on a triangular altar erected in a secret vault, built under the most retired part of the temple. The triangle was further concealed by a cubical stone, on which had been inscribed the sacred law. The vault, the existence of which was only known to the twenty-seven elect, was then walled up.
• 4 . The historical basis for this lies in the work of the writer, Etienne-Leon, Baron de Lamothe-Langon, who published the Souvenirs sur Marie-Antoinette, Archiduchesse d’Autriche, Reine de France, et sur la cour de Versailles par Madame la Comtesse d’Adhemar, Dame du Palais, Paris, 1836. About fifty years later these memoirs were rescued from oblivion by H.P. Blavatsky and her friends. One of the very rare copies of these memoirs was to be found in the library of H.P. Blavatsky's aunt who lived in Odessa. Henry Steel Olcott, who founded the Theosophical Society with Blavatsky in 1875, wrote in his Old Diary Leaves—the true story of the Theosophical Society, 1895, Vol. 1, p. 24: ‘If Mme. de Fadeef—H.P.B.'s aunt could only be induced to translate and publish certain documents in her famous library, the world would have a nearer approach to a true history of the pre-revolutionary European mission of this Eastern Adept than has until now been available.’
  
  The English theosophist, Isabel Cooper-Oakley, published all the parts of the Souvenirs de Madame d’AdhemarThe Comte of Saint Germain—The Secret of Kings, Milan, 1912. (See also note II to lecture 9 of 16th December 1904).
• 5 . The spiritual identity of Christian Rosenkreutz and the Count of Saint Germain is a result of Rudolf Steiner's own investigations. See also the lecture of 27th September 1911, translated in the Anthroposophical Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 4, (winter, 1960).
• 6 . Quotation from Hosea 8, verse 7. See also note 7 to lecture 9 of 16th December 1904.
• 7 . See note 10 to lecture 12 of 22nd May 1905.
• 8 . The German rendering is: exists only in between [?] (dazwischen). The sense is somewhat obscure.

What we possess as the first fruit of Spiritual Science is in its most practical and noble sense able to lead us to feel that there is within the ordinary outer man an inner man, who to the ordinary idea is really a second man. In this respect all men in reality consist of two beings; one composed more of our physical body and etheric body and belonging to that which is the external world: external in the sense that this physical body and to some extent the etheric body too are forms and images—manifestations—of the divine Spiritual beings by which we are always surrounded. Our physical and etheric bodies are in their true essence—though not as we as men at first know them,—images, neither of ourselves, nor of our real being, but of the Gods whose whole life is spent in producing our physical and etheric bodies and bringing about their full development; just as we men bring about the actions and deeds we accomplish. The inner man is of such a nature that he is more closely related to the astral body and ego. To the universe the astral body and ego are younger than the physical body and etheric body. This we know, from what has been given out in the book Occult Science. The physical body and etheric body compose that which, as it were, reposes when we sleep and is made ready for us by the divine-spiritual beings that permeate the outer universe and make it manifest; and the ego and astral body, by the experiences, testings and shiftings which they undergo in the physical and etheric bodies, are to ascend gradually through the stages of development with which we have also become familiar.

Now, as I indicated in the last lecture, we are in connection with the universe, with the whole Cosmos; and this connection is such that—as I merely hinted in the last lecture—it can even be reckoned and expressed in numbers. This connection of ours with the universe can of course be expressed and shown in many other ways, but—I might say—to our great astonishment it can be expressed by the fact that the number of breaths a man draws in a day equals the number of years required for the Vernal Point to return to its original point of departure. These discoveries in the realm of numbers can, if we permeate them with feeling, fill us with awe, with a holy awe; if we reflect that we too belong to the divine Spiritual universe which is manifested in all external phenomena.

The fact that we are the Microcosm, the little world formed and manifested out of the Macrocosm, the great world, is felt as still more profound when we visualise such facts as will be brought before our minds today, and which I may enumerate as follows: the three meetings of the Human Soul with the Being of the Universe: and this is the subject I shall speak about today. We all know that as earth-men we bear within us the physical body and etheric body, the astral body and ego. Each of the two beings I have referred to bears within him what I might call two sub-beings. The more external man the physical and etheric body, the more inner man the ego and astral body. Now we know moreover that man is to undergo further development. The earth as such will some day come to an end. It will then evolve further, through a Jupiter, Venus, and a Vulcan planetary evolution. Man during this time will rise stage by stage; to his ego will, as we know, be added a higher being—the Spirit-Self which will manifest within him. This will reach full manifestation during the Jupiter evolution, which will follow that of our earth. The Life-Spirit will attain full manifestation in man during the Venus period; and the actual Spirit-Man during the Vulcan period. When, therefore, we look forward to the great cosmic future of man, to these three stages of evolution, we look forward to the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. But these three which in a sense await us in our future evolution are even now in a certain respect related to us, although they are as yet not in the least developed; for they are still enclosed in the bosom of the divine-Spiritual Beings whom we have learnt to know as the Higher Hierarchies. They will come forth to us from out the Higher Hierarchies; and we today are already in relation with these Higher Hierarchies, who will endow us with the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. So that today, instead of using the more complicated expression and saying: ‘We are in connection with the Hierarchy of the Angeloi’; we can simply say: ‘We are in connection with that which is to come to us in the future—our Spirit-Self.’ And instead of saying that we are in connection with the Archangels, we can say: ‘We are in connection with what is to come to us in the future, as our Life-Spirit,’ and so on.

Indeed we human beings are already in a certain respect, though at present only in rudiment—(and in the Spiritual world rudiments are something much higher than they are in the physical world)-more than merely four-principled beings consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. We already bear the germ of the Spirit-Self within us, as well as that of the Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man; they will evolve out of us in the future, though at present we only have them in germ within us. This is no mere abstract saying, it has quite a concrete significance, for we have meetings, real meetings with these higher principles of our being. These meetings take place in the following way. We, as human beings, would as time went on feel ourselves increasingly estranged from everything Spiritual—a state of things very difficult to endure—did we not from time to time encounter our Spirit-Self. Our ego must meet that higher Self,—the Spirit-Self which we have yet to develop, and which in a Spiritual respect is of like nature to the Hierarchy of Angels. So therefore we may say in simple language, and speaking in the Christian sense: we must from time to time meet with a being of the Hierarchy of the Angels, a being closely related to ourselves; and when it comes to us, it brings about in us a Spiritual change, which will enable us some day to take in a Spirit-Self. We must also meet with a being of the Hierarchy of the Archangels, for this being then so affects us that something is prepared which will some day lead to our developing the Life-Spirit.

Whether in the Christian sense we place this being in the Hierarchy of Angels, or whether we refer to it in the older sense understood by the ancients when they spoke of their genius as the guiding genius of man, makes no difference. We know that we are living at a time when but few people—though this will soon alter—few can gaze into the Spiritual World and perceive the things and the beings therein. The time has now gone by when the beings and even the various processes of evolution in the Spiritual-world could be perceived in a much wider and more comprehensive sense; for at the time when one spoke of the genius of a man, there was a direct, concrete perception of that being.

In a not very distant past this vision was still so strong that men were able to describe it quite concretely and objectively; describing it in terms now looked upon as poetic fancies, although they were not intended as such. Thus Plutarch describes the relation of man to his genius, as follows,—I should like to quote the passage literally. Plutarch, the Roman writer, says that besides the portion of the soul embedded in the earthly body, there is a purer part outside, soaring above man's head, in appearance like a star, and which is rightly called a man's daimon, who guides him, and whom the wise man willingly follows, In this concrete way does Plutarch describe what he does not wish to be taken as a poetic fancy, but as a concrete external reality. Indeed so concretely does he describe it that he expressly states: ‘The rest of the Spiritual part of man can to a certain extent be perceived at the same time as the physical body, inasmuch as it normally fills the same space; but the genius, the leading and guiding genius of man is something apart and can be seen outside the head of every man'. Paracelsus too, one of the last who, without special training, or without special gifts, was able to give forceful information about these things, said very much the same from his own knowledge of this phenomenon. Many others also said the same.

This genius is none other than the Spirit-Self in process of evolution, though borne by a being belonging to the Hierarchy of Angels. It is of great importance that one should enter somewhat deeply into these things; for when this genius becomes perceptible it has its own special conditions. This subject can be considered from another very different point of view, but we will now consider it from the following one.

Let us take the subject of the mutual intercourse between man and man, for we can learn much from that; it teaches us what is by no means without significance in the perception of the Spiritual principles of the human being.

If a man is only capable of observing the meeting of two persons with his physical, sense vision, he merely notices that they come together, greet one another, and so on. But when he becomes able to observe such an event Spiritually, he will find that each time two human beings meet a Spiritual process is established, which, among other things, is also expressed outwardly in the fact that the part of their etheric bodies which forms the head becomes the expression of every feeling of sympathy and antipathy which the two persons feel for each other; and this continues as long as they are together. Suppose two people were to meet who could not bear each other:—an extreme case, but there are such in life. Suppose two persons meet who dislike each other, and that this feeling of antipathy is mutual. It can then be seen that that part of the etheric body which forms the head projects beyond the head in both cases, and that both the etheric heads incline towards each other. A mutual antipathy between persons meeting is expressed as a continual bowing and inclining of the etheric head of each towards the other. When two persons come together who love each other, a similar process can be observed; but then the etheric head inclines back, it bends backwards.—Now whether the etheric head bends forward as though in greeting when antipathy is felt, or bends backward where love is felt, in both cases the physical head then becomes freer than it is wont to be. This is of course always relative; the etheric body does not entirely emerge but extends in length, so that a continuation can be observed. A more rarified etheric body then fills the physical body than is normally the case, and the result of this, by reason of the exceptional transparency of the etheric body, is that the astral body remaining inside the head becomes more clearly visible to clairvoyant vision. So that not only is there a movement of the etheric body but also an alteration in the astral light of the head. This then, my dear friends,—which is no poetic imagination but an actual fact—is the reason that in places where such things are understood, persons who are capable of selfless love are represented with an aura round their heads, which is known as a halo. When two people meet, with simply a strong tinge of egotism in their love, this phenomenon is not so apparent; but if a man comes in contact with humanity at certain times when he is not concerned with himself and his own personal relation to another, but is filled with a universal human love for all humanity, such phenomena appear. At such times the astral body in the vicinity of the head becomes clearly visible. If there are persons then present who are able to see this in a man clairvoyantly, they can see the halo and cannot do otherwise than paint or represent it as a reality. These things are absolutely in connection with the objective facts of the Spiritual world; but that which is thus objectively present, and which is a lasting reality in the evolution of humanity, is connected with something else.

Man must necessarily from time to time enter into inner communion with his Spirit-Self, with the Spirit-Self which is visible in the astral aura in rudimentary form as I have described; but it still has to be developed; it will be rayed down, as it were, from above, and stream in from the future. Man must from time to time be brought into touch with his Spirit-Self. When does this occur?

We now come to the first meeting of which we have to speak. When does it take place? It takes place quite simply in normal sleep, on almost every occasion, between sleeping and waking. With simple country people, who are nearer to the life of nature, and who go to bed with the setting sun and get up at sunrise, this meeting takes place in the middle of their sleeping time, which as a rule is the middle of the night. With people who have detached themselves from their connections with nature, this is not so much the case. But this depends on man's free will. A man of modern culture can regulate his life as he pleases, and though this fact is bound to affect his life, still he can regulate it as he likes, within certain limits. None the less he too can experience in the middle of a long sleep, what may be called an inner union with the Spirit-Self—that is, with the Spiritual qualities from which the Spirit-Self will be extracted; he can have a meeting with his genius. Thus this meeting with one's genius takes place every night, that is, during every period of sleep—though this must not be taken too literally. This meeting is important for man. For all the feelings that gladden the soul with respect to its connection with the Spiritual world proceed from this meeting with one's genius during sleep. The feeling, which we may have in our waking state, of our connection with the Spiritual world, is an after-effect of this meeting with our genius. That is the first meeting with the higher world; and it may be said that most people are at first unconscious of it, though they will become more and more conscious the more they realise its after-effects by refining their waking conscious life, through absorbing the ideas and conceptions of Spiritual Science, until their souls become refined enough to observe carefully these after-effects. It all depends on whether the soul is refined enough, sufficiently acquainted with its inner life, to be able to observe these. This meeting with the genius is brought to the consciousness of every man in some form or other; but the materialistic surroundings of the present day which fill the mind with ideas coming from the materialistic view of the world and especially the life of today, permeated as it is by materialistic opinions, prevent the soul from paying attention to what comes as the result of the meeting. As people gradually fill their minds with more Spiritual ideas than those set forth by materialism, the perception of the nightly meeting with the genius will become more and more self-evident to them.

The second meeting of which we now have to speak is higher. From the indications already given it may be gathered that the first meeting with the genius is in connection with the course of the day. If we had not, through modern civilisation, become free to adjust our lives according to our own convenience, this meeting would take place at the hour of midnight. A man would meet his genius every night at midnight. But on account of man's exercise of free will the time of this meeting has become movable; the hour when the ego meets the genius is now not fixed. The second meeting is however not so movable; for that which is more connected with the astral body and etheric body is not so apt to get out of its place in the cosmic order. That which is connected with the ego and the physical body is very greatly displaced in present-day man. The second meeting is already more in connection with the great macro-cosmic order. Even as the first meeting is connected with the course of the day, the second meeting is connected with the course of the year. I must here call attention to various things I have already indicated in this connection from another point of view. The life of man in its entirety does not run its course quite evenly through the year. When the sun develops its greatest heat, man is much more dependent upon his own physical life and the physical life around him than in the winter when, in a sense, he has to struggle with the external phenomena of the elements, and is more thrown back on himself; but then his Spiritual nature is more freed, and he is more in connection with the Spiritual world—both his own and that of the earth—with the whole Spiritual environment. Thus the peculiar sentiment we connect with the Mystery of Christmas and with its Festival is by no means arbitrary, but hangs together with the fixing of the Festival of Christmas. At that time in winter which is appointed for the Festival, man, as does indeed the whole earth, gives himself up to the Spirit. He then passes, as it were, through a realm in which the Spirit is near him. The consequence is that at about Christmas-time and on to our present New Year, man goes through a meeting of his astral body with the Life-Spirit, in the same way as he goes through the first meeting, that of his ego with the Spirit-Self. Upon this meeting with the Life-Spirit depends the nearness of Christ Jesus. For Christ Jesus reveals Himself through the Life-Spirit. He reveals Himself through a being of the Realm of the Archangels. He is, of course, an immeasurably higher Being than they, but that is not the point with which we are concerned at the moment; what we have to consider is that He reveals Himself through a Being of the order of the Archangeloi. Thus through this meeting we draw specially near to Christ Jesus at the present stage of development—which has existed since the Mystery of Golgotha—and in a certain respect we may call the meeting with the Life-Spirit: the meeting with Christ Jesus in the very depths of our soul. Now when a man either through developing Spiritual consciousness in the domain of religious meditation or exercises, or, to supplement these, has accepted the concepts and ideas of Spiritual Science, when he has thus deepened and spiritualised his life of impression and feeling, then, just as he can experience in his waking life the after-effects of the meeting with his Spirit-Self, so he will also experience the after-effects of the meeting with the Life-Spirit, or Christ. It is actually a fact, my dear friends, that in the time following immediately on Christmas and up to Easter the conditions are particularly favourable for bringing to a man's consciousness this meeting with Christ Jesus. In a profound sense and this should not be blotted out by the abstract materialistic culture of today—the season of Christmas is connected with processes taking place in the earth; for man, together with the earth, takes part in the Christmas changes in the earth. The season of Easter is determined by processes in the heavens. Easter Sunday is fixed for the first Sunday after the first full-moon after the Vernal Equinox. Thus, whereas Christmas is fixed by the conditions of the earth, Easter is determined from above. Just as we, through all that has just been described, are connected with the conditions of the earth, so are we connected, through what I shall now describe, with the conditions of the heavens—with the great Cosmic conditions. For Easter is that season in the concrete course of the year, in which all that is aroused in us by the meeting with Christ at Christmas, really unites itself with our physical earth manhood. The great Mystery that now brings home to man the Mystery of Golgotha at the Easter Season—the Good Friday Mystery—signifies among other things, that the Christ, who, as it were, has been moving beside us, at this season comes still closer to us. Indeed, roughly speaking, in a sense He disappears into us and permeates us, so that He can remain with us during the season that follows the Mystery of Golgotha—the season of summer—during which, in the ancient Mysteries, men tried to unite themselves to John in a way not possible after the Mystery Of Golgotha.

In that respect we are, as we see, the Microcosm, and we are attached to the Macrocosm in a profoundly significant way. There is a continual union with the Macrocosm in the seasons of the year, and this union, being a more inner process in man, is connected with the year's course. Thus does Spiritual Science endeavour gradually to reveal the ideas, the spiritually scientific conceptions, that man may acquire as to the way in which Christ is now able to penetrate and permeate our earth-life, since the Mystery of Golgotha.

At this point I feel obliged to make an interpolation which is of importance and which ought to be thoroughly understood, particularly by the friends of Spiritual Science. It ought never to be represented that our attempts at Spiritual Science are a substitute for the life and exercise of religion. Spiritual Science may in the highest sense, and particularly as regards the Mystery of Christ, be taken as a support, as a foundation for the life and exercise of religion; but it should not be made a religion, for we ought to be clear that religion in its living form and living practice enkindles the Spiritual consciousness of the human community. If this Spiritual consciousness is to become a living thing in man, he cannot possibly remain at a standstill, stopping at the merely abstract ideas of God or Christ, but must stand renewed amidst the religious practices and activities (which in different people may take various forms) as something which provides him with a religious centre and appeals to him as such. If this religious sentiment is only deep enough, and finds means of stimulating the soul, it will soon feel a longing—a real longing—for the very ideas that can be developed in Spiritual Science. If Spiritual Science may be said to be a support for a religious life, as, objectively speaking, it certainly is—subjectively the time has come today when we may say that a man with true religious feelings is driven by these feelings to seek knowledge. For Spiritual consciousness is acquired through religious feeling and Spiritual knowledge by Spiritual Science, just as knowledge of nature is acquired by Natural Science. Spiritual consciousness leads to the impulse to acquire Spiritual knowledge. It may be said that an inner religious life may today subjectively drive a man to Spiritual Science.

A third meeting is that in which a man approaches the Spirit-Man, which will only be developed in the far future and which is brought near to him by a being belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archai. We may say that the ancients were sensitive to this, as are even the people of the present day, although the latter, in speaking of such things, no longer have a consciousness of the deeper truth of the subject. The ancients felt this meeting as a meeting with that which permeates the world, and which we can now hardly distinguish in ourselves or in the world, but in which we merge in the world as in an unity. Just as we can speak of the second as a meeting with Christ Jesus, so can we speak of the third as a meeting with the Father-Principle, with the Father, with that which lies at the foundation of the world, and which we experience when we have the right feeling for what the various religions mean by ‘the Father.’ This meeting is of such a nature that it reveals our intimate connection with the Macrocosm, with the Divine-Spiritual Universe. The daily course of universal processes, of world processes, includes our meeting with our genius: the yearly course includes our meeting with Christ Jesus: and the course of a whole human life, of this human life of ours, my dear friends—which can normally be described as the patriarchal life of seventy years—includes the meeting with the Father-Principle. For a certain time, our physical earth-life is prepared—and rightly so—by education—at the present day to a great extent unconsciously, yet it is prepared; and most people experience unconsciously, between the ages of twenty-eight and forty-two—and though unconsciously, yet fully appreciated in the intimate depths of the soul—the meeting with the Father-Principle. The after-effects of this may extend into later life, if we develop sufficiently fine perceptions to note that which thus comes into our life from within ourselves, as the after-effects of our meeting with the Father-Principle.

During a certain period of our life—the period of preparation—education ought, in the many different ways this can be done, to make the meeting with the Father-Principle as profound an experience as possible. One way is to arouse in a man, during his years of education, a strong feeling of the glory of the world, of its greatness, and of the sublimity of the world-processes. We are withholding a great deal from the growing boy and girl if we fail to draw their attention to all the revelations of beauty and greatness in the world, for then, instead of having a devoted reverence and respect for these, they may pass them by unobserved. If we fill the minds of the young with thoughts connecting the feelings of their hearts with the beauty and greatness of the world, we are then preparing them for the right meeting with the Father-Principle. For this meeting is of great significance for the life spent between death and a new birth. This meeting with the Father Principle, which normally occurs between the above-mentioned ages, can be a strong force and support to a man, when he has, as we know, to recapitulate his life on earth retrospectively after having passed through the portals of death, and while he passes through the soul-world. This retrospective journey, which as we know, lasts one-third as long as the time spent between birth and death, can be made strong and forceful; as indeed it ought to be, if a man can see himself at a certain point and place meeting with that Being, whom he can only dimly guess at and express in stammering words, when he speaks of the Father of the Cosmic Order. This is an important Picture, which after a man has passed through the gates of death, should always be present with him, together with the picture of death itself.

Now it is natural that a certain question should arise in connection with this. There are people who die before they reach the middle of life, when they would normally have the meeting with the Father-Principle. We must consider the case of those whose death is brought about by some outer cause, such as illness (which is an outer cause) or weakness of some kind. If then, through this early death, the meeting with the Father-Principle has not yet taken place in the subconscious depths of the soul—it will take place at the hour of death. At the moment of death this meeting occurs. Here we may express, somewhat differently, what has indeed already been expressed in another form in a like connection, in the book Theosophy in reference to the always deplorable phenomenon of a man bringing his life to an end by his own will. No man would do this if he could see the significance of his deed; and when once Spiritual Science has really been taken into people's feelings and thoughts, there will be no more suicides. For the meeting with the Father-Principle at the hour of death, when death occurs before middle-life, depends upon that death approaching a man from outside, not being brought about by himself. The difficulty then encountered by the soul and which is described from another standpoint in the book Theosophy might be described from that from which we are speaking today, and we might say: Through his self-chosen death a man may eventually deprive himself of the meeting with the Father-Principle in this incarnation.

Thus, my dear friends, since the truths which Spiritual Science has to tell us concerning human life as a whole, affect our life so deeply, they are indeed serious in cases of special importance. These truths can provide serious explanations of life, which man needs in an age when he must find his way out of the materialism which rules the present world ordering and the current point of view, in so far as these depend on man himself. Stronger forces will be required to overcome the strong connection with the purely material powers which rule over man today, and to give him once again the possibility of recognising his connection with the Spiritual world from the immediate experiences of life.

If we speak in a more abstract way of the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies we can speak in a more concrete way of the fact that man himself—in the experiences at first passed through unconsciously, but which even during his life between birth and death may be brought to his consciousness—may ascend in three stages: through the meeting with his genius, through the meeting with Christ Jesus, and through the meeting with the Father.

Of course a great deal depends on our gaining as many concepts as possible which force themselves into our feelings, concepts that so refine our inner soul-life that we do not carelessly and inattentively pass things by, which in reality, if we are but attentive, play a part in our lives. In this respect education will have a very great deal to do in the near future. I should just like to bring forward one such concept. Just think how infinitely life would be deepened, if to the general knowledge concerning karma such details could be added, as the fact that when a man's life comes to an end in early youth the meeting with the Father-Principle occurs at the hour of death. This shows that the particular karma of this man made an early death necessary, so that an abnormal meeting with the Father-Principle should take place. For what actually occurs in such a case? The man is destroyed from without; his physical being is undermined from without. In illness, too, this is really the case. For the scene of action of the meeting with the Father-Principle is really here in the physical earth-world. When it happens that this external physical earth-world has destroyed a man, the meeting with the Father-Principle can be seen at that very place, and of course it is always to be seen again in the retrospect. This however makes it possible for a man throughout the whole of his life after death to hold firmly, the thought of the place on earth where, descending from heavenly heights, the Father-Principle came to the meeting which then took place. The recollection of this makes him want to be as active as he possibly can to work down into the physical earth-world from the Spiritual world. Now if we consider our present time from this standpoint and try to arouse the same feeling of solemnity as we have just tried to do with respect to the meeting with the Father-Principle, trying not merely to look upon the numerous premature deaths now occurring in the light of feeling or abstract conception, we shall be driven to admit that these were predestined in preparation for the coming need for a great activity to be directed from the Spiritual world to the physical earth-world. This is another aspect of what I have often said with reference to the tragic events of the last few years: that those who today pass so early through the portals of death will become special helpers in the future development of humanity, which will indeed require strong forces to disentangle itself from materialism. But all this must be brought to men's consciousness; it must not take place unconsciously. Therefore it is necessary that even now, souls here on the earth should make themselves receptive—I have already mentioned this—otherwise the forces developed in the Spiritual world may go in other directions. In order that these forces, these predestined forces, may become fruitful to the earth, it is necessary that there should be souls on the earth permeated with the knowledge of the Spiritual world. And there must be more and more of such souls on the earth. Let us therefore try to make fruitful the content of Spiritual Science, which must once be given out in words. By the help of the language (I mentioned this in the last lecture but one) the language we learn through Spiritual Science—let us try to re-animate the old conceptions which are, not without purpose, interwoven in our present life. Let us try to quicken anew what we have heard from Plutarch: that man, even as mere physical man, is permeated by the Spiritual man, and that in a peculiar but normal way a man has a higher Spiritual principle outside his head which represents his genius and which, if he be wise, he obeys. Let us try, as I have said, to take the feelings acquired by Spiritual Science to our assistance—so that the phenomena of life may not pass us by unnoticed.

In conclusion, we will today take one feeling, one conception, which may be of great help to our souls. Unfortunately many people in our modern materialistic age find it very difficult to feel what I might call the holiness of sleep. (The materialistic life is being somewhat softened by this period of trial, and not only ought it to remain softened thereby—which can hardly be hoped if materialism remains at its present strength—but it ought even to be enormously and increasingly softened.) It is indeed a curious phenomenon of man's intelligence today that he is entirely devoid of respect for the holiness of sleep. We need only consider how many people who spend the evening hours in purely materialistic ways, go to sleep without developing the realisation—which indeed can never become a living thing in a materialistic mind—that sleep unites us with the Spiritual world, that sleep sends us across into the Spiritual world. (These things are not mentioned by way of blame, nor intended to drive people to asceticism: we must live with the world, but we must at the same time have our eyes open, for only thus can we wrench our bodily nature away from the lower and lift it higher.) People should at least become gradually able to develop a feeling which can be expressed somewhat as follows: ‘I am going to sleep; until I wake, my soul will be in the Spiritual world. There it will meet with the guiding-power of my earth-life, who lives in the Spiritual world, and who soars round and surrounds my head. My soul will have the meeting with my genius. The wings of my genius will come in contact with my soul.’

Yes, my dear friends, as regards the overcoming of the materialistic life, a great deal, a very great deal, depends on whether one can create a strong feeling of what this means, when one thinks over one's relation to sleep. The materialistic life can only be overcome by stimulating intimate feelings such as these, which are themselves in correspondence with the Spiritual world. Only when we intensify such feelings and make them active, will the life of sleep become so intense, that the contact with the Spiritual world will on the other hand be gradually able to strengthen our waking life too. We shall then have around us not merely the sense-world, but also the Spiritual world, which is the true, the truly real world. For this world that we generally call the real one, is, as I expounded in the last open lecture, nothing but a reflection, an image of the actual real one. The real world is the world of spirit. The small community which is today devoted to Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, will better be able to grasp the earnest signs of the times and undergo the severe trials of the times, if besides all the other trials to which man is subject today, it learns to consider this time as a time of trial, of testing and probation, whether we are able with sufficient strength of soul and warmth of heart to unite our whole being with the Spiritual Science which we must take in through our reason and our intellect.

In these words, I wished once more to emphasise what I have often said here before: that Spiritual Science will only find its right place in the hearts of men, when it is not merely theory and knowledge, but when—symbolically speaking—it constantly permeates and penetrates the soul; just as our physical blood, our heart's blood, constantly permeates and gives life to our bodily nature.

What we possess as the first fruit of Spiritual Science is in its most practical and noble sense able to lead us to feel that there is within the ordinary outer man an inner man, who to the ordinary idea is really a second man. In this respect all men in reality consist of two beings; one composed more of our physical body and etheric body and belonging to that which is the external world: external in the sense that this physical body and to some extent the etheric body too are forms and images—manifestations—of the divine Spiritual beings by which we are always surrounded. Our physical and etheric bodies are I in their true essence—though not as we as men at first know them,—images, neither of ourselves, nor of our real being, but of the Gods whose whole life is spent in producing our physical and etheric bodies and bringing about their full development; just as we men bring about the actions and deeds we accomplish. The inner man is of such a nature that he is more closely related to the astral body and ego. To the universe the astral body and ego are younger than the physical body and etheric body. This we know, from what has been given out in the book Occult Science. The physical body and etheric body compose that which, as it were, reposes when we sleep and is made ready for us by the divine-spiritual beings that permeate the outer universe and make it manifest; and the ego and astral body, by the experiences, testings and shiftings which they undergo in the physical and etheric bodies, are to ascend gradually through the stages of development with which we have also become familiar.

Now, as I indicated in the last lecture, we are in connection with the universe, with the whole Cosmos; and this connection is such that—as I merely hinted in the last lecture—it can even be reckoned and expressed in numbers. This connection of ours with the universe can of course be expressed and shown in many other ways, but—I might say—to our great astonishment it can be expressed by the fact that the number of breaths a man draws in a day equals the number of years required for the Vernal Point to return to its original point of departure. These discoveries in the realm of numbers can, if we permeate them with feeling, fill us with awe, with a holy awe; if we reflect that we too belong to the divine Spiritual universe which is manifested in all external phenomena.

The fact that we are the Microcosm, the little world formed and manifested out of the Macrocosm, the great world, is felt as still more profound when we visualise such facts as will be brought before our minds today, and which I may enumerate as follows: the three meetings of the Human Soul with the Being of the Universe: and this is the subject I shall speak about today. We all know that as earth-men we bear within us the physical body and etheric body, the astral body and ego. Each of the two beings I have referred to bears within him what I might call two sub-beings. The more external man the physical and etheric body, the more inner man the ego and astral body. Now we know moreover that man is to undergo further development. The earth as such will some day come to an end. It will then evolve further, through a Jupiter, Venus, and a Vulcan planetary evolution. Man during this time will rise stage by stage; to his ego will, as we know, be added a higher being—the Spirit-Self which will manifest within him. This will reach full manifestation during the Jupiter evolution, which will follow that of our earth. The Life-Spirit will attain full manifestation in man during the Venus period; and the actual Spirit-Man during the Vulcan period. When, therefore, we look forward to the great cosmic future of man, to these three stages of evolution, we look forward to the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. But these three which in a sense await us in our future evolution are even now in a certain respect related to us, although they are as yet not in the least developed; for they are still enclosed in the bosom of the divine-Spiritual Beings whom we have learnt to know as the Higher Hierarchies. They will come forth to us from out of the Higher Hierarchies; and we today are already in relation with these Higher Hierarchies, who will endow us with the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. So that today, instead of using the more complicated expression and saying: ‘We are in connection with the Hierarchy of the Angeloi’; we can simply say: ‘We are in connection with that which is to come to us in the future—our Spirit-Self.’ And instead of saying that we are in connection with the Archangels, we can say: ‘We are in connection with what is to come to us in the future, as our Life-Spirit,’ and so on.

Indeed we human beings are already in a certain respect, though at present only in rudiment—(and in the Spiritual world rudiments are something much higher than they are in the physical world)-more than merely four-principled beings consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. We already bear the germ of the Spirit-Self within us, as well as that of the Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man; they will evolve out of us in the future, though at present we only have them in germ within us. This is no mere abstract saying, it has quite a concrete significance, for we have meetings, real meetings with these higher principles of our being. These meetings take place in the following way. We, as human beings, would as time went on feel ourselves increasingly estranged from everything Spiritual—a state of things very difficult to endure—did we not from time to time encounter our Spirit-Self. Our ego must meet that higher Self,—the Spirit-Self which we have yet to develop, and which in a Spiritual respect is of like nature to the Hierarchy of Angels. So therefore we may say in simple language, and speaking in the Christian sense: we must from time to time meet with a being of the Hierarchy of the Angels, a being closely related to ourselves; and when it comes to us, it brings about in us a Spiritual change, which will enable us some day to take in a Spirit-Self. We must also meet with a being of the Hierarchy of the Archangels, for this being then so affects us that something is prepared which will some day lead to our developing the Life-Spirit.

Whether in the Christian sense we place this being in the Hierarchy of Angels, or whether we refer to it in the older sense understood by the ancients when they spoke of their genius as the guiding genius of man, makes no difference. We know that we are living at a time when but few people—though this will soon alter—few can gaze into the Spiritual World and perceive the things and the beings therein. The time has now gone by when the beings and even the various processes of evolution in the Spiritual-world could be perceived in a much wider and more comprehensive sense; for at the time when one spoke of the genius of a man, there was a direct, concrete perception of that being.

In a not very distant past this vision was still so strong that men were able to describe it quite concretely and objectively; describing it in terms now looked upon as poetic fancies, although they were not intended as such. Thus Plutarch describes the relation of man to his genius, as follows,—I should like to quote the passage literally. Plutarch, the Roman writer, says that besides the portion of the soul embedded in the earthly body, there is a purer part outside, soaring above man's head, in appearance like a star, and which is rightly called a man's daimon, who guides him, and whom the wise man willingly follows, In this concrete way does Plutarch describe what he does not wish to be taken as a poetic fancy, but as a concrete external reality. Indeed so concretely does he describe it that he expressly states: ‘The rest of the Spiritual part of man can to a certain extent be perceived at the same time as the physical body, inasmuch as it normally fills the same space; but the genius, the leading and guiding genius of man is something apart and can be seen outside the head of every man'. Paracelsus too, one of the last who, without special training, or without special gifts, was able to give forceful information about these things, said very much the same from his own knowledge of this phenomenon. Many others also said the same.

This genius is none other than the Spirit-Self in process of evolution, though borne by a being belonging to the Hierarchy of Angels. It is of great importance that one should enter somewhat deeply into these things; for when this genius becomes perceptible it has its own special conditions. This subject can be considered from another very different point of view, but we will now consider it from the following one.

Let us take the subject of the mutual intercourse between man and man, for we can learn much from that; it teaches us what is by no means without significance in the perception of the Spiritual principles of the human being.

If a man is only capable of observing the meeting of two persons with his physical, sense vision, he merely notices that they come together, greet one another, and so on. But when he becomes able to observe such an event Spiritually, he will find that each time two human beings meet a Spiritual process is established, which, among other things, is also expressed outwardly in the fact that the part of their etheric bodies which forms the head becomes the expression of every feeling of sympathy and antipathy which the two persons feel for each other; and this continues as long as they are together. Suppose two people were to meet who could not bear each other:—an extreme case, but there are such in life. Suppose two persons meet who dislike each other, and that this feeling of antipathy is mutual. It can then be seen that that part of the etheric body which forms the head projects beyond the head in both cases, and that both the etheric heads incline towards each other. A mutual antipathy between persons meeting is expressed as a continual bowing and inclining of the etheric head of each towards the other. When two persons come together who love each other, a similar process can be observed; but then the etheric head inclines back, it bends backwards. -Now whether the etheric head bends forward as though in greeting when antipathy is felt, or bends backward where love is felt, in both cases the physical head then becomes freer than it is wont to be. This is of course always relative; the etheric body does not entirely emerge but extends in length, so that a continuation can be observed. A more rarified etheric body then fills the physical body than is normally the case, and the result of this, by reason of the exceptional transparency of the etheric body, is that the astral body remaining inside the head becomes more clearly visible to clairvoyant vision. So that not only is there a movement of the etheric body but also an alteration in the astral light of the head. This then, my dear friends,—which is no poetic imagination but an actual fact—is the reason that in places where such things are understood, persons who are capable of selfless love are represented with an aura round their heads, which is known as a halo. When two people meet, with simply a strong tinge of egotism in their love, this phenomenon is not so apparent; but if a man comes in contact with humanity at certain times when he is not concerned with himself and his own personal relation to another, but is filled with a universal human love for all humanity, such phenomena appear. At such times the astral body in the vicinity of the head becomes clearly visible. If there are persons then present who are able to see this in a man clairvoyantly, they can see the halo and cannot do otherwise than paint or represent it as a reality. These things are absolutely in connection with the objective facts of the Spiritual world; but that which is thus objectively present, and which is a lasting reality in the evolution of humanity, is connected with something else.

Man must necessarily from time to time enter into inner communion with his Spirit-Self, with the Spirit-Self which is visible in the astral aura in rudimentary form as I have described; but it still has to be developed; it will be rayed down, as it were, from above, and stream in from the future. Man must from time to time be brought into touch with his Spirit-Self. When does this occur?

We now come to the first meeting of which we have to speak. When does it take place? It takes place quite simply in normal sleep, on almost every occasion, between sleeping and waking. With simple country people, who are nearer to the life of nature, and who go to bed with the setting sun and get up at sunrise, this meeting takes place in the middle of their sleeping time, which as a rule is the middle of the night. With people who have detached themselves from their connections with nature, this is not so much the case. But this depends on man's free will. A man of modern culture can regulate his life as he pleases, and though this fact is bound to affect his life, still he can regulate it as he likes, within certain limits. None the less he too can experience in the middle of a long sleep, what may be called an inner union with the Spirit-Self—that is, with the Spiritual qualities from which the Spirit-Self will be extracted; he can have a meeting with his genius. Thus this meeting with one's genius takes place every night, that is, during every period of sleep—though this must not be taken too literally. This meeting is important for man. For all the feelings that gladden the soul with respect to its connection with the Spiritual world proceed from this meeting with one's genius during sleep. The feeling, which we may have in our waking state, of our connection with the Spiritual world, is an after-effect of this meeting with our genius. That is the first meeting with the higher world; and it may be said that most people are at first unconscious of it, though they will become more and more conscious the more they realise its after-effects by refining their waking conscious life, through absorbing the ideas and conceptions of Spiritual Science, until their souls become refined enough to observe carefully these after-effects. It all depends on whether the soul is refined enough, sufficiently acquainted with its inner life, to be able to observe these. This meeting with the genius is brought to the consciousness of every man in some form or other; but the materialistic surroundings of the present day which fill the mind with ideas coming from the materialistic view of the world and especially the life of today, permeated as it is by materialistic opinions, prevent the soul from paying attention to what comes as the result of the meeting. As people gradually fill their minds with more Spiritual ideas than those set forth by materialism, the perception of the nightly meeting with the genius will become more and more self-evident to them.

The second meeting of which we now have to speak is higher. From the indications already given it may be gathered that the first meeting with the genius is in connection with the course of the day. If we had not, through modern civilisation, become free to adjust our lives according to our own convenience, this meeting would take place at the hour of midnight. A man would meet his genius every night at midnight. But on account of man's exercise of free will the time of this meeting has become movable; the hour when the ego meets the genius is now not fixed. The second meeting is however not so movable; for that which is more connected with the astral body and etheric body is not so apt to get out of its place in the cosmic order. That which is connected with the ego and the physical body is very greatly displaced in present-day man. The second meeting is already more in connection with the great macro-cosmic order. Even as the first meeting is connected with the course of the day, the second meeting is connected with the course of the year. I must here call attention to various things I have already indicated in this connection from another point of view. The life of man in its entirety does not run its course quite evenly through the year. When the sun develops its greatest heat, man is much more dependent upon his own physical life and the physical life around him than in the winter when, in a sense, he has to struggle with the external phenomena of the elements, and is more thrown back on himself; but then his Spiritual nature is more freed, and he is more in connection with the Spiritual world—both his own and that of the earth—with the whole Spiritual environment. Thus the peculiar sentiment we connect with the Mystery of Christmas and with its Festival is by no means arbitrary, but hangs together with the fixing of the Festival of Christmas. At that time in winter which is appointed for the Festival, man, as does indeed the whole earth, gives himself up to the Spirit. He then passes, as it were, through a realm in which the Spirit is near him. The consequence is that at about Christmas-time and on to our present New Year, man goes through a meeting of his astral body with the Life-Spirit, in the same way as he goes through the first meeting, that of his ego with the Spirit-Self. Upon this meeting with the Life-Spirit depends the nearness of Christ Jesus. For Christ Jesus reveals Himself through the Life-Spirit. He reveals Himself through a being of the Realm of the Archangels. He is, of course, an immeasurably higher Being than they, but that is not the point with which we are concerned at the moment; what we have to consider is that He reveals Himself through a Being of the order of the Archangeloi. Thus through this meeting we draw specially near to Christ Jesus at the present stage of development—which has existed since the Mystery of Golgotha—and in a certain respect we may call the meeting with the Life-Spirit: the meeting with Christ Jesus in the very depths of our soul. Now when a man either through developing Spiritual consciousness in the domain of religious meditation or exercises, or, to supplement these, has accepted the concepts and ideas of Spiritual Science, when he has thus deepened and spiritualised his life of impression and feeling, then, just as he can experience in his waking life the after-effects of the meeting with his Spirit-Self, so he will also experience the after-effects of the meeting with the Life-Spirit, or Christ. It is actually a fact, my dear friends, that in the time following immediately on Christmas and up to Easter the conditions are particularly favourable for bringing to a man's consciousness this meeting with Christ Jesus. In a profound sense and this should not be blotted out by the abstract materialistic culture of today—the season of Christmas is connected with processes taking place in the earth; for man, together with the earth, takes part in the Christmas changes in the earth. The season of Easter is determined by processes in the heavens. Easter Sunday is fixed for the first Sunday after the first full-moon after the Vernal Equinox. Thus, whereas Christmas is fixed by the conditions of the earth, Easter is determined from above. Just as we, through all that has just been described, are connected with the conditions of the earth, so are we connected, through what I shall now describe, with the conditions of the heavens—with the great Cosmic conditions. For Easter is that season in the concrete course of the year, in which all that is aroused in us by the meeting with Christ at Christmas, really unites itself with our physical earth manhood. The great Mystery that now brings home to man the Mystery of Golgotha at the Easter Season—the Good Friday Mystery—signifies among other things, that the Christ, who, as it were, has been moving beside us, at this season comes still closer to us. Indeed, roughly speaking, in a sense He disappears into us and permeates us, so that He can remain with us during the season that follows the Mystery of Golgotha—the season of summer—during which, in the ancient Mysteries, men tried to unite themselves to John in a way not possible after the Mystery Of Golgotha.

In that respect we are, as we see, the Microcosm, and we are attached to the Macrocosm in a profoundly significant way. There is a continual union with the Macrocosm in the seasons of the year, and this union, being a more inner process in man, is connected with the year's course. Thus does Spiritual Science endeavour gradually to reveal the ideas, the spiritually scientific conceptions, that man may acquire as to the way in which Christ is now able to penetrate and permeate our earth-life, since the Mystery of Golgotha.

At this point I feel obliged to make an interpolation which is of importance and which ought to be thoroughly understood, particularly by the friends of Spiritual Science. It ought never to be represented that our attempts at Spiritual Science are a substitute for the life and exercise of religion. Spiritual Science may in the highest sense, and particularly as regards the Mystery of Christ, be taken as a support, as a foundation for the life and exercise of religion; but it should not be made a religion, for we ought to be clear that religion in its living form and living practice enkindles the Spiritual consciousness of the human community. If this Spiritual consciousness is to become a living thing in man, he cannot possibly remain at a standstill, stopping at the merely abstract ideas of God or Christ, but must stand renewed amidst the religious practices and activities (which in different people may take various forms) as something which provides him with a religious centre and appeals to him as such. If this religious sentiment is only deep enough, and finds means of stimulating the soul, it will soon feel a longing—a real longing—for the very ideas that can be developed in Spiritual Science. If Spiritual Science may be said to be a support for a religious life, as, objectively speaking, it certainly is—subjectively the time has come today when we may say that a man with true religious feelings is driven by these feelings to seek knowledge. For Spiritual consciousness is acquired through religious feeling and Spiritual knowledge by Spiritual Science, just as knowledge of nature is acquired by Natural Science. Spiritual consciousness leads to the impulse to acquire Spiritual knowledge. It may be said that an inner religious life may today subjectively drive a man to Spiritual Science.

A third meeting is that in which a man approaches the Spirit-Man, which will only be developed in the far future and which is brought near to him by a being belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archai. We may say that the ancients were sensitive to this, as are even the people of the present day, although the latter, in speaking of such things, no longer have a consciousness of the deeper truth of the subject. The ancients felt this meeting as a meeting with that which permeates the world, and which we can now hardly distinguish in ourselves or in the world, but in which we merge in the world as in an unity. Just as we can speak of the second as a meeting with Christ Jesus, so can we speak of the third as a meeting with the Father-Principle, with the Father, with that which lies at the foundation of the world, and which we experience when we have the right feeling for what the various religions mean by ‘the Father.’ This meeting is of such a nature that it reveals our intimate connection with the Macrocosm, with the Divine-Spiritual Universe. The daily course of universal processes, of world processes, includes our meeting with our genius: the yearly course includes our meeting with Christ Jesus: and the course of a whole human life, of this human life of ours, my dear friends—which can normally be described as the patriarchal life of seventy years—includes the meeting with the Father-Principle. For a certain time, our physical earth-life is prepared—and rightly so—by education—at the present day to a great extent unconsciously, yet it is prepared; and most people experience unconsciously, between the ages of twenty-eight and forty-two—and though unconsciously, yet fully appreciated in the intimate depths of the soul—the meeting with the Father-Principle. The after-effects of this may extend into later life, if we develop sufficiently fine perceptions to note that which thus comes into our life from within ourselves, as the after-effects of our meeting with the Father-Principle.

During a certain period of our life—the period of preparation—education ought, in the many different ways this can be done, to make the meeting with the Father-Principle as profound an experience as possible. One way is to arouse in a man, during his years of education, a strong feeling of the glory of the world, of its greatness, and of the sublimity of the world-processes. We are withholding a great deal from the growing boy and girl if we fail to draw their attention to all the revelations of beauty and greatness in the world, for then, instead of having a devoted reverence and respect for these, they may pass them by unobserved. If we fill the minds of the young with thoughts connecting the feelings of their hearts with the beauty and greatness of the world, we are then preparing them for the right meeting with the Father-Principle. For this meeting is of great significance for the life spent between death and a new birth. This meeting with the Father Principle, which normally occurs between the above-mentioned ages, can be a strong force and support to a man, when he has, as we know, to recapitulate his life on earth retrospectively after having passed through the portals of death, and while he passes through the soul-world. This retrospective journey, which as we know, lasts one-third as long as the time spent between birth and death, can be made strong and forceful; as indeed it ought to be, if a man can see himself at a certain point and place meeting with that Being, whom he can only dimly guess at and express in stammering words, when he speaks of the Father of the Cosmic Order. This is an important Picture, which after a man has passed through the gates of death, should always be present with him, together with the picture of death itself.

Now it is natural that a certain question should arise in connection with this. There are people who die before they reach the middle of life, when they would normally have the meeting with the Father-Principle. We must consider the case of those whose death is brought about by some outer cause, such as illness (which is an outer cause) or weakness of some kind. If then, through this early death, the meeting with the Father-Principle has not yet taken place in the subconscious depths of the soul—it will take place at the hour of death. At the moment of death this meeting occurs. Here we may express, somewhat differently, what has indeed already been expressed in another form in a like connection, in the book Theosophy in reference to the always deplorable phenomenon of a man bringing his life to an end by his own will. No man would do this if he could see the significance of his deed; and when once Spiritual Science has really been taken into people's feelings and thoughts, there will be no more suicides. For the meeting with the Father-Principle at the hour of death, when death occurs before middle-life, depends upon that death approaching a man from outside, not being brought about by himself. The difficulty then encountered by the soul and which is described from another standpoint in the book Theosophy, might be described from that from which we are speaking today, and we might say: Through his self -chosen death a man may eventually deprive himself of the meeting with the Father-Principle in this incarnation.

Thus, my dear friends, since the truths which Spiritual Science has to tell us concerning human life as a whole, affect our life so deeply, they are indeed serious in cases of special importance. These truths can provide serious explanations of life, which man needs in an age when he must find his way out of the materialism which rules the present world ordering and the current point of view, in so far as these depend on man himself. Stronger forces will be required to overcome the strong connection with the purely material powers which rule over man today, and to give him once again the possibility of recognising his connection with the Spiritual world from the immediate experiences of life.

If we speak in a more abstract way of the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies we can speak in a more concrete way of the fact that man himself—in the experiences at first passed through unconsciously, but which even during his life between birth and death may be brought to his consciousness—may ascend in three stages: through the meeting with his genius, through the meeting with Christ Jesus, and through the meeting with the Father.

Of course a great deal depends on our gaining as many concepts as possible which force themselves into our feelings, concepts that so refine our inner soul-life that we do not carelessly and inattentively pass things by, which in reality, if we are but attentive, play a part in our lives. In this respect education will have a very great deal to do in the near future. I should just like to bring forward one such concept. Just think how infinitely life would be deepened, if to the general knowledge concerning karma such details could be added, as the fact that when a man's life comes to an end in early youth the meeting with the Father-Principle occurs at the hour of death. This shows that the particular karma of this man made an early death necessary, so that an abnormal meeting with the Father-Principle should take place. For what actually occurs in such a case? The man is destroyed from without; his physical being is undermined from without. In illness, too, this is really the case. For the scene of action of the meeting with the Father-Principle is really here in the physical earth-world. When it happens that this external physical earth-world has destroyed a man, the meeting with the Father-Principle can be seen at that very place, and of course it is always to be seen again in the retrospect. This however makes it possible for a man throughout the whole of his life after death to hold firmly, the thought of the place on earth where, descending from heavenly heights, the Father-Principle came to the meeting which then took place. The recollection of this makes him want to be as active as he possibly can to work down into the physical earth-world from the Spiritual world. Now if we consider our present time from this standpoint and try to arouse the same feeling of solemnity as we have just tried to do with respect to the meeting with the Father-Principle, trying not merely to look upon the numerous premature deaths now occurring in the light of feeling or abstract conception, we shall be driven to admit that these were predestined in preparation for the coming need for a great activity to be directed from the Spiritual world to the physical earth-world. This is another aspect of what I have often said with reference to the tragic events of the last few years: that those who today pass so early through the portals of death will become special helpers in the future development of humanity, which will indeed require strong forces to disentangle itself from materialism. But all this must be brought to men's consciousness; it must not take place unconsciously. Therefore it is necessary that even now, souls here on the earth should make themselves receptive—I have already mentioned this—otherwise the forces developed in the Spiritual world may go in other directions. In order that these forces, these predestined forces, may become fruitful to the earth, it is necessary that there should be souls on the earth permeated with the knowledge of the Spiritual world. And there must be more and more of such souls on the earth. Let us therefore try to make fruitful the content of Spiritual Science, which must once be given out in words. By the help of the language (I mentioned this in the last lecture but one) the language we learn through Spiritual Science—let us try to re-animate the old conceptions which are, not without purpose, interwoven in our present life. Let us try to quicken anew what we have heard from Plutarch: that man, even as mere physical man, is permeated by the Spiritual man, and that in a peculiar but normal way a man has a higher Spiritual principle outside his head which represents his genius and which, if he be wise, he obeys. Let us try, as I have said, to take the feelings acquired by Spiritual Science to our assistance—so that the phenomena of life may not pass us by unnoticed.

In conclusion, we will today take one feeling, one conception, which may be of great help to our souls. Unfortunately many people in our modern materialistic age find it very difficult to feel what I might call the holiness of sleep. (The materialistic life is being somewhat softened by this period of trial, and not only ought it to remain softened thereby—which can hardly be hoped if materialism remains at its present strength—but it ought even to be enormously and increasingly softened.) It is indeed a curious phenomenon of man's intelligence today that he is entirely devoid of respect for the holiness of sleep. We need only consider how many people who spend the evening hours in purely materialistic ways, go to sleep without developing the realisation—which indeed can never become a living thing in a materialistic mind—that sleep unites us with the Spiritual world, that sleep sends us across into the Spiritual world. (These things are not mentioned by way of blame, nor intended to drive people to asceticism: we must live with the world, but we must at the same time have our eyes open, for only thus can we wrench our bodily nature away from the lower and lift it higher.) People should at least become gradually able to develop a feeling which can be expressed somewhat as follows: ‘I am going to sleep; until I wake, my soul will be in the Spiritual world. There it will meet with the guiding-power of my earth-life, who lives in the Spiritual world, and who soars round and surrounds my head. My soul will have the meeting with my genius. The wings of my genius will come in contact with my soul.’

Yes, my dear friends, as regards the overcoming of the materialistic life, a great deal, a very great deal, depends on whether one can create a strong feeling of what this means, when one thinks over one's relation to sleep. The materialistic life can only be overcome by stimulating intimate feelings such as these, which are themselves in correspondence with the Spiritual world. Only when we intensify such feelings and make them active, will the life of sleep become so intense, that the contact with the Spiritual world will on the other hand be gradually able to strengthen our waking life too. We shall then have around us not merely the sense-world, but also the Spiritual world, which is the true, the truly real world. For this world that we generally call the real one, is, as I expounded in the last open lecture, nothing but a reflection, an image of the actual real one. The real world is the world of spirit. The small community which is today devoted to Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, will better be able to grasp the earnest signs of the times and undergo the severe trials of the times, if besides all the other trials to which man is subject today, it learns to consider this time as a time of trial, of testing and probation, whether we are able with sufficient strength of soul and warmth of heart to unite our whole being with the Spiritual Science which we must take in through our reason and our intellect.

In these words, I wished once more to emphasise what I have often said here before: that Spiritual Science will only find its right place in the hearts of men, when it is not merely theory and knowledge, but when—symbolically speaking—it constantly permeates and penetrates the soul; just as our physical blood, our heart's blood, constantly permeates and gives life to our bodily nature.

(Continued in Lecture 5).

We have seen that there is a significant difference between knowledge of the spiritual world such as has existed through all the ages and the particular form of knowledge of the Divine-Spiritual to which the organic constitution of the Hebrews enabled them to aspire. Through their progenitor Abraham they had inherited a physical constitution in which there had been implanted an organ whereby, to, the extent possible through knowledge transmitted by way of the senses, men were to be able to have actual experience of the Divine-Spiritual, not merely vague inklings. Knowledge of the Divine-Spiritual has existed everywhere and at all times, but this knowledge of the Eternal was attained in the Mysteries, on the path of Initiation. A distinction must be made between knowledge acquired as the result of individual development through specially devised methods and knowledge of the spiritual world that is normal in some particular epoch and connected with the fulfilment of a definite mission in the evolution of humanity.

In Atlantis the normal form of knowledge was astral-clairvoyant perception of the Divine-Spiritual. But in the times of the ancient Hebrews the normal form of exoteric knowledge of the spiritual world became dependent upon a particular physical organ. It has already been said that in the people of Abraham this knowledge arose in the form of a feeling that the Divine was united with their inmost being. It was therefore inner knowledge, a realisation of the Divine in the deepest core of being that had been made possible.

But this inner realisation of the Divine-Spiritual did not immediately enable a man to say: When I sink into my own being, striving to fathom its depths, I find the drop of the Divine Spirit that can give me knowledge of the Divine-Spiritual by which the outer world too is permeated.—This experience was not immediately possible—not, indeed, until the appearance of Christ in the evolution of humanity. The Hebrew people could experience the Divine only through participating in their Folk-Spirit. When a man felt himself to be a member of his people as a whole, as distinct from a separate individuality, when he felt that through his blood he belonged to a sequence of generations—then he became aware of the presence of the Divine; his consciousness of Jahve lay in the Folk-consciousness, in the very blood of his people. Hence in the spiritual-scientific sense it is not correct to speak of the God Jahve or Jehovah merely as the God of Abraham. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—he is the Being who passes on from generation to generation, manifesting himself in the Folk-consciousness in and through individual men.

The great advance of this form of knowledge to thc Christian form lies in the fact that the latter recognises in each single individual what ancient Hebrew knowledge could reach only by contemplation of the Folk-Spirit, of the Spirit flowing in the blood of the generations. Thus Abraham might have said: According to the covenant that has been made with me, I shall be the founder of a people through my descendants; in the blood flowing down the generations descending from me there will live the God we venerate as the Highest, who reveals himself to us in our Folk-consciousness.—This became the normal experience of that time.

As already said, at all times and through all the epochs there has existed higher knowledge of the Divine-Spiritual. This knowledge, acquired in the Mysteries, is not dependent upon any of the other, special forms of cognition. In ancient Atlantis every human being was endowed with a certain astral-etheric clairvoyance enabling him to gaze into the divine-spiritual ground of existence; by developing his inner faculties he could then acquire knowledge that was. available in the Mysteries or Oracles. Also during the epoch when the spiritual knowledge characteristic of the Hebrews was the normal form, it was still possible in certain sanctuaries for man to experience the Divine while out of the body but not while in the body as in the case of the people of Abraham; in the eternal part of his being a man could rise to vision of the Divine-Spiritual.

You can readily imagine that one thing was essential for Abraham. He had experienced the Divine-Spiritual in his own special way, through knowledge acquired by means of a physical organ; this was how he had learnt to know the supreme God. To become a living power in evolution, however, it was infinitely important for him to know that the God revealed in the Folk-consciousness of the Hebrew people was identical with the God venerated in the Mysteries of all ages as the creative Deity. It was therefore necessary for Abraham to be able to identify his God with the God revealed in the Mysteries, and that was only possible upon one very definite premise. Upon one very definite premise the certainty could be given him that the powers manifesting themselves in thc Folk-consciousness were identical with those ma.nifesting in a higher form in the Mysteries. To understand what this certainty implied, we must turn our minds to a fact closely connected with the evolu-tion of humanity.

In the book Occult Science you can read that in ancient Atlantis there were Initiates known as “Priests of the Oracles”—the actual names are not of essential significance. One of these great Initiates was the leader of all the Atlantean Oracles; he was the Initiate of the Sun-Oracle, in contrast to the subordinate Oracle-centres to which the Mercury-, Mars-, Jupiter-, Initiates, and so forth, belonged. I have said too that this great Initiate of the Sun-Oracle was also the leader of the civilizing colony which, having moved from the West across to the East, from Atlantis to the interior of Asia, spread out from there to inaugurate post-Atlantean culture and civilization. This mighty Initiate—for such he was, already at that time—withdrew to secret centres in the heart of Asia, and made it possible for the wise men known as the holy Rishis to become such illustrious Teachers of their people. And it was he, this great and mysterious Initiate, who conferred Initiation upon Zarathustra.

The Initiation conferred upon Zarathustra was not the same as that received by the Rishis, for their tasks were different. Through their Initiation the Rishis were able, when their inner faculties had further developed, to give utterance as it were out of themselves to the great secrets of existence. Thereby they became the illustrious Teachers of pre-Vedic, ancient Indian culture. Though their powers were awakened by means specially devised, they were otherwise on a par with thc old Atlantean clairvoyant faculties, but they were distributed among the seven Rishis individually. Like the leaders of the several Oracle-centres, each of the seven Rishis had his own particular sphere and task. But a whole collegium spoke when any onc of the seven voiced what he knew of the primeval wisdom. The grcat Sun-Initiate who brought the old Atlantean wisdom from the West across to the East passed it on in a particular form to those who were to become the bearers of post-Atlantean culture. He imparted it to Zarathustra in a different form, enabling him to speak in the way I have already indicated.

The Rishis declared that in order to reach the highest realm of divine-spiritual existence, everything in the surrounding world, everything presented to the outer senses, must be regarded as maya or illusion; man must turn away from this outer world and sink into his inner being: then there will dawn in him a world entirely different from the one out-spread before him in everyday life.—To ascend into the spheres of divine-spiritual existence by turning away from the illusory world of maya, by developing the inner life—such was the teaching of the Rishis of ancient India.

In contrast to this, Zarathustra did not teach men to turn away from what is outwardly manifest. He did not say: everything external is maya and we must turn away from it. He said : this maya is the revelation, the actual garrnent of divine-spiritual existence. We may not turn away from it—on the contrary, it is our duty to fathom it. We must conceive of the Sun's body of light as thc outer texture in which Ahura Mazdao lives and weaves!

In a certain sense, therefore, the gist of Zarathustra's teaching was the opposite of that given by the ancient Rishis. The essential significance of post-Indian civilization lay in the fact that its task was to impress upon the outer world the fruits of man's spiritual activity. As we heard, Zarathustra transmitted to Hermes and to Moses the greatest gifts that were his to bestow. In order that the wisdom of Moses might become fruitful in the right way and work as a seed, it had to take root in the people who were the descendants of Abraham. Abraham was the first into whom was implanted the organ for acquiring consciousness of Jahve; but it was essential for him to know that the God who could announce his presence inwardly to physical faculties of cognition, was speaking with the same voice as the eternal, all-pervading God of the Mysteries, save that he was revealing himself here in the form in which Abraham was able to understand him. It is not possible for a Being of such lofty rank as the great Atlantean Sun-Initiate to speak without more ado in words that are intelligible to those who live at some particular time and have a special mission. An Individuality as exalted as the great Sun-Initiate is one who leads an eternal existence, of whom it was truly said—indicating the hallmark of eternity—that he was without name or age, ‘without father, without mother, having neither beginning of days nor end of life’. (Heb. VII, 3). A figure of this eminence in the evolution of humanity is only able to manifest by assuming a form whereby he can establish relationship with those to whom he is to reveal himself. Thus in order to impart the necessary enlightenment to Abraham, the great Teacher of the Rishis and of Zarathustra assumed a form in which he bore the etheric body of Abraham's original forefather; it was the etheric body of Shem, the son of Noah, and it had been preserved as the etheric body of Zarathustra had been preserved for Moses. The great Initiate of the Sun-Mystery used the etheric body of Shem in order to reveal himself to Abraham and be understood by him. This meeting between Abraham and the great Sun-Initiate is referred to in the Old Testament as the meeting of Abraham with Melchisedek, or Malek-Zadek as it has become customary to call him—the ‘king and priest of the most high God’. (Gen. XIV, 18; Heb. V, 6, 1o ; VII, 1-3). It was a mecting of supreme, world-embracing significance. In order that Abraham should not be utterly dumbfounded, the great Sun-Initiate manifested himself in the etheric body of Shem, the progenitor of the Semites. And the Bible points, most significantly, to something that is unfortunately all too little understood, namely, to the source of that which Melchisedek was able to impart to Abraham. What was this? He could impart the mystery of Sun-existence which Abraham could naturally only under-stand in his own way. The same mystery lay behind the revelation that had been announced, as a prophecy, by Zarathustra.

To his chosen pupils Zarathustra spoke of Ahura Mazdao, the spiritual Being behind the Sun's body of light, saying in effect: Direct your gaze to a power that is behind the Sun, that is not yet united with the Earth but will onc day descend to the Earth and pour into Earth-evolution!—Realising that Zarathustra could only make a prophetic announcement that Christ, the Sun-Spirit, would come in a human body, we shall be aware that even greater profundities of the Sun-Mystery had to be revealed to those who were to prepare for and subsequently be instrumental in bringing about the incarnation of Christ on the Earth. This deeper revelation was made possible because, at the meeting referred to, the same Being who had been Zarathustra's Teacher brought influence to bear upon Abraham from the same source as that from which Christ's influence was eventually to pour. This again is indicated symbolically in the Bible where it is said that Melchisedek, king of Salem, this ‘priest of the most high God’, brought to Abraham bread and wine. (Gen. XVI, 18). Bread and wine were dispensed on another, later occasion—when for those who were believers the Christ-Mystery was given expression in the institution of Holy Communion. The emphasis laid upon the similarity of the sacrificial acts points to the fact that the source of the impulses given by Melchisedek and by Christ was one and the same.

Thus through Melchisedek an influence emanating from a Power that would subsequently come down to the Earth was to be brought to bear in advance upon Abraham, the great preparer of the later event. As the result of this meeting the realisation dawned upon Abraham that the source of the power he felt within him and venerated under the name of Jahve or Jehovah as the loftiest reality of which he could conceive, was also the source of the consciousness of the supreme, all-pervading Godhead—consciousness such as was gained by Initiates in the realm of earthly knowledge too. Abraham was now able to carry this consciousness to a further stage.—A new and different experience came to him. He realised that in actual fact the blood flowing through the generations of the Hebrew people was to contain something only to be compared with what was revealed in the Mysteries when clairvoyant vision was directed to the secrets of cosmic existence and the language of the Cosmos understood.

I have already spoken of how, in the Mysteries, secrets of the Cosmos were expressed in terms derived from the stars and constellations. There were times when the teachers in the Mysteries made use of words and images taken from the courses of the stars and their mutual relationships. Such images were a means of expressing what man experiences spiritually when he attains consciousness of the Divine-Spiritual.

What was it that the Mystery-wisdom was able to read in this stellar script? The secrets of the Godhead pervading the world! The order of the stars was the visible expression of the Godhead. Men turned their gaze to the heavens, saying: There the Godhead reveals himself; the order and harmonies of the stars are for us the manifestation of the Divine. According to this view, therefore, the God of all the worlds was made manifest in the order of the stars.

Thus if the same God were to be made manifest in a special way in the mission of the Hebrew people, the manifestation must necessarily be an expression of the same order as that governing the courses of the stars in the Cosmos. Through the blood of the generations as the outer instrument of the Jahve-revelation, there must be expressed the same order as that made manifest in the courses of the stars. To put it differ-ently: in the sequence of the generations, in the blood-kinship of Abraham's descendants, there must be a mirror-image, a reflection, of the stellar script in the heavens. Hence the promise made to Abraham: The ordering of thy descendants shall be that of the stars in heaven! (Genesis, XXIII, 17.) Such is the correct version of the sentence that is usually rendered to mean that the descendants would be as numerous as the stars in heaven.—This implies number only and is not the true meaning. The true meaning is that the line of the descendants was to be in accordance with an ordcr perceptible in the groupings of the stars, which in turn arc an expression of the speech of the Gods. Looking upwards, mcn beheld an order such as is manifest in the Zodiac. The positions and relation-ships of the planets in the Zodiac formed constellations from which was drawn the language used to proclaim the deeds of the Gods in the Universe. The firm bond demonstrated in the Zodiac and in the relations of the planets to the twelve constellations was to come to expression in the blood-kinship of the descendants of Abraham.

The twelve sons of Jacob, also the twelve tribes of the Hebrew people are therefore images of the twelve constellations of the Zodiac. Just as the language of the Gods is pressed in these twelve constellations, so does Jahve manifest himself in the blood flowing through the generations of the Hebrew people, divided into thc twelve tribes descending from the twelve sons of Jacob. Conditions established in the Zodiac are designated by the name of the planet concerned—Venus, Mercury, Sun, as the case may be. And we have heard how certain parallelisms can be drawn between particular periods in the historical life of the Hebrew people and the paths of the planets through the Zodiac. Thus there is a parallelism between the age of David, the royal minstrel, and Hermes or Mercury; similarly, between the period of the Babylonian captivity—when we see the forrn taken by the Jalive-revela-tion six centuries before our era as the result of a new impulse—and the planet Venus.

It was to be indicated to Abraham that there is a parallelism between the place of a personality such as David in the line of generations, and the position of Mercury in the Zodiac. The tribe of Judah corresponds to the constellation of Leo and the advent of David into that tribe would correspond, in the history of the Hebrew people, to the cosmic phenomenon of the occultation of Leo by Mercury (Mercury in Leo). Such occultations are indicated in many places: in the actual succession, in the conferments of kingly or priestly offices, in the battles or victories of one tribe or another, indeed in the whole history of the Hebrews. All this was implicit in the momentous words: Thy descendants shall be ordered in accordance with the harmony of the stars in heaven.—We must never accept the trivial interpretations so often placed upon records founded on occultism but realise their immense profundity.

Thus there is actual evidence of order prevailing in the generations enumerated in the Gospel of St. Matthew. This evangelist has shown how the blood of the body that was to receive the Zarathustra-Individuality was prepared in a very special way to be instrumental in bringing about the manifestation of Christ on the Earth.

What bad been achieved through the forty-two generations from Abraham to Joseph was that blood, blended in accordance with the laws of the stars and of the holy Mysteries, had finally been produced. In the composition of this blood—which was needed by the Zarathustra-Individuality for the fulfilment of his great mission—there was inner order and harmony, reflecting one of the most beautiful and significant principles manifest in the heavenly constellations. The blood available for Zarathustra was therefore an image of the Cosmos, having been prepared through generations in accordance with cosmic law. The basis of the record we now possess in a modified form in the Gospel of St. Matthew is this profound mystery of the evolution of a people as the image of cosmic evolution.

Those who were the first to know something of the sublime Christ-Mystery felt that the very blood of Jesus of Nazareth of whom the Gospel of St. Matthew tells was a reflected image of the Cosmos, of the Spirit holding sway in the Cosmos. And they expressed this secret by saying: The Spirit of the whole Cosmos lived in the blood wherein was to dwell the Ego who then became Jesus of Nazareth.—This physical body must therefore have been an imprint of the ruling Spirit of the Cosmos. Hence it was said originally that the power underlying the composition of the blood in the body of Zarathustra when incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth, was the Spirit of our whole Cosmos, the Spirit which, in the primal beginning, after the Sun had separated from the Earth, brooded over and permeated with warmth what had emerged into manifestation in the course of the evolution of worlds. From the lectures given in Munich to which reference has already been made, we know that the sentence with which Genesis begins—B'rescht bara elohim et haschamayim w'et et ha'arets'—should not be translated into the trivial words of modern language which no longer convey the ancient meaning. Instead of ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’, the rendering should convey the following meaning: In what has come over from Saturn, Sun and Moon, the Elohim pondered, in cosmic soul-activity, the outwardly manifesting and the inwardly active, throughout which darkness prevailed; but there spread out and into this, brooding over it, permeating it with warmth—as a hen radiates warmth into the egg—the creative Spirit of the Elohim, Ruach-Elohim.—This same Spirit created the heavenly order that is expressed in a certain way in the constellations of the stars. The original Initiates of the Christ-Mystery felt that the blend of blood in Jesus of Nazareth was an image of the work accomplished by Ruach-Elohim throughout the Cosmos. And of the blood that had been prepared in this way for the great event, they said: it was ‘created by the Spirit of the Universe, the spiritual Being called “Ruach” in that significant passage in Genesis beginning "B'reschit bara ...” ’.¹

Such is the sacred meaning, infinitely greater than any superficial interpretation, of ‘the conception by the Holy Spirit of the Universe’; it is also the basis of the saying: ‘And she who gave birth to this Being was filled with the power of the Spirit of the Universe.’—If we feel the sanctity of such a Mystery we shall realise that in this way of presenting it there is something infinitely higher than any of the exoteric interpretations of the Virgin Birth. Consideration of just two points in the Bible will enable us to avoid trivial interpretations of this ‘immaculate conception’. The one point is this: Why should the writer of St. Matthew's Gospel have enumerated the whole sequence of generations from Abraham to Joseph if he had wished to indicate that the birth of Jesus of Nazareth had no connection with this line of descent ? He is at pains to show how the blood was led down the generations from Abraham to Joseph; how, then, could he possibly have intended to indicate that the blood of Jesus of Nazareth had nothing to do with this blood? And the other point of which account must be taken is that in the Hebrew language the gender of ‘Ruach-Elohim’—rendered ‘Holy Spirit' ’ the Bible—is feminine.—We shall speak further of this. I only wanted now to call up a feeling of the sublimity and grandeur of the thought originally underlying this Mystery.

What took place at the beginning of our era, known only to wise men who were initiated into the secrets of cosmic existence, was expressed in the Aramaic language in the original record upon which the Gospel of St. Matthew is based. And it is possible to prove, not only through occultism but through actual philological investigation, that this record was already in existence in the year 71 A.D. The actual way in which the Gospels originated is set forth in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact.² By proceeding with exactitude, however, it is possible to show, even through philology, that statements attributing a later date to the Gospel of St. Matthew are not correct, for there is evidence that an original Aramaic script of this Gospel was already extant in the year 71 A.D. comparatively short time, therefore, after the events in Palestine. But as I am concerned here with facts of spiritual science, not of philology, I will quote only one reference in Talmudist literature, the authenticity of which is accepted by Hebrew scholars.

There is a passage in this literature to the effect that Rabbi Gamaliel II was involved in a dispute with his sister over the estate left by their father who had been killed in a fight with the Romans in the year 7o. It is narrated that Rabbi Gamaliel II appeared at the timc before a judge who, according to the account, was a so-called Jewish Christian. (Such men not uncommonly occupied offices in the judiciary courts set up by the Romans for the jews.) A strange incident occurred during the proceedings. The dispute between the Rabbi and his sister was over the inheritance of their father's estate. And before a judge who certainly had some knowledge of Christianity, Rabbi Gamaliel insisted that according to Jewish Law it was only a son, not a daughter, who could inherit, and that the estate therefore passed to him. The judge replied that in the circle where he officiated, the Thora had been set aside, and that as Gamaliel was seeking justice and a verdict from him, he would not give judgment in accordance with Jewish Law but with the Law that had superseded the Thora. As already said, this happened in the year 71—the year after the death of the father of the litigants during the persecution of the Jews. Rabbi Gamaliel's only loophole now was to bribe the judge. This he did, and the following day the judge quoted from the original Aramaic script of St. Matthew's Gospel, to the effect that ‘Christ did not come into the world to destroy the Law of Moses but to fulfil it’. The judge believed he could still his conscience for deflecting the Law by maintaining that in allotting the estate to Gamaliel his judgment was in accordance with Christian tenets.

Here we have evidence that in the year 71 A.D. there existed an original Christian script from which words now contained in the Gospel of St. Matthew were taken. The passage in question was actually quoted in Aramaic and thus we have external proof that this original text of St. Matthew's Gospel, part of it at any rate, was then in existence. We have yet to consider the findings of occult investigation on the subject. The above episode has been quoted merely in order to show that when the aid of external scholarship is sought, it is not right to adopt the usual procedure which is to collect all the literature available for a.cademic study but leave out of account the Talmudist writings which are exceedingly impor-tant for knowledge even of the exoteric aspect of these things.

Thus there are very good grounds for affixing a comparatively early date to the Gospel of St. Matthew. This alone provides certain exoteric proof that the men who participated in its compilation were living at no great distance of time from the actual happenings in Palestine; the outer circumstances in themselves, therefore, are evidence that nobody could simply have lied to people, saying that Christ Jesus did not live at the beginning of our era. For as not even half a century had yet elapsed, it was a mattcr of speaking to those who had been actual eye-witnesses and therefore could not be persuaded that certain events had never happened. Exoterically these things are important and they are mentioned here merely as evidence of that aspect of the subject.

We have seen how measures founded on mysteries of cos-mic existence were taken in the evolution of humanity in order to prepare from the 'filtered' blood of the Hebrew people—blood in which the order of the Cosmos itself prevailed—a body in which the great Initiate Zarathustra could reincarnate. For it is of the Zarathustra-Individuality, of him and no other, that the Gospel of Matthew speaks in the first place.

It must not be imagined that everything brought to light here from profound secrets of world-evolution took place quite openly, before thc eyes of all men. Even for contemporaries the events were veiled in deep mystery and comprehensible only to a very few Initiates. Hence it is understandable that such complete silence should have been maintained concerning what came to pass at that time as the greatest of all events in the evolution and history of humanity. And when historians to-clay, basing their views on the records available to them, point out that no mention whatever is made of this event, we shall not be at all surprised but on the contrary regard it as a matter of course.

Having characterized the part played by Zarathustra in the preparation of this great event, we must now consider the many other currents and influences at work immediately before and also immediately after the coming of the Christ, and all the happenings that took place around Him. Prepara-tion for the event had been in process for a long time. We have heard that preparation for the development of the outer sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth had been made by Hermes and Moses as the emissaries of Zarathustra, and by Melchisedek, the bearer of the Sun-Mystery, but there had also been preparation in a different form, constituting as it were a sub-sidiary stream. But subsidiary though it was, it nevertheless played a part in the wider stream of happenings originating with Zarathustra. This contributory stream came slowly into existence in centres of which external history informs us by calling attention to certain religious sects where men, named by Philo the `Therapeutae', were endeavouring by inner paths to purify and develop their souls, to expel any elements cor-rupted by outer concerns and external knowledge, in order thereby to rise into the sphere of pure Spirit. An offshoot of the sect of the Therapeutae, where this subsidiary stream undenvent still further development, was the community of the Essenes in Asia. All these men in the sects both of the Therapeutae and the Essenes were under a common spiritual guidance. A brief account of them is contained in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact.³ To have any exoteric knowledge of this spiritual guidance we must remind ourselves of the lectures given last year on the Gospel of St. Luke and published with that title.⁴ Reference was there made to the mystery of Gautama Buddha, the exoteric aspect of which is also presented in oriental writings, and it was said that one who is to attain Buddhahood in the course of evolution must, to begin with, be a Bodhisattva, as in the case of the Being known in history as the Buddha. He too was a Bodhisattva until the twenty-ninth year of his life as the son of King Suddhodana, and it was not until then that through his inner development he rose to Buddhahood. Many Bodhisattvas work in the course of the evolution of humanity and the Bodhisattva who became Buddha six hundred years before our era is one of those who guide and direct evolution. An individuality who rises from the rank of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha does not again incarnate in a physical body on the Earth. From the same lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke we have heard how from the day of the birth of the Jesus of the Nathan line of descent, the power of the Buddha radiated into the etheric body of this child. And we heard that this is not the same Jesus as the Jesus with whom the Gospel of St. Matthew is primarily concerned.

An ancient phase of evolution came to a conclusion svith this attainment of Buddhahood by thc Bodhisattva, the son of King Suddhodana. In point of fact, this phase of evolution belonged to the same stream as that of the holy Rishis of India; but it was brought to a certain culmination when that Bodhisattva attained the rank of Buddhahood.

When a Bodhisattva becomes a Buddha, his successor takes his place. This is also narrated in the old Indian legend where it is said that in the spiritual realms, before desccnding to his final birth, the Bodhisattva who was born as the son of Suddhodana and then rose to Buddhahood, handed to his successor the crown belonging to the office of Bodhisattva. Thus since that time the Bodhisattva who then became Gautama Buddha has been succeeded by the new Bodhisattva who had a par-ticular mission to fulfil in the history of mankind. The task allotted to him was the spiritual guidance of the movement represented in the doctrines of the Therapeutae and Essenes and it was in these communities that his influence worked. During the reign of King Alexander Jannaeus (about 103 to 76 B.c.), a certain Individuality was sent by this Bodhisattva into the communities of the Essenes to be their guide and leader. This Individuality—he is well-known in occultism and also in exoteric Talmudist literature—was the leader of the Essenes about a hundred years before the appearance of Christ Jesus on the Earth.⁵

Thus a hundred years before our era there lived a personality who is not to be confused either with the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel or with the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel; he was a leading figure in the Essene communities and is known in occultism as a herald of Christianity among them. He is also known in Talrnudist literature under the name of Jesus, the son of Pandira, Jeschu ben Pandira. He was a great and noble personality, about whom inferior Jewish literature has woven all kinds of fables that have been recently revived, and he must not be confused, as some Talmudists have confused him, with the ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ of whom we are speaking in these lectures. This herald of Christianity among the Essenes is known to us too as Jesus, the son of Pandira; we also know that he was accused of blasphemy and heresy by those to whom the teachings of the Essenes were anathema, and after being stoned was hanged on a tree, in order to add to the punishment the stigma of infamy. This is an occult fact, also recorded in Talmudist literature.

In Jeschu ben Pandira we have to see a personality stand-ing under the guardianship of the present Bodhisattva. The facts are therefore clear.—A stream, as it were accessory to the main Christian stream, originated from the Buddha's successor, from the present Bodhisattva who later on will become the Maitreya Buddha and who sent his emissary into the Essene communities, where in executing his mission he achieved what we shall come to know in the following lectures.

The name ‘Jesus’ is that of the Individuality of whom the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke tell; but it was also the name of that noble personality—regarding whom everything contained in inferior Jewish literature is calumny—who worked in the Essene community a hundred years before our era, was accused of blasphemy and heresy, stoned and finally hanged on a tree.

• 1. See Genesis. Secrets of the Bible Story of Creation. Study of this cycle, particularly of the first two lectures, is indispensable in connection with the above passage.
• 2. Chapter VII.
• 3. Chapter X.
• 4. Notably Lectures Two and Three.
• 5. Appendix II, p. 236.

DR STEINER greets those present with the words:

My dear friends!

Let the first words to resound through this room today be those which sum up the essence of what may stand before your souls as the most important findings of recent years.^A

Later there will be more to be said about these words which are, as they stand, a summary. But first let our ears be touched by them, so that out of the signs of the present time we may renew, in keeping with our way of thinking, the ancient word of the Mysteries: ‘Know thyself.’

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

Soul of Man !
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

My dear friends! Today when I look back specifically to what it was possible to bring from the spiritual worlds while the terrible storms of war were surging across the earth, I find it all expressed as though in a paradigm in the trio of verses your ears have just heard.^B

For decades it has been possible to perceive this threefoldness of man which enables him in the wholeness of his being of spirit, soul and body to revive for himself once more in a new form the call ‘Know thyself’. For decades it has been possible to perceive this threefoldness. But only in the last decade have I myself been able to bring it to full maturity while the storms of war were raging.³⁸ I sought to indicate how man lives in the physical realm in his system of metabolism and limbs, in his system of heart and rhythm, in his system of thinking and perceiving with his head. Yesterday I indicated how this threefoldness can be rightly taken up when our hearts are enlivened through and through by Anthroposophia.

We may be sure that if man learns to know in his feeling and in his will what he is actually doing when, as the spirits of the universe enliven him, he lets his limbs place him in the world of space, that then—not in a suffering, passive grasping of the universe but in an active grasping of the world in which he fulfils his duties, his tasks, his mission on the earth—that then in this active grasping of the world he will know the being of all-wielding love of man and universe which is one member of the all-world-being.

We may be sure that if man understands the miraculous mystery holding sway between lung and heart—expressing inwardly the beat of universal rhythms working across millennia, across the aeons of time to ensoul him with the universe through the rhythms of pulse and blood—we may hope that, grasping this in wisdom with a heart that has become a sense organ, man can experience the divinely given universal images as out of themselves they actively reveal the cosmos. Just as in active movement we grasp the all-wielding love of worlds, so shall we grasp the archetypal images of world existence when we sense in ourselves the mysterious interplay between universal rhythm and heart rhythm, and through this the human rhythm that takes place mysteriously in soul and spirit realms in the interplay between lung and heart.

And when, in feeling, the human being rightly perceives what is revealed in the system of his head, which is at rest on his shoulders even when he walks along, then, feeling himself within the system of his head and pouring warmth of heart into this system of his head, he will experience the ruling, working, weaving thoughts of the universe within his own being.

Thus he becomes the threefoldness of all existence: universal love reigning in human love; universal Imagination reigning in the forms of the human organism; universal thoughts reigning mysteriously below the surface in human thoughts. He will grasp this threefoldness and he will recognize himself as an individually free human being within the reigning work of the gods in the cosmos, as a cosmic human being, an individual human being within the cosmic human being, working for the future of the universe as an individual human being within the cosmic human being. Out of the signs of the present time he will re-enliven the ancient words: ‘Know thou thyself!’

The Greeks were still permitted to omit the final word, since for them the human self was not yet as abstract as it is for us now that it has become concentrated in the abstract ego-point or at most in thinking, feeling and willing. For them human nature comprised the totality of spirit, soul and body. Thus the ancient Greeks were permitted to believe that they spoke of the total human being, spirit, soul and body, when they let resound the ancient word of the Sun, the word of Apollo: ‘Know thou thyself!’

Today, re-enlivening these words in the right way out of the signs of our times, we have to say: Soul of man, know thou thyself in the weaving existence of spirit, soul and body. When we say this, we have understood what lies at the foundation of all aspects of the being of man. In the substance of the universe there works and is and lives the spirit which streams from the heights and reveals itself in the human head; the force of Christ working in the circumference, weaving in the air, encircling the earth, works and lives in the system of our breath; and from the inmost depths of the earth rise up the forces which work in our limbs. When now, at this moment, we unite these three forces, the forces of the heights, the forces of the circumference, the forces of the depths, in a substance that gives form, then in the understanding of our soul we can bring face to face the universal dodecahedron with the human dodecahedron. Out of these three forces: out of the spirit of the heights, out of the force of Christ in the circumference, out of the working of the Father, the creative activity of the Father that streams out of the depths, let us at this moment give form in our souls to the dodecahedral Foundation Stone which we lower into the soil of our souls so that it may remain there a powerful sign in the strong foundations of our soul existence and so that in the future working of the Anthroposophical Society we may stand on this firm Foundation Stone.

Let us ever remain aware of this Foundation Stone for the Anthroposophical Society, formed today. In all that we shall do, in the outer world and here, to further, to develop and to fully unfold the Anthroposophical Society, let us preserve the remembrance of the Foundation Stone which we have today lowered into the soil of our hearts. Let us seek in the threefold being of man, which teaches us love, which teaches us the universal Imagination, which teaches us the universal thoughts; let us seek, in this threefold being, the substance of universal love which we lay as the foundation, let us seek in this threefold being the archetype of the Imagination according to which we shape the universal love within our hearts, let us seek the power of thoughts from the heights which enable us to let shine forth in fitting manner this dodecahedral Imagination which has received its form through love! Then shall we carry away with us from here what we need. Then shall the Foundation Stone shine forth before the eyes of our soul, that Foundation Stone which has received its substance from universal love and human love, its picture image, its form, from universal Imagination and human Imagination, and its brilliant radiance from universal thoughts and human thoughts, its brilliant radiance which whenever we recollect this moment can shine towards us with warm light, with light that spurs on our deeds, our thinking, our feeling and our willing.

The proper soil into which we must lower the Foundation Stone of today, the proper soil consists of our hearts in their harmonious collaboration, in their good, love-filled desire to bear together the will of Anthroposophy through the world. This will cast its light on us like a reminder of the light of thought that can ever shine towards us from the dodecahedral Stone of love which today we will lower into our hearts.

Dear friends, let us take this deeply into our souls. With it let us warm our souls, and with it let us enlighten our souls. Let us cherish this warmth of soul and this light of soul which out of good will we have planted in our hearts today.

We plant it, my dear friends, at a moment when human memory that truly understands the universe looks back to the point in human evolution, at the turning point of time, when out of the darkness of night and out of the darkness of human moral feeling, shooting like light from heaven, was born the divine being who had become the Christ, the spirit being who had entered into humankind.

We can best bring strength to that warmth of soul and that light of soul which we need, if we enliven them with the warmth and the light that shone forth at the turning point of time as the Light of Christ in the darkness of the universe. In our hearts, in our thoughts and in our will let us bring to life that original consecrated night of Christmas which took place two thousand years ago, so that it may help us when we carry forth into the world what shines towards us through the light of thought of that dodecahedral Foundation Stone of love which is shaped in accordance with the universe and has been laid into the human realm.

So let the feelings of our heart be turned back towards the original consecrated night of Christmas in ancient Palestine.

At the turning of the time
The Spirit-Light of the world
Entered the stream of earthly being.
Darkness of night
Had held its sway,
Day-radiant light
Streamed into souls of men.
Light that gives warmth
To simple shepherds' hearts,
Light that enlightens
The wise heads of kings.

Light Divine Christ-Sun !
Warm thou our hearts,
Enlighten thou our heads,
That good may become
What we from our hearts would found
What we from our heads would direct
In conscious
Willing.

This turning of our feelings back to the original consecrated night of Christmas can give us the strength for the warming of our hearts and the enlightening of our heads which we need if we are to practise rightly, working anthroposophically, what can arise from the knowledge of the threefold human being coming to harmony in unity.

So let us once more gather before our souls all that follows from a true understanding of the words ‘Know thou thyself in spirit, soul and body’. Let us gather it as it works in the cosmos so that to our Stone, which we have now laid in the soil of our hearts, there may speak from everywhere into human existence and into human life and into human work everything that the universe has to say to this human existence and to this human life and to this human work.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man.

For the Father-Spirit of the heights holds sway
In depths of worlds begetting being:
Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones!
Let there ring out from the heights
What in the depths is echoed
And in the echo of the depths
The secret of the heights, resounding
Speaks:
Ex Deo nascimur.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South:
May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

For the Christ-Will in the encircling round holds sway
In the rhythms of the worlds, bestowing grace on the soul:
Through the spirits: Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai,
Let there be fired, ye spirits, from the East
What through the West is formed,
And the fire of the East,
As it receives form from the West
Speaks:
In Christo morimur.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South:
May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

For the world-thoughts of the Spirit hold sway
In the being of worlds, craving for light:
Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi !
Let there be prayed from the depths
What in the heights will be granted,
And when it is rightly understood
How it rings forth from Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi,
When from the depths is prayed
What in the heights can be answered,
Then speaks it through the world:
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South:
May human beings hear it.

My dear friends, hear it as it resounds in your own hearts! Then will you found here a true community of human beings for Anthroposophia; and then will you carry the spirit that rules in the shining light of thoughts around the dodecahedral Stone of love out into the world wherever it should give of its light and of its warmth for the progress of human souls, for the progress of the universe.

• A. In the 1985 German edition, from which this translation is made, the verses spoken here and in the subsequent sessions are given as shown in the shorthand report. See the Note on the Verses.
• B. At this point, and again in the final words of this meeting at which the Foundation Stone was laid in members' hearts, Rudolf Steiner changed for a moment from the formal mode of address to the more intimate ‘Du’. (Tr.)
• 38. For the first time in the public lecture in Berlin on 15 March 1917 in Rudolf Steiner Geist und Stoff, Leben und Tod (Spirit and Matter, Life and Death). GA 66, and in the chapter ‘Die physischen und die geistigen Abhängigkeiten der Menschenwesenheit’ ‘Physical and Spiritual Dependencies of the Being of Man’ in Rudolf Steiner Von Seelenrätseln (Of the Riddles of the Soul) GA 21.

Dear attendees!

If today we are to speak about the value and significance of truth for the development of the human soul, then the old question may well arise for some: What is truth anyway? Can one speak in any way in general about what truth actually is? And if one cannot answer this question, how can one then possibly determine anything about the value and significance of truth for the human soul? Nevertheless, it is by no means the case that one cannot distinguish between approaching the truth and moving away from the truth. What Lessing really meant to express in his famous saying about truth is truly valid: If God were to extend to me his right and his left hand and in his right hand held the pure, full truth; but in his left hand held the eternal striving for truth, then I would say: Father, give me what you have in your left hand, the eternal striving for truth; for the pure, full truth is, after all, only for you.

It is true that man can only have an eternal striving for the pure, full truth; but it would be a mistake if, because of this, one were to fall back into the misunderstanding that one cannot distinguish between that which corresponds more and that which corresponds less to the ideal of truth.

Let us visualize, not so much through theoretical discussion as through an example, how there is indeed a tangible difference, so to speak, between what can be called truth and what can be said to have removed man from the truth. It is not at all true in general that everyone can have their own point of view regarding the truth, that one cannot distinguish whether what someone claims from their point of view comes closer to the truth or moves further away from it. In this context, we may recall the saying of a recently deceased American multi-millionaire, who, among other things, in addition to his occupation, which was certainly more lucrative in terms of his millions, was concerned with arriving at the truth about certain things through thought. In his aphorisms, he made a remarkable statement about the value of human beings: no person in the world is irreplaceable; indeed, one cannot even speak of a special value of the individual. If I – so he said – now lay down my work, numerous others will be found to take it up where I left it. If I withdraw from what I have been doing, I will easily be replaced, and when I die – so roughly he said – the railways will run just as before, the dividends will be earned just as before. In short, nothing special in the world will have changed with the departure of a person. And then he adds – and this is important –: It is the same with every human being.

Let us compare this so-called truth, which the multi-millionaire has expressed from his point of view, about the value and significance of man in the world, with a similar saying by the witty German art historian Herman Grimm, who said this at the time. When Treitschke died, Grimm said about his work and significance: When a man like Treitschke has passed away, only then do we realize what he actually meant to all those who had contact with him. Treitschke was one of those people – as Grimm says – who, when they stop working, cannot find a successor for their work. He makes one realize that individuals are irreplaceable in their value and significance.

They are different, these two statements about the value and significance of a person: one from the American millionaire, the other from the spirited German art historian Herman Grimm. I would like to add: Grimm did not add what the American millionaire added: That is how it is with every human being! Two points of view, one could say, if one wanted to judge lightly, to the effect that the truth can take on a special form for each person. Two points of view, one could say, about the value and significance of the human being.

Now, which is the truer? If you examine the two statements a little, you will notice a huge difference between the two. You just have to examine them according to certain characteristics that are not usually examined today. How does the millionaire take his point of view? Merely in terms of his own personality. He considers what would become of the work he has done up to a certain point in time; he judges entirely from himself and comes to the conclusion that the work he is giving up could be taken up by someone else at any moment, and therefore it must be the same for everyone. A very personal point of view confronts us here, which looks only at itself in order to arrive at the truth about the value and significance of the human being. And Herman Grimm, he does not judge anything about himself in this case, but about another personality. He judges in such a way that he completely disregards himself and is, so to speak, overwhelmed by something that is outside of him as a being. And that is precisely how he comes to judge the case, not making a general judgment from this individual case, but simply accepting the case as it is. We need only consider the difference in the two points of view to see what is characteristic in each case. In the one case, the value and significance of the human being is judged quite subjectively, quite personally, quite from one's own ego; in the other case, the ego is not involved at all. And if we really consider both statements, who could fail to feel that the one who judges impersonally, who disregards himself, allows himself to be overwhelmed, as it were, by the objective, has more to say about the value and significance of a human being than the one who judges quite subjectively, quite personally! This must be the natural feeling of everyone. Such a comparison shows that we must never say: point of view is just a point of view; but that there is a way of approaching the truth, of actually arriving at it in certain respects, if we try to fathom the truth by taking an impersonal approach. Or do we not feel that in certain respects, as Herman Grimm says, each person is irreplaceable? Not only great people are irreplaceable. Can the point of view of the American millionaire apply when one considers how irreplaceable a mother is for many a child, for example? Can one say that something can step into this gap to replace her? Oh, one will feel it as soon as one takes the point of view that there is a coming closer to the truth, even if there can only be an eternal striving for the pure, full truth.

So it is precisely with those things that have such value for the human soul that it is important to examine them sometimes in a very intimate and profound way. And with what we have gained from the simple example of personal and impersonal judgment, we have already gained a great deal precisely for the characterization of truth.

In the lecture on the mission of anger, we started from the assumption that what is actually the nature of the human soul, what we can call its soul nature in contrast to the human body, consists of three parts: the sentient soul, which is, so to speak, the lowest of the human soul members, the mind or emotional soul, which forms the second link of the human being within, and the consciousness soul, which is the third link. And we have already characterized that this sentient soul is the link in the human being within which we find desire, instincts, passions and so on. We have, after all, examined a part of this sentient soul ourselves by pointing to the element of anger and its effect on the sentient soul, and we have seen how the I is present in this sentient soul in a dull way, as it is still overwhelmed by the passions, drives, instincts, and so on.

If we ascend to the next higher level of the human soul, to the soul of mind or feeling, then the I becomes clearer and more luminous, and the I becomes a power in the human being that can perceive and understand itself. How does the soul of mind or feeling actually free itself from the sentient soul? The human being stands in relation to the external world. This external world makes its impressions on the human being; it gives him the rich world of color and light, of sounds, of warmth and cold, in short, everything we perceive through our senses. When we bring our soul into relationship with the outer world through its organs, then, in our sentient soul, joy and delight, suffering and pain, and so on, arise in relation to what we perceive outside in the world of color, in the world permeated by sound, in the world of taste and smell, and so on, through our perceptions. Everything that is connected to our perceptions in our sentient soul, our desires and instincts, makes up the lowest of the soul's members, so to speak, and in this lives, still unaware of itself, the human I, this center of the human being. But in this lowest limb of the soul also live the affects, the passions, the drives and desires. Man lets himself be easily carried away by them; his ego is not yet master over anger, annoyance, vexation; it lets itself be carried away by lust and suffering, by drives and desires, is submerged in them, is not the conductor, the actor in relation to these drives and desires. We can say that the I lives down there, brooding in the surging sea of the sentient soul; but what we call the mind or feeling soul cannot be distinguished from this surging sea of the sentient soul, that which we call the mind or feeling soul, unless the human being delves so deeply into himself that he connects in his inner life with what he has experienced in the outer world. We receive direct impressions from this outer world. We carry these away from our interaction with the outer world. Then we are alone with ourselves. There we weigh one joy against another, there we brood over our pain, we try to get over it or to delve even deeper into it. There we expand within ourselves what we have received from outside impressions. What the soul builds up within itself could not be worked through by it if the I did not do something with what has been received, if the I did not work in this soul. Stimuli from outside can come without the ego; man only has to face the outside world, the world has an effect on him. Like in a mirror, the outer world gives rise to pleasure and suffering, desires and instincts and so on in the sentient soul; but it is only when we turn away from this outer world and collect ourselves, when we process our instincts and desires, when we form a whole in our imaginations, that we say: We work our way through the ego from the sentient soul to the mind soul, then we internalize ourselves within our self, then we process what we have received from the outside. And this inner work is the content of the mind or emotional soul. And only then, when we are able to relate what we have built up to the outside world, when we have formed a realm of inner experiences through our inner life, when we have developed a sum of pleasure and joy in our soul that we call ' beautiful', for example, and then apply all this to the outer world; when we come to recognize something in the outer world as good, beautiful, true through the concepts we have formed, then we say we attain knowledge of the outer world. There we work our way up to grasping the outer world, up to the knowing, cognizing human being: there we develop the consciousness soul. This is initially the highest level of the human soul. Thus the sentient soul leads us from the outside in, we live in ourselves through the mind or emotional soul, and we find the way again to grasp the world through knowledge and understanding through our consciousness soul.

Within the sentient soul, we have encountered the element of anger, and in that anger we have found one of the preparers for the development of the I and the soul. A person who is not yet mature enough to form an opinion about what is true, just, and good will, by falling into righteous anger at the sight of some lie, some injustice, some evil, take a stand on this external world. Anger will, so to speak, indicate to him: This is not in accordance with you, [this is a discordance, an obstacle] and in his inner being awakens that which is called the ego, which opposes the outside world. Where we are inflamed with anger at something we cannot admit, there is the awakening of the ego. [And [the anger] develops this in the transition and ascent into the intellectual and emotional soul through constant internalization out of the developmental soul.] So if anger is something that a person must overcome in order to develop, we can almost say of anger: It has its value in that it can be overcome; if anger has only attained its full significance for a person when the has been transformed into love and gentleness, we can say that the most important thing for the mind or soul is that it presents itself to us as the element that, in the best sense, brings the two sides of the ego mentioned yesterday to development. If the human ego is to develop in an appropriate way, it must happen in such a way that, on the one hand, it becomes fuller and fuller. Only by developing a rich life of ideas and thoughts, a rich life of feelings, emotions and will within himself [and thereby strengthening his ego forces within himself], only in this way will he be able to embrace much of the world on the one hand – and on the other hand, the ego will be able to become a strong starting point for working outwards. The more his individuality develops, the more — we may say — a person is worth in the world as a human being. But we have already pointed out that this I is a two-edged sword, that on the other hand this I, by only aspiring to become richer and fuller in itself, can close itself within itself; that precisely by wanting to live only in itself, it closes the door to the outside world and thereby becomes impoverished. If, on the one hand, a person is to become as independent and strong as possible, then he must avoid impoverishing himself by closing himself off from the outside world by also cultivating the second aspect of the self, selflessness, the merging with the outside world.

Where is the element in human development that, by its very nature, does justice to these two sides of the I? There is nothing else that does justice to both sides of the I as much as truth does. Truth is something that, if it is to appear to us in its highest form, we can only find in the innermost part of our I. Only that which we have recognized as such through our I itself can be considered truth for us. Thus, the truth for the ego must be found in the innermost part of the human ego. We can say: Through the self, the truth for the human being is found. When the human being understands this character of truth, then he will say: It is precisely through the work for the truth that the ego becomes stronger in its selfhood in its inner strength; for truth is only achieved when the ego has to make an effort, because truth can only be found in the depths of the ego.

Hence the peculiarity of truth: we need nothing more than the work of our own ego if the truth is to have any value for us. Admittedly, in the case of present-day man, there are hardly any truths other than the simplest ones that take on such a form for him that the ego can really decide through itself. These are the simplest arithmetical truths. Once we have decided for ourselves that three times three is nine and not ten, then this decision, made in the innermost sanctuary of our ego, is enough to know that this is true. And even if millions of people were to say that three times three is ten, we would still decide for three times three is nine. This is valid for mathematical truths because they are clear and, so to speak, present themselves to us directly in their simplicity. Therefore, when we overcome this simplicity through the passions that assert themselves in the sentient soul, by the I working its way up into the rational soul, it must overcome the other affects in the same way as it overcomes anger. For only by casting out the instincts, desires, drives and passions that are in the soul can what a person experiences in the soul become truth. Where people disagree about the truth, where not everyone finds the same truths in their soul, it is precisely the urges, the desires, the passions that prevent them, so to speak, from truly seeing the circumstances of the truth transparently and brightly and clearly. The passions cannot have a say in simple mathematical truths. If, for example, passions were to arise regarding the transparency of mathematical truths, then many a housewife would certainly desire that if she takes three times three marks to market, it would make ten marks; for the passions speak in favor of this, but the simplicity and transparency of the mathematical truths do not allow the passions and desires to arise. In this case – in any matter at all, where we have managed to silence the passions and desires, we also clearly see the circumstances of the truth. In all the things in which we have not yet succeeded in silencing the passions and desires, we are not yet capable of deciding on the truth in earnest. But when we have succeeded in deciding on a truth, then the ego is in its inmost being the judge of the truth. Thus, the ego must feel itself in its power when it decides on the truth, when it acquires truth.

And again: once we have acquired the truth about something, we may say: this truth, although acquired in the most personal way, is the most impersonal of all; for we can find the same truth in all souls. When we have found a truth, it will take on the same form in millions of people who have also found it. Thus we will be able to communicate with the whole world about the truth. Thus truth is the most personal and thus it is the most impersonal. It leads most deeply into us, because there it must be decided, and it leads out again, because it applies independently of our arbitrariness. Truth is therefore the element in the life of the soul that has the most important mission in relation to this life of the soul. On the one hand, it educates the self to independence – for the self is the judge of truth – and on the other hand, it educates the self to selflessness, in that truth brings together this self with everything in our environment where truth is to be spoken at all. The two sides of the double-edged sword are best educated by the truth, and so the ego becomes strong to be led up from the surging activity of the sentient soul, where it still broods dull; so it becomes strong enough to be led up into the soul of mind or emotion, and at the same time it is prepared to be led up into the consciousness soul, where it comes out again to grasp the environment, to grasp the world selflessly. Thus we have characterized truth as the most important and essential element in the development of the I, in the work of the I on the three soul-members, the sentient soul, the mind or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul. This is why truth is such a powerful educator of the ego, because it works on both sides. We just have to take it seriously. Only those who truly strive for the truth in their own selves, and only strive for the truth, who allow only the truth to determine their inner world of ideas, may hope that this truth will fulfill this implied mission for them. A great English poet rightly says of truth, hinting at its brittleness, hinting at the high demands it makes of us: “To him who prefers anything to truth, this goddess does not surrender.” Those who place their Christianity above truth will soon realize that they are placing their particular denomination above Christianity. But those who place their particular denomination above Christianity will soon realize that they are placing their sect above their denomination. And those who place their sect above their denomination will soon realize that they are placing their personal whims above even the teachings of their sect. So says the poet Coleridge. Truth reveals itself only to him who is in turn ready to surrender himself entirely to it. But now we meet this truth within ourselves in a twofold form. The I asserts its two sides, which we have characterized, quite well in relation to this truth. If we want to characterize these two sides of the I, then we must present to our soul the way in which truth presents itself to the I from the world.

We look into the world. World phenomena present themselves to our senses, that is, to our sentient soul. Those who want to form concepts, ideas, and images about the world but do not want to believe that this world is built from concepts, ideas, and images may as well admit that it is possible to scoop water out of a glass that contains no water. However nonsensical it would be to claim this, it is nevertheless true that we can draw from a world in which there are no ideas or concepts and create in our minds what we then have in our souls: ideas and concepts of the world. A world that was not built according to ideas, that was not steeped in wisdom, could never evoke a reflection in the human soul that represents concepts and ideas of this world as an inner experience. For what would our concepts and ideas be, through which the laws of the world are to be experienced in us, what would all science be, if the world were not built according to ideas? All science would be fantasy, reverie; for science is a sum of ideas and concepts. If there were no ideas and concepts, in other words, if there were no wisdom in the world, if the world were not interwoven and permeated by wisdom, then our wisdom would be folly; for it would be pure fantasy, pure error. We would imagine something in our soul as a picture of the world that is constructed quite arbitrarily. It only makes sense to create an image of the world with the help of concepts and ideas if one assumes that these concepts and ideas are present in the world and that the things themselves that present themselves to our senses arise and grow out of the wisdom of the world, out of the wisdom that flows and streams through the world. So we say to ourselves: Behind this world, which we perceive through our senses, which we feel and desire through our sentient soul, behind this world is wisdom. And we seek to approach this wisdom by working our way up in our soul to that which our mind-soul inwardly reveals as truth. Wisdom is there in the world; wisdom works its way out in our own soul as we ascend to the mind and consciousness soul. But when we relate to this wisdom in the world, we have to say: Oh, this wisdom is built into the world, incorporated into it. We human beings stand, so to speak, as belated observers in relation to this world and explore the wisdom that is implanted in it. [A large part of our striving in the acquisition of knowledge consists of appropriating what pulses and lives through the world as wisdom.] If we allow the wisdom that flows through the world to shine in us as truth, then we are truly the ones who come afterwards. And if we look at the development of humanity, [it shows us how, with all his doings and inventions, man falls short of the wisdom already achieved by the environment with its wisdom]. So we can say: A closer look at human development soon shows us how man, so to speak, stands behind the wisdom of the world with his truth. One can see this by taking a look at the historical development of humanity. In the school books, one can read how people gradually came to produce what we call paper from certain substances. Through human wisdom, people have learned to produce paper. Just as man makes paper out of certain substances, so the paper of the wasp's nest is made – for the wasp's nest consists of paper. The wasp's nest shows the art of making paper, which has been present in nature as wisdom for countless centuries and which man, in his historical development, has found afterwards. In this way, man is truly a thinker of what has been thought outside. A large part of our striving in the acquisition of knowledge consists in reflecting on the wisdom of the world, in appropriating within ourselves what pulses and lives through the world as wisdom. By relating to the world in such a way that we allow its wisdom to shine in us, we feel, precisely in the innermost essence of our I, that we are strengthening ourselves, that we are relating to the world with the substance that is outside as spiritual substance. We grow stronger as the wisdom of the world shines in our I as truth. This truth, which reflects the wisdom of the world, corresponds perfectly to one side of our ego, namely the side that we can call the selfless side. After all, everything we think about the world is there without our ego, it has been there long before we could think it. In grasping the wisdom of the world, we experience something that is outside of our ego. We pour our I out into the world, so to speak: we are completely world, we are completely given to the world, completely selfless, by reviving the wisdom of the world in ourselves. In this way we make ourselves selfless by completely giving ourselves, objectively giving ourselves, to the wisdom of the world, which, as the light of truth, is to shine in ourselves. That is one side of the truth.

The other side of the truth comes to us when we consider human labor. When we consider all the human ideas that we realize in the smallest and largest of things, whether it is an everyday idea or the idea of an inventor who invents a machine, for example, we have the resounding, productive, creative work of man in mind. First we have the idea, then we have what is the external expression of this idea or the consequence of the idea. We see what arises in us, what has not yet been thought in the world, springing from our I. We see our innermost being emerge in our everyday activities, in the activities that we can describe as the realization of the great ideas of the inventors. First there is the thought, we do not reflect on the thought, the sensory phenomenon is not there first, the thought is there first, in which the sensory phenomenon comes to us through our own action, we are the forethinkers and we are the ones who, after our forethought, enter the world creatively ; there we feel our I growing stronger on the other side; there we feel how the essence of our I has flowed out, feel that which we can call our selfhood; through which we become capable of seeing realized that which the I first experiences outside in the surrounding of our existence. There we feel that side of the I where we do not merge into something that exists without the I, but on the contrary, there we feel our inner activity, our selfhood. [Our I is in our deeds, our works, just as it has also worked first in our thoughts.] As a forward thinker, the I is truly cultivating its selfhood; as a backward thinker, the I is truly cultivating its selflessness. And in these two components of the entire inner life, the truth within our work and striving in the world confronts us as reflected truth and as thought-out truth.

Now we ask ourselves: Is there a mediation between these two sides? Just as life approaches the human being, so do the two sides of his ego approach each other, but still keeping the components of truth apart. Truth is indeed the great educator of both sides, but the way the ego appropriates this truth introduces a division. Is there anything where the two sides of truth confront us in the world? [But if there are such truths that existed before, before the ego, and the ego grasps them independently of the external world, then realizes them in the world, that is a truth that we can recognize as one of selfhood and at the same time of selflessness.] If there are such truths that, on the one hand, can be conceived before all sensual reality and yet are realized, not in machines and daily activities; but if we enact the truth independently of the external world and then see it realized in this external world; if the truth that presents itself to us as pre-thought can at the same time show itself to be formed entirely according to the pattern of the postulated truth: Such a truth would be one that particularly cultivates both sides of the self. Do such truths exist? It is precisely such truths that Theosophy or spiritual science seeks to provide for modern humanity.

Let us try to make this clear with an example. It has already been stated that it is the task of Theosophy to present the proposition: that which is soul-spiritual arises only out of that which is soul-spiritual, just as Redi, in another field, first presented the proposition: that which is alive arises only out of that which is alive. We have seen that this proposition follows from what we call the realization of the repeated lives of man on earth. The way in which spiritual research reveals that the innermost core of man's being re-embodies itself is not brought about by logical conclusions, but is an immediate realization of the clairvoyant consciousness. Just as a person with physical eyes sees color and light, so a person who has developed the inner, hidden powers of the human soul perceives the essence of the human being, which we can call the immortal, that lives in the human being and presents itself to the clairvoyant consciousness, that comes from previous embodiments and that goes to future embodiments. So, through supersensible knowledge, we have the concept of the re-embodiment of the human essence. So the spiritual researcher comes and says: Through my research I have established that the human being undergoes re-embodiments; he describes the re-embodiment, he conceptualizes it in the same way that modern natural science conceptualizes the sensory perception and intellectual acquisitions. With these concepts he presents himself to people. Such knowledge cannot be found through outer perception; it must be found through supersensible vision, through the development of those organs that we call the spiritual eyes and ears. But when it is found, it can be conceptualized, thought of, and given forms that we call the forms of truth. So, we have a truth before us that expresses itself in a way that is not possible through outer perception. We have a preconceived idea in contrast to external perception. Just as the thought, as the idea of the machine lives in the mind of the inventor, without him seeing it externally, so the thought of re-embodiment lives as a result of research in the spiritual world, it lives in the mind of the spiritual researcher, but then the message goes out into the world, then we can we can look at the outside world and say: We see how [for example, a child] from the first day of a human being [gradually] develops from the vague, blurred facial features into distinct forms, [into a fixed physiognomy], which slumbers in a dark background of existence. There we see the definite forms developing. And we say to ourselves: According to what the spiritual researcher tells us, we can easily understand this. What has been brought over from previous embodiments is the core of the human being, [who lives anew in the child and comes from a previous life], who works out what was indeterminate into definite forms. We look at the whole development and say: When we look at life and test life, then this life itself in its appearances shows us the truth of what the spiritual researcher says; and only bias can cloud a person's view to such an extent that he would not find the truth in the external sensory appearance of what the spiritual researcher brings down as a preconceived idea from the higher worlds. Thus the spiritual researcher brings his truths down from the higher worlds, and holds them up to external perception. What confronts us in the external world offers us the evidence for the truths from the higher worlds, in that we then understand the external world. We penetrate beneath things with what we bring to them as truths. Thus what has been thought out agrees with the outer world, as the inventor's idea agrees with the finished machine. Thus what is otherwise separate is united in the truths that Theosophy presents. There we have, as it were, nothing behind us. The theosophical truth is not found like the idea of an inventor — created out of nothing in a certain sense —, it is found through observation in the spiritual world. But it can be applied to the external sensual world. This theosophical truth is both a pre-thought and a post-thought. Therefore, it affects the human soul in a completely different way than all the other truths that we encounter. (By absorbing this truth, man unleashes his ego.

By immersing himself in the wisdom of the world, man loses his self, and his I becomes one that, so to speak, flows out more and more; it becomes impoverished of inner strength. By thinking ahead in his daily activities, by demanding that what has been thought ahead be translated into external reality, he wants to imprint his ego on the external world, he wants to see more and more in his surroundings what his self wills; he wants to imprint his self on his surroundings. In this way, he is completely absorbed in his selfhood, and has created an interest in making this I, quite apart from the environment, as strong as possible. We can see two possibilities for the education of the I. One is that the I becomes a completely reflective one, where it is completely devoted to the outer world, where it is more and more devoted to the outer world, where it does not grow stronger in its power. The other is where the self is not merely filled with ideas from the outside world, but should be filled by the will. In the first case, the self can become desolate in the will. We can experience that such people, who absorb objective truth in the most conscientious way, are weak in will. On the other hand, we can observe that those people who only want to impress their will on their environment become closed off from what is going on in the outside world, from what should awaken their interest in the wisdom-filled content of the world. Thus we see, so to speak, the thinking I developed in those people who develop in the first way, and the willing I in those who develop in the second way. But we can achieve harmonious interaction between the thinking I and the willing I by allowing spiritual-scientific truths to take effect in us. Then the two beneficent powers in the I will awaken. On the one hand, the I will let all the content of the world into itself, out of which it is born, and will enrich itself inwardly through what is poured out into the whole world as its spiritual content. On the other hand, it will gather itself together within itself in order to become strong within itself. Thus the ego will not be impoverished in either direction, but will become strong and healthy in both. And this is the health-giving quality of theosophical truth: on the one hand, it is as fully realized as the reflective truth, and on the other hand, it has the same effect as the reflective truth. Therefore, it is healing because on the one hand it pours into us all the beauty of the world and on the other hand makes our ego so flourishing and fruitful because it enables what grows in the ego to find its reflection in the outer phenomena. Through the theosophical truth, we develop our ego so much because it is the truth that is both premeditated and reflected. That is the healthy aspect of the theosophical truth. While we would see in a person who is only a reflective person, who only wants to comprehend the wisdom of the world, that he can, under certain circumstances, paralyze himself more and more in terms of willpower and that his inner weakness , that he becomes inwardly ill from lack of such power, we would see on the other hand that he who only wants to realize his will becomes inwardly impoverished because he has no connection with the world. On the other hand, we see harmony prevailing in all respects in the theosophist. The thought becomes more concentrated as it is seized by the confidence of realization. In short, by permeating itself with the theosophical truth, the ego becomes a point of passage for wisdom. There the will is enlightened and on the other side becomes the true center by having the premeditated truth with the postmeditated truth in relation to the world. Humanity will gradually recognize that the will, which can appear so dry and so sober to the one who merely wants it implemented in external reality, warms up to living feelings because it meets with the wisdom of the world; and again, that this wisdom, which can seem so dry to us when we merely reflect on the world, can seem individual to us when it meets with the living will in the ego. Wisdom and will must meet in the ego. This is the healthy, life-affirming truth that we not only produce mind-soul - or emotional soul - but mind-permeated mind-soul and mind-permeated emotional soul in the higher soul members, in the mind-soul, through the nature of the I, these two sides of approaching the truth.

Above all, in more recent times, no one has felt this so deeply as the person we have spoken about here many times before, who was as close to spiritual science as possible, who created the greatest poetic works, as Goethe. And a work by the later, older Goethe should serve as an illustration to what has been said today. Oh, Goethe knew clearly and distinctly that the way in which man confronts the truth depends on how he has developed in his own self. That truth is merely something objectively compelling was never Goethe's thought. That truth enlightens man all the more the more receptive he is, that was his fundamental conviction, which is little understood today. People come and say: Oh, we have long since gone beyond a certain way of grasping the truth. Science has led us to the point where we cannot help doubting that there is something spiritual in a living being. [Science has thoroughly driven out of us the belief that something spiritual is to be sought behind every material thing. It has driven out our belief in something like an etheric body or a life force, because science is close to showing how living substance can be composed of external chemical components. Don't you hear everywhere that we are told: We cannot recognize such fantasies as those presented by Theosophy, because our ideal is to produce protein, that is, something living, from dead matter in the laboratory. May a counter-question be asked here? After all the development of man, can what he expects about the composition of a living being decide anything? Can that decide anything for his beliefs about the spirit of the world? If you want to think about it, you can find external proof that nothing is decided about the belief in the spirit through something like the expectation that protein could one day be produced chemically in a laboratory. The one does not force the other at all, this can be proved historically. Ask what else people have believed in the past, for example, in earlier centuries, in the Middle Ages, they not only believed that they would succeed in synthesizing protein from carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and so on, they believed something quite different. Imagine the sentences in Goethe's Faust, where Wagner stands before the preparation of the homunculus; the ability to do this was a belief that existed in the Middle Ages. People believed that they could create something that was a small human being from external substances through the various processes they performed in the laboratory. However, this belief that they could create a human being from external substances did not cause these people to deny the spirit. Therefore, the denial of the spirit today does not arise from the compulsion of objective facts, but from the inability [to grasp the spirit] to rise within one's own soul to the kind of thinking that sees the conditions for professing the spirit. One must also consider such things, then one will understand what it meant that only the one who can work in the substance of the soul as the external naturalist works in the external substance can grasp the life of the soul.

And Goethe was one who could see deeply into the ideas we have presented today. Above all, he was aware of the contrast between reflective and pre-reflective truth. And he beautifully expressed this contrast in a wonderful little poem, his “Pandora”.

This “Pandora” was written in 1807; a lot of nonsense has been written about it. People said: This is a Goethean late work, in which Goethe presents all kinds of concepts in symbols. In a Goethe edition, by a much-praised German scholar, you can read the words: Well, what does that tell us, other than that we can form a concept of ourselves, that man represents what he thinks of himself? Goethe would have thanked himself for presenting to the world what he had “formed of himself.” Goethe himself may have once expressed himself in a manner that was not polite but clear about people's judgment of his late works.

Anyone who takes [Pandora] in hand [and lets it sink in], attentively and without prejudice, will recognize one of them. Oh, there are not many works in which the content is evaluated in such a wonderful way, in keeping with the style. It is the one in this work that can be called the light artistic hand. Read “Pandora” and, if you imbue it with your sense of style, you will admire the ease with which everything is shaped to suit the person and situation in question, whether in the verse structure or in the diction. One person speaks in this verse form, the other in a different, more lightly flowing style. Everything is easy in this “Pandora”. It is precisely in this that the greatness of Goethe having to leave this work a fragment is revealed. Even with a Goethe, such a powerful artistic accomplishment as that evident in “Pandora” is only possible for moments. Even for Goethe it was only sufficient for the beginning of Pandora; but then he lost his way, for he was too small to continue the work in the greatness that inspired him as an artist when he created the beginning. But that should not deter us from recognizing the greatness that is present in Pandora.

Goethe was very clear about people who say: Yes, what Goethe wrote in his youth, one can go along with, it is all full of poetic originality; but what Goethe allegorized in his old age, no reasonable person can understand. This was already the case during Goethe's lifetime – not with regard to Faust, but to his other works of later years – Goethe himself by no means held the first part of “Faust”, which is so admired, in the highest esteem. He knew what he had put into it in order to develop ever higher and higher; he knew within himself how much his later works stood above his earlier ones. And so he says something impolite, but clearly:

They praise Faust
And what else
In my works roars
In their favor.
The old Mick and Mack
Is very pleased;
The pack of rags and bones thinks
It would no longer be!

This judgment is justified in the face of the philistine critics of Goethe, who make Goethe into what they themselves are – at least something good comes of it! In recent times, our audience has been inundated with such interpreters of Goethe. [Let us take a closer look at the work in terms of our topic today:] “Pandora” contains on a large scale the problem of the reflective and the forward-thinking human being – [Epimetheus belongs to the former, Prometheus to the latter]. Zeus wanted to take away the existence of evolving humanity. Under Zeus's rule, humanity would have been doomed. Prometheus confronts Zeus. According to the legend, he brings man fire, language and writing. He is thus the one who gives people the opportunity to emerge from the state in which they used to be, where the ego brooded dull down in the sentient soul. Man was to develop his I more and more. It is a correct observation that everything to do with fire, for example, is somehow connected with human forethought. Travelers described how, in areas where they had made a fire, the monkeys, for example, came and warmed themselves, but it never occurred to the monkeys to stoke the fire themselves; that is, these animals of the highest species are not able to envision the future. These higher animals, which are closest to humans, certainly felt the pleasant warmth of the fire; they may also have felt some kind of thought in a dull form, but they still did not think the thought through to the point of maintaining the fire by adding wood, much less to think of further practical applications. It is precisely because man has mastered the element of fire that he has been enabled to make his ego the starting point of thinking ahead, [and thereby gradually to lead his ego to a higher level in ever-increasing measure].

Thus, in his “Pandora”, Goethe presents us with the two brothers, Epimetheus and Prometheus. There stands the one brother: Epimetheus. His name already indicates that he is the contemplative; he is devoted to that which is imprinted on the world as wisdom, those thoughts that can shine as truth in the human soul. He is not prepared to think ahead; in his soul he dreams the truth dream of the world, which is an afterthought conceived behind the wisdom of the world as truth. Such is Epimetheus. Prometheus, on the other hand, is devoted to the other one-sidedness; he wants nothing to do with the reflection of wisdom. He only wants to know about that which arises in the soul of man himself, in order to realize it.

The true celebration of the real man is the deed

— that is Prometheus' saying. [He is a man of action, and this is how he appears before us as a forward thinker.] Thus we see the two opposites: Epimetheus, the thinker, and Prometheus, the forward thinker. Goethe expresses this in his “Pandora” already in the scenery. On the one side, we have Prometheus' dwelling. We see that everything that has been built there has been created by human labor. Although it is rough, we see that it does not bear the character of nature anywhere, does not depict anything outside in nature; we do not see a copy of a natural beauty, it is rough and crude, but as a human work it stands before us. In contrast, what is on the side of Epimetheus as his residence, comes to us as a scene that is composed of the beautiful creations of nature, of parts of nature, and continues into a wonderful landscape. We see in it the reflection on nature and the act of settling in such a way that one lives according to what is exemplified outside. Epimetheus and Prometheus appear to us as complete opposites in their striving for truth.

In the Greek saga, we are told that Zeus wanted to take revenge for the act of Prometheus. [Through Hephaistos, Zeus had an image of a woman made in an artful, artistically beautiful way] – Pandora – [which he brought to life]. She was to bring people gifts from the world of Zeus. [After her descent to earth, Prometheus rejects the divine being, but Epimetheus takes her in and makes the beautiful goddess his wife.] The saga tells how Pandora, the woman created by the gods, opens the box [that Zeus gave her] and how the goods that actually make people miserable fly out. Only one good remains in it: hope. Thus we see that in the saga, Pandora also has something to do with that which belongs to the human race of the past. From the future, thinking humanity has only hope from Pandora. What else it has, what people can use to get by, has been handed down from the past.

This Pandora also appears in Goethe as the wife of Epimetheus. But we see very clearly that Goethe takes what is an external action and elevates it into a spiritual world. We see the reflective soul of Epimetheus and see it connected with Pandora, that is to say, in this soul of Epimetheus lives that which is spread out in the world as wisdom, which is reflected upon as in a dream. The characterization of Epimetheus, who dreams wisdom, which is nothing other than Pandora herself when personified, is wonderful. He feels unsatisfied and weak, and then, in the further course of the drama, Goethe has Prometheus, the brother, confront Epimetheus. There Epimetheus raves about the [beloved, but also vanished, divine] Pandora, about the all-gifted Pandora. Goethe shows us that through this figure, worldly wisdom is illuminated to him, but worldly wisdom as it is grasped by man in reflection. What is this reflected truth like? It is abstract, uncreative, unproductive. Imagine that we could combine in our soul all knowledge about the entire world; but this knowledge would be unproductive if it were only reflected. Just as the wife of Epimetheus, just as Pandora, is endowed with the wisdom of the world but is unproductive. Prometheus, who has no sense for this Pandora, confronts Epimetheus; while Epimetheus raves about Pandora's magnificent hair, about how beautifully her foot moves – Prometheus says: Oh, I know how it is made. [I know how Pandora was made by Hephaestus, the blacksmith, and how she was brought to life by Zeus. He thinks only of the origin of the goddess, not of the beauty of what has come into being, what has been created, and so Pandora, who is otherwise unproductive, gives him the impetus for productivity. And this is what can come out of it as a reaction in him.] In Pandora's case, it is something mechanically put together, something that cannot be put into practice; something against which he asserts his saying:

The true man's true celebration is the deed!

Now Goethe shows how Elpore and Epimeleia, Hope and Foresight, have sprung from the marriage between Epimetheus and Pandora. [In her departure, Pandora took one of her daughters, Elpore, with her to the gods and left Epimeleia, chosen by Epimetheus, with her father.] These two daughters show different sides of Epimetheus's nature, [especially the latter in particular]. Hope, [Elpore], is what reflection alone can defend in relation to the future. The one who is a forward-thinking person sees what he has thought come into being in reality; the one who is a reflective person can say: I expect this or that to happen in the future; because what should happen does not come from himself. On the other hand, there is Epimeleia, the other daughter, who protects the past.

Prometheus also has a scion, Phileros; the one who descends from this I-human Prometheus is the actual caretaker of human I-ness. But already in the son we see the full one-sidedness of mere self-seeking. He no longer wants to create. He no longer wants to create. He cannot endure in a useful, different, thinking activity. This does not endure, because one-sided striving for the self is not complemented by wisdom. In Prometheus, this striving for the self is still present in such a way that it permeates the whole being of Prometheus. In the son, it manifests itself in such a way that it shows its harmful side at the same time. The son is not only the creator, but also the enjoyer of what is there. In this way, he causes conflict. In his blind rage, he even wounds the one who protects what exists, [his beloved] Epimeleia, the daughter of Epimetheus, in a fight.

Thus the powers of the human soul, the reflective and the thinking powers, confront each other in this Goethean drama. [And so these powers fight each other. But nothing is achieved by this; for the soul powers only increase and strengthen each other through harmonious interaction. Only in this way can truth fulfill its mission in the human being.

Goethe shows us how, ultimately, it is through the interaction of the two currents that true human salvation comes about. And Goethe also shows us how what he has depicted here is, for him, a mature result of development. Goethe looked back to the time when he had only developed the Promethean nature in himself one-sidedly. In 1774, the Goethe who was certainly already endowed with all the makings of Goethe, but still immaturely youthful, expressed this one-sided Promethean truth as his conviction in his 'Prometheus' at that time, and it flows towards us there. And if today we find a certain self-satisfaction in pointing to this youthful “Prometheus” as if it gave us the whole of Goethe, then we have to say: this is only a one-sided expression of Goethe himself. Goethe did not stop at thinking ahead; he added the thinking of his mature knowledge, his reflection. No, not only the premeditation, not only that which rejects all wisdom, not only the pre-thinking that rejects all reflection, but the confluence of both alone can establish the mission of truth.

That Goethe in his youth stood on a one-sided point of view, we can still gather from something else. He does not remember the words in the first part of “Faust” where Faust sets out to translate the Bible. There we see how Faust approaches the Bible and wants to replace the correct word “In the beginning was the word” with another: “In the beginning was the deed.” This is what he wants to contribute to the Bible more as a youthful person; that was not Goethe's final opinion. People should stop seeing the whole of Goethe in this. In his youth, Goethe probably cultivated this Promethean point of view, but later he clearly showed how he had progressed beyond it, how he later knew that in addition to the aforementioned deed, in order to develop people healthily, the word, that is to say the reflection of the wisdom imprinted by the world's spirits, must occur. Therefore, in his “Pandora”, Goethe adds from his totality, broadening his youthful point of view:

From heaven,
Senkert's word and deed blessedly descend,
a gift descends, undreamt of before.

That is, he means, unimagined by himself in the past, when he still believed that he had to correct the Gospel of John at this point, to replace the passage “In the beginning was the word” with “In the beginning was the deed”. For Goethe, the deed becomes the word, which expresses the character of what was previously conceived. The word becomes the other, the illuminating wisdom of the world. This is why Goethe says in “Pandora”:

What you below feel is our wish;
What you can give, we know.
You Titans make great beginnings; but
To lead to the eternal good, the eternal beautiful
Is the work of the gods; let it be.

Thus Goethe complements his youthful Prometheus point of view in the right, harmonious way with the point of view of Epimetheus, showing us what attitude and loyalty to true philosophy should be. In this way, Goethe's example shows us the mission of truth within our own human hearts.

Today you have recognized the truth as an educator of the human being. You have seen that truth is something most personal and at the same time something impersonal; something that makes the human being an I-human being, and something that in turn brings the I together with all other beings. You have seen that the ego is so strong on its two sides that it still expresses its selfless character in the Epimetheus-like element of truth and its selfish character in the Prometheus-like element on the other side; and you have seen that it is possible to bring about harmony between the two in spiritual-scientific truth, which encompasses the two, leading the will up to wisdom, leading wisdom down and allowing it to be seen as light, to illuminate the will itself.

Thus we see that truth, although it yields to the strong human ego at an intermediate stage, nevertheless fulfills the great mission in its perfection of shaping the ego ever higher and higher. Truth has this mission, to be the greatest educator of the human ego, at the same time leading to strong inwardness in thinking ahead and to strong selflessness in reflecting.

Thus, truth is the power that has the strongest mission, that leads the ego from level to level, making the soul more and more perfect. And we see this from the point of view that Goethe himself took towards truth, not ignoring any earlier stage, adding the necessary Epimetheus element to the Prometheus element. And Goethe is a true model of a person striving for truth precisely where we eavesdrop on him so intimately, where we readily admit: precisely because we see that he has become more and more mature, we can emulate him; he is great because he shows us the hopeful paths in the pursuit of truth. And then we feel this striving in us in such a way that it fills us with healthy strength, making us stronger and more unselfish. We feel that, in contrast to this, the sentence falls silent that wants to say that truth depends solely on the point of view.

But then again we turn to Goethe and let another mood come over us. In all seriousness of striving for truth, we must never abandon that other healing element that tells us: When you believe you have reached some level of truth, have recognized something, it is also able to tell you on the other side: You must also have already decided; you must tell yourself about no truth that it could be completely infallible, you must strive to let it appear before your soul in an even more truthful form, even with regard to that which you have already recognized as truth. When we feel earnest and dignity in our striving for truth, we also feel a serious, dignified humor, which on the other hand so beautifully corrects what pride could instill in us as a sense of truth. We then also feel the other thing that Goethe always said when he was in danger of holding on to the one truth too tightly: Oh, the thought that has been considered could only be an illusion, the thought that has been considered could be something that does not prove feasible. Yes, let us also feel that as a corrective to our arrogance of truth, as a strain on our seriousness, our dignity in the pursuit of truth! Let us feel the Goethe word

Quite and truly
I am a poor wretch.
My dreams are not true,
And my thoughts go awry.

If we can feel this, then we will be able to cope with our lofty ideal of truth.

On Easter Monday I want to talk to you about the Mystery of Golgotha. Today we may perhaps prepare a little for this. What I have to say today will relate mainly to a New Testament passage which many people find it impossible or at least difficult to understand. At the least it is easily seen that people do not perceive these words to have the deep meaning which they certainly should be given if one considers esoteric Christianity. From another point of view, these words will take us even more deeply into the spirit and the meaning of Christianity. They are words you know well: ‘All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto man: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven him.’⁹⁸

Such words do indeed tell us the meaning of the mission given to Christianity, and essentially the only proper instrument to help us reveal their deep meaning is the view of the world gained through the science of the spirit. Those who come to this world view will have to get used to coming to know the great world mission of the spiritual scientific movement from many different points of view. The world will have to realize more and more that this movement clearly does not exist in order to found some kind of new faith, let alone a new sect or the like. The times when new faiths and new special religions could be founded in the course of human evolution have passed. The future of religious development lies in making the existing religions into one great religion for the whole human race. The movement for spiritual insight does not aim to preach a new religion. It merely wants to be an instrument for gaining insight into the profound religious truths contained in the original religious writings.

I have said on several occasions before that today the tendency in theological and other religious circles is to reduce religious truths to the commonplace, and not take them deeply enough. Just think how it satisfied people to have Christ Jesus considered ‘the simple man of Nazareth’,⁹⁹ a figure people are certainly pleased to consider one of the great ideals of humanity, like Socrates or Plato or Goethe or Schiller, but they do not want to put him too far beyond the level of common humanity. People never think of asking today if it is not true that something that went beyond all common humanity dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. modern humanity seems to have gone far beyond that ancient Gnostic question. The intention had been to call on the whole of human wisdom to understand what really happened in the year 1 of our time. And so people are also satisfied to cover a truth as great as the sin against the holy spirit in a few moralistic phrases, a few, rather commonplace words.

But the original religious writings do not exist to be explained in commonplace terms. No depth is deep enough and no wisdom wise enough to remove the veil that covers them. It is also important not to add anything when we seek to understand the deep meaning. This is none too difficult for a non-academic, non-scientific person; but it is also true that the religious document is so profound that no wisdom suffices to decipher its meaning completely. No mind is so simple that it cannot gain great and sublime impressions from the true original religious writings. Nor should wisdom ever be considered to be so elevated that it goes beyond the limits of a true religious document. This is the point of view and these are the convictions from which we are going to consider those words.

Let us first of all be clear in our minds as to what is meant by the Holy Spirit in true esoteric Christianity and what is meant by the other two aspects of the godhead—the Son, the Word, or Logos, and the Father. It would be wrong to try and penetrate such things by means of speculation or by thinking about them. They do not exist so that anyone may put in whatever meaning suits them. The meaning was given by individuals who are called Christian initiates, and we must go by the things taught in their schools. It is therefore wrong to take the Bible in a superficial way, speculating about the meaning of one passage or another. A true occultist would never do this. He sets about things in a different way, for he knows that there have been esoteric Christian initiation schools where the deep meaning of the original Christian writings was taught. It has never been taught in any other way, and so there are no different points of view with regard to it.

If there is one thing we want to go by, something which in this respect has perhaps come most to the surface of external history, it is the great esoteric Christian school which Paul the apostle himself founded in Athens, the School of Dionysius the Areopagite.¹⁰⁰ Academics have come to speak of a pseudo-Dionysius because writings that bear his name can only be traced back to the 6th century. Academics cannot know the truth in this respect unless they realize that customs have changed enormously through the ages. Today, someone who has a bright idea cannot wait to get it down on paper and into print so that it may flutter out into the world. In earlier times it was the custom to preserve the most sacred truths carefully from the public at large, not to bombard people with them. The only people permitted to receive those truths were people one knew and who had given evidence that they would receive such truths in a worthy manner, having a sense of truthfulness. Initially they were only passed on by mouth, for the intention was that anyone passing on such truths, or indeed revealing the facts relating to them before the eyes of their pupils, would let the words enter only into genuine feelings, into warm hearts that were truly alive. The disciples at those schools had to develop a certain mood, a certain attitude to the most sublime truths.

Today people think a truth may be received whatever one’s mood. This is not a criticism—it is part of evolution. In those days, people took a different view. It did matter then if one received a mathematical or physical truth in one mood or another. People understood that this mood mattered, and even the simplest truths, which ultimately also reveal truths, were received in an exalted mood. They would be received as a revelation of the divine cosmic spirit. Even the mathematical truths representing the divine revelations relating to space would be received in this mood. The school was very much concerned with creating the right attitude, the right sphere of feeling.

In Paul’s school, too, the most sublime truths would only be revealed after intimate preparation. Whilst Paul was preaching to the world at large, his disciples went through their esoteric experiences in Athens. The spirit of that school continued through long periods of time, and because of this the individual who bore the esoteric truth would always be given the same name. The School of Athens continued for centuries and the highest of the teachers was always called Dionysius. This is why the one who wrote the things down in the 6th century, when writing had become more of a custom, also bore that name. You have to know this to understand what this means for the Dionysius school.

Let us now consider the three words ‘Father’, ‘Son’ and ‘Spirit’ in the truly Christian sense. We went into what lies behind these words from another point of view when speaking of the Lord’s Prayer.¹⁰¹ We then came to see what speaks of the divine in the three higher principles of human nature—atman, buddhi, manas. We heard that these three higher principles of human nature are connected with the words ‘name’, ‘realm’ and ‘will’ in the Lord’s Prayer. Today we’ll consider these three human principles from another point of view, as was done in esoteric Christian teaching. Let us briefly recall the relationship between the lower and higher nature of man. In that Christian initiation training it was always taught that man consists of physical body, ether or life body and astral body, and that the I lives within these three human bodies as the inmost part of essential human nature. That was the ‘sacred tetrad’ of which people would speak in the past—physical body, ether or life body, astral body and I.

We have also come to know that the three bodies are transformed by the I in the course of human evolution. We have seen that the I must first of all transform the astral body, the bearer of affects, drives, passions and inner responses. We might also call this astral body the awareness body. Esoteric Christian teaching was that the I has the task of progressively improving and purifying the astral body. And as much of the astral body in a person as has been thus cleansed, purified and improved is called the ‘holy spirit’ in that person in esoteric Christian terms. To use theosophical terms we might also say that the part of the astral body which has been purified through the I is in esoteric Christian terms called ‘the part of the astral body which has been taken hold of by the holy spirit’.

We also know that the I influences the ether or life body to transform, improve and purify it. Whilst in everyday material and non-material life our moral cultural life ennobles the astral body, only the things people take in through religion and art—sensing the eternal in the time form—will change and improve the ether body. The impulses that come from the arts are more powerful than moral teaching, more powerful than the life of rights and government among human beings, for the eternal, immortal shines through in a true work of art. Religious impulses have the most powerful influence on the ether body. Under this influence part of the ether body differentiates out and is transformed into buddhi, the logos, the word. This is known as 'the Christos' in esoteric Christian teaching.

One thing we must always keep in mind when looking at these things is that with the science of the spirit we are not pursuing some kind of grey theory, nor anything removed from the world and alien to life. We are seeking the element in the spirit through which we can have a direct ennobling and purifying influence on these bodies. We must be able to grasp the spiritual principle, live it, and bring it down into life. Only then can we let the insights gained in the realm of the spirit flow through all life, from moment to moment, and make it spiritual. This is practical perception of the spirit. It is not a matter of thinking things out but of letting the spirit flow into our civilization. And so it is also meet and right, at a point where we are speaking of the transformation of the bodies, to draw attention to a practical aspect, namely, what the contemplation of such passages is really meant to convey to us.

When you are in ordinary life with your conscious mind, walking along the streets and crossing the market square, letting life’s influences and impressions come to you, the things you find there will be only part of the whole of your experience. If we do not consider this, we will never come to understand life and perhaps also fail to perceive certain important secrets of our most everyday life. Someone seeking insight in the spirit has to look deeper than someone else would be able to see with the ordinary means our civilization provides today. Our different bodies, the ether and the astral body, also differ in that the outside world influences them in different ways. Everything you take in consciously, giving it your attention, knowing it as you go past it in life, so that it comes to awareness, everything you see outside or in your room that makes an impression on the astral body, creates surges and movements in the astral body. An occultist is able to perceive everything which you experience in full awareness in looking at the movements and currents and everything that shows itself in the astral body.

You can see the infinite importance here of something which people do not really take into account at all in their conscious minds. Beneath the surface of our civilization, things are continually influencing present-day human senses, acting directly on the ether body that is bypassing the astral body and calling up images that are of lasting significance. Beneath the surface of our civilization, such things are all the time having an influence on us. And this is where the science of the spirit needs to draw attention to the more subtle elements that lie beneath our civilization, and has to show how insight can be gained into everyday life by gaining insight into the world of the spirit.

It is simply like this. The people of one age think and do things very differently from those of another. If the former produce horribly bad posters and joke magazines that focus merely on low things, pure sensuality and calculated sensationalism, and the latter do not have such magazines, this reflects for the occultist the things that live in their inclinations and generally also temperaments and character traits. Even conscience mirrors the hidden influences on human beings. If we wanted to study the consciences and also the temperament, mood and inclinations of central Europeans, or Europeans altogether, in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, proceeding by occult methods, we would have to go back to the building styles, the kind of paintings and other cultural elements that were around people in those times. A person would have been in a very different mood walking down streets where everything seen to the left and the right had a relationship to the inner life from the mood you have today when you cross the market square and see quite different things around you. We certainly must not ignore the things that live deeper than conscious awareness, for the very impulses which are connected with the major periods of human civilization have a profound influence. And so we must not underestimate all kinds of things present beneath our present-day civilization that are like the ones I mentioned just now, for there lie the true and real foundations of materialistic feelings and inner responses. That is where we must look for them. And so people should not simply consider one a reactionary when one wants, from a deeper point of view, that nobility and significance should come to expression exactly in these things which have such a profound influence on the human soul, and indeed right down to the form-giving powers of the ether body.

As you can see, therefore, there is a way of looking at things where one is guided not by the prejudices of the age but by spiritual truths. And if we also extend this way of looking at things to the harmful elements in our daily environment which give rise to materialistic views without people having paid them real attention, do you think we shall get far with theories and teachings unless these theories and teachings go right down as far as this? If you know how the more sublime teaching in Christian thinking came to be reflected in paintings, you will not be surprised that they were also reflected in the things that were around people all the time, even if they did not focus their attention on them.

Let us now consider the principle which in Christian esoterics was called ‘the Father’. We know that not only the astral body, but also the ether body and the physical body are transformed through the I. They are transformed unconsciously by people, but consciously so by an esotericist or occultist or someone undergoing esoteric training. Everything that influences only the astral body is mere preparation for the actual esoteric or occult training. Occult training begins when we learn to work into the ether or life body, when the human being is enabled, through the instruction given by the occult teacher, to transform temperaments, inclinations and habits, thus becoming a different person. This alone will give insight into the true higher world—that the person changes. You can study the theory of physics and this will only affect your astral body. You can learn all kinds of things, and they will only affect the astral body. It is only when teachings have such power that they are able to transform the human being that organs develop from inside that allow us to look into the higher world. Then the ether body is transformed and also the physical body. And because the transformation of the physical body comes from the breathing process, bringing rhythm into breathing, a physical body illumined by conscious awareness is called atman. The Christian esoteric term is ‘the Father’.

Within Christian esotericism we have to distinguish between the Holy Spirit—the Christ has as much of the Holy Spirit in him as he has ennobled his astral body; the Son, Logos, Word—the Christ has as much of the son, the Logos, the word in him as he has transformed of the ether body; and thirdly the Father—the Christ has as much of the Father in him (only an initiate can consciously have the Father in him) as he has transformed the physical body, making it eternal. To understand sin or blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the Son or the Father, and learn the Christian way of saying these things, we have to recall the mission of Christianity as the esoteric Christian teachers saw it. I have on some occasions said that the deeper mission of Christianity is given in the words: ‘If anyone comes to me who does not disregard his father and mother, his wife and children and his brothers and sisters as well as his own soul-bearing life, he cannot be my disciple.’¹⁰² Mark also put it in other words: ‘His mother and his brothers came and stood outside and sent to call him. But a crowd was sitting round him. So when they said to him: See how your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside looking for you, he answered them: Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? Looking round at those sitting in the circle he said: See here my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister and my mother.’ In Luke’s gospel we also find: ‘My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.’

Such words speak of Christianity’s real mission. We can understand them if we consider the evolution of the human race, and this will also be the best possible preparation for our discussion of the Mystery of Golgotha next Monday.

Going a long way back in human history we come to a time we call the Lemurian age. As you know we go back through Atlantean times to the Lemurian age. There we find the fourfold human being who we may say was half animal, a human being who did have four bodies—physical body, ether body, astral body and the potential for an I—but was not yet in a position to do any work on the three outer bodies. For the power human beings need to work on their outer bodies in the above-mentioned way first had to enter into those vessels for man’s true essential nature. The I as you know it today, veiling your soul, your deepest nature which already contains as much of the three outer bodies as has been transformed—this did not yet exist then, it was still waiting to enter into the process of evolution. The I was still a hollow space that would receive what today is our deepest, inmost part, our immortal part, as we call it, that goes through all incarnations and can go with the earth when it enters into a different planetary existence. This came down into the human vessel at that time. Before, it had been in the keeping of the godhead, part of divine nature.

On a previous occasion I gave you a picture for the way man was ensouled at that time, with the divine droplet poured into each individual human vessel. I then said that one might take a glass of water—many drops are in it, a mass of fluid. We might then take a thousand tiny little sponges and let each absorb one drop of water. We have then taken many drops from the glass, and something which had been united in the glass has then been distributed among all the small sponges. Something which is now in us and had previously been in the keeping of the godhead as in an element where everything flowed into one, distributed itself at that time among the individual human bodies, so that today each has a drop of this one divine substance in it. This element, which until then had been part of general divine nature, thus became individualized. Just as my ten fingers are part of my organism, so are the souls which are in human bodies today part of the godhead. And just as every finger would become individualized, every finger would receive a life of its own if it were to surround itself with other outer elements, so did the drops resting in the keeping of the godhead become human inner natures.

These human inner natures lived in the human bodies which had been prepared for them at that time. Human bodies looked very different at that time compared to today. Perhaps no one would believe it if I were to describe those bodies which walked about, waiting to be ensouled by the godhead. People who listen to these lectures may be used to some things, but some would be quite surprised, really, if I were to tell them what those bodies were like and how those shapes, grotesque as they would be in our eyes today, gradually changed into the bodies we have today. Who made them look the way they do today? The inner soul itself has done this. The figure, the form of this human soul influenced the body from inside. You get an idea of how this soul was working if you consider the last bits of configuration the soul still does on the human body today.

Consider feelings of shame, anxiety, fear, fright. A feeling of shame makes the blood rush up to make us go red. The colour of the face also changes with anxiety, fear or fright. In the one case it turns red, in the other it grows pale. In my lecture on the blood as a very special fluid,¹⁰³ I showed that the blood is an outer reflection of the inner work of the individual person. Our most intimate nature shoots into the blood—someone who has blood has an I, and someone who has an I has blood. It is therefore a very special fluid. This only applies to warm blood, however, and not to creatures whose blood is sometimes warm and sometimes cold. Today the I influences the blood when we feel shame, fear and fright, changing the body in this definite, subtle way when we feel shame or grow pale from fear, and it also acted like this in those times. The influence which the blood had in the earliest time of human evolution was great and powerful. It reflected, subtly and exactly, the inner power that had entered into the I as its divine content. And because of this the I came to be reflected through the races. Just as people may grow pale or turn red today, so did the inner feeling shape the human body from the inside. When the human being was still soft—he did not yet have fingers—the I created the form from inside, through the blood. Blood is still brought to expression today. The sculpting power comes from the I, via the blood, and develops the human body. In the many different shapes and forms we thus get to know the blood as the vehicle for the I.

In other lectures I spoke of a secret that lies in the earliest Bible stories. I spoke of the image given by saying that Adam grew to be hundreds of years old.¹⁰⁴ This was due to something we call intermarriage, marriage between blood relations. We find it in the early times of every nation, though ve have to go back a long, long way. Then we find small groups everywhere within the earth’s population who are blood-relatives, marrying only within the group. This has an important result. To make it easier for you to understand what needs to be said I once referred to a conversation between Anzengruber and Peter Rosegger.¹⁰⁵ You’ll remember that Rosegger, a good and popular writer, describes the country people in his books the way he sees them; that’s how he presents them to us. Anzengruber describes them in a more living way, his countrymen stand firmly and securely on their feet, as though hewn from wood, absolutely true and sure. The two writers once went out together. Rosegger then said to Anzengruber: ‘You’d be able to give a much better description of the country people if you went into the country and took a look at them there.’ Anzengruber’s reply was: ‘I have never seen such a countryman. But I describe them the way I do because it is in my blood. My father, grandfather, great grandfather and my uncles, too, were country people. And that’s in my blood.’ There was no need for Anzengruber to have seen the country people. The blood had an influence through generations, and this showed itself in the way he wrote about country people.

So you see how the spirit works through the blood, and an I limited to an individual does not stop there but grows strong and spreads through father, grandfather and so on. That’s how it was with Anzengruber, because those country people had only married among themselves. Some level of awareness of this remained. This level of awareness was much higher at the times written about in the first parts of the Bible. People then still had a real memory of things that had happened to their ancestors. There was a time when people remembered not only the things that had happened to themselves in childhood and youth but also had memories of what their father and grandfather had done. This may seem unbelievable to people today, but it is true that in those early times when blood relationship was strictly maintained within a small group and one could not marry outside the community without committing a sin, the I not only had awareness of the character of country people but the son would say of things that had happened to his father, grandfather and so on that they had happened to him. People who after nine hundred years had descended from Adam would say: ‘That has happened to me’, when speaking of things that had happened to Adam. It was a kind of group self that went through generations. And the term Adam, or Abraham, was used to refer to the way the I had thus continued through generations.

This is also what lies behind the stories in the first chapters of the Old Testament You realize that the blood may be seen as an outer reflection of the inner creative soul. How did humanity lose this way of looking upwards into the generations? What caused conscious awareness and memory to be limited to the life of the individual? They were limited because the bond of blood relationship was broken. The old form of blood relationship loosened, small groups became larger ones. A family group became a tribe, the tribe a nation. Humanity could not have developed in any other way but by families coming to be part of tribes, and tribes of nations, breaking the close blood bonds. Memory used to go back up through the generations.

If you recall the many times I’ve said that memory is sustained by the ether body, which reproduces the things that make up memories, you’ll know the connection between blood and ether body. The I impresses itself into the ether body by coming to outward expression in the surges of the blood, in the element that enters into the blood. You’ll recall, however, that someone wanting to be an initiate has to work into the ether body, and here we come close to something that is deeply connected with the mysteries of pre-Christian times. Those mysteries also had to do with the blood. Today we want to see what all this has to do with the blood.

We know that someone who was to be given the pre-Christian initiation had first to be prepared. We know how such an initiation went. The candidate was instructed to transform his qualities and habits and this would make him the kind of human being he needed to be for initiation. I also said that the initiates went back to the adepts of ancient Atlantean times and that the candidate, once suitably prepared, was put into a sleep state for the whole of three and a half days. This was the kind of sleep in which it was possible to lift not only the astral body but also the ether body out of the physical body. The wise individual who initiated the disciple would guide the whole process. The ether body would be lifted out and this made it possible for the initiator to give the disciple the power to experience things in the spirit and have a real perception and experience of the higher world. The ether body would have been set in motion through the preparations that were made, and the disciple would then be able to see into the higher worlds. When he had been brought back, he would be able to bear witness to the truth and reality of the spiritual world. The essential point was that the individual’s conscious mind had to be dimmed, tuned down, and this was connected with lifting out the ether body. He would be wholly under the influence of the initiator.

Let us consider the situation. All existing laws, institutions and social structures ultimately went back to initiation. At the pinnacle of the social structure would be the great initiator. All goals and trends would depend on this. The disciples would take the wisdom that had been revealed out into the world, and those who heard them out there would take their guidance from them and also arrange their social life accordingly. Everything was under the authority of initiation, of the initiator. Everything depended on these. The principle was one of authority based on truth and wisdom, lived out to the highest degree and in the best possible sense. Only the great, wise leaders of humanity were allowed to have such authority. And it was like this without causing any kind of harm to humanity.

What mattered then was to lift the ether body out of the physical body in the right way. This could not be done with just anybody. Anyone who says that this could be done with anybody, is talking in an abstract way and not out of the truth. It needed long preparation to achieve these things. Essentially the blood had to be the right mixture. This is also why great care was taken to see that the generation of priests did not mingle with others. Preparations would continue for centuries to ensure that one of the right descendants would always be available, who might one day be made a true initiate. It was a way of treating the human body in a grand style, in a tremendously mysterious way, a way that was mysterious in the best possible sense of the word. The greatest initiates had been prepared for through centuries to get the right physical principle, the right blood mixture. This whole process of preparing for initiation is the key characteristic of pre-Christian initiation. Yet it could continue for ever in the course of human evolution. For what was this initiation principle about? It had to do with having a clear view of the blood community. The closer we come to understanding community, the more do we come across principles of this kind.

In those very early times, therefore, initiation was based on the blood principle. This came to be broken more and more, from family to family, tribe to tribe, nation to nation. And now the future was making itself felt, with all such blood bonds broken. For where did the community principle reside for human beings when they had come down from the keeping of the godhead? We might say that it flowed through the blood, and the blood therefore had to be taken into account when one wanted to initiate someone.

When the possibility was given, with the warm blood, for the I to make the divine soul quality its own, that divine soul quality flowed through the blood: ‘I’ am he who was, who is and who shall be.’¹⁰⁶ This was indeed the one who spoke as the god Jehovah, saying: ‘I am he who was, who is and who shall be.’ And where did he show himself to be most powerful? In the blood. And how did they guide a human being to initiate him? They would guide him by treating his blood.

These are profound, far-reaching mysteries of ancient times. Someone who only considers Christianity on the surface does not understand it properly. Much thought went into the title of my book, calling it not ‘The mysticism of Christianity’ but Christianity as Mystical Fact. It means that Christianity itself is a mystical fact and can only be understood if one knows that the whole spiritual configuration of the planet earth changed with the coming of Christ Jesus.

Put yourself on a distant planet and imagine you are a seer looking down on to the earth, the earth atmosphere, the earth’s astral body, the bubbling, boiling, billowing mass of animal and human astral bodies. And then imagine you were able to look down on it some centuries before the Christ was born and follow events on into a far distant future. If you were able to follow this you’d see something strange. You would see the astral atmosphere changing profoundly with the coming of Christ Jesus, a tremendous sudden change, so that its shade, its colour, would be different for all future times. Something new entered into the earth’s spiritual atmosphere. Anyone who does not admit that something now exists in the spirit on earth which was not there millennia ago, does not understand Christianity and the preparations that preceded it. You have to consider that something absolutely real came in, something new, and then you know what happened at the beginning of the Christian era.

Looking at it this way you’ll also find the right words for the transformation of the planet earth in the realm of the spirit and have to say to yourself: ‘All close blood bonds broke, everything that kept people together in small blood-based communities gradually disappeared. The small brotherhoods were gradually extended, ultimately to become the large brotherhood that is to include all human beings on earth, with everyone calling everyone else “brother”, and human beings “leaving their mother and father and brother and sister.’” Everything the blood has prepared within a kind of group I, an I that goes beyond the ordinary I, has to vanish from this earth. And when the earth will be ready to be a new astral sphere, the fruit will have germinated, all bonds will have been broken and a single large bond will bring the whole of humanity together. Christ Jesus made it his mission to give the impulse, the power to create this brotherhood. His mission and the ideal of Christianity are thus given in the words: ‘If anyone comes to me who does not disregard his father and mother, his wife and children and his brothers and sisters ... he cannot be my disciple.’ And the rejection: This is not my mother; my mother and my brothers are those who do my father’s will. That is the new spirit that is to come, different from the blood bond.

Please take what I am going to say now not as an image or a symbol, but as something that is real. It is difficult for the materialistic thinking of today to see the reality of such things, but they are real. Let us look on the cross raised up high, and above all the blood flowing from the wounds. Of this blood that flows from the wounds—be clear in your minds of its significance in world history! Why is it flowing? Why do we actually speak of the flowing blood of Christ Jesus? What was the foundation of all close communities? What brought the small tribes together? What must lose its significance within these narrow limits if the whole of humanity is to grow into a brotherhood? The blood. The element that influences the I, pulses in the I, can no longer depend on the blood when the whole of humanity has matured to make brotherhood possible. And so the excess I blood, the blood that causes human beings not to extend their I and let it be universal, must flow out, for it is self-seeking blood, egoistical blood. Consider this not as an image but a reality. Consider the amount of blood that flowed from Christ’s wounds to have been the amount that had to flow so that the blood would lose the tendency to create close communities and thus gain the ability to spread brotherhood over all the earth.

No one perhaps ever came as close to the mystery as Richard Wagner did exoterically in his essay on his conception of Parsifal.¹⁰⁷ Here an exoteric thinker touches on the most profound esoteric mystery truths. If you see things in this light you’ll find that the purpose of Christianity is on the one hand to dissolve the bonds of tribe, family and closely limited communities and on the other to split humanity apart into individuals, so that each feels himself to be an individual and yet also a member of the human race. These are polar opposites that run side by side. In the early times, when groups were small and based on blood relationship, the individual felt himself to be a member of the family, a member of the tribe. And as blood relationship dies out individual independence will grow and increase to the same degree.

This happens because of the event on Golgotha. You can see this from the fact that from that time onwards, when the event happened that was to embrace the whole earth, the religious impulse came to be of the greatest significance. Everything that happened there had been prepared for, and was preparation. The effect of it began when the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost. Speaking in such a way that we speak out of the soul of the other person, that is, no longer egoistically—this was shown in the best possible way in the place where the apostles spoke to all people in all tongues. The Holy Spirit thus prepared the way for the new impulse that was to come through the blood of the Son, the logos, the Christ.

Let us now go back to the ancient initiation principle. This was based on authority. Everyone would look up to the initiates and receive impulses from them. This authority principle is gradually coming to an end. Here we have an apparent contradiction. Humanity is being split up into individuals, with the ancient authority principle no longer valid, and yet brotherhood is to be established in its fullness. By what means is it to be established? By people getting a grasp of what has come as Spirit. What is the nature of this? For the initiate of old it was enough to have the whole wisdom, the truth, and let it flow into the whole of humanity. Now the individual person, with individuality taken to its highest level, must have the truth. Every individual must have truth and wisdom. In those early times, truth came to the individual from the highest pinnacle, and he had to make it his own. The spread of wisdom must go hand in hand with development, and human individualization with the creation of the great human brotherhood. These two things cannot go in parallel; they must go together.

Considering this, we are following the stages by which the Holy Spirit was brought to bear. For as long as human beings obeyed that one and only authority they could, as individuals, give themselves up to life. They were able to live in close communities. The supreme authority took care of the whole. This is no longer possible when the principle of authority is destroyed. Then every individual must take care that brotherhood is maintained. Each individual must be able to take care of the social life within the brotherhood. They must perceive what exists in general, what every individual is preparing. What may this be? We only have to remember how the ancient religions arose. All initiates had the same original wisdom of humanity. But as this wisdom was given to individuals, the state, the clergy and so on gave it specific characteristics, different forms. Buddhism and Zoroastrianism arose in this way. The smaller the communities, the more specialized did things have to be. Now that the great brotherhood has to be created, the wisdom of the initiate must be able to reach the whole of humanity so that every individual can now take care of the things that used to be the responsibility of the initiates.

Wisdom thus comes to the whole of humanity. It is the same for all. And we can see, therefore, that this wisdom, this insight, is the element that was distributed among the separate individuals who ‘leave their father, mother, brother, sister and child’. They shall have this wisdom again, exactly because it is the same for all. To understand what is said of the Holy Spirit we must understand that wisdom is the same for all.

People have not yet got that far, however, for they’ll still say: ‘That’s the way I see it; someone else may have his own point of view.’ This point-of-view idea must be overcome. Humanity had to be split ip so that there could be I-nature, egoism. They have not yet found the way of coming together in one and the same wisdom. They will be able to do so if they truly apply themselves to this wisdom and grow as individual as possible. If they find the spirit of the wisdom that is the same for all they will get out of the habit of saying: ‘That’s the way I see it; that’s my point of view.’ We have to understand that there is no particular point of view when it comes to the wisdom that is the same for all, that having a point of view means that one has not yet progressed far enough. Only then can we grasp the idea of the Holy Spirit. Only imperfect human beings have a point of view. Individuals who are approaching the spirit of wisdom do not have a point of view. They know that they must give themselves up selflessly to the wisdom that is always and forever the same for all. Just as all plants turn to the same sun, so human beings will unite in turning to the One, for one spirit of wisdom will live in them. The principle which originally held people together in the blood has flowed out of the Christ, and now wisdom brings us together again in brotherhood.

This has been reflected most marvellously in the miracle of Pentecost, when the apostles extended their brotherhood into one that embraced the whole of humanity, speaking in words that all could understand. This must show itself more and more, as individual nature reaches its highest development. We are all united in the spirit of truth. All other aspects of human nature will develop further at a much later time, when our planet goes through different stages of embodiment. The one thing, however, which will be alive and active until the earth comes to its fulfilment, is the wisdom that unites, wisdom revealed to us in the way in which it was only revealed to initiates in the past. Anyone who sins against this wisdom, the wisdom that creates brotherhood, cannot be forgiven, for this delays the earth’s evolution, for the earth will only be able to enter into its astral stage once humanity has come together in brotherhood. The spirit which brings the human race together is the one that has been poured out into the future. If we let our astral body be filled with this spirit of wisdom which exists for all, we can take it up into the astral body of the earth.

So now we are able to see that something exists in which the earth may be united. The content of the wisdom is therefore positive theosophy, something that must be reflected in the view of the world that is taken in the science of the spirit. This will not happen if you just say to people: ‘We must unite.’ It is not enough merely to preach brotherhood; moral sermons are empty words. Just as we have to supply a stove with fuel if we want it to get hot, so we must supply wisdom for humanity; this will unite human beings in brotherhood. To talk to people about brotherhood is like talking to the stove, telling it to get hot. No, what will take us forward is to teach in a very real way, concept by concept, idea by idea, conveying the wisdom of the evolution of the world and the nature of the human being. Preaching compassion, and indeed feeling any kind of compassion, means nothing unless we have wisdom. What good is it to someone who has fallen and broken his leg if fourteen people gather round him in the street, overflowing with compassion and love and not one of them can fix the leg! All fourteen of them are useless. But the one who is able to do it can help when he comes, and he will do so if he lives in the spirit.

Ethical principles will come of their own accord. They do not have to be taught. But the one wisdom which is beyond dispute, beyond points of view, the wisdom of which it is said in Christianity that it transfigures the astral body, cleansing it completely—this must come to humanity through the spiritual scientific movement. This is what the mission of Christianity means, it gives us the mission of Christianity.

People should grow more and more independent of all authority and move towards the truth that is the same for all. The brotherhood of humanity will develop of its own accord if people perceive the truth of the most Christian words, the words that are most free and most sublime: ‘And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’¹⁰⁸

If you have two occultists with different views, they do not see the truth. Among true initiates it is not possible to say two different things about one and the same matter. Nor will there be two ways of thinking about it when humanity has reached the path that leads to the unification of the human race, of a brotherliness that is not just a word but an inner power.

• 98. Matthew 12: 31; Mark 3: 28.
• 99. A term used by the Protestant theologian Heinrich Weinel (1874–1936), which Rudolf Steiner would often quote.
• 100. Dionysius the Areopagite (1st century). Greek or Syrian churchman. Mentioned in Acts 17: 34 as a disciple of Paul. At the end of the 5th century On the Heavenly and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies appeared under his name in Syria, translated from Greek into Latin by John Scotus Erigena in the 9th century.
• 101. Lecture of 28 January (in this volume).
• 102. Matthew 19: 29; Mark 10: 29; Luke 14: 26. Second quote from Mark 3: 31-33, third from Luke 8:21.
• 103. Lecture given in Berlin on 25 October 1906. In Supersensible Knowledge (GA 55). See note 95.
• 104. Genesis 5: 3-5.
• 105. 'Another time, going for a walk with Anzengruber... We chatted about creative writing and subjects to write about. I said that he must surely have lived in Upper Bavaria or have had a lot of dealings with the country people of that area. His country figures were very much of that stamp. He put his pince-nez on his strongly hooked nose and said: "Upper Bavaria? No. Actually I never had any dealings with country people. At least not at close hand." Noting my surprise he added: "I don't need that. Just need to see such a one from a distance, hear some ordinary words, observe some gesture of other—and I know the whole chap inside out." "Most peculiar!" "My friend," he said, "you know yourself that all external occasions and opportunities are but midwives. The writer must give birth out of his own resources. Country people? - I'm a city man! But if, as you say, I’m better at writing about country people than city people, it may well be because it is in my blood. Or somewhere in one of my bones, like an inherited kind of gout. My father's family were Upper Austrian farmers. Well, and such things will linger on.'" Gesammelte Werke von Peter Rosegger, Leipzig 1914-16, 36. Band, Gute Kameraden—Personliche Erinnerungen an beruhmte und eigenartige Zeitgenossen, S. 145 f.
• 106. Genesis 3: 14; Rev. 1:8.
• 107. Richard Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen hg. von Wolfgang Goiter, Leipzig o. J., 10. Band, 'Ausführungen zu Religion und Kunst', S. 275 ff.; 'Heldentum und Christentum', insbes. S. 281. See Rudolf Steiner's lectures of 29 July 1906 and 16 January 1907 in The Christian Mystery (GA 97). Tr. A. R. Meuss. Gympie, Australia: Completion Press 2000.
• 108. John 8: 32.

We have been asked to say something about Freemasonry. This cannot be understood, however, until we have examined the original spiritual currents related to Freemasonry, which can be seen as its sources. An even more important spiritual current than Rosicrucianism was Manicheism. So first we need to speak about this much more important movement and then, at a later time, we can shed a light on Freemasonry.

What I have to say on this subject is connected with various things which influence the spiritual life of today and will influence it in time to come. And to illustrate how one who is actively engaged in this field constantly comes across something—if only obliquely—I would point out, by way of introduction, that on many occasions I have described the problem of Faust¹ as of particular importance for modern spiritual life. And that is why the modern spiritual movement is brought into connection with the problem of Faust in the first number of Luzifer.² The allusion I made to the problem of Faust in my essay in Luzifer is not without a certain reason.

In order to bring the things with which we are concerned into connection with one another, we must start from a spiritual tendency which first manifested in about the third century A.D. It is that spiritual movement whose great opponent was St. Augustine,³ although before he went over to the side of the Catholic Church he was himself an adherent of this faith. We have to speak about Manicheism, which was founded by a person who called himself Mani⁴ and lived about the time of the third century A.D. This movement spread from a part of the world which was then ruled by the kings of the Near East; that is to say, from a region of Western Asia Minor. This Mani was the founder of a spiritual movement which although at first only a small sect, became a mighty spiritual current. The Albigenses, Waldenses and Cathars⁵ of the Middle Ages are the continuation of this current, to which also belong the Knights Templar, of whom we shall speak separately,⁶ and also—by a remarkable chain of circumstances—the Freemasons. Freemasonry really belongs to this stream, though it is connected with others, for instance with Rosicrucianism.⁷

What outer history has to say about Mani is very simple.⁸

It is said that there once lived a merchant in the Near East who was very learned. He compiled four important works: first, Mysteria, secondly, Capitola, thirdly, Evangelium, and lastly Thesaurus. It is further related that at his death he left these writings to his widow who was a Persian. This widow, on her part, left them to a slave whose freedom she had bought and whom she had liberated. That was the said Mani, who then drew his wisdom out of these writings, though he was also initiated into the Mithraic mysteries.⁹ Mani is called the ‘Son of the Widow’, and his followers are called the ‘Sons of the Widow.’ However, Mani described himself as the ‘Paraclete’.¹⁰ the Holy Spirit promised to mankind by Christ. We should understand by this that he saw himself as one incarnation of the Holy Spirit; he did not mean that he was the only one. He explained that the Holy Spirit reincarnated, and that he was one such reincarnation.

The teaching which he proclaimed was opposed in the most vigorous fashion by Augustine after he had gone over to the Catholic Church. Augustine opposed his Catholic views to the Manichean teaching which he saw represented in a personality whom he called Faustus.¹¹ Faustus is, in Augustine's conception, the opponent of Christianity. Here lies the origin of Goethe's Faust, and of his conception of evil. The name ‘Faust’ goes back to this old Augustinian teaching.

One usually hears it said about Manichean teaching that it is distinguished from western Christianity by its different interpretation of evil. Whereas Catholic Christianity regards evil as an aberration from its divine origin, the defection of originally good spirits from God, Manicheism teaches that evil is just as eternal as good; that there is no resurrection of the body, and that evil, as such, will continue for ever. Evil, therefore, has no beginning, but springs from the same source as good and has no end.

If you come to know Manicheism in this form it will seem radically unchristian and quite incomprehensible.

Now we should like to study the matter thoroughly according to the traditions which are supposed to have originated from Mani himself, and so see what it is all about. An external clue is given us in the Manichean legend; just such a legend as the Temple Legend, which I recounted to you recently. All such spiritual currents connected with initiation are expressed exoterically in legends, but the legend of Manicheism is a great cosmic legend,¹² a super-sensible legend.

It tells us that at one time the spirits of darkness wanted to take the kingdom of light by storm. They actually reached the borders of the kingdom of light and hoped to conquer it. But they failed to achieve anything. Now they were to be punished—and that is a very significant feature which I beg you to take account of—they were to be punished by the kingdom of light. But in this realm there was nothing which was in any way evil, there was only good. Thus the demons of darkness could only have been punished with something good. So what happened? The following: The spirits of light took a part of their own kingdom and mixed it with the materialised kingdom of darkness. Because there was now a part of the kingdom of light mingled with the kingdom of darkness, a leaven had been introduced into the kingdom of darkness, a ferment which produced a chaotic whirling dance, whereby it received a new element into itself; i.e. death. Therefore, it continually consumes itself and thus carries within itself the germ of its own destruction. It is further related that just because of this, the race of mankind was brought into existence. Primeval man represents just what was sent down from the kingdom of light to mix with the kingdom of darkness and to conquer, through death, what should not have been there; to conquer it within his own being.

The profound thought which lies in this is that the kingdom of darkness has to be overcome by the kingdom of light, not by means of punishment, but through mildness; not by resisting evil, but by uniting with it in order to redeem evil as such. Because a part of the light enters into evil, the evil itself is overcome.

Underlying that is the interpretation of evil which I have often explained as that of theosophy. What is evil? Nothing but an ill-timed good. To cite an example which has often been quoted by me, let us assume that we have to do with a virtuoso pianist and an excellent piano technician, both perfect in their sphere. First of all the technician has to build the piano and then hand it over to the pianist. If the latter is a good player he will use it appropriately and both are equally good. But should the technician go into the concert hall instead of the pianist and start hammering away he would then be in the wrong place. Something good would have become something bad. So we see that evil is nothing else than a misplaced good.

When what is especially good at one time or another strives to be preserved, to become rigid and thus curb the progress of further development, then, without doubt, it becomes evil, because it opposes the good. Let us suppose that the leading powers of the lunar epoch, though perfect in their way and in their activity, were to continue to intermingle with evolution though they ought to have ceased their activity, then they would represent something evil in earth evolution. Thus evil is nothing else than the divine, for, at that other time, what is evil when it comes at the wrong season, was then an expression of what is perfect, what is divine.

We must interpret the Manichean views in this profound sense, that good and evil are fundamentally the same in their origin and in their ending. If you interpret it in this way you will understand what Mani really intended to bring about. But, on the other hand, we still have to explain why it was that Mani called himself the ‘Son of the Widow’¹³ and why his followers were called the ‘Sons of the Widow’.

When we turn back to the most ancient times, before our present Root Race, the mode in which mankind acquired knowledge was different. You will perceive from my description of Atlantis—and also, when the next issue of Luzifer appears, you will see from my description of Lemuria¹⁴—that at that time, and to a certain extent up to the present day, all knowledge was influenced by what is above mankind. I have often mentioned that that Manu¹⁵ who will appear during the next Root Race will for the first time be a real brother to his fellow men, whereas all earlier Manus were superhuman, divine beings of a kind. Only now is man becoming ripe enough to have one of his brother men as his Manu, who has passed through all stages with him since the middle of Lemuria. What is really taking place then, during the evolution of the fifth Root Race? This, that the revelation from above, the guidance of the soul from above, is gradually being withdrawn, so that man is left to go his own way and become his own leader.

The soul was always known as the ‘mother’ in all esoteric (mystical) teachings; the instructor was the ‘father’. Father and mother, Osiris and Isis, those are the two forces present in the soul: the instructor, representing the divine which flows directly into man, Osiris, he that is the father; the soul itself, Isis, the one who conceives, receives the divine, the spiritual into itself, she is the mother. During the fifth Root Race, the father withdraws. The soul is widowed. Humanity is thrown back onto itself. It must find the light of truth within its own soul in order to act as its own guide. Everything of a soul nature has always been expressed in terms of the feminine. Therefore the feminine element—which exists only in a germinal state today and will later be fully developed—this self-directing feminine principle which is no longer confronted by the divine fructifier, is called by Mani the ‘Widow’. And therefore he calls himself ‘Son of the Widow’.

Mani is the one who prepares that stage in man's soul development when he will seek for his own soul-spirit light. Everything which comes from Mani is an appeal to man's own spirit light of soul, and at the same time is a definite rebellion against anything which does not come out of man's own soul,out of man's own observation of his soul. Beautiful words have been handed down from Mani¹⁶ and have been the leading theme of his followers at all later times. We hear the words: You must lay aside everything which you have acquired as outer revelation by means of the senses. You must lay aside all things which come to you via outer authority; then you must become ripe to gaze into your own soul.

St. Augustine, on the other hand—in a conversation which made him into an opponent of the Manichean Faust—voiced the opinion: ‘I would not accept the teachings of Christ if they were not founded on the authority of the Church’.¹⁷ The Manichean Faust said,¹⁸ however: ‘You should not accept any teaching on authority; we only wish to accept a doctrine in freedom.’ That illustrates the rebellious self-sufficiency of the spirit light which comes to expression so beautifully in the Faust saga.¹⁹

We meet this confrontation also in later sagas in the Middle Ages: on the one hand the Faust saga, on the other, the Luther saga.²⁰ Luther carries on the principle of authority.²¹ Faust, on the other hand, rebels, he puts his faith in the inner spirit light. We have the saga of Luther; he throws the inkwell at the devil's head. What appears to him to be evil he thrusts aside. And on the other hand we have Faust's pact with the devil. A spark from the kingdom of light is sent into the kingdom of darkness, so that when the darkness is penetrated, it redeems itself, evil is overcome by gentleness. If you think of it in this fashion you will see that this Manicheism fits in very well with the interpretation which we have given of evil.

How do we imagine the interworking of good and evil? We have to explain it as the harmonisation of life with form.²² How does life change over into form? Through coming up against resistance, through not manifesting all at once in one particular shape. Take note, for instance, how life in a plant—let us say a lily—speeds on from form to form. The life in the lily has fashioned, has elaborated, the form of the lily.

When this form has been created, life overcomes it and passes over into the seed to be reborn as the same life in a fresh form. And so life strides onward from form to form. Life itself is formless and could never perceptibly manifest its vital forces. The life of the lily, for instance, exists in the first lily and progresses to the second, third, fourth and so on. Everywhere there is the same life which appears in a limited form, spreading and interweaving. The fact that it appears in a limited form is a restriction imposed upon this universal flowing life. There would be no form if life were not restricted, if it were not arrested in its flowing force which radiates in all directions. It is just what remains behind, which, from a higher stage, appears like a fetter; it is just out of this that form evolves in the great cosmos.

What comprises life is always set in the framework of a form which was life in an earlier time. Example: the Catholic Church. The life which existed in the Catholic Church from St. Augustine until the fifteenth century was the Christian life. The life therein is Christianity. Ever and again this pulsating life emerges anew (the mystics). Where does the form come from? It is no less than the life of the old Roman Empire. What was still alive in the old Roman Empire has frozen into form. What was at first a Republic, then an Empire, what lived in outward appearance as the Roman State, surrendered its life, frozen into form, to the later Christianity; even its capital city, Rome, was previously the capital city of the Roman Empire, and the Roman provincial officers have their continuation in the presbyters and bishops. What was previously life later becomes form for a higher stage of life.

Is it not the same with human beings? What is human life? The fructification from above (Manas fructification), implanted into man in mid-Lemurian times, has today become his inner life. The form is what is carried over, as seed, from the lunar epoch. At that time, in the lunar period, the life of man consisted of the development of the astral body; now this has become the sheath, the form. Always the life of a former epoch becomes the form of a later epoch. In the harmonisation of form and life that other problem is expressed too: the problem of good and evil, through the fact that the good of a former epoch is joined to the good of a later epoch, which is fundamentally nothing but a harmonisation of progress with the things which hinder progress. That is what, at the same time, makes material existence possible, makes it possible for things to appear in outward form. It is our human existence on the solid mineral plane: soul life and what remains of the life of an earlier epoch hardened into a restrictive form. That, too, is the teaching of Manicheism regarding evil.

If we now pose the question from this point of view: What are Mani's intentions, what is the meaning of his statement that he is the Paraclete, the Spirit, the Son of the Widow? It means no less than that he intends to prepare for the time in which the men of the sixth Root Race will be guided out of their own being, by their own soul's light, to overcome outward forms and convert them to spirit.

Mani's intention is to create a spiritual current which goes beyond the Rosicrucian current,²³ which leads further than Rosicrucianism. This current of Mani's will flow over to the sixth Root Race and has been in preparation since the founding of Christianity. It is just at the time of the sixth Root Race that Christianity will be expressed in its most complete form. Its time will truly have come. The inner Christian life, as such, overcomes every form, it is propagated by external Christianity and lives in all forms of the various confessions. Whoever seeks Christian life will always find it. It creates forms and destroys forms in various religious systems. It does not depend upon a search for conformity in the outward forms in which it is expressed, but it depends upon experiencing the inner life stream which is always current under the surface. What is still waiting to be made is a form for the life of the sixth Root Race. That must be created beforehand, it has to be there so that Christian life can be poured into it. This form has to be prepared by human beings who create an Organisation, a form, so that the true Christian life of the sixth Root Race can find its place therein. And this external form of society must derive from the intention which Mani has fostered, from the small group whom Mani has prepared. That must be the outer form of Organisation, the congregation in which the spark of Christianity will first be truly kindled.

From this you will be able to conclude that Manicheism will endeavour, first and foremost, to preserve purity in outer life; for its aim is to produce human beings who will provide an adequate vessel in the future. That is why such great stress was laid on absolute purity of mind and of life. The Cathars were a sect which rose like a meteor in the twelfth century. They called themselves Cathars because ‘cathar’ means ‘pure one’. They strove for purity in their way of life and in their moral attitude. They had to seek catharsis (purification) both inwardly and outwardly in order to form a community which would provide a pure vessel. That is what Manicheism was striving for. It was less a question in Manicheism of the cultivation of the inner life—for life will flow onwards through other channels—but rather the cultivation of the external form of life.

Now let us look at what is to come about during the sixth Root Race. Good and evil will then contrast very differently from the way that they do today. What will be evident to all mankind in the fifth Round²⁴—that the outer physiognomy which each one acquires will directly mirror what Karma has made out of him—that will express itself spiritually in the sixth Root Race like a prelude to this event. Among those on whom Karma has bestowed an excess of evil, it will become particularly evident on a spiritual level. On the one hand there will be human beings possessing mighty inner forces of good, who will be gifted with great love and goodness; but, on the other hand, the opposite will also be seen. Evil will be present as a disposition without any disguise in a great many people, no longer cloaked or hidden from view. The evil ones will extol evil as something of particular worth. A glimmering of this delight in evil and the demonic pertaining to the sixth Root Race is already in evidence in certain men of genius. Nietzsche's ‘blonde beast’,²⁵ for example, is a portent of this.

The unalloyed evil must be cast out of the stream of world evolution like dross. It will be relegated to the eighth sphere.²⁶ Today we stand immediately at the threshold of a time when good must consciously come to terms with evil.

The sixth Root Race will have the task of drawing evil back into the continuing stream of evolution through kindness. Then a spiritual current will have been born which does not oppose evil, even though it manifests in the world in its demonic form. The consciousness will have been established in the successors to the ‘Sons of the Widow’ that evil must be included again in evolution and be overcome, not by strife, but only through charitableness. It is the task of the Manichean spiritual stream forcefully to prepare for this. This spiritual stream will not die out, it will make its appearance in many forms. It appears in forms which many can call to mind but which need not be mentioned today. If it were to function merely in the cultivation of an inner mood of soul, this current would not achieve what it should do. It must express itself in the founding of communities which, above all, will look upon peace, love and passive resistance to evil as their standard of behaviour and will seek to spread this view. For they must create a receptacle, a form, for the life which will continue to exist even without their presence.

Now you can understand how it is that Augustine, the leading spirit of the Catholic Church, who developed the form of the Church very precisely in his City of God, who worked out the form for contemporary life, was of necessity the most violent opponent of that kind of form which is preparing for the future. Two polar opposites confront one another, Faust and Augustine: Augustine, who based his work on the Church, on the form belonging to his day, and Faust, who strives to prepare in man a sense for the form of the future.

That is the contrast which developed in the third and fourth centuries A.D. It is still present and finds expression in the struggle of the Catholic Church against the Knights Templars, the Rosicrucians, Albigenses, Cathars and so on. All of them are eliminated from the physical plane, but their inner spirit continues to be active. This contrast manifests again later in modified but still violent form in two currents born out of Western culture, that of Jesuitism (pertaining to Augustine) and that of Freemasonry²⁷ (Manicheism). Those who lead the battle on the one side are all conscious of what they are doing—they are the Catholics and Jesuits of the higher degrees. Of those, however, who are on the other side, who lead the battle in the spirit of Mani, only very few are conscious; only those at the head of the movement are conscious of it.

Thus Jesuitism (belonging to Augustine) and Freemasonry (Manicheism) confront one another in later centuries. They are the offspring of ancient spiritual currents. That is why you have in both these currents a continuation of the same ceremonies connected with initiation that you find in the old currents. The initiation into Jesuitism has the four degrees: Coadjutores temporales, Scholares, Coadjutores spirituales, Professi. The degrees of initiation in the true occult Freemasonry are similar. The two run parallel to one another but they point in quite different directions.²⁸

• 1 . See: Goethe's Standard of the Soul, Anthroposophical Publishing Co., 1925; Goethe's Secret Revelation and the Riddle of Faust, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., 1933; The Problem of Faust, (R. 55)—especially lecture of 3rd November 1917.
• 2 . The first number of Rudolf Steiner's Luzifer, a periodical concerned with soul life, spiritual development and theosophy, with its opening article on Luzifer, appeared in June 1903.
• 3 . The famous Church Father (354–430 A.D.) was, according to his own confession, a disciple of Manicheism for nearly nine years until his ‘conversion.’ See lecture of 26.12.1914, in Festivals of the Seasons.
• 4 . Originally Mani is said to have been called ‘Corbicius.’ ‘Mani’ was the name which he gave himself and, according to Schmitt (see note concerning the text), this has the significance: ‘an Aeon of the Mandeans: Mana raba, which is as much as to say: the promised Comforter, the Paraclete.’ The date of Mani's life is usually considered to be 215/16–276/7 A.D.
• 5 . According to Charles William Heckethorn (see note to lecture 3 of 30th September 1904): ‘The sect of the Albigenses, the offspring of Manicheism, fructified in its turn the germs of the Templars and Rosicrucians, and of all those associations that continued the struggle and fought against ecclesiastical and civil oppression.’ The relationship between Manicheism and Freemasonry is expressed thus by Heckethorn: ‘Masons in this degree call themselves the “children of the widow”, the sun on descending into his tomb leaving nature—of which Masons consider themselves the pupils—a widow; but the appellation may also have its origin in the Manichean sect, whose followers were known as the “sons of the widow”.’
  
  According to Joseph Schauberg in his book (Vergleichendes Handbuch der Symbolik der Freimaurerei mit besonderer Rucksicht auf die Mythologien und Mysterien des Altertums) on the symbolism of Freemasonry, a copy of which was in Rudolf Steiner's library: ‘... nearly all Freemasonry symbols show that the Masons of old believed in and dedicated their service to a worship of the light after the manner of the Oriental sects of the Parsecs, Sabaeans, perhaps also of the Manicheans.’
• 6 . There is no evidence to show when this could have taken place in this context. See also sixth lecture (25th September 1916) in Inner Impulses working in the Evolution of Mankind, (R. 45), and lecture of 2nd October 1916 (Z 425).
• 7 . The origin of Freemasonry and its connection with Rosicrucianism is a much debated and unsolved theme, even in the literature of Freemasonry itself, whereas it has hardly even been touched on in serious historical studies. A first attempt in this direction, if exclusively from a rational and a spiritual point of view, is the work of Frances A. Yates: The Rosicrucian Enlightenment.
• 8 . At this point the contents of Rudolf Steiner's lecture seem to have been very inadequately reported. He based what he had to say on a legend which he later repeated in a lecture for members (according to notes lacking date or indication of locality). In the aforementioned notes the literal transcript is as follows: ‘Mani, or Manes, the founder of Manicheism appeared in the third century A.D. in Babylon. An unusual legend has the following to say about him: Skythianos and Terebinthus, or Buddha, were his predecessors. The latter was the pupil of the former. After the violent death of Skythianos, Terebinthus fled with the books to Babylon. He also suffered misfortune; the only one to accept his teachings was an elderly widow. She inherited his books and left them, at her death, to her foster child, a twelve year old boy whom she had adopted out of slavery when he was seven years old. The latter, who might also be called a “Son of the Widow”, came to public notice at the age of 24 as Manes, the founder of Manicheism.’
  
  This legend is dealt with at length and with full references as to source in the work of D. Schwolsohn: Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, Petersburg and Leipzig, 1856. (The detailed source references are not quoted in what follows):
  
  ‘Now that it has been established that Manicheism has been derived from Mandaism, we shall attempt to throw light on the account given of Mani by another of the Church Fathers. According to Epiphanius, Cyrillus Hierosolymitanus, Socrates and the author of the Acta Disputationis S. Archelai (Acta Archelai) with whom Theodoretus Suidas and Cedrenus in part agree, Mani was not the real founder of Manicheism but had as his predecessor a certain Scythianus and the latter's pupil, Terebinthus, who afterwards called himself Buddha. It goes on to say that anyone who wished to make a denial of the heresy of Manicheism, must at the same time abjure Zarades (Zoroaster), Buddha and Scythianus. According to the Acta Archelai, the last-named was a Scyth from Scythia—which accounts for his name, which was not really Scythianus—and he appeared at the time of the Apostles, when he started to spread his doctrine of the two principles. He is said to have been a Saracen by birth and married a woman from upper Thebes, for whose sake he settled in Egypt, where he became acquainted with the wisdom of the Egyptians. Epiphanius, Socrates and Cyrillus, Hierosolymitanus give similar accounts, only the first of these says that he was a Saracen by birth, was educated in Arabia and journeyed to India and Egypt, and the last mentioned says emphatically that his teachings had nothing in common with either Judaism or Christianity. He, or his pupil Terebinthus, was the author of four books, which the latter, after his emigration to Babylon, left to a widow when he died. Mani, the slave of this widow, inherited these writings from her and proclaimed their doctrines as his own. Theodoretus, Suidas and Cedrenus have the same to say of Terebinthus and Mani, only they identify the latter with Scythianus; Theodoritus even goes so far as to say that the reason why Mani was called Scythianus was that he was a slave, and Suidas and Cedrenus say that by birth he was a Brahmin. Bauer maintains that these two predecessors of Mani, Scythianus and Terebinthus-Buddha could not possibly be held to be historical personages: “Alone the obvious anachronism that Scythianus is reckoned as belonging to the time of the Apostles, and then to make his successor, Mani, appear soon after, is enough to make us suspicious of the historical truth of the whole story”. This, however, is quite a wrong supposition. The time of the Apostles lasted until Trajan, who died in 117, for, according to Eusebius, John the Evangelist only died during Trajan's reign. When it is said that Scythianus appeared during the time of the Apostles, it is only the last years of the said Apostle which are meant. As proof of this a point made by Suidas will serve, to the effect that the Emperor Nerva (who reigned from 97 A.D. for 1 year and 4 months) recalled the Evangelist, John, from Patmos, where he had been in exile, to Ephesus; at that time, adds Suidas, the dogma of the Manicheans became known through the public proclamation of Mani's heresy. The latter statement, however, is almost certainly founded on mistaken identity: for, in another place, Suidas himself says that Manes lived at the time of the Emperor Aurelian (reigned from 271–275). Without doubt, Suidas gleaned from his source that Scythianus proclaimed his dualistic doctrine at the time of Nerva and as he, as mentioned above, confused Manes with Scythianus, he substituted the former for the latter. According to that Scythianus started proclaiming his doctrine at the time of Nerva, that is to say, in 97 A.D. His pupil, Terebinthus-Buddha, may therefore have lived until 170 or 180 A.D., or even longer. Mani appears to have been born about 190 A.D. En-Nadim informs us (on the authority of Mohammed ben Is'haq Sahrmani, who is otherwise unknown) that Mani came before Schabur Ardsir (Sapores I) in the second year of the reign of the Roman Emperor Gallus (Trebonianus), who commenced his rulership November 251 A.D. As en-Nadim further adds, this took place on April lst, according to the Manicheans; that is to say, on April lst 253 A.D. But as Mani, according to en-Nadim, had been wandering the land and gathering pupil@ for forty years before he came before Schabur and was already twenty-four years old before he started to preach his doctrines, it follows from this that he must have been born around the year 190 A.D. According to the reports of the above mentioned Church Fathers, Mani did not come into direct personal contact with Terebinthus, but arrived as a seven year old boy at the house of the widow, in whose possession were the writings of the already deceased Terebinthus. The chronology therefore fits in very well and Scythianus and Terebinthus-Buddha can very well both be historical personages; only Bauer makes the conjecture, for reasons which have much in their favour, that Scythianus and Terebinthus-Buddha are identical, which could be so, as Mani, as stated above, never came into personal contact with either of them. But the questions remain: who was Scythianus and whence did he obtain his dualistic teaching? The Acta Archelai states specifically that he was a Scyth from Scythia and yet he is generally called a Saracen. We explain this contradiction in the following way: he was born in a northeastern province of Parthia, which in later times went under the general name of Scythia. Afterwards he wandered to the Near East, namely southern Mesopotamia and north-eastern Arabia (whence the name “Saracen”) and, at the time of Nerva, he was proclaiming his dualistic teaching and became the precursor of Mani. Bauer expressed himself likewise. El'hasai'h, or Elchasai', or Elkasai' (founder of the sect of the Ssabiers or Sabians, mentioned in the Koran—otherwise Mandaeans) also came from northeastern Parthia and proclaimed his dualistic doctrine in the same region and at the same time as Scythianus and was also, in certain respects, a precursor of Mani, as has been shown above. Does it not appear to be a reasonable conjecture to suppose that Scythianus, who was named after his birth place, is identical to the El'hasai'h of en-Nadim, the Elchasai' of the Pseudo-Origines and the Elkasai' of Epiphanius and Theodoretus?
  
  After what has been said there can be no further doubt about the influence of Parsism on Mendaeism, a fact which was already suspected by Lorsbach. Bauer would see indications of the spread of Buddhism—with its consequent influence on Manicheism—in the accounts of Scythianus and Terebinthus-Buddha, whom he identifies, but to whom he attaches no historical reality. This he would see substantiated in many ways, one of which is the abjuration formula of the Manicheans who, on conversion to the Church, were required to denounce Buddha among others. An influence of Buddhism in the Near East at such an early date is certainly a possibility; for enNedim states specifically that Buddhism had penetrated into Transoxiana even before Mani's time. Weber also finds it “highly probable that Buddhist missionaries, urged on by their fresh religious zeal, had spread over the further parts of western Iran” at the time of which he was speaking (the time of the Greek rulership of India). Weber adds, however, that data on the subject are wanting. In another place he remarks: “the important influence which Buddhism had on the teaching of Mani is easily explained by the flowering of the same under the Yueitchi-Princes of Indo-Scythia, whose rulership spread temporarily over a large part of the eastern provinces of Iran”. We are also of the opinion that the account which Mas'udi gives of the journeys of Budasp (Buddha) to Seg'estan, Zabulistan and Kerman point to an early spread of Buddhism in Persia. If, then, according to this, Scythianus, who in our opinion is a well-authenticated historical personality, was the disseminator of Buddhist doctrines, so, according to the above arguments, we would have to look for Buddhist elements and Buddhist influences among the Mendaeans. Perhaps the many assertions of Mohammedan writers to the effect that Budasp (Buddha) was the founder of the cult of the Ssabiers arose out of an actual historical influence of Buddhism on the Mendaeans, who were originally called Ssabiers by the Mohammedans. The genetic origin of both Buddhism and Mendaeism is still insufficiently known for us to be able to form conclusive views about the influence of the former on the latter. We will therefore content ourselves with gentle hints and indications to future investigators, which may perhaps help towards clearing up the problem.’
  
  Even though the latest research no longer pays heed to this legend, because it ascribes a different origin to Mani, it is not thereby invalidated as a description of Mani's ‘spiritual’ origin. Compare note 13: ‘why it was that Mani called himself the “Son of the Widow”’—and Rudolf Steiner's ninth lecture of the cycle given in Munich in 1909: The East in the Light of the West, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., and Anthroposophic Press
• 9 . According to Franz Cument: The Mithras Mysteries, Manicheism was the inheritor of the Mithras Mysteries and the continuator of their mission.
• 10. Compare once more with lecture 9 of The East in the Light of the West, quoted above.
• 11. In his writing: Contra Faustum. Regarding Faustus, compare Bruckner: Faustus von Mileve, Basle, 1901, where Faustus is described as an important representative of Manicheism in Roman cultural circles.
• 12. The legend is given as follows by Eugen Heinrich Schmitt (see notes referring to text above referring to Schmitt).
  
  ‘“While the Powers of Darkness were chasing and devouring one another in a wild rage they arrived one day at the borders of their territory. Here they glimpsed a few beams of the Kingdom of Light and were so struck by the 'splendid sight that they decided to relinquish their quarrels among themselves and took counsel together as to how they could gain mastery over the Good which they had just seen for the first time and of which they formerly had no notion. Their desire thereafter was so great that all of them, as many as there were, armed themselves for battle.” This is the description of events given by Titus of Bostra. In a similar way Alexander of Lycopolis presents it to us: “In the Hyle (Matter) desire arose to climb to the upper regions; there was espied the Divine Ray of Light which engendered so much amazement that a decision was immediately formed to get the same into its power.” Of the measures taken by the threatened Kingdom of Light we are informed by the Acts of Archelaus (Acta disputationis cum Maneta, Chap. 7): “As the Father of Light became aware that the Darkness was about to attack his holy Domain, he allowed a force to emanate from him which is called the Mother of Life, this, in its turn, produced from itself Archetypal Man who, arrayed with the five pure Elements; Light, Fire, Wind, Water, Earth, descended to the earth like an armed warrior to do battle against Darkness.” Manes himself gives the name of the Universal or World-Soul to this force which emanates from God. We can recognise here the same force which is called the Heavenly Mother or Holy Spirit by Bardesanes and other Gnostics (According to Titus of Bostra 1. 29. Compare Bauer: Manicheism).
  
  ‘When Hyle made its attack, God held counsel to decide on a punishment, says Alexander of Lycopolis. But, as he had no means of punishment—there being no Evil in the House of God—he sent forth a force, a Soul-Force, against Matter, so that Matter was penetrated through and through and death consumed it with the force of this separation, with the force of this inner division and confusion which resulted from being mixed together in this way. It reminds us of the saying of Christ: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.” (Luke 11. 17). The latter interpretation contains the deeper esoteric meaning of the above battle. Not force against force, not evil against evil can be the recompense of the gentle light of heaven of which the moral was proclaimed by Christ. His victory must be achieved in quite a different way: in the form of a quiet disintegration in which the Forces of Light act as a kind of ferment to leaven the dough of matter; thus the Gospel describes the battle of the Light in such a wonderfully meaningful fashion. The pictures which Mani gives describe exactly the same event as the Gospel, but in more detail and with a depth which corresponds to the more mature historical setting.
  
  ‘Therefore it is exactly the same thought which is expressed in the further unfolding of this Manichean hero-tale. In the struggle against the opposing forces of Hyle the heavenly hero is not able to prevail, although, like Proteus of the Greek saga, he constantly disguises himself and takes on the shape of the various elements. The Demons overcome him and gain possession of his armour; yes, they appropriate many pieces of his radiant, sun-like nature to themselves and he would have been entirely at their mercy had he not called out to the Father, the Primeval Source of Light! The latter sent him the help of the Spirit of Life (pneuma zoon), who stretched forth the succour of his right hand and drew him up again out of darkness into the Heights of Light. “That is why”, adds the Acta Archelaus Chapter 7, “when Manicheans meet one another they give each other the right hand, as a token that they have been rescued out of darkness; for, in darkness, says Mani, live all heresies.” This point is of particular interest, because it quite openly states the object of this allusion, “heresy”, which in this case refers to the Ecclesiastical, Satanic doctrine, which has known how to appropriate the Garment of Light, the outward form of Christianity, to itself to deceive and captivate the nobler souls. These are the plundered sun-like parts of Archetypal Man, which have come under the dominion of depravity-seeking mankind; a depravity which took on the appearance of sanctity through this act of plunder. It is, however, only one aspect of the meaning of this myth, which embraces both evolution and history. The noblest parts of Archetypal Man, his Sons, as it were, were fixed in the heavens as Sun and Moon by the Spirit of Life. These are the symbols of the all-illuminating Light and Life of Christ and the Paraclete, whereas the other stars, as scattered, expired light, are fixed in the heavens as the Demons of the Night. This Spirit of Life makes his appearance as the tamer of material existence, as the Spirit who brings measure and sets a limit to matter. He was therefore given the name “Architect of the Universe” by the Manicheans and essentially he plays the part of Horos, or Horothathos, the boundary-marker of Valentius. That part of divine Life and Light, however, which is held captive in the nature forms of the plants, animals and Man, is given the name: suffering Jesus: the Man of Sorrows: Jesus Patibilis. In the sense of Manicheism, however, Jesus only represents this divine figure when he surmounts the restricted sufferings within the narrow limits of the body, when it was nailed to the Cross on the hill near Jerusalem. He becomes the Saviour of the World only when he identifies his Divine Life with that of all the suffering beings of a world yearning for his redeeming, light-shedding thoughts. And nothing is more characteristic of the crudity of the basic views of the Constantinian Church than that its chief exponent, the great Augustine, was morally unable to find anything in these thoughts but a calumny and defilement and humiliation which would have been sufficient to make the Manicheans blush. On the other hand, we have seen with what delicacy Mani discharged himself of his task of rendering tangible a struggle between the forces of the Divine and the forces of Matter, of Evil, of Violence and the Demonic, and how beautifully he is able to honour the holy majesty of powerless mildness and to bring forth the dawning of a more noble culture of which the rough Roman mind of an Augustine had no inkling.’
• 13. The Manicheist scholar, Hans Heinrich Schaeder, writes in his study of Origin and Development of the Manichean System, from his collection of lectures, 1924–1925, from the Warburg Library: ‘We do not know what “Son of the Widow” means.’ Rudolf Steiner, by contrast, explains the meaning still more profoundly than in the lecture under consideration as being a ‘Mystery’ title. (The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972).
• 14. His description in the periodical Luzifer. Contained in: Cosmic Memory, Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1971.
• 15. See note 2 to lecture 4 of 7th October 1904.
• 16. Rudolf Steiner here gives a free rendering of a quotation from Eugen Heinrich Schmitt: Die Gnosis, already mentioned at the beginning of these notes. Schmitt's text is as follows: ‘It would therefore be a notable test of the fact that Manicheism, as understood by initiates and as inner secret doctrine, is not just a re-telling of Persian fables, but a genuine Gnostic teaching based on spirit-vision, if we could only prove in a single case that the Manicheans sought the source of their knowledge and warranty for their truth, not in outward belief in authority (Mani said this or that), but directly through inner soul-vision. And this evidence is actually forthcoming. Mani himself introduces his foundation letter (epistola fundamenti) with the following words:
  
  ‘“These are the words of healing and the eternal fountain of life. He who hears them and believes in them first of all and keeps their message will nevermore be prey to death but will enjoy a truly immortal and splendid life. For truly he is blessed who, through this divine doctrine, partakes of the knowledge (Gnosis) which sets him free to pass over into eternal life. The peace of the Invisible God and a knowledge of Truth will be with their brothers and loved ones who believe in the laws of heaven even as they put them into practice in their daily lives. And they will behold you sitting on the right hand of the Light and will take away from you all malevolent attacks and all snares of this world; the gentleness of the Holy Spirit will in truth open your inner sense, so that you shall behold your own soul with your very eyes”. The last words of this sentence, “Pietas vero Spiritus Sancti intima vestri pectoris adaperiat, ut ipsis oculis videatis vestras animas”, appear in the Latin of Augustine (De actis cum Felixe L. 1 C. 14 Migne Aug. Opp. omnia Tomas V-III).’
• 17. (Contra epist. Manich 5).
• 18. (In Augustine's work: Contra Faustum, VI, 8). After Augustine (basing his statement on John XX, 29) calls those blessed who have not seen and yet have believed, Faustus makes the reply: ‘If you imagine that we are called upon to believe without reason or reckoning, then you may well be happier without reasoning, but I prefer to get my blessedness through insight.’ Quoted from Eugen Heinrich Schmitt: Die Gnosis—Grundlagen der Weltanschauung einer edleren Kultur, and marked in Rudolf Steiner's copy.
• 19. Compare Herman Grimm: ‘Die Entstchung des Volksbuches von Dr. Faustus,’ in Fifteen Essays, third edition, Berlin, 1882.
• 20. It is a well-known legend that Luther, while staying in hiding at the Wartburg in Thuringia under the protection of Frederick the Wise (1521–22), threw an ink-bottle at the Devil.
• 21. Martin Luther, 1483–1546. The great inaugurator of the German Reformation was an Augustinian monk prior to leaving the monastic life. See Rudolf Steiner's two lectures: ‘Luther’ and ‘Luther the Janus-head,’ in The Karma of Materialism, C 47.
• 22. Rudolf Steiner had spoken on several occasions about the concepts, life and form, at the time he gave this lecture. See lecture of 3rd November 1904: ‘Theosophy and Tolstoy’ copy Z 332. Also twenty-seventh lecture in Foundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1983.
• 23. In a note of 1907 Rudolf Steiner writes that, within the Rosicrucian current, the initiation of Manes was looked upon as one of the Higher Degrees which consisted of understanding the true function of Evil.
• 24. See diagram in connection with lecture 10 of 23rd December 1904. Compare also: The Apocalypse of St. John, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1977.
• 25. ‘blonde beast’ in his Zur Genealogie der Moral, which was widely praised. However, Rudolf Steiner said in his lecture of 6th October 1917, Elemental Spirits of Birth and Death,’ copy Z 400: ‘people understood very little about it ... It was the Devil himself who inspired people with the wish, as Nietzsche devotees, to become “blonde beasts” themselves ... but even though people never became “blonde beasts” in Nietzsche's sense—something took place in this century as a result of this socially disturbing impulse of the nineteenth century.’
• 26. This difficult occult concept had already been explained by Rudolf Steiner, shortly before this time, as for instance on 31st October 1904, in the following way: ‘In the first half of the fourth Round mankind developed the capacity for adapting his senses to the mineral kingdom for the first time. In the second half of the fourth Round he redeemed the mineral kingdom. But a part of this remained behind and was excluded, because it was no longer of any use to mankind. That constitutes the eighth sphere, which is no longer of use to the development of man, but can be used by higher beings.’ (From previously unpublished notes). In the year 1915, Rudolf Steiner again went very thoroughly into the concept of the eighth sphere. See: The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, especially fourth and fifth lectures, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973.
• 27. Rudolf Steiner spoke in much more detail on this subject, which is here only briefly mentioned, in his lecture given in Dornach on 3rd July 1920 (as yet untranslated); but he also spoke about Jesuitism on 20th May, 3rd and 6th June: ‘Roman Catholicism.’ Copy Z 65.
• 28. In the shorthand version of Franz Seiler a few sentences occur at the end. It is not quite clear if this is the answer to a question: ‘Christ appears in person during the sixth Root Race (Great Epoch)—the Thousand-Years Reign, originally it was Aeon, in Latin saeculum saeculorum. In the sixth Root Race, therefore, both the Bad and the Good will have evolved ... [Gap] ... The Keely Motor came too early, no doubt. An individual will possess so much power during the seventh Root Race, that he will be able to kill thousands and thousands at a stroke.’ Compare this with note 29 to lecture 20, the last lecture in this volume.