The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] Wholly irradiated by the feeling that things are reborn as higher entities in the spirit of man, is the conceptual world of Meister Eckhart. He belonged to the Order of the Dominicans, as did the greatest Christian theologian of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, who lived from 1225 to 1274. Eckhart was an admirer of Thomas in the fullest sense. This is altogether understandable when one examines the whole conceptual framework of Meister Eckhart. He considered himself to be as much in harmony with the teachings of the Christian church as he assumed such an agreement for Thomas. Eckhart did not want to take anything away from the content of Christianity, nor to add anything to it. But he wanted to produce this content anew in his way. It is not among the spiritual needs of a personality such as he was to put new truths of various kinds in place of old ones. He was intimately connected with the content which had been transmitted to him. But he wanted to give a new form, a new life to this content. Without doubt he wanted to remain an orthodox Christian. The Christian truths were his truths. Only he wanted to look at them in a different way than had Thomas Aquinas, for instance. The latter assumed two sources of knowledge: revelation for faith, and reason for inquiry. Reason understands the laws of things, that is, the spiritual in nature. It can also raise itself above nature, and in the spirit grasp, from one side, the divine essence which underlies all nature. But in this way it does not achieve an immersion in the full essence of God. A higher truth must meet it halfway. This is given in the Scriptures. It reveals what by himself man cannot attain. The truth of the Scriptures must be taken for granted by man; reason can defend it, can endeavor to understand it as well as possible by means of its powers of cognition, but it can never produce it out of the human spirit. What the spirit sees is not the highest truth, but is a certain cognitive content which has come to the spirit from outside. St. Augustine declares that within himself he is unable to find the source of what he should believe. He says, “I would not believe the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic church did not move me to do so.” This is in the sense of the Evangelist, who refers us to the external testimony: “That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life ... that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us.” But Meister Eckhart wishes to impress upon men Christ's words: “It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter [in the German version, der heilige Geist, i.e., the Holy Ghost] will not come unto you.” And he explains these words by saying, “It is as if he said: You have taken too much joy in my present image, therefore the perfect joy of the Holy Ghost cannot be in you.” Eckhart thinks that he is speaking of no God other than the one of whom Augustine and the Evangelist and Thomas speak, and yet their testimony of God is not his testimony. “Some people want to look upon God with their eyes, as they look upon a cow, and want to love God as they love a cow. Thus they love God for the sake of external riches and of internal solace; but these people do not love God aright ... Foolish people deem that they should look upon God as though He stood there and they here. It is not thus. God and I are one in the act of knowing.” Such declarations in Eckhart are based on nothing but the experience of the inner sense. And this experience shows things to him in a higher light. He therefore does not think that he needs an external light in order to attain to the highest insights: “A master says, God has become man; through this all mankind is raised and exalted. Let us rejoice that Christ our brother has ascended by his own strength above all the angelic choirs and sits on the right hand of the Father. This master has spoken well, but in truth, I do not set great store by it. What would it avail me if I had a brother who was a rich man, and for my part I were a poor man? What would it avail me if I had a brother who was a wise man, and I were a fool? ... The Heavenly Father brings forth his only-begotten Son in Himself and in me. Why in Himself and in me? I am one with Him, and He cannot shut me out. In the same act the Holy Ghost receives its being, and it arises through me as it does through God. Why? I am in God, and if the Holy Ghost does not take its being from me it does not take it from God either. I am not shut out in any way.” When Eckhart reminds us of the word of Paul: “Clothe yourselves in Jesus Christ,” he wishes to give to this word the following meaning: Become submerged in yourselves, plunge down into self-contemplation, and from the depths of your being God will shine upon you; He will outshine everything for you; you have found Him within yourselves; you have become united with God's essence. “God has become man so that I might become God.” In his treatise Über die Abgeschiedenheit, Concerning Solitude, Eckhart expresses himself on the relationship of external to internal perception: “Here you must know that the masters say that in each man there are two kinds of men: one is called the external man, that is, sensuousness; man is served by five senses, nevertheless he acts through the force of the soul. The other man is called the inner man, that is, the interior of man. Now you must know that every man who loves God does not use the faculties of the soul in the external man any more than is required by the five senses; and the interior does not turn to the five senses except as it is the director and guide of the five senses and watches over them so that, in their strivings, they do not pander to animality.” One who speaks in this way about the inner man can no longer fix his eye upon a nature of things which lies sensorily outside him. For he is aware that this nature cannot confront him in any kind of sensory outside world. To him one might object, What have the things in the outside world to do with what you add to them out of your spirit. Trust your senses. They alone give you intelligence of the outside world. Do not falsify with a spiritual trimming what your senses give you in purity, without decoration, as a picture of the external world. Your eye tells you what a color is like; nothing that your spirit apprehends concerning the color is in the color. From the point of view of Meister Eckhart one would have to answer: the senses are physical devices. Their communications about things therefore can concern only the physical aspect of things. And this physical aspect of things communicates itself to me by the excitation of a physical process within myself. Color as a physical process of the outside world gives rise to a physical process in my eye and in my brain. Through this I perceive the color. But in this way I can perceive in the color only what is physical, sensory. Sensory perception excludes all those aspects of things which are not sensory. It divests things of all that is not sensory in them. If I then proceed to the spiritual, the idea-content, I only re-establish that aspect of things which sensory perception has effaced. Hence sensory perception does not show me the deepest nature of things; rather it separates me from this nature. Spiritual comprehension, comprehension by the idea, again connects me with this nature. It shows me that within themselves things are of exactly the same spiritual nature as I myself. The boundary between me and the external world is abolished by the spiritual comprehension of the world. I am separated from the external world insofar as I am a sensory thing among sensory things. My eye and the color are two different entities. My brain and the plant are two. But the idea-content of the plant and of the color, together with the idea-content of my brain and of the eye, belong to a unified idea-entity.—This view must not be confused with the widespread anthropomorphizing world view which thinks that it comprehends the things of the external world by ascribing to them qualities of a psychical nature, which are supposed to be similar to the qualities of the human soul. This view says: When he confronts us externally, we perceive only sensory features in another man. I cannot look into the interior of my fellow man. From what I see and hear of him I make inferences as to his interior, his soul. Thus the soul is never something I perceive directly. A soul I perceive only within myself. No man sees my thoughts, my imaginings, my feelings. And just as I have such an inner life beside the one which can be perceived externally, so all other beings must have one too. This is the conclusion of one who takes the position of the anthropomorphizing world view. That part of a plant which I perceive externally must in the same way be only the outside of an interior, of a soul, which in my thoughts I must add to what I perceive. And since there exists for me only a single inner world, namely my own, I can only imagine the inner world of other beings to be similar to my own. Thus one reaches a sort of universal animation of all nature (panpsychism). This view rests on a misunderstanding of what the developed inner sense really offers. The spiritual content of an external thing, which appears to me within myself, is not something added in thought to the external perception. It is no more this than is the spirit of another man. I perceive this spiritual content through the inner sense, just as I perceive the physical content through the external senses. And what I call my inner life, in the sense indicated above, is by no means my spirit in the higher sense. This inner life is only the result of purely sensory processes; it belongs to me only as a totally individual personality, which is nothing but the result of its physical organization. When I transfer this interior to external things, I am in fact indulging in idle fancy. My personal inner life, my thoughts, memories, and feelings are in me because I am a creature of nature with such and such an organization, with a certain sensory apparatus, with a certain nervous system. I cannot transfer this human soul of mine to things. I could do this only if somewhere I found a similarly organized nervous system. But my individual soul is not the highest spiritual part in me. This highest spiritual part must first be awakened in me by the inner sense. And this spiritual part which is awakened in me is at the same time one and the same with the spiritual in all things. Before this spiritual part the plant appears directly in its own spirituality. I need not endow it with a spirituality similar to my own. For this world view all talk about the unknown “thing in itself” becomes devoid of meaning. For it is precisely the “thing in itself” which reveals itself to the inner sense. All talk about the unknown “thing in itself” is only due to the fact that those who speak in this way are incapable of recognizing the “things in themselves” in the spiritual contents within them. They think that within themselves they recognize only unsubstantial shadows and phantoms, “mere concepts and ideas” of things. But nevertheless since they have an intimation of the “thing in itself” they think that this “thing in itself” conceals itself, and that limits are set to the human powers of cognition. One cannot prove to those who labor under this belief that they must seize the “thing in itself” within themselves, for they never would acknowledge this “thing in itself” if one showed it to them. And it is just a matter of this acknowledgment.—Everything Meister Eckhart says is penetrated by this acknowledgment. “Consider a simile for this. A door opens and closes on a hinge. If I compare the outer boards of the door to the external man, then I shall compare the hinge to the inner man. Now when the door opens and closes the outer boards move back and forth, while the hinge remains constantly immobile, and in no way is changed thereby. And here it is the same.” As an individual creature of the senses I can investigate things in all directions—the door opens and closes—; if I do not let the perceptions of the senses arise within me spiritually I shall know nothing of their essence—the hinge does not move—. The illumination mediated by the inner sense is, in Eckhart's conception, the entry of God into the soul. He calls the light of knowledge which is lit by this entry, the “spark of the soul.” The place within the human being where this “spark” is lighted is “so pure, and so high, and so noble in itself, that no creature can be in it, but only God alone dwells therein in His pure divine nature.” one who has let this “spark” light up within himself, no longer sees merely as man sees with the external senses, and with the logical intellect, which orders and classifies the impressions of the senses; rather he sees how things are in themselves. The external senses and the ordering intellect separate the individual human being from other things; they make of him an individual in space and in time, who also perceives other things in space and in time. The man illuminated by the “spark” ceases to be an individual being. He annihilates his isolation. Everything which causes the difference between him and things, ceases. That it is he as an individual being who perceives, no longer can even be taken into consideration. The things and he are no longer separated. The things, and thus also God, see themselves in him. “This spark is God, in such a way that it is an united one, and carries within itself the image of all creatures, image without image, and image above image.” In the most magnificent words does Eckhart speak of the extinction of the individual being: “It must therefore be known that to know God and to be known by God is the same. We know God and see Him in that He makes us to see and to know. And as the air which illuminates is nothing but what it illuminates, for it shines through this, that it is illuminated: thus do we know that we are known and that He causes Himself to know us.”

[ 2 ] It is on this foundation that Meister Eckhart builds Up his relationship to God. It is a purely spiritual relationship, and it cannot be formed in an image borrowed from the individual life of man. God cannot love His creation as one individual man loves another; God cannot have created the world as a masterbuilder constructs a house. All such thoughts disappear in face of the inner vision. It is in the nature of God that He loves the world. A god who could love and also not love is formed in the image of the individual man. “I say in good truth and in eternal truth and in everlasting truth that into every man who has gone within himself God must pour Himself out to the limits of His ability, utterly and completely, so that He retains nothing in His life and in His being, in His nature and in His divinity; everything must He pour out in fruitful fashion.” And the inner illumination is something which the soul necessarily must find when it goes down into its depths. From this it already becomes evident that the communication of God to mankind cannot be thought of in the image of the revelation of one man to another. The latter communication can also be left unmade. One man can close himself off from another. God must communicate Himself, in conformity with His nature. “It is a certain truth that God must needs seek us, as if all His divinity depended upon it. God can no more do without us than we can do without Him. Although we may turn away from God, yet God can never turn away from us.” Consequently the relationship of man to God cannot be understood as containing anything figurative, borrowed from what is individually human. Eckhart realizes that part of the accomplishment of the primordial nature of the world is that it should find itself in the human soul. This primordial nature would be imperfect, even unfinished, if it lacked that component of its frame which appears in the human soul. What takes place in man belongs to the primordial nature; and if it did not take place the primordial nature would be only a part of itself. In this sense man can feel himself to be a necessary part of the nature of the world. Eckhart expresses this by describing his feelings toward God as follows: “I do not thank God for loving me, for He cannot keep from doing so, whether He wants to or not, His nature compels him to it ... Therefore I shall not beg God that He should give me something, nor shall I praise Him for what He has given me ... ”

[ 3 ] But this relationship of the human soul to the primordial nature must not be understood to mean that the soul in its individual character is declared to be one with this primordial nature. The soul which is entangled in the world of the senses, and therewith in the finite, does not as such already have the content of the primordial nature within itself. It must first develop it in itself. It must annihilate itself as an individual being. Meister Eckhart has aptly characterized this annihilation as an “un-becoming” (“Entwerdung”). “When I reach the depths of divinity no one asks me whence I come and where I have been, and no one misses me, for here there is an un-becoming.” This relationship is also clearly expressed in the sentence: “I take a basin of water and place a mirror in it and put it under the wheel of the sun. The sun casts its luminous radiance upon the mirror, and yet it is not diminished. The reflection of the mirror in the sun is sun in the sun, and yet the mirror is what it is. Thus it is with God. God is in the soul with His nature and in His being and His divinity, and yet He is not the soul. The reflection of the soul in God is God in God, and yet the soul is what it is.”

[ 4 ] The soul which gives itself over to the inner illumination recognizes in itself not only what it was before the illumination; it also recognizes what it has become only through this illumination. “We are to be united with God essentially; we are to be united with God as one; we are to be united with God altogether. How are we to be united with God essentially? This is to be accomplished by a seeing and not by a being. His being cannot be our being, but is to be our life.” Not an already existing life—a being (Wesung)—is to be understood in the logical sense; but the higher understanding—the seeing—is itself to become life; the spiritual, that which belongs to the idea, is to be experienced by the seeing man in the same way as the individual human nature experiences ordinary, everyday life.

[ 5 ] From such starting-points Meister Eckhart also attains a pure concept of freedom. In ordinary life the soul is not free. For it is entangled in the realm of lower causes. It accomplishes that to which it is compelled by these lower causes. By the “seeing” it is raised out of the region of these causes. It no longer acts as an individual soul. In it is exposed the primordial essence, which cannot be caused by anything except itself. “God does not compel the will, rather He sets it at liberty, so that it wills nothing but what God Himself wills. And the spirit can will nothing but what God wills; and this is not its unfreedom; it is its true freedom. For freedom is this, that we are not bound, that we be free and pure and unadulterated as we were in our first origin, and when we were wed in the Holy Ghost.” It can be said of the enlightened man that he himself is the entity which determines good and evil out of itself. He cannot do otherwise than accomplish the good. For he does not serve the good, rather does the good live within him. “The righteous man serves neither God nor the creatures, for he is free, and the closer he is to righteousness, the more he is freedom itself.” What then must evil be for Meister Eckhart? It can only be an acting under the influence of the lower view, the acting of a soul which has not passed through the state of un-becoming. Such a soul is selfish in the sense that it wills only itself. Only externally could it bring its willing into harmony with moral ideals. The seeing soul cannot be selfish in this sense. Even should it will itself it would still will the mastery of the ideal; for it has made itself into this ideal. It can no longer will the goals of the lower nature, for it no longer has anything in common with this lower nature. It is no compulsion, no deprivation, for the seeing soul to act in the sense of moral ideals. “For the man who stands in God's will and in God's love it is a joy to do all the good things God wills, and to leave undone all the evil things which are against God. And it is impossible for him to leave a thing undone which God wants to have accomplished. As it would be impossible for one to walk whose legs are bound, so it would be impossible for one to do ill who is in God's will.” Furthermore Eckhart expressly protests against an interpretation which would see in his view a license for anything the individual might want. It is just in this that one recognizes the seeing man, that he no longer wants anything as an individual. “Some men say: If I have God and God's freedom, then I can do everything I want. They understand these words amiss. As long as you can do anything which is against God and His commandment, you do not have God's love; you can only deceive the world into the belief that you have it.” Eckhart is convinced that for the soul which goes down into its depths, in these depths a perfect morality will appear, that there all logical understanding and all action in the ordinary sense have an end, and that there an entirely new order of human life begins. “For everything the understanding can grasp, and everything desire demands, is not God. Where understanding and desire have an end, there it is dark, there does God shine. There that power unfolds in the soul which is wider than the wide heavens ... The bliss of the righteous and God's bliss is one bliss; for then are the righteous blissful, when God is blissful.”

Today I shall speak in the most concrete way about the Spirit in order to lay a foundation for the next few days, and I must appeal to you to try to arouse a fundamental feeling for what is here meant by the Spirit.

What is taken into account by the human being today? He attaches importance only to what he experiences consciously, from the time he wakes up in the morning until the time he goes to sleep at night. He reckons as part of the world only that which he experiences in his waking consciousness. If you were listening to the voice of the present and had accustomed yourselves to it, you might say: Yes, but was it not always so? Did human beings in earlier times include in what they meant by reality anything in addition to what they experienced in their waking consciousness?

I certainly do not wish to create the impression that we ought to go back to the conditions in earlier epochs of civilization. That is not my intention. The thing that matters is to go forward, not back. But in order to find our bearings we may turn back, look back, rather, beyond the time of the fifteenth century, before the age I attempted to describe radically to you yesterday. What men of that time said about the world is looked upon today as mere phantasy, as not belonging to reality. You need only look at the literature of olden times and you will find, when men spoke of “salt,” “mercury,” phosphorus and so on, that they included many things in the meaning which people are anxious to exclude today.

People say nowadays: “Yes, in those days men added something out of their own phantasy when they spoke of salt, mercury, phosphorus.”

We will not argue about the reason why this is so anxiously excluded today. But we must realize that people saw something in phosphorus, in addition to what is seen by the mere senses, in the way modern men see color. It was surrounded by a spiritual-etheric aura, just as around the whole of Nature there seemed to hover a spiritual aura, although after the fourth or fifth century A.D. it was very colorless and pale. Even so, men were still able to see it. It was as little the outcome of phantasy as the red color we see. They actually saw it.

Why were they able to see this aura? Because something streamed over to them from their experiences during sleep. In the waking Consciousness of that time man did not experience in salt, sulphur, or phosphorus any more than he does today; but when people in those days woke up, sleep had not been unfruitful for their souls. Sleep still worked over into the day and man's perception was richer; his experience of everything around him was more intense.

Without this knowledge as a basis we cannot understand earlier times. Later on the experience of the ancients in connection with sulphur, phosphorus and so on became a mere name, an abstraction. The Spirit continued as an abstraction in tradition, until, at the end of the nineteenth century, the word spirit conveyed nothing to the mind, nothing by way of experience. External culture, which alleges such great progress, naturally attaches the greatest importance to the fact that the human being acts with his waking consciousness. Naturally, with this he will build machines; but with his waking consciousness he can work very little upon his own nature. if we were obliged to be always awake we should very soon become old-at least by the end of our twentieth year—and more repulsively old than people today. We cannot always be awake, because the forces we need to work inwardly upon our organism are active within us only during sleep. it is of course true that the human being can work at external, visible forms of culture when he is awake, but only in sleeping consciousness can he work upon himself. And in olden times much more streamed over from sleeping consciousness into the waking state.

The great change took place in the middle of the fifteenth century: this trickling of sleep consciousness into waking consciousness ceased. Pictorially I would say: In the tenth and eleventh centuries of western civilization man still grew up in such a way that he felt: Divine-spiritual powers have been performing deeds within me between my going to sleep and waking up. He felt the influx of divine-spiritual forces just as in waking consciousness he experienced the health-bringing light of the sun. And before going to sleep there was in every human being an elemental mood of prayer, full of Nature-forces. People entered sleep—or if they were men of knowledge they at least strove to do so—by giving themselves over to divine-spiritual powers.

The education of those who were destined for the spiritual life was such that this mood was deliberately cultivated. At the end of the nineteenth century those who regarded themselves as the most spiritual men had for a long time replaced this by another method of preparation. I have often witnessed how people prepare themselves for sleep: “I must take my fill of beer to prepare for sleep.” This sounds grotesque. Yet we see it is historically true that vision into the spiritual world through sleep was a deliberate and conscious striving among human beings of past epochs, apart from the fact that the candidates for initiation—the students of those days-were prepared in a sacred way for the temple-sleep in which they were made aware of man's participation in the spiritual world.

At the present time when one considers the development of civilization people do not ask: What has come about in modern mankind from the educational point of view? The question is not asked because people do not think of the whole human being but only of part of him. One has a strange impression if one sees a little further than the nearest spiritual horizon: people believe they at last know the truth about certain things, whereas the men of old were altogether naive. Read any current history of physics and you will find that it is written as if everything before this age were naive; now at last things have been perceived in the form in which they can permanently remain. A sharp line is drawn between what has been achieved today and the ideas of nature evolved in “childish” times. No one thinks of asking: What educational effect has the science that is absorbed today, from the point of view of world-historical progress?

Let us think of some earlier book on natural science. From the modern point of view it is childish. But now let us put aside the modern point of view and ask: What educational effect had such a book at that time and what effect has a modern book? The modern book may be very clever and the older one very phantastic, but if we consider the educational value as a whole, we shall have to admit that when a book was read—and it was not so easy to read books in those days, there was something ceremonial about it—it drew something out of the depths of men's souls. The reading of a book was actually like the process of growing: productive forces were released in the organism and human beings were aware of them. They felt something real was there. Today everything is logical and formal. Everything is assimilated by means of the head, formally and intellectually, but no will-force is involved. And because it is all assimilated by the head only and is thus entirely dependent upon the physical head-organization, it remains unfruitful for the development of the true man.

Today there are people who struggle against materialism. My dear friends, it would be almost more sensible if they did not. For what does materialism affirm? It asserts that thinking is a product of the brain. Modern thinking is a product of the brain. That is just the secret—that modern thinking is a product of the brain. With regard to modern thinking, materialism is quite right, but it is not right about thinking as it was before the middle of the fifteenth century. At that time man did not think only with the brain but with what was alive in the brain. He had living concepts. The concepts of that time gave the same impression as an ant-hill, they were all alive. Modern concepts are dead. Modern thinking is clever, but dreadfully lazy! People do not feel it, and the less they feel it the more they love it. In earlier times people felt a tingling when they were thinking—because thinking was a reality in the soul. People are made to believe that thinking was always as it is today. But modern thinking is a product of the brain; earlier thinking was not so.

We ought to be grateful to the materialists for drawing attention to the fact that present-clay thinking is dependent upon the brain. Such is the truth and it is a much more serious matter than is usually imagined. People believe that materialism is a wrong philosophy. That is not at all true. Materialism is a product of world-evolution but a dead product, describing life in the condition where life has died.

This thinking which has evolved more and more since the fifteenth century and which has entrenched itself in civilization the farther west we go, (oriental civilization in spite of its decadence has after all preserved some of the older kind of thinking) has quite definite characteristics. The farther west we come the more does a thinking, regarded by the orientals as inferior, take the upper hand. It does not impress the oriental at all; he despises it. But he himself has nothing new; all he has is the old kind of thinking and it is perishing. But the European, and more so the American, would not feel at ease if he had to transfer himself into the thinking of the Vedas. That kind of thinking made one tingle and the Westerners love dead thinking, where one does not notice that one is thinking at all. The time has come when people confess that a millwheel is revolving in their heads—not only when someone is talking nonsense but when they are talking about living things. They merely want to snatch at what is dead.

Here is an example which I am only quoting for the sake of cultural interest, not for the sake of polemics. I described how it is possible to see an aura of colors around stones, plants and animals. The way in which I put this in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds was such that it made living thinking, not dead thinking, a necessity. A short time ago a professor at a University who is said to have something to do with philosophy, came across this description. To think livingly! Oh, no? that won't do; that is impossible! And there is supposed to be an aura of colors around stone, plant, animal!—He had only seen colors in the solar spectrum and so he thinks that I too can only have seen them in the solar spectrum and have transferred them to stone, plant and animal. He cannot in the least follow my way of describing, so he calls it just a torrent of words. For him, indeed, it is so. He is incapable of understanding it at all. And for a great number of University professors it can be the same. A millwheel is going round in their heads, so away with the head; and then, of course, nothing can possibly come out of it!

The living human being, however, demands a living kind of thinking and this demand is in his very blood. You must be clear about this. You must get your head so strong again that it can stand not only logical, abstract thinking, but even living thinking. You must not immediately get a buzzing head when it is a matter of thinking in a living way. For those whose characteristic was pure intellectualism had dead thinking. The purpose of this dead thinking was the materialistic education of the West. If we look into it, we get a very doubtful picture.

The earlier kind of thinking could be carried over into sleep when the human being was still an entity. He was a being among other beings. He was a real entity during sleep because he had carried living thinking with him into sleep. He brought it out of sleep when he woke up and took it back with him when he fell asleep. Modern thinking is bound to the brain but this cannot help us during sleep. Today, therefore, according to the way of modern science, we can be the cleverest and most learned people, but we are clever only during the day. We cease to be clever during the night, in face of that world through which we can work upon our own being. Men have forgotten to work upon themselves. With the concepts we evolve from the time of waking to that of sleeping we can only achieve something between waking and sleeping. Nothing can be achieved with the real being of man. Man must work out of the forces with which he builds up his own being. During the period when he has to build himself up, when he is a little child, he needs the greatest amount of sleep. If ever a method should be discovered for cramming into babies all that is taught to seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, you would soon see what they would look like! It is a very good thing that babies are still provided for from the mother's breast and not from the lecturing desk. It is out of sleep that man must bring the forces through which he can work upon his own being.

We can carry into sleep nothing from the concepts we evolve through science, through external observation and experiments and the controlling of experiments; and we can bring nothing of what is developed in sleep into these concepts of the material world. The spiritual and the intellectual do not get on well together unless united in the world of full consciousness. Formerly this union was consummated, but in a more subconscious way. Nowadays the union must be fully conscious, and to this human beings do not wish to be converted.

What happened when a man of earlier times passed with his soul into sleep? He was still an entity, because he had within him what hovers around material things. He bore this into sleep. He could still maintain his identity when in sleep he was outside the physical body and in the spiritual world. Today he is less and less of a real entity. He is well-nigh absorbed by the spirituality of Nature when he leaves his body in sleep. In true perception of the world, this is at once evident to the soul. You should only see it!—well, you will be able to see it if you will exert yourselves to acquire the necessary vision. Humanity must attain this vision, for we are living in an age when it can no longer be said that it is impossible to speak of the Spirit as we speak of animals or stones. With such faculties of vision you will be able to see that even though Caesar was not very portly in physical life, yet when his soul left his body in sleep it was of a considerable “size”—not in the spatial sense, but its greatness could be experienced. His soul was majestic. Today a man may be one of the most portly of bankers, but when his soul steps out of his body in sleep into the spirituality of Nature, you should see what a ghastly, shrunken framework it becomes. The portly banker becomes quite an insignificant figure! Since the last third of the nineteenth century humanity has really been suffering from spiritual under-nourishment. The intellect does not nourish the Spirit. It only distends it. That is why the human being takes no spirituality with him into sleep. He is well-nigh sucked up when with his soul as a thin skeleton, he stretches out into the world of spiritual Nature between sleeping and waking.

That is why the question of materialism is far from theoretical. Nothing is of less importance today than the theoretical strife between materialistic, spiritualistic and idealistic philosophy. These things are of no reality, for the refutation of materialism achieves nothing. We may refute materialism as often as we like, nothing will come of it. For, the reasons we bring in order to refute it are just as materialistic as those we quote for or against idealism. Theoretical refutations achieve nothing one way or the other. But what really matters is that in our whole way of looking at the world we have the Spirit once again. Thereby our concepts will regain the force to nourish our being. To make this clear, let me say the following.

Now, I really do not find any very great difference between those people who call themselves materialists and those who in little sectarian circles call themselves, let us say, theosophists. For the way in which the one makes out a case for materialism and another for theosophy is by no means essentially different. It comes down to whether people want to make out a case for theosophy with the kind of thinking entirely dependent upon the brain. If this is so, even theosophy is materialistic. It is not a question of words, but whether the words express the Spirit. When I compare much of the theosophical twaddle with Haeckel's thought, I find the Spirit in Haeckel, whereas the theosophists speak of the Spirit as if it were matter, but diluted matter. The point is not that one speaks about the Spirit but that one speaks through the Spirit. One can speak spiritually about the material, that is to say, it is possible to speak about the material in mobile concepts. And that is always much more spiritual than to speak un-spiritually about the Spirit.

However many come forward today with every possible kind of logical argument in defense of the spiritual view of the world; this simply does not help us, does not help one bit. During the night we remain just as barren if during the day we ponder about hydrogen, chlorine, bromine, iodine, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, silica, potassium, sodium and so on, and then evolve our theories; as if we ponder about the human being consisting of physical, etheric, and astral bodies. It is all the same so far as what is living is concerned. To speak in a living way about potassium or calcium, to treat chemistry as really alive, this is much more valuable than a dead, intellectual theosophy. For theosophy too can be taught in a dead, intellectual way. It does not really matter whether we speak materialistically or intellectually, what matters is that the Spirit shall be in what we say. The Spirit must penetrate us with its livingness. But because this is no longer understood, it is very disagreeable when anyone takes this seriously.

I did this in one of my last Oxford lectures, and to make myself quite clear I said: It is all the same to me whether people speak of spiritism, realism, idealism, materialism or anything else When I need language to describe some external phenomenon I use materialistic language. This can be done in such a way that the Spirit too lives within it. If one speaks out of the realm of the Spirit, what one says will be spiritual although the language may have materialistic form. That is the difference between what is cultivated here as Anthroposophy and what is pursued in other places under similar names. Every other week books against Anthroposophy are brought out. They contain statements which are supposed to be leveled against what I have said, but what they attack is always quite new to me for as a rule I have never said such things. They collect all sorts of rubbish and then write voluminous books about it. What they attack has usually nothing whatever to do with what I actually say. The point is not to fight materialism but to see to it that the concepts come out of the world of the Spirit, that they are really experienced, that they are concepts filled with life. What is here presented and accepted as Anthroposophy is quite different from what the world says about it.

People fight today against Anthroposophy—and sometimes also in defense of it—quite materialistically, un-spiritually, whereas what really matters is that experience of the Spirit should be made a reality in us. People easily get muddied, for when one begins to speak of spiritual beings as one speaks of plants and animals in the physical world, they take one for a fool. I can understand that; but there is just this, that this folly is the true reality, indeed the living reality for human beings! The other kind of reality is good for machines but not for human beings.

This is what I wanted to say quite clearly, my dear friends, that in what I intend here and have always intended, the important thing is not merely to speak about the Spirit, but out of the Spirit, to unfold the Spirit in the very speaking. The Spirit can have an educative effect upon our dead cultural life. The Spirit must be the lightning which strikes our dead culture and kindles it to renewed life. Therefore, do not think that you will find here any plea for rigid concepts such as the concepts physical body, etheric body, astral body, which are so nicely arrayed on the walls of theosophical groups and are pointed out just as, in a lecture room, sodium, potassium and so on are pointed to with their atomic weights. There is no difference between pointing at tables giving the atomic weight of potassium and pointing to the etheric body. It is exactly the same, and that is not the point. Interpreted in this way, Theosophy—or even Anthroposophy—is not new, but merely the latest product of the old.

The most incredible twaddle is heard when people suddenly feel themselves called upon to uphold the spiritual. I do not mention these things for the sake of criticism, but as a symptom. I will tell you two stories; the first runs as follows. I was once at a meeting in the West of Europe on the subject of theosophy. The lectures had come to an end. I fell into conversation with someone about the value of these lectures. This personality who was a good disciple of theosophical sectarianism told me of his impression of the lectures in these words: “There are such beautiful vibrations in this hall.” The pleasant sensation, you see, was expressed in terms of vibrations—in other words, materialistically.

Another time people pestered me about some discovery that had been made on the spiritual plane. It was stated that repeated earth-lives—which as a matter of fact can only be revealed to the soul by genuinely spiritual perception—must also be perceived in an earthly guise, must be clothed in terms of materialistic thinking. So these people began to speak of the “permanent atom” which goes through all earth-lives. They said: If I am now living on the Earth, and come back again after hundreds of years, the atoms will be scattered to the four winds—but one single atom goes over into the next earth-life. It was called the “permanent atom”. Quite happily the most materialistic ideas were being introduced into the truth of repeated earth-lives, into a truth that can only be grasped by the Spirit. As if it could profit anyone to have a single atom say from the fourth or filth century going around in his brain! Surely it is the same as if a surgeon in the world beyond had managed to equip me in this life by having preserved my stomach from a former incarnation and inserted it in my present body. In principle, these things are exactly the same.

I am not telling you this as a joke, but as an interesting symptom of people who, wanting to speak of the Spirit, talk of the pleasant sensation coming from spiritual “vibrations” and have only absorbed through imitation what others have known about repeated earth-lives, clothe this in such a way that they talk about the permanent atom. Books have been written by theosophists about this permanent atom—books with curious drawings showing the distribution of hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine and so on. And when one looks at them they seem no less outrageous than the sketches which materialists have made of the atoms. It does not matter whether we say: This is spiritual, or that is material. What matters is to realize the necessity of entering the living Spirit. I do not say this in a polemic sense but to make it clear to you.

The following is characteristic. There lives at the present time a very gifted Benedictine Father Mager, one of the finest minds in the Order—and the Benedictines have exceedingly fine minds. Mager has written an extremely interesting little book on “The Behaviour of Man in the Sight of God.” It belongs, in thought, to the time when Benedict founded his Order. Had it been written then it would have been quite in accordance with the times. When someone writes a book about the “Behaviour of Man in the Sight of God” one can admire it. And I do admire it. The same priest has, however, also given his opinion on Anthroposophy. And now he becomes the densest of materialists. It is really terribly difficult for one to force one's way into such a rigid kind of thought in order to describe the statements made by this priest. What he censures most is that the perception in Imaginative knowledge, which I put first, is of such a nature that for Father Mager it amounts to a lot of pictures. He gets no farther. And then he says, in accordance with his scientific conscience, that Anthroposophy materializes the world. He takes violent exception to the fact that Anthroposophy materializes the world, in other words, that Anthroposophy does not confine itself to the unreal, abstract concepts he loves—for this Father loves the most abstract concepts. Just read any Catholic philosophy and you will find—Being, Becoming, Existence, Beauty and so on—all in the most abstract form. Whatever you do, don't touch the world! And the Father notices that Anthroposophy contains living concepts which can actually come down to real things, to the real world. That is an abomination to him.

One ought to answer him: If knowledge is to be anything real, it must follow the course taken by God in connection with the world. This course started from the Spiritual and was materialized. The world was first spiritual and then became more and more material, so that real knowledge must follow this course. It is not sought for in Anthroposophy, but one comes to it. The picture slips into reality; but Father Mager condemns this. And yet it is exactly what he must himself believe if he wants to give his faith a reasonable content. But he calls it in our case the materialization of knowledge.

Of course, there is no satisfying those who insist: For heaven's sake no living concepts, for they will slip into reality, and concepts must be kept away from that! In such cases we can only have concepts belonging to waking consciousness and none that is capable of working upon man from the spiritual world. And that is exactly what we need. We need a living evolution and a living education of the human race. The fully conscious human being feels the culture of the present day to be cold, arid. It must be given life and inner activity once again. It must become such that it fills the human being, fills him with life. Only this can lead us to the point where we shall no longer have to confess that we ought not to mention the Spirit, but it leads us to where the good will to develop within us the inclination not for abstract speaking, but for inward action in the Spirit that flows into us, not for obscure, nebulous mysticism, but for the courageous, energetic permeation of our being with spirituality. Permeated by spirit we can speak of matter and we shall not be led astray when talking of important material discoveries, because we are able to speak about them in a spiritual way. We shall shape into a force that educates humanity what we sense darkly within us as an urge forward. Tomorrow, we will speak of these things again.

In esotericism we must note something that we call the Spirit of the Day. The masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings have given us meditation through which we can approach one of these divine creating beings each day. We will begin with the guiding verse which the masters gave for today.

Great embracing Spirit,
Many archetypes
Sprouted out of your life
At a time when my life forces
Didn't yet exist.
You were.
I lift up my soul to you.
I was in you.
I was part of your forces.
You connected yourself
With the earth's first beginnings
To a sun of life
And gave me the force of life.
I was in your radiant life forces.
You were.
My life force radiated into yours in space.
My body began its becoming in time.
You were.

Great embracing Spirit
May my I raise itself from below upward,
May it get an inkling of you in the all-embracing.
May the spirit of my being be illumined
By the light of your messengers.
May the soul of my being be enkindled by the fire flames of your servants.
May the will of my I grasp
Your creatorword's force.
You are.
May your being permeate my will
That my I be grasped by an understanding of your light's shining,
Your life's love-warmth
And your being's creator words.
You are.

Today we'll speak about how easily an esoteric tends to forget even the simplest exoteric sayings of theosophy, such as: Everything sensory is maya or illusion. Every esoteric should meditate on this regularly. Many will think that they already understand this statement long ago. But few reflect how little of it they really bring into their life and feeling and how much they would have to include thereby. For instance, someone can say: I do the Lord's Prayer every morning and draw strengthening forces for the whole day from the spiritual content of this wonderful prayer. Now, one of the masters of wisdom said that he only prays the Our Father once a month, and otherwise he prepares himself to pray it worthily that one time. Now the first one could say that he'll pray it once a month too, because one should follow a master's example. But what would that be? That would be pronounced haughtiness. It would be saying that we can do as much as a master can, that what he can draw from the spiritual content of the Lord's Prayer is also accessible to us. We often think that we have already eradicated a quality like pride, but have just pushed it into another corner of our nature. For all of these qualities are also maya, and so are the concepts that we make for ourselves on the physical plane about good and evil, right and wrong. When we spoke of the influences of lucifereic beings in exoteric classes we formed the view that these influences were bad ones which we have to resist, whereas on the other hand we know that Lucifer brought us freedom. But we should definitely not take our acquired concepts of good and evil, right and wrong with us into the high regions in which something takes place between Lucifer and the good Gods that looks like a battle and namely one that mostly takes place in the human soul. It's an occult secret that certain qualities of a man develop too fast during earth evolution, and Lucifer is at work here. How does this come about?

Lucifer comes over from Moon evolution and brings the Moon tempo into everything that comes under his influence. Now since he mainly influences our intellect and reason they have developed far in advance. We'll go through many more incarnations and have a variety of experiences, but our intellect and reason will be the same as they are now. And what's the consequence of this advanced development? We can't harmonize our intellect with the wisdom that we find in the world, thereby giving rise to one error after another.

I can give you a trivial example. After the first terrible eruptions of Mt. Pelee were over, the experts at the scene calculated that there would be a long dormant period. But the eruptions came again, worse than before, and the lava and rubble buried the experts and their proclamations. This is an example of how our combining intellect storms ahead and gets on the wrong track instead of slowly working its way into the wisdom of nature's forces.

Lucifer's influences are at work all over the earth. But we would be mistaken if we would want to look for an expression of the same in earthquakes, storm and hail. On the contrary, we must look for his influence in everything that becomes mature quickly, and this acceleration must be hindered by the good Gods. Weather catastrophes are often the expression of the good Gods; they're the hindrance that they have to oppose Lucifer with to avoid overly rapid development. And namely they're hindrances that also correspond to old Moon evolution, in order to offset Lucifer's Moon tempo; what was right on the Moon now has harmful effects.

The good Gods must also intervene to retard an esoteric's development. For what does Lucifer do in our esoteric life? It's due to him that we take the maya of our concepts from material life with us into our meditations. So that we don't enter spiritual worlds unprepared in this wrong way the good Gods throw hindrances on the path, such as all of our bad qualities. They are the bad will, rage, pride, vanity, and envy that break out when we approach the Gods with our earthly views and feelings. The spiritual worlds remain closed to us until we've eliminated these hindrances, for they must be kept free of everything that's maya.

If we reflect about this relation of the good Gods, of Christ, to the Luciferic beings, to Lucifer, then the meditation verse: Everything around us is maya or illusion, will appear to us in a quite different light. We'll become aware of how often we forget in everyday life that things and qualities that we think are very important are just maya.

The lodge is closed in three ways:

Master: Hammer blow (three times):
Wisdom guides our building (extinguishing the light)

2nd overseer (south):
Hammer blow (three times):
Beauty may grace him (extinguishing the light)

1st overseer (west):
Hammer blow (three times):
Strength may guide him (extinguishing the light)

Master: Brother (Sister) 2nd overseer, is this your usual place in the lodge?

Answer: In the south.

Master: Why are you placed there?

Answer: To be the sun in the meridian, and to call the sisters and brothers to labor, that the temple may be built.

Master: Brother (sister) 1st overseer, your permanent place in the lodge?

Answer: In the west.

Master: Why are you placed there?

Answer: To be the setting sun and to give the sisters and brothers back to profane life after work is done, after they have received strength and power in the lodge for their outer work.

Master: Where is the Master's place in the lodge?

Administrator: In the east.

Teacher: Why is the teacher there?

Administrator: Just as the sun rises in the east to illuminate and enliven the day, so the venerable teacher fills the work inside the lodge with light and life.

Speaking to the others:

The venerable master will say the prayer that puts the meaning of brotherhood into your hearts. Rise and listen to it in the sign... of the 3rd degree:

Master: Brothers of the past, let your work become our wisdom; we take the compass and standard from your hands. May your work done be the strength of our soul, may it be the strength of our hands.

Brothers of the present, if you are wiser than we, let your wisdom shine in our souls, so that we may become revealers of your thoughts of God.

Brothers of the future, if you carry the plan of construction in your will, let your strength flow into our limbs, so that we may become the body of the great souls.

Master: Hammer blow

The one on the left (administrant): It is my duty, in the order of the service of Misraim, to draw your attention, my sisters and brothers, to the blow of the holy T (Tau) sign. At a significant hour, you received its sacred meaning, with the bandage over your eyes. From this you know that it tells you how the exalted name of God sounds in the innermost part of your being. The sound of the T encompasses the great mystery of the world. The Master who teaches you from the East will implant the power of the T in your inner being. What is given to you as a spiritual word in the T is to become the essence of your own being.

The path of the holy T from the altar of the East has been laid upon your hearts: inscribe the word that has been spoken to you.

Master: T-stroke

2nd overseer (South): It is my task, my sisters and brothers, to call you to work in the service of Misraim. May that which the worker in the temple building of humanity calls “beauty” inspire my commission. You are to work on the building that beholds its stones in the heart, its connecting links in well-measured thoughts, and its cement in the power of the will. Look into the world that quickens your hearts; whose wisdom trains your thoughts; whose seed-forces nourish your will. All this is a beautiful expression of hidden spiritual beings. Absorb into your inner being the forces of these beings and it will flow outwards as “beauty”, which lives within you.

The path to this beauty was laid out for you from the altar of the East: inscribe the word that has been spoken to you.

Master: T-strike

1. Overseer (West): It is my duty in the order of the service of Misraim to dismiss you, my sisters and brothers, from work. What the laborer in the building of the temple of humanity calls “strength” may inspire my commission. Let the work you have learned take effect when you leave the gates of this temple to face the outside world; let what can shape hearts into building blocks for the great temple flow from your hearts; let what can create connecting links for this structure take effect in your thoughts; let what can be putty for the stones of this temple pour forth from your will. Do only what comes from the authenticity of your heart, to which the care of your thoughts leads you, to which the strength of your will has steeled you. In this way you yourselves become an image of your archetype; and the strength will come from you, which shapes the world.

The path to this strength from the altar of the east has been laid out for you. Write down the word that has been spoken to you.

Administrator (East): Learn to be silent and you will have power.

2. Overseer (South): Give up power and you will have the will.

1. Overseer (West): Give up the will and you will have feeling.

Master: Renounce feeling and you will have knowledge.

The magical conclusion

According to Rudolf Steiner's original manuscript. The designations in parentheses were added according to the participants' notes.

(Salt)

In isto sale sit sapientia et ab omni corruptione servet mentes nostras et corpora nostra, per Hochmael et in virtute Ruach-Hochmael, recedant ab isto fantasmata hylae, ut sit sal coelestis, sal terrae et terra salis, ut nutrietur bos triturans et addat spei nostrae cornua tauri volantis. Amen.

(Ashes)

Revertatur cinis ad fontem aquarum viventium et fiat terra fructificans, et germinet arborem vitae per tria nomine, quae sunt Nezah, Hod et Jesod in principio et in fine per Alpha et Omega, qui sunt in spiritu Azoth! Amen.

(Mixing water, salt and ashes)

In sale sapientiae aeternae et in aqua regenerationis et in cinere germinante terram novam, omnia fiant per Elohim Gabriel, Raphael et Uriel in saecula et aeones. Amen.

(Ex Deo nascimur. In Christo morimur. Per Spiritum sanctum reviviscimus)

(Exorcism of the water)

Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters above from the waters below, and let the dry land arise, that the miracle may be performed. The sun is his father, the moon is his mother, and the wind has blown him into his mother's womb. He ascended from earth to heaven and descended again from heaven to earth. I exorcise you, creature of water, that you may be a mirror of God for me and live in his works and be a source of life and an ablution of sinners. Amen.

The magical conclusion, German wording ²

Of the various German translations available, the one in Marie Steiner's manuscript is reproduced here, since it can be assumed that it goes back to Rudolf Steiner.

Salt

There is wisdom in this salt, and it protects our spirits and our bodies from all corruption through Hochmael and through the power of Ruach-Hochmael; may all illusions of matter disappear and there be the salt of heaven, the salt of the earth and the earth of salt, so that the work bull may form and the horns of the willing ram may join it. Amen.

Ashes

Let the ashes return to the source of the water of life, and let the fruit-bearing earth come into being and the trees of life germinate through the three names Nezah, Hod and Jesod, in the beginning and at the end, through Alpha and Omega, who are in the spirit of Azoth. Amen.

Mixing

In the salt of eternal wisdom and in the water of rebirths and in the ashes of the resurrected new earth, “everything” is formed by Elohim Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel, in centuries and millennia. Amen.

Exorcism of water

Let firmament be formed in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the water from the water; let the upper be like the lower; and let the lower be like the upper; and may the wonders of the One come into being. The sun is its father, the moon its mother, who carries it in his womb, and may it rise from the earth to heaven, and again descend from heaven to earth. I conjure thee, creature of the waters, to be unto me the mirror of the living God in his works, and the source of life and the purifier in all obstacles. Amen.

The Rose Cross conclusion ³

Text according to the original manuscript by Rudolf Steiner
Note sheet archive number 6978

The stones are mute; I have placed and hidden within them the eternal creative word; chaste and modest, they hold it in the depths.

M.Pr. [Materia prima]

Plants live and grow; I have let the eternal creative word of the power of the sun flow into them, they carry it down into the depths.

M.S. [Materia secunda]

Animals feel and want; I have shaped the eternal creative word in them; they form it in the depths.

M.T. [Materia tertia]

Man thinks and acts; I let the eternal creative word suffer and rejoice in him; he shall carry it to the heights.⁴

S.T. [Spiritus tertius]

The soul recognizes and surrenders; I allow the eternal creative word of the power of the sun to rise within her in a flowing stream; she guides its flight to the heights of wisdom and devotion.

S.S. [Spiritus secundus]

The spirit loves dissolving the universe; I speak my eternal word of creation in the spirit, awakening and redeeming the world in purity; it flows calmly in the heights of eternal light.

S.P. [Spiritus primus]

K.A.P.[Konx Aum Pax] ⁵

The Rose Cross Conclusion, old version

Note sheet archive number 6977

The stones are mute – I have placed and hidden the eternal creative word in them; chaste and modest, they conceal it.

anaramaya

The plants are alive – I have let the eternal creative word of solar power flow in them; they carry it down.

pranamaya

The animals feel - and want - I have shaped the eternal creative word within them so that it is alive; they shape it in the depths.

Man thinks and acts - I let the eternal creative word within him rejoice and suffer as it springs forth; he gives it life in the depths.

manomaya

The soul recognizes and surrenders – I allow the eternal creative word to arise in her, streaming; she guides its flight to the heights of wisdom and devotion.

vijnanamaya

The spirit loves, detaching itself from everything – I speak my eternal word of creation in the spirit, awakening and redeeming the world in purity; it flows calmly in the heights of eternal light.

anandamaya

Atman

Regarding the Sanskrit terms:
anaramaya [probably annarasamaya] literally: made of solid and liquid food
pranamaya literally made of life force
manomaya literally made of mind
vijnanamaya literally made of consciousness
anandamaya literally made of bliss

The Rose Cross conclusion, draft.

Note sheet archive number 6976

Muteness becomes speech – I let my eternal word of creation whisper in the silence – I take it, keeping it chaste and modest in my heart.

Life and growth fall silent – I let my eternal creative word flow soundlessly through them; they carry it upwards in a chaste way.

Feeling and willing grow without desire – I let my eternal creative word dwell in them; it shall shine through their transparent cover.

Thinking and acting, feeling and willing – I let my eternal creative word shine in them; they are to shape it into spirit substance.

Recognizing and surrender, thinking and acting – I let my eternal creative word become divine in them – they are to lead me into life.

I am – I – The creative Word rests in me;

the insubstantiality creates itself as a boundary.

Aum

The version of the words spoken at the three altars that has been in use since 1913.

According to the transcript of a participant

East

In the service of Michael, it behooves me to remind you, my sisters and brothers, to pay attention to his holy sign. In a meaningful time on earth, you received its sacred meaning. From this you know that it tells you how the exalted name of God sounds in the innermost part of your being. The sound of the sacred sign encompasses the exalted mysteries of the worlds.

What has become your teaching from the East will strengthen Michael's power within you.

What has been given to you as a spiritual word in the holy sign shall become the essence of your own being.

The path of the holy sign from the altar of the East has been laid upon your heart; inscribe the word that will then be spoken to you...

South

In the service of Michael, it is my duty to call you, my sisters and brothers, to work. What the laborer building the temple of humanity calls beauty may inspire my mission. You are to do work on the building that sees its building blocks in your hearts, its connecting links in well-measured thoughts, and its putty in the power of will. Look at the world around you, whose life moves your hearts, whose wisdom trains your thoughts, whose solar powers nourish your will. All this is a beautiful expression of hidden spirit beings. Absorb within yourself the forces of these beings and it will flow outwards as beauty, which lives within you.

The path to this beauty was laid out for you by our great master of the altar of the east; inscribe the word that will then be spoken to you.

West

In the service of Michael, it is my duty to dismiss you, my sisters and brothers, from work. May the strength of the laborer in the building of the temple of humanity inspire my commission. Let the work you have learned take effect when you leave the gates of this temple for the outer life.

Let what flows from your hearts into humanity shape hearts into building blocks for the great temple. Let your thoughts bring forth connecting links for this structure. And out of your will shall flow that which can cement the stones of this building. Do only that which comes from the authenticity of your heart, to which the care of your thoughts has led you, to which the strength of your will has steeled you.

You yourselves will become an image of your archetype through this, and the strength will come from you that shapes the world.

The path to this strength was laid out for you by our great Master of the Altar of the East; inscribe yourselves in the word that will then be spoken to you...

• 1. Applies equally to the first, second and third degrees.
• 2. Whether the German wording was also spoken has not been handed down. Ruach = Spirit.
• 3. See also the manuscript from 1923 on p. 4691.
• 4. At that moment, the black curtains were changed to red.
• 5. According to a participant's record.

Jean Paul's personality

[ 1 ] There are works of the mind that lead such an independent existence that one can devote oneself to them without thinking for a moment of their author. One can follow the Iliad, Hamlet and Othello, Iphigenia from beginning to end without being reminded of the personality of Homer, Shakespeare or Goethe. These works stand before the viewer like beings with a life all their own, like developed human beings that we accept for themselves without asking about their father. In them, not only the spirit of creation but also that of the creator is constantly before us. Agamemnon, Achilles, Othello, Iago, Iphigenia appear before us as individuals who act and speak for themselves. Jean Paul's characters, these Siebenkäs and Leibgeber, these Albano and Schoppe, Walt and Vult always have a companion who speaks with them, who looks over their shoulders. It is Jean Paul himself. The poet himself also speaks in Goethe's Faust. But he does so in a completely different way to Jean Paul. What has flowed from Goethe's nature into the figure of Faust has completely detached itself from the poet; it has become Faust's own being and the poet steps off the stage after he has placed his double on it. Jean Paul always remains standing next to his figures. When immersing ourselves in one of his works, our feelings, our thoughts always jump away from the work and towards the creator. Something similar is also the case with his satirical, philosophical and pedagogical writings. Today we are no longer able to look at a philosophical doctrine in isolation, without reference to its author. We look through the philosophical thoughts to the philosophical personalities. In the writings of Plato, Aristotle and Leibniz, we no longer remain within the logical web of thought. We look for the image of the philosopher. Behind the works we look for the human being struggling with the highest tasks and watch how he has come to terms with the mysteries and riddles of the world in his own way. But this idiosyncrasy has been fully expressed in the works. A personality speaks to us through the works. Jean Paul, on the other hand, always presents himself to us in two forms in his philosophical writings. We believe that he speaks to us from the book; but there is also a person next to us who tells us something that we can never guess from the book. And this second person always has something to say to us that never falls short of the significance of his creations.

[ 2 ] One may regard this peculiarity of Jean Paul's as a shortcoming of his nature. For those who are inclined to do so, I would like to counter Jean Paul's own words with some modification: Every nature is good as soon as it remains a solitary one and does not become a general one; for even the natures of a Homer, Plato, Goethe must not become general and unique and fill with their works "all the halls of books, from the old world down to the new, or we would starve and emaciate from oversaturation; as well as a human race, whose peoples and times consisted of nothing but pious Herrnhutters and Speners or Antonines or Lutherans, would at last present something of dull boredom and sluggish advancement."

[ 3 ] It is true: Jean Paul's idiosyncrasy never allowed him to create works that have the character of perfection through the unity and roundness of their form, through the natural, objective development of the characters and the plot, through the idealistic representation of his views. He never found the perfect stylistic form for his great spiritual content. But he penetrated the depths and abysses of the human soul and scaled the heights of thought like few others.

[ 4 ] Jean Paul was predisposed to a life of the greatest style. Nothing is inaccessible to his fine powers of observation, his high flight of thought. It is conceivable that he would have reached the pinnacle of mastery if he had studied the secrets of art forms like Goethe; or that he would have become one of the greatest philosophers of all time if he had developed his decisive ability to live in the realm of ideas to greater perfection. An unlimited urge for freedom in all his work prevents Jean Paul from submitting to any formal fetters. His bold imagination does not want to be determined in the continuation of a story by the art form it has created for itself at the beginning. Nor does it have the selflessness to suppress inflowing feelings and thoughts if they do not fit into the framework of the work to be created. Jean Paul appears as a sovereign ruler who plays freely with his imaginative creations, unconcerned about artistic principles, unconcerned about logical concerns. If the course of a narrative, a sequence of thoughts, flows on for a while, Jean Paul's creative genius always reclaims his freedom and leads the reader down side paths, occupying him with things that have nothing to do with the main thing, but only join it in the mind of the creator. At every moment, Jean Paul says what he wants to say, even if the objective course of events demands something completely different. Jean Paul's great style lies in this free play. But there is a difference between playing with complete mastery of the field in which one moves, or whether the whim of the player creates formations which give the impression to those who look at things according to their own laws that one part of the formation does not correspond to the other. With regard to the Greek works of art, Goethe bursts out with the words: "I have the suspicion that the Greeks proceeded according to the very laws according to which nature proceeds and which I am on the track of", and: "These high works of art are at the same time the highest works of nature, which have been produced by men according to true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary and imaginary collapses; there is necessity, there is God." One would like to say of Jean Paul's creations: here nature has created an isolated area in which it shows that it can defy its own laws and still be great. Goethe seeks to achieve freedom of creation by incorporating the laws of nature into his own being. He wants to create as nature itself creates. Jean Paul wants to preserve his freedom by not paying attention to the laws of things and imagining the laws of his own personality into his world.

[ 5 ] If Jean Paul's nature were not very cozy, his free play with things and feelings would have a repulsive effect. But his interest in nature and people is no less than Goethe's and his love for all beings has no limits. And it is attractive to see how he immerses himself in things with his feelings, with his rapturous imagination, with his lofty flight of thought, without, however, seeing through the essence inherent in these things. essence itself. One would like to apply the saying "love is blind" to the sensuality with which Jean Paul describes nature and people.

[ 6 ] And it is not because Jean Paul plays too little, but because he is too serious. The 'dream that his imagination dreams of the world is so majestic that what the senses really perceive seems small and insignificant compared to it. This tempts him to embody the contradiction between his dreams and reality. Reality does not seem serious enough for him to waste his seriousness on it. He makes fun of the smallness of reality, but he never does so without feeling the bitterness of not being able to enjoy this reality more. Jean Paul's humor springs from this basic mood of his character. It allowed him to see things and characters that he would not have seen in a different mood. There is a way to rise above the contradictions of reality and to feel the great harmony of all world events. Goethe sought to rise to this height. Jean Paul lived more in the regions in which nature contradicts itself and becomes unfaithful in detail to what speaks from its whole as truth and naturalness. Appear therefore

[ 7 ] Jean Paul's creations, measured against the whole of nature, appear to be imaginary, arbitrary, one cannot say to them: "there is necessity, there is God"; to the individual, to the individual, his sensations appear to be quite true. He has not been able to describe the harmony of the whole, because he has never seen it in clear outline before his imagination; but he has dreamed of this harmony and wonderfully felt and described the contradiction of the individual with it. If his mind had been able to vividly shape the inner unity of all events, he would have become a pathetic poet. But since he only felt the contradictory, petty aspects of reality, he gave vent to them through humorous descriptions.

[ 8 ] Jean Paul does not ask: what is reality capable of? He doesn't even get to that. For this question is immediately drowned out by the other: how little this reality corresponds to the ideal. But ideals that are so unable to tolerate the marriage with harsh reality have something soft about them. They lack the strength to live fully and freshly. Those who are dominated by them become sentimental. And sentimentality is one of Jean Paul's character traits. If he is of the opinion that true love dies with the first kiss, or at least with the second, this is proof that his sentimental ideal of love was not created to win flesh and blood. It always retains something ethereal. Thus Jean Paul hovers between a shadowy ideal world, to which his rapturous longing is attached, and a reality that seems foolish and foolish in comparison with that ideal world. Thinking of himself, he says of humor: "Humor, as the inverted sublime, does not destroy the individual, but the finite through the contrast with the idea. For it there is no single folly, no fools, but only folly and a great world; unlike the common joker with his side-swipes, it does not single out individual folly, but humiliates the great, but unlike parody - in order to elevate the small, and elevates the small, but unlike irony - in order to set the great alongside it and thus destroy both, because before infinity everything is equal and nothing is equal." Jean Paul was unable to reconcile the contradictions of the world, which is why he was also helpless in the face of those in his own personality. He could not find the harmony of the forces of the soul that were at work in him. But these forces of the soul have such a powerful effect that one must say that Jean Paul's imperfection is greater than many a perfection of a lower order. Jean Paul's ability may lag behind his will, but this will appears so clearly before one's soul that one feels one is looking into unknown realms when one reads his writings.

Boyhood and grammar school

[ 9 ] Jean Paul spent his childhood, from the age of two to twelve, in Joditz an der Saale, not far from Hof. He was born in Wunsiedel on March 21, 1763 as the son of the tertius and organist Johann Christian Christoph Richter, who had married Sophia Rosina Kuhn, the daughter of the cloth maker Johann Paul Kuhn in Hof, on October 16, 1761. Our poet was given the name Johann Paul Friedrich at his baptism. He later formed his literary name Jean Paul by Frenching his first two first names. On i. August 1765, the parents moved to Joditz. The father was appointed pastor there. The family had grown in Wunsiedel with the addition of a son, Adam. Two girls, who died young, and two sons, Gottlieb and Heinrich, were added in Joditz. A last son, Samuel, was born later, when the family was already in Schwarzenbach. Jean Paul describes his childhood in a captivating way in his autobiography, which unfortunately only goes up to 1779. All the traits that later emerged in the man were already evident in the boy. The rapturous fantasy, which is directed towards an ideal realm and which values reality less than this realm, manifested itself at an early age in the form of a fear of ghosts that often tormented him. He slept with his father in a parlor of the Joditz rectory, separated from the rest of the family. The children had to go to bed at nine o'clock. But the hard-working father only came to Jean Paul in the parlor two hours later, after he had finished his night's reading. Those were two difficult hours for the boy. "I lay with my head under the comforter in the sweat of ghostly fear and saw in the darkness the weather light of the cloudy ghostly sky, and I felt as if man himself were being spun by ghostly caterpillars. So I suffered helplessly for two hours at night, until finally my father came up and, like a morning sun, chased away ghosts like dreams." The autobiographer gives an excellent interpretation of this peculiarity of his childhood. "Many a child full of physical fear nevertheless shows courage of mind, but merely for lack of imagination; another, however - like me - trembles before the invisible world, because imagination makes it visible and shapes it, and is easily frightened by the visible, because it never reaches the depths and dimensions of the invisible. Thus, even a quick physical danger -- for example, a running horse, a clap of thunder, a war, the noise of a fire -- only makes me calm and composed, because I fear only with my imagination, not with my senses." And the other side of Jean Paul's nature can also be seen in the boy; that loving devotion to the little things of reality. He had "always had a predilection for the domestic, for still life, for making spiritual nests. He is a domestic shellfish that pushes itself quite comfortably back into the narrowest coils of the shell and falls in love, only that each time it wants to have the snail shell wide open so that it can then raise its four tentacles not as far as four butterfly wings into the air, but ten times further up to the sky; at least with each tentacle to one of the four satellites of Jupiter." He calls this peculiarity of his a "foolish alliance between searching far and searching near - similar to binoculars, which double the proximity or the distance by merely turning around". The boy's attitude towards Christmas is particularly significant for Jean Paul's character. The joys that the near reality offered him could not fill his soul, however great the extent to which they materialized. "For when Paul stood before the tree of lights and the table of lights on Christmas morning and the new world full of splendor and gold and gifts lay uncovered before him and he found and received new things and new and rich things: so the first thing that arose in him was not a tear - namely of joy - but a sigh - namely about life - in a word, even to the boy the crossing or leap or flight from the surging, playful, immeasurable sea of the imagination to the limited and confining solid shore was characterized by a sigh for a greater, more beautiful land. But before this sigh was breathed and before the happy reality showed its powers, Paul felt out of gratitude that he must show himself in the highest degree joyful before his mother; - and this glow he accepted at once, and for a short time too, because immediately afterwards the dawning rays of reality extinguished and removed the moonlight of imagination." Not as a child, nor in later life, could Jean Paul find the bridge between the land of his longing, which his imagination presented to him in unlimited perfection, and the reality that he loved, but which never satisfied him because he could not see it as a whole, but only in detail, in the individual, in the imperfect.

[ 10 ] On behalf of his mother, Jean Paul often visited his grandparents in Hof. One summer's day on his way home, as he looked at the sunny, glistening mountain slopes and the drifting clouds at around two o'clock, he was overcome by an "objectless longing, which was a mixture of more pain and less pleasure and a desire without memory. Alas, it was the whole man who longed for the heavenly goods of life, which still lay unmarked and colorless in the deep darkness of the heart and which were fleetingly illuminated by the incident rays of the sun." This longing accompanied Jean Paul throughout his life; he was never granted the favor of seeing the objects of his longing in reality.

[ 11 ] There were times when Jean Paul wavered as to whether he was born to be a philosopher or a poet. In any case, there is a distinctly philosophical streak in his personality. Above all else, the philosopher needs to reflect on himself. The philosophical fruits ripen in the most intimate inner being of man. The philosopher must be able to withdraw to this. From here he must be able to find the connection to world events, to the secrets of existence. The young Jean Paul also shows a budding tendency towards self-reflection. He tells us: "I have never forgotten the phenomenon within me, which I have never told anyone about, where I stood at the birth of my self-consciousness, of which I know exactly where and when. One morning, as a very young child, I was standing under the front door and looking to the left at the wood, when suddenly the inner face, I am an I, came before me like a flash of lightning from the sky, and remained shining ever since: then my I had seen itself for the first time and forever." All the peculiarities of Jean Paul's character and those of his creations are already to be found in the earliest traits of his nature. It would be wrong to look for the cause of the physiognomy of his spiritual personality in his growth out of the limited conditions of his upbringing. He himself considers it a happy coincidence that the poet spent his childhood not in a big city but in the village. This generalization is certainly daring. For Jean Paul, because of his individual nature, it was fortunate that he received his first impressions in the idyll of Jodice. For other natures, another is certainly the natural one. Jean Paul said: "Let no poet be born and educated in a capital, but where possible in a village, at most in a small town. The overabundance and overstimulation of a big city are for the excitable child's soul like eating dessert, drinking distilled water and bathing in mulled wine. Life exhausts itself in him in boyhood, and he now has nothing more to wish for than at most the smaller things, the villages. If I think of the most important thing for the poet, of love, he must see in the city, around the warm earthy belt of his parental friends and acquaintances, the larger cold turning and icy zones of unloved people, whom he encounters unknown to him and for whom he can kindle or warm himself as little as a ship's people sailing past another strange ship's people. But in the village they love the whole village, and no infant is buried there without everyone knowing its name and illness and sorrow; - and this glorious sympathy for everyone who looks like a human being, which therefore extends even to the stranger and the beggar, breeds a concentrated love of humanity and the right strength of heart."

[ 12 ] There was a real rage for knowledge in the boy Jean Paul. "All learning was my life, and I would have been happy to be taught like a prince by half a dozen teachers at once, but I hardly had the right one." Of course, the father who provided the elementary lessons was not the right man to satisfy this desire. Johann Christoph Christian Richter was an outstanding personality. He inspired his small parish, whose members were connected to him like a large family, with his sermons. He was an excellent musician and even a popular composer of sacred music. Benevolence towards everyone was one of his outstanding character traits. He did some of the work in his field and garden with his own hands. The lessons he gave his son consisted of letting him "merely learn by heart, sayings, catechism, Latin words and Langen's grammar". This was of little avail to the boy, who was thirsting for real spiritual nourishment. Even then, he sought to acquire on his own what was not available to him from outside. He created a box for himself in which he set up a "case library" "made entirely of his own little sedes, which he sewed together and cut out of the wide paper cuttings from his father's octave sermons".

[ 13 ] On January 9, 1776, Jean Paul moved to Schwarzenbach with his parents. His father was appointed pastor there by a patron, Baroness von Plotho. Jean Paul now went to a public school. The lessons there did not meet his intellectual needs any more than those of his father. The principal, Karl August Werner, taught the pupils to read in a way that lacked all thoroughness and immersion in the spirit of the writers. The chaplain Völkel, who gave him private lessons in geography and philosophy, provided a substitute for those in need of knowledge. Jean Paul received a great deal of inspiration from philosophy in particular. However, it was precisely this man to whom the young mind's firmly pronounced, rigid individuality came to the fore in a brusque manner. Völkel had promised to play a game of chess with him one day and then forgot about it. Jean Paul was so angry about this that he ignored his beloved philosophical lessons and never went to see his teacher again. At Easter 1779, Jean Paul came to Hof to attend grammar school. His entrance examination revealed an unusual maturity of mind. He was immediately placed in the middle section of the Prima. Soon afterwards, on April 135, his father died. Jean Paul had no real luck with his teachers in Hof either. Neither principal Kirsch nor deputy principal Remebaum, the primary school teachers, made any particular impression on Jean Paul. And once again he felt compelled to satisfy his mind on his own. Fortunately, his relationship with the enlightened Pastor Vogel in Rehau gave him the opportunity to do so. He placed his entire library at his disposal and Jean Paul was able to immerse himself in the works of Helvetius, Hippel, Goethe, Lavater and Lessing. He already felt the urge to assimilate what he had read and make it useful for his own life. He filled entire volumes with excerpts of what he had read. And a series of essays emerged from this reading. The grammar school pupil set about important things. What our concept of God is like; about the religions of the world; the comparison of the fool and the wise, the fool and the genius; about the value of studying philosophy at an early age; about the importance of inventing new truths: these were the tasks he set himself. And he already had a lot to say about these things. He was already dealing independently with the nature of God, with the questions of Christianity, with the spiritual progress of mankind. We encounter boldness and maturity of judgment in these works. He also ventured to write a poem, the novel "Abelard and Heloise". Here he appears in style and content as an imitator of Miller, the Sigwart poet. His longing for a perfect world that transcended all reality brought him into the path of this poet, for whom there were only tears on earth over broken hearts and dried up hopes and for whom happiness only lies beyond death. The motto of Jean Paul's novel already shows that he was seized by this mood: "The sensitive man is too good for this earth, where there are cold mockers - in that world only, which bears weeping angels, does he find reward for his tears."

[ 14 ] In Hof, Jean Paul already found what his heart needed most, participating friends: Christian Otto, the son of a wealthy merchant, who later became the confidant of his literary works; Johann Richard Hermann, the son of a toolmaker, a brilliant man full of energy and knowledge, who unfortunately succumbed to the efforts of a life rich in deprivation and hardship as early as 1790. Furthermore, Adolf Lorenz von Oerthel, the eldest son of a wealthy merchant from Töpen near Hof. In contrast to Hermann, the latter was a soft, sentimentalist full of sentimentality and enthusiasm. Hermann was realistically inclined and combined practical wisdom with a scientific sense. In these two characters, Jean Paul already encountered the types that he later embodied in his poems in manifold variations, as the idealistic Siebenkäs compared to the realistic Leibgeber; as Walt compared to Vult. On May 19, 1781, Jean Paul was enrolled as a student of theology in Leipzig.

University life

[ 15 ] Conflicting thoughts and feelings waged a fierce battle in Jean Paul's soul when he entered the classrooms of the high school. He had absorbed opinions and views through avid reading; but neither his artistic nor his philosophical imagination wanted to unfold in such a way that what he had absorbed from outside would have taken on a fixed, individual structure. The basic forces of his personality were strong but indeterminate; the energy was great, the creative power sluggish. The impressions he received aroused powerful feelings in him, drove him to make decisive value judgments; but they did not want to form themselves into vivid images and thoughts in his imagination.

[ 16 ] At university, Jean Paul only sought all-round stimulation. As the eldest son of a clergyman, it was part of the family tradition for him to study theology. If the intention of becoming a theologian ever played a role in his life, it did not last long. He wrote to his friend Vogel: "I have made it a rule in my studies to do only what is most pleasant to me, what I am least unskilled at and what I already find useful and consider useful. I have often deceived myself by following this rule, but I have never regretted this mistake. - To study what one does not love is to struggle with disgust, boredom and weariness in order to obtain a good that one does not desire; it is to waste one's powers, which one feels are made for something else, in vain on a thing where one can make no progress, and to withdraw them from the thing in which one would make progress." He lives at the university as a man of spiritual enjoyment who seeks only that which develops his dormant powers. He listens to lectures on St. John by Magister Weber, on the Acts of the Apostles by Morus; on logic, metaphysics and aesthetics by Platner, on morals by Wieland, on mathematics by Gehler; on Latin philology by Rogler. He also read Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, Pope, Swift, Young, Cicero, Horace, Ovid and Seneca. The diary pages and studies in which he collects and processes what he has heard and read grow into thick volumes. He developed an almost superhuman capacity for work and a desire to work. He set down his views in essays that reflect his struggle for a free world view, independent of religious and scholarly prejudices.

[ 17 ] The insecurity of his mind, which prevented Jean Paul from finding his own way in the face of the contemplation and appropriation of the foreign, would probably have held him back for a long time from appearing before the public with his attempts at writing if the bitterest poverty had not driven him to the decision: "To write books in order to be able to buy books." Jean Paul did not have time to wait until the bitterness he felt as a Leipzig student about the deplorable state of life and culture had turned into a cheerful, superior sense of humor. Early mature works emerged, satires in which the grumbling, criticizing man and not the poet and philosopher speaks out of Jean Paul. Inspired by Erasmus' "Encomium moriae", he wrote his "Praise of Stupidity" in 1782, for which he was unable to find a publisher, and in the same year the "Greenland Trials", with which he first appeared in public in 1783. When one reads these writings, one has the feeling that here is a man who not only vents his resentment on what he encounters that is wrong, but who painstakingly collects all the weaknesses and dark sides, all the stupidities and foolishness, all the mendacity and cowardice of life in order to pursue them with his wit. The roots through which Jean Paul connected with reality were short and thin. Once he had gained a foothold somewhere, he could easily loosen it again and transplant his roots into other soil. His life was broad, but not deep. This is most evident in his relationship with women. He did not love with the full elemental force of his heart. His love was a game with the sensations of love. He did not love women. He loved love. In 1783 he had a love affair with a beautiful country girl, Sophie Ellrodt in Helmbrechts. One day he wrote to her that her love made him happy; he assured her that her kisses had satisfied the longing that his eyes had aroused in him. But he also writes soon afterwards that he only stayed a little longer in Hof because he wanted to be happy in this place for some time before he would be happy in Leipzig (cf. Paul Nerrlich, Jean Paul, p. 138 £.). As soon as he is in Leipzig, the whole love dream has faded. His later relationships with women were just as playful with the feelings of love, including those with his wife. His love had something ghostly about it; the addition of sensuality and passion had too little elective affinity to the ideal element of his love.

[ 18 ] The insecurity of the mind, the little connection of his being with the real conditions of life made Jean Paul a self-tormentor at times. He just flitted about reality; that is why he often had to go astray and reflect on his own personality. We read of a self-torture that went as far as asceticism in Jean Paul's devotional booklet, which he wrote in 1784. But even this asceticism has something playful about it. It remains stuck in ideal reverie. However profound the individual remarks he writes down about pain, virtue, glory-seeking, anger: one always has the impression that Jean Paul merely wanted to intoxicate himself with the beauty of his rules of life. It was refreshing for him to write down thoughts such as the following: "Hatred is not based on moral ugliness, but on your mood, sensitivity, health; but is it the other's fault that you are ill? ... The offending man, not the offending stone, annoys you; so think of every evil as the effect of a physical cause or as coming from the Creator, who also allowed this concatenation." Who can believe that he is serious about such thoughts, who almost at the same time wrote the "Greenland Trials", in which he wielded his scourge against writing, against clericalism, against ancestral pride in a way that does not betray the fact that he regards the wrongs of life as the effect of a physical cause?

[ 19 ] The bitterest need caused Jean Paul to leave Leipzig like a fugitive on October 27, 1784. He had to secretly evade his creditors. On November 16, he arrived in Hof with his mother, who was also completely impoverished.

Educator and years of travel

[ 20 ] Jean Paul spent two years in Hof surrounded by a housebound mother and the most oppressive family circumstances. Alongside the noisy bustle of his mother, the washing and scrubbing, the cooking and flattening, the whirring of the spinning wheel, he dreamed of his ideals. Only the New Year of 1787 brought partial redemption. He became a tutor to the younger brother of his friend Oerthel in Töpen near Hof. There was at least one person in Chamber Councillor Oerthel's house who was sympathetic to the idealistic dreamer, who had a slight tendency towards sentimentality. It was the woman of the house. Jean Paul remembered her with gratitude throughout his life. Her loving nature made up for some of the things that her husband's rigidity and roughness spoiled for Jean Paul. And even if the boy he had to educate caused the teacher many a worry due to his suspicious character, the latter seems to have clung to his pupil with a certain love, for he later said of the early departed that he had had the most beautiful heart and that the best seeds of virtue and knowledge lay in his head and heart. After two years, Jean Paul left Oerthel's house. We are not informed of the reasons for this departure. Necessity soon forced him to exchange the old schoolmaster's office for a new one. He moved to Schwarzenbach to give elementary lessons to the children of his old friends, the pastor Völkel, the district administrator Clöter and the commissioner Vogel.

[ 21 ] During his time in Hof and Töpen, Jean Paul's need for friendship bore the most beautiful fruit. If Jean Paul lacked the endurance of passion for devoted love, he was made for friendship that lived more in the spiritual element. His friendship with Oerthel and Hermann deepened during this time. And when they were taken from him by death in quick succession, in 1789 and 1790, he erected monuments to them in his soul, the sight of which spurred him on to ever new work throughout his life. The deep glimpses that Jean Paul was granted into the souls of his friends were a powerful stimulus for his poetic creativity. Jean Paul needed to lean on people who were attached to him with all their soul. The urge to transfer his feelings and ideas directly into another human soul was great. He could consider it fortunate that shortly after Oerthel and Hermann had passed away, another friend surrendered to him in loyal love. It was Christian Otto who, from 1790 until Jean Paul's death, lived through his intellectual life with selfless sympathy.

[ 22 ] Jean Paul himself describes how he spent the period from 1783 to 1790. "I enjoyed the most beautiful things in life, autumn, summer and spring with their landscapes on earth and in the sky, but I had nothing to eat or wear and remained anemic and little respected in Hof im Voigtlande." It was during this time that his "Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren nebst einem notwendigen Aviso vom Juden Mendel" was written. In this book, the creative satirist appears alongside the polemicist. The criticism has partly been transformed into narrative. People appear instead of the earlier abstract ideas. But what is still laboriously struggling for embodiment here emerges in a more perfect form in the three stories written in 1790: "Des Amtsvogts Freudel Klaglibell gegen seinen verfluchten Dämon"; "Des Rektors Fälbel und seiner Primaner Reise nach dem Fichtelberg" and in the "Leben des vergnügten Schulmeisterleins Maria Wuz in Auenthal". In these three poems, Jean Paul succeeds in drawing characters in which humanity becomes caricature. Freudel, Fälbel and Wuz appear as if Jean Paul were looking at his ideal image of man in mirrors, which make all the features appear diminished and distorted. But in doing so, he creates afterimages of reality. Freudel depicts the t'ypus of man, who at moments when he needs the greatest seriousness and solemn dignity becomes ridiculous through the trickery of his absent-mindedness or chance. Another kind of human caricature, which judges the whole world from the narrowest perspective of its own profession, is characterized in Fälbel. A schoolmaster who believes that the great French social upheaval would have been impossible if the revolutionary heroes had commented on the old classics instead of reading the evil philosophers. The Auenthal schoolmaster Maria Wuz is a wonderful picture of stunted humanity. In his village idyll, he lives human life on a microscopic scale, but he is as happy and content as none of the greatest sages can be.

[ 23 ] It is difficult to decide whether Jean Paul was a good schoolmaster. If he was able to follow the principles he wrote in his diaries, then he certainly turned his pupils into what they were capable of becoming. But schoolmastering was certainly more fruitful for him than for his pupils. For he gained deep insights into young human nature, which led him to the great pedagogical ideas that he later developed in his "Levana". However, he would hardly have been able to endure the confines of the office for three years if he had not found in his visits to Hof a conductor that was entirely in keeping with his nature. He was a connoisseur of the intellectual pleasures that arise from relationships with talented and excitable people. In Hof, he was always surrounded by a crowd of young girls who swarmed around him and stimulated his imagination. He regarded them as his "erotic academy". He fell in love, as far as he could love, with each of the academy girls, and the intoxication of one love affair had not yet faded when another began.

[ 24 ] This mood gave rise to the two novels "The Invisible Lodge" and "Hesperus". Gustav, the main character of the "Invisible Lodge", is a nature like Wuz, who only outgrows Wuz's existence and is forced to allow his tender heart, which could be content in a narrowly defined circle, to be tortured by harsh reality. The contrast between ideal sensuality and what is really valid in life forms the basic motif of the novel. And this motif becomes Jean Paul's great problem in life. It appears in ever new forms in his creations. In "The Invisible Lodge", the ideal sensuality has the character of a deep emotionalism that tends towards sentimentalism; in "Hesperus" it takes on a more rational form. The protagonist, Viktor, no longer merely raves with his heart like Gustav, but also with his mind and reason. Viktor actively intervenes in the circumstances of life, while Gustav passively allows them to affect him. The feeling that runs through both novels is this: the world is not made for good and great people. They have to retreat to an ideal island within themselves and lead an existence outside and above the world in order to make do with its wretchedness. The great man with a noble nature, a brilliant mind and an energetic will, who weeps or laughs at the world, but never draws a sense of satisfaction from it, is one of the extremes between which all Jean Paul's characters are to be placed. The other is the small, narrow-minded person with a subaltern attitude, who is content with the world because his empty mind does not conjure up dreams of a greater one. The figure of Quintus Fixlein in the 1794 story "Life of Quintus Fixlein drawn from fifteen boxes of notes" approaches the latter extreme; the following poem "Jean Paul's biographical amusements under the brainpan of a giantess", written in the same year, approaches the former. Fixlein is happy with modest plans for the future and the most petty scholarly work; Lismore, the main character of the "Amusements", suffers from the disharmony of his energetic will and weaker ability and from the other between his idealistically lofty ideas of human nature and those of his fellow human beings. The struggle that arises when a strong will that transcends the boundaries of reality and a human attitude that grows out of the limited conditions of a petty existence collide was depicted by Jean Paul in the book "Blumen-, Frucht- und Dornenstücke oder Ehestand, Tod und Hochzeit des Armenadvokaten F. St. Siebenkäs im Reichsmarktflecken Kuhschnappel" (Pieces of Flowers, Fruit and Thorns or the Marriage, Death and Wedding of the Poor Lawyer F. St. Siebenkäs in the Imperial Market Town of Kuhschnappel), published at Easter 1795. There are two people here who, because of their higher nature, do not know how to come to terms with the world. One, Siebenkäs, believes in a higher existence and suffers from the fact that this cannot be found in the world; the other, Leibgeber, sees through the nothingness of the world, but does not believe in the possibility of any kind of better. He is a humorist who thinks nothing of life and laughs at reality; but at the same time he is a cynic who cares nothing for higher things and considers all idealistic dreams to be bubbles of foam that rise from the muck of vulgarity as a haze to the scorn of humanity. Siebenkäs suffers at the hands of his wife Lenette, in whom philistine, narrow-minded reality is embodied; and Leibgeber suffers from his faithlessness and hopelessness. But he always rises above it with humor. He demands nothing extraordinary from life; that is why his disappointments are not great and why he does not consider it necessary to make higher demands of himself.

[ 25 ] Even before finishing "Hesperus", Jean Paul had swapped his teaching and educational work in Schwarzenbach for one in Hof. In the summer of 1796, he undertook a trip to Weimar. Like the heroes of his novels in the midst of a reality that did not satisfy them, Jean Paul felt at home in the city of muses. In his opinion, everything that reality could contain in terms of grandeur and sublimity should have been crowded together in this small town. He had hoped to meet giants and titans of spirit and imagination, as he had imagined them in his dreams to the point of superhumanity. And he did find geniuses, but only human beings. He was not attracted to either Goethe or Schiller. Both had already made their peace with the world at that time; both had realized the great world harmony that allows man to make peace with reality after a long struggle. Jean Paul was not allowed to find this peace. His soul was made for the lust of the struggle between ideal and reality. Goethe seemed to him stiff, cold, proud, frozen against all men; Schiller rock-faced and hard, so that foreign enthusiasm bounced off him. Only with Herder did a beautiful bond of friendship develop. The theologian, who sought salvation beyond the real world, could be a comrade to Jean Paul, but not the worldlings Goethe and Schiller, the idolizers of the real. Jean Paul felt the same way about Jacobi, the philosophical fisherman in the murky waters, as he did about Herder. Understanding and reason penetrate reality and illuminate it with the light of the idea; feeling clings to the dark, the unrecognizable, to the world of faith. And Jacobi reveled in the world of faith, as did Jean Paul. This trait of his spirit won him the hearts of women. Karoline Herder raved about the poet of sentimentality, and Charlotte von Kalb admired in him the ideal of a man.

[ 26 ] After his return from Weimar, Jean Paul's poetry lost itself completely in the vagueness of emotional indulgence and in an unworldly way of thinking and attitude in "Jubelsenior" and "Kampanerthal oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele" (1797). If the journey to Weimar had not strengthened his eyes for an unbiased contemplation of life, the varied wanderings that lasted from 1797 to 1804 did even less. He now lived successively in Leipzig, Weimar, Berlin, Meiningen and Koburg. Everywhere he established relationships with people, especially with women; everywhere he was welcomed with open arms. People were intoxicated by his ideas, which flowed from the depths of the emotional world. But the attraction they exerted on him soon wore off. He wrapped thick tentacles around the people he got to know, but soon drew these arms in again. In Weimar, Jean Paul spent happy days in the company of Frau von Kalb, Duchess Amalia, Knebel, Böttiger and others; in Hildburghausen, he carried his love game so far that he became engaged to Caroline von Feuchtersleben, only to part with her again soon afterwards. From Berlin he fetched the woman who really became his wife, Karoline, the second daughter of the senior tribunal councillor Maier. He entered into a marriage with her, which initially lifted him to the highest heights of happiness that a man can climb, and from which all happiness then disappeared to such an extent that Jean Paul only held on to her out of duty and Karoline endured it with submission and self-emptying. On her union with Jean Paul, this woman wrote to her father: "I never thought I would be as happy as I am. It will sound strange to you when I tell you that the high enthusiasm which carried me away when I met Richter, but which subsequently faded away as I descended into a more real life, is revived anew every day." And in July 1820, she confessed that she no longer had any right to his heart, that she felt poor and miserable in comparison to him.

[ 27 ] In Meiningen and Koburg, Jean Paul was able to get to know the peaks from which the world is ruled. The dukes in both places were on the most friendly terms with him. He was not to be missed at any court festival. Anyone seeking intellectual entertainment and stimulation joined him.

[ 28 ] Jean Paul's two most important poems, "Titan" and "Flegeljahre", were written during his years of wandering. His poetic power appears heightened, his imagination works in sharper outlines in these works. The characters are similar to those we encounter in his earlier works, but the artist has gained greater confidence in drawing and more vivid colors. He has also descended from depicting the outside of people into the depths of their souls. While Siebenkäs, Wuz and Fälbel appear like silhouettes, the Albano and Schoppe of the "Titan", the Walt and Vult of the "Flegeljahre" appear as perfectly painted figures. Albano is the man of strong will. He wants great things without asking where the strength to achieve them will come from. He has an addiction to breaking all the shackles of humanity. Unfortunately, it is precisely this humanity that is confined within narrow limits. A soft heart, an over-sensitive sensibility blunt the power of his imagination. He is unable to truly love either the rapturous Liana, with her fine nerves and boundless selflessness, or the ingenious, free-spirited Linda. He cannot love at all because his ideals make him demand more from love than it can offer. Linda wants devotion and nothing but devotion from Albano; but he thinks that he must first win her love through great deeds, through participation in the great war of freedom. He first wants to acquire what he could easily have. Reality in itself is nothing to him; only when he can combine an ideal with it does it become something to him. In view of the great works of art in Rome, it is not the secrets of art that open up to him, but his thirst for action awakens. "How in Rome a person can only enjoy and melt softly in the fire of art, instead of being ashamed and struggling for strength and action," he does not understand. But in the end this 'thirst for action only finds nourishment in the fact that it turns out that Albano is a prince's son and that the throne is his by inheritance. And his need for love is satisfied by the narrow-minded Idoine, who is devoid of any higher impetus. Opposite Albano is Schoppe, who is a body giver in a heightened form. He gives no thought to the nothingness of the world, for he knows that it cannot be otherwise. Life seems worthless to him; nothing has value for him but personal freedom and boundless independence. Only one struggle could have value for him, that for the unconditional freedom of the individual. He derides all other activities. Nothing frightens him more than his own ego. Everything else does not seem worth thinking about to him, not worth enthusiasm and not worth hatred; but he fears his ego. It is the only great mystery that haunts him. In the end, it drives him mad because it haunts him as a single being in the midst of an eerie void.

[ 29 ] Something of this fear of the ego lived in Jean Paul himself. It was an uncanny thought for him to descend into the depths of the mind and see how the human ego is at work to produce all that springs forth from the personality. That is why he hated the philosopher who had shown this ego in its nakedness, Fichte. He mocked him in his "Clavis Fichtiana seu Leibgeberiana" (1801).

[ 30 ] And Jean Paul had reason to shy away from looking into his innermost self. For in it, two egos engaged in a dialog that sometimes drove him to despair. There was the ego with the golden dreams of a higher world order, which mourned over the mean reality and consumed itself in sentimental devotion to an indefinite beyond; and there was the second ego, which mocked the first for its rapture, knowing full well that the indefinite ideal world could never be reached by any reality. The first ego lifted Jean Paul above reality into the world of his ideals; the second was his practical advisor, reminding him again and again that he who wants to live must come to terms with the conditions of life. He divided these two natures in his own personality between two people, the twin brothers Walt and Vult, and portrayed their mutual relationship in the "Flegeljahre". How little Jean Paul's idealism is rooted in reality is best shown in the introduction to the novel. It is not the concatenations of life that are supposed to make the enthusiast Walt a useful person for reality, but the arbitrariness of an eccentric who has bequeathed his entire fortune to the imaginative youth, but on condition that various practical obligations are imposed on him. Any failure to fulfill these practical obligations immediately results in the loss of part of the inheritance. Walt is only able to find his way through life's tasks with the help of his brother Vult. Vult attacks everything he starts with rough hands and a strong sense of reality. The two brothers' natures first complement each other for a while in a beautifully harmonious endeavor, only to separate later on. This conclusion again points to Jean Paul's own nature. Only temporarily did his two natures create a harmonious whole; time and again he suffered from their divergence, from their irreconcilable opposition.

[ 31 ] Never again did Jean Paul succeed in expressing with such perfection what moved him most deeply in poetry as in the "Flegeljahre". In 1803, he began to record the philosophical thoughts he had formed about art over the course of his life. This gave rise to his "Preliminary School of Aesthetics". These thoughts are bold and shed a bright light on the nature of art and artistic creation. They are the intuitions of a man who had experienced all the secrets of this creation in his own production. What the enjoyer draws from the work of art, what the creator puts into it: it is said here with infinite beauty. The psychology of humor is revealed in the most profound way: the hovering of the humorist in the spheres of the sublime, his laughter at reality, which has so little of this sublime, and the seriousness of this laughter, which only does not weep at the imperfections of life because it stems from human greatness.

[ 32 ] Jean Paul's ideas on education, which he set down in his "Levana" (1806), are no less significant. His sense of the ideal benefits this work more than any other. Only the educator really deserves to be an idealist. He is all the more fruitful the more he believes in the unknown in human nature. Every pupil should be a riddle for the educator to solve. The real, the educated should only serve him to discover the possible, the yet-to-be-formed. What we often feel to be a shortcoming in Jean Paul the poet, that he does not succeed in finding harmony between what he wants with his characters and what they really are: in Jean Paul, the teacher of the art of education, this is a great trait. And the sense for human weaknesses, which made him a satirist and humorist, enabled him to give the educator significant hints to counteract these weaknesses.

Bayreuth

[ 33 ] In 1804, Jean Paul moved to Bayreuth to make this town his permanent residence until the end of his life. He felt happy again to see the mountains of his homeland around him and to pursue his poetic dreams in quiet, small circumstances. He no longer created anything as perfect as the "Titan", the "Flegeljahre", the "Vorschule" and the "Levana", although his 'urge to be active took on a feverish character. Upsets about contemporary events, about the miserable state of the German Reich, an inner nervous restlessness that drove him to travel again and again, interrupted the regular course of his life. Half an hour away from Bayreuth, he had made himself a quiet home for a while in the house of Mrs. Rollwenzel, who cared for him like a mother and had made him famous. He needed the change of location in order to be able to create. While it was initially enough for him to leave his family home for hours every day and make the "Rollwenzelei" the scene of his work, this also changed later on. He traveled to various places: Erlangen (1811), Nuremberg (1812), Regensburg (1816), Heidelberg (1817), Frankfurt (1818), Stuttgart, Löbichau (1819), Munich (1820). In Nuremberg he had the pleasure of getting to know his beloved Jacobi, with whom he had previously only written, in person. In Heidelberg, his genius was celebrated by young and old alike. In Stuttgart, he became close to Duke Wilhelm von Württemberg and his talented wife. In Löbichau, he spent the most beautiful days in the house of Duchess Dorothea of Courland. He was surrounded by a society of exquisite women, so that he felt as if he were on a romantic island.

[ 34 ] The fascinating influence that Jean Paul exerted on women, which was evident in Karoline Herder and Charlotte von Kalb and many others, led to a tragedy in 1813. Maria Lux, the daughter of a republican from Mainz who had played a role in the Charlotte Corday catastrophe, fell passionately in love with Jean Paul's writings, which soon turned into an ardent love for the poet she did not know personally. The unhappy girl was dismayed when she saw that her feeling of admiration for the genius was turning more and more stormily into a passionate affection for the man, and gave herself up to death. Sophie Paulus' affection in Heidelberg made a deeply moving impression, if not an equally shattering one. In constant vacillation between moods of fiery love and admirable renunciation and self-control, this girl consumes herself until, at the age of twenty-five and unsure of herself, she offers her hand to the old A. W. Schlegel in a union that is soon shattered by the conflicting natures.

[ 35 ] The cheerful superiority that enabled him to create humorous images of life left Jean Paul completely in Bayreuth. What he still produces has a more serious tone. He is still unable to create characters who lead an existence appropriate to the ideal human nature he has in mind, but he does create characters who have made their peace with reality. Self-satisfied characters are Katzenberger in "Katzenbergers Badereise" (1808) and Fibel in "Leben Fibels" (1811). Fibel is happy, despite the fact that he only manages to write a modest book, and Katzenberger is happy in his study of abortions. Both are distorted images of humanity, but there is no reason to mock them, nor, as with Wuz, to look at their limited happiness with emotion. Schmelzle's "Des Feldprediger Schmelzles Reise nach Flätz", which was written before them (1807), differs from them. Fibel and Katzenberger are content in their indifferent, meaningless existence; Schmelzle is a discontented hare's foot who is afraid of imaginary dangers. But even in this poem there is nothing more of Jean Paul's great problem, of the clash between the ideal, fantastic dream world and actual reality. Nor is there any sense of a struggle between the two worlds in Jean Paul's last great poem, the "Comet", on which he worked for many years (1815 to 1820). Nikolaus Marggraf wants to make the world happy. His plans are indeed fantastic. But he never felt that they were just a dream. He believes in himself and his ideals and is happy in this belief. Essays written with reference to the political situation in Germany and those in which Jean Paul discusses general questions of science and life were written between the larger works. Some of them are collected in "Herbstblumine" (1810, 1815, 1820) and in his "Museum" (1812). The poet appears as a patriot in his "Freiheitsbüchlein" (1805), in the "Friedenspredigt" (1808) and in the "Dämmerungen für Deutschland" (1809).

[ 36 ] During his time in Bayreuth, Jean Paul's humorous mood increasingly gave way to one that took the world and people as they were, even though he only saw imperfections and small things everywhere. He is disgruntled about reality, but he bears the disgruntlement.

[ 37 ] The great humorist was not granted a cheerful old age. Three years before his end, he had to watch his son Max die, with whom he laid to rest a wealth of hopes for the future and most of his personal happiness. An eye ailment that afflicted the poet worsened in his last years until he became completely blind. The old man, who could no longer see the outside world, now immersed himself completely within himself. He now lived the life he thought no longer belonged to this world, even before death, and from the treasure trove of these inner experiences he drew the thoughts for his "Selina" or "On the Immortality of the Soul", in which he speaks like a transfigured person and believes he really sees what he has dreamed of all his life. Jean Paul died on November 14, 1825. "Selina" was not published until after his death.

A woodland meadow. In the background, high cliffs on which stands a castle. Summer evening. Country folk; Simon, the Jew; Thomas, the Master miner; the Monk. Countryfolk walking across the meadow, and stopping to talk.

First Countryman:
See yon vile Jew; he surely will not dare
To take the same road that we take ourselves;
For things might very well come to his ears
On hearing which they'd burn for many a day.

Second Countryman:
We must make clear to his effrontery,
Aye, very clear indeed, that we no more
Will tolerate his race in our good land
Across whose bounds he hath contrived to slink.

First Countrywoman:
He is protected by the noble knights.
Who live in yonder castle; none of us
May enter; but the Jew is welcome there.
For he doth do whate'er the knights desire.

Third Countryman:
'Tis very hard to know who serves the Lord
And who the devil. Thankful should we be
To our good lords who give us food and work.
What should we be if it were not for them?

Second Countrywoman:
The Jew shall have my praise his remedies
Have cured the evil sickness that I had.—
Besides, he was so good and kind to me;
And many more can tell the selfsame tale.

Third Countrywoman:
Yet did a monk let slip the truth to me,—
The Jew employs the devil's remedies
Beware his drugs; transformed within the blood
They grant an entrance to all kinds of sin.

Fourth Countryman:
The men who wait upon the knights oppose
Our ancient customs, saying that the Jew
Hath stores of knowledge both to heal and bless
Which will in days to come be rightly prized.

Fifth Countryman:
New times and better are in store; I see
Their coming in my spirit, when my soul
Pictures to me what eyes cannot behold.
The knights intend to bring all this about.

Fourth Countrywoman:
We owe the Church obedience, for she guards
Our souls from devil-visions, and from death,
And from hell-fire. The monks bid us beware
The knights, and their vile sorcerer, the Jew.

Fifth Countrywoman:
Only a short time longer need we bear
In patience the oppression of the knights.
Soon will their citadel in ruins lie.
Thus hath it been foretold me in a dream.

Sixth Countrywoman:
I fear such tales betoken mortal sin—
That noble knights do plot to bring us harm—
Nought do I see but good come from their hands;
I needs must count them Christians, as ourselves.

Sixth Countryman:
What men shall think of them in days to come
'Twere best to leave to be adjudged by those
Who shall live after us. Mere tools are we,
Used by the knights in their satanic arts
To war against true Christianity.
If they be driven out we shall be freed
From their pernicious sway, and live our lives
As we shall choose, in this our native land.
Now let us go to vespers, there to find
That which our souls require, and that which is
In harmony with our ancestral ways.
These novel teachings suit us not at all.

(Exeunt the countryfolk.)

(Simon, the Jew, enters from the wood.)

Simon:
Where'er I go, I find awaiting me
The ancient hatred and the bitter taunts.
And yet I suffer not a whit the less
Each time I find myself exposed to them.
There seems to be no reasonable cause
Why people should behave towards me thus.
And yet one thought pursues me evermore
Which Makes the truth apparent to my soul,—
That nothing can befall us without cause.
So too a reason there must be for this,
That suffering is the lot of all my tribe.
So with the lords of yonder citadel,
I find their lot is near akin to mine.
They have but chosen of their own free will
That which by nature is imposed on me.
They set themselves apart from all mankind,
And strive in isolation to acquire
The powers through which they may attain their goal.
Thus can I feel the debt I owe to fate
And find her blessing in my loneliness.
Forced to rely on mine own soul alone
I took the realms of science for my field,
And recognized from what I learned therein
That ripe for new attainments was our time.
The laws of nature, hitherto unknown,
Must now reveal themselves unto mankind
And make him master of the world of sense
Whence he will be allowed to liberate
Powers he can put to use for his own ends.
So have I tried, as far as in me lay,
To make fresh progress in the healing art.
This toil endeared me to the brotherhood;
Its members made me free of their estates
To seek to find the forces that reside
In plants and 'neath the surface of the ground,
That they may yield for us new benefits.
My actions therefore march with their designs,
And I confess that I have plucked with joy
Much goodly fruit whilst going on my way.

(Exit into the wood.)

(Thomas, the Master miner, enters from the wood. Enter the Monk.)

Thomas:
Here will I sit and rest a little while.
My soul hath need of rest to find itself
After the shocks which I have had to bear.

(The Monk comes up to him.)

Monk:
I greet thee heartily, most valiant son.
Thou hast come here in search of solitude.
Thy work well done, thou wouldst have peace and quiet
In which to turn thy thoughts to spirit-worlds.
To see my well-loved pupil thus employed
Rejoiceth me. But why so sad-thine eyes?
'Twould seem anxiety weighs down thy soul.

Thomas:
Pain oft is neighbour unto highest bliss;
That this is so mine own life proves to-day.

Monk:
Hast thou then met with bliss and pain at once?

Thomas:
I told thee, reverend father, that I loved
The overseer's daughter, and confessed
That she was also greatly drawn to me.
She is to marry me and share my life.

Monk:
She will be true to thee, come weal, come woe;
She is a faithful daughter of the Church.

Thomas:
Such an one only would I take to wife;
Since, honoured master, I have learned from thee
The meaning of obedience to God's will.

Monk:
And art thou also certain of thy soul,
That it will walk still further in the way
Of righteousness, which I have pointed out?

Thomas:
So sure as in this body beats a heart
So sure will I, thy son, be true for aye
To those exalted teachings which of old
From thine own lips I was allowed to learn.

Monk:
And now that thou hast told me of thy bliss
Let me,hear also from thee of thy woe.

Thomas:
Oft have I told thee what my life hath been.
Scarce had I left my childhood's days behind
Than I began to travel and to roam.
I never worked for long in any place.
Ever I cherished in my heart the wish
To meet my father, whom I loved, although
I had not heard a good report of him.
He left my dear good mother all alone
Because he wished to start his life anew
Unhampered by a wife and children twain.
The impulse for adventure dwelt in him.
I was a child still, when he went from us;
My sister was a tiny new-born babe;
My mother died of grief in no long time.
My sister was adopted by good folk
Who later moved away from my old home,
And of her fate I never more heard tell.
Some relatives assisted me to learn
A miner's work, in which I grew expert,
So that I found employment where I wished.
The hope that some day I should once more find
My father, never vanished from my heart.
And now at last my hope is realized
But also is for ever torn from me.
Matters of business led me yesterday
To seek for speech with my superior.
Thou knowest how lightly I esteem the knight
Who issueth directions for my work,
Since I have learned he is thine enemy.
From that time forward I made up my mind
Not to remain in service under him.
For reasons which remain unknown to me
The knight alluded in our interview
To matters which allowed him to declare
Himself to be—the father whom I sought.
What followed ... I would gladly leave untold.
It would not have been hard to overlook
My mother's sufferings at his hands, and mine,
When he and I once more stood face to face,
And when he spoke, grief-burdened, of old days.
But in his form, stood facing me, thy foe.
And one thing then was manifest to me:—
How deep a gulf must ever separate
Myself from him, whom I so fain would love,
And whom I sought so long and ardently.
Now have I lost him for the second time,—
Such is the lot that hath befallen me.

Monk:
I would not e'er estrange thee from those ties
Imposed on thee by blood-relationship.
But what I can bestow upon thy soul
Shall ever be to thee a gift of love.

Curtain

It has often been emphasized that the present can best be understood in the light of the past and its happenings, and we shall most easily discover and understand the characteristics of our spiritual ideals for the future by looking back into times of remote antiquity. Today, therefore, we will consider developments that took place after the destruction of ancient Atlantis and, in connection with those developments, man's experience during the life after death.

The conditions experienced by the soul between death and a new birth have not always been the same. They, too, have changed in the course of evolution. During the great cultural epochs—the ancient Indian, the epoch of the Holy Rishis; the ancient Persian, epoch of the Zarathustrian culture; the Egypto-Chaldean, Greco-Latin and our present epoch—man has connected himself ever more closely with the physical plane, which he grew to love more and more intensely. In every such epoch the human soul descended deeper into the material world. The greater the understanding acquired by man for this world, the stranger the spiritual world became for him after death. This was the case most strongly in the Greco-Latin epoch. The Greeks loved the physical world because in their glorious art, in that splendid adornment of physical existence, their whole soul could live joyfully. The physical world was dear to the Roman because in his discovery of the ego, the “I,” the feeling of his own personality could develop to the full. The concepts of Roman citizenship and Roman rights are hallmarks of this cultural epoch. The Roman felt at home in this physical, material world. The concept of rights has existed only since that epoch, so it is quite correct to say that jurisprudence began in the Roman Empire; it is the sign of reverence for the single personality. Death was the great unknown and evoked fear. The utterance of Achilles: “Better it is to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of Shades,” aptly indicates the conception prevailing in that epoch of the soul's experience during the life after death in the spiritual world. The more fully these souls had given expression in the realm of earth to all their faculties, the more did the capacity to find their bearings in the spiritual world after death depart from them. The soul felt isolated in the spheres it had now entered. Even in spiritland (Devachan) the soul felt that everything around it was dark, empty and cold. The soul was no longer capable of experiencing the spirituality of yonder world. Even the great leaders of mankind, the initiates, could not change this condition, yet they are the teachers of men not only here on earth but also in yonder worlds. When they told the dead anything about the world this side of the threshold, these souls felt still greater pain at having been obliged to leave the physical world that had become so dear to them. The teachers could bring with them nothing that would help or be of value to the dead, all of whom longed for reincarnation. A human being felt as though he were shut away from his brothers, abandoned even in the realm of the spirit. Had these conditions remained, love and brotherliness would also have gradually disappeared from the earth. For this sojourn in the realm of spirit would have meant that these souls would bring egoism with them into the physical world and into a life wholly centered in the individual self.

In the ancient. Indian epoch man still regarded the earthly world as maya, but things changed in the course of evolution. Zarathustra already proclaimed that the spiritual can also be found by man in the physical world. He revealed the path by which the people were ultimately to realize that the sun with its light is only the external body of a sublime spiritual being whom he called Ahura Mazdao, the Great Aura, in contrast to the little human aura. His aim was to proclaim that this being, as yet far off, would one day come down to the earth in order to unite with its very substance and to work further in the evolution of humanity. For the people of Zarathustra this heralded the same being who in later history lived on the earth as Christ. To his pupils Zarathustra proclaimed, “If you learn to understand that the spiritual is present in everything physical and material, that the physical is permeated by the great Sun Aura, by Ahura Mazdao, then Ahriman will no longer lead you astray.”

At other times Zarathustra said, “So great, so mighty is He who has revealed Himself to me in the sun that I sacrifice everything to him. Gladly I offer to Him the life of my body, the etheric existence of my senses, the expression of my deeds, the astral body.”

This was the pledge once made by the great Zarathustra. He announced to his pupils that the great Sun Spirit would reveal Himself directly in the earth itself, in the realities of earthly existence. Thus did Zarathustra inaugurate the teaching that the material is only the physiognomy, the expression of the spiritual.

Then came the time when the being who had been heralded by Zarathustra revealed himself to Moses in the burning thornbush and on Sinai. Moses taught that this Sun Being is also the Ego Being, the highest principle that can be membered into man. But it is not only into man that a particle of the Sun Spirit has descended; it has also descended into everything in external nature, into the elements, everywhere. The same divinity who, in the name of the “I am the I am,” the principle once revealed to Zarathustra as Ahura Mazdao, as the innermost core, the primordial ground of all existence, was proclaimed by Moses to a whole people as the supreme being whose name was inexpressible and might be uttered only in the innermost sanctuary by the officiating priest. The Godhead who dwells in man, who does not reveal Himself only in the elements, in the flaming fire, is He who is here proclaimed.

Thus we can regard Zarathustra as the herald of Jehovah, of the same being who at the beginning of our time-reckoning dwelt for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This is the same God who had been proclaimed by Moses and Zarathustra.

Christ says, “How shall ye believe me if ye have not believed )Moses and the prophets?” Herewith Christ confirms that the Old Testament had proclaimed in advance, only under different names, the same God whom He, Christ also proclaims. All events in the world need a certain time to take effect. On Sinai, in the burning thornbush, this Sun Being, descending from the heights of the spiritual world, had reached the point where He could announce Himself to man through the elements. He now came nearer and nearer to the earth, into the sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth at the Baptism in the Jordan, and when the Mystery of Golgotha took place on the earth and the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer, this was not only the expression of a great cosmic event but also of the greatest of all earthly events: the Christ passed into the earth's aura as the Spirit of the earth. A new impetus had been given and could be perceived by clairvoyance, for at that moment the earth's aura changed, revealing particular colors. New colors were revealed and new powers were incorporated in the earth's aura. At the moment when the blood that is the physical expression of the ego flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer on Golgotha, at that moment the ego of Christ united with the earth. But the moment had also come when conditions in the spiritual world could begin to change for souls after death. This was the meaning of Christ's descent into Hell.

A clairvoyant, living before the event of Golgotha, would not have seen in the earth's aura what could be seen there later on, when Christ Jesus had passed through the death on Golgotha. Let us now think of the event of Damascus. Saul who, as an initiate of the Jewish Mysteries, knew full well that the “Great Aura,” Ahura Mazdao, would one day unite with the earth, rebelled against the belief that this being could have died on the shameful cross. Although he had participated in the events in Palestine, he did not believe that this great spirit had dwelt on the earth in Jesus of Nazareth. It was when he became clairvoyant near the gates of Damascus that in the earth's aura he beheld the Christ spirit, the living Christ, who could not previously have been seen there. He then said to himself, “Yes, it was predicted that the earth's aura would change, and that has now come to pass.” Then Saul became Paul. Paul spoke of himself as one who had been born prematurely, one who had become clairvoyant through grace; his was a premature birth because maturity had not yet been fully reached; he had not descended so deeply into matter and was less firmly connected with the physical body. Those who follow the course of Christianity know that the personality in it of supreme importance is Paul. He achieved more than anyone else for its propagation.

It was an occult fact, an occult event, by which Paul was converted, and it can justly be said that through that clairvoyant experience humanity was led to Christ. At that time a change took place in the earth's aura, and since then it has been changed. The words of St. John's Gospel were thus fulfilled: “He who eats my bread treads upon me with his feet.” Since then Christ has been the Spirit of the earth, the planetary Spirit. The earth is the body of Christ; His habitation is within the earth. This profound utterance in St. John's Gospel is not to be understood in an adverse sense or as a pointer to Judas who betrayed Christ. Rather, the reference is to the Christ-Jehovah Divinity and His relation to the earth.

When the occult investigator compares the effect of the art of the Greeks and post-Christian art upon the world man enters after death, he still finds that when a clairvoyant contemplates with physical eyes a Greek temple with its Doric pillars—for example, the ruins at Paestum-he may well be entranced by the harmonious forms that follow the spiritual lines of direction and thereby make this temple an actual dwelling place of the god. Just as a soul feels drawn to the body that is fitting for it, so does the god descend into these forms that harmonize so perfectly with his nature and being. But when a seer turns his eyes to the spiritual counterpart of his temple, he finds nothing in the spiritual world. The temple seems to have been obliterated from that world and a space left empty there: nothing of the temple is to be seen. If, on the other hand, a seer is contemplating works of art of the post-Christian era or, for example, contemplating the Gospel of St. John or the passages in the Old and New Testaments that have to do with Christ-Jehovah or Raphael's Madonnas—if the seer contemplates these creations first with physical eyes and then with clairvoyant sight, they are by no means invisible in the spiritual world but radiate there in even greater splendor. This is especially true of the Gospel of St. John. It is in the spiritual world that the greatness of that creation is first realized. It is in the spiritual world that whatever is connected with the Mystery of Golgotha first becomes radiant and clear in the fullest sense.

Simultaneously with the historical event on the physical plane, a spiritual happening, which was also a symbolic happening, took place when the blood flowed from the Redeemer's wounds. When Christ was no longer living in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth, at the moment when He died on Golgotha, He appeared in the spiritual world to the souls living between death and rebirth, and the darkness abated. The spiritual world was suddenly filled with light. Just as the objects in a dark room suddenly become visible when a ray of light shines into the room and you see the objects that were always there although you could not previously detect them, thus did light pour into the world of the dead. The souls there were again able to perceive what was around them, to feel united in the realm of spirit with their brothers and could now bring into the physical world the qualities of love and brotherliness. Thus a new light came into this world of the dead, for the Mystery of Golgotha has significance not only for the world in which it took place physically but for all the worlds with which man is connected in the course of his evolution. If the spiritual world had remained as the dead experienced it during the Greco-Latin epoch, if the human soul had remained in the icy coldness and loneliness then prevailing, brotherliness and love would have gradually vanished from the world. Man would have brought with him from Devachan the longing for seclusion. For the light that then streamed into the earthly world and also into the world of the dead was meant to establish the kingdom of brotherliness and love on the earth. That is the mission of the Christ impulse.

We will now consider from still another side the Mystery of Golgotha and the secret of the blood flowing from the wounds of the Redeemer.

We know that man on the earth has received an inheritance from Old Moon. The three lower bodies, physical body, etheric body and astral body had been prepared for him and it was on the earth that the ego was first added—the ego as the expression of human freedom and independence. In ancient times it was important to establish the homogeneity of mankind. At the beginning, conditions were such that the relations of one human being to another were saved only by being given a physical foundation. The blood is the expression of the ego. Blood kinship and the ties of blood were the ruling principles. The physical blood was the medium operating from man to man. This was how things were in times of antiquity. But through Christ Jesus love became a non-material bond. The activity of the human group ego declined. In earlier times the human being belonged to a communal tribal ego and he felt safe and secure within it, within the bosom of Father Abraham. This kinship was much more important to him than his personal identity. His higher self continued to exist in the ties of blood kinship. In the Old Testament we hear of Noah and other tribal fathers that they lived for hundreds of years. We are there led back to times when the human being not only had a memory of what he himself had experienced but also to a time when this memory extended far back into the generations. He did not say “I” of himself but he lived in his “I” right back to remote ancestors. His life did not begin with his birth; it was not then that he began to say “I” of himself but he said “I” of everything his ancestors had experienced.

It was against love based on blood that the luciferic beings at all times directed their sharpest attacks. Their aim was to make each single human being dependent upon himself alone, to instill consciousness of self into man even between death and a new birth. But divine beings, bearers of love, strove to bring individuals together through bonds other than those based on ties of blood, which take no account of freedom. The Christ principle unites with the full expression of the “I” the power flowing from the spirit of love and lets it hold sway from individual to individual. Hence there is a saying, Christ is the true Lucifer (Christus verus Luciferus) or Light-bringer, and finally the opponent of the fallen Lucifer. The love based on blood was transformed by Christ into spiritual love, into the brotherly love streaming from soul to soul. Christ's utterance, “He who forsakes not father and mother cannot be my disciple,” is to be understood in the sense that love based on blood must be transformed into the brotherly love that embraces all human beings with equal strength. Spiritual science takes nothing away from any of these biblical utterances but when it is rightly understood can only enrich them with a deeper understanding of Christian grace. The power of spiritual love was brought to the souls of men for the first time by Christ when He appeared on the earth; and with the blood that flowed on Golgotha from the wounds of the Redeemer the superfluous blood of humanity was as it were sacrificed. Through this act the teaching was confirmed that individual must confront individual as human brothers. In the world today there is still little understanding of Christ. Mankind has first to learn to realize the greatness of this most. mighty cosmic event. A few individuals have always had a divining of the whole significance of the Christ Being and His appearance on the earth. How have they thought of that event? Think of the human beings and peoples who preserved for some considerable time the connection with the spiritual world. The ancient Indian set little store by his connection with the physical world. He was intent upon the acquisition of super-sensible truths and lofty spiritual life in the spiritual world but had no desire to love physical existence. Let me tell you about an Eastern saga, which indicates in a splendid way how the Christ principle was tentatively grasped there.

In the course of time, so runs this saga, there appeared the power that guides our earth. An oriental legend, which reports it, was narrated in the temples of Northern Tibet to the pupil of the wisdom of the Buddha, and has been preserved ever since. This Eastern legend narrates that Kashyapa, the worthiest pupil of the Buddha, lived at a time when, even in the East, little understanding of wisdom was to be found. When he felt his end approaching he withdrew into a cave where he lived for long ages; his corpse was to be preserved there to await the appearance of the Maitreya Buddha in order then to ascend to heaven.

The gist of this legend follows. If there had been no special event, that is to say, if Christ had not appeared on the earth, neither the East nor the West would have been able to find the path into the spiritual world. The body of Kashyapa is pre-served until the Maitreya Buddha releases the corpse from the earth. This means that in the future man will again have powers whereby what is earthly can be spiritualized. The sublime being who conducts Kashyapa's body into the spiritual world will have descended more deeply than any being has ever done. Christ Himself releases the body of Kashyapa. In the period following this event the body is no longer there. What does this mean? It means that the body was immediately transported into the spiritual world. The body of Kashyapa can be liberated in the element of fire. Where is this fire? When seen by Paul before Damascus it was spiritualized. Thus the appearance of Christ on the earth is the great turning point when man can ascend again from the physical into the spiritual world.

Now think of the Buddha's teaching. Through observing old age, illness, death, and so forth, the great truth concerning suffering dawned in him. He now taught of the cessation of suffering, of release from suffering through the elimination of the desire for birth, for physical incarnation.

Now think of humanity six hundred years later. What do you find? Humanity reveres a corpse. Men gaze at Christ on the cross, Christ who dies and through His death brought life. Life has vanquished death.

One: To be born is suffering? No, for Christ entered into our earth and henceforward for me, a Christian, to be born is no longer suffering.

Two: Illness is suffering? But the great medicine will exist, that is, the power of the soul that has been kindled by the Christ impulse. In uniting himself with the Christ impulse, man spiritualizes his life.

Three: Old age is suffering? But whereas man's body becomes frail and infirm, in his real self he grows ever stronger and more powerful.

Four: Death is suffering? But through Christ the corpse has become the symbol of the fact that death, physical death, has been vanquished by life, by the spirit; death has been finally overcome by life.

Five: To be separated from the being one loves is suffering? But the man who has understood Christ is never separated from the one he loves, for Christ has brought light to the world stretching between death and a new birth; so a man remains united with the object of his love.

Six: Not to receive that for which one craves is suffering? He who lives with Christ will no longer crave for what does not come to him, or is not given to him.

Seven: To be united with what one does not love is suffering? But the man who has recognized Christ kindles in himself that universal love that envelops every being, every object according to its value.

Eight: To be separated from what one loves is no longer suffering, for in Christ there is no more separation.

Thus for the illness of suffering, which Buddha proclaimed and recognized, the remedy has been given through Christ.

This turning of humanity to Christ and to the dead body on the cross is the greatest transformation that has ever come to pass in evolution.

When I set myself to the task of speaking to you to-day on the contents of the Fifth Gospel, the concluding words of St. John's Gospel afford me a certain consolation. As you know, this concluding passage is to the effect that the events which took place around Christ Jesus are not by any means all recorded in the Gospels, for if in those days attempts had been made to record them all, the world itself could not have produced books in sufficient numbers. On one point, therefore, there can be no doubt, namely, that as well as what has actually been recorded, many other things may have happened. In order to make myself intelligible when I am speaking, as I wish to speak in these particular lectures, about the contents of the Fifth Gospel, I will begin to-day with narratives of the life of Jesus of Nazareth approximately from that time in his life of which indications have been given on other occasions, when brief portions of the Fifth Gospel have been communicated.¹

I want to speak to-day of certain happenings in the life of Jesus of Nazareth from about his twelfth year onwards. As you know, this was the year when the Zarathustra-Ego which had incarnated in one of the two Jesus children born at that time, had passed over, through a mystical act, into the other Jesus child—the child who is described at the beginning of St. Luke's Gospel. Our narrative begins, then, from that year in the life of Jesus of Nazareth when the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel had received the Ego of Zarathustra. In the Gospel, this moment in the life of Jesus of Nazareth is indicated in the story that on a journey to Jerusalem for the feast, the Jesus child of St. Luke's Gospel was lost and when he was found he was sitting among the learned doctors and scribes, amazing them by his lofty answers. We, however, know why it was possible for him to give these astounding answers. It was because everything that welled up as it were from the Spirit into the Zarathustra-Ego like remembrances hidden in the soul, worked in such a way that Jesus of Nazareth was able at that time to give those astounding answers. We know too that after the death of the mother in the one family and of the father in the other, the two families amalgamated into one and that the Jesus child, endowed now with the Zarathustra-Ego, grew up in this family.

As the Fifth Gospel reveals, it was a truly remarkable development that took place during the following years. Those in the immediate environment of the young Jesus of Nazareth held him in highest repute because of the astounding answers he had given in the temple. They saw in him the future doctor of the law, one who would attain outstanding eminence among the learned scribes. Those around Jesus of Nazareth entertained the highest hopes of him. They began to drink in his every word. But in spite of this he became more and more silent—so silent, indeed, that he often caused great displeasure to those around him. Between the twelfth and eighteenth years of his life, however, a mighty struggle was going on within him. It was as though deep-lying treasures of wisdom were springing to life in his soul, as though the radiant sun of Zarathustrian wisdom had flashed up within him in the form of Hebrew learning. At first the boy listened with the greatest discernment and concentration and gave astounding answers to everything said by the many learned doctors and scribes who came to the house. To begin with, in the house at Nazareth too, he astonished the learned doctors who came there and who regarded him as a wonder-child. Then, however, he became more and more silent, merely listening to what others were saying without himself speaking a word. But while this was going on, great and sublime thoughts, ethical truths, and above all powerful moral impulses came to life in his soul during those years. What he heard from the learned scribes assembled in the house made a certain impression upon him—but one that caused him bitter sorrow, because he felt—mark well, even in those early years—that much uncertainty, much that tended to error was contained in what they said about the ancient traditions and the writings compiled in the Old Testament. Heaviness oppressed his soul when he heard that in ancient times the Spirit had descended upon the Prophets, that the word of God Himself had inspired those ancient Prophets and that now the inspiration had departed from a later generation. But to one thing he always listened with deep attention, because he divined that one day it would happen so to him. The learned doctors and scribes said many a time: “That sublime and mighty Spirit who once descended, for example, upon Elias, speaks no longer; but what still speaks” ... and many of the scribes still believed it to be an inspiration from spiritual heights ... “what still speaks is a feebler voice, yet a voice which many regard as issuing from the Spirit of Jahve himself.”

The “Bath-Kol” was the name given to that mysterious voice of inspiration—a voice feebler and less significant than that of the Spirit who had inspired the ancient Prophets. Nevertheless this voice represented something similar. Many of those around Jesus spoke in this way of the Bath-Kol and much concerning it is related in later Jewish writings. I now interpolate into this narration of the contents of the Fifth Gospel something that does not actually belong to this Gospel, merely for the purpose of explaining the nature of the Bath-Kol. At a somewhat later date, controversy broke out between two Rabbinic schools. The famous Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus upheld a certain doctrine and maintained in support of it that he was able to work miracles (this is related in the Talmud). He made a carob-tree rise out of the soil and take root again a hundred ells away; he made a stream flow backwards; and thirdly he called upon a voice from heaven to proclaim the truth of his doctrine. But nevertheless those in the opposing school of the Rabbi Joshua did not believe in it. And Rabbi Joshua retorted: “Even if Rabbi Eliezer does make carob-trees transplant themselves from one spot to another, even if he does make a stream flow backwards, even if he does call upon the Bath-Kol ... it stands written that the eternal laws of existence must be established through the mouth and in the heart of man; and if Rabbi Eliezer would convince us, let him not call upon the Bath-Kol but upon what the human heart can comprehend.” I narrate this story because it indicates that soon after the dawn of Christianity, respect for the Bath-Kol had greatly diminished in certain Rabbinic schools, although in a way it continued to be a voice of inspiration among the Rabbis and the Scribes.

As the boy Jesus listened to and pondered all these things, he himself became aware of the inspiration of the Bath-Kol. The remarkable thing was that because he bore within him the Zarathustra-Ego, Jesus of Nazareth was able very rapidly to absorb all the knowledge possessed by the others around him. Not only had he been able in his twelfth year to give astounding answers to the learned doctors, but he now heard the Bath-Kol within his own breast. But this very inspiration through the Bath-Kol gave rise to bitter, inward struggles in Jesus of Nazareth during his sixteenth and seventeenth years. For the Bath-Kol revealed to him—and he was convinced that he discerned it with all certainty—that in times to come the voice of the same Spirit who had inspired the ancient Hebrew teachers would speak no longer in the stream of events recorded in Old Testament history. And one day—it was a truly terrible experience in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth—he believed that the Bath-Kol made known to him the following: “I no longer reach to those heights where the Spirit can reveal to me the truth about the continued progress of the Jewish people!” It was a deeply moving and terrible moment for Jesus of Nazareth when the Bath-Kol seemed to be declaring to him that it could no longer continue the ancient revelations, that it was no longer capable of perpetuating the old Hebraic wisdom. Jesus of Nazareth felt as though all the ground were swept from under his feet, and many a day he said to himself: All the forces of soul which I believed had been bestowed upon me, only lead to the realisation that in the evolution of the Jewish people there is no longer the capacity to scale the heights of the Divine revelations.

Let us try for a moment to enter into the soul of the young Jesus of Nazareth at the time when these experiences were thronging in upon him. It was in his sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth years, when, partly for reasons connected with his handicraft and partly owing to other circumstances, he made many journeys about the country. On these journeys he came to know many regions in Palestine and places outside. Now in those times—and to clairvoyant sight this is clearly perceptible in the Akasha Chronicle—a certain Asiatic cult was very widespread in Western Asia and the regions round about, even in certain parts of Europe. It was a mixture of several different rites but in the main it represented the Mithras cult. Temples dedicated to the worship of Mithras were to be found in many widely scattered regions. The rites often contained elements of the Attis cult, but were in essentials a form of Mithraic worship. Temples and centres dedicated to the worship of Mithras and of Attis were numerous and widespread. It was a form of ancient heathen religion but comprised many practices and ceremonies common to Mithras- or Attis-worship. The fact, for example, that the Church of St. Peter in Rome stands over the site of one of these earlier places of worship shows that this cult had spread far and wide. Although to many Catholics it may sound sacrilegious, the truth obliges one to say that in its outward form the ceremonial practised in the Church of St. Peter in Rome and everything deriving from it, is by no means without resemblance to the ancient Attis cult on the site of which St. Peter's stands. And the cult centred in the Church of St. Peter is in many respects a continuation of the Mithras cult. When in his sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth years, Jesus of Nazareth began to journey about the country, he came to know these centres of heathen rites. Later on too, he discovered still more about them. In this way he learnt to understand the souls of the heathen peoples by actual, physical observation—if one may put it so. At that time, as the result of the mighty act whereby the Zarathustra-Ego had passed over into his soul, Jesus of Nazareth possessed, as it were by a process of natural development, a power of clairvoyance such as others could achieve only by intense effort and struggle. Therefore in witnessing these cults he experienced many things that remained hidden from others—many terrible things. Fabulous as it may seem, I have to testify that when the priest was enacting the rites of the cult at many a heathen altar and Jesus of Nazareth witnessed the whole act of worship, he saw that numbers of demonic beings were attracted to the spot. He discovered that many idols worshipped by the people were, in reality, images not of the good spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies but of demonic powers. He also perceived that many a time these demonic powers passed over into the believers participating in these rites. For reasons easy to understand, these things have not found their way into the other Gospels. And indeed it is only now, within our spiritual Movement, that such things can be disclosed, because it is only in our time that the human soul is ripe enough to understand the deep and overwhelming experiences which came to Jesus of Nazareth while he was still a young man.

These journeyings continued on through his twentieth, twenty-second, twenty-fourth years. It was always with feelings of bitter sorrow that he witnessed the power wielded by the demons—by the demons issuing as it were from Lucifer and Ahriman—that he witnessed how the heathen peoples had in many respects actually come to the point of taking the demons for gods, even of having in their idols the images of wild, demonic powers which, attracted by these images and rites, entered into the people while they prayed, and obsessed them. Many bitter experiences fell to the lot of Jesus of Nazareth. And these experiences led up to a certain culmination.

Round about the age of twenty-four, a new and heavy experience was added to that caused by the disillusionment in connection with the Bath-Kol. In narrating this experience of Jesus of Nazareth, I have to say that I am not yet in a position to indicate precisely at which place in his journeyings this came to pass. It was possible for me to decipher the scene with a high degree of certainty but I cannot to-day indicate the exact place. It seems to me that the event took place on a journey outside Palestine. But although I cannot say this with certainty, I must relate the scene. In the twenty-fourth year of his life, Jesus of Nazareth came to a place where, in a heathen cult, a certain Deity was worshipped. But the people round about were in a state of dire misery, afflicted with all kinds of terrible illnesses of soul and body. The priests had long ago forsaken this place of worship. And Jesus heard the people crying: The priests have forsaken us, the blessings of the sacrificial offering do not descend upon us and we are leprous and diseased because the priests have forsaken us.—Jesus of Nazareth grieved for the people and an infinite love for them flamed in his soul. The people around must have remarked something of this infinite love welling up within him; a deep impression must have been made upon the sorrowing people, who had been forsaken by their priests and, as they believed, also by their god. And now, as if at one stroke, there arose in the hearts of the majority of the people something that made them say as they recognised the expression of infinite love in the countenance of Jesus: Thou art the new priest who has been sent to us! And they pressed him towards the altar of the sacrifice, they placed him at the altar. And there he stood—at the heathen altar. The people besought him to offer the sacrifice, in order that the blessing of the god might come upon them. While this was happening, while the people were lifting him to the altar, he fell down as if dead. His soul was as if transported away and the people around who believed that their god had returned to them, witnessed the terrible spectacle that the one whom they had held to be the new priest sent from heaven, had fallen down as if dead. But the soul of Jesus was aware of being transported into spiritual realms, into the sphere of sun-existence. And now, as if resounding from the spheres of the sun, this soul heard words such as it had often heard through the Bath-Kol. But now the Bath-Kol was utterly transformed; moreover the voice came to Jesus of Nazareth from quite a different direction. And that of which he now became aware can—if one translates it into our language—be rendered in words which I was able to communicate for the first time when just recently we were laying the Foundation Stone of our building in Dornach. Certain occult duties exist! And obeying one such occult duty, I then communicated what came to Jesus of Nazareth through the now transformed voice of the Bath-Kol on the occasion of which I have been speaking. Jesus of Nazareth heard the words:

AUM, Amen!
Es walten die Übel,
Zeugen sich lösender Ichheit,
Von andern erschuldete Selbstheitschuld,
Erlebet im täglichen Brote,
In dem nicht waltet der Himmel Wille,
Da der Mensch sich schied von Eurem Reich
Und vergass Euren Namen,
Ihr Vater in den Himmeln.

AUM, Amen!
The Evils hold sway,
Witness of Egoity becoming free,
Selfhood-Guilt through others incurred,
Experienced in the Daily Bread,
Wherein the Will of the Heavens does not rule,
In that Man severed himself from Your Kingdom,
And forgot Your Names,
Ye Fathers in the Heavens.

In no other way can I render in the German language what Jesus of Nazareth heard at that time as the transformed voice of the Bath-Kol. Verily, in no other way than this! This was what his soul brought back when he awoke from the state of insensibility during which he was transported into the spiritual worlds on the occasion I have described. When Jesus of Nazareth had come to himself again and turned his eyes towards the crowd of wretched and miserable people who had brought him to the altar, they had all fled. And letting his clairvoyant vision widen into the distance he discerned a host of demonic powers and beings, all of them connected with the people. That was the second significant event, the second significant climax in the various periods of the life of Jesus of Nazareth since his twelfth year. Truly, my dear friends, the events which most deeply affected the soul of Jesus of Nazareth in his adult years cannot be said to have conduced only to inward elation, inward happiness! It was the lot of this soul before the Baptism in the Jordan to know human nature in its darkest depths.

From this journey, Jesus of Nazareth returned to his home, where the father had remained. The father died about this time—it was when Jesus of Nazareth was in his twenty-fourth year, or thereabouts. When Jesus came home his soul was still under the mighty impression of how demonic powers held sway in much that was contained in the old heathen religion. But just as it is the case that certain stages of higher knowledge can only be attained by plumbing the darkest depths of life, so too, in a certain sense, did it happen to Jesus of Nazareth. At a place unknown to me, in about the twenty-fourth year of his life, he had gazed into infinite depths of the human soul, he had gazed into souls in whom all the grief of the humanity of those times was as it were concentrated. He was also steeped in the wisdom which pierced his soul like red-hot iron but also imparted a faculty of clairvoyance powerful enough to gaze into the radiant worlds of the Spirit. And so this comparatively young soul was able to read the things of the Spirit with discerning, clear-sighted vision. Jesus of Nazareth had become one who gazed deeply into the mysteries of life, more deeply than any man living on the earth hitherto. Nobody before him had been able to witness to what degree of intensity human misery can reach. He had seen misery in its direst, most concentrated form ... had seen how sacred rites themselves can evoke all manner of demons! In very truth, no human being on the earth had ever gazed with such deep penetration at all this wretchedness as had Jesus of Nazareth; none had been capable of such infinite depth of feeling when confronted with those who were possessed by demons. Nor was any other being on the earth as ready as he to face the question: How, how can an end be made of this misery?

And so Jesus of Nazareth possessed not only the vision, the knowledge that is wisdom, but had in a certain sense become an Initiate through the experiences of life itself. This came to the knowledge of certain people who in those days had gathered together in an Order, known very widely as the Order of the Essenes. The Essenes were people who practised a kind of secret cult and secret tenets at certain places in Palestine. It was a strict, rigorous Order. One who desired to enter it was required to pass through a year, at the very least, of strict probation, to show by his conduct during this period, by his moral principles, by his obedience in worshipping the supreme Powers of the Spirit, by his sense of justice and of equality among men, by his disregard of earthly goods and the like that he was worthy to be initiated. There was a succession of grades through which he had to pass, leading to that Essenian life which strove to approach the spiritual world in a certain separation and aloofness from the rest of humanity, through strict monastic discipline and rules of cleanliness, in order that all impurity both in body and in soul might be purged. These principles were expressed in many symbolic rules of the Order. The deciphering of the Akasha Chronicle has shown that the name “Essene” derives from or at any rate is connected with the Hebrew word “Essin” or “Assin.” This means something like a trowel, a little shovel, because the Essenes always wore as their badge a little shovel—a symbol that has been preserved in many Orders to this day. And certain symbolic customs gave expression to their aims: they were not allowed to carry coins about with them nor to pass through any gateway that was either painted or had images in its neighbourhood. As the Essene Order at that time was to a certain extent recognised by the outside world, unpainted gates had been erected in Jerusalem so that the Essenes too might enter the city. If an Essene came to a painted gate he must always turn back. In the Order itself, ancient lore and ancient traditions were preserved, and concerning these the members kept strict silence. They were allowed to teach but only what they themselves had learned within the Order. Everyone who entered the Order must give to it all his worldly possessions. At that time the Essenes numbered from four to five thousand, and people from all parts of the then known world came to dedicate themselves to the austere life of the Order. If they possessed a house far away in Asia Minor or even farther off, they always presented it to the Essene Order which consequently became the owner of small properties, houses, gardens, even extensive fields, widely dispersed over the land. No one was accepted who did not present all he had to the community. Everything belonged to all the Essenes in common; no individual possessed anything for himself. A law that in the conditions of life to-day seems extraordinarily austere but is comprehensible none the less, was that an Essene might use the assets of the Order to help any who were in need, with the exception of members of his own family.

In Nazareth there was an Essene settlement which had been one of these gifts. The Essene Order, therefore, had come within the purview of Jesus of Nazareth. Tidings reached the centre of the Order of the profound wisdom that had sunk into the soul of Jesus of Nazareth in the way that has been described. Especially among the most eminent Essenes a certain attitude of soul prevailed. With a kind of prophetic inkling, they said: From among men living in this world a new soul must arise, one who will be a Messiah! Therefore they looked around for souls of outstanding wisdom. And they were deeply moved on being told of the wisdom that had come to flower in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. No wonder, therefore, that without compelling Jesus of Nazareth to undergo the testings of the lower grades, the Essenes received him into their community—I will not say into the Order itself—as a kind of extern, or outside member, and that even the most learned Essenes spoke about the secrets without reserve to this wise young man. In the Essene Order, Jesus of Nazareth heard far, far deeper teachings concerning the secret lore than he had ever heard from the scribes and doctors of the law. He also heard many things that had already flamed up as illumination in his own soul, from the Bath-Kol. To put it shortly, a lively exchange of thought took place between Jesus of Nazareth and the Essenes. And in his intercourse with them from about the twenty-fifth to the twenty-eighth years of his life and even beyond, he came to know almost everything that the Essene Order could impart. For what was not communicated to him through words revealed itself to him in all manner of clairvoyant impressions. Great and impressive clairvoyant impressions came to Jesus of Nazareth, either within the Essene community itself or very shortly afterwards at his home in Nazareth where, in a more contemplative life, he yielded himself to what thronged in upon him from forces of which the Essenes had no inkling but which were experienced in his soul.

One of these experiences, one of these inner impressions must be brought into particularly strong relief because it can shed light upon the whole course of mankind's spiritual evolution. It was a great and significant vision into which Jesus of Nazareth was as if transported, in which the Buddha appeared to him as a real presence. It was indeed so: the Buddha appeared to Jesus of Nazareth as a result of the exchange of thoughts with the Essenes. And one can truly say that at that time, converse took place in the Spirit between Jesus and Buddha. It is possible, and moreover it is necessary to-day, to touch upon these deep mysteries of the evolution of humanity. In this discourse with Buddha in the Spirit, Jesus of Nazareth became aware of words coming from the Buddha, somewhat to this effect:—If my doctrine, as it actually is, were to be led to full fruition, then all human beings would have to live the life of the Essenes. But that cannot be. That was the fallacy in my doctrine. Even the Essenes can only make progress by separating themselves from the rest of humanity; their mode of life would not be possible were it not for the existence of human souls other than they. If my doctrine were fulfilled to the uttermost, men would all have to become Essenes. But that cannot be.—This was a momentous experience which came to Jesus of Nazareth as a result of his contact with the Essenes.

Another experience was that Jesus of Nazareth made the acquaintance of a man who was still young at that time, of almost the same age as himself. This man's association with the Essene Order had come about in quite a different way but he too was not an Essene in the strict sense of the word. This man, living as a kind of lay-brother with the Essene community, was John the Baptist. During the winter, he, like the Essenes, wore garments of camel's hair. But he had never been able inwardly and completely to exchange the doctrines of Judaism for those of the Essenes. As, however, the tenets practised by the Essenes and their whole mode of life made a deep impression upon him, he lived the Essene life as a lay-brother, allowed himself to be stimulated and inspired by his association with them and gradually grew to be all that the Gospels narrate of John the Baptist. Many conversations took place between Jesus of Nazareth and John the Baptist. It happened one day ... I know what it means to narrate these things so simply, but nothing can deter me for I know that they must be told ... it happened one day that while Jesus of Nazareth was conversing with John the Baptist, he saw the physical form of John the Baptist disappear and there came to him the vision of Elias. This was the second overwhelming experience in the community of the Essenes. But there were others as well.

For some time already, Jesus of Nazareth had witnessed a strange spectacle when he came to places where gates had been made for the Essenes, that is to say, gates without images or pictures. Jesus of Nazareth could not pass through such gates without great inner bitterness and sorrow. He saw these bare gates, but he perceived spirit-forms around them; at either side of these gates there always appeared to him the Beings we know in our theosophical studies under the names of Ahriman and Lucifer. And gradually the vision, the impression had been confirmed in his soul that the aversion of the Essenes for pictures on their gates must have something to do with the evocation of spiritual beings; that pictures on the gates were, in reality, images of Lucifer and Ahriman. Jesus of Nazareth had many times been aware of this.

Anyone who experiences such things will not find it good to brood upon them unduly; for they are too overwhelming. One also very soon feels that human thoughts cannot fathom their depths, that human thoughts are not capable of approaching them. But the impressions not only engrave themselves deeply into the soul—they become part of the soul's very life. One feels bound up as it were with the part of the soul in which such experiences have been gathered—bound up with the experiences themselves, and one carries them on through life.

Thus had Jesus of Nazareth carried on with him through life the two pictures of Ahriman and Lucifer that he had seen at the gates of the Essenes. To begin with, the only effect this produced was to make him realise that a mystery prevailed between these spiritual Beings and the Essenes. Moreover, since these experiences had come to Jesus of Nazareth, mutual understanding with the Essenes was not as easy as it had been before. For there was something in his soul of which he could say no word to the Essenes—something seemed lacking as they conversed together. For always there came in the way what he had experienced at the Essene gates. One day, after a memorable conversation on lofty spiritual matters, when Jesus of Nazareth was passing out through the gate of the main Essene building, there came before him the figures he recognised as Lucifer and Ahriman. And he saw Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing away from the gate of the monastery. And a question sank into his soul ... not as if he himself were asking it, but as if it were being driven into his soul with a mighty, elemental power: Whither are these Beings fleeing, whither are Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing? For he knew that the very sanctity of the Essene monastery was responsible for their flight; but the question: Whither are they fleeing?—ingrained itself into his very soul, burned like fire in his soul, and never left him. As he went about during the weeks following it was with him every hour, nay every minute. Whither are Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing? This was the question that burnt like fire in his soul when after that deep conversation he had gone through the main gate of the Essene building. What he did under the impress of this question, what he had heard as the now changed voice of the Bath-Kol when he had fallen as if dead at the altar of the heathen cult, and the significance of the happening of which I have just told you—of these things we will speak further in the lecture tomorrow.

• 1. See e.g. Gospel of St. John, Gospel of St. Mark, Gospel of St. Matthew, Gospel of St. Luke, and From Jesus to Christ. Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co.

The great truth that in Abraham there began a new relationship of mankind to the material and spiritual worlds is a main theme of these three lectures, and it is worth while considering it in the light of the evolution of human consciousness which Rudolf Steiner revealed as the clue to the understanding of human history. In the ancient Indian civilisation man, in his consciousness, was still a dweller in the spiritual world, and the material world was “Maya”, Illusion, a world in which he did not feel at home and from which he longed to escape.

In the ancient Persian civilisation it was revealed to man that the material world was itself a manifestation of spirit, and the scene of a great spiritual conflict of Light against Darkness, in which man had a part to play, Man's powers of perception were still predominantly super-sensible.

In the Chaldean-Egyptian civilisation man became more and more absorbed in his experience of the physical world through his senses, and his powers of spiritual perception diminished. Two dangers threatened him. First, that he should regard the objects of the outer world merely as affording him the means for a variety of experiences, in which his unbridled passions and lust for power would have free play; secondly, that, being no longer able to perceive spiritual beings behind natural phenomena, he should make gods out of the phenomena themselves. This would lead to idolatry. These two trends were manifest in the Babylonian world into which Abraham was born. They were bound to lead man further and further from his spiritual destiny.

While he still retained clairvoyant powers, man's etheric body, which was the instrument of spiritual perception, was not wholly contained within the confines of the physical body. With Abraham the withdrawal of the etheric body into the physical body was more advanced, and the etheric forces, which had formerly exercised perception independently of the body, withdrew within the skull—the “cave” in which it was said Abraham was born—and functioned as Thought, playing upon the experiences of the physical world which were conveyed through the portals of the sense-organs. This Thought-activity upon sense-experience began to reveal the multiple relationships of “measure, weight and number” by which the diversity of sense-phenomena were brought into unity, and to discover behind this the being and working of Jehovah.

This attitude to the phenomena of Nature—never as being in themselves a manifestation of the Divine, but always as a revelation of Divine wisdom and power—is peculiar to the Hebrew race. It finds expression frequently in the Psalms. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” “The voice of the Lord is mighty in operation; the voice of the Lord is a glorious voice.” “O Lord, how manifold are thy works; in wisdom hast thou made them all. The earth is full of thy riches; so is the great and wide sea also.” So too, when the Lord confounds both Job and his friends, it is by his wisdom and power manifest in the created world.

This special relationship of number and weight is summed up in Isaiah in one verse (Isaiah XL, 12): “Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?”

The same thought is expressed by Jesus in his teaching in the New Testament. “Not a sparrow falls to the ground without your heavenly Father.” “The very hairs of your head are numbered.”

Thus, man's growing awareness of the physical world, which, in the case of other nations, finally hid the divine and spiritual from him, led the Hebrews to perceive God behind, yet separate from, material objects, and so also behind all human life, and in a special way related to themselves. The psycho-physical organism of thought, which made this possible, originated in Abraham, and was passed down through their generations by a strictly-guarded heredity.

This special quality in Abraham is treated at greater length by Rudolf Steiner in the third lecture of the Course on The Gospel of St. Matthew, and also by Dr. Emil Bock in his Primeval History, chapter 3. It is also referred to by Philo of Alexandria in his allegorical study of Abraham.

A few more reflections on the lost temple. We must regard Solomon's temple as the greatest symbol. Now the point is to understand this symbol. You know the course of events from the Bible, how it began. In this case, we are not dealing with mere symbols, but in fact with outward realities, in which, however, a profound world-historic symbolism finds its expression at the same time. And those who built the temple were aware what it was meant to express.

Let us consider why the temple was built. And you will see that each word in the Bible's account of it¹ is a deeply significant symbol. In this you need only consider in what period the building was erected. Let us particularly recall the Biblical explanation for what the temple was to be. Yahveh addressed this explanation to David: ‘A house for My Name’—that is, a house for the name Yahveh. And now let us make clear what the name Yahveh signifies.

Ancient Judaism became quite clear, at a particular time, about the holiness of the name Yahveh. What does it mean? A child learns, at a certain moment in its life, to use the word ‘I’. Before that, it regards itself as a thing. Just as it gives names to other things, so it even calls itself by an objective name. Only later does it learn to use the word ‘I’. The moment in the lives of great personalities when they first experience their own ‘I’, when they first become aware of themselves, is charged with significance. Jean Paul recounts the following incident:² as a small boy he was once standing in a barn in a farmyard: at that moment he first experienced his own ‘I.’ And so serene and solemn was this instant for him, that he said of it: ‘I then looked into my innermost soul as into the Holy of Holies.’

Mankind has developed through many epochs and everyone conceived themselves in this objective way up to Atlantean times; only during the Atlantean epoch did man develop to the stage where he could say ‘I’ to himself. The ancient Hebrews included this in their doctrines.

Man has passed through the kingdoms of Nature. Ego consciousness rose in him last of all. The astral, etheric and physical bodies and the ego together form the Pythagorean square. And Judaism added thereto the divine ego which descends from above, in contrast with the ego from below. Thus, a pentagon has been made out of the square. This was how Judaism experienced the Lord God of its people, and it was therefore a sacred thing to utter the ‘Name’. Whereas other names, such as ‘Elohim’ or ‘Adonai’, came increasingly into use, only the anointed priest in the Holy of Holies was allowed to utter the name ‘Yahveh.’³ It was in the time of Solomon that ancient Judaism came to the holiness of the name Yahveh, to this ‘I’ which can dwell in man. We must take Jehovah's challenge to man as something that sought to have man himself made into a temple of the most holy God. Now we have gained a new conception of the Godhead, namely this: the God which is hidden in man's breast, in the deepest holiness of man's self, must be changed into a moral God. The human body is thus turned into a great symbol of the Inner Sanctuary.

And now an outward symbol had to be erected, as man is God's temple. The temple had to be a symbol,illustrating man's own body. Therefore, builders were sent for—Hiram-Abiff—who understood the practical arts that could transform man himself into a god. Two images in the Bible relate to this: one is Noah's Ark, and the other is the Temple of Solomon.⁴ In one way both are the same, yet they also have to be distinguished.

Noah's Ark was built to preserve mankind for the present stage of human existence. Before Noah, man lived in the Atlantean and Lemurian epochs. At that time he had not built the ship which was to carry him across the waters of the astral world into earthly existence. Man came by the waters of the astral world, and Noah's Ark carried him over. The Ark represents the construction built by unconscious divine forces. From the measurements given, its proportions correspond to those of the human body, and also with those of Solomon's Temple.⁵

Man has developed beyond Noah's Ark, and now he has to surround his higher self with a house created by his own spirit, by his own wisdom, by the wisdom of Solomon.

We enter the Temple of Solomon. The door itself is characteristic. The square used to function as an old symbol. Mankind has now progressed from the stage of four-foldness to that of five-foldness, as five-membered man who has become conscious of his own higher self. The inner divine Temple is so formed as to enclose the five-fold human being. The square is holy. The door, the roof and the side pillars together form a pentagon.^{6, 7} When man awakens from his fourfold state, that is, when he enters his inner being—the inner sanctuary is the most important part of the temple—he sees a kind of altar; we perceive two cherubim which hover, like two guardian spirits, over the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy of Holies; for the fifth principle [of man's being], which has not yet descended to earth, must be guarded by the two higher beings—Buddhi and Manas. Thus man enters the stage of Manas development.

The whole inner sanctuary is covered in gold, because gold has always been the symbol of wisdom. Now wisdom enters the Manas stage. We find palm leaves as the symbol of peace. That represents a particular epoch of humanity, and is inserted here as something which only came to expression later, in Christianity. The temple leaders guarded this for itself, in this way suggesting something to do with later developments.

Later, in the Middle Ages, the idea of Solomon's Temple was revived again in the Knights Templars,⁸ who sought to introduce the Temple thinking in the West. But the Knights Templars were misunderstood at that time (e.g. trial of Jacques Molay, their Grand Master). If we wish to understand the Templars, we must look deeply into human history. What the Templars were reproached with in their trial rests entirely on a major misunderstanding. The Knights Templars said at the time: ‘Everything we have experienced so far is a preparation for what the Redeemer has wished for. For,’ they continued, ‘Christianity has a future, a new task. And we have the task of preparing the various sects of the Middle Ages, and humanity generally, for a future in which Christianity will emerge into a new clarity, as the Redeemer actually intended that it should. We saw Christianity rise in the fourth cultural epoch; it will develop further in the fifth, but only in the sixth is it to celebrate the Glory of its resurrection. We have to prepare for that. We must guide human souls in such a way that a genuine, true and pure Christianity may come to expression, in which the Name of the Most High may find its dwelling place.’

Jerusalem was to be the centre and from there the secret concerning the relationship of man to the Christ should stream out all over the world. What was represented symbolically by the temple should become a living reality. It was said of the Templars, and this was a reproach to them, that they had instituted a kind of star-worship, or, similarly, a sun-worship . However, a great mystery lies behind this. The sacrifice of the Mass was originally nothing else but a great mystery. Mass fell into two parts; the so-called Minor Mass, in which all were allowed to take part; and, when that had ended, and the main body [of the congregation] had gone away, there followed the High Mass, which was intended only for those who wished to undergo occult training, to embark on the ‘Path’. In this High Mass the reciting of the Apostolic Creed took place first; then was expounded the development of Christianity throughout the world, and how it was connected with the great march of world evolution.

The conditions on earth were not always the same as today. The earth was once joined to the sun and the moon. The sun separated itself, as it were, and then shone upon the earth from outside. Later, the moon split away. Thus, in earlier times, the earth was quite a different kind of dwelling place for man. Man was quite different physically, at that time. But when the sun and the moon split off from the earth, the whole of man's life underwent a change. Birth and death took place for the first time, man reincarnated for the first time, and for the first time the ego of man, the individuality, descended into the physical body, to reincarnate itself in continuous succession. One day that will cease again. The earth will again become joined to the sun, and then man will be able to pass through his further evolution on the sun. Thus we have a specific series of steps, according to which the sun and man move together. Such things are connected with the progress of the sun across the vault of heaven.

Now everything that happens in the world is briefly recapitulated in the following stages. Everything has been repeated, including the evolution of the global stages in the first, second and third Great Epochs. *See scheme at the end of the notes to lecture 10. It came about, then, that man descended into reincarnation. The sun split away [from the earth] during the time of transition from the second to the third Great Epoch, the moon during the third epoch [Lemuria]. Now the earth develops from the third to the sixth epoch, when the sun will again be joined to the earth. Then a new epoch will start in which man will have attained a much higher stage and will no longer incarnate.

This teaching concerning the course of evolution came into the world through religion in the shape of the story of Noah's Ark. In this teaching, what was to happen in the future was foreshadowed. The union of the sun with the earth is foreshadowed in the appearance of Christ on earth. It is always so with such teachings. For a time what happens is a repetition of the past, then the teaching begins to be a prefiguring of the future. Each individual cultural epoch, as it relates to the evolution of consciousness for each nation, is connected with the progression of the sun through the zodiac.

You know that the time of transition from the third to the fourth cultural epoch was represented by the sign of the Ram or Lamb. The Babylonian-Assyrian epoch gathered together in the sign of the Bull all that was important for its time. The previous Persian age was designated in the constellation by the sign of the Twins. And if we go still further into the past we would come to the sign of the Crab for the Sanskrit culture. This epoch, in which the sun was in Cancer at the time of the spring equinox, was a turning point for humanity. Atlantis had been submerged and the first Sub-Race [cultural epoch] of the fifth Great Epoch had begun. This turning point was denoted by the Crab. The next cultural epoch similarly begins with the transition of the sun into the sign of the Twins. A further stage of history leads us over into the culture of Asia Minor and Egypt, as the sun passes into the sign of the Bull. And as the sun continues its course through the zodiac, the fourth cultural epoch begins, which is connected in Greek legend with the Ram or Lamb (the saga of Jason and the search for the Golden Fleece). And Christ Himself was, later on in early Christian times, represented by the Lamb. He called Himself the Lamb.

We have traced the time from the first to the fourth-cultural epoch.⁹ The sun proceeds through the heavens, and now we enter the sign of the Fishes, where we are ourselves at a critical point. Then, [in the future], in the time of the sixth epoch, the time will arrive when man will have become so inwardly purified that he himself becomes a temple for the divine. At that time the sun will enter the sign of the Water Carrier. Thus the sun, which is really only the external expression of our spiritual life, progresses in heavenly space. When the sun enters the sign of the Water Carrier at the spring equinox, it will then be understood completely clearly for the first time.

Thus proceeded the High Mass, from which all the uninitiated were excluded. It was made clear to those who remained that Christianity, which began as a seed, would in the future bear something quite different as fruit, and that by the name Water Carrier was meant John [the Baptist] who scatters Christianity as a seed, as if with a grain of mustard seed. Aquarius or the Water Carrier means the same person as John who baptised with water in order to prepare mankind to receive the Christian baptism of fire. The coming of a ‘John/Aquarius’ who would first confirm the old John and announce a Christ who would renew the Temple, once the great point of time should have arrived when Christ will again speak to humanity—this was taught in the depths of the Templar Mysteries, so that the event should be understood.

Moreover, the Templars said: Today we live at a point in time when men are not yet ripe for understanding the great teachings; we still have to prepare them for the Baptist, John, who baptises with water. The Cross was held up before the would-be Templar and he was told: You must deny the Cross now, so as to understand it later; first become a Peter, first deny the scriptures, like Peter the Rock who denied the Lord. That was imparted to the aspirant Templar as a preliminary training.

People generally understand so little of all this that even the letters on the Cross are not interpreted aright. Plato said of it that the world soul would be crucified on the world body.¹⁰ The Cross symbolises the four elements. The plant, animal and human kingdoms are built out of these four elements. On the Cross stands: JAM= water = James; NOUR = fire, which refers to Jesus himself; RUACH = air, the symbol for John; and the fourth JABESCHAH = earth or rock, for Peter.

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Thus there stands on the Cross what is expressed in the names of the [three] Apostles [and Jesus]. While the one name J.N.R.I. denotes Christ himself. ‘Earth’ is the place where Christianity itself must at first be brought, to that Temple to which man himself has brought himself so as to be a sheath for what is higher. But this Temple [Gap in text]¹¹

The cock, which is the symbol for both man's higher and lower selves, ‘crows twice’ [Mark 14:30]. The cock crows for the first time when man descends [to earth] and materialises himself in physical substance; it crows for the second time when man rises again, when he has learnt to understand Christ, when the Water Carrier appears. That will be in the sixth cultural epoch. Then man will understand spiritually what he should become. The ego will have attained a certain stage then, when what Solomon's Temple stands for will be reality in the highest sense, when man himself is a temple for Yahveh.

Before that, however, man still has to undergo three stages of purification. The ego is in a threefold sheath: firstly, in the astral body, secondly, in the etheric body, thirdly in the physical body.

As we are in the astral body, we deny the divine ego for the first time, for the second time in the etheric body, and for the third time in the physical body. The first crow of the cock is threefold denial through the threefold sheath of man. And when he has then passed through the three bodies, when the ego discovers in Christ its greatest symbolical realisation, then the cock crows for the second time.

This struggle to raise oneself up to a proper understanding of Christ, first passing through the stage of Peter none of the Templars found it possible, under torture, to make clear to the judges.

At the outset, the Templars put themselves in a position, as if they had abjured the Cross. After all of this had been made clear to the Templar, he was shown a symbolical figure of the Divine Being in the form of a venerable man with a long beard (symbolising the Father). When men have developed themselves, and have come to receive in the Master a leader from amongst themselves, when those are there who are able to lead humanity, then, as the Word of the guiding Father, there will stand before men the Master who leads men to the comprehension of Christ.

And then it was said to the Templars: When you have understood all this, you will be ripe for joining in building the great Temple of the Earth; you must so co-operate, so arrange everything, that this great building becomes a dwelling place for our true deeper selves, for our inner Ark of the Covenant.

If we survey all this, we find images having great significance. And he in whose soul these images come alive, will become more and more fit to become a disciple of those great Masters who are preparing the building of the Temple of Mankind. For such great concepts work powerfully in our souls, so that we thereby undergo purification, so that we are led to abounding life in the spirit.

We find the same medieval tendency as manifested in the Knights Templars, in two Round Tables as well, that of King Arthur, and that of the Holy Grail. In King Arthur's Round Table can be found the ancient universality, whereas the spirituality proper to Christian knighthood had to be prepared in those who guarded the Mystery of the Holy Grail. It is remarkable how calmly and tranquilly medieval people contemplated the developing power (fruit) and outward form of Christianity.

When you follow the teaching of the Templars, there at the heart of it is a kind of reverence for something of a feminine nature. This femininity was known as the Divine Sophia, the Heavenly Wisdom. Manas is the fifth principle. the spiritual self of man, that must be developed, for which a temple must be built. And, just as the pentagon at the entrance to Solomon's Temple characterises the fivefold human being, this female principle similarly typifies the wisdom of the Middle Ages, This wisdom is exactly what Dante sought to personify in his Beatrice. Only from this viewpoint can Dante's Divine Comedy be understood. Hence you find Dante, too, using the same symbols as those which find expression in the Templars, the Christian knights, the Knights of the Grail, and so on. Everything which is to happen [in the future] was indeed long since prepared for by the great initiates, who foretell future events, in the same way as in the Apocalypse, so that souls will be prepared for these events.

According to legend we have two different currents when humanity came to the Earth: the children of Cain, whom one of the Elohim begat through Eve, the children of the Earth, in whom we find the great arts and external sciences. That is one of the currents; it was banished, but is however to be sanctified by Christianity, when the fifth principle comes into the world. The other current is that of the children of God, who have led man towards an understanding of the fifth principle. They are the ones that Adam created. Now the sons of Cain were called upon to create an outer sheath, to contain what the sons of God, the Abel-Seth children, created.

In the Ark of the Covenant lies concealed the Holy Name of Yahveh. However, what is needed to transform the world, to create the sheath for the Holy of Holies, must be accomplished again through the sons of Cain. God created man's physical body, into which man's ego works, at first destroying this temple. Man can only rescue himself if he first builds the house to carry him across the waters of the emotions, if he builds Noah's Ark for himself. This house must set man on his feet again. Now those who came into the world as the children of Cain are building the outward part, and what the children of God have given is building the inner part.

These two streams were already current when our race began ... [Gap]¹²

So we shall only understand theosophy when we look upon it as a testament laying the ground for what the Temple of Solomon denotes, and for what the, future holds in store. We have to prepare for the New Covenant, in place of the Old Covenant. The old one is the Covenant of the creating God, in which God is at work on the Temple of Mankind. The New Covenant is the one in which man himself surrounds the divine with the Temple of Wisdom, when he restores it, so that this ‘I’ will find a sanctuary on this earth when it is resurrected out of matter, set free.

So profound are the symbols, and so was the instruction, that the Templars wanted to be allowed to confer upon mankind. The Rosicrucians are none other than the successors to the Order of the Templars, wanting nothing else than the Templars did, which is also what theosophy desires: they are all at work on the great Temple of Humanity.

• 1 . First Book of Kings, Chapters 5–7. Second Book of Chronicles, Chapters 3–4. Ezekiel, Chapters 40–42.
• 2 . Jean Paul (pseudonym for Jean Paul Friedrich Richter) 1763–1825, poet, writer of novels, and thinker. The episode here related was recorded in his childhood reminiscences.
• 3 . This took place once a year on the Day of Atonement. Leviticus, Chapter 16, verses 29–34: ‘And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an atonement for the children of Israel, for all their sins, once a year.’
• 4 . According to notes of a lecture by Rudolf Steiner given in Cologne on 28th December 1907 (not yet published in German, but intended for inclusion in Volume 101 of the complete edition) he there states:
  
  ‘Were we to take millennia into account rather than centuries, we would observe how the form of the human body undergoes change according to the thoughts, feelings, and conceptual criteria of previous millennia; and the mighty leading powers of evolution give to man the right concepts at the right time, so that even the human form becomes transformed ...
  
  ‘How did the whole length, breadth and height of the physical body of today actually evolve? It is a result of what was at first contained in the astral and etheric bodies. That was where the thoughts, pictures, feelings, etc., at first resided. You will better be able to understand what I have to say if you call to mind a process which takes place immediately after physical death. It happens then that the physical body is at first forsaken by the etheric and astral bodies. Sleep consists in the fact that the astral body and ego withdraw leaving the physical body and ether body lying in bed. Death is differentiated from sleep through the fact that in the former state the physical body alone remains behind on the bed and the ether body withdraws along with the other two members of man's being. A strange phenomenon then takes place which could be described as a sensation, but which is connected with a kind of concept: the person feels as if he were expanding and then the memory-tableau occurs; but before that happens he feels himself expanding in all directions—he gains dimension on all sides.
  
  ‘This viewing of his ether body in huge dimensions is a very important concept; for it had to be induced into Atlantean man at a time when his etheric body was not so closely knit up with his physical body as it was to be in post-Atlantean times. This concept which occurs in man at death today had first to be aroused in him at that time. If a person were to visualise the approximate dimensions which are experienced by man today when he expands at death, then he has built up the motive, the thought form, which is able to bring his physical body into approximately its present form. If, therefore, the true measurements were held up in front of a person whose etheric body was at times separated from his physical body, they would take on the form that the physical body has today. And this form would have been induced into man primarily by those who are leaders of mankind's development. The exact account of this is contained in the various stories of the flood, particularly the Biblical account. If you were to visualise man more or less surrounded by those forms which the etheric body must have in order that the physical body can be built up according to its proper dimensions, then you would have the same dimensions as Noah's Ark.
  
  ‘Why are the exact measurements of Noah's Ark given in the Bible? So that man, who was to be the bridge from Atlantean times to post-Atlantean times, would have a structure—300 cubits long, 50 cubits broad, 30 cubits high—which he must have around him in order to build up the proper thought form, to develop the right motive, out of length, breadth and height, to build up the post-Atlantean body in the right way. There you have a symbol from which the dimensions of your present-day body have been taken and which are the result of the thought form which Noah experienced in the Ark. It is not for nothing that Noah was placed in the Ark and that the Ark was described in this way. The Ark was built thus so that the human body could be properly formed in post-Atlantean times. The whole of mankind was reared in the use of effective symbols. Man carries with him at the present day the measurements of Noah's Ark. When man stretches his hands upwards the measurements of the Ark come to expression in the measurements of man's present-day body. Now man has evolved from Atlantis to post-Atlantis. In the epoch which will follow ours, the sixth epoch, man's body will again be quite differently formed; and today, too, man must experience those thought forms which will enable him to create for the next epoch the motives to provide the proper measurements for the bodies. That must be presented to man. Today the measurements of man's body are in the proportion 300 to 50 to 30. In the future his body will be built up quite differently. What will supply present-day man with the thought form for building up his future body? That is also told us. It is the measurements of the Salomonic Temple. And these measurements of the Salonionic Temple, when realised in physical form, represent, with profound symbolical significance, the whole physical Organisation of the man of the next epoch, the sixth great epoch.
  
  ‘Everything which is effective in mankind takes its start from inside the human being, not from outside. What appears as thought and feeling at one period is outward form in the next. And the individualities who guide mankind must implant the thought forms into him many thousands of years in advance, if they are to become outward reality later. There you have the working of the thought forms which are activated by such symbolical figures. They have a very real meaning.’
• 5 . It has not been possible to identify the literary source to which Rudolf Steiner here refers.
  
  In the Cabbala of Agrippa von Nettesheim (Scheible edition, Stuttgart, 1855), it is stated in the chapter concerning ‘The Measurement, Relationship and Harmony of the Human Body:’
  
  Yes, God himself instructed Noah in the building of the Ark according to the measurements of the human body, just as he himself incorporated into the whole world-mechanism the symmetry of man; and therefore the latter is called the macrocosm, the former the microcosm. With reference to the above some microcosmologists determine the measurements of the human body as being six foot, the foot being ten degrees and the degree being five minutes; this amounts to sixty degrees or 300 minutes, the same number of geometrical cubits as, according to the description of Moses, were contained in the length of the Ark. just as the human body, however, has a length of 300 minutes, a breadth of 50 and a thickness of 30, so had the Ark of Noah not only a length of 300 cubits, but also a width of 50 and a depth (or height) of 30, from which it will be seen that there is a relationship of 6 to 1 of the length to the breadth, 10 to 1 of the length to the depth and 5 to 3 of the breadth to the depth.’
  
  Further to this, Franz Coci in his work: Detailed Calculation of the Three Dimensions of Noah's Ark from the Standpoint of Geometry and Mechanics, (translated from Polish into German by Wenzel Bauernopl, Bilin, 1899), demonstrated mathematically that: ‘The only fitting and possible relationship of width to height of a four-sided hollow body, which combines the use of the least amount of material with the greatest stability, would be to take 5 (more exactly 5.322232) for the width and for the height 3 (more exactly 2.967768) equal parts. And this is the ratio in which the Ark actually was built.’
• 6, . The version here translated is the version from the notes of Berta Reebstein-Lehmann. Walter Vegelahn's version is only fragmentary. It is rendered thus: ‘The ... Temple is so formed that it encloses the fivefold human being. That ... is the most important thing about the Temple. The square is holy, the roof, the roof-covering and the side pillars together form ... In front of the altar stood two cherubim.’
• 7. First Book of Kings, Chapter 6, verse 31: ‘And for the entering of the oracle he made doors of olive tree: the lintel and side posts were a fifth part of the wall.’ The gloss referring to ‘fifth part’ gives the alternative ‘five-square.’
  
  Emil Bock in his Old Testament History, Volume 3, in speaking about the Temple of Solomon says:
  
  ‘The third, inmost chamber in the west, the Holy of Holies (Debir), was screened by a wooden partition containing a pentagonal doorway and covered by a curtain of four colours.’
• 8 . See in this connection Rudolf Steiner's later and more detailed accounts of the Templars, e.g., lecture of 2nd October 1916 in Dornach (‘The Templars,’ copy Z 156), also: lecture of 25th September 1916, (sixth lecture of the series R. 45): Inner Impulses working in the Evolution of Mankind.
• 9 . The text is quite plainly only preserved in an incomplete form. In connection with the cultural epochs and the course of the sun through the zodiac see Rudolf Steiner's lecture given in Dornach, 8th January 1918, in the lecture course entitled: ‘Ancient Myths,’ (RSE 564).
• 10. Rudolf Steiner often quotes this passage from Timaeus, but he gives it in the formulation which Vincenz Knauer uses, a Viennese philosopher personally known to him, whose book: Die Hauptprobleme der Philosophic ... etc: (‘The Development and Partial Solution to the Main Philosophical Problems from The time of Thales to Robert Hamerling’), formed part of his personal library. In this particular version the passage here quoted has the following wording: ‘God laid this soul in cross-formation through the universe and spread out over it the world body.’ In the English translation of this passage (Penguin Classics, 1971, p. 48) it reads as follows: ‘He then took the whole fabric and cut it down the middle into two strips, which he placed crosswise at their middle points to form a shape like the letter X; he then bent the ends round in a circle and fastened them to each other opposite the point at which the strips crossed, to make two circles, one inner and one outer.’
  
  In the opinion of the Ancients there were two circles of greatest significance in the universe: the heavenly equator and the ecliptic. The translator of the copy which was in the possession of Rudolf Steiner, (Vincenz Knauer), makes a comment on the passage in question which reads as follows: ‘And so, in the arguments of Plato it is the soul itself which, as a result of a mysterious process, spreads itself out in the spatial image of the ecliptic and the equator. If the position of these two largest circles to one another is visualised in the form of the Greek letter X (Chi—thought of as lying horizontally) then that would be a very appropriate comparison. For these two circles cut one another at an angle of 23 1/2 degrees. The motion of the equator is in the direction from east to west (when the observer faces north), but the motion of the ecliptic is from west to east.’ In addition to this it may be said that the Church Father Justin the Martyr, C 100—C 165, in the first of his Apologies, points to the fact that the source of Plato's teaching regarding—world creation was, in all probability, the account of the raising of the brazen serpent in the wilderness by Moses (Chapter 21, verses 4–9).
• 11. This passage is very incomplete. In the Vegelahn text there are only the words as given above. In the text given by Reebstein it continues: ‘But the Temple is not yet understood by man,’ perhaps the correct rendering should be: ‘But the building of the Temple is not yet understood by man.’
• 12. In the Vegelahn text this sentence finds an incomplete continuation: ‘These two streams already made themselves felt at the beginning of our race—the old stream which entered evolution at a time when the gods were still engaged in creating the world, and the second ... which must always continue to build in this Temple of Wisdom ...’