The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When we speak of human development in Christian mysticism, we have to consider that the way to higher development in the spirit was always strictly laid down in advance. For gnostic Christian development, the individual had to withdraw from outer civilization. The whole was so strict that it could not be done by someone who was involved in the outside working world. But anyone can achieve a great deal by even approximately taking this way. The Christian way demands a considerable level of development. It differs from all other ways in that those who follow it cannot gain insight into reincarnation and karma on their own.

Reincarnation was accepted belief in esoteric Christianity, but did not form part of exoteric Christianity. There was a particular reason why it was not part of Christian teaching in the past.

You only need to go back a few thousand years to come to a time when the teaching of reincarnation and karma was more or less world-wide. It was only somewhat less well known among peoples of Semitic origin. Apart from this it would be found everywhere in those times. People oppressed by their destiny would say to themselves: ‘This is one of many lives. In this life I am preparing things that will have their reward in a later life.’ People were always looking up to higher worlds in those days. This was the same everywhere, and thus also among Chaldean wise men who were priests. The stars were to them a reflection of a soul and a spirit, they were the bodies of spirits. The whole of cosmic space was filled with living spiritual entities for them. They would speak of the laws that governed the movements of the stars as the will of the spirits embodied in the sun and the planets. Life in those days was a matter of continually turning to the spirit in your inner life. The work people did on earth then was primitive, but their penetration of the universe in the spirit had reached a high level. So one would see sublime spiritual views side by side with a primitive material civilization.

The age which followed was to pay increasingly more attention to outer material civilization, conquering the globe for material civilization, as it were. Human beings were meant to concentrate on physical life. The thinking of the Chaldean priests, the followers of Hermes and those of the holy Rishis was directed to the life of the spirit. Repeated earth lives were a factual reality to them. Then humanity had to let this go of this for a while. All human beings were meant to go through one incarnation when they did not know about repeated earth lives. This was in preparation as early as 800 years before Christianity came, and it is gradually dying down again now in our time. Today, those familiar with occult streams know that Christianity, too, must return to the teaching of reincarnation and karma.

This is evident from the Mount Tabor Mystery,¹ an event that took place ‘on the mountain’. ‘On the mountain’ is a key phrase signifying that the master was taking his disciples into the innermost sphere to teach them the most occult things. It says ‘the disciples were taken out of themselves’, which means that they were taken into higher worlds. Elijah, Moses and Jesus appeared to them. This means that space and time had been overcome. Moses and Elijah, who were no longer on earth, appeared to them in their devachanic condition. The name Elijah means ‘the way of God’, the goal. The word el, meaning ‘god’ is found in elohim, Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and also in Bel.² The name Moses signifies truth. Moses is the occult term for truth. Jesus means ‘life’ The Christ himself, standing in the middle, is life. This was written in the mental plan in letters of brass, as it were: ‘The way, the truth and the life’. The disciples said: ‘Let us put up tabernacles here.’ This means they were chelas of the second degree. The Lord also said: ‘Elijah is come already, and they knew him not. Tell this to no man until I am returned again.’ He was speaking of reincarnation. John the Baptist was Elijah. The return refers to the return of Christ Jesus.³ Understanding of this event can be prepared for with the anthroposophical view of the world.

When all human beings have been through an incarnation where they knew nothing of reincarnation and karma, reincarnation will be taught again. In the innermost circles of Christianity reincarnation was, however, always accepted as a truth. This can be seen wherever initiates taught by doing things. An example is the Trappist Order.⁴ Keeping an absolute vow of silence in one life they become excellent speakers in later incarnations. The opposite of what happens in one incarnation thus prepares for a very special gift in the next. Ardent speakers were to be created by withholding speech.

The external teaching in one age thus was that human beings should hold on to the feeling that life on earth was exhausted with this one life. They were to say to themselves: ‘A whole eternity will depend on what happens in this one life’. A radical form of this was the dogma of eternal punishment in hell. The earth would not have been conquered if the teachers of Christianity had not given this to humanity. The great teachers have never presented absolute truth but only what was right for humanity at the time. They never teach the ultimate truths but only what is right for a particular age. It would not have been right to teach reincarnation in that age. What the science of the spirit teaches is also not the ultimate truth. The anthroposophical view of the world must be taught now because it is right for this time. The people who now hear the teaching of spiritual science will hear the truth in a very different way in a later incarnation. Within three thousand years we shall learn something that belongs to a higher realm because we have previously gone through anthroposophy. This is the spiritual side of it. But all things of the spirit must also have a counter image in the physical world. The spirit who appeared in the Christ prepared the way for this several centuries beforehand.

To have people think one incarnation was the one and only one, it was necessary that something cut off the brain from the higher principles in man, from atma, buddhi, manas and from knowing about reincarnation. Humanity was given wine for this purpose. In earlier time, all temple rituals used water only. Then the use of wine was introduced, and a divine spirit—Bacchus, Dionysus—became the representative of wine. John, the most deeply initiated disciple, showed the significance of wine for inner development in his gospel. At the Wedding at Cana,⁵ water was changed into wine. Wine prepared human beings so that they no longer knew anything of reincarnation. At that time, the water for the offering was changed into wine and we are now again in the process of changing the wine into water. Anyone wishing to reach higher regions of existence must refrain from taking even a drop of alcohol now.

Every line in the gospel of John reflects a profound experience in the single individual and in the whole of humanity. Jesus said: ‘I have come to initiate this period in evolution.’ Paul, an initiate, called the Christ the inverse Adam.⁶ Adam was the first human being to appear in this form, and with this the spiritual human being was put into incarnation on earth. Two ways were open to him. He could take what the gods gave or gain something new for himself. That is the story of Cain and Abel.⁷ Abel took the animals that were there. Cain worked to produce his offering. Bread was produced through the work of Cain. Bread has always been something man has worked for himself. Working to produce bread, man has fallen into sin. Cain slew his brother. Doing his own work man fell into sin, he fell into matter.

The inverse Adam is Christ Jesus who ascends again. He has to pay for this with his blood. This had to be done once by a person. The bread and the wine have their representative in the person of the Christ, in his body and blood. The Lord had to take Cain's deed on himself: This is my body, this is my blood.⁸ Redemption has to be brought about by hallowing that which is on earth. The wine represented this at the last supper, and through this the blood was related to the wine.

The gospels exist not only to teach, they are also books of life. The stories told in them are not just external events but inner human experiences. Christian yoga consists in entering wholly into the gospels in a living way, making this the whole life of one's own soul.

Four things are absolutely necessary for Christian yoga to be at all possible. The first is simplicity. This is a Christian virtue. You have to understand that we have many experiences in life that make us lose our lack of bias. Almost every human being is biased. The only unbiased answers to questions come from children. But they are childish, because the children lack knowledge. We must learn to be wise and unbiased in the life of experience, as unbiased as children. This is called simplicity in Christian terms.

The second virtue we have to acquire is that as a Christian mystic we have to rid ourselves of something many people have, and that is inner satisfaction in religious exercises. We must devote ourselves to those exercises not for personal satisfaction but because the training we follow demands it. All pleasure in religious exercises must cease.

The third virtue is even more difficult. It calls for absolute refusal to ascribe anything whatsoever to our own skills and efficiency. Instead we must learn to ascribe it all to the divine power, the merit of God who works through us. Without this you cannot be a Christian mystic.

The fourth virtue to be achieved is patient acceptance of whatever may come upon us. All cares, all fear must be put aside, and we must be prepared to meet what comes, be it good or ill.

If we do not develop these virtues up to a certain level we cannot hope to be Christian mystics. This preparation then enables us to go through the seven stages on the road of the Christian mystic.⁹

The first stage is the washing of the feet. It is putting the words ‘to be lord you must be the servant of all’¹⁰ into practice. We must understand that we do not owe anything we are to our own self. We have to take account of everything other people and the world around us have made of us and reflect on this deeply. We are then able to see that we are connected with the whole of our environment. Having gained strength through the four virtues—simplicity, refusal to feel satisfaction at religious exercises, refusal to ascribe skills to ourselves and patient acceptance of whatever comes—we also gain strength to do the ‘washing of the feet’, as it is called, which is to look in gratitude on everything given to us from outside, everything that has raised us higher, and bow down before it. We must transform everything we feel into nothing but gratitude to those who have given it all to us. And so we must kneel before those because of whom we are, what we are. Christ Jesus knelt before his disciples for without them he could not have been what he had become. Christ Jesus had the disciples as a precondition just as a plant has the mineral world and an animal the plant world as a precondition. He, the Lord, became the servant of all. If we thus learn to lower ourselves and develop a feeling of profound gratitude, then much that exists by way of outer social form drops away and we can go through the next stage.

To do without strength from outside we must have strength inside. When we have come to be the last, we go to the father. This is called ‘the way to the father’, and we are then intimately bound up with this original strength and power. It can only be found through personal experience. We must learn to bear all pain. That is the second stage, the scourging, the second stage in Christian mysticism. The self then is sustained by itself.

To bear contempt is a yet higher stage, the third stage. One must learn to bear finding no regard among people at all. All the strength one needs must be found in the higher life. That is to wear the crown of thorns. We must learn to stand erect when the world despises us and casts derision on us. When a person has got to this point his own body has become alien to him. He has lowered himself has learned to bear pain, to bear contempt. Now the body is something he no longer lives in; his soul floats around it. This is the crucifixion, the fourth stage. It is followed by the stage where one's own body has become wholly object, as if one were tied to an alien piece of wood. Then being apart has ceased for us. It is the mystic death on the cross—the fifth stage.

The sixth stage is reached when the human being has become one with all that exists on earth, embracing it all with his feeling, experiencing the whole earth as his body. That is the entombment. The individual has then reached the point known as ‘being at one with the planet’ in initiation science. He then feels himself to be no longer apart. Man can only exist on this earth. A few hundred miles away from it and he must die, shrivel up as a hand shrivels up when it is cut off the body. The earth is then the body of the human being. We must be entombed in it. Through this condition man gains the conscious awareness of the earth. There follows the seventh stage, the resurrection. The individual has become one who is raised from the dead. This condition can only be understood by someone whose thinking no longer depends on the physical brain as its instrument.

Human beings can go through these seven stages by bringing the gospel of John, from the 13th chapter onwards, to life in themselves again and again—the washing of the feet, the path of wanting to serve, bowing down in humility before all; second stage the scourging; third stage the crown of thorns; fourth stage the crucifixion; fifth stage the mystic death on the cross; sixth stage the entombment; seventh stage the resurrection. These are the seven stages of the inner Christian mystery that have been outwardly presented on the plan of world history.

Christian monks lived through these experiences over and over again in the gospel of John, for the whole of their lives. This was the source of the strength they needed.

• 1. Tradition going back to Origines, and probably also 2 Peter 1,18, makes Mt Tabor the place where the transfiguration took place. See Rudolf Steiner's lectures given in Bern on 10 Sept. 1910 (The Gospel of St Matthew, GA 123, tr. D. Osmond, M. Kirkcaldy. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1985) and in Basel on 22 Sept. 1912 (The Gospel of St Mark, GA 139, tr. C. Mainzer, S. C. Easton. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1986). See also Matthew 17, 1-9; Mark 9, 2-9; Luke 9, 28-36.
• 2. Bel was another name for Marduk, the chief Babylonian god, meaning ‘god’, or simply ‘lord’.
• 3. See also Steiner R. Das Ereignis der Christuserscheinung in der ätherischen Welt. GA 118. Some of the lectures appear in The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric, tr. B. Betteridge, D. Tatum, R. Pusch, M. de Ris, A. Wulsin. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1983.
• 4. Cistercian monks with strict observance of the rule which requires absolute silence, hard work in the fields, a vegetarian diet. Established in 1664 at La Trappe Monastery in northwest France
• 5. John 2,1-11. See R. Steiner's lecture in Kassel on 2 July 1909 in The Gospel of St John in Relation to the Other Gospels (GA 112). Tr. S. & L. Lockwood. New York & London: Anthroposophic Press & Rudolf Steiner Press 1948. 2nd edition rev. by M. St Goar New York: Anthroposophic Press 1982.
• 6. 1 Cor 15, 5. See R. Steiner's lecture given in Karlsruhe on 19 Oct. 1911 From Jesus to Christ (GA 131). Tr. H. Collison and D. Davy. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1973.
• 7. See lectures given in Berlin on 10 June 1904, 22 May and 23 Oct, 1905 in The Temple Legend (GA 93). Tr. J. Wood. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1985. Also the lecture given in The Hague on 27 March 1913 in The Effects of Esoteric Development (GA 145), tr. A. H. Parker. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1978.
• 8. Matthew 26, 26 & 28.
• 9. See lectures given in Paris by Rudolf Steiner on 1 June 1906 (An Esoteric Cosmology, GA 94, Spring Valley: St George Publications 1978) and in Kassel on 7 July 1909 in The Gospel of St John in Relation to the Other Gospels (see Note 5).
• 10. John 13,16.

Dear attendees! Spiritual science or theosophy is, through what it gives us as human beings for knowledge, at the same time a basis for life practice. The fact that we are able to see through the sensible, through what is merely comprehensible to the external mind, into the supersensible, makes this spiritual science a tool for us to feel that we are part of the supersensible world. In this way, Theosophy gives us the nourishment of knowledge that flows like spiritual blood into our entire spiritual organization, and we gain security and strength of life by absorbing knowledge of the supersensible world. But we are only in such a case when we seek to bring that which is supersensible into our knowledge. It is a different matter when we are confronted with the developing human being, as he enters into existence through birth, as he is compelled, through the normal course of life, to assert, step by step, through the material of the body, that which is rooted as a human spirit in indeterminate depths and comes more and more to the fore in the course of development. Here we are in a different situation from when we acquire knowledge, for we seek to bring the spirit out of its hiddenness into real existence, not only through our knowledge but also through our help and deeds. This prospect of passing from the external physical to the spiritual will have to arise in our soul when we consider the question that is the subject of our meditation today.

It must be emphasized at the outset that a prerequisite in the sense of spiritual science must be made for this question. Spiritual science goes beyond what presents itself to us in human life between birth or from the development before birth until death as an individual life. It penetrates to the essence of the human being, to the spiritual soul that exists before birth and that remains after death - to the core that can be traced from life to life through spiritual research, because we are indeed talking about repeated lives on earth. We make a strict distinction between these lives, which a person repeatedly spends on earth between birth and death, and the lives that lie in between in a purely spiritual world. When a human soul-spiritual comes into existence through birth, it is the case that it brings with it into this life all the effects of those causes that are to be found in previous lives. When we look at the developing human being, we see emerging like a sacred riddle what he has acquired in previous lives and brings into this life. The human being enters into the present life and lives spiritually, but he envelops himself with the qualities, characteristics and abilities that lie in the line of inheritance. Thus, the human being brings with him into his life the spiritual and soul essence, and he experiences in a certain way the strengths and abilities that the talents, characters and other qualities of his ancestors can give him. What a person brings with them from the spiritual world and what they inherit from their ancestors comes together in their development. To truly answer the question of education in a more intimate sense, we must be able to gain insight into the relationship between inherited traits and the spiritual-soul core of the person.

If we treat these repeated earthly lives and the effects of earlier lives on later ones as a spiritual scientific fact, this will provoke the opposition of many people who do not want to be informed in detail about the evidence that can be provided by spiritual science. It is not possible to convince oneself that this truth really exists in any other way than through practice. One can discuss at length whether a piece of iron, which is claimed to be a magnet, really is one. One can put forward many reasons against it; one could say that the person making the claim seems credible and so on, and so it can be argued about for an infinitely long time. But proof is there if one takes a small piece of iron and sees whether it is attracted. Through practice, evidence is provided. In a similar sense, one can be convinced of the truths of spiritual science.

The educator can now say: What I encounter in the child puzzles me; I must try to see whether what spiritual science claims is true, whether something really comes into the world as a spiritual-soul core of being. It will be shown that such a principle bears fruit for education by enabling us to enrich the child's life and to divine and coax out his or her gifts. We must focus on the way in which the gifts are formed if we want to distinguish the spiritual-soul core of the being from what the child has inherited. To do this, we must allow the human being's predisposition – everything that gradually comes to us in the way of qualities, abilities, talents and so on – to come to the fore, and we then find that it is characteristic of the human soul to allow the individual forces to interact so that they support and sustain each other in an overall organism. But still we see that the soul-forces of man, for example, thinking, feeling and willing, or other forces, appear independently of each other in their strength, yes, so independently that we find, for example, people in whom the power of thought is so highly developed that they can be good thinkers, while the power of will, on the other hand, recedes. Others are men of will and are equally ready to tackle an action, but are not always able to keep their thoughts together and follow them logically in a comprehensive way. They act, but do not think much. There are still other people who are pushed by their feelings to do this or that without thinking too long. So we see: the individual abilities can be developed to different degrees. For example, a person is very musical, and the other abilities recede. Some people, on the other hand, do not have the ability to do extensive calculations and so on.

The abilities are therefore independent of each other, but come together to form a complete organism. When we visualize the soul forces of a person, it becomes clear that he or she enters into existence with a very specific tendency and nature that brings soul forces into relationship and connection. If we turn our attention to what is inherited, that is, to the line of inheritance, and then to what enters into existence from a previous life, we can see what connects the forces and abilities. It is in fact the case that what the person brings with them as a result of previous lives has the ability to organize the abilities and shape them into a whole organism. The emotional tendencies, qualities, talents and so on point us in the direction of the line of inheritance. There is no more interesting observation to be made than to see how, on the one hand, the spiritual core of the being works to connect the soul forces and form an overall organism, and how, on the other hand, the individual forces are inherited from the ancestors.

Spiritual science is able to indicate very definite laws as to the relationship between these two elements. These can be understood in the same way as natural laws, but on a higher plane. When such laws are stated, one must not come and try to refute them with casual observation. That is child's play, even in the field of chemical physics. Let us suppose that a physicist establishes that the line traced by a stone thrown through the air is a parabola. If someone now follows the line externally, he will see that it is not exact. The line varies due to the resistance of the air and other external circumstances, but one can only arrive at the truth by going back to the law. One can only arrive at what underlies the spiritual life as a law by penetrating behind the scenes of existence.

Now, two types of forces present themselves in the soul life of man; we can describe one type more as the intellectual principle, and also as that of the imagination: everything that man has as a life of ideas, the way he conceives something, whether he goes slowly from one idea to another or can grasp rapid associations of thoughts, whether he can follow thoughts sharply and over a long distance, and the like. We have to take people who easily develop pictorial representations, who are able to clothe facts in images of the imagination, in short, who have the element of the intellectual and imaginative particularly active, who have inventiveness and the ability to think of many things, we have to take them as representatives of one side of the soul life. The other side, on the other hand, is the side of affects, passions and drives, the way someone is quickly captivated by this or that, whether they have many interests or are dull and so on. The latter is more connected with what we call the element of character, the former more with the reflective, the internalization. We must strictly distinguish these two sides, because if we are observers of life, the laws of development only reveal themselves to us when we can follow how the spiritual-soul essence of the human being, going from life to life, acquires one or the other element.

In general, we find that the child inherits the side that has to do with interest, passions, and attention more from the father; the spiritual-soul core of the human being borrows these elements from the father where it finds what passions are, what confronts events in life, what intervenes in the outer life. When a person wants to embody themselves, they are drawn to the father as if by magnet, who can transfer the qualities of interest, strength of character and so on, which are suitable for their individuality. They seek out the father who can give them this. The intellectual and imaginative qualities are more likely to come from the mother. Generally speaking, if we disregard more specific causes, we can say that the child's mental character comes about because the spiritual core of the being brings about something like a mixture of the intellectual and imaginative qualities of the mother with the temperament and drives of the father. How these qualities are mixed depends on the overall disposition of the spiritual core of the being. We can see what the elements are that belong to the nature of will and passion by looking at the father. We must look to the mother for what the core of the being has in the way of imagination and intellectuality. The children of the same parents are so different because the spiritual-soul core of their being mixes the paternal and maternal elements in different ways.

But we must go into this in more detail and distinguish between male and female offspring. Real observation of life will also confirm this law – that is, if the reservation is made in the same way as with physical laws and the secondary circumstances are not made the main thing. That which is in the soul character of the mother is more easily inherited by the sons, and in such a way that it is transformed in the son to a certain extent. If the mother is imaginative but only works in the narrowest circle, the soul of the mother works in such a way that it descends a step in the son, as it were, and gives him the outer organ predisposition so that he expresses this predisposition to a greater extent. The mother remains in the soul element in the narrow circle; the son shows what she has in her soul but imprinted in the brain as his tool. He has as a world ability what she experienced in the innermost circle. A talent for which the mother shows the disposition can come about in this way. And what descends more into the physical disposition through the mother is mixed and imbued with what is inherited from the father. This is how it is with sons.

It is different with daughters. Here it can be seen how what the father lives in his profession and so on is more expressed in the overall personality. What is the predisposition of the father's physical body is reflected in the soul of the daughter. What the father had as external qualities is realized in the soul. In the daughter, we encounter in spiritualized form what was more in the physical man in the father. It is particularly interesting, and one can almost express it as a law of nature, that the mother in the son descends in relation to her soul and appears in the physical, while the father ascends in the soul of the daughter with what he is in the physical man.

This can be demonstrated in hundreds and thousands of cases, and life will prove it right across the board. Here it will be explained only by means of one particularly characteristic example – in Goethe, in whom this general law shows itself especially clearly: What was admired in the mother's innermost circle as a spiritual quality was manifested in a “lowered” form in the son and was admired by the world. Frau Goethe had a desire to tell stories, which could have a stimulating effect in the innermost circle. In Goethe's case, it became a mental disposition, so that he became a world-affecting personality.

We also see the opposite in a wonderful way in his sister Cornelia. Councillor Goethe was extremely likeable due to his strong character and the serious way he led his life. He stood firm in the outer life as a thorough and earnest man. Let us take a look at how Goethe relates to his father. It is peculiar that the outer character traits, temperament, thoroughness and so on are inherited by the son. When people with the same disposition live next to each other, they sometimes repel each other. There was never any intimate relationship between father and son Goethe. But the sister had absorbed her father's thoroughness into her soul as depth of soul and seriousness, mixed with intimacy, as is often the case when external qualities are transformed into soul qualities and come to us. That is why the siblings were such loyal companions, because the qualities that Goethe did not like in his father had penetrated into the soul of his sister.

Can we not see this peculiar survival of maternal soul qualities in the external organ systems of the son everywhere? Throughout world history, we see the relationships of sons to mothers, for example in the poet Hebbel. He was the son of a bricklayer. If you knew him and were with him, you would know that the gnarled, pedantic character he had within was already apparent on the outside. His hands were much too long, his legs even longer, and his movements were angular. He got all that from his father, but he and his father did not get along. On the other hand, he got his mother's simple nature, which he relates so beautifully. We see how her soul, descended by one level, reappears in his poetic personality. This is how the two came to understand each other, and it was only through his mother that he escaped the fate of becoming a mason. Wherever we look, in everyday life and in history, we can see that this law applies universally.

But how should we proceed as educators when we see this complex interaction between inherited traits and the spiritual and psychological core? We must direct our attention as much as we can to the way in which certain traits that we see in children can be found in their parents at a different level. But we must not regard the child as a copy of [the parents], for then we would not consider the transformation, how the soul qualities of the mother descend into the body of the son, and how, conversely, the physical nature of the father is transformed in the soul of the daughter. Today, people are inclined to admit transformations of natural forces; natural science, for example, shows how natural substances transform into heat. But it is not admitted that these laws also apply to the spiritual. A real art of education can only come about when people become aware that spiritual science can flow into such areas of life as education.

We are always talking about individuality. But what is individuality? Today, we only refer to the word in a very abstract way. However, if we know how individuality arises, in that the spiritual-soul core of the child not only absorbs the qualities of the father and mother, but transforms them, we can grasp it in a concrete way. Then education comes from the abstract to the concrete, from materialistic abstraction to true reality. Now someone might object: You tell us that the soul-spiritual core of the being envelops itself in what is given to it in inherited powers. But we see the human being as a unified being, and how can we distinguish between what is inherited and the spiritual core of the being?

If we consider development only superficially and see only the individual, we will not make any progress. But life offers us proof, sufficient proof, to show how the spiritual-soul core of our being is enveloped and permeated by what comes from our parents and ancestors. Great minds such as Newton or Humboldt, who achieved great things, did not do particularly well at school and were considered to be poorly endowed. Many other people with great names could be named who also developed slowly, while child prodigies progressed rapidly. In the case of Newton or Humboldt or others, they brought a rich core of being into this life, with much sprouting and budding in the soul, and this working into what had been inherited from the parents had to happen slowly. The rich inner core needs more time, because it must first chisel out, transform, precisely gradate and so on, what it has inherited in powers. So rich natures, which are called to give much, must work longer on adapting the inherited material.

This will become increasingly clear, because today a person who brings strong soul forces with them has to fight against all the tough obstacles, because very rigid, sober, fixed hereditary traits are inherited that are not very flexible, so it takes a long time to adapt them precisely to the individual core of the being. Child prodigies are quickly finished, because they quickly process the abilities that lie in the line of inheritance and absorb them in a one-sided way. But it soon becomes apparent that their talents dry up and wither away. When we look at these most extreme cases, we see the slowly developing genius or the quickly developing prodigy and all the stages in between, as the spiritual and psychological core of the being works its way through the obstacles.

This slow process of working one's way through can also be found in Goethe. If, like me, you have spent three decades studying Goethe in detail and with humility, you can safely say, without running the risk of being misunderstood: If one surveys Goethe's life, one notices a slow progression in the development of his abilities and talents. We find the tendency towards what he became in him even as a child sacrificing to the great God, but what effort he had throughout his life to bring what was in him through the many obstacles of his physicality. We recognize him when he expresses his great thoughts, for example in the second part of Faust, as a mature human being, in contrast to young Goethe, who, compared to old Goethe, wrote many immature things. How does what is said here go against the judgment of our time, where the editions of the youthful works are particularly praised – there, it is thought, he achieved the greatest things. The young Goethe, it is said, brought forth great and powerful things. He is praised to the skies. And of the old Goethe, some say that he produced the second part of Faust in his old age. Few people understand that he developed and deepened slowly and gradually, that the Italian world fostered him inwardly, and that his essential core increasingly removed external obstacles. In short, they do not understand the old Goethe because he is too lofty for them. Even during his lifetime, he had to suffer from the fact that his later works were decried as products of old age. He expresses this in the following verse:

They praise Faust,
And what else
In my writings roars,
In their favor;
The old Mick and Mack,
That pleases them very much;
The pack of rags and tags thinks,
It would no longer be!

In Goethe's case, it is particularly evident how the spiritual and mental core of his being rose to its height in the second half of his life, and no one who believes that the whole of Goethe was already present in his youthful writings understands him. People understand the young Goethe better, but they attribute this not to the fact that they do not understand the old Goethe, but to the fact that he has declined. Thus, we can also find it true in this great spirit how the spiritual-soul core of being works its way into the outer shells.

Someone might object that we are talking here about an essential core that must be there to group and organize abilities. But we need only point out that the most important qualities nevertheless lie in the line of inheritance and can be explained from it. For example, in the last few centuries there were 25 to 28 musicians in the Bach family. So how can you say that the essential core is the main thing? Similarly, there were a whole series of important mathematicians in the Bernoulli family in Basel. In their case, it is particularly clear how seemingly mere inheritance works, because some of them were destined for something completely different, but nevertheless, in later life, it drove them to mathematics.

To understand this correctly, one must consider the relationship between the spiritual-soul core of one's being and one's inherited disposition and talents. To be a musician, one needs a musical ear; but this belongs to the physical organization, that is, to the shell. Just as one inherits the shape of one's nose, hands and so on, one also inherits the finer inner organs that lie hidden beneath the surface of the physical body. A soul-spiritual core that strives to receive physical tools for musicality will be drawn to families that can pass on musical organs. What is musical talent based on? Not on the brain, which is the organ of logic, but on the shape of the ear canals. One must look at the individual relationships very carefully. Such auditory ossicles of a certain shape are inherited from generation to generation. It is similar with the Bernoullis. Those who need a predisposition for geometry can seek out such a family. Thus, what life shows us here again coincides with what spiritual science asserts. We can understand and illuminate life better if we bring before our soul the connection between heredity and predisposition and the harmony or disharmony that arises from it.

If we distinguish between the spiritual-soul core of our being and the environment in which it is embedded, then life means an interaction between these two elements. Let us look at a child in the very first weeks of its life. His features are still undefined, his organs not yet fully functional; he cannot yet walk and so on. But if we think properly, we know that where features and abilities are still undefined, the core of the being is still dormant and is only gradually working its way to the surface to become defined. What the person will become later works its way out of the vagueness of movements, gestures and so on. It works its way up from indeterminate depths to the surface, and more and more the outer shell becomes an expression of what lives inside the person. In later life, much more is expressed on the outside, as the person really is. In the youthful child, the forces that will one day express themselves in his features, in his gestures, in his hand movements, and so on, are still dormant. In later life, the human being shows the imprint of the soul's inner character in the physical. The outer, the envelope-like, becomes more and more [a mirror] of itself; in the physical, what he is as a spiritual human being shows.

During the first period of life, the human being works more into his physical being. There is something very interesting connected with this fact, and it is connected with the same lawfulness as a physical law. With regard to inheritance, a distinction must be made between what children inherit who are born in the first years of marriage and what those who are born in later years of marriage inherit. The first children show in a remarkable way the ability to shape the inherited traits in the freest way; they can do this more with an individual style independent of their parents. The later children are more constrained to yield to the strong element of heredity; they become more of an imprint of their parents. Children born in the early years of a marriage find it easier to mix the inherited traits with each other; inheritance is less tyrannical towards them. Those born in the later years of the marriage have to apply stronger forces, because the power of inheritance is stronger in their case. Thus we see how these children become more and more like their parents. Of course, this can be broken by the most diverse circumstances, but in the sense of today's scientific research, this is a law.

When we consider these laws of inheritance, the right relationship between a person's disposition, talents and upbringing becomes apparent. Such laws can only be made useful for the soul's life if they do not remain mere theories and insights, but if they are transformed into feelings and intuitions. It is a remarkable thing how feelings kindled by knowledge give us the gift of tactfully divining what qualities are striving for expression in a human being. If we have goodwill and a sense for it, we stand face to face with the developing human being as with a sacred riddle. The secret of education lies in our approaching the child with such a feeling, for then he will solve the riddle for us. He shows us what abilities can be drawn out of him. Then there is no need for much speculation; tact will guide us so that we do not burden the child with something that cannot be developed in him. This brings the educator into the right relationship with the child. Then we stand before the human being we have to educate as before a sacred riddle and not – as many an educator often does – as before a vessel, where one can discuss what is best to be poured into it. That is a very external point of view! We must not forget that life often forces us to bring the child to something that, in our opinion, is not within his or her individuality, so that he or she can get ahead in life. But generally speaking, all the talk about education is usually less about what the child is more or less suited for and more about family relationships and education befitting one's station in life. But we must grasp the demands of life and individuality in a concrete sense, harmonize the blending of the soul-spiritual essence and the inherited predispositions, and endeavor to solve the riddle according to the circumstances of life. A riddle can be solved in different ways, but one must recognize it, then one can let the child become different, otherwise one will often not hit the right thing despite all speculation.

It is precisely in such areas [as education] that the fruitfulness of spiritual science for life becomes apparent. Spiritual science is not just theory, but something that can and will prove itself in life every day and every hour - for the progress of all humanity and of each individual. It places us in life in such a way that we acquire the security, strength and confidence we need for life. This chapter on disposition, talent and education thus proves to us that, indeed, through having gone through many lives, the human being carries an enigma at the core of his being and that life, in the broadest sense, must be a solution to this enigma.

The better we can answer the riddle within us, the happier, more secure and more fruitful a person's life will be – we must take this as our motto.

The spiritual and soul essence that goes through many births and deaths is a riddle, and life is the solution.

Certain duties imposed on me from the spiritual world have made it necessary for me to research some things regarding the life of Christ Jesus in recent times. You know that it is possible to gain access to events that took place in the past through the so-called Akashic Records research. So an attempt was made to gain access to the most important event in the evolution of the earth, the event that is connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. A number of things have emerged that can complement the more spiritual scientific explanations that have been given to you on various occasions about the Mystery of Golgotha. What has now emerged from the Akasha Chronicle research is of a different nature; it is, so to speak, more concrete, a sum of facts related to the life of Christ Jesus. It is hoped that these facts will, over time, come together to form a kind of fifth gospel, and we will talk about why it is necessary in our time to extract from the occult sources what can be described as a fifth gospel in a certain respect.

Today I will begin by telling a few stories that relate to the youth of Jesus of Nazareth and that will culminate in an important conversation that he had with his stepmother or foster mother. Some of what will now be discussed as the Fifth Gospel has already been communicated to some of you by Miss Stinde; but for the sake of the context I shall also have to briefly mention the things that have already been presented to some of you.

I would like to begin my story today with the event that I have already described to you several times, with the passing over of the Zarathustra ego into the physical form of the Jesus child who descended from the Nathanic line of the House of David. I will briefly mention that, according to the Akasha Chronicle research, two Jesus children were born around the same time. One was born out of what we can call the Solomon line of the House of David, the other out of the Nathan line of the House of David. The two were very different in terms of their entire childhood. The body that descended from the Solomonic line of the House of David contained the same ego that once walked the earth as Zarathustra. This ego had advanced to become a spirit that, as is often the case occurred in such cases, he appeared childlike during the first twelve years, but he proved to be endowed with the very highest gifts, and he learned with great rapidity everything that human cultural development had produced up to that age. We would call a boy of the highest talent, according to what emerges from the Akasha Chronicle, this boy from the Solomonic line of the House of David. We cannot address the other Jesus boy from the Nathanic line with such predicates. He was basically untalented for everything that can be learned through the achievements of the earth sciences and arts of man. He even showed a certain reluctance to learn anything of what mankind has achieved. On the other hand, this Jesus-boy showed the most profound genius of the heart; even in his earliest boyhood he radiated the warmest love imaginable, and in human and earthly terms he absorbed everything that could lead to the development of a life of love.

We also already know that after the two boys had turned about twelve years old, the ego of Zarathustra emerged, as sometimes happens in the occult processes of the evolution of humanity on earth. It emerged from the body of the Jesus-child of the Solomonic line, and passed over into the bodily sheaths of the other Jesus-child. The Gospel of Luke indicates this by telling how this Jesus boy then sat among the scribes and gave astounding answers and was hardly recognized by his own parents. Thus, from the age of twelve, we have come to know this Jesus child, with the genius of the heart, who had united within himself the sum of all human gifts related to feeling and the soul; we have the union of Zarathustra's ego with this Jesus child, who at that time did not yet know what was happening to him: that it was the ego of Zarathustra that left the body of the Solomonic Jesus child and moved into him and already worked in his bodily shells, so that both elements gradually permeated each other to the highest perfection.

We also know that the biological mother of the Nathanian Jesus child soon died, as did the father of the Solomonian Jesus child, and we know that a family was formed from the two families from which the two Jesus so that the Nathanian Jesus from the other family got step-siblings and the natural mother of the Solomonian Jesus boy became his step- or foster mother. In this family he now grew up in Nazareth. The extraordinary talent which he had shown when he gave those great and powerful answers in the temple among the scribes, astonishing everyone, increased further. Something wonderful took place in the soul of this Jesus child of Nazareth, in whom was contained the ego of Zarathustra, from the age of twelve until about the age of eighteen: something emerged from the depths of his soul life that no one else at that time was able to experience; a tremendous maturity of spiritual judgment, alongside a deep originality of his soul abilities, asserted itself. To the amazement of those around him, that mighty divine voice from the spiritual regions, which in the Hebrew secret teachings was called the great Bath-Kol, spoke ever more clearly and distinctly to his soul. But differently than to the scribes, the great Bath-Kol spoke to this adolescent boy in a sublime way. It came up like an inner, wondrous illumination. So it came about that even in his youth, Jesus of Nazareth could say to himself in a sad mood: What has become of Hebrew humanity since those times, since this humanity heard the old prophets, those old prophets who themselves still received the spiritual secrets from higher worlds through their inspirations and intuitions? Then it dawned on Jesus of Nazareth through inner illumination that there had once been a close communication between the old Hebrew prophets and the divine spiritual powers; that the greatest secrets were revealed to the old prophets through the holy, solemn voice of the great Bath Kol. But times had changed until the present day, when Jesus of Nazareth lived. There were scholars and scribes, and some prophets, who could only grasp the echoes, the faint echoes, of what the great prophets had once received as revelation. But all that could be attained in the present time was only a shadow of the old teachings. But what was preserved in the scriptures as tradition, Jesus felt and sensed - now that he received it through his direct inner inspiration, through lights that shone more and more brightly in him from day to day, that it was there, but that the present was no longer suited to understand it. His life was powerful in these inspirations.

One gains an immensely strong impression when one directs one's spiritual gaze to this point in the evolution of the earth, when one sees again, in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth, what was revealed in ancient times, as it were, to the patriarchal prophets, and one sees how lonely he stood in humanity, which was without understanding for what he experienced. He had to say to Himself: Even if the great Bath Kol spoke loudly and clearly from heaven, there are no people here who could understand it. What has become of humanity? This weighed heavily on his soul as an enormous pain. So we see the boy growing into young adulthood. From week to week, new insights arose for him, but each new insight was linked for him to an ever-increasing suffering, to deep, deep pain over what humanity has forgotten, what it can no longer understand. The entire descent of humanity was borne by the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. One learns many things about the pain and suffering that people in the world have to endure when one focuses one's spiritual vision on the evolution of humanity. But the impression that one receives from that soul, which out of pure compassion for humanity felt the most intense pain at the descent of humanity, at what humanity was no longer able to receive of what was prepared for it from spiritual worlds. This pain increased all the more because in the whole environment of Jesus of Nazareth, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, there was no one with whom he could have spoken about it in any way. Even the best disciples of the great scholars, such as Hillel, did not understand the greatness that was revealed in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. He was alone with his revelations and alone with his infinite pain, embracing humanity in boundless compassion. Above all, I would like to characterize this mood of his soul in Jesus of Nazareth. While he was going through all this inwardly, while worlds were unfolding within him, he worked unpretentiously on the outside in his father's business, which was a kind of carpentry. And so he matured until he was eighteen years old. Then, according to the will of the family, he was to go on a kind of journey through the world, moving from place to place to work there for a while. So he did. And this brings us to a second period in the youth of Jesus of Nazareth, which lasted from about the age of eighteen to twenty-four.

He traveled to many places, both within and outside of Palestine. He came into contact with Jews and Gentiles in all kinds of Gentile regions. One could discern something remarkable about this personality, which will always be among the most instructive aspects of any attempt to explore the secrets of the human depths: One could see that the immense pain he had experienced in his soul had been transformed into immense love, as it often does when he is selfless, into a love that works not only through words but also through his mere presence. When he entered the families in whose midst he was to work, they knew from the way he presented himself, from the way he was, that the love that can only come from one person radiated from this soul; a love that did everyone good, in whose atmosphere everyone who was aware of it wanted to live. And this love was transformed pain, was the metamorphosis of pain. Many things happened that gave the people among whom he lived the impression that they were dealing with a person unlike any who had ever walked the earth. By day he worked; in the evenings the families gathered at the places where he worked and there he was among them. Everything that could radiate from his love lived in such families. People felt that they were more than mere humans when he spoke his simple words, but they were imbued with what he had experienced from the age of twelve to eighteen. And then, when he had moved away from the place, it was as if these families felt him still among them, as if he had not left at all. His presence was still felt. Yes, it happened again and again that they all had a real vision: while they were talking about what he had said, while they were inwardly rejoicing in what they felt of his presence, they saw him come in through the door, sit down among them, feel his loving presence, and hear him speak. He was not there in the flesh, but there was a vision shared by all.

And so, in many regions, a sense of community gradually developed between Jesus of Nazareth and the people with whom he came into contact over the years. And everywhere people talked about this man of great love. Many scriptures were applied to him. The scriptures were not understood, and he was also understood little with the mind; but with the heart, one felt all the more deeply his love, the extraordinary of his existence and his effect. He came not only to Hebrew but also to pagan areas, even outside of Palestine. Strangely enough, his path also led him to such pagan areas where pagan teachings had declined. He got to know some pagan places whose old places of worship had fallen into disrepair.

And then one day he came to a place that had suffered particularly from the decline of the old pagan places of worship, the old pagan priesthood. The pagan places of worship were, after all, an external expression of what had been practiced here and there in the mysteries. The ceremonies in the places of worship were images of the mysteries. But all this was in decline, had fallen into disrepair in many areas. Then Jesus of Nazareth came to a place of worship where, for reasons unknown to him, the outer buildings had also fallen into disrepair. I still do not know the location of this place of worship. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to determine the exact location and name of the place in the Akasha Chronicle; for some reason, the impression of the place has been blurred on the map of the earth, so to speak. What I am telling you is absolutely correct, in my opinion, but it is not possible to indicate the location; for some reason it cannot be found. But it was a pagan place, a dilapidated place of worship, and all around it the people were sad and sick and burdened with all kinds of diseases and hardships. Because they were burdened with such diseases and hardships, the priesthood had left and fled. The place of worship had fallen into disrepair. The people felt unhappy because their priests had abandoned them. There was tremendous misery when Jesus entered this pagan place of worship. As he approached, he was noticed by some and immediately it spread like wildfire among the people: here comes someone who can help us! Because of the power that radiated from his love, which had already become a kind of sanctifying love, people felt as if someone special was approaching, as if heaven itself had sent them another of their cult priests. They flocked there in great numbers, hoping that their cult would now be performed again. Jesus of Nazareth was not inclined to perform the pagan cult, as is understandable; but when he looked at the people with his gaze, which had now been heightened to a kind of clairvoyance, born of pain and love, he already understood something of the essence of the decline of paganism. Then he learned to recognize the following: He knew that in ancient times, when the still good priests served and sacrificed, good spiritual beings from the sphere of the higher hierarchies bowed down at these places of worship for the pagan sacrifices and rituals. But little by little – that dawned on him – paganism had fallen into decline. Whereas in the past the rivers of mercy and grace of the good gods worshipped by the heathens had been sent down to the sacrificial altars and united with the sacrifice, now demons, emissaries of Ahriman and Lucifer, had descended. He saw them among the people and realized that these demonic entities were actually the cause of the evil diseases that were raging among the people, who now pitied him in their deepest souls. And when he perceived these mysterious connections, when he thus came to understand the secret of the declining paganism, he fell down as if dead. This occurrence had a terrible effect on the people, who believed that a priest had come down from heaven. They saw the man fall down and flee, flee in terror from the place to which they had just flocked. With the last glance that he cast, in his ordinary consciousness, at the fleeing people, Jesus of Nazareth saw the demons fleeing with the people; but other demons still surrounded him. Then the everyday consciousness receded and he felt as if he had been transported into a higher spiritual world, from which the blessings of the pagan gods had once flowed, which had united with the sacrifices. And just as he had otherwise heard the voice of the great Bath-Kol, so now he heard the sounds from the divine-spiritual realms, from those hierarchies to which the pagan good gods belonged. He heard human primordial revelation in this enraptured state.

I have tried to put into German words what he heard there; as well as I could, to reproduce what he heard. And it is characteristic: I was able to share these words first at the laying of the foundation stone of our Dornach building. It is like the reverse of the Christian Lord's Prayer, which he only had to reveal much later in the well-known form. But now it impressed itself on him as it might have been revealed in the beginning of the evolution of the earth as a cosmic Lord's Prayer. This is how it sounds when translated into German:

Amen

Evil rules
Witnesses of dissolving egoity
From other selfhood guilt
We experience in our daily bread
in which heaven's will does not prevail
in which man has separated himself from your kingdom
and forgotten your name
you fathers in the heavens.

So then:

Amen
Evil reigns
Witnesses of the disintegration of the ego
Of the guilt of selfhood owed to others
Experienced in the daily bread
In which heaven's will does not prevail
In which man has separated himself from your kingdom
And forgotten your name
you fathers in the heavens.

What spoke to him from the regions from which the gods of the heathens had once worked was like a great, powerful revelation to him. These words, which at first sound simple, in fact contain the secret of the whole incorporation of man into physical earthly corporeality. They contain this secret. One comes more and more to realize, as I have convinced myself by gradually meditating on these words, what tremendous depths are contained in them. One would like to say that the whole ancient pagan heaven, which expressed itself in this mystery of the Incarnation as in a macrocosmic Lord's Prayer, once worked on the fallen Jesus of Nazareth, who was in a raptured state. And when he came to again, he still saw the last fleeing demons, who had taken the place of the old good pagan gods, and in the far distance he saw the people fleeing. But he had suffered not only from the pain caused by the revelations of the Bath-Kol, for which humanity was no longer ripe, but now he had to suffer the second pain, because he had to recognize: Even that which had once been spoken to paganism, even that which were divine-spiritual revelations for paganism, is now in decline. Even if all the voices of the heavens were to resound today, humanity would not have the capacity to receive them. — So he had to say to himself.

It is a tremendous impression to see how much pain had to be accumulated in a soul for the Mystery of Golgotha to be prepared. It is a tremendous impression to realize, through these things, what pain had to be poured into that impulse which we call the Christ impulse for the further development of the earth. In this way, Jesus had also come to know the essence of paganism and the essence of its decline.

When he was about twenty-four years old, he went home; it was around the same time that his biological father died. He was now alone with his siblings, who were all his step-siblings, and his foster or stepmother. Now something strange happened: little by little, the love and understanding of the stepmother or foster mother for him grew more and more, while his brothers and sisters did not understand him. Something like a genius of the heart blossomed in her. She was able to understand the lonely man, who carried the suffering of humanity within him, little by little – even if only little by little – while his brothers did not care.

But first he would get to know something else: the community that showed him, so to speak, the third aspect of the decline of humanity. He would get to know the Essene community. This Essene community, which had its main center at the Dead Sea, was widespread throughout the world at that time. It was a strict, closed order that strove to ascend again through a certain regulated, renounced life to those levels above which humanity had descended in its decline ; to ascend by spiritual exercises to that spiritual height where something could be heard again of—no matter whether it was called in the Jewish sense, the great Bath-Kol, or in the heathen sense, the old Revelation. The Esseneans sought to achieve this through strict training of the soul and isolation from the things that otherwise characterized humanity. What they strove for had attracted many. They had various possessions far and wide throughout the land. Whoever wanted to become an Essenean had to give up what he had inherited or could still inherit to the common possession. No one was allowed to keep property for himself. Many Essenes had a house or a country estate here or there, which they dedicated to the order. As a result, the order had scattered settlements throughout the Near East, especially in Palestine, including Nazareth. Everything had to be in the public domain. The Essenes performed great deeds of charity. No one owned anything for themselves. Everyone was allowed to give away from the common property to anyone they considered poor or in need. Through spiritual exercises they attained a certain healing power, which had an enormous beneficial effect. They had one principle that would be impossible today, but which was strictly observed at that time: anyone could support people they considered worthy from the common fund, but never their relatives. They had to free themselves from all the ties of the senses that connected them to the outside world.

Jesus of Nazareth did not actually become an Essene, like John, whom he briefly met among the Essenes; but because of the enormity of what his soul held, he was treated with great trust in the order. Much of what was otherwise only known to members of the higher degrees was discussed with him in confidence, based on the way his soul worked. In this way he learned to recognize how they were striving upwards again along a steep path to the heights from which men had descended. Often it seemed to him as if he could say: Yes, there are still people among us who are ascending again to that which was once revealed to mankind in primeval times, but which mankind in general does not understand today.

Once, after he had had a profound conversation about the secrets of the world within the Essene community, he had a great, powerful impression. As he walked out through the gate, he saw two figures in a vision. He recognized Ahriman and Lucifer and saw them flee from the Essene gates. He knew that they fled into the rest of humanity. He often had such a vision from then on. It was the custom of the Essenes not to pass through the ordinary gates of a city or house of that time that were somehow decorated with sculptures. They had to turn back at such gates. But since there were so many Essenes – there were as many Essenes as Pharisees in Palestine at that time – they were taken into consideration and had their own very simple gates built. So the Essenes were not allowed to go through any gate that had any images on it. This was connected with their entire spiritual development. Therefore, there were special Essene gates in the cities. Jesus of Nazareth had often passed through such Essene gates. He always saw how Lucifer and Ahriman in a particularly threatening way for humanity departed from the gates. Yes, you see, when you learn about such things in theory, they certainly make an impression; but when you learn about them as you can learn through a glimpse into the Akasha Chronicle, when you really see the figures of Lucifer and Ahriman under the same conditions as Jesus of Nazareth saw them, then it makes a completely different impression. Then you begin to grasp the deepest secrets not only with your mind, with your intellect, but with your whole soul, you not only know them, you experience them, you are one with them.

I can only stammer with poor words what now, as a third great pain, was discharged onto the soul of Jesus: He recognized that it was indeed possible in his time for individuals to separate themselves and achieve the highest insight, but only if the rest of humanity is all the more cut off from all development of the soul. At the expense of the rest of humanity, such people seek the perfection of their soul, and because they strive for such a development, through which Lucifer and Ahriman cannot approach them, they must flee. But as these individual people break free, Lucifer and Ahriman flee to the other people. These are plunged into decadence all the more, the more such people rise in their isolation. This was indeed a terrible impression for Jesus of Nazareth, who felt undivided compassion for all people, who could not feel without the deepest, most profound pain that individuals should rise in their soul development at the expense of humanity in general. And so the idea formed in him: Lucifer and Ahriman receive in general humanity an ever-increasing power precisely because individuals want to be the pure, the Essene. That was the third great pain, even the most terrible pain; for now something like despair of the fate of mankind would sometimes break out in his soul. The secret of this fate of mankind came over him terribly. He carried this fate of the world, crowded together in his own soul.

So it was in his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year, so it was after the mother, who was his stepmother or foster mother, had more and more of an understanding for him that one day, when they both felt that their souls could understand each other, he entered into a conversation with this stepmother or foster mother, into that conversation which was so infinitely significant for the development of humanity. Now, during this conversation, Jesus of Nazareth realized how he could truly pour into the stepmother's heart what he had experienced since he was twelve years old. Now he could gradually put into words to her what he had been through. And he did so. He told her what he had felt about the decay of Judaism and paganism, about the Essenes, about the hermitage of the Essenes. And it was so that these words, which passed from the soul of Jesus to the soul of the stepmother or foster mother, did not work like ordinary words, but as if he could have given each of his words something of the full power of his soul. They were inspired by what he had suffered, what had come directly from his suffering for love, for the holiness of the soul. He was so connected with his suffering and love that something of his self floated on the wings of his words into the heart and soul of this stepmother or foster mother.

And then, after he had told her what he had gone through, he brought up something else that had come to him as an insight and which I will now summarize in words that we have gained in spiritual science. What Jesus of Nazareth said to his stepmother or foster mother will only be said in accordance with its actual meaning, but I will choose the words so that you can understand them more easily than if I were to speak directly in German the words that came to me from the pictures in the Akasha Chronicle. Jesus of Nazareth spoke to his stepmother or foster mother, as in all his pain he had come to understand the secret of the evolution of humanity, how humanity had developed. And so he said to her: I have recognized that humanity once went through an ancient epoch in which, unconsciously, it received the highest wisdom in the freshness of childhood. With these words, he hinted at what we refer to in spiritual science as the first post-Atlantic cultural epoch, when the holy rishis of the ancient Indian people were able to impart their great and powerful wisdom to humanity. But these teachings were seen by Jesus of Nazareth in such a way that he could say to himself: How were these teachings received by the holy rishis? What forces were active in the souls of the rishis and in the entire ancient Indian people? They were forces that otherwise only prevail in childhood, between birth and the seventh year, but which then died away for the individual human being, but were poured out over the entire human age. Because the childhood forces were spread over the entire human age, these ancient, sacred, divine truths flowed down into the human mind, inspiring and intuiting. But with the passing of this first epoch of humanity in the post-Atlantean era, which we call the ancient Indian cultural epoch, which Jesus of Nazareth compared to the first childhood to his mother, the possibility of preserving the forces of childhood until later in life also passed. They faded away and therefore humanity was no longer able to absorb and preserve within itself that which had once been revealed to it. Jesus of Nazareth further spoke of the fact that an epoch then followed which can be compared to the human age from seven to fourteen years, but where the forces that are otherwise only present from seven to fourteen years of age were poured out over the whole of human life, so that people still experienced them as old men. Because this was the case, and because these forces could still be present at later ages, it was possible in this second, the primeval Persian epoch, to attain the wisdom that we recognize as the wisdom of Zarathustra, which Jesus of Nazareth now saw rejected by humanity due to a lack of understanding. In the third epoch, which Jesus of Nazareth could look back on and spoke of to his mother, what is otherwise experienced between the fourteenth and twenty-first year was poured out over all generations, so that even at fifty or sixty years of age people still had the powers that otherwise only last until the age of twenty-one. Thus accessible for this third epoch were those great sciences of the workings of nature that we so admire when we penetrate into Egyptian, into the ancient Chaldean science, into the true foundations of their astrological knowledge, that deep knowledge that deals not only with the earth, but with the secrets of the world in their effect on people, and of which later humanity could understand only a little. But the third age also saw Jesus of Nazareth fading away. Just as the individual human being grows old, he said, so has humanity grown older.

The greatest impulses for Greek culture came from the mystery wisdom, which caused a high point of philosophical thought and art in it, but also brought about the transition to the fourth cultural period in which we ourselves live, which already appeals to the independence of the human being and creates new social structures that break with the dependency on the old mystery being. The decline of the old mysteries begins with the rise of the new state system and its rivalries among itself; but its rapid intellectual ascent is also connected with this. The forces that can only grasp the slightest when they are poured out over the entire human lifespan are now there. We live within a humanity that can only grasp with the powers that are inherent to humanity between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-eight. But when this cultural period has faded away, humanity will have reached its middle age; a certain peak will have been reached that cannot be maintained. The descent must begin, albeit slowly at first. Humanity is entering an age in which the forces are dying, in a similar way to the age that the individual reaches in his thirties, from which the descent begins. The descent of all mankind begins with the next age, so said Jesus of Nazareth, as all the pain of this future decline of mankind passed through his soul. Humanity itself, he said, is entering the age when the original forces have died. But while for the individual, as it were, the forces of youth can still continue to work, this cannot be the case for humanity as a whole. It must enter an invincible age of old age if no new forces come into it. He foresaw the desolation of earthly culture if no young forces came into it. The natural forces have dried up as humanity enters the age that, for the individual, runs from the age of twenty-eight to thirty-five. If no other sources then open up, humanity will grow old.

Summarizing this, Jesus of Nazareth said to his mother: “What will become of all mankind if it is subject to the fate of the individual?” Faced with the force of this question, Jesus and his stepmother felt the need for a new spiritual impulse. Something had to come that could only come from outside, that was not in humanity itself, because after this middle age something new in inner human powers, not connected with the sense world, could no longer unfold freely in man. Something had to be expected from outside, which otherwise grows from within in the time between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth year of life. And with an enormous force, which cannot be compared to anything, the soul of Jesus of Nazareth was wrung from the pain that there was nothing in the environment that could pour the forces of renewal into decaying humanity.

That was how the conversation went, and with each word something flowed from one's own self into the stepmother or foster mother. The words had wings and in them it was expressed that they were not just words, but that something was wringing itself out of the corporeality of Jesus of Nazareth, which was precisely like his self, which had become one with his pain and his love-power. In that moment, as his self was wringing itself free, it shone in him for a moment what this self truly was: the consciousness of one's own ego as that of Zarathustra. He felt himself to be Zarathustra's ego, shining for a moment as if shining. But it seemed to him as if this ego went out of him and left him alone again, so that he was again the one, only greater, grown, who he had been in his twelfth year of life.

A tremendous change had also taken place in his mother. If one researches in the Akasha Chronicle to find out what was happening there, one comes to the conclusion that soon after Jesus of the Nathanic line had reached the twelfth year and the Zarathustra ego had become indwelling in him, the soul of his physical mother had ascended into the spiritual regions. Now she descended again as a soul and inspired his stepmother, who was thereby rejuvenated. Thus the stepmother or foster mother, who was the biological mother of the Solomonic boy Jesus, was now spiritualized by the soul of his own mother. So now the soul of the physical mother of the Nathanian Jesus child also walked again on earth in a physical body, in the body of the mother of the Solomonian Jesus child. But he himself was as if alone with his three bodies, but most highly spiritualized by all his experiences, alone with his physical, etheric and astral bodies; the self, however, had gone away. For in this physical, etheric and astral body dwelt all that came from the ego of Zarathustra. Although the Zarathustra ego had withdrawn, all its impressions had remained. This had the effect that in this remarkable personality, which Jesus of Nazareth now was, after the ego of Zarathustra had departed from him, something very special was. And what was in it, that presented itself to me, when I could see the further progress in this Fifth Gospel, as I describe it.

After the conversation with his mother, something stirred in Jesus of Nazareth, from whom the ego of Zarathustra had gone. It seemed like a mighty cosmic urge that pushed what was now there to the banks of the Jordan, to John the Baptist. On the way there, this strange being met—for that is what Jesus of Nazareth was now, a being who wore the highest humanity, as it is otherwise only compatible with fully developed four human limbs, only in three human covers across the ground, a being who felt inwardly different than a human being, but who had the human form on the outside. After the conversation with his mother, when he had felt the urge within himself to go to the Jordan to John the Baptist, he encountered this being, two Essenes, two of those Essenes who knew Jesus well. Of course, they found what was said in his features strange; but they still recognized him by his outward appearance, which had not changed and which was clearly recognizable. But they found him strange. The change that had taken place in him had given his eyes a very special expression. Something spoke from these eyes, like an inner light that shone gently, like the light embodied, not earthly, but heavenly, love of man. The two Essenes saw him as an old acquaintance. They felt that they could not escape the tremendously mild, infinitely mild gaze of Jesus, as he now was. But then again, when they looked into those eyes, they also felt something like a reproach that did not come from him, that was something like a force that welled up in their own soul, radiated into his eyes and back, like a mild moonlight, but like a tremendous reproach about their own being, about what they were.

Only with such words can I describe what can be seen by looking into the Akasha Chronicle, what these Essenes saw in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth, which they felt through his body, that is, through his physical, etheric and astral body, which they saw looking at them, which they heard. His presence was hard for them to bear; for it was an expression of infinite love, but at the same time it was something of a reproach to them. They found his presence deeply attractive, but at the same time they felt the urge to get away from it. But one of them pulled himself together, since they both knew him from the many conversations they had had with him, and asked him: “Where are you going, Jesus of Nazareth?” — I could translate the words that Jesus then spoke into words of the English language something like this: “To where souls of your kind do not want to look, where the pain of humanity can find the rays of the forgotten light!” They did not understand his speech and realized that he did not recognize them, that he did not know who they were. From the strange way he looked at them, which was not at all like the way he looked at people he knew, from his whole behavior and from the way he spoke the words, they realized that he did not recognize them. And then one of the Essenes pulled himself together again and said: “Jesus of Nazareth, don't you recognize us?” And this one answered with something that I can only express in the following words in German: “What kind of souls are you? Where is your world? Why do you wrap yourselves in deceptive covers? Why does a fire burn inside of you that is not kindled in my Father's house?” They did not know what was happening to them, did not know what was wrong with him. Once again, one of the two Essenes pulled himself together and asked, “Jesus of Nazareth, don't you know us?” Jesus replied, “You are like lost lambs; but I was the shepherd's son, whom you fled. If you recognize me, you will soon flee again. It has been so long since you fled from me into the world. — And they did not know what to think of him. Then he spoke further: You have the tempter's mark on you! He has made your wool glisten with his fire. The hairs of this wool pierce my gaze! — And they felt that these words of his were something like the echo of their own being from his being. And then spoke Jesus further: The tempter met you after your escape. He has saturated your souls with pride! Then one of the Essenes took courage, for he felt something familiar, and spoke: Did we not expel the tempter? He has no more part in us. Then spoke Jesus of Nazareth: You did indeed expel him; but he went to the other people and came over them. So he is not around you, he is in the other people! You see him everywhere. Do you believe that you have elevated yourselves by expelling him from your gates? You have remained as high as you were. You seem to have become high because you have humiliated the others. By belittling the others, you have seemingly come up.

Then the Essenes were frightened. At that moment, however, when infinite fear came over them, it seemed to them as if Jesus of Nazareth had dissolved into a fog and disappeared before their eyes. But then their eyes were transfixed by this vanishing being of Jesus of Nazareth and they could not avert their gaze from where it was directed. Then, as if in cosmic distance, their gaze fell on a huge apparition that looked like the face of Jesus of Nazareth, enlarged to an excessive size, which they had just seen. What had spoken to them from his features now spoke with gigantic size from these enlarged features, which captivated them. They could not avert their gaze from the apparition, whose gaze was fixed on them as if from far away. As a result, something like a reproach settled in their souls, which seemed to them to be deserved on the one hand, but unbearable on the other. As if transformed into a mirage in the distant sky, the Jesus appeared to these two Essenes, enlarged to gigantic proportions, and the circumstances that lay in the words also appeared to be magnified to gigantic proportions. Out of this vision, out of this countenance, there sounded the words which can be rendered in the German language in something like the following way: “Vain is your striving, because empty is your heart, you who have filled yourselves with the spirit, which deceptively shelters pride in the garment of humility.

These were the words spoken by the being to the Essenes he encountered, after the ego of Zarathustra had detached itself from the physical shell of Jesus, who in turn had become only what he had been in his twelfth year, but now imbued with all that the ego of Zarathustra and all the experiences of which I have told you could sink into this peculiar body, which had already announced its uniqueness by being able to speak wonderful words of wisdom in a language only the mother's heart could understand.

That is what I wanted to give you today in a simple story that first takes us to the path that Jesus of Nazareth took after his conversation with his mother to John the Baptist at the Jordan. The day after tomorrow, we will continue the story and try to build a bridge to what we have tried to grasp as the meaning of the mystery of Golgotha.

Today I should like to indicate the extent to which religious systems reveal, in specific instances, their hidden spiritual-scientific foundations.

It is a small but important aspect of the occult scientific basis of religions that I wish to discuss. Even the simplest people in contemporary society recognize this hidden background of religions as a spiritual fact involving the deepest truths. Seeking these truths brings to light how wisdom-filled and fraught with mystery are the ties binding together the spiritual life of mankind.

Think of Christian prayer. You all know what it is. It has often been spoken of, and anthroposophists have often reflected upon its relation to the spiritual-scientific world view. This spiritual-scientific world conception has brought to members of the anthroposophic movement another method of elevating the human being—the human soul—to contact with the divine, spiritual, cosmic forces. This method is meditation, by which a person experiences the spiritual content within himself, and receives something of what is given by the great guiding spirits of humanity or by the spiritual content of great civilizations in which the human being immerses himself and so identifies himself with the divine spiritual currents in the world.

Meditating in even the simplest way upon one of the formulas pronounced by the spiritual leaders of mankind, admitting to the mind a formula that embodies a great thought—not every thought is suitable, as you know, but only one handed down for this purpose by the guiding spirits of humanity—and letting such a formula really live in the heart and experience, brings a person to union with the higher spirituality. A higher power, in which he lives, streams through him, and patient perseverance to the point of letting this flow of power strengthen him enough morally and intellectually, brings him to the moment when the content of his meditation can awaken the deeper forces latent in the human soul. This kind of meditation may reach any of a number of stages, from the smallest gain in moral strength to the highest attainments of clairvoyance. But time, patience and energy are needed to bring most people to the higher degrees of clairvoyance by this means.

Meditation is usually thought of as an oriental approach to the divine. In the Occident, especially in Christian communities, prayer has taken its place. It is by prayer that the Christian customarily approaches the Divine, and through it he seeks entry to the higher worlds.

It should be noted by the way that what passes for prayer today would by no means have been considered such in early Christian times, least of all by the Founder of Christianity, Christ Jesus Himself. For if it were to happen that someone were really to gain the gratification of his personal wishes by prayer or entreaty, he would soon entirely disregard the all-embracing effect that the granting of the prayer should bring. He would assume that the Deity granted his wishes rather than those of others. One peasant might pray for sunshine for a particular crop; another for rain for another crop. What would Divine Providence then do?

Or suppose two opposing armies are facing each other, with each side praying for victory and supposing its cause alone to be just. Such an instance makes immediately obvious how little universality and sense of brotherhood attach to prayers arising out of personal wishes, and the granting of such prayers by God can satisfy only one group of supplicants. People so praying disregard the prayer in which Christ Jesus set forth the fundamental attitude of mind that should prevail in all prayer: “Father, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done.” This is the Christian attitude of prayer.

Whatever the object of the prayer, this fundamental temper of mind must echo readily as an undertone in the soul of the petitioner for his prayer to be given in a Christian manner. When this is the character of his plea, the form of his prayer will be but a means of rising to higher spiritual realms to experience the Divinity within the soul. It will be such, moreover, as to expel every selfish wish and will-impulse. Its spirit will be that of the words, “Not my will, but thine, be done.” The result will be a rising to the divine world and absorption in it. Attainment of this soul mood in Christian prayer renders it similar to meditation, though more colored by feeling. Originally, Christian prayer was not essentially different from meditation. Meditation is more imbued with thought, however. Through it, the thoughts of the great leaders of mankind draw the meditant onward toward harmony with the divine currents streaming through the world. Through feeling, prayer accomplishes the same result.

The goal of both prayer and meditation is thus clearly the soul's union with the divine currents in the world. This union, on the highest plane, is the so-called unio mystica, or mystical union, with the Godhead.

Never could the human being attain to this union with God, never could he gain a relationship with higher spiritual beings, were he himself not an emanation of the divine-spiritual. Man's nature is twofold, as we know. In him are the four oft-mentioned human principles—physical body, etheric or life-body, astral body and ego. Then, within the ego, he has the possibility of unfolding for the future the three higher principles—manas, buddhi and atma, known in our western languages as spirit self, life spirit and spirit man.¹

To understand rightly this twofold human nature, let us consider the period of man's origin. From previous lectures, you will remember that man now represents the blending of these two natures—the blending of the three higher potentials (spirit self, life spirit and spirit man) with the four existing lower principles (physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego) developed in a far-distant past, which we term the Lemurian epoch of the earth. Tracing man backward from the present epoch through the Greco-Latin, Egypto-Chaldean, Persian and Indian periods of mankind to the great Atlantean flood recorded in the deluge-myths of all nations, we reach those ancestors of ours who lived on the land-mass we call Atlantis, between present-day Europe and America. Still further back, we come to a primeval land-mass, which we call Lemuria, lying between Australia and India. It was in the middle of that Lemurian period that the higher triad of spirit self, life spirit and spirit man united with the four lower human principles—physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego.

Correctly speaking, at that period in the Lemurian epoch, the highest being on earth was not yet a physical human being in our sense of the word. Only a kind of envelope existed, made up of the highest animal nature—a being, or collection of beings, made up of the four lower principles of human nature. But until then the higher human being, which is the internal part of human nature, destined to evolve further and further in the future through the three principles of spirit self, life spirit and spirit man, rested in the bosom of the Godhead.

To picture the scene at that time by a trivial modern comparison, it was as though all the people living on earth had been building bodies capable of receiving a human soul as a sponge absorbs water. Picture a vessel of water. It is impossible to tell where one drop of water ends and another begins. But picture also a number of little sponges immersed in the water, each soaking up a part of it. What had been a uniform mass of water is now distributed among the many little sponges. So it was with human souls in that remote age. Previously, they had been at rest, without individuality, in the bosom of the Divine First Cause, but at that particular moment they were absorbed by human bodies and so individualized, like the water by the sponges.

What was then absorbed by the separate bodies, or four lower principles, continued to evolve further, and will so continue into the future. In spiritual science it has always been called the higher triad, and the triangle and the square were made symbols, especially in the Pythagorean school, of the human being as he came into existence at the middle of the Lemurian epoch. The diagram on the next page thus represents the constituent elements of the human being,

But the higher, eternal portion, which passes through all incarnations, has a double character, as you can see, From one side it may be regarded as the primordial, eternal element of humanity and, from the other, as a drop of the Divine Essence given up by the Godhead and poured into the fourfold human vessel. As a result, a drop of the independently individualized Divinity is to be found in each of us human beings.

The three higher members of the human being—the eternal portion—may thus be looked upon as the three highest principles in man, but equally as three principles in the Godhead Itself. Actually, the three highest principles of human nature are at the same time the three lowest principles of the Divinity nearest to man. An enumeration of man's principles must start with the physical body, continue with the etheric body, astral body and ego, thence from spirit self to spirit man. But a corresponding enumeration of the principles of those Divine Beings who gave a drop of their own soul nature to man at the time of which we are speaking in the far-off past, must begin with spirit self, continue with life spirit and spirit man, and thence proceed to principles above spirit man, of which contemporary man can only conceive when he is a pupil of Initiates.

You see that the three principles of higher human nature may be looked upon as three divine principles, and today we shall so regard them, not as human, but as divine principles, describing them accordingly. The highest principle in us, which we shall only develop at the end of our earth incarnations, or, we may say, at the end of our present planetary course, is called spirit man in terms of spiritual or occult science. The original essence of this human principle is faintly comparable to the will element in present-day human nature. This comparison is not exact, but only a faint indication. Yet the fundamental character of this highest of the divine principles in us is of the nature of will—a kind of willing. This will element in us, today only feebly developed in our inner being, will become in the course of our ever ascending development the predominating principle in us.

Man is today essentially a consciousness, or understanding being, whereas in many ways his will is limited. He understands the surrounding world as a totality—that is, to a certain degree—but has no real control over all that he penetrates with his knowledge. This control by his will is a development of the future, and it will become ever stronger until he attains that central goal of existence known to spiritual science as “the great sacrifice,” signifying the power of will to sacrifice oneself completely, not merely in driblets of human sacrifice of the kind of which man is capable today with his puny present feelings and will power. In future time he will have developed the strength to sacrifice his whole being by letting it flow directly into material substance.

One may picture this “great sacrifice,” the highest expression of will in divine nature, by imagining oneself before a mirror in which one's image is reflected. This image is, of course, an illusion, a semblance. Now carry over this image to the point of imagining yourself dying, sacrificing your existence, your feeling and thought, your very being, to inject life into that image. Spiritual science in all ages has called this phenomenon the “outpouring,” “the emanation.” If you could really make this sacrifice, it would be clear that you would no longer be here because you would have given up your whole being to this reflected image to imbue it with life and consciousness.

When the will has become capable of making the “great sacrifice,” it actually creates a universe, great or small, whose mission is bestowed upon it by its creator. Such is the creative will in the Divine Being.

The second principle in the Godhead, life spirit, insofar as it has flowed into humanity, has already been indicated in the comparison that has been made with the mirror. This second principle is the reflected image itself.

Now imagine the inner being of a Divinity that has in this way created a universe, with itself as the center. If, for example, you imagine yourself as the central point in this room, surrounded not by these six surfaces of walls, ceiling and floor, but by a hollow globe that reflects its content, you will see yourself, as the central point, reflected on all sides, everywhere. In like manner you can picture a Divinity as a central will, reflected on all sides, and the mirror is both image of Divinity and the universe. For what is a universe? Nothing but a mirror of the essential nature of Divinity.

The universe lives and moves because the Divinity is poured into it—the “outpouring”—when Divinity makes the “great sacrifice” and is reflected in the universe. The pouring of life and being into a reflected image is an exact picture of this divine creative process.

The divine will expresses itself in infinite diversity, animating thereby the entire universe. In spiritual science, this process of Divinity repeating itself in infinite differentiation, in multiplicity, is known as “the kingdom,” distinguished from the will itself. The will is the central point; its reflection, the kingdom. The will is in this sense comparable with spirit man; the kingdom, or will's reflected image, with life spirit.

The kingdom, in turn, reproduces the being of the Divine in infinite variety. Observe it fully, at least to the extent to which it is our kingdom, our multiplicity, or universe. Observe its visible manifestations in minerals, plants, animals and human beings. The kingdom is manifested in each separate being of all these, a fact that even our language expresses in the terms “mineral kingdom,” “vegetable kingdom,” “animal kingdom” and all the great divisions of our universe. The kingdom is all these; each of these in turn, is a kingdom, and if we observe the mass of details involved, we find the nature of all to be divine. In all of them the divine being is reflected, just as the central being is reflected in a hollow globe.

So an observer, looking at the world in the sense of spiritual research, sees God reflected in every human being as an expression and image of the Divine. In a graded series of beings, in infinite diversity, the Godhead appears in the kingdom, and the separate entities are distinguished from one another in the sense of spiritual science by their names. An observer at a stage of existence sufficiently lofty to look upon all these separate entities as “emanations,” or “outpourings,” of the Divine is able to give these entities their names, to give each manifestation of the Divine its name.

Of all beings in the universe, only man thinks the name of each of the separate members of the great multiplicity of the kingdom, distinguishing each from all the others. The will, as we have noted is comparable with spirit man; the kingdom, or reflected image into which the will has been “outpoured,” is comparable with life spirit. The third of the three highest human principles that emanate from the Divine, by which the separate members of the great multiplicity of the kingdom are distinguished from one another and separately named, is comparable with spirit self. The occult science of the different religions has thus simply taught what it was that emanated from the Godhead and flowed into a person to become his eternal image or archetype.

Thus, if you could see yourselves in that condition to which you should finally rise—the condition of spirit man—you would recognize its will-like nature.

If you would rise in thought to a comprehension of the vehicle of will (spirit man)—in other words, to life spirit—you would see that it is the kingdom that represents it in the divine sphere.

If you would rise to penetrate what the names, or conceptions or ideas of things really signify in spirit, you would see that it is the name that represents this wisdom in the divine sphere.

So does ancient teaching reveal that the emanation of Divinity, which has flowed into human nature to form its eternal part, consists of name, of kingdom, of will. Thus what is called the higher triad in man is recognizable as part of the Divine.

To complete this picture, think of the four lower principles of perishable human nature. The three higher principles may be thought of, we know, as principles of the Godhead. Similarly, the four lower principles may be considered as of the perishable world, as human principles.

Think of the physical body, composed as it is of the same substances and Forces as is the seemingly lifeless world around it. The physical body could not go on existing without the inflow into it of matter and force from the surrounding world. The physical body, in a strict sense, is a continual thoroughfare for all that is in it. Into it and out of it again the substances continuously flow that are at one time of the outer world and at another time within us. In the course of seven years, as we have mentioned in other connections, the entire material composition of the human body is renewed. In none of you are the substances that were in you ten years ago. We are perpetually renewing the substances of our physical body. What was formerly in us is now somewhere else, distributed outside us in nature; something else has replaced it inside of us. The body's life depends upon this continual inflow and outflow of matter.

Just as we have considered the three higher human principles as parts of Divinity, we may observe the four principles of our lower nature as parts of Divine Nature.

The physical body may be seen as part of the physical substance of our planet. Its substance is taken from the material planet, then is returned to it. The etheric body likewise may be considered a part of the environment surrounding us here, and so also the astral body.

Think of the etheric body and the astral body together. The astral body, as you know, is the vehicle of all that lives in man as impulse, desire and passion, all that surges up and down in the soul as joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. The etheric body, on the contrary, is the vehicle that represents and bears within it the more lasting qualities of soul.

Often I have compared the development of the etheric body and astral body with the hour-hand and the minute-hand of a clock. A great difference is observable between what you knew and experienced as an eight-year-old child and what you now know and have experienced, as I have also reminded you on other occasions. You have learned so much, gained so many concepts, in the intervening period. Much that your soul has taken in of joy and sorrow has left it again, actually has passed through it. How different are these relatively ephemeral experiences from such human elements as temperament, character and tendencies that are persisting and continuing. You will find, for instance, that if you were passionately inclined as a child, you are probably still so in later years. Most people keep throughout their lives such basic elements in their natures. It is to overcome this relatively stationary quality of the etheric organism that spiritual training and development are instituted; for, as has often been emphasized, such training is no matter of mere theoretical knowledge. The student has accomplished a great deal, indeed, if he has changed one quality of temperament to which he is predisposed, so speeding up the hour-hand of the clock even a little.

Whatever evolves slowly in this way—a human being's lasting tendencies, enduring qualities of temperament, habits that persist—is rooted in the etheric body; whatever changes quickly by contrast, minute- hand-wise, has its roots in the astral body.

Applying these facts practically to the human being in his environment, to life in the external world, the observer notices a person's connections with the epoch in which he lives, with a nation, with a family, all of which are revealed in his habits, temperament and enduring inclinations. These relatively fixed and abiding qualities tend to be observable, not only in the person himself, but in all with whom he is in any way connected—his family, his nation, etc. A nation's separate individuals are recognizable through their common habits and temperament. An individual who is to achieve a higher spiritual development, to unfold his higher nature, must change his disposition and basic habits. Such a man is called “homeless” in the terminology of spiritual science, because he is obliged to change his etheric body, through which he has been, except for this higher development, connected with his nation.

Life in one's native community reveals, too, that the qualities linking one to a family or nation, stirring one to feel relationships with individual people of the nation, are similar also to qualities widely discernible in one's era. If an ancient Greek should walk into your life, you would have little in common with him. His etheric body would be so unlike yours. Human beings understand one another through common qualities in their etheric bodies.

In the astral body, however, is rooted a man's ability to lift himself more readily out of certain qualities binding him to a common life with others, and to establish himself as a separate individual in his family, in his folk, so that he is not a mere Frenchman nor a mere German nor a member of a family, but stands out as a special individuality within the folk, the family, etc. Thus he can outgrow the totality of characteristics of his nation. Those qualities that he transcends are rooted in the astral body. The astral body is their bearer. The astral body is thus seen to bear more of what is individual and personal in man.

So it is that faults committed through the etheric body render a man more a sinner toward his fellow men through neglect of those obligations and conditions making social life possible among them, between one man and the next. On the other hand, faults of a more individual nature, a man's wrong-doings as a separate personality, result from qualities in the astral body.

Spiritual science has always termed as “guilt” (German, “Schuld”) those sins that are against the community, and that originate in a faulty etheric body. The more common English word “debts” (“Schulden”) has in German an origin similar to the word “guilt,” with its more moral connotation in English, signifying what one man owes another in a moral sense. Debt, or guilt, derives from defective qualities in the etheric body, whereas a defective element in the astral body leads to what spiritual science associates with the word “temptation.” The man yielding to temptation takes upon himself a personal fault, or failure.

The ego, or true personality, too, can commit faults. The Paradise story indicates the kind of fault through which an ego may fall. The human being's higher soul became an ego when it descended from the bosom of the Godhead and entered an earthly body for the first time. It was taken up by the earthly body like a drop of water by a sponge.

The higher soul, or individuality, can commit faults within the ego. These ego-failures, which are different from those stemming from faulty qualities of the etheric and astral bodies, occur through the very fact of a man's attaining independence. To rise gradually, in full consciousness, to freedom and independence, man had to pass through selfishness and egotism. As a soul, he is descended from the Godhead, which is incapable of egotism. A member of an organism never imagines itself independent; if a finger were to imagine itself independent, it would fall away from the rest of the hand and wither.

The self-dependence that is so necessary to human development, and that will attain its full meaning when its fundamental nature is unselfishness, could originate only from selfishness.

It was when this selfishness entered the human body that man became a self-seeking, egotistic being. The ego naturally follows the body's inclinations. Man devours his fellow man, follows selfish impulses and desires, is completely entangled in his earthly receptacle as the drop of water in the sponge.

The Paradise story shows the individual placed in a position to sin just by having become an individual, a really independent being. Whereas formerly he drew in what he needed from the universe, as a single drop in a mass of water derives its force from the mass, his impulses as a fully independent individuality derive wholly from himself. The eating of the apple in Paradise signifies this kind of error stemming from independence. It is significant, too, that the Latin malum means both “evil” and “apple.” All real meanings of words, of course, provided they have any spiritual scientific background, are deeply connected in an inner sense. Spiritual science never uses the word “evil” for any transgression that does not stem from the ego.

Evil is thus the fault proceeding from the ego. Trespass, or guilt, is the fault proceeding from the etheric body of a man in social relationships with his fellow men. Temptation may assail the astral body in any respect in which it is individually and personally at fault.

The fault of the etheric body:
Debts, or Guilt.
The fault of the astral body:
Temptation.
The fault of the ego:
Evil.

Consider the relation of the four lower principles of human nature to their environment, that is, the planetary conditions surrounding them. The physical body continually takes in physical substance as nourishment; so it maintains its existence. The etheric body's life in a finite condition is possible only by maintenance of fellowship with people into whose community one has grown. The astral body is maintained by overcoming temptation. The ego is maintained, and undergoes development in the right way, by not succumbing when “evil” threatens.

Now bring before your mind's eye the whole human being—the lower quaternary and the higher triad—so that you can say: In individual man there lives a drop of Divinity; he is evolving to the Divine through the expression of his deepest, innermost nature. In once expressing outwardly that deepest, innermost nature, he reveals that he has by gradual development transmuted his own being into what Christianity calls the “Father.” What lies hidden in the human soul and hovers before humanity as its great goal is called the Father in Heaven.

One wishing to attain that degree of development must be capable of bringing his higher triad and lower quaternary to the point at which they can maintain the physical body adequately. The etheric body must live socially so that an adjustment is effected with whatever exists of “trespass” within it. The astral body must not perish in “temptation,” nor the body of the ego fall in “evil.” Man must strive upward to the Father in Heaven through the three higher principles—the Name, the Kingdom, the Will.

The Name must be felt in such a way that it becomes hallowed. Look around you. All things in their diversity express the Godhead. In calling each thing by its name, you make it a member of the divine order of the world. By beholding in every single thing or being that you name in your environment some element that reveals in it a principle of Divine Being, you help make each part of your environment sacred. You hallow each part. You grow into the Kingdom—which is the outpouring of Divinity—and develop yourself up to the Will, which is spirit man but at the same time a principle of the Godhead.

Think, now, of a meditant who concentrates wholly upon this meaning of human development, and who wishes to gather this meaning—the seven principles of man's spiritual evolution—into seven petitions in prayer. How will he pray?

To express the aim of the prayer, he will have to begin, before he utters the seven petitions:

In this form of salutation, man concerns himself with the deepest foundation of the human soul, the inmost element of the human being, which Christian esoteric teaching characterizes as of the kingdom of spirit. The link of the first three petitions, which follow this exalted salutation, is with the three higher principles of human nature, with the divine substance within man:

Munich, December 12, 1906 ¹

The four elementary natures that permeate the universe are called:

1. Gnomes, who live in the earth.
2. Undines, who embody themselves in water.
3. Sylphs, who we imagine living in the air, and
4. salamanders, which we have to imagine living in fire.

Instructional session, Basel, September 24, 1912

It goes without saying that if we have devoted ourselves to our occult development for a long time, in the sense that we have done our exercises and meditations in the right spirit, we must also reach the point where we are granted an insight into the spiritual world. This moment will come for every human being at some time or other if we allow everything we are presented with here as rituals and symbols to take effect on us with true earnestness and devotion in connection with our daily exercises. For some it will come sooner, for others later, but for every human being it will come at some point.

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, it was very difficult to enter the spiritual worlds. At that time, one could not go much further than to certain imaginations, which, although they gave a sense, a feeling for higher worlds of existence, did not convey direct revelations from the spiritual world. In our time, since the last third of the 19th century, it was even more difficult to make the leap that brings a person out of their physical body and into the spiritual world. But once they have managed to ascend, it is easier today than it was in the past to experience many things in the spiritual world.

In the course of the twentieth century, people will begin to develop their dormant organs, and through these they will first of all be revealed that which lies immediately above the physical-sensual world, that which is announced to us through nature. You will find yourself, for example, at the seaside or anywhere else near water; then you will look at the water and no longer describe it only externally as a composition of hydrogen and oxygen, but you will feel the nature of the water quite differently. You will recognize in it a huge number of elemental beings that permeate the water and are basically the water. For water is the arena, the soul element of these elemental beings. This is also where the word “element” comes from.

These elemental beings have their existence in water and they also perish in it, namely when another element, fire, enters. The heat causes a drying process and causes the water to rise in the form of fog or moisture or even clouds. During this process, the clairvoyant notices how the elemental beings are paralyzed, even killed, as it were. But when the water cools down again or the rising mist forms dense clouds again, from which lightning strikes and rain falls to the ground, he sees how these beings come to life again, and even arise anew. In the process of evaporation and dying that takes place when water is heated and vaporized, these elemental beings release seeds, as it were, that in turn sprout when the water cools and condenses. Countless numbers of elemental beings are born when rain pours down on the earth, and we can experience the beneficial influence of these newly emerging beings.

The beneficial and life-giving effect of water on the human organism has been well demonstrated by the healing arts in recent decades, but they have also had to learn that this power, when used in the wrong way or in excess, can cause harm. Where warm (hot) water is used, there is the need to numb or to nullify the effect of the elemental beings. When cold water is used, there is the need to feel the life-irritating power of all these emerging beings.

The clairvoyant will notice many other things. To him, the clouds that are there for the ordinary eye during a thunderstorm as black, ominous, compressed clouds, will appear as luminous, bright clouds. And when lightning strikes the rain cloud and the rain pours down, he sees it as light pouring down on the earth. This is what the ancients experienced when they drank the soma. They had a connection with the elemental world, and for them, with the rain, light came down on the earth.

The clairvoyant sees other elemental spirits, beings that are at yet another stage of development. These beings fill the air that we inhale with every breath and that we exhale (without being defined in chemical terms) as a dead thing when it is consumed by us. To the ordinary perception, the inhaled air is the living air and the exhaled air is the air of death or the killing air. Seen spiritually, however, the inhalation is the death of the elemental beings of the air, and with the exhalation they come to life again. Thus, these beings permeate our entire organism and have been working from the very beginning to build it.

Now let us consider the question of what particular role these elemental beings of water play in evolution, and what role those of the air element play. In long-gone evolutionary epochs, when the human being still had a very different composition of his higher limbs than he does now, these elemental beings also worked quite differently. At that time, man did not yet have what we call language. The speech organs are integrated into the respiratory organs, which enable us to speak. Man uses language to express his soul or just for conversation, but that is only the case in the materialistic age we are living in now. In the age that preceded our materialistic one, the speech organs were also organs of perception. Language arose from the fact that the water elementals, while penetrating the germinal organs (germinal formation) of the larynx, slowly and gradually transformed them into the speech organ as it is today.

The people of that time did not yet make themselves understood through words, as we now communicate with each other. Since they still had the old clairvoyance, they looked into the spiritual world, into the world of the elements. And they experienced the whirring elemental beings around them while pronouncing sounds like our vowels A, I, U, by letting sound from within them what they experienced in images. In this way they also expressed their feelings and emotions when, for example, what they saw inspired sympathy or antipathy in them. This was also the case when they pronounced the word Tao, which resonated throughout nature; then they knew of the Great Spirit, the cause of all being. This word, which was thus also a spiritual perception, has been lost since the respiratory and speech organs became more independent of each other than they were in the past.

[This postscript ends here. In another, the following is added:]

Not only in the lungs do we have a breathing process, but also in the eyes. Only that there is no air inhaled and exhaled, but warmth. When we see a red color, warmth is exhaled (red, orange, yellow). If a cold color such as blue, indigo, violet is perceived, then the eye inhales. That which underlies the eyes in the etheric, just as air underlies the physical lungs, is warmth, and this is inhaled and exhaled. Fundamentally, every sense organ is a respiratory organ.

Higher beings, those who stand directly above man, have neither eyes such as these nor speech such as man's. They direct warmth somewhere and a color lights up at that point. This is how they express their essence and how they communicate with each other. Anyone who has ever perceived colors in this vivid form feels pain when they see the solid colors that adhere to physical objects – just as the whole physical world initially pains them. The pain only stops when one learns to perceive colors morally. Then one perceives punishment for egoism in red and the reward for overcoming egoism in blue. Then the colors begin to speak a language that will also be the future language of people.

As humans approach the Jupiter existence, their speech will increasingly become a form of perception; then the organs of breathing and speech will no longer be as separate as they are today. Vision and the sensation of warmth will also merge. It was necessary for the development of the independent self that these processes were separate for a time. If this had not happened, then man would indeed always have perceived what was happening in his environment, but would not have come to self-awareness. In the future, one will begin to feel a connection between the spoken word and colors. One will feel green when talking about unimportant things; yellow will arise when speaking selfishly; red will be there when fighting egoism.²

This unification of the organs can basically only be achieved by understanding the mystery of Golgotha. Only that can enable us to feel the whole of nature morally. If you then look up at the clouds and see lightning shooting out of them, you will be able to see Christ in his etheric form. With the “clouds”, that is, with the elements, he comes in his spiritual form. This vision will one day occur to every human being, sooner or later. Only the Father knows the day and the hour, as the Gospel says.³

• 1. It is not known which symbols were used to express these.
• 2. In notes from a different hand, it says: The red color will be felt as the punishment for the evil that is to be overcome; the yellow indicates the selfishness of man, the blue the heavenly that we envision.
• 3. In the same notes from another hand, it says at the end: “Sacred service or esotericism gradually leads to vision. Only a few are called by grace, as elect, to see through the Christ; the others must develop to this through meditation and through sacred service. Only the Father knows the day and hour for each one, but it will come for everyone. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

[Ladies and gentlemen!]

Before I move on to my next topic, I would like to take up a few remarks that have been made with regard to the recent lecture and the whole approach in general. I would like to take up two facts of recent spiritual development and show what our task here actually is. I would like to show, if this task is grasped, how from the deepest grasp of the mystical and theosophical content of the most diverse - I am not just saying religious systems, but - world teachings, how from this content emerges the actual consciousness that man has to form in the course of his life. I would therefore like to refer to two events in the lives of important people from the last period of the development of spiritual life who, at a certain moment in their lives, recognized that there is a higher, an upward ascent, that knowledge is not something that can be presented to us once and for all in a certain form, but that it is nothing other than the treading of a path that opens up the perspective towards the eternal.

It must have been a great moment when the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte expressed his consciousness in Jena with strong power and deeply penetrating words at the moment when what is called the actual spiritual layer of consciousness was revealed. This is not understood by the historians of philosophy.

I would like to quote here the words he spoke to his disciples at that time: "That which is called death cannot abort my work; for my work is to be completed, and it cannot be completed in any time, therefore no time is appointed for my existence - and I am eternal. By taking on this great task, I have usurped eternity. I lift my head boldly up to the threatening rocky mountains and to the raging torrent of water and to the striving clouds swimming in a sea of fire, and say: "I am eternal, and I defy your power! All of you come down upon me; and you earth and you sky, mingle in the wild tumult! And all of you elements - froth and rage and in the wild battle, crush the last speck of sunlight from the body that I call mine! My will alone with its firm plan shall hover boldly and coldly above the ruins of the universe; for I have seized my destiny, and it is more permanent than you; it is eternal, and I am eternal, like it."

This is one fact that expresses the effect that is exerted on a person who is imbued with the conviction that he has entered infinity with knowledge, a fact that expresses the influence this has on the personality.

The other refers to Goethe, who came to the same inner effect in a different way, who also realized in a flash that in the phenomena of the world we have a book from which the divine can be read. When he stood before the works of art in Italy, he wrote the following words to his friends: "I have a suspicion that they have proceeded according to the very laws that nature follows and that I am on the trail of. But there is something else that I do not know how to express." "These high works of art, like the highest works of nature, were created by people according to true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary and imaginary collapses, there is necessity, there is God." Goethe became aware of God in Italy in 1787, when he stood before the works of art into which the mysteries of ancient secrets had been revealed.

He also realized that only those who have good will and faith can see the divine. He can only recognize it. For the person who has faith, the moment occurs in his life when the field of our life is illuminated in a flash and he enters the path of the eternal. This assurance, which flows from such facts, must guide us if we want to penetrate into what the religions of all times, but also what the other teachings have contributed at a more or less elementary level and what we must know if we truly want to penetrate into the mystical content and reality of Christianity. If we want to penetrate, we must not take anything away from Christianity.

It is not my job to teach religion, nor is it my job to teach theology. My task is only to expose mystical-theosophical teachings. I could not do that if I were not imbued with it - just as it was with Goethe, where he says that only now do I realize the divine in these works of art, only now do I understand the ancient mysteries - if I were not so convinced that in a certain moment something lights up that makes it possible to recognize the eternal, the divine, then I could not speak in this way.

I started from Johann Gottlieb Fichte's awareness of the eternal in an individual human soul, and I can show you the deeper reason in Christianity in no other way than to trace this awareness in a very old time, in the time of the ancient Egyptian religious teachings, and then to show you how these teachings of the ancient Egyptians shine forth in the teachings of the Essaeans, in order to prove that at the moment when the God-Man appeared to men, there could indeed only be men in such a brotherhood who were sufficiently prepared to understand what was about to take place.

John the Baptist, who probably belonged to the Essaean League, was prepared. This can be seen from the words of his sermon: "Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Prepare the way for the Lord and make his paths straight. - He answers the question: "Are you Christ? I am not Christ. It is he who is coming after me, who was before me, whom I am not worthy to untie his sandals. There is one coming after me who is stronger than I am.

If these words are to point to what appears in Christianity, then we must first get to know the preconditions that were able to open John's eyes. It is not a matter of following the events of history, but of recognizing the divine ideals.

In religious development, death and resurrection confront us first in the Pauline teachings, and they confront us before we get to know the other content of the teachings historically. We can only understand them if we go back to the teachings that were present in the Egyptian priesthood for thousands of years, to those teachings which in Egyptian mystery life also represent nothing other than the overcoming of life through death, that is, in other words, the possibility of understanding death and life as the greatest symbols of becoming, as those symbols that show precisely the deepest existence, the deepest being in the development of the world.

Through the Egyptian Book of the Dead, we also have the opportunity today to penetrate the teachings of the Egyptian mysteries. We know what ideas the Egyptian priests had about the transition from life to death. But we also know that the Egyptian priests tried to arrange the whole human life of those who wanted to enter the path of knowledge in such a way that such a person embarking on the path of knowledge was prepared for those stages of development which the Egyptian Mystery Teacher demonstrates when the disciple passes through the gate of death. The tests that were required are described to us in ancient documents.

I have come to realize from the study of the Egyptian teachings, as far as they can be traced according to our Western knowledge, that we are dealing with an expression for the deepest secrets of human life, for the same secrets that the Greek Mystery Teachings also had. Indeed, it has become clear to me that they are based on practical mystery exercises, which were also practiced in the Egyptian priestly schools.

What is meant by these tests will become clear to us from individual passages that I would like to read to you. It will show you what kind of confession those people had to make, according to the Egyptian priests, in order to enter the higher worlds, in order to climb the higher levels of existence. We will see what preconditions he must have fulfilled.

But intimately linked to all these Egyptian teachings is an idea of the Egyptian priestly view that man himself comes to where he can then be addressed by the gods with the name of the god who is closest to the god Ra. Man is addressed with the name Osiris. Becoming Osiris is what we are told in ancient Egypt. After man has gone through the trials, after he has practically entered the path and ascended, he becomes similar to the god whom the Egyptians regard as the mediator between the highest god, between Ra himself, the expression of the infinite spirit, and the material, the earthly, the human.

Osiris, the son of the supreme god, had to perish according to Egyptian legend. His body had to perish. The pieces are buried here and there, and he sits at the right hand of God. Man is called to undergo the development that makes him Osiris. At the entrance through the gate of death he has to make the confession that enables him to continue along the path that leads him to Osiris.

I would now like to share a few passages from this confession with you. You will see to what great, powerful views these thousand and thousand-year-old mystery teachings lead. [The person to be initiated] calls upon God in order to receive a share in the higher life. There will be words that would go too far to explain. It only depends on the spirit: "Hail to thee, Harmachis Khepra, who gives himself form! Radiant is your rising on the horizon, illuminating the twofold earth with your rays. All the gods are in joy when they see you, king of heaven, with the serpent on your head, the crown of the south and the crown of the north on your forehead, and they sit down opposite you and work at the front of the barque to destroy all your enemies for you."] The barque is the chariot of the sun god. ["The inhabitants of Tiau go to meet your majesty to see this radiant sign. I come to you, I dwell with you, to see your disk every day. May I not be imprisoned, may I not be cast out. May my limbs be renewed"] and so on. ["Great Light, emerged from the Nun! You sustain the existence of mankind through the stream that emanates from you."] - We will also encounter this current in Christian mysticism. - ["Protect Osiris N. in the divine underworld."] Then the name of the person concerned was mentioned. - ["Let him enter the Amenti, let him conquer evil; stand behind him as patron against his sins; place him among the blessed and the exalted."].

[The title of the important 125th chapter is:] "Chapter, to enter the hall of twofold righteousness and to separate man from his sins, that he may behold the face of the gods". The dead man is then immediately introduced in speech: "Blessed be the God, the Lord of twofold justice! I have come to you, my Lord; I have been brought to the sight of your glory. I know thee, I know the names of the forty-two gods who are with thee in the hall of twofold righteousness, who live in the vigilance of sinners and drink of their blood on this day of the weighing of conduct before the "Good Being" (Osiris). Patron of the beloved twins, his eyeballs, Lord of the twofold justice is your name. Shield me! I come to you, and I bring you justice; I keep away unfairness."

Now he is tested to see whether he really knows the names of the 42 gods. After he has undergone purification, he must describe how he came to know the gods.

Now I will show you how he thanks the gods after they have recognized him as worthy. Invisible powers confront him and put his knowledge to the test before he can enter the bosom of Osiris. He has acquired his mystical knowledge through contemplation under the fig tree. "What did you see?" - On entering, he has to say the names to the beings at the gate: "[Arm of Shu, ready for the umbrella of Osiris], "Children of the serpent is [your name]."

[If the deceased has passed the test, then Thoth speaks: "Step forward, you have passed the test. Brod is for you in the Uzat Eye. Osiris N truly lives forever."]

[Gap in transcript] These are prayers as they were tied to this turning point of man and which were imposed on the one who wanted to go the way. He also had to go through the ceremonies of initiation, and prepare himself through his life to understand the true life essence of these teachings.

After I have shown you the ideas that have prevailed in Egypt for thousands of years, after I have shown you that death and life are only two expressions for one and the same thing, after I have shown you that the god Osiris represents nothing other than the goal that man himself has to strive for, after I have shown you that everyone is called to become an Osiris, and everyone is to be brought onto the path of Osiris, I want to jump off to an idea that is formed in the distant Orient, which will show an inner relationship that will present itself as a kind of continuation, as something that leads this down to the earth itself.

In the Egyptian mystery teachings we find within them the conviction that the one who has actually become similar to Osiris, who has passed the test, has the ability to appear as a god himself on earth, and that he has the ability to appear on earth in such a way that when he takes on human form, he is recognized by the secret knowers as a deity in disguise.

Let us skip back in time and think of that great judgment of the dead that was held between Osiris and Ra, let us visualize it and imagine that within this judgment of the dead it was discussed whether a god should not be sent down to bring people a new teaching, a new view, new concepts, new ideas, whether the means should not be resorted to of sending down a god Osiris and letting him become human.

We encounter such an idea in Indian teachings, which first appeared around the sixth century before our era. It is thus discussed in the bosom of the gods whether an enlightened one, an exalted divine being himself, should not descend among men and be born among them. If we are to express this in the words of the Egyptian sages, then we must say that an Osiris should descend and take on human form, a savior, in other words, or as the wisdom teachings of the Indians say, a true physician, one who is truly experienced in medicine, should descend among men and it should be proclaimed that an enlightened one should be born to a queen, Maja by name. This king shall be named Bhagavad>, the glorious one. He will later be recognized as the Savior, the Buddha. It is said that he will be born in the form of a white elephant. According to the ancient wisdom teachings, this is the form in which God can embody himself. He will be a high-minded king, a king of kings. He will leave the region of light to enter this world out of love for all. He will be honored as king of the three worlds.

This prophecy was to be fulfilled for Gautama of the Siddhartha lineage. Brahma himself gave a drop of dew to the divine entering the earthly realm. Kings and priests appear with gifts before the child. Heavenly hosts appear and declare: "The world is at ease, happiness is established in the universe, a master of wisdom is born." - This is what the Indian tale tells us happened when Buddha was born.

And from another side it was said: This child will become Buddha. He is depicted in the temple at the age of twelve. Here the child smiles and remembers his divinity. It is said of him that a king has been born whose kingdom is not of this world. The twelve-year-old Buddha has gone missing. He is found by his relatives in the forest, where he sits among the singers of ancient times, transported to heavenly regions, and as he interprets the ancient holy books to these old sages, they marvel at his wisdom. The awareness of his calling awakens in him.

I read this passage from the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, verse 40, and others for the reason that you will see for yourself as you follow these verses. "But the child grew and became strong in spirit, full of wisdom; and the grace of God was with him. And his parents went to Jerusalem every year for the Easter feast. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast. And when the days were fulfilled and they returned home, the child Jesus remained in Jerusalem, and his parents did not know it. But they thought that he was among his companions, so they traveled a day's journey, looking for him among friends and acquaintances. And when they did not find him, they went again to Jerusalem to look for him. And it came to pass, after three days, that they found him sitting in the temple in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and questioning them; and all who listened to him were astonished at his understanding and his answers."

The twenty-nine-year-old Buddha is prompted by the sight of human misery, by the sight of suffering and illness, by the sight of evil on earth, to leave his wife and child to see in solitude what path he must walk; and we hear that on his way through solitude he recruits disciples from among those who have already chosen solitude, and that he then speaks a number of beatitudes. We hear from the mouth of the thirty-year-old Buddha: Blessed are the lonely. Blessed are those who are free from all lust. Blessed are those who rise above the thoughts of their own ego. Truly, this is supreme bliss.

Blessed is the mother, blessed is the father, blessed is the wife, cries the crowd in the street. But he says: Blessed are only those who are in nirvana. On the other hand, the Gospel of Luke, chapter 11, verses 25 to 28: "And when they come in, they dwell there, and afterward it is worse with that man than before. And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the people lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the body that bare thee, and the breasts which thou hast sucked. But he said, "Yes, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it."

We hear from Buddha that he has recruited five disciples. Bathing by the river, he is celebrated by the sons of the gods. He goes under the fig tree. Here he is then [granted] enlightenment, the mystical knowledge that is attained through contemplation.

John 1:45-48: "Philip finds Nathanael and says to him, "We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph of Nazareth. And Nathanael said to him, "What good can come from Nazareth? Philip said to him, 'Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and said to him, "Behold, a true Israelite, in whom is no guile. Nathanael says to him, 'How do you know me? ' Jesus answered and said to him, 'Before Philip called you, while you were under the fig tree, I saw you.

The tempter "Mara" approaches Buddha and invites him to worship him by promising him a kingdom. - I do not desire a worldly kingdom, Buddha replies. Mara's daughter appears. Buddha approaches her with the holy books of the Indians. When Mara saw that Buddha confronted him with divine wisdom, he said: My wisdom is gone.

Mark 1:12-14: "And immediately the spirit drove him into the desert. And he was there in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan and being with the beasts, and the angels ministered to him. And after John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God."

Now he recruits disciples. Two brothers are his first disciples, one of whom is one of the most important. - Let us compare John 1, verses 45 to 48 - Five more disciples are now to be found on his teaching tours. - In the first Buddha biography we hear of twelve disciples and his favorite disciple Ananda.

We also hear from the Buddha biography that the Buddha used parables to make the talks understandable, that he expressed all his teachings in such parable speeches. [...] The rain pours down on the righteous and the unrighteous. The Brahmin who does not have enlightenment is like a blind man. He can only be a teacher for the blind.

This includes the words of Matthew 15:12-14: "Then his disciples came to him and said: Knowest thou also that the Pharisees were offended when they heard the word? But he answered and said, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them go. They are blind leaders of the blind. But if one blind man leads another, they will both fall into the pit."

[Stenographer's note:] A few more Buddha words.

The Buddha's favorite disciple did not want to let a despised girl approach him when she wanted to approach the Buddha. So he replied in the presence of his favorite disciple: "I am not asking about your caste, not about your family, my sister."

Compare this with the passage in John 4:1-7: "Now when the Lord knew that Jesus had come before the Pharisees, making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but his disciples did), he left the land of Judea and went back to Galilee. But he had to travel through Samaria. There he came to a town of Samaria called Shechar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down at the well; and it was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink."

Far from there, Buddha sends out his disciples with words that come to us like a kind of Pentecostal sermon within the Buddhist teachings. Buddha himself speaks to his disciples: Each shepherd should speak in his own language. Do not deliver the teaching to scorners and mockers and not to those who are intoxicated with desire.

And Matthew 7, verse 6: "Do not give the sanctuary to the dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you apart."

Now [Buddha] says in one of his last teachings that he will be with his disciples as long as they spread his teaching. He will be invisibly present to them. The corresponding passages are in Matthew and John.

He prophesies that one will come after him in heavenly glory. And the evil one and his kingdom will then be completely overcome.

We hear that they were united after the Buddha had returned to the divine, after he himself had seen his death approaching and had withdrawn into solitude.

From his wisdom his body became a shining body.

At his death a meteor fell, the earth was on fire, a thunder shook the world. He had descended to hell to comfort those in it. This is a kind of continuation of what the ancient Egyptians have in their passage from life to death.

I had to preface all of this before I can continue. I can't even quite make it clear why I had to make it all clear because the time is already too advanced. I had to show what context was present in the wisdom teachings and religious ideas centuries before our era. I had to show what was positive in them. This way of looking at things will lead us to truly understand what happened at the turn of our era.

[Answer to question:]

[The book "Buddha and Christ"] by Rudolf Seydel is very good, but historical. It brings together essential moments, but doesn't know what to do with them. - There is also a very good book by [Oldenberg].

Let me first extend to you my heartfelt greetings. Friends in Norrköping have expressed the wish that on this occasion I should take a theme concerning that Being who in the realm of spiritual science is above all else near to us—the Christ Being. I have tried to meet this wish by undertaking to speak about the coming to life of the Christ Being in the human soul and the significance of this. We shall thus have the opportunity to speak of the most human and intimate significance of Christianity from the standpoint of spiritual science.

Let us consider the human soul. In the sense of spiritual science we have a short word which, although it does not embrace all that the expression “human soul” signifies for us, points to something which for us men of Earth fills and permeates the soul element to its farthest limits—we have the short word “I”. In so far as we are men of Earth, our ego-being reaches as far as does our soul-nature. You know that by the name “I”, or ego, we denote one of the four most immediate principles of man. We speak, in the first instance, of four members or principles of the human being—the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego. And in order to have the starting-point for what we shall be considering in these lectures, we need recall only one thing: we do not regard the laws and the living essence of the physical body of man as explicable in terms of our present earthly environment.

We know that if we want to understand the physical human body we must go back to the three preceding embodiments of our Earth—the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods. In a remote, primordial past, during the Saturn embodiment, the germ of the physical body was already laid down. During the Sun embodiment the foundation of the etheric body was laid down; and during the Moon embodiment that of the astral body. In reality our Earth-evolution, in all its phases and in all its epochs, is none other than that which enables the ego to fulfill its whole being. We can say that just as the physical body had reached a significant stage of its evolution at the end of the Saturn period, the etheric body at the end of the Sun period, and the astral body at the end of the Moon period, so at the end of the Earth period our ego will have reached a significant point in its evolution.

We know that our ego develops through three soul members or principles, through the sentient soul, the intellectual or mind-soul, and the spiritual or consciousness-soul. All the worlds that come within the compass of these three soul members are also concerned with our ego. In the course of our Earth-evolution these three soul members first prepared for themselves the three external bodily members—the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body—through long Earth periods. In successive post-Atlantean epochs of civilization the three soul principles developed further, and in future Earth periods they will again adapt themselves to the astral, etheric and physical bodies, so that the Earth can be prepared to pass over to the Jupiter evolution.

If we take the expression comprehensively enough, we might also speak of man's Earth-evolution as his soul evolution. One could say that when the Earth began, the soul element also began, in conformity with law, to bestir itself in man. At first it began to work on the external sheaths, then it developed its own being, and from then onward it begins again to work on the external sheaths in order that preparation may be made for the Jupiter evolution.

We must keep before our mind's eye what man is meant to become in his soul during the Earth evolution. He is to become what may be designated by the word “personality”. This personality needs in the first place what may be called “free will”. But it needs also, on the other side, the possibility of finding within itself the way to the divine in the world. On the one side free will, the possibility of choosing between the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil, the true and the false; on the other side, the laying hold of the divine so that the divine penetrates into the soul and we know ourselves to be inwardly filled with it. Such are the two goals of man's evolution on the Earth; and to aid him in reaching them he has received two religious gifts. One of these gifts is destined to lay down in the human soul those forces which lead to freedom, to the capacity for distinguishing between the true and the false, the beautiful and ugly, the good and bad. And another religious gift had to be given to man during his Earth evolution in order that there might be laid in his soul the seed through which the soul can feel united to the divine within itself.

The first religious gift comes to meet us at the beginning of the Old Testament as the great picture of the Temptation and the Fall.

The second religious gift comes to us from all that the Mystery of Golgotha signifies.

The Temptation and the Fall have to do with the implanting of freedom in man, the gift of being able to distinguish between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, true and false. The Mystery of Golgotha points to the possibility of man's soul finding again the path to the divine, of knowing that the divine can flash up within it and penetrate it. These religious gifts include everything that is most important in the Earth evolution—everything proceeding from the Earth evolution that the soul can experience in its uttermost depths, everything associated most profoundly with the being and becoming of the human soul. How far is there a connection between these two religious gifts and the being and becoming of the human soul—its inner experience?

I do not want to put these matters before you in an abstract way, so I will start from a certain scene in the Mystery of Golgotha as it stands before our eyes in historical tradition and has impressed itself—and should indeed have impressed itself even more—on the hearts and souls of mankind. Let us assume that we have in Christ Jesus that Being of whom we have often spoken in the course of our lectures. Let us assume that in Christ Jesus we have before our spiritual eyes that which must appear to humanity as the most important fact in the whole universe. And then let us set in contrast to this feeling the outcry, the fury, of the enraged multitudes in Jerusalem at the time of the condemnation before the crucifixion. Let us observe that the High Court of Jerusalem held it above all things necessary to question Christ Jesus as to His relationship with the divine, as to whether He claimed to be the Son of God. And let us bear in mind that the High Court held such a claim to be the greatest blasphemy that Christ Jesus could have uttered.

An historical scene is there before us—a scene in which the people cry out and clamor for the death of Christ Jesus. And now let us try to picture to ourselves what this shouting and rage signified historically. Let us ask: What ought these people to have recognized in Christ Jesus? They ought to have recognized that Being who gives meaning and significance to Earth life. They ought to have recognized that Being who had to accomplish the deed without which Earth humanity cannot find the way back to the divine. They ought to have understood that humanity has no significance apart from this Being. Men would have to strike out from the evolution of the Earth the world “man” if they wished to strike out the Christ Event. Now let it come home to us that this multitude condemned and were enraged against the Being who actually makes man Man upon the Earth; who is destined to give to the Earth its goal and purpose. What does this mean? Surely it means that in those who in Jerusalem at that time ranked as the representatives of human knowledge concerning the true being of man, the knowledge of man was obscured. They had no knowledge of what man is, what his mission on the Earth is to be. We are told nothing less than that humanity had reached a point where it had lost itself, where it had condemned that which gives purpose and significance to the Earth-evolution. And out of the cries of the enraged multitude could be heard, not the words of wisdom, but of folly: “We do not wish to be Man; rather do we wish to cast away from us that which gives us any further meaning as Man.”

When we reflect on all this, the relation of man to sin and guilt—in the sense of Pauline Christianity—assumes a different aspect. Man, in the course of his evolution could fall into sin which he was not himself able to wash away; that is what St. Paul means. And in order to make it possible for man to be cleansed of sin and debt, Christ had to come to the Earth. That is St. Paul's view. If this view requires any evidence, it is there in the fury and clamor of those who cried “Crucify Him!” For this implies that the people did not know what they themselves were to be on the Earth; they did not know that it was the aim of their earlier evolution to veil their being with darkness.

Here we come to what may be spoken of as the preparation of the human soul for the Christ Being. Through what it is able to experience within itself, the soul feels, even though it may not be able to express it in words: “Since the very beginning of the Earth I have developed in such a way that through what I possess in my own being I cannot fulfill the aim of my evolution. Where is there anything to which I can cling, which I can take into myself and with it reach my goal?” To feel as if the human being extends far beyond anything that the soul can achieve through its own strength by reason of its evolution on the Earth hitherto—such is the Christian attitude or mood of preparation. And when the soul finds that which it must recognize as essentially bound up with its being—but for the attainment of which it could not find the power within itself—when the soul finds that which bestows this power, it finds the Christ. The soul then develops its connection with the Christ, saying to itself: “At the very beginning of the Earth a certain nature was pre-ordained for me; in the course of Earth-evolution my true nature has been darkened, and when now I look into this darkness I feel that I lack the power to bring my true nature to fulfillment. But I turn my spiritual gaze upon the Christ, who gives me this power.” On the one hand the human soul feels this lack, and on the other hand it feels the approach of Christ and stands as if in a direct personal relationship to Him. The soul seeks Christ and knows that it cannot find Him if He does not give Himself to humanity through human evolution, if He does not approach from outside.

There is a well-known Christian Church Father who was not afraid to speak of the Greek philosophers, Heracleitos, Socrates and Plato, as Christians who lived before the founding of Christianity. Why does he do this? As we know, the doctrines professed today obscure much of what was at first an illuminating Christian teaching. St. Augustine himself said: “All religions have contained something of the truth, and the element of truth in all religions is what is Christian in them, before there was a Christianity in name.” St. Augustine dared to say that. Nowadays many a man would be regarded as a heretic if he were to say something similar within certain Christian congregations.

We shall most readily understand what this Church Father wished to convey, when he called the old Greek philosophers Christians, by endeavoring to enter into the feeling of those souls who in the first Christian centuries tried to determine their personal relationship to the Christ. These souls did not think of Christ as having had no relation to the Earth evolution before the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ has always been concerned with the evolution of the Earth. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, however, His task, His mission, in the Earth-evolution was changed. It is not Christian to seek Christ in the evolution of the Earth only since the Mystery of Golgotha. True Christians know that Christ has always been connected with the evolution of the Earth.

Let us now turn to the Jewish people. Did the Jews know Christ? I am not asking whether the Jewish people knew the name of Christ or if they were conscious of all I have to say to you; I am asking whether those who really understand Christianity are justified in saying: “Judaism had Christ; Judaism knew Christ.” It is possible to have some person near one and to see his external form without being able to recognize or value truly his essential being, because one has not risen to real knowledge of him. In the true Christian sense, ancient Judaism had Christ, only it did not recognize Him in His true being. Is it Christian to speak in this way? It is indeed Christian, as truly as it is Pauline.

Where was Christ for ancient Judaism? It is said in the Old Testament that when Moses led the Jews out of Egypt into the wilderness, a pillar of cloud went before them by day and a pillar of fire by night. It is said that the Jews passed through the sea, that the sea parted in order that they might pass through, while behind them the Egyptians were drowned, for the sea closed in on them. It is also said that the Jews murmured because they had no water, but at the command of God Moses was able to strike a rock with his staff so that water poured forth for the Jews to drink. Moses led the Jews, he himself being led by God. Who was the God of Moses? We will in the first instance allow Paul to answer. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians (X:1-4), we read: “Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant how that all our fathers were under the cloud” (he means the pillar of fire) “and all passed through the sea and all were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea ... and all drank of the spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.” Thus who was it, according to Paul, who led the Jews and who spoke with Moses? Who was it who caused water to flow out of the rock and who turned away the sea from the path of the Jews? Only those who wish to declare that Paul was no Christian would dare pronounce it unchristian to see Christ in the guiding God of the Old Testament, in the Lord of Moses.

In the Old Testament there is a passage which must, I think, present great difficulties for all who reflect more deeply. It is a passage to which anyone who does not read the Old Testament thoughtlessly, but who wants to understand its connections, will return again and again. “What may this passage mean?” he asks himself. The passage (Numbers XX:11-12) is as follows: “And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he struck the rock twice; and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also. And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron: ‘Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.’”

Take this passage in its context in the Old Testament. When the people murmured, the Lord commanded Moses to strike the rock with a staff: Moses struck with his staff on the rock, and water flowed out; everything that the Lord commanded took place through Moses and Aaron, and yet, directly after this, we are told the Lord reproved Moses—if it is a reproof—for not having believed in Him. What does it mean? Turn to all the commentaries on this passage and try to understand it with their aid. You will then understand it as one understands a great deal in the Bible—really not at all—for behind this passage a great mystery is hidden. It is this: He who led Moses, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, He who led the people through the wilderness and caused water to flow out of the rock, He was the Lord, Christ! But the time was not yet come; Moses himself did not recognize Him; Moses thought He was another. This is what is meant by Moses not having believed in Him who had commanded him to strike the rock with his staff.

How did the Lord—Christ—appear to the Jewish people? We are told that by day it was in a pillar of cloud and by night in a pillar of fire—and by His dividing the waters for their safety ... and many other things we can read in the Old Testament. In phenomena of cloud and fire, in the air, in the elemental events of nature He was active, but never once did it occur to the ancient Jews to say to themselves: That which appears in the pillar of cloud and in the pillar of fire, that which worked wonders such as the parting of the waters, appears also in its purest original form in the human soul. Why did this never occur to the ancient Jews? Because, owing to the course taken by human evolution, the soul of man had lost the power to feel its deepest being within itself. Thus the Jewish soul could look into nature; it could allow the glory of the phenomena of the elements to work upon it; everywhere it could divine the existence of its God and Lord; but directly within itself, as the Jewish soul then was, it could not find Him.

There in the Old Testament we have the Christ. There He worked, but men did not recognize Him. How did the Christ work? Do we not see how He worked when we read through the Old Testament? The most significant thing Moses had to impart to his people through the mouth of Jahve was the Ten Commandments. He had received them out of the power of the elements from which Jahve spoke to him. Moses did not descend into the depths of his own soul; he did not ask in lonely meditation: “How does God speak in my own heart?” He went up the mountain and through the power of the elements the divine Will revealed itself to him. Will is the fundamental note of the Old Testament: this is often spoken of as the Law. Will works through the evolution of humanity and is expressed in the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. The God proclaimed his Will to man through the elements. Will holds sway in the Earth evolution. That is really the purport of the Old Testament, and the Old Testament, accordingly, calls for man's submission to this Will.

If we hold all this before our souls, we can sum it up by saying: The will of the Lord was given to men; but men did not know the Lord; they knew not the divine in such a way as to connect it with their own human souls.

Now let us turn from the Jews to the heathen. Did the heathen have Christ? Is it Christian to say of the heathen that they also had Christ? The heathen had their Mysteries. Those initiated in the Mysteries were brought to the point where their souls passed out of their bodies; the tie connecting body and soul was loosened; and when the soul was outside the body, it perceived in the spiritual world the secrets of existence. Much was connected with these Mysteries; much varied knowledge came to the candidates for Initiation in the Mysteries. But when we investigate what was the highest that the disciple of the Mysteries could receive into himself, we find that it consisted in the fact that outside the body he was placed before the Christ. As Moses was placed before Christ, so in the Mysteries was the disciple placed with his soul, outside his body, before Christ.

Christ was there for the heathen also, but for them he was there only in the Mysteries. He revealed Himself to them only when the soul was out of the body. Christ was there for the heathen, even if among them there was as little recognition of this Being as Christ as there was among the Jews of that Being of whom we have just spoken and before whom the disciples of the Mysteries were placed.

The Mysteries were instituted for the heathen. Those who were fit and ready were admitted into the Mysteries. Through these Mysteries Christ worked upon the pagan world. Why did He work thus? Because the soul of man, in its development since the beginning of the Earth, had lost the inherent power to find its true essence through itself. This true being had to reveal itself to the soul of man when the soul was unhampered by the bonds of human nature; when, that is, it was not bound up with the body. Hence Christ had to lead men by means of the fact that as initiates of the Mysteries they were as though divested of their human nature. Christ was there for the heathen too! He was their leader in the Mysteries. For never could man have said: “When I develop my own powers, then I can find the meaning and purport of the Earth.” This meaning was lost, obscured in darkness. The forces of the human soul had been pressed down into regions too deep for the soul of itself, through its own powers, to be able to realize the meaning of the Earth.

When we allow what was given in the pagan Mysteries to the disciples and candidates for Initiation to work upon us, it proves to be Wisdom. To the Jews was given Will, through the Law; to the disciples of the pagan Mysteries was given Wisdom. But if we look at the characteristics of this pagan Wisdom, can we not express it by saying: If he did not leave his body when he was a pupil of the Mysteries, the Earth-man could not, through Wisdom alone, recognize his God as such. As little through Wisdom as through Will could the divinity reveal itself to men. Indeed, we find an injunction that resounds most wonderfully through Greek antiquity, like a powerful demand upon mankind. At the entrance to the shrine of the Mysteries of Apollo stood the words, “Man, know thyself!” What are we told by the fact that these words, “Man, know thyself!” stood at the entrance to the sanctuary, like a summons to mankind? We are told that nowhere outside the sanctuary, where man remains what he has become since the beginning of the Earth, can he fulfill the commandment “Know thyself!” He must become something more than man; he must loosen in the Mysteries the ties which bind the soul to the body, if he is to know himself. These words, standing like a powerful demand before the Apollonian sanctuary, point to the fact that darkness had fallen upon humanity—in other words, that God could be reached through Wisdom as little as he could directly reveal himself as Will.

Even as the individual human soul feels that it cannot bring forth within itself the forces which impart to it the purport of the Earth, so do we see the human soul at such a stage of development among the Jews that even Moses himself, their leader, did not recognize who was leading him. Among the heathen we see that the demand “Know thyself” could be fulfilled only in the Mysteries, because man, as he had developed in the course of the evolution of the Earth, was unable with his connection of body and soul to unfold the power whereby he could know himself. The words “Not through Will and not through Wisdom is God to be known” sound to us from those ages. Through what, then, was God to be known?

We have often characterized the essential nature of the point of time when Christ entered into the evolution of Earth-humanity. Let us now consider exactly what it means when it is said that a certain darkening of the soul of man had set in, that the divine could be revealed neither through Will nor through Wisdom. What is the real meaning of this?

People speak of so many relationships between the human and the divine. They often speak of the relationship between the human and the divine, and of the meaning which the human has within the divine, in such a way that it is impossible to differentiate between the relation of the human to the divine, or of anything else earthly to the divine. Today we find again and again that philosophers want to rise to the divine through pure philosophy. But through pure philosophy one cannot rise to the divine. Certainly by means of it man does come to feel that he is bound up with the universe and to know that the human being must, in some way or other, be bound up with the universe at death; but how and in what manner he is thus connected with the universe he cannot know through pure philosophy. Why not? If you take the whole meaning of what we have considered today, you will be able to say to yourselves: What is at first revealed to the soul of earthly man between birth and death is too weak to perceive anything that transcends the earthly, that leads to the divine-spiritual. In order to make this quite clear to ourselves, let us investigate the meaning of immortality.

In our day many people no longer have any knowledge of the real meaning of human immortality. Many today speak of immortality when they can merely admit that the being of the human soul passes through the gate of death and then finds some place or other in the universal All. But every creature does that. That which is united with the crystal passes over into the universe when the crystal is dissolved; the plant that fades passes into the universe; the animal at death passes over into the universe. For man, it is different. Immortality has a meaning for man only if he can carry his consciousness through the gate of death. Think of an immortal human soul that was unconscious after death; such immortality would have absolutely no meaning. The human soul must carry its consciousness through the gate of death if it is to speak of its immortality. Because of the way in which the soul is united to the body, it cannot find anything in itself of which it can say, “I carry that consciously through death”, for human consciousness is enclosed between birth and death; it reaches only as far as death. The consciousness that belongs at first to the human soul extends only as far as death. Into this consciousness there shines the divine Will, for example in the Ten Commandments. Read in the Book of Job as to whether this illumination could stimulate man's consciousness to such a point that it might say to itself: “I pass as a conscious being through the gate of death.” What a challenge to us there is in the words spoken to Job: “Reject God and die!” We know that he was uncertain whether he would pass with consciousness through the gate of death. And let us set beside this the Greek saying which gives expression to the dread felt by the Greeks in the face of death: “Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the shades.” Here we have from paganism, also, a testimony to the uncertainty felt by man concerning his immortality. And how uncertain many people are even today. All those people who say that man, when he goes through the gate of death, passes into the universal All and is united with some universal being or other, take no heed of what the soul must ascribe to itself if it is to speak of its immortality.

We need only pronounce one word, and we shall recognize the attitude that man must take up with regard to his immortality. The word is Love. All that we have said concerning the word immortality we can now connect with what is denoted by Love. Love is not anything that we appropriate to ourselves through the Will; or anything that we appropriate to ourselves through Wisdom. Love dwells in the realm of the feelings. We must admit to ourselves that the human soul would fall short of its true nature if it were unable to be filled with love. Yes, when we penetrate into the nature of the soul, we realize that our human soul would no longer be a human soul if it could not love. But let us now suppose that on passing through the gate of death we lost our human individuality and were united with some universal divinity. We should then be within this divinity; we should belong to it. Love would have no meaning if we were within the Godhead. If we could not carry our individuality through death, we should in death have to lose love, for in the moment that individuality ceased, love would cease. One being can love another only if the other is separate from himself. If we are to carry our love of God through death, we must carry with us that which kindles love within us—our individuality.

If the meaning of the Earth was to be brought to man, information concerning his immortality had to be given him in such a way that his nature would be thought of as inseparable from love. Neither Will nor Wisdom can give man what he needs; only Love can give it to him. What was it, then, that became darkened in the course of man's evolutionary path on Earth? Take the Jews or take the heathen: their consciousness of anything beyond death had been darkened. Between birth and death—consciousness; beyond death and beyond birth—darkness; of their bodily consciousness nothing more remained. “Know thyself!”—at the entrance of the Greek Mysteries, stood this most holy demand of the sanctuary upon mankind. Man could only answer: “If I remain bound to my body with my soul, as is the way with a man of Earth, I cannot recognize in myself an individuality which could love beyond death. I cannot do it.” The knowledge that man can love as an individuality beyond death—this is what had been lost for man.

Death is not merely the cessation of the physical body. Only a materialist can say that. Suppose that throughout every hour of life in the body man's consciousness were such that he knew what lies beyond death as certainly as he knows today that the sun will rise on the morrow and take its journey across the heavens. Then death would have no sting for him; death would not be what we call death; he would know in the body that death is only a phenomenon leading from one form to another. Paul did not understand by “death” the cessation of the physical body; by “death” he understood the fact that consciousness extends only as far as death, and that man, in so far as he was united with the body in the existence of that period, could, within his body, extend his consciousness only as far as death. Whenever Paul speaks of death, we might add: “Lack of consciousness beyond death.”

What did the Mystery of Golgotha give to man? Was it a series of natural phenomena, a pillar of cloud, a pillar of fire, that stood before humanity with the Mystery of Golgotha? No! A man, Christ Jesus, stood before men. With the Mystery of Golgotha did any event drawn from the mysterious realms of nature take place—did a sea divide so that the people of God could go through? No! A man stood before men; a man who made the lame to walk and the blind to see. By a man were these things done.

The Jew had to look into nature when he wanted to see him whom he called his divine Lord. Now it was a man who could be seen. Of a man it could be said that God dwelt in him. The pagan had to be initiated; his soul had to be withdrawn from his body in order that he might stand before the Being who is the Christ. On the Earth he had been unable to divine the Christ; he could know only that the Christ was outside the Earth. But He who had been outside the Earth came down to Earth, took on a human body.

In Christ Jesus there stood as man before men that Being who had formerly stood in the Mysteries before the soul that was liberated from the body. And what came to pass through this? It was the beginning of the course of events whereby the powers that man had lost ever since the start of the Earth evolution—the powers which assured him of his immortality—were restored to him through the Mystery of Golgotha. The overcoming of death on Golgotha gave birth to the forces which could rekindle in the soul the powers it had lost. And the path of man through Earth evolution will henceforth be this: Inasmuch as he takes the Christ more and more into himself, he will discover within himself the power which can love beyond death, so that he will be able to stand before his God as an immortal individuality. Therefore, only since the Mystery of Golgotha has it become true to say: “Love God above all, and thy neighbor as thyself.”

Will was given from out of the burning thorn-bush; Will was given through the Ten Commandments. Wisdom was given through the Mysteries. But Love was given when God became man in Christ Jesus. And the assurance that we can love beyond death, that by means of the powers won back for our souls a community of Love can be founded between God and man and all men among one another—the guarantee for that proceeds from the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Mystery of Golgotha the human soul has found what it had lost from the primal beginning of the Earth, in that its forces had become ever weaker and weaker.

Three forces in three members of the soul: Will, Wisdom, Love! In this Love the soul experiences its relation to Christ.

I wanted to bring these things before you from a certain aspect. Whatever may have seemed aphoristic in the explanations given today will find its context later on. But I believe we can inscribe deeply in our souls that progress in the knowledge of Christ is a real gain for the human soul, and that when we consider the relationship of the human soul to Christ, it again becomes clear to us how before the Mystery of Golgotha there was a veil, as it were, between the human soul and Christ; how this veil was broken by the Mystery of Golgotha, and how we can say with truth: “Through the Mystery of Golgotha a cosmic Being flowed into Earth-life, a super-earthly Being united Himself with the Earth.”

We shall speak in the following lectures of all that the human soul, with Christ, can experience within itself.

LET me begin by extending to you my heartiest greeting. Friends in Norrköping have expressed the wish that on this occasion I should speak upon a theme concerning that Being Who, in the realm of Spiritual Science, is above all else near to us-the Christ Being. I have endeavored to comply with this wish by undertaking to speak about the coming to life, and the meaning, of the Christ Being in the human soul. We shall thereby have the opportunity of speaking of the most human and intimate significance of Christianity from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.

Let us consider the human soul. Speaking from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, we have a short word which, although it does not embrace all that is included in the expression ‘human soul,’ indicates that which for us earth-men fills and permeates the soul element to its furthest limits-the word ‘I.’ In so far as we are earth-men, our Ego being reaches as far as does our soul nature. By the name of the ‘I,’ or Ego being, we are reminded of one of the four most immediate principles of man. We speak, in the first instance, of four members or principles of the human being-the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego. And we need only recall one thing in order to have the starting point for what we shall be considering in these lectures. It is only necessary to be reminded of the fact that we do not regard the laws and the living essence of the physical body of man as being capable of explanation by anything presented by our earthly environment. We know that when we want to understand the physical human body we must go back to the three preceding embodiments of our earth-the Old Saturn, Old Sun, and Old Moon periods. In a remote, primordial past, during Old Saturn, the germ of the physical body was already laid. During the Old Sun the foundation of the etheric body was laid; and during the Old Moon that of the astral body. In reality our Earth evolution in all its phases and in all its epochs is none other than that which gives to the Ego the possibility of the fulfillment of its whole being. It may be said that just as at the end of the Old Saturn period the physical body had reached a significant stage of its evolution, at the end of the Old Sun the etheric body had reached a significant stage of its evolution, the astral body at the end of the Old Moon, so at the end of the Earth period our Ego will have reached a significant point of its evolution. We know that our Ego develops through three soul members or principles, through the sentient soul, the intellectual or rational soul, and the conscious or spirit-soul. All the worlds that come within the range of these three soul members are also concerned with our Ego. In the course of our Earth evolution these three soul members first prepared for themselves the three external bodily members-the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body-through long Earth periods. In successive Post-Atlantean epochs of civilization the three soul principles developed further, and in future Earth periods they will again adapt themselves to the astral, etheric and physical bodies, so that the Earth can be prepared to pass over to the Jupiter evolution. If we take the expression comprehensively enough we might also speak of man's Earth evolution as his soul evolution. It may be said that when the Earth began, the soul element also began, in conformity with law, to bestir itself in man. At first it began to work on the external sheaths, then it developed its own being, and from then onwards begins again to work on the external sheaths in order that preparation may be made for the Jupiter evolution. We must keep before our mind's eye what man is meant to become in his soul during the Earth evolution. He is to become what may be designated by the expression ‘personality.’ This personality needs in the first place what may be called ‘the free-will.’ But it needs also, on the other side, the possibility of finding within itself the way to the Divine in the world. On the one side free-will, the possibility of choosing between the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil, the true and the false; and on the other side, the laying hold of the Divine so that the Divine penetrates into the soul and we know ourselves to be inwardly filled with it. Such are the two goals of man's soul evolution on the Earth. This human soul evolution on the Earth has received two religious gifts for the purposes of the attainment of these two goals. The one religious gift is destined to lay down in the human soul those forces which lead to freedom, to the capacity for differentiation between the true and the false, the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad. And on the other side another religious gift had to be given to man during his Earth evolution, in order that there might be laid in his soul that seed through which the soul can feel united to the Divine within itself. (‘Atoned’ is the rendering suggested by a translator.)

The first religious gift is that which we meet in the beginning of the Old Testament as the mighty picture of the Temptation and the Fall.

The second religious gift comes to us from all that ‘the Mystery of Golgotha’ signifies.

The Temptation and the Fall have to do with what planted freedom in man, the gift of being able to distinguish between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, true and false. The Mystery of Golgotha points to the possibility of man's soul finding once again the path to the Divine, of knowing that the Divine can flash up within it and penetrate it. These religious gifts include everything that is most important in the Earth evolution—everything proceeding from the Earth evolution that the soul can experience in its uttermost depths, that is associated most profoundly with the being and the development of the human soul. How far is there a connection between existence and development of the inner experience of the human soul?

I do not want to put these matters before you in an abstract way. I want to start from a perfectly concrete element, from a certain scene in the Mystery of Golgotha as it stands before our eyes in historical tradition and has impressed itself-and should indeed have impressed itself still more—in the hearts and souls of men. Let us assume that we have in Christ Jesus, that Being of Whom we have again and again spoken in the course of our lectures on Spiritual Science. Let us assume that in Christ Jesus we have before our spiritual eyes That Which must be manifest to us men as bearing the greatest importance for the whole universe. And then let us place in contrast to this feeling the outcry, the fury, of the enraged multitudes of Jerusalem at the time of the condemnation before the crucifixion. Let us place before our minds the fact that the High Court of Jerusalem for its own sake held it above all things necessary to question Christ Jesus as to His relationship with the Divine, as to whether He claimed to be the Son of God.

Let us recall to our spiritual eyes the fact that the High Court held such a claim to be the greatest blasphemy that Christ Jesus could have uttered. An historical scene is there before us—a scene wherein the people cry out and clamor for the death of Christ Jesus. And now let us try to picture to ourselves what this shouting and rage of the people signified historically. Let us ask: ‘What ought these people to have recognized in the Christ Jesus?’ They ought to have recognized that Being Who gives meaning and significance to earth life. They ought to have recognized that Being Who had to accomplish the deed without which earth humanity cannot find the way back to the Divine. They ought to have understood that humanity has no significance apart from this Being. Men would have to strike out from the evolution of the earth the word ‘man’ if they wished to strike out the Christ event. Now let us set before our minds that this multitude condemned and were enraged against the Being Who actually makes man upon this earth, and Who is destined to give to the earth its goal and purpose. What lies in this? Surely this, that in those who in Jerusalem at that time were the representatives of human knowledge concerning the true being of man, the knowledge of man was obscured. They had no knowledge of what man is, what his mission on the earth is to be. We are told nothing less than that humanity had reached a point where it had lost itself, where it had condemned That Which gives to the earth evolution its purpose and significance. And out of the cries of the enraged multitude could be heard, not the words of wisdom, but of folly: ‘We do not wish to be men, rather do we wish to cast away from us that which gives us any further meaning as men.’

When we reflect on all this, the relation of man to sin and guilt, in the sense of Pauline Christianity, assumes a different aspect. Man, in the course of his evolution was able to fall into sin which he could not of himself wash away; that is what St. Paul says. And in order for it to be possible for man to be cleansed of sin and debt, Christ had to come to the Earth. That is St. Paul's view. If this view requires any evidence, it is there in the fury and the clamoring of those who cried ‘Crucify Him!’ For this cry implies that the people did not know what they themselves were to be on the Earth; they did not know that it was the aim of their earlier evolution to veil their being with darkness. Here we come to what may be spoken of as the attitude of preparation of the human soul for the Christ Being. This attitude of preparation may be described as follows: Through what it is able to experience within itself, the soul feels, even though it may not be able to express it in words: ‘Since the very beginning of the Earth I have developed in such a way that through what I possess in my own being I cannot fulfill the aim of my evolution. Where is there anything to which I can cling, which I can take into myself and with it reach my goal in evolution?’ To feel as if the human being extends far beyond anything that the soul can achieve through its own strength won during its evolution on the Earth hitherto—such is the Christian attitude or mood of preparation. And when the soul finds that which it must recognize as essentially bound up with its being—but for the attainment of which it could not find the power within itself—when the soul finds that which bestows this power—it finds Christ. The soul then develops. its connection with the Christ, saying to itself: ‘At the very beginning of the Earth a living nature was predestined for me: during the course of Earth evolution darkness has descended over this living nature and when I now look into this darkness I lack the power whereby I may bring it to fulfillment, but I turn my spiritual gaze upon the Christ Who gives me the power.’ The human soul feels the approach of Christ and stands as if in a direct personal relationship to Him. The soul seeks Christ and knows that it cannot find Him if He does not give Himself to humanity through human evolution, if He does not approach from the beyond.

There is a fairly well-known Christian Church Father who was not afraid to speak of the Greek philosophers, Herakleitos, Socrates and Plato, as Christians who lived before the founding of Christianity. Why does he do this? St. Augustine himself said: ‘All religions have contained something of the Truth, and the element of Truth in all religions is what is Christian in them, before there was Christianity in name.’ St. Augustine dares to say that. Nowadays many a man would be regarded as a heretic if he were to say a similar thing within certain Christian bodies.

We most readily arrive at an understanding of what this Church Father wished to convey when he called the old Greek philosophers Christians, by endeavoring to transport ourselves into the feeling of those souls who in the first post Christian centuries tried to determine their personal relationship to the Christ. These souls did not think of Christ as having had no relation to the Earth evolution before the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ has always had something to do with the evolution of the Earth. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, however, His task, His mission in the Earth evolution, was changed from what it was before. It is not Christian to seek Christ in the evolution of the Earth only since the Mystery of Golgotha. True Christians know that Christ had always been connected with the evolution of the Earth.

Let us now turn to the Jewish people. Did the Jews know Christ? I am not speaking of whether the Jewish people knew the name of Christ or whether those who really understand Christianity are justified in saying: ‘Judaism had Christ: Judaism knew Christ.’ It is possible to have some person or other near one, and to see his external form without recognizing his essential being, or being able to place a right value upon him, because one has not risen to real knowledge of him. In the true Christian sense ancient Judaism had Christ, only it did not recognize Him in His true Being. Is it Christian to speak in this way? It is Christian in as true a sense as it is Pauline. Where was Christ for ancient Judaism? It is said in the Old Testament that when Moses led the Jews into the wilderness, a Pillar of Cloud went before them by day and a Pillar of Fire by night. It is said that the Jews passed through the sea, that the sea parted in order that they might pass through; but that behind them the Egyptians were drowned, for the sea closed in on them. It is also said that the Jews murmured, but that at the command of God, Moses was able to go to a rock and to strike it with his staff so that water poured forth for the Jews to drink. Moses led the Jews, he himself being led by God. Who was the God of Moses? We will in the first instance allow Paul to answer. We read in the First Epistle to the Corinthians (x. 1-4): ‘Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant how that all our fathers were under the cloud (he means the pillar of fire) and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of the spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.’ Thus according to Paul, Who was it who led the Jews and who spoke with Moses? Who was it who had allowed water to flow out of the rock and who turned away the sea from the path of the Jews? Only those who wished to declare that Paul was no Christian would dare pronounce it unchristian to see Christ in the guiding God of the Old Testament, in the Lord of Moses.

In the Old Testament there is a passage which must, I think, present great difficulties for all who reflect more deeply. It is a passage to which anyone who does not read the Old Testament thoughtlessly, but who wants to understand its connections, will return again and again. ‘What may this passage mean?’ he asks himself. The passage is as follows: ‘Then Moses raised his hand, and struck the Rock with the staff twice; thereupon much water came forth, and the congregation drank, and their cattle. But the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron: Because ye have not believed in Me to sanctify Me before the children of Israel, ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I will give unto them.’ Take this passage in its context in the Old Testament: When the people murmured, the Lord commanded Moses to strike the rock with a staff: Moses struck with his staff on the rock, and water flowed out; everything that the Lord commanded took place through Moses and Aaron, and directly after this, we are told that the Lord reproved Moses—if it is a reproof—for not having believed in Him. What does it mean? Take all the commentaries on this passage, and try to understand the passage by means of what has been written in them. One understands it as one understands a great deal in the Bible—that is to say, really not at all, for behind this passage a mighty mystery is hidden. What is hidden in this passage is this: He Who led Moses, Who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, He Who led the people through the Wilderness and caused water to flow out of the Rock, He was the Lord Christ! But the time was not yet come; Moses himself did not recognize Him; Moses thought He was another. That is what is meant by Moses not having believed in Him Who had commanded him to strike the Rock with his staff.

How did the Lord Christ appear to the Jewish People? We are told that by day it was in a Pillar of Cloud, and by night it was in a Pillar of Fire—and by His dividing the waters for their safety ... and many other things which we can read in the Old Testament. In phenomena of cloud and fire He appeared and was active, but never did it occur to the ancient Jews: That Which appeared in the Pillar of Cloud and in the Pillar of Fire, That Which worked wonders such as the parting of the waters, appears in its purest original form in the human soul. Why did this never occur to the ancient Jews? Because, owing to the course taken by human evolution, the soul of man had lost the power to feel its deepest being within itself. Thus the Jewish soul could look into Nature, it could allow the glory of the phenomena of the elements to work upon it; everywhere it could divine the existence of its God and Lord; but directly, within itself as it was, it could not find Him.

There in the Old Testament we have the Christ. There He worked, but men did not recognize Him. How did the Christ work? Do we not see how He worked, when we read through the Old Testament? The most significant thing Moses had to impart to his people through the mouth of Jehovah was the Ten Commandments. He had received them out of the power of the elements from which Jehovah spoke to him. Moses did not descend into the depths of his own soul; he did not ask in lonely meditation: ‘How does God speak in my own heart?’ He went up into the mountain, and through the power of the elements the Divine Will revealed itself to him. Volition, or Will, is the fundamental character of the Old Testament—this fundamental character is often called that of Law. Will works through the evolution of man, and is expressed in the Decalogue, in the Ten Commandments. The God proclaimed His Will to man through the elements. Will holds sway in the Earth evolution. That is, really, the purport of the Old Testament, and the Old Testament, in accordance with its whole purport, calls for man's subjection to this Will.

If we hold before our souls what we have just been considering, we can express the result in the words: The Will of the Lord was given to men; but men did not know the Lord: they knew not the Divine in such a way as to connect it with their own human soul.

Now let us turn from the Jews to the heathen. The heathen, had they Christ? Is it Christian to say of the heathen that they also had Christ? The heathen had their Mysteries. Those initiated in the Mysteries were brought to the point where their soul passed out of their bodies; the tie connecting body and soul was loosened; and when the soul was outside the body, the soul perceived the mysteries of being in the spiritual world. Much was connected with these Mysteries; much varied knowledge came to the candidates for initiation in the Mysteries. But when we investigate what was the highest that the disciple of the Mysteries could receive into himself, we find that it consisted in the fact that outside his body he was placed before the Christ. As Moses was placed before Christ, so, in the Mysteries was the disciple placed with his soul, outside his body, before Christ. Christ was there for the heathen also, but for them He was there only in the Mysteries. He revealed Himself to them only when the soul was out of the body. Christ was there for the heathen, even if among the heathen there was as little recognition of this Being as Christ, as there was among the Jews of that Being of Whom we have just spoken and before Whom the Mystery-Disciples were placed. The Mysteries were instituted for the heathen. Those who were fit and ready were admitted into the Mysteries. Through these Mysteries Christ worked upon the heathen world. Why did He work thus? Because the soul of man, in its development since the beginning of the earth, had lost its inherent power to find its true being through itself. This true being had to reveal itself to the soul of man when unhampered by the ties of human nature, that is to say when it was not bound up with the body. Hence Christ had to lead men through their being divested of their human nature in the Mysteries. Christ was there for the heathen too I He was their Leader in the Mysteries. For never could man have said: ‘When I develop my own powers, then I can find the meaning and purport of the earth.’ This meaning was lost, obscured in darkness. The forces of the human soul had been pressed down into regions too deep for the soul of itself, through its own powers, to have been able to realize the meaning of the earth.

When we allow that, which was given in the heathen Mysteries to the disciples and candidates for initiation, to work upon us, it is Wisdom. To the Jews was given WILL, through the Laws; to the disciples of the heathen Mysteries was given WISDOM. But if we look at what characterizes this heathen Wisdom, may we not express it in the words: If he did not go out of his body when he was a pupil of the Mysteries, the Earth-man could not recognize his God as such. As little through Wisdom as through Will could the Divinity reveal Himself to man. We find words that sound most wonderfully through Greek Antiquity, like a mighty demand upon humanity. At the entrance to the abode of the Mysteries of Apollo stood the words, ‘Man, know thyself!’ What are we told by the fact that these words, ‘Man, know thyself,’ stood before the abode of the Mysteries, like a demand upon man? We are told that when man remains what he has become since the beginning of the Earth, nowhere outside can he fulfill the commandment ‘Know thyself.’ He must become something more than man; he must loosen in the Mysteries the ties which bind the soul to the body, if he is to know himself. These words, standing like a mighty demand before the abode of the Mysteries of Apollo, point to the fact that darkness had fallen upon humanity—in other words that God could be reached through Wisdom as little as He could directly reveal Himself as Will.

In the same sense as the individual human soul feels that it cannot bring forth within itself the forces which impart to it the purport of the Earth, so we see the human soul at such a stage of development among the Jews that even Moses himself, their leader, did not recognize Who was leading him. Among the heathen we see that the demand ‘Know thyself’ could be fulfilled only in the Mysteries, because man, as he had developed in the course of the evolution of the Earth, was unable with his connection of body and soul to unfold the power whereby he could know himself. The words, ‘Not through Will and not through Wisdom is God to be known,’ sound to us from those ages. Through what, then, was God to be known?

We have often characterized the essential nature of the point of time when Christ entered into the evolution of earth-humanity. Let us now consider exactly what it meant when it is said that a certain darkness of the soul of man had set in, that the Divine could be revealed neither through Will nor through Wisdom. What is the real meaning of this?

People speak of so many relationships between the human and the Divine. They often speak of the relationship between the human and the Divine and of the meaning which the human has within the Divine, in such a way that it is impossible to differentiate between the relation of the human to the Divine, or of any other earthly thing to the Divine. To-day we find again and again that philosophers want to rise to the Divine through pure philosophy. But, through pure philosophy one cannot rise to the Divine. Certainly by means of it man does come to feel that he is bound up with the universe, and to know that the human being must, in some way or other, be bound up with the universe at Death; but how and in what manner he is thus connected with the universe man cannot know through pure philosophy. Why not? If you take the whole meaning of what we have considered to-day, you will be able to say to yourselves:

That which is first revealed to the soul of the Earth-man between birth and death is too weak to perceive anything that transcends the earthly that leads to the Divine-Spiritual. In order to make this quite clear to ourselves let us investigate the meaning of immortality.

In our day, many people have no longer any knowledge of the real meaning of human immortality. Many to-day speak of immortality when they can merely admit that the being of the human soul passes through the gates of death, and then finds some place or other in the Universal All. But every creature does that; what is united into the crystal passes over into the Universal All when the crystal is dissolved; the plant that fades passes into the Universal All. For man the thing is different. Immortality has only a meaning for man when he can carry his consciousness through the gates of death. Picture to yourselves an immortal human soul which was unconscious after death; such immortality would have absolutely no meaning at all. The human soul must carry its consciousness through the gates of death if it is to speak of its immortality. Because of the way in which the soul is united to the body, it cannot find anything in itself of which it can say, ‘I carry that consciously through death,’ for the consciousness of man is enclosed between birth and death; it reaches only as far as death; at first the consciousness possessed by the human soul extends only as far as death. Into this consciousness there shines the Divine Will, for example in the Ten Commandments. Read in the Book of Job as to whether this illumination could stimulate man's consciousness to such strength that it might say to itself: ‘I pass as a conscious being through the gates of death.’ What an intense interest there is for us in these words spoken to Job: ‘Submit thyself to God and die!’ We know that the man was uncertain as to whether he would pass through the gates of death with consciousness. And let us set beside this the Greek saying which gives expression to the dread felt by the Greek in the face of death: ‘Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shades.’ Here we have the testimony from heathenism also to the uncertainty felt by man concerning his immortality. And how uncertain many people are even to-day. All those people who say that man, when he goes through the gates of death, passes into the Universal All and is united with some Universal Being or other, take no heed of what the soul must ascribe to itself if it is to speak of its immortality.

We need only pronounce one word, and we shall recognize the position that man must take up with regard to his immortality—this is the word Love. All that we have said concerning the word Immortality we can now connect with what Love designates. Love is nothing we appropriate to ourselves through the Will; Love is nothing that we appropriate to ourselves through Wisdom; Love dwells in the region of the feelings, and we know that we could not be the ideal human soul, if that human soul could not be filled with love. When we penetrate into the nature of the soul, we realize that our human soul would no longer be a human soul if it could not love. But now, let us suppose that we were to pass through the gates of death in such a way that our human individuality was lost, and that we were to be united with some Universal Divinity. We should then be within this Divinity; we should belong to It. We could no longer love the Godhead; we should be in Him. Love would have no meaning if we were in the Godhead. If we could not carry our individuality through death, we should in death have to lose love, for in the moment that individuality ceased, love would cease. One being can only love another that is separate from itself; if we carry our Love of God through death, we must carry with us through death that which kindles Love within us.

If the meaning of the earth is to be brought to man, information concerning his immortality must be given him in such a way that his nature may be thought of as inseparable from Love. Neither Will nor Wisdom can give to man what he needs; only Love can give man what he needs. What was it then that became darkened in the course of man's evolutionary path over the Earth? Let us take the Jews, or the Heathen: the consciousness beyond death had become obscure, dark. Between birth and death-consciousness; beyond death and beyond birth—darkness; nothing remained of the consciousness within the earth-body—‘Know thyself’—at the entrance of the Greek Mysteries, the most holy demand of the Greek sanctuary upon mankind. Man could only answer: ‘If I remain bound to my body with my soul as when an earth-man, I cannot recognize myself in that individuality which can love beyond death. I cannot do it.’ The knowledge that man can love as individuality beyond death—that was what had become lost for man. Death is not the cessation of the physical body. Only a materialist can say that. Suppose that in every hour that he lived in his body, man's consciousness were such that he knew as certainly what lies beyond death as he knows to-day that the sun will rise on the morrow and take its journey across the heavens. Then death would have no sting for him, death would not be that which we call death; man would know in the body that death is only a phenomenon leading from one form to another. Paul did not understand by ‘death’ the cessation of the physical body; by ‘death’ he understood the fact that consciousness only extends as far as death, and that man, in so far as he was united with the body in the existence of that period, could, within his body, extend his consciousness only as far as death. Wherever Paul speaks of death we might add: ‘Lack of consciousness beyond death.’

What gave to man the Mystery of Golgotha? Is it a number of natural phenomena, a pillar of cloud, a pillar of fire that stands before humanity with the Mystery of Golgotha? No! A man stands before men—Christ Jesus. With the Mystery of Golgotha did anything out of mysterious nature take place—did a sea divide so that the people of God could go through? No! A man stood before men, Who made the lame to walk and the blind to see. That proceeded from a man.

The Jew had had to look into Nature when he wanted to see Him Whom he called his Divine Lord. Now it was a man Who could be seen. Of a man it could be said that He had God dwelling in Him. The heathen had to be initiated; his soul had to be withdrawn from his body in order that he might stand before the Humanity which is the Christ. On the earth he had been unable to divine the Christ; he could only know that the Christ was outside the earth. But He Who had been outside the earth came upon the earth, took on a human body. In Christ Jesus there stood as man before men That Being Who formerly had stood in the Mysteries before the soul that was liberated from the body. And what came to pass through this? In this the beginning was made, whereby the powers that man had lost since the beginning of the Earth in the course of the earth-evolution—the powers through which his immortality was assured to him—were to come again to him through the Mystery of Golgotha. In the overcoming of Death on Golgotha the forces originated which could rekindle the powers which had been lost. And the path of man through the earth-evolution will henceforth be that by taking the Christ more and more into himself he will discover that within himself which can love beyond death—that is to say, he can stand before his God as an immortal individuality. Therefore only since the Mystery of Golgotha, has the saying become true: ‘Love God above all, and thy neighbor as thyself.’

Will was given from the burning thorn bush; Will was given through the Ten Commandments. Wisdom was given through the Mysteries. But Love was given when God became man in Christ Jesus. And the guarantee that we can love beyond death, that by means of the powers won back for our souls a Society of Love exists between God and man, and love of all men for one another—the guarantee for that proceeds from the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Mystery of Golgotha the human soul has found what man had lost from the primal beginnings of the earth, in that his forces had become ever weaker and weaker.

Three forces in three members of the soul: Will, Wisdom, Love I In this Love the soul experiences its relation to Christ.

I wanted to bring these things before you from a certain angle. What may have seemed aphoristic in the explanations given to-day will find its context later on. But I think we can inscribe deeply within our souls, that progress in the knowledge of Christ is a real gain for the human soul, and that when we consider the relationship of the human soul to Christ, it again becomes clear to us how before the Mystery of Golgotha there was a sheath, as it were, between the human soul and Christ; how this sheath was broken by the Mystery of Golgotha, and how we can say with truth: ‘Through the Mystery of Golgotha a Cosmic Being flowed into the Earth-life, a Super-earthly Being united Himself with the Earth.’

As to what the human soul can experience in itself with its Christ, we shall speak of together during the next few days. We shall speak in the following lectures of all that the human soul, with Christ, can experience within itself.

Yesterday we looked at Jesus of Nazareth's life from when he was about twelve until the end of his twenty-first year. From what I was able to relate, you will certainly have the feeling that some very important things for Jesus of Nazareth's soul occurred during that period of time, most important also for the evolution of humanity. For you will certainly realize from the fundamental experience obtained from spiritual scientific studies that everything having to do with human evolution is interconnected, and that an event of such importance which happens in a human soul and is related to human history cannot be without importance for the whole of human evolution. We recognize just what the event of Golgotha means from the most varied viewpoints. In this lecture cycle we are attempting to obtain this knowledge through a consideration of Christ Jesus' life. Therefore we shall now again look at the same characteristic point in time we considered yesterday. What must have lived in Jesus of Nazareth's soul after all the important events that happened to him up until he was twenty-eight, twenty-nine years old, and which I described yesterday?

One can have a feeling for what lived in his soul from hearing about a scene that took place during his late twenties. The scene was of a conversation which Jesus had with his mother, with that person who had been his mother for many years through the consolidation of both families. An intimate and excellent understanding existed with her, a much better understanding than existed with the other family members who lived in the house; that is, he could get along well with them, but they didn't really understand him. Previously he spoke with his mother about many of the impressions which had developed in his soul.

But at the time in question a most meaningful talk took place between them, one which allows us to see deeply into his soul. He had become wiser over time as a result of the events already described, to the extent that an infinite wisdom was expressed in his face. But he also felt sadness, which is often the case, though to a lesser degree. Wisdom had the effect of causing him to be quite sad when he observed his human surroundings. Adding to this was the fact that whenever he had a minute to himself he thought back to how in his twelfth year a tremendous revolution took place in his soul—when Zarathustra's soul [ego] entered into his soul. When at first Zarathustra's soul entered into his soul he felt only the great richness of the former. At the end of his twenties he didn't yet know that he was the reincarnated Zarathustra; but he did know that a great change had taken place in his soul during his twelfth year. And now he often had the feeling: Oh, how different everything was before that change during my twelfth year! He thought about how infinitely warm his heart felt then. As a boy he had been detached from the world, but had the liveliest feelings for the speech of nature, for what was wonderful in nature. But he had little disposition for worldly learning. He showed little interest in school work.

It would be completely mistaken to assume that the boy Jesus was gifted in any usual way before his twelfth year. He was kind-hearted, had a deep understanding of what is human, great capacity for feeling—an angelic, gentle being. Now it seemed as if all that had been eradicated from his soul when he was twelve years of age. And now he thought and felt about how previously he had been united with all the deeper universal spirits, how his soul had been open to the depths of infinite space. And how since his twelfth year he had suddenly become adept at Hebrew erudition, which had sprung from within him. He thought about how on his travels he encountered the pagan cults and the wisdom and religiosity of Paganism streamed through his soul. He remembered that between his eighteenth and twenty-fourth years he had been in contact with the activities and achievements of common humanity. He then entered the Essene community at approximately twenty-four years of age, where he learned an occult teaching and knew the people who dedicated themselves to that occult teaching. He thought often of those things. But he also knew that he had only learned what humanity had accumulated in wisdom since antiquity—treasures of human wisdom, culture and moral achievements. He often thought back on how, before that twelfth year, he felt united with the divine primeval ground of being and everything seemed spontaneous, welling up from his warm, expansive, loving heart and closely uniting him with the other strengths of the human soul.

These were the feelings which brought about a very special talk between him and the mother. His mother loved him terribly and often spoke with him about all the beautiful and great things which had become apparent in him since his twelfth year. At first he never spoke to her about the inner conflict which he experienced, so that she saw only the good and the beautiful. Therefore what he told her in this conversation, which was a kind of general confession, was all new to her, but she accepted it with a warm and gentle heart. She understood how he felt, that he was nostalgic for what he had before that twelfth year. So she tried to console him by speaking about the things which had become so beautiful and splendid about him since then. She reminded him of the renewal of the great teachings and wise sayings and treasures of the Jewish laws, which had come about through him. His heart was heavy when he heard his mother speak so enthusiastically about what he considered superseded. He said: That may well be, but whether all the wonderful old treasures of Judaism are renewed through me or some other, what does it mean for humanity? What has happened is essentially meaningless. Of course if the people had ears still capable of listening to the old prophets, then such a renewal of the prophets' wisdom would be of use to them. But even if Elias were to come – Jesus of Nazareth said – and wanted to announce to our humanity the wonders he experienced in the expanses of heaven, the people are not there who have ears to hear Elias's wisdom, or the older prophets, even Abraham and Moses. All that those prophets announced is impossible to announce today. The words would blow away in the wind. Everything I thought to have received is worthless today.

He told how a great teacher had recently been more or less ignored. For although he had not the stature of the old prophets he was, nevertheless, a profound and important teacher – the good, old Hillel. Jesus well knew what Hillel meant for many within Judaism, even during Herod's rule, when it was hard to gain respect. And he knew what profound words Hillel had spoken. It was said of him: The Torah had died among the Jews, but Hillel revived it. He renewed the original Jewish wisdom, for those who understood him. Hillel was a wandering teacher of wisdom; he wandered among the Jewish people like a kind of new Messiah. Meekness was his main characteristic. The people praised him highly. I can only mention a few examples of how Jesus spoke to his mother about Hillel in order to indicate how he felt about him. He described Hillel as having a mild, gentle character and who accomplished great things through gentleness and love.

One meaningful story has been preserved which shows how Hillel was a patient man who was open to everyone. Two people bet on the possibility of angering Hillel, for it was well known that Hillel was never angry. One of them said: I will do all possible to anger him – in order to win the bet. At a time when Hillel was most occupied (he was preparing for the Sabbath) the man who made the wager knocked at his door and said in a less than polite way – and Hillel was the head of the highest priestly authority, one accustomed to being addressed with respect – the man called out: Hillel, come out, come out right now!

Hillel threw something on and patiently went out.

The man said sharply: I have something to ask you.

Hillel said, My dear man, what is your question?

My question is, Why do the Babylonians have such narrow heads?

Hillel answered most gently, Well, my dear, the Babylonians have such narrow heads because their midwives are so clumsy.

The man left. But after a few minutes he returned and rudely called Hillel out again: Hillel, come out, I have a question for you!

Hillel put his cloak on, went out and said: Well, my dear man, what is your question?

I want to ask you why the Arabs have such small eyes.

Hillel answered gently: Because the desert is so large, it makes the eyes small, the eyes become small observing the vast desert.

The man who had made the bet was becoming anxious now. Hillel went back to his work.

After a few minutes the man came again and called out rudely: Hillel, come out, I have a question to ask you.

Hillel threw on his cloak, went out and gently said: What do you wish to ask me?

I want to ask you why the Egyptians have such flat feet.

Because the area where they live is so marshy, Hillel said and went back inside.

A few minutes later the man came again and told Hillel that he had something else to ask – that he had made a bet that he could anger him, but he knew not how to do it. Hillel said gently: My dear man, it is better that you lose your bet than that Hillel is angered.

That legend is told in order to show Hillel's patience, even with those who antagonize him. Such a man is, Jesus of Nazareth said to his mother, in many respects like a prophet of old. And don't we know many of Hillel's sayings that sound reminiscent of the prophets of old? He repeated several of Hillel's beautiful sayings, and then said: You see, dear mother, that Hillel is considered to be an old prophet who has come again. It occurs to me that what I know does not come from Judaism alone.

Now Hillel was born in Babylon and only occupied with Judaism later. But he descended from David, was related to the house of David from ancient times, as was Jesus. And Jesus said: If I could also speak as a son of David, as Hillel does, the people don't exist who could hear me; such words are no longer relevant. In ancient times yes, but not now. To speak thus now is useless and of no worth.

Then he summarized his position to his mother. These prophesies of ancient Judaism are no longer appropriate because the ancient Jews are no longer here. They must be seen as worthless now. Strangely enough his mother listened to him when he spoke about the worthlessness of what she considered to be most holy. But she loved him deeply and felt only her infinite love. So something of a profound intuitive understanding of what he meant reached her. He went on to tell her about his wanderings to the pagan places of worship and what he experienced there. He remembered falling unconscious on the pagan altar and hearing the transformed Bath-Kol. And then a renewal of the old Zarathustra teaching flashed before his mind. He didn't yet know for sure that he carried the Zarathustra soul within him, but the Zarathustra teaching and wisdom, the Zarathustra impulse arose within him during that talk with his mother. Together with his mother he experienced that great Zarathustra impulse. All the beautiful and great of the ancient Sun-Teaching arose in his soul. And he remembered the Bath-Kol words, which I recited yesterday, and he recited them to his mother:

AUM, Amen!
Evil rules,
Witness of the severing I,
Selfhood's guilt by others owed,
Now lived in daily bread,
In which heaven's will be not done,
For man deserted your kingdom,
And forgot your names,
You fathers in the heavens.

All the greatness of the Mithras worship lived in his soul with those words, rising up as from an inner genius. He spoke with his mother about the greatness and glory of paganism and about what lived in the ancient mysteries of the various peoples, much of which converged in the Mystery cults of Asia Minor and Southern Europe. But he also carried in his soul the feeling that this cult had gradually changed and had come under demonic power, which he had himself experienced when he was around twenty-four years of age. It also seemed to him that the old Zarathustra teaching was no longer appropriate for the people.

The second important thing he said was: If all the Mysteries were united and contained everything which was once great – the people are not there to hear it. It is all useless. And if I were to go around announcing the transformed Bath-Kol, if I were to declare the secret of why people can no longer live in their physical bodies together with the Mysteries – the people are not there today who would understand. Nowadays it would be demonic. People can no longer hear what was once announced and heard.

Jesus of Nazareth knew that what he had heard as the transformed voice of Bath-Kol was an ancient holy teaching, an all-powerful prayer wherever the Mysteries were celebrated; it had been forgotten, but had come to him when he fell down on the pagan altar. He also saw, however – and he expressed it clearly in that discussion – that today it is impossible to make all that understood. Then he spoke of what he had learned in the Essene circles. He described the beauty, the greatness and the glory of the Essene teachings and remembered the Essenes' gentleness.

Then he spoke of the third important thing, which had come to him during his visionary talk with the Buddha: Not all people can be Essenes. Hillel was right when he said: Don't separate yourself from society, but live and work within it. For what am I if I am alone? That's what the Essenes do though; they separate themselves from the people, who are then necessarily unhappy. Then he told his mother about his experience after an intimate conversation with the Essenes. As he was at the gate leaving, he saw Lucifer and Ahriman running off.

Since that moment, my dear mother, I knew that the Essenes protect themselves by means of their way of life and their occult teachings to the extent that Lucifer and Ahriman must flee from their gates. But they send Lucifer and Ahriman to others in order to be happy themselves. Those words greatly impressed the loving mother, and she felt herself transformed, and as one with him. And Jesus of Nazareth felt as though everything which burdened him had been lifted from him by this conversation. He saw it and his mother saw it. The more he spoke, the more she heard, the more she knew of all the wisdom that had lived in him since his twelfth year. He also transplanted all his experiences into her own heart.

He was also transformed by that talk, so much so that his stepbrothers and other relatives thought he had lost his mind. What a pity, they said, he knew so much; he was always very quiet, and now he has lost his mind. They considered him lost. In fact he did walk around the house dream-like for days on end. The Zarathustra-I was preparing to abandon that Jesus of Nazareth body. And his last resolve was to leave the house almost mechanically and go to John the Baptist, whom he already knew.

And then the event took place which I have often described: the baptism in the Jordan by John. During that talk with his mother, the I of Zarathustra withdrew. He was again what he was at twelve years of age, only grown up. And the Christ-Being descended into that body at the baptism in the Jordan. And at the same moment as this baptism in the Jordan took place, the mother experienced the end of her transformation. She felt – at the time she was forty-five, forty-six years old -, she felt herself imbued with the soul of the woman who was Jesus' mother until he was twelve when he received the Zarathustra-I; and who had later died. The other mother's spirit had descended upon the mother with whom Jesus had the conversation. And she felt like that young mother who had given birth to the Luke-Jesus.

Imagine what a hugely important event that was! Let us try to feel it, but also let us feel that now a special being lived on the earth: the Christ-Being in a human body, a Being who had not yet lived in a human body, who heretofore had only been in spiritual regions, who previously had not lived on earth, who knew the spiritual worlds, but not the earth! That Being only knew of the earth what was stored in the three bodies – physical body, etheric and astral bodies – of Jesus of Nazareth. It descended into those three bodies, as they had become under the influence of the thirty years of life which I have already described. Therefore the Christ-Being was unbiased in respect to his first earthly experiences.

This Christ-Being was led at first into solitude. This is also indicated in the Akasha Record and the Fifth Gospel. Jesus of Nazareth, in whose body the Christ-Being now dwelled, gave up everything which had tied him to the world. The Christ-Being had come to the earth. At first he was drawn to what was impressed most strongly in the astral body, like a remaining memory. Yes, he thought, that is the body which experienced Ahriman and Lucifer fleeing and realized that the striving Essenes pushed Ahriman and Lucifer off onto other people. He felt himself drawn to Ahriman and Lucifer, for it is against them that humanity must fight. Therefore the Christ-Being, who had never existed in a human body, departed into solitude to do battle with Ahriman and Lucifer.

I believe that the scene I am about to describe is essentially correct. But it is very difficult to observe such things in the Akasha Record. Therefore I would like to explicitly state that one or another detail may eventually be modified, but that the essential is there. The temptation scene appears in several Gospels, which describe it from different sides. I have often emphasized this. I have taken pains to investigate this temptation scene and would like to relate how it really was.

At first the Christ-Being in Jesus of Nazareth's body encountered Lucifer in solitude – how Lucifer works on people when they overestimate themselves, have too little humility and self-knowledge. Take advantage of man's false pride and self-importance: that is what Lucifer wants to do! Lucifer approached Christ Jesus and said more or less the words which also appear in the other Gospels: Look at me! The other kingdoms in which man dwells, founded by the old gods and spirits – they are old. I want to found a new kingdom; I will give you everything that is beautiful and glorious in the old kingdoms if you will enter into my new kingdom. But you must separate yourself from the old and recognize me! And Lucifer showed him all the beauty of the Luciferic world, all that would attract a human soul that had even a trace of pride. But the Christ-Being came from the spiritual world. He knew who Lucifer is and how the soul must act not to be tempted on earth by him. He knew nothing of Luciferic temptation; he knew though how to serve the gods and was strong enough to reject Lucifer. So Lucifer attacked a second time, but he came with Ahriman as support and they both spoke to Christ. One tried to goad his pride: Lucifer. The other spoke to his fear: Ahriman.

The first said to him: Through my spirituality, through what I can give you, you will not need what you now need because you have entered into a human body as Christ. That body subjugates you, so you must obey the law of gravity. I can throw you down and the human body prevents you from overcoming the law of gravity. If you obey me I will annul the effects of the fall and nothing will happen to you. Ahriman said: I will protect you from fear, throw yourself down! They both closed in on him, but as they balanced the scales, so to speak, by their insistence, he was able to resist them. He found the strength which man needs to find on earth to raise himself above Lucifer and Ahriman.

Then Ahriman said: Lucifer, you are of no use to me, you have not increased my power, only diminished it. So Ahriman sent Lucifer away and carried out the last attack as Ahriman alone and said the words which resonate in the Gospel of Matthew: Turn minerals into bread! Turn stones to bread if you claim to have divine powers. And the Christ-Being said: Men do not live by bread alone, but by the spiritual which comes from the spiritual world. The Christ-Being knew that well, for he had recently descended from the spiritual world. Ahriman replied: You may be right. But that you are right and insofar as you are right does not stop me from stopping you in a certain way. You only know what the spirit does which descends from the heights. You were not yet in the human world. Below, in the human world, there are completely different people; they truly need to turn stones to bread, they cannot nourish themselves by the spirit alone. That was the moment when Ahriman told Christ what one could know on the earth; which, however, the god who had just stepped upon the earth for the first time could not yet know. He did not know that it was necessary below to turn the mineral, metal to money, to bread. So Ahriman said that the people below are forced to nourish themselves with money. That was where Ahriman still had power. And, said Ahriman, I will use this power!

This is the correct description of the temptation story. The questions weren't definitively answered – Luficer's questions perhaps, but not Ahriman's. Something more was required for that.

As Christ Jesus left the solitude of the wilderness he felt himself released from all he had experienced and learned from his twelfth year on; he felt the Christ-spirit to be more connected with what had lived in him before his twelfth year. In fact he felt no longer connected with what was old and arid in humanity. He was even indifferent to the language spoken around him and he was silent at first. He walked around Nazareth and farther a field, visited many of the places he knew as Jesus of Nazareth, and there something extremely peculiar happened. Please note that I am telling the story from the Fifth Gospel, and it would make no sense to look for contradictions with the other four gospels. I am relating what the Fifth Gospel says.

Silently, like having nothing to do with the surroundings, Christ Jesus went at first from inn to inn, working with the common people. Ahriman's saying about bread had left a deep impression on him. Everywhere he found the people who knew him from before, and these were the people to whom Ahriman had to gain access because they needed to turn stones to bread, or what is the same – turn money, metal to bread. He had no need to associate with those who observed Hillel's – or others' – moral teachings. But he did associate with those whom the other gospels call tax collectors and sinners, for they were the ones most inclined to turn stones into bread. He spent much time with them.

But here is the strange thing that happened: Many of them already knew him from the time before his thirtieth birthday, when he had been with them as Jesus of Nazareth. They knew his mild, kind and wise nature and he was well loved in every house and inn. That love remained. They often spoke of the dear Jesus of Nazareth who had come to those houses and those places. And the following happened—as though an effect of cosmic law. (I am relating scenes which often repeat themselves, which clairvoyant research can often confirm.) There were families for whom Jesus of Nazareth had worked, who sat together after work, when the sun had gone down, and liked to talk about the dear fellow who had been with them as Jesus of Nazareth. They spoke of his love and gentleness and about the warm feelings that streamed through their souls when he lived under their roofs. In some of these houses where they sat and talked about Jesus of Nazareth for hours on end, an image of Jesus of Nazareth would appear as a vision shared by the whole family. Yes, he visited them in the spirit; or also, they created his spiritual image. You can imagine what it meant for such a family when he appeared to them in a vision, and what it meant to them when he now returned after the baptism in the Jordan and they recognized him, except that his eyes were more brilliant. They saw the transfigured face which had once looked upon them so kindly, this whole man whom they had seen sitting with them in the spirit. We can well imagine how the people in such families felt and what the sinners and tax collectors experienced who, because of their karma, were surrounded by all the demons of those times.

Now Jesus' transformed nature became evident, especially in such people. Previously they had felt his love, warmth and gentleness, but now a magical power emanated from him. While previously they had felt merely comforted, now they felt themselves healed. They went to their neighbors who were also depressed and brought them to him. And thus it happened that Christ Jesus, after he had defeated Lucifer and had only been stung by Ahriman, was able to accomplish what is described in the Bible as driving out demons.

Many of the demons he had seen as he lay like dead upon the sacrificial altar went out of the people when he stood before them as Christ Jesus. The demons saw their enemy. As he wandered through the land he often had to think about how he had lain upon the altar where instead of gods there were demons and where he couldn't perform the rite. He also had to think about Bath-Kol, who had revealed the old mystery prayer to him, which I told you about. He concentrated especially on the center line of that prayer: “Now lived in daily bread”. The people who were around him now had to turn stones into bread. And many among them had to live from bread alone. And the words from that ancient pagan prayer – “now lived in daily bread” – sank deeply into his soul. He felt the whole incorporation of man in the physical world. He felt that because of this necessity for bread in human evolution the names of the Fathers in heaven, that is the names of the spirits of the higher hierarchies, had been forgotten. And he felt that no humans existed who could still hear the voices of the old prophets. He now knew that living in daily bread is what had separated men from heaven and what must lead them to egotism and into Ahriman's clutches.

As he wandered with such thoughts through the land, it turned out that those who most strongly felt how Jesus of Nazareth had been transformed became his disciples and followed him. From various stops on his way he would select one or another of them, those who felt that impulse most strongly. Soon there was a large number of such disciples. These people had a completely new basic outlook, who because of him were different from those whom he described to his mother as not being able to hear the old prophesies. And then the god's mission on earth struck him: I am not here to tell men how the gods brought the spirit down to earth, but how mankind can find the way from the earth up to the spirit.

And then the voice of Bath-Kol came to him and he knew that the ancient formulas and prayers must be renewed; he knew that man must seek the way to the spiritual word from below. He inverted the last line of the prayer to make it appropriate for the people of those new times and because it was not to refer to the many spirits hierarchical beings, but only to one spiritual being:

“Our father who art in heaven.”

And the second line, which he had heard as the next to last line: “And forgot your names” – he inverted to accord with the needs of the times:

“Hallowed by thy name.”

And the third line, which was: “For man deserted your [plural] kingdom,” he inverted to: “Thy kingdom come,”

And the line: “In which heaven's will be not done,” he inverted so people could now understand it, for the old version was incomprehensible; he inverted it, for a complete inversion of the way to the spiritual world was to take place: “Thy will be done in heaven as it is on earth.”

And the mystery of bread, the mystery of the incarnation in the physical body, the mystery of all that had been revealed to him by Ahriman's sting – he transformed these things in such a way that man could feel that the physical world also comes from the spiritual world, although it is not directly apparent. So he changed the line about daily bread into a request: “Give us this day our daily bread”. And the words: “Selfhood's guilt by others owed” he changed to: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The second line of the old mystery prayer – “witness of the severing I” he changed to: “but deliver us”, and the first line: “Evil rules” he made “from evil. Amen”.

Thus the prayer which Christianity learned to know as the “Our Father” was transformed through the inversion of the voice of Bath-Kol, which Jesus heard when he fell upon the altar, to what Christ Jesus taught as the new mystery prayer, the new Our Father. The Sermon on the Mount and other things Jesus taught his disciples came into being in a similar way.

Christ Jesus had a remarkable effect on his disciples. Please bear in mind that I am merely relating what is written in the Fifth Gospel. As he made his way through the land his effect on his surroundings was remarkable. It is true that he was together with his disciples but, because he was the Christ-Being, it was as though he was not only present in his own body. One or another of the disciples would sometimes feel as though he were also acting in them, in their own souls. They felt that the Christ-Being was in them and began to say things which in reality only Christ Jesus himself could say. So the group traveled around and spoke to other people but it wasn't always Christ Jesus who spoke, but one of the disciples, for he shared everything with the disciples, also his wisdom.

I must admit that I was astonished when I realized that the conversation with the Sadducee, as related in the Gospel of Mark, was not spoken by Christ Jesus from Jesus' body, but by one of the disciples. It often happened that when Christ Jesus left the group he was with it anyway. Either he walked with them spiritually or he appeared to them in his ether-body. His ether-body was among them, walked around the country with them, and it was not always possible to determine whether his physical body was actually there, or if it was his ether-body.

That was the manner of the interaction with the disciples and the people when Jesus of Nazareth became the Christ-Jesus. He, though, experienced this time as I have already mentioned. At first the Christ-Being was relatively independent of Jesus of Nazareth's body, but had to gradually become more and more similar to it. And the longer he lived the more he was bound to Jesus of Nazareth's body, and a profound pain came over him in the last year due to being bound to the ailing body of Jesus of Nazareth. But he continued to wander about the land with a large group of disciples. One spoke here, another there, and one could think that it was always Christ Jesus – for Christ spoke through them all.

It was once possible to listen in to a conversation among scribes. They said: In order to frighten the people it would be possible to kill any one of them; but it could be the wrong one, because they all talk alike. That wouldn't help us, because then the real Christ Jesus could still be there. Only the disciples can identify him. They would certainly not tell their enemies which is the right one. But Ahriman had become strong enough in respect to the question which remained, which Christ couldn't resolve in the spiritual world, but only on earth. He would have to experience the most terrible deed – what it means to turn stones to bread. For this Ahriman made use of Judas of Iscariot. There was no spiritual means available to identify who among men who revered him was actually the Christ. For where the spirit worked he was not identifiable. Only when an individual – Judas – used means which were unknown to Christ, could he be recognized. He could not be recognized except when someone in the service of Ahriman would betray him for money alone. In this way Christ Jesus was bound to Judas, something which befell him during the temptation event, which is understandable in a god: He didn't know that it was only correct in heaven that one does not need stones for bread. The betrayal took place because Ahriman had retained his sting. Therefore Christ had to come under the power of the lord of death, insofar as Ahriman is the lord of death. That is the connection between the story of the temptation and the mystery of Golgotha with Judas' betrayal.

There is much more to be said from the Fifth Gospel than what I have said here. But during the course of human evolution surely the other parts of the Fifth Gospel will be revealed. I have attempted to give you an indication by telling you more in the way of how it is. At the end of these lectures, it has occurred to me once more what I said at the end of the first lecture – that the needs of the times make it necessary to speak about this Fifth Gospel now. And I would like to urge my dear friends to treat what has been said about the Fifth Gospel in the appropriate way.

You see, we already have enough enemies and they act in a quite peculiar way. I don't wish to speak of this now, perhaps you already know about it from reading the “Newssheet”. You also know the strange fact that there are people who have been saying for a long time now that what I teach is infected with all kinds of dogmatic Christianity, even with Jesuitism. Especially certain followers of the so-called Adyar-Theosophy talk in the worst way about this supposed Jesuitism, as well as many more hateful, unscrupulous things. And a certain source claiming outrage at the narrow-mindedness and perversity of our teaching, then completely falsified it. A man from America learned our teaching over a period of many months, wrote it down, brought it to America in a watered down version and then published a Rosicrucian Theosophy, which he copied from us. [The reference is to Max Heindel – ed.]He says that he learned a lot from us, but that he was then called by the masters and learned more from them. He was silent about the fact that he took the more profound things from my unpublished lecture cycles. One could accept that such a thing could happen in America One could, like Hillel, remain meekly silent – even when it spreads to Europe. Those who are most enraged at us here make a translation and in the translation say: Although there is also a Rosicrucian world view in Europe, it is narrow-minded and Jesuitical, and it can only thrive in the pure air of California.

Well, that's enough! That is our enemies' method. We can look at these things not only calmly, but also with compassion – but we may not close our eyes to them. When such things happen, then care must be taken by those who for years indulged such people who acted without scruples. I would really prefer not to speak about such things, were it not necessary in the service of truth. One must see everything with clarity.

When one the one hand these things are spread around, it does not protect us from others who may find such things unpleasant in a somewhat more honest way. I won't annoy you with all the silly junk written by both sides. All this peculiar literature by Freimark, Schalk, Maack, etc. would not be worthy of note because of its inferiority. But there are people who simply cannot stomach something like the Fifth Gospel. And perhaps no hate was as honest as that which arose when something about the mystery of the two Jesus children was first made public.

Real anthroposophists will treat this Fifth Gospel, which is given in good faith, correctly. Take it with you, discuss it in the branches, but tell the people how it must be treated. Make sure that it is not cast irreverently to people who might ridicule it.

We stand against our times with clairvoyant investigation, so necessary for the times, and above all against academe. We are aware of this. Those who were together with us at the laying of the foundation stone of our building know how necessary is the spreading of a spiritual teaching with strict observance of truth. We tried to be conscious of how distant our present culture is from this search for truth. One can well say that the cry for the spirit is heard through our times, but that people are too proud or limited to want to know anything about the true spirit. The amount of truthfulness necessary in order to witness the spirit must first be acquired. For this amount of truthfulness is lacking in today's educated milieu and, what is worse, this lack is not recognized. Treat what you have heard here about the Fifth Gospel so that it is treated reverently in the branches. We do not emphasize this due to egotism, but for a completely different reason, because the spirit of truth must live in us and the spirit must stand truthfully before us.

People talk today about the spirit, but have no idea of the spirit even when they do. There is a man who has won great respect because he talks so much about the spirit – Rudolf Eucken. He talks a lot about the spirit, but when you read his books – try it sometime – he always writes: The spirit exists, one must experience it, be together with it, sense it,—and so on. All through these books endlessly repeated: spirit, spirit, spirit! They talk about the spirit in this way because they are too lazy or arrogant to go to the source of the spirit. And such people are greatly respected nowadays. It is difficult today to be convincing about what is brought in such a concrete way from the spiritual world, such as the description of the Fifth Gospel. Seriousness and truthfulness are requisites for that. In one of Eucken's latest books, “Can We Still be Christians?”, he goes on and on about soul and spirit, spirit and soul, like a tapeworm, and many such volumes are written, for that is how one gains great respect and fame – when one claims to know something about the spirit, for people don't notice when reading the amount of untruthfulness involved. On one page we read: Humanity is beyond believing in demons; no one can be expected to believe in them. But in another place in the same book we find the peculiar sentence: “Contact of the divine with the human creates demonic powers.” The same man speaks seriously here of demons. Isn't that the deepest inner untruthfulness? But I don't see that many of our contemporaries notice this untruthfulness.

We stand at a point today when the truth about the spirit is in opposition to our times. We must always remember this in order to be clear about what we must do in our hearts if we wish to participate in announcing the spirit, the new life of the spirit which is so necessary for humanity. How can one hope to be well received in leading the human soul to the Christ-Being through spiritual teaching when the clever philosophers and theologians say that there was a Christianity before Christ! They show that the rituals and similar legends existed previously in the Orient. The clever theologians explain to all and sundry that Christianity is nothing more that a continuation of what previously existed. And such literature is greatly esteemed by our contemporaries, who don't realize what is happening.

When one speaks of the Christ-Being as spiritually descended, and then finds the Christ-being worshiped in the same ritual form as the pagan gods were worshiped, and when that is used to deny the Christ-Being, which is the case, it is using the following logic: Someone stays at an inn and leaves his clothes there. It is obvious from the clothes that they belong to him. Afterwards a person such as Schiller or Goethe due to some circumstance puts the clothes on and comes out with the clothes belonging to the other person. Then someone goes around saying asking what kind of special person is that. I have examined the clothes, they belong to so-an-do, and he is not at all special. Because the Christ-Being to some extent uses the clothes of the old rituals, the clever people come and fail to realize that the Christ-Being only puts them on as a garment and what is now in the old rituals is the Christ-Being.

And take the sum of scientific monistic considerations, libraries full – they are evidence of the Christ-Being's clothes, and they are even true! The hounds of cultural evolution are held in high regard and their science is accepted. We must paint this picture in our minds if we want to absorb what is meant with this Fifth Gospel, not only in understanding but also in feeling. What is meant is that we must assert our truth correctly in these new times as a new annunciation, and realize how impossible it is to make it comprehensible to the old times. Therefore Gospel words may be spoken now as we take leave of each other: We will not get far in spiritual development with the way people think today. Therefore this thinking must be changed and put in a different direction. And those whose nature is one of compromise, who have no desire for a clear picture of what is there now and what must come, will be of little use in what is spiritually necessary in the service of humanity.

I was obliged to speak of this Fifth Gospel, which is sacred to me. And I take leave of your hearts and souls with the wish that the bond which has arisen between us through other things may be strengthened through this spiritual investigation of the Fifth Gospel, which is especially dear to me. And perhaps this can release a warm feeling in your hearts and souls: When we are separated in distance and time we want nevertheless to be together, feel together what we are to develop in our souls and to what we are duty bound by the spirit in our times.

Hopefully what we strive for will be accomplished in every soul. I think this is the best farewell greeting I can give at the end of this lecture cycle.

It is without question that among the teachings of spiritual science least acceptable to many of our contemporaries we may count that of repeated earth lives, and the echoing-on into a man's later earth-life of causes going back to a previous life of his on earth. This is what we call the law of spiritual causation or Karma. It is easy to understand that men of the present day are bound to adopt a suspicious and adverse attitude towards this knowledge; it follows from all the habits of thought in modern life and will doubtless last until a more general recognition is reached of the enlightening nature of these basic truths of spiritual science. But an unprejudiced observation of life, an unbiased outlook on the enigmas with which we meet daily, and which are only explicable on a basis of these truths, will increasingly lead to a change in the habits of thought, and thus to a recognition of the enlightening nature of these great truths.

To the phenomena we may include in this field quite certainly belong those usually comprised under such names as human fortune or misfortune, words with such manifold meanings. It is only necessary to utter these two words and immediately the sensitive judgment of man's heart will respond to the call to observe the boundaries set between his knowledge and the happenings in the outer world. This verdict sounds as clearly as any other in the soul, and leads to a fervent desire to know more of those inexplicable relationships which, though rejected again and again at a certain stage of enlightenment, must nevertheless be acknowledged by a really unprejudiced desire for Knowledge. To realize this, we need only call to mind how enigmatic good fortune or misfortune—especially the latter—may be in a man's life. This element of enigma can certainly not be solved by any theoretical answer; it clearly shows that something more than any theory, more than what may be called abstract science, is needed to answer it. Who can doubt that in man's soul there is a definite urge to be in a certain harmony with his environment, with the world? And what an amount of disharmony may be expressed when sometimes a man must say of himself, or his fellow-men of him, that throughout his life he is pursued by ill-luck! With such an admission is linked a “Why?” of deep significance for all we have to say about the value of human life, about the value too of the forces forming the foundation of human life. Robert Hamerling, yhe important but alas too little appreciated poet of the nineteenth century, has included in his Essays a short article on “Fortune”, beginning with a reminiscence that recurred to him again and again in connection with this problem. He had heard this story related in Venice—whether it was legendary or not is of no consequence. A daughter was born to a married couple. The mother died in child-birth. The same day the father heard that all his property had been lost at sea. The shock brought on a stroke, and he, too, died the day the child was born. Hence the infant met with the misfortune of becoming an orphan on the first day of her earthly existence. She was first of all adopted by a rich relation, who drew up a will bequeathing a large fortune to the child. She died, however, while the child was still young; and when the will was opened it was found to contain a technical error. The will was contested and the child lost the whole of the fortune intended for her. Thus she grew up in want and misery and later had to become a maid-servant. Then a nice, suitable young man whom the girl liked very much fell in love with her. However, after the friendship had lasted some time, and when the poor girl, who had been earning her living under most difficult conditions, was able to think that at last some good fortune was coming her way, it transpired that her lover was of the Jewish persuasion and for this reason the marriage could not take place. She reproached him most bitterly for having deceived her, but she could not give him up. Her life continued its extraordinary, alternating course. The youth was equally unwilling to give up the girl, and he promised that after the death of his father—who had not long to live—he would be baptized, when the marriage could be celebrated. He was in fact very soon called to his father's death-bed. Now, to add to the troubles of this unfortunate girl, she became very ill indeed. In the meantime, the father of her betrothed had died at a distance, and his son was baptized. When he came back to her, however, the girl had already died of the mental suffering she had endured in addition to her physical malady. He found only a lifeless bride. Now he was overcome by most bitter grief, and he felt that he could not do otherwise—he must see his beloved again although she was already buried. Eventually he was successful in having her body exhumed; and behold, she was lying in a position that clearly showed she had been buried alive and had turned in the grave when she woke.

Hamerling says he always remembered this story when talking or thinking of human misfortune, and of how it sometimes actually seemed as if a human being were pursued by misfortune from his birth, not only to his grave but as in this case beyond it. Of course, the story may be a legend, but that is of no consequence, for everyone of us will say: Whether the facts are true or not, they are possible, and might have happened even if they never actually did happen. But the story illustrates very clearly the disquieting question: How can we answer the “why” when considering the value of a life thus pursued by misfortune? This at any rate shows us that it might be quite impossible to speak of fortune or misfortune if a single human life only were taken into account. Ordinary habits of thought may at least be challenged to look beyond a single human life, when we have before us one that is so caught up in the intricacies of the world that no concept of the value of human life can fit in with what this life went through between birth and death. In such a case we seem compelled to look beyond the limits set by birth and death.

When, however, we look more closely at the words fortune or misfortune, we see at once that after all they can only be applied in a particular sphere, that apart from mankind there is much outside in the world that may indeed remind us of man's individual accordance or discordance with it, but that we shall hardly venture to speak of fortune or misfortune in connection with analogous occurrences outside mankind. Suppose that the crystal, which ought to develop regular forms according to definite laws, should be compelled, through the vicinity of other crystals, or through other forces of Nature at work near it, to develop one-sidedly and is prevented from forming its proper angles. There are actually very few crystals in Nature perfectly formed in accordance with their inner laws. Or, if we study the plants, we must say that in them, too, an inner law of development seems to be inborn. We cannot fail to see, however, that very many plants are unable to bring to perfection the whole force of the inner impulse of their development in the struggle against wind and weather and other conditions of their environment. And we can say the same of the animals. Indeed, we may go still further, we need only keep undeniable facts before our eyes—how many germs of living beings perish without reaching any real development, because under existing conditions it is impossible for them to become that for which they were organized. Think of the vast quantity of spawn in the sea alone, spawn that might become inhabitants of the sea, populating this or that ocean, and how few of them actually develop. True, we might say in a certain sense: We see quite clearly that the beings we come across in the different kingdoms of Nature have inner forces and laws of development; but these forces and laws are limited by their environment and the impossibility of bringing themselves into harmony with it. And indeed, we cannot deny that we have something similar when we speak of human fortune or misfortune. There we see that a man's power to live out his life cannot become a reality because of the many hindrances continually obstructing him. Or we may see that a man—like a crystal fortunate enough to develop its angles freely in every direction—may be so fortunate as to be able to say with the crystal: Nothing hinders me; external circumstances and the way of the world are so helpful to me that they set free what is purposed in the inmost core of my being.—And only in this case does a man usually say that he is fortunate; any other circumstances either leave him indifferent or impel him to speak directly of misfortune. But unless we are speaking merely symbolically, we cannot, without falling into a fantastic vein, speak of the ill-fortune of crystals, of plants, or even of the amount of spawn that perishes in the sea before it comes to life. We feel that to be justified in speaking of good or bad fortune, we must rise to the level of human life. And again, even in speaking of human life, we soon notice a limit beyond which we can no longer speak of fortune at all, in spite of the external forces by which man's life may be directly hindered, frustrated, destroyed. We feel that we cannot speak of “misfortune” when we see a great martyr who has something of importance to transmit to the world, condemned to death by hostile authorities. Are we justified in speaking of misfortune in the case of Giordano Bruno, for instance, who perished at the stake? We feel that here there is something in the man himself which makes it impossible to speak of ill-fortune, or if he is successful, of good fortune. So we see good or bad fortune definitely relegated to the human sphere—and within that to a still narrower one.

Now when it comes to man himself, to what he feels with regard to fortune or misfortune in his life, it would seem that when we try to grasp it conceptually, we very seldom succeed. For just think of the story of Diogenes (again this may be based upon a legend, but it may also have happened), when Alexander urged him to ask a favor of him—certainly a piece of good fortune. Diogenes demanded what very few men would have asked for—that Alexander should move out of his light. That then was what he regarded as lacking to his happiness at the moment. How would most men have interpreted their fortune at such a moment? But let us go further. Take the pleasure-seeking man, the man who throughout his life considers himself fortunate only when all the desires arising from his passions and instincts are satisfied—satisfied often by the most banal of pleasures. Is there anyone who would believe that what such a man calls good fortune could also be good fortune for the ascetic, for one who hopes for the perfecting of his being, and considers life worth living only when he is denying himself in every possible way, and even subjecting himself to pain and suffering that would not be inflicted upon him by ordinary fortune or misfortune? How different the conceptions of fortune and misfortune are in an ascetic and a sensualist! But we can go still further and show that any universally accepted conception of good fortune eludes us. We have only to think of how unhappy a man can be who, without reason, without any foundation of true reality, becomes fiercely jealous. Take a man who has no grounds for jealousy at all, but believes that he has every possible ground; he is unhappy in the deepest sense of the word, yet there is no occasion for it at all. The extent, the intensity, of the unhappiness depends not on any external reality but simply on the man's attitude to external reality—in this case, to a complete illusion.

That good luck as well as bad may be in the highest degree subjective, that at every turn it projects us, so to speak, from the outer world into the inner world, is shown by a charming story told by Jean Paul at the beginning of the first volume of his “Flegeljahre”. In this, a man who lived habitually in Central Germany pictures to himself how fortunate it would be for him to be a parson in Sweden. It is a most delightful passage where he imagines that he would sit in his parsonage and the day would come when by two o'clock in the afternoon it would be dark. Then people would go to church each carrying his own light, after which pictures of his childhood would rise before him—his brothers and sisters, each carrying a light. It is a charming description of his delight in the people going to church through the darkness each with his own lantern. Or he dreams himself into other situations, called up simply by the memory of certain natural scenes connected together in his mind; for instance, if he imagined himself in Italy he could almost see the orange trees, and so on. This would throw him into a mood of most wonderful happiness; but there was no reality in any of it, it was all only a dream.

Doubtless Jean Paul, with this dream of being a parson in Sweden, is pointing to a deep connection in questions of good or bad fortune by showing that the whole problem can be diverted from the outer world to man's inner being. Strangely enough, it would seem that since good or bad fortune may be entirely dependent upon the inner being of man, the idea of good fortune as a general idea disappears. Yet again, if we look at what a man generally calls good or bad fortune, we see that in countless cases he refers it, not to his inner being, but to something outside himself, We might even say: The characteristic quality of man's desire for good fortune is deeply rooted in his incessant urge not to be alone with his thoughts, his feelings, his whole inner being, but to be in harmony with all that works and weaves in his environment. In reality a man speaks of good fortune when he is unwilling that some result, some effect, should depend on himself alone; on the contrary, he attaches great importance to its depending, not on himself but on something else. We need only picture the luck of the gambler—here no doubt the small and the great have much in common. However paradoxical it may seem, we can quite well connect a gambler's luck with the satisfaction a man may have in acquiring an item of knowledge. For acquiring knowledge evokes in us the feeling that in our thinking, in our soul-life, we are in harmony with the world. We feel that what is without in picture-form is also within us in our apprehension of it; that we do not stand alone with the world staring us in the face like a riddle, but that the inner corresponds to the outer, that there is living contact between them, the outer mirrored in, and shining forth again from the inner. The satisfaction we have in acquiring knowledge is proof of this harmony. If we analyze the satisfaction of a successful gambler we can only say—even if he has no thought of whence his satisfaction arises—that it could not exist at all if he himself could bring about what happens without his cooperation. His satisfaction is based on the fact that something outside himself is involved, that the world has “taken him into consideration”, that it has contributed something for his benefit. This single shows that he does not stand outside the world, that he has definite contact, definite connection, with it. And the unhappiness a gambler feels when he loses is caused by the sensation of standing alone—bad luck gives him a feeling of being shut out from the world, as if the contact with it were broken.

In short, we see that it is by no means true that, by good or bad fortune, a man means only something that can be locked up within himself; on the contrary, when he speaks of good or bad fortune he means in the deepest sense what establishes contact between him and the world. Hence there is hardly anything about which the man of our enlightened age becomes so easily superstitious, so grotesquely superstitious, as about what is called luck, what he calls his expectation from certain forces or elements outside himself which come to his assistance. When this is in question, a man may become exceedingly superstitious. I once knew a very enlightened German poet. At the time of which I speak he was writing a play. This play would not be finished before the end of a certain month—he knew that beforehand. Yet he had a superstition that the drama could not be successful unless it were sent in to the manager of the theatre concerned before the first day of the next month; if it were later, according to his superstition it could have no success. One day, towards the end of the month, I happened to be walking in the street when I saw him bicycling in hot haste to the post office. Through my friendship with him I knew that his work was far from finished; so I waited for him to come out. “I have sent my play in to the theatre”, he said. “Is it finished then?” I asked; and he replied: “There is still some work to do on the last acts, but I have sent it in now because I believe it can only be successful if it goes in before the end of this month. I have written, though, that if the play is accepted, I should like it returned when I can finish it; but it had to be sent in at this time.”—Here we see how a man expects help from outside, how he expects that what is to happen will not be effected by him alone, by his efficiency or his own powers, but that the outer world will come to his aid, that it has some interest in him so that he does not stand alone by himself.

This only proves that when all is said the idea of fortune in general eludes us when we try to grasp it. It eludes us, too, when we look into any literature that has been written about it; for those who write about such things are usually men whose business it is to write. Now at the outset everyone knows that a man can, indeed, speak correctly only of something with which he has not merely a theoretical but a living relation. The philosophers or psychologists who write about fortune have a living relation to good or bad fortune only as they themselves have experienced it. Now there is one factor that weighs very heavily in the balance, namely, that cognition as such, as it meets us in the world of man outside, that knowledge when it is taken in a certain higher sense, signifies at the very outset a kind of good fortune. This will be admitted by everyone who has ever felt the inner delight that knowledge can give; and this is substantiated by the fact that the most eminent philosophers, from Aristotle down to our own times, have constantly characterized the possession of wisdom, of knowledge, as a piece of particularly good fortune. On the other hand, however, we must ask ourselves: What does such an answer to the question concerning fortune mean to one who works the whole week long with few exceptions in the darkness of the mines, or to one who is buried in a mine and perhaps remains alive for days together under the most horrible conditions? What has such a philosophical interpretation of fortune to do with what dwells in the soul of a man who has to perform some menial, perhaps repulsive, task in life? Life gives a strange answer to the question of fortune, and we have abundant experience to show that the philosophers' answers are often grotesquely remote, in this connection, from our experience in everyday life, provided we consider this life in its true character. Life, however, teaches us something else with regard to fortune. For life appears as a noteworthy contradiction to the commonly accepted conceptions of fortune. One case may serve as an example for many.

Let us suppose that a man with very high ideas, even with the gift of an exceptional imagination, should have to work in some humble position. He had perhaps to spend almost all his life as a common soldier. I am speaking of a case that is indeed no legend, but the life of an exceedingly remarkable man, Josef Emanuel Hilscher, who was born in Austria in 1804 and died in 1837. It was his fate to serve for the greater part of his life as a common soldier; in spite of his brilliant gifts he rose to nothing higher than quartermaster. This man left behind him a great number of poems, not only perfect in form but permeated by a deep life of soul. He left excellent translations into German of Byron's poems. He had a rich inner life. We can picture the complete contrast between what the day brought him in the way of fortune and his inner experiences. The poems are by no means steeped in pessimism; they are full of force and exuberance. They show us that this life—in spite of the many disappointments inherent in it—rose to a certain level of inner happiness. It is a pity that men so easily forget such phenomena. For when we set a figure of this kind before our eyes, we can see—because indeed things are only relatively different from one another—we can see that perhaps it is possible, even when the external life seems to be entirely forsaken by fortune, for a man to create happiness out of his inmost being.

Now anyone can inveigh against fortune, especially from the point of view of spiritual science—indeed, if he clings to misunderstood or primitive conceptions he may be fanatical in his protest against the idea of good fortune or equally fanatical in explaining life one-sidedly from the idea of reincarnation and karma. A man would be fanatical in his protest against fortune were he through misunderstanding the principles of spiritual science to say: All striving after good fortune and contentment is after all only egoism, and spiritual science makes every effort to lead men away from egoism. Even Aristotle considered it ridiculous to maintain that the virtuous man could in any way be content when he was experiencing unaccountable suffering. Good fortune need not be regarded merely as satisfied egoism, but even were this so in the first place it could still be of some value for the whole of mankind. For good fortune can also be regarded as bringing our soul-forces into a certain harmonious mood, thus allowing them to develop in every direction; whereas ill-fortune produces discordant moods in our soul-life, hindering us from making the most of our efficiency and powers. Thus, even if good luck is sought after in the first place only as a satisfaction of egoism, yet we can look upon it as the promoter of inward harmony in the soul-forces, and can hope that those whose soul-forces achieve inner harmony through good fortune may gradually overcome their egoism; whereas they would probably find it hard to do so were they constantly pursued by ill-fortune. On the other hand, it may be said: If a man strives after good fortune and receives it as the satisfaction of his egoism, he can—because his forces are harmonized—work for himself and for others in a beneficial way. So what may be called good fortune must not be assessed one-sidedly.—Again, many a man who thinks he has fathomed spiritual science when he has only perceived something of it from a distance falls into error by saying: Here is a fortunate man, and there one who is unfortunate; when I think of karma, of one life determining another, I can easily understand that an unfortunate man has prepared this bad fortune for himself in a former life, and that in a former life the fortunate man has prepared his own good fortune. Such an assertion has something insidious about it because to a certain extent it is correct. But karma—that is, the law of the determining of one earth-life by another—must not be accepted in the sense of a merely explanatory law; it must be regarded as something that penetrates our will, causing us to live in the sense of this law. And this law is only vindicated in life if it ennobles and enriches this life. As regards fortune, we have seen that a man's quest of happiness springs from a desire not to stand alone, but to be in some way related to the outer world so that it may take an interest in him. On the other hand, we have seen that good fortune may—in contradiction to external facts—be brought about solely by a man's conceptions, by what he experiences from external facts.

Where is there a solution of this apparent contradiction—depending, not on abstractions and theories but on reality itself?

We can find a solution if we turn our minds to what may be called the inmost core of man's being. In former lectures¹ we have shown how this works on the outer man, even shaping his body, and also establishing the man in the place he occupies in the world. If we follow up this conception of the inner core, and ask ourselves how it can be related to the man's good or bad fortune, we most easily find the answer if we consider that some stroke of good fortune may so affect a man that he is bound to say: I intended this, I willed it, I used my good sense, my wisdom, in such a way that it should come about, but now I see that the result far exceeds all that my wisdom planned, all that I determined or was able to see beforehand.—What man is there, in a responsible position in the world, who would not in countless cases say something of this kind—that he had indeed used his powers but that the success that had befallen him far out-weighed the powers exerted? If we comprehend the inner core of man not as what is there just for once but as something in the throes of a whole evolution, in the sense, that is, of spiritual science; if we comprehend it not simply as shaping one life but many, as something therefore that would shape the one life as it is in our immediate present, so that when this inner core of man's being goes through the gate of death and passes into a super-sensible world, returning when the time comes to be active in physical life in a fresh existence—what then can such a man, grasping his central being in this way, understanding himself within a world-conception of this kind—what attitude can he adopt towards a success that flows to him in the way we have pictured? Such a man can never say: This has been my good fortune and I am satisfied; with the powers I set in motion I expected something quite insignificant, but I am glad that my fortune has brought me something greater.—Such a man who seriously believes in karma and repeated earth-lives will never say that, but rather: The success is there but I have shown myself to be weak in face of such a success. I shall not be content with this success, I shall learn by it to enhance my powers; I shall sow seeds in the inmost core of my being which will lead it to higher and higher perfection. My unmerited success, my windfall, shows me where I am lacking; I must learn from it.—No other answer can be given by one to whom fortune has brought success, if he looks upon karma in the right way and believes in it. How will he deal with such a lucky chance? (The word chance is used here in the sense of something that comes upon one unexpectedly, it is not meant in the ordinary way). For him it will be considered not as an end but as a beginning—a beginning from which he will learn and which will cast its beams upon his future evolution.

Now, what is the opposite of the instance we have given? Let us place it clearly before us. Because a man who believes in repeated earth-lives and karma, or spiritual causation, receives a stroke of good fortune as a spur to his growing forces, he regards it as a beginning, as a cause of his further development. And the converse of this would be if, when we were struck by some misfortune, by some misadventure that might happen to us, we were to take it not simply as a blow, as the reverse of the success, but looking beyond the single earthly life, we were to see it as an end, as what comes last, as something the cause of which has to be sought in the past, just as the consequence when appearing as success has to seek its effects in the future—the future of our own evolution. We regard ill-fortune as an effect of our own evolution. How so?

This we can make clear by a comparison showing that we are not always good judges of what has occasioned the course of a life. Let us suppose someone has lived as an idler on his father's money up to his eighteenth year, enjoying from his own point of view a very happy life. Then when he is eighteen years old his father loses his property; and the son can no longer live in idleness but is obliged to train for a proper job. This will at first cause him all sorts of trouble and suffering. “Alas!” he will say, “a great misfortune has overtaken me.” It is a question, however, whether in this case he is the best judge of his destiny. If he learns something useful now, perhaps when he is fifty he will be able to say: Yes, at that time I looked upon it as a great misfortune that my father had lost his wealth; now I can only see it as a misfortune for my father and not for myself; for I might have remained a ne'er-do-well all my life had I not met with this misfortune. As it happens, however, I have become a useful member of society. I have grown into what I now am.

So let us ask ourselves: When was this man a correct judge of his destiny? In his eighteenth year when he met with misfortune, or at fifty when he looked back on this misfortune? Now suppose he thinks still further, and enquires concerning the cause of this misfortune. Then he might say: There was really no need for me to consider myself unfortunate at that time. Externally it seemed at first as if misfortune had befallen me because my father had lost his income. But suppose that from my earliest childhood I had been zealous in my desire for knowledge, suppose that I had already done great things without any external compulsion, so that the loss of my father's money would not have inconvenienced me, then the transition would have been quite a different matter, the misfortune would not have affected me. The cause of my misfortune appeared to lie outside myself, but in reality I can say that the deeper cause lay within me. For it was my nature that brought it upon me that my life at that time was unfortunate and beset with pain and suffering. I attracted the ill-fortune to myself.

When such a man says this, he has already begun to understand that in fact all that approaches us from outside is attracted from within, and that the attraction is caused through our own evolution. Every misfortune can be represented as the result of some imperfection in ourselves; it indicates that something within us is not as well developed as it should be. Here we have misfortune as opposed to success, misfortune regarded as an end, as an effect, of something occasioned by ourselves at an earlier stage of our evolution. Now if, instead of moaning over our ill-luck, and throwing the whole blame upon the outside world, we look at the core of our inner being and seriously believe in karma, that is, the causation working through one earth-life to another, then ill-luck becomes a challenge to regard life as a school in which we learn to make ourselves more and more perfect. If we look at the matter thus, karma and what we call the law of repeated earth- lives will become a force for all that makes life richer and increases its significance.

The question, however, may certainly arise: Can mere knowledge of the law of karma enhance life in a definite way, making it richer and more significant? Can it perhaps bring good fortune out of bad?—However strange it may seem to many people nowadays, I should like to make a remark that may be significant for a full comprehension of good fortune from the point of view of spiritual science. Let us recall Hamerling's legend of the girl pursued by ill-fortune up to her death, and even beyond the grave since she was buried alive. No doubt anyone not deeply permeated by the forces knowledge can give, will find this strange. But let us suppose that this unfortunate girl had been placed in an environment where the outlook of spiritual science was accepted, where this outlook would prompt the individual to say: In me there dwells a central core of spiritual being transcending birth and death, showing to the outer world the effects of past lives, and preparing the forces for subsequent earth-lives. It is conceivable that this knowledge might become strength of soul in the girl, intensifying belief in such an inner core. It may perhaps be said: As the force issuing from spirit and soul may be consciously felt working into the bodily nature, it might well have worked into the girl's state of health; and the strength of this belief might have sustained her until the man returned after his father's death. This may appear odd to many who are not aware of the power of knowledge based on true reality—knowledge not abstract and merely theoretical but working as a growing force in the soul.

We see, however, that as regards the question of good fortune this belief may offer no consolation to those who are definitely fixed for their whole life in work that can never satisfy them, those whose claims upon life are permanently rejected. Yet we see that firm faith in the central core of man's being, and the knowledge that this single human life is one among many, can certainly give awakening strength. All that in the outer world at first appeared to me as my ill-fortune, as the evil destiny of my life, becomes explicable to my spiritual understanding through my relation to the universal cosmos in which I am placed. No commonplace consolation can help us to overcome what in our own conception is a real misfortune. We can only be helped by the possibility of regarding a direct blow as a link in the chain of destiny. Then we see that to consider the single life by itself, is to look upon the semblance and not the reality. An example of this is the youth who idled away his time until his eighteenth year and then, when misfortune befell him and he was obliged to work, regarded it as sheer ill- luck and not as the occasion of his later happiness. Thus, if we look more deeply into the matter we see clearly that study of a life from one point of view alone can give only an apparent result, and that what strikes us as good or bad fortune appears merely in its semblance if we study it in a circumscribed way. It will only show us its true nature and meaning if we study it in its proper place in the man's whole life. Even so, if we look at this whole human life as exhausted within the boundaries of birth and death, a life that can find no satisfaction in ordinary human relations and the usual work will never seem comprehensible to us. To become comprehensible—comprehensible according to the reality we have often expressed in those terms to which, however, where real human destiny is concerned, only spiritual science can give life-this can become comprehensible only when we know that what we find intelligible no longer has power over us. And to him for whose central being good fortune is only an incentive to higher development, ill-fortune is also a challenge to further evolution. Thus the apparent contradiction is solved for us when, in observing life, we see the conception of good or bad fortune approaching us merely from the outside, converted into the conception of how we transform the experiences within ourselves and what we make of them. If we have learnt from the law of karma not only to derive satisfaction from success but to take it as an incentive to further development, we also arrive at regarding failure and misfortune in the same way. Everything undergoes change in the human soul, and what is a semblance of good or bad fortune becomes reality there. This, however, implies much that is immensely important. For instance, let us think of a man who rejects outright the idea of repeated earth-lives. Suppose, then, that he sees a man suffering from jealousy founded on an entirely imaginary picture created by himself; or another pursuing a visionary happiness; or on the other hand he may see someone who develops a definite inner reality merely out of his imagination, develops something most real for the inner life—that is, out of mere semblance, not out of the world of real facts. Thus he might say to himself—Would it not be the most incredible incongruity as regards the connection of man's inner nature with the outer world, if the matter ended with this one fact occurring in the one earth-life? There is no doubt that, when a man passes through the gate of death, any illusion of fortune or of jealousy which he has looked on as a reality will be wiped out. But what he has united with his soul as pleasure and pain, the effect which has arisen in the stirrings of his feelings, becomes a power living its own life in his soul and connected with his further evolution in the universe. Thus we see, by means of the transformation described, that man is actually called upon to develop a reality out of the semblance.

With this, however, we have also arrived at an explanation of what was said at the beginning. It becomes clear to us now why it is impossible for a man to connect his fortune with his ego, with his individuality. Yet, even if he cannot directly connect it with his ego as external happenings that approach him and raise his existence, he can, nevertheless, so transform it within himself, that what was originally external semblance becomes inner reality. Thereby man becomes the transformer of outward semblance into being, into reality. But when we look around upon the world about us, we see how the crystals, the plants and animals are hindered by external circumstances so that they cannot live out fully the inner laws of their growth; we see how countless seeds must perish without coming into true existence. What is it that fails to happen? Why can we not speak here of good or bad fortune as we have stated it?—The reason is that these are not examples of an outer becoming an inner, so that in fact an outer is mirrored in the inner and a semblance transformed into real being. It is only because man has this central core of being within him that he can free himself from the immediate external reality and experience a new reality. This reality experienced within him lifts his ordinary existence above external life so that he can say: On the one hand, I live in the line of heredity, since I bear within me what I have inherited from my parents, grandparents, and so on; but I also live in what is only a spiritual line of causation, and yet can give me something besides the fortune that may come to me from the outside world.—Through this alone it is clear that man is indeed a member of two worlds, an outer and an inner. You may call it dualism, but the very way that man transforms semblance into reality shows us that this dualism is itself merely semblance, since in man outer semblance is continually being transformed into inner reality. And life shows us, too, that what we experience in imagination when we call an actual fact false becomes reality within us.

Thus we see that what may be called good and bad fortune is closely associated with what is within man. But we see, too, how closely associated it is with the conception of spiritual science, that man stands in a succession of repeated earth-lives. If we look at the matter in this way we may say: Do we not then base our inner happiness on an outer semblance and reckon with this happiness as something permanent in our evolution? All external good fortune that falls to our share is characterized in what, according to legend, Solon said to Croesus: Call no man happy till you know his end.—All good fortune that comes to us from outside may change; good fortune may turn into bad. But what is there in the realm of fortune that can never be taken from us? What we make of the fortune that falls to us whether it comes from success or failure. Fundamentally the following true and excellent folk-saying can be applied to the whole of a man's relation to his fortune: Everyone is the smith of his own fortune.—Simple country people have coined many beautiful and extraordinarily apposite sayings about fortune, and from these we can see what profound philosophy there is in the simplest man's outlook. In this respect those who call themselves the most enlightened could learn very much from them. To be sure these truths are often presented to us in a very crude form. There is even a proverb that says: Against a certain human quality the Gods themselves contend in vain. There is, however, also a noteworthy proverb that connects this particular human quality—against which the Gods are said to contend in vain—with good fortune, saying: Fools have the most luck. We need not conclude from this that the Gods seek to reward such men with good fortune to make up for their stupidity. Nevertheless, this proverb shows us a distinct consciousness of the inner depths and of the necessity for deepening what we must call the interdependence in the world of man and fortune. For as long as our wisdom is applicable to external matters alone, it will help us very little; it can help us only when it is changed into something within ourselves, that is, when it again acquires the quality, originally possessed by primitive man, of building on the strong central core that transcends birth and death, the central core that is explicable only in the light of repeated earth-lives. Thus what a man experiences as the mere semblance of fortune in the outer world is distinguished from what we may call the true essence of fortune. This comes into being the moment a man can make something of the external facts of his life, can transform them and assimilate them with the evolving core of his being which goes on from life to life. And when a sick man—Herder—in the most severe physical pain says to his son: “Give me a sublime and beautiful thought, and I will refresh myself with it”, we see clearly that in an afflicted life Herder awaits the illumination of a beautiful thought as refreshment—that is, as a stroke of good fortune.

Hence it is easy to say that man with his inner being must be the smith of his own fortune. But let us fix our minds on the powerful influence of that world-conception of spiritual science that we have been able to touch upon to-day, where it is not merely theoretical knowledge but knowledge that stirs the core of our souls, since it is filled with what transcends good or bad fortune. If we grasp this world-outlook thus, it will furnish us with more sublime thoughts than almost any other, thoughts that make it possible for a man—even at the moment when he must succumb to misfortune—to say: “But this is only a part of the whole of life.”

This question of fortune has been raised to-day to show how everyday existence is ennobled and enriched by the real thoughts concerning life's totality which spiritual science can give us, thoughts that do not merely touch upon life as theories but that bring with them the forces of life. And this is the essential. We must not only have external grounds of consolation for one who is to learn to bear misfortune through the awakening of those inner forces, rather must we be able to give him the real inner forces that lead beyond the sphere of misfortune to a sphere to which—although life seems to contradict this—he actually belongs. This, however, can only be given by a science which shows that human life extends beyond birth and death, and yet is linked with the whole beneficent foundation of our world-order. If we can count upon this in a world-conception, then we may say that this conception fulfills the hopes of even the best of men; we may say that with such a conviction a man can look at life as one who though his ship is tossed to and fro by surging waves yet finds courage to rely on nothing in the outer world, but on his own inner strength and character. And perhaps the observations of to-day may serve to set before men an ideal that Goethe in a certain way sketched for us, but that we may interpret beyond Goethe's hopes as an ideal for every man. True, it does not stand as something to be immediately achieved in the single human life, but as an ideal for man's life as a totality—if a man, tossed to and fro in his life between good and bad fortune, feels like a sailor buffeted by stormy waves, who can rely on his own inner power. This must lead to a point of view which, with a slight adaptation of Goethe's words, we may describe thus:

Man stands with courage at the helm
By wind and waves the ship is driven—
The wind and waves do not affect him.
Controlling them he looks in the green depths
And trusts, no matter wrecked or safe in port,
The forces of his inner being.

• 1. The Hidden Depths of Soul Life. Berlin, 23rd November, 1911.