The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Of all the Elohim, Jah-veh is the one who has turned to the world of physical processes in human development; to nature in humanity. His rule over human nature is the result of a struggle that ended with man coming into natural necessity with his soul life: Jah-weh is not originally “born”, but is present in the cosmic-soul element within the sphere of elective affinity; but he leaves this sphere to enter the “realm of birth” by starting a fight against the other Elohim, whom he expels into those realms that are accessible to man only through the powers of “illusion” as long as man stands at the level of intellectual consciousness - they only become apparent again at a different level of consciousness. The worship of God in the form of the child is essentially a beginning of a liberation from Jah-veh; for the latter can only reveal himself in processes that end with birth; Jah-veh's birth is an apparent one - he cannot enter into earthly forms that are “born”. He can only be represented in symbols whose content belongs to a form of life that reveals itself in the “unborn” state: the mineral-mathematical and part of the plant world.

Jah-veh is not the “Word made flesh”.

The development of the consciousness that man has a relationship to Christ that is not inherent in his natural existence, that in him he has a being to whom he is related through the powers that transform the air in him (in his heart) make him a being that can grasp thought; through the flesh, which does not live in the process of the prenatal natural order, but only in that which begins with birth; which proceeds personally in the interrelationship of man to the world.

As a Christian, one cannot see in the manifest universe the revelation of “God the Father”, but that it comes from the same source as the “born human being”: what is manifest in the universe is only insofar as it is reclaimed through Christ], for Jah-weh has confined divinity to the embryology of the world, pushing the other Elohim into the “sphere of illusion”. The fate of humanity, which can no longer see Jah-weh in the revealed universe, is therefore atheism - the worship of the mere natural order, which, however, only came about because Jah-weh removed the other Elohim from this natural order in the human realm. Yahweh has chosen his people; but in so doing, he has inserted them into the mere order of nature; they have thus become the opponents of all other spirit beings, all spirit beings that do not reveal themselves through human nature; they have also become the opponents of the spirit being that reveals itself in the flesh after birth – the opponents of a spiritualized natural science. Man can attain knowledge through the powers he has at birth; but with this knowledge he cannot consciously bring himself into a relationship with the spiritual world; he must gain this through other spiritual beings if it is not to remain instinctive. otherwise he remains an “animal with the capacity for abstraction,” ideas remain images, and his reality is guided by instincts - that is, by the spiritual beings whom Jah-veh has pushed into the “sphere of illusion.” In order to make man free from the other Elohim, he has driven the other Elohim out of the nature of man – he has moved back in time, that is, materially effected what would later have been spiritually The totality of the Eloh[lim] has been led back [by Christ]; first the “healer” - the “Hermes” - the next will be the “seer”. —

Yahweh is working through the process of the sleeping, not the waking, fleshly organism – therefore the waking is exposed to lower spirit beings – it is now the age in which Yahweh himself cannot sustain himself against the lower spirit beings. –

When the body is alone, it decays: that is to say, the causes of its continued existence do not belong to this world.

Because Jah-weh has assumed the autocracy of consciousness, the flesh in man, which is included in the waking process of life, has come under the rule of lower spirit beings than those in whose spheres Christ lives. The establishment of the personal relationship with Christ] returns to man his conscious kinship. Otherwise, only reason remains, turned to the Christ-Divine, as it was in fact in pre-scriptural times; but now reason too is seized by the animalistic.

Now the consciousness nourished by Jah-weh, the Christ-Christus-Revelation, is in preparation.

We have already pointed out in these lectures that in the words of Christ-Jesus to Nicodemus, we must recognize a conversation between Christ and a personality who is able to perceive what can be beheld outside of the physical body by means of higher organs of cognition if developed to a certain stage. For those who understand such things, this is clearly and distinctly indicated in the Gospel wherein it is stated that Nicodemus came to Christ-Jesus “in the night,” meaning in a state of consciousness in which the human being does not make use of his outer sense organs. We shall not enter into the trivial explanations which have been presented by different people concerning these words, “in the night.” You know that in this conversation the problem is one of rebirth of the human being “out of water and Spirit.” These are very important words concerning rebirth which the Christ speaks to Nicodemus in the 4th verse of the 3rd Chapter:

Nicodemus said unto Him:—How can a man be reborn when he is old?

Jesus answered:—Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.

We have already said that these words must be carefully weighed and we should keep definitely in mind that the words of a religious document of this kind must be taken in a literal sense on the one hang, but on the other we must first discover and understand this literal meaning. The words are often quoted, “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life!” Those who quote these words often employ them in a very peculiar manner. They find in them a license for reading into them their own phantasy, which they call the “spirit of the thing,” and then they say to someone who has taken the trouble to learn the letter before coming to the spirit: “What have we to do with the letter? The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” One who speaks in this manner, stands about on the same level with a man who would say: “The spirit is what truly lives, but the body is something dead. Therefore let us destroy the body, then will the spirit become alive.” Whoever speaks in this way does not know that the spirit is formed gradually, that the human being must use the organs of his physical body for reception of what he experiences in the physical world, which he then raises into spirit. First we must know the letter, then we can kill it; likewise, when the spirit has drawn everything it can out of the human body, the latter falls away from the human spirit.

There is something extraordinarily profound just in this very chapter of the Gospel of St. John. We can only enter into the meaning of it, when we follow human evolution still further back than we have already in our consideration of the Gospel up to the present. Today we must trace the human being back into still more remote periods of the earth's evolution.

In order that you may not, at the very beginning, be too much shocked at what I shall have to say about these early human states, I should like to lead you back once more to the ancient Atlantean epoch.

We have already called attention to the fact that before that great cataclysm of our earth, a memory of which is retained in the sagas of the Flood, our human progenitors lived out there in the west in a region which no longer exists, but which now forms the bed of the Atlantic Ocean. This continent which is called the ancient Atlantis harbored our forefathers. When we examine the later epochs of this Atlantean period of human evolution, we find, even in these epochs of the far distant past, that at least the form of the human being was not so very much unlike his present one. However, if we should go back to the earliest periods of this Atlantean continent, we would find the human form quite different from that of the present. We can go still further back.

Before the Atlantean age, the human being lived in a land which, in the language of today, is called Lemuria. This continent also perished through great changes on our earth. It occupied approximately the region which now lies between southern Asia, Africa, and Australia. When we examine the human forms which lived in Lemuria, as they present themselves to clairvoyant sight, we find them very different from those of present day humanity, and it is not necessary that I describe them to you in detail nor those of the early Atlantean period. Although you have already had to endure a great deal in the descriptions of Spiritual Science, nevertheless the forms of these ancient Lemurians, fundamentally so different from the present forms, would appear to you quite improbable. However, we must in a certain respect describe them, although quite superficially if we wish to understand what has happened to the human being in the course of the earth's evolution.

Let us suppose, for example, something in reality quite impossible, but we shall assume it for the sake of an understanding. Let us suppose that with your present senses, which of course you did not at that time possess, you could look into the latter part of the Lemurian and the first part of the Atlantean epochs of human evolution, and observe the surface of the earth in its various parts. If you should expect to be able to find the human being upon the earth by means of this physical sense perception, you would be greatly disappointed. At that time he did not exist in a form which you would be able to see with your present physical senses. It would appear to you as though certain regions of our earth's surface, already resembling islands, protruded out of the rest of the still fluidic earth, which was either surrounded by sea-water or enveloped in vapour. But those regions which thus protruded like islands were not yet dry land like our present solid earth, but soft earth masses in the midst of which fiery forces played. These island regions were continually being thrown up and then again submerged by the volcanic forces of that time. In short, there was still in the earth an element active in fire; all was still actively in a state of flux, continually changing. In certain regions which already existed, and which had been cooled to a certain degree, you would find precursors of our present animal world. Here and there you would have observed grotesque shapes; you would have found strange forms, forerunners of our reptiles and amphibians. However, you would have been able to see nothing of the human being, because at that time he did not possess a physical body dense and solid enough to be seen. You would have had to seek him elsewhere, as it were, in the masses of water and vapour. It would be, perhaps, as though you were to swim out to sea at the present time and could see there not much more of certain lower animals than a soft, slimy mass. You would then find the human physical form of that time embedded in the regions of aqueous vapour. The further back we go, the more attenuated and like his vapoury, watery environment do we find the human form of that period. Not until the Atlantean period does it begin to condense, and were we able to follow with our eyes the whole of evolution, we should be able to see how, out of the water, this human being becomes condensed, gradually descending upon the surface of the earth. As a matter of fact, it is true that the physical human being set foot upon the ground of our earth's surface relatively late. From this region of water and air, he gradually descended, crystallizing out of it. We have now obtained a sketchy picture of a human being who is not distinguishable from his environment, who consists of the same element in which he lives. When we follow very far back in the evolution of the earth, we find that this human body becomes more and more tenuous.

Now let us go back to the very beginning of our present earthly planet. We know that it arose out of the ancient Moon. This ancient Moon we have called the “Cosmos of Wisdom.” At a certain stage of its evolution, this ancient Moon did not contain what we would call solid earth, and we must understand very clearly that the physical conditions were quite different on the embodiment of our planet which just preceded our present Earth. If you follow back as far as the ancient Saturn condition, you must not imagine that it would appear as our earth now appears, that you would find rocks upon which you could walk, and trees which you could climb. None of all this existed at that time. If you had approached ancient Saturn during the middle period of its evolution from far out in cosmic space, you would not, perhaps, have seen any special cosmic body moving about, but you would have been able to detect something very strange, namely, that you had come into a region where you felt as though you had crept into an oven. The only reality of this Saturn state was that it possessed a different degree of warmth from its environment. In no other way could it have been perceived. Occultism does not, like the present ordinary physics, distinguish three conditions of matter only, but it discerns still others. The physicist declares that at present there are solid, fluidic and gaseous bodies. Saturn, however, was not yet even gaseous. Our gaseous state is much denser than the densest state on Saturn. In occultism, we distinguish also the state of warmth which is not simply a state of matter in vibration, but a fourth substantial state. Saturn consisted only of this warmth and if we proceed from Saturn to the Sun, we experience a condensation of that ancient fiery planet. The Sun is the first gaseous embodiment of our planet; it is the first gaseous or airy body. The ancient Moon-state then condenses still further; it is a fluid body which only later, when the sun departs from it, assumes a more dense condition. The actual middle condition, however, while it is still united with the sun, is the fluidic state. All that we today call mineral earth, the mineral, rocks, surface soil, all this did not exist on the ancient Moon. This appeared for the first time upon our Earth, crystallizing itself out of it.

When the Earth commenced its evolution, it began by first repeating once more all the various earlier conditions. Every substance and every being in the cosmos always repeats earlier conditions at the beginning of any new stage of evolution. Thus our Earth passed quickly through the Saturn, Sun and Moon states. When it was passing through the Moon evolution, it consisted of water, mixed with vapour—not like our present water, but a watery, that is to say, a fluidic condition of substance. The fluid state was its densest condition. This watery sphere which swam about in cosmic space was not like the water of the present, but water mixed with vapour, in other words, something gaseous and something fluidic permeating each other, and within this we find the human being. He could exist in this watery sphere, because no solid substance had yet been precipitated. Of the present human being, only his ego and his astral body were present. This ego and astral body did not yet feel themselves as separate entities, but as though embedded within the body of divine spiritual beings. They did not yet feel themselves severed from a being whose body is the water-vapour earth. Then within these ego-endowed astral bodies, enclosures were formed, very tenuous, fine human germs. This is shown in the first diagram.

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The upper part of the diagram is intended to represent the astral body and ego which, insensible to outer perception, were embedded in the water-earth sphere; these draw from themselves the first germ of the physical body which together with the ether body was in a very rarefied condition. This then took form out of this watery earth-water sphere. If you were to follow this clairvoyantly, you would see the first germ of the physical and ether bodies surrounded by the astral body and ego as shown in the first figure. That part of you—namely, your physical and ether bodies—which at present lies in bed when you sleep, formed in its very first beginnings in this Earth-state the first human germ still wholly enveloped by the astral body and the ego. The watery vapour mass then densified, and the astral body with the ego gave the impulse to this first human germ to become a part of this primal water-earth. (We cannot now follow further the evolution of the animals and plants.) The next thing that occurred was the condensation of the water, and, in a certain sense, air and water appeared. No longer were vapour and water mixed together, but water and air were separated from one another. As a result, the human corporeality—physical and ether bodies—again became somewhat more densified and because the air had separated from the water, it became airy and took into itself the fiery element. Thus what was formerly watery now became aeriform. The physical ether human germ now consisted of air permeated by fire; the astral body and ego enveloped it and all this moved about in what remained of the water, fluctuating back and forth alternately in water and air.

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We thus have before us the human being of that time, whose incipient state has reached even the density of air and has been made incalescent by fire. This has become the same human being who lies sleeping in bed today. To each of these human fire-beings belong an astral body and an ego, but they are completely embedded within the bosom of the Godhead, that is, they do not yet feel themselves individualized.

You must meditate deeply upon these things, for these conditions are so different from the present conditions of the earth, they seem shocking and unbelievable. Now you will ask:—What is the fire element which you have indicated there in the air? The fire which human beings possessed at that time still exists within you. It is the fire that pulses through your blood, it is the heat of the blood. What is left over from the ancient air also lives on within your organism. When you inhale and exhale, you have air within your otherwise solid body which flows in and out of it. When you inhale deeply, the air is then taken up into the blood and this is the reason for the warm air-breath. Imagine this air permeating the whole body, penetrating into all its parts. Now, think away all that is solid and fluid and picture only the form that remains, the form of a human being who has just inhaled; that means that he has driven the oxygen into the outermost parts of the body. A form remains which is very similar to the human, but which, however, consists only of air. The air which streams through the human being takes on the exact form of the body. A kind of shadow body remains consisting of air permeated with warmth. That is the kind of human being you were at that time; you did not then have the form which you now possess, but the physical and ether bodies were enveloped by the astral body invested with the ego. This condition continued on into the Atlantean period. Those who yield to the illusion that in the earliest epochs of Atlantis men walked about as they do today, are quite in error. The human creature first descended out of the airy sphere into the denser region of matter. There were at that time upon the earth only the animals who could not hold back their incarnation in physical form, thus they remained at the animal stage, since the earth was not yet mature enough to yield up its substance for the physical human form. Therefore the animals remained in lower forms because they could not hold back their descent into matter.

The next thing that occurred was the division of the human being, in respect of his physical body, into airy, warmth and fluid parts. This means, in an occult sense, that he became a water-man. You may say that the human being was previously already a water-man. But that would not be quite correct. Previously the earth was a watery sphere, and within it—although only in a spiritual state—were astral body and ego. They swam about in the water as spiritual beings; they were not yet individualized. Now we have for the first time reached the point where we could have found the physical human body contained within this water, but in a sort of jelly fish formation. If you had swum out into this primeval sea, you would have found in it, condensed out of the water, forms which would have been transparent to you. This is the way these human beings appeared in the beginning. First they had a water body and at the same time their astral body and ego continued to remain deeply embedded in the divine, spiritual beings. At that time, when the human being possessed this watery body the apportioning of his states of consciousness was very different from what it became later on. The separation into unconscious night and conscious day did not exist as it does now, but then, when the human being was still embedded in the beings of the divine-spiritual world, he had a dreamy astral consciousness. When, during the day, he dipped down into his fluidic, physical body, this was night to him and when he was again out of his physical body, he beheld the dazzling, astral light. When he plunged into the physical body in the morning, there all was dull and dreary and a sort of unconscious state began. Gradually, however, the present physical organs were formed in his physical body and with these he gradually learned to see. Day consciousness became brighter and brighter, and he was thereby cut off from the divine matrix. It was only toward the middle of the Atlantean period that this human creature was dense enough to become flesh and bone. After the cartilage had solidified, the bones then gradually appeared. At the same time the earth also became more solid and the human being then descended upon the surface of the earth. Thus that consciousness which he had possessed in the divine-spiritual world gradually disappeared, and he became more and more an observer of the outer world, preparing himself thereby to become a true earth dweller. In the last third of the Atlantean period, the human form became more and more like the present one.

Thus literally and truly the human being descended from spheres which we must designate water-vapour, water-air spheres. As long as he remained in the water-air sphere, his consciousness possessed the faculty of a clear astral perception, because whenever he was outside of the physical body he was above in the presence of the gods, but by virtue of the densification of the physical body, he cut himself off, as it were, from the divine substance. Like something that had acquired a shell, he slowly severed himself from his earlier connections, when he ceased to be watery and gaseous. As long as he was fluidic and airy in form, he remained above with the gods. He was not able to develop his ego, for he had not yet released himself from the divine consciousness. Because he descended into physical matter, his astral consciousness became ever more darkened. If we wish to characterize the significance of this evolutionary process, we may say that formerly, when the human being was still living with the gods, his physical and ether bodies were fluidic and gaseous in form, and were only gradually, simultaneously with the solidification of the earth, condensed to their present material form. That is the descent, but just as he has made this descent, so will he also ascend again. After he has had the experiences that are to be had in solid substance, he will again mount into those regions where his physical body will be fluidic and gaseous. He must bear within him the consciousness that if he wishes to unite himself again consciously with the gods, his true existence will be in those regions from which he has sprung. He has become condensed out of water and air and he will again become diffused into them. He can only spiritually anticipate this condition today by gaining within his inner nature a consciousness of the future state of his physical body. Only by becoming conscious of it today, however, will he gain the power to do so. When we have acquired this consciousness, our earthly goal will have been reached, our earthly mission attained. What does that mean? It means that human beings were at one time born, not of flesh and earth, but of air and water and that they must later be truly re-born in the Spirit, of air and water.

In the linguistic usage of those epochs in which the Gospels were written, (which we should also study), “Water” was called water; but “Pneuma,” which is now used for “Spirit,” was then called “Air.” It had at one time exactly that meaning. The word “Pneuma” should be translated “Air” or “Vapour,” otherwise a misunderstanding arises. Thus we should interpret the words in the conversation with Nicodemus in the following manner: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and air he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The Christ is pointing to a future condition into which the human being will develop, therefore in this conversation we have before us a deep mystery of our evolution. We have only to understand the words correctly and employ them in the manner Anthroposophy can teach us. In the common language of every day, we still have remains of this former usage, when volatile substances are spoken of as spirit. Originally the word “Pneuma” meant air. You can see that it is very important for words to be understood in a very accurate and exact sense and to be carefully weighed. Then out of this very literal meaning arises the most wonderful spiritual interpretation.

Now let us try for a little while to direct our spiritual glance toward another fact of evolution. Let us once more look back to the time when the human astral body with the ego was immersed in the matrix of a common divine astral substance. As you follow this evolutionary course, you find that development took place in such a way that it is possible to describe it schematically. In the beginning, your whole astral being was embedded in the common astral substance and through the processes which we have just described, the physical and etheric enclosed it like surrounding shells. Thus individual human beings became separated from the general astral substance as detached parts. It was as though you had a fluid substance here before you and were dipping out parts of it. The detachment of the individual human consciousness from the divine consciousness runs parallel with the formation of the physical body. Thus we may say that the further we progress, the more we see how the separate individual human beings enclosed in the shell of the physical body, develop themselves as parts which are severed from the common astrality. It is true, the human being had to pay for this becoming independent by the darkening of his astral consciousness. Therefore he looked out from the sheath of his physical body and beheld the physical plane. The ancient clairvoyant consciousness, however, gradually disappeared.

Thus we see coming into existence the human inner being, an independent individual human inner being which is the bearer of the ego. When you observe the sleeping human being of the present, you have before you in the physical and ether bodies, which have remained behind in bed, what these sheaths, formed during the course of the ages, have produced through condensation. What had previously separated from the common astral substance returns to it each night in order to receive strength from it. Of course it does not enter so deeply into this divine substance as it did at that time, otherwise it would be clairvoyant. It retains its independence. This, then, is the independent individuality that came into existence in the course of evolution.

It may be asked, to what is this independent individual human being indebted for its very existence, this inner being that seeks its strength outside the physical and ether bodies? It is indebted to the physical and ether human bodies which were gradually formed in the course of evolution. They gave birth to that which dipped down into the physical senses and looked out into the physical world during the day, but which at night sank down into a state of unconsciousness, because it had severed itself from that condition in which it previously existed. In occult language, the part remaining in bed is called the real earth-man. That was “man.” And that part in which the ego remained day and night, that part born out of the physical and ether bodies was called the “child of man” or the “son of man.” The “son of man” is the ego and astral body, born out of the physical and ether bodies in the course of earthly evolution. The technical expression for this is the “son of man.”

Then comes the question, for what purpose did Christ Jesus come to earth; what was imparted to the earth through His Impulse? The “son of man” who had severed himself from existence in the bosom of the Godhead and had broken away from his earlier connections, and in place of which developed a physical consciousness will come again to a consciousness of the spirit through the force of the Christ Who appeared upon the earth. He will not only perceive in his physical environment with physical senses, but by means of the force of his own inner being of which he is now unconscious, a consciousness of his divine existence will flash up within him. Through the force of the Christ Who came upon the earth, the son of man will again be raised to his divine estate. Previously, after the manner of the ancient Mystery initiation, only chosen individuals could perceive the divine-spiritual world. In ancient times there was a technical expression for this. Those who could look into the divine-spiritual world and could become witnesses of it were called “serpents.” Those men of ancient times who were initiated into the Mysteries in this way were “serpents.” The “serpents” were the forerunners of the deed of Christ Jesus. Moses showed his mission by lifting up before his people the symbol of the elevation of those who could perceive in the spiritual worlds; he lifted up the serpent. What these chosen few had then become, now every “son of man” could attain through the force of the Christ present upon the earth. This the Christ expresses in his further conversation with Nicodemus when He says:—“Just as once upon a time Moses lifted up the serpent, even so will the son of man be lifted up.” Throughout, Christ Jesus made use of the technical expressions of that age. First the literal sense of the expressions must be discovered, then the true meaning can be understood; this is also identical with the Anthroposophical teaching. Therefore, in ancient times only a prophecy of the “I AM” teaching could gain a footing. Only on the outer authority of the initiated could the people hear something of the power of the “I AM” which should be enkindled in every “son of man.” But we are quite sufficiently informed about this.

We have seen what the “I AM” signifies in the Gospel of St. John and can ask whether this “I AM” in the course of time has been imparted to humanity. Has it been gradually proclaimed? Did the Old Testament prophetically point to and prepare for what was brought to mankind as an impulse through the descent of the incarnated “I AM?”

Please remember that all that occurs in the course of the ages has been slowly and gradually prepared before-hand. Like the child in the mother's womb, all that was brought by Jesus-Christ had been slowly matured in the followers of the Old Testament through the ancient Mysteries. On the other hand what had been prepared in the followers of the Old Testament among the ancient Jewish peoples had grown to maturity among the ancient Egyptians. Among them were highly developed initiates who knew what was to come upon the earth. We shall now learn how the Egyptians, who were the third sub-race of the post-Atlantean root-race, developed by degrees the complete impulse of the “I AM,” and how they furnished, like the mother's womb, the outer structure for this “I AM,” but did not go far enough to give birth to the Christ Principle. Then we shall learn how at last the ancient Hebrew peoples separated from them.

Moses is represented to us as one chosen from among the people of Egypt to become the prophet of God, of the incarnated “I AM.” He prophesied the coming of the “I AM” to those who could understand something of It. He announced that for the words, “I and Father Abraham are one,” will be substituted these other words, “I and the Father are one,” which means, I and the spiritual foundation of the World are directly one. The followers of the Old Testament looked up to the folk group-soul in its plurality and in this group-soul, each individual felt sheltered as though within the Divine. Through Moses, an initiate of the old order, it was prophesied that the Christ would come; in other words, that there is a divine principle which is higher than the blood-principle flowing down through the generations. It is true, God has been active in the blood since the time of Abraham, but this blood-father is only the outer manifestation of the spiritual Father.

Moses said unto God, Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?

He said, I will be with thee: and this shall be a sign that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth my people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.

And Moses said unto God: Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them: The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they say unto me: What is his name? What shall I say unto them?

He had to announce prophetically a more exalted God, Who exists within the God of Father Abraham, but Who is at the same time a higher Principle. What is His name?

And God said unto Moses, I am the “I AM!”

Here is foretold the profound truth about the Word which later appeared incarnate in Christ-Jesus.

And he said: Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: the “I AM” hath taught it to me.

This is the literal wording. In other words, this means that the “name,” that name which is the basis of the blood-name, is the “I AM”—and this “I AM” appears incarnate in the Christ of the Gospel of St. John.

And God said further unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, the Lord, God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob hath sent me unto you.

What has been seen only externally streaming through the blood, is in its deeper meaning, the “I AM.”

Thus was proclaimed what was later to enter the world through Christ-Jesus. We hear the name of the Logos, we hear Him at that time calling to Moses, “I am the I AM!” The Logos proclaims His name, that part of Himself which can be comprehended through the understanding, through the intellect. What is here proclaimed appears in the flesh as the Logos, is incarnated in Christ-Jesus.

Now let us consider the external sign of the flowing down of the Logos into the Israelitish people, as far as this can be grasped abstractly in thought. This outer sign is the “Manna” of the Wilderness. The word “Manna” is, in fact, (those who understand Spiritual Science know this) the same as “Manas”¹, the “Spirit-Self.” Thus there streams into that people which has by degrees acquired an I-consciousness, the first trace of the Spirit-Self. However that which lives and appears in Manas itself must be called by another name. It is not something that can be simply known, but it is a force which can be taken into oneself. When the Logos simply proclaimed His name, it could be understood and grasped with the intellect. But when the Logos became flesh and appeared among men, then it became a Force-Impulse which is not only a teaching and a concept, but exists in the world as a Force-Impulse in which humanity can participate. He then calls Himself no longer “Manna,” but the “Bread of Life,” which is the technical expression for Budhi or Life-Spirit.

The water transformed by the spirit, which was offered in symbolic form to the Samaritan woman, and the “Bread of Life” are the first heraldings of the influx of Budhi or Life-Spirit into mankind. Tomorrow we shall continue this discussion.

• 1. Note by translator. Dr. Steiner was giving these lectures to Theosophists who were familiar with the oriental terminology. By degrees he dropped this as the students became familiar with his own new occidental terms.

I have often spoken to you of how the human soul has altered in the course of mankind's development, how short-sighted it is to believe that the constitution of the modern soul can be understood if one will not look back to the different changes it has passed through. We look back—I do not need to recapitulate it—to the most varied epochs of earthly evolution; we have in particular often characterised the post-Atlantean epochs in order to show how the constitution of man's soul continually altered. In speaking of such things one must advance from the abstract to the concrete. One must try to give as clear an answer as possible to the question: What was the nature of the human soul in the ages of antiquity? We look back to a far-off age in which—and this may be stated in more than a figurative sense—divine teachers themselves instructed men about the sacred mysteries of existence. We know that from this ancient epoch onwards men have come to learn of these mysteries of existence in most manifold ways. From epoch to epoch the conceptions of the human soul have actually become more and more different. The concepts and ideas which we have today, which live in us and which we put every moment into words, these lived too in earlier conditions of our soul but in an utterly different way. Many of our most ordinary ideas lived quite differently. Today I will speak of what are apparently the most ordinary concepts, two concepts living in man's soul. People denote them at every moment from their word-store, but they lived in the human soul in earlier times in an entirely different way. I will speak of the two concepts: Space and Time.

Space for modern man is the most abstract thing conceivable. What do men mostly picture as space? Three dimensions standing at right angles to each other—or if one reads philosophical text books: the state of extension of physical objects—or there are still other definitions of space. But all that—think how prosaic, cold, abstract, that all is! Three dimensions standing at right angles to one another, or even all that geometry has to say about space,—how frightfully abstract, how prosaic and poverty-stricken, so poverty-stricken that the whole of space—with time as well—has become for Kant subjective shadow, merely a form of conceiving sense-phenomena. This abstraction, space, of which modern man knows little more than that it has length, breadth and height, this abstraction, space, was a very different conception in the far past, of which, however, something still exists today for especially sensitive people—though indeed it is only a trace. One need not go back so extremely far; in the 6th, 7th, 8th pre-Christian centuries one may definitely say that space, as it was then experienced, was very different for the human soul from the prosaic abstraction that it is for man today. Even in the early Greek ages when the soul experienced space, it felt it to be something with which it was livingly united. It felt itself placed into a living Something, in feeling itself placed into space.

Today man has at most a vestige of the sense of standing with his personality, his human self within space. But the man of antiquity expressed a significant relation of himself to the universe, if he distinguished above and below, right and left, in front and behind. The living feeling that one expressed when in ancient times one spoke of above and below, of right and left, of before and behind, has terribly little to do with our abstract three dimensions, which have no other occupation at all than standing at right angles to each other. What a very monotonous occupation it would be through eternity, if one did nothing else at all but stand at right angles to one another like the three dimensions of geometry.

Above and below: it was something living when in ancient times man still experienced how he was first a little child and raised himself from below upwards, when he felt how the course of life consists in an unfolding in the direction of above and below. The course of life consisted in the experience of the direction of above and below. One only travels a tiny distance from the earth (unless one lives in the Ahrimanic age of aeroplanes, or in the Atlantean age but there it was not very high above the earth—you know of this from my description of Atlantis), only a very little distance in normal life does one travel upwards from the earth in growing, and thus experience the above and below, the opposition of above and below. But this opposition was felt in antiquity as the contrast of the world of consciousness and the objective world,—of the conscious and the unconscious world. How subject is related to object—that was a deep experience when one felt above and below. Above, and ever farther and farther upwards come the divine worlds, downwards the worlds which are opposed to the Gods, and the human being is placed within the Above and Below.

As late as to such men as Goethe (you only need study his “Faust”) you still find remains of the consciousness of above and below. In addition to the above and below men felt the right, and left. Today we must use abstractions if we speak of right and left. To the man of antiquity a living in right and left was an actual experience, one might say a genuine world of observation. The Above and Below is the line from infinity to infinity or from the conscious to the unconscious. Right and left: in experiencing right and left one experienced the connection in the world between mind and figure, between wisdom and form. You only need draw a symmetry-axis, what is left and right of it gives together the form and you cannot combine the right and the left without doing it purposefully, without relating the one to the other.

If above and below is pointing to man's mysterious relation to the spiritual and material worlds, then the experience of right and left is his relation to the worlds spreading out in form. And by relating the form in the right and left to one another, by letting wisdom prevail in the forms arranged symmetrically right and left, he experiences himself in the second element of space. This experience of sense in the shape, of wisdom in the form in all possible variations, this feeling of oneself within this harmony of sense and shape, of wisdom and form, was experienced by the man of old as what today is the abstract second dimension. The above and below, the right and left belonged to the flat plane, to the surface which can have no existence for the senses, which requires thickness, needs before and behind if it is to exist in the element of the sense-perceptible.

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And in this third, in the before and behind, ancient mankind felt the entrance of the material into the spiritual. (See diagram) Above and below, left and right he experienced as something still spiritual. It can have no material existence if something is merely above and below, and right and left—it is pure picture, must be pure picture in space; it becomes material only through thickness. In ancient times man felt vividly that in growing he made a few steps upwards from the earths surface in the direction of the above and below. He felt that in walking, he could move freely that he was in the element of his will: before and behind. In between stood the completely free self-movement to right and left while standing still.

Ancient man experienced in his being this threefold contrast as placed into the All; the remaining still with regard to right and left, the striding into the world with regard to before and behind, the gradual movement from below upwards in the direction of the above-below. This was the experience of the man of old. In experiencing the above and below he felt weaving in the universe all that today we call the intelligence, the reasoning of the universe. All that rules in the universe as intelligence was interwoven in space with his idea of the above and below, end since he could share in this intelligence of the world through his growth from below upwards, man felt himself to be intelligent. The participation in the above and below was at the same time a participation in cosmic intelligence. And participation in the right and left, in the interweaving of sense and shape, of wisdom and form, was for him the feeling that weaves through the world. And his restful remaining still, surveying the world, was to him a uniting of his own feeling with the universal feeling. His striding through space in the direction of forwards or back was the unfolding of his will, the placing of himself, with his own will, into the universe, the universal will, He felt his own life to be interwoven with the above and below, the right and left, the before and behind. The conscious and the unconscious: above and below; wisdom and form: right and left; spirit and matter: in front and behind. Such was the experience of the man of antiquity.

At the same time, however, he experienced the indefinite—if I put it crudely—when one stands on one's head then the under is above and the above under. So too is it for the antipodes, and if one counts oneself in with the earth, the below is above and the above underneath. One can imagine too through some circumstance or other that what is normally right is in front, what is normally left is behind. These directions are just as living and weaving in space as in a certain respect they are indistinguishable, weaving into one another. Ancient man felt as he thus experienced himself in the three-divisioned space that the Divinity ruled in the threefoldness. The divine ruling in space directed man then to the divine in duration.

He experienced—and what I am saying now was actually experienced—he experienced in space the divine manifestation, ruling in threefold manner. It was the image in him of the threefold God: Father, Son and Spirit or by what other terms the three-membered God was known. Threefoldness is truly not thought out in the mind, is not an invention. The threefoldness with all its qualities was experienced in its reflection when ancient man experienced livingly the three dimensions of space.

And just as in a certain respect want of clearness can prevail about the above and below, just as right and left can also be before and behind, so in certain circumstances an uncertainty can also enter into the reciprocal relationships of God, Son, Spirit. In the sphere of the transitory, the sphere of space, man experienced the three dimensions concretely, not abstractly or geometrically as we do. And as he experienced concretely how the divine expressed itself in space, in the transitory, he therefore related the transitory to the element of duration; the three-dimensioned space became for him the reflected image of the three-dimensioned spirituality.

The idea of ancient man was approximately: If I live here below on earth I live in the threefoldness of space, but this is to me the reflected proof of the threefold nature of the divine origin of the world.

Today space has become an abstraction and only a few people perceive the depth-dimension, the thickness-dimension, that is, the above and below, the in front and behind, or the plane-dimension of right and left. Even among philosophers little of this experience is to be found. But yet some few who reflect on things and are not entirely asleep come to realise that the depth-dimension really arises in the unconscious observation lying not so very far below the consciousness. Men still feel the depth, but that is the last shadowy relic of space-experience. In the evolved religions an understanding for the Oneness of God has taken precedence of the real understanding of the threefoldness. The understanding for the unity of God has an origin similar to that for the threefold nature of God through space.

My dear friends, spiritual science seeks its information out of the divine facts themselves. Simple-minded people that come and say that no external proof for this or that is given. Well, we have gone into a great deal. I could still relate many things, but it shall not occupy our time today. I will only point out that it is largely the unscientific nature of modern science, so-called, if the verification cannot be found. Just this one thing I will say, and it is as it were an external proof of the fact that the man of antiquity felt in the same way I have described today. Why have the ancient Rabbis called God also Space? Because in earlier time, even in Judaism, they felt what I have shown you today concerning mankind. If science could really think in different domains it would find countless riddles which at the same time, however, are true proof, external proof of what spiritual science has at any rate to find out of the spiritual facts. One of the names for God among the Rabbis is Space; Space and God denote the same.

The unity of the divine has an origin similar to that of the threefoldness of the divine. It is connected with the living experience of Time. Time too was not the abstraction to the man of old that it is to us today. But the concrete experience of time was lost still earlier than the concrete experience of space. If one reads Plato or Aristotle today with a real understanding, and not in the way many schoolmasters read—well, I have often quoted the note written by Hebbel in his diary where the reincarnated Plato sits before the schoolmaster as a pupil, and the teacher reads a dialogue of Plato's with his class and the reincarnated Plato is given very poor marks. Hebbel noted this in his diary. One who reads Plato and Aristotle today, not as is often done by a schoolmaster, but with really deep understanding, finds that this feeling for space was still fully in existence in the 6th, 7th, 8th pre-Christian centuries. It was however already shadowy in Plato and Aristotle, and the living experience of time was lost still earlier than those pre-Christian centuries. It was strongly alive in the second post-Atlantean epoch the ancient Persian, where a cold shiver would have been produced among, for instance, the pupils of Zarathustra, if one had spoken to them of time as a line running from the past to the future. It runs quite uniformly, but does nothing else than run its course from the past to the future.

Again in the Gnosis there existed a more shadowy feeling—but scarcely still to be recognised—for the living nature of time. They did not speak of a line running from past to future but they spoke of Aeons, the creators who were there earlier and from whom the later proceeded, where one Aeon always passed on the impulse of creation to others. Time was so imagined pictorially that in the hierarchical succession the preceding Being always gave the impulse to the one following; the following was ever, as it were, brought forth by the preceding, the preceding Being enclosed the next following. One looked up to the preceding Being, as more divine than the one succeeding. “Later” one experienced as more non-divine, “earlier” one experienced as more divine. This looking towards the change in evolution from the divine to the non-divine was contained in the living experience of time. Everything would fall apart if one were not to weave the divine and the non-divine to a unity. That is identical with our modern abstractions of past and future.

But in this picture of time, looking right back to the “Ancient of Days”, and encompassing the ever more and more encompassing, one experienced the image of God as Unity. Just as the three-divisioned, threefold Space was experienced as the image of the threefoldness of God, so was Time experienced as the image of the oneness of God. The basis of monotheism lies in the ancient time-experience, the basis for perceiving the Trinity lies in the ancient space-experience. Thus has the constitution of man's soul changed, thus has what was once alive became abstract and dry. However paradoxical this may sound: modern man most certainly has an abstract picture when he speaks of space, and he pictures or so I believe—a living relationship when he speaks of a friend. But that concreteness, that elementary experience, which today speaks from friend to friend, that is still abstract in comparison with the intensive experience of the universe which ancient man had when he experienced space and time, which to him were the images of the Unity and Trinity of the Divine.

Thus have we become dry and abstract in respect of space and time, and something else must take their place, something that we must again experience, that must be more and more inwardly realised. We must learn to feel that duality, that contrast in the world of which I have spoken during recent weeks. My dear friends, think for once that someone were to see only the rippled surface of water. This crinkly, rippled water-surface is in fact an abstract line. What is the concrete? There below, the water; there above, the air. And out of the duality air and water, in the co-operation of their forces, there arises the maya, the rippled surface. But so is our world the rippled surface, so too are we as men if we behold ourselves only as we look within maya; if we behold ourselves in reality then here too we must see: below, the water; above, the air.

Below the water—we see it if we observe transitory evolution, as I have brought it before you recently, where man develops in such a way that what he can conceive as a child he would grasp only as an old man. What he conceives in the age of puberty, he knows somewhat earlier, but still only towards old age. I depicted the course of human life, where it is only in old age that one grasps in oneself what one has been in childhood and youth. Life runs thus not apparently, but in reality on the surface, I have said that perhaps one does not need such a perspective today for life on the surfaces but for dying one needs it.—That the conception of the below; and belonging to it, the conception of the real above the region of duration. I spoke of this region in a recent lecture,¹ where man does not evolve, but has that which belongs to duration his whole life through from birth to death. But we cannot consider today how the below and the above interweave, if we do not realise the below, there where it threatens to become fixed, where it threatens to harden; and if we do not realise the above there where it threatens to dissolve, to spiritualise itself—if we do not develop the feeling for the contrast: the Divine—the Luciferic the Ahrimanic. Man of old had something alive in his soul when he spoke of his space-experience, his time-experience; the man of the Earth-future must develop inner concepts, inner impulses representing: Divine—Ahrimanic Luciferic.

• 1. 15th September 1918

My dear Friends,

Suppose that we observe an animal during the course of a year. We will find that its life follows the cycle of the seasons. Take for example an insect: according to the time of year it will form a chrysalis (pupate), at another season it will emerge and shed its chrysalis-form, at another time lay its eggs, and so on. We can follow the course of nature, follow the stages of such an insect's life, and find a certain connection between them, for the animal organizes its life according to its natural surroundings.

If we then go on to consider people—say, the people of one of the larger human communities during earlier stages of the earth's evolution—we find that they too experienced, more or less instinctively, the Life of nature. But as humanity developed further, those instincts, which enabled people to experience their natural surroundings so directly, largely died out. Among more advanced humanity, therefore, we will not find that spontaneous harmony—a harmony between what arises from the human side and the immediate setting or natural surroundings. That has to do with the fact that humanity itself is undergoing a development, which constitutes its history, and which will form a whole within the long planetary development of the earth.

Returning to our example of a lower animal, in insect, where these matters are revealed most clearly, we find that its experience spans a comparatively short space of time—a year. Then the cycle repeats itself. With regard to mankind, a certain law of development is found to run like a thread through long ages of our earth's planetary evolution, as we have repeatedly observed during our historical studies. We have become familiar, for instance, with the type of instinctive clairvoyance belonging to earlier peoples. Their pictorial consciousness gradually diminished during an intermediate period of human development, eventually giving place to modern consciousness which is intellectual, conceptual. Our own historical time, dating from the first third of the fifteenth century, is the time of the developing Consciousness Soul. It is that time when man will step fully into his capacity of intellectual thinking in its narrower sense, which will then bring him fully to free consciousness of the Self.

If we consider a longer space of time from this point of view, we begin to find certain observable laws in the development of humanity. We can compare these developmental laws with those which, say, an insect experiences during the course of a year. Now in ancient times people still instinctively lived together with their natural surroundings and with the cycle of nature but these instincts have more or less died away, and nowadays we live in a time in which conscious inner life must replace them. What would happen nowadays if a man were to give himself up entirely to chance! Suppose he were not to adopt any inner guiding principles or rules, or that he did not tell himself at a certain moment: ‘This is how you should orientate yourself’—suppose that he were not to arrive at any such inner orientation but lived his life though, from birth to death, as chance directed. Man who by virtue of his higher soul development is ranged above the animals would sink because of the manner in which he handled his soul-life, below the animal level.

We may say, therefore, that the insect has a certain direction in its life through spring, summer, autumn and winter. It does not give its development up to chance, placing itself as it does within certain laws in each succeeding phase of its life. Mankind, however, has left behind the age of instinctive co-existence with nature. In his case it was more ensouled than that of the animals, but still instinctive. His life has taken on a newer, more conscious form. Yet we find that man, in spite of his higher soul-life and capacity to think, has given himself over to a more chaotic life. With the dying away of his instincts he has fallen, in a certain way, below the level of the animals. However much one may emphasize man's further steps forward, towering above the animals, one must still concede that he has lost a particular inner direction in his life. This directing quality of his life could be found once more by seeing himself as a member of the human race, of this or that century. And just as, for a lower form of life, the month of September takes its place in the course of the year, so does this or that century take its place in the whole development of our planet. And man needs to be conscious of how his own soul-life should he placed historically in a particular epoch.

This is an idea to which man needs to grow accustomed so as to step even further into the development of the Consciousness Soul. A man should be able to say to himself: ‘I live in this or that epoch. I am not man in the full sense of the word if I give myself over to chance. Chance has deposited me into earthly life through birth. But to give myself up to change as far as my consciousness is concerned would be simply to abandon myself to karma. I am only man, in the full sense of being man, if I take account of what the historical development of humanity asks from my soul-life, belonging as I do to this particular epoch.’ An animal lives within the cycle of the year: man must learn to live as part of the earth's history.

We have placed as the most vital event in the earth's history the Mystery of Golgotha. And we have often considered what it meant to live before the Mystery of Golgotha, or at some point after it. We have here a kind of fulcrum in historical development, from which vital, historical deed one can reckon backwards and forwards. But to do justice to such reckoning we must keep in mind the particular tasks awaiting the human soul in each historical age. The kind of presentation of the past which is customary cannot lead to such an understanding of each particular age. We may be told in bald terms, how Persian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek or Roman history unfolded, but that leaves us without any key to the position of each in the whole regular historical development of our planet—in the whole regular way an animal stands within the course of the year. Now, in order to gain a concept of what we need to arouse in our own soul-life in this age, we have had to consider the various ages of history from many points of view. Life is rich and diverse, and if one wants to reach some reality concerning our life on earth, we shall have to look at human life from ever-differing points of view, from which the particular tenor of soul-life in our own time.

If we look back to ancient times in human history we shall find, scattered about the inhabited earth, what are know as the Mysteries. We find that various groups of people, living their lives scattered about the earth, develop under the influence of the Mysteries. They do so outwardly—but more particularly in regard to culture and the life of the soul. We find that individuals are accepted into the Mysteries, according to their degree of maturity. There they undergo further development, which is to lead them to a particular grade of knowledge, of feeling, and willing. Then, when they have advanced in knowledge, in higher feeling, and higher willing, they step out again and move among the majority of mankind, giving guidance for the details of daily life, for the strengthening of the soul's inner work and of their will, their actual deeds. With regard to past ages of man, the best place in which to study such guidelines is actually the training of those preparing for initiation in the Mysteries.

Though not of course in the abstract, intellectual manner of today, the pupils in the Mysteries were led to know the world about them. Most importantly, they learned to know the so-called three kingdoms of nature and all that lives in them. In the lowest classes of our schools we learn, by way of all sorts of concepts and pictures, how we stand within the three realms of nature. Through concepts and ideas we learn to know mineral, plant and animal. We then seek there the key to understanding human life itself. Such concepts, with the intellectual soul-content imparted to people these days, did not exist among those working for initiation in the ancient Mysteries. Concepts did exist then; but they were not won, as today, through the exercise of observation and logic. Rather, people had to exercise their souls inwardly, so as to arrive eventually at inner pictures of mineral, of plant, and animal. These people did not absorb the abstract concepts of today but experienced pictures—pictures that intellectual modern man might find fantastic but, nevertheless, pictures. And man knew from direct experience that what he discovered, when he experienced these pictures, actually yielded him something that lived in the mineral, plant or animal—of what grew there, took form, and unfolded within them. This he knew: and he knew it from those pictures which to modern man would appear fantastic myths.

Ancient man knew that reality expressed itself in things which today are considered mere mythology. He could certainly say: ‘The animal before me has firm visible outlines.’ But these firm outlines were not what he tried to grasp or understand. He tried rather to follow the flowing, mobile, fluid quality of its life. He could not do this, however, in sharp outlines, in sharply defined concepts. He had to teach in pictures that were fluid, metamorphosing, changing. And thus it was taught in the Mysteries.

But when, on the basis of this Mystery-knowledge, a man was to rise to self-knowledge, he underwent a significant crisis in his soul. According to the type of knowledge available in those ancient times, early man obtained pictures of mineral, plant and animal. With his dreamlike consciousness, he could then see, as it were, into the inner realms of nature. From the content of the Mysteries he also received the guiding principles of self-knowledge, much as he did in later times. ‘Know Thyself’ has been an ideal in all civilizations, in all ages of human cultural development. But in progressing from his kind of imaginative, natural knowledge towards knowledge of himself, ancient man underwent an inner crisis of the soul. I can only describe the nature of the crisis by saying that when he learned to look at the nature of the mineral as it was spread before him man found fulfillment in his soul-life. He bore in himself the effects of physical-mineral processes. He bore in himself pictures of interweaving vegetative life, and also of animal life. In his world he was able to bring all these together: mineral, plant and animal. Looking back from the vantage point of the world around him into his own inwardness, he had, in his primitive type of memory, an inner picture of mineral, plant and animal, and of how they worked together.

Undertaking to obey the injunction ‘Know Thyself’, however, he found himself suddenly at a stand. He had a world of inner pictures, varied, richly diverse in form and colour, and sounding with inner music—this was his experience of his earthly surroundings. Yet he felt that this world of forms, diversity, and constant flux, this world that trembled with glowing colour and radiance and musical tones, let him down when he made the attempt to know himself. The pictorial way in which he tried to grasp the nature of man itself baffled him in his attempt. He was able to attain pictures of man too: but even while experiencing them he knew that the reality of man's being, the source of his human dignity, escaped him—it was not there.

In his Mystery-initiation man lived through this crisis. Yet out of it, arising from the impotence of self-knowledge, something else developed: a particular conviction about Life, a conviction on which every ancient civilization was based. It meant that really enlightened people in those ancient times could say: ‘Man does not reveal his true nature here on earth. The minerals, plants and animals all achieve their end here on earth; they can reveal themselves fully in the pictures which I have of them.’ This is at the root of all ancient civilizations: this living conviction that man does not belong to the earth in the same sense as do the other realms of nature. His home is elsewhere than on the earth. His home lies essentially in the super-sensible world. And this belief was no arbitrary figment. It was achieved through a crisis of the soul—after gaining the knowledge available at that time about the world external to man. And a solution to the crisis was only possible because people still had the capacity to turn their minds to life before birth, and from there to life after death. Everyone then knew instinctively of life before birth. It was part of earthly life, like a pre-natal memory. And they learned about life after death on the basis of life before birth.¹

On the basis of those capacities which he then had, man learned that after crossing the threshold of death the moment would come when he would not only have around him the natural world, external to man, but his own being would arise before his soul. For it was characteristic of the more ancient stages of human development that, between birth and death, man developed an exclusively pictorial consciousness. I have often spoken about this. He did not yet possess the intellectual consciousness which we have today. In those days this was only developed immediately after death. And people retained it then, after death. It is a peculiarity of man's progress that, in ancient times, man's consciousness after death was an intellectual one; whereas we experience a purely pictorial panorama of our life during the three days after death. There lies the peculiarity, that in ancient times men had a dreamy pictorial consciousness on earth, whereas nowadays we have an intellectual consciousness. Then after death, they grew into an intellectual consciousness which enabled them, once free of the body, to gain freedom. In ancient times man became an intellectual and free being after death.

On being initiated into this fact, the pupil in the Mysteries would be told that he could win knowledge of the world external to man through his picture-consciousness. If however he obeys the imperative ‘Know Thyself’, and looks back upon himself, he will not find his full human dignity there. He will not find it in earthly life before death. He will only become fully human when he has crossed the threshold of death, and pure thinking becomes his; for with pure thinking he can become a free being. It is a strange thing that this type of consciousness occurred after death in past ages of human development, whereas today after death we have the panorama of past life spread out before us. In a sense this consciousness has entered man's life in a counter-stream. It has moved from the life after death into his actual earthly life. And what we have gained, particularly since the first third of the fifteenth century, has trickled into earthly man from post-earthly man. The pupil in the ancient Mysteries knew clearly that the essence of man could only be found in super earthly life, after death. This has now taken its place in life on earth. A real super-sensible stream has entered into our life on earth. This sets up an opposition to the direction of our human life, moving from ‘before’ to ‘after’, the super-sensible stream moving from ‘after’ to ‘before’. Thus, as modern people, we take part in super-earthly life. We have undertaken to become worthy—worthy of what has been drawn from super-sensible into sensible existence. We now have to win our freedom by inner right. We must recognize fully the import of the super-sensible for the development of the Consciousness Soul.

For the people of ancient times, when the injunction ‘Know Thyself’ loomed before them, their response had to be that there is no self-knowledge on earth: for the essence of humanity is simply not fulfilled here on earth. Man reaches it only when he has gone through the threshold of death into the super-sensible world.

At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and for centuries afterwards, man as he lived on earth was still called, in the language of ancient Mystery wisdom, the ‘natural man’. And it was considered that this natural man was not the real human being. The natural man was clearly differentiated from the spiritual being which bore the essence of man. The view then was that one only became spiritual man with the laying aside of the physical body. Only after crossing the threshold of death did one become spiritual man and, as such, ‘fully human.’ Initiation in the ancient Mysteries led to great humility with regard to earthly consciousness. Earthly man could not be made arrogant through Mystery-initiation. For whilst on earth he did not even feel that he was man in the fullest sense. He felt that he was more a candidate for humanity, and that he needed to use his life on earth in such a way that, after death, he could become fully man. So, according to Mystery-wisdom, man, as he went about his business on earth, was not a revelation of full humanity.

Now we must come to ancient Greece, and the time when Greek culture was widely influential. For it was then that people began to be aware, with their intellect and in freedom, that the true being of man was pouring from the sphere of after-death into man's earthly being. In Greek civilization the individual on earth was not regarded as entirely fulfilling his humanity. Men saw the work of the super-earthly, as it was drawing into the earthly. They saw in the detail of man's physiognomy, his way of going about, his shape—in all this they beheld with reverence, the super-earthly streaming into the earthly.

With the recent development of humanity all that has changed. Now man says: My great task is to become aware of my humanity. My task on this earth is to reveal, at least to some degree, man's being in its fullness. I too stand under the banner of the exhortation ‘Know Thyself’. I can compose my soul for freedom, because I have gained intellectual consciousness. I can lay hold of the inner strength of pure thinking in the act of self-knowledge. Before the eye of my soul man can appear. Not that man should grow proud in the partial fulfillment of this injunction ‘Know Thyself’. He should realize how at every moment this freedom of his has to be wrestled for. He should realize how, in his passions, emotions, feelings and sensibilities, he is always dependent on the subhuman. What was seen by that high form of pictorial consciousness in the world around, by ancient humanity, was also this realm of subhuman. They recognized that all their knowledge was of the subhuman realm in those ancient times. That was a significant point. For, they said, true man does not exist on earth. To grasp the intellectual nature of man they would have needed intellectual capacities themselves. With their non-intellectual form of knowledge they could only grasp the subhuman.

I have described in my (Philosophy of Freedom) how the intellectual is further developed into conscious, exact clairvoyance. It then lives in a free inner constitution of the soul. Only then can man know himself and his relation to the other parts of his being, outside his pure thinking and his free will. Through such a higher consciousness—imaginative, inspired and intuitive consciousness—man may reach in self-knowledge beyond his intellect and know himself as part of the super-sensible world. And then it will be clear to him that although he is fully human, as has become clear to him in his self-knowledge, full humanity requires of him that he perfect it ever more and more.

Thus modern man cannot develop the same sort of humility that he needed in ancient times, which arose when he had to say of himself: ‘Living in a physical body you are not yet fully human, you are only a candidate for humanity, not yet fulfilling your human dignity and worth. All you can do is prepare yourself for consciousness and freedom as they will arise in you immediately after death.’ A more modern man, who has meanwhile lived under Greek conditions in a different incarnation, would say: ‘Take heed that in your fleshly body between birth and death you do not neglect to be fully man. For as a modern man your inner task is the working-out of what has entered earthly life from the realm of the pre-earthly. You can become man on earth, and you must therefore take upon yourself the difficulty of becoming man on earth.’

All this is expressed in the development of man's religious consciousness. On a previous occasion we saw how in earlier times man looked up principally to the Father God, and in Christ he had the Son of God. In God the Father he saw the creative source of substance and the super-sensible origin of divine providence. Of this the earthly, perceptible world is merely an impress. He looked up to the cosmos from the earth; and in religious consciousness he looked up to God the Father. The pupils in the Mysteries had always been conscious that the most they could learn about man would be a preparation for the life after death. Now, through the Mystery of Golgotha, the Son of God has united with the earth's life, and man is able to develop an awareness of what St. Paul meant when he said ‘Not I, but Christ in me’. Now man can so direct his inner life as to let the Christ-impulse come to flower in him; he can let Christ's life flow and breathe through him. He can absorb the stream which has come to us from pre-earthly life and bring it to fruition in his life on earth.

A first stage in the reception of this stream consists in man noticing that at a particular point in his life he feels something flowering and coming alive in him. Previously it sat under the threshold of his consciousness, and he notices for the first time that it is there. It rises, filling him with inner light, inner warmth, and he knows that this inner life, inner warmth, inner light, has arisen in him during life on earth. He acquires a greater knowledge of life on earth than was his birthright. He learns to know something which arises within his humanity during his life on earth. And if man is sensible of the light and Life, of the love arising in him, and feels there the flowing, living presence of the Christ, he will receive strength—strength to grasp the fully human, the post-earthly, in the free activity of his own soul. Thus the Mystery of Golgotha and the Christ-impulse are intimately bound up with the attainment of human freedom, of that consciousness which is able to suffuse with inner life and warmth our mere thinking that is otherwise dead and abstract.

The exhortation ‘Know Thyself—bring your humanity to fruition in your own inner life’ has been addressed to humanity through all time, and is still in force today. But the experience of Christ in man is essential to our own day. It takes its place alongside the injunction ‘Know Thyself’, and must be given its full weight.

This indicates once again the enormous difference between the soul-constitution of the present day and that which prevailed in times past. We learn to consider man over great periods of time. The whole process is compatible with what takes place when the insect is sensitive to the period of summer in the setting of this world. For man should be able to live in the whole history of the earth as an animal lives in the course of the year. The insect ensures that it notices the transition to autumn, and it sets in motion another aspect of its life accordingly, as it did for spring and summer. And man knows: Once upon a time we were instinctively clairvoyant; we were unfree; our consciousness was pictorial; we were unable to obey the injunction ‘Know Thyself’; we know we could fully realize our humanity only on the other side of the gate of death; that time was analogous to spring in the life of the insect. Then came the Greek era, as summer and autumn come round for the insect. This was a bridge to that later era in which we now live. Our soul's work is different. We should be able to know ourselves to a certain degree here on earth, and accordingly be free after death to reach higher stages of development than in previous ages of man. Then one was wholly man only after death. In those ancient times man's task on the earth was to be a candidate for life, becoming fully man after death. In this, our own age, it is man's task to realize himself here in earth, that after death he may rise to higher stages of development than he could in former ages.

In those times the danger was that if he did not live his life on earth properly, man would not arrive at his full humanity. Today we face something different. We have to achieve our full humanity while on earth. If we fail in this, we betray ourselves and in the life after death plunge further down into the subhuman. In ancient days things could be left undone; today destruction follows. Then, not to become a candidate for life was an omission; today a man destroys, through his own humanity, something in the whole human race if he does not strive after full humanity in his own life. In past ages he merely left something undone; by doing so today he betrays mankind.

Thus we must grasp the need to place ourselves consciously in the world on a higher Level of being, as the insect does instinctively, on a lower Level, in its world. Otherwise man delivers himself up to chaos, which the animal instinctively does not do. We must learn through Anthroposophy to be really human, that we may not experience the scandal of being less in the world-order than the animals—despite the Gods having determined us for higher things. The animals do not neglect their part in the cosmic harmony, yet we as mankind turn the cosmic harmony into dissonance. And thus, I may say, we shall heap upon ourselves cosmic scandal, if we do not learn to think in this way and make our consciousness accord with the demands of the age. This we must learn in these days to join our feeling to our intellectual life. We must take in what would follow upon our not striving after that knowledge which makes us fully man. It would be a scandal before the Gods themselves.

• 1. I refer to my remarks in the so-called ‘French Course’.(Published as Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy)

Meister Bertram, Hieronymus Bosch, Dieric Bouts, Pieter Brueghel, Petrus Christus, Gerard David, Jan Van Eyck, Master of Flémalle, Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Hugo van der Goes, Quentin Matsys, Hans Memling, and Joachim Patinir.

The pictures we shall show today are to illustrate the development of Dutch and Flemish painting towards the end of the 15th century and on into the 16th.

From the inner historical point of view, this is one of the most important moments in the evolution of Art. It is, as you know, the period immediately after the dawn of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—that epoch which is called upon to bring forth, out of the depths of human evolution, all that is connected with the development of the Spiritual Soul. In the Dutch and Flemish pictures we shall now consider, this comes to expression in a most characteristic way. We see in every detail how the Spiritual Soul begins to work. We can see it, my dear friends, if only we bring to these works of Art an elementary power of understanding—that is to say, if we have to some extent escaped the unhappy fate of being historians of Art after the modern fashion.

The most up-to-date of the modern critics and historians will, no doubt, consider a critic like Hermann Grimm an altogether inferior intellect. But if we have not the misfortune to be quite so up-to-date, then, even if we knew nothing beforehand of the laws and impulses of human evolution as explained by Spiritual Science, we should still find in this artistic evolution a wonderful confirmation of all the differences which Spiritual Science indicates in its descriptions of the Third, Fourth, and fifth post-Atlantean epochs. It is interesting to see how gradually there emerges—century after century during these epochs—what we may regard as the fundamental frame-work of the artistic conceptions of today. It is interesting to see the several elements of it emerging in the most manifold quarters in the evolution of mankind.

If we go back to the history of drawing and painting, we find that the laws of Space, for example, have only been evolved by gigantic efforts of the human soul. The older representations in line and color do not really constitute a pictorial Art in the modern sense. They are more like a kind of narrative or story-telling on the flat surface. This applies to a by no means very distant past. (Without entering at length into these historic aspects, I will only indicate a few general points of view.)

We can see that in those olden times, the artist had in his mind's eye some story which he wished to portray—a story such as one might even narrate in words. He did not try to represent Space as it is; he simply fixed on to the flat surface what he desired to represent. The various things that he relates stand side by side on this flat surface. From our point of view, we could, at most, regard this as a kind of primitive illustration. Today we should not even allow the art of illustration to proceed in this way, merely setting down the events of the narrative on a flat surface.

At the next stage, an attempt is made to represent the ordering of things in Space, at any rate, in a most rudimentary way, by introducing the principle of overlapping. The artist makes use of the visibility, or partial visibility of this or that figure.

A figure that stands in the way of another, is in the foreground; the other stands behind it. By this method of overlapping, the surface is really used to suggest, at any rate, the dimension of depth.

At a following stage, the several figures are already made larger or smaller in proportion, taking into account that that which appears larger is to the front, while all that which appears smaller is further back. If, however, we return to the Third Post-Atlantean period, we find that this spatial treatment to which we are now accustomed, did not exist at all. They either put things down on the flat surface, as described above, or else they used the element of Space to express their thought. This, indeed, continued into the Graeco-Latin period. Contrary to the way in which things are really seen, we often find figures which are obviously to the front (nearer to the spectator) smaller in proportion to other figures which are further away. In olden times they often made use of this kind of treatment.

We see a King, for example, enthroned in the background of the picture. His subjects, in the foreground, are represented as being smaller in proportion. In Space they are not really smaller, but according to the conception prevailing, they are smaller in idea. Hence, while they are placed in the foreground, they are made smaller. This gives you the transition to a thing you will frequently find in older times—I mean what we may call "inverse perspective" compared to the perspective we know today. In this “inverse perspective” we must imagine things envisaged as they are seen by a particular figure in the picture. Figures which are in front from our point of view can, indeed, be smaller than other figures which are farther back, if a figure in the background is conceived as the observer of the scene. But to this end the man who is actually looking at the picture must entirely obliterate himself! He must either imagine himself away, or he must think himself into the picture, as it were,—into the personality of the figure conceived as the observer of the scene.

Here, then, we have an Impersonal perspective. This “impersonal perspective” was still suited to the stage of the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, when the Spiritual Soul was not yet so consciously born as afterwards. The man of the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch cannot forget himself; he demands a presentation arising from his own point of view. Hence it is that the art of perspective, strictly related to the visual point of the spectator, only appears with Brunellesco—that is to say, is the main, with the beginning of the Renaissance.

We may truly say that what is now called perspective was first introduced into the technique of Art at that point of time. Moreover, the South, through the impulses I characterised in one of the earlier lectures, is the inventor of perspective. For the South is much concerned with the ordering of things in the inner relationship of Space; concerned, that is to say, with qualities in extension. Thus the South is predisposed for mastery in the whole art of composition, and at a later date we see this art of composition fertilised by the Southern Renaissance—with all that I have described already as the inherent impulses which then came to the surface, and reached so high a degree of perfection.

Thus there comes forth in Art what we may call the gathering together of things in Space, where the man who looks at the picture is included in the whole conception. Truly, this corresponds to the age when the Spiritual Soul is born—when man becomes conscious of himself.

Hence it is in the south—in all that is connected with the Southern culture, which we have described before—it is here that the modern principle of perspective first arises. We see how it evolves quite naturally out of the Southern culture.

Meanwhile, however, another principle is at work, is emerging in the North; this principle we see in its nascent state, as it were, in the very moment of its origin, when we turn our gaze to the Brothers Van Eyck.

In the two Van Eycks—Hubert van Eyck to begin with, and later in his brother Jan—we see emerging, albeit in a different form as yet, what afterwards came forth as described when dealing with Rembrandt, for example. Something which emerges out of the Mid-European, Northern element. These things always find expression in external symptoms—in outwardly real symbols, if I may so call them. Brunellesco must be conceived as the inventor of modern perspective. The ancient perspective—that which underlies the Greek pictures, for example,—does not possess what is called a “vanishing point.” It has a whole “vanishing line.” The scene we see seems to converge, not in a vanishing point, but in a vanishing line. In this is, indeed, expressed the radical difference between the ancient perspective and the modern, which is the perspective of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

Brunellesco, then, is the discoverer of modern perspective. It is discovered in the South. Whereas in the North—this is no mere tradition, but contains a profound truth—in the North oil-painting is discovered. Although Hubert van Eyck was not the sole inventor of oil-painting, nevertheless, it is true that oil-painting was discovered in the age and out of the whole milieu out of which he created.

Now what does this signify? What is the underlying reason? For the art of oil-painting was then carried to the South. Perspective was carried from the South to the North; oil-painting from the North to the South. What does this signify?

It is deeply rooted in their fundamental character and mood of soul. In the South men have a feeling for coming together mutually in the Group. The South has far more attachment to the Group-soul as such. Hence the people of the South are fond of describing themselves as members of such and such a Group. They have little understanding of the individual principle. Such things should be taken into account, for Nations will never understand each other if they take no pains to grasp their several characteristics.

When a man has been brought up in the more Latin spirit—who has received the inner impulse of the Southern nature—speaks of his devotion to nation or people—when he calls himself a Patriot in one sense or another, he means something very different from the Mid-European who speaks of Patriotism. Mid-Europe really has no talent for this belonging together, this gathering of men together into a Group. In Mid-Europe there is a faculty for the Individual principle. The true native character of Middle Europe is expressed in the recognition of the Individual, and in the age of the development of the Spiritual Soul this implies, to begin with, the recognition of the personality, the human individual—the person.

Now, if we feel essentially the Group-element, which is, of course, extensive (spread out in space), we shall naturally live in the element of composition. One who has this tendency will have a natural understanding for the art of composition. If, on the other hand, we have a strong feeling for the individual principle, we shall seek to mould the individual from within—outward. Instead of seeing the Spirit, as it were, put forth its feelers to embrace and hold the Group together, we see the Spirit within each single form; we place the several individual figures side by side, seeing the Spirit in each single one. We seek to bring to the surface of the body what is there in the inner being of the soul.

This is not to be achieved by perspective, but by color that is irradiated, flooded by light. Thus in the profoundly Germanic brothers, Van Eyck, we have the real starting point of the modern art of color, which seeks to hold fast in the color itself, what comes from the individual character of the soul to the outer surface of the body.

The brothers Van Eyck and their successors, derive their essential inner quality from this Northern Mid-European element, while composition, which gradually finds its way into their works, is borrowed more from France and Burgundy.

It is no mere matter of chance that this special development in the 15th century took place at a time when the districts where these artists lived did not possess a hard-and-fast political structure. Such a structure was only afterwards imposed upon them from the South—from France and especially from Spain. In that period we see spread out over the Northern and Southern Netherlands the more individual City-formations—towns and cities whose connection as compact States was at most a very loose one. The people of those regions, and of that time, had no inclination to think that men ought to be held together in groups by well-defined States, where the State itself is the important thing—where the precise extent and frontiers of a particular State are considered a matter of importance. To the people out of whom the brothers Van Eyck arose, the particular nation to which they belonged was not the point. Nor did they think of what is called the “State,” or trouble themselves about its frontiers. What mattered to them was that human beings full, thorough-going human beings—should develop, regardless of the group to which they might belong.

So we see this Art of the Southern Netherlands, the regions of Flanders. The inner being of man is conjured forth to the surface of the body in a tender and thoughtful way. By a mysterious power they flood their pictures with light, introducing just that element which color can introduce, for the individual characterisation of the soul.

Then we see the burgher, the citizen virtues of the Northern Netherlands reaching down into the Southern aristocratic element. The life of the burghers gives birth to that Art which places the individual so thoroughly into the world. It is, in reality, an overcoming of the Group-soul principles in Art.

And yet, as we shall see in the very first of our pictures today, how wonderfully the mass-effects are, nevertheless, attained. But with these mass-effects, it is not that they are conceived as a group from the outset. They arc not deliberately constructed: the figures distributed in Space so as to belong together as a Group. On the contrary, these wonderful groupings arise through the very fact that each individual being has his full importance, and takes his stand beside the others.

Such are the things that we shall recognise out of this portion of artistic evolution. In the brothers Van Eyck we still have comparatively primitive, rudimentary groupings in Space, but withal a high degree of inwardness, and a strong adaptation to what is actually seen, regardless of any hard and fast conventions.

In effect, we have here the second pole of that entry into the physical reality in the artistic life, which belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean period. This pole is in the North, while the other takes its start from the Italian art of the Renaissance. There we have the element of composition, and all else is to some extent subservient to this. In the North we have a creating from within, outwards. Only gradually and by dint of constant striving do they arrive at a certain power of composition by the placing together of individuals portrayed with inwardness of soul. Thus the one aspect of the naturalistic principle in Art, which belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, found its essential fountain-head in these regions. These painters place their subject in the immediate reality which surrounds them. The Biblical story, for example, when reproduced in Art by men of earlier times, was taken right away from their immediate surroundings. But this period in Art places the Biblical narratives into the midst of the immediate naturalistic reality. Men of the Netherlands stand before us as the characters of Biblical history.

What formerly shut one off, as it were, from the outer naturalistic world—the golden background and all that was expressed in it—ceases to exist. On the very soil where we ourselves are standing, the Biblical scenes move before us.

It goes with this, quite naturally and inevitably, that they everywhere surround their human figures with that peculiar treatment of space which we find in their interiors, not in their outer landscapes. I would express it thus. Having ceased to be living in the composition, the space itself must be transposed, transplanted into the picture. Space, as such, must now appear in the picture. How, then, can this be done? By shaping a portion of the picture itself as a “space,” that is to say, by placing the figures in an “interior”—in a room, or the like. Or, again, by painting a naturalistic space such as forms itself around the human being in the landscape. Thus with all the impulses of the new age which, as above described, permeate especially this Dutch and Flemish Art, we see arising quite naturally, the art of landscape painting. The landscape appears, often with a mighty and overpowering grandeur, in the background of the figures, or in some other way.

This Art evolves and flourishes most beautifully in the age of the free cities, when every town or city in these regions has a pride in its independence, and feels no inner need for territorial union with other cities. A certain international consciousness arises. This freedom from separations, this freedom from the Group-spirit, is a product of the sound and strong Germanic burgher-spirit of those times and places.

All this grows out of the life of the Northern and Southern Netherlands. Influenced very slightly by the South—influenced only by the Southern art of composition through the adjoining southern countries—their artistic creation springs from this democratic strength and soundness of the burghers, and blossoms forth until the time when the whole thing is eclipsed, if I may put it so, by the Group-mind once more.

Thus the period in artistic evolution which we shall illustrate today is at the same time a period of free development of human beings. I might continue to say many other things; but I wanted, above all, to fix your minds on the world-historic moment when this development in Art took place.

We will now proceed at once to show a number of pictures on the screen.

We begin with the famous Altar-piece of Ghent, by the Brothers Van Eyck.

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1. The Brothers Van Eyck. Altar-piece. (St. Bavo. Ghent.)

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2. God, the Father

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3. Mary

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4. John

This Altar-piece consists of many parts. This is the portion seen when the front is opened—the middle portion above the Altar. The figure in the center, in Papal costume, is representing God the Father. Conceived in the spirit of the Church, God the Father is actually represented as a Pope. Nevertheless, the features I have indicated are recognisable in the whole artistic composition. If we went back still further, we should find the preceding evolution altogether steeped in Christian ideas—the Christian traditions—that is to say, which the ecclesiastics forcibly impressed upon the people. These traditions most certainly corresponded to a manner of thought inspired by the Group-consciousness. But out of the midst of this very element we now witness the individual spirit making itself felt.

The figure to your left is Mary; that on the right is St. John. Here, then, we find ourselves in the first third of the 15th century. Hubert Van Eyck died in 1426; the Altar-piece was finished by his brother Jan. It is the first third of the 15th century.

From the same Altar-piece we will show the angel-pictures, to the right and left of these central figures.

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5. Angels making Music

Here you see a group of angels playing on instruments of music. Compare them with the angels by the German Christian Masters of the period immediately preceding this. Lochner, for instance, or the Master of Cologne—the pictures we saw in a former lecture. You will see how great a difference there is. The angels here are full-grown human beings, in spite of their clerical and ceremonial garments—fully developed human beings—no longer as before, half child-like forms. In such a group as this, you will see that the artist has not yet reached a thorough-going perspective. The perspective is only carried through to a slight extent. You see the whole picture on the surface—spread out like a tapestry. We will now show the angel-picture from the other side of the altar-piece.

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6. Angels singing

This whole Altar-piece was done by order of a wealthy Burgher for the Church of St. Bavo. The several parts are now scattered abroad—at Ghent, in Brussels, in Berlin ...

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7. The Brothers van Eyck. Adoration of the Lamb.

Here we come to the main portion of the picture, beneath the other three. The “Adoration of the Lamb” is one of the fundamental motifs of this and the preceding period. Here we see it beautifully presented as the fundamental religious conception which had evolved during the course of many centuries. It could not have been embodied in this beautiful artistic form till they had so grown together with this conception as to represent it thus. Throughout the centuries of Christianity this idea had gradually taken shape—this idea of the Salvation, the Redemption of mankind through a great Sacrifice.

We must go far, far back in time to realise its full significance. Compare the subject—the story which this picture tells—with a picture, for example, of the Mithras Offering. There you have Mithras seated on the Bull; the Bull is wounded, the blood is flowing. It is the uplifting of Mithras, His salvation by the overcoming of the Beast. You are familiar with the deeper spiritual meaning of this picture; it is, if I may so describe it, the very antithesis of the one we now see before us. The rearing and rebellious Bull has to be fought down—gives up his blood by force; the Lamb gives His Blood of His own free will.

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8. Adoration of the Lamb as compared to a Mithras-Relief

What does this signify? Salvation is lifted out of the element in which it was previously conceived—the element of violence, and strife and conflict. It comes into the element of free devotion and out-pouring Grace. Such is the idea which is here expressed. Not by man seeking in pride to rise beyond himself, seeking to kill his lower nature, but by experiencing in his soul that which streams through the world and patiently suffers with the world, will he attain his liberation at every point of this world's existence, his redemption.

Such is the Universal—and therefore, the individually universal—principle of redemption which we here find expressed. The Lamb is One, yet no one being is striking it. Therefore we see it offered up for every one of those who worship it, who draw near to it from all their different spheres of life—near to the Lamb of Salvation, near to the Fountain of Life.

The greatest conception of the Middle Ages, grown and matured in the course of the centuries, is thus recorded at the end of the Mediaeval Ages by the brothers Van Eyck, and there arises in this period one of the greatest of all works of Art.

Of course, we must bear in mind the points of view I emphasised just now. The individual principle, creating from out of the inner life, wrestles still with an inadequate mastery of the treatment of space. You will, for instance, scarcely be able to imagine a spectator situated with his eye in such a place as to perceive the spatial distribution of this figure here (at the bottom of the picture).

Very beautifully Van Eyck portrayed how the Impulse of the Lamb works in the various callings, in the several branches of human life. Here are some examples.

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9. Brothers van Eyck. The Knights and Judges. (From the Altar-piece at Ghent. Berlin Museum.)

These are the Judges and the Knights as they draw near to the Lamb. All these are portions of the same great Altar-piece. The next is a very tender picture:

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10. Brothers van Eyck. The Pilgrims and Hermits. (From the Altar-piece at Ghent.)

Here we can already admire the treatment of landscape in relation to the human beings to whom it belongs.

Hubert van Eyck died in 1426, when the Altar-piece was not nearly finished. His brother Jan continued working at it for many years, and scholars have long been engaged in the dispute, which they seem to regard as so important, as to which portions are due to Hubert and which to Jan. This dispute is, after all, more or less superfluous, if we are interested in the artistic aspect. We now come to another picture by Van Eyck.

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11. Jan van Eyck. Madonna. (At Bruges.)

This picture was painted in 1436. You will admire the tenderness of expression in the Madonna, no less than the characterisation of this figure (the Canon, Georg van der Pole). It reveals a wonderful observation of Nature and a strong sense of character, with all the primitiveness of the period—needless to say. The next picture was painted by Jan van Eyck in Spain, whither he had been summoned.

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12. Jan van Eyck. The Waters of Life. (Prado. Madrid.)

Observe the Gothic architecture in the background. To represent the Waters of Life, the Well of Life, in connection with the Sacrifice of the Lamb, was natural to the ideas of that time. Once more, as in the former picture, you have the motif of God the Father with Mary and St. John.

Here, however, it is transferred more into the spirit of the Southern Art—not unnaturally, as the picture was painted in Spain.

In the former picture we had the same theme treated with more of the Northern character.

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13. Jan van Eyck. The Crucifixion. (Berlin.)

Notice how the characteristic qualities come to expression in this picture. The human element far outweighs the Biblical tradition. Only the subject, the occasion, we might say, is taken from that quarter. See with what deep human sympathy the Biblical story is re-awakened, as it were. Here it is not merely the prevalent idea that it is meet to represent in pictures what the Bible tells. The whole event is felt again and re-experienced in the highest degree. It is scarcely conceivable—(pointing to the figures of Mary and St. John)—that a Southern artist would have placed this line, and this, side by side. Here, however, the painter's chief concern is not with the composition, but to give an impression of real inwardness—to realise the inner experience. And then we must say that the effect of this line, and this line, together, is most wonderful, characterising as it does the different moods of the soul.

We now give two examples of secular subjects by the same artist.

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14. Jan van Eyck. The Betrothal. (National Gallery. London.)

This picture shows very clearly how great was the artist's power of characterisation and expression. Our last picture by Van Eyck shows the attempt to get still further in the way of portraiture;

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15. Jan van Eyck. The Man with the Carnation. (Berlin.)

Here you will see with great distinctness, the artist does not care at all to conceive what a man should be like; he does not work out of any such impulse, but as he sees the human being—whatever presents itself to his vision—this he reproduces.

We now come to a contemporary artist who outlived Van Eyck by a few years—the Master of Flémalle, as he is called.

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16. Master of Flémalle. St. Veronica. (Frankfort.)

In him we recognise a seeker inspired by somewhat the same impulse as the Van Eycks, yet influenced far more from France. He recognise these influences in the “line.” There is a kind of echo of artistic tradition. In Van Eyck's work we feel that everything is born out of an elemental inner need. Here, on the other hand, there is already an underlying opinion—this thing or that ought to be represented in such or such a way. Though they are not by any means predominant in his work, still we can see the Master of Flémalle accepts the principles of certain aesthetic traditions. In the former artist you will not easily find, for example, this peculiar position of the hand, nor this peculiar treatment of facial expression. These elements in the picture are undoubtedly to some extent determined by certain influences from France. An atmosphere of elegant grace is poured out over these figures, which you will not find to this extent in the figures of Van Eyck.

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17. Master of Flémalle. Death of the Virgin. (London.)

Characteristically—this picture shows the Christian legend transplanted into the artist's present time. These pictures were painted about the thirties of the 15th century.

We now come to Van der Weyden, who—like the former artist, received certain influences from France. Still, he contains all those elements which mark him out clearly as a follower of the Van Eycks.

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18. Rogier van der Weyden. Descent from the Cross. (Berlin.)

Already in this picture you will see a characteristic difference. There is an essentially dramatic life in this, whereas we might say Van Eyck is purely ethical. Van Eyck places his figures quietly side by side; they influence one another, but there is no one all-pervading movement. Here, however, in Van der Hayden's work, there is a certain drama in the working together of the figures. It is not merely ethical.

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19. Rogier van der Weyden. Descent from the Cross. (Prado. Madrid.)

The same subject, treated once more by the same artist. And now a picture taken from the Christian legends.

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20. Rogier van der Weyden. St. Luke painting the Madonna. (Munich.)

Here you see the Evangelist St. Luke, who, as the legend has it, was a painter, painting Mary and the Child.

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21. Rogier van der Weyden. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Alte Pinakothek. Munich.)

One of these is King Philip of Burgundy; this one, who is just taking off his hat, is Charles the Bold. If only by this external feature, the whole scene is very much transferred into the artist's immediate present. For the Kings who come to worship the Child, he takes the figures of princes more or less of his own time.

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22. Rogier van der Weyden. Charles the Bold. (Berlin.)

Here, then, we have a portrait by Van der Weyden. All these artists attained—a certain perfection in the art of portraiture.

We now come to Petrus Christus:

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23. Petrus Christus. The Annunciation (wings of an Altar-piece) (Berlin.)

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24. Petrus Christi. The Birth of Christ

The Angel and Mary (The Annunciation) and the presentation of the Christ Child. Petrus Christus works more or less equally along the lines of Van der Weyden on the one hand, and the Van Eycks on the other. These pictures were painted about 1452—the middle of the 15th century.

In the following pictures we come increasingly to the more Northerly Dutch element, where the landscape is developed to greater and greater perfection. The next picture is by Dieric Bouts the Younger. And now, a picture extraordinarily characteristic of this stream in Art:

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25. Dieric Bouts. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Alte Pinakothek. Munich.)

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26. John the Baptist and Christopher

On one side is the Baptist; on the other side the Christophorus—the Christ-Bearer. Truly, there comes to expression here the full and immediate human inwardness, and with it the landscape that belongs to it. In Dieric Bouts you will especially notice this art—to place the human being fittingly within the landscape of open Nature.

The realistic representation of things is working its way through more and more. Man as an artist becomes more and more able to find, in the direct reproduction of Nature, what he has been striving for along this path.

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27. Hugo van der Goes. Portinari Altarpiece, c. 1475. (Uffizi. Florence.)

Truly, Realism has here reached a high degree of perfection. The same subject again:

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28. Hugo van der Goes. Adoration by the Shepards, 1480 (Berlin.)

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29. Hugo van der Goes. St. Anthony and St. Matthew.

Below are the Donors of the picture. By the same artist:

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30. St. Margaret and St. Mary Magdalene. (Ste. Maria Novalis. Florence.)

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31. Hugo van der Goes. The Death of Mary. (Academy. Bruges.)

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32. Hugo van der Goes. Adam and Eve. The Fall. (Vienna.)

The Art of that time—as I have said on previous occasions relating to Meister Bertram—did not picture a mere snake, but tried to portray the Luciferic element.

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33. Meister Bertram. The Fall (Hamburg.)

That the snake itself—the existing physical snake—should have been the Tempter, is an invention of the most modern naturalistic materialism.

We now come to the artist who, educated in the School of Van der Weyden, represents, in a certain sense, its continuation. He was known in the School as Der deutsche Hans. I refer to Hans Memling.

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34. Hans Memling, Madonna Enthroned. (Uffizi. Florence.)

This artist was born at Mainz. We shall, if possible, in the near future, show some examples of Upper German paintings, which have their own characteristic peculiarities. Its tendencies are quite evidently present in this picture; but for the rest, Memling had absorbed all that was then living in the Art of the Netherlands, including the influence that came over from France. The next picture is also by Hans Memling.

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35. Hans Memling. The Seven Joys of Mary. (Munich.)

—a motif which was also familiar to those times. The various events connected with the life of Mary are here portrayed. Unfortunately it is too small in this reproduction to recognise the details very clearly.

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36. Memling. The Last Judgment. (Marienkirche. Danzig.)

A characteristic picture by Memling. With real genius, in his own way, he brings to expression his conception of the Last Judgment. There is a certain angular quality about it, and yet the whole event is permeated with humanity, with inward feeling. The picture is note at Danzig. A powerful trader stole the picture—but, being a pious man also, he afterwards bequeathed it to a church in Danzig.

He will also acquaint ourselves with Memling's portraits. You will see that all this School achieves a greatness of its own in representing the human individuality.

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37. Memling. Portrait of a Man. (Berlin.)

The expression of the qualities of the soul in this face is, indeed, remarkable. This is a well-known picture at the Hague.

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38. Memling. Portrait. (The Hague.)

We come now to the later artists who no longer show quite the same freedom and simplicity, but a certain contortion and inner complexity. David, for instance, was born in 1400; he came from Holland. Hitherto, we may say, we have had before us the pre-Reformation period in Art; the artist we shall now show brings us already very near the Reformation.

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39. Gerard David. Adoration of the Magi. (Munich.)

Here you will recognise how strongly the Southern influence is already working in the element of composition.

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40. Gerard David. Baptism of Christ. (Bruges.)

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41. Gerard David. Madonna and Christ, with Angels. (Rouen.)

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42. Gerard David. Mary and Child

The next is by an artist who was in a sense only a kind of imitation of David. We now come to Geertgen, who, though he dies at the early age of twenty-eight, does, indeed, bear within him all the peculiar characteristics of this epoch.

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43. Geertgen. Holy Family. (Amsterdam.)

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44. Geertgen. The Holy Night. (Berlin.)

As we go forward into the 16th century, other elements mingle more and more with what was characteristic of the Van Eyck period. We come now to Hieronymus Bosch.

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45. Hieronymus Bosch. Descent from the Cross.

In his work we find a strong element of composition. Also we have no longer the mere naturalistic observation. His work is permeated with a fanciful, fantastic feeling—so much so, that he becomes the painter of all manner of grotesque and “spooky” subjects.

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46. Hieronymus Bosch. Christ carrying the Cross.

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47. Hieronymus Bosch. Hell. (Prado. Madrid.)

The fantastic element is mingled with all that he had learned in this direction.

Now we come to Quentin Matsys, in whom the element of composition is already strongly paramount. Indeed, this is already in the 16th century.

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48. Quentin Matsys. Holy Family, 1509. (Brussels.)

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49. Quentin Matsys. Mourning for Christ. (Antwerp.)

Here you see quite deliberate composition. In the next picture we shall see how this feeling for composition combines with that for individual characterisation even where there is less intensity of form, or movement, in the group.

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50. Quentin Matsys. The Money-Changer and His Wife. (Louvre. Paris.)

We now come to an artist who reveals the characteristics of the period especially in his landscape-painting—Joachim Patinir. It was at this time and from these regions that landscape-painting first developed and found its way into the full artistic life. Only from this time onward was it really discovered for the life of Art.

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51. Patinir. The Flight into Egypt. (Madrid.)

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52. Patinir. The Flight into Egypt. (Berlin.)

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53. Patinir. The Baptism of Christ. (Vienna.)

I beg you to look at this especially, from the point of view of landscape-painting. Such landscape treatment could naturally only originate in the age of attempted naturalism; only then does landscape begin to have a real meaning for Art.

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54. Patinir. Temptation of St. Anthony. (Prado. Madrid.)

The next is a painter quite definitely of the 16th century. I spoke just now of the “Burgher” element. He carries it still further, even into the sphere of the peasantry. His works are born of the elemental simplicity of the people. Nevertheless, all manner of other influences enter into them—Italian influences, for example. Thus he strangely unites his elemental Dutch simplicity with a very marked Renaissance feeling. I refer to Pieter Brueghel—born in 1525.

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55. Brueghel. The Pious Man and the Devil. (Naples.)

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56. Brueghel. The Blind Leading the Blind. (Paris. Louvre.)

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57. Brueghel. The Fall of the Angels. (Brussels.)

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58. Brueghel. The Way to Calvary. (Vienna.)

And another Biblical subject by the same painter.

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59. Pieter Brueghel. The Adoration of the Magi. (London.)

With that, we will finish for today.

Eight days ago began with a presentation to help us understand the language of John. We considered how the Apocalypse is to be read and what is hidden behind some of the mysterious expressions, for example, behind the lamb as the beast with seven eyes and seven horns. We also sought to explain the beast with two horns and considered the number 666 as an example of how we must live into this mysterious book. Today, we again seek to find the meaning of this book.

The record of the New Testament is a record of initiation. Using individual images as examples we have seen how deep their meaning really is. All the images have shown us that the Gospels express, in pictorial form, the deepest imaginable meaning of the evolution of the world. It could occur to someone to ask why there are contradictions in the individual Gospels, why they do not correspond to each other. What needs to be said concerning this is already laid out in my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact.¹ The Gospels are not records of the biography of Christ Jesus, but rather records concerning initiation. And the Apocalypse is the profoundest record. Augustine said: What is now called the “Christian religion” is the ancient true religion. What was the true religion, now is called the Christian religion.²

We understand what is meant by this statement when we consider the fundamental assertion of Christianity: “Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.” John 20:29) In this way something entirely new has come into the world. The teachings are already contained in other religious systems. Among those who understood who “Christ” is the main emphasis was never placed on the content of this teaching. One can also find this content in records from earlier times. What is important with Christ is what this individual means for humankind. We can acquire an understanding for this most readily if we take a look at the ancient mystery centers.

Until the time of Christ only a few specially chosen people were initiated. After severe testing they were permitted to learn the teachings that can now be found in my book Theosophy.³ One had to wait a long time until the higher degrees of vision were permitted. Only the most initiated knew the tradition of how to carry out an initiation. If someone wanted to become a pupil, as a first step they had to do this, as a second step, that, and so forth. The initiation concluded when the pupil had gone through the preparatory stages and was led by the wise ones into the mysteries themselves. That took place in a state of consciousness called “ecstasy,” a state of existence outside the physical body. It was connected with a diminution of consciousness, but at the same time with a vision of the spiritual world. An inner schooling consisting of certain will impulses, meditations, and a purification of the desires brought the pupil to a point where the last step was possible. Then the pupil was put by the initiator into a state that lasted three and a half days, a state like the one we enter when we fall asleep at night. External sense impressions disappeared. When we are asleep, nothing enters into the place where the sense impressions of sight and sound have disappeared, but with those being initiated a new world appeared. They were surrounded by a new world, a world of astral light, not the darkness, nothing of what today's human being experiences in the night appeared to them. The darkness was permeated by spiritual light and beings that are incarnated within the spiritual light. These beings became visible in the astral light. Then, after awhile, the astral world full of flowing light began to resound with the music of the spheres. What had merely been seen earlier began to be heard; it was a pure, spiritual music. External music is only a shadow-like reflection of the sounds of the spheres the seer hears, the seer who also perceives the inside of spiritual beings. Suppose we enter a large room filled with people; only when they begin to speak do they reveal their inner life to us. That is how it is in the spiritual world. First the beings become visible, then the inner life of the beings speaks to us. That is the harmony of the spheres.

Then, when the initiates were led back to vision of the physical world, they experienced themselves fully transformed into new human beings. Everyone who returned in this way then typically expressed: “My God, my God, how you have glorified me!” (Compare Matt. 27:46 and Mark 15:34)⁴

And so they returned, knowledgeable concerning the spiritual world out of their own experience. They were then seen as messengers from the spiritual world. What they had experienced up to the point of entering the spiritual world was prescribed precisely, stage by stage.

Although the rites of initiation were not recorded exactly, still there were canons of initiation containing prescriptions for all the steps. Everywhere, whether in the Egyptian schooling of Hermes, or in the Persian school, or in the Greek mysteries, or with the Druidic or Drotten mysteries, there were typical, traditional rules concerning what was to be experienced by anyone wanting to become an initiate.

Typical, similar characteristics appear wherever the lives of the great apostles of religions or world-views are described. The lives of Orpheus, Pythagoras, Hermes, and Buddha have many features in common, features that are important for all religious heroes. Why is this? Superficial researchers have believed that one borrowed from the other. But that is not true. Nevertheless, all of these typical religious heroes passed through these steps up to the highest stage of initiation. There were no biographies in ancient times that took into consideration the external conditions of a person's life. The further back we go before the turning point of time, the less value we find ascribed to the externals of life. Absolutely nothing was said concerning what the very greatest heroes of humankind experienced externally on the physical plane. Their lives were entirely dedicated to initiation. Telling the story of their initiation meant telling the story of their life. The main thing about a Hermes or a Buddha was what he had experienced until the initiation. Since the stages of initiation were similar everywhere, one heard a spiritual description of the life of the great initiates.

What in the past had been experienced only in secret became historical fact in Christianity. What could be described of Herme' experience took place in inner mysteries, at locations far removed from profane eyes.

In Christianity, for the first time, something was experienced as an external physical event that otherwise only took place in the mystery centers. The course Christ's life followed is the same as that experienced by all initiates when, to begin with, they had their etheric bodies lifted out of their physical. Everything that Christ Jesus experienced physically, on the physical plane, they had experienced in the etheric realm. Their last words were also, “My God, my God, how you have glorified me!” They had experienced earlier in the etheric body what Christ experienced in a physical body. In this way the prophecies of the prophets were fulfilled. This one time only experience of Christ represents the greatest decisive turning point in our world history and separates it into two parts.

The evangelists did not write ordinary biographies, but took rather the existing canonical initiation books. All four Gospels are to be seen as initiation writings, each presented from a different perspective. Since, however, initiation is described everywhere in the same way, the Gospels are in agreement on the most important things. We can describe the life of an initiate if we consider it as a life dedicated wholly to initiation. It would have seemed unholy to the evangelists to give an ordinary, external, historical biography of Christ Jesus. They had to take the building blocks for their writings from books derived from the mysteries. Hence, to a certain extent, what the prophets had said was fulfilled.

In a certain sense the Apocalypse represents a new kind of initiation; it shows how the old mysteries were transformed into Christian mysteries. When we look back at the old mysteries we find in them a more or less unified feature. It consisted of the following: Whether we go to Egypt, or to Persia, or to India, whether we are deepened in the Orphic or the Eleusinian mysteries, we find there complete agreement in one feature: a prophecy concerning the One who is to come.⁵ This trait is also found in the Northern European mysteries. There was an initiate in the most ancient times who was signified by the name “Sig.” The Drotten mysteries, which were in Russia and Scandinavia, the Druidic mysteries in Germany all derived from an initiate with the name Sig, who was the founder of the northern mysteries. What happened in the mysteries has been preserved in the various myths and legends of the German nation and other Germanic peoples. The myths and legends are pictorial representations of what was experienced. In the Siegfried legend⁶ we see most clearly that feature that seeks for an end. This feature is expressed in mythological terms in the “Gotterdammerung,” the twilight of the gods.⁷ This is characteristic of all the northern mysteries.

In all mysticism the image of the feminine is used for the soul; this image is also used by Goethe in his “chorus mysticus,” in the concluding scene of the second part of Faust. It is the eternal in the human being, the divine soul that draws the human being forward. Just as initiation was described in ancient Egypt and Persia as the union of the soul with the spiritual, so was it also described here in the north. Here in the north it was understood best that a man proved his worth on the field of battle. Those who counted for something in the north were honored as fighters who fell in the field of battle; those were the ones who entered into eternal life; the others died in their sleep. The fallen fighters were received by the Valkyries,⁸ their own soul; union with the Valkyries was union with the eternal. It was said of Siegfried that he had already united with the Valkyries here on earth; that shows he was an initiate. The meaning of the story, that Siegfried had already experienced union with the Valkyries here on earth, is that he was an initiate. This legend tells us something with the death of Siegfried. When experiencing initiation in the ancient mysteries the initiate is told: We can only bring you to a certain point ... further than this only another can bring you—this other one is Christ Jesus—all that we can give you will be darkened when he comes, the One who will bring the new initiation. Siegfried is vulnerable to Hagen⁹ on his back because the cross has not yet been placed on the back of the one who will take over from the ancient initiation. This part of the body will one day be made invulnerable when the cross has been laid across it. In this way the northern mysteries alluded to Christ Jesus.

All the ancient mysteries looked toward him who was to come, who will live on the physical plane so as to found a new world order. The new initiation is what will occur through the impulses he gave. We find a portrayal of this in the Apocalypse. It tells us how initiation will proceed until Christ Jesus comes again in a new form. The Apocalypse refers to the time when an organ for receiving Christ will be developed. The time until Christ Jesus again will approach is described in the Apocalypse. We will understand the individual words if we adopt the way of thinking of one who has experienced such an initiation. We remember here the words of Christ—if we understand them we will also understand the Apocalypse—“Before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58) Christ directs his view from the past over to the present because for him there is an eternal present.

If we wish to understand what is meant by this we need only remember the fourfold human being who consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I. When the I lights up in the course of evolution then the astral and etheric bodies are changed; and then finally the physical body too. The I is here for eternity; it is born out of the womb of a higher spirituality. Whether we look into the past or into the future, this I is what is eternal. If we observe an individual we can ask the question: What transformation has this person's I gone through? If we look back to the great Atlantean flood and then further back we do not find the I in a body such as exists today. At that time we were in a state wherein we could not think as well as we can now. When we look into the future we find the I in bodies ever more perfect, bodies having a perfection that we today with our thinking cannot even imagine. We cannot now imagine the perfection of thinking, the purity of feeling, and so forth in the future bodies of humankind. Initiates must make use of the form the human body has at any given time. Christ, too, had to use the ordinary form of the human body in his time. Still, when we look deeper we see in him a stage of evolution that humankind will only achieve in the distant future. Christ Jesus was the first born among those who could overcome death.

Let us compare the two ways of developing. The human being is born, goes through a life on earth, dies, goes through an astral condition, through devachan, and is then born again. When we go back to the beings who were present before the Lemurian age we have beings who do not die and are not reborn. They are constantly exchanging sheaths, as we do between physical birth and death. Then a certain revolution enters in. Today, human beings alternate between spiritual and physical life. With the group souls of animals it happens this way: Individual animals discard their bodies but the group souls themselves never die.

If we try to imagine the very highest being, the one who was as highly developed at the beginning as others will be at the end of evolution, then we have the image of Christ. He was the I that was as highly developed at the beginning as the human being will be at the end. “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come ...” (Rev. 1:4) He is the first and the last.

The one who gives the Revelation to John is thus described. It is a Christian book; that is proven by the passage that reads: “... and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the first born of the dead and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (Rev. 1:5,6)

Christianity represents the greatest possible individualization of the human being, the freedom of the human being as an individual. At the beginning of the human race we see small communities held together by blood ties. Love was limited to those of the same blood. Now Christ Jesus comes and expands all ethnic groups and communities to include all of humanity. All ethnic religions are overcome through him. Christianity is the religion of the world. Within it there are only human beings; Christianity knows only human beings. Christianity would never be able to speak of the community of religions, but only of community of human beings. An age began when the secret mysteries became accessible to everyone through the mystery of Golgotha, which was placed in the center of the world. The chosen priests and kings gradually cease to exist. A final state is pointed to wherein everyone is a priest and a king, a state wherein all distinctions are swept away and all human beings are made equal. Therefore, the Apocalypse speaks of: “... a Kingdom, priests to his God and Father.” (Rev. 1:6)

The book portrays a real initiation, an ascent, to begin with, through learning on the physical plane. This step is portrayed in the words concerning the seven letters to the seven communities. The seven letters present what must first be learned. Then a number of pictures lead us to the astral plane. We see groups of beings undergoing transformation in the astral light: “... and he who sat there appeared like jasper and carnelian, and, round the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald.” (Rev. 4:3) “And before the throne there is as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.” (Rev. 4:6) The quality and being of the astral light is indicated by the transparency. In the astral light we can see through objects; they appear like glass. The entire astral world is like a glass sea.

The four living creatures then follow; they are to represent the human group souls. They were full of eyes within and without and had no peace day or night. There is constant movement in the astral world—astral eyes are everywhere and everything is transparent to them, both within and all around.

We see how, at first, the mysteries of the physical plane are described and then, out of the sealed book, the astral imaginations. They approach us in pictures.

After the seer has perceived the spiritual beings in the astral light for awhile, they begin to sound forth. This is described in the resounding of the trumpets when the sixth seal is opened. That is the condition of devachan. The seer becomes “clairaudient,” able to hear spiritual sounds—the spiritual ear is opened.

The stage then follows when the seer expands his consciousness over the entire earth. This is indicated in the swallowing of the book. It expresses the ascent into the higher regions of the spiritual worlds.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner, Christianity as Mystical Fact (Hudson, N.Y.:Anthroposophic Press, 1993).
• 2. Actual words: “For what is now called the Christian religion existed even among the ancients and was not lacking from the beginning of the human race until ‘Christ came in the flesh.’ From that time, true religion, which already existed, began to be called Christian.” Augustine, The Retractions Book I, chapter 12, section 3, trans. Mary Inez Bogan in The Fathers of the Church (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1968).
• 3. Steiner, Theosophy (GA 9) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1993).
• 4. ompare lecture of September 12, 1910 in The Gospel of St. Matthew (GA 123) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press. 1965).
• 5. Compare the lecture cycle Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul, and Revelations of the Spirit (GA 129) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1963); Mystery Centers (GA 232) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973); and World History in the Light of Anthroposophy (GA 233) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1977).
• 6. Compare the lecture of October 21, 1904: “Die Siegfriedsage” in Esoterik und Weltgeschichte in der grieschischen und germanischen Mythologie [“The Legend of Siegfried” in Esoteric and World History in Greek and German Mythology] (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1955).
• 7. Compare the lecture of August 14. 1908 in the lecture cycle Universe, Earth and Man (GA 105) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1987).
• 8. he virgin heroines of Germanic mythology.
• 9. One of the main heroes of the Nibelungen saga: he treacherously suffocates Siegfried after a hunt while Siegfried is drinking at a fountain.

In the foregoing studies we have indicated how necessary it is to study Man in his entirety if we would see how exact a copy he is in all his nature of the Universe as a whole. It is specially important to receive this knowledge not only into our intellect, but also into our feeling and will; for only by regarding Man in his totality as born out of the whole Universe, can a deeper understanding be gained for that which Christianity wishes to be for the world. It might easily be objected that if this is so, a complicated understanding of the details of the Universe and of Man is demanded of modern humanity in order that Man should become complete Man in his consciousness. Yet just reflect that this demand, which now approaches humanity as a cardinal demand, is not peculiar to Spiritual Science. In order to indicate exactly what I mean, let me first put the question: What demand did Christianity bring when it first came into the world? In reality it claimed an understanding of the Universe which originally belonged to the ancient heathen conceptions, but which has in course of time been completely forgotten. Just consider what has been gradually lost to Man in course of time of the fundamental views and characteristics of Christianity. Christianity first appeared in such a way that it could only be understood by comprehending e.g. the Trinity: The Nature of God the Father, God the Son—that is, Jesus Christ—and the Spirit. In the sense in which Christianity understood these three aspects of the Divine Spiritual, the understanding of them demanded no less than does the understanding of such things as are given by Spiritual Science today. Only all that leads to the comprehension of this idea of Father, Son and Spirit has been gradually eliminated; it has been thrown out of the intelligible and become empty words; empty husks of words have alone been retained. For centuries man has had these empty word-husks. This has gone so far that, after having first dogmatically rejected them, people have begun to ridicule them. The best of men have ridiculed these empty husks. Ridicule has been poured upon them. ‘Dogmatic Theology’, it is said, ‘claims that One is Three and Three One!’ it is indeed a terrible delusion, it is sheer deception to believe that the Christian movement has ever demanded less understanding, less self-sacrificing knowledge, than that demanded by modern Spiritual Science—and demanded by it in order to regain Christianity. The most important and basic facts have been cast out of Christianity, and if we leave out of account that these live on in the different confessions as words, we can ask: What really remains to man of the fundamental ideas of Christ Himself? How does modern man discriminate between Christ and the Universal Cosmic God who can be met with in the ideas of Jahveh or Jehovah? I have drawn attention to the fact that even theologians such as Harnack do not discriminate. How many people today are clear as to what is to be understood by the Spirit? People have become such ‘abstractlings’, satisfied with the mere empty husks of words; either they remain in the churches and are satisfied; or if they are—as they call it—‘enlightened’, they turn all to ridicule. What is given in empty husks of words can never have the power to bring light to the individual activities of human knowledge.

Only reflect how far we have actually gone in this direction. All that was comprised in the knowledge of ancient Greece was at the same time a healing principle. The healer was a priest and at the same time the teacher of the people. That the teacher and priest was also a healer presupposes that something unhealthy was present in the whole process of civilisation; otherwise there would be no ground for speaking of a healer. They spoke of the healer because from an instinctive knowledge they had still an understanding of the whole cosmic process, more comprehensive and intense than we possess today. Today man pictures the cosmic process as running its course in such a way that what comes later is always the effect of what was earlier; but this is not so in reality. The older instinctive knowledge was aware that this was not so. Today men imagine, especially those who speak of progress in the abstract, that evolution is bound continually to ascend. We find this notion of an ascending evolution among the superficial philosophers of modern times. A man who is simply carried along by the general prejudices of the time, such as Wilhelm Wundt, the non-philosopher, who became the philosopher of the hour for many, also spoke as an alleged philosopher of such “Universal Progress”, without the slightest knowledge of what really lies in the actual stream of human development. We must realise that in the real stream of human development there is always a tendency to degenerate. There is not a tendency towards progress there, least of all in history. There is a continual tendency towards degeneration, and only because what we call teaching, or knowledge, works steadily against it, is that raised up which would otherwise be drawn down into the depths. Only in this way do we have progress.

Consider from this standpoint how the matter stands with the child. The child is born. People speak of heredity, but we inherit only what would lead to decline. If the child were not educated by his whole environment and later by school and by life, he would degenerate. Education is a preservative from degeneration, it brings healing. The old instinctive knowledge of Man would still regard as a healing process everything connected with knowledge, education or priesthood. In olden times the office of the doctor could not be separated from that of the priest, they were one and the same. Modern evolution has separated natural science from the science of soul and spirit, as I explained in yesterday's lecture. Thus man leaves to medical science the healing of all that which, according to Julius Robert Mayer, has nothing to do with human aims, but is concerned only with the use of the forces of the horses and their transmutation to heat in the horses, in the wagon-axles, in the streets on which the wheels ran, and so forth. This is, roughly speaking, left to the physician; and people like Rubner in Berlin, who is only a representative of this mode of thought, calculate what is necessary to human life almost as though Man were a kind of complicated stove.

But now draw the social-ethical conclusion of such a conception, and recognise that if of all that takes place in the transmutation of force the purposes and aims of Man are only a secondary effect, then we are confronted with the possibility of believing that the world could get on without these secondary effects. As a matter of fact that is really the secret belief of modern man, that the real consists only of the physical, and everything else is a side-stream, a secondary effect.

In face of such a view it would be only consistent to reject Christianity, as the materialists of the middle of the nineteenth century did. They actually carried out to its logical conclusion the materialistic cosmic conception, by saying: If naturalism is correct, then there is nothing for it but to ridicule the idea of any difference between a transgressor and a good man—for of course, just the same amount of force is transmuted into heat in the one as in the other! The questions that flash through the world at the present time are really often questions of honesty, courage and consistency. At a time when man certainly does not possess this honesty in respect of the outer things of life, it is indeed not surprising to find that it is not there in respect of these cardinal questions.

Thus it comes about that modern humanity still talks of Christ, without really knowing that He must be distinguished from the Universal God underlying all nature. If the Christ-Concept has been gradually changed into the simple God-concept, that signifies a retrogression of humanity, back to before the Mystery of Golgotha. In order to understand Christianity rightly it is necessary to take this principle of degeneration seriously, and place in opposition to it the necessity of working out of something quite different from what bears the germ of degeneration within it. The attention of present-day man must be drawn to the fact that at that time in the course of Earthly events when the Earth moved—together with man, of course—through the Mystery of Golgotha, something took place as a happening on Earth which had significance not merely for humanity, but for the entire Earth-life.

To comprehend this, Nature and Spirit must of course be studied with much greater earnestness than lies in the inclination of modern humanity. In order to explain this, let me point back to something which lived in the consciousness of man, perhaps up to the eighth century before Christ. Man did not then perceive himself as an isolated being, as he does today. Today he feels himself as a being enclosed in his skin, but up to the seventh or eighth century BC. he felt himself to be a member of the whole Universe, taking part in the events of the whole Universe. Grotesque as it may seem today, it is a fact that in those olden times man did not feel his head so strongly shut off by his skull, he felt that that which lived in his head extended into the Cosmos, and belonged to the whole starry heaven. Strange as it seems today, he felt himself in the sphere of the stars, for he felt his head in living connection with them. Thus he said to himself: ‘When the night-sky arches over me, it is really I myself, who live there in living communion of my head with the stars.’ He said: ‘I follow the course of time further, when after the night the day appears. Then the stars which rose on the one side set on the other, and in their place the Sun rises. The configuration of the stars then no longer works in my head, for the Sun takes the place of the starry heavens and my eyes it is that are co-ordinated with the Sun.’ And because he vividly felt: ‘My eyes are co-ordinated with the Sun when I am busy on Earth during the day,’ he said to himself: ‘Just as now there is an earthly existence and my eyes are co-ordinated to the Sun, so in the existence preceding the Earth (we call it the Moon existence) my whole head was a kind of eye; not as now, perceiving the objects in a twofold way, but, looking out into the Cosmos there were within me, in my brain, as it were, as many little eyes as there are stars. Out of these little eyes has grown all that lives now in my brain; and my sense-eyes are but later products, co-ordinated to the Sun as was my brain to the starry heavens. Therefore my brain is a later product of evolution of an eye, or really of many separate eyes, as many in number as the stars shining out there in the night. Thus my brain has grown out of a sense; and what is now in Earth-existence, my eye, whereby I am in communication with my Earth-environment, will be an inner organ, as is now in my brain, when the Earth has been replaced by another planet (which as you know we call the Jupiter-condition). What is now on my outer surface will draw into my inner being. People will then look different. What they now have as corresponding with their environment will form an inner organ in future times.’ Ancient humanity felt this instinctively and said: ‘Light penetrates; through the eye of my senses, but in my inner being I preserve the light of olden times. It works in me as thought. Thought was a sense-perception before the Earth became Earth, when it was an earlier planet; and my sense-perception will be thought in the future.’ In ancient times man perceived all this as wisdom, which he felt ‘instinctively’ as we should say today. The ancients did not throw about the word ‘instinctive’ as is done today, they said: ‘It is the wisdom which the Gods in heaven have brought down to us on Earth.’ Of what arose in them instinctively concerning the past, present and future they said: ‘This was brought to us by the Immortals.’ This they represented to themselves in Pictures. What does the Isis-picture tell us? ‘I am the All; I am the Past, the Present and the Future. My Veil has no mortal ever lifted.’ The modern interpretation of this is really in truth a strange one! People today think in materialistic terms about a saying containing the term ‘mortal’. They do not think, in the case of this saying of Isis: ‘I am the Past, I am the Present, I am the Future. My veil hath no Mortal yet lifted;’ but they think of it as: ‘I am the Past, the Present and the Future; my veil hath no man yet lifted.’ The people of today do not reflect how on the other hand they hold themselves to be immortal and that therefore ‘My veil hath no mortal ever lifted’ cannot be regarded as a final sentence. Novalis said: ‘Well then, we must become immortal, so that we may lift the veil of Isis.’

Let us reflect on the underlying thought brought forward by modern materialists. It gives them pleasure to think: ‘I am the All. I am the Past, the Present and the Future. My veil no man hath ever raised.’ For they are thus spared the effort of lifting it, and their philosophers can teach that man has now reached the boundaries of knowledge. In reality they mean that man is too indolent to tread the path of knowledge. They do not like to say this, so they say that man has reached the boundaries of knowledge.

In our age, which wants to be independent of authority, these things are accepted, but they must not be carried into the future, if man is not to fall into decadence. It should not be overlooked that no one has the right to call himself a Christian who believes only in a general progress and does not realise that if the Earth had been left to itself since the Mystery of Golgotha, it would have fallen into decadence. Hence it is necessary for us to oppose to this decadence something which we cannot obtain from the Earth, nor from that from which the Earth is derived—the Father-God—but which must be obtained from God the Son, and must be injected into the continuous evolution of mankind. It is an absolute deviation of man from his task of today if he continues unwilling to admit that the Universe is to be brought into relation to the Christ-Event. Think what it really means when, though stormed at by Catholic and Evangelical confessions, Spiritual Science asserts that the Christ-concept and the Cosmos-concept must be united, while against that it is always said: ‘Spiritual Science has no idea that Christ is only to be understood in an ethical sense, as something inserted only into the moral order of the world.’ If man holds the moral order of the world as a secondary effect of the transmutation of forces, then the Christ-concept inserted only into the moral order of the world, also appears as a mere secondary effect in the cosmic system.

We have spoken of one thing whereto the old instinctive knowledge of mankind pointed, namely that the human brain stands in relation to the starry sphere, and that the human eyes are in a certain way co-ordinated with the Sun-sphere. Going back into earlier periods, when man still possessed a qualitative knowledge of astronomy and of the earthly elements, we see that Light was brought into relation with what is nearest our Earth, with Air. With their instinctive knowledge, the ancients could not think of Light without Air. Modern thinkers with their abstract knowledge do not bring what they explain as Light into relation with Air. Certainly they describe it in a wonderful way—as a vibratory movement of the ether; but in relation to Air, the farthest they go is to regard the Air as a medium through which the Light passes. It is really most remarkable how little people reflect upon what is imposed upon them! Earth: Infinite Space: Stars. Among these stars are some whose Light needs millions of years to reach the Earth. Night falls. Here is a star whose Light needs a shorter time to reach the Earth. Just imagine for a moment: What have we in the rays of its Light? Certainly we do not see the star itself when we look in the direction of the Light-rays. The Light-ray which meets our eye, according to this theory, comes from something millions of years back; it may even have perished long ago, but its Light is still traveling hither. Nothing is told us of what is really out there in the Cosmos. All we are told is how channels of Light are approaching, which may perhaps lead back to some still existing star but which may also lead to some star no longer there.

We must make ourselves acquainted with the thought of how for us the Light-phenomena as such make themselves apparent in the phenomenon of Air; for although the Light passes through the apparently airless space, by us it is not seen in airless space, but in the Air-filled space, for only in such can we exist. Thus for us Light and Air are experienced together. In this way we can go more deeply into the human constitution; we can go a step further. In the human head we can pass from the eyes to the nose. The nose (and oriental philosophy knows a great deal about this), the nose is the organ through which one breathes in and breathes out. The eye is the receptive organ for Light. The nose and eye are divided. The nose is adapted to the Air, and all that is adapted to the Air extends to the world of the planets. The Sun makes the beginning in working in our earthly part; but the rest of the planets work on the rest of our constitution; and as we come down from the starry world into that of the Sun and planets we arrive, in the case of man, as it were, at the nose. Then we come down quite to the earthly, passing from the nose to the mouth, to the organ of taste, and, taking up the substances of the Earth through that organ, we descend from the planetary into the Earth-world. We have the rest of man as an appendage; the head as appendage of the eyes, the breast as appendage of the nose, and all the rest of man, the limb-man, the metabolic man as appendage of the organ of taste. We have now apportioned man, taking him in his totality, to the starry world, the solar and planetary world and the Earth-world. We have placed him into the whole Universe and when we look at his brain—inwardly, not outwardly; not by physical anatomy, but by inner knowledge—we see in the human head, inasmuch as it is the bearer of the brain, a direct copy of the starry world. We see in all that extends from the nose to the lungs, a copy of the planetary system with the Sun. If we then consider the remainder, we see that part of man which is Earth-bound, as e.g. are animals. In this way only do we arrive at the true parallel between man and the rest of the world. Thus should man be understood, even in detail.

Consider for a moment the circulation of the blood. The blood, transmuted by the outer air, enters the left auricle, passes into the left ventricle, and from thence branches off through the aorta into the organism. We can say: Blood passes from the lungs to the heart, thence into the rest of the organism, but branching off also to the head. The blood however in passing through the organism takes up the nourishment. And into this is introduced all that is dependent on the Earth. All that the digestive apparatus introduces into the circulation of the blood is earthly. What is introduced through the breathing, when we bring oxygen into the blood-course, is planetary. And then we have the blood-circulation that goes to the head, which includes all that composes the head. Just as the circulatory course of the lungs with its absorption of oxygen, and giving out of carbonic acid, belongs to the planetary system, just as what is introduced through the digestive apparatus belongs to the Earth, so that part of the circulatory course that branches off above, belongs to the starry world. It is, as it were, drawn away from the aorta and then streams back and unites with the blood streaming back from the rest of the organism, so that they stream conjointly back to the heart. That which branches off above says, as it were, to the whole of the rest of the circulatory course: ‘I do not share either in the oxygenating process nor in the digestive process, but I separate myself out. I invert myself upwards.’ That it is that belongs to the starry world. And the nervous system might be followed up in the same way.

One arrives at no perception of man by thinking that he can be studied from his physical aspect only. In so doing we only find in the cranium that pulp described by our physical anatomy! What it describes is simply non-existent. It is in reality the confluence of forces of the starry heavens. To describe the physical brain by itself, is like describing a rose by itself. That has no sense, for a rose is no entity for itself. It cannot be dissociated from its bush. It is nothing apart from its bush. So too, the human brain is nothing apart from the starry heavens.

Let us however here recall the true nature of the Sun. Again and again I have emphasised how astonished the physicists would be if they could fit out an airship (it actually forms part of their ideal to do so), and could journey to the Sun, imagining they would find there a glowing ball of gas. They would not find this, but a suction-sphere, trying to absorb everything possible into itself, really an empty space, nay even less than empty, a negation of matter. Within the circumference of the Sun there is nothing comparable to our matter. It is not merely empty, but less than empty; it is blank, just like a hole, in comparison with the rest of matter. It is really important that one should not, in these days, begin to speculate on things of the world, without any accord with reality, but fill oneself with the spirit of reality. I have recently said a good deal on the Theory of Relativity. You will remember what I brought forward regarding the Einstein box by means of which the theory of gravity is to be overcome. Another affirmation of Einstein's is that even the dimension of a body is merely relative, and depends on the rapidity of movement. Thus, according to the Einstein theory, if a man moved through cosmic space with a certain velocity, he would not retain his bulk from front to back, but would become as thin as a sheet of paper. This is discussed in all seriousness. Such dwelling in thoughts foreign to reality forms the ‘science’ of today. And it is the opposite pole to what we have on the other hand as faith.

The physician has been relegated to the purely physical, the priest to what is purely of the soul. As for the Spiritual, it is abolished. But when it comes to considering everything outside the physical as a side-issue—horses, coach, these are real to the physical senses; and the forces of the horses, these are transmuted into heat, heat of the horses, heat of the axles, and heat of the furrows of the road; and for the rest, well, we cannot even call the rest a ‘fifth wheel’ of the wagon, for it is less that that, it is a mere side-issue, a secondary effect. As regards the priest, one cannot even say that he is the fifth wheel of the wagon in the modern conception—for what does he achieve if all the ‘rest’ is a side-issue? When physicians such as Julius Robert Mayer make philosophy, they make physics; and when the adherents of soul-substance, or whatever it is, make philosophy, it becomes abstract concepts; and the two world-streams flow on side by side quite foreign to one another, the materialistic physician of the middle of the nineteenth century and the preaching pastor; they have really neither understood nor even paid attention to one another, at most perhaps they have contended politically. A time has assuredly now come in which there is but little honesty or consistency, and this state of things must be seriously combated and overcome.

We have not only to combat ill-will, but what perhaps has also to be taken into account, namely all kinds of stupidity and ignorance. That is how things are.—Let me draw your attention especially to the fact that from a certain motive I intend at Whitsun to give three lectures on the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. [*See The Redemption of Thinking. English translation of these lectures by A. P. Shepherd and Mildred Robertson Nicoll. Published by Hodder and Stoughton (1956).] I do not know whether our opponents will deny us the right to study Thomas Aquinas here. As you know, by an order of Pope Leo XIII, the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas was declared the official philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church and I wonder whether this, which we are about to study here, will be described as an unlawful propaganda issuing from Dornach! We will wait and see. Let the wind whistle from whatever quarter, we will await it. But perhaps it is well that we should once meet all the talk that comes from that particular quarter with a serious study of the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas.

You know the passage in the Gospel of John: “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Consider further how Jesus Christ contrasts his mission with the events in the wilderness: “Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and died. I give you another bread, I am the bread of life.

Let us recall once more how the four members of the human being developed at different times. The I only emerges as consciousness towards the end of the Atlantean period. The manasic abilities only arise in our fifth root race, and more specifically, manas arises inwardly in the sentient body in the primeval Indian epoch. In a higher form, Manas enters the sentient soul in the case of the ancient Persians. In the case of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, Manas enters the intellectual or mind soul.

Let us be clear about what this means. Unlike today's astronomers, the Chaldean-Babylonian priests viewed the stars differently. They saw in them living, spirit-filled worlds. When they spoke of the planet Mercury, they did not just mean a material thing, but the Mercury spirit – just as we do when we name a person. The movement of the stars, their starry writing, was an expression of something spiritual for them. This is manasic knowledge, a penetration of space with thoughts.

What their Chaldean predecessors limited to heavenly connections, the Egyptian sages drew into the service of more and more earthly matters and animal needs; they placed the manasic entity at the service of matter.

Please note this. An example of this is the construction of the artificial Lake Moris. The Egyptians created a reservoir to regulate the Nile flood. The development of all of Egypt was based on manasic knowledge. Manasic means purely spiritual. Manasic beings were placed in the service of the highest human needs. It is the very nature of the mind soul to use manasic wisdom to satisfy external needs and desires.

Today, this development, “Egyptian darkness,” the darkness of Manas, has progressed much further. But is it so crucial whether a person grinds his grain between two stones or orders it by cable in New York? Kama Manas is the name given in Theosophy to such a connection of higher consciousness with animal, earthly, material purposes. The ancient religions would have looked down on the achievements of all our technology, our communication and trade with very mixed feelings. They saw it as a defilement of sacred things when man put his higher mental capacity at the service of the lower natural needs. This was worse than when an animal uses its instincts, which are good for nothing better, to satisfy its needs. It was felt as a defection, an abuse of the manas called to higher tasks, a defection of the spirit from itself. This defection is expressed in a strange name: “Egypt”. This refers not only to the country, but the name is also the symbol for such apostasy; for it was in Egypt that it first happened on a large scale. The word Egypt is therefore not only meant as the name of the country here, but of the particular state of mind, the delusion of Manas, where the higher nature is placed in the service of the lower. This is not meant as a criticism, but as a description of the facts of spiritual-historical evolution.

This stage had to be passed through; Manas had to be submerged in lower forces during three sub-races in order to then arise from its own nature. Within Egypt, however, there arose the people who were called to purify Manas, so to speak, to raise it to a higher consciousness. The Israelite people were called upon to fulfill the task of working Manas out of their own people. And the great missionary for this is Moses. The Israelites were transplanted to Egypt, where they received the inspiration for Manas. The exodus from Egypt is at the same time the exodus from Manas into the higher reality.

To achieve this, something had to happen that would have a transforming effect on the ego. Moses first became the lawgiver of Israel. The Ten Commandments had to begin with the conscious I being worked towards. God must announce himself as the expression of the ego in man.

In the third chapter of the second book of Moses, it is related how Moses, while tending Jethro's sheep, sees a burning bush from which the voice of Yahweh resounds: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” This is the birth of Manas in self-awareness. Moses says to God: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” God replies to him: “I will be with you. And this shall be the sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought my people out of Egypt, you will sacrifice to God on this mountain.” Moses asks further: “If I come to the children of Israel and say to them: The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they will say, What is his name? what shall I say to them?” And God replies to him, ‘I am that I am. So you shall say to the children of Israel, I-Am has sent me to you.’ This is the birth of clear self-awareness, which was previously vague.

Now it will be a matter of grasping God in his spirituality; to keep the God who announces himself within, truly holy. The law applies namely already to something higher. Jehovah God says to the people: “I am the Lord thy God, who brought you out of Egypt. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” But the people made an image for themselves and worshipped the golden calf, although they were commanded not to make an image or to take the name in vain. But God, who is formless, wanted to be the formless God for them.

If we want to understand this process even more precisely, we must now point out another. The I has a long history of development in humanity. In order for the I to arise, the human body, which developed towards it, had to be transformed in many ways.

In the ancient Atlanteans, part of the etheric head was still outside the physical head. This part corresponds to our forebrain. The head had to grow towards the etheric body, it had to mature towards spirituality. This was the prerequisite for

self-awareness. Independence emerged at that moment in physical evolution when a bone system first developed in humans. The stability that humans thus acquired is connected to their predisposition for spirituality. And when we look at the future of humanity, it becomes all the more clear to us how important the formation of this bone system was. How will the human race change – in its body, not in its soul? It will become more and more solid. Just as the oyster masters its shell, man will master his body, his tool, from the outside. To understand this, you only need to start from the state of sleep, in which the soul masters the physical organism from the outside. In the times to come the soul will consciously control the body as its instrument from without. The formation of the bones is therefore the potential for something great and glorious. Hence the old religious injunctions: Keep your bone system. Do not break your bones. The symbolic expression of this was the sacrifice in Egypt in remembrance of the deliverance that took place there when the first-born of the Egyptians were strangled. As an outward sign, a lamb is to be enjoyed, and the words are therefore significant: “And you shall not break a bone in him!” Thus, at the point where Manas' liberation begins, this importance of bone formation is emphatically indicated in the ritual prescription for the Passover lamb. And with the great Lamb, the representative of humanity, with Christ Jesus, what was otherwise usual with all crucified people, the legs were not broken. “That the scripture might be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.”

So the Jews were led out of Egypt. Let us see if our view is confirmed more precisely in the Bible. Yes, literally! It is one of the great achievements of spiritual science to be able to read the details of religious documents about ancient symbolic acts in their literal sense. The people of Israel go into the wilderness. What is the wilderness? When the self is absorbed in itself in order to seek the God within, then it must go into the wilderness, into solitude, and this wilderness man must then revive in himself after the awakening of the Manas in himself. When the children of Israel murmured because they were close to starvation, the Lord promised them that the next morning they would have plenty of bread. The next morning “it lay in the desert, round and small like the hoarfrost on the ground.” Then the Israelites asked each other, “Man hu - what is this?” That is the question that man asks himself when he is supposed to recognize something. They called the food that came from the shimmer manna. It is the same word as manas. Of course, philologists will object to this explanation, but that is how it is. The task of the Jewish people was to carry pure manas into the future.

To understand this better, we must step to the edge of a mystery, the fourth of the seven unspeakable mysteries. Yesterday we spoke of the mystery of numbers, today we will touch on the fourth, that of birth and death.

Birth and death, what are they in the occult sense? One must realize this. Are they always necessarily linked to life? Let us think back to pre-Lemurian times, before man descended into gross physical matter.

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He had a kind of light and fire body and was embodied in etheric matter. His contemporaries on earth are beings who are slightly higher than animals in physical bodies. In the animal body, a kind of cavity is formed. The etheric man descends into the cavity and fills the physical body. The man of light had condensed himself into an air man, who now moved into the physical body. This is the moment depicted in the history of creation with the words: “And God breathed into him the living breath, and he became a living soul.” With the breath we actually draw in our etheric body. The etheric man had condensed to the air when his connection with the earthly body could be made, and he entered the lungs. With each breath we actually draw our etheric body into us.

The entire way of life was different for early man than it was for later man. Parts were constantly being released from his etheric body, and new etheric substance was constantly being drawn into it: renewal and excretion were taking place. There were also constant intensive changes within it, corresponding to the higher subtlety of the etheric body; this happened continuously without the abrupt change of birth and death. So there was no birth and death, only a transformation occurred. Dying and being born could only take place after the etheric body had entered into matter.

Strictly speaking, birth and death are changes in the state of consciousness. Death can and must only occur where a soul dwells in a body that is actually foreign to it and uses foreign organs. The soul's previous purpose in life dissolves when the physical body is discarded. These two bodies are subject to two completely different laws and worlds, since the body belongs to the earth and the soul to the astral. The spiritual man who dwells in the body receives it when he enters the world, and the earth takes it away from him again. It is as if I live in the earth as a tenant: the tenement house is subject to the property laws and regulations - so is the earthly body. Through it, man can see outward. This looking outwards is a condition for knowledge; therefore birth and death are inseparable from the arising of knowledge. The Bible says this with the words: “Your eyes will be opened and you will know what is good and what is evil.”

Thus, since Lemuria, Manas has been prepared, organized in opposition to what was formed in the lower realms. Manas enters the physical body through the senses; death is conditioned by manas, without manas there would be no death. This is the passage in the Gospel of John: “Your fathers ate manna and died.” One cannot die from the bread of life. It is Christ who brings the etheric evolution again. The Christ impulse is the penetration of Budhi.

Manas is therefore a point of transition that took place when the etheric body entered the physical body in Lemuria. Budhi is brought into the etheric body from within through Christ, but from within. This principle of inward vitalization is brought by Christianity. “I am the bread of life.” As long as the world was bound to the physical body, the principle of heredity, man had no possibility of looking beyond death. But this happens at the moment when his life body, his ether body, can be enlivened from within through Budhi, when Manas receives Budhi. Moses is therefore the messenger for Manas, Christ the bringer for Budhi. At this stage, the initiate can be outside his body.

Now we ask ourselves one more question: a people is made the bearer of the development of Manas, the whole national consciousness is condensed in the one initiate. When the Jewish people were about to forfeit their mission, the Lord said: I will destroy them, but I will make you, Moses, a great nation. This passage is to be taken literally; it is a higher initiation of Moses. In this way, Moses is given his mission in such a way that he is made an initiate with a national consciousness.

Another deeply significant fact is the part played by blood in the process of Manas, for the higher process must naturally be reflected in the blood. Moses takes the sacrificial blood and sprinkles it over the people. This is the sign of the truth of the covenant through blood relationship. When Manas has absorbed the blood and so has Budhi, then we understand the passage in the Gospel of John: “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.” If Christ is to be able to work on humanity, He must make a covenant with it through His blood. Man must receive Christ's blood in the Lord's Supper if Christ is to implant Budhi in him.

Now we must consider some cosmic-human truths – the world is really very complicated. The entities that are stones, plants and animals today are closely related to human beings. Man is not the latest creature in creation, but the earliest. Today, let us disregard earlier earth embodiments and deal with man.

When the Earth emerged from the Pralaya and condensed to the etheric Earth, it actually consisted of nothing but etheric human bodies and can be compared figuratively to the shape of a giant blackberry. Man at that time was a completely spiritualized being, endowed only with an etheric body.

The next stage is that the etheric human beings divide into two currents, one ascending and one descending. From the descending current the animals emerge. Just as when we have two brothers, one of whom becomes more and the other less like the father, so men divide into two groups, men and degenerate men, the animals. Later, these two groups became three: the plants were added. Then a fourth group separates: the mineral.

Whenever a new element is added, the human being develops a different, new nature. At the moment when the animal separates, the human being develops an astral sense; at the moment when the plant separates, etheric growth. At the moment when the stones branch off, the microcosm forms bones. Every time a new nature develops, a corresponding correlate arises in man, so that one can say of every animal, every plant, every mineral what corresponds to them in man. The lion is also in man, but overcome. Hence the correspondences and analogies between bodily organs and earthly objects, be it a lion, deadly nightshade or asbestos. Paracelsus says: Outside in the earthly world there are nothing but letters; man is their coherent inner meaning, their word. All of nature is only man laid out; in man the word is formed.

Those driven away from the stream of human development have not remained without any development at all; on the contrary, they have even reached certain developmental goals earlier than the non-specialized human being. For example, the future hardness of the human body is being prepared; the woody plant has long since achieved this in its inferior nature. Certain poisons also represent a developmental advantage over humans. Poison that is found in a plant was once also in man. If man had developed in the same sense as these substances, then he could, for example, excrete arsenic from himself. If he contracts cholera, the same symptoms occur as if he had taken arsenic. That is why Paracelsus called the cholera patient an arsenicicum.

Just as with wood and poisons, so too with the plant sap, the wine, which is a substance that has rushed ahead of human development. This can be examined in more detail. The wine, the sap that flows through the grapevine, is a one-sided development of the blood. What the blood breathes gives carbonic acid, alcohol. Alcohol is, so to speak, future blood. The plant sap breathing out carbonic acid is related to the present blood as the blood of the future is to the blood of the present. From the cosmic knowledge we experience the relationship between wine and blood. Christ may say of the wine: This is my blood. For Christ is the representative of the future humanity. His teaching itself is a living source to which humanity develops. Let us think of the parable of the vine and the branches, of the transformation of water into wine. The vine is only a developmental anticipation, analogous to the anticipated hardening of the wood. Just as the plant today transforms its watery juices into wine, so man cannot do it today, but he will transform his blood later.

From this point of view, light is thrown on the mystery of the transformation of water into wine at the marriage at Cana. Why at Cana in Galilee? Galilee (el gojim) is the land of the mixed race, of the non-Aryans. There racial mixing had always been very strong, thus the removal of the barriers between peoples; there the marriage of different bloods took place. The mother of Jesus is also present, as she is later at the cross. She is never called “Mary” in the Gospel of John. On the contrary, the two other women at the cross are explicitly named “Mary”, and one of them is referred to as the sister of the mother of Jesus. Jesus' mother is not Mary.

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This collection of special prayers is a wonderful companion for parents and caregivers and will help guide children on their journey to adulthood. It includes verses for every occasion—for parents to recite as the incarnating soul prepares for birth, for the baby after birth, and for children of all ages. Also included are prayers for morning and evening and graces for mealtimes.

This book is a First English Edition, published in 1943. The prayers in this volume offer insight into the greater cosmic relationships in which individuals are immersed before birth, during life, and after death.

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Spoken by the Mother

BEFORE BIRTH:

And the soul of the child,
Be it given to me
According to Thy will
Out of the worlds of the spirit.

AFTER BIRTH:

And the soul of the child,
Be it guided by me
According to Thy will
Into the worlds of the spirit.

Spoken by the Mother for the Child

May light flow into thee, that can take hold of thee.
I follow its rays with the warmth of my love,
I think with the best glad thoughts of my thinking
on the leaping of thy heart.
They are to strengthen thee, they are to bear thee up,
they are to keep thee pure.
I would fain gather my glad thoughts into thy steps
on the paths of life,
So they link themselves to thine own will of life
That this may find itself in strength in all the world
ever more through its own self.

Evening Prayer

FROM head to foot
I am made in the image of God.
From my heart right into my hands
I feel the breath of God.
When I speak with my mouth
I follow the will of God.
When I behold God
In father and mother,
In all dear people,
In animal and flower,
In tree and stone,
Nothing can fill me with fear,
But only with love for all that is about me.

Morning Prayer

WHEN I look at the sun, then I think God's spirit,
When I move my hand, then lives in me God's soul,
When I take a step, then stirs in me God's will.
And when I behold a man, then God's soul lives in him.
And so too it lives in father and mother,
In animal and flower, in tree and stone.
Never can fear come near to me,
If I think—God's spirit;
If I live—God's soul;
If I bestir—God's will.

Child's Prayer

THE growing plants live
In sun-light's power,
The bodies of men act
In soul-light's might.
And what the heavenly light of the sun
Is to the plant,
That is the soul-light of the spirit
To the body of man.

Child's Prayer

O sun, thou shinest over my head,
Ah stars, you look down upon field and city,
Ye animals, you are busy and move over the face of Mother Earth,
And plants, you live through the force of the earth and the sun.

Grace

THE plants are quickening in the earth's deep night,
The herbs are sprouting through the power of the air,
The fruits are ripening through the sunlight's might.

Thus quickens the soul within the heart's holy shrine,
Thus sprouts the might of the spirit in the light of the world,
Thus ripens the strength of man in the glory divine.

Children's Song

THE light of the sun floods through
All space so wide,
The song of the birds sounds through
The air so free,
The boon of the plants is drawn
From the bosom of earth,
And souls of men lift up
In thankfulness
Their being to the spirits of the world.

The consciousness soul, intellectual soul and sentient soul shouldn't be completely equated with willing, thinking and feeling, for the latter are to be found in each of the three soul members. People who are more feeling beings come to esotericism, and namely, especially those who have a religious bent. Such people usually get general ideas about the spiritual world and also Imaginations very easily. They're usually spared the things that make it difficult for men to ascend into spiritual worlds. Their worries are taken away from them by an angelic being, they're carried over the threshold by their angel. Such men can experience many beautiful things in the spiritual world, and when they speak about this we should listen well to what they tell us.

Then there's people who come to esoteric development more out of the will that's connected with emotions and passions, and this can be connected with criticism and ridicule. It's more difficult for them than for the feeling type to get into the spiritual world. When they stand before the threshold they're tortured by their passions and emotions so badly that it can become physical torture. In their meditation it's as if they were being tormented and hindered by devils. They would like to enter the spiritual world, but they don't feel that they can.

The third path through thinking is one that one can choose oneself. But very few people tread this path. One hears people say that they can't imagine what things were like during Moon evolution. But that's their own fault. A farmer would easily be able to understand Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution. People who don't understand it just don't want to accept it because they've never seen it. But even if we had never seen a child we would know that an adult couldn't be the way he is if there weren't other stages of development behind him.

Our verse Ex Deo nascimur, In Christo morimur is speaking about the Father God who has a son in Christ. It was a deep thought of Christianity to express this relation with the help of the father-son relationship. For a father can also remain without a son. It's a gift of the Father that he let the Son proceed from him. If one feels united with the Son who is the God in a man's soul one can arrive at a deeper understanding of EDN, ICM and will later also come to a realization of PSSR.