The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today we'll consider one of the greatest works in world literature, Dante's¹¹ Divine Comedy.¹² We have to understand that to gain even a little insight into this work we must go back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Goethe has Faust say:

The spirit of our times, as you will say,
is basically just the gentlemen's own mind
acting as mirror for the times.¹³

When someone wants to discuss a work written in earlier times he usually does so from his own point of view, finding in it the things that come from his own subjective feelings.

In the case of Dante's Divine Comedy we can see how hard it is to go back to the Middle Ages in one's mind. All kinds of interpretations are available, among them Cameri's translation into German.¹⁴ The introduction shows that Cameri was attempting something very difficult. He said the Divine Comedy was always spoiled for one because it was given theological interpretations. He himself had given it a purely human interpretation. Cameri was the ethic philosopher of Darwinism.¹⁵ Basing himself on Darwinism, he developed noble ethics which, however, were materialistic, with no awareness of spiritual powers in the world. The whole of his translation reflects a materialistic attitude. That is ‘the gentlemen's own mind acting as mirror for the times’.

But let us now really enter into the spirit of that past time. For once let us forget everything we have taken in from childhood and enter into those times. People both thought and felt very differently about things then. We have learned that the planets and the sun are one system and that this system is one of many. At school we learn that the sun is at the centre of this one system, with the planets orbiting around it. Abstract rational laws govern everything which is in orbit there, everything that lives and moves in the infinity of cosmic space around us. Anyone who thinks like that sees nothing but cosmic bodies orbiting in a vast empty space, cosmic bodies that have life forms on them.

The people who lived in Dante's time saw the world very differently. No one would then have thought of such abstract ideas. The earth was to them the centre of the whole world system. It was not only a solid planet, however, for within it were spirits that related to human beings. These were the powers that made man animal-like. They were at the centre of the earth. The different stages of ‘hell’, as it was called, were there. Dante described things that were wholly real to people in those days. He did not invent them. Anyone who thinks even for one moment that Dante believed it all to be mere superstition does not understand him. The idea people had at that time was that yonder, on the other side of the earth, the pull of gravity went in the opposite direction. In medieval times people thought of the forces that were in opposition to man, forces that removed him from everything there was by way of earthly gravity in mind and spirit. That was kama-loka, the purging fire.

Looking out from there into the starry heavens people had very different ideas then. The moon was not a mineral but the body of a spiritual entity and the abode of many spirits—a cosmic body. The spirits who lived there had gone through similar evolutional states as human beings, but had fallen deeper than man. Their vices were, however, of a more spiritual kind than the animal vices of humanity.

Mercury was also seen as a body encompassing a spirit. Just as we derive man from his innermost soul qualities, so did medieval people see the sun, the moon, mercury, venus, mars, jupiter and saturn as spiritual entities. People saw spirit everywhere then. The world was populated by spirits for them.

The Christ lived in the region of the fixed stars since he had left this world. Beyond the fixed stars was the empyrean, the tenth heaven, where the source of all being was. People thought the spirits which were not here on earth and in this body dwelt in some region or other beyond the earth. A warrior who had gone through death would have to be sought on Mars. Someone who had lived a contemplative life would be on Saturn. Those who had risen even higher had to be sought in the region of the fixed stars, where the Christ was after he died. Beyond this would be even higher spirits.

Dante wrote his Divine Comedy out of this way of thinking. Today people have simply no idea that people in his day still saw something of the spirit in everything material. For them, nothing was wholly physical and nothing purely spiritual. Interweaving matter and spirit was something entirely natural for them. If we enter into such a way of thinking we are alive to the feelings out of which the Divine Comedy was written. It is pointless to fight over whether Beatrice was just a symbol or Dante's lover. The two are not contradictory. Beatrice was a real person, and she also stood for all that is spirit. For someone not lead astray by learning she was the true personification of Theologia.

Let us consider the atmosphere in mind and spirit in which the work evolved. It gives sublime expression to 13th and 14th century strict Christian Catholicism, before the Church came to be divided. People like Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa,¹⁶ whose thinking was that of scholasticism. Dante was a student of scholasticism. He saw the world the way his teacher Thomas Aquinas did.¹⁷

What was the mission of Christianity? It was to create a new basic religious approach. Before that, a girdle of religious views spread around the whole world. Christianity brought a different basic approach to religion.

We have to go back a long way to enter into the basic tenor of Dante's work. About ten thousand years before the Christian era¹⁸ the vast continent known as Atlantis was gradually sinking. Theodor Arldt¹⁹ has given scientific proof of the existence of Atlantis in the journal Kosmos.²⁰ The Flood, as we call it, refers to that continent gradually becoming flooded. The ancestors of the people who now live in Europe and Asia lived on Atlantis. The mythologies of all these nations show profound similarities. German mythology speaks of Atlantis, calling it Niflheim, home of mists. A view of the world has come down through tradition that gives us the figure of Wotan, the ruler. Wotan is the same as Bodha or Buddha. And Veda and the Edda have the same linguistic origin, for example.

These views, which are, as it were, a sediment from the past, have something in common. Reincarnation was originally taken as a matter of course in all of them. Buddhism then spread among Mongol tribes, however, and not among Aryans. The Semitic element entered into the views of Aryan peoples, and reincarnation is unknown in this. The most sublime expression of this type of religion, which thinks in terms of one incarnation only, is Christianity. It is a characteristic feature of Christianity that it considers one incarnation only. This was not the case with esoteric Christian teachings, but the popular teaching did not include the idea of reincarnation. Ancient Judaism and Arabism knew nothing of reincarnation.

Knowing this, we have the basic tenor of Dante's magnificent work. It represents a vision beginning on Good Friday. That was the day to mark life's victory over death. People did not think of this in abstract terms. They would feel that the sun was given new powers of spring on Good Friday and at Easter. It rises, entering into the sign of the Ram or Lamb,²¹ letting the plant world come into active growth. The sun was considered to represent a particular spirit. People thought that the powers of spirit and soul related to the spirit of the sun body. And Good Friday night was felt to be the best time for the soul to enter the realm that lies beyond death.

Dante's work is a vision of the kind initiates know, something real in the world of the spirit. Dante was truly able to perceive the spiritual. He perceived the world of the spirit with spiritual senses. He gained his images as a strictly Catholic initiate. As he had his visions he brought into them the catholic world that had come alive in his organism, but he would see it in the spirit. People always see things of the spirit through the spectacles of personal experience. As the child's presence in the mother's womb relates to the physical level, so does one's presence in the world of the spirit relate to the things we know in the spirit here on earth. Our life on this earth is like a maternal womb in which we grow mature so that we may later arise in the spirit. The senses we have developed for things of the spirit depend on our life here on earth. Here we mature for the other world, preparing spiritual eyes and ears for the other world. Dante had thus developed his spiritual organs in the way made possible in a strictly Catholic world.

When we enter into the other form of existence we are able to perceive the things that are now inside us. They then become outwardly visible. We say that passions, instincts and drives are ours. When we have entered into the worlds of spirit, the contents of our soul organism become something that exists outside us, just like the objects we perceive around us in physical existence. The things that live in our souls become visible in symbolic form.

Dante wrote of three symbols representing three main qualities in his astral body, the body of drives or lower soul—a leopard, a lion, a she-wolf.²² His three main passions thus appeared to him in the form of three animals. This was no mere symbol, however. When man enters the astral level, his lower passions truly appear to him in the form of animals. The she-wolf represented one passion. This is the she-wolf who once suckled Romulus and Remus. It is the passion people adopted at the founding of the Roman nation, the passion which lives in everything connected with property—the desire to possess and on the other hand the right to have personal possessions. This passion was implanted in human beings at the time when the wolf suckled Romulus and Remus. Before this, humanity gained the power of courage, indicated by the lion, which can become lust for power. Even earlier came the increased cunning that developed from priestly rule—the leopard, the ability shown by Odysseus.²³ When Virgil²⁴ came to meet Dante he said: cannot make those animals go away, least of all the she-wolf? He said so because Dante had grown up in what remained of those old Roman passions in Italy. Virgil, who had given a picture of the initiation process in his Aeneid,²⁵ had to be Dante's guide. It was from the works of Virgil that people learned most about the other world in those days. They saw that world as having three levels—hell, purgatory and heaven.

There are only two consistent views of the world—that of Augustine²⁶ and that of reincarnation and karma. Augustine said: ‘Part of humanity on this earth is destined to be good and part to be evil’. According to the other view we develop through many incarnations. These are the only two possible views. Dante took Augustine's view, according to which human beings prepare here on earth for a destiny that will be eternal. Because of this, life on earth is immediately followed by hell, purgatory or heaven. The one life was all that counted. The person was all that was considered.

If we go beyond the person we are beyond birth and death. The principle that enters at birth and departs again at death goes beyond the personal. It is the individual. Anything the individual has done wrong must be compensated for in a next life. If we take away reincarnation and karma, everything has to be compensated in a single life. If one looks for retribution for everything concerning one person, a counter image of the personal is created and that is hell. Hell is nothing but being utterly caught up in the personal. The counter image of the personal in this world is hell in the other world. The personal must not be caught up in this world to such an extent that it beautifies existence. Christianity brought the view that everything depends on the one life between birth and death. The earth world had therefore to be made into a vale of sorrows, and people had to be told to let go of earthly things. Art on the other hand was a pagan element that made people be caught up in the personal aspect. The artists of old sought to make this earthly realm beautiful. Someone who sees only the personal element will say: ‘This personal aspect must do away with all that is beautiful. The earth must be made less beautiful, the person must be torn away from all that belongs to this world.’ It was therefore perfectly logical for Homer and all the poets of antiquity to appear to Dante in hell.²⁷

Dante gave a true picture of avaricious and prodigal people on the astral level.²⁸ There people see their own passions in mirror images. On the astral level an avaricious person will see what he has done with his avarice in the image of a prodigal. The prodigal will see his attributes in the counter image of an avaricious person.

In the city of Dis, Epicurus represents the approach to life that aims to expand and develop this world.²⁹ The city of Dis stands for physical reality. There people are in coffins. The materialists are living dead. They have been saying that man is but a corpse. As dead souls they now have to lie in coffins.

From hell Dante is taken into purgatory. Princes who neglected their soul's salvation over affairs of state also need to be purified in the fire.³⁰ The strictly Catholic view is that the personality must be developed. Princes who have not done so must therefore languish in the fire.

The next region between purgatory and heaven Dante enters is the Garden of Eden.³¹ Here we are introduced to the truly Christian view, which is that the origin of the Church rests in the realm of the spirit. Anyone wishing to understand the medieval view of the ideal Church must organize himself in a higher way so that he may see its original image in the other world.³² Dante used the views of the heavenly hierarchies held by Dionysius the Areopagite³³ for this. Dionysius wrote of a ranking order of angels, archangels, principalities, powers, virtues, dominations, thrones, cherubim, seraphim. The ranks in the temporal hierarchy of the Church were meant to reflect those heavenly hierarchies. Dante wrote of the hierarchies in symbolic form in the Garden of Eden.

Then Beatrice took on the role of guide.³⁴ We distinguish between a female element in the soul, which is inner soul nature, and a male element, which is the spiritual principle in the universe that impregnates the soul. The female soul draws us upwards. Medieval alchemists called the female aspect of the human being the ‘Lilium’.³⁵ This is also why Goethe spoke of the ‘beautiful Lily’ in his Tale.³⁶ In the Dantean way of thinking Beatrice represents the edifice of scholastic theology.

Spirits of the moon who had broken their spiritual vows were first of all brought before Beatrice.³⁷ They had broken their vow to serve only the spiritual and had fallen back into sensuality. In ancient Greek theosophy Mercury³⁸ was still the spirit who had a role to play when the ancient Atlanteans advanced to a concept of the I. The earliest Atlanteans were not yet conscious of the I. The personal comes under the sign of the god Mercury, Hermes. Man came to the personal level when he fell into I-nature, egotism. This also made us into people who want to have possessions and is the reason why Mercury was also the god of merchants.

On Jupiter Dante found the princes who exercised justice.³⁹ Something very important occurred on the sun.⁴⁰ Dante was shown the true nature of eternity on the sun; how to see the day known as the Day of Judgement. The Day of Judgement changes everything. Two people made their appearance—Thomas Aquinas and King Solomon. Thomas Aquinas represented life in terms of Christianity, of the New Testament, and King Solomon was the teacher of the Old Testament.

Christians saw the priesthood as a physical expression of what the Christ meant to them in spiritual development. After life on earth the Christ had gone away and was now triumphant in the fixed star heaven. Someone who has prepared his spiritual embryo here on earth so that he has spiritual vision is able to see the Christ in the fixed-star heaven. The disciple who had been most profoundly initiated, John, appeared as the teacher of this view.⁴¹ Only the Christ and Mary were able to take their bodies up into the fixed star heaven. A master also has his body fully in hand. Just as people are learning to master their passions with moral ideas in our present civilization, so does someone who has reached a higher level truly learn to control the physical body. Jesus and Mary had hallowed their physical body to such a degree that they were able to take it with them to the highest regions.

Then St Bernard⁴² became the guide for the higher regions where God is beheld and one enters wholly into the divine self. There Dante went beyond the teachings of the Church. He saw the three cycles, the threefold original essence of the world, father, son and spirit. They are called Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva in Indian religion. Here the trinitarian nature of the universe became apparent, with Dante rising to pure vision in the spirit, to contemplation.

In the end we are shown how we live, move and are in God but must not presume to understand God.⁴³ In the end, Dante only wrote of growing certainty in the human ability to recognize God. For him, this work was the drama of the world seen from the other side.

• 11. Dante Alighieri (1265–1321).
• 12. Rudolf Steiner was here considering the fundamental aspect of La Divina Commedia, the Divine Comedy. He spoke of this in a very different style in the lecture given to the workers at the Goetheanum on 14 March 1923, published in GA 349, Vom Leben des Menschen und der Erde. Über das Wesen des Christentums (in process of publication). The influence of Brunetto Latini was discussed in a lecture given in Dornach on 30 Jan. 1915, published in GA 161, Wege der geistigen Erkenntnis und der Erneuerung künstlerischer Weltanschauung (not yet translated) and a number of lectures given in 1924, especially in Dornach on 10 Sept. 1924, published in translation as Karmic Relationships vol. 4 (in GA 238). 10 lectures, Dornach 5-23 Sept. 1924. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1957. For the translation of this lecture I have followed the terminology used in Dante Aleghieri, The Divine Comedy, text with translation by Geoffrey L. Bickersteth. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1981. Translator.
• 13. Faust I, 577-578.
• 14. Cameri, B. Sechs Gesänge ausDantes Göttlicher Komödie, in German, with an introduction on Dante's use of alliteration. Vienna 1896.
• 15. Sir Bartholomaeus Cameri (1821–1909). See essay ‘Bartholomaeus Cameri, der Ethiker des Darwinismus’ (not translated) in GA 30, also in Steiner R. The Riddles of Philosophy (GA 18). Tr. F. C. A. Köllin. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1973.
• 16. Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464). See Steiner R. Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age (GA 7). Tr. K. E. Zimmer. Blauvelt: Steinerbooks 1980. Also Steiner R. The Origins of Natural Science (GA 326). Tr. M. St Goar, N. Macbeth. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1985.
• 17. Aquinas, Thomas (1225–1274). In his teachings high scholasticism reached its pinnacle. Rudolf Steiner spoke about him at Whitsun 1920 in Dornach (see The Redemption of Thinking. A study in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (GA 74). Tr. A. P. Shepherd, M. R Nicoll. London: Hodder and Stoughton 1956.) Concerning his relationship to Aristotle, see lecture given in Munich on 20 March 1908 (in GA 108, not available in English).
• 18. The first German edition said ‘thirty thousand years’. It is doubtful, however, if the figure was written down correctly. See Steiner R. Occult History (GA 126) lecture of 31 Dec. 1910. Tr. D. S. Osmond, C. Davy. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1957.2nd edn Rudolf Steiner Press 1982.
• 19. Arldt, Theodor, b. 1878, palaeontologist and palaeogeographer.
• 20. Das Atlantisproblem. Kosmos 1905; 2: Nr. 10.
• 21. Dante's Divine Comedy, Inferno 1,38f The general view held at the time was that the sun was in the Ram when god made the heavenly bodies move in orbits. Thus be the day when Dante set out on his journey would have been the first day of spring. (Comment on 1,38 in W. v. Wartburg's German translation). The German translation has ‘panther’ instead of ‘leopard’ (translator).
• 22. In Roman mythology, the twin brothers Romulus and Remus, sons of Mars, who later founded Rome were suckled and reared by a wolf.
• 23. Odysseus or Ulysses, in Greek mythology king of Ithaca. Homer spoke of him in his Odyssey as being cunning and wise.
• 24. Divine Comedy, Inferno 1,94 f. Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70–19 BC). Roman poet highly esteemed in the Middle Ages.
• 25. Virgi's Aeneid, a great epic about the role ofRome in ancient history, speaks of the wanderings of Aeneas after the sack ofTroy before he finally settled in Italy.
• 26. Augustine (354–430), greatest of the Latin church fathers. He taught that because of Adam's fall into sin humanity was incapable of goodness (original sin), with individual people chosen for eternal salvation by an act of grace (predestination). See Steiner R. Christianity as Mystical Fact and The Mysteries of Antiquity (GA 8) chapter on Augustine and the Church. Tr. H. Collison, rev. C. Davy, A. Bittleston. Bristol: Rudolf Steiner Press 1992.
• 27. Divine Comedy, Inferno 4, 25 f
• 28. Inferno 7.
• 29. Inferno 10.
• 30. Purgatorio 7, 64 f.
• 31. Purgatorio 27, 124 f; 28 f.
• 32. Purgatorio 29 f.
• 33. Dionysius the Areopagite, member of the Areopagus, the highest judicial and legislative council in ancient Athens, converted to Christianity by Paul (Acts 17:34). The works published in his name in the 6th century were much venerated by scholastics and mystics and translated from Greek to Latin by Johannes Scotus Erigena in the 9th century. They include the treatises On Divine Names, On Mystical Theology, On the Heavenly and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies, and 10 epistles. See also Steiner R. The Spiritual Hierarchies and their Reflection in the Physical World (GA 110) lecture given in Düsseldorf on 12 April 1909. Tr. R. Querido. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1983.
• 34. Purgatorio 30.
• 35. Purgatorio 30, 21.
• 36. Goethe's Tale (of the green serpent and the beautiful Lily) first appeared in the literary magazine Horen in 1795, concluding the story ‘Conversations of German emigrants’. See Allen PM, Allen J deRis, The Time is at Hand! Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press 1995., and Steiner R. Goethe's Standard of the Soul. As illustrated in the Fairy Story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily (GA 22). Tr. D. S. Osmond. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1925.
• 37. Paradiso 3.
• 38. Paradiso 5,91 - VII.
• 39. Paradiso 18, 70 f.
• 40. Paradiso 10-14.
• 41. Paradiso 26, 1-69; 31, 58 f
• 42. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). See Steiner R. A Sound Outlook for Today and a Genuine Hope for the Future. Lecture given in Berlin on 16 July 1918. Typescript translation C 50, Rudolf Steiner House Library, London: ‘Perhaps the most significant figure in the 12th century.’
• 43. Paradiso 33, 124 to the end.

You know that the saying that is to be the leitmotif of our lecture, “Blood is [a very special fluid],” is found in Goethe's “Faust.” Mephistopheles, the emissary of hell, and thus of evil, demands that Faust sign the contract he is concluding with him in blood. The point is that Faust, whom Goethe presents as a representative of striving humanity, is placed between good and evil, that Faust is to be served by the servant of hell and that Mephistopheles is to accompany Faust throughout his life and Faust in return surrenders himself to him. This contract should be signed in blood, as Mephistopheles demands. Now you know the answer to Faust's remark as to whether such a form, and especially blood, is required: “And blood is a very special fluid.”

There is a whole literature about Faust, but very few people know the meaning of the word “Mephistopheles”: the liar, the corrupter – from the Hebrew =; much less [do they] know the meaning of the blood. In one of the last commentaries on Faust, you can read that one has to understand the saying of Mephistopheles in this way: Mephistopheles demands the blood and remarks ironically: “Blood is a very special fluid” because he hates the blood, because it is particularly unpleasant for him, so he demands the signature in blood. You really have to be a “Goethe explainer” to be able to make such a statement. Can you in your right mind demand something as a special prize because it is the most unpleasant thing to you? You don't do that; when you demand something, as strictly as Mephisto does, with the signature, you are designating this something as something valuable. Common sense simply dictates that the emissary of hell places a very special value on blood. Hence the signature in blood.

We can trace the legend on which Goethe based his poem back to the sixteenth century. Even then, we find the signature in blood, and it is still vividly depicted. How Faust's vein is opened, how the blood trickles out, how it then coagulates, how the sign finally appears: O man, cleanse thyself!

The Faust saga is in turn only one of the many sagas in which blood and blood oaths play a role. The blood oath did not come into the Faust saga by mere happenstance, but through that through which we find a deep wisdom expressed in so many sagas and myths. How mysterious a fact often appears! But the spiritual researcher knows that when we explore the old legends and fairy tales, not in the way of today's materialistic scholars who speak of a poetic folk fantasy that the connoisseur of the people certainly has never found them anywhere, and who speak of fantastic creations – if we observe not in this way, but as spiritual researchers, we find profound spiritual truths expressed in them everywhere, figurative expressions for profound spiritual truths. It is most remarkable that when we look at simple expressions of the people, we have before us great spiritual truths, presented in images. These are fairy tales, myths, legends! And we can always ask ourselves: is there perhaps a deep spiritual truth contained in this folk tale, perhaps in this one saying? And then, as spiritual scientists, we want to examine this saying.

Today, we will deal with the significance of blood, the significance of this particular fluid, in the life of the individual as well as in the life of humanity and nations. By illuminating the mystery of blood, we will shed some light on important cultural issues of the present.

We will understand what we have to say about it if we keep to an ancient saying, a saying that is called the Hermetic Principle. It comes from one of the greatest initiates, Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian initiate. Many scholars consider him to be a fabulous personality. However, spiritual science knows that he was the greatest teacher of Egyptian culture. This sentence may at first seem strange, it reads: “Everything above is as it is below, everything below is as it is above.”

What does this mean? You will understand when you consider the following: You see a smiling expression on a person's face; it is immediately clear to you that serenity is present in that person's soul. You see a tear, and it is clear to you that sadness or pain has settled on this person's soul. You draw conclusions about the inner being from what the eyes see on the outside, and about the material from the spiritual. Now, in the sense of the philosophy of Hermes Trismegistus, the material is called the lower, and the spiritual-soul is called the upper. And anyone who is familiar with this philosophy is aware that there is a spiritual world and that everything that takes place in this spiritual world can find expression in the material world. This philosophy tells us that at some point every spiritual reality finds material expression. There is no spiritual reality that does not express itself in the material world, and no material reality that does not have a spiritual side. Everything down in the material as well as up in the spiritual.

In medieval philosophy of that great, wonderful brotherhood, which is called the brotherhood of the Holy Grail, you could have been an invisible spectator between the teacher and students of the Holy Grail covenant and overhear a long-lasting teaching scene. I cannot sketch this in any other way than in the form of a conversation. It did not take place like this, but you will get an idea of what happened between teacher and student.

It was made clear to the student: just as you can tell a person's soul and their cheerfulness by a laughing expression on a face, and their sadness by a tear, you can do the same in all of nature. For such a student, what Goethe characterizes as the earth spirit was not just a poetic image, but reality. Just as every human being, when he sees his fellow human beings laughing or sad-faced before him, says to himself: Here I have not only flesh and blood, but a soul, so the medieval Grail disciple had been brought to say to himself: When I look at this earth with its stones, plants, animals, people and everything else, , it is, like the human body, the expression of a soul or spirit; and it was made quite clear to him: If your finger were to imagine itself to be an independent entity without your soul, you could easily convince yourself that this is not the case by cutting it off from your body. It would wither away in no time. It cannot live an independent life. Nor can you, who belong to the earth soul. If you could separate yourself from it, you would wither like the finger if you were to move only a few miles away from the earth. The finger does not indulge in the foolish illusion of being an independent entity because it has grown; if it could walk around like a person, it would do so.

Thus the saying became a deep truth for the pupil, and the earth spirit a real being. And when he walked across the fields, a realization shone in him, going deep to his heart. When he saw one plant with a laughing face, it was the expression of the cheerful earth spirit, and when he saw another with dark purple flowers, it was the expression of the grieving earth spirit; the whole earth became the expression of a spirit, as did the seemingly dead stone.

When the student then went on to the so-called Rosicrucian school, which was founded in the fourteenth century, the teaching continued with the following: Look at the stone, this crystal! It consists of a certain substance. Compare this substance with animal and human substance. This is permeated by instincts and desires, by cravings and wishes; but desireless, without desire - only of glass - illuminated by the light, the stone substance stands there; chaste in the face of animal and human substance. - And so the disciple had to delve deeper into the chaste stone. As a lofty ideal, the goal was before his eyes, to become as pure as the stone in its kind. The disciple had to feel this way about the chaste stone.

I may only tell you the first sentence of a very solemn formula that was spoken every time there was an important section in the teaching, the formula that indicates the passage of divine wisdom through all nature. Where world wisdom works down in the realm of stones, it is characterized in the formula: The stones are mute. I have placed and hidden the eternal creative Word in them, and chaste and modest, they bear it in the depths.

And another scene that took place within the Grail Schools was this: one pointed to the plant calyx, which stands out from the plant, and said: “Behold the plant! It stretches its roots into the earth and its organs of fertilization towards the sun, those organs that appear here in chaste purity and are kissed by the sunbeam, which is called the holy lance of light. And this plant chalice contains the same reproductive organs that must be covered by the sense of shame in the human realm. Man is the completely inverted plant. The roots are the head of the plant. We have to imagine that, through the absorption of desires and instincts, the human being has to shamefully conceal what the plant holds up to the sun as a chaste chalice. A development takes place from plant to human being. Imagine the plant indicated by a downward stroke, the animal makes half the turn, the human being the whole. This is drawn: a cross is created. Plato expressed it thus: the world soul is crucified on the cross of the cosmic body. — For the three kingdoms were felt in spiritual science as the cross, and as the world soul passes from the plant to man, it passes through the cross.

And now the disciple was told: Imagine this development, imagine the chaste chalice of the plant as a model for the human power of procreation, and this purified from all desire; imagine man as a creative being, as pure and chaste as the calyx of the plant, then the chalice appears to man as the spiritual organ of production of the future, kissed by the sun of spiritual life. This ideal is called the Holy Grail. - So the spiritual content of the Holy Grail was distributed to the students.

Those who walk through nature as scientists see in the chalice a deep reference to what man should become. The lower, matter, expresses the spirit, the upper, everywhere.

And we learn to understand the lower when we get to know the upper. We understand the matter of blood when we get to know the upper that corresponds to it. Our task is first to look at the human being spiritually and then to see what corresponds to the blood in the spiritual.

We no longer need to get to know the nature of the human being in detail in the spiritual. Four members: physical, etheric, astral body and I, through which the human being has become the crown of creation. The I is that which sensitive natures always feel as the expression of the actual and eternal in man. And you need only make a very small effort to consider what this name 'I' means in contrast to all other names. Anyone can call a chair a chair; but this cannot be done with the name 'I'. No one can say 'I' to me, the name 'I' can never approach us from the outside if it is to mean anything to us. The soul must begin to speak from within. With the I, we express something that gives itself its name. The true religions have always felt this. For example, the ancient Hebrew secret science called this divine the God himself, and the name for it the unspeakable name of God. “I am, who am” means nothing other than this “I am” in the soul. And that is what those who heard it, the listeners felt: the resounding of the spiritual in the soul when it was spoken: “Jav” = “I am who I am”; that is the unspeakable name of God.

The I is therefore the highest of the four members of man. Of these four members, you can only see and touch the physical body here, et cetera. The other three members are the upper part of man; but to every upper part there corresponds a lower. Each of these three members is built up in the physical body by special organs. The physical body, of which the ordinary materialistic anatomist knows something, is also a many-membered being. Its organs are not all the same; man has four kinds of organs: those that are purely physical, built only by the physical body itself; then those that he could not have developed without the etheric body, without the astral body, without the ego. Certain organs are the lower part of the etheric body, certain the lower part of the astral body, and certain the physical expression, the lower part of the ego.

At the same time, you must not believe that physical organs, which are only composed of the physical, can also be in a purely physical body; all are permeated by the etheric and astral bodies; but these first ones take their form only from the physical body. The ear and the eye are physical apparatuses. In his senses, the human being is an expression of the physical body. Now go from these senses to the organs of nutrition, reproduction and growth: these are no longer mere physical apparatuses, they are structured and are the lower part of the etheric body. You have to imagine that the human body, in its sense organs and its skeleton, is built by the physical principle itself. The fact that it is permeated by the etheric body means that the others are incorporated into it. The plant is also permeated by an etheric body, which is why it also incorporates the organs of nutrition, growth and reproduction. The moment a being is also permeated by an astral body, a nervous system is incorporated into that being. This is the expression of the astral body.

As man gradually developed as a material being, he passed through the various kingdoms of nature; he has found his way from the mere physical body up to the higher ones, and the higher members of his being have incorporated more and more organs from the lower ones. The organs are not of equal value. The nerves are the expression of the astral body, the stomach and liver those of the life body; they find, as it were, their outer physiognomy in the lower for the upper.

The matter can be explained in even more detail: the astral body has developed slowly; it consists of different members, first of all the so-called sentient body, the lowest member, then the sentient soul, then the intellectual soul, and finally the consciousness soul. They have developed little by little. If you want to understand this gradual development of man, you have to start again at the bottom. Look at a physical being! Great philosophers call this a mirror of the entire world system. Why? Look at the smallest stone, consider that it could not be as it is if the whole environment were not as it is. The great naturalist Cuvier said: If you show a very wise anatomist a single bone, he would be able to see from its structure what the structure of the whole animal to which it belongs should be; if the bone were a little different, the whole structure would have to be different. The whole is expressed in the individual; this applies to the whole cosmos.

Just as a single bone must be as it is because the whole is as it is, and would be different if the whole were different, so a very wise being could tell from the smallest stone how the whole planet is formed. The individual is a mirror of the cosmos.

But if we ascend from the mere lifeless mirror of the cosmos, as it already shows itself in the stone, this cosmic reflection appears to us in a higher form when we see it where there is life underlying the beings. There the cosmos is not reflected as it is in the stone; there the process of reflection continues within. The being closes itself off from the outside. Processes within are stimulated because certain processes are taking place outside. In its movements, the plant reflects what is happening outside.

In the nervous system, the reflection is even more complete. The simplest nervous system is the one that still exists in humans as the sympathetic nervous system, which spreads out in two strands on either side of the spinal cord and whose activity our consciousness is unaware of. This nervous system, as the lowest nervous system, is the lower one for the sentient body. Now you can see, as is shown in my Theosophy, how the sentient soul integrates itself into the sentient body. There is an expression of this in the lower part: the spinal cord nerve strand integrates itself between the two ganglion strands. Everything below is like everything above!

The material world is a wonderful expression of spiritual life. Theosophy will offer you a spiritual image of the world. This has the seal imprint outside. And this is the meaning of the word seal. In the language of revelations, St. John calls it “sealed” where we have something material in front of us and we do not yet know the spiritual aspect of it. And our world will become apparent with its seven secrets. The whole world is sevenfold: seven colors, seven tones, seven limbs of the human being. There is nothing miraculous about this, only the same basic law. This sevenfold universe is, as far as it is not revealed, a book with seven seals. When it is unsealed, one will recognize the upper part for the lower.

For the mind soul, which is a higher link in the astral body, the brain is the outer expression, the lower.

Now the question arises: if the physical body is, so to speak, its own physical expression, everything that belongs to the nutritional and et cetera system, the expression of the ether body, if the nervous system is that of the astral body, what then is the expression of the eternal?

That is the blood and the blood system. Wherever blood appears, it is an expression of an ego.

In this way, we will understand in a spiritual-scientific way why, for example, in the human being, when the germ develops, the heart and blood come only after all the organs have been formed in the womb. This corresponds entirely to what takes place in the spirit. The I is the crown of everything and also appears last.

There is also a wonderful connection between blood and the I. You may be able to get an idea of how blood is connected to the I, to the very essence of the human personality, if you consider the following: where the I is afraid, where it is horrified, its physical body turns pale; where it wants to hide, the blood appears in the form of a blush. Wherever the ego is particularly engaged, we see external expression in the discoloration of the face. This is trivial, but it gives us an idea of the connection between the ego and the blood.

You see, our materialistic science regards the heart as a kind of pumping station. It is of the opinion that the heart pumps blood through the body, quite mechanically. Hegel was the only German philosopher of the nineteenth century to know that this is not the case. He said: it is not the heart that drives the blood, but the blood that gives the heart its movement. And the blood gets its movement from the soul, is driven by the spirit. The heart beats faster when the spiritual impulse is there. The blood is the driving element of the heart.

It was a bold statement, but it is common knowledge in spiritual science. It has never said anything other than this: that it is the soul itself, under the impulse of the ego, that causes the blood to flow either under a sense of terror or under some other feeling that belongs to the soul, that this soul, this ego, drives the blood and thereby the heart.

And at the same time, this will draw your attention to something in spiritual science that will make one thing clear to you. Namely, the heart is something that thwarts today's material science. The voluntary muscles are so-called striated muscles, all involuntary muscles are so-called muscles with smooth muscle fibers. The heart is now an involuntary muscle; most people cannot control it. And yet it is striated; where does that come from? Spiritual science explains it thus: the heart as it is today is at the beginning of its development; there will come a time when what is still an involuntary movement today will become an involuntary one, subordinate to its spirit. The brain is the thinking organ of today and the heart will become the spiritual organ of the future. In the future, the heart will occupy a completely different position. Man will consciously make his blood circulate through his body. The heart will be the expression of his spiritual life, a consciously working muscle. In the future it will be so. That is why it is already present in the germ. Thus we have these very different organs of man, blood and heart, as the expression of the I and can follow it in its significance for the world.

We speak of blood relationship, of the importance of blood. We sense this, but we have no real insight into it. I will present such intuitions from life: Anzengruber and Rosegger, who are both known for their depictions of rural life – the latter describes them as he sees them, but the former very aptly describes them entirely from his own perspective, without having observed and studied them more closely – had a conversation in which Rosegger said to Anzengruber: You live and have lived entirely in the city, and yet you have characterized the farmers so admirably. If you were to go out to them and take a good look at them, you would be able to describe them perfectly. That would just drive me crazy, Anzengruber replied. I have lived in the city all my life, but my ancestors were farmers, all farmers, it's in my blood.

It is in the blood – that could seem like a picture; but is it a mere picture? Anzengruber really did describe from his blood. He didn't have a notebook. Why? Not because blood is inherited, it cannot be inherited. Not a single drop of blood passes from father to son. It is even the latest thing to arise in the germ. But just as you inherit your father's nose, the structure of external organs, you also inherit the structure of your nervous system, the structure of your internal organs. Everything that is the expression of the physical body, the etheric and astral body, you inherit from your ancestors. You could just as easily examine the similarity of your stomach to that of your father as you could your nose. And you could examine the similarity of the Anzengruber brain to that of his peasant ancestors, like the nose. The limbs of the human being that prove to be similar to the ancestral forms express themselves in the blood as in a tablet, because the blood represents the I. What makes an impression on the blood makes an impression on the I. If I live entirely as a son of my ancestors, and what has been inherited is the strongest in me, then what has been inherited is imprinted in the blood, and I feel in the blood what was still present in my ancestors. If the impressions of the outer world are stronger, then what has entered my ego, my blood, drowns out what flows from within. I forget what the ancestors have allowed to flow in.

Thus, the one of whom it is said that he has “race” will truly be a son of his family, have the structure of his ancestors. He imprints this in his blood, his I. The one in whom the race is no longer so strong is dependent on external impressions. Everyone has these impressions, whether they are the son of this or that father. They have drowned out their inner impulses when faced with stronger external impressions. If the impressions of the outside world are stronger, then he has its blood, if race lives in him, then race has his blood. What the ancestor has experienced is then expressed in what he does and writes.

Expand this and consider the spiritual origin of man. Imagine: Even more is expressed by what is inherited. Imagine that; it really happened.

If we go back to ancient times, we find a certain starting point in every people. Very different marriage relationships, relationships of love and belonging and kinship prevailed then; within the family, the tribe, the individuals married. In every nation, you will find the transition from what can be called close marriage to what is called distant marriage. In the time of the former, it would have broken the custom, the law of a tribe, if a male or female member had married outside it. In every nation, however, we see how close marriage is later broken, how individuals married into other tribes. And everywhere this transition from close marriage, where blood relatives marry, to distant marriage, where those who are distant unite, is linked to a change in spiritual life.

The legends of the peoples have preserved this transition from close to distant marriage in a special, unique way. There are many legends in which women are abducted and taken to foreign tribes. Something tragic in the transition from the old order to the new is expressed in them. The transition to distant marriage is linked to a transition from an ancient clairvoyance to a modern one, more dependent on the observation of the external world of the senses. Where close marriage is common practice, people still have something like a natural clairvoyance. This is lost when foreign blood is mixed with the close blood. What Anzengruber felt in his blood was also felt by those who were in close marriage, but to a much greater degree. They did not feel what their ancestors had experienced as darkly, as half unconsciously as Anzengruber, but as something they had experienced themselves. Through the close relationship, the inherited structure was so strong that it was imprinted in the blood. Thus the ego, the blood, the whole family felt, not just itself. Only when foreign blood was added did the power of generation cease, did the old cult of ancestors lose itself. Where a distant ancestor was honored, it was not the product of the imagination, but rather the feeling that the most distant descendant felt connected to the ancestors in his blood, in his ego. Clairvoyance was there. All legends, which are like images of truths, become understandable to us when we know that they arose out of other perceptions, out of clairvoyance, which can still be found today in primitive, natural peoples.

You need to know this if you want to understand the writings that are based on spiritual science. One writing belongs here above all: the Bible. You cannot understand the most important parts of it in today's times. It is impossible if one does not know one thing: that in ancient times a name did not refer to what was represented in a personality, but to what lived on in the blood of a distant relative for entire generations. Because the inherited structure was expressed in the blood of the most distant descendant, one felt all of this in one's self. It did not yet work as it did with the Anzengruber, but rather like a true memory. The person in whom all the blood had merged with another through the distant marriage remembers only his own life, while the person from the close marriage remembers everything that the ancestors have experienced. They, the ones from the close marriage, referred to it as belonging to their ego. Through generations the same name resounded, because the experiences of the ancestor were recalled. Thus Adam was not the name of an individual man, but of a continuous memory through generations.

Let the Bible describe the original ages; it knows that the names were given in that way. A wonderful light falls on those ancient reports. They are correct as soon as one knows that their names belong to the time when the same structure was expressed in the blood over and over again.

And then we find everywhere, where the transition from the near to the distant marriage takes place, how that ancient clairvoyant memory is killed. Today you can find everywhere the very first elementary truths, which are thousands of years old in occultism. You can find the sentence presented: The more closely related the blood relationship is, the more vivid the power of vision is. The mixing of blood had an extinguishing effect on the life of the spiritual body. Today, researchers are trying to see if the blood of different animals can be mixed. The blood of mice does not kill rats, that of rabbits does not kill hares, because these animals are closely related. Blood from more distantly related animals kills them. Distant blood really does kill here. It was different with humans. Distant blood did not have an extinguishing effect on the physical body, but on the spiritual body, which was the carrier of that higher wisdom.

This shows us the function of blood. We see that the one who has the blood has the I. Where the outside world has gained greater power because foreign blood has been added, there the external experiences have taken effect and these have the blood. Whoever has the blood of a being has the being's I.

Not everything is the same for all time. When close marriage existed, conditions on earth were different. This does not apply to the new era; because conditions on earth have changed, the I had to move into distant marriage. The old aristocratic families have retained the old ways, and this has adverse consequences today. What in ancient times was the bearer of high spiritual human development must have a harmful effect in materialistic times.

In the future, humanity will rise again to higher levels of consciousness, but in a different way, in that the individual will take possession of spiritual rebirth; he will become so strong that he himself as a person will be able to imprint the spirit in his blood, gaining power over his blood. Then man will become clairvoyant again, so that he will not merely conquer abstract knowledge, but will be able to transfer this knowledge into his blood. Try to acquire as much theoretical knowledge as you want, it remains dry and abstract, sober and bare; try to develop knowledge in such a way that concepts become feelings for you, higher affects, touch your blood, then it becomes higher knowledge. Hence that medieval schooling that led the student across the fields, that let the flowers speak to his blood, and not just to his cool mind.

This is how things are connected. It is necessary to research the function of blood. Just as blood is the creator of what holds the ego together, so if we bring spiritual life to the blood from the outside and it does not match the blood, the spiritual life cannot be understood by the blood. Therefore, the European cannot simply impose his culture on a “savage” tribe. They can preach as much as they like, but they will not achieve their purpose and will only destroy it. This is how the Spanish destroyed the Indians: the blood differences were too great. The Indians had very different blood from the Europeans.

Thus you will see that the spiritual intercourse between nations must be consciously regulated. One must pay attention to the mission of the blood, the blood question is related to the colonial question. Here again one can see how practical Theosophy is. The time will come when we will have to consciously guide what we call cultural mixtures. We must not overlook the fact that only the upper part can penetrate into the lower part, where it can truly find expression.

Study the conditions of your blood, for then you will get to know the conditions of your various selves.

When you speak to a person in everyday life, you speak to them in terms of abstract, bare, and dull concepts! The other person can learn a lot from you, but everything they can learn remains in a certain shadowy conceptual state. If you speak to them about something that touches their heart and makes their blood boil, then you will not only have their mind, but also their soul, and you will have them inside you. Whoever has a man's blood has his soul. Whoever has a nation's blood – not in a materialistic sense, but as an expression of the soul – has the nation, and whoever wants to have a nation, to teach it, must understand the soul and the expression of the soul in blood. Whether for good or evil, if you want to take possession of a human soul, you must take possession of the blood.

Thus the folk tales have spoken wisdom here, by emphasizing the blood oath, to indicate that a person gives himself completely. There is profound wisdom in the legend that lets the devil win Faust, his entire self, by obtaining the signature in blood. Once Mephistopheles has the blood of Faust, he has his ego. That is why he did not mean it mockingly, but it is truth and really the expression of deep wisdom; yes, it is precisely the deepest wisdom about the nature of man in the sense that the lower is the expression of the upper, it confirms this sentence to us: And blood, yes, blood is a very special fluid.

A translation of the writings of Tertullian by Peter Holmes, D.D., is contained in several volumes of the series: Ante-Nicene Christian Library; Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. (Published by T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1874.)

The text of the translation of De Carne Christi (On the Flesh of Christ) is to be found in Vol. XV (vol. 2), pp. 163–214.

Vol. XV (vol. 1) includes Tertullian's Apologeticus, one of the writings in which he inveighs against the Romans for their persecutions of the Christians. The following is a typical passage from chapter 1:

‘And then, too, you do not in that case deal with us in the ordinary way of judicial proceedings against offenders; for in the case of others who deny, you apply the torture to make them confess.—Christians alone you torture to make them deny; whereas, if we were guilty of any crime, we should be sure to deny and you with your tortures would force us to confession. ... So that you act with all the greater Rerversity when, holding our crimes proved by our confession of the name of Christ, you drive us by torture to fall from our confession. Thus, in repudiating the name, we in like manner repudiate also the crimes with which, from that same confession, you had assumed that we were chargeable’ (p. 57).

It is also in the Apologeticus (p. 99) that a passage occurs on the subject of possession by demons: ‘Let a person be brought before your tribunals, who is plainly under demoniacal possession. The wicked spirit, bidden speak by a follower of Christ, will as readily make the truthful confession that he is a demon, as elsewhere he has falsely asserted that he is a god ...’

In Vol. VII of the same series, The Five Books of Tertullian against Marcion, the translator includes in his Introductory Notice (p. XVI) the following quotation from Vincentius Lirinesis:

‘And for his (Tertullian's) wit, was he not so excellent, so grave, so forcible, that he scarce ever undertook the overthrow of any position, but that either by quickness of wit he undermined, or by weight of reason he crushed it? Further, who is able to express the praises which his style of speech deserves, which is fraught (I know none like it) with that cogency of reason, that such as it cannot persuade, it compels to assent: whose so many words almost are so many sentences; whose so many sentences, so many victories? This know Marcion and Apelles, Praxens and Hermogenes, Jews, Gentiles, Gnostics, and divers others, whose blasphemous opinions he hath overthrown with his many and great volumes, as it had been with thunderbolts ...’

The first thing to realise is that Yoga is not a sudden, convulsive event, but a process of gradual training, inner transformation. It does not consist, as is often supposed, in a series of external adjustments and ascetic practices. Everything must run its course in the depths of the soul.

It is often said that the first steps of Initiation are fraught with perils and grave dangers. There is a measure of truth in this. Initiation, or Yoga, is a coming-to-birth of the higher soul which lies latent in every human being. The astral body is faced with dangers analogous to those attending physical birth; there is travail before the divine soul comes forth from the desire-nature of man. The difference is that the birth of Spirit is a much longer process than that of physical birth.

Let us take another comparison. The higher soul is closely linked with the animal soul. By their fusion the passions are tempered, spiritualised and dominated according to the strength of man's intelligence and will. This fusion is of benefit to man but he pays for it by the loss of clairvoyance. Imagine to yourself a green liquid, produced by a combination of blue and yellow elements. If you succeed in separating them, the yellow will descend and the blue will rise to the surface. Something analogous happens when, through Yoga, the animal-soul is separated from the higher soul. The latter acquires clairvoyant vision; the former is left to its own devices if it has not been purified by the self and it is then given over to its passions and desires. This often happens in the case of mediums. The ‘Guardian of the Threshold’ protects man from this danger.

The first condition requisite for the Initiate is that his character shall be strong and that he shall be master of his passions. Yoga must be preceded by a rigorous discipline and the attainment of certain qualities, the first of which is inner calm. Ordinary ‘morality’ is not enough, for this relates merely to man's conduct in the outer world. Yoga is related to the inner man.

If it is said that compassion suffices, our answer will be: compassion is good and necessary but has nothing directly to do with occult training. Compassion without wisdom is weak and powerless.

The task of the occultist, of the true Initiate, is to change the direction of his life's current. The actions of man today are impelled and determined by his feelings—that is to say, by impulses from the outer world. Actions determined by space and time have no significance. Space and time must be transcended. How can we achieve this?

(1) Control of thought. We must be able to concentrate our thought upon a single object and hold it there.

(2) Control of actions. Our attitude to all actions, be they trivial or significant, must be to dominate, regulate and hold them under the control of the will. They must be the outcome of inner initiative.

(3) Equilibrium of soul. There must be moderation in sorrow and in joy. Goethe has said that the soul who loves is, till death, equally happy, equally sad. The occultist must bear the deepest joy and the deepest sorrow with the same equanimity of soul.

(4) Optimism—the attitude which looks for the good in everything. Even in crime and in seeming absurdity there is some element of good. A Persian legend says that Christ once passed by the corpse of a dog and that His disciples turned from it in disgust. But the Christ said: ‘Lo! the teeth are beautiful.’

(5) Confidence. The mind must be open to every new phenomenon. We must never allow our judgments to be determined by the past.

(6) Inner balance, which is the result of these preparatory measures. Man is then ripe for the inner training of the soul. He is ready to set his feet upon the path.

(7) Meditation. We must be able to make ourselves blind and deaf to the outer world and our memories of it, to the point where even the shot of a gun does not disturb. This is the prelude to meditation. When this inner void has been created, man is able to receive the prompting of his inner being. The soul must then be awakened in its very depths by certain ideas able to impel it towards its source.

In the book Light on the Path, there are four sentences which may be employed in meditation and inner concentration. They are very ancient and have been used for centuries by Initiates. Their meaning is profound and many-sided.

“Before the eyes can see, they must be incapable of tears.”

“Before the ear can hear, it must have lost it's sensitiveness.”

“Before the voice can speak in the presence of the masters, it must have lost the power to wound.”

“Before the soul can stand in the presence of the masters, its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart.”

These four sentences have magical power. But we must bring them to life within us, we must love them as a mother loves her child.

This, the first stage of training, has power to develop the etheric body and particularly its upper part which corresponds to the head. Having trained the upper part of the etheric body, the disciple must begin to control the systems of breathing and blood, the lungs and the heart. In remote ages of earthly evolution, man lived in the waters and breathed through gills like fish. Sacred literature indicates the time when he began to breathe the airs of heaven. Genesis says “God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.”

The disciple must purify and bring about changes in his breathing system. All development proceeds from chaos to harmony, from lack of rhythm to rhythm (eurhythmy). Rhythm must be brought into the instincts.

In ancient times, the various degrees of Initiation were called by particular names:

First degree: The Raven (he who remains at the threshold). The raven appears in all mythologies. In the Edda, he whispers into the ear of Wotan what he sees afar off.

Second degree: the hidden Scholar, or the Occultist.

Third degree: the Warrior (struggle and strife).

Fourth degree: the Initiate bears the name of his people—he is a “Persian” or a “Greek” because his soul has grown to a point where it includes the soul of his people.

Sixth degree: the Initiate is a Sun-Hero, or Sun-Messenger, because his progress is as harmonious and, rhythmic as that of the Sun.

Seventh degree: the Initiate is a ‘Father,’ because he has power to make disciples of men and to be the protector of all; he is the Father of the new being, the ‘twice-born’ in the risen soul.

The Sun represents the vivifying movement and rhythm of the planetary system. The legend of Icarus is a legend of Initiation. Icarus has attempted to reach the Sun-sphere prematurely, without adequate preparation, and is cast down.

The new rhythm of breathing produces a change in the blood. Man is purified to the point of himself being able to generate blood without the aid of plant-nourishment. Prolonged meditation changes the nature of the blood. Man begins to exhale less carbon; he retains a certain amount and uses it for building up his body. The air he exhales is pure. He gradually becomes able to live on the forces contained in his own breath. He accomplishes an alchemical transmutation.

What are the higher stages of Yoga?

(1) The Initiate finds calm within his soul. Astral vision—where everything is a symbolic image of reality is acquired. This astral vision which arises during the sleeping state, is still incomplete.

(2) Dreams cease to be chaotic. Man understands the relation between dream-symbolism and reality; he gains control of the astral world. And then the inner astral light awakens in the soul who perceives other souls in their real being.

(3) Continuity of consciousness is set up between the waking state and the sleeping state. Astral life is reflected in dreams but in deep sleep, pure sounds arise. The soul experiences the inner words issuing from all beings as a mighty harmony. This harmony is a manifestation of reality; it was called by Plato and Pythagoras, the harmony of the spheres. This is not a poetic metaphor but a reality experienced by the soul as a vibration emanating from the soul of the world.

Goethe, who was initiated between the periods of his life at Leipzig and Strasburg, knew of the harmony of the spheres. He expressed it at the beginning of Faust in words spoken by the Archangel Raphael:

“The Sun makes music as of old
Amid the sister-spheres of heaven.
On its predestined circle rolls
With roar of thunder.”

In deep sleep, the Initiate hears these sounds as if they were the notes of trumpets and the rolling of thunder.

My dear brothers and sisters! It is not possible to repeat once again the introduction and the obligations of membership for those who have just joined the class. Therefore, I enjoin those class members who will give the newly accepted members the verses, in accordance with the procedures that I shall review at the close of this session, I enjoin them to also communicate the conditions of membership to those who have only just become members of the class.

Now, my dear brothers and sisters, we shall begin as previously by letting the specific words meander through our souls, words that a person who can sense them can hear from all actuality of the encompassing world, words that could be heard in the past, that can be heard in the present, that will be heard in the future, that presently call out to him, that urge him insistently from the whole world-all to self-awareness, to self-knowledge, that truly bridge to what a person needs for his thinking, for his feeling, for his work in the world, if a person wishes to become a human being in the full sense of the word.

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds.
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

My dear brothers and sisters, the description of the path of awareness has led us to the Guardian of the Threshold. After the Guardian of the Threshold, hard at the abyss of existence, has shown us the specific forces, the forces of our inner being of willing, feeling, and thinking, how they appear eviscerated to the eyes of the beings of the spiritual world, after he has shown us, how in truth a person of the present time’s awareness, not having awakened into full humanity, in regard to these forces observed inwardly, instead before the spiritual godly powers appear as the three beasts, that presently will be placed before the person and indicated by the Guardian of the Threshold, after the Guardian of the Threshold has placed this shattering appearance before our souls, he then shows us the further path that through lifting oneself up leads in turn to true self-awareness, the path that must be walked, if the demand O Man know yourself¹ is to be fulfilled.

After showing us how initially we should regard our thinking, feeling and willing, he shows us, in the specific mantric verses that were presented here in this Michael School at the end of the last session, how we first of all have to immerse ourselves, have to steep ourselves in our thinking and come to recognize that our thinking is illusory appearance, that cannot be carried by our true individuality, and how by diving down below mere appearance we become interwoven into the world ether and come somewhat to honor the guiding beings who lead us from earthly life to earthly life.

Then he shows us how we can clamber down into our feelings, where appearance mingles with reality, how there with half strength emerges our being, our self-nature (our selfhood in the best sense of the word), how there we should consider well what already streams inwardly, for within the powers of life lies not merely our transient apparent existence, but rather the powers of life of the world, of the cosmos.

Just when we descend into willing do we feel existence streaming into our autonomous existence.² Apparent-being transforms itself in existence. Our being descends into willing and we feel world-maker-might streaming through our willing.

These were the words of the Guardian of the Threshold hard on the abyss of being, where there before us stands the yawning darkness, the night-bedecked darkness, which should lighten, in order that we find the light that can illuminate our intrinsic self. Behind us lies the shining sunlit-gleaming physical reality, that now becomes dark, as we cannot find within it our own intrinsic being. There the Guardian of the Threshold speaks the mantric words:

Look upon your web of thoughts:
World of semblance you experience,
Self-awareness hides from you;
Plunge beneath appearance:
Ether being whirls in you;
Self-awareness, it should honor
Your own spirit’s guiding beings.

Embrace your stream of feelings:
Where semblance and substance mingle,
Aware-self leans toward semblance;
So plunge beneath appearance:
And world soul forces are in you;
Aware-self should consider well
Inherent in soul the powers of life.

Let reign in you the thrust of will:
It climbs from all apparent being
With autonomous existence well-equipped;³
Turn to this throughout your life:
Filled it is with world-spirit-might;
Your autonomous existence,⁴ it should grasp
World-maker-might⁵ into spirit-I.

[The mantra was now written on the board:]

Look upon your web of thoughts:
World of semblance you experience,
Self-awareness hides from you;
Plunge beneath appearance:
Ether being whirls in you;
Self-awareness, it should honor
Your own spirit’s guiding beings.

Embrace your stream of feelings:
Where semblance and substance mingle,
Aware-self leans toward semblance;
So plunge beneath appearance:
And world soul forces are in you;
Aware-self should consider well
Inherent in soul the powers of life.

Let reign in you the thrust of will:
It climbs from all apparent being
With autonomous existence well-equipped;
Turn to this throughout your life:
Filled it is with world-spirit-might;
Your autonomous existence, it should grasp
World-maker-might into spirit-I.

The Guardian of the Threshold has spoken a mantric verse for us, regarding which it not merely matters to arrive at the content, but with our entire strength of feeling to transpose ourselves into the movement and life⁶ of the spiritual world. It is for this reason that this verse is formed just so, in the first part appearing rhythmically as a downward movement out of the spiritual world. Each line begins with a stressed, higher syllable, followed by an unstressed, lower one. In the first verse we have: [The reading emphasized the trochaic meter, which was indicated with a macron and a breve above the first two syllables of each line.]

Lōok ŭpon your web of thoughts:
Wōrld ŏf semblance you experience,
Sēlf-ăwareness hides from you;
Plūnge bĕneath appearance:
Ēthĕr being whirls in you;
Sēlf-ăwareness, it should honor
Yōur ŏwn spirit’s guiding beings.

The downward movement toward us on the part of the spiritual world is to be felt in this trochaic rhythm. We only take this verse rightly into our soul when we speak it with the inner feeling that this descent of the spiritual world, the speaking downward to us by spirit-beings, is at work in this rhythmic cadence:

Lōok ŭpon your web of thoughts:
Wōrld ŏf semblance you experience,
Sēlf-ăwareness hides from you;
Plūnge bĕneath appearance:
Ēthĕr being whirls in you;
Sēlf-ăwareness, it should honor
Yōur ŏwn spirit’s guiding beings.

The next verse is just the opposite. Here we are supposed to ascend in feeling to real existence. Here [in the first syllable] we are below; here [in the second syllable] we strive upward toward reality. The lower, unstressed syllable precedes the higher, stressed one: [The reading emphasized the iambic meter, which was indicated with a breve and a macron above the first two syllables of each line.]

Ĕmbrāce your stream of feelings:
Ĭt mīngles semblance and substance for you,
Ăwāre-self leans toward semblance;
Sŏ plūnge beneath appearance:
Ănd wōrld soul forces are in you;
Ăwāre-self should consider well
Ĭnhērent in soul the powers of life.

We must live in these words that are united in this mantric rhythm. We must feel them like this:

Ĕmbrāce your feelings streaming:
Whĕre sēmblance and substance mingle,
Ăwāre-self leans toward semblance;
Sŏ plūnge beneath appearance:
Ănd wōrld soul forces are in you;
Ăwāre-self should consider well
Ĭnhērent in soul the powers of life.

That we are entering more fully into reality is expressed in the progression, that initially we honor [the word was underlined on the blackboard], an activity that is an inner soul-activity, that we then ascend to consider well [the word was underlined on the blackboard]. We gradually approach the matter beginning with guiding beings [the word was underlined], who guide us, who are busy with us, then with powers of life [the words were underlined], which dwell, move, and live throughout the world. In a mantric verse everything is placed in the right place, and all is joined together in the right way in the organization of the entirety.

The third verse tells us how we take up existence directly in willing. We stand right beside existence. Two stressed syllables begin the line: [The reading emphasized the spondaic meter, which is indicated with two macrons above the first two syllables of each line:]

Lēt reīgn in you the thrust of will:
Īt clīmbs from all apparent being
Wīth aūtonomous existence well-equipped;
Tūrn tō this throughout your life:
Fīlled īt īs with world-spirit-might;
Yoūr aūtonomous existence, it should grasp
Wōrld-māker-might into spirit-I.

Here we have progressed. It’s no longer a matter for us to consider, but rather to grasp [the words were underlined], which is an action. World-maker-might [the words were underlined] comes at the beginning of the line, whereas powers of life is at the end of the corresponding line, in order to indicate the complete turn-about that we undergo when we rise from appearance through semblance to existence. The third verse must therefore be experienced in such a way that the beginning of each line is felt in this spondaic meter. In the first verse we have the trochaic meter [“trochaic” was written beside the first verse], in the second the iambic meter [“iambic” was written beside the second verse], in the third the spondaic meter [“spondaic” was written beside the third verse].

Lēt reīgn in you the thrust of will:
Īt clīmbs from all apparent being
Wīth aūtonomous existence well-equipped;
Tūrn tō this throughout your life:
Fīlled īt īs with world-spirit-might;
Yoūr aūtonomous existence, it should grasp
Wōrld-māker-might into spirit-I.

After the Guardian of the Threshold has placed this before our soul, he makes us aware of how we must be incorporated, if we want to progress in spiritual knowledge, into the cosmos, into the world, into the cosmos, into the world with all their forces. Their place in us is not initially delineated, but in the cosmos, it is visibly arrayed. In the cosmos we can point out the places. In us all is interwoven. But we do not proceed to a real inner acquaintanceship if we do not go out into world-forces and world-powers, if we remain within ourselves subjectively, if we remain enclosed within our skin, if we do not go out and beyond, our body becoming the whole world. Then our soul of our narrow human nature will feel itself as a member of the world. Spirit will incorporate our narrow human nature into the whole cosmos, into the whole world.

This we must fully consummate, as the Guardian of the Threshold advises. He points out to us how massive forces from the depths of the earth pull on all beings. Forces go out that draw us down, that bind our willing to the earth, if we do not make it free through inner striving. Our gaze goes toward earth, our gaze reaches down, if we want to localize our willing. We must feel ourselves at one with the mass of the earth, we must feel pulled on by the earth, we must have the impulse within us to free ourselves from the mass of the earth, if we would allow our willing to become one with the cosmos, which we must do.

Feel how the depths of earth
Sends its forces to your being,
Surging in through body parts.
You'll lose yourself in them,
If powerless you entrust
Your willing to their striving;
They’ll overshadow in you the I.

So speaks the Guardian of the Threshold to our willing at the yawning abyss of existence, in service to Michael. And he instructs us, for he would integrate our feeling into the cosmos, now not to the depths, he instructs us about the horizontal reaches of the world, where from West to East, from East to West, forces swing like a pendulum and permeate us. These are the forces that seize our feeling. Godlike powers we must feel, which send their spirit clarity⁷ into this horizontal wash of waves,⁸ if we would integrate our feeling correctly into the world’s expanse. Just as we would integrate our willing into the vertical, feeling it bound below and wanting to free it above, just so must we be able to place our feeling into the world’s expanse. Then will our feeling be light, bright, clear.⁹ Then something goes through and through our feeling, just as the Sun with its light passes through us as it shines through the Earth’s air on its path from east to west.

But in all that streams through us we must find the loving. The force of love alone, which moves and lives in a person, love alone can do what there will be demanded of us. Then wisdom will be woven into us, and we will feel ourselves within the expanse of the circling movement of the Sun, as a feeling human being, an individual strong in virtuous spirit works. That is said to us at the yawning abyss of existence as feeling human beings, that is said to us by the Guardian of the Threshold.

Feel how from world’s expanse
The powers of gods their spirit clarity
Sets your inner soul aglow.
Find yourself in them with love,
And they’ll make, wisdom weaving,
You as someone in their midst,
Strong in virtuous spirit works.

And when the Guardian of the Threshold presently would speak to our thinking, that it should be integrated into the cosmos, then he instructs not as he does in willing directed under, that should get into motion above, then he instructs not as he does with feeling in the wide circling, in which a person moves with the sun, then he instructs in the heights, in the heights of heaven, where alone the self can live selflessly, if it would catch hold of the powers of thought in what comes from overhead in grace. We must inwardly be stalwart¹⁰ in order to take up the word, for only if we hold ourselves in fortitude in striving for wisdom and inner knowing, only then the Word of Worlds resounds from on high in grace, only then it speaks of mankind’s true enduring being.¹¹ Just that the Guardian of the Threshold states to us at the yawning abyss of existence.

Feel how in heaven's heights
Selfhood selflessly can live,
If spirit-imbued power of thought
With highest striving will align
And in fortitude takes up the word,
That from on high resounds in grace
In mankind’s true enduring being.

[The mantra was now written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian teaches about willing, feeling, thinking:

Feel how the depths of earth
Sends its forces to your being,
Surging in through body parts.
You'll lose yourself in them,
If powerless you entrust
Your willing to their striving;
They’ll overshadow in you the I.

Feel how from world’s expanse
The powers of gods their spirit clarity
Sets your inner soul aglow.
Find yourself in them with love,
And they’ll make, wisdom weaving,
You as someone in their midst,
Strong in virtuous spirit works.

Feel how in heaven's heights
Selfhood selflessly can live,
If spirit-imbued power of thought
With highest striving will align
And in fortitude takes up the word,
That from on high resounds in grace
In mankind’s true enduring being.

There above is the place we must look to if our thinking would be in unity with the forces of the cosmos. In the world’s circling expanse is the region that we must feel into, if our feeling would be in unity with cosmic forces. We must look down to the region of our earth-bound willing, which we should free toward the heights, to incorporate it properly into cosmic activity. Everywhere, above, in the periphery, and below, everywhere there is particular existence. We must feel it inwardly. The Guardian of the Threshold also instructs us there, in service to Michael and speaks to us about what we find above, in the middle, and below.

He teaches us additionally about the heights, the widths, and the depths, as he teaches us about thinking, feeling and willing. So he speaks:

There battles light with powers dark
In that realm, where your thinking
In spirit-presence would like to be.
You’ll find, striving toward the light,
Your self by spirit-being taken from you;
You can, if darkness lures you,
In matter lose the self.

We are placed in the world between light and darkness. Light wants to seize our essential conscious existence,¹² our self; darkness wants to seize our essential conscious existence. We have to find the path between light and darkness in order to retain the self. This lies in the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.

And the Guardian speaks concerning our feeling:

There battles warmth with cold
In that realm, where your feeling
In spirit-weave would like to live.
You’ll find, loving the warmth,
Your self in spirit-bliss blowing away;
You can, if coldness hardens you,
In sorrow waste the self.

In turn we stand with feeling between polar opposites, between loving warmth, between warm love and cold hardness, hardening coldness. We must find our way between these two if our essential conscious self is to find itself.

And the Guardian of the Threshold instructs us admonishingly about the third realm, where the will primordially emerges and stands:¹³

There battles life with death
In that realm, where your willing
In spirit-work would like to rule.
You’ll find, holding on to life,
Your self in spirit-power to vanish;
You can, if death-power binds you,
In nothingness confine the self.

Life and death, we can lose our willing to life, we can lose it to death. We feel it vanishing in life, or feel it confined in death. We must seek the path. The Guardian demands this of us. It is from this point that the work will begin in the next lesson. The Guardian draws our attention once more to the way we must seek our path in order to come to our human self. There he speaks earnest words, for it is not easy to find the inner strength that holds and carries and guides the self, strength the self should itself find, which it does not have in ordinary life on earth. How the Guardian gives us the means we will delve into more deeply. Next Saturday, these mantric verses will be written on the board, and we will hear the Guardian speak further, as he teaches about straying in error, which we must know about to find the correct path. He would direct us along the right path by showing us where we might get lost.

Now however, let us think once again, looking back on life on earth, which we must do every time we enter into the esoteric, now let us think again of the admonition that has been spoken to man in the past by all beings and processes, that speaks to man in the present, that will speak to man always in the future.

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds.
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

When all that streams through the Guardian in Michael's name through this Michael School, when here instruction permeates our soul in this rightful Michael School, then we may be certain, if we are honest and open-minded, that the power of Michael streams through this room, which may be brought to witness by the Sign of Michael [The Michael sign was drawn on the blackboard.] and by the seal-gestures, by means of which Michael allows the Rosicrucian Stream, the Rosicrucian Temple, to stream in the force that the man of today needs for his esoteric life, that takes effect out of the three-sided wellspring of the world, out of the godlike Father principle, out of the Christ principle, out of the Spirit principle, so that the Rosicrucian Maxim, the Rosicrucian Proverb combines with the Michael-Gesture-Sign.

Ex Deo Nascimur [The lower seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.]

In Christo Morimur [The middle seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.]

Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus [The upper seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.]

which must be felt in such a way that the gesture is understood as:

I honor the Father¹⁴ [This was written beside the lower seal gesture.]

I love the Son¹⁵ [This was written beside the middle seal gesture.]

I unite with the Spirit¹⁶ [This was written beside the upper seal gesture.]

Once again: [The Michael sign was made, and then the three seal gestures, accompanied by the spoken words:]

Ex Deo Nascimur
In Christo Morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

It has to be added that the mantric verses given here in this school may only be possessed by those who are legitimate members of the school. If any member of this school was prevented from being present at a session at which he might have been present, but does not have the mantras of the hour, he may receive them from another member who was able to have them. For this it is necessary to ask either Frau Dr Wegman or myself. So if somebody wishes to receive the mantras because he could not receive them here, there must be a request to Frau Dr Wegman or myself, but not by the one who would receive the mantras, only by the one who would pass them on. This must be stated at the very outset.

Furthermore, it has to be emphasized that this is not an administrative measure, it has to take place in every single case for every individual to whom one wishes to give the mantras, for it is the beginning of that occult act through which one receives the mantras.

Those members who have only joined recently and have advanced to today's lesson may only receive those mantras which have been offered up to their participation in today's lesson. Only in particular cases, which must be judged individually, may the request be made as to whether the later mantras may be given. The mantras may be transmitted from one member to another only by word of mouth, in no other way. They may not be sent by mail.

If somebody has made notes, other than the mantras, it is his duty to keep these notes only for a week, and thereafter to burn them. What is communicated here in the rightfully existing School of Michael has significance only in verbal communication, which is an inner occult law, with the exception of the mantric verses. To forestall the assumption that these things are being handled in a childish, secretive manner, it has to be stated that if these occult mantras were to be passed on illegitimately to others, they would lose their effectiveness, for the act of transmitting is part of the efficacy of the school. It is for the sake of this occult fact that the handling of the mantras is required to be so strict.

In the program for tomorrow the course on pastoral medicine will take place at 9:30 and the course for theologians at 3:30. Tomorrow evening there will be a lecture for members, and at 5 o'clock in the afternoon a performance of eurythmy. The speech formation course will be at 12 noon as usual.

The Guardian speaks

Lōok ŭpon your thinking weaving:
Wōrld ŏf appearance you experience,
Sēlf-ăwareness hides from you;
Plūnge bĕneath appearance:
Ēthĕr being whirls in you;
Sēlf-ăwareness, it should honor
Yōur ŏwn spirit’s guiding beings.

Ĕmbrāce your feelings streaming:
Ĭt mīngles semblance and substance for you,
Ăwāre-self leans toward semblance;
Sŏ plūnge beneath appearance:
Ănd wōrld soul forces are in you;
Ăwāre-self should consider well
Ĭnhērent in soul the powers of life.

Lēt reīgn in you the thrust of will:
Īt clīmbs from all apparent being
Wīth aūtonomous existence well-equipped;
Tūrn tō this throughout your life:
Fīlled īt īs with world-spirit-might;
Yoūr aūtonomous existence should grasp
Wōrld-māker-might into spirit-I.

The Guarding teaches willing, feeling, thinking

There battles light with powers dark
In that realm, where your thinking
In spirit-presence would like to be.
You’ll find, striving toward the light,
Your self by spirit-being taken from you;
You can, if darkness lures you,
In matter lose the self.

There battles warmth with cold
In that realm, where your feeling
In spirit-weave would like to live.
You’ll find, loving the warmth,
Your self in spirit-bliss blowing away;
You can, if coldness hardens you,
In sorrow waste the self.

There battles life with death
In that realm, where your willing
In spirit-work would like to rule.
You’ll find, holding on to life,
Your self in spirit-power to vanish;
You can, if death-power binds you,
In nothingness confine the self.

Ex Deo Nascimur
In Christo Morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus

I honor the Father
I love the Son
I unite with the Spirit

• 1. O Mensch
• 2. Selbsteigenheit
• 3. Erschaffened auf: The will is well-equipped, constituted, fashioned with Eigensein, autonomous existence that is inherent.
• 4. Eigensein (a derivative of Dasein, existence-awareness) is willing that exists in and of its own self, naturally inherent autonomous existence. This follows the usage of Kant in section 3 of his 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, “Clarity is gained, from most basic to most esoteric usage, by this principle: autonomous existence of willing is the nature of willing, a quality it is equipped with in and of itself, independent of the nature of the objects of willing.” (Es könnte sich um einen Satz aus der Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitte handeln: Autonomie des Willens ist die Beschaffenheit des Willens, dadurch derselbe ihm selbst (unabhängig von aller Beschaffenheit der Gegenstände des Wollens) ein Gesetz ist.)
• 5. Weltschöpfermacht
• 6. weben und leben: Luther translated Acts 17:28, “Denn in ihm leben, weben und sind wir,” but Tyndale at the same time translated it, “For in him we live and move and have our being.” Weave in this sense is somewhat archaic in English except for the idiom “to weave a web of lies”.
• 7. Geisteshelle
• 8. Wellenschläge
• 9. licht
• 10. tapfer
• 11. des Menschen wahre Wesenheit
• 12. unser Selbst
• 13. Urständet: a variant of entstandet, meaning primordially emerges and stands.
• 14. Literally from God I am born, but put in the modern form Ich bewundere den Vater. The prefix be- makes it an inner wondering, an honoring. The word revere is not quite right as it comes from Latin and means “to be in fear of,” which is the Old Testament way of relating to God. The word “awe” for bewundere is also not quite right as it also comes from an old English-German word meaning “to fear.”
• 15. Literally in Christ I die, but put in the modern form Ich liebe den Sohn.
• 16. NoteText

My dear Theosophical friends!

In the course of yesterday's lecture, we saw how complicated the event in Palestine is for spiritual scientific research. We have seen that clairvoyant consciousness has shown us two infant Jesus, one belonging to the Solomonic line of the House of David, and the other to the Nathanic line of the House of David, and that in the pure physical body of the child of the Solomonic line, that individuality incarnated again which we know under the name Zoroaster or Zarathustra.

Today we will deal with the other of the two children, with the one from the Nathanic or priestly line. The etheric body of this child was of a peculiar purity. To understand this, we have to go back far in the evolution of mankind. Never before has a being been born with a similar etheric body. We have to go back to the beginning of human development on earth, to the so-called Lemurian age.

We know that humanity has developed only gradually and slowly into what it is now. Jesus lived in the fourth post-Atlantic age. It was only during this cultural period that the I came into full possession of its powers.

This time marked the descent of the personality to Earth. Before this period was the Chaldean-Egyptian age, the third post-Atlantean; before that the Ur-Persian, the second post-Atlantean; and before that the first post-Atlantean age, the ancient Indian, whose culture came directly from the Atlantean period. Before this period was the event that we call the great Atlantic catastrophe, since our ancestors, that is, our own souls, which were embodied on the Atlantic continent, Atlantis, were washed away from the earth.

The continent inhabited by our ancestors was located between present-day Europe, Africa and America. The Atlanteans saw spiritual entities as a misty aura surrounding all beings. They also saw all the soul and spiritual energies that flow in and out through the person. Just as our finger, if it were conscious, would see the blood pulsating in it and feel itself as a limb in the organism, so the Atlantean felt himself to be part of the environment; he knew that, cut off from the environment, he would wither away. On the other hand, he could not distinguish himself from the environment; he felt himself cast into the whole external world.

Enormous natural revolutions, which completely changed the world map, put an end to the Atlantic cultural period, during which people had lived together in sharply distinct groups and races. The same individualities that had been active in the Atlantides continued their development - although under completely different circumstances - in other parts of our earth, where their first steps were guided by the high Rishis.

But we have to go back even further if we want to get to know the conditions that [gap in the transcript].

Before the Atlantic catastrophe, humanity – that is, we, our souls – lived in very different bodies on the Lemurian continent, which was located roughly between present-day southern Asia, Africa and Australia. Going back even further, we see beings with forms that would seem quite fantastic to present-day humans. What does this mean? Yes, during this Lemurian period, large areas of this earth were abandoned by human souls. Before this time, human souls had inhabited the earth in completely different forms; but now they went in great flocks to completely different regions of the world [incarnated themselves on other planets]; only very few people remained behind to survive the most difficult and barren period of development on our earth. It was the time when the first germ appeared that we call self-awareness.

In this world, beings asserted themselves that we describe as Luciferic beings. At that time, people had clairvoyance. These Luciferic beings approached the astral bodies of people and penetrated the astral bodies of people who were on earth. Since that time, the Luciferic element has been in the soul of man. Man owes his freedom to this Luciferic element. What would have become of people if these Luciferic beings had not come? Through them, man developed into an ego, but slowly; and man would never have been able to develop this out of his own nature, what is called the inner impulse to freedom. Man had to pay for the possibility of evil, in other words, he had to be confronted with the possibility of choosing between good and evil.

But a counterweight also had to be created, otherwise man would not be able to maintain his connection with good. So that the luciferic element would not become too strong, a counterweight was created in that part of the etheric body of the few people remaining on the devastated earth was withdrawn from their bodies and sunk into the spiritual world. This part remained during the Lemurian and Atlantean ages. The descendants of the Lemurian people thus lacked a part of their etheric body, which remained in the spiritual world. That part of the human etheric body, which no human being had been part of until the Palestine event, and which had thus remained untouched by all Luciferic influence, became the etheric body of the Nathanic Child Jesus; and so there was a sum of forces present in this child that had never existed before in the etheric body of a human being. The religious documents that are really based on clairvoyant knowledge, and which are always right about human physical research, speak of this if we understand them correctly.

The effect of the luciferic forces on people is described in the story of the Fall of Man. The astral body had been corrupted by the luciferic influence. The snake of the Garden of Eden is a symbol of the Luciferic influence, through which human beings acquired the ability to distinguish between good and evil by their own judgment. Jehovah's words to man that they should not eat from the tree of life indicate that a part of the etheric body remained until it was taken up into the Nathanic boy Jesus. In this boy were united the purest heart feelings and the greatest powers of love as never before in a human being; the pure soul qualities that man had before the Fall, that is, before the Luciferic influence, were present in him in the richest measure.

There is something else to be said, namely about the astral body of the Nathanian Jesus Child. There was an important power in it, over which nothing less than the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha exercised its influence. After Buddha had completed his incarnation as Buddha, he no longer needed a physical incarnation, but could only embody himself in an etheric body. As such a being, Buddha descended - attracted by the pure etheric body to which Buddha had risen - and united with the astral body of the Nathanian child Jesus. Anyone who could have observed the process with clairvoyant eyes at that moment would have seen the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha floating in the aura of the child. This is hinted at in the Gospel of Luke in the account of the vision of the shepherds. Due to special circumstances, the shepherds had become clairvoyant. They saw a host of angels, that is, the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha, the etheric body of the Buddha. Thus, a wonderful etheric body was at work in this Nathanic Jesus child, which had never before been used by a human being. In the same way, Gautama Buddha worked through the Nathanic Jesus Child, and through him he let flow the contribution that he, as Buddha, had to give after six hundred years of development.

In a wonderful way, the Evangelist Luke describes a blending of oriental legend with religious document. This merging of the Buddha with the spiritual body of the Nathanian Jesus child, which Luke saw with clairvoyant eyes, is confirmed by legend. Legend tells us that when the son of King Suddhodana was born, the old seer Asita saw a host of angels descending from heaven. At this sight, he began to weep. When asked if something had happened to make him weep, he replied, “No, I weep because my eyes will no longer see my Bodhisattva.” In a clairvoyant way, he had recognized his master in the newborn prince and wept because he was too old to see him grow into a Buddha.

When the Nathanian Jesus child was born, Asita was also there. The Simeon of the Gospel of Luke is none other than the reincarnation of Asita from Indian legend. He was now standing before his Buddha again, and saw the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha floating in the aura of the child. Therefore he added to his testimony and said: “Now, God, thou lettest thy servant depart in peace, for now he has seen his Lord.” Thus the oriental legend winds itself into the religious document in the great images which have become real events of the physical world.

Now we must turn back for a few words to the other Child Jesus, in whose physical body was enclosed the ego of Zarathustra, the Zarathustra who was once a contemporary of Buddha and, as Zaratas-Nazaratos, taught Pythagoras during the Babylonian captivity.

So we know the ego of this Solomon-like baby Jesus, but now we have to look at that physical body. This body originated from the ancient Hebrew people, and this body had to be able to develop organs that Zarathustra could use at that particular time. That is to say, they had to be built up through inheritance from generation to generation within a specially selected people. This was the mission of the ancient Hebrew people.

[In order for the ego to emerge, ancient clairvoyance had to be abandoned. Instead of the old consciousness, which consisted of dark dream images, brain-bound thought power now had to be developed. In the year 3101 BC, the old clairvoyance began to fade... Kali yuga]

Here we come back to an area where we have to turn to spiritual science to gain reliable insights. This teaches us that the Hebrew people can be traced back to a patriarch who had been specially selected: Abraham. He was entrusted with a very special mission. We can best understand this if we realize that the further we go back in the development of the earth, the more varied the soul forces in man were. Before Abraham, people still had a vague dream-like consciousness. Those old clairvoyant abilities had to be sacrificed. Now, from the entire mass of ancient peoples, the individuality was selected that was best suited in its physical makeup, not to be a tool for the old clairvoyance, but for intellectual combination, suitable only to direct the eyes and ears to the outer world in order to develop reason or intellect. That individuality was Abraham.

All the old qualities of dreamy clairvoyance were closed to him. Mathematical calculation was his tool. That is why he could become the progenitor of a nation that was geared to deduction, to rational, intellectual thinking, but was alien to all forms of clairvoyance. While all other people tried to grasp the spiritual world by closing their outer eyes and letting inspiration flow into them, Abraham looked out, saw everything and tried to grasp the spiritual by combining the outer appearances. This required a particularly developed brain.

Abraham received everything from the outside, and because this ability, which became a physical property, was inherited from generation to generation. So the characteristic of the ancient Hebrew people is

to take nothing from within, but everything from without. The consciousness of the people should also be given from the outside. Everything [should be] received from the outside, even one's own nationality. The sacrifice of Isaac is a symbol of this, in that Abraham is induced to sacrifice Isaac and then gets him back as a gift from God. What was sacrificed with this? Yes, the whole nation, its own mission. Israel received its own nationality as a gift from outside.

What is significant is what is handed down to us in the promise of Jehovah to Abraham regarding the descendants of Abraham, namely that his descendants should be structured according to the number of stars in the sky: “Numerous as the stars in the sky” is an incorrect translation, it should be “corresponding to the numerical proportions of the stars in the sky”. The order of his descendants should correspond to the actual order of the stars in the sky. Twelve is a basic number in all things esoteric. They were to be organized according to the twelve constellations of the zodiac; hence the twelve tribes, which thus correspond to the number of stars in the sky and have a spiritual connection with them. Here that which is otherwise spiritual-soul should express itself in the physical descendants. We now see the mission of the ancient Hebrew people gradually developing physically in such a way that ultimately the body for Zarathustra could emerge.

But something that had happened to Abraham could not be completed immediately. Some of the old clairvoyance remained; Joseph's dreams point to this. Therefore, he had to be excluded from the ancient Hebrew people. At first, this people developed without Joseph, who was sent to Egypt; then it was limited entirely to external combinations. Now the ancient Hebrew people had to receive from Egypt, from the outside, what the other peoples received from within. Moses gave the Hebrews Egyptian wisdom as something external. Thus, this people had to receive clairvoyant wisdom from the outside. So it was to develop under constant external influences until, as its most mature fruit, it could produce the physical body for the re-embodied Zarathustra.

When an individual develops, the physical body is born first. Up to the seventh year, when the teeth change, the human being is enclosed in an etheric mother-shell; this is an etheric birth. At fourteen years of age, the astral shell is shed: astral birth. At twenty-one years of age, the human ego is fully born. We see, then:

1. From birth to the change of teeth, seven years.
2. From the change of teeth to the fourteenth year, the development of the etheric body follows.
3. From there, the astral body develops until the twenty-first year.

From the age of twenty-one, the ego develops after the veils have been discarded.

Likewise, there had to be three epochs in the development of the ancient Hebrew people:

1. From Abraham to the Davidic era.
2. From David to the Babylonian captivity.
3. From the Babylonian captivity to the birth of the Solomonic child Jesus. This is so that a lofty ego like the Zarathustra ego may receive a worthy shell. The people had to be developed from generation to generation so that the physical shell would become more and more suitable. Seven years correspond to seven generations in each epoch. But seven generations were not enough; one generation is always skipped in inheritance, because children do not inherit their predispositions from their parents, but from their grandparents. There had to be 3 x 14 = 42 generations before the physical body was developed in which the ego of Zarathustra had a worthy shell. The Gospel of Matthew, which describes the Palestine event from the physical aspect, gives the list of generations for the Solomon Jesus child and goes back to Abraham, that is, to the time when the physical body began to be developed. Luke, who describes the Palestine event from the astral point of view, gives the generation list of the Nathanian Jesus child and goes back to Abraham and to God. Luke goes even further back than Abraham, because the etheric body must be sensed even earlier. In the Nazarene of Nathan there was something present that did not come from people, but from the very beginning, before the Luciferic influence. It is therefore good that these records differ from each other. In the three wise men of the Orient we find three disciples of Zaratas-Nazaratos. These Chaldean disciples knew that the star they were following contained the ego of Zarathustra. The three disciples followed the star to Bethlehem, and when the star stopped over the manger in Bethlehem, they understood that Zarathustra descended there to incarnate.

Both boys grew up to the age of twelve. By then, the Solomon-like boy had developed the Zarathustra qualities; he had developed the qualities that belonged to his physical body. He had come so far that he was able to make a great sacrifice. The Nathanian boy had in particular those abilities that originated from the pure etheric body and on the other side from the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha. This Nathanian Jesus boy did not have an ordinary ego in the human sense. He had preferably the three higher covers.

The Zarathustra embodied in the Solomon Jesus Child made a great sacrifice in his twelfth year. A spirit as high as his can leave his body and take on another body. The ego of the Solomon Jesus Child, that is, that of Zarathustra, left the body of the Solomon Jesus Child and entered the body of the Nathan Jesus Child. This happened when the Nathanian Jesus child was allowed to accompany his parents to Jerusalem at the age of twelve. His parents lost sight of him, and when they found him again in the temple three days later, they did not recognize his speech: Zarathustra had inspired the Nathanian Jesus child.

The Solomon-like Jesus child died after he had lived an “automatic” life for a time. The mother of the Nathanian Jesus child also died. Soon after the birth of the Solomonic Jesus child, his parents had moved to Nazareth, where not long after, the Solomonic father died. In Nazareth, the boys grew up, side by side. After the Nathanian mother had died, the father of the Nathanian child took the Solomonic mother to live with him, and so she became the stepmother of the Nathanian Jesus child.

For the period from the age of twelve to thirty, the Gospels tell us nothing about the life of Jesus. At the age of thirty, he had matured for the great event.

We see how complicated the starting point of Christianity is, and how the most significant spiritual currents of the preceding time, through Zarathustra and Buddha, have flowed into the Nathanian Jesus child.

for the inauguration of the Novalis branch

Due to the circumstances, a number of our friends here in Strasbourg have founded a second branch in addition to the already existing one, which is to bear the significant name “Novalis Branch”. Our friends from other places, who have lovingly gathered in Strasbourg today, have shown through their visit how they understand that branches can also exist side by side in one city and that the diversity of work in different fields need not preclude what we must call harmony and concord, which must prevail among all those who consider themselves members of our society spread across the globe. And so this branch should also be part of the great current that we call spiritual science.

You, my dear friends of the Novalis branch, have chosen a significant name for your signature, a sign of your work. The name Novalis belongs to a personality who last, that is, in her last incarnation, was active only in the 18th century; a personality whose whole being is permeated, spiritualized, by what we regard as a spirit-knowing sense, as spirituality. And so you showed from the very beginning that you want spiritual science to be something directly alive, that you seek it wherever it can be found, not just in this or that time, but as it lives through all times, and how it can pour out into the world through one or the other personality in many different ways. In Novalis, we can see how the striving for spiritual knowledge is something that can permeate and interweave our ordinary everyday lives. Of course, if we wanted to point to the sources of the theosophical spirit in Novalis, we would have to look into earlier incarnations of this lofty spirit, and from these earlier incarnations it would become clear to us how what can only be the most profound form of theosophical spiritual life was lived in the incarnations that preceded Novalis's own. But even if we consider only that Novalis, who was barely thirty years old and lived at the end of the 18th century, if we consider only that one incarnation, then we can already see in him how spiritual knowledge is not something that takes people up into a dreamy, fantastic world, something that draws him away from immediate reality. On the contrary, in the most diverse ways, we can see in Novalis how the spirit of reality, how real life acquires its value and true content by permeating it with spiritual science.

Novalis came from a noble family in central Germany in which there was a certain, I might say materialistic piety – for such a thing also exists – but not really that which one can describe as the yearning of the heart for a real, living spirit. In order to fulfill the karma of Novalis in the right way, it happened that the father of Novalis, the old Hardenberg, even in his later age - although he was not imbued with spiritual life, but because he came into the Herrnhut sect, a pietistic sect - was interspersed with pious impulses from a certain side. And from this middle-class, German-speaking environment – which, as I said, had enough of the spirit in it to enable even old Hardenberg, in his later life, to achieve a certain spirituality, even if it was sectarian – our Novalis emerged. He grew into – not into what was destined for him according to the will of his family, for that would have been some military or diplomatic position – he grew into a great time; into that time in which great, powerful minds worked at the chair of the Central German University of Thuringia.

So he could still hear Schiller's history being presented in Jena at that time. Contemporary history teachers may say that Schiller was not an erudite historian. But what history should be in life, a permeation of the whole of human development with spiritual life, that is what came from Schiller to those souls who were able to hear him in Jena as a history teacher. Schiller spoke as a great personality above all. Spirit spoke from this personality; it awakened the spirit.

And there was yet another teacher when Novalis was young, a teacher who, through the great energy of his spiritual life, not only created things in the field of philosophy that belong to the whole human race but are still little understood today. Fichte was working at the time when Novalis was living his life. He worked in such a way that his whole demeanour, Fichte's demeanour, had something spiritual about it. One can look at it as an externality. Those who have a sense for it will not look at it as an externality, that Fichte, when he lectured in the dark hall in the evening and the candle was burning on his lectern, first extinguished the candle by saying: So, my dear listeners, now the physical light has been extinguished, now only the spiritual light should shine in this room.

When the relationship between the spiritual and the physical is conjured up not only before the soul but also before the eyes at the right moment, this means something tremendous for receptive souls like Novalis. Such a soul can thereby become capable of maintaining an unshakable belief in spiritual life. It imbues the soul with a noble sentiment that remains for life when a Novalis comes into such an environment. One cannot say that Novalis was prone to enthusiasm. Those who believe that he was a dreamer do not understand Novalis. No, the spirit that lived in Novalis said – we can read it today in his unpublished writings –: the state of sleep is different from the state of wakefulness. When a person is awake, the inner soul – as it was called in those days, what we would call today the astral body – is united with the outer body. The body enjoys the soul. A beautiful word that Novalis used to express the relationship between the physical and astral bodies. And in sleep, the soul is released from the body, as Novalis said, and the body digests the soul when the person is asleep. This is another beautiful, short, concise expression for a relationship that we also encountered in spiritual science. It is beautiful when Novalis writes the saying in his notes: We are always surrounded by a spiritual world. Wherever we are, spiritual beings are around us. It is only up to the human being to project his or her self in such a way that he or she becomes aware of the spiritual beings that surround us wherever we are. It is wonderful how he shows a deep understanding of the course of esoteric human development and writes: In ancient times, attempts were made to lead the soul to a higher development by mortifying the body, through self-chastisement and so on. In more recent times, the strengthening of the soul must take its place: strengthening the soul. Through this strengthening, the soul must gain power over the body, must not become weaker as a result, and must then exercise a certain mastery.

We could talk about Novalis for hours. We would not find a spirit that expresses itself in words and teachings like the ones we can give in spiritual science today, but we would find a spirit that expresses exactly the same thing with its words. He was no dreamer, no fantasist. Although his lyric poetry took on the highest momentum we can imagine, leading us up to the highest warmth of feeling, Novalis – and this applies to him, who did not live to be thirty – was a practical mind, who studied at the Mining Academy, was a practical man, through and through a mathematician, who felt that mathematics was a great poem, according to whose lines the divine spirit had woven the world, but who proved himself to be practical in everything a mining engineer needs. Novalis was a spirit who, despite this practicality, knew how to implement in his emotional life, in his heart, what was for him a theosophical attitude, directly into his life. Truly, what we know of his relationship with Sophie von Kühn should not be understood as something related to sensuality. He loved a girl who died at the age of fourteen. He actually only began to love her so ardently when she was already dead. He felt that he now lives in the realm in which she has been since her “death.” He decided to die after her. His further life was a living with a physically dead personality. All this shows us what Novalis grew into through the strong pull of his spiritual being.

We can see from Novalis that, as a human being, you basically only need to have one quality in order to have a sense of this spirituality that spiritual science is supposed to bring us. You only need one quality, and this one quality becomes so difficult for people. Because it becomes so difficult for people, people do not come to spiritual science easily. When this one quality is mentioned, it seems to people as if they all have it. Nevertheless, it is this quality, the lack of which prevents people from coming to spiritual science: truthfulness, honestly confessing what really is in the deepest soul. Seemingly, they have so many people — in their own opinion. Nevertheless, Novalis in particular gives us an example of how just a moment of real honesty is needed, and how through this one moment of honesty a person should confess what spirituality can be for the human heart. Novalis' father had a certain inclination towards spirituality; otherwise he would not have joined the Moravian Church. But his soul was not as free and honest as is meant here. What lived in his soul from the external physical world prevented him from doing so. The physical world, with all its prejudices, did not allow him to ascend into the spiritual world. But his son had this truthfulness. What was more obvious than that the father could have no inkling of what lived in this son? The physical world, with its separateness, disharmony, and lack of truthfulness, erected a barrier here between what the young Novalis really was and what the old Hardenberg wanted to be , but which he could not be because of a lack of real inner truthfulness, the physical world with all that it makes of a person did not allow him to realize his son's importance as long as Novalis lived. The son had been dead for a few weeks when old Hardenberg was in his Herrnhut community. They sang a hymn in the community: “What would I have been without you, what would I not be without you.” And this hymn that was sung – old Hardenberg had not yet heard it, but in that moment everything that was spiritual in his soul ignited. He was so overwhelmed by the great impression of what flowed from this song that in that moment his soul, which had become honest, was filled with the spirit of the world, with spiritual life. And when the meeting was over, the old Hardenberg asked someone the name of the song that had so deeply moved him. Then they told him: It is your son's song. It was only necessary that for a moment everything that the physical plane brought could be forgotten, and then, without knowing it, pure truthfulness, pure objectivity, not the prejudices of the physical plane, lived in him for a moment, brought into him by him who had brought it. This is how spirit would find spirit if we, without what are the obstacles of the physical plane, were to face soul to soul. In that moment when man, given over purely to the truth, can find the soul of the other and the soul of the world, in each such moment he must be imbued with what might be called theosophical spirituality.

What could be called theosophical spirituality does not lie only in some theory, in some doctrine, although we must never forget that for us humans, who are born to think, a doctrine is indispensable. But the essence of theosophy does not lie in the doctrine. Anyone who might want to emphasize that the doctrine is superfluous and that it is only important to cultivate what is called universal brotherly love must be repeatedly and repeatedly reminded that universal brotherly love cannot be achieved anywhere in the world by preaching universal brotherly love. If we preach only of love, then for the connoisseur of life it is as if we were saying to a stove: Dear stove, it behoves you, for your stove-love, to warm the room. But the room remains cold, no matter how often we preach of love. If, however, we give it fuel, wood and fire, then the wood and fire in it are transformed into warmth, and it warms the room. The fuel for the human soul is the great ideals, the great thoughts that we can absorb, through which we recognize the context of the world, through which we can learn the secrets of human destiny and human life. These are not thoughts that only fill us with theory, but those that warm us inwardly, and the result of theosophical wisdom is love. And just as surely as the stove warms the room by heating and not by preaching, so surely the right teaching of the great thoughts that permeate the world will make the soul loving. For that is the secret of real wisdom: that it transforms itself into love in the soul through its own power. Those who have not yet found the way from wisdom to love only show that they have not yet come far enough in wisdom. But anyone who wants to believe that the thoughts we absorb about the evolution of the world, the evolution of man, about karma and so on, are unimportant for man should realize again and again in his soul that these are not just human thoughts, that they are not just thoughts that we think first, but that these thoughts, which penetrate our soul, are the thoughts according to which the divine spirits have built the world.

In spiritual science, it is not our thoughts that arise in our mind's eye, but the thoughts of the divine architects, the divine spirits of the world. What the gods of the world thought among themselves before the creation of the physical world is what we reflect on in spiritual science, and in so doing we explore that which flowed from the divine beings into the activity and becoming of the world to which we belong. But that which the gods have thought is spiritual light. And anyone who does not want to think what the gods have thought, even if he does not know it, does not give himself the direction towards the light, but towards darkness. The only possible foundation for a real development of the human soul is the one in which we start from what the divine thoughts of the world are. The abilities of the spirits of the world have not been given to us as potentialities to be left fallow. They have been given to us to develop. And since thinking is our most important and outstanding ability in this cycle of human development, we must start from thinking. But we must not stop at thinking. This gradually leads us to implement spiritual science in our attitudes, so that we learn to understand the secrets of how knowledge leads to character traits, to emotional qualities. Correctly understood knowledge leads to character traits, to real emotional qualities.

We can make this clear to ourselves by means of a single example, by realizing that we humans undergo successive, ever new embodiments, incarnations. What would be the point of these incarnations, these repeated lives on earth, if they were not meant to make man more and more perfect? We must look back from our present incarnation to earlier incarnations and say to ourselves: What we have become at the present time, we have become through the fact that, incarnation after incarnation, these or those qualities of our soul have been added, that our soul has always absorbed new and ever new forces, had new and ever new experiences, had new and ever new experiences. What is built into this soul in one incarnation then comes out in the following incarnation.

We have now become what we have been prepared to become in previous incarnations. But then we can stop for a moment and say: we are not only looking back into the past, but we are also looking up into the future, to later, more perfect lives. What would this human life be through all these many embodiments if we could not say to ourselves: The further we develop into the future, the higher the stages will have been attained by what sits within us today as our ego.

We can only guess at what we are still capable of becoming, for otherwise we would already be it. We must ascribe to ourselves the ability to rise ever higher. — But so we must look shyly and reverently into the future; we must say to ourselves, even if we can already recognize this or that today, are able to experience this or that in the world already today: with the greater abilities that we can attain, we will be able to experience and recognize many more things.

How impossible it is for someone who writes such a thought as has now been expressed in his soul, how impossible it is for him to say to himself: I can decide today what is true or false, I can ultimately judge between true and false. — It behoves him only to say: If I could decide today, then it would be impossible for even higher abilities to arise in me in the future. But when we internalize this, it gives us the great modesty, the true, dignified humility that we need to truly be human in every moment of our development. Thus, the realization of reincarnation transforms into a feeling, a character trait: into dignified humility, into true modesty.

You could put it this way: Anyone who today realizes that he is going through successive incarnations and is constantly rising higher in his development would have to be a fool if he said to himself, “I am perfect.” Or he would say, “There is no need for me to learn today, because tomorrow I will experience it quite differently.” Knowledge is transformed into a real character trait. And when viewed correctly, every spiritual-scientific insight is transformed into a character trait. But we can see that if we are unable to apply our powers at any stage of our existence, then these powers from spiritual worlds would not have been given to us. If we want to wait until the world has reached its final stage, in the belief that we must first be so perfect that we can finally recognize and experience, then we would not have to go through various incarnations. That means, we must be clear that we have to apply our powers of knowledge in every incarnation. We must not say: we want to recognize only in the following incarnation, or at the end of our existence. — We should apply the power that we have despite humility and modesty.

Thus, alongside humility and modesty, there arises a justified human sense of self, which flows directly from our being imbued with the Divine-Spiritual and which tells us: although our knowledge will only be complete when we have reached a high level, we can make it complete precisely by becoming aware of our human dignity today and applying our strength today. In this way our character will acquire something that can be compared to a pair of scales. We can put humility and modesty on one side of the scales and justified self-esteem, boldness in judgment on the other, and say: We have attained a level in knowledge and self-awareness. In short, we will find that whenever you try to introduce into your feelings what spiritual science teaches, the teachings or theories of spiritual science are transformed in our soul, because they contain thoughts of the divine spirits, are transformed in our soul into our character, our will, our feelings. This can show us that in spiritual science the teaching, the theory, is not the main thing, but that it is, so to speak, the kindling for the development of the human soul; that it is that which is to bring forth higher qualities precisely in our soul. And anyone who demands these qualities without realization lives in the worst of illusions, in self-deception, that self-deception which has entered into human evolution in that, in the course of earthly development, other beings have also entered into it, have participated in our evolution, beings who were not only harmful, but also useful. But however useful they were to us, in that they brought us freedom and self-awareness, we must nevertheless be clear about the fact that precisely these gifts of the so-called luciferic entities: freedom and self-awareness, must not be allowed to degenerate into extremes, into radicalism, for then they become pride and arrogance. And pride and arrogance in the face of knowledge lead this knowledge into darkness. Knowledge is the acceptance of divine light, of divine thoughts. Rejection of knowledge is something that leads into darkness and that cannot lead to higher qualities of the soul either. If we look at spiritual science in this way, we will recognize it as one of the most important matters for humanity. We will recognize it as something that we do not do just for our own sake, but because we are aware of our duty to humanity and to development.

We are not living in a completely unimportant time today; we are living in an important time. It is often said by people living in this or that time that they live in a transitional time. All times of human development have been called transitional times, but not all are such significant transitional times. But today we can truly say that our time is a transitional time. To what extent is this the case? Let us first realize the character of another transition period. For example, it was a transition period for human development when the predecessor of our Christ Jesus, John the Baptist, appeared. When John the Baptist appeared, he told the people what was later repeated in significant words by Christ Jesus: “Change your minds, the Kingdoms of Heaven are near.”

What does this mean? We can understand what it means if we remember that as people have developed from incarnation to incarnation, they have passed through various qualities of soul. In the distant past, people did not yet have the qualities and soul abilities that they have today. It was possible for all people in ancient times to develop a dim, twilight, dream-like clairvoyance, to look into the spiritual world. There was the possibility for all people not only to see the physical, but to look into the spiritual world. But in those days when clairvoyance was common, people did not yet have what they have today: clearly developed self-awareness. At that time, people could not yet say “I am” to themselves in a clear way. Stability in the center of the inner being could only be achieved by the old clairvoyance disappearing for a while. They had to accept, as it were, their isolation from the spiritual world in order to develop a clear self-awareness here on the physical plane. Later, this clairvoyance will develop again together with self-awareness, so that the two qualities will arise together again and people will have them once more. We can therefore look back into the distant past. At least for certain periods of time, when people were inattentive to the physical, when they closed their eyes and turned away from the physical, and left their ears inattentive to sounds, they were able to see into the spiritual world and gain direct conviction of the existence of the spiritual world. These qualities faded, but in their place came more and more the ability to think, the ability to be self-aware, to draw conclusions, to make independent judgments, which is what makes up our present-day consciousness. The time can be roughly estimated when it gradually occurred that the old clairvoyant abilities completely disappeared from the abilities of mankind. Before the year 3101, almost all people on our planet were still endowed with dim clairvoyance. Then, from that year on, it diminished more and more, became weaker and weaker. But with this, self-awareness, self-consciousness, judgment, reasoning, and self-confident thinking grew. So, as it were, the light of spirituality grew dim, and that which is the human ego dawned, became brighter and brighter. It grew brighter within, but it grew darker in spirituality. In this year begins what Oriental philosophy calls the Kali Yuga, the dark, black age. Something had come to a crisis, so to speak, at the time when John the Baptist and then Jesus the Christ appeared as forerunners. They had to say to mankind: You must now learn that spirituality exists, even though you do not see spirituality with any spiritual eye. You must learn that the Kingdoms of Heaven are there. You must grasp it from your own self. — Therefore, the Christ had to embody himself in a physical body, because only on the physical plane could self-awareness perceive spirituality during the Kali Yuga.

At that time there was a transition period. The old abilities had faded away. If the people of that time had not heard the call of the Baptist, of Christ Jesus, then they would have fallen into decline at this stage, would not have progressed. Those who heard these voices had to recognize the God who descended into the physical and carnal. They understood that the Kingdoms of Heaven had come close to the ego.

Christ was on Earth in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth for three years. That was the time when people could only see with the physical eye when a God descended to them.

Today, we are once again living in a transitional age, in a crisis. The Kali Yuga expired around the year 1899. And now, although people are unaware of it, new qualities are developing in them. New qualities are developing in the human soul in a natural way. The fact that so many people are unaware of this is no proof to the contrary. A hundred years after Christ, Tacitus was still writing about an unknown sect of Christians; and in Rome, after Christ Jesus had accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha seventy to eighty years earlier, people still talked about a sect that was said to live in a back alley and was led by a certain Jesus. But the most important events had taken place in front of countless people. If people do not perceive something, that is no proof that this most important, most decisive and most incomparable thing is not there. Since about 1899, abilities have been developing unnoticed in people that will emerge in the mid-thirties of the twentieth century, roughly between 1933 and 1937. Then, because the time has come, these soul abilities will arise in a whole series of people; abilities of etheric clairvoyance will arise. They will be there. Just as there were people with an ego consciousness carried to the highest peak when Christ Jesus was here, so in our century there will be people who will not only see with the physical eye, but who, as a natural development, will experience what strives down from spiritual levels, so that spiritual-soul abilities emerge from their soul, and they enter into the etheric existence. And the happiness of these people will be to understand the new world that they will see. One thing is true and important for our soul to know that Christ Jesus said, “I am with you until the end of our Earth cycle.” He is here. He has been within our Earth orbit since that time. And when their spiritual eyes are opened, they will see him as Paul saw him at the event outside Damascus. That is what will happen around 1933, that he will be seen as an ethereal being, as a being that does not descend to the physical plane, but can be seen in the etheric body, because a certain number of people will then ascend to etheric vision. But people will be ignorant if they are not prepared for what they will see through spiritual science. That is why we are living in a time of transition, because we are growing into a new way of seeing.

Spiritual science has the responsible task of preparing people for the great moment when the Christ will not appear in the fleshly body – for He was only once in the fleshly body – but He is there and He will come again in a form that those whose eyes are open will see Him in the world, which is only visible to clairvoyant eyes. People will grow up to Him. That will be the return of Christ: a growing up of people into the sphere in which the Christ is. But they would stand there foolishly if they were not prepared for this great moment through spiritual science. This preparation must be a serious one, for it is a responsible one. Humanity is to be prepared for the fact that more will be seen than what has been seen so far, if people do not lead this ability into darkness and cause it to wither. Because it could also happen that the whole of the twentieth century would pass without bringing the fulfillment of this goal. We have the responsible task of preparing people for the great moment through spiritual science. But we have to prepare people spiritually, to make them understand that only the spirit will meet the Christ with the spiritual eye open. A materialistic mind might believe that the Christ would appear in a carnal body again. But that would not be spiritualistic, it would be materialistic. If we humans believed that, we would not have the will to work our way up to his spirit. That is why certain prophecies from the Apocalypse will be fulfilled at that time. Relying on and building on the materialistic spirit, individuals will appear in physical bodies who will then say that they are the embodied Christ. And those who are not led to the right knowledge through spiritual science will fall prey to them, for Maya will be great and the possibility of self-deception will be enormous. Temptations will grow to gigantic proportions. Only spiritual knowledge that is aware of its responsibility will bring people to an understanding of what is to happen.

These were reflections intended to show how spirituality through spiritual science should work in the individual human soul, and that spiritual knowledge is a task for the times, because we can also say of today's times: We are facing the most important things. But because even the most important things could be completely overlooked by humanity in the darkness, because the great moment could pass without people seeing it, that is why spiritual science must work in the right way. Penetrating with our spirit what is transmitted to us by the study of the spirit will give us the spirituality we need in every branch to develop our own soul ever higher, to perform ever higher and higher services for humanity.

Let us try to remember more often that the words spoken at the time of Christ also apply to our time: “Change your minds, for the time is at hand.” At that time it was said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Today, prophetically looking into the near future, we must say: “For the human ego is close to the Kingdoms of Heaven”. Let us prepare ourselves through correct spiritual science so that we may enter worthily into the kingdom that demands something of us. And we ourselves can only flourish if we find the way to the Kingdoms of Heaven. When we process the experiences we have on earth and allow what we experience in the higher spiritual existence to arise, offering it as a great sacrifice at the altar of divine existence, then we fulfill our destiny as human beings to the fullest. Let what you are working on here be imbued with both the spirit of Novalis and the spirit of spiritual science itself, which has come before our soul, and you will see that your work will proceed in the good sense. For when our work is imbued with such an attitude, then, while we are gathered in our branches, there flows in that which we call the light of the Masters of Wisdom and the harmony of the intuitions. We are never without the help of these advanced individuals when we are united in the right attitude in one of our branches. May such spirit unite you! Such spirit, which is at the same time the spirit of the Masters of Wisdom, inspire you! Work in this spirit and your work will be a part of the great spiritual scientific work, your work will be a part of the spirit that shall go throughout the whole world.

Yesterday at the end of the considerations about High Scholasticism, I attempted to point out that the most essential of a current of thought are problems that made themselves known in a particular way in the human being. They culminated in a certain yearning to understand: how does the human being attain that knowledge which is necessary for life, and how does this knowledge fit into that which controlled the minds in those days in social respect, how the knowledge does fit into the religious contents of the western church?

The scholastics were concerned with the human individuality at first who was no longer able to carry up the intellectual life to concrete spiritual contents, as it still shone from that which had remained from Neo-Platonism, from the Areopagite and Scotus Eriugena. I have also already pointed to the fact that the impulses of High Scholasticism lived on in a way. However, they lived on in such a way that one may say, the problems themselves are big and immense, and the way in which one put them had a lasting effect. These should be just the contents of the today's consideration—the biggest problem, the relationship of the human being to the sensory and the spiritual realities, still continues to have an effect even if in quite changed methodical form and even if one does not note it, even if it has apparently taken on a quite different form. All that is still in the intellectual activities of the present, but substantially transformed by that which significant personalities have contributed to the European development in the philosophical area in the meantime.

We also realise if we consider the Franciscan Monk Duns Scotus (~1266-1308) who taught in the beginning of the fourteenth century in Paris, later in Cologne, that as it were the problem becomes too big even for the excellent intellectual technique of scholasticism.

Duns Scotus feels confronted with the question: how does the human soul live in the human-body? Thomas Aquinas still imagined that the soul worked on the totality of the bodily. So that the human being is only equipped indeed, if he enters into the physical-sensory existence, by the physical-bodily heredity with the vegetative forces, with the mineral forces and with the forces of sensory perceptivity that, however, without pre-existence the real intellect integrates into the human being which Aristotle called nous poietikos. This nous poietikos now soaks up as it were the whole mental—the vegetative mental, the animal mental—and intersperses the corporeality only to transform it in its sense in order to live on then immortal with that which it has obtained—after it had entered into the human body from eternal heights but without pre-existence—from this human body.

Duns Scotus cannot imagine that the active intellect soaks up the entire human system of forces. He can only imagine that the human corporeality is something finished that in a certain independent way the vegetative and animal principles remain the entire life through, then it is taken off at death and that only the actually spiritual principle, the intellectus agens, goes over to immortality. Scotus cannot imagine like Thomas Aquinas that the whole body is interspersed with soul and spirit because to him the human mind had become something abstract, something that did no longer represent the spiritual world to him but that seemed to him to be gained only from consideration, from sense perception. He could no longer imagine that only in the universals, in the ideas that would be given which would prove reality. He became addicted to nominalism—as later his follower Ockham (William of O., ~1288-1347) did—to the view that ideas, as general concepts in the human being are only conceived from the sensory environment that it is, actually, only something that lives as names, as words in the human mind, I would like to say, for the sake of comfortable subsumption of existence. Briefly, he returned to nominalism.

This is a significant fact, because one realises that nominalism, as it appeared, for example, with Roscelin of Compiègne—to whom even the Trinity disintegrated because of his nominalism-, is only interrupted by the intensive work of thought of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas and some others. Then the European humanity falls again back into nominalism which is incapable to grasp that which it has as ideas as spiritual reality, as something that lives in the human being and in a way in the things. The ideas become from realities straight away again names, mere empty abstractions.

One realises which difficulties the European thinking had more and more if it put the question of knowledge. Since we human beings have to get knowledge from ideas—at least in the beginning of cognition. The big question has to arise repeatedly: how do the ideas provide reality? However, there is no possibility of an answer if the ideas appear only as names without reality. The ideas that were the last manifestations of a real spiritual world coming down from above to the ancient initiated Greeks became more and more abstract. We realise this process of abstracting, of equating the ideas with words increasing more and more if we pursue the development of western thinking.

Single personalities outstand later, as for example Leibniz (Gottfried Wilhelm L., 1646-1716) who does not get involved in the question, how does one recognise by ideas, because he is quite traditionally still in the possession of a certain spiritual view and leads everything back to individual monads which are actually spiritual. Leibniz towers above the others, while he still has the courage to imagine the world as spiritual. Yes, the world is spiritual to him; it consists of nothing but spiritual beings. However, I would like to say what was to former times differentiated spiritual individualities are to Leibniz more or less gradually differentiated spiritual points, monads. The spiritual individuality is confirmed, but it is confirmed only in the form of the monad, in the form of a spiritual punctiform being.

If we disregard Leibniz, we see, indeed, a strong struggle for certainty of the primal grounds of existence, but the incapacity everywhere at the same time to solve the nominalism problem. This becomes obvious with the thinker who is put rightly at the starting point of modern philosophy, Descartes (1596-1650) who lived in the beginning or in the first half of the seventeenth century. Everywhere in the history of philosophy one gets to know the real cornerstone of his philosophy with the proposition: cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore, I am.—One can note something of Augustine's pursuit in this proposition. Since Augustine struggles from that doubt of which I have spoken in the first talk, while he says to himself, I can doubt everything, but, the fact of doubting exists, and, nevertheless, I live, while I doubt. I can doubt that sensory things are round me, I can doubt that God exists that clouds are there that stars are there, but if I doubt, the doubt is there. I cannot doubt that which goes forward in my own soul. One can grasp a sure starting point there.—Descartes resumes this thought, I think, therefore, I am.

Of course, with such things you expose yourself to serious misunderstandings if you are compelled to put something simple against something historically respected. It is still necessary. Descartes and many of his successors have in mind: if I have mental contents in my consciousness if I think, then one cannot deny the fact that I think; therefore, I am, therefore, my being is confirmed with my thinking. I am rooted as it were in the world being, while I have confirmed my being with my thinking.

The modern philosophy begins with it as intellectualism, as rationalism that completely wants to work from the thinking and is in this respect only the echo of scholasticism. One realises two things with Descartes. First, one has to make a simple objection to him: do I understand my being because I think? Every night sleep proves the opposite.—This is just that simple objection which one has to make: we know every morning when we wake, we have existed from the evening up to the morning, but we have not thought. Thus, the proposition, I think, therefore, I am, is simply disproved. One has to make this simple objection, which is like the egg of Columbus, to a respected proposition that has found many supporters.

However, the second question is, at which does Descartes aim philosophically? He aims no longer at vision, he aims no longer at receiving a world secret for the consciousness, and he is oriented in intellectualistic way. He asks, how do I attain certainty? How do I come out of doubt? How do I find out that things exist and that I myself exist?—It is no longer a material question, a question of the content-related result of world observation; it is a question of confirming knowledge.

This question arises from the nominalism of the scholastics, which only Albert and Thomas had overcome for some time, which reappears after them straight away. Thus, that presents itself to the people which they have in their souls and to which they can attribute a name only to find a point somewhere in the soul from which they can get no worldview but the certainty that not everything is illusion, that they look at the world and look at something real, that they look into the soul and look at reality.

In all that one can clearly perceive that to which I have pointed yesterday at the end, namely that the human individuality got to intellectualism, but did not yet feel the Christ problem in intellectualism. The Christ problem possibly appears to Augustine, while he still looks at the whole humanity. Christ dawns, I would like to say, in the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages; but He does not dawn with those who wanted to find Him with thinking only which is so necessary to the developing individuality, or with that which would arise to this thinking. This thinking appears in its original state in such a way that it emerges from the human soul that it rejects that which should just be the Christian or the core of the human being. It rejects the inner metamorphosis; it refuses to position itself to the cognitive life so that one would say to himself, yes, I think, I think about the world and myself at first. However, this thinking is not yet developed. This is the thinking after the Fall of Man. It has to tower above itself. It has to change; it has to raise itself into a higher sphere.

Actually, this necessity appeared only once clearly in a thinker, in Spinoza (Benedictus Baruch S., 1632-1677), the successor of Descartes. With good reason, Spinoza made a deep impression on persons like Herder and Goethe. Since Spinoza understands this intellectualism in such a way that the human being gets finally to truth—which exists for Spinoza in a kind of intuition, while he changes the intellectual, does not stop at that which is there in the everyday life and in the usual scientific life. Spinoza just says to himself, by the development of thinking this thinking fills up again with spiritual contents.—We got to know in Plotinism, the spiritual world arises again to the thinking as it were if this thinking strives for the spirit. The spirit fulfils as intuition our thinking again.

It is very interesting that just Spinoza says, we survey the world existence as it advances in spirit in its highest substance while we take up this spirit in the soul, while we rise with our thinking to intuition, while we are so intellectualistic on one side that we prove as one proves mathematically, but develop in proving at the same time and rise, so that the spirit can meet us.—

If we rise in such a way, we also understand from this viewpoint the historical development of that what is contained in the development of humanity. It is strange to find the following sentence with a Jew, Spinoza, the highest revelation of the divine substance is given in Christ.—In Christ the intuition has become theophany, the incarnation of God, hence, Christ's voice is God's voice and the way of salvation.—The Jew Spinoza thinks that the human being can develop from his intellectualism in such a way that the spirit is coming up to meet him. If he can then turn to the Mystery of Golgotha, the fulfilment with spirit becomes not only intuition, that is appearance of the spirit by thinking, but it changes intuition into theophany, into the appearance of God himself. The human being faces God spiritually. One would like to say, Spinoza did not withhold that what he had suddenly realised, because this quotation proves that. It fulfils like a mood what he found out from the development of humanity this way; it fulfils his Ethics.

Again, it devolves upon a receptive person. Therefore, one can realise that for somebody like Goethe who could read most certainly between the lines of the Ethics this book became principal. Nevertheless, these things do not want to be considered only in the abstract as one does normally in the history of philosophy; they want to be considered from the human viewpoint, and one must already look at that which shines from Spinozism into Goethe's soul. However, that which shines there only between the lines of Spinoza is something that did not become time dominating in the end but the incapacity to get beyond nominalism.

Nominalism develops at first in such a way that one would like to say, the human being becomes more and more entangled in the thought: I live in something that cannot grasp the outside world, in something that is not able to go out from me to delve into the outside world and to take up something of the nature of the outside world.—That is why this mood that one is so alone in himself that one cannot get beyond himself and does not receive anything from the outside world appears already with Locke (John L., 1612-1704) in the seventeenth century. He says, what we perceive as colours, as tones in the outside world is no longer anything that leads us to the reality of the outside world; it is only the effect of the outside world on our senses, it is something with which we are entangled also in our own subjectivity.—This is one side of the matter.

The other side of the matter is that with such spirits like Francis Bacon (1561-1626) nominalism becomes a quite pervasive worldview in the sixteenth, seventeenth centuries. For he says, one has to do away with the superstition that one considers that as reality which is only a name. There is reality only if we look out at the sensory world. The senses only deliver realities in the empiric knowledge.—Beside these realities, those realities do no longer play a scientific role for whose sake Albert and Thomas had designed their epistemology. The spiritual world had vanished to Bacon and changed into something that cannot emerge with scientific certainty from the inside of the human being. Only religious contents become that what is a spiritual world, which one should not touch with knowledge. Against it, one should attain knowledge only from outer observation and experiments.

That continues this way up to Hume (David H., 1711-1776) in the eighteenth century to whom even the coherence of cause and effect is something that exists only in the human subjectivity that the human being adds only to the things habitually. One realises that nominalism, the heritage of scholasticism, presses like a nightmare on the human beings.

The most important sign of this development is that scholasticism with its astuteness stands there that it originates in a time when that which is accessible to the intellect should be separated from the truths of a spiritual world. The scholastic had the task on one side to look at the truths of a spiritual world, which the religious contents deliver of course, the revelation contents of the church. On the other side, he had to look at that which can arise by own strength from human knowledge. The viewpoint of the scholastics missed changing that border which the time evolution would simply have necessitated. When Thomas and Albert had to develop their philosophy, there was still no scientific worldview. Galilei, Giordano Bruno, Copernicus, and Kepler had not yet worked; the intellectual view of the human being at the outer nature did not yet exist. There one did not have to deal with that which the human intellect can find from the depths of his soul, and which one gains from the outer sensory world. There one had to deal with that only which one has to find with the intellect from the depths of the soul in relation to the spiritual truths that the church had delivered, as they faced the human beings who could no longer rise by inner spiritual development to the real wisdoms who, however, realised them in the figure that the church had delivered, just simply as tradition, as contents of the scriptures and so on.

Does there not arise the question: how do the intellectual contents relate—that which Albert and Thomas had developed as epistemology—to the contents of the scientific worldview? One would like to say, this is an unconscious struggle up to the nineteenth century. There we realise something very strange. We look back at the thirteenth century and see Albert and Thomas teaching humanity about the borders of intellectual knowledge compared with faith, with the contents of revelation. They show one by one: the contents of revelation are there, but they arise only up to a certain part of the human intellectual knowledge, they remain beyond this intellectual knowledge, there remains a world riddle to this knowledge.—We can enumerate these world riddles: the incarnation, the existence of the spirit in the sacrament of the altar and so on—they are beyond the border of human cognition. For Albert and Thomas it is in such a way that the human being is on the one side, the border of knowledge surrounds him as it were and he cannot behold into the spiritual world. This arises to the thirteenth century.

Now we look at the nineteenth century. There we see a strange fact, too: during the seventies, at a famous meeting of naturalists in Leipzig, Emil Du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896) holds his impressive speech On the Borders of the Knowledge of Nature and shortly after about the Seven World Riddles. What has become there the question? (Steiner draws.) There is the human being, there is the border of knowledge; however, the material world is beyond this border, there are the atoms, there is that about which Du Bois-Reymond says, one does not know that which haunts as matter in space.—On this side of the border is that which develops in the human soul.

Even if—compared to the imposing work of scholasticism—it is a trifle which faces us there, nevertheless, it is the true counterpart: there the question of the riddles of the spiritual world, here the question of the riddles of the material world; here the border between the human being and the atoms, there the border between the human being and the angels and God. We have to look into this period if we want to recognise what scholasticism entailed. There Kant's philosophy emerges, influenced by Hume, which influences the philosophers even today. After Kant's philosophy had taken a backseat, the German philosophers took the slogan in the sixties, back to Kant! Since that time an incalculable Kant literature was published, also numerous independent Kantian thinkers like Johannes Volkelt (1848-1930) and Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) appeared.

Of course, we can characterise Kant only sketchily today. We want only to point to the essentials. I believe that someone who studies Kant really can understand him in such a way, as I tried to understand him in my booklet Truth and Science. Kant faces no question of the contents of the worldview with might and main in the end of the sixties and in the beginning of the seventies years of the eighteenth century, not anything that would have appeared in certain figures, pictures, concepts, ideas of the things with him, but he faces the formal question of knowledge: how do we get certainty of something in the outside world, of any existence in the outside world?—The question of certainty of knowledge torments Kant more than any contents of knowledge. I mean, one should even feel this if one deals with Kant's Critique that these are not the contents of knowledge, but that Kant strives for a principle of the certainty of knowledge. Nevertheless, read the Critique of Pure Reason, the Critique of Practical Reason, and realise—after the classical chapter about space and time—how he deals with the categories, one would like to say how he enumerates them purely pedantically in order to get a certain completeness. Really, the Critique of Pure Reason does not proceed in such a way, as with somebody who writes from sentence to sentence with lifeblood.

To Kant the question is more important how the concepts relate to an outer reality than the contents of knowledge themselves. He pieces the contents together, so to speak, from everything that is delivered to him philosophically. He schematises, he systematises. However, everywhere the question appears, how does one get to such certainty, as it exists in mathematics? He gets to such certainty in a way which is strictly speaking nothing but a transformed and on top of that exceptionally concealed and disguised nominalism, which he expands also to the sensory forms, to space and time except the ideas, the universals. He says, that which we develop in our soul as contents of knowledge does not deal at all with something that we get out of the things. We put it on the things. We get out the whole form of our knowledge from ourselves. If we say, A is connected with B after the principle of causation, this principle of causation is only in us. We put it on A and B, on both contents of experience. We bring the causality into the things.

With other words, as paradox this sounds, nevertheless, one has to say of these paradoxes, Kant searches a principle of certainty while he generally denies that we take the contents of our knowledge from the things, and states that we take them from ourselves and put them into the things. That is in other words, and this is just the paradox: we have truth because we ourselves make it; we have truth in the subject because we ourselves produce it. We bring truth only into the things.

There you have the last consequence of nominalism. Scholasticism struggled with the universals, with the question: how does that live outdoors in the world what we take up in the ideas? It could not really solve the problem that would have become provisionally completely satisfactory. Kant says, well, the ideas are mere names, nomina. We form them only in ourselves, but we put them as names on the things; thereby they become reality. They may not be reality for long, but while I confront the things, I put the nomina into experience and make them realities, because experience must be in such a way as I dictate it with the nomina.

Kantianism is in a way the extreme point of nominalism, in a way the extreme decline of western philosophy, the complete bankruptcy of the human being concerning his pursuit of truth, the desperation of getting truth anyhow from the things. Hence, the dictates: truth can only exist if we bring it into the things. Kant destroyed any objectivity, any possibility of the human being to submerge in the reality of the things. Kant destroyed any possible knowledge, any possible pursuit of truth, because truth cannot exist if it is created only in the subject.

This is a consequence of scholasticism because it could not come into the other side where the other border arose which it had to overcome. Because the scientific age emerged and scholasticism did not carry out the volte-face to natural sciences, Kantianism appeared which took subjectivity as starting point and gave rise to the so-called postulates freedom, immortality, and the idea of God. We shall do the good, fulfil the categorical imperative, and then we must be able to do it. That is we must be free, but we are not able to do it, while we live here in the physical body. We reach perfection only, so that we can completely carry out the categorical imperative if we are beyond the body. That is why immortality must exist. However, we cannot yet realise that as human beings. A deity has to integrate that which is the contents of our action in the world—if we take pains of that what we have to do. That is why a deity must exist.

Three religious postulates about which one cannot know how they are rooted in reality are that which Kant saved after his own remark: I had to remove knowledge to get place for faith.—Kant does not get place for religious contents in the sense of Thomas Aquinas, for traditional religious contents, but for abstract religious contents that just originate in the individual human being who dictates truth, that is appearance.

With it, Kant becomes the executor of nominalism. He becomes the philosopher who denies the human being everything that this human being could have to submerge in any reality. Hence, Fichte, Schelling, and then Hegel immediately reacted against Kant. Thus, Fichte wanted to get everything that Kant had determined as an illusory world or as a world of appearances from the real creative ego that he imagined, however, to be rooted in the being of the world. Fichte was urged to strive for a more intensive, to a more and more mystic experience of the soul to get beyond Kantianism. He could not believe at all that Kant meant that which is included in his Critiques. In the beginning, with a certain philosophical naivety he believed that he drew the last consequence of Kant's philosophy. If one did not draw these last consequences, Fichte thought, one would have to believe that the strangest chance would have pieced this philosophy together but not a humanely thinking head.

All that is beyond that which approaches with the emerging natural sciences that appear like a reaction just in the middle of the nineteenth century that strictly speaking understand nothing of philosophy, which degenerated, hence, with many thinkers into crass materialism. Thus, we realise how philosophy develops in the last third of the nineteenth century. We see this philosophical pursuit completely arriving at nullity, and then we realise how—from everything possible that one attaches to Kantianism and the like—one attempts to understand the essentials of the world. The Goethean worldview which would have been so significant if one had grasped it, got completely lost, actually, as a worldview of the nineteenth century, with the exception of those spirits who followed Schelling, Hegel and Fichte. Since in this Goethean worldview the beginning of that is contained which must originate from Thomism, only with the volte-face to natural sciences.

Thomas could state only in the abstract that the mental-spiritual really works into the last activities of the human organs. In abstract form, Thomas Aquinas expressed that everything that lives in the human body is directed by the mental and must be recognised by the mental. Goethe started with the volte-face and made the first ground with his Theory of Colours, which people do not at all understand, and with his “morphology.” However, the complete fulfilment of Goetheanism is given only if one has spiritual science that clarifies the scientific facts by its own efforts.

Some weeks ago, I tried here to explain how our spiritual science could be a corrective of natural sciences, we say, concerning the function of the heart. The mechanical-materialist view considers the heart as a pump that pushes the blood through the human body. However, it is quite the contrary. The blood circulation is something living—embryology can prove that precisely -, and it is set in motion by the internally moved blood. The heart takes the blood activity into the entire human individuality. The activity of the heart is a result of the blood activity, not vice versa. Thus, one can show concerning the single organs of the body how the comprehension of the human being as a spiritual being only explains his material existence. One can do something real in a way that Thomism had in mind in abstract form that said there, the spiritual-mental penetrates everything bodily. This becomes concrete knowledge. The Thomistic philosophy lives on as spiritual science in our present.

I would like to insert a personal experience here. When I spoke in the Viennese Goethe Association about the topic Goethe as Father of a New Aesthetics, there was a very sophisticated Cistercian among the listeners. I explained how one has to imagine Goethe's idea of art, and this Cistercian, Father Wilhelm Neumann (1837-1919), professor at the theological faculty of the Vienna University, said something strange, you can find the origins of your talk already with Thomas Aquinas.—Nevertheless, it was interesting to me to hear from him who was well versed in Thomism that he felt that in Thomism is a kind of origin of that which I had said about the consequence of the Goethean worldview concerning aesthetics.

One has already to say, the things, considered according to truth, appear absolutely different than they present themselves to the history of philosophy under the influence of an unconscious nominalistic worldview which goes back largely to Kant and the modern physiology. Thus, you would find many a thing if you referred to spiritual science. Read in my book The Riddles of the Soul which appeared some years ago how I tried there to divide the human being on the basis of thirty-year studies into three systems; how one system of the human physical body is associated with sense-perception and thinking, how the rhythmical system, breathing and heart activity, is associated with feeling, how metabolism is associated with the will. Everywhere I attempted to find the spiritual-mental in its creating in the physical. That is, I took the volte-face to natural sciences seriously. One tries to penetrate into the area of natural existence after the age of natural sciences, as before the age of scholasticism—we have realised it with the Areopagite and with Plotinus—one penetrated from the human knowledge into the spiritual area. One takes the Christ principle seriously as one would have taken the Christ principle seriously if one had said, the human thinking can change, so that it can penetrate if it casts off the original sin of the limits of knowledge and if it rises up by thinking free of sensuousness to the spiritual world—after the volte-face. What manifests as nature can be penetrated as the veil of physical existence. One penetrates beyond the limits of knowledge which a dualism assumed, as well as the scholastics drew the line at the other side. One penetrates into this material world and discovers that it is, actually, the spiritual one that behind the veil of nature no material atoms are in truth but spiritual beings.

This shows how one thinks progressively about a further development of Thomism. Look for the most important psychological thoughts of Albert and Thomas in their abstractness. However, they did not penetrate into the human-bodily, so that they said how the mind or the soul work on the organs, but they already pointed to the fact that one has to imagine the whole human body as the result of the spiritual-mental.

The continuation of this thought is the work to pursue the spiritual-mental down to the details of the bodily. Neither philosophy nor natural sciences do this, only spiritual science will do it, which does not shy away from applying the great thoughts like those of High Scholasticism to the views of nature of our time. However, for that an engagement with Kantianism was inevitable if the thing should scientifically persist.

I tried this engagement with Kantianism first in my writings Truth and Science and Epistemology of Goethe's Worldview and, in the end, in my Philosophy of Freedom. Only quite briefly, I would like to defer to the basic idea of these books.

These writings take their starting point from the fact that one cannot directly find truth in the world of sense perception. One realises in a way in which nominalism takes hold in the human soul how it can accept the wrong consequence of Kantianism, but how Kant did not realise that which was taken seriously in these books. This is that a consideration of the world of perception leads—if one does it quite objectively and thoroughly—to the conclusion: the world of perception is not a whole, it is something that we make a reality.

In what way did the difficulty of nominalism originate? Where did the whole Kantianism originate? Because one takes the world of perception, and then the soul life puts the world of ideas upon it. Now one has the view, as if this world of ideas should depict the outer perception. However, the world of ideas is inside. What does this inner world of ideas deal with that which is there outdoors? Kant could answer this question only, while he said, so we just put the world of perception on the world of ideas, so we get truth.

The thing is not in such a way. The thing is that—if we look at perception impartially—it is not complete, everywhere it is not concluded. I tried to prove this strictly at first in my book Truth and Science, then in my book Philosophy of Freedom. The perception is everywhere in such a way that it appears as something incomplete. While we are born in the world, we split the world. The thing is that we have the world contents here (Steiner draws). While we place ourselves as human beings in the world, we separate the world contents into a world of perception that appears to us from the outside and into the world of ideas that appears to us inside of our soul. Someone who regards this separation as an absolute one who simply says, there is the world, there I am cannot get over with his world of ideas to the world of perception. However, the case is this: I look at the world of perception; everywhere it is not complete in itself, something is absent everywhere. However, I myself have come with my whole being from the world to which also the world of perception belongs. There I look into myself: what I see by myself is just that which the world of perception does not have. I have to unite that which separated in two parts by my own existence. I create reality.

Because I am born, appearance comes into being while that which is one separates into perception and the world of ideas. Because I live, I bring together two currents of reality. In my cognitive experience, I work the way up into reality. I would never have got to a consciousness if I had not split off the world of ideas from the world of perception while entering into the world. However, I would never find the bridge to the world if I did not combine the world of ideas that I have split off again with that which is not reality without the world of ideas.

Kant searches reality only in the outer perception and does not guess that the other half of reality is just in that which we carry in ourselves. We have taken that which we carry as world of ideas in ourselves only from the outer reality. Now we have solved the problem of nominalism, because we do not put space, time, and ideas, which would be mere names, upon the outer perception, but now we give back the perception what we had taken from it when we entered into the sensory existence.

Thus, we have the relationship of the human being to the spiritual world at first in a purely philosophical form. Someone is just overcoming Kantianism who takes up this basic idea of my Philosophy of Freedom, which the title of the writing Truth and Science already expresses: the fact that real science combines perception and the world of ideas and regards this combining as a real process. However, he is just coping with the problem which nominalism had produced which faced the separation into perception and the world of ideas powerlessly.

One approaches this problem of individuality in the ethical area. Therefore, my Philosophy of Freedom became a philosophy of reality. While cognition is not only a formal act but also a process of reality, the moral action presents itself as an outflow of that which the individual experiences as intuition by moral imagination. The ethical individualism originates this way as I have shown in the second part of my Philosophy of Freedom. This individualism is based on the Christ impulse, even if I have not explicitly said that in my Philosophy of Freedom. It is based on that which the human being gains to himself as freedom while he changes the usual thinking into that which I have called pure thinking in my Philosophy of Freedom which rises to the spiritual world and gets out the impulses of moral actions while something that is bound, otherwise, to the human physical body, the impulse of love, is spiritualised. While the moral ideals are borrowed from the spiritual world by moral imagination, they become the force of spiritual love.

Hence, the Philosophy of Freedom had to counter Kant's philistine principle—“Duty! You elated name, you do not have anything of flattery with yourself but strict submission” -, with the transformed ego which develops up into the sphere of spirituality and starts there loving virtue, and, therefore, practises virtue because it loves it out of individuality.

Thus, that which remained mere religious contents to Kant made itself out to be real world contents. Since to Kant knowledge is something formal, something real to the Philosophy of Freedom. A real process goes forward. Hence, the higher morality is also tied together with it to a reality, which philosophers of values like Windelband (Wilhelm, 1845-1915) and Rickert (Heinrich R., 1863-1936) do not at all reach. Since they do not find out for themselves how that which is morally valuable is rooted in the world. Of course, those people who do not regard the process of cognition as a real process do not get to rooting morality in the world of reality; they generally get to no philosophy of reality.

From the philosophical development of western philosophy, spiritual science was got out, actually. Today I attempted to show that that Cistercian father heard not quite inaccurately that really the attempt is taken to put the realistic elements of High Scholasticism with spiritual science in our scientific age, how one was serious about the change of the human soul, about the fulfilment of the human soul with the Christ impulse also in the intellectual life. Knowledge is made a real factor in world evolution that takes place only on the scene of the human consciousness as I have explained in my book Goethe's Worldview. However, these events in the world further the world and us within the world at the same time.

There the problem of knowledge takes on another form. That which we experience changes spiritual-mentally in ourselves into a real development factor. There we are that which arises from knowledge. As magnetism works on the arrangement of filings of iron, that works in us what is reflected in us as knowledge. At the same time, it works as our design principle, then we recognise the immortal, the everlasting in ourselves, and we do no longer raise the issue of knowledge in only formal way.

The issue of knowledge was always raised referring to Kant in such a way that one said to himself, how does the human being get around to regarding the inner world as an image of the outer world?—However, cognition is not at all there at first to create images of the outer world but to develop us, and it is an ancillary process that we depict the outside world. We let that flow together in the outside world in an ancillary process, which we have split off at our birth. It is exactly the same way with the modern issue of knowledge, as if anybody has wheat and investigates its nutritional effect if he wants to investigate the growth principle of wheat. Indeed, one may become a food chemist, but food chemistry does not recognise that which is working from the ear through the root, the stalk, and the leaves to the blossom and fruit. It explains something only that is added to the normal development of the wheat plant.

Thus, there is a developmental current of spiritual life in us, which is concerned with our being to some extent as the plant develops from the root through the stalk and leaves to the blossom and the fruit, and from there again to the seed and the root. As that which we eat should not play any role with the explanation of the plant growth, the question of the epistemological value of that which lives in us as a developmental impulse must also not be the basis of a theory of knowledge, but it has to be clear that knowledge is a side effect of the work of the ideal in our human nature. There we get to the real of that which is ideal. It works in us. The wrong nominalism, Kantianism, originated only because one put the question of knowledge in such a way as food chemistry would put the question of the nature of wheat.

Hence, one may say, not before we find out for ourselves what Thomism can be for the present, we see it originating in spiritual science in its figure for the twentieth century, and then it is back again as spiritual science. Then light is thrown on the question: how does this appear if now one comes and says, compared with the present philosophy one has to go back to Thomas Aquinas, and to study him, at most with some critical explanations and something else that he wrote in the thirteenth century?—There we realise, what it means, to project our thoughts in honest and frank way in the development current that takes High Scholasticism as starting point, and what it means to carry back our mind to this thirteenth century surveying the entire European development since the thirteenth century. This resulted from the encyclical Aeterni patris of 1879 that asks the Catholic clerics to regard the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas as the official philosophy of the Catholic Church. I do not want to discuss the question here: where is Thomism? Since one would have to discuss the question: do I look best at the rose that I face there if I disregard the blossom and dig into the earth to look at the roots and check as to whether something has already originated from the root.

Now, you yourselves can imagine all that. We experience what asserts itself among us as a renewal of that Thomism, as it existed in the thirteenth century, beside that which wants to take part honestly in the development of the European West. We may ask on the other hand, where does Thomism live in the present? You need only to put the question: how did Thomas Aquinas himself behave to the revelation contents? He tried to get a relationship to them. We have the necessity to get a relationship to the contents of physical manifestation. We cannot stop at dogmatics. One has to overcome the “dogma of experience” as on the other side one has to overcome the dogma of revelation. There we have really to make recourse to the world of ideas that receives the transforming Christ principle to find again our world of ideas, the spiritual world with Christ in us. Should the world of ideas remain separated? Should the world of ideas not participate in redemption?

In the thirteenth century, one could not yet find the Christian principle of redemption in the world of ideas; therefore, one set it against the world of revelation. This must become the progress of humanity for the future that not only for the outer world the redemption principle is found, but also for the human intellect. The unreleased human reason only could not rise in the spiritual world. The released human intellect that has the real relationship to Christ penetrates into the spiritual world.

From this viewpoint, Christianity of the twentieth century is penetrating into the spiritual world, so that it deeply penetrates into the thinking, into the soul life. This is no pantheism, this is Christianity taken seriously. Perhaps one may learn just from this consideration of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas—even if it got lost in abstract areas—that spiritual science takes the problems of the West seriously that it always wants to stand on the ground of the present.

I know how many false things arise now. I could also imagine that now again one says, yes, he has often changed his skin; he turns to Thomism now because the things become risky.—Indeed, one called the priests of certain confessions snakes in ancient times. Snakes slough their skins. As well as the opponents understand skinning today, it is indeed a lie. Since I have shown today how you can find the philosophically conscientious groundwork of spiritual science in my first writings.

Now I may point to two facts. In 1908, I held a talk about the philosophical development of the West in Stuttgart. In this talk, I did not feel compelled to point to the fact that possibly my discussion of Thomism displeased the Catholic clerics, because I did justice to Thomism, I emphasised its merits even with much clearer words than the Neo-Thomists, Kleutgen or others did. Hence, I did not find out for myself in those days that my praise of Thomism could be taken amiss by the Catholic clergy, and I said, if one speaks of scholasticism disparagingly, one is not branded heretical by the so-called free spirits. However, if one speaks, objectively about that, one is easily misunderstood because one often rests philosophically upon a misunderstood Thomism within the positive and just the most intolerant church movement. I did not fear at all to be attacked because of my praise of Thomism by the Catholic clergy, but by the so-called free spirits. It happened different, and people will say, we are the first whom he did a mischief.

During these days, I have also pointed to my books that I wrote around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, among them also to a book that I dedicated to Ernst Haeckel, Worldviews and Approaches to Life in the Nineteenth Century. There I pointed to the fact that the modern thinking is not astute and logical; and that Neo-Scholasticism tried to rest upon the strictly logical of Thomism. I wrote: “These thinkers could really move in the world of ideas without imagining this world in unsubtle sensory-bodily form.” I spoke about the scholastics this way, and then I still spoke about the Catholic thinkers who had taken the study of scholasticism again: “The Catholic thinkers who try today to renew this art of thinking are absolutely worth to be considered in this respect. It will always have validity what one of them, the Jesuit father Joseph Kleutgen (1811-1889), says in his book An Apology of the Philosophy of the Past: “Two sentences form the basis of the different epistemologies which we have just repeated: the first one, that our reason ...” and so on. You realise, if the Jesuit Joseph Kleutgen did something meritorious, I acknowledged it in my book. However, this had the result that one said in those days that I myself was a disguised Jesuit. At that time, I was a disguised Jesuit; now you read in numerous writings, I am a Jew.

I only wanted to mention this at the end. In any case, I do not believe that anybody can draw the conclusion from this consideration, that I have belittled Thomism.

These considerations should show that the High Scholasticism of the thirteenth century was a climax of European intellectual development, and that the present time has reason to go into it. We can learn very much for deepening our thought life to overcome any nominalism, so that we find Christianity again by Christianising the ideas that penetrate into the spiritual being from which the human being must have originated, because only the consciousness of his spiritual origin can give him satisfaction.

When we carefully study the mental life of the present day we find a deep cleft in many minds. Men now receive, even in earliest youth, not one view of the world only but two: the one from their religious instruction and the other from Natural Science. The result of this is, that from the very outset doubts arise as to the correctness of the religious traditions.

It might be thought that Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy desires to bring in a new religion in addition to those already existing; but that is not the case. Anthroposophy is not a new religion, it is not a new sect.

In these lectures it will be our task, with the aid of Spiritual Science, to show the significance of this religious document, St. John's Gospel, and in so doing we shall be able to point out the relation of Spiritual Science to religious records in general. Spiritual Science enables us to understand the various religions in the world. One who is acquainted with Anthroposophical Spiritual Science takes Christianity as it is, as a fact of the very greatest significance to the whole spiritual life of humanity. It has been made impossible for the mental and spiritual life of the present day to understand the depths of Christianity. This understanding can only be gained through Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. If we make use of what it provides we can penetrate deeply into the wisdom contained in the religious records.

We might compare Spiritual Science with philology. We can also study the Christian documents with the aid of philology; but Spiritual Science leads us into the spirit of these documents. The best expounder of Euclid's Geometry is one who knows Geometry, not one who only knows the Greek language.

Spiritual Science is not to be a new religion for the men of modern times; it is to be the means by which the true contents of Christianity may be brought home to them. Christianity is the zenith and meeting point of all religions. All other religions do but point to Christianity, which is the religion for all the future and will not be followed by any other. The fountain of Truth which springs up in it is abundant and never-ending; it is so plenteous that as the evolution of humanity progresses it will reveal every new aspects of its being. Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science is to present Christianity to man from a new and different side.

Now, the various religious records may be considered from four different points of view:

1. The point of view of the Simple Believer, who holds fast to the words that are giving him. Many people, however, cannot reconcile the standpoint with their modern thought and they then pass on to:

2. The point of view of the Critic, the Doubter, the one who denies. This is the point of view of the “clever, enlightened men”, who have “risen above” religious truths. But many of them search further and discover that a very great deal is nevertheless contained in these religious documents they wrestle through to:

3. The point of view of the Symbolists. These interpret the religious records in their own way and find in them much or little according to their knowledge or acuteness. In Germany many former Freethinkers have come to this point of view. Finally, it is possible through Spiritual Science to arrive at:

4. The point of view where one learns to take the religious documents literally once more. We find many remarkable examples of this in the study St. John's Gospel.

St. John's Gospel takes quite a special place among the four Gospels. The Gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke give us an historical picture of Jesus, but St. John's Gospel is regarded as a kind of apotheosis, a wonderful poem. There are many contradictions when we compare it with the statements made in the other Gospels, but these contradictions are so apparent that it cannot be supposed that the old defenders of St. John's Gospel did not perceive them also.

At the present time St. John's Gospel is considered to be the least worthy of credence. The reason for this attitude lies in the materialistic frame of mind of the men of our time. In the course of the 19th century humanity became materialistic in feeling, and consequently also in thought; for as a man feels, so does the judge. Materialism is not confined to the view of the world contained in the books of Büchner, Moleschott, and Vogt: even those who explain the religious documents from a certain spiritual standpoint do this in a fully materialistic way. As example of this I might quote the dispute between Karl Vogt and Professor Wagner of Munich. This dispute was fought out at the time in the “Augsburger Zeitung” and ended completely in favor of Karl Vogt. Wagner stood up for the existence of the soul; he did this, however, in an absolutely materialistic way. And as the theologians have materialistic feelings, the three synoptic Gospels please them better, because they more easily admit of a materialistic explanation. It is repugnant to materialistic thinking to accept a Being who towers above all men; it is much more acceptable to them to see in Jesus a noble human being only, “the humble man of Nazareth.” According to St. John's Gospel is quite inadmissible to see in Jesus only that which also lives in any other man. The Christ-soul in the Jesus-body is something quite different. St. John's Gospel represents Christ to us not only as a very great man, but as a Being who embraces the whole earth.

If we translate St. John's Gospel according to the spirit and not only according to the words, the first 14 verses run approximately as follows:—

1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God

2. The same was in the very beginning with God

3. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

4. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men.

5. And the Light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.

6. There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

7. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that through him all men might believe.

8. He was not that Light, that came to bear witness of the Light.

9. For the true Light, which enlighteneth all men, was to come into the world.

10. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, but the world did not recognize Him.

11. It came into the several human beings, even into the ego-men; but the individual human beings, the ego-men, did not receive Him.

12. But those that did receive Him, to them gave He power to manifest that they were Sons of God.

13. Those who trusted in His Name were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

14. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we have heard His teaching, the teaching of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of devotion and truth. (in St. John's Gospel truth—aletheia—is Spirit Self, devotion—charis—is Life Spirit, and wisdom—sophia—is Spirit Man.)

Even the very first words are taken in an abstract sense by the modern man. The “Very Beginning” is thought of as an abstract beginning; but to grasp the true significance of this word we must recall what was taught on this point in the Christian Secret School of Dionysius the Areopagite.

Mineral, plant, animal, and man make up the series of being in evolution which require the physical body. Above them are beings who do not need the physical body, namely, the Angels, Archangels, Very Beginnings, the Powers, Virtues, Dominions, the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim, and Beings were still higher.

Thus the Very Beginnings are real Beings. They are those who, at the beginning of the evolution of our world, were already at the stage humanity will only reach at the end of its evolution (in the Vulcan Period.) If in the light of this we study the first verse, “In the very beginning was the word,” we might represent the state of affairs pictorially by the following comparison. Before we utter a word, this word lives in us as thought. It lives within us. When the word is uttered the air around us is set in motion; vibrations are produced. If we imagine these vibrations condensed and hardened in some way, we should see the words fall to the ground as forms and figures; we should perceive the creative power of the word with our eyes. If the word is already creative now, it will be much more so in the future.

Man already possesses organs which will only attain their full significance in the future; he also possesses others which are already in decline. To the latter belong the organs of reproduction, to the former the heart and the larynx, for these are only at the beginning of their development. At the present time the heart is an involuntary muscle, although it has transverse fibers like all voluntary muscles. These transverse fibers are an indication that the heart is in the process of transition from an involuntary to a voluntary organ. The larynx is destined to be the human organ of reproduction in a distant future, strange as this may sound at present. Just as man, by means of speech, can already transpose his thoughts into vibrations of the air, he will in the future be able to create his own image by means of the word.

The Very Beginnings already possessed this creative power at the outset of the evolution of our world and can therefore be rightly looked upon as divine Beings. At the beginning of the evolution of the Earth a divine Word was uttered, and this has become mineral, plant, animal and man.

My dear brothers and sisters! It is not possible, again today, to repeat the introductory words, despite the fact that a number of new members of this esoteric school are present who were not here before. For this reason, I must require that when the newly admitted members of the school receive the mantras from other members, in accordance with the instructions which I shall refer to at the conclusion of today’s session, they must feel themselves duty bound to have explained to them, by those who impart the verses, the conditions for membership in this school. It will now be necessary to continue where we left off the last time.

To begin with let us once again allow those words to come before our soul which sound forth to any open-minded human soul from all beings of the world and from all living processes of the world. What lies in the following words sounds forth to the human being from everything around him; all things have spoken thus to man in the past, all things speak thus to him in the present, all things will speak thus to him in the future.

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds.
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

We saw how someone who takes this in comes to feel the longing arising out of the word which speaks to him from all things and from all processes in the world, the longing to take leave of the majestic, shining world of the senses and to enter into that world which exists beyond the yawning abyss, the world which at first looms up before the human soul as black, night-bedecked darkness. For the solution, the true solution of the riddle of man the hope arises that everything in external life that is bathed in radiant, gleaming light may grow dark so that the light which is in the world where our true self is to be found may shine forth from the world of being that at first appears to be black, night-bedecked darkness.

And as we approached in thought and feeling along the path, we saw the figure of the Guardian of the Threshold brightly forming up, clarifying its existence in our awareness as if from a spiritual cloud. We heard him speak, for everything that is spoken here sounds forth out of spiritual worlds, sounds forth at the behest of Michael, the leader of the spiritual stream of mankind at the present time, for this school is the true Michael School. And the Guardian spoke about human self-awareness. But then he uttered words which at first have a crushing effect upon the soul.

The Guardian called us to himself, to stand close by him. He gazes toward us, beholding us with earnest countenance. He shows us how our willing, our feeling, our thinking appear, at least as imaginations of what is envisioned by the gods. There it is not yet human, this willing, this feeling, this thinking; there it is still animalistic. There acquaintanceship with oneself is still bewildering, shattering. But we must penetrate out of their misconception by means of that aspect of ourselves that is conjured up, which in our time, in our world era has been placed in us, for by means of this we can press onward to true self-awareness.

This misconception, familiarity with that aspect of ourselves that we carry about within us in the spirit of our era, is shown to us by the Guardian as he allows the first beast to rise out of the yawning abyss of existence, the beast that depicts willing. His hand then sweeps again instructively over the abyss of existence, showing the second beast rising up, the beast that depicts feeling. And then once again the hand sweeps instructively over the yawning abyss of existence, allowing the third beast to rise up, the beast that depicts thinking.

They rise up one after the other. The first beast, initially the true spirit-gestalt of our willing, is produced by fear of knowing, fear that can only be overcome through courage, courage concerning spiritual awareness. Just so the second beast appears, born out of hatred of knowing, lurking in the underground reaches of the soul in all human beings, only to be overcome by dignified enthusiasm for knowing, by truly soul-filled fire for knowing. Living in souls today is lukewarm indolence toward inner awareness, indeed, hatred in relation to inner acquaintanceship, because of mental laxity and laziness. Then also comes the third beast in his ghostly character, produced by doubts about the spiritual world, doubts which gnaw today at the roots of human souls, doubts that can only be weakened and made to yield when inner knowing wakes the strength in itself to attain those things which exist outside in the spiritual world. The Guardian speaks about this at the yawning abyss of being once we have drawn near to him:

Yet you must beware the abyss;
Lest your beasts within devour
You, if in heedless haste you pass me by;
They are in you throughout this age of man,
As foes of knowing placed within.

Behold the first beast, the crooked back,
The bone-locked head, the withered body,
Dull blunt blue is its skin.
Your fear of spirit-creator-being
Produced this monster in your willing;
Your courage of knowing alone overwhelms it.

Behold the second beast, it bares its teeth,
Contorts its face, and lies in scornful mockery,
Yellow with grayish cast is its body;
Your hatred of spirit-revelation
Produced this weakling in your feeling;
Your fire of knowing must tame it.

Behold the third beast, with long-split mouth,
Glazed eye, and slouching attitude,
Dirty red its form appears to you;
Your doubt in spirit-light-dominion
Produced this specter, this ghost in your thinking;
The work of knowing must weaken it.

Only when you subdue the three,
Will wings of your soul grow,
To soar across the deep abyss
That severs you from fields of knowing,
For which your yearning heart,
Healing-seeking, would hallow itself.

[The mantra, including the underlinings, was now written on the blackboard:]

Yet you must beware the abyss;
Lest your beasts within devour
You, if in heedless haste you pass me by;
They are in you throughout this age of man,
As foes of knowing placed within.

Behold the first beast, the crooked back,
The bone-locked head, the withered body,
Dull blunt blue is its skin.
Your fear of spirit-creator-being
Produced this monster in your willing;
Your courage of knowing alone overwhelms it.

Behold the second beast, it bares its teeth,
Contorts its face, and lies in scornful mockery,
Yellow with grayish cast is its body;
Your hatred of spirit-revelation
Produced this weakling in your feeling;
Your fire of knowing must tame it.

Behold the third beast, with long-split mouth,
Glazed eye, and slouching attitude,
Dirty red its form appears to you;
Your doubt in spirit-light-dominion
Produced this specter, this ghost in your thinking;
The work of knowing must weaken it.

Only when you subdue the three,
Will wings of your soul grow,
To soar across the deep abyss
That severs you from fields of knowing,
For which your yearning heart,
Healing-seeking, would hallow itself.

When the Guardian has shown us this staggering picture, confronting us presently in answer to the challenge, “O Man, know yourself,” once the Guardian has shown us this picture, he approaches us to give us a clarification, which now can begin to set us straight, a clarification of the third beast, that is interwoven in our thinking, of the second beast interwoven in our feeling, and of the first beast interwoven in our willing. And he gives us a sort of lesson in what he initially says to us. He points out to us how we should feel our way correctly into our human earth-thinking.

My dear brothers and sisters, even exoterically one feels that this thinking, suitable in relationship to things and processes of the world, is somewhat abstract, somewhat shadowy, somewhat unreal. What actually is this thinking?

As a picture we must place in our mind’s eye what this thinking really is. We place there a corpse, a corpse which has only a short time ago been left by the soul and spirit of a human being. We examine this corpse. It can never arise in the world as it is now. It can be nothing for itself, but can only be left over from a living person. It must have been due to the person, who must himself have configured it. Death lies there; life has withdrawn; the corpse lies in the coffin. Let us keep firm hold of this image.

Our soul-spiritual life, which is our own true human essence, was alive before it descended from the divine spiritual world through conception and birth into a physical earthly human body. When it was in the spiritual world it was no shadowy, abstract thinking, but soul-spirit-being, living, moving, fashioning, working, weaving, continuing. There it was alive. Then it descended into a human body. But it died while descending. The human body is its coffin. And the thinking that we have between birth and death is the corpse of that living thinking that we had before we descended into earthly existence.

My dear brothers and sisters, we rightly experience thinking’s esoteric essence only when we experience it in this way, and only then can we struggle upward, gradually, gradually overcoming the ghostly gestalt of the third beast. Only then can we rise ever nearer and nearer to the pure angelic gestalt of true thinking, the dead after-image of which whiles away, weaves, works, and dwells¹ in our physical, earthly body.

As long as we regard thinking as somewhat alive, we are not being truthful. Only when we look at our body as the coffin of dead thinking, only when we feel this thoroughly, only then are we truthful. So the Guardian of the Threshold speaks to us in his words, which we will hear and can use as mantric verse. He speaks them to us in special intimacy.

And when we pass by our thinking to view our feeling, then we must see and feel how the sort of customary feeling, which we believe to be living within us between birth and death, is only half-living, how this feeling works continually to consume us, how it somehow continually kills us, how it pointedly drags us away from spirit. Thinking is dead, but in us our half-alive feeling is basically only picture-formation. Only when we feel this contrast in our feeling, that this earth-feeling is a weak, half-living reflection of the might of the sun, which as universal world love the cosmic feeling streams through the whole cosmos, then we feel the contrast of feeling correctly. In this manner the Guardian of the Threshold speaks to us confidentially, intimately.

And not until we feel a similar contrast in willing, that it undoubtedly lives in us, but that that it is continuously being tampered with and bogged down by hostile opposing spiritual powers, who intend that its force should not be in service to overarching godliness, but rather to physicality below, not until we actually feel these opposing powers, that in our willing continuously would like to divert us from our proper godly task and ensnarl us entirely and solely in awareness of our earth existence, only then can we really feel these opposing powers trying to take possession of our willing, trying to have the future of the earth in their power. If they were to succeed, if we are not steadfastly on guard that our willing remains hallowed to godliness, not to Ahrimanic earth-powers, then on earth the gods themselves would be disputed, the gods who actually tended earth-existence from the very beginning.

The Guardian says this to us in clarification of the three beasts:

The third beast’s glassy eye
Is the bad contrary-type
Of thinking, that denies itself
In you and chooses death,
Forsaking spirit powers
That held it before its earth-life
Living in spirit in spirit-fields.

The second beast’s mocking face
Is the bad contrary-force
Of feeling, that hollows-out suitable soul
And in it fashions living emptiness
Instead of spiritual worth, which was
Illuminating it before its earth-existence
By means of spirit’s sunny might.

The first beast’s boney mind,
Is the bad creative-might
Of willing, that estranges suitable body
From your soul's domain
And devotes it to adverse powers,
Who would rob world-existence
Of gods-existence in times to come.

[The mantra was now written on the blackboard and a few words were underlined]

The Guardian speaks:
The third beast’s glassy eye
Is the bad contrary-type

(it is merely an image)

Of thinking, that denies itself
In you and chooses death,
Forsaking spirit powers
That held it before its earth-life
Living in spirit in spirit-fields.

The second beast’s mocking face
Is the bad contrary-force

(the first is image, the second force)

Of feeling, that hollows-out suitable soul
And in it fashions living emptiness
Instead of spiritual worth, which was
Illuminating it before its earth-existence
By means of spirit’s sunny might.

The first beast’s bony mind,
Is the bad creative-might

(the progression: image or type, force, might)

Of willing, that estranges suitable body
From your soul's domain
And devotes it to adverse powers,
Who would rob world-existence
Of gods-existence in times to come.

Ever more the Guardian at the gaping abyss of being leads us nearer to true self-knowledge, which can only dawn for us when light arises yonder in the black, night-bedecked darkness. In this regard he shows us in different ways, what he first showed us in the formation of the beasts, and then in the formation of the corresponding mantric verses, and now again delineates, in order that we may come ever closer and closer to self-awareness, so that we may gain wings with which to cross the abyss of being, for we are not able to cross over with human feet, with heavy human feet, which means with external illusions, with maya-reality.

So the Guardian makes us aware, after he has given us these mantric verses intimately, he makes us aware of how we should proceed in using empathy in delving into our thinking, how we should feel our thinking and not just see it as objectively existing, for there we no longer weave the fabric of our thoughts as illusion, as we do in the sort of thinking that we engage in as men and women of earth, but rather as something else than appearance. Self-aware existence means our true actual existence, that does not actually live in thinking, but conceals itself in thinking, so says the Guardian. One can do nothing except to plunge into the appearance of thinking, ever further, then as one plunges deep into and disperses oneself with the soul beneath the appearance of thinking, one arrives into immeasurable world-ether.

There, where our aware-self feels itself just minimally hovering in appearance, there we should honor the guiding beings of the higher hierarchies that guide us. There we feel that we need these guiding beings of the higher hierarchies.

Then the Guardian admonishes, that we should turn from thinking to feeling, experiencing, finding with empathy feeling streaming within us. Thinking is still entirely appearance. In feeling, however, we stand at least halfway close to our existence. In feeling we come deeper into our intrinsic existence than we do in thinking, although we are not yet fully within. We are halfway into our proper being when we are feeling, for feeling has some ambiguity, not total ambiguity, for it mingles semblance and substance. The aware-self that we seek, here in the proper sense genuine aware-self, simply leans toward semblance. Now we should plunge into the semblance of existence, into an existence that only seems to be, into a semblance that is energized halfway toward existence. There we will grasp world forces that now are not merely semblance, but rather halfway existing as world soul forces. There we should consider well in this moving web of our intrinsic weaving, moving being in the weaving moving world ether, there we should consider well the life powers intrinsic to the soul, that we cannot consider in thinking, for thinking is semblance only.

Then we should plunge into willing, which we feel as existence, existence concealed within us. We are unable to inwardly grasp it. But the will is effective as thrusting and crafting existence. The will climbs from all apparent being and equips our autonomous existence, our true autonomous existence, meant here as autonomous existence in the best sense. We should turn our life to this. It is filled with world-spirit-might. Our intrinsic existence should inwardly grasp and plunge into world-creator-might, the world-maker-might that inwardly fills all regions of space, all times, all spirit-realms in willing.

At the very edge of the abyss the Guardian speaks:

Look upon your web of thoughts:
World of semblance you experience,
Self-awareness hides from you;
Plunge beneath appearance:
Ether being whirls in you;
Self-awareness, it should honor
Your own spirit’s guiding beings.

Embrace your stream of feelings:
Where semblance and substance mingle,
Aware-self leans toward semblance;
So plunge beneath appearance:
And world soul forces are in you;
Aware-self should consider well
Inherent in soul the powers of life.

Let reign in you the thrust of will:
It climbs from all apparent being
With autonomous existence well-equipped;
Turn to this throughout your life:
Filled it is with world-spirit-might;
Your autonomous existence should grasp
World-maker-might into spirit-I.

I will write these mantric verses on the board next time and clarify their various characteristics.

Now, however, let us turn once more to what spoke to man in the past, to what speaks now in the present, and to what will speak in the future, exhorting him to undertake the holiest task on his life's path, the task of seeking self-knowledge:

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds.
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

The next esoteric Lesson of this First Class will take place on Thursday at 8 o'clock.

I must now add that the verses, which are given as mantric verses for meditation by the Guardian of the Threshold at the behest of Michael, are only for those who are members of this school. Those who are unable to receive them personally can obtain them from someone else who is a member of this school. Permission must, however, be requested in every single instance either from Frau Dr. Wegman or from me. This is not merely a bureaucratic regulation, but rather it points to the fact that everything in our Anthroposophical Movement from now on expresses a reality. The procedure for passing on the texts begins with the request for permission as a real matter of fact, not as a mere administrative reason. The mantras may not be sent through the mail. Only the one who has to give the mantras to someone else may ask permission from Frau Dr. Wegman or from me. It is not the one who is to receive them who asks, but the one who is to give them. You speak with someone who might give them to you and that person then requests permission.

If anyone has taken notes during this lesson of anything other than the mantras, I would ask that they be kept not longer than a week, after which they should be burned, in order that the content of the school, which only has meaning if the Michael stream flows through the school, shall not go beyond the circle of its members and thereby become ineffective. This is not because of any obscure wish to make things secret, but so that the content of the school may not become ineffective. This is a fundamental occult law that must be observed. And we live in an earnest occult school, in the true School of Michael, and we give what flows here through this school in the sign of Michael.

[The Michael Sign was drawn on the blackboard.]

We give it in the Rosicrucian sense with the Rosicrucian symbol.

Ex Deo Nascimur

[The sign of the lower seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.]

In Christo Morimur

[The sign of the middle seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.]

Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus

[The sign of the upper seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.]

And we think as we make this seal and sign of Christian Rosenkreutz:

I honor the Father

[This was written beside the sign of the lower seal gesture.]

I love the Son

[This was written beside the sign of the middle seal gesture.]

I unite with the Spirit

[This was written beside the sign of the upper seal gesture.]

Per signum Michaeli:

[The sign of Michael was made.]

[The three seal gestures were made and the words were spoken.]

Ex Deo Nascimur
In Christo Morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

The Guardian speaks at the edge of the abyss:
Yet you must beware the abyss;
Lest your beasts within devour
You, if in heedless haste you pass me by;
They are in you throughout this age of man,
As foes of knowing placed within.

Behold the first beast, the crooked back,
The bone-locked head, the withered body,
Dull blunt blue is its skin;
Your fear of spirit-creator-being
Produced this monster in your willing;
Your courage of knowing alone overwhelms it.

Behold the second beast, it bares its teeth,
Contorts its face, and lies in scornful mockery,
Yellow with grayish cast is its body;
Your hatred of spirit-revelation
Produced this weakling in your feeling;
In your fire of knowing it must be tamed.

Behold the third beast, with split mouth,
Glazed eye, and slouching attitude,
Dirty red its form appears to you;
Your doubt in spirit-light-dominion
Produced this spectral form in your thinking;
The work of knowing must weaken it.

Only when you subdue the three,
Will wings of your soul grow,
To soar across the deep abyss
That severs you from fields of knowing,
For which your yearning heart,
Salvation seeking, would hallow itself.

The Guardian speaks:

The third beast’s glassy eye
Is the bad contrary-type
Of thinking, that denies itself
In you and chooses death,
Forsaking spirit powers
That held it before its earthly life
Living in spirit in spirit-fields.

The second beast’s mocking face
Is the bad contrary-force
Of feeling, that hollows-out suitable soul
And in it fashions living emptiness
Instead of spiritual worth, which was
Illuminating it before its earth-existence
By means of spirit’s sunny might.

The first beast’s bony mind,
Is the bad creative-might
Of willing, that estranges suitable body
From your soul's domain
And devotes it to adverse powers,
Who would rob world-existence
Of gods-existence in times to come.

Ex Deo Nascimur
In Christo Morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus
I honor the Father
I love the Son
I unite with the Spirit

• 1. west und webt und wirkt und wellt.