The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Handwritten note by Rudolf Steiner
Note sheet archive number 6974

Where do you come from?

From the lodge of St. John.

What happens in the lodge of St. John?

A temple of virtue is built there and prisons for vices are dug there.

What do you bring from there?

Welfare, progress, and goodwill for all mankind.

What do you intend to do here?

To conquer my passions, subjugate my will and make new progress.

Take your place, my B., and be welcome in this place, where the rays of your light are consciously received.

Individual texts by Rudolf Steiner in the handwriting of Marie Steiner-von Sivers

Wisdom should have guided you while you were building this temple, which is an earthly image of the spiritual life stream. This wisdom is now a water of light to guide you, as your soul unfolds the seeds of wisdom.

Beauty should adorn your work while you were building this temple, which is an image of self-limiting form-creating: this beauty is now a releasing salt for you, as your soul dissolves the covers of your spirit seed.

Strength should have carried out your work as long as you were building this temple, which is an image of the creative powers of existence: the fire of creation, to which the ashes of your body will return, is this strength in the future, as your spirit unites with the world spirits to create the great temple of being.

Brothers of the past, your wisdom penetrated the waters of the elemental kingdom and gave our sister an earthly shell so that she could reveal in the world what her soul had accepted under your wise guidance in prehistoric times.

Brothers of the present, our sister sought to come into your wise guidance so that your thoughts of God might be revealed in her part.

Brothers of the future, you will incorporate our sister's soul into your plan of construction, so that she may continue to flow in your strength, in the body of your great soul.

And you, sister, who have joined us in our striving for the vision of the heights of eternal light, your powers that flow into another form of being, let them flow into our work, work with us in the sanctuary of spiritual life: but we are inseparable in our souls from yours.

One, united, unity.

Prepared by silence, it is spoken with the mantle of that which has been received from above.

To make himself the bearer of wisdom, the$* [Rosicrucian] Mason vows to his God in the soul of his spirit. He beholds a temple of this God in the human form of his being. He vows to make himself the builder of this temple. He will think nothing that might be shameful to wisdom. The watchword floats before his eyes:

My thoughts shall seek thee everywhere, divine spirit.

The Mason [Rosicrucian] will make himself the servant of Beauty; he pledges himself to Beauty, because only in her bosom can the life of God flourish in his soul. The Mason [Rosicrucian] avoids an appearance that contradicts reality; he seeks true embodiment in the appearance of reality. His breathing in his breathing the watchword:

My speech shall reveal you, divine soul.

The + [Rosicrucian] Mason wants to make fortitude his covering; he praises fortitude because only through its fire can the God in his heart mature. The Mason seeks to flee from languor, which only hinders all progress; he seeks fortitude, which, with a sharp, two-edged sword of fire, prepares the way for all advancement. The watchword beats in his heart:

My heartbeat shall confirm you, divine will.

I

The earth's soil bears me;
The earth's air envelops me;
Around me I see the rocks of the mountains;
Around me the plant cover of the earth blossoms;
In the animal kingdom there is feeling,
Which, as in a thousand individual forms,
my own being's abundance.
I feel the power to shape myself ever higher,
only this noble striving makes a human being.

II

He is born of the earth's soil.
He is animated by the earth's air.
He is related to the rocks of the mountains,
His existence is interwoven with the plant cover,
The realm of the animals carries his spirit power;
But as if in a harmonious miracle
Earth, rocks, life are joined in him.
The earth's soil will sink beneath him.
The circle of the air will be the bearer of death.
The mountains' rocks will fall,
The plants will wither,
The animals' life will be stunned.
But he will bear the fruit of being earth
To create new worlds in a distant time.
To feel this goal's eternal value
Creates wisdom in every thought,
Receive beauty in every breath of life,
Strengthen fortitude in every beat of the blood.

We, wise M.d.O. [Masters of the East], present ourselves before you in spirit with purified desire, that the center of the heart may be silent in the expression of the outer self and burn with the fire of a new inner self. Let the fundamental fires germinate in us, melting and uniting the elements of the temple, which shall be a worthy dwelling for your divine being. ¹

The old temple will give birth to the new.

The three may create a new chariot from our signs.

The three may make Audhumla fertile.²

The following spoke, sitting amidst the stars of wisdom:

The time will come when man's intelligence and sensuality will become desolate and formless. And the power of the flesh will be barren and the daughter of the brain will be lame. And what has been founded among men by thinking and feeling will dry up like the sea dries up in scorching heat. But the revelation of the stars of wisdom will flourish. Mine is what you have kept as silver, what you have kept as gold – so says He who sits in the midst of the stars of wisdom.

The revelation of the new temple will shine forth more brightly than the first, and the I will have found itself in the I.

The initiate at the gates: M.M. Remember that you must find your way in fields where you have never been:

West = Ahriman: He wants to be you.
South = Lucifer: He wants to be you.
East = gold. A

Hand over your sources

1. 3. 7. 12.

Water

In nomine Elohim et per spiritum aquarum viventium, sis mihi in signum lucis et sacramentum voluntaris.

Smoke

Per serpentum aneum sub quo cadunt serpentes ignei, sis mihi.

Hauch

Per firmamentum et spiritum vocis, sis mihi.

Erde

In sale terrae et per virtutem vitae aeternae, sis mihi.

Sylphs

Spirit of light, spirit of wisdom, whose breath determines the form of all things – reach through to us.

Undines

King of the sea, who holds the keys of heaven, we call upon you – –

Salamander

Immortal, eternal, uncreated father of the world

Invisible king, lead us to clarity.

Handwritten note by Rudolf Steiner
from notebook Archive number 611

Green the Earth Mother rises
With the bright colors of flowers
The spirit of the sun will cover up
What springs from the soil in a living way.

Dress is what springs from the earth
Coat is what the spirit of the sun creates
It holds the soul within it alive
The soul is permeated by the spirit with power.

Spirit you become sisters, you brothers
Look only when you hear,
What to tell your being innermost
Has the word of the wise of the East.

Take the word of the spirit.
Those who have served him from the beginning
will send you their strength
through the wisdom, the beauty and strength.

• 1. “Chariot” may refer to Ezekiel's vision of the divine throne chariot, “Merkabah”, with which a special secret doctrine was associated in Jewish mysticism.
• 2. Audhumla = in Norse mythology, the cow that arose from the primeval ocean; see lecture Berlin, October 7, 1907.

Distinguished Participants! The spiritual-scientific considerations from which we have to start today can be brought to the fore because they can shed light on what follows. At first it will seem as if today's topic has little to do with the intention of establishing a relationship between spiritual-scientific knowledge and practical life. However, if we do not move on to those things that can lead us to the center of scientific considerations, things would remain unresolved. And this central point of scientific observation stands before us today in such a way that it is actually excluded from conventional science. For one must admit: when man looks at nature, he tries to recognize nature from his own point of view, and in so doing he is involved in all these points of view; the process of knowledge flows under his direct participation, he cannot, as it were, exclude himself. And only when we have become familiar with his involvement will we be able to look at what, in today's approach, we would like to separate from the human being, namely those phenomena from which, as they say, we want to build an 'objective picture of the world'. Today, in order to arrive at a physical world view, one wants to disregard the human being altogether; one wants to achieve the ideal that the human being does not bring anything of himself into the physical world view. But in order to fulfill such an ideal, the question must first be decided to what extent the human being is able to observe phenomena completely separately from himself. And on the other hand, the fact that, precisely when man is observed in the spirit of today's scientific view, one cannot avoid applying to man what has now been gained from this view of nature and what is supposed to be quite independent of man. Today, it has almost become the norm to introduce psychological observations, observations about the human soul life, by sending purely scientifically researched results ahead. Indeed, what can be said about the physiological results of psychology is even considered to be the most important. But in doing so, what was intended to be studied independently of the human being in its own right is itself brought back into the studies on humans. And it is no wonder that psychological studies also reach limits that are highly unsatisfactory. This has become customary in scientific observation. But it can also be said that, as a result of these habits of thought, the human being has basically been completely excluded from the observation of the world. We can say, for example, that the ideal of the astronomical approach is to stick as closely as possible to what can be expressed through measuring, counting and the like. The physical ideal has also been transferred to astronomy, and attempts are being made to arrive at ideas about the relationships between the world bodies, in which the Earth is also included, and in doing so, man is completely excluded. This is quite obvious to anyone who today considers the scientific approach in this field. He is not considered at all in any connection with that which is otherwise examined as a law.

In physics, it is quite common and perhaps even taken for granted – we will see in later lectures to what extent – that the human being is excluded. One then comes to the more organic sciences via chemistry, which should then culminate in biology and in special anthropology. But it is precisely here that the 19th-century approach has increasingly endeavored to investigate, using all sorts of methods that are very commendable in this field, how one animal form develops from another evolves from another animal form, how the simplest animal forms perfect themselves – if the term is used in a relative sense, it may well be used – how then, at the top of the animal forms, man can be observed.

But the aim of all this, which has emerged as the history of development, as the theory of descent, is to understand man by first learning to understand the laws of animal life very well, then applying those laws found in animal life to the life of man, and thinking of these laws in a modified way in order to understand man. In a particular field, this has led to a situation in which the findings from animal experiments are considered to be absolutely decisive for human beings as well. No matter how clear it may be that all kinds of theoretical objections have to be raised, what is gained in terms of biological truths from animal experiments is considered to be absolutely binding for human beings as well. In the fundamentals of therapy, what is gained from animal experiments is regarded as decisive, in a certain sense, for what is then to be recognized in man. Especially in this field, it is quite clear how, by believing that one is getting close to the animal organization, one supposes that one can also get close to the human organization, only by a certain modification of the results.

Exactly the same thing, only appropriately modified for a different field, has occurred in the field of political economy. Since the time of Adam Smith, we have theories that do not actually consider the human being as such as a social object. The fact that the human being in his totality stands within the social order is completely ignored, and it is actually not the human being who is considered, but the human being in so far as he is a “possessor”, as a “private owner” and so on. Man is not considered as a free being, in so far as freedom flows from the center of his nature, but only that which is called “economic freedom” is considered. So here, too, we see that man as such is excluded from the point of view. And one can see nothing else in this exclusion of man than a fundamental feature of all modern science.

The question now is whether, if one tends towards such an exclusion of the human being, one can thereby arrive at a somehow significant, somehow satisfying or reality-capturing characteristic of the extra-human world view that presents itself in inorganic natural science, for example. In order to throw light on this in the right way, it is necessary that we do not come to the subject of inorganic natural science directly but indirectly, and that today we familiarize ourselves with the path that can lead to such an unprejudiced discussion.

I will start from an area that is particularly characteristic because it shows anyone grounded in spiritual science the great discrepancy between a realistic view and a view that is constructed from all kinds of theoretical assumptions and yet believes it is a true reflection of reality. As I said, this area is especially characteristic because, on the one hand, it shows this discrepancy and, on the other hand, it shows how far removed today's ordinary view of science is from what spiritual science, as it is meant here, wants to be and how spiritual science wants to fertilize the individual specialized sciences. I am referring to the field of optics, in particular the field of color theory. Today, of course, anyone who points out the question of whether Goethe's theory of colors is justified or the theory of colors that is recognized by physics today is immediately dismissed as a scientific dilettante. Now, the essential thing about this matter is that Goethe never wanted to do any scientific research without placing the human being in the whole structure of the world. He does not want to do a scientific investigation separate from the human being; he therefore also brings all experimentation with colors to the human being itself.

Our present world view, as it is expressed in the sciences - and it is, as we shall see, entirely a world view that expresses itself in the sciences, although this is often denied - the world view that is expressed in the sciences today has strayed far from the paths that Goethe laid out, even though he is considered a dilettante in this field by so-called experts. In my introductions to Goethe's scientific writings in Kürschner's National Literature, I have tried to express the very thing that matters in a scientific appreciation of Goethe: this particular current of scientific work as it was undertaken by Goethe. This particular current has actually dried up at the present time. On the other hand, the scientific approach of the present day – which is particularly strong in the field of inorganic natural science and in all those fields where the inorganic can be transferred into the organic – looks down on the Goethean approach. On the other hand, it is based entirely on what natural science has become through such views as Newton's. Even if Newton's views themselves are outdated in many respects, it must be said that the way of research is entirely dependent on Newton's views. And so, Goethe's theory of colors has not been continued in our accepted science, only in Newton's.

Today, I would like to provide a kind of aphoristic introduction to this topic from various points of view, which may help us to move forward.

In Goethe's view, the theory of colors is all about considering colors in connection with what is happening in the human organism itself. You only need to open Goethe's Theory of Colors to see that Goethe starts out from the physiological colors, from the behavior of the eye, which he, however, basically considers differently, one might say, than it is considered today. Today, we actually look at the eye in such a way that we think of it as being separate from the whole human organism, that we sort of isolate it from this organism, that we look at it as an optical apparatus and then try to get to know how – when this eye is taken out of the organism, when it is looked at as an optical apparatus – how the impressions on the eye, the stimuli on the eye and so on are presented. Just try to visualize how this approach actually works. If you want to clarify something in relation to the eye, if you want to answer the question: How does the eye relate to any visible object? , with this mode of observation one can hardly do otherwise than to draw the eye itself in some average on the board, to lead lines from the object to the eye and so on; then one can still ask: How do the different parts of the eye relate to that which exerts a stimulus there?

It is perhaps difficult for someone who is completely schooled in today's scientific observation to grasp what the difference is between this way of looking at things, which I have just characterized in a somewhat radical way, and the Goethean way of looking at things, and how this way of looking at things relates to the physiological-subjective way in which Goethe does his experiments. He conducts his experiments in such a way that he allows the eye to be part of the living process of the organism; he allows the eye to be, so to speak, a degree of conscious organ in the human organism during his experimentation. Thus, the eye experienced in man, the eye felt to be alive in connection with man, Goethe regarded as the starting point for his physiological-subjective color investigations.

The eye that Goethe exposed to the phenomena during his experiments cannot be drawn on a blackboard. And what Goethe then describes as phenomena in the realm of light and color cannot be drawn on a blackboard either. Goethe is therefore averse to those abstractions which today's physicist draws on the board immediately when he means anything at all in the field of colors or optics. Goethe is reluctant to draw this whole abstract system of lines. He describes what, so to speak, lives in the consciousness of any optical process.

It is only when Goethe passes over from subjective colors to objective colors, when he investigates the external physical color formations, that he actually begins to draw in the sense that today's physicist loves. The whole process of seeing in today's physicist is - at least in thought - separated from human nature, translated into the inorganic, represented in mathematical lines. In Goethe's work, life is not eradicated from the process of seeing; rather, what arises in the modified process of seeing is merely described; at most, it is given form by fixing the phenomena, I would say, with an inner, meaningful symbolism.

It is important to point this out, because it is in this approach, in this overall attitude to appearances, that distinguishes Goethean observation of nature from the way we observe nature today. This Goethean observation of nature is perhaps much less convenient than the present-day approach. For it is generally easier to draw things on the board with mathematical lines than to grasp with the mind's eye what makes strong demands on our imagination and what cannot really be drawn with sharply defined lines.

But at the same time, my dear audience, something else becomes apparent. Goethe starts from the physiological colors; I have already explained this to you when I characterized his way of coming to insights through different methods of investigation than today's methods of investigation. But then his whole approach culminates in the chapter he called 'The Sensual and Moral Effects of Color'. There Goethe goes, as it were, directly from the physical into the soul, and he then characterizes the whole spectrum of colors with extraordinary accuracy. He characterizes the impression that is experienced; it is, after all, something that is experienced quite objectively. Even if it is experienced subjectively, it is something that is experienced objectively in the subject, the impression that, let us say, the colors towards the warm side of the spectrum, red, yellow, make. He describes them in their activity, how they have an exciting or stimulating effect on people. And he describes how the colors on the cold side have a relaxing effect, encouraging devotion; and he describes how the green in the middle has a balancing effect.

He thus describes, so to speak, a spectrum of feelings. And it is interesting to visualize how a psychologically differentiated view immediately emerges from the orderly physical perspective. Anyone who understands such a course of investigation comes to the following conclusions. He says to himself: The individual colors of the spectrum are standing before us, they are experienced as entities that appear quite distinct from man. In our ordinary perception of life, we naturally and justifiably attach the greatest importance to directly observing this objective element, let us say in red, in yellow. But there is an undertone everywhere. If you look at the direct experience, it can only be separated in the abstract from what is, so to speak, an externally isolated experience of the red shade and the blue shade in the objective sense; it is an abstract separation of what is also directly experienced in the act of seeing act, but which is only hinted at, which is, so to speak, experienced in a quiet undertone, but which can never be absent, so that, in this area, one can only observe purely physically if one first abstracts what is experienced in the soul from the physical.

So, first we have the outer spectrum, and on this outer spectrum we have the undertone of the soul experiences. We are thus confronted with the outer world through our senses, through our eyes, and we cannot adjust the eye differently, except that, even if often unconsciously or subconsciously, soul experience is involved. We call what is experienced through the eye a sensation. We are now accustomed, ladies and gentlemen, to calling the sensation experienced something that is experienced by the soul – that is, an impulse that comes from what is objectively spread out and presents itself as a sensation – something subjective. But you can see from the way I have just presented this in reference to Goethe that we can, so to speak, set up a counter-spectrum, a soul counter-spectrum, that can be precisely paralleled with the outer optical spectrum.

We can set up a spectrum of differentiated feelings: exciting, stimulating, balancing, giving and so on. When we look outwards, we see the yellow; we feel the stimulating undertone of it, the active influence from the outside world. What about the experience of the soul? This experience of the soul comes from within us to meet the outer world. But let us assume that we are able to record exactly what we have experienced in relation to the red, the yellow, the green, the blue, the violet. Let us assume that we could record the feelings in such a differentiated way that we have a spectrum of feelings within us, just as we have the ordinary optical spectrum from the outside. If we now imagine that from the outside, the red, yellow, green, blue, violet, i.e. the objective, ignites the undertones of excitement, stimulation, balance, devotion , we could thus see it as something that accompanies external phenomena, so that this external phenomenon is there without us, but the accompanying spectrum of feelings is there through us. Would it be so absurd to assume that the same could happen from within, which otherwise underlies this spectrum of feelings without our intervention from the outside? Would it be so absurd that the spectrum of feelings would now be present within and that the spectrum of colors would jump out of it in the experience of the human being, which is now captured in inner images? Just as the color spectrum is there and the inner emotional experiences are added through our presence, it could also be that the emotional experiences, which can be represented in the differentiated spectrum, would be seen as the objective, the objective that is inwardly situated, and now what can be compared with the objective color spectrum jumps out as an undertone.

Now, spiritual science does not claim anything other than that a method is possible in which what I have presented to you now as a postulate is really experienced [inwardly] in the same way as it is in the outer experience where the objective spectrum is present and, as it were, extends as a veil over the objective spectrum, the subjective spectrum of feeling. In the same way, the spectrum of feeling can now be experienced inwardly, to which the color experience now connects. This can be truly experienced and it underlies what I characterized in more abstract terms yesterday as the imagination. What is an external phenomenon spread out in space can certainly be brought forth from the human being as an inner phenomenon. And just as the external phenomenon becomes more and more diluted in our knowledge, so the inner experience becomes more and more concentrated as it is absorbed by the unconsciously developed consciousness within us, as I indicated yesterday.

You just have to be clear about it, my dear attendees, that what occurs in the spiritual science meant here is by no means nebulous fantasies, as it is mostly the result of some kind of “mystical worldviews” known as reveries. What is meant here as anthroposophical spiritual science is based on experiences that one does not have otherwise, that must first be developed, but that can be grasped and followed in absolutely clear concepts.

Thus we may say that Goethe has described the objective outer world just as a human being would who is half-consciously aware of the fact that there is an inner counterpart to what he is describing outwardly, and that there is an inner vision corresponding to the outer vision. Once we have familiarized ourselves with this train of thought, and if we have made an effort to experience something along the lines I have just suggested, namely to allow our differentiated emotional life to brighten to imaginations, which may then be addressed with the same words with which one designates the external phenomena - when one has risen to these things, then one is offered the prospect of an understanding of the human being, which is precisely what is missing in modern scientific views. How could one possibly arrive at an understanding of the human being if one artificially separates everything that arises in a person's interaction with the world, if one only wants to look outward and not at all inward? That, and nothing else, is ultimately what is raised as an accusation against spiritual science, especially from the scientific side, namely that it does not proceed scientifically. This is a prejudice that has arisen from the fact that from the outset only that which is separate from the human being is accepted as scientific observation, and the undertones that characterize the human element are not considered at all. As a result, one cannot find the transition to what the human being actually experiences within himself. The colors I am thinking of now, which arise from the spectrum of feelings just as the spectrum of feelings arises from the objective external spectrum, these colors are experienced in imaginative contemplation, and they form the mediation for recognizing the spiritual in the same way that the outer spectral colors form the mediation for recognizing the external sensual-physical. One could say that the surfaces of external bodies reveal themselves in the ordinary spectral colors. If I now express myself in a somewhat strange, seemingly paradoxical way, I would have to say: the surfaces of the spiritual - of course every reasonable person will know what I mean, that I do not mean some kind of sphere when I speak of a spiritual -, the surfaces of the spiritual express themselves in those colors that are evoked in the imagination from the spectrum of feelings. Instead of pursuing this thought further and saying to oneself, if outer nature is as it is, then another way of seeing must be possible, then one must try to arrive at this way of seeing – instead of saying this to oneself, and , the opponents devote themselves much more to pouring scorn and ridicule on what is called the human aura, which is nothing more than what has been brought to inner perception in another field, as here in the field of the spectrum of feelings.

But when one has become imbued with this view, my dear audience, then it has all sorts of consequences. For example, it has the consequence that one now also continues the same kind of train of thought, through which one tries to get a picture of the way in which external sensory impressions arise, to the inside of the human being, so that one can say: something is going on that one can indeed then recognize by the human being surrendering to the sensory impressions and making them his own experiences right up to the point of imagining them. But something must also take place in man when he perceives what is within him, when he therefore devotes himself to his inner being. Then something takes place that is directed inwards, just as something takes place when he directs his attention, his perception, outwards. And if you then adjust your method of investigation to this, then from there a light is also thrown on certain physiological facts, which otherwise, when they come to us as in today's science, are quite unsatisfactory for those who seek a real understanding and not just one that has been acquired.

As I said, I will illuminate things aphoristically from different angles; we will come to connections. You know that in today's science, a distinction is made between nerves that spread outwards within the human being and are supposed to mediate perceptions. These nerves are contrasted with another type of nerve, those nerves that are supposed to go from the central organs to the human limbs and so on; these nerves are supposed to have the task of conveying the will, just as the other nerves are supposed to have the task of conveying sensory perceptions. Some very nice constructions have been devised, involving the conduction of sensations to the central organ, their transformation there into volitional impulses, and the innervation of the motor nerves, which are then supposed to mediate what leads from the will to movement and the like. Certainly, the things that are cited to justify the distinction between these two types of nerves are very seductive. I need only recall what one believes, for example, can be studied in a well-known, very painful disease, tabes. One believes that, of course, all the sensitive nerves are intact, that only the motor nerves have suffered damage.

Everything that is said in this direction based on a preconceived notion about things is quite seductive. On the other hand, however, one should be suspicious, firstly, of the anatomical findings, which in no way provide any clues to distinguish these types of nerves, and secondly, of the fact that one type of nerve can be transformed into the other. If you cut one and connect a sensitive nerve and a motor nerve at the point of intersection, then these nerves can certainly be formed into a unified one. One should be perplexed by such things, which are well known, but once you have set the explanation in a certain direction, then you continue to think in that direction, and you can no longer be persuaded to really examine the matter from the beginning.

If one actually pursues what can be observed impartially as sensory and motor processes, one will in fact find no basis for making such a distinction of nerves. But if one starts not from one-sided but from total presuppositions, one will be compelled to assume inward mediation of sensation just as much as one recognizes outward mediation of sensation. Just as one recognizes the transmission of sensation through the nerve from the outside, whereby one becomes inwardly aware of some entity of the external world, so it is necessary that a consciousness be transmitted from what is inwardly located in the human organism; it is necessary that a real sensation occur of that which is inwardly located in the human organism. And if we continue the investigation in this way, we will find in the so-called motor nerves nothing other than those nerves that convey perceptions of the inside of the body in the same way that the so-called sensitive nerves convey perceptions of external entities. On the one hand, we have nerves that connect us to the outside world; on the other hand, we have nerves that connect us to our own inner world. It is quite natural that if our optic nerves are not working and we are blind, we cannot reach for an object; and if the motor - but in truth the sensitive - nerve that is supposed to convey that a limb is to perform a movement is not in us, we simply do not perceive the relevant limb, the relevant processes in the limb, and we cannot perform the movements. A truly consistent train of thought shows us that what are called motor nerves are to be imagined as sensory nerves - only as those that convey inner sensations, the sensations of one's own body, the processes within one's own body. You will see that if you really apply the idea that I have just presented to what are now quite empirically established facts, you will be able to see through everything that these empirical facts represent, without contradiction, and that anyone who really thinks consistently cannot really do anything with the theories, such as those that exist about the difference between the sensitive and motor nerves, because in reality they continually lead to contradictions.

I have hinted at something here, where anthroposophically oriented spiritual science aims at the perception of the human organism. It does not do this out of some kind of prejudice, but rather out of an objective consideration of the facts – only that it transforms the organ that considers these facts in such a way that imaginative perception, in the sense of what we discussed yesterday, is added to ordinary objective perception.

And if we look around again in another field of today's research, we have to say: today we have a strange thing as psychology, for example. Just look at what Theodor Ziehen calls his “physiological psychology”, but look at it with sound judgment. There you are first of all made aware of the fact that we have ideas. Then these ideas are examined in relation to their qualities, as far as the powers of observation of such a researcher go. The chains and associations of ideas are examined and so on. In a sense, then, the faculty of imagination as it exists in empirical reality is grasped. Then this psychological field of imagination, with its various processes, is contrasted with what is given by brain-nerve physiology; and it cannot be denied that to a high degree there are parallels between the structure of the brain and what emerges as the facts of the life of imagination. Now, however, the soul life does not only include representations, it also includes impulses of feeling and of the will. And now let us take a look at what this “physiological psychology” makes of feeling. It is simply stated: feelings as such - which are really a very real experience after all - are not considered at all, only the “emotional emphasis” of the life of representation is considered. It is observed how the emotional emphasis connects with the ideas, which thus connect according to the laws of association - the connection corresponds to a certain structure of the nerves and the brain structure. So these emotional emphases are an appendage of the life of ideas. In a sense, the life of ideas points to something that loses itself in the indefinite. The emotional emphasis of the life of ideas loses itself in the indefinite.

One cannot make any progress if one attempts to parallel the life of the imagination with the structure of the brain and nerves. One is forced not to move from the life of the imagination to the emotional life at all, but to regard the emotional life only as a special emphasis of the life of the imagination. So now we have lost the emotional life in the psychological view. The focus has been placed on the fact that the ideas have emotional emphasis – and then the emotional life disappears into an indeterminate X. We may be living quite intensely in these feelings, but for the modern psychologist they disappear into nothingness. Something that we identify so strongly with our human self as the emotional life is no longer to be grasped by cognition at all.

And the impulses of the will, which actually represent our real starting point for the outside world, the impulses of the will, there is no possibility at all in such a physiological psychology to even begin to consider them. For feelings, one at least begins with the life of ideas and considers them in so far as they are emotional accents of the life of ideas; but the will impulses are considered in such a way that one really only looks at what follows them from the outside. One sees one's arm move when some will impulse is present; one sees the effect of the will impulse. Thus one observes the volitional impulse from the outside. It does not occur to one to seek in any way to really arrive at the way of observing the volitional impulse.

In a certain sense, the life of ideas and the nervous life are still seen as belonging together by the modern psychologist. In a certain sense, more or less materialistically or, as a certain theory would have it, according to the principle of psychophysical parallelism, he still finds a relationship, even if it is as external as in the case of psychophysical parallelism, between the structure of the life of the imagination and the structure of something physical, but then the matter stops, then one absolutely does not go further.

Hence the hopeless theory, which is repeatedly warmed up and always refuted, of the interaction of the soul-spiritual with the physical-bodily. One does not know the real, empirical connection between the soul-spiritual and the physical-bodily. One does not examine this connection in detail, as one examines the connection between oxygen and hydrogen in detail, but one puts forward all kinds of abstract theories about it, which then, of course, can always be refuted. For it is a basic law that what is only theoretically constructed out of concepts always has as much for itself as against itself, that it can be proved as easily as refuted. The secret of much of the scientific discussion of the present time lies in the fact that theories constructed in this way can be affirmed or denied equally well. This is the case with the theory that presents itself as a thoroughly inadequate understanding of the human being. Man has simply been eliminated in the modern scientific spirit.

I have contrasted this with what has emerged for me through the organic threefoldness of the human being. It is the result of more than thirty years of research; and I was able to convince myself that what I will outline to you today - I will come back to it from different angles in the next few days - I can assure you that I have followed up the results of today's scientific research everywhere in order to verify what has emerged from pure spiritual science over the course of decades. And I would not have dared to express what I communicated about these results in my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Puzzles of the Soul) a few years ago, until it now appeared to me to be fully verified. One always believes that the spiritual scientist speaks only at random. In truth, spiritual scientific research demands years of work just as much as other scientific research.

What became clear to me is that only human imagination, the human field of imagination, has a structure that is connected to what we can call the nerve-sense life. Because we started from the assumption that the whole life of the soul must be connected with the nerve-sense life, we lost two links in the life of the soul. One can associate nothing with the nerve-sense life except the life of thinking. One cannot bring the life of feeling or the life of the will into direct connection with the nerve-sense life – into an indirect one, however, because feelings and will impulses are also presented; this is how an indirect connection comes about. But one cannot find a direct connection between the life of feeling and the nerve-sense life.

On the other hand, there is a direct connection between the emotional life and the course of all those processes in the human organism that are rhythmic, such as breathing, blood circulation and so on, so that we have to say: just as the life of thinking is connected with the nerve-sense life, so the life of feeling is connected with the rhythmic system.

It is interesting – I have already pointed this out in the book 'Von Seelenrätseln' – to examine the musical experience under these conditions. Anyone who has ever studied the analysis of the musical experience will know how much of this musical experience is thoroughly emotional, but how this emotionality must be related to the life of the imagination. Otherwise we could not bring differentiated melody into the musical experience; we could not even have the individual tone in its objective grasp if the imaginative experience did not come together in some way with the emotional experience in the overall musical experience. But it is emphasized again and again, and rightly so, that the main thing in the musical experience is the emotional experience. And people like Eduard Hanslik, in his book 'On Musical Beauty', go too far when they want to eliminate the emotional experience altogether and see the musical more or less only in the experience of tonal arabesques. But this musical experience must be analyzed further. Then we come to relate this musical experience, which in objectivity corresponds to something rhythmic and related to rhythm, to that which, so to speak, runs musically within us: to the processes of our rhythmic system. One can now follow in a complete way how, through the inhalation process, the cerebral fluid is pushed through the spinal canal towards the brain, how it, as it were, bumps into the brain and how it in turn swings down during the exhalation process. One can follow how the rhythm is now also modified by the modification of the breathing process in this ascending and descending cerebral fluid. And if we approach this view with the same objectivity as we do other objective views of the external world, we will come to examine how, for example, the breathing experience is modified in song. We will find something that is expressed in song as a musical experience in the breathing experience; we will find the breathing experience in the oscillating brain water. We shall then recognize the union of this rhythmic process in the human organism with the nerve-sense process in the brain, and thus recognize the interaction of the rhythmic system and the nerve-sense system. And then we shall be able to separate what corresponds to the emotional experience, which in the human organism is entirely the rhythmic system.

It is necessary to approach these things with careful analysis, then they offer the possibility of finding in the human being itself what now gives a true picture of the human organization.

Thirdly, it turns out that the impulses of the will are connected with the metabolic processes of the human organism. Just as the processes of imagination are connected with the nerve-sense processes and the processes of feeling with the rhythmic processes, so the impulses of will are connected with the metabolic processes. And one can definitely find in detail how the impulse of will, which originates in a muscle, arises from this muscle, is based on a metabolic process that takes place in this muscle.

If we consider these three systems, which represent the entire process of the human organism, in their interaction, we will have the physical-bodily counterpart, but the complete physical-bodily counterpart of the soul. We will find the soul mirrored in the human organism in thinking, feeling and willing. And then people will no longer be inclined to speak merely of an emotional emphasis of the life of the imagination, and to consider the impulses of the will only in terms of their external correspondences in the imagination, and to consider the metabolism only in terms of its material side. It is absolutely necessary to also consider the metabolism in its spiritual aspect. There it is that which corresponds entirely to the will.

You will be able to completely resolve any contradictions that may arise from these statements if you approach them in the right empirical way, because these three systems are not separate, but interpenetrate each other. The nerve is built up organically through metabolism, but is something different in terms of its nervous process than the metabolism. However, the metabolic process also works in the nerve, because the nerve must be built up and broken down organically. When metabolism takes place in the nerve, our life of imagination is permeated with the impulse of the will. And one must be as materialistically sick as John Stuart Mill or those who profess him when one speaks of mere associations of ideas - which do not exist in this abstractness - when one completely separates the element of will from the life of ideas.

From this you can see, honored attendees, how necessary it is to seek the relationship between the soul and the physical in a completely different way than is usually done today. I will give you further evidence of this in the course of the lectures. You can see what it is actually about. This is what it is about: to seek in a truly concrete empirical way the relationships of the spiritual-soul to the physical-bodily in the human being, and not just to talk abstractly about the relationships of soul and spirit, which does not give us much more in the content of the words than the relationships of an abstract soul-spirit to the physical-bodily.

But if we apply a way of looking at things that really does see the soul at work in the physical, that recognizes the soul permeating the body through and through in its configuration, and conversely sees everything that takes place in the physical realm as playing into the soul, then we can have a science that can be the basis for a rational medicine and in turn the basis for rational therapy. Here begins one of the chapters in which spiritual science has immediate practical consequences, where it appears to be called upon to find solutions for what is most unsatisfactory when one wants to have human knowledge as a basis for pathology and therapy based on today's conditions.

I have organized these first two lectures in this way mainly so that you can see that anthroposophical spiritual science is not just about fantastically constructing things, but is about providing a serious world view that includes the human being and can therefore do justice to that which, in practical terms, should proceed from the human being in one way or another, according to the two sides described here yesterday. Ultimately, it is a matter of really recognizing the human being, not just talking about him, but really recognizing him, if we want to gain a basis for what should come from the human being in ethical and social terms. In today's world, we are called upon to use our knowledge of the human being to also gain goals for practical life. That is why the subject of these lectures, which are intended to deal with the fertilization of the specialized sciences by spiritual science, had to be set in this way. And we will also see how fruitful results can be gained from such a consideration of the human being, both in technical and in social-practical respects, not only for science but also for life, because basically, if one only understands it in the right sense, true science must always serve true life.

The advent of instructing and life-giving powers from the cosmos through the Christ. Their transmission to the disciples. Their awakening. The avowal of Peter. The Son of Man—the Son of the living God. The founding of new communities on the basis of moral and spiritual relationships. Leading forth of the disciples into the Macrocosm by the Christ. The inpouring of the power of the Sun-Word through the mystery of Golgotha. The gradual growth upwards into the Kingdoms of Heaven

Following on the story of the ‘Temptation,’ which we might describe as the impulse towards a new initiation, comes the teaching given by Christ to His disciples. This was a teaching in a completely new form. What He gave them was not so much by way of instruction, but as a force, a health-giving force for mankind. This is demonstrated in His acts of healing.

Yesterday we made a transition in our studies, such as presupposes, as I said, the goodwill to understand—the goodwill that is the result of intensive work in spiritual scientific knowledge which has been received in the course of years. We have endeavoured to put a mighty mystery into human language, and to make comprehensible the nature of the instruction given to the disciples. Christ Jesus was a kind of focal point, a living centre for forces passing from the macrocosm into the earthly sphere, and thence into the souls of the disciples. Such a concentration of forces was only possible through the special powers appertaining to the nature of Christ Jesus. Forces, formerly only bestowed on men while unconscious in sleep, now streamed down to the disciples through the being of Christ Jesus from universal space, as the illuminating, life-giving forces of the cosmos itself. Details concerning these forces, which are enlightening forces in connection with world-existence, can naturally only be given by referring to the constellations, and we propose to deal with these mysteries to-day in so far as they throw light on the Gospel of Matthew.

In the first place we have to realize how the disciples increased in knowledge regarding earthly conditions, because the forces of Christ Jesus had streamed into them. They had to develop in themselves, to grow in their lives, and in living wisdom, in the most varied ways. An instance is given of the peculiar nature of this development in one of the disciples or apostles, but we can only understand this important and outstanding event in the life of the apostle when we show it in its comprehensive setting. We have to realize that a man himself advances within human evolution as a whole.

It is not in vain that we pass from one incarnation to another; neither is it in vain that we have incarnated in post-Atlantean civilizations—the Indian, Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, and Graco-Latin—in order that we might garner experiences from our surroundings. These are stages in the great school of life, each giving its appropriate experiences and promoting development. We pass gradually through them all. In what does human development through the different epochs consist?

According to the elementary teachings of Anthroposophy, mankind is formed of different members; these we call the physical body, etheric body, and astral body. With the astral body is associated the sentient soul; then the rational or intellectual soul; and then the consciousness or spiritual-soul. Beyond these are the higher principles of human nature towards which man is evolving; they are spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man. Now, in the course of each of the post-Atlantean periods, something definite was given for these different members of human nature. In the first epoch, the ancient Indian period of civilization, man had added to him an increase in the capacities of his etheric body whereby it became something more than it had been before. What was implanted in him in this respect as regards his physical body already had a beginning during the last part of the Atlantean period; but he only received these enhanced powers into his etheric body during the post-Atlantean period. Thus it was during the period, known as the ancient Indian that the etheric body received these gifts. Then during the Persian civilization similar forces were implanted in his astral or sentient body; and during the Egypto-Chaldean period he received those suited to his sentient-soul; during the Greco-Latin period—the fourth age of post-Atlantean culture—the forces of the rational-soul were imprinted in man; and now, in the fifth period, we are living in an age in which the forces belonging to these lines of progress are gradually to be impressed on the spiritual-soul. As yet humanity has made but little progress with this.

Following on this age will come the sixth post-Atlantean age, which is to witness the impressing of the forces of the spirit-self on human nature; and the seventh age will see that of life-spirit. Beyond this our vision reaches out to a far distant future, in which the spirit-man or Atma will be impressed on normal humanity.

Let us now consider human evolution in relation to the individual man, for this is how it was viewed in the Mysteries; man was always considered from this aspect by those who knew somewhat of the true relationship of things. It was thus the disciples had gradually to learn to know him, in the light of the life-giving, illuminating force that streamed into them from Christ Jesus. When we observe mankind—either at the present time, or at the time of Christ Jesus—we must recognize that rudiments lie in men just as plants contain seeds, even when only in leaf and before the blossom and fruit is formed. In looking at such a plant we can say: As surely as this plant which so far only possesses green leaves has within it the germ of both flower and fruit, so man, who at the time of Christ Jesus possessed only sentient and intellectual-soul, holds within him the germ of the spiritual-soul, which then opens itself to the spirit-self, in order that the higher triad, as a new spiritual gift from God, may flow into him from above. Thus we can say: Man unfolds through the content and qualities of his soul in the same way as a plant unfolds in turn green leaves, blossoms, and fruit. In developing his sentient-soul, intellectual-soul, and spirit-soul man develops something that corresponds to the flower of his being, and lifts this up to receive the inpouring of the Divine Spirit from above, so that by receiving the spirit-self he may rise to ever further heights of human evolution.

At the time Christ Jesus walked on earth the normal man had developed the rational-soul as his highest principle; this was not as yet capable of receiving into it the spirit-self; but out of the same man as now had developed to the rational soul the spiritual-soul would evolve as his child—as the consummation of his being, which later would become the receptacle for the spirit-self.

What is to unfold out of the whole nature of man, and come forth from him like a blossom? How was this described in the Mysteries, and in the circle where Christ Jesus spoke to His disciples of their further development? Translated into our language it was called the ‘Son of Man.’ The Greek has a less restricted meaning than our word ‘son,’ meaning ‘son of a father,’ and signifies rather the offspring of a living organism, something that evolves out of such an organism, as a blossom evolves from a plant which at first possessed only green leaves. So it was said of the ordinary man, whose being had not yet blossomed into the spiritual-soul, that the ‘Son of Man’ had not yet evolved in him. But there are always some who are in advance of their contemporaries, who bear within them the life and knowledge of a future age. So in the fourth period, that in which the rational-soul was normally developed, there were some among the leaders of mankind who, though appearing outwardly as other men, had developed inwardly the possibility of the spiritual-soul, out of which the spirit-self was to dawn. These were the ‘Sons of Men.’

The disciples had to grow to an understanding of the nature of these leaders of humanity. It was to test their understanding of this that Christ asked His more intimate disciples, ‘Tell me, of what beings, of what men in this generation, can it be said that they are “Sons of Men?”’ So runs the question according to the Aramaic Script—for though the Greek translation from the Aramaic Script when read aright is certainly better, yet something has been lost in it also. We have to picture Christ Jesus standing thoughtfully before His disciples and saying, ‘What is the general opinion concerning the men who, in previous generations of this Greco-Latin period, were called “Sons of Men”? Who were they?’ And the disciples spoke to Him of Elias, of John the Baptist, of Jeremiah, and other prophets. They were able to answer thus through the illuminating forces that came to them from Christ. They knew that these leaders of men had developed powers by which they had given birth within themselves to the ‘Son of Man.’

On the same occasion, the disciple who is usually called Peter gave a different answer. In order to understand this answer we must allow what we have heard in recent lectures concerning the mission of Christ Jesus, according to the Gospel of Matthew, to sink deeply into our souls. It was there explained that through the Impulse of Christ it has become possible for men to develop full ego-consciousness—that what lies within the ‘I am’ can blossom fully through His Impulse. In other words Men will be able in time to enter the higher worlds—may even attain to initiation—while retaining their ego-consciousness, the only state of consciousness considered normal for men in the physical world to-day. This has become possible through the life of Christ Jesus on earth. He is the representative of the force that gives complete consciousness of the ‘I am’ to man.

I have already explained that interpretations of the Gospels given by free-thinkers, or by opponents of the Gospels, do not as a rule even mention the facts of greatest moment. They point continually to certain sequences of words found there, which they say are also to be met with elsewhere; as when they assert the previous existence of the contents of the Beatitudes. But there is something that has never existed before, and on this we lay stress what had previously been impossible of attainment through ego-consciousness had now become possible through the impulse imparted by Christ. This is a point of inestimable importance.

We have already analysed the Beatitudes, and said that the first should read ‘Blessed are the beggars in respect of the spirit,’ those who as a result of human evolution are poor in spirit, who, having lost the old clairvoyance, are unable to look into the spiritual worlds; but comforting them Christ explains, ‘Even though ye have lost the old clairvoyance and can no more through it see into the spiritual world, ye shall now be able to view these worlds through the powers of your own individual ego, for: “Within yourselves ye shall find the Kingdoms of the Heavens!”’ Similarly with the second Beatitude: ‘Blessed are those who mourn.’ Blessed are ye who no longer require to see into the spiritual world with the help of the old clairvoyance, for you will develop your ego so powerfully that through it you will attain to the spirit-world. But to do this your ego must gain more and more of the power which Christ, by His unique nature, has once and for all time firmly united with the earth.

It would be well if men would really ponder these things a little. It is not without purpose that each of the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount contains a very important Greek word showing that, if we take the first Beatitude: ‘Blessed are the beggars in spirit,’ this should be followed by the words ‘for in themselves’ or ‘through themselves’ ‘they shall attain the Kingdoms of the Heavens.’ So in the second and third sentences onwards attention is dircted to ‘in themselves.’

Forgive me if I now refer to something of great importance to our day by employing a rather trivial example. We must learn to use the Greek word ‘Auton’ (the same as appears in the modern word automobile) but not so that we apply it exclusively to machines, or understand it only in its external sense; we must learn to associate it as a ‘self-starting’ activity within the realm of spirit where it belongs. This advice might well be taken by our contemporaries. Men love a self-starting action in connection with machines, but they must learn to employ it also in connection with all they used to experience unconsciously in the Mysteries before the coming of Christ. This must now be learnt through ‘a setting of themselves in action,’ so that they gradually become creative from within themselves. The men of to-day will come to understand this when they fill themselves with the impulse brought to them by Christ.

Keeping this in mind we can see how important the second question was that Christ put to His disciples. After asking them: Who among the leaders of former generations could be described as ‘Sons of Men,’ He questioned them further, and wished gradually to bring them to an understanding of His own nature, to an understanding of that ego-nature of which He was the representative. Hence He asked, And what think ye that I am? On every occasion you see how special stress is laid on the ‘I am’ in the Gospel of Matthew. Then Peter answered Him, and showed by his answer that he now recognized the Christ not only as a ‘Son of Man,’ but as the ‘Son of the living God.’ This brings us to a consideration of the difference between these two phrases, ‘Son of Man’ and ‘Son of the living God.’ In order to understand them, we must enter more fully into some facts already dealt with.

In the course of his development man evolves the spiritual-soul so that in it the spirit-self may appear. When he has evolved the spiritual-soul,¹ the upper triad, spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man come to meet him, so that the opening flower of his being can receive into it this upper triad from above. This may be illustrated graphically to resemble the unfolding of a plant (see overleaf).

When a man has made himself receptive by developing his spirit-soul, the higher triad, spirit-self or Manas, life-spirit or Budhi, and spirit-man or Atma, draw near; this may be likened to a spiritual fructification coming towards him from on high. While with the other principles of his being he grows upwards from below, unfolding the blossom of the ‘Son of Man,’ there must come to meet him from on high, so that he may gain his ego-consciousness, that which brings with it spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man.

Who is the representative of the gift which comes down to man from above and is indicative of the nature of humanity in the far future? Who is this? The first gift that comes to man is the ‘spirit-self.’ Of whom is he the representative who receives this gift coming from on high? It is the Son of God, He Who lives, the life-spirit, the Son of the Living God!

So in the scene to which we have just referred Christ Jesus asked the question, ‘What is to come to men through My impulse?’ The answer is, ‘The life-giving Spirit- Principle from on high!’

So we have to distinguish the Son of Man who evolves upwards from below, and the Son of God—the Son of the living God, Who comes down to meet him from above. These must be distinguished. We can understand what a difficult question this was for the disciples. Especially so because they were receiving for the first time those things which the simplest of mankind have had implanted in them through the Gospels from the beginning of the Christian era; things which first reached the disciples through the living, instructing forces of Christ Jesus. Through powers such as had previously been developed by them, no answer could be given to the question: ‘Whose representative am I Myself?’ To this question one of the disciples—Peter—answered: ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ This was an answer which—if we may say so—did not spring from the normal spiritual powers of Peter at that moment.

Let us try to picture this scene vividly. Christ Jesus, looking at Peter, said to Himself: ‘It means much that such an answer should have come from this mouth; for it is an answer that points to the distant future.’ Then having gazed into Peter's consciousness, and seen how far he had progressed, seen that through his intellect, or the powers that initiation had evoked in him, he was able to give such an answer, the Christ was bound to say ‘This answer has not sprung from Peter's conscious knowledge; here spoke. those deeper forces that are inherent in all men, but which will only gradually become conscious forces in them.’

We bear within us physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego; we are rising towards spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man through transmutation of the powers of the lower bodies. This is an elementary lesson of Spiritual Science. The forces that we shall one day evolve in our astral body as spirit-self are already there, only they have been put there by divine spiritual powers and have not been evolved by us. It is the same as regards our etheric body, which already contains within it a divine life-spirit. Therefore, looking at Peter, Christ said: ‘What spoke to me is not what is within thy consciousness at the present time, thou hast spoken from out of something that will certainly be evolved within thee at a future time, but of which at present thou knowest nothing. What at the present time is within thy flesh and blood could not have spoken, so that the words: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” could have sprung from it. In these words divine spiritual forces spoke, forces lying deep below the threshold of consciousness, in the profoundest depths of human nature.’ The mysterious Higher Powers that at this moment spoke through Peter, Christ calls the ‘Father in Heaven.’ These were the forces out of which he was born, but of which he was not as yet conscious. Hence Christ's words: ‘The man of flesh and blood thou art at present did not reveal this unto thee, but the Father which is in Heaven revealed it.’ But Christ had something further to say to Peter. He had to say to Himself: ‘In Peter I have a disciple before me, whose nature is so constituted, that through the forces that have already evolved consciousness in him, and through the whole manner in which spiritual forces have worked in him the Father-force has remained intact; this subconscious, human force has remained so strong in him that when he surrenders himself to it he can build thereon. This is the most important thing in Peter.’ And Christ might have gone on to say: ‘What is present in Peter is present in all men, but they are not sufficiently advanced either to be aware of it or to make conscious use of it; the power to do so will only be developed in the future. If that which I am to give to man, if that for which I am the impulse, is to develop further and become a part of him, it must be founded on the consciousness which spoke through the mouth of Peter in the words: “Thou art the Christ,. the Son of the living God”; on this rock in human nature which the surging waves of consciousness as at present evolved have not yet destroyed, and which, as Father-force has just made itself heard, I will build that which will emerge with ever-increasing strength as the result of my impulse.’

When men have constructed this foundation, what the Christ-impulse can become for humanity will be revealed. This is contained in the words: ‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build what a certain number of men, a community, can reveal when they confess the Impulse of Christ.’

Such words must not be passed over as lightly as are the discussions which at this moment are the subject of violent controversy. They can only be understood when reconstructed out of the depth of that wisdom which is the same as the wisdom met with in the Mysteries.

The sentence that follows shows clearly that Christ Jesus built on this deep subconscious force in Peter. For immediately afterwards He speaks of the events that are about to take place, and of the Mystery of Golgotha. The moment, however, had already passed when the more deeply lying forces spoke in Peter. It is the conscious Peter who now speaks, who fails to understand Christ, and cannot believe that suffering and death are to follow. So when the conscious Peter speaks (he who had already developed conscious powers within himself) Christ has to correct him, saying: ‘It is not God Who now speaks in thee but that which thou hast evolved within thee as man; the source from which it comes is of no value, but is a vain deception, for it comes from Ahriman—that is Satan!’ This is contained in the words, ‘Remove thyself from Me, Satan, thou offendest Me, for thou considerest not the things that are divine, but those that are human.’ Christ compares Peter to Satan, employing the word used to designate Ahriman. Whereas in other parts of the Bible the word ‘devil’ stands for everything Luciferic, Christ here makes deliberate use of the word ‘Satan,’ for it was to the Ahrimanic form of deception that Peter had succumbed.

These are the facts. What do modern critics of the Bible make of them? They say: It is most unlikely that Christ Jesus would stand before Peter one minute saying, ‘Thou alone hast grasped the fact that a God confronts thee,’ and immediately afterwards call him ‘Satan.’ So the critics conclude that the word ‘Satan’ must have been interpolated by someone later, and is therefore incorrect. The truth is that current opinions concerning the deeper meaning of these words when gained only through philological research are worthless, unless preceded by an actual understanding of the Biblical records. An understanding of the actual facts of the Bible is necessary before anyone can speak of the historical origin of corresponding documents.

Between the two sayings that have just been considered there is another. This we can only understand if we call to mind a very ancient, yet ever new teaching of the Mysteries: The teaching that man as he exists on earth—and not only man himself but each group or class of men—is a reflected image of cosmic happenings. This has already been explained by me when referring to the descent of Jesus of Nazareth. We saw the true meaning of the promises made to Abraham: ‘Thy descendants shall be a copy of the order of the stars in Heaven.’ The order of the Heavens as seen in the twelve Constellations, and the paths of planets through these twelve Signs of the Zodiac, were to be repeated in the twelve tribes, and in all that the Hebrew people experienced during three times fourteen generations. In the sequence of the generations, and in their special inheritance through the blood-tie within the twelve tribes, we have to see a copy or reflection of cosmic relationships. This was told to Abraham.

In the moment when Peter stood before the Christ, and our Lord knew that in his deeper nature he had really understood what was given to man with the Christ-Impulse—that it meant the down-flowing of spiritual power through the ‘Son of the living God’—Christ knew He could now inform those standing round Him that something new was about to begin on earth, that a new model could now be given to them. As in the cosmic relationship of the heavens Abraham had been given an image of blood relationship, so now an image for an ethical and spiritual relationship was provided; a model for what man would be able to attain to through his ego. When people come to understand what the Christ is, as the higher nature of Peter understood it, they will cease to establish relationships and communities that depend only on the blood-tie, but will consciously weave bonds of love from soul to soul. This means that as in the blood of the Jewish people, in the threads stretching through the generations, people were bound together in accordance with a macrocosmic model, and were also liberated from each other through the same heavenly ordinance—from this time forth a force was to arise out of the conscious ego that would separate man from man, or bind them to each other in love, in accordance with moral and spiritual relationships. Regulations affecting humanity will be made or harmonized by the conscious ego. This is contained in the words spoken by Christ in continuation of His answer to Peter when He said: ‘What thou bindest on earth—what the deeper nature in thee binds—is the same as is bound in Heaven; and what this nature loosens here below is also loosened in Heaven.’

In ancient times the whole meaning of human union lay in relationship through the blood-tie; but men in future will develop more and more towards moral, intellectual, and spiritual ties. It follows, that what they form in the way of communities shall mean something to them. Or, to express this in anthroposophical language, we might say: The individual karma of a man will have to be associated with the karma of the community.

From the teachings of Spiritual Science during recent years you can gather that it does not contradict the idea of karma for me to give something to a poor man, so it does not contradict the idea of karma that a man's individual karma should be affected by that of the community to which he belongs. The community can share in the lot of the individual. Karma maybe so connected that the community as a whole bears the karma of the individual. In moral relationships the following may happen: An individual member of a community may commit some wrong; this will most surely be written in his karma, and must be worked out in the great inter-relationships of the whole world. But suppose another case: Suppose a man were found willing to help another to bear his karma. The karma would have to be fulfilled, but the man might be helped. Groups or associations of people can help a wrong-doer in the same way. The karma of an individual can be so interwoven with that of a community that—because it recognizes him as one of themselves—it can consciously accept his destiny, and in sympathy desire his improvement. Their attitude might be—‘You, as an individual, have done wrong, but we will stand by you. We will take over that in your karma, which is conducive to your betterment.’ If for ‘community’ the word ‘church’ be substituted, then it means that the Church lays upon itself the duty of accepting the sin of the individual and of sharing the burden of his karma. This does not refer to ‘forgiveness of sins’ in the usual meaning of the words, but to a real bond, to ‘a taking upon them’ of the sins, and the community must be conscious of its acceptance of the debt.

When ‘binding’ and ‘loosing’ are understood in this sense there must be with every forgiveness of sins a recognition by the community of the responsibilities arising out of it. In this way a web is woven in which the threads of individual karma are woven into the karma of the whole community; and this web shall become a reflection of the order in heaven through the gift brought down to Earth by Christ from spiritual heights. This means that individual karma shall be bound up with universal karma after the pattern of the order in the spiritual worlds, and this in no haphazard way, but so that the whole social organism may become a reflection of the heavenly order.

Hence for those who begin to understand it, this scene of the ‘confession of Peter’ acquires an infinite depth of meaning. It was so to say the founding of future humanity on the basis of their ego-nature. What happened in this confidential conversation between Christ and His more intimate disciples was that the power brought down by Him out of the macrocosm He passed on to that which they were to establish.

From this point onwards the Gospel of Matthew shows how the disciples were led upwards step by step towards that which they were able to receive of the forces of the Sun, and of the cosmos, through the medium of the Christ-being.

You know that one side of initiation is an expansion into the macrocosm, and because Christ is the impulse to this initiation, in the instructions He gives His disciples, He leads them out into the cosmos. As the individual who experiences initiation consciously expands into the macrocosm gradually acquiring wisdom from it, so the Christ descends from the macrocosm, revealing on every hand the forces active there, and these He passes on to His disciples.

How this takes place I have already explained. Let us once more picture the scene. A man falls asleep; on the couch lie his physical and etheric bodies, while his astral body and ego pass out into the cosmos so that these members absorb the forces of the cosmos. If the Christ now approaches this man, He is the Being who attracts these forces consciously to the sleeper, thereby illuminating him. This actually happened; a scene is described in which we are told how the disciples journeyed by sea in the last watch of the night, how they then saw that what they at first took to be an apparition was the Christ, Who enabled the forces of the macrocosm to flow into them. We are shown, in a way apparent to anyone, how Christ conducted these cosmic forces to the disciples.

In what follows in this Gospel we are shown how, scene by scene, step by step, Christ guided the disciples towards initiation. It is as if He experienced this Himself and led them as by the hand along the path that all initiates must tread. I will tell you one thing which clearly shows the gradual leading of them into the macrocosm.

When a living perception of the spiritual world has been gained, when the powers of clairvoyance have been awakened, it brings with it knowledge of things previously quite unknown. One learns, for instance, the real connections in the progressive stages of the growth of a plant. A materialist says of a flower (one that bears fruit): ‘Here is a flower, in it seeds will develop, these can later be gathered and planted in the earth where they will decay and a new plant will appear; this in turn will again bear seeds—and so it goes on from growth to growth. Materialistic thought cannot but suppose some part of the seed, however small, passes over into the new plant. But this is not the case. In respect of its material part, the whole of the old plant is destroyed. A leap occurs, so far as the material part is concerned; the new plant is of entirely new material. Actually a new formation has taken place.

Most important connections in the world are understood as soon as this very remarkable law is grasped and applied to the whole macrocosm; when we have learnt that as regards material conditions leaps or springs do actually occur. This was expressed in a special way in the Mysteries. It was said there: The disciple for initiation must learn at a certain stage through expansion into the cosmos to know the forces that cause these ‘leaps.’ Now a man learns something from the cosmos in whichever direction he advances, and this is expressed in a language taken from the stars. The stars are in this case used as letters. If our development advances in a certain direction we become aware of the ‘leap’ that takes place between an ancestor and a descendant, whether this be in the realm of plants, of animals, or men, or in the realm of planetary existence; such, for instance, as the transition from ancient Saturn to ancient Sun-existence where everything material perished. What is spiritual endures what is material perishes. The spirit was the cause of this ‘leap.’ In the same way, spirit brought about the transition from ancient Sun to Moon, from Moon to Earth. In small things as in great, the law is the same. Two symbols are used to express this fact, one is an ancient one more of a pictorial imaginative script and the other more modern. The modern form is frequently found in calendars. As evolution advances, what is past curls up within itself in the form of a spiral, and the new evolution comes forth as a new spiral out of the old, unfolding from within. But between the end of the old and the beginning of the new there is a little ‘gap,’ only then does evolution advance.

We see this represented in the above figure; here are two interlaced spirals, and, in the centre between them, a little ‘gap.’ This is the sign of ‘Cancer,’ the fourth Sign of the Zodiac, and symbolizes the growing outwards into the macrocosm, and also the starting point of a new shoot within an evolution.

There is another symbol which represents this same connection. Strange as it may seem, the symbol of an ass and its foal was used to express the connection between an ancestor and his descendant, and was intended to represent the actual point of transition from one condition to the other. In old drawings the sign of Cancer is frequently represented in this way. It is not unimportant for us to know this. It is an important teaching towards the understanding that a similar important transition also occurs when we rise to the macrocosm; that when man enters the spiritual world an entirely new illumination is associated with it. This is expressed quite correctly when in accordance with the language of the stars it is said that the physical Sun, having passed through the Constellation of Cancer and reached its highest point, descends again. Much the same happens when the disciple for initiation who has made his first ascent into the spiritual worlds learns of the forces there. When he has acquired knowledge concerning these forces he turns, and bears them down again, so as to make them serviceable to humanity.

The Gospel of Matthew, as well as the other Gospels, tells how Christ Jesus brought about this ‘leap’ in the development of the disciples; and by the way this is told we are shown that He did not influence them by words alone, but that He induced in them imaginative perception—a living image of what He Himself was accomplishing, that exalted state that is the goal of human evolution. To this end He made use of the symbol of the ass and its colt; which means that He guided His disciples towards an understanding of what in spiritual life corresponds to the sign of Cancer. This was the expression of something that occurred in the living spiritual relationship of Christ to His disciples, and was of such majesty, such grandeur, that no human words, whatever the language, were found adequate to express it. The only way that Christ could convey the meaning of it to His disciples was to lead them into the spiritual world, and then to create in physical conditions, an image or reflection of events in the macrocosmic world. For this purpose He led them to the point where the forces of those who had been initiated could become of service again to mankind. He then stood at the summit of His power, and this is shown when He tells the: His sun stood at its zenith, in the sign of Cancer No wonder, therefore, that at this point the Gospel of Matthew informs us that the life of Christ, as regards His earthly existence had reached its climax! This is mightily demonstrated in the cry: ‘Hosanna in the Highest!’ Here each tone is chosen so as to show how the disciples are led on towards maturity; so that through what took place in them humanity as a whole might attain that which through the Christ has been brought into its evolution.

The story of the Passover that follows is nothing else than the actual living inflow of that magic force, which first, in the form of teaching, and later as the outcome of the Mystery of Golgotha, was to enter humanity. With this in mind it becomes clear why the writer of this Gospel always felt it necessary to emphasize the contrast between the living teaching heard by the disciples coming to them from the heights of cosmic existence, a teaching suited to them; and the other teaching given to those who stood outside, who were not sufficiently ripe to receive the Christ-force itself. This difference will be dealt with in the next lecture in connection with the conversation of the Scribes and Pharisees. Just now we would remind you that Christ Jesus, having led the disciples to the point of initiation, showed them that by following this path they would themselves be able to experience expansion into the spiritual world of the macrocosm. He explained that they had already experienced the preliminaries of initiation, that the way was open, to where they could become more and more able to recognize the true nature of Christ as the Being Who fills all spiritual spaces, Whose reflection had been in Jesus of Nazareth. Christ Jesus told His disciples that they must progress in ripeness for initiation so that they might become initiates for humanity. He taught them further that they could only attain individual initiation if with patience and perseverance they furthered this inner ripeness.

What had to increase in strength in man's inner being, if his inner nature was to evolve clairvoyant higher forces? The as yet undeveloped attributes of his being had to ripen, so that he could become capable of receiving into himself the forces of spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man. As to when this would happen, when the power from above which leads to initiation and makes of a man a participator in the Kingdoms of the Heavens dawns in him, depends on the degree of ripeness he has attained; it depends on the karma of the individual. Who can tell when this moment is at hand? Only the highest Initiates. It is not known to those on lower stages of initiation. The hour of man's attainment comes to those who are ripe for entry into the spiritual world. It must surely come; but it comes like a thief in the night.

But how does this expansion into the spiritual world come to pass? In the ancient Mysteries, and to a certain extent in the new, there were three stages of initiation into the macrocosm. The first stage brought knowledge of all that could be perceived through the spirit-self. The Initiate was then not only a man in the new sense, but he had attained to what, in the language of the Hierarchies, is called ‘Angel-nature’—the nature of the Hierarchy next above man. Thus in the Persian Mysteries a man who had advanced to this stage at which he had expanded to the Macrocosm, when the spirit-self was active in him was called either a Persian (since he was no longer an isolated being but belonged to the Angel of the Persian nation) or he was simply called an Angel, one whose nature was divine. The second stage is that in which the life-spirit had awaked in like manner; at this stage a man was called a ‘Sun-hero’ in the old Persian Mysteries, for he had then advanced to the point where he could draw into himself the spiritual forces of the Sun, when these forces had approached the earth. Such a man might also be called ‘Son of the Father.’ And he who had won to the heights of the third stage, the stage of Atma, or spirit-man, was called in the ancient Mysteries ‘the Father.’ These were the three stages of initiation—‘Angel,’ ‘Son or Sun-hero,’ and ‘Father.’

Only the highest initiates can judge when initiation is about to awaken in man. Hence Christ said: ‘Initiation will come when you have travelled further along the way on which I have led you; you will then ascend to the Kingdom of Heaven; but the hour of your arrival is known neither to the Angels (those initiated with the spirit-self, nor to the Son (those initiated with life-spirit), but only to the highest Initiates, those initiated with the Father.’ Here once more the language of the Gospel of Matthew conforms absolutely with the tradition of the Mysteries.

And we shall see as the Gospel continues how all that Christ tells His disciples concerning the Kingdom of Heaven is merely a prediction of what they are to experience in initiation. Examining carefully the sentences dealing with this subject, it is easily seen that Christ is referring to a certain teaching common at that time—concerning the way in which the Kingdom of Heaven was to be attained. People had accepted this attainment of the Kingdom of Heaven in a material sense, believing it applied to the whole earth, whereas they ought to have known that this was only possible to certain individuals, those who had passed through initiation. Some people really expected that the earth would be transformed into Heaven in a material way. Christ refers directly to this when He says that certain people who will appear and announce this teaching are lying prophets and false Messiahs. It is amazing to find expounders of the Gospels who even to-day spread this false doctrine of the material heavenly kingdom, and declare it to be the teaching of Christ Himself. Anyone who really knows how to read the Gospel of Matthew knows that Christ refers to a spiritual event, towards which those seeking initiation grow. In the course of earthly evolution it will, however, be possible for all humanity—for all who follow Christ—to grow to this condition—inasmuch as the earth itself is spiritualized.

When from this side also we have looked more deeply into the whole form and content of the Gospel of Matthew, our reverence for it deepens enormously. This is more especially the case in respect of the teaching Christ gave to His disciples from the standpoint of the ego—the ‘I.’ In none of the other Gospels is this given so clearly. We can picture the Christ, with His disciples gathered round Him, and can see how cosmic forces work through the agency of His human body; we can see the disciples learning of initiation as He leads them by the hand, and we catch a glimpse of the human conditions of His environment. All this makes the Gospel of Matthew a most human production. Through it we really learn to know the man Jesus of Nazareth, the bearer of the Christ; we recognize all that came to pass through the descent of Christ into human nature. Yes, in the Matthew Gospel even heavenly events are clothed in garments that are truly human.

How this is the case in other things not only in those relating to initiation will be dealt with in the next—the last lecture.

• 1. Spiritual-soul is sometimes called consciousness-soul.

In the preceding lecture we studied the principles and powers in the being of man belonging specifically to Earth-existence. Certain forces operating in human nature are, in reality, “heritages” from the earlier embodiments of the Earth: from the Old Saturn period, the Old Sun period and the Old Moon period. These heritages from primeval epochs of evolution are contained in the physical body, the ether-body and the astral body of the earthly human being; but it is the Earth, the forces deriving actually from the Earth, that have made the physical body into the instrument of man's present form of consciousness. The ether-body has received, specifically from the Earth, the qualities whereby it becomes the bearer of the memory, the instrument of remembrance. The astral body itself developed during the Old Moon period of evolution—the planetary predecessor of the Earth—and the Earth adds the forces which provide for the operation of human karma. But something else exists as an activity, an expression of the human personality, something specifically connected with the “ I ” in man which has been acquired only during Earth-evolution. Waking consciousness, memory and remembrance, the operation of karma—these were the active principles added to the physical-, ether- and astral-bodies in that man was endowed with the “ I.” We said that the forces of the “ I ” are sent outwards, towards the outer spiritual world, and that these forces, unlike those inhering in karma, or in memory, do not remain inexorably bound up with the human being. A man's memories and remembrances remain part of him; his consciousness, obviously, has significance only for him, for other beings have quite different forms of consciousness; and karma is bound up with the human being in so far as it has to operate during the earthly incarnations to adjust and make compensation for his deeds. But “forms” or “forces” begotten of thoughts or feelings—these detach themselves from the real “ I ” of man, and in a certain respect acquire independent existence, independent reality. Unlike the other forces, they do not remain connected with him.

Now in respect of the forms or forces deriving from the “ I ” of man, a sharp distinction must be made. The human “ I ” or Ego can unfold either selfishness or selflessness in the inner life. According to whether selfishness, or selfless love and compassion are unfolded, these “forces” or “forms” operate quite differently. The forces of selfish thoughts become forces of disturbance, even of destruction; they pass into the spiritual world actually as destructive forces. On the other hand, all forces of selfless thoughts enter into the spiritual life of Earth-evolution, not as destructive but as upbuilding, constructive forces. In that these forces of selfless thought detach themselves as it were from the “ I ” of man, they leave behind certain traces in him. Especially is it true of forces begotten of selfless thoughts and feelings, that as they go forth from the “ I,” they leave traces behind in the human being—traces which are quite perceptible. The more the “ I ” sends out forces born of selfless thoughts and feelings, the more does a man develop individuality of form, of gesture, facial expression, and so on—in short, the power inherent in his own being. The forces of selfish, self-seeking thoughts and feelings, however, operate in him in such a way that he has little power to give expression to his own individuality. We must therefore ask: What is the principle underlying the distinction to be made among the individual forms of men in the course of the evolution of humanity?

Everything that is “form” on the Earth derives from the Spirits of Form. The name “Spirits of Form” is actually given to these Beings of the Higher Hierarchies because everything that has form, shape, life—everything that takes on shape inwardly and evolves an outer form, has received the essential impetus for this form from the “Spirits of Form.” Now all these Beings of the Higher Hierarchies are involved in a constant process of evolution. Not only man, but in a certain sense all the Beings of the different Hierarchies are involved in a constant process of evolution. In our present age, the Spirits of Form are moving to the higher rank of “Spirits of Movement”; the “Spirits of Personality” to that of “Spirits of Form; the “Archangeloi” to that of “Spirits of Personality” or “Archai.” As the Spirits of Form move upwards in rank they no longer function, in the primary sense, as “Spirits of Form,” but the succeeding Spirits of Personality do not, at once, assume the functions of Spirits of Form. This will help you to understand that something quite definite will come about during the second half of the period of Earth-evolution into which we have now passed. At the beginning of Earth-evolution, the Spirits of Form stamped the principle of form into man; this comes to expression in the different human forms. Just as the various races have developed their characteristic qualities, and individual human beings take on the traits of the several races, so have the various groups of humanity as a whole all over the Earth received their stamp from the Spirits of Form. What the Spirits of Form stamped into human beings has long since passed into the processes of heredity; it has long since become a heritage, handed down from generation to generation. In a sense, the Spirits of Form leave man greater freedom as they themselves move into a higher category and withdraw from the form-creating function devolving upon them at the beginning of Earth-evolution. So far as the Beings of the Hierarchies are concerned, man is drawing nearer and nearer to his “coming of age.” But of this we must be clear—The Spiritual Beings, moving up as they do to higher ranks, have themselves to evolve, and prepare for the next planetary condition of the Earth, in order that during the Jupiter-existence they may endow the beings who once belonged to the Earth with forms which will then be appropriate. Towards the end of a planetary age it is always the case that the being of central importance—and on the Earth this is man—is left free, so that the qualities with which he was originally endowed may pass more freely into his own hands. In the course of Earth-evolution in the future, therefore, the forces of form, the forms begotten by thoughts and feelings, will assume greater and greater importance. And in so far as they are selfless, in so far as they are the offspring of selfless wisdom, selfless love, these forces will work formatively upon man. For the design or pattern of the evolutionary process may be indicated in the following way. The further we go back into the past, the more do we find that the outer form of the child resembles that of its forefathers; but the further we go into the future, the more will the human being, in his outward appearance, become an expression of the individuality who passes on from one incarnation to another. This means that in one and the same family (even now it is very frequently the case and nobody with an eye for such things will deny it) there will be less and less likeness between the faces of the children and between the faces of the children and between the other parts of the human figure, for the reason that the forms will no longer be the expression of family or race, but more and more the expression of the individuality. Anyone with a knowledge of Spiritual Science, if he really observes human beings living all over the Earth, can perceive, even today, side by side with the inherited characteristics of race or family, more and more strongly individual lineaments of face, head, and other bodily forms; he can perceive the striking differences in form and figure among members of one and the same family. In this respect, of course, we are in a period of transition; but the Sixth Post-Atlantean epoch is in preparation, together with its paramount characteristic, namely, that unlike the conditions obtaining in earlier periods of culture, outer marks of race will be much less of a criterion. In the Sixth epoch the criterion all over the Earth will be the extent to which the individuality has impressed upon his countenance and upon the whole of his being, the forces left behind by the forms begotten of selfless thoughts and feelings—especially those deriving from wisdom.

It is contrary to every principle of true Spiritual Science to say that just as there was one leading race in each of the culture-epochs in the past, so in the future, too, there will be another such race, distinguished by physical attributes. The ancient Indian culture was borne and sustained by a leading race; so, too, was the culture of ancient Persia, of the Egypto-Chaldean and Graeco-Latin epochs. But already today it is apparent that culture, instead of being borne by one specific leading race, spreads over all races. And it is by Spiritual Science that culture—a spiritual culture—must be carried over the whole Earth, without distinction of race or blood. It is already apparent that our epoch will be succeeded by another of quite a different character, an epoch when, all over the Earth, the extent to which a man expresses his innermost being in his outer form, will be made manifest. It would be sheer contradiction of every principle of Spiritual Science to speak today of continental limits, or the limits of any particular territory, in connection with human beings belonging to the Sixth epoch of culture—for they, in the future, will be spread over the whole Earth. Only one whose vantage-point is not that of Spiritual Science, who has some queer bee in his bonnet that a kind of wheel revolving in spiritual evolution causes everything to repeat itself just as spring, summer, autumn and winter repeat themselves when a year has run its course—only such a one could make the statement that what was necessary for the creation of races in earlier times will simply be repeated for the Sixth epoch. Such a statement would be entirely at variance with true Spiritual Science, and would cut across all knowledge of the actual and real progress of humanity. The inner power of the soul becomes more and more manifest as evolution goes forward. The old is not repeated merely in slightly different form, but actual progress takes place in the evolution of humanity. If Theosophy is to keep faith with its good old principles—the first of which is to promote culture without distinction of race, colour, and so forth, it will not cherish groundless hopes of a future culture emanating from one particular race. The deeper connection of Theosophy with the actual course of evolution consists precisely in this:—that the processes operating in world-evolution are understood, that thinking and feeling are brought into harmony with theosophical knowledge, and the necessary impulses of will made effective in the world. In order to understand how the power of the soul will more and more be made manifest in humanity, it is only necessary to bring out one point clearly, and then we shall realise how the human being evolves as an individual. (The point that has been developed today has been dealt with repeatedly, for many years.¹).

At the beginning of Earth-evolution, the human being was part of a group-soul—as expressed in race, blood, family and so on—to a far greater extent than was the case later on. As evolution continues he becomes more and more of an individual, develops his individuality. We have heard what an important part certain forces play in the development of the individuality during Earth-evolution: consciousness that is dependent on the physical body; memory and remembrance which are dependent upon the ether-body; and karma, whereby a man can make real progress, in that his imperfections and faults do not remain but can be overcome by him as he passes through one incarnation after another. But the “forms” or “forces” created by thoughts and feelings, although they detach themselves from the human being and lead an independent existence, are nevertheless closely united with him, in that they leave vestiges behind; these vestiges, as they are sent out by the “ I ”, contribute to the definition of the individuality and man gradually divests himself of the qualities belonging to the group-soul. The trend which will become more and more general over the globe and will form the essential, fundamental character of the Sixth epoch of culture, is no kind of approach to a new group-soul, but far rather the laying aside of the attributes of the group-soul. Intimately connected with this is the fact that the spiritual guidance of human beings will become more and more a matter individual to each one; they will have greater inner freedom in this respect.

Anyone who has understood the trend of the little book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind will realise that a movement in this direction is in very truth taking place in the human race. It is a fact that in ancient times men lived under external leaders and teachers, but even in those days, leadership was gradually becoming an inner concern. Just as the outer form becomes an expression of the Individuality, so does the path to the spiritual worlds taken by human beings become more and more their individual concern. It is the duty of those who have insight into the signs of the times to insist that human beings have not remained stationary at an earlier stage of development, that the forces once employed, cannot be repeated in the same form, simply because men have gone forward in their evolution. In the age that is coming, the souls of men will become more and more mature, able to discern and perceive those things of which Spiritual Science teaches today.

The “Mystery of Golgotha,” as the essential Christ Event, was an outer happening, striking into the physical world; a future Christ Event will be an inner concern, inasmuch as the soul of man has been so quickened by the first Christ Event that in days to come, the way to Christ will be found in the Spirit, out of the life of soul.

Wherever you look in Spiritual Science as it is presented here, you will always find—even in the case of very specialised details—that it is consistent with your own powers of reason and free judgment, provided only that you make a real effort to apply this free power of judgment. In that the individual human being is all the time becoming more accessible to influences from the spiritual world, the authority of external leadership will gradually lose its weight. It is very important to realise that the ancient wisdom exists and must be understood, that understanding of it can constantly increase if men's souls are open to the spiritual worlds and if they strive to grasp this wisdom with their powers of reason. This is the very essence of progressive evolution. However specialised the subjects may be, appeal to individual reason and judgment must never be excluded. It is a very different thing to bring forward some young man and announce that he has this and that incarnation behind him! If I were to tell you such things I should beg you at the outset not to believe them simply on my word—but I should never dream of making such assertions authoritatively, for the simple reason that you could not possibly convince yourselves objectively of their truth. When, however, it is said that the same Individuality was present in Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis—all long since dead—you can yourselves discover by studying their lives, whether there are reasonable and sound grounds for such a statement. And no other kind of appeal must ever be made: the respect due to each individual soul demands that such a test should be within the realm of possibility. There are, of course, lazy-minded people who say: “We have to “believe” you when you speak of the same Individuality having lived in Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis.” ... No! they are not obliged to believe it ... but they can try, at least, to find evidence in the different lives of what, admittedly, can only be actually discovered by occult research. This evidence can be found, and it is pure laziness when people say that if someone speaks of the incarnations of human beings long since dead, this must be taken on authority just as is the case when the incarnations of some young person living today are announced. That is a very different matter! In this respect a deep appeal must be made to Theosophists to put everything to the test of reason and not to rest content with the cheap excuse that things cannot be proved. They can be proved, if there is willingness to do so. This must be constantly emphasised.

A kind of counterbalancing process operates in the world and while, on the one hand, the development of the individuality is progressing, on the other, something else will become more and more universal, namely, the objective knowledge which must be acquired by man. Objectivity of knowledge, uniformity of knowledge does not gainsay the principle of individuality. Mathematics in itself is an illustration of this fact. And so it is the task of occultism—if one may speak of occultism having such a task at the present time—to provide objective wisdom and knowledge of the universe. Even although, in the nature of things, the ideal is not immediately in sight because not every individual has sufficient time and opportunity to put specific details to the test, it is true, nevertheless, that although things can actually be discovered only through occult research, they can be examined and endorsed by every individual; it is not necessary to take them on faith. All that is required is to reflect about things, with reason and sound judgment. Let us take a definite case, remembering that what will be said about it is applicable everywhere.

Suppose someone says: “Mankind has evolved. Progress is a reality in evolution. This progress reveals itself in the fact that man is becoming more strongly individual in his nature and being. It follows that whereas in olden times, leadership was vested more in persons, in times to come this kind of leadership will be superseded by objective wisdom, objective knowledge; personal leadership will recede and become merely an instrument and means for bringing objective wisdom to the human being. The ideal vantage-point is that the occult teacher is no different from a teacher of mathematics, who quite obviously has his function. But mathematics are not accepted merely on the authority of the teacher of mathematics; every individual accepts mathematics because he gradually acquires knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals. Hence the element of wisdom and of knowledge will more and more supersede the element of personality” ... Suppose that such a statement were confronted by another, to the effect that “the world rolls onwards like a wheel; in olden days there were great Teachers of humanity, and new ones are about to come ...” When faced with a statement like that, it is not possible to adopt the easy-going principle that either the one or the other may be believed; it is a matter, then, for deciding: which of the two is acceptable to reason? There is the choice between deciding whether no progress is to be ascribed to humanity and everything thought of as eternal repetition, or whether humanity does really progress and that evolution has meaning and purpose. Those who refuse to recognise any meaning in evolution can speak, if they like, of the eternal repetition of epochs of time; but those who see meaning and purpose in Earth-existence as brought to light by occult research, will not speak of eternal repetition of the same things—which does not, in fact, take place.

It is all-important to realise that the faculties of man have developed and that in this development—to take one example—the following is involved. In the ancient Mysteries each human being was obliged to submit to certain enactments and procedures directed to his own person; thereby he became an “Initiate.” He passed through the “different grades of Initiation.” In and through the Mystery of Golgotha these grades of Initiation became a world-historical Event, made manifest for all humanity. What had in olden times been an affair of one or another particular centre of Initiation, became a world-historical event, passed into the common estate of humanity, and was thereafter accessible to every advancing individuality. In my book Christianity as Mystical Fact, therefore, the Mystery of Golgotha is described as the culmination and, in a sense, the close of the ancient Mysteries, because it brought all the ancient religions into one great unity. Occultism reveals still more clearly how the several streams of culture are gradually converging into one; but as they converge, they must be recognised and identified. The very operations of occult research reveal how the fruits of this research harmonise with what everyone can accept for himself, from his own observation of happenings on the physical plane.

Let us take a very far-reaching example, of which you may well say, to begin with: “There he is telling us something that really cannot be put to the test of reason, nor even approached by reason.” You may well say this, when it is first put before you.

My book An Outline of Occult Science describes how, at one time, Sun, Moon and Earth were united in a single planetary existence; the Sun then separated off and, at a later stage, Mercury and Venus; still later, Mars separated off from the Sun. The further we go back in time, the more does such a process become a spiritual process and the question it is essential to understand is really this:—Who were the Beings who thus separated? Of primary importance as regards the Earth, was the Christ Being, the great Sun Being Who through the Mystery of Golgotha subsequently united again with the Earth. Thereby all the antecedents of Christianity were brought to a kind of climax and culmination in Christianity itself. With the Mystery of Golgotha, a mighty Cosmic Power streamed into Earth-evolution. It might conceivably be argued that if the Christ came once and once only, this would imply injustice to the souls who lived before His coming. If a materialist were to bring forward such an argument, it might be understandable, but it would certainly not be understandable if it came from a Theosophist. For he knows that the souls living today also lived in earlier times, before the Mystery of Golgotha; the coming of Christ, therefore, is of equal significance for the souls of the pre-Christian ages, because they all incarnate again in the times following the Mystery of Golgotha. There is, however, this point to be made and it must be understood by Theosophists, namely, that in a certain sense the Buddha forms an exception. We must reach the vantage-point of the true Buddhist who says that the Individuality in the Buddha was that of a “Bodhisattva” who was born as the son of King Suddhodana, rose in his twenty-ninth year to the rank of Buddha, thereby attaining a height whence he need no longer return to a body of flesh. That, therefore, was the final incarnation of the Bodhisattva Individuality who does not reincarnate in the era following the founding of Christianity. The lectures in Christiania² drew attention to the fact that a very special mission in the universe devolves upon an Individuality as sublime as the Buddha. The Individuality who became the Buddha had been sent from the hosts of Christ on the Sun to the “Venus men” before they came to the Earth (see also the description in Occult Science); the Individuality of the Buddha, therefore, had been sent forth by Christ from the Sun to Venus, as His emissary. This Individuality came to the Earth with the “Venus men” and had thus reached such an advanced stage of development that through the Atlantean, on into the Post-Atlantean era, he was able to attain to the rank of Buddhahood before the coming of Christ. He was in very truth a “Christian” before the time of Christ. We know, too, that later on he revealed himself in the astral body of the Jesus-Child of St. Luke's Gospel—since he need no longer return in a body of flesh. United as he is with the Christ Stream, a different task devolves upon him for the times to come. (This task was described in greater detail in the Christiania lectures.) The Buddha need not incarnate again in a body of flesh. It fell to him to fulfil a certain Deed on Mars—a Deed not identical with the Mystery of Golgotha but to be thought of as a parallel—namely, the Redemption of the people of Mars. There is, of course, no question here of a Crucifixion as in the Mystery of Golgotha, for as may be read in Occult Science, the people of Mars are quite differently constituted from human beings on Earth. These things, of course, are the results of occult observation and can only be discovered through clairvoyant investigation.

Now let us think of this fact—that the Buddha was an emissary of the Christ and had lived on Venus. Then think of the uniqueness of the Buddha-life, of its fundamental character, and proceed as I did myself. First, there came to me the occult knowledge: Buddha goes from Venus to Mars in order there to accomplish a Deed of Redemption for the beings of Mars. And now take the life of Buddha, and observe how strikingly it differs from the lives of all the other founders of religion in that period. The teachings of all the others tend in the direction of concealing the doctrine of reincarnation; Buddha teaches reincarnation and founds a community based essentially upon piety, upon a kind of remoteness from the world. Ask yourselves whether there are beings for whom this quality would be of fundamental significance—beings whose redemption could be wrought by all that the Buddha had lived through and made his own? If it were possible, now, to say more about the constitution of the Mars beings, you would see that the Buddha-life was a kind of preparation for a higher mission; that it occurred in Earth-existence as a kind of culmination and can have no direct continuation. You may compare much in the Buddha-life with the indications given by occultism and then you will be able to form some real judgment of matters with such far-reaching cosmic connections. To discover them—that will still be beyond you; but you will be able to examine and study them with the help of all the material at your disposal, and you will find agreement and conformity among the indications given. That Buddha is connected with Venus was known, also, to H. P. Blavatsky. In her Secret Doctrine, she writes: “Buddha=Mercury”—“Mercury,” because in earlier times the names for Venus and Mercury were confused and reversed. “Buddha = Venus” would be the proper form. A knowledge possessed by occultists today is already hinted at in H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine—but it must be understood correctly.

These things are connected with the whole process of advancing evolution. The evolution of man must be studied in connection with the whole universe; man must be thought of as a microcosm within the macrocosm. The fact that Beings do actually mediate between the several planets is entirely in line with these concatenations of cosmic existence, so that a being like the Buddha can actually be regarded as a mediator between planets. A good principle on which judgment of all these things may be based, is recognition of human progress as a reality, recognition of “evolution,” not as a catchword, but as a truth.

How can we fail to realise that evolution is a reality? Goethe has shown with such beauty that in each plant, green leaf, petal, calyx, stamen and pistil are a unity and yet progress is clearly to be observed—from the green leaf to the petal and the fruit. Progress in the spiritual life is still more clearly perceptible. It would be pure abstraction to say that the path of the Mystic has everywhere been the same, among all peoples and in all ages. If one were content with cheap persuasion it would be quite easy to tell people that the mystical experience of a Yogi has never differed from that of a Christian Saint. But such a statement would not be based upon knowledge of the facts—not even of the external facts. The experiences of a Yogi and those of a Christian Mystic like St. Theresa, for example, differ fundamentally and essentially! Is it not casting all sense of truth to the winds to compare the experience of an Indian Yogi with experiences that are permeated through and through with the Christ Principle—or with the Jesus Principle in the case of St. Theresa? As true as there is a difference between the red petal of the rose and the green leaf on its stalk, so is it true that there is a difference between experiences arising in the practice of Yoga and those of a later age. There is a fundamental difference and a progression as well. Even if many lapses occur, it can be perceived, nevertheless, and the progress outruns and overcomes the lapses.

It is possible for everyone to put these principles to the test of reason—and that is essential. For Theosophy must be given under the assumption that it speaks to the innermost soul, the innermost heart, but is also grasped and assimilated. It would imply that human beings could never come of age, if in the future they were obliged to wait, in the same way as was necessary in olden times, for the coming of World-Teachers—and this quite apart from the fact that no true occultism will ever speak of such an abstract principle of repetition, because it is a direct contradiction of what actually happens. As world-evolution progresses, the factor of independent judgment and examination will assume greater and greater importance. That is one of the reasons why it is so difficult in the present age to speak truly of an Individuality who is so misunderstood, even among occultists—I mean the Individuality known as Christian Rosenkreutz. Those who have a real link with him will never disobey the principle here described. But recognition of the principle of evolution—which reveals itself most clearly in the intrinsic worth of a human being—is difficult and gradual. Christian Rosenkreutz whom we recognise as the one by whom the true occult movement will be led on into the future and who will assuredly never add weight to his authority by means of any outer cult, will be misunderstood—he more than all. Those who have any knowledge of this Individuality know, too, that Christian Rosenkreutz will be the greatest of martyrs among men—apart from the Christ Who suffered as a God. The martyrdom of Christian Rosenkreutz will be caused by the fact that so few make the resolve to look into their own souls, in order there to seek for the evolving individuality, or to submit to the uncomfortable fact that truth will not be presented ready-made but has to be acquired by intense struggle and effort; requirements of a different character will never be brought forward in the name of the Individuality known as Christian Rosenkreutz. These requirements are in line with the character of the present age and with what is felt by men of the present age, even if in many respects they misinterpret it. The present age feels quite distinctly that the principle of individuality will assume greater and greater prominence. Even if here and there this truth is expressed grotesquely and sometimes far too radically, the very fact that it is expressed is indication of a sound instinct in humanity. Many a time one is amazed that in spite of the materialism and the many absurdities current in modern civilisation, an absolutely true instinct, although it is often pushed to extremes and caricatured, prevails in regard to many things. An example occurs in a book recently published: Zur Kritik der Zeit, by Walter Rathenau. It contains a passage to the effect that the time for the founding of sects, for belief in authority, has gone forever as a possible ideal for mankind ... As, however it is a fact that every sound development in our time calls forth its opposite, belief in authority and mania for dogma are rampant in certain circles. And yet: anyone who knows the world today will realise that nothing can so deeply undermine peace and harmony among men as non-recognition of the principle here outlined. The ideal of man must be to fathom and recognise objective truth, to be led through objective truth itself into the spiritual worlds. Hindrances would be laid in his path by attempts to base some truth upon narrow, personal authority—a mode of procedure that is, furthermore, quite impermissible so far as the future is concerned. This must be clearly understood. Many years of work in the field of Spiritual Science have shown how very difficult things are. Not only here, but wherever theosophical work is possible, it is always difficult to make this principle of theosophical striving the root-nerve of theosophical activity. The reason of the difficulty is that there are always people who will not bestir themselves to grasp what must be the fundamental impulse of our age. Objections that may crop up here and there would die a natural death if people would only give a little thought to the fundamental requirements of the times and realise that humanity is ever and everywhere going forward. To lay hold of the whole essence and spirit of Theosophy—that is what matters! But it would run counter to the very essence of Theosophy if a certain teaching that is being broadcast today were to find any widespread acceptance, namely, that culture which should be the common property of all mankind without distinction of race and colour, is conditioned by some particular continental factor. Is it really possible to take back with one sentence what has been proclaimed in another? Is it difficult to see the contradiction when it is said on the one hand that universal wisdom must be spread as a possession of all men without distinction of race and other differences, while on the other it is said that the civilisation of the future rests with a race localised within geographical boundaries? It is high time to reflect on these things and get to the root of them. Is it possible to speak of the progress of humanity when it is constantly reiterated that the same need—in this case, the authority of a personal teacher—exists in the world as of yore? Is it possible to say that man's own spiritual forces must grow stronger, that he must by his own efforts find the way to the spiritual world, if this is made dependent upon the authority of a single individual on the physical Earth? It is extremely easy to say that all opinions have equal weight in the Theosophical Movement. This remains a catchword when it is not taken really in earnest. Above all it remains a catchword when the opinions of others are misrepresented. Once before I have been obliged to say that “equal right of opinion” is no more than a phrase if our work here—which has nothing whatever to do with any specific territory or race on the Earth—is presented by the other side as though it were suitable only for the German mind. It is an affair of humanity, like mathematics—not the affair of any particular nation. To speak of our work here as being an affair of one particular nation, of a strictly limited territory, is an untruth. To quote a catchword does not justify the spreading of untruths in the world. In such circumstances, moreover, the other side may well become the victim of injustice. A semblance of intolerance may easily be created, simply because a stand has to be taken for the truth. The hour shows signs of becoming very serious in this connection. What I am saying here will be understood only by those who take Theosophy in real earnest and will not countenance things that run counter to the fundamental principles of theosophical work. Suppose one were obliged to ward off certain untruths from those who cannot put everything to the test for themselves, can the other person say: “That is intolerance”? He can, of course, say so if, under the guise of truth, he is merely seeking domination and authority! In the future, spiritual truth will work by reason of its own inherent strength, its own power, independently of physical circumstances. And it will be a great and splendid achievement if Theosophy can promote unity of culture over the whole Earth. Not for personal reasons, not for national reasons, nor for any “human” reasons whatever, but for purely theosophical reasons it makes one's heart bleed that in England today the President of the Theosophical Society should be making speeches which really cannot be described as “theosophical” but are eminently political. Thinking of the good old traditions of Theosophy, the heart bleeds to hear it said in a theosophical address that the day will come for proclaiming: “England together with India, at the centre; America and Germany, right and left. One World Policy under the banner of Theosophy!” ... And then we are accused of “intolerance” when it is necessary to protest against the introduction of the personal element into the leadership—where it should never be. It makes an occultist's heart ache that the label “theosophical” should be tacked on to this kind of statement. Once again I repeat: the heartache is not caused by personal or human considerations but for purely theosophical and occult reasons. It is grievous that the root-principle of theosophical teaching should be tainted—either consciously or unconsciously—with national and imperialistic aspirations! It is grievous to me not because I have anything whatever against any country or any aspirations on the Earth, but because the placing of such aspirations in the foreground shows at the very outset that the most intensely personal element is insinuating itself into the true ideal of Theosophy.

Many times I have spoken earnest words of the tasks and aims of Theosophy. The occultist does not speak without reflection. He knows very well when he must use such words! What I have said to you is entirely remote from any emotion, any desire, any sympathy or antipathy; it is demanded by something you may perhaps yourselves realise, namely, the seriousness of the hour—I mean, for Theosophy, for Occultism. As I have so often said, Theosophy must draw from the well-springs of human wisdom the message that is needful for mankind in the present age. If Theosophy is to move towards this ideal, it must stand on its own feet, set up its own rules of conduct—not only for what it has to say, but for how it has to confront the world—in order that standards prevailing in the outside world shall not play into our theosophical Movement. For there they become an evil, a great evil. As often as certain usages current in the outside world are introduced into the theosophical Movement, just so often is the Movement handed over to the forces of destruction. To outside eyes, these usages, when introduced into Theosophy, sometimes assume so grotesque a form that the world will certainly take good care not to copy things that may grow from the rich and fertile soil of occultism. Every kind of league exists in the world today—for the promotion of Peace, Vegetarianism, Anti-Alcoholism and what not—all of which are perfectly justifiable goals. But when the basic principles of a society are stretched in order to include the foundation of Unions or even Orders connected with the coming of figure-heads, founders of religion, future World-Saviours³ ... then the outside world will certainly not follow suit! I cannot imagine that a Statesman would found a league to await the coming of a new Statesman, or a General to await the coming of a great General in the future!

These things are so simple that only a little reflection is necessary. For to found an Order to await the coming of a World-Saviour is just as grotesque as it would be to found a league to await the coming of a new Statesman or a great General. A certain person who is striving today to found a branch of such an Order, used the following argument to me: “Yes, but after all, in the year 1848 a league was founded for the purpose of uniting the German States—and then there was Bismarck too ... he certainly helped to bring the German Reich to birth.” I could only reply: “Really I am not aware that a league was ever founded to await the coming of a “Bismarck”!

Do you think I am saying this jokingly? I say it because occultism has also this side to it, that if it is not cultivated in the right way, it can actually undermine instead of developing the powers of judgment, and I say it because I am in deep earnest about these things. Many occult teachings have been gathered together here; in fifty years, possibly, one point or another may have been investigated still more closely, may have to be differently expressed.

But even if no fragment remains of the knowledge that has brought forward—I do desire that one thing shall have survived, namely, this: that here there was inaugurated and sustained a theosophical-occult movement taking its stand solely and entirely upon integrity and truth. Even if in fifty years it is already said; Everything must be corrected; but at least they were out to be true, to let nothing happen except what is true ... even then my ideal would have been attained. That integrity and truth can prevail in an occult movement, whatever storms may rise up against us in the world—I am not so arrogant as to say that this has been “achieved,” but rather that this is the goal towards which we have striven.

• 1. The reference here is to certain prejudiced and faulty views contained in the teachings emanating from the Theosophical Society.
• 2. Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy
• 3. For those who have only lately become acquainted with the Anthroposophical conception of the world, let it here be mentioned that these words were spoken at the time when Mrs. Besant had founded the “Order of the Star in the East,” with objects similar to those indicated here, and rejected by me. Mrs. Besant's subsequent malicious agitation against Germany is, moreover, a direct result of the errors into which she was falling at that time.

In the last lecture we spoke of the experiences of the human soul in relation to the Mystery-principles of ancient times, the Eastern and Egyptian Mysteries. In a certain sense this brought us to the last step in the stages of Initiation, for in the first lecture we described as characteristic of the nature of all Mysteries these four steps: Approach to the Boundary of Death; Becoming acquainted with the Life of the Elementary World; Beholding the Sun at Midnight; Standing before the Upper and the Lower Gods.

This Standing before the Upper and the Lower Gods comes about when the aspirant has to apprehend the forces which rule everything that belongs to the physical side of man, the part which remains behind in sleep as physical and etheric body—here we have to do with the Lower Gods in the widest sense of the word. We have to speak of the Upper Gods in relation to all the forces which are concerned with the innermost being of man; with that which passes through the various incarnations, the ego and the astral body.

In the preceding lectures I was able to describe the experiences of a modern man, acquainted with the nature of the Mysteries, when he looks back in the Akashic Record at the experiences undergone by human souls within the Mysteries of ancient times. We had to point to the tragic impression made on Egyptian souls when in the course of their Initiation they came face to face with the changes that had affected the Cosmic Power known as Isis in the Egyptian Mysteries. From the Osiris legend we learn that the spouse of Isis was overcome by the enemy and torn away from her. But we have also come to know the results in the higher worlds of this changed situation in the life of Isis. The soul which in later Egyptian times had raised itself into spiritual worlds became a participant in the fate of Osiris, the God who was dying to the higher worlds and descending into the earthly region. For that is how it was experienced.

Now it is extraordinarily difficult to speak in ideas and concepts concerning the further development of this “fate of Gods”. But since we have become accustomed to bring in pictures as a help in connection with the most intimate things of the higher worlds, where our ordinary speech, which has already become so secular, fails us, let us express in a readily understandable picture something that is to form, as it were, the leit-motif of the exposition to be given today.

Let us enter into the tragic mood of one about to be initiated during the Egyptian epoch. We transpose ourselves into this mood and find. that it originated from experiences that the aspirant could express only by saying to himself: “Formerly, when I entered the spiritual worlds, I found Osiris permeating cosmic space with the Creative Word and its meaning, which represent the ground-forces of all being and development. Now the Word has become mute and silent. The God who was called Osiris has forsaken these realms. He is preparing to penetrate into other regions; he has descended into the Earth-region in order to enter into the souls of men.”

The Being who had been known spiritually to human souls in earlier days first became manifest in physical life when Moses heard in the physical world the Voice that in earlier ages had been heard only in the spiritual worlds: “Ejeh asher Ejeh!”—“I AM THE I AM, Who was, and is, and will be”. And then this Being who, as the Creative Word, had gradually become lost to the experience of the candidate for Initiation, transferred His life into the Earth-region so that He could gradually come to life again in the souls of earthly men; and in this new life, rising to ever higher and higher glory, would consist the further development of the Earth, even to the end of the Earth-evolution.

Let us try to transport ourselves as vividly as we can into the frame of mind of one of these candidates, and realise how in the spiritual regions to which he could first attain he felt the Creative Word disappearing, sinking down into the Earth-region and becoming lost to spiritual sight. Let us follow the evolution of the Earth, and we shall see that for spiritual sight this Creative Word now goes forward somewhat as a stream which has been on the surface and then disappears for a certain time below the Earth's surface, in order to reappear later at another place. And so there reappeared That which the souls who were being initiated in the later Egyptian Mysteries had seen sinking tragically out of sight. It reappeared, and could be looked upon by those in later times who were permitted to participate in the Mysteries. And they had to bring into the picture what they could see arising again, but arising now in such a way that henceforward it belonged to Earth-evolution.

How did That reappear which had become submerged in ancient Egypt? It reappeared in such a way that it became visible in the Holy Vessel which is spoken of as the “Holy Grail”, guarded by the Knights of the Holy Grail. In the rise of the Holy Grail can be found That which had sunk down in ancient Egypt, and in this arising of the Holy Grail there stands before us everything that went into the post-Christian renewal of the principle of the ancient Mysteries. Fundamentally speaking, the phrase the “Holy Grail”, with all that belongs to it, involves a reappearing of the essence of the Eastern Mysteries,

Everything that appears at a certain time in the evolution of humanity, in order to bring this evolution forward, must include a kind of repetition of what has gone before. In every later epoch the earlier experiences of humanity must appear again, but in a fresh form. We know that in the third post-Atlantean epoch the emphasis was on the Sentient Soul; in the fourth, the Graeco-Latin epoch, it was on the Intellectual Soul, and the development of the Consciousness Soul is the special task of our own epoch, the fifth. For the candidate for Initiation all these things are important, because in a given epoch the most important forces of Initiation must proceed from the soul-principle which is specially connected with that epoch. The Egyptian Initiation was connected with the Sentient Soul; the Graeco-Latin Initiation with the Intellectual Soul; and the Initiation of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch must be connected with the Consciousness Soul. But in the dawn of this fifth epoch there must also be a repetition of what the Initiates once went through out of the forces of the Sentient Soul; and equally a repetition of what was gone through in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Then something is added, something new which must come from the Consciousness Soul to provide supporting forces for the candidate. Hence the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, with its special emphasis on the arising of the new Initiation, must have centres where there can be recalled to human souls the secrets poured into human evolution through the Egyptian-Chaldaic soul, and the secrets poured. out in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the Graeco-Latin time, during which the Mystery of Golgotha took place. And to that must be added a new element.

As in earlier ages, so also in this later age, that which was enacted in the depths of the Mysteries finds expression in the most varied legends, and these correspond more or less closely to secrets in which the human soul has participated. Hence it was necessary that the secrets of the Egyptian-Chaldaic period should appear as a kind of repetition before the souls of the fifth epoch. They were secrets related to the Cosmos, to the in-pouring of the forces of the Zodiac and of the Planets, but particularly to the secrets connected with the co-operation of the Sun and Moon, and to the shifting influences of the Sun and Moon as they pass through the signs of the Zodiac. (I am speaking of the apparent movements, because they sufficiently characterise the processes involved.) But there had to be a difference between the way in which these secrets had emerged in the third epoch and the way in which they were presented in the fifth epoch. Everything now had to work right into the Consciousness Soul, into that which makes for and constitutes human personality. This took place in a quite special way through the fact that those inspiring forces which were seen when in the third epoch souls were transported into spiritual regions of the Cosmos, and which simultaneously streamed out of cosmic space into the Earth—during the fifth epoch these forces inspired certain individuals. In the dawn of the fifth epoch, accordingly, there were persons who, not exactly through their training but through certain mysterious influences, became the instruments, the vehicles, of cosmic influences issuing from the Sun and Moon during their passage through the signs of the Zodiac. The secrets that could then be won for the human soul through these individuals were a repetition of what had once been experienced through the Sentient Soul. And the persons who expressed the transit of the cosmic forces through the signs of the Zodiac were those called “The Knights of King Arthur's Round Table”. Twelve in number, they had around them a band of other men, but they were the principal Knights. The others represented the starry host; into them flowed the inspirations which were more distantly distributed in cosmic space; and into the twelve Knights flowed the inspirations from the twelve directions of the Zodiac. The inspirations which came from the spiritual forces of the Sun and Moon were represented by King Arthur and his wife Guinevere. Thus in King Arthur's Round Table we have the humanised Cosmos. What we may call the pedagogical high school for the Sentient Soul of the West proceeded from King Arthur's Round Table. Hence we are told—and the legend here refers in pictures of external facts to inner mysteries which were taking place in the dawn of that epoch in the human soul—how the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table journeyed far and wide and slew monsters and giants. These external pictures point to the endeavours of human souls who were to make progress in refining and. purifying those forces of the astral body which expressed themselves for the seer in pictures of monsters, giants and the like. Everything that the Sentient Soul was to experience through the later Mysteries is bound up with the pictorial concepts of King Arthur's Round Table.

What the Intellectual Soul was to experience in this later time has in turn found legendary form in the saga of the Holy Grail. Everything that had to be recapitulated from the epoch in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place was concentrated in the influences that streamed forth from the secrets of the Holy Grail. And these influences could work on the Intellectual Soul in persons who had gained understanding of the Holy Grail and wished to understand their own epoch. In the present day also the human soul must be open to these influences if it is to be initiated, if it is to have understanding for the spiritual nature of our times. The Holy Grail is surrounded by many, many mysteries. Today, naturally, we can give only a sketchy outline of these mysteries; but it may provide a starting-point for more detailed studies which may one day be undertaken regarding these mysteries of the Holy Grail. In the Holy Grail, if understood in its true nature, there was embraced everything which characterised the secrets of the human soul in later times.

Let us take an Initiate of later times when, having freed his ego and astral body from his physical and etheric bodies and come forth from them, he looked down at them from outside, and let us picture what he saw in them. He saw something which could be very disturbing, if he had not learnt to understand it thoroughly. And he still sees it today. The physical and etheric bodies have woven into them something which flows through them like streams or strands running in various directions. As the nerve fibres run through the physical body, so is there woven into the physical body something finer than the nerves, of which occult sight reports: That is dead—so dead that there really is something like a piece of dead substance in the human body. It is now condemned to be dead throughout the time between birth and death, but during the Eastern period of human evolution it was still living. Yes, one has the experience that in human bodies there is something dead which once was alive. And one sets out to discover what it really is. “Dead” is to be understood here in a relative sense; the dead part is indeed stimulated by its environment, but there are tendencies and currents in the human body which, in comparison with the life that animates it, have always a disposition toward death. We investigate how this has come about, and we find that the origin of it is as follows.

Once in ancient times men's souls possessed a certain faculty of clairvoyance, and in the latter part of the Egyptian-Chaldaic civilisation this clairvoyance still existed to such a degree that a man, when gazing into the starry heavens, saw not merely the physical stars but also the spiritual beings united with them. And so, when in the intermediate state between waking and sleeping the human soul looked out into the universe and saw something spiritual, the impression received was different from the impressions made upon the human soul today, when people study science in the modern way or are living mostly in the ordinary consciousness of the times. But all the souls living and embodied today were also incarnated in the Egyptian-Chaldaic epoch. All the souls present here today once looked out from their bodies into starry space, took part in the spiritual life of the universe and received its impressions. This sank into our souls and became an intrinsic part of them. All the souls of today once looked out into the universe and received spiritual impressions in the same way as they now receive impressions of colours and sounds. It is all there still, in the depth of our souls, and the souls created their bodies in accordance with it. But our souls have lost remembrance of it! For modern consciousness it is no longer present in the souls of men. And that which corresponds to the old up-building forces which the souls used to receive, cannot now build upon the body, with the result that the corresponding part of the physical and etheric bodies remains lifeless. If nothing else were to happen, if men went on living merely with those sciences which are concerned with the outer physical world, then men would deteriorate more and more, because their souls have forgotten those former impressions of the spiritual world which go with the vivifying and building up of the physical and etheric bodies.

That is what the candidate for Initiation sees today. And he can say to himself: Souls are thirsting to vitalise something in the physical and etheric bodies which they have to abandon as lifeless because the impressions they once absorbed do not penetrate into modern consciousness. This is the disturbing impression received today by the candidate for Initiation.

Thus there is something in man that is withdrawn from the sovereignty of the soul. I beg that you will take these words with all earnestness; for a characteristic of modern man is that something in his nature is withdrawn from the rule of the soul, something that is dead in contrast with the life of the organism that surrounds it. And by working upon this dead part, the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces exercise on man a very great influence in a quite special way. While on the one hand men can acquire more and more freedom, the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces insinuate themselves precisely into that part of the organism which has been withdrawn from the sovereignty of the soul. That is why so many people in modern times feel (and quite rightly say they feel) as if there were two souls dwelling within their breast, and as if one wanted to tear itself away from the other. Much of what modern man finds so baffling in his inner experience lies in what has just been said. The Holy Grail was and is nothing else than that which can so nurture the living portion of the soul that it can become master of the dead part. Montsalvat, the sanctuary of the Holy Grail, is the school in which one has to learn, for the sake of the living part of the human soul, something that there was naturally no need to learn in the Eastern and Egyptian Mysteries. One needs to learn what has to be poured into the still living part of the soul in order to become master of the part of the physical body that has died, and the part of the soul that has become unconscious. Hence, in these secrets of the Grail, the Middle Ages saw something related to a repetition of the Graeco-Latin period in the Intellectual or Mind-soul, for in the Intellectual Soul are rooted mostly those parts of the soul which are now forgotten and dead. Thus the secrets of the Grail referred to the permeation of the Intellectual or Mind-soul with new wisdom.

When the Initiate of the Middle Ages wanted to present in picture form what he had to learn in order to permeate with the new wisdom the part of his soul that had remained living, he spoke of the Castle of the Holy Grail and of the new wisdom—which is in fact the “Grail”—that flows out from it. And when he wanted to indicate that which is hostile to this new wisdom, he pointed to another domain, the domain wherein dwelt all the beings and. forces which had made it their task to gain access to the part of the body that had become dead, and to the part of the human soul that had become unconscious. This domain, into which were justly transferred (“justly” is here used in an occult sense) all the successors of the evil spiritual beings of earlier times who had preserved the worst forces of oriental magic (not the best forces, which also had remained)—the domain which was the most vicious and hostile to the Grail was Castle Merveil, the gathering-place of all the forces which attack man in this part of his body and soul and have undergone a karmic fate such as has been indicated. Spiritual wisdom can be carried anywhere today, because we have reached a transition stage leading towards the Sixth Epoch and these things are no longer tied to particular localities, but in the Middle Ages it had to be sought in certain definite places, as I have shown in my book, The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind. Hence when in earlier times it was said that one had to travel to a particular neighbourhood in order to receive a certain teaching, this was not meant in any figurative sense. In our own time it must be said that wisdom has less of a local character; for we are living in a time of transition from life in space and time into more spiritual forms of time.

Whereas it has been said that the Castle of the Grail is situated in the West of Europe, the stronghold of hostility to the Grail must be located in another place, a place where, on account of certain spiritual forces there, a person can have just as great and powerful and good an impression as he can have also of its opposite, through other forces which have remained there to this present time like an Akashic after effect from those opponents of the Grail of whom we have been speaking. For at that place one can speak of the very worst forces, and they are still perceptible in their after-effects. At one time evil arts were practised in that place, arts which penetrated right into physical life and thence launched their assaults on the part of the human soul that had become unconscious and on the portion of the human organism that had become dead.

All this is closely connected with a figure who glimmers across from the Middle Ages as a legendary being, but is well known to anyone acquainted with the nature of the Mysteries: a personality who was quite real in the middle of the Middle Ages, Klingsor, the Duke of Terra de Labur, a district we have to look for in what is now Southern Calabria. From there were carried out the incursions of the enemy of the Grail, especially over to Sicily. Even as today, if we tread Sicilian soil and have occult sight, we are aware of the Akashic after-effects of the great Empedocles still present in the atmosphere, so we can still perceive there the evil after-effects of Klingsor, who allied himself from his Duchy of Terra de Labur, across the Straits of Messina, with those enemies of the Grail who occupied the fastness known in occultism and in legend as Calot bobot.

In the middle of the Middle Ages, Calot bobot in Sicily was the seat of the goddess called Iblis, the daughter of Eblis; and among all evil unions which have taken place within the Earth's evolution between beings in whose souls there were occult forces, the one known to occultists as the worst of all was between Klingsor and Iblis, the daughter of Eblis. Iblis, by her very name, is characterised as being related to Eblis, and in Mohammedan tradition Eblis is the figure we call Lucifer. Iblis is a kind of feminine aspect of Eblis, the Mohammedan Lucifer, and with her the evil magician Klingsor united his own evil arts, through which in the Middle Ages he worked against the Grail. These things must needs find expression in pictures, but in pictures that correspond to realities; they cannot be expressed in abstract ideas. And the whole of the hostility to the Grail was enacted in that fastness of Iblis, “Calot bobot”, whither the remarkable Queen Sibylla had fled with her son William, in 1194, under the rulership of the Emperor Henry VI.

Everything that was undertaken by a power hostile to the Grail, and whereby also Amfortas was wounded, is finally to be traced back to the alliance which Klingsor had contracted with the stronghold of Iblis, Calot bobot; and all the misery and suffering which we see embodied in the Grail legend through Amfortas is an expression of that pact. For this reason the soul must still be strongly armed even today when it comes into the neighbourhood of those places from which can emanate all hostile influences related to the Mysteries of the Grail and the advancing evolution of humanity.

Viewed thus, we have on the one hand the Kingdom of the Grail, and on the other the evil Kingdom, Chastel Merveille, with all that came from the pact between Klingsor and Iblis playing into it. And here we can see, expressed in a wonderfully dramatic form, all that the most independent and innermost of the soul-organs, the Intellectual or Mind-soul, has had to endure in face of attacks from without. In the fourth post-Atlantean period this soul-principle was not yet as inward as it had to become in the fifth. It withdrew itself more from the life in the external world that had prevailed in Greek and Roman times, back into the inner part of man, and became freer, more independent. But on that account (for reasons already given) it was much more open to attack by all the powers than it had been in the Graeco-Latin epoch. The whole of the change which had taken place in the Intellectual or Mind-soul is portrayed haltingly, in a legendary way, and yet it stands so dramatically before us in the antithesis between “Montsalvat” and “Chastel Merveille”. We feel an echo of all the sufferings and all the conquests of the Intellectual Soul in the stories connected with the Holy Grail. All that had to be changed in the human soul in more recent times is revealed to him who has come to know the nature of the Mysteries. In this connection we need only take a concrete case.

We often find that persons who have not gone far enough into the matter will ask how a man such as Goethe can on the one hand bear within him certain secrets of the human soul, and on the other hand be so often torn by passion, as he is found to be by those who read his life-story in a rather superficial way. In fact, there was in Goethe something that can be called, in a crude sense, a double nature. To a superficial view the two sides can hardly be brought into harmony. On the one hand there is the great, high-minded soul who could bring forth certain portions of the second part of Faust, and gave expression to many deep secrets of human nature in the Fairy-Story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily; and one would like to forget everything one knows from biographies of Goethe and pay homage only to the soul who was capable of such achievements. On the other side, there appears in Goethe, tormenting him and often causing him pangs of conscience, his other nature, “human, all-too-human”, in many respects. In earlier times the two natures of man were not so widely separate in their development; they could not diverge in this way. A person with a biography comparable with Goethe's could not rise to such heights as are revealed in certain passages of the second part of Faust or in the Fairy-Story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, and at the same time be so divided in his soul. That was not possible in earlier times. It has become possible only in later days, because there now exists in human nature something we have already spoken of—the part of the soul that has become unconscious, and the part of the organism that has died. The part that has remained alive can be so elevated and purified that the impulse which leads on to the Fairy-Story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily; can be nurtured there, while the other part may remain exposed to the attacks of the outer world. And because the forces described are able to make their abode there, circumstances may arise in which there is very little agreement with the higher ego of the person. It should be understood that the soul living in Goethe had once belonged to an Egyptian Initiate, and had then lived in Greece as a sculptor and a disciple of philosophy; then, between this Greek incarnation and the one as Goethe, there comes an incarnation (probably only one) which I have not yet been able to find. If we keep this in mind, we can see how a soul who in former incarnations could rule the entire man can be led downwards, and then has to relinquish a part of the total human nature, which then lies open to the influence of evil forces.

That is what is mysterious and so hard to understand in a nature such as Goethe's; but by the same token it brings to light many hidden aspects of the human soul in modern times. Everything brought about by the duality of human nature lays hold, in the first place, of the Intellectual Soul, and the Intellectual Soul divides into those “two souls”, whereof one can sink fairly deeply into matter and the other can rise into the spiritual.

Thus in the “Knights of King Arthur's Round Table” we are presented with a repetition of all that the candidate for Initiation had in a certain sense to experience through the Sentient Soul. In all that was grouped around the Holy Grail we are shown what can be experienced in modern times by the Intellectual Soul. Everything that a man must now go through, so that he may make one part of his double nature strong enough to penetrate into the mysteries of the spiritual worlds in modern times, must be enacted in the Consciousness Soul. This is the new thing that has to be added. And that which has to be enacted in the Consciousness Soul is crystallised in the figure of Parsifal. All the legends connected with King Arthur and the Round Table represent the repetition of the experiences of earlier ages in the Sentient Soul; all the legends and narratives which are directly connected with the Holy Grail, apart from Parsifal, represent what the Intellectual Soul had to go through; and all that finds expression in the figure of Parsifal, this ideal of the later Initiation in so far as this later Initiation is dependent on the Consciousness Soul, represents the forces which must especially be made our own through the Consciousness Soul. So the interaction of the three soul-principles in modern man is presented in a threefold legendary form. And just as we can discern deep secrets of the human soul in old legends, so can we now also sense in them deep secrets of the Mysteries of the modern age.

It is false to suggest that the nature of Initiation has not changed since olden times, as though a present-day Western man had to go through the same stages as did a person belonging either to the ancient or to the more modern East. Things are so that a characteristic belonging to an earlier epoch will persist into a later time for certain peoples. A much more important point is that the whole nature of modern Initiation has a more inward character, makes greater demands on the innermost part of the human soul; but in a certain sense it cannot directly approach the external part of human nature. Much more than in the old Initiation, therefore, the external must be cleansed and purified through the strengthening of the inner, so that this inner part becomes lord over the outer. Asceticism and external training belong more to the character of the old Initiation; a direct evolution of the soul itself, so that it develops strong forces in its inner being, belongs more to the nature of the newer Initiation. And because external circumstances are such that only in the course of time will the lifeless elements of human nature be overcome—the elements which can so greatly disturb the Initiate of today—we must say that in our time and on into the far future there will still be many natures similar to that of Goethe, persons who with one part of their being rise up into the heights, while with the other part they are connected with the “human, all-too-human”. Persons who in earlier incarnations showed no sign of these peculiarities, but on the contrary displayed a certain harmony between the outer and the inner, may enter fresh incarnations in which a deep disharmony can show itself between the external and the inner organisation. Those who know the secrets of human incarnations will not feel confused in face of this disharmony. For in proportion as these things increase, the human faculty of judgment grows also, so that the old principle of authority comes to an end. Hence there will be an ever more insistent call to test the fruits of the Mysteries. It would be more convenient to pay heed only to the external characteristics of those who have to teach, for then one would not need to ask whether the facts concerning them—what they have to say and teach and do in a spiritual sense—are in line with human understanding and impartial logic. The duality of human nature is not in the very least to he defended; on the contrary, we must insist in the strictest sense on the rule of the soul over externals, but it must still be said that the facts which have been indicated are absolutely true for modern evolution. For the after-effects of Klingsor and Iblis are still always present, even though in another form.

A special feature of our time is that these attacks from Klingsor and Iblis, as they gradually lay hold of people, are insinuating themselves into intellectual life, particularly the intellectual life that bears on education, with its popularisation of modern science. Consider what people have been learning for quite a long time now and what they think it right to instill into children; consider what is accepted as the basis of modern education—all this should not be judged in accordance with the views of someone who, believing he is very clever, says he understands these things and knows they are entirely correct. No, all this should be judged in accordance with how it influences and fructifies the soul, and in terms of the impressions it produces on the soul. And when a person becomes cleverer and cleverer, in the sense in which it is fashionable to call people clever today, he develops in his soul certain forces which in this incarnation may make him very well able to dominate the conversation in circles wedded to materialistic or monistic ideas; but then certain vital forces necessary for the human organism are worn away. And when such a person has taken into himself only these typical dregs of modern education, in his next incarnation he will lack the forces that are required for properly building up the human organism. The “cleverer” a person is by the standards of the time we are now facing and the closer his intellectual attunement to it, the more of an imbecile will he be in a later incarnation. For those categories and, concepts which relate only to the sense-perceptible outer world and to the ideas which hold it together—these concepts set up in the soul a configuration which may be ever so fine intellectually but lacks the force to work intensively on the brain and to make use of it, And to be unable while in the physical body to make use of the brain is to be an imbecile.

If it were true, as the materialists maintain, that the brain does the thinking, then one could certainly give them some comfort. But this is as false as the assertion that the “speech-centre” has formed itself. It has acquired its form through human beings having learnt to speak, and so the speech-centre is the result of speech. Similarly, all cerebral activity, even in the historical past, is the result of thinking—not the other way about. The brain is plastically modeled through thinking. If only such thoughts are developed as are customary today, if the thoughts are not permeated by the wisdom of the spirit, then the souls occupied with thinking only about material things will find in later incarnations that they are unable to use their brains properly; their brain-forces will be too weak to lay hold of things. A soul which today is occupied merely with calculating debit and credit, let us say, or with the usages of commercial and industrial life, or absorbs only the ideas of materialistic science, is filling itself with thought-pictures which in later incarnations gradually darken the consciousness, because the brain would be an unformed mass—as today in cases of softening of the brain—and so no longer capable of being taken hold of by the forces of thinking. Hence for anyone who looks into these deeper forces of human evolution, everything that can live in the soul must be permeated by a spiritual comprehension of the world.

So in this modern time the nature of man may still be twofold. The forces belonging in particular to the Consciousness Soul must be infused with inner spiritual knowledge. Man must overcome the two regions through which Parsifal went; he must overcome “apathy and doubt” in his own soul. For if he were to carry apathy and doubt with him over to a later incarnation, he would not make a success of it. Man must come to have knowledge of the spiritual worlds. Only through the fact that life widens out in the human soul, the life called Saelde by Wolfram von Eschenbach, the very life that pours out spiritual knowledge over the Consciousness Soul—only by this means can human soul-development advance fruitfully from the fifth epoch onwards into the sixth.

These are among the fruits of the newer Mysteries; they are the important and significant results which must be drawn from these Mysteries, which are an after-effect of the Grail Mystery. But, unlike all ancient Mystery-wisdom, they can be understood by the generality of people. For gradually the unconscious and dead forces of the soul and of the organism must be overcome through a strong permeation of the Consciousness Soul with spiritual knowledge; that is, with a knowledge that has been understood and grasped spiritually, not a knowledge built up on authority.

Even such things as have been said in these lectures—if a person takes into account all that modern knowledge and education are able to give—can, when they are heard, be thoroughly understood and grasped; though they can be discovered only by one who gets to know the Mysteries through occult sight. And they should be most thoroughly grasped. Now it may perhaps be true of many a modern man who is striving to attain to higher worlds that in the shape of his outer life something will still be visible of the “human, all-too-human”, or of his efforts to raise himself out of it. Yes, it may well be that the “fool's motley” is still discernible through the raiment of the spiritual, as with Parsifal. But that is not the point. What matters is that there should be present in the soul the impulse toward spiritual knowledge, spiritual understanding—that impulse which is inextinguishable in Parsifal and brings him at last, in spite of everything, to the stronghold of the Holy Grail. In the whole picture drawn of Parsifal, if rightly understood, we can find all the different methods of training the Consciousness Soul which are necessary to evoke from it the right effects, so that the person can gain control of the forces which whirl in confusion and strive against one another in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. The more present-day man looks into himself and tries to exercise honest self-knowledge, the more will he find how conflict is raging in his soul; it is a conflict within the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. For self-knowledge is a harder thing than many people suppose, and it will indeed become more and more difficult. Someone tries to acquire self-knowledge, but even if he is able to discipline himself in many respects and to build up his character, he will very often notice at critical moments how in his innermost depths the most deeply hidden passions and forces are raging, and how they tear apart the domain of the Intellectual Soul. And how is it with a modern man who devotes himself seriously to knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge? The difficulties of the inner life may perhaps never dawn on people who believe that real knowledge is to be found in external scientific work and its fruits. But anyone who takes the search for knowledge seriously and from worthy motives will be in a different situation once he looks with real insight into his inner being. He seeks in this or that field of knowledge, seeks and seeks, and seeks also in life to come to terms with the diverse aspects of human living. After searching for a while, he thinks he knows something; but then he searches further. And the more he searches with the means normally available today, the more does he feel himself torn into pieces, the more does he feel drawn into doubt. And. a person who, having acquired a present-day education, confesses to himself that in spite of all this education he really knows nothing, is often just the person who strives most earnestly and worthily for spiritual knowledge.

In truth there can be no one with any depth of soul today who does not experience this gnawing doubt. And it is something he ought to be familiar with. For only then will he immerse himself in that spiritual knowledge which is right for the Consciousness Soul and must pour itself out into the Intellectual Soul in order to be master there. Hence we must try to penetrate with rational understanding into what is brought to the Consciousness Soul from out of occult knowledge. By that means we shall draw into our inner being such a self as will be a real lord and master there; and then, when we come to know the nature of the modern Mysteries, we shall stand confronting ourselves.

Anyone who approaches the Mysteries today must. feel that he is confronting himself in such a way that he will strive after the virtues of Parsifal, while knowing that—because of the modern conditions already described and because he is a man of modern times—he is in fact someone else also, the wounded Amfortas. A man of our time carries within him this double nature—aspiring Parsifal, wounded Amfortas. That is what his self-knowledge must lead him to feel. Then from this recognition will flow the forces which out of duality must make a unity, and so should bring man a little further on in the course of world-evolution. In our Intellectual Soul, in the depths of our inner life, there must be a meeting between Amfortas, wounded in body and soul, and Parsifal, whose task is to cultivate the Consciousness Soul. And it is entirely true to say that in order to gain freedom for himself, a man must go through the “wounding” of Amfortas and become acquainted with the Amfortas within himself, so that he may also come to know Parsifal. Just as it was right for Egyptian times that one should rise up into the spiritual worlds in order to know Isis, so is it right for our times to start with the spirituality, the spiritual nature, of this world, and through it to rise into the higher spiritual worlds. A wish to deny the Amfortas-nature is not a true characteristic of our time. It is because modern man is so fond of surrounding himself with Maya that he wants to deny Amfortas. For how delightful it sounds when we hear it said: “Humanity is always advancing!” Yes, but this “advance” follows a very tortuous path. And in order to develop the forces of Parsifal in human nature, the Amfortas-nature in man must be recognised.

So in this cycle of lectures, using legends from which I have tried to call forth pictures of deep soul-processes, I have sought above all to lead your deeper premonitions, at least in some degree, towards the nature of the modern Mysteries. Perhaps one day we shall have opportunity to speak in still clearer words, if that can be, of what the nature of the modern Mysteries discloses concerning the dual nature which man bears within himself: concerning Amfortas and Parsifal.

My Dear Friends:

The course of observations, upon which we are about to enter, has in view a kind of self-recollection amongst those persons who are met together for Anthroposophy. It will afford opportunity for a self-recollection of this kind,—a self-recollection to which they may be led by a description of the anthroposophic movement and its relation to the Anthroposophical Society. And so you must let me begin to-day by referring to the people to whom this self-recollection applies. And these people are you yourselves,—all those who, through one occasion or another, have been led to find their way to Anthroposophy.

One person has found the way, as though, I might say, by an inner compulsion of the soul, an inner compulsion of the heart; another, maybe, for reasons based in the under-standing. But there are many again, who have come into the anthroposophic movement through some more or less exterior occasion, and have then perhaps, inside the anthroposophic movement itself, been led into profounder depths of the soul, and found more than at first they looked for. One characteristic, however, is common to all the people who find their way to the anthroposophic movement. And if one looks back through all the various years, and sums up what the characteristic feature is amongst all those who come into the anthroposophic movement, one finally can but say: They are people of a kind, who are forced by their particular fate,—their inner fate, their karma, in the first instance,—to turn aside from the ordinary highroad of civilization, along which the bulk of mankind to-day are marching, to abandon this highroad, and to seek out paths of their own.

Let us but clearly consider for a moment, what the way actually is, in which most people in our day grow up into life from their childhood on.—They are born of parents, who are Frenchmen, or Germans, Catholics, or Protestants, or Jews, or belong to some other of the creeds. They are born perhaps of parents who hold peculiar opinions. But in any case, there is always some kind of pre-recognized assumption, directly the people are born at the present day, amongst the parents, amongst the members of the family into which these people are born out of their pre-earthly lives, there exists so to speak a pre-recognized assumption,—not indeed uttered, but which is felt, even though perhaps not thought, (and. thought too, very often, when occasion gives rise to it!) ... looking out generally upon life, they think as a matter of course: We are French Catholics, or German Protestants, and our children will naturally be so too.

And the circumstance, that such a sentiment exists, naturally creates a social atmosphere,—and not a social atmosphere only, but a concatenation of social forces, which do then, in actual reality, work more or less obviously or non-obviously, so as to shove these children into the lines of life already marked out for them in advance by these sentiments, by these more or less definitely conceived thoughts.

And then all rolls on to begin with as though by matter of course in the life of the child. As though by matter of course these children are supplied with their education, their school-training. And all the time again the parents are filled with all sorts of thoughts about the children,—thoughts which again are not uttered, but which give the presuppositions for life, which are extraordinarily determinative for life;—such thoughts, for instance, as, My son will of course be a civil servant with a pension; or, My son is heir to the family estates; or, My daughter is to marry the son of the man who owns the neighbouring property.—Well, of course it is not always so definitely materialized, but it gives a certain prospective outlook, and this again always prescribes a line of direction. And the lines of external life are as a matter of fact so mapped out to-day, that, even down into our present times of chaos (which are felt by people however, for the most part, to be unusual), this life does go on externally in obedience to impulses given to it in this way. And then there is nothing for it, but that the man should, somehow or other, grow up to be a French Catholic, or a German Protestant: he cannot grow up to be anything else, for the forces of life impel him that way. And though it may not come directly from the parents' side with quite such definiteness, yet still, life catches him fresh from school, lays its grip on the man whilst he is still quite fresh, emerging from young life, from a state of childhood, and plants him down in some post in life. The State, the religious community, draw the man into their vortex.

And if the majority of people to-day were to try and account to themselves for how they came to be there, they would find it hard to do so. For too keen reflection on the subject would mean something intolerable. And so this intolerable something is driven as far down as possible into the sub-depths of consciousness,—driven under into the sub-conscious, or unconscious, regions of the soul's life. And there it remains; unless the psychoanalyst happens to fish it up again, if it behave with more than usual pertinacity in these unknown soul-regions down below. But, for the most part, the strength is wanting, to take any sort of stand in proper person, as an individual, in the midst of all this, that one has simply ‘grown into’ in this fashion.

One has moments of revolt perhaps, when of a sudden one finds oneself quite unexpectedly realizing in life that one is, say, a clerk,—perhaps even a town-clerk! But then, most likely, one clenches one's fists in one's trouser-pockets; or,—if it happens to be a woman,—one makes one's husband a scene about a disappointed life, and so forth. ... Well,—there are these reactions against the things which a man simply grows into.

And then very often too, you know, it happens, that there are the little pleasures attached to the various things, which deaden one's sense of the things themselves. One goes to public balls; and then the next day of course is occupied with sleeping them off; and so the time is filled up in one way or another. Or else one joins a strictly patriotic association. Because, being a town-clerk, you know, one must belong to something or other which absorbs one into its ranks. One has been absorbed into the ranks of the State, into the ranks of a religious community; and now one must needs shed a sort of halo in this way over the thing which one has inconsciently grown into.—Well, I need not pursue the description further.

This is, in fact, the way, more or less, in which those people, who follow along the beaten highroad of life to-day, grow into their external lives.

And the others, who are unable to go along with them,—they find themselves on side-tracks;—and this kind of people, who are unable to follow along most of the prescribed routes to-day, are to be found scattered about on any number of paths, possible and impossible. But, amongst these other paths, there is the anthroposophic path too, where the man is bent upon what lies within himself,—where he is bent on living through it in a more conscient fashion,—where he wants to live out his part consciently in something that lies to some extent at least in his own choice.

They are people such as these for the most part, whose path does not lie along the beaten highroad of life, who are Anthroposophists. Whether they find their way to Anthroposophy in youth, or in older years, one form or other, they are people of this kind. And if one examines further what the origin of it is, then again one comes to circumstances connected with the spiritual world:—

The souls, as they come to-day out of their pre-earthly state of life into their earthly one, have, for the most part, spent a long while in that condition preceding their birth, which I have often described in my lectures.—Man, after he has finished travelling over his life's road in the spiritual world between death and new birth, comes next into the region where he enters more and more into the life of the spiritual world, where his own life consists in working in company with the beings of the higher hierarchies, and where everything that he does is a work amidst this world of substantive spirit.

But in the course of this passage from death to a new birth there comes a particular point of time, when the man, as it were, turns his eyes down again towards earth. There, in soul, the man begins, for a long time in advance, to unite himself with the successive generations, at the end of which stand finally the parent pair that give him birth.—So that a man looks down beforehand, not only upon his fathers' fathers, but to his ancestors of faraway back generations, and unites himself with the line of direction, with the current, that runs through the generations of his fore-bears.

And so it happens with the majority of souls at the present day, that during the time when they are making ready to come down to earth again, they have a burning interest already in what is going on upon earth. They gaze as it were from the spiritual world upon the earth below, and are keenly interested in all that goes on with their forefathers on the earth.

Souls of this kind become, in fact, what I have described as being the case with those who follow the stream along the broad highway of modern life.

In contrast to these, there are, especially at the present day, a number of souls, whose interest, when their pre-earthly life begins to tend downwards again towards earth-life, lies less with what is going on upon earth, but for whom the subject of principal interest is: How are we maturing in the spirit-world? They continue to interest themselves down to the very last moment, so to speak, when they take their way back to earth, in the spiritual world.

Whereas the others have a profound desire for an earthly state of existence, these souls have to the last a lively interest in the things that are going on in the spiritual world, and come upon earth accordingly, when they do embody, with a mind that draws its consciousness from spiritual impulses, and affords less inclination to the kind of impulses which I described as existing in the case of the broad highroaders. They outgrow the impulses of their surroundings; in particular, they outgrow their surroundings in their spiritual aspirations. And they are thus pre-destined,—ready prepared,—for going simply their own way.

And so one might divide the souls into two kinds, which come down to-day out of their pre-earthly existence into earthly existence. The first kind, which still at the present day includes the majority of people, are remarkably ‘home-gifted’ souls, who feel so thoroughly at home as souls in their warm nest,—even though at times they may think it uncomfortable; but that is only in appearance, is only maya;—they feel comfortable in this warm nest, in which they have already taken an interest for so long, before coming down to earth.

Others perhaps,—the external maya, is not always a good guide,—others, who may go through their child-life quite acquiescently as souls, are not so home-gifted, are homeless souls, grow out of the snug nest rather than into it.

And to those of this latter species belong undoubtedly those souls too, who afterwards find their way into the anthroposophic movement.

It is therefore certainly a matter, in one way or other, of predetermination, whether one is impelled by one's fate into Anthroposophy.

It may truly be said, however, that the impulse manifests itself in all manner of ways, which leads these souls to search along side-paths, off the track of life's great highroad. And anyone, who has gone through life with a certain conscientness during the last twenty or thirty years of the nineteenth century and the first twenty to thirty of the twentieth, will have observed, that everywhere, amongst the others, there were to be seen these homeless souls—soul-homeless souls, that is,—in numbers,—numbers relatively speaking, of course. A great many souls, in fact, to-day, have what I might call a certain streak of this homelessness.

If the others did not find it so comfortable to keep along the beaten tracks, and did not put such difficulties in the way of the homeless souls, these homeless souls would be much more striking in their numbers to the eyes of their contemporaries. But even so, one can perceive everywhere, I might say, to-day a certain streak of this homelessness in a great number of souls.

Only quite a short while ago, there was a report of an incident, which shows how even such things as this may happen. A professor at a certain university gave a set of lectures, a course of collegiate addresses, announced for schoolmen, with the title, ‘The evolution of mystic-occult philosophy from Pythagoras to Steiner’. And the report says, that when the course was announced, so many people came to the very first lecture, that he was not able to give it in one of the ordinary lecture-rooms, but had to hold it in the Great Auditorium, which as a rule is used only for the addresses on big University occasions.

From facts such as this, one can see how things stand at the present day, and how in fact this tendency to homelessness has spread extremely deep into men's souls. And one could watch this thing, so to speak, which to-day grows week by week to an ever more intense longing in the souls of those who bear about this homelessness within them,—the longing for something which is not a ready planned, ready mapped-out post in life,—this longing for something spiritual,—which shows itself in this corner of life from week to week, one might say, with greater insistence and ever increasing force amid the chaotic spiritual life of the day one could watch all this growing up. And if to-day I succeed in sketching the gradual growth of it for you in a few brief touches, you may be able to find in this sketch, through a sort of self-recollection, just a little perhaps of what I might term the common anthroposophic origin of you all.

To-day I will do no more than pick out some characteristic features by way of introduction.—Look back to the last twenty or thirty years of the nineteenth century. We might quite well take any other field; but let us take a very characteristic field; and here we find coming into prominence at a particular time what one may call ‘Wagnerianism’: the cult of Richard Wagner.

There was, no doubt, mixed up with this Richard Wagner cult, a great deal of fashionable affectation, desire for sensation, and so forth. But amongst the people who showed themselves at Bayreuth, after Bayreuth was started, there were not only gentlemen in the latest cut of frock-coat, and ladies in the newest and smartest frocks; but at Bayreuth there was everything conceivable, side by side. Even then, one might see there gentlemen with their hair very long and ladies with their hair cropped short. People might be seen, who felt it like a sort of modern pilgrimage to travel from long distances to Bayreuth. I even knew one man, who, when he set out for Bayreuth, drew off his boots at a place on the road a very long way off, and pilgrimaged to Bayreuth barefoot.

Amongst the people who turned up like this,—the gentlemen with the long, and the ladies with the short hair, there were undoubtedly many who belonged in some form or other to the homeless-soul class. But amongst those, too, who were dressed, if not in the very latest, yet at any rate in a fairly respectable fashion, there were also such as were homeless souls.

Now, what made such an effect upon the people in this Wagnerianism,—what there actually was in it, (I am not talking now of the musical element only, but of Wagnerianism as a social phenomenon)—what made itself felt in Wagnerianism as a force, was something that in this Wagnerianism stood out quite distinct from anything else that the materialist age had to offer. It was something that went out quite peculiarly, and almost suggestively I might say, from this Wagnerianism, and acted upon people in such a way as to give them the feeling: It is like a door into another and more spiritual world, quite different from the one we usually have round about us.

And round Bayreuth and all that went on there, there sprung up a whole crop of longing aspirations after pro-founder depths of spiritual life.—To understand Richard Wagner's personages and dramatic compositions was at first certainly difficult. But that they were the creations of quite another element than merely the crass materialism of the age,—this at any rate was felt by numbers of people. And if these happened to be persons, who as homeless souls were more particularly impelled in this direction, they were stirred up by what I might call a sort of suggestive force in the Wagner dramas, particularly in the life that the Wagner dramas brought with them into our civilization, and began to have all sorts of hazy, emotional intuitions.

There were also, for instance, amongst the many people who came into this Wagnerian life, the readers of the Bayreuth Papers. It is interesting, historically,—to-day it has already all come to be history,—historically it is interesting to take up one of the annual sets of the Bayreuth Papers, and to look through it and see, how they start out with an interpretation of Tristan and Isolde, of the Nibelung Ring, of the Flying Dutchman even, how they start out from the dramatic composition, take the individual figures in the Wagner dramas, the incidents in them, and thence, in an extremely subjective and unreal way, it is true,—unreal even in the spiritual sense,—but nevertheless with a great yearning of spirit, how they attempt to arrive at a more spiritual aspect of the things and of human life in general. And one can truly say, that in the multifarious interpretations of Hamlet and other interpretations of works of art that have since been brought out by theosophists, there is much that reminds one of certain articles, written in the Bayreuth Papers, not by a theosophist, but by an expert Wagnerian, Hans von Wolzogen. And if you woke up one morning, let us say, and if, instead of a theosophist paper that you read perhaps fifteen years ago, some mischievous fairy had laid beside your bed a batch of the Bayreuth Papers, you might really mistake the tone and style of them for something you had come across in the theosophist paper,—if it happened to be an article of Wolzogen's, or one of the kind.

So that this Wagnerianism, one might say, was for many persons, in whom there dwelt homeless souls, an opening, through which to come to some aspect of the world that led away from the crassly material that led them into a spiritual region.

And of all these people who, not externally out of fashion-able affectation, but from an inner impulse of the soul, had grown into a stream of this kind, it may truly be said of them all, that whatever else they might be in life, whether they were lawyers, or lords, or artists, or M.P.s, or whatever else they might be, who had grown into this stream,—even the scientists, for there were some of these too,—they pursued the direction into the spiritual world from an inner longing of their souls, and troubled themselves no further about hard and fast proofs, of which there were plenty to be found everywhere for the world-conception of materialistic construction.

As said before, I might have mentioned other fields as well, where homeless souls of this kind were to be found; one did find plenty of such homeless souls. But this Wagner field was especially characteristic; there these homeless souls might be found in numbers.

Well, it was my lot, I might say, personally, to make acquaintance with a number of souls of this kind (but in company also with others), who had gone, so to speak, through their spiritual novitiate as Wagnerians, and were as I knew them, again in a different metamorphosis. These were souls whom I learnt to know towards the end of the eighteen eighties in Vienna, amongst a group of people, collected together entirely one might say out of homeless souls.

How this homelessness displayed itself in those days, even on the surface, is something of which people no longer form any true conception at all to-day; for many things, which then required a good courage,—courage of soul,—have to-day become quite commonplace.

This, for instance, is something, which I think not many people at the present day will be able to conceive.—I was sitting in a group of such homeless souls, and we had been talking of all sorts of things, when one of them came in, who either had been kept longer than the others by his work, or else maybe he had stayed sitting at home, busied with his own thoughts. At any rate, he came later, and began talking about Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov [Known in English under the title ‘Crime and Punishment’], and spoke of Raskolnivok in such a way that it struck like lightning into the company,—just like a flash of lightning. A new world opened up, a world which ... well, it was very much as though one were transported all of a sudden into another planet:—that was how these souls felt.

Perhaps I may be allowed to say something:—In all these observations of life, which I am telling you by way of introduction to the history of the anthroposophic movement, during all the time that I was impelled by my fate to make these observations in life, there was for myself never any sort of interruption of the contact with the spiritual world. The direct association with the spiritual world was never in any way broken; it was always there. I am obliged to mention this, because this must form the background of these contemplations: namely, the spiritual world as a self-obvious reality, and the human beings on earth seen accordingly as the images of what they really are as spiritual individualities within the spiritual world. I want just to indicate this frame of mind, so that you may take it as spiritual background all through.

Of course, ‘making observations’ did not mean sniffing about like a dog with a cold nose, but taking a warm, whole-hearted interest in everything, and not with the intention of being an observer, but simply because one is in the midst of it, in all good-fellowship and friendliness and courtesy, as a matter of course. So one really was in it all, and became acquainted with the people, not in order to observe them, but because it naturally came about in the course of actual life. And so I made acquaintance at the end of the 'eighties with a group of this kind, composed in other respects of people of every variety of calling, with every different shade of colouring in life, but who were all homeless souls of this kind; and of whom a number, as I said, had come over from the Wagner region, and were people whose spiritual novitiate, so to speak, had been made in the Wagner region. The man of whom I told you, who took off his boots in Vienna and walked barefoot to Bayreuth, he was one of them, and was, in matter of fact, a very clever man. For a while I used to come together with these people quite frequently, often indeed every day. They were now living, as I might say, in a second metamorphosis. Having gone through their Wagner metamorphosis, they were now in their second one.

There were three of them, for instance; people who knew H. P. Blavatsky well, who had been indeed intimate acquaintances of H. P. Blavatsky, and who were zealous theosophists, as theosophists were at that time, when Blavatsky was still living. About the theosophists of that time,—the time just after Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled and Secret Doctrine had appeared,—there was something quite peculiar. They all had a marked tendency to be extremely esoteric. They had a contempt for the external life in which they were placed, and a contempt of course for their own profession in life; but were nevertheless under the obligation of mingling in external existence:—that lay in the order of nature. But, as for everything else,—that is ‘esoteric’; there one converses only with Initiates, and only within a small circle. And one looks upon all the people, who, in one's opinion, are not worthy of conversing on such matters, as the sort of people, to whom one talks about the common things of life;—the others, are the people to whom one talks esoterics. They were readers, and good readers too, of Sinnett's newly-published book, Esoteric Buddhism, but all of them people eminently belonging to the class of homeless souls I have just described: people, namely, who, the moment they stepped into practical life, were engineers, electricians, and so forth, and yet again studied with deep interest, with the keenest eagerness, a book like Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism. And with these people too, there was a sort of tendency,—inherited partly from their Wagner phase,—to seize on everything available in the way of myths and legends, and explain, or interpret, them in ‘an esoteric sense’, as they called it.

One might observe, however, as these homeless souls really began more and more to make their appearance with the close of the nineteenth century, that the most interesting of all were not those, who after all, if I may say so, with only nine-tenths honest minds—nine-tenths honest, at most — used to study the writings of Blavatsky and Sinnett, but the others,—those who would listen, but were not willing to read for themselves. (In those days people were still exceedingly shy of such things.) They were not willing to read the things personally, but would listen with open mouths, when the people, who had read, expounded them. And it was very interesting to watch how the listeners, who were often more honest-minded than the narrators, would drink in these things, in the homelessness of their souls, like a spiritual nourishment of which they were in need,—and who indeed, out of the comparative lack of sincerity with which this spiritual nourishment was presented to them, converted it into something absolutely sincere, through the superior honesty of their own souls. And the way they drank it in! One could see the longing there was in them, to hear for once something quite different from what is to be found on the ordinary highroad of civilization. How these people gulped down what they heard! And it was extra-ordinarily interesting to see, on the one side the long arms of the highroad life snatching up the people ever and again in their clutches ... and then again, you know, how these people would turn up afresh in some drawing-room where they used to meet,—often it was a coffee-house,—and there would listen with hungry eagerness to what somebody or other had just been reading in some book of this kind that had newly appeared,—and who often laid it on pretty thick with what he had read. But there were these honest souls there too, most unquestionably, who were tossed in this way to-and-fro by life.

In the early days, especially, towards the close of the nineteenth century, one saw these souls regularly tossed to-and-fro, and unwilling really to admit to themselves their own homelessness. For there would be one of them, you know, listening with every sign of the deepest interest to what was being said about physical body, ether body, astral body, kama-manas, manas, budhi, and so on. And then, afterwards, he must go off and write the article the news-paper expected from him, into which of course he must stick the usual plums,—These people, truly, were the kind of souls that quite peculiarly showed, how difficult it really was, particularly at the commencement of the new spiritual period of evolution (which we must reckon really from the end of the nineteenth century), how difficult it was for many a one to abandon the broad highway of life. For indeed, from the way many of them behaved, it looked as though, when they wanted to go to the really important thing, to the thing which interested them above all else in life, they crept away on the sly as it were, and wanted if possible to avoid any one's knowing where they had crept to.—It really was most interesting, the manner in which, amid this European civilization, the spiritual life,—the spiritual volition,—the seeking for a spiritual world,—made its way in.

Now you must consider: it was the end of the 'eighties, in the nineteenth century, and so much more difficult really even than to-day,—less detrimental perhaps than to-day, but more difficult,—to come out straight away with a confession of the spiritual world. For the physical, sensible world, with all its magnificent laws ... why, that was all demonstrated fact; how could one hope to be any match for it! It had on its side any number of demonstrable proofs. The laboratories testified to it, the physical test-room, the medical clinics,—all testified to this demonstrated world!—But the demonstrated world was, for many homeless souls, one so unsatisfying, one which, for the soul's inner life, was so altogether impossible, that they simply, as I said, crept aside. And whilst in huge masses,—not in buckets, but in barrels,—the great civilization of the age was laid before them, they turned aside, to sip such drops as they might catch from the stream which trickled in as it were out of the spiritual world into modern civilization.—It was, in fact, by no means easy to begin straight away to speak of the spiritual world. It was necessary to find something on to which to connect.

If I may here introduce something which is again a personal remark, it is this: For myself ... one couldn't break so to speak into people's houses with the spiritual world; above all, one couldn't break into the whole civilized edifice with it! I had to take something to connect onto; not for an external reason; something that could be quite honestly internal. At this time, the end of the 'eighties, I took in many places, as connections for the remarks I had to make about more intimate aspects of the spiritual world, Goethe's Story of the Green Serpent and the Lovely Lily. That was something onto which one could connect; because, well, Goethe had, at any rate, a recognized standing; Goethe was, after all, Goethe, you know! It was possible, if one took something which had, after all, been written by Goethe, and where the spiritual influences running through it are so patent as in the Story of the Green Serpent and the Lovely Lily, it was possible then to connect onto these things. For me, indeed, it was the obvious course at that time to connect on-to Goethe's Story of the Green Serpent and the Lovely Lily; for I certainly could not connect onto the thing which was then being carried on as ‘Theosophy’, such as a group of at least very enterprising people towards the end of the 'eighties had extracted at that time out of Blavatsky and out of Sinnet's Esoteric Buddhism and similar books. For someone who proposed to carry over a scientifically trained mode of thought into the spiritual world, it was simply impossible to come in any way into association with the kind of mental and spiritual atmosphere which grew up in immediate connection with Blavatsky and the Esoteric Buddhism of Sinnet.

And again on the other side the matter was not easy; and for this reason:—Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism no doubt is a book which one very soon found to be a spiritually dilettante work, pieced together out of old, misunderstood esotericisms. But to a work like Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine as a phenomenon of the times, it was not so very easy to arrive at a definite relation. For it is a work, which betrays after all in numerous passages, that what is said in them proceeds from direct and forceful impulses of the spiritual world; so that in numerous passages of this Secret Doctrine of Blavatsky's one finds the spiritual world revealing itself in fact through a particular personality,—which was the personality of Blavatsky.

And here there was one thing above all, which could not but especially strike one, which struck one particularly in the course of the search so intently pursued by the people who had come in this way either to Blavatsky personally, or to Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine.

Through this book, The Secret Doctrine, a great mass of ancient truths had been voiced to the world,—old-world truths, obtained by atavistic clairvoyance in the pre-historic ages of mankind. It was like a re-awakening, as I might say, of old-world civilizations. One had there before one, coming to one from the world outside, not merely out of one's own self,—one had there, before one, a thing, of which one could but say to oneself: Here lies unearthed a vast treasure of ancient wisdom, which men once possessed, and which was a wondrous source of light to them. And, patched between it all, pieces of the most incredible kind, which continually amaze one; for the book is a slovenly piece of work, quite dilettante as regards any sort of scientific thinking, and nonsensical with respect to a lot of superstitions and similar stuff. Altogether a most extraordinary book, this Secret Doctrine of Blavatsky; grand truths, along with terrible rubbish. It was, one might say ... the sort of thing, which ... very well characterized the kind of soul-phenomena to which those were exposed, who were beginning little by little to grow up into homeless souls in the new age. And I really learnt in those days to know a great number of such souls, one could see these homeless souls gradually growing up on earth.

After this, during the time that immediately followed, I was intensely busy with other things, in my time at Weimar. Although, there too, there was plenty of opportunity for observing such souls on the search. For during my Weimar time especially, every sort of person, if I may say so, came through Weimar to visit the Goethe and Schiller archives, and from all the leading countries of the world. One learnt to know the people quite remarkably, on the good and on the bad sides of their souls, as they came through Weimar. Queer-fish, as well as highly educated men of fine breeding and distinction: one learnt to know them all. My meeting with Herman Grimm, for instance, in Weimar is described by me in the last number but one of the “Goetheanum.” [‘A personal recollection etc.’ ‘Goetheanum’ Year 2. (1923), No. 43.]

With Herman Grimm it was really so,—to my feeling at least,—that when he was in Weimar ... he came very often; for when he was on his way from Berlin to Italy or back, and at other times as well, he frequently came to Weimar; and I had grown to have the feeling: Weimar is somehow different, when Herman Grimm is in the place, and when he has left it. Herman Grimm was something that made one understand Weimar particularly well. One knew, what Weimar is, better when Herman Grimm was staying there, than when he was not there.

One need only recall Herman Grimm's novel, Powers Unconquerable, to remark at once, that in Herman Grimm there is at any rate an unmistakably strong impulse towards spiritual things. Read the conclusion of this novel, Powers Unconquerable, and you will see how the spiritual world there plays into the physical one through the soul of a dying woman. There is something grand—tremendous—about it, that lays hold of one. I have spoken of it in previous lectures.

And then, of course, there were queer fish too, that came through Weimar. For instance, there was a Russian State Councillor who was looking for something. One couldn't make out what it was he was looking for,—something or other in the second part of Goethe's Faust. In what way he exactly proposed to find it in the Goethe Archives, that one couldn't make out. Nor did anyone exactly know how to help him. They would have been very glad in the Goethe Archives to help him. But he always went on looking. He was looking for the Point in the second part of Faust; and no one could succeed in discovering what kind of a point he wanted. All one could ever learn was that he was looking for the Point, the Point. And so one could only let him look. But he was so talkative with this Point of his, that in the evening, when we used to be sitting at supper, and he drew near, the whisper would go round: ‘Don't look round you! The Councillor's prowling about!’ Nobody wanted to be caught by him.

Well, next to him again, there sat a very curious visitor, who was a very clever fellow, an American, but who had the peculiarity that his favourite position was sitting on the floor, with his legs cocked one over the other; and he used to sit in this fashion with his books before him on the ground. It was a weird sight. But, as I said, one met with these things too there, and had, in fact, opportunities of seeing a sort of sample slice out of the life of modern civilization, and in an unusually striking way.

Later on, however, when I went to Berlin, my destiny again led me more especially into a circle, made up of the kind of souls whom I spoke of as being ‘homeless souls’. Destiny led me indeed so deep into it that from this particular circle there came the request that I would give them some lectures, the same which have since been published in my book, Mysticism at the Dawn of the New Age of Thought. (In the preface to the book I have also given an account of how these things came about.)

This particular circle happened now to be people who had found their way into the Theosophical Society at a somewhat later period, as I may say, than my Vienna acquaintances. And they occupied a different position towards all that had been Blavatsky. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine was a work to which but few of them gave any study; but they were well-versed in all that Blavatsky's successor, Mrs. Annie Besant, was giving forth in her lectures as the Theosophy of the day. In this they were well-versed, these people, to whom I was saying something quite different in my lectures on ‘Mysticism’. They were very well-versed in it indeed; and I remember still, for instance, hearing a lecture by a member of this same group, which was based upon a little book of Mrs. Annie Besant's, in which Mrs. Annie Besant, on her part, had divided up Man into physical body, ether body, astral body, and so on. I can't help often recalling how awful, how appalling, this description seemed to me at the time, of the human being as drawn from Mrs. Annie Besant. I had not read anything of Mrs. Besant's. The first which I heard of her things was this lecture, given by a lady on the strength of Mrs. Annie Besant's newest pamphlet of the day.—It was quite awful, how in those days the different parts of the human being used to be told off in a string, one after the other, with, at bottom, very little understanding,—instead of letting them proceed out of the whole totality of man's being.

And so once more, as in Vienna at the end of the 'eighties, I was in the midst of such homeless souls, and with every opportunity of observing them. And, as you well know, what since has come to be Anthroposophy first grew up in all essentials then, with as many as were there of these homeless souls,—grew up, not in, I would say, but with these homeless souls, who had begun by seeking a new home for their souls in Theosophy.

I wished to carry our observations to this point to-day, my dear friends, and tomorrow will then continue, and try to lead you further in this study in self-recollection, upon which we have only just embarked to-day.

[ 1 ] The magazine Lucifer, edited by Rudolf Steiner in the service of spiritual science, was enlarged in 1904 through the merger with the Austrian magazine, Gnosis. Thenceforth it bore the double name, Lucifer-Gnosis. In it were published Rudolf Steiner's articles that later appeared as the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, which, with the books, Theosophy and Occult Science, an Outline, belongs to the basic works of the anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit.

A continuation of these articles appeared under the title, The Stages of Higher Knowledge. They were intended, later on, to be formed into a second volume in continuation of Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. But an overabundance of work and the heavy demands that lecturing made upon his time gradually prevented Rudolf Steiner from devoting the necessary attention to the magazine, although there was a steady increase in the number of its readers. As a result, its publication had to cease, and the further appearance of the articles on The Stages of Higher Knowledge had to be interrupted.

We have often been asked to make them available again through a new edition. The present books complies with this wish. Since the text suddenly breaks off, the book cannot claim the value of completeness. It was, therefore, justifiable to question the advisability of a new edition. The views presented here, but not brought to a conclusion, have been published many times in other written works of Rudolf Steiner in a different form and under different titles. But for the searcher of the spirit the fact remains that the conquest of spiritual reality is possible only by returning again and again to the spiritual contents once worked over but never sufficiently assimilated, and by experiencing ever anew the path that once has shown the direction into the realm of the spirit. The soul life of the person working meditatively must be kept so mobile that the view afforded him by one path makes him all the more receptive to views from other aspects.

[ 2 ] The articles published here are of historical value. They indicate the starting-point of Rudolf Steiner's esoteric instructions; they show us how he has become the pioneer in this very domain in which, through his indications, man for the first time has been allowed freedom. With a world encompassing outlook, and a high sense of responsibility he had to build a basis and create a spiritual attitude through which man—by finding within himself the solid moral support—might still in this freedom avoid falling prey to temptation and aberration. In order to accomplish such a deed at a decisive turning-point in history, in the midst of opposing forces, relying solely upon one's own self, there was needed the tremendous ethical power that permeates Rudolf Steiner's entire life-work, its goals the welfare of mankind, the rescue of the Western world from the threatening collapse. He laid the foundations for his work in a way that corresponded with the demands of the age. To achieve this required the synthesis of all knowledge.

[ 3 ] If one takes up these articles, written at the beginning of an astonishing life work that continued until March 30, 1925, and that, in the first years of this century, had received an impulse willed by destiny through its connection with theosophical groups fed from oriental sources—the question arises: How is it to be understood that Rudolf Steiner, who pointed the way to freedom also in esoteric life, to full self-reliance, and who let the pupil pledge to his own higher ego the obedience he must otherwise pledge to the teacher—how is it to be understood that Rudolf Steiner still urges in these articles the necessity of a strict reliance of the student upon the teacher, making the student as it were dependent upon the teacher?

[ 4 ] In truth, Rudolf Steiner is only describing the pupil teacher relationship as one of trust. From the very beginning he has avoided and rejected the authoritative element. In ancient times, the initiating priests took full responsibility for initiation of the neophyte into the mysteries of spiritual existence and exerted their will upon him. Thus the pupil was at the same time protected and guided, and was able to escape the dangers that otherwise would have overpowered him. His ego still hovered above his physical sheaths; his consciousness of self had not yet awakened. To awaken it more and more was the task of the progressing mystery training.

By drawing attention to the Cosmic Teacher, Christian initiation lessened the dependency upon the personal teacher, without wholly eliminating it. In the Rosicrucian training this dependency gradually loses its personal character and transforms itself into a relationship of trust. The teacher assists the student, shows him the way he seeks but cannot find unaided. The teacher gives him moral support, points out the dangers of vanity and the trickery of deceptive images that he must learn to distinguish from true spiritual reality. Thus the teacher is a helper ready to withdraw when trust is lacking.

At the turning-point of history at which we stand, the teacher working for the present had to point to the past, present, and future of human spiritual striving and, beginning with the education of the individual, had to erect his work so that it constituted a deed for mankind: a newly gained element of life for posterity. Thus, Rudolf Steiner created a science of initiation in which henceforth every serious, morally striving human being can find the fundament that carries him; he will be able to take hold of the elements that sharpen his power of discrimination while new worlds open up to him. He need not grope uncertainly, having received enough instruction to guide him until he finds the leader in the lands of spirit.

[ 5 ] This was not the case before Rudolf Steiner began his spiritual work. His deed is the science of initiation. Through it is revealed what lay hidden in the Mysteries of the ancient temples: namely, alongside the knowledge of cosmic evolution, the knowledge of the imminent descent of Christ, and what was sealed up in the Church: the redeeming deed of the liberation of mankind through the Christ and the gradual permeation of the ego of the individual with His power. Instead of personal guidance, the requirement now is that the human being find the way to the Ego of Mankind, to the Christ, through the forces of the time spirit. The consciousness of the individual human being is made mature for the acceptance of the higher ego force; self-consciousness is raised to spirit self.

[ 6 ] It is the work of the future. But only by standing on the ground of the past and preparing the future can man work fruitfully for the present. By any other course he strives in the void. Here, too, the laws of metamorphosis govern. The future is created through transformation of the present that is rooted in the past. New elements appear, just as the new spring follows the winter. The power of the sun glows through the earth; all that decays, undergoing transformation, is kindled to new life through grace descending from above.

[ 7 ] Also in the esoteric realm happenings unfold in historical continuity, in accordance with the law of ascending evolution and the flood tide and ebb tide of diminishing and flourishing life until the seemingly sudden moment when the rays of grace break forth, like the miracle of the radiant blossom in the green plant world. Yet without this transformation from form to form carried out by wise powers, and the constant enhancement in all domains of life, the new values, the gifts of the spirit, the fiery tongues of the Word would not descend upon us. Without knowledge of such happenings, the recipients of these gifts would not be in a position to grasp what it is that wants to take place among them. The great new power could not become effective, the future could not be saved.

[ 8 ] The souls striving for spiritual knowledge who approached Rudolf Steiner were the human material willed by destiny and led to him by the age with whom Rudolf Steiner had to work. Out of their needs and requirements he had to form the science of initiation, based on cognition. It was his task to tear men away from the indolence of the age in regard to the spirit, so that they could become a bridge for the demands of the future.

[ 9 ] Most difficult was the awakening of a sense for inner freedom, self-reliance, fully answerable to itself. With scrupulous regard for this goal, Rudolf Steiner desired no other role among men than that of instructor and, when so requested, advisor, awakener to spiritual goals of mankind. He was able to present spiritual facts because his thinking and beholding were permeated with life and unfolded, step by step, with the power of an organism of nature. His spiritual work stands before us—the restored unity of science, art and religion.

There is a phenomenon of physical life which has never been explained by exoteric thought—the chaotic life bound up with sleep and called the life of dream.

What is the dream? It is an activity which has survived from prehistoric times. To understand it by analogy, let us consider certain phenomena which do not any longer belong, properly speaking, to physical life—organs which have now become useless, rudimentary organisms of which the naturalist can make nothing. Such are the motor organs of the ear and eye which function no longer, the appendix and,—notably, the pineal gland in the brain which has the form of a tiny pine cone. Naturalists explain it as a product of degeneration, as a parasitic growth in the brain. This is not correct. In the lasting creations of Nature, nothing is without its use. The pineal gland is the surviving remnant of an organ of great significance in primitive man, an organ of perception which served simultaneously as antenna, eye and ear. This organ existed in man during his rudimentary period of development, in days when the semi-fluid, semi-vaporous Earth was still united with the Moon. Man moved through the semi-fluid, semi-gaseous element like a fish, guiding his way by means of this organ. His perceptions were of a visionary, allegoric nature. Currents of warmth evoked in him the impression of dazzling red and of powerful sound. Currents of cold evoked the impression of shades of green and blue, silvery, rippling sounds.

The rôle played by the pineal gland was thus of great significance. But with the mineralisation of the Earth, other organs of sense made their appearance, and with us the pineal gland has no apparent purpose.

Let us now turn to the phenomenon of the dream.

The dream is a rudimentary function of our life—seemingly without use or purpose. In reality it represents an atrophied function—a function which in days of yore gave rise to a very different mode of perception.

Before the Earth became metallic, it was only perceptible in the astral sense. All perceptions are relative; they are merely symbolic. The central core of truth is ineffable and divine. This is wonderfully expressed in the words of Goethe: “All things transitory are but symbols.”

Astral vision (which is still present in the dream) is allegoric and symbolic.

Examples of dreams provoked by physical and bodily causes:

A student dreams that a companion gives him a blow, whereupon a duel is fought and he himself is wounded. He wakes up to find that the cause of the dream is a chair that has fallen over. Again someone may dream of a trotting horse but the sound is really caused by the ticking of a watch.

The bodily nature of man lies at the root of certain dreams but others are directly related to the astral and spiritual worlds. This latter class of dreams are the origin of myths.

In the opinion of modern scholars, the myths are poetic interpretations of the phenomena of Nature. If, however, we study certain folk-legends, we shall find that they are more than this. Myths and legends are based upon astral visions which have been travestied, changed and added to by tradition.

Think of the Slavonic legend of the ‘Woman of Noonday.’ If peasants who are labouring at the harvest in the oppressive heat of summer lie down to rest on the ground at midday instead of going to their homes, the figure of a woman appears and places a number of enigmas before them. If the sleeper can solve these enigmas, he is saved; if not, the woman slays and cuts him in two with a scythe. The legend goes on to say that this phantom can be exorcised by reciting the verses of the Lord's Prayer in backward order. Occultism teaches us that the Woman of Noonday is an astral figure, an incubus who appears and oppresses man during his sleep. The reversed Lord's Prayer indicates that in the astral world everything is reflected as in a mirror (inversion). In The Riddle of the Sphinx, Ludwig Laistner says that the origin of the legend of the sphinx is to be found among all races. He also proves that all legends have been conceived in a condition of higher sleep where realities are perceived, and that the sphinx is in truth a daemonic figure.

A state of dream-consciousness, or perception of a real world in astral symbols-this, then, is the origin of all the myths. Myths describe the astral world seen in symbolic visions.

In the course of history we find that the creation of myths ceases when the life of logic and intellectuality begins to develop.

A law known to occultism is that with every new stage of evolution, an element from the past makes its appearance. Ancient faculties, survivals from past epochs which have atrophied in the being of man, act as ferments for subsequent development; they are like the yeast which makes the dough rise. Man's present faculty of dreaming will beget a new kind of vision, a perception of the astral and spiritual world.

The man of today lives only in his senses and intellect which elaborates what the senses tell him. The intellect of man of the future will awaken to the full light of consciousness and he will live consciously in the astral world.

The trance of the hypnotised subject and of the medium is an atavistic phenomenon, bound up with lowered consciousness. The initiated clairvoyant is not an unbalanced visionary; he possesses, in advance, the consciousness which will be possessed by all men in future ages; he has his feet on solid ground just as firmly as the most matter-of-fact human being; his reason is just as clear and certain but he sees in two worlds.

It is a law of evolution that certain organs atrophy, subsequently to take on new functions.

The pineal gland has a certain physiological relation with the lymphatic system. In olden times this gland was the organ of perception of the outer world and it is still to be seen near the top of the head of newly-born babes where the soft matter recalls the nature of man's body in olden times.

In our life of intellect, the dream plays a rôle similar to that of the pineal gland in the physiology of the human body.

Why is there a descending and an ascending process in evolution? What is the purpose of evil? These are weighty questions which have never been solved by science or religion. Yet the whole problem of education depends upon their solution.

We cannot speak of evil in the absolute sense. Evil, indeed, plays a part in the development of beings and the unfolding of freedom.

The materialist will not admit that the thoughts stimulated in us by Nature are, in fact, already contained in her being. He imagines that we infuse our thoughts into Nature.

The Rosicrucians in the Middle Ages were wont to place a glass of water before the neophyte and say to him: ‘This water would not be in the glass if some being had not put it there.’ Thus it is in regard to the ideas we find expressed in Nature. They must have been implanted there by divine Intelligences, by servants of the Logos.

The thoughts we derive from the universe are actually there. All that we create is contained somewhere in the universe.

It is a false idea on the part of certain mystics to disparage the value of the physical body. It has just as much value as the astral body; its mission is to become the temple of the soul.

Think of the marvelous structure of the femur, of the bone which bears the whole body. Its construction is such that the maximum amount of strength is produced with the minimum amount of substance. No engineer could create such a wonder-structure. In comparison with the physical body, the astral body—the seat of passions and desires—is rudimentary and crude.

The physical world is the expression of wisdom incarnate, divine wisdom.

The Rosicrucians taught that the Earth, in primeval times, was an Earth of wisdom. Today we may call it an Earth of love. The mission of man is to accomplish for the imperfect part of his being what divine wisdom once accomplished for his physical body. He must ennoble his astral body and therewith the world around him.

All that has entered into us without our conscious will under the influence of divine wisdom—that is Involution. All that we must bring out of ourselves by dint of conscious will—that is Evolution.

The pyramids will perish in the course of the centuries but the ideas which gave them birth will develop onwards. The cathedral of today will take another form. Raphael's pictures will fall into dust but the soul of Raphael and the ideas which his creations represent will be living powers forever. The Art of today will be the Nature of tomorrow and will blossom again in her. Thus does Involution become Evolution.

Here we have the point of intersection between the divine and the human, the twofold power which brings God to man and raises man to God.

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.

THE Festival of Christmas which we shall soon be celebrating acquires new life when a deeper, more spiritual conception of the world is brought to bear upon it. In a spiritual sense the Christmas Festival is a Festival of the Sun, and as such we shall think of it to-day. To begin with, let us listen to the beautiful apostrophe to the sun which Goethe puts into the mouth of Faust:—

Life's pulses newly-quickened now awaken,
Softly to greet the ethereal twilight leaping;
Thou Earth through this night too hast stood unshaken,
And at my feet fresh breathest from thy sleeping.
Thou girdest me about with gladness, priming
My soul to stern resolve and strenuous keeping,
Onward to strive, to highest life still climbing.—
Unfolded lies the world in twilight-shimmer;
With thousand throated song the woods are chiming;
The dales, where through the mist-wreaths wind, lie dimmer,
Yet heavenly radiance plumbs the deeps unnumbered,
And bough and twig, new-quickened, bud and glimmer
Forth from the fragrant depths where sunk they slumbered,
Whilst hue on hue against the gloom still heightens,
Where bloom and blade with quivering pearls are cumbered.
A very Paradise about me lightens!

Look up!—The giant peaks that rise supernal
Herald the solemn hour; for them first brightens
The early radiance of the light eternal,
Upon us valley-dwellers later showered.

Now are the green-sunk, Alpine meadows vernal
With radiance new and new distinctness dowered,
And stepwise downward hath the splendour thriven.
He sallies forth, and I mine overpowered
And aching eyes to turn away am driven.

Thus when a yearning hope, from fear and wonder
Up to the highest wish in trust hath striven,
The portals of fulfilment yawn asunder.
Then bursts from yonder depths whose days ne'er dwindle
Excess of flame—we stand as smit with thunder.
The torch of life it was we sought to kindle,
A sea of fire-and what a fire!—hath penned us.
Is't Love? Is't Hate? that yonder glowing spindle
In bliss and bale alternating tremendous
About us twines, till we the dazed beholders
To veil our gaze in Earth's fresh mantle wend us.

Nay then, the sun shall bide behind my shoulders!
The cataract, that through the gorge doth thunder,
I'll watch with growing rapture, 'mid the boulders
From plunge to plunge down-rolling, rent asunder
In thousand thousand streams, aloft that shower
Foam upon hissing foam, the depths from under.
Yet blossoms from this storm a radiant flower;
The painted rainbow bends its changeful being,
Now lost in air, now limned with clearest power,
Shedding this fragrant coolness round us fleeing.
Its rays an image of man's efforts render;
Think, and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing
Life in the many-hued, reflected splendour.

(Translation by Latham)

Goethe lets these words be spoken by Faust, the representative of humanity, as he gazes at the radiant morning sun. But the Festival of which we are now to speak has to do with a Sun belonging to a far deeper realm of being than the sun which rises anew every morning. And it is this deeper Sun that will be the guiding moth in our thoughts to-day.

And now we will listen to words in which the deepest import of the Christmas Mystery is mirrored. In all ages these words resounded in the ears of those who were pupils of the Mysteries—before they were allowed to participate in the Mysteries themselves:—

Die Sonne schaue
Um mitternächtige Stunde.
Mit Steinen baue
Im lebenlose Grunde.
So finde im Niedergang
Und in des Todes Nacht
Der Schöpfung neuen Anfang,
Des Morgens junge Macht.

Die Höhen lass offenbaren
Der Götter ewiges Wort,
Die Tiefen sollen bewahren
Den friedensvollen Hort.
Im Dunkel lebend
Erschaffe eine Sonne.
Im Stoffe webend
Erkenne Geisteswonne.

Behold the Sun
At tire midnight hour;
Build with stones in the lifeless ground,
Thus in decay and in the night of Death
Find the Creation's new beginning,
Young morning's strength;
Glory in the heights the eternal Word of Gods;
Shelter in the depths the Powers of Peace.
In darkness dwelling, create a Sun.
In matter weaving, know the joy of Spirit!

Many to whom the Christmas Tree with its candles is a familiar sight to-day, believe that it is a very ancient institution—but this is not the case. The Christmas Tree is a very recent European custom, dating no further back than about a hundred years or so. Although, however, the Christmas Tree is a recent custom, the Christmas Festival is very ancient. It was celebrated in the earliest Mysteries of all religions, not as a festival of the outer sun but as one which awakens in men an inkling of the very wellsprings of existence. It was celebrated every year by the highest Initiates in the Mysteries, at the time of the year when the sun sends least power to the earth, bestows least warmth. But it was also celebrated by those who might not yet participate in the whole festival, who might witness only the outer, pictorial expression of the highest Mysteries. This imagery has been preserved through the ages, varying in form according to the several creeds.

The Christmas Festival is the Festival of the Holy Night, celebrated in the Mysteries by those who were ready for the awakening of the higher Self within them, or, as we should say in our time, those who have brought the Christ to birth within them.

Only those who have no inkling of the fact that as well as the chemical and physical forces, spiritual forces are also at work and that the workings of both kinds of forces take effect at definite times and seasons in cosmic life, can imagine that the moment of the awakening of the higher Self in man is of no importance. In the Greater Mysteries man beheld the forces working through all existence; he saw the world around him filled with spirit, with spiritual Beings; he beheld the world of spirit around him, radiant with light and colour. There can be no more sublime experience than this and in due time it will come to everyone. Although for some it may be only after many incarnations, nevertheless the moment will come for all men when Christ will be resurrected within them and new vision, new hearing will awaken. In preparation for the awakening, the pupils in the Mysteries were first taught of the cosmic significance of this awakening and only then was the sacred Act itself performed. It took place at the time when darkness on the earth is greatest, when the external sun gives out least light and warmth—at Christmas time—because those who are cognisant of the spiritual facts know that at this time of the year, forces that are favourable for such an awakening stream through cosmic space. During his preparation the pupil was told that one who would be a true knower must have knowledge not only of what has been happening on the earth for thousands and thousands of years but must also be able to survey the whole course of the evolution of humanity, realising that the great festivals have their own, essential place within that evolution and must be dedicated to contemplation of the eternal truths. The pupil's gaze was directed to the time when our earth was not as it is now, when there was no sun, no moon out yonder in the heavens, but both were still united with the earth, when earth, sun and moon formed one body. Even then man was already in existence, but he had no body; he was still a spiritual being. No sunlight fell from outside upon these spiritual beings, for the sunlight was within the earth itself. This was not the sunlight that shines from outside upon objects and beings to-day, but it was inner sunlight that glowed within all beings of the earth. Then came the time when the sun separated from the earth, when its light shone down upon the earth from the universe outside. The sun had withdrawn from the earth and inner darkness came upon man. This was the beginning of his evolution towards that future when the inner light will again be radiant within him. Man must learn to know the things of the earth with his outer senses; he evolves to the stage where the higher Man, Spirit-Man, again glows and shines within him. From light, through darkness, to light—such is the path of the evolution of mankind.

The pupils of the Mysteries were prepared by these constantly inculcated teachings. Then they were led to the actual awakening. This was the moment when, as chosen ones, they experienced the spiritual Light within them; their eyes of spirit were opened. This sacred moment came when the outer light was weakest, when the outer sun was shining with least strength. On that day the pupils were called together and the inner Light revealed itself to them. To those who were not yet ready to participate in this sacred enactment, it was presented as a picture which made them realise: For you too the great moment will come; to-day you see a picture only; later on, what you now see as a picture will be an actual experience. Thus it was in the lesser Mysteries. Pictures were presented of what the candidate for initiation was subsequently to experience as reality. To-day we shall hear of the enactments in the lesser Mysteries. Everywhere it was the same: in the Egyptian Mysteries, in the Eleusinian Mysteries, in the Mysteries of Asia Minor, of Babylon and Chaldea, as well as in the Mithras-cult and in the Indian Mysteries of Brahman. Everywhere the same experiences were undergone by the pupils of these Mysteries at the midnight hour of the Holy Night.

Early on the previous evening the pupils gathered together. In quiet contemplation they were to be made aware of the meaning and import of this momentous happening. Silently and in darkness they sat together. When the midnight hour drew near they had been for long hours in the darkened chamber, steeped in the contemplation of eternal truths. Then, towards midnight, mysterious tones, now louder, now gentler, resounded through the space around them. Hearing these tones, the pupils knew: This is the Music of the Spheres. Then a faint light began to glimmer from an illumined disc. Those who gazed at it knew that this disc represented the earth. The illumined disc became darker and darker—until finally it was quite black. At the same time the surrounding space grew brighter. Again the pupils knew: the black disc represents the earth; the sun, which otherwise radiates light to the earth, is hidden; the earth can see the sun no longer. Then, ring upon ring, rainbow colours appeared around the earth-disc and those who saw it knew: This is the radiant Iris. At midnight, in the place of the black earth-disc, a violet-reddish orb gradually became visible, on which a word was inscribed, varying according to the peoples whose members were permitted to experience this Mystery. With us, the word would be Christos. Those who gazed at it knew: It is the sun which appears at the midnight hour, when the world around lies at rest in deep darkness. The pupils were now told that they had experienced what was known in the Mysteries as "seeing the sun at midnight."

He who is truly initiated experiences the sun at midnight, for in him the material is obliterated: the sun of the Spirit alone lives within him, dispelling with its light the darkness of matter. The most holy of all moments in the evolution of man is that in which he experiences the truth that he lives in eternal light, freed from the darkness. In the Mysteries, this moment was represented pictorially, year by year, at the midnight hour of the Holy Night. The picture imaged forth the truth that as well as the physical sun there is a Spiritual Sun which, like the physical sun, must be born out of the darkness. In order that the pupils might realise this even more intensely, after they had experienced the rising of the spiritual Sun, of the Christos, they were taken into a cave in which there seemed to be nothing but stone, nothing but dead, lifeless matter. But springing out of the stones they saw ears of corn as tokens of life, indicating symbolically that out of apparent death, life arises, that life is born from the dead stone. Then it was said to them: Just as from this day onwards the power of the sun awakens anew after it seemed to have died, so does new life forever spring from the dying.

The same truth is indicated in the Gospel of St. John in the words: "He must increase, but I must decrease!" John, the herald of the coming Christ, of the spiritual Light, he whose festival day in the course of the year falls at midsummer—this John must ‘decrease’ and in this decreasing there grows the power of the coming spiritual Light, increasing in strength in the measure in which John ‘decreases.’ Thus is the new life, prepared in the seed-grain which must wither and decay in order that the new plant may come into being. The pupils of the Mysteries were to realise that within death, life is resting, that out of the decaying and the dying the new flowers and fruits of spring arise in splendour, that the earth teems with the powers of birth. They were to learn that at this point of time something is happening in the innermost being of the earth: the overcoming of death by life, by the life that is present in death. This was portrayed to them in the picture of the Light gradually conquering the darkness; this is what they experienced as they saw the Light beginning to shine in the darkness. In the rocky cave they beheld the Light that rays forth in strength and glory from what is seemingly dead. Thus were the pupils led on to believe in the power of life, in what may be called man's highest Ideal. Thus did they learn to look upwards to this supreme Ideal of humanity, to the time when the earth shall have completed its evolution, when the Light will shine forth in all mankind. The physical earth itself will then fall into dust, but the spiritual essence will remain with all human beings who have been made inwardly radiant by the spiritual Light. And the earth and humanity will then waken into a higher existence, into a new phase of existence.

When Christianity came into being it bore this Ideal within it. Man felt that the Christos would arise in him as the representative of the spiritual re-birth, as the great Ideal of all humanity and moreover that the birth takes place in the Holy Night, at the time when the darkness is greatest, as a sign and token that out of the darkness of matter a higher Man can be born in the human soul.

Before men spoke of the Christos, they spoke in the ancient Mysteries of a ‘Sun Hero’ who embodied the same Ideal which, in Christianity, was embodied in the Christos. Just as the sun completes its orbit in the course of the year, as its warmth seems to withdraw from the earth and then again streams forth, as in its seeming death it holds life and pours it forth anew, so it was with the Sun Hero, who through the power of his spiritual life had gained the victory over death, night and darkness. In the Mysteries there were seven degrees of Initiation. First, the degree of the Ravens who might approach only as far as the portal of the temple of Initiation. They were the channels between the outer world of material life and the inner world of the spiritual life; they did not belong entirely to the material world but neither, as yet, to the spiritual world. We find these ‘Ravens’ again and again; everywhere they are the messengers who pass hither and thither between the two worlds, bringing tidings. We find them too, in our German sagas and myths: the Ravens of Wotan, the Ravens who fly around the Kyffhäuser. At the second degree the disciple was led from the portal into the interior of the temple. There he was made ready for the third degree, the degree of the Warrior who went out to make known before the world the occult truths imparted to him in the temple. The fourth degree, that of the Lion, was reached by one whose consciousness was no longer confined within the bounds of individuality, but extended over a whole tribal stock. For this reason Christ was called "the Lion of the stem of David." To the fifth degree belonged a man whose still wider consciousness embraced a whole people. He was an Initiate of the fifth degree. He no longer bore a name of his own but was called by the name of his people. Thus men spoke of the ‘Persian,’ of the ‘Israelite.’ We understand now why Nathaniel was called a ‘true Israelite’; it was because he had reached the fifth degree of Initiation. The sixth degree was that of the Sun Hero. We must understand the meaning of this appellation. Then we shall realise what awe and reverence surged through the soul of a pupil of the Mysteries who knew of the existence of a Sun Hero. He was able in the Holy Night to participate in the festival of the birth of a Sun Hero.

Everything in the cosmos takes its rhythmic course: the stars, as well as the sun, follow a regular rhythm. Were the sun to abandon this rhythm even for a moment, an upheaval of untold magnitude would take place in the universe. Rhythm holds sway in the whole of nature, up to the level of man. Then, and only then is there a change. The rhythm which through the course of the year holds sway in the forces of growth, of propagation and so forth, ceases when we come to man. For man is to have his roots in freedom; and the more highly civilised he is, the more does this rhythm decline. As the light disappears at Christmas-time, so has rhythm apparently departed from the life of man: chaos prevails. But man must give birth again to rhythm out of his innermost being, his own initiative. By the exercise of his own will he must so order his life that it flows in rhythm, immutable and sure; his life must take its course with the regularity of the sun. Just as a change of the sun's orbit is inconceivable, it is equally inconceivable that the rhythm of such a life can be broken. The Sun Hero was regarded as the embodiment of this inalterable rhythm; through the power of the higher Man within him, he was able to direct the rhythm of the course of his own life. And this Sun Hero, this higher Man, was born in the Holy Night. In this sense, Christ Jesus is a Sun Hero and was conceived as such in the first centuries of Christendom. Hence the festival of His birth was instituted at the time of the year when, since ancient days, the festival of the birth of the Sun Hero had been celebrated. Hence, too, all that was associated with the history of the life of Christ Jesus; the Mass at midnight celebrated by the early Christians in the depths of caves was in remembrance of the festival of the sun. In this Mass an ocean of light streamed forth at midnight out of the darkness as a remembrance of the rising of the spiritual Sun in the Mysteries. Hence the birth of Christ in the cave—again a remembrance of the cave of rock out of which life was born—life symbolised by the ears of corn. As earthly life was born out of the dead stone, so out of the depths was born the Highest—Christ Jesus. Associated with the festival of His nativity was the legend of the three Priest-Sages, the Three Kings. They bring to the Child: gold, the symbol of the outer, wisdom-filled man; myrrh, the symbol of the victory of life over death; and frankincense the symbol of the cosmic ether in which the Spirit lives.

And so in the whole content of the Christmas Festival we feel something echoing from primeval ages. It has come over to us in the imagery belonging to Christianity. The symbols of Christianity are reflections of the most ancient symbols used by man. The lighted Christmas Tree is one of them. For us it is a symbol of the Tree of Paradise, representing all-embracing material nature. Spiritual Nature is represented by the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.

There is a legend which gives expression to the true meaning of the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Seth stands before the Gate of Paradise, craving entry. The Cherubim guarding the entrance with a fiery sword, allow him to pass. This is a sign of Initiation. In Paradise, Seth finds the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge firmly intertwined. The Archangel Michael who stands in the presence of God, allows him to take three grains of seed from this intertwined Tree. The Tree stands there as a prophetic indication of the future of mankind. When the whole of mankind has attained Initiation and found knowledge, then only the Tree of Life will remain, there will be no more death. But in the meantime only he who is an Initiate may take from this Tree the three grains of seed -the three seeds which symbolise the three higher members of man's being. When Adam died, Seth placed these three grains of seed in his mouth and out of them grew a flaming bush. From the wood cut from this bush, new sprouts, new leaves burst ever and again. But within the flaming ring around the bush there was written: "I am He who was, who is, who is to be"—in other words, that which passes through all incarnations, the power of ever-evolving man who descends out of the light into the darkness and out of the darkness ascends into the light.

The staff with which Moses performed his miracles is cut from the wood of the bush; the door of Solomon's Temple is made of it; the wood is carried to the waters of the pool of Bethesda and from it the pool receives the healing properties of which we are told. And from this same wood the Cross of Christ Jesus is made, the wood of the Cross which is a symbol of life that passes into death and yet has within it the power to bring forth new life. The great symbol of worlds stands before us here: Life the conqueror of Death. The wood of this Cross has grown out of the three grains of seed of the Tree of Paradise.

The Rose Cross is also a symbol of the death of the lower nature and the resurrection of the higher. Goethe expressed the same thought in the words:

"As long as thou best it not,
This Dying and Becoming,
Thou'rt but a dreary guest
Upon the dark earth."

The Tree of Paradise and the wood of the Cross are connected in a most wonderful way. Even though the Cross is always an Easter symbol, it deepens our conception of the Christmas Mystery too. We feel how in this night of Christ's Nativity, new, upwelling life streams towards us, This thought is indicated in the fresh roses adorning this Tree; they say to us: the Tree of the Holy Night has not yet become the wood of the Cross but the power to become that wood is beginning to arise in it. The Roses, growing out of the green, are a symbol of the Eternal which springs from the Temporal.

The square is the symbol of the fourfold nature of man; physical body, ether-body, astral body and ego.

The triangle is the symbol for Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man.

Above the triangle is the symbol for Tarok. Those who were initiated into the Egyptian Mysteries knew how to interpret this sign. They knew too, how to read the Book of Thoth, consisting of 78 leaves on which were inscribed all happenings in the world from the beginning to the end, from Alpha to Omega and which could be read if the signs were rightly put together. These pictures gave expression to the life that dies and then springs again to new life. Whoever could combine the right numbers with the right pictures, were able to read the Book. This wisdom of numbers and of pictures had been taught from time immemorial. In the Middle Ages it was still in the fore ground although little of it survives to-day.

Above this symbol is the Tao—the sign that is a reminder of the conception of the Divine held by our early forefathers; it comes from the word: TAO. Before Europe, Asia and Africa were scenes of human civilisation, these early forefathers of ours lived on the continent of Atlantis which was finally submerged by mighty floods. In the Germanic sagas of Nifelheim or Nebelheim, the memory of Atlantis still lives. For Atlantis was not surrounded by pure air. Vast cloud-masses moved over the land, like those to be seen to-day clustering around the peaks of high mountains. The sun and moon did not shine clearly in the heavens—they were surrounded by rainbows—by the sacred Iris. At that time man understood the language of nature. To-day he no longer understands what speaks to him in the rippling of waves, in the noise of winds, in the rustling of leaves, in the rolling of thunder—but in old Atlantis he understood it. He felt it all as a reality. And within these voices of clouds and waters and leaves and winds a sound rang forth: TAO—That am I. The man of Atlantis heard and understood it, feeling that Tao pervaded the whole universe.

Finally, the cosmic symbol of Man is the pentagram, hanging at the top of the tree. Of the deepest meaning of the pentagram we may not now speak. But it is the star of humanity, of evolving humanity; it is the star that all wise men follow, as did the Priest-Sages of old. It symbolises the very essence and meaning of earth-existence. It comes to birth in the Holy Night because the greatest Light shines forth from the deepest Darkness. Man is living on towards a state where the Light is to be born in him, where words full of significance will be replaced by others equally significant, where it will no longer be said: ‘The Darkness comprehendeth not the Light,’ but when the truth will ring out from cosmic space: The Darkness gives way before the Light that shines in the Star of Humanity—and now the Darkness comprehendeth the Light!

This should resound and the spiritual Light ray forth from the Christmas Festival. We will celebrate this Christmas Festival as the Festival of the supreme Ideal of mankind, for then it will bring to birth in our souls the joyful confidence: I too shall experience the birth of the higher Man within me! In me too the birth of the Saviour, the birth of the Christos will take place!

Positions of the symbols on the Christmas Tree