The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear Friends,

The attainment of occult knowledge—it is necessary we should remind ourselves of the fact now and again—is no child's play; and if anyone approaches it with the idea that it will offer him theories to which he can either remain indifferent or, if they are not so remote as all that, still theories that require no more than the intellect to grasp them, he will find he is very much mistaken.

We have been considering the human form—to all appearances something quite external. And yet I have told you that it is this human form, as we have described it in its three members, which the student in occultism must take for his starting-point. He must—in most cases—begin with the feelings and impressions that come to him from a study of the human form, because in so doing he takes his start from something that is as independent as possible of the inner life.

There is as a matter of fact another possibility, and it is sometimes even desirable, not only for the theosophist, but also for the occultist,—namely, to start from the inner life of soul. We are, however, then brought face to face with an almost insurmountable obstacle. As you know, we have in our inner man not only what was already present there when Earth evolution began, but throughout our incarnations upon Earth spiritual beings and forces have contributed all the time to its upbuilding and development. Ever since primeval times, Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces have had their part in all the work that has been done upon our inner man. If you take this into consideration—and you must do so, for it is true—then you will see that were we to take our start from the inner man, there would be some uncertainty as to whether we should get free of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, or whether we should not rather remain entangled in their influences and these then find their way into our occult vision. Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces can easily penetrate into the soul without man's being aware of it. Many things that go to make up the content of our life of soul,—we may think them to be exceedingly good, and yet they may not be so at all, so mixed up are they with the influences exerted upon us by Lucifer and Ahriman.

The surest and safest way for the pupil is therefore to take his start from the human form or figure. Upon the human form Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces have had least influence. Please note, I say “least” influence. They have had influence on the human form, but there least of all; a far greater influence has been exerted on the inner life of soul. The human form always remains, therefore, the most healthy starting-point if the pupil will hold firmly to the ancient occult saying that man in respect of his form is an image of the Godhead. The pupil does well to follow this course; for he links himself on to the Divine, choosing for his point of departure the picture or image of the Godhead,—and that is good and important.

Nevertheless this path has its difficulties. If you start from inner soul experiences and by means of occult development succeed in looking out from these inner soul experiences into the spiritual world, then the impressions of the spiritual world last for a comparatively long time. The consequence is that when by means of inner soul experiences alone someone succeeds in crossing the Threshold and entering the spiritual world, then he experiences spiritual vision and can as it were take time to look at the things before him; they do not pass quickly, they continue for a considerable length of time. Herein lies, we might say, the advantage, the convenience of starting from inner soul experiences. It has, however, the drawback already indicated, that one is quite unprotected and cannot recognise or estimate rightly Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences. It is, in fact, true to say that at no time are people less aware of Lucifer and the devil than when they set out on the occult path from the inner life of soul. The other starting-point has the drawback that the vision to which we attain, the Imaginations that present themselves, last only a very little while, they do not stay; so that we require to develop a certain presence of mind, if we want to catch them.

Let me now give you a picture of what happens when a pupil in occultism, taking his start from the human form, penetrates into the super-sensible world. I do not know whether any of you will have observed in himself a remarkable experience that happens every day but has to be quite consciously observed if one wants to gain knowledge from it. I mean the experience that when you have directed your gaze upon a bright object, the impression remains in the eye long after the eye has ceased to gaze upon the object. Goethe made a very special study, as he tells us repeatedly in his Theory of Colours, of these after-images that remain behind in the organism,—that is, inside the human form. When, for example, you lie down in bed and put out the light and shut your eyes, then you can have before you for a long time a picture or image of the light—as it were, echoing on. As a rule, the impression from without is exhausted when we have had this “echoing” experience. The vibration, the movement caused by the external impression has finished, and for most persons that is the end of the matter. This is, however, where the pupil must take his start, proceeding, as we said, from the human form,—that is to say, from what we know the human form to be on the physical plane in ordinary life. So long as he continues to observe only the after-images, nothing of any importance will happen. The interest begins when something is still left after the image of the object has disappeared. For what then remains does not come from the eye at all, it is a process, an experience that is given us by the ether body. Anyone who has himself carried out this experiment will not bring forward the otherwise perfectly reasonable suggestion that what we have here can still only be an after-image of the physical body. People say this who have not had the experience. Once they have had the experience, they say it no more. For what remains afterwards is something totally different from anything that has relation to an external impression.

Generally speaking, what remains, for example, after an impression of colour or of light is by no means an appearance of colour or light. Indeed, we can say that if it is colour or light, then it is illusion! It is a tone, of which one is quite certain that it has not been heard with the ear, that the ear has had no part in its reaching us. What remains can also be some other impression, but it is always different from the external impression. The occultist has to learn completely to overcome external impressions, for occultism is there for the blind, for example, who have never in their life seen an external object, never once had any external impression of light by means of the eye. Most of the ghostlike figures that people see are merely memory pictures of sense impressions that have been changed by the play of fancy. Occult experience is not dependent on whether a person can use some particular sense organ or not, it occurs quite independently of the sense organs.

Having now made himself an accurate picture of the complete human figure, the pupil must hold it firmly before him. It must live before him as an Imagination. With which of the senses or in what manner he fixes the human form is of no account. What is important is that in some way or other he fixes this human form—that is to say, through the human form a picture, an Imagination, is evoked in him, a living picture. The pupil may now take for his starting-point the external picture of the human form. It is, however, also possible for him to start from the inner feeling of the body, the feeling he has of being within the form.

When the occultist succeeds in experiencing in this way something like an after-image in respect of the human form—when, that is to say, having first comprehended this human form as he finds it in the physical world, he allows it then to “echo on” in him in the way that an after-image echoes on—when he is able to have this experience and afterwards to wait until the image of the human form is past and gone, he will obtain a picture of the human form which is no longer an image of the physical form but is experienced in the ether body.

You see, for the pupil in occultism it is a question of experiencing himself in the ether body. And when the pupil has come to the point of experiencing himself in this way in the ether body, then this experience is indeed a profound one! It falls at once into two distinct experiences. It does not remain whole and single. And these two experiences have to be expressed by two words. We have to say that the pupil experiences first, death and second, Lucifer.

Since the experiences of which we are now speaking are not of the senses, but are in their very essence and nature higher experiences, it is naturally not altogether easy to describe them. Words are for the most part taken from the world of the senses and they remind us always, in their application, of the world of the senses. But these are experiences that we feel to be inward rather than outward; and if we make use of words to describe them, it is rather for the purpose of evoking some conception, some picture only of what is in very truth experienced.

The experience of death is somewhat as follows. The pupil knows that the human form, which he has first perceived and then taken as his starting-point, has no continuance outside Earth existence. It is bound up with Earth existence. Whoever wants to go beyond Earth existence, whoever wants to reckon at all with a super-sensible life, must realise that this human figure can be experienced as such only on Earth; it must go to pieces—it does so before his eyes—the moment he passes beyond Earth existence, and show itself as death. In the ether body the human form can show itself in no other way than as given over to death.

This, then, must be the first impression, and here the pupil may easily founder; for the impression made by the shattered and destroyed human form is one that sinks very deeply into the soul. It is a fact that many who have aspired to be occultists have not been able to surmount this first impression and have said to themselves: “Fear of what may be still to come stops me from going any further.” It is necessary for the pupil to behold death, for the simple reason that only so can he know in all certainty that in the Earth body it is impossible to experience the higher world; one must come right out of the body, one must leave it.

That is actually the next impression the pupil receives. I do not mean to imply that the higher world can never be experienced while in the Earth body. But the pupil in occultism must inevitably come at this point to the experience and knowledge that I have described. It may be expressed in the words: He experiences Lucifer.

Lucifer is there before him, and directs his attention to a fact which carries with it for the pupil a very great temptation, If we had to put into words what is experienced in making the acquaintance of Lucifer, we might express it in the following way. Lucifer makes the pupil attentive to the frailty and destructibility of the human form He says: “Look at this human form. See how destructible it is; a destructible form have the Gods given you—the Gods who are my enemies.” That is what Lucifer tells him, and he points out to him that the Higher Gods were placed under the necessity of making man destructible in his form; he shows the pupil that They could not do otherwise, owing to certain conditions of which we shall speak later. And then he shows him what he, Lucifer, wanted to make of man, what man would have become if he had been given the handling of him,—alone, unhindered by his opponents.

There is something extraordinarily seductive in the picture Lucifer gives of what man would have become if he, Lucifer, alone had had the making of him. For Lucifer says, “Look around you and see what remains of you when your human form has gone to pieces.” When the human form has been destroyed, when man turns round, as it were, and sees himself flayed—spiritually speaking—, when his form has been taken from him, then he beholds two things. In the first place, he sees that what remains is in fact conformable to the super-sensible world, is in a certain respect immortal, whilst the body is mortal. This fact puts a powerful argument in the hands of Lucifer, wherewith he may tempt man. Man's attention has first been directed to the image of God which he has, which, however, is destructible and bound to the Earth. Then Lucifer directs him to something else in him that is immortal, not subject to death. Therein lies the temptation. But when man comes to consider and observe that which is immortal in him, when he contemplates that which shakes off the external form after it has broken up into the three parts of which we have discovered it to be composed, then man sees himself and sees at what cost Lucifer has made him immortal. For man, when he looks back upon himself, discovers he is no longer man. Threefold man, as we have described him, has always been expressed in occult symbolism in certain pictures. These pictures, these Imaginations, have throughout the ages had something to say to man. Very few, however, have understood their wonderful significance. The upper man, as man sees him when he turns back to look upon himself, is different in different people. The picture that presents itself here is also more or less transient. It gives nevertheless an approximate idea of the impression man experiences. There is no longer a human countenance; the countenance is suggestive of a bull, or else of a lion. Experiences in the super-sensible world have often a quite grotesque appearance; and it transpires that, although not always, yet generally speaking, a woman who looks back in this way perceives herself more like a lion, a man more like a bull. There is no getting away from it, it is really so! And connected with these two pictures—which are intermingled, for the man is not entirely devoid of lion, nor the woman entirely devoid of bull, the two merge into one another—blended in at the same time with these is the picture of a bird, which has always been called the eagle and which belongs in the whole picture.

Nor has the worst yet been told! Many a man might be ready to make up his mind to be a bull, a lion or an eagle as a price for immortality. That is, however, only the upper man. The continuation down below is a wild, savage dragon. Here you have the source of all the numerous sagas and stories of the dragon. Traditional religious symbolism has always given man the four pictures,—Man, Lion, Bull, Eagle; but it has given no more than indications, as, e.g., in the account of the Fall, that a wild Dragon also belongs to man. The dragon, however, has its place in the totality of man, it is to be found there; and man has to say to himself: Lucifer is indeed able to promise you immortality—it is a sure and well-founded promise—but only at the cost of your form and figure, so that you go on living in the form you have become under the influence of Lucifer. And now we can see how it has come about that we have received such an inner form; it is because of the influence of Lucifer in Earth evolution. We perceive also that this Earth evolution has under the influence of Lucifer given to man super-sensible gifts one after another. Wisdom and everything connected with wisdom comes to man by many and manifold paths from Lucifer. Lucifer can show man, when he meets him, how much man really owes to him. But what I described just now has also to be reckoned among the things man owes to Lucifer.

The question is bound to arise: “Is there then no ray of comfort in this self-knowledge?” For, when all is said, it is not exactly comforting if this new insight only leads to a description of how man is degraded to the rank of an animal. The animal is, moreover, tripartite and does not belong to the “higher” animals; rather is man debased to the animal stage that exists on the Earth in the picture of an amphibian. No, such a conception can hardly be called comforting!

This is the experience which I described to you before as being so extraordinarily fleeting and transient. One needs great presence of mind to grasp the impression at all, to get a view of it, as it were. It goes past one so swiftly. That is the disadvantage of starting from the human form. People do not as a rule have sufficient presence of mind to grasp death and Lucifer and then turn round, spiritually, and survey themselves. Nothing we see brings any comfort, for ultimately we have only two courses to choose from. We can hold to what is mortal and destructible in us and comes from the Gods, the opponents of Lucifer; or we can choose immortality and along with it the degradation of the human form.

The presence of all these things, the impression made by them, is in the first moment terrible and paralysing. For this reason a great part of the task of the occult teacher consists in warning people not to pay too much heed to such impressions, or indeed to any first super-sensible impressions, because these impressions, whether they are of a kind to occasion joy or pain, can never be trusted as guides. The right course is to wait patiently, very patiently. It may well be that when one has carried out the experiment described, a feeling of absolute hopelessness comes over one; to persevere then in calling forth the impression again and again requires courage. But this is what we must do if we would make practical progress in occultism, and a time will come when we find, as it were, ground for our feet.

What the present moment affords—on that can man most assuredly not rely. Everything he achieves in life is seen now to be destructible, impermanent. Lucifer promises something eternal. But not to that either can man hold. A moment comes, however, when there is one thing of which he can take firm hold; it is not anything of the present, but a memory that can remain with him from ordinary life on Earth. This memory must stay with him like a thought out of Earth life, and intermingle in the meeting with death and Lucifer It streams over from Earth life, and is suddenly there, this memory, this thought, which alone can give man support and stay. But it is singularly feeble, and great energy is required to hold it. This one and only thing in life which man can recall as something sure and certain is the thought of Self, of “ I.” It is the thought: Over there I have been a Self. There is, as we said, extreme difficulty in holding this thought. Many of you will know how difficult it is to bring over a dream from the other state of consciousness into the present moment. And it can happen all too easily that when man has entered the super-sensible world, this “ I” thought is like a dream that he has had in the Earth world and does not remember. Like a forgotten dream is this “ I ” thought, when he has come into the other consciousness; and the difficulty of holding it has even increased for man in the course of evolution. In ancient times, in times that lie far back in the remote past, it was comparatively easy to carry over the “ I ” picture from here on Earth to the Beyond, but in the course of the evolution of mankind it has become more and more difficult.

When I say, “The thought of the I comes,” you must think of it in the following way. For the present-day pupil in occultism, the thought often does indeed come. It does not merely remain with man as a dream picture,—no, it can flash up in him beyond as a sudden memory. For this to happen, however, help is needed. It can happen, but not without help,—an important point. When the pupil enters the super-sensible world, then under present day conditions of evolution the I would almost certainly remain behind like a forgotten dream, if help were not forthcoming.

If I am to give a name to the help that the pupil in occultism needs today in order that he may not forget the thought of the I when he ascends into the super-sensible world, there is but one expression I can use, and that is being together with the Christ Impulse on Earth. That is what helps! In present-day conditions of Earth evolution everything depends at this point on what sort of a relation man has had with the Christ Impulse during his life on Earth, and in what measure he has let It become alive in him. On this depends whether the thought of the I is lost in forgetfulness when man ascends into the super-sensible world, or whether it remains with him as the one and only sure support that he can take over with him from Earth into the super-sensible world.

The Christian of today has many remarkable and beautiful things to say about the Christ Impulse. But one who consciously in the Christian sense enters the higher worlds knows still more of the Christ Impulse. And this more that he knows is exceedingly important and significant. He knows that the Christ Impulse is the one and only thing that can come to our help when we are in danger of forgetting the I of Earth evolution. How is it that in addition to all that the Christ Impulse has already been able to be for man on Earth, in addition to the untold blessings that man has received and is still receiving from It, for his comfort, for his goodness of heart and mind, for his education and culture, there is also this,—that the Christ Impulse in the measure in which It works in man, can bring it about that the I of Earth does not need to be forgotten? Where can we look for the explanation of this?

If I am to give you an answer to this question, I must draw your attention to facts which, although you may not know them from occultism, you can yet acquaint yourselves with by an intelligent study of the Gospels. For there are two ways of coming to a knowledge of the reasons why the Christ Impulse can give this help. The first is the path of occultism,—an occultism such as rightly belongs to the stage of evolution reached by man in our times. And the second is the path of a thoroughly intelligent and deep study of the Gospels. The Gospels have one remarkable and unique feature, as compared with other religious records. People do not always notice it, but it is there, none the less. Take all that you can find in the external history of religions, take the whole content of the religions founded even in Post-Christian times, and compare with this what you read in the Christian records, the Gospels. If you look into the history of the founder of any religion and take pains to understand him, you will find you can only do so by learning to know and understand the super-sensible inspirations or intuitions which he received. Enquire of the Pre-Christian founders of religion whence came their wisdom and you will be told,—in the case of Buddha, for example, how he acquired under the Bodhi tree that great and high enlightenment which enabled him to proclaim what he called the “holy doctrine.” You are directed, that is to say, if you want to know the ground and source of Buddha's teaching, to a super-sensible enlightenment.

Nor is it any different in Post-Christian times. Take Mohammed. You must look to the visions, the revelations Mohammed received from super-sensible worlds, in order to explain why this or that was spoken in such and such a way. It is the same with all founders of religions; and not only with founders of religions, but with all who have given authentic revelations. We are directed to their divine inspiration, to the super-sensible that shone into them. We have quite exact knowledge of this in the case of Pythagoras. And in Plato's writings we can find everywhere indications that while he did not give all he knew, for what he did communicate he received inspiration through the Mysteries,—that is to say, he underwent evolution into higher worlds. Even in the case of Socrates we read of a “Daimon,” and indeed it would be absurd to leave out the Daimon in speaking of Socrates. What Socrates developed for man on the foundation of pure intelligence, he received through his Daimon. Look where you will, everywhere you will find the same.

Now let me ask; you to turn from these examples to the Gospels. Go through them carefully and you will find but one single occasion in the whole three years of His sojourn on Earth when, in the sense of initiation-experience, Christ Jesus looked into, or had to look into, the super-sensible world. The only time that you will find anything of this kind is in the scene of the Temptation, and even there you are not told that Christ had to learn to hold fast to a super-sensible good God, but only that He had a meeting with that which was for Him the “evil,”—with Satan, with Lucifer.

We are told that this Temptation was for Him from its very beginning no temptation. Read the passages through for yourselves and you will see how unique is the picture given us in the Gospels. Christ passed through what the initiators have always had to pass through, but from the beginning He holds steadfastly to His God, withstands the attacks and utters the word: “Get thee hence, Satan! For it is written, Thou shalt worship God, thy Lord, and Him only shalt thou serve.” Lucifer cannot tempt Him any further and leaves Him. In all the other scenes and events that follow the Temptation, in everything else the Gospels have to tell, we can discover nothing at all to be compared with the accounts that have to be given of the life of initiates, where we read a description of how and in what manner they learned in the course of their life to penetrate into the spiritual worlds.

We can speak of the Christ, right from the very beginning, as of an “initiate”—that is, one who has direct and immediate connection with the super-sensible world. I have done this in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact and continually in lectures. But one cannot in the case of the Christ speak of His “initiation,” one cannot speak in His case of progress through initiations. We can say that He is an “initiated” one, but we can say nothing at all about how He became “initiated.” That is a profound distinction.

Compare all that is told of the life of the “initiated” with the account you have in the Gospels. Perhaps you will observe—I have shown it in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact—that the writers of the Gospels needed only to take the ancient ritual in accordance with which initiation was carried out, in order to describe the life of Christ. In relating the ritual they were relating the events of the life of Christ Jesus. But they could never say that He actually underwent what they were describing. Take such a scene—pregnant with deep meaning—as the Transfiguration, or the Prayer on the Mount of Olives. These are events which if you had set out to relate them of some other initiated person you would have had to describe in quite a different way. You could not merely say that he went up to the Mount of Olives and that there drops of sweat fell from him like blood; in the case of another initiated person you would have to tell what he experienced there, how he was changed on the Mount of Olives. Christ was not changed. The meeting with His God on the Mount of Olives was not of such a character that we can feel He has anything to learn there. Similarly, what He passed through at the Transfiguration was not for Himself an enlightenment. For the others, for His companions, it was an enlightenment, but not for Him. For Him it was perfectly natural and comprehensible; He could not learn anything new from it.

What on the other hand should we expect to be told concerning any other initiated person? We must be shown how he advanced step by step on the path of knowledge. In the case of higher initiates we may expect to be told of how they brought a great deal with them from earlier incarnations and perhaps only needed still to pass through the very last stage. We find nothing of all this with the Christ. We have the story of the Temptation, and that is all. What we find in the Christ is that He was permeated through and through in the very highest degree with Divine Self-consciousness. This marks the opening scene of the three-year life of Christ. And then we have before us this wonderful picture,—the picture of highly exalted divine revelations proceeding directly and immediately from One who is Earth Man. In the case of any other initiated person we have to tell how he first attained to this or that stage of initiation and was then able to make this or that revelation. With Christ Jesus on the other hand it all wells up freely in Him from the very beginning, and we are not told that in the course of the three years of His life this or that stage of initiation was passed. If anyone were to treat the description of the Death and Resurrection of Christ Jesus as though they were such stages, it would only demonstrate his failure to perceive the fact that the Resurrection took place by virtue of the power that was already there in the living Christ. The Resurrection is not an act of initiation. Christ Jesus was not awakened to life by some other initiate but by the Divine Power that comes from beyond the Earth, the Power that was communicated to Him through the Baptism. The Resurrection was given at the time of the Baptism, it was already there in that moment; whereas the act which in the case of other initiated persons is called “Resurrection” has to be brought about by the deeds and instructions of an elder initiate.

This is the reason why I had to describe the Christ Event as I did in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact,—which was written more than ten years ago and appeared shortly after. We have to see it somewhat in the following way Christ lived His life on Earth. In this life many events and processes took place. How do we describe these events and processes? We describe them best by relating what an initiated one of olden time had to pass through. What the initiated in olden time passed through in his Mystery School, that unfolded itself in the case of Christ as historical fact. Therefore, the Evangelists could use the ancient books of initiation, not in order to describe an initiation of Christ but to write a biography of Him. That is the gist of the argument in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact.

It is evidence of the very deepest misunderstanding of the life of Christ if we speak of Him not as one already initiated but as one who had during Earth evolution to undergo initiation. Anyone who wants to explain the life of Christ as an initiation is making a very great mistake in regard to the Spirit of Christianity. He would understand Christianity as though its Founder were not already an Initiated One, but had first to be initiated, as though in describing the life of Christ one were describing processes of His initiation.

It is accordingly necessary, in speaking of the life of Christ, to make it perfectly clear that the expressions which are used cannot be applied in the same sense as they are applied to the ancient—or any other—initiation, but that they are used in an absolutely physical earthly sense, that they refer to a history, to an event in history that lies outside initiation.

The importance of this cannot be over-emphasised. No graver mistake could be made than to overlook what has just been explained and speak of an “initiation of Christ,”—not in the sense that it is spoken of in my lectures “At the Gates of Theosophy” or in those on “The St. John Gospel,” but clothing the life of Christ in the garb of an account of an initiation. In doing so, one would from the very outset be placing oneself in contradiction to every reasonable interpretation of the Gospels. It would be impossible to find the way to the heart and kernel of these, or to understand what occultism has to say concerning Christ Jesus. Let us never forget that when we speak of other founders of religion, we have to speak of them as men who have become initiated and we are justified and right in understanding their life as comprising within it an initiation, but that the life of Christ has to be described differently. Although this life of Christ, as it takes its course on Earth, had indeed to make divine revelations, we are not to conceive of any process of initiation shining as it were into this life of Christ and enlightening it. No, Christ was Himself an initiator. Read in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact the passage concerning the true meaning of the miracle of the Raising of Lazarus. You will find it was an initiation that Christ then performed. He Himself was able to initiate; but we can by no means say that Christ was initiated on Earth in the same sense as we have to say Lazarus was initiated by Christ.

In the place of initiation we have the Baptism by John in Jordan. If, however, the Baptism had been the corresponding act of initiation, it would have been described differently. We would have been told how Christ stood there as one awaiting initiation while a far more exalted initiator performed the act of initiation. The other, however, who stands at His side as the instrument for the act is no higher initiator, but is John the Baptist who cannot, in accordance with the facts, be placed higher than Christ Jesus Himself.

It has frequently happened that men have made this mistake. But for a right relation to Christianity, for a true understanding of Christianity, such a mistake is always fatal. We must, therefore, beware of speaking as though Christ had passed through various stages—Birth, Childhood, or again, Baptism or Transfiguration or Resurrection—in the sense in which some initiated person may be said to pass through such stages. The moment we apply to the Christ in the same manner the expressions: Birth, Baptism, Transfiguration, Ascension, we show a complete misunderstanding of Christianity.

All this needs to be clearly understood if we would answer the question: How has it come about that the Christ Impulse is what enables man to carry the memory of his I from ordinary life on Earth into the life of the super-sensible worlds?

Let me ask you to call up a picture before you of what I have tried to show you today, how man meets with death and with Lucifer and how the pupil in occultism comes into a hopeless and desolate situation from which he can only be released if he is able to retain a memory of the thought of the I. And remember then what I said further that the greatest help for the retention of the I thought consists, for a man of the present day, in having placed himself during life on Earth in a relation to the Christ Impulse. Recall too, how in order to establish this fact I set out to explain wherein the life of Christ is different from the life of any other initiated person. Christ comes before us from the outset as One of Whom we are certainly told that He performed deeds on Earth, but of Whom we are not told that He was influenced by a Daimon—like Socrates, or that He sat under a Bodhi tree—like Buddha, or that He had visions—like Mohammed. To imagine any of these would make it impossible to understand the Christ. How the Christ Impulse becomes the means for the pupil to let the I thought live on over into the spiritual world, so that he does not instead have only thoughts that have died, and how the super-sensible world then appears to him,—of this we will speak tomorrow.

Before coming to our main theme I want to make a brief addition to something that was said in the lecture yesterday. I spoke of the fact that really significant happenings in the evolution of humanity can be characterized by expressions derived front processes in the Cosmos. I also emphasized how impossible it is to speak intelligibly and adequately in the words of ordinary language about the great mysteries of existence.

The best way to characterize the deeply significant inter-action between Hermes and Moses, the two great pupils of Zarathustra, is to present it as a repetition, a re-enactment, of a cosmic process, viewed in the light of occult science.

In order to picture this cosmic process, let us again look back to the time when our Earth had separated from the Sun, when each with an independent centre was pursuing a further life of its own in the Cosmos. We can picture that in the far, far distant past, the substantiality of Earth +Sun formed a single whole, one great cosmic body which then divided into two. In saying this it must be remembered that other, parallel cosmic happenings—the splitting off of the other planets belonging to our solar system—are being left out of consideration here. For our immediate purpose the time sequence of these other severances need not be taken into account; it is enough to say that a separation once took place, as the result of which the Sun became an entity and the Earth another.

It must also be remembered that this separation took place in an age when the globe now called ‘Earth’ still contained within it the substantiality of the present Moon. Earth + Moon on thc one side confronted Sun on the other. All the forces, both spiritual and physical, that had been at work before this separation, divided: the coarser elements, the coarser, cruder activities, remained with thc Earth, whereas the higher, spiritual-ethereal activities accompanied the Sun. We must picture to ourselves that for long ages Earth and Sun continued their evolution separately. To begin with, everything going forth from the Sun to the Earth was entirely different in character from the forces streaming from the Sun to-day. Earth-existence, Earth-life, was inward, enclosed, receiving little life from the Sun, little of what rayed down spiritually, taking physical expression, from the Sun.

In this first period of separation from the Sun, the Earth threatened to become barren, arid, mummified. And if the Moon had continued to remain in thc Earth the life that is present on our planet to-day would never have been possible. While the Moon was still contained in the Earth, the life pouring from the Sun could not be fully effective; this was only possible at a later time, when the Earth had separated from itself the substantiality of what is now Moon, and with it the spiritual Beings connected with the Moon.

But very much else is connected with the separation of the Moon from the Earth. It must be realised that everything we call life on our Earth to-day evolved by slow degrees, and Spiritual Science indicates the successive conditions or states of existence which made life possible. Previously there was the Old Saturn-existence, then the Old Sun-existence, then the Old Moon-existence, and finally our Earth-existence. The separation of the Sun and also the earlier union of Earth and Sun were therefore preceded by other, quite different evolutionary processes. And when the Earth began to exist in its present form, it was still united with the substance of all the planets that belong to our solar system and were not separated off until later—the process of separation and differentiation being brought about by forces previously operating during the three preceding evolutionary periods of Old Saturn, Old. Sun, Old Moon.

We know that during the Old Saturn-existence there was no matter, no substance, such as is present to-day; there were no solid bodies, no fluids, even no gaseous, vaporous or aeriform masses. Old Saturn was composed solely of warmth—differentiated warmth. We can therefore say: the body of ancient Saturn consisted of warmth only; everything evolved within the element of warmth. I need not emphasize here that one who ventures to make such a statement is fully aware of how impossible it is for modern physics to conceive of a body consisting solely of warmth; he is also aware that ‘warmth’ is for modern physics a state or condition only, not anything having the character of substance. However that may be, we are not concerned to-day with modern physics but only with the truth.¹

Evolution advanced from the warmth-body of Saturn to the next stage—the stage of Old Sun. There, as described in thc book Occult Science, the warmth-body of Saturn densified. Some of the warmth remained, but the warmth-body densified, in part, to the gaseous, aeriform sate of Old Sun. The process was not only one of densification but also of rarefication—a development upwards, to light. Hence we can say: passing from the warmth-condition of Old Saturn to the stage of Old Sun, we have a cosmic body comprising air, warmth and light.

When the Old Sun-existence advanced to the stage of the Old Moon-existence which preceded that of our Earth, again there was densification and again rarefication. The fluid or watery condition was added to the gaseous, but a change also took place on the other side, in the direction as it wry or spiritualisation, etherealisation. During the Old Moon stage, not only was there light but also the sound-ether or chemical ether. What is here called sound-ether is not to be identified with what we call physical sound or tone. The latter is only a reflection of what is experienced by clairvoyant consciousness as the 'Harmony of the Spheres', as etheric sound or tone weaving as a living power through the Universe. In speaking of this ether and of this sound we are therefore speaking of something far more spiritual, far more ethereal than ordinary sound.

Densification to the solid state took place when Old Moon evolved to Earth. On Old Moon there were no solid bodies such as exist on Earth, where the solid condition came into existence for the first time. On the Earth, therefore, WC now have, on the one side, warmth, the gaseous and watery states, and solid bodies; and on the other side, light-ether, sound-ether, and then life-ether. Evolution on the Earth has reached this stage. Thus on the Earth there are seven elemental states or conditions, whereas on Old Saturn there was only the one state—that of warmth.

When our Earth emerged from the cosmic night at the beginning of its existence, when it was still united with the Sun and with the other planets, we must picture it living and weaving in these seven elemental conditions. But with the separation from the Sun something very remarkable took place.

Warmth and light are present for external life to-day since it is affected by the influences that stream from the Sun to the Earth and belong to the whole domain of sense-perception; but the sound-ether and the life-ether do not belong to this domain. The workings of the sound-ether manifest themselves only in chemical combinations and dissolutions, that is to say, in processes operating in material existence. What we call the working of the life-ether as it streams in from the Sun cannot be directly perceived by man in the sense that light is perceptible when through the senses he distinguishes light from darkness. The active workings or effects of life are perceived in living beings, but not the instreaming life-ether itself. Hence science too is compelled to admit that life per se is a riddle.—

Thus the two highest kinds of etheric manifestation—the life-ether and the sound-ether—although they proceed from the Sun as extremely delicate emanations—are not directly manifest in Earth-existence. Although these emanations ray down from the Sun, they are hidden from ordinary perception. Yet in modern existence too, something corresponding to what lives in the sound-ether and life-ether is perceptible on the Earth in the inner nature of man. The direct influences and effects of the life-ether and the sound-ether (the harmony of the spheres) are not externally perceptible on the Earth, but what takes effect in the constitution of man is perceptible.

The easiest way in which I can explain this will be to re-mind you of the process of human evolution on Earth. In very ancient times and on into the Atlantean epoch, man was endowed with a faculty of clairvoyance enabling him to behold not only a material world as he does to-day but also the spiritual backgrounds of material existence. This was possible for man because in those ancient times there was an intermediate state between the waking consciousness that is ours to-day and what we call the sleeping state. In the waking state man perceived the things of the physical world of the senses; in the sleeping state to-day he neither perceives nor is aware of anything at all; he simply goes on living.—That at any rate is true of the great majority of people. If you were to investigate clairvoyantly man's life during sleep you would make startling discoveries—although only those people who look no deeper than the surface of things would be taken aback by them.

While man is asleep his astral body and Ego are outside his physical and etheric bodies. But it must not be imagined that astral body and Ego during sleep are like a misty cloud hovering in the vicinity of the physical body. What an inferior kind of astral clairvoyance sees in the form of a cloud and which we call the astral body, is only the very crudest beginning of what the human being reveals during sleep. If anyone were to regard this cloudlike formation near the physical and etheric bodies as the only phenomenon of importance he would simply be basing himself upon the lowest forms of astral clairvoyance. The truth is that during sleep man is a being of vast magnitude. At the moment of going to sleep, the inner forces in the astral body and in the Ego actually begin to expand over the whole solar system, to become part of it. From every direction man draws into his astral body and into his Ego forces which strengthen this life during sleep, and on waking he contracts into the narrower confines within his skin and pours into these what he has absorbed during the night from the whole solar system. That is why medieval occultists too called this spiritual body of man the ‘astral’ body, because it is united with the worlds of the stars and draws its forces from them. During sleep at night, then, man actually expands over the whole solar system.

What is it that permeates the astral body during sleep when it is outside the physical and etheric bodies? It is the weaving life of the harmonies of the spheres, forces that can otherwise operate only in thc sound-ether. Just as when a violin bow is drawn across the edge of a metal disc strewn with sand the vibrations pulsing through the air also pulsate through the sand and produce the well-known Chladni sound-figures, so do the harmonies of the spheres vibrate through the human being during sleep and bring order again into what has been cast into disorder during the day through his sense-perceptions. The weaving forces of the life-ether also permeate him during sleep, but he is entirely unaware of this inner life of his sheaths when he is separated from the physical and etheric bodies. In the normal state, man has the power of perception only when he again plunges down into the physical and etheric bodies, using the outer organs of the etheric body for thinking and those of the physical body for sense-perception.

But in ancient times there were intermediate states between waking life and sleep, states which can be induced to-day only by abnormal means and because of the dangers inseparable from such conditions, ought never to be induced. In Atlantean times, however, these faculties of perception that functioned normally in the intermediate states between waking and sleeping, enabled man to be transported into the domain of the forces living and weaving in the sound-ether and the life-ether. In other words: through clairvoyance in its old form, man was able in that distant past to be aware of what was being radiated to him by the Sun as the harmony of the spheres and the life that pulses through cosmic space—although the earthly effects of the sound-ether and the life-ether were perceptible only in living beings in the external world.

Such experiences gradually ceased to be possible; with the loss of the old clairvoyance the door closed against these perceptions and something different came into being, namely the inner power of cognition. Only then did man learn to reflect, to ponder, to cogitate. What we to-day call reflection about the things of the physical world, in other words an inner activity, began to develop only when the old clairvoyance was fading away. In the early epochs of Atlantis, man had no inner life such as he has to-day—an inner life of feelings, sentient experiences, thoughts and mental concepts, which actually constitute the creative impulse in culture and civilization. In the intermediate states between waking and sleeping his whole being was outpoured in a spiritual world and the material world of the senses seemed to be veiled in mist.

With the gradual disappearance of the old clairvoyance, external life increased in importance. A faint reflection of the harmony of the spheres and of the working of the life-ether was present in man's inner nature. But the reflection of the harmony of the spheres faded away to the same extent as man became inwardly aware of feelings and perceptions which mirrored the external world to him and constitute his inner life to-day. To the extent to which he felt himself an ‘I’, an Ego-being, his perception of the divine, all-pervading life-ether vanished from him. His condition had to be acquired at the cost of being deprived of certain aspects of external life. As an earthly being, man felt that the life he could no longer experience as streaming directly from the Sun was enclosed within him; and in his inner life to-day He has only a faint reflection of the sublime cosmic life, of the harmony of the spheres and the life-ether.

The development of man's faculty of cognition was also a kind of repetition of the Earth's own evolution. The Earth, when it separated from the Sun and became self-enclosed, would have hardened completely if all the substances left within it after the separation had been retained. The Sun's influence could not, to begin with, find entrance into the process of thc Earth's evolution and this state of things lasted until the Moon was separated from the Earth, together with all those substances and qualities that were making it impossible for the Earth to receive direct influences and forces from the Sun. Thus it was through having cast out the Moon that the Earth was able to receive the influences and forces of the now separated Sun. The Earth sent part of itself, the Moon, towards the Sun, in the opposite direction to that in which it had itself separated from the Sun, and the Moon then reflected back to the Earth the influences of the Sun, just as outwardly it reflects its light. The separation of the Moon from the Earth was an event of untold significance: the Earth had opened itself to the influences and forces of the Sun.

A cosmic event of this kind had necessarily to be re-enacted in the life of man as well. It was only when the Earth had long since opened itself to the workings of the Sun that the right point of time arrived for man to shut himself off from the direct influences of the Sun. The direct influences and forces of thc Sun were still active in the clairvoyance of Atlantean man. And just as there had come a time when the Earth began to harden, so too there came a time for man when he withdrew into his own inner nature, developed an inner life and could no longer receive the direct workings of the Sun. This process of the development of an inner life, when man could no longer be open to the Sun's influences and could receive only faint reflections within himself of the workings of the life-ether, the sound-ether, the harmonies of the spheres—this process lasted for long ages, right on into the post-Atlantean era.

In the earliest epochs of Atlantean evolution men had been directly aware of the Sun's influences. Then they shut them-selves off; and when these influences could no longer penetrate into them and their own inner life asserted itself strongly, it was only in the sacred Mysteries, through the practice of what may be called ‘Yoga’ that the spiritual powers of the pupils could be trained as it were to defy the normal conditions of Earth-existence and become directly aware of the workings of the Sun. Thus in the second half of the Atlantean epoch there were sanctuaries, appropriately called ‘Oracles’, where from among a humanity no longer able in a normal way to be aware of the direct workings of the sound-ether and the life-ether, pupils and dedicated disciples of the sacred wisdom were so trained that by first suppressing all perception through the senses, they could become aware of the manifestations of these higher ethers.

In places where genuine spiritual science was cultivated, this possibility actually remained in the post-Atlantean epoch—so persistently indeed that even external science, without understanding the meaning of it, has preserved a tradition originating in the School of Pythagoras to the effect that the harmonies of the spheres can become audible. But external science immediately turns anything of the nature of the harmony of the spheres into an abstraction—which of course it is not—and has no inkling of the reality. In the Pythagorean Schools the power to become aware of the harmony of the spheres was understood to be the re-opening of man's being to the sound-ether and to the divine life-ether.

It was Zarathustra or Zoroaster who had proclaimed with the greatest power and splendour that behind the Sun radiating its light and warmth to the Earth there is something which as the activity of the sound-ether and indeed of the life-ether is only feebly reflected in man's inner life. If we endeavour to translate his teaching into modern language, we can say that he taught his pupils as follows.—He said to them: When you look upwards to the Sun you are aware of the beneficial warmth and light streaming from it to the Earth; but if you develop higher organs, if you develop your faculty of spiritual perception, you can become aware of the Sun Being behind the physical Sun and its life; and then you become aware of the workings of the sound-ether and within these the essence of life!

Zarathustra spoke to his pupils of Ormuzd, or Ahura Mazdao, the great Sun Aura, as the spiritual reality behind the physical workings of the Sun. ‘Ahura Mazdao’ can therefore also be translated as the ‘Great Wisdom’ in contrast to the meagre wisdom evolved by men to-day. Man becomes aware of the Great Wisdom when he beholds the spiritual essence of the Sun, the great Sun Aura.

A poet, gazing back to the remote past in the evolution of humanity, was able to point in the following words to what the spiritual investigator knows to be a truth:

‘The sun-orb sings, in emulation,
'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round:
His path predestined through Creation,
He ends with step of thunder-sound.’
(Faust: Prologue in Heaven. Tr. Bayard Taylor)

Disciples of aestheticism regard this simply as euphony and quote it as an outstanding example of poetic licence. They have no inkling that a poet of Goethe's calibre is describing actual realities when he writes: ‘The sun-orb sings his ancient round’—that is to say, in the way known to ancient humanity, and known even to-day to one who is initiated.

Zarathustra had imparted this mighty truth to his pupils, particularly to the two among them who can be said to have been his most intimate disciples and were incarnated later on as Hermes and Moses. But Zarathustra gave the instruction on what lies behind the radiant body of the Sun in two quite different forms. The instruction given to Hermes enabled him to receive the influence streaming directly from the Sun. Moses, on the other hand, was inspired in such a way that he preserved the secret of the Sun-wisdom as though in a memory.

If in the light of what is said in the book Occult Science we picture the Earth after its separation from the Sun, and then the departure of the Moon-forces from the Earth after which the Earth opened itself to the Sun, we find Venus and Mercury between Earth and Sun. Dividing the whole space between Sun and Earth into three, we can say: the Earth separated from the Sun and sent forth the Moon towards the Sun. Then Venus and Mercury separated off from the Sun and came towards the Earth. Venus and Mercury, therefore, move from the Sun towards the Earth; the Moon goes from the Earth towards the Sun.

Conditions in the evolution of humanity reflect conditions in the Cosmos. The Sun-wisdom contained in the revelations of Zarathustra had been transmitted by him on the one side to Hermes and on the other to Moses. In Hermes there lived the Sun-wisdom radiating from the astral body of Zarathustra that had been transmitted to him; the wisdom living in Moses was like a separate planet that had still to develop towards what radiated directly from the Sun. Just as the Earth, by relinquishing the Moon, opened itself to the influence of ,the Sun, so did the wisdom of Moses open itself to receive the Sun-wisdom radiating directly from Zarathustra. And these two forms of wisdom, the Earth-wisdom of Moses and the Sun-wisdom of Zarathustra as imparted to Hermes, came into con-tact in Egypt, where the teachings of Moses encountered those of Hermes. What Moses had received from Zarathustra in the far distant past, he wakened to life within his own being and transmitted it to his people. We have to conceive of this as a process analogous to the emergence of the Moon-substantiality from the Earth.

The wisdom transmitted by Moses to his people can also be called Jahve- or Jehovah-wisdom—the name which, if rightly understood, epitomises it. We can also understand why old traditions speak of Jahve or Jehovah as a Moon God. This is frequently stated but is comprehensible only when these profound connections arc known. Just as the Earth cast out the Moon, sending it towards the Sun, so too the path of the Earth-wisdom of Moses inevitably led towards Hermes who possessed the direct wisdom of Zarathustra in the astral body that had been bequeathed. The wisdom of Moses, having made contact with Hermes, had then itself to evolve, and we have already described how its development continued until the age of David, when in David himself, the royal warrior and psalmist of the Hebrew people, Hermetic or Mercury-wisdom arose in a new form. We have also heard how the wisdom of Moses made still closer contact with the Sun-wisdom during the time of the Babylonian captivity, when Zarathustra himself, then bearing the name of Zarathas or Nazarathos, was the teacher of the Hebraic Initiates during the captivity. In the wisdom of Moses, therefore, we see a re-enactment of the cosmic process of the separation of Earth from Sun and of subsequent happenings on the Earth.

The wise men among the ancient Hebrews and all who were aware of these connections were filled with deepest reverence. They felt as though direct revelations were being vouchsafed to them from cosmic spaces and cosmic existence. And a personality such as Moses seemed to them to be a messenger of the cosmic Powers themselves. This they felt—and We too must feel something of the kind if we desire genuinely to understand ancient times. Otherwise, all our learning is no more than empty abstraction.

It was essential that what had streamed from Zarathustra and had been transmitted to posterity through Hermes and Moses should also evolve to a higher stage and appear again in a different, more advanced form. To this end it was necessary that Zarathustra himself, the Individuality who had previously bequeathed only the astral body and the etheric body, should be able to appear on the Earth in a physical body, in order that this too might be offered up. Here we have a beautiful illustration of progress. In his life in the very distant past, Zarathustra had given the impulse to post-Atlantean evolution in ancient Iranian culture. Then he bequeathed his astral body in order to inaugurate a. new form of culture through Hermes, and he bequeathed his etheric body to Moses. He had thus bequeathed two of his sheaths. Opportunity had now to be afforded him to offer up his physical body as well, for the great mystery of the evolution of humanity demanded the offering of the three bodies by one single individual. The third act still ahead of Zarathustra was the offering of the physical body, and this required very special measures of preparation. I have already indicated how the particular kind of life lived by the Hebrew people throughout the generations made possible the preparation of the physical body that could eventually be offered up by Zarathustra as his third great act. This preparation demanded that what elsewhere had been direct, outwardly oriented spiritual perception—the astral vision which in the Turanians had become decadent—should be trans-formed into an inner activity.

This is the secret of the Hebrew people. Whereas in the Turanians the forces inherited from ancient times produced organs of external clairvoyance, in the Hebrew people these forces turned inwards, organising the inner constitution of the body. Hence the Hebrews were the people destined to feel and to experience inwardly what during the Atlantean age men had seen outspread behind the single physical objects. Jahve or Jehovah—the name consciously uttered and proclaimed by the Hebrew people—was the ‘Great Spirit’ revealed to ancient clairvoyance behind all things and beings and now concentrated into a unity. And it is also indicated that in a very special way the progenitor of the ancient Hebrews had been endowed with this inner organic constitution.

Let me again repeat that the pictorial accounts of ancient happenings contained in sagas and legends are nearer to the truth than the picture of evolution pieced together by modern anthropological research from evidence provided by excavations and fragments of monuments. In most eases the old legends are corroborated by spiritual-scientific investigation. I say ‘in most cases’ and not ‘in all’ because I have not investigated every one of them; but it is very probable that the above holds good for all genuinely ancient legends. Thus when we enquire into the origin of the Hebrew people, we are led back, not to what modern anthropologists surmise, but to an actual progenitor named in the Bible. Abraham or Abram is a living figure and what the Talmud legend says of this original ancestor is true.

According to the story, the father of Abraham is a captain in the service of that legendary but nevertheless real personality called ‘Nimrod’ in the Bible (Genesis X, 8-9). It is announced to Nimrod by those who understand the signs of the times as revealed in dreams that many kings and rulers will be overthrown by his captain's son. Nimrod is seized with fear and orders that the child be killed. Such is the legend, and its truth is confirmed by occult investigation. Abraham's father resorts to subterfuge and presents another man's child to Nimrod. His own child, Abraham, is reared in a cave.—Abraham is the first in whom the forces formerly operating as the faculties of external clairvoyance turned inwards to become the powers that were to lead to inner consciousness of the Divine. This complete reversal of forces is indicated in the legend by saying that by thc grace of God the child was able to suck milk from the fingers of his own right hand during the three years he lived in the cave. This process of self-nourishment, in other words the penetration of the forces formerly used for the old clairvoyance into the inner constitution of man, is illustrated in a wonderful way in Abraham, the progenitor of thc Hebrew people.—If their real foundations are understood, legends of this kind are so convincing that we realise why old narratives could only convey in pictures what lay behind their contents. But these pictures were able to evoke feelings—even if not actual consciousness—of the great truths. And that sufficed in those ancient times. Abraham, then, was the first man in whom the faculties of divine wisdom, divine vision, were reflected inwardly in an entirely human form, as thought of the Divine. In actual fact, and as occult investigation will always insist, the physical constitution of Abram, or Abraham as he was called later on, was entirely different from that of everyone living around him. The organic constitution of other human beings was not such as would have enabled them to unfold inner activity of thinking through a special instrument. Thinking was possible for them when they were free of the body, when forces were activated in the etheric body; but they had not yet developed the instrument for thinking in the physical body itself. Abraham was actually the first in whom the physical instrument for thinking had been elaborated in the real sense. Hence—although this must not be taken too literally—he is not incorrectly called the inventor of arithmetic, the science dependent primarily upon the instrument of the physical body. Arithmetic is something that in its form, and because of its intrinsic certainty, comes near to clairvoyant knowledge, but it is essentially dependent upon a bodily organ.

Thus there is a deep and intimate connection between a faculty in which external forces had hitherto been used for clairvoyance and one which now made use of an inner organ for the activity of thinking. This is indicated when Abraham is spoken of as the inventor of arithmetic. He is therefore to be regarded as the first personality into whom was implanted the physical organ of thinking, the organ through which man, by means of physical thinking, could rise to actual thought of the Divine, whereas formerly it was only through clairvoyant vision that he could have any knowledge of God and of the Divine. All such knowledge in ancient times was the outcome of clairvoyance. To rise to the Divine through thought required a physical instrument and Abraham was the first into whom it was implanted. And as here it was a matter, of a physical organ, the whole relation of this thought or concept of the Divine to the objective world and to the subjective being of man was different from what it had formerly been, when a physical instrument was not involved.

The thought of the Divine had formerly been grasped through the wisdom preserved in the Mystery Schools and could be conveyed to one who had developed to the stage of being able to have perceptions in the etheric body, free from the organs of the physical body. But the only means for the transmission of a physical instrument to another human being is physical heredity. Thus if what was of salient importance for Abraham, namely the physical organ, was to be preserved on the Earth, it had to be transmitted from generation to generation through heredity. It is therefore understandable that the element of racial heredity, the transmission of this physical attribute through the blood flowing down the generations, was of very great importance in the Hebrew people.

But a physical attribute that appeared for the first time in Abraham, resulting from the crystallization and shaping of a physical organ for comprehension of the Divine—such an attribute had to be established. Transmitted by heredity from generation to generation, it penetrated ever more deeply into the nature and constitution of man and took firmer and firmer hold there as the effect of heredity grew progressively stronger. Hence we can say: it was necessary that what had been imparted to Abraham in order that the mission of the Hebrew people might be fulfilled, should reach greater perfection in the course of being transmitted from generation to generation through heredity. And in thc case of a physical organ this was the only possible means.

If the Individuality we have come to know as Zarathustra was to be provided with as perfect a physical body as possible—that is to say, a body containing an organ capable of grasping, in a human physical body, the thought or concept of the Divine—the physical instrument once implanted in Abraham had to be brought to the highest attainable degree of perfection; it had to be inwardly consolidated through heredity and to develop in such a way that a body suitable for Zarathustra might be produced, with all the qualities needed by him in his physical body. But a physical body that was to be of use to Zarathustra could not have developed to greater perfection by itself, separated from the rest of man's constitution; all the three sheaths, physical, etheric and astral, had gradually to be perfected through what physical heredity flowing down the successive generations was able to impart to them.

There is a certain law in evolution of which we have often heard in connection with thc development of the individual human being. A particular period of this process is from birth until the sixth or seventh year of life, during which the main development is that of the physical body. The period of the development of the etheric body is from the sixth or seventh year until the fourteenth or fifteenth. The period of the development of the astral body is from then until the twenty-first or twenty-second year. Such is the law, based on the number seven, governing thc development of the individual human being. The development of the outer sheaths of humanity in general through the generations is governed by a similar law and the deeper aspects of this process have still to be considered.

Whereas in the course of every seven years the individual completes a stage of development, until his seventh year that of the physical body, which becomes more and more perfect during this period—so the whole structure of the physical body of mankind in general, developing as it can do through the generations, reaches a certain completion after seven generations. But heredity works in such a way that the qualities transmitted do not pass from one human being to his nearest descendant in the immediately following generation; the salient qualities and attributes cannot be transmitted directly from father to son, from mother to daughter, but only from father to grandson—thus to the second generation, then the fourth, and so on. The number seven is basic in the process of heredity through the generations; but as every other generation is skipped, we have, in reality, to do with the number fourteen.

The special physical constitution established in Abraham could reach the peak of its development after fourteen generations. But for this process to take effect in the etheric body and the astral body as well, the development which in the case of the individual proceeds during the period from the seventh to the fourteenth year would have to continue through a further seven, or in reality, fourteen generations, and then through a still further period of seven (or fourteen) generations, starting from the fourteenth year in the case of the individual human being. In other words : the physical constitution established in Abraham, the racial progenitor, had to develop through three times seven or rather three times fourteen generations; the development had then taken place in all the three sheaths—physical body, etheric body and astral body. Thus the process of heredity through three times fourteen generations, i.e. through forty-two generations, made it possible for a man to receive in the physical body, etheric body and astral body in a state of perfected development, what had been imparted to Abraham in its first rudiments.

Thus after three times fourteen generations, beginning with Abraham, we find a human body impregnated with what had been present in Abraham in its earliest rudiments. Only a body of this kind was suitable for Zarathustra in his incarnation. This is also made clear by the writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew. In the table of generations, fourteen generations are expressly enumerated from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian captivity, and fourteen from the captivity to Jesus Christ. Through these three times fourteen generations—in the sequence of which one is always skipped—the complete development has been achieved of what was imparted to Abraham for the mission of the Hebrew people. This was now fully impressed into the principles of human nature and thence could arise the body needed by Zarathustra for his incarnation in the epoch when a completely new impulse was to be brought to mankind through him.

The wisdom underlying the beginning of the Gospel of St. Matthew is indeed profound. It is essential, however, to understand what is indicated by these three times fourteen generations. In the body that it was possible for Joseph to provide for Jesus of Nazareth there was contained the essence of what had been present, in its rudiments, in Abraham; this had streamed into the whole Hebrew people and could then be concentrated in a single instrument, in the sheath used by Zarathustra by whom the incarnation of Christ was to be made possible.

• 1. See Occult Science—an Outline, p. 21. From Rudolf Steiner's Preface to the first edition. (1909).

WITH BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

ABELS, JOAN (b. India – d.1962 Heidenheim a. d. Brenz)
Eurythmist. Took part in the very first performance of eurythmy in 1913 in Munich, subsequently continuing the work in Dornach. After retiring from eurythmy, he took on the office work at the Canteen.

AEPPLI, WILLI (Accra 1894–1972 Basel)
Swiss teacher. Member of the Society from 1921. At the Christmas Foundation Conference he was the representative of the Swiss Anthroposophical Society. From 1927 to 1954 he taught at the Rudolf Steiner School in Basel, and in 1954 became an adviser to the Association of Waldorf Schools in Germany. Wrote books on education.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT
See Note 77.

BEMMELEN, DANIEL J. VAN (Indonesia 1899–1983)
Dutch member from 1921. In 1923 co-founder and teacher at the first Dutch Waldorf school, ‘De Vrije School’ at The Hague.

BESANT, ANNIE
See Note 39.

BRANDTNER, W.
Secretary to the Anthroposophical. Society in Porto Alegre, Brazil, founded in 1920.

BÜCHENBACHER, DR HANS (Fürth 1887–1977 Arlesheim)
Lectured on the threefold social order. At the Christmas Foundation Conference he was the representative of the Free Anthroposophical Society in Germany. 1931-1935 President of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany. Later leader of the Working Group for Philosophy and Psychology at the Goetheanum in Dornach.

BÜRGI-BANDI, LUCIE (Bern 1875–1949 Bern)
Member from 1907. On the Council of the Johannes branch in Bern. 1913-1925 on the Council of the Bauverein. In March 1925 appointed by Rudolf Steiner to join the administration group for the building of the Goetheanum. Founder member of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung.

CARNEGIE, ANDREW
See Note 61.

CESARO, DUKE GIOVANNI ANTONIO OF (Rome 1878–1940 Rome)
Son of Baroness de Renzis (see below). Member of various town councils in Sicily (Radical Party, later Social Democratic Party). Member of Parliament. 1922-24 Minister for Post and Telegraphy. Co-publisher of Lo Spettatore. Political writings. In 1926 he joined the anti-fascist National Alliance. At the Christmas Foundation Conference he was the representative of the Novalis group in Rome.

COLLISON, HARRY (London 1868–1945 London)
Lawyer, painter and writer. Member from 1910. Leader of the Myrdhin group in London. Authorized by Rudolf Steiner to translate his works into English. Founder of the Anthroposophical Publishing Company. From 1923 General Secretary of the English Anthroposophical Society.

CROSS, MARGARET FRANCES (Preston 1866–1962 Hemel Hempstead)
Owner and head of a private school, interested in Rudolf Steiner's work. The school subsequently became The New School, Kings Langley, Hertfordshire.

DONNER, UNO (Helsingfors 1872–1958 Arlesheim)
Engineer. Founded and ran textile factories, among others. Met Anthroposophy in London in 1913. 1923-1932, at Rudolf Steiner's suggestion, General Secretary of the Finnish Anthroposophical Society. Participated in the agricultural course given by Rudolf Steiner at Koberwitz, Breslau in 1924. From 1928 he endeavoured to run a large farm on bio-dynamic lines. A bequest in his will led to the founding of the Donner Institute for Religious History and Cultural Research at the University of Abo in Finland.

DRECHSLER, LUNA (b. Lemberg/Lvov – d.1933 Poland, in her fifties)
Painter and sculptress. Active in political life (town council). Worked on the first Goetheanum. Initiated the founding of the Polish Anthroposophical Society and became its General Secretary.

DUNLOP, DANIEL NICOL (Kilmarnock 1868–1935 London)
Initially a member of the Theosophical Society. From 1918 a member of the Anthroposophical Society in England and leader of the Human Freedom group. Organiser of the summer schools in Penmaenmawr (1923) and Torquay (1924). Founder of the British Weleda Company. 1930-1935 General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in England.

DÜRLER, EDGAR (St Gallen 1895–1970 Arlesheim)
Businessman. Member of the Society from 1921. Worked for Futurum AG, Dornach, part of the time on the board of directors. Later member of the board of directors of Ilag AG, then Weleda AG, Arlesheim. Then for many years chairman of the board of directors.

EISELT, DR HANS (b. Prague – d.1936 Prague)
Having met Anthroposophy early in life, he worked for it until his death. He was leader of the branch in Prague and also lectured and ran the administration of the national Anthroposophical Society. He took the shorthand notes when Rudolf Steiner lectured in Prague. At the Christmas Foundation Conference he was the representative of the council of the Society in Czechoslovakia.

ERZBERGER, MATTHIAS
See Note 5.

FERRERI, CHARLOTTE (d.1924 in Milan)
Born in Honolulu as the daughter of an American missionary. Leader of the Leonardo da Vinci group in Milan. This group had resigned as a body from the Theosophical Society in 1913 and then joined the Anthroposophical Society. Later she was co-founder of a group in Honolulu. At the Christmas Foundation Conference she represented Honolulu.

FREUND, IDA (d.1931 in Prague)
An active member from 1909/10 in Prague. Her public charitable work was honoured after her death by the establishment of an Ida Freund Foundation.

GEERING-CHRIST, RUDOLF (Basel 1871–1958)
Bookseller and publisher. Founder member of the German Section in 1902 and of the Paracelsus branch in Basel in 1906, of which he became the chairman in 1921. 1922/23 he was a member of the inner working group at the Goetheanum. From 1913-1925 he was a member of the council of the Bauverein and in March 1925 he was appointed by Rudolf Steiner to join the administration group for the building of the Goetheanum.

GEUTER, FRIEDRICH (Darmstadt 1894–1960 Ravenswood)
Met Anthroposophy through Herbert Hahn when both were working as interpreters at a prisoner of war camp for British and French prisoners. After a spell at Der Kommende Tag, he began his lifetime's curative work at the Sonnenhof under Ita Wegman. From 1929 onwards he lived and worked in England, founding two homes for mentally handicapped children.

GEYER, REVEREND JOHANNES (Hamburg 1882– 1964 Stuttgart)
Heard Rudolf Steiner lecture for the first time when he was a student. Member from 1910. From 1912 pastor of the Protestant church. From 1919, at Rudolf Steiner's suggestion, a teacher at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart.

GLEICH, GENERAL GEROLD VON
See Note 8.

GNÄDIGER, FRANZ (d.1971)
Priest of the Christian Community. For a time secretary to Friedrich Rittelmeyer. At the time of the Christmas Foundation Meeting he lived in Zurich, from 1934 in Bern.

GOYERT, WILHELM RUDOLF (Witten a. d. Ruhr 1887–1954 Arlesheim)
Art dealer. Co-founder of the first Waldorf school in Cologne, named ‘Neuwacht School’ by Rudolf Steiner.

GROSHEINTZ, DR. MED. DENT. EMIL (Paris 1867–1946 Dornach)
Member from 1906 and co-founder of the Paracelsus branch in Basel. From 1908 to 1913 he was a member of the council of the German Section. In 1912 he placed a parcel of land he owned in Dornach at the disposal of Rudolf Steiner for the Goetheanum. From 1913 to 1915 he was deputy chairman of the Bauverein, from 1915 to 1924 chairman, and 1924/25 deputy chairman when Rudolf Steiner was chairman. In March 1925 Rudolf Steiner appointed him chairman of the administration group for the building of the Goetheanum. In 1920 he was founder-member and president of the branch at the Goetheanum, which he remained until 1946. 1922/23 he was a member of the inner working group at the Goetheanum.

GROSHEINTZ, DR OSKAR (d. 1944 in Basel)
Member from 1907 and chairman of the Johannes branch founded in Bern on his initiative. Took part in the performance of the Mystery Dramas in Munich.

GYSI, PROFESSOR DR MED H. C. ALFRED (Aarau 1864–1957 Zurich)
Eminent researcher in the field of dentistry who did pioneering work on dental prosthetics. Lecturer and professor at the dental institute of the University of Zurich, of which he was a co-founder. In 1902 he was one of the three Swiss founder members of the German Section and chairman of the Zschokke branch in Zurich which he founded in 1908 and to which he gave house room until 1920. ‘To his manner of working we owe the fact that Dr Steiner's most important Zurich lectures were scientific in character.’ (Marie Steiner, Erinnerungen I (Memoires, I). In 1913, together with Dr Emil Grosheintz, Frau Marie Schief and Frau Marie Hirter-Weber, he was one of the four Swiss members to make the land on the Dornach hill available for the building of the Goetheanum. He was a member of the council of the Bauverein till 1920. At the beginning of the twenties Professor Gysi withdrew from the Anthroposophical Society.

HAAN, PIETER DE (Utrecht 1891–1968 Holland)
Member from 1912. Having been the intended General Secretary for Holland, he withdrew in favour of Zeylmans van Emmichoven when the latter was suggested by Rudolf Steiner. From 1964-66 manager of the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag in Dornach.

HAHL, ERWIN (d.1958)
A native of Württemberg. Heard Rudolf Steiner lecture for the first time in 1919 in Stuttgart. From 1922 he worked in Yugoslavia, where he endeavoured to found a branch in Zagreb. At the Christmas Foundation Conference he was the representative of the work in Yugoslavia.

HARDT, DR MED HEINRICH (Stargard 1896– 1981)
Met Anthroposophy in Rostock, where he was a student. Co-initiator of the lectures Rudolf Steiner gave for young doctors in January and at Easter 1924 in Dornach. Later he was for many years the doctor at the Lauenstein home for the handicapped.

HART-NIBBRIG, FRAU J (b. Holland–1957 Dornach in her late eighties)
Was a member of the Theosophical Society before 1913. From about 1924 she lived in Dornach. She was close to Marie Steiner.

HARTMANN, EDUARD VON
See Note 53.

HENSTRÖM, SIGRID
Member from 1911. From 1924 chairman of the branch in Stockholm. At the Christmas Foundation Meeting she was the representative of the Swedish Society.

HEROSTRATOS
See Note 76.

HOHLENBERG, JOHANNES (1881–1960 Kopenhagen)
Painter and writer. From 1923 General Secretary of the Danish Anthroposophical Society. From 1926 he was the joint publisher and from 1929 the publisher of the Scandinavian anthroposophical journal Vidar till it was closed down in 1940. From 1947 to 1954 he published the cultural and political journal Øjeblikket in Denmark.

HUGENTOBLER, DR JAKOB (d.1961)
Teacher. A member of the council of the Zschokke (later Paracelsus) group in Zurich and then of the Johannes branch in Bern.

HUSEMANN, GOTTFRIED (b.1900–1972 Arlesheim)
Co-founder and priest of the Christian Community.

IM OBERSTEG, DR ARMIN (b.1881–1969 Basel)
Eminent lawyer. Member from 1919. A helpful supporter of the Goetheanum. For many years president of the cafe and restaurant co-operative at the Goetheanum and legal adviser to Weleda AG.

INGERÖ, KARL (d.1972 in Oslo)
At the Christmas Foundation Conference he was the representative of the Norwegian Anthroposophical Society. Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steiner were guests in his house on several occasions.

JONG, PROFESSOR DE
See Note 64.

KAISER, DR WILHELM (Pery 1895–1983 Dornach)
Astronomer. Met Rudolf Steiner in 1918. Worked with Dr Elisabeth Vreede in the Goetheanum archives for a while. Lectured extensively in Germany and Switzerland. Wrote many books.

KAUFMANN (LATER ADAMS), DR GEORGE (Maryampol 1894–1963 Birmingham)
Mathematician and physicist. Member from 1916. Acted as consecutive interpreter for English-speaking audiences for 110 lectures, conferences and conversations by and with Rudolf Steiner in England and Dornach. Translated several of Rudolf Steiner's works and wrote numerous books.

KELLER, KARL (Basel 1896–1979 Arlesheim)
Journalist and editor in Basel. Heard Rudolf Steiner lecturing for the first time in 1917. As a member of the staff of the Swiss news agency he was able to publicise an essay written by Rudolf Steiner in the autumn of 1924 on the rebuilding of the Goetheanum.

KELLERMÜLLER, JAKOB (Räterschen 1872–1947 Dornach)
Engaged by Rudolf Steiner as doorkeeper for the first Goetheanum, he performed this task until 1946.

KOLISKO, DR MED EUGEN (Vienna 1893–1939 London)
Member from 1914. From 1920 teacher and school doctor at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. From 1923 to 1935 on the council of the German Anthroposophical Society. Then lived in England.

KOLISKO, LILLY (Vienna 1889–1976 Gloucester)
Collaborated with Rudolf Steiner at the biological research institute in Stuttgart, publishing works on the spleen and on microorganisms in 1922 and 1923.

KOSCHÜTZKY, RUDOLF VON (Upper Silesia 1866–1954 Stuttgart)
Member from about 1917. He was originally a farmer but worked as a war correspondent in the First World War. From 1922 priest of the Christian Community. He participated in bringing about the agricultural course and then became a member of the management of the resulting research group of anthroposophical farmers.

KREBS, CHRISTIAN (d.1945)
A member in Sweden. Participated in the agricultural course given by Rudolf Steiner at Koberwitz, Breslau, in 1924.

KRKAVEC, DR OTOKAR
Member in Prague. At the Christmas Foundation Conference he was the representative of the council of the Society in Czechoslovakia.

KRÜGER, DR BRUNO (b.1887–1979 Stuttgart)
Public prosecutor in Berlin. From 1921 he worked with the federation for the threefold social order in Stuttgart, lecturing on this subject. After the failure of the threefold project he worked as a lawyer in Stuttgart.

LEADBEATER, CHARLES WEBSTER
See Note 40.

LEER, EMANUEL JOSEF VON (b. in Amersfoort – 1934 Baku)
Dutch wholesale merchant. Member from 1909. Giver of strong financial backing to the various institutions. 1922/23 president of the management committee of the International Laboratories and the Clinical and Therapeutic Institute AG in Arlesheim. In 1924 the first president of the first management committee of the Weleda AG, Arlesheim.

LEHRS, DR ERNST (Berlin 1894–1979 Eckwälden)
Scientist. Member of the Society from 1921. Teacher at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. From 1923 a member of the committee of the Free Anthroposophical Society confirmed by Rudolf Steiner after the Christmas Foundation Conference, and thus an officer of the General Anthroposophical Society. Published scientific writings. From 1952 he taught at the seminar for curative education at Eckwälden.

LEINHAS, EMIL (Mannheim 1878–1967 Ascona)
Merchant. Member from 1909. In March 1920 co-founder, later managing director and finally liquidator of Der Kommende Tag AG in Stuttgart. From 1921 to 1923 in the central Vorstand of the Anthroposophical Society, from February 1923 a member of the council of the German Society in Stuttgart. Member of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung from 1949. Aus der Arbeit mit Rudolf Steiner. Sachliches und Persönliches (Working with Rudolf Steiner), Basel 1950.

LEISEGANG, HANS
See Note 36.

LJUNGQUIST, ANNA (d.1935 in Dornach)
One of the early pioneers of anthroposophical work in Sweden. At the Christmas Foundation Conference she was the representative of the Swedish Anthroposophical Society.

MACKENZIE, PROFESSOR MILLICENT
Professor of education at University College, Cardiff, Wales from 1910. At her instigation, Rudolf Steiner gave a course of lectures for English teachers at the Goetheanum at Christmas 1920 and he was also invited to lecture at educational conferences in Stratford-on-Avon (Spring 1922) and in Oxford (August 1922). These public lectures in England led to the founding of the Educational Union under the chairmanship of Professor Mackenzie, the purpose of which was to gain an entry for Rudolf Steiner's educational ideas particularly in English and American organizations.

MAIER, DR RUDOLF (Schorndorf 1886–1943 Hüningen)
Member from about 1908/09. From 1920 to 1924 leader of the scientific research institute of Der Kommende Tag AG in Stuttgart.

MARYON, LOUISE EDITH (London 1872–1924 Dornach)
Sculptress working in Dornach from 1914. Collaborated with Rudolf Steiner in the field of the sculptural arts, especially on the wooden sculpture ‘The Representative of Man between Lucifer and Ahriman’. On her initiative the coloured eurythmy figures came into being and also the three ‘eurythmy houses’ to provide living accommodation for those working at the Goetheanum. At the Christmas Foundation Conference she was chosen to be the Leader of the Section for the Sculptural Arts.

MAURER, PROFESSOR DR THEODOR (Dorlisheim 1873–1959 Strasbourg)
Writer and anthroposophical lecturer. At the Christmas Foundation Conference he was the representative for the Alsace.

MAYEN, DR MED WALTHER
He came from Breslau. Worked in connection with Anthroposophy in South America, including Porto Alegre in Brazil.

MERRY, ELEANOR (Durham 1873–1956 Frinton-on-Sea)
English writer and painter. Member from 1921. Together with D. N. Dunlop she organized the summer schools at Penmaenmawr (1923) and Torquay (1924).

MONGES, HENRY B. (1870–1954 New York)
Professor of architecture. Member from 1916. Participated actively in founding, shaping and maintaining the Anthroposophical Society in America. He was its first chairman, and from 1923 its General Secretary. He secured the publication rights for Rudolf Steiner in the USA, translated his works and founded a publishing company.

MORGENSTIERNE, ETHEL

MÜCKE, JOHANNA (Berlin 1864–1949 Dornach)
Belonged to the socialist trade union movement and was a member of the management of the workers' educational establishment where she met Rudolf Steiner during his time as a teacher there (1899-1904). Member from 1903. From 1908 until her retirement (1935) she was the business manager, first in Berlin and from 1924 in Dornach, of the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag founded in 1908 by Marie Steiner for the publication of Rudolf Steiner's work. From the end of 1911 until 1913 she was on the council of the German Section and from 1921 to 1923 on the council of the German Anthroposophical Society. Her book Erinnerungen an Rudolf Steiner und seine Wirksamkeit an der Arbeiter-Bildungsschule in Berlin 1899-1904 (Memories of Rudolf Steiner and his work at the Workers' Educational Establishment in Berlin 1899-1904) was published in Basel in 1955.

MUNTZ-TAXEIRA DEL MATTOS, FRAU (b. Holland – d. 1931 in Brussels)
At the Christmas Foundation Conference she was the representative of the Belgian Anthroposophical Society as its General Secretary. Translated works by Rudolf Steiner into French.

NEUSCHELLER-VAN DER PALS, LUCY (St Petersburg 1886–1962 Dornach)
Together with her husband she first heard Rudolf Steiner speak in 1908 in Berlin. Both thereupon became members. Later she took up eurythmy. With her husband she went to America in 1913 and there built up the eurythmy work and participated in the founding of the Rudolf Steiner School in New York. She moved to Dornach in 1959.

PALMER, DR MED OTTO (Feinsheim 1867–1945 Wiesneck)
Member from 1908 at which time he was a practising doctor in Hamburg. In 1921 at the request of Rudolf Steiner he took on the management of the Klinisch-Therapeutisches Institut in Stuttgart. From 1923 onwards a member of the council of the German Anthroposophical Society.

PEIPERS, DR MED FELIX (Bonn 1873–1944 Arlesheim)
Member from 1904. In 1906/7 established a private clinic in Munich. Played the role of Benedictus when the Mystery Dramas were performed in Munich (1910-1913). Co-founder of the Bauverein and member of its council from 1911 until 1925. From 1911 to 1913 a member of the council of the German Section. From 1915/16 leader of the anthroposophical work in Munich. From 1921 to 1924 worked as a doctor at the Klinisch-Therapeutisches Institut in Stuttgart.

POLLAK, RICHARD (Karlin, Prague 1867–1940 Dachau)
He and his wife were both artists and took part in the painting of the large dome of the first Goetheanum (1914-1919). In the concentration camp at Dachau he gave over a hundred anthroposophical lectures to those doomed to accompany him through death.

POLZER-HODITZ, LUDWIG COUNT OF (Prague 1869–1945 Vienna)
Member from 1911. In 1917 he used his influence to interest the Austrian government in Rudolf Steiner's movement for the threefold social order. From 1919 to 1921 he worked in Austria for the threefold movement. He became chairman of the Austrian Anthroposophical Society at its foundation in October 1923. At the Christmas Foundation Conference, he was the representative of the council of the Austrian Society.

PUSCH, HANS LUDWIG (1902–1976)
Actor. Participated in Rudolf Steiner's dramatic course given in 1924 and subsequently worked as a member of the Goetheanum stage ensemble under Marie Steiner. Moved to the USA in 1939 where he lectured, gave courses in speech formation and staged the Mystery Dramas.

PYLE, WILLIAM SCOTT (b. America – d.1938 The Hague)
Painter. From 1921/22 in Dornach. In 1929/30, together with his wife Mieta Pyle-Waller, he designed the scenery for the third and fourth Mystery Dramas. At the suggestion of Rudolf Steiner he worked at the production of new plant-based paints (‘Anthea Paints’).

RATHENAU, WALTHER
See Note 6.

REICHEL, DR FRANZ (d.1960 in Prague)
One of the representatives of the council of the Anthroposophical Society in Czechoslovakia.

RENZIS, BARONESS EMMELINA DE (d.1945 in Rome)
Member from 1909. Was one of the pioneers of the Anthroposophical Society in Italy. After Rudolf Steiner lectured there in 1909 she became the leader of a branch in Rome and concerned herself with the translation of his works into Italian.

RIHOUET-COROZE, SIMONE (Paris 1892–1982 Paris)
Member from 1913. In 1921 she founded the Paris eurythmy school and the journal Science spirituelle. From 1931 to 1976 she was General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in France. Translated the works of Rudolf Steiner and published the journal Triades. Wrote Rudolf Steiner, une Epopee de l'Esprit au XXe Siècle, Paris 1951.

SAUERWEIN, ALICE (b. Marseille – d.1931 in Switzerland)
Sister of the prominent French journalist and anthroposophist Jules Sauerwein. Founded the Paris group ‘Saint-Michel’ for whom Rudolf Steiner gave lectures in 1913 and 1914. From its founding in 1923, she was the General Secretary of the French Anthroposophical Society till 1930.

SIMON, FRÄULEIN

SCHMIDT, HERR

SCHMIEDEL, DR OSKAR (Vienna 1887–1959 Schwäbisch Gmünd)
Chemist. Member from 1907. Participated in establishing the Weleda company and was a member of its management from the beginning and later in Schwäbisch Gmünd.

SCHUBERT, DR KARL (Vienna 1889–1949 Stuttgart)
Member from about 1910. In February 1920 Rudolf Steiner requested him to take on the remedial class at the Waldorf School in Switzerland. He was thus the first anthroposophical curative teacher. Later he assisted in the establishment of curative establishments in Germany and other countries.

SCHWARZ, LINA (d.1947)
Met Anthroposophy in 1912 and was one of the pioneers of anthroposophical work in Italy. Worked in the Milan branch, which she represented at the Christmas Foundation Conference. She took over the leadership after the death of the founder, Charlotte Ferreri. She made excellent translations of Rudolf Steiner's works.

SCHWEBSCH, DR ERICH (Frankfurt/Oder 1889–1953 Freiburg i.Br.)
Writer about music, teacher. Member from about 1919. At the request of Friedrich Rittelmeyer, he contributed the essay ‘Goethe und Rudolf Steiner’ to his anthology Vom Lebenswerk Rudolf Steiners (On the Life's Work of Rudolf Steiner). This drew him to the attention of Rudolf Steiner who requested him to join the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. He taught there from 1921. Its re-institution after the Second World War was largely due to his initiative. In 1946 he brought the Waldorf schools in Germany together in the Association of Waldorf Schools, of which he was the chairman.

SCHWEIGLER, KARL RICHARD
Brother of the painter Emil Schweigler. Member from 1918 (St Gallen). Founded a working group in Rorschach in 1921. Lived in Dornach from 1922.

STEFFEN, ALBERT (Murgenthal/Aargau 1884–1963 Dornach)
Swiss poet. Met Rudolf Steiner in 1907 in Munich. Lived in Dornach from the autumn of 1920 onwards. Became editor of the weekly Das Goetheanum when it was established in 1921. From Christmas 1923 till 1925 Vice-president of the General Anthroposophical Society and Leader of the Section for Belles-Lettres. From Christmas 1925 President of the Society. Writer of poetry and plays, eg In Memoriam Rudolf Steiner, 1925, and Begegnungen mit Rudolf Steiner (Meetings with Rudolf Steiner), 1955.

STEIN, DR WALTER JOHANNES (Vienna 1891–1957 London)
Member from 1913. From 1919 to 1932 teacher of history at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. From 1923 to 1928 a member of the council of the German Anthroposophical Society. Later he worked in England.

STEINER, MARIE, NEE VON SIVERS (Wloclawek/Russia 1867–1948 Beatenberg/ Switzerland).
From 1902 Rudolf Steiner's closest colleague in building up the Movement and the Society. At Christmas 1914 they married. With him she developed the Goetheanistic stage arts of speech formation and eurythmy. At Christmas 1923 she became the Leader of the Section for the Spoken Arts and Music. With the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, which she founded in 1908, she ran the editing and publishing of Rudolf Steiner's written works and his lectures. In 1943 she founded the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung to continue with this work. See Rudolf Steiner The Course of My Life; Marie Steiner von Sivers Correspondence and Documents 1901-1905; Hella Wiesberger Aus dem Leben von Marie Steiner-von Sivers (From the Life of Marie Steiner), Dornach 1956; Marie Steiner, ihr Weg zur Erneuerung der Bühnenkunst durch Anthroposophie. Eine Dokumentation (Marie Steiner. Her Path to a Renewal of Stagecraft through Anthroposophy. A Documentation), Dornach 1973.

STIBBE, MAX (b. Padang 1898 – d.1983)
Teacher. Member from 1920. In 1923 he became co-founder and teacher at the first Dutch Waldorf school ‘De Vrije School’ at The Hague.

STOKAR, WILLY (Schaffhausen 1893–1953 Zurich)
Member from about 1916. Writer. 1921-23 colleague of Willy Storrer in the smaller working committee at the Goetheanum, among other things for tours of the building and as a lecturer. From time to time he was also a member of the management committee of Futurum AG, Dornach.

STORRER, WILLY (Töss bei Winterthur 1896–1930 Dornach)
From 1919 onwards worked with Roman Boos in the threefold movement and in his secretarial and organizational work at the Goetheanum. In the early summer of 1921 he took on the responsibility for Dr Boos's work in this area. After the founding of the weekly journal Das Goetheanum, Rudolf Steiner entrusted him with the administrative side. He thus became manager of the Verlag am Goetheanum. In 1920 he was a founder-member and the secretary of the branch at the Goetheanum. In 1923 he co-founded the Neue Generation branch. Belonged to the smaller working committee at the Goetheanum till the Christmas Foundation Conference in 1923. From time to time he was also a member of the management committee of Futurum AG. On 3 May 1930 he met with a fatal accident in his private aeroplane on the Gempen in Dornach.

STUTEN, JAN (Nijmegen 1890–1948 Arlesheim)
Musician. Member from about 1910. From 1914 he was a permanent musician at the Goetheanum (composing and conducting). He portrayed a number of roles on the stage under the direction of Rudolf Steiner, among others that of Faust. Later he also created scenery (in 1928 for the first and second Mystery Dramas). Composer of various works, above all stage music for Faust, Parts One and Two and for Rudolf Steiner's funeral. Member of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung.

THUT, PAUL (b.1872–1955 Bern)
Engineer. Director of the power station at Bern. Member in Bern for many years.

TRIMLER, DR

TRINLER, KARL (d.1964)
Arlesheim and Basel.

TYMSTRA, FRANS (b.1891–1979 Arlesheim)
From Holland.

UNGER, DR CARL (Bad Cannstatt 1878–1929 Nuremberg)
Member from 1902/03. Till his death he was the leader of the main branch in Stuttgart, which he had founded in 1905 together with Adolf Arenson. From 1913 to 1923 he was a member of the central Vorstand of the Anthroposophical Society. From 1923 he was a member of the council of the German national Society. At the Christmas Foundation Conference he represented that council and also the Porto Alegre group in Brazil. From January 1914 to September 1915 he was the technical building manager of the first Goetheanum and from 1913 to 1925 in the council of the Bauverein. Before beginning a public lecture on Anthroposophy in Nuremberg on 4 January 1929 he was shot dead by a mentally ill man. His collected works have been published in three volumes.

USTERI, DR ALFRED (Säntis area of Switzerland 1869–1948 Reinach)
Papers on botany. Plant drawings; lectures at the Goetheanum.

VREEDE, DR ELISABETH (The Hague 1879–1943 Ascona)
Member of the Theosophical Society as early as about 1902. From April 1914 she worked at the Goetheanum where from 1919 onwards she set up the archive of Rudolf Steiner's lectures. In 1920 she became a founder-member and later the secretary of the branch at the Goetheanum. In 1922/23 she was a member of the smaller working committee at the Goetheanum and from Christmas 1923 till 1935 she was a member of the founding Vorstand of the General Anthroposophical Society and the Leader of the Section for Mathematics and Astronomy.

WACHSMUTH, DR GUENTHER (Dresden 1893–1963 Dornach)
Permanently in Dornach from 1921. In 1922/23 in the smaller working committee at the Goetheanum. From Christmas 1923 till 1963 he was a member of the Vorstand of the General Anthroposophical Society in the capacity of Secretary and Treasurer, and Leader of the Natural Science Section. He wrote, among other things: Rudolf Steiners Erdenleben und Wirken. Eine Biographie (Rudolf Steiner's Life and Work), Dornach 1941 and 1951; Die ätherischen Bildekräfte in Kosmos, Erde und Mensch (The Etheric Formative Forces in Cosmos, Earth and Man), Stuttgart 1924.

WACHSMUTH, DR WOLFGANG (Dresden 1891–1953 Arlesheim)
Worked for various publishing companies. He met Anthroposophy towards the end of the First World War. In Stuttgart from 1920 he took over the management of the publishing company Der Kommende Tag AG until it was dissolved in 1924/25. From time to time he was a member of the council of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany.

WEGMAN, DR MED ITA (Java 1876–1943 Arlesheim)
Member from approximately 1903. Studied medicine in Zurich. In 1921 she founded the Klinisch-Therapeutisches Institut in Arlesheim which resulted in close collaboration with Rudolf Steiner in the field of medicine. From 1922 to 1924 she was on the council of management of the International Laboratories in Arlesheim. From 1922-23 in the smaller working committee at the Goetheanum. From Christmas 1923 to 1935 she was the Recorder of the Vorstand of the General Anthroposophical Society and Leader of the Medical Section. From 1924-25 she was Rudolf Steiner's physician. Together they wrote Fundamentals of Therapy.

WEISS, FRAU

WERBECK, LOUIS MICHAEL JULIUS (Hamburg 1879–1928 Hamburg)
Member from 1910. From 1917 leader of the Pythagoras branch in Hamburg. From 1923 he was a member of the council of the German Anthroposophical Society. He wrote Die wissenschaftlichen Gegner Rudolf Steiners und der Anthroposophie durch sie selbst widerlegt (The Scientific Opponents of Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy Disproved by Themselves) and Die christlichen Gegner Rudolf Steiners und der Anthroposophie (The Christian Opponents of Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy), Stuttgart 1924.

WINDELBAND, WILHELM
See Note 41.

WULLSCHLEGER, FRITZ (Zofingen 1896–1969 Zofingen)
Teacher. Member from 1920. Member of the School Association for Independent Education in Switzerland. (See Note 56.

ZAGWIJN, HENRI (d.1954)
Composer and writer from Rotterdam. Set to music Rudolf Steiner's verses ‘Im Seelenaug ...’ and ‘Die Sonne schaue ...’ Wrote Die Musik im Lichte der Anthroposophie (Music in the Light of Anthroposophy). Teacher at the Waldorf school in The Hague.

ZEYLMANS VAN EMMICHOVEN, DR MED F W WILLEM (Helmond 1893–1961 Johannesburg)
Member from 1920. Founder of the Rudolf Steiner Clinic in The Hague, co-founder of the Anthroposophical Society in Holland and from November 1923 its General Secretary. Wrote, among other works, Rudolf Steiner, Eine Biographie (Rudolf Steiner, A Biography), Stuttgart 1961.
[Note: a reader who was at the funeral of Dr Zeylmans van Emmichoven has reported he died in Cape Town, not Johannesburg. His ashes were scattered on Table Mountain. e.Ed]

Thirteen years ago, almost to the day, in a course of lectures¹ that I gave in Stuttgart between Christmas and New Year, I spoke of the same events that we shall treat of in the present course of lectures. Only we shall have to alter the standpoint somewhat. In the first two introductory lectures we have been at pains to acquire an understanding for the radical change in man's life of thought and feeling that has come about in the course of human evolution, prehistoric as well as historic. In to-day's lecture, at any rate to begin with, we shall not need to go back more than a few thousand years.

You know that from the standpoint of Spiritual Science we have to regard as of paramount importance in its consequences for human evolution the so-called Atlantean catastrophe which befell the Earth in the time commonly known as the later Ice Age. It was the last Act in the downfall of the Atlantean continent, which continent forms to-day the floor of the Atlantic Ocean; and following it we have as we have often described, five great successive epochs of civilisation, leading up to our own time. Of the two earliest of these we have no trace in historical tradition, for the literature remaining in the East, even all that is contained in the magnificent Vedas, in the profound Vedantic philosophy, is but an echo of what we should have to describe, if we wanted to recall these ancient epochs. In my Outline of Occult Science I have always spoken of them as the Ancient Indian and the Ancient Persian.

To-day we shall not have to go so far back as this; we will direct our thoughts to the period which I have often designated as the Egypto-Chaldean, the period preceding the Graeco-Latin. We have already had to draw attention to the fact that during the time between the Atlantean catastrophe and the Greek period, great changes took place in regard to man's power of memory and also in regard to the social life of humanity. A memory such as we have to-day—the temporal memory, by means of which we can take ourselves back in time—was not in existence in this third Post-Atlantean period; man had then, as we have described in an earlier lecture, a memory that was linked to rhythmic experience. And we have seen how this rhythmic memory proceeded from a still earlier memory that was particularly strong in the Atlantean period, namely, the localised memory, where man only bore within him a consciousness of the present, but used all manner of things which he found in the external world or which he himself set there, as memorials by means of which he put himself into relationship with the past; and not alone with his own personal past, but with the past of humanity in general.

In this connection we have not only to think of memorials that were on the Earth; in those ancient times the constellations in the heavens served man as memorials, especially in their recurrences and in the variations of these recurrences. From the constellations man perceived how things were in earlier times. Thus did heaven and earth work together to build for an ancient humanity the localised memory.

Now the man of long past times was different in the whole constitution of his being from the man of a later time, and still more so from the man of our own time. Man to-day, in his waking condition, bears the Ego and astral body within him unnoticed, as it were; most people do not notice how the physical bears within it, along with the etheric body, a much more important organisation than itself, namely, the astral body and the Ego-organisation. You, of course, are familiar with these connections. But an ancient humanity felt this fact of their own being quite differently.

And it is to such a humanity that we must return, when we go back to the third epoch of Post-Atlantean civilisation,—the Egypto-Chaldean. At that time man experienced himself as spirit and soul still to a great extent outside his physical and etheric body, even when awake. He knew how to distinguish: This I have as my spirit and soul,—we, of course, call it the Ego and the astral body—and it is linked with my physical body and my etheric body. He went through the world in this experience of twofold-ness. He did not call his physical and his etheric body ‘I.’ He called ‘I’ only his soul and spirit, that which was spiritual and was in a manner connected downward with his physical and etheric bodies, had a connection with them that he could observe and feel. And in this spirit and soul, in this Ego and astral body, man was made aware of the entry of the Divine-spiritual Hierarchies, even as to-day he feels the entry of natural substances into his physical body.

To-day man's experience in the physical body is of the following nature. He knows that with the process of nourishment, with the process of breathing, he receives the substances of the external kingdoms of Nature. Before, they are outside; then they are within him. They enter him, penetrate him and become part of him. In that earlier age, when man experienced a certain separation of his soul-and-spirit nature from his physical and etheric nature, he knew that Angels, Archangels and other Beings up to the highest Hierarchies are themselves spiritual substance that penetrates his soul and spirit and becomes—if I may put it so—part of him. So that at every moment of life he was able to say: In me live the Gods. And he looked upon his Ego, not as built up from below by means of physical and etheric substances, but as bestowed on him through grace from above, as coming from the Hierarchies. And as a burden, or rather as a vehicle, in which he feels himself borne forward in the physical world as in a vehicle of life—so did he conceive of his physical-etheric nature. Until this is clearly grasped, we shall not understand the course of events in the evolution of mankind.

We could trace this course of events by reference to many different examples. To-day we will follow one thread, the same that I touched upon thirteen years ago, when I spoke of that historic document² which represents the most ancient phase of the evolution we have now to consider,—I mean, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The Epic of Gilgamesh has in part the character of a Saga, and so to-day I will set before you the events that I described thirteen years ago, as they manifest themselves directly to spiritual vision.

In a certain town in Asia Minor—it is called Erech³ in the Epic—there lived a man who belonged to the conquering type of which we spoke in the last lecture, the type that sprang so truly and naturally out of the whole mental and social conditions of the time. The Epic calls him Gilgamesh. We have then to do with a personality who has preserved many characteristics of the humanity of earlier times. Clear though it is, however, to this personality that he has, as it were, a dual nature,—that he has on the one hand the spirit-and-soul nature into which the Gods descend, and on the other hand, the physical-and-etheric into which substances of the Earth and the Cosmos, physical and etheric substances, enter,—it is none the less a fact that the representative people of his time are already passing through a transition into a later stage of human evolution. The transition consisted in this. The Ego-consciousness, which a comparatively short time previously was above in the sphere of spirit and soul, had now, if I may so express it, sunk down into the physical and etheric, so that Gilgamesh was one of those who began no longer to say ‘I’ to the spirit-and-soul part of their being, in which they felt the presence of the Gods, but to say ‘I’ to that which was earthly and etheric in them. Such was the stage of development in the human soul life of that time.

But along with this condition of soul, where the Ego has drawn down from the spirit and soul and entered as conscious Ego into the bodily and etheric, this personality had still left in him habits belonging to the past; and especially the habit of experiencing memory solely in connection with rhythm. He still retained also that inward feeling that one must learn to know the forces of death, because the death-forces can alone give to man that which brings him to powers of reflection.

Now owing to the fact that in the personality of Gilgamesh we have to do with a soul who had already gone through many incarnations on Earth and had now entered into the new form of human existence which I have just described, we find him at this point in a physical existence that bore in it a strain of uncertainty. The justification, as it were, of the habits of conquest, the justification, too, of the rhythmic memory, were beginning to lose their validity for the Earth. And so the experiences of Gilgamesh were throughout the experiences of an age of transition.

Hence it came about that when this personality, in accordance with the old custom, conquered and seized the city that in the Epic is called Erech, dissensions arose in the city. At first he was not liked. He was regarded as a foreigner and indeed would never have been able alone to meet all the difficulties that presented themselves in consequence of his capture of the city. Then there appeared, because destiny had led him thither, another personality—the Epic of Gilgamesh calls him Eabani⁴—a personality who had descended relatively late to the Earth from that planetary existence which Earth-humanity led for a period, as you will find described in my Outline of Occult Science.

You know how during the Atlantean epoch souls descended, some earlier, some later, from the different planets, having withdrawn thither from the Earth at a very early stage of Earth evolution.

In Gilgamesh we have to do with an individuality, who returned comparatively early to the Earth; thus at the time of which we are speaking he had already experienced many Earth incarnations.

In the other individuality who had now also come to that city we have to do with one who had remained comparatively long in planetary existence and only later found his way back to Earth. You may read of this from a somewhat different point of view in my Stuttgart lectures of thirteen years ago.

Now this second individuality formed an intimate friendship with Gilgamesh; and together they were able to establish the social life of the city on a really permanent footing. This was possible because there remained to this second personality a great deal of the knowledge that came from that sojourn in the Cosmos beyond the Earth, and that was preserved for a few incarnations after the return to Earth. He had, as I said in Stuttgart, a kind of enlightened cognition; clairvoyance, clairaudience and what we may call clair-cognition. Thus we have in the one personality what remained of the old habits of conquest and of the rhythmically-directed memory, and in the other what remained to him from vision and penetration into the secret mysteries of the Cosmos. And from the flowing together of these two things, there grew up, as was indeed generally the case in those olden times, the whole social structure of that city in Asia Minor. Peace and happiness descended upon the city and its inhabitants, and everything would have been in order, had not a certain event taken place that set the whole course of affairs in another direction.

There was in that city a Mystery, the Mystery of a Goddess, and this Mystery preserved very many secrets relating to the Cosmos. It was, however, in the meaning of those times, what I may call a kind of synthetic Mystery. That is to say, in this Mystery revelations were collected together from various Mysteries of Asia. And the contents of these Mysteries were cultivated and taught there in diverse ways at different times. Now this was not easily understood by the personality who bears the name of Gilgamesh in the Epic, and he made complaint against the Mystery that its teachings were contradictory. And seeing that the two personalities of whom we are speaking were those who really held the whole ordering of the city in their hands and that complaints against the Mystery came from so important a quarter, trouble ensued; and at length things became so difficult that the priests of the Mysteries appealed to those Powers Who in former times were accessible to man in the Mysteries. It will not surprise you to hear that in the ancient Mysteries man could actually address himself to the Spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies; for, as I told you yesterday, to the ancient Oriental, Asia was none else than the lowest heaven and in this lowest heaven man was aware of the presence of Divine-spiritual Beings and had intercourse with them. Such intercourse was especially cultivated in the Mysteries. And so the priests of the Istar Mysteries turned to those Spiritual Powers to whom they always turned when they sought enlightenment; and it came about that these Spiritual Powers inflicted a certain punishment upon the city.

What happened was expressed at the time in the following way: Something that is really a higher spiritual force, is working in Erech as an animal power, as a terrible spectral animal power. Trouble of all kinds befell the inhabitants, physical illnesses and more especially diseases and disturbances of the soul. The consequence was that the personality who had attached himself to Gilgamesh and who is called Eabani in the Epic, died; but in order that the mission of the other personality might be continued on Earth, he remained with this personality spiritually, even after death. Thus when we consider the later life and development of the personality who in the Epic bears the name of Gilgamesh, we have still to see in it the working together in the two personalities; but now in such a way that in the subsequent years of Gilgamesh's life he receives intuitions and enlightenment from Eabani, and so continues to act, although alone, not simply out of his own will, but out of the will of both, from the flowing together of the will of both.

What I have here placed before you is something that was fully possible in those olden times. Man's life of thought and feeling was not then so single and united as it is to-day. Hence it could not have the experience of freedom, in the sense in which we know it to-day. It was quite possible, either for a spiritual Being who had never incarnated on Earth to work through the will of an earthly personality, or, as was the case here, for a human personality who had passed through death and was living an after-death existence, to speak and act through the will of a personality on Earth. So it was with Gilgamesh. And from what resulted in this way through the flowing together of the two wills, Gilgamesh was able to recognise with considerable clearness at what point he himself stood in the history of mankind. Through the influence of the spirit that inspired him, he began to know that the Ego had sunk down into the physical body and etheric body,—which are mortal; and from that moment the problem of immortality began to play an intensely strong part in his life. His whole longing was set on finding his way by some means or other into the very heart of this problem. The Mysteries, wherein was preserved what there was to say on Earth in those days concerning immortality, did not readily reveal their secrets to Gilgamesh. The Mysteries had still their tradition, and in their tradition was preserved also in great measure the living knowledge that was present on Earth in Atlantean times, when the ancient original wisdom ruled among men.

The bearers of this original wisdom, however, who once went about on Earth as Spiritual Beings, had long ago withdrawn and founded the cosmic colony of the Moon. For it is pure childishness to suppose that the Moon is the dead frozen body that modern physics describes. The Moon is, before all, the cosmic world of those Spiritual Beings Who were the first great teachers of earthly humanity, the Beings Who once brought to earthly humanity the primeval wisdom and Who, when the Moon had left the Earth and sought a place for itself in the planetary system, withdrew also and took up their abode on this Moon.

He who to-day through Imaginative cognition is able to attain to a true knowledge of the Moon, gains knowledge too of the Spiritual Beings in this cosmic colony, Who were once the teachers of the ancient wisdom to humanity on Earth. What they had taught was preserved in the Mysteries, and also the impulses whereby man himself is able to come into a certain relationship with this ancient wisdom.

The personality who is called Gilgamesh in the Epic had, however, no living connection with these Mysteries of Asia Minor. But through the super-sensible influence of the friend who, in the after-death existence, was still united with him, there arose in Gilgamesh an inner impulse to seek out paths in the world whereby he might be able to come to an experience concerning the immortality of the soul. Later on, in the Middle Ages, when man desired to learn something concerning the spiritual world, he would sink down into his own inner being. In more modern times one could say that a still more inward process is followed. In those olden times, however, of which we are speaking, it was a matter of clear and exact knowledge to man that the Earth is not the mere lump of rock which the geology books would lead one to imagine, but that the Earth is a living being,—a living being, moreover, endowed with soul and spirit. As a tiny insect that runs over a human being may learn something of that human being as it passes over his nose and forehead, or through his hair, as the insect acquires its knowledge in this way by making a journey over the human being, so in those times it was by setting forth upon journeys over the Earth and by learning to know the Earth with its different configurations in different places, that man gained insight into the spiritual world. And this he was able to do, whether access to the Mysteries were permitted to him or no. It is in truth no mere superficial account that relates how Pythagoras and others wandered far and wide in order to attain their knowledge. Men went about the Earth in order to receive what was revealed in its manifold configurations, in all that they could observe from the different forms and shapes of the Earth in different places; and not of the Earth in its physical aspect alone, but of the Earth too as soul and spirit.

To-day men may travel to Africa, to Italy,—and yet, with the exception of external details, at which they gape and stare, their experience in these places may be very little different from their experience at home. For man's sensitiveness to the deep differences that subsist between different places of the Earth has gone.

In the period with which we are now dealing, it had not died out. Thus the impulse to wander over the Earth and thereby receive something that should help to the solution of the problem of immortality, betokened something full of meaning for Gilgamesh.

So he set forth upon his wanderings. And they had for him a result that was of very great significance. He came to a region that is nearly the same as we now call Burgenland, a district much talked of in recent times and concerning which there has been a good deal of contention as to whether it should belong to Hungary or not. The whole social conditions of the country have of course greatly changed since those far off times. Gilgamesh came thither and found there an ancient Mystery—the High Priest of the Mystery is called Xisuthros⁵ in the Epic—an ancient Mystery that was a genuine successor, as it were, of the old Atlantean Mysteries; only, of course, in a changed form, as must of necessity be the case after so long a time had elapsed.

And it was so that in this ancient Mystery centre they knew how to judge and appraise the faculty of knowledge that Gilgamesh possessed. He was met with understanding. A test was imposed upon him, one that in those days was often imposed on pupils of the Mysteries. He had to go through certain exercises, wide-awake, for seven days and seven nights. It was too much for him, so he submitted himself only to the substitute or alternative for the test. Certain substances were made ready for him, of which he then partook, and by means of them received a certain enlightenment; although, as is always the case when certain exceptional conditions are not assured, the enlightenment might be doubtful in some respects. Nevertheless a degree of enlightenment was there, a certain insight into the great connections in the Universe, into the spiritual structure of the Universe. And so, when Gilgamesh had ended his wandering and was returning home again, he did in fact possess a high spiritual insight.

He travelled along the Danube, following the river on its northern bank, until he came again to his home, to the home of his choice. But before he reached home, because he did not receive the initiation into the Post-Atlantean Mystery in the other way that I described, but instead in a somewhat uncertain way, he succumbed to the first temptation that assailed him and fell into a terrible fit of anger over an event that came to his notice,—something, in effect, which he heard had taken place in the city. He heard of the event before he reached the city, and burst out into a storm of anger; and in consequence, the enlightenment he had received was almost entirely darkened, so that he arrived home without it.

Nevertheless,—and this is the peculiar characteristic of this personality—he still had the possibility, through the connection with the spirit of his dead friend, of looking into the spiritual world, or at least of receiving information thence.

It is, however, one thing by means of an initiation to acquire direct vision into the spiritual world, and another thing to receive information from a personality who is in the after-death condition. Still, we may say with truth that something of an insight into the nature of immortality did remain with Gilgamesh. I am setting aside just now the experiences that are undergone by man after death; these do not yet play very strongly into the consciousness of the next incarnation, nor did they in those days;—into the life, into the inner constitution they do work very strongly, but not into the consciousness.

You now have before you these two personalities whom I have described and who together bring to expression the mental and spiritual constitution of man in the third Post-Atlantean period of civilisation at about the middle point of its development,—two personalities who still lived in such a way that the whole manner of their life was in itself strong evidence of the duality in man's nature. The one—Gilgamesh—was conscious of this duality; he was one of the first to experience the descent of the Ego-consciousness, the descent of the Ego into the physical and etheric nature in man. The other, inasmuch as he had passed through but few incarnations on Earth, had a clairvoyant knowledge, by means of which he was able to know that there is no such thing as matter, but that everything is spiritual and the so-called material only another form of the spiritual.

Now you can imagine that, if a man's being were so constituted, he could certainly not think and feel what we think and feel to-day. His whole thinking and feeling was indeed totally different from ours. And what such personalities could receive in the way of instruction was of course quite unlike what is taught to-day at school or in the universities. Everything of a spiritual or cultural nature that men received in those days came to them from the Mysteries, whence it was spread abroad as widely as possible among men by all manner of channels. It was the wise men, the priests, in the Mysteries, who were the true teachers of humanity.

Now it was characteristic of these two personalities that in the incarnation that we have described they were unable just because of their special constitution of soul, to approach the Mysteries of their own land. The one who is named Eabani in the Epic stood near the Mysteries through his sojourn in the extra-earthly regions of the Cosmos; the one who is named Gilgamesh experienced a kind of initiation in a Post-Atlantean Mystery, which however only bore half fruit in him. The result of all this was that both felt in their own being, as it were, something that made them kin to the primeval times of earthly humanity. Both were able to put the question to themselves: How have we become what we are? What share have we had in the evolution of the Earth? We have become what we are through the evolution of the Earth; what part have we played in its evolution?

The question of immortality that was the occasion of such suffering and conflict to Gilgamesh, was connected in those days with a necessary vision into the evolution of the Earth in primeval times. One could not think or feel—using the words in the sense of those times—about the immortality of the soul unless one had at the same time some vision of how human souls who were already there in very early phases of the Earth's evolution, during the Ancient Sun and Ancient Moon embodiments, saw approaching them, that which later has become what we call earthly. Men felt they belonged to the Earth. They felt that to know himself, man must behold and recognise his connection with the Earth.

Now the secret knowledge that was cultivated in all Mysteries of Asia, was first and foremost cosmic knowledge; its wisdom and its teachings unfolded the origin of the evolution of the Earth in connection with the Cosmos. So that in these Mysteries there appeared before men in a living way, in such a way that it could become living Ideas in them, a far-spread vision, showing them how the Earth evolved, and how in the heave and surge of the substances and forces of the Earth, all through the Sun, Moon and Earth periods of evolution, man has been evolving together with all these substances. All this was set before men in a most vivid manner.

One of the Mysteries where such things were taught, was continued on into much later times. It was the Mystery centre of Ephesus.⁶ This Mystery had in the very middle of its sanctuary the image of the Goddess Artemis. When we look to-day at pictures of the goddess Artemis, we have perhaps only the grotesque impression of a female form with many breasts. This is because we have no idea how such things were experienced in olden times; and it was the inner experience evoked by these things that was all-important. The pupils of the Mysteries had to go through a certain preparation before they were conducted to the true centre of the Mysteries. In the Ephesian Mysteries the centre was this image of the Goddess Artemis. When the pupil was led up to the centre, he became one with such an image. As he stood before the image, he lost the consciousness that he was there in front of it, enclosed in his skin. He acquired the consciousness that he himself is what the image is. He identified himself with the image. This identification of himself in consciousness with the divine image at Ephesus had the following effect. The pupil no longer merely looked out upon the kingdoms of the Earth that were round about him—the stones, trees, rivers, clouds and so forth—but when he felt himself one with the image, when he entered as it were into the image of Artemis, he received an inner vision of his connection with the kingdoms of the Ether. He felt himself one with the world of the stars, one with the processes in the world of the stars. He did not feel himself as earthly substance within a human skin, he felt his cosmic existence. He felt himself in the etheric. And as he did so, there rose before him earlier conditions of Earth-experience and of man's experience on Earth. He began to see what these earlier conditions had been. To-day we look upon the Earth as a great piece of rock or stone, covered with water over a large part of its surface and surrounded by a sphere of air containing oxygen and nitrogen and other substances,—containing, in fact, what the human being requires for breathing. And so on and so on. And when men begin to explain and speculate on what passes to-day for scientific knowledge, then we get a fine result indeed! For only by means of spiritual vision can one penetrate to the conditions that prevailed in the earliest primeval times. Such a spiritual vision, however, concerning primeval conditions of the Earth⁷ and of mankind was attained by the pupils of Ephesus, when they identified themselves with the divine image; they beheld and understood how formerly what surrounds the Earth to-day as atmosphere was not as it now is; surrounding the Earth, in the place where the atmosphere is to-day, was an extraordinarily fine albumen, a volatile, fluid albumenous substance. And they saw how everything that lived on the Earth required for its own genesis the forces of this volatile, fluid albumenous substance, that was spread over the Earth, and how everything also lived in it. They saw too how that which was in a certain sense already within this substance—finely distributed but everywhere with a tendency to crystallisation—how that which was present in a finely distributed condition as silicic acid was in reality a kind of sense-organ for the Earth and could take up into itself from all sides the Imaginations and influences from the surrounding Cosmos. And thus in the silicic acid contained in the earthly albumenous atmosphere were everywhere Imaginations, concretely, externally present.

These Imaginations had the form of gigantic, plant-like organisms, and out of that which was, so to speak, ‘imagined’ into the Earth in this way, there developed later, through absorption of the atmospheric substance,—the plant; everything that is of a plant-like nature. At first it was in the environment of the Earth, in volatile, fluid form; only later did it sink down into the soil and become what is known to us as the plant.

Besides the silicic acid, there was imbedded also in this albumen-atmosphere another substance, lime, in a finely-divided condition. Again, out of the lime substance, under the influence of the congelation of the albumen there arose the animal kingdom. And the human being felt himself within all this. He felt one with the whole Earth. He lived in that which formed itself as plant in the Earth through Imagination, he lived too in that which was developing on Earth as animal, in the way I have described. Each single human being felt himself spread out over the whole Earth, felt himself one with the Earth. So that the human beings were all—as I have described it for the Platonic teaching in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact, in reference to the human capacity for ideas—were all each within the other.

Now destiny brought it about that the two personalities, of whom I spoke in Stuttgart and of whom I am speaking to you again here, reincarnated as adherents of the Mystery of Ephesus, and there received with deep devotion into their souls the things that I have here pictured to you in brief outline. Thereby their souls were, in a manner, inwardly established. Through the Mystery they now received as Earth-wisdom what had formerly been accessible to them only in experience,—for the most part unconscious experience.

Thus was the human experience of these personalities divided between two separate incarnations. And thereby did they bear within them a strong consciousness of man's connection with the higher, the spiritual world, and at the same time a strong, an intense capacity for feeling and experiencing all that belongs to the Earth.

For if you have two things that perpetually flow together, so that you cannot keep them apart, then they merge and lose themselves in each other. If, on the other hand, they show themselves clearly distinct, then you can judge the one by the other. And so these two personalities were able on the one hand to judge the spiritual of the higher world that came to them as a result of life-experience and that lived in them as an echo from their earlier incarnations. And now, as the origin of the kingdoms of nature was communicated to them in the Mystery of Ephesus under the influence of the Goddess Artemis, they were able, on the other hand, to judge how the things external to man on the Earth came into being, how gradually everything external to man on the Earth was formed out of a primeval substance, which substance also included man. And the life of these two personalities—it fell partly in the latter end of the time when Heraclitus⁸ was still living in Ephesus, and partly in the time that followed—became particularly rich inwardly and was powerfully lit up from within with the light of great cosmic secrets. There was in them moreover a strong consciousness of how man in his life of soul may be connected, not merely with that which lies spread out around him on the Earth, but with that too which extends upward,—when he himself reaches upward with his being. Such was the inner configuration of soul of these two personalities, who had worked together in the earlier Egypto-Chaldean epoch and then lived together at the time of Heraclitus and after, in connection with the Mystery of Ephesus. And now this working together was able to continue still further. The configuration of soul that had been developed in both, passed through death, through the spiritual world, and began to prepare itself for an Earth life that must needs again bring problems which will now of course present themselves in quite a different way. And when we observe in what manner these two personalities had to find their part later in the history of Earth evolution, we may see how through the experiences of the soul in earlier times—these experiences having their karmic continuation in the next life on Earth—things are prepared which afterwards appear in totally different form in the later life, when the personalities are once more incorporated into the evolution of humanity on Earth.

I have brought forward this example, because these two personalities make their appearance later in a period that was of extraordinary importance in the history of mankind. I indicated this in my lectures at Stuttgart thirteen years ago; in fact, I dealt with all these matters from a certain point of view. These personalities who had first in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch gone through what I may call a widely-extended cosmic life, and had then deepened this cosmic experience within them, thereby in a sense establishing their souls, now lived again in a later incarnation as Aristotle⁹ and Alexander the Great.¹⁰ When one understands the underlying depths in the souls of Aristotle and Alexander the Great, then one can begin to understand, as I explained in Stuttgart, all that was working so problematically in these two personalities, whose lives took their course in the time when Greek culture was falling into decay and Roman rule beginning to have dominion.

• 1. See Occult History. Historical Personalities and Events in the Light of Spiritual Science by Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Publishing Company, London, 1957.
• 2. The Epic of Gilgamesh was discovered in the ruins of a palace of Assurbanipal written in cuneiform characters on twelve tablets. This text is based on older Sumerian documents of which fragments remain.
• 3. Called Erech in the Bible (1 Moses 10, 10), the city is named Uruk in the cuneiform text.
• 4. The cuneiform text has Enkidu or Engidu.
• 5. This is the Sumerian name Ziusudra used by Berossus, priest of Bel in Babylon, who wrote a history of Babylon and Chaldea in Greek around 280 B.C. based on the archives of the Temple in Babylon. In cuneiform script it is Utnapishtim.
• 6. Rudolf Steiner spoke in detail about this place in the 6th lecture of Mystery Knowledge and Mystery Centres, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1973.
• 7. See the 5th lecture in Mystery Knowledge and Mystery Centres.
• 8. Heraclitus of Ephesus, Greek philosopher. He lived around 500 B.C. and deposited his chief work in the Temple of Artemis. See Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1972.
• 9. Greek philosopher from Stagira (384–322 B.C.). See Riddles of Philosophy by Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1973.
• 10. (356-323 B.C.). From 336 King of Macedonia. Died in Babylon.

Among the mysteries of ancient times Ephesus holds a unique position. You will remember that in considering the part played by Alexander in the evolution of the West, I had to mention also this Mystery of Ephesus. Let us try to see wherein lies the peculiar importance of this Mystery.

We can only grasp the significance of the events of earlier and of more recent times when we understand and appreciate the great change that took place in the character of the Mysteries (which were in reality the source whence all the older civilisations sprang) in passing from the East to the West, and, in the first place, to Greece. This change was of the following nature.

When we look back into the older Mysteries of the East, we have everywhere the impression: The priests of the Mysteries are able, from their own vision, to reveal great and important truths to their pupils. The farther back we go in time, the more are these Wise Men or Priests in a position to call forth in the Mysteries the immediate presence of the Gods themselves, the Spiritual Beings who guide the worlds of the planets, who guide the events and phenomena of Earth. The Gods were actually there present.

The connection of the human being with the macrocosm was revealed in many different Mysteries in an equally sublime manner to that I pictured for you yesterday, in connection with the Mysteries of Hibernia and also with the teachings that Aristotle had still to give to Alexander the Great. An outstanding characteristic of all ancient Oriental Mysteries was that moral impulses were not sharply distinguished from natural impulses. When Aristotle points Alexander to the North-West, where the Spirits of the element of Water held dominion, it was not only a physical impulse that came from that quarter—as we to-day feel how the wind blows from the North-West and so forth—but with the physical came also moral impulses. The physical and the moral were one. This was possible, because through the knowledge that was given in these Mysteries—the Spirit of Nature was actually perceived in the Mysteries—man felt himself one with the whole of Nature. Here we have something in the relation of man to Nature, that was still living and present in the time that intervened between the life of Gilgamesh and the life of the individuality Gilgamesh became, who was also in close contact with the Mysteries, namely, with the Mystery of Ephesus. There was still alive in men of that time a vision and perception of the connection of the human being with the Spirit of Nature. This connection they perceived in the following way. Through all that the human being learned concerning the working of the elementary spirits in Nature, and the working of the Beings of Intelligence in the planetary processes, he was led to this conclusion: All around me I see displayed on every side the plant-world—the green shoots, the buds and blossoms and then the fruit. I see the annual plants in the meadows and on the country-side, that grow up in Spring-time and fade away again in Autumn. I see, too, the trees that go on growing for hundreds of years, forming a bark on the outside, hardening to wood and reaching downwards far and wide into the Earth with their roots. But all that I see out there—the annual herbs and flowers, the trees that take firm hold into the Earth—once upon a time, I, as man, have borne it all within me.

You know how to-day, when there is carbonic acid in the air, that has come about through the breathing of human beings, we can feel that we ourselves have breathed out the carbonic acid, we have breathed it into space. We have therefore still to-day this slight connection with the Cosmos. Through the airy part of our nature, through the air that gives rise to the breathing and other air-processes that go on in the human organism, we have a living connection with the great Universe, with the Macrocosm. The human being to-day can look upon his out-breathed breath, upon the carbonic acid that was in him and is now outside him. But just as we are able to-day to look upon the carbonic acid we have breathed out—we do not generally do so, but we could—so did the initiates of olden times look upon the whole plant-world. Those who had been initiated in the Oriental Mysteries, or had received the wisdom that streamed forth from the Oriental Mysteries, were able to say: I look back in the evolution of the world to an ancient Sun epoch. In that time I bore still within me the plants. Then afterwards I let them stream forth from me into the far circles of Earth existence. But as long as I bore the plants within me, while I was still that Adam Cadmon who embraced the whole Earth and the plant-world with it, so long was this whole plant-world watery-airy in substance. Then the human being separated off from himself this plant-world. Imagine that you were to become as big as the whole Earth, and then to separate off, to secrete, as it were, inwardly something plant-like in nature, and this plant-like substance were to go through metamorphoses in the watery element—coming to life, fading away, growing up, being changed, taking on different shapes and forms—and you will by this imagination call up again in your soul feelings and experiences that once lived in it. Those who received their education and training in the East at about the time of Gilgamesh were able to say to themselves that these things had once been so.

And when they looked abroad upon the meadows and beheld all the growth of green and flowers, then they said: We have separated the plants from ourselves, we have put them forth from us in an earlier stage of our evolution; and the Earth has received them. The Earth it is that has lent them root, and has given them their woody nature; the tree-nature in the world of plants comes from the Earth. But the whole plant-nature as such has been cast off, as it were, by the human being, and received by the Earth. In this way man felt an intimate and near relationship with everything of a plant-nature.

With the higher animals the human being did not feel a relationship of this kind. For he knew that he could only work his way rightly and come to his true place on the Earth by overcoming the animal form, by leaving the animals behind him in his evolution. The plants he took with him as far as the Earth; then gave them over to her that she might receive them into her bosom. For the plants he was upon Earth the Mediator of the Gods, the Mediator between the Gods and the Earth.

Men who had this great experience acquired a feeling that may be put quite simply in a few words. The human being comes hither to the Earth from the World-All. The question of number does not come into consideration; for, as I said yesterday, they were all and each within the other. That which afterwards becomes the plant-world separates off from man, the Earth receives it and gives it root. The human being felt as though he had folded the Earth about with a garment of plant growth, and as though the Earth were thankful for this enfolding and took from him the watery-airy plant element that he was able, as it were, to breathe on to her.

In entering into this experience men felt themselves intimately associated with the God, with the chief God of Mercury. Through the feeling: We have ourselves brought the plants on to the Earth, men came into a special relation with the God Mercury.

Towards the animals, on the other hand, man had a different feeling. He knew that he could not bring them with him to Earth, he had to cast them off, he had to make himself free from them, otherwise he would not be able to evolve his human form in the right way. He thrust the animals from him; they were pushed out of the way and had then to go through an evolution on their own account on a lower level than the level of humanity. Thus did the man of olden times—of the Gilgamesh time and later—feel himself placed between the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom. In relation to the plant kingdom he was the bearer, who bore the seed to the Earth and fructified the Earth with it, doing this as Mediator for the Gods. In relation to the animal kingdom he felt as though he had pushed it away from him, in order that he might become man without the encumbrance of the animals, who have consequently been stunted and retarded in their development.

The whole animal-worship of Egypt has to do with this perception. The deep fellow-feeling, too, with animals that we find in Asia is connected with it. It was a sublime conception of Nature that man had, feeling his relationship on the one hand with the plant world and on the other hand with the world of animals. In relation to the animal he had a feeling of emancipation. In relation to the plant he felt a near and intimate kinship. The plant world was to him a bit of himself, and he felt a sincere love for the Earth inasmuch as the Earth had received into herself the bit of humanity that gave rise to the plants, had let these take root in her, had even given of her own substance to clothe the trees in bark. There was always a moral element present when man took cognisance of the physical world around him. When he beheld the plants in the meadow, it was not only the natural growth that he perceived. In this growth he perceived and felt a moral relation to man. With the animal man felt again another moral relation: he had fought his way up beyond them.

Thus we find in the Mysteries over in the East a sublime conception of Nature and of Spirit in Nature. Later there were Mysteries in Greece, too, but with a much less real perception of Nature and of Spirit in Nature. The Greek Mysteries are grand and sublime, but they are essentially different from the Oriental Mysteries. It is characteristic of these that they do not tend to make man feel himself on the Earth, but that through them man feels himself a part of the Cosmos, a part of the World-All. In Greece, on the other hand, the character of the Mysteries had changed and the time was come when man began to feel himself united with the Earth. In the East the spiritual world itself was either seen or felt in the Mysteries. It is absolutely true to say that in the ancient Oriental Mysteries the Gods themselves appeared among the priests, who did sacrifice there and made prayers. The Mystery Temples were at the same time the earthly Guest Houses of the Gods, where the Gods bestowed upon men through the priests what they had to give them from the treasures of Heaven. In the Greek Mysteries appeared rather the images of the Gods, the pictures, as it were, the phantoms,—true and genuine, but phantoms none the less; no longer the Divine Beings, no longer the Realities, but phantoms. And so the Greek had a wholly different experience from the man who belonged to the ancient Oriental culture. The Greek had the feeling: There are indeed Gods, but for man it is only possible to have pictures of these Gods, just as we have in our memory pictures of past experiences, no longer the experiences themselves.

That was the fundamental feeling that took rise in the Greek Mysteries. The Greek felt that he had, as it were, memories of the Cosmos, not the appearance of the Cosmos itself, but pictures; pictures of the Gods, and not the Gods themselves. Pictures, too, of the events and processes on Saturn, Sun and Moon; no longer a living connection with what actually took place on Saturn, Sun and Moon,—the kind of living connection the human being has with his own childhood. The men of the Oriental civilisation had this real connection with Sun, Moon and Saturn, they had it from their Mysteries. But the Mysteries of the Greeks had a pictorial or image-character. There appeared in them the shadow-spirits of Divine-Spiritual Reality. And something else went with this as well that was very significant. For there was yet another difference between the Oriental Mysteries and the Greek.

In the Oriental Mysteries, if one wanted to know something of the sublime and tremendous experience that was possible in these Mysteries, one had always to wait until the right time. Some experience or other could perhaps only be found by making the appropriate sacrifice, the appropriate super-sensible ‘experiments’ as it were, in Autumn,—another only in Spring, another again at Midsummer, and another in the depth of Winter. Or again it might be that sacrifices were made to certain Gods at a time determined by a particular constellation of the Moon. At that special time the Gods would appear in the Mysteries, and men would come thither to be present at their manifestations. When the time had gone by one would have to wait, perhaps thirty years, until the opportunity should come again when those Divinities should once more reveal themselves in the Mysteries. All that related to Saturn, for example, could only enter the region of the Mysteries every thirty years; all that was concerned with the Moon about every eighteen years. And so on. The priests of the Oriental Mysteries were dependent on time, and also on place and on all manner of circumstances for receiving the sublime and tremendous knowledge and vision that came to them. Quite different manifestations were received deep in a mountain cave and high on the mountain top. Or again, the revelations were different, according as one was far inland in Asia or on the coast. Thus a certain dependence on place and time was characteristic of the Mysteries of the East.

In Greece the great and awful Realities had disappeared. Pictures there still were. And the pictures were dependent not on the time of year, on the course of the century, or on place; but men could have the pictures when they had performed this or that exercise, or had made this or that personal sacrifice. If a man had reached a certain stage of sacrifice and of personal ripeness, then for the very reason that he as a human being had attained thus far, he was able to have view of the shadows of the great world-events and of the great world-Beings.

That is the important change in the nature of the Mysteries that meets us when we pass from the ancient East to Greece. The ancient Oriental Mysteries were subject to the conditions of space and locality, whilst in the Greek Mysteries the human being himself came into consideration and what he brought to the Gods. The God, so to speak, came in his phantom or shadow-picture, when the human being, through the preparations he had undergone, had been made worthy to receive the God in phantom form. In this way the Mysteries of Greece prepared the road for modern humanity.

Now, the Mystery of Ephesus stood midway between the ancient Oriental Mysteries and the Greek Mysteries. It held a unique position. For in Ephesus those who attained to initiation were able still to experience something of the tremendous majestic truths of the ancient East. Their souls were still stirred with a deep inward experience of the connection of the human being with the Macrocosm and with the Divine-Spiritual Beings of the Macrocosm. In Ephesus men could still have sight of the super-earthly, and in no small measure. Self-identification with Artemis, with the Goddess of the Mystery of Ephesus, still brought to man a vivid sense of his relation to the kingdoms of nature. The plant world, so it taught him, is yours; the Earth has only received it from you. The animal world you have overcome. You have had to leave it behind. You must look back on the animals with the greatest possible compassion, they have had to remain behind on the road, in order that you might become Man. To feel oneself one with the Macrocosm: this was an experience that was still granted to the Initiate of Ephesus, he could still receive it straight from the Realities themselves.

At the same time, the Mysteries of Ephesus were, so to speak, the first to be turned westward. As such, they had already that independence of the seasons, or of the course of years and centuries; that independence too of place on Earth. In Ephesus the important things were the exercises that the human being went through, making himself ripe, by sacrifice and devotion, to approach the Gods. So that on the one hand, in the content of its Mystery truths, the Mystery of Ephesus harked back to the Ancient East, whilst on the other hand it was already directed to the development of man himself, and was thus adapted to the nature and character of the Greek. It was the very last of the Eastern Mysteries of the Greeks, where the great and ancient truths could still be brought near to men; for in the East generally the Mysteries had already become decadent.

It was in the Mysteries of the West that the ancient truths remained longest. The Mysteries of Hibernia still existed, centuries after the birth of Christianity. These Mysteries of Hibernia are nevertheless doubly secret and occult, for you must know that even in the so-called Akashic Records, it is by no means easy to search into the hidden mysteries of the statues of which I told you yesterday—the Sun Statue and the Moon Statue, the male and the female. To approach the pictures of the Oriental Mysteries and to call them forth out of the astral light is, comparatively speaking, easy for one who is trained in these things. But let anyone approach, or want to approach, the Mysteries of Hibernia in the astral light, and he will at first be dazed and stupefied. He will be beaten back. These Irish, these Hibernian Mysteries will not willingly let themselves be seen in the Akashic pictures, albeit they continued longest in their original purity.

Now you must remember, my dear friends, that the individuality who was in Alexander the Great had come into close contact with the Hibernian Mysteries during the Gilgamesh time, when he made his journey westward to the neighbourhood of the modern Burgenland. These Mysteries had lived in him, lived in him after a very ancient manner, for it was in the time when the West resounded still with powerful echoes of the Atlantean age. And now all this experience was carried over into the condition of human existence that runs its course between death and a new birth. Then later the two friends, Eabani and Gilgamesh, found themselves together again in life in Ephesus, and there they entered into a deeply conscious experience of what they had experienced formerly during the Gilgamesh time more or less unconsciously or sub-consciously, in connection with the Divine-Spiritual worlds.

Their life during this Ephesus time was comparatively peaceful, they were able to digest and ponder what they had received into their souls in more stormy days.

Let me remind you of what it was that passed over into Greece before these two appeared again in the decadence of the Greek epoch and the rise of the Macedonian. The Greece of olden time, the Greece that had spread abroad and embraced Ephesus also within its bounds, and had even penetrated right into Asia Minor, had still in her shadow-pictures the after-echo of the ancient time of the Gods. The connection of man with the spiritual world was still experienced, though in shadows. Greece was however gradually working herself free from the shadows; we may observe how step by step the Greek civilisation was wresting its way out of what we may call divine civilisation and taking on more and more the character of a purely earthly one.

My dear friends, it is only too true that the very most important things in the history of human evolution are simply passed over in the materialistic external history of to-day. Of extraordinary importance for the understanding of the whole Greek character and culture is this fact: that in the Greek civilisation we find no more than a shadow-picture, a phantom of the old Divine Presence wherein man had contact with the super-sensible worlds, for man was already gradually emerging out of this Divinity and learning to make use of his own individual and personal spiritual faculties. Step by step we can see this taking place. In the dramas of Æschylus we may see placed before us in an artistic picture the feeling that yet remained to man of the old time of the Gods. Scarcely however has Sophocles come forward when man begins to tear himself away from this conscious sense of union with Divine-Spiritual existence. And then something else appears that is coupled with a name which from one point of view we cannot over-estimate—but of course there are many points of view to be considered.

In the older Grecian time there was no need to make written history. Why was this? Because men had the living shadow of everything of importance that had happened in the past. History could be read in what came to view in the Mysteries. There one had the shadow-pictures, the living shadow-pictures. What was there then to write down as history?

But now came the time when the shadow pictures became submerged in the lower world, when human consciousness could no longer perceive them. Then came the impulse to make records. Herodotus,¹ the first prose historian, appeared. And from this time onward, many could be named who followed him, the same impulse working in them all,—to tear mankind away from the Divine-Spiritual and to set him down in the purely earthly. Nevertheless, as long as Greek culture and civilisation lasted, there is a splendour and a light shed abroad over this earth-directed tendency, a light of which we shall hear tomorrow that it did not pass over to Rome nor to the Middle Ages. In Greece, a light was there. Of the shadow-pictures, even the fading shadow-pictures of the evening twilight of Greek civilisation, man still felt that they were divine in their origin.

In the midst of all this, like a haven of refuge where men found clear enlightenment concerning what was present, as it were in fragments, in Greek culture,—in the midst stood Ephesus. Heraclitus received instruction from Ephesus, as did many another great philosopher; Plato, too, and Pythagoras. Ephesus was the place where the old Oriental wisdom was preserved up to a certain point. And the two souls who dwelt later in Aristotle and Alexander the Great were in Ephesus a little after the time of Heraclitus and were able to receive there of the heritage from the old knowledge of the Oriental Mysteries that the Mystery of Ephesus still retained. Notably the soul of Alexander entered into an intimate union with the very Being of the Mysteries as far as it was living in the Mystery of Ephesus.

And now we come to one of those historical events of which people may think that they are mere chance, but which have their foundations deep down in the inner connections of the evolution of humanity. In order to gain an insight into the significance of this event, let us call to mind the following. We must remember that in the two souls who afterwards became Aristotle and Alexander the Great, there was living in the first place all that they had received in a far-off time in the past and had subsequently elaborated and pondered. And then there was also living in their souls the treasure of untold value that had come to them in Ephesus. We might say that the whole of Asia—in the form that it had assumed in Greece, and in Ephesus in particular—was living in these two, and more especially in the soul of Alexander the Great, that is to say, of him who afterwards became Alexander the Great.

Picture to yourselves the part played by this personality. I described him for you as he was in the Gilgamesh time; and now you must imagine how the knowledge that belonged to the ancient East and to Ephesus, a knowledge which we may also call a “beholding,” a “perceiving,”—this knowledge was called up again in the intercourse between Alexander the Great and Aristotle, in a new form. Picture this to yourselves; and then think what would have happened if Alexander, in his incarnation as Alexander, had come again into contact with the Mystery of Ephesus, bearing with him in his soul the gigantic document of the Mystery of Ephesus, for this majestic document of knowledge lived with extraordinary intensity in the souls of these two. If we can form a idea of this, we can rightly estimate the fact that on the day on which Alexander was born, Herostratus threw the flaming torch into the Sanctuary of Ephesus; on the very day on which Alexander was born, the Temple of Diana of Ephesus was treacherously burnt to the ground. It was gone, never to return. Its monumental document, with all that belonged to it, was no longer there. It existed only as a historical mission in the soul of Alexander and in his teacher Aristotle.

And now you must bring all this that was alive in the soul of Alexander into connection with what I said yesterday, when I showed you how the mission of Alexander the Great was inspired by an impulse coming from the configuration of the Earth. You will readily understand how that which in the East had been real revelation of the Divine-Spiritual was as it were extinguished with Ephesus. The other Mysteries were at bottom only Mysteries of decadence, where traditions were preserved, though it is true these traditions did still awaken clairvoyant powers in specially gifted natures. The splendour and the glory, the tremendous majesty of the olden time were gone. With Ephesus was finally put out the light that had come over from the East.

You will now be in a position to appreciate the resolve that Alexander made in his soul: to restore to the East what she had lost; to restore it at least in the form in which it was preserved in Greece, in the phantom or shadow-picture. Hence his idea of making an expedition into Asia, going as far as it was possible to go, in order to bring to the East once more—albeit in the shadow form in which it still existed in the Grecian culture—what she had lost.

And now we see what Alexander the Great is really doing, and doing in a most wonderful way, when he makes this expedition. He is not bent on the conquest of existing cultures, he is not trying to bring Hellenism to the East in any external sense. Wherever he goes, Alexander the Great not only adopts the customs of the land, but is able too to enter right into the minds and hearts of the human beings who are living there, and to think their thoughts. When he comes to Egypt, to Memphis, he is hailed as a saviour and deliverer from the spiritual fetters that have hitherto bound the people. He permeates the kingdom of Persia with a culture and civilisation which the Persians themselves could never have produced. He penetrates as far as India.

He conceives the plan of effecting a balance, a harmony between Hellenic and Oriental civilisations. On every hand he founds academies. The academies founded in Alexandria, in Northern Egypt, are the best known and have had the greatest significance for later times. Of the first importance however is the fact that all over Asia larger and smaller academies were founded, in which the works of Aristotle were preserved and studied for a long time to come. What Alexander began in this way continued to work for centuries in Asia Minor, repeating itself again and again as it were in feebler echoes. With one mighty stroke Alexander planted the Aristotelian Knowledge of Nature in Asia, even as far as India. His early death prevented his reaching Arabia, though that had been one of his chief aims. He went however as far east as India, and also into Egypt. Everywhere he implanted the spiritual Knowledge of Nature that he had received from Aristotle, establishing it in such a way that it could become fruitful for men. For everywhere he let the people feel it was something that was their own,—not a foreign element, a piece of Hellenism, that was being imposed upon them. Only a nature such as Alexander's, able to fire others with his own enthusiasm, could ever have accomplished what he did. For everywhere others came forward to carry on the work he had begun. In the years that followed, many more scholars went over from Greece. Apart from Edessa it was one academy in particular, that of Gondishapur, which received constant reinforcements from Greece for many centuries to come.

A marvellous feat was thus performed! The light that had come over from the East,—extinguished in Ephesus by the flaming torch of Herostratus,—this light, or rather its phantom shadow, now shone back again from Greece, and continued so to shine until the dramatic moment when beneath the tyranny of Rome² the Schools of the Greek philosophers were ultimately closed. In the 6th century A.D. the last of the Greek philosophers fled away to the academy of Gondishapur.

In all this we see two elements interworking; one that had gone, so to speak, in advance, and one that had remained behind. The mission of Alexander was founded, more or less unconsciously, upon this fact: the waves of civilisation had advanced in Greece in a Luciferian manner, whilst in Asia they had remained behind in an Ahrimanic manner. In Ephesus was the balance. And Alexander, on the day of whose birth the physical Ephesus had fallen, resolved to found a spiritual Ephesus that should send its Sun-rays far out to East and West. It was in very truth this purpose that lay at the root of all he undertook: to found a spiritual Ephesus, reaching out across Asia Minor eastward to India, covering also Egyptian Africa and the East of Europe.

It is not really possible to understand the spiritual evolution of Western humanity unless we can see it on this background. For soon after the attempt had been made to spread abroad in the world the ancient and venerated Ephesus, so that what had once been present in Ephesus might now be preserved in Alexandria,—be it only in a faltering hand instead of in large shining letters—soon after this second blooming of the flower of Ephesus, an altogether new power began to assert itself, the power of Rome. Rome, and all the word implies, is a new world, a world that has nothing to do with the shadow-pictures of Greece, and suffers man to keep no more than memories of these olden times. We can study no graver or more important incision in history than this. After the burning of Ephesus, through the instrumentality of Alexander the plan is laid for the founding of a spiritual Ephesus; and this spiritual Ephesus is then pushed back by the new power that is asserting itself in the West, first as Rome, later under the name of Christianity, and so on. And we only understand the evolution of mankind aright when we say: We, with our way of comprehending things through the intellect, with our way of accomplishing things by means of our will, we with our feelings and moods can look back as far as ancient Rome. Thus far we can look back with full understanding. But we cannot look back to Greece, neither can we look back to the East. There we must look in Imaginations. Spiritual vision is needed there. Yes, we can look South, as we go back along the stream of evolution; we can look South with the ordinary prosaic understanding, but not East. When we look East, we have to look in Imaginations. We have to see standing in the background the mighty Mystery Temples of primeval post-Atlantean Asia, where the Wise Men, the Priests, made plain to each one of their pupils his connection with the Divine-Spiritual of the Cosmos, and where was to be found a civilisation that could be received from the Mysteries in the Gilgamesh time, as I have described to you. We have to see these wonderful Temples scattered over Asia; and in the foreground Ephesus, preserving still within its Mystery much that had faded away in the other Temples of the East, whilst at the same time it had already itself made the transition and become Greek in character. For in Ephesus, man no longer needed to wait for the constellations of the stars or for the right time of year, nor to wait until he himself had attained a certain age, before he could receive the revelations of the Gods. In Ephesus, if he were ripe for it, he might offer up sacrifices and perform certain exercises that enabled him so to approach the Gods that they drew graciously near to him.

It was in this world that stands before you in this picture that the two personalities of whom we have spoken were trained and prepared, in the time of Heraclitus. And now, in 356 A.D. on the birth-day of Alexander the Great, we behold the flames of fire burst forth from the Temple of Ephesus.

Alexander the Great is born, and finds his teacher Aristotle. And it is as though from out of the ascending flames of Ephesus a mighty voice went forth for those who were able to hear it: Found a spiritual Ephesus far and wide over the Earth, and let the old physical Ephesus stand in men's memory as its centre, as its midmost point.

Thus we have before us this picture of ancient Asia with her Mystery centres, and in the foreground Ephesus and her pupils in the Mysteries. We see Ephesus in flames, and a little later we see the expeditions of Alexander that carried over into the East what Greece had to give for the progress of mankind, so that there came into Asia in picture-form what she had lost in its reality.

Looking across to the East and letting our imagination be fired by the tremendous events that we see taking place, we are able to view in a true light that ancient chapter in man's history,—for it needs to be grasped with the imagination. And then we see gradually rise up in the foreground the Roman world, the world of the Middle Ages, the world that continues down to our own time.

All other divisions of history into periods—ancient, medieval and modern, or however else they may be designated—give rise to false conceptions. But if you will study deeply and intently the picture that I have here set before you, it will give you a true insight into the hidden workings that run through European history down to the present day.

• 1. Herodotus of Halicarnassos, the first Greek historian, lived in the fifth century B.C. Wrote history of the Persian Wars.
• 2. Justinian, Byzantine Emperor from 527–565, son of a peasant, sent an edict to Athens in 529 forbidding the teaching of philosophy and law. Thereupon the last seven Athenian philosophers left the Roman Empire and emigrated to Persia.

With our study of the Apocalypse we have reached the point that leads us to the so-called third letter. This third letter portrays to us—entirely in keeping with what we have seen in the first two letters—the evolutionary secrets, so to speak, of a certain geographical territory. In order to find our way into the following train of thought we must once again briefly call to mind the basic tendency and goal of the Apocalypse.

We have seen that the Apocalypse is a book of initiation. It describes the steps to be taken by a candidate for initiation in order to develop the highest vision of the spiritual world. We have seen that acquiring knowledge of all aspects of the physical plane is the first step. Those to be initiated must raise themselves to the astral plane, and then to the devachanic plane. It has become clear to us that human beings who raise themselves to the astral plane are surrounded by a world of pictures, which are much more real than anything we call pictures in our poor language. These astral pictures are much more real than what exists here. These pictures experienced by the seer are the fundamental forces of the physical world. The physical world is formed out of this world of pictures. When human beings have worked through to the astral plane, then they raise themselves to the devachanic plane; this plane's world of pictures resounds with the so-called music of the spheres, which constitutes the inner being of all things. Progressing then from the astral plane to the devachanic the seer hears for the first time what the Pythagorean school characterized as “the music of the spheres.” The music of the spheres finds only an abstract expression in what we call the higher numbers. But what are ordinary numbers and measure? What are the numbers physicists speak about when they discover wave motion, when they speak of oscillations? What are these numbers compared with what our ears hear when they hear the sounds themselves? What we find in the philosophical books concerning the “mysticism of numbers” is nothing more than a babbling. But what Pythagoras described is what the seer perceives after the spiritual ear has been opened, when it hears the sounds that make the wave movement or hears what is expressed in such wave movement. The devachanic world is nowhere else. You can remain standing in the same location and experience the physical world fading away. The world is enlivened with colors and forms—and then you can experience that this world of light is penetrated by tones.

In the Apocalypse you will find a description of how Christian mysticism describes the devachanic world. If you raise yourself to that elevated condition as the servant of the Lord did, then you first experience what is taking place on the physical plane. This is described to us in a certain way in the seven letters to the seven communities. Then the enlightenment achieved through knowledge of the physical plane is put into signs in the seven seals. When human beings raise themselves to the astral plane they experience a world flooded with light, pictures, and forms. That is described to us in the picture of the man surrounded by the four living creatures, of the lamb receiving from his hand the book with the seven seals. As these picture-seals are unsealed the astral world comes to meet us, and the trumpeting angels signify the harmony of the spheres on the plane of devachan.

With the Apocalypse we are confronted by a book of initiation. Such a book is, at the same time, always a prophetic book. One who experiences the events of the astral and devachanic planes also, at the same time, experiences the events of the future—a profound mystery of the future is present here. What is found today on a higher plane will appear in the future on the physical plane. Place yourself with a seer presently on the astral plane; the seer can only rise to this world if his or her spiritual eye is opened. Think of everything that you experience on the astral plane condensed, grown solid like water to ice; then you have the condition of your own physical world in the near future. The present, today, in the astral world, is the future in the physical, so that the seer can see today the future state of humankind on the astral plane. Initiation means, at the same time, penetrating the secrets of future events. Hence, the Apocalypse is first of all a book of initiation and secondly, a prophetic book. This prophetic wisdom we want now to illuminate a little more closely; we want to see how this wisdom encompasses the meaning of the evolution of our humankind.

You have heard that the Apocalypse speaks of very bad conditions of our earth, devastating conditions. We have just studied the task of Theosophy within our human evolution. Let us look at the future: There will he terrible conditions, conditions that devastate the earth. Human beings will be in a moral state that will allow egotism to attain heights compared with which our present-day state is mere child's play. One might ask how will it be in the future with souls of the present day? Must they be condemned to incarnate in a morally degenerate humanity, in an evil race? We must answer with a decisive “no.”

A wonderful legend describes to us the state of development of the soul. The soul is in a different line of evolution than the body of the human being. The difference between soul and racial development can be seen if we look into the past. Souls were incarnated many times in the Atlantean race; all of you were Atlanteans at that time. The souls worked themselves out of that situation and the remaining human bodies belonged to the races that had become decadent and were falling into decline. The souls left the bodies of the races and rose up to higher races. Human bodies afflicted with fundamental evil will not have souls within them that are striving to rise above their present state to a higher one. Souls that proceed with their development, who rise above themselves, will have, through their work, achieved different kinds of bodies in the sixth root race. But there is also something in Christian esotericism called the melting of human beings with their race. There is a great difference between a human being who says: I will raise myself above what I am capable of giving today to something higher; and another who says: I will stay in the life that surrounds me today. Those who do not strive to go beyond the present-day configuration, who fuse with their race, will be condemned to lead further lives in the bodies of the later races that are left behind.

When we look to the great leaders of humankind who are our pathfinders, we look to them as leaders who will show us how to go beyond the evolution of races in order to dwell in bodies that are more perfect in the future. The fact that a human being can say: I want to stay where I am! is expressed in a legend that has lived for a long time and found various explanations. However, it is really only explained by Theosophy. Think of the pathfinder whom we call Christ Jesus, the one who points to the passage in the Apocalypse we have just discussed. It is the passage he most often refers to—the place where he speaks of the overcoming of death. When you find human souls sitting along the way who are not interested in evolving—what do they experience? They must again and again be born in the same race because they have rejected the signal from the redeemer. This tragedy is expressed in the Ahasuerus legend;¹ Ahasuerus, “the wandering Jew,” created his own destiny because he had pushed the redeemer away from himself.

We must, then, distinguish between the evolution of the soul and the evolution of races; and we are shown how souls climb ever higher. But we are also shown how races sink deeper and deeper in a terrible way. We have now explained how present day evolution is described in the seven letters. We think of the letters as directed to the seven communities of our earth.

If we divide the earth into seven zones geographically, a letter is directed to each. The first territory is one where human beings, particularly today, work to perfect their physical bodies into a higher form. In the second region etheric bodies are the focus and in the third astral bodies are especially cultivated. So you will find one aspect emphasized in one territory, and another aspect in another. Think of these regions spread over the earth. What we refer to as the various peoples or folk groups cultivate particular parts of the human constitution: one folk especially develops the physical human being, another folk cultivates another aspect. But we have mentioned that it is not true to say that at one location only the astral body, at another only the physical body, is cultivated. In our various incarnations our souls must learn the lesson of each individual region. The seven letters are directed to every human being because every human being must pass through the seven stages of evolutionary development. The letter to the community in Ephesus is directed to a territory where the physical body is especially cultivated. The individual words characterize wonderfully just this kind of development. The third letter, to the Pergamonians, goes to the region where the astral body is particularly developed.

Let us keep together all the different facts we have discovered in the course of time. The evolution of the human being proceeds in such a way that the I works into the astral body, spiritualizing it. That part of the astral body transformed by the I is designated by the term “spirit self” or “manas.” Cultivating the astral body means, then, to work manas into the astral body. As much as you have cultivated your astral body—to that extent have you worked manas into it. In Christian esotericism the word “manna” means the same as manas; what is indicated as manna in the Bible is what we mean when we speak of the manasic nature flowing into the human being.

In the third letter we read: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches (communities). To him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna.” (Rev. 2:17) That is clearly stated; and with this letter the other side of the issue is also indicated, that those who do not undergo this development bring their bodies down, bring them into decline. In Christian esotericism the degeneration of the astral body is indicated in a very radical way.

In the Lemurian age the higher part of the human soul descended into the three human members. Remember, at that time the external human being was at a stage just somewhat higher than today's highest animals. From that time onward human beings have been working to form and develop their astral body because the soul is dependent on it. The soul is dependent on the astral body which, when the soul first entered it, was almost at the stage of animality. The progress of humankind consists just in this, that we work on the astral body, that we purify the animalistic emotions and instincts.

Assume for a moment the opposite; the consequence is not that the astral body remains unchanged but rather that it sinks down into a condition lower than it was in during Lemuria. Such neglect is portrayed as the temptations of Satan. For a Christian esotericist, “Satan” is a being who seduces human beings into bringing their astral bodies into decline rather than into ascent. When the writer of the Apocalypse wants to describe the other side, he says: If you develop your astral body then you will enjoy the heavenly manna. But there are regions where people do not develop the astral body—they experience the temptations of Satan. He describes this pull downward on the astral body: “I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is ...” (Rev. 2:13)

The fourth letter—to the community in Thyatira—is addressed to the region where humanity's sense of personality finds expression. This I plays a large role with all those wanting to lead human nature into a descent. Especially in middle European esotericism, the I is presented altogether as the middle point, as what is actually active and at work within the human being. The human being is like a flowing together of forces, forces that flow together in the astral body, etheric body, and physical body; and the I is presented as what is at work on these three members. In Germanic mythology this is portrayed by the tree, the world-ash, the symbol for threefold human nature. The middle point for this threefold human nature is the I; through its incorporation in the three members it carries the entire tree of human growth and evolution. “Ygg” is the ancient form for growth and evolution. You will find that in the ancient forms of speech as a characterization for what has been incorporated, the world-ash is called “Yggdrasil.” Yggdrasil means, “the carrying I”; and the name of the god who is connected with the formation of the I is also derived from it.

In the course of evolution the human being first learned how to inhale; in Hebrew that is connected with the word “Jehovah.” In old High German that corresponds to Odin, who is a god of the wind and races around in storms. “Jach” (Jahweh) is the “blower,” and when we speak of Wotan, and his army that rushes here and there, then we are speaking of the Odem, who was necessary for the growth of the I. In Christian esotericism a very special value is placed on this word altogether. It is seen as the name for the eternal in the human being and is, therefore, portrayed as what carries the other bodies, as what forms their middle point. Consider only this passage: “... and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received power from my Father; and I will give him the morning star.” (Rev. 2:27,28) This I means the same thing as the actual name of Christ Jesus. Here, in almost every sentence, the word I appears again to tell us that it is the eternal in the human being. You will find this meaning expressed again and again by the words in the Apocalypse.

I will cite only a very special passage. The sixth letter must be addressed to a community where budhi is especially cultivated. What does that mean? If manas is especially cultivated, and if the human being has become a knower, then what we previously knew will pass over into our living feelings; it becomes for us a natural, given, feeling. It becomes a passion for us. If you realize that justice should prevail, that justice should live, if you realize that humankind cannot live without the beautiful and the good, then you are on the way to develop budhi. If higher things have become your second nature, if your soul is fully permeated with enthusiasm for the beautiful and the true, then you are on the path to budhi. Budhi takes its substance from the realm of feelings; and atma from the realm of the will. And when humankind finally reaches the point where it has made enthusiasm for the good into a reality, then what is called the Christian ideal of brotherhood will have appeared. This sixth territory can receive its name only from the ideal of brotherhood, and “Philadelphia” is the city of brotherly love. If you read the relevant passage you will see the city described this way: “I know your works. Behold, I set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut; I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.” (Rev. 3:8) They did not deny the name that comes from fraternal duty.

The seventh letter is taken from the realm of atma, the atma or breath of the human being. When we have come as far as the physical breath we take in, when the I has worked down into the physical body—perhaps you know that in Christian esotericism this is designated by the word “amen”—then the esotericist, when speaking of this, will refer to the “amen,” and to the Angel of the Church (community) in Laodicea write: “The words of the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation.” (Rev. 3:14)

I have been able to select only some of the passages. If we could discuss everything, then you would see that we have messages for regions in our own time in these seven letters.

Let us now go from the past into the future. What does the writer of the Apocalypse think of the future? He speaks entirely in the following way: What you can see today on the astral plane is nothing other than the formation of the physical future of human beings. Look at what is on the astral plane and you will experience the future of humankind. There is no future that does not result from the present.

You know that the human being is enveloped in an astral body that permeates the physical body. You know, too, that there are sense organs in the astral body that are entirely different from the sense organs in the physical body. We speak of the lotus blossoms or wheels. What the human being can develop today in terms of such astral senses, the human physical body will have in the future as physical senses. The astral is on the way to becoming physical. How do human beings form these organs of the future, which today are still astral? Through what we achieve today in terms of the true, the beautiful, and the good. Work and deeds of today form the foundation for organs in the future. There was a time when human beings did not have eyes—they couldn't perceive light and color. Human beings acquired eyes through their actions at that time. They had other organs previously—by turning to the light they developed eyes. Present deed is future destiny; the deeds of the past were such that eyes could be created, and from your deeds in the present day, your sense organs of the future will be created.

Human beings who are active in terms of the true, the beautiful, and the good will have normal organs in the future. If they strive against the true, the beautiful, and the good then they will have crippled organs in the future. It is impossible to erase what we do in the present. A deed laid down in the present in order that it emerge in the future is termed “sealed” in Christian esotericism. In terms of Christian esotericism one says: Today you have eyes that were nonexistent in the past but you did this or that. Your eyes were “sealed,” now they are “unsealed.” Your eyes are the “unsealing” of your past deeds. We have now the sealing of what will be unsealed on the physical plane in the future. For anyone who looks only at the physical plane, evolution is a book with seven seals. Anyone who looks at the astral plane can see all future organs already laid out. The organs reveal themselves as pictures. An esotericist would say: If you look to the middle point, which is characterized as the lamb, then the lamb will put the book into your hand; and the book is unsealed in such a way that what will have form in the future can only be expressed in pictures. Therefore, what can occur is expressed through pictures, piece by piece. In the first seal a future condition is portrayed pictorially by a horse, a further condition is revealed in the second seal through another horse and so forth. In order to discern the meaning we will consider one image, let us say, the third horse. This is the picture that appears when the third seal is broken. It is presented in the following way: “When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, ‘Come!’ And I saw, and behold, a black horse, and its rider had a balance in its hand.” (Rev. 6:5)

What does this mean? A future condition of the human being is here portrayed, a condition that proceeds from the evolution of the third member of the human being, the astral body, which has been worked on and purified by the I. An unpurified astral body is one that knows only itself, that finds everything that does not belong to it to be antipathetic. A purified astral body is one that receives everything coming to it weighed out with a just balance. If we rightly purify the astral body, an organ is created that can be expressed pictorially by a rider with a balance. An organ in the astral body arises for the human being out of just deeds in the present. This is expressed here pictorially. We could explain the other pictures in the same way. Then we would see the inadequacy of the usual explanations that are given.

When the fifth seal is opened we are told something very significant: “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne ...” (Rev. 6:9) What happens to a soul that develops itself up to the fifth step? It is strangled in its lower soul; the impurities that cling to it are done away with, and the soul thereby appears clothed in innocence: “And they were each given a white robe ...” (Rev. 6:11) The soul is white; it has become innocent when it has developed to the fifth step.

If we ascend higher we arrive at the place where the astral pictures go over into the devachanic, to the sounding of the trumpets. The Ahasuerus human beings form one group of humanity; the others will be those who can enter into other beings. Now, it will appear obvious to us that what has fallen behind must be described with pictures that can only be described as repulsive. While the souls that have developed further are hearing the trumpets, the others will have achieved the peak of egotistical development. Those who have advanced, who have developed their souls, will live like lofty initiates today.

I have told you that initiates progress through various stages. They must transform not only something of their astral body, but also something of their etheric body, and even something of their physical body. In earlier times initiates were kept in a state such that their etheric body existed outside their physical body for three and one-half days while the physical body lay there as if dead. Meanwhile, the hierophant lead the etheric body through higher worlds.

The writer of the Apocalypse describes to us what a present-day initiate experiences. He describes it as something similar to the initiation process of three and one-half days. Remember that there is actually a passage in the Apocalypse that says two witnesses of God appear, who lie as if dead for three and one-half days and then again become alive: “... and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange gifts, because these two prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth. But after three and one-half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them.” (Rev. 11:10,11) The Apocalypse speaks of these two prophets in addition to the leader of humankind, whom the people could see. You have here a description of a process of initiation. You see how everything fits together.

There is something else that will show you how deeply the writer of the Apocalypse has penetrated into the mysteries of the world. I can best explain this if I relate to you the Golden Legend,² which has played an especially large role in Christian esotericism.

We are told that Seth was able to journey to Paradise, that the cherub with the flaming sword permitted him to pass and actually enter Paradise. He encountered there a vision: The crowns of the two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, had grown together. Seth took a seed from this tree that had grown together; this seed he placed in the mouth of his deceased father, Adam. From this seed then grew a tree with three trunks, which provided wood for various things. It was especially important that Seth could see how a kind of flaming script was formed in the branches of this tree. The following words appeared: “Ejeh, Ascher, Ejeh,” which mean, “I am he who was, he who is and he who will be. The wood from this tree was used to make the staff with which Moses performed his miraculous deeds; the wood was used to build Solomon's temple; then it was used for a bridge over the Bethesda pool, which Jesus walked over. Finally, the wood was used to make the cross on which Christ Jesus was crucified. What do these two symbols mean, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge? What does it mean that they have grown together? And what does the tree signify, the tree that provided the wood even for the cross?

The fact that Seth could enter Paradise means nothing other than that he had become an initiate, that he could penetrate into mysteries that were closed to others. Now let us ask ourselves: What do the trees that he saw signify? That is something found in every human being, something present in every individual.

How did the human being become a knower? The answer is connected with the inhalation of air through the lungs, where the “used” blue blood is transformed into red blood. In this way the human being could take up the Odem, the breath of God. This is the becoming of the individual human I: through the infiowing of the Odem of God through which the human being became a knowing soul. A real tree is actually incorporated in the human being, a tree you can still see today if you study the human body. This is the tree created by the main arteries, which branch off into smaller and smaller capillaries throughout the entire body. There is no being in the world that can become a knowing being if it cannot, like a human being, take up the oxygen from the air—the oxygen that is so necessary to create red blood—so that human beings can take into themselves the tree of knowledge through the red blood.

The other tree, the tree of blue veins, has been taken away from the human being in terms of human mastery over it. It contains the used, blue blood which is a poison, filled with death. Before the human being descended from the bosom of God, it was the tree of life. By becoming earthly, the human being was divided into two parts, comprising the veinal and arterial, the blue and the red blood vessel systems. The blue blood streams up to the heart and must unite with what the plants give. The human being breathes out carbon dioxide; plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. In this way human breathing, which expresses itself in our actual “I-ness,” is an intertwining of the red and blue “blood trees.” This is, however, only possible if the human being has a tool, and that is the plant, without which the human being cannot live. The plant is what allows us to intertwine the blue and the red “blood trees.”

The alchemy of the human being is this: what the plants do for us today, human beings in the future will be able to accomplish within and through their consciousness. What is outside the human being today will be intertwined within the physical body when we have taken in the entire plant world, when we have expanded our consciousness to include the entire world of plants. That is the future condition of humanity. Then, what exists outside in the natural world surrounding us will be entirely different.

Our entire cosmos will be changed with us. Earlier conditions will return at a higher level. There was a time when the earth and the sun were united with one another. At that time the human being existed within the being of the sun. But by entering into a physical body, the human being actually left the Mars state—and it is this state that someday humankind will once again attain. At that time the tree of life and the tree of knowledge were intertwined; at that time the human being did not need any external tool. That will be the case again in the future. What humankind will have then attained has always been indicated symbolically by drawing the sun, and then indicating the earth at a higher stage of development—with the human being also more highly developed. What will bring human beings to that point is the union of the red and blue bloodstreams by means of an expanded consciousness. This is indicated with two metal pillars—those are the two bloodstreams—and the sun is what will be ... [omission in manuscript]. Then the blue blood tree will no longer be a tree of death.

The seer must see this condition in astral signs. To describe this condition the writer of the Apocalypse must indicate it with pictures. “Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun and his feet were like pillars of fire.” (Rev. 10:1) We have here a picture of this condition. In the same way the entire Apocalypse is composed with occult signs.

Christian esotericism sees the earth as the body of Christ. When Christian esotericism speaks of the body of Christ, it is speaking of the planetary body of the earth. Therefore, you must take words such as the following seriously: “He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.” (John 13:18) When we eat the bread of the earth we are treading on it with our feet.

If so, the writer of the Apocalypse can say even something more. We have seen that Seth was an initiate. Abel was a man of God who voluntarily lived from what was given to him. Cain was a farmer who himself built whatever he needed. Two lines of development are spoken of. One could be called the Seth or Abel direction, while the other included those who themselves had to change the form of everything. They will have to work for a long time; therefore tilling the soil, the work of the farmer has always been a symbol for those who transform the earth. The children of Abel or Seth stand over against the servants of Cain, who are the successors of Cain or the people of Cain. Those who have received revelations from the beginning have seen from the beginning, but also those who diligently work and strive will become initiates and behold the one who is the spirit of the earth, the planetary spirit of the earth. If the writer of the Apocalypse wants to indicate that the spirit of the planet will be seen by those who themselves transform the earth, then he will say: “All eyes will see Christ Jesus, also those who have pierced him.” Therefore, the writer of the Apocalypse says, right at the beginning, “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, everyone who pierced him.” (Rev. 1:7) Those are, at the same time, words that describe the goal, the essence, the leitmotif of the Apocalypse. Precisely these profound words show us that the Apocalypse is really a prophetic book, that we can read from it the future that is here portrayed in pictures. It is our task as Theosophists to see things that Christ Jesus could not speak about in those days because the people could not yet understand. But he did point to them with signs.

What Christ Jesus has poured into these signs must become clear to us for the sake of the stream of Theosophy in the world. It must stand before our eyes symbolically during the next days of our Congress through the seven seals of the Apocalypse, through the motifs on the pillar capitals, and through the five planetary seals that we find as vignettes in the program. These five vignettes were not invented; they are rather five vignettes from the occult script.

If we learn to understand every line, all the curves and marks, then we have understood something of how human evolution has been written in the occult language of signs. Theosophy must point out this language of occult signs.

We meet together in order to work for knowledge. Everything else will come by itself through this work for knowledge. Therefore, the moral admonition, “You should love your brother” is just like saying to a stove: Your task is to heat the room! Saying so does not make the room warm. But when you put wood in the stove then it will warm the room by itself without having to be told.

By striving for knowledge, by accomplishing the work of knowing, you heat the human soul and this leads to the great work of the brotherhood of humankind. The Theosophical Society must be a society that promotes work toward esoteric knowledge, otherwise it will not thrive. If we absorb something from these ideas, then we will be able to do some of what the Theosophical Society must do, also on the occasion of this Congress.³ If Theosophy is also connected with what is described in the book of wonders, the Apocalypse, then we must also do something in order to break the seals ourselves. Only when within our society we open the seals of the books that have been given to us by great individuals, only then are we striving toward that which the Theosophical Society should be, if it wants to be a real influence on our modern culture.

• 1. Ahasuerus is a figure in Christian legend fraught with mystery and ambiguity. A reference in John 18, 20–22 to an officer who struck Jesus is sometimes seen as the origin of the story. Another possible source, the English Flores Historiarum (1228) describes a man in Armenia, Cartaphilus, who later converted to Christianity. Cartaphilus had been Pontius Pilate's doorkeeper. He had struck Jesus on the road to Calvary and Jesus responded: “I go, and you will wait until I return.” This legend was revived in Germany in 1602 in a pamphlet entitled, “A brief description and narration regarding a Jew named Ahasuerus.” Since then the tale has been the subject of many plays, poems, novels, and paintings. Rudolf Steiner's acquaintance, the Austrian poet Robert Hamerling, for example, wrote an epic Ahasver in Rom (1862), while Edgar Quinet in Ahasverus (1833) used the legend to symbolize the progress of humanity.
• 2. Compare the lectures in part II of The Temple Legend (GA 93) “Concerning the Lost Temple and How It Is to Be Restored in Connection with the Legend of the True Cross, or Golden Legend” (London:Rudolf Steiner Press, 1985)
• 3. IV Annual Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society, May 18 – 21, 1907.

It is of the first importance that there should be in this present time a certain number of people who know where man stands in his spiritual evolution, and know also what must be his next step if civilisation is not to go completely under. For what is happening today? In speaking to you, my dear friends, I can use anthroposophical terminology and say at once that the Ahrimanic forces, which are at work wherever man thinks or acts on a materialistic basis, are in our day trying to chain man to the Earth by gaining possession of his intellect. They are at this moment very powerful, these Ahrimanic forces, and they are searching out all kinds of ways to get access to the souls of men, with the object of enticing them to the adoption of a purely materialistic outlook, a purely intellectual understanding of the world. It is on this account important that there should be, as I said, a certain number of persons who know how the evolution of man has to proceed in order for him to reach his goal.

Let us look back a little into the past. We could go back very much farther, but for the moment we need go no more than three or four thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha. And then let us follow, from one point of view, the course of man's evolution since that epoch.

In the age of which I want first to speak, a civilisation flourished in the East that in my book Occult Science I have called the Ancient Persian civilisation. The teacher of mankind during the height of this civilisation was Zarathustra, Zoroaster. Not the Zarathustra of whom history tells; he lived later. The Zarathustra I mean is a much more ancient teacher of mankind. In those olden times it was, you know, quite a common custom for the pupils of a great and lofty teacher to continue for a long time to bear his name; and the Zarathustra we read of in history is in reality the last of a succession of pupils of the great Zarathustra. Now, this great teacher of mankind was initiated in a most wonderful and remarkable manner into the secrets of existence, and he could stand before the men of his time and teach them as an eminent and sublime initiate. Zarathustra knew—and it was his initiation that enabled him to have the knowledge—that in that place in the heavens whither our eyes are turned when we look at the Sun, lives a great and all-embracing Spirit. He did not at first see the physical Sun at all; in the place in the heavens where we today with our ordinary consciousness see the physical Sun, Zarathustra beheld a great and omnipresent cosmic Spirit. And this cosmic Spirit influenced him in a spiritual way, whereby he was able to know that with the sunshine, with the rays that fall from the Sun upon the Earth, come also spiritual rays, rays of divine-spiritual grace and bounty, which enkindle in the soul and spirit of man that ‘higher man’ to which the ordinary man in us must continually aspire.

In those olden times initiates were not given names on any external grounds, their names came to them on account of what they knew. And so this sublime initiate of whom we speak was called by his pupils—and he also called himself—Zarathustra, Zoroaster, the Radiant Star; he was named from the radiant Godhead Who sends to Earth the rays of wisdom. The initiation of Zarathustra was, in relation to all initiations that came after him, more lofty and more sublime. When he looked upon the spiritual cosmic Sun, he was looking into the source of all the forces that make the stones on the Earth to be hard and solid, that make the plants to come forth from their seeds and grow, that make the animals to spread abroad over the face of the Earth in their different kinds, and that make man to flourish and thrive upon the Earth. The oldest of the Zarathustra’s, the Radiant Star, had knowledge of everything that took place on the Earth; and he had this knowledge because he was able to experience the Spiritual Being of the Sun.

When came a time when man was no longer able to penetrate so deeply into the Mysteries of the worlds,—the time that I have named, in my Occult Science, after the civilisations of Chaldea and Egypt. Man still looked up to the Sun, but he no longer saw it as radiant, as sending forth rays; he saw it only as shining, as illuminating the Earth with its light. Men spoke in those times of Ra, whose representative on Earth was Osiris; Ra signified for them the Sun that moved round the Earth, giving light. Some of the secrets had been lost; the initiate was no longer able to see with full inner clarity the radiant cosmic God, as had the initiates of an older time. He could only see how the primal astral forces come from the Sun. Zarathustra saw in the Sun a Being, he was still able to see in the Sun a Being. The initiates of Egypt and of Chaldea saw in the Sun the forces that come to, the Earth,—forces of light, forces of movement. What they saw was deeds,—something inferior of Being; spiritual deeds, it is true, but not a spiritual Being. And the Egyptian initiates spoke of One who represents on Earth the forces of the Sun that man carries within him; and they called him Osiris.

When we come to the age of Greece, we find that by the eighth, seventh, fifth century before the Mystery of Golgotha, man had lost all power of looking into the Mysteries of the Sun, he could see only the effect of the Sun's influence in the environment or the Earth. Man beheld the working of the Sun in the ether that fills all the space around the Earth. And this ether, that spreads out around the Earth and permeates also man himself, the Greek initiates—not the people generally, but the initiates—called Zeus.

There have been then these three stages in the cultural evolution of mankind. First there was the stage when the initiates beheld in the Sun a Divine-Spiritual Being; then came a second stage, when the initiates beheld the Sun's forces that are working there; and finally a third stage, when the initiates beheld only the influence of the Sun Being in the Earth's ether.

Now, there was in a later time a man who came as near to the teachings of initiation as it was possible to come in the time in which he lived, and who was acquainted with the teaching of these three aspects of the Sun—the aspect of the Sun according to Zarathustra, the aspect of the Sun that is associated with Osiris, and the aspect of the Sun as seen and understood by Pythagoras and Anaxagoras. I refer to Julian the Apostate. Julian the Apostate was not able himself to behold the Sun in all three aspects, but he knew of the teaching; he knew it as a tradition that had come down in the Mystery Schools. And so impressed was Julian the Apostate by this teaching of the three aspects of the Sun that to him that which Christianity brought seemed small in comparison. For he still knew of the inexpressible glory and splendour into which Zarathustra had gazed; he had learned to know also of the activities of fire and of light, of the cosmic chemical forces, and of the cosmic life-forces, as man had been able to behold them in the ancient Mysteries. Of all this he, Julian, could in his time still learn,—although only by tradition. And the whole teaching seemed to him so sublime, so mighty, that he found himself unable to accept Christianity. The thoughts and purposes of his mind were, in fact, turned in quite another direction. He seized with the desire to impart to mankind the ancient Mysteries into which he had himself been initiated up to a certain degree. And this, my dear friends, was what led at last to the unsheathing of the dagger that brought his life to a violent end. The hand that lifted the dagger belonged to one of those who counted it a sin to communicate the Lofty teachings of initiation to the general run of mankind, and who wanted that people should hear the Sun spoken of in an external manner only,—that is, of course, in such external terms as were customary in that age.

Julian the Apostate declared that the Sun has three aspects: first, the aspect of the Earthly ether; secondly, the aspect of the light of heaven that is behind the Earthly ether,—which is the aspect also of the chemical, the warmth of fire, and the life forces; and lastly, the aspect of pure spiritual Being. For this he was put out of the way. And indeed it must be admitted that the moment had not yet come when mankind in general was ripe to receive such weighty and solemn truths.

A study of history can, however, bring to light something else in this connection, that is of very great significance. A good deal of this threefold teaching of Zarathustra, Osiris, and Anaxagoras—the teaching of the spiritual Sun; of the elemental Sun; and of Zeus, the Sun-flooded ether environment of the Earth—found its way into the external exoteric culture of Greece. And the world would never have had such a sublime Greek art, nor such a wonderful Greek philosophy, would never have had a Plato and an Aristotle, were it not that into the art and philosophy of Greece, streams from this ancient wisdom were able to flow. A time came, however, when the initiation truths that were handed down from past epochs were no longer sufficiently protected from profanation. Many teachings that had their source in initiation wisdom passed into the hands of distinguished Romans, more especially the Romans, more especially the Roman emperors. Among them all, perhaps of Augustus alone can it be said that he still knew how to value the initiation wisdom that was imparted to him. In the Roman world there was, generally speaking, no understanding for the esoteric factor in Greek art and Greek wisdom, no recognition that these contained elements which could be traced back to the very most ancient wisdom teaching, Consequently, the hopelessly prosaic, the semi-barbarous civilisation of Rome took over what we may call the surface brightness, the sheen, of Greek culture, but was quite incapable of handing on, in its true form, to later generations what lived at the heart of this culture. And so when Roman influences began to permeate the Christianity that had, ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, been making its way into the world, there was no possibility for Christianity to receive, along with all that came from Rome, the true essence of the ancient culture.

When I describe historical events in the way I have just been doing, you must not take it as an expression of blame or of criticism. It was necessary for the evolution of mankind that things should happen as they did. It is, however, also necessary that we should not be blind to the fact that because Rome did not know how to value and guard initiation, the genuine initiation truths of earlier times have been prevented from finding their way over to the West. We must realise that we, as human beings possessing the ordinary consciousness of modern times, have been debarred from the sacred truths of olden times because Rome was unable to understand these truths. As we know, it was a man who hailed from Rome that drove out of Europe the last remaining Greek philosophers and obliged them to seek refuge in the East.

I have to call these things to mind; the consideration of the subject we have in hand made it necessary to begin by referring to them—taking our thoughts back, even if only for a brief while, to the far-off time when the spiritual teachers of man could still turn their gaze to the starry heavens and behold up there the threefold Sun. The only remnant of this knowledge that has been left for later generations is the symbol of it in the triple crown worn by the Popes of Rome. The outer symbol remains; the inner reality is lost. But through the new initiation of modern times, a way has, opened once again for man to look back into those earlier epochs of his evolution. This new initiation of which our anthroposophical teaching has to tell enables us to look back and behold how, it was for man, when he looked up from Earth to the Sun and listened to hear what the Sun should teach him of the mysteries of human evolution.

My dear friends, when the pupils of the old initiates looked out into the wide universe and spoke of what they saw living out there beyond the Earth in the workings of the Sun, yes, in the Sun itself,—when they spoke of the sublime Spirit-Being of the Sun as proclaimed by Zarathustra, they were speaking of the very same Being Whom, in these later times, we designate as Christ. So that we are adhering strictly to truth when we say that the initiates of olden times beheld the Christ outside the Earth in the Cosmos, in the Cosmos that has its centre and representative in the Sun. The real essence of the Mystery of Golgotha does not lie in the fact that it teaches of the Christ. The initiates of olden times also knew and taught of Him. Only, they spoke of Him not as living on the Earth, in the forces of the Earth, but as living within the forces of the Sun. It is a mistake to think that the old initiates did not speak of the Christ Being. Christ was spoken of continually before the Mystery of Golgotha,—as a Being who is outside and beyond the Earth. Men have lost sight of this truth and are apt to regard the statement of it as unchristian. But why should such a statement be regarded as unchristian, seeing that the Early Church Fathers undoubtedly held this view? They said: “The wise men of olden times who are often described as heathen are, in a deeper sense, Christian. The Early Church Fathers did not hesitate to speak of the heathen as Christians before the Mystery of Golgotha.”

What took place at the Mystery of Golgotha was really nothing less than that the Being Who, previously, was not to be found on Earth, Whom one could find only outside the Earth when one had been initiated into the Mysteries of the heavens,—this Being incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, lived on Earth in Jesus of Nazareth, was crucified and laid in the Earth, and appeared to his initiated pupils as Resurrected—as One who has risen in the spiritual body. The great and sublime Sun Being descended from cosmic heights, descended to Earth—that is the event that came to pass in the Mystery of Golgotha. And when He had descended from spiritual worlds and passed through death, and His body had been laid in the Earth, then this same Christ—after His death, after His resurrection—had initiate pupils. And it is important that many should know today what Christ taught at that time to His initiate pupils; it is important that many should know of this teaching of the risen Christ, in order that they may be able to participate in the forces that are now at work for the further evolution of mankind.

Let us look back once more to the initiate of olden times. How did he receive his teaching? All initiates of olden times were instructed by Beings who were outside and beyond the Earth. And the instruction was carried out in the following manner. The pupils of the Mysteries were trained and prepared to be able to see when outside their body, and then through this kind of seeing they came to know Beings. We have spoken of how Zarathustra came to a knowledge of Christ as a sublime Sun Being. The initiates of old came to know also other Beings of the Hierarchies. And the language, the spiritual language that was used by a Being who descended in this way to teach the initiates, was a language by means of which, it was in those times still possible to impart teachings to men.

There were thus in olden time[s] divine teachers. And the Christ,—He was also such a divine teacher. For those to whom He gave instruction after His resurrection He was the divine teacher. And what He was able to teach them was new; it was more than what the earlier divine teachers taught.

The divine teachers of earlier ages spoke to men of the secrets of birth, but they did not speak of the secrets of death; for in the divine world whence the earlier divine teachers descended to teach the initiates of olden time, there were no beings who had undergone death. Death was something that could only be undergone on Earth by man. The Gods looked down and saw man who dies; their knowledge of death was an external knowledge merely. But Christ learned to know death on the Earth. For He did not merely become incorporated, shining forth in some human being at certain times, as was the case with the divine being teachers of long ago. Christ learned to know death inasmuch as He, a God, lived on Earth as a human soul in a physical human body. Thus, He learned to know death in actual reality. He went through death. And He learned also something more.

My dear friends, if the Christ had undergone only what took place from the time of the Baptism in Jordan until the time of the Crucifixion and the Death on the Cross, then, having undergone all this, He would still not have been able to speak of the Mysteries of which He did speak to His initiate disciples after His resurrection. I must explain to you that, to the divine teachers who were able to descend to Earth, and to the initiated teachers in olden times, all Mysteries were open in the whole wide world save only the Mysteries of the interior of the Earth. The initiates knew that down there within the Earth spiritual Beings hold command, of quite another kind than the Gods Who before the Mystery of Golgotha used ever and again to descend to human beings. The Greeks, for instance, were not unaware of the Spiritual Beings in the interior of the Earth; they called them in their mythology the Titans. But Christ was the first of the Upper Gods to learn to know the interior of the Earth. That is an important fact. The Christ, because He was buried in the Earth, brought knowledge to the Upper Gods of a region of which before They had no knowledge. And this secret, that the Gods too undergo evolution—this secret Christ communicated to His initiate pupils after His Resurrection. This secret Paul also learned through the natural initiation that he experienced outside Damascus. What stunned and shook Paul to the depths of his being was the knowledge that the Power that had formerly been sought in the Sun had now become united with the powers of Earth.

For what was the reason why Paul, when he was still Saul, persecuted the followers of Christ? The reason was, he had learned in the old Chaldean initiation that the Christ lives outside the Earth in the Cosmos, and that those who declare that Christ lives in the Earth are in error. But when Paul received enlightenment on his way to Damascus, at that moment he knew that it was he himself who had been mistaken, in that he was ready to believe only what had hitherto been true. For now he saw that what had been true, had become changed; the Being Who dwelt formerly only in the Sun had now descended to Earth and continued to live in the forces of the Earth.

Thus was the Mystery of Golgotha, for the understanding of those who first made it known to men, not an event for Earth alone, but a cosmic event, an event for all the worlds. This was how it was understood in early Christian times. And the true initiates described the event in the following way.

They were deeply initiated, the earliest Christian initiates; and they knew that the Christ, Whom we think of today as the Being Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha at the beginning of our era,—they knew that the Christ, Who came hither from the Sun, had also descended to the Sun from yet more distant heights. It was in the Sun that Zarathustra beheld Him. Then His power went over into the rays of the Sun. The initiates of Egypt beheld Him in the rays of the Sun. And then His power lived in the environment of the Earth. It was there that the initiates of Greece beheld Him. And now in this present time—so said the earliest Christian initiates—it is given to man to behold Christ as One Who walked on Earth in an earthly body, and Who is seen by us in His true form when we behold Him as the Risen One—the Christ Who is in the Earth, and has seen the Mystery of the Earth and can now bring it about that this Mystery shall gradually flow into the evolution of mankind.

There was a wonderful warmth and glow about the whole way in which this esoteric teaching was communicated, in scattered and lonely schools of initiation, during the first centuries after Christ,—coming over from the East and spreading continually westward by secret channels. Yes, make no doubt of it, there was verily such an esoteric teaching of Christianity. The Early Church Fathers knew more than is known today. But they saw also at the same time the attack that was threatening from the side of Rome. Modern historians have very little idea of the magnitude of that collision between the early Christian impulse and the anti-spiritual world of Rome. What the Roman world did was to throw a cloak of externality over the deepest Christian Mysteries.

The men of old had a living relationship to the powers of the Universe, such as is scarcely possible for us to imagine today with our ordinary consciousness. Men who lived three, four, five thousand years before Christ knew quite well that when they ate this or that substance, it went on working in their body and brought the powers of the Cosmos to manifestation within them. Look, for example, at the kind of instruction Zarathustra gave to his pupils. He used to teach them in the following manner. “You eat the fruits of the field. These fruits have been shone upon by the Sun, and in the Sun lives the high and lofty Spirit Being. The power of the high Spirit Being, coming from the distant Cosmos, enters with the Rays of the Sun into the fruits of the field. You eat the fruits of the field; what the substance brings forth in you fills you with the spiritual forces of the Sun, when you enjoy the fruits of the field, the Sun ‘rises’ in you, I will tell you what you should do at Solemn festival times. Take something that has been prepared from the fruits of the field. Meditate upon it. Remember that the Sun is within it. Meditate upon it until the piece of bread becomes radiant to you. Then eat it, and be conscious of how the Spirit of the Sun has come from the vast Universe, has entered into you and become alive within you.”

What is left of all this? Merely the outer expression of it,—the eating of the bread in the Mass and in the Communion Service. And those who continue to celebrate this rite in the spirit and understanding which Rome has introduced into Christianity are the very ones who oppose most fiercely any suggestion that man needs cosmic wisdom in order to understand the teachings of Paul; for Paul beheld the Radiance, raying inwards from the clouds, of that force which is the Power of the Sun, the super-corporeal Being, the Christ, Who in the Mystery of Golgotha descended to Earth,—the Cosmic Godhead united with the forces of the Sun. In the first three or four centuries of Christian evolution, a good deal was still known of this Mystery. Afterwards the external knowledge of the world gained such a hold upon man that it is hardly possible for us today, when we read the accounts that have come down to us of the first Christian centuries, to recognise from these how deeply spiritual was the early Christian conception of the Event of Golgotha. But now the time has come when it is of the highest importance for man to look back and call up once again in memory the spiritual understanding of Christianity that he had in the first centuries after Christ. Since that time man has gone through a development that has enabled him to attain a wonderful earthly wisdom. Through this he has become a free being. In olden times even the initiates were not free. When they wanted to work out of really deep impulses, they suffered themselves to be guided by the Gods. By the attainment of earthly wisdom, and by that alone, is man able to become free. In the near future this will, however, have the result that the anti-divine, the anti-Christian forces, will be able to seize hold of the souls of men. These anti-Christian forces,—I call them the Ahrimanic forces.

We have in our day a highly developed science, but it is not yet Christianised. We talk a great deal about our civilisation and culture, but no one sees any occasion to Christianise the natural science upon which they are founded. It must, however, be Christianised; otherwise we shall be deprived of all that we stand in need of from the Cosmos. We shall lose it utterly. Long ago, when men were more sensitive, they were able to receive understanding along with the nourishment that they enjoyed. But as time went on, they became more and more estranged from the cosmic life. In the later part of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch of culture, the initiates were still able to speak of the forces of the Gods,—the forces that enter into plant and stone. And so there could arise in this time a science of healing and medicine. And as a matter of fact, our most effective remedies today come from that ancient epoch, little as people suspect it. Yes, in the realm of healing too, we shall have to turn again to the true sources of knowledge, and develop an art of medicine that is based on insight into the deeper forces of the things that are around us. It rests with modern initiation science to find the way. The anthroposophical movement is really there for nothing else than to impart to man that which is attainable for him today. For since 1879, the Dark Age—as the, prophets of old called it—is past and over. All around us is the spiritual world, the living spiritual world that can reveal itself to us; we can perceive it and take cognisance of it. And it is for us to listen and hear what the spiritual world is revealing to us. That is the aim and purpose we have in view in this anthroposophical movement of ours; we want to make men attentive to the revelations of the spiritual world. Verily, that is a task and mission that is no affair of mankind alone, it concerns the cosmic worlds.

My dear friends, when we begin to communicate single, concrete facts from initiation knowledge, we must not be surprised if one or another truth is met with ridicule and even scorn. Remember what I said at the beginning of my lecture,—that there is need today for persons who have clear and detailed knowledge concerning the evolution of mankind, there is need in the world today for persons who have acquired such knowledge from initiation science. And you will, I think, have seen from the descriptions that have been given, how important it is that we should not rest content with the recognition of broad and general truths, but should bring these truths right into the everyday world of humanity, and let them come to life there. This we shall indeed be able to do, for the truths of initiation science have in them the vigour of life and can speak with strength and precision of the life of man on Earth. Let me give you an example.

During the time of one of the later Crusades there was living in a monastery in Italy a young monk, who was remarkably gifted and who devoted himself to a special study of the knowledge that came—not in writings, but handed on by word of mouth—from early Christian times. For such knowledge continued to live on for a long time as tradition, notably in some of the monasteries. An older monk would, for instance, impart it to a younger when they were alone together; and the young monk of whom I am speaking learned a great deal of early Christian knowledge in this very way. He then left Italy and joined the Crusade. He fell ill in Asia Minor, and while he was being tended, met a still older monk who had been initiated into the Mysteries of Christianity. As a result of this meeting, an intense longing was awakened in the young man to come to a real knowledge and understanding of the deeper Christian Mysteries, Then he died, out there in the East. And he was born again in our age, born again as a person in whom the forces that came from his earlier incarnation worked strongly and showed themselves in the following remarkable way. As I said just now, when one begins to speak on the ground of initiation knowledge about practical matters of life, it is really no more than can be expected if people turn it to ridicule. Nevertheless, it is absolutely necessary that this should be done in our day; and the time will come when we shall have the perception to see that things which are discerned spiritually can be spoken of as historical fact with the same directness and assurance with which we speak of the facts of external science. The personality of whom I speak is none other than Cardinal Newman. Follow the course of his life from youth upwards; look at the knowledge he possessed, read his own words. You cannot, I think, fail to see that in Cardinal Newman we have a strong personality imbued with a Christianity that is different from the Christianity of his environment. You will understand why he wanted to get away from the intellectual type of Christianity that he found around him, and dreamed of another kind of consciousness such as had been possessed by the first disciples of the Risen Christ. Follow his life further, note the significant words that he uttered at the time of his investiture, when he declared that there can be no salvation for religion, unless man receives a new revelation. Ponder it all, and it will grow clear to you that this earnest seeking is born of a deep and powerful longing that had come over from former lives on Earth. The man sensed the presence and impulse of those spiritual forces of which I spoke in the second part of my lecture. He felt—if but dimly—that it might be possible in our day, by undergoing special development, to attain a new initiation knowledge to receive a new revelation. And yet he himself ultimately accepted for his understanding of Christianity—a tradition! I need not tell you whither his search led him; you can read the story for yourselves. He strives to reach through the “gloom” to a “light” that is beyond, but remains all the time within the cloud. A deeper knowledge of his being reveals to us that Newman was not really to blame for this, rather was he in this respect a sacrifice, a victim of his age, a victim of the Ahrimanic forces—as I named them just now. These Ahrimanic forces had an extraordinarily strong influence on Cardinal Newman; they fell upon him and took captive his power of thought, which was consequently unable to develop freely and find its way into spirituality. For he who would today unfold his life in freedom must first of all be free in his thinking, must liberate his power of thought from the bondage of the brain.

Ahriman achieves his greatest successes by shortening the second half of man’s life after death. You know how a certain time elapses between death and a new birth. I have described in my Mystery Plays how this time consists of two halves, the second half taking its course after what I have called the Cosmic Midnight. It is this later half—the period from the Cosmic Midnight to the moment of new birth—that Ahriman tries to shorten. And by so doing he gets hold of the human brain and its thinking. With impetuous and savage energy, he fastens on the brain, and tries to hold men spellbound to the Earth. That is how the Ahrimanic forces are working today,—and in ever increasing measure; they try to bring man’s power of thought ever more deeply into the earthly realm, away from the spiritual world. Human beings are thus incarnated one or two centuries too early. This method of attack on the part of the Ahrimanic forces must be overcome with spiritual energy and determination. At the time when Cardinal Newman was still holding the rudder of his life, he was even then incapable, for all his spiritual energy, of freeing his thought sufficiently,—or he would not have spoken as he did of the need for a new revelation, he would instead have found the way to it himself„ We cannot omit from our considerations a person like Cardinal Newman when we are calling attention to the spirituality that can bring man in our age to a new life. For this spirituality will help men, as I have already indicated, to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. It will enable them to summon their fullest human powers to its comprehension; and the Mystery of Golgotha shall then live within them, within their very inmost being. Speaking here in England, I have purposely cited Cardinal Newman as an example. The study of tragic figures such as his can bring home to us very forcibly the need of our time; and you will find many similar instances here in England. That is why it is so urgent that there should be understanding in this country of the need for that spiritual knowledge and spiritual life, from which Cardinal Newman was snatched away by the Ahrimanic forces. Spiritual knowledge and spiritual life must again be made accessible to mankind, if civilisation is to be saved from ruin.

Insight into such connections as we have been considering can stimulate in us the resolve to do all in our power for the furtherance of the spiritual life of mankind. There is really no other possible course for us today. Let us, however, not be blind to the fact that the Ahrimanic powers are very strong. The truth to which we would bear witness has fierce and stubborn enemies, who are inspired by these Ahrimanic powers. Stronger, and ever stronger grow these powers! I want to say this to you today, that you may not be taken aback when you find that as soon as the anthroposophical movement begins to stand forth in the world, it will have to fight continually and increasingly with terrific enemy forces. May my words rouse you, on the one hand to have insight into the will and intention that lies behind all our anthroposophical efforts, and on the other hand to be on your guard against attacks—which will often be grossly slanderous—from enemies who want to stifle this movement in the moment of its birth. Strong as these enemies may be, not a whit less strong must we be,—each one of us in the positive power of his own energy and initiative. The anthroposophical world-conception must be put before the world clearly and truthfully, even if in the way it is put forward it should often meet with misunderstanding, and with an inclination to distrust the aims and purposes of our movement.

It is therefore my earnest desire that there may be many among you who will be stirred and quickened to work unremittingly for the time when this spirituality, in spite of all that is being done to misrepresent and obscure it, shall prevail in the world. That you feel an urge to do so will mean that you are awake to the fact of how urgently necessary this spirituality is for the further evolution of mankind.

If, my dear friends, we have come a little nearer to one another in a common understanding of the inmost nature of the Being Anthroposophia, and of its importance for our age, then will this meeting for which we have had to wait for some years, have borne fruit, borne indeed what I for my part shall be ready to recognise as good and beautiful fruit. Carrying this hope in our hearts, let us then resolve to remain together in soul, even when in terms of space we are far apart.

As you know from the spirit of our anthroposophical work over the years, our work is not based on a striving for sensations. Instead, we want to calmly examine the facts of spiritual life that are important in our lives. It is not by speaking of what lies on the surface of daily life that we serve our age spiritually, but by gaining knowledge of life's larger connections. Our individual lives are closely connected with the great events of existence, and only when we judge our own life on the basis of the greatest phenomena of life can we assess it rightly. That is why we have tried in the last three years to deepen our fundamental views in relation to universal questions. We spent the first four years in this first seven-year cycle in the existence of the German Section of the Theosophical Society establishing our views and insights. From what you heard in the various lecture cycles, you will have realized that the lectures on the Gospels are part of the work of these last three years. Those lectures not only helped us understand the contents of the Gospels, but also showed what we can learn from them about human nature. Today, we will talk more about how the Gospels can be applied to our personal lives.

Conventional science is less and less willing to consider the Gospels historical documents about the greatest individuality ever to intervene in human evolution, Christ Jesus. The attitude toward the Gospels in the first Christian centuries and even in the Middle Ages was quite different from what it has become in modern times. These days, the Gospels are indeed seen as four mutually contradictory documents, and nothing seems more natural than to ask how they can be considered historical records when they contradict each other as much as they do in giving an account of what happened in Palestine at the beginning of our era.

Now, if people did not love to overlook the most important things, their thinking would inevitably have to lead them to the following realization. They would have to admit that it does not really take much to see that the Gospels contradict each other in our modern sense of the word. One could say that even a child can see the contradictions. But we could also add that nowadays the Gospels are available to everybody, and everybody can read them. However, before the invention of printing, they were not available to all people but were read only by a few people. These few were spiritual leaders. The content of the gospels was then taught to other people in a way they could understand. Now we have to ask if those few people who read the gospels, the spiritual leaders, were really such tremendous fools that they did not realize what every child can see these days, namely, that the gospels contradict each other.

When we investigate this matter, we soon notice that people's whole world of feeling toward the Gospels was different in the past. Today it is the critical intellect, trained in outer sensory reality, that has a field day with the Gospels. It has no problem at all finding the intellectual contradictions there; this is, after all, child's play.

How, then, did those leaders of spiritual life, who were reading the Gospels, come to terms with these contradictions? On account of the Gospels, people in ancient times had a tremendous reverence we can't even imagine today for the great Christ event. Indeed they felt that precisely because they had four Gospels they should revere and appreciate the Christ event all the more. This is because these early readers of the Gospels thought quite differently than we do today. Modern readers are no cleverer than somebody who photographs a bouquet of flowers from one angle. Then he has a picture of the bouquet and shows it around. People look at it and remember the picture, thinking they now have a clear idea of what the bouquet looked like. But then someone takes a picture of the same bouquet from another angle and gets quite a different picture. He also shows it to everyone but now people say it cannot possibly be the same bouquet because the two photographs contradict each other. And if the bouquet is photographed from all four sides, the four pictures will not be at all similar; yet they will be four pictures of the same thing.

This was how the early readers of the four Gospels felt. They believed the four Gospels are four different representations of one event, each taken from another point of view. They provide a complete picture of the event precisely because they are not alike. It is only when all four sides are combined that a complete idea of the event in Palestine emerges. People back then felt they had to look up to the Christ event with even more humility precisely because it was presented from four perspectives, for clearly this event is so great that it cannot be understood if it is presented from only one point of view. They felt they had to be grateful to have four Gospels describing this event from four points of view. However, they saw they had to understand how these four different points of view originated. Then they could develop an idea of what the individual can derive from the four Gospels.

What we call the Christ event is a tremendous, mighty event in the spiritual evolution of humanity. What place does that event in Palestine have in this evolution? We can say that everything humanity had previously experienced spiritually merged in this event in Palestine and from then on continued in one common stream. For example, the ancient Hebrew teaching, as it is recorded in the Old Testament, is one part of this common stream. It flowed in as the event in Palestine took place. Another stream proceeded from Zarathustra. This, too, entered into Christianity, which then flowed through the world as a kind of mainstream. Likewise, what we might call the oriental spiritual stream, which found its most significant expression in Gautama Buddha, also joined the one great mainstream. All these various streams are now contained in Christianity. You do not learn what Buddhism is nowadays from people who warm over the teachings of Buddha from 600 B.C. Those teachings have flowed into Christianity. Likewise, you do not learn what Zarathustrianism really is from people who want to explain its nature on the basis of ancient Persian documents. For the one who taught in ancient Persia what was recorded in these ancient documents has evolved further. He has let his contribution to the spiritual life of humanity flow into Christianity, and we will have to look for it there.

To get a clear picture of the facts, let us consider how these three streams, Buddhism, Zarathustrianism, and the ancient Judaic stream, flowed into Christianity. To understand how Zarathustrianism flowed in, we should remember that the individuality we call Zarathustra was the great teacher of the second post-Atlantean epoch who first taught among the ancient Persians and was then incarnated again and again. Through each incarnation he ascended higher and higher, and finally he appeared around 600 B.C. as a contemporary of Buddha. He appeared in the secret schools of the ancient Chaldean-Babylonian culture and was the teacher of Pythagoras, who had gone to Chaldea to perfect himself. Then this Zarathustra, who in 600 B.C. was known as Zarathas or Nazarathos, was reborn at the beginning of our era to parents called Joseph and Mary, as described in Saint Matthew's Gospel. This child of Joseph and Mary, the so-called Bethlehem parents, was one of the two Jesus children born at the beginning of our era. Thus, we see the individuality who was the bearer of Zarathustrianism—one of the significant streams mentioned above—transplanted to ancient Palestine.

This was not the only spiritual stream that was to revive and in a new form flow on in Christianity. Many different things had to come together to bring this about. For instance, Zarathustra had to be born in a body so organized that it was possible for him to develop further the faculties he had acquired through ascending from incarnation to incarnation. We must keep in mind that no matter how highly developed an individuality is, if it descends into an unsuitable body because it cannot find a suitable one, this individuality cannot express his or her soul-spiritual faculties because it lacks the necessary physical instruments. It takes a certain kind of brain to express such faculties as Zarathustra possessed. That is, he had to be born into a body that had inherited the qualities making it an appropriate instrument for such faculties. Thus, the Jesus child described in Saint Matthew's Gospel had to have a high soul-spiritual organization in his reincarnating I, which would allow him to have the powerful effect that was necessary, and he also had to have a perfect physical organization, which was inherited, for his soul to be born into. Zarathustra had to find a suitable physical brain.

This perfectly adapted physical organization was the contribution of the ancient Hebrews to Christianity. A suitable physical body for Zarathustra, a body with the most perfect imaginable physical instruments, had to be created in the Hebrew people through purely physical heredity. This had to be prepared far back in the past through many generations so that the right qualities were passed on and then inherited by the body that was born at the beginning of our era.

Let us look at how this life flowed into the mainstream of our present spiritual life. Just as we have seen the mission of Zarathustra in relation to Christianity, so we will now find out about the mission of the ancient Hebrews. Here I must tell you that the more spiritual-scientific research progresses, the more it has to admit that the Bible, not outer cultural history, is right. What cultural history digs up appears childish in comparison with what is written in the Bible and what only needs to be read properly to be understood. For spiritual science the Bible is more correct than historical research. For example, it is true that Judaism descended, in a sense, from a common forefather called Abraham or Abram. It is indeed absolutely correct that as we trace the generations back into the past, we come to a forefather who was endowed with very special powers by the spiritual world. What were these powers? To understand what special capabilities were given to Abraham, we must recall various things we have already spoken about here.

As we have said, when we look at ancient times, we find that people had other faculties of soul than we have today; these can be called a kind of dim clairvoyance. Back then, people could not look at the world in the self-confident, intellectual way we do, but they were able to perceive the spiritual around them, spiritual phenomena, facts, and beings. Since this seeing took place in a state of dimmed consciousness, it was like a living dream, but a dream that had a vital connection to reality. This ancient clairvoyance had to become weaker so people could develop our modern way of thinking and our intellectual culture.

Human evolution is a kind of education through which the various faculties are gradually developed. For example, in our present way of seeing, we perceive, let's say, a flower without seeing its astral body winding all around it. The ancients, however, still saw the flower and its astral body. We had to be trained in our modern perception that sees objects with the sharp contours of the intellect; this training required that the ancient clairvoyance vanish. Now, there is a certain law that prevails in spiritual evolution. According to this law, every capacity humanity acquires must have its beginning in one individuality. Faculties that are to become common to a large number of people must first appear in one person. Thus, the faculties having to do with reasoning not related to clairvoyance, with evaluating the world by measure, number, and weight—faculties that aim not at seeing into the spiritual world but at understanding sensory phenomena—were first implanted by the spiritual world in the individuality known as Abraham or Abram. He was chosen to be the first to develop the powers that are especially bound to the physical brain. It is not for nothing that Abraham is called the discoverer of arithmetic, that is, of the capability to quantify the world and calculate it according to measure and number. In a sense, he was the first of those in whose soul the ancient dreamy clairvoyance was extinguished and whose brain was prepared so that the faculty using the brain as instrument could become effective. Thus, the mission given to Abraham was a significant and profound one.

Now this faculty that had been given to Abraham in rudimentary form was to become more and more perfect. As you can imagine, everything in the world must develop, and the ability to perceive the world through the physical brain was no exception. This faculty was developed through being transmitted from Abraham to the succeeding generations. However, something different had to happen in this case than is usual when a mission is passed on from the older generation to the younger. After all, other missions, especially the greatest ones, were not connected to a physical instrument, the physical brain.

For example, let us look at Zarathustra. He gave his disciples a higher, more advanced clairvoyant vision than other people had. It was not bound to a physical instrument but was transmitted from teacher to pupil. The pupil then in turn became a teacher and gave this higher clairvoyant vision to his pupils, and so on. Abraham's mission, however, was not a teaching or method of clairvoyant perception but something bound to the brain. Thus, it could be transmitted to later generations only through physical inheritance. The mission given to Abraham depended on being transmitted physically from one generation to the next, that is, the perfected organization of Abraham's brain had to be inherited by his descendants generation after generation. Because Abraham's mission consisted in perfecting the physical brain, the latter became more and more perfect from generation to generation. In other words, the mission of Abraham depended on procreation for its gradual perfection in the course of physical evolution.

There was yet something else connected with this contribution of the ancient Hebrew people, and we will understand what it was when we consider people in other civilizations who had dim clairvoyance. We can ask how they received what was most important to them, what they revered most in all the world. They received it as inspirations that lit up within them. They did not have to do research as we do. Nowadays, we establish sciences by investigating the world outside us, by experimenting and deducing laws from the external facts. The ancients did not gain their knowledge in this way; rather, it lit up within them as an inspiration like a flash of lightning. They received their knowledge in their inner being; their souls had to give birth to it within them. They had to turn their gaze away from the outer world in order to allow the highest truths to blossom forth within them as inspirations.

This was to become different for those who derived their mission from Abraham. Abraham had to bring to humanity precisely the results of observation and reasoning. When people in those civilizations that were built on ancient clairvoyance looked up to the highest, they felt, “I am grateful to the God who reveals himself to me within me. I turn my gaze away from the outer world, and the Godhead is most present to me when, without looking at the outside world, I let his inspirations light up within me.”

However, the descendants of Abraham were to renounce inspirations coming from within themselves and prepare themselves to turn their gaze to the world around them. They were to observe what is revealed in air and water, in mountain and plain, and in the starry world, and to ponder how all things exist side by side. They were to connect external things with one another and to gain an all-embracing thought from this. When they condensed what they saw in the outer world into one single thought, they called what the outer world told them Yahweh or Jehovah. They were to receive the highest through a revelation that speaks through the outer world.

In contrast to what other peoples were to contribute, the mission of the Abrahamic people was to give humanity what came as revelation from outside. Therefore, the instrument of spiritual life had to be inherited so that its organization was appropriate for the revelations from outside, just as earlier the inner powers of soul had to be adapted to the revelations from within.

Let us look at what happened when the clairvoyants of ancient times yielded to revelations from within themselves. They turned their gaze away from the outer world because what was revealed there could tell them nothing about the spiritual world. They even turned their gaze away from the sun and stars and listened only to what was within. There, a great inspiration about the secrets of the world was revealed, and they had a picture of the structure of the cosmos. What these ancient clairvoyants knew about the stars and their movements, about the laws of the starry world, and about the spiritual worlds was not acquired through external observation. Rather, the ancients knew something about Mars, Saturn, and so on because they had revealed themselves within these people. The laws of the universe, which are inscribed in the stars, were also inscribed within the human soul and revealed themselves there in inspirations. Just as the laws of the universe, which rule the stars, were revealed in the soul, so the laws that rule the world were now to be revealed to the Abrahamic people through outer reasoning and deduction—that is, those laws had to be grasped through outer revelation.

For this purpose, heredity had to be guided in such a way that the brain could acquire the qualities enabling it to perceive the right relationships between things. This wonderful lawfulness was implanted into the predispositions transmitted to Abraham, predispositions that developed through the generations in such a way that their organization corresponds to the great cosmic laws. The brain had to be transmitted so that its inner capabilities and its structure developed like the laws of numbers in the stars in the universe. This is why Jehovah said to Abraham, “You will see generations descend from you that will be ordered and arranged in accordance with the numbers of the stars in the heavens.” The generations following Abraham were to be arranged in harmonious numerical relationships just as the stars in the sky are ordered in harmonious relations. In other words, these generations were to bear within them laws that are like the laws of the stars in the heavens.

In the heavens, there are twelve constellations. An image of this was to appear in the twelve tribes of descendants of Abraham so that the faculties that were implanted in rudimentary form in Abraham could be carried down through the generations. In the organic structure of this people, developing further from age to age, an image was to be created of number and measure in the heavens. In one Bible translation this is rendered as, “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore.” In truth, however, the passage should read, “Your descendants shall be grouped regularly in their blood relationships so that their arrangement is an image of the laws of the stars in the heavens.” The Bible is profound, but the way it is presented these days is colored by the modern view of the world. Thus, we read, “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore,” while a true translation would be, “Your descendants shall be so regularly grouped that, for example, twelve tribes will arise that correspond to the twelve constellations.”

Thus, the individual characteristics had to express that the Abrahamic people was to realize that their mission was a gift from outside, not something that came to life within them. They had to know that what they have to bring to the world is given to them from the outside. The Bible wonderfully expresses that Abraham's mission comes to him from outside in contrast to the old revelations that were given from within. What was this mission? Abraham's mission was to provide what flows through the blood up to the time of Christ Jesus. The entire spirituality of a certain stream had to be placed into this. It was to work as if it came as a gift from outside. Abraham had to give to the world the ancient Hebrew people. That was his mission.

If this people was to be in keeping with this mission, it had to be given to Abraham as a gift from outside. Abraham had a son, Isaac, and he was asked to sacrifice this son, as the Bible tells us. As Abraham was about to carry out the sacrifice, his son was given back to him by Jehovah. What was Abraham given there? The entire Hebrew people descended from Isaac. If Isaac had been sacrificed, it would not have come into being. Thus, the whole Hebrew people was given to Abraham as a gift. The sparing of Isaac wonderfully expresses the nature of this gift. It was Abraham's mission to father the Hebrew people, and with Isaac he received it as a gift from Jehovah.

This is how profound the stories in the Bible are; all of them correspond in their impressive details to the inner character of the progressive development of humanity. The Old Testament Hebrews gradually had to relinquish the ancient clairvoyance that continued within the other civilizations. This clairvoyance was connected to faculties coming from the spiritual world, which were designated according to their nature by expressions taken from the names for the constellations. The last faculty to be given up in exchange for the gift of the Hebrew people was connected with the sign of the Ram. Therefore, a ram was sacrificed in place of Isaac. This is the external expression of the sacrifice of the last clairvoyant power, making it possible for Abraham to receive the Hebrew people as a gift. The Hebrews were chosen to develop the faculties for observation of the outer world. Nevertheless, every new development contains also atavistic remnants of earlier things. That is why everything that was not purely in the blood and still recalled ancient clairvoyance had to be excluded for the sake of the transmission of the new outer-directed faculties. Thus, the Hebrews always had to exclude what came as an inheritance from other peoples.

We come now to a subject that is difficult to discuss because it contains a truth far removed from modern thinking. Nevertheless, it is a truth, and those who have worked for a while in anthroposophical groups may be able to accept a truth that is foreign to the conventional modern thinking. We must be aware that certain classes of people in ancient times retained their earlier faculties into later ages, especially faculties related to knowing. Clairvoyant powers lived in human souls, and people were closely connected with spiritual beings who revealed themselves in their souls. In certain people, who were the products of the decline of these ancient times, there developed ultimately a lower form of this connection to the spiritual world around them. While the actual clairvoyants were connected with the whole universe through spiritual intuition and inspiration, those who were part of the process of decline and who developed this connection to the spiritual in a phase of decadence were actually lower types of people. They were not independent because their I was undeveloped, and at the same time their clairvoyant faculties were already declining. Such individuals appeared throughout history, and in them we can see the relationship between certain physical organs and the clairvoyant organs.

Now we arrive at the truth that will sound strange to you. What we call ancient clairvoyance, this lighting up of the cosmic secrets within human souls, had to enter the soul somehow. We have to picture this as streams flowing into human beings. The ancients did not perceive them, but when these streams had occurred and lit up within them, people perceived them as their inspirations. In other words, certain streams flowed into people from their environment; in later periods these streams were transformed. In the distant past, these streams were purely spiritual, and clairvoyants could perceive them as purely astral-etheric streams. But later these purely spiritual streams dried up, as it were, and condensed to etheric-physical streams. What became of them? They developed into hair. Our hair is the result of these ancient streams. The hair on our body was formerly spiritual streams that flowed from outside into human beings. Our hair is nothing else but dried up astral-etheric streams.

Such facts are preserved only where the old truths have been retained externally in writing or through tradition. In Hebrew the characters for the words “hair” and “light” are approximately the same because people were conscious of the kinship between the light streaming in astrally and hair. In general, the greatest truths are contained in ancient Hebrew literature in the words themselves.

So, we can say human evolution is progressive. However, in those people whose ancient faculties were declining the incoming streams changed and dried up, but no new faculties appeared to take their place. Those people were connected with the new in an old way, yet unconnected because the streams were dried up. Such people were very hairy, while those who developed further were less hairy because new powers replaced those that later condensed into hair.

It will take a long time for science to arrive at these significant truths. Nevertheless, they can be found in the Bible. The Bible is far wiser than our science, which is still at the stage of a child beginning to learn his ABC's. Read the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob was the one who progressed a step further and developed the new faculty; Esau, on the other hand, remained at an earlier stage, and compared to Jacob he was a simpleton. When they were presented to their father Isaac, their mother had covered Jacob with false hair to make Isaac confuse his younger son with Esau. This shows us that the Old Testament Hebrews still had retained something that was inherited from other cultures and that had to be discarded. Esau is cast out, and what was to live on as sense-based reasoning is transmitted through Jacob. Here, what had remained in a retarded form was expelled in Esau. Similarly, the ancient clairvoyant faculties, an atavistic inheritance, appeared in Joseph, who was consequently expelled by his brothers to Egypt. Joseph had dreams through which he could interpret the world—this faculty was not to be developed in the mission of the Abrahamic people. Therefore, Joseph was cast out and had to go to Egypt.

There we see how a stream evolved in the Hebrew people that is built on the blood relationships of generations and from which the remnants of the old inheritance are gradually expelled. It was the special faculty of the ancient Hebrews to turn what is inherited down through the generations into a more and more perfect instrument so that finally a body could be produced that could be the instrument for Christ who would incarnate in it. If the Hebrews could no longer receive revelations from within, they had to receive them from without. They had to receive through external revelation even those things other peoples received through direct inspiration. That is, the Jews, led by Joseph, had to go to a people that still possessed the old inspiration. There, Joseph was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries, and the Jews attained through external means the knowledge they needed about the spiritual worlds. They even received their moral laws from the outside rather than as something lighting up within them. After they had assimilated what they had to take in from outside, they returned to Palestine.

We must now show how the Hebrews gradually developed from generation to generation so that finally the body of Jesus could be produced, and the ancient Hebrew stream flow into Christianity. Remember our discussion of the development of rudimentary characteristics in individuals. The life of an individual can be divided into periods of seven years. The first period, in which the physical body simply builds its forms, extends from birth to the change of teeth at the age of seven. The second period, in which the etheric body is active in growth and forming, continues until puberty. The forms are defined until the age of seven and the already-defined forms are then enlarged. From fourteen to twenty-one the astral body is especially predominant, and at twenty-one the true I is born and becomes independent. The life of the individual runs its course in certain periods until the birth of the human I.

In the same way the gifts of the people that was to provide a body for the most perfect I had to develop gradually. What takes place over years in an individual, however, develops in a people over generations. Each successive generation must further develop the characteristics of the preceding one. To explain the occult reasons for this would lead us too far afield, but you might recall a quite ordinary phenomenon. Just remember that certain qualities are inherited not directly, but skip a generation. For example, it is the grandson who resembles the grandfather in those characteristics. It was the same in the inheritance of qualities in successive generations of the Hebrews; every other generation was skipped.

What is one period of seven years in an individual's life corresponds in the successive generations of a people to two periods or fourteen generations. We can therefore say the Hebrews developed in twice seven or fourteen generations, which corresponds to the period from birth to the change of teeth in the individual. The following period corresponds to that between the change of teeth and puberty and again comprises twice seven generations. A third period of twice seven generations corresponds to the years between fourteen and twenty-one, when the astral body is especially prominent. It was then possible for the I to be born in the Hebrew people after three times twice seven or three times fourteen, that is, forty-two generations.

To describe the body that became Zarathustra's instrument, I had to show how the seed given to Abraham developed through thrice fourteen generations so that the I could be born, just as in the individual the I is born into the threefold corporeality after thrice seven years. The writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel shows this. He describes thrice fourteen generations—the generations from Abraham to David, from David to the Babylonian Captivity, and from the Babylonian Captivity to the birth of Jesus. Here, from the profundity of knowledge Saint Matthew's Gospel points to the mission of the Hebrews, showing how the forces were gradually developed that made it possible for the perfect I attained by Zarathustra to be born in a body produced by this people.

Looking at the destiny of the Hebrews, we find that the Babylonian Captivity occurred at the period when the individual, after the age of fourteen, prepares for life, when the hopes of youth to be realized later take root. The Babylonian Captivity was the time when the astral body of the Hebrews developed, and what gives this astral body its impulse in the final fourteen generations of the forty-two was implanted into it then. That is why the Hebrews were led into the Babylonian Captivity where, six hundred years before our era, Zarathas or Nazarathos was incarnated as the teacher in the Mystery schools of the Babylonians. There, the most prominent Hebrew leaders came in contact with Zarathas, the great teacher of that era. Zarathas joined them and became their teacher. From him the Hebrew leaders received the impulse that, in their last fourteen generations, prepared them for the birth of Jesus.

History as we know it then unfolded, and we see the writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel take into account a law in the spiritual sphere that will be recognized more and more as significant for all life. This is the law that whatever has happened earlier is repeated at a higher stage. This is expressed in science in a somewhat distorted form in the axiom that what occurs at a lower stage of the species throughout long epochs is repeated in brief in each individual. The writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel shows this in a magnificent way by saying that the I of Zarathustra was to incarnate in a body that was gradually developed within the Abrahamic people.

Abraham proceeded from Ur in Chaldea, the place where Babylonian civilization originated, through Asia Minor to Palestine. Through the dreams of Joseph, his descendants were led farther south to Egypt, and after they had received the Egyptian impulse, they returned to Canaan. This was the fate of the whole people. First, they were led through Canaan to Egypt, and then back again to Canaan. This fate of the whole people was to be repeated in brief. After all that had originated in Abraham had been developed, after the sheaths had been prepared, Zarathustra's I again took Chaldea as its point of departure. His spirit was connected with Chaldea, and in his last incarnation he was the Mystery teacher there.

What path does Zarathustra's soul take when it incarnates in Bethlehem? He had remained connected with the Magi, who had been initiated in the Chaldean Mystery schools. They remembered that they had heard him say he would reappear and that his soul, which had always been called “the golden star,” would proceed at a particular time to Bethlehem. When the time came, they followed the path his soul took, thus repeating the path of the Old Testament Hebrews. As Abraham traveled the road to Canaan, so this star, the soul of Zarathustra, also followed it. The three Magi followed the star of Zarathustra, and he led them to the place where he was born into the body from the Abrahamic people that was destined for him. Thus, the I of Zarathustra repeated in spirit the path Abraham had taken to Palestine.

The Old Testament Hebrews then had to seek the way to Egypt. They were led there by Joseph's dreams. Now the I that was born in the Jesus-child of Bethlehem was led through the dreams of another Joseph to Egypt along the same path the Abrahamic people had followed earlier. Zarathustra's I repeated in Jesus' body the ancient Hebrews' destiny, going first to Egypt and then returning to Palestine. Here, we have a recapitulation in spirit through the I of Zarathustra, reflecting the earlier fate of the Hebrews.

Based on his knowledge of the spiritual law that what appears at a higher stage is a brief repetition of what has occurred earlier, the writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel faithfully describes all this. How profoundly these Gospels record the event that inaugurated our era! That event is so great that the four evangelists found that each of them could only describe it from his own standpoint. Each of them has described this event according to his own limited powers. When we see someone from one of four sides, we get only one picture, and only by combining mutually contradictory pictures do we get an overall idea of the person. Similarly, the writer of Saint Matthew's Gospel described what he knew through initiation about the law of thrice twice seven, the law of forty-two, and about the preparation of the body for the great I of Jesus of Nazareth. Through his initiation, the writer of this gospel knew the Mysteries according to which Jesus’ body was prepared as the mission of the Hebrews. The writer of Saint Luke's Gospel described, on the basis of his initiation, how the stream of the Buddha flowed into Christianity. The other evangelists have described the event on the basis of their initiations. The event they recorded is so profound that we must be grateful to find it described from the point of view of four initiates.

Today I just wanted to mention a few details of the spiritual origin of Christianity to show how our knowledge of the world and of humanity grows when we study this greatest of human events. I wanted to give you an idea of how deeply this event should be taken and how the Gospels really are when we know how to read them.

Translator Unknown, revised

It may well be said that the anthroposophical conception of the world is distinguished from any other we may meet because it can satisfy to such a great extent the desire for knowledge. In the present time we so often hear that it is impossible to gain knowledge of certain things—that our capacity for knowledge has limits and cannot rise above a certain height. On becoming acquainted with modern philosophical research we constantly hear of such limits to knowledge, especially among those schools of philosophy which owe their origin to Kant. The understanding of anthroposophists and of those who practice mysticism is distinguished from all such doctrines through never setting limits to man's capacity for knowledge, but rather looking upon it as capable of being both widened and uplifted. Is it not, to a certain extent, the greatest arrogance for anyone to regard his own capacity for knowledge, from the point at which it stands, as something decisive, and then to say that with our capacities we cannot go beyond definite limits of knowledge? The anthroposophist says: “I stand today at a certain point in human knowledge, from which I am able to know certain things and not others. But it is possible to cultivate the human capacity for knowledge, to heighten it.” What is called a school of initiation has as its essential aim to raise to a higher stage this human capacity for knowledge. So it is quite correct if one from a lower stage of knowledge says that there are limits to his knowledge and that certain things cannot be known. One can, however, raise oneself above this stage of knowledge and press on to a higher stage, so that it becomes possible to know what at a lower stage was impossible. This is the essence of initiation, and this deepening or heightening of knowledge is the task of the initiation schools. This means raising man to a stage of knowledge to which nature has not brought him, but which he must acquire for himself through long years of patient exercise.

In all ages there have been these initiation schools. Among all peoples, those having a higher kind of knowledge have arisen from these initiation schools. And the essential nature of such schools—and of the great Initiates themselves, who have soared above the lower stages of the human capacity for knowledge and, through their inspirations, have been acquainted with the highest knowledge accessible to us in this world—finds expression in Initiates giving to the various peoples on earth their various religions and world-conceptions.

Today we wish with a few strokes to illuminate the essential being of these great Initiates. As in every science, in every spiritual process one must first learn the method through which one penetrates to knowledge. This is also the case in the initiation schools. And here too it is a matter of our being led through certain methods to the higher stages of knowledge, about which we have spoken precisely. I shall now briefly refer to the stages that here concern us. Certain stages of knowledge can only be attained in the intimate schools of initiation where there are teachers who have themselves in their own experience gone through each school, have devoted themselves to every exercise, and have really pondered every single step, every single stage. And one must entrust oneself only to such teachers in the initiation schools.

In these schools there is, it is true, no hint of authority, nothing that smacks of dogmatism; the governing principle is entirely that of counsel, the imparting of advice. Whoever has gone through a certain stage of learning, and has himself acquired experiences of the higher, super-sensible life, knows the inner way that leads to this higher knowledge. And it is only one such as this who is qualified to say what one must do. What is necessary is simply that there be trust between pupil and teacher in this sphere. Whoever lacks this trust can learn nothing; but whoever has it will very soon perceive that nothing is recommended by any occult, mystic, or mystery teacher other than what the teacher has himself gone through. What concerns us here is that, of the whole being of man as he stands before us today, it is essentially only the outward visible part already within human nature that is today complete. This must be made clear to anyone aspiring to become a student of the mysteries—that man as he stands before us today is by no means a completed being, but is in the process of developing so that in the future he will reach many higher stages.

That which today has attained to an image of God, that which has arrived at the highest stage in man, is the human physical body, that which we can see with our eyes and perceive in any way with our senses. That is not, however, the only thing that man has. He has still higher members of his nature. To begin with, he further possesses a member that we call his etheric body. This etheric body can be seen by anyone who has cultivated his soul organs. Through this etheric body man is not simply a creation in which work chemical and physical forces, but a living creation, a creation that lives and is endowed with capacities for growth, life, and propagation. One can see this etheric body, which represents a kind of archetype of man, if, with the methods of the art of clairvoyance—which will be characterized still further—one suggests away the ordinary physical body. You know how, by the ordinary methods of hypnotism and suggestion, the point can be reached when, if you say to anyone that there is no lamp here, he actually sees no lamp. So you can also, if you develop in yourself sufficiently strong willpower—a willpower that shuts out, entirely shuts out, all observation of the physical body—so you can, in spite of seeing into space, completely suggest away physical space. Then you see space not empty but filled by a kind of archetype. This archetype has practically the same form as the physical body. It is, however, not of the same nature through and through, but is fully organized. It is not only interlaced with fine veins and streams but it also has organs. This creation, this etheric body, produces man's essential life. Its color can only be compared with the color of the young peach blossom. It is no color that is contained in the sun spectrum; but it is something between a violet and a reddish tinge. This is then the second body.

The third body is the aura, which I have often described—that cloud-like formation of which I spoke last time when describing man's origin, in which man is as if in an egg-shaped cloud. In this is expressed all that lives in man as lust, passion, and feeling. Joyful self-sacrificing feelings express themselves in this aura in luminous streams of color. Feelings of hate, physical feelings, express themselves in dark color tones. Sharp, logical thoughts express themselves in sharply outlined forms. Illogical, confused thoughts come to expression in figures with blurred outline. Thus, we have in this aura an image of what is living in man's soul as feeling, passion, and impulse.

As man has now been described, so he was set down on the earth—from the hand of nature, so to speak—at the point of time that lies approximately at the beginning of the Atlantean race. Last time I described what is to be understood by “the Atlantean race.” At the moment when the fertilization by the eternal spirit had already taken place, man confronts us with the three members—body, soul, and spirit. Today this threefold nature of man has taken a somewhat different form, as since that time, since nature has released him, since he has become a being with self-consciousness, man has worked on his own being. This work on himself means the refining of his aura; it also means sending light into the aura out of this self-consciousness. A man who stands at a very low stage of development and has never worked on himself—let us say a savage—has the aura which nature has provided him. But all those within our civilization, our cultural world, have auras on which they themselves have helped to work, for in so far as man is a self-conscious being he works upon himself and this work comes into expression first through changing his aura. All that man has learned through nature, all that he has absorbed since he was able to speak and think self-consciously, is a recent acquisition in his aura brought about by his own activity.

If you put yourself back into the Lemurian age, in which man had already had warm blood flowing in his veins for some time, and in which, in the middle of this Lemurian age, his fertilization with the spirit had taken place, man then was not yet a being capable of clear thinking. All this occurred at the beginning of evolution when the spirit had just taken possession of the corporeality. At that time the aura was still completely a consequence of forces of nature. One could then perceive—as one still can with men at a very low stage of development—how at a certain place in the interior of the head (that is to say, a place that we have to seek in the interior of the head) there exists a smaller aura of a bluish color. This smaller aura is the outer auric expression of the self-consciousness. And the more a man has developed this self-consciousness through his thought and through his work, the more this smaller aura spreads itself over the other, so that often in a short time both become totally different. A man who lives in outer culture, a refined man of culture, works on his aura in the particular way that this culture impels him. Our ordinary knowledge, which they offer in our schools, our experiences that life brings us, are absorbed by us and they are perpetually transforming our aura. But this transformation must be continuous if a man wishes to enter into practical mysticism. Then he must make a special effort to work upon himself. For then he must not incorporate into his aura only what culture offers him, but must exercise an influence upon it in a definite, orderly manner. And this happens through so-called meditation. This meditation, this inner immersion, is the first stage which a student of initiation must undergo.

Now in what does this meditation take an interest? Just try to bring to mind and reflect upon the thoughts that you shelter from morning to night, and upon how these thoughts are influenced by the time and the place in which you live. See whether you can hinder your thoughts, and ask yourself whether you would have them if you did not happen by chance to be living in Berlin at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, men did not think in the same way as men do today. If you consider how the world has changed in the course of the last century, and what kind of changes time has brought about, you will see that what passes through your soul from morning to night is dependent upon time and space. It is different when we give ourselves up to thoughts that have an eternal worth. Actually it is only certain abstract, scientific thoughts to which men have given themselves up, the highest thoughts of mathematics and geometry, that have an eternal worth. Twice two is four holds good at all times and in all places. It is the same with the geometrical truths that we accept. But leaving aside a certain fundamental stock of such truths, we may say that the average man has very few thoughts that are not dependent on time and space. What is thus dependent unites us with the world, and only exerts a trifling influence upon that essence which is in itself enduring.

Meditation means nothing other than surrendering oneself to thoughts which have eternal worth, in order to raise oneself up in a conscious way to what lies above both space and time. Such thoughts are contained in the great religious writings: the Vedanta, the Bhagavad Gita, the Gospel of John from the thirteenth chapter to the end, and the “Imitation of Christ,” by Thomas a Kempis. He who sinks himself with patience and perseverance so that he lives in such writings; he who deepens himself anew every day—perhaps working for weeks on one single sentence, thinking it through, feeling it through—will gain unlimited benefit. Just as each day one learns more nearly to know and love a child with all its individual characteristics, so one can daily draw into one's soul an eternal truth of the kind that flows from the great Initiates, or from inspired men. This has the effect of filling us with new life. Very significant also are the sayings in the “Light on the Path” that have been written down by Mabel Collins, under the instruction of higher powers. Actually in the first four sentences there is something that, when applied with patience in the appropriate way, is capable of so seizing upon man's aura that this aura is completely shot through with new light. One can see this light in the human aura shining and glistening. Bluish shades arise in the place of the reddish or of the reddishbrown shimmering shades of color, and, in the place of yellow, clear reddish ones arise, and so on. The whole coloring of the aura transforms itself under the influence of such eternal thoughts. The student cannot yet perceive this in the beginning, but he gradually begins to notice the deep influence that emanates from the greatly transformed aura.

If a man, in addition to these meditations, consciously and in a most scrupulous way practices certain virtues, certain achievements of the soul, then, within this aura, his sense-organs of the soul develop. We must have these if we want to see into the soul-world, just as we must have physical sense-organs to be able to see into the material world. As the outer senses were planted into the body by nature, so must man, in a regular way, implant the higher sense-organs of the soul into his aura. Meditation leads man to become ripe from within outwards, forming, developing, and interweaving the available capacities of the soul's senses.

But if we wish to cultivate these sense organs we must turn our attention to quite definite accomplishments of the soul. You see, man has a series of such organs in his organization. We call these sense organs the so-called Lotus flowers because the astral image, which man begins to evolve in his aura when he is developing himself in the way described, takes on a form that may be compared with that of a Lotus flower. It goes without saying that this is only a comparison, just as one can speak of the wings of the lung, which also bear only a resemblance to wings. The two-petalled Lotus flower is found in the middle of the head above the root of the nose, between the eyes. Near the larynx is the sixteen-petalled Lotus flower, while in the region of the heart there is the twelve-petalled one, and in the region of the pit of the stomach the one with ten petals. Still farther down are found the six-petalled and four-petalled Lotus flowers. Today I want to talk only about the Lotus flowers that have sixteen petals and twelve petals.

In Buddha's teachings you are given an account of the so-called eightfold path. Now ask yourselves once why Buddha offered precisely this eightfold path as particularly important in the attainment of the higher stages of man's development. This eightfold path is: right resolve, right thinking, right speech, right action, right living, right striving, right memory, right self-immersion, or meditation. A great Initiate such as Buddha does not speak out of a vaguely felt ideal, but out of knowledge of human nature. He knows what influence the practice of such exercises of the soul will have on the future development of the body. If we look at the sixteen-petalled Lotus flower in the average man of today we actually see very little. If I can so express it, it is in the process of flaring up again. In the far-distant past this Lotus flower was once present; it has gone backward in its development. Today it is appearing again, partly through man's cultural activity. In the future, however, this sixteen-petalled Lotus flower will come again to full development. It will glisten vividly with its sixteen spokes or petals, each petal appearing in a different shade of color; and finally, it will move from left to right. What everyone in the future will possess and experience is today being cultivated by those who seek in a conscious way their development in the school of initiation, in order to become leaders of mankind. Now eight of these sixteen petals have already been formed in the far-distant past; today eight have still to be developed, if the mystery pupil wishes to have the use of these sense-organs. These will be developed if man treads the eightfold path in a conscious way, observantly and clearly, if he consciously practices these eight soul activities given by Buddha, and if he arranges his whole life of soul so that he takes himself in hand, practicing these eight virtues as vigorously as he can only do when sustained by his meditation work, thus bringing the sixteen-petalled Lotus flower not only into bloom but also into movement, into actual perception.

I will now speak of the twelve-petalled Lotus flower in the region of the heart. Six petals of this flower were already developed in the far-distant past, and six must be developed by all men in the future, by present-day Initiates and their pupils. In all anthroposophical handbooks you can find reference to certain virtues in the forefront of those that should be acquired by anyone aspiring to the stage of Chela, or pupil. These six virtues which you find mentioned in every anthroposophical handbook concerned with man's development are: control of thought, control of action, tolerance, steadfastness, impartiality, and equilibrium, or what Angelus Silesius calls composure. These six virtues, which one must practice consciously and attentively in conjunction with meditation, bring to unfolding the six further petals of the twelve-petalled Lotus flower. And these are not gathered blindly in the anthroposophical textbooks, nor are they stamped by haphazard or individual inner feeling, but they are spoken out of the great Initiates' deepest knowledge. Initiates know that whoever really wishes to evolve to the higher super-sensible stages of development must bring about the unfolding of the twelve-petalled Lotus flower. And to this end he must today develop, through these six virtues, the six petals that were undeveloped in the past. Thus you see how the great Initiates essentially gave their directions for life out of their own deeper knowledge of the human being. I could extend these remarks to still other organs of knowledge and observation, but I only wish to give you a brief sketch of the process of initiation, and for that these indications should suffice.

When the pupil has progressed so far that he begins to form the astral sense-organs, when he has progressed so far that he is capable of perceiving not only the physical impressions in his surroundings but also what belongs to the soul—in other words, to see what is in the aura of man himself as well as what is in the aura of animals and plants—he then begins a completely new stage of instruction. No one can see in his environment that which has to do with his soul before his Lotus flowers revolve, just as one without eyes can see no color and no light. But when the barrier is pierced, when the pupil has gone beyond the preliminary stages of knowledge so that he has insight into the soul-world, then true “pupil-ship” first begins for him. This leads through four stages of knowledge. Now what happens in this moment, when man has passed beyond the first steps and has become a Chela? We have seen how all that we have just described related to the astral body. This is organized throughout by the human body. Whoever has undergone such a development has a totally different aura. When man out of his self-consciousness has illuminated his astral body, when he himself has become the luminous organization of his astral body, then we say that this pupil has illuminated his astral body with Manas. Manas is nothing other than an astral body dominated by self-consciousness. Manas and astral body are one and the same, but at different stages of development.

One must understand this if, in the practice of mysticism, one wishes to apply in a practical way what is given in anthroposophical handbooks as the seven principles. Everyone acquainted with the mystic path of development, everyone who knows something about initiation, will say that these have a theoretical value for study but for the practicing mystic they have value only if the relation existing between the lower and the higher principles is known. No practicing mystic recognizes more than four members: the physical body, in which work chemical and physical laws, the etheric body, the astral body, and finally the self- or Ego-consciousness, called at the present stage of development Kama-Manas, the self-conscious thinking principle. Manas is nothing other than that which has been worked into the body by the self-consciousness. The etheric body in its present form is deprived of any influence of the self-consciousness. We can indirectly influence our growth and nourishment, but not in the same way as we cause our wishes, our thoughts and ideas to proceed from self-consciousness. We cannot ourselves influence our nourishment, digestion, and growth. In men, these are without connection to the self-consciousness. The etheric body has to be brought under the influence of the astral body, the so-called aura. The self-consciousness of the astral body has to penetrate the etheric body—to be able to work out of itself upon the etheric body—as man, in the way already shown, works upon his astral body, his aura. Then, when man through meditation, through inner immersion, and through practicing activities of the soul, which I have described, has come so far that the astral body has organized itself, then the work extends to the etheric body, and the etheric body receives the inner word. Then man not only hears what lives in the world around him, but there resounds in him his etheric body, the inner meaning of things.

I have often said here before that the essentially spiritual in things is a resounding. I have drawn your attention to how the practicing mystic, when speaking in a correct sense, talks of a sound in the spiritual world in the same way as of a light in the astral world, or world of desire. Not for nothing does Goethe say, when guiding his Faust to heaven: “Die Sonne tönt nach alten Weise im Bruderspharen Wettgesang ...” (“The sun resounds in ancient fashion, contending with his brother spheres”). Nor are the words of Ariel empty when Faust is being escorted by the spirits into the spiritual world: “Tönend wird für Geistesohren schon der neue Tag geboren” (“Hear the new day being born, Spirit ears can hear its ringing”).

This inner sounding which, of course, is not at all a sound perceptible to the outer physical ear, this inner word through which things can express their own nature, is an experience that man has when he becomes able to influence his etheric body from his astral body. Then he has become a Chela, a real student of the great Initiates. Then he can be led further upon this path. A man who has thus ascended this step is called a homeless man, because fundamentally he has found the connection with a new world, because it rings to him out of the spiritual world, and because he thereby no longer has his home, so to speak, in this physical world. One must not misunderstand this. The Chela who has reached this stage is just as good a citizen and family man, just as good a friend, as he was before he had reached the stage of Chela. He need not be torn away from anything. What he has experienced is an evolution of the soul, thus acquiring a new home in a world lying behind this physical one.

What then has happened? The spiritual world sounds within man, and through this sounding of the spiritual world man overcomes an illusion, the illusion which takes in all men before they begin this stage of development. This is the illusion of the personal self. Man believes himself to be a personality separate from the rest of the world. Mere reflection could teach him that even physically he himself is not an independent being. Bear in mind that if the temperature in this room were 200 degrees higher than it now is, none of us would be able to survive as we now survive. As soon as the outer situation changes, the conditions for our physical existence are no longer there. We are simply a continuation of the external world, and are as separate beings absolutely inconceivable. This is still more the case in the world of the soul and of the spirit. Thus we see that man conceived of as a self is only an illusion—that he is a member of the universal divine spirituality. Here man overcomes the personal self. Here arises what in the mystic chorus of Faust Goethe has expressed in the words: “Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis.” (“All that is transitory is but a likeness.”) What we see is only a picture of an eternal being. We ourselves are only a picture of an eternal being. When we have surrendered our separate being—for we live a separate life through our etheric body—then we have overcome our outer, separate life, we have become part of universal life.

There arises in man something which we have called Buddhi. Buddhi is now practically reached as a stage in the development of the etheric body, that etheric body which no longer occasions a separate existence but enters into universal life. The man who has attained this has arrived at the second state of Chela-ship. Then all doubts and reservations fall away from his soul; he can no longer be superstitious any more than he can be a doubter. Then he has no more need to secure the truth in order to compare his ideas with the outer environment; then he lives in tone, in the word of things; then what it is sounds and resounds out of its being. And there is no more superstition, no more doubt. This is called the surrendering of the keys of knowledge to the Chela. When he has reached this stage, within it there sounds a word from the spiritual world. Then his own words no longer proclaim an echo of what is in this world, but his words are an echo of what stems from another world, which works into this world, but which cannot be perceived with our outer senses. These words are messengers of the Godhead.

When this stage is passed beyond, a new one comes. This is entered by man gaining influence over what is done directly by his physical body. Before this, his influence only extended to his etheric body, but now it extends to his physical body. His actions must set the physical body in motion. What man does is incorporated into what we call his karma. Man, however, does not work on this consciously; he does not know how each of his deeds causes a consequence. It is only now that he begins in a conscious way so to fulfill his actions in the physical world that he consciously works on his karma. Thus, through his physical actions, he wins influence over his karma. And now there is not only a sounding from the objects in his environment, but he has come far enough to be able to utter the name of all things. Man lives in our present stage of culture in such a way that he is only able to utter one single name. That is the name he gives himself: “I.” That is the only name man can really give to himself. (Whoever immerses himself in deeper knowledge can arrive at depths of which psychology does not dream.) It is the only instance in which you yourself can give the name in question. No one else can say “I” to you, only you yourself. To everyone else you must say “you,” and they in return must say the same. There is something in everyone to which only they themselves can apply the name “I.” On this account the Jewish mystery teachings speak also of an inexpressible name of God. That is something which is immediately a proclamation of God in man. It was forbidden to utter this name unworthily, sacrilegiously; hence the sacred awe, the significance and reality when the Jewish mystery teachers uttered this name. “I” is the one word that says something to you that can never approach you from the outer world. So now, as the average man alone names his “I,” so the Chela in the third stage gives to all things in the world names which he has received out of intuition. That means he has passed into the world “I.” He speaks out of the world “I” itself. He may call everything by its most profound name, whereas the man today standing at the average stage can only say “I” to himself. When the Chela has arrived at this stage, he is called a Swan. The Chela who has been able to raise himself to the point of naming all things is called Swan because he is the messenger of all things.

What lies beyond these three stages cannot be expressed in ordinary language. It demands knowledge of a special script only taught in mystery schools. The next stage is the stage of what is veiled. And beyond this lie the stages which belong to the great Initiates, those Initiates who at all times have given the great impulses to our culture. They were Chelas to begin with. To begin with they acquired the keys of knowledge. Next they were led further to the regions where were disclosed to them the universal and the names of things. Then they raised themselves to the stage of the universal, where they could have the deep experiences through which they were qualified to found the great religions of the world.

But it was not only the great religions that came forth from the great Initiates; it was every mighty impulse, all that is important in the world. Let us take just two examples that show the kind of influence that has been exercised on the world by the great Initiates who have gone through the schooling. Let us go back to everyday life at the time when the pupils of the initiation schools were guided under the leadership of Hermes. This guidance was in the end an ordinary, so-called esoteric, scientific instruction. I can sketch for you in only a few strokes what such instruction contained. It was shown how the Cosmic Spirit descended into the physical world, incarnated himself here, and how he began afresh a material existence, how he then reached the highest stage of man and celebrated his resurrection. Paracelsus in particular has expressed this very beautifully in the following words: “The individual beings we meet in the outer world are the single letters, and the word that is formed from them is MAN.” Outwardly we have all contributed human virtues or failings to this creation. Man, however, is the fusion of all this. It was taught as esoteric instruction in the Egyptian mystery schools, in all detail and with great richness of spirit, how there lives in man, as microcosm, the fusion of the rest of the macrocosm.

After this instruction came the Hermetic instruction. What I have said one can grasp with the senses and the understanding. But what is offered in the Hermetic instruction can only be grasped if one has attained the first stage of Chelaship. Then one can learn that special script which is neither arbitrary nor a matter of chance, but which gives us the great laws of the spiritual world. This script is not, like ours, an external picture arbitrarily fixed in single letters and parts; it is born out of the spiritual law of nature itself, because the man who becomes versed in this script is in possession of this natural law. All his conception of soul and astral space itself thus becomes regulated by law. What he conceives is conceived in the sense of the great signs of this script. He is capable of this when he has renounced his self. He unites himself with primal everlasting law. Now he has his Hermetic instruction behind him. Henceforward he himself can be admitted to the first stage of a still deeper initiation. Now, as the next stage, he should experience something in the astral world, the essential soul world, that has a significance reaching beyond the cosmic cycles. After he has acquired the capacity for the astral senses to be fully effective, so that they work right down into the etheric body, then for three days he is ushered into a deep mystery of the astral world. In that astral world he then experiences what last time I described to you as the primal origin of the Earth and man. He has before him and he experiences this descent of the spirit, this separation of Sun, Moon, and Earth, and the coming forth of man—this whole series of phenomena. And at the same time they form themselves into a picture before him. And then he emerges. After he has this great experience in the mystery school behind him, he goes among the people and relates what he has experienced in the soul and astral world. And what he relates runs approximately like this:

“There was once a divine couple who were united with the earth, Osiris and Isis. This divine pair were regents of everything that happens on earth. But Osiris was pursued by Typhon and cut into pieces, and Isis had to search for the corpse. She did not bring it home, but graves of Osiris were distributed among the various parts of the earth. So he was brought completely down into the earth and buried there. But a ray from the spiritual world fell upon Isis, fertilizing her through immaculate conception with the new Horns.”

This picture is nothing other than a mighty representation of what we have come to know as the exit of Sun and Moon, as the separation of Sun and Moon and as the dawning of mankind. Isis is the image of the Moon; Horns stands for earthly mankind, the earth itself. Before man was endowed with warm blood, before he was clothed with his physical body, he felt in mighty pictures what proceeded in the soul world. In the beginning of the Lemurian, of the Atlantean and the Arian evolutions, man was always prepared by the great Initiates to receive the mighty truths contained in such pictures. For this reason, the truths were not simply represented but were given in the pictures of Osiris and Isis. All the great religions we meet in antiquity are from what the great Initiates experienced in astral space. And the great Initiates emerged from these experiences and spoke to each particular people in the way they could understand, that is to say in pictures of what the Initiates themselves had experienced in the mystery schools. This was so in ancient times. Only through being in such a school of initiation could one rise to higher astral experience.

All this was changed with the coming of Christianity. It cut into evolution with great significance. And since the appearance of Christ it has been possible for man to be initiated as an initiate of nature, just as one speaks of a poet of nature. There have been Christian mystics who by grace have received initiation. The first who was called to carry Christianity into all the world under the influence of the words: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,” was Paul. The appearance on the road to Damascus was an initiation outside the mysteries. I cannot go into further detail here.

It was the great Initiates who gave the impulse to all great movements and founding's of culture. From medieval times there comes a beautiful myth that may be said to show us this in a time when one did not yet demand materialistic foundations. The myth arose in Bavaria and has, therefore, assumed the garb of Catholicism. What then happened we will make clear as follows. There arose at that time in Europe the so-called civic culture—modern citizenship. The onward development of man, the progress of each soul to a higher stage, was understood by the mystic as the advancing of the soul, of the womanly element in man. The mystic sees in the soul something womanly that was fertilized by the lower sense impressions of nature and by the eternal truths. In every historical process the mystic sees such a process of fertilization. For those who see more deeply into man's path of development, for those who see the spiritual forces behind physical appearances, the great and deep impulses for the progress of mankind are given by the great Initiates. Thus the man with a medieval world outlook ascribed to the great Initiates the raising up of the soul to higher stages during the new period of culture that was brought about by means of cities. This city-development was attained by souls making a sudden move forward in history. And it was an Initiate who brought about this move. All mighty impulses were ascribed to the great lodge of Initiates surrounding the Holy Grail. From there came the great Initiates who are not visible to ordinary men. And the Initiate who at that time provided the civic culture with its impulse was called, in the Middle Ages, Lohengrin. It is he who was the missionary of the Holy Grail, of the great lodge; and Elsa of Brabant stands for the soul of the city, the womanly element that was to be fructified through the great Initiate. The mediator is the swan. Lohengrin was brought by the swan into this physical world. The Initiate must not be asked his name. He belongs to a higher world. The Chela, the Swan, has been the mediator of this influence.

I have merely been able to indicate how this great event has again been symbolized for the people in a myth. It is in this way that the great Initiates have worked and have put into their teachings what they have to make known. And in this way worked all those who have founded man's early culture—Hermes in Egypt, Krishna in India, Zarathustra in Persia, Moses among the Jewish people. Orpheus continued the work—then Pythagoras, and finally the Initiate of all Initiates, Jesus, who bore within Him the Christ.

Here only the greatest of Initiates are mentioned. We have tried in these descriptions to characterize their connection with the world. What has been described here will still remain remote to many people's thoughts. But those who have become aware of something of the higher worlds in their own souls have always raised their eyes not only to the spiritual world but also to the leaders of mankind. It was only from this standpoint that they have been able to speak in as inspired a way as Goethe. But you find among others, too, something of the divine spark leading towards the point to which spiritual science should again bring us. You find it in the case of a German, a young, intelligent German poet and thinker, whose life has all the appearance of a blessed memory of some former existence as a great Initiate. Those who read Novalis will notice something of the breath that guides us into the higher world. There is something in him that also contains the magic word, though not expressed as explicitly as usual. Thus he has written the beautiful words about the relation of our planet to mankind that convey as much to the lowly and undeveloped as they do to the Initiate:

“Mankind is the sense of our earth-planet, mankind is the nerve that binds the earth-planet with the higher worlds; mankind is the eye through which this earth-planet lifts its gaze to the heavenly Kingdoms of the Cosmos.”

The theosophical world view differs from all remaining world views, which we can meet in the present, because it also satisfies knowledge. We have so often heard in the present: we cannot recognise certain matters; our cognitive faculties have limits and cannot rise up above a certain height. If we let the philosophical investigations of the present approach us, then one often speaks of such limits of knowledge in particular those philosophical schools which go back to Kantianism. The view of the theosophist and the practical mystic differs from all such discussions because it never puts limits to the human cognitive faculties, but considers them in such a way that they can be extended. Is it not a big immodesty, if anybody considers his particular cognitive faculties, his point of cognition as something decisive and says that we cannot go with our cognitive faculties beyond a certain limit?

The theosophist says: I stand on a certain point of view of human cognition today. From this point of view I can recognise this or that, and I cannot recognise this or that. But it is possible to develop the human cognitive faculties to increase them. What one calls initiatory schools is intended basically to increase these human cognitive faculties to a higher level, so that it is indeed correct if one says from a lower level of knowledge that there are limits of cognition, that one cannot recognise this or that. But one can also rise up above such a level of knowledge, one can get to higher levels, and then one can recognise what one could not recognise on subordinate levels. This is the nature of initiation, and this deepening or rise of knowledge is the task of the initiatory schools. It is a matter of raising the human being to the levels of knowledge on which he cannot stand from nature which he has to attain only with long-standing patient exercises.

At all times, there have been such initiatory schools. With all peoples recognising men of higher kind came from such initiatory schools. The nature of such initiatory schools and of the great initiates who have outgrown the lower levels of the human cognitive faculties and got to the highest knowledge, which is accessible to us on earth, expresses itself in the fact that these initiates gave the different religions and world views to the different peoples.

We want to outline the nature of these great initiates today. As one must get to know the methods of every science, of every spiritual procedure with which one penetrates to knowledge, it is also in the initiatory schools. Also there it is the point that we are led to higher stages of cognition using certain methods of which we have just spoken. Now I shortly invoke the concerning stages. Certain levels of knowledge are to be attained only in the intimate initiatory schools, where teachers are who themselves have experienced that school, who have carried out those exercises, who can really consider any single stage, any single step. One has to confide in such teachers of these initiatory schools only.

Indeed, there is nothing of authority in these initiatory schools, nothing of the principle of dogmatism, but only the principle of advising holds sway. Who has gone through certain stages of study and has thereby acquired the experiences of the higher super-sensible life knows the intimate ways leading to this higher cognition. Only such a man/woman is competent to say what one has to do. What is necessary in this field between pupil and teacher is confidence only. Who does not have this confidence is not able to learn anything. Who has this confidence sees very soon that by any esoteric or mystic teacher nothing else is recommended than what this teacher himself has worked through. The point is that only the externally visible part of the whole entity of the human being is completed, as well as the human being faces us today. Everybody who strives for esoteric instructions has to get clear in his mind that the human being is not a completed being today, as he faces us, but that he is developing that he gets to much higher stages in future.

What has already attained the image of God today, what of the human being has come to the highest level is the human sensuous body what we see of him with eyes, what we can generally perceive with our senses. However, this is not the only what the human being has. The human being has even higher members of his nature. At first, he has a member which we call the etheric body. Someone who has developed the soul organs can see this etheric body. Because of this etheric body the human being is not only a creation in which chemical and physical forces work but a living creation that lives and is provided with growth, life and the capacity of reproduction. One can see this etheric body which is a kind of archetype of the human being, if one suggests the usual physical body away with the methods of clairvoyance that are still characterised afterwards. You know that one can achieve by the usual methods of hypnosis and suggestion that if you say to anybody that here is no lamp he really sees no lamp. Thus you are able to thoroughly suggest the room away although you look into the room. That is possible if you develop enough strong willpower in yourselves, that willpower which diverts the attention from the physical body. Then you see the room not empty, but filled with a kind of archetype. This archetype has approximately the same figure as the physical body. However, it is not through and through of the same kind, but is organised thoroughly. It is not only interspersed with fine little veins and currents, but it also has organs. This formation, this etheric body causes the real life of the human being. Its colour can be compared only with the colour of the young peach-blossom. It is no colour which is included in the solar spectrum; it is approximately between violet and red. This is the second body.

The third body is the aura which I have already described occasionally, that cloud-like formation of which I have spoken last time, when I described the origin of the human being, in which the human being is like in an ovoid cloud. Everything expresses itself in it that lives in the human being as desire, passion and feeling. Happy, devoted feelings express themselves in bright colour currents in this aura. Hatred, sensual emotions express themselves in darker hues. Keen, logical thoughts express themselves in well-defined figures. Illogical, confused thoughts find expression in figures with unclear contours. Thus we have an image of the human soul-life in this aura.

As well as I have now described the human being he was placed so to speak, by the hand of nature on earth at that time which lies nearly in the outset of the Atlantean age. I have described last time what one has to understand by the Atlantean age. At the time when the fertilisation with the eternal spirit had already taken place the human being faces us with three members: body, soul and mind. Today these three members of the human being are basically somewhat changed because the human being has worked on himself since that time, since nature has dismissed him, since he has become a self-conscious being.

This work on himself means improving his aura, irradiating light from the self-consciousness to this aura. The human being who stands on a very deep level who has not worked on himself, we say a savage, has an aura as nature has given him. All those, however, who are within our civilised world, have auras in which they themselves have co-operated. For as far as the human being is a self-conscious being, he works on himself, and this work finds expression in him at first that his aura changes. Everything that the human being has learnt from nature what he has taken up, since he can speak and think self-consciously, is a new impact in his aura, caused by himself.

If you transport yourselves back to the Lemurian age when the human being was warm-blooded since long time when his fertilisation by the spirit had taken place in the middle of this Lemurian age, the human being was not yet a being capable of clear thoughts. All that just started developing. The spirit had just taken possession of the corporeality. At that time, the aura was completely a result of the natural forces. There one could notice and one can notice it still today with people of very low level , a smaller aura of bluish colour originating at a certain place within the head. This smaller aura is the external auric expression of the self-consciousness. The more the human being has developed this self-consciousness by his thinking and working, the more this smaller aura spreads out about the other aura, so that both become often completely different in short time. The human being who lives in the external civilisation who is an educated civilised person works on his aura in such a way as civilisation just drives him. We take up our usual knowledge, as our school offers it, our experiences, which life brings us, and they perpetually change our aura. But this change must be continued if the human being wants to join the practical mysticism. There he has to work particularly on himself. There he has to incorporate into his aura not only what civilisation offers him, but there he has to exert an influence in certain, regular way on his aura. This happens by means of the so-called meditation. This meditation or the inner contemplation is the first stage which the student of an initiate has to go through.

What is the sense and purpose of this meditation? Attempt once to hold the thoughts before yourselves, which you hold in the mind from the morning up to the evening, and to ponder how these thoughts are influenced by the space and time in which you live. Attempt once whether you are able to prevent your thoughts and ask yourselves whether you had them if you did not live by chance in Berlin and in the beginning of the 20-th century. At the end of the 18-th and at the beginning of the 19-th century, the human beings have not thought in the same way as the human beings of today. If you imagine how the world has been changed in the course of the last century and which changes time has caused, then you see that what permeates your soul from morning to night depends on space and time. It is different if we dedicate ourselves to thoughts which have an eternal value. Actually, these are only certain abstract, academic thoughts, the highest thoughts of mathematics and geometry to which the human being dedicates himself and have eternal value. Twice two is four: this must hold good at all times and places. The same applies to the geometrical truths which we take up. But if we refrain from the certain foundation of such truths, we can say that the average person thinks very little that is independent of space and time. What is dependent on them connects us with the world and exerts a small influence only on that being which itself is something permanent.

Meditation is nothing else than dedicating oneself to thoughts of eternal value, to educate oneself consciously to that which is beyond space and time. The great religious writings contain such thoughts: the Vedanta, the Bhagavad Gita, the John's Gospel from the thirteenth chapter up to the end, also the Imitation of Christ (1441) by Thomas à Kempis (~1380-1471, canon regular). Who becomes engrossed with patience and perseverance in such a way that he lives in such writings, who becomes engrossed every day anew and maybe works on one single sentence for weeks, and thinks and feels it through, gets an infinite use. As well as one gets to know and love a child with all its peculiarities more and more every day, one lets such a sentence of eternity penetrate the soul every day which arises from the great initiates or inspired human beings. This fulfils us with new life. The sayings in Light on the Path (1885), written down by Mabel Collins (1851-1927) according to higher instructions, are also very important. Already the first four sentences are suitable if they are exercised patiently to intervene in the human aura in such a way that this aura is completely illuminated with a new light. One can see this light lighting up in the human aura. Bluish colour nuances replace the reddish or reddish-brownish ones, light reddish nuances replace the yellow ones et etcetera All the colours of the aura change under the influence of such thoughts of eternity. The student cannot yet perceive this in the beginning, but he starts gradually feeling the deep influence that goes out from this changed aura.

If the human being exercises certain virtues, certain performances of the soul most carefully beside these meditations, then his soul senses develop within this aura. We must have these if we want to behold into the soul-world, just as we must have physical senses to be able to look into the physical world. As the external senses are implanted by nature into the body, the human being has to implant higher soul senses lawfully into his aura. The meditation causes that the human being becomes mature to work on these senses which exist as rudiments.

But we have to turn our attention to particular soul performances if we want to develop these senses. Consider that the human being has a number of such senses as rudiments. We call these senses lotus-flowers, because the astral structure which the human being starts developing in his aura takes on the figure of lotus-flowers comparatively. Of course, this is only comparative, just as one speaks of lungs which resemble to wings. The two-petalled lotus-flower is in the middle of the head about the nasal root between the eyes. Then near the larynx is the 16-petalled lotus-flower, near the heart is the twelve-petalled one, near the pit of the stomach the 10-petalled one. More far below there are the 6-petalled and the 4-petalled lotus-flowers. I would like to speak only of the 16-petalled and the 12-petalled lotus-flowers today.

In Buddha's teaching the so-called eightfold path is given. Now ask yourselves once: why does Buddha give just this eightfold path as especially important for the attainment of the higher stages of the human being? This eightfold path is: right view, right aspiration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Such a great initiate like Buddha does not speak out of a vaguely felt ideal, he speaks out of the knowledge of the human nature, and he knows which influence the soul performances have on those bodies which must develop only in future. If we consider the 16-petalled lotus-flower of a modern average person, we see, actually, very little. It is about to light up again, so to speak. In times of very distant past this lotus-flower existed already once. It declined in its development. Today it appears again due to the cultural work of the human being. However, in future this 16-petalled lotus-flower comes again to full development. It begins to gleam in its sixteen spokes or petals brightly, any petal appears in another hue, and, finally, it moves from the left to the right, clockwise.

Someone develops in the initiatory school consciously what every human being experiences and possesses once in future, so that he can become a guide of humanity. Eight of the sixteen petals were already developed in the very distant past. Eight are still to be developed today if the esoteric student wants to get to the use of these senses.
These are formed,
-If the human being goes consciously and carefully the eightfold path
-If he exercises the eight soul activities given by Buddha
-If he arranges his whole soul-life in such a way that he exercises these eight virtues as intensely as possible,
So that he controls himself, supports his meditation work and not only matures the 16-petalled lotus-flower, but sets them also in motion to be able to really perceive.

Now I still want to speak of the 12-petalled lotus-flower near the heart. Six petals were already developed in the far-off past; six have to be developed in future with all human beings, with initiates and their pupils already today. In all theosophical manuals you can find certain virtues cited which someone who wants to ascend to the stage of a chela or student should acquire in the forecourt. These six virtues, which you find cited in every theosophical manual where of the development of the human being is spoken, are: control of thoughts, control of actions, tolerance, steadfastness, impartiality and balance or what Angelus Silesius calls calmness. These six virtues, which one has to practice consciously and carefully and to add to the meditation, develop the other six petals of the 12-petalled lotus-flower. This is not blindly or accidentally picked up in the theosophical textbooks or written down out of own internal feeling, but is spoken from the deepest knowledge of the great initiates. The initiates know that somebody who really wants to develop to higher super-sensible stages has to develop the 12-petalled lotus-flower. For this purpose he has to develop the six petals, which were not developed in the past, with these six virtues. Thus you see how from a deeper knowledge of the human being the great initiates gave their instructions for life. I could still extend this consideration to other organs of cognition and observation, but I want only to give you an outline of the initiatory process with these remarks which should be sufficient.

If the student has advanced so far that he starts developing these astral senses if he has advanced so far that he is thereby able to see not only the sensuous impressions in his surroundings but also what is mental, what the aura is in the human being, in the animal and in the plant, a quite new level of instruction begins. Nobody can see anything mental in his surroundings, before his lotus-flowers rotate, just as somebody who has no eyes can see no colours and no light. If now the wall is broken through if he has progressed on the preliminary stage of knowledge so far that he has an insight into this astral world, then only the real apprenticeship begins for him. This leads through four stages of knowledge. What happens now at this moment when the human being has become a chela, after he has gone through the preliminary stages? We have seen that everything that we have now described refers to the astral body. This is organised thoroughly by the human body. The human being who has experienced such a development has another aura. If he then examines his astral body with self-consciousness, if he himself has become the clear organisation of his astral body, we say that this student has examined his astral body with manas. Nothing else is manas than an astral body which is controlled from self-consciousness. Manas and astral body are one and the same, but on different developmental stages.

One has to realise this if one wants to practically use for the practical mysticism what is given in the theosophical manuals as seven principles. Everybody who knows the mystic way of development, everybody who knows something of initiation says that they have a theoretical value for the study, but for the practical mystic only if one knows the relationships which exist between the lower and upper principles. No practical mystic knows more than four members: the physical body, in which the chemical and physical laws are working, the etheric body, the astral body and, finally, the self-consciousness which we call kama-manas in the present development, the self-consciously thinking principle. Manas is nothing else than what the self-consciousness works into the body. The etheric body, as it is now, is taken away from any influence of the self-consciousness. We can influence growth and nourishment indirectly, but not in such a way as we let our wishes, our thoughts and ideas come from the self-consciousness. Thus we ourselves cannot influence our relationships of nourishment, digestion and growth. These are without any connection with the human self-consciousness. This etheric body has to come under the influence of the astral body, the so-called aura. The self-consciousness of the astral body must penetrate and treat the etheric body in the same way as the human being his aura, his astral body. If the human being has advanced so far by meditation, by contemplation and by the exercise of the soul activities that the astral body is organised of its own accord, then the work proceeds to the etheric body, then the etheric body receives the inner word, then the human being hears not only what lives in the environment, then the inner sense of the things sounds to him in his etheric body.

Many a time I have said here that the actually spiritual in the things is something sounding. I have drawn your attention to the fact that the practical mystic if he speaks of a sounding in the spiritual world that he speaks of a luminescence in the astral world, the world of desires. Not without reason Goethe says when he leads his Faust to the heaven:

In ancient rivalry with fellow spheres
the sun still sings its glorious song,
and it completes with threat of thunder
the journey it has been assigned.

And not without reason Ariel says, as Faust is led by the spirits to the spiritual world: “In these sounds we spirits hear the new day already born.”

This inner sounding which is, of course, no sounding perceptible to external sensuous ears, this inner word of the things by which they express their own nature is the experience which the human being has if he is able to influence his astral body from his etheric body. Then he has become the chela, the real disciple of a great initiate. Then he can continue this path. One calls such a human being who has ascended this level a homeless human being, because he has found the connection with a new world because the spiritual world sounds to him and because he has no longer his home, so to speak, in this sensuous world. One must not misunderstand this. The chela who has attained this level is a good citizen and father of a family, a good friend as he would be, if he had not become a chela. He needs to be torn out from nothing. What he experiences there is a course of soul development. There he attains a new home in a world which lies behind these sensuous one.

What has happened there? The spiritual world sounds in the human being, and while the spiritual world sounds into the human being, he overcomes an illusion, the illusion generally, in which basically all human beings are prejudiced before this level of development. This is the illusion of the personal self. The human being believes that he is a personality, separated from the rest of the world. Already a mere reflection could teach him that he himself is no independent being in the physical. Take into account if in this room the temperature were 200 degrees higher than now, we would not be able to exist here as we exist now. As soon as the circumstances change outside, the conditions are no longer appropriate to our physical existence. We are only the continuation of the outside world and absolutely inconceivable as a special being. This is even more the case in the psychic and in the spiritual worlds. We see that the human being, understood as a self, is only an illusion that he is a member of the general divine spirituality. Here the human being overcomes the personal self. It appears what Goethe pronounced it in the chorus mysticus (Faust) with the words: “All that is transitory is only a symbol.” What we see, is only an image of an eternal being. We ourselves are only an image of an eternal being. If we give up our special being, we have the external life and we live a separate life with the whelp of the etheric body , then we have overcome the external, separate life, we have become a part of the All-life.

In the human being something now appears that we have called buddhi. Buddhi is virtually now achieved as a developmental stage of the etheric body, of that etheric body which does no longer cause a special existence, but enters the All-life. The human being, who arrives at this, has arrived at the second level of chelahood. Then all scruples and doubts drop from his soul, and then he can no longer be a superstitious person, just as little as he can be a disbelieving person. Then he does no longer need to get truth comparing his ideas with the external environment, then he lives in the sound, in the word of the things, then it sounds and sounds out of the being what it is. Neither superstition nor doubt is there. One calls this the delivery of the key of knowledge to the chela. If he has attained this stage, a word of the spiritual world sounds into this. Then his word does no longer echo what the world is but what comes from another world which works into our external world which cannot be seen with our external senses. Messengers of the divinity are these words.

If this stage is stepped over, a new one comes. It happens that the human being wins influence on what his physical body is immediately doing. He had only influence on the etheric body before, now, however, on the physical body. His actions have to set the physical body in motion. What the human being does is integrated into what we call his karma. But the human being does not work consciously on it; he does not know that he pulls an effect behind himself because of his action. Only now the human being starts performing the actions consciously in the physical world in such a way that he consciously works on his karma. There he wins influence on the karma with the physical action. There it sounds not only from the things of the environment, but there he is so far that he is able to pronounce the names of all things. As the human being lives in our cultural stage, he is able only to pronounce one single name. And this is the name he gives himself: I. This is the only name the human being himself can give. Who becomes deeper engrossed in it, can come to profound knowledge nothing of which the academic psychology dreams.

It is only one thing to which only you yourselves can give the concerning name. No one else can say to you I, only you yourselves. To anyone you must say you and every other must say you to you. It is something in everybody that everybody can call I. Therefore, the Jewish secret doctrine also speaks of the inexpressible name of God. This is something that is immediately an announcement of the God in him. It was forbidden to pronounce this name unworthily and unholy. Hence, the holy shyness, the importance and fundamentality if the Jewish esoteric teacher pronounced this name. “I” is the only word which says something to you what can never come to you from the outside world. As the average person gives his self only the name, the chela of the third degree gives names which he has from intuition to all things of the world. That is he is merged up in the world-self. He speaks out of this world-self. He is allowed to say the deepest name of a thing to this thing, whereas the average present-day human being is only able to say “I” to himself. If the chela has attained this level, one calls him a swan. The chela who can rise to the names of all things is called swan because he is the herald of all things.

What is beyond the third degree cannot be expressed with everyday words. This requires the knowledge of a special script which is taught only in the esoteric schools. The following degree is the degree of the disguised. Beyond it are the degrees which the great initiates have, those initiates who gave our culture the big impulses at all times. They were chelas first. First they attained the key of knowledge. Then they were led to the regions where to them the universal and the names of the things were disclosed. Then they ascended to the stage of the All and could have the deep experiences by which they were enabled to found the great religions of the world.

Not only the great religions, but generally every big impulse, everything that is important in the world originated from the great initiates. Only two examples are cited which kind of influence on the world the great initiates have who experienced the training.

We transport ourselves back to that time where under the guidance of Hermes the students of the initiatory schools were instructed. These instructions were usual, so-called esoteric, scientific lessons.

Only with a few lines I am able to draw what such lessons contained. It was shown there how the world spirit descends to the body world, embodies itself, and how it revives in the matter, how it gets to its highest stage in the human being and celebrates its resurrection. Paracelsus expressed this pleasantly saying: what we meet outside, these single beings are the letters, and the word which is joined together from them is the human being. We have off-loaded all human virtues or weaknesses on the creatures outside. However, the human being is the confluence of all that. How in the human being a confluence of the remaining macrocosm revives as a microcosm, this was taught in details and with immense spiritual wealth as esoteric lessons in the Egyptian initiatory schools.

After these lessons the hermetic lessons followed. One can understand with the senses and with the reason what I have said. One can only understand what in the hermetic lessons was offered if one has achieved the first degree of chelahood. Then one gets to know that special script which is not an accidental and arbitrary one but echoes the great laws of the spiritual world. This script is not like ours an external image which is fixed arbitrarily in single letters and members, but it is born out of the spiritual law of nature because the human being who is expert of this script is in the possession of these laws of nature. Thus all his ideation is following a set pattern in the psychic and astral space. What he imagines he imagines in the sense of these big characters. He is able to do that if he gives up his self. He submits to the eternal laws. Now he is over his hermetic lessons. He is admitted to the first stage of a more profound initiation. He has to experience something in the astral world, in the real soul-world that has a significance extending over the world cycles. After he has attained the capacity that the astral senses fully work, so that they work down to the etheric body, he is introduced in a deep secret of the astral world for three days. He experiences in the astral world what I have described to you as the origin of the earth and the human being last time. He experiences this descent of the spirit, this separation of sun, moon and earth and the origin of the human being, he has this whole sequence of phenomena before himself. At the same time, he has them before himself in such a way that they become a picture. And then he comes out of the temple. After he has gone through this great experience in the initiatory school, he steps among the people and tells what he has experienced in this psychic and astral world. This story runs approximately in such a way:

Once a divine couple, Osiris and Isis, was combined with the earth. This divine couple was the regent of everything that happens on earth. But Osiris was persecuted and dismembered by Typhon, and Isis had to search for his corpse. She did not bring it home, but at different places of the earth Osiris's graves were laid out. There he descended completely and was buried in the earth. There a ray of the spiritual world radiated on Isis, fertilising her to the new Horus by an immaculate conception.

This image was nothing else than a big representation of what we have just got to know as the emergence of the sun and moon, as the separation of the sun and moon and as the origin of the human being. Isis is the symbol of the moon; Horus signifies the earthly humanity, the earth itself. When humanity was not yet provided with warm blood, when it was not yet covered with the physical body, it felt in big images what occurred in the soul-world. It was prepared to receive the big truths in such images from the great initiates in the beginning of the Lemurian, Atlantean and Aryan developments. Hence, these truths were not simply arranged, but were given in the picture of Osiris and Isis. All great religions which we find in antiquity were experienced by the great initiates in the psychic space. These great initiates came out and spoke to the people in the way how it could understand, namely in images of that which they themselves had experienced in the initiatory schools. This was in antiquity that way. Only because one was in such initiatory school one could ascend to the higher astral experience.

With the emergence of Christianity this changed. It represents a significant incision in the development. Since the appearance of Christ, it was possible that one could be initiated as a nature initiate as one also speaks of a nature poet. There are Christian mystics who had received the initiation by mercy. The first who was called to bring out Christianity all over the world under the effect of the saying “happy are they who find faith without beholding me” (John 20:29) was Paul. The appearance on the road to Damascus was an initiation outside of the mysteries. I cannot deal with further details.

To all great movements and cultural foundations the great initiates gave the impulses. A nice myth has survived to us from the Middle Ages which should show this in a time when one did not yet ask for materialistic reasons. The epic originated in Bavaria and, hence, has taken on the dress of Catholicism. We want to realise what happened at that time in the following way. At that time the so-called urban culture, the modern bourgeoisie originated in Europe. The mystic understood the further development of humanity, the advance of every soul to the next stage as the advance of the soul, of the female in the human being. The mystic sees something female in the soul that is fertilised by the lower sensory impressions of nature and by the eternal truths. In every historical process the mystic sees such a fertilisation process. The big impulses for the progress of humanity are given by the great initiates. Somebody can notice this who looks deeper into the evolution of humanity who beholds the spiritual forces behind the physical phenomena. Thus the medieval world view also attributed that rise of the soul to higher stages during the new cultural stage which was caused by the cities. This urban development was achieved because the soul took a leap forward in history. It was an initiate who caused this leap. One attributed all big impulses to the great lodge of the initiates who surrounded the Holy Grail. From there the great initiates came who are not visible to the external human being. And one called that person Lohengrin who provided the urban culture in those days with an impulse in mediaeval times. This is the emissary of the Holy Grail, the great lodge. And the urban soul, the female principle that should be fertilised by the great initiates is suggested by Elsa of Brabant. That who should mediate is the swan. Lohengrin is brought by the swan to this physical world. The initiate must not be asked for his name. He belongs to a higher world. The chela, the swan, provided this influence.

I could only suggest that the big impact was symbolised again for the people in a myth. The great initiates worked that way and put into their teachings what they had to announce. Also those worked this way who founded the elementary culture of humanity: Hermes in Egypt, Krishna in India, Zarathustra in Persia, and Moses in the Jewish people. Then again Orpheus, Pythagoras and, finally, Jesus worked who is the initiate of the initiates who carried Christ in himself.

With it only the great initiates are called. I have tried to characterise their connection with the world in these explanations. What has been described with it is still abstruse to many people. But those who themselves felt something of the higher worlds in their souls looked always up not only to the spiritual worlds but also to the leaders of humanity. Only with this point of view they were able to speak so enthusiastically like Goethe. But you also find something of a holy spark with others, which leads us to this point which spiritual science should give us again. You will find it with a German, with a young sensible German poet and thinker whose life looks like a blissful recollection of a former life of a great initiate. Who reads Novalis (pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801, German poet and philosopher) feels something of the breath which leads to this higher world. It is not so pronounced as usually, but it is something in him that also the magic words have. That is why he wrote the nice word of the relationship of our planet to humanity, which applies to the lower, undeveloped human being as well as to the initiate:

Humanity is the sense of our earth planet, humanity is the nerve that connects this earth planet with the upper worlds, and humanity is the eye with which this earth planet faces the heavenly kingdoms of the universe.

Answer-to-Question

Question: Why did Christ not leave writings behind?

This is just the basic difference between him and the former founders of a religion. Christ says: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” The other founders of a religion were way and truth. They announced what should be done and believed, as Moses did, for example. If we study the ancient religious confessions, we find no difference of the contents, no difference between Christianity as doctrine and the other great religions. Who knows the Egyptian religious system in its deepness finds everything that is included in Christianity also there. That applies to all religions. Christianity is still something absolutely new, not as a doctrine but as a fact. Hence, I have called my book: Christianity as Mystic Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity (CW 8). The appearance of Christ signifies something that is termed “blessed” (selig), filled with the soul (Seele). Now everybody should become blessed who was connected in faith with the founder. Christ descends to the valley and becomes a human being among human beings. He teaches nothing new, but he lives in the immediate existence, in the innermost personality in that which the others taught. What the others taught was the Logos, the divine truth. If you study Buddha, if you penetrate the lofty teachings of Hermes or of the Vedas, you have external sayings of the divine creator's word. The Logos became doctrine there.