The Rudolf Steiner Archive

There have always been great searching minds. There have always been epochs in which the human mind sought to penetrate into the deepest questions; at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was particularly astonishing. In the German thinkers, we find the highest level of training. But precisely these important ones have become the least known. One man stands at the top: Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Who knows and still reads his “Addresses to the German Nation” today?

Fichte's world view is a difficult one, so let us first take a look at Immanuel Kant. Kant, so to speak, set firm limits to human knowledge. He sought the thing in itself. He did not penetrate into its depths. Fichte went beyond him in a way. The Age of Enlightenment began with Kant. He said: “Man, you shall dare to use your own reason.” This caused the old belief in authority to falter. Stirring memories of the spirit of enlightenment came from France. Rousseau's spirit had a powerful effect on Kant. Materialism appeared there first, and the spirit of enlightenment also made itself felt in Germany; but something else was added there.

Lessing, in his “Education of the Human Race”, showed how he had been seized by this spirit of enlightenment; but with him, for the first time, we encounter a new idea, the idea of re-embodiment. He said: “Is not all eternity mine?” Through many lives, man walks the path to perfection. We see how Goethe showed us the great idea of re-embodiment in great images. That was Fichte's “deed”: Fichte showed in his teaching of science that man has to find the “I” within himself, and it was precisely this that was difficult for man to grasp. Fichte said: The great thing is that man himself says “I” to himself. No one can call out “I” to us from the outside. It is the only name that only we can give ourselves; it is the designation of our unique nature in relation to nature. It is there that the God in man begins to speak. With this, man has begun to ascend to ever higher levels. In 1800, Fichte wrote “On the Destiny of Man”. One should not read it, but live it, let it take effect on oneself. He suggests observing our inner life, immersing ourselves in the inner power of our nature in order to come to the certainty of our eternal essence. In his booklet “Instructions for a Blessed Life” he shows that the I has always lived in us and will always live in us. In such German writings you receive the best theosophical training.

Novalis was an eminently theosophical spirit; he died at the age of 29 as a mining engineer. He himself felt that his mathematics was a great poem. In this he recalls Pythagoras' saying that there is music of the spheres in it. Novalis sensed the movement in the universe as harmonious tones. For him, the starry world was a world built according to mathematical principles — just as the harmonies that one perceives in music can also be calculated. He also sensed and thought the layers of the earth. It was clear to Novalis that man must develop his inner senses. In “The Apprentices of Sais” he clearly stated that man is related to God and the whole world – Pictures: Hyacinth, a beautiful boy, loves the beautiful Rose Child. He owes the realization of the human ego to Fichte.

Another thinker: Schelling. In his 1809 publication “On Human Freedom”, he seeks to bring out Jakob Böhme's ideas. He is concerned with the interesting research into the origin of evil. I can only hint at a comparison today: everyone will see harmony at the bottom of everything. But how does disharmony come about? How can man come to freedom? By also having the possibility of doing evil. Schelling says: the divine good is like sunlight. When light throws light into darkness, it awakens shadows. The light would not be able to develop its power if there were nothing to cast the shadows. — Jakob Böhme calls it the counter-throw. Darkness is precisely the nothing. The something, the good, can only be understood by the fact that evil is a nothing, only a shadow. Schelling also called human beings, as a physical body, a perfection. Hands, for example, are perfect and independent, but can scratch themselves if they turn against each other. — Conversation: Clara and Benno. He had been silent for a long time, then Frederick William IV appointed him to the University of Berlin. Then he wrote “Philosophy of Mythology” and “Philosophy of Revelation”. He speaks there of ancient mysteries. What is a mystery? If we go far back behind Homer to the culture of the Greek secret schools, temple cults, we see that the disciples first had to observe the external drama, the God who descends into nature, who is hidden in all four realms, who only awakens in man. In the human breast is the place of the resurrection of God. This was not art, religion, science, it was all three at once: beauty, religion and piety. It was only later that truth, beauty and piety, science, art and religion separated. The mysteries illustrated this. In Schelling you can find the most beautiful in his “Mystical Revelations”.

Heinrich Kleist: “Käthchen von Heilbronn”, “Prinz von Homburg”. The former cannot be understood if one denies hypnosis and does not look deeper into the soul life. Kleist delved deeply into Schubert's philosophical lectures, which he heard in Dresden at the time, about dreams and the interior of the soul, and through this he gained those thoughts.

Justinus Kerner found a way to study the abnormal soul life with the seer of Prevorst. She came into a spiritual and mental environment in that state. This has many concerns. While the physical body rested during sleep, the soul perceived conditions in its environment. Kerner said: “For her, the state of constant illness is a constant dying.” Eckartshausen presents everything in an idealized way up to a certain point.

Ennemoser was somewhat superficial.

This chain of theosophical thinkers provided deep insights into the further development of humanity, showed the eternal core of being in individuality, and demonstrated re-embodiment.

What significance does the personality have for the being? It gains experience in thinking, feeling and willing. It does not discard this experience when it dies like a garment; no, life was a school for it, and what it took in during its lifetime, it takes with it as treasure into its new existence. A human being would have lived in vain if that were not the case. Thus, with each life, the individuality becomes richer. Everything that the personality has collected is the pearls of a pearl necklace. The personality is the tool for developing out of life. Earth life is what makes us more perfect. The personality lays the foundation for development.

Certain Western views underestimate the personality and believe that we simply shed our personality at death. No, we take its fruits with us. It is valuable to learn what the personality means. And all those spirits are masters at describing the personal. The mission of the German spirit at that time was to emphasize what is pure and beautiful and noble in the personality. And this is precisely what Theosophy shows: beautiful, pure and lofty thinking. Each age has its task and mission. That was the mission of German philosophy. The great minds have been almost completely forgotten, and it is our duty to learn from them. The most wonderful fruits can be gained there. Then one will truly understand the energy that emanated from those minds. “Man can do what he should, and when he says, 'I cannot,' he will not.” There were two great eras: the first when the Vedanta philosophy emerged in Asia in the post-Vedic period, the second at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Germany. On both occasions, the human mind experienced its greatest depth. During this time, will and strength were directed towards the ideal.

Nature is a great living thing,
And everything is fruit, and everything is seed.

Notes by Mathilde Scholl

We want to remind ourselves today, as in every esoteric hour, that what we are told in these hours comes from the Masters of Wisdom and of the harmony of feelings.

We want to develop, not out of an egoistic longing for development, but to become helpers in the development of humanity, to whose karma ours is linked. We should come out of these hours different from what we were when we entered them, by drawing benefit from the teachings for our esoteric daily work. To always carry out these most intimate soul activities in the right spirit is the main thing that cannot be impressed upon us often enough.

Our meditations primarily take into account the division of the present human being into two parts: the consciousness during sleep and during wakefulness. These two parts have been given to us from ancient, pre-Atlantean times and are tailored to this division of the human being. Why is it necessary for the human being to withdraw his ego and astral body from the physical and etheric bodies at night? The divine beings who built the physical and etheric bodies into such a magnificent, perfect temple move back into them during the night, while the human being's ego and astral body also enter divine realms. If they did not do so, they would completely destroy the physical and etheric bodies, because, in addition to the spiritual-divine beings who were their creators, the luciferic beings also have influence over the astral body. For it was they who made the astral body free and independent. Thus, when man returns to his physical body, he falls into error and guilt during the day. It is not the physical and etheric bodies that are subject to aberrations, but the astral body, which is seduced by the ego, which yields to the whisperings of the satanic entities. The normal person is protected from deeper, more dangerous influences of these Luciferic beings by the spiritual-divine creators, in that they have endowed him with a strong power, but the esotericist should use this power to ascend to higher levels of development.

The esotericist should now say to himself when falling asleep: “I return to my creators,” and when awakening: “I come from where I stayed before my body was created.” And he should consciously dwell in these realms for a few moments in meditation. If he does this with the right attitude, he will ignite the sacred fire, the inner warmth, that is necessary for him. And before he falls asleep at night, he should develop the same feelings during his evening esoteric work, even if it is only the daily review. By letting his day pass before him in pictures, backwards and forwards, he creates spiritual images, the essence of which he takes with him into the spiritual worlds. This must be done backwards and forwards because that is how everything happens in the spiritual worlds, and it creates a transition into them so that they can flow into us more easily and we can enter into them more easily. Through the usual forward thinking, which we transfer to the spiritual worlds, we brace ourselves against them, push them away from us and thereby hinder ourselves and our development.

Just as in the night the luciferic entities influence man from within, so in the day the ahrimanic-mephistophelian influence him from without. What have these entities now brought about in man through their influence? The luciferic ones brought with freedom and self-consciousness the most extreme expression of this, the haf. Man would never have been able to hate if he had not more and more isolated himself in his self. And the Ahrimanic entities shrouded the divine spiritual entities in the smoke of Maya for the human eye, so that man no longer sees what is behind things. This is how fear arose. Man would never have known fear if he could see the divine creators instead of bumping into things in space. A little child learns fear at the moment when it comes into contact with matter and is hurt by it.

These two, hatred and fear, must now be discarded by the esotericist, even in their finest shades, in order to successfully move forward. Zarathustra, one of our mightiest teachers, has therefore left us words that, if we take them up in the right spirit, will help us to successfully achieve fearlessness. He said: “I will speak, now come and listen to me, you who, far and near, desire it. I will speak of him who can become manifest to the spirit, and no longer shall the deceptive mind confuse men, which has caused so much evil in human development. I will speak of that which is the first and greatest in the world, of that which he has revealed to me, the great spirit, which is Ahura Mazdao. But he who does not hear my words, as I understand and grasp them, will experience evil when the earth's course has come to an end in his age.“ ^{13Free rendering of a Gatha passage, Yasna 45.}

With this he wanted to point out to people that the outer sun is only the cover for the great regent of the fire spirits, just as everything physical is the cover for a spiritual, and if we concentrate on this great Auramazda, which stands behind the life-giving sun, fearlessness will be our part.

And much later, to help us achieve freedom from hatred, the great Zarathustra gave us another symbol. He had two disciples. He prepared the astral body of one of them so that he became clairvoyant, and therefore, in a later incarnation, this disciple was able to connect with his prepared astral body that of Zarathustra, who sacrificed his for this purpose. This disciple became the great Hermes, who directed the Egyptian mysteries. Zarathustra sacrificed his etheric body to the second disciple, whose etheric body he had also carefully prepared for this union. This disciple reincarnated in Moses, and that he had received a special etheric body can be seen from

narrative of the Bible, in which he, as a small child, had to dwell for a while, completely closed off from the world, in the water, so that his ego and astral body would not have a confusing effect on these subtle processes through impressions from the outside.

Zarathustra's ego was powerful and strong enough to create a new etheric and astral body for himself during a new incarnation. After being Nazarathos, the teacher of Pythagoras, he finally became Jesus of Nazareth, who could now sacrifice his three bodies, including the physical one, for the Auramazdao, which he had always proclaimed. He descended and dwelt in him, and that is why Jesus could say in this sense: “I am the light of the world.” (In the Gospel of John).

And the symbol of the absence of hatred that Zarathustra left us on this path is the blood that flowed at Golgotha. Hatred is the most extreme expression of the “I”. And where does our “I” reside? In the blood. Even our physical blood changes when this hardening, this withering of the “I”, the hatred, is transformed into a lack of hatred and this into love. If chemists had the appropriate fine instruments, they would be able to detect the difference in the blood of, for example, an old Indian and a Saint Francis of Assisi. This spiritualization is also expressed in the physical. With the blood that flowed for humanity at Calvary, we have the symbol of lack of hatred, through which we can transform every feeling of hatred into love, in order to bring it before the altar of the creative beings. The magic breath that emanates from Golgotha has a transforming effect on hatred and fear, which are brothers, just as Lucifer and the ahrimanic-mephistophelian entities are brothers.

An initiate is one who is able to communicate from self to self with other individualities. The fourth step on the path of knowledge is initiation. One cannot speak about the nature of the initiate.

To understand Western spiritual culture, we need to note a few things. The starting point of our reflection today is the event that Tauler experienced in the Middle Ages. He preached passionately as a Christian. One day, a personality came to him who apparently wanted to listen to him. But he soon turned out to be greater than Tauler. He said that this sermon is only conceptual, it is only intellectual knowledge, a matter of memory. But through practice, Tauler soon brought him to the point where he preached differently, that he spoke through the Spirit. This layman walked with the Master Jesus of Nazareth.

Christianity originated from a circle that came from oriental sources. The Knights Templar had a home where Solomon's Temple used to stand. This is only an external accessory. One can distinguish between an exoteric side, an esoteric side and a secret doctrine. The aim of the Knights Templar was to give Christian life a completely new direction. The cults were hidden in a completely secret service. They differed significantly from what was then the Christian cult of the West. They were based on an oath that had been taken by a Christian patriarch. It was a current that can even be seen as anti-Christian. The worship of the divinity of Christ was to be done away with. It is an emphasis of the faith of the Knights Templar in John the Baptist. It was a revival of what had existed in Christianity within the Gnostic school.

In what way was the Templars a new influence in Christianity, a revival of the old teachings? Jesus accompanied the cultural development to the present day. - “I remain with you until the end of the world.”

One could learn as little about the true nature of Christianity through study as one can today. The most diverse studies on Christianity have been made. One is amazed at this. Just take Pfleiderer, for example. But this cannot give satisfaction to anyone who stands on the ground of Christianity. Historical facts cannot help us. It is about an eye-to-eye vision with Jesus, about an immediate vital influence. There must be a small circle that knows the truth not only through the knowledge of the letter, but through direct life. The Knights Templar said to themselves: We can only be initiated into the secrets by the chela who has been left to us.

No one can skip any of these stages. There are four stages. “I baptize you with water, but one is coming who will baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit.” The baptism with water is associated with the personality of John the Baptist.

A large part of Goethe's initiatory knowledge can be traced back to Rosicrucianism. Not only the outer part of it, but the stream of mystical facts has existed. With Swedenborg, there is a danger of being easily taken for a charlatan. But before he came to his mysticism, he was at the height of the science of his time. The Academy of Sciences collected the learned writings of Swedenborg. This current also had a great influence on Goethe. Swedenborg was influenced by a current of Atlantic culture. This influence can only be a very peculiar one, and one can see how difficult these mystical things are for those who try to understand them. The influence of this Atlantic school of thought can be as follows.

The Atlanteans inhabited a country that stretched between Africa, Europe and America. It perished many thousands of years before our era. Plato still speaks of a last remnant, of the island of Poseidonis, which is said to have perished about ten thousand years before our era. For the mystical researcher, the fact of the Atlanteans' existence is certain. This fourth race had particularly developed one spiritual power, which has taken a back seat in our society in favor of another power. Their memory was their main strength. It is less important for us to know what they looked like on the outside. Our fifth race has developed the intellect. The Atlanteans did not calculate and think like us. Our calculating and thinking is a product of the fifth human race. Another power of mind will replace the intellect in the future. The Atlanteans never formed the judgment 2 x 2 = 4. There was no such judgment at that time. Man remembered that 2 x 2 = 4 was taken earlier. He also knew general sentences, but he could not summarize certain types of animals. The general judgments were only formed in the fifth race.

This shows how one faculty can be overshadowed by another. The strong sense of smell in certain animals is later overshadowed by the intellect of humans. This Atlantean culture has been preserved in today's spiritual development. Certain influences flow into our cultural life. Examples of this are Leadbeater and Swedenborg. However, this influence is always somewhat chaotic. Since the eighteenth century, there has been a very intense influence of this Atlantic Lodge within our Western development. Many are under this influence without knowing it. The influence goes to the subconscious. This can always be influenced by certain currents. This can be observed in somnambulists. Many people who advocate something today do not know that they are under this influence.

What did the Knights Templar bring to Western thought? They broke away from Christianity. Then astrology comes to them. Within the Knights Templar we have a complete system of astrology. They now turn their gaze up to the starry world, to the great connections of the universe, away from Jesus. Thomas Aquinas predicted Copernicus [in the thirteenth century], as did Cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus [in the fifteenth century].

Two things can be seen:
1. A great plan has been designed, under the influence of which we stand in the Theosophical Society.
2. Religions have a common core of truth.

This is expressed in the second program of the Theosophical Society. One also finds the teaching that the earth revolves around the sun in Cusanus and later in Copernicus. The last point has emerged in a long series of developments. Western culture had emerged from the same source from which Gnostic knowledge had originally emerged.

A comparison: I have a child to educate until adolescence. I don't want him to absorb knowledge too soon that makes the mind strong but does not sufficiently ennoble the heart. Certain truths are left untouched. When the heart has been purified and ennobled in the right way, then one approaches it with the truths of nature. It is the same in the greater world of nature. First comes the development of the emotional side and then that of the intellectual powers. The development of literature is subject to the same influences.

We have a mystical direction and a scientific direction. The first includes the well-known great mystics, the second the naturalists such as: Lamarck, Darwin, Copernicus and so on. These two currents still run side by side today. The union has not yet been found.

Reincarnation and karma are contained in the Bible as self-evident truths. The higher soul of man was the content of all wisdom religions. The mysteries had to cultivate this higher soul above all else. This higher soul should now recede, so that the lower soul can experience development. This too should receive a higher religious culture. This ennobling of the individual personality was achieved all the more surely the more one disregarded the development of the higher soul. It is necessary to give humanity a new impetus from this theosophical side.

The materialistic attitude has gained a great influence, and has also gained a deep influence on the moral life. This can be seen from statements such as the following: Hamlet's tragedy is nothing more than a product of the transformation of what Shakespeare ate. - In the long run, there is no morality in the materialistic view. Hence the necessity for the Theosophical movement. In the past, world views were still possible on a materialistic basis. Today, after the research of natural science, no longer.

As long as Christianity was only concerned with the sanctification of the personality, it was not necessary to consider the greater truths and the higher life of the soul. There is a great connection with what I have said about the mysteries. You will see on closer examination that Christianity wanted to make the mysteries popular. This is evident from many sayings: “Blessed are they that have believed without seeing,” “Blessed are they that have begged for the Spirit,” and so on. What was in the mysteries was to be handed down to humanity piece by piece.

The mystery process was carried out in different stages:

— The first stage was the purification of the personality, the purification of the astral body. Pythagoras also subjected his disciples to a preparatory and purification process.
— Then he taught them about the nature of the external world.
— Then he gave them the teaching about re-embodiment and karma, the law of the moral world order.

This process then also became external, historical; it became a mystical fact within the historical development itself:

— Up to the twelfth century, Christianity is the process of purification of the fifth race of mankind.
— Then comes the teaching about the nature of external nature. In the case of humanity, this takes centuries.
— Then comes the teaching about reincarnation and karma. The development of the individual is repeated in the development of humanity.

The repetition of the mystery process can be found in the theosophical current.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Second degree: the hidden Scholar, or the Occultist.

Third degree: the Warrior (struggle and strife).

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

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

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

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

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

What are the higher stages of Yoga?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before I start with today’s topic, I would like to make you aware that today’s discussions are the beginning of a whole series of such discussions, and that basically all subsequent topics this winter could have precisely the same title as today’s topic. The path a human being must take if he wants to attain knowledge of the spiritual world will be explored in the course of the next lectures in relation to the most diverse phenomena of human and scientific life in general and to various cultural personalities of mankind.

Allow me to start with something personal, although this topic, this contemplation, must head, so to speak, in the direction of the most impersonal, most objective Spiritual Science. Yet the path into the spiritual world is such that it must lead through the most personal to the impersonal. Thus in spite of the impersonal, the personal will often be a symbolic feature of this path, and one gains the opportunity to point out many important things just by starting, so to speak, from the more intimate immediate experience. To the observer of the spiritual world many things in life will be symbolically more important than they initially seem to be. Much that might otherwise pass by the human eye, without particularly attracting attention, can appear to be deeply important to someone who wants to study intensely an observation such as the one that forms the basis for today’s examinations. And I can say that the following—which may at first seem like a trifle of life to you—belongs for me to the many unforgettable things on my path of life that on the one hand marked the longing of today’s human beings to truly ascend to the spiritual world. Yet on the other hand, they marked a more or less admitted impossibility of somehow gaining access to the spiritual world by means, that were not only provided by the present, but were also available in the past centuries, insofar as they were externally accessible to man.

I once sat in the cosy home of Herman Grimm. Those of you who are somewhat familiar with German intellectual life will associate much with the name of Herman Grimm. Perhaps you will know the spirited, important biographer of Michaelangelo and Raffael, and might also know, as it were, that the sum of education of our time, or at least of Central Europe, or let’s say it even more narrowly, of Germany, was united in the soul of Herman Grimm. During a conversation with him about Goethe, who was so close to his heart, and about Goethe’s view of the world, a small thing happened that belongs to the most unforgettable things on my path of life. In response to a remark I made—and we will see later how exactly this remark can be of importance in relation to the ascent of man into the spiritual world—Herman Grimm answered with a dismissive movement of his left hand. What lay in that gesture is what I consider, as it were, to be one of the unforgettable experiences on the path of my life. It was supposed to be in relation to Goethe, how Goethe wanted to find the way into the spiritual world in his own way.

In the course of these lectures we will have another talk about Goethe’s path into the spiritual world. Herman Grimm willingly followed Goethe’s pathways into the spiritual world, but in his own manner.

It was far from his mind to enter into a conversation about Goethe, in which Goethe would be seen as the representative of a human being who had really brought down spiritual realities—also as an artist— from the spiritual world and then undertook to embody them in his works of art. For Herman Grimm, it was much more obvious to say to himself: Alas, with the means that we as human beings have nowadays, we can only ascend to this spiritual world by way of fantasy. Although fantasy offers things that are beautiful, great and magnificent and are able to fill the human heart with warmth; but Knowledge, well-founded knowledge was not something that Herman Grimm, the intimate observer of Goethe, wanted to find in Goethe either. And when I said that Goethe’s whole fundamental nature is based on his willingness to embody the true in the beautiful, in the art, and then attempted to show that there are ways outside of fantasy, ways into the spiritual world that will lead you on more solid and firmer ground than fantasy—then it was not the rejection by someone who would not have liked to follow such a path. Herman Grimm did not use this gesture to express his rejection of such a path, but—in a way only those who knew him better would understand—he laid in it roughly the following: There may well be such a path, but we human beings cannot feel a calling to find out anything about it!

As I said, I do not wish to present this here as a personal matter in an importune way, yet it seems to me that just in such a gesture the position of the best human beings of our age towards the spiritual world is epitomised. Because later I had a long conversation with the same Hermann Grimm on a journey that led us both from Weimar to Tiefurt. There he explained how he had freed himself entirely of a purely materialistic view on world events, from the opinion that the human spirit, in the successive epochs, would produce out of itself that which constitutes the real soul-wealth of man. At that earlier time Herman Grimm talked about a great plan that was part of a piece of work that was never realised. Those of you who have occupied themselves with Herman Grimm will know that he intended to write a ‘History of the German fantasy’. He had envisaged the forces of fantasy to be like those of a goddess in the spiritual world who brings forth out of herself that which human beings create for the benefit of world progress. I would like to say: In that lovely region between Weimar and Tiefurt, when I heard these words from a man, whom I, after all, acknowledge as one of the greatest minds of our time, I had a feeling that I would like to express in these words; ‘Today, many people say to themselves: One must be deeply dissatisfied with everything that external science is able to say about the sources of life, about the secret of existence, about world riddles—but the possibility to step powerfully into another world is missing.’

There is a lack of intensity of willingness to realise that this world of spiritual life is different from what man imagines in his fantasy. Many enjoy going into the realm of fantasy, because for them it is the only spiritual realm that exists. About 17 years ago, on the journey to Tiefurt, I met Herman Grimm, who already through his scriptures and many, many other things, had made an impression on me. Facing this personality I remembered just then that, 30 years ago, I had glanced at just the passage in one of Grimm’s Goethe lectures,¹ which he had held in the winter of 1874/75 in Berlin, and where, with reference to Goethe, he spoke of the kind of impression that a purely external study of nature, devoid of spirit, must make on a spirit like his own. Already 30 years earlier Herman Grimm appeared to me to be the kind of human being whom all feelings and emotions urge upwards into the spiritual world, but who, unable to find the spiritual world as a reality, can only perceive it in its weaving and workings as a fantasy. And on the other hand—just because he was like this—he did not want to acknowledge that Goethe himself searched for the sources and riddles of existence in a different realm, not just in the realm of fantasy, but in the realm of spiritual reality.

There is a passage where Herman Grimm speaks about something that must affect our souls today, at the beginning of our contemplations. This passage refers to something which, as I have already indicated, and although its importance cannot be denied by Spiritual Science, is regarded as an impossibility by natural science—or by a worldview that claims to stand on the firm ground of natural science. It is an impossibility not only for feeling and emotion but also for a realisation that truly understands itself. What I mean is the Kant-Laplace theory that explains our solar system as if it were made up only of lifeless, inorganic substances and forces, and as if it had clenched itself out of a giant gas ball. I would like to read to you the passage from Herman Grimm’s Goethe lectures that shows you what this world-view, which is so fascinating, so deeply impressive today, meant for a spirit like Herman Grimm’s:

As much as Goethe here prohibits reason to accept as truth more than one can indeed grasp with the five fingers of a hand, the more he grants license to the poet’s fantasy, to create out of an unconscious, dreaming force pictures of what the spirit wishes to behold. However, he sharply upholds the boundaries between both of these activities. A long time ago, already in his youth, the great Kant-Laplace fantasy about the origin and the future downfall of the globe, had gained ground. Out of the primeval, cosmic, in itself rotating world-nebula—the children learn this at school already—the central drop of gaseous matter forms itself, which later becomes the Earth and, as a solidifying ball in incomprehensible periods of time, goes through all phases including the episode of mankind’s habitation. This ball will finally crash back into the sun as burnt out slag: This is a long, but completely comprehensible process for the audience, that does not require any further external intervention for its implementation apart from the endeavour by some outside power to maintain a constant heating temperature on the Sun.

There cannot be imagined a more futile perspective for the future than the one that is being imposed on us today in this expectation as a scientific necessity. A carrion bone, around which a hungry dog made a detour, would be a more refreshing appetising piece in comparison to this latests excrement of creation—the form in which our Earth would finally pass to the Sun again. The inquisitiveness with which our generation embraces such things and thinks it believes them, is a sign of a sick imagination. Scientists of future epochs will use a lot of astuteness to explain it as a historical phenomenon of the time.

I felt it was necessary to point out such a quote, as basically it is rarely done these days. Today, when the concepts of these world-views have such a fascinating effect, and when they seem to be based so solidly on natural science, little reference is made to the fact that there are, after all, spirits who are deeply connected to the cultural life of our time, and yet relate in such a way out of their whole soul make-up to something about which countless people now say: It is obvious that things are like that, and anyone who does not concede that they are like that is really a simpleton! Yes, already today we see many people who feel the deepest longing to forge links between the soul of man and the spiritual world. But on the other side, we see only a few outside of those circles that are more deeply engaged with what we call Spiritual Science, who are busying themselves with means that could lead the human soul to what could after all be called the land of its longings.

Therefore, when we speak today about ways that are to lead man into the spiritual world, and speak so that what we say applies not only to a tight circle, but is addressed to all those who are equipped with a contemporary education, we still encounter strong resistance in a certain respect. Not only is it possible that what will be presented is regarded as daydreaming and fantasy, but it may also easily annoy many people of the present. It can actually be an annoyance to them because it deviates so much from those ideas that are currently considered valid in the widest circles, and which are the suggestive and fascinating imaginations of people who consider themselves to be the most educated.

In the first lecture it was already hinted at that the ascent into the spiritual world is basically an intimate affair of the soul and is in stark contrast to what is common for the imaginative and emotional life both in popular and scientific circles. Namely a scientist easily makes the demand that to be valid as science today, something has to be verifiable at any time and for anyone. And he will then also refer to his external experiment that can be proven anytime to anyone. It goes without saying that this demand can not be met by Spiritual Science. We are about to see why not. Spiritual Science here means a science that does not speak about the spirit as a sum of abstract terms and concepts, but as something real and of real entities. Spiritual Science therefore must contravene the methodical demands that are currently so easily established by science and world-views: to be verifiable anywhere and at all times by anyone. Spiritual Science very often encounters resistance in popular circles for the reason that in our time, even where there is an inner longing to ascend to the spiritual world, feelings and emotions are penetrated and permeated by a materialistic view.

Even with the best intentions, even if one yearns for the spiritual world, one cannot help but imagine the spirit as in some way material again, or at least imagine the ascent into the spiritual world as somehow connected to something material. That is why most people may prefer that you talk to them about purely external matters, like what they should eat or drink or shouldn’t eat and drink, or what else they should undertake purely externally in the material world. They would much rather do this than be asked to introduce intimate moments of development into their souls. But that is exactly what ascending into the spiritual world is all about.

We now want to try to map out—entirely in line with Spiritual Science’s own view—how this ascent of a human soul into the spiritual world can happen. The starting point must always be a person’s current life situation. A human being, as he is placed in our present world, lives completely and firmly in the external sensory world. Let’s try to become clear about how much would remain in a human soul, if one would disregard the concepts that the outer sense perceptions of the physical world have ignited within us, and that which has entered into us through the outer physical experiences, through eyes and ears and the other senses. And disregard that which is stimulated of sufferings and joys, of pleasure and pain within us through our eyes and ears, and what our rational mind has then combined from these impressions of the sensory world. Try to eliminate all of this from the soul, imagine it away, and then ponder what would be left behind. People who honestly undertake this simple self-observation will find that extremely little will remain, especially in the souls of people of the present time. And it is just so that initially the ascent into the spiritual world cannot proceed from something that is given to us by the external sensory world—it has to be undertaken so that a human being develops forces within his soul, which ordinarily lie dormant in it. It is, so to speak, a basic element for all possibilities of ascent into the Spiritual world, that a person becomes aware that he is capable of inner development, that there is something else in him than what he is initially able to survey with his consciousness.

Today, this is actually an annoying concept for many people. Let’s take a very special person with a contemporary education, for example, what does a philosopher nowadays do, when he wants to establish the full meaning and the nature of Knowledge? Someone like this will say: ‘I will try to establish how far in general we can get with our thinking, with our human soul forces, what we can comprehend of this world.’ He is attempting in his own way—depending on what is momentarily possible for him—to comprehend a world view and to place it before him, and usually he will then say, ‘We simply cannot know anything else, because it is beyond the limits of human knowledge.’ Really this is the most widespread phrase that can be found in today’s literature: ‘We cannot know this!’

However, there is a another standpoint that works in a completely different way from the one just described, by saying: ‘Certainly, with the forces I have now in my soul, which are now probably the normal human soul forces, I can recognise this or that, but here in this soul is a being capable of development. This soul may have forces within it that I first have to extrapolate. I first have to lead it along certain pathways, must lead it beyond its current point of view, and then I will see whether it could have been my fault when I said that this or that is beyond the limit of our knowledge. Perhaps I just need to go a little further in the development of my soul, and then the boundaries will expand and I will be able to penetrate more deeply into things.

In making judgments, one does not always take logic seriously, otherwise one would say: ‘What we can recognise depends on our organs.’ For this reason, someone who is born blind cannot judge colours. He would only be able to do so, if through a fortunate operation he were to become capable of seeing colours.

Likewise it may be possible—I do not wish to speak of a sixth sense here, but of something that can be brought forth from the soul in a purely spiritual way—that spirit eyes and spirit ears can be brought forth from our soul. Then the great event could happen for us—which occurs at a lower level when the one born blind is so lucky to be operated on—so that then for us the initial assumption could become a truth: Around us is a spiritual world, but to be able to look into it, we first have to awaken the organs within us. This would be the only logical thing to do. But, as I said, we do not always take logic very seriously, because people in our time have very different needs than finding their way into the spiritual world when they hear about it. I have already told you that once, when I had to give a lecture in a city in southern Germany, a courageous person, who wrote feature articles, opened his article with the words; ‘The most obvious thing about theosophy is its incomprehensibility.’ We like to believe this man that for him theosophy’s most outstanding characteristic is its incomprehensibility. But is this in any way a criterion? Let’s apply this example to mathematics about which someone would say: ‘What I notice most about mathematics is its incomprehensibility.’ Then everyone would say: ‘Quite certainly, this is possible, but then, if he wants to write feature articles, he should be so good and learn something first!’ Often it would be better to transfer what is valid for one particular subject and apply it correctly to another.

So people have nothing left to do than either to deny that there is a development of the soul—and they can only do this by speaking a word of power—namely, when they refuse to go through such a development, or, alternatively they can immerse themselves into the development of their soul. Then the spiritual world becomes for them an observation, reality, truth. But in order to ascend into the spiritual world, the soul must become capable—not for physical life, but for the realisation of the spiritual world—of completely transforming itself in a certain relation to the form it initially has, and in a certain way becoming a different being.

This could already make us aware of something that has been emphasised repeatedly here, namely, that someone who feels the urge to ascend into the spiritual world, must first and foremost make it clear for himself time and again whether he has gained a firm foothold in this world of physical reality and whether he is able to stand firm here. We have to maintain certainty, volition and sentience in all circumstances that take place in the physical world. We must not lose the ground beneath our feet if we want to ascend from this world into the spiritual one. Doing anything that can lead our character to stand firm in the physical world is a preliminary stage. Then it is a matter of bringing the soul to a different kind of feeling and willing for the spiritual world, than the feeling and willing in the soul normally are. The soul must become, as it were, inwardly a different feeling and willing organism than it is in normal life. This brings us to that which can, on the one hand, initially really place Spiritual Science in a kind of opposition to what is recognised as ‘science’ today. On the other hand, it places Spiritual Science yet again directly next to this science with the same validity that external science has. When it is said that everything that is supposed to be science, needs to be at any time and by anyone verifiable, then, what is meant by this is that what is deemed to be science must not be dependent on our subjectivity, on our subjective feelings, on any decisions of will, will impulses, feelings and emotions that we only carry individually within ourselves. Now, someone who wants to ascend into the spiritual world, must first take a detour through his innermost soul, must reorganise his soul; at first he must completely turn his gaze away from what is outside in the physical world. Normally, a human being only turns away from looking at what is within the physical world when he is asleep. Then he does not let anything enter into his soul through his eyes, his ears, nor through the entire organisation of his senses. But for that he also becomes unconscious and is not able to live consciously in a spiritual world.

It has now been said that it is one of the basic elements of spiritual realisation for a human being to find within oneself the possibility to go beyond oneself. However, this means nothing else than to first let the spirit become effective within oneself. In today’s ordinary human life we all know only one kind of turning away from the physical world, namely when we enter into the unconsciousness of sleep. The contemplation of The Nature of Sleep ² has shown us that a human being is in a real spiritual world during sleep, even if he knows nothing about it. For it would be absurd to believe that a person’s soul-centre and spirit-centre disappears in the evening and newly comes into being in the morning. No, in reality, it outlasts the stages from falling asleep to awakening. However, what for a normal person today is the inner strength to be conscious—even if there is no stimulation of consciousness through sense impressions or through the work of the rational mind —is missing in sleep. The soul life is so turned down during sleep, that the person is unable to kindle or awaken what allows the soul to experience itself inwardly. When the human being wakes up again, events from the outside enter. And because a soul content is gifted to the human being in this way, he becomes conscious of himself by means of this soul content. He is not able to become conscious of himself if he is not stimulated externally, because his human strength is too weak for this, when he is left to himself in his sleep.

Hence the ascent into the spiritual world means an arousal of such forces within our soul that enable it, as it were, to truly live consciously within itself, when it becomes, in relation to the external world like a human being who is asleep. Basically, the ascent into the spiritual worlds demands a spurring on of internal energies, an extraction of forces that are otherwise asleep, that are, as it were, paralysed within the soul, so that man cannot handle them at all. All those intimate experiences that a spiritual researcher must experience in his soul, ultimately aim at what has just been characterised. And today, I would like to summarise something for you about the path that leads upwards into the spiritual world. This has been presented in detail by element, so to speak, by their rudiments, in my book published under the title: How to attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? ³ But today, I do not want to repeat myself by just presenting you an excerpt from this book. Instead, I wish to approach the issue from a different side, that is what the soul must do with itself to rise up to the spiritual world. One who is interested in this more deeply, can read the details in the book mentioned above. However, no one should think that what was presented in detail there can be summarised here in the same words and sentences. Those who are familiar with the book will not find that it is a summary of what has been said there, but a description of the topic from a different angle.

For a spiritual researcher who wants to direct his steps into the spiritual world, it is extremely important that much of what would lead other people directly to a realisation and a goal becomes for him simply a means of education, an intimate means of education of the soul. Let me illustrate this with an example. Many years ago I wrote a book, The Philosophy of Freedom. As it is out of stock since years, it is currently not available, but hopefully a second edition will appear in the near future.⁴ This Philosophy of Freedom was conceived in such a way that it is quite different from other philosophical books of the present time, which more or less aim by what is written to share something about how things are in the world or how they must be according to the ideas of the authors. However, this is not the immediate aim of this book. Rather, it is intended to give someone who engages with the thoughts presented there a kind of workout for his thoughts, so that the kind of thinking, the special way to devoting oneself to these thoughts is one in which the emotions and feelings of the soul are set in motion—just as in gymnastics the limbs are exercised, if I may use this comparison. What is otherwise only a method of gaining insight, is in this book at the same time a means of spiritual-soul self-education. This is extraordinarily important. Of course this is annoying for many philosophers of the present time, who associate something quite different with philosophy than that which may help a human being to progress a little further—because, if possible, he should remain as he is, with his normal innate capacity to gain knowledge. Therefore, in regard to this book it is not so important to be able to argue about this or that, or if something can be understood one way or another, but what really matters is that the thoughts which are connected as one organism, are able to school our soul and help it to make a bit of progress.

This is also the case with my book Truth and Science. And so it is with many things that are initially supposed to be basic elements to train the soul to rise up into the spiritual world. Mathematics and geometry teach man knowledge of triangles, quadrangles and other figures. But why do they teach all this? So that man can gain knowledge about how things are within space, which laws they are subject to and so on. Essentially, the spiritual ascent to the higher worlds works with similar figures as symbols. For instance, it places the symbol of a triangle, a quadrangle or another symbolic figure before a student, but not so that he will win immediate insights through them, as he can acquire these also by other means. Instead, with the symbols he receives the opportunity to train his spiritual abilities so that the spirit, supported by the impression he gains from the symbolic pictures, ascends into a Higher World. Thus it is about mental training, or, do not misunderstand me, it is about mental gymnastics. Therefore, much of what is dry external science, dry external philosophy, what is mathematics or geometry, becomes a living symbol for the spiritual training that leads us upwards into the spiritual world. If we have let this affect our soul, then we will learn to understand what basically no external science understands, that the ancient Pythagoreans, under the influence of their great teacher Pythagoras, spoke of the universe being made up of numbers because they focussed on the inner laws of numbers. Now let us look at how we encounter numbers everywhere in the world. Nothing is easier than to refute Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy, because from a standpoint, imagined to be superior, one can easily say: There are these Spiritual Scientists again, coming out of their mystic ⁵ darkness with numerical symbolism and say that there is an inner regularity of numbers, and, for example, one has to consider the true foundation of human nature according to the number seven. But something similar was meant also by Pythagoras and his students, when they talked about the inner regularity of numbers. If we allow those marvellous connections, which lie in the relationships between numbers, to affect our spirit then we can train it in such a way that it wakes up when it would otherwise be asleep and develops stronger forces within itself to penetrate into the spiritual world.

Thus it is a schooling through another kind of science. It is also what is actually called the study of someone, who wants to enter deeply into the spiritual world. And for someone like this, gradually everything that for other people is a harsh reality, becomes more or less an external allegory, a symbol. If a human being is able to let these symbols have an effect on him, then he is not only freeing his spirit from the outer physical world, but also imbues his spirit with strong forces, so that the soul can be conscious of itself, even when there is no external stimulation. I have already mentioned that if someone lets a symbol like the Rosy Cross affect him, he can feel an impulse to ascend into the spiritual world. We imagine a Rosy Cross as a simple black cross with seven red roses attached in a circle at the crossing of the beams.

What should it tell us? One who allows it to have an effect on his soul in the right way will imagine: For example, I look at a plant; I say of this plant that it is an imperfect being. Next to it I place a human being, who in his nature is a more perfect being, but even only in his nature. For if I look at the plant, I have to say: In it I encounter a material being which is not permeated by passions, desires, instincts, that bring it down from the height where it otherwise could stand. The plant has its innate laws, which it follows from leaf to flower to fruit; it stands there without desires, chaste.

Beside him lives the human being, who certainly by his nature is a higher being, but who is permeated by desires, instincts, passions through which he can stray from his strict regularity. He first has to overcome something within himself, if he wants to follow his own inner laws as a plant follows its innate laws. Now the human being can say to himself; The expression of desires, of instincts in me is the red blood. In a certain way, I can compare it with chlorophyll, the chaste plant sap in the red rose, and can say: If man becomes so strong within himself that the red blood is no longer an expression of what pushes him down below himself, but of what lifts him above himself—when it becomes the expression of such a chaste being like the plant sap, which has turned into the red of a rose, or in other words; when the red of the rose expresses the pure inwardness, the purified nature of a human being in his blood, then I have before me the ideal of what man, by overcoming the outer nature, can achieve and which presents itself to me under the symbol of the black cross, the charred wood. And the red of the rose symbolises the higher life that awakens when the red blood has become the chaste expression of the purified, instinctive nature of man, which has overcome itself.

If one does not let what is depicted be an abstract concept, then it becomes a vividly felt evolutionary idea. Then a whole world of feelings and emotions comes to life within us; we will feel within ourselves a development from an imperfect to a more perfect state. We sense that development is something quite different from the abstract thing that external science provides us with in the sense of a purely external Darwinism. Here, development becomes something that cuts deep into our heart, that pervades us with warmth, with soul-warmth—it becomes a force within us that carries and holds us. It is only through such inner experiences that the soul becomes capable of developing strong forces within itself, so that it can illuminate itself with consciousness in its innermost being—in the being that otherwise becomes unconscious when it withdraws from the external world.

It is of course child’s play to say; ‘Then you recommend an idea of something completely imaginary, of something entirely made up. But only those concepts which are reproductions of external ideas are valuable, and an idea of the Rose Cross has no external counter-image.’ But the point is not that the concepts we use to school our souls are reflections of an external reality, instead it is about concepts that are strength-awakening for our soul and that draw out of the soul what lies hidden within it.

When the human soul is dedicated to such pictorial ideas, when, so to speak, everything that it normally values as reality now becomes a cause for pictures that are not arbitrarily retrieved from fantasy, but are inspired by reality, just like the symbol of the Rosy Cross, then we say: The human being makes an effort to move upwards to the first stage of knowledge of the spiritual world. This is the stage of ‘Imaginative Knowledge’ that leads us above and beyond what is immediately concerned with the physical world only.

Hence, a human being who wishes to ascend into the spiritual world works in his soul with very particular concepts in a precisely determined way, to let the otherwise external reality affect him. He works in this soul itself. When the human being has worked in this way for some time, then it will be so that the external scientists can tell him: This has only a subjective, only an individual value for you. But this external scientist does not know that when the soul undergoes such a serious, regular training, there exists a stage of inner development when the possibility for the soul to express subjective feelings and emotions ceases completely. Then the soul arrives at a point where it must tell itself: Now concepts arise within me that I encounter like I normally meet trees and rock, rivers and mountains, plants and animals of the outer world that are as real as otherwise only external physical things are, and to which my subjectivity can neither add anything to them nor can it take anything away from them.

So there actually exists an intermediate state for everyone who wants to ascend into the spiritual world, where man is subject to the danger of carrying his subjectivity, which is only valid for himself, into the spiritual world. But man must pass through this intermediate state, for then he reaches a stage where what the soul is experiencing becomes as objectively verifiable—to anyone with the ability to do so—as all things in the outer physical reality. Because, after all, the principle that applies to external science—for something to be regarded as scientifically valid it must be verifiable at any time by anyone—also applies only to one who is sufficiently prepared for this. Or do you believe that you would be able to teach ‘the law of corresponding boiling temperatures’ to an eight-year-old child? I doubt it. You will not even be able to teach him the theorem of Pythagoras. Thus it is already bound to the basic principle that the human soul must be appropriately prepared if one wants to prove something to it.

And just as one must be prepared to understand the theorem of Pythagoras—even though it is possible for everyone to understand it—one must be prepared through a certain soul exercise if one wants to experience or realise this or that in the spiritual world. However, what can be realised, can then be experienced and observed in the same way by anyone who is appropriately prepared. Or, when messages are conveyed from observations of Spiritual Science by those who have prepared their soul for this, such as, that a particular man is able to look back on repeated Earth lives so that these become a fact for him, then it is likely that people will come and say; ‘There he brings us some dogmas again and demands that we should believe in these!’ Yet a spiritual researcher does not approach his contemporaries with his realisations so that people should believe them.

People who believe that we speak about dogmas, should ask themselves, is the fact that a whale exists a dogma for someone who has never seen one? Certainly, it is explainable in this way: A whale is a dogma for someone who has never seen one. Yet spiritual research does not approach the world with messages alone. Neither does it do so when it understands itself; instead it clothes what it brings down from the higher worlds in logical forms. These are exactly the same logical forms with which the other sciences are permeated. Then anyone will be able to verify, by applying a healthy sense of truth and unbiased logic, whether what the spiritual researcher has said is right. It has always been said that a schooling of the soul is necessary for someone wanting to explore spiritual facts by self-searching, whereby the soul must have gone through what is now being described here. But to understand what is being communicated, all you need is a healthy sense of truth and unbiased logic.

Now, if the spiritual researcher has allowed such symbolic terms and pictures to affect his soul for a while, he will notice that his feeling and emotional life becomes completely different from what it was before.

What is the feeling and emotional life of man in the ordinary world like? Nowadays it actually has become somewhat trivial to use the expression ‘egoistic’ everywhere, and to say that people in their normal life are egoistic. I do not want to express it in this way, but prefer to say: In their normal lives people are at first closely tied to their human personality, for example, when something pleases us, yes, especially in relation to things which we enjoy of the noblest spiritual creations, things of art and beauty. The saying, there is no accounting for taste, already expresses that much is connected to our personality and depends upon our subjective stance towards things. Check how everything that can please you is related to your upbringing, in which place in the world, in which profession your personality is placed, and so on, in order to see how feelings and emotions are closely connected to our personality. But when one does exercises of the soul, like the ones described, one notices how feelings and emotions will become completely impersonal. It is a great and tremendous experience when the moment arrives in which our feeling and our emotional life becomes, so to speak, impersonal. This moment comes, it certainly comes, when a human being on his spiritual path, inspired by those who undertake his spiritual guidance, allows the following things to really affect his soul. I will now list some of these things that will affect our whole feeling and emotional life in an educational way if someone allows them to work on his soul for weeks, or months.

The following can be considered. We focus our attention on what we find at the centre of philosophical observations, on the spiritual centre of the human being, the Ego—if we have learned to rise to the concept of Ego—which accompanies all our ideas, the mysterious centre of all experience. And if we continue to further the respect, this reverence and this devotion, which can connect to the fact, that for many is certainly not a fact but a figment of the imagination,—that there is an Ego living within us!—if this becomes the greatest, the most momentous experience to keep telling yourself that this ‘I am’ is the most essential of the human soul, then mighty, strong feelings develop in relation to the ‘I am’, which are impersonal. These lead directly to an insight into how all of the world’s secrets and mysteries that float around us are concentrated, as it were, in a single point—the Ego-point— to comprehend the human being from this Ego-point. For example, the poet Jean Paul ⁶ talks about becoming conscious of the Ego in his biography:

“I will never forget what manifested in me, which I have never told anyone about, whereby I stood at the birth of my self-consciousness, and of which I can tell at which place and at what time it happened. One morning, when I was a very young child, I stood under the front entrance and looked left at the woodshed, when suddenly the inner vision—I am an I—flashed before me like a bolt of lightning from the sky and since then has remained shining; there my Ego had seen itself for the first time and forever. Memory errors are hardly imaginable here, and since there was no extraneous retelling, nothing could be added and mixed into the narrative about an occurrence which took place only within the veiled inner sanctum of a human being—only the novelty lent permanence to these everyday, incidental circumstances.

It is already quite a lot to feel the devotion for the concentrated crowdedness of the world-being at one point, with all the shivers of awe and with all the feelings for the greatness of this fact. Yet, when a human being feels this time after time and allows it to affect him—although it will not enlighten him in regard to all the riddles of the world—it can give him a direction entirely focussed on the impersonal and the innermost human nature.

Thus we educate our emotional and our feeling life by relating it to our Ego-beingness. And when we have done this for a while, then we can focus our feelings and emotions in a different direction and can tell ourselves; this Ego within us is connected to everything we think, feel and perceive, with our entire soul life, it glows and shines through our soul life. We can then study human nature with the Ego as the centre point of thinking, feeling and willing, without taking ourselves into consideration or getting personal. The human being becomes a mystery to us, not we to ourselves, and our feelings expand from the Ego across to the soul. We can then transition to a different kind of feeling. In particular, we can acquire this beautiful feeling without which we are not able to lead our soul further into spiritual knowledge—this is what one would like to call it: The feeling that in each thing we encounter, as it were, an access to something infinite opens up for us. If we let this appear before our soul again and again, then it is the most wonderful feeling. It can be there when we go outside and look at a wonderful nature spectacle: cloud-covered mountains with thunder and lightning. This works greatly and forcefully on our soul. But then we must learn not only to see what is great and powerful there, but we may take a single leaf, look at it carefully with all its ribs and all the wonderful things that are part of it, and we will be able to perceive the greatness and might that reveals itself as something infinite in the smallest leaf, and we will hear and feel as if we were at the greatest spectacle of nature. It may appear to be strange, yet there is something to it, and afterwards one must express oneself grotesquely; it may make a great impression when a human being witnesses a glowing lava flow ejected from the Earth. But then, let us imagine someone looks at warm milk or the most ordinary coffee, and sees there how small crater-like structures form and a similar scenario unfolds on a small scale. Everywhere, in the smallest and in the greatest is access to an infinity.

And if we steadily keep researching, even if so much has been revealed to us, there is still something more under the cover, which perhaps we may have explored on the surface. So right now we are sensing what may result in a revelation of something intensely infinite at any point in the universe.

This imbues our soul with feelings and emotions that are necessary for us, if we want to attain what Goethe has called ‘spirit eyes’ and ‘spirit ears’.⁷ In short, it is a realisation of our feeling life, which is usually the most subjective to the point where we feel ourselves as if we were merely a setting where something is happening—where we no longer consider our feelings to be part of us. Our personality has been silenced. It is almost as if we were painters and stretching a canvas and painting a picture on it. Hence, when we train ourselves in this way, we stretch our soul and allow the spiritual world to paint on it. One feels this from a certain point in time onwards. Then it is only necessary to understand oneself, and in order to recognise what the world essentially is, it is necessary to consider a particular stage in the life of the soul as solely and only decisive.

So indeed what a human being acquires in ardent soul striving becomes the deciding of truth. It is in the soul itself where the decision must be made if something is true or not. Nothing external can decide, but the human being, by going beyond himself, must find within himself the authority to behold or discover the truth. Yes, basically we can say; in this regard we cannot be entirely different from all other human beings. Other people search for objective criteria, for something that provides us with a confirmation of truth from the outside. Yet a spiritual researcher searches within for confirmation of the truth. Thus he does the opposite. If this were the case, one could say in pretence; ‘Things are not looking too good when Spiritual Scientists in their confusion want to turn the world on its head.’ Yet in reality natural scientists and philosophers don’t do anything different from what spiritual researchers are doing, they only do not know that they are doing it. I will provide you with proof of this, taken from the immediate present.

At the last conference of natural scientists, Oswald Külpe ⁸ gave a talk about the relationship of natural science to philosophy. There he came up with the idea that the human being, by looking into the sensory world and perceiving it as sound, colour, warmth and so forth, only has subjective qualities. This is only a slightly different slant from what Schopenhauer said; ‘The world is our conception.’ But Oswald Külpe points out that what we perceive with our external senses, in short, everything that appears to be pictorial is subjective. And in contrast to this, what physics and chemistry say—pressure, the forces of attraction and repulsion, resistance and so on—must be characterised as objective. So in this way we partly have to deal with something purely subjective in our world-views, and partly with something that is objective such as pressure, forces of attraction and repulsion.

I do not want to go further into the criticism that has been voiced, but only want to address the mindset. It seems so terribly easy for a contemporary epistemologist to prove that because we cannot see without our eyes, light could only be something produced by our eyes. But what happens in the external world, it is said, when one ball hits another, those forces which cause resistance, pressure and so on, must be shifted into the outer world, into space. Why do people think that? At a particular point Oswald Külpe gives this away very clearly when he speaks about sensory perceptions—because he regards these as pictures, he says; ‘They cannot push or attract each other, neither can they pressure nor warm each other. They cannot have such and such large distance in space that would allow them to send light through space at such and such speed, nor can they be arranged as a chemist would arrange elements. Why does he say this of sensory perceptions? Because he sees sensory perceptions as pictures that are brought about solely by our senses.

Now I want to present a simple thought to you, to illustrate that the pictorial nature does not change anything. Things do push against or attract one another. When Mr Külpe now observes the sensory perceptions, this world—which supposedly could neither attract nor repel—simply does not face Mr Oswald Külpe as reality, but as a mirror image. Then he really has pictures in front of him. But push, pressure, resistance and anything that is placed into this world as different from sensory perceptions, will in no other way be objectively explained than through the pictorial nature of the sense perceptions. Why is this so? Because when the human being perceives pressure, push and so on, he turns what lives within the things, into sensations of the things. Man should study, for example, that when he says that one billiard ball hits another, what he experiences as the impact force is what he himself puts into these things! And someone who is standing on the ground of Spiritual Science, is not doing anything else. He makes what lives in the soul the criterion for expressing the world. There is no other principle of knowledge than that which can be found through the development of the soul itself. So the others do the same as the spiritual research. But only spiritual research is aware of this. The others do it unconsciously, they have no idea that they do the same at an elementary level. They just remain standing on the very first level and deny what they themselves are doing. Therefore we are allowed to say, Spiritual Science is in no way contrary to other research on the truth: the other researchers do the same, yet they take the first step without knowing about it, while spiritual research consciously takes the steps as far as a particular human soul can take according to its level of development.

Once it has been achieved that our feelings have, in a certain way, become objective, then, what I have already indicated will even more certainly come about, as it is a necessary pre-requisite for progress into the spiritual worlds. This is that man learns to comprehend how to live in the world in such a way that the weaving and living of an all-encompassing spiritual regularity within the spiritual world is presupposed. In daily life man is far removed from such a way of thinking. He gets angry when something happens to him that he doesn’t like. This is quite understandable as a different standpoint must be hard won. This other standpoint consists in saying; we have come from a former life, we have placed ourselves into the situation in which we are now, and have led ourselves to what is now facing us out of the lap of the future. What approaches us there corresponds to a strictly objective spiritual regularity. We accept it, because it would be an absurdity not to accept it. What approaches us from the lap of the spiritual worlds, whether the world admonishes us or praises us, whether joyful or tragic things happen to us, we will accept it as wisdom-filled experience and interweaving of the world. This is something that slowly and gradually must become once more the whole basic principle of our being. When it does, our will begins to be schooled. Whereas prior to this our feelings needed to be reorganised, now our will is transformed, becomes independent of our personality and thereby turns into an organ of perception of spiritual facts.

After the stage of ‘Imaginative Knowledge’, there occurs for man what can genuinely and truly be called inspiration, the fulfilment through spiritual facts. We must always be clear that man can attain the training of his will at a particular stage only, when his feelings are in a certain way already purified. Then his will can connect with the lawfulness of the world and he will exist as a human being only so that those facts and entities which want to appear to him, can erect a wall before him in his will, on which they can depict themselves for him, so that they can exist for him.

I could only describe for you some of what the soul must go through in silent, patient devotion, if it wants to ascend into the higher worlds. In the following lectures I will have much to describe of the evolution of the world history that the soul must experience to rise up into the spiritual worlds. So consider what has been said today as an introduction only, so that through such schooling our feeling and willing life and our complete imaginative life will develop to become bearers of new worlds, so that we will actually step into a world that we recognise as reality, just as we recognise the physical world as a reality of its own kind.

At a different occasion I have already mentioned that when people say,‘You only imagine what you believe to see,’ then it must be replied, that only the experience, the observation can yield the difference between reality and appearance, between reality and fantasy, just as this is also the case in the physical world. You must win the difference by relating to reality. For example, someone who approaches reality with a healthy thinking can distinguish a red-hot iron in reality from one that only exists in imagination—and no matter how many ‘Schopenhauerians’ may come—he will be able to tell both apart, he will know what is truth and what is imagination. Hence, man can orientate himself on reality. Even about the spiritual world he can only orientate himself on reality. Someone once said that if a person only thought about drinking a lemonade, he could also perceive the lemon taste on his tongue. I answered him, ‘imagination can be so strong that someone who has no lemonade in front of him, could perhaps feel the taste on his tongue through the lively imagination of a lemonade. But I would like to see, if someone has ever quenched his thirst with an imaginary lemonade only. Then the criterion begins to become more real. Thus it is also with the inner development of a human being. Not only does he learn to know a new soul-life, new concepts, but in his soul he collides with another world and knows: you are now facing a world that you can describe just as you can describe the outside world. This is not mere speculation, which could be compared with a thought development only, instead it is about the forming of new organs of perception and the unlocking of new worlds that truly stand before us just as real as our external, physical world.

What has been hinted at today is that contemporary circumstances made it necessary to point out that spiritual research is possible. This is not to say that everyone should immediately become a spiritual researcher. For it must always be emphasised that when a human being with a healthy sense of truth and unprejudiced logic allows the information from Spiritual Science to approach him—even if he himself is not able to look into the spiritual worlds—yet all that which arises from such messages can turn into energy and feelings of strength for his soul, even if he at first believes in Haeckelianism or Darwinism. What the spiritual researcher has to say, is suitable to speak more and more to man’s healthy sense of truth, all the more so, as it is connected to the deepest interests of every human being. There may be people who do not consider it necessary for their salvation to know how amphibians and mammals relate to each other, or something like this. But all people must warm up to what can be said on the sure basis of spiritual research: that the soul belongs to the sphere of eternity—insofar as it belongs to the spiritual world, descends at birth into the sensory existence and enters again into the spiritual realm through the gate of death. It has to be for all human beings of profound interest, that the strength, which sinks more and more into the soul, is of a quality that the soul can gain certainty from it to stand in its place in life. A soul that does not know what it is and what it wants, what the essence of its nature is, can become hopeless, can ultimately despair and feel dreary and desolate. Yet a soul that allows itself to be filled by the spiritual achievements of Spiritual Science cannot remain empty and desolate if only it does not accept the messages of Spiritual Science as dogmas, but as a living life that streams through our soul and warms it. This provides comfort for all the suffering in life, when we are being led upwards from all temporal suffering to that which can become comfort for the soul from the share of the temporal in the eternal. In short: Spiritual Science can give man what he needs today in the loneliest and most work-intensive hours of his life due to the intensified circumstances of our time —or, if the strength would want to leave him, Spiritual Science can give him what he needs to look into the future and go energetically towards it.

Hence, Spiritual Science—as it arises from spiritual research, from those who want to undertake steps into the spiritual world—can forever confirm what we want to summarise in a few words that express with sensitivity the characteristics of the path into the spiritual world and its significance for the people of the present. What we want to summarise in this way is not supposed to be a contemplation on the theories of life, but one on remedies, means of strengths, tonics for life:

The Spirit World remains shut to you
Unaware of the spirit in yourself
That shines in your soul
And can uphold light for you
In world depths, on world heights! ⁹

• 1. Herman Grimm: Goethe-Lectures, Berlin 1877, 23rd Lecture, Pages 215 et seq.
• 2. Lecture GA 60 #5, The Nature of Sleep, Berlin, 24 November 1910
• 3. Now published under the title - How to Know Higher Worlds, GA 10.
• 4. The Second Edition of the The Philosophy of Freedom was published not until 1918. At this occasion Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture about the genesis of this book, which is featuring as the sixth lecture of the cycle Historical Symptomatology, Dornach 1942. Newly published in Rudolf Steiner's Letters, Volume 2, Dornach 1953
• 5. This was mentioned in the earlier lecture What is Mysticism?, given on 10 February 1910, as part of The Architect House Lecture Series, 1909/1910, and was printed as part of Paths of Soul Experiences, GA59
• 6. The Works of Jean Paul, Berlin 1865, Volume 16, Page 26 et seq.
• 7. For example in Goethe’s Colour Theory, Goethean Science, edited by Rudolf Steiner, Volume 1, Bern 1947, Pages 107 and 262.
• 8. Oswald Külpe, 1862-1915, Philosopher and Psychologist, Epistemology and Natural Sciences, Lecture given on 19 September 1910 at the 82nd Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Medical Doctors, Leipzig 1910.
• 9. Poem translated by Norbert Mulholland.

An old wise man calls the place that a person enters when the secrets of the world are revealed to him a garden of maturity. There is no flower in the garden that does not bear its fruit, no egg that has not matured the life that germinated in it. But the paths that lead to the narrow door through which this garden is closed are described as dark and dangerous. At the same time, it is asserted that the darkness will become brighter than the sun, and that the dangers will be powerless against the forces swelling in the soul of the one to whom a mystic, an “initiate”, points these paths with a caring hand. As childish notions from a time when people knew nothing of the sciences of our day, such ideas are dismissed by the “enlightened” who believe they can distinguish between the delusions of the “groping imagination” and the sober insights of a “scientifically trained” mind. And anyone who still speaks of such ideas today can be sure that they will be met with a condescending or at least a pitying smile by many of their contemporaries.

And despite all this, there are those who, like the ancient sages, speak of the world of the soul and the home of the spirit. They are considered to be people who speak of a world that only their unrestrained imagination conjures up. One may even feel sorry for them, staggering like drunkards in the midst of a world that has achieved so much through sober logic, losing their footing at every turn because they do not adhere to what “actually” exists.

What do these “drunken men” themselves say in response to such objections? When they feel they have reached the level at which they are entitled to speak about themselves, then we hear the following from their mouths: “We understand you, who must be our opponents, perfectly well. We know that many of you are honest people who are unreservedly committed to the service of truth and goodness. But we also know that you cannot understand us as long as you think as you do. We can only talk to you about the things we have to talk about when you have made an effort to learn our language. After this statement of ours, many of you will be done with us, for you will now believe that our incurable arrogance is added to our fantastic enthusiasm. But we also understand you in such a statement, and we also know that we should not be arrogant, but modest. We have only one thing to say to you in order to induce you to try to understand our ideas. You may believe us when we say that we do not recognize the right of anyone to speak about our knowledge who cannot feel what you feel in making your assertions, and who does not thoroughly know the power, the convincing force and the scope of your science. Anyone who does not have the certain knowledge that he can think as soberly and as “scientifically” as the most sober astronomer, botanist or zoologist should only be a learner, not a teacher, in matters of spiritual life and mystical knowledge. But do not misunderstand us: we are only talking about teachers, not learners. Every person can become a student of mysticism, for every person's soul contains the ability to sense the truth. The mystic should speak in a way that is understandable to the most ignorant. And to those to whom he cannot say a hundredth of the truth according to their level of understanding, he should say a thousandth. Today they recognize the thousandth, and tomorrow they will recognize the hundredth. All should be students. But no one should want to be a teacher who cannot allow the most sober understanding and the strictest science to discipline him. Only those who have been strict scientists before are true teachers of mysticism, and who therefore know how it is to live in science. The true mystic also regards everyone as a dreamer, as a drunkard, who could not at any moment take off the solemn holiday dress of mysticism and walk in the weekday suit of the physicist, the chemist, the plant and animal researcher. — Thus speaks the true mystic to his opponents; in all modesty he assures them that he understands their language, and that he would not claim to be a mystic if he were ignorant of their language. But then he may also add that he knows, knows as one knows facts of external life: if his opponents learn his language, they will cease to be his opponents. He knows this, as every man who has studied chemistry knows that under certain conditions water is formed from oxygen and hydrogen.

The fact that Plato did not want to introduce anyone to the higher levels of wisdom who was ignorant of geometry does not mean that he only made learned geometers his students, but that they had to become accustomed to serious, strict and exact research before the secrets of spiritual life were revealed to them. Such a requirement appears in its true light when we consider that in these higher regions the control which corrects the ordinary researcher at every turn ceases. If the plant researcher has false ideas, his senses will soon enlighten him about his error. He is to the mystic what the person walking on a level path is to the mountain climber. The one can fall to the ground; he will kill himself only in exceptional cases; the other is always in danger of doing so. And certainly no one can climb mountains who has not learned to walk. — Because spiritual facts do not correct the ideas in the same way as external facts, strict, reliable thinking is a completely natural prerequisite for the mystical researcher.

If one gives oneself over to such thoughts, one recognizes what those old sages meant when they spoke of the dangers that threaten a person who wants to penetrate the secrets of the world. Those who come to them with untrained thinking will cause confusion in their souls. They become as dangerous as a dynamite bomb in the hands of a child. Therefore, every mystic researcher is faced with the strict demand that the correctness of his thinking, indeed of his entire soul life, be tested first on difficult, thorny tasks before he approaches the actual higher tasks. This is an indication of what the mystic has in mind when he speaks of the first steps of “initiation” into the higher truths.

Countless people who believe themselves to be at the level of education of our time consider healthy thinking and mysticism to be irreconcilable opposites. They think that a clear scientific education must eradicate all mystical tendencies in a person. And they find it particularly incomprehensible when someone who is familiar with the most important results of modern science has such tendencies. If those who think so are right, then one would have to admit that mysticism has little chance of finding access to the souls of our contemporaries. For no one who has an understanding of the spiritual needs of our time can doubt that the victories that science has achieved and will achieve in the future are fully justified. It must be admitted without reservation that today no one can sin against the spirit of genuine scientific thought with impunity. And yet, anyone with eyes to see must also admit that the number of those who feel unsatisfied with what scientific thinkers have to say about the inescapable questions of the human soul is growing. Almost shyly, such unsatisfied people immerse themselves in the works of the mystics. There they find what their souls thirst for. There they find what their hearts need: real spiritual life. They feel the growth of their souls; they find what man must constantly seek: the breath of the divine. But they are constantly being told again and again that they should learn to think clearly and calmly through the natural sciences, and not be beguiled by dreamers and visionaries. If they then do as they are told, they only learn that their soul is desolate.

But it remains a truth, deeply engraved in every human heart, that the nature of man is a great teacher. Who could fail to sympathize with Goethe when he speaks of how he likes to withdraw from the aberrations and disharmonies of mankind to the eternal necessities of nature. And who could read the words with which the great poet describes the feelings that came over him during a lonely contemplation of the iron laws by which nature forms mountains without unreserved agreement: “Sitting on a high, bare summit and surveying a wide area, I can say to myself: here you are resting directly on a foundation that reaches down to the deepest places on earth... At this moment, when the inner attractive and moving forces of the earth are acting on me as if directly, when the influences of heaven are hovering around me, I am attuned to higher considerations of nature... So lonely, I say to myself, looking down at this bare summit... so lonely does it feel to a person who wants to open his soul only to the oldest, first, deepest feelings of truth. There he can say to himself: here on the oldest eternal altar, on which the depths of creation are built, I bring a sacrifice to the essence of all beings.»

It is only natural that such an attitude, with which one stands reverently before the great teacher Nature, should also be transferred to the science that speaks of her.

There must be no contradiction between the feelings that flow through the soul when it approaches the “oldest, first, deepest truths” about spiritual life and those that enter it when the eye rests on the eternal building activity of nature.

Does the mystic have no understanding of such harmony between nature and the most sacred feelings of the human soul?

But above the altar at which the true mystic offers his sacrifice, there has always been, in all ages, the highest law written in letters of fire: Nature is the great guide to the divine; and man's conscious search for the sources of truth should follow in the footsteps of her sleeping will.

If the mystics follow this supreme law, there should be no contradiction between their paths and those of the natural scientists. Such a contradiction should be least apparent in an age that owes so much to natural science.

In order to see clearly in this direction, we must ask: in what can the agreement between natural science and mysticism consist? And in what would a contrast lie? — The agreement can only be sought in the fact that the ideas that one has about the nature of man are not foreign to those that one has of the other beings of nature. That one sees this kind of regularity in the workings of nature and in the life of man. A contrast would then exist if one wanted to see a being of a completely different kind in man than in the other creatures of nature. For those who want to see a contradiction in this way, it was shocking when, more than four decades ago, the great researcher Huxley, in the spirit of the newer natural sciences, summarized the similarity of the anatomical structure of humans with that of higher animals in the words: “We can take any system of organs we like, and a comparison of them with those of the apes will lead us to the same conclusion: that the anatomical differences which separate man from the gorilla and the chimpanzee are not so great as those which separate the gorilla from the lower apes.” Such a sentence can only have a shocking effect if it is brought into a false relationship with the nature of man. Certainly, the thought can be attached to it: how close man is to the animal! This close relationship is not a cause for concern for the mystic. For him, the other thought immediately arises: how can the organs that exist in animals serve higher purposes when they are transformed into human ones? He knows that the sleeping will of nature makes human out of animal perception by developing the animal organs in a different form. He follows the sure tracks of nature and continues her deeds. For him, the work of nature is not finished with what she has given him. He becomes a faithful student of nature by enhancing her work. She has brought him to human thinking and feeling. He does not accept thinking and feeling as something rigid and immovable, but makes them capable of higher activities. Through his will, what happens in external nature without it also happens. His eyes prove that eyes are capable of more than they perform in apes. Eyes can thus be transformed. The soul capacities of the developed mystic are related to those of the undeveloped human being in the same way that human eyes are related to the eyes of an ape. It is understandable that those who are not mystics understand the soul nature of the mystic as little as an animal can understand the thinking of a human being. And just as a non-thinking creature would be able to understand a new world if it could develop the ability to think, so the mystic, after developing his higher abilities, looks into another world. He is “initiated” into this world. He who does not become a mystic denies nature. He does not continue what her slumbering will has accomplished without him. In so doing, he places himself in opposition to nature. For nature is constantly transforming its forms. It creates eternally new things out of the old. He who believes in this transformation, in this development, in the sense of modern natural science, and yet does not want to change himself, recognizes nature, but in his own life he places himself in contradiction with it. One should not merely recognize development; one should live it. Thus, one should not limit our life abilities by pointing exclusively to our kinship with other beings. Those who become true students of nature through mystical education will understand the higher development of man.

Many will say to these hints about mysticism and “initiation”: “What use is such talk of abilities that are unknown to us? Give us these abilities, and we will believe you.” — No one can give another something that the other rejects. And it is usually brusque rejection that our mystics experience. — At present they can do little else but tell their mystical insights to those who want to listen. However, at first this seems to be the same as merely telling someone from America that we want to enable him to visit us there. But it only seems that way. With spiritual things it is different from with physical things. Long before a person is able to see the truth in bright light, he is able to sense it and absorb it into his feelings. And these feelings are themselves a force that can lead him further. It is a necessary step. Those who follow the presentation of the mystic with devotion are already walking the path forward to higher truths. Only the initiate understands the initiate completely. But love of the truth also makes the uninitiated receptive to the words of the mystic. And through such receptivity he works to develop his mystical talents. The first thing is to have a feeling for the possibility of higher knowledge. Then one no longer passes by carelessly the people who speak of it.

It has already been said in this essay that there are also personalities today who are striving for the renewal of mystical life. In a further essay, two phenomena in this area will be discussed. Annie Besant's book “Esoteric Christianity, or the Minor Mysteries” (which has just been published in German translation by Mathilde Scholl. Leipzig 1903, Griebens Verlag.) And from the work of the ingenious French thinker and poet Edonard Schuré: “The great initiates” ("Les grands Inities ”). Both books shed light on the nature of the so-called initiation or initiation. Annie Besant shows how Christianity should be understood as the work of such initiation. Edouard Schuré paints pictures of the greatest leaders of humanity on the basis of his conviction that the great creeds and world views that they have given to humanity contain eternal truths that can only be found in them and extracted from them. Both writings are only justified on the basis of mysticism. They have emerged from the spiritual current of our time that is destined to raise humanity from a purely external culture to the heights of spiritual insight. A time will come when “scientific thinking” will no longer be able to oppose this current. Then science will recognize that it itself must be mystical. For it will realize that one does not understand the spirit by denying it, and that one does not rebel against the laws of nature by seeking the spiritual ones. Mystics will no longer be called obscurantists, for it will be known that only for their opponents is the field dark of which they speak.

And people will no longer mock at “initiation” any more than they mock at the demand that anyone who wants to research the life of the smallest organisms must first learn how to use a microscope. Research requires the fulfillment of certain preconditions. For the aspiring mystic, these conditions are not those of external technique, but rather the cultivation of a certain direction of the life of the soul. Through this cultivation, the sense is opened for truths that do not speak of the transitory, but rather of that of which – in Goethe's words – the transitory is “only a simile”. — In the womb of human existence, higher abilities rest, as the fruit rests in the womb of the flower. — And therefore no being should have the presumption to say that there is something exhaustive, finished in its world. If a person has such presumption, he is like the worm that considers the world of his senses to be the circumference of existence.

A “garden of maturity” is the place where the secrets of the world are revealed. To approach this place, a person must have the will to mature. “You must strip off the eggshells of your everyday being and awaken the inner life hidden within you if you want to enter the

Like many great personalities, Goethe did not express many of the deepest insights of his mind in broad, circumstantial speech, but in short, often enigmatic hints. Such a hint is contained in his saying: “In the works of man, as in those of nature, the intentions are actually especially worthy of attention.” This sentence is recognized in its full depth when it is applied to the most significant phenomena of human spiritual life. For just as we only gain meaning and understanding for the actions of an individual person when we recognize his intentions, so it is with the history of the whole human race. But what a gulf there is between the observation of actions that are openly apparent and the recognition of intentions that lie hidden in the soul! One man may be a dwarf in insight and understanding compared to another: his actions will be observable. One must have some knowledge of his mentality and spiritual level if one wants to see through his intentions. If you do not, the source of his actions remains a mystery, a riddle, the key to which is missing. It is no different with the great deeds of human intellectual history. These deeds themselves lie open to the eyes of the historian: the intentions lie in mysterious depths. Those who want to have the key to understanding must penetrate these depths. Now, however, the intention of an action will lie all the deeper, the more significant, the more comprehensive the action is. The intention for an action of everyday life is not difficult to understand. Of course, it cannot be the same with actions whose horizon spans centuries.

Those who consider such things will get an idea of what mysteries are. For in these mysteries there rests nothing else but the intentions for the great, world-embracing deeds of the development of humanity. And those who recognize these intentions and thus themselves can give their actions the weight to work into centuries: these are the initiated.

Those who see world history as a mere collection of coincidences can deny the existence of mysteries and initiates. They cannot be helped until they approach the facts of history with a loving gaze. Then, little by little, meaning and context will dawn on them; and they will see these historical facts as no less intentional than they would see an acting person as an automaton. In his research, he then reaches the point where the initiates guide the progress of humanity according to the insights that are shrouded in the darkness of the mysteries.

The religious documents of all times speak of such mysteries. And to them are led those who do not stop at the external life of the founders of religion and the historical facts of the spread of their teachings, but who try to rise to the intentions of these founders. It should not be surprising that these intentions are shrouded in mysterious darkness, that they have been communicated only to the chosen ones, within the schools of wisdom, which are precisely the mysteries. For it makes sense to communicate to a person only that which he can understand; or, in other words, to communicate it to him only when he has acquired the conditions for understanding. In order to accomplish meaningful deeds, one must possess great wisdom; and in order to acquire great wisdom, one must undergo a long and difficult period of preparation. This is the case with the mysteries.

Through the various religions and philosophies, the spiritual development of humanity is progressing. Those who work towards this development set the spiritual forces of humanity in motion. They must know the laws upon which this movement depends, just as one must know the laws of chemistry in order to mix substances in a purposeful way. The mysteries teach the high laws of spiritual life, the chemistry of the soul. One must try to gain insight into the nature of these laws if one wants to recognize, even only by intuition, the motives that underlie the deeds of the great teachers of humanity.

In harmony with all those who have sought to open their spiritual eyes to such insights, Annie Besant, the soul of the Theosophical movement, speaks of a “hidden side of religions” in her book “Esoteric Christianity, or the Minor Mysteries”. She guides us with great insight into the discussion of the mystical secrets of Christianity – its so-called esoteric content – by asking: “What is the purpose of religions?” And she says about it: “They are given to the world by people who are wiser than the masses of the people to whom they are given, and they have the purpose of accelerating human development. In order to do this effectively, they must reach individuals and influence them. Now, not all people are at the same level of development, but one could represent development as an inclined plane, with people standing at all points. The most highly developed stand far above the least developed in both intelligence and character; the ability to understand as well as to act changes at every level. Therefore it is useless to give everyone the same teaching; what helps the intellectual person would be completely incomprehensible to the less intelligent, while what transports the saint into ecstasy would leave the criminal completely untouched. ... Religion must be graded just as development is, otherwise it will fail to achieve its purpose.” How the teacher of religion speaks to people at different stages of development depends on the spiritual and emotional needs of those to whom he is speaking. To be able to do this, he must himself carry the kernel of wisdom through which he is to work in his soul; and the way in which he carries this kernel must be such that it enables him to speak to every man in his own way of understanding. Therefore, anyone who looks at the speeches of religious teachers from the outside recognizes only the one, the _ external side of their wisdom. Edouard Schuré forcefully points out this fact in his book on the “Great Initiates”. In it, he presents the great teachers of wisdom: Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato and Jesus in the manner of an intuitive researcher, a noble thinker and a personality inspired by deep religious feeling. He describes his point of view in the introduction: “All great religions have an outer and an inner history; one is obvious, the other hidden. Through the outer history, the dogmas and myths are revealed to me, as they are publicly proclaimed in temples and schools, as they are presented in the cults and in popular superstition. The inner history reveals to me the profound science, the mysterious wisdom and the hidden laws of the deeds of the great initiates, prophets and reformers who created, supported and spread these religions. The first, the outer history, can be learned everywhere; it is not a little dark, contradictory and confused. The second, which I would like to call the esoteric history or the wisdom of the mysteries, is very difficult to develop from the first. For it rests in the depths of the temples, in the secret societies, and its most harrowing dramas unfold exclusively in the souls of the great prophets, who have entrusted neither documents nor disciples with their most sublime experiences and their ideas that elevate them to the divine. One must solve their riddles. But what one finds then appears to be full of light, organic, in harmony with itself. One could also call it the eternal and universal religion. It presents itself as the inner side of things, as the inner side of human consciousness in contrast to the merely historical outer side. This is where we find the creative germ of religion and philosophy, which meet at the other end of the ellipse in undivided science. It is the point that corresponds to the supersensible truths. This is where we find the cause, the origin and the goal of the marvelous work of the centuries, the guidance of the world in its earthly messengers.»

These “earthly messengers” work in the spiritual pharmacy, in the spiritual laboratory of humanity. What enables them to do such work are the imperishable laws of spiritual chemistry, and what they accomplish as spiritual-chemical processes: these are the great intellectual and moral deeds of world history. But what flows from their mouths are only parables, only images of the higher wisdom dwelling in the depths of their souls, adapted to the understanding of those who lend them an ear. This wisdom can only be revealed to those who fulfill the conditions that guarantee the understanding and proper use of higher wisdom. These, however, then feel in the initiation into the mysteries the direct contact with the spiritual sources, with the father and mother powers of existence. Listen to what one who was imbued with such feelings said. Clement of Alexandria, the Christian writer of the second and third centuries of our era, who was a mystic, that is, a student of the mysteries, before his baptism, praises these mysteries with the words: “O truly holy mysteries! O pure light! A torch is carried before me when I look at heaven and God; I become holy when I receive the consecration. The mysteries, however, are revealed to me by the primordial spirit and sealed by the illumination of the initiate; initiated into the faith, he presents me to the All-One, so that I may be preserved in the bosom of eternity. These are the initiation ceremonies of my mysteries! If you wish, you too can be initiated, and you will join the spiritual forces of existence in a dance around the uncreated, immortal, all-one world spirit, and the language that is inspired by the cosmos will sing the praises of this All-One."

One understands Annie Besant's description of the mysteries when one considers that the initiates had to speak of them in the way that Klemens does in the above words. “The Mysteries of Egypt” – as A. Besant explains on page 15 of ‘Esoteric Christianity’ – ”were the glory of that ancient country, and the noblest sons of Greece, such as Plato, went to Sais and Thebes to be initiated into the mysteries by the Egyptian teachers of wisdom. The Mithraic mysteries of the Persians, the Orphic and Bacchic mysteries, and the later Eleusinian semi-mysteries of the Greeks, the mysteries of Samothrace, Scythia, and Chaldea, are, at least by name, generally known. Even in the extremely weakened form of the Eleusinian mysteries, their value is highly praised by the most distinguished men of Greece, such as Pindar, Sophocles, Isocrates, Plutarch and Plato.» — The point of mystery wisdom is not to expand knowledge, but to explain unknown things: it is about elevating the whole human being, so that it is imbued with the sacred mood that is capable of grasping the sources and seeds of the cosmos. The mystic not only recognizes higher things; his own being merges with these higher things. He must be prepared so that he can properly receive the sources of all life that flow into him. — Especially in our time, when only the grossly scientific is recognized as knowledge, it is difficult to believe that mood is important in the highest things. The realization is thus made an intimate affair of the human soul. For the mystic it is such. Tell someone the solution to all the world's riddles. The mystic will find that it will sound like empty words in his ears if his soul has not been raised to a higher level by prior conditions; that it will leave his feelings untouched if they are not attuned to perceive the reception of wisdom as a consecration. Only those who see through this know the spiritual atmosphere from which the words of a mystic, such as Plotinus', are spoken: “Often, when I awaken from the slumber of corporeality, come to myself, turn away from the outside world and enter into myself, I see a wondrous beauty; then I am certain that I have become aware of my better part. I am active in true life, united with the divine, and in it I gain the strength to place myself beyond the world. When I then descend from the contemplation of the highest to the ordinary formation of thoughts after this rest in the spiritual world, I ask myself how it came about that my soul became entangled in the everyday, since its home is where I have just been.” — Whoever knows the degree of purification of the life of feeling and understanding that is necessary to feel in this way also knows the reasons why the mystical, the sacred knowledge cannot be an object of everyday life, nor of ordinary instruction and the documents of external history; why it is locked in the soul of the divine messengers and must only be – as Schuré says – the object of initiation into intimate brotherhoods. ordinary instruction and the documents of external history; why it is locked up in the souls of the divine messengers and must only be the subject of initiation into intimate brotherhoods, as Schuré says. But even if this direct grasp of the truth remains a matter of the most intimate instruction, the blessings of wisdom are bestowed upon all men. Just as the fruits of the electric railway system benefit the whole population, but the laws of the organization of this system are known only to the electricians, so it is also with the effect, the fruits and with the wisdom of the mysteries. And just as the blessings of technical knowledge are manifested in the external cultural institutions, so too is the wisdom of the mysteries manifested in the spiritual life of humanity: in its myths, beliefs and religious ideas, in its world of legends and fairy tales, but also in its moral and legal concepts, and finally in its artistic creations, in its sciences and philosophies. The mystic points to the root of these contents of life in the deepest knowledge of humanity, and he is clear about the fact that they can only find their true explanation there. Clement of Alexandria says that “a man can have faith without possessing learning,” but at the same time he emphasizes that “it is impossible for a man without knowledge to understand the things that are explained in faith” (see Annie Besant: “Esoteric Christianity,” page 59). Every mystic knows this true relationship between faith and knowledge and knows that a contradiction between the two is impossible. But he can also only accept mysticism on the basis of true science. Clement also speaks of this: “Some who believe themselves gifted by nature do not want to come into contact with philosophy or logic; indeed, they do not even want to study natural science. They merely demand faith... I therefore call truly learned the one who brings everything into relation with the truth, so that he himself reads out of geometry, music, grammar and philosophy everything that is useful in them... How necessary it is for the one who wants to partake of the power of the world spirit to treat intellectual things in a philosophical way... The mystic uses the branches of knowledge for preparatory studies.” (Annie Besant: ‘Esoteric Christianity’, page 59f.)— Anyone who has taken a look at this deep harmony of faith and knowledge must repeatedly point out a characteristic feature of our newer culture that has created a gulf between the two. Schur& points out this gulf in the very first sentences of his book. “The greatest evil of our time is that science and religion appear in it as two hostile and irreconcilable powers. It is an all the more dangerous evil because it comes from the heights of education and slowly but surely seeps into all minds like a poison that one inhales with the air. And every intellectual evil becomes, with the passage of time, an evil of the soul and, furthermore, a social one. As long as Christianity was able to develop the Christian faith in a naive way in the midst of a still semi-barbaric, medieval Europe, it was the greatest moral power: it shaped the modern soul. - As long as experimental science, publicly restored in the sixteenth century, claimed for itself the rights of reason and unlimited freedom, it was the greatest intellectual power; it renewed the face of the world, freed man from centuries-old fetters and gave his spirit an indestructible foundation. But since the Church has become incapable of defending its original dogmas against the claims of science, it has shut itself up as in a house without windows, it has set its faith against reason as an absolute and unchallengeable law ; and since science has been intoxicated by its successes in the physical world, it has become increasingly alien to the psychic and intellectual; it has closed itself off from the higher through its methods and has become materialistic in its principles. Since then, philosophy has been moving aimlessly back and forth between the two: it has renounced its own rights in order to fall into doubt about the supernatural, and gaps have opened up both in the soul of human society and in that of the individual.» (Schuré, «Les Grands Inities», page VIIf.)

Annie Besant points out this peculiarity of the newer spiritual culture no less strongly. “It is clear to anyone who has studied the last forty years of the past century that a large number of thinking and moral people have turned their backs on the Church because the teachings they received offended their intelligence and outraged their feelings. It is in vain that it is claimed that the widespread agnosticism of this age is due to the lack of morality, or to the conscious lack of logic of the mind. Anyone who carefully examines the phenomena mentioned will admit that people of keen intellect have been driven out of Christianity.” (“Esoteric Christianity”, page 27.) Annie Besant answers the question of what is to be done in this direction from the standpoint that the root of Christianity also lies in a hidden wisdom, and that faith must struggle back to this root in order to survive. If Christianity is to “live on, it must regain the knowledge it has lost...; it must again appear as an authoritative teacher of spiritual truths, with that authority which alone is worth anything, the authority of knowledge... Then the hidden Christianity will descend again into the Adytum, behind the veil that protects the “Holy of Holies”, into which only the initiate may enter.“ (”Esoteric Christianity”, page 29.)

How the “great initiates” and, in particular, Christianity lead through the “narrow gate” into the “garden of maturity” is described by Annie Besant and Edouard Schuré in the books mentioned above.

Through the sense of sight, man perceives nature in a hundredfold of light and color shades. It is the rays of sunlight that, reflected from objects, cause their light shades. If the perception of sunlight is a daily habit of the eye, the eye is not able to look into the source of light, into the sun itself, without being blinded by the direct rays of the sun. What corresponds to the everyday work of the eye in its effects: that becomes the cause of pain when it itself, as cause, strikes the sense of sight. He who knows how to apply this image in the right way to the spiritual life of man understands why those who “know” speak of dangers in initiation into the mysteries. These dangers are very real; but the words of the one who speaks of them must not be understood literally in the sense in which we speak of dangers in ordinary life. — Man's intellect and reason are just as little accustomed to seeing the sources of truth in the whole of the world as the eye is able to look directly at the sun. Just as the eye perceives the effects of light as corresponding to it, so reason and understanding perceive the effects of eternal wisdom in the phenomena of nature and in the course of human history. And just as the eye becomes powerless in the face of the source of light, so human understanding becomes powerless in the face of the original sources of wisdom. This understanding fails at first. One need only compare what happens to man with the fact that the eye is dazzled by the sun. Because man is accustomed to seeing only the reflection of truth in nature and spiritual life, and not the truth itself, he is powerless in the face of it when it confronts him. Accustomed to grasp only the coarse reality that surrounds him in everyday life, he perceives the revelations of higher wisdom as illusions, as unreal fantasies. They cannot tell him anything. They are like airy chimeras, blurring when he tries to grasp them. For he wants to grasp them in the same way as he is accustomed to grasping the things of ordinary reality. This reality attracts him with a thousand ties. He knows what it can promise him, he has learned to appreciate it a thousand times over. - Those who see in the right light understand what religious legends mean when they speak of the tempter who promises all the glories of this world to those who want to enter the path of higher enlightenment. If the power to resist this tempter is not awakened in them, then they will inevitably fall prey to him. And this suggests something of what is meant by the dangers of the “threshold” that must be crossed if the “path” of wisdom is to be entered. No one can enter this path who wants to use his spiritual eye, his intellect and his reason only as they are used in everyday life. As a transformed being, as one whose spiritual eye has been strengthened, man must enter the threshold. And in our present age it is difficult to strengthen the eye in this way. For this eye is attuned only to the tangible, precisely through our science. In order to make its conquests in the field of external natural forces, this science had to dull the eye for the spiritual forces of existence. This should not be misunderstood as a reproach. Anyone who wants to understand the mechanism of a clock certainly does not need to explore the thoughts of the inventor of the clock: he can stick to what he has learned in physics. He can understand the clock from its mechanism itself. But no one can understand how the forces and things that work together in the clock are originally put together unless he seeks the spirit that put them together and explores the reasons why they are put together. The natural scientist can only understand nature correctly if he first seeks the forces of its workings within it. If he claims that they have put themselves together, he is like someone who might think that the clock made itself. Superstition is not looking for the spirit behind things: but blindly attributing it to the things themselves. The superstitious person is not like the person who looks for the inventor of the clock, but like the person who in the clock itself suspects a spirit that moves the hands forward. Only when one misunderstands those who search for the spirit in the existence of the world can one lump them together with those who are rightly accused of superstition and who are just as rightly considered troublemakers today because they endanger the blessings that our scientific culture has created. (Those who see without prejudice will know who is meant in both directions.)

Anyone who enters the “threshold” to higher insight must, if he is to succeed in his progress, be endowed with the power that leads to the perception of the real where the ordinary mind and everyday reason perceive fantasy and illusion. For it is the permanent and eternal that appears to the eye attuned to the transitory and temporal as illusion and fantasy. Therefore, nothing can help a person when he is led to the sources of eternal wisdom with his ordinary mind. That is why the first step in initiation in the mysteries is not the imparting of new knowledge, but the complete transformation of the human powers of cognition. With subtle insight, Edouard Schuré characterizes in his book “The Great Initiates” the path of those striving for “knowledge” through the mysteries: “Initiation was a gradual introduction of the human being towards the dizzying heights of the spirit, from which life is dominated.” And further on, we are told: “To achieve mastery, the ancient sages said, man needs a complete transformation of his physical, moral and intellectual being. This transformation is only possible through the simultaneous exercise of will, intuition and reason. Through their complete harmony, man can expand his abilities to incalculable limits. The soul has dormant senses. Initiation awakens them. Through deep study and constant diligence, man can come into conscious relationship with the secret forces of the universe. Through an amazing effort, he can reach immediate spiritual perfection, can open the paths to it and make himself capable of directing himself there. Only then can he say that he has conquered fate and that he has conquered his divine freedom from there. Only the initiate can become an initiator, prophet and theurgist, that is, a seer and creator of souls. For only he who shows himself the way can show it to others: only he who is free can liberate.“ (”The Great Initiates”, page 124.)

This is how we must understand the task of the mysteries, insofar as their first stage is concerned. It was not just a matter of a new science, but of creating new powers of the soul. Man had to become another person, a '"transformed being, before he was led into the spiritual sun, to the source of wisdom.

Those whose powers are not steeled when they cross the threshold will not feel the reality of the eternal, spiritual powers that confront them. Instead of connecting with a higher world, he falls back into the lower one. This danger is faced by anyone who seeks the sources of wisdom. If a person succumbs here, then he has temporarily killed the seed of eternity within himself. This seed was previously dormant within him. But even as a dormant seed, it was that which ennobled and transfigured the transitory, lower nature. Naively and unconsciously, man lived with his inclination towards higher spirituality. The unsuccessful attempt at initiation has killed the slumbering inclination. Nothing remains for man but the urge to live in the transitory, to live in the realm of this world alone. Because he has felt the divine-spiritual as an illusion, he worships the sensual-material. Thus, at the “threshold”, man can lose his most valuable part, his immortal part. This is the danger, which is analogous to the blinding of the eye in the above picture.

It is clear that those who were responsible for the initiation in the mysteries, out of a sense of responsibility, made the highest demands on the disciples. For these demands had to have the effect of steeling the spiritual forces in the sense described. Schuré describes the sequence of initiation as it was practiced in the school of Pythagoras (582-507 BC). This description is inspired by a genius for art and mystical depth. — With reference to this description, we will speak of these stages here. Only those were admitted to initiation who, by the nature of their intellectual, moral and spiritual being, offered the certainty of success. For these, the time of preparation then began. They became listeners for several years. In our time, when everyone believes that they are entitled to a critical, discerning judgment if they have learned something, or even – perhaps even more – if they have learned nothing, it is not easy to give a sympathetic idea of this long audience. This listener was required to maintain absolute silence. The silence was not meant to be external. It was a silence of judgment. One had to absorb completely without prejudice, without spoiling this impartiality by premature examination. The wise knew, and the listeners had confidence. They were not allowed to examine for the time being. For the knowledge that they received was to make them ready for examination. How can someone really learn if he wants to immediately examine what he is learning? With this view of silent learning, the Pythagoreans have honored a principle that alone can lead up the steps of knowledge. Those who have traveled the path of knowledge know this. They can only feel pity for those who block their path to knowledge by premature judgment and criticism. Our time is completely filled with this immature critical spirit. One need only look around at what is being said by our speakers and what is being written by our writers. If only a little Pythagorean spirit could be found in our time, much more than nine-tenths of what is spoken would remain unsaid, and just as much of what is printed would remain unprinted. Anyone who has made a few observations or formed a few concepts today believes that he is entitled to pass judgment on the most essential things. But such a right is only given to those who have understood how to withhold their judgment for years and to listen impartially to what the wise men of mankind have said. Examine everything and keep the best is a deceptive principle in the soul of those who are not mature enough to examine. Our judgment is nothing, absolutely nothing, before the truth, as long as we have not had it examined by the truth itself. Instead of saying: I will examine everything and keep the best, many should say: I will let the truth examine me; and if I am good enough for it, then it may keep me. He who has not practiced for years in the way of clinging, of living in, of unreserved devotion to the judgment of the wise leaders of mankind, his judgment is sound and smoke.

This is certainly an unsympathetic principle in our age of “enlightenment”, public criticism and the journalist spirit. But the Pythagorean listeners lived according to it.

Once the student had attained the necessary maturity, the “golden day” dawned, when revelations about the nature of nature and the human spirit began. The laws of physical and spiritual existence were gradually revealed to him. Those who try to grasp these laws with their everyday, unrefined intellect will understand nothing of them. Goethe once pointed out what is important here. When he had devoted himself to the study of the plant world in Italy and Sicily and had formed his now much discussed but little understood views on the “primordial plant”, he wrote to Germany that he wanted to make a journey to India, not to discover anything new, but to look at what had been discovered in his own way. It is not a matter of knowing the laws that rational botany has brought to light, but of penetrating into the inner essence of plant life with the help of these laws. One can be a learned professor of botany and understand nothing of this life. Our scholars have some particularly remarkable views on this matter. They either believe that it is impossible to penetrate into the inner nature of things, or they claim that our research has not yet progressed “that far”. They do not realize that, while they can indeed increase our knowledge in a most beneficial way through this research of the senses and the intellect, a completely different way of thinking is necessary for the exploration of the “inner nature” than they are developing. They want to know nothing about the inventor of the clock, studying it according to the principles of physics. Because they cannot find a little spirit in the clock that drives the hands forward, they either deny the spirit that put the wheels together, or they claim that it is either completely inaccessible to human knowledge or “until now”. Anyone who speaks of the spirit in nature is accused of fantasizing with words alone. Well, it is not his fault that the accusers hear mere words. The Pythagorean disciples were introduced to the spirit of nature in the second stage of their instruction.

Once they had passed this stage, they could be led to the “great” initiation. Now they were ready to absorb the secrets of existence. Their spiritual eye was now sufficiently strengthened for this. They now learned not only the spirit in nature, but also the intentions of this spirit. From this point on, the nature of the mysteries can no longer be discussed in the proper sense, but only figuratively, because our language is completely adapted to the intellect and has no words for the higher form of knowledge that is being considered here. So I ask you to understand the following. Above all, man learned to look beyond his personal life. He learned that this life of his is the repetition of earlier lives on a new plane of existence. He was able to convince himself that that which is rightly called the soul often incarnates and reincarnates, and that he must regard the abilities, experiences and actions of this life of his as the effects of causes lying in his earlier lives. It also became clear to him that the deeds and experiences of his present life would have their effects in a future existence. Since the intention is to speak in detail about the great laws of “reincarnation” and “world lawfulness”, or “reincarnation” and “karma”, in this journal, we will stop here with these hints. These truths could become as convincing to the student of the mysteries as the truth that “two times two is four” is to the ordinary person, because he was ripe for them on the third step. But even on this step one can only have a completely certain judgment of these insights, because only on this step is one able to understand their meaning correctly. Even today, as at all times, these ideas are criticized a great deal. But what is criticized is only the arbitrary thoughts of the critics themselves; and these are quite without importance. - Incidentally, it should be admitted that many supporters of the idea of reincarnation have no better ideas about it than its opponents. Of course, it is not to be claimed here that everyone who defends these teachings today understands them. Among these defenders, too, there are many who are too lazy or too self-confident to learn in silence before they teach.

If it was not the case with the Pythagoreans, then there were other mysteries after the “great” revelation initiation, which included the stage of the actual mystical initiation. It was the stage in which not only perception and thought, but the whole life expanded beyond the immediate human personality. Here the disciple became not only a sage, but a seer. He now not only perceived the essence of things, but experienced it with them. It is very difficult to give an idea of what is involved here. The seer does not merely feel things, but he feels in things; he does not think about nature, but he steps out of himself and thinks in nature. The theosophist knows this process and speaks of it by calling it the opening of the astral senses. — The man of understanding passes by the seers; they must appear to him as enthusiasts, if not worse. He who has a sense for their gifts listens to them with pious awe, for he feels that it is no longer a human personality that speaks through them, but living wisdom itself. They have sacrificed their personal inclinations, sympathies and opinions so that they could lend their voices to the eternal word through which “all things were made”. For where human opinion still speaks, where inclinations and interests come into play, there eternal wisdom is silent. And if it reaches the ears of those who have no feeling for it, then it appears as the personal word of a human being, even if divine power may always lie within it. But people could hear from the seers themselves, for the seer is silent in his human personality when the voice of truth speaks to him. His judgment is silent; his interests and inclinations lie before him, as meaningless to him as the table that stands before him is meaningless. He is completely devoted to inner hearing.

Only the seer should ascend to the next level, which the ancients called that of the theurgist, and which in the German language can be indicated by calling it the level on which a “complete reversal of human abilities” takes place. Forces that otherwise only flow into people now flow out of them. In certain areas in which people are merely servants, the one who is ruler is the one whose abilities are “turned”. And since only the seer is able to judge the scope and nature of such forces, people will abuse these forces if they come into possession of them without having attained the purity of the seer. And this “wisdom without purity” is possible through a certain concatenation of circumstances that are not to be discussed here. — Schur speaks excellently of the higher initiation with reference to the Pythagoreans: “... At the summit, the earth disappeared like a shadow, like a dying star. From there, the heavenly vistas opened up – and the “point of view of the heights” unfolded like a wonderful whole, the <"epiphany> of the universe. The purpose of the instruction was not to allow man to become absorbed in contemplation or ecstasy. The teacher had led the disciples into the unpredictable regions of the cosmos, he had plunged them into the abysses of the invisible. The true initiates had returned from this terrible journey to earth better, stronger and more hardened for the trials of life... The initiation of the intelligence was followed by that of the will, the most difficult of all. For it was a matter of taking the disciple into the truth, into the depths of life... At this level, the human being became an adept and possessed sufficient energy to acquire new powers and abilities. The inner powers of the soul opened up and the will radiated into the others.” — ”Everything that a person accomplishes before reaching this level has its causes in regions that are completely unknown to him. The theurgist's gaze sees into these regions; and consciously he lets radiate from himself what in the human being usually slumbers unconsciously in the deepest recesses of the soul. He stands face to face with the guide who has previously led him invisibly “from behind”. Equipped with such thoughts, one should read sentences like the following from the ancient wisdom book “Mundakopanishat”: “When the seer sees the golden-colored creator, the Lord, the spirit, whose lap is Brahman, then, having cast away merit and demerit, the sage, spotless, attains the highest union.”

Schuré directs his gaze to the summits that are thus reached; and the mystical faith in the illuminating power of these summits gives him the ability to see through some of the clouds of mist that veil the true essence of the great leaders of humanity. This enables him to describe the great initiates: Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato and Jesus. Gradually, the powers were radiated into humanity through these leaders, depending on the maturity that the human race had attained in the course of time. Rama led to the gate of wisdom, Krishna and Hermes gave some the key into the hand, Moses, Orpheus and Pythagoras showed the inside, and Jesus, the Christ, represented the sanctuary. — It would be called the quite own charm of the Schuréschen book impair, wanted one the remarks to retell, into which, as they are, everyone should deepen itself.

Schuré& indicates how the wisdom powers of the mysteries were poured into the spiritual veins of humanity by the founder of Christianity in a form that could be heard by the ears of mankind. — And in this field, too, the truth is to be sought on the paths that Schuré represents. — The power that radiates from Jesus' personality is living power in the hearts of all those who let it flow into them. Understanding the living Word that works in this power is only possible for those who have obtained the key to this Word through an understanding of the wisdom of the mysteries. And Annie Besant's “Esoteric Christianity” provides the basis for this, as far as possible. It is a book through which the hidden meaning of the words of the Bible is revealed to the devoted reader.

In our time, such key books are necessary. Humanity was in a different state than it is now when it received the gospel, the “good news”. Today, reason has a completely different training than it did nineteen centuries ago. Today, people can only experience the living power of the “revealed word” if they can grasp this power with their ability to judge. But what is true remains eternally true, even if the way in which man must grasp it changes over the course of time. That reason and judgment should assert their rights today is a necessity; the student of the development of humanity knows that it must be so. That is why he gives reason what was given to other powers of the soul centuries ago. It is from this realization, and from no other, that the true 'theosophist' should work. Annie Besant's 'Esoteric Christianity' should be understood in this way.

The theosophist knows that Christianity is the truth. And he also knows that Jesus, in whom the Christ was embodied, is not a leader of the dead, but a leader of the living. He understands the great master word: I am with you always, even to the end of the age. The one who wants to explain Christianity in the way Annie Besant does turns first to the living leader, not to the one of the historical reports. What the “living word” still proclaims to the ear that wants to listen: that then radiates into the gospel reports. Yes, he has remained until today, the announcer of the word, and he can tell us himself how we have to grasp the letter that reports of his deeds and speeches. The “good tidings” are to be grasped esoterically, that is, the living power must first awaken within us, which will then impress the stamp of the “holy” upon them. And because the intellect and the power of judgment are the great means of contemporary culture, they must be freed from the bonds of mere sensual comprehension, of the purely tangible understanding of reality. The intellect of contemporary humanity must itself immerse itself in the ocean that fills it with true piety. For it is not right that the clever intellect should only destroy the “illusions” that the religious sense has woven around things. This is only accomplished by a mind that is blinded and captivated by the successes it has achieved in the knowledge and control of purely material natural forces. —- People of the present day, and with them our physicists, biologists, and cultural historians, believe themselves to be free in their purely factual world of reason. In truth, they live under an all-dominant suggestion. Free to a certain extent you could become, you physicists, biologists and cultural historians of the present, if you wanted to recognize that your ideas of reality, indeed of substances and forces of the world, of human history and cultural development are nothing but mass suggestions. The bandage will fall from your eyes one day, and then you will learn in what respect truth and not error is what you think about electricity and light, about the development of animals and of man. For, mind you, even the theosophists do not regard your assertions as error, but as truth. For your view of nature is also a religious confession to them, and when they say that they want to seek the kernel of truth in all confessions, they do so not only in relation to Buddha, Moses and Christ, but also in relation to Lamarck, Darwin and Haeckel. And writings such as those by Edouard Schuré and Annie Besant are called upon to remove the bandages from your eyes; they should teach you to see through your suggestions. In this respect, it is not only the words that are important in such books, but also the hidden powers that guided the writers' pens and that flow into the veins of the readers, so that they are imbued with a new attitude towards truth. Readers who experience the right effect from such books are initiated in a certain respect. – Anyone who does not sense the assertion of a miracle behind this sentence, and who is able to see something other than a phrase in it, will also understand when these books are presented to him not merely with the request for ordinary ordinary reading, but with the quite different intention that they should awaken slumbering powers in him through the powers with which they are written, even if these powers can initially only be those of the intellectual soul. But for our time there is no genuine initiation that does not pass through the intellect. – Anyone who wants to lead to the “higher secrets” today by bypassing the intellect knows nothing of the “signs of the times”; and he can only replace the old with new suggestions.

Meditation

He who denies the spirit of the world does not know that he is denying himself. But such a person not only commits an error, he also neglects his first duty: to work out of the spirit himself.

[ 1 ] Numerous facts combined to show us that the N philosophical wisdom of the Greeks rested on the same mental basis as mystic knowledge. We understand the great philosophers only when we approach them with feelings gained through study of the Mysteries. With what veneration does Plato speak of the “secret doctrines” in the Phaedo! “And it almost seems,” he says, “as though those who have appointed the initiations for us are not such bad people after all, and that for a long time they have been enjoining upon us that anyone who reaches Hades without being initiated and sanctified falls into the mire; but that he who is purified and consecrated when he arrives dwells with the gods. For those who have to do with consecrations say that there are many thyrsus-bearers,¹ but few really inspired. These latter are, in my opinion, none other than those who have devoted themselves in the right way to wisdom. I myself have not missed the opportunity of becoming one of these, as far as I was able, and have striven after it in every way.”

It is only a man who is placing his own search for wisdom entirely at the disposal of the condition of soul created by initiation who could thus speak of the Mysteries. And there is no doubt that a flood of light is shed on the words of the great Greek philosophers when we illuminate them from the Mysteries.

[ 2 ] The relation of Heraclitus of Ephesus (535-475 B.C.) to the Mysteries is plainly given us in a saying about him, to the effect that his thoughts “were an impassable road”, and that anyone entering upon them without ‘ being initiated found only “dimness and darkness”; but that, on the other hand, they were “brighter than the sun” for anyone introduced to them by an initiate. And when it is said of his book that he deposited it in the temple of Artemis, this simply means that initiates alone could understand him.² Heraclitus was called “The Obscure”, because it was only through the Mysteries that light could be thrown on his views.

[ 3 ] Heraclitus comes before us as a man who took life with the greatest seriousness. Even his features show us, if we can recall them, that he bore within himself intimate knowledge which he knew words could only suggest, not express. Out of this background arose his celebrated utterance, “All things are in flux,” which Plutarch explains thus: “We do not dip twice into the same wave, nor can we twice come in contact with the same mortal existence. For through abruptness and speed it disperses and brings together, not in succession but simultaneously.”

A man with such views has penetrated the nature of transitory things, for he has felt impelled to characterize the essence of transitoriness itself in the clearest terms. Such a description as this could not be given unless the transitory were being measured by the Eternal; and in particular, it could not be extended to man without an insight into his inner nature. Heraclitus has extended his characterization to man: “Life and death, waking and sleeping, youth and age are the same; this in changing is that, and that again this” In this sentence there is expressed full knowledge of the illusory nature of the lower personality. He says still more forcibly: “Life and death are found in our living even as in our dying.” What does this mean but that only a point of view based on the transitory can value life more than death? Dying is to pass, in order to make way for new life, but the Eternal lives in the new life, as in the old. The same Eternal appears in transitory life as in death. When we grasp this Eternal we look upon life and death with the same feeling. Life has a special value only when we have not been able to awaken the Eternal within us. The saying, “All things are in flux,” might be repeated a thousand times, but unless said in the mood of this feeling, it is empty sound. The knowledge of eternal growth is valueless if it does not detach us from temporal growth. It is the turning away from that love of life which impels toward the transitory that Heraclitus indicates in his utterance: “How can we say of our daily life, ‘We are;’ when from the standpoint of the eternal we know that ‘We are and are not’?”³ “Hades and Dionysos are one and the same,” says one of the Fragments. Dionysos, the god of joy in life, of germination and growth, to whom the Dionysiac festivals are dedicated is, for Heraclitus, the same as Hades, the god of destruction and annihilation. Only one who sees death in life and life in death, and in both the Eternal, high above life and death, can view the merits and demerits of existence in the right light. Then even imperfections become justified, for in them, too, lives the Eternal. What they are from the standpoint of the limited lower life they are only in appearance: “The gratification of men’s wishes is not necessarily a happiness for them. Illness makes health sweet and good, hunger makes food appreciated, and toil, rest” “The sea’s water is the purest and impurest, drinkable and wholesome for fishes, it is undrinkable and injurious to human beings.” Heraclitus is not primarily drawing attention to the transitoriness of earthly things, but to the splendor and majesty of the Eternal.

Heraclitus speaks vehemently against Homer and Hesiod, and the learned men of his day. He wished to show up their way of thinking which clings to the transitory. He did not desire gods endowed with qualities taken from a perishable world, and he could not regard as supreme that science which investigates the laws of growth and decay of things. For him, the Eternal speaks out of the perishable, and for this Eternal he has a profound symbol. “The harmony of the world returns upon itself, like that of the lyre and the bow.” What depths are hidden in this image! By the pressing asunder of forces and by the harmonizing of these divergent forces, unity is attained. One tone conflicts with another, but together they produce harmony. If we apply this to the spiritual world we have the thought of Heraclitus: “Immortals are mortal, mortals immortal, living the death of mortals, dying the life of the immortals.”

[ 4 ] It is man’s original guilt to cling with his cognition to the transitory. Thereby he turns away from the Eternal, and life becomes a danger for him. What happens to him comes to him through life, but its events lose their sting if he ceases to set unconditioned value on life. In that case his innocence is restored to him. It is as though he were able to return from the so-called seriousness of life to his childhood. The adult takes many things seriously with which a child merely plays, but one who really knows becomes like a child. “Serious” values lose their value when looked at from the standpoint of eternity. Life then seems like play. On this account does Heraclitus say: “Eternity is a child at play, it is the reign of a child.” Where does the original guilt lie? In taking with the utmost seri- ousness what ought not to be so taken. God has poured himself into the world of objects. If we take these objects and leave God unheeded, we take them in earnest as “the tombs of God”. We should play with them like a child, but at the same time should earn- estly strive to call forth from them the Divine that sleeps spellbound within them.

[ 5 ] Beholding of the Eternal acts like a consuming fire on ordinary speculation about the nature of things. The spirit dissolves thoughts which come through the senses; it fuses them; it is a consuming fire. This is the higher meaning of the Heraclitean thought, that fire is the primary element of all things. This thought is certainly to be taken at first as an ordinary physical explanation of the phenomena of the universe. But no one understands Heraclitus who does not think of him in the same way as Philo, living in the early days of Christianity, thought of the laws of the Bible. “There are people,” he says, “who take the written laws merely as symbols of spiritual doctrines, who diligently search for the latter, but despise the laws them- selves. I can only reprove such, for they should pay heed to both, to an understanding of the hidden meaning and to the observation of the obvious one.” If the question is discussed whether Heraclitus meant by “fire” physical fire, or whether fire for him was only a symbol of Eternal Spirit which dissolves and rebuilds all things, then a wrong construction has been put upon his thought. He meant both and neither of these things; for spirit was also alive for him in ordinary fire, and the force that is physically active in fire lives on a higher plane in the human soul, which melts in its crucible mere sense-knowledge and engenders out of this the perception of the Eternal.

[ 6 ] It is very easy to misunderstand Heraclitus. He makes strife the father of things, but only of “things”, not of the Eternal. If there were no contrasts in the world, no conflicting interests, the world of becoming, of transitory things, would not exist. But what is revealed in this antagonism, what is poured out into it, is not strife but harmony. Just because there is strife in all things, the spirit of the wise should pass over them like a breath of fire, and change them into harmony.

From this point there shines forth one of the great thoughts of Heraclitean wisdom. What is man as a personal being? From the point of view just stated Heraclitus is able to answer. Man is composed of the conflicting elements into which Divinity has poured itself. In this state he finds himself, and beyond this becomes aware of the spirit within him, the spirit which is rooted in the Eternal. But the spirit is born for man himself out of the conflict of elements, and it is the spirit also which has to calm them. In man, nature surpasses her creative limits. It is indeed the same universal force that created antagonism and the mixture of elements which afterwards by its wisdom is to do away with the conflict. Here we arrive at the eternal dualism which lives in man, the perpetual contrast between the temporal and the Eternal. Through the Eternal he has become something quite definite, and out of this he is to create something higher. He is both dependent and independent. He can participate in the Eternal Spirit whom he beholds only in the measure of the compound of elements which that Eternal Spirit has effected within him. And it is just on this account that he is called upon to fashion the Eternal out of the temporal. The spirit works within him, but works in a special way. It works out of the temporal. It is the peculiarity of the human soul that a temporal thing should be able to act like an eternal one, should work and increase in power like an eternal thing. This is why the soul is at once like a god and a worm. Man, owing to this, stands midway between God and the animal. The productive and active force within him is his daimonic element—that within him which reaches beyond himself.

“Man’s daimon is his destiny.” Thus strikingly does Heraclitus make reference to this fact.⁴ He extends man’s vital essence far beyond the personal. The personality is the vehicle of the daimon, which is not confined within the limits of the personality, and for which the birth and death of the personality are of no importance. What is the relation of the daimonic element to the personality which comes and goes? The personality is only a form for the manifestation of the daimon.

One who has arrived at this wisdom looks beyond himself, backward and forward. The experience of the daimonic in himself proves to him his own immortality. And he can no longer ascribe to his daimon the sole function of occupying his personality, for the latter can be only one of the forms in which the daimon manifests itself. The daimon cannot be shut up within one personality; he has power to animate many. He is able to transform himself from one personality into another. The great idea of reincarnation springs as something obvious from the Heraclitean premises, and not only the idea, but the experience of the fact. The idea only paves the way for the experience. One who becomes conscious of the daimonic element within himself does not find it innocent and in its first stage: it has qualities. Whence do they come? Why have I certain propensities? Because other personalities have already worked upon my daimon. And what becomes of the work which I accomplish in the daimon if I am not to assume that its task ends with my personality? I am working for a future personality. Between me and the spirit of the universe, something interposes that reaches beyond me, but is not yet the same as Divinity. This something is my daimon. As my today is only the product of yesterday and my tomorrow will be the product of today, so my life is the result of a former and will be the foundation of a future one. Just as earthly man looks back to numerous yesterdays and forward to many tomorrows, so does the soul of the sage look upon many lives in his past and many in the future. The thoughts and aptitudes I acquired yesterday I use today. Is it not the same with life? Do not people enter upon the horizon of existence with the most diverse capacities? Whence this difference? Does it proceed from nothingness?

Our natural sciences take much credit to themselves for having banished miracle from our views of organic life. David Friedrich Strauss, in his Old and New Faith,⁵ considers it a great achievement of our day that we no longer think that a perfect organic being is a miracle issuing from nothing. We comprehend perfection when we are able to explain it as a development from imperfection. The structure of an ape is no longer a miracle if we assume its ancestors to have been primitive fishes that have been gradually transformed. Let us at least accept as reasonable in the domain of spirit what seems to us to be right in the domain of nature! Is the perfect spirit to have the same antecedents as the imperfect one? Does a Goethe have the same antecedents as any Hottentot? The antecedents of an ape are as unlike those of a fish as are the antecedents of Goethe's spirit unlike those of a savage. The spiritual ancestry of Goethe’s spirit is a different one from that of the savage. The spirit has evolved as has the body. The spirit in Goethe has more progenitors than the one in a savage. Let us take the doctrine of reincarnation in this sense and we shall no longer find it unscientific. We shall be able to explain in the right way what we find in our soul, and we shall not take what we find as if it were created by a miracle. If I can write, it is owing to the fact that I learned to write. No one who has a pen in his hand for the first time can sit down and write offhand. But one who has come into the world with the stamp of genius, must he owe it to a miracle? No, even the stamp of genius must be acquired. It must have been learned. And when it appears in a person we call it spirit. This spirit too must have gone to school; its capacities in a later life were acquired in a former one.

[ 7 ] In this form, and this form only, did the thought of Eternity live in the mind of Heraclitus and other Greek sages. There was no question with them of a continuance of the immediate personality after death. Compare some verses of Empedocles (490-430 B.C.). He says of those who accept the facts of existence as miracles:

[ 8 ] Foolish and ignorant they, for they do not reach far with their thinking,
Who suppose that what has never been can really come into being,
Or that beings there be that die away and vanish completely;
It is ne’er possible for being to begin from what is non-being,
Quite impossible also that being can fade into nothing; For wherever a being is driven, there will it remain in being.
Never will those believe, who have in these things been instructed,
That the spirits of men live only while what is called life here endures,
That only so long do they live, receiving their joys and their sorrows,
But that ere they were born they were nothing, and after they die they are naught.

[ 9 ] The Greek sage never even asked whether there was an eternal element in man, but only inquired of what this element consisted and how man can nourish and cherish it in himself. For from the outset it was clear to him that man is an intermediate creation between the earthly and the Divine. There was no thought of a Divine being outside and beyond the world. The Divine lives in man but lives in him only in a human way. It is the force urging man to make himself ever more and more divine, Only one who thinks thus can say with Empedocles:

[ 10 ] When leaving thy body behind thee thou soarest up into the ether,
Then thou becomest a god, immortal, beyond the power of death.

[ 11 ] What may be done for a human life from this point of view? It may be introduced into the magic circle of the Eternal; for in man there must be forces which the merely natural life does not develop, and the life might pass away fruitless if the forces remained idle. To release them, thereby to make man like the Divine, this was the task of the Mysteries. And this was also the mission the Greek sages set themselves. In this way we can understand Plato’s utterance that “he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the nether-world will lie in a slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and purification will dwell with the gods.” We have to do here with a conception of immortality the significance of which lies bound up within the universe. Everything man undertakes in order to awaken the Eternal within him he does in order to raise the value of the world’s existence. His enlightenment does not make him an idle spectator of the universe, imagining things that would be there whether he existed or not. The power of his insight is a higher one, a creative force of nature. What flashes up within him spiritually is something divine which was previously under a spell, and which, failing the knowledge he has gained, would have to lie fallow, awaiting some other exorcist. Thus the human personality does not live in and for itself but for the world. Life expands far beyond individual existence when looked at in this way. From within such a point of view we can understand utterances like that of Pindar, giving a glimpse of the Eternal: “Happy is he who has seen the Mysteries and then descends under the hollow earth. He knows the end of life, and he knows the beginning promised by Zeus.”

[ 12 ] We understand the proud features and solitary nature of sages such as Heraclitus, They were able to say proudly of themselves that much had been revealed to them, for ‘they did not attribute their knowledge to their transitory personality, but to the eternal daimon within them, Their pride had as a necessary adjunct the stamp of humility and modesty, expressed in the words, “All knowledge of perishable things is in perpetual flux like the things themselves.” Heraclitus calls the eternal universe a game: he could also call it the most serious of realities. But the word “serious” has lost its force through being applied to earthly experiences, On the other hand, the game of the Eternal leaves man that sureness in life of which he is robbed by such seriousness as derives from the transitory.

[ 13 ] A different conception of the universe from that of Heraclitus grew up, on the basis of the Mysteries, in the community founded by Pythagoras in the 6th century B.C. in Southern Italy. The Pythagoreans saw the basis of things in the numbers and geometrical figures into whose laws they made research by means of mathematics. Aristotle says of them: “They first developed mathematics; then, completely absorbed in it, they considered the roots of mathematics to be the roots of all things. Now as numbers are naturally the first thing in mathematics and they thought they saw many resemblances in numbers to things and to development,—more in numbers than in fire, earth, and water,—in this way one quality of numbers came to mean for them justice, another, the soul and spirit, another, time, and so on with all the rest. Moreover, they found in numbers the qualities and relations of harmony; and thus everything else, in accordance with its whole nature, seemed to be an image of numbers, and number seemed to be the first thing in nature.”

[ 14 ] The mathematical and scientific study of natural phenomena must always lead to a certain Pythagorean habit of thought. When a string of a certain length is struck, a particular tone is produced. If the string is shortened in certain numeric proportions, other tones will be produced. The pitch of the tones can be expressed in figures. Physics also expresses color relations in figures. When two bodies combine into one substance, it always happens that a certain definite quantity of the one body, expressible in numbers, combines with a certain definite quantity of the other. The Pythagoreans’ sense of observation was directed to such arrangements of measures and numbers in nature. Geometrical figures also play a similar role in nature. Astronomy, for instance, is mathematics applied to the heavenly bodies. One fact became important to the thought life of the Pythagoreans: that man, quite independently and purely through his mental activity, discovers the laws of numbers and figures; and yet, that when he looks around in nature, he finds that things obey the same laws he has ascertained for himself in his own mind. Man forms the idea of an ellipse, and ascertains the laws of ellipses. And the heavenly bodies move according to the laws which he has established, (It is not, of course, a question here of the astronomical views of the Pythagoreans. What may be said about these may equally be said of Copernican views in the connection now being dealt with.) Hence it follows as a direct consequence that the achievements of the human soul are not an activity apart from the rest of the world, but that in those achievements the cosmic laws are expressed. The Pythagoreans said: “The senses show man physical phenomena, but they do not show the harmonious order regulating these phenomena.” The human spirit must first find that harmonious order within itself if this spirit wishes to behold it in the outer world. The deeper meaning of the world, that which holds sway within it as ap eternal, law-obeying necessity, this makes its appearance in the human soul and becomes a present reality there. The meaning of the universe is revealed in the soul. This meaning is not to be found in what we see, hear, and touch, but in what the soul brings to light from its own unseen depths. The eternal laws are thus hidden in the depths of the soul. If we descend there, we shall find the Eternal. God, the eternal harmony of the world, is in the human soul. The soul element is not limited to the bodily substance enclosed within the skin, for what is born in the soul is nothing less than the laws by which worlds revolve in celestial space. The soul is not in the personality. The personality only serves as the organ through which the order of pervading cosmic space may express itself. There is something in the spirit of Pythagoras in what one of the Church Fathers, Gregory of Nyssa, said: It is said that human nature is something small and limited, and that God is infinite. But who dares to say that the infinity of the Godhead is limited by the boundary of the flesh, as though by a vessel? For not even during our lifetime is the spiritual nature confined within the boundaries of the flesh. The mass of the body, it is true, is limited by neighbouring parts, but the soul reaches out freely into the whole of creation by the movements of thought.”

The soul is not the personality, the soul belongs to infinity. From such a point of view the Pythagoreans must have considered that only “fools” could imagine the soul force to be exhausted with the personality.

For them, too, as for Heraclitus, the essential point was the awakening of the Eternal in the personal. Enlightened knowledge for them meant intercourse with the Eternal. The more man brought the eternal element within him into existence, the greater must he necessarily seem to the Pythagoreans. Life in their community consisted in holding intercourse with the Eternal. The object of Pythagorean education was to lead the members of the community to that intercourse. Education was therefore a philosophical initiation, and the Pythagoreans might well say that by their manner of life they were aiming at the same goal as that of the Mystery cults.

• 1. Thyrsus, a staff entwined with ivy and surmounted by a pine-cone, or by a bunch of vine or ivy leaves, with grapes or berries. It is an attribute of Dionysos, or the Satyrs.
• 2. Edmund Pfleiderer has already collected the historical evidence for the relation of Heraclitus to the Mysteries. Cf. his book: Die Philosophie des Heraklit von Ephesus im Lichte der Mysterienidee, Berlin, 1866.
• 3. Cf. Fragments of Heraclitus, No. 81.
• 4. Daimon is used here in the Greek sense. Today we would say “spirit”.
• 5. David Friedrich Strauss, Alter und Neuer Glaube.

[ 1 ] Numerous facts lead us to perceive that the philosophical wisdom of the Greeks stems from the same basic conviction as does mystical cognition. We can understand the great philosophers only when we approach them with the feelings gained from observation of the Mysteries. How reverently Plato speaks of the “secret teachings” in the Phaedo: “And it appears that those men who established the Mysteries were not unenlightened, but in reality had a hidden meaning when they said long ago that whoever goes uninitiated and unsanctified to the other world will lie in the mire, but he who arrives there initiated and purified will dwell with the gods. For as they say in the Mysteries, ‘the thyrsus-bearers are many, but the mystics few;’ and these mystics are, I believe, those who have been true philosophers. And I in my life have, so far as I could, left nothing undone, and have striven in every way to make myself one of them.”¹⁰—Initiation can be discussed in this way only by someone who has placed his own striving for wisdom entirely at the service of the conviction engendered by initiation. And there is no doubt that a bright light is cast upon the words of the great Greek philosophers when they are illuminated by the Mysteries.

[ 2 ] A saying which has been handed down about Heraclitus of Ephesus (535–475 B.C.) gives a clear indication of his relationship to the essence of the Mysteries, saying that his thoughts are “a path which is difficult to travel,” that anyone who approaches them uninitiated will find only “obscurity and darkness,” but that on the other hand they are “brighter than sunlight” for the person who is introduced to them by a mystic.¹¹ When it is said of his book that he placed the latter in the temple of Artemis,¹² this means that he could be understood only by initiates. (Historical evidence of Heraclitus' relationship to the Mysteries has already been contributed by Edmund Pfleiderer. See his book, Die Philosophie des Heraklit von Ephesus im Lichte der Mysterienidee, Berlin 1886.) Heraclitus was called “The Obscure” because only the light of the Mysteries provided the key to his conceptions.

[ 3 ] Heraclitus strikes us as a personality with the most serious attitude toward life. If we know how to conjure up his appearance, we see in his physiognomy that he bore within him the most intimate experiences of cognition which he knew could only be indicated, not expressed, by words. From the soil of such a conviction sprang his famous saying, “Everything is in a state of flux,” which Plutarch interprets in the following words: “It is impossible to step twice in the same river nor is it possible to lay hold twice of any mortal substance in a permanent state, by the suddenness and swiftness of the change in it there comes dispersion and at another time, a gathering together; or rather, not at another time nor later, but at the same instant it both settles into its place and forsakes its place; it is coming and going.”¹³ The man who thinks in this way has seen through the nature of transitory things. He has felt urged to characterize in the sharpest words the essence of transitoriness. Such a characterization cannot be made unless the transitory is measured against the eternal. In particular this characterization cannot be extended to man unless his innermost being has been penetrated. Heraclitus does extend this characterization to man: “Living and dead are the same and so are waking and sleeping, youth and age. For the one in changing becomes the other, and the other, changing, again becomes the one.”¹⁴ Full cognition of the illusory character of the lower personality is expressed in this sentence. He speaks of this even more forcibly: “There is life and death in our life, just as in our death.” What does this mean except that life can be valued more highly than death only when seen from the point of view of the transitory. Death is decay to make room for new life, but the eternal lives in the new life as in the old. The same eternal appears in transitory life as in death. When man has grasped this eternal he looks upon death with the same feelings as he looks upon life. Only if he is unable to awaken this eternal within himself does life have a special value for him. The sentence, “Everything is in a state of flux” may be trotted out a thousand times, but if it is not spoken with a feeling for this content it is void of meaning. Cognition of eternal creation is valueless if it does not cancel out our dependence upon earthly creation. Heraclitus means to repudiate the lust for life which presses after transitory things with the saying, “How shall we say of our daily life: ‘we are,’ when we know that from the standpoint of the eternal: ‘we are and we are not.’” (Heraclitus, Fragment No. 81)¹⁵ “But Hades is the same as Dionysus,” states another of the Fragments of Heraclitus.¹⁶ Dionysus, the god of lust for life, of germination and growth, to whom the Dionysian festivals were dedicated, is for Heraclitus the same as Hades, the god of annihilation and destruction. Only one who sees life within death and death within life, and in both the eternal which is infinitely above life and death, his gaze alone can behold in the right light the disadvantages and advantages of existence. Then the disadvantages find their justification, for the eternal lives in them also. What they appear to be from the standpoint of the limited lower life is only illusory: “For men to get all they wish is not the better thing. It is disease that makes health a pleasant thing; evil, good; hunger, surfeit; and toil, rest.” “Sea water is the most pure and the most polluted; for fishes it is drinkable and salutary, but for men it is undrinkable and deleterious.”¹⁷ Heraclitus intends primarily to point out not the transitory quality of earthly things, but the splendor and majesty of the eternal. Heraclitus spoke vigorously against Homer, Hesiod and the scholars of his day. He wished to point out the manner of their thought which clings only to the transitory. He did not want the gods furnished with attributes taken from the transitory world. And he could not respect as the highest a science which investigated the laws of the growth and decay of things. For him the eternal speaks through the transitory. He has a deeply significant symbol for this eternal: “The harmony of the world is of opposite tensions, as is that of the lyre or bow.”¹⁸ How much is contained in this pictured Unity is attained by the striving of forces in opposite directions and the harmonization of these diverging forces. One tone contradicts another, yet together they achieve harmony. If we apply this to the spiritual world we have the thought of Heraclitus: “Immortals take on mortality, mortals immortality; death is the eternal life of mortals, earthly life the death of immortals.”¹⁹

[ 4 ] To cling to the transitory with his cognition is the original fault of man. Thereby he turns away from the eternal. Through this, life becomes a danger to him. What happens to him comes to pass through life. But it loses its sting when he no longer values life as absolute. Then his innocence is restored to him. It is as though he could return from the so-called seriousness of life to childhood. How much that is play to the child is taken in all seriousness by the adult! The one who knows, however, becomes like a child. “Serious” values lose their worth when seen from the standpoint of the eternal. Life then appears as a game. Therefore Heraclitus says, “Eternity is a child at play; it is the dominion of a child.”²⁰ Where does the original fault lie? It consists in taking with the utmost seriousness those things to which this seriousness should not be attached. God has descended into the world of things. Whoever receives these things without God receives them seriously as the “Tombs of God.” He should play with them like a child and employ his seriousness to draw out of them the God who sleeps spellbound within.

[ 5 ] Burning, yes, scorching is the effect which contemplation of the eternal has upon ordinary assumptions about things. The spirit dissolves the thoughts of sensuality; it melts them. It is a consuming fire. This is the higher sense of the thought of Heraclitus, that fire is the archetypal substance of all things. Certainly this thought is to be taken first in the sense of an ordinary physical exploration of the phenomena of the world. But no one understands Heraclitus who does not think about him in the way that Philo, who lived at the time of the birth of Christianity, thought about the laws of the Bible. He says, “There are people who take written laws only as pictures of spiritual teaching. They search out the latter with great care and despise the former. I can only censure such people for they should take care of both: the cognition of the esoteric sense and the observation of the exoteric.”²¹—We pervert the thoughts of Heraclitus if we argue whether by his concept of fire he meant physical fire, or whether for him fire was only a symbol of the eternal spirit which dissolves and reforms material things. He meant both and neither, because for him the spirit also lived in ordinary fire. The force physically active in fire lives on a higher plane in the human soul, melting sense-bound cognition in its furnace and allowing contemplation of the eternal to emerge from it.

[ 6 ] Heraclitus in particular may easily be misunderstood. He allows strife to be the father of things,²² but to him it is the father only of “things,” not of the eternal. If there were no polarities in the world, if the most manifold conflicting interests did not exist, the world of growth would not exist, nor would the world of decay. What reveals itself, however, in this, what is diffused in it, is not strife; it is harmony. Just because strife is in all things, the spirit of the sage is to move over all things like fire, transforming them into harmony. This point throws light on one of the great thoughts of Heraclitean wisdom. What is the personal essence of man? The above passage contains the answer of Heraclitus. Man is a mixture of conflicting elements, into which God is descended. This is the condition in which he finds himself. Further, he becomes aware of the spirit within him, the spirit which is rooted in the eternal. This spirit, however, is born for him personally out of the conflict of the elements. This spirit should also pacify the elements. In man, nature creates beyond herself. It is the same unique force which has begotten the conflict, the mixture, which, filled with wisdom, is to remove this conflict again. There we have the eternal duality which lives in man, the eternal contradiction in him between temporal and eternal. Through the eternal he has become something quite definite, and out of this he should create something higher. He is both dependent and independent. He can participate in the eternal spirit which he beholds only to the extent of the mixture the eternal spirit has produced in him. Just because of this he is called upon to form the eternal out of the temporal. The spirit works in him. But it works in him in a special way. It works out of the temporal. It is the peculiarity of the human soul that something temporal works like something eternal, that it leavens and strengthens like an eternal quality. This makes the human soul similar to a god and a worm at the same time. Because of this man stands midway between God and animal. This leavening and strengthening force in him is his daemonic element. This is what strives beyond him from within. Heraclitus points to this in a striking way: “Man's daemon is his destiny.”²³ (Daemon is meant here in the Greek sense. In the modern sense we would say spirit.) Thus for Heraclitus what lives in man extends itself far beyond the personal. This personal element is the bearer of a daemonic element. This element is not confined to one personality and the death and birth of the personality have no significance for it. What connection has this daemonic element with what in the form of personality comes into existence and decays? The personal element is only a form of appearance for the daemonic. The bearer of such cognition looks forward and backward beyond himself. That he experiences the daemonic element in himself is to him evidence of his own immortality. Now he may no longer ascribe to this daemonic element the single task of filling out his personality. For the personality can be only one form of appearance of the daemonic element. The daemon cannot confine itself within one personality. It has the force to animate many personalities. It can go from personality to personality. This premise of Heraclitus gives rise as a matter of course to the great thought of reincarnation. Not, however, to the thought alone, but to the experience of reincarnation. The thought is only the preparation for the experience. Whoever becomes aware of the daemonic element within himself does not discover it to be an innocent primary element. He finds that it has characteristics. How has it come by these? Why have I tendencies? Because other personalities have already worked upon my daemon. And what will become of the effect which I produce on the daemon, if I may not assume that its task is exhausted in my personality? I prepare for a later personality. Something which is not the same as a divinity, something which reaches beyond me, introduces itself between me and the cosmic unity. My daemon introduces itself. As my today is but the result of yesterday, and my tomorrow will only be the result of my today, so my life is the continuation of another, and will be the basis for another. As physical man looks backward on numerous yesterdays and forward to numerous tomorrows, so the soul of the sage beholds numerous lives in the past and numerous lives in the future. What I acquired yesterday in the way of thoughts and accomplishments, I use today. Is it not so with life? Do not men set foot upon the horizon of existence with the most varied faculties? Whence comes this variety? Does it come out of nothingness?—Our natural science congratulates itself on banishing the miracle from our conceptions of organic life. David Friedrich Strauss (see Alter und Neuer Glaube, Old and New Faith) considers it a great achievement of modern times that we no longer think of a perfect organic creature being miraculously created out of nothingness. We grasp perfection when we are able to explain it as an evolution out of imperfection. The structure of the ape is no longer a miracle if we may assume, as ancestors of the ape, primitive fish which have gradually transformed themselves. Let us agree to accept for the spirit what seems to us right with regard to nature. Is the perfected spirit to have the same origin as the imperfected spirit? Is Goethe to have the same disposition as any Hottentot? The spirit of Goethe cannot have the same spiritual predispositions as an aborigine, any more than a fish has the same predisposition as an ape. The spiritual ancestry of Goethe's spirit is different from that of the aborigine. The spirit has grown like the body. The spirit in Goethe has more predecessors than that in the aborigine. Let us take the teaching of reincarnation in this sense. Then we shall no longer find it “unscientific.” On the contrary, what is found in the soul will then be explained in the right way. What is given will not be accepted as a miracle. That I can write is the result of the fact that I have learned to do so. One who has never held a pen in his hand cannot sit down and write. But someone or other is supposed to have a “spark of genius” in some purely miraculous way. No, this “spark of genius” must also be acquired; it must be learned. If it makes its appearance in a personality, we call it a spiritual element. But first this spiritual element also had to learn; in an earlier life it has acquired for itself the “ability” it has in a later one.

[ 7 ] In this way and no other did Heraclitus and the Greek sages conceive the thought of eternity. For them there was no question of the continuance of the actual personality. Let us refer to a saying of Empedocles (490–430 B.C.). Of those who regard something as a miracle, he says:

[ 8 ] “Fools! for they have no far-reaching thoughts—²⁴
Who deem that what before was not comes into being,
Or that aught can perish and be utterly destroyed.
For it cannot be that aught can arise from what in no way is,
And it is impossible and unheard of that what is should perish;
For it will always be, wherever one may keep putting it.
A man wise in such matters would never surmise in his heart
That as long as mortals live what they call their life,
So long they are, and suffer good and ill;
While before they were formed and after they have been dissolved
They are just nothing at all. ”

[ 9 ] The Greek sage did not raise the question whether there is an eternal element in man; he only asked of what does this eternal consist and how can man cherish and care for it within himself. For it was clear to him from the beginning that man lives as a creature midway between the earthly and the divine. There was no question of the divine existing outside and beyond earthly things. The divine lives in man; it lives there, but in a human way. It is the force which urges man to make himself ever more and more divine. Only a person who thinks in this way can say with Empedocles,

[ 10 ] “When, released from the body, you ascend to the free ether,
You will become an immortal god, escaping death.”²⁵

[ 11 ] What can happen to a human life from such a point of view? It can be initiated into the ordered cycle of the eternal. Forces must be present in it which are not brought into development by a purely natural life. And this life could pass by unused if these forces remained lying fallow. It was the task of the Mysteries to open them up, thereby likening the human to the divine. And the Greek sages also set themselves this task. Thus we understand Plato's words: “Whoever goes uninitiated and unsanctified to the other world will lie in the mire, but he who arrives there initiated and purified will dwell with the gods.”²⁶ Here we are dealing with an idea of immortality, the significance of which is determined within the whole cosmos. Everything man undertakes in order to awaken the eternal within himself he does in order to heighten the existence-value of the cosmos. As a cognizant being one is not an idle observer of the whole cosmos when he pictures to himself what would equally well be there without him. His power of cognition is a higher natural creative force. What lights up in him spiritually is a divinity which was spellbound before, and which without his cognition would have to lie fallow and wait for another deliverer. Therefore the human personality does not live within itself and for itself; it lives for the cosmos. Life extends far beyond individual existence when it is regarded in this way. Within the framework of such a conception we can understand sentences such as the following by Pindar, which gives us a glimpse of the eternal: “Happy is he who has seen those Mysteries ere he passes beneath the earth. He knows the truth about life's ending, and he knows that its first seeds were of God's giving.”²⁷

[ 12 ] The proud physiognomy and solitary manner of sages like Heraclitus are understandable. They could say proudly of themselves that much was revealed to them, for they did not ascribe their knowledge to their transitory personality at all, but to the eternal daemon within them. Their pride was of necessity stamped with the attributes of humility and modesty, which are expressed in the words: All knowledge of transitory things is in eternal flux like these transitory things themselves. Heraclitus calls the eternal cosmos a game; he could also call it the most profoundly serious thing. But the word serious has become worn out through being applied to earthly experiences. The game of the eternal grants man a security in life of which he is deprived by the seriousness arising out of the transitory.

[ 13 ] Another form of world-conception, different from that of Heraclitus, grew from the same foundation in the essence of the Mysteries, within a community founded by Pythagoras in lower Italy in the sixth century before Christ. The Pythagoreans saw the foundation of things in numbers and figures, whose laws they investigated mathematically. Aristotle says of them, “They were the first to advance the study of mathematics, and having been brought up in it they thought its principles were the principles of all things. Since of these principles numbers are by nature the first, and in numbers they seemed to see many resemblances to the things that exist and come into being—more than in fire and earth and water, such and such a modification of numbers being justice, another being soul and reason, another being opportunity—and similarly almost all other things being numerically expressible; since, again, they saw that the attributes and ratios of numerical scales were expressible in numbers; since, then, all other things seemed in their whole nature to be modeled after numbers, and numbers seemed to be the first things in the whole of nature, they supposed the demands of numbers to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number.”²⁸

[ 14 ] The mathematical-scientific observation of natural phenomena must always lead to a kind of Pythagorean conception. If a string of definite length is struck, a certain tone is sent forth. If the string is shortened in definite numerical relationships, other tones come into being. The pitch of these tones can be expressed by numerical relationships. In physics color relationships also are expressed by numbers. When two bodies combine to form one substance this always occurs in such a way that of one substance one quite definite mass, expressible by number, combines with an appropriate one of the other substance. The Pythagoreans directed their observation upon such arrangements of measure and number in nature. Geometric figures also play a similar part in nature. For instance, astronomy is mathematics applied to the heavenly bodies. The point which became important to the thinking life of the Pythagoreans is the fact that man discovers the laws of numbers and figures entirely by himself, through his spiritual activity alone, and that when he looks out into nature the objects follow these laws he has established for himself in his soul. Man formulates for himself the concept of the ellipse; he establishes the laws of the ellipse. And the heavenly bodies move according to the laws he has established. (Of course we are not concerned here with the astronomical conceptions of the Pythagoreans. What could be said of them also applies to the Copernican conceptions in the connection under consideration here.) From this it follows immediately that the functions of the human soul are not a force apart from the rest of the cosmos, but that these functions are the expression of a law-abiding pattern which is interwoven with the cosmos. The Pythagorean said to himself: The senses show material phenomena to man. But they do not show the harmonious patterns which the objects obey. Rather, the spirit of man must first find these harmonious patterns within himself if he wishes to behold them outside in the cosmos. The deeper sense of the cosmos, that which reigns in it as eternal law-abiding necessity, becomes apparent as a present reality in the human soul. In the soul the meaning of the cosmos dawns. This meaning does not lie in what is seen, heard and touched, but in what the soul brings forth from its deep recesses into the light of day. The eternal pattern therefore lies hidden in the depths of the soul. Let us descend into the soul, and we shall find the eternal. God, the eternal cosmic harmony, is within the human soul. The soul is not confined to the physical body enclosed by man's skin. For in the soul are born the patterns according to which the worlds circle in space. The soul is not in the personality. The personality merely provides the organ through which what is interwoven with the cosmos can be expressed. Something of the spirit of Pythagoras is contained in the saying of the Church Father, Gregory of Nyssa: “It is said that human nature by itself is something small and limited, but the Godhead is infinite, and how has the infinite been embraced by something so tiny? And who says that the infinity of the Godhead was enclosed within the bounds of the flesh as in a vessel? For not even in our life is man's spiritual nature enclosed within the bounds of the flesh; on the contrary the physical body is limited by neighboring parts, but the soul expands freely over the whole of creation by means of the activity of thought.”²⁹ The soul is not the personality. The soul belongs to eternity. Taking this point of view, the Pythagorean also had to admit that only “fools” could suppose the qualities of the soul to be exhausted with the personality. For them also it depended upon the awakening of the eternal within the personal. To them cognition was communion with the eternal. The more a man brought this eternal into existence within himself the higher they valued him. The life of their community consisted in fostering this communion with the eternal. In order to lead the members of the community to such communion, the Pythagorean education was established. This education, therefore, was a philosophical initiation. And the Pythagoreans could very well say that by their mode of life they strove toward the same goal as the Mystery cults.

• 10. Plato, Phaedo, 69 C.
• 11. The anonymous epigram reads: “Do not be in too great a hurry to get to the end of Heraclitus the Ephesian's book: the path is hard to travel. Obscurity is there, and darkness devoid of light. But if an initiate be your guide, the path shines brighter than sunlight.” Anth. Pal. Book IX, 540 (Cf. also Diogenes Laertius IX, 16).
• 12. “Heraclitus lays down his book ceremonially in the temple of Artemis. So some people say, he has purposely written it obscurely, so that only the able would approach it.” (Cf. Kranz: Vorsokratische Denker, p. 84.)
• 13. Heraclitus, Fragments 40, 41. Cf. Note 5
• 14. Heraclitus, Fragment 78.
• 15. Heraclitus, Fragment 81.
• 16. Heraclitus, Fragment 127.
• 17. Heraclitus, Fragment 104, 52.
• 18. Heraclitus, Fragment 56 (Cf. 45).
• 19. Heraclitus, Fragment 67.
• 20. Heraclitus, Fragment 79.
• 21. Philo of Alexandria, De Migratione Abrahami, The Migration of Abraham, 89. (see Note 46 below)
• 22. Heraclitus, Fragment 44.
• 23. Heraclitus, Fragment 137.
• 24. Empedocles, Fragments 11, 12, 15, translated by John Burnet in his Early Greek Philosophy, Adam & Charles Black, London, 1952.
• 25. Empedocles, Fragment 112
• 26. Plato, Phaedo, 69 C.
• 27. Pindar, Fragment 137
• 28. Aristotle, Metaphysica A, Book I, Chapter 5.
• 29. Gregory of Nyssa (c 331–c 396), One of the four great Fathers of the Eastern Church, in Oratio catechetica magna, Chapter 10, modern edition edited by Krabinger, Munich, 1838.

On the eve of the day we call White Lotus Day let us remember the great individual to whom we are indebted for giving the impulse for the theosophical movement Fifteen years ago on the 8th of May, Mrs Blavatsky¹⁸ left the physical plane. We speak of the anniversary not of her death but of a second, different birthday when we remember the day when this individual, who did great things for humanity when in her physical body, was called to other spheres from where to continue her work. This day should arouse feelings and inner responses in us through which we get a sense of the way of working which human beings are called on to follow when they are no longer on the physical plane. This work may be all the more significant if they find suitable instruments for it on the physical plane. The members of the theosophical movement are meant to be such instruments. They are able to be such through the truths gained in the science of the spirit which you take into your hearts and minds all the year round.

The individual who was so incomparably selfless and the first to give the great messages that are taken up in the theosophical movement, may be brought a bit closer to us on this anniversary. Not many of us have an idea what Helena Petrovna Blavatsky truly was and will continue to be for the world. What does it matter? In the first century after Christ, Tacitus, a historian of incomparable significance, lived in Rome.¹⁹ A century after the spiritual movement on which the whole of our western culture has been based had arisen he had no more to say about it than that far away, on the edge of the Roman empire, an insignificant sect was reported to have been founded by a certain Jesus, a Nazarene.

Is it surprising, then, if academics, professors and many educated people know nothing of Mrs Blavatsky's mission, or at least have only wrong and confused ideas and prejudices? There are laws according to which a great person appearing in this world must arouse contradiction, prejudice and misunderstanding. It will happen again and again that something minor and insignificant is only slowly and gradually overcome by something great that holds certainty for the future. The event which has come into the world through Helena Petrovna Blavatsky is one that cannot be measured in a short time span. It was an event in the face of which our words today have grown too shadowy. If the potential that lay in Mrs Blavatsky's mission comes to realization, a new stage will be reached not only in the way humanity understands the world and sees things, but also in the way human beings feel and inwardly respond. Let us consider the tremendous change that will come today for some and for many more in the future.

So that we may understand one another, let me paint a picture for you. Let us go far back to ancient Greek times. The magnificent sculptures, poetic works and scholarship that have come down to us from that time, the divine poetry of Homer, the penetrating thoughts of Plato, the teaching of Pythagoras—all this comes together for us if we cast an eye on what we may call the Greek mysteries. Such a mystery centre would be both school and temple. It was not open to those who were not yet able and worthy to take in those truths, but only to those who had prepared themselves to face truth with hallowed feelings. When they were admitted to the centre from which all the art, poetry and scholarship came, onlookers who were not yet initiated into clairvoyant power were able to see in an image—those in whom the dormant powers of mind and spirit had already been awoken would see the reality of it—how the god descended into matter, embodying himself there, and now rests in the realms of nature to await his resurrection. The mystery pupil would see that all realms of nature, the mineral, plant and animals worlds, have the sleeping god at their foundation, and that man is called to experience the resurrection of this god in himself, knowing his soul to be part of the godhead. Everywhere out there the human being can perceive something from which he is meant to arouse the slumbering godhead. In his own soul, however, he feels the divine spark itself, feels himself to be the god and gains certain knowledge of his immortality, of being at work and alive in the infinite universe. Nothing compares with the sublime feeling the mystery pupils would experience in such centres. Everything was to be found there—religion, art, knowledge. His religious feelings were aroused by the objects of veneration, holy feelings of wonder and awe would be kindled by works of art, and the riddles of the world were revealed to him in beautiful images that inspired devotion. Some of the greatest people who knew this were to say: It is only through initiation that a human being rises above the transitory and earthly to reach the eternal. Perhaps the most beautiful word we can use to speak of a scholarship and art that is deeply immersed in the sacred flame of religious feeling is ‘enthusiasm’, which means ‘to be in god’.

Having contemplated this picture and now letting our thoughts move to the present time we see not only that it has all become separated for us—beauty, wisdom and religious devotion—but that our civilization has grown so abstract and rational that the living fire of those times has been lost and grown shadowy by nature.

Some of the outstanding representatives of cultural life in our present age who felt they were not understood and thus isolated, therefore looked back to those great periods in the infinitely distant past when human beings still had communion with the spirits and the gods. They knew this, and in the stillness of the night would often long to be back in the past, at the Eleusinian Mysteries. Those were the last, wonderful times of the ancient Greek mysteries. A profound German thinker, one of those who had contemplated the riddles of existence, reflects for us the mood that would come on him when his thoughts went back to the ancient centres of Greek wisdom—the mood of one who went far away in the spirit. It was Hegel, that great master of thought, who sought to encompass the images once seen by the pupils in the mysteries.²⁰ He wrote:

Eleusis
To Hölderlin²¹

Around me, in me, calm is reigning.
The ever-active cares of busy people sleep.
They give me freedom and a breathing space.
Thank you. O night.
That frees me—White mists are drawn
Over the distant hills to veil them By the moon.
The bright ribbon of the lake Reflects a gentle light.
Memory puts far away the endless noise of day,
As if many years had passed since.

Those are the words of the reflective thinker as he looks deeply into the riddles of the world, being able to encompass all that lived in his own heart in his thoughts only. Looking back now to the Mysteries of Eleusis he continued:

Your image, beloved, comes before me,
And the joy of days now gone. But it soon yields
To sweeter prospects of seeing you again.
Now the longed-for ardent embrace becomes a picture
That I see before me; then the scene where questions come,
And more secretly, looking to see
What may have changed in my friend's
Demeanour, mien, way of thinking
Since we last met; delight in being sure
Of finding the old trust again, grown firmer, riper,
A union that no oath did ever seal—
To live for free and open discourse,
And never, never make a pact with statutes
That regulate opinion and the way we feel.
Now the great wish that took me to you
So easily over mountains and across rivers
Is negotiating with inert reality
But soon a sigh marks division between them
And with it, the dream sweet fantasy created soon is gone.

My eye is raised to the eternal vault of heaven,
To you, O brilliant star of night!
And from your eternal space there flows
Forgetfulness of all my wishes, all my hopes.
My mind is lost as I thus gaze,
All that I called my own has vanished.
I give myself to the immeasurable.
I am in it, am all, and am but it
Thought when it returns to me feels alien,
It fears the infinite and in a maze
It fathoms not the depths that are beheld.
Fantasy brings the eternal close to the mind,
Marrying it with form and figure. Welcome,
Sublime spirits, lofty shades
Whose brows do radiate perfection!
Be not afraid, I feel it is my heartland, too,
The glory and solemnity that shines around you.

So we have a thinker calling up the spirits who in truth did appear to the pupils at Eleusis. Then he calls up the goddess Ceres who was at the heart of the Eleusinian Mysteries. For Ceres is not only the goddess of earth's fruitfulness but also the one who fructifies cultural life.

Ha! If the gates to your sanctuary were to open now,
O Ceres, once enthroned in Eleusis!
Overcome with enthusiasm I'd now feel
The shivers of your nearness,
Understand your revelations,
I'd tell the images' sublime meaning, hear
The hymning at the meal the gods would take.
The sublime words of their counsel.

Yet silence now reigns in your halls, O goddess!
The gods have gone away to Olympus,
Away from desecrated altars;
Gone away from the tomb of humanity profaned
Is the genius of innocence whose magic once brought them here.
The wisdom of your priests is silent.
Nothing from the blessed sacraments
Has survived for us, and in vain does now
The curiosity of scholars look for more than love
Of wisdom. The seekers own it now, and despise you.
To master it, they delve for words
That would express your sublime reality.
In vain! It is but dust and ashes they discover,
In which your life will not return in all eternity.
Yet those eternally dead, content in moderation
Also liked to delve in decay, with soul all gone. In vain.
No sign remained of your fastness, no trace of any image.
To the son of sacred faith, sublime things taught,
Unspoken depth of feeling, were much too sacred
To let dry signs and symbols take their place.
Thought cannot encompass the soul,
For outside time and space, immersed in its sense
Of vast infinity, it forgets itself and once again awakens
To full awareness. Wanting to speak of this to others,
E'en in angels’ tongues, you'd know the poverty of words.
He shudders, having thought so small the sacred,
Made it so small that words seem sinful now;
Trembling he keeps silent.
Thus the initiate imposed on himself a silence that a wise
Law bid lesser spirits never to proclaim
What they did see, hear, feel in the holiness of night,
Lest the clamour of their nonsense disturb the better man
In his devotions; the hollow sound of words
Make him wax angry at the sacred thing itself, that it
Should not be trodden in the mire, entrusted
Even to memory, that it should never be
The toy and merchandise of sophists,
Selling for a pittance,
Nor a mantle for wordy pretenders, nor a rod
Upon the back of cheerful lads, and be so empty
In the end, that its life roots would lie
But in the echoes of alien tongues.
Avariciously, goddess, your sons did not
Take your honour into alleyway and market, keeping it
Within the sanctum in their breast.
You therefore did not live upon their lips.
Their life did honour you. You live on in their deeds.
During this night, too, I did hear you, sacred goddess.
Often the life of your children also reveals you to me.
I often sense you to be the soul of their doings!
You are sublimity of mind, steadfast faith
Unshaken in a divine spirit, though all else may perish.

In recent times need arose to bring the power of thought to expression in an ideal way on the one hand and a more materialistic way on the other. Hegel, too, was no longer understood, being altogether one of the lost spirits of humanity. In the second half of the 19th century the spirit of materialism entered into everything, and it now prevails almost everywhere. If it were to keep the upper hand, materialism would cause human culture to turn to stone in every way.

A strange attitude came to the fore in the second half of the 19th century. In the 18th century, Lessing was still saying that a faith need not be meaningless just because it arose in the pure, innocent childhood of humanity.²² Materialists will, however, say that this faith, which is the basis of culture for all peoples, represents childish fantasies, and that only the thoughts created by means of scientific thinking reflect a mind that is both male and mature. Everyday life has become a hustle and bustle for material goods to satisfy purely physical needs, and much worse things will arise from this in future. Scientists who pride themselves on their achievements consider themselves far above anything humanity has achieved in the past to gain a relationship to the world—the priestly wisdom of ancient Chaldaea and Babylon, the teaching of Pythagoras and others. It is said of Plato, that great mind, that one cannot make head or tail of the confused ideas he has bequeathed to us. His Timaeus is said to be incomprehensible, but people do not ask for the reason why it cannot be understood.²³ Here we may think of Lichtenberg's words that when a head collides with a book and there is a hollow sound this may not be due to the book. In practice, materialism has also given rise to hypocrisy; above all people are not prepared to admit that life is governed entirely by materialistic aims. There has hardly ever been so much talk of ideals and such lack of understanding as in our time.

The mission of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky came at this time. Perhaps it may be permitted to state, without saying anything against her as a person, that her soul was given a task that was really too much for it. To solve the riddle as to why it was this woman in particular who was called upon to give to the world the message of theosophy, we find that she was the only possible means the spirits could find to make themselves understood by Western peoples. People in official positions had not the least conception of the spiritual realities humanity needed. The very idea of the spirit had been lost, and when anyone would speak of the spirit those were but empty words. This strange woman, who even as a young person had unusual psychic and spiritual gifts, was called upon to give the world a message which no academic person could give. From her earliest days her view of the world differed to some degree from that presented at schools and universities in the 19th century. She was able to perceive spiritual entities in everything around us, and they were as real to her as tangible objects are. From her young days, she felt great veneration for a sublime spirit. No human soul will even gain higher insight without such veneration. You may have a brilliant mind or a clear, rational mind, you may even have developed dim powers of clairvoyance, but you will not progress to genuine, true insight without the feeling we call ‘great veneration’. True insight can only be given to us by spirits who are well ahead of humanity in their evolution. Everyone will admit that people differ in their levels of development. Maybe people don't like to admit it so much in this day and age, but it cannot be denied that there are differences. Most people will, however, believe that the level of insight they have gained is indeed the highest, and they will not easily admit that there are more highly developed minds, greater than Goethe and Francis of Assisi. This, however, is the basic condition if true insight is to be gained. No one can gain it unless they have this great veneration, something that has been completely lost in our levelling age.

An important fact relates to this great veneration. We all come from worlds of spirit, from an original life in the spirit. The part of our soul that is divine comes from a divine source and origin. There was a time for each of us when the ability to look out from the soul world into the world perceived through the senses first awoke in us. In very early times, human beings had dim but clairvoyant perception. Images would arise from the soul that pointed to a real world around them. Conscious awareness in the senses, as we know it today, only came later. There was a particular moment in the development of each of us—shown symbolically for Eve in the paradise story²⁵—when the serpent of knowledge came to us, in an incarnation that happened a long, long time ago, and said the words: ‘Your eyes will be opened, you will know good and evil in the visible world around you.’ The serpent has always been the symbol of the great spiritual teachers. Every human being had such an advanced teacher and on one occasion was with one of them when he spoke the words: ‘One day you will know the world around you as it is perceived through the senses.’

A human being who has developed great veneration will meet such a teacher once more in life, when the senses for the spirit are opened up for him. In occult terms this is known as ‘finding the guru again’, the great teacher. Each must seek his guru and will only be able to find him if he is capable of great veneration and also knows that there is something that goes beyond run-of-the-mill humanity.

This great veneration and knowledge of the existence of the great teachers lived in Mrs Blavatsky, and it was because of this that she was called to make something about these great teachers known to humanity. The guru works in hidden ways and can only be recognized by someone who has found his way to him of his own accord. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky thus had the right inner feeling that enabled her to give present-day humanity something that is quite new.

Anyone who has had some insight into the places where the truth is represented also realizes that taking hold of something new like this does have its problems. The time then comes for someone who knows something about the search for the truth when he loses his critical approach to the great human spirits. He will no longer consider superficial things about them. People who have no idea of the position which such great people hold in the world will cling to such superficial aspects. Someone able to grasp the situation will be grateful for the gifts those great spirits have given. This is indeed the only possible attitude to a person such as Mrs Blavatsky. ‘Much admired and blamed as much’,²⁶ this woman called Helena came among the people. It would seem that hardly anyone else has had so much nonsense and silly things said and written about them as Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, except, of course, for others of the same stature. Some academics have made the strange statement that she had written a great work, her Secret Doctrine,²⁷ which contains the Dzyan verses, which are said to be a very ancient tradition. Others who were opposing them said, however, that Mrs Blavatsky had invented the verses, pretending that they were ancient tradition. Only academics can take foolishness to such a level. Let us assume, just for the moment, that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky had really invented the verses and let us consider them in more detail. If we study them for a while, two or three years maybe, we find that all our scholarship and all discoveries, all the achievements of modern science, may still be of interest but pale into insignificance compared with the great revelations made in these verses. Don't you think that this would make us venerate Helena Petrovna Blavatsky even more? Now of course someone who uses just the short span of two or three years to enter into the profound meaning of these verses will not care if they were written thousands of years ago or by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in the last third of the 19th century. On reflection one even has to say to oneself that in the latter case the miracle would be even greater. It then seems all the more foolish for critics to raise objections which merely show that they have not understood a single word of it all. So there you see some of the great obstacles that rose in the path of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. People who talk of her having had some fault or other clearly have no idea of her true importance.

Mrs Blavatsky spoke of phenomena in the occult worlds. Anyone who knows the path she followed to reach those worlds will also know the dangers connected with this. If you consider how easily our passions are roused even in the world of the senses, and the deep abysses someone had to experience who had to look into the occult worlds in the way it had to be done in order to write a book like Secret Doctrine, will no longer consider the superficial things connected with this important person and those around her. She was strong, but the resistance the world offered almost broke even her. She met so much lack of understanding and false authority, and if we consider the receptiveness and sensitivity of her occult powers, we can understand why she was more or less a broken woman when she came to the end of her life. But the things she has given to the world shall live on in humanity and have a future.

The mood I wanted to recreate for you, using the words of one of the greatest men of our time, this mood of longing must spread more and more. The longing can be satisfied with the things Mrs Blavatsky was destined to give to the world, things that need to be developed more and more. We honour her most if we see her as someone who has given the impetus. She only sought to prevail as a faithful disciple of the great spiritual powers that stood behind her, and the only people to work in harmony with the theosophical stream are those who do so in accord with those spiritual powers. The life of the spirit, which has become shadowy, will come alive again if people come to understand more and more of the things Helena Petrovna Blavatsky wanted to bring into the world with such courage, such energy and boldness. And it is possible to gain deeper insight into the nature of such a Lotus Day if we ignore all historical gossip and make every effort to consider the things that are important.

We have the right understanding for the theosophical movement if we come to realize that the living spirit of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky must continue to act through us for the salvation and progress of humanity. We'll then not merely say in an indolent, sentimental way that her immortal spirit is celebrating another birthday, but actively help it to live and work in the places where it should take effect. It surely was the only personal wish our founder had that the members of the theosophical movement would be a living means of giving expression to the spirit which she herself selflessly put wholly at the service of this spiritual movement. The more members understand this spirit of selflessness, and the more they understand that it behooves us to gain insight and understanding, the more will they do justice to the spirit of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. One always hears people say: ‘Love and compassion are the main thing.’ Of course they are, but it needs insight and understanding to make love and compassion bear fruit. It is not uncommon to be facile, even among those who believe themselves to seek the spirit. To say ‘love’ is something you learn in a second. To gain insight for the salvation and progress of humanity needs an eternity. The meaning the theosophical movement has for us must more and more be that insight is the foundation of all true spiritual activity. It is important, therefore, that we work without respite to follow in the footsteps of our founder—step by step, never giving in to the laziness of wanting to grasp it all in a day rather than learn it properly. We can study this very well in the writings and the work of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and all talk is in vain that is mere refusal to face up to things. What we must learn, continuing the work she herself started on the physical plane, is to seek to gain insight and knowledge in the science of the spirit.

• 18. Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, née Hahn (1831–91). Born in Yekaterinoslav in the Ukraine, went to the USA in 1873. In 1875 she founded the Theosophical Society with Henry Olcott. Later she continued her work in India.
• 19. Tacitus (c. AD 55–120). Annales XV, 44.
• 20. Hegel (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, German philosopher, 1770–1831)
• 21. Hegel sent the work Eleusis to his friend the poet Hölderlin in 1796.
• 22. Lessing. Gotthold Ephraim (1729–81), German writer. Erziehung des Menschengeschlechtes (education of the human race) p. 78 ff. Berlin 1844.
• 23. The dialogue in this book, written late in Plato's life, shows the connection between the world of space and the cosmic soul; this has also given rise to the laws that govern the movements of heavenly bodies. Summing up, Plato wrote: ‘It has been shown how this world evolved—evolved uniquely and on its own, perfect in its nature and phenomena, visible and encompassing the great fullness of all things visible, a living organism within which all other mortal and immortal organisms have their being, the sense-perceptible image of a god who can only be conceived in thought.’ Timaios 92 C.
• 25. Genesis 3:5
• 26. Faust 2, Before Menelaus' Palace.
• 27. Published in London, New York, Madras in 1893.

We have heard that the human soul was once endowed with a kind of primeval wisdom, that this wisdom gradually faded away and is now no longer accessible. Consequently with respect to their knowledge, people feel thrown back more and more upon what is presented to them by physical existence. By “knowledge” I do not mean only science in the accepted sense, but the knowledge that is consciously applied by the soul in the ordinary affairs of life.

The question will naturally arise: how did this ancient wisdom actually come into being? Here I must touch upon a new aspect of matters we have often considered from other angles.

Let us look back to the time when human beings began in the real sense to be citizens of the earth, when as beings of soul and spirit they came down to the earth, surrounded themselves with its forces and became earthly beings. If human beings had simply descended to the earth with the qualities inherent in their own nature, evolution would have taken quite a different course through the various epochs of culture. But having made the descent, human beings would have been obliged to establish a relationship with the surrounding world, to acquire earthly knowledge—I will not say through clairvoyance in the proper sense—but through instincts imbued with a certain measure of clairvoyance. The acquisition of this earthly knowledge would have been a very slow and gradual process and for long ages people would have remained ineffectual, childish beings. By our own time they would, it is true, have succeeded in developing a constitution of soul and body compatible with humanness, but they would never have reached the spiritual heights they have actually attained. That they were able to achieve this evolution in a way other than by passing through all the stages of childhood is due to the intervention in earthly evolution of the luciferic beings. We know from recent lectures that the Lucifer individuality himself incarnated in Asia in a certain epoch of pre-Christian times, and that the original pagan wisdom to which many historical data bear witness proceeded from this being. But the luciferic beings have from the very beginning been associated in some way with the evolution of humanity.

I beg you earnestly—although I know that such requests are of little avail-not to adopt a philistine attitude when mention is made of luciferic beings. Even among anthroposophists there is still the tendency to say: “That is certainly luciferic. At all costs let us avoid it, reject it!” But these things have to be considered in many different aspects and it must always be remembered that the whole of the old pagan wisdom emanated from a luciferic source. The subject is one that calls for deep and serious study.

The farther back we go in the evolution of humanity, the more do we find certain individuals who through the qualities attained in earlier incarnations were sufficiently mature to apprehend the treasures of wisdom possessed by the luciferic beings. Think, for example, of the seven Holy Rishis of ancient India. When Indians interpreted the wisdom of the Holy Rishis, they knew, if they had been initiated into these things, that the teachers of the Rishis were luciferic beings. For what the luciferic beings brought with them into earth evolution was, above all, the world of thought, of intellectualistic thought pervading culture, the world of reason in the highest sense of the word—the world of wisdom. And going back to the primeval origins of human existence, we find that the sources of pagan wisdom always lie with luciferic beings.

It may be asked: How is this possible? We must realize that human beings would have remained children had they not received from the Mysteries the constant instruction that emanated from luciferic beings. Those who possessed the knowledge and the inherited, primeval wisdom wherewith to foster the progress and education of humankind were not—like a modern philistine—fearful of receiving this wisdom from luciferic sources. They took upon themselves the obligation incumbent upon everyone to whom luciferic beings impart knowledge from spiritual realms. The obligation—for so it may be called, although such words do not always convey the exact meaning—was to use this luciferic, cosmic wisdom rightly, for the good of earth evolution. The difference between the “good” wisdom and the purely luciferic wisdom—which so far as content is concerned is exactly the same—is that the “good” wisdom is in hands other than those of the luciferic beings. That is the essential point. It is not a question of there being one wisdom that can be neatly packed away in some chamber of the soul and make a person virtuous! The wisdom of worlds is uniform, the only difference being whether it is in the hands of wise people who use it for good, whether it is in the hands of the Angeloi or Archangeloi, or whether it is in the hands of Lucifer and his hosts. In olden times the wisdom needed for the progress of humanity could be obtained only from a luciferic source; hence the initiates were obliged to receive it from that source and at the same time to take upon themselves the obligation not to yield to the aspirations of the luciferic beings.

Lucifer's intention was to convey the wisdom to humanity in such a way that it would induce people to abandon the path of earth evolution and take a path leading to a super-earthly sphere, a sphere aloof from the earth. The luciferic beings inculcated their wisdom into human beings but their desire was that it would make them turn away from the earth, without passing through earthly evolution. Lucifer wants to abandon the earth to its fate, to win humankind for a kingdom alien to the kingdom of Christ.

The sages of olden time who received the primeval wisdom from the hands of Lucifer had, as I said, to pledge themselves not to yield to his wishes but to use the wisdom for the good of earth evolution. And that, in essence, was what was accomplished through the pre-Christian Mysteries. If it be asked what it was that humanity received through these Mysteries, through the influence of the luciferic beings who, in postAtlantean times, still inspired certain personalities like the Rishis of India and sent their messengers to the earth—the answer is that human beings received the rudiments of what has developed in the course of evolution into the faculties of speech and of thinking. Speaking and thinking are, in their origins, luciferic, but were drawn away from the grip of Lucifer by the sages of old. If you are really intent upon fleeing, from Lucifer, then you must make up your minds to be dumb in the future, and not to think!

These things are part of the initiation science which must gradually come within the ken of humanity, although on account of the kind of education that has now been current for centuries in the civilized world, people shrink from such truths. The caricatured figure of Lucifer and Ahriman—the medieval devil—is constantly before their minds and they have been allowed to grow up in this philistine atmosphere for so long that even today they shudder at the thought of approaching treasures of wisdom that are intimately and deeply connected with evolution. It is much pleasanter to say: “If I protect myself from the devil, if I give myself to Christ with the simple-heartedness of a child, I shall be blessed, and my soul will find salvation.” But in its deep foundations, human life is by no means such a simple matter. And it is essential for the future of human evolution that these things we are now discussing shall not be withheld. It must be known that the art of speaking and the art of thinking have become part of evolution only because they were received through the mediation of Lucifer. The luciferic element can still be observed in thinking. Speech, which has for long ages been differentiated and adapted to earthly needs, has already been assailed by Ahriman. It is he who has brought about different tongues on earth. Whereas the luciferic tendency is always toward unification, the fundamental tendency of the ahrimanic principle is differentiation. What would thinking be if it were not luciferic?

If thinking were not luciferic, human beings on the earth would be like one whose thought was utterly non-luciferic, namely Goethe. Goethe was one of those who, in a certain respect, deliberately set out to confront and defy the luciferic powers. That, however, makes it essential to keep constant hold of the concrete, individual reality. The moment you generalize or unify—at that moment you are nearing luciferic thinking. If you were to contemplate each human individual, each single plant, each single animal, each single stone in itself alone, having in mind the one, single object, not classifying into genera and species, not generalizing in your thought—then you would be little prone to luciferic thinking. But anyone who was to attempt such a thing, even as a child, would never get beyond the lowest class in any modern school.

The fact of the matter is that the universal thinking implicit in pagan wisdom has gradually been exhausted. The human constitution is such that this luciferic principle of unification can no longer be of much real service to people on earth. This has been counteracted by the fact that the God-created nature of the human being has followed in the wake of earth evolution, has become related to, allied with the earth. And because this is so, through their own inherent nature, people are less allied with the luciferic element which always tends to draw them away from the earth.

But woe betide if humanity were simply to draw away from the luciferic element without putting something different in its place. That would bring nothing but evil. For then human beings would grow together with the earth, that is to say with the particular territory on earth where they are born; and cultural life would become completely specialized, completely differentiated. We can already see this tendency developing. It has taken root most markedly since the beginning of the nineteenth century; but the tendency to split up into smaller groups has been all too apparent as a result of the catastrophic world war. Chauvinism is more and more gaining the upper hand until it will finally lead people to split up to such an extent that at last a group will embrace only one single human being! Things could come to the point where individual human beings would again split into right and left, and be at war within themselves; left would be at loggerheads with right. Such tendencies are even now evident in the evolution of humankind. To combat this, a counterweight must be created; and this counterweight can only be created if, like the old wisdom inherent in paganism, a new wisdom, acquired by the free resolve and will of human beings, is infused into earthly culture. This new wisdom must again be Initiation wisdom.

And here we come to a chapter that must not be withheld from modern knowledge If, in the future, people were to do nothing themselves toward acquiring a new wisdom, then, without their consciousness, the whole of culture would become ahrimanic, and it would be easy for the influences issuing from Ahriman's incarnation to permeate all civilization on the earth. Precautions must therefore be taken in regard to the streams by which the ahrimanic form of culture is furthered. What would be the result if people were to follow the strong inclination they have today to let things drift on as they are, without understanding and guiding into right channels those streams which lead to an ahrimanic culture? As soon as Ahriman incarnates at the destined time in the West, the whole of culture would be impregnated with his forces. What else would come in his train? Through certain stupendous acts he would bring to humanity all the clairvoyant knowledge which until then can be acquired only by dint of intense labor and effort. People could live on as materialists, they could eat and drink—as much as may be left after the war!—and there would be no need for any spiritual efforts. The ahrimanic streams would continue their unimpeded course. When Ahriman incarnates in the West at the appointed time, he would establish a great occult school for the practice of magic arts of the greatest grandeur, and what otherwise can be acquired only by strenuous effort would be poured over humankind.

Let it never be imagined that Ahriman will appear as a kind of hoaxer, playing mischievous tricks on human beings. No, indeed! Lovers of ease who refuse to have anything to do with spiritual science would fall prey to his magic, for by means of these stupendous magic arts he would be able to make great numbers of human beings into seers—but in such a way that the clairvoyance of each individual would be strictly differentiated. What one person would see, a second and a third would not see. Confusion would prevail and in spite of being made receptive to clairvoyant wisdom, people would inevitably fall into strife on account of the sheer diversity of their visions. Ultimately, however, they would all be satisfied with their own particular vision, for each of them would be able to see into the spiritual world. In this way all culture on the earth would fall prey to Ahriman. Human beings would succumb to Ahriman simply through not having acquired by their own efforts what Ahriman is ready and able to give them. No more evil advice could be given than to say: “Stay just as you are! Ahriman will make all of you clairvoyant if you so desire. And you will desire it because Ahriman's power will be very great.” But the result would be the establishment of Ahriman's kingdom on earth and the overthrow of everything achieved hitherto by human culture; all the disastrous tendencies unconsciously cherished by humankind today would take effect.

Our concern is that the wisdom of the future—a clairvoyant wisdom—shall be rescued from the clutches of Ahriman. Again let it be repeated that there is only one book of wisdom, not two kinds of wisdom. The issue is whether this wisdom is in the hands of Ahriman or of Christ. It cannot come into the hands of Christ unless people fight for it. And they can only fight for it by telling themselves that by their own efforts they must assimilate the content of spiritual science before the time of Ahriman s appearance on earth.

That, you see, is the cosmic task of spiritual science. It consists in preventing knowledge from becoming—or remaining ahrimanic. A good way of playing into Ahriman s hands is to exclude everything of the nature of knowledge from denominational religion and to insist that simple faith is enough. If people cling to this simple faith, they condemn their soul to stagnation and then the wisdom that must be rescued from Ahriman cannot find entry. The point is not whether people do or do not simply receive the wisdom of the future but whether they work upon it; and those who do must take upon themselves the solemn duty of saving earthly culture for Christ, just as the ancient Rishis and initiates pledged themselves not to yield to Lucifer's proviso that humankind be enticed away from the earth.

The root of the matter is that for the wisdom of the future too, a struggle is necessary, a struggle similar to that waged against Lucifer by the ancient initiates through whose intermediary the faculties of speech and of thinking were transmitted to humanity. Just as it devolved upon the initiates of the primeval wisdom to wrest from Lucifer that which has become human reason, human intellect, so the insight which is to develop in the future into the inner realities of things must be wrested from the ahrimanic powers. Such are the issues—and these issues play strongly into life itself.

I recently read some notes written shortly before his death by one who was a friend of the anthroposophical movement. He had been wounded in the war and lay for a long time in hospital where, in the course of the operations performed on him, he had many a glimpse into the spiritual world. The last lines he wrote contain a remarkable passage, describing a vision which came to him not long before his death. In this last experience, the atmosphere around him became, as he expresses it, like dense granite, weighing upon his soul. Such an impression can be understood in the light of the knowledge that we have to battle for the wisdom of the future; for the ahrimanic powers do not allow this wisdom to be wrested from them without a struggle. Let it not be thought that wisdom can be attained through blissful visions. Real wisdom has to be acquired “in travail and suffering.” What I have just told you about the dying man is a very good picture of such suffering, for in this struggle for the wisdom of the future, one of the most frequent experiences is that the world is pressing in upon us, as though the air had suddenly frozen into granite. It is possible to know why this is so. We have only to remember that it is the endeavor of the ahrimanic powers to reduce the earth to a state of complete rigidification. Their victory would be won if they succeeded in bringing earth, water, and air into this rigidified state. Were that to happen, the earth could not again acquire the Saturn warmth from which it proceeded and which must be regained in the Vulcan epoch; and to prevent this is the aim of the ahrimanic powers. A trend which has an important bearing on this is the lack of enthusiasm in human souls at the present time for the content of spiritual science. If this lack of enthusiasm were to persist, the first impulse toward the rigidification of the earth would emanate from human souls themselves, from their apathy, their indolence and love of ease. If you reflect that this rigidification is the aim of the Ahrimanic powers, you will not be surprised that compression, the feeling that life is becoming granite-like, is one of the experiences that must be undergone in the struggle for the wisdom of the future.

But remember that people today can prepare themselves to look into the spiritual world by apprehending with their healthy human reason what spiritual science has to offer. The effort applied in study that lets itself be guided by healthy human reason can be part of the struggle which leads eventually to vision of the spiritual world. Many tendencies will have to be overcome, but for people of today the fundamental difficulty is that when they want to understand spiritual science they have to battle against their own granite-like skulls. If the human skull were less hard, less granite-like, spiritual science would be far more widely accepted at the present time. Infinitely more effective than any philistine avoidance of the ahrimanic powers would be to battle against Ahriman through sincere, genuine study of the content of spiritual science. For then human beings would gradually come to perceive spiritually the danger that must otherwise befall the earth physically, of being rigidified into granite-like density.

And so it must be emphasized that the wisdom of the future can be attained only through privations, travail, and pain; it must be attained by enduring the attendant sufferings of body and soul for the sake of the salvation of human evolution. Therefore the unwavering principle should be never to let oneself be deterred by suffering from the pursuit of this wisdom. So far as the external life of humankind is concerned, what is needed is that in the future the danger of the frozen rigidification—which, to begin with, would manifest in the moral sphere—shall be removed from the earth. But this can happen only if people envisage spiritually, feel inwardly and counter with their will, what would otherwise become physical reality.

At bottom, it is simply due to faint heartedness that people today are unwilling to approach spiritual science. They are not conscious of this, but it is so, nevertheless; they are fearful of the difficulties that will have to be encountered on every hand. When people come to spiritual science they so often speak of the need for “upliftment.” By this they usually mean a sense of comfort and inner well-being. But that cannot be offered, for it would simply lull them into stupor and draw them away from the light they need. What is essential is that from now onward, knowledge of the driving forces of evolution must not be withheld from humankind. It must be realized that in very truth the human being is balanced as it were between the luciferic and the ahrimanic powers, and that the Christ has become a companion of human beings, leading them, first away from the battle with Lucifer, and then into the battle with Ahriman.

The evolution of humanity must be understood in the light of these facts. One who presents secrets of cosmic existence in the way that must be done in spiritual science is often laughed to scorn, for example about the use of the principle of the number seven—as you will find in my book Theosophy. But you will notice that people do not laugh when the rainbow is described as sevenfold, or the scale—tonic, second, third, and so on, up to the octave which is a repetition of the tonic. In the physical world these things are accepted, but not when it comes to the spiritual. What must be regained here is something that was implicit in the old pagan wisdom. A last glimmer of this pagan wisdom in regard to a matter like the principle of the number seven is to be found in the Pythagorean school—which was actually a Mystery school. You can read about Pythagoras today in any text book; but you will never find any understanding of the reason why he based the world order on number. The reason was because in the ancient wisdom everything was based on number. And a last glimmer of insight into the wisdom contained in numbers still survived when Pythagoras founded his school. Other branches of the ancient wisdom survived much longer, some indeed until the sixth and seventh centuries of the Christian era. Up to that time many true things about the higher worlds are said in the sphere of what is called natural philosophy. And then, gradually, this primeval intelligence in humankind ran dry—if I may use this expression.

Let us picture some orthodox representative of modern learning sitting in a corner and saying: “What nonsense these anthroposophists talk! What do they mean by asserting that the primeval wisdom has run dry? Wonderful, epoch-making results have been achieved, above all during the last few centuries, and are still being achieved. There may have been a temporary halt in 1914, but at any rate up to then marvels were accomplished!” But if you look candidly and without bias at what has been achieved most recently, you will arrive at the following conclusion. Admittedly, masses of notes have been collected—masses of scientific and historical data. This kind of collecting has become the fashion. Countless experiments have been made and described. But now ask yourselves: Are there any fundamentally new ideas in all that this modern age has produced? New ideas, new conceptions were given by individual spirits like Goethe but Goethe has not been understood. If you study recent findings of natural science or historical research, it will be clear to you that, with respect to ideas, there is nothing new. Certainly, Darwin made journeys, described many things he saw on these journeys and gathered it all into an idea. But if you grasp the idea of evolution in its details, as idea, you will find it in the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras. So too you will find the fundamental principles of modern natural science in Aristotle-that is to say in the pre-Christian era. These ideas are treasures of the primeval wisdom—springing from a luciferic source. But the primeval wisdom has run dry, and something new in the form of insight into the spiritual world must be attained. A certain willingness on the part of humanity is necessary to undertake the labor entailed by really new ideas. And humankind today is sorely in need of new ideas, especially concerning the realm and the life of the soul. Fundamentally, all that science tells us in regard to the soul amounts to nothing more than a collection of words. What is taught in the lecture halls about thinking, feeling, and willing is simply a matter of words thrown out spasmodically. It amounts to little more than the sounds of the words. There is hardly the beginning of an attempt to take seriously anything that is really new.

In this connection one may have curious experiences! Some time ago I was invited to speak to a “Schopenhauer Society” in Dresden. I thought to myself: Yes—a Schopenhauer society—that must surely be something out of the ordinary! So I tried to show how the contrast between sleeping and waking, between waking up and going to sleep is to be understood in the psychological sense, how the soul is involved. I spoke of something I have recently mentioned to you, namely, that a zero-point is there at the moments of falling asleep and waking up, that sleep is not merely a cessation of the waking state, but bears the same relation to the waking state as debts bear to assets.

If you were to search through modern psychology you would not find the slightest trace of any attempt to get to the root of these far-reaching matters. After the lecture, in a “discussion” as it was called, certain learned members of the audience got up to speak. One of these philosophers made a really splendid statement, to the following effect. He said: “What we have been hearing could not possibly be a concern of serious science. Serious science has other, very different matters with which to occupy itself. We can know nothing of what has just been put before us so plausibly; none of it is a concern of human cognition. Moreover we have known it all for a long time.” In other words, therefore: what we cannot know is something with which we have long been familiar!

Now contradictions do exist, but contradictions of this kind exist only in the heads of present-day scholars! If someone says that certain things cannot be known, that they are not objects of human cognition—well and good, that is his opinion. But if he says in the same breath that he has known all about them for a long time, then there is an obvious contradiction. Erudite scholars of today often have a habit of placing two diametrically opposite opinions side by side in this way.

This kind of thinking has a great deal to do with the present situation. An individual—thanks to the Divine Powers and also, be it remembered, to Lucifer and Ahriman—is often able to form a fairly sound judgment of these things; but when it comes to presenting them to the world—that is a different matter altogether. Many people are willing to embark upon the study of spiritual science provided they find a society of rather sectarian tendencies in which they can take refuge. But when they have to face the world and present something of which the world itself possesses evidence, everything is apt to go up in smoke and they become veritable philistines. And then Ahriman's progress is greatly furthered.