The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Although the form of man, in those ancient times which have been already described, was very different from his present form, yet, if we go still further back in the history of humanity, we find conditions differing even much more widely. For it was only in the course of time that the forms of man and woman arose from an earlier, original form in which the human being was neither the one nor the other, but both at the same time. He who would gain for himself a conception of those primeval ages must free himself entirely from those customary ideas which are drawn from present conditions. The times to which we are looking back lie somewhat before the middle of that epoch called in the preceding extracts the Lemurian. The human body then consisted of soft plastic matter; and the rest of the earthly forms also were both soft and plastic. Compared with its later firmness, the earth was still in a bubbling and more fluid state. The human soul, being embodied in that matter, could then adapt itself in a much greater degree than later. For the clothing of the soul in a male or female body is due to the fact that the one or the other is forced upon it by the development of external nature. So long as matter had not become firm, the soul could enforce its own laws upon it. It moulded the body in its own likeness; but when matter had grown dense the soul had to suit itself to the laws stamped on that matter by external nature. So long as the soul was master of matter, it formed its body neither male nor female, but gave to it qualities common to both. For the soul is at once both male and female. In itself it bears these two natures. Its male element is related to that which we call Will, its female element to what is designated Imagination. The external formation of the earth has led the body to adopt a one-sided evolution. The male body has assumed a form determined by the element of Will; the female, on the contrary, bears rather the impress of Imagination. Thus it is that the bisexual male-female soul inhabits a unisexual male or female body. And so the body had in the course of evolution assumed so decided a form through the influence of external earth-forces that thereafter it was no longer possible for the soul to pour its entire force into this body. It had to retain within itself something of the force that belonged to it, and could allow only a part to flow into the body.

When we study the Âkâshic Records we see that, at a period in the far past, human forms appear soft, plastic, and quite unlike those of later times. They still retain in equal measure the nature of man and woman. As time passes and matter densifies, the human body appears in two forms, one of which resembles the man's later form, the other the woman's. Before the appearance of these differentiated forms, every human being could of itself bring forth another. The fructification was no outer process, but one which took place within the human body itself. When the body took on a male or a female form, it lost the possibility of self-fructification. Co-operation with another body was necessary in order to produce a new human being.

The separation of the sexes appears when the earth attains a certain condition of density. The density of matter partly checks the power of reproduction, and that portion of the reproductive force which is still effective requires completion from outside by the opposite force in another human being. But the soul must retain within itself a part of its earlier force, in man as well as in woman. It cannot expend this part in the outer corporeal world. Now this portion of his force is directed inwards in man. It cannot appear outwardly; therefore it is set free for the use of inner organs—and here comes an important point in the evolution of mankind. Before it, that which we call mind—the ability to think—could have found no place in man, for this capacity would have had no organ through which to act. The soul turned its whole force outwards to the building up of the body. But now the soul-force, which cannot find an object for its activity without, can unite itself with the mind-force; and, by such union, those organs of the body are evolved which, at a later period, make man a thinking being. Thus could man direct a part of the force that in earlier times he had turned to the bringing forth of his kind, to the perfecting of his own being. The force by means of which mankind formed for itself a thinking brain is the same force by which, in ancient times, man fructified himself. Thought is attained by unisexuality. Since man no longer fructifies himself, but the opposite sexes fructify one another, they can turn a part of their productive force inwards and become thinking beings. Thus the male and female bodies respectively present externally an imperfect picture of the soul, but because of this they become inwardly more perfect beings.

Very slowly and gradually this change is accomplished in man. Little by little the later single-sexed human forms appear side by side with those of the double sex.

It is again a kind of fructification which takes place in man on his becoming a thinking being. The inner organs which can be built up by the superfluous soul-force are fructified by the mind. The soul is in itself two-fold—male-female, and so in ancient times it also formed its body. At a later period it can only give to its body a form that can co-operate with another externally; for itself it retains the ability to co-operate with the mind. From this time forward man is fructified from without for the exterior part,—from within and for the interior part of his nature by the mind. It may be said, then, that the male body has a female soul, the female body a male soul. This inner one-sidedness in man is now balanced by the fructification of the mind. The one-sidedness is removed. The male soul in the female body and the female soul in the male body both become bisexual again through fructification by the mind. Thus do man and woman differ in their outer form, and, within, the one-sidedness of the soul unites itself in both sexes to a harmonious whole. Within, mind and soul melt into unity. The mind affects as female the male soul in woman, and thus makes it male-female; it works upon the female soul in man, as male, and so forms it female-male. The bisexuality in man has withdrawn from the outer world, where it existed in pre-Lemurian times, to his inner self.

We see that the higher inner man has nothing to do with male and female. Nevertheless the inner uniformity comes from a male soul in a woman and in like manner from a female soul in a man. The union with the mind brings uniformity at last; but the fact that before the appearance of this uniformity there exists difference, this fact contains a mystery of human nature. The knowledge of this mystery is of great importance to all occult science, for it is the key to weighty problems of life. For the present it is forbidden to raise further the veil that covers this mystery.

Thus did physical man develop from the bisexual body to the unisexual,—to the separation into man and woman. And because of this, man has become a being endowed with mentality, such as he now is. But it must not be imagined that there were not intelligent beings in connection with the earth even before this period. If we search the Âkâshic Records, we certainly see that in the first Lemurian period the physical man of the future was a very different being from that which we call man to-day. He was unable to connect any sense-perceptions with thoughts: he did not think. His life was one of instinct. His soul expressed itself simply in instincts, desires, animal wishes, and so on. His consciousness was dreamy; he lived in a kind of stupor. But there were other beings in the midst of this humanity. These were, of course, also bisexual; for with the prevailing conditions in the evolution of the earth at that time, no male or female human body could be brought forth. The external conditions were still wanting. But there were other beings who, in spite of their double sex, were able to acquire knowledge and wisdom. This was possible, because these beings had undergone an entirely different evolution at a still more remote period of the past. It had become possible for their souls to fertilize themselves with mind, without waiting for the development of the inner organs of the human physical body. It is only by the help of the brain that contemporary man is able to ponder upon those impressions which he receives from outside and through the senses. It is the evolution of the soul of man that caused this. The human soul had to wait till there was a brain to co-operate with the mind. The soul would have remained mindless had it not taken this indirect path. It would have remained at the stage of dream-consciousness.

It was different with the superhuman beings already mentioned. The soul of such beings had at earlier stages developed soul-organs which required nothing physical to enable them to unite themselves with the mind. Their knowledge and wisdom were supersensually acquired. Such knowledge is called intuitive. It is not until a later stage of his evolution that the man of the present attains to this intuition, which enables him to come into touch with mind, apart from the assistance of the senses. He must reach it indirectly through the material senses. This indirect course is called the descent of the human soul into matter, or popularly “The Fall” (into sin). Owing to an earlier evolution of a different kind, these superhuman beings did not need to undergo this descent into matter. As the soul of such beings had already attained a higher stage, their consciousness was not dreamy but inwardly luminous, and the comprehension of knowledge and wisdom by them was clairvoyance which needed no senses and no organs of thought. The Wisdom by which the world was built streamed directly into their soul.

Thus were they able to be the leaders of young humanity, still sunk in apathy. They were the bearers of an Ancient Wisdom, to comprehend which man must struggle upwards by the roundabout path described. They differed from what is called “man” by the fact that Wisdom poured out its rays on them “from above” as a free gift, just as the sunlight streams down on us. It was not so with “man.” He had to acquire wisdom for himself by the labour of the senses and of the organ of thought. It did not at first come to him as a free gift. He must desire it. Only when the longing for wisdom is alive in man does he strive to attain it for himself through his senses and thought-organ. So a new impulse must awaken in the soul,—desire, the longing for knowledge. The human soul could not possess this longing in its earlier stages. Its impulses were only towards embodiment in that which took on an outer form, in that in which it lived as a dreamy life, but not towards the knowledge of an outer world, not towards understanding. With the separation of the sexes first appeared the desire for knowledge.

It was just because the superhuman beings did not desire it, that wisdom became known to them by the path of clairvoyance. They waited till wisdom streamed into them, as we wait for the sunshine that we cannot create by night, but which must come to us of itself in the morning.

The longing for knowledge is evoked in this way, in order that the soul may build up inner organs (the brain, etc.) by which it comes into possession of knowledge. This result follows, because part of the soul-force works no longer from without but from within. But the superhuman beings who have not accomplished this separation of their soul-forces direct their entire soul-energy outwards.

They have thus also at their service, for the outer fructification by the mind, that force which man turns inward for the building up of his organs of knowledge. Now that force by means of which man turns outwards to unite himself with another is Love. The superhuman beings directed their whole love outwards to let the wisdom of the worlds stream into their souls. But man can turn outward only a part. Man became sensual, and thus his love grew sensual too. He withdrew from the outer world a part of his being which he then directed towards his inner building. And this produced what is called “selfishness.” When man became man or woman in his physical body he could only surrender a part of his being; with the other part he separated himself from the surrounding world. He became selfish. And his outer activity, as well as his striving for inward development, became selfish. He loved, because he desired, and he thought, because again he desired,—in this case, knowledge. In contrast to a childish and selfish humanity stood the leaders in their all-loving, unselfish natures. The soul which in them inhabits neither a male nor a female body is itself male-female. It loves without desire. The innocent soul of man loved thus before the separation of the sexes; nevertheless, it could not at that time know, for the very reason that it was still at a lower stage—in dream-consciousness. Thus too does the soul of the higher beings love; nevertheless, these beings can know in spite of this and on account of their advanced development. “Man” must pass through selfishness in order once more to reach unselfishness at a higher stage, but this time with an absolutely clear consciousness.

This, then, was the task of the superhuman beings, of the great leaders,—to stamp upon the young humanity their own character, that of love. They could do so only with that part of the soul-force which was directed outwards. Thus arose sensual love. And hence the latter accompanies the soul's activity in a male or female body. Sensual love became the force for human physical development. This love brings man and woman together in so far as they are physical beings. On this love rests the progress of physical humanity. It was over this love only that the so-called superhuman beings had power. That part of the human soul-force which turns inwards and must gain knowledge by the indirect path of sensuality withdraws itself from the power of those superhuman beings. They themselves had never descended to the development of corresponding inner organs. They could clothe the outward impulse in love, because they possessed as their very essence the love that was outwardly active. Thus there was a gulf between them and the young humanity. They could implant love in man, at first in a sensual form; knowledge they could not give, because their own knowledge had never taken the by-path through those inner organs which man was now developing in himself. They could speak no language which a being with brains could understand.

Now the said inner organs of man were, it is true, not ripe for contact with mind till that stage of earthly existence was reached which lies in the middle of the Lemurian period; but once before, at a much earlier period of development, they had been cultivated into an imperfect first beginning. For the soul had already passed through physical embodiments in times long gone by. It had lived, not indeed on the earth, but on other celestial bodies in densified matter. More exact information on this subject cannot be given till later. Only so much as this may now be said,—the beings of earth had formerly inhabited another planet, and, according to the conditions existing on it, they had developed to the stage at which they stood when they reached the earth. They laid aside the matter of the preceding planet like a garment, and became pure soul-germs at the stage of development reached then,—capable of sensation, of feeling, and so on; in short, able to lead that dreamlike life which still belonged to them in the first stages of their earth existence. But the superhuman beings spoken of, the leaders in the domain of love, had also lived on the preceding planets, and were even there so perfect that they no longer needed to descend in order to develop the first beginnings of those inner organs.

But there were other beings, not so far advanced as these Leaders of Love, but who might rather be counted as men on the preceding planet, who nevertheless outstripped mankind at that time. They were thus indeed, at the beginning of the earth formation, further advanced than man, but nevertheless still at the stage at which knowledge must be acquired through inner organs. These beings were in a peculiar position. They were too far advanced to pass through the physical human body, either male or female, and yet not far enough to be able to act by means of perfect clairvoyance, as were the Leaders of Love. They could not be, as yet, Beings of Love; and at the same time they could no longer be “men.” So it was only possible for them as semi-superhuman beings to continue their own evolution, but with the help of man. They could converse with the beings with brains in a language these understood. By this means the human soul-force directed inwards was aroused, and they were enabled to unite themselves to knowledge and wisdom. It was indeed only thus that wisdom of a human sort came to the earth. The “semi-superhuman” beings spoken of were able to absorb this human wisdom, and thus reach that perfection which they themselves still lacked. They thus became the creators of human wisdom. For this reason they were called “light bringers” (Lucifer). Thus had infant humanity leaders of two kinds—Beings of Love and Beings of Wisdom,—human nature was yoked between Love and Wisdom, when it assumed its present form on the earth. By the Beings of Love it was stimulated to physical development, by the Beings of Wisdom to the perfection of its inner self. In consequence of its physical development, mankind advanced from generation to generation, forming new tribes and races; through its inner development the individuals increased in inward perfection; they became scholars, sages, artists, technical scientists, etc. From race to race physical humanity advances; each race throughout its physical evolution transfers, to the following one, such of its qualities as are perceptible to the senses. Here the law of heredity reigns. The children bear the physical characteristics of their fathers. Beyond this lies an evolution towards perfection of mind and soul which can only be accomplished by the development of the soul itself. And here we are confronted with the law of the evolution of the soul within the bounds of earthly existence.

A description of the constitution of man before the division into male and female sexes must now be given. The body consisted then of a soft, plastic mass. Over it the will-power was far more potent than was the case with mankind subsequently. On his separation from the parent being, man appeared, it is true, as an organism with members, but incomplete. His organs continued their further development apart from the parent body. Much of that which at a later period ripened within the maternal organism was then brought to perfection by an external force akin to our will-power. The parent's fostering care was necessary to promote such a ripening from without. Man brought with him into the world certain organs which he afterwards discarded. Others, still quite imperfect at his first appearance, completed their development. The whole process permits of a comparison with liberation from an egg-form and the casting off of an outer covering; but we must here not think of a hard and egg-like shell.

Man's body was warm-blooded. This must be distinctly stated, for in former times it was otherwise, as will afterwards be shown. The process of maturing apart from the mother-entity was accomplished under the influence of increased warmth, conveyed in like manner from without. But by no means must we imagine a hatching-out of the egg-shaped man—so named for the sake of brevity. The conditions of warmth and fire on the earth were different then from those of later times. By means of his own force a man could constrain and confine within a certain space fire or warmth. In short, he could concentrate heat. He was thus in a position to supply warmth to the young creature that required it for his development.

The organs of motion were at that time man's most highly developed organs. The sense-organs of to-day were then quite unevolved. The most advanced were the organ of hearing and the organs for the perception of cold and heat (the sense of feeling); still far behind was the perception of light. Man was born with the senses of hearing and of touch, and then, somewhat later, the light-perception was evolved.

All that is stated here refers to the latest period before the separation of the sexes. The latter proceeded slowly and gradually. For a long time before its actual appearance, mankind began to develop in such a way that one individual was born with more of the masculine, the other with more of the feminine character. Nevertheless, the characteristics of the opposite sex were present in every individual, so that spontaneous generation was possible, though not at all times, for it was dependent upon the influences of external conditions at certain seasons of the year. In diverse matters mankind as a whole depended to a large extent on such external circumstances. For that reason he had to regulate all his undertakings in accordance with such outer conditions; in accordance, for example, with the course of sun and moon. This regulation did not, however, take place consciously, in the present sense of the term, but was carried out in a manner which must rather be called instinctive, a term indicating the mental life of the man of that time.

This mental life cannot be described as an actual inner life. Bodily and mental activities and qualities were not as yet rigidly separated from one another. The outer life of Nature was still experienced by the soul. It was above all on the sense of hearing that every single vibration from without made a powerful impression. Every quiver in the air, every movement in his surroundings was “heard.” The wind and the water expressed in their motions what to man was an “eloquent language.” It was a perception of the mysterious weaving and working in Nature which thus penetrated man. And this weaving and working resounded again in his soul. His activity was an echo of these influences. He transformed the perception of sound into his own activity. He lived amid those surgings of sound, and brought them into expression by means of his own will. In like manner was he impelled to accomplish all his daily work. To a somewhat less degree, indeed, he was affected by the energy playing upon his feelings. Nevertheless these too acted an important part. The surroundings were sensed by him within his own body and he acted accordingly. By the activities of his feelings he knew when and how he ought to work. By these he knew where to settle, or recognised the dangers threatening his life, and so avoided them. He regulated the taking of sustenance accordingly.

Altogether different from that of later times was the course taken by the rest of his mental life. Pictures lived in his soul, but not as representations of external things. When, for example, the man moved from a colder into a warmer place, there arose in his soul a definite colour-picture, but this colour-picture had nothing to do with any external object. It sprang from an inner force akin to the will. Pictures like these continually filled the soul. The whole can only be compared with the rising and falling dream-visions of man. Only at that time the pictures were not unregulated, but in conformity with laws; and for that reason we must not speak, at this stage of humanity, of a dream-consciousness, but rather of a picture-consciousness. In the main it was colour-pictures with which this consciousness was filled, but these were not the only kind. Thus man wandered through the world, experiencing its events by means of his senses of hearing and feeling, but in his inner life this world was reflected in pictures, very unlike those existing in the outer world. Pleasure and pain were bound up with these soul-pictures in a much smaller degree than is the case with man's ideas to-day, which reflect his perceptions in the world outside. Doubtless one picture caused him pleasure, another disgust; the one hatred, and the other love; but these sensations bore a much fainter character. On the other hand strong feelings were produced by something else. Man was then much more agile, much more active than later. Everything in his surroundings, as well as the pictures in his soul, stirred him to activity, to movement. Now when his activity, unhindered, had free play, he experienced a sensation of well-being; when, however, this activity was checked in any direction, he was overcome by unhappiness and discomfort. The absence or presence of opposition to his will determined the content of his life of feeling, his pleasure and his pain. And this pleasure or this pain discharged itself again in his own soul as a living world of pictures. Clear, bright, beautiful pictures lived within him when he was able to expand unhindered; gloomy and misshapen were those which appeared in his soul when his movements were hampered.

So far the average man has been described. In the case of those who had developed into a kind of superhuman state, the inner life was different. With them the soul-life was not of this instinctive character. What they perceived through their senses of hearing and of feeling were Nature's deeper secrets, and these they could consciously interpret. In the roaring of the wind, in the rustling of the trees, the laws and the wisdom of Nature were disclosed; and in their soul-pictures these were not mere reflections of an outer world, but images of the spiritual powers in the world. It was not the things of sense which they perceived, but spiritual intelligences. If the average man, for example, experienced a sensation of fear, a hideous sinister picture would arise in his soul. The superhuman being received by means of such pictures information, revelation from the spiritual beings of the world. The processes of Nature did not appear to him as they do to the naturalist of to-day, dependent on lifeless natural laws, but rather as the deeds of spiritual beings. The outer reality did not as yet exist, for there were no outer senses, but to the higher beings the inner reality revealed itself. The spirit poured its rays into them as the sunlight streams into the physical eye of the man of to-day. In these beings was knowledge in its fullest sense, that which is called intuitive knowledge. There was no such thing as combining and speculating among them, but a direct contemplation of the working of spiritual beings. These superhuman individualities could thus absorb directly, into their wills, communications coming from the spiritual world. Consciously they led the others. They received their mission from the spiritual world and acted in accordance with it.

Now when the time arrived at which the sexes separated, these beings naturally considered it their task to influence the new life in conformity with their mission. The regulation of sexual life originated with them. All arrangements which had to do with the generation of mankind had their source in them. In this they acted with perfect consciousness, but the other human beings were sensible of the impulse only as an instinct implanted in them. Sexual love was implanted in man by direct thought-transference; and all its expressions were at first of the noblest kind. Everything in this domain which has taken on an ugly character dates from a later period, when man had become more independent, and when he had sullied a desire originally pure. In these early times there was no such thing as a satisfaction of sexual desire for its own sake. Everything then was a service of sacrifice for the continuance of human existence. Generation was regarded as a sacred thing, as a service which man owed to the world, and sacrificial priests were the leaders and rulers in this domain.

Of another kind were the influences of the semi-superhuman beings. The latter were not developed to the stage at which they could receive the revelations of the spiritual world in all their purity. In their soul-pictures there arose besides the impressions of the spiritual world the activities also of the world of sense. Those who were in the fullest sense superhuman beings had no sensation of either pleasure or pain from the external world. They abandoned themselves entirely to the revelations of the spiritual powers. Wisdom flowed into them as light flows into the creatures of sense. Their will was directed towards nothing else but to action in accordance with this wisdom, and in action of this kind lay their highest pleasure. Wisdom, Will, and Activity composed their very being. It was otherwise with the semi-superhuman beings. They felt the desire to receive impressions from without, and connected pleasure with the satisfaction of this desire, disappointment with its lack. They were thus distinguishable from the superhuman beings. For the latter, impressions from without were nothing more than confirmation of spiritual revelations. They might behold the outer world and receive nothing more than a reflection of that which they had already received through the spirit. The semi-superhuman beings experienced something new to them, and on that account they were able to be the leaders of mankind, when the latter began to change the mere pictures in the soul into images, into representations of outer objects. This happened when a part of the earlier human generative force turned inwards and when beings possessing a brain were evolved. For with the brain man also developed the capacity to change external sense-impressions into mind-conceptions. It must be said, therefore, that man was impelled by semi-superhuman beings to turn his soul towards the external world of sense. It was, indeed, denied him to expose his own soul-pictures directly to pure spiritual influences. The ability to generate his kind was implanted in him as an instinctive impulse by the superhuman beings. Mentally he would have had to lead a sort of dream-existence at first, had not the semi-superhuman beings interfered. Swayed by them, his soul-pictures were directed to the world outside. He became a being self-conscious in the world of sense. And thus man achieved the ability to guide his actions consciously and according to his perceptions in the world of sense. Once he had acted from a kind of instinct, under the sway of his external surroundings and the energizing forces playing upon him from higher individualities. Now he began to follow the urgings, the allurements, of his own conceptions. And with this the free will of mankind appeared in the world. That was the beginning of “Good and Evil.”

Before advancing further in this direction something must be said about man's environment on the earth. Side by side with man there existed animals as well, which according to their kind were at the same stage of development as he was. In accordance with our present conceptions they would be counted as reptiles. Besides these there were lower forms of the animal world. Now there was an essential difference between man and the animals. On account of his still plastic body, man could only live in those regions of the earth which had not as yet reached the densest material form, and in these regions animals possessing a like plastic body lived with him. In other regions, however, animals lived which had already dense bodies and which had also already developed unisexuality and their sense organs. Whence they came will be shown later. They could develop no farther because their bodies had taken on the denser matter too soon. Some species among them have disappeared, some have developed further after their kind into the present forms. Man was able to reach higher forms because he remained in those regions which at that time suited his structure. On that account his body remained so flexible and soft that he was able to single out of himself those organs which were capable of fructification by the mind. His external body had then advanced so far that it could densify and become a protecting sheath for the finer mental organs. But all human bodies were not so far developed. Those that were so advanced were few. These were first of all vivified by the mind. Others were not vivified. Had the mind entered the latter as well, it would only have been able partially to evolve, because of the imperfect inner organs. And so these human personalities had for the time being to continue their development as a kind of mindless creature. A third kind had proceeded so far that feeble mental impulses could make themselves felt. These stood between the other two kinds. Their mental activity remained dull. They had to be led by higher mental powers. Between these three kinds were all possible grades of transition. Further development was now only possible if one part of mankind should educate itself more highly at the cost of another part. First of all, the absolutely mindless had to be sacrificed. An intermingling with them for the purpose of propagation would only have dragged the more advanced down to their level. And so all who had received the mind principle were singled out from among them. Therefore they fell more and more to the level of animality. Thus, side by side with mankind, animals resembling man evolved themselves further.

Man left, as it were, a portion of his brothers behind him on the path, so that he might himself mount higher. This process was, however, by no means at an end here. Those men also of dull mentality, who stood rather higher, could only advance further by being drawn into association with higher beings and by separating themselves from the less mentally gifted. Only by these means could they develop bodies afterwards suited for the reception of the entire human intelligence. Not until after the lapse of a certain time had physical evolution advanced so far that, in this direction, a sort of pause set in, during which all lying beyond a fixed limit belonged to the human domain. The conditions of life on the earth had meantime so changed that a further rejection would have resulted in the production, not of animal-like beings, but of such as were not even fit to live. But what was thrust down into a state of animality has either died out or lives on in the various higher animals. In such therefore we must recognize creatures which had to remain behind, at an earlier stage of human development. Only they have not retained the same form which they had at the time of their separation, but have degenerated from a higher to a lower type. Thus monkeys are retrograde human beings of a bygone age. Just as man was at one time less perfect than he is to-day, so were these at one time more perfect than at present. And that which remained within the domain of man has undergone a like process, within its own limits. In many a savage tribe we may see the degraded descendants of human forms which were at one time more exalted. These have not sunk to the level of the brute, but only to that of the savage.

That which in man is eternal is the mind. It has been shown at what period the mind entered the body. Before that time the mind belonged to other regions. It could not unite itself with the body till the latter had attained a certain stage of development. Only when there is a perfect comprehension of the way in which this union took place can the meaning of birth and death be understood, or the character of the everlasting mind become known.

The observations of the Âkâshic Record, which will be described in the following pages, date from a period immediately preceding the incidents related in the previous chapter. In view of the materialistic tendency of thought at the present day, the risk attending the publication of the following facts is even greater than that incurred by the descriptions given in the preceding chapters. One is so liable in these days, when dealing with matters of this kind, to be dubbed fantastic, or accused of groundless speculation, that nothing but the conviction that the information we offer with regard to spiritual experience is true and accurate could induce us to publish these statements, knowing, as we do only too well, that any one who is versed in the teachings of Physical Science, as accepted by the present generation, will be unable even to approach the matter in a serious attitude of mind. Nothing is herein stated, but what has been carefully tested according to the methods employed by Spiritual Science; and all we ask of the ordinary scientist is that he shall accord to the student of the Higher Science the same tolerance as the latter shows to the mode of thought of Physical Science. (See my Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert, where I think I have shown my appreciation of the views held by materialistic Science.)

Nevertheless, for the benefit of any who may be sympathetically inclined towards the teachings of the Higher Science, I would add a further special remark with reference to the present expositions: we shall here touch upon matters of very great significance, pertaining to an age now long past, matters which, portrayed by the Records of Âkâsha, it is by no means an easy task to decipher. The writer, indeed, makes no claim on blind faith; he merely sets forth the results of investigations on which the utmost care has been bestowed, and any correction, if based on a practical knowledge of such matters, would be welcomed. The signs of the times are such as to impress him with a sense of duty, nay, urgency, in making known these events in the evolution of mankind. Moreover, we shall first have to sketch briefly an extensive period of existence, in order to gain at the outset a good general idea. Many things, therefore, which are now merely indicated, will receive a more detailed exposition in later chapters.

It is, however, difficult to translate the inscriptions of the Âkâshic Records into everyday language. It were easier to decipher the occult language of symbolical signs used in occult schools, but this is not yet permitted in our time. The reader is therefore begged to give a hearing to much that may seem obscure and hard to understand, to make a valiant endeavour to grasp their meaning, as the author, on his part, has striven to devise a mode of interpretation capable of being understood by all. The trouble expended in mastering many a difficult passage will be rewarded by the insight gained into the profound mysteries, the momentous problems of humanity herein revealed. These Âkâshic Records—which, for the occult investigator, are as much an undeniable reality as mountains and rivers are for the physical eye—constitute for man the basis of a true knowledge of self. An error of perception is, of course, as possible for the one as for the other.

It must be remembered that the present chapter relates only to the evolution of man. As a matter of course, the other kingdoms of Nature, the mineral, the plant, and the animal, are evolving side by side with humanity, and these other evolutions will be dealt with in future chapters. In these we shall discuss certain other subjects destined to illumine and to render more comprehensible the details given concerning man's evolution. On the other hand, we shall not be able to study the evolution of the other terrestrial kingdoms from the occult standpoint until the gradual development of man has been shown.

When we retrace still further the earth's evolutionary history—further back even than we have done in the foregoing pages—we find our celestial globe composed of ever finer conditions of matter. The matter which later became solid was, at a previous stage, liquid; before that, gaseous and of the nature of vapour; while at a still remoter period we find it in its finest form, that is to say, as ether. The decrease of temperature, however, caused the gradual solidification of matter.

In our present studies we shall go back to the time when our earthly dwelling-place was composed of matter in its finest etheric state. In that epoch of the earth's evolution man began his earthly career. In earlier times he had lived in other worlds, which will be the subject of study elsewhere. [See An Outline Of Occult Science, by Rudolf Steiner, Ph.D.] We will here only say a word or two about the existence which immediately preceded his earth-life. It was what we should call an astral or spiritual world, peopled with beings who had no outer, that is to say, no physical, corporeal existence. Neither had man. He had by that time perfected the picture-consciousness, or dream-consciousness, which was described in a foregoing chapter. He possessed feelings and desires, but all confined in a soul-body: a human being at that stage would only have been visible to clairvoyant sight.

It is true that the more highly evolved human beings of that period possessed such sight, though it was of a rather vague and dreamy description; it was not self-conscious clairvoyance. These astral beings are, in a certain sense, man's ancestors; for what to-day we call “Man” contains an indwelling, self-conscious Spirit. This Spirit became united to the being which descended from that ancestor about the middle of the Lemurian phase of civilisation. (This union of the Soul-Ancestor with the Physical-Ancestor has already been mentioned in earlier chapters. The subject will be taken up again, and treated more explicitly, after we have followed the evolution of man's ancestors up to that point.)

The astral or Soul-Ancestors of man were transplanted to the subtle matter of the etheric world. They absorbed this subtle matter into themselves—roughly putting it—something after the manner of a sponge. Thus, by permeating themselves with etheric matter their etheric bodies were formed. They were elongated, and elliptic in form; yet subtle differentiations of matter, tendencies to form limbs and other organs to be developed at a later period, were even then perceptible. The whole process perceptible in the mass of etheric matter was, however, purely physico-chemical, though regulated and controlled by the soul.

When one of these ovoids of matter had reached a certain size, it split into two, forming two new masses each resembling the one which gave it birth, and reproducing the same activities which were at work in the parent form. Every one of these new forms possessed a soul similar to that of the mother-being. The reason of this was that not only a definite number of human souls incarnated on the physical plane, but there was what we might call a Soul-Tree (or Group Soul), which was able, as it were, to give off innumerable individual souls, sprung from its common root. Just as a plant springs up again and again from numberless seeds, so did the soul-life reincarnate in the countless offshoots which were created as the result of these continual cleavings. (Of course, there existed from the beginning a very limited number of soul species, but within these species, evolution proceeded in the manner described, every soul species putting forth innumerable scions.)

With incarnation in physical matter a most important change came over the souls themselves. As long as the souls remained unconnected with the material world, no outward material occurrence could affect them. All influences affecting them were purely psychic, or clairvoyant. Thus in their life they shared the astral influences of their surroundings, and it was in this way that they took part in, or experienced, everything that existed at that time. The impressions made by stones, plants, and animals, then also existing in a purely astral (Soul) form, were felt as inner experiences of the soul. On entering the plane of our earth, something quite new was added. Outer material events brought influences to bear upon the soul, which had thus robed itself in a garment of etheric matter. At first these influences consisted of motions in the outer material world which caused corresponding activity in the etheric body. In the same way as the vibrations of the air now affect us in the form of sound, so were those etheric beings affected by the vibrations of the etheric matter surrounding them. Such a being was, in fact, a single organ of hearing. This sense was the first to be developed; but from this we see that the separated organ of hearing was formed at a later period.

With the increasing solidification of physical matter, the soul-nature gradually lost control over its formation. The bodies already formed could only reproduce bodies after their own image. A change now occurs in the manner of generation, that is to say, the offspring of the mother-being appears considerably smaller, only growing gradually to the size of the parent. Organs of generation now begin to appear, whereas hitherto they had not existed. Henceforward it is no mere physico-chemical process which takes place within the form. Such a process is now no longer sufficient for the purpose of generation: for the outer matter, growing denser and denser, is no longer capable of being directly influenced by the soul. A special portion within the form is therefore set apart for this function, being withdrawn from the immediate influence of the outside material world. Only the body, exclusive of the specialised part, is still exposed to these influences; and it remains in the condition which was formerly that of the whole body. In the specialised part the psychic nature continues to work, and the soul becomes at this point the vehicle of the life-principle (called in Theosophical literature “Prâna”).

We now find the physical human ancestor in possession of two principles: one being the physical body, which is subject to the chemical and physical laws of the world surrounding it; and the second, the sum total of the organs directly controlled by the individual life-principle. In this manner a part of the activity of the soul has been liberated. No longer retaining power over the physical sheath, the soul turns this part of its activity inwards, transforming part of the body into special organs; and so begins an inner life of the body. It no longer merely participates in the vibrations from without, but begins to feel them inwardly as individual experiences. Here sensation begins. At first, the sensation somewhat resembles the sense of touch: the subject feels the movements of the outer world, the pressure caused by substances, and so on; also a sensation of heat and cold began now to be developed.

At this point man has reached an important stage in his evolution. The direct influence of the soul has been withdrawn from the physical body, the latter being entirely surrendered to the physical and chemical activities of the material world. The moment the soul, at work in the other principles, relaxes its hold over the body, the latter dissolves. This is the beginning of what we call “death.” We cannot speak of death in reference to previous states. In the simple case of separation, the life of the mother-form is continued in the offspring, for in the latter are at work all the transformed soul-forces which hitherto had sought expression in the one parent-form: after the separation, nothing remains that is soulless.

A change now takes place: as soon as the soul ceases to retain its power over the physical body, the latter is subject to the chemical and physical laws of the outer world, that is to say, it decays. The field of activity for the soul-powers is limited to generation and the developed inner life; for through this generative power, descendants are brought forth, which are in their turn endowed with a surplus of organ-forming power. In this surplus the soul always returns to life again. As the whole body was formerly filled with psychic activity at the separation, so were now the organs of reproduction and of sensation. We must recognise in this nothing less than a Rebirth of the soul-life in the new growing organism.

Theosophical literature describes these two evolutionary stages of man as the first two Root-Races of our earth. The first is called the Polar Race, the second the Hyperborean Race.

We must bear in mind that the field of sensation possessed by these human forefathers was of a general character and as yet quite vague and indefinite. So far, only two of the kinds of sensation we now possess were differentiated: the sense of hearing and that of touch. By reason of the changes, however, which the body was undergoing, as well as its physical environment, the whole human form was no longer capable of acting, so to speak, as “all ear.” Henceforward a specialised part of the body retained the power of responding to the delicate vibrations, and supplied the material from which was gradually developed the organ of hearing we now possess, whilst the rest of the body remained almost entirely an organ of touch.

Obviously, the whole process of the evolution of man has hitherto been connected with the alteration in the degree of warmth of our earth; it was, in fact, due to the heat in his surroundings that man evolved to the stage we have just described. The heat from without, however, had now reached a point at which further progress in the formation of the human body was no longer possible. Thus, with the cooling off of the earth, a corresponding reaction set in within the form itself, and man became the generator of his own supply of heat, whereas hitherto his temperature had been that of his surroundings. Organs now appear in him, enabling him to generate for himself the degree of heat necessary for his life. Up till now, currents of substances had circulated within him, dependent on the environment for the necessary heat; but now he could generate his own heat, for these substances and the fluids of the body turned into warm blood. Thus he had attained a far greater degree of self-dependence as a physical being than ever before, and his whole inner life was intensified. Sensation still depended entirely upon the effects of the outer world. The filling of the body with its own warmth gave it an independent physical inner life. The soul had now a field of activity within the body, where it could unfold an existence which would no longer be a mere sharing in the life of the outer world.

By this proceeding, the astral, or soul life, was drawn into the sphere of physical matter. Hitherto desires, longings and passions, joy and sorrow of soul, could only arise through psychic influences; and attraction and aversion were awakened, passions excited, and so on, by that which proceeded from one soul to another. No other external physical object could have produced such effects. Now, for the first time, the possibility arose that such outer objects had a significance for the soul. For the quickening of the inner life which followed the power of generating its own heat caused it to experience the sensation of pleasure, while the disturbance of this inner life caused it discomfort; an outer object qualified to maintain bodily comfort could become an object of desire, or longing. The astral, or desire body—known as “Kâma” in Theosophical literature,—was united with terrestrial man, and the objects of the senses became objects capable of being desired; man was thus bound through his desire body to earthly existence.

The foregoing fact coincides with a great cosmic event, with which it is causally connected. Till now there had been no material separation between sun, earth, and moon: these three affected man as a single body. At this point separation occurs: the finer matter, including all that which had hitherto conferred on the soul the power of directly giving life, was separated off as sun; the grossest matter went forth as moon; while the earth, with its materiality, occupied a position between the two. Of course, the separation did not occur suddenly; for the whole process was gradually taking place while man was advancing from the stage of generation by cleavage to that just described. The advance in man's evolution was, indeed, accomplished just through the cosmic happenings mentioned. First, the sun withdrew its substance from the common globe. The soul was thereby deprived of the possibility of directly vivifying the earth substance left behind. Then the moon began to take form, in this way bringing about a condition of the earth favourable to the growth of the capacity for sensation just as we have already described.

In conjunction with this occurrence, a new sense was developed. The conditions of warmth of the earth became such that the bodies gradually took on a definite outline, dividing the transparent matter from the opaque. The sun, which had withdrawn from the earth-body, now assumed its task as light-giver, and awoke in the human body the sense of sight. It was not at first what we know as sight to-day. Light and darkness were perceptible to man as vague sensations. For instance, he was aware that under certain conditions light gave him a sense of comfort and well-being, quickening the life in his body; therefore he sought it and strove towards it.

Meanwhile the actual soul-life continued to run its course in the form of dreamlike pictures. Colour-pictures came and went in this life, without having any particular connection with the things of the outer world, and these colour-pictures were still attributed by man to soul activities. Light colour-pictures appeared to him when his astral experiences were pleasant; sombre pictures when he was affected by disagreeable astral influences. That which was effected as the result of self-generated heat we have called in the foregoing the “inner life.” Nevertheless, we see that it was not an inner life in the sense of later human development. All things advance step by step, and so does the evolution of the inner life. In the sense in which it has been spoken of in a former chapter, this true inner life only begins when the fructification by the mind takes place, when man begins to think about these outer influences. All that has been described here does but show how man climbed upward to the state depicted in the preceding chapter. And we really live over again the times there described when we picture to ourselves the following. More and more the soul learns to relate to the outer bodily existence that which it formerly lived through in itself and which it only attributed to soul influences.

The same thing now happened with regard to the colour-pictures. Just as before the impression of a sympathetic psychic influence was connected in the individual soul with a bright colour-picture, so did it now become a brilliant light-impression from outside. The soul began to perceive in colours the objects surrounding it. This was in conjunction with the development of new organs of sight. At its previous stages the body had one eye, which does not exist to-day, by means of which it vaguely sensed the light and the darkness. (The legend of the Cyclops with one eye is a reminiscence of this state.)

The two eyes developed when the soul began to associate the external light-impressions more intimately with its own life, and thus was lost the capacity of perception of the surrounding astral world. The soul became more and more a mirror of the outer world, the latter being reproduced within it as an image; and simultaneously with this the separation of the sexes appeared. On the one hand, the human body became capable of fecundation only by another human being, while on the other hand there developed in the body “soul-organs” (the nervous system), by which the sense-impressions of the outer world were reflected in the soul, thereby preparing the way for the mind, or thinking principle, in the human body.

We will now trace the Âkâshic Records back to the primeval past, when our earth, as it is now, began to exist. By earth we mean that condition of our planet by reason of which it is the bearer of minerals, plants, animals, and men, in their present form; for this state was preceded by others in which the above-named kingdoms of Nature existed under essentially different forms.

The earth, as we know it, had undergone many transformations before it could become the bearer of our present world of minerals, plants, animals, and human beings. Minerals also existed in those earlier conditions, but they had quite a different appearance from the minerals of our day. These past conditions will be dealt with later, but for the time being we shall merely refer to the way in which the condition immediately preceding the present was transformed into the latter.

We may form a faint idea of such a transformation by comparison with the passage of the plant nature through the germinal state. Imagine a plant with its roots, stem, leaves, blossoms, and fruit: it draws matter from its surroundings and expels it again. But everything belonging to it of the nature of substance, form, and growth disappears—all but the tiny germ; through it the life quickens, to spring up again next year in a similar form. In the same way all that existed on our earth in its previous state disappeared, but only to arise again in its present form. That which might be called mineral, plant, animal, in the former condition, has passed away, as the roots, stem, and different parts of the plant have passed away; and in one case as in the other, the germ-state has remained out of which the old form is built up anew, for within the germ lie concealed the forces which cause the new form to proceed from it.

In the period which we are just about to describe, we have to deal, therefore, with a kind of earth-germ, containing within it the forces which gave rise to the earth of to-day, forces which were acquired by virtue of its former conditions. We must not imagine, however, that this earth-seed consisted of dense matter like the plant-seed: it was rather of a psychic nature, and composed of that fine, vibrating, plastic matter which is called “astral” in Theosophical literature.

This astral germ of the earth at first contained the embryonic human being, the beginnings of the future human souls. Everything which existed in previous states as minerals, plants, and animals, had been absorbed by these human germs—merged in them. So, before man trod the physical earth, he was a soul—an astral being,—and as such he finds himself on the physical earth, which then consisted of the finest matter—called in Theosophical literature the finest etheric matter.

The origin of this etheric earth will be explained in another chapter. The astral human beings drew this ether round them, imprinting on it, as it were, their own nature, so that it became a copy of the astral human being. Thus, at the first stage, we have to deal with an etheric earth, which is really only composed of this etheric humanity, and is nothing but a conglomerate of it. The astral body, or soul of man, is actually, for the most part, outside the etheric body and organizes it from without. To the occult investigator the earth appears somewhat as follows: it is a sphere composed in its turn of countless tiny etheric spheres—etheric humanity—and surrounded by an astral covering, as the present earth is surrounded by a covering of air. In this astral envelope (atmosphere) astral humanity lives, and from there it works on its etheric images. The astral human souls create organs in their etheric images, in whom they effect a human etheric existence. Within the whole earth there is only one condition of matter, and that is the subtle vital ether. This primeval humanity is called in Theosophical books the Polar, or First, Root-Race.

The further evolution of the earth now consists in the development of the one condition of matter into two; a denser matter separates off, leaving a finer substance behind. The denser substance is similar to our air, while the finer substance resembles that which effects the formation of chemical elements from their previously undifferentiated substance. In addition to these, a remnant of the earlier matter—the vitalised ether—continued to exist. Only a part of the latter was incorporated with the two conditions of matter just described.

We find, then, at this time three kinds of matter in the physical earth. While formerly the activities of the astral human beings were confined to one substance in the earth-shell, they now had to work upon three, their work being carried on in the following manner. That part which had become gaseous at first offered resistance to the work of the astral beings; it would not assimilate all the latent possibilities contained in the perfect astral beings; consequently, the astral humanity is forced to divide into two groups. One group is that which elaborates the gaseous matter, and creates in it its own image; the other group is able to do more: it can work upon the two other kinds of matter; it can create an image of itself composed both of the vitalised ether and the other kind of ether, thus giving rise to the chemical elements. In the present work we shall call this kind of ether “chemical ether.”

But this second group of astral beings has only acquired this higher faculty by throwing off a part—the first group—of the astral essence, and condemning it to perform lower work. Had it retained in itself those forces which accomplished the meaner task, it could not have risen higher itself. Here we have an event arising from the fact that something higher procures its own advancement at the cost of another, which it severs from itself.

This is the picture which now presents itself within the physical earth: two kinds of beings exist. Firstly, those having a gaseous body, on which astral beings belonging to it work from outside. These beings are of the nature of animals, and form a first animal kingdom on the earth. Were we to describe the forms of these animals, the man of to-day would think them rather strange. Their form—we must bear in mind that it consisted only of gaseous substance—resembles none of the animal forms existing now; they have, perhaps, a distant resemblance to the shells of certain snails or shell-fish of the present day.

Side by side with these animal forms, man's physical development progresses. Astral humanity, now risen a step higher, creates a physical image of itself consisting of two kinds of matter, of vital ether and of chemical ether. Thus we have before us a human being consisting of an astral body, who is working upon an etheric body, which is again composed of two kinds of ether, vital and chemical ether.

By means of the life-ether this physical image of man has the power of reproduction, of bringing forth beings like itself. By means of the chemical ether it develops certain forces, similar to the chemical forces known to us at the present day as attraction and repulsion. Thereby this human image has the power of attracting certain substances in its surroundings and of uniting them with itself—afterwards to throw them out again by the power of repulsion. Such matter can, of course, only be drawn from the animal kingdom described above, and from the human kingdom. Here we discover the origin of nutrition. These first human images were thus animal and man-eaters. There still existed simultaneously with these the descendants of the former, merely life-ether beings, but they became stunted, having to adapt themselves to the new terrestrial conditions. From these are formed at a later period, after many transformations undergone by them, the unicellular creatures, as also the cells which afterwards went to the formation of the more complicated beings.

The next step forward is this: the gaseous matter divides in two, the denser part becoming watery and the other remaining gaseous. But the chemical ether also divides into two conditions of matter; the one becomes denser, and forms what we shall here call light-ether; it confers on the beings in whom it is contained the gift of becoming luminous. But a part of the chemical ether retains its original form. We have henceforth to deal with a physical earth composed of the following kinds of matter: water, air, light-ether, chemical ether, and life-ether. Now, to enable the astral beings to influence these kinds of matter again, another occurrence takes place, involving the progress of something higher at the expense of something lower thrown off from it. This process gives rise to physical beings of the character we shall now describe.

Firstly, there were those whose physical body was made up of water and air, who are now worked upon by coarse astral beings belonging to those who had been thrown out. So there arises a new group of animals composed of denser matter than the former ones. Secondly, another new group of physical beings came into existence, possessing a body which may consist of air and light-ether mixed with water. These are plant-like beings, but differing greatly in form from the plants of the present time. Only in the third new group do we find the man of that time represented. His physical body is composed of three kinds of ether, light-ether, chemical ether, and life-ether. When we consider that descendants of the old groups still continue to exist, we can gauge the multiplicity of living beings which already existed when our earth was at that stage of development.

A momentous cosmic event here occurs. The sun withdraws, and simultaneously certain forces leave the earth altogether. These forces are composed of a part of that which was present on the earth hitherto in the form of life-, chemical-, and light-ether. Thus these forces were withdrawn, as it were, from the earth as it had existed up to the present. Thereby a radical change took place in all the groups of terrestrial beings who had hitherto contained these forces within themselves. They underwent transformation. The first to be so transformed were what we called above the plant beings, who were deprived of the forces they had possessed by means of the light-ether, so that they could now only develop as living beings when acted upon from without by the light forces taken from them, and in this way plants came under the influence of sunlight.

Something of a similar nature happened to the human bodies as well. Their light-ether had to co-operate henceforth with the light-ether of the sun, in order to be capable of life. But not only those beings from whom the light-ether had been directly withdrawn were affected; others were also influenced; for everything in the world works together. The animal forms, too, which did not themselves contain light-ether had once been irradiated by their fellow-beings on the earth, and developed under the influence of the light received from them; and they now came also indirectly under the influence of the sun from without.

The human body, however, in particular, developed organs which are susceptible to the sunlight—the first rudiments of the human eye.

The result of the sun's separation was a further condensation of the matter of the earth. Solid matter began to develop from the liquid; in like manner the light-ether differentiates into a second kind of light-ether and an ether which enables bodies to develop warmth. The earth thus becomes a being which generates heat within itself. All its inhabitants were brought under the influence of heat. Again, in the astral world a similar process to the former one must occur: certain beings progressed at the expense of others. A certain number of beings, suited to work upon the gross solid matter, were separated off, and this was the origin of the firm skeleton of the earth, the mineral kingdom.

At first the higher kingdoms of Nature did not all exercise their influence on this solid, mineral, bony mass, so that we find on the earth a mineral kingdom which is hard and a vegetable kingdom in which the densest matter is water and air. For in this kingdom the gaseous body itself had been densified to a water-body by the events described; and, besides these, there were animals of the most multifarious forms, some with water- and some with air-bodies. The human body itself had undergone a process of densification. Its firmest corporeality had solidified to the density of water. The heat-ether having arisen, this water-body of man's was pervaded by it, imparting to it a kind of matter which might, perhaps, be described as of the nature of gas. This condition of matter of the human body is described in works on Occult Science as that of “firemist.” In this body of firemist man was incorporated.

In the last chapter the Âkâshic studies are carried to that point of time at which man's soul is incarnated in the subtle matter of the firemist. We must understand very clearly that man only assumed dense matter, which he now regards as his own, at a later date, and then only very gradually. If we wish to form an idea of his bodily appearance at the stage of his development just depicted, we can best do so by thinking of it as water-vapour, or as a cloud floating in the air; but this representation is, of course, on which merely approaches the reality superficially; for the fiery-cloud “man” is inwardly vitalized and organized. But in comparison to that which he becomes later, we must picture him at this stage as psychically slumbering, as yet but dimly conscious. All that we can call intelligence, understanding, and reason are yet lacking in him. He moves about with a floating, rather than pacing, motion, by means of four limb-like organs, forwards, backwards, sideways, and in all directions. But as regards the soul of this being something has already been said.

We must not think, however, that the movements, or other expressions of life evinced by these beings, were irrational or unregulated. On the contrary, they were perfectly regulated, and nothing happened without purpose and meaning, the only difference being that the guiding power, or understanding, was not within the beings themselves; rather were they controlled by an intelligence outside themselves. Higher beings, more fully developed than they, hovered round them, as it were, and guided them; for that is the all-important and fundamental quality of the firemist, that human beings at this stage of evolution could incarnate in it, while at the same time higher beings could also incorporate therein, and could thus be in full intercommunication with man. Man had developed his inclinations, instincts, and passions, up to a point at which they could clothe themselves in the firemist; but the other order of beings here mentioned could, by the power of their reason, create within this firemist, by means of their intelligent activity. For these latter possessed still higher faculties by means of which they could reach up to higher regions. From these regions their determinations and impulses emanated, but the actual effects of these determinations were apparent in the firemist. All that was done on the earth by man originated in the regulated intercourse of the human firemist body with that of those higher beings.

We can therefore say that man strove to climb upwards; in the firemist he was to evolve higher qualities—in a human sense—than he had possessed before. The other beings, however, strove downwards towards the material. Their course of evolution was to seek expression for their creative forces in ever denser and denser material forms; but in a wider sense this in no wise meant a degradation for them. We must come to a very clear understanding on this point: it requires higher power and capacity to control denser than rarer forms of matter. These higher beings, too, had in former periods of their evolution a power as limited in extent as that of man at the present time. And they, like man to-day, once had dominion only over that which took place within them; they had no control over the outer coarse matter. They now strove to reach a condition in which they should magically direct external things, and were, therefore, at this period ahead of man in evolution. Man reached upwards, striving first to embody the mind in finer substances, so that it could afterwards direct its activity outwards. He had already assimilated reason, and now became possessed of magic power in order to permeate with reason the surrounding world. Thus man advanced upwards through the stage of the firemist, while his companions pressed downwards through the same stage in order to increase their power.

The forces which above all others were most effective in the firemist were those known to men as lower passions and impulses. Man, as well as the higher beings, makes use of these forces at the firemist period described; and these forces, working at that stage within the human form, have the effect of developing organs which enabled man to think, and thus to develop his personality. In the higher beings, however, these forces worked, at the stage with which we are now dealing, in such a manner that the beings mentioned could make use of them in order impersonally to bring about terrestrial conditions through their medium. By this means there arose on the earth, through these beings, forms which were themselves an image of the laws of reason. Thus, through the activity of the passional forces, there appeared in man the personal reasoning organs, and round about him, by means of the same forces, organisations replete with intelligence were formed.

Let us now think of this process as a little further advanced, or rather, let us bring before us what we find registered in the Âkâshic Records, when we glance at a somewhat later period: The moon has separated from the earth; a great revolution has thereby been accomplished. A great part of the heat has escaped from the objects surrounding man, whereby these objects have passed into a coarser and denser order of matter. Man must live in this colder environment, and he can only do so by altering his own matter; and a change of form goes hand in hand with this densification of substance. For the condition of firemist on earth has itself given place to one which is entirely different. The result of this is that the higher beings spoken of no longer have the firemist as a medium for their activity. Nor can they consequently any longer exercise an influence over the expression of man's soul-life, formerly their chief sphere of activity. But they have obtained power over the human form which they themselves had before created from the firemist.

This change of activities goes hand in hand with a transformation of the human form. One half of the latter, with two motory organs, has been transformed into the lower half of the body, which has thus become mainly the vehicle of nutrition and generation. The other half is, as it were, directed upwards. Out of the two other organs of motion grow rudimentary hands. And such organs as had once also served for nutrition and generation are remodelled into organs of speech and thought. Man stands upright. That is the immediate consequence of the moon's exit. And together with the moon the terrestrial globe is deprived of all those forces which, in the period of the firemist, had enabled man to practise self-fructification and to bring forth beings like himself without external influence. The whole lower half of his body—that which we often call his lower nature—is now subject to the formative influence, governed by reason, of those higher beings. That which these beings had themselves been able to regulate before in man, while the volume of forces, henceforth withdrawn into the moon, were still united with the earth, must now be organized by them with the co-operation of the two sexes. This explains why the moon has been regarded by Initiates as the symbol of generative forces, these forces clinging to it, as it were.

The higher beings, described above, being akin to the moon, are in a certain sense, moon-gods. Before the separation of the moon, they worked by its force in man; afterwards their forces worked from outside to effect the propagation of man. We may also truly say that those exalted spiritual forces which were formerly acting upon man's still higher instincts through the medium of the firemist have now descended to unfold their powers in the realm of reproduction. Lofty, divine forces are actually at work in regulating and organising this function.

In this we have the expression of an important teaching of Occult Science, which says that the high and sublime god-like forces are akin to the—apparently—lower forces of human nature. The word “apparently” must here be understood in its full significance; for it would be a complete misconception of occult truths to regard the force of generation in itself as something ignoble. It is only when man misuses this force and compels it to serve his passions and desires that evil lurks in it; but not when he ennobles it by the thought that it contains divine, spiritual strength. Then will he place these forces at the service of the evolution of the earth, and will carry out the plans of those higher beings by means of his own generative forces. To raise this entire domain and place it under divine laws—not to destroy it—is what Occult Science teaches us. The latter can be the only result of superficially understood occult principles, distorted into mistaken asceticism.

We see that man had developed in the upper half of his body something over which the higher beings we spoke of had no influence; over this part other beings now obtain authority. They are those who had, indeed, at earlier stages of development advanced beyond humanity, but had not yet risen so high as the moon-gods. They could, so far, develop no power in the firemist; but now that a later condition has appeared in which, through the firemist, something in man's reasoning organs had attained development, something to which they themselves had approached earlier—now their time has come.

In the case of the moon-gods the stage at which reason worked and organized outwardly had arrived earlier. In them this reason was present at the beginning of the firemist epoch. They could act outwardly on terrestrial objects, but the beings just described had not at an earlier period attained the development of an outwardly active reason, and therefore the firemist period found them unprepared. Now, however, reason is there. It is present in man, and they seize this human reason in order that they may work upon the things of earth through it. Just as formerly the moon-gods had worked upon the whole man, these work now on his lower half only, whereas the influence of the lower beings spoken of is at work upon his upper half.

Thus man is subject to a twofold guidance. In his lower nature he is subject to the power of the moon-gods, but in his evolved personality he has come under the leadership of those beings called collectively by the name of their regent “Lucifer.” For the Lucifer-beings complete their own evolution by making use of the awakened forces of man's reason. They could not attain this stage earlier. But they confer on man at the same time the disposition towards freedom, the tendency to distinguish “good” from “evil.” Under the sole guidance of the moon-gods the human reasoning organ is indeed formed, but these gods would have allowed the organ to slumber; they would have had no interest in using it for themselves. They had their own powers of reason. The Lucifer-beings had an interest in developing human reason, in guiding it to the objects of earth for their own sake, and therefore they became for humanity the teachers of all that can be accomplished through man's reason. They could, however, be no more than instigators. For they could not develop reason in themselves, but, as we have seen, they could only do so in man. There arose thus a twofold stream of activity on earth. The one, arising from the direct influence of the moon-deities, was regulated from the beginning by law and reason; for the moon-gods, having already finished their time of apprenticeship, were now beyond the possibility of error. On the other hand, the Lucifer-gods, who had intercourse with man, had first of all to work their way to the light of such knowledge. Under their guidance man had to learn the laws of his nature; under the guidance of Lucifer he must himself become as “a god among gods.”

The question arises: if the Lucifer-beings had not progressed in their evolution to the point of intelligent creation in the firemist, where did they fall behind? Up to what stage in the earth's evolution were they able to co-operate with the moon-gods? The Âkâshic Records show us that they were able to take part in earthly creation up to the period at which the sun separated from the earth. We are shown that up to this time they performed what, it is true, was work of a somewhat inferior nature to that of the moon-gods, but nevertheless they belonged to the band of divine creators. After the separation of earth and sun, an activity—the work in the firemist—began on the former for which the moon-deities, but not the Lucifer-Spirits, were prepared. For these a period of inactivity and waiting then began.

Now, when the universal firemist had rolled away and the human beings began to work on the formation of their intellectual organs, the Lucifer-Spirits could again emerge from their period of rest. For the creation of reason is correlated with solar activity, and the dawn of intelligence in human nature is the rise of an inner sun. This is affirmed not merely figuratively, but in an absolutely real sense. These beings found thus an opportunity of resuming their activity within the human being, in conjunction with the sun, when the firemist epoch had passed away from earth. From this it is easy to see the origin of the name “Lucifer”—that is, “Light-bearer”—and to understand why these beings are characterised in Occult Science as “sun-gods.”

The readings from the Âkâshic Records describing the first beginnings of our earth and its inhabitants are to be found in An Outline Of Occult Science—the most important of Dr Steiner's works which has so far appeared—in the fifth chapter entitled “The Evolution of the World and Man.” The reader will there find the present studies of the Âkâshic Records carried back to the origins of what we find in the worlds to-day.

[ 1 ] In my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, the path to higher knowledge has been traced up to the meeting with the two Guardians of the Threshold. The relation in which the soul stands to the different worlds as it passes through the successive stages of knowledge will now be described. What will be given may be called “the teachings of occult science.”

[ 2 ] Before man enters upon the path of higher knowledge, he knows only the first of four stages of cognition. This stage is the one he occupies in ordinary life in the world of the senses. Even in what is called science, we have to do only with this first stage of knowledge, for science merely elaborates ordinary cognition more minutely and in a disciplined way. Aided by instruments—the microscope, the telescope, and so forth—the senses examine their surroundings with greater exactness than they could without these aids. Yet man remains at the same stage of cognition whether he sees large things with the naked eye or observes small objects and phenomena with the aid of a microscope. Also in the application of thinking to facts and things, this science remains in the realm of everyday life. Man arranges the objects, describes and compares them, seeks to picture to himself their variations, and so forth. The keenest scientist does nothing fundamentally, in this respect, but develop to a fine art the methods of observing everyday life. His knowledge embraces a wider range, becomes more complex and more logical, but he does not proceed to any other mode of cognition.

[ 3 ] In occult science this first stage of knowledge is called the “material mode of cognition.” This is followed by three higher stages, and there are still others beyond these. These stages of knowledge shall be described here before proceeding with the description of the “path of knowledge.” Considering the ordinary method of scientific cognition, of apprehension through the senses as the first stage, we shall have to differentiate the following four stages:

1. Material knowledge
2. Imaginative knowledge
3. Inspirational knowledge, which may also be called “of the nature of will.”
4. Intuitive knowledge

[ 4 ] These stages will be discussed here. It must first be made quite clear what is significant in these different modes of cognition.—In the ordinary sense knowledge four elements are to be considered: (1) the object, which makes an impression upon the senses; (2) the image, which the human being forms of this object; (3) the concept, through which the human being arrives at a spiritual comprehension of an object or an event; (4) the ego, which forms for itself the image and concept based on the impression of the object. Before the human being makes for himself an image, a “representation,” an object is there that causes it. He does not form the object, he perceives it, and on the basis of this object, the image arises. As long as we are looking at an object, we have to do with the thing itself. The moment we turn away from it, we have left only the image. The object is relinquished, the image is retained in the memory. But one cannot stop here at the image-making stage. One must go on to “concepts.” The distinction between “image” and “concept” is absolutely necessary if we are to be clear at this point. Suppose one sees an object of circular form. Then one turns away and retains the picture of the circle in memory. So far one has not yet the “concept” of the circle. One attains this concept only when one says to oneself, “A circle is a figure in which all points are equidistant from the center.” Understanding of a thing is attained only when a “concept” of it has been formed. There are all kinds of circles—small, large, red, blue, and so forth—but there is only one concept “circle.”—All these things will be approached more closely; for the moment it will suffice to sketch what is necessary to characterize the first four stages of knowledge.—The fourth element that comes under consideration in material cognition is the “ego.” In it the union of images and concepts is produced. The ego stores up the image in memory. Otherwise no continuing inner life would be possible. The images of things would remain only so long as the things themselves affected the soul. But the inner life depends upon the linking of one perception with another. The ego orients itself in the world today because in the presence of certain objects the images of similar objects of yesterday arise. It is obvious that soul life would be impossible if the image of a thing could be held only as long as the thing itself was present.—In relation to concepts also, the ego forms the unity. It combines its concepts and so makes a survey, calls forth an understanding of the world. This linking up of concepts is what occurs in “forming judgments.” A being possessing only loosely connected concepts would not find his way in the world. All man's activity depends on his capacity to combine concepts—that is, to “form judgments.”

[ 5 ] The “material mode” of cognition rests upon the fact that man receives through his senses an impression of things and representations of the outer world. He has the power of sensing, or sensibility. The impression received from “outside” is also called sensation. Therefore in “material cognition” four elements have to be considered: Sensation, image, concept, ego.—At the next higher stage of knowledge, the impression made upon the outer senses, the “sensation,” falls away. There is no longer any outer sensory object. Of the elements to which man is accustomed in ordinary knowledge there remains only the three: Image, concept and ego.

[ 6 ] Ordinary knowledge in a healthy individual creates no image and no concept when an object does not confront the outer senses. The ego then remains inactive. Whoever forms images of which the corresponding sensory objects do not actually exist lives in fantasy.—But the occult student acquires this very faculty of forming images without the stimulus of external sensory objects. With him something else must take the place of outer objects. He must be able to form images although no object touches his senses. Something must step in to replace sensation. This something is Imagination. At this stage, images appear to the occult student in exactly the same way as if a sensory object were making an impression upon him. They are as vivid and true as sensory images, yet they are not of material, but of soul-spirit origin. Yet the senses remain entirely inactive.—It is evident that the individual must first acquire this faculty of forming meaningful images without sense impressions. This is accomplished through meditation and through the exercises that have been described in the book, >Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. The man confined to the sense world lives only among images that have reached him through the senses. The imaginative man has a world of images that he has received from a higher source. A careful training is necessary to distinguish illusion from reality in this higher image world. When such images first enter a man's soul he tends to say, “Ah! that is only fancy; a mere outflow of my life of thoughts.” This is only too understandable, for man is at present accustomed to term “real” only what is given to him on the sure foundation of the evidence of his senses without effort on his part. He must first accustom himself to accept as “real” things that originate from a different side. In this respect he cannot guard too carefully against becoming a visionary. The capacity to decide what is “real” and what is “illusionary” in these higher regions can come only from experience, and this experience must be made one's own in a quiet, patient inner life. One must be fully prepared to expect the nasty tricks that illusion plays upon one. Everywhere lurks the possibility that images will emerge that result from delusions of the outer senses, or of abnormal life. All such possibility must first be done away with. One must first completely stop up the springs of the fantastic; only thus can one come to Imagination. At this point it will be clear that the world that one has entered in this way is not only just as real as the world of sense, but much more real.

[ 7 ] In the third stage of knowledge, images no longer appear. The human being has now to deal only with “concept” and “ego.” Whereas at the second stage a world of images still surrounded one, remainder of the moment when a vivid memory instantaneously kindles impressions from the outer world, without oneself actually having such impressions, at the third stage not even such images are present. The human being lives wholly in a purely spiritual world.. One accustomed to hold strictly to the senses will be tempted to believe this world pale and ghostly. But that is not at all the case. Neither has the world of images of the second stage anything pale or shadowy about it. So, to be sure, are the images that remain in memory after the outer objects are no longer there. But the pictures of Imagination have a vivacity and a comprehensiveness with which the shadowy memory pictures of the sensory world, and even the glittering and ephemeral physical world itself are not to be compared. This, too, is but a shadow compared to the realm of Imagination.—Now the world of the third stage of knowledge! Nothing in the sensory world can even suggest its wealth and abundance. What was sensation at the first stage of cognition, imagination at the second, here becomes “inspiration.” Inspiration gives the impressions, and the ego forms the concepts. If anything at all in the realm of sense can be compared with this world of Inspiration, it is the world of tone opened up to us by the sense of hearing. But now not the tones of earthly music are concerned, but purely “spiritual tones.” One begins to “hear” what is going on at the heart of things. The stone, the plant, and so forth, become “spiritual words.” The world begins to express its true nature to the soul. It sounds grotesque, but it is literally true, that at this stage of knowledge one “hears spiritually the growing of the grass.” The crystal form is perceived like sound; the opening blossom “speaks” to men. The inspired man is able to proclaim the inner nature of things; everything rises up before his soul, as though from the dead, in a new kind of way. He speaks a language that stems from another world, and that alone can make the everyday world comprehensible.

[ 8 ] Lastly, at the fourth stage of knowledge Inspiration also ceases. Of the elements customarily observed in everyday knowledge, the ego alone remains to be considered. The attainment of this stage by the occult student is marked by a definite inner experience. This experience manifests itself in the feeling that he no longer stands outside the things and occurrences that he recognises, but is himself within them. images are not the object, but merely its imprint. Also, inspiration does not yield up the object itself, but only tells about it. But what now lives in the soul is in reality the object itself. The ego has streamed forth over all beings; it has merged with them. The actual living of things within the soul is Intuition. When it is said of Intuition that “through it man creeps into all things,” this is literally true.—In ordinary life man has only one “intuition”—namely, of the ego itself, for the ego can in no way be perceived from without; it can only be experienced in the inner life. A simple consideration will make this fact clear. It is a consideration that has not been applied by psychologists with sufficient exactitude. Unimpressive as it may appear to one with full understanding, it is of the most far-reaching significance. It is as follows. A thing in the outer world can be called by all men by the self-same name. A table can be spoken of by all as a “table”; a tulip by all as a “tulip.” Mr. Miller can be addressed by all as “Mr. Miller.” But there is one word that each can apply only to himself. This is the word “I.” No other person can call me “I.” To anyone else I am a “you.” In the same way everyone else is a “you” to me. Only I can say “I” to myself. This is because each man lives, not outside, but within the “I.” In the same way, in intuitive cognition, one lives in all things. The perception of the ego is the prototype of all intuitive cognition. Thus to enter into all things, one must first step outside oneself. One must become “selfless” in order to become blended with the “self,” the “ego” of another being.

[ 9 ] Meditation and concentration are the sure means by which to approach this stage of cognition, like the earlier ones. Of course, they must be practiced in a quiet and patient way. Whoever supposes that he can violently, by forceful means, rise to higher worlds is mistaken. One giving himself over to such beliefs would be expecting the realities of the higher regions to meet him in the same way as those of the sensory world. Rich and vivid as are the worlds to which man may rise, yet they are delicate and subtle, while the world of sense is coarse and crude. The most important thing to be learned is that one must accustom oneself to regard as “real” something wholly different from what is so designated in the realm of sense. This is not easy. It is for this reason that so many who might willingly tread the occult path are frightened away at the first steps. Someone had expected to encounter things like tables and chairs, and instead finds “spirits.” But since “spirits” are not like chairs and tables, they seem like “illusions.” The only thing wrong is the unusualness. One must first acquire the right feeling for the spiritual world; then one will not only see, but also will acknowledge, what is spiritual. A great part of occult training is concerned with this right acknowledgment and assessment of the spiritual.

[ 10 ] The state of sleep must first be considered to arrive at any understanding of imaginative cognition. As long as man has attained to no higher stage than material cognition, the soul truly lives during sleep, yet is incapable of perception in the world in which it dwells in the sleeping state. It is in this world like a blind man among material objects. Such a one lives in the world of light and color, but does not perceive them.—From the outer sense organs, the eye, the ear, the ordinary brain activity, and so forth, the soul has withdrawn in sleep. It receives no impressions through the senses. Now what is it doing during sleep? It must be realized that in waking life the soul is continually active. It takes in the outer sense impressions and works upon them. That is its activity. It stops this during sleep. But it is not idle. While sleeping, it works upon its own body. This body is worn out by the activity of the day. This expresses itself in fatigue. During sleep the soul occupies itself with its own body in order to prepare it for further work when it again awakens. We see from this how essential is proper sleep to bodily well-being. Accordingly, the man who does not sleep sufficiently hinders his soul in this necessary repair work upon the body. The consequence must be that the body deteriorates. The forces with which the soul works upon the body during sleep are the same through which it is active in the waking state. But in the latter case they are applied for absorbing the impressions of the outer senses and working upon them.

[ 11 ] Now when imaginative cognition approaches in man, part of the forces directed upon the body in sleep must be employed in another way. Through these forces are formed the spiritual sense organs that provide the possibility for the soul not merely to live in a higher world, but also to perceive it. Thus the soul during sleep works no longer merely upon the body, but also upon itself. This work results from meditation and concentration, as well as from other exercises. It has often been stated in my writings about higher knowledge that the particular directions for such exercises are given only from one individual to another. No one should undertake such exercises on his own account. For only he who has experience in this realm can judge what effect comes about for one man or another who undertakes to withdraw his soul-work from the body and apply it in a higher way.

[ 12 ] Meditation, concentration and other exercises bring it about that the soul withdraws for a time from its union with the sense organs. It is then immersed in itself. Its activity is turned inward. In the first stages of this self immersion, its inner activity differs but little from its daily wont. In its inward labours, to be sure, it must make use of the self-same thoughts, feelings and sensations as belong to the habitual life. The more the soul accustoms itself to be in a measure “blind and deaf” to the material environment, the more it lives within itself, the better it fits itself for inward accomplishments. What is accomplished by the immersion in the inner life bears fruit first of all in the state of sleep. When at night the soul is freed from the body, what has been stimulated in it by the exercises of the day works on. Organs take shape within it, through which it comes into connection with a higher environment, exactly as through the outer sense organs it had formerly united itself with the corporeal world. Out of the darkness of nocturnal surroundings appear the light phenomena of the higher world. Tender and intimate at first is this communion. It must be taken into account in this connection that for a long time, upon awakening, the light of day will draw a dense veil over the night's experiences. The recollection that perception has occurred during the night appears only slowly and gradually. For the student does not easily learn to pay attention to the delicate formations of his soul that in the course of his development begin to mingle with the common experiences of daily sense life. At first, such formations of the soul resemble what are generally referred to as casual impressions. Everything depends upon his learning to distinguish what is due to the ordinary world from what through its own nature presents itself as a manifestation from higher worlds. In a quiet, introspective mental life he must acquire this discernment. It is necessary first to develop a sense of the value and meaning of those intimate formations of the soul that mingle themselves with daily life as though they were “chance impressions,” but that are really recollections of the nightly communion with a higher world. As soon as one seizes these things in a crude way and applies to them the measuring stick of sensory life, they vanish.

[ 13 ] It is evident from the foregoing that, through work in a higher world, the soul must withdraw from the body some of its activity ordinarily bestowed upon it with such care. It leaves the body to a certain extent self-dependent, and the body needs a substitute for what the soul had formerly done for it. If it does not obtain such a substitute, it comes in danger of mischief from hurtful forces, for one must in this regard be clear that man is continually subject to the influences of his surroundings. Actually he lives only through the influences of these surroundings. Among these, the kingdoms of visible nature first of all come under consideration. Man himself belongs to this visible nature. If there were no mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, nor other human beings around him, he could not live. If an individual could be imagined as cut off from the earth and lifted up into surrounding space, he would have to perish instantly as a physical being, just as the hand would wither if cut off from the body. Just as the illusion would be formidable if a human hand were to believe that it could exist without the body, so powerful would be the deception of a man who maintained that he could exist as a physical being without the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, and without other men.—But besides the above-named kingdoms there are three others that generally escape the notice of man. These are the three elemental kingdoms. They stand, in a sense, below the mineral kingdom. There are beings who do not condense into the mineral condition, but who are none the less present and exert their influence upon man. (Further information concerning these elemental kingdoms will be found in my >Cosmic Memory, and also in the remarks about them in my Theosophy.) Man is thus exposed to influences from kingdoms of nature that in a sense must be called invisible. Now, when the soul works upon the body, a considerable part of its activity consists in regulating the influences of the elemental kingdoms in such a way that they are beneficial to man.—The instant the soul withdraws part of its activity from the body, injurious powers from the elemental kingdoms may get hold of it. Herein lies a danger of higher development. Therefore care must be taken that, as soon as the soul is withdrawn from the body, the latter is in itself accessible only to good influences from the elemental world. If this be disregarded, the ordinary man deteriorates, to a certain extent, physically and also morally, in spite of having gained access to higher worlds. While the soul dwells in the higher regions, pernicious forces insinuate themselves into the dense physical body and the etheric body. This is the reason why certain bad qualities, which before the higher development had been held in check by the regulating power of the soul, may now come to the fore for want of caution. Men formerly of good moral nature may, under such circumstances, when they enter higher worlds, reveal all kinds of low inclinations, increased selfishness, untruthfulness, vindictiveness, wrath, and so forth.—No one alarmed by this fact need be deterred from rising to the higher worlds, but care must be taken to prevent the occurrence of such things. The lower nature of man must be fortified and made inaccessible to dangerous elemental influences. This can be brought about by the conscious cultivation of certain virtues. These virtues are set forth in the writings on spiritual development. Here is the reason why they must be carefully sought after. They are the following.

[ 14 ] First of all, the human being must, in a fully conscious manner, in all things, continually be intent upon the lasting, distinguish the imperishable from the transitory and turns his attention toward it. In all things and beings he can suppose or discern something that remains after the transitory appearance has faded away. If I see a plant, I can first observe it as it presents itself to the senses. No one should neglect to do this, for no one who has not first made himself thoroughly familiar with the perishable aspect will detect the eternal in things. Those who are continually afraid that to fix their attention on the spiritually imperishable will cause them to lose the freshness and naturalness of life do not really know what is being dealt with. But when I look at a plant in this way, it can become clear to me that there. is in it a lasting living impulse that will reappear in a new plant when the present plant has long since crumbled to dust. Such an orientation toward things must be adopted in the whole temper of life.—Then the heart must be fixed upon all that is valuable and genuine, which one must learn to esteem more highly than the fleeting and insignificant. In all feelings and actions, the value of any single thing must be held before the eyes in the context of the whole.—Thirdly, six qualities should be developed: control of the thought world, control of actions, endurance, impartiality, trust in the surrounding world, and inner equilibrium. Control of the thought world can be attained if one takes the trouble to combat that wandering will-o'-the-wisping of the thoughts and feelings that in ordinary human beings are constantly rising and falling. In everyday life man is not the master of his thoughts; he is driven by them. Naturally, it cannot be otherwise, for life drives man and as a practical person he must yield to this. In ordinary life there is no alternative. But if a higher world is to be approached, at least brief periods must be set aside in which one makes oneself ruler of one's thought and feeling world. Therein, in complete inner freedom one puts a thought in the center of one's soul, where otherwise ideas obtrude themselves upon one from without. Then one tries to keep away all intruding thoughts and feeling and to link with the first thought only what one wills to admit as suitable. Such an exercise works beneficially upon the soul and through it also upon the body. It brings the latter into such a harmonious condition that it withdraws itself from injurious influences despite the fact that the soul is not directly acting upon it.—Control of actions consists of a similar regulation of these through inner freedom. A good beginning is made when one sets oneself to do regularly something that it would not have occurred to us to do in ordinary life. For in the latter, man is indeed driven to his actions from without. But the smallest action undertaken on one's innermost initiative accomplishes more in the direction indicated than all the pressures of outer life.—Endurance consists in holding oneself at a distance from every whim that can be designated as a shift from “exulting to the highest heaven to grieving even unto death.” Man is driven to and fro among all kinds of moods. Pleasure makes him glad; pain depresses him. This has its justification. But he who seeks the path to higher knowledge must be able to mitigate joy and also grief. He must become stable. He must with moderation surrender to pleasurable impressions and also painful experiences; he must move with dignity through both. He must never be unmanned nor disconcerted. This does not produce lack of feeling, but it brings man to the steady center within the ebbing and flowing tide of life around him. He has himself always in hand.

[ 15 ] Another important quality is the “yea saying” sense. This can be developed in one who in all things has an eye for the good, beautiful, and purposeful aspects of life, and not, primarily, for the blameworthy, ugly and contradictory. In Persian poetry there is a beautiful legend about Christ, which illustrates the meaning of this quality. A dead dog is lying on the road. Among the passersby is Christ. All the others turn away from the ugly sight; only Christ pauses and speaks admiringly of the animal's beautiful teeth. It is possible to look at things in this way, and he who earnestly seeks for it may find in all things, even the most repulsive, something worthy of acknowledgment. The fruitfulness in things is not in what is lacking in them, but in what they have.—Further, it is important to develop the quality of “impartiality.” Every human being has gone through his own experiences and has formed from them a fixed set of opinions according to which he directs his life. Just as conformity to experience is of course necessary, on the one hand, it is also important that he who would pass through spiritual development to higher knowledge should always keep an eye open for everything new and unfamiliar that confronts him. He will be as cautious as possible with judgments such as, “That is impossible,” “That cannot be.” Whatever opinion he may have formed from previous experiences, he will be ready at any moment, when he encounters something new, to admit a new opinion. All love of one's own opinion must vanish.—When the five above mentioned qualities have been acquired, a sixth then presents itself as a matter of course: Inner balance, the harmony of the spiritual forces. The human being must find within himself a spiritual center of gravity that gives him firmness and security in the face of all that would pull him hither and thither in life. The sharing in all surrounding life must not be shunned, and everything must be allowed to work upon one. Not flight from all the distracting activities of life is the correct course, but rather, the full devoted yielding to life, along with the sure, firm guarding of inner balance and harmony.

[ 16 ] Lastly, the “will to freedom,” must come within the seeker's consideration. Whoever finds within himself the support and basis of all that he accomplishes already has this attribute. It is so hard to achieve because of the balance necessary between the opening of the senses to everything great and good and the simultaneous rejection of every compulsion. It is so easy to say that influence from without is incompatible with freedom. The essential thing is that the two should be reconciled within the soul. When someone tells me something and I accept it under the compulsion of his authority, I am not free. But I am no less unfree if I shut myself off from the good that I might receive in this way. For then worse elements in my own soul act as a compulsion upon me. Freedom means not only that I am free from the compulsion of an outside authority, but above all that I am not subservient to any prejudices, opinions, sensations and feelings of my own. The right way is not blind subjection to what is received, but to leave ourselves open to suggestion, receiving it impartially, so that we may freely acknowledge it. An outside authority should exert no more influence than to make one say, “I make myself free just by following the good in it—that is to say, by making it my own.” An authority based upon occult wisdom will not at all exert influence otherwise than in this way. It gives whatever it has to give, not in order itself to gain power over the recipient, but solely that through the gift the recipient may become richer and freer.

[ 17 ] The significance of the above-mentioned qualities has already been touched on in the discussion of the “lotus flowers” Knowledge of the Higher Worlds]. Therein was shown their relation to the development of the twelve petalled lotus flower in the region of the heart, and to the currents of the etheric body connected with it. From what has been said it is now evident that these qualities enable the seeker to dispense with those forces that formerly benefited the physical body during sleep, and which now, because of his development, must be gradually withdrawn from this task. Under such influences Imaginative Knowledge develops.

[ 1 ] It is impossible to make real progress in penetrating to the higher worlds without going through the stage of imaginative knowledge. This by no means implies that during occult training the human being is compelled to remain for a certain time at the imaginative stage as though it were something like a class to be attended at school. In certain instances this may be necessary, but by no means as a general rule. It depends entirely upon what the occult student has experienced before entering upon his occult training. It will be shown in the course of this discussion that the spiritual environment of the occult student is important in this regard, and that depending on his orientation to this spiritual environment diverse methods have been instituted for treading the path of knowledge.

[ 2 ] It can be of the utmost importance to know what follows if one is preparing to undergo occult training. Not merely as an interesting theory does this come into consideration, but as something by which manifold practical points of view can be gained if one is to succeed on the “path to higher knowledge.”

[ 3 ] It is often said by those striving toward a higher development: I wish to perfect myself spiritually; I wish to develop the “higher man” within me; but I have no desire for the manifestations of the “astral world.” This is understandable when one takes into consideration the descriptions of the astral world found in books dealing with such things. There, to be sure, appearances and beings are spoken of that bring all sorts of dangers to men. It will be said that under the influence of such beings a man may easily suffer harm to his moral disposition and mental health. It will be brought home to the reader that in these regions the wall dividing “the good from the evil path” is as “a spider's web” in thickness, and that the plunge into immeasurable abysses, the fall into utter depravity, lies all too near.—It is, of course, impossible simply to contradict such assertions. Yet the standpoint taken in many cases as to treading the occult path is in no way a correct one. The only reasonable point of view is the one that says, rather, that no one should be deterred from traveling the way of higher knowledge because of dangers, but that in every case strict care must be taken to weather these dangers. It may happen that one who asks an occult teacher's guidance will be counselled to postpone actual training for a time, and first undergo certain experiences of ordinary life or learn things that can be learned in the physical world. It will then be the task of the occult teacher to give the seeker the right instructions for accumulating such experiences and learning such things. In most cases, by far, the occult teacher will be found to proceed in this way. If then the student now is sufficiently attentive to what happens to him, after he has come into contact with the occult teacher, he will be able to observe many things. He will find that henceforth things happen to him as if “by accident,” and that he can observe things that he would never have been exposed to without this link with the occult teacher. If the student does not notice this and becomes impatient, it is because he has not paid sufficient attention to what has happened to him. It is not to be believed that the influence of the teacher upon the student will show itself in distinctly visible “tricks of magic.” This influence is rather an intimate matter, and he who would explore its nature and essence without having first reached a certain stage of occult training will surely err. The student injures himself in every case in which he becomes impatient over the waiting time prescribed for him. His advance will be none the less rapid on this account. On the contrary, his progress would be slowed down if he were to begin too soon the training he often impatiently awaits.

[ 4 ] If the student allows the waiting time or the other advice and hints given to him by the occult teacher to influence him rightly, he will be actually preparing himself to hold his ground before certain trials and dangers that approach him when he encounters the unavoidable stage of Imagination. This stage is unavoidable for this reason: Everyone who seeks communication with the higher world without having passed through it can only do so unconsciously and is condemned to grope in the dark. One can acquire some dim sense of this higher world without Imagination; one can without it certainly attain to a sense of being united with “one's God” or “one's higher self,” but one cannot in this way come to a true knowledge in full consciousness and bright, luminous clarity. Therefore, all talk about coming to terms with the “inferior spiritual worlds” (the astral and the devachanic) being unnecessary, that the one thing needful is for man to awaken the “God within him,” is no more than illusion.—Whoever is satisfied with this approach should not be interfered with in his strivings, and the occultist would not so interfere. But true occultism has nothing at all to do with such strivings. It makes no demand upon anybody to become a pupil. But in him who seeks its discipline it will awaken no mere dim perception of himself as “godlike,” but will also try to open his spiritual eyes to what actually exists in higher worlds.

[ 5 ] Of course, the “divine self” is contained in every man. It is in every created being. In stone, plant, and animal, the “divine self” is also contained and active. But it does not so much matter to feel and know this in general as to enter into a living connection with the manifestations of this “divine self.” Just as one can mutter over and over again that this world contains the “divine self” veiled within it and know nothing thereby of the physical world, so does he who seeks the “divine kingdom of spirits” only in blurred and indeterminate generalities know nothing of higher worlds. One should open the eyes and behold the revelation of deity in the things of the physical world, in the stone, in the plant, and not merely dream away all these as only “appearances” with the true form of God somehow “concealed” behind them. No, God reveals Himself in His creations and whoever would know God must learn to know the true essence of these creations. Therefore one must also learn to behold what really goes on and is living in the higher worlds, if one would know the “divine.” The consciousness that the “God-man” dwells within one can at most provide a beginning. But this beginning experienced in the right way, rises to an actual lift into the higher worlds. But this is possible only for one in whom the spiritual “senses” have been developed. Any other view arrives only at the standpoint, “I will stay as I am and attain only what is possible for me to attain in this way.” But the aim of the occultist is to become a different human being, in order to behold and experience other things than the customary ones.

[ 6 ] It is precisely for this purpose that passage through imaginative knowledge is necessary. It has already been said that this stage of Imagination need not be conceived of as a school class that must be gone through. It is to be understood that, particularly in present-day life, there are persons who bring with them pre-conditions enabling the occult teacher to call forth in them inspired and intuitive knowledge simultaneously, or nearly so, with the imaginative. But it is not at all to be understood that any person could be spared passage through the imaginative stage.

[ 7 ] The cause of danger inherent in imaginative knowledge has already been pointed out in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. This cause is that upon entrance into that world the human being in a certain sense loses the ground under his feet. The source of his security in the physical world is for the moment to all appearances entirely lost. Upon perception of something in the physical world it is asked: Whence comes this perception? This is mostly done unconsciously. But it is quite “unconsciously” clear that the causes of the perception are objects “outside in space.” Colours, sounds, odours go out from these objects. Colours would not be seen floating free in space, nor sounds heard, without consciousness arising as to the objects to which these colours pertain as qualities, and from which these tones come. This consciousness that objects and entities cause physical perceptions gives to them, and thereby to man himself, his security and sure hold. Anyone having perceptions without outward causes is spoken of as abnormal and morbid. Such causeless perceptions are called illusions, hallucinations, visions.

[ 8 ] Now first of all, viewed entirely outwardly, the whole imaginative world consists of such hallucinations, visions, and illusions. It has been pointed out [in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds] how, through occult training, such visions, etc., are artificially produced. By focusing the consciousness on a seed or a dying plant, certain forms, which to begin with are nothing but hallucinations, are conjured up before the soul. The “flame formation,” spoken of as appearing in the soul through observation of a plant or the like, and that after a time completely separates itself from the plant, is, outwardly viewed, to be regarded on the same level as an hallucination. It is the same in occult training when the imaginative world is entered. What was customarily regarded as going forth from things “outside in space,” or “clinging to them” as properties—colours, sounds, odors, etc.,—now float free in space. Perceptions break loose from all outer things and swim free in space, or fly around in it. Yet it is known with strict accuracy that the things before us have not brought forth these perceptions, but rather that they are self-induced by the human being. So it is that one thinks one has “lost the ground under one's feet.” In ordinary life in the physical world those inner picturings that do not proceed from things must be guarded against and are without ground or foundation. But to call forth imaginative knowledge, the prime essential is to have colours, sounds, odours, etc., fully torn loose from all things, “floating free in space.”

[ 9 ] The next step towards imaginative knowledge is to find a new “ground and foundation” for the picturings that are thus adrift. This must occur in that other world that is now about to be revealed. New things and entities take possessions of these inner picturings. In the physical world, for instance, the color blue stays on a cornflower. In the imaginative world likewise it must not remain “free floating.” It streams, as it were, towards some being, and whereas it floated unattached at first, it now becomes the expression of a being. Something speaks through it that the observer can only perceive in the imaginative world, and so these “free-floating” picturings gather around definite centers. It becomes clear that beings are speaking to us through them. And, as in the physical world there are corporeal things and beings to which colours, sounds, odors, and so forth, are attached or from which they are derived, so now spiritual beings speak out through them. These “spiritual beings” are, in fact, always there; they hover continually around human beings. But they cannot reveal themselves to them if the occasion is not given them to do so. They are given this opportunity when one calls forth the capacity to let sounds, colours, and so forth, arise before one's soul, even when occasioned by no physical object.

[ 10 ] The “spiritual facts and beings” are entirely different from the objects and entities of the physical world. In ordinary speech it is not easy to find an expression that even remotely describes this difference. Perhaps it can best be approached by saying that in the imaginative world everything speaks to man as if it were directly intelligent, whereas in the physical world intelligence can only reveal itself in a roundabout way through corporeality. Exactly this makes for mobility and freedom in the imaginative world—that the medium of the outer object is missing, and the spiritual lives itself out with full immediacy in the free-floating tones, colours, etc.

[ 11 ] Now the basis of danger threatening the human being in this world lies in the fact that he perceives the manifestations of “spiritual beings”, but not the beings themselves. This is the case as long as he remains only in the imaginative world and rises no higher. Only Inspiration and intuition lead him gradually to the beings themselves.—If, however, the occult teacher should awaken these faculties prematurely, without having thoroughly introduced the pupil to the realm of Imagination, the higher world would have for him only a shadowy and phantasmal existence. The whole glorious fullness of the pictures in which it must reveal itself when one really enters into it, would be lost. Herein lies the reason why the occult student needs a “guide.”

[ 12 ] For the student, the imaginative world is at first only a “picture world” of which mostly he does not know the meaning. But the occult teacher knows to what things and entities these pictures pertain in a still higher world. If the student has confidence in him, he can know that later connections will be revealed to him, which he cannot yet penetrate. In the physical world, the objects in space were themselves his guides. He was in a position to prove the accuracy of his inner picturings of them. The corporeal reality is the “rock” upon which all hallucinations and illusions must be shattered. This rock disappears into an abyss when the imaginative world is entered. Therefore the teacher must serve as another such rock. From what he is able to offer, the student must sense the reality of the new world. From this it can be judged what great confidence in the teacher must exist in any occult training worthy of the name. When he can no longer believe in the teacher, it is exactly the same in this higher world as if in the physical world everything on which his faith in the reality of his perceptions had been built were suddenly taken from him.

[ 13 ] Apart from this fact, there is yet another through which the human being might be thrown into confusion if he were to enter the imaginative world without guidance, for the occult student has in the first place to learn to know himself as distinct from all other spiritual beings. In physical life man has feelings, desires, longings, passions, ideas, and so forth. True, these are all caused by things and beings of the outer world, but the human being knows quite definitely that they form his inner world, and he distinguishes them from the objects of the outer world as what is happening within his soul. But as soon as the imaginative sense is awakened, this ease of differentiation completely ceases. His own feelings, ideas, passions, and so forth, literally step outside him and take on form, color and tone. He stands before them now as before wholly strange objects and beings in the physical world. It will be understood that the confusion can become complete if it is remembered what has been said in the chapter, “Some Results of Initiation,” in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. The way in which the imaginative world appears to the observer is described there. All appears there reversed as in a reflected image. What streams out from man appears as if it were coming toward him from outside. A wish that he cherishes changes into a shape—for example, into the form of some fantastic looking animal, or again into an entity resembling a human being. This appears to assail him, to make an attack on him, or to cause him to do this or that. So it can happen that the human being appears to himself as surrounded by a wholly fantastic, often charming and seductive, often also horrible, world of fluttering forms. In reality these are nothing other than his thoughts, wishes, and passions, transformed into images.—It would be a great error to believe it easy to distinguish between this self transformed into images on the one hand and the real spiritual world on the other. At first it is downright impossible for the student to make this distinction. For the identical picture can come from some spiritual being that speaks to men or from something in the interior of the soul, and if one's development is unduly precipitate at this point, there is danger of never learning to separate the two in an orderly fashion. The greatest caution is to be the rule in this regard.—Now the confusion will be still greater in that the wishes and desires of the soul clothe themselves in images of an exactly opposite character from what they really are. It may be assumed, for instance, that vanity clothes itself in a picture in this way. It may appear as a charming shape promising the most wonderful things if its dictates are carried out. Its pronouncements seem to set goals thoroughly good and worth striving for; if followed, they plunge one into moral and other kinds of ruin. Conversely, a good soul quality can clothe itself in unprepossessing garb. At this point only the real knower can differentiate, and only a personality unsusceptible to weakening in respect to a right aim is steady in face of the seductive artifices of his own soul's imagery.—From these considerations it will be recognised how necessary is the guidance of a teacher who, with a sure sense, makes the pupil attentive to what in this realm is phantasm and what is truth. There is no need to believe that the teacher must always stand just behind the pupil. The presence of the teacher close to the occult student in space is not what matters most. Certainly there is the moment when such spatial presence is desirable, and also when it is absolutely necessary. But on the other hand, the occult teacher finds means of remaining in touch with the pupil even when spatially far removed. Besides, it must be observed that much of what takes place between teacher and pupil in this sphere when they meet can go on working often for months and perhaps for years afterward. But there is one thing that must surely destroy the necessary link between teacher and pupil. This happens if the pupil loses confidence in the teacher.—It is particularly bad if this bond of confidence is broken before the pupil has learned to distinguish the illusory reflections of his own soul from true reality.

[ 14 ] Now it could perhaps at this point be argued that if a connection with the teacher occurs in this way, the occult student loses all freedom and independence. He gives himself, so to speak, wholly into the hands of the teacher. This is in truth, however, not at all the case. The various methods of occult training certainly differ from one another with respect to this dependence upon the teacher. This dependence can be required to be a greater or a lesser one. It is relatively greatest in the method that was followed by the Oriental occultists, and even today is taught by them as their own. This dependence is already proportionately less in the so-called Christian initiation, and, properly speaking, its complete omission comes on the path of knowledge that, since the fourteenth century, has come to be advanced by the so-called Rosicrucian occult schools. On this path the teacher can by no means be disregarded; that is impossible. But all dependence on him ceases. How this is possible will be presented in the continuation of these thoughts hereafter. Therein we shall explain precisely how these three paths of knowledge differ: the oriental, the Christian, and the Rosicrucian. In the Rosicrucian approach there is nothing at all upsetting in any way to a modern man's sense of freedom. It will also be described in this continuation how one person or another as an occult student, even in present-day Europe, may travel, not the Rosicrucian, but the Oriental path, or the old Christian; although today the Rosicrucian is the most natural. This way, as will be seen in due course, is not at all unchristian. A man can go this way without endangering his Christianity, as can also he who supposes himself to stand at the pinnacle of the modern scientific world-conception.

[ 15 ] But perhaps one other explanation is needed. One might feel tempted to ask whether the occult student could not be spared going through the delusions of his own soul. But if this happened, he would never attain to that independent discernment so desirable for him. For by no other means can the singular nature of the imaginative world be so well grasped as by the observation of one's own soul. To begin with, man knows the inner life of his soul from one side. He is immersed in it, and this is just what the occult student has to learn—not only to look at things from outside, but to observe them as if he himself were within all of them. If his own thought world now meets him as something foreign, and he already knows a thing from one side, he can still learn to know it from another. He must himself become to a certain extent the first example of such knowledge. Here in the physical world he is accustomed to something quite different. Here he looks upon all other things only from outside, but he experiences himself only from the inside. As long as he remains in the physical world, he can never see behind the surface of things. He can never go outside himself, “slip out of his skin,” as it were, to observe himself from outside. This objective observation of himself is literally his first obligation in occult training, this helps him learn also to look beneath the surface of outer facts and beings.

[ 1 ] From the description of Imagination it has become evident how through it the occult student leaves the ground of outer sense experiences. In a much higher degree is this the case with Inspiration. Here representation (image forming) is based much less upon what can be designated an outer stimulus. Man must find strength within himself to make it possible for him to form representations concerning things. He must be inwardly active on a much higher level than in the case of outer cognition. There he simply gives himself over to outer impressions, and these cause the images. This kind of surrender ceases when we come to Inspiration. No eye any longer supplies colours, no ear supplies sounds, and so forth. The whole content of representations must largely be shaped by one's own activity, consequently by purely spirit-soul processes, and the manifestation of the higher world must be impressed upon what man has created by his inner activity. A peculiar contradiction seems to appear in such a description of the world of higher cognition. The individual to a certain extent should be the creator of his own representations yet of course these representations must not be allowed to be his own creation. The processes of the higher world must be expressed through them just as the processes of the lower world are expressed through the perceptions of the eyes, ears, and so forth. But a contradiction is inevitable in the description of this mode of cognition, for this is exactly what the occult student must make his own on the path of Inspiration; he must attain by his inner activity a result that in ordinary life is outwardly compelled.—Why in ordinary life do the images representing the outer world not take their course arbitrarily? Because man has to make his inner imagery conform to the outer objects. All arbitrariness of the “ego” falls away because the objects say: We are that, or that. The objects themselves tell how they shall be thought of; the “ego” has nothing to decide about it. Whoever will not adjust himself to the objects has erroneous thoughts, and he would soon become aware of how little success he would have with them in the world. This necessary attitude of human beings to the things of the outer world can be designated in cognition by the term “selfless.” Man must attain a “selfless” attitude toward things, and the outer world is his instructor in this selflessness. It removes from him all illusions, all fantastic notions, all illogical judgments, all non-objectivity, simply by putting the correct image before his senses.

[ 2 ] If the human being wants to prepare himself for Inspiration, he must so develop his inner nature that this selflessness is his very own, even when nothing outside compels it. He must learn to create inwardly, but in such a way that his “ego” does not in the least way play an arbitrary role in this creative activity. The difficulties to be considered in achieving such selflessness become the more apparent the more consideration is given to what soul powers are especially needed for Inspiration.—The three fundamental powers of soul life are differentiated: Representation (thinking), feeling, and willing. In everyday sensory cognition, representations are stimulated into existence by outer objects, and through these externally stimulated representations the directions taken by feeling and willing are determined. For instance, the human being sees an object; it gives him pleasure, and in consequence he desires the things concerned. Pleasure is rooted in feeling, and through feeling the will is aroused, just as feeling has itself received its stamp from thinking. But the ultimate foundation of thinking, feeling and willing is the external object.—Another instance would be this. A man witnesses an event. It frightens him. He runs away from the scene of the event. Here, too, the outer occurrences are the initial cause; they are perceived through the senses, become representations, the feeling of fear springs up; and the will—expressing itself in running away—is the result. In Inspiration any outer object of this kind falls away. The senses do not come into play for a perception. Therefore they cannot give rise to representations. From this side no influence is exerted upon feeling and willing. Yet it is precisely from these two, as out of a mother substance, that in Inspiration representations inwardly arise and grow. If the mother substance is healthy, true representations will arise; if unhealthy, errors and illusions.

[ 3 ] As certainly as inspirations that originate in healthy feeling and willing can be revelations from a higher world, so certainly do errors, delusions and fantastic notions concerning a higher world spring from confused feeling and willing.

[ 4 ] Occult training therefore undertakes to indicate how the human being may make his feelings and his will impulses productive in a healthy way for Inspiration. As in all matters of occult training, the need here is for an intimate regulating and forming of soul life. First of all certain feelings must be developed which are known only to a slight degree in ordinary life. Some of these feelings will be hinted at here. Among the most important is a heightened sensitiveness to “truth” and “falsehood,” to “right” and “wrong.” Certainly the ordinary human being has similar feelings, but they must be developed by the occult student in a much higher measure. Suppose someone has made a logical error. Another sees this mistake and corrects it. Let it be clear how great is the role of judgment and intellect in such a correction, and how slight the feeling of pleasure in the right and displeasure in the wrong. Surely this is not to claim that the pleasure and corresponding displeasure are non-existent. But the degree to which they are present in ordinary life must be illimitably raised in occult training. Most systematically must the occult student turn his attention to his soul life, and he must bring it about that logical error is a source of pain to him, no less excruciating than physical pain, and conversely, that the “right” gives him real joy and delight. Thus, where another only stirs his intellect, his power of judgment, into motion, the occult student must learn to live through the whole gamut of emotions, from grief to enthusiasm, from afflictive tension to transports of delight in the possession of truth. In fact, he must learn to feel something like hatred against what the “normal” man experiences only in a cold and sober way as “incorrect”; he must enkindle in himself a love of truth that bears a personal character; as personal, as warm, as the lover feels for the beloved.—Certainly much is spoken in our “cultured” circles about the “love of truth” yet what is meant by this is not at all to be compared with what the occult student must go through in quiet, inner soul work toward this end. As a test, he must patiently, over and over again, place before himself this or that “true” thing, this or that “false” one, and devote himself to it, not merely to train his power of judgment for sober discrimination between “true” and “false,” but he must gain an entirely personal relation to it all.—It is absolutely correct that at the beginning of such training the human being can fall into what may be called “oversensitiveness.” An incorrect judgment that he hears in his environment, an inconsistency, and so forth, can cause him almost unbearable pain.—Care must therefore be taken in this respect during training. Otherwise great dangers might indeed result for the student's equilibrium of soul. If care is taken that the character remains steadfast, storms may occur in the soul life and the human being still retain the power to conduct himself toward the outer world with harmonious countenance and bearing. A mistake is made in every case in which the occult student is brought into opposition to the outer world so that he finds it unbearable or wishes to flee from it entirely. The higher world of feeling must not be cultivated at the expense of well-balanced activity and work in the outer world; therefore a strengthening of the power to withstand outer impressions must appear in corresponding measure to the inner lifting of the feeling life. Practical occult training, therefore, directs the human being never to undertake the above-mentioned exercises for developing the feeling world without at the same time developing himself toward an appreciation of the tolerance that life demands from men. He must be able to feel the keenest pain if a person utters an erroneous opinion, and yet at the same time be perfectly tolerant towards this person because the thought in his mind is equally clear that this person is bound to judge in this way, and his opinion must be reckoned with as a fact.—It is, of course, correct that the inner being of the occult scientist will be ever more and more transformed into a twofold life. Ever richer processes come about in his soul in his pilgrimage through life, and a second world becomes continually more independent of what the outer world offers. It is just this twofold existence that will bear fruit in the genuine practice of life. What results from it is quick-witted judgment and unerring certainty of decision. While anyone who stands remote from such schooling must go through long trains of thought, driven hither and thither between resolution and perplexity, the occult scientist will swiftly survey life situations and discern hidden relations concealed from the ordinary view. He then often needs much patience to synchronise with the slow rate at which another person is able to grasp something that for him comes swift as an arrow.

[ 5 ] Thus far we have spoken only of the qualities that must be developed in the feeling life so that Inspiration may occur in the correct way. The next question is: How do the feelings become fruitful so that they are accurately represented for the world of Inspiration? If one wishes to understand what occult science has to offer in answer to this question, acquaintance is necessary with the fact that man's soul life has always a certain treasure of feeling over and above those stimulated by sense perceptions. The human being feels, as it were, far more than things compel him to feel, only in ordinary life this excess is employed in a direction that through occult training must be transformed into another. Take, for instance, a feeling of anxiety or fear. It can be crystal clear that often fear or anxiety is greater than it would be if it were in true proportion to the corresponding outer event. Imagine that the occult student is working energetically on himself with the aim to feel in no instance more fear and anxiety than is justified by the corresponding external events. Now a given amount of fear or anxiety always entails an expenditure of soul force. This soul force is actually lost as a result when fear or anxiety is produced. The student really conserves this soul force when he denies himself fear or anxiety—or other such feelings—and it remains at his disposal for some other purpose. If he repeats such processes often, he will build up an inner treasure of these continually husbanded soul forces, and the occult student will soon find that out of such economies of feeling will arise the germs of those inner images that will bring to expression the revelations of a higher life. Such things cannot be “proved” in the ordinary sense; the occult student can only be advised to do this or that, and if he does so to watch for the indubitable results.

[ 6 ] A careless examination of what has been described might easily make it appear as a contradiction to demand from the one side an enrichment of the feeling world, with feelings of pleasure or pain to be kindled by what otherwise arouses only intellectual judgment, and from the other side to talk in almost the same breath of economy of feeling. This contradiction quickly disappears if it is borne in mind that the economies are to be effected in those feelings aroused by the outer senses. Just what is conserved there appears conversely as an enrichment of spiritual experience, and it is wholly correct that the feelings conserved in this way in the world of sense perception not only become free in the other sphere, but prove creative in that sphere.—They shape the matrix substance for those representations wherein the spiritual world reveals itself.

[ 7 ] But it would not accomplish much to remain at a standstill with only such economies as those indicated above. For greater results, still more is necessary. A far greater treasure still of power to create feeling must be supplied to the soul than is possible in this way alone. For instance, as a test, one must expose oneself to certain outer impressions, and then wholly deny oneself the feelings that “normally” arise as a result. One must, for instance, face an occurrence that “normally” excites the soul, and absolutely and totally forbid oneself the excitation. This can be accomplished either by actually confronting such an experience, or by conjuring it up imaginatively. The imaginative method is even better for a really fruitful occult training. As the student is initiated into Imagination, either before his preparation for Inspiration or simultaneously with it, he should actually be in a position to place an occurrence imaginatively before the soul with the same force as if it were in fact taking place.—If, therefore, in the course of long inner work the student ever again and again subjects himself to things and events, yet denies himself the corresponding “normal” feelings, a fertile ground for Inspiration will be created in his soul.—Just incidentally it might be noted here that he who is describing such training for Inspiration can fully appreciate possible objections against such a description from the standpoint of present-day culture. Not only can objections be made, but people may smile haughtily and say, “Inspiration cannot be pedantically taught; it is a natural gift of genius.” Yes, from the standpoint of modern culture, it may certainly seem almost comical to speak of a process that this culture will not admit to be explainable, but this culture is itself not conscious of how little it is able to think through its own thought processes to the end. Whoever would expect a disciple of this culture to believe that some more highly developed animal had not slowly evolved, but had appeared “suddenly,” would soon hear that a person cultured in the modern sense would not believe in such a “miracle.” Such a belief would be “superstition.” Now in the sphere of soul life, one with such modern education is himself but the victim of crass superstition simply in the style of his own opinions. By the same token, he will not recognise that a more fully developed soul must also have evolved, that it could not have sprung into existence suddenly as a gift of nature. Of course, externally, many a genius appears to have been born suddenly “out of nothing” in some mysterious way; but it appears so only for materialistic superstition; the spiritual scientist knows that the assessment of genius with respect to the life of a man born to this condition as if out of nothing is simply the result of his preparation for Inspiration during an earlier life on earth.—In the theoretical sphere, materialistic superstition is bad, but it is still worse in the practical sphere such as is concerned here. As it assumes that genius in the whole of the future must “fall from heaven,” it does not trouble itself about this “occult nonsense” or “fantastic mysticism” that speaks of preparation for Inspiration. In this way the superstition of the materialists retards the true progress of mankind. It does not see to it that the latent faculties are developed in man.

[ 8 ] In reality, precisely those who call themselves progressives and free-thinkers are often the enemies of true progress. But this, as noted, is but a casual remark, necessary because of the relationship of occult science to present-day culture.

[ 9 ] Now the soul powers that are stored up in the student's inner being by self-denial of “normal” feelings, as indicated above, are riches that would undoubtedly be transformed into Inspirations even if nothing else came to their aid, and the occult student would experience how true thought images arise in his soul, representing experiences in higher worlds. Progress would begin with the simplest experiences of supersensible events, and slowly more complicated and higher ones appear, if the student continued to live inwardly according to the suggested directions.—But in reality such occult training today would be entirely impractical, and nowhere is it carried out where work is undertaken earnestly. For, if the student wished to develop “out of himself” everything that Inspiration can give, he could undoubtedly “spin out” of himself all that has been said here, for example, about the nature of man, human life after death, the evolution of humanity and of the planets, and so forth. But such a student would need an immeasurably long time to do it. It would be, for example, as if a man would spin the whole of geometry out of himself, without regard for what had already been achieved in this realm before him. Certainly, in theory, it is fully possible. To carry it out in practice would be folly. Also, this is not the procedure in occult science, but through a teacher things are handed down that have been acquired for humanity by inspired predecessors. This tradition must for the present provide the basis for individual Inspiration. What is being offered today in literature and lectures out of the realm of occult science can absolutely provide such a basis for Inspiration. There are, for example, the teachings about the various component parts of man (physical body, ether body, astral body, and so forth), the knowledge concerning life after death pending a new incarnation, and everything that has been printed under the title, Cosmic Memory. In other words, it must be held fast at all points that Inspiration is needed for discovering and personally experiencing the higher truths, but not for understanding them. What is communicated in Cosmic Memory cannot at first be discovered without Inspiration. But once communicated, then it can be understood through wholly ordinary logical judgment. No one should assert that things are stated there that cannot be logically grasped without Inspiration. They are found inconceivable, not because of lack of Inspiration, but because they are not given sufficient reflective consideration.—If such communicated truths are received, they awaken Inspiration in the soul through their own strength. If sharing in such Inspiration is desired, however, the effort must be made not to receive this knowledge in a prosaic and matter-of-fact way, but to open oneself to be moved by the upswing of ideas into all possible feeling experiences. Why should this not be possible? Can feeling remain dull when overpowering cosmic occurrences pass before the spirit's gaze—how the Earth has developed out of Moon, Sun, and Saturn, or when the infinite depths of human nature are penetrated by a knowledge of man's ether and astral bodies, and so forth? One might almost say, “How regrettable,” for a person who can contemplate unmoved such edifices of thought. For if he did not regard them prosaically, but lived through all the tensions and relaxations of feeling that they make possible, all climaxes and crises, all progress and retrogression, all catastrophes and dispersions, then indeed would the mother substance be prepared in him for Inspiration itself. Certainly the necessary feeling life in the face of such communications from a higher world can be really unfolded only by exercises like those indicated above. Whoever turns all his feeling forces toward the outer world of sense perception will see narrations from a higher world as “arid concepts,” as “gray theory.” He will never be able to grasp why another finds the communications of occult science heartwarming, while his own heart remains cold to them. He will even say, “But this is only for the intellect; this is intellectual. I would like something for my whole well-being.” But he does not tell himself that it is his own fault if his heart remains cold.

[ 10 ] Many still undervalue the power of what lies already hidden in just these communications from a higher world, and in this connection they overvalue all kinds of other exercises and procedures. “What good is it to me,” they say, “to learn from others what the higher worlds look like? I want to see them for myself.” Such persons mostly lack the patience to concentrate over and over again upon such narrations from higher worlds. If they would do so, they would see what kindling force these “mere stories” have, and how one's own Inspiration is stimulated by hearing an account of the Inspirations of others.—Certainly other exercises must supplement mere “learning” if the student wishes to make rapid progress in the experience of the higher worlds, but no one should under-estimate the great significance precisely of “learning.” In any case no hope can be given that he will make rapid conquests in the higher worlds through any exercises whatever, unless he has at the same time set out to ponder incessantly upon the communications, purely narrative, that have been given from a competent quarter about the events and beings of the higher worlds.—Now that such communications are actually being presented in literature and in lectures, and so forth, and the first indications are also being given for the exercises leading to knowledge of higher worlds (as, for example, such indications as are presented in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment), it has now become possible to learn something of what formerly was communicated only in strictly guarded occult schools. As has been frequently mentioned, it is owing to the special conditions of our time that these things are and must be published. But also, on the other hand, it must be ever again emphasised that while it has thus been made easier to acquire occult knowledge, sure guidance through an experienced occult teacher is not yet to be completely dispensed with.

[ 11 ] Cognition through Inspiration leads men to the experience of processes in the invisible worlds, as, for instance, the evolution of man and that of the earth and its planetary embodiments. But when in these higher worlds not only processes, but being come under consideration, then must Intuition enter in as a mode of cognition. What occurs through such being is discerned through Imagination in pictures; laws and relationships, through Inspiration; if one would come face to face with the beings themselves, Intuition is needed.—How Inspiration becomes articulate in the world of Imaginations, how it permeates the latter as a “spiritual music” and so becomes the means of expression for the beings who are to be known through Intuition, will be explained later. Then also Intuition itself will be dealt with. Here it will merely be pointed out that what is designated as “Intuition” in occult science has nothing to do with the application of the word “intuition” in current popular usage. By this application is meant a more or less uncertain notion in contrast to clear cognition, logically arrived at through intellect or reason. In occult science, Intuition is nothing vague and uncertain, but a lofty mode of cognition, full of the most luminous clarity and the most indubitable certainty.

[ 1 ] Just as imagination may be called a spiritual seeing, so may Inspiration be called a spiritual hearing. Of course, it must be quite clear that by the expression “hearing” is meant a perception still further removed from sensory-hearing in the physical world than “sight” in the imaginative (astral) world is removed from seeing with the physical eyes. It can be said of the imaginative world's light and color phenomena that the radiant surfaces and colours of sensory-objects are as if lifted from these objects and released from them to float free in space. But this gives only an approximate idea, for “space” in the imaginative world is in no way like it is in the physical. Whoever fancies that he has before him imaginative color-pictures when he is seeing freely floating coloured particles in ordinary space dimension is in error.—But the forming of such color representations is, nevertheless, the way to the imaginative life. Whoever tries to put a flower before his mind's eye, and then separates off from his picture everything that does not represent color, so that an image of the coloured surface, separate from the flower, is suspended before his soul, can gradually through such exercises arrive at an Imagination. This picture itself is not yet such Imagination, but is more or less preliminary fantasy suggestion. Imagination, that is, the real astral experience first exists when not only the color is wholly lifted apart from the sense impression, but when also the three-dimensional space has fully lost itself. That this is the case can be confirmed only by a certain feeling. This feeling is described by saying that one no longer feels oneself “outside” but “inside” the color-picture and has the consciousness of partaking of its coming into being. If this feeling is not there, if one remains standing before the thing as before a sense-bound color-picture, then one has to do, not yet with real Imagination, but with something of the fanciful. It should not be said that such fantasy pictures are wholly worthless. They can actually be etheric reflections—like shadows—of real astral facts. As such they have their own value in occult-scientific training. They can form a bridge to true astral (imaginative) experiences.—A certain danger lurks in the observation only if the observer does not fully apply his sound human judgment at this frontier between the sensible and the supersensible. It is not to be expected that an unfailing test can be given whereby at this frontier he can differentiate illusion, hallucination, and the fantastic from reality. Such a general rule would surely be comfortable. But comfort is a word that the occult student should strike from his vocabulary.—It can only be said that he who would acquire clarity of discernment in this sphere must already be intent upon it in the ordinary life of the physical world. Whoever takes no care in ordinary life to think sharply and clearly will fall a victim to all possible illusions on his ascent into higher worlds. It has only to be considered how many snares of everyday life beset sound judgment. How often human beings do not see in an unconfused way what exists, but rather what they crave to see! In how many cases do men believe something, not because they have discerned it, but because it is acceptable to them to believe! Or what errors arise because one does not go to the bottom of a thing, but forms a hasty judgment! All these reasons for deception in ordinary life might be multiplied indefinitely. What tricks are played upon sound judgment by partisan feeling, passion, and so forth. If such errors of judgment in ordinary life are disturbing and often disastrous, they are the greatest conceivable danger to the wholesomeness of the supersensible experience. No general rule can be given to the student for his guidance in the higher worlds, beyond the advice to do everything possible for his healthy power of discernment and for his sound, independent judgment.

[ 2 ] When the observer in the higher worlds once knows what Imagination really is, he soon acquires the conviction that the pictures of the astral world are not merely pictures, but manifestations of spiritual beings. He comes to know that these imaginative pictures have reference to spirit or soul being just as do sensory colours to sensory things or beings. In particular, he will, of course, have yet much to learn. He must learn to discriminate between color formations that are opaque and those that are quite transparent and in their inner nature clear and radiant. In fact, he will perceive formations that seem to be continually producing their color-light anew from within, and that therefore are not only fully illuminated and transparent, but are forever radiating light from within. He will link the opaque formations to lower beings, the clear, luminous ones to intermediate entities; the inwardly radiant ones will be for him manifestations of higher spiritual beings.

[ 3 ] If we would arrive at the truth about the imaginative world, we must not form too narrow a concept of spiritual sight, for in that world there are not mere light and color perceptions, comparable to the sight experiences of the physical world, but also impressions of heat and cold, of taste and smell, and still other experiences of the imaginative “senses” for which the physical world offers no likeness. Impressions of heat and cold are, in the imaginative (astral) world, revelations of will and intention on the part of soul and spirit beings. Whether such a being aims at good or evil comes to light in a definite effect of heat or cold. Astral beings can also be “tasted” or “smelled.”—Only what constitutes in the actual sense the physical element of tone and sound is almost wholly lacking in the real imaginative world. In this connection absolute stillness prevails there. But instead, for the progressing spiritual observer, there is offered something quite different, comparable to tone and sound, to music and speech, in the sense world. This higher element steps in when every tone and sound from the outer physical world is wholly hushed; indeed, when even the faintest inner soul echo from this sphere of the outer world is silenced. Then there occurs for the observer what may be called an understanding of the significance of the imaginative experiences. If we were to compare what is now experienced with something in the physical world we could only come near to explaining the matter by referring to something that does not exist at all in that world. Let it be supposed possible to perceive the thoughts and feelings of a human being without hearing his words with the physical ear; such a perception might be comparable to a direct comprehension of the imaginative element referred to as “hearing” in the spiritual sense. What “speaks” are the color and light impressions. In lightings-up and dimmings-down, in the color metamorphosis of images are revealed harmonies and discords that unveil the feelings, representations, and thought life of soul and spirit beings. Just as tone becomes speech in physical man when thought is imprinted in it, so do harmonies and discords of the spirit world grow into manifestations that are definite thought entities. To this end, darkness must fall upon that world if thought is to be revealed in its immediacy. The experience here is: The bright color-tones—red, yellow, and orange—are seen to fade away, and it is perceived how the higher world darkens through green to blue and violet; at the same time a waxing of inner will energy is experienced. Full freedom with regard to space and time is experienced; there is a feeling of being in motion. Certain linear forms and shapes are experienced. These are not experienced as though seen to be drawn before one in any spatial expanse, but rather as though in continuous movement every single curve, every form, was followed by the ego. In fact, the ego is at once felt as the draughtsman and the drawing material. Every linear direction, every shift in position, is at one and the same time an experience of this ego. The ego stirred to motion is recognised to be bound up with the world's creative forces. The laws of the world are no longer something that the ego perceives outwardly, but a truly miraculous fabric that it is helping to weave.—Occult science designs all kinds of symbolic drawings and pictures. When these really correspond to fact and are not mere invented figures, they are based on the observer's experiences in higher worlds, which are to be viewed as described above.

[ 4 ] So is the world of Inspiration placed within the Imaginative world. When the Imaginations begin to unveil their meanings in “silent speech” to the observer, the world of Inspiration arises within the Imaginative world.

[ 5 ] Of that world that the spiritual observer penetrates in this way, the physical is a manifestation. Whatever of the physical world is accessible to the senses and the sense bound intellect is only the outer side. To cite a single example, the plant as observed with physical senses and physical intellect is not the whole plant being. Whoever knows only this physical plant resembles a being who might be able to perceive the finger nail of a man, but to whom the perception of man himself would be inaccessible. But the structure and being of the finger nail is understandable only when explained by the whole nature of man. Thus in truth the plant is comprehensible only when one knows what pertains to it as the whole human nature relates to the man's fingernail. But what is related to the plant cannot be found in the physical world. The plant is related to something fundamental that can only be unveiled by Imagination in the astral world, and, further, to something that will be revealed only through Inspiration in the spirit-world.—Thus the plant as a physical organism is the revelation of a being comprehensible by Imagination and Inspiration.

[ 6 ] From the foregoing it is evident how for the observer of higher worlds there opens up a path that has its beginning in the physical world. Namely, he can start from the physical world and from its manifestations rise to the higher being sustaining them. If he starts from the animal kingdom, he can rise by this means into the imaginative world; if he takes his start from the plant world, spirit observation will lead him through Imagination to the world of Inspiration. If this path is taken, within the imaginative and inspiration worlds will soon be found beings and facts not at all revealed in the physical world. It must not, therefore, be believed that in this way acquaintance is made only with those beings of the higher worlds that have physical manifestations. Whoever has once entered the imaginative world comes to know a multitude of beings and occurrences of which the observer of what is merely physical has not the slightest inkling.

[ 7 ] Now, to be sure, there is another way. It does not take its start from the physical world. It makes man directly clairvoyant in the higher regions of existence. For many persons this method might have more power of attraction than the one above indicated. But for our life-conditions only the ascent from the physical world should be chosen. It requires of the observer the self-renunciation that is necessary if he is first of all to examine the physical world around him and accumulate knowledge and, especially, experience. In any case, it is the method best suited to our present-day cultural conditions. The other way presupposes the prior acquisition of soul qualities extremely hard to attain under modern life-conditions. Even though such soul qualities have again and again been stressed with full sharpness and clarity in past writings, still most people have no idea at all, or at most, an inadequate one—of the degree to which these qualities (for example, selflessness and devoted love ) must be acquired for attainment of the higher worlds without starting from the firm ground of the physical. If anyone should be awakened in the higher worlds without having attained the requisite degree of the corresponding soul qualities, the result must be unspeakable misery. Now it must not be believed, however, that the soul qualities characterized above can be dispensed with by one making his start from the physical world and its experiences. To believe this would also be an error of serious consequences. But such a start allows for the gradual acquisition of these qualities in the measure, and above all in the form, possible in our present life conditions.

[ 8 ] Another thing comes into consideration in this regard. If the start is made in the way indicated from the physical world, a living connection is retained with this physical world in spite of the ascent into higher worlds. A full understanding continues for all that happens in it, and the full energy to work in it. Indeed, this understanding and energy increase in a most helpful way just through the knowledge of the higher worlds. In every realm of life, even in what seems most prosaically practical, the knower of the higher worlds will work better and more usefully than the non-knower, provided he has preserved the living connection with the physical world.

[ 9 ] But whoever is awakened in the higher spheres of existence without starting from the physical world is only too readily estranged from life; he becomes a hermit, confronting his contemporaries without understanding or sympathy. Indeed, it even happens that people of incomplete development in this respect—not, of course, those with perfect development—look down with a certain disdain upon the experiences of the physical world and feel themselves superior, and so forth. Instead of their sympathy toward the world being heightened, such people become hardened, self-seeking natures in the spiritual sense. The temptation to all this is truly not slight, and those striving for the ascent into the higher worlds may well pay attention to it.

[ 10 ] From Inspiration the spiritual observer may rise to Intuition. In the manner of expression of occult science this word denotes in many respects the exact opposite of that for which it is often used in ordinary life. In the ordinary sense intuition is spoken of when one has in view a notion dimly felt to be true, which still lacks clear, conceptual definition. A preliminary step toward knowledge, rather than knowledge itself, is seen therein. An idea of this nature may—according to that definition—illuminate a great truth like a flash of lightning, but it can first have value as knowledge when founded on conceptual judgment. Sometimes also intuition designates something “felt” as truth, of which one is fully convinced, but which one will not weigh down with intellectual judgment. People who become acquainted with spiritual-scientific knowledge, often say: That was always clear to me “intuitively.” All this must be put entirely aside if the term Intuition is to be kept in view in its true significance meant here. In this application Intuition is not a mode of cognition which with regard to clarity lags behind intellectual knowledge, but one that far surpasses it.

[ 11 ] In Inspiration the experiences of the higher worlds speak their meaning. The observer lives in the qualities and actions of the beings of these higher worlds. If, as described above, he follows with his ego a lineal direction or the shape of a figure, he knows that he is not within the being itself, but within its qualities and functions. Already in imaginative cognition he has, indeed, experienced the feeling of being not outside, but inside the color-images; but he knows no less clearly that these color-images are not in themselves independent beings, but the qualities of such beings. In Inspiration, he is conscious of his becoming one with the deeds of such beings, with the manifestations of their will; in Intuition, for the first time, he merges his own self into that of self-contained beings. This can happen in the right way only if the emergence takes place, not by the effacement, but by the complete maintenance of his own being. Any “losing of oneself” in another being is bad. Therefore only an ego fortified to a high degree within itself can without damage plunge into another being.—Something has been grasped intuitively only if the feeling has arisen with regard to it that in it there is expressing itself a being of the self-same nature and inner content as one's own ego. Whoever examines a stone with his outer senses and seeks to understand its peculiarities with his intellect and by the usual scientific resources comes to know only the outer aspect of the stone. As spiritual observer he proceeds to imaginative and inspired knowledge. By dwelling within Inspiration he can come to an additional feeling. This may be characterized in the following way by a comparison. Suppose one sees a man on the street. To begin with, he makes a fleeting impression upon the observer. Later one becomes better acquainted with him; then comes the moment when one becomes such a friend that soul opens itself to soul. The experience goes through when the veils of the soul fall thus away and one ego confronts the other, is comparable to that when, to the spiritual observer the stone appears solely as an outer manifestation, and he advances to something related to the stone as the fingernail to the human body, and which lives itself out as an ego like one's own ego.

[ 12 ] That kind of knowledge that leads into the “innermost nature” of beings is first attained for man in Intuition. In the discussion of Inspiration, mention has been made of the transformation the spiritual observer's inner soul constitution must undergo if he wishes to arrive at this mode of cognition. In this connection it has been stated that, for instance, an incorrect conclusion must extend its effects not only to the intellect, but to the sensing nature, that it must cause grief, pain, and the observer must systematically cultivate such inner experience. Of course, as long as this pain springs from the sympathies and antipathies of the ego, and from partisan attitudes, the preparation for Inspiration cannot be considered adequate. Such involvement of the soul is far removed from the inner sympathy that the ego must feel for the pure truth—as truth—if it would arrive at the proclaimed goal. If cannot be too strongly emphasised that all forms of interest that prevail in ordinary life as pleasure and pain in relation to truth and error, must first be silenced, and then a totally different kind of interest, wholly without self-seeking, must enter in if anything is to be done for cognition through Inspiration. This one quality of the inner soul life is, however, but one means of preparation for Inspiration. There is an unlimited number of others that must be added to it, and the more the spiritual observer refines himself with regard to what has already served him for Inspiration, the better equipped he will be to approach Intuition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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