The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It was my task to show that Christianity underwent a development in the first centuries, and I emphasized that the conclusion of this development actually occurred relatively late, at least much later than the "orthodox" churches imagine this conclusion to have been.

This development also went through a mystical epoch. The main idea was that everywhere in the Mediterranean region, in Europe and far into Africa, there was a deepening of the religious worldview before our era, before the first century of the Christian era, and that this deepening of religious life moved in exactly the same direction and virtually grew towards Christianity, indeed formed the direct basis for many currents in Christianity.

When we sift through Christian writers from the first century, we cannot say what comes from these or those. The Apocalypse was nothing more than a popularization of ancient mystery ideas. Initiates into the mysteries often converted to Christianity later. They then expressed themselves in the same way as the pagan writers. This became particularly clear to us with the pseudo-Dionysius, Dionysius Areopagita, who is said to have been converted by the apostle Paul. The writings of this Dionysius probably date back to earlier times. They are imbued with mystical ideas; they also contain theosophical ideas. We are dealing with an ancient Egyptian priest who was initiated into the Egyptian or Eleusinian mysteries, who then expresses the truths in this way. Or we can also assume that the mysticism of Dionysius was expressed again in Alexandria. In the first century, we are dealing with a teaching that is in the process of development. In fact, we can say that it was not until the fourth century that the very specific doctrine known in the West as Christianity took hold.

The first writer to testify to the first purely Christian mysticism was St. Augustine, who concerns us today. In him we have the first Christian mysticism before us. Thus the riddle that the mysteries of the ancients underlie primitive Christianity will appear most clearly to us. The Gnostics were Christian mystics of the first century. I said that these Gnostics taught the ancient theosophical teachings of the Logos, of the Logos embodied in matter, and that they spread what they had gained from the ancient Mysteries. I said that they assumed that man can only ascend to a real vision through the various degrees of knowledge - they recognized a spiritualized Christ as their own - that they made use of all the means of the Christian mind in order to carry over as many teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as possible into those teachings which you can still guess from the Gospels today. There were also various sects among the Gnostics. Those teachings are essentially nothing more than ancient mysticism translated into popular form. If we think of this spirit [of the old teaching poured into new forms], then we have what the Gnostics represented. They were also the ones who said that the best cannot be entrusted to Scripture, but that the highest levels can only be transmitted from personality to personality.

So the Gnostics were the bearers of a spiritualized Christianity. We also have such confessions in Alexandria. We could list a whole series of Christian confessions, but we can no longer say what was taught by the various ecclesiastical writers who were labeled false teachers by the Church Fathers.

If we were to go through these various opinions, we would see that in the first years of Christian development we are dealing with a diverse, not a uniform doctrine, with a doctrine that has gained influxes from all sides. It is therefore the case that we are not dealing with a self-contained doctrine in the first century. Today's Christianity is a creation of the two councils of Nicaea and Constantinople.

We must see the most important personality within the Christian mystical development in Augustine, because he sought in himself a deepening that was not achieved in such a way by any later one, nor could it be overtaken, because the later time was [indeed] more Christian, but not more mystical. Augustine presents us with the beginning of that - in the fourth to fifth century - which can show us the basic difference between what must still have been present in [earlier] Christianity and what later took the place of this original Christianity.

I would like to say right away that those who approach the study of Augustine themselves - the deep life of the mind - will find the greatest satisfaction. I would like to say that I would not like to compare any personality with Augustine in terms of greatness and perspicacity of thought. But even among modern philosophers there are probably few and only a few that I would place alongside Augustine. Whoever takes Cartesius and studies him, whoever compares him with him, will find that Cartesius is only a one-sided education. Augustine, however, is one of the most profound thinkers of all time.

What we know about the Gnostics indicates that in addition to the ancient religious systems of the whole world, the Gnostics also had in their basic views that which was still widespread as mysteries, that in Gnosticism everything was indeed represented which we today seek to awaken in the teachings of Theosophy. He who tries to penetrate Gnosticism will be able to say to himself nothing other than that it is undoubtedly the case that this basic Gnostic view is still permeated by the sentiments and ideas which constituted the essence, the deepest core of the old religious systems, that only the documents do not speak to us clearly and distinctly enough.

If we take the doctrine of re-embodiment, of reincarnation, it is this which alone corresponds to an eternal world order, which is strictly self-contained, which alone shows us how the world and God can be identical, because only on the premise of this doctrine can a complete balance, a harmony between the true and the false, in short a complete harmony between all apparently divergent ideas, be possible. I mean that man not only feels at one with some divine being, but with the eternal spirit which pervades the whole world, and feels this spirit not only as the one deity, but also as the individuality which passes through each individual life; I mean, therefore, the re-embodiment of the spirit which also confronts us in the Buddhist doctrine, which has not one, but many Buddhas. This doctrine [of re-embodiment] was undoubtedly something that was contained as a keynote in the ancient teaching of the Gnostics. We now understand why deeper initiates, disciples of Dionysius, used this apostle's name over and over again. Like the Pythagoreans, they were of the opinion that the spirit of the founder still lived on in them. They recognized him in themselves, just as the Pythagoreans recognized their forefather in themselves. It was only later that the teachings [of Dionysius] were recorded. The one who recorded them regarded himself as a personality who reached up in spirit to the time of the founding of the order.

This is the basic phenomenon of Christianity, that this doctrine of the general spirituality of the world, this esoteric view, is gradually being overcome, forgotten and disappearing. Christianity without this view of the world, without this basic mood, first appears to us clearly and distinctly in Augustine. He represents a view that is free from the transformation of the soul and free from the transformation of the spirit. In Augustine we therefore encounter the first mystic who only deals with the one personal human life. What lies between the individual personalities, what the old religions interposed between the individual personality and the All-Unity, has fallen away with Augustine.

The great and significant thing is that despite this, a personality appeared in the Church that reached an immeasurable depth, even though it knew no intermediate links between personality and all-unity. This is what gives us an understanding of Augustine's teachings. They contain a mysticism without the foundation of an ancient mystical view, a mysticism in which everything that the ancients placed between the two is placed in the Godhead. What is between man and the Godhead is placed within the Godhead. This is why Augustine also writes: "I have transferred into the Godhead that which men formerly perceived as their world. When people used to look at the whole world and then at their personal characteristics, they said to themselves: This world is not a boundary. It includes personalities before and after; and the balance that I cannot find in myself, I find in the whole world. What I lack in one place at one time can be replaced in another place and at another time. For people, therefore, everything is only seemingly limited, isolated, because sooner or later it balances itself out again. This whole question: How is it that a single personality with these or those characteristics appears in such a way that a peculiarity that destroys others turns to the good in this one? - This question stood before Augustine as a great riddle. He solved it in a way that it can only be solved. This man of wisdom appears to be inhuman, apparently carried away by the worst fanaticism when he speaks about this question, because he does not have the opportunity to answer in the sense of the theosophy of the ancients. That is why he had to burden a God with it, that is why he had to say: It is not the personality that determines its own existence in the eternal development of the spirit; this individual personality, he had to say to himself, stands there all by itself; and what stands opposite it is the infinite perfection of power [of God]. He had to say to himself as a logical thinker: So all the characteristics of man, regardless of whether he comes into the world as a sinner or as a good person, as a genius or imbecile, stem from the Godhead. This cannot be explained by anything else in the world. It can only lie in the Godhead, if all intermediate elements are removed. Hence the harsh teaching of Augustine: man is either predestined to eternal bliss or to eternal damnation.

It would have been impossible for a personality who suffered as much as he did to have taught such a harsh doctrine if he had not at the same time sought to build up a world system within this view in a logically consistent manner. In the last lecture, i.e. today over eight days, we will see how this doctrine was reversed immediately after Augustine by a highly significant inconsistency into a completely different doctrine, in the case of an equally profound thinker, Scotus Eriugena.

This is what makes St. Augustine understandable to us, this is what explains why this personality clings to it so rigidly: Man is predestined for good or for bad. That intermediate link [- re-embodiment -] which the Gnostics still had, has been lost to him. Now begins that Christian development which has eliminated the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, palingenesis.

Augustine is considered the greatest authoritative and most important Doctor of the Church. Let us now take a look at this great personality of St. Augustine himself. There will hardly have been a second personality in the Christian Church who combined all three characteristics in such a harmonious way. Let us disregard what the Christian Church had lost at that time and consider St. Augustine as a Christian mystic. Clear thinking, sharply based on reason, depth of mind and at the same time the noblest will and character. These were the qualities that were present in rare harmony in this man. We therefore also see that his life is a continuous process of self-initiation, which is sought by most mystics. We see how he is religiously educated by his mother Monika, but how he is not satisfied by the ordinary teachings of the Church; we see how he falls into doubt, how, after finding no satisfaction in the teachings that his mother could give him, he joins the Manichaeans, a sect.

This sect shows us that the Persian worldview had penetrated the Christian doctrine, in which two opposing forces play a role: Good and Evil. They regard Christ, as the Logos, as the helper who leads people entangled in the bonds of evil back to good. The Manichaeans are [destined] to explain evil. For them, evil is an original power and should only be overcome.

According to the theosophical view, evil arises merely through a sacrifice that the deity itself makes by entering into existence in an external way, by incarnating itself. This creates the appearance of evil, of falsity, of error. The error arises because the complete connection within the world cannot be made clear to us. It is concealed by the various material intermediate grounds between individuality and allness.

This teaching of the Manicheans satisfied Augustine for a time because he had felt the bad, the pulling down, the evil passions, desires and impulses in his youth. He could not explain this in any other way than that these forces are present in the world. However, something in St. Augustine resisted this view. And so it was that within this doctrine a contradiction arose and confronted him. He could not explain how two original elements could exist: a good All-One and an evil All-One. He could not grant error the same right [as truth] in his progressive thinking.

Now came something that must come over every human being who has progressed to this stage. The period arises when evil and good, ugliness and beauty actually confront him like two equal forces. The Buddha is approached by Mara, the Christ by Satan. Only life, immersion, can bring about victory. No knowledge that is given to us beforehand is capable of doing so. We ourselves must bring about victory through our own work on ourselves. There are two ways. We can perhaps advance to this conquest of evil through mystical guidance, or if this is not possible, as it was for Augustine, who could not have any external mystical guidance, then the only possibility is to fight for that victory from within ourselves, to climb that step.

Augustin found this guidance in Christianity, which he grasped as deeply as possible [...]. He did not find this path immediately. At first he did not find people who could help him. His own strength was not so well developed. He did not find anyone who could have taught him from the Christian tradition itself what he later called "the spirit over the letter". It was therefore necessary for him to go through the most terrible doubts into which he now fell. He himself became a doubter, a skeptic and went through the most bitter doubts of knowledge before he became a Christian in the sense [that] is called "soteric".

It was the Bishop of Milan, Ambrose, who introduced him to the spirit as opposed to the letter. We can still see the doubts he went through page by page in his "Confessions". This work should be read by everyone, Protestants and Catholics alike. They will read through the book with the greatest satisfaction. And so will everyone else who does not belong to these confessions.

Luther himself was an Augustinian monk, was a Catholic and regarded [Augustine] as the first saint. Anyone who has grown up in theosophical ideas will find in Augustine a mysticism that actually went as far as one can go without the missing teachings that I have mentioned. Doubt emerges everywhere between the lines in the "Confessions". He shows us how he fought throughout his life. And he became a victor over doubt.

What kind of doubts were these? We also have doubters in our time that we have to confront. But you have to study Augustine's doubt, and then you have to see and say: there is a right to doubt once you have reached this level of Augustine. The doubts that come from people who do not want to conquer them, or from people who have taken them from philosophy, seem to us like a frivolity of knowledge compared to Augustine's doubt. But Augustine's doubt, which is based on the question of how good and evil can be in harmony, is overcome in spite of everything. Augustine struggles through under the guidance of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. He describes this development in his spiritual journey. We see that Augustine achieved everything that could be achieved in the current of thought in which he was placed. We even see in him an echo of Indian teachings. His path of knowledge appears to us in seven limbs. Within the seven limbs, however, everything that must be missing is missing, since the primal element is missing.

Man develops out of material existence. He is at the same stage as plants and animals. That is the first stage. You will find these stages somewhat different from what is known about them in Theosophy. Man then develops from this material stage to the organic stage, he develops his organs, his organic activity, his sensory activity, his memory activity. He now also lives in the outside world. There he is on the second stage. There he works cognitively in the sensory element. Then he comes to the third stage. It introduces the spirit into the outer world. The spirit takes possession of the outer world, from the simple technical activities up to that which appears to us as our formulation of the spirit in the world, up to that through which the spirit receives its strength for practical work. And then, when man withdraws again, when he has become a willful being, when he feels the spirit of goodness and truth, then he is on the fourth stage. He reaches the fifth stage when he senses that the divine dwells in the true and receives a "prospect of the divine thoughts. He reaches the sixth stage when he not only feels the divine within himself, but also senses it in his eternal existence. He is on the seventh stage when he acts with willpower like the deity.

The Buddha teachings show us how man has to go through certain stages. When he has reached a certain stage, he sees the cosmic in-breath and out-breath; he sees how man emerges from one house, as it were, and then later enters another house. Thus the spiritually developed person sees how the human being enters the process of re-embodiment from the spiritual world and then returns to the spiritual world. This is what had to be distinguished in the Buddha teaching. In Augustine's teaching, which otherwise appears to us to be similar to the Buddhist teaching, we lack this poignant element, which had been forgotten in Christianity. Augustine's seven-limbed path lacks the gripping description given to us five hundred years before the birth of Christ on "The visible fruits of the ascetic life". It is a writing that no one will read without receiving the greatest impressions of the meaning of what was present in the Buddha community.

[Are they not words of deepest knowledge about Augustine that confront us in the wisdom of Augustine's biography?] What we previously encountered as a bone of contention appears to us [in Augustine] in a transfigured way. For example, the Trinity, which has led to countless sectarian formations. When we encounter this in Augustine, he refers us to our self-knowledge. He says: I immerse myself in my own personality, and this confronts me as a threefold. I feel myself first as my "being", then as the "knower" and then as the "willer". I am these three in one person. And just as I am these three in one person, so it is in that of which the personality is only an image. - The divine lives in man. Man can therefore only find the divine by penetrating into his inner being, in the inner truth that we can find through our self-knowledge.

The fact of thinking is the deepest fact there is for him. There he finds the most poignant words to describe it for him, which also gave him the certainty of the divine [primordial One]. "I went out into the world and looked at the most diverse natural things. I could find that they are divine, but I could not find that they are God. I look at people and finally look inside myself. I see that I must be divine, but I also see that I am not "God. I first had to come to complete certainty within myself, I had to become better myself. Then I discovered the "good in me." - Self-deepening must come first: That is true mysticism. If you have not first discovered what is within you, all previous self-knowledge will be of no avail. First awaken this primal One in you, then you will also be able to find the deepest. - He wanted to doubt that he is alive, doubt that he thinks; but he cannot doubt that. And what is this primordial One? "I asked the earth, the sea, I asked the winds" - see the "Confessions" - "they answer: We are not God." He could not recognize the spiritual [there]. He only saw it under symbols. He believed [at first] that this was it. But that was his mistake. He felt it was the highest good to see the spiritual also spiritually. - I now see the eternal goals, the eternal ideas, as the Pythagoreans saw them. I don't just see counted, understood things, but I see in such a way that I see into the numbers, into the things, that I see the purely spiritual itself.

In Scotus Eriugena we will get to know a personality of infinite, mystical depth. But we must say to ourselves that in Augustine we have found such a leading personality for Christianity that it becomes clear to us from Augustine's teaching and personality what Christianity has lost in terms of its old mystical views. It becomes clear to us to what depth it was able to reach despite what it had lost. St. Augustine experienced everything that was possible for him, because he was a personality who had lived through everything, who had found the law of truth as the primal law of life. This is the teaching of St. Augustine, which cannot be ignored when speaking of Western mysticism.

Answer to the question:

Question: It is strange that Augustine, despite his inner vision, despite his mystical deepening, did not find the doctrine of re-embodiment.

Answer: Those who follow Augustine's teaching achieve a harmony between cognition, feeling and moral love. This gives them the perspective of the divine, which they recognize as the innermost human being. This is a level of vision in which the divine does not take shape. However, this is possible when vision has reached the point where the spiritual presents itself to us on the most diverse levels. Its seven stages therefore also appear to us as the most important thing not contained.

Through contemplation, he can penetrate mysticism, and mysticism means life in the divine to him.

Buddha's personality is higher than the personality of Augustine.

The truly mystical has never been lost. The esoteric has permeated the exoteric both in Buddha and in the first Christian centuries.

Dear guests!

Of course, this can only be a kind of artificial, provisional conclusion, brought about by the fact that I still have to deal with the theosophical-mystical view of Scotus Eriugena.

I have undertaken to deal with this personality because this personality forms a conclusion to the Christian research that lies ahead of him on the one hand and on the other hand the starting point of what is actually called the Christian Middle Ages.

Scotus Eriugena shows us clearly that what is called the Christian view was by no means as fixed until the ninth century as it was later regarded. What was meant by genuine, true Christianity was not so fixed that it would not have been possible for such a mind to have views on the Christian teachings of the Church that differed from the majority of others.

However, this is already the great battle that the centralized Catholic Church is waging against such views. Christian doctrine is [still] fluid on all sides. Debates are still taking place as to how the various dogmas should be interpreted. With Scotus Eriugena you can clearly see that at that time it was still possible to have a free interpretation of the Bible. He is a completely theosophical interpreter of the Bible. He cites the sentences of the Old and New Testaments as symbols for spiritual processes alongside the historical side. He chooses those symbols and interpretations which correspond better to his own views. This free custom dwindled [in the course of time] in the Catholic Church, dwindled more and more. The faith established by the administration is asserting itself more and more. However, it had been preserved as a tradition that only those who had reached a certain high level of life were called to interpret the Bible and the teachings of the Church. I don't think it would be easy to prove that almost lay interpretations of Scripture could have asserted themselves; I don't think anyone would have dared to criticize the dogma who had not already attempted to do so through their pursuit of wisdom. Belief in authority was taken for granted. What St. Augustine, for example, had written and said was not regarded as the opinion of a single person, but as a teaching given to us through the indwelling of the power of wisdom in such a person. These views must be understood according to their intention.

Those who were later condemned, who were heretized, grew out of the material that the Church preserved and which first had to permeate those who became involved in such things in the first place, who believed they were called to approach an interpretation of the Church and the Church's teachings.

It would be wrong to compare the philosophy of Scotus Eriugena with any other. It can only be understood in and within Christianity. It must also be viewed in this way and not in the same way as Giordano Bruno. I have already mentioned a person who lived in the first century and left behind writings. [I am referring to the works of the "false" Dionysius, whose author is said to have lived in Athens with the Apostle Paul.] We know that these writings represent a mystical deepening. At the end of the fifth century, we realize that we are dealing with ancient teachings. They must also be understood as such. The teachings can be traced back to the time when the Gospel of John and the Apocalypse were written. They were probably [given] by the one who founded the [Athenian] school.

Finally, we come to the point where wisdom ceases to be wisdom, where it must pass over into life. This is a view that underlies gnosis. It endeavors to turn wisdom into immediate life. The practical meaning of gnosis lies in bringing the spirit down into the material. This view in turn has as its equivalent the view that wisdom cannot be attained through the mere pursuit of wisdom, but only the prospect of it.

There are two different views: "positive theology" and "negative theology". The primary source of the former is sensory perception. One sees, hears, feels this being, this thing; this thing has these and those properties. Negative theology, however, says that behind what we see, hear and so on lies the original source of existence. Nothing can lead us to penetrate it completely; it is only the [inner] life that leads us on the path to penetrating that primordial existence.

This is the path to the heights of mystical knowledge as opposed to external scientific knowledge. Positive theology, which therefore really says something for man, is only a down payment. This knowledge only becomes negative theology because man is forced to say to himself that there is something hidden in the primal grounds of existence. So where, above all, the realization of inadequacy emerges, where the right to doubt awakens, where the feeling awakens that knowledge is only a support in the effort to advance towards divinity - this is where negative theology arises.

You do not reach divinity through concepts, not through the mind. If you imagine divinity as personality, you see divinity in the superpersonality, as essence in the superessential, as perfection in the superperfect! It is most remarkable that the Western world could be surprised by the word "superman", which we encounter so often today. In Dionysius we see a word that takes us much higher, in that he speaks not only of the superman, but of the "supergod". This is in contrast to the God who is human-like, in contrast to what was then called "positive theology", the vital theology that was behind the negative one. Nicholas Cusanus said - after he had acquired all the knowledge that science could give him, after the realization had dawned on him during a voyage across the great sea of how the spiritual eye must become clear at a glance - that these are not expressions for something that exists, but only for symbols that can awaken a perspective in us.

These writings by Dionysius Areopagita were given to Louis the Pious by the Greek owners and have been in Paris ever since. When Scotus Eriugena was favorably received by Charles the Bald, he was commissioned - he was one of the few who knew Greek - to translate these writings. In this way he immersed himself in the spirit of the first Christian centuries, and so we see a Christian tinged theosophy emerging in his works. The writings of Augustine supported him in this. They became a great help for monks and priests, and for the Church in general.

What was probably still present in the Gnostics of the first centuries and what the Christian Church has not preserved is completely missing in [Augustine]: the awareness of a pervasive individuality and any mention of transmigration. Nothing is interposed between personality and divinity. Augustine had to attribute every human peculiarity to the will of the Godhead, so to speak. He could say nothing [else], since he knew nothing of a pervasive individuality. That which appears in me as my own personality is the result of that which reaches out backwards and forwards. But [Augustine] must trace this back to the will of the Godhead. Thus we create a boundary between the Godhead and the will of the individual. And this is how the [so-called predestination] controversy arises. On the one hand, we have those who are saved, and on the other, those who are not allowed to enter divinity: despite the immense love, the realization of the terrible. In other words, dualism.

With such a doctrine, it was extremely difficult to work within the church. One can only imagine that this doctrine could only be presented to a generous mind; it was not possible to present it to the congregations. Nevertheless, it was clear to the church that the wisdom of Augustine set the tone. This [drastic] doctrine of predestination could not be maintained, so they tried to conceal and weaken this hard, cruel doctrine. It was said: "It is quite undoubted that from the very beginning sinners were predestined to eternal damnation, the righteous to bliss; but then the possibility was introduced that a crossing over [to the other side] could take place. In short, they tried to get out of the dilemma. The only way out, which is given in the transmigration of souls, was now sought to be bridged by the half-measure of the Augustinian doctrine. A French monk, [Gottschalk], stood up against this half-measure of Augustine's teaching at the court of Charles the Bald in France. Although he did not name Augustine, he represented him completely and he taught the entire Augustinian doctrine [of absolute predestination] again.

Scotus Eriugena was then presented with the question [of the correctness of this doctrine], first by the Church and then by his master, Charles the Bald. Gottschalk had been publicly flogged. He was flogged in [Mainz at the synod of 848 AD and in Quierzy at the synod of 849 AD]. A treatise had been written against him on predestination. It said that Gottschalk should have been burned, that he should have been dealt with by fire and sword - the heretic judgments began much later. So the only options were condemnation or public flogging.

Scotus Eriugena contrasted himself with Gottschalk. Nevertheless, he emphasized that the doctrine that prevailed in the church was not the right one either. He himself also stated that the theosophical-mystical element always and repeatedly breaks through in large-scale natures. He said that Augustine could only be misunderstood in a view that places divinity beyond the world and where the divine [does not] permeate the whole world, i.e. only in such a teaching. From such a deepening we see the meaningful writing of Scotus Eriugena "On the Division of Nature" emerge. The stream of the divine runs through the world. But the divine must be sought in the world in various stages. He advocates a kind of pantheism of which Boehme would say that he does not mix the world with the divine, but rather evaluates it by saying: The things of the world are indeed the divine, but not in such a way that it can be found in the individual things. They only lead to it, they are the guides [to the divine]. Thus we also see in Scotus Eriugena's objection to Augustine's doctrine that he says: "If one part of the world were indeed to be regarded as bad, as an apostasy against the original good and the original beauty, if it were a dualism between good and evil, then it would be impossible for the divine to permeate the world, for the divine would then also have to be present in the bad. But then the bad would be a manifestation of the divine - or one would have to speak of an impotence of the divine.

Whoever has gained an insight into the depths of the world as a whole cannot possibly recognize two world powers in this way or think of the world as constructed in this way. He must think of the world as constructed in a unified way, so that what we regard as error must be founded in a [unified] way. He cannot suppose that the divine has determined a part to be unattractive, he can only suppose that the divine has determined the aim and purpose of the world; he can only suppose that the beautiful and the ugly only appear, that the world is not divinity itself, is not the entity existing in unfathomable divinity, but that the divine has poured itself out in the world. Evil arises through diversity, through multiplicity. It only has an existence if we express it in earthly terms, it only appears to us as evil [if we do not see through the world as maya, not as illusion]

Jakob Böhme has an idea that is very similar to this. He compares the world to an organism. Every single limb is alive. The hand is just as necessary to the whole of the organism as the foot or any other part of it. It is what it is only in the context of the organism. When the hand is separated from the organism, when it dies, it is no longer a hand; as a hand it must be permeated by the organic. Thus the manifold is only good because it is connected with the original source. Can this prevent one hand from injuring the other? Because the organism is made up of parts, it is possible for parts to come into conflict with each other. Thus disharmony is not rooted [in the organism]. But it can arise if the organism appears to us as a manifold. When the parts of the manifold have returned to unity, then disharmony can no longer come about, then the forces can no longer be turned against each other. As long as the world is a manifold, parts of it will continue to turn against each other. Although the whole is good and in harmony, disharmony is still possible. If we could see through time and space at a glance, then every single thing that seems bad to us would turn out to be good, every disharmony would cancel itself out in the harmony of the whole. We only see a part because we ourselves are a member of the manifold. Thus, for Scotus Eriugena, this doubt is resolved by the fact that he does not assume God's dominion, but God's integration into the world. Thus evil must also have only an illusory nature, and necessarily so, because God assumed matter.

In four parts, in four forms of existence, Scotus Eriugena breaks down nature by treating Augustine's teaching:

First, into that which cannot be attained, the uncreated, creating nature, which we only have in truth if we say to ourselves: all concepts are not sufficient to attain that which underlies everything.

The second is the development out of the [un]created: the created and creating nature. For him, these were the primordial spiritual forces. They are creating and created. That which Plato calls the world of ideas, that which symbolizes unity for us, has separated into multiplicity. This world-spirit, this all-soul, this world-pervading spirituality, which is manifold, which is divided into intelligence and unintelligence - but in a spiritual way - in short, this whole Platonic world of ideas, which as a spiritual world underlies our world, these primal reasons of existence, those thoughts which lived in the Godhead as model images, the eternal primal thoughts of the Godhead - we form the ideas, but they have lived themselves out in the Godhead - they are the "Worb. The things of nature are created according to the patterns of this word. He equates them with the eternal Son of the Godhead. The infinite wisdom, the spirit full of wisdom: This to him is the Son, the second entity, which, as he expresses it, is to the first entity as in the relation of the Son to the Father. This relationship then reached a historical personality - Jesus: Jesus Christ. This Christ is an existence free of desire, an existence beyond the world of desires and senses, he can be wisdom without will and once came into the world, says Scotus Eriugena.

Then comes the third stage of the forms of existence of nature: the created, but non-creating nature. Man, who has assumed matter, is not created and not creating, but existing.

The fourth stage is nature that is neither created nor creating. The divine nature is its goal, to which all beings return in their eternal bliss, resting in themselves. A return of the Godhead to itself is for him the world process in the most eminent sense of the word. All beings are permeated by the Godhead, where they rest in bliss within themselves. They should regard this as their goal.

However, this is how Scotus Eriugena appears to us as a theosophical interpreter of Christianity in the West. It also seems theosophical to us that, in a seven-fold ascent, he outlines the path for people to strive for union with the Godhead.

He therefore distinguishes between four natural powers. Under the first he understands God as the reason for creation, under the second the Platonic world of ideas, under the third the world of bodies, under the fourth God as the final purpose of creation. This is why he calls the process return, "reversio>, "deificatio. To him, the whole process is the return of unity to unity, which only transforms from a creative to a non-creative one.

The beings who undergo the process of development go through it in seven stages. The people who have theosophical aspirations and are engaged in theosophical studies always come to seven stages.

The first stage is the body. The second stage is that which animates the body, the life force that flows through it. On the third level, the sense is animated. From this arises the animal soul. Fourthly, the spirit awakens within the sense. The higher stages, which are no longer bound to the elements, no longer bound to the senses, are contained therein, thus fifthly: the receptivity for the spiritual hovering above the senses. Then, sixthly, bliss, spirituality, develops. The spirit is [...] turned towards the senses, thus still permeated by the body of desire, which chains it to material existence; at the seventh stage this ceases, there the spirit steps before itself in its pure existence. [This makes it possible to embark on the path to return to God, to the divine. The divine would then be the [highest] level.

Then we also see a view in Scotus Eriugena that cannot be integrated into his other teachings. He cannot logically explain the contrast between the elect and those who do not attain beatitude. He cannot bridge this contrast. But this contrast does not exist at all in Christianity: it has only been possible for those minds in the West to find the ideas and truths unconsciously slumbering in Christianity, [which had clarity about the idea] that the essence [of man] is rooted in eternity. If we explore Christianity in and according to its depths, we will find that these ideas lie dormant in Christianity.

It is therefore a matter of awakening the depths of religion. Christianity only needs to be grasped deeply enough to awaken its content. We must therefore reach the point where we can find out what unites them all in the great religious systems, to see how one spirit is expressed in all of them.

It must therefore fill us with great satisfaction to see how in Theosophy we encounter the common spirit in all religions. As we ponder and penetrate the ancient wisdom of Buddhism and see the infinite deepening of spiritual life in these oriental teachings, we will also notice that this spirit has emerged in our scientific endeavors and also in Christianity. In the teachings of natural science, the core also rests in the same way as in the world religions. But it is not from the best core of the same. It is basically the same whether we open the great book of nature or pick up a religious book and look it up. Both lead to the great theosophical convictions. I believe that even the wing of natural science that is [not] on the side of Christianity is fighting in this direction: even the battles that are being waged against the Church are Christian ways of fighting. Those who see the deeper context see this direction in the way modern researchers fight Christianity. What Christianity and the Church have forged is being used against them.

A direct balance cannot be found between two such powers. But that which can lead us to believe that reconciliation must be possible is shown to us by spirits such as Scotus Eriugena. They do not yet recognize the sharp distinction between the two wings: Natural science on the one hand and religion on the other. Scotus Eriugena could still be a good Christian, and he could still describe the whole world as nature in a Christian world view. It seems that this is no longer possible for the minds of people today. It seems to me that the only salvation lies in continuing along the path that has been followed in the West for decades. We must draw new courage from the sources of light in the Orient, from the two rivers that flowed together back then, and create reconciliation.

If we immerse ourselves in oriental wisdom, reconciliation will still be possible. For me, it is proof of this that the light that came from the Orient still lived in Scotus Eriugena in a more or less unconscious way in undivided unity. What has carried people for so long will continue to carry them in such a way that they must find the path through this light. And what has brought the spirit into harmony will continue to do so. But for this we need to delve deeper into the theosophical teachings. If we find the path that reunites the two, then it will mean the reconciliation of natural science with Western religions, then it will become clear that they are seeking the same thing on different paths.

The outer forms of the phenomenal world have, in addition to their outer significance, an inner meaning. They are, as it were, symbols of an earlier phase of development. “All that is transitory is but a parable” to him who looks more deeply. To the psychograph, which looks with astral power into the inner becoming, into the soul of the world, the things of the phenomenal world reveal their inner history. The eye of the Dangma sees the transformations of the Logos in a developmental series. The sacred books of the Vedas and the Rosicrucian Chronicle speak of ten such avatars or metamorphoses of our present Sun Logo. For the clairvoyant, the present-day lancelet (Amphioxus lanceolatus) is the memory sign of an incarnation of the Sun Logo and a parable for the foreshadowing of the vertebrates. This can be imagined when one thinks of the signs Sickle, Scorpio, Fish and so on in the calendar, which symbolize processes in the world of the stars. The vertebrae, from which in succession fishes, amphibians, birds and mammals have developed, were present in the Vorahn only in the first stage, just as in the present-day lancelet the organ of touch is indicated by a single nerve cord, from which in later developments the brain of aquatic animals, of fishes, organized itself.

The first metamorphosis of the Sun Logos is expressed by the Rosicrucian Chronicle in the following words:

The single mother substance of spiritual light dawned upon itself. And from the dawning density of matter, a spiritual peculiarity escaped, empathizing with the dawn of matter.

The World Spirit lives in this feeling as the soul, whose body is the waters.

Indian: Matsya = Fish

First Avatar.

The Solar Logos incarnates as an example and guide in the midst of a new phase of development. Originally, the spirit dawned upon itself, spirit and matter are still undifferentiated in each other. Thus, mollusks and worms today show no separate nervous life; sensation permeates all of the unified substance of which they are composed. In the first avatar, the spirit separated from the egg-shaped astral, fine shell of matter and formed a luminous point within it, permeating it with its rays. All development is polar.

And the spirit light generates within itself an even higher spirituality; it brings forth an even finer mental matter – into which the brain later integrates itself – the sentient astral matter is pushed back, enveloping itself protectively at its outermost pole with an even more solid matter, from which the physical matter later develops. This would be the second avatar, the second metamorphosis of the deity, which the Rosicrucian chronicle expresses in the following words:

And feeling escaped from the body of water, drawing to itself the solidity that slumbers in the waters. The material solidity became the suffering of feeling. Trembling, the garment was adapted to the life of the world soul; the soul created harmony in the trembling garment.

The symbol of remembrance of the second avatar is Kurma, the turtle (amphibian). That is why Paracelsus saw animals in the amphibians that are even closer to the deity in their nature. Second third of the second round.

In the third metamorphosis of the Logos, spirituality withdraws even more into itself, astral matter expands, becomes stronger and more solid, and the developing human being lives completely in its powerful strength and might, while the spirit is in a state of slumber. The astral substance first had to become resistant in full selfhood in order to be overcome again later.

The symbol of remembrance for the third avatar, at the beginning of the third round, is called Varaha, the boar. The Rosicrucian Chronicle says:

The Keide should be firm against the storms of the material: it should be a strong cover for its spiritual Lord, and in

Therefore the soul of the world clothed itself in the garment of strong animality.

In the fourth avatar (first third of the fourth round) this beast-man became ruler. Giant in his power of matter, he drew all spirituality into himself and made himself lord of it, protecting it with his mighty strength. A small part remained as a warner, and united with the All-Soul the Soul was symbolized as a dwarf – the Nara-simha, the man-lion's power.

And the strong animality became the Self, self-power streaming through the loins of matter, repelling the power of the enemy from the tender spirit-self that slumbers as a warner in the strong animality of the man-lion.

But the dwarf of the spirit, Vamana, pours his invigorating power through the limbs of the giant, guides him and makes himself the ruler of the man-lion, just as the giant Goliath was ruled by the dwarf David. And now the warner, too, is drawn completely into the material world and loses the last connection with the universal soul. Man is now completely left to his own resources and has reached the extreme degree of separation. In the beginning this spirit, separated in the material, fights in selfishness and arbitrariness against the other separated spirits; it becomes unrestrained because the Warner is missing and the guidance. It is the physical man, and the fifth avatar reads:

And the Warner became the ruler of the strong beast-like nature of man-lion. The dwarf conquered the giant's mighty strength: and he awakened spirit-life in the beast-like nature's massive limbs.

Now the sixth avatar appears as the first lawgiver, and the law now severely punishes the abuse of the warrior's strength. It is the epoch of Parashu-Rama (father of Rama). He leads the warriors and bends them under the harsh but good law.

Sixth Avatar:

From now on, the body's loins should not stretch without the spirit life's judgment. Such stretching, alien to the spirit, would become evil. The spirit life stepped into the midst of the loin-gifted warriors, and the good law wanted to punish the forces alien to the spirit.

Now, as the seventh metamorphosis of the Logos, Rama, the son of Parashu-Rama, appeared, and he softened the hardness and strictness of the commandments in love, and the warriors loved the law in willing obedience. He was the first legendary ideal king of the Indians and all other peoples.

Seventh Avatar:

The spirit's compulsion was strict and stern. So it gave birth to gentleness within itself. In love, hard law was dissolved.

Now Krishna appeared as the eighth incarnation of the god, teaching people to feel love as bliss and living as an example of bliss:

And the seed of love blossomed and bore the fruit of love, which is called bliss. And bliss itself was human.

Up to this point, the human life was an ascent to the height of Budhi, of bliss, but now the path had to be traveled down again, to learn wisdom and to release Manas through work, through karma, and to connect it with Budhi. And so Buddha appeared as a guide and archetype, so far ahead of human development to show them the way. Thus is the name of the ninth avatar: Buddha.

And Bliss sent her son to Earth, who is called the Embodiment of Wisdom. And she dwelled in the mortal body of the king's son. — Buddha.

The tenth avatar: that is, he who is to come; Kalki, says the Indian. The Rosicrucian Chronicle reads:

But when the times are fulfilled, the eye opens, and the destiny of man becomes luminous within, let the luminous figure choose as guide: then destiny itself becomes law and loving volition. He whose eye opens sees living roses growing from the cross.

For the Rosicrucians, Christ was this coming one, Christ as the ever-evolving crystallization into the shining example of evolving humanity, who as Jesus took upon himself human karma and remains connected to the karma of Christianity through ever new incarnation, guiding and directing it until the end of this race.

All the life legends of the Nirmanakayas, the teachers of humanity, are similar, they follow a certain pattern: life, temptation, sacrificial death and transfiguration, chosen for the common purpose of descending into matter: Zarathustra, Hermes, the Druid teachers, Buddha, Christ. The lives of Jesus and Buddha are the same until the transfiguration; from here on, there is a change, and Christ descends the deepest into matter, for he has been given a special task. When Mahaguru's individuality incarnated as Buddha, his teachings had led to misunderstandings and divisions; he had given too much. Once again, Buddha had to incarnate as Shankaracharya, and it was from him that the Tibetan teachers, the Mahatmas, were then trained. These teachers handed over the teaching of theosophy to the public in part, in order to convey to the various religions the esoteric content that underlies them all, and to raise the fallen spiritual level of humanity. When the individuality of the Mahaguru incarnated in Christ, he did not choose, as was his custom, a virgin embryonic matter, pure and free of karma, but descended lower, in order to bring, in full brotherhood with humanity, the densest matter to spiritual transfiguration, laden with karma, as flesh from their flesh. Thus the mystery of Christ came about: that the Mahaguru took possession of the body of a lower Mahatma, a chela of the third initiation, the thirty-year-old Jesus, whose body had already passed through life and formed karma. From now on, the great teacher of humanity appeared as Christ. Up to the transfiguration, the life of Jesus resembles that of the Buddha, but from here the tragedy of the Christ begins. He was destined to experience death on the cross and resurrection in an exemplary and public way, in his own body, which otherwise were only carried out symbolically in seclusion. Through this sacrifice, he was also to uplift the masses and lead them towards redemption from lower matter. Thus, on the one hand, Buddha stands on a higher level because he remained untouched by the lower matter and only taught, and on the other hand, Christ stands higher because he made the greater sacrifice and, by descending into the densest physical matter, brought it back spiritualized.

Christ did not leave any records like other great teachers of mankind. His task was to live these teachings, which were already present, to live in an exemplary way for humanity and thus to release the mystery teachings in order to bring as much of humanity as possible to a faster spiritual evolution. Thus he made the greatest sacrifice for humanity: his enlightened spirit descended into the darkest matter.

The Bhagavad Gita, which contains the most sublime teaching of virtue in the Indian world view in poetic form, is a self-contained episode from one of the most famous and oldest of the two great heroic epics of the Indians, the Mahabharata, which means the great war.

What the Homeric poems are to the Greeks and the Nibelungenlied to the Germanic peoples, that is the Mahabharata to the Sanskrit people. Its core is formed by the ancient war songs and heroic sagas from the time of the great migration and the conquest struggles on the Ganges. The origins of this poetry go back to the 10th and 11th century BC and provide a faithful portrait of the mores of this, the most ancient of India's heroic ages. These descriptions are based as much on historical facts and personalities in poetic guise as on other folk songs.

The centerpiece is the struggles of the two related clans of the Kurus and Pandus, which end with the decline of the heroic age of the Kurus. The Bhagavad Gita is the account of a wonderful religious and philosophical conversation between the hero Arjuna and Krishna, the incarnate God. The luminous and exalted wisdom teachings and the extremely finely differentiated capacity for feeling and discernment in the most subtle ethical questions not only suggest that our tribal ancestors had an unrivaled culture in this area, but they also seem like direct revelations of the divine spirit. Wilhelm von Humboldt was so moved by the incomparable beauty and depth of this poetry that he exclaimed enthusiastically: “It is worth living so long to get to know such a poem.” At the beginning, the two hostile armies face each other ready for battle. Arjuna the hero has his golden chariot, drawn by white steeds, steered into the middle of the battlefield to take a closer look at the battle-hungry enemies. But when he discovers blood relatives in their ranks, fathers, sons, grandsons, cousins and brothers, who are about to kill each other in a rage, his noble heart trembles in wild sorrow, and overwhelmed by compassion, his already tensed bow falls away from him. He shudders at the thought of bloodshed, preferring to renounce glory and kingship rather than incur this sin; he would rather die at their hands than be responsible for the death of one of his relatives. But Krishna approaches the fainthearted man and settles the fight within him by explaining to him his duties as a warrior, his dharma. Arjuna the hero is the human being, and his inner being is the battlefield where the hard struggles of the soul are fought. Torn between the earthly and heavenly parts of our mental life, in the conflict of feelings, plagued by anxious doubts, we often do not know where to turn, what our duty is. For every special being has its own special duty, its dharma, which it must recognize.

What does the Indian mean by “Dharma”? Dharma has many meanings, but they are all complementary and interrelated. Dharma is closely linked to karma; they are related to each other like fruit and seed. Dharma is the result of past karma, of past activity, and Dharma is the present creative principle within us, again creating the karma of the future. Dharma is the guiding force of our own thoughts and actions, our own personal truth. It denotes our inner nature, characterized by the degree of development achieved; it is the law that determines growth for the future period of development, the continuous thread of life. Like ring upon ring, incarnation follows incarnation, a continuous chain. Dharma is our past, present and future at the same time and works in us as father, mother and son. The Father as the Overself, as the higher self, as one's truth and law; the Mother as the developing being and the Son as the future. An incarnation is worthless and lost if it does not become a stepping stone to higher development through activity; likewise, striving and desiring perfection that has not been acquired through previous activity is futile. There is no leap in development; we patiently weave our way through the loom of time, garment upon garment. What has been practiced in a past stage becomes a predisposition in a future one, and activity in an earlier period becomes skill in a later one.

It is always difficult for us to find our own dharma, the law of our personal existence, to fulfill the commandment “know thyself”. It takes a long time to become accustomed to being able to immerse ourselves in ourselves, uninfluenced by the things of the sensual world, by our own desires and admired role models, and to listen to the inner voice that shows us the path of our duty, which our position, our relationships, the circle into which we were born impose on us. When we correctly recognize the level of our being, our degree of imperfection, when we become quite clear about what the truth and duty is at our level of development, then self-knowledge does not serve selfishness, but that is Dharma, because Dharma is the observance of the law in the sense of true self-knowledge. We then find our personal note and can make it resound powerfully in the eternal harmony of the world. We must learn to understand our intimate connection with the cosmos, as a part of it; our vibrations must harmonize with the rhythmic movement of the cosmos. Injustice and sin are nothing more than disharmony, when our irregular vibrations cause disruptions and disturbances in the lawful course of cosmic events. The more we feel at one with the cosmos, the more it will reveal to us. Only the spirit speaks to us, which we have learned to understand. According to the extent of our knowledge, divine inspiration is bestowed upon us, the higher self, which is of divine nature, reveals itself to us.

We can only recognize a part of that great, eternal truth, to the extent and magnitude that we have brought it to manifestation in us through our own activity, through our karma. Life after life, this scope increases in our process of development, we progress in knowledge and insight, for it is our destiny to gradually absorb the whole conceptual content of our world, our cosmos, into ourselves. We can never do this without gradually experiencing the whole richness of the world of phenomena. Nature lives in us when we fully grasp it. Calm, peace and contentment with one's life must overcome everyone who clearly recognizes that he has been born into the circle for which he had prepared himself through his past karma and which he must now fulfill with all his loyalty and exhaust in its entirety through his activity. In this way he has gained a field of knowledge through his own life and is now working in his own line to expand it, in order to create higher and better conditions of existence for himself in the future. And so he will also reach out his hand in loving understanding to his brother, who is trying to climb up under him on the ladder of beings, to help him, because he himself was still on the same rung not so long ago, struggling laboriously upwards, stretching out his hands to his brothers who had gone before him.

Thus we see how each of us has different duties, how clearly we must learn to distinguish in order not to be led astray, to maintain our balance, to follow our law. With wise foresight, the high leaders and enlightened kings had divided the Indian people into castes. As cruel as this may seem to us Westerners, who are accustomed to freedom and unrestricted choice, there is a deep meaning behind this strict compulsion. The caste system of the ancient Indians corresponds entirely to the natural division of the human race. Each person is born through his own karma into the caste appropriate to him; he must first fulfill the full range of duties within that caste before he becomes ripe for a new incarnation in the next higher caste. As long as one's judgment is still undeveloped at a lower level, one must learn obedience; one must acquire the virtues of loyalty and devotion through service, and so the caste of the Sudra is the school for unconditional obedience and subordination – these practiced virtues that make one capable of self-conquest, self-determination, and a loving and mild rule.

In the second caste, the Vaisya, man, engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry, will enter into the most intimate relationship with the surrounding nature. He will learn to work the soil with the sweat of his brow, he will sow and reap and thus produce food for his fellow brothers; he will practice all the virtues of a farmer. Then he will become a merchant, engage in trade and industry, accumulate riches and undergo many of the vices of his class. It is only through selfishness and avarice that he will often learn the first wisdom of economics and the proper use of his wealth for the benefit and worship of his fellow citizens. When he has learned his lesson to perfection at this level, he will be born as a Kshatriya in the next incarnation, in the warrior caste. Here he must use his powers to protect and defend his homeland; he must gain strength through courage and bravery and self-denial to be able to face any danger. He can only do this if he is prepared to sacrifice his life to duty at any moment. The warrior must give up his physical life, then his soul acquires the spirit of self-denial and is the creator of an ideal. The body is solely intended to help the development of the inner life; it must disappear when the soul needs a new body, that is, a more suitable garment for its advanced development. War is the school that must be passed through to reach that highest caste of the Brahmins, for whom - at their level of development and knowledge - fighting and killing is a mortal sin. “Kill your enemy” is commanded to the Kshatriya, but he knows that he can never truly kill one of his brothers nor be killed by him, as Krishna says to Arjuna in consolation.

Only by attaining the highest perfection in all the duties of the other castes does one become qualified to enter the Brahmin or priestly caste. The Brahmin must keep away from fighting and quarrelling; he collects and guards the highest goods of humanity, he is its spiritual leader and teacher. He imparts peace and wisdom and knowledge to his weak brothers, and in him rest all the experiences of the past centuries as an ability to guide humanity to its eternal destiny.

Thus we see how each stage of development must fulfill its own dharma. What is considered good at one stage must be avoided as evil at the other stage. Good and evil have their place in the eternal world order; in it they lose the meaning that we attach to them. They are necessary because they are the poles of development, they have emerged from a single origin. Good and evil, action and reaction, condition and complement each other like sleep and waking, like rest and activity, like light and shadow, like brightness and darkness, and they belong to each other like spirit and matter. It is Atma as purest light, the original source of all being, and Aima as its mirror image, darkest point and germinal power in the densest matter, which gives the impetus for the development and refinement of matter in the eternal change of form structures, until the contrariness has risen to the light source of the spirit and reunites with its starting point in Nirvana. From the original unity of world harmony, the eternal reason of all things, being, contrast breaks away – the eternal becoming of matter, which develops out of itself and upwards in countless changing forms to fulfillment, in order to merge from the diversity of appearances, the many, back into a unity, enriched with the countless experiences of the separate units. With Nirvana, the circle closes: the beginning and return to the eternal original spirit.

For the Western world view, which sees the highest goal in the development of the present being, Nirvana means nothingness. However, there is nothing of what is considered a perfect being in Nirvana. Nirvana is the nothingness of karma; no more karma can arise because Dharma has become apparent.

Past worldviews looked at what is not yet, and the present being was an imperfect transition to something higher. They saw every state of activity as an intermediate link between imperfection and absolute perfection in Nirvana. The goal and ideal for them was the state of an entity that has revealed all its dharma and thus burned its karma and enters nirvana.

[The beginning of the statement is missing.]

When the selfless stream returns to its starting point in two cyclical outpourings and matter dissolves again, nothing has happened but that it returns enriched to its origin. Only by absorbing and overcoming the selfish current will the unselfish current develop such a strongly vibrating power that it must go beyond itself, that is, beyond the cosmic circle that forms the first meeting of the two currents. A new region will be born out of the selflessness, called forth by it: Paranirvana, the negative matter, because in contrast to matter held within the cosmic circle by attraction, it spreads outwards. One can visualize the process by imagining the swinging of a pendulum. The pendulum swinging forward will immediately swing back and, if it is not stopped by obstacles in its path, will swing so strongly that it goes beyond its starting point – just as a cart rolling forward cannot suddenly stop, but must roll a little further.

With this preparation and gradual development of matter, the material components for a planetary formation would now have been created, but planetary life itself cannot yet arise. So the Logos could not remain in paranirvana; he had to return, and on this return journey he formed the maha-paranirvana region. From here, the Logos had to make the sacrifice and begin the cycle through matter again, so that other life, besides himself, but out of him, could arise.

All life in manifold forms has emerged from the unity, the one Logos. In him, all diversity still rests undivided, undifferentiated, hidden. As soon as he becomes recognizable, perceiving himself as self, he emerges from the absolute, from the undifferentiated, and creates the non-self, his mirror image, the second logos. He animates and invigorates this mirror image; it is his third aspect, the third logos.

Thus, the first Logos would be the undifferentiated, in which life and form rest undivided, to be regarded as the Father. Time begins with his existence; he separates his reflection from himself, the form, the feminine, which he fills with his life, the second Logos; and from this inspiration, the third Logos emerges as son, as animated form. Thus, all religions have conceived of their God in threefold form, as Father, Mother and Son. Thus Uranus and Gäa, the maternal Earth; and Kronos, Time, emerged from her womb as a son; Osiris, Isis and Horus and so on.

The sacrifice of the Logos is: the spirit descends into matter, animating its reflection, and thus the world of animated forms is also given its existence, all of which lead their special existence and go through the cycle of evolution in order to become one again with the Logos as the most highly developed individualities, who receive the wealth of experience through them. If He had not poured Himself out to animate all these forms, there would be no independent growth and development. All movement, all becoming would have no life of its own; it would only stir and move according to the direction of God.

Just as people are only interested in the unknown, the individual, about people, and are indifferent to anything they can calculate and understand, so too the Logos can only take joy in independently developing life that emerges from it, for which it sacrifices and devotes itself.

The process of development of matter begins, in which the qualities of the being are reflected and are effective until these reflections begin their activity as separate forms and thus spiritualize and animate matter more and more until it becomes one again with the being Atma, Budhi, Manas... [space]

First, the cosmic basis was created by the coming together of the two qualities of selfhood and selflessness of the first Logos. Through the second current of the same, guided by harmony, the atomic essence was formed. This enveloped itself with the already existing mother substance, and the atom was formed. These atoms, with their shells of varying degrees of density, gradually formed matter, which could serve as a medium for the second Logos, which is the mirror image of the first, to give up its mirror image of the same. The second Logos now flows into this matter, which, on its first, the nirvana level, is of such a fine texture that it can flow through it unhindered and unchanged. It now reaches the region of Budhi; here it is detained, and even if in this region selflessness is so strong that it does not want to retain the Logos for its realm, it still claims it for its entire cosmos. Here the sacrifice of the Logos begins, the voice, the sound emerges from it: it wants to animate matter with its spirit, so that its thoughts shall have their existence as independent forms. Here, where the divine thought becomes sound and voice, in the sphere of Budhi, is the divine realm for the Middle Ages. Enveloped in Budhi, the Logos now flows into the mental region, which is divided into the stages of Arupa and Rupa; the divine world of thought now pours into this region, the exemplary ideas surge through each other. What later becomes a special being and still rests enclosed in the Logos in the Budhi sphere is called into existence here as an exemplary idea. This Arupa level of the mental sphere is the world of ideas of Plato, the world of reason of the Middle Ages. On the Arupa level, these ideas take on their first forms. As divine geniuses, they begin their special existence and float around together, still penetrating each other as similar spiritual beings. This is the heavenly realm of the Middle Ages.

These spiritual beings now enter the astral sphere; here, enveloped in a denser substance, they awaken through touch; only now do they feel themselves as separate beings, they feel the separation. It is the elemental realm, the world of the elemental. Having descended into the etheric sphere, this sensation is pushed out from within, it swells up, expands and grows through the etheric vegetative power, only to be enclosed and crystallized by physical matter, because here the ego is still striving mightily for limitation. Thus is the sensation enclosed in the mineral kingdom and the divine ideas sleep in sublime calm in the chaste rock. The stone - a frozen thought of God: “The stones are mute. I have placed and hidden the eternal creator word in them; chaste and shameful, they hold it locked within themselves.” So reads an old Druid saying, a prayer formula. In the Middle Ages, the etheric and physical realms, or mineral kingdom, were called microcosm or the small realm.

As it flowed in, the Logos surrounded itself with ever denser shells until it had learned to define itself firmly in the rock. However, the stones are mute; they cannot reveal the eternal creative word. The rigid physical shell must be cast off again; it remains in its realm, while now the crystalline forms in their soft etheric shell expand, growing from within, that is, being able to live, because life is growth; the stone becomes a plant. And ascending further, the Logos also sheds this etheric shell and arrives at the astral sphere of sensation. Here, through the interaction of touch and perception, activity unfolds; the sentient animal existence is formed out of sensation and will. In this way, the animal gradually develops its organs of perception, with the stimulus from outside acting as a sensation within. The types are formed. Crossing over into the mental realm, this sensation perceives itself, and with the consciousness of self, the stage of humanity is reached.

From the cosmic point of view, the Logos' descent into the mineral kingdom marks its deepest descent into matter, and the casting off of the first shell marks the beginning of the Logos' ascent. Seen from the point of view of man, however, in the anthropocentric sense, as adopted, among others, by the ancient Druid priests, the resting of the spirit in the chaste rock would be an exalted stage of existence. Untouched by selfish will, the stone obeys only the law of causality. For the human being at the lower mental level, at which we now stand, the rock would be a symbol of higher development. Through lower, earthy passions and trials, we develop into an ethereal plant existence, living and growing from within in selfless self-evidence, in order to later live in our causal body, untouched by anything outside, as pure spirit resting within ourselves, like the crystallized spirit enclosed in stone.

The second Logos, as the mover and animator of the matter in which it is enclosed, has only reached as far as the lower mental sphere. Through self-awareness, the sentient animal has reached the human stage of existence. It is able to relate the external world to its personality; it perceives itself. Nature has led and guided him so far, but here she leaves him alone and in freedom. The further development of man now depends solely on his will. He must make himself the vessel, strip off the outer shell of the lower mental sphere, so that he can now receive the inflow of the first Logos, just as the seed opens and waits for fertilization, without which it cannot grow and bear fruit.

The first logos is the eternal in the universe, the immutable law according to which the stars move in their orbits, the basis of all things. The individual forms are subject to destruction and change. We perceive colors with our sensory vision that may appear different to another vision. The external, solid object, which is held together by its parts in a certain form, can disappear at a certain temperature, its parts can dissolve, but the law according to which it has become remains and is eternal. Thus the whole universe moves according to eternal laws, the first logos flows spread out in it. Man must raise himself up to him with his will. He must develop in himself the selfless lower soul knowledge (Antahkarana). He must perceive through pure contemplation this eternal immutable law in the transitory; he must learn to distinguish what is only a transitory phenomenon in a particular form and what is its essential core; he must absorb and preserve what he has seen as a thought. Thus he gradually becomes acquainted with the unreal in the world of phenomena; the thought becomes for him the real; he gradually ascends to the stage of Arupa, he lives in the pure world of thought. The many dissolves for him and merges in the One; he feels himself one with the All. Thus he has raised himself so high that he can receive the inflow from the first Logos directly as intuition. But not to every individual soul does a single soul flow in this way; no, it is the All-Soul, it is the soul of Plato and others, in which he shares, with whom he becomes one in thought. Gradually, the higher man develops from the lower.

At this turning point, where he is to rise up in freedom through his will, he needs a teacher, and that is why the Sons of Manas descended and incarnated in the third race of the fourth round, the Lemurian period, to serve as guides. With the simple act of counting, with the understanding of numbers, mental development began and distinguished the thinking human from the animal, which only senses through the senses.

In the wisdom schools of Plato and Pythagoras, students were only allowed to penetrate to the higher sources of knowledge after studying mathematics. Eternal wisdom was only revealed through pure selflessness, and mathematics was the only science that could educate people to this, because it serves no purpose, no selfish satisfaction, and only teaches the pure relationships, the pure laws of the basic forms.

Man's development is a descent from the All-Unity to the particular and a gradual ascent in conscious freedom to the realization of his connection with the All and return to the General. Therefore, from the mental point of view, the dead stone is a model of the higher for man. In it the great connection is still preserved; in it only the law of causality is effective; what sets it in motion, it gives to the outside world. It extends from the mental into the physical, for pure thought is enclosed within it. Its life is only form. Thus the sun, which as a physical image of the Logos is at home in the mind, and the whole mineral kingdom can be regarded as a great laboratory of physical and chemical forces.

With the plant, which has its origin one stage lower, in the astral, life begins and with it the process of isolation. It draws nourishment into itself from outside in order to increase in size; it wants to grow and spread. It is the beginning of egoism. However, the plant can develop one stage higher; it develops from the astral through the physical realm up to the etheric sphere. The animal that arises in the etheric sphere already feels, it not only wants food to grow, it wants to take from the outside world that which creates pleasure for itself and appropriate it. It feels life as pleasure and suffering; it rises and develops to the astral.

And man as such, who has his origin in the physical and, as a creature of nature, has reached the point of perceiving the outside world and perceiving himself as an individual, is at his lowest in his egoism, yet he can elevate himself in thought to the mental sphere, although he can only perceive in the physical, because he lives with his brain and his visible body in the mineral kingdom. But he carries all the elements of the universe within him, he has passed through all the realms, and the powers of all rest in him as principles; he can consciously develop them from within himself. What we see is the physical body, it belongs to the mineral kingdom, but through prana, the life principle, it also lives in the etheric sphere of the plant world, it has its etheric body; and further, it also lives through sensation in the astral world, in its astral body, and through rational perception in the mental world, through the kama-manas principle. In the lower world, man possesses four bodies with the principles. But he is also connected to the higher world, since he has his origin there. He can develop his mental body and advance from the conception of the individual and the many to the idea of the type; he can develop the causal body and ascend to the higher world of the trinity of manas-budhi-atma. In the sphere of Budhi he will form his thoughts out of astral matter, he will be able to create the Mayavi-rupa body, he will live and work out of his causal soul, be a creator himself and become one again with the totality.

This upper trinity, to which man must develop, is, however, in truth deeply hidden within him, it underlies his being; he must liberate it in succession – “As above, so below”. The multiplicity that we see is nothing other than the principle of unity, the Logos, which has dissolved into multiplicity. Disharmony can only arise in multiplicity because the many separateness, which are all parts of the spirit, can come into conflict with each other. When this multiplicity reunites to form a whole, our cosmos becomes a whole again, it becomes the Logos again, harmony. “As above, so below!” – Atma, the highest principle in our cosmos, in our mineral kingdom, to which we count the stars with their orbits and all the stars and all the forces in nature, has at the same time penetrated the deepest into matter; our physical organs are essentially animated and held together by Atma. Atma as the highest principle has its counterpart in the physical realm.

The Budhi principle has only penetrated into the etheric and astral spheres, forming the essence of the plant and animal world, their etheric and astral bodies. When man, originally still in connection with the divine geniuses, forming a whole with them, separated into an individual being in the astral sphere and attained to ego-consciousness through imagination, then Manas, the third principle, descended into the astral sphere: united with Kama, enclosed in the brain of man, he formed his Kama-Manas body. Man has passed through all realms on the descending arc of his development. We carry Atma as a mineral cosmos within us; it is our physical body; Budhi as a living, sentient cosmos in our prana and kamakörper; and Manas, in its connection with Kama, forms our Kama-Manas-body. He is the fourth principle in the lower world and at the same time forms the transition to the higher mental world. It is the connecting bridge to it. When freed from all lower sheaths, manas reunites with budhi in selfless radiance into the universal.

Of all the entities, the human being is most deeply immersed in egoism and a separate existence. He has absorbed everything and carries the whole trinity of Atma-Budhi-Manas within himself. In the mineral kingdom, Atma is spread out; it rests in its entirety in the rock, which is still directly connected to the cosmos. In the plant and animal world, dualism is already present; Budhi penetrates into the etheric and astral worlds, and the plant and animal world is built from life and sensation. Manas, wisdom, hovers above them and brings about the wisdom that is expressed in nature, in the wonderful conformity to law of the structure of all animals' rational actions. But man draws Manas into himself. Wisdom can no longer affect him from the outside. Bound up with Kama, enclosed in his mental body, wisdom is clouded for him. Man is a condensation into the single form of chemical-physical processes that take place in the mineral cosmos. Man is also active in the astral world through his feelings, desires and passions. He ceaselessly creates astral beings in that sphere, which have a truly living, material existence there, because the matter of the astral world consists of surging sensations such as envy, hatred, goodwill, anger and so on. There, the beings created by human feelings lead their special existence as elemental beings; there are also beings from other worlds that require the astral sphere for their development, and then there are the astral bodies of the souls awaiting their human incarnation. Furthermore, there are the devas, who also come from other worlds and often seek to influence people. There are the four Deva-Rajas, who form the physical bodies according to the astral scheme from the four elements of fire, water, air and earth, which the Lipikas, the lords of karma, have formed from the mental substance of the individuality.

The higher development of man depends on conscious concentration and meditation, which must be practiced daily and carried out according to certain rules. By detaching himself daily, in the morning hours, even if only for five minutes, from all impressions of the outside world and directing all his concentration to a revealed thought of eternity, he will gradually connect with the cosmos and take part in its rhythmic movement. Through this consistent daily retreat from the transitory world of appearances, for the short time of his meditation, man gradually ascends to the Arupa sphere. By thinking through a sentence that contains an eternal universal truth, so that it takes on life, the human being draws out its entire content and absorbs it. The control of thought and meditation, strictly practiced daily, must not serve the individual's own education and expansion of the mind; it must be done with the awareness that in doing so we are helping and working with the development of our cosmos. All our uncontrolled, “real” thinking constantly disturbs this regular process. The person who wants to develop his astral senses must also learn to control his feelings and awaken in himself a sense of reverence for the wisdom of highly developed beings; and he must cultivate a devotional surrender, in proper appreciation of the distance to that higher wisdom. Every evening, the person practicing meditation should review the past day, look upon failures without regret or remorse, and learn from them in order to benefit from the experiences and improve. Meditation should not be forced; it should not separate the person from their surroundings or change their usual existence. On the contrary, the person should surrender to their nature without worry. He will learn more from the collection and overview at the end of the day than if he tried to force himself to become a better person.

If man wants to ascend to higher development, where the first Logos flows into the second, he must become a chela and develop the qualities of a chela within himself. He must gradually develop four main qualities within himself:

First: the power of discrimination, the distinction between the permanent and the transitory; that is, man must learn to recognize in the transitory, in that which he perceives, the formative power that is permanent. All things that our senses perceive have an inherent power that seeks crystallization, just as salt, which is dissolved in warm water, [forms crystals when the water cools]. The arable soil is ground crystal, the seed contains the power to become a plant and fruit, and the vertebral bone has the potential to develop into a skullcap. Thus the lancelet, which consists only of the spinal column, is a miniature image of the first living, sentient form in which the Logos manifested itself. The enormous first fish, which consisted only of a gelatinous mass, is the ancestor that carried in its vertebrae the possibility for the development of amphibians, fish, mammals and humans. Thus, the physical human being is to be understood only as a temporary phenomenon that changes its mineral substances daily and whose sense organs will not remain as they are today, but will adapt to the higher human stages of development and carry the power of transformation within themselves.

The second quality to be developed is the appreciation of what is lasting. Knowledge becomes perception. We learn to value what is lasting more highly than what is passing, which increasingly loses its value in our estimation. And so the developing chela is led by the development of the first two qualities to the third by itself, to the development of certain soul abilities.

a) Thought control.

The chela must not allow himself to look at things from only one point of view. We grasp an idea and consider it to be true, while in fact it is only true from that one aspect or point of view; we must later also look at it from the opposite point of view and hold up the reverse side to every obverse. Only in this way do we learn to control one thought with another.

b) Control of actions.

Man lives and acts in the material world and is placed in the temporal. He can only comprehend a small part of the world of phenomena and is bound by his activity to a certain circle of the transitory. Daily meditation helps the chela to focus and control his actions. He will consider only the enduring in them and place value only on the action with which he can helpfully serve the higher development of his fellow human beings. He will lead the abundance of the phenomenal world back to the highest unity.

c) Tolerance.

The chela will not allow himself to be dominated by feelings of attraction and repulsion. He will seek to understand all - criminals and saints - and although he experiences emotionally, he will judge intellectually. What is correctly recognized as evil from one point of view can be judged as necessary and logical from a higher aspect.

d) Tolerance.

Accepting good and bad fortune with equanimity, not letting them become determining powers that can influence us. Not letting joy and pain push us out of our direction. Keeping oneself free from all external influences and influxes and asserting one's own direction.

e) Faith.

The chela should have a free, open, unbiased heart for the higher spiritual. Even where he does not immediately recognize a higher truth, he should have faith until he can make it his own through knowledge. If he wanted to proceed according to the principle of “testing everything and keeping the best,” he would apply his judgment as a standard and place himself above the higher spiritual, closing himself to its penetration.

f) Equilibrium.

The last soul ability would result as the outcome of all the others as equilibrium, as a sense of direction, soul balance. The chela gives direction to himself.

And so he would now have to develop the fourth quality within himself: the will to freedom, to the ideal. As long as we still live in the physical, we cannot attain full freedom, but we can develop the will to freedom within us, strive towards the ideal. We can free ourselves from external circumstances and no longer react to external impulses, but make the law within us, the enduring, the guiding principle of our thinking and acting, living not in the passing personality, but in our individuality, which is enduring and strives for unity.

I must first say something that is important for understanding evolution and re-embodiment. Every personality, every individuality must live through the devachan up to the Arupa sphere in order to obtain the continuous, unified 'thread [through several earth lives].

A personality as exalted as Nicholas of Cusa was already active in ordinary life from the Arupa sphere. Although every person acts from the Arupa sphere, only a few are aware of it. The higher a person has raised himself in the Arupa sphere in the time between two earthly lives, the more the divine breaks through in him. Cusanus wrote a work about not-knowing out of higher knowledge: De docta ignorantia. Ignorantia means not-knowing, and not-knowing here is equivalent to higher beholding. In his books he stated the following: There is a kernel of truth in all religions, we need only look deeply enough into them. He also stated that the earth moves around the sun. He said this out of intuition. Copernicus only had this realization in the 16th century, Cusanus already in the 15th century. Such an incarnation as that of Cusanus is to be considered in connection with his later embodiment. Cusanus already points on the one hand to future theosophy and on the other hand to future modern natural science. This had an influence on his following incarnation. It was Nicholas Cusanus who reappeared in Copernicus.

It is possible that the memory of past embodiments, which is lost in an incarnation, may be reawakened later, perhaps after one or more incarnations. The means of the causal body can only be used when one awakens in the plane above the causal sphere (in devachan). Every human being must be drawn down from Devachan back into the physical sphere by a force in order to learn abilities there that he has not yet developed. In the highest Arupa level, the person gets to know these forces and thereby gains influence over his later incarnation. He then also takes his life into his own hands to a certain extent. He is an example of regular development.

However, an incarnation does not depend solely on one's own development, but also on the benefit and significance for the whole evolution. The succession of personalities of higher individualities is no longer irregular. For the less developed, embodiment is still irregular. For highly developed individualities, salient qualities will emerge. These include

1. a reverent looking up to the Higher,
2. a calm love for God,
3. becoming in God.

As an example of a regular development of an individuality, we can consider a contemporary of Jesus, Philo of Alexandria. His individuality reappeared as Spinoza and then as Johann Gottlieb Fichte. So here we have one continuous individuality in three personalities. If you read Fichte without knowing about this, you will understand very little. But with this knowledge, you will find that his words are written in fire. All these great minds have undergone a regular development.

Postscript by the editors:

H. P. Blavatsky writes in volume III of the “Secret Doctrine”, section XLI:

“As an example of an adept... some medieval Kabbalists cite a well-known personality of the 15th century – Cardinal de Cusa; as a result of his wonderful devotion to esoteric studies and the Kabbalah, karma led the suffering adept to seek intellectual respite and rest from ecclesiastical tyranny in the body of Copernicus.”

Rudolf Steiner presents this in more detail in the lectures of January 21, February 15 and March 7, 1909 (in “The Principle of Spiritual Economy,” GA 109/111, pp. 1 6, 52/53 and 290), in which he says that the astral body of Nicholas of Cusa has been transferred to Nicholas Copernicus, although Copernicus' I was quite different from that of Cusanus.

Rudolf Steiner also talks about Spinoza and Fichte in the lecture of June 5, 1913 in Helsingfors (GA 158).

Today I would like to make some remarks about processes that can be perceived in the astral sphere.

The theosophical movement is a necessity for our time. We are criticized for revealing secrets that otherwise only a few people knew – for example, in Blavatsky's books “Isis unveiled” and “Secret Doctrine” – but other people consider it timely to share these things. There are occultists who say that it is harmful to share this knowledge. So we see two directions, one saying that it is harmful, a misfortune to share occult knowledge; but the other direction claims that it is necessary to share this knowledge with the world.

The astral sphere does not always remain the same, it undergoes small changes. These are not significant, but they can still be clearly perceived. The general scenery of the astral plane was different in the time of the Atlanteans than in our time; it changed from year to year. Certain changes in the astral world have led to the realization that it is necessary to communicate some of the occult knowledge to people, and to do so publicly and popularly and not merely to individual initiates. This is the deepest occult knowledge, and only part of it can ever be stated.

In the nineteenth century, very special signs have appeared in the astral world which prove with absolute certainty that the great secret that must be expressed in our race shows a slightly different character from the earlier secrets. Each race receives one of the seven great secrets. Four of these secrets have already been delivered. The fourth was delivered to the fourth root race. The fifth secret is the one we are growing into; the sixth and seventh secrets will be delivered to the sixth and seventh root races.

Not all people of a root race are initially initiated into such secrets. Until now, the basic secret was only ever in the possession of the adepts. Through possession of the secret, they were the leaders of the respective race. For our fifth root race it has been the same until now. In the September number of “Lucifer” you will find some hints about this. Only at the end of the fifth root race will it be revealed to and understood by a larger number of people. In the earlier root races, only a few received these secrets. In our root race, the ability of the intellect, the mind, has been developed. The deepest depths are closed to the mind, but some external aspects of the secret can be guessed with the mind. Before the year 1875, nothing was known about these things, or at least they were ignored.

The secret of the fifth root race can now be handed down from mind to mind without speculation. I cannot explain what the signs in the astral are; some have indeed been guessed by personalities who are far from any occult current. It is in the nature of human disposition within the fifth race that there will soon be many people who will guess some of it.

There are occultists who say that divulging the secret is something very dangerous; it is detrimental to both the person concerned and to all humanity. It is dangerous for the reason that the communication of the secret of the fifth root race could divide people into a few very good people and many others who are radically immoral. This is a paradoxical and daring assertion. But these occultists really believe that the central secret of the fifth root race cannot be communicated, because if someone were to communicate this secret, they would be at the mercy of others and would lose the opportunity to exert a beneficial influence on humanity. Furthermore, it is futile to communicate the secret because it would only lead to harmful effects. Therefore, there is no initiate who has communicated this secret. And there is no way to snatch the secret from an initiated person, even torture would be of no use, the person would go insane or die from the agony.

Theosophy is now to prepare humanity so that when the secret is partially revealed, the bad effects will be paralyzed. One fundamental difference between the secret of the fifth root race and the secrets of the earlier root races is that the secret of our fifth root race can be partially guessed by the mind. In the past, the secrets were strictly in the hands of adepts who led humanity. But in our time there could be people who outgrow the adepts in some respects. Therefore, some people must be prepared when the secret confronts them from the outside. The time will come when individuals will emerge with parts of the truth that they can guess. Without the preparation of Theosophy, however, this would be terrible and devastating for people. It could be that there would be a few good people, but the great mass of humanity would be lost to the good. The basic teachings of Theosophy are the prerequisite for these truths to be given to people. Without them, people would be divided into three parts: firstly, the thoughtless masses; secondly, the destructive intellectuals with the guessed secret; and thirdly, the occultists. People would wage a life-and-death struggle against each other. But those who have guessed the secret do not realize why the secret must not be revealed. The Theosophical Society strives to prevent this division of humanity into three parts, but to create a nucleus of a universal brotherhood. One may object that there can never be a universal brotherhood of humanity. We reply: What you say is true, but we know the foundations of theosophy and we know that such a core will protect humanity. This is a kind of prophecy, but it is based on objective perception in the astral world. The secret of our root race is one that can be guessed to a certain extent. Therefore, people must be prepared for the time of guessing. People must learn to support each other, they must work together. It would be detrimental if all people's thoughts were directed only at the immediate present, if their thoughts were directed only at the temporal and not at the eternal. We now know an even deeper reason than that of the astral laws, which compels us to use our powers for the theosophical movement, because we know where humanity is heading.

Rudolf Steiner's lecture

Dr. Rudolf Steiner spoke on this topic at the annual meeting of the German Section of the Theosophical Society on October 18, 1903. A very brief summary of the lecture is given here.

The founder of the “Theosophical Society” gave us the “Secret Doctrine”, in which the foundation for a solution to the great riddles of existence is laid on two sides. In a comprehensive theory of the origin of the world (cosmogenesis), the plan is shown according to which the scene has developed out of the spiritual primal powers of the universe, on which man is responsible for his earthly change. From a second volume (Anthropogenesis) we see the stages through which man himself has passed until he has become a member of the present race. It will depend on the development of the theosophical movement, on when it will have reached a certain state of maturity, in which time the same spiritual forces that have given us the great truths of the first two volumes will also give us the third. This will contain the deeper laws for what the so-called “world history” offers us on the outside. It will deal with “occult historical research”. It will show how the destinies of nations are fulfilled in the true sense, how guilt and atonement are linked in the great life of humanity, how the leading personalities of history arrive at their mission, and how they fulfill it.

Only someone who understands how the great trinity of body, soul and spirit is interwoven with the wheel of becoming can see through the development of humanity. Above all, one has to realize how physical existence in the broadest sense is conditioned by the great cosmic natural forces, which take on a particular form in racial and national characters and in what is called the “spirit” of an age. One will understand how the material basis comes about, which expresses itself in the fact that people represent certain types (peoples, ages), in which they resemble one another. The generic characters will be more clearly illuminated here, which they cannot receive from the cultural history that is focused on the merely superficial. It will be understood how the influence of the soil, the climate, the economic conditions, and so on, actually takes place on people.

Then the role that the personal element plays in history will be examined. The drives, instincts, feelings and passions come from this personal element. And they can only be understood by knowing the influence of the world that we call astral or psychic (soul-like) on that which takes place before our physical senses and our minds. This part of occult history will help us to understand what is usually attributed to the arbitrariness of individual personalities. And we will understand the interaction of individual personality, nation and age. The enlightening light will be cast into world history from the astral field.

Thirdly, it will be learned how the total spirit of the universe intervenes in human destinies, how the life of this total spirit pours into the higher self of a great leader of humanity and in this way, through channels of this higher life, is shared with all humanity. For that is the way this higher life takes: it flows into the higher selves of the leading spirits, and these share it with their brothers. From embodiment to embodiment, the higher selves of human beings develop and learn more and more to make their own selves into missionaries of the divine plan of the world. Through occult historical research, one will recognize how a human leader develops to the point where he can take on a divine mission. One will see how Buddha, Zarathustra, and Christ came to their missions. The lecturer illustrated these general statements by suggesting some examples of how one might think about the development of great leaders of humanity through their reincarnation.

Report (probably by Richard Bresch)

At half past five, Dr. Steiner gave the announced lecture on occult historical research, which was attended by an audience of 40-50 people. The speaker said something like the following:

After the Theosophical Society was founded in 1875, H. P. Blavatsky, with the help of her teachers, began to work on the mighty work that we know under the title “The Secret Doctrine” and in which a treasure of the deepest knowledge has been bequeathed to us. This work consists of two parts, the cosmological and the anthropological, the first of which deals with the development of the universe and the second with that of man. In the course of time, this work will be supplemented by a third part, which will deal with what profane science calls “history”. History, whether it likes it or not, must be content with the facts that take place on the physical plane; Theosophy, on the other hand, which goes directly to the causes, finds the answer to all those questions that secular science has so often and so vainly tried to solve.

If we follow the historical facts, we encounter three things: just as the acting human being is enveloped in a threefold system - the physical, the soul and the spiritual being - so too are historical facts subject to such a threefold division. The external actions that take place before our senses are in the physical; in the soul lies the center where pleasure and displeasure, sympathy and antipathy prevail, and in the spiritual we find the realm where the events of history arise. Here we have to look for the true causes of everything that happens on earth, here the leading figures of history consult eye to eye with the great and invisible leaders of humanity. Only when we explore the intention that drove them to act do we understand the often inexplicable facts of history.

For example, in the 15th century there lived a Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus), who had profound scientific insights. Long before Copernicus, he had recognized and taught the double movement of the earth, without being understood by his contemporaries. It was a kind of preparation for what Copernicus (born 1473) was able to communicate to a more insightful generation (16th century). Occult students now teach unanimously (and H. P. Blavatsky also openly stated this and hinted at it in the third volume of The Secret Doctrine) that Copernicus was none other than Cardinal Cusa reincarnated, who thus brought his work to completion. Thus are tasks set and solved; the soul that prepares something great comes back later to fulfill and complete its mission.

The speaker gave two more examples to show how occult historical research works in its difficult field, how it connects seemingly unrelated facts in an explanatory way; and with these examples, he also gave a picture of the supplement to The Secret Doctrine that was once to be expected: rounds and races were the subjects of the parts published so far; the third part, the occult research into history, will deal with reincarnation.

Finally, Dr. Steiner spoke at length about the Theosophical movement. This, he emphasized, is also an enormous necessity in the occult sense; there are many reasons for this, one of the most important of which is as follows:

A secret is handed down to each human race; we are in the fifth race and with the fifth secret, and although the latter cannot be pronounced today, we are gradually living into it. Paul, who was an initiate, already hints at what it is, but it will only be revealed in the course of our race's development. Premature divination of this secret by purely intellectual abilities would mean an indescribable danger for humanity. Since such divination has almost occurred twice already and will happen again in the foreseeable future, the great teachers of humanity have brought about the theosophical movement. Humanity is to be prepared for the great truth. Theosophy is working towards a certain point in time; a core is to be formed that understands this truth when it emerges undisguised one day – a core that grasps it correctly and uses it not as a curse but as a blessing for humanity. The earlier races were formed from an already existing one, by selecting suitable individuals or families and continuing them through the Manu in suitable deserted landscapes. This procedure is no longer feasible, given the extent of today's global traffic, but it is no longer necessary either; it has been replaced by education through the cosmopolitan International Theosophical Society, of which this core is a part.

Postscript by the editors:

On November 14, 1903, Günther Wagner of Lugano, who had heard this lecture, wrote to Rudolf Steiner as follows:

”... I would be very grateful if you could give me some specific information: the suggestion about a mystery that every race has to solve was completely new to me; I found nothing about it in ‘Secret Doctrin®’. Would you be able to tell me the four riddles that the first four races (apparently did) solve? I would also like to read H. P. B.'s allusion to it; perhaps you could give me the exact place.

Rudolf Steiner replied to him on December 24, 1903:

Dear Mr. Wagner: Page 73 of the (German edition) “Geheimlehre” reads with reference to verse 1,6 (Dzyan): “Of the seven truths or revelations, only four have been handed down to us, since we are still in the fourth round.” When you were in Berlin, I hinted to you, in the sense of a certain occult tradition, that the fourth of the seven truths mentioned above goes back to seven esoteric root truths, and that of these seven partial truths (the fourth regarded as the whole) one is delivered to each race, as a rule. The fifth will be revealed in full when the fifth race has reached its goal of development. Now I would like to answer your question as best I can. At present, the situation is such that the first four partial truths form meditation sentences for the aspirants of the mysteries and that nothing more can be given than these (symbolic) meditation sentences. From them, then, through occult channels, much that is higher emerges for the meditator. I therefore set out the four meditation sentences here, translated into English from the symbolic sign language:

I. Sense: how the point becomes a sphere and yet remains itself. When you have grasped how the infinite sphere is only a point, then come again, for then the infinite will seem finite to you.

II. Sense: how the seed becomes an ear of corn, and then come again, for then you will have grasped how the living

in number.

III. Sense: how light longs for darkness, heat for cold, how the male longs for the female, then come again, for then you will have grasped what countenance the great dragon at the threshold will show you.

IV. Ponder: how one enjoys hospitality in a strange house, then come again, for then you have grasped what befalls him who sees the sun at midnight.

Now, if the meditation was fruitful, the fifth secret arises from the four. For the time being, let me just say that Theosophy - the partial theosophy that lies, for example, in the “Secret Doctrine” and its esotericism - is a sum of partial truths of the fifth. You will find a hint as to how to go beyond this in the letter from Master K.H. [Kuthumi], quoted by Sinnett, which begins with the following words: “I have read every word...” In the first (German) edition of “Occult World,” it appears on pages 126 and 127.

I can only assure you that almost the entire fifth secret is hidden in an occult way in the sentence in which K.H. writes (page 127), “When science has learned how impressions of leaves originally came about on stones...”.

That is all I can say for the present about your questions. More perhaps in answer to further questions.

The four sentences above are what are called living sentences, i.e., they germinate during meditation and sprouts of knowledge grow out of them.

[...]

The questions were asked: Why, in the context of karma, are there imperfect things, evil, pain and

disease? Is not karmic compensation also brought about by the thought of a benevolent human spirit? The thought of a forgiving God is surely closer at hand than that of a strict and just God.

The following answer can be given to these questions: Our idea of God, [as it presents itself from the theosophical point of view], includes the notion that the individual entities will be led to their highest perfection in the course of time, and not in some indefinite way, but in such a way that they reach the divine final goal on a specific path of development.

In our cosmos, we are dealing with seven planetary developmental stages: Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, then comes the Earth, which will later pass into the next developmental stage, into the fifth, then into the sixth and finally into the seventh. We can gain a certain idea of three of these seven planetary stages, that is, of the Moon, of the Earth and of the future planet Jupiter. We call our planet, the Earth, the cosmos of love, and the next one, Jupiter, the cosmos of fire. In the preceding planetary state, the moon state, we see the cosmos of wisdom.

We call the most highly developed beings of the present earth state the “masters of love and compassion”. The “Masters of Wisdom” were the most highly developed beings in the moon evolution; they guided the wise construction of the human organs from the cosmic karmic forces in such a way that hunger and thirst occur at the right time, for example. When these “Masters of Wisdom” appear in our time, they come across with too much wisdom. A piano maker, for instance, must carry out his work in his workshop; in the concert hall his work would only cause harm. So one and the same activity can be good in one place and bad in another. This also applies to these “Masters of Wisdom”; since they have too much wisdom, they would consequently cause harm here on earth, just as the piano maker would cause harm in the concert hall. If the “Masters of Love and Compassion” take too much of our earth with them into the next stage of planetary development, they would become a kind of “Brothers of the Shadow”, for this next epoch will have the task of purifying the Manas element to the level of Budhi. All these purified karmic feelings will then merge into a single power that will strive towards the original spirit that flows through our planet. Everything that the human being of today feels will, in the next state, converge in a purified form like flames, and these many individual flames will combine to form a single fire. And so this planet is called the Cosmos of Fire, which is formed from the purified feelings of human hearts as they resonate harmoniously with one another.

This Cosmos of Fire relates to our earthly cosmos as it did to its predecessor. The spiritual essence must first pass through wisdom, then through love, and finally it must merge with fire. This is the goal that the original spirit, which flows through the cosmos, is striving for. It wants to let humanity experience all the intermediate stages. Man should not only simply reach perfection, but it is also important to let him go through all the individual stages in order to let him experience the richness of existence. These intermediate goals could not be achieved if there were no diversity in time and space. In space, different levels of existence coexist. But beings also live in succession in time and go through different epochs, different levels. Thus, the original spirit strives for diversity in time and space. It allows the beings to progress to perfection through themselves. It allows the beings to truly undergo the individual lessons.

Karma can only work in such a way that the one, the perfect, corresponds to the other, the imperfect. Imagine that a child is supposed to develop in order to perfect itself in view of its later adulthood. It must first learn everything. It must learn to stand and walk, it must learn to keep itself in balance; in doing so, it will often fall over. If there were no pain associated with falling, falling would have no effect in the direction of perfecting abilities. In order to perfect itself, imperfection must be present in life. Each fact must be connected with another in such a way that this first fact becomes a lesson for us, that it teaches us something. This is what theosophy shows us. All intermediate stages of our planet are a learning through which we ascend to the highest degree. We must therefore see life as a learning. The divine original spirit gives us the opportunity to learn as much as possible from life. A God who only forgives would prevent us from learning.

Every action becomes the source of knowledge. It would not be so if the swinging to one side were not linked to the swinging of the pendulum to the other side. It is necessary that the pendulum can swing in two directions so that we are not guided by the hand of a creator like puppets. Because at certain stages of our development not the whole variety of human life appears, at other stages something must appear that looks like the other side of the pendulum.

Now there are physical illnesses. We cannot really understand the origin of physical illnesses. We can only understand that accidents happen to us; but that our body simply becomes ill out of itself, without an accident happening to it, is something we cannot readily comprehend. In occultism, the “brothers of the shadow” are also seen as the bearers of evil diseases that work from within; and we can look for the cosmic-karmic origin of physical illnesses that occur without external cause in the same direction. Too much wisdom in the wrong place causes the soul to stray into evil. In physical terms, this means that the masters of wisdom intervene too strongly in the organs. However, they should only occupy themselves with wisdom and not delve into the physical sphere of the organs in their present state on earth. In the same way, if the Masters of Wisdom do the same here that they rightly did in an earlier stage, they become the cause of physical illnesses. This self-perpetuating wisdom principle is the origin of physical evil.

Our cosmos of love, compassion and benevolence was preceded by the cosmos of wisdom, in which beings devoted their activity to the development of the physical body. The fact that they still extend their activity into our cosmos is what causes disease. Diseases, physical and moral evils, can be traced back to this common origin. This is a fact that emerges from occult historical research.

I have shown how our time has come through external research to the point where a spiritualization through theosophy is necessary. Western science comes to the gate of theosophy and knocks, because it cannot find satisfactory solutions on its own.

Lombroso's research, for example, is justified in itself; in his work, the physical and the psychological appear to be closely related. How closely he relates disease and physical abnormality in the case of criminals. Lombroso found purely physical abnormalities and irregularities in the physique of criminals; he measures the skulls, looks for asymmetries and abnormalities and says that where there is moral wrongdoing, there is also physical disharmony. In this way, he brings moral and physical illness very close together. In this way, physical science arrives at convictions that occultism also leads to. But Theosophy knows that in the case of moral and physical illnesses, it is a karmic intrusion of the lunar epoch into our earthly one; it is cosmic-karmic effects that come to light in this too deep penetration into the physical.

Now you will see why those who have the ability to see in the astral can be very different doctors than those who do not have this ability. During the lunar epoch, everything that happened was much closer to the astral than it is today; the astral forces were much more active, much more fluid, and much more powerful. The astral seer can therefore trace the connection between our world and the lunar one. He must look from the physical effects into the astral causes. One must try to imagine this in a picture. Let us imagine that the astral had been water and had now frozen, so that everything that was there before can be seen in the ice. A physician like Paracelsus, who had this ability to see, was able to discover a whole range of healing processes that are incomprehensible to the ordinary physician. He was able to determine the causes of physical illnesses through his ability to see, that is, to see the causes of illnesses in the preceding developmental epochs. He said that one must not only cure the earthly man, but also the sidereal man; that is, in our words: one must also cure the astral part of man. Paracelsus sees the relationship between the effect of the physical remedy used by him and the cause of the disease, and he also sees the effect of this remedy. The ordinary physician finds the effect only through the experiment.

Thus you see how what appears on earth as imperfection is no longer imperfect for us if we understand it as having been caused by the influence of wisdom, which was justified in the past, into our epoch. What is perfect in our epoch may be imperfect in an earlier or later one. Jesus says, “Why do you call me perfect? Only the Father in heaven is perfect. —No single being is perfect; it is only imperfect — in the place and at the time where it is.