The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We have been trying to gain some understanding of the opening chapters of the Gospel of St. Luke. Only through knowledge of happenings in the evolution of humanity to which such lengthy study has had to be devoted is it possible to unravel what the writer of this Gospel has narrated as a kind of historical prelude to the great Christ Event. But we now know something about the Being who in the thirtieth year of his life received the Christ-principle into himself.

To understand what the writer of St. Luke's Gospel tells us about the personality and the deeds of Christ Jesus—that is, of the Individuality who worked in the world for three years as ‘Christ’ in a human body—brief reference must be made to certain aspects of the evolution of humanity of which our age has only a very inadequate idea. Men to-day are in many respects extraordinarily short-sighted, believing that the law of evolution underlying what is happening in humanity at the present time or happened during the last few centuries, has remained unchanged, and that conditions not existing nowadays could never have existed in the past. That is why it is so difficult at the present time for people to understand and freely accept narratives of a past epoch such as that during which Christ was living on the Earth.

The Gospel of St. Luke tells us of the deeds of Christ Jesus on the Earth in such a way that to get at the real meaning of his accounts a clear picture of the stage then reached in evolution is essential.

Attention must again be drawn to what has often been said in the course of our studies, namely that our ancestors—that is, our own souls in other bodies—lived in ancient Atlantis, the continent once stretching between Europe and Africa on the one side and America on the other. When the face of the globe was changed by the Atlantean Deluge, the masses of the people migrated Eastwards and Westwards, and so colonised the Earth. Then, in the post-Atlantean epoch, the various civilizations arose: the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Graeco-Latin, and our own.

It is entirely erroneous to believe that during the post-Atlantean epoch man was always constituted as he is to-day. The fact is that human nature has undergone constant and very great changes. Historical documents cover a few thousand years only and the one and only source of information about the earliest periods of civilization after the Atlantean catastrophe is the imperishable ‘Akashic Chronicle’—a record inaccessible to external research—the character of which has again been briefly indicated in the present lecture-course.

After the Atlantean catastrophe there developed, first, the ancient Indian civilization. This was an epoch when men still lived more in the etheric body, not as deeply in the physical body as was the case later on. Without having developed the Ego-consciousness of to-day, by far the greater majority of the people of ancient India were endowed with dim, shadowy clairvoyance. Their consciousness was dreamlike but they were able to gaze into the depths of existence, into the spiritual world. When studying these things it is very necessary to be aware of the facts connected with the various forms of knowledge and of cognition through the different epochs. Thus we constantly lay stress upon the view of the world held by our ancestors in ancient India and upon the fact that they were clairvoyant in a far higher degree than the men of later times. But if we are to understand the Gospel of St. Luke, attention must be paid to yet another of their characteristics.

In that early epoch, when man's etheric body still projected on all sides beyond the physical body and was less firmly knit with it than is the case to-day, the forces and qualities of the soul had considerably greater power over the physical body. The more deeply the etheric body penetrated into the physical body, the weaker it became and the less power it had over the physical body. In the ancient Atlanteans the etheric head extended very considerably beyond the physical body, but to a certain extent this was still the case in the people of ancient India too, enabling them on the one hand to have clairvoyant consciousness and on the other to wield great power over processes in the physical body.

We can, if we like, make a somewhat remote comparison between a body belonging to the ancient Indian epoch and one belonging to our own. In our time the etheric body has penetrated to the deepest possible extent into the physical body and is therefore closely bound up with it. But we are now at the very verge of the turning-point when the etheric body will emerge again, emancipate itself from the physical body and become more independent. As humanity advances towards the future this will take place to an ever-increasing extent and as a matter of fact the point of closest union has now already been passed. Comparing the body of an ancient Indian with that of a modern man, it can be said that in the Indian body the etheric body was still comparatively free and the soul was able to exert forces that worked right into the physical body. Not being so closely bound to the physical body, the etheric body could immediately take into itself the forces of the soul; this gave it greater power over the physical body, with the result that influences brought to bear upon the soul in that age also had a tremendously strong effect upon the physical body. In the ancient Indian epoch, if one man hated another and spoke words charged with hatred, such words ‘pierced’ the other, penetrated right into the physical organism. The soul still had an actual effect upon the etheric body and the etheric body in turn upon the physical body. The etheric body to-day lacks this power. In those olden times, loving words produced in the other man a sense of release, of warmth, of expansion, affecting his physical body too. Therefore much depended upon whether words were filled with love or hatred, for this had an effect upon all the bodily processes. The strength of such an effect steadily decreased in humanity the more deeply the etheric body penetrated into the physical body.

Things are different nowadays. Words spoken to-day have an effect only upon the soul and people who feel that malicious words actually make something contract within them or that loving words bring a sense of release and happiness have become extremely rare. The peculiar effects we may possibly still feel in our physical heart to-day when loving or malicious words are spoken were experienced with tremendous intensity at the beginning of post-Atlantean evolution. Quite different effects from those now possible could therefore be produced in that age when such influences were brought to bear upon the soul. Words full of the warmth of love may be spoken to-day, but when they come up against the present human organism they are constantly repelled and do not penetrate; for it does not depend only upon how words are spoken, but also, upon how they can be received.

It is therefore not possible to-day to work so directly upon the soul of a man that the effect penetrates into his physical organism. This is not immediately possible, but in a certain way it will again become so, for a future is approaching when the spiritual will reacquire its significance. We can, in fact, already indicate what this will mean in time to come. In our present evolutionary cycle we can do very little to enable whatever love, good will and wisdom may be in our soul to stream directly into the soul of another human being and there be strong enough to work right down into the physical body. Such an effect can only very gradually become possible; nevertheless this spiritual way of working is beginning again on the soil where the spiritual-scientific conception of the world takes root, for this actually strengthens the activity of the soul. Only very rarely to-day is it possible for a word to produce physical effects; but it is possible for human beings to come together in order to receive spiritual truths into their souls. These spiritual truths will gradually gain greater strength in the souls of men and therewith the power to work right into the physical organism. Thus in future time the soul-and-spirit will again acquire great power over the physical and form it into its own image.

In the days of the very ancient Indian civilization, for example, what is called ‘healing’ was a very different matter from what it came to be later on, for all the things are connected with the facts just referred to. Because by working upon the soul a tremendously strong effect could at one time be produced upon the body, it was possible so to impress the soul of another by means of a word charged with the right impulse of will that this soul transmitted the effect to the etheric body, and the latter in turn to the physical body. If there were any realization of what effect it was desirable to bring about, it was possible, in a case of illness, to produce this effect upon the soul and thereby upon the body, resulting in restoration of health. And now imagine this effect intensified to the maximum, the Indian physician controlling the influences and impressions in question, and you will realize that all healing in the ancient Indian epoch was a far more spiritual process than it can be to-day—I say expressly, than it can possibly be to-day. But the time is approaching when such ways of working will again be effective. What is brought down from spiritual heights as a world-conception, as a number of truths corresponding to the great spiritual realities of the Universe this will flow into the souls of men, and as humanity lives on into the future will itself be a source of healing, springing from the inmost being of man himself. Spiritual science is the great remedy for souls in the life awaiting them in future time. Only it must be understood that humanity has been on a descending path of evolution, that the spiritual influences have steadily lost strength, that the lowest point of the process has now been reached, and that the ascent to the level at which we once stood can only be very gradual.

As time went on, effects that were eminently possible in ancient India ceased to be so. A somewhat similar human constitution—one enabling soul to work upon soul was still in existence in Egyptian civilization. The farther back we go in that civilization-epoch, the more evidence is there that one soul was able to produce a direct effect upon another—an effect which could then pass over to the physical organism. This possibility was much rarer among the ancient Persians, for theirs was a different function; they were to give the primary impetus for penetration into the physical world. In respect of the characteristic just mentioned, Egyptian culture was related to that of ancient India much more closely than was the Persian. In ancient Persia the soul began to be enclosed within itself to an increasing extent and to have less and less power over the external organism, because it was to develop self-consciousness. Therefore with the stream of culture in which the spiritual had maintained mastery over the physical, another had to converge—one especially concerned with inner deepening and the development of self-consciousness. In Graeco-Latin culture these two streams came, in a sense, into equilibrium. In that fourth post-Atlantean culture-epoch humanity had already descended just so far into the physical world as to enable a kind of equilibrium to be established between the physical and the soul-and-spirit—in other words, the mastery of soul-and-spirit over the body was about equal in strength to that of the body over the soul. A state of equilibrium had been brought about.

Humanity must however again undergo a kind of ‘cosmic trial’ in order to be able to ascend once more to spiritual heights. Since the Graeco-Latin epoch, everything in man of a corporeal, physical nature has descended still more deeply into materiality. In the age in which we are living, the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, man has actually been driven below the line of equilibrium; to begin with it was only in his inner nature that he could rise to a more theoretical kind of consciousness of the spiritual world. He had to acquire inner strength.

Relatively speaking, then, there was a condition of equilibrium in Graeco-Latin civilization, whereas now, in our epoch, the physical has gained the mastery and dominates the soul-and-spirit which has become powerless in a certain respect and is accepted merely in theory. Man has had to be restricted through the centuries to the acquisition of inner strength—a process not revealed to the consciousness. But little by little it must be possible for a new consciousness to be developed. And when—it will not be until the sixth post-Atlantean epoch—such consciousness has acquired a certain strength through having absorbed more and more spiritual nourishment, man will no longer derive theoretical wisdom from such nourishment but living wisdom, living truth. The spiritual will then be so strong that once again it will have mastery over the physical—now from the other side.

How then can the mission of spiritual science in humanity be explained?

If in our age spiritual science becomes more and more alive in the soul, able not only to stimulate the intellect but to imbue the soul with greater and greater warmth, then the soul will become strong enough to dominate the physical. Certain transitional states are of course inevitable—states which may at first actually appear to denote deterioration or even harm. But these states are only transitional and will give way to the future condition when men will receive spiritual life into their ideas—the condition that will signify in the whole of humanity the mastery of the soul and spirit over the physical and material. Those who are interested in the truths of spiritual science to-day not merely because they stimulate the intellect, but who can be enraptured by and derive living satisfaction from these truths—such men will be the forerunners of those in whom the mastery of the soul and spirit over the physical and material has been achieved.

It has been possible in our own time to present great truths relating to happenings such as we have been studying during the last few days: the momentous fusion of the Buddha-stream with the Zarathustra-stream and all that took place in Palestine at the beginning of our era. We have been able to show how wisdom in the world's evolution created the two figures of the Nathan Jesus-child and the Solomon Jesus-child and through these stupendous happenings brought about the union of streams previously flowing in separation over the Earth.

Different views may be taken of what has been presented in these lectures. Someone may say: ‘To begin with, all this may seem fantastic to the modern mind; yet when I lay on the scales the outer effects of the happenings described, everything seems plausible; in fact the Gospels become intelligible to me only when I apply to them what has been discovered from the Akashic Chronicle.’ Another person may, for instance, be interested in what is related about the two Jesus-children, and say: ‘I can now understand a great deal that hitherto seemed inexplicable.’ Again, someone else may say: ‘When I review all these happenings and the findings of occult investigation concerning the manifestation of the Nirmanakaya of Buddha in the proclamation to the shepherds, and so on—again, when I think of the other stream and of how the Star guided the followers of Zarathustra when their Teacher appeared again on Earth—when I see there how one great stream flowed into another and how forms of spiritual life that were previously separate, united ... when I picture all this I have one outstanding impression—that everything is indescribably beautiful in the process of world-evolution!’ We ourselves can have the same impression of the grandeur and sublimity of it all, and this can kindle the fire of wonder in our souls at what has come to pass in the world.

The great truths can bestow upon us no greater boon than this. The ‘lesser’ truths will satisfy our longing for knowledge; the ‘great’ truths will warm our very souls and we shall say that there is supreme beauty in what is thus made manifest through the happenings of world-existence. If we feel this beauty and splendour, any purely theoretical understanding will be transcended.

What are the words of Christ Jesus as related in the Gospel of St. Luke?

“A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. ...” (Luke, VIII, 5–8)

This parable of the Sower given by Christ Jesus to His disciples is applicable to the anthroposophical conception of the world. The seed is the Kingdom of the Gods, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of the Spirit. This Kingdom of the Spirit is to pour as seed into the souls of men and take effect on Earth.

There are people who have in their souls only such forces as repel the spiritual view of the world and any consciousness of the realm of the divine-spiritual Beings; such consciousness is made impossible by hindrances existing in the soul and it is repelled immediately. This applies to many people in regard to the words of Christ Jesus; it also frequently applies to what Anthroposophy has to bring into the world to-day; it is repelled; the birds devour it, preventing it from ever penetrating into the soil. Then again, the words of Christ Jesus or the words of spiritual wisdom may be spoken to a soul lacking sufficient depth. Such a soul may be able to understand that these are very plausible truths, but they do not become part of its very substance and being. It may even be capable of giving out the wisdom again, but it has not really become one with the wisdom. This is comparable to the seed that has fallen on rocky ground and cannot germinate. The third kind of seed falls among thornbushes; there it does indeed germinate, but it cannot thrive. The meaning, as Christ Jesus indicates, is that there are people whose souls are so filled with the interests and cares of day-to-day life that although they are capable of understanding the words of spiritual truth, everything else in the soul acts as a thornbush, as a continual obstruction. There are also souls to-day—and they are very numerous—who would willingly assimilate the truths of spiritual science were it not for the suppression exercised by external life. Only very few are able to allow the spiritual truths to unfold in freedom, in the manner of the fourth kind of seed. These are people who begin to experience Anthroposophy as living truth, who receive it into their souls as very life and steep their whole being in it; they are also the pioneers of the strength with which spiritual truths will work in future time. No one, however, in whom the right trust and depth of conviction are not born from his own soul can be persuaded to-day by any external means to believe in the truth and the power of spiritual wisdom.

It is no argument against the effectiveness of spiritual wisdom that in the case of many people to-day the physical organism is not influenced. On the contrary, it might be taken as proof of the soundness of spiritual wisdom that it sometimes has a negative effect upon physical bodies. Someone with poor physical health—a slum child, for instance—who is ailing as the result of having breathed nothing but city air from his earliest years, is not necessarily made healthy by bracing mountain air; it may even make him really ill. Just as this is no argument against the health-giving quality of mountain air, so too the fact that when spiritual wisdom penetrates into certain physical organisms it may temporarily upset them, is no argument against its effectiveness. For it encounters what human bodies have inherited through the course of hundreds and thousands of years, encounters elements that cannot possibly harmonize with it.

Proofs of this cannot yet be found in the outer world; we must penetrate deeply into this wisdom and become firmly convinced of its truth. However much external evidence may eventually be forthcoming, we must be able to penetrate to the inner core of the wisdom and develop conviction in our own being. We are then able to say: If here or there this anthroposophical wisdom is found to be too overwhelming, it is because of unhealthy conditions encountered in human beings themselves. Spiritual wisdom is intrinsically healthy—human beings by no means always! Quite obviously, therefore, it is not possible for all the spiritual wisdom that can become accessible to mankind as time goes on, to be revealed to-day. Care is taken that possible harm shall be avoided just as slum children are not sent into high mountain air that would be harmful for them. Hence it is only from time to time that information appropriate for average human beings can be communicated. If certain deeper truths were revealed to the fullest extent, this would be too overwhelming for men with a particular constitution, having the same effect as high mountain air upon impaired physical health. The great spiritual truths can be unveiled only very gradually, but this will be done in due course and prove to be a universal, health-bringing factor in humanity.

Men must gradually reacquire that ascendancy of the soul-and-spirit over the material which they were obliged to lose. It was being slowly lost from the time of ancient Indian culture until well into the Graeco-Latin epoch. But during the latter epoch there were always human beings in whom as a heritage from olden times the etheric body was still loosened to a certain extent and whose whole organism was amenable to psychic and spiritual influences. It was in that age, therefore, that Christ Jesus appeared. Had He come in our epoch He would not have been able to work as He did at that time or become the great Example for mankind. In our epoch He would have encountered human organisms far more deeply sunk in physical matter. He Himself would have had to descend into a physical organism in which the powerful effects produced by the soul-and-spirit upon the physical would not have been possible as they were at the time of His coming.

This applies not only to Christ Jesus but to others as well, and the evolution of humanity can be understood only in the light of what has been said. It applies, for example, to Buddha and his mission on the Earth. He was the first to proclaim and establish the great teaching of compassion and love and everything connected with that teaching as expressed in the precepts of the Eightfold Path. Do you imagine that if Buddha were to appear to-day he would be able to achieve what he achieved in India? Indeed he would not, for a physical organism in which he was able to reach that stage of development could not exist to-day. Man's physical organism has undergone continual changes in the course of the ages. Buddha was obliged to descend at exactly the point of time when it was possible for him to use an organism enabling him to accomplish the mighty deed of inaugurating the Eightfold Path. Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true that all the philosophical and moral teachings since produced by humanity are no more than a feeble beginning of what was established by Buddha. However greatly people may admire different philosophies, however fervent their enthusiasm may be for Kantian thought and other such systems—everything is elementary compared with the all-embracing principles of the Eightfold Path. Humanity can only slowly reach the stage of understanding what lies behind the words of this teaching. At the right moment something of the kind is established in the world for the first time; from this point evolution advances and humanity acquires, but only after long ages, what was first exemplified in a mighty deed. Thus in his day Buddha brought to the world the teaching of love and compassion as a token for coming generations of human beings who must gradually acquire the capacity to recognize and understand from within themselves the principles of the Eightfold Path. In the sixth post-Atlantean epoch of civilization a considerable number of human beings will be capable of this. But a long path has to be trodden before men say to themselves: We can now acquire out of our own souls what Buddha established five or six centuries before our era; we have now become like Buddha in our own souls.

Step by step, humanity must climb to the summit. The first disciples are those who, in the wake of the Individuality concerned, rise to the heights of a great epoch; the capacity to understand what has been achieved then remains with them as a heritage. The rest of humanity ascends slowly and arrives at the goal very much later. But when a considerable number of human beings have reached the stage where the principles of the Eightfold Path can arise as knowledge born of their own souls, not derived from or taught to them by Buddhism—these human beings will have made great progress in another respect as well.

In the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment you can read how the development of the sixteen-petalled ‘lotus-flower’ is connected with the Eightfold Path.¹ Those who have insight into the evolution of humanity can recognize a sign of the extent to which humanity has succeeded in making progress—the sign being the stage of development reached by the sixteen-petalled lotus-flower, which will be one of the chief organs used by men in future time. But when this organ has been developed a certain mastery over the physical will have been established by the soul-and-spirit. Only one who sets out to-day to achieve spiritual development in the esoteric sense can say that he is beginning to make the principles of the Eightfold Path part of his very being. Others ‘study’ them. But of course that too is very useful as a stimulus.

Fundamentally speaking, therefore, it may be said that the soul-and-spirit can work effectively only in those human beings who are beginning to make the spiritual wisdom presented to them an integral part of their souls. To the extent to which the Eightfold Path becomes an actual experience in the soul, to that extent an effect will also be produced upon the physical.

Of course people who are considered very clever nowadays and who swear by materialism, may say: ‘We know someone who followed your advice and tried to develop by making spiritual wisdom come alive within him; but he died at the age of fifty, so the wisdom did little towards prolonging his life!’ This kind of sapient remark is frequently made. The only pity is that contrary instances are not also brought forward. It should be asked how long the person concerned would have lived if he had made no attempt to promote spiritual development and whether in that case he might possibly not have lived beyond the age of forty. That point would have to be decided first! But people will look only at what is actually under their noses!

The mastery wielded by the soul-and-spirit over the physical gradually fell away from humanity until well into the fourth civilization-epoch when there were still enough human beings living in whom the effect of the spiritual upon the physical could be perceived. It was then that Christ came to the Earth. Had He come later, none of the things that were then revealed could have been revealed. Such a stupendous manifestation had necessarily to appear in the world at exactly the right time.

What does the coming of Christ into the world signify?

It signifies that when a man rightly understands Christ he learns to exercise his self-consciousness to the fullest extent and his Ego eventually gains complete mastery over everything that is within him. That is what the coming of Christ signifies. The self-conscious Ego will reconquer everything that mankind has lost in the course of the ages. But just as the teaching of the Eightfold Path had to be established for the first time by Buddha, so too the supremacy of the Ego-principle over all the bodily processes had to be visibly established before the expiration of the old era. If the entry of the Christ-principle into the world had taken place in our present epoch, it would not have been possible for the mighty influences of healing to be exercised upon the environment as they were at that earlier time. Conditions were necessary when there were still in existence human beings whose etheric bodies were sufficiently detached to enable drastic effects to be wrought upon them merely by words or by touch effects of which to-day there can be only faint echoes. Men began to develop the Ego in order to be able to understand the Christ, and through this understanding to re-acquire what they had lost. Through the last surviving examples of humanity belonging to the old era, it was to be shown with what power the Ego worked upon those who were living at that time, for the Ego was present here in its fulness in one human being, in Christ Jesus, as will be the case in the rest of mankind at the end of the Earth period. The Gospel of St. Luke records this in order to show that with Christ there came into the world an Ego which penetrated the human physical, etheric and astral bodies so completely that health-bringing influences could be brought to bear upon the whole physical organism. This had to be demonstrated as a proof that when mankind in the future, after thousands of years, has acquired in full measure the power that can proceed from the Christ-Ego, it will be possible for influences such as streamed into humanity from Christ while He was on Earth, to stream from the Egos of men. This truth had to be revealed but it was only through the humanity of that time that it could have been revealed.

It has been said that there are illnesses which originate in the human astral body. The form these illnesses take is connected with the whole nature of man. If someone to-day has bad moral traits, these may, to begin with, be confined to the life of soul. Because in the modern age the soul does not dominate the body to the extent that it did at the time of Christ Jesus, not every sin will come to expression in an external illness. We are, however, approaching conditions when the etheric body will again emerge and when the greatest care will have to be taken lest the bad traits of the soul, both in a moral and intellectual respect, should manifest physically as illnesses. Many of those semi-psychic, semi-bodily diseases—the so-called ‘nervous’ diseases characteristic of our time—are evidence that this epoch is already beginning. Because in their desires and their thoughts men have absorbed the disharmonies reigning in the outer world to-day, such factors can naturally only express themselves in phenomena such as hysteria and similar disorders. But this is all connected with the particular character of the phase of spiritual development upon which we are now entering, with the loosening and emergence of etheric body.

At the time of Christ's appearance on the Earth there were many human beings in His environment in whom sins and transgressions—but especially defects of character deriving from former bad traits—were expressing themselves in disease. The sin that is actually seated in the astral body and manifests as illness, is called ‘possession’ in the Gospel of St. Luke. It is the condition that sets in when a man attracts alien spirits into his astral body and when his better qualities fail to give him mastery over his whole nature. In human beings in whom the old state of separation between the etheric and physical bodies still persisted, the effects of evil qualities and attributes expressed themselves conspicuously at that time in forms of illness manifesting as ‘possession’. The Gospel of St. Luke tells how such people were healed through the mere proximity and the words of the Individuality now in Christ Jesus and how the evil power working in them was expelled. This is a prefigurement of conditions at the end of Earth evolution, when man's good qualities will exercise a healing influence upon all his other traits.

People do not generally notice the subtler implications concealed behind many narratives in the Gospels, nor realize that reference is often being made to illnesses of a quite different character when, for example, these are described in the passage in St. Luke's Gospel telling of the healing of one sick of the palsy. (Luke V, 17–26). ‘The healing of one paralysed’ would be the correct rendering, for the Greek text here has the word ‘paralelymenos’, denoting one whose limbs are paralysed. It was still known in those times that these forms of illness are due to qualities of the etheric body. When it is said that Christ Jesus healed those who were paralysed, this shows that by the power of his Individuality, effects were produced not only in astral bodies but in etheric bodies too, so that it was possible for men with defects in the etheric body also to be healed. Precisely when Christ speaks of ‘deeper sin’—sin which reaches into the etheric body—He uses a particular expression, clearly indicating that the spiritual factor causing the illness must first be removed. He does not immediately say to the paralysed man: “Stand up and walk!” but concerns Himself with the cause that is penetrating as illness into the etheric body, and says: “Thy sins are forgiven thee!”—meaning that the sin which had eaten its way right into the etheric body must first be expelled. Ordinary biblical research does not enter into these fine distinctions; it does not perceive that what is here being shown is that this Individuality had an influence upon the secrets of the astral body and the etheric body—even upon those of the physical body.

Why in this connection do we speak of the secrets of the physical body as though they were the highest? In outer life itself the effect made by one astral body upon another is quite obvious. You can, for example, wound a man by a word charged with hatred. Something then takes place in his astral body; he hears the word and suffers pain in his astral body. That is an example of mutual action between one astral body and another. Mutual action between one etheric body and another is far more deeply hidden; this involves delicate influences which play from man to man but are never perceived to-day. The most deeply hidden of all are the influences which reach the physical body, because owing to its dense materiality it conceals the working of the spiritual most completely. In the Gospel of St. Luke, however, we are also to be shown that Christ Jesus has power over the physical body. Here we come to a passage that would be quite incomprehensible to materialistic thinkers. It is as well that these lectures are being attended only by people who have some knowledge of spiritual science, for if by chance someone were to come in from the street, what is being said to-day would seem to him pure lunacy, even if he considered the rest only half or quarter mad!

Christ Jesus shows that He is able to see into the very depths of the physical corporeality and to work into it. This is revealed by the fact that His power is also able to have a healing effect upon illnesses rooted in the physical body. But for this to be possible there must be knowledge of the mysterious effects working from the physical body of one human being upon the physical body of another. When it is a matter of working spiritually, man cannot be regarded as a being enclosed in his skin. It has often been said that our finger is wiser than we are ourselves. Our finger knows that the blood can flow through it only if the blood is circulating normally through the whole body; our finger knows that it would wither away if it were severed from the rest of the organism. So too, if he would understand the conditions relating to the physical body, man must know that in respect of his physical organism he belongs to humanity as a whole, that influences are continually passing from one human being to another, and that he can in no way separate his physical health as an individual from the health of the whole of humanity. This principle will be admitted to-day in respect of the coarser influences but not in respect of the finer, because people cannot know the facts. In the following passage from the eighth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel it is the finer, more delicate influences that are indicated.

“And it came to pass, that, when Jesus was returned, the people gladly received him: for they were all waiting for him. And behold, there came a man named Jairus, and he was a ruler of the synagogue: and he fell down at Jesus' feet, and besought him that he would come into his house: For he had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a-dying. But as he went the people thronged him. And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched.“ (Luke VIII, 40–44.)

How can the twelve-year-old daughter of Jairus possibly be healed, for she is at the very point of death? This can only be understood if we know that the girl's physical illness was connected with another phenomenon in another person, and that she cannot be healed independently of that other phenomenon. When this, child, now twelve years old, was born, a certain connection existed with another personality—a connection deeply grounded in Karma. Hence we are told that a woman who had suffered from a certain illness for twelve years, passed behind Christ and touched the border of His garment. Why is this woman mentioned here? It is because she was connected karmically with Jairus' child! This twelve-year-old girl and the woman who had suffered for twelve years were deeply connected! And it is not without reason that a secret of number is indicated here: the woman with an illness suffered for twelve years approaches Jesus and is healed—and only now could He enter the house of Jairus and heal the twelve-year-old girl who was believed to be already dead.

Depths as great as these must be explored in order to understand the Karma that weaves between one human being and another! Then we can perceive the third way in which Christ worked—namely, upon the whole human organism. This must be especially borne in mind when we are considering the higher effects produced by Christ as presented in the Gospel of St. Luke.

Thus we are shown quite clearly how the Christ-Ego worked upon all the other members of man's being. That is the essential point. The writer of the Gospel of St. Luke, who gives special prominence in these parts of the Gospel to descriptions of the healings, wished to show how the healing influences proceeding from the Ego indicate the attainment of a lofty level in the evolutionary process; and he shows how Christ worked upon the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body of man. St. Luke has set before us this great Ideal of evolution: ‘Look towards your future! Your Ego, in the present stage of its development, is still weak; as yet it has little mastery. But it will gradually become master of the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body, and will transform them. Before you is set the great Ideal of Christ who reveals to mankind what this mastery can mean!’

It is upon truths such as these that the Gospels are founded—truths which could be recorded only by those who did not rely upon outer documents but upon the testimony of men who were ‘seers’ and ‘servants of the word’. Conviction of what lies behind the Gospels can be acquired only by degrees. But men will gradually grasp with such intensity and strength the nature of the truths upon which the scriptures are founded that this understanding will have an effect upon all the members of the human organism.

• 1. See pp. 75–81 in the revised edition of 1963.

You will have gathered from the lecture yesterday that a record such as the Gospel of St. Luke cannot be understood unless the evolution of humanity is pictured from the higher vantage-point of spiritual science—in other words unless the transformations that have taken place in the whole nature and constitution of man during the process of evolution are kept in mind. In order to understand the radical change that came about in humanity at the time of Christ Jesus—and this it necessary for elucidation of the Gospel of St. Luke it will be well to make a comparison with what is happening in our own age—admittedly less rapidly and more gradually but for all that clearly perceptible to those possessed of insight.

To begin with we must entirely discard a frequently expressed idea to which mental laziness gives ready assent, namely, that Nature, or Evolution, makes no ‘jumps’. In its ordinarily accepted sense, no statement could be more erroneous than this. Nature is perpetually making jumps! This very fact is essential and fundamental. Think, for example, of how the plant develops from the seed. The appearance of the first leaflet is evidence of an important jump. Another is made when the plant advances from leaf to flower; another when its life passes from the outer to the inner part of the blossom; and yet another, very important jump has been made when the fruit appears. Anyone who ignores the fact that such jumps occur very frequently will entirely fail to understand Nature. When such a man turns his attention to humanity and observes that development in some particular century proceeded at a snail's pace, he will believe that the same will be the case during other periods. It may very well be that in a particular period development is slow, as it is in the plant from the first green leaf to the last. But just as in the plant a jump occurs when the last leaf has developed and the blossom appears, so do jumps continually occur in the evolution of humanity. The jump made when Christ Jesus appeared on Earth was so decisive that within a comparatively short time the old clairvoyance and the mastery of the spiritual over the bodily nature were transformed to such an extent that only remnants of clairvoyance and of the former power of the soul-and-spirit over the physical continued to exist. Hence before that drastic change took place it was essential that whatever of the ancient heritage survived should once again be gathered together. It was in this milieu that Christ Jesus was to work. The new impulse could then be received into mankind and develop by slow degrees.

In another domain a jump is also taking place in our own epoch, but not so rapidly. Although a longer period of time is involved, the parallel will be quite comprehensible to those who understand the character of the present age. We can most easily form an idea of this jump by listening to people who approach spiritual science from one sphere or another of cultural life. It may happen that the representative of some religious body comes to a lecture on spiritual science ... what I am saying is quite understandable and is not meant as censure. He listens to a lecture let us say on the nature of Christianity, and says afterwards: ‘It all sounds very beautiful and fundamentally speaking is not at variance with what we ourselves preach. But we put it in a way that is intelligible to everyone, whereas only a few individuals can understand what is being said here.’ This statement is frequently made. But whoever says or believes that his is the only right way of presenting Christianity overlooks one essential, namely that he must judge according to facts, not according to his personal inclinations. I once had occasion to reply: ‘No doubt you believe that you are presenting the truths of Christianity in a form suitable for everyone. But beliefs prove nothing; only facts decide. Does everybody go to your Church? Thus facts prove the contrary. Spiritual Science is not there for people whose spiritual needs you are able to satisfy; it is there for people who demand something else.’

We are living in an age when it is becoming impossible for human hearts to accept the Bible as it has been accepted during the last four or five centuries of European civilization. Either mankind will receive spiritual science and through it learn to understand the Bible in a new way, or, as is now happening to many who are unacquainted with Anthroposophy, men will cease to listen to the Bible. In that case they would lose the Bible altogether and with it untold spiritual treasures—actually the greatest and most significant spiritual treasures of our Earth evolution! This must be realized. We are now at the point where a jump is to take place in evolution; the human heart is demanding the spiritual-scientific elucidation of the Bible. Given such elucidation, the Bible will be preserved, to the infinite blessing of mankind; without it the Bible will be lost. This should be taken earnestly by those who believe that they must at all costs adhere to their personal inclinations and the traditional attitude towards the Bible. Such, therefore, is the jump now being taken in evolution. Nothing will divert a man who is aware of this from cultivating Antroposophy, because he recognizes it as a necessity for the evolution of humanity.

Considered from a higher point of view, what is happening at the present time is relatively unimportant compared with what took place when Christ Jesus came to the Earth. In those days the stage reached in the evolution of humanity was such that the last examples were still in existence of its development since primeval times, actually since the previous embodiment of the Earth. Man was developing primarily in his physical, etheric and astral bodies; the Ego had long since been membered into him but at that time was still playing a subordinate rôle. Until the coming of Christ Jesus the fully self-conscious Ego was still obscured by the three sheaths: physical body, etheric body and astral body.

Let us suppose that Christ Jesus had not come to the Earth. What would have happened? As evolution progressed the Ego would have fully emerged; but to the same extent as it emerged, all earlier outstanding faculties of the astral, etheric and physical bodies, all the old clairvoyance, all the old mastery of the soul and spirit over the body would have vanished. That would have been the inevitable course of evolution. Man would have become a self-conscious Ego, but an Ego that would have led him more and more to egoism and to the disappearance and extinction of love on the Earth. Men would have become ‘Egos’, but utterly egotistical beings. That is the point of importance.

When Christ Jesus came to the Earth man was ready for the development of the Self, the Ego; for this very reason, however, he was beyond the stage where it would have been permissible to work upon him in the old way. In the ancient Hebrew period, for example, the ‘Law’, the proclamation from Sinai, was able to take effect because the Ego had not fully emerged and what the astral body—the highest part of man's constitution at that time—should do and feel in order to act rightly in the outer world was instilled, impressed into it. The Law of Sinai came to men as a last prophetic announcement in the epoch preceding the full emergence of the Ego. Had the Ego emerged and nothing else intervened, man would have heeded nothing except his own Ego. Humanity was ready for the development of the Ego but it would have been an empty Ego, concerned with itself alone and having no wish to do anything for others or for the world.

To give this Ego a real content, so to stimulate its development that the power of love should stream from it—that was the Deed of Christ Jesus on the Earth. Without Him the Ego would have become an empty vessel; through His coming it can become a vessel filled more and more completely with love. To those around Him Christ could speak to the following effect: ‘When you see clouds gathering, you say: there will be this or that weather; you judge what the weather will be by the outer signs, but the signs of the times you do not understand! If you were able to understand and assess what is going on around you, you would know that the Godhead must penetrate into the Ego. Then you would not say: We can be satisfied with traditions handed down from earlier times. It is what comes from earlier times that is presented to you by the Scribes and Pharisees who wish to preserve the old and will allow nothing to be added to what was once given to man. But that is a leaven which will have no further effect in evolution. Whoever says that he will believe only in Moses and the Prophets does not understand the signs of the times, nor does he know what a transition is taking place in humanity!’ (Cp. Luke XII, 54–57). In memorable words Christ Jesus said to those around Him that whether or not an individual will become Christian does not depend upon his personal inclination but upon the inevitable progress of evolution. By the words recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke concerning the ‘signs of the time’, Christ Jesus wished to make it understood that the old leaven represented by the Scribes and Pharisees who preserve only what is antiquated, was no longer sufficient and that belief to the contrary could be entertained only by those who felt no obligation to put aside personal inclinations and judge according to the necessity of the times. Hence Christ Jesus called what the Scribes and Pharisees desired, ‘Untruth’—something that does not tally with reality in the outer world. That would have been the real meaning of the expression.

We can best realize the forcefulness of these words by thinking of analogous happenings in our own day. How should we have to speak if we wished to apply to the present age what Christ Jesus said of the Scribes and Pharisees? Are there, in our own times, any who resemble the Scribes? Yes indeed! They are the people who will not accept the deeper explanation of the Gospels and refuse to listen to anything that is beyond the range of their own faculties of comprehension—faculties that have been unaffected by spiritual science; these people refuse to keep pace with the strides in knowledge of the foundations of the Gospels made through spiritual science. This is really everywhere the case when efforts—no matter whether of a more progressive or more reactionary character—are made to interpret the Gospels, for the fact is that the capacity for such interpretation can develop only on the soil of spiritual science—there and there alone. Spiritual science is the only source from which truth about the Gospels can be derived. That is why all other contemporary research seems so barren, so unsatisfactory, wherever there is a genuine desire to seek the truth.

To-day, as well as the ‘Scribes and Pharisees’ there are the natural scientists—a third type. We may therefore speak of three categories of men who want to exclude everything that leads to the spiritual, everything in the way of faculties attainable by man in order to penetrate to the spiritual foundations of the phenomena of Nature. And those who, among others, must be impugned at the present time, if one speaks in the sense of true Christianity, are very often the holders of professorships! They have every opportunity for comparing and collating the phenomena of Nature, but they entirely reject the spiritual explanations. It is they who hinder progress; for humanity's progress is hindered wherever there is refusal to recognize the signs of the times in the sense indicated.

In our days the only kind of action consistent with discipleship of Christ Jesus would be to find the courage to turn—as He turned against those who wished to confine truth to Moses and the Prophets—against people who retard progress by rejecting the anthroposophical interpretation of the scriptures on the one side and the phenomena of Nature on the other. Now and then there are really well-meaning people who occasionally would like to bring about a kind of vague reconciliation. But it would be well if in the hearts of all such people there were some understanding of the words spoken by Christ Jesus as related in the Gospel of St. Luke.

Among the most beautiful and impressive parables in that Gospel is the one usually known as the parable of the unjust steward. (Luke XVI, 1–13.) A rich man had a steward who was accused of wasting his goods. He therefore decided to dismiss the steward. The latter asked himself in dismay: ‘What shall I do? I cannot support myself as a husbandman for I do not understand such work, nor can I beg, for I should be ashamed.’ Then the thought occurred to him: In all my dealings with the people with whom my stewardship brought me into contact, I had in mind only the interests of my lord; therefore they will have no particular liking for me. I have paid no attention to their interests. I must do something in order to be received into their houses and so not be utterly ruined; I will do something to show that I wish them well. Thereupon he went to one of his lord's debtors and asked him: ‘How much owest thou?’—and allowed him to cancel half the debt. He did the same with the others. In this way he tried to ingratiate himself with the debtors, so that when his lord dismissed him he might be received by these people and not die of starvation. That was his object. The Gospel continues—possibly to the astonishment of some readers: ‘And the lord commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely.’ Those who set out to elucidate the Gospels to-day have actually speculated about which ‘lord’ is meant, although it is absolutely clear that Jesus was praising the steward for his cleverness. Then the verse continues: ‘For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.’ This is how the sentence has stood for centuries. But has anyone ever reflected upon what is meant by ‘the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light?’ ‘In their generation’ stands in all the different translations of the Bible. But if someone with only scanty knowledge were to translate the Greek text correctly, it would read: ‘for the children of this world in their way are wiser than the children of light,’ that is to say, in their way the children of this world are wiser than the children of light, wiser according to their own understanding—that is what Christ meant. Translators of this passage have for centuries confused the expression ‘in their way’ with a word that actually has a very similar sound in the Greek language; they have confused it—and do so to this very day—with ‘generations’, because the word was sometimes also used for the other concept. It hardly seems possible that this kind of thing should have dragged on for centuries and that modern, reputedly good translators, who, have endeavoured to convey the exact meaning of the text, should make no change. Weizsacker, for example, gives this actual rendering! Strangely enough, people seem to forget the most elementary school-knowledge when they set about investigating biblical records. Spiritual science will have to restore the biblical records in their true form to the world, for the world to-day does not, properly speaking, possess the Bible and can have no real grasp of its contents. It might even be asked: Are these the genuine texts of the Bible? No, in very important parts they are not, as I will show you in still greater detail.

What is the meaning of this parable of the unjust steward? The steward reflected: If I must leave my post I must gain the affection of the people. He realized that one cannot serve ‘two masters’. Christ said to those around Him: ‘You too must realize that you cannot serve two masters; the one who is now to enter the hearts of men as God, and the one hitherto proclaimed by the Scribes and the interpreters of the books of the Prophets. You cannot serve the God who is to draw into your souls as the Christ-principle and give a mighty impetus to the evolution of humanity, and the other God who would hinder this evolution.’ Everything that was right and proper in a bygone age becomes a hindrance if carried over into a later stage of evolution. In a certain sense the process of evolution itself is based upon this principle. The Powers which direct the ‘hindrances’ were called at that time by a technical expression: Mammon. ‘You cannot serve the God who will progress, and Mammon, the God of Hindrances. Think of the steward who, as a child of the world, realized that one cannot serve two masters, not even with the help of Mammon. So too should you perceive, in striving to become children of light, that you cannot serve two masters!’ (Cp. Luke XVI, 11–13.)

Those living in the present age must also realize that no reconciliation is possible between the God Mammon in our time—between the modern ‘scribes’ and scientific pundits—and the direction of thought that must provide human beings to-day with the nourishment they need. This is spoken in a truly Christian sense. Clothed in current language, what Christ Jesus wished to bring home to those around Him in the parable of the unjust steward was that no man can serve two masters.

The Gospels must be understood in a really living way. Spiritual science itself must become a living reality! Under its influence everything it touches should be imbued with life. The Gospel itself should be something that streams into our own spiritual faculties. We should not only chatter about the Scribes and Pharisees having been repudiated in the days of Christ Jesus, for then once again we should be thinking only of an age that is past. We must know where the successor of the Power described by Christ Jesus for His epoch as the ‘God Mammon’ is to be found to-day. That is a living kind of understanding—which is also such a very important factor in what is related in the Gospel of St. Luke. For with the parable that is found only in this Gospel there is connected one of the most significant concepts in all the Gospels: it is a concept we can engrave into our hearts and souls only if we are able once again, and from a somewhat different angle, to make it clear how Buddha, and the impulse he gave, were related to Christ Jesus.

We have heard that Buddha brought to mankind the great teaching of compassion and love. Here is one of the instances where what is said in occultism must be taken exactly as it stands, for otherwise it might be objected that at one time Christ is said to have brought love to the Earth, and at another that Buddha brought the teaching of love. But is that the same? On one occasion I said that Buddha brought the teaching of love to the Earth and on another occasion that Christ brought love itself as a living power to the Earth. That is the great difference. Close attention is necessary when the deepest concerns of humanity are being considered; for otherwise what happens is that information given in one place is presented somewhere else in a quite different form and then it is said that in order to be fair to everybody I have proclaimed two messengers of love! The very closest attention is essential in occultism. When this enables us really to understand the words in which the momentous truths are clothed, they are seen in the right light.

Knowing that the great teaching of compassion and love brought by Buddha is given expression in the Eightfold Path, we may ask ourselves: What is the aim of this Eightfold Path? What does a man attain when from the depths of his soul he adopts it as his life's ideal, never losing sight of the goal and asking continually: How can I reach the greatest perfection? How can I purify my Ego most completely? What must I do to enable my Ego to fulfil its function in the world as perfectly as possible?—Such a man will say to himself: If I obey every precept of the Eightfold Path my Ego will reach the greatest perfection that it is possible to conceive. Everything is a matter of the purification and ennoblement of the Ego; everything that can stream from this wonderful Eightfold Path must penetrate into us. The point of importance is that it is work carried out by the Ego, for its own perfecting. If, therefore, men were to develop to further stages in themselves that which Buddha set in motion as the ‘Wheel of the Law’ (that is the technical term), their Egos would gradually become possessed of wisdom at a high level—wisdom in the form of thought—and they would recognize the signs of perfection. Buddha brought to humanity the wisdom of love and compassion, and when we succeed in making the whole astral body a product of the Eightfold Path, we shall possess the requisite knowledge of the laws expressed in its teachings.

But there is a difference between wisdom in the form of thought and wisdom as living power; there is a difference between knowing what the Ego must become and allowing the living power to flow into our very being so that it may stream forth again from the Ego into all the world as it streamed from Christ, working upon the astral, etheric and physical bodies of those around Him. The impulse given by the great Buddha enabled humanity to have knowledge of the teaching of compassion and love. What Christ brought is first and foremost a living power, not a teaching. He sacrificed His very Self, He descended in order to flow not merely into the astral bodies of men but into the Ego, so that the Ego itself should have the power to ray out love as substantiality. Christ brought to the Earth the substantiality, the living essence of love, not merely the wisdom-filled content of love. That is the all-important point.

Nineteen centuries and roughly five more have now elapsed since the great Buddha lived on the Earth; in about three thousand years from now—this we learn from occultism—a considerable number of human beings will have reached the stage of being able to evolve the wisdom of the Buddha, the Eightfold Path, out of their own moral nature, out of their own heart and soul. Buddha had once to be on Earth, and the power that mankind will develop little by little as the wisdom of the Eightfold Path proceeded from him; after about three thousand years from now men will be able to unfold its teaching from within themselves; it will then be their own possession and they will no longer be obliged to receive it from outside. Then they will be able to say: This Eightfold Path springs from our very selves as the wisdom of compassion and love.

Even if nothing else had happened than the setting in motion of the Wheel of the Law by the great Buddha, in three thousand years from now humanity would have become capable of knowing the doctrine of compassion and love. But it is a different matter also to have acquired the faculty to embody it in very life. Not only to know about compassion and love, but under the influence of an Individuality to unfold it as living power—there lies the difference. This faculty proceeded from Christ. He poured love itself into men and it will grow from strength to strength. When men have reached the end of their evolution, wisdom will have revealed to them the content of the doctrine of compassion and love; this they will owe to Buddha. But at the same time they will possess the faculty of letting the love stream out from the Ego over mankind; this they will owe to Christ.

Thus Buddha and Christ worked in co-operation, and the exposition given has been necessary in order that the Gospel of St. Luke may be properly understood. We realize this at once when we know how to interpret correctly the words used in the Gospel. (Luke II, 13–14.) The great proclamation is to be made to the shepherds. Above them is the ‘heavenly host’—this is the spiritual, imaginative expression for the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha. What is it that is proclaimed to the shepherds from on high? The ‘manifestation (or revelation) of the wisdom-filled God from the Heights!’ This is the proclamation made to the shepherds by the Nirmanakaya of Buddha, pictured as the ‘heavenly host’ hovering over the Nathan Jesus-child. But something else is added: ‘And peace be to men on the Earth below who are filled with a good will’—that is, men in whom the living power of love is germinating. It is this that must gradually become reality on Earth through the new impulse given by Christ. To the ‘revelation from the Heights’ He added the living power, bringing into every human heart and into every human soul something that can fill the soul to overflowing. He gave the soul not merely a teaching that could be received in the form of thought and idea, but a power that can stream forth from it. The Christ-bestowed power that can fill the human soul to overflowing is called in the Gospel of St. Luke, and in the other Gospels too, the power of Faith. This is what the Gospels mean by Faith. A man who receives Christ into himself so that Christ lives in him, a man whose Ego is not an empty vessel but is filled to overflowing with love—such a man has Faith.

Why could Christ be the supreme illustration of the power of ‘healing through the word?’ Because He was the first to set in motion the ‘Wheel of Love’ (not the ‘Wheel of the Law’) as a freely working faculty and power of the human soul; because love in the very highest measure was within him—love brimming over in such abundance that it could pour into those around Him who needed to be healed; because the words He spoke, no matter whether ‘Stand up and walk!’ or ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’, or other words—issued from over-flowing love. His words were uttered from overflowing love—love transcending the limits of the Ego. And those who were able to some extent to experience this were called by Christ ‘the faithful’. This is the only true interpretation of the concept of Faith—one of the most fundamental concepts in the New Testament. Faith is the capacity to transcend the self, to transcend what the Ego can—for the time being—achieve. Therefore when he had passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus and had there united with the power of the Buddha, Christ's teaching was not concerned with the question: ‘How shall the Ego achieve the greatest possible perfection?’ but rather with the question ‘How shall the Ego overflow? How can the Ego transcend its own limits?’ He often used simple words, and indeed the Gospel of St. Luke as a whole speaks to the hearts of the simplest men. Christ said, in effect: It is not enough to give something only to those of whom you know for certain that they will give it back to you again, for sinners also do that. If you know that it will come back to you, your action has not been prompted by overflowing love. But if you give something knowing that it will not come back to you, then you have acted out of pure love; for that is pure love which the Ego does not keep enclosed but releases as a power that flows forth from a man. (Luke VI, 33–34.) In many and various ways Christ speaks of how the Ego must overflow and how the power overflowing from the Ego, and from feeling emancipated from self-interest, must work in the world.

The words of greatest warmth in the Gospel of St. Luke are those which tell of this overflowing love. The Gospel itself will be found to contain this overflowing love if we let its words work upon us in such a way that the love pervades all our own words, enabling them to make their effect in the outer world. Another Evangelist, who because of his different antecedents lays less emphasis upon this particular secret of Christianity, has for all that summarized it in a short sentence. In the Latin translation of the Gospel of St. Matthew we still have the genuine, original words which epitomise the many beautiful passages about love contained in the Gospel of St. Luke: Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur. ‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.’ (>Matt. XII, 34.) This expresses one of the very highest Christian ideals! The mouth speaks from the overflowing heart, from that which the heart does not confine within itself. The heart is set in motion by the blood and the blood is the expression of the Ego. The meaning is therefore this: ‘Speak from an Ego which overflows and rays forth power (the power of faith). Then do thy words contain the Christ-power!’—‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh!’ this is a cardinal principle of Christianity.

In the modern German Bible this passage is rendered: ‘His mouth overflows whose heart is full!’¹ These words have for centuries succeeded in obscuring a cardinal principle of Christianity. The absurdity of saying that the heart overflows when it is ‘full’ has not dawned upon people, although things do not generally overflow unless they are more than full! Humanity—this is not meant as criticism—has inevitably become entangled in an idea which obscures an essential principle of Christianity and has never noticed that the sentence as it stands here is meaningless. If it is contended that the German language does not allow of a literal translation of Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur into ‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh’ on the ground that one cannot say ‘The abundance of the stove makes the room warm’—that too is senseless. For if the stove is heated only to the extent that the warmth just reaches its sides, the room will not be heated, it will be heated only when a superabundance of warmth comes out of the stove. Here we light upon a point of great significance: a cardinal principle of Christianity, one upon which part of the Gospel of St. Luke is based, has been entirely obscured, with the result that the meaning of one of the most important passages in the Gospel has remained hidden from humanity.

The power that can overflow from the human heart is the Christ-power. ‘Heart’ and ‘Ego’ are here synonymous. What the Ego is able to create when transcending its own limits flows forth through the word. Not until the end of Earth evolution will the Ego be fit to enshrine the nature of Christ in its fullness. In the present age Christ is a power that brims over from the heart. A man who is content that his heart shall merely be ‘full’ does not possess the Christ. Hence an essential principle of Christianity is obscured if the weight and significance of this sentence are not realized. Things of infinite importance, belonging to the very essence of Christianity, will come to light through what spiritual science is able to say in elucidation of the sacred records of Christianity. By reading the Akashic Chronicle, spiritual science is able to discover the original meanings and thus to read the records in their true form.

We shall now understand how humanity advances into the future. The Bodhisattva who became Buddha five or six centuries before our era, ascended into the spiritual world and now works in his Nirmanakaya. He has risen to a higher stage and need not again descend into a physical body. The powers that were his as Bodhisattva are again present—but in a different form. When he became Buddha at that time, he passed over the office of Bodhisattva to another who became his successor; another became Bodhisattava. A Buddhist legend speaks of this in words which give expression to a deep truth of Christianity. It is narrated that the Bodhisattva, before descending to the incarnation when he became Buddha, removed his heavenly tiara and placed it upon the Bodhisattva who was to be his successor. The latter, with his somewhat different mission, works on. He too is to become a Buddha. When—in about three thousand years—a number of human beings have evolved from within themselves the teachings of the Eightfold Path, the present Bodhisattva will become Buddha, as did his predecessor. Entrusted with his mission five or six centuries before our era, he will become Buddha in about three thousand years, reckoning from our present time. Oriental wisdom knows him as the Maitreya Buddha.²]

Before the present Bodhisattva can become the Maitreya Buddha a considerable number of human beings must have developed the precepts of the Eightfold Path out of their own hearts and by that time many will have become capable of this. Then he who is now the Bodhisattva will bring a new power into the world.

If nothing further were to have happened by then, the future Buddha would, it is true, find human beings capable of thinking out the teachings of the Eightfold Path through deep meditation, but not such as have within their inmost soul the living, overflowing power of love. This living power of love must stream into mankind in the intervening time in order that the Maitreya Buddha may find not only human beings who understand what love is, but those who have within them the power of love. It was for this purpose that Christ descended to the Earth. He descended for three years only, never having been embodied on the Earth before, as you will have gathered from everything that has been said. The presence of Christ on the Earth for three years—from the Baptism by John until the Mystery of Golgotha—meant that love will flow in ever-increasing measure into the human heart, into the human soul in other words, into the human Ego; so that at the end of Earth evolution the Ego will be filled with the power of Christ. Just as the teaching of compassion and love had first to be kindled to life through the Bodhisattva, the substance of love had to be brought down from heavenly heights to the Earth by the Being who allows it gradually to become the possession of the human Ego itself. We may not say that love was not previously in existence. What was not present before the coming of Christ was the love that could be the direct possession of the human Ego; it was love that was inspired that Christ enabled to stream down from cosmic Heights; it streamed into men unconsciously, just as previously the Bodhisattva had enabled the teaching of the Eightfold Path to stream into them unconsciously. Buddha's relation to the Eightfold Path was analogous to the status of the Christ-Being before it was possible for Him to descend in order to take human form. The taking of human form signified progress for Christ. That is the all-important point.

Buddha's successor—now a Bodhisattva—is well known to those versed in spiritual science and the time will come when these facts—including the name of the Bodhisattva who will then become the Maitreya Buddha—will be spoken of explicitly. For the present, however, when so many factors unknown to the external world have been presented, indications must suffice. When this Bodhisattva appears on Earth and becomes Maitreya Buddha, he will find on Earth the seed of Christ, embodied in those human beings who say: ‘Not only is my head filled with the wisdom of the Eightfold Path; I have not only the teaching, the wisdom of love, but my heart is filled with the living substance of love which overflows and streams into the world.’ And then, together with such human beings, the Maitreya Buddha will be able to carry out his further mission in the world's evolution.

All these truths are interrelated and only by realizing this are we able to understand the profundities of the Gospel of St. Luke. This Gospel does not speak to us of a ‘teaching’, but of Him who flowed as very substance into the beings of the Earth and into the constitution of man. This is a truth expressed in occultism by saying: The Bodhisattvas who become Buddhas can, through wisdom, redeem earthly man in respect of his spirit, but they can never redeem the whole man. For the whole man can be redeemed only when the warm power of love—not wisdom alone—flows through his whole being. The redemption of souls through the outpouring of love which He brought to the Earth—that was the mission of Christ. To bring the wisdom of love was the mission of the Bodhisattvas and of the Buddha; to bring to mankind the power of love was the mission of Christ. This distinction must be made.

• 1. In the English versions of the New Testament the correct meaning has been preserved. (See Matt. XII, 34, also Luke VI, 43.
• 2. Among countless references to Maitreya Buddha in the vast literature of Buddhism, special attention may be called to the chapter entitled ‘Maitreya, the future Buddha’, in Buddhist Scriptures, translated by Edward Conze (Penguin Classics).

  Dr. Steiner spoke of Maitreya Buddha in many lecture-courses and in considerable detail in the following lectures: Buddha and Christ. The Sphere of the Bodhisattvas, given in Milan, 21st September 1911; Jeshu ben Pandira, Lecture 1, 4th November 1911, and Jeschu ben Pandira, Lecture 2, 5th November 1911, both lectures given in Leipzig.

Our task to-day will be to bring the knowledge gained in these lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke to the culminating point indicated by spiritual investigation—the culminating point we know as the Mystery of Golgotha.

Yesterday's lecture endeavoured to convey an idea of what actually took place at the time when for three years Christ was on Earth, and the preceding lectures indicated how the convergence of streams of spiritual life made this event possible. The writer of the Gospel of St. Luke gives a wonderful account of the mission of Christ Jesus on the Earth, as we shall realize if the light of knowledge derived from the Akashic Chronicle can be brought to bear upon what he describes.

The following question might be asked: As the stream of Buddhism is organically woven into Christian teachings, how is it that in the latter there is no indication of the great Law of Karma, of the adjustment effected in the course of the incarnations of an individual human being? It would, however, be sheer misapprehension to imagine that what the Law of Karma enables us to understand is not also implicit in the words of the Gospel of St. Luke. It is indeed there, only we must realize that the needs of the human soul differ in different epochs and that it is not always the task of the great emissaries in world-evolution to impart the absolute truth in abstract form, because men at different stages of maturity simply would not understand it; the great pioneers and missionaries must speak in such a way that men receive what is right and suitable in a particular epoch. The teaching received by humanity through the great Buddha contains, in the form of wisdom, everything that in conjunction with the teaching of compassion and love and the synthesis of this in the Eightfold Path, can enable the doctrine of Karma to be understood. Failure to achieve this understanding only means that no effort has been made to use faculties in the soul leading to knowledge of the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation.

In the lecture yesterday it was said that in about three thousand years from now, large numbers of human beings will have progressed sufficiently to unfold from their own souls the teaching of the Eightfold Path and—we may now add—that of Karma and Reincarnation. But this must inevitably be a gradual process. Just as a plant cannot unfold its blossom immediately the seed has been sown but leaf after leaf must develop according to definite laws, so too the spiritual development of humanity must progress stage by stage and the right knowledge be brought to light at the right time.

Anyone possessed of faculties that can be kindled by spiritual science will realize from the voice of his own soul that the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation is indispensable. It must be remembered however that evolution is not fortuitous and in point of fact it is only now, in our own time, that human souls have become sufficiently mature to discover these truths through their own insight. It would not have been a good thing to give out the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation exoterically a few centuries ago; and it would have been detrimental to evolution if the present content of spiritual science—for which human souls are longing and with which research into the foundations of the Gospels is connected—had been imparted openly to mankind a few hundred years earlier. It was necessary that human souls should be yearning for it and should have developed faculties able to accept such teaching; it was essential that these souls should have passed through earlier incarnations, even in the Christian era, and have undergone the available experiences before reaching a degree of maturity capable of assimilating the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation. Had this teaching been proclaimed in the early centuries of Christendom in the form in which it is proclaimed to-day, this would have meant demanding of human evolution the equivalent of demanding a plant to produce the blossom before the green leaves.

Humanity has only now become sufficiently mature to assimilate the spiritual content of the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation. It is therefore not surprising that in what has been imparted to humanity for centuries from the Gospels, there is much that gives a quite erroneous picture of Christianity. In a certain respect the Gospel message was entrusted prematurely to men and it is only to-day that they are becoming mature enough to develop all the faculties that could lead to an understanding of the actual content of the Gospel records. It was absolutely necessary that what was proclaimed by Christ Jesus should take account of the conditions and the attitude of soul prevailing in those days. Therefore Karma and Reincarnation were not taught as abstract doctrines, but feelings were cultivated through which human souls would gradually become ready to receive this teaching. What was needed at that time was to speak in a way that could lead by degrees to an understanding of Karma and Reincarnation rather than any enunciation of the teaching itself.

Did Christ Jesus and those who were around Him speak in this way? In order to understand this we must study the Gospel of St. Luke and interpret it rightly. If we do so we shall realize in what form the Law of Karma could be made known to men at that time.

“Blessed be ye poor; for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now; for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now; for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day and leap for joy; for behold your reward is great in heaven”—i.e. in the spiritual worlds. (Luke VI, 20–23.)

Here we have the teaching of ‘compensation’. Without going into the subject of Karma and Reincarnation in an abstract way, the aim is to let the feeling of assurance flow into the souls of men that one who for a time is still hungering will eventually experience the due compensation. It was necessary that these feelings should flow into the souls of men. The souls then living, to whom the teaching was given in this form, were not, until they were again incarnated, ready to receive, as wisdom, the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation.

What was to ripen in human souls had to flow into these at that time. For a completely new epoch had begun, an epoch when men were preparing to develop their Ego, their self-consciousness, to maturity. Whereas revelations had hitherto been received and the effects made manifest in the astral, etheric and physical bodies of men, the Ego was now to become fully conscious but be filled only gradually with the forces it was eventually to acquire. Only the one Ego¹ which came to the Earth as the Nathan Jesus and into whose bodily constitution, when this had been duly prepared, the Individuality of Zarathustra passed this Ego-Being alone could bring to fulfilment within itself the all-embracing Christ-principle.

The rest of humanity must now, in imitation of Christ, gradually develop what was present for three years on the Earth in the one single Personality. It was only the impulse, as it were the seed, that Christ Jesus was able to implant into humanity at that time and the seed must now unfold and grow. To this end provision was made that at the right times there shall always appear on Earth individuals able to bring the truth that humanity will not be ready to assimilate until a later period. The Being who appeared on Earth as Christ had to take care that His message would be accessible to men immediately after His appearance, in a form that they could understand. He had also to make provision for Individualities to appear later on and care for the spiritual needs of human souls at the stage of maturity reached in the course of time.

In what manner Christ made such provision for the ages following the Event of Golgotha is related by the writer of the Gospel of St. John. He shows us how, in Lazarus, Christ Himself ‘raised’, ‘awakened’, that Individuality who continued to work as ‘John’, from whom the teaching proceeded in the form described in the lectures on the Gospel of St. John.² But Christ had also to provide for the appearance, in later times, of an Individuality who would bring to humanity in a form compatible with subsequent evolution, that for which men would by then be ready. How an Individuality was ‘awakened’ by Christ for this purpose is faithfully described by the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke. Having declared that he would describe what ‘seers’ endowed with the vision of Imagination and Inspiration could say about the Event of Palestine, he also points to what would one day be taught by another—but only in the future. In order to describe this mysterious process the writer of St. Luke's Gospel has also included an ‘awakening’, a ‘raising’, in his account (Luke VII, 11–17.) In what we read concerning the ‘awakening’ of the young man of Nain lies the mystery of the progress of Christianity. Whereas in the case of the healing of the daughter of Jairus, to which brief reference was made in a previous lecture, the mysteries connected with it were so profound that Christ admitted only a few to witness the act and charged them not to speak of it, this other ‘raising’ was accomplished in such a way that it might immediately be related. The former healing was an act presupposing in the healer a profound insight into the processes of physical life; the latter healing was an ‘awakening’, an Initiation. The Individuality in the body of the young man of Nain was to undergo an Initiation of a very special kind.

There are various kinds of Initiation. In one kind, immediately after the process has been completed, knowledge of the higher worlds flashes up in the aspirant and the laws and happenings of the spiritual world are revealed to him. In another kind of Initiation it is only a seed that is implanted into the soul, and the individual has to wait until the next incarnation for the seed to bear fruit; only then does he become an Initiate in the real sense.

The Initiation of the young man of Nain was of this kind. His soul was transformed by the event in Palestine but he was not yet conscious of having risen into the higher worlds. It was not until his next incarnation that the forces laid in his soul at that earlier time came to fruition. In an exoteric lecture names cannot now be given; all that is possible is an indication to the effect that the Individuality awakened by Christ in the young man of Nain subsequently appeared as a great teacher of religion; in later time a new teacher of Christianity arose, equipped with the powers implanted into his soul in a previous incarnation.

Thus Christ provided for the subsequent appearance of an Individuality able to bring Christianity to a further stage of development. Moreover the mission of the Individuality who had been awakened in the young man of Nain is destined to permeate Christianity later on, and to an ever-increasing extent, with the teachings of Karma and Reincarnation—teachings which when Christ was on Earth could not be proclaimed explicitly as wisdom, because the human soul had first to receive them into the life of feeling.

Christ indicates clearly enough (according to the Gospel of St. Luke too) that an entirely new factor had now entered into the evolution of humanity, namely, Ego-consciousness. He shows—it is only a matter of being able to read the meaning—that in earlier times the spiritual world did not flow into the self-conscious Ego, for men received this spiritual stream through the physical, etheric and astral bodies; a certain degree of unconsciousness was always present when, as in previous epochs, divine-spiritual forces flowed into men. In the stream in which Christ Jesus was actually working, men had had formerly to receive the Law of Sinai, which could be addressed only to the astral body. The Law was imparted to man in such a way that it did indeed work in him, but not directly through the forces of his Ego. These forces could not operate until the time of Christ Jesus because it was not until then that man became conscious of the Ego in the real sense. This is indicated by Christ in the Gospel of St. Luke when He says that men must first be made ready to receive an entirely new principle into their souls. He indicates this when speaking of His forerunner, John the Baptist. (Luke VII, 18–35.)

How did Christ Himself regard this Individuality? He said that before His own coming the mission of John was to present in its purest and noblest form the old teaching of the Prophets that had been handed down, unadulterated, from bygone times. He regarded John as being the last to transmit, in its pure form, the teaching belonging to past ages. The ‘Law and the Prophets’ held good until the coming of John. His mission was to set before men once again what the old teaching and the old constitution of soul had been able to impart. How did this old constitution of soul function in the times preceding the advent of the Christ-principle?

Here we come to a subject—incomprehensible as it may seem at the present time—that will some day become a teaching of natural science as well, when it allows itself to be inspired to some extent by spiritual science. I must now refer to a matter of which I can touch only the very fringe but which will show you what depths spiritual science is destined to illumine in the domain of natural science. If you survey the branches of natural science to-day and perceive the efforts that are made to penetrate the mysteries of man's existence with the limited faculties of human thought, you will find it stated that the whole human being comes into existence through the intermingling of the male and female seeds. One of the basic endeavours of modern natural science is to establish this theory. Searching microscopical examination of substances is made in order to ascertain which particular attributes proceed from the male or from the female seed, and the researchers are satisfied when they believe, it can he proved that the whole human being is thus produced. But natural science itself will eventually be compelled to recognize that only one part of the human being is determined by the intermingling of the male and female seeds and that however precisely the product of the one or the other may be known, the whole nature of man in the present cycle of evolution cannot be explained by this intermingling.

There is in every human being something that does not arise from the seed but is, so to speak, a ‘virgin birth’, something that flows into the process of germination from a quite different source. Something unites with the seed of the human being that is not derived from father and mother, yet belongs to and is destined for him—something that is poured into his Ego and can be ennobled through the Christ-principle. That in the human being which unites with the Christ-principle in the course of evolution is ‘virgin-born’ and—as natural science will one day come to recognize through its own methods—this is connected with the momentous transition accomplished at the time of Christ Jesus. Before the Christ Event there could be nothing that did not enter into man's inner being by way of the seed. Something has actually happened in the course of the ages to bring about a change in the development of the Ego. Humanity has not been the same since the Christ Event; but the element that has been added since then to what is produced by the seeds must be gradually developed and ennobled by assimilating the Christ-principle.

We are here approaching a very subtle truth. To anyone conversant with modern natural science it is extremely interesting that already to-day there are domains where investigators are faced with the fact that there is something in man not derived from the seed. The preliminary conditions for realizing this are already there, only the investigators are not yet intellectually capable of recognizing what is present in their own experiments and observations. More is at work in the experiments than is known to modern natural science and little progress would be made if it were entirely dependent upon the ability of the investigators. While one or another is working in a laboratory, in a clinic, or perhaps in his own study, there stand behind him the Powers which direct and guide the world, and these Powers allow that to come to light which the researcher himself does not understand and for which he is merely the instrument. It is therefore also true that even objective investigation is guided by the ‘Masters’, that is, by higher Individualities. The facts now indicated are not usually observed; but they certainly will be when the conscious faculties of researchers are permeated by the spiritual teachings of Anthroposophy.

As a result of the fact of which I have just spoken, a great change has taken place in connection with the faculties of the human being since Christ came to the Earth. Previously, the only faculties available to man were those derived from the paternal and maternal seeds, for these faculties alone were able to develop in him. Between birth and death we develop through our physical, etheric and astral bodies such faculties as we possess. Before the time of Christ Jesus the instruments employed by man for his own life could be developed only from the seed. After the appearance of Christ Jesus that element was added which is of ‘virgin birth’ and does not in any sense arise from the seed. This element can of course be gravely impaired if a man is entirely given over to materialistic thought; but it can be sublimated if he lets his being be suffused by the warmth issuing from the Christ-principle and he then brings it into his following incarnations in an ever higher and higher form.

What has now been said necessarily implies that in all the proclamations made to humanity prior to that of Christ, there was an element bound up with faculties originating from the line of descent and from the seed; and it also imparts the conviction that Christ Jesus addressed himself to faculties that have nothing to do with the seed arising from the Earth but from out of the divine worlds unite with the seed. Teachers before Christ Jesus could speak to men only by using the faculties transmitted to their earthly nature through the seed. All the prophets and forerunners, however exalted, even when they descended as Bodhisattvas, were obliged to use faculties transmitted by way of the seed. Christ Jesus, however, spoke to that in man which does not pass through the seed but comes from the realm of the Divine. He indicates this when He speaks to His disciples of John the Baptist (Luke VII, 28): "For I say unto you, among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist"—that is to say, among those who, as they stand before us, can be explained as having come into existence through physical birth from male and female seeds. But then Christ adds words to the effect that the smallest part of that which is not born of women and which unites with the man from the kingdom of God is greater than John. Such are the depths hidden beneath these words! Some day, when study of the Bible is illumined by spiritual science, it will be found to contain physiological truths of far greater significance than any finding of the blundering thinking applied in modern physiology. Words such as those just quoted can lead to recognition of one of the very deepest physiological truths. Profound indeed is the Bible when it is truly understood!

Christ Jesus exemplifies in manifold ways, and also in a different form, what I have now told you. His purpose is to indicate that the element which is to come into the world through Him is something altogether new, a truth differing from any hitherto proclaimed, because it is connected with faculties derived from the kingdoms of Heaven—faculties that have not been inherited. He points out how difficult it is for men to learn to understand such a teaching, and that they will demand to be convinced in the same way as formerly. He tells them that they cannot be convinced in the old way of the new truth that has now come; for what could be proof of truth in the old form could not bring conviction of the new. The old truth was presented in comprehensible form when symbolized by the ‘Sign of Jonah’. This symbolized the old way in which man gradually attained knowledge and penetrated into the spiritual world, or how—to use biblical terms—he became a ‘Prophet’.

The old way of attaining Initiation was this: first the soul was brought to maturity and every necessary preparation made; then a condition lasting for three-and-a-half days was induced in the candidate, a condition in which he was completely withdrawn from the outer world and from the organs through which that world is perceived. Those who were to be led into the spiritual world were carefully prepared and their souls trained in knowledge of the spiritual life; then they were withdrawn from the world for three-and-a-half days, being taken to a place where they could perceive nothing through their external senses and where their bodies lay in a deathlike condition; after three-and-a-half days their souls were summoned back again into the body and they were awakened. Such men were then able to remember their vision of the spiritual worlds and to testify of those worlds. The great secret of Initiation was that the soul, prepared by long training, was led out of the body for three-and-a-half days into an entirely different world, was shut off from the environment and penetrated into the spiritual world. Men who could bear witness to the realities of the spiritual world were always to be found among the peoples; they were men who had undergone the experience referred to in the Bible in the story of Jonah's sojourn in the whale. Such a man was made ready to undergo this experience and then, when he appeared before the people as an Initiate of the old order, he bore upon him the ‘sign of Jonah’ the sign of those who were able themselves to testify of the spiritual world.

This was the one form of Initiation. Christ said, in effect: ‘In the old sense there is no other sign save the sign of Jonah.’ (Luke XI, 29.) And He expressed Himself even more clearly according to the meaning of words in the Gospel of St. Matthew. ‘As a heritage from olden times there remains the possibility that without effort of his own, without Initiation, a man can develop a dim, shadowy kind of clairvoyance and through revelation from above be led into the spiritual world.’ The indication here is that there were also Initiates of a second kind—men who went about among their fellows and who, as a result of their particular lineage, were able to receive revelations from above in a kind of sublimated trance condition, without having undergone any special Initiation. Christ indicated that this twofold manner of being transported into the spiritual world had come down from ancient times. He bade the people to remember King Solomon—thereby pointing to an Individuality to whom, without effort on his own part, the spiritual world was revealed from above. The ‘Queen of Sheba’ who came to King Solomon was also the bearer of wisdom from above; she was the representative of those predestined to possess, by inheritance, the dim, shadowy clairvoyance with which all men were endowed in the Atlantean epoch. (See Luke XI, 31.)

Thus there were two kinds of Initiates: the one kind typified by King Solomon and the symbolic visit paid to him by the Queen of Sheba, the Queen from the South; the other kind typified by those who bore upon them the ‘sign of Jonah’, meaning the old Initiation in which the candidate, entirely cut off from the outer world, passed through the spiritual world for a period lasting three-and-a-half days. Christ now added: ‘A greater than Solomon, a greater than Jonah is here’—indicating thereby that something new had come into the world. The message was not to be conveyed to the etheric bodies of men from outside, through revelations, as in the case of Solomon, nor was it to be conveyed to etheric bodies from within through revelations imparted by the duly prepared astral body to the etheric body, as in the case of those symbolized by the sign of Jonah. ‘Here is something which enables a man who has made himself ready for it in his Ego, to unite his being with what belongs to the kingdoms of Heaven.’ The forces and powers from those kingdoms unite with the virginal part in the human soul, the part that belongs to the kingdoms of Heaven and that men can destroy if they turn away from the Christ-principle, but can cultivate and nurture if they receive into themselves what streams from the Christ-principle.

As indicated in the Gospel of St. Luke, Christ's teaching is imbued with the new element which came to the Earth at that time, and we see how all the old ways of proclaiming the kingdom of God were changed through the Event of Palestine. Christ says to those from whom, because of their preparation, He could expect some measure of understanding: ‘Of a truth there are some among you who are able to see the kingdom of God, not only in the manner of Solomon, through revelation, or through the Initiation symbolized by the sign of Jonah; if any among you had attained nothing further than that they would never see the kingdom of God in this incarnation before their death.’ The meaning is that before their death they would not have seen the kingdom of God unless they had attained Initiation in some form; but then they would also have had to pass through a condition similar to death. Christ wished to show that because of the new element now present in the world there can also be men who, even before they die are able to behold the kingdom of Heaven. The disciples did not at first understand what this meant. Christ wanted to convey to them that they were to be the ones who would come to know the mysteries of the kingdoms of Heaven before natural death or the death experienced in the old form of Initiation. The wonderful passage in the Gospel of St. Luke where Christ is speaking of a higher revelation, is as follows: "But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God." (Luke IX, 27.) The disciples did not understand that it was they themselves who, being closely around Him, were chosen to experience the tremendous power of the Christ principle which would enable them to penetrate directly into the spiritual world. The spiritual world was to become visible to them without the sign of Solomon, and without the sign of Jonah. Did this actually happen?

Immediately after these words in the Gospel comes the scene of the Transfiguration, when three disciples—Peter, James and John—are led up into the spiritual world. The figures of Moses and Elijah appear before them in that world and, simultaneously, Christ Jesus in Glory. (Luke IX, 28–36.) The disciples gaze for a brief moment into the spiritual world—a testimony that insight into that world is possible without the faculties designated by the sign of Solomon and the sign of Jonah. But it is evident that they are still novices, for they fall asleep immediately after being torn out of their physical and etheric bodies by the stupendous power of what was happening. Christ finds them asleep. This account was meant to indicate the third way of entering the spiritual world, apart from the ways denoted by the signs of Solomon and of Jonah. Anyone capable in those days of interpreting the signs of the times would have known that the Ego itself must develop, that it must now be directly inspired, that the Divine Powers must work directly into the Ego.

It was also to be made evident that the men of that time, even the very best among them, were not capable of taking the Christ-principle into themselves. The event of the Transfiguration was to be a beginning but it was also to be shown that the disciples were not able, at the time, to receive the Christ-principle in the fullest sense. Hence their powers fail them immediately afterwards, when they want to apply the Christ-power to heal one who is possessed by an evil spirit but are unable to do so. Christ indicates that they are still only at the beginning, by saying: I shall have to stay a long time with you before your forces are able also to stream into other men. (See Luke IX, 41.) Thereupon He heals the one whom the disciples could not heal. But then He says, again hinting at the mystery behind these happenings, that the time has come when “the Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of men”. This means: the time has come when the Ego, which is to be developed by men themselves in the course of their Earth-mission, is gradually to stream into them, to be given over to them. This Ego is to be recognized in its highest form in Christ. “Let these sayings sink down into your ears; for the Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of men. But they understood not this saying; it was hid from them, that they perceived it not.” (Luke IX, 44–45.)

How many have understood this saying? Greater and greater numbers will, however, eventually understand that the Ego, the ‘Son of Man’, was to be given over to men at that time. And the explanation that was possible in those days, was added by Christ Jesus. He spoke to the following effect: As he stands before us, man is a product of the old forces that were active before the Luciferic beings had laid hold of human nature; but the Luciferic forces drew man down to a lower level. The results of all these processes have passed into the faculties possessed by him to-day. Everything that comes from the seed, as well as all human consciousness, is permeated by the influence that dragged man to a lower sphere.

Man is a twofold being. Whatever consciousness he has developed hitherto is permeated by the Luciferic forces. It is only the unconscious part of man's being, the last remnant of his evolution through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods when no Luciferic forces were at work—it is only this that streams into him to-day as a virginal element of his nature; but it cannot unite with him without the qualities and forces he is able to develop in himself through the Christ-principle. As he stands before us, man is primarily a product of heredity, a confluence of what derives from the male and female seeds. From the beginning he develops as a duality—a duality already permeated by Luciferic forces. As long as a man is not illumined by self-consciousness, as long as out of his own Ego he cannot fully distinguish between good and evil, he reveals to us his earlier, original nature through the veil of his later nature. Only the part of man that is ‘childlike’ still retains a last remnant of the nature that was his before he succumbed to the influence of the Luciferic beings.

Hence there is a ‘childlike’ part and also a ‘grown’ part in man. It is the latter part of his being that is permeated by the Luciferic forces but its influence asserts itself from the very earliest embryonic stage onwards. The Luciferic forces also permeate the child, so that in ordinary life what was already implanted in the human being before the Luciferic influence, cannot make itself manifest. The Christ-power must re-awaken this, must unite with the best forces of the child-nature in man. The Christ-power may not link itself with the faculties that man has corrupted, with what derives merely from the intellect; the link must be with that which has remained from the child-nature of primeval times. That is what must be reinvigorated and must thereafter fructify the other part (of man's nature).

“But there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be the greatest,” that is, which of them was most fitted to receive the Christ-principle into his own being. "But Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child and set it by them and said unto them. Whosoever shall receive this child in my name"—that is, whosoever is united in Christ's name with what has remained from the times before the onset of the Luciferic influence “receiveth me; and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me” (Luke IX, 46–48)—that is, He who sent this (childlike) part of the human being to the Earth. Emphasis is there laid upon the great significance of what has remained ‘childlike’ in man and should be fostered and nurtured in human nature.

We may say of a human being standing before us that he has the rudiments of very good qualities. We may try our hardest to develop those qualities of his so that he makes real progress, but the methods usually adopted to-day take no account of what is present in the foundations of man's being. It is essential to pay heed to what has remained ‘childlike’ in man, for it is by way of this childlike nature that warmth can be imparted to the other faculties through the Christ-principle. The childlike nature must be developed in order that the other faculties may follow suit. Everyone has the childlike nature within him and this, when wakened to life, will also be responsive to union with the Christ-principle. But forces—of however lofty a kind—that are dominated by the Luciferic influence will, if they alone work in a man to-day, repudiate and scoff at what can live on Earth as the Christ power—as Christ Himself foretold.

The Gospel of St. Luke, brings home very clearly the purport and meaning of the new proclamation. When a man who bore on his forehead the sign of Jonah went about the world as an Initiate of the old order, he was recognized—but only by those who were knowers—as one who had come to testify of the spiritual worlds. Special preparation was needed before the sign of Jonah could be understood. But a new kind of preparation was now necessary in order to understand what was greater than anything indicated by the signs of Solomon and of Jonah—a new preparation which was to pave the way for a new understanding, a new way of maturing the soul. The contemporaries of Christ Jesus could at first understand only the old way, and the way preached by John the Baptist was the one known to most of them. That Christ was now bringing an entirely new impulse, that he was seeking for souls among those who did not in the least resemble men who would formerly have been considered suitable, was utterly incomprehensible to them. They had assumed that He would associate with those who practised the old kind of disciplinary exercises and would impart His teaching to such men. Hence they could not understand why He sat among those whom they regarded as ‘sinners’. But He said to them: If I were to impart in the old way the entirely new impulse I have come to give to mankind, if a new form of teaching were not to replace the old, it would be as if I were to sew a piece of new cloth on an old garment or pour new wine into old wine-skins. What is now to be given to humanity and is greater than anything indicated by the sign of Solomon or the sign of Jonah, this must be poured into new wine-skins, into new forms. And you must rouse yourselves sufficiently to understand the new teaching in a new form! (See Luke V, 36–37.)

Those who were to understand must now do so through the powerful influence of the Ego—not through what they had learnt but through what had poured into them from the spiritual Christ-Being Himself. Hence the chosen ones were not men who according to the old doctrines were properly prepared but men who in spite of having passed through many incarnations, proved to be simple human beings, able to understand through the power of Faith what had streamed into them. A ‘sign’ was to be placed before them as well, a sign now to be enacted before the eyes of all mankind. The ‘mystical death’ that had been a ceremonial act in the Mystery Temples for hundreds and thousands of years was now to be presented on the great arena of world-history. Everything that had taken place in the secrecy of the Temples of Initiation was brought into the open as a single event on Golgotha. A process hitherto witnessed only by the Initiates during the three-and-a-half days of an old Initiation was now enacted before mankind in concrete reality. Hence those to whom the facts were known could only describe the Event of Golgotha as being what in very truth it was: the old Initiation transformed into historical fact and enacted on the arena of world-history.

That is what took place on Golgotha! In former times the three-and-a-half days spent in deathlike sleep had brought to the few Initiates who witnessed it, the conviction that the spiritual will at all times be victorious over the bodily nature and that man's soul and spirit belong to a spiritual world. This was now to be a reality enacted before the eyes of the world. An Initiation transferred to the outer plane of world-history such was the Event of Golgotha. Hence this Initiation was not consummated only for those who witnessed the actual Event, but for all mankind. What issued from the death on the Cross streamed into the whole of humanity. A stream of spiritual life flowed into mankind from the drops of blood which fell from the wounds of Christ Jesus on Golgotha. For what had been imparted by other Teachers as ‘wisdom’ was now to pass into humanity as inner strength, inner power. That is the essential difference between the Event of Golgotha and the teachings given by the other Founders of religion.

Deeper understanding than exists to-day is necessary before there can be any true conception of what came to pass on Golgotha. When Earth evolution began, the human Ego was connected physically with the blood. The blood is the outer expression of the human Ego. Men would have made the Ego stronger and stronger, and if Christ had not appeared they would have been entirely engrossed in the development of egoism. They were protected from this by the Event of Golgotha. What was it that had to flow? The blood that is the surplus substantiality of the Ego! The process that began on the Mount of Olives when the drops of sweat fell from the Redeemer like drops of blood, was carried further when the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ Jesus on Golgotha. The blood flowing from the Cross was the sign of the surplus egoism in man's nature which had to be sacrificed. The spiritual significance of the sacrifice on Golgotha requires deep and penetrating study. The result of what happened there would not be apparent to a chemist—that is to say to one with the power of intellectual perception only. If the blood that flowed on Golgotha had been chemically analysed it would have been found to contain the same substances as the blood of other human beings; but occult investigation would discover it to have been quite different blood. Through the surplus blood in humanity men would have been engulfed in egoism if infinite Love had not enabled this blood to flow. As occult investigation finds, infinite Love is intermingled with the blood that flowed on Golgotha. The writer of the Gospel of St. Luke adhered to his purpose, which was to describe how, through Christ, there came into the world the infinite Love that would gradually drive out egoism. Each of the Evangelists describes what it was his particular function to describe.

If these things could be explained in still greater depth we should find that all contradictions alleged by materialistic research would be invalidated, as they are in the case of the antecedents of Jesus of Nazareth when the true facts of his early childhood are known. Each Evangelist describes what concerned him most closely from his own standpoint. St. Luke describes what his informants, who were ‘seers’ and ‘servants of the Word’ were able to perceive as the result of their special preparation. The other Evangelists are concerned with different aspects—the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke perceives the out-streaming Love which forgives the most terrible of all wrongs the physical world can inflict. Words expressing this ideal of Love, words of forgiveness even when the most terrible of wrongs has been committed, resound from the Cross on Golgotha: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” (Luke XXIII, 34.) Out of His infinite Love, He who on the Cross on Golgotha accomplishes the Deed of untold significance, implores forgiveness for those who have crucified Him.

And now we turn once again to the doctrine of the power of Faith. Emphasis was to be laid upon the fact that there is something in human nature that can stream from it and liberate man from the material world, no matter how firmly he may he bound to that world. Let us think of a man embroiled in the material world through every imaginable crime, so that the forum of that world itself inflicts the punishment; let us conceive, however, that he has saved for himself something that the power of Faith can cause to germinate within him. Such a man will differ from another who has no Faith, just as the one malefactor differed from the other. The one has no Faith, and the judgment is fulfilled. In the other, however, Faith is like a faint light shining into the spiritual world; hence he cannot lose the link with the spiritual. Therefore to him it is said: ‘To-day’—since you know that you are connected with the spiritual world—‘you shall be with me in Paradise!’ (See Luke XXIII, 43.)

Thus do the truths of Faith and Hope, as well as the truth of Love, resound from the Cross in the account given in the Gospel of St. Luke.

There is still something else, belonging to the same realm of the soul's life, upon which the writer of this Gospel wishes to lay emphasis.

When a man's whole being is pervaded with the Love that streamed from the Cross on Golgotha he can turn his eyes to the future and say: Evolution on the Earth must make it possible for the spirit living within me gradually to transform the whole of physical existence. We shall in time give back again to the Father-principle which existed before the onset of the Luciferic influence, the spirit we have received; we shall let our whole being be permeated by the Christ-principle and our hands will bring to expression what is living in our souls as a faithful picture of that principle. Our hands were not created by ourselves but by the Father-principle, and the Christ-principle will stream through them. As men pass through incarnation after incarnation, the spiritual power flowing from the Mystery of Golgotha will stream into what they achieve in their bodies—which are the creations of the Father-principle—so that the outer world will eventually be imbued with the Christ-principle. Men will be filled with the confidence that resounded from the Cross on Golgotha and leads to the highest Hope for the future, leads to the ideal that can be expressed by saying: I let Faith germinate within me, I let Love germinate within me and I know that when they grow strong enough they will pervade all external life. I know too that they will pervade everything within me that is the creation of the Father-principle. Thus Hope for humanity's future will be added to Faith and Love, and men will understand that in regard to the future they must acquire firm confidence, saying: If only I have Faith, if only I have Love I may entertain the Hope that what has come into me from Christ Jesus will gradually find its way into the outer world. And then the words resounding from the Cross as a sublime ideal will be understood: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!” (Luke XXIII, 46.)

Words of Love, of Faith and of Hope ring out from the Cross according to the Gospel which indicates how spiritual streams that had previously been separate united in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. What had formerly been received in the form of wisdom, streamed into men as an actual power of the soul, exemplified by the sublime ideal of Christ. It is incumbent upon human beings to acquire deeper and deeper understanding of what is communicated in a record such as the Gospel of St. Luke, in order that the three words resounding from the Cross may become active forces in the soul. When with the faculties that the truths of spiritual science can develop in them men come to feel that what streams down to them from the Cross is not lifeless exhortation but vital, active force, they will begin to realize that a truly living message is contained in the Gospel of St. Luke. It is the mission of spiritual science gradually to unveil what is enshrined in such records.

In this course of lectures we have tried to penetrate as deeply as possible into the content of St. Luke's Gospel. In the case of this Gospel too, one course of lectures cannot possibly unveil everything and you will realise at once that a very great deal has inevitably remained unexplained. But if you pursue the path indicated by lectures such as have been given here you will be able to penetrate more and more deeply into these truths and your souls will be better and better fitted to receive and assimilate the living Word hidden beneath the outer words.

Spiritual science is not a body of new teaching. It is an instrument for comprehending what has been given to humanity. Thus for us it is an instrument for understanding the Christian revelation. If you have this conception of spiritual science you will no longer say: ‘It is Christian theosophy or just another form of theosophy!’ There is only one spiritual science and we apply it as an instrument for proclaiming the truth, for bringing to light the treasures of the spiritual life of mankind. It is the same spiritual science that we apply in order to explain the Bhagavad Gita on one occasion and on another the Gospel of St. Luke. The greatness of spiritual science lies in the fact that it is able to penetrate into every treasure given to humanity in the realm of spiritual life; but we should have a false conception of it if we were to close our ears to any of the proclamations made to humanity.

It is with this attitude of mind that you should listen to the proclamation made in the Gospel of St. Luke, realizing that it is pervaded through and through by the inspiration of Love. And then the increasing knowledge that can be acquired from this Gospel with the help of spiritual science will contribute not only to insight into the mysteries of the surrounding Universe and of the spiritual ground of existence but to an understanding of the momentous words in the Gospel of St. Luke: ‘And peace be in the souls of men in whom there is good will.’ When thoroughly understood, the Gospel of St. Luke is able, more than any other religious text, to pour into the human soul that warmth-giving Love through which peace reigns on Earth—and that is the most beautiful mirror-image of divine mysteries revealed on Earth. What can be revealed must be mirrored on Earth and, as mirror-image, rise up again to the spiritual Heights. If we learn to understand spiritual science in this sense it will be able to reveal to us the mysteries of the divine-spiritual Beings and of spiritual existence, and the mirror-image of these revelations will live in our souls. Love and Peace—here is the most beautiful mirror-image on Earth of what streams down from the Heights.

In this way we can receive and assimilate the words of the Gospel of St. Luke which resounded when the forces of the Nirmanakaya of Buddha streamed down upon the Nathan Jesus-child. The revelations pour down from the spiritual worlds upon the Earth and are reflected from human hearts as Love and Peace to the extent to which men unfold the power, the ‘good will’, which the Christ-principle enables to flow from the centre of man's being, from his Ego. The proclamation rings out clearly and with the glow of warmth when we truly understand the meaning of these words in the Gospel of St. Luke:

The revelation of the spiritual worlds from the Heights and its answering reflection from the hearts of men brings peace to all whose purpose upon the evolving Earth is to unfold good will.

• 1. See references to the nature of this Ego in Lectures Four, Five and Seven.
• 2. See the lecture-courses given at Hamburg, in May 1908, and at Cassel, in July 1909;
  also the book Christianity as Mystical Fact, Ch. VIII.

Wherever we, as human beings, have striven for knowledge, whether as mystics or realists or in any way at all, the acquisition of self-knowledge has been demanded of us. But as has been repeatedly emphasised on other occasions, self-knowledge is by no means as easy to achieve as many people believe—anthroposophists sometimes among them. The anthroposophist should be constantly aware of the hindrances he will encounter in his efforts. But the acquisition of self-knowledge is absolutely essential if we are to reach a worthy goal in world-existence and if our actions are to be worthy of us as members of humanity.

Let us ask ourselves the question: Why is the achievement of self-knowledge so difficult? Man is a very complicated being. If we mean to speak truly of his inner life, his life of soul, we shall not begin by regarding it as something simple and elementary. We shall rather have the patience and perseverance, the will, to penetrate more deeply into the marvellous creation of the Divine-Spiritual Powers known to us as Man.

Before we investigate the nature of self-knowledge, two aspects of the life of the human soul may present themselves to us. Just as the magnet has North and South poles, just as light and darkness are present in the world, so there are two poles in man's life of soul. These two poles become evident when we observe a person placed in two contrasting situations. Suppose we are watching someone who is entirely absorbed in the contemplation of some strikingly beautiful and impressive natural phenomenon. We see how still he is standing, moving neither hand nor foot, never turning his eyes away from the spectacle presented to him, and we are aware that inwardly he is picturing his environment. That is one situation. Another is the following: a man is walking along the street and feels that someone has insulted him. Without thinking, he is roused to anger and gives vent to it by striking the person who insulted him. We are there witnessing a manifestation of forces springing from anger, a manifestation of impulses of will, and it is easy to imagine that if the action had been preceded by thought no blow need have been struck. We have now pictured two contrasting situations: in the one there is only ideation, a process in the life of thought from which all conscious will is absent; in the other there is no thought, no ideation, and immediate expression is given to an impulse of will. Here we have examples of the two extremes of human behaviour. The first pole is complete surrender to contemplation, to thought, in which the will has no part; the second pole is the impelling force of will without thought. These facts are revealed simply by observation of external life.

We can go into these things more deeply and we come then into spheres in which we can find our bearings only by summoning the findings of occult investigation to our aid. Here another polarity confronts us—that of sleeping and waking. From the elementary concepts of Anthroposophy we know that in waking life the four members of a man's being—physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego—are organically and actively interwoven, but that in sleep the physical and etheric bodies remain in bed, while the astral body and ego are outpoured into the great world bordering on physical existence. These facts could also be approached from a different point of view. We might ask: what is there to be said about ideation, contemplation, thinking—and about the will and its impulses on the one hand during waking life and during sleep on the other?

When we penetrate more deeply into this question it becomes evident that in his present physical existence man is, in a certain sense, always asleep, Only there is a difference between sleep during the night and sleep during the day. Of this we can be convinced in a purely external way, for we know that we can wake in the occult sense during the day, that is to say, one can become clairvoyant and see into the spiritual world. The physical body in its ordinary state is asleep to what is then and there happening and we can rightly speak of an awakening of our spiritual senses. In the night, of course, we are asleep in the normal way. It can therefore be said: ordinary sleep is sleep as regards the outer physical world; daytime consciousness at the present time is sleep as regards the spiritual world.

These facts can be considered in yet another light. On deeper scrutiny we realise that in the ordinary waking condition of physical life, man has, as a rule, very little power or control over his will and its impulses. The will is very detached from daily life. Only consider how little of all you do from morning to evening is really the outcome of your own thinking, of your personal resolutions. When someone knocks at the door and you say “Come in!”, that cannot be called a decision of your own thinking and will. If you are hungry and seat yourself at a table, that cannot be called a decision made by the will, because it is occasioned by your circumstances, by the needs of your organism. Try to picture your daily life and you will find how little the will is directly influenced from the centre of your being. Why is this the case? Occultism shows us that in respect of his will man actually sleeps by day, that is to say he is not in the real sense present in his will-impulses at all. We may evolve better and better concepts and ideas; or we may become more highly moral, more cultured individuals, but we can do nothing as regards the will. By cultivating better thoughts we can work indirectly upon the will but as far as life is concerned we can do nothing directly to it, for in the waking life of day, our will is influenced only in an indirect way, namely through sleep. When we are asleep we do not think; ideation passes over into a state of sleep. The will, however, awakes, permeates our organism from outside, and invigorates it. We feel strengthened in the morning because what has penetrated into our organism is of the nature of will. That we are not aware of this activity of the will becomes comprehensible when we remember that all conceptual activity ceases when we ourselves are asleep. To begin with, therefore, this stimulus shall be given for further contemplation, further meditation. The more progress you make in self-knowledge, the more you will find confirmation of the truth of the words that man sleeps in respect of his will when he is awake and sleeps in respect of his conceptual life when he is asleep. The life of will sleeps by day; the life of thought sleeps by night.

Man is unaware that the will does not sleep during the night because he only knows how to be awake in his life of thought. The will does not sleep during the night but it then works as it were in a fiery element, works upon his body in order to restore what has been used up by day.

Thus there are two poles in man, the life of observation and ideation, and the impulses of will; and man is related in entirely opposite ways to these two poles. The whole life of soul moves in various nuances between these two poles, and we shall come nearer to understanding it by bringing this microcosmic life of soul into relation with the higher worlds.

From what has been said we have learnt that the life of thought and ideation is one of the poles of man's life of soul. This life of thought is something which seems unreal to materialistically minded people. Do we not often hear it said: “Oh, ideas and thoughts are only ideas and thoughts!” This is intended to imply that if someone has [a piece] of bread or meat in his hand it is a reality because it can be eaten, but a thought is only a thought, it is not a reality. Why is this said? It is because what man calls his thoughts are related to what thoughts really are as a shadow-image is to the actual thing. The shadow-image of a flower points you to the flower itself, to the reality. So it is with thoughts. Human thinking is the shadowing forth of ideas and beings belonging to a higher world, the world we call the Astral plane. And you represent thinking rightly to yourself when you picture the human head thus—it is not absolutely correct but simply diagrammatic. In the head are thoughts but these thoughts must be pictured as living beings on the Astral plane. Beings of the most varied kinds are at work there in the form of teeming concepts and activities which cast their shadow-images into men, and these processes are reflected in the human head as thinking.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

As well as the life of thought in the human soul, there is also the life of feeling. Feelings fall into two categories: those of pleasure and sympathy and those of displeasure and antipathy. The former are aroused by good deeds, benevolent deeds; antipathy is aroused by evil, malevolent deeds. Here there is something more than and different from, the mere forming of concepts. We form concepts of things irrespectively of any other factor. But our soul experiences sympathy or antipathy only in respect of what is beautiful and good, or what is ugly and evil. Just as everything that takes place in man in the form of thoughts points to the Astral plane, so everything connected with sympathy or antipathy points to the realm we call Lower Devachan. Processes in the Heavenly World, or Devachan, are projected, mainly into our breast, as feelings of sympathy or antipathy for what is beautiful or ugly, for what is good or evil. So that in our feelings for the moral-aesthetic element, we bear within our souls shadow-reflections of the Heavenly World or Lower Devachan.

There is still a third province in the life of the human soul which must be strictly distinguished from the mere preference for good deeds. There is a difference between standing by and taking pleasure in witnessing some kindly deed and setting the will in action and actually performing some such deed. I will call pleasure in good deeds or displeasure in evil deeds the aesthetic element as against the moral element that impels a man to perform some good deed. The moral element is at a higher level than the purely aesthetic; mere pleasure or displeasure is at a lower level than the will to do something good or bad. In so far as our soul feels constrained to give expression to moral impulses, these impulses are the shadow-images of Higher Devachan, of the Higher Heavenly World.

It is easy to picture these three stages of activity of the human soul—the purely intellectual (thoughts, concepts), the aesthetic (pleasure or displeasure), and the moral (revealed in impulses to good or bad deeds)—as microcosmic images of the three realms which in the Macrocosm, the great Universe, lie one above the other. The Astral world is reflected in the world of thought; the Devachanic world is reflected in the aesthetic sphere of pleasure and displeasure; and the Higher Devachanic world is reflected as morality.

 Thoughts: Shadow-images of Beings of the Astral Plane (Waking) Sympathy and Antipathy: Shadow-images of Beings of Lower Devachan (Dreaming) Moral Impulses: Shadow-images of Beings of Higher Devachan (Sleeping) 

If we connect this with what was said previously concerning the two poles of the soul-life, we shall take the pole of intellect to be that which dominates the waking life, the life in which man is mentally awake. During the day he is awake in respect of his intellect; during sleep he is awake in respect of his will. It is because at night he is asleep in respect of intellect that he is unaware of what he is happening with his will. The truth is that what we call moral principles, moral impulses, are working indirectly into the will. And in point of fact man needs the life of sleep in order that the moral impulses he takes into himself through the life of thought can become active and effective. In his ordinary life today man is capable of accomplishing what is right only on the plane of intellect; he is less able to accomplish anything on the moral plane for there he is dependent upon help coming from the Macrocosm.

What is already within us can bring about the further development of intellectuality, but the Gods must come to our aid if we are to acquire greater moral strength. We go to sleep in order that we may plunge into the Divine Will where the intellect does not intervene and where Divine Forces transform into the power of will the moral principles we accept, where they instill into our will that which we could otherwise receive only into our thoughts.

Between these two poles, that of the will which wakes by night and of the intellect which is awake by day, lies the sphere of aesthetic appreciation which is continuously present in man. During the day man is not fully awake—at least only the most prosaic, pedantic individuals are always fully awake in waking life. We must always be able to dream a little even by day when we are awake; we must be able to give ourselves up to the enjoyment of art, of poetry, or of some other activity that is not concerned wholly with crass reality. Those who can give themselves up in this way form a connection with something that can enliven and invigorate the whole of existence. To give oneself up to such imaginings is like a dream making its way into waking life. Into the life of sleep you know well that dreams enter; these dreams in the usual sense, dreams which permeate sleep-consciousness. Human beings need also to dream by day if they do not wish to lead an arid, empty, unhealthy waking life. Dreaming takes place during sleep at night in any case and no proof of this is required. Midway between the two poles of night dreaming and day dreaming is the condition that can come to expression in fantasy.

So here again there is a threefold life of soul. The intellectual element in which we are really awake brings us shadow-images of the Astral Plane when by day we give ourselves up to a thought—wherein the most fruitful ideas for daily life and great inventions originate. Then during sleep, when we dream, these dreams play into our life of sleep and shadow-images from Lower Devachan are reflected into us. And when we work actively during sleep, impressing morality into our will—we cannot be aware of this actual process but certainly we can of its effects—when we are able to imbue our life of thoughts during the night with the influence of Divine Spiritual Powers, then the impulses we receive are reflections from Higher Devachan, the Higher Heavenly World. These reflections are the moral impulses and feelings which are active within us and lead to the recognition that human life is vindicated only when we place our thoughts at the service of the good and the beautiful, when we allow the very heart's blood of Divine Spiritual life to stream through our intellectual activities, permeating them with moral impulses.

The life of the human soul as presented here, first from external, exoteric observation and then from observation of a more mystical character is revealed by deeper (occult) investigation. The processes that have been described in their more external aspect can also be perceived in man through clairvoyance. When a man stands in front of us today in his waking state and we observe him with the eye of clairvoyance, certain rays of light are seen streaming continually from the heart towards the head. Within the head these rays play around the organ known in anatomy as the pineal gland. These streamings arise because human blood, which is a physical substance, is perpetually resolving itself into etheric substance. In the region of the heart there is a continual transformation of the blood into this delicate etheric substance which streams upwards towards the head and glimmers around the pineal gland. This process—the etherisation of the blood—can be perceived in the human being all the time during his waking life.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

The occult observer is able to see a continual streaming from outside into the brain, and also in the reverse direction, from the brain to the heart. Now these streams, which in sleeping man come from outside, from cosmic space, from the Macrocosm, and flow into the inner constitution of the physical body and etheric bodies lying in the bed, reveal something remarkable when they are investigated. These rays vary greatly in different individuals. Sleeping human beings differ very drastically from one another, and if those who are a little vain only knew how badly they betray themselves to occult observation when they go to sleep during public gatherings, they would try their level best not to let this happen!

Moral qualities are revealed distinctly in the particular colouring of the streams which flow into human beings during sleep; in an individual of lower moral principles, the streams are quite different from what is observable in an individual of noble principles. Endeavours to dissemble are useless. In the face of the higher Cosmic Powers, no dissembling is possible. In the case of a man who has only a slight inclination towards moral principles the rays streaming into him are a brownish red in colour—various shades tending toward brownish red. In a man of high moral ideals the rays are lilac-violet in colour. At the moment of waking or of going off to sleep a kind of struggle takes place in the region of the pineal gland between what streams down from above and what streams upward from below. When a man is awake the intellectual element streams upwards from below in the form of currents of light, and what is of moral-aesthetic nature streams downwards from above. At the moment of waking or of going off to sleep, these two currents meet, and in the man of low morality a violent struggle between the two streams takes place in the region of the pineal gland. In the man of high morality there is around the pineal gland as it were a little sea of light. Moral nobility is revealed when a calm glow surrounds the pineal gland at these moments. In this way a man's moral disposition is reflected in him, and this calm glow of light often extends as far as the heart. Two streams can therefore be perceived in man—the one Macrocosmic, the other, Microcosmic.

To estimate the significance of how these two streams meet in man is possible only by considering on the one hand what was said previously in a more external way about the life of the soul and how this life reveals the threefold polarity of the intellectual, the aesthetic and the moral elements that stream downwards from above, from the brain toward the heart; and if, on the other hand, we grasp the significance of what was said about turning our attention to the corresponding phenomenon in the Macrocosm. This corresponding phenomenon can be described today as the result of the most scrupulously careful occult investigation of recent years, undertaken by individuals among genuine Rosicrucians. These investigations have shown that something similar to what has been described in connection with the Microcosm also takes place in the Macrocosm. You will understand this more fully as time goes on.

Just as in the region of the human heart the blood is continually being transformed into etheric substance, a similar process takes place in the Macrocosm. We understand this when we turn our minds to the Mystery of Golgotha—to the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of Jesus Christ.

This blood must not be regarded simply as chemical substance, but by reason of all that has been said concerning the nature of Jesus of Nazareth it must be recognised as something altogether unique. When it flowed from His wounds, a substance was imparted to our Earth, which in uniting with it, constituted an Event of the greatest possible significance for all future ages of the Earth's evolution—and it could take place only once. What came of this blood in the ages that followed? Nothing different from what otherwise takes place in the heart of man. In the course of Earth evolution this blood passes through a process of “etherisation.” And just as our human blood streams upwards from the heart as ether, so since the Mystery of Golgotha the etherised blood of Christ Jesus has been present in the ether of the earth. The etheric body of the Earth is permeated by the blood—now transformed—which flowed on Golgotha. This is supremely important. If what has thus come to pass through Christ Jesus had not taken place, man's condition on the Earth could only have been as previously described. But since the Mystery of Golgotha it has always been possible for the etheric blood of Christ to flow together with the streamings from below upward, from heart to head.

Because the etherised blood of Jesus of Nazareth is present in the etheric body of the Earth, it accompanies the etherised human blood streaming upwards from the heart to the brain, so that not only those streams of which I spoke earlier meet in man, but the human blood-stream unites with the blood-stream of Christ Jesus. A union of these two streams can, however, come about only if a person is able to unfold true understanding of what is contained in the Christ Impulse. Otherwise there can be no union; the two streams then mutually repel each other, thrust each other away. In every epoch of Earth evolution understanding must be acquired in the form suitable for that epoch. At the time when Christ Jesus lived on Earth, preceding events were rightly understood by those who came to His forerunner, John, and were baptised by him according to the rite described in the Gospels. They received baptism in order that their sin, that is to say, the karma of their previous lives—karma which had come to an end—might be changed; and in order that they might realise that the most powerful Impulse in Earth evolution was about to descend into a physical body. But the evolution of humanity progresses and in our present age what matters is that people should recognise the need for the knowledge contained in Spiritual Science and be able so to fire the streams flowing from heart to brain that this knowledge can be understood.

If this comes to pass, individuals will be able to receive and comprehend the event that has its beginning in the Twentieth Century: this event is the appearance of the Christ as an Etheric Being in contradistinction to the Physical Christ of Palestine. For we have now reached the point of time when the Etheric Christ enters into the life of the Earth and will become visible—at first to a small number of individuals through a form of natural clairvoyance. Then in the course of the next three thousand years, He will become visible to greater and greater numbers of people. This will inevitably come to pass in the natural course of development. That it will come to pass is as true as were the achievements of electricity in the nineteenth century. A number of individuals will see the Etheric Christ and will themselves experience the event that took place at Damascus. But this will depend upon such men learning to be alert to the moment when Christ draws near to them. In only a few decades from now it will happen, particularly to those who are young—already preparation is being made for this—that some individual here or there has certain experiences. If he has sharpened his vision through having assimilated Anthroposophy, he may become aware that suddenly someone has come near to help him, to make him alert to this or that. The truth is that Christ has come to him, although he believes that what he saw is a physical man. He will come to realise that what he saw was a super-sensible being, because it immediately vanishes. Many a human being will have this experience when sitting silent in his room, heavy-hearted and oppressed, not knowing which way to turn. The door will open, and the etheric Christ will appear and speak words of consolation to him. The Christ will become a living Comforter to men. However strange it may as yet seem, it is true nevertheless that many a time when people—even in considerable numbers—are sitting together, not knowing what to do, and waiting, they will see the Etheric Christ. He will Himself be there, will confer with them, will make His voice heard in such gatherings. These times are approaching, and the positive, constructive element now described will take real effect in the evolution of mankind.

No word shall be said here against the great advances made by culture in our day; these achievements are essential for the welfare and the freedom of men. But whatever can be gained in the way of outer progress in mastering the forces of nature, is something small and insignificant compared with the blessing bestowed upon the individual who experiences the awakening soul through Christ, the Christ who will now be operative in human culture and its concerns. Men will thereby acquire forces that make for unification. In very truth Christ brings constructive forces into human culture and civilisation.

If we look into early post-Atlantean times, we would find that men built their dwelling places by methods very different from those used in modern life. In those days they made use of all kinds of growing things. Even when building palaces they summoned nature to their aid by utilizing plants interlaced with branches of trees and so on, whereas today men must build with broken fragments. All the culture of the external world is contrived with the aid of products of fragmentation. And in the course of the coming years you will realise even more clearly how much in our civilised life is the outcome of destruction.

Light itself is being destroyed in this post-Atlantean age of the Earth's existence, which until the time of Atlantis was a progressive process. Since then it has been a process of decay.* What is light? Light decays and the decaying light is electricity. What we know as electricity is light that is being destroyed in matter. And the chemical force that undergoes a transformation in the process of Earth evolution is magnetism. Yet a third force will become active and if electricity seems to work wonders today, this third force will affect civilisation in a still more miraculous way. The more of this force we employ, the faster the earth will tend to become a corpse and its spiritual part prepare for the Jupiter embodiment. Forces have to be applied for the purpose of destruction, in order that man may become free of the Earth and that the Earth's body may fall away. As long as the earth was involved in progressive evolution, no such destruction took place, for the great achievements of electricity can only serve a decaying Earth. Strange as this sounds, it must gradually become known. By understanding the process of evolution we shall learn to assess our culture at its true value. We shall also learn that it is necessary for the Earth to be destroyed, for otherwise the spiritual could not become free. We shall also learn to value what is positive, namely the penetration of spiritual forces into our existence on Earth.

* See also the section at the end of the text, containing answers given by Dr. Steiner to questions.

Thus we realise what a tremendous advance was signified by the fact that Christ lived for three years on the Earth in a human body specially prepared in order that He might be visible to physical eyes. Through what came to pass during those three years men have been made ready to behold the Christ who will move among them in an etheric body, who will participate in earthly life as truly and effectively as did the Physical Christ in Palestine. If men observe such happenings with undimmed senses they will know that there is an etheric body that will move about in the physical world, but is the only etheric body able to work in the physical world as a human physical body works. It will differ from a physical body in this respect only, that it can be in two, three, nay even in a hundred, a thousand places at the same time. This is possible only for an etheric, not for a physical form. What will be accomplished in humanity through this further advance is that the two poles of which I have spoken, the intellectual and the moral, will more and more become one; they will merge into unity. This will come about because in the course of the next millennia men will become aware of the presence of the Etheric Christ in the world; more and more they will be influenced in waking life too by the direct working of the Good from the spiritual world. Whereas at the present time, the will is asleep by day, and man is only able to influence it indirectly through thought, in the course of the next millennia, through the power which from our time onwards is working in us under the aegis of Christ, it will come about that the deeds of men in waking consciousness too can be directly productive of Good.

The dream of Socrates, that virtue can be taught, will come true; more and more it will be possible on Earth not only for the intellect to be stimulated and energized by this teaching but for moral impulses to be spread abroad. Schopenhauer said, “To preach morality is easy; to establish it is very difficult.” Why is this? Because no morality has yet been spread by preaching. It is quite possible to recognise moral principles and yet not abide by them. For most people the Pauline saying holds good, that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. This will change, because the moral fire streaming from the figure of Christ will intensify recognition of the need for moral impulses. Man will transform the earth by feeling with ever-increasing strength that morality is an essential part of it. In the future, to be immoral will be possible only for individuals who are goaded in this direction, who are possessed by evil demons, by Ahrimanic, Asuric Powers and more-over aspire to be so.

In time to come there will be on Earth a sufficient number of individuals who teach morality and at the same time sustain its principles; but there will also be those who by their own free decision surrender themselves to the evil Powers and thus enable an excess of evil to be pitted against a good humanity. Nobody will be forced to do this; it will lie in the free will of each individual.

Then will come the epoch when the Earth passes into conditions of which, as in so much else, Oriental Occultism and Mysticism alone give some idea. The moral atmosphere will by then have gathered strength. For many thousands of years Oriental Mysticism has spoken of this epoch, and since the coming of Gautama Buddha it has spoken with special emphasis about that future condition when the earth will be bathed in a “moral-ether-atmosphere.” Ever since the time of the ancient Rishis it was the great hope of Oriental Mysticism that this moral impulse would come to the Earth from Vishva-Karman or, as Zarathustra proclaimed, from Ahura Mazdao. Thus Oriental Mysticism foresaw that this moral impulse, this moral atmosphere, would come to the Earth from the Being we call the Christ. And it was upon Him, upon Christ, that the hopes of Oriental Mysticism were set.

Oriental Mysticism was able to picture the consequences of that event but not the actual form it would take. The mind could picture that within a period of 5,000 years after the great Buddha achieved Enlightenment, pure Akashic forms, bathed in fire, lit by the sun, would appear in the wake of One beyond the ken of Oriental Mysticism. A wonderful picture in very truth: that something would happen to make it possible for the Sons of Fire and of Light to move about the Earth, not in physically embodiment but as pure Akashic forms within the Earth's moral atmosphere. But then, so it was said, in 5,000 years after Gautama Buddha's Enlightenment, the Teacher will also be there to make known to men what the nature of these wonderful forms of pure Fire and Light are. This teacher—the Maitreya Buddha—will appear 3,000 years after our present era and will speak of the Christ Impulse.

Thus Oriental Mysticism unites with the Christian knowledge of the West to form a wonderfully beautiful unity. It is also disclosed that he who will appear three thousand years after our era as the Maitreya Buddha will have incarnated again and again on the Earth as a Bodhisattva, as the successor of Gautama Buddha. One of his incarnations was that of Jeshu ben Pandira, who lived a hundred years before the Christian era. The being who incarnated in Jeshu ben Pandira is he who will one day become the Maitreya Buddha, and who from century to century returns ever and again in a body of flesh, not yet as Buddha, but as Bodhisattva. Even now there proceeds from him who later on will be the Maitreya Buddha, the most significant teachings concerning the Christ Being and the Sons of Fire—the Agnishvattas—of Indian Mysticism.

The indications by which the Being who is to become the Maitreya Buddha can be recognised are common to all genuine Eastern mysticism and to Christian gnosis. The Maitreya Buddha who, in contrast to the Sons of Fire, will appear in a physical body as Bodhisattva, can be recognised by the fact that in the first instance his early development gives no intimation of the nature of the individuality within him. Only those possessed of understanding will recognise the presence of a Bodhisattva in such a human being between the ages of thirty and thirty-three, and not before. Something akin to a change of personality then takes place. The Maitreya Buddha will reveal his identity to humanity in the thirty-third year of his life. As Christ Jesus began His mission in His thirtieth year, so do the Bodhisattvas, who will continue to proclaim the Christ Impulse, reveal themselves—in the thirty-third year of their lives. And the Maitreya Buddha himself, as transformed Bodhisattva, speaking in powerful words of which no adequate idea can be given at the present time, will proclaim the great secrets of existence. He will speak in a language that has first to be created, for no human being to-day could formulate words such as those in which the Maitreya Buddha will address humanity. The reason why men cannot be addressed in this way at the present time is that the physical instrument for this form of speech does not yet exist. The teachings of the Enlightened One will not stream into men as teachings only, but will pour moral impulses into their souls. Words such as will then be spoken cannot yet be uttered by a physical larynx; in our time they can be present only in the spiritual worlds.

Anthroposophy is the preparation for everything that the future holds in store. Those who take the process of man's evolution seriously resolve not to allow the soul's development to come to a standstill but to ensure that this development will eventually enable the spiritual part of the Earth to become free, leaving the grosser part to fall away like a corpse—for men could frustrate the whole process. Those who desire evolution to succeed must acquire understanding of the life of the spirit through what we to-day call Anthroposophy. The cultivation of Anthroposophy thus becomes a duty; knowledge becomes something that we actually feel, something towards which we have responsibility. When we are inwardly aware of this responsibility and have this resolve, when the mysteries of the world arouse in us the wish to become Anthroposophists, then our feeling is true and right. But Anthroposophy must not be something that merely satisfies our curiosity; it must rather be something without which we cannot live. Only then are our feelings what they ought to be, only then do we live as building stones in that great work of construction which must be carried out in human souls and can embrace all mankind.

Anthroposophy is a revelation of world-happenings which will confront the men of the future, will confront our own souls whether still in the physical body or in the life between death and a new birth. The coming changes will affect us, no matter whether we are still living in the physical body or whether it has been laid aside. Understanding of these events must however be acquired during life in the physical body if they are to take effect after death. To those who acquire some understanding of the Christ while they are still living in the physical body, it will make no difference, when the moment comes for vision of the Christ, whether or not they have already passed through the gate of death. But if those who now reject any understanding of the Christ have already passed through the gate of death when this moment arrives, they must wait until their next incarnation, for such understanding cannot be acquired between death and rebirth. Once the foundation has been acquired, however, it endures, and then Christ becomes visible also during the period between death and the new birth.

And so Anthroposophy is not only something we learn for our physical life but is of essential value when we have laid aside the physical body at death.

This is what I wished to impart to you today as a help in answering many questions. Self-knowledge is difficult because man is such a complex being. The reason for this complexity is that he is connected with all the higher Worlds and Beings. We have within us shadow-images of the great Universe and all the members of our constitution—the physical, etheric, astral bodies and the ego—are worlds for Divine Beings. Our physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego form one world; the other is the higher World, the Heaven world. Divine-spiritual Worlds are the bodily members of the Beings of the higher spheres of cosmic existence.

Man is the complex being he is because he is a mirror-image of the spiritual world. Realisation of this should make him conscious of his intrinsic worth. But from the knowledge that although we are reflected images of the spiritual world we nevertheless fall far short of what we ought to be—from this knowledge we also acquire, as well as consciousness of our worth as human beings, the right attitude of modesty and humility towards the Macrocosm and its Gods.

Rudolf Steiner's Answers to Questions at the End of the Lecture

Translated by George Adams

Question: How are the words used by St. Paul, “to speak in tongues” (Cor. I: 12), to be understood?

Answer: In exceptional human beings it can happen that not only is the phenomenon of speaking present in the waking state, but that something otherwise present in sleep-consciousness only, flows into this speaking. This is the phenomenon to which St. Paul refers. Goethe refers to it in the same sense; he has written two very interesting treatises on the subject.

Question: How are Christ's words of consolation received and experienced?

Answer: Men will feel these words of consolation as though arising in their own hearts. The experience may also seem like physical hearing.

Question: What is the relation of chemical forces and substances to the spiritual world?

Answer: There are in the world a number of substances which can combine with or separate from each other. What we call chemical action is projected into the physical world from the world of Devachan—the realm of the Harmony of the Spheres. In the combination of two substances according to their atomic weights, we have a reflection of two tones of the Harmony of the Spheres. The chemical affinity between two substances in the physical world is like a reflection from the realm of the Harmony of the Spheres. The numerical ratios in chemistry are an expression of the numerical ratios of the Harmony of the Spheres, which has become dumb and silent owing to the densification of matter. If one were able to etherealise material substance and to perceive the atomic numbers the inner formative principle thereof, he would be hearing the Harmony of the Spheres.

We have the physical world, the astral world, the Lower Devachan and the Higher Devachan. If the body is thrust down lower even than the physical world, it comes into the sub-physical world, the lower astral world, the lower or evil Lower Devachan, and the lower or evil Higher Devachan. The evil astral world is the province of Lucifer, the evil Lower Devachan the province of Ahriman, and the evil Higher Devachan the province of the Asuras. When chemical action is driven down beneath the physical plane—into the evil Devachanic world—magnetism arises. When light is thrust down into the sub-material—that is to say, a stage deeper than the material world—electricity arises. If what lives in the Harmony of the Spheres is thrust down farther still, into the province of the Asuras, an even more terrible force—which it will not be possible to keep hidden very much longer—is generated. It can only be hoped that when this force comes to be known—a force we must conceive as being far, far stronger than the most violent electrical discharge—it can only be hoped that before some discoverer gives this force into the hands of humankind, men will no longer have anything un-moral left in them.

Question: What is electricity?

Answer: Electricity is light in the sub-material state. Light is there compressed to the utmost degree. An inward quality too must be ascribed to light; light is itself at every point in space. Warmth will expand in the three dimensions of space. In light there is a fourth; it is of fourfold extension—it has the quality of inwardness as a fourth dimension.

Question: What happens to the Earth's corpse?

Answer: As the residue of the Moon-evolution we have our present moon which circles around the Earth. Similarly there will be a residue of the Earth which will circle around Jupiter. Then these residues will gradually dissolve into the universal ether. On Venus there will no longer be any residue. Venus will manifest, to begin with, as pure Warmth, then it will become Light and then pass over into the spiritual world. The residue left behind by the Earth will be like a corpse. This is a path along which man must not accompany the Earth, for he would thereby be exposed to dreadful torments. But there are Beings who accompany this corpse, since they themselves will by that means develop to a higher stage.

Reflected as sub-physical world:

Astral World—the province of Lucifer
Lower Devachan—the province of Ahriman
Higher Devachan—the province of the Asuras

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

When one gives a lecture on a Christian theme at a public gathering, it is not possible to speak about the worldwide theosophical movement in the intimate way which is possible in the present case, in a smaller, closed group. The lecture will give an outline of the three ways of initiation.

Many of you will no doubt have been involved with theosophy in all kinds of different ways and also know different views presented within the world-wide theosophical movement. Reading, lectures, and your own reflections will have made some of you interested in finding out more about things that go beyond the sphere of the senses, things eternal, beyond time and mortality.

The science of the spirit has made it its special mission to give instruction on the deeper nature of man and his relationship to the world as a whole, also to try and discover what is the eternal, lasting principle in man, what are the causes of illness, of bad and evil things in the world and in individual human beings, what are the ultimate goals and purposes of the world and of man, and, finally, how the world has come into existence.

Today, however, our theme will mainly be the ways in which insight may be gained into those higher problems.

Human morality is the greatest goal man can set for himself. General brotherhood among people has been the ideal of all great, noble people through the ages. The theosophical association wants this, too. It definitely does not aim to create a sect based on Buddhist views, nor does it seek to abolish or replace Christianity. It also does not want to present anything unscientific. Apart from this it is also important to distinguish between the doctrine of theosophy, its view of the world, and its aims, which are to achieve the general brotherhood of man.

Both are important, the theory and the practice of theosophy. The teaching should serve to make us aware of the higher and highest principles. For we are doing some work on our souls when we follow such theoretical thinking. We prepare it, as it were, for the practice of human love and brotherhood. The theoretical aims are to reach a point where we understand the essential nature of human beings, so that we meet one another with real understanding, judging and treating one another accordingly. Different opinions, occupations, environments and so on drive people apart in life. Deeper insight and knowledge should be the means of creating peace and love among people in spite of many different opinions. That is the theosophical view of the world. It has originally come from individuals who have made efforts to deepen and develop their dormant inner faculties so that they might gain greater insight into the world than is possible by means of our ordinary senses or ordinary human understanding. Such people are called initiates. Different degrees of initiation are known. The great founders of religions were great initiates, among them Hermes, teacher of the priests in ancient Egypt, Zarathustra, Moses, Plato, Jesus Christ. All of them had more highly developed souls. They were able to see into the world of the spirit which is around us in a similar way to the physical world.

For as long as someone does not seek himself to take the path of initiation, there is only one way to look into those worlds of spirit, and that is by using the rational human mind. The world grows clear and lucid if penetrated by the rational mind.

The view of the world gained in the science of the spirit makes insight into the world clearer and deeper than other philosophies do. The rational mind is the judge, accepting or rejecting such teachings about humanity. Human beings have a real need for these, which is also why they are presented to them.

We will now take a closer look at how one may develop one's soul so that it will be able to perceive the sublime realm that lies beyond the senses. There is, of course, no compulsion or obligation about this. Not everyone needs to follow such a path. Those who are able will receive the necessary suggestions and be able to take the right steps in accord with them.

Methods of acquiring such higher faculties have existed at all times. But until a few decades ago they were only known to a few chosen occult teachers and occult pupils. Someone who is called may also find the right path of development for himself. All it needs is serious resolve and one's own free will.

This lecture shall therefore also have no bias towards propaganda nor seek to push people towards such a path. All that will be done is to show the ways that might be followed. Initiation is the goal of such a path of development, that is, gaining the faculties needed for insight into higher worlds.

Unfortunately it is still widely, and wrongly, believed that theosophy is something that comes from the East, really from India, and a kind of neo-Buddhism that is to be pushed on to us Westerners as a new religion. To say this is to do a great injustice to theosophy, for it has existed in Europe from the beginning, and had grown deep roots in many places, especially in recent centuries. It has to be admitted, however, that it was always met with greater understanding in the East. East and West also have quite different ways of initiation, which is in accord with the more deep down nature of individual nations. For us, the European way is of course more important, and it is more appropriate for us to follow this. All these ways lead to one and the same goal, however, for the truth is the same both here and there, today and yesterday and in all eternity.

To begin with, a brief description will be given of the three most important forms of initiation—first the Indian yoga initiation, secondly the Christian and gnostic way, which people would also do well to follow today, and thirdly the Rosicrucian way. This is the most suitable for people today who cannot find what they seek in mere faith and need to enter into the achievements of civilization and technology. Deep down this is also a Christian way, as is evident, apart from anything else, in the fact that someone who has developed by taking the Rosicrucian way learns to understand the wisdom taught in Christianity in the best and deepest way.

Firstly, the Eastern yoga way. The human soul is able to develop to the point where it becomes like an eye that has direct vision of the spirit, of the eternal which is beyond time. The way taken by people of the East for this development differs from the way of the European because their natural disposition and organization are different. A Hindu differs from a European not only in external appearance, for his brain and soul are also built differently. It is evident, therefore, that if they are truly to reach the goal, Hindus must take a different way from that of Europeans. It actually goes so far that a European may possibly ruin himself both morally and physically by taking the Eastern path of development. The isolation and withdrawal of the soul required for the yoga way is practically impossible in our European civilization. One would have to step completely aside from ordinary life here, and indeed from our whole civilization, devoting oneself entirely to one's personal inner development.

Someone who follows this route needs a spiritual guide or guru who pilots him safely through all the chaos. Without such a guru it is impossible to follow this way. It also needs a complete transformation of human nature, a transformation laid down for one by the guru. Such a guru altogether has unlimited power over his pupil. It then is no longer of no concern what the individual does in his life in other respects. It is no longer enough to be a decent, good person of the ordinary kind, simply the kind of person society tends to consider an example.

It has to be possible to keep soul and body quite distinct and separate, they must no longer interpenetrate the way they did before. Passions and animal instincts should no longer have a place in the human soul, for the soul is inhibited and prevented by them from penetrating the mists of the physical world and looking into the higher world of the spirit. However, when soul and body are cleanly separated, the latter may well bring its passions and drives into play at the same time as the soul is in that higher life. It is therefore possible for the soul to develop to a higher level and gain vision in the spirit, whilst the body falls subject to all kinds of bad qualities and perhaps becomes corrupted because its passions and drives are no longer guided towards better things by the soul's insight, which had been possible when soul and body were still interpenetrating. This shows the tremendous importance of proper guidance on this difficult path. One must in that case strictly obey the guru, even if it goes against the grain. The guru is permitted to involve himself in the pupil's most intimate affairs of the heart and give him rules on how to conduct his life. Certain relationships may be forbidden as being an impediment to the development that is in progress. Preconditions for this way of development are firstly the ability to prevent the lower drives to good effect, then regular practice of certain ways of doing things, firmly establishing particular qualities and developing additional faculties that still lie dormant or do not yet exist.

Such preparations for development are: firstly to get out of the habit of letting one's thoughts dart about. This would seem to be an easy condition, but it is in fact difficult. We are driven and put under pressure by external impressions. For at least five minutes a day the individual should have complete control of the way his thoughts run. One exercise one might try, for instance, is to concentrate the mind on a single idea. Nothing else should be linked with this idea, however many things want to come in of their own accord, only the thoughts I myself connect with it, freely deciding to do so. Such exercises should be done with a variety of objects. After some time, the individuaPs thinking will be controlled and this is outwardly apparent in a more precise choice of words, among other things.

Secondly, taking initiative in one's actions. Some people are quite incapable of this, for they may have been forced into an occupation from early on, and this occupies most of their active life. Most of the things we do are dictated from outside. Someone seeking to gain initiation should therefore be deeply concerned to do something regularly, always at the same time of the day, something they have decided on themselves, even if it is something quite insignificant.

Thirdly, the pupil should overcome mood swings, being on top of the world one minute and down in the dumps the next. It means we should not give ourselves without will to pleasure and pain but keep our inner equilibrium even in the bitterest pain and greatest pleasures. This certainly will not make us insensitive and lacking in response; quite the contrary, our inner responses become all the more subtle and intensive.

Fourthly, a Persian legend about Christ Jesus should live in the pupil's heart. It is this. One day Jesus walked in the countryside with his disciples. A half decomposed dog lay by the wayside, a horrible sight. The disciples turned away, feeling shocked. Christ Jesus looked at the cadaver with loving eyes, however, commenting: ‘Look what beautiful teeth this dead animal has!’ The quintessence of this is to find hidden beauty even in ugly things, and altogether always look for the positive aspect, for something to which one can say yes. The life of even the worst of evildoers has moments of light and we can meet these with understanding.

Fifthly, we must seek to gain complete freedom from prejudice, The past should never determine the way we judge the present. We should not reject something new just because we have not come across it before. New insights should be taken in an unbiased way if one wants to be an initiate.

Sixth, developing harmony of soul. This will really arise from all the other things, as if of its own accord.

These qualities are absolutely essential preconditions for anyone who is to be initiated the yoga way.

The actual yoga way involves a number of stages that must be kept clearly distinct.

Firstly the yoga pupil must not kill, lie, steal, live to excess or be covetous. The more one ceases to live at the cost of others, the closer does one come to what is meant by the requirement that one should not steal. For this is not, of course, the stealing that is a punishable crime, but more subtle forms of it. As to the other requirements, each individual will immediately know what they involve.

Secondly it is highly desirable to acknowledge certain symbolic acts for one's own. One must have a feeling for it and come to understand that a rite is really just giving symbolic expression to something much more profound.

Thirdly the assumption of specific body positions, for the position into which one brings the body for the exercises to gain higher wisdom is far from immaterial. As far as possible it should be placed in the direction in which the spiritual streams move in the world.

Fourthly, pranayama, the regulation of one's breathing, is of great importance. It has to do with the requirement not to kill, for man's breath is capable of killing many things in the world around him. Yoga breathing aims gradually to free the breath from its deadly effect on other life forms. Above all, yoga pupils should no longer release so much deadly carbon dioxide. This is possible, for we know that individuals who have been deeply initiated can spend decades in caves where the air is stale and this does not ruin them physically.

The fifth stage relates to suppressing the evolution of certain sensual ideals. We must no longer let every sensual idea influence us but need to take individual ones and concentrate all our attention on them. The rest of our thoughts should also be made to progress in a specific, regulated way.

The sixth stage is that as he progresses the pupil must concentrate on, say, an impression of light, or, put in a better way, to concentrate on the image such an impression has left in the soul. This is an even higher stage. Even more valuable is meditation based on an idea that is no longer part of the world we perceive through the senses. It is essential for the human being to give himself to the contemplation of such ideas if he is to progress.

The seventh stage is very hard. It consists in the individual banishing every idea of any kind from his conscious mind whilst remaining wholly awake. He then comes closer to the state of intuitive conception. Now at last the soil is prepared and the contents of a world that has been unknown to us so far can come to us.

A guru is absolutely essential during the whole of this preparation for the yoga way. It is solely and exclusively due to him that these inner developments take the right course and benefit the pupil.

This has, of course, been only a rough and ready outline of the yoga way. It is certainly not a set of instructions for following it. Let me repeat: the guidance given by the guru from time to time is absolutely essential, and it is given from person to person.

The second way is the Christian gnostic one. The main difference here, compared to the one that went before, is that it is not necessary for every individual pupil to have his own guru. This is no longer required because of the existence of a great, sublime individual, Christ Jesus, who is there to be the pupil's goal and to point the way. The way that has to be followed is given in detail in holy writ, in the Bible, above all in the gospel of John. Deep down this does indeed give direct instructions for training as a mystic.

Along this way, the guide is there more to advise than to be an authoritative guru in the usual sense. The guidance concerning initiation is of the highest authority, that of Jesus Christ. John's gospel gives such guidance. It is not a book for study but a book for life in the true sense of the word. The first few sentences of the gospel have special mystic powers and are tremendously important for setting out on this path of initiation. A pupil of the Christian mysteries needs to take a meditative approach to those few sentences, for instance letting them and nothing else live in his soul at a particular time every morning. After some time the profound meaning of these sentences will be clear to him intuitively, and it is only then that the moment has come when one can begin further study of John's gospel so that it will truly bear fruit.

In the course of one's study, the images of the gospel will gradually slip quietly into our dreams, so that we have real inner experience of the events described. This inner experience then continues through all further stages of development which I am not going to describe in detail here and now.

When the pupil has progressed to the washing of the feet, a symbolic act in which one humbly confesses one's dependence and the fact that one has grown and developed on the basis of something lower, at a lower level than our own, certain symptoms will show themselves also externally—a strange feeling of water running by one's feet. The inner symptom relating to this is an imaginative vision of the washing of the feet. In Christian mystic development, the washing of the feet marks the first stage.

The second station is the scourging, which is also something one enters into in one's feelings. It means that in spite of the great and frequent pair and troubles we have to bear in life we will always stand up straight and not grow faint-hearted. Again we have both an outer and an inner symptoms—a strange physical stabbing sensation and the mental image of our own scourging.

Stage three is the crown of thorns. This means that though it is painful to have our most sacred feelings and convictions derided and have scorn poured on them, we must not lose our inner firmness, our equilibrium. Symptoms are headaches, and vision of one's own person wearing the crown of thorns.

Fourthly bearing the cross (crucifixion). Here the pupil is to gain living experience that the body is really an indifferent object compared to the soul and its importance. When we are truly aware of this we'll also be able to use the body merely as an instrument for higher things, and weUl truly control it. Symptoms are the Christ's stigmata appearing as reddened areas on hands and feet. This blood trial only occurs for brief moments during the meditation, however. Inner vision of being crucified oneself.

Fifth, the mystic death. Here the pupil has a strange experience. It is as if the whole world around him is covered by a veil, and he senses the essence that lies behind the veil. When he feels himself thus to be in utter darkness, the veil will suddenly tear and he looks through it into a new, wondrous world. He now learns to judge the depths of the human soul by a completely different standard. This mystic death is like a descent into hell.

The pupil is now someone who has been awakened and can progress to the sixth stage, the entombment. Here he feels the whole outer environment to be his body. His individual nature expands, encompassing the whole world. The body feels itself to be one with the earth, and individual consciousness expands to become earth consciousness.

The seventh stage cannot be described to any degree, for it is beyond all powers of imagination based on the senses. Individuals who have finally come free of this world by unceasing practice may just be able to grasp it in their thoughts. This stage involves entering into perfect divinity and glory, and we do not have the words to describe it.

This Christian way is difficult, for it demands great inner humility and giving up of self. Anyone who has gone through it, however, will have achieved man's goal and dignity. True Christianity will have come to life in him in a very real way.

The third way is the Rosicrucian one. It is really just a modification of the other two. It developed in the 14th century, when the adepts were able to foresee that civilization would become very different in the centuries ahead.

This is the most suitable way for modern people. It is also the most appropriate for Europeans. This does not mean to say that one of the other ways will not also lead to the goal. But the Rosicrucian system is compatible with our whole civilization and culture. It has not so far been laid down in books or manuscripts, but has been passed from generation to generation by oral tradition. A more detailed description is given in Lucifer-Gnosis under the title ‘How to gain knowledge of the higher worlds’.¹⁴⁶

This is a very different view of the role of a guru. He is no longer absolute authority for the pupil but more a friend and adviser. The only authority lies in the individual's own free decision.

Evolution is in seven stages: 1) study, 2) imagination, 3) insight into occult scripture, 4) making life rhythmic, 5) looking for relationships between macrocosm and microcosm, 6) contemplation, 7) experiencing godliness.

Study is thus required as a first step, though this is not the scholarly type of study but working with thoughts relating to the world and to human life, the origin of the heavenly bodies, and so on, and other ways of training one's thinking. Thinking is able to give us new living experiences—I am referring to logical thinking with a definite goal. It provides secure guidance througJi all worlds, for thinking has to be equally consistent in all of them.

Secondly we have to gain the faculty of imagination. This is a matter of relating to the world around us not only in theory and in our thoughts but in moral terms. We must learn to discover the aspect of every thing that gives its moral background. To develop this kind of imagination we may, for instance, put the image of a plant clearly before our mind's eye. Or we may have a small seed grain before us and develop images of how it gradually sprouts, producing a stem and finally a complete plant with its fruit. After some practice one can really see how a plant emerges and grows from such a seed. This does, however, call for considerable occult powers. With lesser means it is possible to perceive the astral body of the plant as a small flame emerging from the seed.

Thirdly to learn occult script. This means to learn signs that have to do with the cosmic process.

Step 4 is to make life rhythmical. Our breathing needs to be regulated, changing the relative proportions of exhaled carbon dioxide and inhaled oxygen in a specific way. It is altogether most necessary to bring rhythm into life in our restless age. All processes follow one another in a great rhythm, and as far as possible this should also be made part of one's life. Thus we should arrange to have a meditation process at a given hour, or to review our past life at the same time every night. This releases great powers in the soul.

Step 5 is to look for correspondences between microcosm and macrocosm. Goethe put this most beautifully in the following verse:

Were not the eye like to the sun,
The sun it never could behold;
Were not in us the god's own power,
How could we take delight in things divine?¹⁴⁷

Entering intensely into our organs teaches us about the parts of the macrocosm that relate to them. Thus study of the eye teaches us about light, exploration of the lung about the composition of the air, and so on. Using a similar way we should finally also gain self knowledge.

Entering into the small world within us we thus gradually also have the great world revealed to us. Such comparative studies will ultimately lead to the state of godliness, the result of all the work that has gone before and above all of the deep, calm contemplation that is the sixth stage.

With all this, the individual must be imbued with specific good qualities, these being self confidence, self control and being present in mind and spirit.

The pupil has to work unceasingly on this inner development. For although the divine principle is indeed latent in us, it does not reveal itself without work and the right kind of development. To follow this way one does not have to leave one's human and social environment to devote oneself to personal development in solitude. Nor does it ask that we despise matter, merely that we grow beyond it, overcoming it to reach something higher.

Our guiding principle should be that self knowledge is world knowledge.

The three ways I have described take the individual to being a pupil at a higher level. It is only from this that a true initiate can then give us the key to the secret of the world, so that we may gain insight into the deeper connections in the life of the world and in human life. That highest level then means one is able to receive intuitions from higher worlds. It is a state of lucidity in spirit and of divine light.

• 146. Steiner R. Geisteswissenschaft und soziale Frage. Lucifer-Gnosis—Grundlegende AufsStze zur Anthroposophie und Berichte (GA 34) . Originally in Luzifer-Gnosis Nos. 13–28, Berlin, 1904–1905.
• 147. Goethe, Zahme Xenien III.

When we carefully study the mental life of the present day we find a deep cleft in many minds. Men now receive, even in earliest youth, not one view of the world only but two: the one from their religious instruction and the other from Natural Science. The result of this is, that from the very outset doubts arise as to the correctness of the religious traditions.

It might be thought that Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy desires to bring in a new religion in addition to those already existing; but that is not the case. Anthroposophy is not a new religion, it is not a new sect.

In these lectures it will be our task, with the aid of Spiritual Science, to show the significance of this religious document, St. John's Gospel, and in so doing we shall be able to point out the relation of Spiritual Science to religious records in general. Spiritual Science enables us to understand the various religions in the world. One who is acquainted with Anthroposophical Spiritual Science takes Christianity as it is, as a fact of the very greatest significance to the whole spiritual life of humanity. It has been made impossible for the mental and spiritual life of the present day to understand the depths of Christianity. This understanding can only be gained through Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. If we make use of what it provides we can penetrate deeply into the wisdom contained in the religious records.

We might compare Spiritual Science with philology. We can also study the Christian documents with the aid of philology; but Spiritual Science leads us into the spirit of these documents. The best expounder of Euclid's Geometry is one who knows Geometry, not one who only knows the Greek language.

Spiritual Science is not to be a new religion for the men of modern times; it is to be the means by which the true contents of Christianity may be brought home to them. Christianity is the zenith and meeting point of all religions. All other religions do but point to Christianity, which is the religion for all the future and will not be followed by any other. The fountain of Truth which springs up in it is abundant and never-ending; it is so plenteous that as the evolution of humanity progresses it will reveal every new aspects of its being. Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science is to present Christianity to man from a new and different side.

Now, the various religious records may be considered from four different points of view:

1. The point of view of the Simple Believer, who holds fast to the words that are giving him. Many people, however, cannot reconcile the standpoint with their modern thought and they then pass on to:

2. The point of view of the Critic, the Doubter, the one who denies. This is the point of view of the “clever, enlightened men”, who have “risen above” religious truths. But many of them search further and discover that a very great deal is nevertheless contained in these religious documents they wrestle through to:

3. The point of view of the Symbolists. These interpret the religious records in their own way and find in them much or little according to their knowledge or acuteness. In Germany many former Freethinkers have come to this point of view. Finally, it is possible through Spiritual Science to arrive at:

4. The point of view where one learns to take the religious documents literally once more. We find many remarkable examples of this in the study St. John's Gospel.

St. John's Gospel takes quite a special place among the four Gospels. The Gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke give us an historical picture of Jesus, but St. John's Gospel is regarded as a kind of apotheosis, a wonderful poem. There are many contradictions when we compare it with the statements made in the other Gospels, but these contradictions are so apparent that it cannot be supposed that the old defenders of St. John's Gospel did not perceive them also.

At the present time St. John's Gospel is considered to be the least worthy of credence. The reason for this attitude lies in the materialistic frame of mind of the men of our time. In the course of the 19th century humanity became materialistic in feeling, and consequently also in thought; for as a man feels, so does the judge. Materialism is not confined to the view of the world contained in the books of Büchner, Moleschott, and Vogt: even those who explain the religious documents from a certain spiritual standpoint do this in a fully materialistic way. As example of this I might quote the dispute between Karl Vogt and Professor Wagner of Munich. This dispute was fought out at the time in the “Augsburger Zeitung” and ended completely in favor of Karl Vogt. Wagner stood up for the existence of the soul; he did this, however, in an absolutely materialistic way. And as the theologians have materialistic feelings, the three synoptic Gospels please them better, because they more easily admit of a materialistic explanation. It is repugnant to materialistic thinking to accept a Being who towers above all men; it is much more acceptable to them to see in Jesus a noble human being only, “the humble man of Nazareth.” According to St. John's Gospel is quite inadmissible to see in Jesus only that which also lives in any other man. The Christ-soul in the Jesus-body is something quite different. St. John's Gospel represents Christ to us not only as a very great man, but as a Being who embraces the whole earth.

If we translate St. John's Gospel according to the spirit and not only according to the words, the first 14 verses run approximately as follows:—

1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God

2. The same was in the very beginning with God

3. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

4. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men.

5. And the Light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.

6. There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

7. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that through him all men might believe.

8. He was not that Light, that came to bear witness of the Light.

9. For the true Light, which enlighteneth all men, was to come into the world.

10. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, but the world did not recognize Him.

11. It came into the several human beings, even into the ego-men; but the individual human beings, the ego-men, did not receive Him.

12. But those that did receive Him, to them gave He power to manifest that they were Sons of God.

13. Those who trusted in His Name were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

14. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we have heard His teaching, the teaching of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of devotion and truth. (in St. John's Gospel truth—aletheia—is Spirit Self, devotion—charis—is Life Spirit, and wisdom—sophia—is Spirit Man.)

Even the very first words are taken in an abstract sense by the modern man. The “Very Beginning” is thought of as an abstract beginning; but to grasp the true significance of this word we must recall what was taught on this point in the Christian Secret School of Dionysius the Areopagite.

Mineral, plant, animal, and man make up the series of being in evolution which require the physical body. Above them are beings who do not need the physical body, namely, the Angels, Archangels, Very Beginnings, the Powers, Virtues, Dominions, the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim, and Beings were still higher.

Thus the Very Beginnings are real Beings. They are those who, at the beginning of the evolution of our world, were already at the stage humanity will only reach at the end of its evolution (in the Vulcan Period.) If in the light of this we study the first verse, “In the very beginning was the word,” we might represent the state of affairs pictorially by the following comparison. Before we utter a word, this word lives in us as thought. It lives within us. When the word is uttered the air around us is set in motion; vibrations are produced. If we imagine these vibrations condensed and hardened in some way, we should see the words fall to the ground as forms and figures; we should perceive the creative power of the word with our eyes. If the word is already creative now, it will be much more so in the future.

Man already possesses organs which will only attain their full significance in the future; he also possesses others which are already in decline. To the latter belong the organs of reproduction, to the former the heart and the larynx, for these are only at the beginning of their development. At the present time the heart is an involuntary muscle, although it has transverse fibers like all voluntary muscles. These transverse fibers are an indication that the heart is in the process of transition from an involuntary to a voluntary organ. The larynx is destined to be the human organ of reproduction in a distant future, strange as this may sound at present. Just as man, by means of speech, can already transpose his thoughts into vibrations of the air, he will in the future be able to create his own image by means of the word.

The Very Beginnings already possessed this creative power at the outset of the evolution of our world and can therefore be rightly looked upon as divine Beings. At the beginning of the evolution of the Earth a divine Word was uttered, and this has become mineral, plant, animal and man.

According to Spiritual Science man, as he stands before us, is divided—from one point of view—into seven parts, of which the physical body perceptible to our senses is only one part of the human being. Man possesses this physical body in common with the whole of the mineral kingdom surrounding us; the forces at work in our physical body are the same as those operating in the whole of so-called inanimate nature.

This physical body is, however, permeated by still higher forces, just as a sponge may be permeated by water. The difference between inanimate and animate bodies is that in inanimate bodies the materials of which they are constituted follow physical, chemical laws only; but in animate bodies the various materials are combined with one another in a very complicated manner, and only under the influence of the etheric body can they be held together in this form, which to-them is unnatural and is forced upon them. The physical materials have the constant tendency to group themselves according to their own nature; this signifies the destruction of the living body and the etheric body fights continually against this destruction.

When the etheric body withdraws from the physical body, the substances of the physical body group themselves in the manner natural to them, and the body becomes a corpse and falls to pieces. The etheric body, therefore, continually combats the destruction of the physical body.

Each organ of the physical body has behind it this etheric body. Man has an etheric heart, an etheric brain, etc., which holds together the corresponding physical organ. One is naturally tempted to picture the etheric body in a material way, somewhat like a thin cloud, but in reality the etheric body consists of a number of currents of force. The clairvoyant sees in the etheric body of man certain currents that are exceedingly important. Thus, for example, there is a stream which rises from the left foot to the forehead (see diagram), to a point which lies between the eyes, about half an inch down within the brain; it then returns to the other foot; from there it passes to the hand on the opposite side; from thence through the heart into the other hand, and from there back to its starting-point. In this way it forms a pentagram of currents of force.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

This current is not the only one in the etheric body, there are very many of them. It is to this stream of force that man specially owes his upright position. We do not find this current in animals, they are bound to the earth by their front limbs. In respect of the form and size of the human etheric body we may say that in its upper part it is an exact image of the physical body. The lower parts are different; here they do not coincide with the physical body. There is a great secret underlying the relationship between the etheric and physical bodies, one which throws a strong light upon human nature. The etheric body of a man is female, that of a woman is male. This explains the fact that in each man's nature there is much that is feminine, and in each woman's nature there is much that is masculine. In the animals the etheric body is larger than the physical body. Thus, for example, in the case of the horse the clairvoyant sees that his etheric body projects above his head like a cap.

There is something in man that is much closer to him than his blood, muscles, nerves, etc., namely, his feelings of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain,—all that he calls his inner being. In Spiritual Science this is called the astral body, and man possesses it in common with the animals only.

A man who is born blind only knows the world around him imperfectly; for him the world of colour and light does not exist. Man is in the same position in respect of the astral world; it exists just as truly, it surrounds and permeates the physical world, but he does not perceive it. When a man's astral senses are opened the astral world becomes visible to him. The significance and importance of this moment in the development of a human being is, however, very much greater than when a man who is born blind recovers his sight through an operation. Every human being knows this astral world, although imperfectly, for his astral body is transposed into it each night.

We repose in the astral world in order to restore the harmony of the astral body, for from the standpoint of Spiritual Science tiredness is only disharmony in the physical and astral bodies. The relationship between the physical and astral bodies may be illustrated in the following way. If we take a sponge, cut it into a thousand small pieces and place them in a glass of water, so that the water is absorbed into these tiny pieces, this represents the waking condition of the average man. If we squeeze out the little sponges and collect the water again in its container, it flows together into one common mass: In the same way the human astral bodies, which during the day were individualised, like the drops of water which were absorbed into the tiny sponges, enter into the common astral substance and are strengthened by it. This we recognize each morning by the fact that our tiredness has gone. Until a person becomes a seer his astral body during the night mingles with the others; but in a seer the conditions are different.

The various plants do not possess an astral body of their own, but the whole world of plants has one astral body in common, namely that of the earth. The earth is a living being and the plants are part of it,—just as the hair belongs to the human body:

The fourth principle of man is the ego. The word “I” can only be uttered by a man with reference to himself; this word can never strike our ear from outside with reference to ourselves. When this “I” sounds in a being, then God is expressing Himself in him. In respect of the ego, the animal, plant and mineral worlds are in a different position. For example, an animal can no more say “I” to itself than a finger on our hand can say “I” to itself. If the finger desired to name its “I,” it would have to point to the “I” of the human being; in the same way the animal would have to point to an ego which belongs to a being living in the astral world. All lions, all elephants, etc., have a group-ego in common; thus there is a lion group-ego, an elephant group-ego, and so on.

If the plants wished to point to their ego they would have to point to a common ego in the centre of the earth, in the lower spiritual world. When an animal is injured it feels pain. In the plant it is different, and the seer is able to say that the plucking of a flower or the cutting of the corn gives to the earth the same pleasant feeling that a cow experiences when her calf draws the milk from her. But when a plant is torn out of the earth by the root this is just as though one were to tear a piece of flesh out of an animal. It is felt in the astral world as pain.

Were we to seek for the ego of the minerals, we should not find it in a being forming a centre in the spirit world, for the ego of the minerals is to be found in the higher spiritual world outspread everywhere as a force of the whole cosmos.

In the Christian occult doctrine the world in which the egos of the animals are found—the astral world—is called the world of the Holy Spirit, and the world which contains the egos of the plants—the lower spiritual world—the world of the Son. When the seer begins to have perceptions in this world, the “Word,” the “Logos” speaks to him. In the same occult teaching the world of the mineral egos—the higher spiritual world—is called the world of the Father Spirit.

Man is involved in a process of continuous development. We have now become acquainted with all four principles of his nature; they are what Pythagoras referred to in his school as the lower quaternary. The savage, the civilised man, the idealist, the saint—all possess these four parts. But the savage is the slave of his passions; the civilized man no longer follows indiscriminately all his passions and desires; the idealist does this still less, and the saint has fully mastered them.

The ego works upon the astral body and separates a portion from it. In the course of human evolution this part grows larger and larger, whereas the inherited portion becomes ever smaller. In Francis of Assisi almost the whole of the astral body was worked upon by the ego and transformed. This transformed part forms the fifth principle of human nature: the Spirit Self.

But the ego can also become master of the etheric or life-body. The part of the etheric body which has been transformed by the ego is called Life Spirit. The etheric body is transformed under the influences of art and religion. The influence of religion is especially strong because it is repeated day after day, and this repetition is the magic power which transforms the etheric body. But the conscious work in occult training acts most strongly upon the etheric body, and meditation and concentration are the means here used.

The relative speed in the transforming of the etheric body and the astral body may be compared to the movement of the hour and minute hands of a clock. If a man succeeds in changing his temperament ever so little, which depends on the conditions of his etheric body, this is of more value to him than the acquisition of many clever theories.

It requires the very greatest strength to change the physical body consciously. The means for this are only given in the occult school. We can only indicate here that the regulation of the breathing forms the beginning of this transformation. The physical body that has been consciously transformed by the ego is called Spirit Man or Atma. The force for the transformation of the astral body flows to us from the world of the Holy Spirit; the force for the transformation of the etheric body flows to us from the world of the Son or the Word; the force for the transformation of the physical body flows to us from the world of the Father Spirit or the Divine Father.

The ideas contained in St. John's Gospel are so profound that we shall only be able to understand this document correctly in all its parts when we have laid the right foundation for this through the knowledge of the evolution of our planet.

There is a remarkable agreement between the beginning of St. John's Gospel and the first words of the Bible. The first words of the book of Genesis are: “In the very beginning God created the heavens and the earth;” and in St. John's Gospel the first words are: “In the very beginning was the word.” These opening words give the fundamental tone to the whole of St. John's Gospel. The development of the earth can only be understood correctly when it is realised that in it the same laws are at work as in the evolution of the individual human being. The planet visible to the senses is, in the view of Spiritual Science, only the body of the spirit dwelling in it. This spiritual Being goes through repeated incarnations just as man does. Spiritual research recognises three incarnations before the earth reached its present condition. By this we do not mean to say that it had not already gone through other incarnations before, but even to the highest clairvoyant only three preceding and three following incarnations can be known. These, together with the present incarnation, make seven. When we use this number seven we are under no superstition. When a person stands in the open country he sees equally far in all directions. It is the same with the clairvoyant; he, too, sees equally far in time both forwards and backwards. In Spiritual Science these seven incarnations of the Earth are called: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. These names signify only conditions of one and the same Being.

Saturn was a condition of our Earth lying in the far distant past. The present planet Saturn is related to the present Earth as a child to an old man, and the Earth was once in the Saturn condition, a child. Again, it must not be thought that in the next embodiment of the Earth humanity will wander over the present planet Jupiter; but in its next embodiment the Earth will reach the condition in which the present planet Jupiter exists to-day.

Between two planetary embodiments there lies a kind of heavenly or spiritual state a Pralaya. The period between two planetary conditions is not a period of rest, any more than is the period through which man lives between two incarnations; it is a time of spiritual activity and preparation for the next life. Outwardly this condition appears to be dim.

When the Earth came forth from Pralaya in order to pass into the Saturn condition, it was not constituted as it is to-day. If we were to take all the substances and Beings contained in the Earth, Sun, and Moon, and form a single body out of them, we should then have what constituted the Earth when it passed over from that dim state into the Saturn condition. It did not come forth as a body without any being; the present humanity was already there, but in a state suited to that of the planet. On Saturn we formed the first foundations of the physical body. We can gain an idea of the physical constitution of man at that time if we try to realize the material condition of the planet. On Saturn there were no conditions of corporeality such as we meet with to-day. There were no solid, fluid or gaseous substances; matter was in a state which the modern physicist would not recognise as being corporeal.

Spiritual Science knows of four states of matter: earth, water, air, and fire or warmth. By “earth” we mean all that is solid; thus frozen water or ice is included in “earth”. “Water” is all that is fluid; thus molten iron or metal is also “water.” Air is all that is gaseous; thus steam would come under the heading of “air.” According to the view of the Physicist of the present day, fire or warmth is only a state of matter, an extremely rapid vibration of its smallest particles. But to Spiritual Science warmth is also a substance, one much finer than air. According to Spiritual Science, when a body is heated it absorbs the substance of warmth; when it cools it parts with warmth, the substance of warmth can condense to air, this in its turn can condense to water, and this to earth. All substances were once present merely as warmth. When the Earth was in the Saturn condition, only warmth existed.

The first rudiments of the human body were also formed out of the substance of warmth, nevertheless certain organs were already indicated even then. Not only did the germ of the physical body exist, but there was also the Spirit, the inmost being of man, the Spirit Man. This Spirit Man rested in the bosom of the Deity, which formed the spiritual atmosphere of Saturn. The Spirit Man was not an independent being, any more than one of our fingers is to-day, only at the end of the Vulcan Period will it be independent.

In the following epoch, the Sun Period, matter—and also the human bodies—had condensed from the state of warmth to the form of “air.” In consequence of this the etheric body of man was added to the existing physical body, and on the spiritual side the Deity descends, as it were, a step further and forms the Life Spirit.

In the Moon Period matter condensed to the fluid condition, and the densest substance might be compared to wax. Man also developed further and the astral body was formed, and on the other hand (from the spiritual side) the Spirit Self. Man at that time did not yet process an ego; he might be compared to the animals of the present day, although he looked quite different from them.

After the period of rest which followed the Mood Period the Earth came forth once more in its present period of evolution, and it then contained within it the substances and beings now contained in the present Sun, Moon and Earth. Man was so far refined materially that his astral body became capable of receiving an ego, for this astral body formed itself into an ego-bearer. On the other hand, the Spirit had so far condensed that it could, as ego, fertilise the lower bodies.

The first important cosmic event was the separation of the Sun from the Earth. This separation was necessary in order to provide the higher spiritual Beings with a suitable field of action—those spiritual Beings who till then had been united with humanity and were now ready to pass on to higher activity. These higher Beings had reached the goal of human evolution even during the Saturn Period, and they were then at the stage of evolution which man will only reach in the far-distant Vulcan Period of the Earth. Again, other high spiritual Beings had already reached in the Sun Period of the Earth the sublime condition which humanity will only reach in the Venus Period. These are the Beings who now send down their forces to us with the physical sunlight. These two kinds of Beings separated from the Earth and, taking with them the finest substances and forces, formed the present Sun.

It was a sad time when the Sun was separated from the Earth and the Moon was still within it. There was a danger of man being immersed in mere form, of his spiritual part dying out and with it all possibility of development. If the Sun had remained united with the Earth, this would have caused man to develop so rapidly in the direction of the spiritual that he would not have been able to develop himself corporeally. If, on the other hand, the Moon forces had remained united with the forces of the Earth, all life would have hardened in mere form, the human beings would have become statues and, as Goethe says in “Faust”, a “crystallised people” would have originated.

Through the separation of the forces of the Sun and Moon from the Earth there was brought about the balance between life and form which was necessary for the evolution of humanity. It was only because these forces could from this time forth work upon man from outside that he could continue to develop in the right way. The forces coming from the Sun create and fertilise life; the forces coming from the Moon pour this life into firm forms. The form of the physical body we now possess we owe to the Moon; but the life which sinks into this body comes from the Sun.

It was through one of the Sun-Beings uniting himself with the Moon that these two streams from the Sun and Moon work in the right way. The Beings standing at the stage of the Gods separated with the Sun; that one of these Beings separated himself from the rest and made the present Moon his dwelling place. This Spirit who is united with the Moon is known as Jehovah, the God of Form or the Moon-Deity. This God Jehovah or Jahve so moulded the three bodies of man that they became capable of receiving the drop of the ego. Jehovah formed the human body in his image, “in the Image of God created He him:” (Genesis 1:27.)

The occult schools of all ages have possessed this knowledge of evolution. In the Christian occult school of Dionysius the Areopagite the pupil received this teaching in approximately the following way. His teacher said to him: observe various kingdoms of nature. You see the stones. They are dumb; they manifest neither joy nor sorrow. Observe the plants. They, too, are dumb, they express neither pleasure or pain. The animals have raised themselves above this stage; they are not dumb. If with spiritually sharpened gaze you were to follow their development; you would see that in the sounds uttered by the animals of the far distant past the same is expressed as sounds through the cosmos. The further you ascend in the kingdoms of nature and approach Man the more you will find that sound becomes the expression of individual pain and individual pleasure. To man alone is it given to express in sound that which proceeds, from his individual spirit. The animal bellows forth that which goes on in nature; but sound became word when Jahve had so moulded the human bodies that the spiritual Beings of the Sun could sink into them. When sound becomes word, the Spirit enters into the astral body. Sense and meaning penetrated into sound when the higher Sun-Powers pressed into the forms created by Jehovah. The actual spiritual beginning of man was when the first word rang out in him.

We have now arrived at the point touched upon by the Evangelist John in the first verse of his Gospel: “In the very beginning was the Word.” The highest Spirit united with the Sun, He who sent the Egos to the Earth, is called in the occult teaching: “Christ.” But the Egos, as parts of the Sun-Logos, only streamed gradually into the forms. The “Light” streamed forth from the Sun-Logos, but few received it in those old times; those, however, who received it became different from their fellow-men. They were called children of God or Sons of God (St. John, 1:13). They possessed four principles, physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego, although the fourth, the youngest principle, was still weak and dim. The “light,” however, is to come to all men, but for this time is needed. This is indicated in verses eight to fourteen. But there were a few men who had already received the light to a high degree so that they knew about it and could bear witness to it, and these taught others. Those who bore witness to the “light” from their own experience, those who were able to point out that One was coming Who for the first time would offer the light to all, were in the occult teaching called “John” (Chapter 1:6-7). The writer to one of these “Johns.” In verse eighteen we read: “No man has ever seen God.” That is to say, no one before “Johns,” for He only became personified in Christ Jesus. The Event of Golgotha is the greatest Event in the evolution of Man and the Cosmos.

At the outset of our studies to-day we must deal with a word that in Spiritual Science is very important. In Christian occult science the Old Moon is called the Cosmos of Wisdom and the Earth the Cosmos of Love. By “Moon” we here mean the Moon Period of the Earth. The reason why the Old Moon is called the Cosmos of Wisdom is because all that was then developed was filled with wisdom. When the Earth Period succeeded the Moon Period the Cosmos of Wisdom was replaced by the Cosmos of Love. When the Earth came forth from the darkness of Pralaya, the rudiments of the human being which had been developed in former periods reappeared—the physical, etheric and astral bodies. On the Old Moon Wisdom had been implanted in these bodies and their mutual relationships; we therefore find wisdom in the constitution of these three bodies. We find the greatest wisdom in the construction of the physical body, less in that of the etheric body, and still less in that of the astral body. If we thoughtfully observe the human body we discover this wisdom in each organ, in each part. For instance, if we study the upper portion of the human thighbone we find in it a network of cells beautifully constructed with a view to their purpose. No engineer of the present day would be able to produce these two columns, which bear the upper part of the human body with the smallest expenditure of matter and force. Wisdom was implanted in the human body as long as the divine Spirits worked upon it. As a rule the physical body is looked upon as the lowest part of man, unjustly so, for the very greatest wisdom can be seen just in the physical body. Only through this wisdom is it possible for the physical body to withstand the attacks continually made upon it by the astral body, and so not break up before the time. The pleasures and desires which hold sway in the physical body when tea and coffee and so on are taken, all these are attacks of the astral body on the physical body, and especially on the heart. It has therefore to be so wisely constructed that these attacks can be withstood for decades. Of course the suitable form of the heart could only be discovered by subjecting it to many transformations.

Wisdom lies at the foundation of the construction of the world, and it is for this reason that our intellect can now seek and find it there. But wisdom did not come suddenly into the world, it was only poured in slowly and gradually; and in the same way love will also permeate the Earth very gradually. The purpose of the evolution of our Earth is to be permeated with love. Love has only begun to permeate the Earth to the smallest extent, but it will spread more and more, and at the end of the Earth Period everything will be saturated with love, just as it was saturated with wisdom at the end of the Moon Period.

When the Moon separated from the Earth the force of love was only contained in it seminally. First of all only those who were related to one another by blood loved one another. This state of things lasted for a long time; then the sphere of the activity of love gradually widened. For the perception and exercise of love a certain independence is necessary.

From the beginning of human evolution two forces have always been active: one that draws together and one that separates (Sun and Moon forces). Under the influence of these two forces man was so far developed that his three bodies, together with the bearer of the ego, inclined towards the Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man. But a final union could not have come about without the addition of a new cosmic force. This force, which exercised a specially strong influence after the separation of the Moon, came from another planet, which entered into a remarkable relationship with the Earth. This planet, Mars, made a sort of passage through the body of the Earth when the latter began its evolution. Until then iron had been lacking in the Earth, and through its appearance on the Earth the course of evolution was changed at one stroke. It was the planet Mars which brought iron to the Earth, and from that time it was possible for Man to develop warm blood containing iron. Through Mars the astral also received a new principle, the sentient soul, the courageous soul. When Mars entered, the aggressive element developed in the soul. We have now to distinguish in men the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the sentient soul. Red, warm blood was the result of the activity of the sentient soul on the physical body; then the fertilising Ego could gradually be membered into the human being.

“Blood is a very special fluid.” The God of Form, Jehovah, now played a specially important role. He took possession of the newly developed organ, the blood, permeated it with His forces, transformed the aggressive qualities of the courageous soul into the forces of love and made the blood into the physical vehicle of the Ego.

In the beginning each human individual did not possess his own Ego. The same Jehovah-force, the Ego-force, the same Ego worked in all who were related by blood, who preserved the same blood through endogamy (near marriage). A small group of this kind had a common Ego. The individual was related to the whole family as a finger is related to the whole body. In the beginning there were group-souls; the individual felt himself to be part of the family or tribe; and the same Ego lived on through several generations, it was not confined to those who were living at the same time; the common Ego was felt as long as the blood remained unmixed, as long as those who belonged to the same tribe intermarried. Therefore the Ego was not felt as something personal, but as something common to all the members of the tribe. Just as a man now remembers what he has experienced from the time of his birth, the men of that time remembered what the ancestors of the same tribe had done as vividly as if they themselves had experienced it: The grandchild and great-grandchild felt within them the some Ego that had lived in the grandfather and great-grandfather. When we know this we shall understand the secret of the great age of the patriarchs. For example, “Adam” was not the name of a single individual but of the common Ego which flowed through many generations. We have just said that Jehovah made the blood, into the physical vehicle of the Ego. He did this by taking in hand the development of the blood. He expressed His force in the kind of breathing; man became the Jehovah-man through Jehovah giving him the breath. The fact that the man who was supplied with the necessary preliminary conditions had the living breath breathed into him must be taken quite literally. “Jehovah breathed breath into man and he became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). But this inbreathing of the soul did not take place suddenly, it was a process which lasted for thousands of years. Man thus became a breather of air.

On the Old Moon there was something else in place of the breathing of air. Whereas the man of the present day breathes air in and out and thereby has a source of warmth within himself, his ancestors on the Old Moon consisting of physical, etheric and astral bodies; breathed the substance of warmth or fire in and out. Man's predecessors on the old Moon were fire-breathers. Occult Science looks upon all matter only as the expression of spirit. We breathe in and out not air alone, we breathe in the Spirit it contains. Air is the body of Jehovah just as flesh is the body of man. The remembrance of this is expressed in the German legend of Wotan who rides in the Wind. What was breathed in and out on the Old Moon was also spirit.

Upon the Old Moon there were the same spiritual Beings as live upon the Earth; there they lived in fire, but upon the Earth they have become spirits of air. In cosmic evolution Beings remain behind in their development, just as some pupils are backward at school. The Beings who made the Sun their dwelling-place had developed more rapidly and made the transition from fire-spirits to air-spirits; but a great host of beings had not made this transition. The former now worked upon man as spiritual forces from outside, from Sun and Moon. Man takes them into himself through his breath. Between Man and these highly developed Sun-Spirits there are the spiritual Beings, who, it is true, developed very much further than man upon the Moon, but not as fast as the Sun-Spirits and Jehovah. They were unable as yet to influence man through his breathing, nevertheless they endeavoured to influence him. They were the Fire-Spirits who had not completed their task. They worked in the element of warmth and this existed in man his blood. They lived in this warmth.

Thus in the course of his evolution man was placed between the Air-spirits, who live in his breathing (the highest Spirits who permeate him with Spirit), and the fire-spirits who live in the warmth of his blood. They act in his blood as the opponents of the God Jehovah. Jehovah sought to hold men together by love in small groups, He desired to fill them with the feeling of belonging together. But if love had only existed in this form men would never have become independent beings; they would have had to develop love involuntarily. The Fire-spirits directed their attacks against this, with the result that man gained his personal freedom. The small groups of people were broken up. Jehovah's only interest was to lead people together in love, He worked in the blood as the God of blood-love. The action of the Fire-spirits was different; it was they who brought art and science to men. These Spirits are also called Luciferic Spirits. The further course of the evolution of humanity proceeded under the influence of Lucifer, who brings freedom and wisdom to man. Under the guidance of the God Jehovah men were to be led together through the principle of blood-brotherhood. The fact that man has become a free citizen of the Earth,—this he owes to Lucifer. Jehovah placed men in the Paradise of Love; then there appeared the Fire-spirit, the Serpent, in the form which man once possessed when he still breathed fire, and opened men's eyes to what still remained from the Old Moon. This Luciferic influence was perceived as a temptation. But those who were instructed in the occult schools did not look upon this enlightenment, as wrong; the great Initiates have not cast the Serpent down but, like Moses in the wilderness, they have raised it. (Numbers 21:8-9).

That which was revealed in humanity was manifested for a long period through Jehovah as blood-love. Beside this worked the Spirit of Wisdom, a principle which has to prepare something different. Love gradually spread from smaller to larger groups of human beings, from families to tribes and peoples. A characteristic example of this is the Hebrew people, which felt itself as a group which belonged together and called all others “Galileans,” i.e. those who did not belong to the blood. But humanity was to receive not only blood-love but spiritual love, which will embrace the whole earth with a bond of brotherhood. The period during which humanity was held together by the love which existed between relations is only to be looked upon as a period of preparation for what was to come later. The action of Lucifer, too, which consisted in splitting apart the bonds which confined human beings, is only the preparation for the activity of a higher Being who was to come. This higher Being was called in the Christian occult schools the true Light-bearer, the true Lucifer, the Christ.

Let us now go back to the period when the Atlantean humanity lived on the Earth. The Earth had quite a different appearance then. Between Europe and America, where now the Atlantic Ocean rolls, there was land, a part of the Earth which now lies at the bottom of the ocean. Modern science is gradually arriving at the knowledge that a continent once existed where the Atlantic Ocean now lies. In Haeckel's magazine, '“Cosmos,” there is an interesting article on “Atlantis.” Atlantis was inhabited by people who were quite different from those of the present day. The relationship between the etheric and physical bodies was then quite different from what it is now. The clairvoyant sees two-points in the human head, one in the etheric brain, the other in the physical brain, between the eyes, about half an inch below the surface. In the man of the present day these two points coincide, but in the Atlantean this was different; the etheric brain projected some distance beyond the physical brain and the two points did not coincide. It may also happen in exceptional cases in people of the present time that these two points do not coincide and the consequence is—idiocy. It was only in the last third of the Atlantean Epoch that these two points came together, and only from that time did man learn to say “I” consciously to himself. Before that time the Atlanteans could not reckon, think logically or form a judgment; but they possessed a wonderful memory, which extended over generations, and they were dimly clairvoyant. They did not see the outlines of physical objects clearly, but they perceived psychic occurrences. When the Atlantean met an animal he perceived clairvoyantly the attitude of the creature towards him whether it was friendly or hostile. For instance, if he saw reddish-brown colour, he turned away for he knew that a hostile influence was approaching; but if he saw a reddish-violet colour he knew that something sympathetic to him was approaching. He also recognised the value of certain foods to him with the aid of this clairvoyance. The animals of the present day, which have preserved this dim clairvoyance, distinguish in a similar way between the plants in the meadows in respect of their value as food or their harmful nature. The kind of vision man now possesses in dreams is a decadent remnant of the clairvoyance of the old Atlanteans. Among the Atlanteans there was not such a clear separation between the consciousness of waking and sleeping as there is in the man of the present day. Their day-consciousness was less clear than ours; but their consciousness during sleep and in dreaming was clearer. During the early part of the Atlantean Epoch there were also times of complete unconsciousness, which were filled with mighty dream-pictures. In those very early times, too, the Atlanteans were unconscious of the act of reproduction. This took place in a state of complete unconsciousness. When the Atlantean awakened, he knew nothing about the act of reproduction; this process was only shown to him in pictorial images. We are reminded of this by the Greek legend which tells of two people who came to Greece and threw stones behind them, and out of these stones men developed. The act of reproduction was veiled in unconsciousness as long as marriages took place between those who were related by blood. It is due to the activity of the Luciferic Spirits, who opened the eyes of men, that men awakened to consciousness and that they recognized the act of reproduction consciously. Men learned to distinguish between good and evil. Because Men now knew about their love and no longer enquired about the blood-relationship they became independent. Then Jehovah was replaced by Christ, Who brought a higher love into the world and made man independent of the members of their tribe and blood-relationships. This universal love is only just beginning; but when the Earth has one day passed on its being to Jupiter, it will be entirely permeated by this spiritual love. It is to this universal love that Christ's statement refers: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children and brethren, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26). It is the Christ Who pours out this universal love more and more over the Earth. The evolution of the Earth is divided into two parts through the appearance of Christ Jesus,—the blood, which flowed on Golgotha signifies the replacement of the love of relations by spiritual love. This is the connection between Jehovah, Lucifer, and Christ.

“The Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” If we thoroughly understand this passage we shall also understand that deeply significant event in the history of humanity which took place through the appearance of Christ on the Earth. In the earlier lectures of this course we have traced the evolution of humanity in broad outlines, and we have described the way in which the consciousness of the Ego developed in the distant past whole groups and generations of human beings had one Ego in common. From this we learned to understand the long age of the patriarchs. Gradually this feeling of the Ego became limited more and more to the single personalities. We also showed how two spiritual streams made themselves felt in this evolution: the one was the stream of blood-relationship, which endeavoured to hold men together by natural ties, and the other, the Luciferic, which made men independent and prepared them for the purely spiritual tie which was to come.

During the whole period of the Old Testament one understood by “Law” something which brings order into human society from without. After blood-relationship had lost its binding power, men had to be brought into a certain connection with one another by an outer thought-order. The law was perceived as something coming from outside, and this Law which was given from outside holds good until the “grace and truth,” or devotion and truth, which comes through Jesus Christ, has developed in us from within, the understanding for the true knowledge. Devotion and truth can only develop gradually. Christianity, which is to bring devotion and truth in place of the Law, is only at the beginning of its growth; the further the Earth progresses in its evolution the stronger will be the influence of Christianity on humanity. Humanity is to raise itself to a stage of social life at which each one is drawn, by an impulse arising within himself, to act towards his neighbor as one brother to another. Men could not however, raise themselves of their own power to this high stage of development, and it is the task of Christianity to help them to do this. Men will no longer need any outer law to force upon them this attitude when they have the inner impulse so to act that devotion and truth are the motives for their actions.

We do not mean to say by the above, that humanity no longer needs the Law, but that which we have described is an ideal, which should be striven for. Gradually men will come to where the harmony of the world will be brought about through their voluntary action, but for this goal to be reached the Power which in the Gospel is called Christ had to step in. In the occult schools it is said of one who, of his own inner power, is able to raise himself into this relationship to all his fellow-men, that “he bears Christ within him.” In order to understand what we are about to say, it will first of all be necessary to recapitulate once more the real constitution of man. Recall to mind the contents of the third lecture with the aid of the following sketch:

Through the work of the Ego upon the astral body the latter is transformed into Spirit Self. But this takes place step by step, through the sentient soul being developed first, then the intellectual soul, and finally the spiritual soul; then the Spirit Self pours into the purified and mature spiritual soul. In the same way the Ego works upon the etheric body, and the impulses which are most effective in this case are the influences of art, religion and occult training.

There were also occult schools in pre-Christian times, where pupils were trained, so that they were able to look into higher worlds; but this vision only existed among the true pupils in the most hidden occult schools, and even they only at the actual moment of initiation, when the etheric body was separated from the physical body . The raising of a human being, so that he might be able to see in the spiritual world, was called Initiation. In all initiations of pre-Christian times the one who was to be initiated had to be brought into a kind of sleeping state. This sleep of initiation was distinguished from ordinary sleep by the fact that in the latter the etheric body remains united with the physical body, whereas in the former the etheric body was for a short time separated from the physical body. During this time the Hierophant had to keep the body alive. Through the etheric body being separated, it was possible to lead it, together with the other parts, into the higher worlds, in order there to undergo experiences which could afterwards be imparted to the physical brain. That was the method of initiation in pre-Christian times.

Through the advent of Christ Jesus an entirely new kind of initiation came in. Imagine that a man has transformed the whole of his astral body into Spirit Self. This Spirit Self then impresses itself into the etheric body, as a seal impresses itself into sealing-wax, and gives it its imprint. The etheric body is thereby changed into Life Spirit. When this has come about completely, the Life Spirit then imprints itself in the physical body and makes it into Spirit Man. Now it was only through the appearance of Christ Jesus that it became possible to imprint the Life Spirit directly into the life body; and the experiences undergone in the higher worlds could henceforth be embodied in the physical brain without the necessity of a previous separation of the etheric body. Thus all the pre-Christian initiates had undergone the experiences of initiation outside the physical body; they had then descended again into the physical body and could from that time forward, out of their own experience, announce what had taken place in the spiritual world.

Buddha, Moses and others were initiates of this kind. In Jesus there had come to the Earth for the first time a Being who, while still remaining in the physical body, could see the life of the higher worlds. The teachings of Buddha, Moses, etc., were quite independent of the personality of their agent. Those who accept the teachings of Buddha or Moses are Buddhists or followers of Moses, for these founders of religion only passed on what they had experienced in the higher worlds. With Christ it is different. It is only through His personality that His teachings become Christianity, and in order to be a Christian it is not enough merely to follow the teachings of Christianity. Those alone are true Christians, who feel themselves united with the historical Christ. Certain sentences contained in Christian teaching, or something very similar to them, could also be found in that world before Christ appeared; but that is not the point. The essential thing is, that the Christian believes in Christ Jesus, that he considers Him to be the One Who, while walking in the flesh, represents the perfect man.

In ancient times the statement was often made; ‘The initiate is a divine man.’ The reason for this lay in the fact that during the ceremony of initiation the initiate was above in the spiritual world with the spiritual or divine Beings; He was then the divine man. But one could “see” in the physical body for the first time through Christ Jesus, the Deity,—but never before. Thus we have to take the words of John 1:18. quite literally: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” Formerly the Deity could only be perceived by one who had himself made the ascent. In Christ the Deity had for the first time come down visibly to the Earth. This is told us in St. John's Gospel, (Chapter 1:14): “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.” It was also taught in the Dionysian School. Christ came to show men the way; they are to become His followers; they are to prepare to imprint what is in the etheric body into the physical body; that is to say, to develop within themselves the Christ principle.

The Gospel of St. John is a book of life. No one who has merely enquired into it with his intellect has understood this book; he alone who has experienced it really knows it. If a man meditates upon the first fourteen verses day after day for some time, he will discover the purpose of these words. They are really words which, when one meditates upon them, awaken in the human soul the capacity to see the various parts of the Gospel, such as the marriage at Cana in chapter two, the conversation with Nicodemus in chapter three, as one's own experiences in the great astral tableau. Through these exercises clairvoyance develops in the human being and he can then experience for himself the truth of what is written in St. John's Gospel. Hundreds have experienced this. The writer of St.John's Gospel was a great Seer who was initiated by Christ Himself.

The disciple “John” is never mentioned by name in this Gospel. We read of him as “the disciple whom the Lord loved,” for example in Chapter 19:26. This is a technical expression and signifies the one who was initiated by the Master Himself. “John” describes his own initiation in the story of the “raising of Lazarus.” (Chapter 11). It was only through the writer of St. John's Gospel being initiated by the Lord Himself that the most secret connections between Christ and the evolution of the world could be revealed. As we have already said, the old initiations lasted for three and a half days; hence the raising of Lazarus on the fourth day. It is also said of Lazarus that the Lord loved him (John 3:35-36.)

While the body of Lazarus lay as if dead in the grave, his etheric body was lifted out in order to undergo the initiation, and to receive the same force that is in Christ. Thus the one whom the Lord loved, the one to whom we owe St. John's Gospel, was raised, he was awakened. Not a line in St. John's Gospel, contradicts this fact; the process of initiation is represented in a veiled way.

Let us now consider another scene in this Gospel. In (John 19:25), we read: “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, His mother, and His mothers sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.” If we wish to understand this Gospel it is necessary to know who these three women are. We do not usually give two sisters the same name; neither was it the custom in former times. The passage we have quoted proves that, according to St. John's Gospel, the mother of Jesus was not called Mary. If we search through the whole of this Gospel we nowhere find it said that the mother of Jesus was called Mary. In the scene of the Marriage of Cana, for example, Chapter 2, we only read, “the mother of Jesus was there.” In these words something important is indicated, something we only understand when we know how the writer of this Gospel uses his words. What does the expression “the mother of Jesus” mean? We have seen that man consists of physical, etheric and astral bodies. We must not consider the transition of the astral body to the Spirit Self so simply. The Ego transforms the astral body very slowly and gradually into sentient soul, intellectual soul and spiritual soul. The Ego goes on working and only when it has developed the spiritual soul is it able so to purify it that Spirit Self can arise in it.

The following diagram represents the constitution of man.

The Spirit Man will only be developed in the distant future, and Life Spirit is also only germinal in most people of the present day. The development of the Spirit Self has only just begun; it is closely united with the spiritual soul (somewhat like a sword in its sheath). The sentient soul is similarly united with the astral body. The human being thus consists of nine parts or principles; but as the Spirit Self and the spiritual soul, and the sentient soul and the astral body are so closely united, we often speak of seven parts. Spirit-Self is the same as the “Holy Spirit,” who according to esoteric Christianity, is the guiding Being in the astral world. According to the same teaching, Life Spirit is called the Word or the Son; and Spirit Man is the “Father Spirit” or the “Father.”

Those human beings who had brought the Spirit Self to birth within them, were called Children of God; in such men “the light shone into the Darkness and they received the light.” Outwardly they were, men of flesh and blood, but they bore a higher man within them; the Spirit Self had been born within them out of the spiritual soul. The “mother” of such a spiritualised man is not a bodily mother, she lies within him; she is the purified and spiritualised spiritual soul; she is the principle who gives birth to the higher man. This spiritual birth, a birth in the highest sense, is described in St. John's Gospel. The Spirit Self or the Holy Spirit pours into the most highly purified Spiritual Soul. This is referred to in the words, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.” (John 1:32).

As the Spiritual Soul is the principle in which the Spirit Self develops, this principle is called the “mother of Christ,” or, in the occult schools, the “Virgin Sophia.” Through the fertilisation of the Virgin Sophia the Christ could be born in Jesus of Nazareth. In the occult school of Dionysius, the Intellectual Soul was called “Mary,” and the Sentient Soul “Mary Magdalene.”

The Physical man is born of the union of two human beings; but the higher man can only be born of a Spiritual Soul which embraces a whole people. Among all the peoples of olden times the method of initiation was essentially the same. Each initiation had seven stages or degrees. Among the Persians, for example, they were called as follows:—I. The Raven. One at this stage had to bring information from the outer world into the temple. The Raven has always been called the spiritual messenger, for instance in the legend of the Ravens of Barbarossa, and also in the German legends of Odin and his two ravens. 2. The Occult. 3. The Warrior. In the occult school the warrior was allowed to go forth and announce the teachings. 4. The Lion. The Lion was one who was firmly grounded in himself; he not only had the word, but he possessed also the magical forces; he had stood the test which guaranteed that he would not misuse the powers entrusted to him. 5. The Persian; 6. The Sun Hero. 7. The Father.

Let us consider the title of the fifth degree,the “Persian”, a little more closely. In all the occult schools an initiate of the fifth degree was called by the name of the people to whom he belonged; for his consciousness had widened where it included the whole people. He felt all the sorrow of the people as his own; his consciousness had been purified and expanded to the consciousness of the whole people. Among the Jews the initiate at this stage was called an “Israelite.” Only when we grasp this fact do we understand the conversation between Christ and Nathanael (John 1:46-49). Nathanael was an initiate of the fifth degree. The words of Christ Jesus to Nathanael, that he had seen him under the fig tree, refer to a special process in initiation, namely, the reception of the Spiritual Soul.

The following considerations will help towards the understanding of the inner process of initiation. The individual “I”-consciousness of man is in the physical world; men walk the Earth with their Ego. But the egos of the animals are on the astral plane; each group of animals there possesses an ego-consciousness in common. There is, however, in the astral world, not only the ego of the animal, but also the ego of the body which man has in common with the animals, the ego of the human astral body. In the Lower Spirit World we find the ego of the plants and also the ego of the body man possesses in common with the plants, the ego of the etheric body. If we rise still higher, into the Higher Spirit World, we there find the ego of the minerals and the ego of that part which man has in common with the minerals—the ego of the physical body. Thus through our physical body we are connected with the Higher Spiritual World. We are here in the physical world with our individual Ego only. When, in the case of an initiate, the ego of the astral body is permeated by his Individual ego, the consequence is that he becomes conscious in the astral world; he can then perceive the beings around him there and become active in that-world. He then meets Beings who are incarnated in astral bodies; he also meets the group-souls of the animals, and the higher Beings who in Christianity are called angels. On being initiated still more deeply, the ego of the etheric body is also permeated by the individual ego. The consciousness of the human being then extends into the Lower Spiritual World. There he encounters the egos of the plants and the Spirit of the Planet. A still deeper initiation takes place when the individual ego permeates the ego of the physical body,—man then rises to personal consciousness in the higher Spiritual world. There he meets the egos of the minerals and still higher Spirits. Thus continued initiation raises a man to higher and higher worlds, in which he meets with higher and higher Beings.

When the individual Ego has gained full control over the three bodies, it has brought about inner harmony. Christ possessed this harmony to the fullest extent,—he appeared on the Earth in order that men might develop this power of inner harmony. In this Son of Man we see represented the full development of humanity, up to the highest spiritual stage. Formerly this inner harmony did not exist, outer laws worked in its place,—this inner harmony is the new impulse which humanity received through Christ. Man is to acquire the “Christ capacity,” that is to say, he is to develop the inner Christ. Goethe said: “The eye is built by light for light;” in the same way this inner harmony, this inner Christ is only kindled through the presence of the outer, historical Christ; before His appearance it was not possible for man to reach this stage of spiritual development.

Those human beings who lived before the appearance of Christ on Earth are not excluded from the blessings He brought to humanity; for it should not be forgotten that, according to the law of reincarnation, they will come again to the earth and will therefore have the opportunity to develop the inner Christ. It is only when people forget the law of reincarnation that they can speak of injustice. St. John's Gospel shows the way to the historical Christ, to that Sun which enkindles the inner light in man, just as the physical Sun has enkindled the light of the eyes.

The ego of the etheric body may be compared to the engineer who builds a motor-car; the ego of the astral body may be compared to the one who drives it; and the ego of the individual to the one who owns it.