The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Notes by Alice Kinkel For all degrees

The physical body of Christ Jesus was given to the Earth and became one with the Earth.

The etheric body of Christ Jesus, parts of which were transferred to the people who were to be guides in a certain way.

Likewise, the images of the astral body of Christ Jesus were transferred to those people who had a special task in humanity.

There was no actual ego with this being, because the ego of Jesus of Nazareth left the three covers during John's baptism in the Jordan, but the fact that the Christ lived in the covers for three years has created something like a thin membrane, a kind of ego cover, which is incorporated into those who have a good understanding of the Christ being today.

When the seer looks into the spiritual worlds, he sees that the Christ has always been surrounded by the mystery of Golgotha and has lived in an etheric body that he has built up, surrounded by radiant life forces. The physical body was taken from the Christ forever by the mystery of Golgotha...

Materialism is something that manifests itself in the spiritual world. The materialists there present a terrible sight in the spiritual world. Through them, the Christ has suffered a second death in the spiritual world. As a consequence of this, the cross now appears in the spiritual world, growing out of the earth like a green bush, seized by flames of fire, charred and entwined with seven red roses. The cross with the body of the Lord is the symbol of the Mystery of Golgotha (the death of the physical body).

The Rose Cross is the symbol for the second death of the Christ in the nineteenth century, for the death of the etheric body at the hands of the materialists. The consequence of this is that the Christ can now be seen in the twentieth century as I have often told you, namely in the etheric body.

One can now see the cross growing out of the earth, black, charred by the fire of the materialists, and then the seven roses, red roses, shining on it. This is how the seer experiences the imagination.

By proclaiming this spiritual fact, you have now become confidants of a great mystery. Such secrets impose special obligations.

You have to be especially careful and watchful against those who have fallen away from us, so that nothing comes to their ears, because they hate us (Sonklar, Ostermann, Hübbe-Schleiden). What does all the hatred and enmity against us mean? It is because they hate us as the recognizers of the second death of Christ as the second sacrifice for humanity. This second death took place in the etheric sphere of the earth.

The “Temple Legend” and the “Dawn” are discussed. Those who let them sink in may say to themselves: I have tried hard, but now I have been a little absent-minded, my memory is fading. That is not a bad sign, because every person in the present has parts of himself that are dead, and materialists have the most of such inclusions. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a large number of materialists were in the life between death and a new birth; they formed a kind of sect in the spiritual world, hating everything spiritual, everything of a spiritual nature, even though they are in the spiritual world.

We have spoken of those who have fallen away; in order to prevent them from interfering with our work here with their thoughts, it is necessary to change the ritual.

(From here on, probably M.E. instead of F. M.)

Notes B from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede First degree

When the esoteric practitioner regularly performs his exercises and delves into the temple legend or the great cosmic images given to us in theosophy, or into Jakob Böhme's “Morgenröte” and the other symbols as given in this temple, he will notice that it may (is) as if his brain at a certain moment were unable to think further, as if a limit were set to his thinking.

The esotericist should feel and inwardly experience something like this. The ordinary person sometimes has the same feelings that his brain is failing him, but he does not come to experience and become aware of this fact. People actually oversleep their whole lives; not only by sleeping at night, but also during the day they oversleep the most important events because they are completely absorbed in the impressions they receive from the senses. All those who, in an important time such as our own, have turned against what they could have attained as a spiritual current, however clever they were in and of themselves, but refused to take in the spiritual, and devoted themselves entirely to materialism, have turned against everything spiritual after their death as well and developed a certain hatred there, which they then, as a force (or forces), projected back into the physical world. Basically, this has always been the case since the sixteenth century, and these feelings of hatred make themselves felt in the physical world and have their effect there. The worlds are not separate from each other, they permeate each other.

We have also spoken of how, at the death of Christ Jesus at Golgotha, the physical body penetrated into the physical substances of the earth and how, from this, strength arose for individuals to undergo martyrdom in the first post-Christian times. In his time, the etheric body of Christ also dissolved into the earth as an etheric substance, and this opened up the possibility for individual personalities to absorb this etheric substance, and thus certain tasks could be accomplished by these individual personalities here on earth.

The astral body of Christ also entered the astral substance (aura) of the earth at a certain time, and with that, human astral shells could also be clothed, which produced certain events on earth.

And now the I-substance can be imparted to people. For even if Jesus of Nazareth also left his three veils at the baptism, still a part of the I-substance remained with the veils, and so this power was also added to the earth.

The new thing that is now gradually being revealed (communicated) to people is a reminder or repetition of what Paul experienced near Damascus. He saw the etheric form of Christ. But the fact that this is now to become visible to us is due to the fact that a new mystery of Golgotha has taken place in the etheric world, as it were. What took place here in the physical world at the crucifixion as a result of the hatred of people who did not understand, has now been repeated on the etheric plane through the hatred of people who, as materialists, entered the etheric world after death.

Consider once more how, in the Mystery of Golgotha, a cross was erected from dead wood, on which the body of Christ hung. And then we see that wood of the cross in the etheric world as sprouting, sprouting wood, green, living wood, charred by the flames of hatred, with only the seven blooming roses appearing on it, representing the sevenfold nature of Christ; then we have the image of the second “mystery of Golgotha”, which has now taken place in the etheric world. And through this dying, this second dying of Christ, it has become possible for us to behold that etheric body. The denser, dead part of the etheric body of Christ Jesus will be seen by people.

This is one of the greatest mysteries that is now to be revealed to the esotericist and about which nothing more can be said at present. Everyone should reflect on it and incorporate it into their meditation.

What has already been said, how hatred against our movement will grow ever greater, should be repeated and particularly emphasized. This hatred will not only come from materialists, but also from pseudo-spiritualists, even from pseudo-theosophists, who will create their own concept of Christ so that the truth about the Christ will not be known.

So it will be more necessary than ever that we stand together and feel united against this attack of hatred. It has even already been possible to betray these (F.M.) mysteries by people entering with too little seriousness and dignity.

Therefore, everyone should be reminded of the seriousness and dignity of such sacred things as are spoken of in our temple. Because of this betrayal, it has become necessary to change our ritual and to transform it so that, while the meaning remains essentially the same, the rituals will be different than before, so that they will not resonate with those of others.

Record C by Alice Kinkel Third Degree

What do we walk on in our world? On a corpse! — The mountains of the earth, what are they? The solidified thoughts of the gods! - The dying of the earth was a slow process that began in the fourth period of the Atlantean era, and the death rattle of the earth falls into the pre-Persian era, the Zarathustra era.

Leonardo da Vinci was an emissary of Rosicrucianism; he did not write in mirror writing for nothing. He worked for sixteen years on the painting of the “Last Supper”, and just as long on the statue of Franz Sforza. For the Last Supper, he could not find a model for the two main figures; Christ and Judas; Christ, from whose face the inner light should shine, and Judas, from whom the inner blackness should look out. The shadow on Judas' face cannot be explained technically either. Only a fragment of the painting remains, but it still gives some idea of the wonderful distribution of light and shadow in the painting and of its overall powerful beauty.

There is another picture that is truly moving, a picture in which the master Lionardo stands before his completed painting, the “Last Supper”, and is dissatisfied by it, because one cannot paint Christ in our age.

The statue, the other great work of Lionardo, was destroyed, that is, the model of it, when it was to serve as the centerpiece at a festival.

What we do and think as human beings here and the movements we make are what the gods did in the past to bring this world into being.

The seeds of the future are to be sown through the work and ritual in our M.E. lodges. Magic is not something that performs arbitrary actions or strange customs, but magic is what prepares the future of humanity and the world.

Notes by Alice Kinkel Third degree

The letter from Baron von Wrangell is read and thoroughly discussed by Dr. Steiner

The members as the disseminators of Theosophy or Anthroposophy. But you, who are gathered here, should form a core group. You should be careful and everyone should take care to ensure that the right views and the right judgments are spread about Theosophy. Everyone should pay attention and check who is accepted into the Society. Many a person must be accepted, but it will be up to us to ensure that they do not spread themselves too thinly.

With loving greetings and the instruction:
......................................
this shall be written in our soul.

The subject of the instruction is: CORE AND SHELL. We should not practice human complacency towards those for whom false concepts of tolerance are the right ones.

All materialistic culture, all the great technical achievements such as airships, railways, telegraphs and so on, belong to the shell of present-day human life. But this shell of culture later falls away; the core, however, is to become the savior of human progress. But the core is in greater danger than the shell; the core can be eaten by worms. We should remember that such a thing could happen!

Dr. Steiner speaks of the theosophical indecencies that have taken place in the Society, and cites Max Heindel's book as an example.

We should remember that we belong to the core group, supported by the leaders of spirituality and occultism. Man should not forget his original image; he should always strive to become similar to it. Conscience, an alert conscience and not lying lead to this. The Luciferic entities eliminate conscience and truthfulness. Conscience and compassion will disappear in part of humanity in the sixth epoch.

Each of us should keep the legend, the seven-step ladder and other givens in mind during the day, then the person will feel a consequence of doing these things right here, that is, the right forces will then flow in.

During the night, the human being can then come close to Hiram Abiff or Adoniram, Lazarus, who was initiated by the Lord Himself.

For this purpose, meditation is given: “I am not only in the world for myself, but to become similar to my archetype.” This striving is a duty - not selfishness.

These things are given in the first scenes of “Examination of Conscience” and “The Guardian of the Threshold”, as in the three dramas in general: they contain much, much material for meditation.

You should not forget that the spiritual powers are counting on you to help guide humanity.

Every person is a citizen of the spiritual world, but you should be aware of it! At night, you are always in a spiritual world, interacting with beings and judging. This can suddenly come to a person's awareness when waking up or at other times during the day: “I have to train myself to become a revealer of the divine archetype within me.”

Meditate on death: this is a very important matter.

Berlin, February 10, 1913

Notes by Alice Kinkel Fourth Degree

A.o.L.o.L.A.

The human being is connected to the self in thirty-three ways. We have to overcome this self through our I. This self is anchored in the human body in the 33 currents in the spinal cord.

The shearer sees how currents emanate from the etheric and astral bodies, which can then be expressed in the movements of the limbs, which are half held back in the speech organs, in the larynx, where the sound is formed, and then held rigidly in the human head, brain and skull, brain lobes. The brain, the symbols for it in the lodge...

Starting with the left hand: I - an outward striving. The sound I - direct the right eye into the indefinite.

Stretching = A - both eyes into infinity.

Embrace = O - Look firmly at a specific point. Cross = E - Place your right hand over your left hand, and your feet in the same way, crossing your right foot over your left - just as the optic nerves are crossed in the human head.

Cupped hand = AO - Bend the body in a semicircle. Fist or clench = U

You should not carry out the movements, but inhibit the movement, press the limbs firmly against the body, but feel the same as if you were carrying out the movements.

We are the lost word of creation. The holy word is to be used only in the sign.

Where are we? In the sign of four.

Name the four: earth, water, air, fire.

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The Cassiazweig has been discussed.

You are all half human; you are to develop the other half that belongs to you through the exercises that have been given to you, gradually. That is the task.

The [Pillars of] Hercules.

The task is this: for six to eight to ten weeks or more of the year, completely switch off the ego in words and thoughts. Only when you have accomplished this will you understand all of this.

Be The following also belongs to the explanations about the four:

The four can also be understood in terms of the four sentences that are always spoken in the lodge and that we know: 1913

Learn silence and you will have power.

Give up power and you will have will. Give up will and you will have feeling. Give up feeling and you will have knowledge.

The four is complemented to the seven: salt, sulfur, mercury.

Now the holy word is broken down again into the four;

earth, water, air, fire

gnomes, sylphs, salamanders

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One column is the sun, the other the moon; both make up the earth.

Notes A from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede First degree

When we are in our sacred space, we have to practice self-reflection. And we have to feel very strongly the karma that has brought us to the gates of this temple.

The human soul passes through the different ages and takes something with it from each one. From epoch to epoch, the soul's life changes, even if people do not notice it.

If we did not experience our own body, we could not immediately know whether we were walking or standing still; we would then have to perceive from the trees or telegraph poles whether we were walking or not. On a train, it may occasionally happen that you really don't know.

Today's astronomy is based on this point of view; it has to perceive from the movements of the stars and so on that the earth moves and that the whole solar system moves. In ancient times, it was quite different. In the time of the ancient Persians, for example, people still lived with their soul the life of the earth; through this they knew how the earth moves through space, and if they had recorded it, they would have drawn it like this - which later became the staff of Mercury.

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This ability faded in later times. It was a freeing of the human being from the macrocosm, so that he can no longer feel this movement.

Only among the farmers did one still find this connection to the macrocosm some time ago. They went to bed when the sun went down and got up when the sun rose. If we were still like the ancients, we would not be able to have evening meetings; everyone would feel an insurmountable need for sleep.

It was the good gods who detached man from the macrocosm because, as a result of the temptation of paradise, man was connected to the creation of Lucifer and Ahriman. Therefore, after the Fall, Yahweh said to Lucifer: You wanted to give people the freedom within themselves so that they would become like the gods, distinguishing good from evil, but now they should also be freed from my creation so that they will follow it later in freedom and accept it.

As a result, man has become lonely in his soul on earth. And when we feel completely at home in our occult movement and in our meditation we are overcome by a great sense of loneliness, then that is a good sign of progress. Only through this feeling of loneliness can the higher worlds reach us.

At present, man is so far advanced that he has absolutely no eye for what is immediately around him. For example, Nietzsche once had a conversation with his friend from high school, Deussen, who was a Schopenhauerian, while Nietzsche wanted to go beyond Schopenhauer. Deussen defended the “negation of the will to live,” and when Nietzsche wanted to object to it, Deussen said that this could only happen if one had not yet understood what this negation really means.

But where is this negation of life really present? In the drunkards and gluttons; they are the ones who deny the divine creative powers; in all those who live in sensual passions or affects.

Everywhere a “bark culture” develops, which we must admire, but which we must immediately recognize as such. We have to cultivate the “marrow culture” alongside the “bark culture”. This outer culture is particularly flourishing in America. For example, the “scientific operating system” has developed there. This is of the same kind as, for example, “scientific pedagogy”, which also originated in America and is beginning to spread here as the “last word in wisdom”. Large numbers of children are observed to find out how long they can focus their attention on something and so on; then “fatigue coefficients” are established and the like. In this way, the work of laborers was also studied, for example, in laying stone; they examined how people could be used in such a way that, without having to think about it, the stones could be transported and laid in the fastest possible way. Man is made into a machine. This will get worse and worse in the future.

Everything will be mechanized; there will be no more handwriting, but children will immediately learn to type. Mechanization of life will dominate the future. It began with the discovery of the steam engine, and in the future people will look back on this discovery - or invention - as on a victory of Ahriman, just as we look back on the Fall of Man as on a victory of Lucifer. For when the steam engine was discovered at the end of the eighteenth century, the gods handed over the material development of the earth to Ahriman. The rest of the development of the earth, with its machines and the mechanization of life, belongs to Ahriman. The gods left it to him. This is what should hit our souls like a bomb.

But we should not try to remove the weight from the bowl that is being pressed down, but through our development we should put the weight of spiritual life on the other bowl. The Mystery of Golgotha was precisely that, the center of gravity of earthly development, and we have to take care of establishing balance.

Soon the terrible consequences of things like the “scientific operating system” (Taylor system) will arise. As a result, human souls will no longer be able to find their way on earth after living in the body for thirty or thirty-three years; they will experience themselves as dead and barren in soul. Then it will be up to those of us who have prepared ourselves for it and who will then live between death and a new birth in the spiritual world, to warm and sun the souls from there, so that they will feel: At first I was dead inside, but now something is beginning to live in me like an inspiration from higher worlds, something that makes me fully alive and warm again; now spiritual life is beginning to come into me again!

That is what must be said as a result of a conversation with the leading spirit of our development. And if one should ask: How can I know that what has been said here is really the result of such a conversation? - then the only answer that can be given is: What has been said today must be said, and it will have fulfilled its task when it strikes like a bomb in your hearts.

(This last part was first given in Kristiania, October 1913, during the cycle “The Fifth Gospel”)

Notes B by Unknown

The hours we spend between the three altars and our three lights are to be used for self-reflection. We are to learn to understand the world correctly. People today rely on external documents and, compared to earlier periods, say: How we have come so gloriously far! — Thus they stand under Ahriman and Lucifer.

Let us assume that man is so organized that he does not know whether he is walking or standing. In this situation, man finds himself in relation to the earth. Only by observing the stars does science calculate and recognize that the earth moves and how. It was not always so.

We go from incarnation to incarnation. The soul life is always different: when our souls were incarnated in Persian culture, people felt much more connected to the earth. They felt the movements of the earth in the cosmos. When this consciousness was lost, people deduced from the stars that the earth moves. Copernicus' theory is not correct. The Earth moves approximately in the lines of a Mercury staff. Man has thus lost a great ability. (Only the ability to perceive the Earth's movement inwardly also makes possible an understanding of the teaching and figure of Zarathustra.) But because of this he has become freer. Man has been set aside from the spiritual world on to the Earth, and he does not even know whether it moves. When Lucifer once approached man temptingly and said, 'I will make you free; you will see for yourselves what is good and what is bad,' the stern voice of Jahve was heard behind him saying, 'You lead man on to the earth, you must also lead him on it to his own independence.

Our whole culture would not be possible if man had not achieved this independence. Because man would also be bound to the great macrocosmic conditions: tiredness in the evening; the life of the farmer with nature. Progress must be recognized, for example, the ingenuity that has been used to build a (machine), even if that machine has no good purpose. Machine culture.

The Earth is handed over to the rule of Ahriman in order to mechanize it. This is what the archangeloi teach. As a counterweight, they teach people to develop spirituality, wisdom, virtue and moral strength (wisdom, beauty, strength). - From America, the land of bark culture, a management science is now coming over. Man becomes completely a machine (Taylor system). Experiments on children because of fatigue. Work should be done entirely mechanically to save time. Children will learn to write with a machine, not by hand. Free time should be used to enjoy beauty. Blindest of the blind. The beauties will not be there. Things belong together...

From the age of thirty, souls will no longer be able to cope with themselves. Our work and our task is to help them. This is the right aspiration if we strive not for ourselves but for the service of humanity. These proclamations should hit our spiritual life like bombs.

Notes A by Camilla Wandrey All degrees

My dear sisters and brothers!

Every human being has the potential for occult abilities in the depths of his soul. The teacher, to whom the human soul entrusts itself, does nothing other than to awaken these sleeping, unconscious soul powers, to gradually raise them into consciousness and thus to give the soul the opportunity to penetrate deeper and deeper into the secrets of the world, of the macrocosm, and to recognize its relationships to the microcosm, the human being, more and more. For those disciples who begin to make progress in occult knowledge, it is good practice to converse, so to speak, with the sense organs of their body.

For example, I could imagine holding a dialogue with my eyes. Of course, the consciousness of the eye is different from the consciousness that the whole person has. A person looks up at the sun; with consciousness, he allows the essence of the sun or the moon and the starry sky to take effect on him through his sense organs. But the eye itself cannot consciously see the sun, moon or starry sky. However, it can consciously see animals, plants - in fact, everything on earth. But it cannot consciously rise to the starry sky.

Man stands on the earth and looks up to the firmament, but not to heaven, for the eye cannot see it consciously. The only heaven to which the eye can rise is the earth. The earth is the same for the eye as heaven is for man.

Now someone might object: Yes, but we do see the starry sky through the eye. Yes, but only because the I in man is within it. It is the I that looks up at the starry sky and admires its splendor and magnificence. The eye alone cannot see it consciously.

The eye is connected to the rest of the human organism through the optic nerve. It is, as it were, rooted in the human being through this optic nerve. As a creature of the Earth, the human being stands on the Earth. They are connected to the entire Earth organism, and the occultist sees how the entire head of the human being is something like an eye through which the Earth spirit looks up to the firmament, and that the rest of the human body is, in a sense, something like a root through which they are connected to the interior of the Earth. When you look at the head and the rest of the human organism in this way, the human form only then takes on meaning.

Now you know that among the lower animals there are quite a number of insects that have not just one eye, but many eyes: the compound eyes. And so the earth spirit also has many, many eyes: these are the heads of the people through which the earth spirit looks up into the cosmos, and each person is a facet of the earth spirit's eye. And the earth spirit looks up to the sky through people with such intensity that it creates an imprint in the brain of the human child arriving on earth as soon as it is born. You will find a more detailed description of this in 'The Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and of Humanity'.

And just as the human being carries his sense organs with him on his physical body, so too does the earth have its sense organs - and these are the human beings.

And the earth also thinks. How does it think? - The human being on earth initially thinks through the medium of his brain. The brain of the earth is the animals with their group souls. One could say: they form the entire nervous system of the earth, so that the higher animals form the brain, the lower ones the spinal cord and the solar plexus nervous system, the vegetative system. And the earth lives and breathes and also nourishes itself through the plant world.

And finally, what gives it the firm structure that the human body has in the bone system is what we see in the mineral kingdom.

Thus the earth spirit lives in its physicality. And the earth spirit looks up to heaven so that it is not separated from the universe, its home, by man and what man does on the surface of the earth. This earth spirit naturally has a different consciousness from that of humans; its gaze is freer, more unrestricted, and streams out into the vastness of the firmament when it looks up through its compound eyes: the heads of humans. Do not believe, my dear sisters and brothers, that it is ever held back by the hard skull. He, the spirit of the earth, sees through physical matter; it does not exist for him, it is transparent to him. He looks up to heaven, which is the home of the Christ, who has united with our earthly body since the Mystery of Golgotha.

If we think this through, we can say: It is the Christ who looks up through me to his true home: heaven. Not I, not my earthly self beholds heaven – but the Christ in me.

Let us, my dear sisters and brothers, look at this occult truth from yet another perspective: let us consider the state of sleep. We know that the astral body and the ego are outside the physical and etheric bodies. They are then in the spiritual world, in the world of hierarchies. And through them – while the human being is not present with his consciousness at first – the hierarchical worlds that act upon us have an effect on the human being and on the earth. We human beings, when we immerse ourselves in this spiritual fact, can know with reverence: spiritual beings feel, want, and even think through me: the hierarchies that rule over me. Through me, they send their feeling horns down into the physical world during the state of sleep, so to speak.

And for this they use my soul-spiritual, which is separated from the physical-etheric. This can give us as earth people the certainty that we, with our soul-spiritual, are members of the higher hierarchies.

My dear sisters and brothers, let us increasingly imbibe the following thoughts: through our physical and etheric sense organs, we human beings are of the earth, through which the Christ gazes up to the firmament, to the heaven that is His true home. And let us also feel how the spiritual hierarchies work through our astral body and our ego down to earth. Let us become more and more aware of how we are embedded through our human existence in the activity of all spiritual beings working on world evolution.

If we stop at this point in our human consciousness, we can know: here is where spiritual science becomes religion.

Often, my dear sisters and brothers, I have emphasized that we are living in a significant time in human development. In all modesty, however, we may know and feel that if we carry such soul content within us in all seriousness and dignity, we are called to form a select band within the rest of humanity. We are called to first receive the treasures of the spirit, which are to flow to humanity little by little for its salvation, and to spread them ever further.

At the turn of the millennia, the luciferic and ahrimanic beings are particularly at work, and something very significant will happen to many and more and more people in the last decade of the twentieth century. This is already being prepared. Care is taken for people from the spiritual world so that they grow towards this event. In the next higher world, a fact will take place from now until the end of our century and further into the following millennia: Man will transform himself inwardly in a very natural way, so that he will imbue his soul with a light that gradually emanates from the human being himself and will illuminate the Christ-form within the etheric world. And the more this inner light develops in man, the more the etheric form of Christ will become visible in the coming centuries. This introduces a completely new event that will have an effect on the Christ-development of humanity.

We may know, my dear sisters and brothers, Through what the earth spirit, in union with the Christ, accomplishes by looking into the heavens through our human head, and through what the hierarchies achieve by looking down into the earthly world through our soul and spirit, this inner light is kindled in us human beings when we become aware of these cosmic-earthly facts through meditation. With this inner light we perceive – as in an image that arises through us – the etheric Christ. The Christ has left his home, the world of the hierarchies, with which he was connected before the Mystery of Golgotha. And he has sacrificed himself into the earth.

The spiritual hierarchies must rediscover the Christ in the process of becoming earth. And they will find him again through the light that human souls ignite within themselves, as has been described to you, my dear sisters and brothers.

This light has been a factor in the development of the universe since the very beginning. It is a factor in the fact that at some point people will be proclaimed as instruments of the gods to help with the evolution of the earth through this inner light. And we are now approaching this point more and more. And by you, my dear sisters and brothers, being allowed to receive these secrets of the world, as is the case in today's lesson, you are called upon to help with the evolution of the world.

Now there are two spiritual entities that want to prevent this: the one entity - Lucifer with his hosts - is striving to prevent people from feeling like spiritual and soulful organs of the spiritual hierarchies. He seeks to fill people with other false ideas, teaching them ideas and desires that create error after error in the soul. One can truly say: He makes man obsessed with all kinds of false soul stuff.

In contrast, Ahriman seeks to present something as reality to man that, spiritually speaking, is nothing but maya, nothingness. He seeks to keep man always in a state of blindness that covers the true light from him. Just as a person is blinded when looking at the sun, so Ahriman seeks to blind him on earth by spreading out the colorful carpet of the sensual world in seductive colors, teaching him that this is the only true reality and thus covering the spiritual reality behind this carpet from the person. Blindness of men on earth, that is the mission of Ahriman.

Take, for example, the Copernican system, which entered into the cultural development at the dawn of modern times. It should not be denied that it has its justification for a certain period of time, but it is equally impossible to deny that it has great contradictions and deficiencies, as it is taught to young people today. But now, in the future, the urge will arise in many people to recognize these deficiencies and to penetrate to the truth. More and more people will clearly recognize how many errors it contains.

Ahriman will always try to darken [people's view], Only recently a book came flying onto my desk that can only be read by someone with a mathematical education. In this book, the author seeks with great ingenuity to prove that the earth is not spherical or lenticular, but that it represents an elongated surface. One can see in such a way how Ahriman leads the battle in an ingenious way against the thinking of truth in man.

Spiritual science shines into this web of error. Through it the most profound thoughts of truth of the gods are imparted to man, so that he can extricate himself from the web of error of Ahriman; and it shows the soul how it can be filled with the strong warmth of the love of the Christ for the world, which snatches it from all egoism and all selfish revelry in untrue sentimentalities that Lucifer produces in the soul. All religions have been based on sentimentality and egoism. People were told: If you behave as shown in it, then you have the right to expect this or that reward.

My dear sisters and brothers: spiritual science gives the true religion, which is also knowledge. A completely egoism-free religion that calls on people to work with the gods. And it is a necessity that it be given today.

In the cycle of time, a thousand years will soon have passed again. We are thus approaching a most significant event, which is already beginning to cast its shadows - ever more clearly perceptible - ahead of itself. Before the year 1000, people feared the approaching end of the world. Today, it will happen more and more that we grow into a time in which the luciferic and ahrimanic forces will receive a tremendous, ever more knowledgeable power. Yes, they will take hold of human souls in such a way that they will put their physical powers at the service of Ahriman and Lucifer in many, many people. More and more people will be possessed by demons of Lucifer and Ahriman. And they will believe that they are right. In their blindness, they will not even notice in whose service they are: for the devil does not notice the little people when he holds them by the collar.

But to whom will these people be unfaithful? They should be called upon to place their occult physical powers, as we have learned today, at the service of the world as a whole - to become servants, co-workers of the World Spirit!

The occultist must blush with shame before the World Spirit when he looks at such souls possessed by the adversaries - knowing what mission these souls have become unfaithful to: the mission to be instruments of this World Spirit in such a way that he can maintain his connection with the Christ-Spirit, can work with the Christ so that his sacrifice may find fulfillment.

This is what true occultism is given to us for today. To study it means nothing other than to gradually train ourselves to become a self-aware tool of the World Spirit.

Notes from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede, volume 1

If we continue to develop our occult abilities, we will be able to penetrate ever deeper into the secrets of the world, of the macrocosm in its relationship to the microcosm, to the human body. For those who are beginning to make progress in the occult, it is good to converse with their sense organs.

For example, I could imagine holding a conversation with my eye. Of course, the consciousness of the eye is different from the consciousness that the human being has. The eye cannot consciously see the sun or the moon or the stars, but it can consciously see animals, plants, in fact everything on earth. However, it cannot raise itself up to the starry sky. Man stands on the earth and looks up at the firmament. The eye is something like this in man, but the heaven to which the eye alone can raise itself is the earth. The earth is the same for the eye as heaven is for man.

Now someone might object: Yes, but we do see the starry sky through the eye! - Certainly, but only because the human ego is behind it; the eye alone could not see it consciously. And just as the eye is connected to the rest of the human organism through the optic nerve, through which it is, so to speak, firmly rooted in the human being, so the head of the human being is the eye through which the earth spirit looks up to the firmament, and the rest of the human being is, so to speak, the root through which it is connected to the interior of the earth. It is only in this way that the human form acquires meaning.

Among the lower animals, there are quite a number – the insects that have not just one eye, but many eyes, the compound eyes. So the earth spirit also has many eyes, namely the heads of the people, through which he looks up into the cosmos, and every person is a facet of the eye of the earth spirit. And the earth spirit looks so intensely through the human being to the sky that it is already imprinted in the human brain at the moment of birth! This has been pointed out in the book “The Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and Humanity.

And the earth also thinks. How does it think? The group souls of the animals are the brain of the earth; one could say that they form the entire nervous system of the earth, for the higher animals form the brain, the lower ones the spinal cord and the solar plexus, the so-called vegetative nervous system.

And the earth lives and breathes and also nourishes itself, namely through the plant world. And finally, what gives it its solid structure, like our skeletal system, is the mineral kingdom.

The earth spirit looks up to heaven through the human being so that it is not separated from the universe. Of course, the earth spirit has a completely different consciousness than the human being; its view is freer, more unrestricted, the hard skull, for example, would not be an obstacle for it. He looks up to heaven, which is the home of the Christ, who has united with the earth spirit since the Mystery of Golgotha.

It is the Christ who, through me in me, looks up to his true home, heaven. Not I, but the Christ in me! We must also look at it from another point of view.

We know that during sleep the astral body and I are outside the physical and etheric bodies. They are then in the spiritual worlds, and through them the higher hierarchies work downwards on man and on earth. We must feel: the spiritual hierarchies feel, will, and even think through me, so to speak, they stretch their feeler horns down into the physical world.

Through our soul and spirit we are members of the higher hierarchies.

Let us increasingly imbue ourselves with the thought that we humans are the sensory organs through which the Christ looks up to heaven, his true home; but let us also feel how the spirits of the higher hierarchies work through our souls down to earth, how we are embedded in the higher hierarchies through our being. At this point, spiritual science becomes religion!

It has often been emphasized that we are living in momentous times. In all modesty, we can feel that we are a select group called upon to first receive the treasures of the spirit and then spread them further. And precisely because the luciferic and ahrimanic entities are always particularly active around the turn of the millennium, something very significant will happen for many: Through the work of the earth spirit, united with the Christ, as he looks up into the heavens through us humans - we perceive this as the etheric Christ; and in the image that arises, the spiritual hierarchies, with whom the Christ was united, must recognize him in his earthly incarnation!

Two spiritual entities seek to hinder the development of man. He who wants to prevent us from feeling ourselves as soul organs of the spiritual hierarchies is Lucifer. Instead, he seeks to fill man with other, false ideas. You can really say he makes him obsessed with all kinds of secular and spiritual stuff.

Ahriman, on the other hand, seeks to deceive man by presenting as reality that which is only Maya. When man is blinded, when he looks at the sun, Ahriman also seeks to blind him on earth by spreading the colorful carpet of the sensual world before him in seductive colors, hiding the spiritual reality behind it. The mission of Ahriman on earth is to blind man on earth.

Take, for example, the Copernican system, which entered the cultural development at the dawn of modern times. It is not to be denied that it has its good, but just as little is to be denied that it, as it is taught into the youthful age, also shows its great contradictions and deficiencies. More and more in the future, the urge will arise in many people to eliminate these deficiencies. More and more people will clearly recognize how many contradictions it shows, as far as their view is not darkened by Ahriman. Just recently a book arrived on Dr. Steiner's desk that can only be read by someone with a mathematical education. The author attempts to prove that the Earth is an elongated surface. This is not correct, but it is not as absurd as one would like to believe.

Only spiritual science can shed light on this, because it conveys the thoughts of the gods. That is why it will be the religion of the future. All religions so far have been based only on selfishness

and sentimentality. People were told: If you do this and that, you will receive such and such a reward. This true religion, which is also knowledge, is a religion completely free of egoism. And it had to be given now, because in the time cycle, another one thousand years will soon have passed. There is no longer the fear that the end of the world is near, as there was in the year 1000, but it will become more and more apparent that around the turn of this century, these luciferic and ahrimanic forces will assume ever greater power. More and more people will put psychic powers at their service and be possessed by Lucifer and Ahriman without realizing it, because the devil never feels the people, even when he has them by the collar.

The occultist must blush with shame before the World Spirit when he looks at such souls possessed by Lucifer, knowing what mission these souls have become unfaithful to, namely to be an instrument of the World Spirit so that he can maintain his connection with the Christ Spirit.

That is why true occultism is given to us today, and to study it, to study it seriously and devotedly, means nothing more than to train oneself to become such a tool of the world spirit.

Record C by Alice Kinkel For all degrees

One good way to develop the occult powers of perception is for a person to speak with his senses. We know that in all things, consciousness of various degrees is revealed. Spiritual beings also live behind our senses, but our senses have a different consciousness than that of a human being; they see the world differently than we do. If a person talks to his eye (an occultist can do this with any of his senses), this eye will tell him something that may sound paradoxical: the eye does not see a starry sky as a human being does, it knows of no sun or moon, but it does tell us about something like a heaven. This heaven is the earth with what appears on its surface. We see the sky above. The eye sees the earth below as heaven, and the eye sees this when it is awake. When it is asleep, it would say: My heels, the back of my knee, now perceive what the eye previously saw when awake. The illuminated part of the earth (for the eye, the sky) seems to have slid backwards, behind the eye. The eye perceives our body as its earth. How embedded the eye is in our body. And so embedded, stored in the earth, is the human being. For just as he stands on the earth, he is the sensory organ of the earth.

We are the eye of the earth as humanity. Every human being is an eye of the earth. The earth has many eyes. Just as there are lower animals that have compound eyes, so every human being is a facet of the eye of the earth. The earth has a different consciousness than humans. The spirit of the earth looks out through us as its sensory organs into the heavens, perceiving differently than we do; but it looks so intensely, with such power, that it leaves an imprint of its power in the sensory organ. Just as the physical eye would be blinded if it looked so intensely into the light that an imprint of the power were to arise in the eye, so the earth can bear this strong power. A bony covering, such as our skullcap is, does not prevent it from looking through. And it looks out into space so intensely through the human being at his birth that the human being shows an imprint of the whole starry sky in his brain.

We are the sensory organs of the earth. But our earth also thinks. Its brain and nervous system are the animals of the earth. The higher animals are its brain, the lower ones its spinal cord and solar plexus. And its thoughts are the group souls of the animals. They are also invisible, like our thoughts. The earth also breathes and feeds itself; and these are the plants of the earth. And just as the bone system underlies our body, so the mineral underlies the earth.

[And just as we stand on the earth, we are embedded in it, just as the eye is embedded in the brain. And just as the optic nerve continues into our brain and connects further with our body, so we are the eye of the earth, with which it looks out into space.

Just as the consciousness of the eye is a dreaming one, graduated in sleep, so our consciousness in relation to that of the earth, which is a much brighter one, is also a dreaming one. We can feel like the optic nerve of the earth, growing out of it into the sky. To know ourselves as a sensory organ of the earth is necessary for the future. We are the chosen ones for this knowledge. In all modesty and humility, we want to tell ourselves that. The Christ is the spirit of the earth. Through us, as his sensory organ, he looks out into his home in the heavenly realms: it is not I who looks out, but the Christ in me.

What is proclaimed from the pulpits about Christ can be understood as an atavistic world view, and is directed only at our egotism and sentimentality. But our karma leads us, so to speak, to proclaim a new world view. We are at the starting point of it. This twentieth century, the last century before the year 2000, will need more and more people who know that they are meant to become sense organs for the Christ. What does such knowledge trigger in us? Reverence and deep devotion, true religiosity.

Spiritual science must bring this new world view. That is why we are now receiving it as a gift from the higher worlds. It addresses the greatness of the human being by telling him: You human being [you are destined to become a sense organ for the Christ]...

But it will be difficult to feel and know that we are the sense organs of the earth. Because this awareness will always darken us and not want to let Ahriman arise. He will want us to think and speculate and philosophize about what man is when we cannot feel ourselves as the sense organ of the earth. And the time until the end of the earth will be just long enough for him to hold back people on earth. They would have become so accustomed to the earth that he could then lead them into his realm, that he could establish his kingdom. Because he wants to keep us from knowing that we are an organ of the earth, that is why we are so difficult to understand in the world. More and more confusion.

But our organization is such that at night we leave our physical and etheric bodies here, and the astral body and the ego go into the spiritual world. But we as souls can feel ourselves at night, projecting from the spiritual worlds into the physical world, like horns of feeling stretching out from ourselves into this world, widening more and more. As a soul being, feeling at night that embodies the will of the hierarchies, as they want to see man on earth. As a soul, we are the will, feeling and thinking of the gods. To feel this is even more difficult than to know oneself as a sense organ of the earth. For Lucifer will repeatedly cloud our clear consciousness of this and will present demonic things in front of it, so that people become obsessed with all kinds of spiritual stuff and say to themselves: You should not work on earth with the physical instrument of the body, but with your spiritual powers. That is Lucifer who says that.

It is uncomfortable to have to think again and again in spiritual science, to have to reflect again and again on the thoughts of the gods; because that is what we are doing. It is more comfortable to say to oneself: you don't need any of that, you have all of that in spiritual powers. These are demons, and people will become more and more obsessed by them. The blinding of the human being as an organ of the senses of the earth, that is what Ahriman wants. Being obsessed comes from Lucifer. Why we are being told this, we must ask our karma. We are the ones to whom this is said and we vow loyalty, firm and true loyalty to that to which we have committed ourselves; for the temple is no bauble, but the most sacred thing for us, to which we want to be loyal.

If what has been said is received by our hearts as warmly as it has been given, then we will find the right way, despite all difficulties, to know ourselves by day as the sense organ of the Christ and by night to feel ourselves as the feeling of the hierarchies, which say: The Christ was with us in the spiritual world; he took leave of us in the Mystery of Golgotha; he entered into the earth, and we must feel him down there through the souls of men. A sign that the hierarchies feel the Christ will be when people see the etheric Christ, and this must always be the case in the last century of the second millennium and in the first centuries of the third millennium. Today, many people are confused. For the adversaries of the Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman, will be unleashed around the year 2000, and there will be great confusion. But we should feel that we are the ones who know: Through me, the Christ looks into the spiritual worlds, and my etheric vision is the feeling of the hierarchies of the Christ (on earth) in the earth. He who knows the connections must blush before the good advice of the world spirits, the true light gods, when he sees how all kinds of spiritual stuff, demons, are mistaken for the true spiritual world.

We must know that we are placed in the struggle between Ahriman and Lucifer with the true light gods.

[“I am the eye of the earth with my physical body.

And with my soul, I am the tool for the activity of the gods.”]

Notes D by Unknown

Something very important that we should awaken in ourselves more often in meditation is a kind of conversation with our senses. Take the eye, for example. The eye does not see as we see the sky above us with the sun, moon and stars, but we have to imagine that we are the microcosm of the earth for the eye, and the surrounding world is for the eye what the sky is for us. The eye is as if in a dreaming consciousness, not as we are in a bright daytime consciousness. And at night, when we sleep and close our eyelids, the eye sinks into a deep, dreamless sleep, and it is as if the upper half were dark and could only be seen through the hollow of the heel and knee, just as the sun disappears behind the earth for people on the other side of the world in the evening.

Just as the eye is the sensory organ of the human being, so the human being is the sensory organ of the earth, only that the earth has many eyes, just as there are animals that have what are known as compound eyes. And our head is to the earth what the eye is to us. The powers with which the earth looks out into the cosmos are so strong that they penetrate the firm skullcap and look at the cosmos and the sky. The starry sky is imprinted in our brain, and right at birth a certain part of the starry sky is imprinted in our brain. We must endeavor, in humility and modesty, to provide the best possible organ of vision for the spirit of the earth, through which it can look up into the cosmos.

But the earth also needs breathing and nourishment, just like humans. The plant world is there for this purpose, supplying the earth with substances and forces from the cosmos.

And the earth can think too. What is achieved through the human brain, spinal cord and nerves is done for the earth by the animal world. The higher animal world corresponds more to the human brain, the lower to the nerves and the extended marrow. It is the group souls of the animals through which the earth thinks.

The earth's bone system is in the mineral kingdom.

The spirit of the earth is the Christ, who, through us as the earth's sensory organ, looks up to the higher hierarchies from which he came and which he left to connect with the earth. And we must increasingly make ourselves the appropriate tool and seek to develop the abilities slumbering within us so that we can see the etheric Christ in the last century of the second millennium. Then we will also make ourselves a tool for the high gods of light, who will look up to the Christ through us, whom they have been seeking on earth since he left his true home. This realization will lead us to true religiosity, not what is proclaimed to us from the pulpits by the priests. There, appeals are made to people's selfishness and sentimentality to awaken religiosity. They are told: Your sins will be punished, your good deeds will be rewarded.

Just as the eye is implanted through the nerves and is connected to the human organism, so is our head, the eye of the earth, connected to the earth through our physical body. Our body is like the nerve that attaches to the eye and integrates it into the human organism.

We should consider ourselves, in all humility and modesty, to be the select few of people who, in the last century of the second millennium, are to hear this wisdom and these truths first. For they must now flow into humanity. We should not sink into the mire of the swamp, but rise up to the world of light.

There's a nice remark by Hegel: The deepest thought is united with the figure of Christ, with the historical and outer one, and that's the great thing about the Christian religion, that for all of its profundity it's easy to understand in an outer way, and yet also challenges one to get into it more deeply. Thus it's for every stage of development and also satisfies the highest demands.

The fact that the Christian religion is understandable to every stage of consciousness is clear through the history of its development. It must be the task of spiritual science in general to show that this religion invites one to penetrate the deepest teachings of wisdom that mankind has. Theosophy is not a religion but an instrument for understanding religions. It's related to religion in about the same way that our mathematical theory is related to ancient math books. One can understand mathematics out of one's own intellectual forces and the laws of space without referring to Euclid's geometry book. But when one has taken in geometric teachings one will treasure that old book all the more, that first placed these laws before the human spirit. That's the way it is with theosophy. Its sources are not in documents and aren't based on tradition. Its sources are in the real spiritual worlds; that's where one must find them and grasp them in that one develops one's spiritual forces, whereas one grasps mathematics as one tries to develop one's intellectual forces. The intellect that enables us to grasp the laws of the sense world is carried by an organ, the grain. We also need corresponding organs to grasp the laws of spiritual worlds. How did our physical organs develop? When outer forces worked on them, sun forces, sound forces. That's how the eyes and ears developed out of neutral, dull organs that did not permit a penetration of the sense world at first and only opened slowly. Our spiritual organs will also open when the right forces work on them.

Now which forces storm in our spiritual organs that are still dull? During the day forces press into a modern's astral body that work against his development, and that even kill organs he had before he got his bright day consciousness. A man used to perceive astral impressions indirectly. The surrounding world spoke to him through pictures, through the astral world's form of expression. Living, differentiated pictures, colors float around free in space as an expression of pleasure and displeasure, sympathy and antipathy. Then thee colors laid themselves around the surface of things and objects received firm contours. This happened when man's physical body became even firmer and more differentiated. When his eyes opened completely to physical light, when maya's veil placed itself before the spiritual world, man's astral body received impressions from the surroundings via the physical and etheric bodies and transmitted them to the ego, from where they entered men's consciousness. Thereby he became continuously active. But what worked on him in this way wasn't plastic, formative forces that corresponded to his own nature; it was forces that consumed and killed him to awaken his ego-consciousness. Only at night when he dived down into the rhythmic spiritual world that was homogeneous to him did he strengthen himself anew so that he could send forces to the etheric and physical bodies again. The life of the single ego, ego-consciousness arose from the conflict of impressions, from the killing of the astral organs that worked unconsciously in man before. Death out of life, life out of death. The snake's circle was closed. Now the forces that rekindled life in the dead remnants of previous astral organs and molded them plastically had to come out of this awakened ego-consciousness.

Mankind moves toward this goal, it's guided towards it by its teachers, leaders and great initiates, whose symbol is the snake. It's an education towards spiritual activity, and therefore it's a long and difficult one. Great initiates could make the task easier for themselves and men if they would elaborate the astral body when it's free at night, so that they imprinted astral organs into them, worked on them from outside. But that would be a working within the dream consciousness of a man, an intervention into his sphere of freedom. Man's highest principle, the will, would never develop. Man is led step by step. There was an initiation in wisdom, one in feeling, and one in willing. Real Christianity is the integration of all initiation stages. The initiation of antiquity was the annunciation, the preparation. Man slowly and gradually emancipated himself from gurus. Initiation at first took place in a complete trance consciousness, but there was a way to imprint a memory of what had happened outside the physical body, into the latter. That's why it was necessary to separate the etheric body, the carrier of memory, and also the astral body. Both of them dived down into the sea of wisdom, into mahadeva, into the light of Osiris. This initiation took place in the deepest secrecy and seclusion. No breath of the outer world was permitted to push in between. The man was as if dead to the outer world, the delicate seeds were cultivated away from blinding daylight.

Then initiation stepped out of the darkness of the mysteries into the brightest daylight. The initiation of all mankind took place historically—symbolically to begin with—at the stage of feeling in a great, mighty personality, the carrier of the highest unifying principle, of the Word, that expresses the hidden Father, that is his manifestation, that since it took on human form it became the son of man and could be the representative for all mankind, the unifying band for all I's: In Christ, the spirit of life, the eternal unifying one. This event was so powerful that it could go on working in every human being who lived by it, right into the appearance of stigmata, right into the most excruciating pains. Feeling was shaken to its depths. An intensity of feeling arose that had never flooded the world in such mighty waves before. The sacrifice of the I had taken place for all in the initiation on the cross of divine love. The physical expression of the I, the blood, had flowed in love for mankind and it worked in such a way that thousands pressed to this initiation, to this death and let their blood stream out in love, in enthusiasm for mankind. How much blood flowed out in this way was never sufficiently emphasized, people are no longer aware of it, not even in theosophical circles. But the waves of enthusiasm that flowed down in this blood and ascended have fulfilled their task. They've become mighty impulse givers. They have made men ripe for an initiation of will.

And this is Christ's legacy.

There's a nice remark by Hegel: The deepest thought is united with the figure of Christ, with the historical and outer one, and that's the great thing about the Christian religion, that for all of its profundity it's easy to understand in an outer way, and yet also challenges one to get into it more deeply. Thus it's for every stage of development and also satisfies the highest demands.

The fact that the Christian religion is understandable to every stage of consciousness is clear through the history of its development. It must be the task of spiritual science in general to show that this religion invites one to penetrate the deepest teachings of wisdom that mankind has. Theosophy is not a religion but an instrument for understanding religions. It's related to religion in about the same way that our mathematical theory is related to ancient math books. One can understand mathematics out of one's own intellectual forces and the laws of space without referring to Euclid's geometry book. But when one has taken in geometric teachings one will treasure that old book all the more, that first placed these laws before the human spirit. That's the way it is with theosophy. Its sources are not in documents and aren't based on tradition. Its sources are in the real spiritual worlds; that's where one must find them and grasp them in that one develops one's spiritual forces, whereas one grasps mathematics as one tries to develop one's intellectual forces. The intellect that enables us to grasp the laws of the sense world is carried by an organ, the brain. We also need corresponding organs to grasp the laws of spiritual worlds. How did our physical organs develop? When outer forces worked on them, sun forces, sound forces. That's how the eyes and ears developed out of neutral, dull organs that did not permit a penetration of the sense world at first and only opened slowly. Our spiritual organs will also open when the right forces work on them.

Now which forces storm in our spiritual organs that are still dull? During the day forces press into a modern's astral body that work against his development, and that even kill organs he had before he got his bright day consciousness. A man used to perceive astral impressions indirectly. The surrounding world spoke to him through pictures, through the astral world's form of expression. Living, differentiated pictures, colors float around free in space as an expression of pleasure and displeasure, sympathy and antipathy. Then these colors laid themselves around the surface of things and objects received firm contours. This happened when man's physical body became even firmer and more differentiated. When his eyes opened completely to physical light, when maya's veil placed itself before the spiritual world, man's astral body received impressions from the surroundings via the physical and etheric bodies and transmitted them to the ego, from where they entered men's consciousness. Thereby he became continuously active. But what worked on him in this way wasn't plastic, formative forces that corresponded to his own nature; it was forces that consumed and killed him to awaken his ego-consciousness. Only at night when he dived down into the rhythmic spiritual world that was homogeneous to him did he strengthen himself anew so that he could send forces to the etheric and physical bodies again. The life of the single ego, ego-consciousness arose from the conflict of impressions, from the killing of the astral organs that worked unconsciously in man before. Death out of life, life out of death. The snake's circle was closed. Now the forces that rekindled life in the dead remnants of previous astral organs and molded them plastically had to come out of this awakened ego-consciousness.

Mankind moves toward this goal, it's guided towards it by its teachers, leaders and great initiates, whose symbol is the snake. It's an education towards spiritual activity, and therefore it's a long and difficult one. Great initiates could make the task easier for themselves and men if they would elaborate the astral body when it's free at night, so that they imprinted astral organs into them, worked on them from outside. But that would be a working within the dream consciousness of a man, an intervention into his sphere of freedom. Man's highest principle, the will, would never develop. Man is led step by step. There was an initiation in wisdom, one in feeling, and one in willing. Real Christianity is the integration of all initiation stages. The initiation of antiquity was the annunciation, the preparation. Man slowly and gradually emancipated himself from gurus. Initiation at first took place in a complete trance consciousness, but there was a way to imprint a memory of what had happened outside the physical body, into the latter. That's why it was necessary to separate the etheric body, the carrier of memory, and also the astral body. Both of them dived down into the sea of wisdom, into mahadeva, into the light of Osiris. This initiation took place in the deepest secrecy and seclusion. No breath of the outer world was permitted to push in between. The man was as if dead to the outer world, the delicate seeds were cultivated away from blinding daylight.

Then initiation stepped out of the darkness of the mysteries into the brightest daylight. The initiation of all mankind took place historically—symbolically to begin with—at the stage of feeling in a great, mighty personality, the carrier of the highest unifying principle, of the Word, that expresses the hidden Father, that is his manifestation, that since it took on human form it became the son of man and could be the representative for all mankind, the unifying band for all I's: In Christ, the spirit of life, the eternal unifying one. This event was so powerful that it could go on working in every human being who lived by it, right into the appearance of stigmata, right into the most excruciating pains. Feeling was shaken to its depths. An intensity of feeling arose that had never flooded the world in such mighty waves before. The sacrifice of the I had taken place for all in the initiation on the cross of divine love. The physical expression of the I, the blood, had flowed in love for mankind and it worked in such a way that thousands pressed to this initiation, to this death and let their blood stream out in love, in enthusiasm for mankind. How much blood flowed out in this way was never sufficiently emphasized, people are no longer aware of it, not even in theosophical circles. But the waves of enthusiasm that flowed down in this blood and ascended have fulfilled their task. They've become mighty impulse givers. They have made men ripe for an initiation of will.

And this is Christ's legacy.

Archetypal Self from whom we have proceeded
Primal Self who lives in all things
To you, you higher Self, we return.

To this we add the verse that expresses how this primal Self works on man, how it appears to men:

Truth, wisdom, immeasurablity, O God,
Bliss, eternity, beauty,
Peace blessedness, undividedness
On me
Peace, peace, peace.

The nature of the Trinity is expressed in the first part, and at the end the way in which this Trinity sinks down into a man's soul.

Mantra:

Primal Self from which everything proceeded
To which everything returns
Primal Self that lives in me
Towards you I strive.
AUM-peace, peace, peace, AUM.

Everything proceeded from this higher Self, even human bodies. We should not think that there's anything lowly or of little value in the world. Everything is divine. Even a grain of sand is something that came from the Godhead. In minerals we see the thoughts of the Godhead that have become form. The Godhead's thought comes to expression in all mineral forms.

Aside from form the Godhead also poured out its life in plants.

In addition to their life the Godhead has also poured feeling into animals and man's form and lower soul. Everything around us is an expression of God's power.

A man's body is the most perfect thing that the Godhead created for him. Man's body is the most perfect form that the Gods developed. It's an instrument through which man's soul looks out into the world. The human body is equipped in a wonderful way. Man's body is supposed to be a sacred temple for his soul. But the soul is not yet perfected. It's just beginning to develop. Man's body makes no mistakes; it's the imperfect soul that's constantly making them. Passions, desires, and drives live in it, and it uses the body to satisfy these desires.

But just as there are senses in man's body through which the soul looks out into the world, so organs will also gradually develop in the soul that will make it ever more perfect. Such organs are already developing in the soul.

We find a mighty drive in the animal kingdom that's independent of sense organs. If one brings a foreign pair of butterflies to Germany and releases the male in Frankfurt and the female say in Magdeburg, the two will reunite without fail. They do this with special organs that are even finer than sense organs. If we meet a total stranger whom we feel a great sympathy for, as happens between man and wife and also between friends, then this is a sign that these people belong together and that they have soul organs that tell them this and bring them together.

Men will develop such soul organs ever more as they purify their astral body and ennoble their other bodies. It's quite important to consider which foods are good for or harmful to higher development. Not everyone is in a position to pick out the foods that are favorable for his occult development. Sometimes it's better to renounce things that promote us inwardly. But it's nevertheless true that some foods have qualities that do not help men. A man must develop certain organs for his higher development. To this end certain concentrations are done in yoga exercises. When a man concentrates on a point between the eyes at the root of the nose with the thought “I am” he develops the organ that we call the two-petaled lotus flower and that makes him into an “I”. An animal can't say “I” to himself. When man's forebrain developed, the organ of the I was put into man's head at the root of the nose. The I lives there in man. But in animals the I is outside in front of the head and not in the skull. In animals it lives in the astral world. For instance all dogs have an ego in the astral world. In dogs a red stream from the astral plane streams in at the place where we have the organ of the I, and in a dog this ego becomes manifest in lower desires. In man the I streams out of this place.

But it isn't enough that the organ of the ego is developed in man. So that the higher self can stream into him to make him into a higher being, we find the organ for this where a vertical line from the top of the head crosses a horizontal line through the root of the nose, or a little above it. This organ is the pineal gland. Man makes a connection with the divine self in the world through the pineal gland. A third higher organ, the 16-petaled lotus flower, lies in man's larynx, and a fourth organ, the 12-petaled lotus is in the heart region. A man must choose his foods wisely so that these organs can develop in the right way. What's good for his inner development is what's connected with an animal's life process, namely, milk and what's made from it, and in plants what grows towards the sun above the ground.

A plant is an inverted man. When the sun was still united with the earth a plant's flowers stuck into the sun and its roots turned outwards. After the sun left the earth plants turned around and chastely turned their flow towards the sun with their roots in the earth. An animal is a half inverted plant, and man is a completely inverted plant since he turns all the organs that a plant turns towards the sun, away from it. Man's root, head or brain, is turned towards the sun. Plant, animal and man together form a cross.

Subterranean plant parts that are turned away from the sun aren't good for occult development, whereas everything that grows upward is good for men, especially fruit and grain that a plant gives us without us having to destroy it. Beans, lentils and other leguminous fruit pollute the etheric body (nitrogen). Milk is good for men because it's connected with an animal's life process and animals give it voluntarily. Whereas meat obtained by killing animals is bad for occult development, and so are all salts.

The higher self can enter a man if he prepares himself through a selfless life and through purification of his body. It's not enough to retreat within. The higher self is not in man at first but outside in nature and in his older brothers, the masters and leaders of mankind. From there it must go into him. Then he's overcome by the peace that's higher than all reason. That's what the formula: Truth, wisdom, immeasurability, O God ... refers to.

Satyam jnanam anantam brahma
Anandarupam amritam bibharti
Shatam sivam advaitam
Om, shantih, shantih, shantih.

A man is always destroying living things. He kills when he breathes. No living creature could exist on earth if only men who exhale carbon dioxide lived on it. The gas that a man exhales pollutes the atmosphere. It is lethal for all living things. Plants exhale oxygen and thereby enable live things to exist.

When the earth was still at the old Moon stage there was no human kingdom such as the one we have. The whole Moon was a kind of a plant being like a peat bog, soft and alive. The beings who are now men developed out of this plant-mineral earth. This plant porridge also contained present plants and animals. There was an intermediate kingdom between these two: animal-plants had sensation. There was a plant kingdom on old Moon, higher than the present mineral kingdom, an animal-plant kingdom of sentient plants, and a kingdom of man-animals, higher than the present animal kingdom and lower than the present human kingdom.

Creatures on this old Moon mainly lived in a nitrogen atmosphere. The Moon was surrounded by it, and it perished from an excess of nitrogen. The mushrooms that now still live on a more plantlike soil are remnants of the animal-plant kingdom that was present on old Moon. Since they contain much nitrogen they're not good for occult development. Parasitic mistletoe is another remnant of that kingdom.

After old Moon had perished from its atmosphere everything went through a pralaya, re-emerged, and present earth evolution began. Then after awhile everything that wasn't favorable for further evolution split off and formed the present moon. Other kingdoms developed out of the Moon kingdoms on earth. So that present plants could arise, one part of the plant-mineral kingdom had to be pushed down a stage, and the present mineral kingdom gradually arose through consolidation and hardening of the same. Men had not been able to perceive the world objectively on old Moon, but now that the plant-mineral kingdom had descended and the present mineral kingdom formed gradually it became objectively visible. It was only through the solidification that it could now reflect light and there was a world that became visible for physical eyes. This is what the biblical story about the creation of light refers to. All heavenly bodies that can be seen in a telescope have solidified to the mineral stage. But there are many more heavenly bodies than those we can see minerally.

Plants not only live from the mineral world, but also from the light that is reflected by the mineral kingdom. And just as plants live from this light, so men and animals live on the oxygen that plants exhale. The animal-plants of old Moon went down a step on one side and up a step on the other side. That's why animals can live from plants' oxygen. Physically oxygen is what otherwise lives in a plant as its etheric body.

Men-animals also split into two kingdoms, into the two sexes. This split gives rise to the human love that initially is still physical. Man can lift himself into the Gods' realm through this love. They lived from men's physical love just as men and animals live from the oxygen that plants emanate, and as plants live from light that's radiated back from the mineral kingdom. The nectar and ambrosia that the Gods feed on is the love of men and women. Man's ascent takes place through the overcoming of physical love, the regulation of the breathing process, and the development of kundalini light. First the overcoming of physical love. A separation of the previously unisexual man into two sexes was necessary so that the intellect could develop in man. Man was split into a higher spiritual nature and a lower animal one. It's an ascent when a man overcomes the forces of physical love and transforms them into higher, more spiritual forces through his own inner soul force. Secondly, a man who wants to develop higher must give up the forces that he takes from plants. Man uses up the vital oxygen that plants exhale through his breathing process. The breath becomes purer through rhythmization of the breathing process and inner soul work, so that what a man exhales contains less carbon dioxide. Then the air around him isn't used up as fast, and he doesn't take away so much oxygen or vital substance from other living beings. To attain this as much as possible Indian yogis withdraw into caves, where they breathe as little oxygen as possible. They can do that because their breath is so pure from soul work that they can live a long time without intake of outer air. The more spiritualized a man is the longer he can live in his own air and the less carbon dioxide he exhales.

The breath of a materialist ruins much more air than that of an idealist. Modern materialists can't live without a continual supply of fresh air. A man out in the country brings a certain rhythm into his life through his life with nature. Thereby the air that he exhales becomes better, whereas the city air gets full of poison through men's immorality. Plants stream out pure air, oxygen. They're pure, selfless, without desire, and that's why a man feels good among plants. But a continual supply of fresh air actually has an unfavorable effect on occult development, because one thereby takes too much life from plants. An esoteric learns to control his breathing process, and thereby he can have moments when he doesn't participate in the destructive process that's brought about by breathing. Thirdly a man learns to radiate back the light that the mineral kingdom reflects. He develops kundalini light and radiates it into the world, thereby giving light back to it—the light of the human kingdom. A man doesn't know what an important instrument he has in his organism. He knows the rest of the world better than he knows himself. He can in fact develop wonderful capacities.

A man has an organ in himself that fills with air when he inhales and loses this air when he exhales. It fills up with outside air right into its finest branches on inhalation. But spirit lives in the air around us. When a man inhales he breathes spirit in, and when he exhales he puts some of the spirit that lives in him into the exhaled air. The spirit develops in him ever more and also outside in the world through the rhythmicized, spirit-filled breath. The spiritual man's growth is promoted through breathing in and out. The most important thing is the spirit that a man puts into his exhaled breath. The spirit is built up by thoughts. A man builds up and streams out his spirit through every thought that he gives along with the exhalation. Man didn't always have an organ to inhale air. Beings breathed fire instead of air on old Moon. Just as we breathe oxygen in and out, so they breathed fire in and cold out. Future men will no longer breathe air. Just as a man prepares his warmth by feeding his warmth organ, the heart, with the blood circulation, through air streaming in from outside, so he will later have an inner air organ through which his organism will be supplied with what we now take in from the atmosphere. A man prepares his own warmth, that on old Moon had been directly sucked in from the environment by the beings there. A man will be able to elaborate the used up air in his interior. Later on he'll no longer live in an outer air. On Jupiter he'll live in light and inhale light just as we inhale air now and inhaled warmth on old Moon.

Overcoming of physical love or development of astral body and transformation into spirit self, ennoblement of animal kingdom ... wisdom

Rhythmization of breathing or development of the etheric body and transformation into life spirit, elevation of the plant kingdom ... beauty

Radiation of kundalini or development of physical body, transformation into spirit man, elevation of mineral kingdom ... power

When all of this has happened the mineral kingdom will pass over into a kind of plant kingdom, then the latter into an animal kingdom, etc. until the next round.

Today we'll try to get a little closer to the nature of the three Logoi. Many Theosophists speak about these things before they know much theosophy. This can only bring confusion and harm. If the higher consciousness isn't awakened in a man, he can't really form an idea about the three Logoi. And yet one can prepare the soul for right vision in the future by making the right pictures. All spiritual things make an imprint on the physical world also. So we'll look at the things in the physical world that correspond to these high forces.

People usually say that a man has five senses. Occultism only names three, namely smell, sight and hearing. Taste and the warmth sense lie between these. When I smell something I take very fine particles of the particular substance into my nose. Therefore in smell I perceive matter itself. But when I see with my eyes I only perceive an image of the object that's produced by a chemical process in the eye. Taste is a sense in between smell and sight. Although I take parts of the object into myself when I taste it, I don't perceive these parts directly as in smell, for I must first subject them to a chemical process to taste them. In hearing I perceive air vibrations and no objects. I also perceive particular oscillations when I feel warmth, but then my whole body perceives, whereas in hearing the perception of oscillations takes place in an organ that's especially developed for this.

The three Logoi are related to these three senses. The third Logos is so selfless that he lets his being resound through the world. The second streams himself out in pictures. The first Logos lets his own body stream out. That is the highest grade of selflessness, when one can let one's own essence flow out.

At the beginning of the world the first Logos began to let his being stream out; a fragrance filled world space. Let the world aroma be the first Logos. All material things originated from his body. He is the aroma of the world. Then the second Logos began to stream out and he wove pictures and forms into the world aroma. The world began to take on form; light and colors lit up. Then the third Logos sounded through the developing world. World aroma flowed in space, wonderful forms lit up, and the sounds of the third Logos surged through this shimmering, fragrant world.

Thus we can look upon the whole world around us as an outflow of the three Logoi and thereby gradually press forward to their true nature. Now a Logos does not work by himself—the three live and weave completely in each other so that each of the three also expresses himself in the other two. But we can't perceive the effects of the three equally well, because they stream out at different times.

When our chain of planets first saw the light the streaming out of the third Logos began. And his sound will only die out when our planet chain will have reached the end of its development. But the waves of the two other Logoi didn't first stream out at the beginning of our world chain, they came over to us from previous world evolutions. The flow waves of these two have a longer duration than those of the third Logos. But before our planetary chain reached its goal on the Sun, the streaming of the second had ended, and a new outstreaming began. This new outstreaming is what really belongs to our planetary system at which we too are working. Long before the new radiation of the second Logos had fully streamed out it prepared itself. It was such preparatory streams that brought Buddha, Zoroaster, Hermes and other founders of religion into the world. When the light of the second Logos shone in a preparatory way for the last time, it shone the brightest, and that was in Christ Jesus. When it shines again now it's the second Logos himself who radiates out his being anew.

The flow wave of the first Logos is even longer than that of the second one. When the second Logos has already been flowing along for some time, the first one's radiation is just dying away and begins his new outraying, that then only really belongs to our planetary chain. Thus the third Logos becomes the most clearly perceptible to us. He sounds loud and clear, and if we want to characterize his nature we say that he has a clear, vocalic sound: A.

The first and second Logoi also sound along in the third one, the first and third radiate as pictures in the second Logos, and the second and third Logoi stream out their aroma in the first Logos. But to begin with only the interactions of the first and second are discernable in the third Logos for us. Now if we can hear the clear, loud A of the third Logos, the sound of the second Logos can also be heard in there.

Since our second Logos is still developing, his tone still sounds dull and yet vocalically full, like U. Our first Logos who only arises in the future sounds along like a quiet, humming undertone as a dully consonantic M. Thus we have the sound of the most sublime powers expressed in AUM. That's the goal towards which we are all striving: to participate in the essence of these very sacred world forces. A human soul only has value for world evolution to the extent that it participates in these powers: AUM

The third Logos, sound, is entirely on the physical plane. We can generate sounds and take them in. Later on a man will be able to place the pictures of the outer world he receives via his eyes outside again as forms via his pineal gland and blood that he'll then have under control. He'll generate oxygen himself and convert the blue blood that goes to the heart into red blood without the use of outside air. And he'll give it for the creation of pictures and forms. When he's become still more selfless he'll be able to give out his own substances and create beings out of it by means of the pituitary gland and place them outside.