The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We still have one question: What is the relationship between Earth and the other planets? Mars and Mercury can shed some light on this, but because erroneous ideas have been formed about them, it is a difficult subject. From the very beginning, the Masters of the Wisdom have not willingly answered questions.

Some words of a great master, which are found in the Secret Doctrine: “Do not give the great wisdom!” And so on. They express a clear warning. There are reasons why it is not allowed to talk about this until man is mature enough.

The relations of the earth to Mars and Mercury.

Before they inhabited this Earth, people lived on the moon. The moon that can be seen today is only a piece of it. Before that, they were on the sun, and before that on Saturn. Three planets in a row. The days of the week are named after them. Colorless: Saturday.

Now to Earth: a globe in metamorphosis, which it completes in seven times seven cycles.

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Moon orange, then darker, then green - Earth - colored, then over to the next state darker again, so the successive states.

So after the moon – which had turned orange – had completed its 49 metamorphoses and man had developed as far as the goal set for him here on the third round, all life contracted into the germinal state in order to flourish again on earth. The earth had to go through the Saturn state in seven cycles, then the sun state, then the moon state, and is now becoming physical in its fourth round, which is where we are now in the most solid matter and have the color green, the previous phase was orange.

The moon was only astral at the beginning, then it became dense ether. The earth was first ether and then solid, then astral and so on.

We will only truly understand our Earth when we familiarize ourselves with what has happened on our Earth. The Earth goes through seven stages of development, which are the seven races.

I. The polar root race. Etheric substance. Then denser, not like our air, the
II. root race, the Hyperboreans. The
III. Race, the Lemurians, air-fire nebula, not yet dense. Up to the Lemurians, humans were bisexual, but from then on they became unisexual. IV. Race, the Atlanteans, who perished in the flood. V. The Aryan race, our present race.

Then the sixth and seventh races, whose names will be given later. From the seventh race, then, over to the next cycle. Here in this fourth round, the earth has come to its full development. In the Lemurian race, man has come to his full destiny. If man cannot reach another level, he descends from the moon, because he was in a high level of dream consciousness.

He came down from the moon because he was in a highly dream-conscious state.

The Lemurians are similar to the state of the moon people. The most mature fruit of the moon development was bisexual. When he had then gone through all the rounds of the earth to become a Lemurian (gap in the transcript).

The soul of the Lemurians was different from our present one. He also had only two senses. Hearing and touch. But it was not the sense of touch as we have it, to touch solid objects, but it was a feeling of warmth and cold, of air. Man was like a soundboard. The air was denser, the water thinner. A mass of fog was the air.

Man lived in the fire fog. Everything around him resounded, he heard as if clairaudient. He heard the air crackle like the rumble of a thunderstorm. He could then arrange his life and activities accordingly. Through the sense of touch he could feel his way to the food. There were not images that were like pictures, but like dream images, but regularly in colors, it was an inner seething and weaving. When he felt red, it was his life itself and was not directed towards external objects, but it had a magnetizing effect, for example: when he felt fear, it was ugly images. These had been brought by people from the moon. The human of the Lemurian race would not have been able to progress if the other impact had not occurred.

The facility for this further training was not available. But in addition to these average people, higher beings were already there. For example, there were beings who had already risen to such a high level on the sun; they no longer needed to go through the moon phases. These are the solar Pitris. On the sun, they had already attained this superhuman nature. This nature is also much further advanced and more perfect in its soul life. While the average human being only saw images in his surroundings, these Pitris saw true revelations in the images, a higher kind of images. This was the expression of a high spiritual entity. It was a different kind of knowledge than our present-day knowledge, it was like intuition. They did not study natural laws, but perceived nature. Such entities had to reveal themselves to people.

Before the Lemurians, man would have become a statue, a cinder – he now needed a new influence. He would not have been able to develop the life of thought. These guides were there, they had a lot of power, quite unlike the masters today. They could intervene in development – just as chemists use substances. They formed the astral-inserted human body, which was taken from somewhere else. These high guides were never connected to the earth, these solar beings could come together with other planets. The first three races - earth - were important, where that could be supplied; and that had to be studied on [other] celestial bodies. The leaders have studied it, they have brought it from Mars, which was just about to darken. Mars has different inhabitants than the earth. The earth is physical in nature, but Mars is astral, but frozen, and in this state it is in the same low sphere as our earth. Mars has two higher planets. This astral one is in the same sphere as the earth is now in the physical. Mars is astral, but the Martians have become physically tangible directly from the astral state. And this astral covering has been brought down from Mars and incorporated into the human being, thereby enabling the human being to develop further.

A second impact of the highest spirituality has become the earth through correspondence with Venus, since the ingredients are fetched, which man still needed. Through studies of the beings of Venus. These sons of Venus have come down to bring to earth what they - the sons of Venus - have studied on other planets.

A third impact was now coming. Man, who now had the spark of the spirit, had to be led further. First he had to go through fear and striving, through passion, through desires and wishes, but now he had to be led to a desireless spirituality. Mercury is in the stage of brightening, which shows a highly developed astral being, from where the manasic bodies were fetched.

The first race on our Earth had the development of Mars and Mercury. Actually, we owe our properties to the moon and the sun, but then to Mars and Mercury.

Saturn stage = Saturday
Moon stage = Monday
Mars impact = Tuesday
Mercury impact = Mercury day

So much for the present, but they point to the future. The Mercury stage is attained by our Earth in the next planet. The Earth is not designated by the days of the week because it is itself, it lies in between.

Today, man already has the beginning of the higher purest wisdom within him, on the next devachan; but will only become physical in the future.

If we observe Jupiter, we learn how people, how the beings of Jupiter become. There is a relationship with Jupiter. The beings are an example to us.

Jupiter = Zeus state. Minerva = Pallas Athene, who sprang from the head of Jupiter.

The beings are no longer connected to the Kama-Rupa, but are beings of the highest spirituality.

Then finally with Venus. This planet is so far away from us that the beings only have an indirect effect on us. These planets also have their own chains. With Venus, one speaks of Kronos - Uranus - Jupiter - Jeudi, Venus - Friday - Freya - Vendredi.

The days of the week are written down, the wise men have taken them down from the sky. We have learned a secret here, how the great leaders descended to inspire us.

That is why it is said: God Jupiter descended to marry human women.

Zeus and Dionysus. Mercury in Greek. Myth = Mercury, son of Zeus and Maya, a Hellenic nymph. But esoterically connected to Mercury.

Hellenic nymphs. Ares has descendants who have dragon teeth.

German myth Wotan = Mercury = Wednesday

Mercury connects with Erda, she is clairvoyant, she can see the future. Brunhilde was born of her - of Erda. Brunhilde = wish girl, passion.

The initiated sages therefore went to remind people of their current situation. Time had to be given a name to remind them. Thursday will now be a holiday for people because they are developing into a Jupiter being.

The Earth from Mercury and Mars.

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The lower beings are abandoned and pushed back into animality to further the development of man, and with the next race the lower ones are eliminated again, so with the Lemurians the reptiles were rejected.

With the Atlanteans, the mammals were split off. Our savages today are degenerated beings.

Man has been pushed down, but the guilt will be redeemed once again. Karma has come about because man had to descend and become physical.

Such a solar being is embodied in Hermes; the hermaphroditic time. When we were on the sun, the sun was spatially another sun; so today's sun is in a different place. But the clairvoyant sees the sun in the place where it was then. The old place is still on the mental plan. The moon has also suffered a shift.

In the Middle Ages, the Ptolemaic system was still known. According to astronomical observations, the earth was at the center, and esoterically this is indeed the case.

Copernicus only showed the sky externally, physically.

The fifth race begins in the twelfth century.

Additional information from a typewritten transcription of Camilla Wandrey's notes:

The Solarpitris were superhuman beings, they had a fundamentally different disposition, especially in their spiritual life, than humans. These exalted beings took young humanity under their protection. They were able to experience revelations of higher spiritual powers and beings, they perceived the gods, they possessed a knowledge that lived into the gods through intuition, they perceived the living divine beings directly.

Man needed a new impetus to keep him from ossifying; he could not develop a spiritual and soul life of his own accord. These mighty Solarpitris had the vision that could truly connect them with other planets. They studied the other beings on the other planets in order to utilize the fruits of their studies for human beings. Thus they observed the development of beings on Mars. Mars now has the astral state, not the physical state, as its deepest. They studied the sheaths of the beings on Mars, and a kind of 'downward pulling' of the astral sheaths of the Martian beings took place. That was the impact. Through this impact from Mars, people were able to receive the passions, the desires, the sexual - KamaRupa.

The second impact, that which as spirituality, as pure, virginal spirituality, can also underlie the passionate, the covetous, the spiritual-covetous, became possible for these Solarpitris through the same study taking place in relation to Venus.

Then man received the third impact, which came a little later. Man now had the spark of the spirit on the one hand, and the passions on the other. He now had to be led further. He had to be given something so that he would not sink into the depths of the Kama-Rupa brought from Mars.

The more delicate Kama-Rupa, which serves the thought life and enables man to pacify his passions, was brought by the Solarpitris from Mercury. Thus mankind received spiritual impregnation through the Solarpitris from Mercury, Mars and Venus: the two Kama-Rupa and that which is to establish the balance between the two.

From Jupiter, the Solarpitris then brought what we now want to develop, the spiritual essence of man, which can attain wisdom, manas. Jupiter gave man the opportunity to attain wisdom, while from Venus flow the virgin heights of the spirit, which we can only sense, which are still far from our reach, even if we have the potential, the ability to accept this divine inheritance from the Solar Pitris within us.

The esoteric week, which we as true esotericists should relive again and again in our thoughts and feelings, is an earthly reflection of the effectiveness of the Solarpitris for humanity.

We have listed Saturn, Sun, Moon-day. Then comes Mars-day - Tuesday. Here Mars is thought of as identical with the first half of the earth's development. Then Mercury. Mercury or Wotanstag, Wednesday - Wednesday, Wotan is the same as Mercury. Then Donars-day. Donar is Jupiter. There should always be Jupiter Day, Thursday, the day of the future, a festival and a holy day for every esoteric and also for everyone who wants to become an esoteric. And finally, the day of Venus, of Freya. Venerdi in Italian, Vendredi in French, these words evoke the ancient knowledge of the future secret of humanity, which is commemorated by the day of Venus, Friday.

Today I would like to say a few words about the development of the future. We must be clear about earthly human development because it is necessary for the apocalypse, because doubts are very easily possible.

If one can come to look back by means of certain methods that one must apply, it can still be doubtful to look into the future.

But being prophetic is less doubtful now because everything in nature has laws, but only those who see through the laws can say something.

Whoever knows the laws of chemistry knows exactly how to mix the substances, so the one who recognizes the spiritual laws can draw the right conclusions.

So we use methods to see into the future. I would like to explain in detail what the stages of the past are and what the circumstances are under which one can see and see clearly. There are levels of clairvoyance. The development before our earthly state was the astral, before that the rupa and before that the arupa. The earthly state is perceived through the physical senses. Everyone can see that. The preceding as well as the future state cannot be seen with physical senses, but it is still possible to perceive them. In addition to his waking state, a person also has two sleeping states: dreamless and dream.

Those who have not undergone any development will only have confused dreams, but those who are trained can bring regularity into their dream life.

The dreams of the purely materialistic person will only deal with material things. But for those who live by the principle of Goethe's saying, “Transience is only a parable,” dreams become symbols.

Of course, this is not yet clairvoyance; a clairvoyant is someone who, during their waking day consciousness, can continually leap into the astral vision; they must be awake and look into the astral world. The clairvoyant sees the aura of the person. The aura surrounds the person like a cloud. In undeveloped people, this cloud is confused; the clearer the thoughts, the more ordered and structured the aura.

How does one develop the sense organs for seeing?

These sense organs are located at different points in the aura. One sees an elongated structure from the brain to the chest, embedded in this body structure are the “sacred wheels”, called “lotuses”. There are actually six lotuses in this body. These are the astral sense organs. Between the two eyebrows is the two-leaved lotus flower, which turns from right to left. The one who is now able to see, the lotus flower begins to turn in him.

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A second lotus flower is located in the larynx, it is the sixteen-petalled one, turning from right to left. In the past, the dream-like person was gifted with it, he did not contribute to it, it was given to him by nature. It was lost again during the development of the mind. Eight petals were fully developed in bright, shiny colors, but later this flower darkened because the person matured into bright consciousness.

We can now take a look at the secrets of the initiate and understand when Buddha speaks of the eight-limbed path in his teaching.

There are eight virtues that the secret disciple must acquire:

1. Faith and understanding of karma
II. Clear thinking
III. Clear speech
IV. Right action
V. Right livelihood
VI. Fulfilling one's duties
VII. Memory control
VIII. Concentration of thought.

Whoever moves on this path, the other eight leaves begin to move, the first eight are pulled along. So the sixteen leaves turn from right to left. Buddha did not speak of the eightfold path in vain.

A third organ is near the heart, it is the twelve-petalled lotus flower. To develop these senses, other methods are needed. Every theosophist knows of six virtues that need to be developed.

I. Tolerance
II. Serenity, patience
III. Belief, trust
IV. Love of freedom
V. Control of thoughts, control of actions
VI. Concentration of thought.

Six of these twelve have been developed in humans before. Here, too, the next six will begin to rotate, and then move the first six along with them. This is how one acquires the ability of astral vision. Through diligent meditation one attains these virtues, through these virtues one attains astral vision. Meditation is healthy, it leads to moral health. Then, a little lower, is the ten-petalled lotus flower, a little lower still the six-petalled lotus flower and then, lower still, the four-petalled lotus flower.

Those who have developed the astral sense of the sixteen-petalled lotus flower can see into the thoughts of other people. Those who have developed the sense of the twelve-petalled flower can see into the sensory world of others, but those who have developed the sense of the two-petalled flower, the upper one between the eyes, can see into the karma of others. I can only discuss the development of this sense in very intimate circles.

The ability of a person to perceive the two globes before and after the earthly - physical - occurs when he is able to perceive something in deep sleep, dreamless. He then experiences what is going on in the mental world or in Devachan and can look at it here. But not only in sleep, but in clairvoyance he can perceive the two higher globes.

It is important to put all your energy into the first two sentences of “Light on the Path”, but not just in thought; they must be felt. And in the same way, the other two sentences

Before the masters the voice can speak,
it must unlearn the woundings.
Before them the soul can stand,
its heart's blood must water the feet.

Once the light has been absorbed, the senses are awakened in order to be able to see the higher spheres. “Light on the Path” is written in such a high symbolic language and dictated by a higher being.

But there are other methods, which will be discussed another time.

The manas is awakened precisely through diligent meditation.

He who can see the higher state is an adept. Only the adept is capable of this.

Let us place ourselves in the development of our earth. Our earth is becoming thinner and thinner, finer and finer, ultimately only astral and then only spiritual. In the future, all people will perceive it. So the earth goes through seven times seven states.

Let us consider what is happening today. Man can only perceive in a mineral way, he cannot perceive the life of an animal or a plant directly; it must first be made known to him through the senses. Man cannot prepare a plant germ, but he can make machines because he is attuned to the inanimate; it is the lowest form of his spirit.

Once upon a time there were no machines, but later on there will be a perfect processing of the inanimate stone, of the crystal - the stone also has a dull consciousness. At the end of the second round, man had transformed all the soil, and then he worked his mind into the physical world. He imposes his laws on the mineral, the inanimate, by reworking the mineral world. He has then worked his mind into it. The earth is then a product of the human mind.

The clairvoyant can experience beforehand what all people are going through today. He can develop the lotus flowers as an astral sense organ in himself earlier than the average person has them; when the beings are in the astral state, they will also have them. The lotus flower plays in beautiful colors, regularly.

So man achieves the transformation of natural products into artificial products with his mind. The astral world is an imprint of the minds of people. The movements of the flowers then match what he has worked into them.

What was previously worked in the inanimate is now being brought to life by the turning lotus flower. He transforms the earth into a living astral being.

Thus, on the later globe, the spirit will move the bodies. [Form states]

Just as today the word emerges from the human larynx, so then he himself will be the word. He is a spiritual being that vibrates himself, that sonorously sounds his manasic self. Now that he has become spiritual, he animates everything around him, he then fills the globe with his being; he will permeate with his own consciousness what he has done with his lotus flower. After us, plant life will be the lowest realm, it will then disappear, and the animal kingdom is the lowest; then the animal kingdom will also disappear, then the whole earth will be a creation that man himself has prepared for himself. Then comes a pralaya. Then comes the next cycle of the earth - round -, everything is repeated again. Then in the fifth round the earth is so developed that it has the state as physical, which will be the next of our present round - round four, similar to the astral plant nature. Man will then be on an earth whose lowest kingdom is plant; so our next metamorphosis will be denser – that which will become our next state will be denser. The lotus flower will then truly bloom. Man is today at the stage of his mineral development. In the fifth round, he will be in his plant development; what is now “mechanized” will then be “organized”.

When he has worked through the physical earth, he will animate it himself. What he has done by technical means, he will find; there are forms - entelechies - that he makes today, which he will then animate.

These are the higher stages of human development. It is not foolishness when we speak of the future. Initiates can put themselves into certain states of consciousness in order to see what are now ideals of the mind.

The elevated human being rises to the level of prophecy, which is why the term “prophet” is used in Jewish secret language when the divinely endowed receive the impulse to see the future.

Today I want to develop something of the human future. We have to understand the perspective in such a way that we do it in the sense of a natural law, because the initiate looks at the laws of the world. One must not imagine that these goals will be achieved without human intervention. For if we look back into the past, we find that humanity in its rounds and races has developed quite lawfully.

People were guided by divine beings. But now we are living in a time in which the guidance is transferred to humanity itself, whereas in the past humanity was guided by great beings who did not need to incarnate.

That is the task of our root race, that people should come to the point where they have to take on the role of God. In those days, the masters were the great guides who were beyond the Ma/gap in the transcript], who cooperated; they knew the laws of Kama-Manas, which they had brought down from Mars.

But now more human entities are involved when our fifth root race is developed to the seventh. Humanity will come to the point where it will itself perform divine functions. Then people will know the laws of effectiveness.

We can only vaguely grasp it: we live in the development of the intellect. All we have is something that extends into us from the past; or something that already extends into us from the future is what we already use. The masses use the intellect. What can this intellect do? It can describe what is in front of it as an object, what the senses perceive; but there can be no intellectual science [of the spirit], there must be an object. It imprints its intellect on nature, but it needs raw material. Artistic ability already shines out of the future. The intellect, however, needs material; the intellect needs combining, it will not be able to do more as long as the earth is physical.

But now a new state is approaching, a new metamorphosis of the earth, first ethereal, but then astral; at first there is no resistance facing us. Man will then no longer build machines out of wood and iron, piece by piece. The world will then be pliable and flexible. The clairvoyant sees it in colors, comparable to our feeling. Then he will be able to create freely in the astral realm; there is no external matter, he will create from the astral substance.

Manas - German 'wisdom', more than knowledge; wisdom creates from intuition. How to create a picture from intuition to put it into the substance.

Man then creates out of the astral substance, he then has the ability to shape with wisdom; and that is because man has been on the physical globe - fourth round - and has acquired the ability on it.

Freemasonry - Architecture

When he builds a church on this fourth round in the physical, he masters the material; he acquires abilities; because the church disappears, but the ability is not lost. This ability arises on the astral globe, rising in astral images. There it takes on a strange character. Man then does not build stone on stone - form and material are not needed. Just as the plant brings forth a new form out of its own power, so is this kind of creating, with real bringing forth out of oneself. There is no difference between human creation and vegetable form. His work will sprout and flourish like that of the plant. Then there will be the human, animal and plant kingdoms; but then he will create alive — which happens today in the organic — but only in the astral.

In the next metamorphosis, the astral will disperse, and man will then be only a pure spiritual being. He can then create even higher than the plant does; the plant feels nothing in doing so, but then man will create as a spiritual being. Everything he creates physically here will happen there with full consciousness. There is a sense of pleasure in what is being created, he no longer distinguishes himself from what he is doing today with the animal [gap in the transcript]

He will not only bring forth life, he will bring forth everything with feeling. He will become a being that feels itself. Man will not only build churches, as he does today, but the buildings will have life in them. He will no longer create form, he will create thought itself. His works of art will be living beings – animality in the realm of the spiritual. Everything will flow together with animality.

Then there will only be two kingdoms, humanity itself and the animal kingdom.

Now we come to the next metamorphosis: here man has reached the highest level –

Animalism has disappeared here. Everything he has separated out during his descent into matter, he will have to absorb back into himself.

The mineral kingdom was once united with us, permeated with us. The lion's fury, the fox's cunning, man had all this within himself; he descended into animalism, which was once his brothers.

When he had cast off the mineral kingdom, he became softer, then he cast off the plants, he was able to refine himself step by step. He created the kingdoms. For every saint there is a criminal, otherwise the saint would not have progressed. Man must push the others down, but he must also bring them up again. One may develop, but not for one's own sake, only to develop in order to pull the others up with oneself again. He must balance everything again. Then our round is over. This thought is in the mind of the master, no other thought, and if such a thought is our ideal, we will develop in the following way.

A twilight state now sets in.

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In the fifth round we do not need to apply the laws of chemistry and minerals, because man then works in the astral as in the next astral state of the fourth round, but this astral will then be physical again in the lowest globe.

The earth will then be seen with physical eyes again, but it will be the lowest realm, the plant kingdom. There will be no chemical law or substance, but an intertwined plant kingdom.

Man is all growth, plant-like. Just as he feeds on mineral substances in the physical world of the fourth round - today - he will then only feed on plants.

Man [is] then a large plant.

Through his activity will emerge

Churches – everything [will] then only grow. He will sink the seed for a church or a building, and it will grow. Then the earth will receive an even higher ability, a higher realm will be added. Today he lives in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, he only feels mind. But above the mind, a new realm will be established in the fifth round.

Today there is blood relationship, physical coexistence, but that will no longer exist, it will cease. It would then seem completely unthinkable to us to belong to a community if it did not belong to all of humanity.

The moral - [gap in the transcript]

Today we speak of races and peoples, that would be nonsense there. Man will create his kingdom, his community, but according to the principles of reason. Moral communities.

One thing will be their basic principle. Life will be organized according to the principles of fulfilled karma. Karma is only conditioned by birth and death, but that already stops in our sixth root race in the fourth round; already on the astral plane there are no more embodiments, no birth and death.

Fifth round no karma. Man goes over with a certain karma, and then people will be divided according to their karma.

This explains something that is inexplicable in Europe: the caste spirit. In India this was already the case with the Brahmins. They came with a certain karma, they were higher beings.

One should not criticize the caste spirit, because one must know the matter. Our next globe - of the fourth round - is the model for the physical globe of the fifth round, and here man appears in his highest state, 'glory'.

Then a state of slumber sets in and the sixth round begins. Here the beings live in such a way that the animal kingdom is the lowest realm. The animal kingdom has the same mind in itself. Now an even higher realm is added - the spiritual ability to go beyond mere morality. That was the realm of Zarathustra, Christ, Buddha, which is why they are called artificial six-rounders. Plato was an artificial five-rounder.

Therefore, such beings lead a double life, they tower far above humanity with their spirituality. We do not have to address the great strangers and donors of our goal right away, there are countless degrees - an artist is in the sense of development. If there had only been Christ and Plato, there would be no evolution, but that is why some have to stand out in order to catch up with the others.

It seems unfair at first, but only time does that, but he who is exalted above time finds the great harmonies. Otherwise it would be meaningless - like Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The harmonies must arise through disharmony. Therefore some must hasten ahead of the multitude.

From the discussion

Mercury is now in a state of becoming lighter between the fourth and fifth metamorphosis.

Martian beings Kama-Manas in their lowest form, they are now entering the astral state from the third to the fourth round. With our solar system, a whole host of planets are in different stages; what we see with our physical eyes can be thought of as seven or eight times greater in the astral.

The fifth round will develop manas.
The sixth round will develop buddhi manas
The seventh round will develop atma.

On the moon, for example, beings have descended so low that they appear on earth as enemies of humanity.

Steadfastness, equanimity, patience, trust, control, concentration of thoughts and actions –

the two-petalled lotus flower between the eyes develops insight into karma and one's own incarnations. All people today are reincarnated Atlanteans.

In the sixth round, the destruction of souls that have lagged so far behind that they are considered black magicians; they fall away. This is to be seen as a punishment because people already have a higher consciousness; they will then be banished in a shell in order to be carried away again later; but they have to wait so long and remain preserved in a thick shell; however, this is a terrible state, there is nothing more difficult than standing still. Then they enter a development in order to work their way through it again under terrible torments. Fate is already decided in the fifth round, but the Atma still has to be developed. So that from the sixth on, the Atma would not have been able to develop its deepest self. But fate is decided. - The “Laue in the Apocalypse. But whoever is imbued with real knowledge today, from what we have heard today, one cannot become a black magician with this thought.

Today I will continue the reflections of the last few hours in order to then continue the apocalypse, which can now be done very briefly if one approaches the document with the prior knowledge that we have gained in the last few hours. These are the ideals of the initiate, to look at everything with the impression that it will come true. But it must also be possible to shape, not just out of the blue.

Our round will conclude with an absorption of the mineral; then in the next, the plant kingdom as the lowest kingdom -—

Physical is everything that can be seen; mineral is subject to chemical and physical laws. Mineral beings are also all other beings in nature; the plant also has a chemical process.

All the kingdoms are mineral. Therefore, the fourth round is the mineral one.

The fifth round will have nothing mineral anymore, only the plant kingdom at the bottom. A moral world order will be established in the fifth round. The well-being of the individual will be no different from that of all other beings. Karma will be fulfilled. It will be fulfilled in the next race - the sixth - of the fourth round. It will be realized in the fifth round - no more crystal - everything will be one great garden in the manner of interlocking crystals.

Everything is transformed into growing beings.

In the fourth round, the mind is formed. As long as a person comprehends with the mind, [gap in the transcript]

The living is not grasped by the mind, only the pure spirit will understand this. One must learn to think without using one's senses. Both Goethe and Plato had such thinking. That is the process up to the fifth round. We are currently living in the fifth root race.

The Atlanteans did not yet have sober minds. Life was interspersed with dull clairvoyance.

The first root race, the polaric one, could only live as it did because the earth was of a finer substance and at a higher temperature. It was a fine, ethereal substance. The souls incarnated in this substance. They were people of a different kind – etheric people.

Reproduction was as follows: the people were elongated, hands had not yet developed – the beings divided, one being gave birth to the other. There was no death yet. Death did not occur until the second race. The first race lived in the area around the pole. The temperature conditions were different. Every being was filled with soul. There was no dying. The earth cooled more and more, and matter could no longer reproduce itself in the same way. The soul lost the ability to affect matter in the first way and created other organs for reproduction. The daughter beings were now smaller, and now the beings could absorb more substance to cause the division. But the daughter beings were very small at first; but then they grew very quickly. The chemical dies off. The beings now had to develop new organs. Because with the second race, sensation occurs. With the first race, only the sense of hearing was present. The whole environment was sound. The sound was perceived.

With the second race, the sense of touch was added. Man begins to make heat differences. That is the Hyperborean time. The second race were the Hyperboreans. The third race, the Lemurians, developed something very special. Before that, man was transported by external heat, but now the earth has become colder and colder, and a kind of reaction occurred. Man now had his own warmth, whereas before, beings could not have their own warmth.

So the third race had their own warmth.

The soul now became a place of independent life. Expression of Kama in the physical body. Through emotional life the beings could absorb the outer warmth. Therefore man now became a flame.

In those days, before man could generate inner warmth, the instincts, passions, were still undeveloped, in the sense of the outer world.

In the early days of the Lemurian race, the beings were bisexual, male-female, and hermaphroditic. Then the being split, and man and woman appeared.

Those selected by the Atlanteans were led to the Gobi Desert, and from these the fifth root race - our present root race - emerged, which had the particular task of developing the intellect. The first sub-race of this fifth was sent out from Gobi to various parts of the south, to India.

The first sub-race are the Indians; the high culture of this people can still be found in the echoes of the Vedas. The second sub-race are the Medo-Persians, the Near Easterners. The dual divinity appeared.

The third, the Near Eastern-Egyptian race.

The triad of goddesses appeared.

The fourth, the Greek-Latin, and also the Celtic, Southern Europe, Central Europe, Christian culture.

The fifth is our Aryan race, and this must preferably develop the intellect. — This race must descend completely to the physical plane. The following sixth sub-race will, it can only be hinted at in perspective, arise from none other than the Slavic race. There is no other for further sub-race than the Slavic one; in the East in the “oppressed” race.

This sub-race in its dull childishness today [gap in the transcript]

The mind will be taken up by the eastern peoples, and it will then be more spiritual sense. It may seem dreamy, but the sense is already prefigured.

The fifth root race will reach its end through destruction – the third root race perished through fire, the fourth root race through water – the fifth root race will perish through evil, through war, conflict, evil.

But we are approaching the moral root race, the sixth.

When the sixth sub-race of our fifth root race is formed from the Slavic peoples, the seventh sub-race is formed from the Americans. The remnants of the latter will then look like the Chinese do today, who are remnants of the Mongolian, the seventh sub-race of the Atlantic, the fourth root race. But the spiritual, the sixth sub-race, will reach a different physical state, the substances will be finer, hardening of the solid, this will proceed in a conscious way, it will deliver the first sub-race of the sixth root race. In this sixth root race - in the middle - a separation will take place. Male and female will cease, a regression to earlier behavior. In the seventh root race, the mind will reach its highest perfection.

Then it is transition to the next globe, to the next round. Then a physical life / gap in the transcript]

But a new sense will be added, the moral sense. During our fourth round, a majority of people already have that sense; they are artificial fifth-rounders. Those who cannot reach this high level cannot develop further.

Those who are left behind have a very special task.

The physical materiality is no longer there, it will have cooled down in those who have not attained spirituality, who have remained at that level, this level of today's fifth race of the fourth round.

These now have a kind of inclination towards the physical, and they bring this inclination with them. The present round is the mineral one, the earth will lose this composition.

There would no longer be a physical state if it were not for these retarded ones [...] to develop a new kind of mineral kingdom. The earth will no longer come into a physical state. These retarded ones will represent what was represented in the Lemurian great entities incarnating in this race, mid-way through the third race, what is referred to in the Bible as the Fall of Man, good and evil arose; and the animals remained [gap in transcript]

And just when this heavy element is expressed, the earth becomes an appearing star, and man will approach his deification; this is how the planets were formed. The formation of planets happens by itself – this is how new planets are formed.

Just as some animals are soft on the inside and have a hard crust on the outside, these animals have already hardened before – moon animals – and have thus become a materially perceptible being. So people who have remained at this material level, who cannot develop further, will then be able to work materially in the fifth round.

There is still something else, a mystery. The time has come for revelation, and every normal person will make it that far. People will bring their karma with them into the fifth round. This karma, which they have acquired by the end of the fourth round, is then passed on.

A being whose karma is complete then appears.

The account book is closed, the balance on his karma is zero.

[Gap in the transcript]

so far only sub-balance Solar beings.

[Gap in the transcript]

The sum of karma is expressed in its outer form, on its face.

Today, people can hide, but in the fifth round, people can no longer be hypocrites – they will become what they have made themselves. In the sixth round, people will develop Budhi; spiritual perception, much higher, superphysical clairvoyance.

Man will have a relationship to the world - which will displease the being. The sense of self will be integrated and will experience a world that has a basis in feeling, as the inner man lives today.

He will express himself, man will have become word.

In the sixth round, what he feels will materialize, only he will no longer speak - the exterior will be separated, which is why Christ says: “And the Word became flesh.”

In the sixth round, the human being will become the word.

In the fifth round, the emotional life will take on a fixed form.

In the sixth round, his surroundings will be filled with his life.

In the seventh, he will be so far advanced that he is God-like.

All nature has ceased in him.

Today man says 'I'.

No one can say I to another, only to himself can man say I. The naming of all beings is the stage where his I awakens.

With the I, the deity is pronounced.

He then called his name Jehovah, which means “inexpressible”.

In the seventh round, he will be like a great ego-concept – a world complex with the ego.

In Genesis – the first four days are the first four rounds and the three following rounds are then on Jupiter, then Venus, then Vulcan. And the Mars stage would already be here. Jupiter should be the same as Venus. The next planet – the fifth round – will have the Mars stage, the seventh may not yet be named because one cannot imagine this state, it is called Vulcan for the time being.

Man will find the fifth planet at a stage that differs from today's because he is creatively active. Imaginary creator, creator, he is a creator himself. This is how he develops on the seven rounds of the earth.

But he will be more [gap in the transcript]

He will be a creator, magical images will be his, and the color images will be realities. Creating images separate from matter.

The third elementary realm emerges from the human being; it will be what Christian esotericism calls “glory”. The sixth planet will be like this in the fourth elementary realm.

The human being will be able to do more than just weave the imagination.

For while in the fifth round man is only capable of creating as an appearance, as our sun does today, on the other hand, in the sixth round, this created color image will be a productive being. On Venus, such a state of creating while alive has been achieved today; one can only imagine this state.

The seventh cannot yet be spoken of.

If man could see it – the sight is so harrowing that he cannot bear it. Only someone who can think without a physical brain can imagine such a thing.

All festivals have a living meaning in Theosophy, which is also recovered for the materialistic worldview. People today have become accustomed to the conventional. Yet we can recognize that ancient wisdom has called the Theosophical worldview.

Our ancestors were endowed with different gifts; there was still a living connection with the sources of existence from which we ourselves come and to which we return. Easter had taken on a new form through Christianity. It is the most venerable festival among all peoples. But Easter is not only a festival since the times of Christianity; it existed much earlier. The goal that was striven for could be attained in the mysteries; that which was to come to consciousness was composed in the resurrection of faith. Empedocles describes it with the words: “When you leave the body and swing yourself to the free ether - to the resurrection faith - you will be an immortal spirit, having escaped death.

[That which passes through all of humanity as a collective consciousness and is expressed in its greatest representatives is summarized in the Christian belief in resurrection.

This is most strikingly and mysteriously found in the Easter faith in the mysterious places [of the mysteries. Where the sun gains power, victory over all obstacles of nature, there I must lead you. We are led to the ancient pyramids of the Egyptians, to the places of the Rishis. There has not been a single great spirit who did not believe in resurrection. Plato, Pythagoras, Giordano Bruno, Nicholas of Cusa drew from this belief in resurrection, and it gave them strength. The victory of the spirit over matter in the lowlands of the body? That is the belief from the cult of sacrifice of ancient mysteries. The soul conquers the body. In spring, the sun gains new strength, then it achieves victory over all obstacles in nature. The ancient Indian Rishis did not instruct, but they made new people. Only those who, through outstanding qualities, testified to the spirit in the outside world, were admitted to Easter. Man had to practise virtue, develop his intellectual powers and clarity of mind. He had to become so pure, so virtuous that one could say he had spiritualized himself to such an extent. Those who were found good by the priests were admitted to Easter, which is the festival of the knowledge and transformation of man's nature. It was to be made clear to them what happened to mystics.

We look at the body of man, only a part of it can be perceived with eyes. But we still have the etheric body, which is not quite like the physical body. When we look at the physical body, the space is filled with the second body, the etheric body, and the third, the astral body, [which surrounds and penetrates the physical body like a swirl of mist]. They both surround the physical body, and within it dwells the fourth, the [the ego of the] human being.

Let us consider the human being. He has only to do with his self-knowledge and his astral body, but this can be purified. - When we look at an undeveloped person, his etheric and astral body expresses the lower suffering, it rages through him. In a person who is aware of their moral duty, compassion for people arises; in this case, the colors green, bluish, violet, and reddish appear. Green is the color of thinking activity. Bluish violet is a sign of devotion and all [similar] feelings. The red coloration indicates desire. Orange-yellow means ambition.

The clairvoyant can recognize the level that a person has reached. When the undeveloped person begins to purify his thoughts, red hues appear. Through many incarnations, a person becomes astral within himself, he cultivates and refines himself. When a person is the creator of his astral body, he has triumphed over death. If a person is not yet the master of his astral body, then the physical and astral bodies dissolve in the cosmic mist. At death, the soul is dissolved again into the universe. The etheric body also dissolves. Why do the bodies dissolve? Because man has not yet power over his bodies. What a person has worked on in his astral body is eternal. What he has experienced in terms of purification during his physical existence, he takes with him, and in the new embodiment he brings these experiences with him again. The etheric body is the carrier of life; during life in the physical, the physical body is the ruler. Man cannot easily become the ruler over the life principle. Man knows nothing about the laws that take place in the body - blood, kidneys. All these processes are contingent on life. All physical processes affect the etheric body. Only when a person is liberated from the bodies does he begin the path of life.

For the chela, it is different: when one has undergone a transformation through the mysteries, one's etheric body does not disappear. The chela learns to work on his etheric body. He who begins to work on his etheric body, who has experienced initiation, will gain mastery over his etheric body. Man must work on his etheric body just as he worked on his physical body and his astral body before. When the disciple experiences the “die and become” in the secret schools, he has gained control over his astral body. The chela will conquer death because he has submitted to the mysteries. The chela is made insensitive to his physical body - it no longer exercises control over the chela; the body has then become soft and pliable.

It is a symbol that the mystic receives a new name because he belongs to the higher worlds. Thus the mystic appeared before his fellow human beings as a messenger, and what now appeared to him was an image of what surged within him.

The chela heard the music of the spheres with the vibrations of the universe; it was his own perception. He had experienced immortality. For three days the chela had to work on himself, then he could step before men as a messenger, a prophet. Then he had experienced within himself the mysterious life, the great word of the Logos, the spiritual sounding, ringing and vibrating of the universe: “When you leave the body and swing yourself to the free ether, you will be an immortal spirit, having escaped death!” Empedocles.

During the three days, such mystics had lived in the coffin of the living spirit of immortality. They had conquered death because they had animated their etheric body. It is not for nothing that one speaks of solar heroes, they are those who control their etheric body. Solar heroes exist in all religions. The sun that we see is only a part of the whole sun. One speaks of the sun as the “sounding” one, which sends us life; it is the victory over darkness, the victory over matter. When the chela has become a solar hero, he says, “I have seen the sun shine at midnight.” He sees the sun through the solid matter of the earth. This is not just to be understood figuratively; the sun is a role model for the hero who has learned to control his etheric body.

Goethe's “Faust” I, Prologue in Heaven: “The sun resounds in the brother spheres in the old way of song contest.” And in “Faust” II: “Listen, listen to the storm of the hours, the new day is already being born for the ears of the spirit.” Everywhere where initiation has taken place, one speaks of “sounding.

The word that Christianity gives us: “Blessed are those who believe, even if they do not see,” is intended to emphasize the way in which man has experienced initiation. Aristides, after experiencing initiation, says, “I feel the approach of the Godhead, my hand has touched it.” - Sophocles: “The truth of immortality is recognized only by those who are initiated.” Those who had not yet been able to be initiated hoped for the future life. It would be unthinkable for a slave to endure the hardships of his lot if he could not say to himself: Today I am a slave, but in the next life I will be a king.

Initiation is granted to all people; a character is formed from this awareness. Such a person is also called a “poor person” because he no longer possesses life; the kingdom of God had been absorbed into his inner being. Blessed are those who believe, even if they do not see. This saying will become clear to us when we recognize in the Easter Mystery a point in time that had not yet arrived before the appearance of Christ. That is what happened in Damascus: Saul became Paul. Who would have experienced that before Christ-Jesus was there! No one could have experienced it – unless they had gone to the mystery schools. All the teachings taught the same thing. But that is not what is important, what matters is that Christ was on earth.

[Krishna,] Hermes, Moses, Zarathustra, Buddha and all the other [honorable teachers] could say of themselves, “I am the way and the truth.” But Christ could say, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

Therefore, no teaching was left behind. What is significant is that Christ lived. He had truly appeared. What permeated the mystic when he had conquered death had become flesh. The Logos had become flesh and had lived among us. The word, which otherwise only sounded to the initiate, had become flesh. Until now, only the priests had experienced it in the mystery temples. What was to become clear to all people later. That Christ lives had to take place in the world.

Outside in the world, on the historical stage, something has happened that took place in the depths of the mysteries and cults; what the individual was only allowed to see became an event that took place before everyone's eyes. The initiate knew the word that was spoken.

What took place as a historical event had previously been prophetically indicated. The prophetic coincided with what had taken place; it was now a proof of immortality, it was not just faith. The cross, which earlier only the disciple had seen, was now erected before everyone's eyes. Faith arose in Saul without him entering the mystery schools. What the mystery school student had to gain through training arose in him.

The Simplon and St. Gotthard tunnels would not have been possible if a Leibniz and a Newton had not lived before.

All limit the belief of mystical facts – now the divinity incarnated itself. So the life of Christ Jesus had to take place as a fact if such an event, which was to convert Paul, could take place. – That is why I called my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”.

That is the vision of the Paschal Mystery – it is not just that one speaks of the “humble man of Nazareth”, but it comes down to the fact that Christ Jesus lived, that he appeared in the flesh. It is the same as what lay at the basis of all people before humanity descended into density. That was the Fall of Man at the time the world was founded. Then the Word underlies what was there before the world was, and what will be there when all outer wisdom has perished. Paul first utters the word . Fichte says, “Fall upon me, all of you, rocks, and destroy me... for I am stronger than you when I fulfill my destiny.”

That was the experience in the mystery schools: the initiate penetrated through sensuality, he experienced that the Logos was there before the world was founded. He beheld the sounding Logos, he beheld life, he had attained the free ether. What he absorbed in the mysteries, what penetrated him, was the Word, which was there before the world was founded. (The whole world is based on the Word, the divine Logos. This Word was there before the world was.) When the initiate was made holy through to immortality, then the Word lived in him.

“My Father has loved me before the foundation of the world...”, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Composition of the Sun and the Moon. Astral body – lunar body.

The Easter faith should give us the strength to live towards the great Easter festival, which is born out of the deepest wisdom. These are events that defeat the dark existence and have content for all who are imbued by them. When the human being is illuminated by the light of the Easter faith, the victory over the darkness becomes tangible. The Easter festival is the victory of the light over the darkness.

The sun gains new strength in spring, reviving in man, victory over the lunar body.

Those who know how to interpret the signs of the times also know that we are heading towards great events in the near future. At such a time, it is necessary to go beyond the point of view of the lower mind. Thought and idea should shine. From such a point of view, let us now look at an important chapter of the Bible – the Sermon on the Mount.

Without knowing the Sermon on the Mount, one cannot understand Christianity either. It is no coincidence that the Sermon on the Mount is at the beginning of the Gospel. But it, too, like so much else, has not only been misunderstood, but not known at all. This ignorance of such an important chapter stems from the fact that neither scholars nor the Church have even a hint of an intellectual grasp of the deeper Christian truths. If we want to understand something like the Sermon on the Mount, we have to be aware that today's homely, philistine view does not correspond to true Christianity at all. Such an understanding, as could not have been held by a Christian, but probably by the champion of the so-called French state morality - l'&tat c'est moi - would never have had the power that Christianity had - such power, which has been effective in such a way through the centuries, never has mundane sources, but has spiritual-occult sources. And we want to expose these in relation to the Sermon on the Mount.

This lack of understanding of the Bible and the Sermon on the Mount stems from the fact that we do not actually have a proper translation of the Bible, and that the most elementary conditions are not met. People may say that the letter is dead, but the spirit gives life. In doing so, everyone takes some pride in the fact that they could interpret something like the Sermon on the Mount from a “fantastic” imagination; but a lot of arbitrariness can be found in it. You first have to know the letter; you have to know what is written there so that you do not value your own banality of spirit more than the dead letter. Only when one has understood the letter can one dare to explain the spirit. Therefore, today it will be a matter of first understanding the letter, and then interpreting this letter in the right spirit.

It is not necessary to tell of the theological view of the Sermon on the Mount. Everyone knows it from the usual sermons. We would not get very far if we wanted to record just a few of these sermons. Besides this theological view, there is also a liberal view that arises from a philistine ethic and moral teaching. You can find such a view in the book “Was lehrte Jesus?” by Wolfgang Kirchbach. This author, who has the merit of having translated something more correctly than is done in the Lutheran Bible, is so partial to the high-altitude view of his view and so unintelligent towards any occult spiritual deepening that errors upon errors can be accumulated if one were to abandon oneself to the study of this liberal view of the Bible. One must know the elementary concepts that make a book like the Bible understandable if one wants to delve deeper into the matter.

The Bible is an entirely occult work. When I discuss with you in the near future the depths to be found in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John, you will become even more aware of what a profound book we have before us in the Bible. It is quite improper for those today who have picked up a few terms from the so-called liberal world view – even if they are theologians – to tell us all sorts of things about sentences like those in the Sermon on the Mount. These people do not even consider that they are taking something quite homely and familiar and, with their presuppositions, are approaching these exalted truths.

They know that the first sentence of the Sermon on the Mount is usually translated:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Any deeper, more meaningful understanding must be struck by the arguments that are usually associated with these sentences of the Sermon on the Mount: a “general reward” would be the understanding for those who are spiritually poor. And if we allow the sentences to approach us as if it could be a matter of receiving a reward for spiritual poverty, for mercy, and so on, if we believe that the founder of the Christian religion wanted to say, “Be merciful and you will be blessed for your reward,” then he would have to praise all haggling for reward. But that is an ethical truism, and does not require an ethical teaching like that of the Sermon on the Mount. Teachings like those of the Sermon on the Mount, given by an initiate himself, make one an initiate.

Right at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, it is sufficiently indicated that we are dealing with an occult instruction. In most occult writings, the expression occurs: “The Master led his disciples up the mountain.” This means nothing other than talking about the most intimate matters, about truths that are beyond the everyday. It is not a sermon to the people that is being preached here.

If you read carefully, you can see even in Luther's translation that this is not a sermon for the people.

But when he saw the multitudes, he went up into the mountains.

The original text reads: He went away from the people, away from the people, and there he then taught the deeper teachings, which only the initiates, those more deeply united with him, could understand. You can follow the “leading up the mountain” in all mystery writings. It means: to retreat to where one can discuss the most intimate truths of the soul.

Now, let us assume that Christ spoke profound truths in the most intimate way, not for the masses, but for the hearts of the initiates, in order to give their words strength so that they could go before the masses and their words could once again penetrate deeply into the hearts of others. Let us take this point of view quite without fanaticism, quite objectively, on the basis of the teaching that we have heard in the whole series of lectures in recent times. First of all, I have to repeat something that those who have heard my lectures on the astral world and on four-dimensional space already know to some extent. But let us once again let these important truths pass before our mind's eye. We spoke of entering a higher world in which the causes of the effects are present, which we can perceive with our senses. Our own higher self also lies in this world. The lower self belongs to the world of the senses, to the everyday. This sentence explains to us what we have to accomplish within our immediate work, but also within our age, our people and so on. In what Christianity calls the spiritual world, the “heaven”, we can also see what Theosophy calls the spiritual world. Our higher self also rests in this realm of heaven. We must get to know this higher self, we must rise to it. And this higher self, when we get to know it by entering the astral realm or a still higher realm, initially presents things to us somewhat differently than they can be according to the habits of thought, according to the ideas that we have acquired in the ordinary world.

I have drawn your attention to the fact that when you are initiated as an occultist into this higher world, you first have to learn to see things as they are and to recognize them in their reality. An example of this is that you have to read a number in its mirror image. When you are initiated as an occult student into higher secrets, and the teacher of occult secrets, of occult science, shows you the number 5 61 is shown to you, you have to read it as shown by the mirror, namely 165. You also know that you see a sphere or a cube as if you were at the center of it and looking in all directions. Not from the outside, from all sides, but from the inside. You also know that time runs backwards in this higher world. We are accustomed to seeing the world as our senses present it to us. In the astral realm, it is different. We first have to get used to correctly recognizing what we see there, which is reversed. We first have to learn to read. Morality also presents itself differently in these higher worlds. You can best experience this when, in a pathological case, a person's astral realm is suddenly opened. There are many people who occupy themselves with this. The fact that there are many people to whom the astral realm is suddenly opened is due to the fact that materialism has now taken hold of all circles. However, the need to see the spirit sits so deeply in the human soul that precisely when a person is completely surrounded by the material world, the inner senses are opened. But then he falls into a state of fear and despair. Everything that emanates from us as instincts, desires and passions, everything that rests at the bottom of the human soul, be it base and mean, but also that which fills us with higher enthusiasm, all this appears in images. A mirror image of the lower self appears in the astral realm. Man beholds his entire inner being as in a large painting. He is frightened, for it is no small thing to see what lies at the bottom of the soul. This occult vision expresses a great and terrible truth. And there is no disguising or concealing it. It is not without good reason that in the Indian world view - which is not the theosophical one - our sensory world is called an illusion, Maja. Man often deceives himself about the qualities of his own inner being. But the occult finds everything that lies within him. It is this that gives the occultist the most inner expression on his face once he has entered this world. One speaks of the seriousness and dignity that are inseparable from an occult world view. You know that there is nothing fanciful about it. The strictest tests are imposed on the student.

You know that you first develop a sober mind so that you are far beyond everything dreamy and fanciful.

If you suddenly enter the astral world, you do not understand it. But it can happen pathologically. From this characteristic of the astral realm, the spiritual world, you can see that at first you have the form of a mirror image. How positive and negative, how warm and cold, what we experience in the higher, spiritual world relates to what we have here in the sensual world. This is not an arbitrary connection, but a necessary one, like that of a law of nature. Every person who knows the connection between these two worlds from his or her own experience can say that a link in one world necessarily draws the opposite pole in the other world. Longing [in the physical] is one pole, fulfillment [in the spiritual] is the other pole. Compassion is one pole, compassion is also the other pole. Purity of heart is one pole, divine vision is the other pole. I could give you a great number of these so-called pathological poles, from which you could see that everything that rests in our soul appears in the mirror image in the other world.

In this lower self, if I am a person who is in need of truth and enlightenment, I have a longing for the truth, and then, for the occult observer, this longing of mine is reflected as a fulfillment in the higher self. What the lower self longs for necessarily indicates the opposite pole in the spiritual world. Whether fulfillment comes in this life or in another life is another question. But what is longing for the lower self here is fulfillment for the higher self. And what swings up from the lower self as fulfillment into the higher self here becomes longing on the higher level. That this is so was the profound wisdom that Christ Jesus presented to his intimate disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, in this initiation sermon.

With a book like the Bible, we have to take the words much more literally than is usually the case. “To be blessed” — what does that actually mean? People who have had occult knowledge have always known this. And Goethe, who, as you know, is to be understood as one of the real and true occultists, knew very well what these words are about. That is why he described the awakening of the higher self, if not in the highest sense of the word, in the second part of 'Wilhelm Meister' in the character 'Makarie, 'the blessed. Goethe describes the inner life of this 'blessed personality' in a way that he definitely wants to be taken seriously, although Goethe presented these things with a certain humor. But anyone familiar with these things knows how seriously the fifteenth chapter of “Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years” must be read. If only the Goethe scholars would decide to take seriously what Goethe has said so earnestly in so many places. The fifteenth chapter begins as follows:

Makarie is in a relationship to our solar system that one dare not even utter. In spirit, in soul, in imagination, she not only sees it, but she also makes a part of it, so to speak; she sees herself drawn into those heavenly circles, but in a very special way. She has been walking around the sun since childhood, and, as has now been discovered, in a spiral, moving further and further away from the center and circling toward the outer regions.

If we may assume that beings strive towards the center if they are corporeal, and towards the periphery if they are spiritual, then our friend belongs to the most spiritual; she seems to have been born only to free herself from the earthly, to penetrate the nearest and furthest spaces of existence. This quality, as glorious as it is, has been seen in her since her earliest years as a difficult task. From an early age, she remembers her innermost self as permeated by luminous beings, illuminated by a light that even the brightest sunlight could not diminish. She often saw two suns, namely an inner one and one outside in the sky, two moons, the outer of which remained the same in size during all phases, while the inner one diminished more and more.

This is, of course, spoken in such a way that it could not be expressed exoterically in any other way. But every expert knows that Goethe was familiar with the occult and that he knew what a “blessed personality could be called, a personality who could relate to the words: inner, higher, spiritual self and so on. If we give up this spiritual self as the reflection in the world of reflections, then it shows us the contradictions of polar qualities. So we can say to ourselves: because our higher self is in the realms of heaven, we can therefore arrange our lives in the realms of heaven, because we are able to shape our lives here.

Now we come to the text. I have tried to translate the Beatitudes correctly, both literally and in terms of meaning. You will see how accurate this translation is.

I) Blessed are the beggars for spirit, for in their self are the kingdoms of heaven. [Matt. 5:3]

This “self” is also in the Greek text. It does not say “the spiritually poor”, but “the beggars for the Spirit”, that is, those who are in need of the Spirit. In the higher self, the beggar for the Spirit finds the Kingdoms of Heaven on earth [which he has longed for in the lower self]. The Christ Jesus also spoke of the Kingdoms of Heaven or the Kingdom of God in other places. These passages are also usually translated quite wrongly. I would like to translate them as they should be translated in terms of meaning, if we draw on everything that we can glean not from the dictionary but from the spirit and from a deeper knowledge of the subject. Jesus Christ was asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come. He replied: “The Kingdom of God is not coming with [external] perception - and by that he means sensory perception. Nor will they say, 'Look, here it is! or 'There it is!' For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you. The Kingdom of God is all around us, just as the physical senses are. If we had no eyes, we would see no colors and no shapes. If we had no ears, we would hear no sounds. Likewise, for those whose higher, spiritual senses have been awakened, their surroundings are no longer sensual alone; they are full of spiritual beings that are around us. The spirit was taught by Christ Jesus. That is why he says: “Not with the eyes with which you [see], not with the ears with which you hear, will you perceive the Kingdom of God, but with the eyes and ears of the spirit, just as we also see the Kingdom of Devachan.

Whether we see a realm or not depends on whether we have sensory organs for it. The same realm that we call Devachan is also referred to by Christ Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount [as the heavens].

II) Blessed are the meek, for they will possess the Earth in their higher self. [Matt. 5:5]

Through the meekness of their lower self, they will generate a power in their higher self that makes this Earth their possession, that is, the power to shape the Earth in the spirit of humanity. Not through anger, not through wild passions of the lower self, but through the gentleness of the lower self, the opposite qualities are generated in the higher self, in powers that express themselves on earth in a peaceful existence, in a realm of humanity.

III) Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted in themselves.

Those who patiently bear their suffering in their lower self will see a higher self arise in the realm of heaven, in which they will find comfort. This is the significant teaching of occultism: that what is sown in the lower self is absorbed in the higher self.

IV) Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. For they shall be satisfied in themselves.

[But there is no necessary connection here. It does not mean that the blessed who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied in themselves.

Hunger and thirst for righteousness in the lower self strengthens righteousness in the higher self.

V) Blessed are the merciful, for they shall also obtain mercy.

This means that if we understand what is meant by the expression “compassion,” we will have a sense of the harmony of humanity and radiate this harmony into the higher worlds.

VI) Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

This is a saying that could be considered the basic tenet of all theosophy and occultism. He who is not pure of heart, who has prejudices of an intellectual or moral nature, is like one whose eye or crystal lens is penetrated by false powers. But he who has a pure heart will send forth the rays of pure hearts, and will see God.

VII) Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

In the last lectures we described the exalted future of Christianity. From this it became clear that Christianity has the power of Christ for the future, that it will become ever purer and greater and nobler, and that what this Christianity will pour out on the peoples of the earth will be peace. This peace can only become God when peacefulness, arising from the lower self, reaches up. People who prepare themselves through peacefulness will ascend to the higher self and as such will be called “children of God.

VIII) Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. [Matt. 5:10]

Persecution means refuge, that is a counterpole. If I am persecuted in the lower self today, I will find refuge in the higher self, because that is the other counterpole.

Thus, in the theosophical sense, these sublime truths are to be read. It is necessary today to emphasize this essential of the Sermon on the Mount for the reason that we live in a time when a core of humanity must again be made aware of this higher self, of this kingdom of heaven, in order to consciously strive for it. A part of humanity must become genuine, true Christians again. You know, as the misunderstood Goethe often says, selflessness is overcoming one's self. But in truth it is the unlocking of the spiritual self.

Those who have heard my Wagner lectures know what we in Theosophy call the Hebrew spirit. They will also know that from the occult point of view, from the point of view of the Secret Doctrine, this Hebrew spirit is one of the important ones. As true as this is, it is equally true that the future can only bring a spiritual humanity if the pure, free, Christian spirit is rediscovered. We need the original power, because the higher self must come from something original. Consider what has happened. Usually one does not look deeply enough at the pages of world history. It is true – because everything historical is necessary – that in the past times the wave of materialism has also risen, that the spirit has emerged, which is limited only to the external sense world. This spirit is the spirit of materialism. But this materialism has lost its significance for humanity. For the discerning, materialism today is idolatry; for the discerning, spiritualism must replace materialism.

If we look at it this way, we will see that in a sense the vessel for the spirit to be poured into it already exists. We need only consider what I have once called the “northern current” and the “southern current” in our cultural life, which go from east to west. One is the one called the Indian-Persian-Germanic cultural current. The other is the one that goes through the Chaldean, Babylonian, Egyptian and southern European Greco-Roman countries. We must distinguish between these two currents. To the occult observer they present themselves quite clearly, so that the one that comes through Spain and gave the Middle Ages their final impact must be replaced by the Sanskrit-Persian-Germanic current. The sixth sub-race will be completely dominated by the northern current. However, we can only achieve what we are supposed to achieve as self-aware beings if we consciously recognize it. The Theosophists are the least likely to say that what is to happen will happen by itself, because man must bring it about. Therefore, we must delve into the task that world history presents to us. We must recognize what is in decline and what is in the ascendant, what is in the rising of the sun.

Karma is not a fatalistic book of nature. We must recognize what it means to work towards the future in the sense of Christianity. The vessel has been handed over to us from the past.

But just as water will not become water from hydrogen and oxygen if the chemist does not mix them, [Karma will not create new Karma] if man does not act. The lower, personal self has played a major role in the materialistic epoch that has just ended. From this element, the higher self of humanity will arise and then show itself in its glory.

I said that people do not look deeply enough at contemporary history; we have forgotten how to do that because of materialism. But materialism has reached its extreme point. If you observe in the small things, you will see this. I would like to give just a few small symptoms; they are decisive for those who are able to see deeper into the interrelationships. A few hours before the lecture, when I read in a newspaper about the departure of [Hungarian] Minister Stephan [Tisza], I also read a sentence in an editorial in the “Neue Freie Presse” in Vienna that expresses a deep irony about our entire time. If it is possible that a person's thinking habits are such that he dares to write such sentences, then this person's inner life is insipid. The sentence roughly translates as: “What I have heard this man say at the time when no one could have known that his fall marked the end of a development, that is the complete seriousness of his aims.” So it is possible that the aims of a great statesman are not serious. The time has come when a person with serious aims can already be called a great man.

Materialism had to be there; it created our natural science, our entire external culture. We also want to admit that the sensual way of thinking has produced our industry and technology. But now it is time to move up again. Man must rise above the lower personality to that which is the higher self in the sense of the Sermon on the Mount. He must therefore know the connection between the lower and higher worlds. He must rise above the spirit of the fifth root race. There is also much that is impersonal in insipidity. This has also taken place in an impersonal, natural way.

It is completely foreign to a theosophist to look at things other than objectively. Therefore, what I am about to say is meant objectively. No personality is to be denigrated. These personalities are a symptom of materialism, which has actually already overcome itself.

Two people [of the Rothschild family] died recently, one shortly after the other. It would no longer be possible today for the symbol that was decisive for the Rothschild world house - it is a five-pointed star - to gain significance. This five-pointed star - what does it mean? It means that until some time before the end of the nineteenth century, this world house was active in five different places in Europe, that its spirit was active in these five places. The purely personal self was at work there, and it did much more to build up the last period than anyone who only knows history on the outside can imagine. Someone who can also say something about what is hidden behind the respectability of some banking houses knows what domination emanated from this materialistic spirit, that it weighed on our state and that our state history can no longer be understood without taking this materialistic spirit into account. Here is a significant characteristic:

Rothschild once received a visit from a statesman. He was sitting at his desk, noticed the visit, but continued writing. When this went on for some time, the statesman said, “I am Count So-and-so.” To which Rothschild replied, “Please sit down and take a chair.” The statesman was quite amazed and repeated once more: “I am Count So-and-so and I come on behalf of the king.” And to this Rothschild replied: “Please take two chairs.”

This five-leaf clover [of the Rothschilds] had become so powerful. But materialism has now become impersonal; it is more powerful than even five individual personalities are today. Even these personalities would be powerless before the impersonal corporation when it unites. The impersonal share, as it dominates the world today, is the external symbol of our world that has become entirely external. International, cosmopolitan, strong, without any individual power, is the impersonal, materialistic spirit today. Only the higher, spiritual spirit will defeat it, and this will flow from people when they have found their higher self.

If the theosophical movement does not prove to be one that educates the core of people, then

much evil could follow in its wake. The Theosophical Society has been created out of the necessity of our time, and everyone who contributes, even if only by listening to a theosophical lecture now and then, in order to imbibe the theosophical thoughts and reproduce them in the smallest of circles, truly contributes to an increase in human spirituality. Only someone who has no idea of the tasks of our time or to whom the tasks of our time are completely indifferent could pass by the theosophical spirit, by the theosophical attitude.

We must take Christianity very seriously. St. Paul was the first to use the word theosophy. He used it in our sense. What matters is to rise above the so-called spirit of liberalism, which is so widespread today and which is nothing more than the spirit of the egoism of the crowd. We must rise above it into the spirit of community born of clear, enlightened knowledge, not of mere sentiment, for that is not the genuine thing. This is how we must understand and live Theosophy. Then we will see that we see every word in a new light, in a new splendor. Do not be misled by those who speak of Theosophy as a “new Buddhism,” as if it were bringing a completely new worldview to Europe. A true theosophist will seek the truth where it is to be found at the root of a nation's culture. That is why I have tried to replace the Indian expressions with good German expressions [in my book “Theosophy”]. Many have misunderstood this. But it is not meant the way you take it. The true theosophist does not say, “I am bringing something foreign to everyone,” but rather, “Every person and every people is born of the spirit, and if we recognize the spirit, we also recognize the deepest soul of the people.”

This is how the great teachers of the world religions have worked. The Buddha did not go to India and teach his students something that was native to Europe. They all drew from the same source, the God-wisdom; but each presented the wisdom in a way that was appropriate to his people. United, the great sages are in the white brother lodge. But each speaks in the language of his people, his age and his education, so that people can understand him.

In the same way, the Christ also came among people. He did not preach a wisdom that was taken from a different substance. If we take this spirit, we will find the spiritual spirit again. We will find that it is not becoming for us to stick with the old and that we should not fall into the materialistic spirit either. We should fill ourselves with souls that are free from materialism and that lead to the higher self. Then we will feel the inner meaning of what is meant by “blessed” in the Sermon on the Mount. If we become beggars for the spirit, then we will partake in the future of the rich in heaven.

Since today is the last time that we will see each other before the holidays, I would like to briefly discuss an object that is truly suitable to provide people with nourishment for the holiday season. What we want to take a look at today is the spirit of the Gospel of John. This gospel is regarded by learned theologians today as the one that is of least importance for the religious education of man.

The first three gospels are called the three synoptic gospels and it is thought that these three evangelists report, to a certain extent, what happened in Palestine between the years 3 and 33. On the other hand, today's theologians are of the opinion that the Gospel of John is a kind of fiction and does not actually present facts. They dismiss it and consider it to be a kind of fervent confession of its author, but they do not want to act on it.

We will now try to penetrate a little into the meaning and power of this Gospel of John. For those for whom it is the main thing to penetrate into the spirit of Christianity and into the tasks of our immediate future, for them the Gospel of John is the most important, and it is only due to a misunderstanding of our time that the Gospel of John is neglected today. The mystics knew that the Gospel of John is a book of life. I have mentioned something similar before. Anyone who reads the Gospel of John from the thirteenth chapter onwards is not just reading a book, not just absorbing the knowledge of certain facts; each sentence is a source of occult powers. And when we read this Gospel from there on, we generate spiritual forces in ourselves, we become different people. It is not important that we know the sentences by heart, but that we experience their meaning, that we become one with it. The occultist says: Each sentence from the thirteenth chapter onwards is written for you in such a way that it initially means an inner human experience. Something happens in us when we become completely absorbed in it and let the magic of the words take effect on us. Things light up in us that we did not know before, and through this we understand our task for the near future.

Even in our last hours, I said that we are facing a significant task, that we can only rise to our task if we grasp it in the spiritual, if we have absorbed the spirit of our time within us at all, and this spirit is the spirit of true, genuine Christianity.

What has civilization been striving towards in the last few decades? Towards external possessions, towards such an organization of the external, material world that this external world is as comfortable as possible, that it satisfies the external, sensual needs as much as possible. Even the greatest spiritual progress has only served to make the life of the senses more comfortable. Likewise, all our inventions, all our advances in technology, the efforts of our greatest thinkers, and so on, have only provided us with means to satisfy the needs of our senses. The animal goes out to pasture and feeds itself, and man has used his reason in recent centuries to ultimately satisfy the same needs. Let us immerse ourselves in this: what mental power is needed to invent the railroad, the telephone, the steam engine, and so on; and we use them to satisfy our nutritional needs. [We speak on the telephone, we take the train to the farthest reaches of the earth. And for what? Why do we use the telephone and why do we take the train? We telephone in order to get some grain, we travel by train to get things that serve purely sensual needs.] Ultimately, we use the means of our culture so that people can satisfy their purely sensual and material needs. It is as if the animal kingdom in us wants to satisfy its sensual needs in the most sophisticated way.

In the distant past, it was different. Then, primitive people provided the necessities of their material existence in the simplest way possible, while, in contrast, the spiritual needs of the human being were in the foreground. All this has become more sophisticated today as far as the material life is concerned. Man has woven himself into a web of intellect and reason in order to satisfy only the external life. But in those days, when we turn our gaze back, a high spiritual movement was at the center of life. People were simple, but a high spiritual culture presents itself to us. Within those masses of people, there were places where highly developed spiritual beings took possession of high spiritual powers, with which they brought about a spiritual culture. A stream of spiritual life emanated from these mystery centers. [In simple fables and fairy tales, the mystery priests told the masses about their wisdom.] The old Druid priest told fairy tales that may seem very elementary to us, but that arose from the deepest spiritual insight. [But they are not, as our fantastic scholars believe, created by the childlike spirit of popular fantasy, but they have emerged from deep spiritual insight.] The goblins, undines, nixies, which are now thought to be superstition and fantasy, originated from the living interaction with the highest spiritual beings that inhabited other planes. Because we are surrounded by spiritual worlds. The astral world is everywhere, it is just as [animated and just as] colorful and resounding as our [physical] world, [no, it is even much more resounding and much more colorful].

All this appears to the advanced human being [to whom the chakras are open; he sees a new world, somewhat like someone who was previously blind or deaf and then, through some circumstance, became seeing or hearing]. In particular, he gets to know a whole range of new beings that cannot become visible on the physical plane because they cannot come to this material, but because they have their corporeality in the astral material. The legends and fairy tales originate from the interaction with these higher entities. The spiritual powers worked wonders in our present sense at that time. The primitive conditions that naturalists tell us about are not correct. These people satisfied their material needs in the simplest way, but in contrast to that, they participated in the spiritual life of those higher personalities.

[Their state and gender associations were imbued with the spiritual power of the spiritual beings.] An anthill [or a beehive] is much more sensibly arranged than many a present-day state. But where is the leader for a present-day state in this sense? Behind all those states in the past, however, was the intelligentsia, and those individualities of which we are speaking here ruled over everything around them with their spiritual insights. The outer life was simple and primitive, but behind it stood a spiritual life. Thus the world is the symbolic imprint of a higher spiritual life.

Even today, those who are in possession of higher spiritual powers live, who can see into the higher worlds, who can counsel with beings of higher worlds. But it has become their destiny that they had to step back for a while, that they had to stay in the background.

Over the last few millennia, the wave of materialism has risen ever higher and the wave of spirituality has descended ever lower. So today they live in obscurity, these masters [of wisdom and] of the harmony of sensations, and so only those who have undergone special training to open up access to them know about them.

For two millennia, humanity has been guided by a different force; but this force has only developed the first chapter here on earth today: that is Christianity.

Christianity has the task of consciously guiding the human being who is to enter the material plane. We still have to draw comparisons from the animal kingdom if we want to know how our ancestors were guided by spiritual beings. Let us use an image again that can make the whole process clear. An army of slaves worked on the Egyptian pyramids, and in a way that people today cannot even imagine. But each one had a consciousness: “This life is one of our many - but I will live many on this earth; and just as he who commands today, where I am a slave, so I will also command one day.” - So life was bearable for them. They knew that if they suffered now, they had laid the foundation for it in previous lives. They knew that they are visitors here on Earth. This constituted a completely different cultural awareness.

But it could not remain that way, because human beings have a completely different task. We are not meant to be mere visitors; we are meant to transform the Earth in such a way that all material things become more and more spiritual; we are meant to work the spirit into the Earth. Everything we do for the earth, we have done for God, no matter what we accomplish, we are all links in a great chain. We are the messengers of the deity, and the earth must one day become a golden age, a paradise; people must transform the earth as free creative beings.

To achieve this, man on earth had to be prepared by first looking up at the sky. But then there had to come a time when man realized the importance of the material – realized that every move is important. Everything that seems to be vain will one day become important on other levels.

Christianity was to become an education: first, to distract the view from the spiritual. Such importance was to be attached to things on earth that the man of two millennia should not think at all of the spiritual. So there was an age in which the spiritual receded. People had forgotten the connection with the spiritual, but for that they should also remain aware of it. [That is why Christ Jesus appeared, so that they could endure living on earth for two millennia.] That is why the Christ came to Earth; that is why he gave his disciples the order not to say anything about reincarnation in the scene of the transfiguration. The Christ said: Elijah has come back, and people have not recognized him. Then he explained the doctrine of reincarnation to them; but they should not say anything about it until he had reappeared.

[The doctrine of reincarnation is a truly Christian doctrine. He chose Peter, James and John to witness the transfiguration. The time differences disappear, Moses and Elijah become visible. From the disciples' question: What do the scribes say, Elijah must come back first? - it is clear that they knew about the doctrine of reincarnation. Jesus said: Elias has already come, but they have not recognized him.

He explained re-embodiment to them, but he said: Tell no one about this until I have reappeared. The reappearance refers to our own age.

For two millennia, people have become more and more immersed in the material world - the Christ was their leader. But now humanity is called upon to experience the Christ within themselves again. The occultist knows the truth:

I am with you always, even to the end of time.

This always refers to the end of a current era and the dawn of a new one. [Christ was elevated into the so-called common astral body of humanity. The time will come when he will be here again; the time will come when everyone, albeit in a different way, will know that the Christ will reappear in the etheric plane.

The time will come when everyone will know in a completely different light what the Christ actually is. The Christ will reappear on earth in glory, and then the second chapter of Christianity will begin. The “new gospel” will then begin - the “new gospel is the Gospel of John. A correct understanding of the old gospel is the Gospel of John.

Through materialistic science, the matter of the “simple man from Nazareth” arose. Theologians set out to interpret the events in Palestine in a purely materialistic way from their liberal point of view. Materialism was a necessary phenomenon; but it is misunderstood in many ways, and theology has also been seized by this misunderstanding. [Harnack's school also emphasizes that what matters is the historical. It is pure materialism. We do not fight it because we know that it is necessary. The materialistic lack of understanding has also seized the theologians. And this materialistic lack of understanding is now taught at the universities and in the schools. They mock themselves and do not know and do not realize it.]

A new understanding of Christianity will awaken, and man must consciously approach it - a culture full of light, in which violence will not threaten, in which the spirit of the initiated will flood over souls and bring a different age.

We are being led towards this age not only spiritually and psychically; we cannot remain in lethargy; the last moment is upon us. World history is connected with the spiritual world.

Today there is a disease that is the disease of all diseases – we call it 'nervousness'. People in the past did not suffer from this condition. If we cannot convey to the young consciousness of our age how great the materialistic danger is, then we should at least convey to people the fact that they are nervous. Only a century ago, only those who could use their muscles could be called 'nervous'. Now a new thing has emerged: a sensitivity that goes as far as the external senses – up to now materialism has driven us. Material things in the external world have their counterpart in nervousness, and as the striving in the material world becomes more widespread, people will ruin their nerves to the same extent.

The Baron Rothschild, who has now died in Vienna, was a signature for this example. He left twenty million for a foundation for the benefit of people with nervous disorders. He gathered this fortune as a sick man throughout his life. He entered life with ruined nerves, and that is how he left it. It cannot be separated: the chasing and rushing and mere thinking of the material with the collapse of the nervous system. The twenty million are supposed to be for the care of nervous people – a signature for the ruination of the nervous system. – The occultist knows that deep relationship between the spiritual and the outer physical life – but today's man does not yet know that.

Especially in the material life, today's doctors live. But we know that the truth will come to light. If we do not want the materialistic attitude to ruin people physically as well, we must take hold of the spiritual life again. All those who do not see this say: Behind us the deluge! It will take its revenge that many today no longer want to know anything about penetrating into the depths of the mystical writings of Christianity. Another dawn will have shone in our time when the Christian churches have a better understanding of what Christianity is. With powerful hieroglyphs, our age is also written into the Bible: Who betrays Christ Jesus? The one who has the thirty pieces of silver, who represents material possessions. At the beginning of the Christian era, the divine spirit descended. The Christian spirit descended to sanctify the earthly valley as well, and anyone who does not consider that he is called upon to usher in a different era violates his deepest responsibility. Man had to lend a hand to two thousand years of education. Judas of Kariot had to make the sacrifice. He had to deliver the Christ to the material forces of life. Because humanity followed the thirty pieces of silver, the Christ disappeared into the astral plane. Through the betrayal of Judas, you are characterized by what the task of Christianity has been during the two thousand years. But another task lies ahead for Christianity today. We have only to knock again at the gates from which the words resound, which were spoken to the apostles at that time:

[I tell you, Elijah has already come.) [Matt. 17,12]

Today's Christianity is called “Theosophy” and it is a false Christianity that denies Theosophy. Has any of today's theologians thought about the Bible passage John 13, verse 16?

The servant is not greater than his master, nor the apostle greater than he who sent him.

One would like to understand why people do not reflect on such an important matter when it would be the other way around: the Lord is not greater than his servant and he who sent him, not greater than the apostle.

It follows the washing of the feet. You know this significant scene. At first, Peter refuses, but then asks that the Master also wash his whole body. Then the Master points out that there is one who is not pure, who will betray him.

[If you do not let yourself be washed, you have no part in me.] [John 13:8]

... Those who are pure only need to have their feet washed. You are pure, but not all.) [John 13:10]

The entire mystery of the present human condition is hidden in this chapter. Fundamentally, the education of the last two millennia should be a washing of feet. While on the one hand Judas stands with knowledge [with the thirty pieces of silver], Christ washes the feet of the others.

Let us consider our physical body and our astral body. The physical body is within this physical world. The same physical and chemical forces that work outside [in stones and machines] also work within our physical body. Our astral body is determined by our drives and passions.

What did Christ want to achieve by washing feet? I have often said that the physical body of modern man is the most perfect and significant, and that his other bodies must first reach that level.

Take, for example, a piece of the thigh bone. No technician could put such a piece together better. Our physical body is constructed in a wise and perfect way, an imprint of the highest wisdom. If the physical body were only on earth, the physical world would be more perfect. There are no low activities in our physical body. That is what the astral body first works down there. Nothing is sinful that the physical body does, only the astral body is sinful. The astral body works as the enemy of our physical body, and sin and wrong are thereby brought about in the physical body.

The astral body had to adapt to the physical. It had to descend during the last two millennia – the Christ had to descend, he had to be betrayed. He had to find those things by which he can best serve the physical body. The passions had to pour over the physical life. Judas with the purse had to move in to bring about harmony with the physical world. [Gap in the transcript]

Our physical body is a seal imprint of perfection and wisdom; therefore the occultist will say: the perfect gods have created the physical body in perfection and the astral body must first grow into this perfection; it must become divine itself. The astral must purify itself, just as the physical has purified itself by descending into the physical world, which is represented by the earth. And when we descend to earth, we must cleanse our feet; and when the astral body descends to earth, its feet must be particularly clean. It must be able to descend into the material world, to take part in everything, but remain pure.

If those who now live in their astral body and want to ennoble it want to fulfill their task, then they must take this wise man as their model. In our time, the astral body is the servant of the physical body; for in the physical body lives the God. And it would be bad for man if he were to place his physical body below the astral body. “Lord” is what works in our physical body, and the 'servant' is the astral body. He Himself, the God, has perfected the physical body; He has sent forth the astral body and placed it forever under the influence of spiritual forces that are to perfect it and make it ever more perfect. This makes us servants, and it would be arrogance on our part if we were to place ourselves higher than the higher forces at work in nature. We should be edified by the divine nature [and be edified by the sun's rays, by the orbits of the planets, and so on] and not place ourselves above it, otherwise we violate this commandment [which is expressed in the words: The servant - the astral man - is not greater than the one who created the physical body].

Today, from the theosophical point of view, we understand such a profound passage when it says: “The apostle is not greater than his master.” Such words have a similar effect to how the devas used to work. And they worked like our ancestors,

the voice of the masters in the folk tales and folk legends – there is the Lord within. Our material wisdom has become bungled and servile; here we are told that the servant should not rise above the Lord.

In the margin, it may be added here: one cannot make a more humble confession than Schelling and Hegel. [Hegel, Fichte, Saint-Martin, Baader - they all say]: There will come a time when all that is material science, [that is, knowledge of the external world of the senses] will be seen as child's play - and we will stand there again like children and prostrate ourselves before the old legends and seek the ancient wisdom therein.

[This time has come. We seek this wisdom in every religious confession.] We know that we are Christians; and let us not misunderstand our task of working spiritually now; the better Christians and the better theosophists we become. There is no better guide for this than the Gospel of John. If we live with the Gospel of John, then we live into a new future of Christianity; then we also follow the sentence that the servant should not place himself above the master. But if you come with material, chaotic wisdom and criticism, and want to master it, then it is a crime and presumption – before man has recognized the book. To recognize and be silent and to surrender in humility to that which is rooted in these writings, to do nothing but fulfill this task of the time, the masters have taught us the harmony of the ancient truths again. They themselves have worked on building our world. Thus speaks he who, from the theosophical standpoint, has looked into the hustle and bustle of the world, not as one speaking from theory but from the knowledge drawn from the sources themselves.

He who has sat at the Steps of Wisdom – before our older, more perfect brothers – who has kissed their feet and heard their voice, draws his words from the future itself, which apocalyptically shines before him; he can speak again as it was once permitted to speak prophetically, and he will have the strength to speak of what will come once.

This power is given to us by the great masters, who are the seal-keepers, and in whose service we place ourselves. Because we believe we can discern the pulse of the future, and because we know what speaks to us from the sounds of the future, that is why we are Theosophists, because we cannot help it. And when we let the breath of the spirit flow through our souls, then we are true theosophists. This spirit is a spirit of worship and humility. Christ was born of the spirit; and when the spirit carries us again, then we will become true Christians once more.

Let us work together, wherever we may be, like brothers; each one is not too weak to do so; each one can do it: to work in the spirit of the light that comes to us from our greatest Master, Christ-Jesus. So we will meet again in the fall and try to penetrate further into the halls of spiritual life.

Atma consists of seven principles: 1. auric covering, 2. Budhi, 3. Manas, 4. Kama Manas, 5. Kama, 6. Physis.

This seven-principle being has three states of consciousness, also called 'destinies' or 'upadhis'. Atma lives in three upadhis:

1. physical - strength
2. astral - living
3. manasic - thinking.

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Sthula Sharira: The entire mineral kingdom has not awakened. It is powerful, that is, it is, but it does not feel and does not think its being.

Linga Sharira: Plants and animals have partially awakened. They live, that is, they feel, but they do not think their being.

Karana Sharira: People have awakened. They think, that is, they think their being.

Let us imagine a personality, it is perceived and it is recognized. We therefore have subject and object. Furthermore, the subject perceives itself, it places itself, as it were, outside of itself and makes itself an object; its I stands above the external expression of its I. It is, perceives itself and thinks.

Let us imagine Atma. In order to perceive itself, Atma must manifest itself, that is, it must make itself known through an act of will; it must be and therefore surrounds itself with a fine shell, which we call the auric shell.

Now Atma perceives itself, it feels, senses itself as a being and thereby forms the astral shell in the auric shell. - Second aspect: the world as feeling/Budhi.

In order to have an idea of itself, Atma must step out of itself, it now makes itself objective and thus creates the physical shell. - Third aspect: the world as thinking / Mahat.

We now have Atma, which permeates everything seven times: three times subjectively and three times objectively in its aspects, and once as itself.

If we consider the objective side in its descent, in the “separation of Atma, we find will without spirit as force, feeling without spirit as Kama, thinking without spirit as concrete Manas. In its ascent, that is, in its return to the welling Atma, Kama becomes Budhi, Manas becomes Mahat, the force becomes the auric covering. Everything is absorbed again into Atma: if a being is to come to itself, it must consist of seven principles. The number seven in the objective world and in man:

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A being can awaken in three states of consciousness, that is, in its three shells: as energy, as life – or as feeling – and as thought.

In the mineral kingdom, the being has awakened only as energy; in the plant kingdom, as life; in the animal kingdom, as life and feeling; in the human kingdom – as thought.

That which awakens on a plane merely subjectively can work on that plane, but not perceive. Mineral has awakened – subjectively on the physical plane.

What awakens subjectively and objectively on a plane can act and perceive on that plane.

A person has awakened:

on the physical plane – subjectively and objectively
on the astral plane – subjectively
on the mental plane – subjectively

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The physical plane is only there for the human being because he has awakened subjectively and objectively on it.

If he awakens objectively on the astral plane, then the whole world of desires will have an objective existence, as the whole physical world has now.

If he awakens objectively on the mental plane, then everything that is now merely the world of thoughts will be an objective world of its own.

Man's evolution consists of a succession of successively objective worlds.

1. Physical world objective: physical existence
2. Astral world objective: Kamaloka existence
3. Mental world objective: Devachan existence

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Earth: physical, astral, manas
Devachan: mental, budhi, atma

Development consists in the continuous transformation of the subjective into the objective or of the law into reality. Dharma in karma.

The function is realized in form.
The hand is the result of work.
The eye is the result of light.

Function is existence in action conceived.
Development in progress is called: Dharma
Gets through its activity from its environment the organs for its future.

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Karma is the Dharma crucified in matter.

Karma is the manifest Dharma and must work because it carries the unmanifest part of Dharma locked within itself.

Dharma is at the same time the transcendence of being.

Self-knowledge means to recognize the level of one's being in the right sense; then self-knowledge serves the Dharma.

Self-knowledge is the realization of the degree of imperfection of each individual.

Following the law in the sense of true self-knowledge is Dharma.

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Dharma takes on matter and is active in matter.

Father: the being-beyond
Mother: the evolving being
Son: that which comes into being through the power of being-beyond.

Dharma is the creative principle, it is the continuous intervention of being in existence. Karma is the dharma crucified in matter. As long as karma has not become dharma, it must incite action.

Ideal: the state of an entity that has revealed all its dharma and thus burned its karma.

Nirvana. Nirvana is the nothingness of karma because all dharma has been revealed.

Last time I took the liberty of saying a few words about the task or the significance of a theosophical branch. What I said then is really something that cannot be emphasized enough, perhaps, for those who are in the theosophical movement or who want to participate in what is called theosophy today. Nothing is more common today than opposing, than fighting against mere theory, against mere teaching, and on the other hand, again, the desire for life, for sensation and feeling, for that which is not theory and not teaching; for no time has been so caught up in theories, teachings and dogmas - without one really knowing it - as the present one.

That seems to be a strong claim, and yet I would like to maintain it, even against those who object: Isn't that the dark ages, the dark dogma, and isn't our time beyond that? You will find a well-known magazine on display this week, in which the first page talks about a book that deals with Christianity and that comes from the philosopher Eduard von Hartmann. It is not obvious enough for us today to deal with the ideas of this writing. But a well-known fighter for the current renewal of Christian ideas has expressed ideas in the “future” in connection with this writing, which do give us food for thought because they are very widespread in our present time. Jentsch says that Hartmann said in this writing something that has often been said before, but that the logical mind of Eduard von Hartmann has stated as clearly as possible once again, so that everyone now knows that one can never again deal with any theoretical or systematic, doctrinal basis of religious views or truths. The time when religion was philosophically or theologically justified is over. Today we know full well – and in saying this he expresses something that will resonate in many hearts – that all systems of thought become entangled in contradictions and that only life, looking up into a world beyond, to a divine world order, can truly interest us.

The good man does not realize that, although he rejects all other dogmatics, two or three dogmas, even if they remain merely abstract, have a certain value for him. He wants to cast off all dogmatics, and he is precisely a dogmatist of the most pronounced kind. Although one does not want to be a dogmatist, and yet one is one, without knowing how strong one is as a dogmatist. This has also led to the fact that all similar movements - be it the “Giordano Bruno League” or the “Society for Ethical Culture” - more or less stand on a strictly doctrinal point of view, that it is therefore more important to them to spread teachings. Whether they are teachings about the right moral action or about monism or about a reform of our religious education in schools, which is to be replaced by a moral education that only amounts to a certain moral dogmatics - because something has to be taught after all - it makes no difference. So the old dogmas are replaced by new ones, by the dogmas of liberalism. Everywhere it comes down to doctrine, everywhere to the content of the word.

This is not at all necessary in the theosophical movement. I wanted to emphasize this point: Whatever we teach, whatever one or the other writes or teaches in his books, may it be high truths, and may there be many people who feel addressed by such truths because they represent a world system without contradictions and so on – that is not what matters in the theosophical movement. What matters is not what we teach, what we assert, what we say, but how we live together in the theosophical movement, what kind of attitude we develop. This attitude, which we should develop and want to develop, is that in our soul lives the consciousness of spiritual activity, the consciousness that thoughts, sensations, feelings are just as real forces in the world as magnetism, electricity, light or steam power. Not the one who admits that there is truth in the things spread in our literature is a true theosophist, but the one who, together with his fellow human beings, finds himself in the ever-recurring awareness in his soul that when he thinks, feels or wills something that may not even be translated into an external action, that it will then have an effect.

And when one of us speaks to such a congregation, which brings this awareness to him, then his words are quite different from the words of any other lecturer or any other speaker. Because then you will be sitting here in the knowledge that not only your physical body, which is here, is something real, but that your feelings and emotions and your thoughts, which pass through your mind, are as present as your physical body. And when you cross the threshold with this awareness and absorb the words that are spoken here, then these words will find the way they are meant to find into the world. The words of the theosophist are not spoken for the sake of one or the other agreeing or disagreeing with them. It is not whether they are true or not that is of primary importance, but the fact that they are forces. No matter how beautiful and excellent the thoughts expressed in the words of the individual may be, this is of less importance; what is of primary importance is through which channels these thoughts pass. A theosophical lodge or branch is the starting point for numerous channels through which these thoughts, when spoken, find their way out into the whole world.

But these words will only be heard in this way if the listeners are aware of a spiritual world. Then the speaker's powers are strengthened by the consciousness of each person present; then the spiritual forces are like those in an electric battery, and they penetrate out into the world like waves and are effective wherever the opportunity arises. It is this attitude, this consciousness, this life in the teaching that is important, not the content. Our teachings are drawn from the contemplation of the great spiritual connections of existence and from the contemplation of the nature of the human being. The goal is not that we know them, but that they have an effect. And this effect is important for the reason that these thoughts are the same ones through which everything in the world has happened for millions of years, ever since there has been a time. And as true as the world has become as it is now through these thoughts, so true will the world become in the future through the same thoughts, as it should and must become.

But there is a factor that must be involved in order for the right thing to happen in the future, and this factor is called “human being”, this factor is called “knowing and conscious human being”. We can say: There was a time when the great thoughts of the world order were realized by what we call the gods. At that time, man was still completely unconscious. At that time man could not yet participate in the building of the world. You see, man is now at the beginning of the development of his consciousness. He will approach times when this consciousness will draw ever wider and wider circles. Thus he will be ever more called upon to collaborate in what the gods once did. That is why we call our theosophy 'Divine Wisdom', because we have the wisdom from it, and because we must have our share if we want to set up our construction in the future.

In the future, man will be called upon in a broader sense to participate more consciously than he does today. Just as today's society creates a moral world order for itself, so too will a time come when spiritual forces will permeate the soul of man to a much greater extent than they do today, and the rigid social order will have a much deeper, more intense meaning. And just as man today only uses the laws of nature on the surface in order to do what lives and works in industry, so a time will come when man will use the spiritual laws of the world to make our institutions. Man will gain mastery over health and disease by applying the great laws of the world. There is a divine being in man at the beginning of his development, and to bring out this divine being and make it a creative one is the goal of Theosophy or 'divine wisdom'. Theosophy does not exist to satisfy the curiosity of those who want to know something about God, but to give people the strength to fulfill their task as a divinizing being. Although it may not happen in a short period of time, we will be able to realize this more and more.

What I would now like to summarize in one sentence may seem quite peculiar to some people, but it is a truth that the occultist knows as a natural scientist knows some other truth, some external truth. There is such a truth. I have already pointed this out in the twenty-seventh issue of Lucifer-Gnosis. It is connected with health in the world. It is a truth, admittedly, in the spiritual sense, and the connection is not so obvious. Ultimately, it is absolutely true that a healthy external physical body is the result of an inner life of the spirit in truth. To express myself more clearly, but somewhat remotely: a theosophical lodge, a theosophical branch is also a source of health. As you sit here together in the attitude of mind of which I have spoken, and absorb into your consciousness those truths which are nothing other than an echo of the great world thoughts that have created the harmonies of the world, tremble and vibrate through your soul the true thoughts of the world. And just as it is true that everything physical is an effect of the spirit, it is just as true that the state of the physical will be determined by the vibrations, by the waves that now tremble through your soul. If the thoughts that stimulate the wave vibrations of your soul are healthy, then these will also stimulate the physical vibrations, and these must then be healthy. By radiating these vibrations in all directions throughout the world, we are creating a source of health. A source of health emanates from the theosophical lodges. You will not notice this recovery in your life tomorrow or the day after. But in the future you may find that health is the result of the current pursuit of truth. We build healthy bodies for future generations by allowing our souls to cultivate the truth in spiritual life. We place ourselves in the whole course of time, we place ourselves in the course of the world, if we have the right faith.

Many say, yes: What harm has materialism done us? It has brought us many powerful devices and so much knowledge and understanding of life at all naturalist and medical gatherings. You can hear so much about life there. You can hear how great the hygienic progress is and so on, how much lower the mortality rate is today than it was a century ago. All this has been brought to us by the study of natural laws, a study that works with pure matter. But you also have to see deeper. You have to see that the outside does not always correspond to the inside, and that the outside is a very deceptive indicator of the inside.

Yes, we do not want to deny that great and magnificent things have been created in our age of materialism. But who created it? Here we come to a point that teaches us the difference between what man merely thinks, what merely lives in the human mind, and what lies deep in the bottom of his soul. You must strictly distinguish these two things. You go through the world and do your daily tasks according to what you think today. But what you think today is based on a reason that is not from today. What you think today is based on a deeper soul reason that is the result of the past. Even from a purely external point of view, even the materialistic thinkers of the nineteenth century grew out of the thinking of the past. They were educated in schools that had not yet fallen prey to materialism. Where did the great teachers of materialism such as Büchner, Vogt, Moleschott learn their subject, and why do their books have such a seductive quality? It is because their school was in a time when it had not yet been so taken over by materialism. In truth, we carry within us the essence of what we were in past lives. Indian philosophy tells us with profound wisdom: What you think today, you will become tomorrow. This applies to people and to all facts and beings in the world. Today, our thinking is superficial. Today, we are what we thought in the past.

They believe that we have overcome the old. People speak of the dark, gray Middle Ages. But the first times of the Middle Ages rest as our deepest being in our soul. At that time we lived in an earlier incarnation. What we think today, we will only be in a future incarnation. We should not be surprised that we think in a materialistic way, but nevertheless have reaped fruits that are the result of earlier epochs. What we have today is only the result of an age that we are inclined to look down on with ridicule and scorn. It was out of this deep realization that the impulse arose that led to the theosophical movement in the last third of the nineteenth century.

We are now facing the fruits of earlier times and earlier ways of thinking. But those who are watching over the signs of the times know that our thoughts, what we have in our souls today, determine our future life. This future will be an ever faster and faster unfolding of life. You must be aware that life does not proceed at the same pace in all ages. All those sitting here have heard many theosophical lectures, and I may therefore often say a word that is taken from deeper wisdom. We know that besides the physical plan there is the astral plan, and he who knows the higher life also knows how to predict the course of development in this higher world and to follow the course of progress.

If we compare the period from the time of Charlemagne to the end of the eighteenth century with the period from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, thus comparing a millennium with a century, we note the surprising fact that approximately the same things happened in both periods. The progress of the human wave was only ten times faster and it will be faster and faster in the time to come. Therefore, we must be prepared for the things that our thoughts bring about to become external reality in the not too distant future. This shows you the impulse from which the theosophical movement has flowed.

The recovery of the following generation should be due to our thoughts, just as we owe the progress we have made to the preceding generations. Those who look at the theosophical movement in this light may be called 'prophetic' in nature. But at all times, prophets have been, and had to be, those who really wanted to guide the course of events. For to determine what should happen in the future, on a large scale, one must first know what is lawful for that future. The great individuals who know what is lawful for the future have therefore given us the opportunity to get to know again the great laws of the world, which had been forgotten for so long, and to feel them for the spiritual and physical recovery of our race. Take this quite literally, that true thoughts have a healing physical effect, and that those thoughts, which are awakened in the theosophical lodge through our soul vibrations, are medical-medical forces that pulsate through humanity. Feel this truth, this truth of life, with all your soul and feel the importance in the theosophical movement, then you will come to another chapter and be able to grasp it.

There are many among us who say: Yes, the theosophical movement spreads a beautiful, high ethics, it spreads beautiful teachings that are consistent in themselves. But one should stick to it and not raise one's eyes and confuse people in mystical, mysterious, abstract and mental worlds. How many there are in the Theosophical Society who say: Leave us alone with the astral and mental realm, we want to develop the consciousness of unity. A certain shyness can be noticed towards what we know as the doctrine of the astral and mental. But one day it must be said: The one who wanted to exclude this teaching of these higher worlds from the theosophical movement was acting against the intentions that the great individuals, whom we call the masters, gave us. We might as well abandon the theosophical movement if we ban the teaching of the higher worlds from it. Certainly, one can speak of an ethic, of an ethical teaching today. This ethical teaching is already being introduced in schools. Ethical societies have been founded that attempt to establish and introduce general human duties without regard to this or that worldview, to this or that religious belief. But you can only establish duties based on what you know. But take a look at these teachings of duty. They are a true reflection, a perfect imprint of the material age in which we live. What you find in the way of new duties among the new enlightened ones is nothing more than the consequence of a materialistic world view, the consequence of what the eyes can see, ears hear and hands can touch. This is certainly idealism, and one can be a noble idealist in this field – without doubt. But this is the last consequence, the last outflow of a materialistic time.

And because even those who believe themselves to be idealists, and who aspire with their thoughts and feelings to a higher world and at least want to retain a dark foreboding of a higher world, because they want to start thinking, feeling and acting and not just talk, immediately fall back into materialistic habits of thought. Because there are many such people in the theosophical movement, the idea is spreading in it too: we should limit ourselves to such a materialistic ethics, to a unity consciousness that one cannot grasp and does not want to grasp because people are afraid of touching the higher worlds in a certain way.

The theosophists, who say that one should not speak of the astral and mental planes, also point out that a certain amount of theosophical truth can be spread with the mere intellect. They also want to hint at what is the deeper essence and foundation of all reality, as a divine reality underlying all realities. But to see it for themselves, to grasp it, to face it as it is, they shrink back from that. That would be just as if someone wanted to say: Yes, there is an electrical force, we want to admit it; but to apply it, to study it in order to construct electrical machines and so on, we do not want to get involved in that. That is dangerous, we could confuse ourselves, that gives the world a different picture. But such a one does not really approach the power of electricity. Rather, the right approach is taken by the one who says, “I want to get to know the power of electricity in every respect, so that I can bring it into existence and use it in the outer arrangements of men.” The first follower of the power of electricity would resemble the theosophist who says, “Let us not concern ourselves with the astral and mental worlds, but only with the consciousness of unity.” He would not apply spiritual power to the immediate present.

But if we do not want to just dream of the divine, not just have hunches, not just talk and at most feel vaguely, but actually implement it in reality, then we have to get to know it in its individual forms, as it reveals itself in the higher worlds, and then we can penetrate into the higher worlds. Just as we conquer our physical world by getting to know the individual forms of electrical power, we get to know our life as a tangible reality when we make this power our own. In the future, this power, which today is only realized in the world by universal beings, will be consciously realized and controlled by human beings.

It is not to satisfy our curiosity that we look into the spiritual world, not in vain do we seek to open the eyes of the mind and soul to those beings who do not live in the physical body, but as if from our passions and instincts and inner soul forces. It is not without reason that we rise to those beings whose body is not physical, whose body is woven from the same material as our thoughts are woven, to those beings whom we call the beings of the mental world. We rise to them in order to learn what needs to be woven into the world in which we live. That is a fundamental truth, that the spirit is always present. When you see a flower, you do not just see a physical object – today's science does not want to know anything about that: this flower is spirit, and its sensual form is only an expression of the spirit. I have said many times: if you have a surface of water and you let the water cool more and more, ice will form. Someone will now come and say: ice is real water, only in a different form. Then another person comes and says: But it is not water, it is solid and not liquid. Everyone knows that ice is condensed water, shaped by cold and differently formed. It is quite similar with the flower. In this flower you have only a differently formed spirit. Just as you can transform ice into water, so you can also dissolve the flower into its spiritual essence. Our physical world is nothing but astral and mental substance that has become too solid. All those sitting here are also mental beings and express themselves in their physical bodies in a condensed form. If you want to work for the greater good, you have to know the forces. If you want to create ice, you need to have cold and water. If you want to shape the physical world in the right way, you have to know the spirit.

You have to explore the forces of the spirit, not to satisfy our curiosity about the higher worlds and to learn all kinds of interesting things, but because we draw from them our knowledge for our practical life. What is astral today will be physical in the future; and what is mental today will be astral in the future and physical in the more distant future. When we speak of the astral plane in a theosophical lodge and allow these astral truths to permeate our soul and create vibrations in it, these souls will in the future be incarnated in people who are disposed to the astral plane. If we are then incarnated on earth again, these truths will flow out of us. What will then take physical shape through us are the things that descended into our soul as parts, as children of the astral world. We are here to bring down the laws of our work and life from the higher worlds. Therefore, the question cannot be whether one or the other likes to ascend to the higher worlds, but only whether we should and must ascend. That we should ascend, that there should come again an age which spiritualizes the world, which spreads spiritual views among mankind, this was the realization of the great beings who inspired the theosophical movement.

The age that lies behind us, the epoch in which man became material, was preceded by another. This era relied on great, exalted spiritual beings who were the teachers and guides of humanity. In ancient times, when great holy leaders guided humanity, all of these leaders were at least deeply imbued with the truths that the theosophical movement is spreading among humanity today, including the truth of the repeated incarnation of the human soul. If you imagine the relationship of the great teachers of antiquity to the masses, you will get an idea of the way of teaching in ancient times. Think back to those times and to the great advanced individuals who looked into the mysterious, secret structure of the world, which was closed to the eyes of others - as St. John expresses it in the Apocalypse. They spoke to people in a pictorial form that they could not yet grasp with their minds, but which they had to be prepared for in order to grasp with their minds in later incarnations. And that led to the form of language that was spoken at that time, to the language of legends, myths and fairy tales.

This is where you are sitting today. But all your souls were once embodied in those distant times, all your souls listened to one of the great teachers of the distant past as he told the fairy tales. These fairy tales were not of the same kind as those conceived from light, superficial fantasy, as today's are, but in these fairy tales the great truth of existence lived and breathed. And even if the truth was not expressed conceptually in them, it was not the conceptual that descended into your souls with the figures and persons of the fairy tale, but rather the intuitive perception. The fairy tales that you read in the Grimm's Fairy Tale Collection mostly contain such teachings of wisdom. When they were absorbed into the human soul, you learned them in such a way that today you are able to grasp the truths that were once contained in the fairy tale. It is the greatest untruth to say that fairy tales contain no truths. They contain the most ancient truths of the human race. The soul that allows the fairy tale to flow into it receives the seed of feeling for the truth, which later unfolds. In our youth, because everything in the world must repeat itself that has been there in the past, we must briefly relive those souls and states of mind that we went through in earlier times when we heard the eternal words of the saints of humanity. And when today a mother tells her child a fairy tale from the treasure of ancient times, then truth flows into the soul of the child. Thus the child is repeatedly prepared for his later age, when he is then able to absorb these truths with his mind.

If we look at it this way, we understand the course of time. We hear about the time that we have described, when the great mysteries of humanity were given, down to our time. Our time should become great through what man himself can produce. It had to gradually develop out of what was wrapped up in fairy tales, just as a child develops into greatness and independence.

It was good that humanity referred to itself, to its own soul, for a while. That is a middle state. And what has it led to? It has led to the saying: we cannot know anything about the beyond. We know nothing about what first opens up beyond death. It is a great immodesty to speak like that. Not those who know nothing about it can speak about it, but those who know something about it. Those who have correctly understood the theosophical movement in its deepest essence have also tried to grasp the right thing through this feeling. The insistence on itself has inevitably led man to ignorance. In the beginning, man's intellect sees only what lies on this side of death. So when he looks at himself, he cannot know anything of what lies beyond death. But they will get used to listening to the teachers who have already crossed the threshold of death in this life and who know how to tell about this life from their own experience.

What is happening here is giving rise to a new modesty. It is not immodesty when those who speak for the Theosophical Society emphasize time and again: “We do not speak our wisdom, no, we speak not our wisdom, we speak that which the great leaders and sages of humanity still teach us today. We do not speak of masters because we presume to draw the higher truths from ourselves, from our own source. We sit at the feet of the masters because we know that as long as we insist on our own rightness, as long as we do not make ourselves disciples of the masters, we must remain at the “I do not know” level. Out of this humility, we do not express our own thoughts. I speak through that which we want to inspire in the world, I speak the wisdom of the great, superior, wise guides who have left our stage of development behind them. And we try in every way to hear the voice of these masters. That is why teachings such as those in “Light on the Path” have been spread as the golden teachings of the theosophical movement. That sentence

Before the Masters can speak the voice, the wounding must be unlearned.

becomes our guiding principle. We try to unlearn the wounding. We try to break off the tip of each of our thoughts that wounds, because we know that words that hurt others reflect badly on the Word of the Master. Sharp thoughts that hurt reflect badly on the Master's words. But when our heart opens up like a bell flower, when our words are soft and mild and do not wound, then the voice of the masters, the word of the masters, goes through us purely and brightly like a bell.

You will hear the voice of the master when you can pass through the words that do not wound without resistance. Then you will hear the words of the master. Through such thoughts the thoughts of the masters flow. And when a person behaves in this way, the voice of the masters resounds through him, through what he thinks and says. The “masters of the harmony of thoughts and feelings” become audible to him. Those who have a true relationship with the Master speak in this sense. Only in this sense may they speak. Otherwise their word is not truth, but deception and falsehood. Everything that is brought as a message from the Master in any other sense is not true. It is true, however, that the thoughts and impulses of higher beings flow through the theosophical movement, if we do not want to spread our thoughts but make ourselves the instrument of those who today want to rekindle spiritual life in the world.

From the Questions and Answers

Can one cultivate the art of listening to the inner voice while out in nature?

The school of solitude in nature is very important. Most people cannot associate any true sensation with what was once called “silence in the forest”. And yet there is something very significant behind it. Imagine a very loud sound becoming weaker and weaker, and then imagine it falling completely silent. Otherwise, think of nothing. Then you will hear nothing around you. Imagine the same with light. You see light. The light grows dimmer and dimmer; then you see darkness. And yet, the darkness is not nothing. Darkness is as positive a sensation as whiteness. But you see, the nothingness of hearing and seeing is caused by the gradual weakening of light and sound. The complete darkness and soundlessness has occurred gradually. Ask yourself now, could this weakening and weakening of the sound not be continued even further? Below this nuance, down to where it is even quieter than when you hear nothing. In ordinary life, everyone admits this. One who always and always spends his money has nothing; but he can still have even less. He can get into debt. Then he has even less than nothing. When the tone goes deeper and deeper, you come to the point where you hear the tone again on the other side of nature. But first you have to learn to live the voice. In the beginning, this can be felt as a mood. If you did such exercises, you would already find that on the other side of the mental world, the new day is born for spiritual ears. Those who can do this are on the right track. A lot can be achieved with it. In our cities, however, it is almost impossible. It is easy in nature, where spring really greens, where the trees, the leaves and the forest look different every day. It is not for nothing that the occult sites where culture was cultivated were located in nature.

Are plant colors audible? I read a sentence from Stifter: “I heard the blue color of the flower.

Sounds in colors, and not just colors in sounds, also appear to have a less extensive sensitivity. This goes even further, that when another 'I' is pronounced, certain people have a certain color in their consciousness. The beginning of the Ninth Symphony has already been recomposed in colors. The physiologist Nussbaumer has studied this, as have French physiologists.

Do cities also have certain colors?

Yes, Berlin is gray, Vienna is red. The Gothic church is a piece of music in the astral, a sound structure in the mind.