The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Initiation makes it possible for a person to gain insight into higher worlds. It is a process of development in the inmost soul. Different people take different paths, but the truth is the same for all of them. Having reached the summit of a mountain you have an open view in all directions. But it would be quite nonsensical not to take the path to the top that is nearest to the point where we actually are. And it is the same with initiation. Once we have reached our goal and truly gained an open view, the insight gained will be the same for all.

It is not good, however, for someone to take a route other than the one that suits his nature. There should really be a separate path for every individual. All of them do, however, fall into one of three types—the yoga path, gnostic and Rosicrucian Christian initiation. One of these three different routes may be taken. They differ because there are three kinds of human beings. Only few Europeans can take the Oriental yoga route. It therefore is not right, as a rule, for a European to take that route. People live in an entirely different climate in the Orient, where the light of the sun is completely different. The anatomical differences between Orientals and Europeans are not easily demonstrable, but the difference in soul and spirit is profound, and this must be taken into account, for inner development intervenes deeply in the soul and spirit nature of a person. Anatomists cannot perceive the finer structure of the Hindu brain. But if you were to ask of a European the things that can be asked of an Indian, you would destroy him. An Indian may be asked to do certain things which serve no purpose at all for a European and may even be bad for him. Above all the yoga path makes one basic demand on pupils that has to be met if the path is to be taken at all. It demands the strict authority of a teacher, who is called a guru. To take that path one must accept the guru's directions in every detail of life. Quite apart from that, the Indian yoga route can hardly be taken unless one tears oneself away from the external conditions of life. It is necessary, you see, to make all kinds of external arrangements that will support the exercises one is given. If you experience things that make a deep impression on your feeling life, this will have a profound influence on you as you are going through occult inner development. The Oriental yoga pupil must therefore ask his guru about every detail of his life. To make any change whatsoever in his life, he must first ask the guru for direction. The yoga path therefore requires absolute subjection to a guru. You have to learn to see things through the guru's eyes, and to feel the way he does. It is impossible to follow this path unless there is profound trust, perfect love, combined with utter trust and an unconditional surrender that has precedence over everything else.

For the gnostic Christian path there is only one great teacher, the central guru. What is needed is belief in Christ Jesus himself not only his teachings. A gnostic Christian pupil must be able to believe that the one and only sublime divine individual spirit was incarnated in Christ Jesus, an individual spirit that cannot be compared with any other, not even the highest. All other individuals started at a lower level on earth and then ascended, examples being Buddha, Hermes, Zoroaster and Pythagoras, and their spiritual stature is the result of many earlier incarnations. This is not the case with Christ Jesus. He cannot be compared with any other individual, with anything else on earth. It would be impossible to follow the gnostic Christian path unless one believes this.

A third path is the Rosicrucian Christian one. There the teacher is the counsellor who essentially limits his counsel to the actual measures taken for spiritual development. This spiritual development must be organized in such a way that it has a deep-reaching influence on the life of the individual. A teacher must always be present for initiation. There is no serious initiation without a teacher. Anyone who wants to say there is, would be saying something as silly as someone who thought it was possible for a child to be bom without the two sexes playing a role. Initiation is a spiritual fertilization process which would in fact be harmful if it were not brought about in such a dual relationship between teacher and pupil.

The Indian yoga path is in seven stages. The sequence is not always the same, however. Different stages may be combined, in a way. It is not necessary to go through stages 1 to 7 in that order. It may happen that one is asked to take something from somewhere in the sequence earlier on, and an exercise may be given that relates to another stage. It depends on the individual concerned. A pupil may do this in a few years, or even a few months. Asked how long initiation takes, Subba Row¹⁴⁸ said it may be 70 incarnations or 7, some need 7 years, others may need 7 months, or 7 days, or indeed 7 hours. It depends entirely on the spiritual maturity of the person. Spiritual maturity shows itself sooner in some and needs longer in others. This is a matter of karma. We may well ask why someone may not be outstanding in this respect though he may have reached a very high level of spirituality in an earlier existence. There may be obstacles in his physical or soul nature. The teacher's task is above all to remove such obstacles. The physiognomy of a person in ordinary life has nothing to do with it. An earlier incarnation may lie hidden deep down in the soul and be unable to emerge because of some kind of obstacle or other.

Yama is the first stage of Indian yoga training. It signifies ‘restraint’; or ‘forbearance’. To an Indian this means not to lie, not to kill, not to steal, no dissoluteness, no desires. To enter more deeply into what this means to an Indian, we must consider it in its whole context. Thus we may be vegetarians, but we still have not got out of the habit of killing things. Our life is in fact impossible without this. We actually kill as we breathe, for we exhale carbon dioxide. If the earth's green plant cover did not continually take up the carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, humans and animals would be unable to live. It is part of the yoga exercises to get out of the killing habit. Indians take this very seriously. Many of the connections we have in our life would also come under the heading of stealing for them. Each of us must accept money in some way. Many conditions are involved in our getting this money. When we buy a coat we have no way of knowing if human blood has not been shed for it. People do not give much thought to the fact that they are in a social context and partly responsible for what they do. If we take these things seriously, we must feel responsible for the things that happen because of us.

You help other people most by having few wants. Someone who reduces his wants helps others more than a philanthropist does. Thus if we do not write unnecessary letters this may save some people the effort of having to climb stairs. It is quite wrong to think that you help people by making more demands, thus providing more work. You do not in the least add to the things people need by making work for them. In Europe the situation is so complex nowadays that it is getting more and more difficult to meet the requirements of the Eastern yoga path. This can of course be followed in the proper, strict way in a country where there are no banks and where the cultural situation is clearly apparent.

The 2nd stage is niyana, observance of ritual. The Indian yoga way certainly demands ritual, so that the teachings may be linked with religious rites. It is strictly required that everyone taking the yoga way observes a ritual. Things should be enacted before their eyes. Just as in the case of art it matters that it comes to real expression in objects, so in the case of initiation it is important to have things presented in rituals.

The 3rd stage is asana, body positions assumed to be in accord with specific currents in the cosmos. When people still had a feeling for such things, they would always put the main altar at the eastern end of their religious buildings. Indians are so subtly organized that it matters in which direction they face. The current that goes from north to south is indeed different from the one that goes from east to west. Body positions are important for yoga initiation because the Oriental body is much softer, and taking a particular position leaves much more of an imprint. A European wanting to take the Oriental yoga way would have to do all these things as well.

The 4th is pranayama, bringing rhythm into the breathing process. We can best understand this if we consider that under present-day conditions, the human breath kills things. The teacher instructs the pupil to regulate his breathing according to certain rules he gives him, at least for a time. If we were to examine the breath we would find that the air exhaled by a yoga pupil has quite a different composition, quite a different carbon dioxide content, than the breath of ordinary people. It is therefore true that by regulating the breath the pupil influences the future evolution of the earth. Constant dropping wears the stone. You don't see results from one day to the next. But it all adds up and will have definite significance over long periods of time.

At a particular time, Rosicrucian teachers also get their pupils to bring rhythm into their breathing. What does the breathing process bring about? The physical human being cannot be thought of without the plants. We inhale oxygen which combines with carbon in the lung, and we exhale carbon dioxide. The plant does exactly the opposite. There is a continuous cycle between human beings on the one hand and plants on the other. In far distant times human beings will develop an organ of their own which will take care of the function plants perform today. They will be able to process the carbon dioxide in themselves. Human beings will have an organ able to separate the carbon from the oxygen and make it part of themselves. The principles we take in with our food today to build up our bodies will then be something we consciously do within ourselves. We'll thus change carbon dioxide into oxygen again. This process is indeed helped by making the breathing process rhythmical. This was taught extensively in 14th century Rosicrucian schools. Some of these secrets were betrayed, so that they appeared in the popular literature. In an 18th century work reference is made to the philosopher's stone.¹⁴⁹ The statement is literally true. The author himself probably did not know what this was really about. The whole human being must change if he is to achieve what the plant does for him now. His physical body will then be carbon, but not black coal, nor hard diamond, which after all is only a symbol for the philosopher's stone. The philosopher's stone is meant to be a body which is transparent, with the other organs integrated within it. It will consist of a mass of gel-like carbon, rather like the white of an egg. Man is following a course where he will one day develop into this marvellous glory. The rhythmic breathing which leads to this is called ‘alchemy’. The philosopher's stone is the lapis philosophorum. The man who wrote this did not actually know what it was he was writing.

The 5th stage on the yoga path is pratyahara. It consists in being able to suppress external sensory impressions. We have to know the things that are truly our soul world and leave aside everything that has come to us from outside. Most of the things people think have come to them from outside. When someone is able to give himself up consciously to his inner thoughts and make himself blind and deaf to the world around him, though he is inwardly awake; if he is able to have a thought without reflecting on external things, his sleep will be filled with dreams and he'll be practising pratyahara.

At the 6th stage one needs not only to blot out completely anything the eyes see and the ears hear but also suppress inner ideas rising from the soul itself. Having removed everything from the soul that has come to it from life, one then holds one idea, which the guru has given, in one's inner soul. These may be ideas like those given in the first four rules in Light on the Path. The best soul contents are those a special teacher is able to give us.

Such a soul content is allowed to act for some time before one lets go of it, without losing conscious awareness. One then has the function of the life in mind and spirit, without the thinking content. When this 7th stage has been reached the world of the spirit enters into us. This condition is called samadhi.

The path of Christian gnosis is also in seven stages. This method is designed for a somewhat less subtle body and above all for the world of sentience and feeling. The Christian teacher has to guide the pupil's world of sentience and feeling. The seven stages of Christian initiation are 1) the washing of the feet, 2) the scourging, 3) the crown of thorns, 4) the crucifixion, 5) the mystic death on the cross, 6) the entombment, 7) the ascension to heaven.

It is best to consider these 7 stages by describing the way the teacher works with the pupil. The teacher will say, for instance: ‘Look at the plant. It roots and grows in the world of minerals. Addressing itself to the mineral world it would have to say: “It is to you that I owe my existence, and I am only able to live because of you. Thank you!”’ In the same way the animal should say to the plant world: ‘I owe my existence to you and am only able to live thanks to you.’ Looking at the natural world around him and at the human beings who are at a lower level, a similar feeling should live in his soul. It is never possible to develop and reach a higher level unless there are also lower levels. Because of this, people who are socially at a higher level must also go down to those who are below them and give thanks to them. Christ Jesus suggested this when at the washing of the feet he bent down to his disciples and washed their feet. Someone who is at the first stage of Christian initiation must fill his heart and mind with such a feeling of gratitude to all that is below him. Two symptoms will indicate what he has achieved. He will have an astral vision where he sees himself in the washing of the feet situation. This happens to everyone who goes through this in the right way. Secondly he will have a feeling as if water were washing around his feet.

At the 2nd stage the pupil must learn to bear all the pain and suffering that life brings and which is always present all around him. He must stand up straight, even when he has to suffer the greatest pain. The symptoms will be an astral vision where he sees himself being scourged and he will feel something like needle pricks in different places on his body.

At the 3rd stage the pupil gains the ability to bear it when scorn and derision are poured on things that are most sacred to us. The teacher says to the pupil: ‘If you are able to bear mockery and derision of what is most sacred to you and stand up for it nevertheless, you will be able to wear the crown of thorns.’ The pupil will experience a particular kind of headache when he has reached this level.

At the 4th stage he must learn to consider the body as something wholly external to himself carrying it around the way we carry around an instrument, a hammer or some other tool. In some schools the pupils learn to speak of their body like this: ‘My body goes through the door’—and the like. In his astral vision the pupil then sees himself nailed to the cross. He has Christ's stigmata on his hands and feet and on the right side of the body. Red stigmata appear at the moment of meditation and concentration.

The 5th stage is the mystic death. Here the individual feels as if a veil was placed between him and the rest of the world, like a black curtain. He then comes to know inwardly all the badness there can be in the world. Descent into hell—that is the mystic death. A vision will then show the curtain being torn apart.

At the 6th stage one has a feeling as if everything else were one's own body. You are united with the earth. That is the entombment.

The 7th stage, resurrection, cannot be put into words. Someone who goes through those feelings in his soul gains insight into the world of the spirit.

The third kind of initiation is the Rosicrucian way. It has been known in Europe from the 14th century. It is above all concerned to strengthen and empower the inner will. Where the Oriental school puts the emphasis on thinking, and the Christian school on feeling, the Rosicrucian way aims to develop the will. The stages of this way are 1) study, 2) Imagination, 3) learning the occult script, 4) bringing rhythm into life, 5) coming to understand the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, 6) contemplation of or entering into the macrocosm, 7) godliness.

For study, the pupil must have the patience to gain certain ideas concerning the world. He must first of all accept the teaching he is given. Thus he must, for example, devotedly study the teachings of elementary theosophy. He must try and enter as deeply into these as he can. Patient acquisition of ideas is essential for anyone who wants to reach higher levels. This calls for a specific way of training one's thinking, getting used to living and being active in the pure thinking element. Books such as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Truth and Knowledge¹⁵⁰ have been written for those who want to achieve Rosicrucian initiation and train their minds. It is a matter of overcoming the difficulties, which many find insurmountable, of following one's thoughts and perceiving how one thought of necessity arises from another. Oriental training required strict submission to the guru. For gnostic Christian training the pupil must put the Christ at the centre of all endeavour. In Rosicrucian Christian training the teacher is by his side, his friend and counsellor.

We are more apt to take a tumble when we come to the higher regions. It is therefore important to gain inner certainty. In everyday situations life itself puts us right. It will sometimes correct our errors in terrible ways. Such correction is not given when we ascend to the higher worlds. This is why in Oriental training one must see with one's guru's eyes and feel through him. The European teacher is a counsellor. One needs the guidance of another when ascending into the higher worlds. In the astral world, perceptions are entirely different from those we have in the physical world; and in the devachanic world, too, a new world of perceptions opens up for us. The three worlds differ completely in the impressions to be gained. But one thing is the same for all of them, and that is logical thinking. This can be a reliable guide on the astral and devachanic planes. When study has taught us to think logically, we can also manage on the astral and devachanic planes. The logic of the physical plan no longer applies on the buddhi plan, however.

The 2nd stage of Rosicrucian training is Imagination. European pupils should take their time over this, for it is easy to take a tumble. Man must learn to develop a moral relationship to things. All that is transient should be seen as a simile for something that is eternal. If we look at the natural world in this way, the autumn crocus, for instance, becomes the image for us of a solitary spirit seeking to rise upwards in a melancholy way. The violet will be a symbol of something that has its existence in undemanding, calm beauty. Every stone makes us think—it is a simile for something that lies behind it. Our world thus grows richer. Things tells us of their inmost nature. One flower will then be the tear through which the earth gives expression to its pain, another the expression of joy. Looking at a grain of rice, for example, we may observe a small flame arising from it. The small flame becomes an image of what will later be the haulm growing from the grain.

At the 3rd stage a whole world of the spirit arises from all that is. The spiritual reality, the spiritual content of all things floats above them. The whole astral world becomes visible. You then find yourself as if in the waves of the ocean, feeling as if you were floating in the sea. You see the colour of a tulip lifted out of it, as it were, and realize that this is the garment of a spiritual entity. At this third stage the pupil learns the occult script. We must learn this if we truly want to live in the astral world. Thus many things are based on a spiral in this world (Fig. 4).

We see such a spiral in the Orion nebula and in the configuration of life forms. Human and animal embryos are spiral in form at an early stage. One part is an image of the physical aspect, the other part, which winds into it, of the astral. The beginning of a new stage in human history is also symbolized by a double spiral. It is the sign of Cancer in the zodiac. When ancient Atlantis had perished and the post-Atlantean period began, with the ancient Indian race, the sun rose in the sign of Cancer at the beginning of spring. Learning the occult script we gain our orientation in the astral world.

The 4th stage consists in learning the rhythm of life. The pupil is instructed to regulate his breathing in a particular way. In nature, everything goes in rhythms. Every plant will rhythmically flower at the same time. Rhythm may also be seen in the animal world. Thus an animal is only fertile at certain times of the year. In man, however, rhythm becomes chaos. Man must create a new rhythm for his life. Many people only have rhythms that are imposed on them. Generally speaking, people do not have rhythms chosen of their own free will. The Rosicrucian must see to it that his life becomes rhythmical. Rhythm is given to the breathing process according to special instructions given by the teacher.

The 5th stage is getting to know the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. A bond exists between human beings and all things around them in this world. Ordinarily this only shows itself as love between the two sexes, the feeling that the one person finds in the other exactly what is familiar and related to him, what belongs to him. Many things are due to this mysterious relationship between world and man. An example is Paracelsus' discovery of the relationships that exist between certain plants and man. Having this ability he also came to know how other substances relate to man.¹⁵¹ He called someone suffering from cholera an Arsenicus, because arsenic will evoke exactly the symptoms in a healthy person which one also sees in a case of cholera.¹⁵² One can have a personal relationship, a loving relationship with all things, one that is wholly of the spirit. This must be practised. You achieve it by following specific directions. If you think of the point that lies between the eyebrows and above the root of the nose in relation to a particular word, insight into a quite specific process in the world will come to you after some time. Thinking of the inner eye you gain knowledge of the sun's nature, of the processes that occurred when sun and earth were still one heavenly body. Another exercise makes it possible to know the moon in its spiritual aspect, or the condition of the earth 18 million years ago.

You then enter deeply into the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. Concentration on the point between the eyebrows and above the root of the nose you are able to penetrate into the time when the I entered into the human being. The human being then grows into the macrocosm in his conscious mind. He has to practise this for some time, growing into all things, be they far or near.

The 7th stage is that of godliness, when one grows beyond the limited bodily shell and is able to live with the macrocosm.

Pupils are instructed according to their occult status. When a pupil has gone through these stages as a real experience, he has reached the summit of insight into higher worlds.

• 148. Subba Row (Rao) (1856–1890), Indian scholar. Esoteric Writings, 2nd edition, Adyar 1931.
• 149. Karl Arnold Kortüm (1745–1828) published a treatise on the philosopher's stone in a paper called the Reichsanzeiger on 8 October 1976. Those able to read German may also see Kleeberg L. Wege und Worte 2. Aufl., Fussnote auf Seite 131. Stuttgart 1961.
• 150. Steiner R. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. A Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4). Tr. R. Stebbing. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1989. Steiner R. Truth and Knowledge (GA 3). Tr. R. Stebbing. West Nyack NY: Rudolf Steiner Publications 1963.
• 151. Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (1493–1541), son of a Swiss physician. Studied alchemy and chemistry at Basel, the properties of metals and minerals in mines. Later town physician at Basel, moving to Salzburg in 1541. Revolutionized old medical methods, basing himself on empiricism.
• 152. ‘It arises from this that you shall not say “that is cholera”, “that is melancholia”, but “that is Arsenicus, that is Aluminosum”; and thus also "he is of Saturn, he is of Mars”, not “he is of melancholia, he is of cholera”. Then one part is of the heavens, one part of the earth, mingled together like fire and wood, so that each may lose its name; then they are two things in one.’ From Paragranum, collected medical works in German, edited by K. Sudhoff vol. 8 p. 74. Munich 1922–23.

The secret behind the mystery of Golgotha is one of the most profound secrets in world evolution. We will need to go back through millennia in earth evolution and let occult wisdom illumine it. It is true that the things Christ Jesus has done should be understood by ordinary people, this does not go against delving more deeply into the mystery of Golgotha. For complete understanding of this, the greatest phenomenon on earth, we must, however, enter into the depths of mystery wisdom.

In this session we'll therefore be concerned with going deeply into mystery wisdom so that we may understand how such a thing as the mystery of Golgotha could happen. We need to remember that when the Christ appeared on earth something happened that truly brought a major change in human history. We'll understand this most easily if we consider the question as to who Christ Jesus really was. For the occultist, this question has two parts. We have to distinguish between the individual who lived in Palestine at that time and lived to the age of 30, and what then became of this individual.

Jesus became the Christ in his thirtieth year. In ordinary people, only small parts of the astral body, ether body and physical body have become manas, buddhi and atman,⁷¹ or spirit self, life spirit and spirit human being. Jesus of Nazareth was a third-degree chela. His bodies were thus at a high level of purification. Complete cleansing, sanctification and purification had been achieved in his astral body, ether body and physical body. When a chela has gone through these three purification stages in his three bodies he is able at a given time in his life to give up his I. In the thirtieth year, the I of Jesus left the three bodies and went over into the astral world, leaving three sanctified bodies on earth that had been hollowed out by the I, as it were, so that there was room in them for a higher spirit. The I of Jesus of Nazareth thus made the great sacrifice in his thirtieth year of offering his purified bodies to the Christ spirit. The Christ filled those three bodies. After this time we refer to him as Christ Jesus, who walked on this earth for three years and did great things in the body of Jesus.

To understand who the Christ was we must go back a long way in the evolution of the earth and of humanity. Before it became earth, the earth was the ancient Moon. This is not the same as our present moon, which is just a piece of earth that has split off. Before the earth became Moon it was Sun, and before that, Saturn. We thus have to understand that milliards of years ago a body existed in cosmic space that was ancient Saturn. A planet evolves through a number of incarnations. Before our earth was earth, it existed as Saturn, Sun and Moon. Let us first of all go the Sun. There the ‘fire spirits’ were at the level which human beings have reached on earth today. They did not look the way present-day human beings look, however. Those sublime spirits went through their human stage on the Sun under completely different conditions than people do on earth today. On the Moon, another group of spirits went through the human stage—the lunar pitris, Moon spirits, who are now at a higher level than human beings. In Christian esotericism they are called angeloi or angels. Man only became ‘man’ on earth. The lunar pitris are one stage higher than man, and the fire spirits above them are at a very high level of evolution.

We now come to the earth, to the condition of the Lemurian race who lived on a continent between present-day Asia, Africa and Australia. Physical entities then existed on earth that were higher than today's animals and less developed than today's human beings. They created a kind of housing or case, a dwelling place. They would have grown decadent if they had not been inseminated by higher spirits. It was at that time that souls finally entered into the human physical body. Those souls then prepared what was later to become the human body. The physical housings of human bodies were on earth, and higher spirits let soul substance flow into these from the worlds of spirit. This soul principle was still connected with the worlds of spirit. It was like water, drops of which were poured into a number of vessels. The spirits who poured out the soul principle were those who had completed their human stage on the Moon, the Moon spirits. They were now one level higher than human beings and able to pour part of their essence into humanity, so that this might develop further (Fig. 1).

A relationship existed between all these souls, for they came from a community of spirits. All those who had received a drop each from a communal spirit showed great similarity. In the past, members of a tribe would have souls showing such similarity. Later it was nations, for instance the whole Egyptian, the whole Hebrew nation. They had souls that came from a common source.

The Moon spirits had given human beings the spirit self in man. This made man an I, someone with self-awareness. There was something, however, which the Moon spirits could not give, only a single, communal spirit that was even higher and had completed its human stage on the Sun was able to do this—a fire spirit. Many such fire spirits had developed on the Sun and were sublime spirits on earth. One such fire spirit was called upon to pour out his essence over the whole of humanity. A communal spirit was there for the whole earth, and this was able to pour out the element of the Sun spirits or fire spirits, the buddhi or life spirit, doing so over the whole of humanity with all its members. But in the Lemurian race and in Atlantean times human beings were not yet ripe to receive anything from this Sun spirit. Looking at the akashic record of that time one finds that strangely enough, human beings consisted of physical body, ether body, astral body and spirit self. The spirit self was, however, still very tenuous. The buddhi or life spirit was present around every individual but this could only be seen in astral space. In astral space every individual had such a buddhi surrounding; but this buddhi, being around the outside of the human being, was not yet ripe to enter into him (Fig. 2).

The whole of this fire spirit, the common source spring of all the sparks of spirit for human beings, had entered into the physical body, ether body and astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. That is the Christ, the unique divine spirit that does not exist in any other form on earth. It entered into Jesus of Nazareth so that those who felt connected with Christ Jesus were given the strength to receive the buddhi into themselves. The coming of the Christ meant that the potential began to be there for receiving the buddhi. John called this the divine creator-word. The divine creator-word is the fire spirit who poured his sparks into human beings.

The following then happened. The Moon spirits made it possible for communal tribes to exist among humanity. The Christ was a single spirit for the whole earth, so that people were united in a family that encompassed the whole earth. Before, differences had existed between people in that different Moon spirits poured out their drops over the earth. Now humanity became one through the powers that came from Christ Jesus. The principle that came to the earth with Christ Jesus is one that unites human beings.

When the Christ spoke of the day of judgement, his words were: ‘When the son of man shall come in his glory’—meaning ‘when the drops of the Christ will all have flowed into human beings, when all people have become brothers’—‘he shall say to those on his right hand, Come, you are the blessed of my father, inherit the realm prepared for you from the foundation of the world! For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink.’⁷³ There will then be no difference between people except for good and evil.

He said to his disciples: ‘Inasmuch as you have done it for one of the least of my brothers, you have done it for me.’⁷⁴ This means that Christ Jesus was referring to the time when the drops he had poured will have been received by human beings in such a way that anyone seeing another person knows that the same substance lives in both of them. The strength needed to make it at all possible for the buddhi to be called awake in human beings came from the life of the Christ on earth. We must therefore see the Christ as the spirit of community here on earth.

If we were able to look down on the earth from a distant star and do so through millennia, we would discover a moment in time when the Christ was influencing the earth in such a way that all astral matter was penetrated by the Christ. The Christ is the earth spirit, and the earth is his body. Everything that lives, sprouts and grows on earth is the Christ. He is in every grain of seed, in all trees and in everything that grows and sprouts on earth. The Christ therefore had to say, as he pointed to the bread: ‘This is my body’.⁷⁵ And he had to say of the juice of the grape—it was not fermented wine at the last supper—‘This is my blood’.⁷⁶ for the juice of the fruits of this earth is his blood. Because of this human beings also had to appear to him to be walking about on his body. He therefore also said to his disciples after the washing of the feet: ‘He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.’ This must be taken literally, considering that the earth is the body of the Christ. It is exactly because he has made himself the bearer of earth evolution that a distant spirit would be able to see that more and more of his spirit is entering into human beings—the substance of Christ Jesus entering into every individual human being. In the end that spirit would see the whole earth transformed, bearing people who have been godded⁷⁷ through the Christ. Anything that has not taken part in this godding is set aside as evil. It has to wait for a later time when it may develop and become good. Before the coming of the Christ, all nations on earth had mysteries. In the mysteries it was shown what was to happen in future. The pupils went through long preparations to prepare them for entombment. The hierophant would then be able to take the pupil to a higher state of consciousness, a kind of deep sleep. In earlier times, conscious awareness always had to be suppressed if the divine was to appear in the human being. The soul would be taken through the regions of the spiritual world, and after three days the individual would be restored to life by the hierophant. He then felt himself to be a new person. He would be given a new name. He would be called a son of God.

In the mystery of Golgotha this whole process happened outwardly on the physical plane. Before, the pupils would be enlivened with a spark of the Christ spirit, and they would be told: one day there will be one who will make it possible for all human beings to be christed. That one will truly be the word become flesh. You can only know this for three days, when you'll be walking through the realms of the heavens. But there will be one who always walks through the heavenly realms, and he will take the realms of heaven with him into the physical world.

The experience which an initiate had on the astral plane was to be presented on the physical plane by the Christ. It was the experience that the divine word had been there from the beginning, pouring its drops out over human beings, though the I-people were not yet able to take it in. This is what John tells us, John who proclaimed the I-human being, who was christed, who had taken the Christ into himself. That is the meaning of the ‘word’ in John's gospel. He spoke of the word that was on the earth from the very beginning:

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was a god.

This was with God in the beginning.

All that exists has come into being through it, and nothing that has come into existence has done so except through it. In it was life, and life was the light of mankind. And the light shone into the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.

There came to be a man, sent by God, and his name was John. He came to witness, that he bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him.

He was not the light, but a witness of the light.

For the true light, that illumines all men, was to come into the world.

It was in the world, and the world came into being through it, but the world did not know it.

It came into individual human beings (it came to the I-people); but the individual human beings (the I-people) did not receive it.

Those who did receive it were able through this to reveal themselves to be children of God.

Those who believed in his name were born not of the blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the human will, but were born of God.

And the word has become flesh and dwelt among us and we have heard his teaching of the son at one with the father, full of devotion and truth.

The word ‘devotion’ in verse 14 meant the same to John as ‘buddhi’; truth is ‘manas’, wisdom, the ‘spirit self’.

John bears witness to him, saying clearly: This was the one of whom I said: after me will come the one who was before me, for he has preceded me.

Out of his fullness we all received grace upon grace. For the law has been given through Moses, but grace and truth entered into existence through Jesus Christ.

No one has ever had sight of God. The once-born son who was within the father of the world, he has come to be the leader in this beholding.

Every initiation into the mysteries of the spirit pointed to this coming of the Christ. This initiation was given in the yoga sleep, the Orphic sleep, the Hermes sleep. When the initiate woke again in his body, when he was able to hear and speak again, using physical senses, he said the words which in Hebrew were ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!’ meaning 'my God, my God, how you have raised me up high!'

That was the initiation known in ancient Judaism. The initiate would be in the higher worlds for three days and experience the whole progress of future human evolution, what was to come for him in human evolution. In the perceptions he had during the three days, the future stages for humanity were not as a rule seen in abstract form but every stage was represented by an individual. The initiate would perceive twelve people. They represented the twelve stages of inner development. Powers of soul thus appeared before him in the form of human individuals. At a given moment the initiate would see a particular scene. He would see his own individual nature taken to the stage where the whole of humanity is filled with buddhi, meaning that it will be christed. He would see himself in the God, with the powers of soul ranged behind. Immediately behind him stood John, the final figure who indicates that he had reached completion. He would see himself transfigured in a state he would achieve when he had reached completion; his powers of soul personified, with John the final stage of completion, proclaiming the Christ stage. In the yoga sleep those twelve figures would then make a group, gathering for the "mystic communion, as it was called. This would be as follows. The human being sitting surrounded by the powers of soul would say to himself: these are at one with me; they have taken me through earth evolution. I have walked with the feet of these apostles. The communion meal means that the twelve powers of soul are at one with the human being.

Completion or perfection is reached when the lower soul qualities drop away and only the higher ones remain. Humanity will no longer have those lower powers in time to come, an example being the power of reproduction. John's very power of soul will have brought it about that those powers are then lifted up into the loving heart. Rivers of spiritual love will flow from it. When the Christ is in us, the heart is the organ which is most powerful in us. The lower power of soul will then have been raised from the lower abdomen to the heart. Every initiate experienced this as the mystery of the heart. It came to expression in the words ‘my God, my God, how you have raised me up high!’

With the coming of Christ Jesus, the whole mystery, the whole experience, was brought to realization in the physical plane. Brotherhoods existed in Palestine at that time that had evolved from the old Essene order. They would have such a communion meal as a symbol for the mystic last supper. The term ‘to eat the Easter lamb’ is a general term for what happened at Easter. Jesus sat down at table with the twelve and instituted the communion meal with the words: ‘At the end of earth evolution all people will have received what I have brought to the earth; then this will be true: this is my body, this is my blood.’ He then said: ‘One of you will betray me.’⁷⁸ Egotism, lower desire, is the betrayer. The disciple whom the Lord loved knew this, for he lay against his lap. For as long as this power is there, it will kill—sexual reproduction and death are mutually conditional. This power which now lies in the sexual element ascends higher in the body—to the heart. The disciple shows this in the gospel by moving up to the heart. Just as it is certain that it is lower desire which is the betrayer, so it is certain that the lower power of soul is raised higher. ‘One of the disciples lay in the lap of Jesus—he then lay against the breast of Jesus.’⁷⁹ This signified that all the lower powers, all egotism, had been raised to the heart. Jesus then repeated the words ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!’ for his disciples. ‘Now the son of man has been glorified and God glorified in him.’

What happened in the mysteries was the same as what later happened on Golgotha. Under the cross stood the disciple whom the Lord loved, who had lain in his lap at the last supper and has been raised to the breast. The female figures, his mother, his mother's sister Mary and Mary Magdalene, were also there. It does not say in John's gospel that the mother of Jesus was called Mary but that his mother's sister was called Mary. His mother was called Sophia.

John baptized Jesus in the river Jordan. A dove came down from heaven. That was a moment of spiritual insemination. The mother of Jesus who was inseminated here—who is she? The chela Jesus of Nazareth, divesting himself of his I at this moment, the highly developed manas, was inseminated, with the buddhi entering. The highly developed manas which received the buddhi was wisdom, Sophia, the mother, who was inseminated by Jesus' father. The name Mary, the same as Maya, is the name of ‘mother’ in general. In the Bible we read: The angel came to her and said: ‘Hail to you, sweetest one. Behold you will be fruitful and bear a son. The holy spirit shall come upon you and the power of the highest shall overshadow you.’⁸⁰ The holy ghost is the father of Jesus; the dove that flew down inseminated the Sophia who was in Jesus.

The text should thus be read to say: ‘By the cross stood Sophia, the mother of Jesus.’ He spoke to this mother, saying: ‘Woman, this is your son.’ He had himself transferred the Sophia who had been in him to John. He made him the son of Sophia, saying: ‘This is your mother.’ ‘From now on you must acknowledge divine wisdom to be your mother and dedicate yourself solely to her.’ What John has written was this divine wisdom, Sophia, embodied in the gospel of John itself. He received the knowledge from Jesus himself, and was authorized by the Christ to transfer the wisdom to the earth.

The greatest spirit on earth had to be incarnated in a body. This body had to die, to be killed, the blood had to flow. This means something special. Wherever the blood is, there is the self. If all the old self-communities were to end, then selfhood, which has its seat in the blood, had to be sacrificed on one occasion. All individual egotisms flowed away with the blood of Christ on the cross. The blood of tribal communities became the blood of all humanity when the blood of Christ was sacrificed at that time.

Then again something happened which an astral observer would have noted in the astral atmosphere. The earth's whole astral atmosphere changed at the moment when he died, and events were possible that would never have been possible before. Sudden initiation—like that of Paul—would never have been possible before. It has become possible because with the flowing of Christ's blood the whole of humanity became a communal self. At that time the self flowed from the blood of Jesus' wounds. Only the three bodies remained on the cross and were later given new life by the risen Christ. At the moment when the Christ left the body, the three bodies were so strong that they were themselves able to say the words which the transfigured human being would speak after his initiation: ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!’

Those words would have shown all those who knew something of the mystery wisdom that this was a mystery. A minor change made to the Hebrew text has given us the words we read in the Bible: ‘Eli, Eli, lama asabthani!’ This means: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’

• 71. These are oriental terms also used in theosophy. Current reference works do not use capital initial letters, and I have followed this, since it feels right to keep capitalization for proper nouns and adjectives derived from them. The reference works also consistently give ‘atman’ rather than ‘atma’, which may be similar to the problem we have with 'mantra' and ‘mantram’. Main reference works consulted: Microsoft Bookshelf 1995; The Cambridge Encylopedia, Cambridge University Press 1990; G. de Purucker, Occult Glossary, Pasadena CA: Theosophical University Press 1972. Translator.
• 72. See Steiner R. The God of the Alpha and the God of the Omega (in GA 109), lecture given in Berlin on 25 May 1909. Tr. D. Osmond. Anthroposophical Quarterly 1962. The term ‘the last of the Zarathustras’ means, according to Rudolf Steiner, that this was the last of a number of incarnations for an individual who always bore the name Zarathustra.
• 73. Matthew 25: 31, 34-5.
• 74. Matthew 25: 40.
• 75. Matthew 26: 26.
• 76. Matthew 26: 28.
• 77. Word creations by Rudolf Steiner.—Translator
• 78. John 13: 21
• 79. John 13: 23, 35. The Luther translation uses ‘on the breast’ in both verses, the King James version has ‘bosom’ in verse 23, and 'breast' in verse 25. The Greek original has ‘ἐν τῷ κόλπῳ’ in verse 23 and ‘ἀναπεσὼν ἐκεῖνος οὕτως ἐπὶ τὸ στῆθος τοῦ Ἰησοῦ’.
  Translator's comment. The Greek κόλπῳ (kolpōs) has a number of meanings, including ‘gulf, bay’, and basically refers to something that bulges out into something else. We know from Homer's Greek that it referred to a fold of the overgarment people wore that would hang over the belt, being thus between chest and belt. It was widely used as a kind of pouch in which to keep things. One can thus see how confusion may arise. Ref. Bauers Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament.
• 80. Luke 1:28,31,35

We can see that the world we encounter, the world in which we live, has three aspects—firstly the way it shows itself to us outwardly, secondly the way we inwardly experience it, and thirdly the way it is inside itself.

Our sense organs convey to us the aspect in which the world shows itself to us outwardly, the world of shapes and forms in inorganic nature, the mineral world; in living nature, the plant world; in sentient nature, the animal world, and in thinking nature, the human world. It comes to us from outside as a world of sensory perceptions, and we take in this world of phenomena, of perceptions, through our sense organs. Our sense organs are the gates through which the outside world with its forms has access to us. If we did not have our sense organs, the world of forms would be forever a secret to us, something hidden; it would not exist for us. People might tell us of it, giving descriptions that we could at least partly understand. But for as long as we would lack sense organs, we would never be able to have a true idea of the outside world with its shapes and forms. All the things we now take in by seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling them would not exist for us in that case. The outside world would remain shrouded in darkness for us and we could only have a dim notion of it, getting an approximate but never a true picture of it from the descriptions given by those who knew it. This world of forms would have remained forever hidden to human beings if their senses had not opened up to take it in. The senses had to open up so that human beings might have access to this outside world.

Awareness of the world perceptible to the senses is an evolutional stage humanity did not know before. There was a time when human sense organs had not yet opened up to the outside world. Human beings were then unable to perceive the world of shape and form; they were unable to perceive anything outside; they still lived entirely within themselves, closed off from the world. The inner life they knew then is something we still have as our life of inner responses today.

In this inner life we now find the second aspect of the world. Inner responses arise to anything the senses perceive of the forms in the outside world. Just as we perceive the outside world through the senses, so we respond in our souls to the impressions that world makes on us. This inner world of our own will come to conscious awareness to the degree in which the soul and its organs have developed. The more highly developed a person is, the more does he also feel this outside world to be an inner world in his soul; the more he has developed the organs of his soul, the richer will be the images of it that arise within him, and the greater will be the order and harmony in which they exist within him. To make the outside world wholly his own, a human being must have a strong soul that is differentiated and configured to be harmonious, a fully developed soul organism. The more rich and varied the inner life someone has developed, the more will the outside world appear in it in many different images, full of variety. The greater the harmony in his soul, the more beautiful will be the way the outside world is reflected in his soul. The outside world then enters wholly into the soul, to be a beautiful, harmonious whole full of life and variety.

In their waking consciousness, human beings concentrate mainly on the outside world, and the responses they feel inwardly are chaotic to begin with. They must learn to bring order into these chaotic responses and regulate them, establish a conscious relationship to the outside world and make them into a harmonious whole. They must learn to gain control of this inner world, for only then will it become their very own world in which they are able to live consciously and according to their own will. Human beings enter into this inner world of theirs in their dreams. They are then removed from the world perceived by the senses and given over to the chaotic whirl of the inner responses that arise in images before the mind's eye. Those dream images become more regular and meaningful as they are able to bring order into their inner responses.

This inner world which has arisen in their souls is the aspect of the outside world as they feel it to be. It differs from the aspect in which the outside world presents itself to their senses.

There is however yet another aspect, and that is the aspect of the world as it really is. It is the aspect of the full reality of the world, as it is inwardly. Human beings gain this aspect if they continue on the road on which they have set out. When clear sensory perceptions have met with inner responses, and these responses have been brought into harmonious order and a beautiful rhythm, these will take human beings out into the world again. They build a bridge between their souls and the world, and as the world pours into them through the senses, so do then their souls pour out into the world because they are thinking about the world. They pour their inner responses into their thoughts, and those thoughts enter into the outside world. This completes the link between world and man and between man and world.

The world is outside, the response inside the human being; the thought is in both. In their thinking, human beings become wholly at one with the world. For the world's thinking and their own thinking are a whole. Human beings thus root in outward existence perceived through the senses. They grow by receiving impressions from the world of the senses which become inner responses, images in the soul, gain rhythms and go through transformations in their inner life. They flower when they read, when they sense the world's thought in those images, and this thought lets new flowers arise in every thinking human being.

Human beings all root in one and the same soil of the physical worlds of forms perceived through the senses. It is the same world for all of them, the same soil in which they all grow. And every single human individual draws the energies he needs to develop in his own way from that soil. Individual human beings are many trunks of different kinds that grow from the one soil and take up the energies they need from that one soil to work with them in their own inner life. But up above, where the thoughts come into flower, in the world of thought, all are one great whole, a marvellous swaying, rippling sea of flowers, each flower reflecting the great world-thinking that is one and the same, and each complementing the other, taking its place as a link in the chain, a jewel in a crown of jewels, a wave in the world ocean of thought.

Below, a whole—the physical world. Above, a whole—the world of the spirit. Between them transformation of the lower into the upper in many individuals―the soul world.

The physical world out there is a reflection of the world of the spirit because it is one. The world of the human soul is a reflection of the world of the spirit because it is rich and varied. The whole great world out there becomes a special small world in every human soul, and in emerging from all human souls in thought it once again becomes a great whole. That is how the road goes from the cosmos through the microcosm, to arise as a new, perfected cosmos out of the totality of microcosms.

Why do we need Theosophy? As living beings on the physical plane, we are on a descent. Our body is not the same as in ancient times, our bodies are less ensouled, less sustained by the spirit. Just as the plant is permeated by water, so too was the etheric body active in us in ancient times. It permeated the physical body with its constructive powers. Today it has lost its power over the body. Salvation is only possible if we strengthen the spiritual in us. When the astral body permeates with the spiritual, then the human race will also become healthier. It is fate that the human physical body crumbles, but the etheric body can become stronger and have an effect on it. Now, however, people are heading straight for decadence. Theosophy works to revitalize and heal body and soul. What is particularly effective in healing is that which cannot be perceived by the senses or the brain alone. It seems nonsense to the world when we say that we should focus our thoughts on things that cannot be proven externally. But it is childish to want to prove theosophy by means of today's science.

In our thinking about the external world there is an element that is necessarily destructive and has a destructive effect on the physical body. Sleep improves this. Many phenomena of today's cultural life have a destructive effect, for example, in particular, the light images, which certainly damage the etheric body. Light images also excite sensuality. Real art can sensualize what comes from the higher worlds for the benefit of people. In the theosophical world view, we work in union with supersensible powers. Nothing gives a firm inner foothold like Theosophy. Some slave with a firm spiritual foothold in the time of the pharaohs and the Egyptian priesthood was safer in life than many a person in the present time. Today people strive for the stereotypical, for authority. But only through their own inner activity in the awakened inner being can the soul find a firm foothold. The theosophical mood gives people a hold and makes them content, because they have a firm support in their own inner being through what theosophy gives them, which is as necessary for the soul as daily bread is for the body.

We live on a planet that is heading towards disintegration. Gradually, lakes and rivers will dry up. Such changes are altering the face of the earth. Geology already indicates that we are already in a disintegrating epoch. The renowned geologist Sucß confirms that instead of rising, invigorating processes in the earth, decomposition processes are taking place. This is already happening throughout the great last developmental epoch of the earth. It is particularly intense in the small one since 1250. Some researchers and people who are ingenious in their field show some glimmer of insight. For example, Burdach. He notes a change since the Renaissance, but he knows nothing of the change in direction of the earth's axis at the time when the spirits of personality withdrew.

Different spiritual entities intervene in different ways at different times. This gives each age its own character, just as each age of life has its own special task. It would have a destructive, undermining effect if one were to introduce something that is not appropriate to the times, for example old Egyptian teachings that were anchored in the atavistic view of the people and have been preserved in a transformed form as a belief in a supersensible world. It is not what the mind sees, not the external world, that is the object of belief; this has its strong roots in earlier experiences of the soul. The spirits of personality, the archai, are not visible, and yet they are there and intervene. There was a particularly strong intervention of the archai in the Egyptian-Babylonian period. At that time, the spirits of personality were particularly attracted by the earth sphere. Now it is different. Now they are least attracted or sympathetically touched by what is happening on earth. They no longer intervene, not even in the character of people. Since the year 1250, things have changed. In the thirteenth century, an important and significant transformation of the earth's conditions took place. Since then, the archai have ceased to intervene so strongly. They withdrew to acts in the higher worlds. Before that, their activity had been more on the earth itself. Such events are to be appreciated accordingly, for since then other laws prevail.

All progressive spirits in the universe face opponents, in this case those who are retarded spirits of personality. These opponents, the evil spirits of personality, now gain the field. This is connected with the change in the position of the earth's axis around 1250. After all, the earth describes a conical movement in the course of millennia, a dancing movement. Since the fifth or sixth millennium BC, the Earth's axis has turned more and more. Scientifically, this is called the advance of the vernal point, the equinox. The distribution of spring, summer, autumn and winter was also different in the past, more even.

The love of personality, everything connected with it, has its good and bad sides. This also brought about the Renaissance, when it produced people who lived entirely in their personalities. It was all vehement towards the thirteenth century and long afterwards, well into the Renaissance, both in artistic natures and in Cesare Borgia and Pope Alexander VI. It had also been the same with the leaders of the Crusades. During that time, everything took place under the sign of the spirits of personality. The whole of history at that time is permeated by the evil spirits of personality. Man was, as it were, possessed by the spirits of personality.

The souls incarnated in the thirteenth century knew that people could not free themselves from their personality, and the opposing forces gradually made people as materialistic as possible. The people, who were permeated by the evil spirits of personality, could no longer look up to the spiritual worlds. In those days, the connection with the spiritual world was established through faith, and the scholastic church scholars also emphasized this. Faith and knowledge were now strictly separated. This continued to have an effect over the centuries. Kant was one of the last stragglers of that time, his followers were only parrot-like repeaters. Luther, however, still felt the vague influence of the evil spirits of the personality. He threw the inkwell against the materialistic spirit of the time.

This epoch is over. We live in the time of the archangels, with thoughts that can reach up into the region where the archangels and the opponents of the archangels are. The opponents of the archangels no longer assert themselves over great personalities as the archai used to. There are no longer personalities who, like Leonardo da Vinci, are in contact with the good spirits of the personality or, like Pope Alexander VI, with the bad ones. Today people are more stereotyped. Now they are chasing abstract ideals. More and more, these are ideas, opinions, feelings, through which people are obsessed by the opponents of the archangels. As a result, people become enthusiastic about abstract ideals, become fantasists, no longer love their own eternal self, but are driven by all kinds of lusts and passions. They merely cling to the earthly personality, they rave about some unreal fantasy. But only the striving for the spiritual world can truly fill the souls with content.

A secondary effect of the evil spirits of personality arises from wine. Wine becomes an opponent in the human body itself. Abstinence from wine is a consequence for anyone who wants to penetrate into the spiritual worlds. But enthusiastic anti-alcoholism and vegetarianism belong to the partial ideals. The same applies, for example, to enthusiasm for Greek physical culture, for the Olympic Games and so on. Today's fad for cold ablutions is also part of this, all enthusiasm for the physically tangible and the physically less tangible. This increases from the reverie of drunken people to the wild propensity for crime, because the opponents of the archai work in this way in the sensual world.

Each person must feel their place in the world, must experience something of what is surging into humanity in the characterized way. Otherwise, instability, insecurity, and loss of balance will become general. People who fluctuate between enthusiasm and materialism find no orientation. There was, for example, a Wagner admirer – you can be a fan of Wagner and understand nothing about it – who went barefoot to Bayreuth, then he became an ascetic, he slept on a wooden board with pebbles, and finally he became an opponent of Wagner together with Nietzsche. Instability of the soul expresses itself in neurasthenia; in contrast to this, a firm support is needed within the soul.

But we need something different from what people in the Middle Ages needed, for whom faith was enough. A seven-year-old child needs something different from a person who is seven times seven years old. Theosophy can tear us out of the passive mold that supports us without making us lose our footing. With stormy strides, the outward splendor of our civilization will crumble. The arts, sciences, everything will fall apart. The forms cannot remain, they scatter: time and the spirit are stronger than man with his desires and passions. Theosophy is a necessity, and the theosophist should realize within himself that it is a necessity.

We stand today, as it were, at the starting-point of the foundation of the Anthroposophical Society in the narrower sense, and we should take this opportunity of once more reminding ourselves of the importance and significance of our cause. It is true that what the Anthroposophical Society wishes to be for the newer culture should not in principle differentiate it from that which we have always carried on in our circle under the name of theosophy. But perhaps this giving of a new name may nevertheless remind us of the earnestness and dignity with which we intend to work in our spiritual movement, and it is with this point in view that I have chosen the title of this course of lectures. At the very outset of our anthroposophical cause we shall speak on a subject which is capable of indicating in manifold ways the remarkable importance of our spiritual movement for the civilisation of the present day.

Many people might be surprised to find two such apparently widely different spiritual streams brought together, as the great Eastern poem of the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of one who was so closely connected with the founding of Christianity, the Apostle Paul. We can best recognise the nearness of these two spiritual streams to one another if, by way of introduction, we indicate how at the present day, is to be found, on the one hand, that which appertains to the great Bhagavad Gita poem, and on the other the Paulinism which originated with the beginning of Christianity.

Certainly much in the spiritual life of our present time differs from what it was even a comparatively short time ago, but it is just that very difference that makes a spiritual movement such as Anthroposophy so necessary.

Let us reflect how a comparatively short time ago if a man concerned himself with the spiritual life of his own times he had in reality, as I have shown in my Basle and Munich courses, to study three periods of a thousand years each; one pre-Christian period of a thousand years, and two other millennia, the sum of which is not yet quite completed; two thousand years permeated and saturated with the spiritual stream of Christianity. What might such a man have said only a short time ago when contemplating the spiritual life of mankind when, as we have said, there was no question of a theosophical, or anthroposophical movement as we now understand it? He might have said: “At the present time something is making itself prominently felt which can only be sought for in the thousand years preceding the Christian era.” For only during the last thousand years before the Christian era does one find individual men of personal importance in spiritual life. However great and powerful and mighty much in the spiritual streams of earlier times may appear to us, yet persons and individuals do not stand out from that which underlies those streams. Let us just glance back at what we reckon in not too restricted a sense, as the last thousand years before the Christian era. Let us glance back at the old Egyptian or the Chaldean-Babylonian spiritual stream; there we survey a continuity so to speak, a connected spiritual life. Only in the Greek spiritual life do we find individuals as such standing out as entirely spiritual and living. Great, mighty teachings, a mighty outlook into the space of the Cosmos; all this we find in the old Egyptian and Chaldean-Babylonian times, but only in Greece do we begin to look to separate personalities, to a Socrates or Pericles, a Phidias, a Plato, an Aristotle. Personality, as such, begins to be marked. That is the peculiarity of the spiritual life of the last three thousand years; and I do not only mean the remarkable personalities themselves, but rather the impression made by the spiritual life upon each separate individuality, upon each personality. In these last three thousand years it has become a question of personality, if we may say so; and the fact that separate individuals now feel the need of taking part in the spiritual life, find inner comfort, hope, peace, inward bliss and security, in the various spiritual movements, gives these their significance. And since, until a comparatively short time ago, we were only interested in history inasmuch as it proceeded from one personality to another, we got no really clear understanding of what occurred before the last three thousand years. The history, for which alone we had, till recently, any understanding, began with Greece, and during the transition from the first to the second thousand years, occurred what is connected with the great Being, Christ Jesus. During the first thousand years that which we owe to Greece is predominant, and those Grecian times tower forth in a particular way. At the beginning of them stand the Mysteries. That which flowed forth from these, as we have often described, passed over into the Greek poets, philosophers and artists in every domain. For if we wish rightly to understand AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides we must seek the source for such understanding in that which flowed out of the Mysteries. If we wish to understand Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, we must seek the source of their philosophies in the Mysteries, not to speak of such a towering figure as that of Heraclitus. You may read of him in my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact, how entirely he depended upon the Mysteries.

Then in the second thousand years we see the Christian impulse pouring into spiritual development, gradually absorbing the Greek and uniting itself with it. The whole of the second thousand years passed in such a way that the powerful Christ-impulse united itself with all that came over from Greece as living tradition and life. So we see Greek wisdom, Greek feeling, and Greek art slowly and gradually uniting organically with the Christ-impulse. Thus the second thousand years ran its course. Then in the third thousand years begins the cultivation of the personality. We may say that we can see in the third thousand years how differently the Greek influence is felt. We see it when we consider such artists as Raphael, Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci. No longer does the Greek influence work on together with Christianity in the third thousand years, as it did in the culture of the second; not as something historically great, not as something contemplated externally was Greek influence felt during the second thousand years. But in the third thousand we have to turn of set purpose to the Greek. We see how Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo and Raphael allowed themselves to be influenced by the great works of art then being discovered; we see the Greek influence being more and more consciously absorbed. It was absorbed unconsciously during the second thousand years, but in the third millennium it was taken up more and more consciously. An example of how consciously this Greek influence was being recognised in the eyes of the world is to be found in the figure of the philosopher, Thomas Aquinas; and how he was compelled to unite what flowed out from Christian philosophy with the philosophy of Aristotle. Here the Greek influence was absorbed consciously and united with Christianity in a philosophic form; as in the case of Raphael, Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci, in the form of art. This whole train of thought rises higher through spiritual life, and even takes the form of a certain religious opposition in the cases of Giordano Bruno and Galileo. Notwithstanding all this, we find everywhere Greek ideas and conceptions, especially about nature, cropping up again; there is a conscious absorption of the Greek influence, but this does not go back beyond the Greek age. In every soul, not only in the more learned or more highly educated, but in every soul down to the simplest, a spiritual life is spread abroad and lives in them, in which the Greek and Christian influences are consciously united. From the University down to the peasant's cottage Greek ideas are to be found united with Christianity.

Now in the nineteenth century something peculiar appeared, something which requires Anthroposophy to explain it. There we see in one single example what mighty forces are at play. When the wonderful poem of the Bhagavad Gita first became known in Europe, certain important thinkers were enraptured by the greatness of the poem, by its profound contents; and it should never be forgotten that such a thoughtful spirit as William von Humboldt, when he became acquainted with it, said that it was the most profoundly philosophical poem that had ever come under his notice; and he made the beautiful remark, that it was worth while to have been allowed to grow as old as he to be enabled to become acquainted with the Bhagavad Gita, the great spiritual song that sounds forth from the primeval holy times of Eastern antiquity. What a wonderful thing it is that slowly, although perhaps not attractive as yet to large circles, so much of Eastern antiquity was poured out into the nineteenth century by means of the Bhagavad Gita. For this is not like other writings that came over from the ancient East which ever proclaim Eastern thoughts and feelings from this or that standpoint. In the Bhagavad Gita we are confronted with something of which we may say that it is the united flow of all the different points of view of Eastern thought, feeling and perception. That is what makes it of such significance.

Now let us turn back to old India. Apart from other less important things, we find there, in the first place, three shades, if we may so call them, of spiritual streams flowing forth from the old Indian pre-historic times. That spiritual stream which we meet with in the earliest Vedas and which developed further in the later Vedantic poems, is one quite definite one—we will describe it presently—it is, if we may say so, a one-sided yet quite distinct spiritual stream. We then meet with a second spiritual stream in the Sankhya philosophy, which again goes in a definite spiritual direction; and, lastly, we meet a third shade of the Eastern spiritual stream in Yoga. Here we have the three most remarkable oriental spiritual streams placed before our souls. The Vedas, Sankhya, and Yoga.

The Sankhya system of Kapila, the Yoga philosophy of Patanjali and the Vedas are spiritual streams of definite colouring, which, because of this definite colouring, are to a certain extent one-sided, and which are great because of their one-sidedness. In the Bhagavad Gita we have the harmonious inter-penetration of all three spiritual streams. What the Veda philosophy has to give is to be found shining forth in the Bhagavad Gita; what the Yoga of Patanjali has to give mankind we find again in the Bhagavad Gita; and what the Sankhya of Kapila has to give we find there too. Moreover, we do not find these as a conglomeration, but as three parts flowing harmoniously into one organism, as if they originally belonged together. The greatness of the Bhagavad Gita lies in the comprehensiveness of its description of how this oriental spiritual life receives its tributaries from the Vedas on the one side, on another from the Sankhya philosophy of Kapila, and again on a third side from the Yoga of Patanjali.

We shall now briefly characterise what each of these spiritual streams has to give us.

The Veda stream is most emphatically a philosophy of unity, it is the most spiritual monism that could be thought of; the Veda philosophy which is consolidated in the Vedanta is a spiritual monism. If we wish to understand the Veda philosophy, we must, in the first place, keep clearly before our souls the fact that this philosophy is based upon the thought that man can find something deeper within his own self, and that what he first realises in ordinary life is a kind of expression or imprint of this self of his; that man can develop, and that his development will draw up the depths of the actual self more and more from the foundations of his soul. A higher self rests as though asleep in man, and this higher self is not that of which the present-day man is directly aware, but that which works within him, and to which he must develop himself. When man some day attains to that which lives within him as “self,” he will then realise, according to the Veda-philosophy, that this “self” is one with the all-embracing self of the world, that he does not only rest with his self within the all-embracing World-Self, but that he himself is one with it. So much is he one with this World-Self that he is in two-fold manner related to it. In some way similar to our physical in-breathing and out-breathing does the Vedantist picture the relationship of the human self to the World-Self Just as one draws in a breath and breathes it out again, while outside there is the universal air and within us only the small portion of it that we have drawn in so outside us we have the universal, all-embracing, all-pervading Self that lives and moves in all things, and this we breathe in when we yield ourselves to the contemplation of the spiritual Self of the World. Spiritually one breathes it in with every perception that one gets of this Self, one breathes it in with all that one draws into one's soul. All knowledge, all thinking, all perception is spiritual breathing; and that which we, as a portion of the world-Self, draw into our souls (which portion remains organically united to the whole), that is Atman, the Breath, which, as regards ourselves, is as the portion of air that we breathe in, which cannot be distinguished from the general atmosphere. So is Atman in us, which cannot be distinguished from that which is the all-ruling Self of the World. Just as we breathe out physically, so there is a devotion of the soul through which the best that is in it goes forth in the form of prayer and sacrifice to this Self. Brahman is like the spiritual out-breathing. Atman and Brahman, like in-breathing and out-breathing, make us sharers in the all-ruling World-Self. What we find in the Vedantas is a monistic spiritual philosophy, which is at the same time a religion; and the blossom and fruit of Vedantism lie in that which so blesses man, that most complete and in the highest degree satisfying feeling of unity with the universal Self powerfully weaving through the world. Vedantism treats of this connection of mankind with the unity of the world, of the fact of man's being within a part of the whole great spiritual cosmos. We cannot say the Veda-Word, because Veda means Word, but the Word-Veda as given is itself breathed forth, according to the Vedantic conception, from the all-ruling unitary Being, and the human soul can take it into itself as the highest expression of knowledge. In accepting the Veda-Word the best part of the all-mighty “Self” is taken in, the consciousness of the connection between the individual human self and this all-mighty World-Self is attained. What the Veda speaks is the God-Word which is creative, and this is born again in human knowledge, and so leads it side by side with the creative principle which lives and weaves throughout the world. Therefore, that which was written in the Vedas was valued as the Divine Word, and he who succeeded in mastering them was considered as being a possessor of the Divine Word. The Divine Word had come spiritually into the world and was to be found in the Veda-Books; those who mastered these books took part in the creative principle of the World.

Sankhya philosophy is different. When one first meets with this, as it has come down to us through tradition, we find in it exactly the opposite of the teaching of the Unity. If we wish to compare the Sankhya philosophy to anything, we may compare it to the philosophy of Leibnitz. It is a pluralistic philosophy. The several souls mentioned therein—human souls and the souls of Gods—are not traced back by the Sankhya philosophy to unitary source, but are taken as single souls existing, so to speak, from Eternity; or, at any rate, their origin is not traced back to Unity. The plurality of souls is what we find in the Sankhya philosophy. The independence of each individual soul carrying on its development in the world enclosed within its own being, is sharply accentuated; and in contrast to the plurality of souls is that which in the Sankhya philosophy is called the Prakriti element. We cannot well describe this by the modern word “matter,” for that has a materialistic meaning. But in Sankhya philosophy we do not mean to convey this with the “substantial” which is in contrast to the multiplicity of souls, and which again is not derived from a common source. In the first place, we have multiplicity of souls, and then that which we may call the material basis, which, like a primeval flood, streams through the world, through space and time, and out of which souls take the elements for their outer existence. Souls must clothe themselves in this material element, which, again, is not to be traced back to unity with the souls themselves. And so it is in the Sankhya philosophy that we principally find this material element, carefully studied. Attention is not so much directed to the individual soul; this is taken as something real that is there, confined in and united with this material basis, and which takes the most varied forms within it, and thus shows itself outwardly in many different forms. A soul clothes itself with this original material element, that may be thought of like the individual soul itself as coming from Eternity. The soul nature expresses itself through this material basic element, and in so doing it takes on many different forms, and it is in particular the study of these material forms that we find in the Sankhya philosophy. Here we have, in the first place, so to speak, the original form of this material element as a sort of spiritual primeval stream, into which the soul is first immersed. Thus if we were to glance back at the first stages of evolution, we should find there the undifferentiated material elements and immersed therein, the plurality of the souls which are to evolve further. What, therefore, we first find as Form, as yet undifferentiated from the unity of the primal stream, is the spiritual substance itself that lies at the starting-point of evolution. The first thing that then emerges, with which the soul can as yet clothe itself individually, is Budhi. So that when we picture to ourselves a soul clothed with the primal flood-substance, externally this soul is not to be distinguished from the universal moving and weaving element of the primeval flood. Inasmuch as the soul does not only enwrap itself in this first being of the universal billowing primal flood but also in that which first proceeds from this, in so far does it clothe itself in Budhi. The third element that forms itself out of the whole and through which the soul can then become more and more individual, is Ahamkara. This consists of lower and lower forms of the primeval substance. So that we have the primeval substance, the first form of which is Budhi, and its second form which is Ahamkara. The next form to that is Manas, then comes the form which consists of the organs of the senses; this is followed by the form of the finer elements, and the last form consists of the elements of the substances which we have in our physical surroundings. This is the line of evolution according to Sankhya philosophy. Above is the most super-sensible element, a primeval spiritual flow, which, growing ever denser and denser, descends to that which surrounds us in the coarser elements out of which the coarse human body is also constructed. Between these are the substances of which, for instance, our sense organs are woven, and the finer elements of which is woven our etheric or life-body. It must be carefully noticed that according to the Sankhya philosophy, all these are sheaths of the soul. Even that which springs from the first primeval flood is a sheath for the soul; the soul is at first within that; and when the Sankhya philosopher studies Budhi, Ahamkara, Manas, the senses, the finer and the coarser elements, he understands thereby the increasingly dense sheaths within which the soul expresses itself.

We must clearly understand that the manner in which the philosophy of the Vedas and the Sankhya philosophy are presented to us is only possible because they were composed in that ancient time when an old clairvoyance still existed, at any rate, to a certain extent. The Vedas and the contents of the Sankhya philosophy came into existence in different ways. The Vedas depend throughout on a primeval inspiration which was still a natural possession of primeval man; they were given to man, so to speak, without his having done anything to deserve them, except that with his whole being he prepared himself to receive into his inner depths that divine inspiration that came of itself to him, and to receive it quietly and calmly. Sankhya philosophy was formed in a different way. That process was something like the learning of our present day, only that this is not permeated by clairvoyance as the former then was. The Veda philosophy consisted of clairvoyant knowledge, inspiration given as by grace from above. Sankhya philosophy consisted of knowledge sought for as we seek it now, but sought for by people to whom clairvoyance was still accessible. This is why the Sankhya philosophy leaves the actual soul-element undisturbed, so to say. It admits that souls can impress themselves in that which one can study as the super-sensible outer forms, but it particularly studies the outer forms, which appear as the clothing of those souls. Hence we find a complete system of the forms we meet with in the world, just as in our own science we find a number of facts about nature; only that in Sankhya philosophy observation extends to a clairvoyant observation of facts. Sankhya philosophy is a science, which although obtained by clairvoyance, is nevertheless a science of outer forms that does not extend into the sphere of the soul: the soul-nature remains in a sense undisturbed by these studies. He who devotes himself to the Vedas feels absolutely that his religious life is one with the life of wisdom; but Sankhya philosophy is a science, it is a perception of the forms into which the soul impresses itself. Nevertheless, it is quite possible for the disciples of the Sankhya philosophy to feel a religious devotion of the soul for their philosophy. The way in which the soul element is organised into forms-not the soul element itself, but the form it takes-is followed up in the Sankhya philosophy. It defines the way in which the soul, more or less, preserves its individuality or else is more immersed in the material. It has to do with the soul element which is, it is true, beneath the surface, but which, within the material forms, still preserves itself as soul. A soul element thus disguised in outer form, but which reveals itself as soul, dwells in the Sattva element. A soul element immersed in form, but which is, so to say, entangled in it and cannot emerge from it, dwells in the Tamas-element; and that in which, more or less, the soul element and its outer expression in form, are, to a certain extent, balanced, dwells in the Rajas-element. Sattva, Rajas, Tamas, the three Gunas, pertain to the essential characteristics of what we know as Sankhya philosophy.

Quite different, again, is that spiritual stream which comes down to us as Yoga. That appeals directly to the soul-element itself and seeks ways and means of grasping the human soul in direct spiritual life, so that it rises from the point which it has attained in the world to higher and higher stages of soul-being. Thus Sankhya is a contemplation of the sheaths of the soul, and Yoga the guidance of the soul to higher and ever higher stages of inner experience. To devote oneself to Yoga means a gradual awakening of the higher forces of the soul so that it experiences something not to be found in everyday life, which opens the door to higher and higher stages of existence.

Yoga is therefore the path to the spiritual worlds, the path to the liberation of the soul from outer forms, the path to an independent life of the soul within itself. Yoga is the other side of the Sankhya philosophy. Yoga acquired its great importance when that inspiration, which was given as a blessing from above and which inspired the Vedas, was no longer able to come down. Yoga had to be made use of by those souls who, belonging to a later epoch of mankind, could no longer receive anything by direct revelation, but were obliged to work their way up to the heights of spiritual existence from the lower stages. Thus in the old primal Indian times we have three sharply-defined streams, the Vedas, the Sankhaya, and the Yoga, and today we are called upon once more to unite these spiritual streams, so to say, by bringing them to the surface in the way proper for our own age, from the foundations of the soul and from the depths of the Cosmos.

You may find all three streams again in our Spiritual Science. If you read what I have tried to place before you in the first chapters of my Occult Science about the human constitution, about sleeping and waking, life and death, you will find there what in our present-day sense we may call Sankhya philosophy. Then read what is there said about the evolution of the world from Saturn down to our own time, and you have the Veda-philosophy expressed for our own age; while, if you read the last chapters, which deal with human evolution, you have Yoga expressed for our own age. Our age must in an organised way unite that which radiates across to us in three so sharply-defined spiritual streams from old India in the Veda-philosophy, the Sankhya philosophy, and Yoga. For that reason our age must study the wonderful poem of the Bhagavad Gita, which, in a deeply poetical manner, represents, as it were, a union of these three streams; our own age must be deeply moved by the Bhagavad Gita. We should seek something akin to our own spiritual strivings in the deeper contents of the Bhagavad Gita. Our spiritual streams do not only concern themselves with the older ones as a whole, but also in detail. You will have recognised that in my Occult Science an attempt has been made to produce the things out of themselves. Nowhere do we depend on history. Nowhere can one who really understands what is said find in any assertion about Saturn, Sun, and Moon, that things are related from historical sources; they are simply drawn forth from the matter itself. Yet, strange to say, that which bears the stamp of our own time corresponds in striking places with what resounds down to us out of the old ages. Only one little proof shall be given. We read in the Vedas in a particular place, about cosmic development, which can be expressed in words somewhat like the following: “Darkness was enwrapt in darkness in the primal beginning, all was indistinguishable flood-essence. Then arose a mighty void, that was everywhere permeated with warmth.” I now ask you to remember the result of our study of the evolution of Saturn, in which the substance of Saturn is spoken of as a warmth-substance, and you will feel the harmony between the so-called “Newest thing in Occult Science,” and what is said in the Vedas. The next passage runs: “Then first arose the Will, the first seed of Thought, the connection between the Existent and the Non-existent, ... and this connection was found in the Will ...” And remember what was said in the new mode of expression about the Spirits of Will. In all we have to say at the present time, we are not seeking to prove a concord with the old; the harmony comes of itself, because truth was sought for there and is again being sought for on our own ground

Now in the Bhagavad Gita we find, as it were, the poetical glorification of the three spiritual streams just described. The great teachings that Krishna himself communicated to Arjuna are brought to our notice at an important moment of the world's history—of importance for that far-distant age. The moment is significant, because it is the time when the old blood-ties were loosening. In all that is to be said in these lectures about the Bhagavad Gita you must remember what has again and again been emphasised: that ties of blood, racial attachment and kinship, were of quite special significance in primeval times, and only grew less strong by degrees. Remember all that is said in my pamphlet, The Occult Significance of Blood. When these blood-ties begin to loosen, on account of that loosening, the great struggle began which is described in the Mahabharata, and of which the Bhagavad Gita is an episode. We see there how the descendants of two brothers, and hence, blood relations, separate on account of their spiritual tendencies how that which, through the blood, would formerly have given them the same points of view, now takes different paths; and how, therefore, the conflict then arises, for conflict must arise when the ties of blood also lose their significance as a help for clairvoyant perception; and with this separation begins the later spiritual development.. For those to whom the old blood-ties no longer were of significance, Krishna came as a great teacher. He was to be the teacher of the new age lifted out of the old blood-ties. How he became the teacher we shall describe tomorrow; but it may now be said, as the whole Bhagavad Gita shows us, that Krishna absorbed the three spiritual streams into his teaching and communicated them to his pupil as an organised unity.

How must this pupil appear to us? He looks up on the one side to his father, and on the other side to his father's brother the children of the two brothers are now no longer to be together, they are to separate now a different spiritual stream is to take possession of the one line and the other. Arjuna's soul is filled with the question: how will it be when that which was held together by the ties of blood is no longer there? How can the soul take part in spiritual life if that life no longer flows as it formerly did under the influence of the old blood-tie? It seems to Arjuna as if everything must come to an end. The purport of the great teachings of Krishna, however, is to show that this will not be the case, that it all will be different. Krishna now shows his pupil—who is to live through the time of transition from one epoch to another, that the soul, if it is to become harmonious, must take in something of all these three spiritual streams. We find the Vedistic unity interpreted in the right way in the teachings of Krishna, as well as the principles of the Sankhya teaching and the principles of Yoga. For what is it that actually lies behind all that we are about to learn from the Bhagavad Gita? The revelations of Krishna are somewhat to this effect: There is a creative Cosmic Word, itself containing the creative principle. As the sound produced by man when he speaks undulates and moves and lives through the air, so does the Word surge and weave and live in all things, and create and order all existence. Thus the Veda principle breathes through all things. This can be taken up by human perception into the human soul-life. There is a supreme, weaving Creative-Word, and there is an echo of this supreme, weaving Creative-Word in the Vedistic documents. The Word is the creative principle of the World; in the Vedas it is revealed. That is one part of the Krishna teaching. The human soul is capable of understanding how the Word lives on, in the different forms of existence. Human knowledge learns the laws of existence by grasping how the separate forms of being express, with the regularity of a fixed law, that which is soul and spirit. The teachings about the forms in the world, of the laws which shape existence, of cosmic laws and their manner of working, is the Sankhya philosophy, the other side of the Krishna teaching. Just as Krishna made clear to his pupil that behind all existence is the creative cosmic Word, so also he made clear to him that human knowledge can recognise the separate forms, and therefore can grasp the cosmic laws. The cosmic Word, the cosmic laws as echoed in the Vedas, and in Sankhya, were revealed by Krishna to his pupil. And he also spoke to him about the path that leads the individual pupil to the heights where he can once again share in the knowledge of the cosmic Word. Thus Krishna also spoke of Yoga. Threefold is the teaching of Krishna: it teaches of the Word, of the Law and of reverent devotion to the Spirit.

The Word, the Law, and Devotion are the three streams by means of which the soul can carry out its development.

These three streams will for ever work upon the human soul in some way or another. Have we not just seen that modern Spiritual Science must seek for new expression of these three streams? But the ages differ one from the other, and in many different ways will that which is the threefold comprehension of the World be brought to human souls. Krishna speaks of the Cosmic Word, of the Creative Word, of the fashioning of existence, of the devotional deepening of the soul,—of Yoga. The same trinity meets us again in another form, only in a more concrete, more living way—in a Being who is Himself to be thought of as walking the Earth—the Incarnation of the Divine Creative Word! The Vedas came to mankind in an abstract form. The Divine Logos, of whom the Gospel of St. John speaks is the Living and Creative Word Itself! That which we find in the Sankhya philosophy, as the law to which the cosmic forms are subject, that, historically transposed into the old Hebrew revelation, is what St. Paul calls the Law. The third stream we find in St. Paul as Faith in the risen Christ. That which was Yoga in Krishna, in St. Paul was Faith, only in a more concrete form—Faith, that was to replace the Law. So the trinity, Veda, Sankhya and Yoga were as the redness of the dawn of that which later rose as sun. Veda appears again in the actual Being of Christ Himself now entering in a concrete, living way into historical evolution, not pouring Himself out abstractly into space and the distances of time, but living as a single Individual, as the Living Word. The Law meets us in the Sankhya philosophy, in that which shows us how the material basis, Prakriti, is developed even down to coarse substance. The Law reveals how the world came into existence, and how individual man develops within it. That is expressed in the old Hebrew revelation of the Law, in the dispensation of Moses. Inasmuch as St. Paul, on the one hand, refers to this Law of the old Hebrews, he is referring to the Sankhya philosophy; inasmuch as he refers to faith in the Risen One, he refers to the Sun of which the rosy dawn appeared in Yoga. Thus arises in a, special way that of which we find the first elements in Veda, Sankhya and Yoga. What we find in the Vedas appears in a new but now concrete form as the Living Word by Whom all things were made and without Whom nothing is made that was made, and Who, nevertheless, in the course of time, has become Flesh. Sankhya appears as the historical representation based on Law of how out of the world of the Elohim, emerged the world of phenomena, the world of coarse substances. Yoga transformed itself into that which, according to St. Paul, is expressed in the words; “Not I, but Christ in me,” that is to say when the Christ-force penetrates the soul and absorbs it, man rises to the heights of the divine.

Thus we see how, in a preparatory form, the coherent plan is present in world-history, how the Eastern teaching was a preparation, how it gives in more abstract form, as it were, that which, in a concrete form, we find so marvelously contained in the Pauline Christianity. We shall see that precisely by grasping the connection between the great poem of the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, the very deepest mysteries will reveal themselves concerning what we may call the ruling of the spiritual in the collective education of the human race. As something so new must also be felt in the new age, this newer age must extend beyond the time of Greece and must develop understanding for that which lies behind the thousand years immediately before Christ—for that which we find in the Vedas, Sankhya and Yoga. Just as Raphael in his art and Thomas Aquinas in his philosophy had to turn back to Greece, so shall we see how in our time, a conscious balance must be established between that which the present time is trying to acquire and that which lies further back than the Greek age, and stretches back to the depths of oriental antiquity. We can allow these depths of oriental antiquity to flow into our souls if we ponder over these different spiritual streams which are to be found within that wonderfully harmonious unity which Humboldt calls the greatest philosophical poem the Bhagavad Gita.

When we speak of prayer in the Christian sense we have to understand above all that prayer is really nothing else but to enter deeply, giving oneself up, into the divine. In the great religions where people seek to achieve this giving up of self more by entering into deep thought, people speak of meditation; in religions where the devotion comes from the heart more than the head, more from the personal sphere, it is called prayer. In the Christian religion this devotion has gained personal character; in the old religions it was more unconscious and impersonal. People knew thousands of years ago that there is an eternal, divine principle. Example of slave who said to himself: One life of many. People of those times therefore had hope in life, courage, strength and certainty. It was a kind of looking out from life in time to life eternal. A time had to come, however, when the human being looked up to his god in a personal way. Exoteric Christian teaching is that a tremendous amount depends on the individual person who went from birth to death. This is also why meditation assumed the more personal aspect of prayer. But we should not forget that in the Christian faith there is an exemplary prayer: ‘Father, if it can be done, let this cup pass away from me, but not my will but your will be done.’¹⁰³

If you develop this mood, you have a Christian prayer. A prayer in which someone asks things for himself his personal affairs, is not a Christian prayer. You may have two armies about to do battle, with both praying for victory. Two farmers, one asking for rain, the other for sunshine. What is the god supposed to do? True Christian prayer has nothing to do with such personal wishes and desires. The personal prayer, the true prayer, may also include personal petitions, but the guiding principle must be: Not my will but your will be done. This exemplary Christian prayer of Christ Jesus, the Lord, thus gives the mood which prayer should have. There are many Christian prayers, but the Lord's Prayer, the prayer of prayers, is the one of which we can say that there is hardly anything else in the world that contains so much and such important things as this Lord's Prayer. And we then remember how Christ Jesus introduced this prayer. ‘Go into seclusion to say your prayers’, he said.¹⁰⁴

Everywhere, in all religions, you have formulas for meditation and magic formulas. Such magic formulas are of the same significance for meditation as actual meditations. People sought to give themselves up to their god in meditation with them, and they also wanted to give themselves up to their god by practising magic. Christ Jesus warned, however: ‘Do not pray for the things that happen in the streets; go deep down into your innermost being when you pray.’ Something of the divine nature lives in human beings, a drop of the divine spirit, and it is the same in substance as the godhead. The ocean as a whole and the drop of water are also the same in substance.

And so let us consider the universe and man in the way in which it was customary in the earliest esoteric schools. We'll go back to the time when the human bodies that were in the process of preparation were waiting, as it were, for the divine seed, the human soul coming down from the godhead. At that time the world was populated by plants and other things, including animal-human bodies. Man as he is today did not yet exist. The souls were gradually preparing the present-day body for themselves. A spiritual fluid was all around the earth. And now imagine someone taking a hundred tiny sponges and taking up a drop of the fluid in each. You now have a drop of the divine in each. Before, souls had been in the ocean of the godhead, now they were incarnated drops. Those souls were still very imperfect when they thus incarnated for the first time, but they already held the potential for man's higher nature—atman, buddhi, manas—which was to unfold and develop in life on earth. The animal-human being already had the four lower members at the time, but it needed the soul to transform them so that atman, buddhi and manas might arise.

Let us now consider this process of evolution esoterically, taking two points of view. Firstly, man grows increasingly more divine in atman, buddhi and manas; secondly, the drop of godhead is in him.

Let us first of all consider higher man in his divine aspect. In the Christian schools it was taught that one should first consider the highest aspect of the divine spirit; man would have risen to this when he came to the end of his evolution. Atman, the will, is this highest principle, will-like by nature. When man has reached perfection, his will shall be his greatest power. The will must then flow out from him. Every resolution made in the will shall immediately become action. Our atman is will-like by nature. In atman, the godhead first of all let its will flow into us. The divine will lives in us and in all things.

The second higher principle in us is the buddhi. Streaming down into man, the godhead goes from atman to buddhi. How does the divine will work? We can only gain understanding by considering the concept of offering or sacrifice. Imagine you are looking into a mirror. You see your own figure. This figure is similar to you. Now imagine a creative will in you. You would then have given everything you have, all of your life, all of your essential being to the image. You would then live in this image. This is how you may think of the creative sacrifice of the divine will. The divine will is not merely reflected in things, in the images, but sacrifices everything, putting it into them, and you so have the sacrificed divine will in the whole of cosmic space. A Christian thus sees a mirror image of the godhead, the divine will, in everything that exists in this world. You have the sacrificed godhead in the cosmic space, and this mirror image of the godhead was called the ‘kingdom’ in esoteric Christian terminology. The divine will multiplied millions of times and reflected again―that is what the ‘kingdom’ was to them. The creative atman, the buddhi living in us, the creative spirit in the world—that was the ‘kingdom’.

Look up now to see the part of the godhead that lives in the cosmos in its mirror image. This is able to identify the individual entity by its ‘name’ which is the manas, the spirit self, in us, it is our ‘name’. Manas is the name in us and in every single thing outside us. The name of every single thing was thus hallowed to man. And the pupil would be told: ‘You must clearly understand that when you eat a bite of bread that this, too, is something in which the godhead lies and it shall therefore be hallowed to you.’

In so far as our name is in God, it is manas, the name. Our buddhi thus is the kingdom. In our atman lives the divine will. These three are the divine elements in man. Man received these divine elements as part of his essential being, and in the world outside they are called name, kingdom and will.

And now, you see, the Christ wanted to teach his disciples by saying to them: the godhead was called the father, and the divine principle heaven. Union with the divine was only possible in that this divine principle now gave itself up to the three higher elements in man.

What does a Christian have to say, to bring this to expression?

Our father, who are in the heavens,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth
as it is in the heavens.

The first three petitions of the Lord's Prayer thus speak in a quite specific way of man's three higher principles. These first three petitions have arisen from the higher spiritual nature of man.

Let us now consider the four lower members of man in esoteric terms—physical body, ether body, astral body and I.

The physical body is the one man has in common with all minerals, with physical matter and forces going in and out day by day. To develop his physical body, man must plead to be given the physical matter which is out there in the physical world. We have our ether body in common with all the people around us. The astral body is something more personal.

In the ether body we have things that are held in common in every family, in every nation. You belong more to a genus, a species, because you have an ether body. You are more of an individual because you have an astral body. You are a problem to the ether bodies around you if you are not in harmony with them, and this was called ‘trespass’ or ‘fault’ something we do to others with our ether body. But we also suffered harm ourselves because of this. Trespass is thus connected with the ether or life body. You commit a fault against someone near to you by injuring or damaging his ether body or life body. Take care not to do this, for only then will your own faults be forgiven.

What makes the astral body thrive? When the individual deviates from the true way he falls into temptation. The astral body is subject to temptation. Every way in which the individual sins is temptation.

The I is the fount of human independence but also of egotism, of selfishness. In this respect the I is the ‘evil’, which is the symbol for this. Malum is Latin for both ‘apple’ and ‘evil’. The Fall is the evil, the failing that arises from egotism.

When a Christian wants to ask that his four lower members may make good progress he will say, speaking for these entities:

Give us today our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us,
and lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.

These are the other four petitions in the Lord's Prayer.

These were the petitions Christians were instructed in the esoteric schools to ask, they are the four formulas for the four lower members of the human being. Consider the last four petitions in the Lord's Prayer with reference to man's lower nature, and you find you have four petitions for the lower members, just as you have the first three petitions for the higher principles of man. The seven petitions in the Lord's Prayer thus contain the doctrine of the sevenfold nature of man, as taught in the science of the spirit.

In all the great religions there is not a prayer, a formula that has not been taken from the whole profound world wisdom. These prayers have their profound effect for the very reason that they have been born from this. It is thanks to the original wisdom of the world that the great religions have had an influence through thousands of years.

The father stands for the original essence of the world. It cannot be put more beautifully than it has been put in the Lord's Prayer. Because of this the Lord's Prayer touches human hearts and has great strength. You can't say simple people know nothing of this wisdom. They gain just as much from it. It is the same as when they take delight in flowers, having no idea of the wisdom that has created them. And so their souls may take delight in the Lord's Prayer without grasping its wisdom. The knowledge that lives in the prayer may not be grasped, but it can give people this strength. Those who gave the prayers to humanity, took them out of the most profound wisdom; hence the power of the great cosmic prayer. It is the secret of these prayers that they were taken from original wisdom by initiates and the founders of religions.

Now the time has come when people must know the deeper meaning of these prayers. We should say the Lord's Prayer daily. Everything we need to know about the nature of man is in that prayer. And by doing so, a person would receive what theosophical wisdom has to say about the nature of man.

The esotericism of the school created by Paul the Apostle was profound. Outside, Christianity was presented in an exoteric way. Dionysius the Areopagite was asked by Paul to take care of this esoteric wisdom. And so the realm of the spirit was envisaged with the dominions, principalities and powers, and people said to themselves: if we live the way the Lord's Prayer demands, we rise through dominions, principalities and powers all the way to the cherubim and seraphim and to the godhead itself in the Lord's Prayer.

This gives you the three stages: ‘For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory’, three stages in the realm of the spirit.

It is difficult to speak particularly about the Amen. All I can say is that it is an ancient formula that has become a bit mutilated.

We have seen, therefore, in how far the Lord's Prayer with the powerful effect it has on the human soul represents the doctrine of the sevenfold nature of man. This makes it the most effective prayer. This rhythm which is touched on in the soul came to the awareness of people who had the esoteric knowledge that a Christian who has said the Lord's Prayer has prayed human theosophy, has lived in the prayer. This theosophy is nothing new; it is something that lives in all hearts and is grasped in the spirit so that the light of understanding may extend to the divine realm. If this happens in human hearts and souls, people will find the way to the greatest heights of the spirit which they are capable of reaching.

• 103. Matthew 26: 39.
• 104. Matthew 6: 6.

The truths of religious documents come from the depths of wisdom. Many people will say, however: ‘You give us something complicated; we want the gospel to be simple and naive. Great truths should not be complicated.’ In a way they are right, but not only simple but also wisdom-filled thinking must be able to find the most sublime truths. The point of view from which we consider these things cannot be high enough. In future we must let go more and more of the desire for ease and enter into the most profound insights with great seriousness.

Today we want to gain understanding of the promised spirit of truth. These words concern a secret initiation.

‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments,’ the Christ said. ‘Love’ here refers to the trust that exists between teacher and pupils in an esoteric relationship. The most profound secrets of the soul are passed from one individual to another, in a most intimate way. The words of the Bible we want to consider today are:

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled! You believe in god, you also believe in me. There are many rooms in my father's house ...’

‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask this father and he will give you another counsellor to be with you in all eternity—the spirit of truth whom the world has not the power to receive; for it does not see him and does not recognize him. You, however, recognize him; for he remains with you and shall be in you.’

‘He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. And someone who loves me shall be loved by my father, and I shall love him and make myself apparent to him. Judas, not Iscariot, said to him: Lord, what has happened, that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered and said to him: Someone who loves me will keep my word; and my father shall love him, and we shall go to him and make our abode with him.’¹⁰⁸

‘Father’—that is the inmost power of soul. It is to be revealed to the close disciples. Judas asked: ‘What has happened, that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?’ Judas thus said openly that something was to be revealed to the close disciples.

Jesus said: ‘We shall make our abode with the father.’ This was the most important part of the pouring out of the spirit that began with the words: ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled!’ The Christ was going to prepare the abode for his close disciples: In my father's house there are many dwelling places.’

Let us gain insight into these words. The degree of conscious awareness which man has gained will never be lost again. One has to get out of the habit of any other idea. ‘Giving oneself up to the cosmic mind’ often means people wallowing in this, believing this to be redemption. There is no such cosmic mind and there never will be. The ability to say ‘I’ is now achieved by man. The the more he says ‘I’ and works out of the I to purify his three lower bodies—the astral body, ether body and physical body—the more strongly will he develop his I and develop into the future. A human being can thus become consciously selfless, because he wills it. The time will come when all human beings will have reached the summit of I-development. And yet they can selflessly take up the spirit of the community. We are sitting in this room together, and the common spirit in it is like a point from which everything radiates out together. But this common spirit may also radiate freely from every individual heart and move through this room. Let us remember how the godhead is reflected in the world. It has made the sacrifice and poured all its life into its mirror image. Let us now imagine that we, too, can pour our life into countless mirror images, so that each individual mirror image would say: I and my origin are one. That is how all human beings once came forth from the keeping of the godhead like mirror images of the godhead. They finally become empty ‘I’s, with astral body, ether body and physical body transformed, and they enter into the world of the spirit and utter the deepest secret of their being: ‘I and my father are one!’¹⁰⁹ The animal-humans of Lemurian times could never become spiritual by themselves, but only by taking up the divine droplets. At the end of their evolution, cleansed and purified, they will be able to say: ‘I and my father are one.’

We are gazing back into far distant times. There was still a great deal of volcanic activity on earth in Lemurian times. The creatures that lived then were very different. That was the time when man first received the element he was to develop as soul. Going back even further we see soul nature above and bodily nature below still as one nature. The two were united in god's keeping. Then the physical stream down below was left to itself and developed into the animal-man ofLemurian times. The upper developed in soul and spirit. The body had to be prepared first down below, so that it might receive the soul coming from above.

The spirit that prevailed in the common origin of both souls and bodies is the father spirit; that is the father.

The spirit that prevailed down below in the physical realm, whilst the spiritual went its separate ways up above, is the son spirit; that is the son.

And the spirit that prevailed up above in the soul sphere until it was able to descend into the physical realm, that is the holy spirit.

In Lemurian times, when the soul first incarnated, there was a pouring out of the spirit: ‘And god breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.’¹¹⁰ That was the first outpouring of the spirit, an unconscious outpouring. Man was to live in a dream for a long time yet. It was only in the second half of the Atlantean period that he gained the ability to calculate, to think logically, and to observe the world outside correctly in its relationships. In the first half of the Atlantean period, a human being would see another human being as a coloured cloud. The cloud would be reddish brown if the other individual was not sympathetic, was an enemy. A violet reddish cloud indicated a sympathetic individual, a friend. Other things would also be perceived like this. If a golden yellow cloud rose like a kind of misty form between the astral and the physical, this indicated that a useful metal was to be found here. A dull, bluish red cloud with strange lines to delimit it, of the kind which only a mineral can have, indicated a useless metal. Human beings gradually separated out more and more; limiting their feelings by having a skin, and external, physical sensory perception developed. In earliest Atlantean times, human beings had perceptions like those a fish or a snail has today—not a turtle or a crocodile. The new sensory perception developed when man began to breathe with a lung. The production of blood and inner I-activity were also connected with this.

A residual effect of the I on the blood can still be seen today if we go pale with fear or red with shame. This still shows direct I-activity. It is something that has remained from a time when the I had a powerful influence on the blood. Today the inner power of the I only shows itself in gestures, in going red or turning pale. Today people can gesticulate with their hands in their enthusiasm; then the blood was able to create organs out of the body under the I-impulse. The fingers developed in this way, for example. By the end of the Atlantean period, the human beings of that time were beginning to be similar to the human beings of today.

Blood bonds were stronger in the past than they are now. The bond between blood relatives was much stronger. An example would be the following. Two modern authors have given an excellent picture of the rural population, but in different ways. Anzengruber's¹¹¹ figures are clear-cut, almost as if cut in stone. Rosegger¹¹² takes many individual outward traits and combines them in a whole. He would make notes as he observed people and use these in his writing. Rosegger was wondering how Anzengruber was able to write about country people, seeing that he had never lived among them and observed them. Anzengruber told him the very reason that he was able to present the people so well was that he did not know them. All his forebears had been farming people, and so the ways of fanners were in his blood. He wrote about farmers his forebears had known, and he did so out of the blood.¹¹³

In earlier times, humanity consisted of many small groups. Reading Tacitus' Germania.¹¹⁴ one finds numerous small tribes listed who were related by blood and to whom the blood relationship meant something special. In the days of the Old Testament patriarchs, marriage was always within the tribe, with the same blood in everyone's veins. The memory of the descendants would then go right back to the times of their ancestors. The descendant would remember his ancestors the way we remember our own childhood. 900 years after Adam his descendants still remembered the events of his life. This explains why people are said to have lived to such great ages in the Bible.¹¹⁵ For as far back as a person could then remember, the I that went through generations would be called ‘Adam’ for example. A common I lived in the tribe, and it lived in the blood. Because of this the shedding of blood called for blood revenge. And the whole tribe would revenge itself for the blood of a single member by means of blood revenge.

Close marriage gradually changed and finally became distant marriage. The tribes became international. The principle of pure humanity gained the upper hand.

The son principle was active in the physical realm, in the love among relations that was based on blood. But the soul became progressively more individual, so that the blood was moving in wider and wider groups, getting further away from the tribal community.

All the ancient systems of government were based on the principle of blood relationship. The ten commandments of the Jews are tribal laws. Something connected with the Jewish people was not yet connected with the whole of mankind. Then the son spirit came to earth in the Christ and his blood flowed. Blood which until then had only created close bonds was poured out. This brought it about that all close bonds flowed out into a brotherhood for all humanity. The narrowly limited feeling of self where it was not yet possible to say: ‘Anyone who does not leave father and mother, wife, children, brother and sister and also his personal life cannot be my disciple’—such self-seeking had to run out from the redeemer's wounds. The capacity for love was gained as the blood of the Christ flowed, overcoming blood-brotherhood, tribe and nation. If we had been able to collect drops of blood by the cross, we would in all truth and reality have had the substance that thus transforms human beings. The goal is for human beings to find their relationship to all human beings, with love not only between brother and sister, but between human being and human being. The physical blood that flowed from the wounds of the Christ is the embodiment of the redeemer principle. This blood is a significant redemption symbol.

Humanity is to find the spirit again, fully and wholly. They had it once, but only dimly so, in a nebulous way. Later it assumed the form in which human beings see the world today. But they only see this world, only one side of things. With this view, man is cut off from the life of the spirit as if by a veil. He now needs to be taken beyond individual conscious awareness, which has made him an I, and gain awareness of the whole world again. This is why the blood of Christ was scattered—from narrow tribe to the wide world. The cross made it possible to achieve this. From the cross, the blood flowed into the whole of humanity. At the same time, however, the cross made the I grow more and more narrow and individual. All this has come to us through Christianity.

But when people are thus left to their own resources, with no tribe to give them context and with self-awareness enhanced, egotism must also increase. Christ Jesus foresaw this. He saw the coming of materialism, and made Christianity a bulwark against it.

In antiquity, everything rested on blood-brotherhood. This is clear from ancestor worship. Many legends were based on the figure of an ancestral hero such as Theseus¹¹⁶ or Cadmus.¹¹⁷ The principle governed both laws and commandments. Then, however, external institutions began to determine the life of the community. This only developed with the spread of Christianity, however. What do people see in the international idea today? A principle that is more powerful than the power of the state. The great powers that rule the world today are international. They are called money, transport, industry, and so on. Nothing to do with the blood-brotherhood of old any more. The other side of the coin is materialism. Egotistical thinking lives in a machine. How different were the ways in which ancient Greeks saw their god Zeus, remembering that the father principle lay at the base of all. Where do we find anything divine in public life today? Machines, railways and so on all serve egotistical aims. This will come to play a special role in the future. In the war of all against all it will go to extremes.

The Christ did create the bond that will unite all humanity, but something else has to come together with this act of redemption. Inner responses from person to person live in people who feel drawn to the Christ. His deed is the great bond that can unite the spirit again with the physical. Today people still control the physical world to serve their egotism. One day they must use it to serve the spirit. The spirit must unite with the son so that the two, united, become one with the father.

The Christ said: ‘No one comes to the father except through me.’¹¹⁸ Each should say: ‘I am as the branch on the vine.’¹¹⁹ Then the Christ overcomes the egotism in human organisms. The father spirit, the spirit of common origin, must enter into our individual selves, and then the I works on the father principle. Every I then builds its own house, and yet they are all united in the Christ principle. ‘There are many rooms in my father's house’,¹⁰⁸ said the Christ. These are the dwellings which human I-natures build for themselves. The Christ must, however, prepare the place, the dwelling place. And for this it is necessary for the spirit to come that unites human beings—the spirit of truth.

It is the purpose of theosophy to teach human beings the things they have in common; it is to bring the higher wisdom, the spirit of truth. People differ in their opinions for as long as they do not yet have the highest knowledge. The gnostics called mysticism ‘mathesis’, for in mathematics none can say he differs from someone else in his opinions. Two scientists can never disagree over a mathematical axiom. There it is not a matter of human wishes. For the great wisdom we must first rid ourselves of our wishes. Only those who seek to study the spirit of truth, wholly free from personal wishes, will be ripe to receive it. The highest knowledge unites human beings, there is no opinion or notion. The spirit of truth must shine upon people. Then they may indeed be dispersed through different dwelling places, but the spirit of truth will unite them. The common spirit must govern the truth held by individual I-natures if the house which the I builds for itself is to fit in with the spiritual principle. The Christ promised his disciples the spirit of truth at Pentecost. Then the disciples spoke in different tongues, then all nations learned to understand one another. Egotism may indeed wax more and more, but every human I will have the spirit of community if it partakes in the spirit of truth. Those who wish to achieve this must live in the spirit of John's gospel. That is true theosophy. Just as all plants turn to the sun as they grow, wherever they may be, so all I-natures will turn to the sun of the spirit, the spiritual light of truth.

• 108. Bible quotes from John 14: 1-2, 15-17, 21-23.
• 109. John 10: 30.
• 110. Genesis 2: 7.
• 111. Anzengruber, Ludwig (1839–1889), Austrian playwright and novelist. Rudolf Steiner wrote an obituary on him, published in Steiner R. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Literatur, 1884–1902. (GA 32) S. 16 ff..
• 112. Rosegger, Peter (1843–1918), Austrian poet and novelist
• 113. ‘Went for a walk with Anzengruber on another occasion ... We talked about writing and the subjects one had for writing. I said he must have lived in Upper Bavaria himself or at least had a great deal to do with the fanning people there. His figures were very reminiscent of this type of people. He put his pince-nez on his sharply curved nose and said: “Upper Bavaria? No, I have never really met those country people. At least not enough to know them.” Realizing that this surprised me: “I don't need that. Just need to see one of them from a distance, hear a few everyday words, observe perhaps one of his gestures—and I know that fellow inside out!”—“Strange!”—“My dear fellow,” he said, “you know it yourself. All outer occasions and situations are just the midwives. The writer must give birth himself. Farmers—ha! I'm a city man myself! But if as you say, I write better about country people than about city people, this is probably in the blood. Or in some bone or other, like inherited gout. My forefathers on my father's side were farmers in Upper Austria. And well, such things are still lurking about.”’ Gesammelte Werke von Peter Rosegger, Leipzig 1914–1916, 36. Band, Gute Kameraden—Persönliche Erinnerungen an berühmte und eigenartige Zeitgenossen, Seite 145 f
• 114. Tacitus, Cornelius (c. 55–166), greatest Roman historian. The second part of his work De origine et situ Germanorum, chapters 28-46, gives descriptions of the individual Germanic tribes.
• 115. E.g. Genesis, Chapter 5.
• 116. King ofThebes, hero who killed the Minotaur.
• 117. A Phoenician prince who killed a dragon and sowed its teeth. An army grew from them who fought one another until only five survived. Cadmus founded the city of Thebes with them.
• 118. John 14: 6.
• 119. John 15: 5 (variant).
• 108. Bible quotes from John 14: 1-2, 15-17, 21-23.

The Mystery of Golgotha is one of the profoundest secrets of the evolution of the world. In order to understand it, we must shed light upon the occult wisdom of thousands of years ago, on the remote past of the world's development. It is not a plausible argument against a more penetrating knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha to say that the life and work of Christ Jesus should be accessible to the simplest mind. This is indeed the case. But a full, encompassing comprehension of this greatest event on earth must be drawn out of the depths of Mystery-wisdom.

In this lecture we shall penetrate into the depths of Mystery-wisdom in order to understand how an event such as the Mystery of Golgotha could take place. In this connection we should bear in mind that with the appearance of Christ Jesus upon the earth something occurred which divided mankind into two parts. We can grasp this best of all by seeking an answer to the question: Who was Christ Jesus?

For the occultist this question is a double one: For we must distinguish between the personality who lived at that time in Palestine and reached the age of thirty, and what became of him afterwards. In the 30th year of his life Jesus became Christ.

In the case of ordinary people, only insignificant portions of the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body are transformed into Manas, Buddhi and Atma, or into Spirit Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. Jesus of Nazareth was a Chela of the third degree, and his bodies were therefore in a state of high purification.

When a Chela has absolved the purification of his three bodies, then he acquires at a certain moment of his life the capacity to sacrifice himself. In his 30th year, the Ego of Jesus left his three bodies and passed over into the astral world, so that the three sanctified bodies remained behind on earth, emptied as it were of their Ego, so that room was made for a higher individuality. In the 30th year of his life, the Ego of Jesus of Nazareth made the great sacrifice of placing his purified bodies at the disposal of the individuality of Christ. Christ filled out these bodies. And from that time onwards we speak of Christ-Jesus who lived upon the earth for three years and fulfilled all his great deeds within the body of Jesus.

In order to understand the true being of Christ, we must go far back into the history of the development of the earth and of mankind. Before the earth became Earth, it was the old Moon, and the present moon is only a fragment of the old Moon. Before the Earth was Moon, it was Sun, and at a still earlier stage it was Saturn. We should bear in mind that milliards of years ago there existed in the cosmic spaces a heavenly body, Saturn. Also planets develop through different incarnations: Before the Earth was EARTH, it existed as Saturn, Sun and Moon.

Let us now transfer ourselves upon the Sun. There, the so-called Fire-Spirits had the same rank which human beings now have upon the earth. Of course, they did not have the same appearance, they did not look like men of to-day; these high individualities passed through the human stage upon the Sun under conditions which were quite different from the present human conditions. Also upon the Moon a host of Beings passed through the stage of humanity, and they came down to the Earth as higher Beings, as Lunar Pitris or Moon-Spirits, that had reached a higher stage than that of man upon the Earth. In Christian esotericism they are called Angeloi = Angels. Only upon the Earth the human being became MAN. The Lunar Pitris are Beings one degree higher than man, and above them stand the Fire-Spirits, who are one degree higher than the Lunar Pitris. The Fire-Spirits have reached a very high stage of development.

Now we come to the Earth, to the Lemurian race which lived upon a continent situated between present-day Asia, Africa and Australia. There, man took on his present form through the fact that below, upon the physical earth, there lived highly developed beings, but physical beings, higher than the present animals and less developed than present-day man. These physical beings formed a kind of shell, a dwelling-place and they would have been condemned to decadence had they not been fructified by higher Beings. Only at that time the human souls entered the physical human bodies, and then began to shape the Subsequent form of the human body. In the past, the human soul was an integral part of higher Spiritual Beings. The physical shells of human bodies were upon the earth, and into these streamed the souls of higher Beings coming from above, from the spiritual worlds. In the spiritual worlds the souls were connected like drops of water in a sea, which were then poured into a number of vessels.

The beings who poured out the souls from above were those who had passed through their human stage upon the Moon, the Moon-Spirits, whose stage of development was one degree higher than that of Man so that they could pour one part of their being into mankind, thus enabling it to develop further, Man could then transform his organism more and more. He could lift himself up from the earth and stand upright, he learned to walk, to speak and to become independent.

There was a certain relationship between all these souls, for they came from a common spiritual chorus. All those who had received a drop from the same being, greatly resembled each other. Members, of the same tribe first had such related souls, then the members of a race or nation, for example, the whole Egyptian or the whole Jewish nation. They had souls that had come from a common source. From the Moon-Spirits man had received the Spirit-Self and this enabled him to become an independent being, an Ego.

But something which man could not obtain from the Moon Spirits, could only be given to him by a still higher Being, common to all men, who had already completed its humanity upon the Sun: a Fire-Spirit. Many Fire-spirits had developed upon the Sun and exercised their influence upon the Earth, for they were high spirits. One of these Fire-Spirits was called upon to pour out his being upon the whole of mankind. A Spirit who belonged to the whole Earth was able to pour out over the whole of mankind, into each one of its parts, the element of the Sun or Fire-Spirits, the Buddhi, or the Spirit of Life. But in the Lemurian and in the Atlantean age the human beings were not ripe enough to receive this from the Sun-Spirit.

When we read the Akasha Chronicle (See Rudolf Steiner's bookThe Akasha Chronicle) we find that something very strange took place at that time: The human beings consisted of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Spirit Self, but this only lived in them in a very weak form. The Buddhi or Life-Spirit soared above every human being—it could be perceived in the Akasha spaces. In the astral space every human being was surrounded by Buddhi, but it remained outside and was not strong enough to enter man. This Buddhi was a part of the great Fire Spirit who had poured out his drops on the human beings, but these drops could not enter the human beings.

Christ's deeds on earth gave man the capacity to absorb into his Manas what we designate as Buddhi.

What Christ fulfilled upon the earth, was prepared by other great teachers who had preceded him, by Buddha, by the last Zarathustra, by Pythagoras, who all lived about 600 years before Christ, and who were men who had already absorbed a great deal of what lived in the surroundings of man. They had absorbed the spark of Christ. Also Moses belongs to them. But the Ego of the other people had not yet absorbed this spark.

Into the physical, etheric and astral body of Jesus of Nazareth had entered the whole Fire-Spirit, the one source of all the different sparks that lived in the human beings. This Fire-Spirit is the Christ, the only divine Being who lived on earth in this form. He entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth and as a result, all those who feel united with Christ Jesus are able to absorb Buddhi. The possibility to absorb and take in the Buddhi begins with the appearance of Christ Jesus. St. John the Evangelist designates it as the Divine Creative Word. The Fire-Spirit that poured his sparks into men is this Divine Creative Word.

As a result, the following took place: Whereas the Moon-Spirits could create differentiated tribes among men by sending down their drops, Christ was a uniting Spirit for the whole earth, and the human beings were thus united into a family all over the world. Whereas the differentiations among men were brought about by the drops poured out by the different Moon-Spirits, the unity among men was brought about by the Spirit poured out by Christ Jesus. What unites men came down to the earth through Christ Jesus.

When speaking of the last Judgement, Christ says in his prophecy: “When the Son of Man shall Come in his glory” (he means by this: when the drops of Christ shall all have entered into the human beings, when all shall have become brothers) “he shall say unto them on his right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was hungred and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me drink.” (St. Matthew 25, 35) Then the only difference among men will be that between good and evil.

Christ says to His disciples: “What ye have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done unto me.” This signifies: Christ Jesus indicates the time when the drops poured out by Him will all be absorbed, so that when one man faces another, this drop of Christ within him will face the drop of Christ in the other. The power whereby the Buddhi could be called into life in man, this power went out from the life of Christ upon the earth. We should therefore look upon Christ as the uniting Spirit of the Earth.

If we could look down upon the earth from a distant star, through an epoch of many thousands of years, we would find a moment when Christ was active on the earth, so that the whole astral substance of the earth was permeated by Christ. Christ is the Spirit of the Earth, and the Earth is His Body. Everything that grows upon the earth is Christ. He lives in every seed, in every tree, all that grows upon the earth. That is why Christ indicated the bread and said: “This is my Body.” And of the juice of the grapes (at the LAST SUPPER the juice of grapes was passed round, not fermented wine) he had to say: “This is my Blood,” for the juice of the fruits of the earth is his blood. Consequently mankind must appear to him like beings who walk about upon his body. That is why he told his disciples after having washed their feet: “He that eateth bread with me, lifts up his heel against me.” (Treads on me). This must be taken literally, in the meaning that the earth is the body of Christ Jesus. Because he took upon himself the evolution of the earth, a distant spiritual being might see that more and more of Christ's spirit flows into the human beings; the single drops of Christ Jesus penetrate into the individual human beings. Finally the whole earth will be peopled by transformed, Christianised men, by men who have become divine through Christ. Only those who do not participate in this, will be put aside as evil; they must wait for a later time in order to follow a course of development leading to goodness.

All the different nations had Mysteries, before Christ appeared on earth. The Mysteries revealed what was to take place in the future. After a long training, the pupils had to undergo a preparation which consisted in a sepulchre. The hierophant was thus able to transfer the pupil into a higher state of consciousness which made his body lie inert in a kind of deep slumber. In ancient times, the consciousness always had to be abated in order that the divine essence might enter man. In this lowered state of consciousness, the soul was led through the spheres of the spiritual world and after three days the hierophant called the pupil back into life. Through this experience he felt that he had become a new man and he obtained a new name. He was called Son of God. The whole process took place upon the physical plane, when Christ appeared and passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. In the ancient initiations the life-drops of Christ's spirit first called the pupils back into life and they were told: “He who will Christianize all men, will appear one day. And He will truly be the Incarnated Word. You can only experience this for three days, when you travel through the kingdoms of heaven; but One will come, Who will bring the Kingdoms of Heaven down to the physical world.”

The Initiate experienced upon the astral plane what Christ lived through upon the physical plane, namely that from the very beginning there existed a Divine Word that poured out its drops over the human beings; but the Ego-men could not absorb these drops. St. John, the herald of the Christianized Ego-man who has taken in the Christ, or the Word, reveals this. St. John speaks of the Word that existed upon the earth from the very beginning:

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

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life and the life was the light of men.

And the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not.

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

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

He was not the light-, but a witness of the Light.

For the true Light that lighteth every man was to come into the world.

He was in the world and the world was made by him and the world knew him not.

He came to each man (to the individual Ego-man) but the individual men (the Ego-men) received him not.

But as many as received him, to them he gave power to manifest themselves as children of God.

Those who believe in his name, are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we have heard his teaching, the teaching of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.

The word “grace” in verse 14 has for St. John the same meaning as Buddhi; “truth” is Manas, the Spirit-Self.

John bare witness of him and cried saying: This was he of whom I spoke. After me cometh one who existed before me. For he is my predecessor.

And of his fullness have we all received grace upon grace.

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

No man hath at any time seen God with eyes. The only begotten Son who lived in the bosom of the Cosmic Father hath become our guide in this vision.

[Dr.Rudolf Steiner's rendering of the text.]

All initiations into the Mystery of the Spirit pointed to the coming of Christ Jesus. This initiation was attained in the Yoga sleep, in the Orphic sleep, in the Hermes sleep. When the initiate woke up again and returned into his body, so that he could again hear and speak with his physical senses, he uttered the words which are rendered as follows in the Hebrew language: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani.” The pupil of the Mysteries woke up with the words: “My God, My God, how thou hast raised me!”

This was the initiation during the ancient Jewish epoch. During his three days' sojourn in the higher worlds, the initiate experienced the whole course of mankind's future development, all that awaited him in the future development of humanity. As a rule, these future stages of human development were not perceived abstractly in his vision.. Each stage was represented by a personality. The seer saw twelve individualities. They represented twelve stages of soul-development. The soul-forces thus appeared in the external form of twelve persons. At a certain moment, the initiate saw a certain scene: His own individuality became transfigured—the stage which the whole of humanity will reach when it shall be filled by Buddhi, when it shall be Christianized. He identified himself with God and behind him he saw the twelve soul-forces. John was immediately behind, he was the last of the twelve who announced his fulfilment. And he saw himself transfigured, he saw the stage which he would reach when perfection will be attained; he saw his soul-forces in the external form of persons, and perceived St. John, the herald of the Christ-stage of development. During the Yoga-sleep, these twelve figures grouped themselves around him, and the scene arose which was designated as the Mystical Supper. This image had the following meaning: When the initiate sits there surrounded by his soul-forces, he says to himself: These are one with me; they have led me through the development of the earth; the feet of this apostle enabled me to walk on along my path, the hands of that apostle gave me the power to work. ... The Holy Supper is the expression of man's fellowship with the twelve soul-forces.

Human perfection consists in the falling away of the lower soul-forces, so that only the higher forces remain behind; in future, man will no longer have the lower forces; he will, for example, no longer have the forces of procreation. John's soul-power above all will raise those lower forces to the loving heart. It will send out streams of spiritual love. The heart is the most powerful organ, when Christ lives in man. The lower soul-forces are then raised from the abdominal regions to the heart.

Every initiate experienced this in the Mysteries of the heart. It re-echoed in the words: “My God, my God, how thou hast raised me!” With the appearance of Christ Jesus, the whole Mystery, the whole experience, became reality upon the physical plane. At that time there were brotherhoods in Palestine which had developed out of the old order of the Essenes. Among their institutions, they also had a meal symbolizing the mystical Holy Supper. “To eat the Easter Lamb” is a general expression for something which took place at Easter. Jesus sat down with the Twelve and inaugurated the Holy Supper with the words: “At the end of the evolution of the earth, all men will have absorbed what I brought down to the earth, and the words, ‘This is my Body, This is my Blood,’ will then be true.” Afterwards he said: “There is one among you who will betray me.” This is brought about by the power of egoism. But as surely as this power of egoism is the source of treason, so surely will this lower soul-force be raised to a higher stage. One of the disciples rested upon Jesus' bosom, he rested upon Jesus' heart. This means that all the lower forces, every form of egoism, will be raised to the heart. At this point Jesus repeated to his Disciples the words: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani”—“Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him!”

The same event which took place upon Golgotha took place in the ancient Mysteries. Under the Cross stood the Disciple “whom the Lord loved,” the Disciple who had rested upon his bosom and had been raised to his heart. Also the women are there under the Cross: the mother of Jesus, his mother's sister Mary, and Mary Magdalene. John does not say that the mother of Jesus was called “Mary,” but that this was the name of his mother's sister. His mother's name was “Sophia.”

John baptises Jesus in the river Jordan. A dove descends from heaven. At this moment a spiritual act of conception takes place. But who is the mother of Jesus who conceives at this moment.

The Chela, Jesus of Nazareth, at this moment divests himself of his Ego, his highly developed Manas is fructified and the Buddhi enters into it. The highly developed Manas that received the Buddhi is Wisdom—Sophia, the Mother who is fructified by the Father of Jesus. Maria, which is the same as Maya, has the general meaning of “Mother name.” The Gospel records: “The Angel came in unto her and said: Hail thou that art highly favoured,—behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son—the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.” The Holy Ghost is Jesus' father: the descending dove fructifies the Sophia that lives in Jesus.

The Gospel should therefore be read as follows: “Under the Cross stood the mother of Jesus, Sophia.” To this mother Jesus says: “Woman, behold thy son.” He himself had transferred the Sophia that lived within him to the Disciple John; he transformed him into a son of Sophia and said: “Behold, thy mother.” “Henceforth you should recognise the divine wisdom as your mother and dedicate yourself to her alone.” John had recorded this divine wisdom; Sophia is embodied in the Gospel of St. John. Jesus had given him this wisdom, and he was authorized by Christ to transmit it to the world.

The highest Spirit of the Earth had to incarnate in a physical body; this body had to die, it had to be killed and its blood had to flow. A special meaning is attached to this. Wherever there is blood, there is Self. The Self rooted in the blood had to be sacrificed in order that the old communities based on Self might come to an end. All individual forms of egoism flow away with the blued of the Crucified Christ. The blood of racial communities changes into a blood which is common to the whole of mankind, because the blood of Christ was sacrificed at the moment when he hung upon the Cross.

Here too something took place which might have been observed by an astral observer in the astral atmosphere. When Christ died upon the Cross, the whole astral atmosphere changed, so that events could take place which could never have taken place before. This has become possible because by shedding His blood, Christ gave the whole of mankind a Self that is common to all. The blood that streamed out of the wounds of Christ Jesus gave to the whole of humanity a Self which is shared by all. His three bodies remained hanging upon the Cross and were then revived by the Risen Christ. When Christ abandoned his physical frame, the three bodies were so strong that they could utter the words of initiation which follow the transfiguration: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani!”

To all who know something of the Mystery-truths, these words must have revealed that a Mystery had been enacted. A small correction in the Hebrew text therefore gave rise to the words contained in the Gospel: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani!” “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!”

If you were in the Cologne Cathedral last night you could have seen there in illuminated lettering: C.M.B. As is well known, these letters represent the names of the so-called Three Holy Kings, who, according to the tradition of the Christian Church, were called: Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar. For Cologne these names awaken quite special memories. An old legend tells us that the Three Holy Kings had become bishops, and some time after they had died their bones had been brought to Cologne. Related to this is another legend which tells that a Danish king had once come to Cologne, bringing with him three crowns for the Three Holy Kings. After he had returned home he had a dream. In his dream the three kings appeared to him and offered him three chalices—the first chalice contained gold, the second frankincense, and the third one myrrh. When the Danish king awoke the three kings had vanished, but the chalices had remained. There before him stood the three gifts he had retained from his dream.

In this legend there is profound meaning. It is hinted to us that the king in his dream rose to a certain insight into the spiritual world by which he learnt the symbolic meaning of the three kings, of these three Magi of the Orient, who brought offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh at the birth of Christ Jesus. From his realisation he retained a lasting possession: those three human virtues, which are symbolised in the gold, the frankincense and the myrrh—self-knowledge in the gold; self-devoutness, that is the devoutness of the innermost self, or self-surrender, in the frankincense; and self-perfection and self-development, or the preservation of the eternal in the self, in the myrrh.

How was it possible for the king to receive these three virtues as gifts from another world? He received this possibility because he had endeavoured to penetrate with his whole soul into the profound symbolism lying concealed in the three kings who brought their offerings to Christ Jesus.

There are many, many features in this Christ legend that lead us deeply into the most diverse meanings of the Christ principle and what it is supposed to do in the world. Among the profoundest features of the Christ legend are the adoration and the sacrifice by the three Magi, the three oriental kings, and we must not approach this fundamental symbolism of Christian tradition without a deeper understanding. Later the view developed that the first king was the representative of the Asiatic peoples; the second, the representative of the European peoples; and the third king, the representative of the African peoples. Wherever Christianity was to be understood as the religion of earthly harmony, the three kings and their homage were more often seen as a convergence of the different currents and religious trends in the world into a single principle, the Christ principle.

When this legend was given such a form, those who had penetrated into the mystery principles of esoteric Christianity saw in the Christ principle not only a force that had intervened in the course of human development, but they saw in the being that embodied itself in Jesus of Nazareth a cosmic world-force—a force far transcending the humanness that merely prevails in our present time. They saw in the Christ principle a force that indeed represents for man a human ideal that lies in a distant future development, but one, which can only be approached by man when he grasps the whole world more and more in the spirit. Initially they saw in man a small being, a small world, a microcosm, which for them was an image of the macrocosm, the great all-embracing world which contains everything that man can perceive with his external senses, see with his eyes, hear with his ears, but comprises, besides, all that the spirit could perceive including the perceptions of the lowest and also of the most clairvoyant spirit.

This was how the world appeared to the esoteric Christian in ancient times. All he saw occur in the firmament and on our Earth, all he saw as thunder and lightning, as storm and rain, as sunshine, as the course of the stars, as sunrise and sunset, as moonrise and moonset—all this was a gesture to him, something like mimicry, an external expression of inner spiritual processes.

The esoteric Christian views the world structure as he views the human body. When he looks at the human body, he sees it as consisting of different limbs: head, arms, hands, and so on. When he looks at the human body he sees hand movements, eye movements, movements of the facial muscles, but the individual limbs and their movements are for him the expression of inner spiritual and soul experiences. And just as he looked at the human limbs and their movements and perceived through them that which is the eternal, the soul in man, the esoteric Christian saw in the movements of the celestial bodies, in the light that streams down from the celestial bodies to humanity, the rising and setting of the Sun, the rising and setting of the Moon—in all of this he saw the external expression of divine-spiritual beings pervading space. All these natural phenomena were to him deeds of the Gods, gestures of the Gods, mimicry of those divine-spiritual beings. As was also everything that occurs among mankind, when people establish social communities, when they submit to moral rules and regulate their actions among themselves by laws, when from the forces of nature they create tools for themselves—although they make these tools with the help of the forces of nature, but in a form in which they have not been directly provided by nature. For the esoteric Christian, everything that man did more or less unconsciously was the external expression of inner divine spiritual workings.

But the esoteric Christian did not confine himself to such general forms. Instead he pointed to very specific individual gestures, single parts of the physiognomy of the universe, of the mimicry of the universe, in order to see in these individual parts very definite expressions of the spiritual. He pointed to the Sun and said: The Sun is not merely an external, physical body. This external, physical solar body is the body of a soul-spiritual being who rules over those soul-spiritual beings who are the governors, the leaders of all earthly fate, the leaders of all external natural occurrences on Earth, but also of all that happens in human social life, in the lawful conduct of men among each other. — When the esoteric Christian looked up to the Sun, then he revered in the Sun the external revelation of his Christos. In the first place the Christos was for him the Sun's soul, and the esoteric Christian said: From the beginning the Sun was the body of the Christos, but human beings on Earth and the Earth itself were not yet mature enough to receive the spiritual light, the Christ-light, which streams from the Sun. Humanity, therefore, had to be prepared for the Christ-light.

And now the esoteric Christian looked up at the Moon and saw that the Moon reflects the light of the Sun, but is more feeble than the Sun's light itself; and he said to himself: If I look at the sun with my physical eyes, I am dazzled by its radiant light; if I look into the Moon I am not dazzled; it reflects to a lesser degree the radiant light of the Sun. In this weakened sunlight, in this moonlight pouring down upon the Earth, the esoteric Christian saw the physiognomic expression of the old Jehovah principle, the expression for the religion of the old law. And he said: Before the Christ principle, the Sun of Righteousness, could appear on Earth, the Jahve principle had to prepare the way by sending this light of Righteousness, toned down in the Law to the Earth.

What lay in the old Jehovah principle, in the old law—the spiritual light of the Moon—was for the esoteric Christian the reflected spiritual light of the higher Christ principle. And like the confessors of the ancient Mysteries, the esoteric Christian—until far into the Middle Ages—saw in the Sun the expression of the spiritual light ruling the Earth, the Christ light. In the Moon they saw the expression of the reflected Christ light, which by its very nature would blind man. In the Earth itself the esoteric Christian saw, like the confessors of the ancient Mysteries, that which at times disguised and veiled for him the blinding sunlight of the spirit. The Earth was for him just as much the physical expression of a spirit, as was every other body an expression of something spiritual. He imagined that when the Sun could be seen shining down on the Earth, when it sent down its rays, beginning in the spring and continuing through the summer, and called forth from the Earth all the budding and sprouting life, and when it had culminated in the long summer days—then the esoteric Christian imagined that the Sun maintained the external up-shooting life, the physical life. In the plants, springing from the soil, in the animals that could unfold their fertility in these seasons, the esoteric Christian saw the same principle in an external physical form that he saw in the beings for which the Sun is the external expression. But when the days became shorter, when autumn and winter approached, the esoteric Christian said: the Sun withdraws its physical power more and more from the Earth. But to the same degree as the Sun's physical power is withdrawn from the Earth, its spiritual power increases and flows to the Earth most strongly when the shortest days come, with the long nights, in the times that later were fixed by the Christmas festival.

Man cannot see this spiritual power of the Sun. He would see it, said the esoteric Christian, if he possessed the inner power of spiritual vision. The esoteric Christian was still conscious of the fundamental conviction and fundamental knowledge of the Mystery-pupils from the most ancient times to the more recent time.

In those nights, now fixed by the Christmas festival, the mystery pupils were prepared for the experience of inner spiritual vision, so that they could see inwardly, spiritually that which at this time most withdraws its physical power from the Earth. In the long Christmas winter night, the mystery pupil was made to advance so far that he could have a vision at midnight. Then the Earth no longer shrouded the Sun,¹ which stood behind the Earth. It became transparent for him. Through the transparent Earth he saw the spiritual light of the Sun, the Christ light. This fact, which represents a profound experience of the mystery pupils, was captured in the expression ‘to see the Sun at midnight’.

There are areas where the churches, otherwise open all day, are closed at noon. This is a fact which connects Christianity with the traditions of ancient religious confessions. In ancient religious creeds the mystery students, on the strength of their experience, said: At noon, when the Sun stands highest, when it unfolds the strongest physical power, the Gods are asleep, and they sleep most deeply in summer, when the Sun unfolds its strongest physical power. But they are widest awake on Christmas night, when the external physical power of the Sun is at its weakest.

We see that all beings, who desire to unfold their external physical strength look up to the Sun when the Sun rises in spring, and strive to receive the external physical power of the Sun. But when, at a summer noon, the Sun's physical power flows most lavishly from the Sun to the Earth, the Sun’s spiritual power is weakest. In the winter midnight, however, when the Sun rays the least physical power down to the Earth, man can see the Sun's spirit through the Earth, which has become transparent for him. The esoteric Christian felt that by immersing himself in Christian esotericism he approached more and more that power of inner vision through which he could completely fulfil his feeling, thinking and his will-impulses when gazing into this spiritual sun. Then the mystery student was led to a vision of most real significance: As long as the Earth is opaque, the individual parts appear to be inhabited by people who develop separate creeds but the unifying bond is not there. Human races are as scattered as the climates, human opinions are scattered all over the Earth and there is no connecting link. But to the extent that human beings begin to look through the Earth into the Sun by their inner power of vision, to the extent that the “Star” appears to them through the Earth, their confessions will reconcile to form one great united human brotherhood. And those who guided the great individual human masses in the truth of the higher planes towards initiation into the higher worlds, were introduced as the Magi. There were three Magi, while in the different parts of the Earth the most diverse powers are expressed. Humanity therefore had to be guided in different ways. But as a unifying power there appears the Star, rising beyond the Earth. It leads the scattered individuals together, and then they make offerings to the physical embodiment of the solar Star, which had appeared as the Star of Peace. The cosmic-human religion of peace, of harmony, of universal peace, of human brotherhood, was thus brought into connection with the ancient Magi, who laid down the best gifts they had for humanity at the cradle of the incarnate Son of Man.

The legend has retained this beautifully, by saying that the Danish king rose to an understanding of the Wise Magi, of the three Kings, and because he had risen to it they bestowed on him their three gifts: firstly, the gift of wisdom in self-knowledge; secondly, the gift of devoted piousness in self-giving; and, thirdly, the gift of the victory of life over death in the strength and fostering of the eternal in the self.

All those who understood Christianity in this way, saw in it the profound spiritual-scientific idea of the unification of religions. For they were of the view, yes, they had the firm conviction that whoever understands Christianity thus, can rise to the highest grade of human development.

One of the last Germans to understand Christianity esoterically in this way is Goethe. Goethe has laid down for us this kind of Christianity, this kind of religious reconciliation, this kind of Theosophy, in the profound poem The Mysteries. Although it has remained a fragment² it shows us in a deeply meaningful way the inner spiritual development of one who is imbued with and convinced by the feelings and ideas that were just hinted at.

We first learn how Goethe points us to the pilgrim-path of such a man and indicates that this pilgrim-path may lead us far astray. That it is not easy for man to find it, and that one must have patience and devotion to reach the goal. Whoever possesses these will find the light that he seeks. Let us hear the beginning of the poem:

A wondrous song is here prepared for many.
Hear it with joy! Tell all from far and near!
The way will lead you out o'er mount and valley;
Now is the view obscured, now wide and clear,
And if the path should glide into the bushes,
That you have gone astray, you need not fear,
For by a persevering, patient climb
We shall draw near our goal, when it is time.

But no one will, despite profound reflection,
Unravel all the wonders hidden here:
Our mother earth brings forth so many flowers,
And many shall find something to revere;
Maybe that one will gloomily forsake us,
Another stays with gestures full of cheer:
For many wand'ring pilgrims flows the spring,
To each a different pleasure it will bring.

This is the situation into which we are placed. We are shown a pilgrim who, if we were to ask him, would not be able to tell us rationally what we have just explained to be the esoteric Christian idea—but a pilgrim, in whose heart and soul these ideas live transformed into feelings. It is not easy to discover everything that has been secreted into this poem called The Mysteries. Goethe has clearly indicated: a process occurring within a person in whom the highest ideas, thoughts and conceptions are transformed into feelings and sensations. What causes this transformation to take place?

We live through many embodiments, from one incarnation to another incarnation. In each one we learn things of many kinds; each one is full of opportunities for gathering new experiences. It is impossible to carry over everything in every detail from one incarnation to another. When man is born again, it is not necessary for everything that he has once learnt to come to life again in every detail. But if someone has learnt a lot in one incarnation, dies and is born again, although there is no need for all his ideas to be revived, but he will return to life with the fruits of his former life, with the fruits of his learning. His sensations, his feelings correspond to the realisations of his earlier incarnations.

In this poem of Goethe we find expressed something wonderful: we encounter a man who, in the simplest words—as a child might speak, not in particularly intellectual or abstract terms—shows us the highest wisdom as a fruit of former knowledge. He has transformed this knowledge into feeling and sensation and is thereby qualified to guide others who may have learnt more in the form of concepts. Such a pilgrim with a mature soul that has transformed much of the knowledge it has gathered in earlier incarnations into direct feeling and sensation, such a pilgrim we have before us in Brother Mark. As a member of a secret brotherhood he is sent on an important mission to another secret brotherhood.

He wanders through many different areas, and when he is tired, he comes to a mountain. He finally climbs up the path to the summit. Every step in this poem has a deep significance. When he has climbed the mountain, he sees a monastery in a nearby valley. This monastery is the dwelling of the brotherhood to which he has been sent. Above the gate of the monastery he sees something extraordinary. He sees the cross, but in a special guise; the cross is entwined with roses! And at this point he utters a significant word that only he can understand who knows how very often this password has been spoken in secret brotherhoods, “Who added roses to the cross?” And from the middle of the cross he sees three rays radiating out as if from the Sun. There is no need for him to place before his soul conceptually the meaning of this profound symbol. The perception of it and feeling for it already live in his soul, in his mature soul. His mature soul that knows everything that lies within it.

What is the meaning of the cross? He knows that the cross is a symbol for many things; among many others also for the threefold lower nature of man: the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body. In it the ‘I’ is born. In the Rose-Cross we have the fourfold man: in the cross the physical man, the etheric man, and the astral man, and in the roses the I. Why roses for the I? Esoteric Christianity added roses to the cross because it saw in the Christ principle a summons to raise the I from the state in which it is born in the three bodies to an ever higher and higher I. In the Christ principle it saw the power to carry this I higher and higher.

The cross is the symbol of death in a quite particular sense. This, too, Goethe expresses in another beautiful passage³ when he says,

And until thou truly hast
This dying and becoming,
Thou art but a troubled guest
O'er the dark earth roaming.

Die and become—overcome what you have first been given in the three lower bodies. Deaden it, but not out of a desire for death, but to purify what is in these three bodies so as to attain in the I the power to receive an ever-greater perfection. By deadening, what is given to you in the three lower bodies, the power of perfection will enter into the I. Into the I, the Christian should take into him the power of perfection in the Christ principle, right down to the blood. This power must work right into the blood.

Blood is the expression of the I. In the red roses the esoteric Christian saw that which in the blood, purified and cleansed by the power of the Christ principle, and in the I, which in turn was cleansed by this blood, leads man upwards to his higher being—he saw the power that transforms the astral body into the Spirit Self, the etheric body into the Life Spirit, the physical body into the Spirit Man. Thus, we encounter in the Rose-Cross connected with the triple beam a profound symbol of the Christ principle. The pilgrim Brother Mark, who arrives here, knows: he is at a place where the profoundest meaning of Christianity is understood.

Full weary by a long and tiring journey,
With a sublimest motive underta'en,
A pilgrim, brother Mark, came through the thicket,
With staff in hand, his footsteps to sustain,
And longing for a little food and drinking,
One beauteous eve he reached a quiet plain.
Its wooded gorges soothing hope bestowed
Beneath a friendly roof to find abode.

But lo! a path he scarcely can distinguish,
High up a mountain steep before him wending.
He follows it, as more and more it rises,
In curvings in and out the boulders bending,
Until again by sunlight warm enveloped,
He turns and sees how fast he is ascending.
At last the summit comes within his sight,
Inspiring him with heart-felt, deep delight.

Next it the sun, majestic in its setting,
Enthroned 'mong clouds within the dark'ning sky.
Now for the peak! For all his weary toiling
He hopes to be rewarded there on high.
O'erlooking all the country 'fore him spreading,
A human home he will perchance espy.
And while he climbs, oh sound how full of cheer!
The chime of bells is wafted to his ear.

And as at length he has attained the summit,
Below a softly sloping valley lies.
His quiet look with inward pleasure brightens;
Before the forest full of joy he spies
A stately building in a greening field,
Which the departing sun with lustre dyes.
E'er long he nears through meadows dewy damp
A monastery lit with gleaming lamp.

He soon arrives outside the quiet homestead,
With hope and peacefulness his soul enfolding,
And on the arch above the closed portal
A symbol full of mystery beholding.
He stands and ponders, whispers words of prayer,
The deep devotion of his heart unfolding;
He ponders long: What does this sign convey?
The sun has set, the chiming dies away.

The sign he sees erected here on high
That brings consoling hope to all mankind,
Which many thousands pledged their lives to shield,
To which in fervour prayed the human mind,
That has destroyed the bitter powers of death,
On victors' banners fluttered in the wind:
A stream of comfort permeates his being,
He sees the cross and bows his head in seeing.

He feels anew the faith of all on earth,
The power of salvation streaming thence;
But as he looks, he feels his very soul
Pervaded by a new and unknown sense:
Who added to the cross the wreath of roses?
It is entwined by blooming, clusters dense,
Profusely spreading just as though they could
Endow with softness e'en the rigid wood.

While light and silv'ry clouds, around it soaring,
Seem heavenward with cross and roses flowing,
And from the midst like living waters streaming
A threefold ray from out one core is glowing;
But not a word surrounds the holy token,
The meaning of the symbol clearly showing.
And while the dusk is gath'ring grey and greyer,
He stands and ponders and is lost in prayer.

The spirit of deepest Christianity which can be found within this dwelling is expressed in the cross entwined by roses. And as the pilgrim now enters, he is actually received in this spirit. As he enters, he becomes aware that in this house not this or that religion holds sway—but that the higher Oneness of the world’s religions is at work here. In the house he tells an older member of the brotherhood who lives there, at whose behest and on what mission he has come. He is made welcome and hears that in this house lives in perfect seclusion a brotherhood of twelve brothers. These twelve brothers are representatives of diverse groups of people from all over the Earth; every one of the brothers is the representative of a religious creed. None is to be found here, who is accepted while still young in years and immature. One will only be accepted when one has explored the world, when one has struggled with the joys and sorrows of the world, when one has worked and been active in the world and has wrestled with oneself upwards to gain a free survey over one’s narrowly confined domain. Only then is one placed and accepted into the circle of the Twelve. And these Twelve, of whom each one represents one of the world religious creeds, live here in peace and harmony together. For they are led by a thirteenth who surpasses them all in the perfection of his human Self, who surpasses them all in his wide survey of human circumstances.

And how does Goethe indicate that this Thirteenth is the representative of true esotericism, the carrier of the Rosicrucian confession? Goethe indicates this by one of the brothers saying: He was among us. Now we are plunged into the deepest sorrow because he is about to leave us, he wishes to part from us. But he feels it is right to part from us now. He desires to rise to higher regions, where he no longer needs to reveal himself in an earthly body.

He may ascend, for he has risen to a point that Goethe describes as follows: In every creed lies the possibility of coming closer to the highest unity. When each of the twelve religions is matured to establish harmony, then the Thirteenth, who has before brought about this harmony externally, can rise up. And we are beautifully told how we can achieve this perfection of the Self. First, the life-story of the Thirteenth is related. But the Brother who has admitted the pilgrim Mark knows many more details, which the great leader of the Twelve could not say himself. Several traits of profound esoteric significance are now told by this brother to the pilgrim Mark. It is told, that when the Thirteenth was born a star appeared to herald his earthly existence. This is a direct link to the star that guided the Three Holy Kings and to its meaning. This star has an enduring significance; it indicates the way to self-knowledge, self-giving, and self-perfection. It is the star that opens the understanding of the gifts that the Danish king received through the vision that appeared to him in his dream. The star that appears at the birth of everyone mature enough to receive the Christ principle within oneself.

And other things also became apparent. It became clear that he had developed to that height of religious harmony, which brings peace and harmony of the soul. Profoundly symbolical in this sense is the vulture which swoops down when the Thirteenth entered into this world, but instead of having a devastating effect, it spreads peace around it among the doves.

We are told still more. As his little sister is lying in the cradle a viper winds itself around her. The Thirteenth, still a child, kills the viper. Hereby is wonderfully indicated how a mature soul—for only a mature soul can achieve such a thing after many incarnations—kills the viper already in early childhood; this means he overcame the lower astral nature. The viper is the symbol for the lower astral nature. The sister is his own etheric body, around which the astral body winds itself. He kills the viper for his sister.

Then we are told how he obediently submitted to what at first the family demanded of him. He obeyed his harsh father. The soul transforms its realisations, ideas, and thoughts. Then healing powers develop in the soul, through which healing can be brought about in the world. Miraculous powers develop; they find expression in his use of his sword to lure a spring out of the rock. Intentionally, we are here shown how his soul follows in the footsteps of the Scripture.

Thus gradually there matures the superior, the representative of humanity, the Chosen One, who works as the Thirteenth here in the community of the Twelve—the great secret order that, under the symbol of the Rose-Cross, has taken on the mission for all mankind to harmonise the creeds scattered throughout the world. This is how we are first made acquainted in a profound manner with the soul-state of the one who has until now led the Brotherhood of our Twelve.

At last he knocks. The myriad stars above him
Look down with shining eyes as they appear.
The portal opens, and he is bidden welcome
By brethren wont to comfort and to cheer.
So he relates how far by hill and valley
The will of higher Beings led him here.
They stand amazed, for well they see their guest
Was sent to them by heavenly behest.

They crowd around him, and their inmost being
They feel by a mysterious power stirred,
Their breath they hold to listen, for he rouses
An echo in their hearts with ev'ry word.
Like deepest lore, yet uttered by a child,
The wisdom flowing from his lips is heard:
He seems so innocent, like crystal clear,
As though descended from another sphere.

At last an aged brother cries: Oh welcome,
If with consoling hope thy path is blessed!
Thou seest us, our souls are moved within us
By thee, and yet we can but stand oppressed:
Our greatest bliss from us is being taken,
Anxiety and dread disturb our rest.
Thou comest as a stranger, yet to share
Portentous hours of mourning and of care:

For he, alas! who all of us united,
to whom as father and as friend we bow,
who light and fortitude within us kindled—
Our leader—is prepared to leave us now.
Yea, he himself his passing has predicted,
refusing though to tell us when and how:
The mystery of what must needs befall
Brings bitter tribulation to us all.

Thou seest us grey and aged ev’ry one,
By nature destined for repose and rest:
Not one was here admitted who, a youth,
Desired to fly from wordly joy and zest.
Each one has met with life's vicissitudes,
Its burdens, pleasures and its anxious quest,
Until, matured, too old to longer roam,
Within these walls we found a shelt'ring home.

The noble man who led us to this haven,
Within his heart the peace of God does dwell;
Along the path of life we walked together,
His ev'ry action I remember well;
But now his fervent praying, his seclusion,
The hour of his departing must foretell.
How small is man! Oh would that he could give
His life, so that a greater one might live!

This is my heart's profound and only wish!
Fulfilment is denied to my desire.
How many have preceded me in death!
How bitter is the thought he must expire.
Had he been here, with hearty welcome's warmth
He would have given all thou didst require;
But now in spirit-regions dwells his mind,
Already far from those he leaves behind.

Each day one hour he lingers in our midst
And speaks to us, by strange emotion stirred:
The wondrous paths that Providence has led
Within his life he lauds with ev'ry word;
We hark and heed, for after-ages hoarding
With care the merest trifle that occurred,
While one writes down his words to make us sure
His memory shall live both true and pure.

I hear him speak, but oh, how much there is
That I would rather myself relate,
For all is still alive within my mind,
The least of circumstances I would state;
Impatiently I list, can scarce conceal
How sore it is thus silently to wait:
One day I shall no more restrain my zeal,
The splendours of this beauteous life reveal.

I should disclose how first an angel's voice
His coming to his mother prophesied,
And how, when he was christened, in the sky
A star with brilliant lustre was descried,
How down a vulture swooped with mighty wings
To settle by the gentle pigeons' side,
But not to pounce on them in greedy wildness,
A harbinger he seemed of peace and mildness.

How as a child a viper he destroyed,
This is a miracle he ne'er has told.
He found his sister peacefully asleep,
The clinging reptile round her arm was rolled.
The nurse had fled and left the babe alone,
He killed the pois'nous snake, resolved and bold;
His mother came and saw the daring deed
And thrilled with joy she found her daughter freed.

He ne'er related that a spring arose
From out the barren rock before his sword,
And as a brook, with rippling waves alive,
Its plenteous waters down the hill-side poured;
E'en now, as quick as forth it gushed at first,
It bickers silver sparkling o'er the sward.
But those who saw the wondrous stream appear,
Dared not to drink, o'ercome by solemn fear.

For when a man excels by gifts of nature,
It is no wonder if his life is blessed;
In him we worship the Creator's power,
Through feeble human clay made manifest;
But he who overcomes himself has gained
The greatest triumph, stood the hardest test,
And well may he to all the world be shown:
Yea, this is he, this deed is his alone!

With all our strength we strive to live and labour,
Where'er by fate our twisting paths be wended;
Whereas the world oppresses, e'er impeding,
And seeks to tear us from the way intended;
Within this inner storm and outer struggle
Our spirit hears a word scarce comprehended:
The power that holds constrained all humankind
The victor o'er himself it no more can bind.

Thus this man, who had overcome himself, that is, who had overcome the “I” that at first is allotted to man, became the Superior of the chosen Brotherhood just characterised. And so he leads the Twelve. He has led them to a point where they are mature enough for him to be allowed to leave them.

Our Brother Mark is then conducted further into the rooms where the Twelve work. How did they work? Their activity is of an unusual kind, and we are made aware that it is an activity in the spiritual world. A man whose eyes observe only the physical plane, whose senses only see the physical and what is done by people in the physical world, cannot easily imagine that there is still other work. Work that may in some circumstances even be far more essential and important than work that is done externally on the physical plane. Work from the higher planes is far more important for mankind. Mind you, whoever wishes to work on the higher planes must fulfill the condition that he has first completed his tasks on the physical plane. These Twelve had done so. For this reason, their combined activity signifies something of high importance for the service to mankind.

Our Brother Mark is led into the hall where the Twelve were accustomed to assemble. There he encounters in a profound symbolism the nature of their combined activity. The individual contribution that each of the Brothers has to make to this joint activity, in accordance with his particular character, is expressed by a special symbol above the seat of each of the Twelve. Symbols of many kinds are to be seen there, expressing meaningfully and in very different ways what each one has to contribute to the common work. This work consists of spiritual activity, so that these streams flow together here into a current of spiritual life that floods the world and has a strengthening effect on the rest of humanity. There are such brotherhoods, such centres from where such flows emanate and impact on the rest of mankind.

Above the seat of the Thirteenth, Brother Mark again sees the sign: the cross entwined with roses. This sign is at the same time a symbol for the four-fold nature of man, and in the red roses it is the symbol for the purified blood- or I-principle, the principle of the higher man. Then we see that which is to be overcome by this sign of the Rose-Cross installed as a special symbol to the left and right of the seat of the Thirteenth. On the right Mark sees the fiery-coloured dragon, representing the astral nature of man.

It was well known in Christian esotericism that man's soul can be devoted to the three lower bodies. If it succumbs to them, then it is dominated by the lower life of the threefold bodily nature within it. This is expressed in the astral perception by the dragon. This is no mere symbol but a very real sign. In the dragon is expressed what must first be conquered. In the passions, in these forces of astral fire—which are part of man's physical nature—in this dragon Christian esotericism saw that which mankind has received from the torrid zone, from the South. This poem was written in the spirit of Christian esotericism, which spread throughout Europe. From the South stems that part of man which mankind acquired as hot passion tending more towards the lower sensory nature. As a first impulse to fight and overcome this, one sensed what flowed down from the influences of the cooler North. The influence of the colder North, the descent of the I into the threefold bodily nature, is expressed according to an old symbol taken from the constellation of the Bear, which shows a hand thrust into the maw of a bear. The lower bodily nature expressed by the fiery dragon will be overcome. What has been preserved in the higher animal species was represented by the bear. And the I, which has developed beyond the dragon nature, was represented with profound appropriateness by the thrusting of a human hand into the bear's maw. On both sides of the Rose-Cross there appears what must be overcome by it. It is the Rose-Cross that calls on man to purify and raise himself up higher and higher.

In this way, the poem really presents us with the principle of esoteric Christianity in the deepest way, and illustrates to us above all what should be before our soul, especially at a festival like the one we are celebrating today.

The eldest of the Brothers belonging to the Brotherhood, who lives here, explicitly tells the pilgrim Mark that their combined activity is happening in the spirit, that it is spiritual life. This work for mankind on the spiritual plane means something special. The Brothers have experienced life's joys and sorrows, they have endured external conflicts; they have performed work in the world outside. Now they are here, but here also work is done continuously to further the development of mankind. The pilgrim Mark is told: You have now seen as much as can be shown to a novice to whom the first portal is opened. You have been shown in profound symbols how man's ascent should be. But the second portal harbours greater mysteries—how from the higher worlds work is done on mankind. You can only learn these greater mysteries after lengthy preparation, only then can you enter through the other gate. Profound secrets are expressed in this poem.

In him I scarce as virtue may denote
The power of good which e'en his youth inspired
And taught him to respect his father's word,
When harshly he his services required,
With duties burdening his leisure hours;
The son obeyed with ardour, never tired,
Like some poor boy who, friendless and astray,
Is glad to work for but a trifling pay.

On foot he joined the warriors in the field,
In lowering tempest and in dazzling light,
The horses he did tend, the meals prepare,
And armed the soldiers ready for the fight.
Oft as a messenger, both keen and fleet,
He hastened through the woods by day and night;
To live for others both in thought and action
Seemed but to give him joy and satisfaction.

And brave and cheerful always, in the strife
He sought the arrows scattered on the ground;
Then hastily he gathered curing herbs,
With which the burning wounds he cooled and bound;
And just as if his very touch were healing,
Ere long the sufferers were strong and sound;
How all regarded him with joy and pride!
Alone his father seemed not satisfied.

E'en as a ship, despite its heavy load
From port to port with speedy lightness sailing,
He bore the burden of his parents' word
That in obedience ne'er he should be failing;
As pleasure is for boys, for youths distinction,
For him his father's will was all-prevailing,
So that he might demand whate'er he would,
Each task was soon fulfilled, each test was stood.

At last the father yielded and acknowledged
The merit of his son in word and deed;
While of a sudden all his sternness vanished,
He gave the youth a swift and precious steed;
Henceforth a sword replaced the shorter dagger,
And from his lesser duties he was freed:
Thus, destined by his birth and well acquitted,
Into an Order he was now admitted.

Ah, well could I report for many days
Amazing things to every one who hears;
And higher than the most delightful tales
His life will be esteemed in coming years;
For what in poetry and fiction charms,
Yet to our mind incredible appears,
Will here with greater pleasure still be heard,
Because it has in real event occurred.

The name of him whom Providence has chosen
That wondrous things on earth he should achieve,
Whom I may often praise, though ne'er sufficing
Whose destiny we scarcely can believe,
His name—it is Humanus, Saint and wise one,
The best of men whom I did e'er perceive:
By origin another name he bears,
Which with illustrious ancestors he shares.

The aged brother would have spoken on.
Filled with the miracles that he did know,
And he shall gladden us for many weeks
With all the stirring facts he still can show;
But he was interrupted, just as now
His heart was pouring forth in fervent flow.
The others softly in and out had passed
And deemed it time to intervene at last.

When Mark had bowed before his hosts and prayed
In gratitude for the sustaining meal,
A bowl of crystal water he requested.
They brought what he had craved with friendly zeal.
Hereafter led him to their festive hall,
Therein a sight unwonted to reveal.
Of what he saw you soon will be aware,
For everything shall be described with care.

No ornament was here, the eye deluding,
A cross-arched vault rose sternly from the ground,
And thirteen chairs against the walls, he noticed.
Were like a pious chorus ranged around,
By clever hands full delicately carven;
In front of each a little desk he found.
Devotion seemed to fill the very air,
Fraternity and restfulness and prayer.

Above each chair was hung a special shield,
Thirteen in all the number he espied.
They seemed to be important, purposeful,
No boast of ancestors in shallow pride.
And brother Mark, with longing all aglow,
Desired to learn what secret they did hide:
Lo, in the middle one the mystic sign,
The cross which clustring roses do entwine.

Each object will arouse to life and action
The soul which to its inspiration yields;
Some places are adorned by swords and lances,
While helmets hang above these other shields;
Here battered weapons are to be discovered,
Such as one may collect on battle-fields:
There spears and banners, come from distant lands,
And even fetters here and iron bands!

Each brother sinking down before his chair,
In silent prayer profoundly wrapt they rested;
Then softly chanted fervent hymns of thanks,
By cheerfulness and piety suggested;
With mutual blessing they retired to sleep,
A short repose, by fancies unmolested:
But Mark remains, surrounded by a few,
Still wishing more attentively to view.

Though tired in body, full awake his mind,
Preoccupied by many hidden things:
For here, his thirst in raging flames appeasing,
A dragon is enthroned with fiery wings;
And here between his jaws a bear is holding
An arm from which the blood it loses springs,
Both shields, in distance corresponding quite,
Hung next the Rosy-Cross to left and right.

Wherever he now turns and gazes in amazement,⁴
The more he marvels at the art and splendours
Abundant wealth seems wasted here on purpose
Has everything just made itself?—he wonders.
Should he have doubts about the work’s fulfilment?
Who so conceived the plan? ― he ponders.
It seems to him, with heavenly delight,
He’s only just beginning to live each moment right.

The paths were wonderful that led thee here,
The aged brother speaks unto his guest:
Oh let these symbols bid thee stay until
The many heroes' deeds we manifest;
Our mysteries we will confide to thee,
For what is here concealed, can ne'er be guessed;
Although thou wilt divine what here was done,
Endured and lost, and last what triumph won.

Do not believe that but of times gone by
The brother spake. Here wonders never fail;
And more and ever more thou shalt behold,
Until withdrawn is the enshrouding veil.
One portal only 'tis that thou hast passed:
And if thou feelst the call, O friend, prevail!
The foremost court as yet thou didst attain,
But worthy art the very core to gain.

After a short rest, our Brother Mark learns to divine at least something of the inner mysteries. In powerful symbols he has let the ascent of the human Self work upon his soul. When he is woken from his brief rest by a sign, he comes to a portal, only to find it is locked. He hears a strange triad: three beats and the whole as if intermingled with the playing of a flute. He cannot look in, cannot see what is happening there in the room.

We do not need to be told more than these few words to indicate in a profound way what awaits man when he approaches the spiritual worlds, when he is so far purified and perfected by his endeavours to work on his Self that he passed through the astral world and then approaches the higher worlds—those worlds in which the spiritual archetypes of things here on Earth can be found. When he approaches what is called the ‘world of heaven’ in esoteric Christianity, he first approaches it through a world flooded with colours. Then he enters into a world of sound, into the harmony of the universe, the music of the spheres. The spiritual world is a world of sound. He who has developed his higher Self to the level of the higher worlds, must become at home in this spiritual world. It is precisely Goethe who clearly expressed the higher experience of a world of spiritual sound in his Faust, when he lets him be raptured to heaven, and the world of heaven reveals itself to him through sound.⁵

“The sun-orb sings, in emulation
'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round...”

The physical Sun does not sound, but the spiritual Sun does. Goethe retains this image when, after long wanderings, Faust is transported up into the spiritual worlds:

“Sounding loud to spirit-hearing,⁶
see the new-born day appearing.”
“Pealing rays and trumpet-blazes
—eye is blinded, ear amazes:
The Unheard can no one hear!”

As man evolves higher through the symbolic colour world of the astral, he approaches the world of the harmony of the spheres, the Devachan domain, that which is spiritual music. Only softly, softly going outside does our Brother Mark hear―after he has passed through the first portal, the astral portal—the chiming sound of the inner world behind our external world; of that inner world which transforms the lower astral world into this higher world through which the triad flows. And by ascending to the higher world a human being’s lower nature is transformed into the higher trinity: our astral body changes into the Spirit Self, the etheric body into the Life Spirit, the physical body into the Spirit Man.

Brother Marcus first senses the triad of the higher nature in the music of the spheres, and by becoming one with this music of the spheres, he has a first inkling of the rejuvenation of someone who enters into contact with the spiritual worlds. He sees, as in a dream, rejuvenated mankind floating through the garden in the form of the three youths carrying three torches. This is the moment when Mark's soul woke up in the morning from darkness, and where some darkness has still remained as the light has not yet penetrated it. But precisely at such a time the soul can look into the spiritual world. It can look into the spiritual worlds, just as it can look into them when the summer noon has passed, when the Sun gradually gets weaker and winter has arrived, and then at midnight the Christ-principle shines through the Earth in the Holy Night of Christmas.

Through the Christ-principle man is elevated to the higher Trinity, illustrated for Brother Mark by the three youths who represent the rejuvenated humanity. This is the meaning of Goethe's lines:

“And until thou truly hast
This dying and becoming,
Thou art but a troubled guest
O'er the dark earth roaming.”

Every year anew, Christmas must remind those who understand esoteric Christianity that what happens in the external world is mimicry, are the gestures of inner spiritual processes. The external power of the Sun runs free in the spring and summer sunshine. In the Holy Scripture this external power of the Sun—which is only the proclamation of the inner, spiritual power of the Sun—is expressed in John the Baptist, whereas the inner, spiritual power is expressed in Christ. And while the physical power of the Sun continuously abates, the spiritual power rises and grows more and more in strength until it reaches its zenith at Christmas time. This is the meaning underlying the words in the Gospel of St. John, “I must decrease, but He must increase”.⁷ And He increases and increases until He appears where the sun-force has again attained the outer physical power.

So that man may henceforth be able to revere and worship the spiritual power of the Sun in this external physical power, he must learn to recognise the meaning of the Christmas festival. For those who do not recognise this meaning, the new power of the Sun is nothing other than the old physical power anew. But one who has familiarised himself with the impulses which esoteric Christianity and especially the Christmas festival should give him, will see in the growing power of the solar body the external body of the inner Christ, which radiates through the Earth, which vitalises and fertilises it, so that the Earth itself becomes the bearer of the Christ power, of the Earth-Spirit. Hence, what is born to us every Christmas night is born anew each time. Christ will allow us to inwardly perceive the microcosm within the macrocosm, and this perception will lead us higher and higher.

The festivals, which have long ago become something external to man, will again appear in their deep significance for man, if he is led by this profound esotericism to the knowledge that the external events of nature―such as thunder and lightning, sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonset―are the gestures and physiognomy of spiritual existence. And at the significant points, marked by our festivals, man should realise that then also in the spiritual world important things are happening. Then he will be led to the rejuvenating spiritual power, represented by the three youths, which the I can only win by devoting itself to the outer world, and not by egotistically shutting itself away from it. But there is no devotion to the outer world if this outer world is not permeated by spirit. That this spirit should appear anew each year as a light in the darkness for all human beings, even for the weakest, must be written afresh each year into the heart and soul of humanity.

This is what Goethe wished to express in this poem, The Mysteries. It is at once a Christmas poem and an Easter poem. It aims to hint at profound secrets of esoteric Christianity. If we allow what he wished to indicate of the deep mysteries of Rosicrucian Christianity to work upon us, if we absorb its power even in part, then we will become missionaries for at least a few of those in our surroundings. We shall succeed in shaping these festivals in such a way that they are filled with spirit and with life.

When after short repose within his cell
A deep resounding bell awakes our guest,
His soul is filled with longing for devotion,
He rises quickly with unwearied zest
And hastens to the church, with all his heart
Responding to the gladly heard behest,
Obedient, peaceful and by prayer bestirred;
Alas! The door is locked, he stands deterred.

But hark! a blow on dull resounding ore
Three times in equal intervals renewed,
No chime it seems to be of clock or bells,
From time to time with tones of flute imbued;
The floating music fills the heart with joy,
Mysterious 'tis and scarce to be construed,
It sounds like singing, solemn and entrancing,
To which the couples interlace in dancing.

Bewildered and by strange emotion moved,
He hastens to the window there to gaze;
The day is dawning in the distant east,
The sky o'erflown by lucent streaks of haze.
And may he trust his eyes? A mystic light
Is fleeting through the garden's winding ways;
Three youths with torches in their hands he sees
Who haste along the paths between the trees.

He clearly sees their wonderful apparel,
The white resplendent garments which they wear,
Their girdles made of intertwining roses,
The wreaths of flowers in their curly hair;
They seem to come from some nocturnal dances,
With joy of movement thrilled, enlived and fair.
But as the stars will fade, when day is near,
Extinguishing their torch, they disappear.

• 1. A correction after the transcript by Walter Vegelahn. In the first Edition this sentence was due to a different transcript recorded in error as “then the Earth was no longer the hull”.
• 2. Goethe himself wrote an essay about this fragment in the year 1816, “The Mysteries, a fragment by Goethe”, in Essays on Literature, Contributions to the Morning paper for the educated classes, 1807-1816. Sophien Edition, Volume 41/1.
• 3. “And until thou truly hast” is the final verse of the poem by Goethe “Blessed Longings”, of the collection West Eastern Divan.
• 4. The verse “Wherever he now turns and gazes in amazement”, is missing from most Goethe Editions, but according to an original handwritten Goethe script it had been intended for The Mysteries. Refer Goethe’s works, Weimar Edition, Volume 16, Page 436.
• 5. “The Sun-orb sings, in emulation...”, Goethe, Faust Part I, Prologue in Heaven, Verse 243 et seq.
• 6. “Sounding loud to spirit-hearing..”, Faust Part II, Act 1, Ariel Scene, Verse 4666 et seq.
• 7. “I must decrease, but he must increase”. The literal translation would be “I must sink, but he has to rise”. John-3-30.

On various occasions it has been emphasised that the spiritual development, as aspired to by Spiritual Science, must bring the human being into a living relationship with the whole environment. Much in our environment that filled our ancestors with veneration has become dead and mundane for man. For example, a large number of people are alienated from and cold towards our annual festivals. The urban population in particular has only a scant memory of what Christmas, Easter and Whitsun (Pentecost) mean.

Today, mankind does no longer possess this enormous emotional content that our ancestors connected with the festive seasons because they were aware of the great facts of the spiritual world. Cold and sober people look at Christmas and Easter today, and especially also at Whitsun. The pouring out of the Spirit has become an abstract event for many people. But this will change—it will only become life and reality when mankind will come to a truly spiritual realisation of the whole world.

Today, there is a lot of talk about the forces of nature, but not a lot is said about the beings behind these nature forces. Modern man regards talk about the “beings of nature” as a rehashing of an old superstitious belief. It is considered an old superstition if someone believes that the words used for gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders, as our ancestors called them, are based on reality and mean something real. First, in a certain way it doesn’t matter what kind of theories or ideas people have, but if people are tempted by these theories to ignore certain things and to apply their theories in their daily life in practice, then the issue becomes fully relevant.

Let’s take a grotesque example: Who believes in beings whose existence is bound to the air or who are embodied in water? For example, if someone says, “Our ancestors believed in certain beings like gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders, but this is all imaginary stuff!”, then one would like to respond by saying, “Ask the bees.” And, if the bees could talk, they would answer, “Sylphs are not a superstition for us—we know quite well what they are to us!” Someone who is clairvoyant can trace (with his eyes) which force it is that draws the little bee to the flower. “Instinct, natural drive,” is man’s answer, but these are empty words. It is those beings, that our ancestors called sylphs, that guide the bees to the bloom’s calyx to search for food—and those beings are active in the whole bee swarm in search for nourishment.

Wherever different nature kingdoms touch, there is an opportunity for certain (elemental) beings to reveal themselves. For example, inside the Earth, where the stone touches on a metal vein, special beings will settle down. At a spring, where moss covers the stone and thus the plant kingdom touches the mineral kingdom such beings will settle in. Where animals and plants touch, in the bloom’s calyx when the bee touches the blossom, particular beings will embody themselves, and likewise where the human being touches onto the animal kingdom. This is not happening in the normal course of contact. For example, not when the butcher slaughters cattle, or when someone eats the flesh of animals—nothing like this will happen in the normal course of life. But where in the extraordinary course of events, as it happens with bees and flowers, the kingdoms touch each other in an exuberance of life, beings will embody themselves. And especially where man’s mind, his intellect, is particularly engaged in interacting with animals, such beings embody themselves. An example would be the emotional relationship a shepherd has with his sheep.

When we go back to the ancient times, we find such close relationships between humans and animals more often. In times of lower cultures, it was common to have relationships such as an Arab has to his horse, but not as the owner of a racing stable has to his horses. There we find those powers of mind that interplay between kingdoms–like between the shepherd and the lambs. Or where the senses of smell and taste will be developed and radiate across, like between bees and flowers, an opportunity is created for certain beings to embody themselves. When a bee sucks at a flower, a clairvoyant can perceive how at the rim of the flower a small aura is created. This is the effect of the taste: The sting of the bee into the bloom’s calyx has produced a certain flavouring agent – the bee perceives the taste and radiates it out like a bloom’s aura – this is the nourishment for sylph-like beings. Likewise, the element of feeling between the shepherd and the sheep is food for salamanders.

The following question is not for one who understands the spiritual world, “Then why are these beings there and not otherwise?” We should not ask about their origin, because their origin lies in the cosmos. But if one creates an opportunity for them to feed then they appear. For example, bad thoughts emanating from a person will attract bad entities to settle into his aura because they find food there. Then certain beings embody themselves in his aura.

Wherever different nature kingdoms touch, the opportunity presents itself for embodiment of certain spiritual beings. When a miner hacks away the soil—where metal nestles against the stone in the interior of the Earth—the clairvoyant can observe at various spots strange beings crouching, huddling together in a very small place. They scatter, they sputter apart when the earth is removed. They are strange beings but, in a way, not at all unlike humans. Although they have no physical body, they have reason. But the difference between them and human beings is that they possess intelligence without responsibility. Therefore, they do not feel anything is wrong about sometimes playing a prank on human beings. They are called gnomes, and numerous species of them are housed in the earth. They are at home where stone and metal touch. In the past they served mankind very well with mining—not with coal mining but with metal mining. The way how mines were constructed in ancient times, the knowledge about how the strata are layered, was learnt from these beings. They knew the most productive seams and how the layers ran inside the earth. Therefore, they were able to provide the best instruction on how to proceed with work. If one doesn’t want to work with spiritual beings and only relies on the senses, then one will end up in a dead-end road. From these spiritual entities one has to learn a certain method to explore the Earth.

Likewise at a spring beings embody themselves. Where the stone touches the spring, beings bound to the element of water embody themselves: the undines. Where animal and plant touch, the sylphs are working. The sylphs are bound to the element of the air, they lead the bees to the blossoms. Therefore, we owe almost all useful knowledge about beekeeping to old traditions. Especially about beekeeping¹ we can learn a lot from them, because the science that exists about this today is completely erroneous. The old wisdom that has spread through tradition will only be confused by this. Science proves to be useless in this context. Useful are only the old beekeeping flicks of hand whose origin is unknown, because man at that time used the spiritual world for guidance. Nowadays people also know about salamanders because if one says, “Something is flowing to me, I do not know where it comes from...”, then this is usually the effect of the salamanders.

When a human being enters into such close contact to animals as a shepherd to his sheep, then the beings who live in his surroundings will whisper insights to him. A shepherd would have received the knowledge he had about his flock from the salamanders in his surroundings. These old insights have dwindled and now must be regained through proven occult knowledge.

If we follow these thoughts further, then we will have to say to ourselves, “We are completely surrounded by spiritual beings! We walk through the air, and it is not only a chemical substance, but every breath of wind, every air movement is the revelation of spiritual entities.” We are surrounded and completely permeated by these spiritual entities. And, in the future man must have knowledge of what lives around him, if he doesn’t want to experience a completely sad and life draining fate. Without this knowledge he will no longer be able to progress. Man must ask himself, “Where do these beings come from? Where do these beings stem from?”

This question will lead us to an important realisation. To form a view about this, we have to become clear about how in the higher worlds certain facts play out, where what is detrimental and evil is transformed through certain things by wise guidance into something good. For example, the waste, the manure—this is what has been chucked out and through wise usage it is later effective in the economy as the foundation for plant germination. Higher powers pick up and transform things that have seemingly dropped off from higher development. This we encounter to a great extent in the beings we have spoken about, when we follow up on their origin. How do these “salamandrian” entities come into being? Let’s look at this in detail. Salamanders depend on the existence of a specific relation between human and animal. Animals do not have an “I/ego” such as human beings have. Such an ego exists only in modern man on Earth. These human egos are so that every human being has an ego enclosed in himself. This is different with animals. The animals have a “group-ego,” a “group-soul”. What does that mean? A group of animals of the same species, animals of similar shape, have a common ego. For example, all separate lions share a common ego, all tigers, all pikes do.

The animals have their ego in the astral world. This is as if a human being would stand behind a wall with ten holes in it and would put his ten fingers through the holes. Then the human being could not be seen, but every rational person would conclude, “there is a central power behind it that belongs to the ten fingers.” This is how it is with the group-ego. The separate animals are merely the limbs. What they belong to is in the astral world. These animal-egos are not similar to humans, although, from a spiritual perspective they could well be compared with each other, because an animal group-ego is a very, very wise being. The human being as an individual soul is not nearly as wise. For example, think of certain bird species: how wise is it that they are migrating at particular heights and in specific directions to escape winter, and return again by different routes in spring. Here we can recognise in the bird migration the truly wise powers of the group-egos. They can be found everywhere in the animal kingdom.

People are very narrow minded when they are listing human progress. Let us remember our school days, where we learnt how in the Middle Ages slowly the stream of the modern times emerged. The Middle Ages surely have something important to put on record, such as the discovery of America, the invention of gunpowder, the art of book printing and finally also of linen paper. It was probably an important progress to use this product instead of parchment, but thousands of years ago the wasp group-soul had done the same, because wasps’ nests are made from the same material as the paper produced by man; it is made of paper.

Human beings will only slowly find out how certain conjectures of his spirit are connected with what the group-souls have worked into the world.

The group-souls are in constant movement. The clairvoyant perceives a persistent flicker across the backbone of the animals. The spine seems to be enclosed by flickering light. The animals are pervaded by an infinite number of streams that are encircling the Earth in all directions, such as the trade winds, which affect the animals by streaming around the spinal cord. These animal group-souls are perpetually going around the Earth in a circular motion at every height and in every direction. These group-souls are very wise, but they are missing one thing which they do not yet have—they do not know that which on Earth is called “love.” Only in a human being is love connected to wisdom in an individual.

The group-soul is wise, but the individual animal experiences love as sexual love and parental love. In an animal love is individual, but the wise arrangement, the wisdom of the group-ego is still void of love. The human being has united love and wisdom—the animal has love in the physical life, and it has wisdom on the astral plane. Such realisations will be immensely enlightening for people.

The human being arrived at his current “I” only gradually. Previously man also had a group-soul, and the individual soul has crystallised itself only gradually. Let us follow backwards the evolution of mankind up to ancient Atlantis. In former times man lived in the old Atlantis, a continent that is now covered by the Atlantic Ocean. At that time the wide Siberian plains were covered with large oceans. The Mediterranean Sea was quite differently distributed then. Also in our European regions were wide expanses of sea. The further we go backwards into the old Atlantean time, the more all circumstances of life are changing, the more the human being’s waking and sleeping state changes.

Now when man sleeps the physical body with the etheric body remains in bed, and the astral body and the ego lift themselves out. The consciousness darkens, everything becomes dark, sombre, silent. In the Atlantean time the difference between sleeping and waking was not yet so pronounced. At that time, during the waking state, the human being did not see such firm boundaries, such sharp contours, such strong colours attached to objects. When he woke up in the morning, he dived into something like a nebulous substance. For example, there was no greater clarity than when we would look through fog at lights with an aura. Instead, his consciousness did not exactly cease when he was asleep—he then saw the spiritual things.

As man progressed, the physical world gained more and more its contours, but in exchange for this the human being lost his clairvoyance. Then the difference became more and more pronounced: in the spiritual world above, it became increasingly darker and in the physical world below increasingly brighter. All myths and sagas originated during the time when the human being still perceived the astral world up there. When he ascended into the spiritual world, he learnt to know Wotan, Baldur, Thor and Loki and beings, who had not yet descended onto the physical plane. This could be experienced in former times, and all myths are memories of living realities.

All mythologies are such memories. These spiritual realities have simply disappeared from human beings. In the past, when man dived into his physical body in the morning, he got the feeling: “You are an individual, a single one.” But when he dived back into the spiritual world at night he felt: “You are not at all an individual, you are just a link in a great whole, you belong to a great community.”

Tacitus² still told that the ancient peoples, the Herules and the Cheruscans, felt themselves to be more like a tribe than as individual human beings. From an individual’s sense of belonging to a tribe—that one would count oneself as belonging to a tribal community—certain customs such as the blood feuds have originated. Everything that belonged to the whole tribal group-soul was one body. All happens gradually in evolution. Only gradually did individual consciousness evolve out of this absolute tribal group consciousness.

Also, in the descriptions from the time period of the Patriarchs, we find traces of the transition from the group-soul to an individual soul. In the time prior to Noah, memory was quite different: it reached back to what the father, the grandfather, the great-grandfather had experienced. The boundary of birth was not a boundary. In the same blood the same memory flowed on into generations far removed. Today authorities are interested in knowing an individual’s name. In the time when the human being still had a memory of what his father and grandfather had done, this was called by a common name. Then what was connected by the same blood and the same memory was given the same name. This was called “Adam” or “Noah”. Names like Adam or Noah do not describe the life between birth and death of an individual, but the stream of memories as far as it reached. The old names cover whole human communities that were alive in those times.

How would it be if we would compare certain beings: the human-like apes with the human being. The immense difference is that the apes have a group-soul and the human being an individual soul, or at least the aptitude to develop one. The ape group-soul exists in a very special situation (see drawing). Imagine the Earth (refers to sketch) as the horizontal line. Above this, the group-souls of the animals are floating in the astral world like in a cloud that extends over our physical world. Let us now focus on the lion group-ego and the ape group-ego. Each lion is a separate limb into which the group-soul pours part of its substance. When a lion dies, its physical part drops away from the group-soul, like a fingernail from a human being. Then the group-soul retracts what it had sent into the lion and gives it to a different lion, which is newly born. The group-soul stays above. It sort of stretches out tentacles that are hardening in the physical world, then drop off and are being replaced again.

Therefore, the animal group-soul does not know birth and death. The individual animal is something that “falls off” and “grows on”—the group-soul remains untouched by life and death. For the lions it applies entirely, that each time a lion dies, all that has been sent from the group-soul returns to it again.

However, this is not so with the apes. There are individual animals that tear off a piece of the group-soul, which then cannot return to it. When the ape dies the essential part returns, but another part of it excises itself from the group-soul. What the group-soul stretches out, the ape makes it too tight, and when the ape dies part of the group-soul is excised, so that, in a sense, a part of it breaks out, rips away from the soul and does not return to it. In this way excisions from the group-soul arise. In all ape species excisions from the group-soul occur.

We find something similar in certain amphibians, in certain bird species, and especially pronounced in the kangaroo. Through these excisions something is kept back from the group-soul. What remains in this way from the warm-blooded animals will become an elemental being, a nature spirit—the salamander. These elemental beings, these nature spirits are, so to speak, waste, waste products of the higher worlds, that will be put into service by higher beings. They would, if left to their own devices, create interferences in the cosmos. Instead, the higher wisdom uses the sylphs to send the bees to the flowers. Thus, the large forces of elemental beings are placed under higher, wise leadership and the harm that they could cause is transformed into something useful.

This is how it is in the realms that lie below the human being. Now, it could also happen that a human being excises himself off from his group-soul, and as an individual does not find a possibility to develop himself further. Because, whilst being a “limb” of his group-soul, he was guided and led by higher beings, but now he is left to his own guidance. If the human being does not acquire appropriate spiritual knowledge, then he is in danger to excise himself. This is the question that arises.

What is it now, that prevents human beings from excision, from wandering around without direction and aim, whilst earlier the spiritual group-soul has provided directions? We have to become clear that man more and more individualises himself and that in the future he has to voluntarily seek to unite with other humans. In the past, a link existed based on blood relations, tribes and races. But this type of “union” comes more and more to an end. Everything in a human being leads more and more to him becoming an individual being. The only avenue possible is a reversal. Imagine there are a number of people on Earth who say to themselves, “We are going our own way. We want to find inside of us the direction and the goal of the path ourselves. We are all on the way to becoming more and more individualised human beings.” There is a danger of fragmentation. Already people are no longer able to endure spiritual unions. Today we are going as far as everyone having their own religion and presenting their own opinion as the highest ideal. But when human beings internalise ideals, then this leads to agreement, to a common opinion. For example, we recognise internally that 3 x 3 = 9, or that the sum of the three angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. This is an inner knowledge. One doesn’t need to cast a vote about such inner knowledge. No misunderstandings will arise about such inner recognitions, they lead to agreement. All spiritual truths are of this kind. What is taught by the Science of the Spirit, the human being finds through his inner forces. These lead him to an absolute unity, to peace and harmony. There are no two different opinions about a truth without one of them being wrong. The ideal is maximum possible internalisation—it leads to unity, to peace.

First there existed a human group-soul. Then mankind was released from this group-soul in the past. But in the future of evolution people must set themselves a sure goal to strive towards. When they unite themselves in a higher wisdom, then from the higher worlds a group-soul will descend again—when free communities arise out of the bound natural communities. What the leaders of the Science of the Spirit movement hope is that we will find in it a community where the hearts stream towards wisdom, as the plants stream towards sunlight. Where a common truth binds together the different egos, there we create an opportunity for a higher group-soul to descend. By turning our hearts together towards a higher wisdom, we embed the group-soul. We are building, so to speak, the bed, the environment, in which the group-soul is able to incarnate. Humans will enrich life on Earth by developing something that allows spiritual beings to descend from the higher worlds. This is the aim of the Science of the Spirit movement.

This was now once presented in a grand, magnificent form to mankind to show that the human being without such living spiritual ideal would transition into a different situation. This is a “symbol” that can illustrate to man with overwhelming power how humanity can find the way through a spiritual union, to provide a site to incarnate for the common spirit. This symbol is put in front of us in the Whitsun community in which a number of people, glowing from a common feeling of fervent love and devotion, had assembled for common action. There were a number of people whose souls were still reverberating after the shattering event, so that in all of them the same was alive. In the convergence of this one same feeling they provided that in which a higher, a common soul could incarnate. This is expressed by the words that say the Holy Spirit—the group-soul—descended and separated itself into fiery tongues. This is the great symbol for the humanity of the future. If the human being would not have found this connection, then man would transition into an elemental being. Now humanity must search for a site for the Beings from the higher worlds that bend downwards. With the Easter festival man was given the power to absorb into themselves such mighty imaginations and to strive towards oneness of the spirit. The Whitsun Festival is the fruit of the unfolding of this power.

Through the souls’ striving together towards the common wisdom, a lively relationship must be established forever with the forces and beings of the higher worlds, and with something that currently has as little meaning for humanity as the Whitsun Festival. Through the Science of the Spirit, it will once again become meaningful to man. Once people understand the significance of the descent of the Holy Spirit for them in the future, then the Whitsun Festival will come to life again. It will then not only be a memory of that event in Jerusalem, but the everlasting Whitsun Festival of the united soul endeavour will manifest for humanity. It will become a symbol for the great future Whitsun community when mankind will unite in a common truth to allow higher beings the possibility to incarnate. It will depend on human beings themselves, how valuable this will make the Earth for the future and how effective such ideals can be for mankind. Once humanity will strive towards wisdom in this right way, then higher spirits will join mankind.

• 1. compare Rudolf Steiner - Cosmic Working in Earth and Man, Beekeeping. GA 351
• 2. Cornelius Tacitus, 55 to about 120 AD, Roman historian, in his work Germania