The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The ancient Hebrew consciousness of God. The secret of the development of a people, as image of cosmic development. Principal and subsidiary currents in the preparation for the Christ-event

WE have shown that the Hebrew people had received from Abraham a physical organ, enabling them to acquire, through sense knowledge, not merely an inkling, but, as far as was possible, a real knowledge of divine spiritual things. Knowledge of the divinely spiritual there is and has been at all times and in all places. But this, what might be called eternal knowledge of the divine, was reached through initiation into the Mysteries, or at least on the path to initiation.

A distinction must be made between that knowledge of the spiritual worlds acquired by special training or initiation, and that which is normal for any age, and arises as its special mission for human evolution.

In this way the astral clairvoyance prevalent throughout the Atlantean period was normal for that age, but for the age in which the Hebrews flourished an external, exoteric knowledge of the spiritual world was normal, and was gained with the aid of a special physical organ. As already indicated, the people of Abraham arrived at this knowledge in such a way that their innermost being seemed to be dissolved within divine existence. Inner knowledge, or the comprehension of divinity in man's innermost being, became possible through this special physical organ.

But this comprehension of the divine did not make it immediately possible for men to say: ‘I descend into my own inner being, I strive to comprehend as deeply as I can my own inner nature; there I find the drop of divine spiritual existence giving me an understanding of what permeates the external world.’ This first became spiritually possible through the entrance of Christ into human evolution. The possibility of experiencing the divine was first given to the Hebrew people through their Folk-spirit, in which each felt himself not as a single individual but as a member of the whole people; he then felt he belonged through his blood to the whole line of generations, he felt the Divine or Jehovah-consciousness lived in his Folk-consciousness.

In the terms of Occult Science it would be inaccurate to describe the God Jehovah by saying, ‘He is the God of Abraham;’ but we must say, ‘He is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and ofJacob—the Being Who passes from generation to generation, and Who reveals Himself through individual men in the consciousness of the race.’ The Christian perception shows a great advance over this. What the ancient Hebrew perception attained only through meditating on the Folk-spirit, by sinking within the Spirit flowing through the generations, Chistian recognizes in each single individual. I Abraham might have said; ‘In that I am chosen to be the founder of a people whose descendants will spread over the earth, a God will live in the blood flowing through the generations Whom we hold to be the most supreme, and Who reveals Himself to us in the consciousness of our people.’ This was the consciousness normal for that time.

This special form of knowledge was different from the higher knowledge of the Spirit that had been preserved in the Mysteries throughout all ages. In Atlantis, astral-etheric clairvoyance could perceive the divine-spiritual background of existence. By developing their inner life men could there attain knowledge through the Mysteries or Oracles. Even during the period when the Hebrew type of consciousness was normal, men who trained in certain sanctuaries could rise to the perception of the divine. But this was done when outside the body, not within it, as was the way of the people of Abraham. A man could rise to the perception of the eternal divine Spirit by enhancing the eternal in himself. Thus it is easily realized that one thing was necessary to Abraham. He had learnt, in a way peculiar to himself, and by means of a physical organ, to know the divinely spiritual, and in this way he had learnt to recognize the God Who guides the universe. If he were to enter with vivid comprehension into the whole course of evolution, it was of the greatest importance that he should recognize in the God Who revealed Himself in the Folk-consciousness of the people, the same God, Who had been recognized in the Mysteries of all ages as the Creative Deity. Abraham had to be quite certain of the identity of his God with the God of the Mysteries. Certainty of this was brought home to him through a very special revelation.

To understand this certainty one fact of human evolution must be kept in mind. In my book, Occult Science, reference is made to the ancient Atlantean Initiates, the ‘Priests of the Oracles’—what they were called is of little consequence—and I said there that the Sun-Initiate was the head of all the Atlantean Oracles, and must be distinguished from the initiates of the lesser Oracles, those of Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, etc. He was the great leader of those people who carried culture from the West to the East, from Atlantis to Central Asia, and founded post-Atlantean civilizations. This great Initiate, for such he was, withdrew into the secret sanctuaries of Central Asia. It was he who made it possible for those mighty sages, the Holy Rishis, to become the teachers of their race and it was this great and mysterious Initiate who imparted initiation to Zarathustra. The initiation given to Zarathustra differed, however, from that imparted to the Rishis, for their missions were different. The initiation given to the Rishis enabled them, after the further development of their inner being, to declare as from themselves, the mighty secrets of existence. They became the great guides and leaders of the pre-Vedic Indian culture. Though developed by artificial means, the initiation of the Rishis was yet to them something which strongly resembled the old Atlantean clairvoyance. Each of the seven Rishis received his training separately, each had his own appointed region, and each his separate mission, just as each Oracle had its own sphere of influence. Yet, when any one of the seven gave forth knowledge of the primal wisdom of the world, he spoke with the voice of the whole collegium. The great Sun-initiate, who brought the ancient Atlantean wisdom from the West to the East, bestowed it upon the Rishis in a special manner so as to enable them to develop post-Atlantean civilization. He gave the ancient Atlantean wisdom to Zarathustra in a different form, so that he could speak as I have already indicated.

The Rishis declared ‘To reach divinity men must regard everything around them, all that is presented to their senses, as Maya or illusion; they must turn away from the outer world and direct their glance inwards then a quite different world will appear from that which is before them.’

Thus the ancient Indian Rishis taught that by turning away from the deceptive world of illusion and developing their inner life, men could rise to divine spiritual spheres. Zarathustra taught otherwise. Instead of turning away from external manifestations and regarding them as Maya he said: ‘This Maya or illusion is the revelation, the true garment, of Divine Existence; our duty is not to turn from it but to investigate it and to see in the physical light of the Sun an external garment within which Ahura Mazdao lives and moves.’

Thus in a certain sense the standpoint of Zarathustra was the opposite to that of the Rishis. The most significant fact of post-Indian culture was that what man gained through his spiritual and mental activities had to be impressed upon the outer world. It has already been shown how Zarathustra passed on his best possessions to Moses and Hermes. In order that the wisdom of Moses might be fruitful and bear seed in the right way, this seed had to be implanted in the race that had Abraham for its progenitor. Abraham was the first who acquired the organ through which the Jehovah consciousness could be evolved, but he had to realize that the God who spoke in him through his physical powers of comprehension, spoke with the same voice as the eternal all-pervading God of the Mysteries; only that He revealed Himself to Abraham in a more restricted manner, that is, in a way Abraham was able to understand.

For such a mighty Being as the great Atlantean Sun-initiate it is not immediately possible to speak in comprehensible words to those living in some age who have a special mission. A Being so exalted—one who in his own individuality leads an eternal existence, and of whom it has been rightly said (indicating his eternal nature)—that he was without name or age, without father or mother—such a great guide of human existence could only reveal himself; to those whom he sought, by assuming a form that could bring him in contact with them. Therefore in order to give Abraham the appropriate illumination, the individual who had been the teacher of the Rishis and of Zarathustra, assumed a form in which he was clothed in the etheric body of a forefather of Abraham—this was the etheric sheath of Shem, the son of Noah—a forefather of Abraham. In the same way as the etheric garment of Zarathustra had been preserved for Moses, this etheric body of Shem had persisted, and was used by the great Sun-initiate so that he might make himself known to Abraham. The meeting of Abraham with the great Initiate of the Sun-Mysteries is described in the Old Testament. It is the meeting of Abraham with the King, the Priest of the Most High God, Melchisedek or Malekzadik. This meeting of Abraham with the great Sun-initiate is of the greatest, the most universal importance. Lest his presence might overwhelm Abraham this great Being only showed himself in the etheric body of Shem, the ancestor of the Semitic race. Most significantly something is here hinted at in the Bible which is, unfortunately, seldom understood; it refers to whence that something came which Melchisedek was in a position to impart to Abraham.

What could Melchisedek give to Abraham? He could impart to him the secret of the Sun-existence which sprang from the same source as the revelations prophetically foretold, in the first place, by Zarathustra. Naturally, these could only be comprehended by Abraham in his own way. Let us picture the facts told by Zarathustra to his chosen pupils. He spoke to them of Ahura Mazdao who dwelt spiritually behind the sunlight, and said: ‘Behold, behind the sun is something not yet united with the earth, but which will one day stream forth into earthly evolution and descend to earth.’ We must realize that Zarathustra could here only be prophesying of the Sun Spirit, the Christ, of Whom he said, ‘He will come in a human body.’ If we accept this, we must also accept the fact that still deeper revelations of the Sun Mysteries had to be given to those whose mission it was to prepare for the incarnation of Christ on earth. This took place when Zarathustra's own instructor came in contact with Abraham, and the outpouring of power that came from him emanated from the same source as that which came from Christ. This is indicated symbolically in the Bible, where it says: ‘When Abraham met Melchisedek, the King of Salem—this priest of the most high God brought to him bread and the juice of the grape.’ Bread and the juice of the grape were dispensed on another occasion. In the same way as bread and wine were to become the expression of the Mystery of Christ in the institution of the Last Supper for those who believed in Him, this mystery was expressed here also. The similarity of the two sacrificial acts is described with such clearness that it shows that Melchisedek drew from the same source as the Christ.

Thus an indirect outpouring of that which was destined to come to earth at a later period took place through Melchisedek. This influence was to have direct results on Abraham, the great preparer of what took place later. The result of Abraham's meeting with Melchisedek was that he now had some understanding that the outpouring of power he felt stirring within him and which he referred to as Jehovah—the highest to which his thought could rise—had the same origin as the consciousness of the Initiates—the highest wisdom attainable by man—and that it emanated from the mighty God Who fills all worlds with life and movement. This was the new consciousness that dawned in Abraham. He now knew that in the Hebrew blood, passing down from generation to generation, there actually flowed something that could only rightly be compared with what clairvoyant vision beheld when it reached forth to the mystery of existence, and understood the language of the cosmos.

I have already said that in the Mysteries the secrets of the cosmos were expressed in a language of the stars, that the teachers there made use of words and images derived from the constellations. In the movements of the stars, in their relative positions one to another, they saw pictures by means of which they sought to express man's spiritual experiences when he raised himself to what was divinely spiritual.

What did the Mystery wisdom read in the starry script? It read there the secrets of the Godhead, of Him Who lives and weaves in and through the world. The disposition of the stars was a visible expression of this Godhead. Raising his eyes to the firmament man would say, ‘There God reveals Himself; and the way in which He makes Himself known is indicated in the order and harmony of the stars.’ Thus according to this conception, the God of the universe revealed Himself through the stars. If this God was to manifest in a special way in the mission of the Hebrew people, He must do so in accordance with the plan set forth in the starry courses of the heavens. This means that in the blood of the generations, which was the external instrument for the manifestation of Jehovah, a similar ordering should obtain as that expressed in the ordering of the stars. In the line of descent from Abraham, there had to be something which in the course of generations would be a reflection of the starry script. Accordingly, it was promised to Abraham, ‘Thy descendants shall be ordered as the stars in Heaven,’ this is the true rendering of the statement usually given as, ‘Thy descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in Heaven,’ which only refers to the number of the descendants. The statement is not concerned with the numbers but indicates how the same order should rule in Abraham's descendants as was found in the grouping of the stars—the language of the gods.

People looked up to the Zodiac; and in the position of the planets to the Zodiac, constellations were expressed in which they found a language expressing the deeds of the gods. The close connection existing in the Zodiac and in the relation of the planets to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, had to be expressed in the descendants of Abraham. Thus, in the twelve sons of Jacob, and in the twelve tribes of the Hebrew people, we have the reflection of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. As the language of the gods finds expression above in the twelve starry signs, so Jehovah is manifested in the blood flowing through the generations of the twelve tribes that descended from the twelve sons of Jacob. What was ordered within the constellations of the Zodiac we designate by the names of the planets as Venus, Mercury, Moon, Sun, etc., and that which throughout the ages played a special part in different periods of the life of the Hebrew people we have compared with the course of the planets through the Zodiac. For instance, we showed how David, the kingly singer, has to be compared with Hermes or Mercury; and the period of the Babylonian captivity, that is, the form the manifestation of Jehovah assumed through the entrance of a new impulse six hundred years before our era, with the planet Venus.

It had to be indicated to Abraham, for instance, that the position in the race held by such a personality as David, was on parallel lines with that of Mercury in the Zodiac. The tribe of Judah corresponding to the constellation Leo, the entrance of David into that tribe in the course of Jewish history, corresponded in the cosmos to the occultation of Leo by Mercury.

In every detail—in the descent, in the conferring of the kingly or priestly dignities, in the struggles and victories of one or other of the tribes, in the whole history of the Hebrew people we can see what corresponds to the occultation of the several constellations in outer space. This lies in the significant words: ‘Thy descendants shall be ordered in accordance with the harmony of the stars in Heaven!’ We must not only see in documents that are founded on occultism the trivialities usually seen there, but we must recognize their profound depth.

When studied in this way we see that order did in fact exist in the sequence of the generations as related in the Gospel of Matthew; and that the Evangelist shows us the unique composition of the blood of that body which the individuality of Zarathustra assumed in order that he might be the means by which the manifestation of Christ on earth could be brought to pass.

Let us therefore ask: What was attained in the course of the forty-two generations from Abraham to Joseph? What was attained was, that in the last of the generations a blending of the blood in accordance with the laws of the stars—as taught in the Holy Mysteries—had been accomplished. In this blending of the blood necessary to the Zarathustra individuality for the accomplishment of his great work, there was an inner order and harmony that corresponded to one of the most beautiful and significant arrangements of the stellar system. The blending of blood, prepared throughout many generations for the reincarnating Zarathustra, was therefore a reflection of the whole cosmos.

All this is to be found in that great original Scripture, which, if I may venture to say so, lies before us in weakened form in the Gospel of Matthew. It is based on the profound mystery of the development of a people as the reflection of a cosmic development. This was felt by those who first knew something of the mighty Mystery of Christ. To them it already seemed that in the blood of the Jesus of Nazareth of Whom this Gospel tells, they could perceive a reflection of the Spirit that rules the whole cosmos. They gave expression to this Mystery in the words: In the blood which is to be the abode of the Ego of Jesus of Nazareth lives the Spirit of the whole cosmos. Therefore, if this physical body is to be born, it must be an image of the Spirit of the whole cosmos, the Spirit ruling the whole world.

This was the original form of expression. It declared the power inherent in the blended blood of Zarathustra—of Jesus of Nazareth—to be the power of the Spirit of our whole universe—even that Spirit, who, after the separation of the sun from the earth, brooded over and permeated the development of that which had separated itself out in the course of worldly evolution.

From the lectures given in Munich, referred to above, it was shown that the words of Genesis, ‘B'raschit bara Elohim eth haschamajim v'eth h'areths,’ must not be translated lightly according to modern methods which have lost touch with the ancient meaning. If their true meaning is sought, it must be given as follows: ‘In everything that came over from the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, the thought of the Elohim brooded in cosmic activity; in all that manifested outwardly, as in all that stirred inwardly. Darkness reigned over all this. But permeating it and brooding over it, filling it with warmth, as a hen broods over its eggs, was the Creative Spirit of the Elohim, Ruach.’

The Spirit that brooded there was the same, in every respect, as the Spirit that created the harmonious order which finds expression in the starry constellations. The original Initiates of the Christian Mysteries recognized in the blending of the blood of Jesus of Nazareth an image of the work accomplished by the Ruach-Elohim throughout the universe. Therefore they said of the blood which was thus prepared for this Great Event that it was ‘created by the Spirit of the Universe,’ the Spirit who is described in the opening chapter of Genesis as ‘Ruach’ in that most important passage beginning—‘B'raschit bara Elohim ...’

This holy meaning, a meaning far beyond the usual trivial rendering, lies at the root of what is called ‘the Conception out of the Holy Spirit of the Universe.’ It lies at the root of the saying, ‘She who gave birth to this Being was filled with the power of the Spirit of the Universe!’ We need but sense the full greatness of such Mystery to know that the fact presents something infinitely higher than the exoteric idea of the ‘immaculate conception.’

References to two things in the Bible will suffice to deflect the mind from the usual trivial explanation of the immaculate conception and lead it to the recognition of the true point of view. One is, why should the writer of the Gospel of Matthew give the whole line of descent from Abraham to Joseph if he wished in any way to show that the birth of Jesus of Nazareth was unconcerned with the sequence of the generations? He is very careful to tell how the blood of Abraham passed down to Joseph. What sense would there be in saying that this blood had no connection with the blood of Jesus of Nazareth? The other fact that must be taken into consideration is that ‘Ruach-Elohim,’ who, in the Bible, is called the ‘Holy Spirit’ or ‘Holy Ghost’ is of the feminine gender in the Hebrew language.

This point we will consider later. For the moment let it only awaken within us a feeling for the grandeur of the idea which lies at the very root of this Mystery.

The Event taking place at the beginning of our era, and only known to the wise men who were initiated into the secrets of the Universe, found expression first in the Aramaic language, in an ancient document upon which the Gospel of Matthew was based. It can be proved, not only by occult means, but by philological investigation, that this document, which is the foundation of the Gospel of Matthew, existed as early as the year 71 A.D. The true origin of this Gospel is given in my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact. Here, however, as we are concerned with Occult Science not Philology, reference need only be made to one thing in the literature of the Talmud, which is fully confirmed by Jewish erudition. In this literature it is stated that Rabbi Gamaliel II. was involved in a lawsuit with his sister about a legacy from his father, who died fighting against the Romans in the year 70 A.D. We are told that the Rabbi Gamaliel II. appeared before a judge who was a Jewish Christian. Such individuals existed in the courts ofjustice established for the Jews by the Romans. In this case a strange thing happened. Rabbi Gamaliel contested with his sister his father's inheritance; he declared before the judge, who knew something of Christianity, that according to Jewish law, the son only and not the daughter could inherit, and therefore he was the sole inheritor. The judge, stating that in the circle in which he practised the Thora was set aside, said that since Gamaliel sought justice and judgment from him he could not give it merely according to Jewish law, but according to the law set up in its stead. The Rabbi's only way now was to bribe the judge. He did so, and the following day the judge made a citation that was in reality a plagiarism from the original Aramaic script of the Matthew Gospel. He said, ‘Christ did not come into the world to break the law of Moses, but to fulfil it.’ He thought to stifle the pangs of conscience for deflecting the law in Gamaliel's favour by saying that he judged nevertheless according to the Christian doctrine.

From this we know that in the year 71 there existed a Christian document containing words found to-day in the Gospel of Matthew. This is, therefore, an external proof of the existence of the Aramaic document, or part of it, from which the Gospel is derived.

The results of occult investigation have still to be given, but the above has been mentioned to show that when seeking the aid of external Science, it is not wise to consider every other kind of literary evidence and yet ignore the Talmud literature, as is often done—for the latter is of great importance for what one can know of these things exoterically. Thus there is good external justification for placing the Gospel of Matthew comparatively early, and regarding its compilers as men not far removed in time from the events of Palestine. It is even externally certain that it would have been impossible at that time to deny that Jesus Christ had lived, and to say: He of whom we speak, did not live at the beginning of our era. Half-a-century had not yet elapsed, so that men were still able to speak to eye-witnesses who would not state what could not be proved. Exoterically these things are of importance, and we only mention them in confirmation of the esoteric view.

We have seen how, through cosmic mysteries, a body had been prepared in the course of human evolution, as it were, from the filtrated blood of the Hebrew people and how into this body, in which the great initiate Zarathustra incarnated, the order of the Universe itself had entered. It is of this Zarathustra-individuality and none other that Matthew speaks.

It must not be imagined that what we have described out of the profoundest Mysteries of earthly evolution was perceived as clearly by everyone. Even to contemporaries this was deeply veiled, and was only comprehended by a few Initiates. Hence the deep silence is comprehensible concerning all that could then be disclosed about the greatest event in human evolution. If the historians of to-day turn to their records and find these records silent, it should not occasion surprise; such silence is entirely natural.

Having explained the greatest event of our evolution from the side of Zarathustra, it is well that we should now consider another stream of influence preparatory to this great Event. Very many things took place immediately before and immediately after the Christ Event in human evolution. Preparation had been made for it a long time in advance. Just as it was prepared for externally in the sending forth of Moses and Hermes by Zarathustra, and by the work of Meichisedek on the outer sheath of Jesus of Nazareth in the Sun-Mysteries, it was prepared for in another way through what might be called a ‘neighbouring stream’ to the main great current. This ‘neighbouring stream’ was slowly prepared in centres of which external history informs us when dealing with those people described by Philo as the Therapeutze. The Therapeuta were members of a secret sect who sought the purification of their souls by inward paths, trying to drive out what had been debased in them through external intercourse and external knowledge, and to raise themselves to pure spiritual spheres. An offshoot of this sect, among whom this neighbouring stream of culture was carried still further, were the Essaers or Essenes. All the people who were united in the sects of the Therapeutae and Essenes were under a certain common spiritual guidance. They are briefly described in my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact. If you would know something of this spiritual guidance exoterically, you need only recall the lectures given last year on the Gospel of St. Luke. The Mystery of Gautama Buddha, as given exoterically in Oriental literature, was there dealt with, and we explained that he who seeks to become a ‘Buddha’ must in the course of evolution first become a ‘Bodhisattva.’ We explained further that the individual known to history as the ‘Buddha’ had previously been a Bodhisattva. He was a Bodhisattva until the twenty-ninth year of his physical existence, during which time he lived as the son of King Sudhodana. It was only in his twenty-ninth year, through inner soul-development, that he evolved from a Bodhisattva to a Buddha. There is a long sequence of Bodhisattvas in human evolution, and he who attained Buddhahood six hundred years before our era is one of these Bodhisattvas who guided human evolution. An individual who rises from the dignity of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha does not again incarnate in a physical body on earth.

It was explained in the course of the lectures referred to above how Buddha was manifest at the birth of the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke in that he united himself with the etheric body of him who is known as the Nathan Jesus; and it was shown that this is a different Jesus from the one spoken of in the first part of the Gospel of Matthew.

The attainment of Buddha-hood by the son of King Sudhodana must be regarded as the close of an ancient evolution. It was in fact the same stream of evolution as is connected with the Holy Rishis of India. As soon as a Bodhisattva attains Buddha-hood a successor always appears in his place. This is mentioned in an ancient Indian legend where it tells that the Bodhisattva, before he came to earth as the son of King Sudhodana when he was to attain the dignity of Buddha-hood, and while still in spiritual realms, passed on his Bodhisattva crown to his successor.

Ever since that time there has been a successor to the Bodhisattva who then attained Buddha-hood; and the new Bodhisattva, who continued working as such, had a special task for human evolution. The task appointed to him was to guide spiritually the movement then making itself felt among the circles of the Therapeutac and the Essenes. There his influence worked. In the follower of Gautama Buddha we have to recognize the spiritual guide of the Essenes. During the reign of King Alexander Jannai (circa 125-77 B.C.), this Bodhisattva sent a particular individual to lead the Essenes; he was, therefore, the leader of the Essenes about a century before Christ. He is well known to occultism and to the external literature of the Talmud. Thus, a century before our era, before the appearance of Christ on earth, there was an individuality, who has nothing to do with the Jesus of the Luke-Gospel and nothing to do with the Jesus of the Matthew-Gospel, who was a guide and leader in the Essene Community. He is known under the name of Jesus, the son of Pandira, Jeschua ben Pandira. Jewish literature has fabricated many things regarding this individual, and these fables have recently been revived. He was a great and noble personality, and must not be confused, as is done by some students of the Talmud, with Jesus of Nazareth, the subject of these lectures. We recognize this Essene forerunner of Christianity in Jesus, son of Pandira, and we know that he was stoned to death by those who, at that time, saw blasphemy in the teachings of the Essenes. After being accused of blasphemy and heresy he was stoned and hanged on a tree, so that this disgrace might be added to the punishment already inflicted. This is an occult fact, and is also to be found in the literature of the Talmud.

In this Jeschua ben Pandira we have to recognize a personality under the protection of the Bodhisattva who succeeded the Bodhisattva, son of Sudhodana, who later became Buddha. The matter is absolutely clear; we have to recognize here a kind of preparation, a neighbouring stream to the main stream of Christianity, springing from the successor of that Buddha. He is the present Bodhisattva who will one day become the Maitreya Buddha, and who sent his messenger among the Essenes to bring that to pass which will be described in the succeeding lectures.

Thus we have to seek the name ‘Jesus’ in the individual of Whom the Gospels of Matthew and Luke speak; but we have also to seek it a hundred years before our era in the circle of the Essenes, in that noble personality regarding whom all that the Talmud literature relates is calumny; who was accused of blasphemy and heresy, stoned, and hanged upon a tree.

Jesus ben Pandira and Initiation among the Essenes. The secret of numbers. Reflection of cosmic conditions in human evolution. The secret of the blood in the line of descent, and the secret of cosmic space

Ww have to realize that Jesus ben Pandira was in no way related to the personality or individuality of either the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew or of the Gospel of Luke, or any other Gospel; he lived a hundred years before the Christ Event, and was stoned and hanged upon a tree. It is most important that he should not be confused with the Jesus of the Gospels.

Of Jesus ben Pandira it need only be stated that neither occult knowledge nor any clairvoyant faculties are necessary to prove his existence, for information in regard to this can be had from the Hebrew Talmud. Confusion with the actual Jesus has occurred at various times, even as early as the second century of the Christian era. Having stated emphatically that Jesus ben Pandira is not to be identified with the Jesus of the Evangelists, it is nevertheless necessary to establish the real historical connection of these two personalities. This is only possible by means of occult investigation; the connection between them only emerges after a study of the evolution of mankind and those who guide it.

Gazing upwards to those beings who lead human development, we come at last to a group of high individualities who, according to Eastern terminology, are called Bodhisattvas—for it is in the East where knowledge of them has been established. There are many Bodhisattvas; they are the great teachers of mankind. From the spiritual worlds they infuse into humanity through the Mystery schools what according to the degree of human ripeness is appropriate to each epoch. Bodhisattvas succeed one another throughout the ages. Two of them are of special interest to present humanity, one, who as son of King Sudhodana became Buddha; and the other, his successor in this dignity, who is still a Bodhisattva. Both Oriental wisdom and clairvoyant investigation agree that the latter's mission will extend over the next two thousand five hundred years, when this Bodhisattva will rise to the higher rank of Buddha as did his predecessor. This, the present Bodhisattva will then be exalted to the dignity of Maitreya Buddha. In the long line of Bodhisattvas we have to recognize the great guiding teachers of evolution, but they should not be confused with the source of their teaching, the source from which they themselves draw what they bestow upon humanity. Rather we have to picture a collegium of Bodhisattvas, and the centre of this collegium is the living source whence this teaching is derived. This living source is none other than He Whom we call the Christ, from Whom all Bodhisattvas receive what in due course they hand on to humanity. A Bodhisattva devotes himself principally to teaching, but upon attaining Buddha-hood he ceases to descend into incarnation, and his mission becomes different. In accordance with all Eastern philosophy it can be said that Gautama Buddha, who, in his last incarnation, was the son of King Sudhodana, has since then only experienced incorporation as far as the etheric body. In the course of lectures on the Gospel of Luke we explained what the next task of this Buddha was.

When the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke was born—the Nathan Jesus of whom Luke tells, and who is not to be confused with the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew—the Being of the Buddha, who was then incorporated as far as the etheric body, entered into the astral body of the Nathan Jesus. It is therefore possible to say that having incarnated as Gautama Buddha, this Being did not come again as a teacher, but was henceforth present as a living force. He had become an actual force working from the spiritual world into our physical world.

To teach is one thing; to work as a living force with the forces of growth is something quite different. A Bodhisattva is a teacher up to the moment he attains Buddha-hood, from then onwards he becomes a vital force, filling with constructive power everything with which he is concerned. In this way the Buddha entered the organism of the Nathan Jesus as described by Luke. From the sixth century B.C. it is to the Buddha's successor, the coming Maitreya Buddha, that humanity must look for its teacher. His chosen instrument was the circle of the Therapeutæ and Essenes, and he poured down his inspiration especially through his disciple, Jesus, the son of Pandira, the purest, the most noted, the most exalted of them all. Thus we have to realize that the content of this Bodhisattva-teaching streamed forth into humanity through the Essenes.

The actual sect of the Essenes, as regards its profounder teaching, disappeared comparatively soon after the Christ Event, as external history testifies. Hence it need not sound improbable when I say that they were employed as a means for bringing down from the spheres of the Bodhisattvas what was necessary to prepare humanity to grasp the mighty event of the coming of Christ. The most important teaching man had received to aid him in the understanding of the Christ Event had its source in these communities. Jesus ben Pandira was chosen to receive inspiration from that Bodhisattva who was destined to become the Maitreya Buddha, and whose influence was active among the Essenes; he was inspired to impart a teaching that was to make comprehensible the Mystery of Palestine—the Mystery of Christ. External history knows little of the Essenes, more exact information regarding them is only possible with the aid of occult investigation; hence in a society like this I can speak without hesitation of secrets known to the Essenes and Therapeutæ that are needful to an understanding of the Gospel of Matthew.

These communities flourished a hundred years before the Christ Event, and taught how preparation was to be made for it. Their most important feature was the manner of their initiation. It was specially adapted to evoke an understanding, through clairvoyant perception, of the significance of Hebraism and Abrahamism as connected with the Christ Event. This was a mystery peculiar to these communities. The very purpose of their initiation was to impart clairvoyant perception in this connection. A follower of the Essenes had in the first place to attain full appreciation of the significance of what had come to pass in the Hebrew race through Abraham. Through his own individual vision, an Essene had to see in Abraham a true forefather of the race, one in whom a seed had been implanted which then, by means of the blood, percolated from generation to generation, as explained in the last lecture.

To understand how something of such great importance in human evolution could take place through a personality like Abraham, we must keep in mind a most important saying. This saying shows that whenever a man is destined to be a special instrument for human evolution he must be in direct contact with some divine spiritual being.

Those who attended the performance of the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, given at Munich, and those who have read it, know that one of the most important dramatic manifestations occurs where the hierophant informs Maria that her mission will only be possible after such an influx from a higher being has taken place. This was actually accomplished in her. What then took place may be called a separation of the higher from the lower principles, which made it possible for the latter to be possessed by a subordinate spirit. All this is to be found in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, and if allowed to act on the soul, and not accepted lightly, it directs our attention to mighty secrets of human evolution.

Abraham having been selected for his great mission, the Spirit that had been recognized in early Atlantis as the Spirit who moved and lived in all the surrounding world had to enter into his inner organism. This happened for the first time in the case of Abraham, and therefore a change in man's spiritual perception then became possible for the first time. A divine Being implanted as it were a germ in Abraham's organism that was to enter all the other organisms descending from him in the direct line.

An Essene of that time would have said: The seed which actually formed the Hebrew people so as to fit them to be the vehicle for the mission of Christ, was first implanted in them by the mysterious Being only to be discovered when they looked back through the generations to Abraham. This Being worked as a kind of Folk-spirit from out the inner organism of Abraham in the blood of the Hebrew people. To reach some understanding of the crowning mystery of human evolution, it is necessary to rise to the Spirit who implanted this seed, and seek him where he was before he had entered into Abraham's organization. In order to rise to this Spirit who had organized and inspired the Hebrew people, to know him in his purity, the Essenes felt it to be necessary to pass through a certain training; they felt they must purify themselves from all that had come to human souls from the physical world since the time of Abraham. And further, an Essene would declare: The spiritual being which man bears within him, and all the other spiritual beings concerned with his development, are only to be seen in their purity in the spiritual world. As found in man, they have become defiled by the forces of the physical world.

From the point of view of the Essenes (which in a certain sphere of knowledge is absolutely correct), every single person then living had impurities in his soul from early times which disturbed his free vision of the Spiritual Being who had implanted the attribute in Abraham which has been described. Every Essene sought in his soul to be purified from what had entered him in this way, and which dimmed his vision of the Being who dwelt in the blood passing through the generations, the Being who could only be rightly seen after much purification. All the methods of their training were directed towards freeing the soul from its inherited tendencies and influences that clouded its vision and hid the spiritual inspirer of Abraham. Not only had man a spiritual being within him, but this being had been sullied through these inherited tendencies.

There is a law in Spiritual Science which was perceived by the Essenes through their clairvoyant investigation and spiritual vision: that hereditary influences only cease to be active when a man has passed through forty-two stages in the line of descent; only then has he purged his soul of inherited influences. What is inherited by man from father and mother, from grandfather and grandmother, and so on, becomes feebler the farther back the line is traced; beyond forty-two generations nothing more of this could be found, which means that the influence of inheritance is then lost. By careful training and inner exercises, the Essenes directed their attention towards eliminating the impurities of the forty-two generations. This meant a severe training on a mystical path of forty-two clearly defined degrees or stages. Once these were passed, the Essene knew he was freed from the influences of the world of sense, and had reached the point where he experienced his inner self; where he felt the centre of his being to be united with Divinity. Therefore said he: ‘In going through these forty-two stages I ascend to God—to the God with whom I am concerned.’

The Essenes and the Therapeutæ had a clear vision of man's path to a divine Being who had not as yet descended into matter; they alone knew the truth of the fact which can be described as the ‘Event of Abraham’ they knew it at least in so far as it was concerned with inheritance. They also knew that if a man was to rise to a Being who was to enter the line of inheritance he must reach a place where he was no longer steeped in matter he must pass through forty-two stages of development corresponding to the forty-two generations; then he would find that Being. The Essene knew something more; he knew just as man has to rise through these forty-two stages to reach Divinity, so this Divine Being must descend, in the reverse direction, through forty-two generations if He was to enter into physical humanity. If man required to rise through forty-two stages before attaining to God, God had to descend through forty-two stages in order to become a man among men. So taught the Essenes, and so taught above all Jesus ben Pandira, who was inspired by the Bodhisattva. Having learnt this we know the source whence flowed the knowledge given out by the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, and exactly why he traces back these forty-two generations.

Jesus ben Pandira, who instructed the Essenes in these matters, lived a century before these forty-two generations could be completed. He taught them that advance beyond a certain point on their journey through the forty-two stages was only possible if an historical event were connected with it, that any further achievement could only come by grace from above. A time, however, would come, he told them, when this would be a natural event; a man would be born who, through the power in his own blood, would be able to rise so high that divine Spiritual Forces could descend into him, which he had need of in order that he might make fully manifest the Spirit of the Race—the Spirit of Jahve—in the blood of the Hebrew people. Jesus ben Pandira taught them further; that if Zarathustra, he who would bring Ahura Mazdao, were to incarnate in human form, this could only come to pass if this human form had been so prepared that the Divine Spirit ensouling it had passed down through forty-two generations.

It is now apparent that the teaching concerning the descent through the generations with which the Gospel of Matthew begins had its origin among the sect of the Essenes. If these facts are to be fully understood we must refer to something still deeper in this whole connection.

Everything concerned with human evolution confronts us, as it were, from two sides, for the simple reason that man is a two-fold being. Seen during waking consciousness, when the four members of his being are united, the reason for man's dual nature is not at first discernible. But it is easily seen at night when one part, consisting of physical body and etheric body, remains in the physical world, and the other, composed of the astral body and ego, leaves it. Man is made up of these two parts. The human qualities and attributes of the physical world belong to the physical and etheric bodies alone, although the other members have a share in them during the waking state. When awake, man functions by means of his astral body and ego in the other two members; when asleep he leaves them to themselves. The moment that he falls asleep, however, the beings and forces of the cosmos begin to function in, and to permeate, the forsaken members, so that there is a constant influx from the cosmos into the physical and etheric bodies of man. That part of him, however, which is left sleeping in bed, is actually limited to the forty-two generations, during which time it is under the law of inheritance. Beginning with the first generation and taking all that then belonged to physical nature, we shall find at the end, if we trace this through forty-two generations, nothing of what was the most essential in the first case. Thus in six times seven generations are comprised all the active characteristics of the physical and etheric bodies of a man. The inherited tendencies found in these two bodies must be sought for among his ancestors, but only in the forty-two preceding generations; beyond that time they cannot be traced, all belonging to an earlier generation has disappeared.

Human evolution in time is based on a certain numerical relationship. If we consider this more closely we find everything concerning the physical body is limited to forty-two generations, because everything connected with evolution in time is connected with the number seven. The Essenes knew this. An Essene said to himself: ‘Thou must pass through six times seven stages—that is forty-two—thou wilt then have arrived at the last seven which complete the sevenfold count, making forty-nine stages in all.’ What lies beyond the forty-two stages cannot be attributed to the forces and beings active in the physical and etheric body. The whole evolution of these bodies is finished—in accordance with the sevenfold law—after seven times seven generations, but during the last seven of these a complete change has taken place, and nothing of the first generation remains. What we are now concerned with is something entirely new in the realm into which man enters after the forty-two generations. We are now no longer concerned with a human existence but with a superhuman one. The six times seven generations, therefore, are connected entirely with the earth, and the seven times seven that follows is connected with what is beyond the earth; that is fruit for the spiritual world.

Hence the people from among whom the Gospel of Matthew had its origin, expressed their thoughts somewhat in this way: ‘The physical body used by Zarathustra had to be so ripe at the end of forty-two generations that it was already on the verge of becoming spiritualized; it was at the point where deification could take place.’ This could have taken place at the beginning of the forty-third generation, but it did not; this body allowed itself to be used by another being, who, as the spirit of Zarathustra, incarnated on earth as Jesus of Nazareth. In the events capable of providing a fitting body and fitting blood for the soul of Zarathustra, in Jesus of Nazareth, everything was fulfilled in accordance with this mystery of numbers. Everything relating to the physical and etheric body in human evolution has been prepared in this way.

Now, however, there are in man—and hence too in him who was to be the bearer of the Christ-being—not only a physical and an etheric body, but also an astral body and ego. Preparation therefore had to be made not only for a suitable physical and etheric body, but what was needful had also to be done to prepare a suitable astral body and ego. For such a mighty Event not one, but two personalities were necessary. The physical and etheric bodies were prepared in the case of the personality described in the Gospel of Matthew; the astral body and ego were prepared in another personality—the Nathan Jesus, of whom the Gospel of Luke relates. For the early years this was another personality. While the Matthew Jesus received a suitable physical and etheric organism, the Luke Jesus received the appropriate astral-body and bearer of the ego.

How could this come to pass? We have seen that the forces of the forty-two generations had to be prepared in order that the sheaths might come about which were necessary for the Jesus of the Matthew gospel. The astral body and ego had also to be prepared in order to appear later in the appropriate manner. How this happened we shall now explain.

As an introduction to the understanding of the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke, for whom special preparation had also to be made, let us consider the nature of sleep. The notion, derived from the assertions of lower clairvoyance, that the whole astral and ego-nature of man is contained within the nebulous appearance seen near the body of a sleeping man, is entirely erroneous. For it is a fact that during sleep, when man forsakes his physical and etheric sheaths, he expands, and is spread abroad through the whole cosmos. The mystery of the sleeping state is contained in the fact that the astral body expands through the whole stellar world, attracting towards it the purest cosmic forces; and these forces man brings with him when at the moment of awakening he plunges once more into his physical and etheric bodies. Hence he emerges from sleep strengthened by what he has derived from the whole cosmos.

If man were clairvoyant to-day in the highest sense—and this was the same at the time of Christ Jesus—what must then take place in him? Modern man is normally unconscious during sleep when with his astral body and ego he goes forth from his physical and etheric bodies; clairvoyant consciousness must, however, become capable of perception by means of the astral body and ego, without the aid of the physical and etheric bodies. It will then belong to the world the stars, and will not only perceive this world but actually enter into it. Just as the consciousness of the Essene had to rise through successive stages (at the root of which lay the number seven), so man must surmount the stages which enable him to perceive universal space clairvoyantly.

The dangers attending both courses of development I have often pointed out.

The development of the Essenes was fundamentally a penetration into the physical body and etheric body, that they might find their God. With them it was as if a man on awakening did not see the world around him, but plunged into his physical and etheric bodies in order to realize their forces; therefore to see what was external from within. Man's descent into his physical vehicles on awakening is not a conscious act, for at that moment consciousness is attracted to the environment, and is not directed to the forces within his physical and etheric bodies. The essential fact for the Essene was, that, disregarding his environment, he should dip down into his own physical vehicles and perceive all the forces that in the sense of occult science had their rise in the mystery of the six times seven generations.

Similar and even mightier exertions are necessary if a man is to ascend into the cosmos and discover its secrets. In penetrating into his own inner being he is only exposed to the danger of being overcome by the forces of this being, the desires and passions of its depths, of which he is ordinarily unaware and of which he does not dream. Ordinary training usually prevents knowledge of these forces—his attention being attracted to the emergence of the outer world on awakening, so that he should not be overcome by this. Another danger meets him when he experiences ‘expansion over the whole cosmos.’ He who experiences this moment, by retaining his consciousness during sleep, he who is able to perceive the spiritual world through the instrumentality of his astral body and ego, is confronted by a great danger. Like a man attempting to gaze at the sun, he is blinded and bewildered by the overwhelming grandeur of his experiences.

Just as the different stages of wisdom striven for by the Essenes, in order to learn of the hereditary tendencies in the physical and etheric bodies, were connected with the mystery of numbers (six x seven), so there was a secret number in the Mysteries of the Great World, showing how knowledge of these could be acquired. The best approach to these mysteries is through the stars themselves which, in their movements and groupings into constellations, provide a form of expression—a language. As, by passing through six times seven stages man attains the key to the mysteries of his own inner being; twelve times seven or eighty-four stages are necessary before he can rise to the spiritual mysteries of universal space. When we have surmounted the eighty-four stages we are no longer blinded by the complexity of these spiritual cosmic forces. Beyond these eighty-four stages we have attained that calm wherein a way may be found through the mighty labyrinth.

This was taught to a certain extent among the Essenes. A person having attained clairvoyance during sleep, as just described, could pour his being forth into something that is expressed in the mystery of numbers as twelve times seven. Anyone who has attained to the ‘twelve times seven’ degree is already in spiritual realms, for when he has completed the eleven times seven, he has already reached the verge of the Mysteries. As in the other, the seven times seven, he is already in the spiritual realm; so he is in the twelve times seven. On the latter path the spiritual realm is beyond the eleven times seven stage. Such are the number of the stages to be passed through by the astral body and ego. All this is imprinted in the starry script, seven is the number derived from the planets; they are seven in number; what man has to pass through in cosmic space is derived from the number twelve, the number of the Signs of the Zodiac.

As the seven planets group themselves within, and pass through the twelve signs, so if man is to live into cosmic space he must pass through seven times twelve, or rather seven times eleven stages, to attain spirituality. The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac may be pictured as forming a spiritual periphery in the centre of which is man himself. Now man does not reach the spiritual realm spread around him simply by advancing from a centre outwards; he must expand in spiral form; he must advance, as it were, in seven spiral movements. Each time he completes one spiral turn he has passed through all the twelve signs; he has in this way to pass through seven times twelve points. Man gradually expands in spiral form through the cosmos—this is naturally only an image for what man experiences—and in circling thus, on the seventh journey through the twelve signs, spirituality is reached. Then instead of regarding the cosmos from the central point of his own self; he regards it from the spiritual circumference—from twelve points of view—and from these different aspects he views the external world. It is not enough to see things from one point only, they must be considered from twelve aspects.

He who is in quest of what is divinely spiritual must guide his astral body and ego in this way through eleven times seven stages, and at the twelfth he is in the spiritual world.

If Divinity wished to descend and assume a human ego, it would likewise have to pass down through eleven times seven stages. So when the Gospel of Luke wished to describe the spiritual forces that prepared a human astral body and ego to be the bearer of the Christ, it had to relate how the divine force descended through eleven times seven stages. This is truly told in the Gospel of Luke. Because this Gospel tells of the personality for whom the astral body and ego were prepared, it is not concerned, like the Gospel of Matthew, with six times seven generations, but with eleven times seven successive stages through which is traced down, from God Himself; that which dwelt in the individuality of the Luke-Jesus. These seventy-seven different human stages can be counted in the Gospel of Luke.

Because the Gospel of Matthew describes the mystery of the descent of the divine force which worked constructively within the physical and etheric bodies, the ruling number in it must be six times seven. In the Gospel of Luke, because it describes the descent of the divine force which built the astral body and ego, the number must be eleven times seven. Such is the infinite depth of the origin of these facts as related in the Gospels. These Gospels of Luke and Matthew reveal the secrets of initiation; the descent by certain stages of the Divine Spirit into a human individuality, and correspondingly the successive stages by which an individual can reach forth into the cosmos.

It will be explained in the next lecture how a table of descent is also found in the Gospel of Luke; and why, in an age when the Mystery of Christ was imparted only to a few, it should have been demonstrated that there were seventy-seven generations from God and from Adam, down to the Jesus of this Gospel.

Stages of downward penetration of divine nature into a human individuality, and the going forth of this individuality into the cosmos. The spiritual nature of man and the earthly Adam. The superpersonal memory in the blood of the generations. The Essene and Nazarene colonies. The pupils of Jesus ben Pandira: Matthai and Netzer. The two Jesus children

An examination of the descent of Jesus, as given in the Gospel of Luke, shows how the view of the writer of this Gospel is confirmed by the statements made in the last lecture. There it was shown that in the same sense in which an Entity of Divine Force was to permeate the physical and etheric bodies of the Solomon Jesus, so an Entity of Divine Force was also to permeate the astral body and ego of the personality known as the Nathan Jesus of the Luke Gospel. In this Gospel we are clearly told that this Entity of Divine Force is to fulfil itself through the line of heredity streaming in a direct line down through all the generations, from an early stage of human existence before man entered into a physical earthly incarnation. In the Gospel of Luke we find the descent of Jesus is traced back to Adam, and to God. This means that in order to find this divine principle within the astral body and ego of the Nathan Jesus we must go back to man as he was before his descent into physical incarnation; when he still dwelt in the bosom of the Spirit, and may be described as a spiritual being, and as still appertaining to Divinity. All anthroposophical investigation points to the Lemurian Age as that in which man was still in a spiritual sphere, when he had not yet incorporated in the elements of earthly existence. To this period, when man's divine nature was as yet unaffected by Luciferic influences, the Gospel of Luke traces back the lineage of the Jesus of whom it tells.

Those Mysteries which sought to guide their pupils to the initiation already described as ‘the understanding of the mighty secrets of cosmic space,’ leading man to what was super-earthly or rather beyond what man has become through earthly influences, sought to teach man to perceive the world without using the instruments he has acquired since he came under the influence of Lucifer. When a man has freed himself from perception through his physical and etheric bodies, from all that can approach him by earthly means, how does he behold the universe with his clairvoyant perception? This was the great question for the pupils of the Mysteries. Man was naturally in this state before his entrance into earthly incarnation, before he became the ‘earthly Adam,’ using this term in the sense of the Bible and the Gospel of Luke.

There are two ways by which man can reach that which makes him a divine spiritual being; one is the high initiation of the great Mysteries, the other is not realizable at any optional earth period, but was present at an elementary stage of human existence before the descent of divine man into what the Bible calls ‘earthly humanity’ in the Lemurian Age, for Adam means ‘earth man;’ he who is no longer divine, but has clothed himself in the earthly element.

It may be a matter for surprise that in Luke only seventy-seven generations or stages of existence are mentioned; and still more so that in the Gospel of Matthew only forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ are mentioned. Now it can be calculated that with the number of years usually reckoned to a generation, the forty-two could not extend over the period from Christ to Abraham, but it must be remembered that in earlier times, and noticeably in the patriarchal period before Solomon and David, the number of years reckoned to a generation was longer than in subsequent periods. In attempting to fix historical dates for any three generations like those of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the modern reckoning will not suffice; at least two hundred and fifteen years must be allowed for the three generations. This fact is corroborated by occult investigation. The generations were longest in the times from Adam to Abraham, subsequently they were also long, for great age is always ascribed to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, at the time when they begat their heirs. If we are right to-day in reckoning thirty-three years to a generation, the writer of the Gospel of Matthew was correct in reckoning seventy-five to eighty years and even longer to a generation in ancient times. But it is important to note that in the Gospel of Matthew each generation back to Abraham refers to an individual, whereas the names given by Luke to the generations previous to Abraham do not refer to individuals. Here we must recall something that however true, is not easily believed by the materialistic conceptions of to-day.

What is now called memory, or connecting consciousness, does not extend for normal people beyond the early years of childhood. A person can trace his life back to the point where memory ceases; some can remember more of their early childhood than others. Memory to-day is confined to the single personal life—indeed not even the whole of this, for it does not reach back to birth. Considering the very different qualities of soul and of consciousness prevalent in those ancient times with which we are dealing, when a certain state of clairvoyance was normal, it need not seem surprising that memory also was very different from what it is to-day.

Going back to the times before Abraham, and even farther, during Atlantean times, man remembered not only the events of his personal life, but also experiences before birth—he remembered the experiences of his father, grandfather, and previous ancestors. Memory was something that endured in the blood through a long sequence of generations; it was only later that it became restricted to certain periods or to a single life.

In the distant past a name had a quite other significance than what it has to-day. Names in ancient times require a special study—what philologists say of them is incorrect. In former days names were not associated with things and people externally as they are now. A name at that time was something vital, something connected in a living way with the nature of the being or thing named; it was an expression in sound of the inner character of the being. It had to echo in sound the nature of that being. Modern learning is ignorant of this wisdom. The Kritic der Sprache, by Fritz Mauthner, reviews at great length all the modern learning in regard to speech, but omits what throughout the ages has been the essence of speech. Such a book could not have been written in olden times. A name did not then merely signify an individual with his personal life, but it included all that memory could link together, so that a name was used as long as memory endured. ‘Noah,’ for instance, was not a name for one man, it signified what one man remembered of his own life—then of his pre-earthly life, then of the life of his father, grandfather, etc. So long as the threads of memory endured one name was used for a succession of persons. ‘Adam,’ ‘Seth,’ or ‘Enoch’ are names which comprise as many persons as were united through the retention of retrospective recollection. When we are told in ancient times that a certain person was called ‘Enoch,’ it means that in a person, who was the son of someone otherwise designate, a new thread of memory had arisen, which does not go back to previous personalities. This new thread of memory then is not cut off at death, but is carried on, after the death of the first Enoch, from father to son down through the generations until a new memory arises and with it another name. As long as the thread of memory endured, the same name was used. In a family line several persons had but one name; as for example with the name ‘Adam.’ It is in this sense that names are used in the Gospel of Luke. For Luke wishes to explain that the being of power of divine spiritual existence, he who descended into the ego and astral body of the Nathan Jesus, must be traced back to the time of man's first descent into earthly incarnation.

Thus in Luke we have at first the names of separate individuals, but when we go back beyond Abraham, we arrive at a time when memory lasted longer and one name signifies that which, like an ego, united several personalities. This will help to make it clear how the seventy-seven names could really be spread over very long periods—even so far back as to the time when the being whom we describe as the divinely spiritual essence of humanity first incarnated in a physical human body.

The other point in this Gospel is that anyone, who, having passed through the seventy-seven stages of purification in the Mysteries has purged his soul of earthly taint, attains a condition only possible for man to-day when he can live in his astral body and ego free of his body. He can then expand into that from which the Earth itself has come forth—into our whole cosmic system. This does come to pass. Then he has reached the being of power who entered into the astral body and ego of the Nathan Jesus. In the Nathan Jesus it is sought to exemplify what man receives, not through his earthly but through his heavenly conditions.

Thus the Gospel of Luke describes the divine spiritual being who had permeated and impregnated the astral body and ego of the Jesus of whom it speaks. In the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew we have described to us that divine spiritual being of power, who, on one side, had called into existence the inner organ of Jehovah-consciousness in Abraham, and, on the other side, had worked on the physical and etheric bodies, holding together in them a line of inheritance through forty-two generations.

To return to the mission of Jesus ben Pandira, it was he who made known—to a few at least—that forty-two generations after Abraham the Hebrews would have advanced sufficiently to make the incarnation of the individuality of Zarathustra possible in the Solomon branch of the House of David. Such teaching was naturally associated at that time with events in the Mysteries. It was not confined to the Schools of the Essenes, but only among them were pupils to be found who had actually passed through the forty-two stages of development, and who were able to perceive clairvoyantly the nature of the being who was to descend through forty-two stages. For knowledge of this being had to be given to the world. It was the mission of the Essenes to see that among a few at least there should be an understanding of what the Christ would be.

Now let us briefly recall the events connected with the particular course of that human being known as Zarathustra or Zoroaster. Under this name he had given out in early days in the East the mighty teaching that had fitted him for the incarnation described in the Gospel of Matthew. It was he who had inaugurated the Hermetic Civilization in Egypt, and to this end had given up his astral body to Hermes; he also had founded the Mosaic Civilization through the sacrifice of his etheric body, which had been preserved for Moses. Zarathustra himself incarnated later in other astral and etheric bodies. The incarnation in the sixth century B.C. is of special interest, when, as Zarathos or Nazarathos, he had instructed the sages and Magi of Chaldea, and had come in touch with the wisest of the Hebrew pupils of the Mysteries, during the Babylonian Captivity. During the following six centuries, this teaching had permeated the traditions, ceremonies, and culture of the Chaldean Mystery Schools. The name of their great master, Zarathustra, in the form of Zarathos or Nazarathos, had been honoured in the highest degree by generations of pupils in the Mystery Schools of Babylon, Chaldea, and Assyria. They looked forward with longing to the next appearance of their great teacher and leader, for they knew the secret of his reincarnation, and expected it to occur at the end of six hundred years. As the time approached when the blood suitable for this incarnation should be ready, three messengers or wise men, went forth from the East. They knew that the honoured name of Zarathustra would guide them, as a star, to the place of his reincarnation. It was the Being of the great Teacher himself which as a least there should be an understanding of what the Christ would be.

Now let us briefly recall the events connected with the particular course of that human being known as Zarathustra or Zoroaster. Under this name he had given out in early days in the East the mighty teaching that had fitted him for the incarnation described in the Gospel of Matthew. It was he who had inaugurated the Hermetic Civilization in Egypt, and to this end had given up his astral body to Hermes; he also had founded the Mosaic Civilization through the sacrifice of his etheric body, which had been preserved for Moses. Zarathustra himself incarnated later in other astral and etheric bodies. The incarnation in the sixth century B.c. is of special interest, when, as Zarathos or Nazarathos, he had instructed the sages and Magi of Chaldea, and had come in touch with the wisest of the Hebrew pupils of the Mysteries, during the Babylonian Captivity. During the following six centuries, this teaching had permeated the traditions, ceremonies, and culture of the Chaldean Mystery Schools. The name of their great master, Zarathustra, in the form of Zarathos or Nazarathos, had been honoured in the highest degree by generations of pupils in the Mystery Schools of Babylon, Chaldea, and Assyria. They looked forward with longing to the next appearance of their great teacher and leader, for they knew the secret of his reincarnation, and expected it to occur at the end of six hundred years. As the time approached when the blood suitable for this incarnation should be ready, three messengers or wise men, went forth from the East. They knew that the honoured name of Zarathustra would guide them, as a star, to the place of his reincarnation. It was the Being of the great Teacher himself which as a ‘star’ guided the three Magi to the birthplace of Jesus, as is told in the Gospel of Matthew.

Even external philology confirms the fact that the word ‘star’ was used in olden times to describe the human individuality. It is not only through the revelations of spiritual science, which speaks more clearly than other sources of knowledge, that we learn that the Magi followed the ‘Golden Star,’ Zoroaster, to the place where he was to reincarnate, but by the customary use of the word ‘star’ for the higher human individuality it is clearly revealed that in the star which the wise men followed we have to understand Zarathustra himself.

Six hundred years before our era the Magi of the East were closely associated with the individual who incarnated as the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew. He himself led the Magi. They followed in his track.

The secret of the coming incarnation of Zarathustra was known in the Chaldean Mysteries; but the secret concerning the blood of the Hebrew people which when the time was ripe was to be prepared for the new bodily-nature of Zarathustra, was taught by those who in the Essene initiation had passed through forty-two stages of development.

There were therefore two sources from which this knowledge came. From the side of Zarathustra, teaching was given by the Chaldean Initiates; they knew of the individuality who was to incarnate in the Jewish race from the external side, that of the body and the preparation of the blood, teaching came from initiates among the Essenes. This teaching was given out for more than a hundred years in the School of the Essenes, the teaching of the coming of the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew, who in his fulness would satisfy all the needs of which I have spoken, and still others which we will now try to explain.

A pupil of the Essene Mystery Schools, who, after long training, had completed the forty-two stages of initiation, was able to perceive the mysteries of the physical and etheric body. The individual who was to be born, who was to incarnate in this special blood, came from on high, already possessing faculties which were only attained by the Essene after the long and difficult trials of his training. Concerning such a being, one must say, ‘From the beginning he had powers capable of bringing the seed that was in him to fruition.’ ‘They were born with him,’ the Essenes said. That which was fostered among them by means of exercises and purification of the soul was in fact the continuation of a kind of occult training that had existed among the Jews from the earliest days. There had always been those among them who were called Nazarenes. Even before the time of the Therapeutæ and Essenes certain individuals had used special methods for the development of their soul and body, methods still necessary to-day in certain connections when anyone wishes to hasten his soul development. The Nazarenes were especially careful to abstain entirely from meat and wine. This made a certain facility possible—for it is a fact that the consumption of meat can be a hindrance in the path when striving for spiritual development. Without implying any propaganda on behalf of vegetarianism, it is a fact that abstention from meat makes everything easier, for in that case the soul increases in strength and in power of endurance, and is stronger to overcome the oppositions and hindrances arising from the physical and etheric bodies. Capacities for endurance increase by abstaining from flesh though it is not such abstinence alone, but above all by strengthening his soul. It is merely the physical body that is changed by this abstinence; but when certain qualities are absent which should from the soul's side be present, there is no particular object in avoiding meat. All this was included in the teaching of the Nazarenes and was practised by the Essenes in a much stricter form; in particular they cultivated the strictest abstinence from meat. By this, and the strict training I have referred to, a man was able to enhance his memory comparatively quickly; he learnt to extend it over the period of forty-two generations, and he thus acquired the power to read the secrets of the Akashic-Record. He was then given a special name. He was called a ‘bud,’ a bud on the tree of the race, a bud that had endured throughout many generations. Such a man was not in any way isolated from the tree of humanity, but was conscious of his connection with the rest of mankind. He differed from those who severed themselves from the tree, and whose memory had shrunk within a single personality. The special name given to such a man, among the sect of the Essenes, signified ‘a living branch,’ not a severed branch. All such men felt themselves consciously in the line of descent, a part of the tree of the human race. The Essene who had accomplished this and who had completed the forty-two stages of initiation was described as a ‘Netzer.’

Among the class of Netzer there was a special and faithful pupil of Jesus ben Pandira. Among his pupils were five whom he had himself trained; each of these had taken up a special branch of the great general teaching of Jesus ben Pandira, which he then developed further.

The names of these pupils were Mathai, Nakai, Netzer (because he belonged especially to the Netzer class), Boni, and Thona. Occult research reveals the fact that subsequent to the death of Jesus ben Pandira, the teaching concerning the preparation of the blood of the race for the advent of the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew was particularly the work of Mathai. The teaching concerning the qualities of the inner nature of the soul which was associated with the ancient Nazarene teaching and also with the later Netzerism, was cultivated and spread by Netzer. This pupil was in particular chosen to be the founder of a little colony. Many such colonies existed in Palestine, in each of which some special branch of the Essene teaching was cultivated, and Netzer's teaching was fostered more especially in a little colony, which led a secret existence in a little place named in the Bible, Nazareth or Netzereth.

In this little colony dwelt those who cultivated in fairly strict secrecy the ancient Nazarene teaching. And here, after the events shortly to be dealt with—the flight into Egypt and the return—nothing was more natural than that the Jesus of the Matthew Gospel should be nurtured in the atmosphere of Netzerism. This is referred to in the words of the Gospel when after the return from Egypt Jesus was taken to Nazareth ‘that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets He shall become a Nazarene.’

Translators, unaware of the real meaning of this phrase, have dealt with it in various ways. In reality it signifies the existence at Nazareth of a colony of Essenes among whom the early years of Jesus were to be passed.

All the facts described in the first part of the Gospel of Matthew lead back to the mysteries taught by Jesus ben Pandira, which subsequently were spread abroad by his pupil Mathai, and indeed the first mysteries of this Gospel point to Mathai. In all that springs from this side which is so characteristic of the Gospel of Matthew we find teaching concerning the preparation for the physical and etheric bodies of the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew, though naturally during the forty-two generations there were also influences affecting the astral body.

When it is stated that the first fourteen generations are especially concerned with the physical body, the second fourteen with the etheric, and the third period of fourteen, that following the Babylonian Captivity with the astral body, it must be remembered that a physical and etheric body carefully prepared in this way, could only be used by that mighty individuality Zarathustra.

Now recall the oft-repeated facts of the development of a single personality; how the physical body evolves in the first seven years; the etheric in the next seven, between the change of teeth and puberty; and the astral only begins its free development at the age of fourteen. The development of the physical body and etheric body as these passed down through the generations from Abraham, was destined to come to an end, and entered on a new existence when it became the dwelling-place of Zarathustra. But when he had completed the development of the etheric body, that which had been prepared for him no longer sufficed, and he had then to proceed to the development of the astral body. Mighty and amazing events brought this to pass, events which if we have no understanding of them make it impossible for us to grasp the full meaning of the great Mystery of Jesus Christ.

The individuality of Zarathustra evolved during boyhood until his twelfth year, within the physical and etheric body of that Jesus of whom the Gospel of Matthew speaks—for as regards this being and on account of the climate, the period, which in our part of the world occurs about the fourteenth or fifteenth year, was reached earlier. By his twelfth year he had attained everything it was possible to attain in the physical and etheric body fittingly prepared within the line of Solomon. The individuality of Zarathustra did then actually forsake the physical and etheric body described in the Gospel of Matthew and passed over into the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke. In the cycle of lectures on the Gospel of Luke the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple is explained. There we learn what it meant when the child Jesus was suddenly confronted by his parents who could in no way understand how he had become so changed. This change meant that the entrance of the individuality of Zarathustra into his inner being had taken place; until then this Zarathustra-individuality had developed within the physical and etheric sheaths of the Solomon Jesus.

Such things actually come to pass in life, incredible though they may seem to the untrained and materialistic modern mind. The passing over of an individuality from one body to another does occur. Such a transition occurred when the Zarathustra-individuality, forsaking its original body, passed over into that of the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke, whose astral body and ego-bearer had been specially prepared.

From his twelfth year Zarathustra continued his development in the uniquely prepared astral body and ego of the Jesus of the line of Nathan. This is told in such an imposing way in the Gospel of Luke—the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus sitting in the temple among the Scribes, who were astounded at his words. How was this possible to the Jesus of the Nathan line? He was able to speak thus because the individuality of Zarathustra had entered him. Through that twelve-year-old boy who had been brought to Jerusalem by his parents, Zarathustra had not till then spoken. Hence the change in him was so great that his parents failed to recognize him as he sat among the scribes.

Thus we have two sets of parents, each named Joseph and Mary.¹ And there were two children, each named Jesus; the one we read of in the Gospel of Matthew is the Jesus of the Solomon line of the house of David; the other spoken of in the Gospel of Luke is the Jesus of the Nathan line, and is the son of quite other parents. The two boys grew up near to each other until their twelfth year. You can find this in the Gospels. What is related there is quite correct, but as long as it was undesirable for people to experience the truth, or as long as people did not desire the truth, it was withheld. The Gospels speak the truth we have but to learn to understand them aright.

The Nathan Jesus developed with a strongly developed inward nature. While showing little aptitude for the acquisition of external wisdom, he possessed depth of soul and capacity for love in boundless measure, for dwelling in his etheric body was that force which had come down from a time before man's descent into earthly incarnation, when as yet he led a divine existence. Divinity dwelt in him in a boundless capacity for love. This Jesus of the Nathan line was little fitted for the acquisition of that which men gain in the course of incarnation in a physical body, but he was filled with an infinite warmth of love as regards his soul and inner being. The inward trend of the boy's nature was so marked that those who had understanding of such things tell of something that was brought about through this. What is otherwise only evoked in man by external means was present in a certain sense in the child Jesus of the Gospel of Luke from the beginning. Immediately after his birth he spoke certain words which were comprehensible to his surroundings. Thus this Jesus was mighty in all inward matters though unskilled as regards what is gained by passing through repeated earthly incarnations.

What wonder that the parents were greatly amazed when they suddenly discovered in such a physical nature, a boy filled with great external wisdom that could only be gained by outward means. Such a sudden and amazing change was possible because at that moment the individuality of Zarathustra—the Jesus of the line of Solomon—passed over into the Jesus of the line of Nathan. It was Zarathustra who spoke from the boy at the moment when his parents sought him in the Temple.

Zarathustra had acquired the highest faculties possible to acquire through a physical and etheric body. He had to use the physical instruments prepared in the Solomon line of inheritance, for in them were great and very highly developed forces. He took of this physical nature as much as he could make his own, and blended it with the nature that sprang from the inner force of the Luke Jesus, which had its origin before man's entrance into earthly incarnation. These two natures were now joined in one. Henceforward we have only one being before us.

Though it may seem superfluous, we have our attention now directed to something else; the parents of the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke did not only note an exceptional change in him, but there was also an outward change, for why is it expressly stated that after the child Jesus had been found among the learned Scribes in the Temple ‘He went down with them to Nazareth. ... And Jesus increased in outward beauty of form, in noble habits, and in wisdom.’ Why are these three attributes mentioned? Because now that the Zarathustra individuality had entered into him these were the attributes he could make more particularly his own.

I am quite aware that these words are usually translated ‘and Jesus increased in wisdom, age (stature in the English version), and in favour with God and man.’ Do we require a Gospel to tell us that a twelve-year-old boy increased in age? But in Weizeker's translation we have the words: ‘and Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.’ This, however, is not the meaning; the real meaning is, that an individuality is now in the Nathan Jesus, who is not, as formerly, only a being of inward feeling unable to express itself outwardly, but, because it has now assumed a complete physical body, it has also passed on into external physical excellence. At the same time those qualities that especially concerned the etheric body—the habits acquired and cultivated by means of the etheric body—were not to be found previously in the Nathan Jesus. In him the seed of a mighty capacity for love was apparent which could now be developed further, but this attribute sprang up spontaneously in him and could not become fixed as habits are. But once the Zarathustra individuality, which possessed the powers of an evolved physical and etheric body, was present, it was possible for external habits to reveal themselves and to imprint themselves on the etheric body. This was the second attribute in which the child Jesus increased.

Thirdly, Jesus increased in wisdom. This is more easily understood. The Jesus of the Gospel of Luke was not wise; he was to a high degree a being capable of love. The entrance into him of the Zarathustra individuality meant an increase in wisdom.

As was explained in the lectures on the Gospel of Luke, it may easily happen that when an individuality has forsaken a person, and only three members, the physical body, and the etheric body and astral body are left, this person may continue to live for a time. That part of the Solomon Jesus, however, which was left behind soon dwindled away and died. This means that the Jesus child of the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew died comparatively soon after his twelfth year. At first there were two boys; later the two became one.

Ancient records often contain astounding things which we should try to understand; yet this is only possible through a comprehension of the real facts to which they refer. The intimate way in which these two boys were blended into one may be left for later consideration one reference, however, may be permitted here.

In the so-called ‘Egyptian Gospel,’ which even in the first centuries was regarded as heretical, a noteworthy sentence occurs, for even in Christian circles no one wanted to hear the truth, nor wished that it should come to light. In this document which has endured as a kind of apocryphal Gospel, we find it said: ‘that salvation would come to the world when the two had become one and the outer become as the inner.’

This sentence expresses exactly the facts I have explained as the result of occult investigation. Salvation depends on the two becoming one. The two became one when in his twelfth year the individuality of Zarathustra passed over into the Nathan Jesus, and what was inward became external. The soul force of the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke was most powerfully inward, but this inward force became outward when the Zarathustra individuality—whose outward forces had been developed to a high degree in the physical body and etheric body of the Solomon Jesus—entered into this inward nature, permeating it with his highly evolved physical and etheric nature. Thus a power entered the physical and etheric body of the Nathan Jesus, and what was external became an expression of his inwardness—inwardness that was his before the individuality of the Solomon Jesus passed into him. Thus the two became one.

We have now followed Zarathustra from his birth as the Jesus child of the Gospel of Matthew to his twelfth year when he left his original body and took on the bodily sheath of the Nathan Jesus. From this time onwards the physical nature of the Nathan Jesus was developed by Zarathustra to such a high degree of perfection that he was able at a certain climax of his existence to sacrifice his three bodies for acceptance by Him Whom we call the Christ.

• 1. Many people were so named at that time; to deduce anything from the names ‘Joseph’ and ‘Mary,’ as names are understood to-day, is denied by all true investigation.

The law concerning the stages of the perfecting of human qualities (the Eight-fold path). Nature of Initiation in pre-Christian Mysteries. Descent into the physical body and expansion into the Macrocosm. The dangers connected with this. The twelve helpers of the Hierophant. The Christ-event the beginning of freedom. Christ the model—the fulfilment—of the great Initiation

Our endeavour in these lectures is to explain the significance of the Christ Event in human evolution. The main outlines of that Event will be placed before your souls to-day; the details will be filled in subsequently. An understanding of one of the fundamental laws of human evolution, already described at Basle in the course of lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke, is necessary to this outline: the law, that all through human development new faculties are ever emerging and attaining ever higher degrees of perfection. This fact emerges in an external way when we look back into the short periods of time covered by ordinary history when certain human faculties had not yet developed. Throughout the ages we can trace the development of new faculties in man which have finally brought about our present civilization; but before any entirely new faculty can appear, spread, and in due course become the property of all, special conditions are necessary; it is necessary that this faculty should appear somewhere for the first time in a quite special way.

In the earlier cycle on the Gospel of St. Luke I drew your attention to the ‘eight-fold path’ which men can follow who hold to the teaching which flowed into human evolution through Gautama Buddha. This is usually given as: right opinions, right judgments, right speech, right actions, right standards, right habits, right memories, and right contemplations. These are qualities of the human soul. It may be said: before Gautama Buddha lived, human nature lacked the power to develop such faculties, but since then it has advanced sufficiently to make the gradual development of these qualities of the eight-fold path possible as faculties of man's inner being. Before Gautama Buddha lived on earth in his Buddha incarnation, the independent development of these qualities was not possible. In order that they might gradually be developed, a being like Gautama Buddha had to come in the flesh to give the necessary impulse so that in the course of hundreds and thousands of years they might develop independently in mankind. This fact must be emphasized. In the lectures already referred to, I said that in a certain number of people these faculties are already developed, and when this number has sufficiently increased the earth will be ripe for the reception of the next Buddha, the Maitreya Buddha, who at the present time is a Bodhisattva. Enclosed between these two events lies the period during which a sufficient number of men will have acquired the higher intellectual, moral, and emotional qualities of the eight-fold path. It was, however, necessary at the birth of this period, that once, and for the first time, the impulse whereby all the qualities of the eight-fold path could be developed, should find expression in a single exalted individual, in the personality of Gautama Buddha. Such is the law of human evolution. A faculty destined for development in the whole human race must, in the first place, be fully evolved in a single person; then by slow degrees, throughout the ages, maybe thousands of years, these faculties pass into mankind as a whole.

But that which is to enter humanity through the Christ Event will not be confined within some five thousand years—the period of the influx of the Buddha impulse—it will come to life and continue working as a special faculty to the very end of our earthly evolution. But what is it that actually entered through the Christ Event, in a way similar to what entered through the Buddha, but in an infinitely greater and more exalted manner?

It can be described as follows: That which in pre-Christian times could only draw near to man through the Mysteries, can, since the Christ Event, become to some extent a common attribute of human nature, and this possibility will increase. To comprehend this, an understanding of the nature of these ancient Mysteries and pre-Christian initiations is necessary.

Initiation varied among the different peoples in different parts of the globe, as indeed it has varied in post-Atlantean times. One part of initiation would belong to one nation, another to another. It was unnecessary that every people should possess every form of initiation. Souls by reincarnating successively in different peoples, gained experience of the various initiations. Initiation is the power of looking into the spiritual world; this is not revealed through physical perception or through the external understanding dependent on the instrument of the physical body.

In ordinary life, twice in every twenty-four hours, a man has to be, so to say, where the Initiate also is; but the Initiate is conscious of his surroundings, ordinary man is unconscious of them. In twenty-four hours the life of man alternates between sleeping and waking conditions of consciousness. The fact of the withdrawal of the astral body and ego from the physical and etheric bodies during sleep is familiar to you. The astral nature and the ego on expanding into the more immediate universe, derive thence the forces needed during waking life. From the time he falls asleep until he wakes man is actually poured forth into the surrounding world. He is, however, ignorant of this, for the moment he falls asleep his consciousness is extinguished. During sleep he actually lives in the macrocosm.

Initiation consists in man's learning to partake consciously in this experience, to slip consciously into the existence in which our earth is united with other heavenly bodies. This is the essence of initiation into the macrocosm or Great World.

If a man were to fall asleep and behold all unprepared that world into which he enters, then through the mighty, overwhelming impression made upon him, he would be as one who with unprotected eyes attempts to gaze on the Sun. He would suffer a cosmic blinding that would bring death to his soul. All initiation is for the purpose of enabling man to enter the macrocosm, not unprepared, but with organs strengthened and ready to withstand the shock. Blindness and confusion would otherwise occur while sojourning in the macrocosm, because existence there is so far removed from that to which man is accustomed.

It is usual for man to regard everything in the sense world from one aspect only; anything that approaches him in a sense contrary to this seems false and discordant. As long as he holds the opinion that everything should conform to this view, a view quite natural on the physical plane, the seeker for initiation into the cosmos could never feel at ease there. Man lives within his narrow snail's shell of the sense-world, concentrated on one point of view from which he judges every circumstance. What harmonizes with the opinions he has formed he regards as true; all else he considers false. But when he passes through initiation man must expand into the macrocosm. Suppose he were only to expand in one direction, his experience would be limited to that direction, and he would be ignorant of everything else; but expansion in one direction into the macrocosm and with one point of view is impossible. Man cannot help expanding in all directions. The very fact of passing out into the cosmos is an expansion, an enlarging of himself into the macrocosm. It is impossible to have only one point of view there. He must be able to see the world not only from one point—from himself looking back—but also from a second, a third, and many other points of view. The seeker must develop flexibility of outlook, and be able to see things from every side. This does not imply that an infinity of conditions has to be reckoned with, for their number is limited. Theoretically, an infinite number of points of view is possible, but actually, twelve are sufficient. These are symbolized in the star-language of the Mystery schools by the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac. Man must not reach out only towards Cancer, for instance, but must view the world from all twelve points of the Zodiacal Circle. It is vain to seek agreement by means of abstract words suited to the understanding; the first step towards real agreement here on earth will be taken when the world is viewed from many different aspects.

Parenthetically it may be stated that the great difficulty in all world movements based on occult truths is that the ordinary habits of life are so apt to be carried over into them. When a man is constrained to communicate truths which are the results of super-sensible investigation, it is necessary, even when describing them exoterically, to observe the rule of doing so from different points of view. Those who have watched our movement attentively for some years must have noticed that we have always been striving to describe things not from one aspect but from many. Hence judgments formed in accordance with the usage of the physical plane discover contradictions here and there, for a matter seen from one aspect may appear very different when viewed from another. In a spiritually scientific movement it is necessary to emphasize from the beginning, that when a statement made on one occasion apparently contradicts another given previously, the matter needs careful consideration, each being correct in its own setting. In order to avoid such an unjustified spirit of contradiction among ourselves, we take the course of characterizing things from different sides. Those who attended the lectures given at Munich last year on ‘The Children of Lucifer and the Brethren of Christ’ heard of far-reaching cosmic mysteries from the standpoint of Oriental philosophy. It is therefore necessary for the seeker who ventures on the path leading into the cosmos to acquire adaptability of outlook, otherwise he will be lost in a labyrinth. For though man may adapt himself to the world, the world does not adapt itself to him. While the prejudiced man progresses only in one direction, remaining fixed at one standpoint, the world, ignoring him, moves on, and he is left behind in evolution. In the imagery of the stars, a man may desire to advance only in the direction of Aries and to remain with the surrounding world in that constellation, but the world moves on and presents to him the constellation of Pisces. Such a man will see what comes from Pisces as an experience of Aries; confusion results, and so he finds himself in a labyrinth. To find a way through the labyrinth of the macrocosm, not one point of view but twelve are required.

We have here described one way by which a man may pass out into the Cosmos. But there is another way by which a man may enter into the divine spiritual world without being aware of it, namely, during the other portion of the twenty-four hours. When a man awakes from sleep he plunges down into his physical and etheric bodies, but quite unconsciously, for his perceptions connect him immediately with the external world. Were he to descend consciously into his bodies, he would perceive something quite different. During sleep he is preserved from conscious participation in the life of the macrocosm (for which he is unprepared), and he is preserved from entering consciously into the life of the physical and etheric bodies through his perceptive faculties being immediately directed to the world surrounding him. The danger attending the conscious experiencing of this physical world is somewhat different from the confusion and blindness associated with a view of the other.

When a man enters without preparation into the nature of his physical and etheric being, identifying himself with it, the purpose for which these bodies were given him is developed to an extraordinary degree. That purpose is the development of ego-consciousness. The ego enters the world of the physical and etheric body unprepared, and impure. Were this to happen consciously instead of unconsciously, as is usual, the resulting mystic preception would exclude inner truth, and present illusion to him. Because the eye of man's inner being is then opened, he is united to all the egoistic wishes and desires, all the depravity within him. Ordinarily this does not happen, for during waking hours, with his attention directed to the physical world, he does not contact what may evolve out of his own inner nature.

Other lectures have referred to the experiences of Christian martyrs and saints on first touching and plunging into their own nature. These experiences illustrate the statements just made. Through the withdrawal of outer perception and the stimulation of the inner, the Christian saints were able to speak of the temptations and delusions that took possession of them. The descriptions they give are in strict accordance with truth. It is therefore wonderfully instructive to study the lives of the saints from this point of view; to see how the passions, emotions and desires implanted in man work—things from which he is preserved in ordinary life.

By sinking down into his inner being, by being compressed within his ego, and concentrated into one point, by desiring to be nothing else than an ego—this is what renders man incapable of experiencing anything except the satisfaction of his own wishes and desires. The evil in him can then lay hold of his ego.

We thus find that to seek to expand into the cosmos unprepared, means the danger of cosmic blinding; on the other hand to plunge into one's own etheric and physical bodies unprepared, is to be cramped, confined, and contracted entirely within oneself. There is, however, yet another side of initiation which was cultivated by certain other peoples. While expansion into the cosmos was followed more especially by the Aryan and Northern peoples, the other form was largely practised among the Egyptians. There is also this initiation where man draws near to Divinity by following the more inward path and an intensification of the inner life, by sinking within his own being, and striving to learn how divine activity works there.

In the days of the ancient Mysteries mankind as a whole was not sufficiently advanced for initiation, whether directed outwards to the macrocosm or inwards to a man's own self—the microcosm, for it to attain that high point where a man could be left entirely to himself. When for instance, an Egyptian initiation was being carried out the neophyte was inducted into the powers of his physical and etheric bodies so that he should experience with full consciousness what took place there. Dreadful passions and emotions would then arise from every side of his astral nature; demoniacal influences would proceed from him. Hence in these Mysteries the hierophant had to be assisted by helpers who drew these evils towards themselves and through the power of their own nature turned them aside. The Initiator had to be assisted by twelve helpers who received the expelled demons into themselves. Thus in ancient initiation a man was never entirely left to himself; for what was necessarily developed through his sinking into the physical and etheric was only possible when he was surrounded by the twelve helpers who accepted and overcame the demons.

In the northern Mysteries, where similar results were brought about by expansion into the macrocosm, twelve servers were required by the Initiator. They surrendered their forces to the would-be initiate, enabling him to develop the necessary methods of thought and feeling that could guide him through the labyrinth of the macrocosm.

Initiation where a man was dependent on those who assisted the Initiator, and where, because of this help he was safe from the danger of demons, was destined to be gradually replaced by one in which the novice had to rely more on himself. In this case he was given certain instructions which he had to follow; the gradual attainment of initiation was thus left more to the man himself. At the present time man is not far advanced upon this path; but by degrees an independent faculty will develop in humanity. By means of this faculty he will be able without any assistance, either to ascend to the macrocosm or descend into the microcosm. He will thus be able to pass as a free being through both forms of initiation.

The Christ Event took place in order that this might come to pass. This Event means for man the starting point from which, with complete independence, he can either sink inwards into the physical and etheric body or expand outwards into the macrocosm. Both this descent and this expansion had to be fully carried out once and for all time by a Being of a most exalted nature—Christ Jesus. The essence of the Event of Christ is: That this all comprising nature of the Christ accomplished ‘in anticipation’ for all mankind what will now be possible of achievement by a sufficient number of human beings at least, in the course of earthly evolution.

What actually did take place through the Christ Event?

On one hand the Christ Being had himself to descend into a physical and etheric body, and because the physical and etheric body of one human Being had been so sanctified that the Christ could descend into it (which happened only once), an impulse so great was given to human evolution that the possibility was given to every human being who sought it, of experiencing the descent into the physical and etheric body as a free agent. For this the Christ came down to earth, and accomplished what had never been accomplished before. This is something quite different from what was attained in the Mysteries through the co-operation of helpers. In the Mysteries man could descend into the secrets of the physical and etheric bodies, and could ascend to those of the macrocosm, but only when not really living within the physical body. He certainly could penetrate to the secrets of the physical body, but not when in it, only when quite free from it. On returning, he brought back into the physical body a remembrance of his experiences, but this was a remembrance, not a participation when in the physical body.

The Christ Event was to change all this radically, and it did so change it. Before this Event there never had been a physical and etheric body in existence capable of experiencing complete inner penetration by the ego. Up till then no human ego had really taken possession of a physical and etheric body. This occurred for the first time through the Deed of Christ.

From Him originated also that other outpouring, whereby a Being, though infinitely exalted above humanity, yet united Himself with human nature, and poured Himself into the macrocosm without external aid solely through the force of his own Ego. This was only possible through the Christ. Only through Him did it become possible for man to acquire the faculties by which he could gradually penetrate into the macrocosm, with complete freedom. These are the two main pillars that support both the Gospel of Matthew, and that of Luke. How was this?

We know that Zarathustra was the great teacher of Asia in far past post-Atlantean ages, that he subsequently incarnated as Zarathos or Nazarathos, and again later as the child Jesus of the house of David, who sprang from the Solomon line of this house, as described in the Gospel of Matthew. For twelve years, as we have seen, this individuality developed within the child Jesus every faculty it was possible for him to develop in the physical and etheric instruments of a member of the house of Solomon. The Zarathustra individuality then forsook this child and entered the other Jesus, the child of the Gospel of Luke, who was descended from the Nathan branch of the house of David, and was brought up in Nazareth, close to the other Jesus, the child of whom the Gospel of Matthew tells. This event took place at the moment described in the Gospel of Luke when Jesus was missing during the festival, and was later discovered in the Temple. While the Solomon Jesus died shortly after this, Zarathustra continued to live in the Jesus of whom St. Luke tells, until his thirtieth year, and during this time he developed all the qualities it had been possible to acquire through the instrumentality of the carefully prepared physical and etheric body of the Solomon Jesus on the one hand, and further, through having added to these what could be acquired through that very special astral body and ego-bearer belonging to the Nathan Jesus of the Gospel of Luke. Thus Zarathustra evolved within the body of this Jesus up to his thirtieth year. He had then advanced so far in this body with the qualities he had acquired, that he was able to make a third great sacrifice—the sacrifice of the physical body, which then for three years became the body of the Christ Being. Thousands of years before, the Zarathustra individuality had sacrificed his etheric and astral bodies to Moses and Hermes; he now sacrificed his physical body to Christ; that is, he forsook this physical sheath with everything of an etheric and astral nature remaining in it. What had formerly been occupied by the Zarathustra individuality was now occupied by a being of unique nature, the fountain head of all the wisdom of the mighty wisdom-teachers of the world: by the Christ.

This is the event presented to us at the baptism by John in Jordan, the event whose all-embracing nature and infinite greatness is revealed in one Gospel in the words—‘Thou art my well-beloved Son, in Whom I behold Myself, in Whom I am confronted by Myself,’ which should not be translated by the trivial words: ‘In Whom I am well pleased.’ In other Gospels it is even given as: ‘Thou are my well-beloved Son, this day I have begotten thee!’ These words clearly show that we are here concerned with a birth, the birth of Christ in the sheaths first prepared and then offered up by Zarathustra. At the moment of the baptism by John, the Being of Christ passed into the human sheaths prepared by Zarathustra; hence we are now speaking of the rebirth of these three sheaths, since they were permeated by the substance of Christ. The baptism by John is the rebirth of the sheaths acquired by Zarathustra and the birth of Christ on earth. Christ was now within a human body, a body certainly prepared in an unique manner, yet a human body like that of other men however less perfect these may be.

Christ, the most exalted individuality who can be united with the earth, had now entered a human body. If He was to be an example to all mankind, if He was to go through the great experience of complete initiation, He would have to experience this from both sides—the descent into the physical and etheric body, the microcosm, and the ascent into the macrocosm. Christ did pass through both these experiences as an example for mankind. We must, however, realize, as is necessary from the very nature of the Christ Event, that in considering these events, that is His descent into a physical and etheric body, the Christ was proof against the temptations which certainly assailed Him, but which rebounded from Him; and we must also realize that He was quite untouched by those dangers which affect ordinary humanity when seeking to expand into the macrocosm.

The Gospel of Matthew now tells how after the baptism of John, the Christ Being actually descended into the physical and etheric bodies. The account of this is found in the story of the temptation. We can see how the details of these scenes reproduce in every particular the experiences a man passes through when he descends into his physical and etheric bodies. In the descent of the Christ into a human physical and etheric body we see the compression of the human ego lived through before our eyes, and we can say This is true; all this can happen to us! If we remember Christ and desire to become like unto Him, we can acquire power to face all these things, and to conquer all that on such occasions emerges from our physical and etheric bodies.

The scene of the Temptation might be called the first great outstanding event of the Gospel of Matthew. It reproduces one side of initiation, the descent into the physical body and etheric body. The other side of initiation, the expansion into the macrocosm, is also described in such a way that we are indeed shown how the Christ endured this expansion absolutely in accordance with His human nature. I should like to mention here an obvious objection often made, namely: If Christ were indeed such a high Being, why had He to endure all this? Why had He to descend into a physical and etheric body? Why, like men, had He to go forth and expand into the macrocosm? What the Christ did was not done for Himself, but for humanity. In higher spheres and with the substances of these higher spheres, beings of a like nature to Christ could do this, but never before had it been done in a human physical and etheric body, for never before had a human body been permeated by the Christ Being.

Divine substances had before this gone forth into space, but never that which lives in man. Christ alone could take this human nature into Himself and pour it forth into space. This had to be done for the first time by a God in human nature!

And this second great event, the setting up, so to say, of the second pillar of the Gospel of Matthew, is recounted when we are shown how the second side of initiation, expansion to the sun and stars, was really accomplished by Christ while in His human nature. For this He had first to be anointed—anointed as another man would be, that he might be purified and sanctified, so as to be proof against what would approach Him from the physical world. Here we see how the anointing, which played a part in the ancient Mysteries, is again met with, this time on a higher level in the course of history, for formerly anointings were confined to the temples. We see how at the Last Supper the Christ gives expression to this ‘going forth into the universe,’ not only ‘existence within Himself’ when in the words, ‘I am the Bread,’ He tells those around Him that He feels Himself to be a part of what is expressed in the solid substance of the earth and likewise in all that is fluid. Expression is given to this conscious expansion into the macrocosm as distinct from the unconscious expansion of man during sleep, and all that is experienced by man as a blinding, is expressed in the monumental words, ‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.’

Christ Jesus actually felt what is experienced by man as the pains of death, of injury, or blinding. In the scene at Gethsemane He experienced what can be described as the soul revealing its own agony when forsaken by the physical body. In other words it is what is felt by the soul on leaving the body and expanding into the universe. All that follows is really an account of expansion into the macrocosm: The Crucifixion, and what is represented by the Burial, all these were formerly enacted in the Mysteries. This is the other pillar of the Gospel—the living out into the macrocosm.

The Gospel of Matthew tells us clearly that Christ Jesus lived in a physical body, which later hung upon the Cross. He was concentrated within this one point in space; but now He expands into the whole cosmos, and those who would seek Him then must do so no longer in this physical body, but they would have to seek Him clairvoyantly in the Spirit; the Spirit which fills all space.

After the Christ had actually accomplished that which formerly, and only with help from outside, was accomplished during three and a half days in the Mysteries; after He had done that which awakened so much opposition among the Jews, by saying that if they destroyed the Temple He would restore it again in three days (thus clearly referring to initiation into the macrocosm, formerly accomplished in three days), He further tells them that when this is fulfilled He would no longer be found where the Being of Christ Jesus now was, enclosed within a physical body, but that He would have to be sought in the Spirit permeating Universal Space. This is usually translated as follows (and even through the feebleness of the translation the full glory of the new age that was approaching can be seen): After this ye will have to look for the Being who is to be born out of human evolution, at the right hand of Power, and He will appear to you out of the clouds. It is there we must seek the Christ, the Christ Who is poured forth into the world as a prototype of the great initiation which man passes through on forsaking his body to expand into the macrocosm.

Herein we have the beginning and the end of the actual life of Christ. It begins with the birth of Christ, at the baptism in the Jordan, into that body of which we have spoken. It begins with one side of initiation, the descent into the physical and etheric bodies, as set forth in the story of the Temptation, and it ends with the other side of initiation: the expansion into the macrocosm. This expansion begins with the scene of the Last Supper, is continued in that of the Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection.

Between these two points lie all the events with which the Gospel of Matthew is concerned; so far we have but sketched the outline of these events, which will be amplified in subsequent lectures.

The bringing forth of the secrets of the Mysteries into the external world through the historic Christ-event. The Kingdom of Malchut and the Kingdoms of Heaven. The nature of the Ego in the Kingdom

The raising of the two sides of initiation to the heights of a world-historical transaction comprises what is most essential for us in the Christ Event.

In the form of initiation found more especially in the Mysteries and Sanctuaries of Egypt, a man experienced his daily awakening, that is, the descent into his physical and etheric sheaths, so that his perceptive organs were directed, not to his physical environment but to the occurrences within these bodies. Those who were initiated according to this ancient method, in which they received guidance and help to shield them from its inherent dangers, became in a certain sense, different men. They were able, during the act of initiation at least, to behold the spiritual world, to see in the first place those spiritual forces and beings which are associated with our physical and etheric bodies.

Were we to describe the initiation of the Essenes from this point of view, we should have to say that after passing through the forty-two stages, the Essene would arrive at a more intimate knowledge of his true inner being, his own ego-nature, and of everything that made him capable of spiritual perception through the external organs acquired by inheritance; he would be led beyond the forty-two stages to that divinely spiritual Being who, as Jahve or Jehovah, had brought about the formation of the special organ first possessed by Abraham, as I have already explained. In spirit he would recognize in this organ what was essential to the age in which he lived; he would look back to the composition of his inner being and see it as the product of Divinity; in this form of initiation his attention was, therefore, not ¹ directed to knowledge concerning man's own inner nature.

The danger resulting from a man entering his inner being unprepared, was described in general terms in the last lecture. I showed how egoism was then aroused in him so that he said: ‘I will summon all my powers, all my egoistic passions and emotions, all that is antagonistic to spiritual knowledge; I will marshal these within me so as to become one with them; in this way I will act, perceive, and feel, only from out my own egoistic inner being.’ Descent into a man's own inner being brings with it the danger of excessive egoism. It is this which as a special kind of illusion again and again approaches those who seek entrance into their inner being by means of esoteric development. In such cases many forms of egoism become apparent in people which they do not as a rule recognize to be egoism. They believe it to be anything rather than egoism. There are many who would fain see into the higher worlds but they lack the will to endure the training. They find it most uncomfortable to watch the deeply-rooted characteristics of human nature rising within them. They would like to reach the spiritual world without this eruption of egoism. They fail to realize that the dissatisfaction felt towards an experience that is quite in order, is in itself evidence of the bitterest and most marked egoism. They ought rather to ask: Must not I too, since I am a man, call up all sorts of such powers? They find such phenomena extraordinary—in spite of innumerable explanations of their inevitability at a certain stage. It is easy to give examples of these illusions and deceptions to which people are liable. For instance, human beings to-day are in many respects very indolent—they prefer to tread the way of initiation with the accustomed ease of ordinary life; but this comfort cannot be experienced on the path leading to the spiritual world.

In ancient times the man who trod the inner path was led to the divine spiritual powers, because to them he owed the creation of his inner being. He could perceive them at work on his physical body and etheric body. Such a man could bear witness to the mysteries of the spiritual worlds, and could tell his fellow men what he passed through while being led in the Mysteries into his own inner being and hence into the spiritual world. Returning from the higher worlds he could say, ‘I have gazed into spiritual existence, but I was helped. Helpers of the Initiator in the Mysteries enabled me to outlast the time in which otherwise the demons of my own nature would have overwhelmed me.’ But because he was indebted to outside help for his view of the spiritual world, he remained all his life dependent upon the collegium and on those who had helped him. The powers who had aided him went out with him into the cosmos.

This had to be changed; this dependence had to be overcome. The seekers after initiation had to grow less and less dependent on their teachers and initiators—for something else of great importance was closely associated with that help.

At a certain moment in life, a distinct ego-feeling dawns in our everyday consciousness. This has often been described, and you find the moment described in my book, Theosophy. It is the moment when a human being first addresses himself as ‘I.’ This is something an animal cannot do. If an animal were to look into its own inner nature as a man does, it would find not an individual ego, but a group ego. In the old initiations this ego-feeling was, to a certain extent, suppressed. When a man ascended into the spiritual world his feeling of self was clouded. In the light of these lectures it can be seen that it was well this should be so, for egoism, passions, all that tends to separate man from man in the external world, are connected with the ego-feeling. To prevent these passions and emotions from reaching an excessive strength, suppression of the ego-feeling was necessary. During ancient initiation therefore, not exactly a dream-consciousness, but a suppressed condition of the ego-feeling occurred. More and more effort had to be directed towards making a man capable of initiation while maintaining full consciousness of the ego—the ego-consciousness he had in waking life. The ancient practices were to cease. This change could only be achieved in the course of time by slow and gradual stages, but already to-day in all rightly constituted initiations, the point has been reached where the ego-feeling to a high degree is not extinguished when a man rises up into higher worlds.

Let us now examine the pre-Christian initiation of the Essenes more closely. With this initiation was also associated a certain weakening of the ego-feeling. That which gives man his feeling of self in earthly existence, which enables him to confront external objects, had to be suppressed. A little reflection on even the most trivial side of waking life will suffice to make us realize that in another condition, that of sleep, when man is in the spiritual world, he has no consciousness of self. Ego-consciousness belongs to day-consciousness, when the attention is withdrawn from the spiritual world, and is directed to the world of the senses. Thus it is to-day, and so it was in the days when Christ was on earth. The man of to-day is for the most part, and in normal conditions, not awake to the spiritual world. Christian initiation really consists in the Ego remaining as wide-awake in the higher worlds as it is in the external world.

Let us consider quite clearly the moment of awakening. This moment confronts us as that in which man descends from higher worlds and plunges down into his physical and etheric bodies, the inner happenings of which, however, he fails to perceive, his attention being immediately attracted towards his environment. Everything upon which his glance falls at the moment of awakening, everything he perceives through eye or ear, everything he grasps with the understanding bound to the physical brain—everything in fact that exists in his physical environment, was included in the word ‘Malchut’ or ‘the Kingdom’ as employed in the mystery language of the ancient Hebrews. To the Hebrew, ‘Malchut’ stood for everything in which the human ego could consciously take part. ‘The Kingdom’ is primarily the sense-world, the world of waking man, man in the full possession of his ego.

Let us now follow the stages of initiation by which man descends into his own inner being. The first stage preceding the entrance into and the perception of the secrets of the etheric body is easy to surmise. The human outer sheaths consist, as we know, of the astral body, the etheric and the physical body. Into these man must enter. If he is to pass through this kind of initiation he must be able to perceive his astral body consciously from within. This he must experience first, if he wishes to enter the interior of his physical and etheric body. This is the door through which he must go. Here ever new experiences await him, and what he experiences is objective, as objective as the things he encounters in the world of the senses.

In perceiving the objects in our environment with our sense-perception, we distinguish three kingdoms, that of minerals, plants, and animals; but the ancient Hebrew did not make this distinction, he regarded them as one and summed them up in the one conception, that of the Kingdom. In the same way as our outer eye perceives animals, plants, and minerals when we direct our glance to the sense-world in which our ego is conscious, so the eye of those able to sink down into their inner nature can perceive everything that is to be perceived in the astral body. These things are not as yet beheld consciously by man through his ego, but the ego makes use of the instruments of the astral body in order to perceive them. What a man sees when he makes use of other powers of perception—that is, when his ego is active in a world with which he is connected through his astral organs—was always described in the ancient Hebrew language by three words. Just as we speak of an animal, plant, and mineral kingdom, they expressed this trinity of the astral body in the three words: Nezach, Jesod, and Hod. If these three expressions are to be made in some way conformable to our language we must enter more deeply into the old Hebrew feeling for language than is possible with the aid of an ordinary lexicon. We must call to our aid the sense for language that existed in pre-Christian times. For example, the combination of sounds in the word Hod sought to express the idea of something spiritual appearing outwardly. Try to picture this something spiritual that desires to make itself known outwardly, to express itself outwardly, but a spirituality that must be conceived of as astral in nature. This desire for outward expression is implied in a much stronger form in the word ‘Nezach.’ What is here striving to reveal itself might perhaps be rendered as ‘Something that appears to be impenetrable.’

In modern handbooks on Physics it is stated as an opinion—though it is really to be regarded as a definition, but it is not a matter of logic)—that the physical body is ‘impenetrable.’ A physical body should be defined as that of which it can be said, that when in one place, no other body can occupy the same place at the same time. This must be put down as a definition—instead of which we now have the dogma: the bodies of the physical world have the quality of impenetrability. Whereas it ought to be: two bodies cannot occupy the same place simultaneously. (This, however, is philosophy.) ‘Nezach’ expresses the self-manifestation of something in space to the exclusion of something else; it represents something a degree coarser than Hod. What lies between these two is the degree expressed in the word ‘Jesod.’

There are thus three degrees. In the first, ‘Hod’ we have the manifestation of any astral fact revealing itself outwardly. When conditions are coarsened to physical impenetrability it is called ‘Nezach’ in the Hebrew language; and the word ‘Jesod’ is used to define the intermediate conditions. These words express the three different characteristics peculiar to the beings of the astral world.

We can now enter further into man's inner nature with those who seek initiation by this method. Having overcome whatever has to be overcome in the astral body, the seeker enters into his etheric body. He then perceives something higher than is expressed by the three Hebrew words we have just considered. You may wonder why this should be higher. There is something strange here which must be noted if we are to arrive at any real knowledge of the nature of the universe. You Must realize that the highest spiritual forces are active in what are apparently the lowest manifestations of the external world. I have often drawn your attention to this and demonstrated it especially in reference to the nature of man.

Man is described as being composed of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. From a certain point of view it is true that the ego is the highest of these, but at its present stage of development it is the baby among the four principles of human nature. Though it contains the seed of the highest to which man can attain, it is at present in itself the least advanced. The physical body, on the other hand, is in itself the most perfect of the human principles, no thanks to man, but because throughout the Saturn, Sun, and Moon Periods divine beings worked upon it. Even the astral body has become more perfect than the ego. The human ego is that which is so close to us that we identify ourselves with it; in fact anyone who does not wilfully close his eyes or is not too superficial to look within himself; has only to do so to find his ego there. In comparison, think how far removed man is from the comprehension of the mysteries of his own physical body. Spiritual beings have been working on the physical body of man not for millions, but for millions of millions of years, to bring it to its present perfection of structure. Between the physical body and the ego lie the astral and etheric bodies. Compared with the physical principle the astral is very imperfect: in it are the emotions, passions, and desires. Through the emotions of the astral body many things are enjoyed which have a detrimental effect on the wonderful organism of the physical body, even though the etheric acts as an impediment between the two. Allusion has often been made to the many enjoyments that are injurious to the heart, and how the astral body would undermine the health of the human heart were it not that it is so wonderful and perfect an organization that for many decades it can withstand the attacks of the astral body. But so it is. The deeper we descend, the higher are the spiritual forces at work on our different principles. One might say: It is the youngest gods, the more recent divinely spiritual forces who have given us our ego; and the older gods who have bestowed that perfection on the lower principles of our being which man has hardly even begun to comprehend, much less to imitate with the instruments at his disposal.

This perfection was perceived more especially by those who made a descent into their inner being by the methods of initiation practised among the Essenes. Such an Essene Initiate might say: ‘Only after I have passed the first fourteen stages shall I be able to enter my astral body there I encounter all the passions and emotions connected with this astral body, together with all the harm I have done to it during this incarnation. But I am not as yet in a position to do injury to my etheric body, for it is in fact purer and more divine; and will be seen by me when I have passed through the second fourteen stages.’ He felt that if he could but withstand the attacks of the astral body, the greatest difficulties of the first fourteen stages would be overcome, and he could then enter the light spheres of his etheric body on which he had not as yet been able to inflict so much injury.

What the seekers after initiation next beheld is described in the ancient Hebrew occult teaching by three expressions which are very difficult to translate; they are Gedulah, Tipheret, and Geburah. Let us try to form some idea of the realms described by these words.

When a man perceived that which united him with his etheric body, he felt affected by the first of these—by Gedulah. The effect of Gedulah was that the individual gained a conception of the majesty, the grandeur, and over-whelming power of the spiritual world. What, on the other hand, is expressed by Geburah, though connected with the first, has a quite different quality of greatness, a greatness that is, as it were, lessened through activity. Geburah is that degree of greatness, or of power, which reveals itself outwardly in order to defend itself and to make itself known as an independent being. Thus, while the word Gedulah implies activity through intrinsic worth, Geburah is activity manifesting outwards in what might be called an aggressive way. Tipheret is an expression for greatness at rest within itself; an inwardness certainly that manifests outwardly, but without aggression; a being that because it gives expression to spiritual greatness, is such as we can only express through a combination of the two ideas, ‘goodness’ and ‘beauty.’

A being expressing its inner nature in outward form appears beautiful to us. A being giving outward expression to its intrinsic worth appears good to us. These two conceptions were both inherent in the ancient Hebrew word ‘Tipheret.’

It was descent into the etheric body that brought man in touch with the beings revealing themselves through these three attributes.

The next step is the descent into the physical body. In his physical body man learns to know (if one can so express it) the most ancient of the divine spiritual Beings who have worked on him. In Occult Science and in communications From the Akashic Records it is explained how the physical body first came into being on ancient Saturn. Very exalted spiritual beings, the Thrones, offered up their own will-substance to provide the first germ of the human physical body; and in its further development throughout the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods, exalted beings co-operated in the work on germinal humanity. In the Lectures given at Munich on Biblical Secrets of Creation I described how these exalted beings remained united with man throughout the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods, organizing and developing ever more highly and widely the primal germ of the physical organization, so that it might become the marvel of construction we see to-day, and within which man dwells with his etheric body, astral body, and ego.

A man who is really able to descend into his own inner being perceives something that has qualities which, according to the ancient Hebrew mystical teaching, can only be imagined when concentrating on the most exalted wisdom to which the soul can attain. Such a man regards wisdom as an ideal, he feels his being exalted when he can fill it to some extent with wisdom. Those who at the time of the Essenes were able to plunge down into the physical body knew they approached beings whose whole substance consisted of what a man can attain, in small measure at least, when he strives for wisdom; a wisdom that is not won through ordinary external understanding but only through an understanding born of difficult soul experiences, and that cannot be acquired in one incarnation but in many, and only then in part—for only by acquiring every form of wisdom can man possess it completely. The beings perceived at this stage of initiation were beings of Wisdom—in them the peculiar qualities of pure unalloyed wisdom could be seen. The Hebrew word used to express the qualities of these beings, which to-day we somewhat vaguely call wisdom, was ‘Chokmah.’ A somewhat denser form of this quality of wisdom is that which is found in man, although in his individuality he can attain it only in small measure. On making the descent into his physical organism a man is again confronted with beings who possess in vast measure an attribute that is a denser form of wisdom, and which, in Hebrew terminology, was called ‘Binah.’ As beings they appeared completely illumined by this attribute. It is what is aroused in man when he is reminded of his reason, though he may indeed only achieve reason in a very restricted form. We have to imagine beings who are completely permeated by the effects of reason; it is these who are referred to when the word ‘Binah’ is used. It is a denser form of ‘Chokmah.’ In the secret doctrine of the ancient Hebrews, ‘Chokmah’ is the name for the original creative wisdom which brought forth from itself the Mysteries of the World. It was there compared to a spring of water, while ‘Binah’ was compared to the sea, thereby indicating its denser nature.

The most exalted state which could be gained through descending into the physical body was called ‘Keter.’ It is difficult to translate this word. It represents, though but faintly, the qualities of very exalted, divine spiritual beings, and can only be indicated symbolically by that which raises a man above himself, which stands for something more than he himself—hence we translate it with ‘crown.’

Here is the scale of qualities of those beings into whose realm man strives to evolve after having made the descent into his own inner nature. This must be regarded as a growing upwards.

An Essene initiation must be pictured as bringing entirely new experiences and new knowledge, and that it impressed on the pupil the reality of these qualities. It differed entirely from the initiation of neighbouring nations, which was still of the ancient form. This difference must be now explained.

All ancient initiations were especially directed towards the suppression of the feeling of self which a man has when looking upon Malchut, the Kingdom. This feeling had to be blotted out. On initiation a man cannot remain as he is in the physical world; he is certainly led into the spiritual world, but cannot remain such a man as he was when in the ‘Kingdom.’ A sharp distinction has to be made in ancient initiation between the experiences of an Initiate and how he felt when within his ego.

Were I to compress into one sentence how ancient initiation was carried out in the mystery schools of olden times, and how this life could be compared with life in the outer world I should say: ‘It must not be thought that the same feeling of self which a man experiences in the “kingdom” remains when he has developed the three times three attributes, described above, in their reality. He must withdraw from all such feelings of self. What is experienced as Nezach, Jesod, and Hod cannot be carried down into the Kingdom, or remain associated with the ordinary ego-feeling of a man.’ This was common knowledge. Whoever dared to contradict it would have been regarded as a fool, a liar, and a madman.

But the Essenes were the first to teach: ‘A time is coming when all that is above will be brought down, so that man will be able to experience it and yet maintain his ego feeling intact!’ This was what the Greeks called ‘Basileia.’ The Essenes were the first to teach of the coming of One ‘Who would bring down what is in the “Kingdoms of the Heavens” into “Malchut”, the kingdom in which the human ego dwells.’ This was first taught in mighty words by Jesus ben Pandira to his Essene followers and to certain others who were near him.

Jesus ben Pandira was the first to foretell this through the inspiration which he had received from the successor of Gautama Buddha (from the Bodhisattva who was destined to be the Maitreya Buddha); and he gave the following teaching to his pupil Mathai: ‘Hitherto the Kingdoms of Heaven could not be brought down into Malchut, the Kingdom to which the ego belongs; but when the three times fourteen generations shall be fulfilled, there will be born of the race of Abraham, in the house of Jesse (the Jessians or Essenes) One Who will bring the nine attributes of the Kingdoms of Heaven down into the Kingdom in which the ego is present.’

Such teaching was regarded as sacrilege; it was considered the vilest abuse of initiation by those who refused to recognize that what is right for one age is not necessarily right for another—bcause humanity is always advancing. Jesus ben Pandira, who taught this sacrilege, was therefore stoned to death.

Then came the time when what had been foretold was to be fulfilled, when the three times fourteen generations had been accomplished, and a physical body could arise from the blood of the race meet for Zarathustra—such a physical body as after Zarathustra had incarnated in it and brought it to fuller perfection, he could offer up to the Christ. The time had come of which the forerunner of the Christ declared: The time is at hand when ‘The Kingdoms of Heaven’ will approach the ego dwelling in the outer Kingdom—in Malchut.

We can now understand what the first self-imposed task of Christ was after he had passed through the Temptation. He had withstood temptation through the forces of His own inner being, through what, in men, we to-day call the ‘ego.’ He had succeeded in enduring and overcoming all the trials and temptations which assail a man who makes the descent into his astral, etheric, and physical bodies. This is clearly shown. All forms of egoism are represented, so that our attention is directed to them in their intensest form.

The greatest obstacle encountered by the esoteric student, as is only natural when sinking within his own inner being, is the unwise tendency to occupy himself more and more with his own much loved personality. Indeed, one never finds this more readily than in those who seek entrance into the spiritual world. They love to occupy themselves with their own personality, giving it the minutest attention. While formerly they had resolutely kept themselves away from this, as soon as they attempt development, or even as soon as they bcome Anthroposophists, they begin to occupy themselves very largely with their own ego; then all kinds of illusions arise that formerly the ordinary trend of life easily spared them. The reason for this is that such people are ignorant of how to act when everything arising from their own being becomes one with them, they are quite without experience as to what they should do. Formerly, such people were easily interested in external things; now they are more withdrawn, more interested in inner experiences. All kinds of emotions now emerge from their own nature. Why?

Such a person would like to become a complete ego, to be entirely independent of the outer world. Above all, he is now apt to fall into the error of preferring to be treated like a child who has to be told clearly what to do and to have everything explained to him. He would indeed prefer anything rather than to direct himself to the goal which esoteric life discloses. He is not yet able to give his mind to this; yet his dependence on the outer world disturbs him, especially when he wishes to be most detached from it and to interest himself in his own ego. But there is always one thing that prevents his detaching himself completely from the external world—trivial though it may be, this is the fact that he must eat! This fact shows how helpless man is without his environment; such dependence on the outer world may aptly be compared with the dependence of the finger on the hand; if severed the finger perishes. It needs but little insight to realize man's dependence on the outer world. Egoism stretched to its limits may even produce in a man the desire: If only I could become independent of my environment; if only I could create, magically within myself that which as ordinary man forces me to feel so bitterly my dependence on what is outside me

Such a wish may actually arise in the seeker after initiation. Similarly hatred may be roused by the feeling of dependence on the surrounding world and the impossibility of creating nourishment magically. It may seem extraordinary to say such things, because desires that are apparent in small things become absurd when carried to extremes. No-one really gives way to the illusion that he could create nourishment magically, and live without what comes from the ‘Kingdom,’ but carried to an extreme he might exclaim, ‘Could I but reach a stage of development where I live so truly in my astral body and ego that I no longer have need of the world about me!’ This form of temptation does arise; and it is described of One Who had experienced it most acutely, that the tempter who confronted Jesus Christ told Him to change stones into bread. Here we have temptation in its extremest form. It is in fact man's descent into his own being that is so wonderfully described in the story of the Temptation, as related in the Gospel of Matthew.

The second stage of temptation arises after the descent into the astral body has taken place, when the novice is confronted by those desires and emotions which so easily transform him into an extreme egoist. When a man feels himself confronted by these he might, instead of resisting and overcoming them, cast himself down into the etheric and physical body. This is a situation which might be described as hurling himself into the abyss. This is how it is described in the Gospel of Matthew: as a plunging down into the etheric body and physical body, into that which has so far remained almost unspoiled by man. But this cannot be until all desires and emotions have been overcome. The Christ knew this, and facing and subduing the tempter by His own power, He said, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Being to Whom thou must surrender thyself!’

Then comes the third stage, the descent into the physical body. When this descent appears as a temptation, it is described in a special way. It is an experience actually endured by everyone who reaches this stage on the path of initiation. Everything is then seen, as it were, from within, everything that is associated with the three highest principles. The seeker after initiation sees this as a world—but a world of his own illusions, a world in which it is impossible to recognize intrinsic truth without breaking through the shell of the physical body and rising to those Spiritual Beings, who have themselves left the physical body, who are no longer within it, but only work upon it. Unless we free ourselves from egoism, Lucifer or Diabolus, the tempter of the physical world continually rouses self-deception in us. He promises to give us all that we behold, but this is really Maya, the creation of our own illusion. So long as this Spirit of Egoism remains with us, we perceive a complete world—but a world of deception and lies; he promises to give us this world—but we must not think it is a world of reality. We have first to enter this world, but unless we escape from it again we remain in a world of Maya.

Christ Jesus lived through these three stages of temptation as a model and a pattern for man. Because they were once experienced outside the ancient Mysteries, experienced through the power of a Being Who Himself dwelt within the three human bodies, an impulse was given which enables man in the future course of evolution to experience the spiritual world in his own ego, even in that ego in which he dwells in Malchut. That was to be reached by what has held the two worlds apart coming to an end, so that man with his ego that lives in Malchut will be able to ascend into the spiritual world. This was the result gained for humanity in the overcoming of temptation as related in the Gospel of Matthew. It was attained through the fact that a Being living on the earth had now become a pattern for the passing over of the ego as it exists in the Kingdom, into higher kingdoms and higher worlds. What was found to result from Christ having experienced in outward historical form what had hitherto been confined to the Mysteries? What naturally followed from this? What followed was the preaching of the Kingdom.

The Gospel of Matthew therefore first describes the Temptation, and then in ordered sequence tells of the phases of the ascent of the ego, which is now able to experience the spiritual world within itself without the necessity of first going out of itself. The secret of this ego—which as it lives in the outer kingdom, ascends into the spiritual world—this secret was now to be revealed through the Christ to all the world during the time following on the story of the Temptation, as told in the Gospel of Matthew. Then come the chapters, beginning with the Sermon on the Mount, which show what Christ meant by ‘Malchut’—the Kingdom.

Profound indeed is the Gospel of Matthew. So profound that its sources must be sought in the secret teachings, not only of the Essenes, but of the ancient Hebrews, and the Greek world in general. Realization of this truth awakens in us a holy reverence and a profound respect for this document, a reverence which deepens when, furnished with the investigations of Spiritual Science, we meet with what the seers told us of old. When we hear that such things were related by the ancient seers, we feel as if we heard them speaking to us directly from far-off time. It is like the transmission of some spirit-language in which mighty individuals have conversed with one another throughout the centuries—so that those who have the will to hear can hear it. Those can hear at least who understand the words in the Gospel—‘He that hath ears to hear, let him hear!’

But just as at one time much had to happen before the physical ear could be formed, so much, very much is necessary in order that spiritual ears may be developed by which we shall be able to understand what is told us in these mighty original spiritual documents.

The purpose of our new Spiritual Science is to teach people to read these spiritual documents once more. Only when we are equipped with an understanding of the ego—an understanding of the nature of the ego in the Kingdom—will it be possible for us to understand the teaching that begins with the words, ‘Blessed are those who are beggars in regard to the spirit, for through themselves, through their own ego, they will find the Kingdoms of the Heavens!’

An Initiate of olden times would have said, ‘It would have been in vain for you to seek the Kingdoms of the Heavens in your own ego.’ But Christ Jesus said: ‘The time is now come when those who seek the Kingdoms of the Heavens can find the Spirit!’

The carrying into effect in the external world of the profound secrets of the Mysteries is the historical side of the Christ Event, and in this sense we propose to study this Event yet more closely. You will then understand what interpretation to put on the words, ‘Blessed are those,’ with which the Sermon on the Mount begins.

• 1. This sentence is not negated in the original German. —SOL

The Initiation of the Ego. The Gospels are the books of the Mysteries. The Life of Christ, a repetition of Initiation on the great plane of world history

From what has already been given out in these Lectures we are led to the conviction that the following are the essential facts of the Christ Event. The stage of human development described as raising the soul to spiritual realms was only attainable in pre-Christian days within the Mysteries, and then only through a certain dimming of the ego. Human development, however, was destined to receive so powerful an impulse that those who could rise to it would be able to retain full ego-consciousness on entering the world of spirit. This condition belongs for the most part to the future, for ego-consciousness at the present day is normal only on the physical planes.

The advance in human evolution imparted by the Christ Event is the greatest that has yet been made, or ever will be made, in human or earthly evolution. Whatever may arise in the future in consequence of this event will be but a further development of this mighty impulse. Therefore we ask ourselves: What then actually had to come to pass through the Event of Christ?

In a certain way there must be a repetition; a repetition in detail, of what belonged to the secrets of the ancient Mysteries. It was characteristic of those Mysteries, as it is to some extent of those of to-day that he who penetrated within his own physical and etheric bodies experienced the temptations of the astral body as described in the last Lecture. In the Greek Mysteries, on the other hand, man had to confront the difficulties and dangers that always approach those who try to pour themselves forth into the macrocosm. This also has been described. Both these types of initiation were experienced as a single impulse of a great outstanding individuality by the Christ as a pattern for mankind. Through this an impetus was given by which men would gradually in future be able to pass through such a development as came to them in initiation.

Let us therefore consider first what was accomplished in the Mysteries. All that the human soul then passed through was experienced with the ego-consciousness reduced to something half dream-like, and in this condition the inner soul nature gained certain experiences. Such a man experienced the awakening of egoism, the desire to be independent of the external world; but, as explained in the last lecture, so long as man is unable to create food magically, unable to dispense with what is acquired through his physical organism, he is dependent on the outer world. Therefore he is exposed to the illusion that all he perceives by means of his physical nature applies only to the world and to the splendour thereof. Every pupil, every would-be initiate went through this experience, though not in the same way as the Christ, Who experienced it on the highest level. Therefore a description of these facts, which are only experienced by a pupil of the Mysteries, would be in a certain way similar to a description of the life of Christ Jesus. What then took place outwardly, once and for all time, on the plane of the world's history, had been confined hitherto to the darkness of the Mysteries.

Let us consider the following case, one that was frequent in the centuries immediately preceding Christ. Let us suppose that an artist or a writer had learnt that this or that procedure was followed during initiation, and, that he had painted or written of it. Such a picture, or writing might well resemble what is related by the Evangelists of the Christ Event; and one can understand how in many ancient Mysteries after due preparation the candidate's physical form was bound with outstretched hands in the form of a cross, so that his soul nature might be liberated. He remained thus for a certain time, so as to draw forth his soul nature, and that he might undergo the experiences already related. These things might have been represented in paintings or described in writing. They might then be discovered by someone to-day, who might deduce from them that the painter had painted a scene of the Mysteries, or the writer had recorded an old tradition. He might then go on to say that the facts of the Gospels are merely records of the rites of an initiation of former days.

This is frequently stated—and to how great an extent is shown in my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact, in which I explain how all the secrets of the ancient Mysteries appear again in the Gospels, how in fact the Gospels are but repetitions of ancient accounts of initiation as carried out in the Mysteries. Why in telling of the life of Christ does the Evangelist simply describe facts of the ancient Mysteries? The Evangelist describes the scenes of the ancient Mysteries because he saw these inner processes of the soul carried out as historic facts; because all the events of the life of Christ Jesus were a repetition, exalted to the level of an Ego-Being, of the symbolic or even actual-symbolic acts of ancient initiation.

This fact needs emphasis: Those who take their stand on the ground of the historical truth of the Christ Event may rightly point out the resemblance between the Gospel biographies of Christ Jesus and the occurrences of the Mysteries. To express it more exactly, those who were destined to behold the Christ Event in Palestine beheld the fulfilment of the Essene prophecy; the Baptism in Jordan, the Temptation, the Crucifixion, and all that followed. They could say therefore: We have represented to us here the life of a Being in a human body. What are the essential points in the life of this Being? Strange to relate, we find, enacted here in external historic life, certain events that are the very same as those which occurred to the initiate in the ancient Mysteries. We need only refer to the canon of a Mystery to discover a model for those events which are here described as historical facts.

That in fact is the great secret, that what was formerly hidden within the obscurity of the temple, and only reached the world in its results, was now enacted on the great stage of universal history as the Christ Event, and could be seen by those who had attained spiritual vision. It should be realized that in the days when the Evangelists wrote, biographies such as we have to-day were unknown; biographies for instance of Goethe, Schiller, or Lessing giving in detail every minute scrap of information, in which the most unimportant details are amassed and presented as of the greatest moment. With the attention fixed on this mass of detail, concentration on facts of essential importance is impossible. The Evangelists were content to relate the essential facts of the life of Christ Jesus, and the fact of supremest importance is, that in the great plan of world history, the life of Christ is a repetition of initiation. Can we wonder that this truth which has come to light in our time should be so disconcerting to many people—so really overwhelming. These things which are so disconcerting will strike you even more vividly when you consider what follows.

Myths and sagas come to us from the past. What are they? Anyone who understands them, and knows what they are, will find in them descriptions of what ancient clairvoyance had seen in the spiritual world clothed in happenings of the world of the senses, or he will find other myths that are in essence nothing but descriptions of the Mysteries. The myth of Prometheus, for instance, like many another, is partly a reproduction of deeds enacted in the Mysteries. We often find the scene described when Zeus appears and near him some lower god who—according to the Greek account—tempts him. Zeus, standing on an eminence, is ‘tempted by Pan.’ This is one form; there are many others. Why does this image occur so frequently? Because it expresses the descent of man into his inner being, the descent into the physical and etheric body bringing with it the encounter with his lower nature, his egotistical Pan-nature.

The ancient world is full of such accounts of experiences during initiation, which are in this way given artistic form in myths and symbols. Many people who take a superficial view, make the grand discovery that certain knowledge is here presented in the form of symbols. And this upsets people who do not know, or wish to know the facts. They read of Pan tempting Zeus, and say: ‘It is easy to see from this that the scene of the temptation of Christ had taken place before. The Evangelists have only repeated some ancient allegorical tale, and the Gospels are compiled out of such ancient tales.’ It is but a step from this to the conclusion that the Gospels contain nothing of special import, that they are only pieced together from myths and that Christ Jesus is fictitious. A great movement arose in Germany which took the form of frivolous discussions as to whether Christ Jesus had ever really lived. With a grotesque lack of knowledge, bft with profound learning, the various myths and legends which bore some resemblance to scenes in the Gospel were discussed again and again. It is of little avail to-day to impart anything concerning the true facts, although they are well known to those who have knowledge. This is how spiritual movements develop in our time; truly the way in which they develop is very grotesque

There would be no need to interpolate these remarks were it not that one is constantly obliged to make a stand against misrepresentations that are made from one side or another, with apparently great learnedness, against the statements of Spiritual Science.

The true facts are given in these Lectures. We have to see in the Gospels a recapitulation of events that took place in the Mysteries, though in them the secrets of initiation refer to a very different Individuality, and they really wish to say to us: ‘Behold, what formerly was accomplished in the Mysteries through suppression of the consciousness has now been accomplished in a marvellous and outstanding manner by an Ego-Being in full ego-consciousness!’ We need not therefore wonder at the statement that the Gospels hardly contain anything that did not exist before. What we have to realize is, that what was told formerly, related to the ascent of man to the Kingdom of Heaven; never before had what men call the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ come down into the ego. What was essentially new was this: What formerly had taken place in a state of suppressed consciousness and in super-sensible realms could now take place in full consciousness in Malchut, ‘The Kingdom.’ This is why, after Christ Jesus had experienced what is described in the Gospel of Matthew as the Temptation, He became the preacher of ‘The Kingdom.’ What was the essence of his preaching? He said: What formerly was attained through the darkening of the human ego, and through man receiving other beings into himself; can now be achieved with complete retention of the ego-consciousness! This fact is stressed again and again. Hence the necessity for a repetition of scenes from the Mysteries in the life of Christ Jesus. Hence also the necessity of the ‘Sermon concerning the Kingdom,’ in which Christ declared: Everything promised to those who passed through the Mysteries or accepted their teaching can now come to those who experience in themselves the ego-being and follow the path first traversed for humanity by Christ.

Thus everything had to be a repetition; even as regards the teaching. It need not surprise us that special emphasis is laid on the difference between the old teaching and the new; that stress was laid on the fact that the ego could now achieve in itself what had hitherto been quite impossible for it.

Suppose that Christ had wished to refer specially to this great truth. He would have shown how formerly, in accordance with the teaching of the Mysteries, human beings had ever looked up to the Kingdom of Heaven, and had felt that from heavenly realms something came down to them which blessed them, but did not enter their ego. The Father-Source of Existence had only been attainable with a suppressed Ego. Had it been necessary for Christ to retain this former teaching concerning the Divine Paternal Source of existence, and only change the nuance upon which the teaching depended, He must have expressed it thus: ‘If formerly men said, you must raise your eyes to the realms where the Father dwelleth, the divine Source of all existence, and wait until His Light streams down upon you, now it is possible to say: The Father not only sends down His Light to you, but that which is willed on high must enter the very depths of man's ego-nature, and be willed there also.’

Let us suppose that each separate phrase of the Lord's Prayer had existed previously, only that something in them had to be changed. Christ would have said: ‘In former times man looked up to the ancient divine Father Spirit, feeling that everything there endures, and looks down on your earthly kingdom.’

But now this Heavenly Kingdom was to come down to earth where the ego dwells, and the Will that is done in Heaven was also to be done on Earth. What would be the result of this? The result would be, that those who had a deeper vision and could perceive the finer degrees of difference would not be surprised at the fact that the Lord's Prayer had existed earlier. The superficial observer does not notice these finer shades of difference, nor can he understand the true meaning of Christianity. If he came upon these phrases in ancient times he would have said: ‘There it is, the Evangelists write about the Lord's Prayer, but it existed already before their time!’

You can now realize the difference between a true and a superficial understanding of what is written. It is important that those who note the new shades of meaning should apply them to the old. The others, not seeing the difference, merely assert that the Lord's Prayer existed before.

Such facts require attention and have to be spoken of here, because Anthroposophists should be enabled to meet to some extent the dilettante learning of to-day: a learning which passes through countless hundreds of periodicals, until finally it is accepted as ‘Science.’ One individual has actually compared every possible ancient record, searching each source in the Talmud literature, in an endeavour to find some resemblance to the words of the Lord's Prayer. But what these learned people have accumulated is nowhere found in its entirety outside the Gospels. Scattered phrases resembling those of the Lord's Prayer they have discovered here and there. To reduce this method to absurdity it might as well be said that the first sentence of Goethe's ‘Faust’ was constructed in the following way: In the seventeenth century there was a student who failed in his examination, and who afterwards remarked to his father, With what an infinity of trouble I have studied law! And another failing in medicine might have said, ‘With what infinity of trouble have I studied medicine!’ And that from these two remarks Goethe had composed the opening sentences of Faust! This is paradoxical! But in principle and methods it is exactly what we meet in critics of the Gospels.

You will find this in the following patched-up sentences. I take them from Die-Evangelien-Mythen, John M. Robertson, Jena, Diedrichs, 1910. It is supposed to represent the Lord's Prayer:

‘Our Father Who art in Heaven; O Lord our God, blessed be Thy Name, and may the memory of Thee be glorified in Heaven above as on Earth below. Let Thy Kingdom rule over us now and ever more. Holy men of old have said: Let all men be forgiven whatever they may have done to me. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from the wicked. For Thine is the Heavenly Kingdom; and Thou shalt reign in splendour for ever and ever.’

These sentences were collected and put together in the manner I have just described, and are called the ‘Lord's Prayer.’ But the subtle shades of meaning necessary to give the unique significance of the Christ Event are lacking. In none of these phrases do we find it stated that the Kingdom of Heaven is to come down. The sentence runs: ‘Let Thy Kingdom rule over us now and ever more,’ not ‘Let Thy Kingdom come to us.’ This is the essential point, which entirely escapes superficial observers and although these sentences are gathered, not from one, but from many libraries, nowhere do we find the words ‘Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven’ for these imply its taking hold of the ego.

Even regarded from the external scientific point of view, we have here clearly demonstrated the difference between an apparent investigation and one that is truly conscientious, and takes every fact into consideration. And this true investigation exists if people will only take the trouble to pursue it.

These sentences from J. M. Robertson's book have been deliberately selected, for it is a kind of modern gospel recently translated from English into German to make it available to wider circles. For until now a certain person¹ who has given numerous lectures on the subject of whether Jesus really lived, would have had to read it in English. This book gained popularity, and hence the translation.

It has accordingly been possible for a professor of a German Academy to travel widely giving lectures on the question, ‘Did Jesus live?’ Basing his teaching on the facts just given, he answered the question thus: ‘There is no documentary evidence forcing us to accept the fact that such a person as Jesus has ever lived;’ and among many very excellent works, he referred his hearers to J. M. Robertson's book. But for the protection of Anthroposophists I can say: Even from this book, from these historical investigations of the New Testament records, you can learn many things, and there is something further, something very characteristic that I should like to tell you.

This book informs us that not only in phrases drawn from the Talmud is there a model of the Lord's Prayer, but that traces of it may be discovered in chronicles reaching back for thousands of years. To substantiate the fact of the Lord's Prayer being a collection of phrases already existing, and that no Christ was needed to give it out first to the people, an allusion is made to the discovery of a prayer written on little tablets in the Chaldean tongue, a prayer addressed to the old Babylonian god Merodach. Some of the sentences quoted there are as follows, and should be carefully noted: ‘May the fulness of the world come down into thy midst (or city); may thy precepts be fulfilled in all the ages to come. ... May the evil Spirit dwell far from thee.’²

And the savant upon whom these sentences made such an impression added: ‘Here we have prayer-norms which are in line with the Lord's Prayer and perhaps go back 4000 years before Christ.’

Look carefully, and see if you can find anywhere any resemblance between the sentences of the Lord's Prayer and these phrases! Yet these are regarded by this man as prayer-norms, of which the Lord's Prayer is merely a copy! Such things are accepted nowadays as true investigations in this domain of knowledge.

A further reason for presenting these facts to Anthroposophists is that they may be able to calm and strengthen their consciences when troubled by the constant assertion that this or that fact has been established by external investigation. They may well be troubled upon reading in papers or magazines that a tablet has been discovered in Asia proving the existence of the Lord's Prayer, 4000 years before Christ. In such a case it is necessary to ask how such a fact can be proved. The above example reveals the slender foundations on which scientifically based facts are frequently supposed to have been proved. It is unnecessary for students of Anthroposophy to trouble about the worthless facts so often brought forward against it.

But to return to our main theme; Christ Jesus inaugurated an evolution in human nature, based on the retention of the full consciousness of the ego. He inaugurated the initiation of the ego. We can therefore say that the most essential part of the human being to-day is the ego; in it all human nature is centred; everything brought into the world through the Christ Event for this ego, can enter also into all the other members of man's being. This will naturally come to pass in a quite special way, and in accordance with human evolution.

The possibilities of human development are to be clearly seen from these Lectures. Recognition of the physical world, not only through the senses but also through the understanding, and through the intellect connected with the physical brain, first began to function generally just a short time before the Christ Event. It superseded a certain kind of clairvoyance. This clairvoyance which was mentioned in my Lectures on the early Atlantean evolution was universal at that time, though later it came slowly and gradually to an end. Down to the Christian era there were still many who in the intermediate condition between sleeping and waking were able to gaze into, and participate in, the spiritual world. Such a ‘partaking’ in the spiritual world was not only linked with the fact that the average man who had a certain degree of clairvoyance could state: ‘Behind the tapestry of the world of the senses there is a spiritual world. I know this, for I can perceive it.’ This was not all; something else was connected with it. In long past ages it was comparatively easy for human nature to be aware of the spiritual world. The nature of man to-day is different, and it is exceedingly difficult to pass in the right way through the esoteric training that leads to clairvoyance. In somnambulism and similar things we see a relic, a last remnant of the old-time clairvoyance. These conditions which are irregular to-day were normal in ancient times, and could be enhanced by undergoing certain processes. When human nature was exalted to participation in the life of the spiritual world something else was associated with it. To-day there is so little regard for that in which true history consists that people pick and choose what they will, or will not, believe. But, in face of modern scepticism, it is nevertheless true that in the time of Christ certain acts of healing were performed by rendering people clairvoyant. In our time human beings are so deeply sunk within the physical plane that this is no longer possible; but in that earlier period the soul was still very impressionable, and certain processes were all that were necessary to bring about clairvoyance and an entrance into the spiritual world. The spiritual world, being a health-giving element, sends down health-giving forces into the physical world, so that it was possible to effect cures through it. The person who was ill was put through certain processes which led him to perceive the spiritual world. Then the spiritual stream, flowing down into his whole being brought health. This was the usual method of healing. What is described to-day as ‘Temple healing’ is dilettante in comparison.

Everything is in a state of evolution, and, since the time of which we have been speaking, souls have progressed from clairvoyance to non-clairvoyance. Formerly through enhancement of the clairvoyant condition men could be cured of certain illnesses by the spirit streaming from the spiritual into the physical world. We need not, therefore, be surprised at the statements of the Evangelists, that the Christ Event meant that the spiritual world could now be attained not only by those who possessed the old clairvoyance but also by those who had lost it.

Men could say: ‘Looking back into olden times we see men endowed with vision of the spiritual world; but now, through the advance of evolution, they have become poor in the spirit, beggars for the spirit. But Christ has brought this great Mystery into the world, that into the ego—even into the ego of the physical plane—the forces of the Heavenly Kingdoms can enter; thus those who have lost the old clairvoyance and with it the riches of the spiritual realms can yet receive the spirit within themselves and be blessed!’ Hence the wonderful declaration Henceforth not only those are blessed who are rich in the spirit through the old clairvoyance, but those also who are poor or beggars for the spirit; for when Christ has opened the way, into their ego will flow what may be described as the Kingdoms of the Heavens!

In ancient times the physical organism was of such a nature that a partial withdrawal of the soul could be brought about even in normal conditions, and through this withdrawal men became clairvoyant, that is, rich in spirit. With the gradual densification of the human body, which however is quite imperceptible anatomically; is associated poverty as regards the Kingdoms of the Heavens. Man had become a ‘beggar for spirit;’ but through the Event of Christ it is now possible for him to experience the Kingdoms of the Heavens within himself. This is a possibility that can be rightly associated with the physical body.

If we were now to describe what takes place through the ego-man, we should have to show how each principle of human nature can be blessed in itself in a new way. The sentence: ‘Blessed are the beggars for the spirit, for within themselves they will find the Kingdoms of the Heavens!’ is the new truth as regards the physical body.

The blessedness of the etheric body is expressed differently. The etheric body contains the principle of suffering as you can find in many of the lectures. A living being, although it has an astral body, can only suffer through injury to the etheric body. If the healing which formerly poured into the etheric body from the spiritual world were to be described according to the new teaching it would be said: Sufferers can now find comfort not only by passing out of themselves and being united with the spiritual world as in earlier days, but they can find comfort within themselves by entering into a new relationship with the spiritual world, for Christ has brought a new power to the etheric body. Hence the new truth concerning the etheric body declares: ‘Sufferers can now be blessed, not only through entering the spiritual world clairvoyantly and allowing the outpourings of the spirit to come to them in this state, but they can be blessed when lifting themselves up to Christ they fill themselves with the new truth, and find in themselves the solace for every sorrow.’

And what of the astral body? When men of an earlier day endeavoured to suppress their emotions and passions and the egoism of their astral nature, they sought power from the Kingdom of Heaven; they submitted themselves to processes by which the harmful instincts of the astral body were destroyed. But the time had now come when through the act of Christ man had received power into the ego itself by which he could bridle and tame the passions and emotions of his astral body. So the new truth concerning the astral body must read as follows: ‘Blessed are those who have become meek through the power of their own ego, for they will inherit the kingdom of earth!’ Profound indeed is the thought contained in this third Beatitude. Let us examine it in the light of Occult Science.

The astral body was incorporated into man's being during the Moon evolution, and the Luciferic beings who had gained influence over him had established themselves especially in this body. Therefore man from the beginning was unable to reach his highest earthly goal. These Luciferic beings, as we know, remained behind at the Moon stage of evolution, and hindered man from progressing in the right way; but since the descent of Christ to earth, when it has been possible for the ego to be impregnated with His power, man has been enabled to fulfil the mission of the earth by finding in himself the power to bridle his astral body and drive out the Luciferic influences. Therefore, it can be said: ‘He who can curb his astral body, who is so strong that he cannot be moved to anger without the consent of his ego, he who is even-tempered and inwardly strong enough to overcome the astral body, will fulfil the purpose of earthly evolution.’ So in the third Beatitude we have a formula which Spiritual Science has made comprehensible to us.

How can man succeed in controlling the remaining members of his being and bless them through the indwelling Spirit of Christ? He can do this when his soul-nature is controlled by the ego as truly and worthily as is his physical body. Passing on to the sentient soul, we can say: As man gradually evolves to a consciousness of the Christ, he must arrive at experiencing a feeling of longing in his sentient soul similar to what he previously experienced unwittingly as the physical longing we call hunger and thirst. He must thirst for the things of the soul, as the body hungers and thirsts for food and drink. What can be attained through the indwelling Christ-force is that which is described comprehensively in the old-fashioned phrase as thirsting after righteousness; and when a man has filled his sentient soul with the Christ-force he can reach a point where it is possible for him to satisfy this thirst through the power that is in him.

The fifth Beatitude is especially noteworthy, as might be expected, for it refers to the rational, or intellectual soul. Those who have studied my books, Occult Science or Theosophy, or have listened to the lectures on Spiritual Science given during many years, are familiar with the idea of the ego holding together the three principles of the human soul—the sentient soul, the rational, intellectual or mind-soul, and the consciousness-soul or spiritual soul. The ego, though present in the sentient-soul, is as yet in a dulled condition; it comes to life in the intellectual-soul, and through this, man first becomes a complete human being. While man's lower principles and even the sentient-soul are dominated by divine spiritual beings, he becomes an individual in the rational-soul, in it the ego dawns. Therefore we must speak of the reception of the Christ-force into the intellectual or rational-soul in a different way from that used when treating of the lower principles. In the lower principles—the physical, etheric, and astral sheaths, and also in the sentient-soul, divine beings are at work, and to them anything in the way of virtues man has acquired are again taken up. But the qualities evolved in the rational-soul, when this has developed what it receives from the Christ, must above all be human attributes. When a man begins to discover this soul within himself he grows less and less dependent on the divine forces around him. We have here something that belongs to man himself. When he absorbs the power of Christ into this soul he can develop virtues which go from like to like, which are not besought from Heaven as a loan, but go forth from man and return to a being similar to himself. We must try to feel that something streams forth from the virtues of the rational soul in such a way that something similar streams to us again. Wonderful to relate, the fifth Beatitude actually shows us this distinctive quality.

Even a faulty translation cannot conceal the fact; it is different from all the others in that it says: ‘Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy.’ What goes forth returns again—as it must if we accept it in the sense of Occult Science.

In the sixth Beatitude, which refers to the spiritual-soul, we arrive at that principle in man which enables the ego to attain full expression, after which he can make further ascent, in a new way. You know that at the time of the coming of Christ the rational soul first came to expression; in our time it is the spiritual-soul that is destined to find expression—the soul by means of which man will ascend again to the spiritual world. While human self-consciousness first dawned within the rational soul, it is in the spiritual-soul that the ego attains full development and rises once more to the spiritual world. The man who becomes a receptacle for the Christ-force, because he experiences the Christ in himself, will, by pouring his ego into the consciousness-soul or spiritual-soul, and experiencing it in its purity for the first time, be able in this way to find his God. Now it has been said that the blood is the expression of the ego in the physical body, and that its centre is in the heart. Therefore this sixth Beatitude has to express in a practical way how the ego, through the qualities with which it endows heart and blood, can partake of divinity. How does this verse run? ‘Blessed are those who are pure in heart for they shall see God.’ Though not a specially good translation it serves our purpose.

This is how Spiritual Science pours light on the whole structure of these wonderful sentences in which Christ gives instruction to His most intimate pupils, after He had withstood the Temptation in the wilderness.

The remaining Beatitudes refer to a man's raising of himself to the higher principles of his being; to the spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man. They give but an indication of what it will be possible to experience in the future, of what is only possible in our day to a few exceptional individuals. Thus the seventh Beatitude, referring to the spirit-self, says: ‘Blessed are those who draw down into themselves the spirit-self, the first of the spiritual principles, for they will be called the children of God.’ The first of the higher triad has, in this case, entered into these men. They have received God into themselves; they have become an outer expression of the Godhead.

In what follows it is clearly shown that only exceptional beings can attain to what is spoken of in the eighth Beatitude, those who fully understand what the future is to bring to the whole of humanity. This, the ‘complete reception of Christ into a man's inner being,’ is only for a few chosen ones. Because these are exceptional individuals, they are persecuted, for others are unable to understand them. Hence, referring to the persecution of these representatives of the future race, this Beatitude declares: ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake; for in themselves they will find the Kingdom of Heaven.’

The ninth and last Beatitude has especial reference to the most intimate disciples only. It is associated with the ninth member of man's being—the spirit-man: ‘Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you and persecute you for my sake.’

Thus in these wonderful lines reference is made to the nine principles of human nature, and we are shown how the ego is constituted when it becomes ‘Christ-filled’ as regards the different principles of man's being, and blesses them. In the portions following on the Temptation, the Gospel of Matthew shows in grand and majestic way how the influence of Christ works in the nine-fold human nature in the present, and then how it will work in the near future, when those in whom the spirit-self has dawned are already called ‘Children of God,’ even if these children of God are only to be found in a few blessed examples. Especially remarkable is the distinct language used concerning the first principles which are already in being, and the lapse into indeterminate language in the last sentences where the far future is referred to.

Once more let me touch on the superficial method of research. Suppose someone were investigating if sentences could anywhere be found similar to those of the Sermon on the Mount, or if the Evangelists had perhaps compiled these from something else. Suppose also that this person had no idea of what was referred to in the Beatitudes: that the important matter there dealt with was the filling of man's ego-nature with the Christ. If reference to this marvellous enhancement of the ego-nature had not been noticed, he could indicate the following. One has only to read a little further in the book already mentioned to find in it a chapter headed ‘The Beatitudes,’ in which reference is made to ‘Enoch’ (this is not the usual Enoch), and herein nine ‘Beatitudes’ are cited. The author has this much in his favour, that he acknowledges that this document belongs to the very beginning of the Christian era, and he believes that what we have described as being a document of the very profoundest importance and depth could have been copied from the following nine Beatitudes of this Slavonic Enoch.

1. Blessed is he who fears the name of the Lord, and incessantly serves before his face, etc.
2. Blessed is he who does not give a false judgment on account of payment, but in the cause of fairness, not expecting anything in exchange; he will receive a just judgment later.
3. Blessed is he who clothes the naked with his raiment, and feeds the hungry with his bread.
4. Blessed is he who judges rightly the fatherless and widows and supports all those who are oppressed.
5. Blessed is he who turns from the restless path of this vain world, travelling the true way which leads to eternal life.
6. Blessed is he who sows good seed, he will reap sevenfold.
7. Blessed is he in whom is truth, and speaks truth to his neighbours.
8. Blessed is he who has love on his lips, and kindness in his heart.
9. Blessed is he who understands each word of the Lord, and extols His name, etc., etc.

These phrases are certainly beautiful; but consider their whole construction, and the matter with which they are concerned, namely, the recounting of a few worthy platitudes suitable to any period other than one of such tremendous upheaval—the age in which the power of the ego was first being made known. If these lines are likened by anyone to the Beatitudes of the Gospel of Matthew, he stands at the external point of those who compare the religions of mankind in an external way, who, whenever they discover something in any way similar, instantly state an identity, paying no heed to the essential point.

Only when the essential point is recognized does one realize that there is progress in human evolution, and that man advances from stage to stage; that he is not born anew in a physical body in a later millennium to experience over again what he has experienced already, but so that he may experience that in which humanity has progressed meanwhile. That is the meaning of history and of human evolution. Of history, and of human evolution in this sense the Gospel of Matthew speaks on every page.

• 1. Dr. Arthur Drews.
• 2. In the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Oct., 1891, Mr. T. G. Pinches publishes for the first time the translation of a tablet found at Sippara in the year 1882, in which the sentences quoted above appear as an incantation to Merodach.

The gradual endowment of the human ego-forces with the knowledge of the Mysteries. The Beatitudes. The Healings. The Heavenly Bread. The new Essene teaching

We showed in the last lecture that what Christ Jesus means for human evolution is the gradual equipment of the human ego with those forces and capacities formerly only possible of attainment in the Mysteries of the past, when the ego was to a certain extent suppressed. In all ancient initiations it was possible to rise up into the spiritual worlds, into what we called the Kingdoms of Heaven, but with human nature constituted as it was in pre-Christian times, this could not be done while within the ego or while the nature of the ego remained as it was on the physical plane. We have, therefore, to distinguish two conditions of the human soul; one, recognized to-day as normal during waking life, when the objects of the physical plane are perceived by means of the ego; another, in which the ego is clouded, and there is no clear consciousness. It was during this latter condition of his soul that man was exalted to the Kingdoms of Heaven in the days of the ancient Mysteries.

These Heavenly Kingdoms were now to be brought down to earth—first, in accordance with the preaching of John the Baptist, and then in accordance with that of Christ Jesus Himself; so that man might receive an impulse to a more far-reaching development, and be able in his normal ego-consciousness to experience the higher worlds. It was, therefore, not only natural that all the statements concerning incidents in the life of the Christ Jesus should reproduce what a candidate for initiation experienced in the ancient Mysteries; but that ‘at the same time it should be emphasized, that there was to be a difference; these things were to take on a new colouring—a new condition of soul was to arise, a condition in which the ego would be fully conscious.

It was from this point of view that in the last Lecture we considered the nine Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. Still further elucidation of what is found in the present text of the Gospel of Matthew might be given, for in the translation from the Aramaic language into Greek much has been obscured. Yet even in the obscure Greek text, and especially in the later part of the Sermon on the Mount we are aware of clear reference being made to what it was possible to experience formerly through suppression of the ego. If formerly men felt: ‘When my ego was darkened I could enter the spiritual world and in this condition I was able to grasp this or that fundamental fact;’ in future it will be possible for them to do this while retaining full consciousness.

Full understanding of this presupposes some knowledge of something I have already mentioned: the way in which names were used in ancient times. Formerly names were chosen, unlike those of to-day, to indicate the essential nature of the thing designated. And it is clearly shown in all the designations employed in the Sermon on the Mount that Christ felt it was He Himself Who had raised the ego-consciousness to a higher plane than had been hitherto attainable, so that henceforth it would be able to experience within itself the Kingdoms of Heaven. Therefore He placed before the souls of His disciples this contrast ‘Formerly, this or that was revealed to you from the Kingdoms of Heaven; but henceforth ye will be aware of these things when ye listen to what your “I” says to you.’ Hence the ever-recurring expression, ‘I say unto you,’ showing how Christ felt Himself to be representative of every human soul. This is expressed in the words, ‘I say it!’ ‘I, in full consciousness.’ The expression, ‘I say unto you,’ words found all through the Sermon on the Mount, should not be taken lightly. They are the repeated reference to a new impulse that was being implanted in humanity through Christ Jesus. Read in this way the continuation of the Sermon on the Mount, and you will feel that Christ wished to say: ‘Until now, ye were unable to appeal to your own ego, but henceforth, through My gift, through the power of your own inner being, of your own ego, ye will be able gradually to gain the Kingdoms of Heaven.’ The whole spirit of the Sermon on the Mount is pervaded by this new impulse, so also is that which follows, leading on as it does to the so-called miracles of healing.

The ‘healings’ by our Lord, and more especially the ‘miracles,’ have been the subject of a vast amount of discussion, as is well known. Great stress has been laid on the fact that miracles are spoken of in the Gospels. We will now consider these more closely. Yesterday I pointed out to you that man quite underestimates to-day the changes that have taken place in his being during the course of evolution. A comparison in the finer, not the coarser sense, between a physical body of the time of Christ or earlier, and one of to-day, reveals a real difference. This difference, which is not apparent to ordinary science, can be established by occult investigation. The physical body at the beginning of our era was more plastic than it is to-day. It is now denser and more contracted. in those days the powers of perception were such that men knew of certain forces working in and moulding all bodies, so that the muscles were more clearly revealed. Knowledge of this was gradually lost. Childish nonsense in the history of Art points to old drawings, where the formation of the muscles seems exaggerated, and supposes that this indicates the ancient artist's lack of skill. People who criticize such drawings are unaware that they are the result of actual observation, which was quite correct for those days but false in ours. This is, however, of less concern to us at the moment than the main fact, which is, that bodies were then constituted differently.

The power of the soul and of the spirit had a far greater more momentary influence on the human body at one time than was later the case. As the body became denser the soul lost power over it. Therefore, healing through the soul was formerly more possible than it is to-day. The soul had then far more power to permeate a disordered body with active health-giving forces drawn from the spiritual worlds, and to restore it to harmony from within itself. With the progress of evolution the power of the soul over the body declined. Healing became less and less a spiritual process. The physicians of those times, unlike those of to-day, were healers who worked on the body by influencing the soul. They purified the soul by their spiritual influences, filling it with healthy perceptions, impulses, and will-power. These were exercised either under the ordinary conditions of physical perception or through ‘temple sleep,’ which was but a means of rendering men clairvoyant. In considering that ancient culture, we are obliged to say that those who were strong of soul and able to draw upon their own acquired resources could influence the souls of others, and through them their physical bodies to a considerable degree. These men, who were filled with spirit, so that they radiated healing forces, were called ‘Healers.’ Fundamentally, not the ‘Therapeutæ’ only, but also the Essenes, should be regarded as Healers. We can go further: in a certain dialect of Asia Minor, where a language was spoken by those associated with the origin of Christianity, the word they employed, which we translate as ‘spiritual healer,’ was ‘Jesus,’ and means ‘Spiritual Physician.’ That is the actual meaning of ‘Jesus.’ It is the correct translation when one has a feeling for the value of words, and throws light on what was felt to exist in such names at a time when names still meant something.

A man who spoke in accordance with the feeling of those times would have said: ‘There are men who have gained entrance to the Mysteries; who, by means of a certain sacrifice of their ego-consciousness, can touch certain psycho-spiritual forces which then stream from them, so that they become ‘healers’ of others. Suppose such a man had become a disciple of Christ Jesus he might then have said, ‘Strange things have come to pass in our day! Formerly only those could heal who had received spiritual forces through a suppressed ego-consciousness induced in the Mysteries—but now there is One among us Who has become a healer without undergoing the procedure of the Mysteries, and without suppression of His ego-consciousness.’

It was not the performance of miracles that was exceptional, or that spiritual healings took place as described in the Gospel of St. Matthew. This did not strike people as especially wonderful, nor did it seem especially miraculous in those days. A man might then have asked: What is wonderful in spiritual healing being performed by such people? It is quite comprehensible! What is wonderful is what the writer of the Gospel of Matthew says: ‘Here is One Who has brought a new and living force into human nature which enables Him to heal by the impulse of His own ego; by such means healings could not be performed formerly.’ So something quite different from what was usual is here described in the Gospels. The results of occult investigation here put forward by Spiritual Science may be verified in countless ways, and can indeed be proved by historical research.

One instance will serve by way of illustration. If the statements just made be true, then it must have been realized in olden times that under certain conditions the blind could receive their sight through spiritual influences. Attention is directed and justifiably to old pictures representing this. Even J. M. Robertson writes of a picture in Rome which represents Aesculapius standing before two blind men, and he draws the natural conclusion that it represents an act of healing. He then supposes that the writers of the Gospels incorporated this in their narratives. The important point here is not that spiritual healings were miracles, but that the artist desired to depict Aesculapius as an initiate who had acquired his healing powers through the suppression of his ego-consciousness in the Mysteries. But the writer of the Gospel of Matthew wishes to emphasize something else; he wishes to point out: ‘Christ did not perform His healings in this way, but the living force that worked in Him as an original and isolated example, is to be acquired gradually by the whole of humanity; every man will in time be able to do these things through the power of his ego.’ Not yet, but in the distant future, this power will come to life in man. What has been accomplished by Christ at the beginning of our era will slowly and gradually dawn and men will become capable of bringing it to expression. It was this that the narrator of the Gospel of Matthew desired to emphasize. Speaking out of occult consciousness I can say: This writer did not specially intend to describe a ‘miracle,’ but something natural and comprehensible, only he wished to show that it was accomplished in a new way. This is what is found when the results of true investigations by means of spiritual science are presented; we see how profound are the misunderstandings that have entered into the Gospels. How does the story continue?

So far we have seen that what happened in the life of Christ through the ‘Temptation’ was a descent into all these experiences passed through when a man sinks down into his physical and etheric body; and that the forces radiating from His physical and etheric bodies worked as is told in the Sermon on the Mount, and as is revealed in the subsequent healings. In what follows we recognize that the power of Christ Jesus worked and attracted to Him pupils, in the same way as they were attracted to Initiates of old; but, as was natural, these were attracted to Him in a way peculiarly His own.

If the Gospel of Matthew is to be understood from this point onwards, we must recall by way of preparation certain facts of Occult Science acquired through years of study. We must recall that a disciple who truly treads the path of initiation, acquires a kind of imaginative perception, a perception that lives in imaginations. Those who dwelt much in the presence of Christ Jesus had not only to acquire the power by which they could hearken to such magnificent utterances as those of the Sermon on the Mount, they had not only to participate in healings accomplished through Him, but the mighty force active in Christ Jesus had gradually to pass over to those who were His most intimate friends and disciples. This too is revealed. First it is shown how, after the Temptation, Christ was empowered to disclose a new meaning in the ancient teaching, and to carry out the ancient healing by means of a new impulse. Next we are told how the force that was incorporated in Him in fullest measure affected His disciples and those most clearly associated with Him.

How are we shown this? By the fact, that what He stood for was communicated to the unreceptive in words, but to those who were receptive and were chosen by Himself, the action was different. In these chosen ones it worked so that it endowed them with imaginations, it stirred in them the first stage of higher knowledge. What proceeded from Christ Jesus acted therefore in a twofold manner on those who were ‘outside or without’ so that they heard His words, and with them acquired a kind of theory; on the others, who had felt His power, and were chosen because, on account of their Karma, they were specially open to receive this power, it awakened imaginative cognition, a knowledge which in a certain way led them a stage higher towards the spiritual world. This is expressed in the words, ‘Those who are outside hear only in parables;’ meaning they could receive facts concerning the spiritual worlds expressed in images; but to His chosen ones He said, ‘Ye can receive the deeper meaning of the parables—the language that leads to the things of the higher worlds.’ Nor must these words be taken other than literally.

Let us now consider seriously how the disciples were led into the higher worlds. At any rate to understand what I now have to say not only listeners are needed but also a certain amount of goodwill, permeated with understanding gained in the study of occult science. I may then be able to convey to you what is really meant by what follows in the Gospel of Matthew. To do so we will again recall the two sides of initiation: The first where man descends into his physical and etheric body, thus learning to know his own inner being, and is led to the forces that are creative in himself; and the other side where he is led into the spiritual world, to expansion into the macrocosm. Now we know that in reality, though unconscious of it, man withdraws his astral body and ego from his physical and etheric body during sleep, and pours them into the starry universe so that he may absorb its forces—hence the name astral (starry) body. The result of this form of initiation is not merely a conscious understanding ofthings on earth, but a participation in, and a pouring of the self into, the cosmos: a reception of forces flowing in from the cosmos, and a knowledge of the starry world. All this that has to be striven for and slowly acquired by us was, on account of His special nature, already in the Christ from the time of the Baptism in Jordan. It was in Him not only in a condition that resembled sleep, but during His waking hours when within His physical and etheric bodies. He could even then unite His Being with the forces of the stars, and bring their forces down into the physical world.

What was brought to pass by Christ Jesus may therefore be described as follows: Through the attraction of His specially prepared physical and etheric bodies, and through His whole nature, He drew down to earth the forces of the sun, moon, and stars, and of the cosmos generally, in so far as it is related to our Earth. The deeds accomplished by Him were accomplished through the agency of those health-giving, life-endowing cosmic forces which otherwise stream down into man during sleep. The forces through which the Christ worked were forces streaming down from the cosmos through His bodily attraction, they streamed from His body on to His disciples. The disciples now began to be receptive, so that they rightly felt: This Christ Jesus Whom we see before us is a being, through Whom the forces of the cosmos come to us like spiritual nourishment; this force pours over us!

But the disciples were themselves in a twofold state of consciousness—for they had not yet attained that highest state of human development, but only reached up to a higher development through Christ. They themselves lived continually in a twofold state of consciousness that may be compared with the sleeping and waking of ordinary men; and because they were in this alternating condition it was possible for them, in the one state as well as in the other, to come under the influence of the magical power of Christ. The power of Christ acted upon them alike by day when they were with Him and by night when they were outside the physical and etheric bodies. But while men are normally unconscious of their starry environment during sleep, the disciples were aware of the Christ-force about them; it was visible to them. They knew that it was His force that nourished them from the starry universe.

This twofold consciousness produced yet another effect on the disciples. In everyone, including the disciples, we have to recognize both the man of the present and also that which he bears within him as the seed for future incarnations. The seed of what will flower in you in future epochs in an entirely new way is already present in each one of you. If this power which already exists in you were to develop to clairvoyance, it would reveal itself by a sort of early clairvoyant experience, and this would take the form of a vision of the immediate future. If these first experiences are pure and true, things concerning the more immediate future are seen. This was the case with the disciples. In normal consciousness the Christ-force streamed into them so that they said: ‘When we are awake the force of Christ flows into us as it does in normal waking consciousness.’

But how was it when they slept? Because they were the disciples of Jesus and as the power of the Christ had worked in them they became clairvoyant at certain times during sleep; they did not then see what was taking place at the time, but they could participate in the future. They plunged, as it were, into the sea of astral visions and beheld prophetically things that would happen in the future.

The disciples lived therefore in two conditions of consciousness. During the day they felt that Christ brought to them from cosmic space the forces of cosmic worlds that He passed this on to them as spiritual nourishment; that because He was Himself the power of the Sun, He brought to them what is represented by the Christian acceptance of the teaching of Zarathustra. Christ passed on to them the forces the Sun had to bestow through the seven day-time constellations. There below was their day-time nourishment. During the night the disciples were aware that through the power of Christ, the invisible night-time Sun poured heavenly nourishment into their souls as it passed through the remaining five constellations.

Thus in their imaginative clairvoyance they felt: ‘We are united with the Christ-force, with the Sun-force; it sends to us what is right for the men of the present period, that is, the men of the Fourth Epoch of civilization; in the other state of consciousness, that of the night, the Christ-force imparts to us the gifts of the night-time Sun, as the power of the five night constellations.’ But this was appropriate only to the age that was coming, the Fifth Epoch of civilization. This is what the disciples experienced. How could this be expressed?

We shall have more to say of this in the next Lecture meanwhile I wish to speak of something else. In ancient times a crowd or mass of people was described as a ‘thousand,’ and when it was intended to particularize, a number was added descriptive of the most important characteristic of this crowd. The people of the fourth period of civilization were therefore described as the ‘fourth thousand’ while those who already lived in accordance with the Fifth Epoch were called the ‘fifth thousand.’ These were simply technical terms. The disciples knew therefore, that during the day they received, through Christ from the seven day-constellations, the nourishment suitable for the Fourth Period of civilization, that is, for the fourth thousand. And they knew that in their imaginative clairvoyant consciousness of the night they perceived through the five night-constellations what pertained to the epoch that was coming—that of the fifth thousand. The people of the Fourth Epoch, or the fourth thousand, were nourished from Heaven by the seven heavenly loaves—the seven day-time constellations; the people of the Fifth Epoch, or the five thousand, were fed from Heaven by the five night-constellations. At the same time the division between the constellations of the day and those of the night is always indicated by fishes—the twelfth sign of the Zodiac.

Here an important secret is touched on; it refers to an important procedure in the Mysteries—the magic intercourse between Christ and His disciples. Christ makes this clear when He tells them He does not speak of the old leaven of the Pharisees, but that He brings down to them heavenly food from the Sun-forces of the cosmos although on one occasion He had only the seven day-time constellations to draw from—the seven day-time loaves—and on the other the five constellations of night, the five night-time loaves. The division between being always provided by ‘the fishes’—indeed on one occasion two fishes are expressly mentioned, thus indicating His meaning even more clearly.

Who can doubt, when they catch in this way but a glimpse of the profound depths of the Gospel of Matthew, that it is concerned with revelations reaching back to the time of Zarathustra, and that this had to be so, for Zarathustra was the first who taught of the Spirit of the Sun, the first who brought realization of the magic Sun-force that would one day stream down to earth upon those capable of receiving it.

What do the superficial expounders of the Gospels say about these things? They find in the Gospel of Matthew a description of the feeding of the four thousand with seven loaves of bread, and on another occasion the feeding of five thousand with five loaves. They regard the second account merely as a repetition of the first, and the difference in numbers as the error of the negligent copyist. Doubtless such a thing can happen in the making of modern books. The Gospels, however, did not arise in this way. If an account appears twice in them there is a profound reason for it. It is because the profound facts of the Gospel of Matthew are in accordance with the teachings given out by the great Essene Jesus ben Pandira a hundred years before the coming of the Christ-Sun, in order that when He did come He might be understood, that we must strive really to search out the profundities of this Gospel. But to continue.

Christ, in the first place, allowed the forces of Imaginative, or astral vision, to stream forth from Him into the disciples, who absorbed them to the measure of their capacity. This is clearly shown. One might say: Let him who has eyes to read, read. As in earlier days when things were not all written down, it was said: Let him who has ears to hear, hear! So we say: Let him who has eyes to read, read the Gospels! Is it anywhere indicated that this force of the Christ-Sun appeared differently to the disciples by day from how it did by night? Yes, this is clearly indicated.

In an important passage of the Gospel we read that in the fourth watch of the night—that means between three and six o'clock in the morning—the disciples, who were slumbering, saw what they first took to be an apparition walking on the water. This was the nocturnal Sun-force reflected from the Christ. Even the exact time is given, because only at a certain time could it be revealed to them how this force streamed down to them from the cosmos through such a Being. That Christ Jesus walked in Palestine, and that in the wanderings of this Person, this single Individual, the means existed by which the Sun-forces were able to work within our earth, is clearly shown by the fact that reference is always made in the Gospels to the position of the Sun with regard to the constellations—the heavenly bread. This cosmic-nature of the Christ, this activity of the cosmic forces through the Christ, is everywhere insisted upon.

Further, the disciples most fitted to receive it had to be specially initiated by the Christ, so that they could perceive the spiritual world not only imaginatively as in astral pictures, but so that they might see and also hear what took place there. (This has often been spoken of as the ascent into Devachan.) This initiation was to enable them to develop the capacity by which they could identify the personality known to them on earth as Christ Jesus, when, through the spiritual progress they had made, they saw Him on the spiritual plane. They were to become clairvoyant in a region still higher than that of the astral plane.

Not all the disciples were capable of this. It Was possible only for those most receptive of the force emanating from Christ. According to the Gospel of Matthew, these were Peter, James, and John. Therefore it tells how the Christ guided these three to where He could lead them beyond the astral realm into the realms of Devachan. Here they could see certain spiritual archetypes; first, Christ Jesus Himself; and then, because they were able to perceive the relationship in which He stood to the others, the ancient prophet Elias, he who later reincarnated as John the Baptist the forerunner of Christ Jesus. They were able to see Elias (for the scene took place after John's execution and withdrawal into the spiritual world), and they also saw Moses, his spiritual predecessor. This whole experience was only possible because the three chosen disciples had been exalted to spiritual, not only to astral vision. The Gospel clearly indicates that they attained to Devachan, for it tells us that they not only beheld the Christ filled with His Sun-force—expressed in the words: ‘His countenance shone like the Sun,’ but it also tells us that they heard the Three conversing together. This fact indicates an ascent into Devachan, they not only saw but also heard. This whole scene is in strict accordance with the investigations of Spiritual Science. Nowhere do we find any contradiction between these investigations and what is revealed in the Gospels, when it describes how Christ Himself led His disciples first into the astral realm and then into Devachan, the realm of the spirit.

The Gospel of Matthew clearly identifies Christ Jesus as the mighty Bearer of the Sun-force once foretold by Zarathustra. In it He is faithfully described as the Power of the Sun, the Spirit of the Sun—Ahura Mazdao or Ormuzd. Stress is laid on the fact that the Being, of whom Zarathustra could only declare that He dwelt in the Sun, had, through the instrumentality of Jesus of Nazareth, descended to earth; He has dwelt upon the earth and united Himself with it. Through this one life in a physical, etheric, and astral body, He has become an impulse for earthly evolution, and has gradually united Himself more and more with that evolution. In other words An ego-nature was once present in such measure on earth within one personality that it has enabled those who followed it, who received the Christ or who accepted Him in the sense in which Paul accepted Him, gradually to acquire the power of this ego-nature in their following incarnations. When people pass from one incarnation to another, and if during the remainder of their time on earth they permeate their souls with the power of the Personality Who lived at that time, they will rise to ever greater and greater heights of attainment.

At one time those destined for it were able to behold the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth with their physical eyes. It had once in the course of earthly evolution to come to pass that the Christ, Who formerly could only be perceived as the Spirit of the Sun, descended and united Himself with the forces of earth for the sake of all mankind. Man is the being in whom the fulness of the flooding Sun-force is to live; that force, that on one definite occasion descended and lived within a physical body. This event marks the beginning of the era during which the Power of the Sun is to stream forth into man. It will flow gradually, and ever increasingly, into those who fill themselves from incarnation to incarnation with the Christ-force, so far as their earthly bodies will allow of it.

It must be understood that not every physical body can experience the Christ just as it was only that special body prepared in the complicated way we have described, through the two Jesus-forms, and then brought to a high state of perfection by Zarathustra in which the Christ could live once in His fulness. Only once. Those who devote themselves to it will be able to fill themselves with the Christ-force, first inwardly, then ever more outwardly. The future will bring not only understanding of this force, but people will be able to fill themselves with it. What the acceptance of Christ will mean for a human evolution on earth I have endeavoured to show you in the ‘seer-nature’ of Theodora in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play. She must be regarded as one who had developed the power of seeing into the near future, of seeing how we are advancing towards a time, not far distant, when at first a few, and then gradually more and more, will be able to see the form of Christ; not solely as the result of spiritual training but as a natural development of our present stage of evolution. They will perceive Him, not in the physical, but in the etheric world—and in a remoter future they will behold Him in yet another form. Once it was possible for people dwelling on the physical plane to see Him in His physical form; this had to be experienced once.

The Christ-impulse would, however, fail of its mission if it were not always active and evolving. We are approaching a time when man will be able to behold the Christ with his higher powers—this should be regarded as a message. It will happen that before the expiration of the twentieth century a limited number of people will become ‘Theodoras,’ which means that their eyes will be opened spiritually, and they will experience what Paul experienced before Damascus. Paul's vision was possible because he was ‘born out of due time,’ he was a premature birth. People like Paul have no need of Gospel or record in order to know Christ. Christ will appear to them in the etheric clouds, and they will know Him from inner experience as He is.

This is a kind of Second Coming of the Christ, but in an etheric garment, the garment in which He revealed Himself to Paul as a shadowing forth of what was to come. It is our task to emphasize most particularly that the very nature of the Christ-Event carries with it the implication that He Who came in a physical body as Christ Jesus at the beginning of our era, would appear again before its close; this time clothed in an etheric garment as he appeared to Paul on the way to Damascus. When by exalting his nature man acquires ever higher capacities, he will come to know the fulness of the nature of Christ. A second coming of Christ in a physical body would mean that no progress had been made since His first coming, that this had failed to bring about the development of higher powers in man. For the result of the Christ-Event is the development in man of these higher powers, and with these new powers Christ can be seen in the spiritual world whence His powers come.

Having an understanding of the historical struggle of our time it is our duty to speak of this fact, just as the great Essene teacher, Jesus ben Pandira, spoke prophetically of the Christ as ‘the Lion Who was to come forth from the line of David,’ thus referring to the Sun-Force that was to stream from the constellation of Leo. Could humanity but have the good fortune (I desire to give this only as an indication) of seeing the reincarnation in our time of that Jesus ben Pandira who was inspired by the great Bodhisattva destined to be the Maitreya Buddha, he would recognize as his most important mission this teaching concerning the etheric Christ, the Christ Who would appear in etheric clouds, and he would impress on his hearers the fact that once and once only could the Christ appear in a physical body. Let us suppose that this Jesus—the son of Pandira—who was stoned to death in Palestine a hundred years before our era were to be reincarnated in our time and that he announced the coming of Christ; he would not tell of His coming in a physical body but in an etheric garment, similar to that seen by Paul. By teaching this fact, Jesus ben Pandira would be recognized for what he was. The other most essential thing that we shall have to understand from him who will one day be the Maitreya Buddha is what might be called the new Essene teaching. We shall learn from him how Christ will appear in our time, and he would especially warn us against false conceptions concerning this rebirth of the Essene teaching. There is one sure sign by which we would be able to recognize Jesus hen Pandira were he to be born again in our day. He would not declare himself to be the Christ. Anyone who in our day declared his power to be the same as that which abode in Jesus of Nazareth would, by this very assertion, stamp himself as a false representative of that forerunner of Christ, who lived a hundred years before His day in Palestine. By such a declaration he would reveal himself as a false prophet. The danger here is very great. In our time men fluctuate between two extremes. On one hand, it is vigorously asserted of the modern man that he is incapable of recognizing the spiritual forces operating in humanity. We hear it constantly said by the man in the street that our generation is lacking in the gift or in the power to recognize any original spiritual force, even were it to manifest itself. That is one ugly fact of our age, though unfortunately true, that the reincarnation of mighty individuals might take place in it, yet be unrecognized, or passed by with indifference. And there is another fact no less sinister, common to our age and to many others. While spiritual individuals are unappreciated and unrecognized, others are exalted to the skies. There is the liveliest tendency to deify individuals. On every hand we find communities each with its special Messiah. Everywhere the need for deification is felt. This has always been the case; it emerges again and again in the course of centuries.

Maimonides tells of a false Christ who appeared in France in 1137, who had numerous followers and was condemned to death by public authority. He also relates how forty years earlier a man appeared at Cordova and proclaimed himself to be the Christ. Again, twenty-five years earlier, at the beginning of the twelfth century, a false Messiah appeared at Fez in Morocco, who hinted at yet a greater one. Finally about 1147 in Persia there was one who did not proclaim himself to be the Christ, but taught of a Christ. But the worst appearance of all was one I have already mentioned, that of Shabbathai Zewi in 1666 at Smyrna. He declared himself to be the reincarnation of the Christ. We can most clearly observe in him and in the effect he had on his environment, the nature of a false Messiah. His was no narrow movement; news of the appearance of a new Christ spread, and people travelled from all parts of Europe to see him; from Spain, France, and Italy; from Poland, Hungary and Southern Russia, from Northern Africa, and Central Asia. It was a great world movement, and created a great sensation, and it would have boded ill for anyone who ventured to deny that Shabbathai Zewi was the Christ. Such a denial before Shabbathai Zewi betrayed himself and was exposed, would have brought the doubter up against a dogma held by a very great number of people.

This is the other ugly fact that constantly makes its appearance, perhaps not in Christian circles, but certainly in others. A need is felt to allow Messiahs to appear in earthly form. In Christian countries this happens for the most part in small circles, but in them ‘Christs’ are to be found. What mainly concerns us is: that through Spiritual Science, through scientific explanations, and a clear understanding of the facts revealed by occult means, it is possible to avoid both kinds of error. Real understanding of Spiritual Science prevents such errors, and makes it possible to understand in some small way the most profound historical facts of modern times. It enables us, when we enter more deeply into spiritual life, to accept what resembles a kind of revival of the Essene teaching which first foretold the coming of Christ, through the mouth of Jesus ben Pandira, as an event of the physical world.

If the Essene teaching is to be revived in our day, if we strive to live according to the living spirit of a new Bodhisattva, and not in the tradition of an ancient one, we must make ourselves receptive to the inspiration of that Bodhisattva who will one day appear as the Maitreya Buddha. This Bodhisattva will inspire us and draw our attention to the time drawing near when the Christ will appear in a new form in an etheric body. He will bless, and endow with light, those who through the new Essene wisdom are developing new forces in preparation for His return in etheric raiment.

We are now speaking entirely in the sense of that inspiring Bodhisattva who is to be the Maitreya Buddha; we know therefore that we are not speaking in accordance with any religious confession. We are not speaking of a return of Christ that will be perceptible on the physical plane. It is a matter of indifference to us that we are obliged to differ from such a teaching; we know, however, that our teaching is true. We have no prejudice in favour of any form of Oriental religious teaching, but live only for the truth, and we declare the manner of the future coming of the Christ to be in the form we have learned from the inspiration of the Bodhisattva himself.

The advent of instructing and life-giving powers from the cosmos through the Christ. Their transmission to the disciples. Their awakening. The avowal of Peter. The Son of Man—the Son of the living God. The founding of new communities on the basis of moral and spiritual relationships. Leading forth of the disciples into the Macrocosm by the Christ. The inpouring of the power of the Sun-Word through the mystery of Golgotha. The gradual growth upwards into the Kingdoms of Heaven

Following on the story of the ‘Temptation,’ which we might describe as the impulse towards a new initiation, comes the teaching given by Christ to His disciples. This was a teaching in a completely new form. What He gave them was not so much by way of instruction, but as a force, a health-giving force for mankind. This is demonstrated in His acts of healing.

Yesterday we made a transition in our studies, such as presupposes, as I said, the goodwill to understand—the goodwill that is the result of intensive work in spiritual scientific knowledge which has been received in the course of years. We have endeavoured to put a mighty mystery into human language, and to make comprehensible the nature of the instruction given to the disciples. Christ Jesus was a kind of focal point, a living centre for forces passing from the macrocosm into the earthly sphere, and thence into the souls of the disciples. Such a concentration of forces was only possible through the special powers appertaining to the nature of Christ Jesus. Forces, formerly only bestowed on men while unconscious in sleep, now streamed down to the disciples through the being of Christ Jesus from universal space, as the illuminating, life-giving forces of the cosmos itself. Details concerning these forces, which are enlightening forces in connection with world-existence, can naturally only be given by referring to the constellations, and we propose to deal with these mysteries to-day in so far as they throw light on the Gospel of Matthew.

In the first place we have to realize how the disciples increased in knowledge regarding earthly conditions, because the forces of Christ Jesus had streamed into them. They had to develop in themselves, to grow in their lives, and in living wisdom, in the most varied ways. An instance is given of the peculiar nature of this development in one of the disciples or apostles, but we can only understand this important and outstanding event in the life of the apostle when we show it in its comprehensive setting. We have to realize that a man himself advances within human evolution as a whole.

It is not in vain that we pass from one incarnation to another; neither is it in vain that we have incarnated in post-Atlantean civilizations—the Indian, Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, and Graco-Latin—in order that we might garner experiences from our surroundings. These are stages in the great school of life, each giving its appropriate experiences and promoting development. We pass gradually through them all. In what does human development through the different epochs consist?

According to the elementary teachings of Anthroposophy, mankind is formed of different members; these we call the physical body, etheric body, and astral body. With the astral body is associated the sentient soul; then the rational or intellectual soul; and then the consciousness or spiritual-soul. Beyond these are the higher principles of human nature towards which man is evolving; they are spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man. Now, in the course of each of the post-Atlantean periods, something definite was given for these different members of human nature. In the first epoch, the ancient Indian period of civilization, man had added to him an increase in the capacities of his etheric body whereby it became something more than it had been before. What was implanted in him in this respect as regards his physical body already had a beginning during the last part of the Atlantean period; but he only received these enhanced powers into his etheric body during the post-Atlantean period. Thus it was during the period, known as the ancient Indian that the etheric body received these gifts. Then during the Persian civilization similar forces were implanted in his astral or sentient body; and during the Egypto-Chaldean period he received those suited to his sentient-soul; during the Greco-Latin period—the fourth age of post-Atlantean culture—the forces of the rational-soul were imprinted in man; and now, in the fifth period, we are living in an age in which the forces belonging to these lines of progress are gradually to be impressed on the spiritual-soul. As yet humanity has made but little progress with this.

Following on this age will come the sixth post-Atlantean age, which is to witness the impressing of the forces of the spirit-self on human nature; and the seventh age will see that of life-spirit. Beyond this our vision reaches out to a far distant future, in which the spirit-man or Atma will be impressed on normal humanity.

Let us now consider human evolution in relation to the individual man, for this is how it was viewed in the Mysteries; man was always considered from this aspect by those who knew somewhat of the true relationship of things. It was thus the disciples had gradually to learn to know him, in the light of the life-giving, illuminating force that streamed into them from Christ Jesus. When we observe mankind—either at the present time, or at the time of Christ Jesus—we must recognize that rudiments lie in men just as plants contain seeds, even when only in leaf and before the blossom and fruit is formed. In looking at such a plant we can say: As surely as this plant which so far only possesses green leaves has within it the germ of both flower and fruit, so man, who at the time of Christ Jesus possessed only sentient and intellectual-soul, holds within him the germ of the spiritual-soul, which then opens itself to the spirit-self, in order that the higher triad, as a new spiritual gift from God, may flow into him from above. Thus we can say: Man unfolds through the content and qualities of his soul in the same way as a plant unfolds in turn green leaves, blossoms, and fruit. In developing his sentient-soul, intellectual-soul, and spirit-soul man develops something that corresponds to the flower of his being, and lifts this up to receive the inpouring of the Divine Spirit from above, so that by receiving the spirit-self he may rise to ever further heights of human evolution.

At the time Christ Jesus walked on earth the normal man had developed the rational-soul as his highest principle; this was not as yet capable of receiving into it the spirit-self; but out of the same man as now had developed to the rational soul the spiritual-soul would evolve as his child—as the consummation of his being, which later would become the receptacle for the spirit-self.

What is to unfold out of the whole nature of man, and come forth from him like a blossom? How was this described in the Mysteries, and in the circle where Christ Jesus spoke to His disciples of their further development? Translated into our language it was called the ‘Son of Man.’ The Greek

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The disciples had to grow to an understanding of the nature of these leaders of humanity. It was to test their understanding of this that Christ asked His more intimate disciples, ‘Tell me, of what beings, of what men in this generation, can it be said that they are “Sons of Men?”’ So runs the question according to the Aramaic Script—for though the Greek translation from the Aramaic Script when read aright is certainly better, yet something has been lost in it also. We have to picture Christ Jesus standing thoughtfully before His disciples and saying, ‘What is the general opinion concerning the men who, in previous generations of this Greco-Latin period, were called “Sons of Men”? Who were they?’ And the disciples spoke to Him of Elias, of John the Baptist, of Jeremiah, and other prophets. They were able to answer thus through the illuminating forces that came to them from Christ. They knew that these leaders of men had developed powers by which they had given birth within themselves to the ‘Son of Man.’

On the same occasion, the disciple who is usually called Peter gave a different answer. In order to understand this answer we must allow what we have heard in recent lectures concerning the mission of Christ Jesus, according to the Gospel of Matthew, to sink deeply into our souls. It was there explained that through the Impulse of Christ it has become possible for men to develop full ego-consciousness—that what lies within the ‘I am’ can blossom fully through His Impulse. In other words Men will be able in time to enter the higher worlds—may even attain to initiation—while retaining their ego-consciousness, the only state of consciousness considered normal for men in the physical world to-day. This has become possible through the life of Christ Jesus on earth. He is the representative of the force that gives complete consciousness of the ‘I am’ to man.

I have already explained that interpretations of the Gospels given by free-thinkers, or by opponents of the Gospels, do not as a rule even mention the facts of greatest moment. They point continually to certain sequences of words found there, which they say are also to be met with elsewhere; as when they assert the previous existence of the contents of the Beatitudes. But there is something that has never existed before, and on this we lay stress what had previously been impossible of attainment through ego-consciousness had now become possible through the impulse imparted by Christ. This is a point of inestimable importance.

We have already analysed the Beatitudes, and said that the first should read ‘Blessed are the beggars in respect of the spirit,’ those who as a result of human evolution are poor in spirit, who, having lost the old clairvoyance, are unable to look into the spiritual worlds; but comforting them Christ explains, ‘Even though ye have lost the old clairvoyance and can no more through it see into the spiritual world, ye shall now be able to view these worlds through the powers of your own individual ego, for: “Within yourselves ye shall find the Kingdoms of the Heavens!”’ Similarly with the second Beatitude: ‘Blessed are those who mourn.’ Blessed are ye who no longer require to see into the spiritual world with the help of the old clairvoyance, for you will develop your ego so powerfully that through it you will attain to the spirit-world. But to do this your ego must gain more and more of the power which Christ, by His unique nature, has once and for all time firmly united with the earth.

It would be well if men would really ponder these things a little. It is not without purpose that each of the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount contains a very important Greek word

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Forgive me if I now refer to something of great importance to our day by employing a rather trivial example. We must learn to use the Greek word

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Keeping this in mind we can see how important the second question was that Christ put to His disciples. After asking them: Who among the leaders of former generations could be described as ‘Sons of Men,’ He questioned them further, and wished gradually to bring them to an understanding of His own nature, to an understanding of that ego-nature of which He was the representative. Hence He asked, And what think ye that I am? On every occasion you see how special stress is laid on the ‘I am’ in the Gospel of Matthew. Then Peter answered Him, and showed by his answer that he now recognized the Christ not only as a ‘Son of Man,’ but as the ‘Son of the living God.’ This brings us to a consideration of the difference between these two phrases, ‘Son of Man’ and ‘Son of the living God.’ In order to understand them, we must enter more fully into some facts already dealt with.

In the course of his development man evolves the spiritual-soul so that in it the spirit-self may appear. When he has evolved the spiritual-soul,¹ the upper triad, spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man come to meet him, so that the opening flower of his being can receive into it this upper triad from above. This may be illustrated graphically to resemble the unfolding of a plant (see overleaf).

When a man has made himself receptive by developing his spirit-soul, the higher triad, spirit-self or Manas, life-spirit or Budhi, and spirit-man or Atma, draw near; this may be likened to a spiritual fructification coming towards him from on high. While with the other principles of his being he grows upwards from below, unfolding the blossom of the ‘Son of Man,’ there must come to meet him from on high, so that he may gain his ego-consciousness, that which brings with it spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man.

Who is the representative of the gift which comes down to man from above and is indicative of the nature of humanity in the far future? Who is this? The first gift that comes to man is the ‘spirit-self.’ Of whom is he the representative who receives this gift coming from on high? It is the Son of God, He Who lives, the life-spirit, the Son of the Living God!

So in the scene to which we have just referred Christ Jesus asked the question, ‘What is to come to men through My impulse?’ The answer is, ‘The life-giving Spirit- Principle from on high!’

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So we have to distinguish the Son of Man who evolves upwards from below, and the Son of God—the Son of the living God, Who comes down to meet him from above. These must be distinguished. We can understand what a difficult question this was for the disciples. Especially so because they were receiving for the first time those things which the simplest of mankind have had implanted in them through the Gospels from the beginning of the Christian era; things which first reached the disciples through the living, instructing forces of Christ Jesus. Through powers such as had previously been developed by them, no answer could be given to the question: ‘Whose representative am I Myself?’ To this question one of the disciples—Peter—answered: ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ This was an answer which—if we may say so—did not spring from the normal spiritual powers of Peter at that moment.

Let us try to picture this scene vividly. Christ Jesus, looking at Peter, said to Himself: ‘It means much that such an answer should have come from this mouth; for it is an answer that points to the distant future.’ Then having gazed into Peter's consciousness, and seen how far he had progressed, seen that through his intellect, or the powers that initiation had evoked in him, he was able to give such an answer, the Christ was bound to say ‘This answer has not sprung from Peter's conscious knowledge; here spoke. those deeper forces that are inherent in all men, but which will only gradually become conscious forces in them.’

We bear within us physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego; we are rising towards spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man through transmutation of the powers of the lower bodies. This is an elementary lesson of Spiritual Science. The forces that we shall one day evolve in our astral body as spirit-self are already there, only they have been put there by divine spiritual powers and have not been evolved by us. It is the same as regards our etheric body, which already contains within it a divine life-spirit. Therefore, looking at Peter, Christ said: ‘What spoke to me is not what is within thy consciousness at the present time, thou hast spoken from out of something that will certainly be evolved within thee at a future time, but of which at present thou knowest nothing. What at the present time is within thy flesh and blood could not have spoken, so that the words: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” could have sprung from it. In these words divine spiritual forces spoke, forces lying deep below the threshold of consciousness, in the profoundest depths of human nature.’ The mysterious Higher Powers that at this moment spoke through Peter, Christ calls the ‘Father in Heaven.’ These were the forces out of which he was born, but of which he was not as yet conscious. Hence Christ's words: ‘The man of flesh and blood thou art at present did not reveal this unto thee, but the Father which is in Heaven revealed it.’ But Christ had something further to say to Peter. He had to say to Himself: ‘In Peter I have a disciple before me, whose nature is so constituted, that through the forces that have already evolved consciousness in him, and through the whole manner in which spiritual forces have worked in him the Father-force has remained intact; this subconscious, human force has remained so strong in him that when he surrenders himself to it he can build thereon. This is the most important thing in Peter.’ And Christ might have gone on to say: ‘What is present in Peter is present in all men, but they are not sufficiently advanced either to be aware of it or to make conscious use of it; the power to do so will only be developed in the future. If that which I am to give to man, if that for which I am the impulse, is to develop further and become a part of him, it must be founded on the consciousness which spoke through the mouth of Peter in the words: “Thou art the Christ,. the Son of the living God”; on this rock in human nature which the surging waves of consciousness as at present evolved have not yet destroyed, and which, as Father-force has just made itself heard, I will build that which will emerge with ever-increasing strength as the result of my impulse.’

When men have constructed this foundation, what the Christ-impulse can become for humanity will be revealed. This is contained in the words: ‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build what a certain number of men, a community, can reveal when they confess the Impulse of Christ.’

Such words must not be passed over as lightly as are the discussions which at this moment are the subject of violent controversy. They can only be understood when reconstructed out of the depth of that wisdom which is the same as the wisdom met with in the Mysteries.

The sentence that follows shows clearly that Christ Jesus built on this deep subconscious force in Peter. For immediately afterwards He speaks of the events that are about to take place, and of the Mystery of Golgotha. The moment, however, had already passed when the more deeply lying forces spoke in Peter. It is the conscious Peter who now speaks, who fails to understand Christ, and cannot believe that suffering and death are to follow. So when the conscious Peter speaks (he who had already developed conscious powers within himself) Christ has to correct him, saying: ‘It is not God Who now speaks in thee but that which thou hast evolved within thee as man; the source from which it comes is of no value, but is a vain deception, for it comes from Ahriman—that is Satan!’ This is contained in the words, ‘Remove thyself from Me, Satan, thou offendest Me, for thou considerest not the things that are divine, but those that are human.’ Christ compares Peter to Satan, employing the word used to designate Ahriman. Whereas in other parts of the Bible the word ‘devil’ stands for everything Luciferic, Christ here makes deliberate use of the word ‘Satan,’ for it was to the Ahrimanic form of deception that Peter had succumbed.

These are the facts. What do modern critics of the Bible make of them? They say: It is most unlikely that Christ Jesus would stand before Peter one minute saying, ‘Thou alone hast grasped the fact that a God confronts thee,’ and immediately afterwards call him ‘Satan.’ So the critics conclude that the word ‘Satan’ must have been interpolated by someone later, and is therefore incorrect. The truth is that current opinions concerning the deeper meaning of these words when gained only through philological research are worthless, unless preceded by an actual understanding of the Biblical records. An understanding of the actual facts of the Bible is necessary before anyone can speak of the historical origin of corresponding documents.

Between the two sayings that have just been considered there is another. This we can only understand if we call to mind a very ancient, yet ever new teaching of the Mysteries: The teaching that man as he exists on earth—and not only man himself but each group or class of men—is a reflected image of cosmic happenings. This has already been explained by me when referring to the descent of Jesus of Nazareth. We saw the true meaning of the promises made to Abraham: ‘Thy descendants shall be a copy of the order of the stars in Heaven.’ The order of the Heavens as seen in the twelve Constellations, and the paths of planets through these twelve Signs of the Zodiac, were to be repeated in the twelve tribes, and in all that the Hebrew people experienced during three times fourteen generations. In the sequence of the generations, and in their special inheritance through the blood-tie within the twelve tribes, we have to see a copy or reflection of cosmic relationships. This was told to Abraham.

In the moment when Peter stood before the Christ, and our Lord knew that in his deeper nature he had really understood what was given to man with the Christ-Impulse—that it meant the down-flowing of spiritual power through the ‘Son of the living God’—Christ knew He could now inform those standing round Him that something new was about to begin on earth, that a new model could now be given to them. As in the cosmic relationship of the heavens Abraham had been given an image of blood relationship, so now an image for an ethical and spiritual relationship was provided; a model for what man would be able to attain to through his ego. When people come to understand what the Christ is, as the higher nature of Peter understood it, they will cease to establish relationships and communities that depend only on the blood-tie, but will consciously weave bonds of love from soul to soul. This means that as in the blood of the Jewish people, in the threads stretching through the generations, people were bound together in accordance with a macrocosmic model, and were also liberated from each other through the same heavenly ordinance—from this time forth a force was to arise out of the conscious ego that would separate man from man, or bind them to each other in love, in accordance with moral and spiritual relationships. Regulations affecting humanity will be made or harmonized by the conscious ego. This is contained in the words spoken by Christ in continuation of His answer to Peter when He said: ‘What thou bindest on earth—what the deeper nature in thee binds—is the same as is bound in Heaven; and what this nature loosens here below is also loosened in Heaven.’

In ancient times the whole meaning of human union lay in relationship through the blood-tie; but men in future will develop more and more towards moral, intellectual, and spiritual ties. It follows, that what they form in the way of communities shall mean something to them. Or, to express this in anthroposophical language, we might say: The individual karma of a man will have to be associated with the karma of the community.

From the teachings of Spiritual Science during recent years you can gather that it does not contradict the idea of karma for me to give something to a poor man, so it does not contradict the idea of karma that a man's individual karma should be affected by that of the community to which he belongs. The community can share in the lot of the individual. Karma maybe so connected that the community as a whole bears the karma of the individual. In moral relationships the following may happen: An individual member of a community may commit some wrong; this will most surely be written in his karma, and must be worked out in the great inter-relationships of the whole world. But suppose another case: Suppose a man were found willing to help another to bear his karma. The karma would have to be fulfilled, but the man might be helped. Groups or associations of people can help a wrong-doer in the same way. The karma of an individual can be so interwoven with that of a community that—because it recognizes him as one of themselves—it can consciously accept his destiny, and in sympathy desire his improvement. Their attitude might be—‘You, as an individual, have done wrong, but we will stand by you. We will take over that in your karma, which is conducive to your betterment.’ If for ‘community’ the word ‘church’ be substituted, then it means that the Church lays upon itself the duty of accepting the sin of the individual and of sharing the burden of his karma. This does not refer to ‘forgiveness of sins’ in the usual meaning of the words, but to a real bond, to ‘a taking upon them’ of the sins, and the community must be conscious of its acceptance of the debt.

When ‘binding’ and ‘loosing’ are understood in this sense there must be with every forgiveness of sins a recognition by the community of the responsibilities arising out of it. In this way a web is woven in which the threads of individual karma are woven into the karma of the whole community; and this web shall become a reflection of the order in heaven through the gift brought down to Earth by Christ from spiritual heights. This means that individual karma shall be bound up with universal karma after the pattern of the order in the spiritual worlds, and this in no haphazard way, but so that the whole social organism may become a reflection of the heavenly order.

Hence for those who begin to understand it, this scene of the ‘confession of Peter’ acquires an infinite depth of meaning. It was so to say the founding of future humanity on the basis of their ego-nature. What happened in this confidential conversation between Christ and His more intimate disciples was that the power brought down by Him out of the macrocosm He passed on to that which they were to establish.

From this point onwards the Gospel of Matthew shows how the disciples were led upwards step by step towards that which they were able to receive of the forces of the Sun, and of the cosmos, through the medium of the Christ-being.

You know that one side of initiation is an expansion into the macrocosm, and because Christ is the impulse to this initiation, in the instructions He gives His disciples, He leads them out into the cosmos. As the individual who experiences initiation consciously expands into the macrocosm gradually acquiring wisdom from it, so the Christ descends from the macrocosm, revealing on every hand the forces active there, and these He passes on to His disciples.

How this takes place I have already explained. Let us once more picture the scene. A man falls asleep; on the couch lie his physical and etheric bodies, while his astral body and ego pass out into the cosmos so that these members absorb the forces of the cosmos. If the Christ now approaches this man, He is the Being who attracts these forces consciously to the sleeper, thereby illuminating him. This actually happened; a scene is described in which we are told how the disciples journeyed by sea in the last watch of the night, how they then saw that what they at first took to be an apparition was the Christ, Who enabled the forces of the macrocosm to flow into them. We are shown, in a way apparent to anyone, how Christ conducted these cosmic forces to the disciples.

In what follows in this Gospel we are shown how, scene by scene, step by step, Christ guided the disciples towards initiation. It is as if He experienced this Himself and led them as by the hand along the path that all initiates must tread. I will tell you one thing which clearly shows the gradual leading of them into the macrocosm.

When a living perception of the spiritual world has been gained, when the powers of clairvoyance have been awakened, it brings with it knowledge of things previously quite unknown. One learns, for instance, the real connections in the progressive stages of the growth of a plant. A materialist says of a flower (one that bears fruit): ‘Here is a flower, in it seeds will develop, these can later be gathered and planted in the earth where they will decay and a new plant will appear; this in turn will again bear seeds—and so it goes on from growth to growth. Materialistic thought cannot but suppose some part of the seed, however small, passes over into the new plant. But this is not the case. In respect of its material part, the whole of the old plant is destroyed. A leap occurs, so far as the material part is concerned; the new plant is of entirely new material. Actually a new formation has taken place.

Most important connections in the world are understood as soon as this very remarkable law is grasped and applied to the whole macrocosm; when we have learnt that as regards material conditions leaps or springs do actually occur. This was expressed in a special way in the Mysteries. It was said there: The disciple for initiation must learn at a certain stage through expansion into the cosmos to know the forces that cause these ‘leaps.’ Now a man learns something from the cosmos in whichever direction he advances, and this is expressed in a language taken from the stars. The stars are in this case used as letters. If our development advances in a certain direction we become aware of the ‘leap’ that takes place between an ancestor and a descendant, whether this be in the realm of plants, of animals, or men, or in the realm of planetary existence; such, for instance, as the transition from ancient Saturn to ancient Sun-existence where everything material perished. What is spiritual endures what is material perishes. The spirit was the cause of this ‘leap.’ In the same way, spirit brought about the transition from ancient Sun to Moon, from Moon to Earth. In small things as in great, the law is the same. Two symbols are used to express this fact, one is an ancient one more of a pictorial imaginative script and the other more modern. The modern form is frequently found in calendars. As evolution advances, what is past curls up within itself in the form of a spiral, and the new evolution comes forth as a new spiral out of the old, unfolding from within. But between the end of the old and the beginning of the new there is a little ‘gap,’ only then does evolution advance.

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We see this represented in the above figure; here are two interlaced spirals, and, in the centre between them, a little ‘gap.’ This is the sign of ‘Cancer,’ the fourth Sign of the Zodiac, and symbolizes the growing outwards into the macrocosm, and also the starting point of a new shoot within an evolution.

There is another symbol which represents this same connection. Strange as it may seem, the symbol of an ass and its foal was used to express the connection between an ancestor and his descendant, and was intended to represent the actual point of transition from one condition to the other. In old drawings the sign of Cancer is frequently represented in this way. It is not unimportant for us to know this. It is an important teaching towards the understanding that a similar important transition also occurs when we rise to the macrocosm; that when man enters the spiritual world an entirely new illumination is associated with it. This is expressed quite correctly when in accordance with the language of the stars it is said that the physical Sun, having passed through the Constellation of Cancer and reached its highest point, descends again. Much the same happens when the disciple for initiation who has made his first ascent into the spiritual worlds learns of the forces there. When he has acquired knowledge concerning these forces he turns, and bears them down again, so as to make them serviceable to humanity.

The Gospel of Matthew, as well as the other Gospels, tells how Christ Jesus brought about this ‘leap’ in the development of the disciples; and by the way this is told we are shown that He did not influence them by words alone, but that He induced in them imaginative perception—a living image of what He Himself was accomplishing, that exalted state that is the goal of human evolution. To this end He made use of the symbol of the ass and its colt; which means that He guided His disciples towards an understanding of what in spiritual life corresponds to the sign of Cancer. This was the expression of something that occurred in the living spiritual relationship of Christ to His disciples, and was of such majesty, such grandeur, that no human words, whatever the language, were found adequate to express it. The only way that Christ could convey the meaning of it to His disciples was to lead them into the spiritual world, and then to create in physical conditions, an image or reflection of events in the macrocosmic world. For this purpose He led them to the point where the forces of those who had been initiated could become of service again to mankind. He then stood at the summit of His power, and this is shown when He tells the: His sun stood at its zenith, in the sign of Cancer No wonder, therefore, that at this point the Gospel of Matthew informs us that the life of Christ, as regards His earthly existence had reached its climax! This is mightily demonstrated in the cry: ‘Hosanna in the Highest!’ Here each tone is chosen so as to show how the disciples are led on towards maturity; so that through what took place in them humanity as a whole might attain that which through the Christ has been brought into its evolution.

The story of the Passover that follows is nothing else than the actual living inflow of that magic force, which first, in the form of teaching, and later as the outcome of the Mystery of Golgotha, was to enter humanity. With this in mind it becomes clear why the writer of this Gospel always felt it necessary to emphasize the contrast between the living teaching heard by the disciples coming to them from the heights of cosmic existence, a teaching suited to them; and the other teaching given to those who stood outside, who were not sufficiently ripe to receive the Christ-force itself. This difference will be dealt with in the next lecture in connection with the conversation of the Scribes and Pharisees. Just now we would remind you that Christ Jesus, having led the disciples to the point of initiation, showed them that by following this path they would themselves be able to experience expansion into the spiritual world of the macrocosm. He explained that they had already experienced the preliminaries of initiation, that the way was open, to where they could become more and more able to recognize the true nature of Christ as the Being Who fills all spiritual spaces, Whose reflection had been in Jesus of Nazareth. Christ Jesus told His disciples that they must progress in ripeness for initiation so that they might become initiates for humanity. He taught them further that they could only attain individual initiation if with patience and perseverance they furthered this inner ripeness.

What had to increase in strength in man's inner being, if his inner nature was to evolve clairvoyant higher forces? The as yet undeveloped attributes of his being had to ripen, so that he could become capable of receiving into himself the forces of spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man. As to when this would happen, when the power from above which leads to initiation and makes of a man a participator in the Kingdoms of the Heavens dawns in him, depends on the degree of ripeness he has attained; it depends on the karma of the individual. Who can tell when this moment is at hand? Only the highest Initiates. It is not known to those on lower stages of initiation. The hour of man's attainment comes to those who are ripe for entry into the spiritual world. It must surely come; but it comes like a thief in the night.

But how does this expansion into the spiritual world come to pass? In the ancient Mysteries, and to a certain extent in the new, there were three stages of initiation into the macrocosm. The first stage brought knowledge of all that could be perceived through the spirit-self. The Initiate was then not only a man in the new sense, but he had attained to what, in the language of the Hierarchies, is called ‘Angel-nature’—the nature of the Hierarchy next above man. Thus in the Persian Mysteries a man who had advanced to this stage at which he had expanded to the Macrocosm, when the spirit-self was active in him was called either a Persian (since he was no longer an isolated being but belonged to the Angel of the Persian nation) or he was simply called an Angel, one whose nature was divine. The second stage is that in which the life-spirit had awaked in like manner; at this stage a man was called a ‘Sun-hero’ in the old Persian Mysteries, for he had then advanced to the point where he could draw into himself the spiritual forces of the Sun, when these forces had approached the earth. Such a man might also be called ‘Son of the Father.’ And he who had won to the heights of the third stage, the stage of Atma, or spirit-man, was called in the ancient Mysteries ‘the Father.’ These were the three stages of initiation—‘Angel,’ ‘Son or Sun-hero,’ and ‘Father.’

Only the highest initiates can judge when initiation is about to awaken in man. Hence Christ said: ‘Initiation will come when you have travelled further along the way on which I have led you; you will then ascend to the Kingdom of Heaven; but the hour of your arrival is known neither to the Angels (those initiated with the spirit-self, nor to the Son (those initiated with life-spirit), but only to the highest Initiates, those initiated with the Father.’ Here once more the language of the Gospel of Matthew conforms absolutely with the tradition of the Mysteries.

And we shall see as the Gospel continues how all that Christ tells His disciples concerning the Kingdom of Heaven is merely a prediction of what they are to experience in initiation. Examining carefully the sentences dealing with this subject, it is easily seen that Christ is referring to a certain teaching common at that time—concerning the way in which the Kingdom of Heaven was to be attained. People had accepted this attainment of the Kingdom of Heaven in a material sense, believing it applied to the whole earth, whereas they ought to have known that this was only possible to certain individuals, those who had passed through initiation. Some people really expected that the earth would be transformed into Heaven in a material way. Christ refers directly to this when He says that certain people who will appear and announce this teaching are lying prophets and false Messiahs. It is amazing to find expounders of the Gospels who even to-day spread this false doctrine of the material heavenly kingdom, and declare it to be the teaching of Christ Himself. Anyone who really knows how to read the Gospel of Matthew knows that Christ refers to a spiritual event, towards which those seeking initiation grow. In the course of earthly evolution it will, however, be possible for all humanity—for all who follow Christ—to grow to this condition—inasmuch as the earth itself is spiritualized.

When from this side also we have looked more deeply into the whole form and content of the Gospel of Matthew, our reverence for it deepens enormously. This is more especially the case in respect of the teaching Christ gave to His disciples from the standpoint of the ego—the ‘I.’ In none of the other Gospels is this given so clearly. We can picture the Christ, with His disciples gathered round Him, and can see how cosmic forces work through the agency of His human body; we can see the disciples learning of initiation as He leads them by the hand, and we catch a glimpse of the human conditions of His environment. All this makes the Gospel of Matthew a most human production. Through it we really learn to know the man Jesus of Nazareth, the bearer of the Christ; we recognize all that came to pass through the descent of Christ into human nature. Yes, in the Matthew Gospel even heavenly events are clothed in garments that are truly human.

How this is the case in other things not only in those relating to initiation will be dealt with in the next—the last lecture.

• 1. Spiritual-soul is sometimes called consciousness-soul.

The upward development of man, and the descent of divine beings into human souls and bodies. The four points of view of the Evangelists in accordance with the Initiation of each. The Baptism in Jordan and the life and death of Christ Jesus as two stages of Initiation. The Resurrection revealing Christ as the Spirit of earthly existence. The Sun-Aura in the Earthly-Aura. The divinity of Man. Human quality of the Gospel of Matthew

Studying the evolution of mankind in accordance with spiritual science, and watching its progress step by step, we are bound to acknowledge that the most important fact of this evolution is that man, because he incarnates again and again in different epochs, advances to ever higher degrees of perfection, and thus gradually reaches the goal where he has developed, in his inner being, certain active powers corresponding to the different stages of planetary development. We see, on one hand, the man who progresses upwards, who keeps his divine goal before him, but who would never be able to evolve to the heights he should attain if beings whose whole path of evolution is different did not come to his assistance. From time to time beings from other spheres enter our earthly evolution and unite with it, so as to raise men to their own exalted realms. Even as regards earlier planetary conditions we may express this in a wide sense by saying: Already during the Saturn stage of evolution, exalted beings—the Thrones—offered up their will-substance so that from it the earliest beginnings of man's physical body might be formed. This is but a general example; but beings whose evolution is far in advance of that of men, have ever bent down to them and united with their evolution, by dwelling for a time within a human soul. Such beings have ‘assumed a human form’ as is often said, or to put it more trivially, have entered a human soul as an inspiring power, so that a human being who has been ensouled in this way by a god might accomplish more in human evolution than he could otherwise have done.

Our age, permeated as it is with materialistic conceptions, levelling everything, does not accept such facts willingly; indeed I might say that it retains only the crudest notion of accepting the descent of beings from higher regions, beings who enter into man and speak to him. Modern people regard such beliefs as the wildest superstition. Rudiments of such beliefs have, however, remained to our day, though people are for the most part unaware that they hold them; they have retained, for instance, a belief in the occasional appearance of persons of ‘genius.’ Men of genius rise high above the great mass of mankind even in the opinion of ordinary individuals, who say of such persons: Other qualities have come to fruition in their souls than are to be found in average humanity. Such ‘geniuses’ are at least still credited. But there are also circles where there is no longer such belief; the materialistic thought of to-day discredits them, it has (no belief in facts concerning the life of the spirit: Belief in genius does, however, continue in wide circles, and if this is not to be an empty belief we must acknowledge that in a genius through whom human evolution has been advanced, a power, other than the ordinary power of men, works through a human agency. Looking to the teaching that knows the true facts concerning men of genius, one realizes that when such men appear who seem as if suddenly possessed by something extraordinarily good, or great, or powerful, that a spiritual power has descended and taken possession of the place from which this being of power must now work, namely, the inner nature of the man himself.

To people who think in accordance with Anthroposophy it should be clear from the beginning that there are two possibilities; the upward evolution of men to spiritual heights, and the descent from above of divine, spiritual beings into human bodies or human souls.

In one part of my Rosicrucian Mystery Play it is pointed out that whenever something important is to take place in human evolution a divine being must unite with a human soul and permeate it. This is a necessity of human evolution.

To understand this in connection with our spiritual evolution on earth, we must recall how in the time of its early beginnings the Earth was united with the Sun, from which it is now separated. Anthroposophists know, of course, that this does not refer merely to a separation of the substance of the Earth from the substance of the Sun, but with the going forth of divine beings who were associated with the Sun or with the other planets.) After this separation of the Sun, certain spiritual beings remained connected with the Earth, while others remained with the Sun, because they had evolved beyond earthly connections, and could not complete their further cosmic evolution on the Earth. Thus we have the fact that one kind of spiritual being remained connected with the Earth, while other spiritual beings sent their active forces down to Earth from the Sun. After the departure of the Sun from the Earth we have, as it were, two spheres of activity, that of the Earth with its beings and that of the Sun with its beings. The Spiritual Beings who served mankind from a higher sphere are those who chose the Sun as their dwelling-place, and from this realm come the beings who have united themselves from time to time with earthly humanity so that they might aid the further evolution—both of Earth and man.

In the myths of various peoples we constantly find reference to such ‘Sun-heroes’ who have descended from spiritual realms to participate in human evolution; and a man who is filled by such a Sun-being is something far more than from outward seeming he would appear to be. The outward appearance of such a man is deceptive—it is Maya; but behind the Maya is the real being who can only be guessed at by those who can penetrate to the profoundest depths of such a nature. In the Mysteries people knew, and still know, of this twofold fact concerning the path of human evolution. People distinguish now, as they distinguished in the past, divine beings who descend to Earth from spiritual spheres, and men who strive upwards from the Earth towards initiation into spiritual mysteries. ‘With what kind of Being then are we concerned in the Christ?

In the last lecture we learnt that in the designation, ‘Christ, the Son of the living God,’ we are concerned with a descending Being. If we wish to describe Him by a word drawn from Oriental philosophy He would be called ‘an Avatar,’ a God who had descended. But we have only to do with such a descending Being from a certain moment; and we must accept what is described by all four Evangelists, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as such an appearance. At the moment of the Baptism of John, a Being descended to our Earth from the realms of Sun-existence and united with a human being. Now we have to realize clearly that according to the meaning of the four Evangelists this Sun-Being was greater than any other Avatar, than any other Sun-Being who up to that time had ever come to Earth. They, therefore, take trouble to explain that a specially prepared being had to advance from the side of humanity to meet this great descending Being.

All four Gospels, therefore, tell of the Sun-Being—the ‘Son of the living God’—who came towards men to aid their further progress; but only the Gospels of Matthew and Luke speak of the man who evolved towards this Sun-Being so that he might receive Him into himself. They narrate how the human being for thirty years prepares for the moment when he can receive the Sun-Being into himself. Because the Being we call the Christ is so universal, so all-comprising, it did not suffice that the bodily sheaths that were to receive Him should be prepared in any simple way. A quite specially prepared physical and etheric sheath had to evolve, meet for the reception of this descending Being. Whence these came we have seen in the course of our study of the Matthew Gospel. But out of this same being whose physical and etheric sheath had been prepared in accordance with the teaching of Matthew, out of the forty-two generations of the Hebrew people, there could not spring an astral garment or a bearer of the ego suited to that Sun-Being. For this, special arrangements were necessary, and these were carried out by means of another human being. This being we read of in the Gospel of Luke, where the writer of that Gospel describes the early years of the so-called Nathan Jesus. There we read of how the two became one.

This mystery occurred when the ego-entity, forsaking the body of the twelve-year-old Jesus of whom the writer of the Gospel of Matthew tells, namely, the Zarathustra individuality, passed into the Nathan Jesus of the Gospel of Luke. In this body he continued to dwell, carrying on in it the further development of those qualities acquired through his having assumed the physical and etheric sheaths of the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew. In this body his higher principles ripened, until in his thirtieth year they were ready for the reception of the mighty Being who descended into them from higher worlds.

When seeking to describe the whole course of these events as related in the Gospel of Matthew we should have to say The writer first directs his attention to answering the question: What kind of physical and etheric body could serve such a Being as the Christ for His life on earth? And because of what the writer had experienced he could answer: In order that a suitable physical and etheric body could be prepared it was necessary that they should pass through forty-two generations of the Hebrew people so that the attributes laid down in Abraham might be fully developed. He could then continue to answer the question further by telling us: Such a physical and etheric body could only provide a fitting instrument if the greatest individuality humanity had so far produced for the comprehension of the Christ—that is the Zarathustra individuality—made use of them up to his twelfth year, at which time he had to leave this body and enter another. This was the body of the Jesus of whom the writer of the Gospel of Luke tells. From this point, the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, turning from that to which he had given his attention at first, deals exclusively with the Jesus of whom we read in the Gospel of Luke, and follows the life of Zarathustra until his thirtieth year. The moment had then come, when the astral body and ego-bearer had been so far evolved by Zarathustra that he could sacrifice them to the mighty Being—the great Sun-spirit—who descended from spiritual spheres and took possession of them. This was the moment of the baptism by John in Jordan.

If we recall once more the time when the earth was separated from the sun, and the beings whose supreme Leader is the Christ withdrew from the earth, we must say There were beings who let their influences spread gradually over the earth, just as the Christ, in the course of time, has allowed His influence to be felt on earth. But we must not forget something else, which is, that the nature of ancient Saturn as regards substantiality was relatively much simpler than that of the planetary bodies that arose later. It consisted of fire or warmth, there was neither air nor water there, neither was there light-ether. This light-ether came with the Sun-evolution. Then, when later this passed over into the Moon-evolution, the watery element appeared as a further densification, on one hand, and sound or tone-ether as a further refinement on the other. Solid substance was added to these during the evolution of the Earth; this condition arose as a further densification; life-ether being added at the same time as a further refinement. We have therefore on the earth—warmth, air or gaseous substance, water or fluid substance, and solids or earthly substance. Opposed to these as finer conditions we have light-ether, tone-ether, and life-ether, this last being the finest etheric condition known to us.

Now with the departure of the Sun from the Earth, not only the material part of the Sun left but the spiritual part left also. It was only later, and by degrees, that this returned to the earth, and it did not return entirely. I spoke of this at Munich when lecturing on the Six Days of Creation, so I will only touch on it here.

Of the higher etheric substances man is only aware of warmth and light-ether. What he perceives as ‘sound’ is but a reflection, a materialization, of the real tone that is in tone-ether. When tone-ether is spoken of we refer to the bearer of what is known as ‘The harmony of the spheres,’ and is only to be heard clairaudiently. The Sun certainly sends its light to the earth, in so far as this is physical, but a higher condition also lives in the Sun. People who know of these things do not speak in empty phrases when with Goethe they say:—

‘The sun-orb sings, in emulation,
Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round:
His path predestined through Creation,
He ends with step of thunder-sound.’

FAUST—Prologue in Heaven.

This refers to sphere-harmony, to that which lives in the sound-ether, and can only be heard by man when he has attained initiation, or when a Sun-being descends in order to hold intercourse with one who has been chosen to become an instrument for the further evolution of others. For such a one the Sun begins to resound, and the sphere-harmonies to be heard.

Above the tone-ether lies the life-ether. Just as the ‘word’ lies within mere tone, as something possessing an inward soul-like content, so associated with the meaning of the life-ether is that which in later Persian times was called ‘Honover.’ The writer of the Gospel of John calls this the ‘Logos,’ which as meaning-filled tone belongs to the Being of the Sun.

Among those blessed ones whose nature did not remain entirely deaf to this ‘resounding Sun,’ we have to reckon Zarathustra, who lived in the early part of our post-Atlantean civilization. It is no myth, but a fact that can be proved documentarily, that Zarathustra received instruction through the ‘Sun-word.’ He had become capable of hearing this. For what was the overwhelmingly majestic teaching given by the original Zarathustra to his pupils?

We might describe it thus: Zarathustra was an instrument through whom the sound, the meaning of the Sun-Word itself spoke. A Persian legend tells how the ‘Sun-Word’ spoke by the mouth of Zarathustra, how the secret or hidden word behind the Sun spoke through him. This legend, in referring to the astral body of the Sun, speaks of ‘Ahura Mazdao,’ but also of the ‘Sun-word,’ translated later into Greek as the ‘Logos.’

When thinking of this ancient Zarathustra, we realize that even so exalted a person could not in those early times have been initiated so as consciously to receive what he could afterwards pass on to others, but that he must have been ensouled by a Higher Being.

Zarathustra could teach of Ahura Mazdao, because the Aura of the Sun enfolded him, because the Spiritual-Being, Ahura Mazdao, resounded in him, because the World-Light—the great Aura—spoke through him. He was, as it were, the external bodily garment of the Sun-god, who thus sent His influence in advance down to man, though not as yet on earth Himself. At that time the Sun-word was more inward.

It might be said—speaking altogether in the sense of Zarathustra—that he taught his disciples: ‘You must understand that behind the physical sunlight there is a Spiritual Light, just as behind physical man there is something astral—his aura—so behind the sun there is the “Great Aura”. You must regard the physical sun as the light-body of a Being who will one day come to earth it is the external bodily form of something known to clairvoyant perception, and has an inner soul-nature within it. Just as the soul expresses itself in sound, so the Sun-word—the Logos—makes itself known by means of the Sun-Aura!’

Zarathustra gave to mankind the promise that one day the Light-being would come down from the spheres of the Great Aura, and that the soul of this Being would be the Sun-word. This is something we find for the first time in Zarathustra; it is the source from which his teaching springs. In it we have to see a prophetic wisdom, which tells of the coming of the Sun-aura and the Sun-word.

This teaching continued to live from epoch to epoch in the mysteries. It was the great consolation and hope of those who within human evolution longed for higher things. And the less exalted Sun-spirits, those associated with the earth, were able ever and again to give more precise teaching concerning the Spirit of the Sun-light, or Sun-aura, for they were really messengers of the Sun-word.

This was one side of the Mystery-tradition that passed down through the ages. The other side was, that men should learn to know, and by practice should be able to evolve upwards to meet, that which was to descend to earth. In pre-Christian times it was not yet possible for men to believe that without something further a feeble individual could evolve to meet the Sun-being, the Leader of the Hosts of the Sun, the Christ. It was not possible for anyone to attain this by any form of initiation. Hence the Gospel of Matthew describes how all the life-giving forces of the Hebrew people were called upon to produce such a man. On the other hand the Gospel of Luke explains how through seventy-seven successive stages the best that human nature could attain to was, as one might say, filtered, in order that a fitting body might evolve to meet the greatest Being Who was to come down to the earth.

In the Mysteries, as was natural, the men who had to be instructed, who had to be worked on, were ordinary feeble men, and were quite unable to grasp what it was that now faced humanity or that might be attained by single individuals. Therefore, those who were to be initiated were graded into different classes, and they approached the secrets of the Mysteries in different ways. Some, for instance, were taught more how men should live in the external world, what they ought to do there in order to fit themselves to become a temple for the descending Sun-being.

There were other pupils of the Mysteries who were instructed more in what was to evolve in the stillness of the soul if it wished to gain an understanding, a feeling for and perception of the Sun-spirit. Is it not natural that there should have been certain pupils whose task it was, so to direct their outer lives, so to be trained from childhood that their bodies became temples for the descending Spirit? This was the case in olden times; it is also the case to a certain extent to-day, but the ordinary materialistic consciousness passes it by.

Suppose the time drew nigh when some great Being was to descend from spiritual realms to give humanity a forward impulse in evolution.

Those who serve the Mysteries have to await such a moment; they have to interpret the signs of the times. In quiet and retirement, and without making any disturbance, they awaited the moment when a God is to come down to Earth to give an upward impulse to humanity. It was their duty also to watch humanity carefully, to see if among men there were any who could be trained and guided to fit them to receive such a Being into themselves. When the descending Being is of exceptional greatness such a man would have to be trained and prepared from earliest childhood that he might be a temple fit to receive Him. This also happens, and is also unnoticed. If the life of these men is described, it is found that they follow certain fundamental rules; even in outer concerns there is a certain resemblance in their lives. When we glance back over the course of human evolution we have to allow that here and there we find individuals whose lives take a similar course—even as regards external biographical facts. This cannot be denied, and has even been remarked on by those carrying out more recent research. Popular but not very profound works have been produced lately showing similarities in the lives of such persons. In the writings of Prof. Jensen (Marburg) you find, for instance, comparisons between the lives of the ancient Babylonian Gilgamesch, Moses, Jesus, and Paul. The tables are beautifully drawn up; he takes certain incidents from the lives of these individuals and compares them, with the result that quite wonderful resemblances are revealed, puzzling to the materialistic mind. The conclusions drawn are natural; it is stated that in these biographies one myth is copied from the others, that the writers of the Life of Jesus copied the biography of Gilgamesch, that the story of the life of Moses is but an old Epic, served up in a new form, and the final conclusion arrived at is: none of them has existed as a physical personality, not Moses, nor Jesus, nor Paul. People have no idea how far these so-called ‘researches’ lead them in respect of materialistic explanations.

Similarity of this kind in the biographies of great individuals rests on nothing more than the fact that in childhood they were already trained to become the bearers of a Divine Being; this causes no astonishment when we understand the deeper lying paths of human and universal evolution. Not only comparisons with Mythology, but all those searchings after similarities in regard to mythical sources is, in fact, fantasy. It leads nowhere. What does it benefit us to prove resemblances in the life of Siegfried to some Greek hero? They do certainly contain similarities. But the appearance of a house is not what matters, but who lives in it! It matters not that such and such things occurred in the life of Siegfried, but who the individuality was that dwelt in him.

Such things can, however, only be established with the help of occult research. What we have to bear in mind is that the lives of men who were to become fitting temples for higher Beings coming to the aid of humanity were guided in a special way, and that their lives show therefore a similar course as regards certain fundamental features.

In the temples of the Mysteries there have always been precepts regarding what had to come about with such men. Similar precepts were preserved by the association of the Essenes concerning Christ Jesus; telling what the nature of those human beings had to be who as the Solomon and the Nathan Jesus evolved upwards towards the great Sun-being, the Christ.

But those seeking initiation were not initiated into everything. There were different classes and degrees of initiates. Thus to some it was shown with special clearness what a man had to undergo who was evolving towards the God, so that he might be worthy to receive the God into himself. To others it was given to know how a God acted when He revealed Himself in a man; or to put it trivially, when he revealed Himself as a ‘genius.’ It is not generally remarked to-day that genius is apt to reveal itself in similar ways when appearing in different people. Nowadays people do not write biographies from out the spirit. If the genius of Goethe were to be described from the aspect of the spirit, a wonderful similarity would be found for instance between his genius and that of Dante, Homer, and Aeschylus. People do not now write biographies, but stick placards and tickets on a person and repeat all kinds of trivialities concerning the person's external life, which interests most people much more. So we are presented with a vast accumulation of ticketed rubbish concerning the life of Goethe, but not a real account of what Goethe actually was. Mankind to-day declares itself to be in some respects, and actually with pride, incapable of describing the evolution of genius in a human personality. There is a desire to-day to bring to light the earliest efforts of our great poets, stressing the fact that in the freshness and originality of their early works something elemental lived which is lost to the man in later life. But the real fact underlying this is that in their arrogance men only wish to understand the young poet, and not to take part in all he goes through in later life. Men pride themselves on the fact that they understand ‘youth,’ they trouble little about the ‘old,’ and have no idea that it is not the old who have become ‘old,’ but that they themselves have remained mere children.

This evil is widely spread. Seeing it is so deeply rooted, we need not wonder at the little understanding there is of the fact that a divine being can enter into a human personality, and that the life-course of such divine beings in any person and in any age must be fundamentally the same.

As there was necessarily much to be learnt as regards these profound relationships, this domain of knowledge was divided into classes. In a certain division of the Mysteries, teaching was given concerning the preparation of a man so that he might rise towards a divine being, whereas in others teaching was given concerning the descent of the inner Light-being, the Logos, the Sun-word, contained in the Aura of the Sun-being. In Christ we see this gradual descent in its most complex form. We need not wonder if more than four men had been needed for the understanding of these mighty facts; four, however, took it as their task. Two of these, the writers of the Gospels of Matthew and of Luke, undertook to relate the nature of the personality who grew towards the descending Sun-being—Matthew telling of this in respect of the physical and etheric bodies, Luke in respect of the astral-body and the bearer of the ego.

Mark on the other hand does not concern himself with that which advanced towards the Sun-being; but tells us of the Sun-Aura, the great body of light, the Spiritual Light whose power and activity streamed through space and was active within the form of Christ Jesus. He therefore begins his Gospel with the Baptism of John, when the Light of the World came down to earth. In the Gospel of John we are told of the soul of this Sun-spirit—of the Logos or Sun-word—its most inward essence. This is why the Gospel of John is the most inward of all the Gospels. The facts are distributed, and the complicated nature of Christ Jesus described from four different sides. All the four Evangelists tell of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth, but each of them feels constrained to keep to the point from which he makes his start, the point concerning which he first attained clairvoyance so that he might be able to describe this very complicated Being.

It is well that we should review this once more, so that it may really penetrate the soul. Matthew's attention is directed to the birth of the Jesus of the Solomon line he describes the development of the forces of the physical and etheric bodies, and tells how these sheaths were later discarded by Zarathustra, and how he passed on to the Jesus of the Nathan line all he had acquired while in the physical and etheric body of the Solomon Jesus. Matthew has then to trace further what he does not describe at the beginning, the fate of all that which as qualities and consequences had passed over from the Solomon Jesus to the Nathan Jesus. His attention is not so much directed to what was elemental in the nature of the astral body and ego-bearer of the Nathan Jesus, but to that which had been passed on to him from his own, the Solomon Jesus. And as he describes the Sun-being Who came from above, he is mainly concerned with telling of the qualities that could only be possessed by Jesus because he had an etheric and astral body that had been built up by the Solomon Jesus. These qualities could naturally be remarked in the Christ, for they were there, but that part of Christ Jesus which had attracted his attention from the first, he continues to describe most exactly, for this was for him the most important.

The writer of the Gospel of Mark tells from the first of the great descending Sun-spirit; he describes no earthly Being; that which walked the earth in human form provided for him only the means by which the nature of the Spirit that worked within it might be revealed. He draws our attention to the facts that appeal most to him, namely, the way in which the forces of the Sun-spirit worked. Hence many of the things related in the Gospels of Matthew and of Mark are the same, but they are told from different points of view. The first describes more the character of the sheaths, showing especially how qualities which were apparent in later years had already been present in early youth, and describing these so that we see how they worked. The writer of the Gospel of Mark, on the other hand, only makes use of the physical Jesus in order to reveal to us the earthly activities of the Sun-spirit. This he does to the smallest detail. If you wish really to understand the Gospels in these details you must bear in mind that the Evangelists fixed their attention on that which had attracted them from the beginning

Hence the writer of the Gospel of Luke keeps his eyes fixed on what is important to him, namely, the astral body and the bearer of the ego. What Christ Jesus experienced as a physical person does not interest him so much, but rather the feelings and perceptions of the astral body and the ego-bearer. All tenderness and compassion come from the astral body, and Christ Jesus could only be the Being of compassion He was, because He possessed the astral body of the Nathan Jesus. So this writer draws attention from the first to the compassion of Christ Jesus, and all the things He could accomplish, because He bore within Him this special astral body.

The writer of the Gospel of John turns his attention to the most exalted Power working on earth—the inner force of the Sun-Spirit, brought down through the instrumentality of Jesus. Neither does the physical life interest him particularly, but he looks to the Highest, to the pure Sun-Logos; the physical Jesus is for him only the means by which he can trace the relationship of the Sun-Logos to man. That which attracts his attention in the beginning, holds it to the end.

When we look on sleeping humanity we see our external sheaths, our physical and etheric bodies. In these two members live all the forces that have come to us from divine beings who, through mi1licns and millions of years have worked at erecting this temple of the physical body. In this temple we have lived since Lemurian times, and have defiled it ever more and more. It was constructed for us originally during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon ages of evolution. In it divine beings have lived and worked constructively. Looking at our physical body we can say: This is a temple provided for us by the gods; gods who have constructed this temple for us out of solid substance. And in the ether body we have that which contains the finer substances of our being; we are only unable to see these because through the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman we have become incapable of doing so. In this ether body lives also that which appertains to the Sun in it resound the actively formative Sphere-harmonies which the gods perceive behind all purely physical nature. So of the ether body we can say: Exalted Beings live in it, Gods that are closely related to the Sun-Spirits.

In this way we must regard our physical and etheric bodies as the most perfect members of our being. When we have forsaken them in sleep, when they slip from us, they are at once filled with the life and activity of divine beings.

The writer of the Gospel of Matthew keeps the physical body of Christ Jesus before him as his main object through all the Gospel, as it was his main object from the first. The materially physical body, however, no longer existed, this had been given up in its twelfth year; but the divine part—its forces—passed over into the other physical body, that of the Nathan Jesus. The reason why the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth was so perfect was that he had filled it with the forces he derived from the body of the Solomon Jesus.

Let us now try to picture in what way the writer of this Gospel regarded the Jesus dying on the cross. He had always kept his attention fixed on that which it was his special mission to describe, that of which he tells in the beginning; but now the spiritual part forsakes the physical body, and what is godlike departs with it. So the attention of the writer of the Gospel is directed to the separation of the inner being of Christ Jesus from this Divinity in His physical nature. And the ancient cry which was always heard in the Mysteries when the spiritual nature of a man forsook his physical body to gaze into spiritual worlds—‘My God, my God, how hast thou glorified me!’—is altered by Matthew; so that with his attention fixed on the physical body he says, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!’ ‘Thou has gone from me! This is what he exclaims. It is on this ‘forsaking’ that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew fixes his attention at this moment.

The author of the Gospel of Mark, on the other hand, describes the approach of the external forces of the Sun-Aura, and tells how the Sun-Aura, the body of the Sun-Being unites with the etheric body. This etheric body is in the same situation as ours when we sleep. As our external powers go forth from us when we sleep so they went forth from Jesus at His physical death. Hence we find the same cry in the Gospel of Mark.

The writer of the Gospel of Luke also directs his attention at the death of Christ Jesus to that which claimed it in the beginning: to the astral body and ego-bearer. Therefore he does not make use of the same words. His attention is directed mainly to other facts, to facts connected with the astral body, which at this moment attained its climax of compassion and love. Hence he renders the cry as ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!’

This is an expression of tenderness that could only come from such an astral body as the writer of the Gospel of Luke directs our attention to from the first; and the highest development of humility and devotion resulting from this is what claims his attention at the last. Therefore he gives the last words of Christ Jesus as ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit!’

John tells us of what, though certainly derived from the earth, was to be realized by man in the ordering of the earth, the meaning of earthly organization as it is contained in the Sun-Word. His attention is, therefore, directed mainly to what, as organization, was accomplished from the Cross on Golgotha. He describes to us how at this moment the Christ establishes a higher Brotherhood than that of blood-relationship. The former brotherhood arose through the blood. Mary was the mother of the child according to the blood. But that which was to unite soul with soul in love was inaugurated by Christ Jesus.

He gave to the disciple whom He loved not his mother according to the blood, but He gave to him his true mother in Spirit. Thus, renewing old bonds which had been lost to humanity, the words heard from the Cross come down to us in a new sense: ‘Behold thy Son!’ and ‘Behold thy Mother!’

That which as organizing quality lay here at the foundation of a new kind of fellowship is contained in the Life-ether, which organizes life, and which streamed into the earth in the Deed of Christ. Thus, behind all that the Evangelists tell us, we have a single act—the Deed of Christ; but each tells of it from the point of view which he took up from the beginning. The reason is that each of the Evangelists was absorbed in what his clairvoyant vision revealed to him and which he was fitted to receive; the rest passed him by. We now realize that this all-comprehensive event, which is described to us from four sides, is not full of contradictions. Once we are able to gather these different points of view into one we learn to understand it just because it is so described. It then also seems quite natural that the confession of Peter, with which we dealt in the last lecture, is only found in the Gospel of Matthew, and not in the others.

Mark describes the Christ as the Sun-Force, as a universal cosmic force at work in the world, which is now to work in a new way. It is the majestic power of the Sun-Aura in its elemental activity of which he tells. Luke, in speaking of the inner nature of Christ Jesus, describes preferably the astral body, the single human individual, man as he lives in himself; for it is in the astral-body that man lives in himself, here in his deepest individuality, here he develops within his inner self. Man does not form fellowships primarily by means of his astral body; the community-building capacity by which he enters into relationship with other men appears in the etheric body. Luke has, therefore, no inclination to tell us of the founding of any fellowship. Neither has the writer of the Gospel of John, who describes to us the ego-being. But Matthew, who describes Christ Jesus as man, has special inducement to speak of those human relationships established by the God Who once and only once dwelt within a human form. He is constrained to lay special stress on the relationships, the fellowships that God, as man, was able to establish among men, a relationship which could be regarded as a ‘Community,’ as an association in which many dwell together. The human aspect of Christ Jesus is what he describes, because this was the aspect to which he turned his attention in the beginning, and he shows how Christ worked as man through the physical and etheric body he had assumed.

When we have gained an inner understanding of this, we find it natural that the expression which has stirred up so much controversy, ‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I establish my community’ could only be found in the Gospel of Matthew. When we look at all the discussions of modern theologians of most varied schools concerning these words, we really only find particular and unique reasons for accepting them or rejecting them; nowhere, however, do we find an understanding for their deeper meaning. Those who reject them do so because the external community of the Catholic Church upholds them; for the external organization of this church is founded on them. That they are misused in this sense is no proof that they were originally introduced to support the Catholic Church. Those who reject them do not really know what to bring forward against them, for they do not see the misinterpretations. These gentlemen are in a strange position. Some state that the Gospel of Mark is the original Gospel, that to it was then added those of Matthew and Luke, which, they say, are to some extent copied and enlarged from it, and that it had occurred to the writers of the Gospel of Matthew, and of Luke, to insert these words. They specially state this with regard to the Gospel of Matthew, because they say he wished to support the idea of the community by inserting the words: ‘Thou art Peter, on this rock I will found my community.’

In any case parts of the text are of little help in the rendering of certain passages, because it is impossible to say regarding some ancient texts that this or that is the word actually used; but as regards these words in the Gospel of Matthew it is a fact that they belong to what is most certain in it, for here we have no possible philological reason for doubt. Many sayings may be open to doubt in such complicated communications, but from the standpoint of philology no objections can be brought against these two statements ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,’ and the other, ‘Thou art Peter, on this rock will I build my community, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’ No text exists to which objections can be made in respect of these sayings. Perhaps it was hoped that from texts more recently discovered some contradiction of these words might be found, but the passages to which I refer are not found in these texts, portions of which are very much perished.

This at least is the outcome of philological research. Naturally you must rely on what is reported by those who have seen these documents. Of this passage we can state that no other rendering of it is possible, and from the whole nature of the Gospel of Matthew we can well see that this must be so. Christ Jesus is here described as a man. Once we have this key we can understand the Gospel of Matthew and we can also understand the parables told by Christ Jesus to His disciples and to those who were outside his immediate circle.

In the last lecture we showed how man evolves upwards from below until he unfolds the spiritual-soul like a blossom, until he has developed so far that the Christ-impulse comes to meet him.

The five principles of human nature which developed in man during the five epochs of civilization—the ether body, astral body, sentient-soul, rational-soul, and spiritual-soul evolve upwards from below. These can be so used, trained, and developed that they acquire what makes it possible for them—when the time is ripe—to be permeated by the Christ-impulse. In future ages all humanity will be able to develop so that they can participate in the Christ, but they must first develop fittingly these five principles of their being from below. If this is not done, if through succeeding incarnations they do not concern themselves with the development of these principles, then the Christ can come to them; but they cannot unite themselves with Him. They have no oil in their lamps These five. principles may be left without oil. Those who have poured no oil into their lamps are represented very beautifully in the parable of ‘the five foolish Virgins.’ Those who had not attended to their lamps in time could not unite themselves with Christ; but the other five who had put oil in their lamps could in the right hour do so.

All the parables founded on numbers are profoundly illuminating as regards the impulse brought by Christ to men.

Further, He makes it clear to those who regard His teaching outwardly, that many external thing must not be considered merely in a material sense, or in the most obvious way, but rather as symbols for something else. He wishes to point out to them the nature of their own thoughts. He asks for a coin, and showing them the likeness of Caesar imprinted on it, points out that something more is expressed by the coin than is merely contained in the metal, namely, its connection with a certain ruler, with a certain Empire. ‘What in this belongs to Caesar, render to him; it is his, and is contained in his likeness on the coin, not in the metal itself.’ ‘But learn,’ He also wished to teach them, ‘to regard men, and what is in them, in a like manner, for they are the temples of the living God. Look on men as you would look on a coin, learn, that in them you see the image of God; you will then know that they belong to God.’

All these parables have a much deeper meaning than the trivial one generally accepted. We learn this when we know that Christ did not make use of parables as is customary in the literature of the day. In making use of them He directs them to the whole nature of man, obliging people when they think them out to apply them to their whole nature, not to its separate parts. In this way He shows how, if they are to be shown that something is irrational, they must learn to pass with their thoughts from one realm to another.

For example, people have thought out all kinds of Sun-myths in connection with Buddha, Christ, and others. It became at last too much for one person. He said therefore: ‘With these methods of applying Myths and Constellations to any great event, it is possible to do anything. If someone comes and points out that in the life of Christ we have a Sun-myth, in order to show that Christ Jesus never lived, one can also assert by such methods that Napoleon never lived, and can easily prove it. We might say: In the name of Napoleon we have a rendering of “Apollo”, the initial “N” does not represent a negative in Greek but an intensification; hence Napoleon is N'Apollo—a kind of “Super-Apollo”. The resemblance can be carried still further by the individual who sets out to prove the non-existence of Jesus. A resemblance is found by the German Prof. Drews between the names Jesus, Joses, Jason, etc., etc. Marvellous connections can also be discovered between the name of Napoleon's mother, Letitia, and Leto, the mother of Apollo; further, that Apollo—the Sun—had twelve constellations around him; Napoleon had twelve Marshals, who are nothing more than symbolic expressions for the Zodiacal signs surrounding the sun. It is not unimportant that the hero of the Napoleon myth had six brothers and sisters, he making the seventh, just as the planets are seven in number. Behold, therefore, Napoleon did not live!

This is a very clever satire on the symbolic explanations so frequently employed. Men never really learn, otherwise they would have known that according to these methods—which they even employ to-day—it would have been proved long since that Napoleon, for example, never lived. But humanity never learns, for according to the same methods it is proved again to-day that Jesus never lived.

Such things show how necessary it is that we should not approach what the Gospels have to tell concerning the greatest Event in all the world, without preparation. We must realize also that it is exactly here that Anthroposophy ma so easily go wrong. For even our movement is by no means free from playing with all kinds of Symbolism drawn from the world of the stars.

I wished, therefore, especially in this cycle of lectures, where I have spoken of the greatest Event in human evolution as having been revealed in the language of the stars, to point out the true way in which this language is employed when what is referred to is really understood.

With this preparation, let us approach the scene in which the Gospels culminate. I have already referred to the baptism and the history of the life and death of Christ Jesus as two stages of initiation. To this I have only to add that after He had led His disciples to.the point where they could perceive the going forth of the innermost being of a man into the Macrocosm, where they could see beyond death, He accomplished a resurrection before them, but not in the trivial sense in which it is often understood. This took place absolutely as told in the Gospel of Matthew. Let us take the words just as they stand—and as clearly stated also in the Gospel of John—and understand that what Paul says is true when he tells us: Through what he had experienced on the way to Damascus, he had seen the Christ, as the Risen One!

Paul lays special stress on the fact that what was revealed to him was the same as was revealed to the other brethren, to the twelve, and to the five hundred also, at one time. The Christ was seen by him, as others saw him after the resurrection. This is amply indicated in the Gospels, where we read that Mary of Magdala, who had seen the Christ a few days before, seeing Him after the resurrection takes Him to be the gardener, for she finds no resemblance to Him she had known before. If He had really looked as He had a few days before, it would have been impossible for in this case it would have been an abnormal fact.

No one would believe you if you said that you could not recognize someone you had seen a few days before, if he reappeared in the same form a few days later. We have, therefore, to realize clearly that a change had in fact taken place. Reading the Gospels closely we arrive at the necessary conclusion, that through all that had taken place in Palestine, through the Mystery of Golgotha, the eyes of the disciples had been opened, and that they were able to recognize the Christ as He was, as the Spirit penetrating, and working, through the whole world. They recognized Him for what He was, after He had given over His physical body to the earth, and saw that He remained just as powerfully active for the earth as He had been before.

All this is made amply clear to us in the Gospel of Matthew, in words perhaps the most remarkable to be found in any document. We are clearly shown that the writer of this Gospel desires to inform us: Christ appeared once upon a time in a human physical body, but this event is not merely an event, it is an Impulse—an Original Cause. It has results, it has an effect.

The Sun-Word or Sun-aura, of which Zarathustra once spoke as being outside the earth, has through the life of Christ Jesus become united with the earth, and has remained so. Before this, what was later united with the earth was not so united with it.

It is fitting that we Anthroposophists should understand this fact. We then also understand that it was the risen Christ Who revealed Himself to the eyes of the disciples, now become clairvoyant, and showed them how as Spirit He was now interwoven with the earth and could say to them: ‘Go forth and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all things whichsoever I commanded you! and lo! I am with you always, even unto the end of the Earth-age!’

It is the mission of Spiritual Science to help us to understand what was then beginning; that the Aura of the earth has been united with the Sun-Aura, and that it can be seen by those whose spiritual eyes are opened, that this Sun-Aura, in the Earth-Aura, which was visible to Paul, can also be heard when our inward ears are opened to hear the Sun-word as it was heard by Lazarus, he who had been initiated by Christ Jesus Himself.

The purpose of Spiritual Science is to interpret these facts to us. It has also to interpret for us what has taken place with regard to the spiritual evolution of the world. In doing this Spiritual Science actually establishes that which Christ Jesus desired to establish, and does so in the sense of the Gospel of Matthew.

There is one very beautiful saying in the Gospel of Matthew that is generally wrongly translated. The saying: ‘I am not come down to remove peace from earth, but to remove the sword.’ This most beautiful message of peace has unfortunately in the course of time been changed into its very opposite. In order gradually to deliver the earth from that which brings strife and disharmony among men, the Christ-Being had impressed Himself—His own nature—on the spiritual life of the Earth. Spiritual Science will establish peace when, in this sense, she has become so truly Christ-like that she unites all religions. She can then unite not only what is in our immediate neighbourhood, but when the act of the greatest of all Peacemakers is understood, she can establish peace over the whole earth.

It is certainly not in accordance with the greatest Peacemaker that fanatical people should go from one part of the earth to another and impose a narrow Christian teaching on a people whose conditions make such a teaching unsuitable in the form it has taken among another people.

Great mistakes were made when teaching concerning Christ was carried over to the East in our time, and imposed on people here and there.

It has often been pointed out to you as Anthroposophists that the Christ does not belong only to Christians; that in reality the same being was referred to by Zarathustra when he spoke of Ahura Mazdao, and by the seven Indian Rishis when they spoke of Vicva Karman. We live in the West, and we know that it is Christ who is spoken of, when in the East other words are used. We strive to understand the Christ so that this understanding is in accordance with human evolution—with the further progress of humanity. And we clearly realize that neither discernment nor revelation can give us information concerning Christ which turns men from Him, that only those things vouchsafe information to us concerning Him, which consciously bear within them the living content of Christ Himself. And we know when we speak in the right way of Vicva Karman and Ahura Mazdao to those who deny Christ—when we do not force names on them—that they can attain of themselves to an understanding of the Christ. We do not wish to force the Christ on them in name, we realize clearly when we are not only Anthroposophists but Occultists that names mean little, that it is the Being that matters. Were we convinced but for a moment that we could express the being who is in the Christ by any other name we would do so What we are concerned with is the truth, not with our prejudices because of living in one corner of the earth and belonging to one people. It must not be said of us that we understand the Christ through means not fitted to an understanding of Him, because outside His influence, this would be impossible for anyone. Christ can be found also by other nations, but He must be sought by means derived from Himself. People should not reproach Anthroposophists for wishing to study Christianity in forms not derived from Christianity itself. Christ can not be comprehended by Oriental names. He is not understood through them at all; such people look close past Him, thinking perhaps that they have seen Him.

What does it mean when people put forward the objection that we view Christ from a theosophical or oriental standpoint? Have we to deny that the Christ came to us from the East? We have no such wish, but people seek in this way to force us to take the West to the East, and to form a conception of Christ in accordance with the East. This must not and cannot be, not from any aversion, but because Eastern ideas, which have a very ancient origin, cannot reach out to grasp the idea of Christ, and because the Christ can only be absolutely and entirely understood through that line of evolution into which first Abraham and then Moses entered. But the being of Zarathustra passed on into Moses, and we have to seek him there, to where his influence has extended.

Further, we must not seek Zarathustra in the ancient Zarathustrian literature, but where he reincorporated in Jesus of Nazareth! We must consider evolution!

In the same way we must not look for the Buddha as he was six hundred years before our era, but where the writer of the Gospel of Luke tells us he is to be found, where his light streamed from on high, after he had evolved from Bodhisattva to Buddha, and shone down into the astral body of the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke. Here the Buddha is to be found, and here we learn to know him in his further progress.

It can be seen from this how religions absolutely agree, and work together to bring about the advance of humanity. It is not a matter of preaching the tenets of Anthroposophy, but that we place them in a setting of living feeling—that we do not merely talk of tolerance and remain intolerant because we have a prejudice in favour of one religious system or another. We are only tolerant when we measure each with its own standards and understand each for itself.

It is certainly not our fault nor the fault of our special prejudices that many religious systems have apparently co-operated to bring Christianity about. In spiritual realms, where the great spiritual beings have worked, things have progressed in a different way from on Earth, where those who confess these various religions are active. Some of these earthly confessors, for example, summoned a conference in Tibet to establish an orthodox teaching in the name of Buddha at the very time when the actual Buddha had come down to inspire the astral body of the Jesus spoken of in the Gospel of Luke. So it always is. The confessors of a faith hold fast to that which has continued working on earth; meanwhile divine beings have carried the work on further so that mankind may advance. Humanity makes most progress when men try to understand their Gods, when they try to advance with them. Such a thought ought to give us a living feeling, a living understanding, of what we glimpse in the different Gospels.

You have seen that in studying the three Gospels so far dealt with we have to recognize something different in each of them. When to these we shall have added the study of the Gospel of Mark we shall find that it reveals a very intimate knowledge of Cosmology. Ahura Mazdao, who is active in all space, can be described in a right connection in this Gospel, just as the secret concerning the blood, concerning the connection of the individual with the race from which he has sprung is described in the Gospel of Matthew.

Accept what I have ventured to describe in these lectures as one side of the great Christ Event, and realize that far from everything has been said concerning it. The time is perhaps not yet come when all that might be said concerning this Great Mystery can be said, even in small circles such as ours. The best result that can come from the presentations of these facts is that we accept them not only with our understanding and intellect, but that we associate them with the innermost phases of our soul life—with the deepest feelings of our hearts—and there let them live on.

The words of the Gospels are words that, when we receive them into our hearts and really understand them, become powers; powers that fill us and develop a marvellous life-force within us. To-day, when I have to say the final words in connection with this course of lectures on the Gospel of Matthew, I should like to say something I have frequently said before, and which I should like especially to associate with this humanly beautiful document of our Christian records—the Gospel of Matthew.

What strikes us most when reading the Gospel of Matthew which from the very first brings before us the manhood of Christ Jesus?

Though recognizing the great difference between any other earthly man and that man who could receive the Christ, yet in all humility we would say that what strikes us most forcibly is the value of man, what he is worthy of. Then, although our nature is far far removed from that of the nature of Jesus of Nazareth, we may yet venture to say: We bear our human nature within us, and this human nature shows itself to be such that it can receive into it the Son of God, the Son of the living God; so that from this acceptance the promise can spring that the Son of God will from this time forward remain connected with the earth, and that when the earth will have reached its goal all men will be permeated with the substance and nature of Christ, in so far as they have desired to receive this into themselves. We have need of humility if we are to cherish such an ideal. If not so cherished it develops pride and conceit in us; we then think only of what we may become as men, and do not sufficiently keep in mind how little we have so far to show. This ideal must be experienced with humility. When understood in this way it rises before us with such majesty and power, and is so overwhelming in its splendour that we are forced to be humble. Our humility need not overwhelm us, however, for we have the Reality of this ideal before us, and when we understand the Reality, however small our power may be, yet it will bear us ever higher and higher towards our Divine Goal.

The Rosicrucian Mystery Play strikes the entire scale in tones as we need them in ascending progress—firstly in the second scene where Johannes Thomasius stands shattered under the overwhelming impression from the words, ‘O man, know thou thyself;’ secondly, where in the ninth scene, under the impression of the words, ‘O man, feel and experience thou thyself;’ he feels exultingly raised to the wide spaces of Heaven. Keeping this before us, and with help from it, we can understand the majesty and grandeur which meets us in the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew, revealing as it does our own littleness and demanding our humility, but at the same time pointing to the inner truth and inner reality which lift us out of all that seems like an abyss of our own littleness, compared with what we should be and can become.

If frequently we are conscious of feeling crushed when comparing what we are with the human divine greatness that can be in man, yet if we have but the goodwill we can experience something of the divine Impulse coming from the ‘Son of the living God,’ we can call to mind Christ Jesus, who Himself exhorts us, here where as men we experience the ego of which He is the most exalted Representative, crying to us in clear-cut tones for all the ages to come, ‘O man, experience thyself.’

When we understand the humanity of the Gospel of Matthew in this way—and hence it is the Gospel which lies most near to us—there streams to us from it the courage to live, the power and hope to stand fast, whatever our life-work may be. If we do so, we shall have best understood what it was intended that these words should convey to us.

Now that we are resuming activities in the Berlin Group it is well to think for a short time of the studies in which we have been engaged since last year.

You will remember that about a year ago, in connection with the General Meeting of the German Section, I gave a lecture to the Berlin Group with the title: The Sphere of the Bodhisattvas¹ In that lecture on the mission of the Bodhisattvas in the world my purpose was to introduce the subject to which our main attention was to be directed in the Group meetings last winter. Our study was concerned with the Christ-problem, particularly in relation to the Gospel of St. Matthew and also in relation to the Gospels of St. John and St. Luke. And I indicated that at some later date we should be preparing for a still deeper study of the Christ-problem in connection with the Gospel of St. Mark.

In these studies we were not attempting a mere exposition of the Gospels. I have often spoken of this in perhaps rather extreme terms, and made it clear that Spiritual Science would still have been able to describe the events in Palestine even if there had been no historical records of them. The real authority for what we have to say about the Christ Event is not to be found in any written document but in the eternal, spiritual record known as the Akasha Chronicle, decipherable only by clairvoyant consciousness. I have often explained what this really means. We compare what has first been learned from spiritual investigations with what is recorded in the Gospels or in other New Testament sources about the events in Palestine. And in the end we recognise that in order to read the Gospel records as they should be read, we must first—without reference to them—have investigated the mysteries connected with the happenings in Palestine, and that precisely because of this independent approach the value we attach to the Gospels and the reverence we feel for them, greatly increase.

But if we take into account not only the immediate interests of our present gathering but also the fact that contemporary culture needs a new understanding of the recorded sources of Christianity, we shall expect Spiritual Science not merely to satisfy our own intellectual difficulties about the events in Palestine but also to translate into the language of present-day culture what it says about the significance of the Christ Event for the whole evolution of humanity. It would not do to limit ourselves to the contributions made in previous centuries towards an understanding of the problem and the figure of Christ. If that were sufficient for the cultural needs of the modern age we should not find so many people unable to reconcile their sense of truth with accepted Christian tradition and who in one way or another actually repudiate the accounts of the events in Palestine as they have been handed down and believed in for centuries. All this makes it clear that modern culture needs a new understanding, a new enunciation, of the truths of Christianity.

Among many other aids to the investigation of Christian truths one is particularly effective. It consists in extending our vision and our feeling and perception beyond the horizons within which, in recent centuries, man has had to seek an understanding of the spiritual world. Here is a simple indication of how these horizons can be widened.

Goethe—to take as an example this master-spirit of recent European culture—was, as we all know, a man of titanic genius. Many studies have helped us to understand what depths of spiritual insight lay in Goethe's personality and to see that we ourselves can attain a high level of spiritual understanding through contemplating the texture of his soul. But however good our knowledge of Goethe may be, however deeply we steep ourselves in what he has to offer, there is something we shall not find in him, although it is essential if our vision is to be broadened in the right way and our horizon widened for our most urgent spiritual needs. There is no indication that Goethe had any inkling of certain things we can learn about and benefit from to-day—I mean, the concepts of the spiritual evolution of humanity which first became accessible to us in the nineteenth century through interpretations of documentary records of the spiritual achievements of the East. We there find many concepts which, far from making an understanding of the Christ-problem more difficult, if rightly applied help us to realise the nature of Christ Jesus. I therefore believe that there could be no better introduction to the study of the Christ-problem than an exposition of the mission of the Bodhisattvas—as they are named in Oriental philosophy. They are the great spiritual Individualities whose task it is from time to time to influence evolution. In Western culture there had for centuries been no knowledge of concepts such as that of the Bodhisattvas: yet only by mastering such concepts can we acquire some measure of knowledge of what Christ has been for mankind, what He can be and will continue to be.

So we find that study of an extensive phase of the spiritual development of mankind can be fruitful for the civilisation and culture of our own time. From another point of view as well it is important, when reviewing past centuries, to emphasise clearly the difference between men living at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and men living in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, as well as the fact that until about a century ago very little was known in Europe about Buddha and Buddhism. Finally, we must remember that the impulse leading to the goal of our endeavours is the feeling we have when we confront great spiritual truths. For what really matters is not so much the knowledge that someone may wish to acquire, but rather the warmth of feeling, the power of perception, the nobility of will, with which his soul confronts the great truths of humanity. In our Groups the prevailing tone and atmosphere are more important than the actual words spoken. These feelings and perceptions vary greatly but the most important of all is reverence for the great truths and the feeling that we can approach them only with awe and veneration; we must realise that we cannot hope to grasp a great reality through a few concepts and ideas casually acquired and co-ordinated.

I have often said that we cannot accurately visualise a tree that is not actually in front of us if we have drawn a sketch of it from one side only, but that we must go round it and sketch it from many different sides. Only by assembling these different pictures can we obtain a complete impression of the tree. This analogy should make clear to us what our attitude should be to the great spiritual truths. We can make no progress at all in any real (or apparent) knowledge of higher things by approaching them from one side only. Whether or not there is truth in the particular view we may hold, we should always be humble enough to recognise that all our ideas are, and cannot help being, one-sided. If we intensify such a feeling of humility we shall welcome all ideas which throw light on any possible aspect of the great facts of existence. The age in which we are living makes this necessary, and the necessity will be increasingly borne in upon us. Consequently we no longer shut ourselves off from other views or from paths to the supreme truths which may differ from our own or from that of contemporary thought. During the course of the last few years, in considering the fruits of Western culture, we have tried always to maintain the principle of true humility in knowledge. I have never had the audacity to attempt to give one single survey of the events which comprise what we call the Christ-problem. On the contrary, I have always said that we were approaching the problem now from one point of view, now from another. And I have always emphasised that not even then has the problem been exhausted but that much further patient work is necessary.

The reason for studying the four Gospels separately is that we can then approach the Christ-problem from four different standpoints. We find that the four Gospels do, in fact, present four different aspects, and we are reminded that this stupendous problem must not be approached from one side only but at least from the four directions of the spiritual heavens indicated by the names of the four Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. If this is done we shall come increasingly to understand the problems and the great truths which are needed for the life of the human soul; and on the other hand, we shall never say that the one form of truth we may have grasped is the whole truth.

All our studies this last winter have been directed towards evoking a mood of humility in knowledge. Indeed without such humility no progress in the spiritual life is possible. Again and again I have laid stress upon the basic qualities essential for any progress in spiritual knowledge, and anyone who has followed the lectures given here week by week will confirm this.

Progress in spiritual knowledge—this is of course one of the basic impulses of our Movement. What does it mean to the soul? It fulfils the soul's worthiest needs and longings and provides the support which everyone conscious of his true humanity requires. Moreover this support is completely in line with the intellectual needs of the present day.

The progress in knowledge made possible by Spiritual Science should throw light on things which cannot be investigated by our ordinary senses but only by the faculties which belong to man as a spiritual being. The great questions about man's place in the physical world and what lies beyond the manifestations of the senses in this world, the truths concerning what lies beyond life and death—these questions meet a profound need, indeed the most human of all needs, of man's soul. Even if for various reasons we hold aloof from these questions and succeed for a time in deceiving ourselves by maintaining that science cannot investigate them, that the necessary faculties do not exist, nevertheless in the end the need and longing to find answers to them never disappear. The origin of what we see developing in the course of childhood and youth, the destination of what lies harboured in our soul as our bodily constitution begins to wilt and wither, in short, how man is connected with a spiritual world—these questions arise from a deep human need and man can dispense with the answers to them only when he deceives himself about his true nature.

But because these questions spring from so deep a need, because the soul cannot live in peace and contentment if it does not find the answers, it is only natural that people should look for an easy, comfortable way of finding them. Although many people would like to deny it, these questions have become particularly urgent in every domain of life, and what a variety of paths to the answers are offered to us! It can be said without exaggeration that the path of Spiritual Science is the hardest of them all. Many of you will admit that some of the sciences to-day are very difficult, and you will hesitate to tackle them because you are frightened by what you will have to master if you are really to understand them. The path of Spiritual Science may appear to be easier than, let us say, that of mathematics or botany or some other branch of natural science. Yet in the strictest sense the path of Spiritual Science is more difficult than that of any other science. This can be said without exaggeration. Why, then, does it seem easier to you? Only because it stirs the interests of the soul so forcefully and makes so compelling an appeal. It may be the most difficult of all the paths along which man is led into the spiritual world to-day, but we should not forget that it will lead to the highest within us. Is it not natural that the path to the highest should also be the hardest? Hence we should never be frightened by or blind to the inevitable difficulties of the path of Spiritual Science.

Among many features of this path, one has repeatedly been mentioned here. A person wishing to follow it must, to begin with, seriously imbibe what spiritual investigation has already been able to present about the mysteries and realities of the spiritual world. Here we touch upon a very important chapter of progress in Spiritual Science. People speak glibly about a spiritual science that cannot be corroborated, about spiritual facts alleged to have been witnessed and investigated by some initiate or seer, and they ask: Would it not be better simply to show us how we can quickly make our own way upwards into regions from which to glimpse the spiritual world? Why are we constantly told: This is what it looks like, this is how it appears to such and such a seer? Why are we not shown how to make the ascent quickly ourselves?

There are good reasons why facts which have been investigated about the spiritual world are communicated in general terms before details are given of the methods of training whereby the soul itself can be led into those higher spheres. We gain something very definite if we apply ourselves reverently to the study of what spiritual investigations have revealed from the spiritual world. I have often said that the facts of the spiritual world must be investigated and can be discovered only by clairvoyant consciousness; but I have as often said that once someone possessed of clairvoyant consciousness has observed these facts in the spiritual world and then communicates them, they must be communicated in such a way that even without clairvoyance, everyone will be able to test them by reference to the normal feeling for truth present in every soul, and by applying to them his own unprejudiced reasoning faculties. Anyone endowed with genuine clairvoyant consciousness will always communicate the facts about the spiritual world in such a way that everyone who wishes to test what he says will be able to do so without clairvoyance. But at the same time he will communicate them in a form whereby their true value and significance can be conveyed to a human soul.

What, then, does this communication and presentation of spiritual facts mean to the soul? It means that anyone who has some idea of conditions in the spiritual world can direct and order his life, his thoughts, his feelings and his perceptions in accordance with his relationship to the spiritual world. In this sense every communication of spiritual facts is important, even if the recipient cannot himself investigate those facts with clairvoyant consciousness. Indeed for the investigator himself these facts acquire a human value only when he has clothed them in a form in which they can be accessible to everyone. However much a clairvoyant may be able to see and investigate in the spiritual world, it remains valueless both to himself and to others until he can bring the fruits of his vision into the range of ordinary cognition and express them in ideas and concepts which can be grasped by a natural sense of truth and by sound reasoning. In fact, if his findings are to be of any value to himself he must first have understood them fundamentally; their value begins only at the point where the possibility of reasoned proof begins.

There is a radical test which can be applied to what I have just said. Among many other valuable spiritual truths and communications you will certainly attach very great importance to those concerning what a man can take with him through the gate of death of the spiritual truths he has assimilated on the physical plane between birth and death. Or, to put it differently: How much remains to a man who, by cultivating the spiritual life, has mastered the substance of communications relating to the spiritual world? The answer is: Exactly as much remains to him as he has fundamentally grasped and understood and has been able to translate into the language of ordinary human consciousness.

Picture to yourselves a man who may have made quite exceptional discoveries in the spiritual world through clairvoyant observation but has never clothed them in the language of ordinary life. What happens to such a man? All his discoveries are extinguished after death; only so much remains of value and significance as has been translated into language which, in any given period, is the language of a healthy sense of truth.

It is naturally of the greatest importance that clairvoyants should be able to bring tidings from the spiritual world and make them fruitful for their fellow-men. Our age needs such wisdom and cannot make progress without it. It is essential that such communications should be made available to contemporary culture. Even if this is not recognised to-day, in fifty or a hundred years it will be universally acknowledged that civilisation and culture can make no progress unless men become convinced of the existence of spiritual wisdom and realise that humanity must die unless spiritual wisdom is assimilated. And even if all space were conquered for the purposes of intercommunication, mankind would still have to face the prospect of the death of culture if spiritual wisdom were rejected. This is true beyond all shadow of doubt. Insight into the spiritual world is absolutely essential.

In addition to the value of spiritual wisdom for single individuals after death there is its value for the progress of humanity on the Earth. To have the right idea here, distinction must be made between the clairvoyant who has been able to investigate the spiritual world and express his findings in terms of healthy human reason, and a man whose karma while he was incarnated made it impossible for him to see into the spiritual world, and who had consequently to rely upon hearing from others about the findings of spiritual research. What is the difference between the fruits enjoyed after death by two such individuals? How do the effects of spiritual truths differ in an Initiate and in one who knows them only by hearsay and cannot himself see into the spiritual world? Is the Initiate better off than a man who could only hear these truths from someone else?

For humanity in general, vision of spiritual worlds is, of course, worth more than absence of vision. A seer is in touch with those worlds and can teach and help forward the development not only of men but of spiritual beings as well. Clairvoyant consciousness, then, is of special value. For the individual, however, knowledge alone has value and in this respect the most gifted clairvoyant is not to be distinguished from one who has merely heard the communications without being able in the present incarnation to look into the spiritual world himself. Whatever spiritual wisdom we have assimilated will be fruitful after death, no matter whether or not we ourselves are seers.

One of the great moral laws of the spiritual world is here presented to us. Admittedly, our modern conception of morality may not be subtle enough to understand its implications fully. No advantage is gained by individuals—except perhaps a merely selfish gratification—because their karma has made it possible for them to see into the spiritual world. Everything we acquire for our individual life must be acquired on the physical plane and must be moulded into forms appropriate to that plane. If a Buddha or a Bodhisattva stands at a higher level than other human individualities among the hierarchies of the spiritual world, it is because he has acquired these higher qualities through a number of incarnations on the physical plane.

Here is an indication of what I mean by the higher morality, the higher ethics, resulting from the spiritual life. Let nobody imagine that he gains any advantage over his fellow-men through developing clairvoyance, for that is simply not so. He makes no progress which can be justified on any ground of self-interest. He achieves progress only in so far as he can be more useful to others. The immorality of egoism can find no place in the spiritual world. A man can gain nothing for himself by spiritual illumination. What he does gain he can gain only as a servant of the world in general, and he gains it for himself only by gaining it for others.

This, then, is the position of the spiritual investigator among his fellow-men. If they are willing to listen to him and assimilate his findings, they make the same progress as he does. This means that spiritual achievement must be employed only to further the general well-being of man, and not for any selfish purposes. There are circumstances when a man is moral not merely of his own volition but because immorality or egoism would be of no advantage. It is also easy to realise that there are dangers in penetrating into the spiritual world without proper preparation. By leading a spiritual life we do not achieve anything which will fulfil a selfish purpose after death. On the other hand, a man may wish to gratify an egotistic purpose in his life on Earth through spiritual development. Even if nothing egotistic can benefit existence in the spiritual world, there may be a wish to fulfil some egotistical purpose on the Earth.

Most people who follow the path leading to higher development are likely to say that they will obviously strive to discard egoism before trying to enter the spiritual world. But believe me, there is no province of life where deception is likely to be as great as it is among those who claim that their endeavours are free from egotistic interests. It is easy enough to say this, but whether it can be a fact is quite another matter. It is a different matter because when a man begins to practise exercises which can lead him into the spiritual world, he then, for the first time, confronts himself as he truly is. In ordinary life very few things are experienced in their true form. A man lives in a web of ideas, of impulses of will, of moral perceptions and conventional actions, all of which originate in his environment, and he seldom stops to ask himself how he should act or think in a given case if his upbringing had not been what it was. If he were to answer this question honestly, he would realise that his shortcomings are very much greater than he has assumed them to be.

The result of practising exercises through which a man learns how to rise into the spiritual world is that he grows beyond the web woven around him through custom, education, environment. He quickly grows beyond all this. In soul and spirit he is stripped naked. The veils with which he has clothed himself and to which he clings in his ordinary feelings and actions, fall away. This accounts for a quite common phenomenon of which I have often spoken.—Before beginning to work at his spiritual development a man may have been a reasonable, possibly also a very intelligent and at the same time, humble person who went through life without committing any particular stupidities. Then, after beginning this development, he may become arrogant and do all sorts of senseless things. He seems to have lost his bearings in life. To those familiar with the spiritual world the reason for this is clear. If we are to maintain balance and a sense of direction in face of what comes to the soul from the spiritual world, two things are necessary. It must not make us giddy or light-headed. In physical life our own organism protects us through what we call in anthroposophical lectures, the 'sense of balance or equilibrium'. Just as in a man's physical body there is something which enables him to keep himself upright—for if the organism is not functioning properly he will get giddy and may fall down—so in the spiritual life there is something which helps him to orientate himself in his relation to the world, and this he must be able to do. Spiritual unsteadiness comes about because what used to support him, namely the external world and his own sense-perceptions, fall away and he has then to rely upon himself alone. The supports have gone and there is a danger of giddiness. When the supports fall away we may easily become arrogant, for arrogance is always latent in us although it may not previously have disclosed itself.

How, then, can we attain the necessary spiritual balance or equilibrium? We must assimilate with diligence, perseverance and dedication the findings of spiritual research which have been expressed in terms harmonising with our normal sense of truth and sound reasoning. It is not out of caprice that I emphasise so repeatedly how necessary it is to study what we call Spiritual Science. I emphasise it not in order that I may have opportunity to speak here often but it is the only thing which can give the firm support we need for spiritual development. Earnest, diligent assimilation of the results of Spiritual Science is the antidote for spiritual `giddiness' and insecurity. And anyone who has experienced this insecurity through having followed a wrong path of spiritual development—although he may think he has been very diligent—should recognise that he has failed to take in what can flow from Spiritual Science. The study of spiritual-scientific facts from every possible aspect—that is what is necessary for us. And that was why, last winter—though our ultimate purpose was to bring home the significance of the Christ Event for humanity—emphasis was laid over and over again upon the fundamental conditions for spiritual progress.

If a man is to make such progress there must be purpose and direction in his life of soul; but he needs something else as well. The soul can indeed acquire assurance through the study of Spiritual Science but it also needs a certain spiritual strength and courage. Courage of the kind necessary for spiritual progress is not essential in ordinary life because from the time of waking to that of going to sleep, our inmost being of soul-and-spirit is embedded in our physical and etheric bodies; and during the night we are inactive and can do no harm. If a man spiritually undeveloped were capable of acting during sleep as well as during waking life, he could do a great deal of harm. But in our physical and etheric bodies there are not only the forces which are active in us as conscious beings, or as thinking and feeling beings, but also those forces at which divine-spiritual Beings have worked through the evolutionary periods of Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon and the Earth itself. Forces from higher spheres are continually active in us and support us. On waking from sleep we give ourselves up to the divine-spiritual Powers which, for our Well-being and blessing, are present in our physical and etheric bodies and lead us through life from morning till evening. Thus the whole spiritual world is active within us; we can do harm to it in many respects but very little to make amends for the damage we have done.

All spiritual development depends upon our inner being, that is to say, our astral body and Ego, becoming free; we have to learn to become clairvoyant in the part of ourselves that is unconscious during sleep, and because it is unconscious can do no harm. What is unconscious in the members of our constitution in which divine-spiritual forces are active, must become conscious. All the strength we have because on waking we are taken in hand by spiritual powers anchored in our physical and etheric bodies, falls away when we become independent of those bodies and clairvoyant perception begins. We withdraw from the forces which have been a buttress for us against the influences working from the external world; but that world remains as it was and we still confront the whole power of its impact. If we are to resist this impact we must develop in our Ego and astral body all the power we otherwise draw from the physical and etheric bodies. This can be achieved if we follow the indications given in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. The aim of all these indications is to impart to our inmost self the strength previously bestowed by higher Beings, the strength which falls away when we lose the external supports provided by our physical and etheric bodies.

Individuals who have not made themselves inwardly strong enough to replace the powers they have discarded when they become independent of the physical and etheric bodies through serious training of the soul—above all through purifying the quality designated as immorality in the external world—these individuals may still be able to acquire faculties enabling them to see into the spiritual world. But what happens then? They become over-sensitive, hypersensitive. They feel as if from every side they are being spiritually buffeted and cannot stand up against the blows rained on them from all sides. One of the important facts to be realised by anyone who aspires to make progress in spiritual knowledge is that inner strength must be developed through the cultivation of the noblest and finest qualities of the soul.

What are these qualities? Egoism will not help us in the spiritual world and indeed makes it impossible to exist there. Naturally, then, the best preparation for the spiritual life is to banish egoism and everything which stimulates selfish prospects of spiritual progress. The more earnestly we adopt this principle the better are our prospects for spiritual progress. Anyone who has to do with these things will often hear a man say that his action was not prompted by egoism. But when such a man is on the point of letting words like this pass his lips, he should check them and admit to himself that he is not really able to insist that there is no trace of egoism in his action. To admit it is much more intelligent, simply because it is more truthful. And it is truth that matters whenever self-knowledge is concerned. In no realm does untruthfulness bring such severe retribution as in the realm of spiritual life. A man should demand truth of himself instead of claiming to be without egoism. At least if we acknowledge our egoism we have a chance to get rid of it!

In regard to the concept of spiritual truth, let me say this. There are people who claim to have seen and experienced all kinds of things in the higher worlds—things which are then made public. If we know that these things are not true, should we not use every possible means to oppose them? Certainly, there may be points of view according to which such opposition is necessary. But those whose main concern is truth have a different thought, namely that only what is true can flourish and bear fruit in the world and what is untrue will quite certainly be unfruitful. Put more simply, this means that however much people may lie about spiritual matters, what they say will not get very far, and they should recognise that nothing fruitful can be achieved by lies. In the spiritual world, truth alone will bear fruit; and this holds good from the very beginning of our own spiritual development, when we must admit to ourselves what we really are. The conviction that truth alone can be fruitful and effective must be an impulse in all occult movements. Truth justifies itself by its fruitfulness and by the blessings it brings to mankind. Untruths and lies are always barren. They have only one result which I cannot go into in any further detail now; I can only say that they react most violently against those who actually spread them abroad. We shall consider on some other occasion what this significant statement implies.

I have tried to-day to give a kind of review of the activities in our Groups during the past year and to recapture the mood and tone which permeated our souls.

In speaking of the work carried on outside the Groups during the past year, I may perhaps mention my own participation which culminated in the production in Munich of the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. Later Group meetings will give us an opportunity of explaining what was then attempted. For the present I will merely say that in the Play it was possible to give a more artistic and individual form to what could otherwise be expressed in a more general way. When we speak here or anywhere else of the conditions of the spiritual life, we speak of them as they concern every soul. But it must always be borne in mind that each man is an individual whose soul must be studied individually. Consequently it was essential that one particular soul should be depicted at the threshold of Initiation. The Rosicrucian Mystery Play is accordingly to be regarded not as a manual of instruction but as an artistic representation of the preparation for Initiation of a particular individual, Johannes Thomasius.

In our approach to truth we have thus reached two important standpoints. We have presented the general line of progress and have also penetrated to the heart of an individual soul. We are always conscious of the fact that truth must be approached from many sides and that we must wait patiently until its different aspects merge into a single picture. We shall adhere faithfully to this attitude of humility in knowledge. Let us not say that man can never experience truth. He assuredly can! But he cannot know the whole truth at once; he can know only one side. This makes for humility in knowledge and true humility is a feeling that must be cultivated in our Groups and carried into the general culture of the day, for the whole character of our age needs such an attitude.

In this spirit we shall continue our task of presenting the Christ-problem, in order to learn from it how to achieve real humility in knowledge and thereby make further and further progress in the experience of truth.

• 1. When the present lecture-course was given, Rudolf Steiner was the General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society. His association with that Society was terminated in 1912 by its President, Mrs. Annie Besant, largely on account of the difference in his teaching on Christianity and the nature of the Second Coming, and the official founding of the Anthroposophical Society took place in Berlin, in 1913. The lecture on the Bodhisattvas is printed as the first in the Course entitled: The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego-Consciousness.