The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the Questions and Answers

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

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

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

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

Do cities also have certain colors?

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

On Friday at seven o'clock there is a meeting of the Besant branch. On the agenda is: “Preliminary discussion of the general assembly taking place on Sunday”. On Sunday at ten o'clock is the general assembly: reporting on the management and so on. If the general assembly permits, a more factual discussion about Theosophy will take place at four o'clock in the afternoon. At the assembly next Monday, I will speak about “Occultism, Esotericism and Theosophy. I would like to point out that this topic will be related to current trends. I would like to invite as many external members as possible.

Today I would like to speak to you first about “Self-knowledge” and “Knowledge of God”. These are two terms that are very easily misunderstood in the sense of occult world striving and, from experience, are also very easily and often misunderstood. Again and again you read in theosophical books and hear in these or those popular theosophical lectures or in other lectures that belong to related schools of thought that man carries the divine self in his soul, carries it within himself, and that in order to come to the knowledge of God, he need only let this self speak, then he will also find the highest knowledge of God in himself. The “knowledge of the divine self” has almost become a familiar saying. As true as it is that the old sentence “know thyself” should stand as a sacred motto before every theosophical assembly, it is also true that this “know thyself” causes the greatest difficulties. Today we will spend a little time trying to understand this saying: “Know thyself” — and the other saying “Self-knowledge is the first step, the beginning of improvement.” “Self-knowledge” sounds much more trivial, but it is just as true. These two sayings must complement each other. I have met people who approached me with the saying, “I am the Atma, the divine self lives in me, the divine man lives in me” — and the like. Above all, anyone who wants to penetrate into the occult views of life must thoroughly unlearn the trivial view of such sayings. And today we want to discuss some of these sayings from the point of view of the occultist. The occultist does not speak like that, and his words will never be: “Self-knowledge is knowledge of God”. But to see this in the right light, we must ask ourselves: What can we actually find in ourselves? How much can we learn from ourselves? I will start this lecture with a saying of such individuals who have progressed far beyond us all and from whom we all have much to learn. They tell us about self-knowledge: “We learn a great deal” - that is, the higher individuals - “from the nature around us, we learn a great deal from the human life around us. We learn infinitely valuable things from our older brothers; we learn nothing at all from ourselves.”

Let us keep this saying in mind. It is a saying of those who have progressed far ahead of us in development. Those who realize what a human being actually is will gradually learn to understand this saying. What is a human being? Here we have to look back at some of what has been discussed here during these lessons. We know, of course, that a human being is not something that is born out of nothing. We know that he is the re-embodiment of his earlier personality. When we look at the person of today, we have to ask ourselves: in which personalities was this person embodied earlier? And so we come to a series of life courses of the individuality standing before us. And even when we have reached the first incarnation of such a person, we have still not come to a beginning. We only reach older regions. Man was not yet anything that resembles what he is today. But he was already something. And further back, we find man embedded in the facts and beings of the things of the past. There we find the causes of present human existence. And when we ask ourselves, “What are we?” we have to say, “We are the effect of past lives, of days in times gone by.” If we look at ourselves today, we are basically nothing more than what is composed of the causes of our past actions and the actions of the powers of the world that are at work in us. We are a consequence of the past, and everything we can find in us has happened once in the past. Whatever is personality in us was an action - karma, personal, individual or world karma - in the past. We are an expression of this karma. And if we could look into ourselves with true self-knowledge, then, when we undergo the training that the occult schools offer us, we find our own past lives, the people who were connected to us in the past, then we find ourselves entangled with the world of people around us.

If we take into account what I have said in previous lessons, we also know where to look if we want to see the matter in a different form. Before we became physical, we were astral bodies. These are the sum of passions and desires as they were prepared at the time and as they then emerged in the physical body. What is at work in our physical body today is the astral body of the past. It contained the instincts and passions. And what we see outside of us in the animals are the passions that have split off from us. If you look out at the lion, you can say: I once had this lion nature within me; I threw it out so that I could develop higher. What is in me as an impulse, I have cast off and purified. I have fused it into harmony within me, while they have spread out in the animal kingdom. I see my astral past spread out in the various animal groups of the world.

And before I was in the astral body, I was in the mental body. Even then I shed beings to develop myself higher. And in the plant world that I see around me, I see the whole past in the mental body. The delicious fruits of the plants express it.

And when I look into the very depths of nature, into what has become mind and consciousness in me, then I have to perceive this thinking mind in its various images and forms in all mineral nature. This too is part of my own past.

You see, we understand the mineral world because we once were it ourselves. We understand rock crystal because we have separated it from ourselves. What our mind thinks, that once created the whole mineral world. Thus our own being is spread around us, and by looking around in this world, we see only our own self, our past self. And by seeing the people around us, people who may be at a lower level of development, by seeing everything around us, we see the images of our own past embodiments and form our own later embodiment. Just as some people around us are today, so were we once ourselves. [As the Hottentots were, so were we; in the Divine we shall be.]

Thus we come to a picture of the past and a picture of the future. Knowledge of nature is knowledge of the self, a mirror of the past and the future. Bearing this in mind, the only truly clarifying word about self-knowledge that comes from the depths of our being is the Vedanta wisdom, the most wonderful wisdom the world has ever produced: 'Tat twam asi' - 'That thou art'. There is no thing in the external world that is not part of our being, of our self. Look at the stone you step on – that is something that was once connected to your own self. Look at the plants and the animals – all of them are pieces of our own self. They were once woven into our self. We belong to a single being, with the past and the future. That is why we say to what is spreading out in space: “That is you.”

Not that is self-knowledge when you look into your inner self, but precisely when you look out into the world with the awareness that in every world being there is a piece of your own being: The world is not within you, but out there on the great tableau of the universe. It is not from within you, but from the great tableau of the universe, that the creative God speaks. You attain self-knowledge by attaining knowledge of the world, by listening to every being in nature, by opening the senses and spiritual organs to what speaks to you from the outside world. You should not close yourself off from the outside world, but open the self outwards, by first expressing the self and becoming aware that your true self is outside in the outside world, which has created in the most ancient times that which still rests within you as perceptible. Feel yourself one with that which lives and moves in the outer space, and feel this in the saying: “That art thou [dw]. The stone outside is the cause that certain things are within you. Feel, by looking at minerals: ”That art thou [dw].

Man belongs not only to the past but also to the future. He must work into the future; he must learn what he will become. This self that we carry within us will one day be something quite different from what it is today. But what it will be in the future, we cannot find in our self. That is not in our self. Our self is karma – the effect of the past. What the self makes of this, that we will only be in the future. But we cannot learn this from ourselves, but only from those who have progressed one step further than we have, from our older brothers, who are in a more advanced reincarnation than ours. That is why the more highly developed person says: I must learn what I was and what I will be. I can learn a lot from the nature around me, a great deal from the people around me, infinitely valuable lessons from my older brothers, but nothing at all from myself – and by that he means the self that is present at the moment.

Perhaps it needs to be understood more that a deeper self is spread out in nature, insofar as it has its cause in the past. And it must also be understood that what our older brothers, the wise brothers of humanity, experienced is a prefiguration for our own future today. So we must understand that we cannot counter self-knowledge with what our older, wise brothers teach, but that we have to see our own self in these older brothers, that we have to see our future in these older brothers. What they are today, we will be one day, and if we want to learn what we will be in the future, then we have to let ourselves be told what they have already been through. How could the animals, plants and lowly humans provide an explanation of their own selves? That which we are today, they will be in a later time. But we can only have our own selves explained to us by those who have reached the stages that we still have to come to.

Thus we can only sit in humility at the feet of the great teachers of mankind. The wise of India say: The disciple must sit devoutly at the feet of the great guru. This does not exclude self-knowledge, but includes true self-knowledge. Imagine: I am sitting at the feet of the exalted guru – I dare not say: I do not want to learn from you, but from myself. That would be a misunderstanding of the true, higher self. The higher self speaks from all. From his words, my self also speaks.

What I can learn from my self, that sounds from the lips of my guru. Theory, gray theory, is when you think you should let your own self speak. And true esoteric practice is when you listen to the older brothers of humanity. What we are, what our self has to say to us, is best expressed in a book like “Light on the Path” or similar. In the eternal sentences that you find in this book or in the New Testament, namely in the Gospel of John or in the venerable writings of the great masters, your self speaks to you. And when you become silent and still in what you are even now, as an effect of the past at the feet of the guru – he need only be more developed than you – then your own self speaks to you instructively in your ears, in your soul.

And when you are confronted with a sentence as it is written here: “Expect the blooming of the flower in the silence after the storm, not before,” then this is a saying of a master who has long since passed through the stage at which I am standing and who can teach me about my self. That is why the occultist says: First of all, I have to immerse myself in what the wise guides of humanity have produced. And so, in humility and serenity, he gradually ascends. First, we listen to what the greats of humanity have to say, who have emerged in all fields and who were wiser than we were. We look up to the great artists, to the great wise leaders, insofar as they come to us in the outer, exoteric history.

When we let a picture by Raphael work on us, when we let Plato's great works on the immortality of the soul or his “Phaedo” penetrate us, when we let the writings left to us by our German Johann Gottlieb Fichte, for example, or similar great men, then our self speaks to us, then our self talks to us, and then we rise up the first step to a higher element of our self. Then, when we have absorbed what is on this level within us, at least partially, then we can reach the depths of those who do not call themselves because their name is not important, for example in a writing like “Light on the Path”, which was only written down through the instrument of Mabel Collins, but which comes from a great, wise guide, then we can climb to higher levels.

In the same way, our Self speaks to us through the Gospel, through the Bhagavad Gita, through the ancient scriptures of mankind. It is all our Self that speaks, and we find it best when we seek it not within us but without, as it says in the Vedanta verse: 'Tat twam asi' - 'That art thou'.

And then, when we no longer feel that we have something to say to ourselves, when we merely want to be a vessel, when we have given up everything that is connected with our narrower self, which is an effect, then, only then does higher individuality speak to us. But there is still more to it than that. Above all, we must take to heart the saying that self-knowledge, the knowledge of our so-called inner being, is the beginning of the will to perfect not only our knowledge but ourselves as well. We learn nothing at all from our self. In truth, man is subject to the most serious deceptions through this self. This self – just take a look at it. Is it you in your daily activities? Is it you when you go to eat? Is it you when you go about your business? A clear self-knowledge will tell you that it is not yourself, but that it is natural instincts. What your physical body, what nature makes of you, that drives you, that only pushes and pushes in you. It is the greatest illusion when someone says: I eat, I go for a walk, I do this or that business - because he is not the driver, but the driven. For those who immerse themselves in this self-knowledge, it is not the source of the truth that they might find in their self, but they realize that it is precisely in their self that they find the outside world, that which pushes and drives them from the outside. No matter how much you are connected to your present individuality, what are you? You are the result of your karmic development from the past. What we think and feel today, we think and feel that way because we have been driven to this or that in past lives. The past lives continue to have an effect throughout our lives.

When you ask yourself in the process of self-knowledge why you do this or that, you do not arrive at your self, but at the earlier causes in your past lives. And if you go further and examine for yourself what you have acquired in the present life, you will find the same thing. Take language, for example. Is language your self? You speak, you mean to speak. Can a person speak from his or her self? If that were so, every person would have to be able to form new words, every person would have to give birth to language out of their self. But language speaks, the language of the tribe, of the people. The whole nation speaks through language. The whole nation stands behind us and speaks to us, through us.

We can always strive for self-knowledge and will find that the self goes further and further out of us. And when we understand “Tat twam as” and see this self spread and poured out over the outside world, then we live in self-knowledge. You just have to realize this clearly and feel it once, what it means to stand before yourself so hollowed out by self-knowledge. Hollowed out, the self-aware stands before himself. It must first become bleak and dark within us if we want to reach the end of self-knowledge. Where we used to feel warmth, we later feel through self-knowledge that this warmth does not come from our heart, but that it is only poured into it by the outside world and that our self is only the confluence of the forces of the outside world. In place of every arrogant feeling of self, there then comes the most perfect modesty and the realization that we are nothing compared to the world around us. Barrenness and emptiness and hollowness is the result of that self-knowledge, which only wants to search within itself. When we have arrived there and realized that our self lies entirely in the outside world, then we are ripe to let the teachings of our older brothers flow into us, then they speak to us, the seal-keepers of our higher self, when we want to be nothing more of this higher self. Our lower self is spread out in the various stages outside, and our higher self is spread out outside in those who have come further than we have.

Self-knowledge is knowledge of the world, and the beginning of self-knowledge is that our self must flow into us from the outside. No one can walk the path and feel the saying, “Seek the way of inner contemplation,” without being driven to the other saying, “Seek the way by boldly stepping out of yourself.” That is true self-knowledge, that we no longer search within ourselves, but in the outside world. And then something of the future reveals itself to us, of that which is not yet. There are those who, by virtue of their further development, can already see into that which our own self will only see in the future.

We have passed through the astral and mental worlds, and we will struggle up again to an astral and mental world through this physical world of ours. But to do that, we must first develop the strength to move up to these higher worlds, where we depart with death; they can be seen by our older brothers. Those who have humbly reached the level of the older brotherhood already see within life those realms that man enters when he has passed through the gate of death.

And how does man learn to see into this world? Not by brooding over himself, but by listening to what our older brothers tell us; by understanding the sentence that self-knowledge is listening to the teaching of our older brothers. In the words of our older brothers lie the powers that not only teach and instruct us, but also awaken organs, spiritual eyes and spiritual ears in our own astral body and our own mental body. When the guru speaks to me, currents flow into me that awaken spiritual eyes and spiritual ears in me, through which I learn to see into the worlds into which he can see. Only when I no longer want what is within me and is only an effect of the past, when I have hollowed myself out and let the content of the higher brothers flow into the empty vessel, then I receive the content that allows me to see into the future of human life.

Thus, for the true occultist in practice, self-knowledge is the humble listening to those who have already learned what he still has to learn. And from this point of view, one learns the most. Therefore, the occultist worships the disciple and the master, and he seeks the disciple and the master not in himself, but in the other greater self that is out there in the world. For the occultist, self-knowledge means devotion to a disciple and to the master; and seeking the greater self in him, the saying is also true here: “That is you.”

And it would be immodest, in the highest sense of the word, to say that one could find within oneself what our older brothers teach. That is why one becomes so modest when one advances a little in knowledge. That is why, from a certain point on, one stops saying one's own opinion. Because what is it? Nothing but an effect of karma. But when we stand there and suppress our own opinion, initially keeping silent about everything we ourselves believe we have called for, and instead listen to what comes to us from the outside world from those who have progressed further than we have, then we deserve to be truly heard. And then even the simple person who lives in this way has beautiful and great things to say. If a man only expresses his opinion, he will have very little to say to you. If a man comes to you but only wants to express his opinion, he will have very little to say to you. But if he lets the eternal truths of those who are wiser than he is and of whom he is aware resound from his individuality, then he will have an infinite amount to say to you, even if it seems simple.

The highest truth sounds from the deepest modesty and humility. Those who have spoken the highest truths have spoken differently than those who so often speak to us, saying, “I mean this, I believe that, that is my point of view, that is my opinion.” Those who have progressed do not speak in this way; they refer to those who stand behind them. They know that their own opinion is worthless.

Those who founded the Theosophical Society, those who represent it in the right way, have always referred to the individuality behind them, to a true higher self that speaks behind them, [an individuality] that is a master and is therefore our higher self. The words of the external master personalities communicate the actual understanding of the work of the Theosophical Society. They [the founders of the Theosophical Society] completely surrender their will and make themselves their instruments. That is their attitude. They prefer to be able to step in front of others and say: There is nothing in me, nothing should come from me, I want to make myself an empty vessel from which the master speaks. But he should not be my own self, but this higher self should be the wise guides and brothers of humanity who live alongside us and whose words we want to hear and understand in the right sense.

We can learn a lot from the nature around us, a great deal from the people and the life around us, and we can learn the most valuable lessons from our older brothers. But we should learn nothing from ourselves, because we are only a point of passage. We can accomplish nothing in the world if we want to make this point of transition in our present effective. Think of what you would be if you only wanted to make your present effective. This is only the effect of karma. If you reject everything that is above you, nothing happens through you that has not already happened. You would be a barren fruit on the tree of humanity. For everything that could happen through you has already happened if you remain with your own self. Only when you fertilize your self with the higher self, with the higher self present in the world, can you bring something new into this world. Then something works out of you that is not merely the past and its effects. Only the connection with what has been achieved in the world as higher than we ourselves are, only this connection and this full, modest awareness gives us the strength to bring something productive into the world. And this decision to seek the connection with what is higher in the world than we are, out of the desert of our own self, this decision is the first step towards becoming a disciple. Those who seek a different self-knowledge than the one suggested can never become disciples or chelas in the occult sense. Only this gives us the strength to learn something in the world. Without this awareness, we are powerless and powerless - nothing.

All occult schools have summarized this awareness as a full reality in two sentences, which, if a person does not just keep them in mind theoretically, but lives by them in every moment of his life, give him an infinite abundance of soul power, as much as a person can have. All occultism and all human striving is included in these two sentences, which we will discuss in a moment. But these sentences must be lived in such a way that we are completely pulsed and flowed through by them at every step, that we do nothing without being aware of these two sentences. These two sentences basically go together, because what is around us has flowed together in us and brought us to the present point of view. There we stand and give ourselves everything that is around us. That is our own extended past.

You cannot find more in your self. You find the sensations spread out outside in your own astral body. Everything that can feel is a mirror image of what lives in your own astral body. [Everything that lives is a mirror image of our etheric body.] What is around us as stone and mineral is a mirror image of what lives in our own physical body.

At first, your self is completely empty; because you say nothing to it other than 'I'. If you want to have more in this self, then you must look into the future, you must look at what is not the past for yourself. Then you must be aware that something important is expressed in the bridge between these two, namely that you yourself are expressed in the bridge between these two, that you are only a bridge between what you yourself have developed and what is yet to be developed. What we can see, we have already been; what we learn to see when we look at the teachings of the older brothers, we will see that is working towards the future.

Thus, he who has understood this looks out into the world and says: That has been and is there for my sake, so that I could arise. What I can perceive is all part of it. Take anything out of this environment, you would not be the same as you are today. And everything had to be there for you to be. Just as you build a house brick by brick, so it is also there. The lowest stone must be there so that the upper floors can be built. If you take out a single stone, the house will no longer look the way it should. It is the same with people. If you take out a building block, they will no longer look the way they do now. You don't understand this right away. But as the yoga student says, through some yoga exercises you learn to understand this. If we look at the world, we see what is around us in the world. If we look within ourselves, we find what is to become, we find the buds for the fruits of the future.

And then we also realize that we are not here for our own sake, but for the sake of becoming what our older brothers are, that we strive for them as our ideals. Not sophisticated ideas, but the example of [our older brothers] we should strive for. We should live in reality, not in abstractions. That is the second sentence.

This is how the divine develops, by connecting with what is present for us and what we are predisposed to become in the future. We are here for the sake of the divine, not for our own sake. Thus, the one who understands these two occult sentences does not think of himself at all. He thinks of what is there for his sake and of what is to become for the sake of what he is there for. From these two perspectives flows the strength to work, not for ourselves, but for the Divine, which is developing out of us. These are the two pillars of all occultism. If you want to ascend to the higher sources, then you must live under the auspices of these two sentences. They must permeate and pulsate through everything, and they must become very intimate and familiar to you. The two sentences in which the meaning of our discussion today is to be summarized are the sentences that stand in front of every secret school in golden letters, letters that only speak to the soul, but which are erased when someone wants to look at them with self-interest or selfishness. He who enters the gate of the secret school in complete selflessness sees these two pillars of all knowledge of reality, which read:

“All around us for us. And we ourselves for God.”

These are two sentences that give the occultist power when he has fully grasped them. We must really want to learn what is around us.

And when someone asks us about our higher self, we must point beyond ourselves, not to an indefinite, abstract emptiness, but to a concrete reality. We have nothing within ourselves; everything around us is there for us, and we are there for the divine.

The two principles of all occultism, they were written in golden secret letters that lost their luster when a profane eye looked at them, above the portals of all occult schools.

Not only can the profane not read them, but even if they could, they would not understand them. These are sentences that give strength to the occultist when he fully comprehends them.

This is how we should speak today. Because when such things are understood, then one also understands that the theosophical movement is not possible without an occult foundation, without the knowledge of the masters and without the knowledge of the higher worlds. These higher worlds are our future. What we do today is worked into our astral body, and this will build the world to come. There are also souls that have worked into it more than we ourselves are, and these provide us with images of our actual higher self.

When we live under the influence of such knowledge, we may encounter all kinds of difficulties in the theosophical movement. These difficulties usually come from people, not from our older brothers. And one comes more and more to the realization that the mistakes of such great movements, as the theosophical movement is, do not come from within, but are carried into it. What is a movement like Theosophy? It can come into being when a number of people are called together and the life and wisdom of the masters are to flow through their souls. Now they are together and this life flows through them. But these souls came from outside, they came together from all sides, and they bring their faults with them, do not immediately discard them, and so their faults must appear within the movement. But these are not the errors that come from the movement itself. People bring their errors into the movement. If there are bad habits in the movement, they are not those that lie in the theosophical movement, but those that are also out there in the world. We must be clear about this: serious crises may still come. We must also bear the mistakes of the people entering the theosophical movement. We should look at everything that happens in our movement in this way. Some of what we all do is open to criticism. But we have come in from outside and still have the faults of the outside world. And let us be clear about the fact that we must discard these faults through the theosophical movement. And if it were the most valuable members, they too would strive to discard their faults. It is a mistake to point out the mistakes. We should look for the mistakes in ourselves, and if there is greatness and sublimity, outside ourselves. Then we have properly aligned ourselves with the theosophical movement. If we criticize ourselves and not the movement, we can make progress. The Master's words in the sentences: “We learn much from nature, much more from people and infinitely valuable from the older brothers. Nothing from ourselves.” At most one thing: how we have to improve ourselves by the example of the older brothers.

I would like to announce once again that I will take the liberty of giving a lecture tomorrow morning on certain current occult issues related to Freemasonry. And this will be done according to old occult custom, separately for gentlemen and ladies. The lecture for gentlemen will take place at ten o'clock, and for ladies at half past eleven. You may ask why this custom exists, which will only be overcome in the Theosophical worldview. This will become clear from the content of the lectures, and I would also like to take the liberty of noting that the Besant Branch will have its regular meeting tomorrow evening at eight o'clock.

So I would like to talk about the relationship between occultism and the theosophical movement and some other related questions. It has been discussed many times whether the theosophical movement, especially as it is expressed in the Theosophical Society, is an occult movement, or whether one should disregard all occultism in the theosophical movement. The Theosophical movement as such, insofar as it expresses itself in the Theosophical Society, cannot be an occult movement. An occult movement has different prerequisites from those that may be expressed in the Theosophical Society. There have been occult societies at all times. Above all, these had one essential requirement: namely, that they were a kind of hierarchical structure by the very nature of their aspirations. This means that the members of such a society, brotherhood, were organized in degrees. Each degree, from the first up to the ninetieth degree, had its own specific task. Within each degree there were very specific tasks. No one could be promoted to a higher degree until they had fulfilled the tasks of the lower degree.

I can only give a very general indication of why this is so. In fact, we have to talk in general terms about the tasks of such occult brotherhoods. Those revered friends who have heard me speak about such things before will understand me all the better today. Occult brotherhoods are brotherhoods of guides for humanity. Their task is to prepare the things of the future. Everything that is to happen in the future is already being prepared in the present, finding its expression in the present as an idea, as a plan, and is then realized in the future. Even if you look at the development of the human race on the external physical plane, you will still find that things that were later realized first germinated as ideas in the minds and souls of leading personalities and individuals, striving for expression. Take the steam engine, for example. If you trace the matter back, you will find how the steam engine developed from the simplest facts; how even the cooking pot filled with boiling water contains the idea of the steam engine, which then progresses from this simplest form to the most complicated mechanism. But these are trivialities compared to the great structure of humanity that we have before us. The most important things presuppose much larger and much more meaningful perspectives. They presuppose that what is to happen in the distant future is, in a sense, already being prepared today. How can such a thing happen?

By the fact that it is in our hands to lay the forces into the world today that are to take effect in the future. Everything that will happen in the future here on the physical plane is already preparing much earlier on the astral and devachan planes; so that in fact distant future events can be traced in the higher planes and worlds, according to their power. But man cannot work well into the future if he does not prepare this effect from the knowledge of the acting forces. Man is a self-conscious creature and must take his fate into his own hands. Therefore, there have always been advanced brothers of our human race who can see not only on the physical plane, but also on higher planes.

Let us try to understand what it means to foresee on higher planes. Suppose you have a pond of water. You can foresee that when the temperature drops, the pond will be frozen, that there may be skaters on it and so on. Similarly, we are dealing with the relationship between the so-called astral plane and the physical plane, that is, with our world. If one follows the events on the astral plane, then one can indeed see with the help of the astral event what will be there in later time, as it were, as a condensation of it. And so one can see from the astral events what will later appear in condensed form on the physical plane. Physical events are nothing other than such condensed happenings that previously occurred in the higher worlds.

An example: Throughout antiquity there were mysteries. These had the task of accepting individual people and initiating them into the secrets of existence, or - as John the Revelator says - to show what is to happen in the future in brief. When we enter such a temple, we find that instruction is taking place there for those students who are accepted into the first degree. We also find instruction for students who are more highly developed and ever more highly developed. The first step was for the students to purify their astral body. This consisted of them not merely adopting the usual bourgeois ethics. The bourgeois ethic was presupposed; what is considered here had to be followed in strict fulfillment of duty. When the student then ascended more and more to higher ideals, rising from the passions and drives of ordinary life to desires that are above all pettiness of man, and purified his pleasure and displeasure so that the great world-embracing affairs of the human race became his own, when he felt and sympathized with others, then he was on the way to accomplishing what was called the “purification of the astral body.

Then he was allowed to intervene in the denser bodies; he was allowed to work on his etheric body, he was not only allowed to reshape the soft, pliable and flexible astral matter in his spirit and soul bodies, but he was allowed to work into his etheric body. Then he was what is called a chela.

Such a chela is one who not only recognizes higher duties, who has not only purified himself to the point of making human duties his own, but has grown beyond the lower and higher concerns of individual peoples, even of individual creeds. His gaze is directed towards the life of all humanity. And through the more thoroughly organized etheric body, he becomes a participant in the great affairs of the building of the earth. For this to happen, the following had to occur.

The chela had to paralyze all the forces that prevented him from working on his etheric body. When you have a person in front of you, he has a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body. The chela has purified his astral body and can now work on his ether body. You will understand why a person must purify his astral body. What happens when the astral body is purified? What enters the ether body? That which is in the astral body.

The things that live in the astral body are imprinted on the etheric body. As long as you work on the astral body, you can rework the mistakes over and over again: the astral matter is thin and soft. You can always bring that into balance. But once a person has begun to develop the etheric body as a chela, these qualities are imprinted on the etheric body, and it is much more enduring. By making what is defective in the earthly permanent, the person would become a dangerous member of humanity. Hence the constant emphasis on the need for purification. This etheric body is impressed by the forces that act on it. Think of it as separate from the physical body, and it has a completely different elasticity. When it is within, it holds the physical body in shape; but as long as it remains within, it is initially too weak to hold that which has passed through the catharsis as astrality. Therefore, throughout antiquity, one had to do the following.

One had to first remove the forces that prevented the elasticity of the etheric body. This was done by bringing the whole physical body into a state of lethargy. The person lay there, and the etheric body was taken out of the physical body. The physical body then remained as if dead, and the etheric body was formed according to its own forces. This is the 'burial'. The person concerned was put into a state of lethargy for three to three and a half days. And then he could work on the etheric body. And then, after he had shaped the etheric body according to the astral body, he returned to the physical body. Then he had awakened the inner life in himself, then he was a resurrected one, and he was given a new name. This was an act on the astral plane. Everything I have described took place in the astral plane; the physical body had nothing to do with it.

This event was repeated in all the ancient mysteries. Every initiate knew it. Now imagine it in a condensed form, brought down to the physical plane, so that something has happened with this event that used to take place only in the astral. Comparatively speaking, it is as if you now have a piece of ice where you used to have water. Many such astral events must coincide, merge, so that physical condensation will one day be possible. Through the appearance of Christ on the physical plane, that which had so often and repeatedly taken place in the mystery centres on the astral plane, the Mystery of Golgotha has become historically possible. It could be brought down to the physical plane. From this example we learn to understand how the future is actually prepared in occult brotherhoods.

If we now ask ourselves: “What is actually happening there?” the answer is: Certainly, in thoughts, in the idea, one can grasp a great deal. But the idea has no reality. The idea is nothing more than what is brought down from the higher planes to the physical plane. But what man thinks about it is the most ineffective thing, because it is only present on the physical plane. It is different when something is added to this idea that also comes from the higher spheres.

Take, for example, Pythagoras' teaching of the music of the spheres, as he taught it to his students. Philosophers seek to present Pythagoras' occult music as a very simple system. The intellect can grasp this quickly. But for him, it was important that the student only came to it when his mind, his mood, was prepared for it. It is also impossible for someone who has no sense for images that originate in the astral to want to explain the deeper meaning of Raphael's Sistine Madonna: the feeling, the mind, must climb up to it. What otherwise leaves the idea cold appears here in the picture artistically full of life as the divine world thought, as that which the divine forces have created the world after - and a simple line becomes something sacred! By entwining thoughts around the element of the divine, thought is brought to divine influence.

Thus, the aim of such training is to prepare man step by step to approach the great world thoughts, to receive them. Then, by gradually penetrating into these great world thoughts, he connects that effective but otherwise occult power which, in the astral, already prepares the future for the physical plan. If the leading human brother has students who are attached to such spirit-imbued ideas, then these are a force that also helps him to advance in his work for the outer world; the great spiritual centers of spiritual work arise.

So you can see that what I have called occultism actually has a great deal to do with the progress of humanity. And in our time we have a particularly important task. Let us try to hint at how we have come to this task of ours with just a few words.

We are part of the great root race of humanity that has populated this earth. Since the ground we live on today emerged from the depths of the sea, since the Atlantean race gradually began to disappear, the great Aryan root race has been the one that has ruled the earth. If we look at ourselves, we here in Europe are the fifth sub-race of the great Aryan root race. The first sub-race lived in ancient India in the distant past. And today's Indians are descendants of that first sub-race, whose spiritual life is still present in the ancient Vedas of the Indians. The Vedas, however, are only echoes of the ancient Rishi culture. At that time there was no writing; there was only tradition. Then came the second, the third and the fourth sub-races. The fourth sub-race adopted Christianity. Then we see that around the middle of the Middle Ages the fifth sub-race had formed, to which we and the neighboring peoples belong. The ancient Indians of the first sub-race lived under different conditions than we did and were basically organized differently. Even their present-day descendants, the present-day Indians, are organized quite differently from our European peoples. The occultist who studies the differences finds that in the ancient Indian people, the etheric body is much less bound to the physical body, is not as deeply embedded in the physical body, but is much more easily influenced by the astral body.

This is why the Indian race can easily transfer something from the astral body to the etheric body, and why this Indian race can easily work into the etheric body. This means nothing other than that through occult training, it is easier for Indians to arrive at certain higher insights. The more easily the etheric body can be influenced by the astral body, the easier it is to influence the etheric body with pictures, without abstract concepts. It is all the easier for someone who undergoes the yoga training in the astral to relate to the higher realms through pictorial representations. These act on the etheric body, which is still soft. There is no need to work in strict concepts, but with the simplest of images one can work on the soul of an Indian person, and he will be able to reach very high levels of development.

Throughout the various sub-races, the human race has changed. Our etheric body is now much more influenced by the physical body than it was in the case of the ancient Indians. And so it is that we have to work much more strongly and inwardly to influence the etheric body. We cannot resort to half-dreamlike images. We must subject everything to a sharp concentration, work on our inner being through strong soul concentration into the pure supersensible, not merely through pictorial concepts. Such a conception, which brings about a strong concentration of our inner being, can then have a much stronger effect on the etheric body, which is tied to the physical body. In order for the astral body to be able to influence the etheric body, it used to have to be outside the etheric body. But now the etheric body can also be influenced from within the physical body by the astral body. If we were to perform the same experiment that was common in the ancient mystery centers, and induce lethargy, we would be able to act on the etheric body. But when the consciousness of the earth and the mobility of thinking return, these would immediately extinguish what the astral body has impressed in the ether body. We have to strongly influence the ether body if we want it to retain what we have imprinted on it. The occult task today has become a different one, it is now more inward.

And so you can also see how, over time, great differences arise in the occult schools that follow one another. The yoga system of the Indians is different from the schooling of the Rosicrucians. The Rosicrucian schooling is calculated on what I have now explained to you. Furthermore, something else occurs: in order for such progress to occur at all, the power of the intellect had to be influenced. The mind was strained much more than before, and then, through the power of inner concentration, it was able to develop its ability to grasp the supersensible. So in modern times, it had to be taught much more conceptually; emphasis had to be placed on developing the intellect and on abstract imagination. Compare the changes in culture from ancient India to our own time. In ancient India, there was a high level of intuition and little external impact of civilization. Now, in our time, it is the other way around. This means that the position of occultism is also gradually changing. Much of what used to be kept secret has now become common knowledge. Many, many such insights and concepts were formerly kept within the occult brotherhoods, and a person could only gain access to these things if they had completely transformed their hearts. Today, the occultist no longer has this in their hands. Much of what used to be kept for later stages of training must now be recognized as having already been revealed by the culture of the outside world. The mystery initiate must take this into account. And so many truths that were taught in the occult schools had to be gradually brought out onto the physical plane.

Even what is taught in today's elementary schools would lead us away from the spiritual if it were not for the occult background that comes from another side. In earlier times, the student knew that there was something higher behind what he received as teaching material in school and in the world of scholars, and that he himself might one day be able to access this higher knowledge. He knew that he was a link within a spiritual organism; today, in the democratic world, many concepts are adopted that do not lead to such insight. The top of the pyramid had to be added to the structure of external democratic knowledge, as it were. The elementary knowledge of the hidden forces in the world had now been given. The top, leading to a spiritual world view, was still missing. To provide this, a world-embracing movement had to be founded. The theosophical movement was conceived as such. Therefore, in certain brotherhoods, when the popularization of the previously hidden wisdom had gone on and on, it was decided to reveal to the world as much of the secrets behind it as was necessary to harmonize the knowledge of the outer world with the comprehensive occult knowledge of the brotherhoods.

Here we are at the point where we can see the connection between the Theosophical Society and the Theosophical movement and occultism. The Theosophical Society is not an occult movement or an occult brotherhood; it is built on a democratic foundation in which each person is an equal member with the others. However, it is another matter entirely to grasp the task of the Theosophical Society. The task of the Society is on the physical plane. If one wants to grasp this fully, one must be able to see up into the higher worlds. But it is not a matter of the Theosophist already being able to see up into the higher worlds, but rather of the fact that occult powers are also being developed within the movement, so that the Theosophical Society can be a place from which occultism can radiate and be expressed. It is one thing for a society to be an occult brotherhood, and quite another for it to say: We are not an occult brotherhood, but occultism is being discussed again in our society.

Today, when basically all of humanity is looking longingly to the higher worlds, without finding the ways to get there, today an even greater part of occult knowledge must be popularized accordingly. And this task has been given to occultism within the Theosophical Society. Spiritual movements have always had a fruitful effect on the development of culture on the physical plane as well. Their external expression is nothing other than the earthly realization of what has been prepared spiritually. What is it, then, when we consider the works of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, for example? In these works, they have conjured up something spiritual on the wall in colors and forms: the picture is permeated by that which first lived in the soul of the artist as a spiritual being. The spiritual precedes that which later appears as its expression in the material world.

And materialistic external culture is only the imprint of people's inner attitudes that have become materialistic. Since 1850, purely materialistic city culture has been spreading in civilized countries. We see the great things it has achieved on the physical plane, but we also see what it has not been able to achieve. In the artistic field, for example, it has not produced any real new style, except for one: and that is the style of the department store. This is something that is inwardly true in relation to our outer civilization. Everything else that is taken over from ancient times has no relation to the present time. Only when we have formed a society whose members are seized by a spiritual power, as it used to live in Christianity, and as it still lives in the best Christian souls as a longing and can be regained, then we will have a spiritual culture again. And such a culture will again produce artists in all areas of life.

Let Theosophy live in the souls of people, then it will flow out of the souls again as style, as art, it will be there for our eyes and ears. The outer world will be able to express the spiritual again, which is already being experienced in such a society today. In this sense, the Theosophical Society could serve the shaping of the more distant culture.

When we are together, we must realize that we are like cells that must join together to shape a future culture. In our souls, those forces are being prepared which will in future transform the world in such a way that it will become a physical expression of our present-day moods and views of life. Everything that is revealed and manifested today was once occult. Just as electricity is a manifest force today, it was once an occult force. And what is still occult today is destined to become a driving force for the future. Just as millions of years ago our present human body was prepared from forces that are in our environment, so today a higher body is preparing in us, a body of the future; but only in a distant time will this body of the future be ours.

Let us retrace our path of development a little. What was there once? A dull human consciousness. The world around us looked different and was a dreamlike mirror. People had a dreaming consciousness. And even as the development of their community progressed, they had no parliaments based on the exchange of opinions, nothing of the kind. Everything was merely reflected in the consciousness that arose in the human being. And today's bodily organs: how did they come about? Through the fact that those forces worked on human beings. Just as the animals in the dark caves of Kentucky lost their eyesight because they did not need it, so the external forces also organized what we have as eyes and ears. These have been developed and evolved out of our organism by the forces of sound and light. In the future, our spiritual organism will develop out of what is now living in us. The things that stand before us as expressions of our spiritual culture – the churches and so on, the cultural works that convey beauty and truth to us – will imprint themselves on our higher being. And when these will one day unfold into a life of their own, then what lives as beauty and truth in the outer culture will arise within us. What the eyes and ears perceive now are the building blocks for the organization of a higher future. If we look at the world from this point of view, the human inner life takes on a completely different meaning.

We are thus confronted with a fact that can easily make understandable what is called yoga training or inner occult training. From the words I have spoken, you will be able to see that what once created in the world, what worked and strengthened in the world, has been taken up by our inner being. What is in me today was once outside of me: this is the basic idea of occult training. Before our physical body existed, our etheric body was already present. Our etheric body, in turn, is a structure that was formed by our astral body. And this is the starting point of yoga training. Those who engage in yoga training descend into their etheric body and know that in the etheric body they will find the power that once built them up millions of years ago. The physical body has slowly emerged from the basis of the etheric body.

I can only give a rough description of how the descent into the etheric body takes place. There are certain currents in the etheric body that are the forerunners of the physical body organs. The nervous system, the nerve cords, the sympathetic system that runs up the back, the nerve ganglia of the sympathetic nervous system, these are parts that were formed out of etheric matter in the distant past. This is a process that took place in the dim and distant past. Then, after man had progressed further and further, there was a time when the structure developed within this body, which now had the potential for the physical nervous system, which enables us to develop internal body heat and to prepare warm blood. This is again a later structure of the etheric body, which was then already strongly influenced by the forces of the astral body. And from what we subsequently find as the basis of the brain, the spinal cord has developed - again from the etheric body, as the other pole of the etheric body, which on the one hand developed into the brain, and on the other hand into the inner warmth of the blood. This happened in the past. Not only the forces of nature have worked on this formation of the human being, but also higher spiritual beings.

When the yogi now descends step by step into this etheric body, he penetrates into the times of the past, where his spiritual form of origin was influenced by these forces and beings and brought forth what lives in us today. When man has descended into life in this way, he can reach that point again during the descent. He descends from the head down into the lower regions, which were built up in the most ancient times, and then back again into his head. This is a description of the occult path of knowledge, albeit a scant description. More can be given in the occult schools.

Thus the student of mystery wisdom developed the ability to look into the past; then the time comes when he can undertake the occult pilgrimage. He achieves this by means of a certain practice, through which he overcomes his personal self and thereby ceases to be the small, bound ego. Only then can he make the ascent into the universe. Once more he descends, taking the world power with him, into the sea of the past, in an ascending line. He can then gradually follow the path he has taken. Slowly and gradually, the human being learns to descend into the sea of his formative forces, and finally he arrives at a point near the origin. This must have been the experience of those human beings to whom the eye was first given to direct their gaze into the universe.

Then the disciple realizes the confluence of the I with the great world I. And now he must learn to say to the small I: “I am not you.” It is an important moment when he realizes what this means: “I am not you.” This is a moment when one begins to realize that there are higher forces at work in nature than thinking, that there is something beyond oneself that cannot be expressed in the words of the present, but which has the effect that when two people who can speak about the same thing, the speech of one is clear but dull, while that of the other is pulsating with the warm light that will create the future.

When the student has reached this stage, they can learn in yet another way than they have been able to learn until now. They experience something very special. They encounter a spiritual being in the supersensible world. They meet the individuality that was once connected to them. It is a great and important mystery that certain stages of our existence are repeated. We consciously ascend from the manas to the higher forces. We once descended from spiritual worlds, and at that time the same being descended into us something that we now meet again at the stage corresponding to that point in the past when it was with us then. It is the teacher, the so-called guru. We met him for the first time then; now we meet him again when we can consciously grasp what he has sunk into our souls and we have unconsciously received.

And if we descend further, we meet the spirits who helped to build us eons ago. We meet the twelve spirits: the spirits of will, the spirits of wisdom, the spirits of form, the spirits of movement, the spirits of personality or egoism, the spirits of fire or warmth, the spirits of dawn or twilight, and so on. All this presents itself to our mind's eye on this descent into the universe, on this pilgrimage. And that alone makes it possible for us to glimpse the future, to anticipate what is to happen “in the near future,” as the apostle says.

This is the task of occultism. It is to be solved because this solution is necessary. There are enough movements that are idealistic and ethical. But the movement called Theosophy differs from others in that occultism consciously comes into its own in this movement. This clarifies the relationship between occultism and Theosophy. The Theosophical Society can never aspire to be an occult brotherhood. The strength it needs to fulfill its task, the life it needs, can only come from the currents of occultism. Therefore, the Theosophical Society will flourish when there is an understanding for the cultivation of occult teachings and occult life. This does not mean that the members themselves should be occultists. But if Theosophy forgets that this blood pulsates within it, then it may be an interesting society, but it will not fulfill what was intended by the exalted powers that stood at its starting point.

Anyone who understands this will never want to take away the occult character of the Theosophical Society. But anyone who stands in Theosophical Society in this way is put in a conflicting position. He will have to turn his ear to the side from which the occult truths flow to us, and on the other hand, turn his attention to the outer exoteric life of the Society. These things must be strictly separated; they must never be mixed. But one must not, when speaking of the outer Theosophical Society, speak of the occult personalities who are at the starting point. The Powers that live on the higher plane and those who live outside the physical body for the sake of human development never interfere in these matters. They never give anything but impulses. When we work objectively for the spread of the Theosophical Society, the great individualities we call Masters are always at our side; we may turn to them and let them speak through us. When the subject is the expansion of occult life, the Masters speak. When it is only a matter of organizing the Society, they leave it to those who live in the physical plane. That is the difference between the occult current and the framework of the Theosophical Organization.

Let me express the difference between what goes as an inner spiritual current and what is lived out through the individual personalities in the way that it can perhaps best be expressed: When it is a matter of spiritual life, then the Masters speak. When it is a matter of mere organization, then error is possible, because then the Masters are silent.

From the question and answer session

What is the significance of memory in occult training?

Memory is one of the things that have to be sacrificed in occult training. However, everything that was lost on the descent is reclaimed on the ascent. When you develop occultly, you no longer have any memory at all. The memory has developed into something else. You can read about this in Lucifer issues 14 and 15. This is where real reading in the past occurs. First on the astral plane and then in the Akasha Chronicle. The student's lost memory is replaced by reading power. He will no longer know when Caesar was born, but he will be able to trace back the whole process up to that time.

How are the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount to be understood?

The Sermon on the Mount is a teaching by Christ to his disciples. First of all, one must know what it means to be “on the mountain.” There Christ Jesus explained the great world connections to the disciples. It is extremely interesting from the occult point of view. In the occult world, everything appears to us in a mirror image. They see their own passions wrongly. As a wild animal, the animal in him meets the human being. It is the outpouring of one's own passion that comes back to him in the mirror image. Therefore, we may say that man necessarily evokes the reflection of his actions on the higher plane through himself. The number 126 appears as 621. That this is so, the Christ said to his disciples in the Beatitudes. “To be blessed” means to approach the soul. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit that heals. The first sentence, if translated correctly, would read something like:

Blessed are those who beg for the Spirit, for they find within themselves the Kingdoms of Heaven.

And further:

Whoever is persecuted for My sake finds the kingdom of heaven within himself. [Matt. 5:6]

Then something emerges from the inner being into the outer world, and in the outer world it meets him again in the mirror image. All this can be seen beautifully in a good Greek translation. But the correct meaning can only be understood with occult knowledge.

What is the difference between a highly developed and a less developed person in the occult?

The difference is only a matter of time. Why did the highly developed reach spiritual greatness earlier? Because they traced their origin back to earlier world creations. The occultist speaks from experience, and beyond a certain point, one cannot say anything. After that, there is only speculation. Only after the end of all things will it be possible to speak about those things that go beyond the end of all things.

Are there also dangers in occult striving?

Yes, there are dangers in occult striving. Above all, you have to be alert, awake. Not mediumistic. The occultist does not enter any area of the higher life other than with a clear consciousness, so that he is present, similar to the way he walks in the physical world. I must not lose my physical consciousness. If I do that, then the danger begins. I may not absorb anything in a dull state of consciousness, but only in a completely clear state of consciousness. Persons who enter into twilight states, trance and mediumistic states must beware of approaching their teachers other than in complete freedom. On the whole, the development is not such that the student turns to the astral, but the methods lead to the fact that one only comes to the astral plane when one can have higher experiences on the astral plane, when one is no longer exposed to all the confusing impressions.

The person who is on the physical plane lives in his or her self on the devachan plane. What must be striven for is that the person retains this life, which he has on the devachan plane, just as he retains the physical one, so that the following must not occur.

Suppose the person suddenly gains sight on the astral plane. Then he will go astray because he is accustomed to the outside world entering him. His ego cannot be there because it is unaccustomed to living on the astral plane, because it is only accustomed to having contact with the world through the physical senses. If you put a person unprepared into the astral world, he is exposed to all kinds of dangers. He must be able to reconnect with the world, he must have a base from which to move on. To gain this foothold is called “building a hut”. In the Transfiguration scene, Christ introduced the disciples to the Devachan plain, and there the disciples said, “Let us build huts here”.

If the astral power is developed before the mental center, then it is possible that the disciple exposes himself to all sorts of urges and passions. This should be avoided by the new method.

The question is raised about the occult side of Christianity and whether black magic is possible in this way.

It is true: what is called Christian development is not identical with occultism and also not identical with Eastern philosophies. The matter appears even deeper when one looks at the occult side of Christianity. Christianity emerged in the fourth sub-race. There is a deep significance to the fact that it came into the world in the form it is. But it need not remain so. This Christianity, like every spiritual current, takes on a special form in the dawn of the fourth subrace.

I will only briefly characterize how it emerges there. Imagine yourself back in ancient India and among the people who were the bearers of the ancient Zarathustra culture. Then to the time of the culture of the Semites, Jews, Hebrews, and then we see the fourth race of men coming up. It was the Greek-Latin culture that developed in Southern Europe. The coming up of the Greek-Latin race is expressed in ancient art, for example in the Laocoon group. If you look at this Laocoön Group, you will see Laocoön fighting the snakes. Laocoön was an old priest in Troy. And the culture of ancient Troy was still a priestly culture. As is well known, Anchises fled after the capture of Troy. Then a priestly colony was founded in Italy: Alba longa. Alba longa also means the long chasuble, the garment for a priestly culture. Alba Longa was founded for a new priestly culture, as a branch of the old Trojan one. The snake winds around the priest. This is a symbol for the overcoming of priesthood, which has nothing to do with cunning, but only with spirituality. This is what we see in the Laocoön Group. It is a great document for the transition from the third to the fourth sub-race.

There is a law in the occult that expresses itself in the fact that in a race - I cannot prove this today - in which the leading individuals nourish their organism, that is, the instrument of the spirit, with alcoholic or similar drinks, it is simply impossible to arrive at a knowledge of the higher members of the human being. There are only two possibilities: either knowledge of the higher worlds and no alcohol, or alcohol and development on the physical plane with the prospect that there may be other planes, but that we cannot see into them ourselves. This is why all ancient cultures were influenced by the idea of reincarnation. Even the slave who worked on the Egyptian pyramids knew the truth of reincarnation. He knew that he would also one day take the place from which orders were given, just as he had to obey now. Christianity was an education of humanity for the importance of the physical plane. The fifth sub-race with the culture of authority was then prepared. How does this fifth sub-race prepare itself externally? By taking a completely different direction in the mysteries. Before Dionysus, there is no trace of the later sacrifice. There are ablutions, and the water is the sacrifice. With Dionysus, the god of becoming takes effect. The culture of the ram or lamb appears. Homer. Christ is the individuality that descends from the highest regions. Today, it already contains in its physical being what the other human beings will also contain in the very distant future. If you want to contemplate Christ, he is best described in the Gospel of the intimate disciple John. The Word became flesh, it says there. Man will one day become the Word, and this Word lives in the flesh in Christ. When you contemplate this Christ in the fourth sub-race, then he could say one thing: “In a certain way, I am deeply related to this sub-race, this fourth, but at the same time I am also growing out of this fourth sub-race. I represent that which will appear again and again in the future. This is how he is connected to the development of humanity, to the earthly wave of evolution that makes up the fourth and fifth sub-races and will then make up the sixth sub-race. In this way, he looks at everything that develops as material life on earth.

The life of Christ belongs to this; and how did this body become a member of the fourth sub-race? Because a culture emerged that rejected the teaching of reincarnation. After all, the Christ also taught his disciples about reincarnation. For they themselves asked him: “That should not happen until Elijah has reappeared.” Then he said: “He has reappeared. John was Elijah, but they did not recognize him.

We therefore understand Theosophy as the realization of Christianity. It teaches what Christianity has only hinted at. The ancient sacrifices were water sacrifices. The sacrifices of the fourth sub-race are wine sacrifices. And Christ turns the water into wine. This is to be understood physically and materially. The Christian monks are allowed to drink wine. They are not forbidden to drink wine. This makes Christianity a different kind of development. The Christian development must completely entrust itself to the leader. The disciple is not allowed to see for himself, not allowed because he has drunk wine. This also takes place at the Lord's Supper.

What is present then? The body of the whole earth is present in the Christ. He can say: “This is my body.” And what is the blood? That is what immediately brings forth the passions in the time to come. That is the lifeblood of the Dionysian culture. The wine is the astral element. In its all-encompassing individuality in concentrated physical form. I can only hint at all this now. Take the individualities that have grown out of the Christian life: for them this can apply. They surrender to the one who guides them because they are only walking on the physical plane for a while. This is Christian occult development.

But then there is also a Christian black magic. It really exists and plays a certain role. In conversation, it may be possible to provide specific information about this as well. Take a fully developed occultist of the old world, one in whom the light originally shines from the beginning, and then the modern occultist, who starts from the Rosicrucians and is now developing. That is the one where the light is where one develops with a certain awareness and entrusts oneself to the leader. It is being awake when one wants to develop occultly.

Can you tell us more about Noah and the Flood?

The question about Noah is connected with my very latest occult research. No one will find anything in 'Lucifer' that I did not know at the time I wrote the articles. But now I know a little more about it. Now the climatic conditions have become clear and vivid to me. I have come to understand something that I would have mentioned at the time if I had understood it at the time. I took the position of Noah allegorically at the time. It was a picture for the deep spiritual meaning. But now I know that this rainbow in the Bible corresponds to a literal fact. On the old Atlantis, the climatic conditions were different. The distribution of air and water was different. It is not without reason that German legend speaks of the 'Fogheim'. There is no rain there yet. There is a different distribution in the cycle of water in the air, and different cloud formations are present, so that one finds that on the old Atlantis the formation of a rainbow is not yet possible. Such conditions only became possible when Atlantis was flooded and the new continents rose.

Now we are given a hint as to how the rainbow emerges from the flood. Noah is the biblical representative of a certain tribe that originally came from Atlantis. We speak of the Proto-Semites. All sub-races descend from them in a certain way. This is well known to us from theosophical literature. So it is in a sense correct to say that all descend from the Proto-Semitic race. The fourth sub-race, which developed from the then existing one, is predisposed in the Proto-Semites, so that one tribe, which is presented to us biblically as Noah's, is particularly characterized by its wine drinking.

How is race formation related to Germanic mythology?

There was a center in the Gobi Desert. From there, the northern cultural current flowed, which had a tragic course. It is contained in the Nibelungen, in the twilight of the gods. Druid means oak. The arrival of Christianity forms one of the expectations in all Nordic mysteries. This is expressed in a symbolum. Certain truths are indicated to the initiated by certain symbols. What was it that had to be brought, that was predicted by the old Druid priests? It was the cross.

Now there is a Nordic initiate to whom all these things go back. He is called Sieg. All the names like Siegfried, Sieglinde, Siegmund and so on go back to this Sieg. This Nordic initiate found expression in the later Siegfried. He is described as an initiate. It is stated that he was invulnerable through the dragon blood, but that he was still vulnerable at a certain point on his shoulder blade. And it was taught: There will come another who will overcome this vulnerable spot. From the fertilization of the fourth sub-race with what had remained behind and came over from earlier, the fifth sub-race developed. This provided the impetus for the founding of the fifth sub-race.

You often hear, especially from the learned or, let's say, from the progressive side: Yes, spiritual entities are present for those who still cling to old childish beliefs, who live in their imagination and their feelings. But for people who have clear, logical concepts, such spiritual entities are not there. I would like to remind you of what the Leipzig university professor Wundt wrote, in which he fights against all spiritual facts. He says: Those people who believe in such spiritual entities from the outset see these things, but those who do not believe in them do not see them. For them, it remains something that must always be doubted. But that is the decisive factor.

Now let us ask ourselves whether those who see the world with clear logical concepts are really decisive in their statements about the phenomena of a higher world. Here we must take into account a little of what is a condition of life for a whole series of initially elementary phenomena in the higher world.

We are not only constantly surrounded by sensual things and beings, but we are also always surrounded by a world of supersensible entities. One should not think that these supersensible entities have no relation to the visible nature. Just as man consists of visible and invisible parts, of his visible physical body and of his invisible spirit and soul, so also other entities consist of a visible and an invisible part. The relationships can then, however, be very different from those in humans.

The simplest supersensible beings we have to deal with are the so-called elementary beings. These are entities that surround us at every turn. The whole space around us is filled with such entities. Just as plants, animals and people live around us, so do supersensible beings. But they are not always fully developed; they are in a more or less imperfectly developed state. If you look at the natural world around us, you will recognize the same thing in the visible world of the senses. If you have a bean here, a bean seed, and there a bean plant that has shot up, winding around the stick and unfolding bean blossoms, then you can say to yourself: In a certain respect, the bean seed and the bean plant that has shot up and is winding around a stick in many turns are basically the same from a certain point of view. If you put the bean in the ground today, it can sprout up in exactly the same way on the vine in a while, and can be exactly the same as the fully-grown bean plant standing before you today. So here in the world of the senses you seemingly have two entities. From a different point of view, however, they are in fact the same. It is the same in the spiritual world. There you actually have beings that, like beans in the seed state, exist as spiritual germs that surround us all the time in the spiritual world. Just as you give the bean the opportunity to be the expressed bean plant, you can also give these spiritual germs, which constantly surround us in the astral realm, a soil in which they can take root. If you keep the bean on the surface of the earth, on stony ground, it will never be able to develop. But if you sink it into suitable soil, it will sprout. It can be the same with a spiritual seed. There are beings around us, such seed beings, that simply grow through what we develop, that thereby have a breeding ground in which they grow and flourish. Suppose there are spiritual beings around you who, just as the bean plant needs physical soil, salts, physical light and so on to build a physical body, want to build an astral body out of astral matter.

What is astral matter? These are, for example, human passions, urges, desires. Astral matter is greed, generosity, which develops love. All this relates to a being that is not rooted in the physical in its entire nature and wants to make an astral body for itself [like the ground for seeds]. What a person emits, develops in desires and instincts, is necessary for certain entities, so that one can say: Here in the astral realm is a spiritual seed, and there a person develops a pronounced instinct for greed. That is a spiritual soil for a certain spiritual being that is in its environment; it finds an opportunity in it to grow, so you give spiritual beings the opportunity to live in it. In fact, that is present.

For example, it is also known that people seek to discharge their pain in tears. No one will deny that the tears have something that alleviates the pain. A certain pain-relieving agent is the tears. An astral substance causes this peculiar soothing effect that lies in tears. This astral substance, which comes about because the pain is discharged in tears, causes certain entities to incarnate, to embody themselves. In fact, the person who cries draws in spiritual entities from the environment. These cause the pain to become less and less.

Now, however, pain is often, when we experience it ourselves without it discharging in tears, a significant increase in strength, which can have an even stronger effect if we accumulate it as a good experience and do not seek the voluptuousness of tears. Then they are a source of wisdom. Painful experiences are a source of wisdom. Time and again, the one who knows something, who sees something in the world, will gladly give up his pleasures; but he will not gladly give up his pains, because painful experiences reveal what we should and should not do. If something has caused pain, then we know that it is not life-promoting, and we know how to behave in later times.

Great idealists in previous incarnations were often martyrs. From these painful experiences, which they bore with dignity and equanimity, an ideal sense arose. From this you can see that bitter experiences are connected with wisdom. You will also have to admit that when a person cries out the painful experiences, he then also dulls their effects. That is indeed the case. He who wants to see into higher worlds must, above all, understand how to bury pain in his soul, how to turn it into an active ferment and not let it disappear in outwardly flowing tears. In addition to all the figurative interpretations, the word in “Light on the Path” is also to be taken literally as a real truth:

Before the eye can see, it must wean itself from tears.

This is not to say anything against tears in people at a certain stage of development. So you see how this provides a breeding ground for spiritual beings who are constantly present, and from which astral beings sprout like plants from sown soil.

What then are these astral germs? Where do they exist? If you ask yourself these questions very carefully, you will understand many things in nature that would otherwise be difficult for you to grasp. For those who seek to fathom the world in this way, the things of nature are not purely physical entities, as one would usually assume, but they are permeated with spiritual life. All of nature is alive, truly alive with spiritual entities. The ancients knew this and still know it today. Paracelsus, for example, said that spiritual entities rest everywhere in plants and stones.

Now let us try to explore the nature of such spiritual entities that are different from the entities that surround us. First, I have to discuss some concepts that will help you understand the whole supersensory nature. Some of you already know these things, but I believe I can put them in a different context. Besides, it is good to hear them from time to time.

People know their environment and act out of their consciousness. What does that mean? When they are asleep, they do not act out of their consciousness, because then their actual higher self, their actual higher being, is separated from the body. The body is on its own. When you look at a sleeping person, what are you actually looking at? The human being consists of the physical body, [which you see with your eyes,] then of an etheric body, which is similarly constructed and forms a kind of model for the physical body, then of the astral body with the life of feelings, instincts, desires and passions, and finally of the I, in which I combine the higher parts.

When a person is awake, the following parts are present: physical body, etheric body, astral body and I. The physical body is in the sensory world, the etheric body, the astral body and the I are in the supersensible world. So we have a being that has its consciousness in the supersensible and only the body on the physical plane. During sleep, it discards the physical body and lives in the higher worlds. What the human being represents here in the state of sleep can be seen as a constant state in the other physical beings that surround you. With plants, you can say – and not just figuratively – that they sleep. What man is during the night – approximately – that is what the plant always is: it is a sleeper, has a sleeping consciousness. It is important to realize this correctly. You see, just as man, when he sleeps, does not have his consciousness in the physical body, so the plant also does not have its consciousness in the physical body, and therefore it is a sleeper.

This is how man differs from the plant, in that man has his consciousness within his body, while the plant has its consciousness outside of its body. The plant is not without consciousness, it just has it outside of its body; it has it on the mental plane. The animal has its consciousness on the astral plane, but the plant has it on the mental plane.

We now come to the description of the external sensory world, of sensory nature. I will try to present it to you schematically. When you look at this whole world, it comes to you through your senses, through your eyes, ears, through sensation and feeling. We call this the physical plane. Just as a sponge is permeated by water, so this world is permeated by the astral world; it permeates the physical world. The astral plane, however, does not have objects and entities that can be touched and seen with the eyes. The “matter that is present on it is made of the same stuff as your desires and longings.

If you have a candle here and light it, it will burn on the physical plane. The fire is therefore the result of a physical process. But if you curse your neighbor, fire will burn on the astral plane. He is in pain, and that is visible on the astral plane in a kind of flame. Lust is something similar on the astral plane.

An even more refined substance is that from which your thoughts are woven, we call that the mental substance.

Then there is an even higher plane, that is the higher mental plane. The substance on this plane is the same as that from which the thoughts consist, which are completely free of sensuality, the highest thoughts that a person can have at all.

Now we have the following beings on earth: minerals, plants, animals and human beings. When a person is awake, his consciousness is here on the physical plane; his consciousness dwells in the physical body. The animal's consciousness is not in the physical body, but on the astral plane. This means that the animal is not able to express its self on the physical plane. It lacks the ability to think for itself. There is a so-called generic soul in animals; this lives on the astral plane. The plant has its self-awareness on the mental plane. Thus man, animal, plant and finally mineral are in their duality as form and consciousness. From this we can see what mineral, plant, animal and human being are. The animal is not able to grasp the ego. There is no instrument through which it can work. On the astral plane, animals are like human beings on the physical plane; they are beginning to speak to you. And on the mental plane, plants are like human beings on the physical plane. The animal is on the physical plane and rooted in the astral plane with its consciousness. It can also be the other way around, namely, the consciousness is on the physical plane and the body is on the astral plane, which then reaches into our world with its consciousness. What would such a being mean? Such a being would move up in the astral realm, it would go for walks in the astral realm. And just as we experience the animal down here, the “animal that has its consciousness in the physical realm expresses itself in physical action, that is, in the form of an attraction.

For example, the physicist has a magnet here, and if he brings something iron close to it, it is attracted. The physicist then speaks of an attraction. Of course, that is just a word. What is the truth here? The truth is what I have described. In truth, the magnetic force that is at work and visible here is based on an astral entity. All natural forces are based on astral entities. The forces of nature are based on astral beings. There are beings walking on the astral plane, and here they express themselves as natural forces. Natural forces are nothing more than actions on the physical plane of beings that live on the astral plane!

Therefore, anyone who approaches nature with their entire sensitivity will be able to perceive such beings from the natural forces.

Take a highly sensitive person who approaches such forces. He will not only be able to say when the iron is there and is attracted: magnetic force is present here, but his eye will see the magnetic forces - and that is the same as the consciousness of the animal on the astral plane. These magnetic forces have their body on the astral plane, and this can be seen by the sensitive person in question.

A piece of sulfur is not only a piece of sulfur, but it is also a force, and this force corresponds to an astral being on the astral plane. This is a being, an organism on the astral plane.

From this you can see that we are actually constantly dealing with entities that have their being on the astral plane, as with the forces of nature. A person can find one plant lovely and another one repulsive. The clairvoyant can see that the reason for this is that one plant has forces that express themselves in a beautiful astral body, while the other has forces that express themselves in a hideous astral body. The smell that the physical human being can smell, the astral human being can perceive, you can see in an astral form. When you begin to really develop the powers to see what is not perceptible to the physical senses, you will be surrounded by light effects in the plant. We have two entities in the plant, one inside the other, belonging together. The plant sprouts from the ground. It has its consciousness on the mental plane and its physical body down here. Another entity is placed in it, which has its body on the astral plane and its consciousness down here.

Follow with me the path that the animal takes through its life. When the animal is alive, when it is born, the astral body of the animal arises first, then the etheric body, and then they clothe themselves with physical matter. The animal gets the physical body, the astral lives in the physical body. Now take this animal's life. It can only exist as long as there is oxygen in the air. The moment the air does not have enough oxygen, the animal dies. The moment you bury the animal alive, it also dies because it does not have enough oxygen. So you see that the mere physical body cannot hold the animal's astral body unless the appropriate air of life is present. If you cover the whole animal with earth, then that animal cannot live.

You can do something similar with the astral beings I have been talking about. Suppose you have the astral body of an entity that accompanies a plant that belongs to it; you are now confronting this entity. When you confront it, it is often the case for such an entity as if you were planting a bean in the ground. You offer it the opportunity to root, to grow and to flourish through your own spirit. It takes on an outwardly visible form. This is a very important process. You stand in front of a plant, it begins to be surrounded by fire sparks; a being is formed that is connected to the plant; this being's body is formed.

Now you begin to think about this being. When you think, it is really like a kind of soil in which the being is sunk. But as beneficial as the soil is for the plant when it envelops part of its organs in the right way, it is as pernicious for it when you cover the whole plant. And just as the soil kills the plant when you cover the whole plant with soil, so does the soil of thought act on such entities. If you completely cover them with thought material, it has a killing effect. They lack the air of life. This is why the elemental spirits of nature die when their life air is taken from them through thoughts.

This is one reason why caustic thinkers, people who spin out everything and want to surround everything with their thoughts, actually kill the delicate beings that surround us. This will explain to you what it means for such beings to 'die'; they actually die many times over in people. Just as a landslide buries all the plants below and causes them to die, so human thinking, by spreading, kills a whole series of nature entities.

Myth and legend have expressed this beautifully in symbolic language; you can find it expressed in the myth of the brownies: in the past, when man did not think so much, they were there. Then came the time when man began to think; then the nature spirits withdrew. This is expressed symbolically, but corresponds to a hidden reality. Just as man, in his physical body, is consigned to the earth when he dies, so these nature spirits, in their elemental bodies, are sunk into the mental earth in the upper worlds, and there they die. Man dies in the physical earth, the nature spirit dies in the “earth of the spiritual world”! There they have their grave, and it is prepared for them by the megalomaniac, clever thinking of men.

To those who have not yet been initiated into these things, the matter will seem fantastic. The one who approaches the spiritual world with doubting thoughts will not find this spiritual world. He behaves as if he were walking through a swarm of mosquitoes with a flame of fire when he passes through the spiritual world. Such is the case with a thinker who has no sensitivity. Many slain [spiritual] entities indicate the trace of such thinkers. Therefore, man is often a destroyer of elemental spirits. He is something that wants to develop higher, and these entities, which are in a reverse development, are often destroyed by people. Here you have another practical example that makes a real teaching of occultism seem understandable: that you yourself must offer the spiritual entities that which allows them to appear, which allows them to be there. Hence the ever-recurring demand: one should not think caustically, should not criticize, but should devotedly abandon oneself to one's surroundings. Then the bright spiritual elemental beings emerge from their darkness. These things are all connected with the profound laws of spiritual existence.

Now another example from which you can see how the immediate life becomes explicable through such insights that belong to the hidden worlds. Suppose a person lies to another. If I tell the truth, it means something quite different in the spiritual world than if I lie. When I tell the truth, I create a thought-form. Every thought I express is a form in the supersensible world. Now the fact that I want to communicate also corresponds to something in the spiritual world. Every fact in the external, sensory space also corresponds to something in the spiritual world. The moment I speak the truth, the thought form I have formed connects with what corresponds to the fact in the spiritual world. But if I say or think a lie that does not correspond to the fact, then my thought form will immediately rebound on me when I try to unite it with the spiritual counterpart that corresponds to the fact, and it will stick to me. Those who habitually tell lies are constantly having their lies rebound on them, and they surround themselves with a whole armor of lies. Now imagine such a person, enclosed in such an armor of lies. The forces that could develop him cannot enter, and the result is that he lags behind. Those who lie exclude themselves from the power that they must let flow in and out, and as a result they lag behind. Therefore, everything that is untruthful, that does not correspond to the facts, is an obstacle to development. All truth connects with the facts themselves, and it allows man to enter into the whole stream of facts. If you take this into consideration, you will understand what it means to be a 'truthful person'. To be a truthful person means to make yourself capable of progressing, of going further and further. Only truthful people will progress. On the physical plane, a lie can perhaps be hidden, but on the astral plane, a lie cannot be hidden. Liars are surrounded by thick crusts on the astral plane. Therefore, they cannot develop. For this reason, the biggest stumbling block in the world is the existing lie. 'Lie' in Hebrew is 'Tophel'. And if you imagine the 'spirit of lies' in the world, which wanted to make it its business to put as many obstacles as possible in the way of the world, then it would have to be a 'spirit of lies'. He would have to lie in such a way that a crust would form around all of humanity; he would be the corrupter of humanity. Corrupter is called 'Mephiz' in Hebrew. So you can call such a spirit of lies 'Mephistophel', 'spirit of lies'. His name is chosen because he is the 'father of all obstacles'. Goethe also calls him that.

So here you have something from which you can see that you can only understand the poet by looking at him from the point of view of occultism. You will find exactly the same with most really great poets. You will never find that the great world poets created out of a random fantasy, but out of the occult facts, out of the occult connections!

Now another example, which has been mentioned before. We are in the fifth root race, and within this, in the fifth sub-race. Three sub-races had a priestly culture. In the fourth cultural period, the Semitic peoples came up. From the priestly cultures, a culture developed that was quite different, that was not based on inspiration from above; namely, the priestly culture was based on that. The culture of the fourth sub-race was based on cleverness. The emergence of Greek culture thus means overcoming priestly wisdom through cunning. This is presented to us by a Greek poet and a Greek sculptor. The poet Homer presents this to us in Odysseus, who overcomes the Trojans through cunning by making a wooden horse. The sculptor has the old Trojan priest Laocoön crushed by the snake, the symbol of wisdom and prudence. Real poets have always drawn from the occult. The others are not poets, because nothing in their poetry corresponds to reality. Poetry can only flourish among spiritual peoples. The truth is handed down to people in different ways. The poets were not merely entertainers of mankind; they were seers who wanted to shine beyond our physical reality into the higher worlds. Homer is therefore the “blind seer” because he created his works from the hidden, not from the world of the senses. So you see that true great poetry can only be understood if we look at it on the basis of occult facts. Life and the creation of man only become clear to us when we look at them from the occult point of view. Consider what this means! One can rail against occultism and regard it as something that makes people fantasize. But you see: in truth, occultism leads deeper and deeper into the world. It makes the outer context of the world truly understandable. There is, as Goethe already said, no outside and no inside. “Nature has neither core nor shell, it is all at once.” Apparently the secrets are revealed when people open their minds.

This brings me to something that may seem hard to believe at first, but which is really true, namely the benefit of having an external exoteric, theosophical movement alongside the occult schools. Only those who want to live an occult life should be initiated. “What is the purpose of having a Theosophical Society?” you might ask. Those who approach this matter only with intellectual knowledge will hardly find a satisfactory answer. But those who delve into this spiritual world would have more success. It may take a long time, but what comes of it is a real insight into the world. People do not sit together for nothing. Depending on their karma, it takes longer for some and shorter for others. What one hears there awakens one's powers, leading one into the spiritual world oneself, the beginning of initiation. This must be borne in mind if one is to understand the true purpose and the true reason for the Theosophical movement. The true reason for the Theosophical movement is not only to speak in the broadest circles about the higher worlds, but also, through our words, to awaken in people the gift and ability to live in the higher worlds themselves, by infusing them with the power of the higher worlds. This is absolutely necessary. Indeed, someone who understood everything, who could grasp with his pure conceptual material everything that can be told about the higher worlds, and who approached the matter with impartiality, would have only a fine membrane to break, and the gift of clairvoyance would arise without further ado. There may be individuals who have an abbreviated process. There must always be those who develop a little further than the rest. But all of humanity can be helped in our time. What is taught today can, without fail, produce powers of vision in time, in the following way:

Today people think they are terribly clever in their critical thoughts. To what do they owe this? Suppose you are sitting in a meeting. In front of you stands a speaker who, as they say, proclaims the truth. If such a person had spoken to them in their previous incarnation, they would not have understood him. Not a bit of it! Suppose everyone sitting in such a gathering had been on earth fifteen hundred years ago or more. But then they were told fairy tales by their priests. They were not taught in the way we are today, in an intellectual way, but they were told fairy tales. And these souls embody themselves again: the power with which they have accepted the fairy tales is now coming into its own in that they can show understanding for intellectual speech. And through the understanding that has now been developed, a higher understanding will come about. It will no longer be a matter of understanding with the intellect, but of clairvoyance.

So you can see that the theosophical movement opens up a great perspective. It works in the same way as the priests of centuries ago worked into the supersensible world with their fairy tales. Just as they have sunk something into the soul that is coming forth today, so today's intellectual education will, in the next embodiment, produce the ability to penetrate the world with clairvoyant powers. That is the world mission of the Theosophical Society. That is what it wants to be and what it should be. If you look at it that way, you will realize that you cannot have that in occultist associations. There are many movements that have ethical or other purposes. But movements in which there is talk of the transcendental worlds in order to awaken the spiritual, the spirit, do not exist as popular movements outside of the theosophical movement today. That is the reason why such a current was brought into being by the theosophical movement. The theosophical movement is not something that teaches us dull theories, but leads us directly into life, giving us guidance to look around at the world with open eyes.

Throughout the world, there is a kind of blindness in those who should be taking the initiative in the outside world. Last Thursday, I tried to make this clear in the social sphere. In all areas where a knowledge of the forces should prevail, we see that blindness is actually the hallmark of those who should be awakening. Theosophy wants to bring out the underlying forces.

Man is often an enemy of the elemental beings that surround us constantly. But he becomes their friend when he recognizes them and becomes familiar with them and works in their sense. We become friends with those beings that always surround us in the spiritual world when we enter into the hidden sides of nature; then they work with us, not against us. Everything that occurs in the world and hinders progress and causes much bloodshed in the world has its reason in nothing other than in the awakened elemental beings in the world. They are enemies of man as long as man wants to work without knowing them. They transform into friends when he wants to get to know them, when he wants to face them with familiarity. Externally, physically speaking, it means: Man stands in the world, works and works, and around him things happen that arise from his actions. He sees nothing. He sees absolutely nothing. Then suddenly revolutionary movements break in because he has seen nothing, because he has not seen the hidden things that were there long before they discharged the external hostile storm. If man would see them, he would not be so careless of them as to let them degenerate into revolutionary currents. He would work with them. From this you can see that not recognizing the course of the laws, the spiritual elemental beings, destruction, turmoil and revolutions in the world, and that the more we get to know the forces around us, the more we will see what we call the calm development of people. Thus, on a large scale, knowledge of the elemental nature, knowledge of the spiritual world around us, has great practical value. It allows us to penetrate deeper into our environment and understand it.

Next time, we want to talk about a problem that can affect people very deeply. We have already heard a lot about the forces that work around people. And so we want to ask ourselves: Is a human being a being that can be said to have freedom or not? Are they on a tight rein from the elemental beings or not? These are the questions that we want to address next time.

At first it might seem as if the strict lawfulness in the The [...]M[...] is incompatible. You know that this problem [...]

Is man free or not free? Is he subject to ironclad necessity, or are his actions subject to his will? Initially, this question is not asked, and a lot depends on asking questions correctly. As man stands today, he is neither one nor the other, neither free nor bound, but both one and the other. In relation to certain actions, he is free; in relation to others, he is subject to ironclad necessity. Freedom is something we are always approaching; we become freer the more we develop. In the beginning, we are very constrained, dependent on everything our instinctive mat[...] has predisposed us to.

But the more we develop, the freer we become. How does this relate to the laws of karma? Theosophy deals with laws that operate in the future. If we specify laws so firmly, how can we speak of a development towards freedom? If we delve into certain investigations into the human soul in this field, we will make progress. Above all, we must ask ourselves: What is freedom? Can it be a creation out of nothing? Is it a specific nature? Is man predisposed to freedom at the stage of existence at which he now stands? - At the moment when man raises such a question, he is a being that has developed to a certain point.

The fact that my hand moves is a result of infinitely complicated laws. Now it is not a question of whether I can get rid of these laws, but whether I can make a free decision within these laws in which I have become; whether a being that is born according to certain [laws] and moves within these laws can ascribe freedom to itself or not. These laws belong to our becoming in the past and extend into the future. Imagine someone demands to be trained as an athlete. He must train himself in a very specific direction, follow laws, bring himself to a certain point of view; when he has done that, he can become an athlete. Freedom does not consist in our changing the laws by which we have become, but in acting within those laws.

You have heard that [the] human being walks either the left or right path. Yes, so it is not up to him; he must walk one or the other. If he has a guru, he must follow laws, strive for a goal – can there be any talk of freedom? In truth, there is no such goal that we should strive for. Occult development has no such purpose, but it does have the purpose and intention of developing abilities in people and using laws to bring them to a certain level. When they have reached this level, they are then able to set themselves a goal.

The animal cannot act out of freedom, only according to instincts; no act of instinct or passion is free, it is internally forced. To be free, one must above all have the ability to decide freely; not feel any compulsion within oneself to do this or that.

This is a step to be taken. And all occultism is about developing the abilities we need to make free decisions. Suppose a person acquires the ability to see into the supersensible world. At first, the person acts out of instinctive drives. What is the inner compulsion? The first task is to put the person in relation to the outside world. Instinctive drives initially guide his life, making him unfree. When a person begins to look into the supersensible world, the first step is to see the connection between the drives and the world's interconnections. He knows how an instinct works as a cause in the world. He moves on to the realization of the connection between himself and the external world. Occultism provides him with the guidance for this.

You have come to know this lawful mechanism of the world better and better and see how freedom develops from it. The fact that you bring oxygen and hydrogen together is an act of your freedom. If we know nothing of the law, we cannot foresee what will happen and must submit to a compulsion. The fact that we have recognized the lawful consequences makes us free. The more we understand the higher laws, the more we can adhere to them in order to reach our goals. What we learn to recognize are the means by which we achieve the specific goals we then set for ourselves. The master does not give the chela instructions about where to steer; he should learn to move in the direction of the goal. A goal presents itself to us when we truly look at the world without prejudice. The goal that a person sets for himself out of the abundance of world phenomena can only be a free goal. Then he is truly a liberated man.

The three most important elements of the soul's life are activity, wisdom, and will. Actions must be determined by our wisdom and our will, and are therefore not free. Wisdom is partly free and partly not.

In the idea for my house, I am free; my knowledge of the laws leads me to shape the house the way I want it. And the better I know them, the better I will be able to realize this idea.

Free is he who is able to shape out of thought in a self-creative way.

The will determined by free thought is what truly liberates man. Man thus ceases to be determined from behind by the past and is determined from in front by his goals.

Pearl in shell as an example.

A person is unfree as long as we find in him the reason for setting himself the goal; when the law lies in the goal, then he is free, then he can refrain from the action. He acts selflessly in devotion to the goal. The opposite of inner compulsion is determination by the object, love of the object.

Only a god is truly free; but man is on the path to becoming divine.

Through objectification, through transformation into knowledge, what was previously coercion is transformed into freedom.

Therefore, man is on the path to freedom because he is capable of setting aside what lives in him as a goal. Objectification is the path to freedom.

You have heard of the spirits that reveal themselves to man: “Will, Wisdom, Form”. I would like to say a few more things about these entities.

You must familiarize yourself with them. Those who only consider the physical part know only a little.

All teachings are based on observations with higher organs that do not belong to the physical body, that belong to the higher bodies and are not yet developed in the ordinary human being either. Familiarize yourself with the fact that higher insights are gained.

The names of the [four] stages of perception [are]:

1. Material recognition: It is the subordinate one, only used for everyday life [recognition].

2. Imaginative cognition – recognizing spiritual beings in images: the images of the dream world, surging up and down, are chaotic and disorderly, without meaning. However, the meaning can be developed in the soul. Imago image, with which man surrounds himself. There is the fabric from which knowledge is composed [...]

Through the reality that one recognizes imaginatively, one can grasp and pass through.

3. Voluntaristic - volitional - cognition: We are no longer dealing with images. All image-knowledge belongs to the astral worlds, all volitional knowledge belongs to the mental world.

Beings that are perceived have the same substance as our human will. Volitional expressions.

4. Intuition: Will particularly developed sensitively. The will stirs. When the will becomes sentient, that is the highest kind of knowledge that man can have on the third plan. The highest plan is intuition; the stages lead up to the three worlds, where we have arrived at the limit of what

concerns man.

Intuition is the world of knowledge of the disciple who has attained the third degree.

The third degree, or swan, is the degree that connects the intercourse of ordinary people with the masters - Lohengrin.

Intuition enables a person to perceive objects within. We must learn to understand the meaning of the name “I”. Through meditation, the distinction of the I from other names becomes clear. Then you distinguish the basics of the royal yoga school.

There is an unspeakable difference between the “I” and other names. There is no thing that would have a name that anyone could attach to it, but there is a name that everyone knows, that only one can say to himself, the meaningful I. The “I” must resound from within the person, then the person enters the realm that is supersensible and the path by which he comes only from within. There, man first enters the realm that has no [gap in the transcript]

That is why, in Jewish secret doctrine, the unspeakable name [Yahweh], which means “I am,” is God, who announces himself in the innermost part of the soul, the first of intuition. If you now learn to recognize all things in the same way, if you also elicit the names of things as you do for yourself, if you crawl into things through self-abandonment, through the dissolution of the self, then you will learn all secrets, then every object will say its own ego, then all things will become eloquent. All illusions of one's own self will then have vanished. All things will then proclaim the words within them. [...]

What I am saying to you now is a symbolization of what has been said in all schools. I speak to you, you hear me through the fact that I am able to make the air vibrate in very specific forms, which are a true reflection of my words and sounds. Now you know that all things in the form of air can be liquefied. Now you think that if someone could solidify the air at the moment I utter something, then my words would fall like snow crystals. That is how man, who looked deeper, rightly imagined the world in the first place. Thus the world soul once spoke the primal words into an infinitely fine substance, into the Akasha matter. Everything here on earth is Akasha matter that has fallen down. The crystal is the condensed word of the Primordial Soul. Everything around us is the word of the Primordial Soul that has become rigid. When man ascends to intuitive knowledge, he hears the words that the Primordial Soul once spoke.

The four steps of knowledge lead to the mental plane. These four steps are taught in all Rosicrucian schools and form the content of the first seven degrees of initiation. Freemasonry also had these seven steps before it descended to the three St. John's degrees.

One comes to an understanding of the higher worlds through feeling and through calm, clear research. Trust is necessary and faith, evoked by intuitive feeling. Man is inclined towards truth and clarity; when the occultist tells him something, he finds that there is something right about it.

First of all, I will give a skeleton of the higher world and will proceed quite logically and elementarily. If you consider human development, you will become aware of the four-fold nature of man as he stands before you.

Firstly: the physical body has something in common with the mineral kingdom. When a person stands before us, they are a mixture of the physical and the higher bodies. The eye is a physical apparatus without sensation, but it is animated, endowed with sensation. Outside in the world, the realm of the inanimate is spread out, and man has taken possession of it.

1. The realm of the inanimate: physical body
2. The realm of the plant-like: etheric body
3. The realm of the animal-like: astral body I Manas Budhi [Atma]

Secondly: the etheric body: You can cut a piece of the mineral kingdom and lay it down, and it will be just the same after a year. It is different with plants: if you cut off a leaf, it will wither after a short time.

Thirdly: the astral body or the sentient body.

These three kingdoms of nature are also in man. Then there is the fourth link, the I. The I holds together the essence of the whole world in the human body. Schiller expressed it quite theosophically in what he describes as Goethe's view of nature: “You seek to know nature, but on a difficult path, by combining all three kingdoms to understand the human being.”

Here we have arrived at the point where man is today. We have what the forces of nature have made of him. The physical body is what the deities have made, it is the cleverest. The physical body is constructed wisely, the other bodies are still imperfect. The astral body commits follies against the heart, it intervenes in the wise construction in an unrhythmic and chaotic way.

The ego is the real baby, it is at the very beginning. Through these imperfections, man must first develop upwards. The European knows how to distinguish between 'good' and 'bad', 'true' and 'false'. As much as the ego has of impeccable truth, so much manas is in the ego. There is no need to vote on anything that is manasic. However much a person achieves, together with everyone else, he must recognize the truth for himself.

Becoming dispassionate. The more dispassionate feeling there is in a person, the more Budhi there is in him. As the I develops, it also becomes as rhythmic as the physical body. Two worlds.

The human being lives in three realms, but a new world is opening up for the human being, into which he must learn to live. Just as the baby “I” has risen above the animal kingdom, so it rises into higher realms. All religions have striven to lead the “I” upwards. As we ascend, we gain an overview.

The old Christian secret doctrine calls the moon beings angels. The asuras are the origin of all kinds of selfishness, otherwise we would not have independence. Selfhood, but also selfishness. The gods of form are the constructive architectural ones. The spirits of form have worked on the physical body. Jehovah is the spirit of form. The moon gods have been particularly active in the etheric body, which is why Helena Petrovna Blavatsky calls Jehovah the moon god. The occultist approaches these beings and says that they did not develop out of nothing.

Supplement from the notes of Alfred Reebstein

The human being, the I, has taken possession of the other realms, formed an extract from them, which it now rules. The physical body is the most perfectly developed in its way; the higher limbs, etheric body and astral body, are much less developed in their way and the I only reach greater perfection in later stages.

The part of man that is completely flawless truth is called: Manas.

Budhi is what is completely independent of sensations and passions. The following are developing simultaneously with the human kingdom:

- Mineral kingdom
- Plant kingdom
- Animal kingdom
- Human kingdom – kingdom of the egos
- Angelic kingdom, lunar Pitris, moon beings, people of the moon
- Archangels, fire spirits, sun beings, people of the sun
- Archai, spirits of time, spirits of personality; Asuras, humans of Saturn
- Spirits of form, Exusiai
- Spirits of movement - activity - Dynamis
- Spirits of wisdom
- [Throne]
- Cherubim
- Seraphim

Today I would like to continue our examination of the things we began eight days ago. Not long ago, one of our Theosophical friends showed me a letter written in response to an invitation from a southern German pastor to the Theosophical friend. Our friend thought it might be a good idea to invite the gentleman in question to the lecture on the wisdom teachings of Christianity because he believed that the gentleman was actually preaching Theosophy and that a connection could be made between Theosophy and the pastor's understanding of Christianity. The answer given by the person concerned was interesting. He refused to come that evening. He was prevented by external circumstances. But he said that he had studied Theosophy and had also tried to read some issues of “Lucifer - Gnosis” and that he could see from them that the purpose of Theosophy is to renew certain old Gnostic ideas. He could not really see anything special in all these efforts, because he preferred to gain a direct relationship with his God and not to be satisfied with a relationship with divinity that was mediated by many intermediate beings. This is a very characteristic answer, which I mention because it is given by so many people today. A great many people say this, and I say this not as a criticism of our contemporaries, but simply as an observation, for the phenomenon is as justified as can be. It arises entirely from our sense of the times. I say that this answer is given frequently today. People think that one is actually doing something that does not quite correspond to today's consciousness and feelings if one assumes, in addition to the sensual world in which we live and the divinity that permeates the world, a whole series of intermediate beings, let us say gods or spiritual entities. For four centuries, humanity has been educated in this view. It is therefore not surprising that such a feeling has become general today, and that people believe that Theosophy has a little too much to do with all the different spirits and spiritual entities, with a whole hierarchy of spiritual entities between people, and of which one can have no consciousness, but only an inkling.

The doctrine of such a large number of spiritual beings is not new, but as old as humanity itself. The time in which one believes one can ignore this feeling of the spiritual is actually short in relation to the great time of development. Where there was an awareness of the real significance and depth of the spiritual world, there was never the widespread opinion that one can disregard spiritual beings and their knowledge. I have often mentioned here that Theosophy as such is nothing particularly new, that it only represents the popularization, the generally understandable proclamation of teachings, which have always been cultivated in the so-called brotherhoods. Only the way in which people came by these teachings was different in the past centuries than it is today. Fifty years ago, one could not have spoken of all the things we are talking about today. At that time, anyone who wanted to know something like that was definitely required to seek admission to a so-called occult school, and no one was introduced to such significant and far-reaching ideas as can be found today in every little manual of Theosophy. You had to acquire the ability to become acquainted with such things slowly and gradually, you had to complete and study degree after degree. Each new degree one acquired first entitled one to take in certain higher views. And the education within such a degree consisted in one getting the feeling that what one received in the ascending development of mankind from the teachers of occult schools was the true, correct and essential. This was not because it was forbidden - no criticism of the occult teacher - but because one gradually became convinced that it would be nonsense to criticize the occult teachers, just as it would be absurd for a child to criticize the multiplication table before he could do so, or for a student of geometry if he was not yet ready to understand it. In the same way, in the past one would never say, “I don't like that, it doesn't suit me,” and so on. One took it for granted because one was prepared for it.

Today we are obliged to introduce a further circle without such preparation and to speak of the elementary teachings of occultism. I have often explained the reasons why spiritual teaching is proclaimed before all people. Do not think that what we are allowed to proclaim of these occult teachings is the whole teaching of occultism. It is the very first. And the times will not come for a long time yet when the deeper teachings can be communicated. But these too will come, when it will also be possible to open up higher spiritual worlds. Today it is only necessary to proclaim and introduce people to as much as the course of time requires of us. Those who are sitting here have, for the most part, been here often, and for this reason assertions and communications can be made here all the time, which appear grotesque and paradoxical to those on the outside, to those who come to a public lecture, fantastic, if not crazy. But the deeper truths, especially those that constitute the very nerve of life, the deepest laws of world knowledge, these teachings appear at first to those who are only captivated by external sensuality and to what is otherwise said to them about the spiritual world as illusory, as paradoxical. For those who penetrate deeper and deeper into today's world, it is precisely what our senses teach us in our ordinary lives and what our minds can convey to us that appears as an illusion. Now, for centuries, humanity has lost the power to truly distinguish between spiritual things, and that, my esteemed audience, is something you consider to be essential in the introduction to today's lecture, that humanity's powers of discernment have somewhat diminished over the last four centuries.

This is why objections can be made as in the letter mentioned. Imagine what such an objection means. It is exactly the same as if you wanted to make someone a suggestion that they should come to a lecture on botany and they wrote back: I have read a little about botany, read that it distinguishes between different plants - orchids, oaks, palms and so on - but it does not interest me further. I don't want to distinguish between individual plants, I want to be content with a general, direct feeling of plant life as such. I know that the world has plants: oaks, lilies, tulips, poplars - these are plants; but it is an exaggerated gnosis for me to first have to distinguish between lilies, firs, tulips, poplars. I am content with the fact that in general there is something spiritual, something divine that permeates the world. What are people talking about with such entities? Such a person is in the same situation as the one who objects to the distinction in botany. Humanity has lost some of this discernment over the centuries. But this discernment must be awakened again today. That is precisely the purpose of the theosophical worldview. For one who knows the spiritual connections, it is really not an easy decision to go before the world and speak of the great connections between the great spiritual beings, because he knows how hard it is to achieve understanding in this time and how man can be misled by such discussions about the spiritual beings. But at the same time, one must look into the course of the spiritual world.

It is little known that the phenomena of the world occur in so-called cycles. Today, in materialistic times, the regular, rhythmic course of even fatal phenomena in the world is overlooked. But he who looks into the hustle and bustle of the great human spiritual life sees something approaching, something that is revealing itself more and more to humanity. What I am about to say is also paradoxical, but it will only be recognized all too clearly in some time, perhaps in the not too distant future. What is in store for humanity, must be in store simply because of the materialism that has been preparing itself for four centuries, that is a certain loss of spiritual life, a confusion in spiritual life, which would most certainly develop into a kind of spiritual disease, into a kind of epidemic, if the teachers of spiritual life did not work to counteract this spiritual epidemic through their teachings. We would be facing that today. It is slowly preparing itself. Those who do not have eyes do not see, and those who do not have ears do not hear, even if they are in psychiatry. But those who can observe spiritually know the danger that man is in. This danger need not come, but it would come if the human spirit is not strengthened again through life, that is, if it does not receive a true center. The purpose of Theosophy is to produce firm, strong character in the depths of the soul, and not to allow any spiritually vacillating nature to arise. He who scurries about with his knowledge, flitting like a will-o'-the-wisp through the outer material phenomena of existence, today inclined to this person and tomorrow to that, is exposed to the great danger of losing his spiritual center. And it does not help if we imbue this scurrying with general ideas of divinity and spirituality. Just as the only ruler and safe in the plant kingdom is he who has learned botany, so only he can be sure of the spiritual beings — which are there after all — who has knowledge of the spiritual world.

In the past, no one ever said anything about higher spiritual entities. Those who were mature enough sought and found it. They came to people who could initiate them by no mere coincidence. It was the great spiritual human magnetism that necessarily draws the student to the teacher. They may seemingly encounter an innocent person, in the waiting room or on the train, where they may have to sit for hours. Then you will enter into conversation with such a person. It seems to be by chance, but in reality it is a necessity for you. You may find in such a person the one who has the most significant influence on you, who may be your occult teacher. So it has come about that this inner psychic magnetism has diminished to such an extent that this power no longer plays. You no longer find it so easy to connect with the actual spiritual teachers.

Therefore, it has become necessary to develop the occult teachings in an elementary way through the spoken word to the larger masses of our contemporaries, so that everyone can say to themselves, there and there is a center; if I want, I can join. Actually, no one should be asked to join any secret science current. How far the individual goes must be his absolutely free decision. One should never act under the sign of occultism, as is the view today. Such agitation brings about what should not be in this field. Those who join without actually being seekers say, “I like this and I don't like that – and this is not the right thing.” Actually, the principle of social union is not the right one, as in Buddhism. It is only a surrogate today because people join together socially for everything. What is right in occultism is the grouping.

Nor is there any sense in joining a society for the purpose of occultism, just as there is no sense in joining in relation to geometry. You can learn geometry from someone who knows geometry, but you cannot discern the truth of geometry in a society. The occult is a small circle within our society. The Theosophical Society is an administrative matter. But the occult life cannot be cultivated in any other way than the one I have tried to explain. Those who have settled into the occult life know that the great security of the inner soul character can only be achieved if one has the power of discernment within the spiritual world.

I had to presuppose this because, with teachings such as we will now develop, we will encounter the same contradictions over and over again.

Now I would like to expand on what we discussed last time. I have already indicated that there are four levels of knowledge. These four steps have always been cultivated wherever there have been occultists. Not arbitrarily, my esteemed audience, through deliberation, through reasoning, through speculation, has humanity gained knowledge of the higher spiritual worlds and their beings, but by forming the spiritual organs through which one can gain experience in these higher worlds.

Now let us briefly bring these stages of higher life before our soul. The ordinary knowledge that is peculiar to all people in the world is called material knowledge. This material knowledge is almost the only thing that people today know. Almost no other form of knowledge is known today than this material knowledge. You seek it in everyday life, whether you are dancing, cooking or doing something else, and you recognize in this way. But even in the anatomical dissecting room, in the laboratory and in all of science, there is nothing but material knowledge. It is the first step of knowledge. It is not the case that the occultist wants to criticize material knowledge. Material knowledge has its full justification in life. It must be said, however, that there are higher levels of knowledge. You have to be aware of this material knowledge in its individual parts.

There are four elements involved in material cognition. Now, please follow me closely. What belongs to ordinary material cognition? Imagine that you are to look at this flower from the point of view of material cognition. Four things are necessary for this material cognition to come about. First, the flower, which is the object. Secondly, the image of the object. If you want to appreciate something like this at all, you have to engage in such subtle things. Thirdly, the concept. This is something different from the image. The concept is attained through inner spiritual work. The image remains as an impression of the object on your soul. But the concept is something else. I will make it even clearer.

Imagine: many people have looked at the starry sky. They either had the image without the concept or the concept and also the image. The astronomer has a concept of the starry sky and the image; the farmer has an image of it, but no concept. You can see here that the concept and the image are different. Let's take the concept of a circle. The circle is a line that extends equally from the center.

The fourth is the I, yourself. If you consider these four things, you have the components of ordinary material knowledge. That by which the image comes about in material cognition is called sensation.

The second level of knowledge, which also exists, differs from the first in that the external object is absent, and with it the sensation. That which gives you the stimulus for the image is gone. All that you recognize in this way, that an object has an effect on you, is precisely not the second level of knowledge. You have to imagine that the whole world is gone. Now, the materialistic person says that there is nothing left at all. But that is what matters, that you still have something. Indeed, the one who does not undergo development has nothing left when he closes his eyes. He has the empty, dark space around him. The second stage of realization is developed through so-called meditation. The external object has gone. What is still present is the image, the concept and the I. These three are still there. The fact that there is no external object, only the image, tempts many to say: this is fantasy.

It can be, and it will always be fantastic if it is not systematically developed. To regard it as fantastic just because one has only an image would be foolishness. If someone could invent the dirigible balloon in a dream and then realize it, it does not matter whether he made the discovery while dreaming or while awake. If you can become convinced that what appears to you in dreams is true, then it is right – and that is what it is about. The object that otherwise causes sensation must be replaced. What occurs is what in occultism is called illumination. And this whole cognition, which again has four parts – namely image, concept, I and illumination – is now called imaginative cognition. This imaginative cognition is trained through meditation. I have often described how this is done. One cannot meditate without the guidance of someone who has experience in this field. Meditation proceeds in such a way that the meditator really loses sight of the objects around him, that he makes himself blind and deaf and then also loses his memory, so that the soul is completely empty of external objects. You have to be able to fire a cannon without paying attention, then you have achieved the stillness of the soul.

Then, through practice, illumination must be stimulated. You can recognize that you have achieved something by noticing that your dreams no longer have a chaotic character. You have to pay attention to the fact that the dream world is calm and steady. In the case of ordinary people, their dream world is usually one in which they have reminiscences or in which they experience the moods of their external lives in their dreams. So when he meditates, the dream world begins to take on a regular character. He then gets to know things he does not know. Dreams speak in symbols first. This must be felt. But that is where people usually go too far. They try to interpret these dream images. But they should not be interpreted intellectually. The legend of digging for treasure also refers to this fact. It says that when you dig a treasure, you must not speak, otherwise it cannot come out. Even if you say something inwardly, that is, quibble, that is already a danger. You can only speak to someone who has precise experience of this matter. But if you quibble, then the intellect begins to act like a scorching, burning fire on the fine spiritual life.

One should experience dreams very intimately, treat them like very delicate things to which one surrenders with intuition, and not interpret things in sharp, rough lines of the mind. One must do this for the reason that the dream images, when they occur with a reality value, then have such a rich and comprehensive reality value that the ordinary powers of the mind are not sufficient to grasp them. They destroy their inner life when they approach the cobweb-like inner structures with the outer mind. This is how this wonderful life begins, how the inner illuminations begin, and soon you become aware that a new world is opening up in them. Through them you get to know something that is quite different from this ordinary, material world around you.

I would like to understand how it is structured in terms of a way of perceiving within the illumination. Take this flower, for example. It is yellow and has green leaves. Let's look at the colors first. These colors are spread over the surface of the object, so to speak. Think about the fact that you usually perceive color as appearing spread over the surface of the body. Try to consider how seldom it happens that you see colors separate from objects. At most, you have this with a rainbow. You can roughly imagine this when you see a sunbeam entering a dusty room. You have a rough sense of a color. Now imagine that the yellow is not attached to the object, but is free like flakes of color floating through space. Now imagine a room like this, filled in all directions with these color flakes and color formations, and you will have something approximating what you will see when you visualize the world of illumination in terms of colors.

Occult students with a softer nature than Westerners do very special exercises. Westerners are much too compact for that. But because of their soft nature, the Orientals have the opportunity to do these exercises. The Oriental yogi sits down and looks at the color of such a flower, turns all his attention to that color, lives in that color so that he is able to withdraw his attention completely from the object and fix it only on the color, then he acquires the ability to hold the color even when the object is gone. Then it becomes possible for him to gradually bring this floating world of color into consciousness.

The same can be said for the world of sound and for other forms of the world. You see: Man conquers a whole new field of perception. This world and these color flakes are always and everywhere there. These color flakes are not irregular, they are not just clouds flying around, but just as objects on the physical earth plane are not just blocks, but also entities, so too do entities reveal themselves in this flaky world of colors. They have no bones and no flesh, they are incarnated in the substance that I have just described.

So these are the bodies of certain entities. The forms of the entities that you can get to know, once you have generated the illumination so that you can perceive them in this space, are mostly the bodies of the spirits of the twilight. So you can perceive them as the outstanding spirits of this sphere: the spirits of the twilight, the lunar or moon Pitris. Such beings people themselves once were on the planet preceding our Earth. They have only attained their present form through their condensation. Those beings who have not attained human condensation, who have remained at that level, stand today in that world as Lunar Pitris, as spirits of the twilight.

Just as one has to become familiar with each realm in turn, ascending from the mineral realm to the plant realm to the animal realm, and one must not lump all three realms together, so too can we now ascend further to the realm of the lunar Pitris, who can manifest themselves in this so-called elemental realm. This is the first elemental realm - actually the third.

We have not been talking in vague terms, but have indicated a path that leads to the perception of a type of being that you will get to know in planetary development. These twilight spirits play a very special role in this. These are the beings that are closest to man in the spiritual world. Next time I will share something about the relationship between man and these spiritual beings. These entities are present around you and influence you continuously.

At the next level of realization, the image also disappears. So only the concept and the ego remain. This state is achieved through concentration. This consists of the person associating certain parts with certain parts of the organism. That which prevents him from blindly fantasizing, from inventing concepts, is something similar to the illumination of the previous level and the sensation of the level before that. So we have sensation, illumination and now, at the third stage, inspiration. Here, the object and the image are absent, and the concept acquires content through the inspiration that occurs. So here you are dealing with the I, the concept and inspiration.

Illumination has something light-like about it, which is why it is also called illumination. Inspiration is completely free of all these pictorial representations. Here the human being floats in the purely spiritual world. That is why it is also said that his ideas take on a content without the need for them to be images first. It is the word 'imageless' that can be used to compare it to. That is why it is also said that at this stage, a person receives the inner word, that is, he is able to find truths through inspiration, in that the spiritual world works into his understanding in such a way that it is not the image that affects him, but that the spirit speaks directly to him. The language of the spiritual world itself flows into his concepts. That is inspiration. It is the conversation with the beings of a spiritual world. The person is quietly closed in on himself, rejects everything visionary, everything pictorial, keeps quiet and still, and the spirits tell him the truth. That is the level of inspiration, the inner word. This level of inspiration makes it possible for a person to not only see objects wherever he goes, but for them to tell him something everywhere, so that he can hear everywhere what is buzzing around in a new space. This level of knowledge is what Goethe means when he speaks the words at the beginning of the prologue in heaven: “The sun resounds in the old way in the brother spheres of value singing.” This is not a phrase, it is reality. He speaks of the spiritual sun that resounds. The whole world becomes a resounding world that teaches us significantly about the inner core of our being. In this world, we then make acquaintance with a higher group of spiritual beings, which we call the sun spirits or also the fire spirits. Just as we got to know the spirits of twilight there, we get to know the spirits of fire here.

So we have: mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, animal kingdom, spirits of twilight, spirits of fire. The realization at this level is a volitional realization, because the power that one must particularly develop is the will. A special training of the will through concentration, through inner willpower and will education. One then makes the acquaintance of the beings that are growth-producing power, power of reproduction and so on. We get to know this in this way. That which exists everywhere of these fire spirits lives in all growing entities. The one who rises to an inspired realization is one who 'hears the grass growing'. The proverbs are often tremendous words of wisdom. At this level, all growth is heard. That which makes the beings grow is the power that lives in the fire beings.

Finally, there is still the [fourth] stage. The concept is still missing. Then there is only the I. There is no more recognition in the concept, there is a recognition without concept, a pure life in the spiritual. You creep into the beings you want to recognize. The coarsest form of recognition is in the material. Think how little you are able to penetrate a flower. You have to stay outside. In imaginative cognition, you have the images around you. In inspired cognition, the sounds from the outside world come to you. But now you enter into the beings. You are every being you recognize. Space and time cease to exist. You are where you recognize the corresponding being. You are no longer different from that being. Your ego has submerged in that being. And that is the realization through intuition – intuitive realization.

These are the four stages of realization. Through this intuitive realization, you get to know not only the outer appearance of the beings, but the beings in their inner being. The I expands to include the whole environment. The person who has attained this higher realization is called the “swan”. Lohengrin is led from a spiritual world into the physical world by a swan. Through this gift, one attains a knowledge that is only accessible to those who have the gift of transformation into these beings. If you want to rise to the level at which intuitive recognition stands, you must present yourself in such a way that intuitive recognition can transform into you. That is why Zeus had to transform himself into a swan so that he could be grasped. The legends all have a great relationship to this world existence.

Through this intuitive knowledge, you rise to the level of entities called the spirits of personality or the spirits of selfishness. Everything that lives in us as a principle, as an essence of selfishness, comes from this spiritual realm, the realm of the spirits of selfishness or personality. The spirits of selfishness have always been at work. First, the physical body is worked on by the spirits of selfishness, then the etheric body, and then the astral body. Therefore, as a kama-manasic being, man is an egoist. What he thinks is what is independent and also what is selfish. What these beings are can only be recognized when one stands at the stage that one can crawl into the being, into the ego of the beings. There you get to know the spirits of the personality.

So you see that it is not just talk when you find something like this in my 'Lucifer' or in Mrs. Besant's books, even if perhaps not under the same names. The spirits are not invented, but gained through the stages of knowledge. Therefore, we distinguish: mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, animal kingdom, human, lunar Pitris or spirits of twilight, fire spirits or solar Pitris, spirits of egoism or spirits of personality - Suras and Asuras. Then the higher realms: spirits of form, spirits of movement and spirits of wisdom. We will talk about these four spiritual levels next time.

But you can already apply what I have said today in practice, namely that if you know something about this nature, even if you do not yet rise to the level of direct experience in this way, you will gain inner strength if you know even just a little. Man would completely lose his center in the coming decades if the knowledge of these things did not come. These entities do not exist in cloud-cuckoo-land, but surround us continually. The person standing in front of me is not just a human being, but interrelated with him is the Lunar-Pitri, the Solar-Pitri, the spirits of selfishness and so on. And they are constantly active in this person. I recognize something incompletely when I only have the outer person in front of me. Just imagine how insecure you would become if you were to go blind. Orientation in the new world is only made possible by new senses. In the same way, knowledge in the world is only made possible by knowing what is there. It makes us feel secure to know that such things exist, that such things are there. It is therefore necessary for humanity to know such things. In the fourth century, higher spiritual beings still led man, unconsciously. That is the higher development. The meaning of the materialistic time is that the spirits have fled to reappear in his consciousness. Man has descended into darkness to consciously ascend to the light again. That would be the greatest harm if man remained down here in darkness and did not find his way back to the light. The theosophical doctrine has not been brought out of mere caprice, but because it is a necessity for humanity. There have always been individuals in secret societies who had the realization. But it must become much more general. That is why the popular way in which these teachings are spread in theosophy.

I would like to briefly sketch again what we started last time, in order to build on it further. You will recall that I tried to explain the various degrees of higher vision to you, and to break them down into the activities that lead us up into the higher realms, into the realms of the higher beings, which we must consider if we really want to go through the entire human history of development through the various planets. I ask you to bear in mind that such a consideration must necessarily remain quite sketchy, that one has to discuss many things that are really quite difficult to express in ordinary everyday terms, because one is dealing with things for which ordinary language is not really created. Ordinary language is there to describe what is real to the senses, what surrounds us. It is therefore quite inadequate for all the things for which we want to evoke an idea today.

In schools in Europe where, for centuries – or more precisely, since the fourteenth century – ideas such as we are now allowed to discuss publicly in elementary terms have been developed in the same way, it was certainly not the case – especially in the higher grades – that the words of ordinary language were spoken, but rather in a so-called symbolic language. First, a certain language was acquired. First one acquired a certain way of expressing oneself, which then offered the possibility of characterizing in that peculiar way that is necessary if one wants to penetrate into such supersensible realms.

Now let me briefly repeat what I hinted at last time. I told you that at first our ordinary, everyday way of looking at things - and that is also the one that our science has - is the so-called material knowledge. This has its object outside of ourselves. It has its object in the sense world, and it then builds up knowledge with the help of the image, then goes from the image to the concept and from the concept to the I. So in our material knowledge we are dealing with: object, image, concept and I. These four things are to be considered.

When we now have to move on to the first stage of higher knowledge, the object must remain away, the external sensual object must fall away. So of what we have within our ordinary knowledge, only image, concept, I remain. The fact that external objects no longer stimulate us, that external objects no longer affect our sensuality, that the sensation is no longer there, is replaced by illumination, which forms images from within for our ordinary images, so that they are not visions, not illusions, but become what mystics of all times have called imaginations. If one wants to form a correct concept of what is meant here by imagination, then one must already be able to see, to see correctly, everything that still demands a connection to an external object. I think I mentioned last time that this often causes great disappointment to students who are to be trained in this kind of knowledge. Man expects that when a higher knowledge is to present itself, which appears to be the case in ordinary life, that it will approach him from the outside. That was also the mistake with spiritualism. I do not want to say anything against spiritualism. The mistake lay only in the method. The mistake is that the spiritualist has the things in front of him like an earthly object that stimulates his senses. That is why it is basically not a good preparation for a higher desire for knowledge if one goes through spiritualism, although I know very well that many of our best Theosophists have gone through spiritualism. But in the times before the Theosophical Society popularized these higher insights in their elementary stages, there were no schools. They did not build on the spiritualist method at all. They set out directly to reeducate people so that they would be able to truly rise into the supersensible world without external inducement. The spiritist tries to bring the supersensible world down to his ordinary capacity for perception. He says to himself: I can recognize that external objects stimulate me; if the higher world is to have reality, then the essence of a higher world must appear to me in the same way as ordinary things. They have to adapt to my capacity for perception. But the occultist says: No, the objects and beings of a higher world do not descend here, not where one sees with the eyes and reaches with the hands, but one must ascend to them, one must develop within oneself the organs necessary to see in the higher world. Therefore, for today's humanity, a much better training than any external event to come to the higher vision is the passage - as strange as it may seem to those who expect something different - the passage through the arts. What man should make use of, if he does not go directly through the school of clairvoyance, in order to come again to a deeper vision, to an imagination, that is the deepening in what art can give him, and that is art in all fields. We must be clear about the role that art has played for a long time in the development of our humanity. Through such things, many things also become clear to us that would otherwise be extremely difficult to understand.

Follow the advice for the purpose of getting a vivid idea of what I have to say. Follow me into what are called the Greek mysteries, the Greek mysteries, in the time before Homer wrote his poems. Those times when this Greek spirit and seer performed long primal dramas that the best minds sought. But because they were not able to look back clairvoyantly, did not find any positive science in it, what they achieved appears more like a hunch than real knowledge. But if we go back to these earlier times, into which Nietzsche, for example, wanted to look when he conceptually grasped the Dionysian in contrast to the Apollonian, if we go back to these times, we see how teachers led their students to hidden cultural sites and prepared them to see the primal drama there. What did they see there? They saw the secret of the existence and development of the world. What we endeavor to explain in many words, these pupils experienced in astral vision, in real vision: the descending deity that descended into the material, that has descended into the material before time began. And then the transformation of this original formation of matter into the forms that surround us today — into minerals, plants and animals. It was shown how the invisible, supersensible Deity was once creative in the universe, and how it formed and condensed those fruits from which our creation proceeded, how, as it were, the physical emerged from the spiritual as from cloud formations, and how the initial formations gradually developed into the complicated and ultimately into the microcosmic human being. The entire process of the evolution of the world was presented to the student. This was called “the great world tragedy.” First, the great living divinity that descended into matter, was buried in it, and then resurrected in man. And now it was made clear to the student: this process takes place within yourself, it has taken place within you and continues to take place within you. You were already involved in those formations that took place before time began. In those formations you were in the beginning of becoming, and they changed and changed until your present form was reached. Today you feel how that which lives in you as soul, as spirit, rises up again, how that which has sunk into matter, the divinity, rises again as if from a grave, from which the divinity rises, and that when you then say 'I', the divinity speaks within you. All this was explained in complete vividness. And in this way, things were united that have long since been lost to today's humanity. This was possible by placing these students in a completely different state of consciousness than the one in which people find themselves in everyday life, so that they were surrounded by the living images of the whole process of world-becoming. It is therefore a matter of the students, so to speak, feeling the consciousness shining within them, making the objects of everyday life visible to them. The external objects passed around them, but what they were trying to show them appeared in them in much more vivid colors than the objects of nature would ever be able to present themselves. The fire of the deity stood before their soul. And the fire that metamorphosed so that everything else emerged from it, that was there in a way similar to how the dreamer has a superficial knowledge of the dream.

If you translate this dream into something that has regularity and harmony and largely as what surrounds us in the outside world, then you have a weak idea of what was going on in the soul of such a student of the primal drama. It was said of such a student that he had seen the world in the twilight. The world event, this whole world becoming, then sounded into these images. The visible arts are an imprint of such imagination, of such images around us. They relate to this imagination, to this vision, as a silhouette relates to the real object. They are thus related to clairvoyant imagination, while our material vision has no relation to clairvoyant imagination.

The artistic imagination is a shadow of the true imagination. This is not to say that I consider artistic imagination to be of lesser value than clairvoyance. Back in the days when people could still awaken their clairvoyant abilities, when they could see into ancient times, there was no art. What was experienced was religion and art and science at the same time. Everything that led people to the higher worlds was offered in it. Later these three separated. Mankind had to go through this state. And since that time, art has been an external shadow image. External art is an internal imaginative vision. It is part of the process of development that humanity has lost this original vision for a while. What was awakened as a result is another state of consciousness. And in a later present, this introduces art in a tangible, visible form. That is why artistic vision is so beneficial for imaginative vision. That is the first stage: illumination.

The second stage was the one where the image also disappears, where we are only dealing with concepts and the ego, and where inspiration occurs [in place of the image]. Inspiration is there for the person when the so-called continuity of consciousness occurs. Continuity of consciousness means: the person not only has consciousness during everyday life, but also continues this consciousness into sleep. As you know, one partial brightening of sleep is the dream consciousness. The ordinary person has this dream consciousness only in a chaotic way. In the one who develops to clairvoyance, to illumination, the dream images begin to become regular, lawful. He sees truths in dreams that he would not see without developing this dream life into regularity. In such undeveloped people, there is always the dreamless sleep as a state of consciousness. So there are clairvoyant individuals who have developed to the point where they have filled part of their sleep with regular dreams that reveal new worlds. This is the beginning of this stage of illuminative clairvoyance, of imagination. Then you also see how other people, in whom they do not have this, live in their dreams.

Now the person who guides such a person must bring them to the point where they, the student, can bring their dream visions into everyday reality; that is, that they can perceive in everyday life what they perceive in their dream vision. Let's be clear about this. The ordinary dreamer: what do they see? He has experienced something during the day. This appears to him in his dream as a reminiscence. It is an echo of the experiences of the day. Or, he perceives his surroundings in some way. He hears a train rushing by. He wakes up and realizes that he has symbolically perceived the ticking clock next to him as a train. Or the moods in which a person finds himself can also be expressed symbolically in a dream. For example: a person becomes feverish and dreams of a boiling stove. I am telling you facts here that really happened once. I ask you to bear in mind that I am only giving examples of events that really happened. Now let's assume that a person dreams of ugly animals. The chaotic then ceases under the guidance of the secret teacher, and the student perceives things that do not come from everyday life. Things are revealed to him that he does not know from our world. Only when the student is able to transfer this into everyday life, then we make what he experiences the subject of occult wisdom.

So how do we regularize what I have characterized as chaotic? We start at the very beginning. You dream, for example, under the guidance of the teacher. The exercises are done as meditations, and they have the effect that you actually see a person suffering in your dreams. The person is in front of you in a certain situation. You are very soon convinced that you were not dreaming, nor that it is not real, but you convince yourself that you were with a friend who is suffering or has suffered. You have not seen anything sensual, but you have experienced the soul, the real soul life. You then experience not only one such individual soul life, but soon soul life in abundance. You have to familiarize yourself with the diversity of stories. You have to learn to grasp them in an orderly fashion. This is a long and patient task, but we have to do it. Then we dream this into our everyday life.

You will then be able to see the same thing in everyday life with a fully alert consciousness. You will not see what is sensual, but what is spiritual. You must imagine that you will be surrounded by the soul. When you, as a clairvoyant, are confronted with a person, you will at first see nothing differently than any other person sees. But when you turn your attention to his soul, he becomes spiritually transparent to you. But the right dream state must have preceded this. Then the other will follow, because there are very definite stages.

The next stage is where consciousness no longer fades, or at least does not need to fade, where you are therefore aware during dreamless sleep, where you are able to wake up in the morning knowing that you have had experiences, have really lived, throughout the night. This experience of dreamless sleep is not in such images. It cannot be compared with the world of images that are around us in dream-filled sleep. What occurs first in dreamless sleep is a world of sounds and speech, a world of tones and words. Dreamless sleep is first filled with words. You see, in the first stages of this clairvoyant development, you experience this quite sporadically and individually. You simply know in the morning that something has been said to me. You remember what was said to you. You know quite well that something like this could not be said to you in your present life, in ordinary life. It is perhaps a great truth that you could not experience in ordinary life. This calling and hearing was something spiritual. This is spread more and more until finally the whole life of dreamless sleep is a continuous conversation with other entities.

However, a prerequisite for not indulging in illusions in this world is that one has already attained a certain higher degree of inner selflessness. Someone who criticizes a lot, who likes to say a lot of derogatory things about the world and its phenomena, may very often be exposed to the most terrible, deceptive ideas at this stage of development. Therefore, the teacher will, above all, impress upon the students again and again. He will tell the student: Try, over and over again, to ask only questions and to let the answers be given to you from this state. This is quite different from what one actually does in ordinary life. In life, one is quickly finished with an answer. Try to look at life from this point of view. Today, everyone says, “I think so,” or “That is my opinion.” That is what people say today. But the occultist who wants to rise to this level should never speak that way. But when he has prepared himself, he should be able to speak differently within. He should ask questions of the world and learn to refrain entirely from giving an answer himself. This is a mood that Goethe, who knew it, describes in simple words. He says: We are not made to answer the problem, but to pose the problem, to pose it quite clearly, and then to await the further development in reverence. Creating this mood is extremely important for the student at this stage of development. Therefore, it is very useful at this level if he has the self-control and selflessness to set himself a very important task and to refrain from forming any opinion. After all, what he can say is usually only what corresponds to his ordinary level of intelligence. He already has this point of view. But he wants to go beyond this, and so he should completely refrain from answering and wait to be given the answer. In this state of dreamless sleep, it will be whispered to him. From this state, an ever deeper and deeper world arises, which is a world of conversation.

I would like to draw attention to a passage of this kind, to the profound saying of one of our exquisite minds, Goethe. Those who have read or heard Goethe's fairy tales will remember a passage that goes:

“What is more glorious than gold?” asked the king. “Light,” replied the snake.

“What is more refreshing than light?” asked the king. “Conversation,” replied the snake.

At this point, Goethe points out that he knew everything we have discussed here. This conversation, which is about light, is what he is referring to. Then one brings what one has experienced in this way in a dreamless state into everyday life. Some will be tempted to believe that the clairvoyant no longer sleeps without dreams at all, but sees all the time. That is not necessarily so. It does not depend on how much of the night is filled with such experiences. There can be long periods of dreamless sleep in between.

It is true – I think I have already hinted at it: anyone who can experience something in dreamless sleep in this way hears all the objects around him. He hears the glass of water, he hears every little thing that whispers something to him. This is the third stage of knowing, inspiration.

In this way, the scriptures that are called inspired were created. Today, theologians and scholars dispute the method of inspiration in the writings of initiates. Imagine what has been written about whether or not the gospel is inspired – by teachers who have no idea that there is such a thing as revelation. Inspired writings are for those who one day will be made to disappear as painlessly as possible. The greatest parts of the three synoptic gospels and the gospel of John were written in a state of clairvoyance. They are inspired. We are not dealing with a miracle, not with a dictation from a god, but with this state. Therefore, only those who know something about how truths come in such states can understand them.

The next stage is intuition. It expresses itself clearly to you through feeling: you are now inside things, no longer outside them. You now crawl into every thing. This is the state of intuition. The ordinary person only has the state of intuition with his ego. When a person is developed enough, he is inside every thing.

The human being perceives the spirits of twilight at the first level, at the level of imagination. At the level of inspiration, the human being perceives the spirits of fire or of fire nebula. At the level of intuition, he perceives the spirits of personality, the spirits that lie hidden everywhere as the basis of the world-Iche. When he has reached that point, he can truly immerse himself in the depths.

But there is also a raising above this state. This consists in the fact that man no longer merely perceives, but that he participates with humanity. This is even something where understanding itself easily ends with those who still go along to the level of intuition. They will no longer go along so easily from there. It is only through comparison that one can get closer to what I am saying now.

It is also a passive state in intuition. The person submerges, but in a certain respect remains passive. They only begin to become inwardly active when they rise higher inwardly. They now participate in the world. The state that I am now describing can only be reached if one has already reached the state of intuition. When someone has reached the point where they can completely immerse themselves in the object, where they feel that it is themselves, and where they feel as if they have entered the body of a dog or a tulip, so that they not only hear it but also feel what it is inside themselves, then they can move on to something else. He can first rise to the animal kingdom. When he does this, he initially has the task of selflessly observing the animal world around him, and he has to focus his attention on the different animal species. Then, while he has been in individual animals through intuition, a stage will now arise for him where he steps out of the individual animal again, but remains within the animal being itself. Let us say, for example, he has been observing a dog. Through intuition, he is able to completely immerse himself in the dog, to experience all its sensations, and to empathize with all the pleasure and pain that it feels.

Now there is a higher level. Here the person goes beyond things without losing all of this. But the special existence is lost in the process. He rises above the individual being, but in the animal nature he remains in it. He loses interest in the individual being, the special characteristics of this individual being disappear. As he gradually rises above it, but the essence of this being remains present, forms appear in his mind that he has not seen before. He first grasps the ego of the individual being and then takes this ego out of the being like an extract. It takes shape and forms itself, and now he gets what Plato called “ideas”. These are Plato's ideas. You no longer have a single dog, but you have a spiritual, living form before you. This gives you more than the individual being. You have the model for all these beings. You have what is called the soul of the species, and not as an abstract concept, but as a living reality. You are surrounded by the souls of the animal species. You now live with these as you previously lived with the merely sensual animals. Space is not empty around you. But the beings you see there do not look like the beings that walk around us. They are completely new beings, and they do not fit the individual being, the individual dog, but they do fit all of the same species. It is something much more abstract and much more alive than the physical. What you see there are the spirits of form. They belong to a higher spiritual world. One of these form spirits was Jehovah. He was the form spirit that constituted the generic soul of humanity. The generic archetype of humanity was the god Jehovah. It is at this level of the spiritual world that one can reach him, that one can rise to that which in the Jewish mystery teaching is called Jehovah, to the spirit of the human form.

Another spirit had to join this spirit of the human form if a new, different one was to develop. This spirit of the human form had only made man such that he was like the soul of the species. Individual life would not have emerged. Individual life emerged when man struggled to recognize good and evil. This is powerfully and impressively depicted in the Fall of Man. Jehovah did not want to go further than the form. Until then, he guided man. In connection with other entities, man then took over his guidance through the Jehovah principle. So you see him sinking with man's arrogance over the animal world into what is called the world of forms.

When man has reached the point where he begins to sense this entity, then he can rise to the next level. This consists in the fact that he now learns to recognize in these beings that which he has learned to see and recognize at a lower level, in the natural beings, when he goes beyond the form to the life. The first thing you perceive, and why I have to call it that, is that you first see this generic soul in the form. But you have to rise to a higher level of insight if you want to see this world of forms in motion, in action. You cannot do that by merely immersing yourself in the animal world. This gift will only be granted to you when you immerse yourself in the plant world with devotion and do the same with it as I have described with the animal world. When you immerse yourself in the plant world with intuition, but do not lose the essence of the plant, so that the essence of the plant remains and you know how to merge with the whole nature of the plant, when you succeed in experiencing the suffering and rejoicing of the great natural world through the plant world.

When these things are spoken of to a modern man – and the more scientific he is, the more – he laughs at you. But it is nevertheless true that in the plant world, joy and suffering can be perceived by those who can live with the plant world, not as a mere comparison, not as a symbol, but in such a way that they know how to perceive the expression of the inner feeling, just as a person perceives a feeling when a tear comes out of the eye. There is therefore a real level of perception where the dew beading on a plant announces real life to you, a life like that in a tear welling up from an eye. When you are able to see in the sap flowing out of the tree when you cut it, a manifestation of life in nature, just as you cut yourself and know that it then hurts, then you are where you can ascend into the world of activity, into the world of movement. Then you can perceive that the beings, which you previously only saw in form, are alive inside. That's when the beings start to talk. The generic souls say something to you.

The next stage is reached when a person is able to feel the same way about the mineral kingdom as I said for plants, about inanimate nature. Kant said: two things fill him with a sense of awe, the starry sky above him and the moral law within him. But that remains abstract as long as the abstract sky fills us with awe, so that it is still enough for us that the inanimate starry sky speaks to us. But the materialistic view already shows us that the dead crystal is not just dead and mute, but that it also speaks to us the secrets of nature. These secrets can be reached by lovingly immersing ourselves in nature.

Anyone who has done what I have described, who has suffered and rejoiced with the plant world, will also find it easy to understand the dull language of inanimate nature – although there is also a gulf there. It is relatively easier to understand the language of plants than the language of stones. Even at these higher levels, it remains true that we understand best that which is akin to us. We are akin to human feeling, human pain and human joy. Even though the joy and pain that appear in the plant world are very different from human joy and

human pain, they still have something faintly related about them that we do not recognize in the mute world of stone. But the new thing that we recognize in the mute world of stone is precisely what would elevate us so highly [above] what makes us so weak. The mute stone world has no more desires. The world of desire is silent there, it ceases, before we pass from the plant world to the stone world. The plant and animal worlds end here. The plants still have something analogous to desire, which increases in animals and is strongly evident in humans. This is what makes them unchaste, while the stone is chaste. Those who understand stone come to know beings that are chaste and desireless. One comes to know a life without desire or longing in the stone kingdom. When we can feel and perceive something similar in the stone kingdom, as I have described in the plant world, we come to recognize what it means to be a being that is chaste by nature. The chaste, mute world of stone, of which we no longer say that, as with the dewdrop, as with the dripping pitch of the tree, it expresses joy and pain, but must say that it, in discreet, completely restrained silence, faithfully preserves itself within itself and does not, if I may express myself trivially, flaunt what it experiences internally. That is the tremendous thing that we recognize in the interior of the stone world. The stone world reached perfection so many years ago. In truth, the stone world is the greatest. What we see today as rock crystal once went through its time of unchastity when we look back billions of years. The greatest wisdom of nature appears to us when we examine it in the soundless world of the stars, the stones and crystals.

The stage of form leads us to the spirit of form. The second stage, which starts from the plant world, leads us to the spirits of movement and activity, and the same stage of observation leads us to the spirits of wisdom. We do not reach them until we bring to life within ourselves the mute, chaste, self-contained entity, the living entity of the stone kingdom.

If you would like a brief description of what happens in a person, the following may be said. The person must first let the outer light around him disappear; he must first stand before inanimate nature and disregard everything that his senses tell him. Then there is darkness at first. When he now rises to the contemplation that I have described, then all beings shine from within. An inner light shines through and radiates through all these beings and radiates from them. And this is the light of wisdom. These are the stages of contemplation that lead us up to what I have described as the spirits of wisdom.

Now, as you know, at the very beginning of Saturn's development there are the spirits of will. If you want to learn to recognize these, you do not have to turn to animals, plants and minerals in general. Rather, to grasp the spirits of will, you must have something very special. No matter how fantastic you may consider what I am about to say, I hope that will not be the case. If you want to rise even higher - after you have more or less mastered the other levels - you have to approach something - it seems paradoxical - such as an anthill, in which not only animals of the same species are united, but also live in wise connection, and delve into the spirited interaction of these little creatures. The rational scientist does not do that. But the clairvoyant lives with the males and females and workers, all organized in their own way, and they interact in a wonderful way, so that he is inwardly identical with them.

This is the method for getting to know the will. Schopenhauer wrote a lot about the will. But he could have written this chapter if, as a clairvoyant, he had stuck his head into an anthill. There you learn to recognize what the will is by its very nature. There you learn to recognize what it means when you yourself pronounce the word 'I will'. This word lives deep within your own nature. Many things in your own nature come together there. But you only perceive the result. The natural scientist gives you a completely different view. What I am describing to you is taken from life. If, on the other hand, you choose a beehive instead of an anthill, you are doing something completely wrong. What lives in the beehive is quite different from what lives in the anthill.

We have spoken of the spirits of will, of wisdom, of form, of motion, of personality, of fire, of twilight, then of humans, animals, plants and minerals. These entities are not plucked out of thin air, they are not inventions, they are not speculations that are presented to you in elementary occultism, which passes itself off as theosophy, but they are things that are acquired through experience.

I could only make suggestions as to how something like this comes about, what is referred to as elementary theosophy or elementary occultism. In this way, one acquires the higher abilities that grant insight into the higher worlds.

This, you see, is something of what must be revived in the future. There is really a lot around us today that can cause concern, and I believe that what can really worry someone who is enthusiastic about real human progress is also the fact that many do not keep their eyes open. Man should be a pioneer in keeping his eyes open. What matters is not that individuals call themselves Theosophists, but that we find the means and ways in the great development of humanity to give a new foundation to what would otherwise really have to collapse.

Let me conclude the reflections of the old year with this reference, which I have made before. Much destruction is being wrought around us, much that might indicate to the attentive observer, even if he is not clairvoyant, that we are at the beginning of a great work of destruction in terms of external material things, which has developed over the past century, for material development only goes so far.

Supplement from notes of unknown authorship

But what is most worrying is that so many of our fellow human beings do not keep their eyes open for what is needed by humanity. The theosophist, however, should be a pioneer in this work of keeping their eyes open. It is not important that individuals sit down and develop, but to work together in the great development of humanity, to find ways and means to give new content to what would otherwise really have to collapse. Much destruction is being wrought around us today. Much that will alert the attentive observer to the fact that we are at the beginning of a work of destruction, of the material culture of the nineteenth century; for this has not been accompanied by a corresponding spiritual development. We are capable of wireless telegraphy; now imagine this ability of man developed just a little further, so that here in Berlin you could take a cab and drive through Friedrichstrasse with a wave generator, in order to destroy the entire Louvre in Paris by means of the corresponding wave excitations. No one would be able to prove the assassin in such a case. All our legal concepts will be completely powerless in a time that can easily be imagined; a time will come when purely material culture will, by and large, lead itself ad absurdum, where it has a destructive and devastating effect.

Only by the inner soul culture now moving up, so that people no longer depend on the external, and although the worst is done, but only the right thing happens, only by this can help. The path of development of today's humanity shows the first beginnings already. Only the path of inner, spiritual development can lead out again, and Theosophy is a necessary new beginning of a cultural direction, to which, so to speak, the necessary inner morality can be found to counteract the overwhelming external culture, which can only lead out, because man has the soul, the spirit, in addition to the material. That is why the renewed spiritual movements of today are so necessary, so that the forces that would otherwise wither away can be practised and cultivated again.

I must first explain something that is important for understanding evolution and re-embodiment. Every personality, every individuality must live out its life in the devachan, in the arupa sphere, in order to maintain the unified thread. A personality as exalted as Nicholas of Cusa descends even in ordinary life from the arupa sphere. Every person acts from the arupa sphere, but only a few know about it. The higher a person has risen in the arupa sphere in the time between two lives on earth, the more the divine breaks through in him.

Cusanus wrote a work about not-knowing out of higher knowledge: De docta ignorantia. “Ignorantia” means “not-knowing”, and not-knowing here is equivalent to higher beholding. In his books he also expressed the following: There is a kernel of truth in all religions; we need only look deeply enough into them. He also stated that the Earth revolves around the Sun. He stated this as an intuition.

Copernicus did not live until the sixteenth century, Cusanus already in the fifteenth century. Such an incarnation as that of Cusanus is to be considered in context. It is possible that the recollection of previous incarnations is lost in an incarnation, only to awaken later, perhaps after one or even after many incarnations. The means of the causal body can only be used when one awakens in the plane above the causal sphere. Every being must be drawn back down to the physical sphere by a force from the devachan, and by forces that he has not yet encountered. In the highest Arupa level, the person gets to know these forces and thus gains influence over his later incarnation. He also had his life in his hands to a certain extent.

Cusanus points to both theosophy and modern science. Cusanus also had influence on his following incarnation. It was Nicholas Cusanus who experienced re-embodiment in such a way that he reappeared as Copernicus.

An incarnation does not depend solely on one's own development, but also on the usefulness and significance for the whole evolution. An example of regular development. The succession of personalities of higher individualities is no longer irregular. There is no regular development in the less developed. In highly developed individualities, however, outstanding qualities will emerge. These include

firstly, a sincere looking up to the Higher,
secondly, a calm love for God,
thirdly, becoming in God.

As a regular development of an individuality, we can consider

firstly: a contemporary of Jesus, Philo;
secondly: Spinoza;
thirdly: Fichte.

Three personalities – one individuality. If you read Fichte without knowing about these processes, you will understand very little. But with this knowledge, you will find that the words of these personalities are written in fire. These great minds have undergone a regular evolution themselves.

In oriental esotericism, there is something that is difficult to understand: the being does not need to be exhausted in its determinations. A personality can work on one level without lowering its whole being into that level. The being does not need to coincide with the upadhis. The desire to help is the thread of strength that establishes the connection with the sphere in question.

An initiate is one who is able to communicate from self to self with other individualities. The fourth step on the path of knowledge is initiation. One cannot speak about the nature of the initiate.

To understand Western spiritual culture, we need to note a few things. The starting point of our reflection today is the event that Tauler experienced in the Middle Ages. He preached passionately as a Christian. One day, a personality came to him who apparently wanted to listen to him. But he soon turned out to be greater than Tauler. He said that this sermon is only conceptual, it is only intellectual knowledge, a matter of memory. But through practice, Tauler soon brought him to the point where he preached differently, that he spoke through the Spirit. This layman walked with the Master Jesus of Nazareth.

Christianity originated from a circle that came from oriental sources. The Knights Templar had a home where Solomon's Temple used to stand. This is only an external accessory. One can distinguish between an exoteric side, an esoteric side and a secret doctrine. The aim of the Knights Templar was to give Christian life a completely new direction. The cults were hidden in a completely secret service. They differed significantly from what was then the Christian cult of the West. They were based on an oath that had been taken by a Christian patriarch. It was a current that can even be seen as anti-Christian. The worship of the divinity of Christ was to be done away with. It is an emphasis of the faith of the Knights Templar in John the Baptist. It was a revival of what had existed in Christianity within the Gnostic school.

In what way was the Templars a new influence in Christianity, a revival of the old teachings? Jesus accompanied the cultural development to the present day. - “I remain with you until the end of the world.”

One could learn as little about the true nature of Christianity through study as one can today. The most diverse studies on Christianity have been made. One is amazed at this. Just take Pfleiderer, for example. But this cannot give satisfaction to anyone who stands on the ground of Christianity. Historical facts cannot help us. It is about an eye-to-eye vision with Jesus, about an immediate vital influence. There must be a small circle that knows the truth not only through the knowledge of the letter, but through direct life. The Knights Templar said to themselves: We can only be initiated into the secrets by the chela who has been left to us.

No one can skip any of these stages. There are four stages. “I baptize you with water, but one is coming who will baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit.” The baptism with water is associated with the personality of John the Baptist.

A large part of Goethe's initiatory knowledge can be traced back to Rosicrucianism. Not only the outer part of it, but the stream of mystical facts has existed. With Swedenborg, there is a danger of being easily taken for a charlatan. But before he came to his mysticism, he was at the height of the science of his time. The Academy of Sciences collected the learned writings of Swedenborg. This current also had a great influence on Goethe. Swedenborg was influenced by a current of Atlantic culture. This influence can only be a very peculiar one, and one can see how difficult these mystical things are for those who try to understand them. The influence of this Atlantic school of thought can be as follows.

The Atlanteans inhabited a country that stretched between Africa, Europe and America. It perished many thousands of years before our era. Plato still speaks of a last remnant, of the island of Poseidonis, which is said to have perished about ten thousand years before our era. For the mystical researcher, the fact of the Atlanteans' existence is certain. This fourth race had particularly developed one spiritual power, which has taken a back seat in our society in favor of another power. Their memory was their main strength. It is less important for us to know what they looked like on the outside. Our fifth race has developed the intellect. The Atlanteans did not calculate and think like us. Our calculating and thinking is a product of the fifth human race. Another power of mind will replace the intellect in the future. The Atlanteans never formed the judgment 2 x 2 = 4. There was no such judgment at that time. Man remembered that 2 x 2 = 4 was taken earlier. He also knew general sentences, but he could not summarize certain types of animals. The general judgments were only formed in the fifth race.

This shows how one faculty can be overshadowed by another. The strong sense of smell in certain animals is later overshadowed by the intellect of humans. This Atlantean culture has been preserved in today's spiritual development. Certain influences flow into our cultural life. Examples of this are Leadbeater and Swedenborg. However, this influence is always somewhat chaotic. Since the eighteenth century, there has been a very intense influence of this Atlantic Lodge within our Western development. Many are under this influence without knowing it. The influence goes to the subconscious. This can always be influenced by certain currents. This can be observed in somnambulists. Many people who advocate something today do not know that they are under this influence.

What did the Knights Templar bring to Western thought? They broke away from Christianity. Then astrology comes to them. Within the Knights Templar we have a complete system of astrology. They now turn their gaze up to the starry world, to the great connections of the universe, away from Jesus. Thomas Aquinas predicted Copernicus [in the thirteenth century], as did Cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus [in the fifteenth century].

Two things can be seen:
1. A great plan has been designed, under the influence of which we stand in the Theosophical Society.
2. Religions have a common core of truth.

This is expressed in the second program of the Theosophical Society. One also finds the teaching that the earth revolves around the sun in Cusanus and later in Copernicus. The last point has emerged in a long series of developments. Western culture had emerged from the same source from which Gnostic knowledge had originally emerged.

A comparison: I have a child to educate until adolescence. I don't want him to absorb knowledge too soon that makes the mind strong but does not sufficiently ennoble the heart. Certain truths are left untouched. When the heart has been purified and ennobled in the right way, then one approaches it with the truths of nature. It is the same in the greater world of nature. First comes the development of the emotional side and then that of the intellectual powers. The development of literature is subject to the same influences.

We have a mystical direction and a scientific direction. The first includes the well-known great mystics, the second the naturalists such as: Lamarck, Darwin, Copernicus and so on. These two currents still run side by side today. The union has not yet been found.

Reincarnation and karma are contained in the Bible as self-evident truths. The higher soul of man was the content of all wisdom religions. The mysteries had to cultivate this higher soul above all else. This higher soul should now recede, so that the lower soul can experience development. This too should receive a higher religious culture. This ennobling of the individual personality was achieved all the more surely the more one disregarded the development of the higher soul. It is necessary to give humanity a new impetus from this theosophical side.

The materialistic attitude has gained a great influence, and has also gained a deep influence on the moral life. This can be seen from statements such as the following: Hamlet's tragedy is nothing more than a product of the transformation of what Shakespeare ate. - In the long run, there is no morality in the materialistic view. Hence the necessity for the Theosophical movement. In the past, world views were still possible on a materialistic basis. Today, after the research of natural science, no longer.

As long as Christianity was only concerned with the sanctification of the personality, it was not necessary to consider the greater truths and the higher life of the soul. There is a great connection with what I have said about the mysteries. You will see on closer examination that Christianity wanted to make the mysteries popular. This is evident from many sayings: “Blessed are they that have believed without seeing,” “Blessed are they that have begged for the Spirit,” and so on. What was in the mysteries was to be handed down to humanity piece by piece.

The mystery process was carried out in different stages:

— The first stage was the purification of the personality, the purification of the astral body. Pythagoras also subjected his disciples to a preparatory and purification process.
— Then he taught them about the nature of the external world.
— Then he gave them the teaching about re-embodiment and karma, the law of the moral world order.

This process then also became external, historical; it became a mystical fact within the historical development itself:

— Up to the twelfth century, Christianity is the process of purification of the fifth race of mankind.
— Then comes the teaching about the nature of external nature. In the case of humanity, this takes centuries.
— Then comes the teaching about reincarnation and karma. The development of the individual is repeated in the development of humanity.

The repetition of the mystery process can be found in the theosophical current.