The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Our Fifth Root-Race, the present Post-Atlantean humanity, was preceded by that of Atlantis, on the now submerged continent between Europe and America. The Atlanteans can in no way be compared with the human beings who today inhabit our Earth Globe. For even the remnants of that old race have learnt a variety of things from the later inhabitants of the Fifth Continent and we are therefore unable to reconstruct from them the conditions of that civilisation. At the beginning of the Atlantean civilisation there were no tools. By means of clairvoyant forces it was possible for the Atlantean to make the earth serve his needs. The preparation of metals for such uses only appeared towards the end of the Atlantean Epoch.

A small group was separated off from the population of Atlantis, just as now in the Theosophical Society a separation should once again take place. It was their task to carry over a new civilisation into the Fifth Root-Race. You would find the place where those who were chosen lived, a small colony, in present England and Ireland. At that time this was where the original Semites lived. They were the first people who were in a position to think with their intellect. All the ideas of the Atlanteans were still of the nature of pictures. The rounded shape of the front of the brow, the formation of the part of the brain on which thought depends, first appears with the population of the original Semites, who were in no way similar to the present Semitic race. This original Semitic people who, one can say, discovered thinking, journeyed through Europe into Asia and there founded a civilisation. They formed the Fifth Sub-Race of the Atlanteans. The seven Sub-races of the Atlantean RootRace were as follows: Firstly the Rmoahals, secondly the Tlavatlis, thirdly the original Toltecs, fourthly the original Turanians, fifthly the original Semites, sixthly the original Accadians, seventhly the original Mongolians.

The Fifth Root-Race therefore arose from the Fifth Sub-Race of the Atlanteans. When we look towards Asia we find there as, the First Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race, the Ancient Indian race, that people who later journeyed in a more Southern direction and there became the ancestors of the later Indians. The most essential characteristic of this ancestral race, who had travelled towards the north of India, was that it developed no real sense for material culture. It possessed spiritual vision of the highest order combined with a completely undeveloped sense for the material. The ancient Indians were turned away from the world; their souls were completely similar to the Atlanteans, in that they were able to develop a superlative, glorious picture world. Through the practise of Yoga, working from within outwards, they later evolved what today seems to us a learned conception of the world. Of this, what has been handed down as external tradition, only fragments remain. The Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita no longer give any real picture of the mighty conceptions of the Indians, but only echoes. In the Vedanta philosophy also there is only an abstract remainder of the original teaching of the Indians, which was handed down by word of mouth.

Think of the faculty which appeared in the later Kabbalistic teaching in a form which elaborated matters in minute detail with subtle intricacy, think of this faculty applied to lofty cosmic thoughts. When later the Jew was able to apply thought to such things in the Kabbalistic teachings, it followed that the later Jewish occult teaching was only a decadent reflection, an echo of that finely articulated thought system of the primeval Indians. And what the teaching of the Brahmans became is by no means only religion in the sense of later systems, but knowledge, poetry and religion in a single great whole. All this was, as it were the finest flower, the extracted essence of what had developed in the old Atlantean civilisation.

The Europeans also came over from Atlantis to Western and Central Europe and here there developed a quite different teaching. Groups of people settled who were not yet advanced enough to be chosen to found new civilisations, but yet possessed in germinal form what in India came to expression in so magnificent a way, but which here remained at a much earlier stage. What had its start in Europe moved ever further and further towards Asia. A common teaching formed its foundation, but in Europe this remained at a somewhat primitive level.

The Indian teaching was expressed in the Vedas. ‘Veda’ means the same as ‘Edda’, only the content of the Vedas is more finely developed than that which remained here in Europe in a more primitive form as the Edda, which was only written down at the end of the Middle Ages. We must realise that this great primal spiritual teaching underwent a certain modification brought about by the migrating peoples. Its original greatness consisted in grasping the mighty divine unity which was recognised by the spiritual vision of the (ancient) Indians. This was no longer so with the next, the (ancient) Persian Race. In the wisdom arising from this primeval Indian vision the concept of time was almost entirely absent. It was with the Second Sub-Race, the ancient Persian, that the concept of time made its appearance. Time, it is true, was recognised by the Indian but was more uniform; the concept of history, the progression from the imperfect to what is more perfected, was lacking. Thinking was governed by the idea that everything has emanated from divine perfection.

Persian thinking was governed by the concept of time. Zervan Akarana is one of the most important Divinities of the Persians and this is in fact Time. How did one arrive at the concept of time? Whoever seeks above all the primal unity of the Godhead, as in the case of the ancient Indians, must conceive it as the absolute Good. Evil, the imperfect in the world, was for the ancient Indian nothing but illusion; ‘illusion’ was a very important concept. These ancient people said: Nothing whatever exists in the world that is imperfect and evil. If you believe that something evil exists, you have not looked at the world in a way sufficiently free from illusion. Rust, for instance, which eats into iron, is elsewhere very beneficial: you must only consider where it is. When you look at a criminal through the veil of illusion, he will appear to you as such; if however you turn away from illusion you will realise that there is no such thing as evil.—This teaching is inwardly connected with a turning away from the world.

It was otherwise with the Second Sub-Race. There, with the earliest of the Persian peoples, the Good was given a particular place in the World-process, was regarded as the goal. It was said: The Good must be sought for. The world is good and evil, Ormuzd and Ahriman; and what conquers the evil is Zervan Akarana, Time. This is how good and evil came into the early Persian world-conception as the principle of evolution. The Zarathustran teaching rests on the placing of evil in the world, and on the time-concept. Man is placed into life in order to conquer evil. This conception is connected with the fact that the Second Sub-Race was not one that was estranged from the world, but worked within it. Active, productive in various branches of human work, attention directed to the outer world, concerned as to how someone could himself create good out of the world: this was the Second Sub-Race. With the Persians therefore a whole company of Gods makes it appearance; not characteristics of one God, but a plurality of Gods; because the world, if not regarded as illusion, but as reality, presents a plurality, a multiplicity. The Gods which were venerated there were more or less personal-spiritual Divinities.

The earliest initiates, who founded the ancient Indian teaching, were also the teachers of the Second Sub-Race, the ancient Persian Race. Here they adapted the whole teaching to a working people. They created that religion which was brought to fruition by the various Zarathustras.⁸²

A further initiation advanced towards the Near East: to Egypt, to the Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, these forefathers of the Arabs. There the Third Sub-Race was developed. This Third Sub-Race was such that it now sought to bring both directions—the inner nature of man and the outer world—into harmony with each other. Whether you look for the fundamental conception of this Third Sub-Race in Chaldea or Egypt, everywhere you will find a pronounced awareness of the connection between human work and the forces of Nature. This is an essential difference when compared with the Persian Race. In Persia you have two powers, the good and the evil, which do battle with one another. Now man tries to bring the different nature forces or beings into his service. What developed as Persian religion was mainly built up on human morality and industry. Now in the Third Sub-Race the consciousness developed that one does not master nature only by means of bodily strength and moral behaviour, but best of all through knowledge. In those lands where a skillful agriculture was pursued as in Egypt and Chaldea, there developed a co-ordination of heavenly-spiritual powers with what was carried out by human work. Knowledge of the meteorological environment and the heavenly bodies evolved there. Strength for work was sought for in the knowledge of Nature. So it came about that man directed his gaze to the stars, and astronomy was brought into connection with humanity on the Earth. Man's origin was sought for in the stars. Thus, in this sense we have for the first time to do with science. Now in the Third Sub-Race, instead of inner perception, we have practical knowledge. So we hear of great initiates who taught geometry, the practice of surveying, technical skills. The fructification of human activity with cosmic wisdom brought down from the spiritual world makes its appearance in the Third Sub-Race. With this, something was given which translated the whole conception of human life into a kind of heavenly science. With the different peoples this found expression in various ways. In the case of the Egyptians, Osiris, Isis and Horus were conceived of as representatives of astronomical phenomena.

Three different Sub-Races developed in Asia. Taking their start from Atlantis, a colony led by initiates traveled over to Asia. A special result of this was the ancient Indian civilisation, a second, the ancient Persian; the third result was the Egyptian-Chaldean civilisation: they all had a common initiation-source. In Europe however groups always remained behind which fell away from what culminated with such magnificence in the three great civilisations. These separate cultural streams were distributed in Europe in the most varied way. In Europe too there were initiates who formed Mystery Schools towards the end of the period of which we are speaking: they were called Druids: Drys means Oak. The strong oak was the symbol of the early European priest-teachers, for what dominated the peoples in the North was the thought that their old form of culture would necessarily have to decline. There the Twilight of the Gods was taught and the future of Christianity came to magnificent expression through these Northern prophets in what later became the Siegfried Saga.^83a This may be compared with the Achilles Saga.^83b

Achilles is invulnerable in his whole body with the exception of the heel, Siegfried with the exception of the spot between the shoulders. To be invulnerable in such a way signifies to have been initiated. In Achilles you have the initiate of the Fourth Sub-Race which lies on the ascending curve of man's cultural development: therefore all the upper parts of Achilles are invulnerable; only the heel the lower nature is vulnerable, just as Hephaistos is lame. The German Siegfried was also an initiate of the Fourth Sub-Race, but vulnerable between the shoulder blades. This is his vulnerable spot, first made invulnerable by the One who bore the cross. With Siegfried the Gods reach their downfall, the Northern Gods approach their end (Twilight of the Gods). This gives the Northern saga its tragic note, for it not only points to the past, but to the Twilight of the Gods, to the time which is to come. The Druids gave to man the teaching of the declining Northern Gods. Thus in what was still symbolic form, the battle of St. Boniface⁸⁴ with the Oak represents the battle of the Druids with the old Priesthood.

Everywhere in the North one can point to the traces of what came to expression over in Asia. For instance Muspelheim and Niflheim are a counterpart of Ormuzd and Ahriman. The giant Ymir, out of whom the whole world is made, corresponds to the cutting into pieces of Osiris. In the most detailed way one can follow the connection between the European peoples of the North and the other civilisations. When in the South of Europe the Fourth Sub-Race was developing, the Northern tribes had also made the transition into the Fourth Stage so that in the Germanic peoples Tacitus⁸⁵ found much that was related to the Southern culture. Irmin⁸⁶ for example is the same figure as Hercules. Tacitus also tells us of a kind of Isis worship there in the North. So the older stages of civilisations progressed towards what was to come as Christianity.

So think of Europe, Central Asia and Egypt as sown with the seed of what had developed under the influence of the Initiation Schools. These Initiation Schools sent out from their midst the founder of the Fifth [Fourth] Sub-Race, who had long been prepared in the shelter of the Mysteries. This is the personality who in the Bible is called Abraham. He came from Ur in Chaldaea and developed as an extract of the three older civilisations. The task which was represented in Abraham was to carry into the human realm all that had been held in veneration in the outside world; to create initiates who laid great value on what was human, in order to found the cult of the personality. This brought about personal attributes in the Jewish patriarchs. Here we have to do with duplicity and cunning. Jacob gains his inheritance by employing ruse and cunning in order to take what he wants from his brother. This is the reality out of which our present-day civilisation developed: it is founded on intelligence and possessiveness. In the stories of the Old Testament this is magnificently expressed as a kind of dawning of the new. It would be impossible to present this origin in a more powerful way. Esau is still a hairy man, that means he represents the human type which is still more enmeshed in the physical; Jacob represents one who relies on his intelligence and guile and thereby achieves what is now actually developing in human nature. The overcoming of physical force through intelligence is here inaugurated. The initiators do not always introduce something great into the world, but what must of necessity come about. ‘Israel’ means: He who leads man to the invisible God, who dwells within. Isra-el: El means the goal; Isra = the invisible God. Until then God was visible, whether it was the one who gave the urge towards Good and Evil as with the Persians, whether the God who had his body in the stars, in the Universe: This God was experienced as something visible.

And now we have the Jewish initiation portrayed in Joseph and his twelve brethren. It is a beautiful and powerful allegory. The allegorical now makes its appearance: the intellect, when it wishes to be effective, becomes the recounter of allegories.

How Joseph was initiated was first recounted. He was removed from his normal surroundings, sold for twenty pieces of silver and cast into a pit, where he remained for three days. This indicates an initiation. Then he comes to Egypt where his activities bring new life. And now we have finally indicated the transition which began at that time from the knowledge of God in the stars to the knowledge of man. Joseph was rejected because he had dreams. He had the following dream: Sun, Moon and eleven stars bowed down before him. The eleven stars are the eleven signs of the Zodiac. He felt himself to be the twelfth. The symbolism of the Star-Religion was now led over into the human. In the twelve brothers, the starting point of the twelve tribes' the knowledge of God in the stars was led over into the personal. “Now you surely do not wish to assert,” said his father—“that your brothers will bow down to you.” Here the change is given us. The divine knowledge of the stars is replaced by a knowledge attached to the personal human. This finds its form in the Mosaic law.

Out of the three Ancient Civilisations, through the initiation of the Jewish Patriarchs, this Fourth Civilisation, the primal Jewish, was derived. This we have as the Fourth Sub-Race, for there belong to it also the civilisations of Ancient Greece and Rome. The civilisations of Greece and Rome (Roman law) both become great just through this personal element, until eventually this thought incarnated, reaching its culmination in Christianity. So it is in this lesser racial branch that the actual stream of the Fourth Sub-Race makes its appearance. The Graeco-Latin stream is a higher form of the Judaic; here the cult of the personal is intensified. There is no contradiction between this descent to the deepest point and then the ascent.

Everywhere [within the Fourth Sub-Race] we can observe this. The personal had actually to come to expression in the way described in the Esau and Jacob Saga in order to find its purification in the beauty of the human culture of the Greeks and the greatness of the human culture of the Romans. In the Odysseus Saga the ancient civilisation of the priests was conquered by cunning. It was out of the civilisations that arose from this that Christianity could first develop, which in truth contains all the ancient cultures in itself and can therefore also absorb them. In accordance with his parentage Jesus Christ was a native of Galilee ... ‘Galilean’ means: ‘The Stranger’, someone who does not really belong; ‘Galilee’ means a small isolated territory where someone could be brought up who, in his native milieu had to take into himself, not only the Jewish, but also all the ancient forms of culture.

Out of the impact between the Romans and the Northern peoples there now developed the Fifth Sub-Race in which we ourselves live. It has still kept an impulse from the old Initiation Schools in the Moorish, and Arabian influence which came over from Asia. It is always the same influence, the same Initiation School. We can trace how the Irish monks, as also those who work in scientific fields, are essentially inspired by the Moorish-Arabian science. This gives the same fundamental character in a new-form, in a way in which it could now be received. It is here that Christianity first finds its real expression. It has merely passed through the ancient Greek civilisation for as long as the Fifth Period of Culture was being prepared; and then finds here firm ground, embodying itself in a whole range of nations. Everything at that time was permeated and inspired by Christianity. Our present time with its materialistic culture is the last radical expression of what was then inaugurated. The birth of this new culture is symbolically presented in the Lohengrin Saga. Lohengrin is the initiator of the ‘city-state’, and the city life which leads up to a new cultural stage is symbolised by Elsa of Brabant.

Into all these streams others penetrate, for instance the Mongolian tribes. What originally came over from the West was related to what came with the Huns from the East. So from East and West something came together that was related: the Mongolian and Germanic tribes. Those who originated from the West were left-behind descendants of the Atlanteans, as were also the Mongolians from the East. Fundamentally both streams were related. It is always one stream which crosses another. Both, however, have a common native ground since they both originated from Atlantis.

Now here in the North, everything that has remained from earlier times took on a more established form. At the same time as the epoch of the Jewish Prophets, in the centuries before Christ, we find here indications of a great, primeval, Atlantean initiate. Wod-Wodha-Odin.⁸⁷ This is a modernised Atlantis, in a new form, an atavism, a throwback into the Atlantean Age. And this happens everywhere, over in Asia also. In Asia W, the sound V, becomes B, Wodha = Bodha = Buddha. Buddhism appears as a throwback into the Atlantean Age. This is why we find Buddhism most widespread with what has remained over from the Atlanteans in the Mongolian peoples. And where the very pillars of its greatness make their appearance in Tibet, there we have a modern, monumental expression of Atlantean culture.

One must get to know such relationships between peoples, then one will also understand history. When Attila,⁸⁸ the fighter for monotheism, appears in Europe, it was Christianity which first halted him, because there he was confronted with something greater than anything the Huns possessed. The monotheism of the Huns was, as the outcome of an Atlantean civilisation, of a magnitude which they found in no other peoples that they encountered on their way. Christianity alone made a forceful impression on them. Many things in historical development are to be understood in the light of these great considerations.

The well-known traveler, Peters,⁸⁹ certainly feels that the old Bodhism and the Wotanism can flow together, but he does not know that we in Europe have not only to be representatives of what comes from the ancient past, but something new, a new spiral. Into the old part of the spiral there strikes the very newest, the wisdom pointing to the future. This is related to the old wisdom as clear day consciousness is related to trance consciousness. With completely clear day consciousness future peoples will develop a spiritual culture which will be different from the old. For this reason Theosophy must not be only what is carried over from the old, from Buddhism and Hinduism; this would certainly collapse. Something new must arise out of the seeds which slumber in the East of Europe, coming together with everything that is being worked out there.

The inherent culture of the future lies in the unfolding of what is now in a seed condition in the Folk-elements of Eastern Europe. We ourselves in Central Europe are the advance post. Eastern Europe must provide the means, the human material for what is here being founded in advance.

The Rosicrucian Schools always taught that Central and Western Europe are only advance posts of what will develop in the European East, what will proceed from the fructification of the Folk element and European knowledge. With Tolstoi everything is fructified through the West European culture, but in a way different from that of others before him. With powerful simplicity he utters what no Kant and no Spencer could have expressed. What there appears over-ripe appears in him as something still unfulfilled. But it is always so with what is in a seed condition. Not out of the fine perfected plant, but out of the seedling does the new, future plant grow.

Whatever one may experience, one can look with complete trust towards the future. For just as the crystal first develops out of an alkaline solution only after it has been vigorously stirred, so also something new can only develop after great upheavals.

• 82. Re the original Zarathustra see note 65. The historical Zarathustra lived in the 6th century BC and according to Alexander Polyhistor and Plutarch, was the teacher of Pythagoras. On the tradition in mystery schools of transmitting the name of the teacher with the teaching, compare Rudolf Steiner on Dionysius the Areopagite in lecture 13.
• 83a. see lecture 22.3.1906, Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods (Typescript).
• 83b. Invulnerability denoted initiation. (See lecture 7 in the cycle on The Gospel of St Mark.)
• 84. In the 8th century St Boniface (actually Wynfrith) emissary from Rome, known as the apostle of the Germans, spread Christianity in Thuringia, Friesland and Hesse and was murdered in 754 by heathen Friesians.
• 85. ... His descriptions are to be found in Germany and its Tribes.
• 86. divine ancestor of the Germanic tribes.
• 87. Rudolf Steiner has spoken in greater detail of this connection, for instance in Universe, Earth and Man lecture 10
• 88. Rudolf Steiner here refers to Attila's penetration into Italy in the year 452 when Aquileia was destroyed and the Roman bishop Leo I went out with his followers against Attila and was able to force him to retreat.
• 89. Traveled especially in Africa where he founded the East African German colonies and the German East African Company. Wrote among other things Das Goldene Ophir Salomos (1895) and Im Goldland des Altertums (1902).

In a series of lectures, we want to take in a general picture of the theosophical attitude and world view and that which can be considered the basis for our spiritual scientific work. And in doing so, we want to base these theosophical considerations on the Gospel of John. It will come about quite naturally that after a few lectures, light will be shed on the most remarkable piece of writing in the world. Because that is this Gospel of John. Today, let me point out what the Gospel of John actually is.

First, we need to create a basis for understanding the profound first chapter. When you read the gospel, you can be edified by the grandeur of the images, but as a person of the present, you can no longer really grasp what this gospel actually means. In the past, it was considered a record of how the real Christ Jesus lived on earth and what actually happened in Palestine. In more Protestant and modern research, it was later believed that John's gospel seems to contradict the other three gospels. The first three, the Synoptics, were therefore summarized. The fourth gospel is not considered to be of equal value because it was written much later. It contains nothing historical, but is a kind of poetic rendering, a poem in which the writer has set down what he thought of the life of Christ Jesus. This is the point of view of the so-called believer of the present day. With a certain amount of justification, the famous theologian Bunsen said: “If the Gospel of John is nothing more than the poetic outpouring of an individual, then with it the whole of Christianity falls.” All this research is based on the inability of the last four to five centuries to even understand what is meant by the Gospel of John.

Man and his views have changed, and today's man cannot imagine that the world can be viewed from a different point of view. What is really understandable to people today is sensory and intellectual knowledge. In the past, however, people still knew that there is another kind of knowledge. They knew that there are other senses and other sources of knowledge. Today's materialistic research is in stark contrast to the orthodox biblical believer with regard to this knowledge. This also applies to the Mosaic creation story. The believers take it literally, and modern research says: This can never be taken literally; we are dealing with long, long periods of time. The Bible believer and the natural scientist do not understand each other at all. They have sought a kind of compromise, trying to understand the whole story of creation allegorically, saying that it is only meant symbolically. How was the story of creation understood in church circles five hundred years ago? No one in the church originally said: this is what happened materially and visibly before our very eyes. To the medieval theologian, that would have seemed grotesque. The idea that the seven days of creation were to be taken literally only came in through materialism.

As a kind of lawful necessity, the materialistic world view swept over our earth, and the first thing this wave took hold of was religion. At first, it was not science that was grasped by the materialistic view, but the church. What used to be understood spiritually was now imbued with the materialistic attitude. Now science is fighting something that the materialistic world view has brought about.

One example of this is the concept of the Lord's Supper. In the 12th century, the church was shocked when people began to understand the Lord's Supper as if wine could actually turn into blood and bread into the actual body. The spiritual teaching of transubstantiation was forgotten.

nn So the spiritual meaning was lost bit by bit. The theologian of the 6th and 7th century still knew what was meant by the story of creation. When it says, “Adam fell into a deep sleep,” it refers to a dream vision through which Adam experienced the seven-day work as an astral process.

What happened in the distant past could no longer be grasped by the senses. But those who saw with their soul could grasp it in a higher spiritual state. But it then appears to them in images. So it was astral images that Adam saw in his dream during the seven days of creation; he looked back at the original world from which he came.

Thus, the religious documents were attributed to higher sources of knowledge. The fight against the Bible is based on misunderstandings. To take the Gospel of John literally in a materialistic sense is to misunderstand it. This is not to say that it should be taken symbolically. What is written in the Gospel of John cannot be experienced in this physical-sensual world any more than the work of the seven days, the story of creation, but only in a different state of consciousness. The author of the fourth Gospel describes what he perceived not within but outside of the physical body, in a different state of consciousness. The other three Gospels can still be taken literally, but the Gospel of John cannot. It is more true than true; it contains the deepest truth of Christianity. It sees the center of world evolution in Christ Jesus. For John, the Christ hidden in Jesus is an outstandingly high personality that can only be understood by soaring to a higher level of knowledge. To understand what is alive in the Gospel of John, it is necessary to recognize the deepest secrets of existence. To understand the human being and the leader of humanity, one must grasp the essence of the cosmos. The Gospel of John begins with words that are based on the whole secret of the world. The most peculiar thing about these words is that they not only appeal to our understanding, but also have a magical mental effect. They give us a picture of how the human being and the cosmos are connected.

The Gospel of John must be experienced. You have to take the first words as material for meditation, let them live within you. This is spiritual food for life. You have to say to yourself: This is material for me to live with for five minutes a day. These words will open your spiritual eyes and ears; you will experience the magical power of these words, which are forces, and you will experience them in astral images. Let me bring you closer to the soul of what the writer of the Gospel of John felt as an impulse, what he wanted to say. At first he was one who was a newborn according to his soul, one who had been awakened by the power of the insights that lie in the sentences: |

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.

That is the first part of the meditation. And this is the second part:

There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.
He came for a witness, to bear witness about the Light, that through him all might believe.
He was not the Light, but a witness about the Light.
For the true light that enlightens all men was coming into the world.
It was in the world, and the world was made through it, but the world did not recognize it.
It came to what was individual in people (it came to what was individual in the people who were “I” persons), but what was individual in people (the “I” persons) did not receive it.
But those who received it, through it they could reveal themselves as God's children.
Those who trusted in his name were not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of human will, but of God.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we heard his teaching, the teaching of the only
Son of the Father, full of devotion and truth.

If you take the values of these words, not just their literal meaning, then they have infinite value. For example, it should read: “It came to the I-people” - instead of: “He came into his own.”

If you read these words, you have a brief outline of the theosophy of John and that which we also teach. So let us try to understand the very first words. To do this, a brief overview of the basic concepts of theosophy is necessary.

There are entities that are above human beings and no longer need a physical body. These are: the angels, the archangels, the first causes or causes, authorities, powers, dominions, thrones, cherubim, seraphim.

Verse 1: “In the first causes was the Word, and the Word was made life, and because it was creative, it was a god.” Everything, absolutely everything is the crystallized Divine Word, the spoken Word. Now man has the Word; later he will bring forth his own through the Word. The Primordial Beginnings are the entities that were already at the stage at the beginning of the evolution of the earth at which man will arrive at the end of the evolution of the earth.

Because John was able to feel this impulse, he had experienced in great astral visions what is contained in these sentences. But that was only the second thing in his soul, the first was the awakening of these powers. The third was now the following. We will try to understand it with an example. For example, you have a dream one night; it shows you a person you have never seen before. The dream gives you the certainty that you are not indifferent to this person; after a short time you will meet him. — This is how John felt about the experience of Christ. He had had astral visions in a dream state of what became history in Palestine. What his experiences were in higher worlds, his visions, then became experience in earthly life.

The meditation would be done in such a way that one morning a person begins to let the first words of the Gospel of John run through his soul every day. After months, after years, after decades he will experience something in his soul of what is contained in these words. The translation of these words is important: “It came as far as the ‘I’ people, but the ‘I’ people did not accept it.” If you go through these words, you will have a brief outline of theosophy in the Gospel of John: the theosophy that we teach. Hence its tremendous effect. Only those who first awaken these soul-spiritual powers within themselves will experience this.

Try to understand the very first words of the Gospel of John. To do this, a brief overview of the most elementary concepts of Theosophy is necessary.

Let us try it by starting from the bottom. If we look at the human being as he stands before us today, we can say that what we know something about today is the physical body, one limb only of the human being. Even the physical human body is permeated by other higher aspects of our being; that is why it looks as it appears to us now. If it were not permeated by other aspects of our being, it would be just a physical apparatus, with nothing moving it from within and nothing hurting it. Only the physical eye is like a physical apparatus. You must vividly keep in mind the possibility that man grows and that something hurts him, then you will recognize how the physical body is permeated with two other entities: one makes man grow, reproduce and nourish himself; this is done through his etheric body. The other is that he feels, that he has urges, desires and passions that come from his astral body. In order for the physical body to grow, it needs the etheric body. In order for it to feel, it needs the astral body. |

Hydrogen alone cannot represent water; it needs oxygen to do so. If hydrogen and oxygen separate again, we no longer have water; the connection is necessary here as well as there. If the human being is separated from his two other bodies, the physical body will immediately decay.

The sentient body, etheric body and physical body, these three elements of being go down to the animal. Man shares his physical body with the earth, the mineral; his ether body with the plants, and his astral body with the animals. We can also say: everything that requires growth and reproduction resides in the ether body; instincts, desire and pain sensations reside in the astral body.

At death, the physical body remains behind, the etheric and astral bodies initially remain together, and soon the etheric body also separates from the astral body. In sleep, the human being is literally a plant in the fullest sense: his body is still kept going only by the vegetative life, the etheric body. Normally, a person is unconscious and without will or desires when asleep. The few who retain their consciousness during sleep are the exceptions among humanity; they already represent a state that all people will reach in the future: they are the predisposed, predestined leaders and prophets of humanity.

How are dreams possible? How do they come about? There is a hidden potential in the astral body. When this ability is fully developed, consciousness arises.

To the physical body, to the etheric and astral bodies, one more is added. There is a word that differs from all others because it can only be said to oneself. It is the word “I”. This fact is of the utmost importance. Jean Paul's story gives us a beautiful example of the significance of this word. He describes how, as a very young boy, he stood under the door of his parents' house when suddenly the realization flashed through him: I am a self! It is a process in the hidden sanctum of the soul that pure natures feel particularly strongly as a mystery. The scope of this mystery was felt by the priests and sages of all times. It also underlies what the ancient Hebrews called the unspeakable name of God. The high priest would say the word “Joph” once a year to express the sound of the unspeakable. Joph is the “I”. Together with the bodies mentioned above, the “I” forms what is known as the Pythagorean tetrad.

The clairvoyant can see the higher bodies while fully conscious. It is a different matter with hypnosis. In this state, the hypnotized person sees what the hypnotist wants. The hypnotized person is subject to positive or negative suggestion, depending on whether they are led to believe that something is really there, that they feel something, for example, the sweet taste of a pear while biting into a potato, or that something is not there, for example, no people, no objects in the room, and so on.

This last state can be consciously brought about to make the etheric body visible. It is a higher kind of attention. Through a strong volitional act, you suggest the physical body away and then convince yourself that the space previously occupied by the physical body is not empty, but filled with a magnificent light substance, not comparable to anything earthly. In the heart and lung area, you can see wonderful movements of this light substance. This is the etheric body of the human being. The consciously clairvoyant person sees the etheric body protruding a little above the human body. In the case of horses, it protrudes much further.

The third thing that the clairvoyant can see, even if the etheric body is suggested away, is the astral body, which then appears as an elliptical cloud. There you can see the instincts and desires in the form of colored light formations, the bright yellow of developed intelligence and clear thinking, and the beautiful blue of piety and selfless sacrifice.

In addition to these three phenomena visible to the clairvoyant, there is a fourth one that is formed very differently in all people. In the space behind the bridge of the nose, one sees in the astral body a kind of hollow sphere of bluish color, similar to the core of a flame of light that appears blue through the yellow light envelope. In the undeveloped human being it is a small bluish oval; in the developed human being it appears as a blue glow.

Friendship, love, and religious feeling appear in green, blue, and blue-red; everything is in constant and intense motion while the etheric body is rotating.

If we now ask ourselves under what influences these four components of the human being have formed, the answer is that the physical body, which only reflects the life of the earth, is composed of the forces of the earth. The earth has an influence on it. The etheric body, like plants, depends not only on the earth but also on the sun; it strives towards the sun. Our astral body, however, depends on the forces of the stellar world, hence its name. Paracelsus is quite right when he says: “There is nothing in heaven and on earth that is not also in man, and God, who is in heaven and on earth, is also in man.” During the night, man lives in the stars, in the forces from which he was built. During sleep, his astral body experiences the paths in which the stars move and hold. From this astral body, the body born of the stars, the ego is now born.

What can be heard as the keynote of the movement of the stars in the universe is called the Pythagorean music of the spheres. This fundamental chord of the starry orbits and the universe, this tone is what the writer of the Gospel of John means when he speaks of the Word of the world. Thus, a first understanding of the deep mystical meaning of these words will begin to dawn on our consciousness. It will lead us ever deeper and deeper into the true occult meaning of this wonderful document.

We saw yesterday that the Gospel of John contains something that can only be experienced on higher levels of consciousness. Before such experiences are possible, the human being must first develop higher.

The human being is a developing creature. We can observe this from subordinate to ever higher states. This is already shown by the difference between a savage and a civilized European, or between an ordinary person and a genius like Schiller, Goethe or Francis of Assisi. An unlimited potential for development is open to every human being. To understand this, let us take up yesterday's lecture and use a diagram to clarify the theosophical basic teachings on the development of the human being:

During the following explanations, the diagram below will be drawn on the “board, starting from the bottom left.

We have thus seen that man has his physical body in common with all inanimate beings, the etheric body with all plants in our physical world, and the astral body with all animal creatures in his environment. We then saw that man, in terms of his development, differs from all other beings in that he can say “I” to himself.

The “I” is by no means a simple entity. On closer inspection, it is also something that is structured. The animal feels, has desire and passion, the plant does not; the animal because it already possesses an astral body. In this, the I develops in man. But this I has been at work long before man became clearly aware of it. A look at the development of humanity teaches us more about this.

The earth has not always been as it is today. Its face has repeatedly changed; the present continents have not always been there. During the penultimate earth period, a continent called Atlantis was located where the Atlantic Ocean now rages. Traces of it and the story of its downfall have been preserved in ancient legends. In the Bible, the Flood is meant by this. The ancient fathers of a different nature, whose descendants we are, experienced this. In this old Atlantis, the air and water conditions were quite different from what they are now. The whole thing was shrouded in a dense fog. In the words Nebelheim, Niflheim, we still have a hint of this. There was no rain and no sunshine; instead of rain, only fog currents; instead of sun, only diffuse illumination. Only after long periods did the fog condense as water. The sun only penetrated a little, like a faint premonition, through the constant fog. In such an environment, people also lived a completely different mental and spiritual life than today. It was only towards the end of the Atlantic period, roughly in the area of present-day Ireland, that people began to show self-awareness for the first time, and to think clearly and logically. In the mists there was no possibility of distinguishing objects as we do today. Man only develops a consciousness like ours in relation to his surroundings. As the objects emerged from the mists, so did the physical eye; and in the same measure the consciousness soul developed, and within it the self-aware ego. Even then, man could speak.

If we go back even further to the earliest times of Atlantis, we find that man looked significantly different. He had no external vision at that time, but a different way of perceiving, in images. To understand this state of consciousness, imagine a very vivid dream that reflects something of your surroundings. The following “dream” may serve as an example. A student dreams that he is standing at the door of the lecture hall, and another student deliberately brushes against him, which is a serious offense that can only be atoned for by a duel. He challenges him, they drive into the forest, the duel begins, the first shot rings out. Then our student wakes up – he has pushed over the chair next to his bed. Had he been awake, he would have noticed that a chair had fallen over. But because his consciousness soul had descended into sleep, he perceived with a deeper, less developed soul power. The dramatic action of the dream is a pictorial transformation of an external process.

The processes of consciousness in the ancient Atlanteans were similar. Although the images were more regulated and ordered, they did not have a clear perception of their surroundings. The life of feeling expressed itself quite characteristically in fine perceptions of touch and color. If the early Atlantean perceived a warm mist that symbolized itself to him in red, he knew that something pleasant was approaching him. Or if he encountered another person who was unpleasant to him, this was also indicated to him by a very specific sensation that became an image, an ugly color tone. But warmth, for example, was symbolized to him in a beautiful red cloud. This happened in many degrees and variations. The early Atlanteans thus had visual perceptions. We only have such perceptions in the case of pain, which is obviously only within us, however much it is caused by the outside world and can become loud. Our pain is also experienced inwardly, spiritually, and is thus truer than the external facts.

The Atlanteans, however, already developed ordered ideas. Not so the Lemurians. The Atlantean period was preceded by the Lemurian period. Man was not yet able to express language. He was merely able to internalize what the animal also feels. Thus, what we call the sentient soul developed in him. The continent of Lemuria, which was destroyed by the forces of fire, we have to imagine between Africa, Australia and Asia.

But now back to our scheme: IIIa sentient soul, IIIb intellectual soul, IIIc consciousness soul are all three transformations, ennobled transformations from the astral body. It is only towards the end of the Atlantean period that man becomes capable of consciously working on himself. What does he do now?

Up to now, cosmic forces have lifted man up in his development. Now man begins to consciously take his development into his own hands, to work on himself, to educate himself. On which body does he now begin his work? It is important to pay strict attention to the sequence here. First, man was and is able to work on and in his astral body. And on this level of ability, the human being of the present day is still standing today. In general, we can say of today's human being: He uses his experiences and experiences to transform his astral body. Later we will see that a higher level of development consists of working into the lower bodies. Let us first stay with the first: with the ability to transform the astral body.

To do this, let us compare the civilized man with the savage. The savage first follows his instincts, desires and passions, every craving, without restraint. But then he can begin to work on his self. To certain instincts he says: remain; to others: leave. Thus, for example, the man-eater ceases his habit of eating his own kind; in so doing, he leaves a certain stage of civilization and becomes another. Or he learns to act logically, learns, for example, to plow. Thus his astral body becomes more and more structured. Formerly external powers determined man, now he does it himself. The astral body of a Hottentot circles in wild dark red vortices, in a person like Schiller in bright green and yellow, in Franz of Assisi in wonderful blue. This is how the astral body is worked on. That which is consciously worked into the astral body from the I is called the spirit self or manas. With the conscious working in of the I, something very special begins. Before that, however, before one comes to the formation of this manas, that part which the animal also has remains completely unchanged in the astral body. Despite the growth of intellect, the astral body can remain essentially unchanged, full of animal desires. But there are influences that do transform the sentient body: conscious religiosity and art. From these we draw strength to overcome and ennoble ourselves, which is a much stronger power than mere morality. Man has as much of the spirit or Manas as he has worked into his astral body. This is not something external, it is a transformation product of what used to be the sentient soul.

As long as I am merely working on my sentient body, I use my achievements to transform this my astral body. All the morality in the world cannot achieve more, nor can all intellectuality. But if true religiousness is at work in me, this stronger power expresses itself through the astral body and works its way into the next lower one, the etheric body. This is naturally a much greater achievement than when the ego merely works with the astral, because the raw material of the etheric body is much coarser and more resistant than the finer astral body. We call the result of this transformation the spirit of life or Budhi. The spirit of life is thus the spiritualized life body. In the Orient, someone who had brought it to the highest level was called a Buddha. This tremendous moral power proceeds from consciousness when the three souls are governed by a strong ego. These are preparatory steps for humanity in general. Only the chela works consciously in his etheric body. The chela aims to spiritualize everything, even into his etheric body. The chelaship is concluded when he has allowed Budhi to stream completely into his life body, so that the life body, which he ennobles from the I, has become a life spirit.

In the third stage, man reaches the highest principle that is currently accessible to us. He is able to work down to his physical body. In doing so, he rises above the level of the chela and becomes a “master”. When, on the second step, Budhi glows through his etheric body, the human being gains control not only of moral principles but also of his character. He can change his temperament, his memory, and his habits. Today's human being has only a very imperfect command of all these. To understand the task of the chela, compare yourself as you are now with yourself when you were ten years old. How much knowledge have you gained since then, and how little your character has changed! The content of the soul has changed quite radically, but the habits and inclinations only very slightly. Those who were hot-tempered, forgetful, envious, inattentive as a child are often still so as adults. How much our ideas and thoughts have changed, how little our habits! This gives you a clue to estimate how much tougher, firmer, more difficult to shape the etheric body is compared to the astral body. Conversely, how much more fruitful and consequential an improvement achieved in the etheric body!

The following sentence can be used as an example of the different speeds at which transformation is possible: What you have learned and experienced has changed like the minute hand of the clock, your habits like the hour hand. Learning is easy, unlearning is difficult. You can still recognize yourself from the writing of yesteryear, because that is also a habit. It is easy to change views and insights, but difficult to change habits. Changing this tenacious thing, habit, little by little, is the task of the chela. This means becoming a different person by creating a different etheric body, thus transforming the life body into the life spirit. This puts the forces of growth in your hands. Habits are among the manifest growth forces. If I destroy them, the vis vitalis, the power of growth, is released and placed at my disposal, to direct my consciousness. Christ says: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Christ is the personification of the power that changes the life body.

Now to the third stage. There is something that is even more difficult to bring under the control of free will than our habits and emotional stirrings: the physical body in its animal and vegetative, mechanical or reflexive dependency. There is a stage of human development in which no nerve is activated, no blood corpuscle rolls without the human being's conscious will. This self-transformation reaches into conditions and states that were fixed long, long before Atlantis and Lemuria, and are therefore the hardest to reverse: into cosmic primeval states. In this work, man develops Atman, the spiritual man. The potential for this is present in every human being today. This whole cycle depends on the attainment of fully clear self-awareness.

The most powerful and potent laws are those of the breathing process. The entire spiritual being depends on lung breathing, because it is the outer expression of the gradual drawing in of the I. In ancient Atlantis, this potential emerged through the saying of the I. In Lemuria, man did not breathe through lungs, but through gill-like organs. Nor did he walk as we do today, but floated or swam in a more fluid element, where water and air were not yet separated. To maintain his balance, he had an organ analogous to the swim bladder of a fish. As the air gradually separated, the swim bladder was transformed into our present lungs. The development of the sense of self runs parallel to the development of the lungs. This is still expressed in the words: “And God breathed into the man his breath of life, and he became a living soul.” Atman means nothing other than “breath”. The regulation of the breath is therefore one of the most powerful tools in the work of yoga, which teaches the control of all bodily functions. Here we look into a future in which human beings will have transformed themselves from within.

Conscious work in the etheric body is therefore a mastery.

Conscious work in the physical body: mastery.

The human being perceives the growth into these two stages as an opening up of new worlds, new environments, comparable only to the feelings of the child when it emerges from the dark, warm womb into the cold, light world at birth. The moment of generating Budhi is called second birth, rebirth, awakening in all mysteries. As man formerly left an inner world, of which only echoes remain in dreams, so he enters a new world as one awakened to the same world on a higher level. In those ancient times, man perceived the world with the help of his own inner images. On the future level of higher clairvoyance, man steps out of himself and sees behind the essence of things; he sees their souls. It is a kind of clairvoyance that is directed outwards and highlights the 'inherent essence' of things. The seer penetrates, for example, below the surface of the plant or stone. This outward-directed clairvoyance, with full mental alertness, not only illuminates the very basis of his own soul, but also that of the beings and things outside of himself. This is how development takes place.

Modern man lives in the manasical state, that is, he is able to change something in his astral body, but not yet in his etheric body, and least of all in his physical body. Therefore, man takes in from another only as much as corresponds to his stage of development. “You are like the spirit you understand, not like me!” This saying also applies here.

According to Christian terminology, the designations correspond:

Why is Budhi called the “Word”? This brings us to the edge of one of the great mysteries, and we will see the great significance of the term “Word”.

We have seen that man spiritualizes his life body through the Budhi. What does the life body do in man? Growth and reproduction, everything that distinguishes the living being from the mineral. What is the highest expression of the life body? Reproduction, growth beyond itself. What becomes of this last expression of the life body when man consciously covers the path back to spiritualization? How is this reproductive power transformed, what becomes of it when it is purified, spiritualized? — In the human larynx you have the purification, the transformation of the reproductive power, and in the articulated vowel sound, in the human word, you have the transformed reproductive capacity. Analogous to the law “All is below as above”, we find the corresponding process in the physical: the breaking of the voice, the mutation at the time of sexual maturity. All that becomes spirit emanates from the word or the content of the word. This is the very first glimpse of Budhi, when the first articulated sound emerges from the human soul. A mantram has such a significant effect because it is a spiritually articulated word. A mantram is therefore the means for the chela to work down into the depths of his soul.

Thus, in the physical, we have the power of reproduction, through which life is generated and passed on beyond the physical body, becoming something permanent. And just as the physical generative organs transmit bodily life, so the organs of speech — tongue, larynx and breath — transmit spiritual life like an ignition device. In the physiological, the close connection between voice and procreation is obvious. We encounter it in the song of the nightingale, in courtship display, voice change, vocal magic, in singing, cooing, crowing, roaring. We can truly call the larynx the higher sexual organ. The word is the power of procreation for new human spirits; in the word, man achieves a spiritualized creative power. Today, man rules the air with the word, by shaping it rhythmically and organically, by stirring it and enlivening it. On a higher level, he is able to do this in the liquid and finally in the solid element. Then you have transformed the word into the creator's word, for man will achieve this in his development because it was originally so. The life body, emanated from the word of the primal spirit, - this is to be taken literally. That is why Budhi is called the “word”, which means nothing other than: I am.

Thus we see with geometrical clarity the words of the miracle in St. John's Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” The astral body, which is radiant as the stars, becomes the Word-light; the Primordial God, the Life and the Light, these are the three fundamental concepts of the Gospel of John. John had to develop to the point of Budhi in order to grasp what was revealed in Christ Jesus. The other three Evangelists were not so highly developed. John gives the highest, he was an awakened one. John is the name given to all who are awakened. This is a generic name, and the resurrection of Lazarus in the Gospel of John is nothing more than a description of this awakening. The writer of the Gospel of John, whose name we will hear later, never calls himself by any other name than “the disciple whom the Lord loves”. This is the term for the most intimate disciples, for those in whom the teacher and master has succeeded in awakening the disciple. The description of such an awakening is given by the author of the Gospel of John in the resurrection of Lazarus: “the Lord loved him,” he could awaken him.

Only if we approach such religious documents as the Gospel of John with the deepest humility can we hope to arrive at a literal understanding and to grasp at least a small part of its sacred content.

In the previous lecture, we took a look at the essence of human nature. Today, we will continue this consideration. Once we have learned the meaning of human development, we will better understand the main idea of John's gospel. This developmental process of humanity is the theme of the opening chapters. It wants to say, firstly, that it is this Christ Jesus that I want to make you understand. Secondly, the developmental process of all humanity is influenced by this Christ in a very specific way. From Christ onwards, the developmental process of the individual human being also became quite different. We must clearly understand the parallel between the developmental process of all humanity and that of the individual human being.

In the human being, the three highest elements of being are still undeveloped today. The higher these elements are in nature, the later they are worked through by the human being. Let us take a look at the evolution of humanity on earth through the different races. The main races of prehistoric times are the polaric, the hyperborean and the lemuric. In the first main race, the physical body is developed, in the second main race the etheric body, in the third the astral body, the body of feeling. So far man has progressed in the Lemurian period.

During the Atlantean period, the fourth main race, the sentient soul is formed out of the sentient body, followed by the rational soul and finally, towards the end of Atlantis, the consciousness soul with the ego, with which the fifth main race began, our present race. Before the awakening of the consciousness soul, the main abilities of man were language and memory. He could not yet combine, reason logically or calculate. It is only with the dawning of consciousness that the fifth main race begins, whose mission is to integrate Manas, the spirit self, into the human being and to educate it. With the awakening of Manas, the first sub-race of our root race develops. It is the Indian pre-Vedic culture. It is followed by the Persian, then the Chaldean-Egyptian-Hebrew, and fourthly the Greek-Latin. We ourselves belong to the fifth sub-race. We are going through the fifth stage of the development of Manas. We will be followed by the sixth sub-race with still other, higher tasks of human development.

The task of expressing the principle of manas is common to all of them. Each of the races does this in a special way. In detail, it happens something like this:

In the first sub-race, the sentient body or astral body had to accomplish the general manasic work of empathy. Our present physical body comprises a manifold, complicated sum of organ systems. In the age in which we live, it includes the bone and muscle system. The entire sensory apparatus is formed by the forces of the physical body. The etheric body causes all vegetative functions, all organs that serve nutrition, digestion, and reproduction. The astral body builds the nervous system into this bodily complex. All unconscious movements, all reflexes depend on the sympathetic nervous system, which extends symmetrically on both sides of the spinal cord. We call the part that extends into the abdominal cavity the solar plexus. In the Lemurian period, the sympathetic nervous system was the actual astral organ of perception. At that time, it was of a different nature and served clairvoyance. Under the influence of the sentient soul, the spinal cord was incorporated, which then became the brain under the influence of the mind soul, with the two cords of the spinal cord puffing up and widening at their ends, as it were. The forebrain did not develop until the end of the Atlantean epoch. Parallel to this development was another, namely the higher development of breathing and blood circulation, the processes of nutrition and growth.

At the beginning of the fifth root race, the human being was strongest in the sentient body, so that in the first sub-race, the Indian, Manas is sunk into the sentient body. The leaders of this epoch sought to awaken the old power of clairvoyance within themselves. The higher powers of the intellect, which were not yet strong enough, were excluded. Thus, with the help of the sympathetic nervous system, a dream-like clairvoyance was developed. Manas descended into the sympathetic nervous system and thus into the sentient body. In this way the whole wonderful dream world of ancient India becomes understandable, the great and wide, but dim and dull grasping of Brahman, the being beside oneself of the ancient yoga system.

In the second sub-race, the manas rises higher, into the sentient soul. The ancient Persians represent this to us. For them, the spirit self or manas lives in the sentient soul. The first expression of this is the confrontation between world and soul, between world and ego. This is expressed in the contrast between the spirit figures of Ormuzd and Ahriiman. Man seeks to overcome the resulting conflict through labor. Chaos, the disorderly matter, is to be overcome by the good God, who leads to the spiritual.

The third sub-race lives in the Egyptian, Assyrian and Israelite peoples. The Manas or spiritual self rises up into the mind soul. Manas in it now seeks to understand the world around it rationally. Or in other words: man seeks to find Manas in the cosmos. From this the wisdom-filled systems of Chaldean astrology arise, the combinations between the eternal laws that guide and move the cosmos and human destinies. The Chaldean priest-sage looks up to the stars, and the wonderful knowledge of planetary motion arises. But the rule of manas applies to a particular extent in the case of the one people, the chosen people. The Israelites apply the manasic principle in such a way that the people themselves are organized according to reason, as a unified national community. The legislation of Moses is a reflection of the star wisdom of the Chaldean priests.

In the fourth sub-race, the Greco-Latin, the spirit self penetrates as far as the consciousness soul. It is the awakening of consciousness when it takes itself by the scruff of the neck, as it were. The fully awakened consciousness now not only puts its intellect and its mind into the world, as in Jehovah's law, but in Hellas it puts its whole ego into its gods, into pure images of man. But Rome recreates its idealized ego in its state. The Greek gods and the Roman state are thus the image of what the ego has within itself and now seeks to make objective.

The fifth sub-race is our Anglo-Germanic race, which is to express the spirit-self in the spirit-self, Manas in Manas. That is, man will learn to comprehend what the spirit-self actually is; man will stand within Manas. Manas will finally work within itself. Today, only a few people really understand the manas. To grasp thinking with thinking, to catch thinking in thinking, to completely round off the snake of eternity, that is the task of the fifth sub-race. Thinking is the organ where the human being first grasps himself at one point. To stimulate this in man is the purpose of my book 'The Philosophy of Freedom'.

The sixth sub-race is the future one. The spiritual self rises up to the level of the Budhi; there, as in Manas, a light from above, Budhi shines into man. But at first Budhi is still a gift from above. This illumination by Budhi corresponds to the Christian concept of Grace. The beginning of this inflow goes back to the fourth sub-race. We have to describe this point in time as the beginning of Christianity. And the one who brought Budhi into the earthly human world is the Christ Jesus. And the Christ Jesus appeared as the bringer of that power, which had been completely foreign until then.

To sum up: What man has acquired during the five races is Manas - Manas, the spiritual self. It is met, as a gift from above, by Budhi, which corresponds to the Christian basic idea of grace. This, then, is the theme of the Gospel of John. But how was the approach made to this? Two things must, had to come together in order for Budhi to really take effect: first, as the bearers of the previous development, people now had to have an organ for Budhi formed from Manas. They had to be thirsty for Budhi, thirsty to go beyond the intellect. Brain development, without connection to the higher limbs, always ends in a dead end; it does not go beyond manasic development, beyond astral things.

There were such people who, out of the manas, brought a highly developed soul organ to the Budhi. It must be so. No matter how much light there is, if there is no eye, it will not be perceived. It is the same with Budhi. There was a name for all those people who had developed such an organ, who were thirsty for Budhi, a generic name: John. It can also be applied to the Baptist. Christ and Budhi are the same spiritual current.

We must now also consider the other: Manas also transforms the physical man. Gradually, the organs grew stronger, the strengthening spinal cord gradually integrated itself, and new centers of power were constantly forming. As always, these spiritual processes had to be matched by physical ones. The task of the fifth main race was the establishment of Manas, and in the body, the formation of the brain. The sixth main race will see the establishment of Budhi; the perfection of the heart as a completely voluntary muscle. In the seventh main race: the establishment of Atman; the perfection of breathing.

We saw how the heart and respiratory organs formed. In the circulatory system, the development of the budhi is modeled on the heart. The heart is actually only at the beginning of its development. Anatomy is faced with a mystery, because it creates a hole in its theory. The heart is a striated muscle, like all voluntary muscles, but the heart is also an involuntary muscle. Thus it is now the case that it is destined to become an arbitrary muscle, and that is in the future, when Budhi is developed. The heart is organized for the future; it will then be an extremely important organ. Just as manas is nourished in man through the blood circulation, so manas will then work in the heart and from the heart.

Let us consider the historical development before and after the illumination of Budhi. Let us first turn our attention to the blood. The blood is influenced by the nervous system. It is only when the manasic development advances that the relationship to the blood changes. In the primeval times of all peoples we have the very special phenomenon of the so-called Nahehe. We have the small ethnic groups that all marry within their blood relationship. But in every people we find a transition to distant marriage, so that an intensive blood mixture occurs. Earlier groups of peoples were therefore related by descent; they had a common ancestor who was particularly revered, for example, among the Germanic tribes, the progenitor Tuisto.

The legends faithfully preserve the conflicts that arose from the breaking of the blood ties. The blood of such neighboring communities was influenced by the lower parts of the nervous system. This gave man clairvoyance and the intuitive distinction between good and evil; he had a sure moral instinct. The moment man steps out of nearness, it becomes impossible for him to delve into clairvoyance from within, from the sympathetic nervous system. With remoteness, instinctive guidance ceases and the external law begins. The original moral instinct disappeared with remoteness; the external law had to enter. Out of the night of the old instinct there dawned a moral guiding star. Then came the Mosaic Law religion as the custodian of morality. This will finally be replaced by a new light, the Christ-light, the spiritual guidance.

What the moral instinct was for the individual tribe, that is Budhi or the Christ Principle for all mankind. In Christ, this process has become flesh. Christ came when the tribal blood ties had loosened sufficiently for the tribal god to change into a god of all men, for blood brotherhood to become a duty towards every fellow human being, and for tribal loyalty to be extended to self- and god-loyalty. What sunlight is to matter, what intelligible truth to intellect, that is the Christ-light to the Budhi, the grace coming from above. Through the Budhi, the earlier is no longer decisive, neither the moral instinct given by blood ties nor the law of the priests, neither Moses nor tribal authorities at all, the last of which was Jehovah. Now the sentence applies: “Whoever does not leave father and mother and brother for my sake cannot be my disciple.” That is to say, anyone who does not forget the old tribal principles and does not extend blood love to all people cannot follow Christ. The old tribal gods had entered into indissoluble marriages with their peoples, and with their peoples they had to pass away. The Christ represents a completely new spirit in the world, which entered into humanity, and this spirit united with the human soul, which passes through the whole evolution. Those who bore the name John, the leading people of that time, were so far as to feel with the greatest strength the burning yearning for something that lies above mere legality and justice, that is, they thirsted for the new Son of Man. And the One Who satisfied this longing was the Christ, the Bridegroom of the soul of humanity in general, humanity itself being the Bride. Thus Christ or Budhi is indeed the only begotten Son of God: “He must increase, but I must decrease,” was the saying of John the Baptist. One of the greatest symbols of this wedding feast is the wedding at Cana in Galilee, a place where all kinds of peoples flocked together in a colorful, international mix. We see how a wedding feast is celebrated there. “And the mother of Jesus was also there,” it says. In the Gospel of John, the mother of Jesus is never called “Mary”, just as the author of the Gospel of John, the disciple whom the Lord loved, is never called “John”. The mother of Jesus is the human soul, and this must first mature before Christ can work in it. Hence the words: “Woman, what do I have to do with you? My hour has not yet come.” Never would such a high individuality as Christ have spoken thus to his mother.

The fourth chapter of the Gospel of John shows Jesus with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. Here you have Jacob, the representative of the tribal deity; the well: the old tradition from which one must draw and which does not satisfy. “Then the Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink of me, since I am a Samaritan woman?’ (For the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans).” Here you have the old law. But in place of what flowed through the tribal blood, a new principle of life was to come: the Budhi. “But whoever drinks the water that I give him will never thirst. The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The man-God married the human soul, the Budhi descended into the Manas, and henceforth humanity could draw the consciousness of good and evil from another source, the source of the “living waters”, and no longer from the well of Father Jacob, the Mosaic legislation. For it is in this sense, and in no other, that the conversation of Christ Jesus at the well with the Samaritan woman is to be understood.

Who was Christ? And what did he do for evolution? These are the big questions, and we will gradually approach their answers. Some of it may still be difficult to grasp, so we must first gradually strike notes that will resonate even more strongly.

So far Budhi radiates into it.

For the next, the sixth round, Budhi would have to do everything that Manas did in the fifth; on it the world pointer stopped at the end of the fifth main race and the fourth sub-race. In the seventh round, Atman would then have to be developed.

In our consideration the day before yesterday, we arrived at the conclusion that the Gospel of John contains many great aspects. Today we want to talk about the relationship between man and the world that surrounds us here on this earth. Man usually sees himself as a much too simple being. In reality, however, he is a very complicated entity. One of the characteristics of the modern human being is their laziness, which extends to our way of thinking. The truth is simple only for those who have first made their way through the complexity. It is like a thread with many, many pearls strung on it.

From the public lectures, we have already seen how man is related to the cosmos that surrounds him, to the earthly nature that surrounds him. Through his physical body, he is related to the mineral, so-called inanimate world; through his etheric body, to the whole world of plants, to vegetation; and through his astral body, to all animal beings. It is only through self-awareness that he rises above the other three realms. Without a thorough understanding of this development, and without understanding what an initiation or awakening is, we cannot penetrate the depths of the Gospel of John.

Consider the three kingdoms of nature around us. The crystal has no self-consciousness, no ego in the physical world. This assertion is based on clear insights that come from occult research. But only here on this earth do the stone, the plant, and the animal have no self-consciousness. The question arises: are they not conscious? How this is to be understood can only become clear to us through occult study. Let us start with the consciousness of the human being. The nature of the human being in his fourfold nature is based on the fact that he has his consciousness in this physical world, that he has his four members in this world. Let us make this clear with a diagram:

The animal has its three bodies here, its I in the astral world; therefore the animal has no individual soul, but a group soul. If you look at a person's ten fingers, they are all animated, but not independent - they are only one part of the whole body. Just as we have to search for the ego of the fingers within us, so we have to go up into the astral world to find the common soul of the animals. The individual lions are members of the Lion-I, the Lion-Soul. All lions are connected in the astral, a thread goes from each of them into the astral world, where the ego is.

For the materialist this is incredible; but the spiritual researcher must say: it is true! One can ascribe exactly the same evolution to the group soul of animals as to the human ego in the physical world. When we follow groups of animals on the astral plane, we see their development taking place there in the same way as that of human beings on the physical plane as individuals.

The plant has its astral body in the astral world, its physical and etheric body in the physical world and its I in the lower devachan. But what is the entity of such a group of plants? Similar plants have their I, their group soul in the devachan. A human being in dreamless sleep is in exactly the same situation as a plant throughout its entire life. The entire plant world on earth is a sleeping being; the plant leads a dream life.

Let us consider the sleeping human being: the physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed, the astral body is on the astral plane and the I in dreamless sleep in Devachan. Let us now turn to the mineral. Its physical body is in the physical world, its etheric body in the astral world, its astral body in Rupa-Devachan, and the I at the very top in Arupa-Devachan.

Lower Devachan, Rupa: the world of spiritual forms
Upper Devachan, Arupa: the world that has not yet been formed.

The mineral thinks, feels and wills like a human being, not on the physical plane, but in Devachan. It extends only its inanimate parts into the physical world. The mineral's relationship to its soul is the same as a human being's relationship to its nails and bones to its self. An insect crawling over a finger nail and mistaking it for inanimate because it does not see the whole individual, would be comparable to a person mistaking a crystal for inanimate. The crystal is therefore an object that belongs to a being that reaches up into the spiritual world; so is the connection of its physical appearance with the spiritual world.

Man has his four essential elements on the physical plane. What is physical in man remains a physical body, but in Devachan it has a consciousness of its own, of which man knows nothing, though it haunts his limbs. The etheric body has a different consciousness, which is realized in the lower devachan. Finally, the astral body also has its own consciousness on the astral plane. So man is a very complicated being. The following scheme may serve as an explanation:

Upper Devachan: physical body
Lower Devachan: etheric body
Astral plane: astral body
Physical plane: self.

His ego is at home in the physical world; no one can dispute that. Furthermore, that part of his astral body lives in man and belongs to him, which has an unconscious consciousness and is at home on the astral plane. Furthermore, an unconscious consciousness of the etheric body exists on the lower devachan plan, and one of the ego in the upper devachan plan. The most important thing now is that the human being works from the ego into the other bodies, and that only through this does he become aware of the different consciousnesses.

There is a peculiar connection between man and the different worlds, which is a most important mystery. If one learns to recognize this, then one gradually knows what an initiation is. When man works from his I into his astral body, then he rises up to the astral plane and becomes a companion of all astral beings. Everything that has an astral consciousness is around him. When he works with his I into his etheric body, then he rises at the same time into the lower parts of Devachan; then etheric beings emerge around him. This is a great and powerful moment: he sees light not only as light, but as the bearer of light-filled entities; with the physical rays of the sun, angelic beings approach that have light as their body. This is one result of initiation.

When a person ascends or descends even higher, let us remember the words of Goethe:

”It is all one..."

- then the moment has come when he first becomes one with the world's forefather. Then he can say: ‘I and the Father are one.’ Then entities emerge that are even higher than those described. Now imagine a personality who is so highly initiated that he consciously bears the nature of the higher beings in his own body, as John experienced with Christ Jesus. In the one Christ Jesus, the author of the Gospel of John sees the beings of the three worlds. And he has Philip say to Nathanael (John 1:45-51):

"We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote, Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.

And Nathanael said to him, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’

Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and said of him: Behold, a true Israelite (that is, an initiate of the fifth degree), in whom there is no guile.

Nathanael said to him: How do you know me? Jesus answered and said to him: Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.

Being under the tree is the occult expression for initiation, the secret of multiplying and expanding consciousness. Only now does Nathanael reply:

“Master, You are the Son of God” - thus an even higher initiate - “and a king in Israel.

Jesus answered and said to him, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that.

And He said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, from now on you shall see the sky open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’

That means: to see that which permeates his four consciousnesses. Man becomes a ladder on which one can see the angels of God ascending and descending. In this physical world, too, there are higher beings than man. Man used to have a group soul on the astral plane before he descended to the physical plane, at the time when the “blood Rubicon” had not yet been crossed. The entire tribe lived in this group soul. Likewise, the animal group souls will later descend and individualize. Here we touch on a great mystery, which belongs to the seven secrets that are called the unspeakable.

One of these secrets is the secret of numbers. It is true that whole groups of people had one soul. The secret is: From the One it flows and becomes a number: numerous like the grains of an ear of corn. When such a group soul descends, the same thing happens as with a seed: a grain is placed in the earth, and from it arises the ear of corn with many grains.

But everything in the world exists only once in a certain way. So this humanity, as it is now, is also only here once. Nothing in the world repeats itself in the same way. In the group souls of animals, we see some that will later become individual souls, but under very different circumstances than humans, in a very different nature. Are there also souls that have already been individual souls and then ascended to the astral plane again and became group souls? Yes, there are such souls. They arise when a number of people come together cosmically around an initiate and become like the members of a common body. Initiates thus become folk souls. Thus the Jewish people, the chosen people, had a common soul that united the individuals, which was once human and had ascended again and become the folk soul. In the bosom of Father Abraham it could rest.

Now imagine that a person undergoing initiation goes through his development more quickly. He then goes the same way as that folk soul as an individual soul: He becomes a group soul. The individual is absorbed in such an expanded consciousness. In truth, as an initiate, he has the cosmic value of an entire folk soul. You can still see this in the old terms. This stage of development was called by the name of the whole people, for example, Israelites.

In the Persian Mithras initiation, seven levels were distinguished. The initiate of the first degree bore the name of the raven. He is the messenger between the physical and the astral world. The symbol of the raven has been attributed significance since the most ancient times. In the Old Testament, the prophet Elijah was provided for by the ravens. Ravens are the messengers of Wotan, who fly over the world every day and report to him what they have perceived. The Kyffhäuser mountain, where Barbarossa slumbers, is also circled by ravens, which are supposed to give him news when the hour of awakening has come.

The second degree is that of the Occult. This may already live in the inner sanctuary.

The initiate of the third degree, the warrior, may represent the occult wisdom he has absorbed in the world. Such a warrior is Lohengrin. This degree is alluded to in Mabel Collins' book “Light on the Path”.

The fourth degree is that of the Lion. This is the designation for an initiate who has ascended with his consciousness to the tribal soul. Hence the expression: Lion of the tribe of Judah.

In the initiate of the fifth degree, the consciousness of the people itself has awakened. He bears the name of his people; in the Mithras initiation, he is called the Persian.

The initiate of the sixth degree is the solar hero. He can deviate from his path no more than the sun itself.

The seventh degree is that of the Father. It is the union with the original spirit.

Thus the “Persian” bears the name of the entire nation; his individual soul becomes a national soul. The image that this level of initiation expresses is sitting under the tree. You will find this expression everywhere in the occult language. For example, Buddha sits under the Bodhi tree. The tree comes from the one seed and has become many. Such is the process with the initiate; he has gained the ability to empathize with every single soul. So how would such a person have been called by the Israelites? “Israelite,” of course. As we have seen, Jesus recognizes Nathanael as an initiate of the fifth degree, as one who has attained a national consciousness. Nathaniel recognizes in Christ the higher initiate: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God.” Christ is an initiate of the seventh degree, who has expanded his consciousness to include the Father: “I (or the I-Am) and the Father (or the Divine) are one.” He is the life and light of men, for he has brought his high consciousness into the physical body.

Some will think that such an interpretation is being spun into the gospel. Many, and mostly today's theologians, believe that the Bible should be interpreted “simply,” which actually means conveniently. But the gospel is not written in the usual way and for people who are accustomed to reading a book only once and then putting it down again. The Gospel was written for a time when the content was a book of life that was read again and again. It must be read and received in this way, because only then will one learn to recognize that each of these great truths contains an even greater truth, and that even the wisest never stop learning in the knowledge of the religious scriptures and in their full understanding. In the past, these writings were approached by learning a sentence; afterwards, one allowed it to live in the soul over and over again, and if one then had the good fortune, the rare opportunity to meet an initiate, one allowed him to explain it. For religious documents, and especially the Gospel of John, are written from the depth of wisdom, and therefore cannot be grasped deeply enough. But wisdom is not there for the comfortable. Wisdom is there for those who seek and search.

The person to be initiated undergoes the first five stages of initiation while ascending or descending the astral plane. This is completely irrelevant, because the Hermetic saying applies here: “Everything above is as below.” Everything in the spiritual has its counterpart in the physical. If you ascend to the astral plane, you will find yourself in a national soul, for this lives on the astral plane.

The sixth stage means as much as the other five combined: here the human being ascends in his etheric body and brings about its development. One nation always arises out of another through the astral body becoming different; astral entities are always to be found behind the national soul. But the etheric body of humanity and that of the individual remains unchanged from nation to nation; a new etheric body only arises with the ascent from race to race. Even the physical body is subject to change. The ancient Atlanteans had a very different physical body, and the first Lemurians had no real physical body at all. The solar hero encompasses in his consciousness an entire human race like individual atoms. He grasps the whole race with his consciousness. The seventh stage, the Father Initiation, leads beyond the race to all mankind on earth, to all peoples and races of the whole planet. Christ Jesus is the representative of this; he carries all mankind within himself. That is why in the Gospel of John humanity is called the bride, and the initiated Son of Man is called the bridegroom. Christ Jesus is the one who, in the essence, encompasses the consciousness of all humanity. This brings us to where we left off from the previous lecture when we were considering the wedding at Cana.

You know the passage in the Gospel of John: “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Consider further how Jesus Christ contrasts his mission with the events in the wilderness: “Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and died. I give you another bread, I am the bread of life.

Let us recall once more how the four members of the human being developed at different times. The I only emerges as consciousness towards the end of the Atlantean period. The manasic abilities only arise in our fifth root race, and more specifically, manas arises inwardly in the sentient body in the primeval Indian epoch. In a higher form, Manas enters the sentient soul in the case of the ancient Persians. In the case of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, Manas enters the intellectual or mind soul.

Let us be clear about what this means. Unlike today's astronomers, the Chaldean-Babylonian priests viewed the stars differently. They saw in them living, spirit-filled worlds. When they spoke of the planet Mercury, they did not just mean a material thing, but the Mercury spirit – just as we do when we name a person. The movement of the stars, their starry writing, was an expression of something spiritual for them. This is manasic knowledge, a penetration of space with thoughts.

What their Chaldean predecessors limited to heavenly connections, the Egyptian sages drew into the service of more and more earthly matters and animal needs; they placed the manasic entity at the service of matter.

Please note this. An example of this is the construction of the artificial Lake Moris. The Egyptians created a reservoir to regulate the Nile flood. The development of all of Egypt was based on manasic knowledge. Manasic means purely spiritual. Manasic beings were placed in the service of the highest human needs. It is the very nature of the mind soul to use manasic wisdom to satisfy external needs and desires.

Today, this development, “Egyptian darkness,” the darkness of Manas, has progressed much further. But is it so crucial whether a person grinds his grain between two stones or orders it by cable in New York? Kama Manas is the name given in Theosophy to such a connection of higher consciousness with animal, earthly, material purposes. The ancient religions would have looked down on the achievements of all our technology, our communication and trade with very mixed feelings. They saw it as a defilement of sacred things when man put his higher mental capacity at the service of the lower natural needs. This was worse than when an animal uses its instincts, which are good for nothing better, to satisfy its needs. It was felt as a defection, an abuse of the manas called to higher tasks, a defection of the spirit from itself. This defection is expressed in a strange name: “Egypt”. This refers not only to the country, but the name is also the symbol for such apostasy; for it was in Egypt that it first happened on a large scale. The word Egypt is therefore not only meant as the name of the country here, but of the particular state of mind, the delusion of Manas, where the higher nature is placed in the service of the lower. This is not meant as a criticism, but as a description of the facts of spiritual-historical evolution.

This stage had to be passed through; Manas had to be submerged in lower forces during three sub-races in order to then arise from its own nature. Within Egypt, however, there arose the people who were called to purify Manas, so to speak, to raise it to a higher consciousness. The Israelite people were called upon to fulfill the task of working Manas out of their own people. And the great missionary for this is Moses. The Israelites were transplanted to Egypt, where they received the inspiration for Manas. The exodus from Egypt is at the same time the exodus from Manas into the higher reality.

To achieve this, something had to happen that would have a transforming effect on the ego. Moses first became the lawgiver of Israel. The Ten Commandments had to begin with the conscious I being worked towards. God must announce himself as the expression of the ego in man.

In the third chapter of the second book of Moses, it is related how Moses, while tending Jethro's sheep, sees a burning bush from which the voice of Yahweh resounds: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” This is the birth of Manas in self-awareness. Moses says to God: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” God replies to him: “I will be with you. And this shall be the sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought my people out of Egypt, you will sacrifice to God on this mountain.” Moses asks further: “If I come to the children of Israel and say to them: The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they will say, What is his name? what shall I say to them?” And God replies to him, ‘I am that I am. So you shall say to the children of Israel, I-Am has sent me to you.’ This is the birth of clear self-awareness, which was previously vague.

Now it will be a matter of grasping God in his spirituality; to keep the God who announces himself within, truly holy. The law applies namely already to something higher. Jehovah God says to the people: “I am the Lord thy God, who brought you out of Egypt. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” But the people made an image for themselves and worshipped the golden calf, although they were commanded not to make an image or to take the name in vain. But God, who is formless, wanted to be the formless God for them.

If we want to understand this process even more precisely, we must now point out another. The I has a long history of development in humanity. In order for the I to arise, the human body, which developed towards it, had to be transformed in many ways.

In the ancient Atlanteans, part of the etheric head was still outside the physical head. This part corresponds to our forebrain. The head had to grow towards the etheric body, it had to mature towards spirituality. This was the prerequisite for

self-awareness. Independence emerged at that moment in physical evolution when a bone system first developed in humans. The stability that humans thus acquired is connected to their predisposition for spirituality. And when we look at the future of humanity, it becomes all the more clear to us how important the formation of this bone system was. How will the human race change – in its body, not in its soul? It will become more and more solid. Just as the oyster masters its shell, man will master his body, his tool, from the outside. To understand this, you only need to start from the state of sleep, in which the soul masters the physical organism from the outside. In the times to come the soul will consciously control the body as its instrument from without. The formation of the bones is therefore the potential for something great and glorious. Hence the old religious injunctions: Keep your bone system. Do not break your bones. The symbolic expression of this was the sacrifice in Egypt in remembrance of the deliverance that took place there when the first-born of the Egyptians were strangled. As an outward sign, a lamb is to be enjoyed, and the words are therefore significant: “And you shall not break a bone in him!” Thus, at the point where Manas' liberation begins, this importance of bone formation is emphatically indicated in the ritual prescription for the Passover lamb. And with the great Lamb, the representative of humanity, with Christ Jesus, what was otherwise usual with all crucified people, the legs were not broken. “That the scripture might be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.”

So the Jews were led out of Egypt. Let us see if our view is confirmed more precisely in the Bible. Yes, literally! It is one of the great achievements of spiritual science to be able to read the details of religious documents about ancient symbolic acts in their literal sense. The people of Israel go into the wilderness. What is the wilderness? When the self is absorbed in itself in order to seek the God within, then it must go into the wilderness, into solitude, and this wilderness man must then revive in himself after the awakening of the Manas in himself. When the children of Israel murmured because they were close to starvation, the Lord promised them that the next morning they would have plenty of bread. The next morning “it lay in the desert, round and small like the hoarfrost on the ground.” Then the Israelites asked each other, “Man hu - what is this?” That is the question that man asks himself when he is supposed to recognize something. They called the food that came from the shimmer manna. It is the same word as manas. Of course, philologists will object to this explanation, but that is how it is. The task of the Jewish people was to carry pure manas into the future.

To understand this better, we must step to the edge of a mystery, the fourth of the seven unspeakable mysteries. Yesterday we spoke of the mystery of numbers, today we will touch on the fourth, that of birth and death.

Birth and death, what are they in the occult sense? One must realize this. Are they always necessarily linked to life? Let us think back to pre-Lemurian times, before man descended into gross physical matter.

He had a kind of light and fire body and was embodied in etheric matter. His contemporaries on earth are beings who are slightly higher than animals in physical bodies. In the animal body, a kind of cavity is formed. The etheric man descends into the cavity and fills the physical body. The man of light had condensed himself into an air man, who now moved into the physical body. This is the moment depicted in the history of creation with the words: “And God breathed into him the living breath, and he became a living soul.” With the breath we actually draw in our etheric body. The etheric man had condensed to the air when his connection with the earthly body could be made, and he entered the lungs. With each breath we actually draw our etheric body into us.

The entire way of life was different for early man than it was for later man. Parts were constantly being released from his etheric body, and new etheric substance was constantly being drawn into it: renewal and excretion were taking place. There were also constant intensive changes within it, corresponding to the higher subtlety of the etheric body; this happened continuously without the abrupt change of birth and death. So there was no birth and death, only a transformation occurred. Dying and being born could only take place after the etheric body had entered into matter.

Strictly speaking, birth and death are changes in the state of consciousness. Death can and must only occur where a soul dwells in a body that is actually foreign to it and uses foreign organs. The soul's previous purpose in life dissolves when the physical body is discarded. These two bodies are subject to two completely different laws and worlds, since the body belongs to the earth and the soul to the astral. The spiritual man who dwells in the body receives it when he enters the world, and the earth takes it away from him again. It is as if I live in the earth as a tenant: the tenement house is subject to the property laws and regulations - so is the earthly body. Through it, man can see outward. This looking outwards is a condition for knowledge; therefore birth and death are inseparable from the arising of knowledge. The Bible says this with the words: “Your eyes will be opened and you will know what is good and what is evil.”

Thus, since Lemuria, Manas has been prepared, organized in opposition to what was formed in the lower realms. Manas enters the physical body through the senses; death is conditioned by manas, without manas there would be no death. This is the passage in the Gospel of John: “Your fathers ate manna and died.” One cannot die from the bread of life. It is Christ who brings the etheric evolution again. The Christ impulse is the penetration of Budhi.

Manas is therefore a point of transition that took place when the etheric body entered the physical body in Lemuria. Budhi is brought into the etheric body from within through Christ, but from within. This principle of inward vitalization is brought by Christianity. “I am the bread of life.” As long as the world was bound to the physical body, the principle of heredity, man had no possibility of looking beyond death. But this happens at the moment when his life body, his ether body, can be enlivened from within through Budhi, when Manas receives Budhi. Moses is therefore the messenger for Manas, Christ the bringer for Budhi. At this stage, the initiate can be outside his body.

Now we ask ourselves one more question: a people is made the bearer of the development of Manas, the whole national consciousness is condensed in the one initiate. When the Jewish people were about to forfeit their mission, the Lord said: I will destroy them, but I will make you, Moses, a great nation. This passage is to be taken literally; it is a higher initiation of Moses. In this way, Moses is given his mission in such a way that he is made an initiate with a national consciousness.

Another deeply significant fact is the part played by blood in the process of Manas, for the higher process must naturally be reflected in the blood. Moses takes the sacrificial blood and sprinkles it over the people. This is the sign of the truth of the covenant through blood relationship. When Manas has absorbed the blood and so has Budhi, then we understand the passage in the Gospel of John: “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.” If Christ is to be able to work on humanity, He must make a covenant with it through His blood. Man must receive Christ's blood in the Lord's Supper if Christ is to implant Budhi in him.

Now we must consider some cosmic-human truths – the world is really very complicated. The entities that are stones, plants and animals today are closely related to human beings. Man is not the latest creature in creation, but the earliest. Today, let us disregard earlier earth embodiments and deal with man.

When the Earth emerged from the Pralaya and condensed to the etheric Earth, it actually consisted of nothing but etheric human bodies and can be compared figuratively to the shape of a giant blackberry. Man at that time was a completely spiritualized being, endowed only with an etheric body.

The next stage is that the etheric human beings divide into two currents, one ascending and one descending. From the descending current the animals emerge. Just as when we have two brothers, one of whom becomes more and the other less like the father, so men divide into two groups, men and degenerate men, the animals. Later, these two groups became three: the plants were added. Then a fourth group separates: the mineral.

Whenever a new element is added, the human being develops a different, new nature. At the moment when the animal separates, the human being develops an astral sense; at the moment when the plant separates, etheric growth. At the moment when the stones branch off, the microcosm forms bones. Every time a new nature develops, a corresponding correlate arises in man, so that one can say of every animal, every plant, every mineral what corresponds to them in man. The lion is also in man, but overcome. Hence the correspondences and analogies between bodily organs and earthly objects, be it a lion, deadly nightshade or asbestos. Paracelsus says: Outside in the earthly world there are nothing but letters; man is their coherent inner meaning, their word. All of nature is only man laid out; in man the word is formed.

Those driven away from the stream of human development have not remained without any development at all; on the contrary, they have even reached certain developmental goals earlier than the non-specialized human being. For example, the future hardness of the human body is being prepared; the woody plant has long since achieved this in its inferior nature. Certain poisons also represent a developmental advantage over humans. Poison that is found in a plant was once also in man. If man had developed in the same sense as these substances, then he could, for example, excrete arsenic from himself. If he contracts cholera, the same symptoms occur as if he had taken arsenic. That is why Paracelsus called the cholera patient an arsenicicum.

Just as with wood and poisons, so too with the plant sap, the wine, which is a substance that has rushed ahead of human development. This can be examined in more detail. The wine, the sap that flows through the grapevine, is a one-sided development of the blood. What the blood breathes gives carbonic acid, alcohol. Alcohol is, so to speak, future blood. The plant sap breathing out carbonic acid is related to the present blood as the blood of the future is to the blood of the present. From the cosmic knowledge we experience the relationship between wine and blood. Christ may say of the wine: This is my blood. For Christ is the representative of the future humanity. His teaching itself is a living source to which humanity develops. Let us think of the parable of the vine and the branches, of the transformation of water into wine. The vine is only a developmental anticipation, analogous to the anticipated hardening of the wood. Just as the plant today transforms its watery juices into wine, so man cannot do it today, but he will transform his blood later.

From this point of view, light is thrown on the mystery of the transformation of water into wine at the marriage at Cana. Why at Cana in Galilee? Galilee (el gojim) is the land of the mixed race, of the non-Aryans. There racial mixing had always been very strong, thus the removal of the barriers between peoples; there the marriage of different bloods took place. The mother of Jesus is also present, as she is later at the cross. She is never called “Mary” in the Gospel of John. On the contrary, the two other women at the cross are explicitly named “Mary”, and one of them is referred to as the sister of the mother of Jesus. Jesus' mother is not Mary.

We concluded yesterday by trying to shed light on what is narrated in the Gospel of John about the wedding at Cana, and we emphasized the particular importance of the fact that it says “the mother of Jesus was there”. John never refers to her as Mary, nor does he refer to himself as John, but only as “the disciple whom the Lord loved.” We saw that the wedding in Galilee refers to the connection between people beyond the barriers of blood. Furthermore, where the crucifixion of Christ is described, it says: “And standing beside the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” According to the account of the writer of the Gospel of John, the mother of Jesus was therefore not called Mary, because otherwise two sisters would have had the same name. Attention is also drawn to the words: “Woman, behold your son! After that, he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home. Today we want to bring the building blocks for the correct understanding of the following. Let us remember once again that John, or rather the writer of the Gospel of John, was an initiate; that a truly initiated person wrote this gospel, one who saw heaven open and had precise knowledge of the astral and devachanic worlds. John also indicates how to attain such a state: through meditation on the opening words. If you let these words live again and again in your soul, they will become magic words through which you will gradually ascend to an understanding of the Gospel of John. John wants to tell us: If you want to go the Christian way, then you must lift yourselves up to the devachan in the way I am telling it here, and then the deeds of Christ Jesus and everything that is connected with him and has happened to him will appear to you as I am presenting them to you. The Gospel of John wants to be a book of life that presents experiences from one's own body. We cannot understand the gospel until we no longer see the events as mere historical facts, but as things that were seen by John with higher vision and his mind. The wedding at Cana is also a real event, but the facts become symbols. The ordinary person views this wedding with its wine miracle differently than an awakened person like John. To the latter, it becomes the prophetic prediction for the entire future course of human development, everything that was to come about through Christ.

We are now living in the fifth sub-race of the fifth main race. What took place in Palestine falls within the fourth sub-race, the Greco-Latin race. The Jewish people emerged from the third sub-race, preparing for their mission in Egypt, whence they had come. Jesus was one of them. The third main race now extends into the fourth, the fourth into the fifth, the fifth into the sixth. Thus we have to distinguish three epochs. In the esoteric language they are called three days of creation.

But on the third day there was a wedding at Cana: the writer of the Gospel of John sees there that which will only happen in the future, in the sixth race: the marriage of Manas, which expresses itself in the law, with Budhi, the grace, the joy, the great marriage of the whole manasic element with Budhi. This can only happen when the task of Christianity has been completely solved. “He who does not forsake father and mother and brother and sister for my sake cannot be my disciple,” that is, love must be taken out of narrow communities and made into universal human love; it must turn from what is blood-related to what is spiritually related. So in the wedding at Cana we have visualized that which is to come to pass in the future. It is no mere accident that it says, “And on the third day,” for that is to be taken literally as the Day of the World. Every number, every word, everything in the Gospel of John is highly significant.

One is actually amazed when most theologians address Jehovah as the “Father” of Christ. In Luke, it is stated plainly and clearly where the archangel Gabriel announces the birth of Jesus to Mary (Sophia): “Do not be afraid, you have found favor with God; the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you...” and never anything else. So the Father of Christ is the “Holy Ghost.” This is not just according to the Gospel of John, but to an ancient tradition. Christ says, “I and the Father are one.” I and the Holy Ghost are one, does that mean.

Now the question arises: Who was the mother of Jesus? To recognize this, knowledge of the nature of initiation is necessary. Only then will we clearly see that we are dealing here with processes in higher worlds. At the same time, this will prepare us to understand the Gospel of John from the 13th chapter onwards.

At this point, we will now insert the teaching on initiation in some detail. For this is not only about the Gospel of John, but about theosophy. The teaching of the initiations teaches us about the “Mother of Jesus”, what she is and what the “Holy Spirit” is. Today, there is often the misconception that there is only one way to initiation. This is not correct. There is only one view from the mountain, but different paths can lead to the summit. The same applies to the truth. There are different paths to it as well. Which path is the most suitable for you depends on where you are on the mountain. The “mountain” was always the expression for the ascent, for example the summit of the mountain at the feeding of the five thousand.

There are three different paths to initiation, corresponding to the sub-eras of our main era. The sub-eras do not simply follow one another in time, but live side by side for a long time. The difference is much stronger internally than externally. For example: an Indian today can still more easily than a European immerse himself in his sympathetic nervous system by disconnecting his thinking. If a European, especially a man, wanted to follow the Oriental path, he would need strong means to loosen up his entire bone structure and physical constitution, which would not be possible without lasting damage, just to make the physical possible. Therefore such an attempt is not at all advisable for the European, and to achieve a good result with it is almost impossible. Initiation itself is nothing other than a complete transformation of the inner nature. For the present-day European, the Rosicrucian path, which has been cultivated since the 14th to 15th century, is the best.

The three paths of initiation are as follows: the Indian-Oriental yoga path, the Christian-Gnostic path until the 15th century, and the Christian-Rosicrucian path since the 15th century. The first is not for Europeans. The second is suitable for people of the middle zone, it is accessible to us, but the Rosicrucian path, which was taken from the 14th century onwards, is more appropriate. The Christian-Gnostic path does bring truth for the individual, but the disciple will not be able to consistently carry it out in modern life and provide answers to the manifold objections of today's science and culture, as he is able to do with the help of the Rosicrucian path.

The oriental yoga path has a series of stages for which one must first prepare. The seven steps can be practiced in parallel, but the person must strictly place himself under a so-called guru. The guru is aware of the state of his inner development. The Indian path goes straight up into the astral world. In the beginning, the student is very helpless there, hence the strict submission to the guru, because he lacks the ability to correct his own errors when perceiving facts that are in stark contradiction to one another.

The first stage is Yama, that is, refraining. In the physical world, the student's perceptions and assertions are corrected by the physical world, reality corrects him. But it is no longer so in the astral world. There the impressions rush in on him in images and colors, in forms and figures, which are in constant change and ceaseless motion. In addition, what one's own soul thinks and wills also becomes entities, and the student is then not yet able to distinguish his own and other astral beings. Therefore, in the astral world, he must have direction from within in order to stand securely. For how does this world appear? With a plant, for instance, it rises like a violet flame. The properties of things dissolve into colors, stand out from the things, the astral space is filled with colors, properties and sounds surging to and fro. These colors and sounds must go to the astral beings and fill them. Then some elemental spirit will appear to you in a bright yellow color. To be able to distinguish and to know what it is, certainty is necessary. In moments when these elemental spirits want to guide you to something, strong forces arise in man's inner nature: the person's own soul expresses itself in this, and therefore they drive him where the soul wants to go. In order to guide the helpless disciple correctly, he must live in the soul of the guru, see with his eyes, hence the necessity of the strict authority of the guru. In everything he undertakes, for example even buying a house, the disciple has to ask the guru. - In practicing Yama, one must practice refraining. One must refrain from: killing, stealing, lying, coveting, the consumption of alcoholic drinks and debauchery. These demands are much more difficult for a European to fulfill than it appears, because under the current time, life and cultural conditions in Europe, it is hardly possible to know whether the student can fulfill these conditions. For example, he kills with every breath if he does not regulate his breathing. He has his money in a bank or in some company: what does he know about what happens to it? The concept of “omission” must be very strictly defined for the student, because the point is that no one should be harmed by us at all. The only possibility for partial compliance with these conditions is to become more and more frugal.

The second stage, Niyama, prescribes observing cult symbols. Indian training strictly requires the student to take part in ceremonies and submit to a ritual. In doing so, one must visualize what one is going through internally. An example of such a ritual is given in the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass, which, with its four parts, is the expression of what also took place in the ancient mysteries. It consists of the gospel (the proclamation), the sacrifice of the lower self, the transformation into the higher self, and communion: union with the divine. What really happens on the astral plane happens there in the image on the physical plane. It is important to see this in pictures. They absorb the picture, and one night the astral world can absorb the student and become a force within him. First see in pictures what is to take place on the higher planes.

The third step, Asana, is the correct bodily posture. Today's European man of culture has hardly any idea of the importance of the correct bodily posture. There are powerful currents continually flowing through the world and through the human body, and these ether currents are of great influence on man. This was known in ancient India, as well as how much depends on the correct bodily posture for the student. The animal has a horizontal position in relation to the earth's axis, the plant a vertical one. If we draw a line from the flower through the root, we meet the center of the earth. In the plant we have the image of what is shown to us in the structure of the human being, only in reverse; what corresponds to the human head is found at the bottom in the root, and the plant holds its reproductive organs up to the sun in chastity. The horizontal position of the animal and the upright position of man and plant form a cross, hence Plato's saying: “The soul of the world is crucified on the body of the world.” Just as these lines run in the cosmos, so the currents run through all the organs. The Indian yoga student had to place his limbs in a certain direction so that the world currents could work in him; this is not possible for the European human being.

Fourthly: Pranayama. This is the teaching of correct breathing. Man actually kills all the time through his breathing process. We inhale oxygen, mix it with blood and exhale carbonic acid, which is toxic to humans and animals. We would die if the plants did not breathe the carbonic acid, retained the carbon and exhaled the oxygen again. This cycle is of the utmost importance and makes the existence of humans and animals possible in the first place.

Human: plant
animal: breathes in oxygen, breathes out
breathes out carbonic acid: carbonic acid, and builds up its body from
breathes in oxygen: carbon.

Pranayama, the rhythmic breathing process, is supposed to gradually overcome the killing process. Man will not only expand his consciousness, but his whole life. There is carbon in the blood, which burns with the inhaled oxygen to form carbonic acid, which is excreted; the plant separates the components, it breathes out oxygen, and man absorbs it. And so the cycle begins anew. In the future, man will carry out the cycle within himself. When man is able to build his own body out of carbon, then he will have attained his future state. Carbon, coal, corresponds to what the occult literature called the philosopher's stone, lapis philosophorum. Those who are familiar with Rosicrucianism know what is meant by the saying that man will build a transparent body for himself out of carbon, just as a diamond is formed from coal. That will happen.

In the future, man will be able to remodel his blue blood through the lymph glands, which will then play a very important role, and use it, as they do now with the useful red blood, to shape his body. The pineal gland will in the future be an internal apparatus for the process of converting used blood into usable blood.

Closely connected with this is the rhythm of breathing. The breathing process therefore holds the future transformation of the human organism. At the moment when man works his way down into his lower bodies, he ascends to higher planes.

Five: Pratyahara, that is right living. Man must become capable of living purely within the soul; he must be able to have perceptions within that are completely independent of the outer world. The ideal of meditation is to be able to become blind and deaf to one's surroundings.

Sixth: Dharana, the collection of thoughts, complete mastery within one's imagination, so that a person has no impressions other than those they want. If they can then take only one out of a series of ideas and live in it for a long, long time, then this process, in which they remain at rest with their whole consciousness, is called Dhyana.

Seventh: When this is achieved, one must let go of even this one image, while remaining conscious with one's entire soul. One retains the form of the image, without content. With this, the student has reached the highest level, Samadhi, the complete absorption in a thought. Now the spiritual world can flow into him.

Through Indian yoga training, one reaches the same level in occult development as through the Christian-Gnostic path. Even today there are people who follow the Christian-Gnostic path. In this path, one distinguishes seven stages.

First: the washing of feet. The disciple must develop a very definite feeling over a long period of time, and this must live in the soul: the law must become clear to him that no ascent of one is possible without the descent of another. For every initiate there are so many criminals. When one attains more knowledge and insight, it is his first duty to reach down and pull the others up after him. This applies to nature as well as to man. The plant would say to the earth: Thou lifeless earth, in humility — this must be the basic mood of the disciple — I bend down to you, for I owe my existence to you. Christ Himself sets us an example of this in the washing of the feet, in which He shows us the feeling of the innermost humility. If the disciple develops this feeling within himself, two experiences occur to him, an outer symptom and an inner astral experience. The outer symptom is: the disciple has the very definite sensation of water washing around his feet; he perceives the state of a foot washing. Internally, the Christian disciple experiences the image of this as a real vision.

Secondly: the scourging. Pain and torment come upon the person, which want to crush him. He must say to himself: You must learn to endure all this with dignity. When this has been practiced long enough, two symptoms arise again. The outer one: stabbing pains all over the body, as if from scourging. This is proof that the exercise has worked into the etheric body. The inner, astral experience is the image of the scourging.

Three: The Crowning with Thorns. The disciple must learn to bear the scorn and derision with which his innermost being is assailed. Headaches lasting for weeks are the outer symptom for this; inwardly it is the astral picture of one's own crowning with thorns.

Fourth: the carrying of the cross and crucifixion. One's own body becomes something alien. It becomes like a piece of wood, like the cross that Christ carried. The personal must completely fade away. The disciple must become free of his body, completely free. Internally, he experiences the image of the crucifixion; externally, the stigmata appear at the points of Christ's wounds. The side wound appears on the right side of the chest.

Five: mystical death. This is a very high level of experience, an extremely significant one. The realization dawns that all the contemplation of things was an illusion. Terrible darkness pours into the room, the whole world sinks away. One comes to know only one thing: the true nature of all evil, all the torments and sufferings of this world. This is the descent into hell. Once you have gone through this exhaustively, the moment comes when the curtain tears. You now see a new aspect of the world, you see the world from the other side.

Sixth: the entombment. Everything in the world becomes part of the student, as if belonging to his own body. He becomes one with the earth, the whole earth becomes the body that one has. One is laid in the earth, and the earth covers one.

Seven: Resurrection and Ascension. This ascent can no longer be described in words of human language and its glory can hardly be imagined.

Now today we only want to give the scheme of the third type of initiation, the Christian-Rosicrucian schooling, which is the most favorable for the modern man. Only when we have grasped this type can we comprehend what takes place in man at initiation and what St. John, or rather the writer of the Gospel of St. John, describes. The Rosicrucian path also has seven steps:

First: study.
Second: imagination.
Third: Learning the Occult Scripture.
Fourth: Rhythm of Life.
Fifth: Correspondence of Microcosm and Macrocosm.
Sixth: Contemplation, Inner Religious Contemplation in the Macrocosm.
Seventh: Bliss.

This is the third way to reach the mountaintop. A real event that you will find described in the Gospel of John is the descent of the Spirit as a dove upon Jesus. This also refers to the higher birth, where that is received which is called the Son of Man. The Gospel of John 1:18 also contains something mysterious: “God has never seen anyone with his eyes. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father of the world, has become the guide to this vision.” This is to be taken literally. The Gospel of John contains the expression of astral writing. You know that on the astral plane everything is reversed, so you have to learn to read in reverse.

Today we will deal with the initiation steps of the so-called Rosicrucian, Occidental occult training. Everything that is presented here is by no means to be understood as general rules for life, but can only be the task of the one who voluntarily submits to this training and thus initially stands out from the general human race in order to later be able to pass on what he has achieved. Once he has decided to become a disciple, there should be no possibility for him to criticize this training, the way it is conducted, or the behavior of the occult teacher. He must put himself into the hands of the teacher's experience. If this is impossible, and if he entertains any trace of mistrust or dissatisfaction towards his teacher, then it is better to sever the tie between himself and the teacher. For only an affection based on trust and recognizing the teacher's authority can establish the right relationship between the student and the teacher, which should be beneficial for the student. The student is always free to leave the occult training. But if one wants to undergo it, one must also be clear about the fact that the rules in question are given out of a firmly established truth in the sense of the most advanced individualities, those whom we have to regard as the great teachers of mankind, and that one can only progress if one obeys the rules. It must also be clear that this path with its instructions has already been tried and tested by many hundreds and has been successful.

In the three paths that we have now discussed, the relationship between the student and the teacher is different. In the Indian yoga training, the relationship between student and guru is very strict: absolute, complete submission to the guru is an absolute requirement. Since the student is not yet familiar with the higher worlds when following the Indian path, it is necessary that he is guided by his personal guru.

The relation is different in the case of the Christian training. There the teacher is the guide to the great Guru, Christ Jesus. A personal connection, a personal relationship of mind to Christ Jesus, is absolutely necessary for the disciple. If he cannot believe with all the power of his soul in Christ Jesus and in what He has done and exemplified for humanity, he cannot follow the Christian Path.

In the Rosicrucian training, the relationship is the freest and easiest. The teacher is the faithful friend, the guide within the narrower limits of his student's occult experience. He is not concerned with the student's daily activities, he trusts him and allows him full freedom. There is no compulsion or command anywhere, only advice is given. But there must be a friendly relationship of trust between teacher and student. Without this, the training would remain in the realm of the manasic, without it, Budhi could not be implanted at all. The power generated by the relationship of trust is necessary for occult training. Without it, the dormant powers in the student cannot be awakened.

Since the Rose Cross Way indicates study as the first step, it might be thought that this training is not for everyone. However, this is not correct; it is there for everyone, even for the simplest person. Because this study is understood to mean popular Theosophy, everything that you hear and read here in these lectures and in my or other spiritual scientific writings; that is already such a study. It is the elementary occult teaching given to man. Through it he is to become free from the prejudices of life, from the suggestion of science, which completely dominates the modern man and has already caused much mischief, blocking his unbiased view of the world, the way to impartiality, which he must find in order to have a clear judgment. In the Occident, free thinking is no longer common; instead, everything is suggestion, established dogma through power and authority. Even in the simplest concepts we have this suggestive influence: the suggestion of scholars, the suggestion of science, the suggestion that emanates from the individual. Our modern life is dominated by the family, by the relationship between the sexes. The theosophist, however, should penetrate more deeply into preparatory, logical, and sense-free thinking. He should immerse himself in such trains of thought as far as possible. For this purpose, to train such a way of thinking, I have written the two books 'Truth and Science' and 'Philosophy of Freedom', so that one can immerse oneself in such trains of thought. It is less important to understand the content in question than to live in these trains of thought. Free, sharp, rational thinking is necessary because it gives the student a certain independence, but this thinking is also a sure guide to the higher worlds. We encounter new and different things in the various worlds; but what remains the same in all worlds is thinking. Everywhere there are different perceptions, different experiences, but logic is the same in all worlds. This only changes on the Budhiplan. A remarkable change now occurs in the student. His thoughts expand to embrace other worlds. The thoughts that a person usually has here are not mental, they relate only to the physical plane. They are only the shadow images of mental reality. Now he is approaching its reality.

Next to study, the second faculty we have is imagination. Everyone must go through it at some time. Man gradually frees himself from the dry sensual contemplation of things. He tries to see in them only the expression of something that stands behind them and begins to look at the world in the Goethean sense according to the word: “Everything that is transitory is only a parable.” The pupil must carry out this deepened way of thinking systematically. Things must become parables, symbols, to him. When we look at the rose, it is a symbol for a certain form of beauty; the autumn crocus is the image of a fine, melancholy inwardness.

And so every thing has a meaning at its basis. Things are in fact parables in reality. The whole sensual world is an illusion; the spiritual world is the real one. There must be and be achieved an interaction between people and the spiritual world. We must keep our thoughts and our soul life fluid; we must not form rigid forms. It has already been pointed out in Lucifer-Gnosis that through a continuous, loving contemplation, the qualities are released from things and then flow through space. Thus, for example, something like a flame formation seems to rise from a plant; behind this is the spiritual. In these flowing, flooding sensations of color and taste, which have no correlate here on the physical plane, the human being must now find his way, and then he is ready for the teaching of occult writing to begin.

The third thing to learn is how to read the occult writing. This helps us to correctly line up the manifold phenomena like pearls on a string. The occult writing is not arbitrarily conceived, but represents the currents that flow through the world. Something that plays a major role in spiritual reality is two spirals rolled into one another, forming a vortex. At the root of the nose is the predisposition for the two-petalled lotus flower, which will develop into a higher organ of perception in the future. The sign of the vortex corresponds to this etheric organ. It is similar to the sign of Cancer, in which the Sun was at the dawn of the Atlantean race. We still have this and the other signs of the constellations in the calendar. A very important occult symbol is the staff of Mercury with the snake coiled around it. It is the archetypal form of the letter S. Those who know the occult language can evoke the relevant signs as thought-forms; in certain cases they then have power over others. In John's Gospel 8:3-11, there is an account of Christ and the adulteress: Christ wrote signs of the occult writing on the ground with his finger to create the right thought forms in the accusing crowd and to prompt them to the right action at the right moment. “Let him who is without guilt throw the first stone at her.” He hands over her guilt to karma, to the law of equal return. Christ wanted to say: every deed carries its reward within itself. “Go and sin no more.” Moses received instruction in the seeing of these occult signs in his conversation with God (Exodus 3 and 4). There Moses learned to know the occult writing and was endowed with the power to enable him to fulfill his task. That he had to throw a rod, which became a snake, means that he learned the occult writing.

If we imagine a vortex and think of its two parts in red and blue, we see the two etheric currents that underlie the red and blue blood.

A fourth is the rhythm of life. All higher life is based on it. Nature and the cosmos know nothing but rhythmic laws. The orbits of the stars, every flower, even the intimate life of animals know an exact rhythm. Could you imagine a violet blooming in August instead of March? Rhythm is everywhere present in nature. But the closer we get to the human being, the more the rhythm changes into chaos. The weekly timetable of our schoolchildren is still a true blessing. A person should bring a certain rhythm into themselves, create a new cosmos. This happens through daily repetitive actions, meditation at a certain time of day, and also through regulating the breathing process.

The fifth is the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm. When a person finds something within himself that corresponds to a fact in the macrocosm, he first really gets to know himself. How can a person know when the sun was separated from the earth? He can find out by looking into the inside of his eye. Another point in time is when man began to say “I” to himself. This happened in Atlantis, at the time of the Primitive Semites, when a certain point in the physical head coincided with another in the etheric head. The earth was still covered with dense fog, and certain conditions outside and inside man corresponded. An important exercise is for the student to concentrate on a certain point between the eyebrows and to allow himself to be guided by an idea given to him by his teacher.

In the sixth stage, contemplation, the student goes out of himself and expands his consciousness to include the whole world. The higher self is outside of us, we must seek it in all beings, for we are all one. This also speaks from Jupiter and Venus. There are Theosophists who only want to seek the divine within themselves. But in truth, it is the lower personality that speaks from them. One such person once went around saying, “I am Atman, I am Atman.” That was the only thing he knew. Brooding within oneself leads nowhere. We are everything, and we must immerse ourselves in all beings. Immersing oneself in one's own inner being is only a detour to doing so.

When you have come so far as to be able to empathize with all beings, then you have reached the seventh stage, that of divinity. The whole nature of the world takes on a spiritual physiognomy. Everything that man sees around him becomes an expression of something higher. Just as tears are not just salty drops with a certain chemical composition, but an expression of the soul, so the plant cover of the earth is an expression of the earth soul, which is a reality. Some flowers appear to us as joyful eyes, others as tears of the earth spirit, which it weeps over the sadness that prevails in the cosmos. It is true what Goethe has the earth spirit say:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
weaving back and forth
birth and grave,
an eternal sea,
a changing weaving,
a glowing life:
So I create at the whirring loom of time
And work the living garment of divinity.

This is how we got to know the skeleton of the Rosicrucian schooling.

Which training you undergo is not crucial. You can develop your soul powers and gain insights into the supersensible world through all three paths. Of course, it is good to consider which path you choose based on where you are at the foot of the mountain you are climbing.

What does the disciple achieve when the initiation has taken him to the summit up there? A very real thing. Remember the description of the human being. At the time of Christ Jesus, the majority of people had developed part of the astral body and part of the etheric body. It was different for the initiates. When the chela had passed the necessary stages, he was admitted to the initiation. He had to have worked through his entire astral body. There was nothing left in his astral body that he did not control. In general, passions rule over man, not man over passions. Man must be master of his desires and passions if he wants to become a disciple. Then he must work on his etheric body, he must transform the qualities of his temperament and bring it to the point where he can consciously change his movements, his gait, his writing. So it is not only about becoming moral, but one must become a completely different person.

When the entire astral body has been worked through by the I, it has become manas, the spiritual self, and is transformed into it. The transformation of the etheric body is called Budhi; he has become the spirit of life. When the initiate seizes the physical body for transformation, he then influences the planet and makes himself the center of cosmic forces; then he develops in himself Atman, the Father, the spiritual man.

At first it is an unconscious work that man does on his etheric body and his astral body. This takes place in the general process of human development. The chela begins to consciously take this work into his own hands. With unceasing practice, a certain moment is reached where the entire astral body is transformed. Then everything in the astral body can imprint itself into the etheric body. Only then may this happen, not before, because otherwise bad qualities would be imprinted. What has been acquired then goes through all incarnations with the causal body. The immortalization, the vitalization of all that the astral body contains, is an extremely important process. The astral body cannot discard this in any Kamaloka, it carries this with it forever. Therefore, the previous purification is very necessary.

The impressing of what the astral body contains into the etheric body was carried out in the old initiation by placing the disciple in a crypt and laying him in a kind of coffin. Sometimes he was also tied to a kind of cross and placed in a lethargic state, in which the etheric body emerged from the physical body at the same time as the astral body. Something similar, namely the emergence of a part of the etheric body, occurs when a limb falls asleep; one can then see the affected part of the etheric body hanging out of the body. The initiation itself was performed by a particularly high initiate. Much else was done according to prescribed rules. Such a sleep was different from an ordinary sleep. Only the physical body remained behind in the so-called coffin, and the etheric and astral bodies went out; so it was a kind of death. This was necessary to free the etheric body, because only then could the astral body imprint itself on the etheric body. This state lasted three and a half days. When the initiate was then directed by the initiator back to the physical body, one last formula was impressed upon him, with which he woke up. These were the words: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!” that is, “My God, my God, how hast Thou glorified me!” At the same time, a certain star, Sirius in the Egyptian initiation, shone towards him. Now he had become a new man. There was a very specific reason why the completely spiritualized astral body was given a very special name: it was called the “virgin,” the “Virgin Sophia.” And the etheric body, which absorbs what the Virgin Sophia carried within herself, was called the “Holy Spirit.” And that which arose from both was the “Son of Man”. The proclamation and birth of Jesus of Nazareth are based on these mystery teachings.

This inner experience was also depicted in the image of the Holy Ghost as a dove hovering over the chalice. This is the moment described in the Gospel of John 1:32: “And John bore witness, saying, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on Him’.” Imagine this happening on the astral plane, and you have a real event. The one who was allowed to experience these great things outside of the mysteries in the physical world was allowed to initiate others as an initiator. John's Gospel 11, 1-45: the resurrection of Lazarus is nothing more than an initiation performed on Lazarus.

We cannot take the gospel of John deeply enough. Even the giving of names is something extremely important. The names that appear in the Bible are taken from the inner being of man. An example of this are the names of the twelve apostles. They point to the relationship between them and the Lord, the Christ, who is the head and has as a sign the ram or the lamb. John means the one who proclaims the Budhi. You can divide the human being into twelve parts; the whole human being is a twelve-fold being. The human being as he is now gradually came into being. Each time the sun entered a new constellation, a new organ developed in the human being. For example, when the sun was in the sign of Leo, the heart developed. As the human being ascends, he incorporates a group soul. The twelve parts of the human being can be found in the names of the twelve apostles, where they are incorporated. What the twelve constituent parts are in an ordinary body, that is what the twelve apostles signify in the collective body of Christ. The part that represents the ego, in which selfishness rules and brings about the death of Christ, is called Judas Iscariot. In this naming, it was added that he had the bag, the money, the lower principle of greed.

The significance of this naming can also be seen from the fact that the one who, in the great plan of the world, is the spiritual representative of the development of mankind, is given the name “the Son of Man”. His father is the “Holy Spirit” and his mother “the Virgin Sophia”. You can find this again in the Gospel of John 19:25-27, in the scene under the cross: “Woman, behold, your son!” “Behold, your mother!” The writer of the Gospel of John, the disciple whom Christ Himself initiated, took the wisdom and wrote the Gospel of John, which contains the wisdom of Christianity.

We must not forget that these things are facts, but as such they are the expression of profound spiritual realities.

In these lectures, we have become acquainted with the ascent of man to the summit of knowledge and wisdom. I have shown you that a kind of foreshadowing of the event of Palestine took place over and over again during the initiation into the mysteries. The initiation ceremonies culminated in a three-day death-like sleep, through which the initiate, when he woke up, found within himself that which is called the higher man. Blessed - that is, imbued with the soul - is he who beholds the spiritual worlds. And now should become blessed he who believes and does not see. The time was to come when what had formerly taken place in the soul of the individual within the mysteries would now be enacted before the eyes of mankind as an historical fact. To understand this, let us first speak of the effects of initiation.

The man of everyday, who sinks into sleep tired from the burden and toil of the day, is in a state similar to that of a plant. He feels nothing, he knows nothing of himself. During this time, the astral body works on the physical body to repair the forces it has expended. If the person still has an echo of his night experiences in the etheric and physical bodies, we say: his sleep was animated by dreams. But usually, in the average person, these images are blurred and incomprehensible in memory.

Not so with the disciple. We distinguish between the bright consciousness of the day, the consciousness of dreams, and dreamless sleep. If the disciple patiently carries out the exercises given to him, the time will come when order is brought into the chaotic confusion of dreams. The disciple begins to get to know the real world of sleep. He no longer brings isolated memories into the consciousness of the day, but attains continuity of consciousness, constant awareness. This announces itself gradually. At first, the student has a feeling upon awakening like a swimmer emerging from the water, remembering things that never occur on earth. More and more details emerge from the sea of the astral plane. At first, the student's ability to perceive and remember develops very slowly. Later, he becomes aware of how he can transfer his experiences into his waking consciousness. He can now take what he has perceived throughout the night, the world in which he has lived, and the events in it, into this physical world. The time is now beginning for him when every plant becomes for him the expression of a spiritual essence of the earth, a real member of a great earth spirit. He is an earth man, the inhabitant of this world, and as a spiritual man, the inhabitant of a spiritual world. There live and weave in his soul spiritual currents, spiritual beings that arise and now become conscious to him. His consciousness grows together with the other. He knows that his consciousness is only a part of the earth consciousness. Imagine this earth as a living being with its own consciousness, and now think of the individual consciousness as a mirror image of the one great earth consciousness. It is an illusion to believe that man has a consciousness that is unique to him. Man is only on the way to becoming one with the earth and its consciousness, thus to becoming an earth son; the chela is so to a greater degree. The representative of this one great earth consciousness is the Christ Jesus. As the Word made flesh and blood, He represents the embodied future ideal of earth and human consciousness, to which all men will one day attain. Christ Jesus leads us into this time by allowing this consciousness to work through him as the firstborn, so that people will reach this state more quickly. He who has already reached the summit and draws others up to himself can lead to the summits with particular certainty. He who hung on the cross carried the consciousness of the earth in his own breast. The entire Gospel of John is written in a remarkably imaginative language. Let us take an example. What does it mean when it says, “The disciple whom the Lord loves”? Imagine that the writer of the Gospel of John is speaking of himself when he says, “whom the Lord loves” and “who lies at the breast of Jesus.” This disciple is the external representative of the heart, the organ of Budhi. What the heart is in the human body, that is John in the midst of the twelve disciples.

Let us take the thirteenth chapter: the washing of the feet (13, 1-20). What does this washing of the feet mean? Man is a being bound in two ways, he is a double being: with his head turned towards the sun and with his feet towards the earth. What must still become pure in man? The part assigned to the earth must still be cleansed by the representative of perfected humanity (13:8-10). Peter, that is, the rock, is the part facing the earth. If this is also to become pure, it must be washed by Christ. Hence Christ's words: “If your part of the earth is not washed, you have no part in me.” To Peter's reply: “Lord, not only the feet, but also the hands and the head,” Christ says to him: “He who has been washed needs nothing but to wash his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not all.” Christ knew well who should bring him death: Judas Iscariot, the representative of the selfish principle.

And further, verse 18: “He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.” How can Jesus, he who has the consciousness of the earth and feels the whole earth as his body, say these words? He can. Put yourself in the consciousness of the earth as in that of a human being. If the earth had consciousness, it would speak to man: “He who eats my bread tramples me underfoot”. Christ has this consciousness, Christ as the representative of all earthly consciousness may say this.

What will come to pass when that love which He lived out will one day spread to all mankind and all people will have become brothers? Then there will be one example. People have distributed the goods of the earth among themselves, but one thing, which is the outer shell of the earth, the atmosphere, cannot be shared. And just as this “shell” of the earth cannot be shared, so too will the goods be shared later. This is also expressed symbolically in the crucifixion of Christ in the distribution of his garments among the soldiers (John's Gospel 19: 24). The skirt of Christ Jesus as the covering of Earth consciousness is unstitched and made of one piece. The outer garment, which is divided into four parts, represents the four main continents, the indivisible skirt, that is the indivisible air circle. The sublimity that underlies Christianity, the moral and spiritual cosmic, so magnificently expressed in the Gospel of John, is contained in the fact that all expressions of Christ Jesus point to it: this is how one will live in the future, as Christ Jesus has shown.

What Christ Jesus did when He fulfilled the saying, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:48), this feeding of the five thousand, is not only an event of the present time, but one of deep, lasting significance. The earth is the body of Christ Jesus: the few seeds, the disciples, are multiplied. These are the things that make Christianity so great, because the physical and the moral coincide so wonderfully. The most wonderful monism is reflected in Christianity through the way John gives it.

Nor is there any contradiction between Christianity and karma. Christianity appeared at a time when it had something to offer to humanity, which was dying of death, that brought life then and still lives now. Christianity was preceded by a time when the doctrine of reincarnation was common knowledge. Man at that time regarded his present life only as something temporary: the Egyptian slave, who was afflicted by the hardest fate and bowed down deeply, said to himself: “It is one of many existences. In this he found consolation and strength and hope for the present and the future. He said to himself: “My life is dark now, but later it will be light.” Or: “I have brought this upon myself through my own fault, now I will bear it and make amends.”

We find a high spiritual culture among various primitive peoples who used the simplest tools. At that time, man was not yet so attached to the earth. Humanity first had to be educated in this. The conquest of the material, everything that we have around us today, would not have been possible if man had not learned to love the earth. To achieve this, he had to be deprived of an overview of his repeated lives on earth. It is a wise Christian teaching that the one life was placed at the center for a time. This had to be so in order to later reveal the truth of reincarnation to man at a higher level. That is why Christ does not speak about karma in his discourses to the people, but in the intimate circle with his disciples he speaks of the existence of karma.

In the spiritual world, everything is connected as cause and effect, and judgment belongs to what is exercised by the deepest and purest being on earth. In occult writings, everything a person has done is inscribed in the Akasha Chronicle. Once this has been grasped in the future, there will be no more worldly punishment. The Christ shows how judgment will be administered in the future in chapter 8, verses 1-11, of the Gospel of John: it is the story of the adulteress. What Christ says and does there is meant to show that everything that man has done is written in the Earth Akashic Records. This is the direct transfer of jurisdiction to the self-fulfilling law of karma. The living consciousness of the Earth's Akashic Records is Christ Himself, and so judgment is handed over to Him by the Father, and He has power to forgive sins and take them upon Himself (John 5:21, 22, 23): “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wills. For the Father judges no man, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He that honors not the Son honors not the Father who has sent him.

All human earthly karma lives in Christ; He is the living embodiment of earthly karma. That is why the teaching of Christianity is about the personal living relationship of each individual to Christ, which at the same time gives the awareness that Christ forgives sins, that somewhere the balance is to be sought in Christ Jesus. Salvation is to be sought with him, he represents earthly justice. In this subtle way of studying and immersing yourself in it again and again, you will be able to grasp every sentence in the Gospel of John and penetrate deeper into it, at least into the part that you can understand theosophically.

Man slowly ascends to higher consciousness. At first he still differentiates: I have pain, I have pleasure. Once man has risen above this, he ascends through initiation from physical everyday consciousness to the second, to astral consciousness, where the astral world appears as in living images. In Eastern wisdom, a distinction is made between five such levels of consciousness: firstly, physical everyday consciousness = Jagrat; secondly, dream consciousness = Swapna; thirdly, devachan consciousness = Sushupti; fourthly, Turiya consciousness; fifthly, nirvana consciousness.

In the first and second stages, one can do no more than remember what one experienced in the dream; one does not yet have the realization that sets in during the third stage, the devachan consciousness. This stage is reached when one experiences not only the astral but also the purely spiritual world. If you can fill your waking consciousness with it and see the world as spiritually permeated, then you have attained Turiya. If you perceive the essence of the world, you have attained Nirvana.

When Christ says, “Before Father Abraham was, I am,” He points out that a higher consciousness lives in Him. When the crowd wants to stone Him, He “goes out of the temple” (John 8:58, 59), that is, He rises to a consciousness that is not accessible to His persecutors.

Those who ascend must purify all their members and cast out all that weighs them down. Christ, as the Representative of the consciousness on earth that is purifying itself and ascending, casts out what is impure: the spirit of trading and bartering, the spirit of greed for money, will be cast out. This is the meaning of the cleansing of the Temple, which is at the same time a symbol for the future of humanity. After the expulsion of the money changers and merchants, Jesus says: “Destroy this Temple, and on the third day I will raise it up.” “But He was speaking of the Temple of His body,” it continues (2:14-21). In these words you have the clue to the three coming World Days of which we have already spoken. The Christ Jesus is speaking here of the evolution of the whole Earth. The old order shall pass away, and on the third World Day there will come a body that no longer contains the lower self.

Let us also remember that when the chela advances to mastership, he is laid in the tomb for three and a half days. The temple of the body is broken down for him and then raised up again. This is what happens to the individual, and for all mankind it has happened through the death and resurrection of Christ. You must feel in the Gospel of John the radiance of the sentences in many directions, for these sentences are deep and many-sided, encompassing the whole secret of the world.

In initiation, the soul is separated from the body, but it is conscious in the higher worlds. Nicodemus comes to Christ “by night,” that is, outside of daytime consciousness (3:1-21). Christ says to him: “Unless one is born of water” - that is, from the astral world, which one experiences as floods - “and of the Spirit” - the Devachan - “he cannot enter the kingdom of God,” so he does not experience the spiritual world. He speaks of this as long as everyday consciousness has nothing to say, namely during the initiation. Every word in the Gospel of John has a deeper meaning, and there is no end to the explanation of this Gospel.

The purpose of these lessons was to show you how to understand this remarkable book. The way in which it should be used should have become clear. I hope I have been able to make it accessible to you.

Understanding the Gospel of John is only possible through spiritual research and the spiritual-scientific world view. We should become more and more aware of how we have to work towards understanding the Spirit who is the deepest on earth. Christ presents us with a Being such as there has been none else on earth. At the end of His days on earth, the “Word” is once more the last expression of the spiritual Being of the Christ. Christ will then embody Himself in all human beings. In the flesh, the possibility to embody Himself could only be given to Him by a higher being. You could never see the sun if you did not have an eye. But who made the eye of man? The sun made it. Christ is the sun, which is to absorb the human soul with the help of that through which we see the Christ. The Gospel of John is this eye. But this eye could not see without the real Christ Jesus, who first opened this eye to the disciple whom the Lord loved, whom he himself awakened, who was his intimate disciple. Thus, in the Gospel of John, our feeling of thinking, feeling and willing moves up the paths that spiritual knowledge opens up for us.

Today and next time I am going to speak about the Gospel of St. John. I would mention that what I have to say will only really be comprehensible to those who are already somewhat familiar with spiritual science. It would, however, take us too far out of our way if we went into everything unfamiliar to non-theosophists. You are probably aware that latterly New Testament textual criticism has discredited the John Gospel as an historical source. It is said in theological circles—at least in advanced circles—that the first three gospels, the synoptic gospels, are the only documents relevant to the life of the founder of Christianity. They are called synoptic because they can be taken together to form a general picture of the life of Christ Jesus. On the other hand modern theologians try to interpret the John Gospel as a sort of poetic work, a confession of faith, the writings of a person portraying his feelings, his intimate religious life as it was born in him through the impact of Christianity. Thus the John Gospel could be considered as a devotional work, a deeply felt confession of faith, not as anything that could be taken as Christian historical facts.

But for everyone who immerses himself in the writings of the New Testament, one fact is indisputable: an immediate life flows from the John Gospel, and there is a conviction, a source of truth of a different nature to that proceeding from other religious writings. There is a certainty, which needs no outer confirmation. There is a feeling that comes over one when one meets the John Gospel if one is sensitive to inner soul life and spiritual devotion. Only with the help of spiritual science can one understand why this is so. Many a time have I told you how spiritual science helps towards a more intimate connection with religious documents.

You all know that when one first meets the scriptures one adopts the attitude of a simple person and takes the facts as they are described, without criticism; one takes the bread of religious life from these sources and is satisfied with it.

Many people of our day who had this naive outlook and then became “clever”, became “enlightened”, noticed the contradictions in the gospels. Then they rejected the gospels and lost faith. They said: We cannot reconcile remaining faithful to these writings and seeking wisdom in them with our conscience and our sense of truth. This is the stage of the “clever” ones, the second stage.

Then there is the third way that people approach religious documents. They begin to explain them symbolically. They begin to see symbols and allegories in them. This is the way of free-thinkers, especially in recent times.

Bruno Wille, the editor of the paper “Der Freidenker” (The Free Thinker), has now chosen this way. He has taken to explaining symbolically the Christ myth and the Bible in general. The really necessary way of development that man needs, an inner turning point, cannot follow from this. Those who are less ingenious will explain the scriptures less ingeniously. Others who are more ingenious will be better. Much will be read into it that springs from human ingenuity. The third way is thus a half believing, but arbitrary, attitude.

Then there is quite a different standpoint. One learns that there are realities pertaining to higher worlds, that besides our world of the senses, there are soul-spiritual things, and that religious revelations are not concerned with the sense world but present facts of a higher world. Those who have gotten to know the realities of the astral world which lies behind our sense world, and of the devachanic (or mental world) which lies even deeper, will come to a new and higher understanding of religious sources. It is impossible to understand the John Gospel without rising to such higher worlds. The John Gospel is not a poetic work, nor a writing arising from mere religious fervour, but sets forth revelations from higher worlds that the writer of the gospel has received. It is something like this—I will briefly describe it. The supporting evidence I will not deal with today; perhaps I can go into it next time. The writer of the John Gospel learned, through experience in higher worlds, what took place at “the beginning of our era“ that related to the life of the founder of Christianity, and his acts.

Let me give you an example of the difference between just knowing, and truly comprehending. We have recently mentioned here that someone can be next to us, we can see what he looks like, but we need not necessarily really know him for what he is. I have told the story of the singer who, at an evening party sat between Mendelsohn and someone else she did not know. She got on very well with Mendelsohn, but towards the other guest, though he was very courteous, she felt an aversion. Afterwards she asked, “Who was that bore on my left?” The answer was, “It was the famous philosopher Hegel”. If the lady had been told previously that the great philosopher Hegel would be present at a party, that alone would probably have been enough for her to have accepted the invitation. But because he sat beside her unknown, he was a bore. This is the difference between seeing and understanding, between just knowing and comprehending.

He who was the founder of Christianity could not readily be recognised if one only possessed the ordinary intellect employed in the sense world. It needed that which the Christian mystics so often expressed in profound and beautiful language. This was what Angelus Silesius meant when he said:

There is an inner experience of Christ—there is the possibility to realize inwardly what took place outwardly as events in Palestine between the years 1 and 33 A.D. He who came into this world from higher worlds must be understood from a higher world. And he who portrayed Him most deeply had to raise himself to the two higher worlds we have mentioned, the astral and the devachanic, or mental worlds. This elevation of John, if we so name him, was the elevation into these two higher worlds. His Gospel reveals this to us.

The first twelve chapters contain John's experiences in the astral world. From chapter thirteen onwards it is his experiences in the devachanic, or mental world. He who wrote it down says of Christ (the words are not to be taken literally): Here on this earth He lived, here has He worked with divine powers, with occult powers. He has healed the sick, he has gone through everything from death to resurrection. It is impossible to understand these things with the ordinary intellect. Here on earth there is no science or learning by which one could really understand what occurred. But there is the possibility of rising to the higher worlds. There one can find the wisdom to understand Him who walked here on earth among us. Thus did the writer of the John Gospel rise to the two higher worlds and become initiated. It was an initiation, and the writer describes his initiation into the astral world and the devachanic, or mental world.

In olden times, in regions where man's body was still suited to these things, such an initiation took place as follows. The person had to go through a sort of sleep-state. What now takes several years in a modern European initiation—because the modern European can no longer go through the process I will describe—what today is achieved through long exercises of meditation and concentration, was achieved in a short time by some individuals, after the appropriate exercises of meditation and concentration. I particularly emphasise that anyone who really wishes to receive initiation must, in some form or other, face the two important experiences about to be described—though in a somewhat different way. He must go through a sort of sleep condition. To understand the nature of sleep, let us remind ourselves what takes place when one sleeps. One's higher bodies are then separated from one's lower bodies. Man consists of a physical body, which one can see with one's eyes. The second member is the etheric body which surrounds the physical body and which is much finer than the physical body. Currents and organs of wonderful variety and splendour are active in it. The etheric body contains the same organs as the physical body. It has a brain, heart, eyes etc. They represent the forces which formed the corresponding organs. It is as if one cooled water in a vessel until it becomes ice. In this way you should picture the arising of the physical organs through the densifying of the etheric organs. The etheric body extends only a little beyond the physical body.

The third member is the astral body. It is the bearer of desires, wishes, passions, etc. It permeates the physical body in the form of a cloud. There are colours—violent passions appear as lightning flashes. The peculiarities of temperament glide through the body in glowing points of varying intensity.

The whole inner man is expressed in a luminous form. This is the real ego of man, the bearer of the higher centre of his being. In normal sleep the physical and etheric bodies are lying in bed. They are closely united. The astral body and all the rest is separated. As long as one does not do anything particular one is unconscious when the astral body is outside the physical body. One is as unconscious as one would be in the physical world without eyes or ears. One could live as long as one liked in the physical world; if one had no eyes there would be no colours, if one had no ears there would be no sound. So it is when the astral body is outside the physical body. It is spread out in the soul world, but one does not see this world or become aware of it because one has no astral sense organs. They must gradually be formed. If a person does not practice exercises he remains unconscious in higher worlds. But if he does practice then he can attain consciousness in these higher worlds. When his astral body acquires organs he begins to see the astral world around him. Those of you who have often attended these lectures will know that there are seven such organs. They are called wheels, chakrams or lotus flowers. The two-petalled lotus flower lies between the eyes—between the eye-brows, the sixteen-petalled lies in the region of the larynx, the twelve-petalled lies in the heart region. If these organs are gradually developed one becomes clairvoyant in the astral world.

This astral vision is something quite different from physical sight. You can get some idea of astral vision if you think of the flow of dream life. In dreams we have symbolic pictures—true symbols. One sees symbols. One loses consciousness of what takes place here in the physical world, but one can experience in symbolic pictures such events as the life of Christ Jesus as John describes it from his own experience in the astral world. Descriptions of this nature form the content of the first twelve chapters of the John Gospel. Don't misunderstand me. I know many will say: If all this is astral experience, then it is nothing real and what is told us of the founder of Christianity is not authentic. But this is not the case. It would be as if one denied that a man of flesh and blood could be a genius, because one cannot see genius. Although one learns the truth of Christ Jesus only on the astral plane, it is still a fact that he lived his life on the physical plane. We are dealing with symbols on the astral plane and outer reality on the physical plane. Nothing is taken away from the facts when we understand them more deeply in the sense of the John Gospel.

Initiation in the astral world is preceded by, and depends on what is called meditation. This means that the soul sinks into itself—I have often described it here. To reach a meditative experience one must make oneself blind and deaf to all sense impressions. Nothing must be able to disturb one. Cannons can go off without one being aware of it in one's inner life. One does not achieve this at once, but through constant practice one can attain this capacity. One must empty oneself also of all past experiences. Memory must be wiped out. The soul must be concerned only with itself and then out of its inner being there arise the eternal truths which are able—not only to awaken our understanding—but to release capacities which lie slumbering under a spell in our souls. These great eternal verities will rise up in man according to the maturity he has attained through his karma—the one, as Subba Row says, in seven incarnations, another in seventy years, another in seven years, others in seven months, seven days or seven hours.

John sets forth the means whereby his soul was led to perception on the astral plane. The formula he used for meditation stands at the beginning of his gospel. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was a God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without this Word was not anything made that was made. In it was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.”

In these five sentences lie the eternal verities which loosed the spell in John's soul and brought forth the great visions. This is the form of the meditation. Those for whom the John Gospel is written should not read it like any other book. The first five sentences must be taken as a formula of meditation. Then one follows John on his way, and attempts to experience oneself what he experienced. This is the way to do it; so it is meant.

John says: Do what I have done. Let the great formula, “In the beginning was the Word” work in your souls and you will verify what is said in my first twelve chapters.

This alone can really help towards understanding the John Gospel. Thus is it intended and thus should it be used. I have often spoken of what the “Word” signifies. “In the beginning” is not a good translation. It should really read: Out of the primal forces emerged the Word. That is what it means: The Word came forth, came forth out of the primal forces. Thus “in the beginning” means: coming forth out of the primal forces.

When man is in this sleep condition he is no longer in the sense world. He moves into a soul world and in this soul world experiences what the sense world really is. The truth of the sense world is revealed. He starts out from these words derived from the sense world leading back to the primal forces, and rises up to the words of truth. Every truth has seven meanings. For the mystic, immersed in contemplation it has however this meaning: The knowledge, the Word which emerges, is not something that merely applies to yesterday and today, but this Word is eternal. This Word leads to God because it was ever with God, because it is the very essence that God has planted into all things.

There is however, still another way of understanding this, and one acquires it if one returns day after day to the momentous words: “In the beginning was the Word”. When one begins to understand, not with the intellect, but with the heart, so that the heart becomes one with these words, then the power begins to work, and there begins the state of mind of which John speaks. He says it with great clarity: “All things were made by Him and without the Word was not anything made that was made”.

What do we find in this Word? We find life. What do we perceive through this life—through this light? We must take these religious texts quite literally if we want to attain higher knowledge. Where does this light shine? In the darkness of night. It comes to those who sleep. It comes to everyone who sleeps. But the darkness comprehended it not—until the ability develops to perceive it on the astral plane. Thus is the fifth verse to be understood literally. The astral light shines into the darkness of night but man does not normally see it, he must first learn to see.

As all this became reality for the writer of the John Gospel, the light dawned and he saw who He was, He whose disciple and apostle he was. Here on earth he had seen Him. Now he had found Him again on the astral plane, and he knew that He who had walked the earth in the flesh only differed in one respect from what lived in his own deepest inner self. In every single man there lives a divine man. In the distant future this divine man will arise resurrected in every man. As man stands before us today he is, in his outward appearance, to a greater or lesser extent, an expression of the inner divine man, and this inner divine man works constantly on the outer man.

Last Thursday [Public Lecture, Berlin, 15 Feb, 1906. “Reincarnation and Karma”] I already pointed out how one can illustrate this by a simple comparison. Look at a child. One could be tempted to say that these innocent features came from the father or mother, an uncle or an ancestor. However, everything within the child expresses itself in the features, in the gestures of the hands and in all its movements. What slumbers in the child strives to come to expression. Finally the individual emerges and the physiognomy becomes an expression of the individual soul, while previously it showed more of a family type. In primitive man the individual soul is usually still slumbering and has but a meagre existence. In the course of many incarnations and efforts the individual emerges, the soul aquires more power over the physical body, and the physiognomy takes on the imprint, or the expression of the inner man. An immature person expresses little of the power of the soul. Gradually man matures, and full maturity is reached when the inner word has become flesh completely—when the outer has become an exact imprint of the inner, so that the spirit shines through the flesh. This however, John only understood once his higher self had appeared clearly before his astral eyes. It stood in front of his astral eyes and he knew: This is I. Today have I experienced it on the astral plane. However it will gradually descend as it did in Him, who I followed. This is the deep relationship between Christ Jesus and the divine man that exists in every man. This is the deep inner experience of John.

The inner soul lives unconscious in man and he only becomes aware of it through the processes we have described.

What does it mean to say: something becomes conscious. Can we become conscious of something which lives within us? As long as it only lives within us we are not aware of it. Man is not aware of what he carries within him, what is subjective. I will use a crude comparison to make clear what I mean. You all have a physical brain but you cannot see it. It would have to be taken out, and then you could see it. For the same reason, though there is a certain difference, you cannot see your higher self. It is the “I” within you. But it must come out if you are to see it, and this can only happen on the astral plane. When it is outside and confronts you, then spiritually, it is as if you had a physical brain on a platter and made it the object of your sense perception.

The writer of the John Gospel describes this process. His own higher ego appears before Him—his own higher ego, which in its fullness represents the Christ. When you know this you will be able to understand certain hints and truths in the John Gospel. You will be able to understand certain things quite well with the help of what I said up to now. In occult language one describes what this ego inhabits—the physical body, which it has built for itself to dwell in—as the temple. Thus one says: The soul dwells in the temple.

It is not altogether a painless procedure when for the first time the soul must leave the temple of the body so that it becomes visible outside of it. This leaving of the body is not without pain. All that forms this higher connection with the physical body are bands that are not so easy to loosen. Imagine that you are bound with fetters and you break loose. You would experience pain through this tearing apart. It is like a process of tearing apart when the astral body leaves the physical body when it leaves it, perceptibly. Leaving the body in sleep is different, one is not aware of it. If one leaves it consciously then one experiences pain.

When man begins to develop astral consciousness, things on the astral plane appear to him as in a mirror. The number 165 should not be read as 165 but as 561—as reflected writing. Everything appears reversed on the astral plane. Even time is reversed. When you follow someone on the astral plane you start, to begin with, from where he is. Then you go back to his birth. You can follow him on the physical plane forwards; on the astral plane backwards. Leaving the physical body is like this: It is as though we were leaving the temple of the physical body and were laid hold of from all sides. This is the occurrence which John wants to describe. He left his body in order to experience the Christ, his own higher divine self, confronting him. People around him have their astral bodies bound strongly to their physical bodies as if with fetters. Had John remained like them he would have continued to be fettered to his physical body. Now let us read how this occurrence is described pictorially and symbolically in the John Gospel, chapter 8, verses 58 and 59: “Jesus said unto them, verily, verily I say unto you: Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them”, through the hindrances. With this ends the eighth chapter. This is the passing out of the astral body from the physical body. The final act, leading to the leaving of the physical body and to higher vision, usually lasts three days. When these three days are up, one attains a consciousness on the astral plane comparable to that previously experienced on the physical plane. Then one is united with the higher world.

In occult language this union with the higher world is called the marriage of the soul with the powers of the higher world. When one has left the physical body, this appears to one as a mother would appear to a new-born child, were the child able to be conscious at birth. Thus the physical body confronts one, and the astral body can very well say to the physical body: This is my mother. When one has celebrated this marriage one can say this. One can look back on the former union. This can happen after three days. This is the occult procedure on the astral plane. In chapter 2, verse 1, it is stated: “And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there”. This is the pictorial expression for what I have just said. It happened on the third day.

When a person enters the astral world, he finds himself in a region from which he can rise a step further into a still higher world—the mental, or devachanic world. This entry into the devachanic world can only be gained at the expense of the complete extinction, the death of the lower nature. He must go through the three days of death and then be awakened. Once he has attained vision of the astral plane and the pictures of the astral plane have confronted him, he is mature and ready to receive knowledge on the mental or devachanic plane. It is possible then to describe the awakening on the devachanic plane. To find oneself on the higher plane with conscious clarity of thought, this is the awakening of Lazarus.

John describes the awakening of Lazarus. Previously he has shown that through this chain of events one can enter the higher worlds. In chapter 10, verse 9, it is said: “I am the door: by me if any man enter in he shall be saved and shall go in and out and find pasture”. This is the awakening of what was wrapped in sleep and is now awakened on the devachanic plane. John goes through it. John is Lazarus, and John means nothing more nor less than what is described in his first twelve chapters. He describes as an astral experience that he was awakened on the astral plane. Then followed the initiation for the devachanic plane. Three days he lay in the grave, and then he received the awakening. The raising of Lazarus is the awakening of John who wrote the gospel.

Read everything up to the chapter on the raising of Lazarus and you will find no mention of John anywhere. Consider Lazarus and John. It is said of John (John, ch. 13, v. 23): “Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.” Regarding Lazarus, you find the same words—that He loved him. It is the same person. He is not mentioned previous to the awakening. He appears for the first time after he is “raised from the dead”. These are the enigmas hidden in the John Gospel. The disciple whom the Lord loved is he whom the Lord himself has initiated. The writer of the John Gospel was he whom the Lord loved. How was he able to say this? Because he had been initiated, first on the astral plane and then on the devachanic plane. If one is able in this way to find the deeper meaning of the John Gospel, then will one be able to understand it in its true profundity, and then it becomes one of the greatest texts ever written. It is the description of the initiation into the depths of the inner life of the soul. It has been written so that everyone who reads it can follow the same path. And this one can do. Sentence for sentence, word for word, one can find within oneself, by rising to the higher plane, what is described in the John Gospel. It is not a biography of Christ Jesus but a biography of the developing human soul. And what is described is eternal and can take place in the heart of every human being. This text is an example and a model. Hence it has this living and awakening power which not only makes people into Christians but enables them to awaken to a higher reality. The John Gospel is not a profession of faith, but a text which really gives strength, and a self-supporting, independent higher life. This springs forth from the John Gospel, and he who does not merely want to understand it, but to live it, has truly comprehended it.

With these few words I could only touch on the contents. Next time we will go into certain details. Then you will see how every single sentence confirms what we have said today in general terms. Step by step you will then see that the John Gospel is not addressed merely to the human intellect, but to man's entire soul forces, and that real soul experience springs from it.