The Rudolf Steiner Archive

There are riddles of life, the attempt to solve which has not only a scientific value, but also, in the truest sense, a value for our steadfastness in life, for our hopes in life, indeed a value for our strength to work in life. And without question, one of these riddles of life is that which is contained in the meaningful word of human destiny.

It depends on how we can endure fate. It not only wants to be understood and grasped, but also borne. There we see how, seemingly through no fault of his own, man is led astray by powers.

It is precisely in the face of this most characteristic question that what we call science, research of the human mind, is powerless.

You just need to visualize a few things, but before the eyes of the soul, then you will see that this is not the case, that in a way, to the superficial eye, our destiny is not only very dependent on what happens to us, but on how we are. Compare: a person with a melancholic temperament will feel what is meant by the word destiny quite differently than a choleric person.

We hardly pay attention to the things that confront us in our daily lives and how everything is interwoven. Every person will have been able to have experiences to an extent that they could resent their fate. But there is a reconciliation with fate. It consists in the fact that self-knowledge is true, genuine self-knowledge, an unbiased look into our inner selves.

Goethe: “Know thyself and live in peace with the world.”

Because of the connection /?/, which we have lost /?] with the world and because of a fate full of suffering, which does not always have to be met through one's own fault, through vices /gap].

The question of the [gap].

Sleeping and waking. During sleep, one's own inner being is drawn out into another world.

For our unhappiness, we can be grateful to the powers of fate. Through our happiness, we come to something else. In happiness, we are passive, we accept it. But if we recognize that people's lives follow one another and that each subsequent life bears the fruit of the previous one, then we will learn to use our happiness to sow seeds for future lives.

The luck to use to combine our activities /?).

As on the day you were born into the world,
The sun stood in greeting of the planets,
You immediately thrived [and went from strength to strength],
[...]
Here you must be, here you cannot escape
[...]

When the Bible is mentioned in our time, two sentiments may arise in a person, among many other thoughts and feelings. The first may come from the contemplation of the tremendous effect that this book has had on humanity throughout the long history of the development of spiritual life. And anyone who reflects on this influence and recalls how much not only edification but also strength, hope, and comfort have flowed from a book for almost infinitely long periods of time will be unable to close himself off from an enormous sense of awe and devoted recognition of the influence of this book. But in our time, in the intellectual life of the present, a completely different impression can arise alongside this.

If we look back at the early days of Christian development, we find that the Bible was initially a book that was closed to the general public. This was, of course, at a time when the general public was separated from any literature. Before that, the Bible was not only in the hands of those who were misleading people, but also in the hands of serious researchers.

Precisely to the extent that the Bible spread, what was contained in it also lost its persuasive power. It lost its significance for those who could open the great book of nature enlightenment. The emerging natural science with all its achievements gave mankind a belief in, for example, the origin of the world, the solar system, which was no longer compatible for many with the Bible.

1811-13 Fichte: lectures in Berlin.

With the eyes of the seer, [the] development of the earth can be traced back./Transcript breaks off.

This is the third opportunity I have had of speaking in Switzerland about the greatest of all events in the history of the Earth and of Mankind. The first was in Basle, when I spoke of the aspect of this event presented in the Gospel of St. John; on the second occa.sion the lectures were based on the account given by St. Luke; and now, on the third occasion, the basis of the lectures is to be the Gospel of St. Matthew.¹

As I have often said, it is an important fact that accounts of this event have been preserved in four records, in certain respects seeming to differ from each other. This often gives rise to negative and destructive criticism from materialistic scholarship to-day yet it is precisely the point that we, as anthroposophists, consider significant. For nobody should venture to portray any fact or being he has observed from one side only. If a tree is photographed from a single side, it cannot justifiably be said that this photograph is a true or complete portrayal of the whole outer appearance of the tree. If, however, it is photographed from four sides, by comparing the four pictures—even if they differ considerably—we can gain a comprehensive idea of the tree. If this analogy holds good for ordinary things, even in such an external sense, how could anyone fail to realise that an event embracing in the fullest sense all happenings and essential facts of existence would be incomprehensible if it were described from one side only. We should not therefore speak of ‘contradictions’ in the four Gospels. The truth is far rather that each writer knew himself to be capable of describing only one aspect of this stupendous event and was aware that by comparison of the different accounts it would be possible for humanity gradually to form a comprehensive picture of it. So we too will be patient and try to gain some understanding of this greatest of all events in Earth-evolution from the four accounts given in the New Testament.

From what has been said in other lecture-courses, you will certainly be able to gather how the four points of view presented in the Gospels can be differentiated. But now, before characterizing these four points of view even in their purely external aspect, let me make it clear at the beginning of this lecture-course that I shall not do what is customary nowadays when studying the Gospels. It is usual to begin with accounts of their historical origins. But it will be better for us to wait until the end of the lectures before hearing what there is to be said about the origin of the Gospel of St. Matthew. It is after all only natural and would be borne out in the case of other branches of knowledge, that the gist of any subject must be thoroughly grasped before its history can be truly understood. No one can usefully study a history of arithmetic, for example, who is entirely ignorant of that subject. The proper place for historical details is at the end of a study, and when this procedure is not followed the natural needs of human cognition are being overlooked. Here, then, we shall try to satisfy these needs by examining, first, the content of the Gospel of St. Matthew, and afterwards by saying something about its historical origin.

Study of the Gospels, even of their external form, makes us aware of a certain difference in the modes of expression, and this feeling will be intensified when we recall what was said in my lectures on the Gospels of St. John and St. Luke. In trying to fathom the mighty communications given in the Gospel of St. John, we are almost overwhelmed by their sublimity and spiritual grandeur; we feel that this Gospel reveals the very highest goal to which human wisdom can aspire and human cognition gradually attain. Man seems to be standing below, lifting the eyes of his soul to the heights of cosmic existence and saying to himself : However insignificant I may be, the Gospel of St. John enables me to divine that some element with which I myself am akin descends into my soul and imbues me with the feeling of infinitude.—Thus the spiritual magnitude of the cosmic life to which man is related is experienced a by the soul when contemplating the Gospel of St. John.

In studying St. Luke's Gospel we found that the manner of its presentation was different. In contemplating the Gospel of St. John it is paramountly the spiritual greatness—even though divined but dimly—that pervades the soul like a magic breath, whereas in the Gospel of St. Luke the influence is more inward, causing in the soul an intensification of all that the powers of cosmic love and sacrifice can effect in the world when we are able to share in them. So, while St. John describes the Being of Christ Jesus in His spiritual stature, St. Luke shows us His immeasurable capacity for sacrifice. St. Luke gives us an inkling of what this power of sacrificing love has brought about in the evolution of the world and of mankind—this love, which, in the same way as other forces, pulsates and weaves throughout the universe. We see, therefore, that while it is mainly the element of feeling that is uppermost when we steep ourselves in the Gospel of St. Luke, it is the element of understanding—informing us, to some extent, of the very foundations of knowledge and of its goals—that is aroused by the Gospel of St. John. That Gospel speaks more to our faculty of cognition, our understanding, the Gospel of St. Luke more to our hearts. The Gospels themselves produce these feelings in us; but it was also my endeavour to let the keynotes sound through the lectures that were given on the two Gospels in the light of Spiritual Science. Those who heard only words in the lectures on the Gospel of St. John or in those on the Gospel of St. Luke, certainly did not hear everything. There was a fundamental difference in the manner and style of speaking in the two lecture-courses. And everything must again be different when we come to study the Gospel of St. Matthew.

The Gospel of St. Luke makes us feel as if all the human love that ever existed in the evolution of mankind poured into the Being who lived as Christ Jesus at the beginning of our era.

Considered merely in its external aspect, the Gospel of St. Matthew appears at first to present a picture of greater variety than do the other two Gospels, even than do all the other three. For when the time comes to study the Gospel of St. Mark we shall find that in a certain respect it too presents one particular aspect.

The Gospel of. St, John reveals to us the magnitude of the wisdom of Christ Jesus; the Gospel of St. Luke, the power of His love. When we study the Gospel of St. Mark, the picture will primarily be one of might, of the creative Powers permeating the universe in all their glory. In that Gospel there is something overwhelming in the intensity with which the cosmic forces come to expression: when we really begin to understand the content of the Gospel of St. Mark, it is as though these forces were surging towards us from all directions of space. While the Gospel of St. Luke brings inner warmth into the soul and the Gospel of St. John fills it with hope, the Gospel of St. Mark makes us aware of the overwhelming power and splendour of the cosmic forces—so overwhelming that the soul feels well nigh shattered.

The Gospel of St. Matthew is different. All three elements are present here: the warmth of feeling and love, the knowledge full of hope and promise, the majesty of the universe. These elements are present in the Gospel of St. Matthew in a modified form and for this reason seem to be more humanly akin to us than in the other Gospels. Whereas the wisdom, the love and the splendour depicted in the other three Gospels might overwhelm us almost to the point of collapse, we feel able to stand erect before the picture presented in the Gospel of St. Matthew, even to approach and stand on a level with it. Everything is more humanly related to us; we never feel shattered, although it too contains elements which in the other Gospels tend to have this effect. It is the most human of the four records and describes Christ Jesus as a man, in such a way that in all His deeds He is near us in a human sense. In a certain respect the Gospel of St. Matthew is like a commentary on the other Gospels. It clarifies to some extent what otherwise is often beyond the reach of human understanding and once we realise this, great illumination is shed upon the nature of the other three Gospels.

In the Gospel of St. John we are shown how with his wisdom and knowledge man can set out towards the goal that is attainable; this is made plain at the very beginning of the Gospel, where Christ Jesus is referred to as the Creative Logos. The highest spiritual conception our minds and hearts can attain is presented in the very first sentences of this Gospel.

It is different in the Gospel of St. Matthew. This Gospel begins by giving the lineage of the man Jesus of Nazareth from a definite point in history and within a particular people. It shows us how the qualities that were concentrated in Jesus of Nazareth had been acquired through heredity from Abraham and his descendants; how throughout three times fourteen generations a people had allowed the best it had to impart to flow into the blood, in order that preparation might be made for the flowering, in one single Individuality, of the highest powers possible to man.

The Gospel of St. John points to the infinity of the Logos, the Gospel of St. Luke leads back to the very beginning of mankind's evolution. The Gospel of St. Matthew shows us a man, Jesus of Nazareth, born from a people whose qualities had been transmitted by heredity from Abraham, the father of the tribal stock, through three times fourteen generations.

It can only very briefly be indicated here that anyone who desires really to understand the Gospel of St. Mark must have some knowledge of the cosmic forces streaming through the evolution of our world. For the picture of Christ Jesus presented in that Gospel shows us that the Cosmos itself—an essence of the cosmic forces in the infinitude of space—is operating in and through a human agency. St. Mark sets out to describe the deeds of Christ as extracts of cosmic activities, how in Christ Jesus, the God-Man on the Earth, we have before us a quintessence of the boundless power of the Sun. Thus St. Mark describes to us the manner in which the forces of the heavens and the stars operate through human powers.

In a certain way the Gospel of St. Matthew too is concerned, with stellar activity, for at the very beginning it is clearly indicated that cosmic happenings are connected with the evolution of humanity, inasmuch as the three Magi are guided to the birthplace of Jesus by a star. But this Gospel does not describe cosmic workings as does the Gospel of St. Mark; it does not require us to raise our eyes to these heights. It shows us three men, three Magi, and the effect the Cosmos has upon them. We can contemplate these three men and become aware of what they are feeling. Thus if it is a matter of being able to experience cosmic realities, the Gospel of St. Matthew directs our gaze, not to infinitudes of space, but to man himself, to the effect, the reflection, of cosmic activities in human hearts.

(Again I beg that these indications shall be taken merely as pointing to the style in which the Gospels are written. For it is fundamentally characteristic of the Gospels, I repeat, that they describe events from different angles. The distinctive style in which each is written is in accordance with what they want to convey about the greatest event in the evolution of Mankind and of the Earth.)

So we see that the fact of paramount significance at the beginning of the Gospel of St. Matthew is that attention is called to the direct blood-relationships of Jesus of Nazareth. An answer is given to thc question: How was the physical personality of Jesus of Nazareth constituted? How were all the qualities of a people since its founder, Abraham, concentrated in this one personality in order that the Being we call Christ could reveal His presence there ? We are told: In order that the Christ Being might be able to incarnate in a physical body, this body must have qualities that could only be present if all the qualities of the blood of Abraham's descendants were concentrated in the single personality of Jesus of Nazareth. We arc therefore shown how the blood of Jesus of Nazareth leads back through the generations to the founder of the Hebrew people; and how on this account the essential attributes of this people, their particular function in world-history, in the evolution of the world and of humanity, were concentrated in the physical personality of Jesus of Nazareth. To understand the intention of the writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew in giving this introduction, it is therefore necessary to know something about the intrinsic nature of the Hebrew people and to be able to answer the question: What was this race, by virtue of its special character, able to give to mankind?

Materialistic history pays little attention to what must here be advanced. It gives abstract accounts of outer happenings, placing one people practically on a par with every other. But this entirely ignores a fact which anyone wishing to understand the evolutionary process must regard as fundamental, namely, that no people has the same task and mission as another; each has its own specific task and mission; each has to contribute a particular share of the riches which should accrue to the Earth as the result of mankind's evolution. And each share is distinct from the others. Even down to physical details, each people is so constituted that it can make its appropriate contribution to humanity as a whole. In other words: the physical, etheric and astral bodies of human beings belonging to a particular people develop and arc combined in such a way as to afford the appropriate instrument for the contribution that people has to make to humanity.—What, then, was to be the contribution of the Hebrew people, and how were its essential qualities concentrated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth?

To understand the mission of the Hebrew people we must make a deeper study of the whole evolution of humanity. It will be necessary to speak with greater precision of certain matters indicated more briefly in other lectures and in the book Occult Science—an Outline. The part played by the Hebrew people in the evolution of mankind as a whole will be most easily understood if we take the Atlantean catastrophe as a starting-point.

When the face of the Earth was changed as a result of the Atlantean Deluge, the peoples then living on the continent of Atlantis moved from the West across to the East in two main streams, one taking a more northerly, the other a more southerly course. One stream in this great movement of Atlantean peoples through Europe towards Asia spread to the region around the Caspian Sea, while another passed through the land we now call Africa. Over in Asia a kind of confluence of these two streams took place, as when two currents meet and a vortex is formed.

But what chiefly interests us about these peoples who were thus forced to make their way across to the East from Atlantis, is their mode of perception, the general form of their soul-life—in the case, at least, of the main mass of them. In the first post-Atlantean epoch man's whole constitution of soul was different from what it came to be later on—different above all from what it is to-day. Those ancient people still had clairvoyant perception of their surroundings; they were able to behold the spiritual, and even what is now seen physically was perceived then in a more spiritual way. But a point of special importance is that this clairvoyance of the original post-Atlantean peoples was again different, in a certain respect, from that of the Atlanteans themselves in the heyday of their culture. Their clairvoyance enabled men to gaze into a spiritual world with purity of vision, and the revelations of the spiritual world engendered impulses for the good in their souls. Indeed it would be true to say that during the prime of Atlantean culture, the strength of impulses for the good depended upon the ability of a man to look deeply into the spiritual world; in one with less ability these impulses were correspondingly weaker.

The changes which then took place on. the Earth were such that already towards the last third of the Atlantean epoch, but especially in the early post-Atlantean epoch, the good aspects of the old Atlantean clairvoyance had gradually disappeared and were preserved only by those who had undergone special training in the centres of Initiation. As time went on, what remained of this clairvoyance as a natural, inborn gift assumed a character leading all too easily to vision of the evil Powers of existence. Clairvoyance had become too weak to behold the good Powers. On the other hand, vision of the evil, delusive Powers remained, and a form of clairvoyance by no means commendable was widespread in certain regions inhabited by post-Atlantean peoples, a clairvoyance acting in itself as a kind of tempter.

This decline of the old clairvoyance was accompanied by a gradual development of the faculty of sense-perception recognized as normal for human beings to-day. But the things men perceived with their eyes in the first post-Atlantean epoch, and which they perceive normally to-day, were not sources of temptation in that past time, because the soul-forces that are now the cause of temptation had not yet developed. External perceptions which may give rise to inordinate enjoyment in a man to-day, however deceptive they may be, did not constitute any particular temptation for early post-Atlantean man. It was when inherited remains of the old clairvoyance awakened in him that his temptation began. He had practically no vision of the good side of the spiritual world; the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces bad such a strong effect upon him that what he saw Were the Powers of temptation and delusion. With these inherited faculties of ancient clairvoyance he perceived the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces. And so it became necessary for those whose wisdom for the leadership and guidance of human evolution had been received from the Mysteries, to institute means to ensure that in spite of these adverse circumstances men should ultimately be led to the good goal and to clarity of understanding.

The people who had spread to the East after the great Atlantean catastrophe were at very different stages of evolution; it can be said that the level of moral and spiritual development was highest in those who went farthest East. The dawning faculty of external perception was like the opening of a new world, revealing with ever greater clarity the grandeur and splendour of the outer world of the senses. This faculty was especially characteristic of the people who settled to the North of present-day India, in the regions extending to. the Caspian Sea, as far as the Oxus and Jaxartes. In this region of Asia there had settled groups of people from whom many racial streams spread out in different directions, one such stream being the ancient Indian people whose spiritual view of thc world has often been characterized.

Soon after the Atlantean. Flood, indeed to some extent - while it was still in process, the sense-awareness of external reality had already developed among this group of people in Middle Asia. But at the same time, in the human beings who had incarnated there, a kind of memory-knowledge persisted, a living recollection of what they had experienced in the days of Atlantis. This characteristic was strongest in those who went down into India. They had, it is true, great understanding of the splendour of the external world; their faculties of observation and sense-perception were more developed than those of the other peoples, but. at thc same time their remembrance of the ancient spiritual powers of vision in Atlantis was vivid and strong. Hence there arose in them an intense longing for the spiritual world which they remembered; it was easy for them to gaze again into that world—but they also had the feeling that what was presented to the external senses was maya, illusion. And so in these people too the impulse arose not to pay particular attention to the outer world of sense but to do everything possible to enable the soul—now through development deliberately induced, through yoga—to rise to the realm where it could receive the revelations which in the days of old Atlantis had come directly from the spiritual world.

This tendency to despise the outer world, to regard it as illusion and to follow only those impulses which led to the spiritual, was less strongly developed in the people who remained farther North. But they were in a very tragic situation. The innate qualities of the ancient Indian people were such that it was comparatively easy for any one of them to undergo a definite training in Yoga enabling him to rise once again into the realms he had known in Atlantean times. It was easy for such a man to overcome, what he regarded as illusion. He overcame it in acts of cognition, and his supreme conviction was this: The sense-world is maya, is illusion; but if I make efforts to develop my soul I shall reach the world lying behind the sense-world! Thus it was through an inner process that the Indian succeeded in overcoming what he regarded as maya.

The character of the more northerly peoples was different. They were the Persians, the Medes, the Bactrians—known in history as Aryans in the narrower sense. In them too there was a strong tendency towards the development of external perception, external intellectuality. But the urge to achieve through inner development, through some form of Yoga, what the Atlanteans had experienced quite naturally, was not particularly marked. Recollection of the past was not strong enough in these more northerly peoples to become a striving to overcome, through knowledge, the illusion of the outer world. Their attitude of soul was not the same as that of the Indians. The attitude of an Iranian, a Persian, a Mede, might be expressed in modern words somewhat as follows: If we once dwelt in the spiritual world, experiencing and perceiving realities of spirit and of soul, and now find ourselves transplanted into the physical world we see with our eyes and grasp with the brain-bound intellect, the cause of this does not lie in man alone; what has to be overcome cannot be overcome merely in the inner being of man. Nothing much would result from that ! An Iranian would have said: It is not only in man that a change has taken place; Nature herself and everything on the Earth must also have changed when man descended from divine-spiritual realms. It cannot therefore be right to leave the surrounding world just as it is, saying simply: This is maya, illusion, but WC will disregard it and rise into the spiritual world! In that way we shall, it is true, bring about a change in ourselves but not in the world around us.—Therefore the attitude of an Iranian did not allow him to say: maya is outspread around me; I will transcend it, will overcome it in my own being and so reach the spiritual world.—No, he said: man belongs to and is a member of the world around him. Therefore if that which is divine in him, and has descended with him from divine-spiritual heights, is to be transformed, not only what is within him must be changed back to its former state, but also everything in the outer world around!—And this was what gave the people the impulse to take an active and vigorous share in transforming thc world.

Whereas in India men said: The world has fallen; what it now presents is maya—in the more northerly regions they said : True, the world has fallen, but it is our task to change it in such a way that it becomes spiritual again. Contemplation, contemplative understanding—this was basically characteristic of the Indian people. Their attitude was simply that sense-perception is illusion, maya. Activity, physical energy, the will to transform external Nature—these were the basic characteristics of the Iranian and other peoples living in regions North of India. They said: The world around us has fallen from the Divine but man is called upon to lead it back again to the Divine! And the innate traits of the Iranian people were sublimated and charged with measureless energy in the spiritual leaders who went forth from the Mysteries.

What took place towards the East and South of the Caspian Sea can only be adequately understood, even outwardly, by comparing it with conditions still farther to the North, that is to say in the regions bordering on the Siberia and Russia of to-day, and extending even into Europe. Here there were people who had preserved much of the ancient clairvoyance and in whom a kind of balance could be held between the faculty of the old spiritual perception and that of material perception, of the new intellectual thinking. Very many among them were still able to look into the spiritual world. This faculty of vision—which had already degenerated and become, as we should say nowadays, a lower astral clairvoyance had in its character a certain effect upon the general evolution of mankind. That this lower form of clairvoyance produces a very definite type of human being, a definite trait of character in those endowed with it, was clearly evident in these people. It was innate in them to demand from surrounding Nature what they needed for their sustenance while expending the minimum of effort themselves. They knew that divine-spiritual Beings are present in the plants, the animals, and so on, because they actually beheld them; they knew that these Beings are the powers behind all physical creation. But this knowledge prompted them to demand that without any effort on their own part the divine-spiritual Beings by whom they had been placed in existence should provide for their sustenance. Many things could be quoted as expressions of the disposition and tenor of soul prevailing in these peoples with their decadent, astral clairvoyance.

In the period which it is important for us to consider now, all these peoples were nomadic, having no settled habitations; they wandered about as herdsmen, without preference for any particular locality, careless with what the Earth had to offer and only too ready to destroy anything around them when they needed it for their sustenance. These people were not called upon, nor indeed were they qualified, to do anything to raise the level of culture, to transform the Earth.

Thus there arose what is perhaps one of the greatest antitheses in the whole of post-Atlantean evolution: the antithesis between these more northerly peoples and the Iranians. Among the Iranians the longing arose to take a hand in what was going on around them, to live settled lives, to acquire possessions through effort, in other words, to apply man's spiritual forces in order to achieve the transformation of Nature. That was the strongest urge in the Iranians. And in the immediately adjacent lands to the North, lived the people who saw into the spiritual world, were on familiar terms, so to speak, with the spiritual beings, but were wanderers, having no inclination for work and without any interest in furthering culture in the physical world.

This drastic antithesis was purely the outcome of the different forms taken by soul-development. It is also known in external history as the great antithesis between Iran and Turan. But the causes of it are not understood. Actually they are as stated above.

Turan lay to the North, in the area towards Siberia. Its inhabitants, as already said, were people heavily endowed with an inherited, lower astral clairvoyance, and who in consequence of their experience in the spiritual world had neither inclination or sufficient understanding to establish any form of external culture. Because these people were of a passive disposition and their priests were often magicians and sorcerers of an inferior type, whenever spiritual matters were concerned they were wont to engage in very questionable magical practices, indeed not infrequently in actual black magic. To the South lay Iran, where at a very early stage, as we have seen, an urge arose in the people to transform the world of sense with even the most primitive means then available and through the spiritual faculties of man to establish forms of external culture and civilization.

Now you will be able to form an idea of the great antithesis between Iran and Turan.—A beautiful myth—the legend of Djemjid—tells how King Djemjid led his people from the North down towards Iran. He had received from the God who would presently come to be recognized and whom he called Ahura Mazdao, a golden dagger by means of which he was to fulfil his mission on Earth. From the apathetic masses of the Turanians, King Djemjid drew people whom he had specially trained, and in the golden dagger we have to see an impulse for the attainment of wisdom connected with the external faculties of men, wisdom capable of redeeming certain faculties that had already become decadent and of imbuing them with the spiritual force man can acquire on the physical plane. This golden dagger, like a plough, turned the earth into arable land, made possible the first, primitive inventions of mankind. It worked on and is working to this clay in all the achievements of culture and civilization in which men take pride. There is great significance in the fact that King Djemjid who went from Turan down to the Iranian country received this dagger from Ahura Mazdao. It represents a force given to man whereby he can work upon and transform external Nature.

The same Being from whom this golden dagger was received was also the great Inspirer of Zarathustra or Zoroaster, Zerdutsch, the leader of the Iranian people. It was Zarathustra who in primeval times—soon after the Atlantean catastrophe—instilled the impulses he was able to bring from the holy Mysteries into the people who felt the urge to apply the power of the human spirit to external culture. Zarathustra was to give new hopes, new vistas of the spiritual world to this people who no longer possessed the ancient Atlantean vision. He opened out the path along which the people were ultimately to realise that the outer sunlight is only the external body of a sublime spiritual Being whom he called Ahura Mazdao, the ‘great’ Aura, in contrast to the 'little' aura of man. Zarathustra wanted to convey that this same Being—then still in remote cosmic distances—would one day descend to the Earth in order to unite His very substance with the Earth and to work on further in the history and evolution of humanity. Thus Zarathustra directed the minds of these people to the same Being who lived later on in history as the Christ.²

The mighty achievement of Zarathustra consisted in this: to the new post-Atlantean humanity who had fallen away from the divine worlds, he revealed the path of re-ascent to the spiritual and gave to men the hope of being able to reach the goal, even with forces that had descended to the level of the physical plane. Whereas the ancient Indian attained to the spiritual in its old form through Yoga-training, a new path was to be opened out to men through the teaching of Zarathustra.

Zarathustra had a. patron—a figure of great significance. But here I must emphasize that thc date of the Zarathustra of whom I am speaking was said, even by the Greeks, to have been five thousand years before the Trojan War; He is not, therefore, the figure whom external history calls by that name, nor the Zarathustra mentioned as living in the days of Darius.—The original Zarathustra had a patron who can be called Gushnasp—the name that became customary later on. Zarathustra was a majestic, priestly character, one who pointed to the great Sun Spirit, Ahura Mazdao, the Being who guides humanity back from the physical to the spiritual, and Gushnasp was a kingly character, ready to perform any action in the external world that would spread the mighty inspirations of Zarathustra. Hence the inspirations and aims of Zarathustra and Gushnasp that were taking effect in ancient Iran inevitably came into contact with the conditions prevailing immediately to thc North. And the result of the impact was one of the greatest wars ever fought in the world, a war of which little is said in external history because it took place in such a remote past. It was a conflict of the greatest possible magnitude, between Iran and Turan. And out of this war—which lasted, not for decades but for centuries—there developed a certain mood and attitude of soul that persisted for a long time in Asia and the nature of which can be described somewhat as follows:

The Iranians, the followers of Zarathustra, spoke to this effect: Wherever we look there is a world that descended from divine-spiritual heights but has now fallen very far from its earlier level. We must assume that the world of animals, plants and minerals around us once existed at a higher level and that it has all become decadent. But man has the hope of being able to lead it upwards again.

We will now further translate into words of our language what an Iranian felt, and try to convey how a teacher would have spoken to his pupils. He might have said: Think of the wolf. The animal living as the physical wolf you now see has fallen from its former estate, has become decadent. Formerly it did not manifest its bad qualities. But if good qualities germinate in you and you combine them with your spiritual powers, you can tame this animal; you can instill into it your own good qualities, making the wolf into a docile dog who serves you! In the wolf and the dog you have two beings characterizing as it were two great streams of forces in the world.—And so men who used their spiritual faculties to work upon the surrounding world were able to tame the animals, to raise them to a higher level, whereas the others left the animals as they were, with the result that they descended to lower and lower stages of existence.

Here were two different forces, the one being applied by men whose attitude was as follows: If I leave Nature as she is, she sinks lower and lower; everything becomes wild. But I can direct my eyes of spirit to a good Power in whom I trust; then that Power will help me and I shall be able to lead up-wards again what is in danger of sinking. This Power gives me hope that further development is possible!—The Iranian conceived this Power to be Ahura Mazdao and he said to himself: Man can ennoble and sublimate the forces of Nature when he unites himself with Ahura Mazdao, with the power of Ormuzd. Ormuzd represents,an upward-flowing stream. But if man leaves Nature as she is, he will see everything degenerating into a wild state. This is due to Ahriman—And now the following mood developed in the regions of Iran. Men said: North of us live many who are in Ahriman's service. They are the Ahriman-folk who wander about the world and take what Nature gives them, who will do nothing to spiritualise Nature. We, however, will unite ourselves with with Ahura Mazdao!

Thus men became aware of duality in. the world. The Iranians, the people of Zarathustra, felt this duality and desired so to organise their life that the urge towards a higher form of existence should come to expression in their laws. This was the outer consequence of Zoroastrianism and herein we must see the contrast between Iran and Turan. The war of which occult history gives so many and such detailed accounts, the war between Ardshasp and Guslinasp—the former being the King of the Turanians and the latter the patron of Zarathustra—is an expression of the antithesis between the North and the South, between the men living in the two regions of Turan and Iran. If we grasp this, we shall perceive a current of soul-life flowing from Zarathustra to the whole of the humanity upon whom his influence was exercised.

To begin with, then, it was necessary to describe the whole milieu, the whole environment into which Zarathustra was placed. We know from earlier lectures³ that the Individuality who incarnated into the bloods that flowed from Abraham through three times fourteen generations and who appeared as Jesus of Nazareth of whom the Gospel of St. Matthew tells, was Zarathustra, the Individuality who had been Zarathustra. It was therefore necessary to look for him where he is first to be found, in the very early post-Atlantean epoch. And now the question arises: Why was it that the blood that flowed from Abraham in Western Asia through the generations was the blood best fitted for a later embodiment of Zarathustra? (For in one of his incarnations Zarathustra was Jesus of Nazareth.)

In order to approach this question it was necessary, in the first place, to ask about the central figure—the Zarathustra-Individuality—who incarnated into the blood of the Hebrew people. Tomorrow we shall have to consider why it was necessarily this blood, this particular racial stock, from which Zarathustra derived his body as Jesus of Nazareth.

• 1. A list of publications recommended for study in connection with the following lectures will be found on page 239.
• 2. See Appendix I, p. 233.
• 3. E.g. Deeper Secrets of Human History in the Light of the Gospel of St. Matthew, Lecture II. (Obtainable from Rudolf Steiner Press.)

In the early lectures of this Course it will be necessary to repeat certain things that were said in explanation of the Gospel of St. Luke. There are facts and happenings in the life of Christ Jesus which cannot be understood unless these two Gospels are compared.

For any deeper understanding of the Gospel of St. Matthew it is of primary importance to know that in respect of his physical body, the Individuality with whom this record is primarily concerned had descended from Abraham through three times fourteen generations; he therefore represented a kind of quintessence of the whole Hebrew race. Spiritual Science knows that this Individuality and the original Zoroaster or Zarathustra were one and the same.

In the lecture yesterday some idea was given of the external scene of Zarathustra's activities in the very ancient times in which he lived, and now the views of life and the world prevailing in his environment must also be considered. Principles of profound significance were contained in the world-view held by men in those regions and to speak of only a few of the teachings that are rightly regarded as having been given by the first Zarathustra is to point to deep foundations of all post-Atlantean thought.

External history itself tells us of the two fundamental principles underlying the teachings of Zarathustra: the principle of Ormuzd, the Good Being of Light, and that of Ahriman, the Being of Darkness and Evil. But even in exoteric presentations of this religious system it is emphasized that these two, principles—Ormuzd or Ahura Mazdao, and Ahriman—derive from one universal principle: Zeruane Akarene.

What is this single, undivided origin, from which the other two principles—at war with one another in the world—derive? Zeruane Akarene is generally translated ‘uncreated Time’. The primal principle of which Zarathustra's teaching tells may therefore be thought of as the calm, as yet undisturbed flow of cosmic Time. Moreover, the very sense of the words implies that it is meaningless to pursue the question further—to ask what was the origin of this calm flow of Time. It is important to realise once and for always that one may speak of something in cosmic existence without being justified in putting further questions, let us say, about the causes of a First Principle such as this. Whenever mention is made of a cause, abstract thinking will seldom refrain from asking further questions about the cause of that cause, and so on, forcing the concepts back as it were to infinity But when there is a desire to stand firmly on the ground of Spiritual Science, genuine meditation will make it clear that questioning about causes must end somewhere and that to continue it beyond a certain point is merely to indulge in fantasy.

In the book Occult Science—an Outline I referred to this form of mental procedure. As an example, I said that the sight of wheel-tracks on a road may evoke the question: What has caused them? The answer is: The wheels of a cart. Further questions might be: Where, exactly, are the wheels joined to the cart? Why do they make tracks and why was the cart being driven along the road? Such questions can be answered. The cart made the tracks because it was being driven along the road and it was driven because someone wanted to be carried in it—but this kind of questioning leads finally to the intention which caused the person concerned to use the cart. And if a halt is not made here, further questions regarding the cause of the intention lose point and become no more than a game.

The same is true in connection with the great questions of Cosmogony. Somewhere our questioning must end. For the deeper teachings of Zoroastrianism it is meaningless to go back beyond the calm flow of ‘uncreated Time’.

We now see that Zoroastrianism divides Time itself again into two principles, or—better said—speaks of two principles proceeding from Time: a good principle of Light characterized as that of Ormuzd, and an evil principle of Darkness, that of Ahriman. This dual conception is based upon a profoundly significant truth, namely that all Evil in the world, everything that in its physical image must be called dark and sinful, was not originally so. I said that in ancient Persian thought, the wolf, for example—which in a certain way represented something savage and evil, an outcome of the working of the Ahriman-principle—was regarded as having degenerated; when left to itself the Ahriman-principle could become active in it. Thus the wolf had descended from a being in which the presence of the Good cannot be denied. According to the conceptions of the ancient Persians and the earliest Aryan peoples, the fundamental principle in evolution is that Evil comes into being because something that was good in the form in which it existed in an earlier epoch retains this form in a later age; in failing to transform itself it becomes retrogressive, for it preserves the form suitable for an earlier time. Therefore the cause of all Evil :all Darkness, was to the earliest Aryan peoples simply this: a form of being that was good in a previous epoch continues without change into later times and the consequence of the impact of such a form with one that has made progress is a. battle between the two—the battle between Good and Evil. So in the thought of ancient Persia, Evil is not absolute Evil but, rather, Good manifesting out of its appropriate time, something that once, in an earlier period, was good but is no longer so. Evil in the present, therefore, manifests in the form of events through which conditions suitable for the past are carried into the present. When there is as yet no conflict between the earlier and the later, Time is still undifferentiated, not divided into single ‘moments’.

This profoundly significant world-view held by very early post-Atlantean peoples can be regarded as, the basis of, Zoroastrianism; it includes the concept that was characterized in the lecture yesterday and was dominant in those who adhered to the teachings of Zarathustra. There is evidence on every side that these peoples recognized two phases proceeding from the hitherto undivided flow of Time—two phases coming into conflict as they encounter one another and resolving their conflict only in the stream of onflowing Time. It was realised that the new must come into being and that the old must not be swept away; the goal of the Universe—above all, the goal of the Earth—will be achieved through the creating of balance, of harmony, between the old and the new. This conception, as it has now been characterized, lies at the basis of all forms of higher development originating in Zoroastrianism.

Once the original centre of Zoroastrianism had been established in the region and epoch indicated yesterday, its influence was effective wherever it made its way. And we shall see what a tremendous effect it had upon subsequent epochs, giving expression everywhere to the teaching on the polarity between the old and the new.

The reason why Zarathustra was able to exercise such a far-reaching influence upon posterity was that at the time when he had attained the highest Initiation possible in his day, he had two intimate pupils of whom I have previously spoken.¹ To one of these pupils Zarathustra taught everything relating to the secrets of surrounding physical Space, the secrets of contemporaneous existence. To the other pupil he taught the secrets of Time in flow, the secrets of evolution, of development. On a previous occasion I said that at a certain point on the path of Initiation such as this, something of great significance is able to take place, namely that the teacher can offer up part of his own being to his pupils. And Zarathustra offered up to his two pupils his own astral body and his own etheric body. The Individuality of Zarathustra, the inmost core of his being, remained intact for ever-recurring incarnations. But his astral ‘raiment’, that is to say the astral body in which he had lived as Zarathustra in a very early post-Atlantean epoch—this astral raiment was so perfect, so charged with the essence of his whole being that it did not disperse as do the astral sheaths of other human beings, but remained intact. In the great process of evolution the power of an Individuality bearing human sheaths of this quality, may enable them to remain intact and be preserved, and this was so in the case of the astral body of Zarathustra.

The pupil who had received from Zarathustra the teaching about Space and everything that exists contemporaneously in physical Space—this pupil was reborn in the personality known in history as the Egyptian Thoth, or Hermes. Occult investigation reveals that he was destined not only to consolidate in his own being all the teaching imparted to him in an earlier incarnation by Zarathustra, but to do even more. This was made possible by the fact that through a process enacted in the holy Mysteries, the preserved astral body of Zarathustra himself was incorporated into him. Thus the Individuality of this pupil of Zarathustra was reborn as the inaugurator of Egyptian culture. The Egyptian Hermes therefore bore within himself part of the being of Zarathustra, and this power, together with the fruits of his own former discipleship, enabled Hermes to give the impulse for all that was great and significant in the culture and civilization of ancient Egypt.

In order that the mission of this messenger of Zarathustra might be fulfilled, there had naturally to be a folk suited to receive the impulse. Only among those peoples who had taken the more southerly path from Atlantean territories, had settled in the East of Africa and in whom a high degree of clairvoyance in its Atlantean form had been preserved—only among such peoples could fruitful soil be found for what Hermes, the reborn pupil of Zarathustra, was able to impart. The soul-life prevailing in the Egyptian population came into contact with the teaching of Hermes and from this source the culture of ancient Egypt developed.

It was a culture of a very special character. Think of what treasures of wisdom had been received by Hermes when Zarathustra imparted to him the secrets of things existing contemporaneously in Space. Hermes bore within his own being this supremely important teaching of Zarathustra. As we have often heard, the most characteristic feature of Zarathustra's teaching was that he directed the attention of his people to the Sun and the external light of the Sun, explaining to them that this solar body is only the outer sheath of a lofty Spiritual Being. Thus Zarathustra entrusted to Hermes the secrets of the the reality of being underlying the whole of Nature in the world of Space, the reality of being which underlies everything in contemporaneous existence but goes forward through Time from epoch to epoch, manifesting itself anew in each particular epoch. The wisdom possessed by Hermes concerned all that proceeds from the Sun and evolves to further stages. And the reason why he was able to instill this teaching into the souls of the descendants of Atlantean peoples was because those souls had at one time themselves gazed into the mysteries of the Sun and had preserved in memory something of their vision. Everything, of course, had advanced in evolution—the souls who were destined to receive the wisdom of Hermes, as well as Hermes himself.

Circumstances were different in the case of the second pupil of Zarathustra. To him had been entrusted the secrets relating to the flow of Time, and he had necessarily to experience the conflict between the old and the new, the active principle of contrast, of opposition and of polarity, implicit in evolution. Zarathustra had offered up part of his being for this second pupil as well, and when the latter was reborn he too was able to receive what had been bequeathed to him. Whereas the Individuality of Zarathustra remained intact, the astral and etheric sheaths were separated from him, but because they had been borne by such a mighty Individuality, they too remained intact and did not disperse. At a certain point in his new incarnation, this second pupil, to whom had been communicated the wisdom relating to Time—in contrast to that relating to Space—this second pupil received into him-self the etheric body of Zarathustra, who had offered it up as he had offered up his astral body. This second pupil of Zarathustra was reborn as Moses, into whom, in very early childhood, the preserved etheric body of Zarathustra was incorporated.

Religious chronicles that are genuinely based on occultism contain mysterious clues pointing to the secrets disclosed by occult investigation. To enable Moses, the reincarnated pupil of Zarathustra, to receive into himself the etheric body of his former teacher, something quite unusual must necessarily happen to him. It was essential that the miraculous legacy he was to receive from Zarathustra should be incorporated into him before impressions from the environment were made upon his individuality, as in the case of other human beings. This is narrated symbolically in the story that he was laid in a cradle of reeds and lowered into a river—an indication of a remarkable Initiation, During the process of Initiation a human being is shut off from the outer world for a certain period of time and what he is destined to receive is then instilled into him. Thus the etheric body of Zarathustra that had been preserved intact was incorporated into Moses at a certain moment while he was shut off from the outer world; and then there could come to flower within him the wonderful wisdom concerning Time once imparted to him by Zarathustra. He was able, now, to give expression to it in pictures suitable for his people.

Hence we have from Moses the mighty pictures of Genesis—external Imaginations of the wisdom of successive epochs. These pictures were the expression of reborn knowledge, of wisdom that had once been imparted to him by Zarathustra and was now rooted in his very being because the etheric sheath of Zarathustra himself had been incorporated into him.

But in a measure of such significance for the evolution of humanity, two factors are essential. Not only must there be an Initiate to inaugurate an impulse in culture, but it must be possible for this great Individuality to plant the seed of future culture in the folk-soil suitable for it. And to understand the nature of the folk-soil into which Moses could plant what had been transmitted to him by Zarathustra, it will be well to concern ourselves with a certain, characteristic of the Mosaic wisdom.

In an earlier incarnation, then, Moses had been a pupil of Zarathustra. At that time there had been imparted to him the wisdom relating to Time together with the secret that in all epochs the earlier clashes with the later, thus producing contrast. If Moses as the bearer of this wisdom was to become a factor in the evolution of humanity, it had to be presented as a contrast to the other stream of wisdom—the Hermes-wisdom. And this was what actually happened.

Hermes had received from Zarathustra the direct wisdom, the Sun-wisdom, that is to say, knowledge of the reality of being working mysteriously in the outer, physical sheath of the light—the solar body. With Moses it was different. The kind of wisdom of which he was the recipient is harboured more in the denser, etheric body, not in the astral body. His was the wisdom that does not only look upwards to the Sun, seeing all things streaming from the Sun, but is also concerned with what stands over against the light and essential quality of the Sun; this wisdom assimilates—without being corrupted by it—that which has become earthly, dense, solidified, old. This was Earth-wisdom, comprised, it is true, within Sun-wisdom, but for all that essentially Earth-wisdom, The secrets of Earth-evolution, of how man develops on the Earth and how the Earth evolves when the Sun has separated from it—these were the secrets imparted to Moses. And this, if we study the inner, not the external aspects of the matter, explains why we encounter in the teachings of Hermes something that is an utter contrast to the wisdom of Moses.

In studying all such matters, certain modes of thought current at the present time apply the principle that in the night all cows are grey! Those who think in this way have eyes only for similarities and are overjoyed when, for example, they find the same thing in the teachings of Hermes and of Moses: here a triad, there a triad, here a quaternary, there a quaternary, and so on. But there is not much point in this. It would be rather like a person setting out to train someone else to be a botanist without teaching him what differentiates, let us say, a rose from a carnation, but speaking only of features that are identical in both. This does not help. We must know in what respects the beings themselves, and also the forms of wisdom,differ; we must realise that the Moses-wisdom was quite different in character from the Hermes-wisdom. Both forms of wisdom proceeded, originally, from Zarathustra; but just as unity, divides and manifests in very various ways, so did Zarathustra give essentially different revelations to each of his two pupils.

If we steep ourselves in the Hermes-wisdom, we find illumination on cosmogony—it explains to us the origin of worlds and the operations of the inpouring light. But in the Hermes-wisdom we do not find the concepts which reveal the fact that in the evolutionary process the earlier works on into the later, and because of this, the past and the present come into conflict, causing the opposition between Darkness and Light. Earth-wisdom which makes intelligible to us how the Earth, together with Man, evolved after the Sun had separated—this is nowhere contained in the Hermes-wisdom. But it was to be the special mission of the Moses-wisdom to make comprehensible to men the evolution of the Earth after the separation of the Sun. Earth-wisdom was to be the gift of Moses; Sun wisdom, the gift of Hermes. To Moses, with his remembrances of all that had been imparted to him by Zarathustra, there is revealed the process of the Earth's evolution and man's evolution on the Earth. His starting-point as it were is the earthly; but the earthly is separated from the Sun and contains the Sun-nature in a weakened form only. The earthly comes towards and meets the Sun-nature. Hence the Earth-wisdom of Moses had actually to encounter the Sun-wisdom of Hermes in concrete existence; these two streams of wisdom had to contact each other. The outer circumstances too indicate this in a most wonderful way. Moses is born an Egypt, his people are brought thither and make contact with the. Egyptians—the people of Hermes. These happenings are the outer reflection of the contact of Sun-wisdom with Earth-wisdom. Both forms of wisdom stem from Zarathustra but pour over the Earth in quite different streams of evolution, eventually meeting and working in conjunction.

Now certain wisdom connected with proceedings in the Mysteries always expresses itself in, a very special way about the deepest secrets of human and other happenings. In the lectures on Genesis given at Munich, I indicated how extraordinarily difficult it is to speak in terms of current language of these great truths which embrace not only the deepest secrets of the being of man but also cosmic facts. Our words are often fetters, for they bear the connotations that have come to be attached to them from long usage, and when with the great wisdom-truths unfolding themselves in the soul we resort to language, endeavouring to clothe these inner revelations in words, we find ourselves battling with a dreadfully feeble instrument.

The greatest piece of nonsense uttered in the course of the 19th century and repeated times without number is that it should be possible to couch every real truth in simple words and that language, with the means of expression it offers, should actually be a criterion of whether a person is in possession of some particular truth or not. This statement, however, only shows that those who make it are not in possession of essential truth but only of such truths as have been conveyed to them through language in the course of the centuries, the forms of which may change. For such people language is adequate and they feel nothing of the struggle that must often be waged with it. But this struggle becomes only too glaringly real when something of great consequence has to be expressed.

(I referred in Munich to the hard struggle I had with language in connection with the passage spoken in the meditation chamber at the end of the first scene, in. the Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. It was actually no more than a faint echo—all that could be expressed through the feeble instrument of language—of what the Hierophant was intended to say to the pupil.)

In the sacred Mysteries the very deepest secrets were brought to expression and the inadequacy of language for this purpose was felt at all times. Hence the age-long efforts in the Mysteries to find means of expression for the soul's experiences. Terms and phrases that had been used in ordinary intercourse for centuries proved to be utterly inadequate, whereas the opposite was true of the pictures arising when the gaze was directed to the expanse of universal space, to the constellations, to the appearance of a certain star or the eclipse of one heavenly body by another at definite times. These were pictures well fitted to portray particular happenings and experiences in man's life of soul. I will give a brief example.

Let us suppose it was a matter of announcing that something of great and far-reaching importance would take place at a particular moment in time because some human soul would then be sufficiently mature to undergo a sublime experience and to communicate it to his people; or perhaps there might have been a desire to indicate that a people, or a particular section of humanity, had reached a certain state of maturity in evolution and that an Individuality had come to dwell among them, possibly from some quite different region. In the latter case, the highest point reached in the development of this individual was coincident with the highest point reached in the development of the folk-soul of the people concerned and it was desired to express the unique nature of this event. Nothing that could be conveyed through ordinary language was found to be lofty enough to impress men's feelings with the significance of such an event. It was therefore expressed pictorially by saying : When the highest power developed by an an individual coincides with the highest power developed by a particular folk-soul, it is as when the Sun is in the constellation of Leo and radiates its light from there. In this example the picture of the Lion was chosen to denote something manifesting in its greatest strength in the evolution of humanity. A phenomenon in cosmic space was thus used to indicate a happening in the life of humanity. Such is the origin of certain expressions used in history; they were derived from the stars and constellations,and were the means used to express spiritual facts in the life of mankind.

When it is said, for example, that an event in the evolution of humanity is expressed symbolically by a phenomenon in the heavens such as the Sun in Leo or in some particular constellation, trivial thinkers are very apt to reverse the real meaning and state that all happenings connected with the early history of humanity were mythical descriptions of movements of celestial bodies; whereas the truth is that earthly events were expressed in pictures taken from the constellations. The truth is invariably the opposite of the theories loved by superficial thinkers.

This connection with the Cosmos is something that should fill us with reverence for what we are told about the great events in the evolution of mankind and the expression of them in pictures derived from cosmic phenomena. There is actually a mysterious connection between all cosmic existence and what comes to pass in man's existence; for happenings on Earth are reflections of happenings in the Cosmos.

In a certain respect the convergence of the Sun-wisdom of Hermes and the Earth-wisdom of Moses in Egypt is also a reflection, a mirror-image, of happenings in the Cosmos. Picture to yourselves certain forces streaming out from the Sun and other forces streaming back from the Earth into cosmic space; the point in space at which they meet will not be without importance; according to whether the contact is made at a point nearer to or farther away from the sources in question, the effect of the radiations emitted and then sent back, will be different. The contact between the Hermes-wisdom and the Moses-wisdom in ancient Egypt was presented in the Mysteries in such a way that comparison was possible with something that according to spiritual-scientific cosmology had already taken place in the Cosmos. We know that Sun and Earth had separated, that for a time the Earth was still united with the Moon, that then a part of the Earth moved out into space to become our present Moon. The Earth had therefore sent back part of itself towards the Sun in cosmic space. And when, in Egyptian civilization, the Earth-wisdom of Moses came into contact with the Sun-wisdom of Hermes, this remarkable happening was also like a ‘radiation’—this time from the Earth towards the Sun.

After its subsequent separation from the Sun-wisdom of Hermes, the wisdom of Moses Earth-wisdom—can be said to have developed further as the science of the Earth and of Man; in its course towards the Sun it absorbed and steeped itself in the direct wisdom radiating from the Sun. There was, however, to be a limit to this absorption; the wisdom of Moses was destined to progress on its own and develop independence. Hence it remained in Egypt only until enough had been absorbed for its needs; then came the “Exodus of the Children of Moses from Egypt”, in order that the Sun-wisdom received by the Earth-wisdom might be assimilated and also developed.

Two phases must therefore be distinguished in the wisdom of Moses: one while it is developing in the sphere of the wisdom of Hermes, surrounded by it on all sides and perpetually absorbing it. Then comes the separation, and after the exodus from Egypt the wisdom of Moses, although now developing independently, elaborates the wisdom of Hermes it has absorbed and on its own further course reaches three stages . What was its goal and, its destined task?

The task of the wisdom of Moses was to find the way back again to the Sun. It had become Earth-wisdom. Moses was born with all that had been imparted to him by Zarathustra as a wise man of the Earth and he sought for the way back to the Sun in different stages. At the first stage he had steeped himself in the wisdom of Hermes; the course of his further development can best be portrayed in pictures drawn from cosmic existence. When the effects of what happens on the Earth stream back into cosmic space, the first encounter on the path towards the Sun is with Mercury. (We know that thc Venus of ordinary astronomy is Mercury in the terminology of occultism and the Mercury of astronomy is Venus according to occultism.) On the way from the Earth towards the Sun, therefore, the Mercury-nature is encountered first, at a later stage the Venus-nature and then the Sun-nature. Hence through, inner processes in the life of soul, Moses was to develop the heritage received from Zarathustra in such a way that on the returning path it would be able to find the Sun-nature again; it had therefore to reach a definite stage. The wisdom inculcated by Moses into culture and civilization had necessarily to develop in the form in which he had imparted to his people. Hence on the path of return, having first absorbed something of the wisdom imparted by Hermes as directly radiating from the Sun, Moses developed it with a new orientation, that is, in the opposite direction.

It is said that Hermes later called Mercury (Thoth), brought to his people art and science, knowledge of the external world, external art, in the form suitable for them. But it was in a different, indeed opposite way, that Moses himself was to reach this Hermes-Mercury-wisdom and develop it to further stages on the returning path. This process portrayed in the history of the Hebrews up to the time and reign of David; he is described as the royal psalmist, as a divine prophet, as a man of God, an armour-bearer and also a player on the harp. David is the Hermes, the Mercury, of the Hebrew people who had now developed to the stage of being able to produce a Hermes- or Mercury-wisdom in an independent form. At the time of David, therefore, the Hermes-wisdom, once assimilated by the Moses-wisdom, had reached the region, or stage, of Mercury.

On the returning pail towards the Sun the wisdom of Moses was to advance to the Venus-stage. Hebraism reached this stage at the time when the Moses-wisdom, as it had flowed down the centuries, was destined to unite with an entirely different element, with a stream of wisdom that had come from the other direction.

Whatever rays back from the Earth into space encounters Venus on the path to the Sun, and during the Babylonian captivity the wisdom of Moses encountered the wisdom that had made its way over from Asia and was presented in a modified form in the Babylonian and Chaldean Mysteries. This contact was made during the time of the Babylonian captivity. Like a wanderer who, having started from the Earth with a knowledge of what the Earth is, had passed through the region of Mercury and arrived in the region of Venus in order there to receive the light of the Sun falling upon Venus, so did the wisdom of Moses absorb what had proceeded directly from the sanctuaries of Zoroastrianism and was being continued in a modified form in the Mysteries of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It was this that the Moses-wisdom received during the Babylonian captivity, thus assimilating wisdom that had made its way to the region of the Euphrates and the Tigris.

But something else came to pass as well. Moses had encountered the wisdom that once upon a time had streamed from the Sun. In the sanctuaries that were known to and frequented by the wise men among the Hebrews during the captivity, the legacy of the wisdom bequeathed by Moses to his people mingled with the Sun-nature of the wisdom harboured in the Mystery-centres in the regions around the Euphrates and the Tigris where the reincarnated Zarathustra was teaching. Approximately at the time of the Babylonian captivity, Zarathustra himself was incarnated; thus while teaching in that region, he who had already given over one part of his wisdom, receive it back again. He himself incarnated time and time again, and in his incarnation as Zarathas or Nazarathos he became the teacher of the captive Jews who knew of the sanctuaries existing in those regions.

Thus in its later course the wisdom of Moses came into contact with what Zarathustra himself had been able to achieve after he had moved from the more distant Mystery-centres to those of Asia Minor. There he became the teacher of the initiated pupils of Chaldea as well as of individual initiated teachers; there were also those in whom the Moses-wisdom was fructified by the stream with which they could now make contact, being able to receive from Zarathustra himself, in his incarnation as Zarathas or Nazarathos, what he himself had formerly imparted to their ancestor—Moses. Such was the destiny of the wisdom of Moses. It had actually originated with Zarathustra and had been transplanted into foreign lands. It was as if a Sun-being with bandaged eyes had been carried down to the Earth and on the return journey must seek again for what it had lost.

Moses, then, was the reincarnated pupil of Zarathustra. In his existence in Egyptian civilization everything once imparted to him by Zarathustra lit up again within him; but isolated in the domain of the Earth, it was as if he did not know the source of his illumination. Hence he took the path towards what had once been of the nature of the Sun; in Egypt he turned to the Hermes-wisdom which presented the wisdom of Zarathustra in its direct form, not in reflection as in his own case. After he had absorbed enough of the Hermes-wisdom, the stream of his own wisdom developed in a straightforward course. Having established in the Davidic age a form of Hermes-Wisdom, with its own science and art, the stream of Moses-wisdom moved towards the Sun whence it had originally issued, but in a form which at first concealed its real nature.

In the centres of learning in ancient Babylon where he was also the teacher of Pythagoras, Zarathustra—Zarathas or Nazarathos—could only teach in a way that was possible in a specially constituted body, for he was obliged to use such a body as his instrument. If he was to give expression to the Sun-nature in its fullness as he had once done and had then imparted it to Hermes and Moses—if he was to give expression to this wisdom in a new form, suitable for the later epoch, he needed a bodily sheath that would be a worthy instrument. It was only in a form conditioned by a body such as ancient Babylonia was able to produce that Zarathustra could bring forth again all the wisdom which he then conveyed to Pythagoras, to the learned Hebrews and the Chaldean and Babylonian sages who at that time—in the sixth century B.C.—were in a position to hear it.

In regard to what Zarathustra was able to teach, it was actually as if the light of the Sun had first been intercepted by Venus and could not find its way directly to the Earth; it was as if the Zarathustra-wisdom could not manifest itself in its primal form but only in modification. For to enable this wisdom to work in its original form Zarathustra would have to be enveloped in a suitable body and such a body could only be produced in an altogether unique way—which may be characterized somewhat as follows.

It was said in the lecture yesterday that there were three folk-souls in Asia, each of a different character : the Indian in the South, the Iranian and the Turanian to the North. It was indicated that these three species of souls came into being, firstly, because the northern stream of the Atlantean peoples had passed into Asia across these regions and had spread through them. But another stream had passed through Africa and its final offshoots had penetrated as far as the regions of the Turanian peoples. Where the northern stream which had passed from Atlantis towards Asia met the other stream which had passed from Atlantis through Africa, a remarkable mixture of peoples was produced and a racial stock formed from which the Hebrews subsequently sprang.

Something very remarkable came to pass in these people. Faculties of astral-etheric clairvoyance that had remained in a state of decadence among certain people and had become corrupt as the last phase of a faculty of clairvoyance directed outwards—all this turned inwards in those who became the Hebrew people. The direction was entirely changed. Instead of manifesting in its outer operations in the form of a lower astral clairvoyance, as the remains of the old Atlantean clairvoyance, it worked as an organizing power in the inner constitution of the body. What had become a decadent outward clairvoyance and having remained static had been permeated by the Ahrimanic element—this had then developed in the right way through becoming an active force in the inner, organic constitution of the human body. In the Hebrew people this faculty did not come to expression as an outdated form of clairvoyance but it worked as a transforming force upon the bodily nature, thus bringing it to a stage of greater perfection. The faculty that in the Turanian people had become decadent, worked creatively and with transforming power in the inner constitution of the Hebrews.

The following may therefore be said. In the bodily nature of the Hebrew people as propagated through blood-relation- from generation to generation, there were working the forces which as outward clairvoyant vision had had their day and were no longer to continue in this form but were now to function in a different sphere where they would be in the right element. The faculty that had enabled the Atlanteans to look with spiritual vision into space and into spiritual regions and in the Turanians had become a degenerate residue of clairvoyance—this faculty turned inwards in the Hebrew people. What had been of a divine-spiritual nature in Atlantean culture worked inwardly, in the Hebrews as an organic formative force and within their blood was able to light up as an inner consciousness of the Divine. It was as if everything that had been seen by the Atlantean when he directed his clairvoyant gaze outwards to the expanse of space had now become wholly inward, arising in the inmost organism of the Hebrews as consciousness of, Jahve or Jehovah, as inner, consciousness of the Divine. Thus the Hebrews felt the Godhead to be united with their blood, felt themselves pervaded, impregnated, by the Godhead outspread in space, and knew that this same Godhead was living within them, pulsing through their very blood.

Yesterday we considered the contrast between the Iranian and the Turanian civilizations. Now, having compared the faculties of the Turanians with those of the Hebrew race, we see that what had become decadent in the former progressed in the latter, subsequently working in the blood. What had been visible to the Atlantean now manifested in the Hebrew in the form of inner feeling. This experience is summed up in a single word—the name JEHOVAH. Compressed as it were into a single point, into one inner centre of consciousness of the Divine, lived the God who had been revealed to Atlantean clairvoyance behind all external phenomena. Invisible and inwardly experienced, the God lived in the blood of the generations of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, leading them and all their succeeding generations from event to event on their path of destiny. In this way the outer had become inward; the outer was now experienced within, no longer seen, no longer called by different names but known by a single designation: ‘I AM THE I AM !’ The Divine had assumed an entirely different form. Whereas with the faculties man possessed in the Atlantean epoch he had found the God out yonder in the Universe, he now found the God in the centre of his own being, in his ‘I’, felt the God in the blood flowing through the generations. The great God of the Universe had now become the God of the Hebrews, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, the God who flowed in the blood through the generations.

Thus was founded the racial stock whose inner mission for the evolution of humanity we shall study tomorrow. It has only been possible to-day to give an indication of the very earliest stage in the composition of the blood of this people, the stage when everything that in the Atlantean age man had allowed to work in upon him from outside was now com-pressed within his own being. We shall see what mysteries are fulfilled in happenings that have only been touched upon to-day, and we shall learn to understand the unique nature of the people from whom Zarathustra, as the Being we call Jesus of Nazareth, could derive his body.

• 1. e.g. in the Lecture Cycle The Gospel of St. Luke, Lecture Five.

Before coming to our main theme I want to make a brief addition to something that was said in the lecture yesterday. I spoke of the fact that really significant happenings in the evolution of humanity can be characterized by expressions derived front processes in the Cosmos. I also emphasized how impossible it is to speak intelligibly and adequately in the words of ordinary language about the great mysteries of existence.

The best way to characterize the deeply significant inter-action between Hermes and Moses, the two great pupils of Zarathustra, is to present it as a repetition, a re-enactment, of a cosmic process, viewed in the light of occult science.

In order to picture this cosmic process, let us again look back to the time when our Earth had separated from the Sun, when each with an independent centre was pursuing a further life of its own in the Cosmos. We can picture that in the far, far distant past, the substantiality of Earth +Sun formed a single whole, one great cosmic body which then divided into two. In saying this it must be remembered that other, parallel cosmic happenings—the splitting off of the other planets belonging to our solar system—are being left out of consideration here. For our immediate purpose the time sequence of these other severances need not be taken into account; it is enough to say that a separation once took place, as the result of which the Sun became an entity and the Earth another.

It must also be remembered that this separation took place in an age when the globe now called ‘Earth’ still contained within it the substantiality of the present Moon. Earth + Moon on thc one side confronted Sun on the other. All the forces, both spiritual and physical, that had been at work before this separation, divided: the coarser elements, the coarser, cruder activities, remained with thc Earth, whereas the higher, spiritual-ethereal activities accompanied the Sun. We must picture to ourselves that for long ages Earth and Sun continued their evolution separately. To begin with, everything going forth from the Sun to the Earth was entirely different in character from the forces streaming from the Sun to-day. Earth-existence, Earth-life, was inward, enclosed, receiving little life from the Sun, little of what rayed down spiritually, taking physical expression, from the Sun.

In this first period of separation from the Sun, the Earth threatened to become barren, arid, mummified. And if the Moon had continued to remain in thc Earth the life that is present on our planet to-day would never have been possible. While the Moon was still contained in the Earth, the life pouring from the Sun could not be fully effective; this was only possible at a later time, when the Earth had separated from itself the substantiality of what is now Moon, and with it the spiritual Beings connected with the Moon.

But very much else is connected with the separation of the Moon from the Earth. It must be realised that everything we call life on our Earth to-day evolved by slow degrees, and Spiritual Science indicates the successive conditions or states of existence which made life possible. Previously there was the Old Saturn-existence, then the Old Sun-existence, then the Old Moon-existence, and finally our Earth-existence. The separation of the Sun and also the earlier union of Earth and Sun were therefore preceded by other, quite different evolutionary processes. And when the Earth began to exist in its present form, it was still united with the substance of all the planets that belong to our solar system and were not separated off until later—the process of separation and differentiation being brought about by forces previously operating during the three preceding evolutionary periods of Old Saturn, Old. Sun, Old Moon.

We know that during the Old Saturn-existence there was no matter, no substance, such as is present to-day; there were no solid bodies, no fluids, even no gaseous, vaporous or aeriform masses. Old Saturn was composed solely of warmth—differentiated warmth. We can therefore say: the body of ancient Saturn consisted of warmth only; everything evolved within the element of warmth. I need not emphasize here that one who ventures to make such a statement is fully aware of how impossible it is for modern physics to conceive of a body consisting solely of warmth; he is also aware that ‘warmth’ is for modern physics a state or condition only, not anything having the character of substance. However that may be, we are not concerned to-day with modern physics but only with the truth.¹

Evolution advanced from the warmth-body of Saturn to the next stage—the stage of Old Sun. There, as described in thc book Occult Science, the warmth-body of Saturn densified. Some of the warmth remained, but the warmth-body densified, in part, to the gaseous, aeriform sate of Old Sun. The process was not only one of densification but also of rarefication—a development upwards, to light. Hence we can say: passing from the warmth-condition of Old Saturn to the stage of Old Sun, we have a cosmic body comprising air, warmth and light.

When the Old Sun-existence advanced to the stage of the Old Moon-existence which preceded that of our Earth, again there was densification and again rarefication. The fluid or watery condition was added to the gaseous, but a change also took place on the other side, in the direction as it wry or spiritualisation, etherealisation. During the Old Moon stage, not only was there light but also the sound-ether or chemical ether. What is here called sound-ether is not to be identified with what we call physical sound or tone. The latter is only a reflection of what is experienced by clairvoyant consciousness as the 'Harmony of the Spheres', as etheric sound or tone weaving as a living power through the Universe. In speaking of this ether and of this sound we are therefore speaking of something far more spiritual, far more ethereal than ordinary sound.

Densification to the solid state took place when Old Moon evolved to Earth. On Old Moon there were no solid bodies such as exist on Earth, where the solid condition came into existence for the first time. On the Earth, therefore, WC now have, on the one side, warmth, the gaseous and watery states, and solid bodies; and on the other side, light-ether, sound-ether, and then life-ether. Evolution on the Earth has reached this stage. Thus on the Earth there are seven elemental states or conditions, whereas on Old Saturn there was only the one state—that of warmth.

When our Earth emerged from the cosmic night at the beginning of its existence, when it was still united with the Sun and with the other planets, we must picture it living and weaving in these seven elemental conditions. But with the separation from the Sun something very remarkable took place.

Warmth and light are present for external life to-day since it is affected by the influences that stream from the Sun to the Earth and belong to the whole domain of sense-perception; but the sound-ether and the life-ether do not belong to this domain. The workings of the sound-ether manifest themselves only in chemical combinations and dissolutions, that is to say, in processes operating in material existence. What we call the working of the life-ether as it streams in from the Sun cannot be directly perceived by man in the sense that light is perceptible when through the senses he distinguishes light from darkness. The active workings or effects of life are perceived in living beings, but not the instreaming life-ether itself. Hence science too is compelled to admit that life per se is a riddle.—

Thus the two highest kinds of etheric manifestation—the life-ether and the sound-ether—although they proceed from the Sun as extremely delicate emanations—are not directly manifest in Earth-existence. Although these emanations ray down from the Sun, they are hidden from ordinary perception. Yet in modern existence too, something corresponding to what lives in the sound-ether and life-ether is perceptible on the Earth in the inner nature of man. The direct influences and effects of the life-ether and the sound-ether (the harmony of the spheres) are not externally perceptible on the Earth, but what takes effect in the constitution of man is perceptible.

The easiest way in which I can explain this will be to re-mind you of the process of human evolution on Earth. In very ancient times and on into the Atlantean epoch, man was endowed with a faculty of clairvoyance enabling him to behold not only a material world as he does to-day but also the spiritual backgrounds of material existence. This was possible for man because in those ancient times there was an intermediate state between the waking consciousness that is ours to-day and what we call the sleeping state. In the waking state man perceived the things of the physical world of the senses; in the sleeping state to-day he neither perceives nor is aware of anything at all; he simply goes on living.—That at any rate is true of the great majority of people. If you were to investigate clairvoyantly man's life during sleep you would make startling discoveries—although only those people who look no deeper than the surface of things would be taken aback by them.

While man is asleep his astral body and Ego are outside his physical and etheric bodies. But it must not be imagined that astral body and Ego during sleep are like a misty cloud hovering in the vicinity of the physical body. What an inferior kind of astral clairvoyance sees in the form of a cloud and which we call the astral body, is only the very crudest beginning of what the human being reveals during sleep. If anyone were to regard this cloudlike formation near the physical and etheric bodies as the only phenomenon of importance he would simply be basing himself upon the lowest forms of astral clairvoyance. The truth is that during sleep man is a being of vast magnitude. At the moment of going to sleep, the inner forces in the astral body and in the Ego actually begin to expand over the whole solar system, to become part of it. From every direction man draws into his astral body and into his Ego forces which strengthen this life during sleep, and on waking he contracts into the narrower confines within his skin and pours into these what he has absorbed during the night from the whole solar system. That is why medieval occultists too called this spiritual body of man the ‘astral’ body, because it is united with the worlds of the stars and draws its forces from them. During sleep at night, then, man actually expands over the whole solar system.

What is it that permeates the astral body during sleep when it is outside the physical and etheric bodies? It is the weaving life of the harmonies of the spheres, forces that can otherwise operate only in thc sound-ether. Just as when a violin bow is drawn across the edge of a metal disc strewn with sand the vibrations pulsing through the air also pulsate through the sand and produce the well-known Chladni sound-figures, so do the harmonies of the spheres vibrate through the human being during sleep and bring order again into what has been cast into disorder during the day through his sense-perceptions. The weaving forces of the life-ether also permeate him during sleep, but he is entirely unaware of this inner life of his sheaths when he is separated from the physical and etheric bodies. In the normal state, man has the power of perception only when he again plunges down into the physical and etheric bodies, using the outer organs of the etheric body for thinking and those of the physical body for sense-perception.

But in ancient times there were intermediate states between waking life and sleep, states which can be induced to-day only by abnormal means and because of the dangers inseparable from such conditions, ought never to be induced. In Atlantean times, however, these faculties of perception that functioned normally in the intermediate states between waking and sleeping, enabled man to be transported into the domain of the forces living and weaving in the sound-ether and the life-ether. In other words: through clairvoyance in its old form, man was able in that distant past to be aware of what was being radiated to him by the Sun as the harmony of the spheres and the life that pulses through cosmic space—although the earthly effects of the sound-ether and the life-ether were perceptible only in living beings in the external world.

Such experiences gradually ceased to be possible; with the loss of the old clairvoyance the door closed against these perceptions and something different came into being, namely the inner power of cognition. Only then did man learn to reflect, to ponder, to cogitate. What we to-day call reflection about the things of the physical world, in other words an inner activity, began to develop only when the old clairvoyance was fading away. In the early epochs of Atlantis, man had no inner life such as he has to-day—an inner life of feelings, sentient experiences, thoughts and mental concepts, which actually constitute the creative impulse in culture and civilization. In the intermediate states between waking and sleeping his whole being was outpoured in a spiritual world and the material world of the senses seemed to be veiled in mist.

With the gradual disappearance of the old clairvoyance, external life increased in importance. A faint reflection of the harmony of the spheres and of the working of the life-ether was present in man's inner nature. But the reflection of the harmony of the spheres faded away to the same extent as man became inwardly aware of feelings and perceptions which mirrored the external world to him and constitute his inner life to-day. To the extent to which he felt himself an ‘I’, an Ego-being, his perception of the divine, all-pervading life-ether vanished from him. His condition had to be acquired at the cost of being deprived of certain aspects of external life. As an earthly being, man felt that the life he could no longer experience as streaming directly from the Sun was enclosed within him; and in his inner life to-day He has only a faint reflection of the sublime cosmic life, of the harmony of the spheres and the life-ether.

The development of man's faculty of cognition was also a kind of repetition of the Earth's own evolution. The Earth, when it separated from the Sun and became self-enclosed, would have hardened completely if all the substances left within it after the separation had been retained. The Sun's influence could not, to begin with, find entrance into the process of thc Earth's evolution and this state of things lasted until the Moon was separated from the Earth, together with all those substances and qualities that were making it impossible for the Earth to receive direct influences and forces from the Sun. Thus it was through having cast out the Moon that the Earth was able to receive the influences and forces of the now separated Sun. The Earth sent part of itself, the Moon, towards the Sun, in the opposite direction to that in which it had itself separated from the Sun, and the Moon then reflected back to the Earth the influences of the Sun, just as outwardly it reflects its light. The separation of the Moon from the Earth was an event of untold significance: the Earth had opened itself to the influences and forces of the Sun.

A cosmic event of this kind had necessarily to be re-enacted in the life of man as well. It was only when the Earth had long since opened itself to the workings of the Sun that the right point of time arrived for man to shut himself off from the direct influences of the Sun. The direct influences and forces of thc Sun were still active in the clairvoyance of Atlantean man. And just as there had come a time when the Earth began to harden, so too there came a time for man when he withdrew into his own inner nature, developed an inner life and could no longer receive the direct workings of the Sun. This process of the development of an inner life, when man could no longer be open to the Sun's influences and could receive only faint reflections within himself of the workings of the life-ether, the sound-ether, the harmonies of the spheres—this process lasted for long ages, right on into the post-Atlantean era.

In the earliest epochs of Atlantean evolution men had been directly aware of the Sun's influences. Then they shut them-selves off; and when these influences could no longer penetrate into them and their own inner life asserted itself strongly, it was only in the sacred Mysteries, through the practice of what may be called ‘Yoga’ that the spiritual powers of the pupils could be trained as it were to defy the normal conditions of Earth-existence and become directly aware of the workings of the Sun. Thus in the second half of the Atlantean epoch there were sanctuaries, appropriately called ‘Oracles’, where from among a humanity no longer able in a normal way to be aware of the direct workings of the sound-ether and the life-ether, pupils and dedicated disciples of the sacred wisdom were so trained that by first suppressing all perception through the senses, they could become aware of the manifestations of these higher ethers.

In places where genuine spiritual science was cultivated, this possibility actually remained in the post-Atlantean epoch—so persistently indeed that even external science, without understanding the meaning of it, has preserved a tradition originating in the School of Pythagoras to the effect that the harmonies of the spheres can become audible. But external science immediately turns anything of the nature of the harmony of the spheres into an abstraction—which of course it is not—and has no inkling of the reality. In the Pythagorean Schools the power to become aware of the harmony of the spheres was understood to be the re-opening of man's being to the sound-ether and to the divine life-ether.

It was Zarathustra or Zoroaster who had proclaimed with the greatest power and splendour that behind the Sun radiating its light and warmth to the Earth there is something which as the activity of the sound-ether and indeed of the life-ether is only feebly reflected in man's inner life. If we endeavour to translate his teaching into modern language, we can say that he taught his pupils as follows.—He said to them: When you look upwards to the Sun you are aware of the beneficial warmth and light streaming from it to the Earth; but if you develop higher organs, if you develop your faculty of spiritual perception, you can become aware of the Sun Being behind the physical Sun and its life; and then you become aware of the workings of the sound-ether and within these the essence of life!

Zarathustra spoke to his pupils of Ormuzd, or Ahura Mazdao, the great Sun Aura, as the spiritual reality behind the physical workings of the Sun. ‘Ahura Mazdao’ can therefore also be translated as the ‘Great Wisdom’ in contrast to the meagre wisdom evolved by men to-day. Man becomes aware of the Great Wisdom when he beholds the spiritual essence of the Sun, the great Sun Aura.

A poet, gazing back to the remote past in the evolution of humanity, was able to point in the following words to what the spiritual investigator knows to be a truth:

‘The sun-orb sings, in emulation,
'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round:
His path predestined through Creation,
He ends with step of thunder-sound.’
(Faust: Prologue in Heaven. Tr. Bayard Taylor)

Disciples of aestheticism regard this simply as euphony and quote it as an outstanding example of poetic licence. They have no inkling that a poet of Goethe's calibre is describing actual realities when he writes: ‘The sun-orb sings his ancient round’—that is to say, in the way known to ancient humanity, and known even to-day to one who is initiated.

Zarathustra had imparted this mighty truth to his pupils, particularly to the two among them who can be said to have been his most intimate disciples and were incarnated later on as Hermes and Moses. But Zarathustra gave the instruction on what lies behind the radiant body of the Sun in two quite different forms. The instruction given to Hermes enabled him to receive the influence streaming directly from the Sun. Moses, on the other hand, was inspired in such a way that he preserved the secret of the Sun-wisdom as though in a memory.

If in the light of what is said in the book Occult Science we picture the Earth after its separation from the Sun, and then the departure of the Moon-forces from the Earth after which the Earth opened itself to the Sun, we find Venus and Mercury between Earth and Sun. Dividing the whole space between Sun and Earth into three, we can say: the Earth separated from the Sun and sent forth the Moon towards the Sun. Then Venus and Mercury separated off from the Sun and came towards the Earth. Venus and Mercury, therefore, move from the Sun towards the Earth; the Moon goes from the Earth towards the Sun.

Conditions in the evolution of humanity reflect conditions in the Cosmos. The Sun-wisdom contained in the revelations of Zarathustra had been transmitted by him on the one side to Hermes and on the other to Moses. In Hermes there lived the Sun-wisdom radiating from the astral body of Zarathustra that had been transmitted to him; the wisdom living in Moses was like a separate planet that had still to develop towards what radiated directly from the Sun. Just as the Earth, by relinquishing the Moon, opened itself to the influence of ,the Sun, so did the wisdom of Moses open itself to receive the Sun-wisdom radiating directly from Zarathustra. And these two forms of wisdom, the Earth-wisdom of Moses and the Sun-wisdom of Zarathustra as imparted to Hermes, came into con-tact in Egypt, where the teachings of Moses encountered those of Hermes. What Moses had received from Zarathustra in the far distant past, he wakened to life within his own being and transmitted it to his people. We have to conceive of this as a process analogous to the emergence of the Moon-substantiality from the Earth.

The wisdom transmitted by Moses to his people can also be called Jahve- or Jehovah-wisdom—the name which, if rightly understood, epitomises it. We can also understand why old traditions speak of Jahve or Jehovah as a Moon God. This is frequently stated but is comprehensible only when these profound connections arc known. Just as the Earth cast out the Moon, sending it towards the Sun, so too the path of the Earth-wisdom of Moses inevitably led towards Hermes who possessed the direct wisdom of Zarathustra in the astral body that had been bequeathed. The wisdom of Moses, having made contact with Hermes, had then itself to evolve, and we have already described how its development continued until the age of David, when in David himself, the royal warrior and psalmist of the Hebrew people, Hermetic or Mercury-wisdom arose in a new form. We have also heard how the wisdom of Moses made still closer contact with the Sun-wisdom during the time of the Babylonian captivity, when Zarathustra himself, then bearing the name of Zarathas or Nazarathos, was the teacher of the Hebraic Initiates during the captivity. In the wisdom of Moses, therefore, we see a re-enactment of the cosmic process of the separation of Earth from Sun and of subsequent happenings on the Earth.

The wise men among the ancient Hebrews and all who were aware of these connections were filled with deepest reverence. They felt as though direct revelations were being vouchsafed to them from cosmic spaces and cosmic existence. And a personality such as Moses seemed to them to be a messenger of the cosmic Powers themselves. This they felt—and We too must feel something of the kind if we desire genuinely to understand ancient times. Otherwise, all our learning is no more than empty abstraction.

It was essential that what had streamed from Zarathustra and had been transmitted to posterity through Hermes and Moses should also evolve to a higher stage and appear again in a different, more advanced form. To this end it was necessary that Zarathustra himself, the Individuality who had previously bequeathed only the astral body and the etheric body, should be able to appear on the Earth in a physical body, in order that this too might be offered up. Here we have a beautiful illustration of progress. In his life in the very distant past, Zarathustra had given the impulse to post-Atlantean evolution in ancient Iranian culture. Then he bequeathed his astral body in order to inaugurate a. new form of culture through Hermes, and he bequeathed his etheric body to Moses. He had thus bequeathed two of his sheaths. Opportunity had now to be afforded him to offer up his physical body as well, for the great mystery of the evolution of humanity demanded the offering of the three bodies by one single individual. The third act still ahead of Zarathustra was the offering of the physical body, and this required very special measures of preparation. I have already indicated how the particular kind of life lived by the Hebrew people throughout the generations made possible the preparation of the physical body that could eventually be offered up by Zarathustra as his third great act. This preparation demanded that what elsewhere had been direct, outwardly oriented spiritual perception—the astral vision which in the Turanians had become decadent—should be trans-formed into an inner activity.

This is the secret of the Hebrew people. Whereas in the Turanians the forces inherited from ancient times produced organs of external clairvoyance, in the Hebrew people these forces turned inwards, organising the inner constitution of the body. Hence the Hebrews were the people destined to feel and to experience inwardly what during the Atlantean age men had seen outspread behind the single physical objects. Jahve or Jehovah—the name consciously uttered and proclaimed by the Hebrew people—was the ‘Great Spirit’ revealed to ancient clairvoyance behind all things and beings and now concentrated into a unity. And it is also indicated that in a very special way the progenitor of the ancient Hebrews had been endowed with this inner organic constitution.

Let me again repeat that the pictorial accounts of ancient happenings contained in sagas and legends are nearer to the truth than the picture of evolution pieced together by modern anthropological research from evidence provided by excavations and fragments of monuments. In most eases the old legends are corroborated by spiritual-scientific investigation. I say ‘in most cases’ and not ‘in all’ because I have not investigated every one of them; but it is very probable that the above holds good for all genuinely ancient legends. Thus when we enquire into the origin of the Hebrew people, we are led back, not to what modern anthropologists surmise, but to an actual progenitor named in the Bible. Abraham or Abram is a living figure and what the Talmud legend says of this original ancestor is true.

According to the story, the father of Abraham is a captain in the service of that legendary but nevertheless real personality called ‘Nimrod’ in the Bible (Genesis X, 8-9). It is announced to Nimrod by those who understand the signs of the times as revealed in dreams that many kings and rulers will be overthrown by his captain's son. Nimrod is seized with fear and orders that the child be killed. Such is the legend, and its truth is confirmed by occult investigation. Abraham's father resorts to subterfuge and presents another man's child to Nimrod. His own child, Abraham, is reared in a cave.—Abraham is the first in whom the forces formerly operating as the faculties of external clairvoyance turned inwards to become the powers that were to lead to inner consciousness of the Divine. This complete reversal of forces is indicated in the legend by saying that by thc grace of God the child was able to suck milk from the fingers of his own right hand during the three years he lived in the cave. This process of self-nourishment, in other words the penetration of the forces formerly used for the old clairvoyance into the inner constitution of man, is illustrated in a wonderful way in Abraham, the progenitor of thc Hebrew people.—If their real foundations are understood, legends of this kind are so convincing that we realise why old narratives could only convey in pictures what lay behind their contents. But these pictures were able to evoke feelings—even if not actual consciousness—of the great truths. And that sufficed in those ancient times. Abraham, then, was the first man in whom the faculties of divine wisdom, divine vision, were reflected inwardly in an entirely human form, as thought of the Divine. In actual fact, and as occult investigation will always insist, the physical constitution of Abram, or Abraham as he was called later on, was entirely different from that of everyone living around him. The organic constitution of other human beings was not such as would have enabled them to unfold inner activity of thinking through a special instrument. Thinking was possible for them when they were free of the body, when forces were activated in the etheric body; but they had not yet developed the instrument for thinking in the physical body itself. Abraham was actually the first in whom the physical instrument for thinking had been elaborated in the real sense. Hence—although this must not be taken too literally—he is not incorrectly called the inventor of arithmetic, the science dependent primarily upon the instrument of the physical body. Arithmetic is something that in its form, and because of its intrinsic certainty, comes near to clairvoyant knowledge, but it is essentially dependent upon a bodily organ.

Thus there is a deep and intimate connection between a faculty in which external forces had hitherto been used for clairvoyance and one which now made use of an inner organ for the activity of thinking. This is indicated when Abraham is spoken of as the inventor of arithmetic. He is therefore to be regarded as the first personality into whom was implanted the physical organ of thinking, the organ through which man, by means of physical thinking, could rise to actual thought of the Divine, whereas formerly it was only through clairvoyant vision that he could have any knowledge of God and of the Divine. All such knowledge in ancient times was the outcome of clairvoyance. To rise to the Divine through thought required a physical instrument and Abraham was the first into whom it was implanted. And as here it was a matter, of a physical organ, the whole relation of this thought or concept of the Divine to the objective world and to the subjective being of man was different from what it had formerly been, when a physical instrument was not involved.

The thought of the Divine had formerly been grasped through the wisdom preserved in the Mystery Schools and could be conveyed to one who had developed to the stage of being able to have perceptions in the etheric body, free from the organs of the physical body. But the only means for the transmission of a physical instrument to another human being is physical heredity. Thus if what was of salient importance for Abraham, namely the physical organ, was to be preserved on the Earth, it had to be transmitted from generation to generation through heredity. It is therefore understandable that the element of racial heredity, the transmission of this physical attribute through the blood flowing down the generations, was of very great importance in the Hebrew people.

But a physical attribute that appeared for the first time in Abraham, resulting from the crystallization and shaping of a physical organ for comprehension of the Divine—such an attribute had to be established. Transmitted by heredity from generation to generation, it penetrated ever more deeply into the nature and constitution of man and took firmer and firmer hold there as the effect of heredity grew progressively stronger. Hence we can say: it was necessary that what had been imparted to Abraham in order that the mission of the Hebrew people might be fulfilled, should reach greater perfection in the course of being transmitted from generation to generation through heredity. And in thc case of a physical organ this was the only possible means.

If the Individuality we have come to know as Zarathustra was to be provided with as perfect a physical body as possible—that is to say, a body containing an organ capable of grasping, in a human physical body, the thought or concept of the Divine—the physical instrument once implanted in Abraham had to be brought to the highest attainable degree of perfection; it had to be inwardly consolidated through heredity and to develop in such a way that a body suitable for Zarathustra might be produced, with all the qualities needed by him in his physical body. But a physical body that was to be of use to Zarathustra could not have developed to greater perfection by itself, separated from the rest of man's constitution; all the three sheaths, physical, etheric and astral, had gradually to be perfected through what physical heredity flowing down the successive generations was able to impart to them.

There is a certain law in evolution of which we have often heard in connection with thc development of the individual human being. A particular period of this process is from birth until the sixth or seventh year of life, during which the main development is that of the physical body. The period of the development of the etheric body is from the sixth or seventh year until the fourteenth or fifteenth. The period of the development of the astral body is from then until the twenty-first or twenty-second year. Such is the law, based on the number seven, governing thc development of the individual human being. The development of the outer sheaths of humanity in general through the generations is governed by a similar law and the deeper aspects of this process have still to be considered.

Whereas in the course of every seven years the individual completes a stage of development, until his seventh year that of the physical body, which becomes more and more perfect during this period—so the whole structure of the physical body of mankind in general, developing as it can do through the generations, reaches a certain completion after seven generations. But heredity works in such a way that the qualities transmitted do not pass from one human being to his nearest descendant in the immediately following generation; the salient qualities and attributes cannot be transmitted directly from father to son, from mother to daughter, but only from father to grandson—thus to the second generation, then the fourth, and so on. The number seven is basic in the process of heredity through the generations; but as every other generation is skipped, we have, in reality, to do with the number fourteen.

The special physical constitution established in Abraham could reach the peak of its development after fourteen generations. But for this process to take effect in the etheric body and the astral body as well, the development which in the case of the individual proceeds during the period from the seventh to the fourteenth year would have to continue through a further seven, or in reality, fourteen generations, and then through a still further period of seven (or fourteen) generations, starting from the fourteenth year in the case of the individual human being. In other words : the physical constitution established in Abraham, the racial progenitor, had to develop through three times seven or rather three times fourteen generations; the development had then taken place in all the three sheaths—physical body, etheric body and astral body. Thus the process of heredity through three times fourteen generations, i.e. through forty-two generations, made it possible for a man to receive in the physical body, etheric body and astral body in a state of perfected development, what had been imparted to Abraham in its first rudiments.

Thus after three times fourteen generations, beginning with Abraham, we find a human body impregnated with what had been present in Abraham in its earliest rudiments. Only a body of this kind was suitable for Zarathustra in his incarnation. This is also made clear by the writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew. In the table of generations, fourteen generations are expressly enumerated from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian captivity, and fourteen from the captivity to Jesus Christ. Through these three times fourteen generations—in the sequence of which one is always skipped—the complete development has been achieved of what was imparted to Abraham for the mission of the Hebrew people. This was now fully impressed into the principles of human nature and thence could arise the body needed by Zarathustra for his incarnation in the epoch when a completely new impulse was to be brought to mankind through him.

The wisdom underlying the beginning of the Gospel of St. Matthew is indeed profound. It is essential, however, to understand what is indicated by these three times fourteen generations. In the body that it was possible for Joseph to provide for Jesus of Nazareth there was contained the essence of what had been present, in its rudiments, in Abraham; this had streamed into the whole Hebrew people and could then be concentrated in a single instrument, in the sheath used by Zarathustra by whom the incarnation of Christ was to be made possible.

• 1. See Occult Science—an Outline, p. 21. From Rudolf Steiner's Preface to the first edition. (1909).

It must be strictly remembered that there is no connection of kinship or other such relationship between Jesus, the son of Pandira, Jeschu ben Pandira, and the central figure in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, or any other Gospel. A hundred years before our era, that is to say a hundred years before the coming of Christ, Jeschu ben Pandira was stoned and then hanged on a tree, and he must not be confused with any figure in the Gospels. I want to emphasize, however, that to speak about the personality or existence of Jeschu ben Pandira requires no occult knowledge or clairvoyant faculty, because information about him can be obtained, if so desired, from Hebrew and Talmudist records. Confusion with the real Jesus has constantly occurred, for the first time actually as early as the second century A.D. Although Jesus, the son of Pandira, is not to be identified with Jesus of the Gospels there is a historical connection between the two personalities. This connection can be established to-day only through spiritual-scientific research and to understand it in all its depth we must again speak briefly of the evolution of humanity.

Looking up to those Beings who are the great Leaders of evolution, we come finally to lofty Individualities generally known by the name of Bodhisattvas—because it is in the East that the theory of their existence has been most firmly established. There are a number of Bodhisattvas. Their task as the great Teachers of humanity is to allow wisdom from, the spiritual worlds to flow through the Mystery Schools according to the maturity attained by men in a given epoch. The two Bodhisattvas—to whom reference has often been made when 'we have been speaking of the evolution of humanity—of primary interest for our own times arc the son of King Suddhodana who became Buddha, and he who as Gautama Buddha's successor in the office of Bodhisattva still holds this office to-day and—as Oriental wisdom and clairvoyant investigation agree—will do so for the next 2,500 years. This Bodhisattva will then become Maitreya Buddha, attaining the saint: rank as did his predecessor, Gautama Buddha.

The Bodhisattvas succeed one another in the evolution of humanity as great Teachers and must not be confused with the One who is the very source of their teachings, from whom they receive what it is their mission to impart to the several epochs. We must picture a 'college' of Bodhisattvas and at its centre the living source of the teachings. This living source is none other than He whom we are accustomed to call ‘Christ’. It is from Christ that all the Bodhisattvas receive what they have to impart to men in the course of the ages.

As long as a Bodhisattva holds this office he devotes himself first and foremost to the task of teaching; for, as we have heard, when he attains the rank of Buddhahood he does not again descend to incarnation in a physical body. Once more in agreement with all Oriental philosophy it can be said that Gautama Buddha, who as the son of King Suddhodana passed through his final incarnation in a physical body, has since assumed embodiment only as far as the etheric body. In the lectures on St. Luke's Gospel we heard of the next task of this Bodhisattva after becoming Buddha. When the so-called Nathan Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel was born (he is not the same as the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel), the Buddha who was embodied at that time as far as the etheric body, penetrated into the astral body of this child. Hence we can say that since his incarnation as Gautama Buddha the function of that Being was no longer to give teaching but to work as a living power from the spiritual world into the physical world. To work through teaching and to work as a living, growth-promoting power arc entirely different matters. A Bodhisattva is a Teacher until he becomes Buddha; from then onwards he is a power, an organising, life-bestowing power. And the Buddha worked as such in the constitution of the Nathan Jesus.

Since the sixth century B.C., the successor of the Bodhisattva who then became Buddha has taken the latter's place in the series of great Teachers. This is the Bodhisattva who later on will become the Maitreya Buddha. Hence we have to look for teachings needed by mankind since the time of Gautama Buddha wheresoever the Bodhisattva who succeeded him has poured down his inspiration, inculcating into his disciples what it is their mission to communicate to the world.—I said in the lecture yesterday that the activities centred in the communities of the Therapeutae and Essenes were chosen to be an instrument for the work of this Bodhisattva, and that one of the very noblest, purest personalities in the Essene communities was Jesus, the son of Pandira. Thus it was through the Essenes that the teaching of the Bodhisattva sent its radiance into mankind on the Earth.

As hearers of the deeper teachings, the Essene communities disappeared comparatively soon after the Christ Event—this is evident from external history. It will therefore certainly not seem incredible when I say that fundamentally and essentially the communities of the Therapeutae and Essenes were instituted in order that they might be instrumental in bringing down from the spiritual realms, from the spheres of the Bodhisattvas, what was needed to enable men to comprehend the momentous event of the appearance of Christ. The most important teachings given to mankind with the object of promoting understanding of the Christ Event stemmed from the communities of the Therapeutae and the Essenes. Thus Jesus, the son of Pandira, inspired as it were by the Bodhisattva who will become the Maitreya Buddha and whose influence was at work in these communities, was chosen to give teachings whereby the Mystery of Palestine, the Mystery of Christ, could be brought within reach of man's understanding. More detailed information about the Therapeutae and Essenes can be discovered only by means of spiritual-scientific investigation. Very little is known about them in external history. And as we are among anthroposophists, we shall not hesitate to draw from the secrets possessed by the Therapeutae and Essenes what is necessary for a deeper understanding of St. Matthew's Gospel, as well as of the other Gospels. We shall speak of the secrets in a way that tallies with the picture a spiritual scientist must have of these communities which flourished a century before the Christ Event in order to prepare for it through special teachings.

The essential feature in these communities was the Initiation undergone by members of the sects. This Initiation was specially adapted to promote understanding, through clairvoyant vision, of the significance of the part played by the Hebrews and by Abraham in preparation for the coming of Christ. That was the mystery with which the communities of the Therapeutae and Essenes were specially concerned. The very purpose of the Initiation undergone by their disciples was to promote deeper and more exact clairvoyant insight into the connection just mentioned. In the first place, therefore, it was necessary that an Essene should learn to assess the full significance of what had come about for the Hebrew people through Abraham, and so be able to see in him the progenitor of that people. Through his own vision an Essene was to realise that there had been implanted into Abraham the faculty of which I have spoken in the preceding lectures, which had then to be filtered through many generations, flowing down through the blood.

To understand how something of importance for the whole evolution of humanity can be brought about through a personality such as Abraham, you must keep this very significant truth clearly in mind: that always, whenever a personality is chosen to be a special instrument in the great process of evolution, a divine-spiritual Being must have a direct hold in that personality.

(Those of you who were present at the performance in Munich of the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation, or have read it, will know that one of the most important dramatic moments¹ is when the Hierophant indicates to Maria that she can fulfil her mission only when the influence of higher Beings has actually taken effect in her, when, in her case, this has caused what may be called a separation of the higher members of her nature from the lower, making it possible for the latter to be 'possessed' by an inferior spirit.—Everything in the Mystery Play, if you let it work upon your souls and do not take it superficially, can make you alive to great secrets of the evolution of humanity.)

As such a momentous role in evolution had been assigned to Abraham, it was necessary that the Spirit once perceptible to men in Atlantean times weaving through the external world should penetrate into his inner, organic constitution. Abraham was the first in whom this came to pass and therewith a fundamental change in man's faculty of spiritual perception was made possible. This could be brought about only through the influence of a divine-spiritual Being and such a Being did, in fact, lay into the organic constitution of Abraham the seed for the bodies that were to descend from him in the line of generations.

Thus an Essene would have said: The power that could actually bring the Hebrew people into existence, the power that enabled this people to become the bearers of the mission which prepares for Christ's coming, was established, in rudiment to begin with, by the mysterious Being who is only to be discovered when the soul ascends through the entire sequence of generations to Abraham, to the point where this Being entered into Abraham's bodily constitution, thereafter to work through the blood as a kind of Folk-Spirit in the Hebrew people. If, therefore, this secret of the evolution of humanity is to be understood, a man must rise in soul to the Spirit who implanted that power and seek for him in the realm where he was to be found before he had penetrated into Abraham.—The Essenes said: If a man desires to ascend in soul to the Spirit inspiring the Hebrew people and to know him in all purity, such a man, if he is an Essene or a Therapeut, must undergo a certain development whereby he purifies himself from everything that since the time of Abraham has approached the human soul from the physical world. The spiritual Being within man, and all the spiritual Beings who work together to bring about the evolution of humanity are to be experienced in their purity only in the spiritual world; in the state in which they exist within man they have been defiled by the forces of the physical world of sense.

According to the view held by the Essenes--and in a certain province of knowledge it is of course absolutely correct—every human being had within him whatever impurities had made their way into the soul in the past, clouding vision of the spiritual Being who had established in Abraham the power of which we have spoken. Accordingly it was essential that the soul of every Essene should be cleansed of everything that had penetrated into this power as a disturbing factor, dimming the vision of the Being indwelling the blood of the generations. The aim of all the methods of inner purification, all the exercises practised by the Essenes, was to liberate the soul from those inherited traits and influences which might obscure vision of the Being who was the Inspirer of Abraham. It was realised that the soul and spirit within man, this inmost core of his nature, had been clouded and sullied through the inherited traits.

There is a spiritual law which through their studies and clairvoyant perception the Essenes were well able to grasp, namely that the influence of heredity ceases only after 42 stages in the line of generations. Only after 42 stages have all traces of heredity been eliminated from a man's soul. He inherits something from his father and his mother, something from his grandfather and grandmother and so on, but the earlier the stages in the sequence of generations, the less are inherited impurities within him, and after 42 generations there are none; the influence of heredity no longer exists. Hence the aim of the methods of purification practised by the Essenes was to eliminate, through exercises and strict training of the inner life, whatever impurities had sullied the soul in the course of 42 generations. Every Essene was obliged to submit to severe discipline and to undergo difficult mystical experiences leading through 42 stages. There were 42 distinct stages on this mystical path to purification; when he had passed through them in actual experience an Essene knew that he was free from all influences of the world of the senses, from all the impurities in his inner nature resulting from heredity.

Thus an Essene rose in soul through 42 stages to the high level where he felt the inmost core of his own being to be related to the Divine-Spiritual. He said: By passing through these 42 stages I reach the God for whom I aspire !—The Essenes had clear perception of how a man could rise in soul to a Divine Being who had not yet descended into matter, for the path of ascent was known to them from their own experience. Among all who were living on the Earth at that time, the Therapeutae and the Essenes alone were cognizant of the truth about what had come to pass through Abraham. They knew the truth concerning heredity through the generations and they knew too that to ascend to a Being who has entered the stream of heredity and reach the stage where that Being had not yet descended into matter, a man must rise in soul through 42 stages, corresponding to the 42 generations; then the Being would be found. But they knew some-thing else as well, namely this.—Just as a man must ascend in soul through the 42 stages to reach this Divine Being, so must the Divine Being himself take the path in the opposite direction, descending through 42 stages if he is to penetrate into the blood of a man. Just as there are 42 stages on the path of ascent to the Divine Being, so must the Divine Being descend through 42 stages in order to become a man among men.

Such were the teachings given among the Essenes, above all by Jeschu ben Pandira, under the influence of the inspiring Bodhisattva. Thus it was a doctrine of the Essenes that the Being who had inspired Abraham to receive the Divine Seed into his own organism, needed 42 generations to descend to manhood.

When we know this we also know the source of the know-ledge that enabled the writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew to enumerate precisely these 42 generations. And it was Jesus, the son of Pandira, who drew the attention of the Essenes to one point in particular.—The 42 generations would not be completed until a further hundred years had elapsed after the century in which he was living. He therefore taught the Essenes that they could rise in soul through the 42 stages only so far as a link with historical events was still possible, and that from that point onwards any further advance could only be through grace from above. But, so he taught them, the time will come when, as a natural happening, a man will be born for whom it will be possible to rise through his own blood to such a lofty height that there can descend into him the Divine Power enabling him to bring to manifestation the Spirit of the Hebrew people, the Jahve-Spirit, in the blood of that people. Jeschu ben Pandira taught: If Zarathustra, the herald of Ahura Mazdao, is to incarnate in a human body, this body must have been prepared in such a way that the divine-spiritual Being indwelling it has descended through 42 generations.

The Essene communities, therefore, were the source of the teaching concerning the generations with which St. Matthew's Gospel begins. But to understand these facts thoroughly, reference must be made to an even deeper aspect of the subject.

Because man is a twofold being, everything connected with his development presents itself to us from two sides. During waking consciousness the four members of man's being are united and his twofold nature is not immediately apparent. But during sleep he is quite clearly twofold: his physical and etheric bodies remain in the physical world and his astral body and Ego have emerged from the other two members. As long as we are concerned with that which makes man part of the physical world, we can speak only of physical body and etheric body. In truth, all man-made institutions and affairs in the physical world concern the physical body and etheric body, although during waking life the activity of the other members is also involved. During the hours of waking consciousness man works from his Ego and astral body into the other two members; during sleep he leaves the latter to themselves. But in reality, the moment he goes to sleep, forces and beings begin to work from the Cosmos and to permeate the members he has temporarily abandoned; it is a fact, therefore, that a constant influence from the Cosmos is exercised upon his physical and etheric bodies. These bodies that re-main in the bed during sleep constitute the outer side of man's structure and their attributes are comprised within 42 generations, during which span these attributes are transmitted by heredity. If we take everything that belongs to the physical nature in the first generation and then pass on through 42 generations, when these have been completed, no trace at all will be found of the rudimental qualities that were the most fundamental in the first generation. In other words, the active characteristics and forces in the physical and etheric bodies of a human being arc comprised within 6 times 7 generations. Whatever the inherited traits in these two bodies may be, they must be sought among the ancestors, but only within the course of 42 generations. Beyond that, nothing is to be found; everything belonging to an earlier generation has vanished. The forces inherent in the outer constitution of a human being are therefore essentially connected with 42 generations.

In this sense the evolution or development of man in Time is based upon a principle of number. This must be studied more closely, for it has an important bearing upon the genealogy given in St. Matthew's Gospel.

Everything relating to the physical body is connected with 42 generations, because everything that has to do with development or evolution in Time is governed by the number 7. Evolution through the period during which physical attributes are inherited was known by the Essenes to be connected with this number. An Essene said to himself: You have to pass through 6 times 7 stages=42 stages; then you come to the next 7 stages which complete the multiples of 7 : 7 times 7 =49 stages. It is however the case that whatever lies beyond the 42 stages can no longer be attributed to the forces and beings working as active factors in the physical and etheric bodies. In accordance with the law governing the number 7, the whole evolution of the physical and etheric bodies is actually achieved only after 7 times 7 generations; but in the final 7 generations complete transformation has already taken place and nothing of the earlier generations is any longer present. The Essenes knew that what primarily concerned them was comprised within the 6 times 7 generations; but that when the multiples of 7 were complete, something new was there. In the sphere entered after the 42 generations, they realised that they no longer had to do with human but with superhuman existence. They said: 6 times 7 generations are connected with the Earth, and what lies beyond them to make 7 times 7 already leads beyond the Earth: this is the fruit for the spiritual world. After the 6 times 7 generations the fruit is produced which then, with the completion of the 7 times 7, emerges for the spiritual world.

Hence the thoughts of those among whom the Gospel of St. Matthew originated were somewhat to the following effect.—The physical body used by Zarathustra must be of such maturity that after the 42 generations it is already at the point of spiritualisation, therefore of deification. It is in existence at the beginning of the 43rd generation, but instead of passing into the further stages this body allows itself to be permeated by another Being—by the spirit of Zarathustra who incarnated on the Earth as Jesus of Nazareth.—Thus through the fulfillment of the mystery of numbers the most fitting body and the most fitting blood had been provided for the Zarathustra-soul in Jesus of Nazareth.—Such is the preparation of whatever relates to physical and etheric body in human evolution.

But now there are in man—hence also in him who was to be the bearer of the Christ Being—not only physical body and etheric body but astral body and Ego as well. Therefore the astral body and Ego too, not only the physical and etheric bodies, had to be adequately prepared. For an event of such stupendous importance this could not be accomplished in one personality, and two were necessary. The physical body and the etheric body were prepared in the personality with whom the Gospel of St. Matthew is primarily concerned; the astral body and Ego-principle were prepared in the personality of whom the Gospel of St. Luke tells and whom we know as the Nathan Jesus. During the early years this was a different personality. Whereas Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel received the suitable physical and etheric bodies, Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel was to receive the suitable astral body and Ego-principle. How could this come to pass?

As I said before, it is a fallacy due to the assertions of an inferior kind of clairvoyance that the whole astral being and the Ego of a man are contained in the cloudlike formation hovering near the physical and etheric bodies of one who is asleep. The truth is that when, during sleep, man passes out of the physical and etheric bodies, his being expands into the whole Cosmos, into everything pertaining to the Cosmos. The mystery of our sleep is that We draw from the world of t he stars—hence we speak of ‘astral’ body—the purest cosmic forces We then bring these forces with us when, on waking, we descend into the physical and etheric bodies. We emerge from sleep strengthened and vitalized by everything we have been able to draw into ourselves from the Cosmos.

When a man develops clairvoyance in its higher form to-day—and this applies also to the time of Christ Jesus—what experiences must he undergo? In the conditions normal at the present time, man becomes unconscious when with his astral body and Ego he passes out of the physical and etheric bodies. Clairvoyant consciousness must, however, be brought to the stage where there can be vision through the astral body and Ego alone, to the entire exclusion of physical and etheric bodies. This clairvoyant consciousness then participates in and perceives the happenings of the world of the stars—not only gazes into that world but actually penetrates it. Just as the consciousness unfolded by the Essenes rose upwards through the chronological sequence of generations governed by the number 7, so must a man pass through the stages that make it possible for him to have clairvoyant vision of the Cosmos.

I have often spoken of where the danger lies for development either in the one direction or in the other. Among the Essenes it was fundamentally a matter of descent into the physical and etheric bodies in order that after traversing the 42 generations they might find the Divine. With them it was as if, on waking, instead of seeing the world around him, a man were to plunge into his physical and etheric bodies in order to observe their forces—in other words, to perceive his external nature from within. Normally, man does not descend consciously into these bodies on waking; lie is protected from doing so because at the moment of waking his consciousness is diverted to the environment and is not directed to the forces of the physical and etheric bodies. What was essential for the Essenes was to learn to perceive all the forces and capabilities originating from the 42 generations, to learn to disregard entirely what the eyes observe in the outer world and to plunge straightaway into their own physical and etheric bodies where they then beheld the living produce of the secret of 6 times 7=42 generations.

Man must raise his consciousness in a similar sense if his aim is to ascend into the Cosmos in order to learn of the mysteries underlying cosmic existence. This is a mightier task. When descending into his own inner nature the only danger facing him is that of being laid hold of by its forces, by desires, passions and other tendencies in the soul to which lie generally pays no heed or even has no inkling that they exist, because in ordinary circumstances his external interests keep him from direct knowledge of them. In normal circumstances there is no possibility that he will be overpowered by these forces, because at the very moment of waking his attention is diverted by the appearance of the outer world. Whereas, therefore, when descending into his inner nature the danger is that a man will be overwhelmed by his own lowest and most egotistical urges, a different danger confronts one who is living through the experience. of expanding over the Cosmos. This danger cannot be more exactly characterized than by saying: One who at the moment of going to sleep does not become unconscious but retains so much consciousness that in his astral body and Ego he has an instrument for perception of the spiritual world—for such a one the danger may be that he is utterly dazzled, as if he were facing the blinding rays of the sun. He is dazzled and bewildered by the stupendous grandeur of the impressions.

While it was necessary for the Essenes to recognize that all inherited attributes in the physical and etheric bodies were connected with the secret of the number 6 times 7, a certain secret of number was also connected with the attainment of knowledge of the mysteries of the Cosmos, of the Great World. Again, the best approach to this secret was to turn to movements and constellations in the Cosmos, to the manifestations of the stars themselves. As we have heard, 6 times 7 stages lead to the secrets of man's inner nature; the secrets of cosmic space are reached after 12 times 7=84 stages. A man who has passed 12 times 7 stages arrives at the point where the labyrinth of the spiritual forces of the Cosmos is no longer bewildering; he attains the state of calm in which he can find his bearings in this labyrinth and see through its intricacies. In a certain sense that too was a teaching given by the Essenes.

When a man who possesses the clairvoyant faculties here described goes to sleep, his being flows out into conditions expressed in the secret of the number 12 times 7. But at the last of these stages he is already in the super-sensible; for when he has completed the it times 7 stages he has reached the boundary of the conditions to which the numerical secrets apply. Just as the 7 times 7 stages have already led into the Spiritual, so too have the 12 times 7. To reach the Spiritual along this path a man must have passed through t times 7 stages in the astral body and Ego. This is indicated in the stellar script itself, 7 being the number of the planets and I 2 that of the constellations of the Zodiac which the soul must traverse in cosmic space. As the seven planets group them-selves within the twelve zodiacal constellations and pass in front of them, when a man is ascending in soul into the Cosmos he must pass through 7 times 12, or rather 7 times it stages to reach the Spiritual.

You can, if you like, picture the 12 constellations of the Zodiac as the spiritual periphery, with man himself in the centre. If he is to reach the Spiritual, he cannot begin by spreading as it were from the centre, but he must expand in spirals, gyrating in 7 spirals and passing all the 12 constellations in each complete circuit—therefore 7 times 12 stages. Man expands in spirals gradually into the Cosmos—all this is of course only a figurative description—and if, circling in this way, he were to have passed through the 12 constellations for the seventh time, he would have reached the Divine-Spiritual. Then, instead of looking into the Cosmos from the centre, he looks inwards from the spiritual periphery, from the twelve stations, and from these vantage-points he can behold the external world and all that is in it. There must be twelve such vantage-points; one alone does not suffice. Thus a man who aspired to reach the Divine-Spiritual must sublimate astral body and Ego through 11 times 7 stages; when 12 times 7 stages had been scaled, he was within the Spiritual.

Astral body and Ego had in this way to pass through 1 2 times 7, or rather t times 7 stages to reach the Divine. But if the Divine is to descend and a human Ego be made fit to be its vehicle, the descent must equally be through times 7 stages.

Therefore in setting out to describe these spiritual forces whereby astral body and Ego were rendered fit to be bearers of the Christ, it was natural that the Gospel of St. Luke should indicate how the Divine-Spiritual Power descended through 11 times 7 stages. And this the Gospel does. Because the Gospel of St. Luke is describing that other Personality for whom astral body and Ego-bearer were prepared, it does not—as the Gospel of St. Matthew—describe 6 times 7 generations, but a sequence of it times 7 stages through which the Power indwelling the Individuality of the Jesus of whom this Gospel is speaking, came down from God himself. This is expressly stated. Count the stages enumerated in St. Luke's Gospel as those through which the Divine Power descends, and you will find that there are 77.

Because the Gospel of St. Matthew is describing the secret of what is taking effect during the descent of the Divine Power working formatively in physical body and etheric body, the ruling number is 7 times 7. And in the Gospel of St. Luke the number 11 times 7 must necessarily appear, because this Gospel is describing the descent of the Divine Power by which the astral body and Ego are transformed. From this we can realise what deep foundations underlie these presentations and how in very truth the secrets of Initiation, the stages in the descent of the Divine-Spiritual into a human individuality and in the expansion into the Cosmos arc indicated in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke.

We will speak again tomorrow of the reasons why the Gospel of St. Luke enumerates a line of generations and why, in an age when the mystery of Christ Jesus was imparted to only a very few human beings, it was made known that from God and from Adam down to the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel there had been 77 generations.

• 1. Scene 3, pp. 1o7-8, in the translation by Adam Bittleston. The whole scene should be read.

A study of the genealogy of Jesus as it is given in the Gospel of St. Luke will show that what the writer wished to convey is in accordance with the statements made in the previous lecture. We saw that in the same way as a Divine Power (Kraftwesenheit) was to permeate the etheric and physical bodies of the Solomon Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel, so also was a Divine Power to permeate the astral body and Ego (or the vehicle of the Ego) of the personality we know as the Nathan Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel. It is clearly indicated in the latter Gospel that this Divine Power flows down through all the successive generations, in an unbroken line, from that stage in the existence of the Earth when man had not as yet descended for the first time into a physical incarnation. The ancestry of Jesus is traced back through the generations to God. Adam is named as the Son of God. 'This means that in order to find the Divine Principle within the astral body and the Ego of the Nathan Jesus we must look to that pristine state of existence experienced by man before he descended into physical incarnation on the Earth, while he still lived in the divine-spiritual realms and can truly be called a Godlike being. To this period, when man's divine nature was as yet unaffected by Luciferic influences, the Gospel of St. Luke traces back the lineage of the Jesus of whom it tells. All anthroposophical investigation indicates that this period was in the Lemurian Age.

In those Mystery schools where the pupils were trained for the Initiation characterized yesterday as the attainment of knowledge of the great secrets of the Cosmos, the aim was to lead man out of and beyond everything earthly and beyond what he had himself come to be as the result of earthly influences. He was to be taught what vista of the Universe can be revealed to him when he deliberately refrains from using the instruments of cognition he has possessed since the time of the Luciferic influence. The first great question for the pupils of these Mysteries was this: What vista of the Universe lies before clairvoyant vision when a man frees himself from perceptions given through the physical anti etheric bodies and from all the surrounding earthly influences? Such freedom had been man's natural state before he first entered earthly incarnation and became the ‘earthly Adam’—speaking now in the Biblical sense and particularly that of the Gospel of St. Luke. Thus we can see that there are two conditions only in which man can rightly be regarded as a divine-spiritual being: one is that conferred through the lofty Initiation attained in the Great Mysteries; the other is that which was present at an elementary stage of human existence and cannot be fulfilled at any optional Earth-period. It obtained before the descent of the Divine Man in the Lemurian epoch into the 'man of the Earth', as the Bible describes him; for ‘Adam’ signifies ‘earth-man’, that is to say, a being whose nature is no longer purely spiritual but is now clothed in the elements of the earth, of the ‘dust’.¹

It may cause surprise that only 77 generations or stages of hereditary are enumerated in the Gospel of St. Luke. In the Gospel of St. Matthew too it may well cause even more surprise that only 42 generations are mentioned from Abraham to Christ, when a simple calculation will show that the number of years usually reckoned to one generation, multiplied by 42, would not reach back to Abraham. To be accurate, such calculation would have to take account of the fact that in the Patriarchal Age before Solomon and David, longer periods Were reckoned to a generation—and rightly so—than was the case later on. To get the historical dates even approximately correct WC must not reckon to three generations—for example, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—what would now be an average number of years; about 215 years would have to be allowed for the three generations. This is also confirmed by occult investigation. The fact that the period of a generation in those early times was longer than it is to-day holds good even more emphatically for the generations from Adam to Abraham. In respect of the lineage from Abraham onwards it will be obvious to everyone that a single generation was once of longer duration, for it is at an advanced age that heirs are born to the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Just as it is usual now to reckon 33 years to a generation, so those who compiled the Gospel of St. Matthew were right in assigning 75 to 8o years, and even more, to one generation. It must be emphasized that back to Abraham, this Gospel is referring to individuals. The names of Abraham's predecessors given in the Gospel of St. Luke, however, do not refer to single individuals. In this case it is essential to remember something that is a fact, although it may seem incredible to materialistic minds.

What we to-day call our memory, our recollective consciousness of the unchanging identity of our inmost being, goes back in the normal way only into the early years of our childhood. If a man of the present time follows his life back into the past, he will find that memories cease at some point. One person will remember more of childhood, another less; but in any case memory to-day is limited to the one personal life, and indeed does not even embrace the whole of that life back to the day of birth. If we realise what the soul-faculties and characteristics of man's consciousness were in ancient times, recalling that in past epochs of evolution a certain clairvoyant state of consciousness was normal, it will not surprise us to find that in periods not far distant, consciousness was connected with memory to an altogether different extent than was the case later on.

Before the epoch of Abraham, man's whole constitution of soul was different from what it subsequently came to be, and this applies above all to the power of memory. During the still earlier epoch of Atlantis, the difference in this power was far greater still. A man did not, as he does to-day, remember the experiences of his own personal life only, but his memory extended through his own birth and beyond that to what his father, grandfather and other ancestors had experienced. Memory was something that flowed in the blood through a series of generations and only later came to be limited to a single period and to the single life.

Now the connotations of a name in ancient times were not such as arc associated with a name to-day. Indeed, the giving of names in ancient times is a subject that would now require very special study, for what modern philology has to say about it is often sheer nonsense. In the past it would have been impossible to conceive that names could be attached to beings or things in the purely external way that is customary nowadays. A name was once a reality connected essentially with the being who received it, and it was intended to express in sound or tone the inner nature of that being. The name was meant to be an echo of the being in the tone. (Our modern age has no inkling whatever of what this implies; if it had, books such as Fritz Mauthner's Kritik der Sprache could never have been written. This book contains a masterly review of modern research, of all scholarly treatises recently written on the subject of language, but makes no mention of its intrinsic character in antiquity.) In those times when the faculty of memory was different, a name did not apply merely to an individual human being in his personal lifetime but extended to all that was strung together through the memory; therefore the same name was in use as long as this retrospective experience endured. The name ‘Noah’, for example, did not signify a single individual; it signified what, in the first place, an individual remembered of his own life and then, beyond his birth, of the life of his father, of his grandfather and so on, as long as the thread of memory continued. The same name was used for the succession of individuals whom the thread of memory connected. Therefore names such as ‘Adam’, ‘Seth’, ‘Enoch’, comprised as many personalities as were united through memory. Thus when it is said that the name of some individual belonging to times of antiquity was ‘Enoch’, we may understand it to mean that a new thread of memory has come into existence in an individual who was the son of someone bearing a different name; the memory of the former individual did not carry back into that of his predecessors. The new thread of memory is not severed, however, with the death of the first individual to bear the name of 'Enoch' but continues through the generations until again a new thread of memory appears, and, with it, a new name which will be•;used until the new thread is broken. Thus when ‘Adam’ is referred to, the one name designates several successive personalities in the sequence of generations.

It is in this sense that names are used in the genealogical table in St. Luke's Gospel. The intention of the writer is to convey to us that the divine-spiritual Power that entered into the Ego (Ego-bearer) and into the astral body of the Nathan Jesus must be traced back to the stage when man first descended into earthly incarnation. In St. Luke's Gospel, there-fore, we find, firstly, the names of single individualities and then, after we reach the name of Abraham, we come to the epoch when memory embraces the longer period and several individualities are included under one name, combined as it were into one Ego by the memory.

It will now be easier for you to realise that the 77 names enumerated in St. Luke's Gospel extend over very long periods, actually reaching back to the time when the Being we may denote as the divine-spiritual entity in man was incarnated for the first time in a human physical body. The other aspect presented in the Gospel is this.—One who in passing through the 77 stages in the Great Mysteries had succeeded in purifying his soul from everything absorbed by humanity in Earth-existence, attained the state that is possible to-day only when a man is free of his physical body and can live entirely in the astral body and Ego. He is able, then, to pour his being over the whole surrounding Cosmos from which the Earth itself arose. Such was the aim of the Initiation in these Mysteries. A man had then reached the level of the Divine-Spiritual Power which drew into the astral body and Ego-bearer of the Nathan Jesus.

The Nathan Jesus was to exemplify that which man receives, not from earthly but from heavenly conditions of existence. Hence the Gospel of St. Luke describes the Divine-Spiritual Power by which the astral body and Ego of the Nathan Jesus had been permeated. The Gospel of St. Matthew describes the Divine-Spiritual Power through which the inner organ for the Jahve-consciousness had been brought into existence in Abraham; and this same Power was working in the physical body and etheric body through 42 generations, constituting a line of heredity.

These were the teachings—especially those in St. Matthew's Gospel concerning the derivation of the blood of Jesus of Nazareth—which were cultivated and studied in the communities of the Therapeutae and the Essenes, among whom Jeschu ben Pandira worked to prepare for the coming of Christ Jesus. It was his mission to prepare at least a few, by imparting to them the knowledge that at the end of a definite period of time, namely 42 generations after Abraham, the development achieved by the Hebrew people would make it possible for the Zarathustra-Individuality to incarnate in a branch of the lineage of Abraham in the Solomon line of the House of David. This was a teaching given in advance. Not only was it taught at that time in the Schools of the Essenes but there were pupils in those Schools who had lived through the 42 stages in actual experience and were therefore themselves able to behold in clairvoyant vision the nature of the Being who was descending through the 42 stages. Knowledge of this was to be given to the world through appropriate teachings and it was the task of the Essenes to ensure that among a few human beings at least, there would be understanding of what the coming of Christ would be for the Earth.

We have already heard of events connected with the history of that human Individuality who incarnated in the specially prepared blood of which the Gospel of St. Matthew speaks. The wisdom which in very early times this great Teacher—known by the name of Zarathustra or Zoroaster—had imparted in the East, fitted him for the later incarnation. He was, as we know, the inaugurator of the Hermetic culture of Egypt, inasmuch as to this end he had given up his astral body, then to be borne by Hermes. He had also given up his etheric body, which was preserved for Moses. As the creator of the Mosaic civilization, Moses bore within him the etheric body of Zarathustra. Zarathustra himself incarnated later on in other astral and etheric bodies. Of particular interest to us is his incarnation as Zarathas or Nazarathos in ancient Chaldea in the sixth century B.C., where the Chaldean sages were his pupils and where the wisest among the pupils of the occult schools of the Hebrews at the time of the Babylonian captivity came into contact with him. The pupils of the Chaldean occult schools were then occupied throughout the following six centuries with the traditions, rites and cults originating with Zarathustra in the personality of Zarathas or Nazarathos. All the generations of pupils—Chaldean, Babylonian, Assyrian and so on—who were living in those regions of Asia, deeply revered the name of this great Master. They waited with longing for his next incarnation, for they knew that after six hundred years he would come again. The secret of his coming was known to them and was like a beacon light shining in from the future.

And as the time approached when the blood would be suitably prepared for the new incarnation of Zarathustra, the three envoys, the three wise Magi, set out from the East; they knew that the revered name of Zarathustra himself would lead them as a Star to the place where his new incarnation was to take place. It was the Being of the great Teacher himself who as the ‘Star’ led the three Magi to the birthplace of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel.—Ordinary philology itself will confirm that the word ‘Star’ was used in ancient times to denote human individuality. It is not only spiritual research which from its own sources tells us more clearly than anything else that the three Magi at that time were led by Zoroaster, the ‘Golden Star’, to the place where he was to reincarnate, but it follows from the very use of the word ‘Star’ for human Individualities of lofty development that the Star by which the Wise Men were guided was Zarathustra himself.

Thus six hundred years before the Christian era the Magi of the East had come into contact with the Individuality who subsequently incarnated as the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel. Now Zarathustra himself led them to Palestine and they followed in his track. For it was the Star of Zarathustra moving towards Palestine that guided the Magi along their way from the Chaldean Mysteries in the East, to Palestine, where Zarathustra was about to incarnate.

This secret of the coming incarnation of Zarathustra, of Zarathas or Nazarathos, was known in the Mysteries of Chaldea. But the secret of the blood of the Hebrew people which was that when the time was ripe it would be suitable for the new bodily constitution of Zarathustra—this was a teaching of the Essenes, who in their Mysteries were trans-ported in soul through the 42 Stages.

Thus there were, to begin with, two groups who knew something about the secret of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel: the Chaldean Initiates, who possessed knowledge relating to the Individuality of Zarathustra and his coming incarnation in Hebrew blood, and the sect of the Essenes, which was concerned with another aspect of the physical constitution, of the blood of the coming Being. In the Schools of the Essenes, teaching had been given for rather more than a hundred years on the approaching advent of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel, in whose being would be found, wholly fulfilled, not only those conditions of which I have already spoken, but others too which can be characterized as follows.—

In these Schools a pupil underwent a lengthy period of training for the purpose of achieving, by exercises and other methods, the purification of soul necessary to him before he was led through the 42 stages in order to behold the secrets of the etheric body and the physical body. But it was known in these communities that the Being for whom they were preparing would descend from the heights already possessing those qualities which were a prerequisite for development of the faculties capable of perceiving these secrets.

The system employed by the Essenes for the purification of the soul was, in effect, a continuation of the ancient Nazarite discipline.² This form of occult training had existed in Judaism from times immemorial. Long before the advent of the Therapeutae and the Essenes, certain Hebrews had dedicated themselves to it, adopting very special methods for the furtherance of development in soul and body. First and foremost, the Nazarites subjected themselves to a diet that in a certain respect is still useful to-day if anyone desires to make more rapid progress in soul-development than is otherwise possible. They abstained altogether from eating flesh and drinking wine. This made conditions easier for them because the eating of flesh may actually retard development in one who is seeking for the spirit. It is the case—though this is not intended as propaganda for vegetarianism—that abstinence from meat-eating makes everything easier; it is possible to develop greater inner resistance to obstacles, greater strength for the overcoming of hindrances arising from the physical and etheric bodies, and a greater power of endurance. Naturally, this is not due entirely to abstinence from meat-eating but first and foremost to the fact that such a man is strengthening his soul. The avoidance of meat as food merely brings about a change in the physical body; but if the element from the side of the soul is absent and does not permeate the body as it should, there is no particular purpose in abstaining from the eating of flesh.

These practices of the Nazarites were continued, but in a much stricter form, by the Essenes who also resorted to quite other usages of which I spoke to you yesterday and the day before. Above all, however, they practised the very strictest abstinence from meat-eating, with the result that they learnt, comparatively speaking more quickly, to expand their memory beyond 42 generations and to gaze into the secrets of the Akashic Chronicle. They became what may be called a ‘sprout’ or a ‘shoot’ on a branch, on a tree, or on a plant—a sprout that endured through many generations. They were not detached from the tree of humanity but were conscious of the branches uniting them with it. In a certain respect they were different from men who severed themselves from the tribal stock and whose memory was limited to the life of the single personality. The name given to the former individuals in the communities of the Essenes too, was a word meaning ‘a living branch’, in contrast to a severed branch. They were men who felt themselves integrated in the line of generations, in no way severed from the tree of humanity. The pupils who cultivated particularly this trend in Essenism and who had passed through the 42 stages in their own experience were called ‘Netzers’.

Jeschu ben Pandira, of whom I spoke yesterday as the great Teacher in the communities of the Essenes—he is a figure fairly well known to occultists—had a faithful and particularly close disciple from this class of Netzers. Jeschu ben Pandira had five pupils or disciples, each of whom took over a special branch of his general teaching and continued to develop it. The names of these five pupils were: Mathai, Nakai, the third was given the name Netzer because he came especially from that class, then Boni and Thona. These five pupils of Jeschu ben Pandira who himself suffered martyrdom on account of alleged blasphemy and heresy, a hundred years B.C., propagated his teachings in five different sections. Spiritual-scientific investigation finds that after the death of Jeschu ben Pandira the teaching relating to the preparation of the blood for him who was to be the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel was propagated especially by Mathai. The teaching concerning the inner qualities and nature of the soul—a teaching connected with the old Nazarite but also with Netzerism in its later form—was continued by Netzer, the other great pupil of Jeschu ben Pandira. Netzer was specially chosen to be the founder of a little colony. There were many such colonies in Palestine, a particular branch of Essenism being cultivated in each of them. The cultivation of Netzerism, the special concern of the pupil Netzer, was to be the primary aim in the colony which led a secluded existence and which then, in the Bible, received the name ‘Nazareth’. There, in Nazareth—Netzereth—an Essene colony was established by Netzer, the pupil of Jeschu ben Pandira. Those whose lives were dedicated to the ancient Nazarite order lived there in fairly strict seclusion. Hence after the happenings of which I have still to speak, after the flight to Egypt and the return, nothing was more natural than that the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel should be brought into the atmosphere of Netzerism. This is indicated in St. Matthew's Gospel where it is said that after the return from Egypt, Jesus was taken to the little city of Nazareth, ‘that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets: He shall be called a Nazarene’. There have been many different interpretations of these words because none of the translators knew what was really meant—namely that here there was a colony of Essenes where the early years of Jesus' life were to be spent.

Before going into other details and into the relationship with the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel, we will now speak in broad outline of certain matters connected with the life of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel.

Everything presented in the early chapters of St. Matthew's Gospel derives from the secrets taught by Jeschu ben Pandira among the Essenes and subsequently propagated by his pupil Mathai. All the processes with which these teachings were concerned had to do with the preparation of the physical body and etheric body of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel, although needless to say it was also a matter of influences being exercised upon the astral body too through the 42 generations. But if we say that during the first 14 generations it was the physical body that comes into consideration, during the second 14 generations the etheric body and during the third 14 generations—since the Babylonian captivity—the astral body, it must nevertheless be held firmly in mind that what was rightly prepared in this way for Zarathustra could be fully used by this great Individuality only in so far as it belonged to physical body and etheric body.

And now remind yourselves of the development of an individual human being: from birth until about the seventh year it is paramountly the physical body that is in process of development, during the next seven years, from the second dentition until puberty, the etheric body; and only then does the free development of the astral body begin. In the case of the physical and etheric bodies prepared for Zarathustra through the generations beginning with Abraham, this process of development was to reach culmination and into these bodies Zarathustra was to descend in the new incarnation. But when the development of the etheric body had reached its conclusion, what had been prepared for him was no longer adequate and he had now to proceed to the development of the astral body.

To this end there now took place a wonderful, awe-inspiring happening, without some understanding of which it is impossible to grasp the depths of the great Mystery of Christ Jesus. During boyhood the Zarathustra-Individuality evolved in the physical body and etheric body of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel until the twelfth year. In the case of this Individuality and also on account of the climate, the point of development occurring in our regions at the age of 14 to 15 fell somewhat earlier. By the twelfth year everything that could possibly be attained in the suitably prepared physical and etheric bodies of the Solomon lineage had actually been attained. And then the Zarathustra-Individuality forsook the bodies to which the Gospel of St. Matthew is primarily referring and passed over into the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke. From the Lecture-Course on the latter Gospel we know the explanation of the story of the 12-year-old Jesus in the Temple. When the parents of Jesus were suddenly unable to understand him because he had so completely changed, what had happened was that there had passed into him the Zarathustra-Individuality who had lived until then in the physical and etheric bodies of the Solomon Jesus.—Such things do occur in life, difficult though it is for materialistic thought to give credence to them. The fact that an Individuality passes out of one body into another does actually occur, and this was the case when the Zarathustra-Individuality left the original body and passed into the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel in whom the astral body and Ego-vehicle had been specially prepared.

From the twelfth year onwards, therefore, Zarathustra was able to continue his development in the astral body and Ego-vehicle of the Nathan Jesus. This is magnificently presented to us in the Gospel of St. Luke, in the passage referring to the astounding scene where the 12-year-old Jesus is sitting among the learned Rabbis and saying things that sound utterly strange. How could Jesus of the Nathan line be capable of this? The explanation is that at that moment the Zarathustra-Individuality had passed into him. Until the twelfth year Zarathustra had not spoken out of the boy who had been brought to Jerusalem at that time and the change of character was therefore so great that the parents did not recognize the boy when they found him sitting among the learned scribes.

Thus we have to do with two sets of parents, both named ‘Joseph' and Mary’—common names at that time—and with two boys, each named Jesus. But to infer anything from the names ‘Joseph' and 'Mary’ as names are understood to-day would be at variance with the findings of all genuine investigation. The genealogy given in St. Matthew's Gospel is that of the one child—Jesus of the Solomon line of the House of David. And St. Luke's Gospel tells of the other child—Jesus of the Nathan line—who is the son of different parents altogether. The two boys grew up in close proximity to each other until they were twelve; years old. This can be read in the Gospels; what they relate is everywhere correct. But as long as it was desired that people should not learn the truth or the people themselves did not want to hear it, the Gospels were withheld from them. It is only a matter of understanding what the Gospels say—for they speak truly.

Jesus of the Nathan line grew up with a deeply inward nature. He had little aptitude for acquiring external wisdom and assimilating facts of ordinary knowledge. But the depths of his soul were fathomless and he had a boundless capacity for love, because in his etheric body was contained the power that streamed down from the time when man had not yet entered into earthly incarnation, when he was still leading a Divine existence. This Divine existence manifested in this boy in the form of an infinite capacity for love. It was therefore natural that he should have been ill-adapted for everything acquired by men in the coursh of incarnations through the instrumentality of the physical body, while on the other hand an untold warmth of love pervaded his inner life. To those who knew of it, one episode in particular was a sign of the boy's inner faculties. A faculty that otherwise can be awakened in the human being only by outer stimuli, functioned from the beginning in the case of the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel; directly after his birth he spoke certain words that were intelligible to those around him.³ In respect of all inward qualities he was infinitely great; unskilled, however, in respect of whatever can be acquired through the generations of mankind on the Earth.

What wonder that the parents were amazed in the Temple when suddenly there was before them a boy who, having grown up in this body, was now filled with a wisdom otherwise attainable by external means only. This sudden, radical change was possible because at that moment the Zarathustra-Individuality passed over from the Solomon Jesus into the Jesus of the Nathan line. It was Zarathustra (or Zarathas) who was now speaking out of the boy at the time described to us, when his parents were searching for him in the Temple.

Zarathustra had naturally acquired all the faculties it is possible to acquire by using the instruments of the physical body and the etheric body. He had necessarily to choose the lineage from Solomon, for in the bodily constitution produced by this blood there were strong, highly developed forces. From this bodily constitution he drew whatever he could make part of his own being and now united it with the deep inwardness made manifest in the nature of the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel and deriving from an age before man's earthly incarnations began.

Thus two streams became one. There was now one Being. In the Gospel our attention is specially called to the following.—Not only did the parents notice a startling change, detecting something they could not possibly have expected, but this change also showed itself outwardly. When the boy Jesus had been found by his parents among the scribes in the Temple, it is specifically said: ‘And he went with them and came to Nazareth... And Jesus increased in physical stature, in the noblest habits, and in wisdom.’ Why are these particular attributes mentioned? It was because they could be part of his nature in a very special sense now that the Zarathustra-Individuality was in him.—I must call particular attention here to the fact that the words referring to the three attributes in certain translations of the Bible are sometimes as follows: And Jesus increased in wisdom and age and in favour with God and man.' Do we really need a Gospel to tell us that age increases in a boy of twelve? Weizsäcker's translation is: ‘And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man.’ But this does not convey the real meaning. The real meaning is that in the Nathan Jesus-boy there was now a different Individuality—one whose nature was not, as had previously been the case, purely inward, but who, having developed hitherto in a perfected physical body, was able to make himself manifest in the external physical stature as well. Furthermore, habits that are acquired from life and develop in the etheric body as their special province, had previously been absent from the nature of the Nathan Jesus. His capacity for love was so great that it could be the foundation on which to build; but this capacity was a spontaneous reality and could not imprint itself into habits acquired from life. Now, however, the other Individuality was present, having in his own nature the powers resulting from mature development of the physical and etheric bodies, and in these conditions it was possible for habits to come to visible expression and be impressed into the etheric body. That was the second attribute. The third increase ‘in wisdom’ 'in the ordinary sense of the word is easier to understand. Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel was not ‘wise’; he was capable of infinite, supreme love. The increase in wisdom was due to the presence in him of the Zarathustra-Individuality.

In speaking about the Gospel of St. Luke I referred to the fact that it is quite possible for a human being from whom the Individuality has departed and who has then only the three sheaths—physical, etheric and astral—to go on living for a time, But he of whom the early chapters of St. Matthew's Gospel speaks—Jesus of the Solomon line—wasted away and died, comparatively soon after his twelfth year. At first, then, there were two boys; then the two became one.

In very ancient records there are often remarkable utterances which cannot be understood unless the relevant facts are known. Later on we will go into the more intimate aspect of the union of the two boys; at the moment I will refer only to the following .—

In the so-called ‘Gospel of the Egyptians’ there is a passage which already in the early centuries of our era was regarded as extremely heretical, because Christian circles either did not want to hear the truth or did not want the truth to come to light. Something was nevertheless preserved in an apocryphal writing where it is said in effect that salvation (the Kingdom) will come to the world when the Two become One and the Outer becomes as the Inner. This sentence exactly expresses the occult reality of which I have told you. Salvation depends upon the Two becoming One. And the Two became One in very truth when in the twelfth year of his life the Zarathustra-Individuality passed over into the Nathan Jesus and qualities that at first had been entirely inward became outward. The inwardness of soul in the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel was profound beyond all telling. But this quality manifested outwardly too whwn the Zarathustra-Individuality, whose development had proceeded in the physical and etheric bodies of the Solomon Jesus, permeated that inwardness with the forces engendered by his contact with those bodies. An impulse of such power then pervaded the physical and etheric bodies of the Nathan Jesus from within that the outer could become an expression of the inner—of the inner nature as it had been before the Zarathustra-Individuality had passed into the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel.—The Two had become One.⁴

We have now followed Zarathustra from his birth as the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel to his twelfth year, when he left his original body and passed into the bodily constitution of the Nathan Jesus; this he now developed to such a lofty stage that he was able, later on, to offer it as his own three sheaths into which the Being we call Christ might be received.

• 1. I Cor. XV, 47. ‘The first man is of the earth, earthy...’
• 2. The ‘law of the Nazarite’ is found in Numbers VI, 1-21. A recent study of this subject from exoteric sources will be found in Matthew Black, The Scrolls and Christian Origins (Nelson, 1961).
• 3. See The first Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, Chapter I, 1-3. (From the Apocryphal New Testament, published in London. 1820, editied by William Hone.) See also the Koran. Chapter XIX.
• 4. The passage concerning the Two becoming One occurs in the Gospel of the Egyptians and also in the Second Epistle of Clement where it is followed by the reference to the outer becoming as the inner.

If we are to realise to some extent what the Christ Event signified for the evolution of humanity, reference must again be made to a fact already known to those of you who heard the lectures given last year in Basle on the Gospel of St. Luke. It is the more necessary to speak of this, because to-day we shall be studying the Christ Event in broad outline and proceed in the next lectures to fill in details. But to draw this broad outline We must remind ourselves of a fundamental truth of human evolution, namely, that in the course of it men are constantly acquiring new faculties and reaching stages of greater perfection. In its external aspect, this fact becomes obvious simply by looking back over the comparatively short period covered by ordinary history and perceiving how in the course of time new faculties unfolded, finally giving birth to modern civilization and culture. If, however, a particular faculty is to awaken in human nature and eventually be attain-able by everyone, this faculty must appear somewhere for the first time in a specially significant form.

In the lectures on St. Luke's Gospel I spoke of the ‘Eight-fold Path’ which men can tread if they adhere to what flowed into the evolution of humanity through Gautama Buddha. This Eightfold Path is usually said to consist of the following: right view, right understanding, right speech, right action, right vocation, right application, right memory or recollectedness, right contemplation.¹ These are attributes of the life of soul. It can be said that since the time of Gautama Buddha, human nature has reached a stage where it is possible for man gradually to unfold in himself, as intrinsic faculties of his own, the attributes of this Eightfold Path. Before Gautama Buddha had lived on Earth in the incarnation in which he attained Buddhahood, this would have been beyond the power of human nature. Let us therefore be quite clear about the following.—In order that in the course of hundreds of thousands of years these faculties should be able to gradually to develop in individual men, it was essential for the initial impetus to he given through the presence in physical human nature of a Being as lofty as Gautama Buddha. As have said, these faculties will, in fact, unfold in a considerable number of human beings and when the number is sufficient, the Earth will be ready to receive the next Buddha—Maitreya Buddha—who is now a Bodhisattva.

Between these two events, therefore, lies the phase of evolution during which it should he within the power of a sufficiently large number of human beings to acquire the higher intellectual and moral qualities comprised in the Eightfold Path. In the personality of Gautama Buddha all these qualities of the Eightfold Path were present.

It is a law of the evolution of humanity that such qualities must be present in their fullness at some one time in a single personality: then, although time process may take thousands of years, they flow into humanity in general, enabling all men to receive this impulse and to develop the corresponding faculties.

Now, that which is to stream into humanity through the Christ Event will not need some use thousand years to achieve its effect as in the case of the impulse given by Gautama Buddha. What has already streamed into humanity through the Christ Being will live and continue to work as a faculty in men for the whole remaining period of Earth-evolution. What, then, is it that has come to humanity through the Christ Event, as an impulse infinitely more powerful than that of the Buddha?

It may be characterized in the following way.—The powers to which man could attain in pre-Christian times only through the Mysteries, have, since the Christ Event, become accessible—and will become increasingly so—as a universal attribute of human nature. To understand what this means it is first of all necessary to have a clear idea of the nature of the ancient Mysteries and of the process of Initiation in the pre-Christian era.

In ancient times Initiation always varied in form among the different peoples of the Earth, and it has continued to do so—in the post-Atlantean epoch also. Part of the process of Initiation was experienced by particular peoples and part by others. Those who believe in the principle of reincarnation will be able to answer the question why it was not possible for the whole process of Initiation to be experienced by every ancient people. This was not necessary, for the simple reason that a soul who had been born into one people and had there experienced a particular part of Initiation had further incarnations among different peoples and could experience the other part.

Initiation is the power to see into the spiritual world in a way which is impossible to sense-perception or to the intellect that is dependent upon the physical body.

In normal earthly life, twice. within twenty-four hours, man has to be in the sphere where the Initiate also is, but the Initiate is conscious of his surroundings, whereas ordinary man is not. Within a period of twenty-four hours man's life alternates between waking and sleeping. As anthroposophists you are all aware of the fact that when a man goes to sleep he emerges in his astral body and Ego from his physical and etheric bodies. His Ego and astral body expand into the Cosmos, whence he draws the forces he needs during waking life. From the time of going to sleep until waking, his being is in very truth spread over the Cosmos to which indeed he is always related, though he knows nothing about it. His physical consciousness is extinguished at the moment of going to sleep, when his astral body and Ego pass out of his physical and etheric bodies. During sleep man is in the Great World, the Macrocosm, but in normal earthly existence he is entirely unaware of it. Initiation means that lie is no longer unconscious when his being expands into the Cosmos, and thereby he becomes able to participate consciously in the existence of the other celestial bodies that arc connected with our Earth. Such is the nature of Initiation into the Great World.

If, without proper preparation, a man were able to become aware of the world into which he passes during sleep, the overwhelming power and splendour of the impressions made upon him would give rise to an experience comparable only to unprotected eyes being dazzled and blinded by the rays of the Sun. He would he overcome by blindness inflicted by the Cosmos, and be killed in soul. The aim of all Initiation is that man shall not pass into the Macrocosm unprepared, but with organs strengthened to such an extent that he is able to endure the impact. That is one aspect of Initiation: penetration into the Universe, enlightened perception of the world into which man actually passes during sleep at night, but of which he knows nothing.

The reason why this sojourn in the Great World dazzles and bewilders is that in the material world of the senses man is accustomed to altogether different conditions. In the world of the senses he is accustomed to consider everything from a single viewpoint; and if he comes across something that does not tally exactly with the opinions he has formed from this one viewpoint, lie regards it as false. This is quite suitable for life on the physical plane but if he were to attempt to pass out into the Macrocosm through Initiation still holding the opinion that there should he conformity in this sense, he would never find his bearings. His mode of life in the world of the senses is such that he places himself at a particular point and front this point—as though it were his snail-house—he judges everything. But when he undergoes Initiation his consciousness passes out into the Great World.—Let us suppose a man were to pass outwards in one particular direction only; he would experience only what lies in this direction, and everything else, being unnoticed, would remain unknown to him. In point of fact, however, man cannot pass out into the Macrocosm in one direction only; he must necessarily pass out in all directions, for the process is one of expansion, of spreading into the Macrocosm and the possibility of haying one single standpoint ceases altogether. He must be able to contemplate the world not only from the one point but to contemplate it as well from a second and a third standpoint. This means that he must above all develop a certain mobility and universality of vision.

There is, of course, no need to fear that an infinite number of viewpoints must be attained as is theoretically possible. Twelve are enough—in the star-language of the Mystery Schools they were symbolized by the twelve constellations of the Zodiac. A man must not, for example, pass out into the Cosmos in the direction of the constellation of Cancer only, but in such at way that he actually beholds the world from twelve different viewpoints. It does not help here to look for what is called ‘conformity’ in abstract, intellectual parlance. Conformity can be sought afterwards, in the different modes of perception that are adopted. The primary necessity is to contemplate the world from different sides.

Let me say here in passing that the great difficulty to be faced in all movements based upon occult truths is that people are so prone to import the habits of ordinary life into these movements. When truths discovered by supersensible investigation have to be communicated, it is necessary, even in the case of purely exoteric descriptions, to adhere to the principle of describing than from different points of view. Those who for years have followed the development of our movement attentively will have noticed that it has been our endeavour never to describe things from one aspect only but always from many different angles. This, of course, is also the reason why people who insist upon judging everything according to the usages of the physical plane, find contradictions here or there. Every object has a different appearance when seen from one side or from another, and in such circumstances it is easy to find contradictions. The principle in a spiritual-scientific movement should be to remember that when one statement appears to differ from an earlier one, each was being made from a particular standpoint. To avoid undue emphasis being laid upon the apparent existence of contradictions, it must be repeated that the principle of giving descriptions from many angles is always obeyed among us. For example, in the lecture-course given in Munich last year—The East in the Light of the West—great world-mysteries were described from the standpoint of Oriental philosophy. It is essential therefore for anyone who desires to attain consciousness of the Cosmos by the path outlined, to acquire mobility of vision. If he is not willing to do this he will find himself lost in a labyrinth. It is true that man can adapt himself to the Cosmos, but it is also true that the Cosmos does not adapt itself to man. Suppose someone full of preconceptions expands into the Cosmos in one direction only and insists upon adhering to this particular viewpoint; what happens is that conditions in the Cosmos have changed while and he is therefore left behind. Suppose—to use imagery deriving from the stars—he goes out in the direction Aries and believes his viewpoint to be of that constellation. But the Cosmos, having moved onwards, is actually presenting to hint what lies in the constellation of Pisces, and then—symbolically expressed—he sees what is coining from Pisces as an experience arising in Aries. Confusion is the result, and he finds himself in a labyrinth. The essential thing to remember is that man needs twelve standpoints, twelve viewpoints, to be able to find his bearings in the labyrinth of the Macrocosm.

So far we have spoken of one aspect of Initiation, namely the process of passing outwards into the Cosmos. But there is yet another way in which man is in the divine-spiritual world without knowing it; and this happens during the other period of the twenty-for hours of the day. On waking from sleep he sinks down again into the physical and etheric bodies, but quite unconsciously, for at the moment of waking his faculty of perception is immediately diverted to the outer world. Were he to descend consciously into his physical and etheric bodies he would experience something altogether different.

Man is protected by the sleeping state from penetrating consciously into the Macrocosm without due preparation. He is protected from entering consciously into the physical and etheric bodies by the fact that his faculty of perception is diverted to the outer world at the moment of waking. The danger that would arise for a man who was to descend consciously, but without proper preparation, into his physical and etheric bodies, is somewhat different from the blindness and confusion already described as the danger threatening one who attempts to expand his consciousness into the Macrocosm before being fit to do so.

If a man comes into contact with the inmost nature of his physical and etheric bodies and identities himself with it, there is an intensification of what constitutes the very purpose of these bodies, namely to enable him to unfold Ego-consciousness. Unless there has been proper preparation, the Ego descends into the sphere of the physical and etheric bodies unpurified and a man is so overpowered that the resulting mystical experiences preclude inner truth, inasmuch as deceptive pictures arise before him. If a man obtains insight into his own inner nature, he will be united with whatever egoistic , wishes, impulses, vices are in him. In ordinary circumstances no such union takes place, for during day-consciousness his attention is diverted to experiences of the outer world and they preclude comparison with what may arise out of perception of his own inner nature.

I have spoken on other occasions of the experiences described by Christian martyrs and saints when for the first time they penetrated to the depths of their own inner nature. These experiences illustrate the situation I have been describing. These Christian saints describe the temptations and deceptions that came to them when, having shut out all outer perception, they sank into their own inmost nature. Their descriptions are entirely in keeping with the truth, and it is therefore highly instructive to study the biographies of saints from this point of view and to see how man is normally diverted from awareness of the forces operating in his passions, emotions, impulses, urges and the like, because in ordinary life he immediately directs his attention to the external world.—We can therefore say: When a man descends into his own inner nature, he is as it were compressed into his Egohood, entrapped in his Egohood, concentrated with all intensity in that point at which his only desire is to he an Ego, to satisfy his own wishes and cravings; the evil that is in him then endeavours to lay hold of his Ego, Such are the conditions prevailing during this experience.

On the one hand, therefore, when a man attempts to expand into the Cosmos without due preparation, the danger confronting him is that of being blinded, dazzled; and on the other hand he is compressed, confined entirely within his Ego when he penetrates, without the right preparation, into his own physical and etherize bodies.

But yet another form of Initiation was cultivated among certain peoples. While on the one side the expansion into the Macrocosm was practised especially among the Aryan and Northern peoples, the other form was practised above all among the Egyptians, namely, the form of Initiation in which man draws near to the Divine through directing his gaze inwards and through deepened contemplation, through sinking into himself, comes to know his own nature as the work of the Divine.

In the days of the ancient Mysteries the evolution of humanity as a whole had not yet reached the stage where Initiation—whether leading outwards into the Macrocosm or inwards into man's own being, into the Microcosm—could be carried out in such a way that man was left entirely to himself. When, for example, in the process of an Egyptian Initiation a candidate was being inducted into the field of the forces operating in his physical and etheric bodies, experiencing them in full consciousness, from all sides there burst from his astral nature the most terrible passions and emotions; demonic, diabolic beings and influences issued from him. Hence the officiating Hierophant in the Egyptian Mysteries had helpers—twelve in number—who by receiving these demons into themselves turned them aside from the course they would otherwise have pursued. In this sense, therefore, man was never completely free in the old process of Initiation. For what would inevitably be evoked as a result of the penetration into the physical and etheric bodies could only be endured when a man had around him the twelve helpers who received the demons into themselves and subdued them.

Something similar took place in the Northern Mysteries, where expansion into the Macrocosm was made possible by the presence again of twelve helpers of the Initiator who surrendered their own forces to the candidate for Initiation, thus endowing him with the power to unfold the thinking and feeling necessary for finding his way through the labyrinth of the Macrocosm.²

This kind of Initiation—where man was not left to himself but was obliged to depend entirely for safety from demonic forces upon the helpers of the officiating Hierophant—was gradually to he superseded by another, one that can be achieved by a man himself, where the Initiator merely gives indications about what ought to to done and the man then gradually learns to find his own war onwards. No considerable progress has yet been made along this path, but little by little there will unfold in humanity a faculty making it possible for a man both to ascend into the Macrocosm and to descend into the Microcosm without assistance and to pass through both forms of Initiation as a free being.

The Christ Event itself took place for this very purpose: It was the starting-point from which it became possible for matt to penetrate in complete independence into the physical and etheric bodies, as well as to pass outwards into the Macrocosm, into the Great World. It was, however, necessary that both the descent and the ascent (or expansion) should he accomplished in freedom once, in the fullest possible sense, by a Being as sublime as Christ Jesus. The fundamental significance. of the Christ Event is that Christ, the all-embracing Being, accomplished in advance what it would become possible for a sufficiently large number of people to achieve in the course of Earth-evolution.—What was it that actually came to pass as a result of the Christ Event?

It was necessary on the one side that the Christ Himself should descend into a physical body and an etheric body. And because in one human being these bodies had become so sanctified that it was possible fur the Christ so to descend, once and once only, the impulse was given in the evolution of mankind whereby every human being who seeks for it is able to experience in freedom and independence the descent into his physical and etheric bodies. This had never before been accomplished, had never before taken place. For in the ancient Mysteries something quite different was brought about through the instrumentality, of the Hierophant and his helpers. In the Mysteries a candidate for Initiation could descend into the secrets of the physical and etheric bodies and rise to those of the Macrocosm only when he was not living consciously in his physical body; he had to be entirely free from the body. When he returned from this body-free state he could remember his experiences in the spiritual worlds, but he could not bring them to physical experience. It was a matter of remembrance only.

This state of things was radically changed through the Christ Event. Before Christ's coming, no Ego had ever consciously penetrated through the whole of the inner nature of man, right into the physical and etheric bodies. This had now come to pass for the first time through the Christ Event.

The other impulse was also given, in that a Being of a rank infinitely more exalted than that of man, was nevertheless united with human nature and, so united, poured His Being into the Macrocosm through the power of his own Ego, without external aid. Christ alone could make it possible for man gradually to acquire the power to penetrate into the Macrocosm in freedom. These are the two basic facts presented to us in the two Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke.—In what sense is this meant?

We have learnt that the Zarathustra-Individuality who in very early post-Atlantean times was the great Teacher of Asia, incarnated in the 6th/7th century B.C. as Zarathas or Nazarathos; and again later he incarnated as the Jesus-child of the Solomon line of the House of David, as described in St. Matthew's Gospel. In his first twelve years this Individuality in the Solomon Jesus-child developed all the faculties and qualities it was possible to unfold in the instrument of the physical and etheric bodies of an offspring of the House of Solomon. He was able to do so only because he lived for twelve years in this particular physical and etheric body. Human faculties become one's own in the real sense only when they are made into serviceable instruments. At the age of twelve the Zarathustra-Individuality passed out of the Solomon Jesus and entered into the other Jesus, described in the Gospel of St. Luke, who had descended from the Nathan line of the House of David.

The two boys were brought up in Nazareth. The Zarathustra-Individuality passed into the child of the Nathan line on the occasion described in the Gospel of St. Luke, when, after having been lost during the Feast, he was found again in the Temple at Jerusalem. The child of the Solomon line died soon afterwards, but the Zarathustra-Individuality who had dwelt within him lived on in the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel until his thirtieth year, developing to further stages all the faculties it had been possible to acquire through the instruments prepared for the Solomon Jesus in the way described. These faculties were now enriched and supplemented by what could be acquired through the very special astral body and Ego-bearer which were present in the Jesus child of St. Luke's Gospel.

Thus it was Zarathustra himself who evolved in the body of the Jesus described by St. Luke, from his twelfth until his thirtieth year, developing all the qualities contained in that body to the stage where he was able to make his third great offering—the offering of the physical body which then, for three years, became the physical body of the Christ. In a very much earlier epoch the Zarathustra-Individuality had bequeathed his astral body to Hermes and his etheric body to Moses. He now offered up his physical organism, that is to say, he relinquished Ins physical sheath, with the whole of its etheric and astral content, to the Christ. And the sheaths which until then had been indwelt by the Zarathustra-Individuality, were now indwelt by a Being of an absolutely unique nature—by the Christ who is the fount of all the wisdom of the great World-Teachers. .

This is the event portrayed in the Baptism by John in the river Jordan. It is an event whose infinite, all-embracing significance is indicated in one Gospel in the words: ‘Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I behold my very Self, in whom my own Self confronts me!’—a better rendering than the comparatively trivial words...‘in whom I am well pleased’. Elsewhere in the New Testament the rendering is: ‘Thou art my beloved Son: this day I have begotten thee’. (Acts XIII, 33; also Hebrews, V, 5.) Here there is a clear indication of a birth—namely, the birth of Christ into the sheaths prepared by Zarathustra and then offered up by him. At the moment of the Baptism by John, the Christ Being entered the human sheaths made ready by Zarathustra; and there was now a rebirth of the three sheaths themselves, in that they were permeated by the spirit-substantiality of Christ. Christ was now in human sheaths—in bodies, uniquely prepared it is true, but for all that such are possessed in a less perfect state by other men.

Christ, the highest Individuality who can be united with the Earth, was now living in human sheaths, in a human body. But if He was to be a pattern for all mankind of full and complete Initiation, He would have to experience both the descent into the physical and etheric bodies, and the ascent into the Macrocosm. This He did. But from the very nature of the Christ Event it will be obvious that in His descent into the bodily sheaths, Christ was proof against all the temptations—with which He was indeed confronted but which rebounded from Him. It must also be obvious that the dangers accompanying expansion into the Macrocosm could have no effect on Him.

The Gospel of St. Matthew describes how after the Baptism the Christ Being actually descended in full consciousness into the physical and etheric bodies. The account of this is given in the story of the Temptation. We can see how in every detail this scene of the Temptation portrays the experiences undergone by man when he descends into the bodily sheaths. Christ's descent into a human physical body and etheric body was a contraction into human Egohood, lived through as an example, so that it is possible for us to say: ‘All this can happen to us, but if we are mindful of Christ, if we strive to follow His example, we have the power to confront and to overcome everything that may issue from the physical and etheric bodies’.

The first outstanding Initiation-event described in the Gospel of St. Matthew is the Temptation. It portrays one side of Initiation, the descent into the bodily sheaths. The other side of Initiation is also described, in that it is shown how Christ, having assumed the physical nature of man, underwent the experience of expansion into the Macrocosm.

I must here speak of an objection that is very naturally made. It will be fully met in the course of the following lectures but the main point at least shall be considered to-day. The objection is this. If Christ was a Being of such sublimity, why had He to undergo all these trials, why had He to descend into physical and etheric bodies, why—as every man has to do had He to emerge from these bodies and expand into the Macrocosm? He did this, not for His own sake, but for the sake of man! In higher spheres a like deed would have been within the power of Beings akin in nature to Christ, but it had never yet taken place in a human physical body and etheric body. No human body had yet been permeated by the Christ Being. Divine substantiality had before this passed out into space; but what lives in man had never yet been borne out into space. The incarnate Christ alone was capable of such a deed. It was a deed that had to be accomplished for the first time by a Divine Being clothed in human nature.

This second basic event is recounted in the Gospel of St. Matthew where it is shown that the other side of Initiation, expansion into the Macrocosm, into the world of the Sun and Stars, was actually accomplished by Christ. First He was anointed—as others were—so that He should be cleansed and be proof against whatever might approach Him, above all from the physical world. The anointing—an act that played a part in the ancient Mysteries—is presented here at a higher level, in the arena of actual history, whereas formerly it took place only in the seclusion of the temples. We see how at the Passover, Christ gives expression not only t0 the state of inner self-possession, but also to the expansion into the Macrocosm, when in the words, ‘I am the Bread’, He declares to those around Him that feels Himself living in whatever exists on the Earth in the form of material substance. In the scene of the Passover there is indicated the conscious expansion into the Macrocosm, as distinct from the unconscious expansion that takes place during ordinary sleep. And the inevitable experience of being dazzled and blinded is voiced in the monumental words: ‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death’. Christ Jesus experiences in full reality what men experience as the pains of death, paralysis, blindness. The scene at Gethsemane depicts the agony of the soul in parting from the body. What follows in the Gospel narrative is intended to describe the process of passing out into the Macrocosm: the Crucifixion and the Entombment are processes that had formerly been enacted in the Mysteries only.

This, then, is the other main theme of the Gospel of St. Matthew—the expansion into the Macrocosm. Our attention is drawn to the fact that Christ Jesus had been living hitherto in the physical body which afterwards hung on the Cross. He had been concentrated in one point of space and now expanded into the Cosmos. Those who would seek for Him now could not find Him in this physical body but would have to seek Him with clairvoyant vision in the spirit which pervades space.

Christ had accomplished alone what had formerly been enacted in the Mysteries during the three-and-a-half days with extraneous help. He had accomplished that which was at His trial held against Him—namely, His statement that if this Temple were destroyed He would build it again in three days—a clear indication, this, of the initiation into the Macrocosm accomplished in the Mysteries during the three-and-a-half days. He then indicates that hereafter He must no longer be sought in the physical sheath in which He had been confined, but outside, in the spirit pervading cosmic. space. Even in feeble modern translations the majesty of this passage reveals itself to us: ‘Hereafter ye shall see at the right hand of Divine Power the Being who is now born as the prototype of the evolution of humanity and He will appear to you out of the clouds’. It is there, in the Cosmos, that the Christ must be sought, as the prototype of the great Initiation to be undergone by man when he forsakes the body and expands into the Macrocosm.

Herein we have the beginning and the end of the earthly life of Christ. It begins with the birth that took place at the Baptism by John into the body of which we have spoken. It begins with the one side of Initiation as presented in the story of the Temptation: the descent into the physical and etheric bodies. And it ends with the presentation of the other side of Initiation: the expansion into the Macrocosm. Here there is first the scene of the Last Supper, followed by the Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Between these two points lie the events recorded in the Gospel of St. Matthew; and in the following lectures we will insert the details into the sketch that has now been drawn in mere outline.

• 1. Renderings of the original terms vary greatly in literature on Buddhism. Those used here are taken from The Way of Zen, by A. W. Watts (Thames & Hudson), where it is pointed out that each name was originally preceded by the word samyak, meaning ‘perfect’ or ‘complete’. Thus ‘perfect’ or ‘complete’ view, and so on.
• 2. See also the Cycle: Macrocosm and Microcosm. Lecture Six.

It was said yesterday that through the Christ Event the two forms of Initiation became processes of world-historic significance, and when this is fully comprehended it epitomises an essential aspect of that Event.

One form of Initiation consisted in passing through the daily experience of waking from sleep in such a way that on penetrating into his physical and etheric bodies a man's faculties of perception were diverted from the physical environment and directed instead to the processes operating in those bodies. It was above all in the Mysteries and Mystery-centres of ancient Egypt that Initiation took this form. The aspirants were directed and guided in a way that enabled them to avoid the accompanying dangers; in a certain respect they became changed men, able during the process of Initiation to look into the spiritual world—to begin with into the sphere of spiritual forces and beings working in the htiman phsical and etheric bodies.

The Essene Initiation may be described as follows.—When, having lived through the 42 stages, an Essene had gained more intimate knowledge of his inner nature, of his true Eg0-nature, and of what made spiritual vision possible when using the special organs transmitted by heredity, his consciousness was led beyond the 42 stages to awareness of the divine-spiritual Being who as Jahve, or Jehovah, had brought about the formation of the organ first possessed by Abraham; in the spirit the Essene became aware of the essential importance of this organ at that time. He was therefore looking back upon the structure of man's inner nature—itself a product of the same divine-spiritual Being. Knowledge of man's inner nature was the aim of this Initiation.

In the lecture yesterday I spoke in a general sense of what is in store for one who penetrates into his own inner nature. In the first place, egoism in every shape and form is aroused, inducing a man to say to himself: I will marshal all the passions and emotions that are connected with my Ego and are averse from knowing anything of the spiritual world—I will marshal all these forces so that I can identify myself with them, acting and feeling only out of my own Ego-centric nature!—The danger is that a man who penetrates into his own inner nature may become supremely egoistic, and this also as a partisular form of illusion to those who are endeavouring through esotcric development to achieve the same goal. In the latter case egoism takesmany forms which the person in question usually does not recognize; in fact he believes his impulses to be the reverse of egoistic.

Again and again it has been said that the path into the higher worlds demands inner conquests. But there are many who would like to tread this path without any such efforts, who would like to have vision of the higher worlds but are unwilling to undergo the experiences that make this possible; such people dislike having to overcome all kinds of impulscs inherent in human nature and want to reach the higher worlds while at the same time avoiding all such impulses. They are quite unaware that to allow entirely regular and normal occurrences on this path to be the cause of disaffection is often a sign of extreme egoism. Every individual ought really to ask himself: Is it not inevitable that as a human being I should stir up powers of this kind?—But although it has been emphasized over and over again that at, a certain stage something of the sort will happen, these people are still taken aback. In saying this I merely want to indicate the illusions and misconceptions to which everyone is apt to succumb. It must also be remembered that men in our time have become very ease-loving and would prefer to tread the path into the higher worlds with the comforts available to them in everyday life. But comforts much sought after in certain domains of life simply cannot be available along the path leading into the spiritual world.

In former times, a man who found this path through the process of Initiation which led into his inner nature, came into the realm of its own—divine-spiritual Powers at work in his physical and etheric bodies. Such a man was able to testify of the secrets of the spiritual world and to recount to his fellow-men the experiences undergone in the Mysteries while he was being led into his own inner nature and therewith into the spiritual world. But something was connected with this process. When the Initiate came habk from the spiritual worlds he could say I have gazed into the realm of spirtual existence; but I was helped! The helpers of the Initiator made it possible for me to live through the time when the demonic beings from my own nature would have got the better of me.—-But because he owed his vision of the spiritual world to helpers from outside, he remained dependent for the whole of his life upon this ‘Initiation-collegiate’, upon those who had been his helpers. He carried with him into the world the forces of the beings who had helped in his Initiation.

This was all to be changed and such dependence brought to an end. Aspirants for Initiation were to become less and less dependent upon those who were their teachers and initiators. For this help involved a factor of fundamental importance. In our everyday consciousness a clear and distinct feeling of ‘I’ wakens in us at a certain moment of our existence. This has often been spoken of, and my book Theosophy too refers to the point of time when the human being begins to be aware of himself as an ‘I’, an Ego—an experience that is not possible for an animal. If an animal were to look into its inner nature in the way a human being does, it would not find an individual Ego, but a group-Ego; it would feel itself belonging to a whole group. This feeling of of egohood, was suppressed in the ancient Initiations while a man was rising into the spiritual worlds and from everything I have said you will realise that this was a beneficial measure. For all the individualistic impulses, passions and so forth which tend to separate man from the external world are bound up with the feeling of egohood. If passions and emotions were to be prevented from reaching a certain strength, it was necessary for the feeling of egohood to be dimmed. Consciousness during Initiations in the ancient Mysteries was not like that of dreams, but the feeling of egohood was suppressed. The goal now, since the Mystery of Golgotha, was that a man should undergo Initiation while maintaining full awareness of the Ego functioning in him during the hours of waking life. The clouding of the Ego that was always part of the process of ancient Initiation, was to cease. This, of course, can only come about gradually in the course of time, but in fact it has already been achieved to-day to a considerable extent in all rightly constituted Initiations; the feeling of egohood is not extinguished when a man rises into the higher worlds.

We will now study in greater detail an Initiation of pre-Christian times, for example, that of the Essenes. Suppression of the feeling of egohood was, in a certain sense, associated with this Initiation too. That which gives man the feelng,of ‘I’, of egohood, in earthly existence, enabling him to have external perceptions—this had to be suppressed. You need think only of a very elementary aspect of everyday life to realise that in the different state of existence during sleep, when man is in the spiritual world, he has no consciousness of ‘I’. It is only in waking life that he has has consciousness, when he has withdrawn from the spiritual world and his gaze is directed to the physical world of the senses. So it is in men to-day and so too it was in those among whom Christ worked on the Earth. In a man belonging to the present era of Earth-existence the ‘I’ is not, in normal conditions, awake in the spiritual world. The essence of Christian Initiation, however, is that the ’I’ remains fully awake in the higher worlds as in the external, physical world.

Think of the moment of waking. Man emerges from a higher world and descends into his physical and etheric bodies. At this moment, however, he does not become aware of the inner processes in these bodies because his faculty of perception is diverted to the environment. Now everything upon which man's gaze falls at the moment of waking, everything that comes within his purview—whether by physical perception through eyes or ears, or grasped with the intellect bound up with the physical organ of the brain—everything, in fact, that he perceives in the physical environment, was designated in the Hebraic secret doctine as Malkhut,¹ the ‘Kingdom’. This was the expression used for everything in which the 'I' of man could participate consciously. The most accurate rendering of what was conveyed in Hebraic antiquity by the expression the ‘Kingdom’, is this: That in which the human ‘I’ can be consciously present, Primarily, the Kingdom denoted the world of the senses, the world in which man lives in the waking condition with full Ego-consciousness.

Let us now follow the stages of ancient Initiation while a man was penetrating into his own inner nature. The first stage, before he could penetrate into his etheric body and become aware of its secrets, is not difficult to picture. As we know, the external sheaths of a human being consist of the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body. An aspirant for this kind of Initiation must be able consciously to see through his astral body as it were from within. He must first experierice his astral body from within if he is to penetrate into the inner nature of his physical and etheric bodies. That is the portal through which he must pass. New, ever new, experiences await him—experiences as objective as those confronting him in the external world.

If we were to designate as the ‘Kingdom’ the objects which our present constitution enables us to perceive in our physical environment, we should distinguish three kingdoms: mineral, plant and animal. In the terminology of the ancient Hebrews no such definite distinction was made; the three kingdoms were comprised in one. Just as we perceive the animals, plants and minerals through the Ego when we gaze into the world of the senses, so does the gaze of one in process of penetrating into his own inner nature fall upon everything that can be perceived in the astral body. Now, however, he does not perceive directly through his Ego; the Ego is using the instrument of the astral body. And what a man sees when using a different faculty of perception—that is, when his Ego is functioning in the world with which his astral organs connect him—was always designated in the language of the ancient Hebrews by three expressions. just as we have an animal kingdom, a plant kingdom and a mineral kingdom, the trinity perceived when a man's consciousness was functioning in his astral body was designated by three words: Netzah, Yesod and Hod. To translate these expressions into our language with any degree of accuracy it would be necessary to probe deeply into the feeling for words that existed in ancient Hebraic culture, for the renderings usually given in dictionaries do not help at all. For example, Hod as a combination of sounds would have conveyed the meaning of ‘spirit revealing itself outwardly.’ The word would have signified spirituality manifesting itself outwardly, striving to express itself outwardly, but spirituality that must he conceived of as astral. The word Netzah would have been the term denoting this urge for outward expression in a much denser form. The word ‘impermeable’ may perhaps convey some indication of the meaning.

In modern textbooks of Physics you will find a statement that should really count as a definition only, but logic has not been taken into consideration. It is said that physical bodies are ‘impermeable’; but the definition of a physical body ought in reality to be that at the place where it is, no other body can be at the same time. This should count as a definition, but instead of that a dogma is created, and it is said: bodies of the physical world have the quality of impermeability—whereas the correct phraseology would be that two bodies cannot be at the same place simultaneously. That, however, is a matter belonging to philosophy. Self-manifestation in space so that everything else is excluded was expressed by the word Netzah—this would be a much denser nuance of Hod. What lies between the two was indicated by the word Yesod.

Thus there are three different nuances. First, an astral reality revealing itself outwardly—Hod; when densification or coarsening has occurred to such a degree that things become physically impermeable, the Hebraic term would have been Netzah; Yesod indicated the intermediate degrees. It may therefore be said that these three words designated the three different qualities or attributes of the beings of the astral world.

We can now follow the experiences of the aspirant for Initiation through the further stages leading into his inner nature. Having first passed through the necessary stages in his astral body, he penetrated into his etheric body, where he became aware of realities higher than those designated by these three words. Why higher?—you may ask. There is a particular reason for this—one of which account must be taken if you want to understand the inner structure of the world and of man. You must remember that it is the very highest spiritual forces that have worked on what appear to us as the lowest manifestations of the external world. Your attention has often been drawn to this, especially in connection with the nature and constitution of man.

We describe man as consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. The Ego or ‘I’ of man is in a certain sense the highest of his members; but at the stage at which it is to-day, it is the ‘baby’ among the four. At present the ‘I’ is actually at the lowest stage, yet it contains the rudiments of the highest perfection attainable by man. On the other hand, the physical body is, in its way, the most perfect member—although this is due, not to man himself but to the work performed by divine-spiritual Beings through the evolutionary epochs of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon, The astral body too has already reached a stage of greater perfection than that of the Ego. The Ego is the member of our being with which we identify ourselves. Anyone who does not deliberately close his eyes to reality need only look within himself to find his Ego. On the other hand, just think how far man is from understanding the mysteries of his physical body! Divine-spiritual Beings have been working at the human physical body not for millions of years only but for millions upon millions to perfect its present structure. Between physical body and Ego are the astral body and the etheric body. Compared with the physical body, the astral body is an imperfect member, having within it desires, passions, emotions and so forth. Owing to the forces and nature of the astral body man enjoys many things that are directly injurious to the constitution of the physical body, although the etheric body, lying between them, acts as a check. Man enjoys many things that are poison for the heart; if he depended on the astral body alone his health would very soon be undermined. He owes his health entirely to the fact that the human heart is so perfectly constructed that it is able for many decades to withstand the attacks of the astral body. The more deeply we penetrate into man's constitution, the higher are the spiritual forces that have worked at its members. It could he said that our ‘I’ has been bestowed upon its by the youngest gods, the youngest divine-spiritual Powers; and much older gods have produced in our lower members that perfection which man today hardly even begins to comprehend; still less is he capalslc of producing with the instruments at his disposal the marvellous structure created by the divine-spiritual Beings.

This perfection was perceived and experienced in a very special sense by those who through an Essene Initiation, for example, penetrated into the inner regions of man's being. An Essene Initiate said to himself: When I have completed the first fourteen stages I pass into my astral. body; there I am confronted by all the passions and emotions associated with it, by whatever harm I have done to my astral body during my incarnation. But I have not yet been able to do as much injury to my etheric body as to my astral body. My etheric body is still much more godlike, much purer; it reveals itself to me when I am passing through the. second fourteen stages.—And he had the feeling that having resisted the attacks of his astral body, he had overcome the greatest stumbling-block connected with the first fourteen stages and had now passed into the light-filled spheres of his etheric body, the forces of which he had not vet been able to injure to a like extent.

What a man beheld at this second stage was indicated in the secret doctrine of the ancient Hebrews by three expressions, all of which arc extremely difficult to render in our modern language. The three expressions were Gedulah (or Hesed), Tipheret, Geburah. Let us try to picture the three realms of experience designated by these words.

When a man became aware of the realities revealed to him in his etheric body, the effect expressed by the first word, Gedulah was a picture, a conception, of majesty and grandeur in the spiritual world, of everything that gives the impression of overwhelming power On the other hand, the word Geburah, although related to Gedulah, expressed a quite different nuance of greatness—greatness deprived of a certain quality through activity. Geburah expressed that nuance of greatness, of power, which manifests outwardly in order to project itself, to assert itself in the outer world as an independent force. Whereas the expression ‘Gedulah’ implied that the effect produced was due to intrinsic excellence, Geburah conveyed the impression of a kind of aggressiveness, of something asserting itself outwardly through aggressive behaviour. Tipheret was the word used to designate greatness at rest within itself, inner richness which manifests outwardly but without any clement of aggressiveness, giving expression to spiritual greatness through its own nature. To convey what was implied by this word would only be possible by combining our two concepts of Goodness and Beauty. A being bringing its inner richness to expression in its outer form appears beautiful to us; and a being bringing its own intrinsic excellence to expression outwardly, appears good to us. But in the secret doctrine of the ancient Hebrews these two concepts belong together—as Tipheret.—Thus it was by penetrating into his etheric body that a man came into contact with beings expressing themselves through these three qualities.

The nex stage was the penetration into the physicl body. Here a man came to know the most ancient among the divine-spiritual Beings who have worked at his creation. Remind yourselves that in the articles contained in the book From the Akashic Chronical² and in Occult Science—an Outline, it was said that the very first rudiment of the human physical body came into existence on Old Saturn. Very sublime spiritual Beings, the Thrones, sacrificed their own will-substance in order that the first rudiment of man's physical body might arise; and sublime spiritual Beings worked on this rudiment during the further course of evolution through the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. In the lectures on Genesis, given in Munich, I described how these lofty spiritual Beings continued their work through these earlier periods, organising and elaborating this rudiment of the human physical body to higher and higher stages, culminating in the marvellous physical organism in which the human being, consisting of etheric body, astral body and Ego can incarnate to-day.

When a man was able to penetrate into his inmost nature he became aware of what was described in the Hebraic secret teachings as the embodiment of qualities only to be conceived of by reflecting on the very highest wisdom attainable by the human soul. Man regards wisdom as an ideal; he feels lifted to a higher level when be can imbue any part of himself with wisdom. Those (among the Esscnes) whose consciousness penetrated into the physical body knew that they were now approaching Beings whose very nature and substance consisted of what can be acquired by man in a very small measure only, when he strives for wisdom not attained through acts of ordinary cognition but through hard and heavy experiences of the soul, gained wonly in the course of many incarnations. Even then only a certain amount of wisdom is acquired; for not until it has been sought in every possible form could anyone be said to possess it fully. At this stage of Initiation an Essene became aware of Beings revealing themselves as Beings of Wisdom, Beings whose intrinsic quality manifested itself as pure, awe-inspiring wisdom.. This
quality was expressed in the secret doctrine of the ancient Hebrews by the word Hokhmah,, rendered to-day as ‘Wisdom’.

A particular nuance of this attribute or quality of wisdom is again a certain densification. This is present in man but in his individuality he acquires it to a small extent only. On penetrating into the physical body from within, however, a man again encounters Beings who possess this quality—it is a densification of wisdom—in such a marked degree that it seems literally to radiate from them. It is the quality expressed by the word Binah in the secret doctrine of the ancient Hebrews, and is akin to what can be evoked in man his reason is called into play. Man acquires the power of reason to a certain limited degree only. But when the word Binah is used we must think of Beings entirely permeated by what can he born of reason. Binah is a denser nuance of Hokhmah. Hence when reference was made in the Hebraic secret doctrine to the original creative Wisdom out of which worlds were born, Hokhmah was compared to a spring of water, and Binah to a sea—indicating a certain degree of densification.

And the very loftiest experience attainable through penetration into the physical body was designated by the word Keter. It is almost impossible to find an adequate translation for this word. The quality which conveyed an inkling of the attributes of divine-spiritual Beings of the greatest sublimity could only be indicated by a symbol expressing the fact that a man was raised above his own level, invested with a significance greater than was normally his. The expression designating the lofty nature of this quality was Keter, ‘Crown’.

The following, then, are the qualities or attributes of the Beings whose realm a man reaches when he penetrates within himself into his own inner nature.³

You can picture to yourselves that in an Essene Initiation entirely new experiences were undergone by a man, when the qualities and attributes referred to became realities to him.

How did an Essene Initiation contrast with the character and form of Initiation enacted among the neighbouring peoples? All ancient Initiations were adapted to cause the suppression of the feeling of ‘I’ that a man has when he is gazing at Malkhut, the Kingdom. The feeling of ‘I’ was to be eliminated. Hence in Initiation a man could not be as he was in the physical world. True, he was led upwards into the spiritual world, but as an Initiate he could not be man in the sense that he was man in the Kingdom, in Malkhut. In connection with ancient Initiations, therefore, a sharp distinction was made between what a man experienced as an Initiate on the one hand and within his Ego on the other.

If one wanted to give a brief indication of the conditions attaching to Initiation in the secret schools of ancient times compared with those obtaining in public life, one would have to say the following.—Let nobody believe that he can retain the same feeling of egohood that he has in the Kingdom, in Malkhut, if he aspires to become an Initiate. Wonderful and glorious experiences of I lie three times three attributes in their reality come to him as he reaches higher and higher stages; but he must entirely discard the feeling of egohood that is his in the external world. Experiences designated by the words Netzah, Yesod, Hod, and so forth, cannot be carried. down into Malkliut, cannot remain associated with man's ordinary feeling of egohood. That was the conviction held universally. And anyone who might have dared to contradict this principle in ancient times would have been regarded as a fool, a madman and a liar.

The Essenes were the first to teach that the time would come when everything that is above would be carried down, so that man would be able to experience it while maintaining his feeling of egohood intact. The Greeks spoke of Βασιλεια τωυ ομραυωυ (the Kingdoms of Heaven). It was the Essenes who first taught of the coming of One who would bring down for the ‘I’, for the Ego living in Malkhut, what is above in the ‘Kingdoms of Heaven.’ And this too was taught in words of awe-inspiring power by Jeschu ben Pandira to the Essenes and to a few of those around him. The gist of his teaching as transmitted in the immediate future through his pupil Mathai (Matthew) may be indicated briefly in the following way.—

Inspired as he was by the successor of Gautama Buddha, by the Bodhisattva who will eventually become the Maitreya Buddha, Jeschu ben Pandira taught to this effect.—Hitherto the Kingdoms of Heaven could not be brought down into Malkhut, into the realm to which the Ego of man belongs. But when the three times fourteen generations have taken their course and the time is thus fulfilled, there will be born from the progeny of Abraham, from the stem of David, the stem of Jesse (Jessians=Essenes), One who will bring the nine attributes of the Kingdoms of Heaven into the realm in which the ‘I’ of man is actively present.—This teaching led to Jeschu ben Pandira being stoned as a blasphemer, for it was held to be the grossesst violation of the principles of Initiation by those who refused to admit or to recognise that because humanity progresses, something that is right for one period is not necessarily right for another.

Then came the time when prophecy was fulfilled, when the three times fourteen generations had run their course and when there could arise from the blood of the people a bodily constitution in which Zarathustra was able to incarnate, and subsequently, having achieved. further development by the means available in the body of the Nathan Jesus, to offer up that body to the Christ.⁴ The time had come of which Christ's forerunner had declared that the Kingdoms of Heaven would draw near to the Ego which lives in the external world, in Malkhut.

We shall now realise the nature of the task facing Christ after the Temptation. He had withstood the Temptation through the power of His own being, through the principle which in a man to-day, we call the ‘I’, the Ego. He had been victorious over all the attacks and temptations confronting one who penetrates into his own astral, etheric and physical bodies. This is clearly shown in the story. Egoism in all forms is present in such a way as to reveal it in its greatest possible intensity.

A stubborn factor arising in one who is striving for esoteric development is the tendency to occupy himself solely with ins own personality. It is precisely in those who want to find their way into the spiritual world that the habit is so often found of loving to talk about their own cherished personality, concerning themselves with it every moment of the day. Whereas in other circumstances people may deliberately refrain from adopting this attitude when they make efforts to develop or perhaps when they first become anthroposophists, they now begin to pay great attention to their own Ego; and then illusions arise on all hands, illusions from which they were formerly diverted by the ordinary demands of life. Why does this happen? It is because such people are incapable of coping with what rises up from their own inner nature. They are utterly at a loss to know how to deal with what is happening in themselves. Formerly they were alert and readily attracted by the external world; now they are diverted to their own inner world and all sorts of feelings and emotions that were within them begin to rise up. Why is this? What such a person really wants is to be an an Ego, entirely independent of the external world. But then he often falls into the error of wanting to be treated like a child who is told clearly what he must do. He wants to be anything rather than a man who sets his own direction and aim in accordance with what esoteric life teaches him. He has not yet begun to reflect about it, but he has the feeling that dependence upon the external world is a disturbing factor, especially when he wants to be absolutely untrammelled and give all his attention to the dictates of his own egoism. But there is one fact, trivial though it may seem, that prevents him from detaching his bodily life at least from the surrounding world; this fact is that human beings are obliged to eat! It is a trivial fact but it is fatally true. We can learn from it how powerless we are without the world around us. It is a trenchant example of our dependence upon the surrounding world without which we could not live; we are really like a finger on our hand: if we cut it off it withers. A quite trivial consideration can therefore show us the extent to which we are dependent upon the surrounding world.

Egoism at its highest pitch may take the form of the wish: If only I could become independent of the surrounding world; if only I were myself capable of conjuring into existence by magic that which as an ordinary human being I need in physical life but which causes me to be so strongly aware of my dependence upon the world around! Such a wish may actually arise in those who are seeking to attain Initiation. Even hatred may be aroused by the realisation that one is dependent on the environment and incapable of conjuring the means of nourishment into existence by magic. It seems strange to say this, but although wishes that soon arise on a small scale when a person is striving to develop, appear paradoxical, in their extreme form they become downright absurdity. A man is usually quite unaware that he has such wishes. In point of fact no human being has them so strongly that he is deluded into claiming the power to create food by magic, to sustain life by something not derived from the external world, from Malkhut. But in an extrernesase someone might believe: If only I were able to live so entirely in my astral body and Ego that I could rely for my needs entirely on my own wishes, I should no longer be dependent on the surrounding world!

This form of temptation does arise. And in the case of the One who was to undergo it in its greatest intensity, it is characterized by the saying that the Tempter .confronting Christ Jesus bade Him turn stones into bread. This is temptation in its extreme form. The descent into a man's own inner being is described most wonderfully in St. Matthew's story of the Temptation.

The second stage comes after the aspirant for Initiation has penetrated into his astral body and is confronted by all the emotions and passions that could have made him into an utter egoist. Perceiving all this, instead of resisting and overcoming it, a man would like to cast himself down into the etheric body and physical body. This is a situation that may well he described as hurling oneself into the abyss. And this is how it is actually described in St. Matthew's Gospel: man casts himself down into what he has not hitherto been able to spoil to any considerable extent—namely, the etheric and physical bodies. But the passions and emotions must first have been overcome. The Christ Being knows this and facing the Tempter, having overcome the forces by His own power, declares: Thou shalt not tempt the Being to whom thou shoulds't surrender thyself !

Then comes the tthird stage—the penetration into the physical body. When this descent into the physical and etheric bodies takes the form of temptation, it is an experience that may come to every human being during the process of Initiation at the stage when he sees himself from within. He then perceives everything that is contained in the three highest attributes. This is like a world to him but, to begin with, a world of illusion only, a world he cannot see as intrinsic truth unless he penetrates through the sheath of the physical body and rises to those spiritual Beings who are not themselves actually within the physical body but only work in it. If we do not rid ourselves of egoism it is always the tempter of the physical world, Lucifer or Diabolus, who wishes to deceive us about our own being. He promises us everything that confronts us—although it is merely the product of our own maya, our own illusion. If this spirit of egoism does not leave us, we behold a whole world, but a world of deception and lies. Lucifer promises us this world. Let us not believe it to be a world of truth I We enter this world but remain in maya if we do not eventually free ourselves from it.

The Christ Being lived through these three stages of temptation before the eyes of mankind as a model and an example to be followed. Inasmuch as the Temptation was once undergone outside the sanctuaries of the Mysteries, resisted through the power of a Being indwelling the three human sheaths, the impulse was given whereby it was made possible for man in the future course of evolution to rise into the spiritual world with the ‘I’-consciousness belonging to the external realm of Malkhut. The two worlds were no longer to be separate and man was to be capable of rising into the spiritual worlds with the ‘I’ that lives in Malkhut. This was achieved for humanity through the victory over the Temptation as related in the Gospel of St. Matthew. A Being living on the Earth had now provided the model for the ascent of the human ‘I’ from the kingdom of Malkhut into the higher worlds and realms of existence.

What was the result of the Christ Being having lived through as an historical event, an experience hitherto undergone only in the secrecy of the Mysteries? The natural result was the preaching of the Kingdom. The Gospel of St. Matthew therefore relates the Temptation first and then proceeds to describe the stages of the ascent of the Ego, the ‘I’, that henceforth will be able in itself consciously to experience the spiritual world. The secret of the ‘I’ that in accordance with the mode of consciousness prevailing in the external world rises into the spiritual word—this secret, as the Gospel of St. Matthew relates, was now to be unveiled through the Christ Being during the time following the Temptation. Then come the chapters beginning with the Sermon on the Mount and therewith presenting the conception given by Christ of the Kingdom, of Malkhut.

Such are the profundities to be fathomed in the Gospel of St. Matthew. The sources and basic elements of this Gospel must be sought in the secret teachings not only of the Essenes but in those existing in the whole world of ancient Hebraic and Greek culture. We then feel for such a text the profound reverence which, as was said in the Munich lectures,⁵ arises when, enriched with the findings of spiritual-scientific investigation, we turn to the records bequeathed to us by the seers of olden time. We feel that such records speak to us across the ages. It is as though a spirit-language in which great Individualities converse with one another through the centuries were becoming audible—audible, of course, only to those who understand the words of the Gospel: ‘He who hath ears to hear, let him hear!’ But just as in the remote past many things had to happen in order that physical ears might become part of our organism, so it is in the case of the spiritual ears through which we comprehend what is said in those great spiritual records.

The purpose of modern Spiritual Science is to enable us to read and decipher these spiritual records. Not until we have acquired insight into the true nature of the in the Kingdom, in Malkhut, shall we able to understand the chapter in St. Matthew's Gospel beginning: Blessed are they who are beggars for the Spirit; for through themselves, through their own Ego, they shall find the Kingdoms of Heaven!

An Initiate of ancient times would have said to a man: In your own Ego you search in vain for the Kingdoms of Heaven. But Christ Jesus said: The time has come when in their own Egos men will find the Spirit when they seek the Kingdoms of Heaven.

The historic Christ Event consists in the carrying of profound Mystery-secrets into the external world. In this sense we shall be studying that Event still more closely, and then you will understand how to interpret the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount.

Note on the ten Sephirot.

In a lecture on the subject given by Rudulf Steiner in Doruach, 10th May, 1924, to the workmen engaged on building the second Goetheanum, he answered the question put by one of them as to what the Jews meant by the ‘Sephirot-Tree.’ He said that the ten Sephirot were expressions designating ‘the forces by which man is connected with the spiritual world’, adding that these ten forces of the universe were pictured by the ancient Hebrews as working in upon the human being from all sides and directions. The lecture dealt in detail with the qualities connected with each of the ten forces.

In kabbalistic literature, various synonyms are used fur the ten Sephirot, e.g. potencies, emanations, attributes, principles. There are also many variations in the actual names and in their spelling. The Sephirot are often depicted in the form of a tree and its branches (a picture of organic life) and are charted at definite points on a figure representing Adam Kadmon (‘Primeval Man’). This figure was also used to illustrate the lecture to the workmen referred to above.

A useful article on the Sephirot will be found, for example, in the Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, and for students of Jewish mysticism who are able to read German, the following book written by a learned kabbalist and anthroposophist is strongly to be recommended: Der Sohar and seine Lehre, by Ernst Muller, with a Preface by Professor A. Bergman (Origo Verlag, Zurich, 1951).

• 1. One of the ten Sephirot. See note on p. 148.
• 2. Published in 1959 (American edition) with the title Cosmic Memory.
• 3. The ten Sephirot of kabbalistic literature, See note at end of lecture, p. 148.
• 4. See lecture 12, p. 209; also The Gospel of Luke, notably Lectures Four to Seven, Rudolf Steiner gives a condensed account of these happenings in The Spiritual Guidance of Man, Lecture Three.
• 5. See Genesis: Secrets of the Bible Story of Creation, notably the beginning of Lecture VI (p. 73) and the end of Lecture VIII (pp. 99-100)

From everything we have heard in the foregoing lectures it is clear that the essence of the Christ Event may be indicated in the following way.—The stage of evolution denoted by an ascent of the human soul to the realms of the Spirit was attainable in pre-Christian times only within the Mysteries, and through the dimming of the degree of Ego-consciousness then present in man. This stage of evolution was to receive an impulse—the fruits of which still lie, for the most part, in the future—whereby on rising into the spiritual world a man can retain the full Ego-consciousness that is normally his on the physical plane alone. This advance in evolution, made possible by the Christ Event, is truly the greatest advance that has ever taken place or ever will take place in the history of the Earth and of humanity. Whatever else may develop in Earth-evolution in this connection will simply be an elaboration of the mighty impulse given by the Christ Event.

Let us now ask: What was it that was to be brought about by that Event? There was to be a repetition, in a particular case, of certain happenings connected with the secrets of the ancient Mysteries. It was, for example, part of those secrets—and to some extent it is still the same to-day—that on penetrating into his own physical body and etheric body a man experienced in his astral body the temptations of which we spoke yesterday. And in the Greek Mysteries a candidate for Initiation had perforce to encounter all the difficulties and dangers approaching those who pour themselves out into the Macrocosm.

These experiences encountered in one or another mode of Initiation, were undergone by a great and sublime Individuality, by Christ Jesus, as a pattern for mankind. The impulse thus given made it possible for men in the course of their future evolution gradually to achieve the development resulting from Initiation.

What happened formerly in the Mysteries may be described in the following way.—Although Ego-consciousness was dreamlike and dim, certain experiences were nevertheless undergone by the candidate in his inner life of soul. Egoism was aroused in him, making him wish to be independent of the external world. But as was said yesterday, every human being is and must always be dependent on the external world, for the simple reason that he cannot create his means of nourishment by magic or dispense with what he acquires through his physical body. Because this is so he is exposed to the illusion of believing that what is acquired merely through the physical body constitutes the world and its glory. This experience was undergone by every pupil, every candidate for Initiation, but in a condition different from that in which it was undergone at the very highest level by Christ Jesus. Therefore if someone were to describe what happened to a candidate in the ancient Mysteries and then write of the same experiences in the life of Christ Jesus, there would in certain respects necessarily be similarity in the descriptions. For what had come to pass was that happenings formerly shrouded in the secrecy of the Mysteries had now moved to the arena of world-history.

Occurrences such as the following were very frequent in antiquity, especially in the last centuries before the appearance of Christ.—Suppose some painter or scribe, having been told about a certain rite enacted during an Initiation, set to work to portray or describe it. Such a painting or description might well bear a resemblance to the account of the Christ Event given in the Gospels. We can therefore imagine how in many centres of the ancient Mysteries the candidate for Initiation, having completed certain preparations, was bound with outspread arms and hands to a kind of cross in order that his soul might be released from his body. He remained in this condition for a time, undergoing the experiences already described. All this might have been painted or related in writing, and then some scholar, finding it to-day, might assert that what was undergone in the Mysteries had been founded on some older tradition; he might then add that the Gospels themselves are simply repetitions.

Statements to this effect are very widespread. In the book Christianity as Mystical Fact I have explained the sense in which secrets of the ancient Mysteries come to light in the Gospels, and that the Gospels, fundamentally, are repetitions of the descriptions of Initiation in the Mysteries. Why, in relating events in the life of Christ, was it possible to describe the processes enacted in the Mysteries? It was possible because everything that took place in the Mysteries in the inner life of the soul, had become historic fact; because the Christ-Jesus-Event was a re-portrayal of symbolic rites enacted during the process of the old Initiation, but fulfilled now at the higher level of full Ego-consciousness. This fact must always be kept in mind. The similarity of episodes in Christ's life—as narrated in the Gospels—with procedures in the Mysteries will certainly be realised by those who are convinced that such procedures became historic reality through His coming, although they were enacted on an entirely different level of consciousness.

The following could also be said.—Those destined to witness the Christ Event in Palestine observed the fulfillment of the Essene prophecy and were aware of the Baptism by John, the Temptation and what followed it, the Crucifixion, and the ensuing happenings. They could say to themselves: Here is a life lived through by a sublime Being in the body of a man. What are the all-important points in this life? Certain things take place as external events and they are identical with experiences undergone in the Mysteries by candidates for Initiation. We need therefore simply turn to the canon of a Mystery-rite and there we should find the prototype of a process that may now be described as an historical fact!

Here, then, is the great secret. What had formerly been shrouded in the darkness of temple-sanctuaries, perceptible—but only in its effects—to those in the outer world possessed of spiritual vision, was now enacted as the Christ Event on the stage of world-history itself. It must of course be realised that in the days of the Evangelists, no biographies were produced of the kind familiar to us to-day. In a biography, let us say, of Goethe, of Schiller, or of Lessing, every detail of their lives is probed into and every scrap of information collected, usually resulting in a mass of unimportant data purporting to convey the essentials of a life-history. Whereas all these details hinder one from discerning the points that really matter, the Evangelists were content to describe what was of central and fundamental importance in the life of Christ Jesus, namely that in this life there was a repetition of the process of Initiation—but enacted here in the great setting of world-history. Is it any wonder that in our time numbers of people have been taken aback by a certain disconcerting development which comes home to us even more forcibly in the light of the following facts.—

Myths and sagas have come down to us from the past. Anyone who understands their origin and character will realise that many of them are narratives of happenings in the spiritual worlds, seen by ancient clairvoyance and clothed in imagery of the sense-world; other myths again are portrayals of happenings in the Mysteries. For example, the myth of Prometheus, among many others, is partly a presentation of acts performed in the Mysteries. We often find the scene described of Zeus with a god of lower rank who is destined, according to the Greek account, to be his tempter. Zeus standing on a mountain being tempted by Pan—this theme is portrayed in many and various ways. What was the purpose of such imagery? It was meant to give expression to the process of man's descent into his inner being, where he encounters his own lower nature, his egoistic Pan-nature, when he penetrates into his physical and etheric bodies.

The ancient world is full of accounts of experiences undergone by a candidate for Initiation along the path leading into the spiritual world, and in the myths and sagas these accounts are given artistic form.

Scholarship of to-day which fails to penetrate below the surface—and this is what bewilders many people who either cannot or will not recognize the facts—declares when it finds the story of Pan tempting Zeus on a mountain that this shows clearly that the story of the Temptation told by the Evangelists is merely the repetition of an allegory already familiar to them. Scholars then draw the conclusion that there is nothing of unique importance in the Gospels, which appear to them to be compilations pieced together from ancient mythology in order to present a fictitious figure called Jesus Christ. In a certain widespread movement in Germany there were many vapid discussions as to whether Christ Jesus ever lived at all. And with a really grotesque lack of understanding—although with ostentatious erudition—all the sagas and myths alleged to contain earlier parallels of the Gospel scenes were enumerated. It is useless to-day to attempt to give an idea of the actual state of affairs, although it is well known to those who are conversant with these matters. But spiritual movements in our time develop along very strange lines!

I should not have spoken of these things if it were not constantly necessary to take a stand against arguments levelled by ostensibly profound scholarship against the facts and expositions of Spiritual Science.

The real truth of these matters is what I have presented in these lectures. Accounts originating in the Mysteries are necessarily recapitulated in the Gospels, but the secret of Initiation is now connected with an Individuality altogether different. The intention is to show that the experiences formerly undergone in a condition of dimmed consciousness were passed through by this Individuality, this Being, without any loss of Ego-consciousness. Therefore when it is said that the Gospels contain hardly anything for which there is no earlier parallel, we need not be surprised but we must realise that in former times it was a matter of the human being having to rise into the Kingdoms of Heaven, because the Kingdoms of Heaven had not then already ascended to Ego. The really new thing was that what could formerly only be experienced in other realms, and through a kind of attenuation of the Ego, could now be experienced in Malkhut in the ‘Kingdom’, with the Ego erect and self-supporting.

Hence after Christ Jesus had undergone the experience described in St. Matthew's Gospel as the Temptation, He began to preach of the ‘Kingdom.’ What was the gist of His teaching? It was this: What a man formerly attained through suppressing his Ego and receiving other beings into himself, is now and henceforward to be attained in full Ego-consciousness.—That is the essential point. Hence it is not repetition of events connected with Initiations only that are repeated in the life of Christ, but the vital point in the ‘preaching of the Kingdom’ is this: Everything promised to those who were formerly admitted into the Mysteries or who accepted their teachings, is now offered to those who learn to experience in themselves the reality of the ‘I’, the Ego, in the way prefigured for mankind by Christ.

Everything, therefore, even features of the doctrine, must necessarily appear again in some form. But it must not surprise us that emphasis was laid upon the difference between the old teachings and the new, that it was stressed: What could not, in former times, be attained through the Ego, can now be attained by the Ego itself—in full, consciousness! Let us suppose Christ had wanted to draw attention to the great truth that in former times, according to teachings that had reached them from the Mysteries, men had always looked up to the Kingdoms of Heaven, saying: Blessedness can stream down to us from there—but it does not penetrate into our Ego.—In those circumstances it would have been necessary for Christ still to uphold what was formerly said about the Divine Father-Source of existence, for contact with it was indeed attainable when Ego-consciousness was dimmed, and it was the nuances only that needed to be changed. He would have had to speak to the following effect: If you were formerly bidden to look up to the realms of the Divine Father-Source of existence and wait until His radiance streamed upon you, it may henceforward be said that not only does His radiance stream down to you, but whatsoever is willed on high must penetrate into the deepest core of the human Ego and , be willed there also.

Again, let us suppose that each single phrase in the Lord's Prayer had existed previously, and that the only one needing to be altered was to the effect that when in former times men looked up to the Divine Father-Spirit in the Heights everything there remained unchanged, shining down into the earthly realm.—Christ would now have had to say that the heavenly realm must come down to the Earth where the Ego has its dwelling-place; and the will that is fulfilled above in the Heavens must also be fulfilled upon the Earth.—It follows that those who are possessed of deeper insight and perceive the finer shades of difference, will not be in the least surprised that the phrases used in the Lord's Prayer may also have existed in ancient times. A superficial thinker, however, will not notice these fine shades of difference, for in so far as he does not understand the purpose of Christianity he fails to perceive their importance! And when he finds that these phrases were current in earlier times, he will say: ‘There you have it; the Gospels record the Lord's Prayer—but it was already in existence before they were written!’ The essential shades of difference, however, have escaped him.

You can now realise what a vast difference there is between genuine understanding of the scriptures and extern al study. The important factor is for those who discern the new shades of meaning to compare them with the old. The scholar who lacks the deeper understanding and fails to perceive these shades of difference will continue to insist that the Lord's Prayer had already been in existence before the time of Christ.

Attention must be paid to these things and mention made of them here because anthroposophists ought to be able to some extent to make a stand against the dilettante learning that makes its superficial interpretations and its voice heard to-day and by way of innumerable channels in newspapers and periodicals comes to be accepted as ‘science’.

Let me say something further in connection with the Lord's Prayer. There was once a certain individual who set out to collect from every available ancient tradition, from every relevant passage in Talmudic literature, sentences bearing some sort of resemblance to those of the Lord's Prayer. Mark well: the compilation produced by this learned scholar is nowhere to be found originally in this form; the single sentences have been taken piecemeal from one document or another. Carrying this method to the point of absurdity, we might also say: The first sentences of Faust were put together by Goethe in the same way! It might be possible to produce evidence that in the 17th century there was a student who had failed in his examination and afterwards said to his father: Have I not studied jurisprudence with toil and sweat! And another who had failed in his medical examination said: Have I not studied medicine with toil and sweat! And from this the first sentences in Faust are supposed to have been composed. It is an absurdity, but the principle and method are exactly the same as those of the trend in Gospel criticism to which I allude.

The following sentences, pieced together as stated, are sup-posed to have produced the Lord's Prayer:

‘Our Father which art in Heaven; O Lord Our God, hallowed be thy name, and let the remembrance of thee be glorified in heaven above, and upon earth here below. Let thy kingdom reign over us now and for ever. The holy men of old said: remit and forgive unto all men whatsoever they have done against me. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil thing. For thine is the kingdom, and thou shalt reign in glory for ever and for evermore.’¹

The Lord's Prayer is alleged to have been compiled from these sayings which, as I said, were collected from many sources. But the nuance that would indicate the unique significance of the Christ Event is entirely lacking. Nowhere is it said that the Kingdom of Heaven is to come down. The words are ‘Let thy kingdom rule over us now and for ever’—not: Thy Kingdom shall come to us! That is the essential point, but superficial scholarship entirely fails to perceive it. And although these sayings came not from one source but from records in many archives, the words of salient importance in the Lord's Prayer are nowhere to be found: ‘Thy will be done on Earth as it is done in Heaven.’ That is to say, the Ego itself is to participate actively. There you have an example of the difference between superficial research and really thorough and conscientious research which pays attention to every detail. The findings of conscientious research are available, if only people will take account of them.

I have purposely read you these sentences which are quoted in Robertson's book. It has now been translated into German as a kind of modern gospel, in order that it may become widely known; for until now, a certain Professor² who has given a number of lectures on the subject of whether Jesus actually lived, was obliged to read it in English. The book has quickly become famous and the translation of it has meant that people need no longer make the effort to read it in a language not their own. It has been possible for a Professor at a German Academy to travel about lecturing on the question: ‘Did Jesus live?’—and then, on the basis of the facts I have mentioned, to give the answer that there is no documentary evidence whatever to prove that a personality such as Jesus ever lived. Robertson's book is also recommended as an excellent work of reference. Anthroposophists should, however, be warned that they will hear many other things from these investigations into New Testament texts, and I want still to speak of something particularly characteristic.

The book attempts to show that versions of the Lord's Prayer existed not only in the Talmud but also in chronicles of great antiquity. To strengthen the contention that the Lord's Prayer was a compilation of phrases previously in existence and needed no Christ to utter it for the first time, the book quotes certain lines from a prayer in the Chaldaic language, inscribed on tablets, invoking Merodach, the ancient Babylonian god. Listen to this passage which occurs in a footnote:³

‘In the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for October, 189x, Mr. T. G. Pinches published for the first time a translation of a tablet found at Sippara in 1882, in which there occur, in an invocation of Merodach, the lines: “May the abundance of the world descend into thy (the city's) midst; may thy command be accomplished in time to come... may the evil spirit dwell outside of thee.” ’

And the learned scholar who was so deeply impressed by this passage, adds: ‘Here we have prayer norms, on the lines of the Lord's Prayer, dating perhaps from 4000 B.C.’

Can you detect any similarity between the Lord's Prayer and these sentences? Nevertheless the author of the book regards them as prayer-norms of which the Lord's Prayer is simply a copy! Such things are accepted to-day as the findings of genuine research.

There is another reason for bringing this to the notice of anthroposophists, for they must be able to reassure their consciences which might well be troubled by hearing that something or other has been established by external research, or by reading in newspapers or journals of the discovery of a tablet in Asia proving that the Lord's Prayer was already in existence 4,000 years before Christ. A very necessary question would be: Upon what basis has this been proved?—I am trying to show you the kind of foundations underlying many things that are said to-day to be ‘scientifically established’. Such examples are everywhere to be found and it is well for anthroposophists to realise the worthlessness of much that is so often held against Spiritual Science.—But we will proceed.

The all-essential point is that Christ Jesus inaugurated an evolutionary process based upon the human Ego, upon the retention of fill Ego-consciousness. The Initiation of the Ego—that was what He inaugurated. We can say that the Ego, the is the kernel of man's whole being, that all human nature to-day centres in the Ego, and that what was brought through the Christ Event to the Ego, and hence into the world, can also lay hold of, all the other members of man's being. But this, naturally, will have to take place in a very particular way and in keeping with the evolution of humanity.

These lectures show clearly what it is that can be developed. Properly speaking, knowledge of the surrounding physical-material world acquired by man not through the senses alone but also through the intellect using the brain as its instrument, has been possible only since times shortly preceding the Christ Event. Before then, men were endowed with a kind of clairvoyance. As you know from my lectures, this was the case from the early epochs of Atlantis onwards. But the faculty that was still universal and functioning in full strength during the first epochs of post-Atlantean evolution, gradually declined. Until the time of the Christ Event, however, there were still many human beings who in intermediate states of consciousness between waking life and sleep, were able to gaze into and participate in happenings of the spiritual world. Such participation did not merely mean that a man endowed with clairvoyance to a slight extent was able to assert: ‘I know that behind everything physical and material there is the spiritual, for I actually see it.’—This was not all. Human nature in ancient times was such that it was possible, without difficulty, to enable a man to partake in the happenings of the spiritual world, To-day it is very arduous, relatively speaking, to undergo the true esoteric training leading to the attainment of clairvoyance. Natural clairvoyance manifests to-day as a last remnant, a heritage from olden times, in somnambulistic and kindred conditions. These conditions cannot be regarded as regular in our age; but in the distant past they were normal and could be sublimated and enhanced by certain measures.—Something else, too, was connected with this.

To-day, people are not guided by true history and what they happen to believe decides what is or is not historical fact. But however strongly it may be doubted, the truth is that up to the time of Christ, processes of healing, for instance, could be made effective by inducing clairvoyance. In the present age, when humanity has descended more deeply into the the physical world, this is no longer possible. But in those earlier times it was still easy, by applying certain specific measures, to enable the soul to become clairvoyant and to penetrate into the spiritual world. And because the spiritual world is health-giving, in itself and sends its forces into thc physical world, it was possible to bring about healings in this way. In a case of illness certain processes were put in motion, enabling the person concerned to see into the spiritual world. And the streams of the spiritual world flowing down into his whole being had a curative effect. This indeed was the usual method of healing. (The ‘temple healing’ spoken of nowadays is sheer dilettantism.) The fact that souls have lost the clairvoyance that was universal in former times, signifies an advance in evolution. But the earlier clairvoyant condition could be so sublimated that healing forces streamed from the spiritual into the physical world and in the case of certain illnesses cures could be effected, We need not therefore be surprised when it is said by the Evangelists that as a result of the Christ Event not only those possessed of the old clairvoyance would be able to reach the spiritual world, but also those who, owing to the evolution of humanity, had lost contact with it.

In ancient times the riches of the spiritual world were revealed to men's clairvoyant vision. Now, however, it could be said: Evolution has progressed and those who can no longer gaze into the spiritual world have become poor in spirit, beggars for the spirit. But because, through Christ, the forces of the Kingdoms of Heaven can now flow into the Ego, even when the Ego is functioning on the physical plane, those who have lost the old clairvoyance and the riches of the spiritual world, they too can experience the spirit in themselves and be blessed. Hence the momentous words: From now onwards, not only those who through the old clairvoyance are rich in the things of the spirit are blessed; but those too who are beggars for the spirit, are blessed; for when the path has been opened for them by Christ the Kingdoms, of Heaven flow into their Ego.

In earlier times the nature of the human physical organism was such that even in the normal state the soul was able to some extent to emerge from the body; this meant that a man became clairvoyant, rich in the treasures of the spirit. The densification of the physical body—for which, admittedly there can be no anatomical proof—meant that man could no longer be rich in the things of the spiritual world, of the Kingdoms of Heaven. In describing existing conditions, one would have to say: Man has become a beggar for the spirit; but the powers brought down by Christ enable him to experience within him-self the Kingdoms of Heaven.—That, then, is what might be said in reference to the processes of the physical body.

If it were a matter of describing what actually took place in man as an Ego-being, one would have to show how each of his members could be blessed inwardly, in a new way. The new truth relating to the physical body is expressed in the words: Blessed are they who are beggars for the spirit; for within themselves they will find the Kingdoms of Heaven.

In regard to the etheric body, this could be said: In the etheric body lies the principle of suffering. Only a living being can suffer as the result of injury to the etheric body—an astral body must, of course, be there as well—but the seat of the suffering must nevertheless be looked for in the etheric body. To express the new truth applying to healings brought about in earlier times through forces streaming from the spiritual world, one would have to say: Those who suffer can henceforth find consolation not only by passing out of their bodies and thus being linked with the spiritual world as was formerly the case; if they now establish a different relationship with the world they can find consolation within themselves, because through Christ a new force has been imparted to the etheric body. Hence concerning the etheric body it could be said: Those who suffer can now be blessed not only through reaching a spiritual world and in a clairvoyant condition allowing the forces of that world to stream upon them; now, if they can find the path to Christ, to the new truth, they can find within themselves consolation for all suffering.

And what would have to be said about the astral body? In former times, when a man was striving to subdue the emotions, passions and egoistic impulses of his astral body, he turned his gaze to higher spheres, pleading that strength might be vouchsafed to him from the Kingdoms of Heaven; through certain measures to which he was then subjected, the harmful instincts of his astral body were quelled. But now the time had come when through Christ's Deed he was able to receive into his Ego the power to curb and tame the passions and emotions of his astral body. The new truth relating to the astral body would therefore be expressed as follows: Blessed are those who have become meek through the power of their own Ego; for it is they who will inherit the Earth! This third Beatitude is indeed profound. Let us study it in the light of what we have learnt from Spiritual Science.—The astral body was incorporated into human nature during the Old Moon period of evolution. The Luciferic beings who had gained influence over man, established themselves in his astral body, and in consequence of this he could not, at the beginning, hope to reach his highest earthly goal. As we know, the Luciferic beings had remained at the Old Moon stage and prevented man from progressing in the right way along his path of development. But now that Christ had come down to the Earth and the Ego gould be filled with His power, it was possible for man to fulfil the essential principle of Earth-existence, inasmuch as he could now find within himself the power to curb the astral body and expel the Luciferic influences. Hence it could be said: He who curbs his astral body, he whose own inner strength keeps him from being moved to anger without the consent of his Ego, he who is inwardly serene and at the same time strong enough to keep his astral body in check—such a man will fulfil the purpose of Earth-evolution. Infinite light is thus shed by Spiritual Science on the third Beatitude.

How will man succeed in bringing about the sublimation and beatification of the other members of his nature through the Christ-power within him? He will succeed if his soul and body alike are laid hold of worthily by the power of the Ego. Concerning the Sentient Soul we can say : If a man desires to experience the Christ within himself, he must develop in his Sentient Soul a longing as strong as the instinctive longing he otherwise feels in his body and calls hunger and thirst. He must be capable of thirsting after the things of the soul with the same intensity as the body hungers and thirsts for food and drink. What man can develop through the Christ-power within him has always been referred to as ‘thirst after righteousness’. And when he fills his Sentient Soul with the Christ-power, he can find within himself the possibility of satisfying his thirst after righteousness.

The fifth Beatitude, as might be expected, is especially note-worthy, for it concerns the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. Anyone who has studied the book Occult Science, or Theosophy, and has also followed what has been said for years in lectures, knows that the three members of the human soul—Sentient Soul, Intellectual or Mind-Soul and Spiritual Soul (Consciousness-Soul) are held together by the Ego is present in the Sentient Soul in a dull condition; in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul it lights up and only then does man become wholly and completely man. Whereas in the lower members of his being, in the Sentient Soul too, he is ruled by divine-spiritual Powers, he becomes a self-dependent being in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. Here the Ego flashes up and is active. Therefore when the Intellectual or Mind-Soul has received into itself the CHrist-power, this cannot be expressed in the same way as in the case of the lower members of human nature. In the lower members—physical body, etheric body, astral body and Sentient Soul too—man is connected with certain divine Beings who penetrate into these members, and whatever qualities he develops there are carried up again to these divine Beings. But whatever evolves in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul will be an essentially human attribute when it develops the Christ-quality. When a man begins to be conscious of the working of the Intellectual Soul, this makes him less and less dependent upon the divine-spiritual Powers around him. When he takes the Christ-power into himself he can unfold in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul those qualities which pass like to like, which are not besought from Heaven but which go forth from and return again to the same being. We must therefore feel that something streams from the qualities of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul and that something of a like character a truly wonderful way the fifth Beatitude points to this very quality. The wording here differs from that of all the other Beatitudes, and although the various translations are not particularly good, they have not been able entirely to conceal the essential point.—Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.'‘What streams forth streams back again—these words convey the true meaning when understood in the light of Spiritual Science.

With the sixth Beatitude, relating to the Spiritual Soul, we come to that principle in man in which the real nature of the the Ego, comes fully into expression; ascent to the spiritual world can now take a new form. As we know, the Intellectual or Mind-Soul came to active expression in the epoch when Christ appeared. We are living now in the epoch when the Spiritual Soul must come to expression and when man is to rise again to the spiritual world. Whereas consciousness of self first lights up in man in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, in the Spiritual or Consciousness-Soul his ‘I’ unfolds to the -full extent and now ascends again into the spiritual world. A man who takes the Christ-power into himself will find the way to his God when he pours his ‘I’ into the Spiritual Soul. In experiencing Christ in his Ego at the level of the Spiritual Soul, he will find his God.—Now it has been said that the expression of the Ego in the physical body is the blood; the blood has its centre in the heart. Therefore the sixth Beatitude will have to indicate that through the quality imparted to the blood and to the heart, the Ego can experience God. What are the words? ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.’ Again this is not an entirely adequate translation but it suffices.

Spiritual Science sheds light upon the whole structure of these wonderful words spoken by Christ Jesus to his intimate disciples after the Temptation. The further Beatitudes relate to the development of the higher members of man's being: Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man. Therefore the words do no more than indicate what man will experience in the future and what only a few chosen ones are able to experience at the present time.

The seventh Beatitude relates to the Spirit-Self : Blessed are they who draw to themselves the Spirit-Self as the first purely spiritual member of their being; for they will be called the children of God.—The first member of the higher triad has entered into them. They have received the Divine into themselves and have become an outward expression of the God-head.

But it is now clearly shown that only chosen ones, only those who fully understand what the future is to humanity as a whole can succeed in unfolding the Life-Spirit. What men of the future, having received Christ into themselves in the fullest sense, will call the ‘Life-Spirit’ is now within the reach of a few individuals only. But because they are chosen individuals, the others are unable to understand them and they are persecuted. With reference, therefore, to those who are persecuted because as individuals they represent a stage that belongs only to the future, the words are uttered: Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for in themselves they find the Kingdoms of Heaven.

And the last Beatitude concerns the closest, most intimate disciples only; it refers to the ninth member of Man's being: Spirit-Man.—‘Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you... for my sake.’

And so these wonderful utterances relating to the nine members of man's being show how the ‘I’, when filled with Christ, works in the different members and brings them blessedness. In the verses following the account of the Temptation, the Gospel of St. Matthew expresses with majestic grandeur the effect of the Christ-power in the ninefold nature of man, first in the present and then in the immediate future, when those into whom the Spirit-Self already shines are called ‘children of God’—although of these there are only a few specially blessed ones. What is so wonderful is that the indications are quite definite when concerned with members of man's being that have already developed, but become indefinite in the later utterances which relate to the distant future.

But once again we have an example of superficial scholar-ship. Suppose someone were investigating the question of whether similar utterances are also to be found elsewhere and whether the Evangelists might have strung them together from other sources. And suppose this investigator had no notion of the all-important point—that the Beatitudes apply to the Christ-filled Ego! Failing to notice the wonderful enhancement indicated in the utterances, he might well quote the following—and indeed two or three pages later in the book already mentioned,⁴ in a chapter entitled ‘The Beatitudes’, reference is made to an ‘Enoch’—who is not the usual (Ethiopic) Enoch—and nine so-called ‘Beatitudes’ are cited. The author admits that the original record can be assigned to the first period of the Christian era but he considers that the utterances we have characterized as being so profound could have been copied from the following nine 'Beatitudes’ of the 'Slavonic' Enoch:⁵

1. Blessed is he who fears the name of the Lord, and serves continually before his face.

2. Blessed is he who executes a just judgment, not for the sake of recompense, but for the sake of righteousness, expecting nothing in return: a sincere judgment shall afterwards come to him.

3. Blessed is he who clothes the naked with a garment, and gives his bread to the hungry.

4. Blessed is he who gives a. just judgment for the orphan and the widow, and assists every one who is wronged.

5. Blessed is he who turns from the unstable path of this vain world, and walks by the righteous path which leads to eternal life,

6. Blessed is he who sows just seed; he shall reap sevenfold.

7. Blessed is he in whom is the truth, that he may speak the truth to his neighbour.

8. Blessed is he who has love upon his lips, and tenderness in his heart.

9. Blessed is he who understands every word of the Lord, and glorifies the Lord God.

Certainly there is beauty in these sayings. But when you study their whole construction and realise that they simply set forth a few principles suitable for any epoch but not specifically for the one of drastic transformation due to the inauguration of the power of the ‘I’—then, if you still think it possible to place these Slavonic sayings on a par with the Beatitudes of St. Matthew, you will not be far removed from those who make superficial comparisons between the various religions of mankind and whenever they come across similarities at once insist that there is uniformity, ignoring what is of essential importance.

To understand these things is to realise that human evolution progresses, that humanity advances from stage to stage, and that a man is not born in a new physical body in a later millennium in order to repeat experiences already undergone, but to experience in what respects humanity has advanced in the intervening time. That is the purpose alike of history and of human evolution. And of this the Gospel of St. Matthew speaks on every page!

• 1. See p. 417, in Christianity and Mythology, by John M. Robertson. Second edition. First published in 1900 by Watts & Co. London. It is stated that this compilation was made more than two centuries ago by the Rev. John Gregorie, from the Jewish Euchologues.
• 2. Dr. Arthur Drews.
• 3. Op. cit. pp. 418-
• 4. Christianity and Mythology, p. 422.
• 5. From the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, trans. from the Slavonic by W. R. Morfill, and edited, with introd. notes, by R. H. Charles. (Clarendon Press, 1896).