The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If one wishes to characterize higher worlds, one must use words which are of little use, since these are intended for the sensuous world. But there are certain common qualities in all worlds: Colors, sounds, certain forces. We want to speak first about certain colors; these are known to us in the physical world only in spatial things. Even there, where they are present without objects, they become noticeable only through the objects. Only in the borderline cases of the physical life one can see colors without object, for example the rainbow. The colors in the astral world are not bound to a fixed, spatial limit. They are still psychic, are the expression of the being at which they are. A sensual passion expresses itself differently than a highly striving thought. Here is immediate harmony. The color floats freely, but it is connected with what it expresses. It is not exterior color, but interior color. The bell, for example, does not care whether it is yellow or green, it does not affect its tone.

When one gets beyond the astral world, there are also colors, but they are not only inner colors, but they are creative, bring themselves forth; they are radiant colors. Now, when man rises into the mental space, he first loses the ability to perceive the mental colors in the same way. That is why one speaks of the sounding world. On the other hand, the ability to perceive sound occurs. Only when one again gets even higher, one perceives the radiant colors. When the human being has again made his way to the color, he is in the Arupa.

If we could take color from a physical object and carry it with us like a thin layer and bring it to Devachan, the color would shine there. That is why Devachan is also called the 'world of radiant colors'. If you want to communicate something to a fellow human being here, you tell him through sound. In Devachan it would shine in the corresponding color. Such a world, where all beings live in radiant colors, is called the 'first elementary realm'. When the matter of these beings becomes a little denser, descends into the Rupic, they begin to make themselves felt through sounds. This is the 'second elemental realm'. The beings that live in it are very mobile. In the 'third elemental realm', form is added to the rest. The inner color is shaped; passion shows itself in lightning form, lofty thoughts in plant form. In higher realms, they are sparks and glimmers; here they are forms of monochrome and sounding worlds.

All our beings have passed through three elemental realms. Gold, copper and so on have now passed into the mineral kingdom. Gold did not look the same in the lunar round as it does now: a star shining on different sides, through which one could reach. By a similar process, water, when it freezes into snow, becomes a small crystal. The metals are the condensed forms of the third elementary kingdom. Therefore metal is not internally uniform, but internally shaped - Chladnian sound figures. According to lines and figures the whole mineral kingdom is animated, and in the third elementary kingdom it was colored. By the fact that the forms solidify, surface becomes, and now the colors arise on the surface.

So we have:

1st elemental realm - realm of radiant colors
2nd Second elemental realm - realm of free tones
3rd elemental kingdom - kingdom of colored forms
4th mineral kingdom - kingdom of colored bodies

The physical world contains all three elemental kingdoms as coagulated within itself. Sound is much more related to the interior of a being than color. The latter is more surface. The radiating colors are still more inwardly connected. [The self radiating of the first elementary kingdom.]

We have come to know the supreme elemental realm as a realm of radiant colors. When we look at the wonderfully glittering world in connection with a state of consciousness, we get a correct mental image of it. It is a consciousness that directly expresses itself. Human consciousness is very subordinate, it only perceives the object from the outside, as in a mirror. The divine consciousness radiates light from itself. It is called emanation, as opposed to evolution, which is development.

Now, if something emanates from itself, it can be thought that the further the rays go, the lower its consciousness becomes,

The amount of light that used to be in the points is now distributed around the perimeter. By the fact that the light becomes thinner and thinner, the consciousness becomes smaller and smaller, and thereby the first elementary realm passes into the second. This gives rise to the material - a consciousness that becomes weaker and weaker. In the third elemental realm, we have an even more attenuated consciousness, that is, an even more intensifying material.

When the circle spreads out so that a straight line is formed, the mineral kingdom is formed. In the mineral kingdom, the radiance has lost its power. But we now have four kingdoms: the first, second, third elemental kingdoms and the mineral kingdom. Consciousness is where it is directly radiant, luminous, with the emanation on one and the same plane. If we go to the second elementary kingdom, the consciousness is one plan higher than the substance. And if we pass into the third elementary kingdom, the consciousness is two planes higher than the substance; and in the mineral kingdom the consciousness is three planes higher than the substance it directs. The curvature of the substance becomes a balancing. If we go further, the consciousness does not move higher, but begins to grasp the substance from the other side. Gravitation arises instead of emanation. Matter clenches again.

On the fifth stage we have the plant kingdom. We are still experiencing gravity. When a stone falls to the earth, it attracts it. This is the same force that actually only really comes into its own in the plant kingdom. If the gravitation advances, the counter image to the second elementary kingdom arises - the animal kingdom. If now the substance moves together again with the consciousness, then we have to do it with the human kingdom.

In the human being the center of gravity is his I, to which he refers everything. There again his center of consciousness coincides with the material. Let us consider the development of man from here:

Saturn: the development of the physical body in the first elementary kingdom. A radiating light vein. When the development comes from Saturn to the Sun, man undergoes this radiance, and the physical body enters the second elemental kingdom; on the Moon, the third elemental kingdom. On Earth, the physical body is in the mineral kingdom.

On Saturn, man does not yet have an etheric body; it develops only on the Sun, it is there in the first elemental kingdom, it is the same radiating entity. On the Moon the etheric body is in the second elementary kingdom, on the Earth it is in the third elementary kingdom.

The astral body is not yet present on Saturn, nor on the Sun. It develops in the first elementary realm on the Moon; on Earth it develops into the second elementary realm. After the astral body we come to the ego. This enters the first elemental realm only on earth.

When we now ascend, we come to the development on Jupiter. There the physical body of man passes from the mineral kingdom to the plant kingdom. In exchange, the etheric body will move up into the mineral kingdom. The astral body moves up from the second to the third elementary kingdom, the ego from the first to the second elementary kingdom.

On Venus, the physical body moves on into the animal kingdom, that is, it is master of pleasure and pain. The etheric body is then in the plant kingdom, the astral body in the mineral kingdom, and the ego is in the third elemental kingdom.

Now we move on to the volcano. There it[, the physical body,] is in the actual human kingdom, the etheric body is then in the animal kingdom, the astral body in the plant kingdom, and the ego in the mineral kingdom. To be in the mineral kingdom means: to bring forth such matter from itself, as for example this table.

It brings forth physical matter around itself. Then it makes plants grow upon it; makes animals walk upon it. And at last it calls forth man. The ego has then become planetary spirit itself.

All planets are mineral-become “I”s.

[What is radiant planetary matter are I's become mineral.]

There is often something tremendously important in simple expressions of the people. The language is not a random creation. In the language we can see the real spirit. Sometimes a saying points to deeper secrets of existence. We have spoken of the overturning of beings; this going over, jumping over a certain point, we find everywhere. Man, let us recall, consists of his three lower bodies. These three bodies are gradually built up and perfected by mankind. On the earth came to the appearance the real I.

During the third round on the moon, man lived in a dream-like consciousness. He did not see the colors on the objects, but the color came to life as an entity before his soul. /Gap in transcript]

On earth, the pictorial consciousness transforms into the representational consciousness. The color puts itself over the object. That one perceives something depends on the fact that we have sense organs. Now if the moon dweller perceived, he had to have senses; he had them, lotus flowers turning to the opposite side. In which body were these lunar sense organs? In the actual etheric double body. In the pralaya, these lunar sense organs disappeared, and the sensation body is formed, which has the powers that form the eyes, ears and so on. The I as such was also present during the lunar existence, but in an unconscious way. On earth the I looks through the sense organs with the help of this sensory body and perceives. Because the I is stuck in the sensory body, it has consciousness only as long as it can look out. When it cannot - in death - consciousness is interrupted. A

The next stage is that the ego works its way into the same world that it perceives from the outside. On the moon as image the object was perceived, on earth the human being threw these images over the objects. Now he slips into these objects/images and grows with them. This is called "the life in the causal body. It means a coming out over oneself. If this rushing out is done too early or incorrectly, man would lose the connection with his senses.

[Gap in transcript]

This gravitation must be especially strongly developed in the student of occultism.

Madness is nothing but losing harmony with the outside world. In every abnormal development this has happened. The soul has jumped out of the sentient body and is actually outside. It "snaps over.

Language is a powerful cultural factor in development. Great initiates imbibe into language that which is to be expressed in many centuries. In Germany, Christian mysticism should be expressed. This teaches that the Christ lives in Jesus, while the Oriental languages teach the threefold Logos. This is not mutually exclusive.

The ineffable name.

According to his physical body, man has three elementary kingdoms and the mineral kingdom within him. Now today we want to place man in the midst of nature. The physical body has had its first emergence on Saturn. This substance of the physical body was poured out by higher powers. So there was something there before Saturn. This divine poured out the matter which is the densest today. What we call "earth" is simply the densest matter for the occultist speaking. "Earth" is outside and inside the human body. Earth includes everything solid, so also a crystal. Matter is the sum of everything solid. In man there is little earth, that which remains when you burn the corpse. If you think of the ashes in the urn for you, you have that from man which was poured out on Saturn in the first elemental realm.

How is it that the earth outside looks different from that which forms the human body? Because on the sun the etheric body was added, and, as far as it belongs to the human being, it transformed the earth. On the Saturn earth was not loose, but through and through used to the incarnation to the people and to the beings which incarnated beside him and which still have a Saturn existence today. They are the gnomes, the spirits of the earth. On Saturn there has been no water; that came on the Sun, and man formed his etheric body, which was able to absorb his former earth body and to form it according to the etheric body.

In the nodes of the net lay the individual grains. This net body was suitable to draw water out and in. In the water the actual sun beings - undines incarnated. By the fact that the earth, which could live, was taken away from the people to the gnomes, these are given a certain influence on the physical body of the human being; they are pushed out from it into the astral realm. On the moon the astral body is added to the etheric body; thus man intersperses the whole body with water. A mixture of earth with water is formed, something resembling albumen, jelly mass, like jellyfish, in it dissolved the former earth grains in the water; and in and out man could now draw the air. In the air the sylphs incarnated.

Now the entity came over to the earth, added to it was the fire. Man, besides his astral body, received his ego. This means for the human being that he organizes his three bodies even higher. Today the body consists of earth, water, air. By absorbing air, into which one [can] incarnate, man has withdrawn it from the sylphs and pushed them out. Fire he breathed until the Lemurian time. Fire is warmth. Man had the warmth of his environment, and outside lived the salamanders as those actually incarnated in fire. They are the last beings of this kind whose matter man appropriated.

In the Middle Ages, this theory still lies within. By appropriating the fire, it was that man's I rose into the KamaManas.

We have now formed the body with a fifth plant, hence the pentagram.

It consists first of the solid; the ash components form the basis of its bone system. Then on the Sun the aqueous, which forms the soft parts of man, cartilage and muscular system. Third, on the moon, the respiratory system with the lungs. Fourth, the cardiac system, generating heat through the heart, and since Lemurian times nervous system, senses.

When a new limb joins beyond this fourth, a tremendous change takes place. Since Lemurian times, man has been doubly dependent on the earth: first, built up; second, sustained by the food he takes in and gives out. The body is overripe; it cannot be sustained by itself and must be renewed every seven years. So the human body goes through an incarnation every seven years.

These are the things that show you how man stands inside in a great universal world, surrounded not only by the animal, plant, mineral kingdoms, [but also by] the beings he has pushed out into higher realms. The physicist calls them forces. One must recognize the beings that belong to them. The greater superstition is not to give anything to mythology. It is an ancient science, the expression of ancient spiritual experiences.

Paracelsus knew that if this sap is sick in man, the sap belongs to this plant to bring about the balance.

In the Middle Ages we often hear of the art of making gold and of the philosopher's stone. Such things, though connected with quite deep questions of life, are often misunderstood by people who know nothing of higher things. By "philosopher's stone" one understood in former times the production of some mineral, which was able to prolong the life by medicinal ingestion. Gold, as it is found on earth today, has in fact not always existed in the same form, but first had completely different forms and then gradually changed into gold. It is more difficult with gold to bring it into a liquid state than with lead, for example, but there is also liquid gold, which runs like water at high temperature. You can liquefy it still further, then gold clouds develop, which cover the planet, and if you volatilize it more and more, from gold - sunlight develops. So that we have in gold a substance which was formed inside the earth by the solidification of sunlight in the same way as ice was formed by the solidification of water.

When the earth was still sun, the gold was sunlight. It was only by splitting off the sun that the earth became so cold that the rays of light remaining in it solidified into gold. The miner still knows this, and he treats the gold in this way. On the moon the gold became a little more rigid than it was on the sun; it ran in streams on the surface of the moon. On the earth it became veins of gold and crossed the earth as the veins of blood cross the man. When the earth time was there, it happened in such a way that man himself could take up all that which had previously solidified into gold. The light gained this meaning for man. When man sucked fire in and out, it glowed through him and permeated him with the substance contained in the sunlight. The sucking in and out of the fire is a process which was externally connected with luminous and light phenomena; man was then a shining and glittering man. Remnants of it are in the beings that cause the sea luminescence and also in the firefly. Man has lost this luminosity by sucking the warmth into himself. In the post-Lemurian time we already have the warm man, and now the way back begins. When man develops physically, he will not only develop the warmth in himself, but will radiate it again and illuminate his surroundings like a sun. Then he will radiate the light like the sun used to do, and the earth can evolve. On the earth, which later becomes Jupiter, he radiates the luminous gold power, so that man will be the creator of gold. Thus, through his own development, man becomes the chemical laboratory that creates gold. Man becomes the planetary spirit and then brings forth what the planet has brought forth. A material transformation is really going on with him, and so he becomes the source of gold. Through meditation and concentration we generate the forces that lead to this. So that today for the mankind these spiritual operations are the natural forces, by which he prepares later material transformations. Today, even a Christ could not materially produce gold directly in our physical earth, because you cannot produce anything that the environment does not absorb.

The art of making gold was conceived quite materially in the Middle Ages. One did not wait, did not extend spirituality to many incarnations, but merely to one, and thereby materialized.

[Let us now come to the] philosopher's stone. To anyone who has not practiced occultism, the writings about it seem as if written by a madman. In the eighteenth century one described it in the "Imperial Gazetteer" and said, "He who knows it only once finds it everywhere; you have it in your room, find it in the street, hold it in your hand. - So he describes him as something that you just don't know what it is. It is erwas, which, if man will be able to generate it through himself, will make him truly immortal.

We know that man is placed in the whole nature, that he is dependent on the plant world. He inhales oxygen, exhales carbonic acid; the plant, on the other hand, assimilates carbonic acid and exhales oxygen. Thus man and plant complement each other. What the human being expels, the plant builds up its body from. It goes without saying that there must be light before the plant can build up its body; but when that is there, it builds it up from the carbonic acid. Such a plant is a strange chemical laboratory. The main substance is carbonic acid; what salts it takes up are secondary. Carbonic acid consists of carbon and oxygen. The plant retains the carbon and releases the oxygen. Man combines the oxygen with his carbon and pushes it away from him. We can see this when we dig plants out of the ground after millions of years; what do we find? We find coal. The plant has in fact incarnated into the coal, and the coal is its corpse, its lunar body. If we were to follow what the plant world would do if left to its own devices, we would see that the earth would be transformed into a coal planet.

Now we have seen that man is transforming the mineral kingdom, that he is plowing the earth with the same forces with which the mineral kingdom works. When the earth steps out of its present round, man has completely transformed it, then the fifth round begins with the plant kingdom [as the lowest kingdom]. Then man will do to the plant kingdom what he is now doing to the mineral kingdom: he will work through it and incarnate in it. And thus the laboratory powers of the vegetable kingdom will pass into him, and he will, out of his own powers, transform the planet into coal. Thus we have reached the point where the human kingdom becomes immortal. No longer will man move in and out of a body, as is the case with his mineral incarnations, but as a spirit being he will assimilate the substance and move out again, thus forming the planet out of his own substance. Of course, the coal will then be present in the fine form of the present diamond; man forms his diamond planet, which he permeates with the gold veins, as formerly the sun permeated his earth planet with gold veins. Man becomes planetary spirit. Thus we must understand Kortum when he says that we hold the philosopher's stone perpetually in our hand: It is coal.

Today we want to touch on evolution from the theological and spiritual side.

On the planet Saturn, man was in the lowest state of consciousness, in a much deeper state than sleep consciousness. But other beings had other degrees of consciousness. These were spiritual beings who guided and led the evolution on Saturn. There are six types of divine spirits, comrades of man on Saturn.

1 First of all, there are the beings who have a spiritual consciousness, these are highly exalted gods. In Western esotericism they are called “radiant lives” or “radiant flames” because they are radiant beings through and through; they are also called spirits of will.

2. Spirits of wisdom. Highly exalted spirits, but one level lower than the First Ones. They have superpsychic consciousness.

3. Spirits of action, of activity, creating entities, while the others instill the spirit.

4. Spirits of form, who produce shapes.

5. Spirits of darkness, of egoism, of personality (Asuras). They bring into Saturn everything that is connected with egoism. They are active in the fifth round of each planet. That is why '5' is the 'evil number' in secret science. On Saturn they have waking consciousness, like people today.

6. Sons of Fire (Agnishvattas), who have dream consciousness.

7. Sons of Twilight (Lunar Pitris), who have dreamless sleep consciousness.

Christian mysticism now calls these spirits of the first group 'Thrones', the second 'Dominions' (Kyriotetes), the third 'Powers' (Dynamis), the fourth 'Powers' (Exusiai), the fifth 'Primal Forces' (Archai), the sixth 'Archangels' and the seventh 'Angels'. In truth, there are twelve levels of consciousness, but they cannot be traced. Christian mysticism specifies two more: Cherubim and Seraphim.

What we have here is the society of spirits around Saturn, while the human being develops below it. In the first Saturnian round, the human being attains deep trance consciousness. The other Saturn rounds are intended for the other spirits to complete their development, so that in the fourth to fifth Saturn round the Asuras become beings that can be compared with the human being of today; they are a kind of human being.

In the fifth, sixth and seventh Saturn rounds, other spirits were perfected in turn. In the seventh round the human body became completely solid, and at the same time the highest human being was formed in the regions of the spiritual: Atma, the spirit man.

The Sun: the first round of the Sun forms the repetition of Saturn. In the second round, the human being enters deep sleep consciousness; the etheric body is formed. During the fourth round, the spirits of the sons of fire become 'human', and they use the etheric body of man to incarnate in it. In the fifth round, the Asuras claim the physical body again. During the seventh round, the human physical body is again at its densest, the etheric body relatively so, and its counter-image arises in the spiritual: Budhi.

During the first Saturn round, the 'Radiant Lives' or 'Radiant Flames', the 'Spirits of Will' were there, then they left. Saturn becomes dark and is completely dark in the fourth round, when the Asuras are born in deepest night. Now it remains night until the spirits of the 'sons of fire' shine through the human etheric body in the fourth solar round. So we have the dark Saturn and the shining sun.

On the moon, the first two rounds are repetitions. During the third round the human being enters his dream consciousness. After his body has hardened somewhat, the lunar pitris become 'mensches', the 'spirits of twilight' or angels. They inhabit the third formed body, the astral body of the human being. During the fifth, sixth and seventh lunar rounds, the human body hardens more and more, and finally the counterpart of the astral body is formed: Manas. And so we have: Atma, Budhi, Manas.

Now we move over to the earth. In the first three rounds, Saturn, sun and moon are repeated. In the fourth round, human consciousness is added. Only now does the human being become human. He goes through his waking state.

[The following has occurred:] There have been a number of entities that have come down and become 'humans'; they have used the then human body to evolve in. Now, while on planet earth, the human body is there for man himself, to take possession of himself. Whereas in the past human bodies were still inhabited by gods, man is now left to himself and has the free choice to become a descending or ascending being. Man himself becomes the battleground of ascending and descending beings. This battlefield is called Kshetra field in Indian esotericism, and this battle is symbolically expressed in truth in the Bhagavad Gita. Now man begins his activity. His 'I', that is, he himself has come into being. He owes his astral body to the Lunar Pitris, the etheric body to the Agnishvattas, the physical body to the Asuras.

What really happened to the physical body? Formerly [man] had image-consciousness on the moon, now he can perceive objects. He owes this to the Asuras. Therefore, all sensory perception is calculated for egoism, and in our perception the advice of the Asuras is constantly present. They first taught arts and science in the Atlantean race when it was tending towards the fifth. Namely, the great Asuramaya, the first astronomer, taught [so that the arts and sciences became so material]. Man will be on the volcano when he has developed his spiritual consciousness. On Saturn, the spirits of will, of flame, had gone through their volcanic state. They laid the first foundation for the physical human body; it has always developed until earthly existence, where it became most material. Man now has his densest material body, but he wants to overcome it. Gradually his material body disappears. We see the deep intuition of mythology: Hephaestus or Vulcan is always depicted as a lame god; his lower part loses itself, becomes lame.

On Jupiter, man attains his psychic consciousness. There the matter is decided. The great battle on the Kshetra field has been decided: Humanity is divided into races of good and evil. Those people who have shed their bodies have become spirits; those who have kept their bodies are stragglers. For these, the Asuras now become the actual gods of form, who make their bodies for them. This is when the Asuras achieve what they have always striven for: to become masters of physical bodies. From the undischarged evil karma of the world, the Asuras form the first race of devils.

On Venus, man will only attain his super-psychic consciousness in the sixth round. And during the seventh round, the next lower group, the Agnishvattas, gain power over the bodies in place of the Asuras. And finally, as the fruit of Venus on the volcano, the Lunar Pitris gain power over the bodies.

In addition to the seven known forms of consciousness, there are five more, twelve levels in total. The consciousness of deep trance, dreamless sleep consciousness, dream sleep consciousness, waking consciousness, psychic consciousness, super-psychic consciousness, spiritual consciousness.

Spiritual consciousness on the volcano is so high that the person becomes a kind of creator. But what about the higher beings that have begun to develop even higher abilities than merely knowing, doing and creating everything? With spiritual consciousness, the person would be a magician, he could create beings. But there is one thing he still cannot do: emanate from his own being, give off substance. That is the ability of the five higher levels of consciousness: the ability not only to shine, to radiate light, but to radiate matter, to give off one's own substance.

We can distinguish between emanating consciousness, perceiving consciousness and active consciousness, that is, consciousness that creates forms. When we create forms, substance is already there; we merely give it form. When we perceive, form is already there; we emanate images. When we have emanating consciousness, we let the substance itself flow out.

The actual emanating consciousness is the stages twelve, eleven, ten and nine of consciousness; the stages of perceiving consciousness are eight, seven, six, five, and of forming consciousness four, three, two, one. Before something is formed or perceived, something must first be there, and therefore the emanating consciousness first has the task of radiating the material for such a world, of spinning the material out of itself, so to speak. This is called the 'first emanation': the emanating consciousness emits the substance. The substance should not be underestimated; it arises from the sacrifice of a higher consciousness. Where does the substance come from? It comes from where the future substance will come from, it comes from consciousness.

The second thing that happens is that the forming consciousness intervenes; that is the 'second emanation'. And when this forming consciousness has created forms, the perceiving consciousness can take them up – the 'third radiation'. The first emanation that emanates the material is also called the third logos; the forming one that builds the plastic figures is called the second logos; and the perceiving consciousness is called the first logos. Christian esotericism calls the world of the third logos, in which the gods sacrifice their consciousness, radiate: the heavenly world; the world of the second logos: the underworld; and the world of the first logos: the human world.

Let us apply these general concepts to our own humanity. On Saturn, we have the emanation of a matter; on the Moon, the emanation of a spirit. The spirits of will emanate matter out of their consciousness. The human body is formed out of this matter. The primal forces – Asuras – first embody themselves in it; they become human, so to speak. [Christian Science also calls the spirits of the personality primal forces.] On the sun, it is the spirits, the Sons of Fire, the Agnishvattas, who become men. On the moon, the spirits of the twilight, the Lunar Pitris, become men. On the earth, men become real men. On Jupiter, lower beings become men – these are the evil ones. Man rises higher, becomes an angel in a certain sense; on Venus he becomes an archangel and on Vulcan a primal power.

We now have to fall back on radiating matter on the part of the spirits of will. From this matter the physical body is formed on Saturn, transformed on the Sun, on the Moon and on the Earth, and now it begins to crumble, to peel off from the human being - when he becomes an angel, an angel of light. We have an analogy in the coral colony; it is rooted in the water, more and more lime is deposited on it, and more and more little animals form on it, which die; the coral grows as a result. In this way our planet will deposit more and more coal.

Nothing is without matter; when one loses itself, a new one, albeit thinner, must take its place. People move into the angelic stage, lose physical matter, but maintain the etheric body. Etheric matter forms the body up to the volcano, where it loses itself, as does physical matter here.

The other beings, who were already higher, will naturally continue to ascend. The spirits of twilight – Lunar Pitris – are on Earth one step higher than humans, and accordingly, they progress upwards. This level of entities will not only be endowed with spiritual consciousness on Vulcan, but also on Venus. On the level before that, on Jupiter, the Agnishvattas – archangels – have spiritual consciousness. And still one level earlier, on Earth, the elemental forces – Asuras – have their spiritual consciousness, so that in the normal course on Earth, those spirits of personality who had reached their humanity on Saturn attain their spiritual consciousness. They are endowed with free will, so they can stray here. Therefore, here on Earth, the battle takes place between the elemental forces that turn away and those who follow their ascent. This battle between the elemental forces of light and those of darkness is described in the Bhagavad Gita and the Book of Enoch. It takes place at the moment of human incarnation. Two elemental forces are born, one group under the leadership of the descending one, another group under the leadership of the ascending one; the latter is called Christ by Christian esotericism.

[Do you remember the image?] The plant represents the inverted human being. In the plant, the head is directed downwards; in the human being, it is directed upwards. The incarnation is an inversion. As a lower being, the human being was directed head downwards; later, he turned upwards. When we remember Hephaestus, it is an image of the crumbling away of the parts that are directed downwards. Hephaistos is wounded by the evil leader. The good primal power — Christ — shines forth from the earth from humanity in the forefront with a consciousness that will only be granted to man himself on Vulcan. Christ is the first to reveal himself from the new matter emanating from earthly existence. The first to manifest in the new matter independently of the old matter is Christ. This manifestation is called: the birth out of the virgin matter [or out of the Virgin]; out of the second Logos, the beginning of the Gospel of John.

Thus, the appearance of Christ on earth is the center of the whole evolution. It is a cosmic event that has significance for the whole evolution.

We have become familiar with twelve levels of consciousness, we have distinguished between emanating, perceiving and forming consciousness. We have seen that what is called substance or matter is emitted by certain mature spirits of highly developed consciousness. In the case of the radiation on Saturn, the dense physical body is emitted by a very high consciousness. From this we can conclude that the less dense substances can be emitted by less elevated spirits of a slightly lower consciousness.

If we look at the successive planetary bodies, there are seven: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. They all have a dense body at certain points in time, which is emitted, just as man will one day emit his planet. Before he can radiate the dense body, he will be able to emanate his etheric body. Just as twelve planets can be radiated by twelve consciousnesses, so can etheric bodies be radiated by the corresponding lower forms.

Let us examine how consciousness comes to radiate. Let us take a look at the human backbone with the spinal cord inside it. The spinal column consists of rings of bone that fit together to form a tube; inside is the [spinal cord], which tapers downwards to a blind end and widens upwards to the brain. White nerve cords extend from all parts of the body into the spinal cord, where they connect with other nerve cords that lead to the muscles. Even lower animals have a spinal cord like this. When an animal is stimulated, the stimulus travels to the spinal cord, which transmits it to the nerve, and this triggers the muscle movement. The nerves also end in the developed human brain: those that come from the body and others that go back to the body. [There is a big difference between the frog's spinal cord and the human spinal cord. The difference is that in the frog, the movement comes from the spinal cord automatically; in humans, on the other hand, it comes from the will. [In humans, the stimulus goes all the way to the brain and does not automatically trigger the movement; the person must first want it. So his consciousness comes between the stimulus and the outgoing movement. The animal also has a consciousness, but that lies [on the astral plane], and it is from there that the muscle movement is directed. The human consciousness lies in the brain. This is because the nerve cords in the animal [in the spinal cord] are tightly knotted; in the human brain they are somewhat looser, allowing consciousness to enter, and [between the more loosely arranged nerve cords] the will can intervene.

The higher consciousness of man is characterized by the fact that the limbs of a lower consciousness are loosened. But in man, three of the basic powers of his soul are tightly connected: the powers of will, feeling and thinking. The threads are also present in the astral and etheric brain. Will, feeling and thinking correspond to three deities that we have come to know, the spirits of will, wisdom and action. The nine other forces are also present in man, only they are not equally noticeable.

What happens when man develops even higher? The higher man relates to the lower man as the ordinary man relates to the frog. Namely, the three parts - will, feeling and thinking - are loosened, first in the astral, then in the etheric and finally in the physical; and just as there comes a higher consciousness and now has to control the three parts that have diverged. With ever higher development, man loosens twelve such centers and then controls them. Before the limbs are loosened, the higher consciousness cannot intervene.

Every human power stands in relation to the primary forces of the universe, of the world. The will stands in relation to the will of the world, feeling to the wisdom [of the world], thinking to the activity of the world, forming to the forming powers of the universe. The fact that the individual limbs hold each other mutually prevents them from becoming freely outward. In the moment when, for example, the will detaches itself, it can act outwardly and perceive will-beings. It is like looking at an anthill: it has a common soul and three limbs: workers, males and females; these form a common living being.

In this way, a person can expose all twelve parts that are present in him, and in doing so, he splits his etheric body into twelve parts. Each such part has a special property – similar to a polyp, when the limbs are cut through, each part continues to live. In this way a part of the etheric body grows into a whole, so that when the highly elevated human being dies, he withdraws his consciousness and leaves twelve independent etheric bodies behind; they are there. What happens to them? They are, so to speak, the emanation of the former consciousness.

When a person dies, first his physical body returns to earth, the ether body to the general world ether, and the astral body to Kamaloka. When the person returns, an ether body must be built for him. The radiated ether bodies are used as models, which are left behind by the higher ones. In reality, everyone is already radiating etheric bodies, but they are still imperfect, hence the many imperfect bodies. Highly developed etheric bodies also remain from the highly developed. The highly developed person can radiate them when he is about to enter the gate barrier, where he will be able to radiate even denser matter.

Christ radiated new physical matter at his birth, so he was able to radiate the twelve etheric bodies beforehand, the twelve separate limbs of the previous Christ. [The twelve etheric bodies of the apostles are the twelve separate limbs of the previous Christ etheric body.] He had retained control over the twelve. [Where is the consciousness directing them? That is the Christ. Christ is the group soul of the twelve apostles.] Christ is the consciousness – his twelve apostles are his members, the twelve etheric bodies.

Jesus is the single personality; he has surrendered his body to the Christ. [Where is the body of Christ? That is the twelve apostles. Through these twelve members, Christ has truly worked.]

Incarnation or reincarnation is not the same thing in all cases. A reincarnation we call the life between birth and death. It is only arbitrary to say that man died after death and his incarnation is here. Let us think of an entity that never incarnated on earth and never incarnated in the astral; such an entity would observe man in the devachan. It would see man disappear when he went to earth, and would then see him arrive again. This being would say: He is born when he arrives and he dies when he disappears. It depends entirely on the point of view of the observer. When a student of occultism develops higher knowledge, devachanic seeing, the first thing he comes to know in devachan is the area between death and a new birth that man goes through. That is why it is said that what a seer first sees is in the midst of Devachan. When he comes up still higher, even the planetary chain with its manvantaras does not light up for him, but first the pralayas become bright. It is important because now we have to ascend to another kind of reincarnation, namely one that does not have devachan and pralaya in the sense that man does - these are the racial spirits.

Let us take the spirits of the fifth sub-race of the Atlanteans, and the first, second, third and fourth sub-races of the Aryans, that is, five spirits which are much higher in their development than man. Because they are much higher, they incarnate somewhat differently. With them the course of life is no longer interrupted by birth and death. Man will later also come into such kinds of incarnation. Such a being does not die, but his body becomes weaker and weaker, and while it becomes weaker, a second one builds up. In the case of man, it is intermittent cycles that he has to go through. The racial spirit builds a second, then a third [body] when the previous one is in decay. The body consists of the individuals of a race. In this process, one race does not die so suddenly, but it decays very gradually, while the other one rises. This is how the racial spirit leads across. In man there is an alternation between the life on earth and the life in Devachan. In the center of the Devachan life the outer earthly life explains itself; therefore also in the center between the incarnations the explanation will have to be fetched for that which incarnates itself. This is indeed also the case with the race spirit. The race spirit will likewise find its explanation through certain points. [This is to occupy us now.

Think of the following]: If man wants to have an explanation for himself, for his life, he looks to Devachan. If he wants to have an explanation for the race, there must be an opportunity in the race itself for the spirit of the race to reveal itself. This is indeed what happens. In certain points the spirit of the race reveals itself. What did it have to tell us in the fifth sub-race of the fourth root race? That at a certain point the cosmic upward leader would appear, namely, that Christ would reveal Himself.

What comes out in man in the devachan is the human manas. The racial spirit is one step higher; as the redeeming word, what comes out is what corresponds to manas in man, and that is Budhi, the Word. So that the whole fifth root race urges to reveal the word of Christ. Every time in the interstices between the five sub-races under consideration, the message of the coming Christ is proclaimed anew, and this proclamation is called the Gospel for the whole root race. And the blessed race spirit between the fifth sub-race of the fourth root race and the first of the fifth root race is called Matthew; the second, between the first and second sub-race: Mark; the third, between the second and third: Luke; and the fourth, between the third and fourth sub-race: John. That is why it always says "according to Matthew." That's why there are four Gospels, because there are four intermediate states, four Good News between the [five] sub-races.

The first Gospel represents, as it were, the physical incarnation, therefore it also narrates the [generational succession] of Christ. The second Gospel represents the etheric body of the race; it is conferred by the race body being purified, The Gospel of Luke is the proclamation from the kamic side. The Gospel of John is the most spiritual of all. Irenaeus has been completely misunderstood. [He has stated how many of the Gospels are to be held as the correct ones, and considered it arbitrary. But this is not correct.]

We have seen that the event of the birth of Christ on earth has a cosmic significance; it is central to planetary evolution. The whole astral body of the Earth has undergone a change since Christ appeared on Earth. Before that it was only possible to look into higher worlds through the mysteries and prophetic schools. It was not possible before such an appearance as the conversion of Saul into Paul, [it was not possible] that through the astral the higher worlds were seen. Such a nature initiation was possible only because through the death of Christ the astral substance of the earth had changed. Christ had made Himself a body out of the etheric sphere of the earth at the appearance of Damascus, and in that body He appeared to Paul.

The question is always raised whether Paul was a real initiate or not. In fact, he was from the moment of the appearance, but not like the ancient prophets and initiates, but by an immediate natural event. Through this he was called to his mission. We will understand everything in his sermons when we come to understand the impression that this apparition made on him. Through it he was led to present the relation of Christ to men in the light of grace.

Grace, in the original Christian sense, is exactly the same as what in theosophical language is called the Budhi. Budhi can therefore be called grace: Man is born in ever succeeding incarnations. When he has balanced the karma, his manas is pure and free, so that one can say: Man attains manas through righteousness. Through justice, the balancing of karma is there. The Budhi he receives as a new thing by flowing in from above. Budhi was called Caritas. The ancient prophets and initiates depended on acquiring manas first. Christianity, as it were, drops a ray of Budhi upon men, before which karma is removed, so that men feel it as a grace. And such as Paul especially feel the grace because they have received a great stream of Budhi.

The second important thing for Paul was that for him Christ was the Living One who overcame death. He had not believed in Jesus in his previous life. Everything he heard told from Jerusalem in Tarsus did not convince him. He was only convinced by what he had had as a living experience. He appeals everywhere to the fact that Christ is risen, that he is the living one, to his very own experience. All he assures is that people can reach their goal, that they can be transformed by the living Christ. This is the great magic that comes from Paul. Now Paul first proclaimed the doctrine outside in the world as far as he could, preached everywhere in this sense, moreover founded a secret school in Athens where Christian esotericism was taught. There was his great disciple Dionysius the Areopagite; he was so called because he [belonged to the Areopagus]. This Dionysius also founded the doctrine of the so-called Christian hierarchy. We know that he was a great Christian esotericist who exerted a great influence on later Christian teaching by presenting the dhyanic natures, superhuman entities, cherubim and seraphim, to his disciples. Until the sixth century was taught this doctrine, which he never wrote down. Always every head of such a school was called again Dionysius. It was not until the sixth century that such a Dionysius wrote down the doctrine in books, as far as it could be presented externally. Those who are not esotericists consider Dionysius as not a real personality, deny the matter, and therefore speak of PseudoDionysius. But this is folly.

[I said], Dionysius founded, besides Christian esotericism, the so-called Christian hierarchy. He says there exist hierarchically superimposed groups of spirits. Now if the church is to mean something special, it must be an earthly image of this heavenly hierarchy, and so he then arranged the earthly hierarchy. It was thought noble, not in the sense of the later degenerations. Now two currents asserted themselves in the church. One was founded on the fact that the higher self is to be born out of the personality.

It was mainly founded on letting this higher self be born in every man as the Christ. This was the Arian current. It was somewhat premature at that time, and quite in vain did the presbyter Arius advocate it at the Nicene Council, for what is Arius' teaching will not be able to be born out of the devotional personality until the sixth subrace. As a seed, as a germ it was present among the Eastern peoples, first appears among the Goths. The Bible translation of Wulfilas was held in the sense; the whole East was Arian. It was an early, advanced post - theosophy of that time.

The other current was Athanasianism. This one built the higher self not on the individual personality, but on the organization of the Church. And there the door was opened to degeneracy. Therefore, from early on we have to distinguish between the external course of the church and the recurring attempt to deepen Christianity. The first important phenomenon is Augustine. He transformed the teaching of St. Dionysius of Areopagita into an inward mysticism, so that in St. Augustine one can find a truly deep theosophical mysticism. But at the same time he emphasized the principle of the Papal State; and equally great are the mystical writings of Augustine as well as the "Civitate Dei". Thus, for the time being, the victory of Athanasianism was definitely given, for by the fact that Augustine, the great Father of the Church, advocated the principle of Church authority, the whole Middle Ages had to be based on this authority. "I would not accept the truth of Christianity if the Church did not compel me to do so." In this saying of Augustine lies germinal the dogma of infallibility. Then we see the teaching of Dionysius once again deepened, meteorically shining forth in the great Scotus Eriugena, who lived at the court of Charles the Bald in France. In his great, important writing "De divisione naturae" he has in a genuinely Dionysiusian manner expounded the doctrine of man and the superordinate entities. For this he was literally pinched to death with pincers by his priest comrades.

Then, via Spain, the ancient secret doctrine reaches Europe: one learned about the mysteries in a certain sense through the Jewish-Arabic Kabbalists, and it became necessary to bring the Christian doctrine into a certain harmony with what had come over. The form of teaching that had come over was a highly spiritual one. Thus Christianity itself had to become highly spiritual. It had to be all worked out in fine terms, and this was done by scholasticism, which thus flourished from the twelfth to the fourteenth century.

Scholasticism is the spiritualization of the intellect. It is paralleled by a spiritualization of the mind; it is expressed in two pages. It begins with the French mystics, the two Saint-Victors and the very learned chairman of the Council of Constance, Gerson, before whom Huss had to answer, and the German mystics from Meister Eckhart to Valentin Weigel. Then in the fifteenth century the doctrine was renewed once again by the German Nicholas of Cusa.

Then came the time when science went its own way, when everything was explained physically, starting from Copernicus, and thus the spiritual part of knowledge was misjudged. The consequence of this was that Luther wanted to protect faith from science and therefore said, so to speak: religion has nothing at all to do with science, it has to base itself only on the letter of the Bible.

And after that came the centuries where science and religion came more and more into opposition. This brought about in the nineteenth century the sharp antagonism between religiosity and materialism, of which theosophy is supposed to be the balance,