The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Before we begin our actual esoteric study we should say that we in our esoteric stream must separate ourselves completely from the other one that goes through the world and that's promoted by Ms. Besant. For reasons of truthfulness we can separate ourselves from the deeds of a personality, but we must not change our love for the personality and should direct even more sympathy towards her, precisely because we must reject her deeds. As Ms. Besant wrote in 1906: “Judge has fallen on this perilous path of occultism, Leadbeater has fallen on it, very likely I too shall fall ... If the day of my fall should come I ask those who love me not to shrink from condemning my fault, not to attenuate it, or say that black is white; but rather let them lighten my heavy karma as I am trying to lighten that of my friend and brother ...” For occultism is indeed a perilous path, and everyone should consider that forces can slumber in the depths of the human soul that may not appear in ordinary life, but that come to light if one treads the perilous path. That's why one should constantly watch one's own soul and remember the words: “Watch and pray.”

Anyone who wants to enter spiritual worlds must practice strict self-knowledge. The Essene order, whose teachers also taught the Jesus of the Luke Gospel, had two rules that can show us how far away moderns are from spiritual things. One rule said that no Essene should speak about worldly things before the sun rose or after it set. And for those who had gone up to higher grades this rule was reinforced by one that forbade one to even think profane things at the indicated times. Another rule said that before the sun comes up every Essene should ask that this might happen and that the sun's power might shine over mankind every day ... These rules show us how important the connection of our being is with the events in the spiritual world from which we emerge in the morn, and in which we submerge when we go to sleep in the eve.

How little moderns live in accordance with these laws of outer and inner cycles is no doubt shown by an outer cycle like the transition of New Year's Eve into the new year. Everything that people do there and undertake before going to sleep seems to be designed to connect oneself particularly deeply with material things, whereas people should be doing a retrospect at this moment. Corresponding to this outer cycle is an inner one in man: that of waking and sleeping. In the eve a man draws his astral body and ego out of the physical and etheric bodies and lives in a purely spiritual world. Let's take a look at the moment of going to sleep, until unconsciousness gradually sets in. An ordinary man has no consciousness in the spiritual world at night. It may happen that clairvoyant moments occur and he then sees pictures of what he's left lying behind. What he sees will depend on his temperament and character. A man who feels that his stay in his bodies is like living in a house will see the physical and etheric bodies as a house with a portal through which he has to go when he wakes up. A melancholic who experiences the perishable side of earthly existence will see the image of a coffin in which a dead man lies. One who has a strong feeling that Gods built the house of his body during the old Saturn and Sun periods may see an angel or light form that hands him a chalice, representing an ancient, primal word of mankind: We're born from God.

What the Essenes did in the morn before sunrise can't be done any more today, so when a modern esoteric comes back into his physical and etheric bodies he should permeate himself with the holy feeling that sublime Gods prepared and built up these bodies during Saturn and Sun evolution so that we can develop consciousness in them. With this consciousness an esoteric will ask the God—the spiritual sun that the physical sun represents—to maintain and leave him this physical and etheric body each morn when he steps out of the spiritual world, to develop consciousness in the physical world. For where would we be if someone would take away this physical and etheric body overnight? We would then be overpowered by a feeling of unconsciousness. If we permeate ourselves with the fact that the Gods have built us this physical and etheric body we'll then have the experience that our brain, or any other organ, is not just bound to our physical body, but that it expands to a hollow sphere in which stars are imbedded that run in their orbits, and that these stars that are travelling in orbit are our thoughts. Thereby the microcosm becomes the macrocosm. The mighty forces of the whole cosmos are compressed in our brain, and we feel their connection with us. We can describe everything that led us through Saturn, Sun and through the hereditary line to our present birth with the saying: We are born from the Gods.

Just as we would have to remain unconscious if we couldn't dive down into our physical and etheric body in the morning, so passage through the portal of death extinguishes all conscious life. Before the Mystery of Golgotha a man received a consciousness after death from reserve forces that were given to men on their way that gave him consciousness in the spiritual world. But this gift of the Gods had gradually been used up, and a Greek knew that it was his lot to live in the realm of the shades after death. This was in accordance with the will of the Gods. Consciousness was shadowy and dim, and that's why Greeks had one of their greatest men say: Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the shades.

A new substance was created through the Mystery of Golgotha that could give consciousness to men when they were in the spiritual world after death. This substance flowed out of the Mystery of Golgotha. A man can develop consciousness in the spiritual world after death through an immersion in this Christ substance. That's why every evening when we go to sleep and into the spiritual world we should remind ourselves of this and permeate ourselves with the feeling: We die in Christ.—For only the Christ impulse can keep us conscious in the spiritual world after death through its death-overcoming vital force. But there's nothing in the physical world that's great and holy enough to enable one to understand this Mystery that was given through Christ Jesus, so one shouldn't use anything that belongs to the world, not even the words of language in order to refer to this Mystery, the great unfathomable secret that's contained in what flows out from the Mystery of Golgotha. That's why an esoteric is silent in word and thought at the place where the sacred, unspeakable name would have to be said. He just feels the sacredness of this moment: In ... morimur.

But even if a man has consciousness after death, he doesn't have self-consciousness yet, that through which he recognizes himself as an individual being in the spiritual world and finds himself together again with the brothers and sisters he was with in the physical world. The only thing that can help us to find our being again and to awaken with self-consciousness after we were immersed in Christ substance is our experience of our higher I that's given to us by the Holy Spirit, through whom we have to hope: We'll be resurrected in the Holy Spirit and will awaken to self-conscious life.

When the spiritual scientific movement began its activity some thirty years ago, its aim was not to satisfy curiosity about the spiritual worlds, but to make spiritual knowledge available to a wider public, and provide insight that will help to solve not only spiritual but also everyday practical problems. One such problem is the subject of today's lecture. It belongs to everyday life and must be of interest to everyone. Knowledge of human nature and problems of education are intimately connected. No aspect of social life can benefit more from spiritual research than education, because it is possible to provide practical guidelines in this realm through supersensible knowledge.

In order to deal with this subject we must look once more at the nature of human beings. That aspect of their being that is grasped by the intellect is for spiritual science only part of their nature. The physical, bodily aspect that we can see and touch a person has in common with the rest of the natural world. The spiritual investigator's research is not based on speculation, but on what is discovered through the higher sense of clairvoyant sight. This reveals the ether body as the second member of a person's being. It is a spiritual organism that is considerably more delicate and refined than the physical body. It has nothing to do with physical ether, and is best described as a sum of forces or currents of energy rather than as substance.

The ether body is the architect of the physical body. The latter has crystallized out of the ether body much as ice crystallizes out of water. We must therefore regard everything that constitutes the physical aspect of a person's being as having evolved out of the ether body. Human being's have this member in common with all beings endowed with life, that is, with the vegetable and animal kingdoms. In shape and size the ether body coincides with the physical body except for the lower part, which differs in shape from the physical. In animals the ether body extends far beyond the physical. For someone who has developed the spiritual faculties that slumber in every human being, there is nothing fantastic about this description of the ether body, just as it is not fantastic for a person who can see to describe colors to a blind person as blue or red.

The third member of a person's being, the astral body, is the bearer of all kinds of passions, lower as well as higher, and also of joys and sorrows, pleasure and pain, cravings and desires. Our ordinary thoughts and will-impulses are also contained in the astral body. Like the ether body, it becomes visible when the higher senses are developed. The astral body permeates the physical and ether bodies and surrounds humans like a kind of cloud. We have it in common with the animal kingdom; it is in continuous movement, mirroring every shade of feeling. But why the name “astral?”

The physical substances of which the physical body is composed connect it with the whole earth; in like manner is the astral body connected with the world of stars. The forces that permeate it and condition a person's destiny and character were given the name “astral” by those who were able to look deeply into their mysterious connection with the astral world that surrounds the earth.

The fourth member of a person's being, the power that enables him or her to say “I,” makes the human being the crown of creation. This name can only be applied to himself; it expresses the fact that what speaks is the soul's primordial divine spark. The designations of everything else we share with others; they can reach a person's ear from outside, but not the name that refers to what is god-like in each individual human soul. That is why in Hebrew esoteric schools it was called the “inexpressible name of God—Jahve,” the “I am the I am.” Even the priest could utter it only with a shudder. This “I am the I am” the soul ascribes to itself.

The human physical body is related to the mineral kingdom, the ether body to the vegetable kingdom and the astral body to the animal kingdom. The “I” humans have in common with no other earthly being; the “I” makes a person the crown of creation. This fourfold entity has always been known in esoteric schools as the “quaternity of man's nature.”

These four bodies develop in each individual in a particular way from childhood till old age. That is why, if we are to understand a person, we must always consider each human being individually. A person's characteristics are indicated already in the embryo. However, humans are not isolated beings; they develop within a certain environment, and can thrive only when surrounded by all the beings of the universe. During embryonic life they must be enveloped by the maternal organism, from which they become independent only when a certain stage of maturity is reached. During further development, the child goes through more events of a similar nature. Just as the physical body while still at the embryonic stage must be enveloped by the maternal organism, so is it surrounded after birth by spiritual sheaths related to spiritual realms. The child is enveloped by an etheric and an astral sheath; the child reposes in them as he did in the womb before birth.

At the time of the change of teeth an etheric covering loosens itself from the ether body, as did the physical covering at physical birth. That means that the ether body is born and becomes free in all directions. Up to then an entity of like nature to itself was attached to it, from which spiritual currents flowed through it as physical currents flowed from the maternal covering through the child before birth. Thus, the child is born for a second time when the ether body is born. Meanwhile the astral body is still surrounded by its protective sheath, a covering that strengthens and invigorates it up to the time of puberty. Then that too withdraws; the birth of the astral body takes place; and the child is born for the third time.

The fact that a threefold birth takes place indicates that the three entities must be considered separately. While it is impossible for external light to reach and harm the eyes of the unborn child, it is not impossible, but certainly highly damaging to the soul, if influences foreign to it are brought to bear on the ether body before it has become completely independent. The same applies to the astral body before puberty. We should, according to spiritual science, avoid all education and training before the change of teeth, except such that have a bearing on the child's physical body; we should in fact influence the ether body as little as we influence the child's physical body before it is born. However, just as the mother must be cared for, because her health influences the development of the embryo, so one should now respect the inviolability of the ether body for the sake of the child's healthy development. This is so important because before the change of teeth only the physical body is ready to be influenced by the external world; all training should therefore be restricted to what concerns the physical body. Any external influence of the ether body during this period is a violation of laws according to which human beings develop.

The human ether body is different from that of the plant world because in a person it becomes the bearer of his enduring traits such as habit, character, conscience and memory, and also temperament. The astral body is the seat of the life of feelings already mentioned, and also of the ability to discern, to judge.

These facts indicate when it becomes right to exert influence on the natural tendencies. In the period up to the seventh year, the child's bodily faculties develop; they become independent and self-contained. The same applies between the seventh and the fourteenth years to habits, memory, temperament and so on; between the fourteenth and the twentieth or twenty-second years is the time when the faculty of the critical intellect develops, and an independent relation to the surrounding world is attained. All these things indicate that different principles of education are required in the various life periods. Special care must be taken up to the seventh year with everything that affects the physical body. This encompasses a great many things. It is a time when all the essential physical organs are gradually developing and the effect on the child's senses is of immense importance. It matters greatly what it sees and hears and generally absorbs. The faculty most prominent at this time is imitation. The Greek philosopher Aristotle¹ remarked that human beings are the most imitative of all animals. This is especially true of the child before the change of teeth. Everything is imitated during this time, and as whatever enters the child through its senses as light and sound works formatively on the organs, it is of utmost importance that what surrounds the child should act beneficially.

At this age nothing is achieved by admonition; commands and prohibitions have no effect whatever. But of the greatest significance is the example. What the child sees, what happens around him, he feels must be imitated. For instance: the parents of a well-behaved child were astonished to discover that he had taken money from a cashbox; greatly disturbed, they thought the child had inclinations to steal. Questioning brought to light that the child had simply imitated what he had seen his parents do every day.

It is important that the examples the child sees and imitates are of a kind that awaken its inner forces. Exhortations have no effect, but the way a person behaves in the child's presence matters greatly. It is far more important to refrain from doing what the child is not permitted to do than to forbid the child to imitate it.

Thus, it is vital that during these years the educator is an exemplary example, that he or she only does what is worthy of imitation. Education should consist of example and imitation. The truth of this is recognized when insight is attained into the nature of human beings and confirmed by the results of education based upon it. Thus, because the ability to understand what things mean is a faculty of the ether body, the child should not learn the significance of the letters of the alphabet before the change of teeth; before then, he or she should do no more than trace their form with paint.

Spiritual research makes all these subtleties understandable and throws light even on details of what should be done. Everything the child perceives, also in a moral sense, acts on the formation of its physical organs. It makes a difference whether the child is surrounded by pain and sorrow or happiness and joy. Happiness and joy build sound organs, and lay the foundation for future health. The opposite can create a disposition towards illness. Everything that surrounds the child should breathe an atmosphere of happiness and joy, even down to objects and colors of clothing and wallpaper. The educator must ensure that it does so, while also taking into account the child's particular disposition.

If a child is inclined to be too earnest and too quiet, it will benefit from having in its surroundings rather sombre, bluish, greenish colors, while the lively, too active child should have yellow, reddish colors. This may seem like a contradiction, but the fact is that through its inherent nature the sense of sight calls up the opposite colors. The bluish shades have an invigorating effect, while in the lively child the yellow-reddish shades call up the opposite colors.

Thus, you see that spiritual investigation throws light even on practical details. The developing organs must be treated in ways that promote their health and inner forces. The child should not be given toys that are too finished and perfect, such as building blocks or perfect dolls. A doll made out of an old table napkin on which eyes, nose and mouth are indicated is far better. Every child will see such a homemade doll as a lady attired in beautiful finery. Why? Because it stirs its imagination, and that induces movement in the inner organs and produces in the child a feeling of well-being. Notice in what a lively and interested manner such a child plays, throwing itself body and soul into what the imagination conjures up, while the child with the perfect doll just sits, unexcited and unamused. It has no possibility to add anything through imagination, so its inner organs are condemned to remain inactive. The child has an extraordinarily sound instinct for what is good for it, as long as only the physical body has become free to interact with the external world, and as long as it is in the process of development. The child will indicate what is beneficial for himself. However, if from early on this instinct is disregarded, it will disappear. Education should be based on happiness, on joy and the child's natural cravings. To practice asceticism at this age would be synonymous with undermining its healthy development.

When the child approaches the seventh year and the milk teeth are gradually being replaced, the covering of the ether body loosens and it becomes free, as did the physical body at physical birth. Now the educator must bring to bear everything that will further the development of the ether body. However, the teacher must guard against placing too much emphasis on developing the child's reason and intellect. Between the seventh and twelfth years, it is mainly a question of authority, confidence, trust and reverence. Character and habit are special qualities of the ether body and must be fostered; but it is harmful to exert any influence on the reasoning faculty before puberty.

The development of the ether body occurs in the period from the seventh to the sixteenth year (in girls to the fourteenth). It is important for the rest of a person's life that during this period feelings of respect and veneration are fostered. Such feelings can be awakened in the following way: by means of information and narration, the lives of significant people are depicted to the child, not only from history, but from the child's own circle, perhaps that of a revered relative. Awe and reverence are awakened in the child, which forbid him to harbor any critical thoughts or opposition against the venerated person. The child lives in solemn expectation of the moment he will be permitted to meet this person. At last the day arrives and the child stands before the door filled with awe and veneration; he turns the handle, enters the room that for him, is a holy place. Such moments of veneration become forces of strength in later life. It is immensely important that the educator, the teacher, is at this time a respected authority for the child. A child's faith and confidence must be awakened, not in axioms, but in human beings.

People around the child with whom he has contact must be his ideals; the child must also choose such ideals from history and literature: "Everyone must choose the hero whose path to Olympus he will follow," is a true saying. The materialistic view that opposes authority and undervalues respect and reverence is utterly wrong. It regards the child as being already self-reliant, but its healthy development is impaired if demands are made upon the reasoning faculty before the astral body is born. What is important at this time is that memory is developed. This is best done in purely mechanical fashion. However, calculators should not be used; tables of multiplication, poems and so on should be committed to memory in quite a parrot fashion. It is simply materialistic prejudice that maintains that at this age such things should be inwardly felt and understood.

In the old days educators knew better. At the ages between one and seven all kinds of songs were sung to the children, like the good old nursery rhymes and children's songs. What mattered was not sense and meaning but sound; the children were made aware of harmony and consonance; we often find words inserted purely for the sake of their sound. Often the rhymes were meaningless. For example: “Fly beetle fly, your father is away; your mother is in Pommerland, Pommerland, fly beetle fly.” Incidentally, in the idiom of children “Pommerland” meant motherland. The expression stemmed from a time when it was still believed that human beings were spiritual beings and had come down to earth from a spiritual world. Pommerland was the Land of spiritual origin. Yet it was not the meaning in such rhymes that was important, but the sound; hence, the many children's songs had no particular sense.

This is the age when memory, habit and character must be established, and this is achieved through authority. If the foundation of these traits is not laid during this period, it will result in behavioral shortcomings later. Just because axioms and rules of conduct have no place in education until the astral body is born, it is important that the pre-puberty child, if he is to be properly educated, can Look up to authority. The child is able to sense a person's innermost being, and that is what it reveres in those with authority. Whatever flows from the educator to the child forms and develops conscience, character and even the temperament—its lasting disposition. During these years allegories and symbols act formatively on the ether body of the child because they make manifest the world-spirit. Fairy tales, legends and descriptions of heroes are a true blessing.

During this period, the ether body must receive as much care as the physical body. During the earlier period it was happiness and joy that influenced the forming of the Organs; from seven to fourteen (in this case boys to sixteen), the emphasis must be on everything that promotes feelings of health and vigor. Hence, the value of gymnastics. However, the desired effect will not be attained if the instructor aims at movements that solely benefit the physical body. It is important that the teacher be able to intuitively enter into how the child inwardly senses himself, and in this way to know which movements will promote inner sensations of health, strength, well-being, and pleasure in the bodily constitution. Only when gymnastic exercises induce feelings of growing strength are they of real value. Not only the external aspect of the bodily nature benefits from correct gymnastic exercises, but also the way a person inwardly experiences the self.

Everything artistic has a strong influence on the ether, as well as the astral body. Music of excellence, both vocal and instrumental, is particularly important, especially for the ether body. And there should be many objects of true artistic beauty in the child's environment.

Most important of all is religious instruction. Images of things supersensible are deeply imprinted in the ether body. What is important here is not the pupil's ability to have an opinion about religious faith, but that he receives descriptions of the supersensible, of what extends beyond the temporal. All religious subjects must be presented pictorially.

Great care must be taken that what is taught is brought to life. Much is spoiled in the child if it is burdened with too much that is dull and lifeless. What is taught in a lively interesting manner benefits the child's ether body. There should be much activity and doing; this has a quickening effect on the spirit. That is true also when it comes to play. The old kind of picture books have a stimulating effect because they contain figures that can be pulled by strings and suggest movement and inner life. Nothing has a more deadening effect on the child's spirit than putting together and fixing some structure, using finished geometrical shapes. That is why building blocks should not be used; the child should create everything from the beginning and learn to bring to life what he forms out of the lifeless. Our materialistic age extinguishes life through mass-produced lifeless objects. Much dies in the young developing brain when the child has to do meaningless things like, for example, braiding. Talents are stifled and much that is unhealthy in our modern society can be traced back to the nursery. Inartistic lifeless toys do not foster trust in spiritual life. A fundamental connection exists between today's lack of religious belief and the way young children are taught.

Once puberty is reached, the astral covering falls away; the astral body becomes independent. With the awakening feelings for the opposite sex, the ability to judge, to form personal opinion, also awakens. Only now should appeal be made to the reasoning faculty, to the approval or disapproval of the critical intellect. That is not to say that the moment the human being has reached this age he is capable of forming independent judgment, let alone do so earlier. It is absurd for such young people to judge issues or to have a say in cultural life. A young person under the age of twenty has an as yet undeveloped astral body, and can no more make sound judgments than a baby still in the womb can hear or see. Each life period requires a corresponding influence. In the first, it is a model to imitate; in the second an authority to emulate; the third requires rules of conduct, principles, and axioms. What is of utmost significance for the young person at this time is the teacher, the personality that will guide the student's eagerness for learning and his desire for independence in the right directions.

Thus, the spiritual scientific world conception provides an abundance of basic principles that help the teacher's task of developing and educating the young generations. We have shown that spiritual science is applicable to everyday life and capable of practical intervention in important issues. We must understand all the members of the human being, and the way they are interrelated in order to know when to influence which member in a truly beneficial way. The embryo will be affected if the expectant mother is not properly nourished; for its sake the mother must be cared for. Similarly, what later still surrounds and protects the child must also be cared for, as that in turn will benefit the child. This holds good on both physical and spiritual levels. Thus, as long as the child still slumbers as if within an etheric womb and is still rooted in the astral covering, it matters greatly what happens in the environment. The child is affected by every thought, every feeling, every sentiment motivating those around him, even if not expressed. Here a person cannot maintain that one's thoughts and feelings do not matter as long as nothing is said.

Even in the innermost recesses of their hearts, those around the child cannot permit themselves ignoble thoughts or feelings. Words affect only the external senses, whereas thoughts and feelings reach the protecting sheaths of the ether and astral bodies and pass over to the child. Therefore, as long as these protective coverings envelop the child, they must be cared for. Impure thoughts and passions harm them just as unsuitable substances harm the mother's body.

Thus, even subtle aspects are illumined by spiritual science. Through knowledge of the human being the educator gains the insight needed. Spiritual science does not aim to persuade; it is not a theory, it is practical knowledge applicable to life. Its effect is beneficial, for it makes human beings healthier both physically and spiritually. It provides effective truth that must flow into every aspect of life. There is no better way for spiritual science to serve humanity than fostering social impulses in the young during the formative years. What takes place in human beings during the time they grow up and mature is one of life's greatest riddles; those who find practical solutions will prove true educators.

• 1. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) was a Greek philosopher and one of the most influential thinkers of his time.

The spiritual evolution of mankind must be brought into a living connection with the whole surrounding world. For many men to-day a great deal has become dead and prosaic; and this is true even of our religious festivals. A great section of mankind has only the smallest notion of what Christmas, Easter and Whitsun signify; it has almost entirely lost that overwhelming richness in the life of feeling which in earlier times men possessed through their knowledge of their connection with the spiritual worlds. Yes, even the festivals have for many men to-day become dead and prosaic. The pouring down of the spirit has become a mere abstraction, and this will change only when men come again to a real spiritual knowledge.

Much is said nowadays about the forces of nature, but little enough about the beings behind these forces. Our forefathers spoke of gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders, but to see any reality in such ideas is regarded to-day as sheer superstition. It doesn't matter much, in themselves, what theories people hold; it only begins to be serious when the theories tempt people not to see the truth.

When people say that their ancestors' belief in gnomes, undines, sylphs, salamanders and the like was all nonsense, one would like to make a rather grotesque reply, and say: “Well, go and ask the bees. They could inform you: the sylphs are no superstition to us; we know well enough what we owe to the sylphs.”—Anyone investigating spiritual forces can find out which force it is that draws the bee on towards the flowers; he sees actual beings leading the bee to the flowers: amid the myriads of bees which fly forth in search of nourishment are the beings our predecessors called sylphs.

It is especially where the different kingdoms of nature come in contact with each other that certain elemental beings are able to reveal themselves. Where moss is growing on the rocks, for example, such beings can establish themselves; or again, in the flowers, in the contact of the bee with the flowers, certain beings have the chance to show themselves. Another possibility arises where man himself comes into touch with the animal kingdom. This does not happen, however, in the ordinary run of things, as for example, when a butcher slaughters an ox or when a man eats meat. It does occur, however, in less usual circumstances, where the contact between the two kingdoms is the result of something more than the mere fact of life. It occurs particularly where a man has that kind of relationship to animals which involves his own feelings, his own concern of soul. A shepherd, for example, may sometimes have such a special relationship to his sheep. Connections of this sort were very frequent in more primitive cultures in earlier times; they resembled the relationship which an Arab has to his horse. And such soul-forces as play over from one realm into the other—as they do between the shepherd and his lambs, or when the forces of smell and taste stream over from the flowers to the bees—these give to certain beings the possibility of incarnating themselves. The spiritual investigator perceives something like an aura around the blossoms, which arises as the bees thrust their way into them and taste what they find there. A kind of flower-aura streams out, and this provides nourishment for certain spiritual beings.

The question why there are beings just here and nowhere else, does not arise for anyone who understands the spiritual world. If opportunities are provided for such beings, then they are there; give them that on which they can live and they are there. It is just as when human beings let evil thoughts stream out from themselves, certain beings then incorporate themselves in his aura; they are there because he allows nourishment to stream to them. The opportunity is given for certain spiritual beings to incorporate themselves wherever different kingdoms of nature come into touch with each other. Where metal is found in the rocks, the miner as he hacks away sees certain tiny beings which were compressed together into quite a small space and now scatter in all directions. These are beings in some ways not unlike man himself; they have the power of reason, but it is reason without responsibility; and so, when they play some mischievous prank on a man, they in no way feel they are doing anything amiss. They are the beings our forefathers called gnomes; they prefer to take up their abode where metal and stone come together. There was a time when they did men good service, as in the early days of mining; the way to lay out a mine, the knowledge of how the strata ran—this was learnt from such beings.

Mankind will land itself in a blind alley if it fails to acquire a spiritual understanding of these things. As with the gnomes, so with the beings we may call undines; they are found where the plants come into contact with the mineral kingdom. They are bound up with the element of water, they incorporate themselves where water and plant and stone come together.—The sylphs are bound to the element of air, and lead the bees to the flowers. Now everything science has to say about the life of the bees is riddled with error from top to bottom, and nowadays the beekeepers are often misled by it; in this direction science proves itself unusable and again and again beekeepers have to come back to old practices.

As for salamanders, these are still known to many people. When someone feels that this or that element of soul is streaming towards him, this mostly arises through the salamanders. When a man relates himself to animals in the way the shepherd does to his lambs, the salamanders are then able to embody themselves; the knowledge the shepherd has in regard to his flock is whispered to him by these beings.

If we take these thoughts farther we shall have to say: We are entirely surrounded by spiritual beings; we are surrounded by the air and this is crowded with these spiritual beings. In times to come, if his destiny is not to be of the sort that will entirely dry up his life, man will have to have a knowledge of these beings; without such a knowledge he will be unable to make any further progress at all. He will have to put the question: Whence do these beings arise? And this question will lead him to see that, through certain steps taken by the higher worlds, that which is on the downward path to evil can through a wise guidance be changed into good.

Here and there in life we meet with the products of decay with waste products. Thus for example, manure is a waste product, and in agriculture it is used as a basis to further plant growth. Things which have apparently fallen away from a higher course of development are taken up again by higher powers and transformed. This happens with the very beings of whom we have been speaking.

Let us consider how the salamander, for example, originates. Salamanders, as we have seen, are beings who require a special relationship between man and animal. Now the kind of ego man has to-day is only to be found in man, in the human being living on the earth; every man has his ego enclosed within himself. It is different with the animals: they have a group-ego, a group-soul; that is to say, a group of animals with the same form have a common group-ego. When the lion says ‘I’, its ego is up above in the astral world. It is as if a man were to stand behind a wall in which there were ten holes, and then to stick his ten fingers through them. The man himself cannot be seen, but every intelligent observer would conclude that someone is behind, a single entity who owns the ten fingers. It is the same with the group-ego. The separate animals are simply the limbs: the being they belong to is in the astral world. We must not imagine the animal-ego to be like the human being of course, though if we consider man as he is as a spiritual being, we can then certainly compare the animal group-ego with him.

In many animal species the group-ego is a wise being. If we think of how certain kinds of birds live in the north in the summer and in the south in the winter, how in spring they fly back to the north—in this migrating flight of the birds there are wise powers at work; they are in the group-egos of the birds. Anywhere you like in the animal kingdom you can find the wisdom of the group-egos in this way. If we turn back to our schooldays we can remember learning how modern times gradually arose out of the Middle Ages, of how America was discovered, and how gunpowder and printing were invented, and later still the art of making paper from rags. We have long been accustomed to such paper, but the wasp group-soul invented it thousands of years ago. The material of which the wasp's nest consists is exactly the same as is used in making paper out of rags. Only gradually will it become known how the one or the other achievement of the human spirit is connected with what the group-souls have introduced into the world.

When the clairvoyant looks at an animal, he sees a glimmer of light along the whole length of its spine. The physical spine of the animal is enveloped in a glimmering light, in innumerable streams of force which everywhere travel across the earth, as it were, like the trade winds. They work on the animal in that they stream along the spine. The group-ego of the animal travels in a continual circular movement around the earth at all heights and in all directions. These group-egos are wise, but one thing they have not yet got: they have no knowledge of love. Only in man is wisdom found in his individuality together with love. In the group-ego of the animals no love is present; love is found only in the single animal. What underlies the whole animal-group as wise arrangements is quite devoid of love. In the physical world below the animal has love; above, on the astral plane, it has wisdom. When we realise this a vast number of things will become clear to us.

Only gradually has man arrived at his present stage of development; in earlier times he also had a group-soul, out of which the individual soul has gradually emerged. Let us follow the evolution of man back into ancient Atlantis. Mankind once lived in Atlantis, a continent now lying beneath the Atlantic Ocean. At that time the vast Siberian plains were covered with immense seas; the Mediterranean was differently distributed, and in Europe itself there were extensive seas. The farther we go back in the old Atlantean period, the more the conditions of life alter, the more the sleeping and the waking state of man changes. Since that time consciousness during the sleeping condition has darkened, as it were, so that to-day man has, so to say, no consciousness at all in this condition. In the earliest Atlantean times the difference between sleeping and waking was not yet so great. In his waking state at that time man still saw things with an aura around them; he did not attain to any greater clarity than this in his perception of the physical world. Everything physical was still filled out, so to say, with something unclear, as if with mist. As he progressed, the human being came to see the world in its clear-cut contours, but in return he lost his clairvoyance.

It is in the times when men still saw clairvoyantly what was going on up above in the astral world that all the myths and sagas originate. When he was able to enter into the spiritual world, man learned to know the beings who had never descended into the physical world: Wotan, Baldur, Thor, Loki.—These names are memories of living realities, and all mythologies are memories of this kind. As spiritual realities, they have simply vanished from the sight of man. When in those earlier times man descended into his physical body, he got the feeling: “Thou art a single being.” When he returned into the spiritual world in the evening, however, the feeling came over him: “Thou art in reality not a single being.” The members of the old tribal groups, the Herulians, the Cheruskans and the like, had still felt themselves far more as belonging to their group, than as single personalities. It was out of this condition of things that there arose such practices as the blood-feud, the vendetta. The whole people formed a body which belonged to the group-soul of the folk.

Everything happens step by step in evolution, and so it was only gradually that the individual developed out of the group-soul. The accounts of the patriarchs, for instance, reveal quite other relationships which confirm this fact. Before the time of Noah, memory was as yet something quite different from what we know. The frontier of birth was no real frontier, for the memory streamed on in those through whom the same blood flowed. This onstreaming of memory was in earlier times something quite different from what we possess; it was far more comprehensive. Nowadays the authorities like to have the name of each individual recorded somewhere or other. In the past, it was what man remembered of the deeds of his father and grandfather that was covered with a common name and called Adam or Noah; what was remembered, the stream of memory in its full extent, was called Adam or Noah. The old names signified comprehensive groups, human groups which extended through time.

Now we must put ourselves the question: Can we compare the anthropoid apes with man himself? The vital difference is that the ape preserves the group-soul condition throughout, whereas man develops the individual soul. But the ape group-soul is in a quite special position to other group-souls. We must think of a group-soul as living in the astral world and spreading itself out in the physical world, so that, for instance, the group-soul of the lion sends a part of its substance into each single lion. Let us suppose that one of these lions dies; the external physical part drops away from the group-soul, just as when we lose a nail. The group-soul sends out a new ray of being, as it were, into a new individual. The group-soul remains above and stretches out its tentacles in a continual process of renewal. The animal group-soul knows neither birth or death; the single individual falls away and a new one appears, just as the nails on our fingers come and go.—Now we must consider the following:—With the lion it is entirely as we have said, that every time a lion dies, the whole of what was sent out by the group-soul return to it again. It is not at all so, however, with the apes. When an ape dies the essential part does return to the group-soul, but a part does not; a part is severed from the group-soul. The ape detaches substance too strongly from the group-soul. There are species where the single animal tears something away from the group-soul which cannot return to it. With all the apes, fragments are detached in each case from the group-soul. It is the same with certain kinds of amphibians and birds; in the kangaroo, for example, something is kept back from the group-soul. Now everything in the warm-blooded animals that remains behind in this way becomes an elemental being of the kind we call a salamander.

Under entirely different conditions from those on the earth to-day, the other types of elemental beings have detached themselves in the past. We have here a case where cast-off products of evolution, as it were, are made of service under the wise guidance of higher Beings. Left to themselves, these would disturb the Cosmos, but under a higher guidance the sylphs, for example, can be used to lead the bees to the flowers. Such a service changes the harmful into something useful.

Now it could happen that man himself might entirely detach himself from the group-soul in becoming an individual and find no means of developing further as an individual soul. If he does not accept spiritual knowledge in the right way, he can run the risk of complete severance.

What is it that protects man from an isolation which is, without the direction and purpose which, earlier on, the group-soul had given him? We must clearly recognise that man individualises himself more and more, and to-day, he has to find a connection once again with other men out of his free will. All that connects men, through folk, race and family, will be ever more completely severed; everything in man tends more and more to result in individual manhood.

Imagine that a number of human beings on the earth have come to recognise that they are all becoming more and more individual. Is there not a real danger that they will split away from each other ever more completely? Already nowadays men are no longer held together by spiritual ties. Each one has his own opinion, his own religion; indeed, many see it as an ideal state of affairs that each should have his own opinion. But that is all wrong. If men make their opinions more inward, then they come to a common opinion. It is a matter of inner experience, for example, that 3 times 3 makes 9, or that the three angles of a triangle make up 180 degrees. That is inner knowledge, and matters of inner knowledge need not be argued about. Of such a kind also are all spiritual truths. What is taught by Spiritual Science is discovered by man through his inner powers; along the inward path man will be led to absolute agreement and unity. There cannot be two opinions about a fact without one of them being wrong. The ideal lies in the greatest possible inwardness of knowledge; that leads to peace and to unity.

In the past, mankind became free of the group-soul. Through spiritual-scientific knowledge mankind is now for the first time in the position to discover, with the utmost certainty of purpose, what will unite mankind again. When men unite together in a higher wisdom, then out of higher worlds there descends a group-soul once more. What is willed by the Leaders of the spiritual-scientific Movement is that in it we should have a society in which hearts stream towards wisdom as the plants stream towards the sunlight. In that together we turn our hearts towards a higher wisdom, we give a dwelling-place to the group-soul; we form the dwelling-place, the environment, in which the group-soul can incarnate. Mankind will enrich earthly life by developing what enables spiritual beings to come down out of higher worlds.

This spirit-enlivened ideal was once placed before humanity in a most powerful way. It was when a number of men, all aglow with a common feeling of fervent love and devotion, were met together for a common deed: Then the sign was given, the sign that could show man with overwhelming power how in unity of soul he could provide a place for the incarnation of the common spirit. In this company of souls the same thing was living: in the flowing together, in the harmony of feeling they provided what was needed for the incarnation of a common spirit. That is expressed when it is said that the Holy Spirit, the group-soul, sank down as it were into incarnation. It is a symbol of what mankind should strive towards, how it should seek to become the dwelling-place for the Being who descends out of higher worlds.

The Easter event gave man the power to develop these experiences; the Whitsun event is the fruit of this power's unfolding. Through the flowing of souls together towards the common wisdom there will always result that which gives a living connection with the forces and beings of higher worlds, and with something which as yet has little significance for humanity, namely the Whitsun festival. When men come to know what the downcoming of the Holy Spirit in the future can mean for mankind, the Whitsun festival will once more become alive for them. Then it will be not only a memory of the event in Jerusalem; but there will arise for mankind the everlasting Whitsun festival, the festival of united soul-endeavour.

It will depend on men themselves what value and what result such ideals can have for mankind. When in this right way they strive towards wisdom, then will higher spirits unite themselves with men.

Goethe, one of the most inspired spirits of the modern age, has indicated in moving words the power of the Easter bells. In the figure of Faust he places before us the representative of aspiring humanity, who has reached the bourn of earthly existence; and he shows us how the Easter tidings, the light kindled by the Easter Festival, are able, in the heart even of one who is seeking death, to vanquish the thoughts and the power of death.

As Goethe portrays it, the inner impulse given by the Easter tidings has streamed through the whole evolution of mankind. And when in a none too distant future men understand through deepened spiritual insight how the festivals are meant to link the soul with all that lives and weaves in the great universe, they will feel that the soul, expanding in a new way during these days at the beginning of spring, comes to realise that the wellsprings of spiritual life can deliver us from material life, from the constriction of an existence fettered to matter.

It is precisely at the time of Easter that man's soul can become imbued with the unshakable conviction that in the innermost core of man's being lies a fount of eternal, divine existence, a fount of strength which enables us to break free from bondage to matter and, without losing our identity, to become one with the fountain-head of cosmic existence. To this inner fount we can penetrate at all times through higher knowledge. The Easter Festival is an outer sign of this deep experience within the reach of man, an outer sign of the deepest Christian Mystery. And so at Easter to-day the outer festival and its tokens are like a symbol of what at the beginning of their earthly evolution men could discover and know only in the secrecy of the Mysteries. Wherever the peoples of the earth celebrated the festival now called Easter—and it was celebrated far and wide among ancient peoples—it was proclaimed from the Mysteries, awakening everywhere the feeling—indeed the conviction—that life in the spirit can be victorious over death in matter. But whatever was thus instilled into the human soul in olden times had to be proclaimed from the depths of the Mysteries.

The progress of human evolution, however, has brought it about that more and more of the secrets guarded in the sanctuaries are now coming to light, that the wisdom of the Mysteries is now emerging to become the common possession of all mankind. Let us devote our studies to-day and tomorrow to an endeavour to show how this feeling, this inner conviction, forces its way outwards from the depths of primeval knowledge into ever-widening circles. To-day we will look back into the past in order to be able to describe tomorrow what is felt about this festival at the present time. As Easter is the festival of the resurrection of the spirit of man and of mankind, we must come together with inner earnestness before we can hope to advance to a wisdom that in a certain sense leads to the very peak of spiritual-scientific understanding.

Our Christian festival of Easter is only one of the forms of the Easter festival of humanity in general. What the wise men of old were able to say out of their strongest, deepest convictions, out of the very ground of wisdom, about life overcoming death—this was woven into the symbolism of the Easter festival. In the utterances of these wise men we shall everywhere find the foundation for an understanding of the Easter festival, the festival of the resurrection of the Spirit.

A beautiful and profound Eastern legend runs as follows: The great Teacher of the East, Shakyamuni, the Buddha, has endowed the regions of the East with his profound wisdom, which, drawn from the fountain-head of spiritual existence, glowed with infinite blessing through the hearts of men. Primal wisdom flowing from divine-spiritual worlds brought blessing to human hearts in times when men were still able to gaze into the spiritual world. This has been saved by Shakyamuni for a later humanity. Shakyamuni had a great pupil, and whereas the other pupils grasped to a greater or lesser extent the all-embracing wisdom taught by the Buddha, Kashiapa—such was the name of the pupil—grasped it fully. He was one of those most deeply initiated into these teachings, one of the most significant followers of the Buddha. The legend tells that when Kashiapa came to the point of death and on account of his mature wisdom was ready to pass into Nirvana, he made his way to a steep mountain and hid himself in a cave. After his death his body did not decay but remained intact. Only the Initiates know of this secret and of the hidden place where the incorruptible body of the great Initiate rests. But the Buddha foretold that one day in the future his great successor, the Maitreya Buddha, the new great Teacher and Leader of mankind, would come, and reaching the supreme height of existence to be attained during earthly life, would seek out the cave of Kashiapa and touch with his right hand the incorruptible body of the Enlightened One. Whereupon a miraculous fire would stream down from heaven and in this fire the incorruptible body of Kashiapa, the Enlightened One, would be lifted from earthly into spiritual existence.

Such is the great Eastern legend—unintelligible, perhaps, in some respects, to the West. This legend speaks, too, of a resurrection, of a transportation from earthly existence, an overcoming of death, achieved in such a way that the earth's forces of corruption have no effect upon the purified body of Kashiapa. Thus when the great Initiate comes and touches this body with his hand, it will be carried up by the miraculous fire into the heavenly spheres.

It is just where this legend deviates from the content of the Western, Christian account of Easter, that there lies the possibility of reaching a deeper understanding of the Easter festival. Such a legend enshrines an ancient wisdom that can only gradually be approached. We may ask: Why does not Kashiapa, like the Redeemer in the Christian account of Easter, achieve victory over death after three days? Why does the incorruptible body of the Eastern Initiate wait for long ages before being transported by the miraculous fire into the heavenly heights?

We hear to-day no more than echoes of the depths here contained. Only by degrees can we gain some inkling of the wisdom expressed in legends as profound as this one. We must remain in reverent awe at a distance and learn through these solemn festivals gradually to look upwards to the heights of wisdom. Nor should we aspire immediately to apprehend with our prosaic intellect what such legends contain. True understanding will be attained only if we approach these truths with adequate, sufficiently mature perceptions and feelings, in order, ultimately, to grasp them with inner fire and warmth.

For present-day humanity, two truths stand like mighty beacons on the horizon of the Spirit, two inwardly allied tokens of reality. They are two focal points for men who seek the spiritual at the present stage of evolution. The first beacon is the burning thorn-bush, and the second the fire which amid lighting and thunder appeared to Moses on Sinai and through which the proclamation is made to him: I am the I am.

Who is the spiritual Being Who then announced Himself to Moses in the two manifestations?

Those who understand the tidings of Christianity in the spiritual sense also understand the words which make known the identity of the Being Who appeared to Moses in the burning thorn-bush, and afterwards on Sinai amid lighting and thunder when the Ten Commandments were given. The writer of the Gospel of St. John himself indicates that Christ Jesus had been foretold by Moses,¹ by pointing to the passages telling of how the Power, which was later called Christ, made Himself known in the burning thorn-bush and then in fire on Sinai. It was Christ and none other Who says of Himself to Moses: I am the I am.

The God Who appeared later on in a human body and Who fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha, wielded earlier an invisible sway, announcing Himself in the element of fire in nature. The message of the Old Testament and of the New Testament is understood only when it is realised that the God heralded by Moses is the Christ Who was one day to come among men. Thus the God Who is to bring redemption to mankind announces Himself, not in a human form, but in the fire-element of nature, in which He is manifest. The same Being Who appeared visibly in the events in Palestine held sway through all the ages of antiquity, and His divine Being is revealed in many diverse forms.

We look back to the Old Testament and we ask ourselves: “Who was it, in reality, whom the ancient Hebrews worshipped? Who was their God?” Those who belonged to the Hebrew Mysteries knew that it was Christ Whom they worshipped; they recognised Christ as the One Who spoke the words: “Say to my people: I am the I am.” But even if this were not known, the fact that during our cycle of evolution God announced Himself in fire, would be sufficiently indicative to enable one who gazes into the deep secrets of nature to realise that the God Who proclaimed Himself in the burning thorn-bush and on Sinai is the same God Who came down from spiritual heights into a human body in order to fulfil the Mystery of Golgotha. For there is a mysterious connection between the fire kindled in the external world by the elements of nature and the warmth pervading our blood. Spiritual science constantly emphasises that man is a microcosm of the great world, the macrocosm. Truly understood, therefore, processes which take place within the human being must correspond with processes in the universe outside. We must be able to find the outer process corresponding to every inner process. To understand what this means we shall have to penetrate into deep regions of spiritual science, for we come here to the fringe of a profound secret, of a momentous truth which gives the answer to the question: What is it in the great universe that corresponds to the mysterious origin of human thought?

In a very real sense, man is the only thinking being on the earth. Thoughts are kindled in him in a way that applies to no other being belonging to the earth, and through his thoughts he experiences a world which leads him beyond and above the earth. What is it that kindles thoughts in us, what process is taking place when the simplest or the most sublime thought flashes through us?—When thoughts flow through our soul, two forces are working together in us—our astral body and our Ego. The physical expression of the Ego, the ‘I,’ is the blood; the physical expression of the astral body is the life of the nervous system. Thoughts would never flash through the soul if there were no interplay between Ego and astral body, coming to expression in the interplay between the blood and the nerves. It will seem strange to science in time to come that the science of our day should look for the origin of thought in the nervous system alone. For thought does not originate only in the nerves. It is in the living interplay between the blood and the nerves, and only there, that we have to look for the process which gives rise to thoughts. When our blood (our inner fire) and our nervous system (our inner air) are in this interplay, thought flashes through the soul.

Now the genesis of thought within the soul corresponds, in the cosmos, to the rolling thunder. When the fiery lightning is generated in the air, when fire and air interact to produce thunder, this is the macrocosmic event corresponding to the process by which the fire of the blood and the play of the nervous system discharge themselves in the inner thunder which, gently, peacefully, outwardly imperceptible, it is true, rings out in the thought. Lightning in the clouds corresponds, within us, to the warmth of our blood, and the air in the universe, together with the elements it contains, corresponds to the life pervading our nervous system. And just as lightning in the action and reaction of the elements gives rise to thunder, so the action and reaction of blood and nerves produces the thought that flashes through the soul. Looking out into the world around us, we see the dashing Lightning in the formations of the air, and we hear the rolling thunder ... and then, looking within the soul, we feel the inner warmth pulsating in our blood and the life pervading our nervous system; then we become aware of the thought flashing through us, and we say: “The two are one.”

It is really and truly so. The thunder rolling in the heavens is not a physical-material phenomenon only. Materialistic mythology alone regards it as such. To one who sees the spiritual weaving and surging through material existence it is truth and reality when, looking upwards, men see the lightning, hear the thunder, and say to themselves: Now the Godhead is thinking in the fire, announcing Himself to us.—This is the invisible God Who weaves and surges through the universe, Whose warmth is in the lightning, Whose nerves are in the air, Whose thoughts are in the rolling thunder. This is the God Who spoke to Moses in the burning thorn-bush and on Sinai in the fiery lightning.

Fire and air in the macrocosm are, in man the microcosm, blood and nerves. As you have lightning and thunder in the macrocosm, so you have thoughts arising within the human being. And the God seen and heard by Moses in the burning thorn-bush, Who spoke to him in the fiery lightning on Sinai, was present as the Christ in the blood of Jesus of Nazareth. Christ, descending into a human form, was manifest in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In that He thought as a man in a human body, He became the great Prototype of the future evolution of humanity.

Thus the two poles of human evolution meet: the macrocosmic God announces Himself on Sinai in the thunder and fiery lightning; and the same God, incarnate in the Man of Palestine, appears in microcosmic form. The sublime mysteries of the life of mankind are derived from the deepest wisdom. They are truth in all profundity, not invented legends. But so profound is their truth that we need all the means open to spiritual science to unveil the secrets bound up with that truth.

Let us now consider what the impulse was that was received by mankind through its great Prototype, through the Being Who descended and united Himself with the microcosmic images of the elements in a human body—through the Christ Being?

Let us look back once again to the knowledge proclaimed by ancient peoples. Right back into the remote past of the Post-Atlantean epoch, all the ancient peoples knew how human evolution takes its course. All the Mystery Schools proclaimed, as spiritual science proclaims again to-day, that man consists of four members—physical body, etheric body, astral body and the Ego, the ‘I,’—and that he can rise to higher stages of existence when, through the activity of his ‘I’, he himself transforms the astral body into Spirit-Self (Manas), the etheric body into Life-Spirit (Budhi) and spiritualises the physical body into Spirit-Man (Atman). Little by little this physical body, in all its members, must be permeated so deeply with spirit during our earthly life that that which gives man his true being as man—the instreaming of the Divine Breath—is itself spiritualised. It is because the spiritualisation of the physical body begins with the spiritualisation of the breath, that the transformed, spiritualised physical body is called Atma or Atman (Atem (breath)=Atman). The Old Testament says that at the beginning of his earthly existence man received the Breath of Life, and all ancient wisdom sees in the Breath of Life that which man must gradually spiritualise, All ancient views of the world saw the great Ideal to be striven for in Atman, that the breath should become divine to such a degree, that man is permeated by the very breath of the Spirit.

But still more must be spiritualised in man. When his whole physical body is spiritualised, not only the breath but also that which is constantly renewed through the breath, the blood, the expression of the ‘I’ must be spiritualised. The blood must be laid hold of by a force that impels it to the spiritual. Christianity has added to the Mysteries of antiquity the Mysteries of the blood, the fire that is enclosed within man. The ancient Mysteries said: Man on the earth, living in an earthly frame, has descended from spiritual heights into physical, material corporeality. He has lost what constitutes his spiritual nature and has clothed himself in physical corporeality. But he must return again to spirituality, he must cast aside the physical sheaths and rise into a spiritual existence.

As long as the ‘I’ of man, with its physical expression in the blood, was not seized by an impulse to be found on the earth, the religions could not teach of the force of self-redemption in the human ‘I’. So they describe how the great spiritual Beings, the Avatars, descend and incarnate in human bodies from time to time when men are in need of help. They are Beings who for the purpose of their own development need not come down into a human body, for their own human stage of evolution had been completed in an earlier world-cycle. They descend in order to help mankind. Thus when help was needed, the great God Vishnu descended into earthly existence. One of the embodiments of Vishnu—namely, Krishna—speaks of Himself, saying unambiguously what the nature of an Avatar is. He Himself declares who He is, in the Divine Song, the Bhagavad Gita. There we find the sublime words spoken by Krishna in Whom Vishnu lives as an Avatar: “I am the
“Spirit of creation, its beginning, its middle and its end;
“among the stars I am the sun, among the elements—fire;
“among the seas—the cosmic ocean; among the serpents—
“the eternal serpent. I am the ground of the worlds.”

The all-powerful Divinity can be proclaimed in no more beautiful or more sublime words than these. The Godhead seen by Moses in the element of fire, Who not only weaves and surges through the world as a macrocosmic Divinity, is to be found, too, within man. Therefore in all beings who bear the human countenance, Krishna lives as the great Ideal to which the innermost essence of man develops from within. And when, as was the goal of ancient wisdom, man's breath can be spiritualised through the impulse given by the Mystery of Golgotha—this is the redemption that is achieved by what now lives within ourselves. All the Avatars have brought redemption to mankind through power from above, through what has streamed down through them from spiritual heights to the earth. But the Avatar Christ has redeemed mankind through what He gathered out of the forces of mankind itself, and He has shown us how the forces of redemption, the forces whereby the Spirit becomes victor over matter can be found in ourselves.

Thus, although through the spiritualisation of his breath he had made his body incorruptible, even Kashiapa with his supreme enlightenment could not yet find complete redemption. The incorruptible body must wait in the secret cave until it is drawn forth by the Maitreya Buddha. Only when the ‘I’ has spiritualised the physical body to such a degree that the Christ Impulse streams into the physical body, is the miraculous cosmic fire no longer needed for redemption; for redemption is now brought about by the fire quickened in man's own inner being, in the blood. Thus the radiance streaming from the Mystery of Golgotha is also able to shed light on a legend as wonderful and profound as that of Kashiapa.

To begin with, we find the world obscure and full of riddles; we may compare it with a dark room containing many splendid objects which at first we cannot see. But if we kindle a light the objects in the room are revealed in all their splendour. So it can be for a man who strives after wisdom. To begin with he strives in darkness. As he looks into the world of the past and of the future he gazes into darkness. But when the light that streams from Golgotha is kindled, everything in the most distant past and on into the farthest future is illumined. For everything material is born out of the Spirit and out of matter the Spirit will again be resurrected. The purpose of a festival such as Easter, connected as it is with cosmic happenings, is to give expression to this certainty. If men are clear as to what they can achieve through spiritual science—that the soul, recognising the secrets of existence can find the way to the secrets of the universe through festivals containing symbolism as full of meaning as that of Easter—then the soul will realise something of what it means to live no longer within its own narrow, personal existence, but to live with all that gleams in the stars, shines in the sun and is living reality in the universe. The soul will feel itself expanding into the universe, becoming more and more filled with Spirit.

Resurrection from individual human life to the life of the universe—this is the call that echoes in our hearts from the spiritual bells of Easter. And when we hear these bells, all doubt of the reality of the spiritual world will vanish from us and the certainty will dawn that no material death can harm us at all. For we are caught up again into life in the Spirit when we understand the message of the spiritual bells of Easter.

• 1. St. John V, 45, 46.

A direct enrichment gained from symbolic seasonal festivals as full of meaning as the Easter festival is that they make our hearts and souls better fitted to penetrate more and more deeply into the riddle of man and his nature. So we will think once again of the Easter legend which gave us an inkling yesterday of its bearing on this riddle, the legend of Kashiapa, the great sage and enlightened pupil of Shakyamuni. With a vast range of vision and after stupendous endeavours, Kashiapa had absorbed all the wisdom of the East, and it was rightly said of him that of those who came after him no-one else was capable, even in the remotest degree, of preserving what he had drawn from Shakyamuni's deep fount of wisdom and—as the last possessor of this primal wisdom—had bestowed upon mankind.

The legend, you will remember, goes on to say that when Kashiapa was on the point of death and felt his entry into Nirvana approaching, he went into a cave in a mountain. There he died in full consciousness, and his body remained immune from decay, hidden from outer humanity and discoverable only by those who through Initiation were able to fathom such secrets. It rested uncorrupted in a cave, mysteriously concealed. Furthermore, it was predicted that a great proclaimer of the primeval wisdom in a new form, the Maitreya Buddha, will appear, and having reached the supreme height of his earthly existence, will go to the cave where rests the corpse of Kashiapa. With his right hand he will touch the corpse, and a miraculous fire coming down from the universe will transport the uncorrupted body of Kashiapa into the spiritual worlds.

The Oriental who understands this wisdom waits for the Maitreya Buddha to appear and perform his deed on the uncorrupted body of Kashiapa. Will these two events come about? Will the Maitreya Buddha appear? Will the uncorrupted remains of Kashiapa then be transported by the miraculous fire from heaven? With true Easter feelings we shall be able to glimpse the profound wisdom contained in this legend if we try to understand the nature of the miraculous fire into which the remains of Kashiapa are to be received.

In the previous lecture we saw how in our epoch the Godhead reveals Himself from two poles: from the macrocosmic fire of lightning and from the microcosmic fire of the blood. We saw that it was the Christ Who proclaimed Himself to Moses in the burning thorn-bush and in thunder and lightning on Sinai; that it was the Christ and no other Power than He Who declared to Moses: “I am the I AM.” Out of the lightning on Sinai He gave the Ten Commandments as a preparation for His coming. Later, He appeared in microcosmic form in Palestine.

In the fire in our blood lives the same God Who had announced Himself in the heavenly fire and Who then, in the Mystery of Palestine, incarnated in a human body in order that His power might permeate the blood where the human fire has its seat. And if we follow the consequences of this event and what it signifies for earth-existence, we shall be able to find the flaming fire into which the remains of Kashiapa will be received.

World-evolution consists in the gradual spiritualisation of all that is material. In the material fire of the burning thorn-bush, and on Sinai, an outer sign of the Divine Power was revealed to Moses; but through the Christ Event this fire was spiritualised. Now, since the Christ Power has penetrated the earth, by what can the flame of the spiritual fire be perceived? By what can it be seen? By eyes of the spirit that have been opened and awakened through the Christ Impulse itself. To the eyes of the spirit this material fire of the thorn-bush is spiritualised. And ever since the Christ Impulse awakened the eyes of the spirit, this fire has worked in a spiritual way upon our world.

When was this fire seen again? It was seen again when the eyes of Saul, illumined by clairvoyance on the road to Damascus, beheld and recognised in the radiance of heavenly fire the One Who had fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha. And so both Moses and Paul beheld the Christ: Moses beheld Him in the material fire in the burning thorn-bush and in the lightning on Sinai, but only inwardly could he be made aware that it was the Christ Who spoke with him. To the enlightened eyes of Paul, Christ revealed Himself from the spiritualised fire. Matter and Spirit are related in the evolution of worlds as the miraculous, material fire of the thorn-bush and of Sinai is related to the glory of the fire from the clouds that shone before Saul who had now become Paul.

Now what were the consequences of this event for the whole evolution of worlds? Let us look back over the great succession of benefactors and saviours of mankind—those great figures who were the outer expressions of the Avatars, the incarnations of the Divine-Spiritual Powers who from epoch to epoch descended from spiritual heights and took human form in order that mankind should be able to find the way back into the spiritual worlds. Such, for example, was Krishna, one of the Avatars of Vishnu. In earlier times man could only find this way by the descent of a Divine Being. But through the Mystery of Golgotha man was endowed with the faculty to draw from his own innermost being the forces that can raise and lead him upwards into the spiritual worlds. Christ descended far more deeply than the other Guiding Spirits, cosmic and human, for not only did He bring heavenly forces into an earthly body, but He spiritualised this earthly body to such a degree that now, out of these earthly forces, men could find the way to the spiritual worlds. The pre-Christian saviours redeemed mankind with Divine forces. Christ redeemed mankind with human forces. These human forces were then made manifest in all their original, pristine power.

What would have happened on the earth if Christ had not appeared? We will ask ourselves this solemn, crucial question. One world-saviour after another might have descended from spiritual worlds, until finally they would have found on the earth below only human beings so entrenched in matter, so immersed in substance, that the pure, divine-spiritual forces would no longer have been able to raise men again out of this corrupted, impure substance. It was with grief and profound sorrow that the Eastern sages looked into the future, concerning which they knew that the Maitreya Buddha will one day appear in order to renew the primal wisdom, but that no disciple will be capable of retaining this wisdom. “If the world continues along this course,” they said, “the Maitreya Buddha will preach to deaf ears; he will not be understood by men wholly engulfed in matter. Moreover, the materiality prevailing on the earth will cause the body of Kashiapa to wither away so that the Maitreya Buddha will not be able to bear his remains into the divine-spiritual heights.”

It was those with the deepest understanding of Eastern wisdom who looked with such sorrow into the future, wondering whether the earth would be capable of receiving the coming Maitreya Buddha with greater understanding and discernment.

It was necessary that a powerful heavenly force should stream into physical matter, and in physical matter should sacrifice itself. This could not be accomplished by a god merely within the mask of a human form; it had to be accomplished by a man in the real sense, a man with human forces, who bore the God within himself. The Mystery of Golgotha had to take place in order that the matter into which man has descended should be made fit, cleansed, purified and hallowed in such a way as to enable the primal wisdom again to be understood. Humanity to-day must be brought to realise what the Mystery of Golgotha actually effected in this respect. What then was the real significance of the Event of Golgotha for mankind? How deeply did it penetrate into man's whole nature and existence?

We will let our mind's eye sweep across twelve centuries—from six hundred years before the event of Golgotha to six hundred years after it—and think of certain experiences that arose in the souls of men during this period. Truly, nothing greater or more significant can come before the discerning human soul than that stupendous occurrence of the gradual enlightenment of the Buddha, as it is preserved in the legend. He comes from a kingly environment. He is not born in a manger among simple shepherds. The emphasis, however, is not to be placed on this, but on the fact that he leaves this kingly environment and then encounters what he had not hitherto encountered: life in its diverse forms and manifestations. He comes upon a child, weak and ailing. Suffering is the child's lot in the existence it has entered through birth. The Buddha feels: birth is suffering. And again with all his sensitivity of soul the Buddha sees one who is diseased. This can be the lot of man when thirst for existence bears him into the earthly world-illness is suffering. The Buddha meets a man decrepit with the infirmities of old age. What is it that life imposes on man so that gradually he loses control of his limbs? Old age is suffering. And then the Buddha sees a corpse. Death stands before him with all the disintegration and destruction of life that are its accompaniment. Death is suffering. And through further observation of life the Buddha is led to the realisation: To be separated from what we love is suffering; to be united with what we do not love is suffering; not to attain that for which we yearn is suffering.

The teaching of suffering rang with power and insistence through human hearts and human breasts. Men without number learned the great truth that freedom from suffering depends upon elimination of the thirst for existence, learned that they must strive to free themselves from earthly, physical existence, to pass beyond earthly incarnations, and that only the elimination of the thirst for existence can lead to redemption and release from suffering. Truly, a sublime goal of human evolution is presented to us here.

And now we will cast our mind's eye over twelve centuries, embracing the whole period from 600 B.C. to 600 A.D. One particular event stands out: in the middle of this period the Mystery of Golgotha took place. We will think of a single feature only from the times of the Buddha: the corpse, and what the Buddha experienced at the sight of it and then taught. Six hundred years after the Event of Golgotha the eyes of countless human souls turn to a Cross of wood on which hangs a corpse. But there issue from this corpse the impulses which permeate life with spirit, which make life victorious over death. This is the very antithesis of what the Buddha experienced at the sight of a corpse.

The Buddha had seen a corpse and had recognised from it the nothingness of life. Men who lived six hundred years after the Event of Golgotha looked up with fervent devotion to the corpse on the Cross. For them it was the token of life, and in their souls dawned the certainty that existence is not suffering, but leads across death into blessedness. Six hundred years after the Event of Golgotha the corpse of Christ Jesus on the Cross became the token of life, of the resurrection of life, the overcoming of death and of all suffering, just as six hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha the corpse was the sign that suffering must be the lot of man driven into the physical world by the thirst for existence. Never was there a greater reversal in the whole course of human evolution.

If, six hundred years before our era, entrance into the physical augured suffering for man, how does the great truth that life is suffering present itself to the soul after the Mystery of Golgotha? How does it present itself to men who look with understanding at the Cross on Golgotha? Is birth, as the Buddha declared, suffering? Those who look with understanding at the Cross on Golgotha, and feel united with it, say to themselves: “Birth, after all, leads men to an earth able from its own elements to provide a raiment for the Christ. Men will gladly tread this earth upon which Christ has walked. Union with Christ kindles in the soul the power to find its way up into the spiritual worlds, brings the realisation that birth is not suffering but the portal to the finding of the Redeemer, Who clothed Himself with the very same earthly substances which compose the bodily sheaths of a human being.”

Is illness suffering? No!—so said those who truly understood the Impulse of Golgotha—no, illness is not suffering. Even if men cannot yet understand what the spiritual life streaming in with Christ is in reality, in the future they will learn to understand it, and they will know that one who lets himself be permeated by the Christ Impulse, into whose innermost being the Christ Power draws, can overcome all illness through the strong healing forces he unfolds from within himself. For Christ is the great Healer of mankind. His Power embraces everything that out of the spiritual can unfold the healing force whereby illness can be overcome. Illness is not suffering. Illness is an opportunity to overcome an obstacle by man unfolding the Christ Power within himself.

Mankind must arrive at a similar understanding about the infirmities of age. The more the feebleness of our limbs: increases, the more we can grow in the spirit, the more we can gain the mastery through the Christ Power indwelling us. Age is not suffering, for with every day that passes we grow into the spiritual world. So too, death is not suffering for it has been conquered in the Resurrection. Death has been conquered through the Event of Golgotha.

Can separation from what we love still be suffering? No! Souls permeated with the Christ Power know that love can forge links from soul to soul transcending all material obstacles, links in the spiritual that cannot be severed; and there is nothing either in the life between birth and death or between death and rebirth to which we cannot spiritually find the way through the Christ Impulse. If we permeate ourselves with the Christ Impulse, permanent separation from what we love is inconceivable. The Christ leads us to union with what we love.

Equally, to be united with what we do not love cannot be suffering because the Christ Impulse received into our souls teaches us to love all things in their due measure. The Christ Impulse shows us the way and, when we find this way, “to be united with what we do not love” can no longer be suffering; for there is nothing that we do not encompass with love. So too, if Christ is with us, “not to attain that for which we yearn” can no longer be suffering, for human feelings and desires are so purified and sublimated through the Christ Impulse that men can yearn only for what is their due. They no longer suffer because of what they are compelled to renounce; for if they must renounce anything, it is for the sake of purification, and the Christ Power enables them to feel it as such. Therefore renunciation is no longer suffering.

What, in essence, does the Event of Golgotha signify? It signifies the gradual elimination of the facts associated by the great Buddha with suffering. There is nothing that affects more deeply cosmic evolution or cosmic existence than the Event of Golgotha. Therefore we can also understand that its influence works on, with positive and momentous consequences for mankind of the future. Christ is the greatest of all the Avatars who have come down to the earth and when such a Being as the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth descends into earthly existence, this marks the beginning of a mysterious and supremely significant process. On a small scale it is the same in the spiritual world as when we sow a grain of corn in the earth; it germinates and blade and ear spring from it, bearing innumerable grains which are replicas of the one grain of corn we laid into the soil. “Everything transient is but a semblance,” and in this multiplication of the grain of corn we can perceive an image, a semblance, of the spiritual world.

When the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished, something happened to the etheric body and the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Through the Power of the indwelling Christ they were multiplied and ever since that time in the spiritual world many, many replicas of the astral body and etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth have been present—with great spiritual consequences.

A human individuality descending from spiritual heights into physical existence is clothed with an etheric body and an astral body. But when something is present in spiritual worlds such as the replicas of the etheric body and astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, a very special occurrence takes place in men whose karma permits it. After the Mystery of Golgotha, when the karma of a particular individuality allowed it, a replica of the etheric body or of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into him. This was so in the case of Augustine, for example, in the early part of our era. When this individuality came down from spiritual heights and clothed himself in an etheric body, a replica of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into his own etheric body. This individuality bore his own astral body and ego, but into his etheric body was woven a replica of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth.

And so the sheaths that had enveloped the Divine Man of Palestine were transmitted to other men, whose task it then was to carry forth the influence of this great impulse into the rest of humanity. It was because Augustine remained dependent upon his own ego and his own astral body that he was subject to all the doubt, all the vacillation and error which, since they emanated from these still imperfect members of his being, it was so difficult for him to overcome. All the experiences he endured were due to his mistaken judgment and the errors of his ego. But when he had wrestled through, when his etheric body began to operate, he came upon the forces woven into his etheric body from the replica of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. And then he became the one who was able to proclaim to the West some of the great Mystery-truths.

There were many whom we recognise as the great bearers of Christianity in the West, whose mission was to spread Christianity during the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, on to the tenth, in whom the great Ideas could light up as examples. These were persons into whose etheric bodies a replica of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth had been woven. That was the reason why there could arise in them the great visions and prototypal Ideas which were then elaborated and given form by the great painters and sculptors.

How did the prototypes for these pictures that still delight us come into being? They came into being when through the inwoven replicas of the hallowed etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth there came to men of the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth centuries of our era great illuminations of the truths of Christianity which made them independent of historical tradition. In addition to the content of Christ's teaching there had been woven into these men a replica of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, and they needed no longer the historical tradition of the facts of Christianity; they knew through inner illumination that the Christ lives, because they bore within them part of the being of Jesus of Nazareth. They knew that Christ lives, just as Paul knew of Christ as living reality when He appeared to him in the spiritualised fire of heaven. Up till then, had Paul allowed himself to be converted by stories of the events in Palestine? No single one of the events of which he could have been told was able to make Saul into Paul; yet it was from Paul that the most powerful impulse for the outer spread of Christianity proceeded—from one who had remained unconvinced by narrations of events on the physical plane, but who became a believer through an occult event taking place in the spiritual world. It is a strange attitude to wish to have Christianity without the factor of spiritual illumination! For without Paul's spiritual illumination Christianity would never have spread through the world. The early spread of Christianity was due to a super-sensible happening. So again, in later times, Christianity was propagated in the same way through those who were able to experience the Christ in inner illumination. It was the Christ of history, too, because they bore within them what had remained from the historical Christ and His sheaths.

In the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries replicas of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth were woven into other human beings when their karma so permitted and they were sufficiently mature. Francis of Assisi, Elisabeth of Thüringen, for example, and others too, bore within them a replica of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Without this knowledge, the lives of Francis of Assisi and Elisabeth of Thüringen are unintelligible to us. Everything that seems so strange to-day in the life of Francis of Assisi is because the ‘I’ was the human ‘I’ of that individuality; but the humility, the devoutness and the fervour we so admire in him are due to the fact that a replica of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into his own astral body. And it was so in the case of many other personalities living at that time. When we know this, they become examples for us. How can anyone who really studies the matter understand the life of Elisabeth of Thüringen if he does not know that a replica of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into her? And very many were called in this way by the onworking Christ Power to bear this mighty Impulse forward to posterity.

But there was something else, too, which was preserved for still later times, namely, innumerable replicas of the ‘I’ of Jesus of Nazareth. True, his original higher ‘I’ had departed from the three sheaths when the Christ drew into them; but a replica, exalted yet further as a result of the Christ-indwelling, remained present, and this replica of the ‘I’ of Jesus of Nazareth was multiplied many times. This replica of the ‘I’ of Jesus of Nazareth is present to this day in the spiritual world. Moreover it can be found, together with the glory of the Christ Power and Christ Impulse it bears within it, by men who are sufficiently mature.

Now the outer, physical expression for the ‘I’ is the blood. This is a great mystery; but there have always been men who knew of it and were aware that replicas of the ‘I’ of Jesus of Nazareth are present in the spiritual world. There have always been men whose task it was, through the centuries since the Event of Golgotha, to ensure in secret that humanity gradually matures, so that there may be human beings who are fit to receive the replicas of the ‘I’ of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, just as there were persons who received replicas of his etheric body and astral body. To this end it was necessary to discover the secret of how, in the quietude of a profound mystery, this ‘I’ might be preserved until the appropriate moment in the evolution of the earth and of humanity. With this aim a Brotherhood of Initiates who preserved the secret was founded: the Brotherhood of the Holy Grail. They were the guardians of this secret. This Fellowship has always existed. It is said that its originator took the chalice used by Christ Jesus at the Last Supper and in it caught the blood flowing from the wounds of the Redeemer on the Cross. He gathered the blood, the expression of the ‘I’ in this chalice—the Holy Grail. And the chalice with the blood of the Redeemer, with the secret of the replica of the ‘I’ of Christ-Jesus, was preserved in a holy place, in the Brotherhood of those who through their attainments and their Initiation are the Brothers of the Holy Grail.

The time has come to-day when these secrets may be made known, when through a spiritual life the hearts of men can become mature enough to understand this great Mystery. If souls allow spiritual science to kindle understanding of such secrets they become fit to recognise in that Holy Chalice the Mystery of the Christ-‘I,’ the eternal ‘I’ which every human ‘I’ can become. The secret is a reality—only men must allow themselves to be summoned through spiritual science to understand this, in order that as they contemplate the Holy Grail, the Christ-‘I’ may be received into their being. To this end they must understand and accept what has come to pass as fact, as reality.

But when men are better prepared to receive the Christ Ego, then it will pour in greater and greater fullness into their souls. They will then evolve to the level where stood Christ Jesus, their great Example. Then for the first time they will learn to understand the sense in which Christ Jesus is the Great Example for humanity. And having understood this, men will begin to realise in the innermost core of their being that the certainty of life's eternity springs from the corpse hanging on the wood of the Cross of Golgotha. Those who are inspired and permeated by the Christ-‘I’, the Christians of future time, will understand something else as well—something that hitherto has been known only to those who reached enlightenment. They will understand, not only the Christ Who has passed through death, but the triumphant Christ of the Apocalypse, resurrected in the spiritual fire, the Christ Whose coming has already been predicted. The Easter festival can always be for us a symbol of the Risen One, a link reaching over from Christ on the Cross to the Christ triumphant, risen and glorified, to the One Who lifts all men with Him to the right hand of the Father.

And so the Easter symbol points us to the vista of the whole future of the earth, to the future of the evolution of humanity, and is for us a guarantee that men who are Christ-inspired will be transformed from Saul-men into Paul-men and will behold with increasing clarity a spiritual fire. For it is indeed true that as the Christ was revealed in advance to Moses and to those who were with him, in the material fire of the thorn-bush and of the lightning on Sinai, so He will be revealed to us in a spiritualised fire of the future. He is with us always, until the end of the world, and He will appear in the spiritual fire to those who have allowed their eyes to be enlightened through the Event of Golgotha. Men will behold Him in the spiritual fire. They beheld Him, to begin with, in a different form; they will behold Him for the first time in His true form, in a spiritual fire.

But because the Christ penetrated so deeply into earth-existence—right into the physical bony structure—the power which built His sheaths out of the elements of the earth so purified and hallowed this physical substance that it can never become what in their sorrow the Eastern sages feared: that the Enlightened One of the future, the Maitreya Buddha, would not find on the earth men capable of understanding him because they had sunk so deeply into matter. Christ was led to Golgotha in order that He might lift matter again to spiritual heights, in order that the fire might not be extinguished in matter, but be spiritualised. The primal wisdom will again be intelligible to men when they themselves are spiritualised—the primal wisdom which, in the spiritual world, was the source of their being. And so the Maitreya Buddha will find understanding on the earth—which would not otherwise have been possible—when men have attained deeper insight. We understand far better what we learnt in our youth, when tests in life have matured us, and we can look back upon it all at a later time. Mankind will understand the primal wisdom through being able to look back upon it in the Christ-light streaming from the event of Golgotha.

And now—how can the uncorrupted remains of Kashiapa be rescued, and whither will they be transported? It was said: the Maitreya Buddha will appear, touch these remains with his right hand, and the corpse will be transported in fire. In the fire made manifest to Paul on the road to Damascus we have to see the miraculous, spiritualised fire in which the body of Kashiapa will be enshrined. This fire will rescue for future times all that was great and noble in the past. In the spiritualised fire in which the Christ appeared to Paul, the body of Kashiapa, untouched by corruption, will be saved through the Maitreya Buddha. Thus we shall see the greatness, the splendour and the wisdom of all the past stream into what mankind has become through the Event of Golgotha.

A resurrection of the Earth-Spirit itself, a redemption of humanity—this is what lies before us in the symbol of the Easter bells. To everyone who understood it, this symbol was an inspiration of how through the Easter Mystery man climbs to spiritual heights. It is not without meaning that Faust is called back by the Easter bells from the brink of death to a new life which leads him to the great moment when, blinded and facing death, he cries: “But in my inmost spirit all is light.” Now he can make his way up into the spiritual worlds where the ennobled elements of humanity are in safe keeping.

In the purified spirituality that has poured over the earth and into humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha, everything that has existed in the past is rescued, purified, sustained: just as one day, when the Maitreya Buddha appears, the uncorrupted body of Kashiapa, the great sage of the East, will be purified in the miraculous fire, in the Christ-light which was revealed to Paul on the road to Damascus.

Goethe, the inspiring spirit of modern times, describes in a striking manner the power of the Easter bells. He describes how Faust, the representative of striving humanity, had come to the end of earthly life, and how the bells of Easter, the light of the Easter Festival, are able to conquer the impulse of death in the heart of this one who is seeking death. Goethe presented the development of humanity in the same way that he presents to us the impulse of the Easter bells. And when, in the not very distant future, humanity understands the close connection between the soul and all that lives and moves in the world, it will then also be known how the comprehension of the sources of life liberates us from the bondage of matter. At Easter-time mankind will learn something that will give it the unshakeable confidence that in man there dwells the source of Divine existence, uniting with the source of universal existence when we are able through this knowledge to rise to illumination. The nature of the Easter festival shows that humanity has known this deepest Christian Mystery as an external token; for the present festival of Easter is a symbol of what can only be found in the depths of the Sacred Mysteries. This festival was celebrated in the Sacred Mysteries of many lands in order to call forth the conviction that the life in Spirit is able to conquer the death in matter. In ancient times that which was able to give to man this conviction had to be announced from the Mysteries. But the progress consists in this being brought out of the Mysteries and becoming a possession common to all humanity. In this lecture and the next we shall try to show that this perception and conviction is making its way into ever-widening circles.

Since Easter is the festival of the resurrection of the human spirit we must gather together for serious study and try to rise to the greatest height of Spiritual Science.

Our Christian Easter festival is one of the forms of the universal Easter festival, and what the sages possessed as their strongest, deepest conviction was hidden in this Easter festival. A beautiful, profound, Eastern legend relates the following:

The great Teacher of the East, Sakya-Muni, the Buddha, blessed the countries of the East with his profound wisdom. Sakya-Muni preserved for later ages of humanity that which was the source of profound happiness when mankind was still able to see into the Divine world, viz., the Ancient Wisdom. Sakya-Muni had a great pupil, Kashiapa by name, and while the others did not comprehend the great wisdom that Buddha taught, Kashiapa did. When Kashiapa was about to die, he went to a mountain, hid himself in a cave and in this cave his body did not putrefy, but continued as it was. The Initiates alone know of this Mystery, for the body of the great Initiate rests in a hidden place. But Buddha said that when the Maitreya Buddha, the great Teacher and Leader of humanity would come, he would search out that cave, and with his right hand touch the corpse, and then a wonderful fire would descend from heaven and in this fire the body of the great Enlightened One would ascend. Thus this Easter legend also speaks of a resurrection, ‘a being withdrawn’ from earthly existence; it speaks of a victory, so that the forces of the earth have no power over the body, and when the great Initiate touches it with his hand, the supernatural fire will carry it up. Through this legend we shall be able to arrive at a deep understanding of the Easter festival; in it there is a hidden, a primeval wisdom which we shall only be able to approach gradually.

Why is not Kashiapa, like the Redeemer, the victor over death after three days? Why does the Eastern Initiate wait for a long time before he is withdrawn by the heavenly fire into heaven?

We shall gradually gain some idea of the wisdom contained in this. We must control our feelings in order to approach these great truths in all their warmth and fire at such festivals.

For present humanity there stand on the horizon two truths which are intimately connected with one another, two important points for the humanity that is developing and making efforts at the present stage of evolution. These are first, the burning thorn-bush of Moses (Exodus iii) and secondly, the fire that appears on Sinai (Exodus xix) amidst lightning and thunder and announces to Moses, ‘I AM THE I AM’ (Exodus iii, 14). Who is this Being? One who understands the message of Christianity also understands who this Being is who appears to Moses amidst lightning and thunder and gives the ten Commandments. The Gospel of St. John tells us that Moses foretold Christ Jesus (John v, 45 & 46) and, therefore, the power in the burning bush was the Christ. No other Divinity could be imagined when the words were uttered, ‘I AM THE I AM’. He governs invisibly, announcing Himself beforehand in the fiery lightning upon Sinai. And he alone understands the New Testament who knows that the God announced by Moses is the Christ. The God Who was to bring redemption to mankind made Himself known in a form derived from the fiery element in nature; for therein lives the Christ.

The same Being holds sway throughout the whole of the Old Testament and then He appeared visibly through the Event of Palestine.

Whom did the ancient Hebrew people reverence in reality? Those belonging to the Hebrew Mysteries were aware that they reverenced Christ; they recognised Christ in the statement: ‘Say to my people “I AM THE I AM.”’ And even if it were only known that God makes Himself known in fire, that would have been sufficient to enable one to recognise that the God in the burning bush and the God of Sinai is the same as the One who brought about the Mystery of Golgotha through His descent into the human body.

There is a mysterious connection between the fire that is enkindled externally and the warmth of the blood. It has often been said that man is a microcosm; but one must also know the external process that corresponds to each inward process. We shall have to enter deeply into spiritual science if we wish to recognise the meaning of the Easter festival. Here we come in touch with a deep mystery, a great truth.

What is it in the outer world that corresponds to the origin of human thought? Through his thought man experiences a world, and in that form no other being experiences thought. What enkindles thought within us, the simplest as well as the most sublime? Two things co-operate within us when a thought passes through our mind, viz., the astral body and the ‘I.’ The physical expression of the ‘I’ is the blood; the physical expression of the astral body is in the nerves. And our thoughts would never flash through us unless there were this interplay of blood and nerves. In the interplay between blood and nerves (inner fire and inner air) we have thought. And this in the cosmos is the rolling thunder when the fiery lightning is enkindled. Imperceptibly to the external world there rings out as thought that which outside is lightning and thunder. The lightning is like the blood, the thunder like the thought; and as the lightning gives rise to the thunder, so the thunder corresponds to the thought produced by the soul. We see the lightning flash out in the air, we hear the thunder, and we feel the blood, we perceive the nervous system, we perceive the thought flash through us and say, ‘both are one.’ And when the thunder rolls above, it is not a material phenomenon alone; it is actual reality when a person looks up and sees the lightning and hears the thunder and says: God is now thinking in fire in the way He has to announce Himself to us; this is the invisible God Whose thoughts are in rolling fire—the God who spoke to Moses. Where would this God have to dwell if He wished to appear on the earth itself?

That which is in the macrocosm is also in the microcosm. The God whom Moses heard above appeared as Christ in the blood of Jesus of Nazareth. Christ appeared in the whole body of Jesus of Nazareth; He descended into the human form and thought as a man in the human body. And thus, the two poles meet, the macrocosmic God on Sinai and the same God microcosmically as a man incarnate in Palestine.

Truth, profound truth, is contained in the ancient Mystery-Wisdom. It is so deep that we need all knowledge to unveil this truth. And what an impulse did humanity receive through the descending Christ!

In ancient times the course of human development was very well known. It was known that man consists of four principles, the physical body, etheric body, astral body and the ‘I,’ and that he can rise to higher stages of existence through the transformation of his three lower bodies into Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man. This physical body, in all its parts, has to be gradually spiritualised, so that that which has made man into man, the in-streaming of the Divine Breath, is spiritualised. And because this begins with the breath (Atem—Atman), the Old Testament says that at the beginning of his earthly existence man received the breath of life, which he has gradually to spiritualise. This can be seen in the whole of antiquity. Still more has to be spiritualised in man if he is to make the whole of his physical body living, viz., that which breath produces, the blood, the expression of the ‘I.’ It has to be laid hold of by an impulse that impels towards the spiritual. Christianity adds the Mystery of the blood, the Mystery of human fire, to the ancient Mysteries.

Regarding the human soul on earth in an earthly form the ancient Mysteries say:—Man’s spiritual being is enveloped by a physical body. It has to return again to the spiritual. As long as the human ‘I’ was not seized by an impulse that could be found on the earth, so long could religion not teach what may be called the self-redemption of the human ‘I.’ The great Avatars incarnate from time to time when mankind needs help. Thus Vishnu descends from time to time. One incarnation of Vishnu is Krishna, who explains what the nature of an Avatar is: He expresses what he himself is in the Bhagavad Gita: ‘I am the Spirit of Creation, its beginning, its middle and its end.’ The omnipotence of the Divine Being could not be described more beautifully—the Divine Being whom Moses saw in the element of fire, who not only weaves and moves through the world as a macrocosmic God, but who can also be found in the inner being of man. The Krishna-Being lives in all that bears the human countenance as a great ideal towards which the germ of man is developing. And when the breath can be spiritualised through the impulse of Golgotha, we have the principle of redemption through that which dwells within us: The Avatar Christ has redeemed us because He has the power for this, and thereby shows where the victory of the spirit over matter may be found.

Therefore, full redemption cannot be brought to Kashiapa until Maitreya Buddha comes for him. For only when the physical body is so spiritualised through Christ does it no longer need the cosmic fire, but the fire that seethes within man that brings about redemption. Thus we are able to illuminate legends such as these with the light that streams from Golgotha.

To begin with the world is dark. We may compare it to a dark room in which at first we can see nothing; we kindle a light and then all the splendour of the room appears. To begin with man strives in darkness; but when the true light burns, which comes from Golgotha, everything is illumined, even to the farthest future. To express this as a certainty is the purpose of the Easter festival. And when humanity can remember that through Spiritual Science it may really experience the most important symbols of the festival of Easter, the soul will feel itself expanded into an universe and will gradually rise to unite with all that lives there, ever more and more spiritually, from man to the universe. These are the sounds of the spiritual Easter bells, and when we hear them, all doubt about the spiritual world will vanish. Life in the spirit has claimed us again when we understand these spiritual Easter Bells.

One great advantage of such an important time-symbol as the festival of Easter is that it makes our hearts and souls well fitted to see more and more deeply into the riddle of the nature of man.

Let us once more consider the Oriental legend upon which we threw a little light in the last lecture and regarding which we already know that it contains something important for human life—the legend of Kashiapa, the enlightened pupil of Sakya-Muni, who possessed all the wisdom of the East and regarding whom it was justly said that all his followers could not preserve what he had drawn from Sakya-Muni’s fount of wisdom. The legend says that when Kashiapa was about to die he went to a cave in a mountain and died consciously, and that his body did not putrefy, but it could not be found by any human being until he was able to penetrate into such mysteries through Initiation. And it was prophesied that the vehicle of the ancient Wisdom would appear in a new form as Maitreya Buddha, who, when he has reached the zenith of his earthly existence will go to where the corpse is resting and will touch it with his right hand, and fire will come down from the universe and the undecayed body of Kashiapa will be drawn into the higher worlds. Thus the East is awaiting the appearance of Maitreya Buddha and his action on the body of Kashiapa.

Will it be so? Will he appear? Will Kashiapa’s body be withdrawn by the wonderful fire?

We shall be able to get an inkling of the profound wisdom contained in this as an Easter miracle when we inquire into the miraculous fire that is to take up Kashiapa’s remains.

In the last lecture we observed that Christ announced Himself to Moses in the thunder and fiery lightning of Sinai. For it was none other that said to him, ‘I AM THE I AM.’ He gave His blessing in a prophetic manner as a fiery flash of lightning upon Sinai. And then He appeared in the microcosm in Palestine: The God who announced Himself in the heavens appeared in a human body in the Event of Palestine in the fire that dwells in our blood, and through this Event—if we follow the consequences of what it was to the earth—we find the fire which takes up Kashiapa’s remains.

The progress of the world consists in everything material being spiritualised. The fire appeared materially to Moses in the burning thorn-bush and upon Sinai; through Christ this fire is spiritualised. And who sees the burning fire after the Christ-Event? It is the spiritual eye which is opened by the Christ- Impulse itself and which the Christ-impulse has awakened. Thus the fire worked spiritually. It was perceived again when Saul’s eyes had been enlightened, when he became clairvoyant and recognised in the heavenly fire the One who had accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha.

Thus both saw the Christ: Moses saw Him in the material fire; but the Christ spoke to the illuminated eye of Saul from the spiritualised fire. As matter is related to spirit, so in the course of the development of the world is the material fire of Sinai related to the fire that streamed towards Saul or Paul.

And what has come into evolution through all this? Let us consider the figures in humanity which were the expression for the Avatars, such as Vishnu, Krishna, etc., who had to appear in order that humanity might find the way back into the spiritual world. In ancient times humanity needed divine power for this. Through the Mystery of Golgotha the power has been given to man to find within himself the forces which raise him up. Christ descended deeper than all, for He used even this earthly body for this. Christ redeemed humanity with human powers; He placed these powers before our souls in the form in which they can be in their original power. What would have happened if Christ had not appeared? If the Enlightened Ones had been able to descend they would at length have found only human beings so steeped in matter that the spiritual powers would not have been able to bring man up again out of the impure matter. The Oriental sages looked out sadly into the future, for they knew that Maitreya Buddha would appear, but the Ancient Wisdom would then have no disciples. And if it had continued in this way, Maitreya Buddha would also have preached to deaf ears, and that which would have been on the earth would have caused Kashiapa’s body to decay, so that Maitreya Buddha would not have been able to carry up Kashiapa’s remains. They pondered sadly as to whether there would be anyone left who would understand Maitreya Buddha. Something had to sacrifice itself in a physical substance, not a God in human form, but a human being who bears God within him, in order that matter may be made into such a purified substance that for future incarnation the ancient wisdom can be intelligible. And it can be understood that the Event of Golgotha has acted in this way for humanity. How deeply has it penetrated into the nature of man and into human existence!

Six hundred years before the Event of Golgotha we see certain occurrences in the human soul and again six hundred years after. One can scarcely present to the human soul a greater or more important time than that sublime period when Buddha was gradually enlightened. He appeared in a royal palace—not in a stable, among poor shepherds. It should be noticed, however, that he went forth from the palace and observed life in its various forms. He perceived that ‘birth is sorrow.’ He searched further with his soul and found a sick man: thus can man become when he is carried to the earthly world by the thirst for existence: disease is sorrow. He found an old man who had gradually lost the use of his limbs: age is sorrow. He saw a corpse: death stood before him with all that it blots out. To be separated from what one loves is sorrow. To be united with what one does not love is sorrow. Not to have what one desires is sorrow.

The teaching regarding sorrow rang out with sublimity and innumerable people learned that they ought to long for release from this earthly existence, because only deliverance from the thirst for existence can lead to the spiritual.

And now let us allow our vision to sweep over a period of 1,200 years, 600 b.c. to 600 a.d. Notice, one thing in the age of Buddha, viz., the corpse and what Buddha felt and taught when he saw this—and then 600 years after the Event of Golgotha I Innumerable souls then turned towards a wooden cross upon which hung a corpse; but from this corpse proceeds the impulse through which life conquers death. It is the opposite pole of what Buddha perceived when he saw a corpse. It is the certainty that existence is not sorrow. Six hundred years after the Event of Golgotha the body of Christ Jesus on the cross was the token of the knowledge of life, the resurrection of life, the victory over death. Although in 600 b.c. the entry into the physical world was sorrow for man, how do the great truths of life now present themselves before the soul? Is birth sorrow? Those who understand the Event of Golgotha, who feel that they are connected with it, gladly enter upon this earth which Christ has entered; and through the union with Christ comes the knowledge that birth is the door to the finding of the Redeemer who also clothed Himself with physical matter. Is disease sorrow? No! Even though humanity cannot yet understand what the spiritual life is which streams in with Christ, and that the one who lets himself be filled with the Christ-Impulse can overcome all disease by the powers he develops within him; for disease is an opportunity to overcome a hindrance, and this man can do through the strength of the Christ-power developed within him. One has to deal with the burden of old age in the same manner. And death is not sorrow, because through the Event of Golgotha death has been overcome. Can separation be sorrow? No! The souls that permeate themselves with the Christ-power know that love can form ties that cannot be severed, and there is nothing in the life between birth and death and between death and re-birth to which we cannot find the way through the Christ-Impulse; Christ brings us together with that which we love. In the same way, being united with what we do not love cannot be sorrow, because the Christ-Impulse teaches us to love all and when we find the way that leads to this, it can no longer be sorrow, for there is nothing else that we do not embrace in love. This is the case also with desire, for desire is so purified by the Christ-Impulse that one only desires what ought to come to one. If it is withheld, then it is for purification and the Christ-power gives one the strength to feel it as a purification. Therefore again it is no longer sorrow.

There is no greater impulse to anew becoming, and also to further development than the Event of Golgotha, which continues to work on and will positively have mighty consequences to the humanity of the future. Christ is the greatest Avatar and when such a Being descends, as the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth, something most profoundly important comes into evolution. We sow a grain of wheat in the earth; it germinates: the stalk and ears of wheat grow and the many, many grains are facsimiles of the one grain of wheat we sowed in the earth. It is exactly the same in the spiritual world, for ‘all things transitory are but symbols’ (as below, so above). When the Event of Golgotha had taken place, something happened to the etheric body and the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth: through the power of Christ they became multiplied and in the spiritual world there have been since that time many, many reproductions of this astral body and this etheric body, and these worked on. When a spiritual individuality descended, it clothed itself with an etheric body and an astral body; and when an individual’s karma allowed it, an image of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into him. This was the case, for example, with St. Augustine in the early centuries of our era; into his etheric body was woven a reproduction of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, but his astral body and ‘I’ were his own.

Thus that which had enveloped the God-Man of Palestine was transferred to other human beings who were then to carry the impulse further in humanity. As Augustine had his own ‘I’ and his own astral body, he was subject to all the doubts and waverings that he had such difficulty in overcoming; this came from these still imperfect parts of his being. When he struggled through, he came upon the forces of the image of Jesus of Nazareth in his etheric body and was thereby able to give out truths as a great mystic for some time—and there were many such. Hence the great archetypal ideas were able to flash out in them. These originated from the interwoven copy of the sacred etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth in certain people of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries a.d. In addition to the contents of the teaching of Christ they received interwoven into them an image of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth; therefore they knew from inner enlightenment that Christ lives. It was the same with Paul when he saw. Was it possible for him to have been converted before then through what could be told regarding the Event of Palestine? No one had been able to make a Paul out of Saul and yet the most important impulse went out through him who at that time became a believer through an occult event. Those who wish to have a Christianity without spiritual enlightenment have a curious idea of it!

Again, reproductions of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth propagated themselves in inner enlightenment in other human beings. They could experience Christ, for they bore within them something which came from the historical Christ. Later, in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, people who through karma were ready for it had interwoven into them images of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Such, for example, were Francis of Assisi, Elizabeth of Thüringen, and others. Many, many were called through the continuous activity of Christ to carry it to posterity.

But something else was preserved for later times, viz., the copy of the I or Ego of Jesus of Nazareth. His I or Ego indeed disappeared from the three bodies when the Christ entered into them, but, through Christ, a still higher image remained and still exists to-day. It can be found in human beings who have made themselves ready for this and thereby at the same time for the splendour of the Christ-power and the Christ-Impulse which it bears within it. The physical expression for this is the blood. It is a great mystery. But there have always been those who knew this, who throughout the centuries since the Event of Golgotha have had to take care that humanity gradually matured to receive images of Jesus of Nazareth in the same way that images can be received in the etheric body and astral body. To this end a Mystery had to be founded, so that this ‘I’ could be preserved in secret. A brotherhood was formed, the Brotherhood of the Holy Grail, which guarded this Mystery. This society has always existed, and in it it is said that its Founder took the cup which Christ Jesus used at the Holy Supper and in this cup he caught the blood of the Redeemer which flowed from the cross and collected it in the Holy Grail; that is, he preserved the cup with the Mystery of the image of the ‘I’ or Ego of Christ Jesus in this holy place, in the Brotherhood which consists of the Brothers of the Holy Grail.

To-day the time has come in which, if the hearts of men are opened by a spiritual life, they can rise to the understanding of this great mystery, when looking upon that sacred cup, souls become mature enough to know the mystery of the Christ-Ego, or I that can develop in each human being. In order to receive the Christ ‘Ego,’ or ‘I’ in contemplation upon the Holy Grail one needs to understand that which has here happened as a fact and to take it as a fact. And when mankind has been prepared more and more, the Christ-Ego will develop in them more and more; they will understand in how far the Christ- Ego is the great ideal for humanity. And when humanity has understood this, it will begin to perceive that the certainty of life proceeds from the death upon the Cross of Golgotha. The Christians of the future will understand Christ differently—Christ Who underwent death. They will understand Him as the triumphant Risen One of the Apocalypse, as the Uplifted One Who raises all mankind with Him to the right hand of the Father.

Thus the symbol of Easter points us to the perspective of the whole future of the earth and it shows us that the whole of Christendom will one day from being a Saul become a Paul.

Christ made Himself known to Moses in the material fire on Sinai; He will appear to us in a spiritualised fire. He is with us all the days, even to the end of the world, and He will appear in the spiritual fire to those who have cleared their vision through the Event of Golgotha. They will see Him. Formerly they saw Him differently, but in future they will see the true form of Christ in a spiritual fire. Through Christ having worked down so deeply, even into the physical bony structure or skeleton, He has so purified this physical matter that it will never become what the Enlightened Ones of the East supposed it would, when they thought that the Enlightened One of the future would not find human beings on the earth who would understand Him. Christ was led to Golgotha in order that the fire should not become dross, but that it should be spiritualised. Human beings will understand the fire when they themselves are spiritualised; and thus Maitreya Buddha will find understanding, and humanity will understand the primeval Cosmic Wisdom.

Whither will Kashiapa’s remains be taken and through what will they be rescued? We are told that Maitreya Buddha will touch him with his right hand and he will be withdrawn in a fire.

In Paul’s fire we have to see the spiritualised fire in which will be hidden the body of Kashiapa. In this fire will be hidden all the greatness of the future. We shall see it stream into that which man will become through the Mystery of Golgotha.

A Redeemer meets us in the symbol of the Easter bells; they give us to understand how man ascends or swings himself up to spiritual heights through the Mystery of Easter.

Faust became blind, yet clear light shone within, so that he could work upwards into the worlds where man’s more noble principles will be saved, in the purified spirituality which has flowed into humanity from the Event of Golgotha.