The Rudolf Steiner Archive

By receiving the Spirit the human soul develops to ever further stages in the course of cosmic existence. The Spirit is eternal, but the way in which it takes effect, how it manifests in what man can feel, love and create on Earth—that is new in every epoch.

When we think in this way of the Spirit and its progressive manifestation in the course of man's existence, the Eternal and the Transitory are revealed to our eyes of soul. And in particular manifestations of life here and there, we can constantly perceive how the Eternal reveals itself, comes to expression in the Transitory and then vanishes again, thereafter to assert its reality in perpetually new forms.

And today too we can feel that the emblems of Christmas around us are reminiscent of past forms in which the Eternal, manifesting in the outer world, was wont to be symbolised. Certain it is that in the second half of December at the present time, when we go out into the streets of a great city and look at the lights that are intended to be invitations into the houses to celebrate the Christmas Festival, our aesthetic sense must be pained by displays of so-called Christmas goods, while inventions out of keeping with Christmas trees and Christmas symbols whiz past—motor cars, electric tramcars and the like. These phenomena, as experienced today, are utterly at variance with each other. We feel this still more deeply when we realise what the Christmas Festival has become for many of those who want to be regarded in the great cities as the representatives of modern culture. It has become a festival of presents, a festival in which little remains of the warmth and profound depth of feeling which in a past by no means far distant surrounded this most significant season.

Among the experiences restored to us by our anthroposophical conception of the world and way of thinking, will certainly be the warmth of feeling that pervaded the human soul at the times of high festival in the ancient Church's year. We must learn to understand once again how necessary it is for our souls to become aware at certain times of the connection with the great Universe out of which man is born, in order that our intellectual, perceptive and also moral forces may be revitalised. There was an epoch when Christmas was a festival when all morality, all love, all philanthropy could be revivified; in its symbols it radiated a warmth undreamed of by the dreariness and prosaicness of modern life. Nevertheless deep contemplation of these symbols could be a means of developing the perceptions, experiences and convictions of which we ourselves can be aware concerning the resurrection of mankind, the birth of the Spirit of Anthroposophy in our souls.

There is indeed a connection between the earlier conceptions of the Festival of Christ's birth and the modern anthroposophical conceptions of the birth of truly spiritual ideas and ways of thinking, of the birth of the whole anthroposophical spirit in the cradle of our hearts; there is indeed a connection. And maybe it is the anthroposophist of today who will most readily enter into what for long ages was felt at the time of the Christmas Festival and could be felt again if there were any hope of something similar emerging from the atmosphere of materialism surrounding us today.

But if we want to experience the Christmas Festival in the truly anthroposophical way, we cannot limit ourselves to what the Christmas Festival was once upon a time or is now. Wherever we look in the world, and into a past however distant, something that can be compared to the thoughts and feelings connected with the Christmas Festival has existed everywhere. Today we will not go back to the very far past but only to the feelings and experiences which men living in the regions of Middle Europe might have had before the introduction of Christianity at the time of the year when our own Christmas Festival is drawing near. We will think briefly of epochs prior to the introduction of Christianity into Europe, when in regions subject to relatively harsh climatic conditions our forefathers in Europe were obliged to make their living by spending the summer as pastoral or agricultural workers, while their feelings and inclinations were intimately connected with the manifestations of the great world of Nature. They were full of thanksgiving for the sun's rays, full of reverence for the great Universe—a reverence that was not superficial but deeply felt. And when the herdsman or cattle breeder of ancient Europe was out on his rough fields, often in scorching heat, he was inwardly aware not only of the outer, physical aspect of Nature, but in his whole being he felt intimately connected with whatever was radiated to him from Nature; with his whole heart he lived in communion with Nature. It was not only that in his eyes the physical rays of the sun were reflecting the light, but in his heart the sunlight kindled spiritual jubilation, summer-like exultation which culminated in the St. John's fires when the spirit of Nature shouted for joy and was echoed from the hearts of men. Intimate community was also felt with the animal world as being under man's guardianship.

Then came autumn, followed by the season of rigorous winter—and I am thinking now of times when winter swept through the land with a bleakness of which modern humanity has little idea. This was a time when, with the exception of what it was absolutely essential to preserve, the last head of cattle had to be slaughtered. All outer life was stilled; it was actually as though a kind of death made its way into the hearts of men, a kind of darkness, in contrast with the mood that pervaded these same hearts throughout the summer. Those were times when the unique manifestations of climate and of Nature, enabled echoes of ancient clairvoyance still to persist in Middle Europe. People who during the summer were full of joy and merriment, as though Nature herself were rejoicing in their hearts—these same people could become inwardly quiescent during the time of approaching winter; their own souls could respond to an echo of the mood that pervades a man when, unmindful of the outer world, he withdraws into his own inner world in order to become aware of the indwelling Divinity.

So it can be said that Nature herself made it possible for these ancient European peoples to descend from life in the external world deep down into their own inmost being. When November came near this descent into death and darkness was felt for weeks to be a solemn season, to be a harbinger of the approaching dawn of what was called the Yuletide Festival. This mood was a clear indication of how long the remembrance of ancient clairvoyant faculties had persisted among all the peoples of Northern and Middle Europe. During the season following the period roughly corresponding to our months of January and February, men felt inwardly aware of the portents of renewed rejoicing, renewed resurrection in Nature. They were aware of a foretaste of what they would subsequently experience in the external world; but when the fields were still covered with snow, when icicles were still hanging from the trees, when outside in Nature nothing indicated a future state of exultation, there was a persistent condition of withdrawal into themselves, of inner repose which was ultimately transformed in the soul in such a way that a man was, as it were, liberated from his own selfhood.

This intermediate state experienced by our forefathers at the approach of the season we now call spring was felt by them somewhat as the clairvoyant feels his astral body, before that astral body is completely cleansed and purified. It was as if the spiritual horizon were filled with all kinds of animal forms. And those men tried to give expression to this. For them it represented a transition from the profound, festival mood of approaching winter to the mood which would again pervade the soul during summer. And they imitated in symbols what the astral body reveals, imitated it in the form of uninhibited games and dances; by donning animal masks they imitated this transition from a state of complete inner repose to a state of exultant abandonment to great Nature.

When we ponder over this, when we reflect that the hearts and minds of peoples over wide areas were completely given up to such a mood, then we understand that there was present on this soil the feeling of sinking down into the outer physical darkness, into the outer physical death of Nature; we also understand the deep, persistent feeling that in sinking down into the physical death of Nature, into physical darkness, the supreme light of the Spirit can be revealed; and how the experience of being submerged in physical death is directly transformed into that mood of unbridled abandonment to which expression can be given by animal masks, unrestrained dancing and music. Admittedly there was not yet any fully developed feeling that if a human being is to find the highest light he must seek for it in the deepest depths of being; but through an inner, loving union with the weaving forces of Nature a soil was prepared into which there could be planted a knowledge to be imparted to men concerning their further evolution through the power of the Christ Impulse. To these peoples living all over Europe it was only necessary to say—not in dry, abstract words but speaking to the heart by means of symbols: ‘Where you plunge into darkness, into the death of outer Nature, there—if you have prepared your souls to perceive and feel rightly, you can find an eternal, imperishable Light. And this Light has been brought into the evolution of mankind through the quickening power of the Mystery of Golgotha, through the events in Palestine’.

It is characteristic of the centuries immediately following, that in Europe the warmest, most intimate feelings for the Christ Impulse were to be kindled by the thought of the Christ Child, by the birth of the Christ Child. And if we believe that mankind has a mission, what conception must we have of that mission? We must conceive that man has a divine-spiritual origin, that he can look back to that origin, but that he has descended farther and farther away from it, has become more and more closely interwoven with physical matter, with the outer physical plane. But we must also be aware that through the mighty Impulse which we call the Christ Impulse, man can overcome the forces that led him down into the physical world and tread the path upwards into the heights of spiritual life.

Having grasped this we must say to ourselves: as the human Ego is today, incarnated in a physical body, it has descended from divine-spiritual heights of existence and feels entangled with the world of the outer physical plane. But this Ego that has become sinful is rooted in another Ego, a guiltless Ego. Where then, does the Ego that is not yet interwoven with the physical world contact us? At the point when, looking back in memory over our life as it takes its course between birth and death, we come to the moment in our early years when consciousness of our Ego dawned for the first time. The Ego is there, although we are not aware that it is living and active within us, even when there is no realisation of Egohood at all. The Ego looks into the surrounding world, is interwoven with the physical plane even before there is any consciousness of Egohood. In its childlike, innocent state the Ego is nevertheless present and may hover before us as an ideal to be regained, but permeated then with everything that can be experienced in this school of physical life on the Earth. And so, although it will inevitably be difficult for the prosaic intellect to find words in which to clothe it, this ideal can be felt by warm human hearts: ‘Become what your Ego is before there is any concept of it! Become what you could be if you were to find your way to the Ego of your childhood! Then that Ego will shine into everything acquired by the Ego of your later years!’—And inasmuch as we feel this to be an ideal, it shines before us in Jesus of Nazareth, in whom the Christ subsequently became incarnate.

Experiences such as these enable us to understand that an impulse promoting growth and development could move the hearts of the simplest people all over Europe when they contemplated the incarnation of the Being who was afterwards able to receive the Christ into himself. So we realise that it was truly a step forward when feelings connected with the Festival of the birth of Jesus were inculcated into experiences connected with the old Yuletide Festival. It was indeed a mighty step forward and may perhaps best be characterised by saying that in those dark days, when souls gathered together in order to prepare for the rejoicings of the new summer—in that darkness the light of Christ Jesus was kindled!

An echo of what took place among European peoples in those early times still persists in the Christmas Plays which during the nineteenth century, or at any rate during its latter half, had become little more than objects of study for learned investigators and for collectors. During the Middle Ages, however, these Plays were already being performed in a characteristic style during the Christmas period. All the emotions, all the vitality kindled in souls living in the regions where, when Yuletide was approaching, people of an even earlier period had experienced what I have been describing—all these feelings were awakened by the Plays. And as we turn from the description of the old Yuletide Festival to the medieval Christmas Plays, we ourselves can realise what warmth swept through the European peoples with the advent of Christianity. An impulse of a unique kind penetrated then into the hearts and souls of men.

Conditions now are, of course, different from those of earlier times, and in the nineteenth century these Plays were regarded simply as perquisites of erudition. Nevertheless it was a moving experience to make the acquaintance of older philologists and authorities on Germanic mythology and sagas, men who with intense enthusiasm devoted profound study to whatever fragments remained of the Christmas Plays that were performed in different regions. I myself had an elderly friend who during the fifties and sixties of last century had been a Professor at a College in Pressburg and while there had devoted a great deal of time to research among the Germanic peoples who had been driven from Western to Eastern Hungary. He also admired the charming customs and the language of the now Magyarised German gypsies and of other folk living at that time in Northern Hungary. It came to his knowledge that early Christmas Plays were still performed in a village near Pressburg. And he—I am speaking of my old friend Karl Julius Schröer—went to the village in an attempt to discover what vestiges of these old Plays still survived among the country people. Later on he told me a great deal about the wonderful impressions he had also received of what was left of Christmas Plays belonging to far, far earlier times.

In a certain village—Oberrufer was its name—there lived an old man in whose family it was an inherited custom when Christmas came near, to gather together those in the village who were suitable to be alloted parts in a Play in which the Gospels' story of Herod and the Three Kings would be presented in a simple way.

To understand the unique character of these Christmas Plays, however, we must have some idea of the kind of life led by simple folk in olden times. It now belongs to the past and must not be repeated. To make the gist of the matter clear, let me just put this question: Is there not a particular time of the year when the snowdrop flowers? Are there not for the lily-ofthe-valley and for the violet particular seasons when they take their own places in the macrocosm? Certainly, under glass they can be made to flower at other periods but it really gives one pain to see a violet flowering at a time other than that which properly belongs to it. There is little feeling for such things in our day but something of the kind can be said about the people of earlier times. What men felt during certain periods of the Middle Ages at the approach of autumn and of Christmas, when the dark nights were drawing on apace, what they felt in such a way that their intimate experiences were akin to the manifestations of Nature outside, akin to the snow and the snowflakes and the icicles forming on the trees—such feelings were possible only at the time of Christmas. It was a mood that imparted strength and healing power to the soul for the whole of the year. It renewed the soul, was a real and effective power. And how deeply one was moved a decade or so ago when the last indications of such feelings were still to be encountered here or there. From my own personal experience on the physical plane itself I can confirm that there were utterly good-for-nothing fellows who would not dare to be dissolute as the days shortened. At Christmastime those who were invariably the most quarrelsome, quarrelled less and those who quarrelled only now and then stopped quarrelling altogether. A real power was active in souls at that time of the year and these feelings abounded everywhere during the weeks immediately before the Holy Night.

What was it that people actually experienced during those weeks? Their experiences, translated into actual feelings, were that human beings had descended from a divine-spiritual existence to the deepest depth on the physical plane, that the Christ Impulse had been received and the direction of man's path reversed into one of reascent to divine-spiritual existence. That is what was felt in connection with everything to do with the Christ Event. Hence it was not only Christian happenings that people liked to present, but just as the Church calendar couples Adam and Eve's day on 24 December with the birthday of Jesus on the 25th, a performance of the Paradise Play was followed directly by the Play presenting Christ's birthday, denoting the impulse given for man's reascent to divine-spiritual existence. And this was deeply felt when the name EVA resounded in the Paradise Play – EVA, the mother of humanity, from whom men had descended into the vale of physical life. This theme was presented on one day and on the next there was a Play depicting the impulse which brought about the reversal of man's path. This reversal was indicated in the actual sounds: AVE MARIA. AVE was felt to be the reversal of EVA: AVE-EVA. People were deeply stirred by words which rang out countless times to their ears and hearts from the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth centuries onwards, and which were understood.

Ave maris stella (Hail, star of the sea,)
Dei mater alma (Nursing mother of God,)
Atque semper virgo (Virgin for ever and ever,)
Felix coeli porta (Blissful door to the heavens above.
Sumens illud Ave (Adopting that ‘Ave’
Gabrielis ore (Out of the mouth of Gabriel,
Funda nos in pace (Establish us in peace
Mutans nomen Evae! (Altering the name of ‘Eva’.

(Tr. by Owen Barfield)

It was felt that the Paradise Play must be performed in the mood of piety befitting the Holy Night of Christmas. This was a deep conviction, and as anthroposophists, when we hear how the performers in the Christmas Plays rehearsed, how they prepared themselves, how they behaved before and during the performances of the Plays, we may well say: Is this not reminiscent of the attitude to truth adopted in the Mysteries?—although that, admittedly, was a matter of even greater significance. We know that in the Mysteries truth could not be received in any superficial mood of soul. Those who are aware to some extent of the holiness of truth know how absurd it is to imagine that it could be found in the arid, prosaic lectures of modern times, lectures in which there is no longer any indication that truth must be sought by a pure, unsullied, well-prepared soul and that it will not be found by a soul inwardly unsanctified, whose feelings are not duly prepared for its reception. There is no longer any conception of this in our age of materialism when truth itself, in the way it is presented, has become utterly prosaic.

In the Mysteries, truth might be approached only after the soul had passed through probationary tests of purity, inner freedom and fearlessness. Are we not reminded of this when we hear of the old man whom Karl Julius Schröer had known, who while he was assembling his players demanded that they should observe the ancient rules. Anyone who has lived among village people knows what the first rule signifies. The first rule was that during the whole period of preparation none of the actors might visit a brothel. In the village this was a matter of tremendous importance, signifying that the task lying before the actors must be steeped in piety. Nobody, while he was rehearsing, might sing an unworthy song; that was another rule. Further, nobody should desire anything more than a good, honest livelihood. That was the third rule. And the fourth was that he who was the authentic guardian of the traditional Christmas Plays should in all things be obeyed. It was an office not willingly transferred to anyone else.

In the second half of the nineteenth century people collected these Plays, although by then the old feelings associated with them had vanished. Later on I myself came across indications of the piety and fervour of scholars who still had some contact with country folk living in the scattered provinces of Hungary, for example, and were collecting the old Plays and Songs. When I was once in Hermannstadt about Christmastime I found that the teachers at the Gymnasium (Grammar School) there had been busily collecting these Plays and I came across the Herod Play. And so in the second half of the nineteenth century it was still possible to find people who were gathering evidence of old customs in regions which I have mentioned in connection with the Yuletide Festival. Do not let us think of anything theoretical but let us picture this warm, magical breath of the Christmas mood presented in these Plays. We then have a conception of mankind's belief in divine-spiritual reality—a belief acquired through the Christ Impulse.

This deep study of the Christmas Plays was something that could be highly instructive for the present age when the realisation that Art is the offspring of piety, of religion and of wisdom has long since been lost! In these days, when people are apt to regard Art as being detached from everything else, when Art has degenerated, for example, into formalism, much could be learnt from considering how Art in all its aspects was once regarded as a flower of human life. Simple as was the presentation of these Christmas Plays, it nevertheless indicated a flowering of man's whole nature. In the first place, the boys taking part in the Plays must be God-fearing, must absorb into their whole character something that was like an essence of the Christmas mood. They were also obliged to learn how to speak in strict rhythm. At the present time, when the Art of speaking in the ancient sense has been lost, there is no inkling of the vitally important role played by rhythm and rhyme, or of how every movement and gesture of men otherwise accustomed only to handling flails were rehearsed in minutest detail. The actors devoted themselves for weeks on end to practising rhythm and intonation, and were wholly dedicated to what they were to present. For a true understanding of Art, much could be learnt from those customs today when we have forgotten to such an extent how to speak artistically that hardly more than the intellectual meaning of what we have to say is expressed. The essential charm of these old Christmas Plays, however, lay in the fact that in rhythm, intonation and gesture the whole man became articulate. It was indeed a significant experience to have witnessed even the last remnants of these customs.

When the Christmas days were over, the actors taking. the parts of the Three Holy Kings walked through the villages, but at no other time than immediately after Christmas. I still remember seeing the Three Kings going through the villages from house to house. They carried long strips of lattice work attached to shears, a star being fixed to the end of the lattice work. The star shot out when the shears were opened and the lattice work swung back in harmony with the rhythmic movements made by the Three Kings. The Kings wore the most primitive costumes imaginable but their way of bringing the appropriate facts to the notice of the people at the right time of the year and their complete forgetfulness of self, induced a mood of soul that will be utterly incomprehensible to our age unless there can be a spiritual awakening. What should awaken in us as the life of the spirit, transformed through Anthroposophy into Art, can be presented in Plays which transcend the normal standards of the present age. Such Plays will not necessarily be connected with festivals but will be concerned with what is eternal in the human soul, unrelated to any particular season.

The Christ Impulse that was a reality for the souls of a certain epoch could become for us a living experience. True, in a certain sense we are already deeply rooted in an age when materialism in the outer world has taken such a hold in every sphere that if this Christ Impulse is to be renewed, stimuli quite different from the simple methods employed in the Middle Ages are called for. A revitalisation of man's inner life is necessary. The goal of Anthroposophy should be to draw forth the deepest forces of the human soul, forces quite different from those indicated to us by the present Christmas symbols and customs. True as it is that through our Anthroposophy we can become aware of the breath of enchantment which filled men's hearts during performances of the Paradise and Christ-Plays and during all the experiences connected with the festival seasons, it behoves us also to face the other fact—that the eternal Spirit must live in ever new forms through the evolution of humanity. Hence the spectacle of the Christmas symbols should be an incitement to infuse into the Christmas mood the spirit of anthroposophical thinking. Those who have a right feeling of the mysteries of the Christmas night will be filled with hope as they look forward to what will follow the Christmas Festival as a second Festival: they will look forward to Easter, the Festival of Resurrection, when He who was born in the Christmas night will be victorious.

Thus we are convinced that all cultural life, all spiritual life must be pervaded and inwardly charged with anthroposophical conceptions, anthroposophical feeling, thinking and willing. In the future, my dear friends, there will either be an anthroposophical spiritual science or no science at all, only a kind of applied technology; in the future there will either be a religion permeated with Anthroposophy, or no religion at all, merely external ecclesiasticism. In the future, Art will be permeated with Anthroposophy or the various arts will cease to exist, because cut off from the life of the human soul they can have only a brief, ephemeral existence. So we look towards something that shines with the same certainty as Theodora's prophecy of the renewal of the vision of Christ in the first Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. With as great a certainty there stands before our souls the resurrection of the anthroposophical spirit in Science, Religion, Art and in the whole life of humanity. The great Easter Festival of mankind is arrayed before our foreshadowing souls.

We can understand that still there are ‘mangers’, still lonely places in which there will be born, as yet in the form typical of childhood, that which is to be resurrected among men. In the Middle Ages people were led into the houses and shown the manger—an imitation of the stable with the ox and the ass—where the Child Jesus lay near his parents and the shepherds, and the people looking on were told: There lies the hope for the future of mankind!

May all that we cultivate in our anthroposophical centres become in the modern age new mangers in which, under the guidance of the Being we call Christ Jesus, the new spirit may come to life. Today this new spirit is still at the stage of childhood, still being born as it were in the mangers which are the centres of anthroposophical activities, and bearing the pledge of victory—the pledge that we, as mankind, will celebrate the great Easter Festival, the Resurrection Festival of humanity in the new spirit which we already anticipate and for which we strive—the spirit of Anthrophosophy.

The character of Spiritual Science is such that the truths and data of knowledge contained in it increase in difficulty the farther we descend from universal principles to concrete details. You may already have noticed this when attempts have been made in different groups to speak about historical details, for example about the reincarnations of the great leader of the ancient Persian religion, Zarathustra, or about his connection with Moses, with Hermes, and also with Jesus of Nazareth.¹ On other occasions too, concrete questions of history have been touched upon. As soon as we descend from the great truths concerning the universe as pervaded and woven through by Spirit, from the great cosmic laws to the spiritual nature of a particular individuality, a particular personality, we pass from matters where the human heart will still accept, comparatively easily, this or that questionable point, into realms teeming with improbabilities. And, as a rule, those who are insufficiently prepared become incredulous when they confront this abyss between universal and specific truths.

Our study is intended to be an introduction to lectures which belong to the domain of occult history and will present historical facts and personalities in the light of Spiritual Science. In these lectures I shall have many things to say to you that will seem strange. You will hear many things that will have to reckon upon the will-for-understanding promoted by all the spiritual-scientific knowledge brought before you in the course of the years. For, after all, the finest, most significant fruit of the spiritual-scientific conception of the world is that, complicated and detailed as the knowledge is, we finally have before us not a collection of dogmas, but within us, in our hearts and feelings, we possess something that carries us beyond the standpoint we can reach through any other world-view. We do not imbibe so many dogmas, tenets, or mere information, but through our knowledge we become different human beings. In a certain respect, the aspects of Spiritual Science we shall now be considering call for more than a purely intellectual understanding—for an understanding by the soul, which at many points must be willing to listen to and accept intimations that would become crass and crude if pressed into too sharp outlines.

The picture I want to call up in your minds is that behind the whole evolutionary and historical process, through the millennia up to our own times, spiritual Beings, spiritual Individualities, stand as guides and leaders behind all human evolution and human happenings, and that in the greatest, most significant events in history, this or that human being appears with his whole soul, his whole being, as an instrument of spiritual Individualities standing and working with set purpose behind him. But we must familiarise ourselves with many a concept unknown in ordinary life if we are to gain insight into the strange and mysterious connections between earlier and later happenings in the course of history

If you will remind yourselves of many things that have been said through the years, you will be able to picture that in ancient times—and in Post-Atlantean times, too, if we go back only a few thousand years before what is usually called the historic era—men fell into more or less abnormal states of clairvoyance. Between our matter-of-fact waking consciousness, limited as it is entirely to the physical world, and the unconscious sleeping state, there was once a realm of consciousness through which man penetrated into spiritual reality. And we know that what is nowadays explained as poetic folk-fantasy by scholars who are themselves the originators of so many scientific myths and legends, is to be traced back to ancient clairvoyance, to clairvoyant states of the human soul which in those times gazed behind physical existence and expressed what it saw in the pictures contained in myths, fairy-tales and legends. So that in old, genuinely old myths, fairy-tales and legends, more knowledge, more wisdom and truth are to be found than in the abstract erudition and science of the present day. Therefore when we look back to very ancient times, we-find men who were clairvoyant; we know too that this clairvoyance faded away more and more among the various peoples in the different epochs. In the Christmas lecture to-day² I told you how in Europe, at a comparatively very late time, abundant remains of this ancient clairvoyance still survived. The extinguishing of clairvoyance and the advent of consciousness limited to the physical plane occur at different times among the different peoples.

You can conceive that through the culture-epochs after the great Atlantean catastrophe—through the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Greco-Latin culture-epochs and an into our own—the effects produced in the plan of world-history by the activities of men have been very diverse—inevitably so, because the peoples all stood in different relationships to the spiritual world. In ancient Persian and also in ancient Egyptian times, what man inwardly felt and experienced extended upwards into the spiritual world, and spiritual Powers played into his very soul. Not until the Greco-Latin epoch did this living connection between the human soul and the spiritual world cease in essentials; nor did it disappear completely until our own times. As far as outer history is concerned, the connection exists in our time only when, with the means that are accessible to man to-day, the link between the human soul and the realities of the spiritual worlds is sought consciously. Thus in ancient times, when man looked into his own soul, this soul enshrined not only what it had learnt from the physical world, had pictured according to the pattern of the things of the physical world, but the spiritual Hierarchies ranging above man up into the spiritual worlds were experienced as immediate realities. All this worked down to the physical plane through the instrument of the human soul, and men knew themselves to be connected with these individual Beings of the higher Hierarchies. When we look back, let us say, into the Egypto-Chaldean epoch—but it must be the earlier periods of it—we find men who are, so to say, historical personalities; but we do not understand them if we think of them as historical personalities in the modern sense.

When as men of the materialistic age we speak of historical personalities, we are convinced that it is only the impulses, the intentions, of the actual personalities in question that take effect in the course of history. But with this conception we can in reality understand only the men of the last three thousand years: that is—approximately of course—the men of the millennium which ended with the birth of Christ Jesus, and those of the first and the second Christian millennia in which we ourselves are living. Plato, Socrates, possibly also Thales and Pericles, are men who can still be understood as having at any rate some resemblance to ourselves. But farther back than that it is not possible to understand human beings if we attempt to do so merely by analogy with those living to-day. This applies, shall we say, to Hermes, the great Teacher of the Egyptian epoch, also to Zarathustra, and even to Moses. When we go back before the thousand. years preceding the Christian era we must reckon with the fact that wherever we have to do with historical personalities, higher Individualities, higher Hierarchies stand behind and take possession of these personalities—in the best sense of the word, of course. And now a strange phenomenon comes to light, without knowledge of which the process of historical evolution cannot really be understood.

Five culture-epochs including our own, have been enumerated. Many, many thousands of years ago we come to the first Post-Atlantean culture-epoch, the ancient Indian; this was followed by the second, the ancient Persian; this by the third, the Egypto-Chaldean; this by the fourth, the Greco-Latin; and this by the fifth, our own epoch. When we go back from the Greco-Latin to the Egyptian epoch we must change our whole way of studying history: instead of looking at the purely human aspect—which it is still possible to do in connection with the figures of the Greek world as far back as the age of the Heroes—we must now apply a different criterion by looking behind the single personalities for the spiritual Powers which represent the super-personal and work through the personalities as their instruments. We must have These spiritual Individualities always in mind, so that working behind some human being an the physical plane we can discern discern a Being of the higher Hierarchies who, as it were, takes hold of him from behind and Sets him at the appropriate place in evolution.

From this point of view it is highly interesting to perceive the connections between the really significant happenings—those which were determinative factors in the course of history—in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch and in the Greco-Latin epoch. These two culture-epochs follow one another, and to begin with we go back, let us say to the years from 2800 to 3200–3500 B.C.—which comparatively speaking is not so very far. Nevertheless we shall not understand happenings then—of which ancient history is already able to tell something to-day—unless behind the historical personalities we discern the higher Individualities. But then it also becomes evident to us that in the fourth, the Greco-Latin epoch, there is a kind of repetition of the really important happenings of the third epoch. It is almost as if things that in the earlier epoch an be explained through higher laws, must be explained in the following age through laws of the physical world, as if everything had sunk down, had become a stage more material, more physical. There is a kind of reflection in the physical world of great events of the preceding period.

By way of introduction, I want to draw your attention to how one of the most important happenings of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch is presented to us in a significant myth, and how this event is reflected, but at a lower stage, in the Greco-Latin epoch. I shall therefore be speaking of two parallel happenings which in the occult sense belong together, the one taking place half a plane higher, as it were, and the other entirely on the physical earth but like a kind of shadow-image on the physical plane of a spiritual event of the earlier epoch. Outwardly, it is only in the form of myths that humanity has ever been able to tell of events behind which stand Beings of the higher Hierarchies. But we shall see what lies behind the myth which describes the most significant event of the Chaldean epoch.³ We will look only at the main features of this myth.

There was once a great king, by name Gilgamesh. From the name itself, one who understands such matters will recognise that here we have to do not merely with a physical king, but with a divinity standing behind him, a spiritual Individuality by whom the king of Erech is inspired, who works and acts through him. Thus we have to do with one who in the real sense must be called a god-man.⁴ The story narrates that he oppresses the city of Erech. The city turns to its deity, Aruru, and she causes a helper to arise out of the earth. These are pictures of the myth. We shall see what deeply significant historical events lie behind it. The Goddess of the City produces Eabani out of the earth. Eabani is a kind of human being who, in comparison with Gilgamesh, seems to be of an inferior nature, for we are told that he was clothed in the skins of animals, was covered with hair, was like a wild man. Nevertheless in his wild nature there was divine Inspiration, ancient clairvoyance, clairvoyant knowledge, clairvoyant perception.

Eabani comes to know a woman of Erech and is attracted by her into the City. He becomes the friend of Gilgamesh and this brings peace to the city. Gilgamesh and Eabani together are now the rulers. Then Ishtar, the Goddess of Erech, is stolen by a neighbouring city. There upon Eabani and Gilgamesh go to war with the marauding city, conquer the king and bring the Goddess back again to Erech. Gilgamesh lives near her, and here we come to the strange fact that he has no understanding of the essential nature of the Goddess. A scene takes place, directly reminiscent of a Biblical scene described in the Gospel of St. John. Gilgamesh confronts Ishtar, but his conduct is very different from that of Christ Jesus. He upbraids the Goddess for having loved many other men before she had encountered him, reproaching her particularly for her most recent attachment. Thereupon the Goddess carries her complaints to that deity, that Being of the higher Hierarchies, to whom she belongs. She goes to Anu. And now Anu sends a bull down to the earth; Gilgamesh has to engage in combat with it. Those who recall Mithras's fight with the bull will see a resemblance here. All these events—and when we come to explain the myth we shall see what depths it contains—have led meanwhile to the death of Eabani. Gilgamesh is now alone. A thought comes to him that gnaws at the very fibres of his soul. Under the impression of what he has experienced, he becomes conscious for the first time of the thought that man is mortal; a thought to which he had previously paid no heed comes before his soul in all its terror. And then he hears of the only man of earth who has remained immortal, whereas all other human beings in the Post-Atlantean epoch have become conscious of mortality: he hears of the immortal Xisuthros far away in the West. And because he is resolved to fathom the riddle of life and death, he sets out on the perilous journey to the West.⁵—I can tell you at once that this journey to the West is nothing else than the search for the secrets of ancient Atlantis, for happenings prior to the great Atlantean catastrophe.

Gilgamesh sets out on his journey. The details are interesting. He has to pass through an entrance guarded by giant scorpions; the spirit leads him into the realm of death; he enters the kingdom of Xisuthros and there learns that in the Post-Atlantean epoch all men will inevitably be more and more penetrated with the consciousness of death. Gilgamesh now asks Xisuthros whence he has knowledge of his eternal being; how comes it that he is conscious of immortality? Thereupon Xisuthros says to him: “You too can have this consciousness, but you must undergo all that I had to experience in overcoming the terror, anxiety and loneliness through which it was my lot to pass. When the god Ea had resolved to let perish” (in what we call the Atlantean catastrophe) “that part of humanity which was to live no longer, he bade me to withdraw into a kind of ship. I was to take with me the animals that were to remain, and those Individualities who are truly to be called the Masters. By means of this ship I outlived the great catastrophe.” Xisuthros then tells Gilgamesh: “What was there undergone, you can experience only in your innermost being; but you can attain the consciousness of immortality if for seven nights and six days you refrain from sleep.” Gilgamesh wishes to submit to the test but soon falls asleep. Then the wife of Xisuthros baked seven mystic loaves which by being eaten are to be a substitute for what would have been attained in the seven nights and six days without sleep. With this “life-elixir” Gilgamesh continues his journeying, bathes as it were in a fountain of youth, and again reaches the borders of his own country in the region of the Euphrates and the Tigris. A serpent deprives him of the power of the life-elixir and so he reaches his country without it, but all the same with the consciousness that there is indeed immortality, and filled with longing to see the spirit at least, of Eabani. The spirit of Eabani appears to him, and from the discourse which then takes place we can glean how, for the culture of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, a consciousness of the link with the spiritual world could arise.—This relationship between Gilgamesh and Eabani is very significant. I have now outlined pictures from the significant myth of Gilgamesh which, as we shall see, will lead us into the spiritual depths lying behind the Chaldean-Babylonian culture-epoch. These pictures show that two individualities stand there: the individuality of one—Gilgamesh—into whom a divine-spiritual being has penetrated; and an individuality who is more of a human being, but of such a nature that he may be called a young soul, who has had few incarnations and for that reason has carried over ancient clairvoyance into later times—Eabani.

Eabani is depicted as being clothed in skins of animals. This is an indication of his wild nature; but because of this very wildness he is still endowed with ancient clairvoyance an the one hand, and an the other hand he is a young soul who has lived through far, far fewer incarnations than other souls who have reached a high level of development. Thus Gilgamesh represents a being who was ready for initiation but was not able to attain it, for the journey to the West is the journey to an initiation that was not carried through to the end. On the one side we see in Gilgamesh the actual inaugurator of the Chaldean-Babylonian culture, and working behind him a divine-spiritual Being, a kind of Fire-Spirit.⁶ And beside Gilgamesh there is another individuality—Eabani—a young soul who descended late to earthly incarnation. If you read the book Occult Science, you will find that the individualities returned only gradually from the planets.—The exchange of the knowledge possessed by these two is the root of the Babylonian-Chaldean culture, and we shall see that the whole of this culture is an outcome of what proceeds from Gilgamesh and Eabani. Clairvoyance from the divine man, Gilgamesh, and clairvoyance from the young soul, Eabani, penetrate into the Chaldean-Babylonian culture. This process, enacted by two beings working side by side, each of whom is necessary to the other, is then reflected in the later, fourth culture-epoch, the Greco-Latin, and in fact reflected on the physical plane. We shall of course only very gradually reach complete understanding of such a process. A more spiritual process is thus reflected on the physical plane when humanity has descended very far, when men no longer feel the relation of human personality to the divine-spiritual world.

These secrets of the divine-spiritual world were preserved in the places of the Mysteries. So, for example, many of the ancient, holy secrets which proclaimed the connection of the human soul with the divine-spiritual worlds were preserved in the Mysteries of Diana of Ephesus and in the Ephesian temple. A great deal in these Mysteries was no longer comprehensible in an age when human personality had come into prominence. And like a token of how little the purely external personality understood what had remained spiritually, there stands the half-mystical figure of Herostratus, who has eyes only for the superficial aspect of personality—Herostratus who flings the burning torch into the temple of Ephesus. This deed is like a token of the clash between the personality and what had survived from ancient spirituality. And on the very same day when a man, merely in order that his name might go down to posterity, throws the burning brand into the sanctuary of Ephesus, there is born the man who has achieved more than all others for the culture of personality—and on the very soil where the culture of were personality was meant to be overcome. Herostratus flings the burning torch on the day when Alexander the Great is born—the man who is all personality! Alexander the Great stands there as the shadow-image of Gilgamesh.⁷ A profound truth lies behind this. In the Greco-Latin epoch, Alexander the Great stands there as the shadow image of Gilgamesh, as a projection of the spiritual on to the physical plane. And Eabani, projected on to the physical plane, is Aristotle, the teacher of Alexander the Great.

Here indeed is a strange circumstance: Alexander and Aristotle standing, like Gilgamesh and Eabani, side by side. And we see how in the first third of the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch there is carried over, as it were, by Alexander the Great but transformed into the laws of the physical plane—that which had been imparted to the Babylonian-Chaldean culture by Gilgamesh. This comes to wonderful expression in the fact that, as a result of the deeds of Alexander, there was established an the scene of Egypto-Chaldean culture Alexandria itself, the city founded by Alexander in 332 B.C. in order that the great achievements of the Egypto-Babylonian-Chaldean culture-epoch might be brought together in one centre. And gradually all the streams of Post-Atlantean culture that were intended to come together did indeed converge on Alexandria, the city established an the scene of the third culture-epoch but with the character of the fourth.

Alexandria outlasted the beginnings of Christianity. Indeed it was in Alexandria that the factors of greatest significance in the fourth culture-epoch developed, when Christianity was already in existence. There the great scholars were working; there the three most important streams of culture flowed together: the ancient Pagan-Grecian stream, the Christian stream and the Mosaic-Hebrew stream. They interpenetrated one another in Alexandria. And it is impossible to conceive that the culture of Alexandria which was built entirely on the foundation of personality—could have been inaugurated in any other way than through the being who was inspired by personality—Alexander the Great. For now, through the very existence of this centre of culture, everything that formerly was super-personal, extending from the human personality upwards into the spiritual world, assumed a personal character. The personalities we find in Alexandria have, as it were, everything within themselves; the Powers from higher Hierarchies who guide the personalities and set them in their allotted places, are very little in evidence. All the sages and philosophers working in Alexandria seem to be embodiments of ancient wisdom transformed into human personality; it is the personal element that speaks out of them. The singular fact is that everything in ancient Paganism that could be explained only by the teaching of how gods came down and united with daughters of men in order to bring forth heroes—all this is transformed into personal forcefulness in the men in Alexandria. And the forms which Judaism, the Mosaic culture, assumed in Alexandria can be described from what is in evidence precisely during the period when Christianity was already in existence. Nothing is to be found of those deep conceptions of a link between the world of men and the spiritual world which were present in the age of the prophets and are still to be found in the last two centuries before the beginning of our era. In Judaism too, everything has become personality. There are gifted, able men in Alexandria, men possessed of extraordinarily deep insight into the secrets of the ancient occult teachings ... but everything has become personal; personalities are working in Alexandria. And it is there that to begin with, Christianity appears, shall we say, in a distorted, debased state of infancy. Christianity, whose real function is to lead the personal element in man upwards into the impersonal, made its appearance in Alexandria in a very ruthless form. Christian personalities, in particular, acted in such a way that we often have the impression: their deeds are anticipations of later actions by bishops and archbishops working on a purely personal basis. This applies both to Archbishop Theophilus in the fourth century and to his kinsman and successor, St. Cyril.⁸ We can judge them only an the basis of their human failings. Christianity, which was to give to mankind the greatest of all gifts, reveals itself to begin with in its greatest failings and from its personal side. But in Alexandria a sign and token was to stand before the whole evolution of humanity.

There again we have a projection on the physical plane of earlier, more spiritual conditions. In the Orphic Mysteries of ancient Greece there was a wonderful personality, one who was initiated in the Mystery-secrets and was among the most loveable, most interesting pupils of these Mysteries, well prepared by a certain Celtic occult training undergone in earlier incarnations. This individuality sought with deepest fervour for the secrets of the Orphic Mysteries. The pupils of these Mysteries had to live through in their own soul what is described in the myth of Dionysos Zagreus, who was dismembered by the Titans but whose body was carried away by Zeus into a higher life. How, as the result of a certain path taken in the Mysteries, man's life is surrendered to the outer world, how his whole being is torn in pieces so that he can no longer find his bearings within himself—this was to become an actual, individual experience in the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries.

When in the ordinary way we study animals, plants and minerals, what we learn is merely abstract knowledge because we remain outside them; but anyone who wishes to obtain knowledge in the occult sense must train himself to feel as if he were actually within the animals, plants and minerals, in air and water, in springs and mountains, in stones and Stars, in other human beings—as if he were one with them. all. Nevertheless, a pupil of the Orphic Mysteries had to develop the inner strength of soul which would enable him, re-established as a self-based individuality, to triumph over the disintegration of his being in the external world. When all this had become an actual human experience, it represented in a certain sense one of the very highest secrets of Initiation. And many pupils of the Orphic Mysteries had undergone such experiences, had lived through this disintegration in the world and, as a kind of preparation for Christianity, had therewith attained the highest experience within reach in pre-Christian times.

Among the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries was the loveable personality of whom I am speaking, whose earthly name has not come down to posterity, but who stands out clearly as a pupil of these Mysteries. Already in youth and then for many years, this person was closely connected with all the Greek Orphics during the period preceding that of Greek philosophy—a period of which no account is given in books an the history of philosophy. For what is recorded of Thales and Heraclitus is an echo of what the Mystery-pupils had accomplished in their way at an earlier period. And one of the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries was the individual of whom I have just spoken, whose pupil in turn was Pherecydes of Syros, referred to in the lecture-course given at Munich last year: The East in the light of the West⁹

Investigation of the Akasha Chronicle reveals that the individuality of that pupil of the Orphic Mysteries was reincarnated in the 4th century A.D. We find this individuality amid the activity and life of those gathered together in Alexandria, the Orphic secrets now transformed into personal experiences of the loftiest kind. It is very remarkable how all the Orphic secrets were transformed into personal experiences in this new incarnation. At the end of the 4th century, A.D., we find this individuality reborn as the daughter of a great mathematician, Theon. We see how there flashes up in her soul all that could be experienced of the Orphic Mysteries through vision of the great mathematical, light-woven texture of the universe. All this was now personal talent, personal genius. These faculties had now to be of so personal a character that it was necessary even for this individuality to have a mathematician as father in order that something might be received from heredity.

Thus we look back to times when man was still in living connection with the spiritual worlds, as was this Orphic pupil; and we see the shadow-image of this pupil among those who taught in Alexandria at the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century A.D. This individuality had as yet experienced nothing that enabled men at that time to see beyond the shadow-sides of Christianity at its beginning. For all that had remained in this soul as an echo of the Orphic Mysteries was still too powerful to enable any Illumination to be received from that other Light, the new Christ Event. What arose round about as Christianity, represented by men of the type of Theophilus and Cyril, was in truth of such a nature that this Orphic individuality, working now with personal faculties, had things far greater, far richer in wisdom to say and to give than those who represented Christianity in Alexandria at that time.

Theophilus and Cyril were both filled with the deepest hatred of everything that was not Christian in the narrow ecclesiastical sense in which these two bishops, in particular, understood it. Christianity had assumed in them such an entirely personal character that these two patriarchs levied hirelings in their service; men were collected from far and near to form bodyguards for them. Their aim was power in its most personal sense. They were utterly obsessed by hatred of what originated in ancient times and yet was so much greater than the new that was appearing in caricatured shape. The deepest hatred was directed by the dignitaries of Christianity in Alexandria against the individuality of the reborn Orphic pupil. The fact that she was branded as a black magician will not therefore surprise us. But that was enough to incite the whole mob of hirelings against the noble, unique figure of the reborn pupil of the Orphic Mysteries. She was still young, but in spite of her youth, in spite of the fact that she was obliged to undergo much that in those days, too, imposed great hardships an a woman during a long period of study, she found her way upwards to the light that outshone all the wisdom, all the knowledge existing in those days. And it was wonderful how in the lecture halls of Hypatia—for such was the name of this reincarnated Orphic pupil—the purest, most luminous wisdom in Alexandria was presented to the enraptured listeners. She drew to her feet not only the Pagans, bat also Christians of deep and penetrating insight, such as Synesius. She was an influence of outstanding significance, and the revival of the old Pagan wisdom of Orpheus transformed into personality could be experienced in Alexandria in the figure of Hypatia.

World-karma was working in the truest sense symbolically. What had constituted the secret of her Initiation was now projected, mirrored, on the physical plane. And here we come to an event that is symbolically significant in the case of many things that have taken place in historical times. We come to one of those events that is seemingly only a martyrdom, but is in reality a symbol in which spiritual forces, spiritual intimations are coming to expression.

On a day in March in the year 415 A.D., Hypatia fell victim to the fury of these who formed the entourage of the patriarch of Alexandria. They resolved to rid themselves of her power, of her spiritual power. The utterly uncivilised, wild hordes were rushed in from the environs of Alexandria as well, and the chaste young sage was fetched away under false pretences. She mounted the chariot, and at a given sign the enflamed rabble fell upon her, tore off her clothing, dragged her into a church, and literally tore the flesh from her bones. The fragments of her body were then scattered around the city by these hordes, completely dehumanised by their rapacious passions. Such was the fate of the great woman philosopher, Hypatia.

Symbolically, so to say, there is indicated here something that is deeply connected with the founding of Alexandria by Alexander the Great—although it happened a long time after the actual founding of the city. In this event, important secrets of the 4th Post-Atlantean epoch are reflected. This epoch, destined as it was to represent the dissolution, the sweeping-away, of the old, contained so much that was great and significant, and with paradoxical grandeur placed before the world a most pregnant symbol in the slaughter—one can call it nothing else—of Hypatia, the outstanding woman at the turn of the 4th-5th centuries of our era.

• 1. See among other lectures by Rudolf Steiner: Deeper Secrets of Human History in the Light of the Gospel of St. Matthew, lectures II and III; The Gospel of St. Matthew, notably lectures I, II, III; The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, lecture III; From Jesus to Christ, lecture VIII.
• 2. The lecture, not yet printed in English, was entitled: Yuletide and the Christmas Symbols. Stuttgart, 27.12.1910.
• 3. See Rudolf Steiner, World-History in the light of Anthroposophy, notably lectures III, IV, V.
• 4. See also: Jastrow (Mords), Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Chapter XXIII. (Boston, 1898.) Budge (E. A. Wallis), The Babylonian Story of the Deluge and the Epic of Gilgamesh. (London, 1920. Revised by C. J. Gadd, 1929.) Thompson (Reginald Campbell), The Epic of Gilgamesh (London, 1928.) Contains a fairly full text.
• 5. See Budge, op. cit., p. 50:
  
  "I myself shall die, and shall not I then be as Enkidi (Eabani)
  Sorrow hath entered into my soul,
  Because of the fear of death which hach got hold of me do I wander over the country ..."
  
  Xisuthros, said to mean "the exceedingly wise," is a Greek corruption of an earlier designation. He is the same being as Uta-Napishtim in the versions of the Epic mentioned abovc, and is the Babylonian Noah. He tells the story of the Deluge to Gilgamesh. Cp. Cory (Isaac Preston), Ancient Fragments, p. 49; also Enc. of Religion and Ethics, Vol. VI, pp. 642—3; and Budge, op. cit., PP. 25—40.
• 6. See Langdon, op. cit., pp. 207—8. The name Gilgamesh is said to mean: " The Fire-god is a commander."
• 7. Cp. Jastrow, op. cit., pp. 516–17
• 8. Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, 385–412. Persecuted the followers of Origen. Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria. Played a prominent patt at the Council of Ephesus in 431.
• 9. The passage on Pherecydes of Syros occurs in lecture 4 of the Course entitled The East in the Light of the West, pp. 67—71 in the English edition.

In the introductory lecture yesterday our attention was drawn to the fact that certain events in the more ancient history of mankind can be rightly understood only when we not merely observe the forces and faculties of the personalities themselves, but when we realise at the outset that through the personalities in question, as through instruments, Beings are working who allow their deeds to stream down from higher worlds into our world. We must realise that these Beings cannot take direct hold of the physical facts of our existence because, on account of the present stage of their development, they cannot incarnate in a physical Body which draws its constituents from the physical world. If, therefore, they desire to work within our physical world, they must make use of the physical human being—of his deeds, but also of his intellect, his powers of understanding. We find the influence and penetration of such Beings of the higher world the more clearly in evidence the farther back we go in the ages of the evolution of humanity. But it must not be imagined that this downpouring of forces and activities from the higher worlds into the physical world through human beings has ever ceased; it continues even into our own time.

To the spiritual scientist who for years now has been absorbing principles which lead his feelings and ideal to accept the existence of higher worlds—to him a fact such as this will certainly, from he outset, be to some extent comprehensible; for he is accustomed always to draw the connecting threads which link our knowledge, our thinking, our willing, with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. But from time to time the spiritual scientist is also in the position of having to guard against the materialistic conceptions which are so prevalent in the present age and make it impossible for those who stand aloof from the development of the spiritual life even to enter into what has to be said about the working of higher worlds into our physical world.

Fundamentally speaking, it is considered an antiquated attitude in our time even to speak of the influence of abstract ideas in the events of history. Many people to-day regard it as quite impermissible, in face of the genuinely scientific approach, to speak of certain ideas, abstract ideas which properly speaking can live only in the wind, taking effect in the successive epochs of history. A last semblance, at least, of belief in the influence of abstract ideas—although how they are to work is incomprehensible precisely because they are abstract ideas!—was still in evidence even in the 19th century, in Ranke's exposition of history¹⁰ But even this belief in ideas as factors in history is gradually being discarded by our progressively materialistic development, and in a certain respect to-day it is regarded as the sign of an enlightened mind in the domain of history to believe that all the characteristic features of the several epochs merely represent the convergence of physically perceptible actions, outer needs, outer interests and ideas of physical human beings. The time is now past when spirits such as Herder, as if through a certain inspiration, still portrayed the development of human history in a way which enables one to perceive that it is based on the assumption, at least, of the existence of living powers, living super-sensible powers manifesting through the deeds and the lives of men.¹¹ Those who want to be accounted very clever to-day, will say: “Well yes, a man such as Lessing certainly had many really intelligent ideas, but then, at the end of his life, he wrote nonsense such as you find in The Education of the Human Race, where the only way in which he could help himself out of his difficulties was by linking the strict conformity to law shown by the flow of historical development with the idea of reincarnation.” In the last sentences of The Education of the Human Race,¹² Lessing has actually expressed what is described by Anthroposophy on the basis of occult facts—namely, that souls who lived in ancient epochs and then absorbed active, living forces, carry over these forces into their new incarnations, so that behind physical happenings there is not an abstract onflow of ideas but an actual and real onflow of the spirit. As I said, a clever ass will insist that in his old age Lessing hit upon ideas as confused as that of reincarnation, and that these ideas must he ignored.—This reminds one again of the bitterly ironic yet brilliant note once written by Hebbel in his diary, to the effect that a fair motif would be that a master, taking the subject of Plato in his school, has among his pupils the reincarnated Plato, who understands what the master is teaching so little that he has to be severely punished!

The conception of the historical evolution of humanity has lost much of the earlier, spiritual insight, and Spiritual Science will really have to guard against the onslaught of materialistic thinking which comes from all sides and regards communications which are based on the spiritual facts as so much lunacy. That things have come to a pretty pass is shown, for example, in the fact that all those mighty pictures, those grand symbolical conceptions which emanated from the old clairvoyant knowledge and are expressed in the characters of legends and fairy-tales, have interpreters of the very oddest kind. The most curious production in this domain is undoubtedly Solomon Reinach's little book Orpheus, which has caused a certain furor in many circles in France. Everything from which the ideas of Demeter, of Orpheus, and of other mythological cycles are supposed to have sprung, is traced back in this book to purely materialistic happenings and it is often utterly grotesque how the historical existence of this or that figure, standing, let us say, behind Hermes or Moses, is alleged to have originated, and with what superficiality an attempt has been made to explain these figures as the inventions of poetic license, of human fantasy. According to Solomon Reinach's method it would be easy, sixty or seventy years hence, when outer memory of him will have faded somewhat, to prove that there never was such a man, but that it was simply a matter of popular fantasy having transferred the old idea of Reinecke Fuchs to Solomon Reinach. According to his method this would certainly be possible. The absurdity of the whole book is on a par with what is said in the Preface—that it has been written “for the widest circles of the educated public, even for the very young.” “For the very young”—since he emphasises that he has avoided everything that might cause a shock to young girls—although he has not avoided tracing back the idea of Demeter to a pig! He promises, however, that if his book gains the influence he hopes for, he will write a special edition for mothers, which will include everything that must still be withheld from their daughters.—That is the kind of thing we have come to!

One would like to remind students of Spiritual Science particularly, that it is possible to prove on purely external grounds that spiritual powers, spiritual forces have worked through human beings right up to our own century—and this quite apart from the purely occult, esoteric research with which we shall be mainly concerned here. But in order that we may understand how it is possible for Spiritual Science to maintain, on purely external grounds, that super-sensible powers exercise sway in history, let me point to the following.

Anyone who gains a little insight into the development of modern humanity, let us say in the 14th and 15th centuries and on until the 16th, will realise how infinitely significant in this outer development was the intervention of a certain personality, one in respect of whom it can be proved from completely external evidence that spiritual, super-sensible Powers worked through her. In order to throw a little light on the occult understanding of history, we may ask the question: What would the development of modern Europe have been if at the beginning of the 15th century the Maid of Orleans had not entered the arena of events? Anyone who thinks, even from an entirely external point of view, of the development that took place during this period, must say to himself: Suppose the deeds of the Maid of Orleans were erased from history ... then, according to the knowledge obtainable from purely external historical research, one cannot but realise that without the working of higher, super-sensible Powers through the Maid of Orleans, the whole of France, indeed the whole of Europe in the 15th century, would have taken on an altogether different form. Everything in the impulses of will, in the physical brains of those times, was directed towards flooding all Europe with a general conception of the State which would have extinguished the folk-individualities and under this influence a very great deal of what has developed in Europe during the last centuries through the interplay of these folk-individualities would quite certainly have been impossible.

Imagine the deed of the Maid of Orleans blotted out from history, France abandoned to her fate without this intervention, and then ask: Without this deed, what would have become of France? And then think of the role played by France in the whole cultural life of humanity during the centuries following! Add to this the facts which cannot be refuted and are confirmed by actual documents concerning the mission of the Maid of Orleans. This young girl, certainly not highly educated even by the standards of her time, suddenly, before she is twenty years old, feels in the autumn of 1428 that spiritual Powers of the super-sensible worlds are speaking to her. True, she clothes these Powers in forms that are familiar to her, so that she is seeing them through the medium of her own mental images; but that does not do away with the reality of these Powers. Picture to yourselves that she knows that super-sensible Powers are guiding her will towards a definite point—I am speaking to begin with, not of what can be told about these facts from the Akasha Chronicle, but only of what is confirmed by documentary evidence.

We know that the Maid of Orleans confided her vision first of all to a relative who—one would almost say, by chance-happened to understand her; that after many vicissitudes and difficulties she was introduced to the Court of King Charles who, together with the whole French Army, had come to his wit's end, as the saying goes. We know too, how after every conceivable obstacle had been put in her way, she finally recognised and went straight to the King, who was standing among such a crowd of people that no physical eye could have distinguished him. It is also known that at that moment she confided to him something—he wanted to test her by it—of which it can be said that it was known only to him and to the super-sensible worlds. You also know from ordinary history that it was she who, under the unceasing impulse and urge of her intense faith—it would be better to say, through her actual vision—and in face of the greatest difficulties, led the armies to victory and the King to his crowning.

Who intervened at that time in the course of history?—None other than Beings of higher Hierarchies! The Maid of Orleans was an outer Instrument of these Beings, and it was they who guided the deeds of history. It is possible that someone may say to himself: “If I had guided these deeds I would have guided them more wisely!”—because he finds one thing or another in the procedure of the Maid of Orleans at variance with his own way of thinking. Adherents of Spiritual Science, however, should not wish to correct the deeds of gods through human intellect—a very common practice in our so-called civilisation. There have also been people who quite in the Spirit of the present age, have wanted, as it were, to unburden modern history of the deeds of the Maid of Orleans. A characteristic modern work with this materialistic trend has been written by Anatole France. One would really like to know how materialistic thinking manages to reconcile itself with much irrefutable evidence—I am still speaking only of actual historical documents. And so because we are in Stuttgart and I sometimes like to take account of local matters, I want to quote from a document to which reference has already been made here.

Those who belong to Stuttgart certainly know that there once lived here a man¹³ who carried out important research on the Gospels. As spiritual scientists we certainly need not agree with the things—some of them extremely clever—that were brought forward by Gfrörer—that was his name—and we may be quite sure that if he had heard what is now being given in the domain of Spiritual Science he would have used terms he was often wont to apply to his opponents—whom he, with his stubborn-headedness, by no means always let off lightly. He would have said that these Theosophists, too, are people who are “not quite right in the head.” But this was before the time when, as is the case to-day, historical documents can be passed over for purely materialistic reasons if they happen to deal with inconvenient facts and obviously point to the working of higher forces in our physical world. And so I will again quote from a short document—a letter published in the first half of the 19th century. I will read you just a few paragraphs from this letter, which was quoted by Gfrörer at that time in justification of his belief. I will read a passage characterising the Maid of Orleans, and then ask you to think of the implications of such a vivid description.

After the writer of this letter has set forth what the Maid of Orleans accomplished, he continues:

“This and much more has the Maid brought about, and with God's help she will accomplish still greater things. The girl is of appealing beauty and manly bearing; she speaks little and shows remarkable sagacity; when she speaks she has a pleasing, delicately feminine voice. She eats little and abstains from wine. She takes pleasure in fine horses and weapons and admires well-accoutred and noble men. To be obliged to meet and converse with large numbers of people is abhorrent to her; her tears often overflow; she loves a happy face, endures unheard of toil, and is so assiduous in the manipulation and bearing of weapons that she remains uninterruptedly for six days—day and night—in full armour. She says that the English have no right to France, and therefore—as she says—God has sent her to drive them out and conquer them, but only after previous warning. For the King she shows the deepest veneration; she says he is beloved by God, is under special protection, and will therefore be preserved. Of the Duke of Orleans, your nephew, she says that he will be delivered in a miraculous way, but only after a demand for his release has been made to the English who hold him prisoner.

“With that, revered Duke, I bring my report to a conclusion. Still more wonderful things are happening and have happened than I can write of or describe to you in words. While I write this, the afore mentioned Maid has already gone to the neighbourhood of the city of Rheims in Champagne, whither the King has hastily set off for his anointing and crowning under God's protection. Most respected and powerful Duke, and greatly venerated master! I commend myself to you in all humility, while praying the Almighty to protect you and fulfil your desires. Written at Biteromis, the 21st day of June in the year 1429.

Your humble servant
PERCEVAL
Lord of Bonlaninth. Counsellor and
Chamberlain of the King of the French
and of the Duke of Orleans, Seneschal of
Berry.”

This letter¹⁴ was written by one who knew the Maid and was in close contact with the King. It is indeed amazing when one discovers all these things on purely occult grounds and with occult means of proof—for they are indeed to be found in the Akasha Chronicle—and then sees how, in cases like this, actual historical documents can also be produced. In short, it seems almost madness to doubt what was working through the Maid of Orleans. And when we also take into consideration the fact that through her deeds the whole history of modern time assumed a different aspect, this gives us the right to say that here, verified by documentary evidence, we can see the direct intervention of the super-sensible worlds. When the spiritual researcher goes further and seeks in his own way for the one who was the real Inspirer of the Maid of Orleans, he finds something very remarkable as he investigates the successive epochs of time. He finds that the same Spirit who worked through the Maid of Orleans as his instrument at that time had inspired—in a quite different form, a quite different way—another personality who was a philosopher at the Court of Charles the Bald. This was Scotus Erigena, through whose philosophical and theological ideas in an earlier period Europe had been so deeply influenced. And so we see that the same Powers work in different epochs in a different way through human beings who are their instruments; that there is continuity, an onflowing stream of happenings in what we call history.

I showed you yesterday how a significant myth of Babylonian-Chaldean times points to the penetration of the spiritual worlds into men upon whom much depended for the third Post-Atlantean period, for the whole of historical development in ancient Chaldea, in ancient Babylonia. But we must now also observe from the standpoint of occult science the two personalities hidden behind the legendary names of Gilgamish and Eabani. In the Sense of occult history we have to see in them personalities who stand at the starting-point of the Babylonian-Chaldean epoch of culture. The impulses proceeding from them are to be discerned again in the development of the really spiritual culture of ancient Babylonia and Chaldea.—Now Gilgamish was a personality who had many incarnations behind him and may therefore be called an “old” soul within the evolution of humanity.

You know from the book Occult Science that during the Lemurian epoch of earth-evolution only very few human beings had outlasted, on the earth itself, the happenings of this evolution, that only a few remained on the earth during the Lemurian epoch; that before the actual danger of the mummification of everything human began, the majority of souls withdrew from the earth to other planets, continuing their life on Mars, Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, arid so forth. Then, from the end of the Lemurian epoch and during the Atlantean epoch, these souls gradually came down to the earth in order to incarnate in earthly bodies under the changed earthly conditions, and to appear in ever new incarnations. Thus there are souls who came down comparatively early from the planetary worlds and others who came down late; indeed not until the later periods of Atlantean evolution. The souls who came down early have therefore more incarnations behind them in earth-evolution than those who came down later; hence we can call these latter, in contrast to the former, “younger” souls—souls who have taken less into themselves.

The individuality hidden behind the name Gilgamish was an old soul, and a younger soul was incarnated in Eabani, at the starting-point of the Babylonian civilisation. Indeed, in connection with human souls being younger or older in this sense, something very remarkable discloses itself—something that might almost be said to cause astonishment even to the occultist. If someone has reached the point to-day of giving a little credence to the truths of Spiritual Science, but otherwise still clings to the prejudices and criteria of the external world, it will seem plausible to him that modern philosophers or scholars, for example, should be accounted among the older souls. But, strangely enough, occult research finds just the opposite; and for the occultist himself it is surprising to find that in Kant, for example, there lived a young soul. Yes, the facts show that it is so ... it cannot be gainsaid. It can also be intimated here that younger souls—the majority at any rate—incarnate in the coloured races, so that it is the coloured races, especially the negro race, which mainly brings younger souls to incarnation. The characteristic quality of that kind of thinking which comes to expression in erudition, in the materialistic science of to-day, calls for younger souls. And it can be shown that in the case of many a personality where one would not in the least expect it, the preceding incarnation was in an uncivilised race. That again is what the facts tell us! It must be kept strictly in mind, for it is so. Naturally this does not in the least detract from the significance or value of the opinions we have formed about the world around us; nevertheless it must be grasped in order fully to understand the essentials here. In this sense, in Eabani we have to do with a young soul and in Gilgamish with an old soul in ancient Babylonia. The whole nature of an old soul will enable it early in life to grasp not only the essential element, the essential factor, in the existing culture, but also that which strikes into it as a new impulse, opening up a wide vista into the future.

There will be many, of course, who will protest if one tries to make it plausible to them that the Theosophists whom they are wont to look down upon are, generally speaking, older souls than people who deliver scientific lectures. Investigation shows, however, that this is so; and although spiritual research must not be misused for the purpose of forcing people to change their criteria of judgment, or of scoffing at what is after all part of the very make-up of our civilisation, nevertheless the truth must be faced fairly and squarely. Gilgamish, then, was a personality who, owing to his particular condition of soul, participated in the most progressive spiritual elements and spiritual factors of the age—in everything that threw light far into the future and at that time could be attained only if such a personality went through a kind of initiation. Through the imparting of something that can be received only through a certain initiation, Gilgamish was to be enabled to provide a kind of leaven for the Babylonian culture. He had to experience an initiation up to a certain degree.

Let us think of this Gilgamish at the point where he stood in the evolution of humanity before this initiation. He was a man of the third Post-Atlantean epoch. But in this epoch twilight had already fallen over the natural human clairvoyance, over what men were able to achieve through forces that were innate in them. These forces were no longer present to the degree that could enable any great number of men to look back into their earlier incarnations. If we were to go farther back, into the second or into the first Post-Atlantean epoch, we should find that the majority of human beings then on the earth could look back into their earlier incarnations, into the course of their soul-life before their present birth. But that faculty had been lost. In the case of Gilgamish, the Being who was to reveal himself through him, and who could do so only by leading him presently to a kind of initiation, kept a guiding hand upon him from the outset and set him at the place where he came to recognise his own position in the history of the world. As it were through super-sensible events, presented to us in the pictures of the myth I outlined to you yesterday, a friend was placed at the side of Gilgamish, a friend whose barbarity and uncivilised nature are indicated by the statement that his outer form was half animal. It is said that this friend had skins of animals on his body, which means that he was still covered with hair like the men of primeval times, that his soul was so young that it built for itself a body which showed the human being still in a savage state. Thus the more advanced Gilgamish had in Eabani a man at his side who, because of his young soul and the bodily Organisation conditioned by it, still possessed ancient clairvoyance. This friend was given to Gilgamish in order that he might find his own bearings in life. With the help of this friend he was then able to achieve certain things, such as the retrieval of that spiritual Power presented to us in the myth in the picture of Ishtar, the Goddess of the city of Erech. I told you how this Goddess had been stolen by the neighbouring City and that for this reason Gilgamish and Eabani together waged war against this city, vanquished its king and brought the Goddess back.

If we are to understand in the true historical sense such things as are presented to us in these old myths, we must investigate their occult background. Behind this rape of the City Goddess there lies something similar to the rape of Helen, who was carried off to Troy by Paris. We must realise that there are good grounds for what is stated in my little book, Blood is a very special Fluid. It is pointed out there that in the peoples of ancient times there was a kind of collective consciousness. A man did not merely feel his personal ego within his skin, but he felt himself as a member of the tribe, of the city-community. Just as the individual human soul is felt to be the centralising factor for our organism as a whole, uniting fingers, toes, hands, legs, so did man in very ancient times feel himself a member of the group-soul. Something of the kind still persisted in the early city-communities, even in ancient Greece. One common spirit, a folk-egohood, a tribal egohood, lived and weaved through the single personalities of the tribe or folk. But whatever could come to men's consciousness from this collective egohood had to be under the guidance of the Mysteries in the secret temples, where the priests directed the common spiritual affairs of a city or a tribe. And it is not a mere figure of speech, but in a certain sense an actual reality, to say that such a temple-sanctuary served as a dwelling-place for the city-ego, for the group-soul. There this group-soul had its habitation, and the priests of the temple were its servants. It was they who received the instructions of this group-soul through inspiration—through what was known as an Oracle—and bore them out into the world in order that one thing or another might come to pass. For we must think of the Oracles exactly in the sense I have indicated.

Now the direction of these temple-sanctuaries was bound up with certain secrets, and many conflicts in ancient times arose because the temple-priests of one city were carried off by the neighbouring city, so that in this way, together with the priests, the most important secrets of a city came into the hands of the neighbouring one. There you have the reality behind the picture of the abduction of Ishtar, the city Goddess, the group-soul of Erech, by the neighbouring city. The priests, the trustees of the temple secrets were made prisoners, because the neighbouring city hoped in this way to come into possession of the holy secrets and therewith of the power of the city in question. That is the real background.

In the condition of soul at first prevailing in him, Gilgamish could not himself be aware of such things; he did not see their full implications. But a younger soul could be for him as it were the clairvoyant sense which enabled him to recapture the temple treasure for his own city. Gilgamish now realised that in human life, especially in times of transition, there is such a thing as is described in the legend of the blind man and the cripple: each is helpless alone, but together they can make progress inasmuch as the blind man carries the cripple on his shoulders and the cripple lends the blind man his power of sight. In Gilgamish and Eabani, whose respective gifts differed so greatly, we see the same kind of co-operation transformed into the spiritual. In the historical facts of ancient times we find this at every turn. And it is important to understand it, for only then do we realise why it is that myths and sagas so often tell of friends who have to achieve something together—friends who are generally as unlike in their nature of soul as were Gilgamish and Eabani. But what Gilgamish also acquired through his friend Eabani was this: he was as it were “infected” by Eabani with a clairvoyant power of his own, so that to a certain extent he could look back into his own earlier incarnations. This would certainly have been beyond his normal faculties. And now let us picture vividly how Gilgamish must have been influenced by this vision of his past incarnations.

What was he able to experience from the moment when it became possible for him to look back into what his soul had lived through in earlier incarnations? At first it all seemed alien to him. He could not penetrate fully into what he himself had been in these earlier incarnations; he did not, as it were, recognise himself. So it would be with any human being if he began to look back into his previous incarnations. In most cases things would be different from what they are in the vain imaginings which are always so much in evidence when there is talk of some person or other being an incarnation of this or that individual. We may well come across a person who cites a whole series of great names in history as those of his former incarnations ... in fact numbers of people are convinced that they were never below the rank of a queen or a princess! In these matters, which should be treated with great earnestness, there must be no unlawful play of fancy, no misusage.

Now one who, like Gilgamish at that time, begins to look back on his successive incarnations, may also now and then be veritably astonished. Gilgamish himself looked back to incarnations when he was still involved in all kinds of conditions determined by the sway of the group-soul. To be sure he had, in a certain respect, as a person, worked his way out of these connections; through Eabani he had also come to know for the first time the whole import of what is symbolised in the myth through the figure of the city Goddess. But when he looked back there was much in his earlier incarnations that did not please him, that went against the grain. He found, for example, that in these incarnations his soul had had unusual friendships, human connection, of a kind which in his present life he would have regarded as shameful. Thus, in face of what the City Goddess had revealed to him indirectly, through Eabani, he began in a certain way—as the myth indicates—to upbraid, to reproach his own soul. In the myth it is said that he reproaches the Goddess about her lovers, for he is jealous of them. He is looking as it were across the horizon of his own soul and the visions are living realities before him, as real as human beings who stand around someone in the physical world, eliciting feelings of sympathy or antipathy towards them. In the reproaches leveled by Gilgamish against the Goddess we perceive that he is really speaking in terms of what is happening in his own soul. Thus, for example, when it is said that he reproaches the Goddess about her previous relationship with one who is called Ishullanu (Ischlanu) in the myth, this signifies that his own friendship with a certain person who had been his master's gardener in the preceding incarnation was not pleasing to him.¹⁵ What took place in the soul of Gilgamish and which first imparted to it that inner content, that inner realisation, which he needed in order to become the inaugurator of the Babylonian civilisation—all this is shown to us in the picture of the regaining of a certain clairvoyance, of the ascent into super-sensible worlds which, because he was an old soul, were in a certain sense lost to him. This is shown to us in the myth.

And then Gilgamish was to undergo a kind of initiation by being led back to that kind of vision which his own soul had possessed during Atlantean incarnations. What the myth presents as the journey over the sea, and the wanderings of Gilgamish to the West, is nothing else than the inner path towards initiation by which his soul is led upwards to spiritual heights where it can perceive its ancient Atlantean surroundings, when, still clairvoyant, it had gazed into the spiritual world. The myth tells that an this, his spiritual journeying, Gilgamish was brought to the great Atlantean Being, Xisuthros, This was a Being who belonged to certain higher Hierarchies and who during the Atlantean time lived in the sphere of humanity but was afterwards transported from the world of men to dwell in higher regions. Gilgamish was to meet this personality in order that through beholding him he might come to know the condition of souls when they are able to look into the spiritual worlds. Thus he was to be led upwards again into the spiritual spheres by being transported in his life of soul into Atlantean times. And when he is bidden not to sleep for seven nights and six days, this signifies nothing else than an exercise which was to make the soul capable of penetrating fully into the corresponding spiritual regions. When we are now told that he was not able to endure the test, Isis again signifies something of great importance, namely that Gilgamish is represented as a personality who was brought to the very brink of Initiation—who was destined, as it were, to look through the portal of Initiation into the mysteries of the spirit but owing to the conditions of the times was not able to penetrate fully into their depths. In short, this is intended to indicate that the inaugurator of the Babylonian civilisation had remained at the portal of Initiation, that he could not look with full clarity into the higher worlds, with the result that he gave Babylonian culture the stamp that is a sign of no more than a glimpse into the secrets of Initiation.

We shall now see that the nature of external Babylonian culture was indeed such that it confirms what has just been said. Whereas, for example, everything points to the fact that Hermes was a personality who gazed into the very depths of the holiest secrets of Initiation and could therefore become the great inaugurator of ancient Egyptian culture, it must be said that the Babylonian culture was prepared in the way I have just described: through a leading personality who had in his soul all those qualities which develop when penetration into the innermost essence of Initiation has not been fully achieved. Hence historical development in ancient Babylonia gives clear evidence of an external culture and an inner, esoteric culture running parallel to one another. Whereas in the life of ancient Egypt there was greater interplay between these two aspects, in the ancient culture of Babylonia they fell apart. And within what must be regarded as the Babylonian culture inaugurated by Gilgamish, there was enshrined the content and substance of the most sacred, most hidden Mysteries of the Chaldeans.

The Initiates of these Mysteries were indeed initiated into the innermost secrets, but this influence flowed through the external culture only as a tiny stream. This external culture proceeded from the impulse given by Gilgamish. Everything that has been said points to the fact that Gilgamish, as a personality, had not actually reached the point where he could have experienced complete Initiation. But just because at the time in which he was working he did not give effect to his own, personal impulses, did not impart his own personal forces to the world, he was very specially able to let one of the spiritual Beings we place in the rank of the Fire-Spirits, the Archangeloi, work through him. Such a Being did indeed work through Gilgamish, and it is in a Fire-Spirit that we must see the source of the ordering of Babylonian life and its impelling forces, for which Gilgamish was the instrument. So we shall rightly conceive of this Gilgamish in a picture that suggests the symbol of the ancient centaur. Such ancient symbols correspond more closely to reality than is generally supposed. A centaur—half man, half animal—was always intended to represent how in the more mighty of men of old the highest spiritual manhood and that which united the single personality with the animal organisation in a certain sense actually fell apart. Gilgamish gave the impression of a centaur to those who were capable of judging what he was, and it is the same to this day.

Remarkably enough, this picture of the centaur is cropping up again in the field of modern scientific thought. There has recently been published a book which sets out to base itself entirely on scientific facts, and yet goes to work with a certain absence of prejudice, hence it does not produce such an amateurish, senseless hotch-potch as do those who call themselves Monists. The author makes a genuine effort to understand man, and how, as an independent being of soul-and-spirit, he is related to the physical organism. And then this author, who bases himself on natural science, comes out with a remarkable picture. Quite certainly he was not thinking of the centaur when he conceived this picture, but referring to what results from natural-scientific ideas about the relation of the soul to the body, he says: This may be likened to a horseman riding upon his horse. The facts of natural science, when rightly understood, compel one to say: The soul is independent and uses the body as its instrument, as a rider uses his horse.—Yes, the centaur is here again; things will develop rapidly, and before people are aware of it, spiritual-scientific ideas will take root in our contemporaries under the compulsion of the facts of natural science itself. Not long ago I was talking to a philosopher who sets great store by materialistic ideas, and he said to me: “Of course the picture of the centaur arose because the old inhabitants of Greece saw certain tribes coming down from the North on their horses, and as it was generally misty, they thought that horse and rider were a single form. With all their superstition they might easily imagine this.”

That is a really ingenuous idea—perhaps not exactly philosophical—but certainly ingenuous! This picture of the centaur, which did not arise because the Greeks could not distinguish the rider how his horse but because the earlier peoples inevitably thought of the spiritual being of man as independent of the bodily nature—this idea of the centaur is again cropping up in our time out of the very concepts of natural science. It must therefore be said that despite all materialistic ideas we are coming to the point to-day when materialism itself, if only it will take the facts as they really are, will lead by and by to what Spiritual Science has to say from its occult sources. But if, in line with our studies, we want to focus our occult observation upon a figure such as Gilgamish—who has already become an object of interest to external research—we must realise that there we have to do with penetration by a Being of the spiritual Hierarchies. So that while we must in truth see every human being, in respect of his spirituality, in the picture of the centaur, in the case of one who works as Gilgamish worked, we must recognise, in addition, that the spiritual part of the centaur is directed by higher Powers who are sending down their forces to further the progress of humanity. And we shall find an going farther back into history that this is revealed even more clearly. We shall also see how modification takes place in the course of the ages up to our own time and how spiritual forces, when they work through human beings, assume constantly different forms the nearer we come to the immediate present.

---

• 10. Leopold von Ranke, 1795–1886. See Rudolf Steiner, Karmic-Relationships: Esoteric Studies, Vol. II, lecture XIV.
• 11. J. G. Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, written between 1784 and 1791. Tr. by T. Churchill; Outline of a Philosophy of the History of Man. (London, 1803.)
• 12. G. E. Lessing. The last paragraphs of The Education of the Human Race, published in 1780, are as follows:
  
  “But ... why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world?
  “ Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human widerstanding, before the sophistries of the Schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?
  “Why may not even I have already performed those steps of my perfecting which bring to man only temporal punishments and rewards ?
  “And once more, why not another time all those steps, to perform which the views of Eternal Rewards so powerfully assist us?
  “Why should I not come back as often. as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh expertness ? Do I bring away so much from one, that there is nothing to repay the trouble of coming back?
  “Is this a reason against it? Or, because I forget that I have been here already? Happy is it for me that I do forget. The recollection of my former condition would perrnit me to make only a bad use of the present. And that which even I must forget now, is that necessarily forgotten for ever?
  “Or is it a reason against the hypothesis that so much time would have been lost to me? Lost?—And how much then should I miss?—Is not a whole Eternity mine? "
  
  Tr. F. W. Robertson (1872).
  Reprinted (1927) by Anthroposophical
  Publishing Co.
• 13. August Friedrich Gfrörer, 1803—1861.
• 14. Letter of Perceval de Boulainvilliers, 21st June, 1429. See: Procés de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d' Arc, ed. Quicherat, Tome V, pages 114—21. (Paris, 1849) where the text is in Latin. The name Boulainvilliers is said to have been incorrectly rendered in several of the earlier translations.
• 15. See Thompson, op. cit., p. 33. (Gilgamish is reproaching Ishtar):
  
  Lovest thou, too, Ishullanu, the gardener he of thy Sire, Bringing delights to thee ceaseless, while daily he garnish'd thy platter...."
  
  (From the Sixth Tablet.)

Certain things that have been said in giving a brief glimpse into the occult course of human evolution will have indicated to you that the succession of incarnations as determined by the individual character and development of human beings, is modified through the intervention of spiritual forces from the higher Hierarchies. Reincarnation is by no means such a simple process in the evolution of humanity as a certain easy-going way of thinking likes to assume. It is, of course, a fact that man incarnates again and again, that the innermost core of his being appears over and over again in new incarnations; it is also true that there is a causal connection between earlier and later lives. Moreover there is the law of karma which gives expression to this causal connection. But over and above all this there is something else which is essential for understanding the historical course of the evolution of mankind. The course of human evolution would have been quite different if nothing except the causal connections between one incarnation and the next, or between the earlier and the later incarnations of the human being came into consideration. Other forces of great significance intervene perpetually in human life, in every incarnation, to a greater or less extent, and use the human being as an instrument. This applies particularly in the case of leading personalities in history. Hence it follows that purely individual karma is modified through the successive incarnations, and this is what actually happens.

Limiting ourselves for the time being to the Post-Atlantean period, we can speak of a law according to which, in the epochs up to the present time, the influences of other worlds are connected with man's individual karma A diagram is the only means of indicating what form these influences take and how they are related to the human individuality. Let us imagine (see diagram) that the oval form in the middle represents the human ego, the kernel of human nature. We now indicate the other members of man's being, leaving aside for the moment the division of the soul into sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul. Here, then, schematically, we have astral body, etheric body and physical body.

Because we are speaking of Post-Atlantean evolution only, we will try to envisage, from the many descriptions given, the essential elements in the future of man. We are now living in the middle of the Post-Atlantean epoch—in fact somewhat beyond the actual middle. lt is only necessary here to recapitulate very briefly what has been said on other occasions: that the Greco-Latin culture-epoch was the period of development paramountly of the intellectual or mind-soul, and that our present period is that of the development of the spiritual soul, the consciousness soul. The Babylonian-Egyptian culture-epoch brought the sentient soul especially to development; the preceding Persian epoch, the sentient body or astral body; and the far-off Indian epoch, the etheric body. The adaptation of the physical body to Post-Atlantean conditions of earthly existence had already been achieved during the last epochs preceding the great Atlantean catastrophe. So that when we now add to the diagram the other members of man's being we can say: in the Post-Atlantean epoch development proceeds during the ancient Indian period paramountly in the etheric body, during the ancient Persian period in the astral body, during the Egypto-Chaldean period in the sentient soul, during the Greco-Latin period in the intellectual soul, and during our own period in the consciousness-soul—that is to say, in the fifth member of man's being if we count each of the soul-members separately. In a sixth culture-epoch man will develop still further and his soul-nature will grow in a certain way into Manas, the Spirit-Self; in a seventh period—the last Post-Atlantean culture-epoch—man will grow into Life-Spirit or Buddhi; and what has been able to grow into Atma will actually unfold only after the great catastrophe by which the whole Post-Atlantean epoch will be brought to an end.

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These things we know from the Lecture-Course on the apocalypse.¹⁶ But we must now take account of the fact that during the first, the ancient Indian epoch, man's development proceeded at a level below the realm of the ego itself. The ancient Indian, pre-Vedic culture was essentially an inspired culture, a culture which streamed as it were into the human soul without that activity of the ego which we know to-day as our life of thought and ideation. Since the Egyptian period, man has had to be active in his ego, to turn his ego, via the senses, to the surrounding world in order to receive its impressions; he has had himself to participate actively in this further development. The ancient Indian culture was acquired more passively, through surrender to what streamed into men like inspiration. It will therefore be understandable that this ancient Indian culture must be attributed to a kind of activity different from that carried out by the human ego to-day; what is now the activity of the ego had, so to speak, to be substituted in the ancient Indian soul by higher Beings who came down into human beings and inspired the human soul.

If we ask what it was that was brought from outside into the human soul in that age, what it was that was infused into the soul by Beings of the higher Hierarchies, we can answer: it was the came as that which man will attain at some future time as his own activity, when he has risen to the stage of Atma or Spirit-Man. In other words, the human individuality in the future will penetrate into Atma. This penetration will be achieved by the efforts of the soul itself, the efforts of the central core of man's being. And just as man himself will then be working in his own being, so did Beings of the higher Hierarchies once work into and upon the soul of the ancient Indian. To describe what took place in the etheric bodies of ancient Indian souls, we can say: it was a dim, half-slumbering ego-consciousness that was working there; Atma was working in the etheric body. It may rightly be said that the soul of the ancient Indian was an arena where superhuman work was performed; higher Beings were working in the etheric body of the ancient Indian. And what was then woven into the etheric body was an activity such as man himself will later an come to achieve in the way indicated, when Atma works in the etheric body.

In ancient Persian culture, Buddhi or Life-Spirit worked in the astral body, in the sentient body; and in Babylonian-Chaldean? Egyptian culture, Manas or Spirit-Self worked in the sentient soul. This latter culture, therefore, does not yet bear the stamp of the ego working with full activity within the soul itself. Although to a less extent than before, man was still a passive arena for the working of Manas in the sentient soul. It was in the Greco-Latin epoch that for the first time man entered into his own life of soul with full activity. It is in the intellectual soul that the ego first makes itself felt as an independent, inner member of man's being, and we can therefore say: In Greek culture the ego actually works in the ego, man as such works in man. In the course of these lectures we shall see that the essential and unique character of Greek culture is due to the fact that the ego is working in the ego.

But that culture-epoch already lies some time behind us; and whereas in the pre-Grecian epoch higher Beings came down in a certain way into the core of man's nature and worked within it, in our time we have to fulfil an opposite task. What we have developed and elaborated through our ego, what we are in a position to take in from the impressions of the outer world by dint of our own activity, we must, to begin with, be able to acquire in a purely human way; but then we must not remain at the point where the people of the Greco-Latin period came to a standstill, in that we unfold the human only, the purely human as such. What we work out for ourselves must be carried upwards md interwoven into what is still to come; we must take the direction upwards, as it were, to what is to come in later times: Manas or Spirit-Self. This, however, will not be until the sixth culture-epoch. We are now living between the fourth and the sixth epochs; the sixth gives promise that mankind will then be in a position to bear upwards into higher regions of existence what has been unfolded through the outer impressions received by the ego through its senses. In the fifth culture-epoch we are in a position only to set about giving a certain stamp to everything we acquire from outer impressions and from working on them—a stamp which will imbue everything with an impetus in the upward direction. In this respect we are in truth living in a period of transition, and if you recall what was said yesterday about the spiritual Power working in the Maid of Orleans, you will see that there was already in Operation in her something that takes the opposite direction to that of the influences of higher Powers in the pre-Grecian epoch. When, let us say, a man belonging to the ancient Persian culture received the influence of a super-sensible Power which used him as its instrument, this Power worked into and took effect in the very kernel of his being, and the man beheld and experienced what this spiritual Being inspired into him. When the man of our time enters into relation with such spiritual Powers, he can carry upwards what he experiences in the physical world through the work of his ego and the impressions it receives; he can give it all an upward orientation. Hence in personalities such as the Maid of Orleans, the revelations, the manifestations of those spiritual Powers who desire to speak to her, take place, to be sure, in the sphere to which she reaches, but something spreads itself in front of these revelations, without actually detracting from their reality but giving them a particular form—the form arising from what the ego experiences here in the physical world. In other words: the Maid of Orleans had revelations, but she could not behold them with the direct vision of the people of ancient times; the mental pictures she had known in the physical world—pictures of the Virgin Mary, of the Archangel Michael, arising from her Christian conceptions—interposed themselves between her own egohood and the objective spiritual Powers.

There we have an example of how in spiritual matters we must distinguish between the objectivity of a revelation and the objectivity of a content of consciousness. The Maid of Orleans saw the Virgin Mary and the Archangel Michael in the form of a certain picture. We must not conceive these pictures to be the spiritual reality itself; nor must we ascribe direct objectivity to the form they take. But to say that they are mere invention would be nonsense. Revelations from the spiritual world did indeed come to the Maid of Orleans, revelations which in the sixth culture-epoch—and not until then—man will be able to see in the form in which they should be seen in the Post-Atlantean epoch. But although the Maid of Orleans did not see this true form, it did come down towards her. She brought the religious conceptions of her day to meet these revelations, clothed them as it were in this imagery; her world of mental images was evoked by the spiritual Power. The revelation is therefore to be regarded as objective. Even if in our time someone can show that subjective elements make their way into a revelation from the spiritual world, even if we cannot regard the actual picture which the Person in question forms for himself as objective, even if it is only a veil—we must not for that reason assert that the objective revelations themselves are veils. They are objective; but their content is conjured forth from the soul. We must distinguish between the objectivity of that content and the objectivity of the facts which come from the spiritual world.—I am obliged to stress this point because in this domain mistakes are made by those who acknowledge the reality of the spiritual world as well as by our opponents—contrasting mistakes, it is true, but of very common occurrence.

The Maid of Orleans is therefore a personality already working entirely in the spirit of our own epoch, when everything that we can produce on the foundation of our outer impressions must be directed upward to the spiritual. But what does this mean when we apply it to our own culture and civilisation? It means this.—We may direct our attention, naïvely to begin with, to our environment, but if we stop at that, if we have eyes for the outer impressions only, then we are not fulfilling our bounden obligation. We fulfil it only when we are conscious that these impressions must be related to the spiritual Powers behind them. When we pursue science in the manner of academic scholarship, we are not fulfilling our obligation. We must regard everything that we can learn about the laws of natural phenomena and the laws of the manifestations of the life of soul as though it were a language which is to lead us to a revelation of the divine-spiritual. When we are conscious that all physical, chemical, biological, physiological, psychological laws must be related to something spiritual that is revealing itself to us, then we are fulfilling our obligation.

So it is in respect of the sciences of our time and so it is in respect of art. The art we characterise as that of ancient Greece which contemplated the human being in a simpler, more direct way, always presenting the purely human, the working of the ego with the ego in so far as the ego expresses itself in the physical material—this art has had its day. In our time the urge has arisen instinctively in personalities of great artistic gifts, to present art as a kind of offering to the divine-spiritual worlds; that is to say, to regard what is clothed in musical tones, for example, as an interpretation of spiritual mysteries. In the history of culture viewed from its occult aspect, Richard Wagner will one day have to be so regarded, down to the very details of his art. He, particularly, will have to be regarded as a representative man of our fifth culture-epoch, as one who always felt the urge to express in what lived in him in the form of musical tones, the impetus towards the spiritual world; who looked upon a work of art as the outer language of the spiritual world. In him the remains of ancient culture and the dawn of a new culture face each other in sharp, even discordant, contrast in our time. Have we not witnessed how the purely human arrangement of the tones, the purely formal music which Richard Wagner wanted to surmount, was vigorously defended by his opponents because they were incapable of feeling that in him a new impulse was rising instinctively, like the dawn of a new day?

I do not know whether the majority of you are aware that for a long, long time Richard Wagner has had the bitterest, most rabid critics and opponents. These critics and opponents have had a certain guidance from the extremely ingenious work an music produced in Vienna by Eduard Hanslick, the author of the interesting little volume, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (“On the Beautiful in Music.”).¹⁷ I do not know whether you realise that with the publication of this book the old was set up in opposition, as it were, to the rising of a new dawn in history. Hanslick's book may become an historic memorial of recent times. For what was his aim? He says: One cannot make music in the way Richard Wagner makes it; that is not music at all, for music there sets out with the intention of pointing to something that lies outside music, to something super-sensible. Music is an “arabesque in tones”—this was one of Hanslick's favourite expressions. In other words, music is an arabesque-like interweaving of tones, and the musical-aesthetic enjoyment of it may consist in purely human delight in the way in which the tones resound in and after one another. Hanslick says that Richard Wagner is no musician, that he simply does not understand the essence of the musical, that the essence of music lies simply in the architecture of the tone-material.—What can one say about such a phenomenon? One can only say that Hanslick was pre-eminently a reactionary, a straggler from the fourth culture-epoch. Then—in that epoch—he would have been right; but what is right for one epoch is not valid for the next. From Hanslick's standpoint one can say: Richard Wagner is no musician. But then one would have to add: that epoch is now over; we must accept what springs from it, reconciling ourselves through the fact that music, as Hanslick understands it, is expanding into something altogether new.

This clash between the old and the new can be observed in many domains, particularly in our own culture-epoch, and it is extraordinarily interesting to observe it especially in the various branches of science. It would lead much too far to attempt to show how there are reactionaries everywhere, as well as those who are striving to produce out of the different sciences what science ought to become: the expression of a divine-spiritual reality behind the phenomena. Spiritual Science should be the basic element which permeates the present time in order that the divine-spiritual may more and more consciously be made the goal and focus of our labours. Spiritual Science should everywhere awaken the impulses leading from below upwards, summoning human souls to offer up what is gained through external impressions for the sake of what is attained as we work our way to the higher regions of Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man.

With this picture of human history, of occult history, before us we shall understand that a soul incarnated in the ancient Indian and then in the Persian epoch could be inspired by an individual Being of the higher Hierarchies, but that on passing into the Greco-Latin epoch this soul was alone with itself, inasmuch as the ego was then working in the ego. Everything that in the pre-Grecian age, in all the early cycles of Post-Atlantean civilisation, appears as divine inspiration, as a revelation from above—and this still holds good at the beginning of the Grecian epoch itself, in the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, B.C.—everything that presents itself to us as inspired culture into which the spiritual content flows from outside, begins to be expressed more and more in the form of the purely human and personal. And this comes to its strongest expression in Greek culture. No previous age had seen—nor will any subsequent age see again—such an expression of the outer man living in the physical world as a self-based ego-being. The purely human and personal, entirely self-contained, comes to light as historical reality in the mode of life of the ancient Greek and in his creations. See how the Greek sculptor has woven the element of the human and personal into his figures of the gods! We can truly say that in a masterpiece of Greek sculpture man stands before us wholly as personality—in so far as it can be made recognisable in physical media. And if at the sight of a Greek work of art we were not able to efface the thought that the particular incarnation there expressed was preceded and will be followed by others—if we were to imagine for a single moment that in the form of an Apollo or a Zeus only one out of many incarnations is represented—then we should not have the true feeling for these masterpieces. In looking at them we must be able to forget that the human being is incarnated in successive earthly lives. In Greek works of art the whole personality has poured into the form of the single personality. This was the hallmark of the life of the Greeks.

On the other hand, when we go further back into the past, the forms become symbolic; they indicate something that is not purely human, something that man does not yet feel within his own self. In those times he could only express in symbols what was coming in from divine-spiritual worlds. Hence, in the archaic period, art was symbolic.—And when we see the form in which art then makes its way to the people who were destined to provide the material for our own, fifth culture-epoch—think only of earlier German art—we find that there we have to do, not with symbolism, nor with an expression of the purely human, but with an inwardly deepened life of soul. We see there that the soul cannot wholly permeate the outer human form. How could the figures of Albrecht Dürer be characterised otherwise than by saying that man's longing for the super-sensible world comes only to imperfect expression—imperfect in the Greek sense—in the outer configuration of the body Hence the deepening in the direction of the life of soul as art progresses to further stages.

And now it will no longer be incomprehensible to you that in the first of these lectures I said: what was incarnated at an earlier time appears in the physical world later on like a shadow-image. Beings of the higher Hierarchies streamed into the individuality of a man belonging, let us say, to the early Greek world, so that when we say “he was incarnated” we must not see this self-contained being only, but standing behind him an individuality of a higher Hierarchy. That is the picture we must have of Alexander, and of Aristotle, in the Greco-Latin epoch. We follow their individualities back into the past. From Alexander we must go back to Gilgamesh and say: in Gilgamesh is the individuality who then, projected as it were on the physical plane, appears as Alexander; behind this individuality is a Fire-Spirit who uses him as an instrument. And if we go back from Aristotle, we see the powers of the old clairvoyance working in Eabani, the friend of Gilgamesh. Thus we see how both old souls and young souls, with the old clairvoyance behind them, are placed right out on the physical plane in the Greek epoch. This confronts us vividly in the great woman mathematician Hypatia, in whom all the mathematical and philosophical wisdom of her time lived as personal ability, as personal erudition and wisdom. This was all embraced in the personality of Hypatia. And we shall understand that this individuality had to be born as a woman in order to bring together in a delicately concise form all that she had earlier received from the Orphic Mysteries—in order to impart to everything she had learnt from the Inspirers of those Mysteries the stamp of a personal style.

We see, therefore, how in the successive incarnations of human beings influences from the spiritual world bring about modifications. I can do not more than intimate that the individuality who incarnated as Hypatia, who brought with her the wisdom of the Orphic Mysteries and gave personal expression to it, was called upon in a subsequent incarnation to take the opposite path: to bear all personal wisdom upwards again to the divine-spiritual. Hypatia appeared at the turn of the 12th and 13th century as a significant, universal spirit of later history, one who had a great influence upon the knowledge that brings together science and philosophy.—Thus we see how the Powers operating in the course of history penetrate into the successive incarnations of particular individualities.

Observing the course of history in this way we actually see a kind of descent from spiritual heights until the Greco-Latin epoch, and then again an ascent. During the Greek epoch—and it has continued, naturally, into our own time—there is a gathering together of material to be acquired purely from the physical plane and then. a carrying up of it again into the spiritual world. For this, Spiritual Science should provide an impulse—an impulse that was already alive instinctively in a personality such as Hypatia, when she was incarnated again in the 13th century.

Now at this point, because the Theosophical Society is in a certain respect a veritable arena of misunderstandings, I want to emphasise that very many of these misunderstandings are pure inventions. there are people who like to read into what is said, for example, in the lectures given in our German Movement, a certain opposition to the original revelations of the Theosophical Movement in the modern age. I am therefore glad to take the opportunity of pointing out that what is given here from genuine Rosicrucian sources harmonises with mach that was originally given in the Theosophical Movement. This is an opportune moment for referring to the matter. It has been said by me, and enlarged upon quite independently of traditions, that certain personalities in later history are, as it were, shadow-images of earlier personalities portrayed in the myths, and behind whom there stand Beings of the higher Hierarchies. Such things should not be taken as though they contradicted those revelations which were given to the Theosophical Society through H. P. Blavatsky. For then, through sheer misunderstanding, one might very easily set oneself in opposition to the good old teachings which were transmitted through that extraordinarily useful instrument, H. P. Blavatsky. In connection with what we have been studying here, let me quote a passage from her later writings, where she refers to her earlier work, Isis Unveiled. The following passage will show you that what is said about contradiction is really sheer invention—there is no other way of putting it.

“But in addition to reiterating the old, ever-present fact of Reincarnation and Karma—not as taught by the Spiritualist, but as by the post Ancient Science in the world—occultists must teach cyclic and evolutionary reincarnation: that kind of rebirth, mysterious and still incomprehensible to many who are ignorant of the world's history, which was cautiously mentioned in Isis Unveiled. A general rebirth for every individual, with interludes of Kama Loca and Devachan, and a cyclic, conscious reincarnation with a grand and divine object for the few. Those great characters who tower like giants in the history of mankind, like Siddhartha Buddha and Jesus in the realm of the spiritual, and Alexander the Macedonian and Napoleon the Great in the realm of physical conquest are but the reflected images of human types which had existed—not ten thousand years before, as cautiously put forward in Isis Unveiled, but for millions of consecutive years from the beginning of the Manvantara. For—with the exception of the actual Avataras—as above explained, they are the same unbroken Rays (Monads), each respectively of its own special Parent-Flame, called Devas, Dhyan Chohans or Dhyani Buddhas, or again Planetary Angels, etc.—shining in aeonic eternity as their prototypes. It is in their image that some men are born, and when some specific humanitarian object is in view, the latter are hypostatically animated by their divine prototypes, reproduced again and again by the mysterious Powers that control and guide the destinies of our world.

“No more could be said at the time when Isis Unveiled was written; hence the statement was limited to the single remark that ‘There is no prominent character in all the annals of sacred or profane history whose prototype we cannot find in the half fictitious and half real traditions of bygone religions and mythologies.’ As the star, glimmering at an immeasurable distance above our heads in the boundless immensity of the sky, reflects itself in the still waters of a Lake, so does the imagery of men of the antediluvian ages reflect itself in the periods we can embrace in a historical retrospect.”¹⁸

As I said, I gladly seize the opportunity of emphasising the agreement of what it is possible to investigate at the present time with what was in a sense the original revelation. You know that it is a principle here to keep faith in a certain respect with the traditions of the Theosophical Movement; but the essential point—and I lay special stress upon it—is that nothing is repeated unless it has first been investigated and checked. Where agreement between what is already known and something from another source can be clearly shown, this should be done, for the sake of continuity in the Theosophical Society and in fairness; but nothing should simply be repeated without thorough examination. It is part of the mission of our German Section of the Theosophical Movement to bring our own, individual impulse into that Movement. But the examples given can show you how groundless is the misconception which crops up here and there that we always take a contrary view of things. We work faithfully onwards without constantly reiterating the old dogmas; we also test what is being presented to-day from other quarters. And we stand for that which can be said, with the best occult conscience, an the basis of the original occult investigations and the methods handed down to us through our own sacred Rosicrucian traditions.

Now it is of the greatest interest to show by the example of a particular personality how the knowledge that was inspired into humanity under the influence of higher Powers assumed in a man of the Greco-Latin epoch a character adapted to the physical plane. Thus we can show how Eabani, in the incarnation between the life as Eabani and the life as Aristotle, was able under the influence of the ancient Mystery-teachings, into which forces streamed from the super-sensible worlds, to imbibe the principles which in certain Mystery-schools were essential to the further development of the human soul. We will not speak of the particular characteristics of the different Mystery-schools, but will direct our attention to one kind of Mystery-school where, by the awakening of particular feelings, the soul developed to the stage of being able to penetrate into the superphysical world. In such Mystery-schools the feelings and impulses paramountly awakened were those capable of eradicating every trace of egoism from the soul. The soul came to realise that in truth it must always be egoistic when incarnated in a physical body. The whole range, the whole import of egoism an the physical plane were impressed into the soul; and such a soul felt shattered to the depths at having to admit: “Hitherto I have known only egoism; indeed, in the physical body I cannot be anything else than an egoist.” Such a soul was leagues away from the commonplace standpoint of people who are forever saying: “I want this, not for myself, but for someone else.” To overcome egoism and to acquire the urge towards the universal human and the cosmic is not such an easy matter as many people imagine. For it must be preceded by the complete elimination of every trace of egoism in the impulses of the soul. In the Mysteries to which I am here referring, the soul had to learn to feel pity and compassion for everything human, for everything cosmic—compassion born from the overcoming of the physical plane. It might then be hoped that such a soul would bring down again from the higher worlds the true feeling of compassion for every living creature and all existent beings.

But still another feeling was to be developed—a feeling paramount among many others. If man is to penetrate into the spiritual world, he must realise that everything in that world differs from the things of the physical world. He who is to confront the spiritual world face to face must stand before it as before something completely unknown. Fear of the unknown is present there as an actual danger. Therefore in these Mysteries, in order to equip itself to banish all the feelings of fear, anxiety, terror and horror known to man, the soul must first experience them to their very depths. Then the pupil was armed for the ascent into the unknown purlieus of the spiritual world. The soul of the pupil of these Mysteries had to be so trained as to acquire an all-embracing, universal feeling of compassion and of fearlessness. This was the ordeal to be endured by every soul in those ancient Mysteries in which Eabani participated when he appeared again in the incarnation lying between his lives as Eabani and as Aristotle. This too he experienced. And it arose again in Aristotle like a memory of earlier incarnations. He was able to define the essence of tragedy precisely because out of such memories there arose in him at the spectacle of Greek tragedy the realisation that here was an echo, a reproduction carried outwards to the physical plane, of that Mystery-training wherein the soul is purified through experiencing compassion and fear. Thus the hero and the whole construction of a tragedy must present a spectacle which on a milder level evokes in the audience compassion with the face of the hero and fear in face of the destiny and terrible death that beckon him. And so the experiences undergone by the soul of the ancient mystic were woven into the succession of events in the tragedy, into the plot and movement of the drama: purification, catharsis, through fear and compassion, and like an echo, the man of the Greek epoch was to experience this an the physical plane. What was formerly a great educative principle was now be experienced through the medium of aesthetic enjoyment. And when what Aristotle had learnt in earlier incarnations rose up into his personal consciousness, he was the one able to give the unique definition of tragedy which has become classic and has had such an effect that it was still accepted by Lessing in the 18th century, and through the 19th century played a role which caused whole libraries to be written about it. As a matter of fact it would be no great loss if the larger part of these volumes had been burnt; for they were written in complete ignorance of what has just been said—that here we have to do with a projection down into art of something that belongs to the spiritual life. These authors had no inkling that Aristotle was communicating an ancient secret of the Mysteries when he said: A tragedy is a weaving together round a hero of successive actions, which are able to arouse in the spectator the emotions of fear and compassion in order that a catharsis may take place in his soul.¹⁹

So we see that in what a single personality wills and says there is shadowed forth something that can be intelligible to us only when we look through the personality to the Being who Stands behind him, to the Inspirer. Not until we look at history in this way shall we be able to perceive what the personality, as well as the super-personal Powers, signify in history, and how there plays into the single incarnations something which Madame Blavatsky calls the interplay between personal, individual incarnations and what she means when she says: “But in addition to reiterating the old, ever-present fact of Reincarnation and Karma, occultists must teach cyclic and evolutionary reincarnation” ... and so on. She calls this “conscious” reincarnation, because in the case of most people to-day the ego is unconscious of successive incarnations, whereas the spiritual Powers who work into these incarnations from above consciously carry over their forces from one age into the other in accordance with cyclic law.

This example of what was revealed by Blavatsky in her earliest period, from out of the Rosicrucian Mysteries, can be thoroughly checked and confirmed by independent investigations. It will show you, however, that the easy-going habit of conceiving the one incarnation merely as the result of a preceding one, must be essentially modified. You will also realise that reincarnation is a far more complicated nexus of facts than is generally supposed, and can be fully understood only if the human being is seen in connection with a higher, superphysical world which penetrates continually into our world. lt can be said that in the intermediate period which we call the Greco-Latin epoch of culture, men were given time to experience an aftermath of all that had been laid into the soul from higher worlds through long series of incarnations, to let it echo for once in the purely human ego. What was lived out in the Greco-Latin world was like a human and personal expression of endless memories laid at an earlier time into these same individualities by higher worlds. Shall we then wonder that the greatest Spirits of the Greek world became specially conscious of this? Looking into their inner life they said to themselves: “There it is all streaming forth, worlds are stretching there into our personality; but these experiences are recollections of what was poured into us in earlier times from spiritual worlds.”—Read how Plato interprets human knowledge as the soul's recollection of its past experiences.²⁰ There you see how the works of a thinker such as Plato emanated from a deep and true consciousness belonging to the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch. Not until we are able to look with occult insight into the Spirit of the several epochs shall we understand what a single utterance of so outstanding a personality really signifies.

• 16. See Rudolf Steiner, The Apocalypse of St. John
• 17. Published in Leipzig, 1854.
• 18. See H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. III, p. 370. (London, 1897.)
• 19. Aristotle, The Poetics, VI. The several English renderings of this famous passalte differ slightly in wording. The following translation is by W. Hamilton Fyfe, in Aristotle's Art of Poetry (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1940): “A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious, has magnitude, and is complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in separately in the various parts of the work; in a dramatic, not a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.”
• 20. See Phaedo, 75; 76, an the Platonic doctrine of reminiscence. “... But if the knowledge which we acquired before but was lost by us at birth, and if afterwards by the use of the scnses we recovered what we previously knew, will not the process which we call learning be a recovering of the knowledge which is natural to us, and may not this be rightly termed recollection? ...”
  (Tr. Jowett.)

From indications in the preceding lecture you will have been able to gather that in a certain respect the Greco-Latin civilisation-epoch lies in the middle of the Post-Atlantean epoch as a whole. The three preceding civilisation-epochs are as it were a preparation for that activity of the human soul which characterises Greek culture—the ego working in the ego. The culture of the ancient Indian, Persian and Egyptian epochs represents a descent from clairvoyant vision to purely human vision in the Greek epoch. What begins with our own age, and must be attained in ever-increasing measure during the coming centuries and millennia, should be conceived as a reascent, a reattainment of forms of culture imbued with clairvoyance. The Egypto-Babylonian-Chaldean epoch is therefore to be regarded as the last stage of preparation for the essentially human culture of Greece. In the preceding, third Post-Atlantean epoch, man descends from the old clairvoyant conditions which enabled him to participate directly in the life of the spiritual world, in preparation for the purely personal, purely human culture characterised by the activity of soul that may be described as “the ego works in the ego.” Hence we saw how the vision into earlier incarnations which had been implicit in clairvoyant culture was, to begin with, uncertain and indistinct in Gilgamesh, the inaugurator of the Babylonian civilisation; how even when Eabani had as it were endowed him with certain faculties for looking back into earlier incarnations, he was not really sure of his bearings. And everything we see transmitted to posterity through the activity of these Babylonian souls is entirely in accordance with this descent from spiritual heights and entry into the purely personal element that is peculiarly characteristic of the Babylonian soul.

In studying the occult aspect of history it is borne in upon us more and more that with their activities and cultural achievements the several peoples by no means stand isolated in world-evolution, in the general progress of humanity. Each people has its spiritual task, a special contribution to make to human progress. Our civilisation to-day is extremely complex, for many single streams of culture have converged in it. In our present spiritual life and in external life, too, there is a confluence of the most varied folk cultures which were developed more or less one-sidedly by the several peoples in accordance with their own missions, and then flowed into the general stream. Hence the single peoples all differ from one another; in each case we can speak of a particular mission. And we may ask: To what can we, who have received into our own culture the work achieved for civilisation by our forefathers—to what can we point that will show us what contribution was made by this or that people to the general progress of humanity

It is deeply interesting here to think of the task and mission of the Babylonian people. The Babylonian people presented a great riddle to historical research in the 19th century as a result of the decipherment of the cuneiform writing. And even the superficial information which it has been possible to acquire is in the highest degree noteworthy. For the researcher can state to-day that the length of time formerly accepted as historical has been almost doubled by the information gained through the decipherment of the cuneiform script. Evidence provided by external records themselves enables historical research to look back five and six thousand years before the Christian era, and to affirm that through the whole of this period a civilisation of greatness and significance existed in the regions which later on were the scene of the activities of the Babylonians and Assyrians. There, above all in the earliest times, lived a most remarkable people, known in history as the Sumerians. They lived in the regions around the Euphrates and the Tigris, mainly in the upper districts but also towards the lower. There is not enough time to go into the question of the historical records themselves and we must rather concern ourselves with what can be learnt from occult history.

In their thought and spiritual achievements, and also in their outer accomplishments, this people belonged to a comparatively very early stage of Post-Atlantean civilisation. And the farther we go back in the history of the Sumerians, who may be called the predecessors of the Babylonians, the more evident it becomes that spiritual traditions of the highest significance were alive in this people, that there was present among them a spiritual wisdom which may be described by saying that in them the whole mode of life, the way of living not in thought alone, but in the very soul and spirit, was entirely different from anything that developed in later periods of world-history. In the men of later times there is evidence, for example, of a certain hiatus between the thought and the spoken word. How can anyone fail to realise to-day that thinking and speaking are two quite different matters, that in a certain respect speech consists of conventional means of expression for what is being thought This is evident from the very fact that through our many different languages we express a great many common ideas. Thus there is a certain hiatus between thinking and speaking. It was not so among the Sumerians, this ancient people whose language was related to the soul quite differently from what came to be the rule in all later languages. Especially when we go back into times of the greatest antiquity we find something like a primal human language—although no longer preserved, even then, in complete purity. True, we already find differentiation in the languages of the various tribes and races in widespread areas of Europe, Asia and Africa, but there existed among the Sumerians a kind of common speech-element which was intelligible through the whole of the then known earth, especially to more deeply spiritual men. How was this possible? It was because a tone or a sound evoked a definite feeling and the soul was bound to express unequivocally what was felt in association with a particular thought and at the same time with a particular sound.

Let me indicate what this implies by saying that even in the names I quoted from the Epic of Gilgamesh—even there striking sounds are still to be found: Ishtar, Ishulan and the like. When these sounds are pronounced and their occult value is known, one realises that they are names in which the sounds could not be other than they are if they are to designate the beings in question, because U(oo), I(ee) and A(ah) can relate only to something quite specific. In the course of the further development of language men have lost the feeling that sounds—consonantal and vowel sounds—are related to specific realities, so that in those ancient times a thing could be designated only by a definite combination of sounds. As little as when we have some definite object in mind to-day do we have a fundamentally different idea of it in England and in Germany, as little could men in those times designate some object or being otherwise than by a specific combination of sounds, because the immediate spiritual feeling for sounds was still alive. So that language in ancient times—and in the Sumerian language there was an echo of it—bore a quite definite character and was intelligible to one who listened to it simply because of the nature of the soul. This applies, of course, to the very earliest Post-Atlantean civilisations.

But it was the task of the Babylonian people to lead this living connection of man with the spiritual world down into the personal, to the realm where the personality is based entirely upon itself in its separateness, in its singularity. It was the mission of the Babylonians to lead the spiritual world down to the physical plane. And with this is connected the fact that the living, spiritual feeling for language ceases and language adjusts itself according to such factors as climate, geographical position, race, and the like. The Bible—which narrates these things more accurately than do the phantasies of the self-styled philologist Fritz Mauthner²¹ describes this significant truth in the story of the Babylonian Tower of Babel, whereby men who speak a common language are scattered over the earth.²² When we know that the erection of sacred buildings in ancient times was guided by certain principles, we can also understand this Tower of Babel in the spiritual sense. Buildings intended to serve as places where certain acts dedicated to the sacred wisdom were to be performed, or which were to stand as signs and tokens of the holy truths—such buildings were erected according to measures derived either from the heavens or from the human structure. Fundamentally, these are identical, for man as the microcosm is a replica of the macrocosm. Therefore the measures to be found in buildings such as the pyramids are taken from the heavens and from the human body.

If we were to go back into relatively early times, we should find in sacred buildings symbolic representations of the measures contained in the human structure or in the phenomena of the heavens. Length, breadth, depth, the architectural form of the interior—everything was modeled on the measures of the heavens or those of the human Body. This was possible because when there was living consciousness of man's connection with the spiritual world, the measures were brought down from that world. What, then, was bound to happen when human knowledge was to be led down from the heavens to the earth, from the universal spiritual-human to the human-personal? The measures could then be taken only from man himself, from the human personality in so far as it is an expression of the single egohood. Thus the Tower of Babel was to be the cultic centre for men who were henceforward to derive the measures from the human personality. But at the same time it had to be shown that the personality must first mature to the stage of being able again to ascend to the spiritual worlds. The fourth and the fifth civilisation-epochs must be lived through before the reascent is possible—which it would not have been at that time. That the heavens were not yet within the reach of powers deriving from the human personality—this is indicated by the fact that the Tower of Babel was bound to be an unhappy affair. Infinite depths are contained in this world-symbol of the Tower of Babel through which men were limited to the personality as such; to what the personality could achieve under the particular conditions prevailing among some rate or people.

Thus the Babylonians were led downwards from the spiritual world to our earth; there lay their mission and their task. But, as I have already said, underlying the external Babylonian civilisation there was a Chaldean Mystery-culture which, while remaining esoteric, nevertheless flowed quite definitely into the outer civilisation. Hence we see the primeval wisdom still glimmering through in the ways and means available to the Babylonians. But these means were not to be used for the purpose of ascending into the spiritual regions; they were to be applied on the earth. This element in the mission of the Babylonians was embodied in their culture and has come down to our own times, as can be demonstrated. We must, however, learn to have at least some respect for that still great and powerful vision into the spiritual worlds which nurtured the old traditions in the soul and over which the shadows of twilight were only just beginning to creep. We must learn to have respect for the profound knowledge of the heavens possessed by the Babylonians, and for their great mission, which lay in drawing forth from what was known to mankind through vision of the spiritual world, from the laws of measure prevailing in the heavens, everything that must be incorporated into civilisation for the needs of outer, practical life. At the same time it was their mission to relate everything to man. And it is interesting that certain ideas have lived on into our own times, ideas that are like an echo of feelings that were still living experiences in the Babylonians—feelings of the inflow of the macrocosm into man, of a law which, holding sway in man as an earthly personality, mirrors the great law of the heavens.

In ancient Babylon there was a saying: “Look at a man who goes about not as a greybeard and not as a child, who moves about as a healthy, not as a sick being, who neither runs too swiftly nor walks too slowly—and you will behold the measure of the sun's course.” It is a momentous saying and one that can point us deeply into the souls of the ancient Babylonians. For they pictured that if a man with a good healthy gait, a man who maintains a pace in his walking consonant with healthiness of life, were to walk round the earth neither too quickly or too slowly, he would need 365¼ days to complete the circuit—and that is approximately correct, assuming he walks day and night without pause. And so they said: “That is the time in which a healthy human being could complete the circuit of the earth, and it is also the length of time which the sun takes to move round the earth” (for they believed in the apparent movement of the sun around the earth). “If therefore you walk as a healthy human being, neither too quickly nor too slowly around the earth, you are keeping the tempo of the sun's course.” And this means: “O Man, it lies in your very health that you keep the pace of the course of the sun around the earth.”

This is certainly something that can inspire us with respect for the majestic vision of the cosmos possessed by the Babylonian people. For on this basis they divided up the journey of a man sound the earth, using certain fractional measures and then arriving at a result approximately equal to the distance covered by a man when he walks for two hours: this comes to about a mile. (Note by translator: a German mile equals about five English miles.) They calculated this on the basis of a normal, healthy pace and adopted it as a kind of norm for measuring the ground on a larger scale. And in fact this measure persisted until fairly recently—when everything in human evolution became abstract—in the German mile, which can be covered in about two hours, And so there lasted on into the 19th century something that stems from the mission of the ancient Babylonians, who brought it down from the cosmos, calculating it in accordance with the course of the sun.

Not until our own time were there measures which originated from man's nature itself reduced inevitably to abstract measures taken from something deal. For it is obvious that measure to-day is abstract in comparison with the concrete measures directly connected with man and with the phenomena of the heavens—measures which are in truth all to be traced back to the mission of the Babylonian people. In the case of other measures too, such as the “foot,” derived from a human limb, or the “ell,” derived from the human hand and arm, we could find underlying them something that had been discovered as law prevailing in man, the macrocosm, In point of fact the ancient Babylonian way of thinking still underlay our system of measure until a time not so very long ago. The twelve zodiacal constellations and the five planets gave the Babylonians 5 times 12 = 60—this they took as a basic number. They counted up to 60 and then began again. Whenever they were counting things of everyday life they took the number 12 as the basis, because, since it derives from laws of the cosmos, it is related in a fax more concrete way to all external conditions. The number 12 is capable of much division. Twelve—the dozen—is nothing else than a gift from the mission of the Babylonians. We ourselves base everything an 10—a number which causes great difficulty when it has to be divided into parts, whereas the dozen, both in its relation to 60 and in its various possibilities of division, is eminently suited to be the basis of a metrical and numerical system.

When it is said that humanity has sailed into abstraction even in respect of calculation and counting, this is not intended as a criticism of our time, for one epoch cannot do the same as the preceding epoch. If we want to portray the course of civilisation from the Atlantean catastrophe to the Greek period and on through our own, we may say: The Indian, Persian and Egyptian epochs are periods of descent; in Greek civilisation the point is reached where the essentially human is unfolded on the physical plane; then the reascent begins. But this reascent is such that it represents one aspect only of the actual course of development, and on the other side there is a progressive descent into materialism. Hence in our time, side by side with spiritual endeavour there is the crassest materialism which links deeply, deeply into matter. These things are natural parallels. This current of materialism is inevitably present as an obstacle which has to be overcome in order that a higher forte may be developed. But it is the nature of this materialistic current to make everything abstract. The whole decimal system is an abstract system. This is not criticism but simply characterisation. And in other directions, too, the whole tendency is to suppress the concrete reality. Just think of the proposals that have been put forward—for example to make the Easter Festival fall an a fixed day in April, in order that the inconveniences caused to commerce and industry may be avoided! No heed is given to the fact that there we still have something which, determined as it is by the heavens, reaches over to us from ancient times. Everything has to nun into abstraction, and concrete reality, which pressed on again to the spiritual, flows into our civilisation to begin with only as a tiny trickle.

It is extraordinarily interesting to see how not only in Spiritual Science, but outside it as well, humanity is instinctively impelled to take the upward path, to ascend again, let us say to a connection with measure, number and form similar to that which prevailed in the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians. For in our time there is actually a kind of repetition of Babylonian and Egyptian culture; the civilisation-epochs preceding our era repeat themselves: the Egyptian in our own epoch, the Persian in the sixth, the Indian in the seventh. The first corresponds with the seventh, the second with the sixth, the third with the fifth, our own; the fourth Stands by itself, forming the middle. For this reason., so much that went to form the ancient Egyptian view of the world is being repeated instinctively. Remarkable things come to light. Men may be rooted in thoroughly materialistic ideas and concepts, nevertheless through the weight of the facts themselves—not through the scientific theories, all of which are materialistic to-day—they can be 1ed into the spiritual life. For example, there is in Berlin au interesting doctor who has made remarkable observations based entirely an facts, apart from any theory. I will indicate it on the blackboard.—Let us suppose that this point represents the date of a woman's death. I am not speaking of a hypothetical case but of something that has been actually observed.—The woman is the grandmother of a family. A certain number of days before her death a grandchild is born, the number of days being 1,428. Strange to say, 1,428 days after the grandmother's death another grandchild is born, and a great-granddaughter 9,996 days after her death. Divide 9,996 by 1,428, and you have 7. After a period, therefore, seven times the length of the period between the birth of the first grandchild and the death of the grandmother, a great grandchild is born. And now the same doctor shows that this is not an isolated case, but that one may investigate a number of families and invariably find that in respect of death and birth absolutely definite numerical relationships are in evidence. And the most interesting point of all is that if, for example, you take the number 1,428, again you have a number divisible by seven. In short, the very facts compel people to-day to rediscover in the succession of outer events certain regularities, certain periodicities, which are connected with the old sacred numbers. And already to-day the number of findings in this direction collected by Fliess—such is the name of the doctor in Berlin²³—and his students, is a proof that the sequence of such events is regulated by quite definite numbers. These figures are already available in overwhelming quantity. The interpretation placed upon them is thoroughly materialistic, but the facts themselves compel belief in the factor of number in world-happenings. I must emphasise that the application of this principle by Fliess and his students is extremely misleading and erroneous. The way he applies his main numbers, especially 23 and 28—28 = 4 times 7—will have to be amended in many respects. Nevertheless, in a study such as this we can see something like an instinctive emergence of ancient Babylonian culture in the age when mankind is an the path of ascent. Of course, such things are confined to Small circles; the vast majority of people have no feeling for them. But it is certainly remarkable to see the unusual thoughts and feelings which arise in people such as the pupils of Fliess, for example, who discover these things. One of these pupils says: “If these things had been known in ancient times, whatever would men have Said?”—But they were known! And the following passage seems to me particularly characteristic.

After this pupil of Fliess has collected a great deal of such material, he says: “Periods constructed on the clearest mathematical principles are here derived from nature, and such things have at all times been beyond the reach of gifted minds accustomed to far more difficult problems. With what religious fervour would the Babylonians, with their love of calculation, have investigated this domain and with what magic would these questions have been surrounded.”—So you see how near people have already come to an inkling of what has actually happened! How unmistakably men's instinct is working once again in the direction of the spiritual life! But just where the science current in our time passes blindly by, there is much to be found that sheds great illumination on the occult force of which people are completely unconscious. Those who draw attention to this remarkable law of numbers explain it in an altogether materialistic way; but the weight of the facts themselves is already compelling people to-day once again to recognise the spiritual, mathematical law prevailing in the things of the world. We see how deeply true it is that everything which comes to expression in personal form in the later course of human evolution is a shadow-image of what was present formerly in elemental, original grandeur, because the connection with the spiritual world was still intact.

In order that it may be deeply inscribed in your souls, I want to emphasise that it was the Babylonians who in their transition to the fourth civilisation-epoch bad, as it were, to bring down the heavens into measure, number, weight; that in our own day we experience the echo of it; and that we shall find our way again to this technique of numbers which will inevitably come more and more into prominence, although in other domains of life an abstract system of measure and number is naturally the appropriate one. Here again, Chen, we can see how on the path of descent a certain point is reached in the Greco-Latin cultivation of pure, essential manhood, of the expression of personality an the physical plane, and how then a reascent begins. So that in very fact the Greek epoch lies in the middle of the whole course of Post-Atlantean civilisation.

But we must remember that in this Greek epoch there came the impulse of Christianity which is to lead humanity upwards into other regions. We have already seen how in the first phase of its development this Christianity did not at once appear with its full significance, with its spiritual content and substance. The behaviour of the men of Alexandria towards Hypatia gave us a picture of the failings and the shadow-sides with which Christianity was fraught at the beginning. It has indeed often been stressed that the times have yet to come when Christianity will be understood in all its profundity, that there are still infinite and unfathomed depths in Christianity, which really belongs more to the future than to the present—let alone to the past. We see how in Christianity something still in the throes of birth places itself into what had entered into the heritage of primeval world-wisdom and spirituality. For what the culture of Greece had received, what it bore within itself, was actually like a heritage of everything that in countless incarnations had been acquired by men through their living connection with the spiritual world. All the spirituality experienced in the preceding ages had sank down into the hearts and souls of the Greeks and lived itself out in them. Hence it is understandable—especially in view of what had resulted from the Christian impulse in the first centuries that there were men who could not regard the coming of Christianity as equal in value to all that had been transmitted to Greek culture with overwhelming greatness and depth of spirituality, as an ancient heritage of thousands of years.

There was a particularly characteristic personality who experienced as it were within his own breast this battle of the old with the new, this battle between treasures of primordial, spiritual wisdom and what was only at its very beginning—a feebly flowing stream. This personality of the Greco-Latin epoch in the 4th century, who experienced these things in the arena of his own soul, was Julian the Apostate.²⁴ It is interesting in the very highest degree to follow the life of the Roman Emperor Julian. He was a nephew of the ambitious, revengeful Emperor Constantine, and the intention was that he and his brother should both be put to death in childhood. He was allowed to live only because it was feared that his death would cause too great an uproar, and because it was expected that whatever harm he might be able to do could afterwards be counteracted. Julian was obliged to acquire his education through many wanderings among various communities, and strict care was taken to ensure that he should imbibe what at that time was accepted, for opportunistic reasons, in Rome and by Rome, by the Roman Empire, as Christian development. This, however, was a hotchpotch of what took shape by degrees as the Catholic Church and what existed as Arianism, the desire being that neither element should be impaired by the other. And so at that time hostility against the old Hellenistic-Pagan ideal, the ancient Gods and the ancient Mysteries, was fairly vehement on all sides. As I said, every effort was made to ensure that Julian, who might be expected eventually to succeed to the throne of the Cæsars, should become a good Christian.

But a strange urge was asserting itself in this soul. This soul could never really acquire any deep feeling for Christianity. Wherever the boy was taken, and wherever vestiges not only of ancient Paganism but of ancient spirituality still survived, his heart warmed to it. Wherever he found something of the old sacred traditions and institutions living an into the civilisation of the fourth epoch, he drank it in. And so it happened that on his many wanderings, to which he was driven by the persecutions meted out to him by his uncle the Emperor, he came into contact with teachers of the so-called Neo-Platonic School and with pupils of the men of Alexandria, who had received the old traditions handed down from there. It was then that for the First time Julian's heart was nourished with that to which he was so deeply drawn. And then he came to know such treasures of ancient wisdom as still existed in Greece itself. And with all that Greece gave him, with all that the old world gave him in the way of wisdom, Julian could not bat unfold a living Feeling for the language of the heavens, for the secrets which in the starry script speak down to us from cosmic spare. Then came the time when he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries by one of the last hierophants; and in Julian we have the strange spectacle that one who is inspired by the ancient Mysteries, one who stands fully within what can be received when the spiritual life becomes a reality through the Mysteries—that such an initiate sits on the throne of the Cæsars. And although many misconceptions crept into Julian's writings against the Christians, we know what greatness there was in his conception of the world when he was speaking out of the majestic experiences of his Initiation.

But because as a pupil of Mysteries already in decline he did not rightly know how to find his bearings in the times, he faced the martyrdom looming before one who is inspired but is no longer aware of which secrets must be kept hidden and which may legitimately be communicated. Out of the ardour and enthusiasm kindled in Julian by his Hellenistic education and through his Initiation, out of the sublime experiences which the hierophant had enabled him to undergo, there arose in him the resolve to re-establish what he beheld as the active, weaving life of the ancient spirituality. And so we see him endeavouring by many ways and means to introduce the old Gods again into a civilisation already penetrated by Christianity. He went too far both in the matter of speaking openly of the Mystery-secrets and in his attitude towards Christianity. And so it came about that in the year 363, when he had to conduct a military campaign against the Persians, he was overtaken by his destiny. Just as destiny overtakes anyone who has unlawfully uttered those things which may not be uttered without authorisation, so it was in the case of Julian, and there is historical proof that on this expedition against the Persians, he fell by the hand of a Christian. For not only did this news spread abroad very soon afterwards and has never been disavowed by any of the Christian writers of note, but it would have been highly astonishing if the Persians had brought about the death of their arch-enemy without boasting about it. Among them, too, the view prevailed immediately afterwards that Julian had fallen by the hand of a Christian. It was really something like a storm that went forth from this inspired soul, from the fiery enthusiasm acquired from initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries which were already approaching their period of twilight. Such was the destiny of a man of the 4th century, of an entirely personal human being whose world-karma consisted, essentially, in living out in personal anger, personal resentment and personal enthusiasm, the heritage he had received. That was the fundamental law prevailing in his life.

For the study of occult history, it is interesting to observe the laxer course taken by this particular life, this particular individuality. During the 16th century, in the year 1546, a remarkable man was born of a noble house of Northern Europe, and in his very cradle, so to speak, everything was laid—including family wealth—that could have led him to positions of great honour in the traditional life of that time. Because, in line with his family traditions, it was intended that he should occupy some eminent political or other high position, he was marked out for the legal profession and sent with a tutor to the University of Leipzig to study jurisprudence. The tutor tormented the boy—for he was still a boy when he was forced to study law—all day long. But at night, while the tutor was sleeping the sleep of the just and dreaming of legal theories, the boy stole out of bed and observed the stars with the very simple instruments he had himself devised. And very soon he knew not only more than any of the teachers about the secrets of the stars but more than was to he found at that time in any book. For example, he very soon noticed a definite position of Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation of Leo, turned to the books and found that they recorded it quite erroneously. The longing then arose in him to acquire as exact a knowledge as possible of this star-script, to record as accurately as possible the course of the stars. No wonder that in spite of all his family's resistance he soon extracted the permission to become a natural philosopher and astronomer, instead of dreaming his life away over legal books and doctrines. And having considerable means at his disposal, he was able to set up a whole establishment.

This was arranged in a remarkable way. In the upper storeys were instruments designed for observing the secrets of the stars; in the cellars there was equipment for bringing about different combinations and dissolutions of substances. And there he worked, dividing his time between observations carried out on the upper floors of the building and the boiling, fermenting, mixing and weighing which went on in the cellars below. There he worked, in Order to show, little by little, how the laws that are written in the stars, the laws of the planets and fixed stars, the macrocosmic laws, are to be found again microcosmically in the mathematical numbers underlying the combinations and dissolutions of substances. And what he discovered as a living connection between the heavenly and the earthly he applied to the art of medicine, producing medicaments which were the cause of bitter animosity around him because he gave them freely to those he wanted to help. The doctors at that time, intent upon extorting high fees, raged against this man who was accused of perpetrating all sorts of “horrors” with what he endeavoured to bring down from the heavens to the earth.

Fortunately, as the result of a certain happening, he found favour with the Danish King, Frederick the Second, and as long as he retained this favour, all went well: tremendous insight was gained into the spiritual working of cosmic laws in the sense I have just described. This man did indeed know something about the spiritual course of cosmic laws. He dumbfounded the world with things which admittedly would no longer find the same credence to-day. On one Occasion, when he was at Rostock, he prophesied, from the constellation of the stars, the death of the Sultan Soliman, which came true within a few days of the date he had foretold. The news of this made the name of Tycho Brahe²⁵ (also Appendix) famous in Europe. To-day the world at large knows hardly anything more of Tycho Brahe, whose life lies such a short time behind us, than that he was somewhat of a crank and never quite reached the lofty standpoint of modern materialism. He recorded a thousand stars for the first time in the maps of the heavens and also made the epoch-making discovery of a type of star, the “Nova,” which flares up and vanishes again, and described it. But these things are mostly passed over in silence. The world really knows nothing about him except that he was still “stupid” enough to devise a plan of the cosmos in which the earth stands still and the sun together with the planets revolve around it. That is what the world in general knows to-day. The fact that we have to do here with a significant personality of the 16th century, with one who accomplished an infinite amount that even to-day is still useful to astronomy, that untold depths of wisdom are contained in what he gave—none of this is usually recorded, for the simple reason that in presenting the system in detail, out of his own deep knowledge, Tycho Brahe saw difficulties which Copernicus did not see. If such a thing dare be said—for it does indeed seem paradoxical—even with the Copernican cosmic system the last word has not yet been uttered. And the conflict between the two Systems will still occupy the minds of a later humanity.—That, however, only by the way; it is too paradoxical for the present age.

It was only under the successor of the King who had been well-disposed towards him that the enemies of Tycho Brahe arose an all sides. They were doctors and professors at the University of Copenhagen, and they succeeded in inciting the successor of his patron against him. Tycho Brahe was driven from his fatherland and was obliged to go south again. It was in Augsburg that he had originally set up his first great planisphere and the gilded globe an which he always marked the new stars he discovered—finally amounting to a thousand. This man was destined to die in exile in Prague. To this very day, if we turn, not to the usual textbooks, but to the actual sources, and study Kepler, let us say, we can still see that Kepler was able to arrive at his laws because of the meticulous astronomical observations made by Tycho Brahe before him. Here indeed was a personality who again bore the stamp, in a grand style, of what had been great and significant wisdom before his time; one who could not reconcile himself to the kind of knowledge that became popular immediately afterwards in the shape of the materialistic view of the world. Truly it is a strange destiny, this destiny of Tycho Brahe!

And now, placing both personal destinies side by side, think how endlessly instructive it is when we learn from the Akasha Chronicle that the individuality of Julian the Apostate appears again in Tycho Brahe, that Tycho Brahe is, so to say, a reincarnation of Julian the Apostate. Thus strangely and paradoxically does the law of reincarnation take effect when the karmic connection of the single individual are modified by world-historic karma; when the cosmic Powers themselves use the human individuality as their instrument.

Let Inc expressly emphasise that I do not speak of such matters as the connection between Julian the Apostate and Tycho Brahe in order that they shall be proclaimed at once from the housetops and discussed at every dinner-table and coffee-table, but in order that they may sink into many a soul as the teaching of occult wisdom, and that we may learn to understand more and more how super-sensible reality everywhere underlies the human being in his physical manifestation.

• 21. Fritz Mauthner, 1849–1923. A writer, Journalist and author of philosophical works, notably on the subject of language, often referred to by Rudolf Steiner.
• 22. Genesis, XI.
• 23. Wilhelm Fliess, b. 1858. Author of Der Ablauf des Lebens: Grundlagen zur exakten Biologie, Leipzig and Vienna, 1906; also Das Jahr im Lebendigen, Jena, 1919.
• 24. Julian the Apostate, 331–63. Emperor from 361–63. See Rudolf Steiner: Building-Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, lectures VII and VIII; Man's Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds, lecture I; The Sun Mystery in the Course of Human History; Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies, Vol. IV, lectures V and VI; World-History in the light of Anthroposophy, lecture VI.
  
  There are many other references, too numerous to be detailed here. The above are of outstanding importance.
• 25. Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies, Vol. IV, lectures V and VI; also Appendix, p. 121.

The glimpse into the development of individualities such as those whom we were able, in the lecture yesterday, to follow through two incarnations allows us to discern something of the mysterious inflow and activity of the cosmic Spirits during the evolution and history of mankind. For when we keep before our minds the pictures which, in brief outline at least, came before us yesterday, the pictures of Julian the Apostate and of a later expression of this individuality in history as Tycho Brahe, the great astronomer, one thing may strike us particularly. Precisely in the case of personalities who signify something in history we can observe that the special qualities of the individuality work over from one incarnation into another; but that what spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies desire to accomplish in history, using single individuals as their instrument, asserts itself in the straightforward course of reincarnation as a modifying factor.

For we shall realise that in the 4th century A.D. it was the function of the individuality who appeared as Julian the Apostate to give as it were a last impetus for the final flaring up of the spiritual wisdom belonging to earlier epochs, and thus to preserve it from the fate that might easily have befallen it if struggling Christianity alone had been left to handle such treasures. And on the other hand we shall realise that an individuality incarnated in a man whose good fortune it was to be initiated into the Elusinian Mysteries had opportunities, on reincarnating, for receiving in endless abundance the impulses of the time and the influences of beings working in the way destined for the 16th century. We shall find entirely understandable the greatness and power of the personality of Tycho Brahe, as outlined yesterday, if we realise that precisely because he had been an Initiate in an earlier incarnation he was able to bring to light an untold fund of macrocosmic science in its application to the microcosm. Such studies of occult history make us aware that it is men themselves who make history, but that history in the last resort becomes comprehensible only when we find the connection between the single personalities who appear and pass away and the individual threads which run through the whole course of human evolution, reincarnating in personalities. But if we are to understand the historical life of mankind on our earth, we must always associate with it that which streams in from other worlds, super-sensible worlds, through the Powers of other Hierarchies.

In the course of these lectures we have heard how certain high-ranking Powers of the Hierarchies have worked, through human beings, into all the civilisation-epochs since the Atlantean catastrophe. This was most strongly evident in the ancient Indian soul which may be said to have been simply an arena for the inflowing of higher spiritual Beings. In the soul of the ancient Persian it was not so to the Same extent. And then we heard how in Egypto-Chaldean civilisation it was even then the mission of the human soul—noticeable particularly in the Babylonian people—to bring the super-personal down into the personal, the spiritual down to the physical plane. The significance of personality constantly increases the nearer we come to the Greek epoch, when the ego works and weaves in the ego. In the strong and forceful figures of the Greek epoch the stamp of personality is complete. It is with the Greeks, and later with the Romans, that what can at first be bestowed on the individuality only from higher worlds withdraws to the greatest extent, while what a man expresses in his personality as his proper humanity comes to the forefront.

The question may arise: Which particular Spirits, from which Hierarchies, worked through the ancient Indians, the ancient Persians, the Babylonians, Chaldeans and Egyptians respectively It is the answer to this question that alone can give us deeper insight into the occult course of history.²⁶ The investigations made possible from occult sources enable us, in a certain sense at any rate, to say which particular Beings of the higher Hierarchies worked through men as their instruments in each of these periods. Into the ancient Indian soul, which created the civilisation immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe, the Beings we call the Angeloi, the Angels, poured their forces. And in a certain connection it is true to say that when a man of ancient India spoke, when he gave expression to what was active in his soul, it was not his own egohood speaking directly, but an Angelos, an Angel. Ranking only one stage higher than man, the Angel is the hierarchical Being most closely related to him and therefore able, as it were, to speak more directly. It is in the ancient Indian mode of speech that an element foreign to the human comes most strongly into evidence, because the Angel, as the Being most closely related to man, is able to speak with the greatest directness.

This direct expression was less possible for the Beings of the higher Hierarchies who spoke through the souls of the ancient Persian people, for they were Beings of the next higher rank—the Archangels. And because these Beings stand two stages higher than man, what they were able to express by means of human instruments was farther away from their own inherent nature than what the Angels could express through the ancient Indians. Thus, stage by stage, everything becomes more human. Nevertheless this downflow from the higher Hierarchies is continuous, unbroken. Through the souls of the Babylonian, Chaldean, Egyptian peoples, the Spirits of Personality (the Archai) express themselves. Hence it is in this period that the emergence of personality is most prominent, and what man is still able to give out from the forces streaming down to him is therefore the farthest removed from its origin, bearing the essential stamp of the human-personal. And so, as evolution advances to the Egypto-Babylonian epoch, there is a continuing manifestation of the Angels, the Archangels and the Spirits of Personality.

In the ancient Persians, especially, we can see very exactly how they had an awareness that the Archangels—the Spirits of paramount importance in that epoch—were working into the human organism, the human organism in its totality. We must not, to be sure, take an average Persian when considering the downflowing of forces from the Hierarchies. The forces streamed down, too, upon the average Persian, but only those who were the immediate pupils of the inspirer of the ancient Persian culture, of Zarathustra himself, were capable of knowing how this happened, of seeing through to the reality. And they did indeed possess this knowledge. For you will remember from many descriptions I have given of the teachings of Zarathustra, or from exoteric traditions, that according to the view of the ancient Persians the primal Divinity, Zervana Akarana, reveals himself through the two opposing powers, Ormuzd and Ahriman. The ancient Persians were clearly aware that whatever comes to manifestation in the human being derives from the macrocosm, and that the phenomena of the macrocosm—especially, therefore, the movements and positions of the stars—are mysteriously connected with the microcosm, with man. Hence the pupils of Zarathustra saw in the Zodiac the external expression, the image, of Zervana Akarana, of the primal reality of Being living and weaving through eternity. Even the very word “Zodiac” is reminiscent of the word Zervana Akarana. The pupils of Zarathustra saw twelve powers proceeding from the twelve directions of the Zodiac, six directed towards the light side of the Zodiac traversed by the sun by day; the other six towards the dark side—turned, as they said, towards Ahriman. Thus the Persian conceived of the macrocosmic forces coming from the twelve directions of the universe and penetrating into, working into humanity, so that they are immediately present in man. Consequently, what unfolds through the working of the twelve forces must reveal itself also in its microcosmic form, in human intelligence; that is to say, it must come to expression in the microcosm, too, through the twelve Amshaspands²⁷ (Archangels), and indeed as a final manifestation, so to say, of these twelve spiritual, macrocosmic Beings who had already worked in former ages, preparing that which merely reached a last stage of development during the epoch of Persian civilisation.

It should not be beyond the scope of modern physiology to know where the microcosmic counterparts of the twelve Amshaspands are to be found. They are the twelve main nerves proceeding from the head; these are nothing else than material densifications of what arose in the human belong through the instreaming of the twelve macrocosmic powers. The ancient Persians pictured the twelve Archangel-Beings working from the twelve directions of the Zodiac, working into the human head in twelve rays, in order gradually to produce what is now our intelligence. Naturally they did not work into man for the first time in the ancient Persian epoch, but finally they worked in such a way that we can speak of twelve cosmic radiations, twelve Archangel-radiations, which then densified in the human head into twelve main cerebral nerves. And just as knowledge in a later age includes what was already known in an earlier one, so could the Persians also know that Spirits of a lower rank than the Archangels had been at work previously, in the Indian epoch. The Persians called the Beings of the rank below the Amshaspands, “Izads,” and of these they enumerated 28 to 31. The Izads, therefore, are Beings who give rise to a less lofty activity; to soul-activity in man. They send in their rays, which correspond to the 28, 30 to 31 spinal nerves. And so in Zarathustrianism you have our modern physiology translated into terms of the spiritual, the macrocosmic, in the twelve Amshaspands and in the 28 to 31 Izads of the next lower Hierarchy.

A true fact of historical evolution is that what was originally seen spiritually is now presented to us through anatomical dissection; things that were formerly accessible to clairvoyant vision appear in later epochs in materialistic form. A wonderful bridge is disclosed here between Zarathustrianism, with its spirituality, and modern physiology, with its materialism. Of course, the destiny of the great majority of mankind makes it inevitable that such an idea as that of the connection between the Persian Amshaspands and Izads and our nerves is regarded as lunacy, especially by those who study the materialistic physiology of to-day. But after all, we have plenty of time, for the Persian epoch will be fully recapitulated only in the Sixth epoch which follows our own. Then, for the first time, the conditions prevailing will enable such things to be intelligible to a large part of humanity. Therefore we have to content ourselves with the fact that indications of them can be given to-day as part of the spiritual-scientific outlook. And such indications must be given if a spiritual-scientific conception of the world is to be spoken of in the true sense, and attention called, not merely in general phrases, to the fact that man is a microcosmic replica of the macrocosm.

In other regions, too, it has been known that what comes to manifestation in the human being flows in from outside. For example, in certain periods of Germanic mythology mention is made of twelve streams flowing from Niflheim to Muspelheim. The twelve streams are not meant in the physical-material sense, but they are that which, seen by clairvoyance, flows as a kind of reflection from the macrocosm into the human microcosm, the human being who moves over the earth and whose evolution is to be brought about through macrocosmic forces.

It must however be emphasised that these streams are to be regarded to-day as astral streams, whereas in the Atlantean epoch, which immediately followed that of Lemuria, and in Lemuria itself, they could be seen as etheric streams. So a planet which is related to the earth, but represents an earlier stage of development, must reveal some similar phenomenon. And as from a distance things can often be observed which in proximity escape our observation, because what we see is then broken up into details, so in the case of a planet resembling the earth, when it is sufficiently distant and passing through earlier stages of development such as those undergone by our earth, it might be possible, even to-day, to observe these twelve streams.

To be sure, they will not look quite the Same as once they appeared when seen an the earth. Distance is an essential factor, for if, to take an example, you are standing in the midst of a swarm of gnats, you do not see the swarm with its different shades of density; these are perceived only when you see the swarm from some way off. What I have just said lies at the root of the observations of so-called “canals” an Mars. It is there a matter of certain streams of force which correspond to an earlier stage of the earth²⁸ and are described in the old Germanic myths as streams flowing from Niflheim to Muspelheim. Naturally this is rank heresy from the point of view of modern academic physiology and astronomy, but these sciences will have to submit to a great deal of revision in the course of the next few thousand years.²⁹

All these things show us what profound wisdom is to be divined in the simple saying: The human microcosm is a kind of image of the macrocosm. Such sayings themselves bear witness that the words touch directly upon the deepest treasures of wisdom. The saying that man is a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm can be just a trivial phrase, but rightly understood it epitomises an untold multitude of concrete truths. All this has been said in order to indicate to you the configuration of soul in the man of ancient Persian civilisation; especially in the leading personalities there was a living feeling of man's connection with the macrocosm.

After the Beings whom we have named in their sequence as Angels, Archangels and Spirits of Personality had worked until the age of the Babylonian-Egyptian civilisation, there followed that remarkable Greco-Latin civilisation which brought the personality as such, the weaving of the ego in the ego, particularly to expression. There, too, certain Beings made themselves manifest—the Spirits of Form, who are one stage higher than the Spirits of Personality. But the manifestation of these Spirits of Form was different from that of the Spirits of Personality, the Archangels and the Angels. How do the Spirits of Personality, the Archangels and the Angels manifest in the Post-Atlantean epoch? They work into man's inner nature. The Angels worked as inspirers of the ancient Indians; the Archangels similarly in the ancient Persians, but here the influence of the human element already asserted itself to a somewhat greater degree. The Spirits of Personality stood as it were behind the souls of the Egyptians, urging them to project the spiritual on to the physical plane. The Spirits of Form manifest in a different way. They manifest from below upwards as far more powerful Spirits who are not dependent upon using man merely as an instrument; they manifest in the kingdoms of Nature around us, in the configuration of the beings of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. And if man would recognise the Spirits of Form in their manifestation, he must direct his gaze outwards, he must observe Nature and investigate what has been woven into her by the Spirits of Form. Consequently in the Greek epoch, when the paramount manifestation is that of the Spirits of Form, man does not receive any direct influence as an inspiration. The influence of the Spirits of Form works far rather in such a way that man is allured by the outer world of sense; his senses are directed with joy and delight towards everything spread out around him, and he tries to elaborate and perfect it. Thus the Spirits of Form attract him from without. And one of the chief Spirits of Form is the Being designated as Jahve or Jehovah. Although there are seven Spirits of Form and they work in the different kingdoms of Nature, men of the present age have a faculty of perception only for the one Spirit, Jehovah.—If we reflect on all this, it will be intelligible to us that with the approach of the fourth epoch, man is more or less forsaken by these inner Guiding-Powers, by the Angels, Archangels and Spirits of Personality, and that he turn his gaze entirely to the external world, to the physical horizon where the Spirits of Form are in manifestation. They were of course already present behind the physical world in earlier times, but they had not as it were yielded themselves to human recognition. In the period immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe, the Spirits of Form had been at work; they had been at work in the kingdoms of Nature, in the laws governing wind and weather, in the laws of the plants, animals and minerals. They had also worked in times more ancient still. But man did not direct his gaze to what then came to meet him externally, for he was inwardly inspired by the other Spirits. His attention was diverted from the outer world.

How is this to be explained? In what sense are we to understand the fact that these other Hierarchies, who are of a lower rank than the Spirits of Form, asserted their influence so dominantly over against the already existing activity of the Spirits of Form? This is connected with a definite period in the evolution of the earth as a whole. To the clairvoyant vision which with the help of the Akasha Chronicle looks back into the past, these things present an appearance entirely different from the speculative pictures based on the geological data of the present day. When we go back before the activity of the Spirits of Personality in the Chaldean epoch, before that of the Archangels in the ancient Persian and of the Angels in the ancient Indian epoch, we come to the period when the Atlantean cataclysm was at the height of its fury. We find our way gradually into the conditions then prevailing. This is the time to which the legends of the Deluge existing among the different peoples refer, but their picture of it was very different from that drawn by the hypotheses of modern geology. In still earlier Atlantean times, the picture was again quite different. Man was a being capable of transformation. Before this catastrophe the whole face of the earth was different from anything that can be imagined to-day. You can well conceive that at that time Spiritual Hierarchies worked into the earth still more strongly.

Between the old influences in the Atlantean epoch and those in the Post-Atlantean, there was a boundary-period filled by the Atlantean catastrophe—by those events whereby the face of the earth was totally changed in regard to the distribution of water and land. Such periods and changes consequent upon them are connected with mighty processes in the constellation, position and movement of the cosmic bodies connected with the sun. In fact, such periods in the earth's evolution are determined and directed from macrocosmic space. It would lead too far if I were to attempt to describe to you how these successive periods are directed and regulated by what is called in modern astronomy the precession of the equinoxes. This is connected with the position of the earth's axis in relation to the axis of the ecliptic, with mighty processes in the constellation of neighbouring celestial bodies; and there are definite times when, on account of the particular position of the earth's axis in relation to these other bodies of the cosmic system, the distribution of warmth and cold on our earth is radically changed. This position of the earth's axis in relation to the neighbouring stars causes the climatic conditions to change. In the course of something over 25,000 years, the axis of the earth describes a kind of conical or spherical movement, so that conditions undergone by the earth at a certain time are undergone again, in a different form and indeed at a higher stage, after 25,000 to 26,000 years. But between these great periods of time there are always shorter periods. The process does not go forward in absolute, unvarying continuity, but in such a way that certain years are crucial points, deeply incisive times in which momentous happenings take place. And here, because it is of essential significance in the whole historical development of earthly humanity, we may point particularly to the fact that in the seventh millennium before Christ there was a very specially important astronomical epoch—important because, on account of the constellation brought about by the relative position of the earth's axis to the neighbouring stars, the climatic conditions on earth culminated in the Atlantean cataclysm. This happened six to eight thousand years before our era, and the effects of it continued for long ages. Here we can only emphasise what is correct, as opposed to the fantastic periods of time that are mentioned, for these happenings lie much less far behind us than is generally believed. During this period the macrocosmic conditions worked into the physical in such a way as to bring about the mighty physical upheavals of the Atlantean cataclysm, which completely changed the face of the earth. This was the greatest physical transformation of all, the most drastic action of the macrocosm upon the physical earth. Hence the influence from the macrocosm upon the spirit of man at that time was at its lowest; this epoch therefore provided an opportunity for the less powerful Beings of the Hierarchies to begin to exercise on man a potent influence, which then ebbed gradually away.

Thus when the Spirits of Form were working powerfully to revolutionise the physical, they had less time to work also upon the spirit of man, with the result that the physical vanished as it were from under man's feet. But an the other hand it was precisely during the time of the Atlantean catastrophe that men were transported most completely into spiritual realms and only gradually found their way again into the physical world in the Post-Atlantean epoch. Now when you picture that at this time—six to eight thousand years before the Christian era—the least influence was exercised upon the human spirit and the strongest influence on the physical conditions of the earth, it will not be difficult for you to conceive that there may be another point of time when the opposite situation comes about: when those who are cognisant of such a matter experience the reverse of these conditions—namely, the least influence upon the physical and the greatest influence, precisely of the Spirits of Form, upon the human spirit. Hypothetically you can conceive that there may he a point in history where the reverse of the great Atlantean catastrophe applies. Of course it will not be so easily noticeable, for the Atlantean catastrophe, when parts of the very earth were blotted out, is bound to be a very striking event for people of our Post-Atlantean epoch, with their strong leanings to the physical. When the Spirits of Form are exercising a powerful influence on the human personality and have only a little influence upon what is taking place in the external world, the impression will be less vivid. The point of time when this condition—in the nature of things, less perceptible to men—set in, was the year A.D. 1250 This year 1250 is of momentous importance in history.³⁰ It fell in a period that can be characterised briefly as follows.

The spirits of men felt as though impelled to express with the greatest possible precision how the mind and heart can look upwards to the Divine Beings above the other Hierarchies, how man seeks to come into relation with these Beings, conceived primarily as a unity, first through Jehovah, then through Christ, and how all human knowledge is to be applied to the unveiling of the mystery of Christ Jesus. That was a point of time especially adapted for conveying to mankind the mysteries which come to direct expression in the connection of the Spiritual with the working of Nature. Hence we see that this year 1250 was the starting-point of great and detailed elaborations of what was formerly only believed, only divined: it was the starting-point of Scholasticism, which is greatly undervalued to-day.³¹ It was also the starting-point of revelations which found expression in spirits such as Agrippa of Nettesheim, and which took effect most deeply in Rosicrucianism. This shows that if we want to search for the deeper forces of historical development, we must take stock of conditions quite other than those outwardly in evidence. In point of fact, behind the things of which I have just been speaking there are also hidden the forces working, for example, in the waves and subsequent ebbing of the Crusades. The whole of European history, especially the flow of happenings between East and West is attributable solely to the fact that forces are at work behind the events, as I have now elucidated.

We may therefore say: There are two points of time, one of them marked by a great upheaval an the outer physical plane and the other by a change in character of all that had once resounded in the secrecy of the Mysteries. But we must keep well in mind that in all such matters there are again other laws which cut across the main laws. Hence we can understand that in this period there lies the starting-point for great revelations; that this period is entirely in keeping with the appearance of a man such as Julian the Apostate, who had once been inspired in the Eleusinian Mysteries. At that time he had opened his soul to the revelations coming from the Spirits of Form. But the initial onset of a powerful influence always works for a period of about four hundred years, then it begins to ebb and the streams as it were to separate. Hence the eventual effect of what had been perceived at that time as spiritual reality behind the manifestations of Nature was that men forgot the Spiritual and paid attention only to the manifestations of Nature. That is the modern mentality. Tycho Brahe is one of the last of those who still grasped the reality of the Spiritual behind the data constituting the sciences of external Nature. Tycho Brahe was a truly wonderful personality, because with. his supreme mastery of external astronomy he discovered thousands of stars, and at the same time he had such deep inner knowledge of the sway of the spiritual Powers that he could astonish all Europe by boldly predicting the death of the Sultan Soliman. We see how out of the spiritual nature-knowledge, which begins to appear in 1250 and is exemplified in Spirits such as Agrippa of Nettesheim, there gradually emerges what later on amounts merely to perception of the manifestations of external Nature; while the inner, the Spiritual, remains in that mysterious stream known to us as Rosicrucianism. Then the two streams flow on.

It is indeed remarkable how this process shows itself in actual personalities. Once, near the beginning of our German Movement, I drew your attention to how in a personality of the 15th century there appears the continuance of a spiritual movement still connected with a certain knowledge of Nature, and how the Spiritual is then cast aside and the further course is a purely external one. We can follow this in the case of a single individuality: Nicolaus Cusanus (1401-1464). The mere reading of his works—and one can do much more than read—shows clearly that he combined a most penetrating spiritual vision with knowledge of outer Nature, especially where this knowledge is clothed in mathematical forms. And because he perceived how difficult this was, in an age moving more and more towards external learning, he entitled his work, with epoch-making humility, Docta Ignorantia, “Learned Ignorante.” He did not of course mean to imply that he was himself an utter dunce, but that what he had to say was above the level of what was going to develop as mere external learning. To use a prefix much in vogue nowadays, we may say: this “Learned Ignorance” is a “super”-learnedness. Then, as you know, he was born again—it was a case of a very quick reincarnation—as Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)³² The same being who had lived in Nicolaus Cusanus continued to work in Nicolaus Copernicus. But you can see how far human mentality had moved by that time towards the physical, for the depth of knowledge possessed by Nicolaus Cusanus could work in Copernicus only in such a way as to produce the plan of the outer, physical cosmos. The knowledge that had lived in Nicolaus Cusanus was as it were filtered; the Spiritual was ignored and re-cast in terms of external science. There we have a tangible illustration of how that mighty impulse was to work within a short period from the year 1250, which was its central point in time. What streamed into our earth at this point of time worked on its own way. It worked an in there two streams, one of which is materialistic and will become ever more so, while the other strives for the Spiritual, manifesting particularly in what we know as the Rosicrucian revelation, which flowed in greatest intensity from this very starting-point, although there had of course been previous preparation.

So you see that there is a certain epoch, lasting for about six to eight thousand years, during which earth-evolution passes through an important cycle in regard to the historical facts with which man's development is interwoven. Such cycles are again intersected by others, for periodic forces of the most diverse kinds work into our earth-evolution. Only when we analyse, when we investigate the particular forces and their configurations—only then can we really fathom how things come to pass on the earth. Through all such forces and laws mankind is brought forward and human progress effected. You know, too, that in our century, but proceeding from a different stream, there is an important point of time indicated in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation: vision once again into the etheric world and the revelation of Christ in that world.³³ But that belongs to a different stream—I am speaking now more of forces that work into the broad basis of historical happenings.

If we want to understand there happenings fully, we must also take into consideration that such crucial points in evolution are always connected with certain positions of the stars, and that in the year 1250 the earth's axis lay in a definite position and was therefore related in a particular way to the so-called minor axis of the ecliptic. When we take account of the fact that what happens on the earth is brought about by great celestial conditions, even external climates show us that further specialisation and differentiation take place in the sphere of the earth itself. Because the forces work in a certain way from the cosmos, the earth is girdled by the torrid zone, then the temperate zone, then the arctic zone. This can be taken as a kind of example of how what is brought about by spiritual happenings, through the sun and other factors, takes effect on the physical plane. But there is again differentiation an the earth itself; in the torrid zone the climate of low-lying land is not the same as on heights, where it can be extremely cold. Hence in the same latitude there is a quite different distribution of climatic conditions to be observed in Africa, say, as compared with America. There is also something in spiritual evolution which allows of comparison with this kind of differentiation; for it is really true that in epochs during which a definite character due to the stellar constellations is widely predominant over the earth, modifications, special conditions, come about in the activities of the spiritual Beings and in the souls of men.

This is of great importance, for from time to time provision has obviously to be made for the distant future. Just imagine—naturally this is said hypothetically—that the wise leadership of the world was obliged, thousands of years ago, to say: There is a group of souls who must be prepared in order to accomplish this or that task in their next incarnations.—In such a case, connections have to be created so that perhaps a small group of men who have undergone some quite definite happening, who are incarnated together an a little corner of the earth, can pass through an experience which, at that particular time, may seem unimportant. But when we perceive how such men, having been crowded together in a small area, are scattered abroad in their next incarnations, and make effective for humanity as a whole what they received when they were living in this narrow compass—then the matter takes an a very different aspect. And so we can understand that in times when the general character of mankind has a certain definite quality, something very surprising may make its appearance in separate sections of civilisation, something that is entirely distinct from the prevailing character. I will give you an example of this, because it lies fairly near our own time.

In Steinthal, near Strassburg, Oberlin lived.³⁴ The deep-thinking German psychologist and researcher, G. H. von Schubert, has repeatedly referred to him This Oberlin was an unusual personality and he had a strange effect upon people. He was clairvoyant—I can allude to this only briefly—and after he had lost his wife comparatively early, he was able to live with her individuality in a communion as real as with a living person. Day by day he made notes of what was happening in the world where his wife now dwelt; he also marked this an a map of the heavens and showed it to the people who gathered around him, so that actually a whole community shared in the life Oberlin was leading with his deceased wife. Such a thing is strangely out of place at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries; but if you take what I have said into consideration, you will grasp what it portends. Things such as were revealed to Oberlin are among the most significant in this domain in modern times. I may perhaps remind you that we now have a very fine literary and historical work dealing with Oberlin and these affairs: it is the novel by Fritz Lienhard.³⁵ You will find it extraordinarily stimulating reading, with regard not only to the character of this priest but also to the cultural conditions of those days. Such things, which can easily be underestimated and regarded as chance, are able to show us how an occurrence of this kind strikes into evolution, how it can take effect in the whole process of the evolution of mankind. For the human beings who are thrown together in such circumstances, who gather round a personality as the central figure, are destined to undertake certain tasks in later incarnations.

So you see—and this is what I wanted to bring before you today—how the great macrocosmic penetration from the vast universe into the souls of men is connected with what may take place in a minute arena. But these things become especially interesting if we connect them with another law, with such points of intersection in evolution as was the year 1250. At that time there was the strongest possible penetration into the souls of men—and that is not so readily noticed as the upheavals of continents. During the Atlantean catastrophe the Spirits of Form worked so little into the souls of men that the younger hierarchies held the field, as it were, at that time. Thus the activities of the different ranks of hierarchical Beings are distributed. And it is important to know that again in these cyclic movements certain laws of ascent and decline prevail. I indicated something of this when I said that in the year 1250 there was an impetus and then an ebbing away which manifested in the current of materialism. Such things are often to be perceived. And it is interesting to notice how cycles of ascent and of decline alternate in the history of mankind.

• 26. See Rudolf Steiner, The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind. Lectures II and III.
• 27. See Rudolf Steiner, Turning-Points in Spiritual History. Lecture I.
• 28. See Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Hierarchies. Lecture 8. “Mars is a repetition of the ancient Moon and stands in the Same orbit to which the ancient Moon extended. ...” See also, Arenson's Index to Rudolf Steiner's Lecture-Courses, Vol. II, p. 181: “The Mars of to-day arose when the Earth was repeating the ancient Moon existence. What separated off and remained behind at this stage of repetition is the Mars of to-day.”
• 29. See Rudolf Steiner, The Whitsuntide Festival: its place in the study of Karma. (Lecture given at Dornach, 4th June, 1924.) “ ... The physical science of to-day looks to find also in the Universe everything which is on the Earth. But the physical organisation is not there in the Universe at all. Man begins with his physical organisation: then he has the etheric and the astral. The Universe an the other hand begins with the Etheric. Out there in the Cosmos the Physical is nowhere to be found. The Physical is only on the Earth and it is but empty fancy and imagination to speak of anything physical in the far Universe. ...”
• 30. See Rudolf Steiner, The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind. Lecture II.
• 31. See Rudolf Steiner, The Redemption of Thinking: a Study in the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. With an Introduction, Epilogue and Appendices by A. P. Shepherd and Mildred Robertson Nicoll. (Hodder and Stoughton, 1956.)
• 32. See Rudolf Steiner, The Life between Death and Rebirth in relation to Cosmic Facts. Lecture 5.
• 33. See Rudolf Steiner, The Portal of Initiation, Scene I. Four Mystery Plays, Vol. I, p. 28. The following is the English version of words spoken by Theodora, a seeress:
  
  “... Once, long ago, Christ lived upon the earth,
  And from this life ensured the consequence
  That in soul-substance clad He hovers o'er
  The evolution of Humanity,
  In union with the earth's own spirit-sphere;
  And though as yet invisible to men,
  When in such form He manifests Himself,
  Since now their being Lacks that spirit-sight
  Which first will show itself in future times;
  Yet even now this future draweth nigh
  When that new sight shall come to men an earth.
  What once the senses saw, when Christ did live
  Upon the earth: this shall be seen by souls
  When soon the time shall reach its fullness due.”
  
  See also, Rudolf Steiner, The Vision of Christ's Advent in the Etheric World.
• 34. Johann Freidrich Oberlin. Protestant priest in Steinthal.
• 35. Oberlin. A novel by Fritz Lienhard. (Stuttgart, 84th ed., 1920.)

In the lecture yesterday I drew your attention to the fact that very diverse Powers intervene in the course of human evolution. For this reason, and also because one mighty stream of influence intersects another, certain periods of ascent and equally of decline occur in definite spheres of civilisation. While older civilisations are still waning, while they are so to say passing over into external forms, the creative impulses which are to inaugurate later civilisations, to inspire them and bring them to birth, are being slowly and gradually prepared. So that in a general way the course of man's cultural life may be described briefly as follows.—We find cultural life rising from unfathomed depths and ascending to certain heights; then it ebbs, and indeed more slowly than it ascended. The fruits of a particular civilisation-epoch live an for a long time, penetrate into later streams and into folk-cultures of the most diverse character and lose themselves like a river which instead of flowing into the sea trickles away over lowlands. But while it is trickling away the new civilisations—which were still imperceptible during the decline of the old—are in preparation, in order eventually to begin their development and ascent, and to contribute in the same or a similar way to the progress of humanity. If we want to think of an eminently characteristic example of progress in culture we can surmise that it must be one in which the principle of the universal-human, the weaving of the ego in the ego, appeared in the most striking form. This, as we have shown, was the case in the culture of the ancient Greeks. We have there a clear illustration of a civilisation running its own characteristic course; for the achievements of the three preceding civilisation-epochs and of the epoch following that of Greece are modified in a quite different way by forces outside man. Hence what lies in the human being himself, whereby he makes his mark upon the world, everything which, proceeding from super-sensible powers, is able to express itself in him in the most characteristically human way—this is exemplified in the middle, the Fourth civilisation-epoch.

But in regard to this Greek civilisation, the following must also be said. It was preceded by the Third epoch, which then ebbed away, and during this period of decline Greek culture was being prepared. During the decline of the Babylonian culture, which streamed from the East towards the West, there was enshrined in the little peninsula of Southern Europe we know as Greece the seed of what was to sink into humanity as the impulse of a new life. True though it is that this Greek life brought pre-eminently to expression the essentially human element, that which man can find entirely within himself, it must not be thought that such things need no preparation. What we call the essentially human element—that, too, had first to be taught to men in the Mysteries by super-sensible Powers, just as now the still higher freedom which must be prepared for the Sixth civilisation-epoch is sustained and taught in super-sensible worlds by the Beings who lead and guide human evolution.

We must therefore realise that when Greek culture appears to outer observation. as if everything sprang from the essentially human element, it already has behind it a period when it was, so to speak, under the influence of the teachings of higher spiritual Beings. It was through these higher spiritual Beings that Greek culture was able to rise to the heights it achieved in bringing the essentially human element to expression. For this reason Greek culture too, when we trace it backwards, is lost sight of in the darkness of those prehistoric ages when, as its basis, there was cultivated in the Mystery-sanctuaries the wisdom which then, like a heritage, was clothed in majestic poetic form by Homer, by Aeschylus. And so, in face of the grandeur of there unparalleled figures, we must conceive that these men did indeed elaborate something that was entirely the product of their own souls, of the weaving of the ego in the ego, but that it had first been laid by higher Beings into these souls in the temple-sanctuaries. That is why the poetry of Homer and of Aeschylus seems so infinitely profound, so infinitely great. The poems of Aeschylus should not on any account, however, be judged from the translation by Wilamowitz, for it must be realised that the full greatness of what lived in Aeschylus cannot be conveyed in modern language, and that there could really be no worse approach to an understanding of his works than that tendered by one of the most recent translators.

If, therefore, we study Greek culture against the deep background of the Mysteries, we can begin to divine its real nature. And because the secrets of the life in super-sensible worlds were conveyed in a certain human form to the artists of Greece, they were able in their sculptures to embody in marble or in bronze, what had originally been hidden in the secrecy of the Mysteries. Even what confronts us in Greek philosophy clearly shows that its highest achievements were in truth ancient Mystery-wisdom translated into terms of intellect and reason. There is a symbolic indication of this when we are told that Heraclitus offered up his work, On Nature, as a sacrificial act in the temple of Diana at Ephesus. This means that he regarded what the weaving of the ego in the ego enabled him to say as an offering to the spiritual Powers of the preceding epoch with whom he knew himself to be connected. This is an attitude which also sheds light an the profound utterance of Plato, who was able to impart a philosophy of such depth to the Greeks and yet found himself compelled to affirm that all the philosophy of his time was as nothing compared with the ancient wisdom received by the forefathers from the spiritual worlds themselves.³⁶ In Aristotle everything appears as though in forms of logic—indeed, here one must say that the ancient wisdom has become abstraction, living worlds have been reduced to concepts. But in spite of this—because Aristotle stands at the terminal point of the ancient stream—something of the old wisdom still breathes through his works.³⁷ In his concepts, in his ideas, however abstract, an echo can still be heard of the harmonies which resounded from the temple-sanctuaries and were in truth the inspiration not only of Greek wisdom but also of Greek art, of the whole folk-character. For when such a culture first arises, it takes hold not only of knowledge, not only of art, but of the whole man, with the result that the whole man is an impress of the wisdom and spirituality living within him. If we picture Greek civilisation rising up from unknown depths even during the decline of Babylonian culture, then, in the age of the Persian Wars we can clearly perceive the effects of what the Greek character had received from the old temple-wisdom. For in these Persian Wars we see how the heroes of Greece, aflame with enthusiasm for the heritage received from their forefathers, fling themselves against the stream which, as an ebbing stream from the East, is surging towards them. The significance of their violent resistance, when the treasures of the temple-wisdom, when the teachers of the ancient Greek Mysteries themselves were fighting in the souls of the Greek heroes in the battles against the Persians, against the waning culture of the East—the significance of all this can be grasped by the human soul if the question is asked: What must have become of Southern Europe, indeed of the whole of later Europe, if the onset of the massive hordes from the East had not been beaten back at that time by the little Greek people? What the Greeks then achieved contained the seed of all later developments in European civilisation up to our own times.

And even the outcome in the East of what Alexander subsequently carried back to it from the West—albeit in a way that from a certain point of view is not justifiable—even that could develop only after what was destined to decline in respect also of its physical power had first been thrust back by the burning enthusiasm in the souls of the Greeks for the temple-treasures. If we grasp this we shall see how not only the teaching concerning Fire given by Heraclitus, not only the all-embracing ideas of Anaxagoras and of Thales, work on, but also the actual teachings of the guardians of the temple-wisdom in prehistoric Greek civilisation. We shall feel all this as a legacy of spiritual Powers who imbued Greek culture with what it was destined to receive. We shall perceive it in the souls of the Greek heroes who defied the Persians in the various battles. This is how we must learn to feel history, for what is offered us in the ordinary way is, at its best, only an empty abstract of ideas. What works over from earlier into later times can be observed only when we go back to what was imparted to the souls of men through a period lasting for thousands of years, taking definite forms in a certain epoch.

Why was it that in this upsurge of the old temple-treasures something so great could be imparted to the Greeks The secret lay in the universality, the comprehensiveness, of these temple treasures, and in their aloofness from anything of lesser account. It was something that was given as a primal source, something that could engross the whole man, bringing with it, so to say, a direct forte of guidance.

And here we come to the essential characteristic of a culture which is rising towards its peak. During this period, everything that is an active stimulus in man—beauty, virtue, usefulness, purposiveness, what he wishes to achieve and realise in life—all this is seen as proceeding directly from wisdom, from the spiritual. Wisdom embraces virtue, beauty and everything else as well. When man is permeated by, inspired by, the temple-wisdom, the rest follows of itself. That is the feeling which prevails during these times of ascent. But the moment the questions, the perceptions, fall asunder—the moment when, for example, the question of the good or the beautiful becomes independent of the question of its divine origin—the period of decline begins. Therefore we may be sure that we are living in a period of decline when it is emphasised that, independently of a spiritual origin, this or that must be especially cultivated, this or that must be the main consideration. When man lacks the confidence that the spiritual can bring forth of itself everything that human life requires, then the streams of culture, which an the arc of ascent form a unity, fall apart into separate streams. We sec this where interests outside wisdom, outside the spiritual impetus, begin to infiltrate Greek life; we see it in the political life, we see it, too, in that part of Greek life which especially interests us, in the spiritual life immediately preceding Aristotle. Here, side by side with the question: What is the true?—which embraces the question: What is good and practically effective?—the latter question begins to be an independent one. Men ask: How should knowledge be constituted in order that one can attain a practical goal in life? And so in the period of decline we see the stream of Stoicism arising. With Plato and Aristotle the good was directly contained in the wise; impulses of the good could proceed only from the wise. The Stoics ask: What must man do in order to become wiser in the practice of living, in order to live to some purpose? Goals of practical life insert themselves into what was formerly the all prevailing impetus of truth.

With Epicureanism comes an element that may be described as follows.—Men ask: How must I prepare myself intellectually in order that this life shall run its course with the greatest possible happiness and inner peace? To this question, Thales, Plato and even Aristotle would have answered: Search after the truth and truth will give you the supreme happiness, the germinating seed of love.—But now men separate the one question from the question of truth, and a stream of decline Sets in. Stoicism and Epicureanism are a stream of decline, the invariable consequence being that men begin to question truth itself and truth loses its power. Hence, simultaneously with Stoicism and Epicureanism in the period of decline, Scepticism arises—doubt in regard to truth. And when Scepticism and doubt, Stoicism and Epicureanism, have exercised their influence for a time, then man, still striving after truth, feels cast out of the World-Soul and thrown back upon his own soul. Then he looks around him, saying: This is not an age when Impulses flow into humanity from the on working stream of the spiritual Powers themselves. He is thrown back upon his own inner life, his own subjective being. In the further course of Greek life, this comes to expression in Neo-Platonism, a philosophy which is no longer concerned with external life, but looks within and strives upwards to truth through the mystical ascent of the individual. One stream of the cultural life is mounting, another declining, stage by stage. And what has developed during the ascent peters slowly and gradually away, until with the approach of the year 1250 there begins for humanity an inspiration not easy to observe but no less great for all that, which I characterised yesterday in a certain way. This again has been petering away since the 16th century. For since then all the specialised questions have again arisen by the side of those concerning truth itself; again an attitude is taken which wants to separate the question of the good and of the outwardly useful from the one supreme question of truth. And whereas those leading personalities in whom the impulses of the year 1250 were working contemplated all human currents in their relation to truth, we now see coming into prominence the fundamental separation of the questions of practical life from those that are intrinsically concerned with truth. At the portal leading to the new period of decline, the period which so clearly signifies the downward surge in spiritual life—at this portal stands Kant. In his preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, he says expressly that he had to set limits to the striving after truth in order to make room for what practical religion requires.³⁸ Hence the strict separation of Practical Reason from Theoretical Reason: in Practical Reason, the postulate of God, Freedom and Immortality is based entirely on the element of the good; in Theoretical Reason, any possibility of knowledge penetrating into any spiritual world is demolished. That is how things are, when viewed in the setting of world-history. And we may be sure that the striving for wisdom in our age will follow in the wake of Kant. When our own spiritual Movement points to the ways in which the capacity for knowledge can be so extended and enhanced as to enable it to penetrate into the super-sensible, we shall for a long, long time continue to hear from all sides: “Yes, but Kant says! ...” The historical evolution of mankind takes its course in antitheses of this kind. In what arises instinctively, like a dim inkling, we can see that underneath what is pure maya but accepted as the truth, underneath the stream of maya, human instincts do hit upon things which to a great extent are right. For it is extraordinarily interesting that in certain inklings arising out of folk-instincts for practical life, we can perceive the descending course of human evolution until the Greco-Latin epoch and the re-ascent now demanded of us.

What picture, then, must have come before the minds of men who had a feeling for such things When they looked back to the great figures of history in pre-Christian times—or, we had better say, pre-Grecian times—how must they have thought of all those whom we described as the instruments of Beings of the higher Hierarchies They must have said to themselves—and even the Greeks still did so: This has come to us through men who were played into by superhuman, divine forces.—And in all the ages of antiquity we find that the leading personalities, down to the figures of the Hermes, and even Plato, were regarded as “sons of the gods”; that is to say, when men looked back to olden times, heightening their vision more and more, they saw the divine behind there personalities who appeared in history; and they regarded the beings who appeared as Plato and in the Hermes as having come down, as having been born from, the gods. That is how they rightly saw it—the sons of the gods having united with the daughters of men, in order to bring down the spiritual to the physical plane. In those ancient times men beheld sons of the gods—divine men, that is to say, beings whose nature was united with the divine. On the other hand, when the Greeks came to feel: Now we can speak of the weaving of the ego in the ego, of what lies within the human personality itself—then they spoke of their supreme leaders as the Seven Sages, thus indicating that the nature of those who once were sons of the gods had now become purely and essentially human.

What was bound to come about in the instincts of the peoples in post-Grecian times? It was now a matter of indicating what man elaborates on the physical plane, and how he carries the full fruit of this into the spiritual world. Thus, while the feeling in much earlier times was that the spiritual must be recognised as taking precedence of the physical man and the physical man regarded as a shadow-image, and while during the Greek epoch there were the sages in whom the ego works in the ego, in the epoch after Greece attention was turned to personalities who live on the physical plane and rise to the spiritual through what is achieved in the physical world. This concept developed out of a certain true instinct of knowledge. Just as the pre-Grecian age had sons of the gods and the Greeks had sages, the peoples of the post-Grecian age have saints—human beings who lift themselves into the spiritual life through what they carry into effect on the physical plane. Something is alive there in the folk-instinct, enabling us to glimpse how behind maya itself there is a factor which impels humanity forward.

When we recognise this, the impulses at work in the epochs of time throw light upon the individual human soul, and we understand how the group-karma is inevitably modified by the fact that men are at the same time instruments of the process of historical evolution. We are then able to grasp what the Akasha Chronicle reveals—for example, that in Novalis we have to see something that goes back to Elijah of old. This is an extraordinarily interesting sequence of incarnations.³⁹ In Elijah the element of prophecy comes strongly to the fore, for it was the mission of the Hebrews to prepare that which was to come in later time. And they prepared it during the period of transition from the Patriarchs to the Prophets, via the figure of Moses. Whereas in Abraham we see how the Hebrew still feels the working of the God within him, in his very blood,⁴¹ in Elijah we see the transition to the ascent into the spiritual worlds. Everything is prepared by degrees. In Elijah there lives an individuality already inspired by what is to come in the future. And then we see how this individuality was to be an instrument for preparing understanding of the Christ Impulse. The individuality of Elijah is reborn in John the Baptist.⁴⁰ John the Baptist is the instrument of a higher Being. In John the Baptist there lives an individuality who uses him as an instrument, but in order to enable him to serve as such an instrument, the lofty individuality of Elijah was necessary.

Then, later on, we see how this individuality is well fitted to pour impulses working towards the future into forms that were made possible only by the influence of the Fourth Post-Atlantean culture-epoch. However strange it may seem to us, this individuality appears again in Raphael, who unites in his paintings what is to work in all ages of time as the Christian impulse, with the wonderful forms of Greek culture. And here we can realise how the individual karma of this entelechy is related to the outer incarnation. It is required of the outer incarnation that the power of an age shall be able to come to expression in Raphael; for this power the Elijah-John individuality is the suitable bearer. But the epoch is only able to produce a physical body bound to be shattered under such a power; hence Raphael's early death.

This individuality had then to give effect to the other side of his being in an age when the single streams were dividing once more; he appears again as Novalis. We see how there actually lives in Novalis, in a particular form, all that is now being given us through Spiritual Science. For outside Spiritual Science nobody has spoken so aptly about the relation of the astral body to the etheric and physical bodies, about the waking state and sleep, as Novalis, the reincarnated Raphael.⁴² These are things which show us how individualities are the instruments of the onflowing stream of man's evolution. And when we observe the course of human development, when we perceive this enigmatic alternation in the happenings of history, we can dimly glimpse the working of deep spiritual Powers. The earlier passes over into the later in strange and remarkable ways.

To some of you I have already said⁴³ that a momentous vista of history is revealed by the transition from Michelangelo to Galileo. (Mark well, I am not speaking of a reincarnation here; it is a matter of historical development.) A very intelligent man once drew attention to the striking fact that the human spirit has woven into the wonderful architecture of the Church of St. Peter in Rome what he calls the science of mechanics. The majestic forms of this building embody the principles of mechanics that were within the grasp of the human intellect, transposed into beauty and grandeur. They are the thoughts of Michelangelo! The impression made by the sight of the Church of St. Peter upon men expresses itself in many different ways, and perhaps everyone has felt something of what Natter, the Viennese sculptor,⁴⁴ experienced, or what was experienced in his company. He was driving with a friend towards St. Peter's. It was not yet in sight, but then, suddenly, the friend heard Natter exclaim, springing from his seat and as though beside himself: “I am frightened!”At that moment he had caught sight of St. Peter's ... afterwards he wanted to obliterate the incident from his memory. Everyone may experience something of the kind at the sight of such majesty And now, in a professorial oration, a very clever man, Professor Müllner, has made the point that Galileo, the great mechanistic thinker, taught humanity in terms of the intellect what Michelangelo had built into spatial forms in the Church of St. Peter. So that what stands there in the Church of St. Peter like crystallised mechanics, principles of mechanics grasped by the human mind, confronts us once again, but now transposed into intellectuality, in the thoughts of Galileo. But it is strange that in this oration the speaker should have called attention to the fast that Galileo was born on the day Michelangelo died (18th February, 1564). Hence there is an indication that the intellectual element, the thoughts coined by Galileo in the intellectual forms of mechanics, arise in a personality whose birth occurs on the same day as the death of the one who had given them expression in space. The question therefore inevitably arises in our minds: Who, in reality, built into the Church of St. Peter, through Michelangelo, the principles of mechanics only subsequently acquired by humanity through Galileo?

My dear friends, if the aphoristic and isolated thoughts that have been presented in connection with the historical development of humanity unite in your hearts to produce a feeling of how the spiritual Powers themselves work in history through their instruments, you will have assimilated there lectures in the right way. And then it could be said that the feeling which arises in our hearts from the study of occult history is the right feeling for the way in which development and progress occur in the stream of time. To-day, at this minor turning-point of time, it may be fitting to direct our meditation to this feeling of the progress of men and of gods in the flow of history. If in the heart of each one of you this feeling for the science of occult progress in time were to become clear perception of the weaving, creative activity in the becoming of our own epoch, if this feeling could come alive within you, it might perhaps also live as a New Year's wish in your souls. And at the close of this course of lectures, this is the New Year's wish that I would fair lay in your hearts: Regard what has been said as the starting-point of a true feeling for time. In a certain way it may be symbolical that we should have been able to use this minor transition from one period of time to another as an opportunity for allowing ideal which embrace such transitions in their sweep, to take effect in our souls.

• 36. Timaeus, 22, 23. “In the Egyptian Delta, at the head of which the River Nile divides, there is a certain district which is called the district of Sais, and the great city of the district is also called Sais. ... To this city came Solon, and was received there with great honour; he asked the priests who were most skilful in such matters, about antiquity, and made the discovery that neither he nor any other Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about the times of old. On one occasion, wishing to draw them an to speak of antiquity, he began to tell about the most ancient things in our part of the world. ... Thereupon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children and there is not an old man among you. Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. ... just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilised life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education, and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves. ...”
• 37. World-History in the light of Anthroposophy, p. 102.
• 38. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). “I must, therefore, abolish knowledge, to make room for belief”Preface to the 2nd ed. of the Critique of Pure Reason. (Tr. J. M. D. Meiklejohn, p. xxxv. London, 1860.)
• 39. See Rudolf Steiner, Earthly and Cosmic Man, Lecture IV.
• 41. See Rudolf Steiner, Deeper Secrets of Human History in the light of the Gospel of St. Matthew. Lectures II and III.
• 40. See Rudolf Steiner, Earthly and Cosmic Man, Lecture IV.
• 42. See inter alia, Hymns to the Night, the most recent translation of which is by Mabel Cotterell, with an introduction by August Closs, published by the Phoenix Press, London, 1948. Translations were made at the end of the 19th century of Heinrich von Ofterdingen, The Disciples at Sais, of many “Fragments,” and other “Songs.” Carlyle's Essay on Novalis is well known. Apart from there publications, however, the English reader will have some difficulty in finding works in his own language that will enable him to acquire any real insight into the writings of Novalis. A great deal, of course, has been and is continuing to be written in Germany of the one of whom Tieck wrote in 1846: “Few authors have ever produced so great an impression on the world of German thought as Novalis.” The biography by Friedrich Hiebel, Novalis, der Dichter der blauen Blume, is of great value. Students of Spiritual Science will be particularly interested in Novalis in anthroposophischer Betrachtung by Monica V. Miltitz, published in 1956. But Rudolf Steiner alone was able to unveil the mystery enshrouding the personality of Novalis. Among many passages occurring in his lectures, the following is of outstanding importance: “... A deeply shattering event in life made him (Novalis) aware, as by a magic strike, of the relation between life and death and, as well as the great vista of past ages of the earth and cosmos, the Christ Being Himself appeared before his eyes of Spirit. ... In the rase of Novalis we cannot really speak of a self-contained lifc, for his was actually like a remembrance of an earlier incarnation. The initiation he had received as it were by Grace, brought to life within him experiences of an earlier incarnation; there was a certain mysterious consolidation of the fruits of insight acquired in an earlier life. And because he looked back through the ages with his own awakened eyes of spirit, he was able to say that to him nothing in life was comparable with the momentous event when in his inmost self he had discovered what Christ truly is. This experience was like a repetition of the happening at Damascus, when Paul, who had hitherto persecuted the followers of Christ and rejected their message, received in higher vision the direct proof that Christ lives, that He is present! ...” This quotation is from Rudolf Steiner's lecture entitled, The Christinas Mystery. Novalis the Seer. Not yet printed in English. Berlin, 22.XII.08.
• 43. The lecture, not yet printed in English, was entitled: The Human Spirit and the Animal Spirit, Berlin, 17.XI.10.
• 44. Heinrich Natter 1846–92).

Today we will discuss some topics that have played a certain role in our current development of the spiritual movement within Germany. As you know, and as some of you have already experienced, we have discussed the various spiritual truths and insights based on the Gospels. We have talked about what can be said in connection with the Gospel of John in a wide variety of places, and we have also discussed what can be said in connection with the Gospel of Luke. Now, admittedly, not all of you have heard these things. Nor is it intended to speak today in the sense of presupposing something of what has been said there. Rather, it is intended only to mention to you some of the overall field of this spiritual-scientific field, which must be important for everyone.

It has often been mentioned here in Stuttgart that Christianity, and everything connected with it, has made a deep incision in the overall development of humanity and that what is happening around us today, what the human soul can experience today, cannot be properly understood without considering the full significance of the Christ event within our Earth's history. For every single human soul, it is of infinite importance to become acquainted with the significance of this event.

Now you know that this Christ event for humanity is described in four documents, in the so-called four Gospels. You are all familiar with these four documents and have certainly followed them in a variety of ways. These four documents, the Gospel according to Matthew, the Gospel according to Mark, the Gospel according to Luke and the Gospel according to John, have met with the most diverse fates in the course of human development since the founding of Christianity. Great transformations have taken place in the judgment and position of man regarding these four documents. If we ask ourselves first how these four documents appear to today's man, even to today's theologian, the answer is quite obvious. One says to oneself: First of all, we have the three documents of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. They at least agree – so the general opinion today – on some points. But the fourth, the Gospel of John, is quite different from these three documents. At first, this Gospel of John makes such an impression on people that they say to themselves: If we take the first three Gospels as historical documents, as descriptions of the life of Christ Jesus, then the fourth document contradicts the first three so fundamentally that we cannot take this fourth as a description that corresponds to the historical facts. Thus, the opinion exists that this fourth document is merely a writing that arose from the confession of a man who was faithfully devoted to the mission of Christ Jesus, a kind of hymn that arose from the heart to express in an enthusiastic way what the narrator had to say. The other three gospels are also called the canonical gospels because they attempt to provide a kind of historical picture and because it is believed that they reflect the historical facts to a certain extent. However, if one wants to look for contradictions that the external mind, bound to physical conditions, seeks, then the first three gospels truly present such contradictions. For should there be no contradictions in the fact that the Gospel of Matthew tells of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, tells of the flight to Egypt, of the appearance of the Magi from the Orient, whereas the Gospel of Luke tells of a journey to Bethlehem, but completely omits what is told in the Gospel of Matthew about the Magi, that the flight to Egypt is kept secret and so on? We do not want to go into the details of the three years of Christ Jesus' ministry. We could find contradiction upon contradiction.

Now one could raise the question: How has the development of the judgment about the Gospels actually progressed over the course of Christian times? Was it always the case that people looked at the Gospels and saw contradictions in them above all else? We must be clear about how this development of judgment about the Gospels has taken place. It is not so very long ago that people have had access to the Gospels as they do today. They have only been available to the general public for a short time. Before the invention of the printing press, the Gospels were basically only in the hands of a few people, and truly not of the most ignorant, but of those people who had studied them in the most erudite way, who had made them the subject of their lives. And it is not the case that the further back in time we go, the more and more people said: There are contradictions – but the opposite is true. The further back we go, the more it appears that these contradictions were not perceived, that people had the four gospels next to each other and did not see the contradictions. The whole mood that people had towards the Gospels was quite different in the first Christian centuries. If we wanted to characterize this mood, we would have to say that the people of the first Christian centuries were filled with tremendous reverence for what is described in the Gospels. This whole mood was permeated by looking up to the great figure of Christ Jesus.

So how were the Gospels perceived? How did people perceive the fact that the Gospel of Matthew tells a different story than the Gospel of Luke? They perceived it similarly to how someone today - I have already used the comparison in the various lectures that have been given here and there - photographs a tree from one side. A photograph like this gives a view of the tree. If you went among people with it and wanted to create an impression of the tree based on it, this impression would be highly one-sided. And you could hope to create a more accurate impression of the tree if you photographed it from four sides. Then you would show four pictures of the one tree. These would agree with each other very little, they would be very different. Nevertheless, no one would have the feeling that it could not be that these four photographs were the pictures of a single tree. Everyone would say: I can only get a somewhat complete picture of the tree by having seen it from four sides. That is more or less how people in the early centuries of Christianity felt about the Gospels. They said: the whole great event is described from four sides, and we get a complete picture of it when we really take these four descriptions together and thus, so to speak, get an overall view. But then we must be clear about how these four descriptions from the sides actually relate to each other. The great event is indeed described from four different points of view. If we want to understand what each individual point of view describes, we must first realize the following.

We have before us an enormous individuality, Christ Jesus, an individuality of whom we know from descriptions already given here that he descended from the spiritual world and appeared in Palestine at the beginning of our era. What came to earth as an individuality now appears as a great, all-embracing ideal for every single human being. The individual human being strives upwards, as it were, intuiting that perfection in an individuality that is expressed in the Christ Jesus, and strives towards this ideal. Now, in the beginning, man sees what he can regard as his striving in intellectual, moral and so on. But he sees even more when he enters into what we call the spiritual-scientific movement. There he sees the development into the spiritual world. He knows that man can grow beyond his ordinary self, that he can grow to see into the spiritual world, that he can develop his spiritual senses in order to live up into the spiritual world. That is what man recognizes. In the essay “How to Know Higher Worlds” you have described one side of this upward life, of entering into the spiritual worlds, in which you have described what is called “splitting of the personality”. When a person develops spiritually so that he gradually grows into the spiritual worlds and becomes a seer himself, something similar to a kind of splitting of the personality does indeed occur. Three forces are initially expressed in the personality: thinking, feeling and willing. These three forces are, so to speak, united in the ordinary person; they work together, thinking, feeling and willing. You go out into the meadow, see a flower, that is, you have an idea of the flower; you have thought. You like the flower; you call it beautiful, that is, you have felt. A feeling has connected with thinking. You pluck the flower and take it home, that is, you have desired it. And so the entire outer life of man actually flows. He perceives, thinks, feels and wills, and the three go into each other. Perception gives rise to feeling, feeling to will or abhorrence and the like. When man now develops upward into the higher worlds, develops himself to clairvoyance, to participation in the spiritual worlds, then a splitting of these three forces takes place. In him who has reached a certain level of clairvoyant consciousness, not every thought evokes a feeling, but the thought occurs in isolation, and the feeling can occur in isolation and the will can occur in isolation. And precisely because he is divided into three beings, so to speak, whereas otherwise thinking, feeling and willing are only powers in his soul, man must become all the stronger in his individuality. He must not only then balance three powers, but become master of three beings, of a willing being, of a feeling being, of a thinking being. He must be the leader of a band of these three entities. He must create order; he must rule them, otherwise something evil will happen: the will will pull him in one direction and the intellect in the other, and he will then really be split and no longer find his way. Therefore, man must grow strong within himself, become powerful, so that he can be master in the entities that have become his soul forces. When man therefore develops upwards into the higher worlds, he splits himself, so to speak, into three different entities. When the entities come to meet us from above out of the spiritual worlds and one sees them in their actual entity, which one can only recognize through spiritual vision, then they appear from the outset sharply separated as thinking beings, volitional beings and feeling beings. That is what man develops them into.

This was particularly the case with the great individuality who came to us as the Christ. Therefore, those who first described the Christ said: You cannot describe the Christ by choosing only one point of view; you have to describe him as you first see a thinking, wisdom-filled being, then as you see a willing being, and then as you see a feeling being. He must be described from the point of view of wisdom, from the point of view of will, from the point of view of feeling. That is how one must describe him, people said. And they were especially prepared for this by the whole education that was customary in ancient times. If a person was to be developed at all into the higher worlds - today something different is needed for the first steps of attaining higher knowledge; in ancient times a different approach was taken - when someone was ripe to be led up, so to speak, to be made a citizen of the spiritual worlds, it was said: Well, he is ripe to be led up into the higher worlds. But let us take a closer look at him! Should we particularly develop wisdom or thinking powers or will in him?

In the old secret schools, not all powers were developed equally. Depending on the karma of the person concerned, one person's thinking was developed to the point of clairvoyance, another's feeling to the point of clairaudience, and a third's will to the point of magical power. Therefore, in the old secret schools there were three classes of developed abilities, those pupils who had developed especially the ability to see through illumination, to see the spiritual world with wisdom - these were the people in the mysteries who were asked when one wanted to know how things are in the higher worlds and how they are connected according to law. If we want to use a trivial expression today, we can say that they were the experts of knowledge within the mysteries. Then there was another class of initiates. In these, feeling was particularly developed. In order for this feeling to be particularly developed, they refrained from training in knowledge and will, and developed feeling in itself. When feeling is particularly developed in a person, then, as a result, he becomes a healer, a physician, something that is almost no longer known today. For in ancient times the physician had exerted a spiritual influence proceeding from the spheres of feeling, and had healed the receptive soul by means of a more highly developed feeling than exists today. This was the second class of initiates. They had trained their feeling to the highest willingness to sacrifice, to the surrender of all the powers they had within them. They divided the work among themselves. If someone wanted to know what was wrong with someone, they went to those who had developed the wisdom. They determined what was wrong and what needed to be done. Then came those who could not say what was wrong with the sick person because they had not developed the ability to think; but they came and sacrificed their strength because they had developed the powers of feeling. At the same time, these were the people who also had other functions, who showed their willingness to make sacrifices in the event of accidents or similar occurrences. The third category of initiates were the magicians. These were the ones who had developed the sphere of will. They had to take the external measures. The magicians had developed the powers of will and were able to carry out the task at hand. So there were three types of initiate: initiates of thinking, initiates of feeling, and initiates of willing. And a fourth class or category consisted of those in whom an attempt had been made to develop something of each of the three remaining faculties: something of thinking, something of feeling, and something of willing. Therefore, they did not advance as far as the others in any one sphere, but they showed how, with a certain initiation into the three spheres, things are connected. Thus there were powerful initiates of wisdom, powerful initiates of sacrifice, powerful initiates of magistery, and a fourth category, which had something of each of the first three.

When now the Christ Jesus was to be described, so to speak, from all sides, there were found - this can be explained in more detail another time, today it can only be done in broad strokes - four people who now described the abilities that were naturally united in him from their four points of view. One of them, for example, was particularly initiated into the secrets of thinking. He described the Christ Jesus from the standpoint of the one who could understand him particularly well, an initiate of wisdom. He left out the other sides. Another was an initiate of feeling. He described the Christ Jesus from the standpoint of feeling, as a physician, so to speak, as a healer. A third was an initiate of magisterial power. He described the powers that the Christ could unfold to organize all of humanity. And a fourth was an initiate of the fourth class, in which the powers worked together, working in harmony. He described primarily the human work of Christ Jesus. He did not see the full power of wisdom, of sacrificial service, nor the mighty magic strength of the willpower of Christ Jesus; but he saw how the three powers of thought, feeling and will were harmoniously combined in Christ Jesus. He described the human Christ Jesus.

Thus we have described the Christ Jesus to four initiates. The one who described the Christ Jesus as an initiate of wisdom was the writer of the Gospel of John; the one who described him as an initiate of feeling was the writer of the Gospel of Luke ; the one who described him in terms of magical power, that was the writer of the Gospel of Mark; and the one who described the harmonious synthesis of the lower three human members, that was the writer of the Gospel of Matthew. Thus each described that in Christ Jesus in which he was initiated.

Thus we shall understand that we can gain a complete picture of Christ Jesus through the four Gospels, in that they describe what was particularly close to the four personalities on which they are based. Anyone who has the necessary reverence for such a great individuality as the Christ will say: Precisely because of this I can gain a comprehensive picture, that the writers of the Gospels, each one, gave the best they could give. But that is why it is also necessary that you do not always take what is said in spiritual science in reference to the four Gospels, to the fourth for instance, or the third, or the second, or the first, as if you had the whole truth about Christ Jesus in each such chapter. It could easily have been thought from the various lectures that have been given here and there: Now the Christ Jesus has been described, and at most it would still be interesting to describe him with reference to another gospel. It is not so. One gets only the picture from one side, if one describes the Christ Jesus according to one gospel. We must wait until, in the course of our spiritual movement, the Christ Jesus has been described in connection with all four gospels. Only then will you have all the secrets that can be said about him.

Now we will have to start from a certain one-sided description in order to gather together, so to speak, a picture of Christ Jesus, but in such a way that you really have to keep to what has just been said. You must not go away today from the lecture and say: Well, now we have the truth in these matters - but you must say to yourself: It has now been described from one point of view and the other must be added and must be illuminated with what is said from other points of view.

In the Christ Jesus we actually have a confluence of all previous spiritual currents of humanity and at the same time a rebirth of the same. In the Christ Jesus, all spiritual currents flow together and are reborn, reborn to a higher degree. We could mention many such currents of pre-Christian times that arise from spiritual science in the context of those considerations that tie in with the four Gospels, currents that we see flowing together in the Christ event; but for now we will draw attention to only three currents.

First of all, there is a powerful spiritual current that has been active in Asia since ancient times. This is what we can call Zarathustrianism. A second spiritual current is that which flourished in India and reached a certain high point with the appearance of Gautama Buddha, six hundred years before our era. A third spiritual current is that which found expression in the ancient Hebrew people. So that we have the confluence in Christ Jesus of the ancient Hebrew spiritual current, then that which was realized in Gautama Buddha, and that which was associated with the name Zarathustra. We could mention many more such spiritual currents, but that would make the matter too confusing.

Now, in a certain way, everything that actually happened in Palestine at the beginning of our era comes to light in the four Gospels – if we really understand them correctly. It is not the task of spiritual science to draw from the Gospels what it has to say. Nothing at all of what is said about me is drawn from the Gospels. The only source for the spiritual researcher is what is called the Akasha Chronicle, that which can be observed clairvoyantly. If all the Gospels had been lost due to some catastrophe, everything that is said about the Christ in spiritual science could still be said. It is based on spiritual research. Only afterwards is the result of this spiritual research compared with what is in the Gospels. And that is precisely what gives the Gospels their objective reverence when one sees what is presented in the Gospels. You must never lose sight of this point of view. We are not drawing on the Gospels; therefore what I am going to tell you now is not drawn from the Gospels either. But we can compare it afterwards with what is in the Gospels, and we will find it to be in agreement.

One of the spiritual currents that then flowed into Christianity is the one that reached its peak in the personality that was incarnated in India as Gautama Buddha about six hundred years before our era. What kind of individuality is this? We understand this individuality when we consider the following: Everything that has gradually emerged in the development of humanity is precisely a product that develops and gradually settles in. You would be mistaken if you believed that the abilities of today's human beings have always been there. Today, for example, there is something called the voice of conscience. It has not always existed. We can almost grasp when conscience arose in the course of human development. If you go back to Aeschylus, you will find nothing of a description of conscience in his works. It is only in Euripides that we find a description of conscience. Thus, the Greek consciousness first developed the concept of conscience between these two. What man today calls an inner voice has only just developed. Before that, there was, within humanity, we can say, a kind of clairvoyant consciousness. If a person had done something he should not have done, a picture would appear to him like a vengeful spirit, and it would pursue him. This was what the Greeks called the Furies. He really saw the fruits and the avenging spirits of his evil deeds around him. This phenomenon, which was outside of man, has been drawn into the human soul as the voice of conscience. And so, too, did the other faculties of men come into being only gradually, and it is only short-sightedness on the part of men, who do not see farther than the end of their own noses, so to speak, which outer science amply does, to believe that men have always been as they are today.

Thus, people have not had what we might call the teaching of compassion and love. We have to imagine the teaching of compassion and love in ancient times as being very different from today. Today, people can, so to speak, go within themselves. When this or that happens outside, he can allow the feeling of compassion and love to arise within him, and he knows that this is good. He can find the principles of love and compassion within himself. This was not the case in the past; rather, in the past, it was instilled in people purely by suggestion from those charged with instilling it, and they were told how they should behave. People themselves had to be guided. There were individual leaders and guides for humanity who indicated how people should behave. The guides for humanity dictated what should be done in the way of acts of love and compassion. And those who were the guides in the field of love and compassion were in turn under higher guides and all together under a guide who is called the Bodhisattva of love and compassion. He had the mission to spread the teaching of compassion and love. But this Bodhisattva, who was the leader in terms of compassion and love, was not like an ordinary incarnated human being, in that not his entire being was absorbed in the physical human being. He had, so to speak, a connecting bridge up to the spiritual world.

The Bodhisattva of compassion and love lived only partly in the physical man; for the rest, his spiritual being reached up into the spiritual worlds. There he brought down the impulses he had to instill. If we wanted to describe this spiritually, we would have to say: the clairvoyant saw the image of the person in whom the bodhisattva was partially embodied, and behind him a mighty spiritual-astral figure that rose up into the spiritual worlds and was only partially in the physical body. That was what this bodhisattva was like. This Bodhisattva was the same one who was then reborn as the king's son Gautama Buddha in India, and for this Bodhisattva, so to speak, this was the ascent to a higher dignity. He had earlier, so to speak, allowed himself to be guided from above, had received impulses from the spiritual world and passed them on. But in this incarnation, six hundred years before our era, he was elevated to the dignity of Buddha in the twenty-ninth year of his life. That is to say, in this incarnation he experienced his entire individuality entering the physical body. While he had to remain outside as a bodhisattva with a part of himself in order to build the bridge, it was this progress to the dignity of Buddha that allowed him to be fully incarnated in the body. This enabled him not only to receive the teaching of compassion and love through inspiration, but also to look within himself and receive this teaching as the very voice of his heart. This was the enlightenment of the Buddha at the age of twenty-nine, under the bodhi tree. Then it dawned on him: the teaching of compassion and love, independent of the connections with the spiritual world, as a human soul property, that he could think the teaching of compassion and love, which he pronounced in the eightfold path. And the sermon that followed is the great teaching of compassion and love for the first time from a human breast.

This must happen with every human capacity. At some point in the development of humanity, an ability must first be expressed in an individuality; only then can it gradually develop as a separate ability in people in general. The teaching of compassion and love could only be felt as something that man brings out of himself after it has been brought by an individuality. In Oriental philosophy, this is called “turning the wheel” of dharma, compassion and love. This happened through the full individuality of the Bodhisattva sinking into the king's son Gautama Buddha. From that time on, there are people who can find the teaching of compassion and love within themselves. And it will develop in such a way that more and more people will find the teaching of compassion and love within themselves, and three thousand years after our era, a sufficient number of people will live on earth to develop in their own hearts what Buddha has found. Then the mission of the Buddha in this respect will be fulfilled on earth. For at the time when the Bodhisattva descended to become a Buddha, the dignity of the Bodhisattva was taken over by another. Until then, what we call the Buddha today was a Bodhisattva. The next rank after the Bodhisattva is that of the Buddha. From the Bodhisattva, the ascending being becomes a Buddha.

Oriental philosophy expressed it this way: When the Bodhisattva descended to earth, he handed over the crown of the Bodhisattva to his successor. This successor still lives today as a Bodhisattva. He will only ascend to the dignity of Buddha three thousand years after our present time. This is the one whom Oriental philosophy calls the Maitreya Buddha. This one is a Bodhisattva today and will be the Maitreya Buddha in three thousand years. He has a different mission from Gautama Buddha, which is connected with things that people today cannot yet find within themselves. That is a line of development. So that we can say: That Bodhisattva, who contains within himself the teaching of compassion and love, has indeed advanced to the dignity of a Buddha, and in so doing has given his mission a tremendous impetus. The fact that he was in a human body with his entire being six hundred years before our era earned him the right not to be incarnated in a physical body on earth again. In fact, the incarnation of that time was the last incarnation of this Bodhisattva. He no longer needed to incarnate in a physical body, but only needed to descend to the etheric body. All the following embodiments of the Buddha are therefore not such that he can be seen externally on the physical plane, but such that he can only be seen by those powers that enable people to see the etheric body. In the entire following period, the Buddha therefore only embodied himself in an etheric body. Six hundred years after his presence on earth, Buddha incorporated what he had to bring to humanity into what had been initiated by Christianity. He offered what he had to bring as a sacrifice to the founding of Christianity, so to speak, he let it flow in like a spiritual tributary into the great overall stream. This is the current that reaches its climax in the Buddha. That is the one current.

Another came about in the following way. We can form an idea of it by looking a little at the development of humanity itself. You all know that after the great Atlantic catastrophe, people did not have the same abilities as they do today, but that after the great Atlantic catastrophe they still had remnants of an old, dim clairvoyance. Logical thinking developed only gradually. The culture that we call ancient Indian culture was entirely a culture that emerged from ethereal clairvoyance. The Zarathustra culture was also still one in which people worked with ancient, dimmed clairvoyance, and the Chaldean-Egyptian cultures were not yet cultures in which people thought as they do today. Everything was still inspiration; it was not yet permeated with logic, but everything that came to light in Chaldean astrology and in Hermes wisdom was more or less inspired imagination. The human ability to think logically had not yet developed in these cultures. It was reserved for a completely different current to develop what could be called a logical culture, a culture of thinking. The first post-Atlantean culture was still entirely based on ethereal clairvoyance. The Zarathustra culture was still one of these as well, even if it was no longer as pronounced. Likewise, the Egyptian-Chaldean culture was still based on inspiration. Thought in those days was not yet permeated by logic; it was interwoven with imaginations that are expressed in the astrology of the Chaldeans and in the Hermes wisdom of Egypt in magnificent images.

The post-Atlantean cultures emerged from two streams. Apart from those who went west and populated present-day America, two streams of migrating people poured east under the leadership of their leaders, one in a northerly direction and the other in a southerly direction.

The northern stream, parts of which remained in Europe, penetrated further into Asia. While new cultures were developing and unfolding there, the population of Europe lived through the centuries as if biding its time. Its energies were, as it were, reserved for what was to come. In their essential cultural elements they were influenced by that great initiate who chose this field as his own as far as the Siberian regions and who is called the Scythian initiate. The leaders of the original European culture were inspired by him. This culture was not based on what came into humanity as thinking, but on an ability to absorb an element that was halfway between what could be called recitative-rhythmic language and a kind of singing accompanied by a peculiar music that no longer exists today but was based on an interplay of whistling instruments. It was a peculiar element, the last remnants of which lived in the bards and skalds. Everything that the Greek myths of Apollo and Orpheus tell us has developed from this. In addition, practical skills were developed in Europe through colonization, construction and so on.

The other masses of people migrated under the leadership of the great sun-initiates to Asia. The outpost formed the first post-Atlantean culture under the leadership of the Rishis. Further in Western Asia the most ancient Zarathustra culture developed; but we are not speaking here of the historical Zarathustra. What he brought forth is in some respects opposed to ancient India. The latter was entirely built upon ethereal clairvoyance; Zarathustra turned his gaze to the sun. He saw the spirit of the sun, the “great aura,” Ahura Mazda. Zarathustra was the first to express the peculiarities of northern culture here. All that followed is built upon this.

The other trend that came over, the southern one, formed the basis for the Chaldean-Egyptian culture, which arose from a merging of the one with the other. This can be schematically represented: Indian culture signifies the development of the human etheric body; in Persian culture, the sentient body developed; the Egyptian-Chaldean culture gave the sentient soul; it is essentially an inner culture, going through an inward path. And just as the sentient body and the sentient soul join together, so it is the case for all of humanity. This can be seen particularly in the Egyptian-Chaldean culture. The same will be the case with the consciousness soul and the spirit self. This can only happen through the transition of progressive culture into that region where spirituality has been held back: this can only happen in Europe. There the development towards the intellectual and consciousness soul had still been held back and only developed after the Christ event. It is there that the fusion with the spirit-self qualities will also be able to take place in the future. This can only happen through a spiritual current such as the spiritual-scientific one. This will be brought about by the sixth period of our culture.

While the two currents described were still under the influence of the old, dim clairvoyance, the third current, which merged with the others and prepared the Christ event, was followed by a fourth cultural current, which could be called a logical-intellectual one. To understand each other clearly, you have to realize that all clairvoyance comes about because the etheric body works independently in a certain way, namely the etheric body of the brain. Where the etheric body of the brain and the physical tool of logical thinking are strictly united, clairvoyance cannot come about. Only when the etheric body retains something in order to be independent can clairvoyance come about. When the etheric body of the brain is completely linked to the physical brain, it works out the brain in the finest way; but it also engages in the elaboration of the physical brain and nothing is left over to develop clairvoyance. But it was necessary that precisely this ability, which is connected with brain thinking, with the brain's synthesizing of the world phenomena, should make its appearance in humanity. For this to happen, something had to happen in humanity that can be characterized by saying that it had to be selected from humanity – well, let us take an individuality in whom, so to speak, what was called ancient clairvoyance was least present, whereas the physical tool of the brain was highly developed, chiseled, and carved out. This individuality was able to survey the phenomena of the external physical world in terms of measure, number, order and harmony, to seek unity in the externally manifested phenomena. While all the members of the earlier cultures knew something from the spiritual world through inspiration from within, so to speak, this individuality had to direct its gaze out into the surrounding world of phenomena, had to combine, logically weigh and say to itself: “Out there are the phenomena, everything falls into place in harmony when one sees everything in a large unified picture. That which appears as unity there appeared as unity in the external world, as God behind the phenomena of the physical plane. That was one difference compared to the other views of God. The other views of God said: The idea of God arises from within. But this individuality directed his gaze everywhere, organized the phenomena, looked at the different kingdoms of nature, brought them under one unity, in short, he was the great organizer of the world phenomena according to measure and number, who was chosen from the whole of humanity. This individuality, who was chosen from the whole of humanity, to first survey the external physical world and find the unity in it, was Abraham. Abraham or Abram was the one who was chosen, so to speak, by the spiritual-divine powers to receive this special mission, to convey to humanity the powers bound to the measure and number of external appearances. He emerged from Chaldean culture. Chaldean culture itself had recognized its astrology out of clairvoyance. Abraham, the forefather of arithmetic, emerged to find all this through combination, through the physical brain having undergone a very special process here. Thus a very special mission was entrusted to him.

Now we must bear in mind that the way the mission was to proceed was not to remain with him alone, but was to become the common property of mankind. But since the thinking was bound to the physical brain, how could it become common property? It could only become common property by being transmitted through physical inheritance. That is to say, a people had to come forth from this individuality, in whom this special quality was inherited as long as it was to enter humanity as a mission. A nation had to come forth from it. A nation had to be founded, not just a culture, where something had been taught: what one has received clairvoyantly can be taught. What was now to be received by humanity had to be transmitted to the descendants through physical inheritance, so that it could be realized in all its details. What was to be realized? It should be found through human combination, that order which was first brought into humanity through Abraham. If one looks up at the order of the stars, one can find the order through combination. The wise men of Chaldean astrology have reflected on the thoughts of the gods. Now it was a matter of finding this particular transition to combining, to logically grasping the phenomena, in the external world. Therefore, there had to be an inherited property in the physical human body that resulted from the work of thinking itself, which is spread out in space as order. This is expressed very beautifully when the one who assigns this mission to Abraham says: Your descendants shall be arranged according to the order, according to the number of stars - which the Bible nonsensically translates as: “Your descendants shall be like the sand of the sea.” It means that there should be an order in Abraham's descendants, the descendants should be structured in such a way that there is an image of the stars in the sky. This is also expressed in the twelve sons of Jacob. They are an image of the twelve constellations. This is where the dimensions come in, which are modeled in the sky. In the line of generations there should be an image of the number in the sky. Just as the number is written in the sky, so the order of the number is to be written in the line of generations. This is the profound wisdom contained in these words, which are foolishly translated: “Your descendants shall be as the sand of the sea.”

Thus we see the meaning of Abraham's entire mission. But the symbolism of this mission, which is meant to reflect the secrets of the world, is also expressed in other ways. First of all, we ask ourselves the following: what is meant to be sacrificed, so to speak, is ancient, dimmed clairvoyance. Everything that has been rooted in humanity since the earliest times is to be sacrificed. The innermost conviction in this whole mission is that everything is received as a gift from outside. What is to come into being should come into being through physical descendants. Through them, this mission should enter the world. Abraham must receive this himself as a gift from God. This happens when he is first called upon to sacrifice his son Isaac and then prevented from doing so. What does he actually receive from the hand of God? He receives his whole mission. For if he had really sacrificed Isaac, he would have sacrificed his whole mission. He gets his people back by getting Isaac back. He receives as a gift from the divine order of the world in Isaac what he is actually meant to give to the world. Thus everything that followed Abraham was a gift from God Himself. The last gift of clairvoyance that still existed – you will understand later how the individual gifts of clairvoyance express themselves; each one can be related to one of the constellations – the last gift of clairvoyance to be voluntarily sacrificed is linked to the constellation of Aries. That is why we see the ram in the sacrifice of Isaac. This is a symbolic expression of the sacrifice of the last gift of clairvoyance in exchange for the gift of being able to judge the outer phenomena of the world in terms of number and measure. That is this mission of Abraham.

And how does this mission continue? The last gift of clairvoyance is sacrificed, it must be expelled from this mission, and if it still shows itself as an inheritance, it is, so to speak, not tolerated within the straight line of succession. Joseph shows a relapse. He has his dreams, he has the old gift of clairvoyance. The brothers cast him out. This shows how tightly this entire mission was drawn: Joseph is cast out. He migrates to Egypt to establish the connection that was now necessary, the connection with the other wing of our entire cultural development, with Egyptian culture. Joseph had united within himself that which was general in character within this mission and at the same time remnants of ancient clairvoyance. He brought about a complete revolution in Egypt by correcting the declining Egyptian culture in accordance with his clairvoyant gift. He placed his gift at the service of external institutions. This is the basis of Joseph's cultural mission in Egypt.

And now we see a peculiar spectacle. Now we see that those who were the missionaries for outer thinking in terms of measure and number are no longer on the earlier path, but are seeking the outer connection through Joseph by seeking in return what they could not bring forth from themselves in Egypt. There they go, there they take in — the descendants of Abraham take in what they need in Egypt. That is where they go. What is necessary for the further organization of this mission is given from the outside through the Egyptian initiation, because it cannot be brought forth from within. Moses brings this from the outside and connects Egyptian culture with this special mission of Abraham. And now we see how it is passed on from generation to generation, what is the human comprehension of the outer world, what is the recognition of the outer world in terms of measure, weight and number. A new element has entered. This is transmitted through blood relationship and can only be transmitted in this way, because it is bound to that which must be inherited. This is the second of the currents.

The third stream is the one that connects with Zarathustra, which is what was expressed in ancient Persia and spread to the Near East, as we have already learned in the various lectures. These three streams are what flow together in the Christ Jesus. The individuality that is the Christ Jesus must have had to do with all three currents. They must unite in him. How does that happen? This happens in the following complicated way. First of all, we have to realize that one of the things that was to flow into the general world current took place in India six hundred years before our era. At about the same time, something also happened within the Babylonian-Chaldean culture in that Zarathustra reappeared in ancient Chaldea under the name Zarathos or Nazarathos. There he lived and worked as a great teacher at the same time as some of the chosen teachers and leaders of the ancient Hebrew people were led into Babylonian captivity, because that is also the time when the Jews were led into captivity. There you see how the first contact of the Hebrew people with Zarathos took place at that time and how the Hebrew people, through their members, were under the personal influence of the reborn Zarathustra or Zoroaster. The events took place as described in the Bible. The following happened. At the beginning of our era, there were two sets of parents, both named Joseph and Mary. One of them lived in Nazareth and the other in Bethlehem. The husband of the couple in Bethlehem was descended from the Solomonic line of the House of David. The other couple in Nazareth was descended from the Nathanic line of the House of David. Solomon and Nathan are both sons of David. Both sets of parents have a son. To the Nazareth parents, the Nazareth Jesus child is born, as described in the Gospel of Luke, and to the Bethlehem parents, the Bethlehem Jesus child is born, as described in the Gospel of Matthew. So we have two Jesus children at the beginning of our era.

Let us follow the story of the Bethlehem Jesus Child! How did he actually come into being as a physical child, so to speak? As a physical child, we see in the physical line of descent, which the writer of the Gospel of Matthew traces very beautifully back to Abraham, descended from this line. We have to follow the line from Ur of the Chaldees to the land of Canaan, then to Egypt and back to Canaan again. That would approximately give the line of the Israelite people from Chaldea to Palestine, to Egypt and back again. These were the ancestors of the Bet-lehemitic Jesus-child. And because he carried the blood of these ancestors within him, he went through this journey, so to speak. That individuality, which now wanted to embody itself in this Jesus boy of Bethlehem, quickly passed through the same path, albeit in a shortened form. That individuality had been active as Zarathustra in ancient Chaldea. Thus, at the moment when the Bethlehem Jesus child was born, a spiritual individuality, which exactly imitated the traits of Abraham, came spiritually from Chaldea to Canaan. There it was born into the Bethlehem Jesus child. Then it had to briefly imitate the move to Egypt and later back again, until it settled in Nazareth. There you have the individuality that, so to speak, spiritually went through the whole journey of the people of Israel. You can go through this journey that you have described in the Bible and you will find that it is true. The Bible describes better than any external records. What can be found in the Akasha Chronicle for the clairvoyant eye is confirmed by the Bible: the journey that the Israelite people went through from Chaldea to Canaan, to Egypt and back. And the parallels are wonderful everywhere. Who leads the Jews to Egypt? Joseph's dreams lead them there. Who leads the Bethelehemitic Jesus child to Egypt? Also the dreams of Joseph, his father. These parallels go as far as these details. It is again a special gift of clairvoyance that has remained, that establishes the connection.

So the Jesus child is born in Bethlehem, having received the element that came into humanity through Abraham by inheritance, the individuality of Zarathustra. And those who were connected with Zarathustra in the Chaldean secret schools are now pursuing the path. In the spiritual world, their star leads the way: Zoroaster himself, who is going to be born in Bethlehem. They can follow them, the three magi, they appear in the Bible. They know him, who lives in the Bethelehemitic Jesus child.

This is the one Jesus child, the Bethelehemitic. In the other Jesus child, who was also born in Bethlehem only through a journey, something completely different lives, something that is already announced by the fact that this Jesus child was different in all his qualities from the Bethelehemitic Jesus child. From the very beginning, the Bethlehem Jesus Child showed himself to be an extraordinarily gifted human being beyond all human measure, for he had a powerful individuality within him. He was gifted for everything that humanity had so far conquered in terms of cultural means. He showed himself to be extraordinarily gifted for everything that could be learned from the environment. The Nazarene Jesus Child was not at all gifted for the external things of culture. He had only a deep, deep, emotional inwardness. It was precisely the quality of the soul and mind that was developed in him. But he was not gifted to learn what was externally available in terms of cultural means. He had no inclination for that. He had something that people cannot even imagine in terms of distinguishing good from evil. But what had arisen on earth in the way of culture was foreign to him. It was foreign to him because something had been born in him that had not gone through the whole development of humanity.

We can understand this if we consider the following. In the ancient Lemurian times, what we call the Luciferic influence took place within humanity. Then the Luciferic powers crept into the human being's astral body. As a result, humanity has become what it has become. Now, in those days, the guiding powers of the human being's etheric body had to be held back a little so that it would not be infected by anything that the astral body, which was under Luciferic influence, could give it. Part of the etheric body was withdrawn from the influence of the astral body by the fact that man retained influence only over his etheric body, in so far as he is a thinking and feeling being, but not with regard to everything of a thinking nature. This was, so to speak, withheld and conveyed from the spiritual-divine world from above. Therefore, from the very beginning of their earthly existence, human beings have, so to speak, their individual desires and personal feelings, and they could not have their personal thoughts, nor the expression of personal thoughts, language. Thinking was such that it was guided by a continuous spirituality in all of them. As a result, they all think the same. But even language was at least guided by the folk gods, so that not every person has their own language. That which is expressed in the spirit of language was, with respect to the etheric body, removed from the arbitrariness of the individual personality; it was held back. What was withheld in Lemurian times is related in the Paradise Myth: Man partook of the Tree of Knowledge but not of the Tree of Life; he acquired freedom of will, but what was not given to man at that time was now mysteriously transmitted to this Jesus child, to the Jesus child of Nazareth, whose etheric body it was. There was that which had been withdrawn from humanity in the very beginning, and that prevented the Nazarene Jesus Child from taking an interest in the culture that humanity had acquired. He had something much more original, something that reminded of the time when humanity had not yet fallen into the sin of the arbitrariness of the individual. The author of the Gospel of Luke expresses this by leading the family tree up to Adam. So that in the Nazarene Jesus-child something appears which had sunk in Adam, which had been withdrawn from the Luciferic influence. What mankind was before this Luciferic influence, that was in this Nazarene Jesus-child.

These two Jesus-boys lived side by side. When they were both twelve years old, the following happened: the Zarathustra in the Bethlehem Jesus-boy decided to merge with the Nazarene Jesus-boy. This is hinted at in the Bible in the event known as the loss of the twelve-year-old Jesus, where the parents are amazed to find him again. He was quite different from what he had been before, the Nazarene Jesus-child. Now, all at once, he took an interest in external culture because Zarathustra's individuality was in him. This happened at that moment in time which is described in the Bible as the twelve-year-old Jesus getting lost. Something else had happened as well. At the birth of the Nazarene Jesus Child, that which we can call the later embodiment of the Buddha descended into the astral body. From the time of his birth, the Buddha in his etheric body was connected with this Jesus child of Nazareth at his re-embodiment, so that in the aura of the Jesus child of Nazareth in his astral body we have the Buddha. This is alluded to in a profound way in the Gospel of Luke. The Indian legend tells us that at the time when the royal son Gautama Buddha was born, there was a remarkable sage who was to become the Buddha. His name was Asita. He had learned through his clairvoyant abilities that the Bodhisattva had now been born. He looked at the boy in the royal palace and was full of enthusiasm. He began to weep. “Why are you weeping?” the king asked him. “O king, there is no danger of misfortune. On the contrary, the one who has been born is the Bodhisattva and will become the Buddha. I weep because I, as an old man, will not live to see this Buddha.” Then Asita died. The Bodhisattva became the Buddha. The Buddha descends and unites with the aura of the Nazarene Jesus child, in order to contribute his mite to the great event in Palestine. At the same time, through a karmic connection, the old Asita is reborn. He becomes the old Simeon. And he now sees the Buddha, who had become this from a bodhisattva. What he had not been able to see in India six hundred years before our era, the becoming Buddha, he now saw it when the Buddha floated in the aura of the Nazarene Jesus child, whom he held in his arms, and now he said the beautiful word: “Now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace, for I have seen my master,” the Buddha in the aura of the Jesus child.

Thus we see how the three currents flow together: through the blood, the current of Abraham; through the individuality of the Bethelehemitic Jesus-child, the Zarathustra current; and the third current through the Buddha's etheric body or Nirmanakaya floating down and being seen by the shepherds. Thus we see these three currents flowing together. And how these currents live on within Christianity, and how he who lives in the Nazarene Jesus-child, endowed with the individuality of Zarathustra, carries them forward, can only be described at another time.

It should also be said that after the Zarathustra individuality had passed over into the personality, into the body of the Nazarene Jesus child, that the Bethlehem Jesus child gradually wasted away and soon died.

The important thing is that you understand how this guidance of the Zarathustra individuality into the Jesus child took place. You know that the development of the human being proceeds in such a way that from birth to the age of seven the development of the physical body takes place, from seven to fourteen the development of the etheric body takes place, the special unfolding, and that then the astral body is born. The special I, the egoity, as it was born in man in the Lemurian time, was not at all in the Nazarene Jesus child. If He had developed further without the Zarathustra going over to Him, no I could have been born. He had what had been joined together as the holy three members, as they were before the Fall: physical body, etheric body and astral body, and only then received the gift of the I through Zarathustra. All this joined together in a wonderful way. In the Gospels we have the facts mirrored, which can be found in the Akasha Chronicle.

I have only been able to sketch out a few individual features of the confluence of these great, powerful spiritual currents of the Buddha, Zarathustra and the ancient Hebrew stream in Western Asia, where, at the beginning of our era, Christianity was reborn from these three currents. These are a few lines that we can continue another time.

On this occasion let me once more call attention to the fact that as the German Section of the Theosophical¹ Society we find ourselves in an epoch of importance. What has been said in different lectures with regard to the cycles which run in sevens is no mere figure of speech, but is in harmony with the laws of existence. And having now completed a 7-years' cycle in the life of the German Section we may do well to pause and look into our whole work and endeavour. This work is only possible if the spiritual Movement, in its development, contains in its inner ordering something of the laws of the great cosmic system. The cosmic system runs its course in cycles which can be reckoned according to the number 7; for we reckon 7 planetary conditions and so on.

In a Movement like our own, the number 7 also has a certain part to play, and after 7 years our striving in a sense turns back again to the beginning, for it has in the meantime incorporated in itself what has been achieved; our striving turns back again to its beginning, but at a higher stage. It is only possible to arrive at this by considering how the whole rests upon an inner law.

If you look back a little at the work we have done in these 7 years, you will be able to notice one thing: there has been a certain order and regularity about this work. Of course you cannot take what I have said as being correct to a day, but if you take it in its essentials, you will see that it is true.

In the first years of our work in the German Section we so to speak laid the foundations. What we did in the first four years was to acquire some knowledge of the paths-which lead to the higher worlds, of the great cosmic connections, and of the examination and testing of what is found in the Akashic Record with regard to the secrets of the cosmos. Those members who joined later have found it necessary—and will always do so—to acquire knowledge afterwards of this foundation of our work. This is indispensable for everybody; for it is not sufficient to assimilate only what has happened in the last three years and has enabled the Movement to progress in the right way. If you look back you will see that the last three years have brought about the development of those truths and facts which have been put before you of late, perhaps in a somewhat astonishing form. If you try to establish the connection with what was done in the first four years of our work in the four-fold foundation, as it were, of the whole, you will see that even those great and all-embracing truths which have been impressing you so deeply, have a very close connection with what happened in the first four years. You will be able to convince yourselves of this if you ponder it well. The younger members must bear written upon their hearts the absolute necessity of acquiring for themselves a firm and sure foundation. Wherever the work is being carried on, we are making it more and more possible for those who join later to pick up for themselves what has been accomplished here in the early days. It is really impossible for them to co-operate without this recapitulation; and the Theosophical Movement must be taken seriously in the deepest sense. In this connection we may perhaps speak to-day on a subject that concerns the theosophical attitude of mind and the whole manner of theosophical thought; and we will relate it to the significant time through which we are passing. I mean the question: “What is the right attitude for the theosophist to take with regard to Theosophy itself?”

What is here meant will be clearer if I put the question in another way: “Why is Theosophy taught to-day at all as it is taught? Why is information given about the higher worlds, information that is the result of spiritual research and clairvoyant consciousness? Could one not perhaps proceed in quite a different way?” Let us suppose, e.g., that we were to begin by giving each person certain instructions as to how he can develop those inner faculties which at present are dormant within his soul, so that by means of these instructions it would be possible for him gradually to penetrate into the spiritual worlds himself, without having first been given any of the facts of the higher worlds, as is done to-day.

This was indeed the custom formerly, to a certain extent: it was so before the Theosophical Movement in the modern sense came into being. For a long time it had been said: It is really not of much use for anyone to stand before the world and communicate the results of spiritual investigation. Such communications were accordingly withheld as far as possible, and only certain maxims were given to people as to how they should develop the faculties dormant within their own souls; as a rule people were not told any more than they had gradually come to see for themselves in the higher worlds. The question might now arise: Why is this path not taken to-day? Why are the results of spiritual investigation communicated to men?

This step has not been taken out of any personal preference or from any personal decision: there are good reasons for it. We shall understand it better if we constantly remind ourselves of what it is that Spiritual Science really tells us. It tells us of facts and truths from the realm of the higher super-sensible worlds; it tells us of that which clairvoyant consciousness can discover in these higher worlds.

Now it is of course true that one who hears of such things and is not himself clairvoyant cannot convince himself of the facts as such through his own immediate vision; it is quite true that he receives them and cannot prove them by clairvoyant evidence. That is true; but it would be quite wrong to imagine that the man who is not clairvoyant cannot in any way prove or have insight into the facts which are now being presented. And it would be wrong to assert that one must merely take in faith and on authority what is given out of clairvoyant consciousness. These communications would be in the highest degree imperfect, would lack something essential, if they appealed only to authority and faith. What is being given out in the right way—this has often been emphasised—can be discovered only by clairvoyant consciousness but when it has once been discovered—if only by one person—when it has once been seen and communicated, everyone can understand it by means of unprejudiced reason, that is to say by those faculties which are accessible to him on the physical plane. And it may well be said: Even if no one of those here present ever has the opportunity of proving everything immediately in the most comprehensive sense, everyone could at any rate make this possible if he had the time and the necessary mental faculties (I mean, faculties of the physical plane). Let us even consider such difficult matters as were treated of here in recent lectures, with regard to the incarnations of Zarathustra, such difficulties as, e.g. that Zarathustra's etheric body passed over into Moses²—let us even imagine that such difficult, far-reaching and significant subjects are being dealt with, even then let no one assert that he who knows these things as the result of spiritual research appeals for blind credulity! That is by no means the case. But suppose someone were to come and say: “I for my part am no clairvoyant. But here is someone asserting these things about Zarathustra and his incarnations. I will now lay hold of everything that is at my disposal on the physical plane, everything that history hands down to us, everything that is contained in the stone monuments, or in ancient religious documents, and I will test all these most carefully.” And suppose he were to say further: “Assuming that what is being said is correct, does it tally with the facts that can be externally corroborated?”—Such a person would then investigate thoroughly what can be confirmed by external means, and he would see that the more closely he investigated the more he would find corroboration for what the clairvoyant has set forth. If the word “fear” had any meaning at all in this connection, then one could say that the research of Spiritual Science might perhaps really feel fear of an inexact examination; but it could never fear those who are ready to follow fully and accurately the paths of material investigation. For such people will see that the more closely they pursue their investigations the more corroboration they will find for the facts which the clairvoyant communicates. But for the things that are not so remote or difficult, things which are connected with karma and reincarnation, and the life between death and a new birth—for these one only needs to observe, in an open-minded way, what ordinary life has to offer. And the more this is done, the more will confirmation be found for the facts communicated by the clairvoyant; that is to say, there are possibilities enough of convincing oneself that what is acquired from super-sensible worlds can be confirmed by the outer physical world. This is something which should not be taken lightly, but which we should look upon as an essential fact. We must in our own lives put to the test the facts that only a few can really investigate, we should not. always be repeating the phrase: That must be taken on trust! Accept as little as possible on trust; examine, test and prove all the time! Only be sure that you do it in an open-minded, unprejudiced way. This, then, is the first thing upon which stress must be laid.

But now you will find that a testing of this kind requires great effort, it demands thought and work. It means that one must really set out to find confirmations in the physical world for what is stated out of clairvoyant research. And here we come to a matter of which we shall do well to speak, a matter that is closely connected with our main question. Is it not necessary, is it not even good, for the man of to-day, besides striving (as he certainly should strive) to penetrate into the spiritual world, also to occupy himself at the same time with an energetic cultivation of the ordinary means of knowledge and the ordinary methods of thought? In other words: Does the theosophist not do well to overcome the indolence that is certainly prevalent in the world to-day, and to develop his world of thought in all earnestness, to lay hold of the means by which man can be comprehended even only on the physical plane, and to turn these to his use? Is it not right that he should learn a great deal, and especially learn how to think?

It is indeed very difficult to make clear to the consciousness of the present day what is meant by this. It once happened that someone who wanted to make progress in theosophical knowledge and at the same time to learn how to think the thoughts with greater exactitude, came and asked me to recommend him what to read. I recommended him to study Spinoza's Ethics, so that he would be able to formulate in clear-cut outlines the thoughts that were being given him. Not many weeks afterwards he wrote to me that he could not see why he should study this book; it was rather voluminous and the whole object was simply to prove the existence of God, which he had never doubted; therefore he saw no need to wade through long trains of thought in order to prove the existence of God!

This is an example of just that kind of indolence with which men approach Theosophy or Spiritual Science to-day. They are very soon satisfied when they have come to some belief or other, and they fight shy of the trouble of building it up for themselves, bit by bit, into conceptions which are, admittedly, troublesome to acquire. But for such persons the only possible result is blind faith, whereas you will find that it ceases to be blind faith if you will really school your thinking and not simply want, out of curiosity, to develop those powers which lead to an elementary stage of clairvoyance. I do not, of course, say that this could not run parallel, but we need to train at the same time the physical powers of thought, those faculties of knowledge that have been given to us here on the physical plane; these must be trained too, even if it is irksome, in order that we may be in a position to form clearly defined ideas and clearly defined concepts of what is communicated to us from out of the higher worlds. It is very easy to imagine that it is better to have clairvoyance in the very smallest degree than it is to understand through the reasoning mind ever so many of the facts of the higher worlds. It might easily be said: “I really do not know why I am a member of this Society; we are always being told things about the higher worlds; all that is quite nice, but I would much prefer it if I could catch the merest glimpse of them myself by means of clairvoyant vision.”—I know a very learned theosophist who had an intense longing to get beyond mere learning to direct vision, and he expressed this longing as follows: “If only I could once be able to see even the tip of the tail of one of these elemental beings!” Such a remark is quite understandable. This particular theosophist would never have been ready to give up his knowledge of theosophical truth in exchange; but there might well be someone ready to do so, if he could gain only a small degree of clairvoyant vision. Such a feeling would, however be wrong from every point of view. For we must consider the age in which we live. It is the age which, in the whole evolution of man, is the epoch when conscious thought must be developed, just as in the ancient Indian period a quite different kind of consciousness was evolved, a consciousness that was reminiscent of a dim, shadowy clairvoyance; the powers of the present day have gradually been developing ever since that time. It is only we in this age, who in conjunction with the development of the Spiritual Soul have brought human thinking into the sphere of earth-evolution. For this reason Theosophy must now, at this time, be brought down out of the super-sensible world and must make its appeal to the reasoned thinking of men.

We need to distinguish clearly between two conditions. Firstly: a man may not be much of a thinker, his thinking may indeed be quite primitive and yet he may at the same time be comparatively far advanced as regards vision on the astral plane, and even, up to a certain point, on the devachanic plane; he may be quite advanced in this respect and able to see a great deal. Or again, the other case is possible: A man who knows a great deal about the theosophical truths may yet be able to see nothing at all for himself, may not be in the position, as we were saying, to see even “the tip of the tail” of an elemental being! This is also quite possible. Now let us ask ourselves: What is really the inner connection between these different faculties of the human soul?

Here it must be emphasised that to have something, and to be conscious of what we have, are two distinct things. It is extraordinarily important to grasp this point. You will understand it rightly if the question is put somewhat differently. You were all once clairvoyant, in primeval times everyone was clairvoyant, and there was a time too when men were able to look back into the far, far past. And now you may ask: But how is it that we do not remember our former incarnations if we were once able to look back through the ages? Then you may ask: If we become clairvoyant now, will that help us in the next incarnation to look back?

This fact you must have clearly before you, that the old clairvoyance is of no use for looking back to-day. You once had this clairvoyance. How is it, then, that the majority of people to-day do not remember their former incarnations? This question is of the greatest importance. People do not remember their former incarnations—although in earlier epochs they were clairvoyant to a greater or less degree—because in those times they had not developed the faculties which are the faculties of the self, of the ego. For the development of clairvoyant faculties in the general sense is not the essential point.

Let me make this clear to you by a comparison. Imagine that when you woke up in the morning you could remember nothing about your experiences of the day before.—Now however clairvoyant people may have been in former times, if they did not pay attention to the development of the faculties of the ego, namely, the faculty of thinking, the power of discrimination, which are the special faculties of the human ego on this earth, then the ego was not actively present in the former incarnations, the self-hood was not there! What, then, is there for people to remember? A self-contained ego must be there in the previous incarnation. That is the whole point! So that to-day it is only those people who in their earlier incarnations have worked through the medium of thought, of logic, of discrimination, who can remember those incarnations. Thus however advanced a man is in clairvoyance, if he has not in former incarnations worked through the power of discrimination, of logical thinking, he cannot remember a former incarnation. For he had not at that time set up the signpost as it were, to which his recollection has to go back. So you will see that when one understands Spiritual Science, one cannot too quickly set to work to acquire just these very faculties of genuine thought.

Now perhaps you will say: But when I am clairvoyant I shall already have mastered the faculty of logical thinking. That is not so! Why have the Gods allowed human beings to exist at all? Because it was only in human beings that they could cause faculties to develop which otherwise could not have been developed at all. The power to think, to picture something in thoughts in which there is the quality of discrimination—this faculty can be developed only on this our earth; formerly it did not exist, it could only come about through the fact of the existence of human beings. We might take the following comparison.—Suppose you have a grain of corn—of wheat, let us say. However long you look at it, no wheat will grow out of it. You must put it in the soil and let it grow, you must let the growth-forces work upon it. That which the divine-spiritual Beings had before the formation of man may be compared to the grain of wheat. If this “grain of wheat” was to come to life in the form of thoughts, it had first to be cultivated by human beings on the physical plane. The only possible means of cultivating thoughts on the earth from the higher world is through human incarnations. So that the thoughts of men on the physical plane have a character which is entirely their own and must lead up to what is possible in the higher worlds. It was necessary for the Gods that there should be men on the earth. The Gods allowed men to come into being in order to preserve through them in the form of thought what they had had in the higher worlds. Thus what comes down from the higher worlds would never have taken form in thought, if man had not been able to give it this form. And he who will not think, on the earth, deprives the Gods of what they have reckoned upon, and he cannot accomplish what is his real human task and destiny upon earth. For he can only attain this in an incarnation wherein he really labours at the development of his powers of thought. If this is realised, all the rest follows from it.

That which brings revelations, real facts about the spiritual world, can enter the human soul in manifold ways. It is certainly possible for men to come to clairvoyant vision without being clear thinkers, and indeed this is very frequently the case to-day. The majority of those who become clairvoyant are not clear thinkers. But those who are clear thinkers and those who are not will have very different experiences in the spiritual world. The difference might be expressed thus: What is revealed from out of the higher worlds impresses itself most clearly into those forms of mental perception which we bring to the higher worlds as thoughts. Thoughts are the best vehicle for the revelations.

But if we are not thinkers, the revelations must seek other forms, e.g. a picture. The most usual way for one who is not a thinker to receive revelations is in the form of a sense-image. And you may often hear those who are visionary clairvoyants without being thinkers, describe in sense-images what they have seen. These may have beauty; but we must at the same time be aware that a thinker has a different. subjective experience from a non-thinker. If you have revelations as a non-thinker, the sense-image is there; this or that figure stands before you. It reveals itself out of the spiritual world. Let us say, you see the figure of an angel, or some symbolic form—perhaps a cross, a monstrance, a chalice. This is present in the super-sensible realm and you see it as a finished picture. You say to yourselves that it is reality—but actually it is a picture. New experiences of the spiritual world will present themselves to the subjective consciousness of the thinker in a rather different way. It will not be the same as for the non-thinker. For the thinker, the things will not suddenly be there before him as though they had been shot out of a pistol; they will appear in a different way. Take a non-thinking, visionary clairvoyant and a thinking, visionary clairvoyant. They may both receive the same revelations. Let us take some particular case. The non-thinking clairvoyant sees this or that phenomenon of the spiritual world. The thinking clairvoyant does not see it yet, but only later; and the very moment he sees it, it is taken hold of by his own thought and he can at once discriminate and know whether it is or is not truth. He sees it somewhat later, but when he does see it, it comes to him in such a form that he has already penetrated it with his thoughts, and can tell whether it is illusion or reality; so that in a sense he possesses something before he actually sees it. The revelation comes to him at the same moment as to the non-thinking clairvoyant, but he sees it later. When he sees it, however, it is already penetrated with judgment and thought, and he knows exactly whether it is an hallucination, i.e. whether his own desires are being objectivised, or whether it is objective reality. That is the difference in the subjective experiences of the two clairvoyants. The non-thinking clairvoyant sees the phenomenon at once, the thinking clairvoyant, later. In the ease of the former the picture will remain as it was; all he can do is to describe it. But the thinking clairvoyant will be able to link it up and bring it completely into line with what is present in the ordinary physical world; for the physical world, no less than the phenomenon which he has seen, is a revelation from out of the spiritual world.

From this you will see that if you approach the spiritual world equipped with the instrument of thought, you will be able to bring reliable judgment to bear upon what is presented to you.

But now something else follows. A person might dispute the value of communications from the spiritual world if he has not seen the phenomena for himself. Let us imagine a third person as well as the two mentioned. This third person is not clairvoyant at all but is informed of the results of spiritual investigation in so far as they have been acquired by clairvoyance combined with clear thinking. He looks upon them as reasonable. Yes, they are facts from the spiritual world. The thinking clairvoyant has acquired them, and anyone who has grasped them with his reason possesses them, even if he is not conscious of it. You do not need to be at all clairvoyant, yet you have the full value in yourself of what has been communicated to you.. There is a difference between having something and being conscious that one has it. The relation of a non-clairvoyant theosophist to a clairvoyant theosophist can become clear by thinking of the following.—Imagine that you had been given a legacy, but had not yet heard about it. If this were the case, the legacy would nevertheless have its value for you. Even if you do not hear about it until later, yet you possess it all the same. So it is with whoever learns of the facts of the spiritual world through Spiritual Science. They are his, if he has grasped them in an understanding way; he possesses them and need only wait for the time when he will become conscious of them. The becoming conscious of them, however, is not of equal significance with their possession. This is particularly noticeable after death. Which is of more use—if we may put it thus trivially, to make the meaning clear—which is of more use to man after death: to see something in a visionary way, without thought, or to receive purely theosophical communications without seeing things in a visionary way?

One could easily imagine that visionary sight would be a better preparation for death than merely to hear of the facts of the spiritual world. And yet the truth is that after death, what a man has simply seen in a visionary way is of very little use to him, while on the other hand an actual reality is immediately present, as soon as he becomes conscious of what he has received in spiritual communications, if he has grasped these with his understanding. It is what has been understood that is of value after death, whether it has been seen or not.

Consider the deepest Initiate. Through his clairvoyance he can behold the whole spiritual world! But this will not enhance his significance after death, if he is not able to express these facts in human concepts. All that will help him after death is what he has possessed here on earth in the form of clear concepts of thought. There are the seeds for the life after death. Of course anyone who is a thinker as well as a visionary clairvoyant can turn his visions to good account. But two non-thinking persons, of whom one is clairvoyant and the other merely listens to the results of the clairvoyance—these two will be in exactly the same position after death. There is no difference between them, for what we take into the life after death is what we acquire for ourselves here by means of clear thinking. This springs up like a seed; but not so, what we have merely already seen on earth of the worlds we now enter. What we receive here from the higher worlds is not given to us as a free gift so as to make it easier for us when we leave the physical plane, but in order that we may translate it into the current coin of the earth. What we have thus translated, just so much helps us after death. That is the essential thing.

Thus it is in regard to the life after death. But here on the physical plane too, the case of the visionary clairvoyant is different from that of the thinking clairvoyant. It is interesting and beautiful to see into the spiritual worlds, but none the less there is a difference when the spiritual worlds are beheld merely in a visionary way. Apart from the fact that it is impossible to be secure from illusions—and the only way to avoid illusions is to apply clear thinking to what has been seen—apart from this, let us suppose that a visionary clairvoyant has perceived this or that; then the form in which he perceives it, and which you can discover from his own account of it, is penetrated by elements of the physical plane. Has anyone ever described to you an angel that was not permeated by elements of the physical plane? He had wings. So have the birds. He had a human-shaped body. So has every human being on the physical plane. The things the visionary clairvoyant describes are, it is true, put together in a fashion that is not to be found on the physical plane, but the pictures are nevertheless composed of elements of the physical plane. This is not without justification; but you will see that such a picture has within it something that belongs to the earth. The forms and pictures in your vision that are taken from the physical plane do not belong to the spiritual world, they only give a picture of the spiritual world in the domain of the senses. This I have set forth clearly in my Occult Science, which has now been completed. I have there shown that present-day clairvoyance must indeed be of a pictorial character in its early stages, but that it must not remain there, it must develop to the point where the last remnant of what is earthly in the visions is cast aside. There is of course a certain danger for the clairvoyant when he thus strips off the last remnant of earth. For example, when he sees the angel and then strips off all that is earthly, he is faced with the danger of seeing nothing at all! What is it that can prevent one from losing the vision altogether on entering actually into the spiritual world? The seed that can spring up out of thinking! Thoughts afford the substance whereby what is in the spiritual world may be comprehended. We acquire the power really to live in the spiritual world by comprehending, in our world of the senses, what is no longer permeated by sense-elements and yet is on the physical plane. Thoughts alone fulfil this condition. The only thing we may bring into the spiritual world is thoughts. With regard to a circle, for example, nothing of the chalk drawing of it, but simply and solely our thoughts about a circle. With these thoughts you can ascend into the spiritual worlds. You must bring nothing of the picture with you.

And now I can describe the above-mentioned subjective process more exactly. Let us suppose, for example, that something is seen in the field of spiritual vision, let us say, a monstrance. I will now characterise the two clairvoyants, the merely visionary and the thinking clairvoyant, by supposing that the one sees the monstrance here (a) and the other, the thinking clairvoyant, only sees it here (b)

It is only from this point onwards that he becomes conscious of it. He receives it, however, immediately with thoughts, he penetrates it with thought. But at the moment when the thinking clairvoyant fills his image with thoughts, it becomes indistinct for the visionary clairvoyant. It becomes black and indistinct here at this point (b) and reappears only after some time. Just at the point where thought can unite with the image, it becomes indistinct for the visionary clairvoyant; he is really never in a position to unite thought with it, therefore he never has the experience: ‘I was there with my ego’. This experience can never come to the merely visionary clairvoyant.

All this takes us more intimately into the whole question, and it is exceedingly important to reflect upon it. It leads us to consider the necessity of developing our thinking, and of overcoming the disinclination to acquire an understanding knowledge for ourselves. It is a thousand times better to have grasped the ideas of Spiritual Science with thought first of all, and then—sooner or later, each according to his karma—to be able oneself to ascend into the spiritual worlds; a thousand times better than to have ‘seen’ straight-away and not to have grasped with thought the knowledge that is imparted in the Movement known as the Theosophical. A thousand times better it is indeed, to know Theosophy and to see nothing as yet, than to see something and not be able to penetrate it with thought, for that is how unreliability is introduced.

You can express the matter even more exactly, as follows.—You say: There are at the present time very clear thinkers who can understand the theosophical view of the world in an intellectual way. How is it that it is sometimes just these people who have such difficulty in reaching clairvoyance?—Those who are not clear thinkers find it comparatively easy to become clairvoyant, and they are then apt to feel themselves superior to the thinkers, whilst the latter find it difficult to become clairvoyant at all. Here is the point—distant by a hair's breadth only—where a certain arrogance in disguise begins to assert itself. There is indeed hardly anything that breeds and fosters pride so much as a clairvoyance which has not been illumined with thought, and that is why it is so dangerous, because the clairvoyant does not as a rule consider himself proud at all, but very humble. He has no notion of the pride that consists in undervaluing the activity of thought and laying the chief emphasis on inspirations. It is a terrible form of pride, a masked pride.

The question is really as follows: How is it that for many a thinker—as experience teaches us—it is so exceedingly difficult to come to the point of being clairvoyant? This is connected with an important fact. What we call power of discrimination, power of judgment in man, in other words the logical thinking of the thinker, brings about a definite change in the whole structure of the human brain. Clear thinking causes a change in the physical instrument of the brain. Scientific research knows little of this, but it is a fact that a physical brain that has been used by a thinker has a different appearance from the brain which belongs to a non-thinker. The fact of being clairvoyant does not change it much. The brain of a non-thinker has very complicated convolutions, but that of a clear thinker is comparatively simple, without any special complications. Thinking actually expresses itself in the simplification of the convolutions of the brain. Present-day research knows nothing of this. Clear thinking is thinking that can survey wide vistas, not the thinking that occupies itself with analysis. Hence the greater simplicity of the brain-convolutions of a clear thinker. Whenever scientific research does condescend in any way to test clear thinking in its connection with material conditions, then it very soon appears that scientific research corroborates the statements of Spiritual Science. The examination of the brain of Mendeleeff to whom science owes the exposition of the periodic system of the elements confirms what Spiritual Science says. His brain-convolutions were simpler than usual. Within certain limits he had the power of comprehensive thinking, and physical examination bore out absolutely the truth of what I have said.—I do not mention this as being of any very special value but only by the way.—Thus, as I have said, a change comes about in the instrument, and this change must be brought about by the activity of thought itself. No one is born with all the faculties he will possess later; he may have tendencies in certain directions, but the faculties themselves he must first develop. So it is a fact that changes take place in the brain in the course of a man's life. After a life of thought the instrument of thinking is different from what it was before.

Now the fact is that our etheric body, which for clairvoyant consciousness must be loosened from the physical brain, becomes more closely bound to the brain through the activity of thought. Thinking chains the etheric body firmly to the brain. If through his karma anyone has not yet the forces necessary to loosen it again at the right time, it may be that he cannot get far in clairvoyance in this incarnation; this depends on his karma. Supposing that in a former incarnation his karma had ordained him to be a clear thinker, then at the present time his thinking will not bind his etheric body so strongly to the brain; he will be able to set free his etheric body comparatively easily, and for the very reason that the elements of thought are the best preparation for ascending into the higher worlds—for this very reason he can investigate the secrets of the higher worlds in the most intimate way. Of course he must first set free again the etheric body from the brain. But if with what one may call the fine chiseling of thought the etheric body has become so caught in the physical brain that it is exhausted, then his karma may perhaps make him wait a long time before he can set it free again. When, however, the etheric body does become free, it will mean that he has passed the point of logical thought. Then what he has acquired can never be lost; no one can take it away from him. That is an essential and important fact, because otherwise clairvoyance can often be lost again after it has been acquired. Let me remind you once again that you were all clairvoyant in earlier times. Why is it that you no longer possess the faculty of clairvoyance? It is because in former times you were not bound to the earth's existence, because you were remote, in spiritual worlds; you did not bring the spiritual world down into your faculties; your visionary clairvoyance was based upon the condition of being remote from the physical world.

This must be clear to us. We must inscribe these fine shades of thought upon our minds and souls; we must be clear that the task of a real occult science to-day is to impart those results of spiritual investigation which are permeated with a thinking content, so that one can always clothe the results of spiritual research in such a way as to be comprehensible through thinking to the man who is not clairvoyant. To this end they must first be combined with thought. This is why there is such difficulty with old books which speak of phenomena of the higher worlds. If you take up old books of this kind and approach them with the attitude of modern Spiritual Science, you will find something lacking in them all. These old books may impart wonderful knowledge, but they are not of much use to the man of to-day unless he is himself clairvoyant and knows how to place the knowledge rightly. In the case of modern Spiritual Science, however, anyone who takes pains is able to make something of what it presents, because he can permeate it with the element of thought he acquires on the physical plane. For the same concepts are used to grasp what is in the spiritual world and what is in the physical world. Present-day Natural Science speaks of evolution; so does Spiritual Science. If you have grasped the concept of evolution you can understand what is set forth in Spiritual Science. You can create a concept of karma, because you can create a picture of it in thought. Of course if you simply say, as many theosophists do: “Every spiritual cause has a spiritual effect and this is karma”, you have then no conception of karma. You can see the law of cause and effect in a billiard ball, but that would be no right comparison for karma. But now take an iron ball and throw it into a vessel of water. If the ball is cold the water will remain as it is. But if you make the ball hot and then throw it in, the water will get warm as a result of what has been done to the ball. Here we have something which may be compared with karma; here we have a later event that is the result of an earlier.

It must be quite clear to us that one who permeates the facts of the spiritual world with thought can also impart them in such a way that everyone who has thoughts acquired here on the physical plane can apply these same thoughts to what is imparted from the spiritual worlds. If he does this he can understand it. Everyone ought to keep this in mind. Everyone ought to understand that the important thing is, not the fact that we receive knowledge from the higher worlds, but how we receive it—that we receive it in a way that is suited to our present earthly conditions. We must see to it that we do not receive knowledge from the higher worlds in any other way. It is tempting just to believe what is told us but this is very wrong. If someone is willing just to believe, it is as though he wanted merely to be told that there is a light; whereas he needs the light to light up his room! He must have the light; mere belief is no use. Thus it is important first of all to understand the nature of thorough, conscientious thinking, so that the knowledge of the spiritual world may be received through this channel. The knowledge can only be discovered if one has the power of clairvoyance; but when it has been discovered and investigated, it can be understood by everyone who receives it in the right way.

If one thinks in this way, then all the dangers which are otherwise bound up with what is called the Theosophical Movement, will be, in the main, averted. These very dangers will however immediately arise if people develop clairvoyant powers and do not see to it that their thinking, and more especially their perception and discernment, are enriched at the same time through their own thinking. Many people have the desire just to seize hold of something out of the spiritual world instead of carefully bringing their perceptive thought to bear upon what has after all to be acquired on the physical plane. Even a God cannot comprehend the world in terms of thought unless he incarnates on this physical earth. He can comprehend the world in other forms and ways, but to comprehend it in this form he must incarnate upon the earth. If you reflect upon this it will be clear to you that there are certain dangers connected with the development of faculties within oneself which are then wrongly used. He who develops a certain visionary clairvoyance and uses it wrongly by cutting off all possibility of convincing the world with it, he who remains on the astral plane alone and does not bring his experiences down on to the physical plane, is laying himself open to the danger that an abyss will open between his visions and the physical plane. Let us suppose that someone has had visions of real significance which belong to the astral plane. They may be true visions of reality—for this may happen even with the non-thinking, visionary clairvoyant. But now between him and the real foundations of the physical plane there opens out an abyss. Imagine for a moment that this cloth were the physical plane. The visionary clairvoyant is standing in front of it; he sees his vision. But behind the physical plane is the real spiritual world; the physical plane is Maya. The visionary clairvoyant does not strip away the physical plane; this can be done only by one who makes use of the means of thought. Then only do you penetrate behind the physical plane; only with thinking clairvoyance can you ever understand it. The physical plane is there, but you do not see the spiritual world, the real spiritual world. The abyss opens before you, and the physical plane remains as Maya. And the impossibility of penetrating through the physical plane rests upon the fact that the brain is not capable of eliminating itself. If you have learnt to think rightly, you do not directly use your brain in thinking. Thinking works on the brain, but the activity of thinking does not directly need the brain; it is nonsense to assert that the brain itself thinks.

About 35 years ago I was once walking along the street with a young student who was then well on the way to becoming an out-and-out materialist. He said “When a man thinks, the brain atoms are vibrating; every definite thought has a definite form”—and then he continued to speak of how it is really nonsense to presuppose anything like a soul which can think, for it is the brain which does the thinking.—I said to him: “Yes, but now tell me, why do you tell such fibs? If this is true you cannot say: I think! You must say: my brain thinks, And you must also say: My brain eats, my brain sees the sun! You would then be speaking the truth.” He would soon see then what nonsense he had been carrying about in his head.

So it is not the brain that thinks. It needs no very serious consideration, to get this point clear, unless one is a thorough-going modern materialist. Unless you are a ‘Monist’ in the modern sense of the word, you can easily be clear on this point. The activity of thinking is not primarily dependent on having the brain as its instrument. When thinking becomes pure, the brain is not involved. It only plays a part when a sense-picture is made. If you have a picture of a chalk circle in your mind, then this picture has been formed by the brain, but when you think of a pure circle apart from all sense-qualities, then the circle is itself the active element that gives form to the brain. Now when a man has visionary clairvoyance he remains in his etheric body and does not reach the physical brain. But the abyss can never be bridged by this method. What is there seen clairvoyantly is connected with what is behind the physical plane. He who scorns the path of thought develops powers which, so to speak, do not attain their object, do not really penetrate into the spiritual world. And the consequence is that there is a false relationship between what is continually being developed in his etheric body, and what he really is as man. The relationship is entirely false; his brain is not developed to the level of his clairvoyant faculties. The brain is crude, for the man has made no effort to ennoble it through thinking. It is crude, it has built up a barrier which it cannot penetrate and which hinders him from reaching spiritual reality in his visions. He goes away from reality, instead of coming nearer to it. And every possibility of making a judgment about the spiritual world is taken away. Such a man may certainly be able to see a great deal; but there is never any guarantee that what he sees will correspond with the reality. He alone is capable of judging who can distinguish between mere vision and reality. It is only the power of discrimination that can discriminate, and if this is lacking, mere vision can never be distinguished from reality. But this power of discrimination can be acquired only by effort on the physical plane. Thus one will be for ever hovering about without firm foundations if one scorns the activity of thinking—hard and troublesome as it is.

This is what we must have clearly in our minds. Then it will be impossible for conditions to arise which otherwise arise so easily and may recur again and again, when by developing visionary clairvoyance men build up a dam against the world of reality and live in their dreams—which comes to the same thing as losing one's bearings in the physical world, as being not quite in one's right mind. Mere visionary clairvoyance easily leads to this. One can acquire the power of thoughtful discrimination. by working in the only sphere where this can be developed, namely in the sphere of thinking, on the physical plane. If you despise the acquisition of this thoughtful discrimination, you will stray far from the path of truth. Discrimination is what we need, otherwise we shall bring about all the ills that are necessarily connected with what is called the Theosophical Movement. He who gives himself up to blind belief, who merely accepts without reasoned thought all the communications from the higher worlds on the authority of another, will be doing something that is pleasant and easy, but in itself is fraught with danger. Instead of working the things out for himself and reflecting upon them, he accepts the knowledge of another, he assimilates the things that another person has seen, and refuses to test by means of his own thought what has been communicated. This is the cause of the ills to which the Theosophical Movement is liable—but of course this should not frighten anyone from attaching themselves to it. It may happen that a person, who has blind belief of this kind loses his bearings altogether and can no longer discriminate between what is true and what is untrue. Nothing can breed untruthfulness as effectively as a certain kind of visionary clairvoyance which is not supported and controlled by thought. And on the other hand, such clairvoyance breeds another quality, namely, a certain haughtiness and superiority which can even lead to megalomania. This is all the more dangerous because it is often not noticed. There is very serious danger of coming to think oneself superior because one sees something that another person does not see. And usually there is no idea of how deeply embedded in the soul this self-importance that borders on megalomania can be. It conceals itself in a certain way, especially when the (clairvoyant swears by his own visions with absolute certainty and suffers no one to take exception to them. So we sometimes find people believing the most ridiculous rubbish, just because it has been communicated to them “from the astral plane”. They would never dream of believing such things if they had been told them as matters belonging to the physical plane; but if they are told them “from the astral plane” they believe them with the most slavish credulity. Whoever has freed himself from this habit will not be led astray by this or that swindle or humbug. But people will fall into the trap unless they develop within themselves the impulse to prove and test, instead of accepting and believing without effort or exertion. We must not make it easy for ourselves; we must consider it one of the most sacred tasks of man to reach a right conviction. If we think of it in this light, we shall spare no effort of real work, and we shall not merely listen to sensational communications from the spiritual world. Of communications from the spiritual world we have, so to speak, enough. It is necessary that we should have them, but it is also necessary to acquire the right attitude and the right kind of thinking to receive these things worthily.

This is what I wanted to say to you to-day. I did not want to say it merely as an admonition or a sermon. I wanted to show the whole basis and for this reason it may have been rather difficult to keep pace with it in your thought; but in the methods I use I always try to adhere to what may be rightly looked for in the Theosophical Society. Many people like pious exhortations. I dislike them! I try to present things in such a way that they can clothe themselves in true forms of thought. When things of the physical plane are expounded, as has been done to-day, it does of course often entail hard thinking; for such things are neither as sensational nor as attractive as communications from the higher worlds. They are nevertheless of extraordinary importance. And you will not undervalue their importance if you say to yourselves: If that is really to come to pass which ought to come to pass, namely, that in the course of ensuing incarnations a sufficiently large number of people have a memory of this present incarnation, then provision for this must be made beforehand. Develop, therefore, your power of judgment; then you are candidates for the memory, in your next incarnation, of the present one. See to it that you are able to follow the world with your thoughts. For however much you can see m a visionary way, it will give you no help in remembering back to the present incarnation. And it is the mission of Spiritual Science to prepare the way for what must needs come—namely, that there may be a sufficiently large number of people who out of their own knowledge can look back to this present incarnation. How many come to the point in this incarnation of accompanying their knowledge of Spiritual Science with clairvoyant powers depends on the karma of each individual. There are certainly many sitting here whose karma will not allow them to see the world clairvoyantly in this incarnation. But all those who acquire what is given in true Spiritual Science, clothed as it is in the forms of thought, will reap the fruits of it in the next incarnation; for in this one they will have laid the right foundation. A man may, so to speak, be a clairvoyant without knowing it; and one who studies Spiritual Science in the right way has the insight and can wait until his karma also allows him actually to behold the things for himself.

• 1. In connection with the use of the words ‘Theosophy’, ‘theosophical’, in this text, it will be remembered that from the beginning of the century until the years 1911 or 1912, Dr. Steiner had been able to work as an independent teacher within the framework of the Theosophical Society and was the General Secretary of the German Section. His teaching of the unique nature and position of the Christ was at variance with the tendencies which had come to prevail in that Society and the statements on this subject made by its leaders, and Dr. Steiner's association with it inevitably came to an end. In 1912 the Anthroposophical Society was provisionally founded and its Headquarters established at Dornach in 1913.
• 2. cp. The Alpha and the Omega. Lecture given in Berlin, 25.V.O9; also lectures 4 and 5 of the Course on The Gospel of St. Luke.

The macrocosm, the great world, is just as much in a state of development as the microcosm, the human being, the small world. Just as the human being must develop his seven principles. These principles represent the totality of the hierarchies.

I. Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones
II. Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai
III. Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi
IV. Son of Man

The line of development of the macrocosmic principles is as follows:

First macrocosmic principle of development = Thrones
Second macrocosmic principle of development = Cherubim
Third macrocosmic principle of development = Seraphim
Fourth macrocosmic principle of development = Christ

or graphically:

In the case of the Earth, the root races are indicated below with 1, 2, 3 and so on. So schematically:

1. polaric root race - repetition of the Saturn principle: thrones
2. hyperborean root race - repetition of the sun principle: cherubim
3. lemurian root race - repetition of the moon principle: seraphim
4. atlantian root race - center of the earth: Christ
5. our root race - further development
6. presentiment of the Jupiter development
7. presentiment of the Venus development

The Christ principle thus continues to develop throughout the Jupiter period and is fully developed only around the middle of the sixth, the Venus epoch.

From the middle of the Atlantean period onward, the Christ principle can only take effect in its first germinal form. In the human being, this occurs through the formation of the first ego germ. The first direct, real influence in our time occurred in the Revelation on Mount Sinai, where the Christ revealed Himself to Moses under the name of Jahve or Jehovah. Then the direct connection of the Christ with the earth happened through the baptism in the Jordan and the three years in the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. The Christ impulse has thus entered into humanity at the same time as the I-impulse. Christ therefore signifies the macrocosmic I.

The further development of the fifth, sixth and seventh principles on earth can therefore only be possible inwardly, as a kind of presentiment. No higher body than the physical body built up with the fourth macrocosmic principle can be given to man. Only on Jupiter do we receive the fifth and on Venus the sixth body, and so on. Compared to the Greco-Latin period, there is now something like an inner contradiction between spirit, soul and body in man, which will become more and more tangible the further development progresses. Sensitive people in particular can already feel this contradiction today.

Let us now look at the counteraction of the Luciferic spirits from this point of view. The Luciferic spirits originate from a higher hierarchy than that of human beings: the hierarchy of the Angeloi or angels, who, however, did not complete their overall development on the moon, where they underwent their human stage. Therefore, they remain unable to find the connection to the fourth macrocosmic principle in their further development. On the other hand, the Luciferic spirits on the moon have already developed their fourth and fifth principles, so to speak, with presentiments, but still without the macrocosmic fourth principle, without the Christ impulse, which was not yet present.

Let us now take the development of such Luciferic spirits who have attained the fifth principle on the moon. They know nothing beyond the fourth macrocosmic principle, and thus know nothing of the Christ. It is difficult to express in our language. One could say something like this: They turn with derision against the upper gods, who strive for the development of the Christ principle in humanity, and shout to them: You can only give man the fourth principle; but we can give him the fifth principle. That is indeed something higher, which they, just as we are doing in the fifth root race, have brought with them, as if in anticipation. But they lack the macrocosmic fourth principle, the Christ, of whom they know nothing. In a way, they are already precocious, anticipating something, but not in harmony with the cosmos. Normal development therefore presents the Luciferic spirits with something “simpler” that they deem themselves superior to. And there will come a time when, through the power of the higher principles, the fifth or even sixth principle, the Luciferic spirits will have great influence over humanity, which has fallen prey to them.

Can we not already correctly perceive this today in its signs everywhere? In art and science and so on, everywhere we encounter a certain premature higher development, but it seems to lack the inner core of truth, harmony with the eternal.

The leader of those spirits who have developed six principles in this way, who have thus come close to perfection on the moon, is the Antichrist, who can already look confusingly like the Christ.

Today, the majority of humanity has already fallen prey to the influence of the Luciferic spirits. Hence the necessity to now promote that which the human being on earth can only receive inwardly through meditation. Hence the necessity of Theosophy.

At the beginning of our fifth period, that is, at the end of the Greco-Latin period in the thirteenth century, humanity was completely cut off from the Hellenic faculty for a short time. Therefore, a great conference of the wisest people was held at the College of Twelve. The first seven of these were the holy rishis, each of whom had embodied one of the seven Atlantian stages of development. The other four sages embodied the first four sub-races of our time: the eighth the Indian, the ninth the ancient Persian, the tenth the Egyptian-Chaldean, and the eleventh the Greco-Latin; the twelfth took in everything that followed. Then there was a boy among them, a thirteenth, whom they took into their midst and all twelve let their wisdom flow into him in a certain way. The boy's body became completely transparent as a result. He had not eaten for quite some time. He lived only a short time under this powerful influence, but during that time, through what he had absorbed from all of them together, he was able to become the teacher of these twelve about the things they could not grasp individually. In particular, he was able to explain to them the Pauline event in a higher sense through his own insight. He then died and was reborn in the fourteenth century as Christian Rosenkreutz. He then lived for a hundred years and since then has been not only the teacher of the twelve wise men, but of all mankind. His task is to protect humanity against the influence of Lucifer.

These satanic influences are very strong and will grow considerably. But it can rightly be said of them: “The people never sense the devil, even when he has them by the throat.” However, the satanic influence will become more evident in the near future.