The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When we study the Gospels in the light of Spiritual Science we find descriptions of momentous, overwhelming experiences. And it is only when Spiritual Science has been studied much more widely than it is to-day, that men will be able to form an adequate idea of what has been poured into these Gospels out of the spiritual experiences undergone by their authors. They will realise then that many things become apparent only when the accounts given in the four Gospels are studied side by side.

Let me first of all call attention to the fact that in St. Matthew's Gospel the account of the Christ Impulse is preceded by references to childhood and a record of the generations of the Hebrew people from their first ancestor onwards. In this Gospel the account of the Christ Impulse takes us to the beginning of the Hebrew people from whom the bearer of the Christ Being is born. In St. Mark's Gospel we meet the Christ Impulse at the very beginning. The whole childhood story is omitted. We are simply told that John the Baptist was the forerunner of the Christ Impulse and the Gospel then begins at once with the description of the Baptism by John in the Jordan. From St. Luke's Gospel we get a different childhood story which traces the ancestry of Jesus of Nazareth much further back, ‘to the very beginning of humanity on Earth; the descent is traced to Adam who, it is then said, ‘was the son of God’. This indicates clearly that the human nature in Jesus of Nazareth is to be traced right back to the time when man was formed from divine-spiritual Beings. Thus St. Luke's Gospel takes us back to an epoch when man must not be regarded as an earthly being incarnated in the flesh, but as a spiritual being born from the womb of divine spirituality. In St. John's Gospel, again without any childhood story or any mention of the destinies of Jesus of Nazareth, we are led in a very profound way to the Christ Being Himself.

In the course of the development of Spiritual Science we have followed a definite path in our study of the Gospels. We began with the Gospel which reveals the very highest insight into the spirituality of Christ—namely, the Gospel of St. John. Then we studied the Gospel of St. Luke, in order to understand how the highest spirituality in human nature reveals itself when man's descent is traced back to the time when he came forth, as earthly man, from the Godhead. Study of St. Matthew's Gospel then helped us to understand the Christ Impulse as proceeding from the ancient Hebrew people. Study of St. Mark's Gospel has been left to the last. To understand the reason for this, many subjects recently touched upon must be connected both with facts already familiar to us and with others that are new. That is why in the last lecture I said something about aspects of human life in connection with the several members of man's being. I shall be speaking in a similar strain to-day, as a kind of introduction to certain aspects of evolution. For it will become more and more necessary to recognise the conditions upon which human evolution depends—indeed not only to recognise but also to heed them.

As they advance into the future men will become more and more independent, more and more individualistic. Belief in external authorities will be increasingly replaced by belief in the authority of a man's own soul. This is a necessary trend of evolution. If, however, it is to bring wellbeing and blessing, man must have knowledge of his own being, and it cannot be said that humanity in general has yet advanced very far in this respect.

What is particularly characteristic of the present day? There is no shortage of ideals and programmes for the good of humanity. Practically every single individual comes forward as a small-scale Messiah and is anxious to create a picture of ideal human happiness. Above all there is no shortage of associations and societies founded for the purpose of introducing into our culture something they consider essential. There is also abundant faith in these programmes and ideals: indeed so convinced of their value are their promoters that it will soon be necessary to set up a kind of Council to establish the infallibility of individuals concerned! All this is deeply characteristic of our age.

Spiritual Science does not stop us from thinking about our future, but indicates certain fundamental laws and conditions which cannot be disregarded with impunity if its impulses are to achieve any positive effect. What does a modern man believe? An ideal takes shape in his soul and he considers himself capable of making it everywhere a reality. He does not pause to reflect that the time may not be ripe for its fulfilment, that the picture he has formed of it may be a caricature or that it can become mature only in a more or less distant future. In short, it is very difficult for a man today to understand that every event must be prepared for and occur at a particular point of time determined by macrocosmic conditions. Nevertheless this is a universal law and holds good for each individual as well as for the whole human race. We can recognise how this law affects an individual when we study his life in the light of Spiritual Science for we can turn to experiences lying very near at hand.

I am not going just to generalise but will keep to what can be observed. Let us suppose that someone conceives an idea which fires him with enthusiasm; it takes definite form in his soul and he is anxious to bring it in some way to fulfilment. The idea comes into his head and his heart urges him to act. In such circumstances a man of to-day will find it almost impossible to wait; he will go all out to bring this idea to fulfilment. Let us suppose that the idea is, in itself, insignificant, or merely a matter of information about scientific or artistic facts. An occultist, who knows the law, will not immediately proclaim his unfamiliar idea to the world. An occultist knows that such ideas live, first of all, in the astral body: the presence of enthusiasm in the soul is sufficient evidence of this, for enthusiasm is preeminently a force in the astral body. Now as a rule it will be harmful if at this stage a man does not let the idea rest as it is but proclaims it at once to his fellow-men or to the world, for the idea must follow a quite definite course. It must take deeper and deeper hold of the astral body and then impress itself into the etheric body like the imprint of a seal. If the idea is of no great importance this process may take seven days—that is the minimum time necessary. And if a man storms around with his idea he is always apt to overlook something very important, namely that after seven days there will be a subtle but quite definite experience. This experience we may have if we pay proper attention. But if a man rushes wildly around trying to launch the idea into the world, the soul will certainly not be alert to what may happen on the seventh day. In the case of an idea of only slight importance we shall always find that on the seventh day we don't really know what to do with it, and it fades away. We may feel ill at ease, perhaps inwardly worried and oppressed with all kinds of doubts, yet in spite of this we find ourselves attuned to the idea. Enthusiasm has changed into an intimate feeling of love: the idea is now in the etheric body.

If the idea is to continue to thrive it must now lay hold of the outer astral substance which always surrounds us. Hence it must pass from the astral body into the etheric body and from there into the outer astrality. For this, seven more days are needed. And unless the man in question is such a novice that when the idea begins to worry him he wants to get rid of it, he will realise, if he pays attention to what happens, that after this period something from without comes to meet his idea; he then recognises that it has been beneficial to wait fourteen days, because now he is not alone with his idea. It is as if he had been inspired from the Macrocosm, as if something had penetrated into his idea from the outer world. He will then for the first time feel in harmony with the whole spiritual world and will realise that it brings something to him when he has something to bring to it. A certain feeling of contentment arises after a period of about twice seven days.

But now the idea has to retrace its path, to pass from the outer astrality back into the etheric body. It has then become concrete and the temptation to communicate it to the world is very great. We must resist this with all our might, for there is now the danger that because the idea still lies in the etheric body, it may pass coldly into the world. If we wait another seven days the coldness leaves it and it is again filled with the warmth of the individual astral body and takes on a personal quality. That to which we gave birth and have allowed to be baptised by the Gods may now be given over to the world as our own. Every impulse in the soul must pass through these last three stages before it becomes fully mature. This holds good for ideas of no great significance.

In the case of an idea of weight and importance, longer periods will be necessary, but always in this rhythm of seven to seven.

You see, then, that what really matters is not, as a modern man thinks, to have an impulse in his soul but to be able to bear this impulse with patience, to let it be baptised by the World-Spirit and to let it live and achieve a state of maturity. Other such laws could be cited for the soul's development is a process full of ordered rhythms. For example, on some particular day—and such days vary greatly—we may feel that we have been blessed by the World-Spirit and ideas surge up from within us. In these circumstances it is a good thing not to lose our head but to recognise that after nineteen days a similar process of fructification may be expected. As I say, the development of the human soul is a process full of regular rhythms. On the whole, man has a healthy instinct not to carry these things to excess or to disregard them entirely. He takes heed of them, especially if he is one who aims at developing higher qualities and who allows them to mature; he heeds these things without being consciously aware of the law. It would be easy to show that in the creative work of artists there is evidence of a certain periodicity, a certain rhythmic process, a rhythm of days or weeks or years. This is particularly apparent in the lives of artists of the first rank—in the life of Goethe, for instance. It can easily be shown that something arises in Goethe's soul, becomes mature only after a period of four times seven years, and then appears in a different form.

In line with the tendency of the times, the general attitude might be: Yes, that is all very well; there may be such laws, but why should people trouble much about them? They will observe them instinctively.—Now that may have been true in the past; but because men are becoming more independent, more and more attentive to their own individuality, they must also learn to develop an inner calendar. Just as there are outer calendars of importance for everyday matters, so in the future, as the intensity of man's soul-life increases, he will have a feeling of ‘inner weeks’, of an inner ebb and flow of life, of inner ‘Sundays’, for the trend of humanity is towards an increasing inwardness. As we move towards the future, much of what man has experienced in the past as a result of the rhythmical periodicity of his life will be experienced later on as a macrocosmic resurrection in the life of soul. It will then seem to be an obvious duty to avoid bringing tumult and disorder into evolution by constantly transgressing the laws of the soul's development. Men will come to realise that the wish to communicate immediately whatever takes root in the soul is only a subtler form of egoism. They will come to feel the spirit working in the soul, not abstractly, as nowadays, but in conformity with law. And when some idea occurs to them, when they may desire to communicate some inner experience to others, they will not set about their fellow-men like raging bulls but listen to what spirit-filled nature has to say in their inmost soul.

What will it mean for men when they come more and more to recognise the spirituality which works in the world in obedience to law and by which they should let themselves be inspired? The vast majority of men to-day still have no feeling for such things. They do not believe that spiritual beings will lay hold of and work within their soul according to law. Even those who sincerely desire to work for cultural progress will for a long time yet regard it as madness to speak of this ordered activity of the spirit. And owing to the antipathy that is so prevalent to-day, those whose belief in the spirit is founded on spiritual-scientific knowledge will find that certain words in St. Mark's Gospel are directly applicable to them, and indeed to the present time:

‘But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye; for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost’ (xiii, 11).

We must try to understand a passage such as this, which has special significance for our own time because of its place in the whole framework not only of St. Mark's Gospel but in that of the other Gospels as well. Generally speaking, St. Mark's Gospel contains a good deal that is also found in the other Gospels. But there is one very remarkable passage which does not occur in the other Gospels and is particularly noteworthy because of the silly statements that have been made about it by biblical commentators. It is the passage where we are told that after Christ Jesus had chosen His disciples, He went out to preach to the people:

‘And they went into an house. And the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him, for, they said, he is beside himself’ (iii, 20-1).

When we consider that in the future course of human evolution St. Paul's saying, ‘Not I, but Christ in me’, will become more and more true, that only an Ego which receives into itself the Christ Impulse can work fruitfully, we are justified in regarding the passage as particularly relevant to the present time. The destiny lived through by Christ Jesus during the events in Palestine will be lived through by the whole of mankind in the course of the ages. In the immediate future it will be more and more noticeable that wherever Christ is proclaimed with inner understanding, intense antipathy will be displayed by those who instinctively avoid Spiritual Science. It will not be difficult in the future to see how a prototypal event in Christ's life described in St. Mark's Gospel is coming to expression. Men's attitude to daily life, or the way in which art develops, and more particularly what is so widely accepted as science, will make it clear that what was said of Christ will be said of those who proclaim the Spirit in the truly Christian sense: There are many among them who seem to be beside themselves.

Again and again we must repeat that as time goes on the most important facts of the spiritual life as presented by Spiritual Science will be regarded as fantastic nonsense by the greater part of humanity. And from the Gospel of St. Mark we should draw the strength we need to stand firm in face of opposition to the truths that will be unveiled in the domain of the spirit.

If we have any feeling for the finer variations of style between the Gospel of St. Mark and the other Gospels, we shall also notice that the form in which certain things are presented by St. Mark is different from that to be found in the other Gospels. We become aware that through the actual structure of the sentences, through the omission of certain sentences found in the other Gospels, many things that might easily be taken abstractly are given definite shades of meaning. If we are sufficiently perceptive we shall realise that St. Mark's Gospel contains incisive and very important teaching concerning the ‘I’, concerning the inmost significance of the ‘I’ in man. To understand this we need only look carefully at one passage in the Gospel which has all the peculiar features due to the omission of details that are included in the accounts given in the other Gospels. Here is the passage in St. Mark's Gospel which, if there is a feeling for such details, will indicate its deep significance:

And Jesus went out accompanied by His disciples into the towns that are in the neighbourhood of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way He asked those who were around Him: ‘What do men say of the ‘I’? Whom do men recognise as the ‘I’?’—And those who were around Jesus answered: ‘Men say that in the ‘I’, if the ‘I’ is the true ‘I’, there must live John the Baptist; but others say that this ‘I’ must be filled with Elias, that Elias must live in the ‘I’; others again say that another of the prophets must be regarded in such a way that the ‘I’ says: Not I, but this prophet works in me.’ But He said to those around him: ‘But whom do you say is the ‘I’?’ And Peter answered: ‘We understand the ‘I’ in its essential spirituality to be Thou, the Christ!’ And Christ charged those around Him: ‘Tell nothing of this to ordinary men, for they cannot yet understand this mystery!’ (viii, 27-33)¹

But to those around Him who had been inwardly stirred by His words He began to give this teaching:

That which is the outward, physical expression of Ego-hood in the human being must endure much suffering if the ‘I’ is to live in man. The ancient Masters of humanity and those who have knowledge of the holiest wisdom declare that in the form in which the ‘I’ is present, it cannot function; in this form it must be killed and after a rhythm of three days—a rhythm determined by cosmic laws—it must rise again in a higher form. And they were all amazed that He spoke these words openly before all men ...

At this point I must make a comment. Up to that time such words would have been permissible only in the secrecy of the Mysteries. A secret otherwise strictly guarded in the Mystery-temples was that in the process of Initiation a man must pass through the experience of ‘dying and becoming’ and waken after three days. This is an indication of the meaning of the verses which are to the following effect.—

Peter was amazed, took the Christ apart and intimated to Him that such things should not be spoken of openly. Then Christ Jesus turned about and said: ‘In speaking thus, Peter, the words are being put into your mouth by, Satan. The way in which you speak of this truth now belongs to the past, not to the present. In the past, such a truth was confined to the Temples; but in the future, because of the Mystery of Golgotha, it will be openly announced to all humanity. This is ordained by the divine guidance of world-evolution. Anyone who speaks in a contrary sense is not speaking out of divine wisdom but is distorting the divine wisdom into the form that was fitting only in the past.’

This is more or less how we must understand the above passage in the Gospel of St. Mark. We must realise that according to this Gospel the Christ Impulse means that we are to receive the Christ into the ‘I’, thus fulfilling the words of St. Paul, ‘Not I, but Christ in me’—not an abstract Christ but the Christ who sent the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who works as inspiration in the human soul as described to-day, following the rhythms of an inner calendar.

In pre-Christian times these truths were accessible only to those who were initiated in the Mysteries and had remained for three and a half days in a deathlike condition, after having undergone the tragic sufferings which man must experience on the physical plane if he is finally to attain the heights of spiritual life. Such individuals learnt that the ‘earthly man’ must be discarded and slain, that a higher man must rise from within. This was the experience of ‘dying and becoming’. What could formerly be experienced only in the Mysteries became historical fact through the Mystery of Golgotha, as I have shown in Christianity as Mystical Fact. Henceforward it was possible for all men who felt themselves united with the Mystery of Golgotha to become disciples of this great wisdom. Contemplation of what took place on Golgotha could now lead to an experience that could hitherto have been undergone only in the Mysteries. An understanding of the Christ Impulse is consequently the most important thing which a man can acquire for his earthly being, for the power which, since the coming of the Christ Impulse, must waken in the human ‘I’.

In this present age we can be inspired in a special way by the Gospels. The Gospel of St. Matthew was a particularly valuable source of inspiration for the epoch in which the Christ Event actually occurred. For our own time the same can be said of the Gospel of St. Mark. We know that this is the age of the development of the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul which detaches itself, isolates itself, from its environment. We know too that in our age primary attention should not be paid to racial descent but rather to the living impulse expressed in the words of St. Paul: Not I, but Christ in me.

Our own fifth post-Atlantean epoch can, as I have said, be inspired particularly by the Gospel of St. Mark. By contrast, man's task in the sixth epoch will be to permeate himself wholly with the Christ Being. Whereas in the fifth epoch the Christ Being will be a subject of study, of deep meditation, in the sixth epoch men will be permeated by the Christ Being in all reality. They will find particular help in the Gospel of St. Luke, which reveals the whole origin of Jesus of Nazareth—that is to say, of the Jesus described in St. Matthew's Gospel who leads back to Zarathustra, and the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel who leads back to the Buddha and Buddhism. St. Luke's Gospel gives a picture of the evolution of Jesus of Nazareth, reaching back to the divine-spiritual origin of man. It will be more and more possible for man to feel himself a divine-spiritual being. To be permeated by the Christ Impulse can hover as an ideal before him but this ideal becomes reality only if, in the light of St. Luke's Gospel, he recognises physical man in the sense-world as a spiritual being having a divine origin.

The Gospel of St. John which may well be a manual of guidance for the spiritual life of man to-day will be the book of inspiration for the seventh post-Atlantean epoch. Men will then stand in need of a great deal which, as spiritual beings, they will have had to master during the sixth epoch. But they will also have to unlearn from its very foundations much of what they believe to-day. Admittedly, this will not be so very difficult because scientific facts will themselves show that many beliefs will have to be discarded.

To-day, for instance, a man would be considered to be ‘out of his mind’ if he were to maintain that the usual distinction made between ‘motor’ and ‘sensory’ nerves is nonsense. Motor nerves, as they are called, simply do not exist; there are only sensory nerves. The so-called motor nerves are sensory nerves, but their function is to make us aware of the corresponding movements in the muscles. Before very long it will be recognised that the muscles are not set in motion by the nerves but by the astral body—moreover by a force in the astral body that is not directly perceived in its real form: for it is a law that what is to produce an effect is not directly perceptible. What gives rise to movement in the muscles is connected with the astral body, in which a sound or tone, a kind of resonance, is produced. Something akin to music pervades the astral body and muscular movement is the expression of this. What happens can be compared with the well-known Chladni sound-figures which are produced when a fine powder or sand is scattered on a metal plate and forms itself into figures when the plate is made to vibrate by drawing a violin bow across it. Our astral body is filled with numbers of such figures or tone-forms which bring it into a particular condition. In a quite simple way you can convince yourself of this by tightening the biceps—the upper-arm muscle—and holding it close to your ear. When you have acquired the knack of making the muscle sufficiently taut and lay your thumb on it you will be able to hear a sound.—This is not meant to be taken as absolute proof but is merely a trivial illustration. We are, so to speak, permeated with music and give expression to this in the movements of our muscles. And we have the ‘motor’ nerves, as they are wrongly called, in order that we may be aware to some extent of the muscular movements. The way in which facts are grouped together in physiology still seems—but only seems—to contradict this.

This is one example of the kind of truths by which people will gradually be convinced that man is indeed a spiritual being, woven into the harmony of the spheres even in his muscles. And Spiritual Science which has to make preparation for a spiritual understanding of the world in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, will have to concern itself in every detail with the truth that man is a spiritual being. Just as a musical tone rises into a higher sphere when it becomes a spoken human word, so in macrocosmic existence the harmony of the spheres rises to a higher stage when it becomes the Cosmic Word, the Logos.

Now in man's physical organism, the blood, in the physiological sense, is at a higher stage than the muscles. And just as the muscles are attuned to the harmony of the spheres, so is the blood attuned to the Logos and can be experienced more and more strongly as an expression of the Logos—as indeed has been the case unconsciously ever since man was created. This means that on the physical plane man will eventually feel the blood, which is the expression of the ‘I’, to be the expression of the Logos. And in the sixth epoch, when men have learnt to recognise themselves as spiritual beings, they will no longer cling to the fantastic idea that the muscles are moved by ‘motor’ nerves but will recognise that they are moved by the harmony of the spheres which has become part of their own personality.

In the seventh post-Atlantean epoch men will feel their very blood to be permeated by the Logos and will grasp for the first time the real content of what is said in St. John's Gospel. For not until the seventh epoch will the scientific nature of this Gospel come to be recognised. And then it will be felt that the first words of the Gospel ought to stand at the beginning of every book on physiology, that the whole of science should move in the direction indicated by these words. The best thing to say at the moment is that much of this can even to-day be understood, but by no means all; it can hover as an ideal before us.

Everything I have been saying indicates that St. Matthew's Gospel could be a source of inspiration especially for the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, just as that of St. Mark can be for our own. The Gospel of St. Luke will be especially important for the sixth epoch. We must ourselves prepare the conditions that will then prevail, for the seed of whatever the future holds in store must have been planted in the past. If we understand the contents of St. John's Gospel we shall find everything that is to be lived out in the further course of human evolution, everything that is to develop in the seventh epoch up to the time of the next great catastrophe. Therefore it will be particularly important for us to regard St. Mark's Gospel as a book that can give guidance for much that we must practise and also for much that we must guard against. The very sentences of this Gospel are themselves an indication of the significance of the Christ Impulse for the ‘I’ of man.

It is important to realise that our task is to grasp the reality of Christ in the spirit and to be aware of how Christ will reveal himself in future epochs. In my Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation, an attempt was made to indicate this task by words spoken by the seeress, Theodora. There will be something like a repetition of the event experienced by Paul at the gate of Damascus, but to believe that the Christ Impulse will come into the world again in a human physical body would merely be an expression of the materialism of our times. We can learn from the Gospel of St. Mark how to guard against such a belief, for the Gospel contains a special warning for our own epoch. And although much of the Gospel has a bearing on the past, its verses apply, in the high moral sense I have indicated, to our immediate future. We shall then realise the urgent necessity of the influence that must proceed from Spiritual Science.

If we understand the spiritual meaning of the following passage we shall be able to relate it to our own times and to the immediate future:

‘For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be again’ (xiii, 19-23).

These words must be applied to man's power of understanding. There is every prospect of affliction in the future, when truth will come to expression in its full spiritual reality.

‘And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved (that is to say, nothing would have been saved of spiritual nourishment): but for the elect's sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days.’

Then come the words:

‘And then, if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ! or lo, he is there! believe him not. ...’

Here the Gospel of St. Mark is pointing to a possible materialistic conception of Christ.

‘For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall show signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things!’

So powerful will be the onslaught of materialism that it will be essential for human souls to acquire the strength to stand the test expressed in the words: False Christs and false prophets will arise.—But if it is then said: Here is Christ!—those who have felt the true influence of Spiritual Science will obey the exhortation: If any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ—believe it not!

• 1. Dr. Steiner was not quoting any of the usual versions of this passage but giving an extended paraphrase to clarify the points he wanted to make.

Today we shall be bringing to a close for the time being this winter's rather disconnected studies of St. Mark's Gospel. The passages quoted in the last lecture, to the effect that we are living in a period of transition are the key to the ideas with which we have been particularly concerned. On even a superficial consideration of spiritual life we must admit that thoughts and ideas of a new kind are emerging, although individuals living in the very midst of this new order hardly realise it themselves. It will be a good thing if we can take away material for thought which will help us to carry our ideas further, so this evening I want to give certain suggestions which will enable you to elaborate the spiritual-scientific knowledge already communicated to you.

When we refer to a period of transition it is well to remind ourselves of the greater epochs of transition in the evolution of humanity and particularly of the crucial point reached in the events in Palestine. From much that has been said we know the significance of that time. When we try to form some conception of how the supremely important idea, the Christ-idea, arose out of thoughts and feelings of the immediately preceding period, we must remember that the Jahve- or Jehovah-idea meant as much to the ancient Hebrews as the Christ-idea meant to those who became His followers. From other lectures we also know that for those who penetrate deeply into the essence of Christianity, the Being Jahve or Jehovah is not to be distinguished from Christ Himself. We must clearly understand that there is an intimate relationship between the Jahve-idea and the Christ-idea. It is difficult to summarise in a few words the vast aspects of the relationship. The subject has been elaborated in many lectures and lecture-courses in recent years, but I can illustrate it by a picture. I need only remind you again of the picture of the sunlight which can come to us either direct from the Sun or by reflection at night from the Moon, especially at Full Moon. After all, it is sunlight that comes from the Full Moon, even if it is reflected sunlight and this does indeed differ from sunlight directly received. If we think of Christ as symbolised by the direct sunlight, we may liken Jahve to sunlight reflected by the Moon and that would represent the exact sense in which the two ideas should be understood. Those who are to some extent conversant with this subject regard the transition from a temporary reflection of Christ in Jahve into Christ Himself just as they think of the difference between sunlight and moonlight: Jahve is an indirect and Christ a direct revelation of the same Being. Thinking in terms of evolution, however, we must picture what is side by side in space as successive in time. Those who speak of these things from the point of view of occultism will say: If we call the religion of Christ a Sun-religion—and there are good grounds for this expression if we recall what was said about Zarathustra—we may call the Jahve-religion a Moon-religion—the transitory reflection of the Christ-religion. Thus in the period preceding the birth of Christianity the Sun-religion was prepared for by a Moon-religion. You will only be able to understand what I am now going to say if you realise that symbols are not chosen arbitrarily but have deep foundations. When a world-conception or world-religion is associated with a symbol, those who use the symbol with adequate knowledge are aware that it is intimately and essentially connected with what it represents. People to-day have in many ways lost sight of the symbol of moonlight for the old Jahve-religion and to some extent also of the symbol of the Sun for Christianity.

You will remember how I have described the course of the evolution of humanity. First it is a descent, beginning when man was driven out of the spiritual world and sank more and more deeply into matter. And if we picture the general path of evolution, we can think of the lowest point as having been reached at the time of the Christ Impulse, after which the descent was transformed gradually into an ascent. The Christ Impulse began to have its effect at the lowest point and will continue to work until the Earth has achieved its mission.

Now evolution is a very complicated process and certain aspects of it are continuations of impulses given in earlier times. The Christ Impulse given at the beginning of our era will go straight forward, becoming more and more powerful in the souls of men until the goal of human evolution is reached—when from the souls of men it will influence the whole of life on the Earth. All later history will be evidence of the development and influence of this Impulse at a higher and more perfect stage. Many such impulses work in the world in the same way.

But there are also other impulses and factors in evolution which cannot be said to advance in a straight line. Some of them have already been mentioned. In post-Atlantean evolution we have distinguished seven epochs: the Old Indian, then in sequence, the Old Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean, the Graeco-Latin—during which the Christ event took place—and our own fifth epoch which will be followed by two others. In the fifth epoch, certain happenings characteristic of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch are repeated in a different form. The Christ Impulse was given in the middle epoch (the fourth) and the third epoch is in a certain sense repeated in the fifth. There is a similar relationship between the sixth and second epochs and between the seventh and first. Here we are concerned with overlapping factors of evolution which will reveal themselves in such a way that we can apply to them the Biblical saying: The first shall be last. The Old Indian epoch will reappear in the seventh in a different but nevertheless recognisable form.

There is, however, still another way in which an earlier epoch may have an effect in a later one. Shorter periods may also occur in the course of evolution. Thus conditions present in pre-Christian times during the period of ancient Hebrew culture reappeared later in post-Christian times: something that was prepared within the Jahve-or Jehovah-religion, overlapping the Christ Impulse as it were, appeared again and played into the other factors which had by then developed.

If, then, we try to describe by means of a symbol what pressure of time prevents our discussing adequately to-day, we may say: Taking the Moon, contrasted with the Sun, as the symbol representing the Jahve-religion; we may expect that a similar form of belief, by-passing as it were the Christ Impulse, would emerge later on as a kind of Moon-religion. And this is what actually happened. The old Jahve-religion emerged again after the Christ Event, in the religion of the Crescent, carrying earlier impulses into post-Christian times. If you do not take things superficially, the use of the Moon and Crescent as symbols for these two faiths will not be something to smile at, for it is an actual fact that a religion or creed and its symbol are intimately connected. So in a later time we have the repetition of an earlier phase which has skipped the intervening years. This takes place in the last third of the Graeco-Latin epoch which in the occult sense we reckon as lasting up to the twelfth and into the thirteenth century. Leaving out a period of six hundred years, this means that beginning in the sixth century A.D. and exercising a very vigorous influence upon all aspects of development, we have the religion brought by the Arabians from Africa over into Spain: this represents a re-emergence, in a different form, of the Jahve-Moon-religion. The intervening Christ Impulse has been ignored. It is not possible to enumerate all the characteristics brought over with the religion of Mohammed; but it is important to realise that the Christ Impulse is disregarded in the religion of Islam which was actually a kind of revival of Mosaic monotheism. This idea of the One God, however, included a good deal derived from other sources, for instance from Egypto-Chaldean religion, which had yielded very exact knowledge of the connection of happenings in the starry heavens with earthly events. Thus the thoughts and ideas current among the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Babylonians and Assyrians appear again in the religion of Mohammed but pervaded by the One God, Jahve. Speaking scientifically, what we have in Arabism is a kind of gathering-together, a synthesis, of the wisdom-teachings of the priests of Egypt and Chaldea and the Jahve-religion of the ancient Hebrews.

In such a process there is not only compression but also rejection and elimination. In this case everything connected with clairvoyant perception had to be discarded and men were to depend entirely upon reason and intellectual thinking. Hence the concepts belonging to the Egyptian art of healing and to Chaldean astronomy—which in both these peoples were the outcome of clairvoyance—are to be found in the Arabism of Mohammed in an intellectualised and individualised form. Something that had passed as it were through a filter was thus brought into Europe by the Arabians. Old concepts that had been current among the Egyptians and Chaldeans were denuded of their visionary, pictorial content and re-cast into abstract forms. They reappear in the wonderful scientific knowledge possessed by the Arabians who made their way into Europe via Africa and Spain. Whereas Christianity brought an impulse connected essentially with man's life of soul, the greatest impulse given to the human intellect was brought by the Arabians. Without thorough knowledge of the course taken by the evolution of humanity it is impossible to form any idea of how much the world-conception which arose in a new form under the symbol of the Moon, has given to mankind. There could have been no Kepler, no Galileo, without the impulses brought by Arabism into Europe. For the old mode of thinking appears again, but now denuded of its ancient clairvoyance, when the third culture-epoch celebrated its resurrection in our own fifth epoch, in our modern astronomy, in our modern science.

Thus the course of evolution is such that on the one hand the Christ Impulse penetrates into the European peoples directly, through Greece and Italy, and on the other hand a more southerly stream by-passes Greece and Italy and unites with the influences brought indirectly by the Arabians.

Only through the union of Christianity and Mohammedanism during the important period with which we are dealing, was it possible for our modern culture to come into being. For reasons which I cannot go into to-day we have to reckon with periods of six to six-and-a-half centuries for such impulses as I have been describing. Thus actually six centuries after the Christ Event the renewed Moon-cult of the Arabians appears, expanding and spreading into Europe, and until the thirteenth century enriching the Christian culture which had received its direct impulses by other paths. There was an unbroken interchange of thought. If you are conversant merely with the outer course of events, if you know how in the monasteries of Western Europe—in spite of apparent opposition to Arabism—the Arabian concepts made their way into science, you will also be aware that until the middle of the thirteenth century—again a particularly significant point of time—the Arabian impulse and the direct Christ Impulse were interwoven.

From this you will gather that the direct Christ Impulse actually moved along paths different from those taken by the impulses which streamed in like tributaries to unite with it. Six centuries after the Christ Event, as a result of happenings that are not easy to characterise although they are well known to every occultist, a new wave of culture arose in the East, made its way via Africa and Spain into the spiritual life of Europe and united with the Christ Impulse which had taken different paths. We can therefore say that the Sun-and-Moon-symbols merged into each other from the sixth/seventh century up to the twelfth/thirteenth century—again a period of some six hundred years.

After this process of cross-fertilisation had in a certain respect achieved its goal, something new arose which had been in preparation since about the twelfth or thirteenth century. It is interesting that to-day even orthodox science recognises that something inexplicable passed through the souls of Europeans at that time. Science considers it inexplicable but occultism knows that in this period, as though it were following the Christ Impulse, something yielded by the fourth post-Atlantean epoch poured, spiritually, into the souls of men: the fruits of Greek culture constituted a following wave. We call this period the Renaissance—it was the culture which during the next centuries enriched everything already in existence. Here again there was an overlapping after a period of six hundred years since the influx of Arabism. At this point in evolution the age of Greece—which was a kind of centre among the seven post-Atlantean epochs—underwent a certain renewal in the Renaissance. Then again there is a period of six hundred years, during which the Greek wave reaches its culmination; this brings us to the period in which we ourselves are living. We are living to-day at the beginning of a period of transition before the onset of the next six-hundred-year wave of culture, when something entirely new is pressing in upon us, when the Christ Impulse is to be enriched by something new. After the Moon-culture underwent its revival in the religion symbolised by the Crescent and had reached its conclusion during the period of the Renaissance, the time has now come when the Christ Impulse must receive into itself another tributary stream. With this tributary stream our own age has a particular affinity. But we must clearly understand what the influx of this new stream means to our own culture. All these happenings are entirely in accordance with an occult plan—we could also say, an occult purpose.

If we think of Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, in the old not the new sequence, we should expect, after the renewal of the Moon-influence had reached its culmination during the Renaissance, the influx of another stream, to which we could legitimately assign the symbol of Mercury. If our symbolism is correct, just as we called the wave of Arabism a Moon-culture, so we might say theoretically that we now face the prospect of an influx of a form of Mercury-culture.

If we understand the way in which culture and civilisation have developed we may justifiably name Goethe as the last great individual to combine in his soul the full fruits of science, (that is to say, intellectualism enriched by Arabism) of Christianity and of Renaissance culture. We should therefore expect him to represent a glorious union of the three domains and having studied Goethe as we have been doing for years we can easily recognise that these elements do indeed flow together in his soul. But after what has been said about the cycles of six hundred years we should not expect to find in Goethe any trace of the Mercury-influence; we should expect it to appear as something new only after his time. And here it is interesting to note that Goethe's pupil, Schopenhauer, already reveals signs of this new influence. I have said that Schopenhauer's philosophy contains elements of Eastern wisdom, particularly in the form of Buddhism. Mercury has always been regarded as the symbol of Buddhism. So after the age of Goethe there was a revival of the Buddha-influence—Buddha standing for Mercury and Mercury for Buddha—in the same way as the Moon-influence reappeared in Arabism. This side-stream, which flowed into the direct Christ Impulse at the beginning of a new six-hundred-year period can therefore be described—within the limits indicated in my public lecture on the subject—as a revival of Buddhism.

We can now ask: Which is the stream of culture that flows straight forward into the future? It is the Christ-stream. And what side-streams are there? Firstly there is the Arabian stream which flows into the main current, then has a pause and finally passes into the culture of the Renaissance. At the present time a renewed influx of the Buddha-stream is taking place. If we are able to see these things in the right light it will become evident that we have to absorb those elements of the Buddha-stream which were not hitherto present in Western culture. And we can see how certain elements of the Buddha-stream are actually making their way into the spiritual development of the West, for instance, the teaching of Reincarnation and Karma. But there is something else that we must impress firmly upon our minds and it is this: none of these side-streams will ever be able to throw light on the central fact of our world-conception, of our Spiritual Science. To expect from Buddhism or any other pre-Christian oriental religion undergoing revival in our time any illumination on the nature of Christ would be no more intelligent than for European Christians to have expected this of the Arabians who had spread into Spain. The people of Europe at that time knew very well that the Christ-idea was foreign to the Arabians, that the Arabians could say nothing essential about the Christ. And when they did say anything the ideas put forward were incompatible with the true Christ-idea. The various prophets down to Sabbatai Zewi [Sabbatai Zewi (1626-76), proclaimed himself publicly in the year 1666 as the Messiah but subsequently became an adherent of Islam.] who appeared as false Messiahs without any understanding whatever of the Christ Impulse, all sprang from Arabism. Obviously, therefore, the contribution of this Arabian side-stream consisted of quite different elements; it could shed no light on the central mystery of the Christ.

Our attitude to the stream that is approaching to-day as a side-current must be the same. It is a revival of an older stream and will promote understanding of Reincarnation and Karma but cannot possibly bring any elucidation of the Christ Impulse. That would be as absurd as if the Arabians, although they were able to bring to Europeans many ideas through false Messiahs up to the time of Sabbatai Zewi, had set about giving Europe a true idea of Christ. Such occurrences will be repeated, for the evolution of mankind can go forward only if men are strong enough to see through these things with greater and greater clarity.

What we shall find is that the Spiritual Science founded by European Rosicrucianism, with Christ as its central idea, will establish itself despite external obstacles and penetrate into the hearts of men in defiance of all temptations from outside. From my book, Occult Science, you can gather how the central Christ-idea must penetrate into human souls, how the Christ is interwoven with the evolution not only of humanity but of the whole world, and you will be able to recognise along which path progress will be made. The possibility of following this onward march of Spiritual Science will be within reach of everyone who understands the words from the Gospel of St. Mark quoted at the end of the last lecture: ‘False Christs and false prophets will appear ... when men say to you: ‘Lo, here is the Christ, lo, there!—believe them not!’—But beside this stream there is another, claiming to be better informed than Western Rosicrucian Spiritual Science about the nature of Christ. This other stream will introduce all kinds of ideas and dogmas which will develop quite naturally out of the side-stream of oriental Buddhism. But Western souls would be showing the worst kind of feebleness if they failed to understand that the Buddha- or Mercury-stream has as little light to throw on the direct development of the Christ-idea as Arabism had in its time. What I am saying now is not the outcome of any special belief, dogma or fantasy; it emerges from the objective course of world-evolution. If you wanted to follow this up I could prove by figures or by the trends of culture that things will inevitably be as occult science teaches.

But in connection with all this a distinction must be made. On the one hand there is orthodox oriental Buddhism in its original form. The attempt might be made to transplant this as a fixed and unalterable system into Europe and to produce out of it an idea, a conception, of Christ. On the other hand there is Buddhism that has progressed to further stages of development. There will be people who will tell you to think of the Buddha just as he was some five or six hundred years before our era and of the doctrines he then promulgated. But compare this with what Rosicrucian Spiritual Science has to say. It will say: The fault lies with you, not with the Buddha, that you talk as if Buddha had come to a standstill at the point he had attained all those centuries ago. Do you imagine that Buddha has not progressed? When you speak as you do, you are speaking of teaching that was right for his epoch. But we look to the Buddha who has moved onwards and from spiritual realms exercises an enduring influence upon human culture. We contemplate the Buddha as described in our studies of St. Luke's Gospel, whose influence streamed down upon the Jesus of the Nathan line of the House of David; we contemplate the Buddha at the further stage of his development in the realm of the spirit, who proclaims from there the truths of basic importance for our time.

Something strange has happened in dogmatic Christianity in the West. By a curious concatenation of circumstances a Buddha-like figure has appeared among the Christian Saints. You will remember that I once spoke of a legend current all over Europe in the Middle Ages, namely, the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat. Its content was more or less as follows.—There was once an Indian King who had a son. In his early years, far removed from all human misery and life in the outer world, the son was brought up in the royal palace, where he saw only conditions making for human happiness and well-being. Josaphat was his name, though it has been frequently changed and has assumed several different forms—Josaphat, Judasaph, Budasaph. Until a certain age Josaphat lived in his father's palace, knowing nothing about the world outside. Then one day he was led out of the palace and came to know something of the world. First of all he saw a leper, then a blind man, then an old man. Thereafter he met a Christian hermit by the name of Barlaam, who converted him to Christianity.

You will not fail to recognise in this legend clear echoes of the legend of Buddha. He too was an Indian king's son who lived isolated from the world, was later led out of the palace and saw a leper, a blind man and an old man. But you will notice that in the Middle Ages something was added that cannot be attributed to Buddha, namely that Josaphat allowed himself to be converted to Christianity. This could not have been said of Buddha. The legend evoked a certain response among individual Christians, particularly among those who were responsible for drawing up the calendar of the Saints.

It was known that the name Josaphat, Judasaph, Budasaph, is directly connected with Bodhisattva. So here we have evidence of a remarkable connection of a Christian legend with the figure of Buddha. We know that according to the Eastern legend Buddha passed into Nirvana, having handed on the Bodhisattva's crown to his successor, who is now a Bodhisattva and will subsequently become the Maitreya Buddha of the future. Buddha is presented to us in the legend in the figure of Josaphat; and the union of Buddhism with Christianity is wonderfully indicated by the fact that Josaphat is included among the Saints. Buddha was held to be so holy that in the legend he was converted to Christianity and from being the son of an Indian king could rightly be included among the Saints—although from another side this has been disputed.

From this you will see that it was known where the later form of Buddhism, or rather of the Buddha, was to be sought. In hidden worlds the union has meanwhile taken place between Buddhism and Christianity. Barlaam is the mysterious figure who brings Christianity to the knowledge of the Bodhisattva. Consequently if we trace the course of Buddhism as an enduring stream in the sense indicated in the legend, we can accept it only in the changed form in which it now appears. If through clairvoyant insight we understand the inspirations of the Buddha, we must speak of him as he actually exists to-day. Just as Arabism was not Judaism and the Jahve-Moon-religion did not reappear in Arabism in its original form, neither will Buddhism—to the extent to which it can enrich Western culture—appear in its old form. It will appear in an altered form, because what comes later never appears as a mere replica of the earlier.

These are brief, disconnected remarks intended to stimulate thought about the evolution of humanity, and you can elaborate them for yourselves. If you will take everything you can discover in the way of historical knowledge and follow the development of Europe from the spiritual-scientific point of view you will see clearly that we have now reached the point where a fusion of Christianity and Buddhism will take place, just as in the case of the Jahve-religion and Christianity. Test this by whatever European historians can tell you: but test it by taking all the facts into consideration. You will then find confirmation of everything I have said, although it would be necessary to talk for weeks if we were to speak of all that the Rosicrucian Movement in Europe can contribute.

Nor is it only in history that you can find proof of these things. If you set about it rightly you will find proof in modern natural science and allied fields. If you seek in the right way you will find that everywhere the new ideas are thrusting their way into the present; old ideas are becoming useless and are disappearing. In a certain respect our thinkers and investigators are working with outworn concepts because the great majority of them are incapable of assimilating ideas and concepts contributed by the new cultural side-stream, particularly on the subject of Reincarnation and Karma, as well as all the other contributions which Spiritual Science can make. Our scientists are working with concepts that have become useless. If you look through the literature of any field of science you will realise how heart-breaking it often is for scholars that current concepts are quite unable to elucidate the innumerable facts that are constantly coming to light.

There is one concept—I can only touch on these things to-day—which still plays an important part in the whole range of science: it is the concept of heredity. The concept of heredity as it figures in the different sciences and in common usage is simply useless. Facts themselves will force people to recognise the need for concepts other than the useless one of heredity as currently accepted in many fields of science. It will become evident that certain facts already known to-day in regard to the heredity of man and related creatures, can be understood only when quite different concepts are available. When speaking to-day of heredity in successive generations we seem to believe that all a man's faculties can be traced back in a direct line through his immediate ancestors. But it is the concept of Reincarnation and Karma alone that will make it possible for clarity to replace the present confusion in this field of thought. Again I cannot go into detail, but it will become evident that a great deal in human nature as we know it to-day is entirely unconnected with the influence of the sexes; nevertheless a confused science still teaches that everything in the human being originates at the time of conception, through the union of male and female. But it is simply not true that everything in the human being is in some way connected with what takes place in direct physical manifestation in the union of the sexes. You will have to think this out more closely for yourselves; I only want what I have said to be a suggestion.

Man's physical body, as you know, has a long history. It has passed through a Saturn period, a Sun period, a Moon period, and is now passing through the Earth period. The influence of the astral body began only during the Moon period but naturally produced a change in the physical body. Hence the physical body does not appear to us to-day in the form imparted to it by the forces of the Saturn epoch and the Sun epoch, but in the form resulting from those forces combined with the forces of the astral body and the ‘I’. It is only those components of the physical body which are connected with the influence of the astral body on the physical body which can be inherited as the result of the union of the sexes whereas whatever in the physical body is subject to laws going back to the Saturn and Sun periods has nothing to do with the sexes. One part of man's nature is received directly from the Macrocosm and not from the union of the sexes. This means that what we bear within us does not all spring from the union of the sexes; only that which depends upon the astral body springs from that union. A large part therefore of our human nature is received—for example by way of the mother—directly from the Macrocosm and not by the roundabout way of union with the other sex.

We must therefore distinguish in man's nature one part that originates from the union of the sexes and another part that is received by way of the mother directly from the Macrocosm. There can be no clarity in these matters until a definite and precise distinction is made between the individual members of man's nature, whereas to-day everything is mingled together in confusion. The physical body is not a self-contained, isolated entity; it is formed through the combined workings of the etheric body, the astral body and the `I’; and again we must distinguish between the forces that are due to the direct influence of the Macrocosm and others that are to be ascribed to the union of the sexes.

But from the paternal organism too, something is received that again has nothing whatever to do with the union of the sexes. Certain laws and organs in no way based upon heredity are implanted direct from the Macrocosm through the maternal organism; others come from the Macrocosm by spiritual channels through the paternal organism. Of what is received by way of the maternal organism we may say that this organism is the focus through which it is transmitted; but this combines with something that again is not derived from sexual union but from the father. A macrocosmic process thus takes place and comes to expression in the bodily members and forms. Consequently when speaking of the development of the human embryo it is completely misleading to base everything upon heredity, when in actual fact certain elements are received direct from the Macrocosm.

Here, then, we have a case in our own times where the facts themselves far outstrip the concepts at the disposal of science, for these concepts originated in an earlier epoch. You may ask: Is there any evidence to confirm this? Popular literature has little to say, but occultism is absolutely clear about it. And here I should like to draw your attention to something, of which, however, I can give no more than a hint.—A remarkable contrast between two naturalists of the modern age has attracted widespread attention and has influenced other thinkers to a very considerable extent. The characters of the two naturalists are very relevant here. On the one side there is Haeckel. Because Haeckel applies ancient concepts to his really wonderful collection of facts and data, he traces everything to heredity and bases the whole development of the embryo upon it. On the other side there is His, [Wilhelm His (1831–1904).] the zoologist and scientist, who keeps very closely to the facts as such and because of this might possibly be accused, with a certain justification, of doing too little thinking. Because of the particular way in which he investigated his facts he was bound to oppose the concept of heredity as propounded by Haeckel and he pointed out that certain organs and organic structures in the human being can be explained only if the view that they originate from the union of the sexes, is discarded. To this Haeckel mockingly retorted that His was attributing the origin of the human being to a virginal influence independent of any sexual union! But as a matter of fact this is quite correct. Scientific facts more or less compel us to-day to admit that what can be attributed to the union of the sexes must be distinguished from what comes direct from the Macrocosm—which wide circles of people nowadays naturally regard as absurd. So you can see that even in the field of natural science we are being driven towards new concepts. The present phase of evolution makes it evident that to have a genuine grasp of the facts presented by science we must acquire many new concepts and that those inherited from past ages no longer suffice.

From what I have said you will realise that a tributary stream must flow into our present culture. This is the Mercury-stream, the existence of which proclaims itself in the fact that those undergoing occult development as described in many of our lectures, grow into the spiritual world and in so doing experience new facts and realities. This penetration into another world may be compared with the way in which a fish is transferred from water into the air but must first have prepared itself by turning its gills into lungs. Similarly, a man whose faculty of sense-perception is developing into spiritual perception will have made his soul capable of using certain forces in a different element. The very atmosphere nowadays is saturated with thoughts which make it necessary for us to have a genuine grasp of the new facts of science becoming evident on the physical plane. The spiritual investigator can penetrate into the real nature of the facts that press in upon him from all sides. This is due to the appearance of the new stream of which I have been speaking. Thus wherever we look, we find that we are living in an extraordinarily important epoch, in times when it will be impossible for life to progress unless revolutionary changes take place in men's thinking and perception.

I said that man must learn to live in a new element in the same way that a fish, accustomed to living in water, would have to find its way into the new element of air. But men must be able, in their thinking too, to penetrate to the real nature of the facts produced on the physical plane. If they stand out against this new thinking they will be in the same position as fish taken out of the water; later on they will literally be gasping for spiritual concepts. Those who want to retain the monism of to-day are like fish who might prefer to exchange their watery for an airy habitation, but at the same time want to keep their gills. Only those human souls who so transform their faculties that a new conception of present facts is within their reach will grasp what the future has in store.

So we find ourselves living, but now with full understanding, at a point where two streams converge. The first stream should give us a deeper understanding of the Christ-problem and the Mystery of Golgotha; the other should inaugurate new ideas and concepts of reality. The two streams must converge in our time. But this will not happen without great hindrances being encountered; for in periods when two such streams of thought and outlook converge, all kinds of obstructions arise. And in a certain sense it is the adherents of Spiritual Science who will find it particularly necessary to understand these facts.

Some of our members might counter the exposition I have been giving here, by saying: What you have told us is very difficult to understand and we shall have to work at it for a long time. Why do you not give us something more readily digested, which convinces us of the spirituality of the world and makes a greater appeal? Why do you expect so much of our understanding of the world? How much pleasanter it would be if we could believe what a Buddhism transmitted exactly as it was at the beginning, can tell us: that we need not think of the Christ Event as the single point on which the scales of world-evolution hinge and that there can be no repetition of it. It would be so much easier to think that a Being such as the Christ incarnates again and again like other men. Why do you not say that here or there this Being will come again in the flesh—instead of saying that men must make themselves capable of experiencing a renewal of what happened to St. Paul at the gate of Damascus? For if you told us that there will be an incarnation of the Christ Being in the flesh, we could say: ‘Behold, he is here! We can see him with physical eyes!’—That would be so very much easier to understand.

Plenty of people will see to it that this kind of thing is said. But it is the mission of Western Spiritual Science to make known the truth—the truth which takes full account of all the factors responsible for the progress of evolution to this day. Those who look for comfort and ease in the spiritual world will have to seek for spirituality along other paths. The truth needed for our times is that to which we must apply all the intellectual capacity acquired since the fading of the old clairvoyance; this must carry us on until the dawn of the new clairvoyance. And I am sure that those who understand the nature of this intellectual capacity in the form necessary for to-day will follow the path indicated in the words I have spoken here now, and so often before. It is not a matter of saying in what form we wish to have the truth but of knowing from the whole course of human evolution in a given epoch, how, at a particular point of time, the truth must be proclaimed. You may be sure that plenty of other things will be said, and you must not be unprepared for them. Consequently in Rosicrucian Spiritual Science we shall not fail to draw attention again and again to the highest spiritual knowledge attainable in our time. You need never accept blindly on trust anything said here or elsewhere, for in our Movement we never appeal to blind credulity. In your own intelligence and the use of your own reason you have adequate means of testing what you hear. And remember, as you have been told so often, that you must bring the whole of life, the whole of science and the whole of your experience, to bear upon what you hear in Rosicrucian Spiritual Science. Do not fail to put everything to the test. It is precisely where you come across incongruities or perhaps where the truth seems to be the very opposite of what is stated, that on the ground of true spirituality blind faith cannot be allowed. Everything based on blind faith is bound to be sterile and stillborn. It would be easy enough to build on credulity: but those who belong to the stream of Western spiritual life refuse to do this. They build instead upon what can be tested by human reason, understanding and intellect. Those in touch with the source of our Rosicrucian Spiritual Science know that whatever is said has been carefully tested. The edifice of Spiritual Science is built upon the ground of truth, not upon that of easy faith; it is upon the foundation of a thoroughly tested, though perhaps difficult truth, that we establish our Spiritual Science; and prophets of a blind and comfortable faith will not shake that foundation.

There is no doubt that the Spiritual Science we have been studying for many years is beginning to make more and more headway in the world and to find increasing understanding in the hearts and minds of our contemporaries. It might be useful occasionally to speak of how the ideas of Spiritual Science are being made known and many of you would be glad to know what effect the spiritual nourishment you have yourselves received has had upon others at the present time. It is only now and then that I can speak of this spread of spiritual-scientific thought in the outer world, but it will be some satisfaction to you to know that we can see how the spirit inspiring us all is finding entry in various countries. I could see, for instance, that our ideas were beginning to find a footing when I was lecturing in the south of Austria, in Trieste, recently. Then, when I gave a course of lectures in Copenhagen¹ only a few days ago, there too it was evident that the spirit we are trying to cultivate under the symbol of the Rose Cross is gaining more and more ground. Signs such as these make it clear that there is a need and also a longing for what we call Spiritual Science.

It is fundamental to the spirit informing our Movement that we should refrain from any agitation or propaganda and far rather pay heed to the great, all-embracing wisdom needed by the hearts and souls of modern men if they are to feel any security in life to-day. It is our duty to make these spiritual thoughts into real nourishment for our souls. You will certainly have understood enough of the great law of Karma to know that it is by no chance or accident that an individual feels urged to come down into the physical world at this particular time. The souls of all of you here have felt the longing to incarnate in a physical body at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century because of a desire to experience what can be achieved in the present physical environment.

Let us look at our own epoch and see how its spiritual aspect appears to souls which, like yours, have been born into it. At the turn of the century conditions were very different from what they had been fifty or sixty years earlier. Human beings who—like all of you here—are growing up at the present time, attempt now and then to hear about the spiritual guidance and leadership of the world, about the spiritual forces and influences pervading the external world in the different kingdoms of nature and penetrating into the souls of men. But for the last fifty years a soul longing and searching for spiritual nourishment has found very little. This longing has been present in the depths of men's souls, although it may have been a very faint voice, easily silenced. Nevertheless the longing is there and everyone is seeking for spiritual nourishment, whatever his position in life and whatever use he may make of his faculties. No matter in what department of science you may be working to-day, you learn only external, material facts; they can be utilised very cleverly and ingeniously to advance modern culture but they are no help at all towards understanding what the spirit may reveal. No matter whether you are an artist or are engaged in some practical work, you will find little that can pass into head or hand to give you not only energy and impetus for your work but also security and comfort in life. By the beginning of the nineteenth century people had forebodings that in the near future very little spiritual nourishment would be left. During the first half of the century, when vestiges of an old spiritual life were still present, although in a different form, many people felt that there was something in the air presaging the complete disappearance of the ancient treasures of the spirit handed down by tradition from olden times. Yet it is precisely the legitimate progress of culture during the nineteenth century that will completely wipe out the spiritual traditions handed down from the past.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, many voices are to be heard speaking in this strain and I will quote one example of a man who lived during that period and had a wide knowledge of the old form of theosophy, but who also knew that owing to the course of events in that century it was bound to disappear; at the same time he was convinced that a future must come when there would be a revival of this old theosophy but in a new form. I am going to read you a passage written towards the end of the first half of the nineteenth century, in 1847. Its author was a thinker of a type no longer in existence to-day—men who were still sensitive to the last echoes of those old traditions which have now been lost for a considerable time.—

‘It is often difficult to learn among the older theosophists what the real purpose of theosophy is ... but it is clear that along the paths it has taken hitherto, theosophy can acquire no real existence as a science nor achieve any result in a wider sphere. Yet it would be very ill-advised to conclude that it is a phenomenon scientifically unjustifiable and also ephemeral. History itself decisively disproves this: it shows how this enigmatic phenomenon could never make itself really effective in the world but for all that was continually breaking through and was held together in its manifold forms by the chain of a never-dying tradition. ... At all times there have been very few in whom this insistent speculative need has been combined with a living religious need. But theosophy is for these few alone. ... The important thing is that if theosophy ever becomes scientific in the real sense and produces obvious and definite results, these will gradually become the general conviction, be acknowledged as valid truths and be universally accepted by those who cannot find their way along the only possible path by which they could be discovered.

But all this lies in the womb of the future which we do not wish to anticipate. For the moment let us be thankful for the beautiful presentation given by Oetinger, which will certainly be appreciated in wide circles.’

This shows what a man such as Rothe of Heidelberg felt about the theosophical spirit in 1847. The passage is from his Preface to a treatise on Oetinger, a theosophist living in the second half of the eighteenth century.

What, then, can be said about the spirit of theosophy? It is a spirit without which the genuine cultural achievements of the world would never have been possible. Thinking of its greatest manifestations, we shall say: Without it there would never have been a Homer, a Pindar, a Raphael, a Michelangelo; there would have been no depth of religious feeling in men, no truly spiritual life and no external culture. Everything that man creates he must create from out of the spirit. If he thinks that he can create without it he is ignorant of the fact that although in certain periods spiritual striving falls into decline, the less firmly rooted a thing is in the spirit the more likely it is to die. Whatever has eternal value stems from the spirit and no created thing survives that is not rooted in it. But since everything a man does is under the guidance of the spiritual life, the very smallest creation, even when used for the purposes of everyday life, has an eternal value and connects him with the spirit. We know that our own theosophical life has its source in what we have called the Rosicrucian stream; and it has often been emphasised that since the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Masters of Rosicrucian wisdom have been preparing conditions that began at the end of the nineteenth century and will continue in the twentieth. The future longed for and expected by Rothe of Heidelberg is already the present and should be recognised as such. But those who caused this stream to flow into souls, at first in a way imperceptible to men, have been preparing conditions for a long, long time. In a definite sense what we have called the Rosicrucian path since the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is present in our Theosophical Movement in a more conscious form; its influence has flowed into the hearts and minds of the peoples of Europe and sets its stamp upon them.

From what has happened in European culture, can we form an idea of how this spirit has actually taken effect? I said just now that it has worked as the true Rosicrucian spirit since the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; it was always present although only at that time did it assume Rosicrucian form. This Rosicrucian spirit goes back to a very distant past—it had its Mysteries even in Atlantean times. The influence has been taking effect for long ages, becoming more and more conscious as it streamed into the hearts and souls of men.

Let us try to form some idea of how this spirit made its way into humanity. We meet together here and our studies help us to perceive ways in which the human soul develops and gradually rises to regions where it can understand the spiritual life, and perhaps actually behold it. Many of you have for years been trying to let concepts and ideas which mirror the spiritual life stream into your souls as spiritual nourishment. You know how we have tried to acquire some understanding of the riddles of the world. I have often described the different stages of the soul's development and how it can rise to the higher worlds; how a higher part of the Self must be distinguished from a lower part; how man has come from other planetary conditions, having passed through a Saturn-, a Sun- and a Moon-evolution, during which his physical, etheric and astral bodies were formed; and how finally he entered into the period of Earth-evolution. I have told you that there is something within us that must receive its training here on the Earth in order to rise to a higher stage. We have also said that the development of certain beings—the Luciferic beings—was retarded during the Old Moon-period and they later approached man's astral body as tempters, and also in order to impart to him certain qualities. I have often told you too how man must overcome certain tendencies in his lower self and through this conquest rise into the spheres to which his higher Self belongs, into the higher regions of the spiritual life. Words of Goethe must be remembered:

And as long as thou knowest it not,
This Dying and Becoming,
Thou art but a troubled guest
Upon the dark Earth!

The degree of development that is possible to-day and can give strength, assurance and a genuine content to life is within our reach if we acquire knowledge of the manifold nature of man and realise that his constitution is not a haphazard medley but consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. We have formulated definite ideas, for example of the temperaments, by studying the process of education and the development of the physical body up to the seventh year, of the etheric body up to the fourteenth and of the astral body up to the twenty-first year. By studying the mission of Truth, of Prayer, of Anger, our ideas of the three bodies, of the sentient soul, intellectual or mind-soul and consciousness—or spiritual soul, do not remain mere abstractions but impart meaning, clarity and content to our existence.

In this way we have achieved some understanding of the riddles of the world. And although there are large numbers of people outside our circle who still, consciously or unconsciously, persist in materialism, there are nevertheless many souls who feel it necessary to their very existence to listen to expositions of the kind we have been able to give. Many of you would not have been present among us for years, sharing our experiences and activities if it were not a necessity of your very lives. Why are there souls to-day who understand these things and for whom the ideas and concepts developed here become a guide on their life's way? The reason is this.—Just as you have been born into the modern world with these longings, so our forbears in Europe—and this means very many of those present here to-day—were born during past centuries into a world and environment very different from those of the nineteenth century. Let us cast our minds back to the sixth, seventh or even the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of our era when many of those present here were incarnated, and think of the sort of things that souls then living might have experienced.

In those times there was no Theosophical Society where subjects such as those with which we are concerned were studied; the influence of the environment upon the souls of men took a very different form. People did not travel about giving lectures on spiritual-scientific subjects, but minstrels went from village to village, from city to city, proclaiming the spirit. These minstrels did not speak about theosophy, about the lower and higher Ego, about man's physical, etheric and astral bodies and so on. As they moved around the land their mission was to speak of the spirit in the way it was wont to be proclaimed at that time. The following story was told all over Middle and Eastern Europe.—

Once upon a time there was a King's son. During a ride one day he heard moans coming from a ditch, and following the course of the ditch in order to discover the source of the moans, he found an old woman. He dismounted, climbed down into the ditch and helped the old woman who had fallen into it, to get out. Then he saw that she had injured her leg and could not walk. He asked her how the accident happened and she told him: ‘I am old and I have to get up soon after midnight to go to the city and sell my eggs; on the way I fell into this ditch.’ The King's son said to her: ‘You cannot get home by yourself so I will put you on my horse and take you.’ This he did, and the woman said to him: ‘Although you are of noble birth, you are a kind and good man; and because you have helped me I will give you a reward.’ He guessed now that she was not an ordinary woman, for she said: ‘You shall have the reward which your kind soul has earned. Do you want to marry the Flower-Queen's daughter?’ ‘Yes!’ he replied. She went on: ‘For that you will need something that I can easily give you,’ and she gave him a little bell, saying: ‘If you ring this bell once the Eagle-King will come with his hosts to help you in the predicament in which you find yourself; if you ring twice the Fox-King will come with his hosts to help you in the predicament in which you find yourself; and if you ring three times the Fish-King will come with his hosts to help you in the predicament in which you find yourself.’—The King's son took the little bell and returned home, announced that he was going to search for the Flower-Queen's daughter, and rode off. He rode a long, long way but nobody could tell him where the Flower-Queen lived with her daughter. By this time his horse was completely exhausted and could carry him no longer so that he was obliged to continue his journey on foot. He came across an aged man and asked him where the Flower-Queen lived. ‘I cannot tell you,’ the aged man replied, ‘but go on and on and you will find my father who may perhaps be able to tell you.’ So the King's son went on, year after year, and then found another, still more aged man. He asked him: ‘Can you tell me where the Flower-Queen lives?’ But the aged man replied: ‘I cannot tell you, but you must go on and on for many more long years and you will find my father who will certainly be able to tell you where the Flower-Queen lives.’—So the King's son went on and at last found an old, old man and asked him if he could tell him where the Flower-Queen lived with her daughter. The old man replied: ‘The Flower-Queen lives far away, in a mountain which you can see from here in the distance. But she is guarded by a fearsome Dragon. You cannot get near at present for this is a time when the Dragon never sleeps; he sleeps at certain times only and this is one of his waking periods. But you must go a little further, to another mountain, and there you will find the Dragon's mother; through her you will attain your goal.’ So he went on and found the Dragon-mother, the very archetype of ugliness. But he knew that whether he could find the Flower-Queen's daughter would depend on her. Then he saw seven other dragons around her, all eager to guard the Flower-Queen and her daughter who had been long imprisoned and were destined to be set free by the King's son. So he said to the Dragon-mother: ‘I know that I must become your servant if I am to find the Flower-Queen.’ ‘Yes’, she said, ‘you must become my servant and perform a task that is not easy. Here is a horse which you must lead to pasture the first day, the second day and the third. If you can bring it home in good condition you may possibly achieve your object after three days. But if you fail, the dragons will devour you—we shall all devour you.’ The King's son agreed to this and the next morning he was given the horse. He tried to lead it to pasture but it soon disappeared. He searched for it in vain and was in despair. Then he remembered the little bell given him by the old woman, took it out and rang it once. A host of eagles gathered, led by the Eagle-King, looked for the horse and found it, so that the King's son was able to take it back to the Dragon-mother. She said to him: ‘Because you have brought the horse back I will give you a cloak of copper so that you can attend the Ball tonight at the court of the Flower-Queen and her daughter.’ Then, on the second day, he was again given the horse to take to pasture, but again it disappeared and he could not find it. So he took out the bell and rang it twice. Immediately the Fox-King appeared with a host of his followers; they looked for and found the horse and the King's son was again able to take it back to the Dragon-mother. She then said to him: ‘To-day you shall have a cloak of silver so that you can attend the Ball to-night at the court of the Flower-Queen and her daughter.’ At the Ball the Flower-Queen said to him: ‘On the third day ask for a foal of that horse and with it you will be able to rescue me and we shall be united.’ Then, on the third day, the horse was again handed to him to lead to pasture, and again it soon disappeared, for it was very wild. So he took out the bell and rang it three times, whereupon the Fish-King appeared with his followers, found the horse, and for the third time the King's son brought it home. He had now successfully performed his task. The Dragon-mother then presented him with a mantle of gold as his third garment in order that on the third day he might attend the Flower-Queen's Ball. He was also given as a fitting reward the foal of the horse he had cared for. With it he was able to lead the Flower-Queen and her daughter to their own castle. And around the castle, since there were others who wanted to steal her daughter, the Flower-Queen caused a thick hedge to grow to prevent the castle from being invaded. Then the Flower-Queen said to the King's son: ‘You have won my daughter and henceforth she shall be yours, but only on one condition. You may keep her for half the year but for the other half she must return beneath the surface of the earth and be restored to me. Only on this condition can you be united with her.’ So the King's son won the Flower-Queen's daughter and lived with her for half the year, while for the other half she was with her mother.—

This story, as well as others like it, was listened to by many people in those days. They listened and drank in what they heard but did not, like many modern theosophists, proceed to invent allegories, for symbolic or allegorical interpretations of such matters are valueless. People listened to the stories because they were a source of delight to them and a warm glow pervaded their souls as they listened. They wanted nothing more than this as they listened to the story of the Flower-Queen and the King's son with his bell and his wooing of the Flower-Queen's daughter.

There are many souls alive to-day who in those days heard such tales with inner delight, and the effects lived on in them. Their feelings and perceptions were converted into thoughts and experiences and their souls were transformed by new forces. These forces have changed into the longing for a higher interpretation of the same secrets, a longing for Spiritual Science. In those days the wandering minstrels did not go about saying that man strives towards his higher self and to that end must overcome his lower self which holds him back. They gave their message in the form of a story about a King's son who rode out into the world, heard moans coming from a ditch and thereupon performed a good deed. To-day we speak simply of a good deed, a deed of love and sacrifice. In earlier times the deed was described in pictures. To-day we say that man must develop a feeling for the spirit which will awaken in him an inkling of the spiritual world and create powers through which he can establish relationship with it. In earlier times this was expressed in the picture of the old woman who gave the King's son a bell which he rang. To-day it is said: Man has taken into himself all the kingdoms of nature and unites in harmony everything that lies outspread before him. But he must learn to understand how what is outspread in the external world lives within him and how he can overcome his lower nature, for only if he can bring what is at work in the kingdoms of nature into the right relationship with his own being can it come to his aid.

We have spoken often enough of man's evolution through the periods of Saturn, Sun and Moon and of how he left behind him the other kingdoms of nature, retaining within himself the best of each in order that he might rise to a higher stage. To what stage has he evolved? To indicate what lives in the human soul Plato had already used the picture of the horse on which man rides from one incarnation to another. In the times of which we have been speaking the picture used was that of the bell which was rung to summon the representatives of the kingdoms of nature—the Eagle-King, the Fox-King and the Fish-King—in order that the being destined to become the ruler of these kingdoms might establish the right relationship with them.

Man's soul is unruly and can be brought into the right relationship with the kingdoms of nature only when it is tempered by love and wisdom. In earlier times this truth was presented in pictorial form and the soul was helped to understand what we to-day express differently. Men were told that the King's son rang the bell once and the Eagle-King appeared; twice and the Fox-King appeared; three times and the Fish-King appeared. It was they who brought back the horse. In other words: the tumults which rage in the human soul must be recognised; when they are recognised the soul can be freed from lower influences and brought into order.

In the modern age we say that man must learn how his passions, his anger and so on, are connected with his development from one seven-year period to another. In other words, we must learn to understand the threefold sheaths of the human being. In earlier times a wonderful picture was placed before men: the King's son was given a mantle, a sheath, every time he rang the little bell—that is to say, when he had subjugated one of the kingdoms of nature. To-day we speak of studying the nature of the physical body; in earlier days a picture was used—of the Dragon-mother giving the King's son a cloak or mantle of copper. We study the nature of the etheric body; in earlier times it was said that the Dragon-mother gave the King's son a silver cloak on the second day. We speak of the astral body with its surging passions; in earlier times it was said that on the third day the Dragon-mother gave the King's son a cloak of gold. What we learn to-day about the threefold nature of man in the form of concepts was conveyed through the picture of the copper, silver and golden cloaks. Instead of the pictures of the copper, silver and golden cloaks we speak to-day in terms which convey an understanding of how the solid physical body is related to the other sheaths of the human being as copper ore is related to silver and gold.

We speak to-day of seven classes of Luciferic beings whose development was retarded during the Moon-evolution and who set about bringing their influence to bear upon man's astral body. The minstrels said: When the King's son came to the mountain where he was to be united with the Flower-Queen's daughter, he encountered seven dragons who would have devoured him if he had not accomplished his task. We know that if our evolution does not proceed in the right way it will be corrupted by the forces of the sevenfold Luciferic beings. We say nowadays that by achieving spiritual development we find our higher Self. The minstrels said: The King's son was united with the Flower-Queen. And we say: A certain rhythm must be established in the human soul. You will remember that a few weeks ago I said that when an idea has arisen in the soul we must allow time for the idea to mature, and it will then be possible to detect a certain rhythm in the process. After seven days the idea has penetrated into the depths of the soul; after fourteen days the maturing idea can lay hold of the outer astral substance and allow itself to be baptised by the World-Spirit. After twenty-one days the idea has become still more mature. And only after four times seven days is it ready to be offered to the world as a gift of our own personality. This is the manifestation of an inner rhythm of the soul. A man's creative faculty can work effectively only if he does not try immediately to force upon the world something that occurs to him but is aware that the ordered rhythm of the external world repeats itself in his soul, that he must live in such a way that the Macrocosm is reflected in the Microcosm of his own being. The minstrels said: Man must bring the forces of his soul into harmony, must seek the Flower-Queen's daughter and enter into a union with her during which he spends half of the year with his bride and for the other half leaves her to be with her mother who lives in the depths. This means that he establishes a rhythm within himself and the rhythm of his life takes its course in harmony with the rhythm of the Macrocosm.

These pictures—and hundreds like them could be mentioned—stimulated the soul through the thought-forms they created; and the result is that souls living to-day have become sufficiently mature to listen to the different kind of presentation given by Spiritual Science. But before this could happen man had perforce to experience a sense of deprivation and intense longing. The spiritual longings of the soul had first to be engulfed in the physical world. This did in fact happen in the first half of the nineteenth century; and then, in the second half of the century, came the materialistic culture with its devastating effect upon spiritual life. But the longing grew all the stronger and the ideal of the spiritual-scientific Movement became all the more significant. In the first half of the century there were only few who in a kind of silent martyrdom felt that ideas once conveyed in the form of pictures in narratives still survived but only in a state of decline.

In the soul of a man born in the year 1803, echoes of the old wisdom of past times were still reverberating. Something closely akin to theosophical ideas was a living reality in him. His soul was completely engrossed in what we to-day call the spiritual-scientific solution of the riddle of world-existence. His name was Julius Mosen. His soul was able to survive only because for most of his life he was bedridden. Soul and body could not adjust themselves to each other because owing to the way in which Mosen had grasped these ideas without being able to penetrate them spiritually, his etheric body had been drawn out of his physical body which was paralysed as a result. His soul had nevertheless risen to spiritual heights. In 1831 he wrote a remarkable book, Ritter Wahn. He had learnt of a wonderful legend still surviving in Italy, an old Italian folk-legend. As he studied it he became convinced that it enshrined something of the spirit of the universe, that those who created its imagery were filled with the living spirituality of the World Order. The result was that in 1831 he wrote a truly wonderful work—which, needless to say, has been forgotten, in common with so much that is the product of spiritual greatness.

Ritter Wahn sets out to conquer death and on his way he comes across three old men—Ird, Time and Space. Julius Mosen hit on the German word Ird to translate the Italian il mondo, because he knew that there was something particularly significant in it. Ird, Time and Space are the names of the three old men who, however, can be of no use to Ritter Wahn because they are themselves subject to death. Ird denotes everything that is subject to the laws of the physical body, and so to death; Time, the etheric body, is by its very nature transitory; and the third, the lower astral body, which gives us the perception of Space, is also subject to death. Our individuality passes from incarnation to incarnation; but according to the Italian folk-legend, Ird, Time and Space represent our threefold sheath.

Who is ‘Ritter Wahn?’ Each of us, passing from incarnation to incarnation, looks out upon the world and faces maya, the great Illusion; each of us, in that we live a life in the spirit, goes forth to conquer death. On this quest we meet the three old men who are our three sheaths. They are indeed very old! The physical body has existed since the evolutionary period of Old Saturn, the etheric body since the period of Old Sun, and the astral body since the period of Old Moon. The Ego, the ‘I’, has been embodied in men in the course of the Earth period itself. Julius Mosen depicts Ritter Wahn seeking to overcome death. He uses the Platonic image of a rider on horseback—an image that was known all over Middle Europe and still farther afield. Ritter Wahn rides out in an attempt to conquer the heavens with materialistic thinking—like those who cling to the sense-world and are imprisoned in illusion and maya. But when through death they enter the spiritual world, what happens is faithfully described by Julius Mosen. Such human beings have not lived out their lives to the full and long to come down again to the Earth in order that their souls may continue to evolve. So Ritter Wahn returns to the Earth. He sees the beautiful Morgana, the soul, which is destined to be stimulated by whatever is earthly and—like the Flower-Queen's daughter—represents the union with what man can acquire only through schooling on Earth. He falls a victim to death through being again united with the Earth and the beautiful Morgana. This means that he passes through death in order that he may raise his own soul, represented by Morgana, to higher and higher stages during each succeeding incarnation.

It is from pictures like these which carry the stamp of their thousands of years’ life that ideas stream into artists of the calibre of Julius Mosen. In his case they were given expression by a soul too great to live healthily in a physical body during the approaching age of materialism and Julius Mosen had consequently to endure the silent martyrdom imposed on him by his passionate soul.—Such was the impulse at work in a man living in the first half of the nineteenth century. It will become active again but in such a way as to kindle human powers and forces; and it will enable us to have some understanding of what is meant by the spirit of Rosicrucianism—the spirit that must make its way into the souls of men.

We can now surmise that what we ourselves are cultivating has always existed. Were we to imagine that anything in the world can prosper without this spirit working in men we should be succumbing to the delusions suffered by Ritter Wahn.

Whence came the minstrels of the seventh, eighth or even thirteenth centuries, wandering as they did through the world to create thought-forms that would enable souls in our own day to have a different kind of understanding? Where had these minstrels learnt how to bring such pictures to men? They had learnt from the centres we think of to-day as the Rosicrucian schools. They were pupils of Rosicrucians. Their teachers said to them: You cannot now go forth into the world and clothe your message in concepts and ideas, as will have to be done later on; you must speak of the King's son, of the Flower-Queen and of the three cloaks, in order that from these pictures thought-forms may come into being and live in the souls of men. And when these souls return to Earth they will understand what is needed for their further progress.—Messengers are continually sent out from the centres of spiritual life in order that in every age what lies in the depths of the spirit may be made accessible to men.

It is a superficial view to believe that such tales can be invented by human fancy. The old tales which give expression to the spiritual secrets of the world came into being because those who composed them gave ear to others who were able to impart the spiritual secrets. Consequently we can say with truth that the spirit of all humanity, of the Microcosm and the Macrocosm, lives in them.

The minstrels were sent out to tell their stories from the same centres whence we to-day draw the knowledge on which the culture needed by humanity is based. Thus it is that the spirit in which mankind is rooted moves on from epoch to epoch. The Beings who in pre-Christian times imparted instruction to individuals in the temples, teaching them what they had themselves brought over from former planetary evolutions—these Beings placed themselves under the leadership of Christ, the unique Individuality who became the great Teacher and Guide of mankind. Stories which have come down through the centuries and have inspired in the whole of Western culture thought-forms expressing in pictures the same teaching about Christ as we give to-day, make it quite clear that in the period after the Mystery of Golgotha the spiritual leadership of mankind, working through its centres of learning, was vested in Christ. All spiritual leadership is connected with Him. If we can make ourselves conscious of this fact we shall be turning our gaze to the light we need in order to understand the longings of human souls incarnated in the nineteenth century.

If we think deeply about souls who reveal the longings of earlier times, we shall recognise with a sense of profound responsibility that they waited for us to bring their longings to fulfilment. Julius Mosen, the author of Ritter Wahn and Ahasver, and others like him, were the last prophets of the West because the teachings once given by messengers from the holy temples in the form of pictures to prepare souls for later ages, were living realities to them. And their yearning is indicated in words written by Rothe of Heidelberg in 1847: ‘... if theosophy ever becomes scientific in the real sense and produces obvious and definite results, these will gradually become the general conviction, be acknowledged as valid truths and be universally accepted by those who cannot find their way along the only possible path by which they could be discovered ...’ At that time a man who had these yearnings—thinking not only of himself but also of his contemporaries—could only say with resignation that all this lay in the womb of the future which he had no wish to anticipate. In 1847, men who were cognisant of the secrets of the Rosicrucian temples had not yet spoken in a way that could be generally understood. But what lies in the womb of the future can become living power if there are enough souls who realise that knowledge is a duty—a duty because we must not give back undeveloped souls to the World-Spirit. Were we to do that we should have deprived the World-Spirit of forces implanted in us. If there are souls who recognise their duty to the World-Spirit and endeavour to understand the riddles of the world, the hopes cherished by the best men of earlier times will be fulfilled. They looked to us, who were to be born after them, and longed that theosophy should become scientifically acceptable and lay hold of the hearts of men. But these hearts must exist! And that depends upon people who have identified themselves with our spiritual-scientific Movement being convinced of the need for spiritual illumination of the riddles of existence. It depends upon every single soul among us whether the longings of which I have spoken prove to have been empty dreams on the part of those who had hoped for the best in us or to have been dreams now brought to fulfilment.

When we see the barrenness of science, art and every domain of social life we must tell ourselves that we need not succumb to it but that there is a way out. For again an age has dawned when voices from the holy temples are speaking—not in pictures and stories but proclaiming truths which many people still regard as theories but which can and must become sources of life and nourishment to the soul. Each individual can resolve with the highest powers of his soul to receive this source of life.

This is what we must impress upon our souls as the epitome of the meaning and spirit of the guidance of mankind. If we allow this thought to be active in our souls it will be an impulse in us for many months. We shall find that it can grow into an impressive structure—quite independently of the words used to express it. My words may well be imperfect but it is the reality in the thought that matters, not the form in which it is expressed. This reality can live in every single soul. The totality of truth is present in every soul as a seed and can be brought to blossom if the soul devotes itself to the development of that seed.

• 1. The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind. (Obtainable from Rudolf Steiner Press.)

It seems well that on resuming our activities in the Berlin Group we should look back for a little at what has passed through our souls since our work began at this time last year.

You will remember that about a year ago on the occasion of the General Conference of the German Section, I lectured on the “Sphere of the Bodhisattvas.” With this lecture we introduced to the world a subject that principally occupied us in our Group-meetings, throughout the following Winter our studies were associated with the Christ-problem, more especially in its connection with the Gospel of Matthew. We have carried these studies further in many ways, particularly in connection with the Gospels of John and of Luke, and when dealing with them we indicated that at some future date we hoped to go more deeply into this Christ-problem in a course of lectures to be associated mainly with the Gospel of Mark.

These studies of the Christ-problem did not consist merely in giving explanations of the Gospels. We spoke most fully, most radically, of what Spiritual Science had to say concerning the events that took place in Palestine. It has to be explained that there are no external, historical records dealing with these events. What is of the deepest importance in the accounts of the Event of Christ is not found in any book or record, but it stands in the eternal spiritual records, and can be deciphered by clairvoyant consciousness in the Akashic Chronicle. We have often made known to you what has been revealed to us there. Our position towards the Gospels is this: we make known what spiritual investigation tells us, and then we compare this with the events related in the Gospels or in other parts of the New Testament. In every case we found that we first learnt to read these documents aright, because before reading them we had penetrated to the secrets connected with the Events of Palestine; that it is precisely because we had investigated these events without having been prejudiced through having previously read any records concerning them, that our appreciation, I may say our reverence, for them was so greatly enhanced.

When we look not only to the nearest, the narrowest and most fleeting interests of our community, but when we recognise that the whole development of modern culture longs for a new understanding of the documents dealing with Christianity, we feel we are summoned by spiritual science not only to satisfy our own understanding regarding the Events of Palestine, but also to translate what we have to say concerning them into present day language for the sake of all humanity. In order to do this it is not enough that we should confine ourselves to what the present century has contributed towards an understanding of the problem and the figure of Christ. If this satisfied present day demands for knowledge there would not be so many who are, incapable of harmonising their desire for truth with what is taught in Christian circles and has been accepted for centuries, but which contradicts in one way or another what has been imparted to us concerning the Events of Palestine. All this shows that a new understanding and new conclusions with regard to Christian truths are necessary to the education of to-day.

Now among many other means that aid us in deciphering Christian truths there is one that is specially fruitful in our field of research. It consists in our being able to extend our vision, and also our world of feeling and perception beyond the horizon which has limited man's view of the spiritual world in past centuries. How our horizon can be extended can he put before you very simply and intimately in a few words.

In Goethe, to take one of the greatest minds of western civilisation, we have, as we all know, the mind of a Titan; and many of our studies have shown us how deeply the spiritual view entered into his personality. These studies have led us to know how we can rise to spiritual heights by sharing in the composition of Goethe's soul. But however well we may know Goethe, however deeply we may enter into what he has to give us, there is one thing we do not find in him, and this we must have if our vision is to he widened in the right way and our horizon expanded to satisfy our most urgent spiritual needs. Nowhere do we find in Goethe any indication that the things we are able to know to-day, dawned in him. These things can become fruitful for us when we accept them. They are ideas concerning man's spiritual development, the reception of which first became possible in the nineteenth century through the liberation of certain spiritual documents containing the fruits (Errungenschaften) of oriental life. From these we receive many ideas that in no way prevent our understanding the problem of Christ, but may, if rightly received, actually lead us to a true and full appreciation of Christ Jesus. Therefore I believe that a study of the Christ-problem cannot be introduced better than by a careful explanation of the mission of those great spiritual individuals who, from time to time, have made a deep impression on evolution, and are described by the name “Bodhisattva,” a name derived from oriental philosophy.

Ideas dealing with the Bodhisattvas have not existed for any length of time in the spiritual life of the West, and it is only when we realise what these beings are that we are able to rise to a true understanding of what the Christ has been, is, and can continue to be to mankind.

From this you see how wide is the circle of spiritual development that has to become fruitful to man before he really understands what it is so necessary he should understand concerning the education, culture, and spiritual life within which he lives. From another point of view it is important that we cast our spiritual eyes, when this is possible, over recent centuries and note the difference between a man at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and one of a century earlier; that we realise how very little was known in Europe a hundred years ago of Buddha and Buddhism. This last, if not actually the aim of our endeavours is the impulse and also the object of our present studies, and gives tone to the feeling that fills our souls when stirred by its great spiritual truths. The thing that matters most is not what one or another desires to know, but the warmth of feeling, the power of perception, the nobility of will that rises within our souls when the great truths of humanity strike these souls. More important in our Group than the words themselves is the tone and the waves of feeling that are present when certain words ring through space. These feelings and perceptions are of many kinds. The most important of them that should rise in our souls is that of reverence; such reverence as must needs develop in us towards the knowledge of great spiritual truths; the feeling that the nature of these great truths is such that we must approach them in humble reverence; that we cannot think to grasp such mighty facts with any hurriedly acquired ideas or with a few quickly won conceptions!

I have often made use of the example that we cannot depict a tree graphically by making a picture of it from one side only, but we must walk around it and draw it from various sides. Only by combining these different pictures do we gain a general impression of what the tree is like. This comparison should impress on our souls the way to approach great spiritual facts. We cannot make progress in any real or apparent knowledge of the highest things if we view them from one side only. Whether absolute truth regarding the appearance of anything can or cannot be reached, we should all the same never lose the humble feeling that all our ideas are acquired from one point of view only. When filled with this emotion we gladly and willingly take into ourselves feelings and perceptions from any side that enables us to illumine the great facts of existence from the most varied directions. The age in which we live makes this necessary, and in our time the need will grow ever greater for observing things from every possible side. Therefore we no longer shut ourselves off from other opinions, other paths leading to the highest things, that may differ from those of our own civilisation. Indeed we have endeavoured in recent years, within what Western cultural development had to offer, to uphold those principles that lead to true humility in respect of knowledge. I have never ventured (and indeed this is deeply impressed on my soul, for audacity was never possible in this connection) to present a system or a survey of those great events comprised within the term—the “Christ-Problem.” I have always said: “We approach this event now from one point of view,” and again, “We approach it now from another point of view,” and have always insisted that the problem is not thereby exhausted, but that our one desire is to carry on the work calmly and patiently.

The reason for studying the different Gospels is that it enables us to consider the Christ-problem from four points of view, and we find in fact that the four Gospels do present us with these four view points, and that in them the maxim is set before us:—Thou shalt not approach this—the mightiest problem—hurriedly, or view it from one side; it must be approached from the four spiritual directions of the heavens at least, and when thou hast approached it from these four heavenly directions which can he named after the four evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—thou canst then hope it may gradually draw nearer and nearer to thee. And it will approach thee, so that thou needst never say of thyself, thou art cut off from the greatest of all truths without which the human soul, in its inmost depth, cannot live, neither shalt thou say that any one form of truth which thou hast been able to grasp is the whole truth.

Thus all our studies of the past Winter were intended gradually to arouse a feeling of intellectual modesty. In fact, without such a feeling we cannot advance in spiritual life. Incidentally, everything has been done in these studies to impress repeatedly on you the first requirements for progress in spiritual knowledge, and no one who has followed attentively the, lectures given here week by week, can say that we have not constantly pointed out the basic condition of this advance in spiritual knowledge.

Advance in spiritual knowledge is one of the impulses lying at the foundation of our movement. What does advance in spiritual knowledge mean for our souls? It satisfies the deepest, most humanly-worthy longings of our souls, it gives that without which a man who is conscious of his human worth, cannot live. It also gives this knowledge in ways that correspond to the intellectual requirements of the present day. Advance in knowledge brings illumination to us concerning those things which a man cannot investigate with his ordinary senses, but only with those senses which belong to him as a spiritual being, not as a physical being.

The great questions concerning man's position in the physical world and what lies beyond it, the truths concerning life and death: all such questions spring from the deep needs of the human soul. Even if a man from various causes holds aloof from such questions, even if he is able to remain deaf to them for a time, so that he says:—“Science is unable to investigate such matters, the faculties for doing so are wanting in man;” yet the need of finding answers to these questions never leaves him permanently, neither does the true nature of his feelings towards such questions as the following:—

Whence comes that something in a child and in a growing youth, that is capable of education? Where does that go which is hidden within our souls when the bodily nature begins to fall and die? In short, the question as to man's connection with the spiritual world is the great question, and springs from the most human of desires. A man cannot live if these questions remain unanswered, unless he turns a deaf ear to them. But because they spring from so deep a need, because the soul cannot live in peace and contentment if it does not receive an answer to them, it is only natural that he should answer them in a somewhat trivial and comfortable manner. In spite of the fact that these questions (though denied by some) have to-day become burning questions for many, how numerous are the paths they point to us! One can say without exaggeration that of all the paths that open before man to-day when these great and puzzling questions arise within him, the way of spiritual science is the most difficult. Truly, we cannot say otherwise!

There may be many among you who consider some much discussed science difficult; who perhaps do not venture on it because they shrink from all that must be overcome if it is to be gone into thoroughly. It may seem that the path that we call the path of spiritual science is easier than the path leading to mathematics, to botany, or any other branch of natural science. All the same, if followed earnestly, this path is more difficult than that leading to any other science. We say this without any exaggeration. Why is it easier for you? Only because it stimulates the interest of every soul with tremendous force, and because it deals with what lies nearest to each. It is the most difficult of all the paths by which a man can enter the spiritual world to-day, yet one thing we must not forget: this path can lead us to what is highest in the life of the soul! Is it not natural that what leads to the highest should also be the most difficult? Yet: we must never allow ourselves to be frightened by the difficulties of the path, nor hide from our souls the necessity of these difficulties on the path of spiritual science.

Among the many necessities of this path, one is always specially mentioned here: that he who decides to follow this path must, in the first place, accept seriously what spiritual investigation has so far been able to offer concerning the secrets and facts of the spiritual world. We touch here on a very necessary chapter of our spiritual-scientific life. How many say light-heartedly:—“People speak here of a science that is unascertainable, of spiritual facts that one or another investigator, one or another initiate, has been able to elucidate or investigate. Would it not be much better if they simply showed us the way so that we might ourselves quickly enter that region from which one can see into the spiritual world? Why do they always say—‘This is how it looks, this is what one or another has seen!’ Why do they not tell us how we can attain this quickly for ourselves?” It is for very good reasons that the facts investigated concerning the spiritual world are first communicated in a general way before entering into what one might call “the methods of soul-training” which can lead the soul into spiritual regions. For something quite definite is gained by our applying ourselves reverently to the study of what the spiritual investigator has revealed from spiritual worlds. We have often said that the facts of the spiritual world must be sought and found by means of clairvoyant consciousness; but once these facts are discovered, once trained clairvoyance has observed them and communicated them to others, then these communications must be such that everyone, without having passed through any clairvoyant development, can test them, and can recognise the truth of them by his own unprejudiced logic and the feeling for truth that is in every soul. No true investigator of spiritual things, no man endowed with true clairvoyant consciousness, would communicate the facts of the spiritual world except in such a way that those who desired could test them without clairvoyance. But he would have to communicate these facts so that he conveyed the full value and importance of them to the human soul.

What value have the communications and presentations of spiritual facts to a human soul? The value is this; that the man who knows “how things are seen in the spiritual world” can order his life, his thoughts, feelings, and perceptions according to his relationship towards the spiritual world. In this sense every communication of spiritual facts is important—even if he to whom they are communicated, and who receives them, cannot himself investigate them clairvoyantly. Indeed, even for the investigator these facts first acquire “human worth” when he has brought them down into a sphere where he can express them in a form accessible to all. However much a clairvoyant may be able to investigate and see in the spiritual world, what he sees is of no value to him and to others so long as he is unable to bring it down into the ordinary sphere of men, and to express it in thought that can be grasped by sound logic and a natural feeling for truth. The clairvoyant must in fact first understand the matter himself if it is to be of any use to him. Its value begins where the possibility of logical proof begins.

We can prove what has just been said in a double way. Among the many valuable things connected with the spiritual truths and spiritual communications which a man can receive on the physical plane between birth and death, those without doubt are the most important which he can take with him through the gates of death. Or let us put it as a question in this way:—“How much remains to a man of all he has received here, and been able to make his own? What remains of all he has learnt concerning the spiritual world while leading an anthroposophical life?” Just as much remains to him as he has been able to understand, as he has been able to translate into the ordinary language of human consciousness.

Picture to yourselves a man who has perhaps made quite exceptional discoveries in the spiritual world through purely clairvoyant observation, but who has neglected to clothe these observations in language suited to the ordinary sense of truth of any age. Do you know what would happen to him? All his discoveries would be wiped out after death! Just as much of value would remain as it was possible for him to translate or formulate into any language that corresponded to a sound sense for truth.

It is certainly of the greatest importance that there should be clairvoyants capable of bringing over communications from the spiritual world and handing them on to others. This brings blessing to our day, for our age has need of wisdom and cannot advance unless it gets it. Such communications are necessary to the culture of the present time. If not recognised to-day, in fifty or a hundred years it will be the universal conviction of all mankind that culture cannot advance but must perish unless convinced of spiritual wisdom.

One thing is necessary for man if evolution is to advance—this is the acceptance by him of spiritual truth. Even if all spheres were conquered and intercourse with them established, humanity would still be faced with the death of civilisation if no spiritual wisdom had been acquired. This is undoubtedly true. The possibility of looking into the spiritual world must exist.

The facts of spiritual wisdom mean more to the individual after death than human progress upon earth. We must therefore ask in order to form a right conception of this—What has the clairvoyant to tell of the things he has investigated and brought into line with truth and sound logic? What more in the way of fruits does a man possess after death through having been able to look into the spiritual world, than those have whose karma in this incarnation makes it impossible for them to do so, and who therefore have to hear the results of spiritual research from others? How do spiritual truths perceived by an Initiate differ from those heard by a man who has only heard them, and not himself looked into the spiritual world? Does the Initiate understand them better than those to whom they have only been imparted?

As regards mankind in general perception of the spiritual world is of higher worth than non-perception. For one who is able to look into the spiritual world has intercourse with that world, he can teach not only men, but others, spiritual beings, and so further their development. Clairvoyant consciousness has therefore a quite special value, but for individuals knowledge only has value; and in respect of individual worth the clairvoyant does not differ from anyone else who only receives communications, and is himself unable to look into the spiritual world in any particular incarnation. Whatever we have received of spiritual truth is fruitful after death, no matter if we have beheld these truths ourselves or not.

In stating this, one of the greatest moral laws of the spiritual world and one most worthy of reverence is placed before our souls. Our present day morality is perhaps not fine enough fully to understand the ethics of this. Individuals gain no advantage through their Karma having made it possible for them to look into spiritual worlds, thereby gratifying their egoism, Everything we strive to gain for ourselves in our individual life must he gained on the physical plane, and in forms that accord with the physical plane. If a Buddha or a Bodhisattva stands higher among the hierarchies of the spiritual world than other human individuals this is because of his having passed through so many and varied incarnations an earth.

What I mean by the higher ethics, the higher moral teaching given out to us from the spiritual world is this:—No one should think for a moment that he gains an advantage over his fellow men through the development of clairvoyance. This is not at all the case. He gains no advantage in any egoistic sense. All that he gains is that he can be better than others. Anything that serves egoism is absolutely excluded from spiritual fields, it is held to be immoral. A man gains nothing for himself through spiritual illumination. What he gains is only as one who serves the world in general, not himself, and only in so far as he gains it also for others.

The position of the spiritual investigator with regard to his fellowmen is this:—If they wish to hear of of the discoveries he has made and to accept them, they can make the same progress through these discoveries as he has made himself, they can advance individually as far as he has advanced, which means:—spiritual things are of value only in the Spirit of humanity as a whole, not in any egoistic spirit.

There is a realm where a man is not moral merely from preference, but because immorality or egoism would not help. In this case it is easy to see something else, namely, that it is dangerous to enter the spiritual realm unprepared. Nothing of an egoistic nature will ever be won for the life after death through leading a spiritual life, but a man might easily desire something egoistic for this life on the physical plane through spiritual development. Although nothing of an egoistic nature can be gained for the spiritual world things can be desired which are in a sense egoistic.

Most of those who pursue a certain higher development will probably say:—“It is self-understood that I should endeavor to overcome egoism before gaining entrance to the spiritual world.” But I beg of you to believe, in no region of human development is deception so great as in that where men say—“I strive against egoism!” It is easy to say it, but whether one can do it, can really accomplish it, is quite another question. It is another question in the first place, because when we begin to practise certain soul activities that can lead us into the spiritual world, we meet ourselves in our true form. There are very few things which are experienced in true form in the outer world. We live interwoven in a net of ideas, will-impulses, moral perceptions, and customary actions that have their rise in the surrounding world, and we seldom ask:—“How would I act, how would I think regarding any matter if I did not feel constrained by my upbringing to think and act in such and such a way?”

If we answered these questions we would see that we are ordinarily very much worse than we suppose. Now, the result of carrying out those exercises that are intended to help us to rise to the spiritual world is that we outgrow all our surroundings, all that custom and education have woven round us. We become more sensitive, more soulful and spiritual, and ever more and more naked. The veils with which we have clothed ourselves, and to which we cling with our ordinary ideas and actions, fall from us. Hence we have the quite ordinary result of which I have often spoken:—Before beginning his spiritual development a man is perhaps a quite decently behaved person, who does not make any very stupid blunders in life. Then his spiritual development begins. While until now he was perhaps quite a modest man he now becomes arrogant, and does all sorts of stupid things. When spiritual development begins he loses his balance and his bearings. The reason for this is best seen by those who are familiar with the spiritual world. Two things are necessary in order to know where we are with regard to what approaches us from the spiritual world so that balance is maintained. We must not be made giddy by what comes to us from the spiritual world. In physical life our organism shields us from giddiness through the “sense of balance of which you have heard in anthroposophical lectures, the static-sense. And just as this gives to physical man power to hold himself upright (for if his organism does not function correctly a man becomes giddy and he falls down) there is something also in spiritual life by which he can regulate his position to the world. This he must be able to do. “Spiritual giddiness” results from the falling away from him of what formerly gave support, those acquired perceptions, all that is brought about in us by the inter-blending activities of the external world. We must now learn to depend on ourselves. It is easy for us to become arrogant when these outer supports fall away. Pride is situated in us naturally; only, till now it was not so apparent. How can we attain spiritual balance so that this giddiness does not occur? By devoting ourselves with patience and perseverance to what spiritual investigation has discovered and succeeded in putting into words that agree with the ordinary formula of logical veracity. It is not from choice that I emphasize again and again the need of studying what we call spiritual science or anthroposophy. I lay stress on it because it is not possible by any other means to acquire the solid supports necessary to a spiritual development. The diligent and earnest acceptance of the results of spiritual science is the antidote to spiritual giddiness and insecurity.

Many a one has fallen into spiritual insecurity through carrying out his development incorrectly; we know that though such a one may seem to have been very diligent, this is because he has failed to acquire certain things that flow from the well-head of spiritual science. This is why the facts of spiritual science should he studied from every side, and why all through last winter, while desiring ultimately to bring home to you the importance of the Event of Christ to man we returned ever and again to deal with the fundamental conditions of spiritual progress. A balanced soul is necessary to a man's progress; but other things are also necessary.

While the soul acquires certainty through the study of spiritual science something else brings us what is equally necessary. This is a certain degree of spiritual strength and courage. The courage necessary to spiritual progress is not required of us in ordinary life for this reason, that in ordinary life our innermost being is embedded in our physical and etheric body from the time we waken until we fall asleep, and in the night we can do nothing, we cannot spoil anything. Supposing an unevolved man were able to be active during sleep he could do a great deal of harm. But the forces active on our physical and etheric bodies, making us conscious—that is thinking and feeling men—are not the only forces at work in us. Other forces are also active there, forces on which divine spiritual Beings have worked all through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods, and on into our own Earthly period. Here forces from higher realms are continually at work maintaining us. When we waken and draw within the physical and etheric bodies we give ourselves over immediately to these Divine spiritual forces which, for our welfare and blessing, guide and control our physical and etheric bodies from morning till evening. Thus the whole spiritual universe works within us. We can injure it in many ways, but can do very little to improve it.

Now you must realise that all spiritual development depends on our inner being—our astral body and ego—becoming free, that we become able to see, that is learn to become consciously clairvoyant of that which lives unconsciously within us from the time we fall asleep till we waken; and because it lives there unconsciously, can cause no harm. All the strength, all the power that is ours, through our being taken in hand on waking by what is securely bound to our physical and etheric bodies, falls away from us when we become independent of these bodies and begin to be clairvoyantly aware. All the strength and power of the world remains outside us. We have withdrawn from the powers which make us strong and provide us with a shield against the influences of the outer world. We have withdrawn from these supporting powers. The world, however, remains as it is, and because this is so we are faced with the whole power, the whole impact of the surrounding world. The strength we otherwise received directly from our physical body and etheric body must now be within us, so that we can endure and withstand the impact of the world. We must develop this power in our ego and astral body. This is done by following the rules you have received, and which are found in my book, “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and how to attain it.” These rules are calculated to give that inner strength which formerly was imparted to us by higher Beings, and which fails when the external supports which enabled us to withstand the impact of the world fail, when we have ourselves discarded the support provided by our physical and etheric bodies.

Those who have not made themselves inwardly strong enough to be able to replace the supports laid aside with their physical and etheric bodies, by carrying out a true and serious soul-training, those, who above all, have not purified themselves from the qualities of the outer world we describe as “immoral,” may certainly acquire faculties which enable them to some extent to see into the spiritual world. But what is the result? They become what is called “hypersensitives,” they become super-sensitive, as if attacked from every side; they cannot endure what approaches them on all hands. One of the most important facts we have to recognise when striving for progress in spiritual knowledge is that we must strengthen ourselves inwardly by developing the noblest qualities of the soul.

What are these qualities of which we have been speaking and towards which we must strive?

As it is impossible to live in the spiritual world under the brand of selfishness, it is only natural that the banishment of egoism—of everything of the nature of “self” that would fain shelter behind what is spiritual—must form the preparation for spiritual life. The more earnestly this maxim is accepted, the better it is for spiritual progress. It cannot be accepted too earnestly.

Anyone concerned with such things often hears it said:—“I have not done this from egoism!” But when these words are about to pass a man's lips he should pause, he should not allow them to pass, he should rather say to himself:—Thou art really not in a position to say thou canst do something without a trace of egoism. This would be better, because more truthful, and truth in respect of self-knowledge is most important. In no domain does falsehood wreck such vengeance as in the domain of spiritual life. It were better for a man there to lay on himself the command to be truthful than speak in a vague way of “not being egoistic!” It would be better to be truthful and say:—“I acknowledge my egoism,” thus showing his desire at least to overcome it.

I can best express what is connected with the idea of spiritual truth in the following way. One might easily be of the opinion:—“There are people who tell of all kinds of things they have seen and experienced in the higher worlds; this is then spread abroad and is known by others. If one realises that these things are not true, ought one not to use every possible means to contradict them?” Certainly, there are points of view from which such contradiction is necessary. But for those, who as spiritual men are only concerned with the truth, there is always another thought, namely this:—Of the things brought from the spiritual world, only those that are true flourish and bear fruits for the world; what is untrue is most certainly unfruitful.

Expressed more trivially we might say:—However much people lie with regard to spiritual matters these lies have very short legs. The people who spread these lies have to acknowledge that nothing really fruitful comes from them. Truth alone bears fruits in the spiritual realm. This is where our individual spiritual development begins, where we realise and acknowledge our true position. That truth alone is fruitful—that it alone has power to affect anything, must dwell as vital impulse in all spiritual, in all occult movements. Truth is proved by its fruitfulness and by the blessings it brings to man. Untruths and lies are unfruitful. They have but one result which I only hint at, but cannot deal further with to-day—they react most powerfully upon those who originate them. We shall deal with the meaning of this important statement some other time.

As I said, I wished to-day to glance backwards over the work done during the past year; to recall the tone which as feeling-content filled and resounded in our souls.

In speaking of the work carried on outside our own group during the past year I may perhaps mention my own share which reached its culmination in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play we produced in Munich, “Die Pforte der Einwerhung,” the “The Portal of Initiation.” We shall speak at our next group-meeting of what was then attempted, at present I only wish to say that it was then possible to express in a more artistic, more individual form, what had otherwise been said in a more general way. When speaking here or elsewhere of the conditions of spiritual life we speak of these as they are right for every soul. But in doing so it is necessary to keep in view that each man is an independent Being, and each soul must be considered individually. This is why we were obliged to depict one soul in “The Portal of Initiation.” Therefore you must look on this Rosicrucian Mystery not as a hook of instruction, but as an artistic presentation of the preparation for initiation of one man.

We are not concerned here with the way this or that man progresses, but with the progress of him who in the play is called “Johannes Thomasius,” that is with the very individual form the preparation for initiation took in a particular man.

Thus, by approaching nearer to truth, we have arrived at two distinct points of view. First, where we described the whole course of progress, and then that where we penetrated to the very core of an individual soul. All the time we were inspired by the thought that we must draw near, and patiently await the truth from many sides, until these different aspects of the truth were linked together into a single perception. This attitude of reserve in respect of knowledge we desire most especially to acquire. Never let it be said that man cannot experience truth. He can experience it! Only he cannot know the whole truth all at once, but only one side of it. This makes one humble. True humility is a feeling that must be developed here within our group, so that from here it may pass out into the general culture of our day, and there make its influence felt. Our age has need of great modesty in all its activities.

In the spirit of this impulse we shall continue the work of explaining the Christ-problem so that here also we may experience how modesty in respect of knowledge (Erkenntnisbescheidenheit) can be attained, and may thereby progress ever further in the experiencing of truth.

In the last lecture we tried to present a retrospect not only of the content of our studies during the past year, but also of the true meaning—the inner spirit of these studies. In doing so we showed that the spirit which fills our souls when considering the Christ-problem from all possible sides must permeate our whole movement, all our spiritual efforts. We realise that we have been able to grasp one subject from so many different aspects because, in striving after knowledge, we have ever cultivated true modesty with regard to this knowledge. We should like for a moment to speak somewhat more exactly about humility in respect of knowledge.

I have often said that we can only arrive at a true conception of any object when this is viewed from different aspects, that only when these different views are placed side by side is a true picture of the object obtained. Even in ordinary observation we must go all round an object in order to form a comprehensive conception of it. If anyone said that it was possible to grasp an object at a single glance, from one point of view in the spiritual world, he would be much mistaken. Many human errors spring from failing to recognise this. In the accounts given by us of the Event of Palestine great care has been taken that thoroughness in this respect should not be relaxed. We have four accounts of this event, the accounts of the four Evangelists. Those who do not know that in spiritual life an object, being, or event, must be observed from different sides (for people approach such things without much thought) see nothing more in this fact than the possibility of apparent contradictions between the Evangelists. We have repeatedly pointed out that the accounts of the four Evangelists have to be regarded as giving four different aspects of the one mighty Event of Christ, and that they must he compared one with another as we compare four pictures of the same object taken from different sides. If we proceed carefully in this way as we have already tried to do in respect of the Gospels of Matthew, of John, and Luke, and as we hope later to do in respect of the Gospel of Mark, it is seen that the four accounts of the event of Palestine agree in the most perfect way. Thus, in the very fact that there are four Gospels, a great lesson is given showing the necessity of a many sided view if the truth is to be reached.

I have often spoken of the possibility of there being different opinions held by different individuals concerning truth. You will recall how at our general meeting last year I supplemented what is generally called “Theosophy” by another view which I described as the “Anthroposophical view,” and explained how this was related to Theosophy. I showed that there is an ordinary science built on facts and the intelligent comprehensions of facts as revealed to the senses, this when it deals with mankind is called “Anthropology.” It contains everything that can be discovered and investigated by means of the senses. It therefore studies the human organisms as revealed by the instruments and methods of natural science. It studies, for instance, the relics of an earlier humanity, the utensils and instruments of civilisations that have remained hidden within the earth, and seeks from these to form some idea of how the human race has developed. It studies further those stages of development found in savage or uncivilised peoples; and from the conclusions arrived at traces the stages civilised peoples have passed through in former ages. In this way Anthropology forms its conceptions of what man has experienced up to the present stage of development. Much more could be said regarding the nature of Anthropology. I have compared it with a man who learns of a country by walking about on the level, observing the features of the land, its towns, forests, fields, etc., and describing these as seen from this stand-point.

Now mankind can be observed from a different standpoint—theosophical. All Theosophy begins by defining man, by speaking of his being or nature. If you study my “Outline of Occult Science” you will see that everything is summed up and reaches its climax in the description of the being of man himself. If Anthropology can be compared with a man who gathers facts and tries to understand them by walking about on the level, Theosophy can be compared with the observer who climbs a mountain in order to observe the surrounding country from its summit. Much that is spread out on the plain will then fade and only certain features remain. So it is with spiritual observation, with Theosophy. The point of view it takes regarding spiritual matters is a higher one. It follows that many things seen from this standpoint, and many of the ordinary human activities met with in daily life fade away, just as villages and towns vanish when seen from a mountain top.

What I have just said may perhaps not seem very obvious to a beginner in Theosophy. For what such a beginner first learns concerning the nature of man, concerning the different principles of his being, physical body, etheric body, astral body, etc., he tries to understand and form a conception of, but at first he is far from the greater difficulties which face him when he advances further in the acquisition of Theosophical truths. The further one advances the more one realises how infinitely difficult it is to find a connection between what has been gained above, on the spiritual mountain top of Theosophy, and what emerges in daily life as characteristic human feelings, ideas, etc.

We might ask:—Why do Theosophical truths seem obvious and right to many in spite of their not being able to prove what is told them from the spiritual mountain tops, or by what they have themselves seen? This is because the human soul is really designed for truth, not for untruth; it is so organised that it feels it natural when anything true is said. There is a feeling for truth in man; and he should realise the infinite value of this feeling. This is especially the case in our day, for the very reason that the spiritual heights from which the necessary truth can alone be seen are so infinitely high. If people had first to climb these heights they would have to travel a long way in spiritual experience, and those unable to do so would know nothing of the value of these truths for human life. But every soul, are these truths are imparted, can realise them and make them its own.

What is the position of a soul that receives these truths compared with one able to discover them for itself? This can he shown by a quite trivial example, but however trivial it means more than at first appears. Everyone can pull on a boot, but not everyone can make a boot; for this a bootmaker is necessary. What a man receives through the boot does not depend on whether he can himself make it or not, but on whether he makes use of it in the right way. This can be compared exactly with the spiritual truths given to us by spiritual science. We are summoned to make use of them, even though we are not able to discover them for ourselves. And when through our own natural sense of truth we accept and make use of them, they serve us for the directing of our whole lives; through them we know that we are not confined to life between birth and death, that we bear within us a spiritual man, that we pass through repeated earthly lives, and so on. We can make use of these truths. They serve us. Just as a boot protects us from cold, so these truths shield us from spiritual cold, from spiritual poverty. For it is a fact that we are chilled and impoverished spiritually when we only think and feel those things that have reference to the external world of the senses. We must allow that the truths presented to us by those who can bring them down from a higher standpoint can be of service to all, though there may perhaps be only a few who can travel the spiritual path described in recent lectures.

Now every glance into the ordinary world around us—and which when it deals with man is also the concern of Anthropology—shows us how this world is itself the revealer of a world lying behind it, a world that can be seen from the spiritually higher standpoint of Theosophy. Thus even the world of the senses can reveal another world to us when we pass on to its interpretation, when we not only receive the facts it presents to us with our understanding, but begin to interpret these facts. If we cannot see as far over the fields of the sense world as Theosophy can, yet we can stand on the mountain side where the various objects are not absolutely indistinct and some prospect is possible. This standpoint in respect to spiritual things we have called Anthroposophy, and in doing so have shown that there are three ways of considering man—the anthropological, the anthroposophical, and the theosophical.

We hope this year, in connection with the General Assembly, to give lectures on “Psychosophy,” these are important in other ways from those given on “Anthroposophy”; I will then show how the human soul can interpret things for itself from its own impressions and experiences, and can participate in spiritual life in a similar way as in Anthroposophy. And in a future course of lectures on “Pnematosophy” I will bring these lectures to a conclusion so that those dealing with Anthroposophy and with Psychosophy will flow again into Theosophy. All this is for the purpose of evoking in you a sense of the manifold nature of truth. The experiences of one who seeks earnestly for truth is this:—The further he goes the humbler he becomes, and also the more cautious in translating the truths gained at a higher level into words suited to ordinary life. Although, as was stated in the last lecture, these truths are really only valuable when so translated, it must be realised that the task of recalling and translating what has been seen is one of the most difficult in the work of spiritual science. To make what is seen on spiritual heights so clear to the understanding, that sound logic and a healthy sense of truth can accept and understand them presents the very greatest difficulties.

I must lay stress again and again on the fact that in the activities of our group we are especially concerned with the creation of this feeling for, and understanding of, truth. We do not concern ourselves only with the comprehension of what is communicated to us from the spiritual world, it is far more important that we should experience it sympathetically through feeling, and by this means acquire those qualities that should he possessed by all who strive earnestly in the theosophical sense.

Looking at the world that surrounds us we acknowledge that on every side it presents to us the external expressions of an inner spiritual world. For us to-day this is a worn out saying. Just as the human countenance expresses what is passing in a man's soul, so the changing face of the external world can be likened to the play of expressions on the countenance of a living, spiritual world behind the sense world; and we first understand physical events aright when we see in them the expressions of a spiritual world. If a man has not yet been able to reach those heights whence spiritual vision is possible by following his own path of knowledge, he has at least the physical world before him, and can ask himself:—Is not confirmation given me through the evidences of my own senses of what is imparted to me as the result of spiritual vision?

This search for evidence is always possible, but it must be carried out not lightheartedly but with precision.—If you have followed different lectures given by me on spiritual science and have read my “Outline of Occult Science” you will realise that at one period of the earth's development the earth was united with the sun, that these formed one globe; the earth only separated from the sun later. If you remember all you have heard or read you must allow that the animal and plant forms found on the earth to-day are the further development of those that existed at the time when the earth and sun were one. But just as the animal forms of to-day are suited to the present conditions of the earth, so the animal forms of that far off time must have been suited to the planetary body which was then both sun and earth. It follows from this that the animal forms that have remained over from these times have not only remained over, but are the continuation of creatures that existed formerly. There are, for example, animals that still have no eyes, for eyes only have meaning when there is light, such light as streams to earth from the sun when it is outside. Thus among the various creatures of the animal kingdom we find those that have formed eyes after the sun separated from the earth, and also those that are relics of the time when the earth was still united with the sun—that is animals without eyes. Such animals would naturally belong to the lowest types, and so they do. We find it stated in popular books that the possession of eyes began at a certain stage of development. This bears out what spiritual science tells us.

We are able in this way to picture the world around us, in which we ourselves are placed, as the facial expression of the living, weaving life of the spirit. If we merely, considered the physical world, without it revealing to us how it points to a spiritual world, we would never feel the urge, the longing to develop towards that world. Some day a longing for what is spiritual will be aroused in us by the surrounding world itself, some day the spirit must stream down from the spiritual realms as though a door or window that has opened into our everyday world. When will this take place? When does spiritual illumination stream directly into us? It takes place—and you have heard this in many lectures from me and others—when we are in the position to experience our ego.

The moment we experience our ego, we experience something which is directly related to the spiritual world. But what we experience is at the same time in-finitely feeble; it is but a single point amid all the phenomena of nature, the single point which we express by the little word “I.” This word certainly describes something that was originally spiritual, but a spirituality that has dwindled to a single point. All the same what does this shrunken spiritual spark teach us? We cannot learn more of the spiritual world through the experience of our own ego than this ego-point contains, unless we progress to interpretation. But this point possesses what is still more important, namely, through it we are told how we are to know, when we seek to know the spiritual world.

What is the difference between the experiences of the ego and all other experiences? The difference is that we are ourselves within the ego-experiences. All other experiences approach us from outside; we are not ourselves within them. Someone might say here:—“But my thoughts, my will and desires, my preceptions, do these not live within me?” A man can convince himself, through very slight awareness of self, how little he is able to accomplish in respect of dwelling within his will. We imagine that the will can he recognised as that which urges us, as if we were not ourselves within it, but as if in our actions we were compelled by someone or something. This is the case also as regards our perceptions, and as regards the greater part of what people think in daily life. We are not really within these. How little we are within our thoughts in ordinary life is seen when we carefully investigate how much ordinary thought is dependent on education, and on what we have acquired at one time or another, and on surrounding conditions. This is why the ordinary content of human thinking; feeling and will varies so much in different nations and at different epochs. One thing only is the same.—One thing exists everywhere among men, and must be the same in every nation in all parts of the earth and in every human association—this is the experiencing of the single point, the ego.

We may now ask:—What does the experiencing of the ego-point mean? This is not such a simple matter as you might suppose. One might easily think, for example, that one experiences the ego itself. But this is not the case at all. Man does not really experience his ego. What then does he experience? He really experiences a concept of the ego, a percept of it. If the experiencing of the ego was clearly understood by us, it would present something that reached to infinity, that spread out on all sides. If the ego were unable to confront itself, to see itself as an image is seen in a mirror—though this image is only experienced for a moment—man could not experience his own ego, he could form no conception of it. This is man's first experience of the ego, it has to suffice him, for it is precisely this conception that differs from all other conceptions. It differs from them in this, that other conceptions resemble their original, they cannot differ from their original; but when the ego forms a conception of itself it is concerned with itself alone, and the conception is but what remains behind of the ego-experience. It is like a checking or blocking of it, as if we would check it in order to turn it back on itself, and in this checking the ego is confronted by the reflected image of itself which resembles the original. This is what occurs at the experiencing of the ego.

We can therefore say:—We recognise the ego in the conception of it (Ich-vorstellung). But this ego conception differs considerably from all other conceptions, from all other experiences. It differs from them profoundly. For all other conceptions and all other experiences we require something of the nature of an organ. This is clearly seen in respect of sense-perception. In order to have the conception colour we require eyes and so on; it is clear to anyone that in the ordinary perception of the senses an organ is necessary. You might think that no organ was required to perceive what is intimate to your own inner Being, but even in this you can convince yourselves by simple means that organs are necessary. This is dealt with more particularly in my book “Anthroposophy”; here opportunity is given to approach by theosophical methods what there is stated in a manner more suited to the generality. Let us suppose the following—at some period of your lives you grasp a thought or idea. You understand the idea that comes to you. By what means do you understand it? Only through other ideas that you have previously accepted. You realise this because you observe that one man comprehends a new idea that comes to him in one way, another in another way. This is because one man has within him a greater, another a smaller sum of ideas which he has assimilated. The material of old ideas is within us and confronts the new as the eye confronts the light. Out of our own old ideas a kind of “idea-organ” is constructed, and what we have not constructed of this in our present incarnation must be sought in some former one. There it was built up, and we are able to confront the new ideas that come to us with an “organ of ideas.” We require an organ for all the experiences that come to us from the outer world, especially if these are of a spiritual nature. We never stand spiritually naked as it were before what comes to us from the outer world; but are ever dependant on what we have become. Only in a single case do we confront the outer world directly, namely, when we attain ego perception (Ich-wahrnehmung). The ego is present, even when we sleep, but perception of it must always be aroused anew, it must be roused anew each morning when we wake. Even supposing We journeyed in the night to Mars, where our surroundings would be quite different from what they are on earth, yet ego-perception would remain the same! This latter under all conditions take place in the same way because no external organ is required for it—not even an “organ of ideas.” What confronts us here is a direct conception (Vorstellung) of the ego; a conception or perception (Wahrnehmung) certainly, but in its true form. Everything else comes before as a picture seen in a mirror, and is restricted by the form of the mirror. Ego-perceptions come before us absolutely in their true form.

Put in another way one might say:—When realising things with the ego, we are ourselves within them; they cannot possibly be outside of us. We now ask our-selves:—How do individual ego-conceptions or ego-perceptions differ from all other perceptions by the ego? They are distinguished by the direct impression they make on the ego, no other perceptions make this direct impression. But we receive pictures of all that surrounds us; and these in a certain sense can be compared with ego-perceptions. Everything is changed by the ego into an inner experience. The outer world must become our conception if it is to have any meaning or value for us. We form true pictures of the surrounding world, which then continue to live in the ego no matter through which of the sense-organs they have come to us. We smell a substance when we pass it by, and though we do not come in direct contact with it we bear an image of it within us. In the same way we bear within us the image of colours we have seen, and retain pictures of them. The ego preserves such experiences. But if we wish to describe the characteristic feature of these images we must say—it is that they come to us from outside. All the pictures we have been able to unite with our ego, so long as we are in the world of the senses, are the relics of impressions we have received by means of the senses.

One thing the sense-world cannot give us—Ego-perception! This arises in us spontaneously. Thus in ego-perception we have a picture that rises of itself, however closely it may be confined to one point.

Think now of other pictures being added to these, pictures that do not rise through stimulation of the senses, but that rise freely in the ego (as ego-conceptions do), and are therefore formed in the same manner as the ego-conception. These arise in what we call the “Astral world.” There are picture-concepts which arise in the ego without our having received any impression from the outer world.

How do these inner experiences differ from those other pictures we received from the sense-world? We receive pictures of the sense-world by having come in contact with that world; these then become inner impressions, but impressions which have been stimulated from outside.

What are those experiences of the ego which are not directly stimulated by the outer world? We have these in our feelings, our wishes, impulses, instincts and the like. These are not stimulated by the outer world. Even if we do not stand within our feelings, wishes and impulses etc., by means of the senses as already described, yet we must allow an element does enter into our inner feelings, impulses, and desires. In what way do these differ from the sense-pictures we bear within us as a result of what our senses have perceived? You can feel this difference. Pictures received through the senses quietly rest within us, and we try to retain faithful reproductions of them once we have realised our connection with the outer world. But our impulses, desires and instincts are active in us, they represent a force. Though the outer world has no part in the rise of astral pictures, yet the fact of their appearing denotes a certain force. For what is not set going (getrieben) is not there, it cannot arise.

In sense-pictures the “initial force” is the impression received from the outer world. In astral-pictures this force is what lies at the root of desires, impulses, feelings, etc. Only, in life as it is to-day, man is shielded from developing a force in his feelings and desires sufficiently strong to evoke pictures—pictures that would be experienced in the same way as those of the “I” itself.

The most marked feature of the human soul to-day is this powerlessness of its instincts and desires to attain to forming pictures of what the ego places before it. When the ego is confronted with the strong forces of the outer world it is moved to form pictures. When it lives within itself, it has, in the normal man, but one opportunity of perceiving an emerging picture; that is when this picture is the picture of the “I” itself.

Instincts and desires do not work with sufficient strength to form pictures similar to this single ego-experience. If they did they would have to acquire a quality which every external sense-perception has. This quality is of great moment. All sense-perceptions do not grant us the pleasure of doing as we wish. If, for instance, someone lives in a room where there is an unpleasant smell, he cannot dispel it through his impulses and desires. He cannot change the colour of a flower from yellow to red, because he prefers red, merely through his wish to do so. It is characteristic of the sense-world that it remains entirely independent of us. Our wishes and impulses affect it in no way. They are directed altogether to our personal life. What then must happen to them in order that they may he so greatly enhanced that we can experience through them a world of pictures (Bilddasein)? They must become like the external world, which in its construction and in the pictures it calls forth in us does not follow our wishes, but con-strains us to form pictures of the sense-world in accordance with the world around us. If the pictures a man receives of the astral world are to shape themselves aright, he must become as detached from himself, from his own personal sympathies and antipathies, as he is from the presentations of the outer world which come to him through his senses. What he wishes or does not wish must not carry weight with him in any way.

I mentioned in the last lectures that this demand can be formulated as follows—“One must not be egoistic.” This endeavour should not be undertaken lightly, for it is by no means easy to be unegoistic.

There is another fact I would like you to notice. The great difference between the interest we feel in what comes to us from outside compared with what meets us from within. The interest a man takes in his inner life is infinitely greater than in anything the outer world brings him. We certainly know that for many people the outer world when it has been changed into pictures does occasionally have an effect on our subjective feelings; we know people frequently “reckon something to be the blue of heaven,” that they are even not lying but believe what they say. Sympathy and antipathy always enter into such things, people deceive themselves as to what actually comes from outside, allowing it to be changed later into pictures. But these are exceptional cases; for little progress would be made if men allowed themselves to be deceived in daily life. Something in that case would be out of harmony with external life. This would not help them, truth has to be acknowledged as regards the external world; reality is the corrective. It is the same with ordinary sense impressions; external reality is here a good regulator. But when we begin to have inner experiences reality is apt to fail us. It is not then so easy to permit outer reality to make the necessary corrections, and we permit ourselves to he ruled by sympathy and antipathy.

The thing of greatest importance when we begin to approach the spiritual world is that we learn to regard ourselves absolutely with the same indifference with which we regard the outer world.

These truths were formulated in a very strict way in the ancient Pythagorean schools, as were also the truths regarding a most important part of man's knowledge, that concerning immortality. How few there are to-day who take any interest in the question of immortality! The ordinary things of life are what men long for in the life beyond birth and death. But this is a personal interest, a personal longing. The breaking of a tumbler is a matter of small interest to you, but if you had a personal interest in the continued existence of the tumbler, even though broken, the same interest as you have in the immortality of the human soul, you may be sure most people would believe also in the immortality of the tumbler.

Therefore in the schools of Pythagoras teaching concerning immortality was formulated as follows:—

“Only that man is ripe for understanding the truth concerning immortality, who could also endure it if the opposite were true; if he could bear that the question regarding immortality was answered with a ‘no.’ If a man is himself to bring down (selber ausmachen will) anything from the spiritual world regarding immortality," so said the Pythagoreans, "he must not long for immortality; for while there is longing, what he says regarding it is not objective. Opinions regarding the life beyond birth and death if they are to have any value can only come from those who could lie down peacefully in the grave even if there was no immortality.” This was taught in the olden times in the Pythagorean schools when the teacher wished to make his pupils realise how difficult it was to be sufficiently ripe to accept any truth. To be ripe enough to receive a truth and to state it from oneself requires a very special preparation, and must consist in the person being entirely without interest in the said truth. Now, it might well be said regarding immortality:—“It is quite impossible that there should be many people who are not interested in this, there cannot be many such.” People not interested in immortality are those who are told of it and of the eternal nature of human existence, and in spite of this remain uninterested. To accept and make use of the statement concerning reincarnation and human immortality so as to have something for life, can be done by anyone who also accepts the truth without any self-conviction. The fact that one is not sufficiently ripe to accept a truth is no reason for rejecting it. On the contrary, it is being ripe for what life requires of us, when we accept a truth and devote our life to its service. What is the necessary counterpart to the acceptance of truths? One may accept truths calmly even when one is not ripe. But the necessary counter-part to the acceptance of them is—that in the same measure as we long for truth that we may have peace, contentment, and security in life, in the same measure we make ourselves ripe for these truths, such truths as can only be perfected in the spiritual world. An important precept for spiritual life can be drawn from this—that we should accept everything, making what use we can of it in life, but should be as distrustful as possible regarding our presentments of truths, more especially of our own astral experience. This establishes the fact that we must specially guard against those astral experiences that come when we reach the point where we are bound to feel interest, namely, when our own life is under consideration.

Let us suppose that someone through his astral experiences has become ripe enough to carry out some-thing he destined to do next day, to experience next day. It is a personal experience. He guards himself from investigating the record of his personal life; for here he is bound to be interested. People might for instance ask lightly:—“Why does the clairvoyant not investigate the precise moment of his own death?” He does not do so because this can never be without interest to him, and he must hold himself aloof from anything connected with his own personality. Only what is in no way, connected with his own person may be investigated in the spiritual world. Nothing whatever of objective value is transmitted where the investigator is personally interested. He must be willing to confine himself to what is of objective value only, he must never speak of anything that concerns himself in his investigation, or in the impressions he receives from the higher world. When matters arise that concern himself he must be very certain that these are not introduced through his own interest in them. It is exceedingly difficult to investigate anything where the investigator's own interests are concerned.

Thus at the beginning of all endeavours to enter the spiritual world the following rule must be laid to heart:—Nothing that affects oneself must be sought for or considered valuable. The personality must be absolutely excluded. I may add that the “exclusion of everything personal” is exceedingly difficult, for frequently one thinks one has done so, yet is mistaken! For this reason most of the astral pictures seen by one or another are nothing more than a kind of reflection of their own wishes and desires. So long as we are strong enough in our spiritual self to say:—“You must distrust your own spiritual experiences,” these do little harm. But the moment the strength to do so fails and a man declares his experiences to be of value to his life he begins to be unbalanced. It is just as though a person wishing to enter a room finds no door and runs his head against the wall. So the investigator must keep ever before him the maxim:—Be very careful to test your own spiritual experiences. This carefulness consists in setting no more value on such experiences than on any piece of imparted knowledge or enlightenment. We must not apply such knowledge to our own personal life, but merely allow it to enlighten us. It is well if we feel in regard to such experiences:—“You are only being given enlightenment!” For in that case we are in a position as soon as some contradictory idea enters, to correct it.

What I have said to-day is but a part of the many things we shall be considering during the coming winter, and can serve as an introduction to lectures on the life of the human soul, entitled "Psychosophy," which are to follow at a later date.

We have often spoken of that period of human evolution that has passed since the Atlantean catastrophe. We have dealt with the various epochs of this evolution—the original Indian, original Persian, Egypto-Chaldean and Greco-Latin—and then with our own, the fifth epoch of post-Atlantean civilisation. We have also shown that two further epochs will pass, before the coming of another great catastrophe, so that we have to reckon in all seven such epochs of earthly humanity.

It is comprehensible that these epochs should be described differently. For as men of the present day we desire to find how we stand as regards our own mission, we can only gain some idea of what lies before us in the future when we know how far we have participated in these different epochs in the past.

I have often explained how we can distinguish between the separate human being, the little world, or microcosm, and the great world, or macrocosm; I have shown how man, the little cosmos, is a copy of the great world or macrocosm. Though this is a truth, yet it is a very abstract truth, and as generally stated does not mean very much. You will therefore find it helpful if we go into particulars regarding this, and show how certain things met with in mankind have really to be accepted as a little world, and can be compared with another, a greater world.

The man of the present day really belongs to all seven ages of the post-Atlantean epoch. We have passed through all the earlier ages in former incarnations, and will pass through all the later ages in later ones. In each incarnation we receive what the age in question has to give. Because we receive this we bear within us, in a certain sense, the fruits of former evolutions, and the most intimate things within us are really those we have acquired during the ages mentioned. What each of us has acquired in the course of these ages is more or less within human consciousness to-day; while what we acquired generally in our Atlantean incarnations, when the state of consciousness was very different, has sunk more or less into our sub-consciousness, and no longer reverberates within us as that does which we have acquired in post-Atlantean times. In Atlantean times man was more shielded from having his evolution injured in one way or another, because his consciousness was not then so awake as it was in post-Atlantean times. For this reason all we bear within us as the fruits of our Atlantean evolution is more in accordance with the ordering of the world than is that which had its origin in an age when we were already capable of bringing certain things in us into disorder. Ahrimanic and Luciferic Beings certainly influenced man in Atlantean times, but they then worked quite differently, for man was not then capable of shielding himself from them.

That men grew ever more and more conscious is the most important fact of post-Atlantean culture. In this respect human evolution from the Atlantean catastrophe until the next great catastrophe is macrocosmic. Humanity evolves like one great man throughout the seven post-Atlantean periods; and the most important things that were to arise in human consciousness during these seven periods resemble what a single individual experiences in the seven periods of his individual life.

The different ages in the life of a man have been described as follows:—The first seven years, from birth to the change of teeth, is described as the first age. In it man's physical body receives its form, is endowed with it as a gift. With the coming of the second teeth this form, in all its essentials, is fixed. The man then continues to grow within this form, which has received its essential direction. What is accomplished during the first seven years is the construction of the form. This period has to be understood from all sides. We must, for instance, distinguish the first teeth which the child develops early and which fall out, from the second teeth which replace them. These two kinds of teeth, with respect to the laws of the body, are quite different—the first are inherited, they appear as the fruits of the organisms of the man's ancestors, but the second teeth appear as the outcome of the laws of the man's own physical Being! This has to be realised. It is only when we go into such particulars that we observe this difference. We receive our first teeth, because our ancestors pass them on to us with our organism, we acquire our second teeth because our own physical organism is so constituted that we acquire them through it. In the first period the teeth are directly bequeathed, in the second the physical organism is bequeathed, and it produces the second teeth.

After this we distinguish a second period of life, that from the change of teeth until puberty, to about the 14th or 15th year. What is significant in it is the development of the etheric body. The third period, to about the 21st year, represents the development of the astral body. Then follows the development of the ego, and this progresses from the development of the sentient soul to that of the rational soul and on to the consciousness soul. It is thus we distinguish the different ages in the life of a man. In this life, as you know well, only that period is really ordered and regulated, which falls within the first seven years. This is, and must be so, as regards the man of the present day. Such regular differentiations as we find in the first three periods of a man's life do not occur later; neither is the time they last so clearly defined. If we enquire into the causes of this we have to understand that in the evolution of the world a middle period always comes after the first three of any seven periods.

We are living at present in the post-Atlantean age, we have already within us the fruits of the first three periods, and of the fourth, for we are now in the fifth post-Atlantean age, and are living on towards the sixth.

We are entirely justified in finding a resemblance between the evolution of the various post-Atlantean periods and that of the ages in the life of separate individuals, so that here also it is possible to distinguish between what is macrocosmic and what is microcosmic.

Let us take that which is most characteristic of the first post-Atlantean period, the one we call the Old-Indian; for in this the character of the post-Atlantean evolution was most strongly expressed. In this first period an exalted and most clearly differentiated wisdom existed, a primeval wisdom. What was taught in India by the Seven Holy Rischis was in principle the same as was actually beheld in the spiritual world by natural seers, and also by a large part of the people at that time. This ancient wisdom was present in the first Indian period as an inheritance. It was experienced clairvoyantly in Atlantean times, but now it had become more of an inherited primeval wisdom, preserved and given out again by those who, like the Rischis, had risen to spiritual worlds by initiation. What had entered thus into human consciousness was essentially and absolutely an inheritance. It was therefore entirely different in character from present day wisdom. People make a great mistake when they try to express the important matters given out by the Holy Rischis in the first post-Atlantean period in forms similar to those employed by the science of to-day. This is hardly possible. The scientific forms in use to-day appeared first in the course of post-Atlantean culture. The knowledge of the Ancient Rischis was of a very different kind. Those who communicated it, felt how it worked in them, how it rose within them on the instant. If we are to understand what knowledge was at that time, we must realise that its most marked characteristic was that it did not spring in any way from memory. Memory played no part as yet in knowledge. I pray you to keep this in mind. To-day memory plays a main part in the passing on of knowledge. When a university professor mounts the platform, or a public speaker addresses an audience, he must be careful to consider beforehand what he is to speak about, and retain it in his memory. Certainly, there are people who say they do not require to do this, they follow their genius; but this does not take them very far. At the present day the passing on of knowledge depends really very largely on memory.

We gain a correct perception of how knowledge was communicated in the ancient Indian epoch if we grant that knowledge first rose in the head of him who communicated it at the moment he passed it on to others. In former times knowledge was not prepared before-hand as it is to-day. The Rischis did not prepare what they had to say, so that their memory might retain it. They prepared themselves by attuning themselves to what they were about to communicate. They said:—“This knowledge (Wissen) is not built on memory in any way. Memory has no part in it, my soul must first enter into a holy atmosphere, it must be attuned to piety!” They prepared this atmosphere, this feeling, but not what they were to say. At the moment of communication it resembled rather a reading aloud from an invisible script. Listeners who took down in writing what was said would have been unthinkable at that time. This would have been an impossibility, anything preserved by such means would have been regarded at that time as worthless. Only those things were considered of value which a man preserved within his soul, and which his soul then moved him to reproduce and impart to others in the same way as he had received them. It would have been regarded as desecration to write down these communications. Why? Because in the opinion of that day it was thought that what was written on paper could not be the same as what was communicated by word of mouth.

This tradition endured for a long time, for such things are retained far longer in the feelings than in the understanding of men, and when in the middle ages the art of printing was added to that of writing many people regarded it for long as a black art. The old feeling survived, that what passed in a living way from one soul to another should not be preserved in such a grotesquely profane way as was the case when black printer's ink traced spoken words on a white page, thus changing them into something lifeless, in order that later they might be revived in a way perhaps that was far from edifying. We must therefore regard the direct outpouring (Strömung) from soul to soul as a characteristic feature of the time we are considering. This was an outstanding tendency of the first post-Atlantean epoch, and must be realised if we are to understand, for instance, the old Grecian and Germanic rhapsodists, who moved from place to place reciting their very long poems. If they had employed memory they could never have recited these poems again and again in the same way. It was a soul-force, a soul-attribute far more living than memory, that lay behind these long recitations. To-day if anyone recites a poem he must have learnt it beforehand, but these people experienced what they recited, it was as if newly created at the moment. This was strengthened by the fact that in quite other ways than is the case to-day, the soul-element was then more in evidence. In our day, with some justification, everything of a soul nature is more suppressed. When recitations or lectures are given to-day what matters is the meaning; care is taken as to the meaning of the words. This was not the case when in the middle ages a minstrel recited the Nibelungenlied for example. He had still a certain feeling for the inner rhythm, he even stamped with his foot as he marked its rise and fall. These things were but the echoes of what existed in more ancient times. But you would form no true picture of the Rischis of India and their pupils if you thought they did not communicate the ancient knowledge of Atlantis faithfully. The high school pupil of to-day, even if he wrote out the whole lecture, would not have reproduced what had been said as faithfully as the Indian Rischis reproduced the ancient knowledge in their day.

The characteristic feature of the ages that followed is that Atlantean knowledge had ceased to affect them. Up to the decline of the first period, that of ancient Indian culture, the legacy of knowledge man had received continued. Knowledge continued to increase. This came to an end, however, with the first post-Atlantean period, and afterwards hardly anything new came forth from human nature. Increase in knowledge was therefore only possible in the first period, the early Indian, after that it ceased. In the Persian period among those who were influenced by the teaching of Zarathustra, what we can compare with the second age of development in the life of a man began, and it is best understood when so compared. The first period of Indian culture can well he likened to the first part of the life of a man—that from birth to the seventh year—when everything of the nature of form receives its shape, later there is only growth within the established form. Thus it was with the spirit in the first post-Atlantean epoch. What follows later, how man develops the teaching that comes to him in the second part of his life, can be likened to the first period of ancient Persian development and with the instruction then received, only we must be clear as to who the scholars were and who the teachers. I would like to point out something here. Does it not strike you as strange how very differently Zarathustra, the leader of the second post-Atlantean epoch, comes before us to the way, for instance, the Indian Rischis do? While the Rischis appear like holy initiated persons of a far distant age, into whom all the knowledge of ancient Atlantis had poured, Zarathustra comes before us as the first initiate of post-Atlantean times. Something new enters with him. Zarathustra is actually the first historical personality of post-Atlantean times to be initiated into that form of Mystery-knowledge (truly post-Atlantean) in which knowledge was presented in such a way that it was actually comprehensible to the rational understanding of man. What pupils received in those early days in the schools of Zarathustra was pre-eminently a super-sensible knowledge, but it dawned in them so that for the first time it took the form of human conceptions. While it is not possible to reproduce the knowledge of the ancient Rischis in the forms of modern science, this is possible with the knowledge of Zarathustra. Certainly this is a purely super-sensible knowledge, dealing as it does with the super-sensible worlds, but it is clothed in conceptions similar to the conceptions and ideas of post-Atlantean times. Among the followers of Zarathustra a teaching arose of which we can say:—“It was constructed systematically in accordance with the rational conceptions of man.” This means it sprang from the ancient holy treasures of wisdom which evolved up to the end of the Indian period, and continued from generation to generation; no new thing was later added to this, but the old was elaborated further. The mission of the mysteries of the second post-Atlantean period can be realised through a comparison; we can compare it with the publishing of some occult hook. Any book that is the result of investigations into higher world can be clothed in a logical arrangement, thus bringing it down to the physical plane. It is possible to do this. But if my “Outline of Occult Science” had been treated in this way a hook of fifty volumes would have resulted, each as large as the hook itself. If this had been done, each section would have been presented in strictly logical form, this is in the book, and it might have been treated in this way. But it is also possible to proceed otherwise. One can, for instance, leave something to the reader; leave him to think matters out for himself. People must try to do this to-day otherwise the work of occultism could not progress.

Now, in the fifth post-Atlantean period, with his acquired powers of forming conceptions, it is possible for man to approach occult knowledge and to increase it, but at the time of Zarathustra, thoughts had first to be discovered capable of dealing with these facts. At that time knowledge such as we have to-day did not exist. Something there was that had remained over like an echo from the time of the Rischis, and to this was added what was capable of being clothed in human thoughts. But human conceptions had first to be found, and into them super-sensible facts had to be poured. Different degrees in power to grasp what was super-sensible then first made its appearance. We may say:—The Rischis still spoke absolutely in the way men had always spoken, in a pictorial language, an imaginative language. They passed on the knowledge they possessed from soul to soul when speaking in this vital picture-language which came whenever they had any kind of super-sensible knowledge to transmit. With “cause and effect” and the other ideas we have to-day with logic in any form—men did not concern themselves in the least. All that arose later. Then in the second post-Atlantean period they began to be interested in super-sensible knowledge. They then felt for the first time the opposition, as it were, of the physical plane; they felt the necessity of giving expression to what was super-sensible so that it might assume forms that thought could grasp on the physical plane. This was the essential mission of the first period of Persian civilisation.

Then followed the third period, the period of Egyptian culture. People now had super-sensible ideas. This is difficult for the men of to-day. Try and picture conditions as they were at that time; there was as yet no physical science, but people had ideas that had been gained concerning super-sensible worlds, and they could speak of them in the thought-forms of the physical plane.

In the third epoch people began to direct what they had learnt from super-sensible worlds to the physical world. This can again be compared with the third life-period of a man. While in the second life-period he learns; he then goes on to employ what he has learnt. In the third period of their lives most people feel constrained to direct their learning to the physical plane.

The pupils of the heavenly knowledge were those who, in the second epoch, had been pupils of Zarathustra, but they now began to direct what they had learnt to the physical plane. Put into modern language we can say—men now learnt that all they beheld through super-sensible vision could only be understood if expressed by a triangle; if they used the triangle as an image to express the super-sensible, they learnt that the super-sensible part of human nature which permeates the physical part can be grasped as a triad. Other conceptions had come to man so that he now applied physical things to what was non-physical. Geometry, for example, was first learnt so that it was accepted as symbolic of ideas. Men had this and made use of it—the Egyptians in the art of surveying and agriculture, the Chaldeans in the study of the stars and the founding of astrology and astronomy. What formerly was held to be only super-sensible was now applied to things seen physically. People began to use what had been born in them as super-sensible wisdom on the physical plane. This was first done in the third cultural period.

In the fourth period, the Greco-Latin, this became a fact of outstanding importance. Up to that time men possessed super-sensible knowledge, but did not use it as described. It was not necessary for the Holy Rischis to use it in this way, for knowledge flowed into them directly from the spiritual world. In the time of Zarathustra people had only to ponder over spiritual knowledge, and they knew exactly the form this knowledge would take.

In the Egypto-Chaldean age they clothed conceptions from spiritual worlds in what they had gained in physical existence, and in the fourth period they said:—Is it right that what is acquired from the spiritual world should be applied to physical things? Are the things gained in this way really suited to physical conditions?

These questions were only put by man to himself in the fourth period after he had used this knowledge innocently, and applied it to his physical requirements for a long time. He then became more self-conscious and asked:—“What right have I to apply spiritual knowledge to physical uses?”

Now it always happens that, in an age when any important task has to be carried out, some person appears who can fulfil this task. It was such a person to whom it first occurred to ask the question:—“Have I the right to apply my super-sensible ideas to physical facts?” You can see how what I am trying to indicate developed. You can see, for example, how vital Plato's link still was with the ancient world, how he still used ideas in the ancient form, applying them to physical conditions. It was his pupil, Aristotle, who asked the question—“Ought one to do this?” For this reason he is regarded as the founder of logic.

Those who do not concern themselves in any way with spiritual science might ask:—Why did logic arise first in the fourth epoch? Was there not some reason, seeing that evolution had gone on indefinitely, for man to ask himself this question at a specified time?

When conditions are really studied, important turning points in evolution are seen to occur at certain times. One such important turning point in evolution occurred between the time of Plato and Aristotle. In this age there was still, in a certain sense, something of the old connection with the spiritual world, as this existed in Atlantean times. Living knowledge certainly died in the Indian epoch; but it was replaced by something new that came from above. Man now became critical and asked:—How can I apply what is super-sensible to physical things? This means: he was then first aware that he could himself accomplish something; observing the world around him he realised that he could bring something down into this world. This was a most important age.

We divine (spüren) that conceptions and ideas are super-sensible things when from their nature we begin to perceive in them a guarantee for the super-sensible world. But very few people do perceive this. For most people the fabric of conceptions and ideas is worn very thin and threadbare. Although they may divine that something lives in these which can give them proof of human immortality, conviction is not reached, because the conceptions and ideas concerning the solid reality for which man craves are of such a thin-spun consistency. For most people the fabric they have spun from conceptions and ideas is very thin and worn; though something lives in it which can give them consciousness of immortality, they are incapable of full conviction. But at a time when humanity had sunk to the final—hardly any longer believed in—shreds of that fabric of ideas which it had spun from higher worlds, a mighty new impulse came from the spiritual world and entered into it—this was the Christ-Impulse. The greatest spiritual Reality entered humanity in our post-Atlantean age at a time when man was least spiritually gifted, when all that remained to him was the spiritual gift of ideas.

For anyone who studies human development in a wide sense, it is a most interesting consideration, apart from the fact that it affects the soul so overwhelmingly, it is most interesting (even scientifically), to compare the infinite spirituality of that essence which entered human evolution with the Christ Principle, with that which, like a last thin-spun thread from spiritual realms, caused man to ask shortly before: in what way this thread connected him with spirituality. In other words: when we place Aristotelean logic, this weaving of abstract conceptions to which mankind had at last attained, along-side that great Spiritual Outpouring. We can think of no greater disparity than between the spirituality that came down to the physical plane in the Being of Christ, and that which man had preserved for himself. You can therefore understand that in the early Christian centuries it was quite impossible for men to grasp the spiritual nature of Christ with the thin thread of ideas spun from Aristotelean philosophy. Gradually the endeavour arose to grasp the facts of human and world-events in a way conformable to Aristotelean logic. This was the task that faced the philosophy of the middle ages.

It is important for us now to compare the fourth post-Atlantean epoch with the fourth period in the life of a man—that period in which the ego develops—to see how the “I am” of all humanity entered human evolution at a time when humanity as a whole was really furthest withdrawn from the spiritual world. This is why man was at first quite incapable of comprehending Christ except through faith; why Christianity had at first to be a matter of faith; only later, and by degrees, was it to become a matter of knowledge. It will become a matter of knowledge; but we have only now begun to enter with understanding into the study of the Gospels. For hundreds and hundreds of years Christianity was only a matter of faith, and had to be so, because than had descended furthest from the spiritual world.

As this was man's position in the fourth post-Atlantean period, it was necessary after so deep a descent that he should begin to rise once more. The fourth period brought him furthest on the downward path, but also gave him the first great impulse upwards. Naturally this spiritual impulse could not be understood at first, only in the periods that follow will it be possible for him to understand it. But now we can at least recognise the task before us:—We have to refill our ideas with spirit from within.

The evolution of the world is not simple. When, for instance, a ball starts rolling in one direction its momentum tends to make it continue rolling in the same direction. If this is to be changed another impulse must come to give the thrust necessary to a change of direction.

Pre-Christian culture had the tendency to continue the downward plunge into the physical world, and has continued to do so to our day. The upward tendency is only beginning, hence the need of a constant incentive to this upward direction. We can see this downward tendency more especially in men's thoughts. The greater part of what is called philosophy to-day is nothing more than the continued downward roll of the ball. Aristotle divined something of this; he grasped the fact that there was a spiritual reality in the fabric of human thoughts. But a couple of centuries after his day, men were no longer capable of realising that the content of the human head was connected with reality. The driest, most desiccated ideas of the old philosophy are those of Kant and everything associated with Kantism. Kant's philosophy puts the main question in such a way that he cuts every link between what man evolves as ideas, between perceptions as an inner life, and that which ideas really are. All this is old and dead, and is therefore not fitted to give any vital uplift for the future. You will now no longer wonder that the conclusion of my lectures on psychology had a theosophical background. I explained that in all we strive for, more especially as regards knowledge of the soul, our task must be to allow ourselves to be so stimulated by this knowledge, given to us formerly by the Gods and brought down by us to earth, that we can offer it up again on the altars of the Gods.: We have only to make the ideas that come to us froth the spiritual world, once more our own.

It is not from any want of modesty that I say:—Teaching regarding the soul must of necessity be a scientific teaching, that it must rise again from the frozen state into which it has fallen. There have been many psychologists in the past and there are many still to-day, but the ideas they use are void of spiritual life. It is a significant sign that a man like Franz Brentano be allowed the first volume of his book on Psychology to appear in 1874. Though much it contains is distorted, it is on the whole correct. The second volume was ready, and was to have been published that year, but he was unable to complete it, he stuck in it. He still could give an outline of his teaching, but the spiritual impulse necessary if the work was to be brought to a conclusion was wanting.

Such psychologists as we have to-day, Von Wundt and Lipps for example, are not really psychologists for they work only with preconceived ideas; from the first they were incapable of producing anything. Brentano's psychology was fitted to do this, but it remained incomplete. This is the fate of all knowledge that is dying. Death does not enter the domain of natural science so quickly. Here people can work with ideas, for the facts they have accumulated speak for themselves. In the Science of Spirit this does not happen so easily. The whole substratum is immediately lost if people employ ordinary ideas. The muscles of the heart do not immediately cease to beat even if analysed like a mineral product without any recognition of their true nature; but the soul cannot be analysed in this way.

Thus science dies from above downwards, and men will gradually reach a point where they will certainly be able to appreciate natural laws, but in a way entirely independent of science. The construction of machines, instruments, telephones and the like, is something very different from understanding science in the right way or carrying it a step further. Anyone can make use of an electric apparatus without necessarily understanding it. True science is gradually dying. We have now reached a point where external science must receive new life from spiritual science. Our fifth period of culture is that in which the ball of science rolls slowly downhill.

When it can roll no further its activity will cease, as in the case of Brentano. At the same time the upward progress of humanity must receive ever more life. And it will receive it. This can only happen when efforts are made by which knowledge, even if this has been gained outwardly, becomes fruitful through what occult investigation has to give. Our age, the fifth period, will increasingly assume a character which will show that the ancient Egypto-Chaldean epoch is repeated in it; as yet we have not gone very far with this repetition, it is only beginning. That this is the case can be gathered from what occurred at our annual general meeting. On that occasion Herr Seiler spoke about “Astrology” showing, that as spiritual scientists you were in a position to connect certain conceptions with astrological ideas, whereas this was not possible with the ideas of modern astronomy. Modern astronomy would consider these ideas to be nonsense. This is not because of what astronomical science is in itself, for this science has a better opportunity than any other of being led back to what is spiritual; but because men's thoughts are far removed from any return to spirituality. There is a means, through what astronomy has to offer, by which such a return might easily be made to the fundamental truths of Astrology so undervalued to-day. But some time must elapse before a bridge can he formed between these two. During this time all kinds of theories will be devised, theories by which the movements of the planets, for instance, will be explained in a purely materialistic way. Things will be still more difficult in the domain of chemistry, and in everything connected with life. Here it will he still more difficult to build the bridge. It will he done most easily in the domain of soul-knowledge. To do so it is necessary that people should understand what was stated at the conclusion of my lecture on “Psychology.” There I showed that the stream of soul-life does not only flow from the past towards the future, but also from the future into the past; that we have two time-streams—the etheric part of the life of the soul goes towards the future, the astral part of us on the other hand flows back towards the past. (There is probably no one on the earth to-day who is conscious of this unless he has an impulse towards what is spiritual.) We are first able to form a conception of the life of the soul, when we realise that something comes continually to meet us out of the future. Otherwise this is quite impossible. We must be able to form such a conception, and for this, when speaking of cause and effect, we must break with those ordinary methods of thought which deal mainly with the past. We must not only reckon with the past in such connections, but must speak of the future as something real; something that comes towards us in just as real a way as the past slips from us. But it will be a long time yet before such ideas become prevalent, and till they do there will be no psychology.

The nineteenth century produced a smart idea—“Psychology without souls.” People were very proud of this idea, and with it they declared:—“We simply study the revelations of the human soul, but do not concern ourselves with the soul that is the cause of these!”

A Soul-teaching without Souls! This can be carried further; but what results (to use a common comparison), is nothing else than a meal time without food. Such is psychology! Now people are of course not satisfied when dinner time comes and the plates are empty; but the science of the nineteenth century was strangely satisfied with the psychology put before it, which was in no way concerned with the soul. This began comparatively early, but into every part of it spiritual life must flow.

Therefore we have to record the beginning among us of an entirely new life. The old in a certain sense is finished and a new life must begin. We must feel this. We must feel that a primeval wisdom came to us from ancient Atlantean times, that this gradually declined, and we are now faced with the task of beginning in our present incarnation to gather more and more new wisdom which will be the wisdom of the men of a later day. The coming of the Christ-Impulse made this possible. It will continually develop a living activity, and from it men will perhaps be able best to evolve towards the real, historic Christ, when all tradition concerning Him and all that is outwardly connected with these traditions has died away.

From what has been said you can see how the post-Atlantean evolution can actually be compared with the life of a single man; how it is indeed a kind of macrocosm facing man—the microcosm. But the individual man is in a very strange position. What is left to him for the second half of his life of all he acquired in the first half, which when used up is followed by death?

The spirit alone can conquer death and carry on to a new incarnation that which gradually begins to decay when we have passed the first half of our life. Our evolution advances until our thirty-fifth year, then it begins to decline. But the spirit then first begins truly to rise! What it is unable to develop further in the second half of life within the body, it brings to completion in a succeeding incarnation. Thus we see the body gradually decline, but the spirit blossom more and more.

The macrocosm reveals a picture similar to that of man:—Up to the fourth post-Atlantean epoch we have a youthful upward striving cultural development; from then onwards a real decline; death everywhere as regards the development of human consciousness; but at the same time the dawn of a new spiritual life. The spiritual life of man will be born again in the age following our present one. But he will have to work with full consciousness on what is to be reincarnated. When this happens the other must die, truly die. We gaze prophetically into the future; many sciences have arisen and will arise for the benefit of post-Atlantean civilisation, they, however, belong to what is dying. The life that streamed directly into human life along with the Impulse of Christ will in future rise (ausleben) in man in the same way as Atlantean knowledge rose within the holy Rischis.

What ordinary science knows of Copernicus to-day is but the external part of his knowledge, the part belonging to decline. That which will live on, that will be fruitful, not only the part through which he has already worked for four centuries, this part man must win for himself. The teaching of Copernicus as given to-day is not so very true, its truth will first be revealed by spiritual science.

So it is as regards much that is held to be most true in astronomy, and so it will be with everything else which men value as knowledge to-day. Certainly, what science discovers to-day is profitable. Therein lies its usefulness. In so far as the science of to-day is technical it is justified; but in so far as it has something to con-tribute to human knowledge, it is a dead product. It is useful for trade, but for that no spiritual content is required. In so far as it seeks to discover anything concerning the mysteries of the universe, it belongs to declining civilisation. In order to enrich our knowledge of the secrets of the universe, external science must super-impose on all it has to offer, the wisdom derived from spiritual science.

What I have said to-day can form an introduction to our studies on the Gospel of Mark, which are about to begin. But first I had to speak of the necessity for the entrance into humanity of the greatest Spiritual Impulse of all time at a moment when only the last faint shreds of spirituality remained to it.

From my book, “Christianity as Mystical Fact,” it can be gathered that the Gospels, when rightly understood, must be accepted in a very special way. As I intend to speak on the Gospels during this winter I would like to say that it is not possible for me always to begin again from the beginning for the sake of the younger members, so that there will certainly be much in these lectures that will be difficult of comprehension for younger members.

It has frequently been remarked on the occasion of the annual meeting how necessary it is that our younger members should take part in the courses of lectures, that these should be arranged so that early teachings are constantly repeated. May I say here something rather strange—it does not seem practical that the younger members should work so very energetically at going over the beginnings of theosophical life. In that case it might happen that the higher realms of spiritual science were incomprehensible to them, and they might for this reason form strange opinions as to what spiritual science is. This is, however, a matter for the individual member.

I showed in the book mentioned above that we have to accept the Gospels as “books of initiation.” This means that they are nothing less than accounts of the ancient ritual of initiation, paraphrased in a certain way. What is stated in these ancient writings? They mainly contain accounts of how the candidate in his training was led step by step along the path to higher worlds. How he gradually went through certain soul-experiences and was finally brought to the point where certain forces slumbering in his soul were awakened. We read how higher stages gradually evolved out of lower ones, up to that stage when the spiritual world dawned within the soul of the would-be initiate and the secrets of the spiritual world were revealed to him. He could then look into the spiritual world. He could behold, for example, the Beings of the different hierarchies as we have described them in other connections on many occasions. Thus the content of such “books of initiation” was what anyone seeking initiation had to carry out.

In studying pre-Christian ages we find that many persons passed through initiation in different centres of the Mysteries; that this was not always exactly the same in form, though similar in character, that the stages were introduced one by one up to the point where the person seeking initiation could see into the spiritual world, where the Beings of the Hierarchies appeared before him spiritually—that is in a different way to a physical appearance.

This was how it was in pre-Christian times. What meaning for Christianity had these initiations into the ancient Mysteries? What was their significance towards the Christ-Impulse? Their significance was that a Being, outwardly visible on the physical plane and known as “Jesus of Nazareth,” disclosed the secrets of the spiritual world in a way that was not customary, in a way not in accordance with the methods of pre-Christian times. An individual initiated in accordance with ancient ritual (when the events just described had taken place in his soul) could come before men and speak of the secrets of the spiritual kingdoms. But in the case of Christ Jesus something was present by which this personality, Jesus of Nazareth, could speak of these hidden matters without having been led to them in the ancient customary manner.

Jesus of Nazareth had been led to them through what is called the baptism in Jordan. The Spirit of Christ then entered into him. From this moment—that is from the moment of an historic event when the person of Christ Jesus was initiated in so open a way—the Spirit of Christ spoke to the people around Him of the Mysteries of the spiritual realms, but in a higher way than had been done before. Something had there-fore been accomplished on the physical plane, open for all the world to see, which formerly had been attainable—and to a certain extent only by initiates in the depths of the Mysteries, so that they might then go forth and speak of these mysteries to their fellow men. To put the matter pictorially we might say:—We look back to the ancient temple of the Mysteries, we see the Heirophant performing the rites of initiation, so that the person initiated can look into the spiritual world, and can then go forth and teach others of this world. This had always been carried out gradually and in the secret depths of the Temple. Any talk of such things in the world outside the Mysteries, any talk concerning the spiritual world, was an utter impossibility. But now, what had often and often taken place in the depths of the Mysteries, had been transferred to the outer world, it took place in Palestine. There it was enacted as an historic fact, as the development of Jesus of Nazareth; it was enacted historically in the Mystery of Golgotha. And we have to accept this Mystery, set forth as it was historically before all the world, as forming the link between the Mystery of Golgotha and those ancient Temple-Mysteries of the past.

Writings descriptive of initiation, though dealing in essence with the same stages of development differed in certain particulars in different parts of the earth, and were suited to the differences in human individuals according to space and time. Knowing this let us endeavour to enter into the soul of one of those, generally called Evangelists, who concerned themselves with the writing of our Gospels. These men, through their own occult schooling, had some knowledge of the initiation literature of the various peoples and Mysteries. They knew what men had to pass through before it was possible for them to speak of the secrets of spiritual realms and spiritual Hierarchies. And now through the events that had occurred in Palestine, and through the Mystery of Golgotha, they were aware that what formerly had only been seen by initiates in the temple of the Mysteries, had been enacted openly on the plane of history before all the world, and that it would henceforth enter ever more and more deeply into the minds and souls of men.

The Evangelists were not biographers in the ordinary sense of the word when things are written which really do not concern the world, and which no one requires to know about any actively creative personality. They were not biographers like those who ferret out each private concern of the person they write of, but they were biographers in so far as they described the life of Christ by saying:—“Something happened at a certain time to Jesus of Nazareth, into whom the Christ entered, which we have seen happen again and again in the Mysteries; but there it was not compressed as a historic event into a few short years; here, on the contrary, it has become an event of history, yet is at the same time a repetition of Temple-ritual; we can therefore describe this life by describing the different stages formerly passed through during initiation.”

Thus were have to regard the Gospels as books of instructions concerning initiation. In them are found again the ancient directions for initiation, but so that we are shown in a certain way the reason why that which formerly occurred in the depths of the Mysteries now emerges on to the great plane of history. The Evangelist who begins his Gospel by stating the reason for this, who tells from the beginning why he is in a position to write of an historic event which, transformed into something greater, fulfils the instructions given for initiation, is the writer of the Gospel according to Mark. He tells from the first how man has evolved so that this great fact of the removal of initiation from the secret depth of the temples and the setting of it openly on the plane of history, might come to pass. He tells us from the beginning that this is connected with an event of immeasurably great importance to human evolution; an event foretold by the Hebrew Prophets. For what occurred in Palestine as the Mystery of Golgotha had been seen and spoken of prophetically by Hebrew Initiates and Prophets.

If we try to enter into the soul of such a man as the Prophet Isaiah, with whose words the Gospel according to Mark begins, we find that he declares somewhat as follows:—A time will come when the souls of men will perceive differently than they do now; this time is now being prepared for. (Isaiah refers here to his own day.) What is it he wishes to tell us? You know that the Gospel according to Mark begins with the introduction of a mighty saying of this Prophet. You know the words well, and how they are employed. I make use here of the ordinary translation of C. Weizsäcker:—

Behold I send my messenger before thee, he shall prepare thy way. Hark to the cry in the wilderness: Make ready the way of the Lord. Make his path straight.

Thus, it is fairly well translated in our Gospel literature. The Prophet refers in these words to the greatest event in history—to the Mystery of Golgotha.

You, know that in our studies of the other Gospels great trouble has been taken to translate important passages in a comprehensible way. What matters most in this, is not the giving of a correct verbal translation according to the dictionary, but in choosing words that reproduce the deep significance of the original and convey this to us in our own language; not only in presenting them theoretically to our understanding, but so that the whole feeling that accompanied the peculiar quality of the language of that day is also passed on to us. For speech at that time was totally different from the present manner of speech. I would like to impress this fact on you, that speech was then not so abstract, so trivial as it is to-day.

The whole manner of expressing anything was such that an ever deeper meaning, a richer significance and feeling-content was imparted to the listener along with the actual words, yet he knew most unmistakably what this feeling-content was. A whole WORLD was then heard in the spoken word compared with what is ordinarily heard to-day. This is a special quality of the Hebrew tongue, it is exceedingly rich in this power of concealing a very great deal behind the words, because the images employed were taken altogether from the sense-world. Expressions such as “prepare the way” or “make straight the path” are pictures drawn from the sense-world. It is as if the path were prepared with spades and shovels. But when such words were used, the peculiarity of this language compared with others was that behind the expressions employed to denote outward things, a whole spiritual world stood—it stood there so clearly and incontestably that no one could interpret it to their own liking, as is so often done with poetry, where all kinds of things are sometimes read into it. The reason for this was that in the ancient Hebrew language, in the personal use of the language, which cannot be shown in the script, it was possible for whole hidden worlds to be given in the tone. A feeling for such secret things existed.

In Greek, the language of the Gospel text, this is not nearly so much the case. All the same it was still possible, without occult knowledge, to obtain far better translations from the Greek than from the language used by the Evangelists.

As a matter of fact, one translator has merely copied another in this without going into the matter philologically or proving how the original compared with the Greek text. I will give you later a single example of how great were the errors that arose through this. To-day I will not interrupt the course of our studies, but will try, not philologically, but with the help of what can be learnt through spiritual investigations, to put before you some important things concerning the beginning of the Gospel of Mark.

I will start with this important passage from the prophecies of Isaiah, wherein he tries to show what is to come to pass through the Event of Palestine, so that you may discover through your feeling what it means.

The Greek text is as follows:

We must in the first place clearly understand that the word messenger or angel was only used in olden times in the sense employed by us when describing the Hierarchies, that is when we describe those Beings who stand immediately above man in the ranks of the hierarchies. We must feel when we read the words “his angel” that a Being belonging to this realm is meant. If this is not felt then the meaning of the whole passage is lost. Spiritual science alone can provide a foundation for such an understanding, and also for all it has to tell us about the Christ-Event.

What is the fact of greatest importance in the Christ-Impulse? The fact that through it full consciousness first entered the human soul so that a place might be prepared there for a self-conscious ego. So that there might gradually arise within this self-consciousness ego in the further course of earthly evolution, all the secret things (Geheimnisse) which formerly arose by a kind of natural clairvoyance within the astral body.

The present epoch was preceded by one in which men still carried over with them into post-Atlantean culture a natural clairvoyance which enabled them to look into the spiritual world. In certain abnormal conditions of soul the secrets of the spiritual world still poured down into men, and they were able to look up to the Hierarchies. They naturally saw more often, and for a longer period, the Hierarchy which stands nearest to man—The Hierarchy of Angels. They saw them as the Beings standing immediately above man. In the time of this ancient clairvoyance men were not aware that they possessed something within them that was to lead them to the spiritual world. They looked on it as a grace accorded to them from without, as something granted to their souls by spiritual powers. Therefore the Prophets looking to the future could speak as follows:—“A time is coming when man will be aware of his ego; he will then know that it is through the self-conscious ego that the secrets of the spiritual world will come to him.” All this was to come. A time was to come in which man would say: “When I have my ego in me, I shall be able through the power it brings, to penetrate to the secrets of the spiritual world.” This had, however, first to be prepared for.

Thus man, who is as it were, the lowest of the Hierarchies, had to he prepared for what he was to become by being equipped with something which as yet he did not possess. The messenger or Angel, announced that man would become an ego-being in the fullest sense of the word. While the mission of former Angels had been to reveal to man the spiritual world, a special Angel was now to receive a special mission. This Angel was to carry revelation a stage further, and make known to man that he was to enter consciously into his ego, while the revelations of former Angels had not been suited to a self-conscious ego.

So Isaiah announces:—“The age of the Mystery of the Ego is to come, and from among the host of Angels one will be specially chosen to declare to you this Mystery!” Only in this way can we understand what is meant when it says that the Messenger or Angel was sent before. Before whom was the Messenger sent? He was sent beforehand to those who were to attain their self-conscious ego, and was to come as a Being from the Hierarchy of Angels. No angel had as yet announced generally to men that it was foretold they were to receive a self-conscious ego. So this messenger of whom the Prophet Isaiah spoke came to tell them to prepare themselves inwardly, to create within their souls a place for the ego, to prepare for the full validity of the ego. What is most important in this passage is the reference to the great change in the evolution of the human soul; whereas formerly men had to go out of themselves in order to enter the spiritual world, from this time onwards they could continue within their ego, and could, through it, discover the secrets of that world.

Let us now compare a soul of olden times with one from the time when the Christ-Impulse was drawing near; picture a man of the earlier pre-Christian centuries. If wishing to enter the spiritual world he could not to do so and maintain his self-consciousness however highly he was developed. To do this he had to divest himself of his self-consciousness, had to pass into an unconscious condition; he had to rise into the world of the Hierarchies—the world of the spirit. His consciousness was lowered. This was an old feeling belonging to pre-Christian times. What then was the position of a man who did not altogether belong to the age when it was natural for him, on the withdrawal of self-consciousness, to find himself in the spiritual world; and what was the position of the man who did not live at a time when humanity was at the stage when his ego could be developed? The ego existed already in Atlantean times, but complete certainty that the greatest mystery of the spiritual world could well up within it came first to man through the Impulse of Christ. This was the feeling that caused men in the days of the old initiation to say:—“When I desire to enter the spiritual world and learn what these worlds can reveal to me, I have to suppress a certain part of me and stimulate and bring life to another part of my soul.” What had to be suppressed? And what had to be made especially alive? That part of his soul which was gradually to develop into the “I” had to be suppressed; this is what had to become darker, heavier. It could retain no memory. It had to become void and empty. On the other hand the astral body, the body which can give a certain degree of clairvoyance, had to be specially stimulated. When this happened ancient clairvoyant powers of perception entered the astral body.

I have said that the ego was already present to a certain extent, but man could not make use of it when he desired to investigate the secrets of the spiritual world. The ego had in this case to be suppressed and the astral body stimulated. This stimulation of the astral body had become ever more and more impossible. In ancient times suppression of the ego and stimulation of the astral body so that the secrets of the spiritual world could pour into it, was something that belonged to the elemental attributes of man. Advance in evolution consisted in the increasing incapacity of the astral body to receive the secrets of the spiritual world. At this stage men acknowledged:—“My astral body will become ever less able to attain what once was mine through the old form of clairvoyance, my ego also will cease to pass out of me in the way it was wont to do, and as yet it is unable to rise to anything of itself.” The most gifted clairvoyant was at most aware of something empty, something void, within his soul. Such was the ego to which as yet no Impulse had been imparted. At the same time men were aware it was not possible for them to enter the spiritual world through the ego.

From this you can gather what was the soul-attitude of those who desired to look into the spiritual realms at the time when the Christ-Impulse was approaching. They might have said:—“I can no longer develop in my astral body what formerly it was possible to develop; and no impulse has yet come to my ego; my soul is chaotic, I feel unable to rise to the spiritual world.”

Then as the time for the coming of the Christ-Impulse drew near certain methods were employed, men underwent a certain training, with the result that they made the acquaintance of those who were not as yet filled with the spirit. When seeking entrance into higher worlds they were told:—“Realise that thou canst not rise to these worlds through thy astral body; thou must first of all enter that inward place where thou feelest thyself as man, where thou art no longer conscious of the smallest connection with the outer world.”

This was how men felt as the time for the coming of the Christ-Impulse drew near. Everyone who sought for initiation realised that his astral body was no longer fitted to be the means for his entrance into the spiritual world; that the time for this was past; and that the ego was not as yet ready for it. But those who desired to receive the Impulse, who longed to leave the body and penetrate to spiritual worlds, divined (more than divine they could not) that there was some-thing in them that strove with all its might towards that Spiritual Impulse. This soul-experience which all passed through who sought at that time the path to spiritual illumination was called “the path of loneliness.” What, then, had the messenger to do who prepared the way for the Christ-Event? He had to tell those who desired to know of the approaching Impulse, about “the path of loneliness.” He had to know loneliness fundamentally. He had to be the preacher of this loneliness of soul. You will come to know, as you study the Gospel of Mark further, that in certain cases great Spiritual Beings through whom some important advance in human evolution was to be carried out found the instruments they required in living men, and that they entered into them so as to live within a soul in bodily incarnation. The “messenger” spoken of by Isaiah, who must not be accepted as a man quite in the ordinary sense, took possession of the soul of the re-incarnated Elias, lived in him and announced the approach of the Christ-Impulse. It was this messenger who spoke from the soul of John the Baptist. Whence came this voice? It sprang from what I have just described as a great loneliness of soul. We read of this in the Gospel according to Mark, it says:—“Listen to the cry of soul-loneliness.” The Greek word “ὲντηὲφήμ ω” should not be translated in a symbolic sense by “wilderness,” thus giving them an external meaning. In these words an image is presented to us by which the whole spiritual world may be grasped. Their real meaning is “in loneliness.”

To understand this expression better, we must occupy ourselves a little with the true meaning of what is felt by the word “κνφιος” or Lord, as it is usually translated in the lines “prepare the way of the Lord.” The true meaning is something we can still divine in the Greek, and is confirmed when we associate it with ancient tradition. In ancient usage this word had not the trivial meaning it has to-day.

In this materialistic age man has become a great Philistine in respect of language. Words are no longer “the bodies of soul-beings,” so that it is possible to sense a whole world in them.

What was felt in the Greek word “κνφιος” or Lord when spoken in the connection I have indicated? Men felt that it was an image of what went on within them, of what they sensed was happening in their soul-life. The uprising of the “I am” from the depths of the soul was felt as the coming of the “Lord” and “Ruler,” he who regulated and ordered the soul-forces and is used in the sense employed to-day when we say the various soul-forces possessed by man—thinking, feeling and willing, are the servants of his soul. But within the soul there is a master, the ego.

This is shown by the fact that whereas in old times men said “it thinks,” and in respect of feeling and willing “it feels,” “it wills within me”; men now say when the ego, the Lord of the soul-forces is in command and the mighty change in human evolution is felt, “I think,” “I feel,” “I will.” In earlier days the soul was to a certain extent unconscious, it was imprisoned and submerged within the forces that served it. But now the ego, the Lord of the soul-forces was to be born! The cry went forth:—“He who is Lord of the soul is coming!” No person or Being is meant by these words, but only the emergence of the ego as “Lord” of the soul.

This was taught in the Temples where preparation was made for what was to come to pass in human nature. With holy reverence and deep humility it was made known:—For a time the condition of souls was such that they had in them only the serving powers of thinking, feeling and willing; but now the “Ruler” was to be born.

This mighty fact is now proceeding; its development will go slowly on until the end of the earth-age, when it will have gained ever more and more power. Yes, this will come to pass! And it is the Christ who gives the first impulse to this development. This is the “Great Hour,” the turning point of the world's time-piece, the hour when Christ lived on earth. The hands of the world clock now point to the moment of the coming of the ego. As Lord of the forces of the souls it now begins to evolve ever greater power and will have reached its goal when the earth perishes and man passes on to still higher stages of development.

It is only when we try to feel, as people must have felt in those early days, that it is possible for us to form some idea of what Isaiah desired to say, and John the Baptist to repeat. Isaiah referred to the great event that was to take place within the souls of men, and to the course of the further development of these souls. But then we must not translate the word “λνφιοσ,” as “straight” as is usually done, nor as “level,” but as “open,” so that the road could be used.

It is then the “Lord” comes, he takes his way towards the human soul. But man must do something so that he can really take possession of the soul. The way must be made free, open. In short, if we translate this passage so that it means something, and if at the same time we hold to tradition, it must be done some-what as follows:

Take heed,¹ I send my Angel before the ego in thee, he shall prepare the direction (Richtung).

Hark to the cry in the (souls) loneliness, (the cry of longing for the Lord of the soul): prepare the direction for the (soul's) ruler; work that the way be open for him.

In this form of words you have approximately an idea of what can be felt in the words of Isaiah. These words or their content, was carried over by the Angel into the soul of the Baptist. Why could the Angel do this? To answer this question we must consider for a little the nature and method of the initiation of John the Baptist, and how this initiation affected his soul.

From former lectures you know that a man can either be initiated by descending into his own soul or by going forth from his soul, by liberation from the body and uniting his soul-forces with the cosmos. These two paths were followed by different peoples in the most varied manner. When a man desired to pour out his soul into the macrocosm, the twelve stages through which he had to pass to attain to this were “marked” by the twelve signs of the Zodiac; for his soul had to expand in certain clearly defined directions of the Macrocosm. Now a very great deal was already attained—something important that is for the historical evolution of the world—when any soul had evolved so far as to be able to receive into it all the macrocosmic forces springing from those hidden things which are the meaning of each of the constellations. As a rule the ancient rites of initiations were conducted so that the soul-expansion of one Initiate was directed to the macrocosmic secret, say of Capricorn, another to those of Cancer, of the Balance, and so on. I have explained on other occasions that there are twelve different possible ways of expansion into the Macrocosm, and that these are indicated symbolically by the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Anyone attaining initiation through expansion of his soul into the macrocosm, and who does not attain at once to the highest—the Sun initiation—but only to a partial initiation, would have his soul-vision directed to the mysteries connected with some special constellation. To attain this he would have to turn his gaze away from everything of a material nature. This means, care would have to be taken that his gaze was directed, either through the rites of the Mysteries, or through John the Baptist by “Grace from above,” in such a way that he would have the earth between him and the special constellation. In other words, his glance had to be directed at night to the constellation through the earth. When a constellation is seen with physical eyes it is the physical constellation that is seen. But when a man's gaze can penetrate the substance of the earth, which is between him and the physical constellation, he does not see the physical but the spiritual part of the earth; that is he sees the mysteries (Geheimnesse) which the constellation expresses.

The training that John the Baptist had passed through had made it possible for him to gaze at night through the material earth upon the constellation Aquarius, the Waterman. He had received therefore (after the Angel had entered into his soul) the initiation of Aquarius. Thus, through all he knew and had felt, John the Baptist was able to put himself in touch with the faculties of the Angel, so that through this Being he could make the content of the “Waterman-initiation” known; and the information he gave respecting this was: that the lordship of the ego, the “Lord,” would enter men's souls. This is what the initiation of the Waterman gave.

But simultaneously the Baptist declared that the time had now come when a change was to take place in this initiation, it was to be replaced by another, one by which men would be able to understand the approaching lordship of the ego. Therefore he said to his disciples:—“I am he who, through the initiation of the Waterman has all the powers of his Angel at his disposal. But after me ONE will come who has at his command all the subsequent powers of his Angel!”

If you advance by day toward the sun from the constellation of Ares, through that of the Bull, the Twins and so on to Virgo, you must advance at night from the direction of the Waterman (Aquarius) to the constellation of the Fishes, that is, you must advance in the direction of the Spiritual Sun. John had received the Waterman-initiation, and he pointed out that he who was to come after him would be an Initiate of Picis, the initiation which follows on the initiation passed through by John, and was therefore of a higher order. The Baptist told his intimate disciples:—“Through the initiation of Aquarius I have only those powers at my disposal by which I can announce through my Angel that the Lord—the ruler—is coming, but after me One will come who has powers symbolised by the initiation of the sign of the Fishes. Into him the Christ will enter!”

In these words John the Baptist refers to Jesus of Nazareth. Ancient tradition has on this account assigned to Christ Jesus the symbol of the Fish; and as everything that occurs outwardly is symbolic of in-ward events—though these may occur outwardly—the helpers appointed to Him were fishermen. This is an external historic fact, at the same time as regards spiritual secrets it is profoundly symbolic. John declared “a higher initiation is to come to humanity,” and he described himself as a “Waterman.” This is absolutely clear. But we must learn to see ever more clearly how the images employed to express the hidden things of men are at the same time connected with astronomical and cosmic mysteries.

“I have baptised you with water,” said John. Water baptism was specially the baptism within the power of those who had received from heaven the initiation of the “Waterman.” But in that the Spiritual Sun progresses in the opposite direction to the physical sun, which advances from the sign of the Virgin to that of the Balance; the Spiritual Sun (as in the advance from John the Baptist to Jesus of Nazareth) progresses from the Waterman to the Fishes. And were anyone to appear in the world having experienced the initiation of the Fishes and able therefore to receive into him those spiritual forces, those spiritual impulses, which are the instruments of the Fish-initiation, then it would be possible for him to baptise not only as John did with water, but to baptise in the higher sense described by John as the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

In this lecture I have put before you in a certain way a two-fold conception:—Firstly, I have shown that in the Gospel according to Mark facts of human evolution, historical events, are dealt with in which mention is made of a higher Power, of an “Angelic,” not a human power; and that this Power spoke through John the Baptist. On the other hand I have shown that in the accounts given here reference is made to heavenly events; namely, to the progress of the Spiritual Sun from the sign of the Waterman to that of the Fishes. Indeed the Gospel according to Mark contains in every verse something which can only be read aright, when, in the sequence of the words, we keep before us both their human and their cosmic, astronomical meaning, and when we realise that something lives in man, the true significance of which is only to be found in heaven. Only when this is done can the connection between the mysteries of the cosmos and the mysteries of human nature be more clearly understood. To-day, at the close of my lecture, I can but hint at what lies behind such things. I merely wished to-day to give you some premonitions of what lies in this direction. For we shall have to dive to very great depths in studying the Gospel of Mark, and you will have to ponder long and deeply if you are to attain to something more than “premonitions.” In what follows I will try to make clear to you the way this Gospel has to be read.

You all know the rainbow. To a child it appears as something real in the firmament. Until explained to him, he believes he can grasp it with his hands. Later, man learns that the rainbow does not depend on itself, but that it only appears when rain and sunshine stand related to each other in a certain way; when this relationship is changed it disappears. Thus it is not a reality; it is but an illusion. The realities as regards the rainbow are rain and sunshine.

If anyone has made a little progress on the path of occult development something is revealed to him which quite of himself he compares with the rainbow. Of this he says:—It is actually not true, it is but an appearance held together by things outside it. Do you know what this “appearance” is? It is man himself!

Man is only an appearance, a semblance, and if with his physical senses he regards himself as reality, he has given himself over to illusion—to Maya the great “Non est.” For the word “Maya” is compounded of “Mahat aya.” (Mahat=great, ya = Being, and a= not); signifying the great non-being. On the path of occult development man reaches a point where he compares himself with something resembling a rainbow; he realises he is but a semblance, a delusion, and that everything that is perceived by the senses is delusion also. The sun as physical globe is a delusion. What physical science describes as a ball of gas in space is quite correct for practical purposes, but anyone who regards this as reality is giving himself over to delusion—to Maya. The truth regarding the sun is that it is a meeting-place of the spiritual Hierarchies, whose deeds are expressed in warmth and light, and who approach us in the warmth and light of the sun. The warmth and light we perceive is illusion. All appearance is illusion.

A man thinks he has a heart in his breast, but this heart is a delusion, nothing more. It is like the rings we see round street lamps on a misty autumn evening. These rings are not reality, but are produced by clearly defined forces. So is the human heart. You can perceive this in the following way. Suppose that this circle I have drawn represents the vault of the heavens one kind of force streams into us from one side, other forces from other sides, these forces split up here in the centre where I have drawn a small circle.

Nothing of the forces that stream into man from heaven and split up there (sich schneiden) really exist where he thinks they do, in his heart. Think everything else away except the forces that meet in you, as light meets in the rainbow—what remains is the human heart. It is the same with our other organs: they are fragments of forces (Schnittkräfte) caused by the breaking up of world forces.

When you move from one place to another you say “There is an impulse in me to move from here to there.” In saying this you say something that appertains to Maya. Why? Because forces come from the Macrocosm, which are split up down here (sich schneiden), and these broken-up fragments give rise to: illusion concerning the power and direction in walking. The results met with down here are but fragments of cosmic forces. If we desire to know the truth we must ask:—What takes place in the Macrocosm? What do cosmic forces bring about, both the upper and the lower? They bring that about in us that makes it appear as if we had a heart, a liver, etc., or that has such an appearance that we say: I walk from here to there. If the truth regarding this were to be described, we would have to describe cosmic forces.

If we wish to describe what John the Baptist did when he baptised, we must describe what the Macrocosm, that is the forces represented by the sign of the Waterman, charged him to do. This was determined at one time within the great cosmic lodge, and the forces necessary for it were sent down into John. It is thus, in the language of the Cosmos, we must read what took place at a certain point of time. It was thus the writer of the Gospel according to Mark read the heavenly events corresponding with the earthly events that occurred in Palestine. He describes astronomical occurrences when he says:—“Understand what I have to say to you in this way: suppose there is here a wall on which visible shadows play. If you wish to know the real cause of these shadows you must consider the things of which they are the reflections. I describe what took place at Jordan, all the same they are but the instruments of something else; in reality I am describing what was brought about on earth through the astronomical forces of the Macrocosm!”

The writer of the Gospel of Mark describes cosmic forces. He describes the shadow-pictures or projections thrown by mighty macrocosmic events on to the screen provided by the small district of Palestine. We must realise this clearly if we are to enter into the full greatness and importance of the document we call the Gospel of Mark; but we must first try to form something of the nature of a divination of what it is that is here presented to us. We must endeavour to understand what it is we are told in the beginning of the Gospel. The Prophet Isaiah had foretold that the Lord of the soul-forces of mankind would come, that in John the Baptist the “messenger” would dwell, who would prepare man for the reception of this ruler of his soul-forces. This messenger had first to take as his dwelling place the body of one who had passed through the initiation of the Waterman, who was able therefore to lead men on the path that is connected on earth with such an individuality as Jesus of Nazareth; one who because he had received the Fish-initiation had prepared himself for the reception of the Christ.

All the events that take place on earth are the reflections of cosmic events, and are connected with cosmic conditions in the same way as the rainbow is connected with rain and sunshine, and as, if we wish to describe the rainbow, we must study rain and sunshine. If we wish to know what was in the heart of John the Baptist or of Jesus of Nazareth, in whom the Christ dwelt, we must study cosmic conditions. So far as man is concerned, the whole world is explained by what took place in Palestine and on Golgotha. He who does not read the Gospel of Mark otherwise than merely as a document, which provides him with groups of letters descriptive of great world events, is on a level with one who says:—“Here I have one group of lines and strokes, there another;” he has no conception of what is referred to in the word “Lord,” but thinks only of the black letters. It is mostly in this way that the Gospel of Mark is read in our day. For what is told in it is but the outer lettering of what it really contains. To understand this Gospel we must rise to the level of those things to which, as in a shadowy reproduction, the events in Palestine refer.

Try to get at the meaning of the words:—“Earthly events are the shadows of macrocosmic events.” When you have done this you will have taken the first step in the understanding of one of the greatest documents in the world—the Gospel according to St. Mark.

• 1. “Behold” is no longer correct.

In the last Lecture I began by giving some idea of the nature and character of the Gospel according to Mark. I showed that when this Gospel is studied something more can be gathered from it than from the other Gospels concerning the great laws both of human and cosmic development. One has to acknowledge that in what is indicated concerning the profundities of the Christian Mystery, an opportunity is here given us to enter perhaps most deeply into these mighty secrets.

I originally thought that it might be possible, in the course of this winter, to give intimate and important instructions concerning matters we have not heard as yet within our spiritual-scientific movement; or perhaps I should say concerning things that lie on the border of spiritual matters not as yet dealt with by us. But it has been necessary to abandon this scheme, for the simple reason that our Berlin Group has grown so enormously during recent weeks that it would not have been possible at present to bring to the understanding of its members all that I had intended to say.

It is necessary in the case of mathematics, for instance, or any other science, that preparation should he made for any special stage, and this is necessary to a still higher degree when we advance to the consideration of certain high spiritual matters. Therefore we shall leave to a later date the consideration of those parts of the Gospel of Mark which cannot be explained to so large a circle.

It is most necessary when a document like this Gospel is under consideration that we should clearly understand through what important factors the evolution of mankind has passed. I have always impressed on you—as a quite abstract and general truth—that in every age there have always been certain guides or leaders of men who, because they stood in a certain relationship to the Mysteries, to the spiritual super-sensible world, were in a position to implant impulses in human evolution which contributed to its further progress. Now there are two principal and essential methods by which men can come into relationship with super-sensible worlds. The one is that to which I have referred when indicating certain features of the teaching of that great leader, Zarathustra; and the other is one that comes before our souls when we study the special methods of the great Buddha. These two great teachers, Buddha and Zarathustra, differ very much as regards their whole method and manner of working.

We must realise that the entrance into that state which Buddha and Buddhism describe as being “under the Bodhi tree,” is a symbolic expression for a certain mystic enhancement of consciousness, and opens a path by which the human ego can enter into its own Being, its own deeper nature. This path, blazed by Buddha in such an outstanding way, is a descent of the ego into the abyss of its own human nature.

You will gain a more exact idea of what is meant by this if you recall that we have followed man through four stages of development, three of which are already concluded and the fourth is that we are in at present. We have traced human development through the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions; now it is passing through the Earth-evolution.

We know these three stages correspond with the upbuilding of the physical, the etheric, and the astral natures of man; that now during earthly evolution we are at the stage corresponding to the development of the human ego, in so far as this can be developed as a member of man's Being. We have described the human Being from various points of view as an ego enclosed within three sheaths: an astral sheath corresponding to the Moon-evolution, an etheric sheath corresponding to the Sun-evolution, and a physical sheath corresponding to the Saturn-evolution.

As normally developed to-day, man has no consciousness of his astral, etheric and physical bodies, he really knows nothing of them. You will naturally say: but man is aware to-day of his physical body. This, however, is not the case. What ordinarily confronts him as the human physical body to-day is only illusion, Maya. What he regards as the physical body is in reality the interblending activity of the four members of his Being physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego; and the result of this interplay, of these interblended activities, is what our eyes see and our hands grasp as man. If we really wish to see the physical body we must separate off three parts and retain one; as when analysing a chemical compound formed of four substances; we must separate the ego, astral body and etheric body, then the physical body remains. But this is not possible under present conditions of earthly existence. You might perhaps say this happens whenever a man dies. But this is not correct, for what a man leaves behind at death is not the human physical body but a corpse. The physical body cannot live when the laws present at death are active in it. These laws did not originally belong to the body, but are laws belonging to the external world. If you carry out these thoughts you must acknowledge that what is usually called man's body, is a Maya, an illusion, and what spiritual science calls the “physical body” is the combination, the result, within our mineral world of organic laws, which produces the physical body of man in the same way as the laws of crystallisation produce quartz, or those of emerald-crystallisation produce emeralds. This physical body of man as it works in the physical mineral world is the true human body. What man knows of the world to-day is but the outcome of observation made by the senses. But observation as it is made by the senses can only be made by an organism in which an ego dwells. The present day superficial method of observation states that animals perceive the external world, for example, in the same way as men do; through their senses. This is a most confused conception, people would be much astonished if they were shown, as must be clone some day, the picture of the world formed by a horse, a dog, or any other animal. If a picture were made of what a horse or a dog sees round it this would be very different from the picture of the world as seen by man. That the human senses perceive the world as they do is connected with the fact that the ego reaches out over the whole surrounding world and fills the sense organs, eyes, ears and so on, with the pictures it perceives. So that only an organism in which an ego dwells can have such a picture of the world as man has; and the human organism belongs to this picture and is part of it. We must therefore say: What is usually called the “physical body” of man is only the result of sense-observation and not reality. When we speak of physical man and of the physical objects around him it is the ego, aided by the senses and the understanding connected with the brain, that regards the world. Hence man only knows those things over which his ego extends, to which his ego belongs. So soon as the ego is not present the pictures the world presents to it are no longer there; this means the man is asleep. Then no pictures of the world surround him—he is unconscious.

Whenever you regard anything, at every moment, the ego is hound up with what you see. It is spread out over what you see so that you really know only the content of your ego. As normal human Beings you know the content of your ego, but of that which belongs to your own nature, into which you enter each morning when you wake—of your astral body, etheric body, and physical body you know nothing. The moment he awakes, the normal man of to-day sees nothing of his astral body. He would indeed be horrified if he did, that is if he perceived the sum of the instincts, desires and passions that have accumulated in him in the course of his repeated earthly lives. Man does not see these. He would not be able to endure the sight. When he does dip down into his own nature, into his physical, etheric and astral bodies his attention is at once deflected from this to the external world; he there beholds what beneficent Divine Beings spread over the surface of his sphere of vision, so that it is in no way possible for him to sink into his own inner nature.

We are correct therefore when in speaking of this in spiritual science we say: The moment a man awakes in the morning he enters through the door of his own being. But at this door stands a watcher, the “little guardian of the threshold.” He does not permit man to enter his own being, but directs him at once to the outer world. Each morning we meet this little guardian of the threshold, and anyone who on awakening enters his own nature consciously, learns to know him. In fact the mystic life consists in whether this little guardian of the threshold acts beneficently towards us, making us unaware of our own being, turning our ego aside so that we do not descend into it, or permitting us to pass through the door and enter into our own being. The mystic life enters through the door I have described, and this in Buddhism is called “sitting under the Bodhi tree.” This is nothing else than the descent of a man into his own being through the door that is ordinarily closed to him. What Buddha experienced in this descent is set before us in Buddhistic writings. Such things are no mere legends, but the reflections of profound truths experienced inwardly—truths concerning the soul. These experiences in the language of Buddhism are called “The Temptation of Buddha.”

Speaking of this Buddha himself tells us how the Beings he loved approached him at the moment when he entered mystically into his own inner being. He tells how they seemed to approach him bidding him to do this or that—for instance, to carry out false exercises so as to enter in a wrong way into his own being. We are even told that the form of his mother appeared to him—he beheld her in her spiritual substance—and she ordered him to begin a false Askese. Naturally this was not the real mother of Buddha. But his temptation consisted in this very fact, that in his first evolved vision he was confronted not by his real mother but by a mask or illusion. Buddha withstood this temptation. Then a host of demoniac forms appeared to him, these he describes as desires, telling how they corresponded to the sensation of hunger and thirst, or the instinct of pride, conceit and arrogance. All these approached him—how? They approached him in so far as they were still within his own astral body, in so far as he had not overcome them at that great moment of his life when he sat under the Bodhi tree. Buddha shows us in a most wonderful way in this temptation, how we feel all the forces and powers of our astral body, which are within us because we have made them ever worse and worse in the course of our development through succeeding incarnations. In spite of having risen so high Buddha still sees them, and now at the final stage of his progress he has to overcome the last of these misleading forces of his astral body which appear to him as demons.

What does a human personality find when through temptation it passes down through the realms of its astral body and etheric body into its physical body? That is, when it really gets to know these two members of human nature?

If we are to know this, we must realise that in the course of his descending incarnations on earth man has been in a position to injure his astral body very much, but has not been able to injure his etheric and physical bodies to the same extent. The astral body is deteriorated through the “Egoism of human nature,” through greed, hate, selfishness, arrogance and pride. Through all these, and through his lower desires man injures his astral body. The greater part of the etheric body is so strong that however much a man may try to injure it he is unable to do so, for the etheric body resists injury. A man cannot descend so deeply into his own nature with his individual powers, as to injure the etheric or physical body. It is only in the course of repeated incarnations that the faults he develops directly affect the physical and etheric bodies injuriously, and appear later as weaknesses and as dispositions to illness in the physical body. But a man cannot affect his physical body directly. If he cuts his finger, this is not brought about through the soul, neither is infection. In the course of his incarnations he has only become capable of affecting his astral body and a part of his etheric body; on his physical body he can only work indirectly, not directly. We can therefore say if a man descends into his etheric body on which he can still work directly he sees in this region all the things connected with his former incarnations, so that the moment he dips clown into his own being he also dips into his earlier, more remote incarnations. Man can therefore find the way to his former incarnation by sinking down into his own being. If this plunging down into his own being is very intensive, very thorough and forceful, as was the case with Buddha, the insight into other incarnations goes further and further back.

Originally man was a spiritual being, the sheaths that envelop his spiritual nature only gathered round him at a later day. Man came forth from Spirit, and everything external has condensed, as it were, out of Spirit. So that in sinking down into his own being man enters into the Spirit of the world. This sinking down, this breaking through the sheaths of the physical body, is one path into the spiritual framework of the world.

In the information handed down to us concerning Buddha (and these are no mere legends) we learn of the different stages he attained in the passage through his own being, of which he says:—“When I had got as far as to the attainment of illumination”—that is when he felt himself to be a part of the spiritual world—“I beheld the spiritual world as a cloud spread out before me; but as yet I could not distinguish anything; I felt I was not as yet ready for this. Then I advanced a step further. There I no longer merely saw the spiritual world as a widespread cloud, but could distinguish separate forms, although I could not yet see what these forms were, for I was not yet sufficiently advanced. Again I rose a step higher, there I perceived not only separate Beings, but I knew what kind of Beings they were.”

This continued so far that Buddha even beheld his own archetype, that which had passed down from generation to generation, and he saw it in its true connection with the spiritual world. This is one path, the mystic path, the path leading through a man's own being to the point where the boundaries are broken down beyond which lies the spiritual world. By following this path certain leaders of humanity attained what such individuals had to have in order that they could give the necessary impulse to the further development of mankind.

It is by quite another path that personalities, such as the first Zarathustra for instance, attained what enabled them to become leaders of humanity. If you recall what I said about Buddha you will realise that in his former incarnations when he was a Bodhisattva he must have already risen through many stages. Through illumination—that which is known as “sitting under the Bodhi tree”—I described in the only way it can be described how an individual can gradually rise through his personal merit to heights whence he can behold the spiritual world.

If humanity had only had such leaders to look to, it could not possibly have advanced as it has. But it had also other leaders. Of these Zarathustra was one. (I am not speaking now of the “individuality” of Zarathustra, but of the personality of the original Zarathustra who taught concerning Ahura Mazdao.) In studying this personality in the parts of the world in which we find him, we must realise, that at first no individuality was in him as had risen so high through his own merit as Buddha had done; but he had been set apart to be the bearer, the sheath one might say, of a higher Being, of a spiritual entity, who could not himself incarnate in the world, but could only illuminate and work within a human form.

I have shown in my Rosicrucian Mystery Play, “The Portal of Initiation,” how when it is necessary for the further evolution of the world, a human Being is inspired at certain times by some higher Being. This is not intended as a mere poetic image, but is an occult truth presented poetically. The personality of the original Zarathustra was no such highly evolved Being as the Buddha, but was chosen as one into whom a high individuality could enter, could dwell, and inspire him. Such persons were mainly found in olden times, that is in pre-Christian times, in the civilisations that evolved in North-Western Europe and Mid-Western Asia, but not among the peoples that in pre-Christian times evolved in Africa, Arabia, and the districts of Asia Minor extending eastwards into Asia. In these countries that kind of initiation was found which I have just described in its highest development as that of Buddha; while the other I am now about to describe as that of Zarathustra was more suited to northern peoples. The possibility of anyone being initiated in this way has only existed, even in our part of the world, for the last three or four thousand years. The personality of Zarathustra was selected somewhat in the following way to be the bearer of a higher Being, who could not himself incarnate. It was ordained from the spiritual worlds that a Spiritual Being should enter into some child, and when the child had grown up should work within this human being making use of the instruments of his brain, his will, etc. In order that this might take place something quite different had to happen than would otherwise happen in the individual evolution of this human being. Now the events I am about to describe did not happen in any such physical way throughout the life of this highly evolved human being as they otherwise should; though, naturally, people who follow the life of such a child with ordinary perceptions do not observe this. But those who have higher perception see that there is conflict from the beginning between the soul-forces of this child and the outer world, that it is possessed of a will, of an impulsiveness that is in apparent contradiction to all that goes on around it. The fate of this divine, spirit-filled personality is that it grows up as a stranger, that those about it have no idea, no feeling, by which they can rightly understand such a child. As a rule there are few, perhaps only one person, who is able to divine what is developing within this human being. Conflict with its surroundings is apt to develop, and then occurs (but not till later years) what I described as happening when dealing with the story of the temptation of Buddha, when a man descends into his own being.

In normal life a man's individuality is born in him by means of the “sheath-nature” he receives from his parents or his nation. This individuality is not always in entire harmony with its sheaths, and on this account such a man feels more or less dissatisfied with the way fate has treated him. But so heavy, so mighty a conflict as occurred in Zarathustra's case is not possible if a man's individuality develops as it does in ordinary life. When a child like Zarathustra is observed clairvoyantly it is seen that he has feelings, thoughts, and powers of will very different from the feelings, thoughts and will-impulses developed by the people about him. We are shown (and indeed it is always to be seen, only nowadays people do not notice spiritual, but only physical facts) that the people around such a child know nothing of his nature. They feel on the contrary, an instinctive hatred for him, no matter what may be developing within him. To clairvoyant vision the sharp contrast is revealed that such a child who is really born for the salvation of mankind is surrounded by storms of hatred.

This has to he. It is because of this contrast that great impulses are born into humanity. Similar things are then told concerning such personalities as are told of Zarathustra.

One thing we are told—that Zarathustra could do at birth which otherwise only occurs weeks later. We are told he looked on the harmony of the world in such a way that he evolved his “Zarathustra smile.” This smile is described as the first thing which showed him to be quite different from the rest of mankind. The second thing is that there was an enemy, a kind of King Herod, in the neighbourhood where Zarathustra was born. His name was Duranasarum, and after he had been informed of the birth of Zarathustra, which had been divulged to him by the Magi, the Chaldeans, he tried single-handed to murder the child. The legend goes on to tell how, at the moment he raised his sword to kill the child, his Hand was paralysed, and he was forced to let it go. These are pictures perceived by spiritual consciousness, pictures of spiritual realities. Further, we are told how this enemy of the child Zarathustra, unable himself to slay him, had him carried away by his servant to the wild beasts of the wilderness so that he might be devoured by them; but when people went to look for him no wild beast had harmed him, the child was found sleeping peacefully. As this attempt failed his enemy had the child placed where a whole herd of cows and oxen would pass over him and trample him to death. But the first beast, so we are told, took the child between its legs and bore it away, so that the rest of the herd might pass by; it then set him down uninjured. The same thing was repeated with a drove of horses. And the final attempt of this enemy was that he was given to some wild animals after their young had been taken from them. Now it happened when his parents sent people to look for him, they found that none of these animals had harmed him, but as the legend relates “the child Zarathustra was nourished for a considerable time by a heavenly cow.”

We need see no more in all this mass of evidence than that through the presence of the spiritual individuality that had been introduced into such a soul, very exceptional powers had been aroused in the child which brought it into disharmony with its surroundings, and that this was necessary in order that an upward impulse could be given to human evolution. For disharmonies are always necessary if true progress towards perfection is to be made. The nature of these forces is thus revealed, in spite of so great a Being making use of such a child they were required to bring it in touch with the spiritual world into which it was to enter. But how did the child experience this conflict? Picture to yourselves the entering of the soul into its own being at a moment of awaking. When the soul is able to experience the physical body and etheric body it then passes through the evolution I described in respect of Buddha. Now think of falling asleep as a conscious process. As things are to-day man loses consciousness when he falls asleep, instead of the ordinary pictures of the world a blank surrounds him. But suppose that a man could retain his consciousness when falling asleep, he would in that case be surrounded by a spiritual world—the world into which he pours his Being when sleep overtakes him. But here also there are hindrances. When we fall asleep a guardian of the threshold stands before the door through which we would have to pass. This is the Great Guardian who prevents our entrance into the spiritual world so long as we are unripe. He prevents our entrance because if we have not made ourselves inwardly strong enough, we are exposed to certain dangers when we allow our ego to pour forth over the spiritual world into which we enter when we fall asleep. The danger consists in this, that instead of seeing what is in the spiritual world objectively, we only see what we take there through our own fanciful imaginations, through our thoughts, perceptions and feelings. In this case we take what is worst in us, what is not in accordance with truth. Hence an unripe entry into the spiritual world indicates that a man does not see reality but imaginary forms, fantastic images which are described technically in spiritual science as “non-human visions.” If a man would see objectively in the spiritual world he must rise to a higher stage where “human” things are seen. It is always a sign of a fantastic vision when animal forms are seen on rising to the spiritual world. Such animal forms represent the man's own fantasy, and are owing to his not being strongly enough established in himself. What is unconscious in us at night must be strengthened so that the surrounding spiritual world becomes objective, otherwise it is subjective, and we take our fantasies with us into the spiritual world. They are within us in any case; but the Guardian preserves us from seeing them. This rising into the spiritual world and being surrounded by animal forms which attack us and desire to lead us astray is a purely inward experience. We have only to encompass ourselves with greater inward strength, we can then enter the spiritual world.

When a child is filled by a higher Being, as was the young Zarathustra, his bodily nature is naturally unripe, and has first to become ripe. The human organism, that is the understanding and sense-organisms, are disturbed. Such a child is in a world which is rightly described as “being among wild animals.”

We have often shown that descriptions like this, which are both historical and pictorial, only represent different sides of the same matter. Events then happen so that spiritual powers, when represented as hostile forces, make their influence felt as did King Duranasarum in the case of the child Zarathustra. The whole thing exists in its archetypal form in the spiritual world, and external happenings only correspond with what takes place there. Present day methods of thought do not grasp such ideas easily. When people are told that the events connected with Zarathustra are of importance in the spiritual world they think—“Then they are not real.” But when they are shown to be historic, the man of to-day is then inclined to regard everyone as only evolved so far as he is himself.

The endeavour of present day liberal theologians, for instance, is to present the figure of Jesus of Nazareth as being similar to, or at least as not far surpassing, what they can picture to themselves as their own ideal. It disturbs the materialistic peace of their souls when they have to picture great individualities. There should not be anyone in the world, they think, so very much exalted above the modern Professor of Theology.

But when dealing with great events, we are concerned with something that is at the same time both historic and symbolic, so that the one does not exclude the other. Those who do not understand that external things indicate more than appears on the surface will not attain to the understanding of what is true and essential.

The soul of the young Zarathustra really passed through great dangers in his early years, but at the same time, as the legend tells, the heavenly cows stood at his side helping and strengthening him.

We find similar things happening to all great founders of religions through all the regions of the Caspian Sea and even into Western Europe. We find people (without their having raised themselves through their own development) who are ensouled by a spiritual Being so that they can become leaders of mankind. Numerous legends and sagas exist among Celtic peoples, They tell of a founder of religion, one Habich, he was exposed as a child and was nourished by heavenly cows, hostile forces appeared later on and drove away the animals—in short, the accounts of the dangers to the Celtic leader Habich are such that one can almost say they were extracts from certain of the miracles of Zarathustra. While we recognise Zarathustra as the greatest of these personalities, certain features of his miracles are found everywhere, all through Greece and as far as the Celtic countries of the West. As a well-known example we have only to think of the story of Romulus and Remus.

This is the other way in which the leaders of mankind arose. In speaking of it we have described, in a deeper sense, what we have often considered before: the two great streams of civilisation of post-Atlantean times. After the great catastrophe of Atlantis one of these streams continued to spread and develop throughout Africa, Arabia and Southern Asia; the other, which took a more northerly course, passed through Europe and Northern Central Asia. Here these two streams eventually met. All that has come to pass as a result of this is comprised in our post-Atlantean culture. The northern stream had leaders such as I have just described in Zarathustra; the southern, on the other hand, those such as we see in their highest representative in the great Buddha.

If you recall what you already know in connection with the Christ Event you might ask:—How does the Baptism by John in Jordan now strike us? The Christ came down and entered into a human being—as Divine Beings had entered into all the leaders and founders of religions—and into Zarathustra as the greatest of these. The process is the same, only here it is carried out in its sublimest form: Christ entered into a human being. But He did not enter this human being in childhood. He entered it in its thirtieth year, and the personality of Jesus of Nazareth had been very specially prepared for this event. The secrets of both sides of human leadership are given us in synthesis in the Gospels. Here we see them united and harmonised. While the evangelists, Matthew and Luke preferably, tell us how the human personality was organised into which the Christ entered; the Gospel according to Mark describes the nature of the Christ, tells of the kind of Being he himself is. The element that filled this great individual is what is especially described by Mark. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke give us in a wonderfully clear manner a different account of the temptation from that given in the Gospel of Mark, because Mark describes the Christ who had entered into Jesus of Nazareth. Hence the story of the temptation has here to be presented as it occurred formerly in the childhood of such great persons: the presence of animals is mentioned and the help received from spiritual powers. So that we have a repetition of the miracles of Zarathustra when the Gospel of Mark states in simple but imposing words:

“And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness (loneliness). And he was there in the wilderness with the wild beasts; and the angels (that is Spiritual Beings) ministered unto him.” (Mark I, 12-13).

The Gospel of Matthew describes this quite differently, it describes what we perceive to be somewhat like a repetition of the temptation of Buddha; this means the form temptation assumes at the descent of a man into his own Being; when all those temptations and seductions approach to which the human soul is liable.

We can therefore say the Gospels of Matthew and Luke describe the path the Christ travelled when He descended into the sheaths that had been given over to him by Jesus of Nazareth; and the Gospel according to Mark describes the kind of temptation Christ had to pass through when He experienced the shock of coming up against His surroundings, as happens to all founders of religions who are inspired and intuited by Spiritual Beings from above.

Christ Jesus experienced both these forms of temptation, whereas earlier leaders of mankind only experience one of them. He united in Himself the two methods of entering the spiritual world; this is of the greatest importance; what formerly had occurred within two great streams of culture (into which smaller contributory streams also entered) was now united into one.

It is when regarded from this standpoint that we first understand the apparent or real contradictions in the Gospels. Mark had been initiated into such mysteries as enabled him to describe the temptation as we find it in his Gospel; the “Being with wild beasts,” and the ministration of spiritual Beings. Luke was initiated in another way. Each evangelist describes what he knows and is familiar with. Thus what we are told in the Gospels are the events of Palestine and the Mystery of Golgotha, but told from different sides.

In stating this I wish once more to put before you, from a point of view we have as yet not been able to discuss, how human evolution has to be understood; and also how we must understand the intervention into it of such individuals as are passing on from the evolution of a Bodhisattva to that of a Buddha. We have to understand that the main thing in the evolution of these men is not so much what they are as men, but what has come down into them from above. Only in the form of Christ are these two united, and it is only when we realise this that we can rightly understand this form. We can also understand through this the many inequalities that must appear in Mythical personalities.

When we are told that certain Spiritual Beings have done this or that, in respect of what is right or wrong, and have done, for instance, what Siegfried did, one often hears people exclaim:—“And yet he was an Initiate!” But Siegfried's individual evolution does not come under consideration as regards a personality through whom a Spiritual Being is working. Siegfried may have faults. But what matters is that through him something had to be given to human evolution. For this a suitable personality had to be found. Everyone cannot be treated alike; Siegfried cannot be judged in the same way as a leader who belonged to the southern stream of culture, for the whole nature and type of those who sunk down within their own being was different. Thus one can say:—A Spiritual Being entered the forms belonging to the northern culture, compelling them to transcend their own nature and rise into the Macrocosm. While in the southern stream of culture a man sank down into the Microcosm, in the northern stream of culture he poured himself forth into the Macrocosm, and by doing so he learnt to know all the Spiritual Hierarchies as Zarathustra learnt to know the spiritual nature of the Sun.

The law contained herein can be summed up as follows:—The Mystic path, the path of Buddha, leads a man so far within his own inner being that breaking through this inner being he enters the Spiritual World. The path of Zarathustra draws a man out of the Microcosm, sending his being forth over the Macrocosm so that its secrets become transparent to him. The world has as yet little understanding of the mighty Spirits whose mission it is to reveal the secrets of the great universe. For this reason very little real understanding of the nature of Zarathustra has spread abroad, and we shall see how greatly what we have to say concerning him differs from what is usually said of him.

This lecture has again been an Excursus concerning those things which should gradually reveal to you the nature of the Gospel according to St. Mark.

If you continue reading the Gospel of Mark from the verses we endeavoured to explain in the last lecture, you come to a remarkable passage similar in every way to what we are told in the other Gospels, but the full meaning of which can be best studied in the Gospel of Mark. This passage tells how Jesus Christ, after He had received baptism in Jordan and passed through the experiences met with in the wilderness, went into the synagogue and taught. The passage is generally translated as follows:—“And they were astonished at his doctrine: for He taught them as one that had authority and not as the scribes.” What more does this sentence mean to the man of to-day, however much he may believe the Bible, than the somewhat abstract statement: “He taught with authority and not as the scribes?” If we take the Greek text we find for the words “For he taught with authority”—“He taught as an Exusiai” and not as the “scribes.”

If we enter deeply into the meaning of this important passage, it leads us a step further towards what may be called the secrets of the mission of Christ Jesus. For I have already remarked that the Gospels as well as other writings that spring from inspired sources are not to be understood so simply as people think, but that we must bring to the understanding of them everything in the way of thoughts and ideas concerning the spiritual world that we have been able, to acquire in the course of many years. Only such thoughts can show us what is meant in the Gospel where it say:—For he taught those who sat in the synagogue as an “Exusiai,” as a Power, and not as those who are hero called “scribes.”

If such a sentence is to be understood we must recall the knowledge we have acquired in recent years concerning the super-sensible worlds. We have learnt during this period that man as he lives in this world is the lowest member of a hierarchical order; it is here we must place him. He is a part of the super-sensible world, a world where, in the first place, we find Beings called in Christian esotericism, Angeloi or Angels; these are the Beings standing next above man. Above them come the Archangeloi or Archangels, then the Archai or Spirits of Personality. Above these again are the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes, and still higher are the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. We have thus a Hierarchical order of nine kinds of Beings one above the other, the lowest of which is man. Now we ought to understand how these many different spiritual or super-sensible Beings intervene in our lives.

Angels are those who, as messengers of super-sensible realms, stand nearest to man as he is on earth; they constantly influence what may be called the fate of individuals on our physical plane. As soon as we mention Archangels on the other hand, we speak of Spiritual Beings whose activities cover a wider span. We can also call them “Folk-Spirits,” for they order and guide the concerns of whole nations or groups of peoples.

When a “Folk-Spirit” is spoken of to-day people generally mean so many thousands of people who are guided by this spirit merely because they live within the same territory. But when a “Folk-Spirit” is spoken of in spiritual science, we mean the individuality of the people, not such or such a number of people, but a real individuality, just as we speak of the “individuality” of separate men. And when speaking of the spiritual guidance of the individuality of a people this guide or leader is called an Archangel. In speaking of these exalted Beings we speak of real super-sensible entities having their own spheres of activity. The Archai (called also Spirits of Personality or first Beginnings) are spoken of in spiritual science as being again different from “Folk-Spirits.” We speak, for instance, of a French or an English or a German “Folk-Spirit,” and in doing so speak of something allotted to different parts of the earth. But there is something that unites all men, at least all western humanity, something in which these people feel at one. This, in contradistinction to the separate “Folk-Spirits,” we call the “Spirit of the Age or Time-Spirit” (Zeitgeist), there is a different “Time-Spirit” or Zeitgeist for the time of the Reformation from that of pre-Reformation times, and again a different one for our own day. The Beings we call “Time-Spirits” or Zeitgeists have therefore to be ranked above the separate “Folk-Spirits”; in fact the name Archai is given to these leaders of succeeding epochs, but all the same they are “Time-Spirits.”

When we rise still higher we come to the Exusiai, here we have to do with a quite different kind of super-sensible Being. In order to form an idea of how the Beings of the higher Hierarchies differ from the three just mentioned—the Angels, Archangels, Archai—think how similar members of one group of people is to another. As regards their external physical constitution—as regards what they eat and drink for instance—we cannot say they differ very much in anything outside the realm of the soul and spirit. Even in respect of succeeding epochs of time we must allow that the spiritual guides of humanity are connected only with the things of soul and spirit. But man does not consist only of soul and spirit, these influence mainly his astral body, but within his Being are also denser parts, and these, as regards the activities of the Archai, Archangels and Angels, do not differ much from each other. Creative influences are however at work on these denser members of man's Being, and this creative activity of Hierarchical Beings beginning with the “Exusiai,” continues upwards.

We have to thank the “Time-Spirits” Zeitgeister or Archai, and the “Folk-Spirit” or Archangels, for ideas connected with time and for speech, but human nature is influenced also by other things, by what lives in light and air and in the climate of particular districts. The humanity that flourishes at the Equator is different from that which flourishes at the North Pole. We do not perhaps quite agree with a well-known German professor of philosophy who states in a widely read book that “Important civilisations must develop in the temperate zone, for all those great Beings who have introduced important civilisations would have frozen at the North Pole and been burnt up at the South Pole!” We can say however, food, etc., is different in different climates, and this affects people differently. External conditions are by no means unimportant to the character of a people, whether this people dwells, for instance, among mountains or on wide plains. We observe how the forces of nature influence the whole constitution of man, and as students of spiritual science we know that the forces of nature are nothing else than the result of the activities of Beings of a spiritual nature. For we hold that super-sensible spiritual Beings are active in all the forces of nature and make use of these to influence man. We therefore distinguish between the activities of Archai and of Exusiai by saying:—Angels, Archangel and Archai do not influence man by making use of the forces of nature, but they make use of that which affects his spiritual nature, his speech, and the ideas that connect him with epochs of time. The activity of these Beings does not extend to the lower members of his organism, neither to the etheric nor yet the physical body. In the Exusiai, on the other hand, we have to recognise those higher Beings affecting mankind who work through the forces of nature, who are the bringers to man of the different kinds of air and light, of the various ways in which foodstuffs are produced within the different kingdoms of nature. It is they who control these kingdoms of nature.

What comes to us in thunder and lightning, in rain and sunshine, how one kind of food grows in one region, other kinds in other regions—in short, the whole distribution and organisation of earthly condition we ascribe to spiritual Beings that have to be sought among the higher Hierarchies. So that when we look up to the nature of the Exusiai we do not see the result of their activities in any such invisible way as in the case of the “Time-Spirits” for instance; but we see in them that which works on us in light, and that also works on the plant creation as light.

Let us now consider what was given to man as “culture,” what he had to learn in order to progress. Every man receives in his own age what this age has produced, but he also receives to a certain extent what former ages have produced. This can, however, only be preserved historically, can only be the result of historical teaching and learning. This is derived from the lowest of the Hierarchies, and reaches as far as to the “Time-Spirit.” What comes to man on the other hand from the kingdoms of nature, cannot be preserved in records or traditions. Yet those who are able to penetrate to super-sensible worlds pass beyond the sphere of Archangels to still higher revelations. Such revelations are perceived as carrying more weight than what comes from the realms of the Zeitgeists, they affect mankind in a quite special way.

Every clear thinking man should occasionally turn back and seriously ask himself—“Which has the greatest effect on my soul, that which I have learnt from the traditions of different peoples and ‘Time-Spirit’ since history began, or a lovely sunrise; that is, than the revelations of spiritual worlds presented to me by nature itself?”

Such a man feels that the grandeur and beauty of a sunrise reveals infinitely more to his soul than all the sciences, learning, and art of the ages. What nature reveals can be felt by anyone who having visited the Art Galleries of Italy and seen what have been preserved to us of the works of Michelangelo, of Leonardo da Vinci, or Raphael, and having allowed the power of these to act on him has then climbed one of the mountains of Switzerland, and viewed the marvellous spectacles provided by nature. He might then ask:—Who is the greater painter, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, or those Powers who paint the sunrise as seen from the Rigi? And he would be obliged to answer:—However much we may admire what man has achieved, what is here presented to us as the divine revelation of Spiritual Powers appears to us infinitely the greater!

When the great spiritual leaders of men appear whom we call Initiates, who speak not according to tradition but in an original way, their revelations resemble the revelations of nature itself. But what we feel in a sunrise would never have the same effect on us if it were something merely repeated. Compared with what we have received as the communications of Moses and Zarathustra, when these were traditional and had been handed down as the external culture which the “Time-Spirits” and “Folk-Spirits” had preserved and then passed on—compared with this what nature has to give is infinitely greater. For the revelations of Moses and of Zarathustra only worked as powerfully as nature's revelations when they sprang directly from the experiences of super-sensible worlds.

The grandeur of the original revelations made to man is seen in their power to affect him in the same way as the revelations of nature itself. But this only begins where, as lowest among the Hierarchies controlling nature, we divine something of the Exusiai.

What then was felt by those who sat in the synagogues when the Christ appeared among them?

We are told by the “Grammarians” that until then they had experienced those things which the “Time-Spirits,” “Folk-Spirits” and others had communicated to them. People had got accustomed to this; but now One had appeared who did not teach as those others, but so that His words were a revelation of the super-sensible Powers in nature itself, or of the Powers working in thunder and lightning.

Therefore when we know how the greatness of the Hierarchies increases as they ascend, we can understand such a saying in the Gospels and accept it in the full depth of its meaning. This is how we must feel about these words in the Gospel according to Mark, and even in such human endeavours as have come down to us in the works of art of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. Anyone with a feeling for the super-sensible quality lying behind these is aware—even in what remains—of all they originally presented to us. So that it is in all great works of art, in all great works of genius. Something continues to affect us in these like an echo of those others (the Hierarchies); and if we are able to see what Raphael, for instance, put into his pictures, or if we are able to pour fresh life into the works of Zarathustra, we can hear in them something of what streams down to us from the realms of the Exusiai. But in what was taught by the scribe in the Synagogue, that is, by those who accepted what originated from the “Folk-Spirits” and ”Time-Spirits,” nothing could be heard that agreed in any way with the revelations of nature.

We are justified therefore in saying, a sentence like this shows that men began at that time to have a feeling, a presentiment, that something entirely new was speaking to them; that through this man who had appeared among them something made itself felt that was like a power of nature, like one of those super-sensible powers that stand behind nature. Men began gradually to divine what it was that had entered into Jesus of Nazareth, and was symbolised in the baptism in Jordan. In reality, they were not far from the truth when they said in the synagogue: we feel when He speaks as though one of the Exusiai spoke—not only an Archai, or Archangel, or Angel.

It is only through what spiritual science has given us that we can fill once more with living sap these modern translations of the Gospels that have become so thin and meaningless; only then are we able to learn how very much goes to a true understanding of what is contained in the Gospels. It will take many generations to fathom, even approximately, all the depths of which our present age is only beginning to have some perception.

What the writer of the Gospel according to Mark desired especially to point out was really a further development of the teaching of Paul, who was one of the first to grasp the nature and Being of Christ through direct super-sensible knowledge.

Men had now to understand what Paul taught to all, what it was that all men could receive into them through the revelation of Damascus. Although this event is described in the Bible as a sudden illumination, yet those who know the truth regarding such occurrences know that it can happen at any moment to one who desires to rise to spiritual realms; and that through what such a man experiences he becomes a changed Being. With regard to Paul we are amply told how he became an entirely different man through the revelation made to him on the way to Damascus.

Even a superficial study of the letters of St. Paul will prove to anyone that he saw in the Event of Christ and in the Event of Golgotha the central point of our whole human evolution; that he associated this directly with that other event spoken of in the Bible as “the first creation,” the first Adam, so that he might have spoken somewhat as follows:—

What we describe as the true man, the spiritual man (of whom in this world of Maya only a Maya exists) came down in ancient Lemurian times to this world of illusion and to all he had to experience in the flesh in successive incarnations. He became man, as this was understood in Lemurian and Atlantean times, and up to the time of Christ. Then came the Event of Golgotha. All this was firmly fixed in the mind of Paul after the vision of Damascus. He realised that in the Event of Golgotha something was given which is comparable with the descent of man into the flesh. With this was given an impulse by which he could gradually overcome those forms of earthly existence which had entered into him through “Adam.” Hence Paul calls the humanity that began with Christ, the “new Adam,” the “Adam” that everyone can put on through union with the Christ.

We have therefore to see in the man of Lemurian times, and on into pre-Christian humanity, a slow and gradual descent of man into matter (whether he be called Adam or not). Then came the power and impulse that enabled him to rise again; so that along with all he acquired in earthly life man was able to return to his original spiritual state, that state in which he was before he descended into matter. Unless we misunderstand the true meaning of evolution we must now ask “Could man not have been spared this descent? Why had he to enter a fleshly body and pass through many incarnations, only then to rise again to what he had been before? Such questions can only spring from a complete misunderstanding of the spiritual nature of evolution. For man takes with him all the fruits and experiences of his earthly evolution, and is enriched with the results of his incarnations. These are results—contents, which he did not have previously. Picture to yourselves a man entering into his first incarnation: in it he learns certain things; he learns more in the second incarnation, and so on through all his subsequent incarnations. The course of these is a descending one; he is entangled more and more in the physical world. Then he begins to rise again, and is able to rise so far that he can receive within him the Christ-Impulse. One day he will again enter the spiritual world, but will have taken with him all he had gained on earth.

Paul saw in the Christ the true central point of the whole earthly evolution of man; he saw what gave man the impulse to rise to super-sensible worlds enriched by all the experiences he had gained on earth.

How, from this standpoint, did Paul regard the sacrifice on Golgotha, the actual crucifixion? It is not easy to bring these facts, these most essential facts of human evolution clearly before modern minds, in the sense in which Paul saw them. For this sense is also that of the writer of the Gospel of Mark. Before we can do this we must make ourselves familiar with the thought, that in man, as he comes before us to-day, we are concerned with a microcosm, a small world, and we must study everything that this idea brings with it.

As man comes before us to-day in the course of his evolution between birth and death in one re-incarnation, two parts of his development are presented which differ greatly from each other; only this difference is not noticed as a rule. I have frequently spoken about these fundamentally different parts of man's life (for our whole spiritually scientific endeavour has a more systematic construction than is often supposed), one of these parts or periods is that between birth and the moment to which at the present time memory extends. If we trace our life backwards, a point is finally reached beyond which all memory ceases. Although you were present, and have perhaps been told by parents or relatives of things you did, and so have knowledge of them, you have no recollection of them, memory does not reach beyond a certain point. Under favourable circumstances this lies round about the third year. Up to this period the child is specially active and impressionable. How much he has learnt during this period, during his first, second and third years! But of how things impressed him he has not the least recollection.

Then follows the time through which the thread of conscious memory extends smoothly.

These two parts of his development should be carefully considered, for they are of very great importance when man is studied as a whole. Human evolution must be followed carefully, and without the prejudices of modern science. The facts of modern science certainly confirm what I have to say; but if we are not to wander far from the truth we must not follow the prejudice of science. Observing human evolution closely we say:—Man's life among his fellows as a social being can only be lived in accordance with conditions regulated by memory, which begins as a rule about his third year. Of all that concerns this we can say: it is under the direction of our conscious life; all the things we consciously accept as laws according to which we guide our impulses, etc., and that we feel to be worthy, all this is contained in memory. Of what lies before we are unconscious so far as ego consciousness is concerned.

The threads of memory which belong to our conscious life do not reach to this period. There are therefore certain years of our conscious life during which the surrounding world works on us quite differently from how it does later. The difference is a most radical one. Were we able to observe a child before the period to which at a later age its memory extended, we should see that it then feels itself to he much more within general macrocosmic spiritual life; it is not yet separated from this, is not yet isolated within itself, but reckons that it belongs rather to the whole surrounding universe. It does not express itself as others; it does not say:—“I will,” but “Johnnie wills.” It only learns later to speak of itself as an ego; modern psychologists criticise such facts adversely, but this in no way denies the truth, but only their own powers of insight.

In its early years a child still feels within the whole surrounding world, feels that it is a part of this world. Memory first begins when it separates itself as an individual from the world around it. We can therefore say, the laws a man accepts, and which form the content of his consciousness, belong to the second part of his consciousness, to the second part of his evolution, the part we have just described. A quite different relationship to his environment belongs to the first part, he then feels far more a part of, far more within, the environing world. What I wish to say can only he clearly understood if you imagine hypothetically that the consciousness which gives man this direct contact with the surrounding universe in the first years of childhood, were able to continue. In that case his life would be entirely different, he would not feel so isolated, but would feel in later life that he was a part of the whole macrocosm, that he was within the great world. At present he loses this. He has no later connection with that world, he feels cut off from it. If he is a man belonging to ordinary life this feeling of isolation only comes to him in an abstract way. For instance, it enters his consciousness for the most part when egoism increases, when he shuts himself up, as it were, more and more within his own skin. Opinions limiting his life to what is contained within his skin are but half baked opinions, in fact nonsense, for the moment man exhales breath, the breath he had drawn in is now outside of him. So that even as regards our in-breathing and out-breathing we are continually in touch with our whole environment. The way man regards his own being is an absolute illusion, but his consciousness is such that he must live in this illusion. He cannot help himself. For we are really neither suited, nor are we ripe enough, to experience our own Karma at the present day. If, for example, someone wishes to close the window, we are apt, because we regard ourselves as separate beings, to feel injured and annoyed. But if we believed in Karma we would feel that we belonged to the whole macrocosm, and would know as a fact that it was really we who had closed the window, for we are interwoven with the whole cosmos. It is absolute nonsense to think we are enclosed within our skins. But the feeling of being one with the macrocosm is only retained by the child in its early years, it is lost from the point of time to which later its memory extends.

Things were not always thus. In former times, which do not lie so very far behind us, man was still able to a certain extent to carry this consciousness of his early years on into later times. This was in the days of the ancient clairvoyance. With it was associated a quite different kind of thinking as well as a different way of expressing facts. This is something belonging to human evolution that it would be well the student of spiritual science should understand.

When a man is born among us at the present day, what is he? He is in the first place the son of his father and of his mother. And if in communal life he has not got a certificate of birth or baptism showing the standing of his father and mother by which he can be identified nothing is known of him, and his existence is ignored. According to the ideas of the present day, a man is the physical son of his father and of his mother.

This is not how men thought at a time not so very long ago. But because the scientists and investigators of to-day do not know that in former times men thought differently, that their words and their relation-ships to each other were different from what they are now, they have therefore arrived at interpretations of ancient communications that are also quite different. We are told for instance, in these ancient communications of a Greek singer, Orpheus. I select him because he belongs to an age immediately preceding that of Christianity. It was Orpheus who inaugurated the Grecian Mysteries. The Greek age falls within the fourth period of post-Atlantean civilisations, so that in a way the Greeks were prepared by Orpheus for what they were to receive later through the Christ Event.

What would a modern man say if confronted by a person like Orpheus? He would say:—He is the son of such and such a father and mother, modern science might perhaps even look for “inherited attributes” in him. There exists to-day a large volume treating of all the inherited characteristics of the Goethe family, and would present Goethe as the sum of these inherited attributes. People did not think in this way at the time of Orpheus, they did not then regard external man and his attributes as what was most essential. The most essential thing in Orpheus was the power by which he became the inaugurator, the true leader, of pre-Christian civilisation in Greece. They recognised quite clearly that his physical brain and nervous system were not what was most important in him. They considered this to be far more the fact that he bore within him an element that had its direct source in super-sensible worlds, that through it, all he experienced in these worlds came in touch, by means of his personality, with a physical sensible element, and could then express itself in the various stages provided by a physical personality. The Greeks saw in Orpheus not the man of flesh descended from father and mother, even perhaps from grandfather and grandmother, this was not to them the main thing, it was only his shell, his outer presentment. For them the essential thing in him was what had descended from a super-sensible source, and had entered into a sensible being on the physical plane.

When the Greeks confronted Orpheus they hardly considered his descent from father and mother, what mattered to them was the fact that his soul qualities, the qualities through which he had become what he was, sprang from a super-sensible source that till then had never had any connection with the physical plane, and that through what this man was, a super-sensible element was able to work within his personality and be united with it.

Because the Greeks saw, as what was most essential in Orpheus, a pure super-sensible element, they said of him:—“He is descended from a Muse.” He was the son of the Muse Calliope; he was not the son of any mere earthly mother, but of a super-sensible element that had never had connection with sensible things. Had he been the son of Calliope alone, he could only have given information concerning super-sensible worlds. But because of the age in which he lived he was ordained to give expression also to that which would be of service to his age physically. He was not only an instrument for the voice of the Muse Calliope, as the Rischis at an earlier day had been the vocal instruments of certain super-sensible forces, but he was able to express super-sensible things so vividly in his own life that the physical world was influenced by him. Because Orpheus had a Thracean river God for his father, what he taught waS closely associated on the other side with nature, with the climate of Greece, and with all that external nature gave to the river god, Oiagros.

We gather therefore that the soul-nature of Orpheus was considered the most important part of him. It was in respect of their souls men were described long ago, not as became customary later when people were described by saying: he is the son of so and so, and was born in such a town, but they were described according to their spiritual values.

It is extraordinarily interesting to note how intimately the fate of a man like Orpheus was felt; a man who was descended on one side from a muse and on the other from a river god. He had within him not merely super-sensible qualities as the prophets had, but to these he had added sensible qualities. He was therefore exposed to all the influences exercised on man by the physical sensible world.

You are well aware that the nature of man is composed of several members. The lowest of these is the physical body, then comes the etheric body (concerning which I told you that it comprises the opposite sex), then the astral body and the ego. A man like Orpheus was still able to look on one side into the spiritual world because he was descended from a Muse (you now know what that means), but on the other side the capacities by which he could live in the spiritual world were undermined owing to the life he led on the physical plane, and because of his descent from his father, the Thracian river god. Through this his purely spiritual life was undermined. In the case of all the earlier leaders of mankind in the second and third periods of post-Atlantean culture, by whom only a verbal teaching concerning the spiritual world had been imparted, conditions were such that they were conscious of their own etheric body as something separated from their physical body. When in the civilisations of ancient Greece, and also in those of the Celts, a man was empowered to perceive what he had to communicate to his fellow-men, these revelationscame to him because his etheric body extended beyond his physical body. It became in this case the hearer of forces which entered into the man. If the person giving out these revelations was a man and his etheric body therefore female, he perceived what he had to communicate from the spiritual world in a female form.

Now it had to be shown that where Orpheus came into purely spiritual relationship with Spiritual Powers, he was exposed, owing to his being the son of the Thracian river god, to the risk of not being able to retain the revelations that came to him through his etheric body. The more he entered into the life of the physical world and expressed what he was as a son of Thrace, the more he lost his clairvoyant powers. This is shown in the fact that Eurydice, she through whom he revealed himself, his soul-bride, was removed from him, and was taken to the underworld. This occurred through the bite of an adder. He could only receive her hack again by passing through an initiation. This he now did. Whenever we are told of anyone “going into the underworld,” it means an initiation, so he had to pass through an initiation before receiving his bride back again. But already he was too closely interwoven with the physical world. He certainly did attain powers by which he was able to penetrate to the underworld, but on his return, as he again beheld the light of the sun, Eurydice disappeared from his sight. Why? Because when he beheld the light of day he did something he should not have done—he looked back. That means, he overstepped a law strictly laid on him by the God of the underworld. What law is this? It is, that physical man as he lives on the physical plane to-day must not look back beyond that moment of time I have already described, within which lie the macrocosmic experiences of childhood, and which, when extended into later states of consciousness, gave him the ancient form of clairvoyance. “Thou shalt not desire to unravel the secrets of childhood,” said the God of the underworld, “nor remember how the threshold was crossed.” If he did this he lost the faculty of clairvoyance. Something infinitely fine and intimate in Orpheus is shown us by this loss of Eurydice, one result of which is the sacrifice of man to the physical world. With a nature that is still rooted in the spiritual world, he is directed to what he has to become on the physical plane. Through this nature all the powers of the physical plane rush in on him, and he loses “Eurydice” his own innocent soul, which must be lost to modern humanity. The forces among which he is then placed lacerate him. This in a certain sense is regarded as the sacrifice of Orpheus.

What did Orpheus experience as he lived on from the third to the fourth period of post-Atlantean culture? He experienced in the first place that stage of consciousness which the child leaves behind—he experienced connection with the Macrocosm. This does not pass over into his conscious life. Therefore, as we see him, he is swallowed up, slain by life on the physical plane, which really begins at the point of time of which we have been speaking.

Consider now the man of the physical plane, who is normally only able to carry his memory back to a certain point of time, before which lie the first three years of childhood.

The thread of memory so entangles Orpheus with the physical plane that with his true nature he could not abide in it, but is torn to pieces. Thus it is with the spirit of man to-day; we see how profoundly the human spirit is entangled in matter. This is the spirit which, according to the Christianity of St. Paul, is called the “Son of Man.” You get this conception of the “Son of Man” who is in man from the point of time to which memory extends, along with all that he has gained through culture. Keep this man before you, and then think what he might have been through union with the Macrocosm, if there had entered into him all that streamed towards him from the Macrocosm in the early years of childhood. In these early years what comes can only form a foundation, for the evolved human ego is not yet present. But if it entered into an evolved human ego there would then take place what occurred for the first time through the baptism in Jordan at the moment when “the Spirit from above” descended upon Jesus of Nazareth. The three innocent stages of childhood's development would blend with all the rest of the human being. The consequence would be as this innocent life of childhood sought to develop on the physical earth, that it could do so only for three years (as is always the case):—it would meet its end on Golgotha. This means it cannot mingle with what man becomes at the moment when he achieves his egohood, at the point of time to which later his memory extends.

If you ponder this; if you ponder what it would mean if all the connections with the Macrocosm were to meet in one man; if everything that approached him in a vague, uncertain way in his early childhood streamed into him, but could not really dawn in him because the evolved ego was not present, were you to carry this thought further and picture it dawning within a later consciousness, something would be formed in man, something would enter into him, which did not spring from a human source, but from the vast world-depths out of which we are born You would then have the interpretation of the words uttered in connection with the descent of the dove:—“This is my well beloved Son; this day have I begotten Him!” This means: Now is the Christ—incarnated—“begotten” in Jesus of Nazareth. Christ was actually born in Jesus of Nazareth at the moment of baptism in Jordan. He then stood at the summit of that consciousness, which otherwise man only enjoys in the early years of childhood, but He was aware at the same time of this union with the whole cosmos. A child would also have this feeling of union if it were aware of what it felt during those three early years. In this case other words heard at that time would acquire a different meaning:—“I and the Father (the cosmic Father) are one!”

When you allow all this to affect your souls you will be conscious of something within you that is like an echo of what Paul felt, the earliest initial element of that which came to him in the revelation of Damascus, and experienced in the beautiful words:—“Unless ye become as little children ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” This saying has manifold meanings, among others this—Paul said, “Not I, but Christ in me!” This means a being having the macrocosmic consciousness a child would have were it to experience the consciousness of its three early years along with that of a later day. In the normal man of to-day these two kinds of consciousness are separate, they must be separate, for they are not compatible. Neither were they in Jesus Christ. For after these three years death had necessarily to follow under such circumstances as occurred in Palestine. It was not by chance these occurred as they did, but because two factors lived in one Being: the “Son of God”—which man is from the time of his birth until the development of his ego-consciousness, and the “Son of Man” which he is after this ego-consciousness has been acquired. Through the union of the “Son of God” and the “Son of Man” all those events came to pass which later led to the Events of Palestine.

For the goal we have set before us, which is connected with the study of the Gospel of Mark, is to be pursued further, it must be grasped in its widest meaning. It may perhaps be only after a considerable time that the reason will appear why one or another line of study has been pursued, and what connection these have with our subject. We will have to speak to-day, for instance, of certain things which apparently are far removed from our theme, but which will be of great assistance to us in our later studies.

Allow me to say in the first place that those who are outside our movement will always have difficulty in understanding certain things connected with the direction of the theosophical spiritual movement so long as they do not inform themselves intimately with what concerns the central nerve of this movement. Such things, for instance, as: what meaning and value have “clairvoyant investigations” for those who have not yet attained clairvoyant powers. The objection might be made:—“How can a faith or conviction concerning spiritual truths be developed by those who cannot see into the spiritual world?”

Here attention must be drawn to the opposite—that as long as our clairvoyant eyes remain unopened we cannot see into the spiritual world, although from this spiritual world all the results and revelations it contains are derived. When it is stated as a result of clairvoyant investigation that man consists of four members—physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego—the person who holds aloof from such investigation might perhaps object:—“I only see the physical body, how can I convince myself of the existence of these higher members of my Being before my Karma makes it possible for me to see them and realise the truth of what I am told concerning them.”

It is easy for anyone, if he so wishes, to deny the existence of the astral and etheric body, but he cannot by decree annul the processes that go on in them, for they are seen in human life. I would like, in order that you may enter into the whole composition of the Being of man, as revealed by many of the expressions found in the Gospels, to show how clearly the results of processes within the etheric and astral body can be seen in our ordinary life on the physical plane.

Let us, in the first place, consider the difference between a man who is full of idealism and sets up high ideals, and one who is disinclined to do this, who acts according to instinct, who eats when he is hungry, sleeps when he is sleepy, does this or that when moved by desire for one thing or another. Naturally there are all kinds of intermediate stages between these two types; between the one just described and others whose thoughts and ideals rise far above what they are able to attain in ordinary life. Such idealists are always in a peculiar position regarding life. They must always try to convince themselves of the truth of the saying that it is not possible really to satisfy their highest ideals in any domain of the physical plane. Idealists constantly state:—“My deeds ever lag behind my ideals.” We must therefore acknowledge when speaking strictly: in a man's ideals—in what he thinks or feels, there is always something greater than in his deeds. According to spiritual science this is the outstanding feature of the idealist. Keep this clearly before you: the idealist is one whose intentions and thoughts are always greater than what he is able to accomplish on the physical plane. Of the man whose life we have described as being the opposite of this we can say: his thoughts and views are narrower, more restricted than his deeds. Anyone who acts only from instinct, passion, or desire, has not thoughts capable of grasping the result of his actions at any given moment, the things he does far exceed his power of thought. His intentions and thoughts are therefore narrower, more restricted, than his deeds on the physical plane.

The clairvoyant has something to tell us concerning these two types. When we do something, when we carry out some piece of work that is greater and more far-reaching than our thoughts, this activity always casts a reflection into our astral body. We do nothing in life that is not reflected or imaged in our astral body. This image is imparted later to the etheric body and as it is imparted so it remains in the Akashic Chronicle and can he seen there by the clairvoyants as a picture of what the man has done during his life. In the same way images remain behind in the astral body and are later projected into the etheric body, thoughts that are greater than the fulfilment of them. This means thoughts that are the outcome of idealism, that are reflected in the astral body and continue further into the etheric body.

There is a great difference between the reflected images of actions that have sprung from instincts, desires, passions, etc., and the reflected images of deeds that are the outcome of idealism. The first contain something that remains as a destructive element during a man's whole life. They are those images, those con-tents of the astral body which gradually affect the entire human being so that it is slowly destroyed. Such images are closely connected with the way human life on the physical plane is gradually prepared for death. But those other reflections springing from thoughts which transcend our actions, have life-giving qualities. They are specially stimulating to our etheric body, for they continually bring new vital forces to man's whole being.

Thus, according to clairvoyance, we have destructive forces within us on the physical plane and at the same time forces that continually impart fresh life. As a rule the effect of these forces on life can be easily seen. We meet people who are gloomy, hypochondriacal, of a sombre temperament, people who are not happy in their soul life, all this works back on their physical organism. They become nervous, and one observes how nervousness, if it continues, undermines the health of the physical organism. Such men become melancholy in later life, are discontented with themselves, and in various ways are unbalanced natures. If the cause of this is investigated we find that such persons have had little opportunity in the earlier periods of their physical life of transcending action by idealistic thought. In ordinary life such things are not noticed; but their results are clear! Many people feel these results strongly, they feel them as an attitude of soul and of life, and perceive them also in bodily conditions.

So, though the astral body may be denied, its consequences cannot be denied, for they are felt. And when life reveals the things I have just described people are forced to acknowledge that we are not so very foolish when we declare that we have proof of them. For though spiritual happenings can only be seen by the clairvoyant, the results can be seen by anyone.

On the other hand we find that thoughts which are more noble than the actions connected with them, leave impressions which appear in later life as courage, confidence and calmness. These continue to work even into the physical organism, but the connections are only noticed when a man's life is observed over long periods of time. The mistake of many scientific observations is that people are apt to judge results immediately in the course of the first few years, whereas the results of many things are only apparent after decades.

Now, we must realise, there are not only people of a purely idealistic nature whose thoughts transcend their various experiences, and others whose thoughts lag behind their experiences, but we have a large number of experiences which our thoughts only grasp with the greatest difficulty. Eating and drinking are things that spring anew each day from instinct, and it takes a long time before those who are going through a spiritual training learn to connect such things with spiritual life. It is precisely everyday things that are the most difficult to connect with spiritual life. We have first done this as regards eating and drinking when we have discovered why, in order to serve the progress of the world, we have to receive physical substances into us regularly, and what connection these physical substances have with spiritual life. We then learn that digestion is not merely a physical process, but that there is something spiritual in its rhythm. In any case there is a way of gradually spiritualising those things which are not demanded purely by external necessity; it is possible so to regard them that we say:—We eat this or that fruit, and through our spiritual knowledge can always form an idea of how an apple, or any other fruit, is related to the universe as a whole. This, however, takes a long time. For we must in this case accustom ourselves to allow eating to be no mere material fact, but to observe the connection between the spirit and the ripening of any fruit by the rays of the sun.

In this way we spiritualise the most material, most everyday processes, and acquire power to enter into them with our thoughts. (Here it is only possible to hint how thoughts and ideas can be brought into this realm.) It is a long road, and very few men in our age can arrive at thinking perfectly as regards eating.

Thus there are not only people who act instinctively, and others who act idealistically, but with everyone life is partitioned so that one part of a man's actions is carried out in a way that thought cannot follow, and others so that thoughts and ideas have a wider range than actions. We have one set of forces within us which lead our life downhill, and operate so that our physical organism through internal causes is gradually prepared for death; and another set of forces which bring life to our astral and etheric bodies, and dawn continually like a new light within these bodies. These are the life-giving forces within our etheric body.

When after death we forsake our sheaths with the spiritual part of our being we still have the etheric body about us for a few days, and because of this we have that backward vision of our whole life of which I have often spoken. The best of what now remains to us is something inwardly constructive, the life-giving forces just mentioned, that rise within us because our ideas transcend the sum of our actions. These continue to work in us after death, and contain the life-forces necessary for our following incarnation.

The life-giving forces we implant in us remain within our etheric body, they are forces of enduring youth, and though we cannot lengthen our life through them we can so shape it that it retains the freshness of youth for a longer time. We do this by acting in such a way that our thoughts surpass the measure of our deeds.

When a man asks himself:—“How can I gain those ideals which best transcend my actions?” We answer:—This is possible when people give themselves up to spiritual science which directs their thoughts to super-sensible worlds. When they learn, for instance, from spiritual science of the evolution of man, these communications stir up forces in the higher members of their being, and they gain through them at the present day the most certain, most concrete idealism. And when questioned further:—“What specially does spiritual science do compared with other sciences?” We answer:—“It pours into our astral and etheric bodies, fresh, youthful, life-giving forces.”

People are related to what we call spiritual science in so many different ways, not because as men of to-day they are non-clairvoyant, but because they do not observe things in ordinary life with sufficient care; otherwise they would see the various ways in which what we call the man of soul and spirit reveals himself, even within his organism.

Those who live in the world and only approach spiritual science as thorough unbelievers may hear it said:—“This science holds, that the human physical body is filled by various higher members, it sums these up as the soul- and spirit-man. But the materialists of the present day do not wish to believe in this man of soul and spirit. They believe only in the physical man, and for this reason they are materialists. Under the term materialists people frequently understand only theoretical materialists, those who only believe in matter! But as I have often said—these theoretical materialists are not the worst, for such a materialist might he one who created ideas merely through his understanding, and such ideas are usually very short-sighted, a materialism that springs only from ideas is not necessarily very harmful. But when it is fortified by other things it can be very harmful for a man's whole life, especially when with the innermost spiritual kernel of his being he is attached to his material side. And how dependent people are to-day on what is material!

It may be misleading to assert that there are theoretical materialists as regards thoughts, and that some thoughts are fatal to our souls; but our external life is also greatly influenced by the fact that in the practices of life there are so many materialists. What do I mean by this? I mean a man who is so dependent on physical things, that he can only spend a few months in his office in winter, and in the summer must go to the Riviera. Such a man is entirely dependent on materialistic arrangements and combinations; he is a materialist as regards the practices of life; he is entirely dependent on material things; his soul is forced to run after the wants dictated by life. This is a different kind of materialist from the one who lives only in thoughts which are materialistic. A theoretical idealism may yet lead to the conviction that theoretical materialism is a mistake, but the practical materialist can only be cured by entering profoundly into spiritual science.

If people would only think, that is, if their thoughts did but spring, not merely from understanding, but from a connection with reality, they would recognise from quite ordinary facts that there is a great difference between the various parts of man's being.

I will first point out the difference between the hands and, let us say, the shoulders.

If we investigate physical man in an entirely external way, we find physical differences, for instance, in the way the nerves behave. Yet we must remember that we can exercise a certain influence on this. If the behaviour of our nerves was the absolute and only authority for the soul, we should be dependent on the activity of substance, for the behaviour of the nerves is an activity of substance. This we most assuredly are not; for we are able to influence the state of our nerves, and we do so in the most varied way, especially through our etheric and astral bodies; that is through our soul and spirit. We must not simply say:—“The physical body is filled by the etheric and astral body,” for this varies according to the part we are considering, whether it be the head or the shoulder or some other part. Different spiritual parts act differently. It is easy to convince ourselves of this. We must, however, realise that what takes place in life is in accordance with reality, and cannot be studied without thought. If our breath is not drawn correctly the physiologist discovers by physiological laws why it did not reach the place intended.

And why do people not ponder the profound significance there is for life in the fact that they wash their hands more often than any other part of their body? (It may seem strange that such things should be mentioned, but it is precisely by everyday events that the communications of the clairvoyant can be verified.) In any case this is a fact. And it is also a fact that some people wash their hands more frequently and more gladly than others. This fact so apparently trivial is really connected with the highest knowledge. When a clairvoyant observes the hands, they are for him wonder-fully different from all the other members, even from the face. From the fingers luminous projections stream forth from the etheric body, sometimes glimmering feebly, sometimes piercing surrounding space. They stream forth differently according to whether the person is joyful or sad, and differently from the inner surfaces than from the backs of the hands. For anyone who can observe things clairvoyantly the hand, more especially in its etheric and astral parts, is a most wonderful formation.

Everything around us even if material, is a revelation of spirit. Matter has to be thought of in regard to spirit as ice is to water; matter is formed out of spirit. If you like you may call it consolidated spirit. Therefore if we come in contact with any substance, we contact the spirit in that substance. Any contact we make with substance, in so far as this is material, is Maya (illusion). In reality it is the spirit we encounter.

The way we come in touch with the spirit in water, when we wash our hands for instance, is seen—when life is observed with sharpened senses—to have a great influence on our whole disposition, however often we wash them. There are natures that have a certain preference for washing their hands, they must wash at once if they touch anything dirty. These natures are related in a quite special way to their surroundings. They are not restricted merely to what is material, for it is as if a fine force within the material substance begins to affect them, and that they have established the connection I mentioned between their hands and the element of water. Such people are even seen to possess, in an entirely healthy sense, more sensitive natures, finer powers of observation than others. They know at once, for instance, if they encounter anyone of a brutal or of a kindly nature. Whereas those others who endure dirt on their hands are actually of a coarser nature, and show by such ways that they have raised a wall between themselves and the more intimate relationships with the surrounding world. This is a fact and, if you like, it can be proved ethnographically. Pass through and observe the various countries of the world. You are then able to say:—“Here or there people wash their hands more.” Observe the relationship between such people, observe how different the relationship is between friend and friend, between acquaintance and acquaintance, in regions where hands are more frequently washed than in regions where walls have been raised between them owing to this being done less frequently.

Such things have the value of natural laws, Other connections can cancel them. If we throw a stone through the air, the line of its flight describes a parabole. But if the stone is caught by the wind the parabole is not there. This shows that we have to know the conditions before certain relationships can be observed correctly!

Whence does this knowledge come? It comes from clairvoyance, for it is revealed to this consciousness how finely the hands are permeated by soul and spirit qualities. This is so much the case that a special relationship of the hands to water is apparent, greater than in the case of the human countenance, and greater still than in respect of the surface of other parts of the human body. This must not be understood as an objection in any way to bathing and washing, but rather as throwing light on certain relationships. It is only to show how very differently man's soul and spirit-nature is related to his various members, and how differently this is impressed on them.

You will find it hard to believe, for instance, that anyone could suffer injury in his astral body through washing his hands too frequently. But this must be considered in its widest aspect. It depends on the maintenance of a healthy relationship between man and the surrounding world—that is, between the astral body of man and the surrounding world—through the relation-ship of his hands to water. For this reason excess in this is hardly possible.

If people think only in a materialistic way, clinging with their thoughts to what is material they say:—“What is good for the hands is good for the rest of the body.” Showing that they do not note the fine differences between them and the other members.

The result is one that is seldom noticed; namely, that as regards certain things all of the human body should not be treated alike. For instance, as a specific cure children used to be ordered frequent cold baths and friction. Fortunately, because of certain results on the “nervous system” physicians have found these methods unwise. For, owing to the special relationship between the hands and the astral body, what is in some ways suitable for them, may soon prove harmful where the body stands in a different relationship to the astral body. Where a healthy sense of perception towards the surrounding world is evoked through frequent handwashings, an unhealthy, hyper-sensitiveness is often the result of an exaggerated cold water treatment; and this, especially if employed in childhood, may last during the whole life.

It is therefore most necessary that the limits should be known, and this is only possible when people acknowledge the fact that the physical body is closely linked with the higher members of man's Being. People will then realise that the more physical part of us—the physical instrument—must be treated quite differently from the soul and spirit-nature. They must also realise this in connection with the glands which are instruments especially of the etheric body, while everything connected with the nerves and the brain is intimately associated with the astral body. If these things are not understood, neither will certain other appearances ever be understood. Materialists err most in this, because they always look to the instrument and not back to the cause. Everything we experience is experienced in the realm of the soul, and that we are conscious of these experiences depends on our having an instrument of reflection in the physical body. In it everything is preserved, but the physical body is only the instrument. This is often brought to our notice in a remarkable way. I need only mention the thyroid gland. This you know is regarded as a meaningless organ, and in cases of illness is removed, but the patient may sink into idiotcy. If only a part of this gland remains the danger is avoided. This shows that the secretions of this gland are necessary for the development of certain things in the life of the soul. Now the strange nature of this organ is further revealed in the fact that if the secretions of the thyroid gland of a sheep are given to the patient who has lost his own gland, the tendency to idiotcy is lessened, but the contrary if the secretions of the sheep are withheld. Materialists find great satisfaction in this fact. Spiritual science is able, however, to estimate it in the right way. We are faced with the strange fact that we are here concerned with an organ, the products of which we can trace directly to our organism. Activities such as occur in the thyroid gland are only possible when there is a certain connection with the etheric body. Where a similar connection exists with the astral body these activities are not possible.

I have known more or less feebly endowed men who have eaten sheep's brains, yet have not become clever! This shows the great difference there is between different organs. This difference is only so considerable because one group of organs have connection with the etheric body, others with the astral body. From this another very remarkable fact is disclosed to spiritual observation.

It seems very strange that a man becomes feeble-minded when his thyroid gland is removed, but can be restored to cleverness by having the extract of the same gland administered to him. It seems strange because it cannot be discovered that his brain is affected thereby. This is again a point where ordinary human observation is of necessity led to spiritual scientific methods of observation, for spiritual science shows that the man did not become the least feeble-minded when his thyroid gland was removed. “But,” you say, “the facts show that the man was feeble-minded I” In reality men do not become idiotic because they are wanting in understanding, but because the possibility of making use of the instrument which gives them “awareness” is wanting. They do not become idiotic through any loss of understanding, but because contact with their surroundings is blunted, and bluntness is different from the loss of understanding. Understanding is not lost if through want of awareness it has never been developed. If you are unable to think about a thing, you cannot ex-press yourself regarding it; you must first think of it before any contact with it can be established. The “power to participate,” the living interest in things is undermined when the thyroid gland is removed. Men become indifferent to such an extent indeed, that they cease to employ their understanding.

From this you can see the great difference between the employment of an instrument of understanding like the various parts of the brain, and of an instrument connected with a gland such as the thyroid gland. In this way we are able to throw light on the different ways in which our physical body is an instrument, and when this is understood we can distinguish between the different parts of human consciousness.

Even in respect of the ego we can say that it is related in the most varied way to the surrounding world. We have here to consider things connected with the ego which I have described elsewhere from different aspects, showing how man either enters more within himself with his ego, strives to become more aware of himself, or he turns to the outer world striving rather to find his connection with it. We become in a certain sense conscious of ourselves when we turn our glance inwards—when we devote ourselves to the thought of what life gives us, what it holds for us. We are then conscious of our ego. We can become conscious of it when we come in contact with the outer world; for instance, when we knock up against a stone, or if we can-not solve a calculation we are conscious of our ego as something feeble compared to conditions in the external world. In short, both within ourselves and also in the external world we can become conscious of our ego. We become aware of our ego in a very special way when those magic connections between man and the surrounding world arise which we describe as feelings of sympathy or compassion. Here it is clearly seen that a magic activity passes from soul to soul, from spirit to spirit. For whatever takes place in the world is felt by us; what is there felt or thought, is experienced again within us, we experience it as something inward, some-thing of the soul and spirit. We are then inwardly intensified; for compassion and sympathy are experiences of the soul. And if our ego is not sufficiently developed for these experiences and requires strengthening, this is expressed in a purely spiritual way through sorrow and in a physical way through tears. Sorrow as a soul-experience brings greater strength to the ego in respect of outward experience than does indifference. Sorrow is always an inner enhancement of the ego. Tears but express the fact that at the moment the ego strives to experience more than it would through indifference.

In this connection we are forced to admire the poetic fantasy of the young Goethe, closely connected as it was with profound facts of human nature. It is where he allows the weakness of Faust's ego to lead him so far that he feels at first constrained to extinguish this ego physically, he feels driven to suicide.; then the Easter bells ring out, and at the sound the ego of Faust begins to gather strength, so much so that tears spring—the sign of this in the soul of Faust:—“Tears start, earth holds me once more,” he cries.

This means that what belonged to earth was strengthened through the shedding of tears, the increased intensity of the ego found expression in tears.

In mirth and laughter we again have what is connected with the strength or weakness of the ego in its relationship to the external world. These show that the ego feels strong as regards its understanding of things and events. In laughter our ego draws together, and its intensity is strengthened.¹ This finds expression in mirth, in the way we show our amusement. With this is associated the fact that sorrow is fundamentally something that should be so experienced, at least by the healthy man, that what occasions this sorrow is real to him. What affects us in this reality, so that in sharing it we feel we must enhance the inner activity of our ego, brings about a feeling of sadness. But when sorrow depends on what is unreal and is expressed merely in an artistic sense, the man of sound thought will feel that he requires something more. He feels that to the cause of his sadness a certain conviction must be added that sorrow can be overcome by something able to conquer misery. Therefore we demand from the drama that it should represent the victory of the person who is overtaken by misery. It is no aesthetic representation of life that sets only its trivial elements before us; in a man who trusts entirely to his healthy nature, the ego is not satisfied when confronted with misery that is counterfeited.

The whole weight of reality is required before our ego can rise to compassion.

Now, do you not feel in your souls how different it is as regards anything comic? It is in a certain extent inhuman to laugh at a simpleton, but it is quite sound to laugh at one when represented on the stage. Burlesques and comedies are a healthy means of showing how the folly of men's actions leads to absurdities.

When our ego is able to rise to laughter over what is generally recognised as folly, it is strengthened, and there is no healthier laughter than that evoked through such artistic presentations, though it is inhuman to laugh at what actually befalls our fellow men, or at a real simpleton. Thus different laws come into operation whether these things affect us as representations or in actual life. We must allow that if our ego is to be strengthened through compassion this is best done when we are actually confronted with the fact that moves us to compassion. On the other hand as healthy men we demand from misery that is counterfeited, that we should find in it the means of overcoming it. In the dying heroes of tragedy, where death is actually enacted before our eyes, we feel that the victory of the spirit over death is symbolised in these deaths. The whole matter is re-versed when the ego is brought in touch with the world around us. We then feel that faced with reality we can-not attain to mirth or laughter in the right way, that we are best able to laugh at those things that are more or less removed from reality.

When a man meets with some misfortune, which does not specially injure him and is not closely connected with the real facts of life, we may well laugh at his misfortune. But the nearer this experience is to reality the less can we laugh at it when we understand it. From this we see how varied are the relationships of our ego to reality, but in all this variety of facts we recognise everywhere a link with what is greatest.

From many lectures you have learnt that in ancient initiation there were two ways of gaining entrance to the spiritual world. One method was by sinking deeply within one's own being—within the Microcosm; the other was by passing out into the life of the Macrocosm or great world. Now everything which comes to expression in great things is revealed also in the smallest. The way in which a man descends into his own inner being in daily life is shown by his sadness; and the way in which he is able to expand into the life of the outer world is shown by his ability to grasp the connections of such events as he there encounters. In this is seen the supremacy of the ego. And you have heard that if the ego is not to be lost it must be guided by the initiation that leads into the outer world; otherwise it loses itself, and instead of going forth into the outer world it is brought to apparent nothingness.

The smallest things are connected with the greatest. Therefore, in Spiritual Science, where we have so often to rise to the highest spheres, we must sometimes concern ourselves with what belongs to the most everyday things. In the next lecture, when once more we shall occupy ourselves with higher spheres, we shall make use of some of the things dealt with to-day.

• 1. See Paths of Experience: the Chapter on Laughing and Weeping, where this subject is fully explained. – Ed.