The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We concluded yesterday by trying to shed light on what is narrated in the Gospel of John about the wedding at Cana, and we emphasized the particular importance of the fact that it says “the mother of Jesus was there”. John never refers to her as Mary, nor does he refer to himself as John, but only as “the disciple whom the Lord loved.” We saw that the wedding in Galilee refers to the connection between people beyond the barriers of blood. Furthermore, where the crucifixion of Christ is described, it says: “And standing beside the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” According to the account of the writer of the Gospel of John, the mother of Jesus was therefore not called Mary, because otherwise two sisters would have had the same name. Attention is also drawn to the words: “Woman, behold your son! After that, he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home. Today we want to bring the building blocks for the correct understanding of the following. Let us remember once again that John, or rather the writer of the Gospel of John, was an initiate; that a truly initiated person wrote this gospel, one who saw heaven open and had precise knowledge of the astral and devachanic worlds. John also indicates how to attain such a state: through meditation on the opening words. If you let these words live again and again in your soul, they will become magic words through which you will gradually ascend to an understanding of the Gospel of John. John wants to tell us: If you want to go the Christian way, then you must lift yourselves up to the devachan in the way I am telling it here, and then the deeds of Christ Jesus and everything that is connected with him and has happened to him will appear to you as I am presenting them to you. The Gospel of John wants to be a book of life that presents experiences from one's own body. We cannot understand the gospel until we no longer see the events as mere historical facts, but as things that were seen by John with higher vision and his mind. The wedding at Cana is also a real event, but the facts become symbols. The ordinary person views this wedding with its wine miracle differently than an awakened person like John. To the latter, it becomes the prophetic prediction for the entire future course of human development, everything that was to come about through Christ.

We are now living in the fifth sub-race of the fifth main race. What took place in Palestine falls within the fourth sub-race, the Greco-Latin race. The Jewish people emerged from the third sub-race, preparing for their mission in Egypt, whence they had come. Jesus was one of them. The third main race now extends into the fourth, the fourth into the fifth, the fifth into the sixth. Thus we have to distinguish three epochs. In the esoteric language they are called three days of creation.

But on the third day there was a wedding at Cana: the writer of the Gospel of John sees there that which will only happen in the future, in the sixth race: the marriage of Manas, which expresses itself in the law, with Budhi, the grace, the joy, the great marriage of the whole manasic element with Budhi. This can only happen when the task of Christianity has been completely solved. “He who does not forsake father and mother and brother and sister for my sake cannot be my disciple,” that is, love must be taken out of narrow communities and made into universal human love; it must turn from what is blood-related to what is spiritually related. So in the wedding at Cana we have visualized that which is to come to pass in the future. It is no mere accident that it says, “And on the third day,” for that is to be taken literally as the Day of the World. Every number, every word, everything in the Gospel of John is highly significant.

One is actually amazed when most theologians address Jehovah as the “Father” of Christ. In Luke, it is stated plainly and clearly where the archangel Gabriel announces the birth of Jesus to Mary (Sophia): “Do not be afraid, you have found favor with God; the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you...” and never anything else. So the Father of Christ is the “Holy Ghost.” This is not just according to the Gospel of John, but to an ancient tradition. Christ says, “I and the Father are one.” I and the Holy Ghost are one, does that mean.

Now the question arises: Who was the mother of Jesus? To recognize this, knowledge of the nature of initiation is necessary. Only then will we clearly see that we are dealing here with processes in higher worlds. At the same time, this will prepare us to understand the Gospel of John from the 13th chapter onwards.

At this point, we will now insert the teaching on initiation in some detail. For this is not only about the Gospel of John, but about theosophy. The teaching of the initiations teaches us about the “Mother of Jesus”, what she is and what the “Holy Spirit” is. Today, there is often the misconception that there is only one way to initiation. This is not correct. There is only one view from the mountain, but different paths can lead to the summit. The same applies to the truth. There are different paths to it as well. Which path is the most suitable for you depends on where you are on the mountain. The “mountain” was always the expression for the ascent, for example the summit of the mountain at the feeding of the five thousand.

There are three different paths to initiation, corresponding to the sub-eras of our main era. The sub-eras do not simply follow one another in time, but live side by side for a long time. The difference is much stronger internally than externally. For example: an Indian today can still more easily than a European immerse himself in his sympathetic nervous system by disconnecting his thinking. If a European, especially a man, wanted to follow the Oriental path, he would need strong means to loosen up his entire bone structure and physical constitution, which would not be possible without lasting damage, just to make the physical possible. Therefore such an attempt is not at all advisable for the European, and to achieve a good result with it is almost impossible. Initiation itself is nothing other than a complete transformation of the inner nature. For the present-day European, the Rosicrucian path, which has been cultivated since the 14th to 15th century, is the best.

The three paths of initiation are as follows: the Indian-Oriental yoga path, the Christian-Gnostic path until the 15th century, and the Christian-Rosicrucian path since the 15th century. The first is not for Europeans. The second is suitable for people of the middle zone, it is accessible to us, but the Rosicrucian path, which was taken from the 14th century onwards, is more appropriate. The Christian-Gnostic path does bring truth for the individual, but the disciple will not be able to consistently carry it out in modern life and provide answers to the manifold objections of today's science and culture, as he is able to do with the help of the Rosicrucian path.

The oriental yoga path has a series of stages for which one must first prepare. The seven steps can be practiced in parallel, but the person must strictly place himself under a so-called guru. The guru is aware of the state of his inner development. The Indian path goes straight up into the astral world. In the beginning, the student is very helpless there, hence the strict submission to the guru, because he lacks the ability to correct his own errors when perceiving facts that are in stark contradiction to one another.

The first stage is Yama, that is, refraining. In the physical world, the student's perceptions and assertions are corrected by the physical world, reality corrects him. But it is no longer so in the astral world. There the impressions rush in on him in images and colors, in forms and figures, which are in constant change and ceaseless motion. In addition, what one's own soul thinks and wills also becomes entities, and the student is then not yet able to distinguish his own and other astral beings. Therefore, in the astral world, he must have direction from within in order to stand securely. For how does this world appear? With a plant, for instance, it rises like a violet flame. The properties of things dissolve into colors, stand out from the things, the astral space is filled with colors, properties and sounds surging to and fro. These colors and sounds must go to the astral beings and fill them. Then some elemental spirit will appear to you in a bright yellow color. To be able to distinguish and to know what it is, certainty is necessary. In moments when these elemental spirits want to guide you to something, strong forces arise in man's inner nature: the person's own soul expresses itself in this, and therefore they drive him where the soul wants to go. In order to guide the helpless disciple correctly, he must live in the soul of the guru, see with his eyes, hence the necessity of the strict authority of the guru. In everything he undertakes, for example even buying a house, the disciple has to ask the guru. - In practicing Yama, one must practice refraining. One must refrain from: killing, stealing, lying, coveting, the consumption of alcoholic drinks and debauchery. These demands are much more difficult for a European to fulfill than it appears, because under the current time, life and cultural conditions in Europe, it is hardly possible to know whether the student can fulfill these conditions. For example, he kills with every breath if he does not regulate his breathing. He has his money in a bank or in some company: what does he know about what happens to it? The concept of “omission” must be very strictly defined for the student, because the point is that no one should be harmed by us at all. The only possibility for partial compliance with these conditions is to become more and more frugal.

The second stage, Niyama, prescribes observing cult symbols. Indian training strictly requires the student to take part in ceremonies and submit to a ritual. In doing so, one must visualize what one is going through internally. An example of such a ritual is given in the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass, which, with its four parts, is the expression of what also took place in the ancient mysteries. It consists of the gospel (the proclamation), the sacrifice of the lower self, the transformation into the higher self, and communion: union with the divine. What really happens on the astral plane happens there in the image on the physical plane. It is important to see this in pictures. They absorb the picture, and one night the astral world can absorb the student and become a force within him. First see in pictures what is to take place on the higher planes.

The third step, Asana, is the correct bodily posture. Today's European man of culture has hardly any idea of the importance of the correct bodily posture. There are powerful currents continually flowing through the world and through the human body, and these ether currents are of great influence on man. This was known in ancient India, as well as how much depends on the correct bodily posture for the student. The animal has a horizontal position in relation to the earth's axis, the plant a vertical one. If we draw a line from the flower through the root, we meet the center of the earth. In the plant we have the image of what is shown to us in the structure of the human being, only in reverse; what corresponds to the human head is found at the bottom in the root, and the plant holds its reproductive organs up to the sun in chastity. The horizontal position of the animal and the upright position of man and plant form a cross, hence Plato's saying: “The soul of the world is crucified on the body of the world.” Just as these lines run in the cosmos, so the currents run through all the organs. The Indian yoga student had to place his limbs in a certain direction so that the world currents could work in him; this is not possible for the European human being.

Fourthly: Pranayama. This is the teaching of correct breathing. Man actually kills all the time through his breathing process. We inhale oxygen, mix it with blood and exhale carbonic acid, which is toxic to humans and animals. We would die if the plants did not breathe the carbonic acid, retained the carbon and exhaled the oxygen again. This cycle is of the utmost importance and makes the existence of humans and animals possible in the first place.

Human: plant
animal: breathes in oxygen, breathes out
breathes out carbonic acid: carbonic acid, and builds up its body from
breathes in oxygen: carbon.

Pranayama, the rhythmic breathing process, is supposed to gradually overcome the killing process. Man will not only expand his consciousness, but his whole life. There is carbon in the blood, which burns with the inhaled oxygen to form carbonic acid, which is excreted; the plant separates the components, it breathes out oxygen, and man absorbs it. And so the cycle begins anew. In the future, man will carry out the cycle within himself. When man is able to build his own body out of carbon, then he will have attained his future state. Carbon, coal, corresponds to what the occult literature called the philosopher's stone, lapis philosophorum. Those who are familiar with Rosicrucianism know what is meant by the saying that man will build a transparent body for himself out of carbon, just as a diamond is formed from coal. That will happen.

In the future, man will be able to remodel his blue blood through the lymph glands, which will then play a very important role, and use it, as they do now with the useful red blood, to shape his body. The pineal gland will in the future be an internal apparatus for the process of converting used blood into usable blood.

Closely connected with this is the rhythm of breathing. The breathing process therefore holds the future transformation of the human organism. At the moment when man works his way down into his lower bodies, he ascends to higher planes.

Five: Pratyahara, that is right living. Man must become capable of living purely within the soul; he must be able to have perceptions within that are completely independent of the outer world. The ideal of meditation is to be able to become blind and deaf to one's surroundings.

Sixth: Dharana, the collection of thoughts, complete mastery within one's imagination, so that a person has no impressions other than those they want. If they can then take only one out of a series of ideas and live in it for a long, long time, then this process, in which they remain at rest with their whole consciousness, is called Dhyana.

Seventh: When this is achieved, one must let go of even this one image, while remaining conscious with one's entire soul. One retains the form of the image, without content. With this, the student has reached the highest level, Samadhi, the complete absorption in a thought. Now the spiritual world can flow into him.

Through Indian yoga training, one reaches the same level in occult development as through the Christian-Gnostic path. Even today there are people who follow the Christian-Gnostic path. In this path, one distinguishes seven stages.

First: the washing of feet. The disciple must develop a very definite feeling over a long period of time, and this must live in the soul: the law must become clear to him that no ascent of one is possible without the descent of another. For every initiate there are so many criminals. When one attains more knowledge and insight, it is his first duty to reach down and pull the others up after him. This applies to nature as well as to man. The plant would say to the earth: Thou lifeless earth, in humility — this must be the basic mood of the disciple — I bend down to you, for I owe my existence to you. Christ Himself sets us an example of this in the washing of the feet, in which He shows us the feeling of the innermost humility. If the disciple develops this feeling within himself, two experiences occur to him, an outer symptom and an inner astral experience. The outer symptom is: the disciple has the very definite sensation of water washing around his feet; he perceives the state of a foot washing. Internally, the Christian disciple experiences the image of this as a real vision.

Secondly: the scourging. Pain and torment come upon the person, which want to crush him. He must say to himself: You must learn to endure all this with dignity. When this has been practiced long enough, two symptoms arise again. The outer one: stabbing pains all over the body, as if from scourging. This is proof that the exercise has worked into the etheric body. The inner, astral experience is the image of the scourging.

Three: The Crowning with Thorns. The disciple must learn to bear the scorn and derision with which his innermost being is assailed. Headaches lasting for weeks are the outer symptom for this; inwardly it is the astral picture of one's own crowning with thorns.

Fourth: the carrying of the cross and crucifixion. One's own body becomes something alien. It becomes like a piece of wood, like the cross that Christ carried. The personal must completely fade away. The disciple must become free of his body, completely free. Internally, he experiences the image of the crucifixion; externally, the stigmata appear at the points of Christ's wounds. The side wound appears on the right side of the chest.

Five: mystical death. This is a very high level of experience, an extremely significant one. The realization dawns that all the contemplation of things was an illusion. Terrible darkness pours into the room, the whole world sinks away. One comes to know only one thing: the true nature of all evil, all the torments and sufferings of this world. This is the descent into hell. Once you have gone through this exhaustively, the moment comes when the curtain tears. You now see a new aspect of the world, you see the world from the other side.

Sixth: the entombment. Everything in the world becomes part of the student, as if belonging to his own body. He becomes one with the earth, the whole earth becomes the body that one has. One is laid in the earth, and the earth covers one.

Seven: Resurrection and Ascension. This ascent can no longer be described in words of human language and its glory can hardly be imagined.

Now today we only want to give the scheme of the third type of initiation, the Christian-Rosicrucian schooling, which is the most favorable for the modern man. Only when we have grasped this type can we comprehend what takes place in man at initiation and what St. John, or rather the writer of the Gospel of St. John, describes. The Rosicrucian path also has seven steps:

First: study.
Second: imagination.
Third: Learning the Occult Scripture.
Fourth: Rhythm of Life.
Fifth: Correspondence of Microcosm and Macrocosm.
Sixth: Contemplation, Inner Religious Contemplation in the Macrocosm.
Seventh: Bliss.

This is the third way to reach the mountaintop. A real event that you will find described in the Gospel of John is the descent of the Spirit as a dove upon Jesus. This also refers to the higher birth, where that is received which is called the Son of Man. The Gospel of John 1:18 also contains something mysterious: “God has never seen anyone with his eyes. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father of the world, has become the guide to this vision.” This is to be taken literally. The Gospel of John contains the expression of astral writing. You know that on the astral plane everything is reversed, so you have to learn to read in reverse.

Today we will deal with the initiation steps of the so-called Rosicrucian, Occidental occult training. Everything that is presented here is by no means to be understood as general rules for life, but can only be the task of the one who voluntarily submits to this training and thus initially stands out from the general human race in order to later be able to pass on what he has achieved. Once he has decided to become a disciple, there should be no possibility for him to criticize this training, the way it is conducted, or the behavior of the occult teacher. He must put himself into the hands of the teacher's experience. If this is impossible, and if he entertains any trace of mistrust or dissatisfaction towards his teacher, then it is better to sever the tie between himself and the teacher. For only an affection based on trust and recognizing the teacher's authority can establish the right relationship between the student and the teacher, which should be beneficial for the student. The student is always free to leave the occult training. But if one wants to undergo it, one must also be clear about the fact that the rules in question are given out of a firmly established truth in the sense of the most advanced individualities, those whom we have to regard as the great teachers of mankind, and that one can only progress if one obeys the rules. It must also be clear that this path with its instructions has already been tried and tested by many hundreds and has been successful.

In the three paths that we have now discussed, the relationship between the student and the teacher is different. In the Indian yoga training, the relationship between student and guru is very strict: absolute, complete submission to the guru is an absolute requirement. Since the student is not yet familiar with the higher worlds when following the Indian path, it is necessary that he is guided by his personal guru.

The relation is different in the case of the Christian training. There the teacher is the guide to the great Guru, Christ Jesus. A personal connection, a personal relationship of mind to Christ Jesus, is absolutely necessary for the disciple. If he cannot believe with all the power of his soul in Christ Jesus and in what He has done and exemplified for humanity, he cannot follow the Christian Path.

In the Rosicrucian training, the relationship is the freest and easiest. The teacher is the faithful friend, the guide within the narrower limits of his student's occult experience. He is not concerned with the student's daily activities, he trusts him and allows him full freedom. There is no compulsion or command anywhere, only advice is given. But there must be a friendly relationship of trust between teacher and student. Without this, the training would remain in the realm of the manasic, without it, Budhi could not be implanted at all. The power generated by the relationship of trust is necessary for occult training. Without it, the dormant powers in the student cannot be awakened.

Since the Rose Cross Way indicates study as the first step, it might be thought that this training is not for everyone. However, this is not correct; it is there for everyone, even for the simplest person. Because this study is understood to mean popular Theosophy, everything that you hear and read here in these lectures and in my or other spiritual scientific writings; that is already such a study. It is the elementary occult teaching given to man. Through it he is to become free from the prejudices of life, from the suggestion of science, which completely dominates the modern man and has already caused much mischief, blocking his unbiased view of the world, the way to impartiality, which he must find in order to have a clear judgment. In the Occident, free thinking is no longer common; instead, everything is suggestion, established dogma through power and authority. Even in the simplest concepts we have this suggestive influence: the suggestion of scholars, the suggestion of science, the suggestion that emanates from the individual. Our modern life is dominated by the family, by the relationship between the sexes. The theosophist, however, should penetrate more deeply into preparatory, logical, and sense-free thinking. He should immerse himself in such trains of thought as far as possible. For this purpose, to train such a way of thinking, I have written the two books 'Truth and Science' and 'Philosophy of Freedom', so that one can immerse oneself in such trains of thought. It is less important to understand the content in question than to live in these trains of thought. Free, sharp, rational thinking is necessary because it gives the student a certain independence, but this thinking is also a sure guide to the higher worlds. We encounter new and different things in the various worlds; but what remains the same in all worlds is thinking. Everywhere there are different perceptions, different experiences, but logic is the same in all worlds. This only changes on the Budhiplan. A remarkable change now occurs in the student. His thoughts expand to embrace other worlds. The thoughts that a person usually has here are not mental, they relate only to the physical plane. They are only the shadow images of mental reality. Now he is approaching its reality.

Next to study, the second faculty we have is imagination. Everyone must go through it at some time. Man gradually frees himself from the dry sensual contemplation of things. He tries to see in them only the expression of something that stands behind them and begins to look at the world in the Goethean sense according to the word: “Everything that is transitory is only a parable.” The pupil must carry out this deepened way of thinking systematically. Things must become parables, symbols, to him. When we look at the rose, it is a symbol for a certain form of beauty; the autumn crocus is the image of a fine, melancholy inwardness.

And so every thing has a meaning at its basis. Things are in fact parables in reality. The whole sensual world is an illusion; the spiritual world is the real one. There must be and be achieved an interaction between people and the spiritual world. We must keep our thoughts and our soul life fluid; we must not form rigid forms. It has already been pointed out in Lucifer-Gnosis that through a continuous, loving contemplation, the qualities are released from things and then flow through space. Thus, for example, something like a flame formation seems to rise from a plant; behind this is the spiritual. In these flowing, flooding sensations of color and taste, which have no correlate here on the physical plane, the human being must now find his way, and then he is ready for the teaching of occult writing to begin.

The third thing to learn is how to read the occult writing. This helps us to correctly line up the manifold phenomena like pearls on a string. The occult writing is not arbitrarily conceived, but represents the currents that flow through the world. Something that plays a major role in spiritual reality is two spirals rolled into one another, forming a vortex. At the root of the nose is the predisposition for the two-petalled lotus flower, which will develop into a higher organ of perception in the future. The sign of the vortex corresponds to this etheric organ. It is similar to the sign of Cancer, in which the Sun was at the dawn of the Atlantean race. We still have this and the other signs of the constellations in the calendar. A very important occult symbol is the staff of Mercury with the snake coiled around it. It is the archetypal form of the letter S. Those who know the occult language can evoke the relevant signs as thought-forms; in certain cases they then have power over others. In John's Gospel 8:3-11, there is an account of Christ and the adulteress: Christ wrote signs of the occult writing on the ground with his finger to create the right thought forms in the accusing crowd and to prompt them to the right action at the right moment. “Let him who is without guilt throw the first stone at her.” He hands over her guilt to karma, to the law of equal return. Christ wanted to say: every deed carries its reward within itself. “Go and sin no more.” Moses received instruction in the seeing of these occult signs in his conversation with God (Exodus 3 and 4). There Moses learned to know the occult writing and was endowed with the power to enable him to fulfill his task. That he had to throw a rod, which became a snake, means that he learned the occult writing.

If we imagine a vortex and think of its two parts in red and blue, we see the two etheric currents that underlie the red and blue blood.

A fourth is the rhythm of life. All higher life is based on it. Nature and the cosmos know nothing but rhythmic laws. The orbits of the stars, every flower, even the intimate life of animals know an exact rhythm. Could you imagine a violet blooming in August instead of March? Rhythm is everywhere present in nature. But the closer we get to the human being, the more the rhythm changes into chaos. The weekly timetable of our schoolchildren is still a true blessing. A person should bring a certain rhythm into themselves, create a new cosmos. This happens through daily repetitive actions, meditation at a certain time of day, and also through regulating the breathing process.

The fifth is the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm. When a person finds something within himself that corresponds to a fact in the macrocosm, he first really gets to know himself. How can a person know when the sun was separated from the earth? He can find out by looking into the inside of his eye. Another point in time is when man began to say “I” to himself. This happened in Atlantis, at the time of the Primitive Semites, when a certain point in the physical head coincided with another in the etheric head. The earth was still covered with dense fog, and certain conditions outside and inside man corresponded. An important exercise is for the student to concentrate on a certain point between the eyebrows and to allow himself to be guided by an idea given to him by his teacher.

In the sixth stage, contemplation, the student goes out of himself and expands his consciousness to include the whole world. The higher self is outside of us, we must seek it in all beings, for we are all one. This also speaks from Jupiter and Venus. There are Theosophists who only want to seek the divine within themselves. But in truth, it is the lower personality that speaks from them. One such person once went around saying, “I am Atman, I am Atman.” That was the only thing he knew. Brooding within oneself leads nowhere. We are everything, and we must immerse ourselves in all beings. Immersing oneself in one's own inner being is only a detour to doing so.

When you have come so far as to be able to empathize with all beings, then you have reached the seventh stage, that of divinity. The whole nature of the world takes on a spiritual physiognomy. Everything that man sees around him becomes an expression of something higher. Just as tears are not just salty drops with a certain chemical composition, but an expression of the soul, so the plant cover of the earth is an expression of the earth soul, which is a reality. Some flowers appear to us as joyful eyes, others as tears of the earth spirit, which it weeps over the sadness that prevails in the cosmos. It is true what Goethe has the earth spirit say:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
weaving back and forth
birth and grave,
an eternal sea,
a changing weaving,
a glowing life:
So I create at the whirring loom of time
And work the living garment of divinity.

This is how we got to know the skeleton of the Rosicrucian schooling.

Which training you undergo is not crucial. You can develop your soul powers and gain insights into the supersensible world through all three paths. Of course, it is good to consider which path you choose based on where you are at the foot of the mountain you are climbing.

What does the disciple achieve when the initiation has taken him to the summit up there? A very real thing. Remember the description of the human being. At the time of Christ Jesus, the majority of people had developed part of the astral body and part of the etheric body. It was different for the initiates. When the chela had passed the necessary stages, he was admitted to the initiation. He had to have worked through his entire astral body. There was nothing left in his astral body that he did not control. In general, passions rule over man, not man over passions. Man must be master of his desires and passions if he wants to become a disciple. Then he must work on his etheric body, he must transform the qualities of his temperament and bring it to the point where he can consciously change his movements, his gait, his writing. So it is not only about becoming moral, but one must become a completely different person.

When the entire astral body has been worked through by the I, it has become manas, the spiritual self, and is transformed into it. The transformation of the etheric body is called Budhi; he has become the spirit of life. When the initiate seizes the physical body for transformation, he then influences the planet and makes himself the center of cosmic forces; then he develops in himself Atman, the Father, the spiritual man.

At first it is an unconscious work that man does on his etheric body and his astral body. This takes place in the general process of human development. The chela begins to consciously take this work into his own hands. With unceasing practice, a certain moment is reached where the entire astral body is transformed. Then everything in the astral body can imprint itself into the etheric body. Only then may this happen, not before, because otherwise bad qualities would be imprinted. What has been acquired then goes through all incarnations with the causal body. The immortalization, the vitalization of all that the astral body contains, is an extremely important process. The astral body cannot discard this in any Kamaloka, it carries this with it forever. Therefore, the previous purification is very necessary.

The impressing of what the astral body contains into the etheric body was carried out in the old initiation by placing the disciple in a crypt and laying him in a kind of coffin. Sometimes he was also tied to a kind of cross and placed in a lethargic state, in which the etheric body emerged from the physical body at the same time as the astral body. Something similar, namely the emergence of a part of the etheric body, occurs when a limb falls asleep; one can then see the affected part of the etheric body hanging out of the body. The initiation itself was performed by a particularly high initiate. Much else was done according to prescribed rules. Such a sleep was different from an ordinary sleep. Only the physical body remained behind in the so-called coffin, and the etheric and astral bodies went out; so it was a kind of death. This was necessary to free the etheric body, because only then could the astral body imprint itself on the etheric body. This state lasted three and a half days. When the initiate was then directed by the initiator back to the physical body, one last formula was impressed upon him, with which he woke up. These were the words: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!” that is, “My God, my God, how hast Thou glorified me!” At the same time, a certain star, Sirius in the Egyptian initiation, shone towards him. Now he had become a new man. There was a very specific reason why the completely spiritualized astral body was given a very special name: it was called the “virgin,” the “Virgin Sophia.” And the etheric body, which absorbs what the Virgin Sophia carried within herself, was called the “Holy Spirit.” And that which arose from both was the “Son of Man”. The proclamation and birth of Jesus of Nazareth are based on these mystery teachings.

This inner experience was also depicted in the image of the Holy Ghost as a dove hovering over the chalice. This is the moment described in the Gospel of John 1:32: “And John bore witness, saying, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on Him’.” Imagine this happening on the astral plane, and you have a real event. The one who was allowed to experience these great things outside of the mysteries in the physical world was allowed to initiate others as an initiator. John's Gospel 11, 1-45: the resurrection of Lazarus is nothing more than an initiation performed on Lazarus.

We cannot take the gospel of John deeply enough. Even the giving of names is something extremely important. The names that appear in the Bible are taken from the inner being of man. An example of this are the names of the twelve apostles. They point to the relationship between them and the Lord, the Christ, who is the head and has as a sign the ram or the lamb. John means the one who proclaims the Budhi. You can divide the human being into twelve parts; the whole human being is a twelve-fold being. The human being as he is now gradually came into being. Each time the sun entered a new constellation, a new organ developed in the human being. For example, when the sun was in the sign of Leo, the heart developed. As the human being ascends, he incorporates a group soul. The twelve parts of the human being can be found in the names of the twelve apostles, where they are incorporated. What the twelve constituent parts are in an ordinary body, that is what the twelve apostles signify in the collective body of Christ. The part that represents the ego, in which selfishness rules and brings about the death of Christ, is called Judas Iscariot. In this naming, it was added that he had the bag, the money, the lower principle of greed.

The significance of this naming can also be seen from the fact that the one who, in the great plan of the world, is the spiritual representative of the development of mankind, is given the name “the Son of Man”. His father is the “Holy Spirit” and his mother “the Virgin Sophia”. You can find this again in the Gospel of John 19:25-27, in the scene under the cross: “Woman, behold, your son!” “Behold, your mother!” The writer of the Gospel of John, the disciple whom Christ Himself initiated, took the wisdom and wrote the Gospel of John, which contains the wisdom of Christianity.

We must not forget that these things are facts, but as such they are the expression of profound spiritual realities.

In these lectures, we have become acquainted with the ascent of man to the summit of knowledge and wisdom. I have shown you that a kind of foreshadowing of the event of Palestine took place over and over again during the initiation into the mysteries. The initiation ceremonies culminated in a three-day death-like sleep, through which the initiate, when he woke up, found within himself that which is called the higher man. Blessed - that is, imbued with the soul - is he who beholds the spiritual worlds. And now should become blessed he who believes and does not see. The time was to come when what had formerly taken place in the soul of the individual within the mysteries would now be enacted before the eyes of mankind as an historical fact. To understand this, let us first speak of the effects of initiation.

The man of everyday, who sinks into sleep tired from the burden and toil of the day, is in a state similar to that of a plant. He feels nothing, he knows nothing of himself. During this time, the astral body works on the physical body to repair the forces it has expended. If the person still has an echo of his night experiences in the etheric and physical bodies, we say: his sleep was animated by dreams. But usually, in the average person, these images are blurred and incomprehensible in memory.

Not so with the disciple. We distinguish between the bright consciousness of the day, the consciousness of dreams, and dreamless sleep. If the disciple patiently carries out the exercises given to him, the time will come when order is brought into the chaotic confusion of dreams. The disciple begins to get to know the real world of sleep. He no longer brings isolated memories into the consciousness of the day, but attains continuity of consciousness, constant awareness. This announces itself gradually. At first, the student has a feeling upon awakening like a swimmer emerging from the water, remembering things that never occur on earth. More and more details emerge from the sea of the astral plane. At first, the student's ability to perceive and remember develops very slowly. Later, he becomes aware of how he can transfer his experiences into his waking consciousness. He can now take what he has perceived throughout the night, the world in which he has lived, and the events in it, into this physical world. The time is now beginning for him when every plant becomes for him the expression of a spiritual essence of the earth, a real member of a great earth spirit. He is an earth man, the inhabitant of this world, and as a spiritual man, the inhabitant of a spiritual world. There live and weave in his soul spiritual currents, spiritual beings that arise and now become conscious to him. His consciousness grows together with the other. He knows that his consciousness is only a part of the earth consciousness. Imagine this earth as a living being with its own consciousness, and now think of the individual consciousness as a mirror image of the one great earth consciousness. It is an illusion to believe that man has a consciousness that is unique to him. Man is only on the way to becoming one with the earth and its consciousness, thus to becoming an earth son; the chela is so to a greater degree. The representative of this one great earth consciousness is the Christ Jesus. As the Word made flesh and blood, He represents the embodied future ideal of earth and human consciousness, to which all men will one day attain. Christ Jesus leads us into this time by allowing this consciousness to work through him as the firstborn, so that people will reach this state more quickly. He who has already reached the summit and draws others up to himself can lead to the summits with particular certainty. He who hung on the cross carried the consciousness of the earth in his own breast. The entire Gospel of John is written in a remarkably imaginative language. Let us take an example. What does it mean when it says, “The disciple whom the Lord loves”? Imagine that the writer of the Gospel of John is speaking of himself when he says, “whom the Lord loves” and “who lies at the breast of Jesus.” This disciple is the external representative of the heart, the organ of Budhi. What the heart is in the human body, that is John in the midst of the twelve disciples.

Let us take the thirteenth chapter: the washing of the feet (13, 1-20). What does this washing of the feet mean? Man is a being bound in two ways, he is a double being: with his head turned towards the sun and with his feet towards the earth. What must still become pure in man? The part assigned to the earth must still be cleansed by the representative of perfected humanity (13:8-10). Peter, that is, the rock, is the part facing the earth. If this is also to become pure, it must be washed by Christ. Hence Christ's words: “If your part of the earth is not washed, you have no part in me.” To Peter's reply: “Lord, not only the feet, but also the hands and the head,” Christ says to him: “He who has been washed needs nothing but to wash his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not all.” Christ knew well who should bring him death: Judas Iscariot, the representative of the selfish principle.

And further, verse 18: “He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.” How can Jesus, he who has the consciousness of the earth and feels the whole earth as his body, say these words? He can. Put yourself in the consciousness of the earth as in that of a human being. If the earth had consciousness, it would speak to man: “He who eats my bread tramples me underfoot”. Christ has this consciousness, Christ as the representative of all earthly consciousness may say this.

What will come to pass when that love which He lived out will one day spread to all mankind and all people will have become brothers? Then there will be one example. People have distributed the goods of the earth among themselves, but one thing, which is the outer shell of the earth, the atmosphere, cannot be shared. And just as this “shell” of the earth cannot be shared, so too will the goods be shared later. This is also expressed symbolically in the crucifixion of Christ in the distribution of his garments among the soldiers (John's Gospel 19: 24). The skirt of Christ Jesus as the covering of Earth consciousness is unstitched and made of one piece. The outer garment, which is divided into four parts, represents the four main continents, the indivisible skirt, that is the indivisible air circle. The sublimity that underlies Christianity, the moral and spiritual cosmic, so magnificently expressed in the Gospel of John, is contained in the fact that all expressions of Christ Jesus point to it: this is how one will live in the future, as Christ Jesus has shown.

What Christ Jesus did when He fulfilled the saying, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:48), this feeding of the five thousand, is not only an event of the present time, but one of deep, lasting significance. The earth is the body of Christ Jesus: the few seeds, the disciples, are multiplied. These are the things that make Christianity so great, because the physical and the moral coincide so wonderfully. The most wonderful monism is reflected in Christianity through the way John gives it.

Nor is there any contradiction between Christianity and karma. Christianity appeared at a time when it had something to offer to humanity, which was dying of death, that brought life then and still lives now. Christianity was preceded by a time when the doctrine of reincarnation was common knowledge. Man at that time regarded his present life only as something temporary: the Egyptian slave, who was afflicted by the hardest fate and bowed down deeply, said to himself: “It is one of many existences. In this he found consolation and strength and hope for the present and the future. He said to himself: “My life is dark now, but later it will be light.” Or: “I have brought this upon myself through my own fault, now I will bear it and make amends.”

We find a high spiritual culture among various primitive peoples who used the simplest tools. At that time, man was not yet so attached to the earth. Humanity first had to be educated in this. The conquest of the material, everything that we have around us today, would not have been possible if man had not learned to love the earth. To achieve this, he had to be deprived of an overview of his repeated lives on earth. It is a wise Christian teaching that the one life was placed at the center for a time. This had to be so in order to later reveal the truth of reincarnation to man at a higher level. That is why Christ does not speak about karma in his discourses to the people, but in the intimate circle with his disciples he speaks of the existence of karma.

In the spiritual world, everything is connected as cause and effect, and judgment belongs to what is exercised by the deepest and purest being on earth. In occult writings, everything a person has done is inscribed in the Akasha Chronicle. Once this has been grasped in the future, there will be no more worldly punishment. The Christ shows how judgment will be administered in the future in chapter 8, verses 1-11, of the Gospel of John: it is the story of the adulteress. What Christ says and does there is meant to show that everything that man has done is written in the Earth Akashic Records. This is the direct transfer of jurisdiction to the self-fulfilling law of karma. The living consciousness of the Earth's Akashic Records is Christ Himself, and so judgment is handed over to Him by the Father, and He has power to forgive sins and take them upon Himself (John 5:21, 22, 23): “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wills. For the Father judges no man, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He that honors not the Son honors not the Father who has sent him.

All human earthly karma lives in Christ; He is the living embodiment of earthly karma. That is why the teaching of Christianity is about the personal living relationship of each individual to Christ, which at the same time gives the awareness that Christ forgives sins, that somewhere the balance is to be sought in Christ Jesus. Salvation is to be sought with him, he represents earthly justice. In this subtle way of studying and immersing yourself in it again and again, you will be able to grasp every sentence in the Gospel of John and penetrate deeper into it, at least into the part that you can understand theosophically.

Man slowly ascends to higher consciousness. At first he still differentiates: I have pain, I have pleasure. Once man has risen above this, he ascends through initiation from physical everyday consciousness to the second, to astral consciousness, where the astral world appears as in living images. In Eastern wisdom, a distinction is made between five such levels of consciousness: firstly, physical everyday consciousness = Jagrat; secondly, dream consciousness = Swapna; thirdly, devachan consciousness = Sushupti; fourthly, Turiya consciousness; fifthly, nirvana consciousness.

In the first and second stages, one can do no more than remember what one experienced in the dream; one does not yet have the realization that sets in during the third stage, the devachan consciousness. This stage is reached when one experiences not only the astral but also the purely spiritual world. If you can fill your waking consciousness with it and see the world as spiritually permeated, then you have attained Turiya. If you perceive the essence of the world, you have attained Nirvana.

When Christ says, “Before Father Abraham was, I am,” He points out that a higher consciousness lives in Him. When the crowd wants to stone Him, He “goes out of the temple” (John 8:58, 59), that is, He rises to a consciousness that is not accessible to His persecutors.

Those who ascend must purify all their members and cast out all that weighs them down. Christ, as the Representative of the consciousness on earth that is purifying itself and ascending, casts out what is impure: the spirit of trading and bartering, the spirit of greed for money, will be cast out. This is the meaning of the cleansing of the Temple, which is at the same time a symbol for the future of humanity. After the expulsion of the money changers and merchants, Jesus says: “Destroy this Temple, and on the third day I will raise it up.” “But He was speaking of the Temple of His body,” it continues (2:14-21). In these words you have the clue to the three coming World Days of which we have already spoken. The Christ Jesus is speaking here of the evolution of the whole Earth. The old order shall pass away, and on the third World Day there will come a body that no longer contains the lower self.

Let us also remember that when the chela advances to mastership, he is laid in the tomb for three and a half days. The temple of the body is broken down for him and then raised up again. This is what happens to the individual, and for all mankind it has happened through the death and resurrection of Christ. You must feel in the Gospel of John the radiance of the sentences in many directions, for these sentences are deep and many-sided, encompassing the whole secret of the world.

In initiation, the soul is separated from the body, but it is conscious in the higher worlds. Nicodemus comes to Christ “by night,” that is, outside of daytime consciousness (3:1-21). Christ says to him: “Unless one is born of water” - that is, from the astral world, which one experiences as floods - “and of the Spirit” - the Devachan - “he cannot enter the kingdom of God,” so he does not experience the spiritual world. He speaks of this as long as everyday consciousness has nothing to say, namely during the initiation. Every word in the Gospel of John has a deeper meaning, and there is no end to the explanation of this Gospel.

The purpose of these lessons was to show you how to understand this remarkable book. The way in which it should be used should have become clear. I hope I have been able to make it accessible to you.

Understanding the Gospel of John is only possible through spiritual research and the spiritual-scientific world view. We should become more and more aware of how we have to work towards understanding the Spirit who is the deepest on earth. Christ presents us with a Being such as there has been none else on earth. At the end of His days on earth, the “Word” is once more the last expression of the spiritual Being of the Christ. Christ will then embody Himself in all human beings. In the flesh, the possibility to embody Himself could only be given to Him by a higher being. You could never see the sun if you did not have an eye. But who made the eye of man? The sun made it. Christ is the sun, which is to absorb the human soul with the help of that through which we see the Christ. The Gospel of John is this eye. But this eye could not see without the real Christ Jesus, who first opened this eye to the disciple whom the Lord loved, whom he himself awakened, who was his intimate disciple. Thus, in the Gospel of John, our feeling of thinking, feeling and willing moves up the paths that spiritual knowledge opens up for us.

The aim of these lectures is to be an introduction to the theosophical world-conception and its connections. We shall have to deal with problems such as the cause of death, the cause of suffering, the origin of evil, and so forth. By setting out from man, from the nucleus of his being, we shall study the great law of reincarnation and karma, and also the origin of man, of the Earth and of the solar system. Moreover, of the way in which the great truths come to expression, especially in Christianity and in the different religions.

Occultism, the wisdom of the hidden beings, looks upon man in such a way that the visible part of his being, the physical body, constitutes the first member. As a material form, it is looked upon like other lifeless objects.

The second part or member is the etheric body, which is invisible and finer than the physical body. We may therefore say: in the upper parts of man's being, the etheric body is the image of the physical body, but it takes on a different form in the lower parts. A blind-born person considers the description of a seeing person for fantasies; the descriptions of those who perceive the etheric body clairvoyantly are treated in the same way. At present there are about three or four hundred people and all who have this clairvoyant capacity. But it lies dormant in every human being; for this reason things will present a very different aspect in a hundred years. In the near future there'll be a gigantic progress, also in the technical field.

Modern theosophy is only the elementary part of occultism. To-day it is not possible to teach more. The faculty of spiritual vision develops through an inner schooling. Those who are endowed with clairvoyance see the etheric body as follows: first of all, they must deviate their attention completely away from the physical body, they must—so to speak—suggest it away completely. Suggestion, hypnotism, abnormal soul-conditions, a lowered state of consciousness, positive and negative suggestion which harm the person on which it is practiced, all this has nothing to do with theosophy as it is meant here. Those who develop their higher soul-forces are able, by their will-power, to throw out of their field of vision the whole sensory reality of a human being or object of stands before them. The same space occupied by the physical body will then be occupied instead by a form resembling man, consisting of an inwardly luminous form of forces which is very much like the human being of the present time except that the etheric body slightly projects above the head. In plants, animals and children projects greatly by the physical head.

The third member or part of man is the astral body. At first, it should be studied more from the inner aspect. When a person stands before us we can touch his physical body with our hands. Let us now leave aside the etheric body. Where muscles, bones and nerves exist in the physical body, there are also a certain amount of instincts, pains, joys, ideals, and passions. They are all as real as the former. This is the astral body seen from within. Seen from the outside, the astral body does not exist at all as far as the power of vision of ordinary people is concerned. But when we pass through training of the soul we learn to know also the astral body as it appears to us as the soul-part of man. The astral body is designated as the aura.

A wild unchecked passion is like a dull red cloud that passes through the astral body; a pure ideal sends out white-gold rays. The painters of past times, who were still more closely connected with clairvoyance, used to paint this aura in many different ways. People who have a great deal of sympathy and love for their fellow-men are surrounded by a greenish aura; religious feelings, religious fervor, sends out blue rays. The aura is simply the external expression of inner instincts, passions, and so forth. The external form of the aura is quite different from that of the physical body and it surrounds man, and enwrapping him in a kind of oval form. This form of light soars around the human being and sends out rays.

In a few decades these truths will be of immense value in education, in pedagogy. Much will be gained when spiritual science will be included in our educational system. It is of immense importance in external life.

Let us now study the child in regard to these three bodies. They do not develop simultaneously in the child. From the first to the seventh year the physical body unfolds; the other two bodies are not free and they influence the physical body from within. Consequently, during this period, the only way of educating a child is to work upon his physical body, for the other two members of his being have still have to unfold. A sound education will therefore refrain from influencing the etheric body and astral body prematurely. From the first to the seventh year the child needs visible, perceptible images, examples, and so forth. The child's visible environment should therefore be a pure one, and this even applies to the thoughts of the people around him. For a child is able to feel good and evil thoughts. We should endeavor to sharpen and develop the child's senses. His fantasy should be stimulated. Consequently, a child should not be given beautifully finished things to play with. He should instead make something for himself, a form, etc. This rouses and awakens the child and develops the forces of his physical body. Therefore abolish beautiful toys! ...

A special change takes place in the child during his seventh year, for a part of the etheric body becomes free, and for this reason we should now begin to exercise an influence upon the etheric body. In what way can we exercise an influence upon the etheric body? Observe, to begin with, the process which takes place when we die. Only the physical body lies there, while the etheric body and astral body separate themselves from it and ascend. It is not the same when we are asleep. When we are asleep, the etheric body is still connected with the physical body lying on the bed, and only the astral body separates itself from them. But at the moment of death something very strange takes place in man: his whole past life lies spread out before his memory and goes past him. Sometimes this may happen in moments of great danger, for example when a person is drowning or suddenly precipitates from a great height, and afterwards regained consciousness. At such moments his whole past life rises up before his soul. What has really occurred? His etheric body was more loosely connected with the physical body. Something similar takes place when a part of the body “falls asleep”, or when we underbind, tie off extremity. When a finger is underbound a clairvoyant perceives that the finger's etheric body is hanging down, it is loosened. In a hypnotized person this condition is very dangerous, for his etheric brain is hanging down limply at both sides of his physical head. Since the etheric body is the carrier of memory, the memory-tableau rises up before us after death. When the etheric body emancipates itself from the physical body, it can follow its own movements and memory is more free than ever. Normally, the etheric body fills the physical body like a dense cloud of light. And until death, the physical body obstructs the finer influences and forces of the etheric body.

From the seventh year onward the forces of the child's etheric body are free and from the seventh to fourteenth year we should therefore work upon his memory and develop it. Since the etheric body sets forth everything in the form of images, the child should be given images in parables and we should work upon him with the aid of fairy tales and beautiful stories. During this period the child accepts everything on the authority of his parents as teachers.

The astral body emancipates itself wholly from the fourteenth to the 21st year. It begins to unfold with puberty, consequently a little sooner in girls than boys. The astral body is the carrier of reason, of the conscious judgment. During this period we shall be able to influence the astral body by developing the power of judgment. If this is attempted sooner, we sin against a child, it would be of the greatest harm to him. A time will come to which the science of the spirit will be applied in pedagogy.

Man shares his physical body with everything mineral, his of etheric body with all plants, his astral body with all the animals. But man rises above all these things through his self-consciousness, through the little word “I” which is unique in its kind. For “I” is the only name which each one can only give to himself.

This is a greatly significant fact. In the ancient Hebrew religion, the occult word “I” could only be uttered by the highest initiate, by the High priest. This was a solemn cultic moment. The whole congregation waited for the utterance of the word “Jahve” (meaning “I”), and a shudder of holy awe ran through the assembled people, who were filled with reverence. Jahve is the God who speaks within man ... and the word Jahve (Jehovah) was looked upon as the “unutterable name”. It is the voice by which God begins to speak in man. Never can this word enter into us from outside. In the word “I” the eternal touches the transient.

We have thus learned to know the four members of man's being: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and man's nucleus, the “I”, or Ego. At the moment of death, the etheric body, the astral body and Ego separate from the physical body. The etheric body and astral body gradually dissolve, until the Ego enters Devachan, where it remains until it begins a new life on Earth.

Yesterday we endeavored to explain man's being in so far as the three bodies and the nucleus of his being are concerned. Let us now consider man's ascent into the supersensible worlds. For this purpose we must cast a glance into what we call the three worlds and only when we have described the characteristics of these three worlds will it be possible to discuss the nature of the other members of man's being.

The first world is the physical world which we perceive through our senses: it is the one which man inhabits. We then have a second world, the astral world, and the third one, the spiritual world or Devachan. Deva means God in Chan means field or habitation. Devachan therefore means the spirit of God. In so far as man is a spiritual being, he participates in the spiritual world. The physical world need not be described, for it is clearly known to everybody. I will try to speak of the astral and devachanic worlds by keeping as far as possible to the descriptive form.

The first thing which we should bear in mind is that the outer worlds are not to be found in other places, but we are surrounded by them the same way in which we are surrounded by the physical world and they permeate the physical world. After death, man consequently does not travel to other places, but he simply changes his way of looking at things, his consciousness changes. When we die or become initiated, the same thing happens as in the case of a blind-person who suddenly acquires the power of sight; he too will not be transferred into another world, but he simply acquired a new sense. After death, we are not surrounded by a new, completely different world, but the senses for the perception of the physical world are eliminated and we perceive instead things which escaped our notice before, which had remained concealed to us until then.

Let us now consider the astral world: It is the world in which we live every night and to begin with also after death. If we no longer open our senses to the physical world, the senses of the astral world disclose themselves. When we become clairvoyant, we first live in the astral world and perceive what has been described as the etheric body and the astral body.

The astral world greatly differs from the physical world. Those who enter it, face a confusing mass of phenomena. What they first perceive, is so different from what they were used to seeing, that they must first grow accustomed to the sight. They will read things wrongly if they begin to read them as in the physical world. For in the astral world everything appears as a mirrored picture, upside down, or in the reverse order. In the astral world the number 365 would be 563. Especially in the beginning, this is very confusing. In the physical world, when dealing with circumstances connected with time, we reckon everything from the beginning to the end. In the astral world it is the very opposite. In the astral world, a human life, for example, is not traced from birth to death, but from the last moment of life backwards. Here in the physical world first see the egg and then the chicken that slips out of it; but in the astral world we first see the chicken and then the egg.

The most important thing to be borne in mind is however that in the astral world all the images of our moral qualities, such as pleasure and displeasure, pain and joy, hatred and love, appear as if they were rushing towards us. A clairvoyant sees as if they were rushing towards him. To an unexperienced person this is very confusing. He may see all kinds of animal-forms, even terrible human forms, and so forth, rushing towards him. There are people who tell us of such experiences. They are really to be pitied, when through some illness they attain such an abnormal vision of the astral world. But when we begin to meditate in a serious way, when we school ourselves, then the clairvoyant power develops in a normal, regular way, and then we know what is taking place in the astral world. But when people obtain an abnormal, irregular vision of the astral world through some illness of the brain or some other cause, they perceive terrible shapes rushing towards them and throwing themselves upon them. In reality these shapes are their own passions which go out from them and appear as a reflected mirror-image in the astral world. Then everything appears to be rushing towards them, because in the astral world everything is reversed and they cannot read its phenomena. Everything appears in the form of pictures and images. A bursting rage, for example, may appear in the form of a tiger that attacks them. This is how all these wild shape should be explained. Every lust, every passion, becomes a demon. And an untrained person is unable to cope with them and thinks that they are illusions, fantasies. Yet this is not true, for what he sees, is an image, a mirrored picture.

Why must some people pass through such experiences to-day? The cause for this must be sought in our materialistic age. Let us look back into the 13th or 14th century and picture to ourselves a German town of that time. There everything was formed out of the sense of beauty of that time. Each house, each lock, each key had its own characteristic quality: everything had its special character and was formed with love. Those who formed these objects were inspired by a feeling which still exercises an influence upon us even to-day. In the present time it is quite different. In a modern city the things we see no longer appeal to our feeling, nothing touches us; at the most the things in shop-windows, for example books, etc. may attract our attention. Nothing sacred, nothing having a religious character is now spread out before us in the external world. In the past, there were few books, but in those few books one could find something for the soul. But think of all the things that people read to-day: sensational things which excite the senses. ...

Although the soul no longer receives anything from outside, it nevertheless bears deep within it the yearning for religious things; this feeling lies deeply buried within it. Of course, this does not imply that we should long for the things which existed in the Middle Ages! The religious yearning may suddenly break out in people who no longer hear anything of the higher worlds, so that it appears as a religious passion in a mirrored picture, as indicated above. For everything which exists in the physical world as a so-called true reality, appears in the astral world in the form of a picture. In the astral world you do not perceive pain or joy in an immediate, direct way, but pain is perceived as a shape in dark colors, whereas joy appears as a kind shape in a light yellow color. Little by little you will have learnt to understand these images. There is nothing arbitrary or uncertain, for he was perceive that pain or joy of a certain kind always appears as pictures of certain time. The pupil therefore gradually learns to read on the astral plane and he learns to recognize the different pictures. Lightly-colored pictures always indicate something connected with the sympathetic side of life wereas darkly colored pictures always indicate things connected with the antipathetic side. Essential thing in the astral world is imaginative vision. Goethe, who undoubtedly had the astral power of vision very beautifully characterizes this quality of the astral world at the end of his “Faust”: “Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis”. (Everything transient is but a symbol.)

But the astral world does not only contain the mirrored pictures of the physical world; it also contains beings that we can never learn to know on the physical plane. Man's spirit descended as far as the physical world and clothed itself, so to speak, in flesh. But on the astral plane we also come across Beings that never clothed themselves in flesh. They continually hover to and fro among physical shapes, but they remain invisible to the ordinary power vision. But they are not inventions nor fairy-tale characters: Anyone who can look into the astral world may perceive them.

There are other beings besides, that surround man: namely his own thoughts. Just imagine the influence of a thought. For example, we first have in our soul the thought: “This man is a bad fellow.” In the astral world this thought takes on shape; each thought that goes out from us, takes on shape in the astral world. Upon the astral plane, thoughts are realities. Each thought which we set into the world takes on astral substance, even as the child in the mother's womb takes on physical substance. Whenever we have a thought, it clothes itself with natural substance and condenses itself into certain forms. There are Beings to whom man's thoughts offer a welcome occasion to incarnate themselves, to form themselves an astral body; these Beings have a real lust to materialize themselves astrally.

This important fact indicates our responsibility in life. Imagine a room where men sit around enjoying their evening-pint of beer or wine. What are their thoughts? They talk for the sake of talking, thoughts are quite worthless. For a clairvoyant, such a room is afterwards very strangely populated. The enjoyment of talking for the sake of gossiping, talk which is not born out of the intention of transmitting noble thoughts to others, affords certain very evil Beings occasion to incorporate themselves, and these Beings then do all manner of horrible things, just because they incorporate in such great numbers.

In occultism we say: Upon the physical plane a lie is a lie, but upon the astral plane it is a murder. Matters namely stand as follows: Whenever you relate something, you produced the corresponding thought-form; but also the fact which you relate rays out a thought-form. If your thought-form corresponds with it and agrees with it, then the two forms flow together upon the astral plane and strengthen each other. You thus strengthen the life of the being you are talking about. But in the case of an untruth the thought-form streaming out of your words does not correspond with that which goes out from the thing itself; the forms collide and destroy each other. An untruth, a lie, does have a life-destroying, killing effect on them. To speak of morality in the occult meaning, does not mean to preach morality, but to establish it by facts pertaining to the higher worlds. Schopenhauer rightly said: It is easy to preach morals, but is difficult to establish morals.

Man has a short sojourn in the astral world when he is asleep. What takes place with him when he is asleep? His physical and etheric body remain upon the bed, while his astral body and his Ego go out. A clairvoyant sees that at night the astral body is very active. During the day, man consumes his physical forces in work, etc. He grows tired, his forces must be restored. This is the work done by the astral body during the night. But what does he do during the day? He perceives the physical world. When he is asleep, the astral body goes out of the etheric and physical body and then we see and hear nothing—for we have perceptions through the astral body. Our eyes and ears, all our sense-organs, are merely instruments used by the astral body when it has perceptions. The astral body transforms all the vibrations of the air, etc. into sensations of sound. But in the night the astral body no longer needs to do this work; it can then produce new forces for the physical body and above all for the etheric body. In order to do this work of restoring the balance, it must go out of physical body. When we dream a lot, this work is so to speak, interrupted. Restless dreams are therefore bad for our health.

What changes take place in person during sleep when he gradually becomes clairvoyant? The night changes completely for such a person. Ordinary people lose consciousness when they fall asleep and regain it when they wake up; but they are unable to perceive what takes place astrally, because they do not have the organs enabling them to see this. But for a clairvoyant, the night is quite different. He does not lose consciousness like ordinary people. An untrained person experiences the astral world chaotically, in the form of dreams. But a trained person sees the astral world in regular forms. At first these will be transient realities surging up and down, but arising in a regular way.

Let us suppose a person falls asleep and sees a reddish-brown shape rising up before him, with a human face, but a distorted one, which gradually begins to resemble that of a friend. The dreamer wakes up and asks himself? What can this mean?—My friend—he thinks—is in New York, and he looks upon his draem as an illusion. After a time, he hears that his friend has been in great danger, that he passed unscathed through some accident. He investigates matters and discovers that the impression that night came at the very moment when his friend was in danger. This event had stood before his soul in the form of a picture.

Such experiences mark the beginning of clairvoyance; the regular forms that become more and more frequent and this new world takes on a more and more definite shape. To a clairvoyant a man's inner life is not concealed. When you acquire clairvoyance, you can see a person's aura, the image of his soul-life, which hovers around him. The souls of men lie open before your eyes. Even as you see the complexion and the hand of a person, you then see before you the pictures of his soul-life.

So far, I only spoke of pictures, of images. Do only images surge up and down? Is the astral world dumb? Indeed, at first it is dumb for the clairvoyant. The astral world is to begin with, silent. The time comes when these pictures begin to resound; voices from the spiritual world can be heard. Pythagoras spoke of the music of the spheres; this was not a fantastic invention, for the orbit of a star becomes a sound to a clairvoyant. Goethe also knew this. In “Faust” he says:

“Die Sonne ton't nach alter Weiss
in Bruders, haren Wettgesang,
und ihre vergescriebne Reise
vollendst sie mit Donnergang ...”

The sun resounds according to an old measure (or: in an accustomed way)
In the singing-match of the brother-spheres,
and its prescribed journey
it ends with thunder-step ,,,

and further

“Tönend wird für Geistesahren
schon der neue Tag geboren ...”

“To spiritual ears is born
resounding the new day ...”

Of course, learned men say that Goethe meant this symbolically. But after a certain development, the clairvoyant begins to hear sounds. Goethe spoke of the Sun's spiritual being. And when the men of ancient times designated the stars, the names which they gave them were intended for the Spirits of the Planets. The sun that we see, is but the physical body of the sun and Goethe knew quite well that there exists a Spirit of the Sun.

When a clairvoyant hears sounds after certain time, he is later on able to hear the “Inner Word”. The gift of hearing the “Inner Word” is called Inspiration, even as the gift of perceiving images in the Astral world is called Imagination. Imagination therefore enables one to see, whereas Inspiration enables one to hear. When Jakob Böhme and Paracelsus spoke of Imagination, they meant this gift.

In this meeting we can also say that the religious documents are inspired. Those who wrote them were inspired, that is to say, they were initiates who possessed the Inner Word. When a person develops the power of vision, the astral world opens out to him; the inner power of hearing discloses the Devachanic world, the spiritual world.

Yesterday I described the astral world. To-day we shall deal with man's life after death in the astral world. This will give us a basis for an understanding of reincarnation and karma.

We have seen that when we die the following processes take place: The physical body remains behind as a corpse; whereas during sleep the etheric body remains connected with physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego go out of the physical body at the moment of death. Immediately after death, the whole earthly life unfolds itself in every detail before the soul of the departed in the form of pictures. This process lasts for about three days, until the next separation, namely that of the etheric body from the astral body and the Ego. In the occult meaning we therefore speak of two corpses. After a while, the etheric body remains behind as a second corpse.

When the second separation has taken place, the capacity of memory ceases—but not for always—and a new condition begins for the human being. What is this new condition? Man now experiences himself in the world which he enters every night during sleep. But this after-death condition greatly differs from the sleeping condition. Theosophical books sometimes describe death as if it were a kind of sleep. But this is not the case; soon after death man grows conscious of the astral world. Nevertheless there exists in the proverb: Sleep is the brother of death. ... and this is justified. This new state of existence is called life in Kamaloca.

We have seen that during sleep the astral body works on the physical body and on the etheric body in order to renew their forces. This work suppresses consciousness during sleep and prevents us from having perceptions of the astral world. After death the astral body is dispensed from this work indeed no longer to restore fatigue, and for this reason it begins to grow conscious of the astral world. Upon the Earth, this force was used for the reconstruction of the physical body, but now it is free and exists in the form of consciousness. When the astral body is no longer obliged to restore anything, it perceives the images of the astral world. This also shows you why we should strive after a sound sleep.

Observe physical life here in this world, how everyone seeks to satisfy his senses. What a human being enjoys, is enjoyed by his soul, but the organ which enables him to enjoy is physical. If a person enjoys eating, the soul needs the palate for its enjoyment. After death the longing for these enjoyments continues to exist, whereas the organs no longer exist. The soul yearns for good food, but the organ enabling it to taste it is lacking. The longing can no longer be satisfied. The soul is like a wanderer suffering terrible thirst looking in vain for water, for a possibility to quench his thirst.

This state of existence does not last forever, little by little the longings cease. Many religions describe it as a life in purgatory. And old painter sometimes depicted in other pictures with flames of fire. In fact, the soul suffers a burning thirst.

The further courses is that the human being feels his last longings and lives through his whole life backwards, as far as his birth; when he had no passionate longings. Afterwards man enters Devachan. This is clearly indicated in the Gospel verse: unless ye become like little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of God.—Little by little the human being must free himself from everything which linked him up with the physical world. Kamaloca is the condition in which he emancipates himself from everything which chains him to the world of the senses. It is influenced entirely by the sensory life in the physical world. If a person entirely submitted to his senses, his life in Kamaloca will be long and difficult. Ordinarily the Kamaloca-existence takes up about one third of the duration of earthly life. Past life rises up before the soul in the form of images and beings that torment us. In Kamaloca everything is reversed: what used to satisfy us, is now want. Hot passion calls up the feeling of horrible chilling Beings. And the burning thirst remains throughout. The more a human being freed himself from physical life before death and the easier his death, the more readily will he disaccustom himself to the world of the senses. In the case of suicides this will be most difficult of all, for they were the prey of an illusion: they do not consider that in violently severing themselves from the life of the senses, they will be seized by an unspeakable greed for their physical body, which would keep them in close proximity to the physical world. A similar fate—though in a weaker form awaits those who lost their life suddenly through some accident. Such a sudden death also brings with it an avidity for the physical world, for the physical body, but later on this will be compensated in Devachan. When the soul has laid aside its earthly desires, it enters the Devachan state of existence.

Spiritual science does not teach us to turn away from life. The spiritual scientist may use the following comparison: the soul resembles a bee that flies out to the meadows to seek honey and bring it back to the hive. Here on earth the soul gathers the honey of life which he brings to the altar of the Godhead after death. The soul could never do this without a life in the physical world.

When man incarnates and begins to see, he at first simply perceives through his eyes. Gradually spiritual enjoyment grows out of this. Physical pleasure changes into spiritual enjoyment. The savage with but a few incarnations enjoys the many colors and the simplest sense-impressions. With each incarnation his senses grow more refined.—If we had never enjoyed colours sensually, we could never attain spiritual enjoyment of colors. The sensually enjoyment is therefore a necessary deviation. We should enjoy the beauty of the physical world. Similarly, sensual love gradually leads to the highest, purest, spiritual love. The soul should transform every experience and carry it up to the altar of spirituality. Nothing, really nothing, is ever lost. Without the school of sensuality, we can never reach spirituality. The Earth is not a valley of tears, it is a gathering place and the human beings are—so the Bible says—messengers, Angels of God, sent out to gather honey.

The human being is passing through a process of transformation. Think of your childhood years! How many thoughts and concepts approached you and how much you took in! And how your thoughts and concepts changed from the 10th to the 20th year! Your temperament undergoes a far weaker change. A passionate child will still be passionate in old age. The temperament is engraved in the human body. A choleric person has quite a different expression, bearing and walk from a sanguine, melancholic or phlegmatic person. We should strive, above all, to change our temperament to a certain extent at least. This was a training Occult Schools. The whole trend of life was changed in Occult Schools. The essential thing there was to transform the will.

After death, our spiritual connections and ties reach us as far as Devachan. Two people are intimate friends and their friendship takes on more and more spiritual character. Yet the physical body constitutes a certain obstacle. In Devachan this friendship will find its full, pure expression.

Everything that we drew out of our earthly life becomes interwoven with the soul, with the spirit. This enables us to shape our next incarnation, as far as the body, and earthly life is the expression of what we worked out for ourselves. In the East there is a proverb which says: what you think to-day, you are tomorrow.

During each incarnation we thus work for the next one. In my next lecture I will describe man's experiences in Devachan. Life in Devachan is not a dream-condition, for the human being does not sleep through the spiritual world. There, his consciousness is a much higher one, it is more alive than here on Earth. In Devachan everything appears in a stronger light. We do not lose our friends in Devachan; our connections with them are simply of another kin—it is a far more intimate and spiritual union. Devachan is a far more real state of existence than earthly life.

Let us continue our considerations on the effects of the law of Karma, and report what has already been explained: The actions of past lives come to expression in the present life as external life-destinies. The inclinations, the temperament, etc. of the past life change into the physical constitution of health in this life.

Another connection presents itself when we study man's life of thoughts. Our thought-life is an activity of the astral body. The nature of our thought-life influences the etheric body of our next life, that is to say, the lasting moral attitude and mentality. Let us study the mood of the Schopenhauer, who was a pessimist. To view life pessimistically or optimistically, produces a quality in the etheric body; in the case of pessimism this attitude is due to the fact that in a past life such a person had unsatisfactory or unhappy experiences. When someone judges his fellow-men negatively, does nothing but criticize, this inclination will express itself in a next life in a definite physical constitution, namely in the fact that this person will soon grow old and not evince much youthfulness. A good preparatory condition for the next life is to meet all people in a loving way and not reject them.

How is heredity linked up with the fact of reincarnation and Karma? Many will try to oppose reincarnation with the objection that there are our families in which all generations were musicians, and they will trace this back to heredity. A great theosophist once said: It is not true that children resemble their parents, it is rather that the parents resemble the children. Let us throw light upon the meaning of these words.

In the beginning of his development the human being had an astral body which had not yet been elaborated by his Ego. During the course of the incarnations the Ego begins to work into the astral body. The astral body and thus becomes more perfect. The capacity of distinguishing truth from error is only an acquisition of later incarnations. Everything in life must first be learned through experience. A true judgment only develops through error. Mathematical truths also arise through the fact that the opposite is false. Man continually works upon his astral body with his Ego; A clairvoyant sees a great difference in the astral body of a developed or undeveloped person.

As a result of this work upon the astral body there is in every human soul a part still filled by lower instincts and passions, and a part spiritually elaborated by the Ego. Francis of Assisi for example had completely transformed and elaborated his astral body. That part of the astral body which has been transformed by the Ego is designated by the occultists with the Oriental expression of Manas.

Far more difficult than the work upon the astral body is the work upon the etheric body, because it is far more difficult to permeate it. This impermeable quality of the etheric body is in part man's own work, in so far as it is the result of former deeds, but in part it is also the work of other higher Beings who were active when the etheric body was formed. The more a human being works into his ehteric body, the more he becomes what is cllled a religious, wise person.

An occultist must not only know the method of working upon the astral body, but also that of working upon the the etheric body. The occult disciple transforms his etheric body consciously, so that he acquires the faculty of exercising a harmonizing influence upon the forces of the etheric body. In the case of an initiate this influence on the etheric body manifests itself in such a way that in certain phases of his life he can command over forces which he would otherwise not have. What thus arises, as a result of the Ego's work upon the etheric body, is called Buddhi, and a person who has reached this stage is called a Chela.

At a certain moment the Chela grows conscious of his past earthly lives.

Last of all, upon a very high stage of development, the human being also gains control over his physical body. Such an initiative is called a "Master&". The part of the physical body over which the human being gained control, is called Atma. In this lecture we cannot deal with the mystery of working into the physical body, and with the flashing up of Atma, which is the result of this work.

Everything coming from a past life which has not yet been elaborated by the human Ego, continues along the path of ordinary heredity and faces him in a new life as the karma of the generations. This is in the case of modern people a more or less larger part coming from the astral body, the greatest part coming from the etheric body and generally everything coming from the physical body.

In the case of an Initiate or a “Master”, we see the following: When he is born, he only bears a small outward resemblance to his family, and in his whole appearance he bears a far greater resemblance to the appearance which he had during a past incarnation, because he was already able to work into his physical body. Heredity works most strongly of all in the incarnation of insignificant personalities but where personality is strongly differentiated and marked, resemblance is slight. Let us take a human nucleus with definite capacities, that was incarnated many centuries ago and now tends towards a new incarnation. In accordance with his capacities he must feel attracted towards parents whose physical qualities most closely correspond with his capacities. He seeks out the family whose bodily constitution and being can give him the most suitable physical body, the one he needs in order to give full expression to his capacities. A great musician will need a line of ancestors that can give him a body with the best organ for his musical activities. This is the meaning contained in the seemingly paradoxical sentence: The parents resemble their children.

Another question arises: Is man's only work in Kamaloca and Devachan to work for himself? On the contrary, he also works on the remaining world. The fact that man continually enters new incarnations is not devoid of meaning and purpose, for each time he underwent an essential transformation. He returns to the earth only when he can learn something new. The events on the physical plane have their origin in the spiritual worlds. What produced the changes in the fauna and flora of Central Europe since the past 1500 years? Spiritual Beings and the not incarnated human souls! The physical is the expression of purely spiritual processes.

Even as the stones of houses do not accumulate of their own accord and become a house, so the animal kingdom cannot change of its own accord. Everything that changes within the animal kingdom proceeds from the astral plane, at least as far as the warm-blooded animals are concerned. Everything that undergoes a change in the vegetable kingdom is directed from the sphere of Devachan. Natural science traces back changes in the animal kingdom to adaptations to external life-conditions. To use the word adaptation is a make-shift. For it is the work of Spiritual Beings. Natural science can never discover the true causes for such transformations, a clairvoyant can see them.

There are Beings concerned with the transformation of the vegetable and animal kingdoms of the earth. Man also cooperates in this, when he lives in Kamaloca and Devanchan. Nothing ever happens by “miracle” everything is determined by lawful ordered influences.

Even as upon the physical plane the human spirit gradually formed communities and states out of small tents and huts, so he also transforms the fauna and the flora in Devachan. We ourselves prepared the nest where we were born. In Kamaloca, to be sure, man works upon the different animal species.

Before the human being incarnates, he has a foresight of his coming earthly life. (Karma) If this life will be a hard one, he may have a strong shock, and under certan conditions he may become an idiot, because his etheric body rebels against the descending into the physical body, so that its center of power becomes dislocated outside the brain.

In the following lectures we shall deal with the evolution of man and of the earth itself, with the evolution of the whole solar system. Also with the methods of an occult inner training, particularly with the difference between the oriental and the occidental initiation. Then with the Christian initiation, which exists since the time of St. John, the author of the Gospel of St. John and of the Revelations.

Occult research of man's evolution goes back far into the times dealt with by history and natural science. How does the occultist know of these long-past things? He knows them by investigating the Akasha Chronicle. This living chronicle of the spiritual world contains the documents and facts of which we shall speak. They completely harmonize with the investigations of natural science. Natural science also begins to be interested in the continent of Atlantis [See Rudolf Steiner's “Akasha Chronicle”.]. Atlantis always existed and was always known to occult investigation. It is important to bear in mind that modern natural science is better acquainted than in the past with what can be seen through the eyes, but the old science of the Mysteries knew of more encompassing, more powerful realities. What is not yet admitted by modern science, namely that also man already lived on the Atlantean continent, is a fact advanced by Occultism. Our forefathers, the peoples who lived on our continent descended from the Atlanteans. Of course, the Atlantean human beings, whose organization was adapted to the conditions of the earth which existed at that time, greatly differed in aspect from modern man. Atlantis had a quite different climate, and consequently entirely different distribution of air and water, it was a land of fogs and mists ... at that time there was no alternating rain and sunshine. Everything was wrapped in clouds and the only thing which varied with the degree of moisture. Only when the floods of water began to recede and Atlantis had gone down, rain and sunshine alternated. This may be found in the description of the Old Testament, where it speaks of the rainbow seen by Noah after the Flood.

Religious documents may be viewed from four aspects. 1) By taking them naïvely and literally. 2) From the standpoint of science which considers itself far cleverer than the authors of these documents. 3) From the standpoint of an allegorical-symbolic interpretation (which may be very clever, but is in many cases quite arbitrary). 4) From the occult standpoint, by taking the things described in the characteristic language of such documents again in their exact meaning, thus reaching again a literal understanding of the words. For example, Noah's rainbow, it's not a symbol, but it expresses the fact that a rainbow could only arise after the descent of Atlantis and the receding of the mists. There could be no rainbow in the ancient Atlantean epoch. Noah (“Bringer of Peace”) should be looked upon as the leader (the Manu) whose task was that of guiding the peoples out of the sinking Atlantis. It was at this moment that the rainbow first arose.

We thus learn once more to read the Bible literally and at the same time we gain an occultist's sense of devotion for facts which others criticize. Here we may apply the sentence: “With the growth of knowledge and understanding, you will feel that the critic in you becomes a mere apprentice.” There is a deep meaning and ancient truths in legends and fairy-tales. The German saga speaks for example of “Nifelheim”. This is the misty land of Atlantis. “Nibelungen-land” is a metamorphosis of the word “Nifelheim-Nebelheim”—meaning land of fogs.

The animal and vegetable world upon Atlantis differed from the present one as greatly as the human being of that time differs from modern man. The Atlantean's did not have high foreheads; their foreheads were flat and receded. The connection between the etheric and physical body of Atlantean were as follows: His etheric body protruded far, especially from the head. Human evolution consisted in fact that the etheric body gradually entered further into the head. The ancient Atlantean did not yet possess the capacity of abstract thinking, nor the power enabling him to say “I” to himself with a certain conviction. He had instead other highly developed faculties, for example the power of memory. The larger the anterior brain, the greater the intellectual power.

The Atlantean and was able to work in the outside world through his will. By a special volitional impulse he could stimulate the growth of plants, for his will-power exercised a magic influence. The Atlanteans lived in a state of dull clairvoyance. They did not see things materially, as we see them to-day, but in supersensible images. For this reason all their spiritual products have been imaginative-symbolical character.

In general, their civilization was quite different from those which followed. Particularly in the earlier Atlantean ages, they controlled the life-forces. They built machines which enabled them to rise from the ground and soar above it. But these gliding machines were propelled by the life-forces that lie concealed in plants. The vehicles of the Atlanteans were fed with grains of wheat, in the same way in which our railways are fed with coal. In this field many important discoveries will be made in the future.

Since the Atlanteans controlled the life-forces, they could build their houses out of trees which they bend at will. For their dwellings they only used living substances and no lifeless matter. The Atlantean was far more closely connected with Nature than modern man and his culture was a higher one. There was a city in which the highest Initiates lived which was spoken of in the ancient Mysteries as the city with the golden portals. At that time, also the way of teaching was different. By strong will-power, a suggestive influence was exercised upon the pupil.

The Atlantean still had a direct experience of how the divine essence flashed up in every phenomena of Nature. To him the breathing process was still something sacred and religious. In man all these religious feelings converged in a fundamental feeling. It's external sound has been preserved in the Chinese word “TAO”. Its sign, the ancient cross-symbol of the Tao is still preserved in Occultism.

The Lemurians were the forerunners of the Atlanteans; Lemuria sets forth a still more ancient stage of mankind's evolution. The conditions of the earth then greatly differed from the present ones, in view of the much higher temperature. The human being existed even at that time. This leads us to the relationship of animal and man. The human soul flowed together with the body towards the middle of the Lemurian age. Towards the end of Lemuria and upon Atlantis the human soul already lived upon the earth. But before, there was a time when the human being could not as yet have a soul within his physical body. The human soul then lived entirely in higher worlds, upon the astral plane. But we shall speak of this tomorrow.

We have followed the evolution of mankind back as far as Atlantis and will now proceed to the study of Lemuria and speak of the Lemurian human forms. These human beings are the first representatives of real men with bodies permeated by souls. Let us first consider the structure of the Lemurian continent and the type of human being who lived on it.

In the Lemurian age everything was filled with the kind of watery mass, out of which emerged islands which were all of a volcanic kind. Typical for Lemuria is the manifold change in Nature, in the forms and in life. The single forms and species underwent a rapid transformation. The Atlantean soul-characteristics were in the case of the Lemurians, still more strongly marked, especially the will, which also had the greatest influence on the form of the physical body. This consisted only of gelatinous, transparent substances, into which the present bones and muscles had still to be built in. An organ which plays a very great role to-day was then in its very first beginnings. This is very significant, for with the development of the lungs is connected the fact that man was endowed with a living soul.

This installment did not happen in a moment, but lasted throughout long epochs of time.—How was the human soul connected with the body, before giving life to this body which, according to present-day concepts was very misshapen? It was the same connection which now exists during sleep: the soul was outside the body, it soared above it and drew it with it to an earth which was at that time still permeated by powerful streams of life.

The Lemurian constantly lived in a sleep-like condition which may be compared with our dream-consciousness in which a living image-world appears. He could only perceive in this manner and he knew the meaning of the single images, thus recognizing the soul-aspect of things.

An important moment in evolution was when he first used his body for the purpose of perception. The human being moved about in swinging, soaring movements. For this purpose he had a special organ in his bodily cavity, a kind of swimming bladder. The lungs developed out of this bladder, under the influence of the soul that soared above the body. The soul entered the human body in the same measure in which man began to breathe through his lungs. He actually breathed in his soul, with the air he breathed. This process too is described with literal accuracy in Genesis, in the Six Days' Creation, with the words: And God breathed his breath into man and he became a living soul ...

At that time man had the outward appearance of a very soft-bodied dragon (the designation of snake does not quite correspond to the reality); his companions were toads, fish, frogs, etc., in short, a primeval world of reptiles and amphibians, though their present-day descendants can in no way be compared with them; for they are quite degenerate descendants. At that time there were no mammals. To-day no remains can be found either of these reptiles or of the human beings of that age.

How should the relation between animal and man be tought of? The theory of man's ascent from apes may be considered as obsolete, for it is based upon a false train of thought. Think of a morally degenerate and of a highly ethical man. The assertion that man is descended from apes is like saying that the perfect man descends from the imperfect one. They need not descend from one another at all, but they may have a common father and be brothers! The one developed upwards, the other became decadent. Also the relation between ape and man may be viewed in this light. On Atlantis, the human form was still ape-like. During the Lemurian age the sole possession of a body which was even less perfect. This body then took an upward course of development. But the ape-like forms have partly degenerated and have become the apes of to-day. The apes are therefore the degenerated bodily brothers of man.

In the Atlantean age the human race branched out; the one main stem to an ascending development and became the human being of to-day, whereas the other descended and became the ape of to-day. All animals which live among us are consequently human beings who were expelled and condemned to degeneration. The ascent of certain beings is only possible through the fact that others sacrifice themselves. The higher expels the lower, in order to rise still higher; later on there will be a compensation for those who were expelled.

In this connection we must speak of a cosmic event of greatest importance, without which the soul could never have incarnated. This is the exit of the moon from the earth. The moon severed itself from the earth and formed a secondary planet. Formally, moon and earth were one planet. Thus the evolution of the Earth and the evolution of man are closely connected. What the astronomer sees of the moon, is not the whole moon, for everything in the world also has a soul. So also the moon has its soul. The moon went out of the earth with all its forces, with its whole aura, or its astral part.

This event stands in closest connection with everything which one calls fecundation and procreation. The ancient Greek Mysteries still knew this. In the Lemurian age the sexes began to separate; before that time the human beings were hermaphrodites. There was no act of fecundation and conception; procreation took place in a manner which has been preserved in certain lower living beings. The separation of the sexes coincided with the separation of the moon. This applies to all living beings. At that time, certain forces were eliminated from the earth, which had given man the possibility to bring forth descendants without the aid of another being. These forces were eliminated through the exit of the moon. At that time earth plus moon circled round the sun. But the moon maintained the old movement of the earth-moon planet, for it does not turn around its own axis as does the earth. Even as the moon of to-day always turns the same side to the earth, its “sun” and never the back side, so at that time the earth-moon planet always turned the same side to the sun.

Sun, moon and planets are also inhabited by beings. In a still earlier time, sun, moon, and earth were one body, and everything which now exists in the form of human beings, animals and plants, still lived together with sun. At that time man still had a quite etheric form of a very fine substance and he lived a kind of plant-existence. Animal forms and human forms arose much later, for at that time everything still stood at one stage of planned-existence.

These sun-plants were of course entirely different from the plants of to-day. Nevertheless when they say with their blossom they strove towards the center of the planet, i.e. the sun, and that their roots stretched upwards. When the sun severed itself from the earth, the plants turned completely around and again turned their blossom to the sun. From that time onwards the blossom stretched upwards and the root downwards. the animals only made a right-angle turn, when the moon left the earth.¹ Man made a complete turn, so that he is a reversed plant, even as the plant is a reversed human being.

The life-soul passes through the three kingdoms of Nature. Plato therefore says that the world-soul is nailed on to the cross of the world. Also the human soul hangs on that cross, by passing through the three realms of Nature. This is the significance of the Cross in the ancient Mysteries.

From the world-historical aspect, the whole process of development exists for the sake of man. Life can only arise out of life, but life eliminates the lifeless. Everything lifeless has arisen out of life. The minerals are deposits of living substance. But life comes from the spirit. The spirit is consequently the first original source, from which everything descends. And man is the first-born of creation. He has thrown out animals, plants and minerals; the lower always comes from higher.

To-morrow we shall speak of the development of man towards higher stages of knowledge.

• 1. See in this connection: Rudolf Steiner: “Goetheanismus, ein Menschen-Umwandlungsimpuls und Auferstehungsgedanke” 1st Lecture: Die Antwort der Geistwissenschaft auf die wichtigsten Fragen der Zeit. (Philes.Anthrop.Publish. Company, Dornach)

Today and next time I am going to speak about the Gospel of St. John. I would mention that what I have to say will only really be comprehensible to those who are already somewhat familiar with spiritual science. It would, however, take us too far out of our way if we went into everything unfamiliar to non-theosophists. You are probably aware that latterly New Testament textual criticism has discredited the John Gospel as an historical source. It is said in theological circles—at least in advanced circles—that the first three gospels, the synoptic gospels, are the only documents relevant to the life of the founder of Christianity. They are called synoptic because they can be taken together to form a general picture of the life of Christ Jesus. On the other hand modern theologians try to interpret the John Gospel as a sort of poetic work, a confession of faith, the writings of a person portraying his feelings, his intimate religious life as it was born in him through the impact of Christianity. Thus the John Gospel could be considered as a devotional work, a deeply felt confession of faith, not as anything that could be taken as Christian historical facts.

But for everyone who immerses himself in the writings of the New Testament, one fact is indisputable: an immediate life flows from the John Gospel, and there is a conviction, a source of truth of a different nature to that proceeding from other religious writings. There is a certainty, which needs no outer confirmation. There is a feeling that comes over one when one meets the John Gospel if one is sensitive to inner soul life and spiritual devotion. Only with the help of spiritual science can one understand why this is so. Many a time have I told you how spiritual science helps towards a more intimate connection with religious documents.

You all know that when one first meets the scriptures one adopts the attitude of a simple person and takes the facts as they are described, without criticism; one takes the bread of religious life from these sources and is satisfied with it.

Many people of our day who had this naive outlook and then became “clever”, became “enlightened”, noticed the contradictions in the gospels. Then they rejected the gospels and lost faith. They said: We cannot reconcile remaining faithful to these writings and seeking wisdom in them with our conscience and our sense of truth. This is the stage of the “clever” ones, the second stage.

Then there is the third way that people approach religious documents. They begin to explain them symbolically. They begin to see symbols and allegories in them. This is the way of free-thinkers, especially in recent times.

Bruno Wille, the editor of the paper “Der Freidenker” (The Free Thinker), has now chosen this way. He has taken to explaining symbolically the Christ myth and the Bible in general. The really necessary way of development that man needs, an inner turning point, cannot follow from this. Those who are less ingenious will explain the scriptures less ingeniously. Others who are more ingenious will be better. Much will be read into it that springs from human ingenuity. The third way is thus a half believing, but arbitrary, attitude.

Then there is quite a different standpoint. One learns that there are realities pertaining to higher worlds, that besides our world of the senses, there are soul-spiritual things, and that religious revelations are not concerned with the sense world but present facts of a higher world. Those who have gotten to know the realities of the astral world which lies behind our sense world, and of the devachanic (or mental world) which lies even deeper, will come to a new and higher understanding of religious sources. It is impossible to understand the John Gospel without rising to such higher worlds. The John Gospel is not a poetic work, nor a writing arising from mere religious fervour, but sets forth revelations from higher worlds that the writer of the gospel has received. It is something like this—I will briefly describe it. The supporting evidence I will not deal with today; perhaps I can go into it next time. The writer of the John Gospel learned, through experience in higher worlds, what took place at “the beginning of our era“ that related to the life of the founder of Christianity, and his acts.

Let me give you an example of the difference between just knowing, and truly comprehending. We have recently mentioned here that someone can be next to us, we can see what he looks like, but we need not necessarily really know him for what he is. I have told the story of the singer who, at an evening party sat between Mendelsohn and someone else she did not know. She got on very well with Mendelsohn, but towards the other guest, though he was very courteous, she felt an aversion. Afterwards she asked, “Who was that bore on my left?” The answer was, “It was the famous philosopher Hegel”. If the lady had been told previously that the great philosopher Hegel would be present at a party, that alone would probably have been enough for her to have accepted the invitation. But because he sat beside her unknown, he was a bore. This is the difference between seeing and understanding, between just knowing and comprehending.

He who was the founder of Christianity could not readily be recognised if one only possessed the ordinary intellect employed in the sense world. It needed that which the Christian mystics so often expressed in profound and beautiful language. This was what Angelus Silesius meant when he said:

There is an inner experience of Christ—there is the possibility to realize inwardly what took place outwardly as events in Palestine between the years 1 and 33 A.D. He who came into this world from higher worlds must be understood from a higher world. And he who portrayed Him most deeply had to raise himself to the two higher worlds we have mentioned, the astral and the devachanic, or mental worlds. This elevation of John, if we so name him, was the elevation into these two higher worlds. His Gospel reveals this to us.

The first twelve chapters contain John's experiences in the astral world. From chapter thirteen onwards it is his experiences in the devachanic, or mental world. He who wrote it down says of Christ (the words are not to be taken literally): Here on this earth He lived, here has He worked with divine powers, with occult powers. He has healed the sick, he has gone through everything from death to resurrection. It is impossible to understand these things with the ordinary intellect. Here on earth there is no science or learning by which one could really understand what occurred. But there is the possibility of rising to the higher worlds. There one can find the wisdom to understand Him who walked here on earth among us. Thus did the writer of the John Gospel rise to the two higher worlds and become initiated. It was an initiation, and the writer describes his initiation into the astral world and the devachanic, or mental world.

In olden times, in regions where man's body was still suited to these things, such an initiation took place as follows. The person had to go through a sort of sleep-state. What now takes several years in a modern European initiation—because the modern European can no longer go through the process I will describe—what today is achieved through long exercises of meditation and concentration, was achieved in a short time by some individuals, after the appropriate exercises of meditation and concentration. I particularly emphasise that anyone who really wishes to receive initiation must, in some form or other, face the two important experiences about to be described—though in a somewhat different way. He must go through a sort of sleep condition. To understand the nature of sleep, let us remind ourselves what takes place when one sleeps. One's higher bodies are then separated from one's lower bodies. Man consists of a physical body, which one can see with one's eyes. The second member is the etheric body which surrounds the physical body and which is much finer than the physical body. Currents and organs of wonderful variety and splendour are active in it. The etheric body contains the same organs as the physical body. It has a brain, heart, eyes etc. They represent the forces which formed the corresponding organs. It is as if one cooled water in a vessel until it becomes ice. In this way you should picture the arising of the physical organs through the densifying of the etheric organs. The etheric body extends only a little beyond the physical body.

The third member is the astral body. It is the bearer of desires, wishes, passions, etc. It permeates the physical body in the form of a cloud. There are colours—violent passions appear as lightning flashes. The peculiarities of temperament glide through the body in glowing points of varying intensity.

The whole inner man is expressed in a luminous form. This is the real ego of man, the bearer of the higher centre of his being. In normal sleep the physical and etheric bodies are lying in bed. They are closely united. The astral body and all the rest is separated. As long as one does not do anything particular one is unconscious when the astral body is outside the physical body. One is as unconscious as one would be in the physical world without eyes or ears. One could live as long as one liked in the physical world; if one had no eyes there would be no colours, if one had no ears there would be no sound. So it is when the astral body is outside the physical body. It is spread out in the soul world, but one does not see this world or become aware of it because one has no astral sense organs. They must gradually be formed. If a person does not practice exercises he remains unconscious in higher worlds. But if he does practice then he can attain consciousness in these higher worlds. When his astral body acquires organs he begins to see the astral world around him. Those of you who have often attended these lectures will know that there are seven such organs. They are called wheels, chakrams or lotus flowers. The two-petalled lotus flower lies between the eyes—between the eye-brows, the sixteen-petalled lies in the region of the larynx, the twelve-petalled lies in the heart region. If these organs are gradually developed one becomes clairvoyant in the astral world.

This astral vision is something quite different from physical sight. You can get some idea of astral vision if you think of the flow of dream life. In dreams we have symbolic pictures—true symbols. One sees symbols. One loses consciousness of what takes place here in the physical world, but one can experience in symbolic pictures such events as the life of Christ Jesus as John describes it from his own experience in the astral world. Descriptions of this nature form the content of the first twelve chapters of the John Gospel. Don't misunderstand me. I know many will say: If all this is astral experience, then it is nothing real and what is told us of the founder of Christianity is not authentic. But this is not the case. It would be as if one denied that a man of flesh and blood could be a genius, because one cannot see genius. Although one learns the truth of Christ Jesus only on the astral plane, it is still a fact that he lived his life on the physical plane. We are dealing with symbols on the astral plane and outer reality on the physical plane. Nothing is taken away from the facts when we understand them more deeply in the sense of the John Gospel.

Initiation in the astral world is preceded by, and depends on what is called meditation. This means that the soul sinks into itself—I have often described it here. To reach a meditative experience one must make oneself blind and deaf to all sense impressions. Nothing must be able to disturb one. Cannons can go off without one being aware of it in one's inner life. One does not achieve this at once, but through constant practice one can attain this capacity. One must empty oneself also of all past experiences. Memory must be wiped out. The soul must be concerned only with itself and then out of its inner being there arise the eternal truths which are able—not only to awaken our understanding—but to release capacities which lie slumbering under a spell in our souls. These great eternal verities will rise up in man according to the maturity he has attained through his karma—the one, as Subba Row says, in seven incarnations, another in seventy years, another in seven years, others in seven months, seven days or seven hours.

John sets forth the means whereby his soul was led to perception on the astral plane. The formula he used for meditation stands at the beginning of his gospel. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was a God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without this Word was not anything made that was made. In it was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.”

In these five sentences lie the eternal verities which loosed the spell in John's soul and brought forth the great visions. This is the form of the meditation. Those for whom the John Gospel is written should not read it like any other book. The first five sentences must be taken as a formula of meditation. Then one follows John on his way, and attempts to experience oneself what he experienced. This is the way to do it; so it is meant.

John says: Do what I have done. Let the great formula, “In the beginning was the Word” work in your souls and you will verify what is said in my first twelve chapters.

This alone can really help towards understanding the John Gospel. Thus is it intended and thus should it be used. I have often spoken of what the “Word” signifies. “In the beginning” is not a good translation. It should really read: Out of the primal forces emerged the Word. That is what it means: The Word came forth, came forth out of the primal forces. Thus “in the beginning” means: coming forth out of the primal forces.

When man is in this sleep condition he is no longer in the sense world. He moves into a soul world and in this soul world experiences what the sense world really is. The truth of the sense world is revealed. He starts out from these words derived from the sense world leading back to the primal forces, and rises up to the words of truth. Every truth has seven meanings. For the mystic, immersed in contemplation it has however this meaning: The knowledge, the Word which emerges, is not something that merely applies to yesterday and today, but this Word is eternal. This Word leads to God because it was ever with God, because it is the very essence that God has planted into all things.

There is however, still another way of understanding this, and one acquires it if one returns day after day to the momentous words: “In the beginning was the Word”. When one begins to understand, not with the intellect, but with the heart, so that the heart becomes one with these words, then the power begins to work, and there begins the state of mind of which John speaks. He says it with great clarity: “All things were made by Him and without the Word was not anything made that was made”.

What do we find in this Word? We find life. What do we perceive through this life—through this light? We must take these religious texts quite literally if we want to attain higher knowledge. Where does this light shine? In the darkness of night. It comes to those who sleep. It comes to everyone who sleeps. But the darkness comprehended it not—until the ability develops to perceive it on the astral plane. Thus is the fifth verse to be understood literally. The astral light shines into the darkness of night but man does not normally see it, he must first learn to see.

As all this became reality for the writer of the John Gospel, the light dawned and he saw who He was, He whose disciple and apostle he was. Here on earth he had seen Him. Now he had found Him again on the astral plane, and he knew that He who had walked the earth in the flesh only differed in one respect from what lived in his own deepest inner self. In every single man there lives a divine man. In the distant future this divine man will arise resurrected in every man. As man stands before us today he is, in his outward appearance, to a greater or lesser extent, an expression of the inner divine man, and this inner divine man works constantly on the outer man.

Last Thursday [Public Lecture, Berlin, 15 Feb, 1906. “Reincarnation and Karma”] I already pointed out how one can illustrate this by a simple comparison. Look at a child. One could be tempted to say that these innocent features came from the father or mother, an uncle or an ancestor. However, everything within the child expresses itself in the features, in the gestures of the hands and in all its movements. What slumbers in the child strives to come to expression. Finally the individual emerges and the physiognomy becomes an expression of the individual soul, while previously it showed more of a family type. In primitive man the individual soul is usually still slumbering and has but a meagre existence. In the course of many incarnations and efforts the individual emerges, the soul aquires more power over the physical body, and the physiognomy takes on the imprint, or the expression of the inner man. An immature person expresses little of the power of the soul. Gradually man matures, and full maturity is reached when the inner word has become flesh completely—when the outer has become an exact imprint of the inner, so that the spirit shines through the flesh. This however, John only understood once his higher self had appeared clearly before his astral eyes. It stood in front of his astral eyes and he knew: This is I. Today have I experienced it on the astral plane. However it will gradually descend as it did in Him, who I followed. This is the deep relationship between Christ Jesus and the divine man that exists in every man. This is the deep inner experience of John.

The inner soul lives unconscious in man and he only becomes aware of it through the processes we have described.

What does it mean to say: something becomes conscious. Can we become conscious of something which lives within us? As long as it only lives within us we are not aware of it. Man is not aware of what he carries within him, what is subjective. I will use a crude comparison to make clear what I mean. You all have a physical brain but you cannot see it. It would have to be taken out, and then you could see it. For the same reason, though there is a certain difference, you cannot see your higher self. It is the “I” within you. But it must come out if you are to see it, and this can only happen on the astral plane. When it is outside and confronts you, then spiritually, it is as if you had a physical brain on a platter and made it the object of your sense perception.

The writer of the John Gospel describes this process. His own higher ego appears before Him—his own higher ego, which in its fullness represents the Christ. When you know this you will be able to understand certain hints and truths in the John Gospel. You will be able to understand certain things quite well with the help of what I said up to now. In occult language one describes what this ego inhabits—the physical body, which it has built for itself to dwell in—as the temple. Thus one says: The soul dwells in the temple.

It is not altogether a painless procedure when for the first time the soul must leave the temple of the body so that it becomes visible outside of it. This leaving of the body is not without pain. All that forms this higher connection with the physical body are bands that are not so easy to loosen. Imagine that you are bound with fetters and you break loose. You would experience pain through this tearing apart. It is like a process of tearing apart when the astral body leaves the physical body when it leaves it, perceptibly. Leaving the body in sleep is different, one is not aware of it. If one leaves it consciously then one experiences pain.

When man begins to develop astral consciousness, things on the astral plane appear to him as in a mirror. The number 165 should not be read as 165 but as 561—as reflected writing. Everything appears reversed on the astral plane. Even time is reversed. When you follow someone on the astral plane you start, to begin with, from where he is. Then you go back to his birth. You can follow him on the physical plane forwards; on the astral plane backwards. Leaving the physical body is like this: It is as though we were leaving the temple of the physical body and were laid hold of from all sides. This is the occurrence which John wants to describe. He left his body in order to experience the Christ, his own higher divine self, confronting him. People around him have their astral bodies bound strongly to their physical bodies as if with fetters. Had John remained like them he would have continued to be fettered to his physical body. Now let us read how this occurrence is described pictorially and symbolically in the John Gospel, chapter 8, verses 58 and 59: “Jesus said unto them, verily, verily I say unto you: Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them”, through the hindrances. With this ends the eighth chapter. This is the passing out of the astral body from the physical body. The final act, leading to the leaving of the physical body and to higher vision, usually lasts three days. When these three days are up, one attains a consciousness on the astral plane comparable to that previously experienced on the physical plane. Then one is united with the higher world.

In occult language this union with the higher world is called the marriage of the soul with the powers of the higher world. When one has left the physical body, this appears to one as a mother would appear to a new-born child, were the child able to be conscious at birth. Thus the physical body confronts one, and the astral body can very well say to the physical body: This is my mother. When one has celebrated this marriage one can say this. One can look back on the former union. This can happen after three days. This is the occult procedure on the astral plane. In chapter 2, verse 1, it is stated: “And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there”. This is the pictorial expression for what I have just said. It happened on the third day.

When a person enters the astral world, he finds himself in a region from which he can rise a step further into a still higher world—the mental, or devachanic world. This entry into the devachanic world can only be gained at the expense of the complete extinction, the death of the lower nature. He must go through the three days of death and then be awakened. Once he has attained vision of the astral plane and the pictures of the astral plane have confronted him, he is mature and ready to receive knowledge on the mental or devachanic plane. It is possible then to describe the awakening on the devachanic plane. To find oneself on the higher plane with conscious clarity of thought, this is the awakening of Lazarus.

John describes the awakening of Lazarus. Previously he has shown that through this chain of events one can enter the higher worlds. In chapter 10, verse 9, it is said: “I am the door: by me if any man enter in he shall be saved and shall go in and out and find pasture”. This is the awakening of what was wrapped in sleep and is now awakened on the devachanic plane. John goes through it. John is Lazarus, and John means nothing more nor less than what is described in his first twelve chapters. He describes as an astral experience that he was awakened on the astral plane. Then followed the initiation for the devachanic plane. Three days he lay in the grave, and then he received the awakening. The raising of Lazarus is the awakening of John who wrote the gospel.

Read everything up to the chapter on the raising of Lazarus and you will find no mention of John anywhere. Consider Lazarus and John. It is said of John (John, ch. 13, v. 23): “Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.” Regarding Lazarus, you find the same words—that He loved him. It is the same person. He is not mentioned previous to the awakening. He appears for the first time after he is “raised from the dead”. These are the enigmas hidden in the John Gospel. The disciple whom the Lord loved is he whom the Lord himself has initiated. The writer of the John Gospel was he whom the Lord loved. How was he able to say this? Because he had been initiated, first on the astral plane and then on the devachanic plane. If one is able in this way to find the deeper meaning of the John Gospel, then will one be able to understand it in its true profundity, and then it becomes one of the greatest texts ever written. It is the description of the initiation into the depths of the inner life of the soul. It has been written so that everyone who reads it can follow the same path. And this one can do. Sentence for sentence, word for word, one can find within oneself, by rising to the higher plane, what is described in the John Gospel. It is not a biography of Christ Jesus but a biography of the developing human soul. And what is described is eternal and can take place in the heart of every human being. This text is an example and a model. Hence it has this living and awakening power which not only makes people into Christians but enables them to awaken to a higher reality. The John Gospel is not a profession of faith, but a text which really gives strength, and a self-supporting, independent higher life. This springs forth from the John Gospel, and he who does not merely want to understand it, but to live it, has truly comprehended it.

With these few words I could only touch on the contents. Next time we will go into certain details. Then you will see how every single sentence confirms what we have said today in general terms. Step by step you will then see that the John Gospel is not addressed merely to the human intellect, but to man's entire soul forces, and that real soul experience springs from it.