The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The last lecture began by speaking of the distinctive character of St. Mark's Gospel. It became clear that here, almost more than in the other Gospels, we can find in indications drawn from the deepest Christian mysteries, an opportunity to penetrate into many profound secrets and laws of the evolution of Man and of the Cosmos.

I had originally thought that during the winter it would be possible to make important and intimate references to matters of which we have not yet heard in our Movement, or perhaps better said, to matters at spiritual levels we have not yet reached. But we shall have to abandon this original plan for the simple reason that the Berlin Group has grown in numbers so astonishingly in recent weeks that it would now not be possible to make everything properly intelligible. We take it for granted that in mathematics and science some grounding is necessary if we want to reach a certain grade; and the same holds good to an even greater extent in the case of Spiritual Science. Later on, therefore, we shall have to consider how to present the parts of St. Mark's Gospel which are not suitable subjects for so large a Group.

In any attempt to understand a text such as that of the Gospel of St. Mark we must keep clearly in mind the factors which have influenced the evolution of humanity. I have always emphasised as a very general, abstract truth, that in all ages there have been certain leading figures among men who, because they were connected in some way with the Mysteries and with the spiritual, supersensible worlds, were in a position to implant into evolution certain impulses for its further progress. Now there are two main and fundamental ways in which a man can establish relationship with the supersensible worlds. One of these ways can be illustrated by the case of Zarathustra, the great Leader of mankind of whom I shall shortly be speaking in a lecture for the public. The other way in which such Leaders of men establish relationship with the spiritual worlds can be envisaged if we think of the characteristic features of the path followed by the great Buddha. These two outstanding figures differ widely in the whole manner of their work and activity.

What Buddha and Buddhism call contemplation or meditation ‘under the Bodhi tree’—a symbolic expression for a certain mystical deepening of Buddha's consciousness—is a path by which the human Ego can penetrate into its own, inmost being. This path, opened up in so glorious a way by the Buddha, is a descent of the ‘I’ into the depths, into the abyss, of its own nature.

You will get a clearer idea of what this means if you remember that we have followed the evolution of man through four stages. Three of these stages have been concluded and we are living now in the fourth. The first three evolutionary periods were those of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon, the fourth being that of the Earth proper. In the first three periods man's physical, etheric and astral bodies were brought into existence and in the present stage of Earth-evolution his ‘I’, or Ego, is developing as an integral member of his constitution. We have described the human being from various points of view as an ‘I’ enveloped in three sheaths—the astral sheath, the etheric sheath and the physical sheath, deriving respectively from the three previous evolutionary periods of Old Moon, Old Sun and Old Saturn.

At his normal stage of development to-day man has no consciousness of his astral, etheric or physical bodies. You will naturally insist that he is certainly conscious of his physical body. But that is not so. For what is normally regarded as man's physical body is an illusion, a maya. What is taken to be the physical body is the product of the interworking of the four members of man's constitution: physical, etheric and astral bodies, and the ‘I’. As the product of this interworking the physical body is visible to the eyes and can be touched by the hands. If you want to see the physical body as it really is, you must isolate it, as in a chemical analysis, by separating off and disregarding the ‘I’ and the astral and etheric bodies. But present conditions of earthly existence make this impossible. Although you may think that it happens whenever a man dies, this is not correct. What a man leaves behind at death is not his physical body, but a corpse. The physical body could not exist under the laws which come into operation after death has taken place for these laws do not properly belong to it; they belong to the external world. If you follow these thoughts through to their conclusion you will have to agree that what is usually called man's physical body is the complex of laws by which the physical body is created within our mineral world, just as their own laws of crystallisation create, let us say, quartz or emerald.

The physical body of man functions as an organism in the mineral-physical world and this is the sense in which it is always spoken of in Spiritual Science. What we know of the world to-day is nothing but the result of what the senses perceive, and such perception is only possible in an organism in which there is an Ego, an ‘I’. The superficial methods of observation now in vogue presume that an animal, for example, perceives the external world exactly as man perceives it through his senses. But this is a misguided view and people would be much astonished if—as will inevitably happen one day—they were shown how a horse, or a dog, or some other animal, pictures the world. If a picture were painted of the environment as perceived by a dog or a horse it would be very different from a man's picture of the world. We could not perceive the world as we do if the ‘I’ did not pour itself over the surrounding world, filling the sense-organs—the eyes, the ears, and so on. Only an organism in which an ‘I’ is present can perceive the world as man perceives it, and the outer human organism is itself an integral part of this picture. We must therefore conclude that what is usually called the physical body of man is only a result of our sense-observation, not the reality.

When we speak of physical man and of the physical world around him it is the ‘I’ that is viewing the world, with the help of the senses and the brain-bound mind. Hence man knows only that over which his ‘I’ extends, that which belongs to his ‘I’. As soon as the ‘I’ cannot be present there is no longer any perception of the world-picture—in other words, man falls asleep. There is no picture of the world around him and he loses consciousness.

Wherever you look, your ‘I’ is bound up at every point with what you are perceiving; it is poured over the perception so that in reality you can know only the content of your ‘I’. A normal man of modern times is aware of the content of his ‘I’ but he is not aware of his astral, etheric and physical bodies into which he penetrates every morning, for when he wakes he has no perception of his astral body. He would indeed be horrified if he had, for his astral body displays the sum-total of all the urges, desires and passions accumulated in the course of successive lives on Earth. Nor does he perceive his etheric body—there again he could not endure the sight. When he penetrates into his own intrinsic nature—into his physical, etheric and astral bodies—his attention is at once deflected to the external world; and there he sees what beneficent Divine Beings spread over the surface of his vision in order to safeguard him from descending into the core of his inner nature—an experience which he could not endure.

Therefore when we speak of this in terms of Spiritual Science, we rightly say that the moment a man wakes in the morning he passes through the portal of his own being. But at this portal stands a Watcher, the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold, who does not allow him to penetrate into his own being but diverts him immediately to the external world. Every morning a man meets this Lesser Guardian. Knowledge of him comes to anyone who, on waking, consciously passes into his astral, etheric and physical sheaths. And in the mystical life it is only a question of whether this Lesser Guardian benevolently dims our consciousness of our own inner being so that we cannot descend into it, diverting our ’I’ to the environment, or whether he allows us to enter through the portal into our own nature and being. The mystical life consists essentially in passing the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold and entering into our inmost self.

In the case of the great Buddha, what is described symbolically as ‘sitting under the Bodhi tree’ is nothing else than this descent into the inner core of being through the portal that is otherwise closed. Buddhism describes what the Buddha had to experience in order to complete this descent. The narratives are not mere legends but presentations of deeply felt truths, profound realities experienced by the soul.

The experiences encountered by the Buddha in descending into his inmost nature are described as his ‘temptations’. In his account of these temptations Buddha speaks of beings—even those he loves—who draw near to him the moment he attempts the mystical descent; they urge him to some particular activity, for instance, to practise exercises which would lead him astray. We are told that the figure of the mother of Buddha appears to his spiritual vision and urges him to practise a false kind of asceticism. It was not, of course, his real mother; indeed his temptation consisted precisely in the fact that at the first stage of his developing vision, what appeared to him was an illusion, a mask. Buddha resisted this temptation and then a host of demonic figures appeared, who are described as the cravings one experiences in hunger and thirst or as passions, urges, pride, arrogance, vanity, ambition. All these forms confront him—but how? They still lurked in his astral body, in his astral sheath, but in his stronger moments, as he sat in meditation ‘under the Bodhi tree’, he had already overcome them. This temptation of the Buddha shows us in a wonderful way how all the forces and powers of our astral body produce their effect because through the downward trend of evolution in our successive incarnations, we have steadily deteriorated. In spite of the sublime height to which he had risen, the Buddha still saw the demons which tempt the astral body and at the final stage of attainment he had perforce to conquer them.

When a man descends through the region of the astral body, through temptations, into the physical and etheric bodies—when, that is to say, he really gets to know these two members of human nature, what does he find? Our attention must here be called to experiences connected with the descent. In the course of his incarnations on the Earth, man has been able to do severe damage to his astral body, but less damage has been caused to his etheric and physical bodies. The astral body is injured by all lower urges, by every form of egoism in human nature—envy, hatred, selfishness, arrogance, pride, and so on. A normal man of to-day cannot do much more in the way of injury to the etheric body than through lying or at most through unconscious error. But even so, only a part of the etheric body can sustain injury. A certain part of the etheric body is so strong that however hard a man might try to injure it, he would be unable to do so; it would always resist. Through his individual powers a man cannot descend deeply enough into his own nature to be able to injure the etheric or the physical body. It is only in the course of repeated incarnations that the faults for which he is directly responsible have an effect upon these bodies and then they appear as illnesses, defects and dispositions to illness in the physical body. But a man cannot work directly from his individuality upon his physical body. A cut finger or a bodily infection is not the result of any activity of the soul. In the course of his incarnations man has become capable of working upon the astral body and part of the etheric body; but upon his physical body he can work indirectly only, never directly.

Hence we can say that when a man descends into the region of the etheric body upon which he still has some direct influence, everything that is part of him from his successive incarnations becomes manifest. By sinking into the depths of his own being, a man finds the way to his incarnations in the near or more distant past. And when the descent is as intense and complete as it was in the case of the great Buddha, this vision of the incarnations extends farther and farther.

Man was originally a wholly spiritual being. In course of time sheaths gathered around this spiritual being. Man was born out of the spirit, of which everything external is a condensation. Hence through penetrating into his own being he finds the way to the spirit of the universe. This descent into the sheaths enfolding the physical body is a path leading to the spiritual texture of the universe, enabling man to see how the physical has been built up in the course of his incarnations. And when he can go far enough back into the past, to the times when with his primitive clairvoyance he was in a certain respect one with the spiritual world, he then had direct vision of that world.

In tradition—which again is not merely legendary—we learn of the stages reached by the Buddha as he penetrated through his own being. Of these stages he himself says: When I had attained the stage of Illumination—that is to say, when he could feel part of the spiritual world—I beheld that world outspread before me like a cloud; but as yet I could distinguish nothing in it, for I was not yet perfect. I advanced a step further and then not only could I see the spiritual world outspread like a cloud but I could distinguish particular forms. But still I could not see what the forms actually were, for I was not yet perfect. Again I ascended a step and now not only could I distinguish the spiritual Beings but I could also recognise what order of Beings they were.—This process continued until the Buddha beheld his own archetype which had passed down from incarnation to incarnation, and could see its true relationship with the spiritual world.

This is the one way, the mystical way; it is the descent through a man's own nature and being to the point where the bounds beyond which lies the spiritual world are broken through. It is by following this path that certain leading Individualities acquire the powers they need in order to give an impetus to the evolution of humanity.

Very different is the path by which men such as the original Zarathustra came to be leaders of mankind. If you will recall what I have said about the Buddha, you will realise that having become a Bodhisattva in his earlier incarnations he must already have risen through many stages. Through the illumination known as ‘sitting under the Bodhi tree’—an expression which must be understood in the sense I have indicated—a man can develop vision of the spiritual worlds and rise to great heights through the faculties of his own Individuality. But if humanity had always been obliged to depend upon leaders of this kind only, the progress that has actually been made would not have been possible. There were leaders of a different type altogether, of whom Zarathustra was one. I am not speaking now of the Individuality of Zarathustra but of the ‘personality’ of the original Zarathustra, the herald of Ahura Mazdao. If we study such a personality at the point where he stands in world-history, we realise that this is not a human being who has risen through his own intrinsic merits. On the contrary, he is a personality who has been chosen to be the bearer, the sheath, of a spiritual Being who cannot himself incarnate in the flesh, who can only send his illumination into and work within a human sheath.

In my Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation, I have indicated how at a certain point of time, when it is necessary for world-evolution, a human being is inspired by a higher spiritual Being. This is not poetic imagery but a poetical presentation of an occult reality.

The personality of the original Zarathustra was not one which through its own merits had reached as lofty a stage of development as that attained by Buddha; the personality of Zarathustra was chosen to be the abode of a higher Being and was filled with living spirituality. Such personalities were chiefly to be found in the early, pre-Christian civilisations which had arisen throughout Europe, in North-Western and Mid-Western Asia but not in the other civilisations which spread through Africa, Arabia and Asia Minor, into Asia. In these latter territories the predominant mode of Initiation was the one I have just described as having been achieved in its highest form by the great Buddha. Taking Zarathustra as a particular example among the peoples of the Northern stream, I shall now speak of the mode of Initiation which was to be found, too, in our own part of the world. Three or four thousand years ago this was the only kind of Initiation that it was possible to attain.

The personality of Zarathustra was chosen in somewhat the following way to be the bearer of a higher Being who was not himself actually to incarnate. It was decreed by the higher worlds that into this child there was to descend a divine-spiritual Being who when the child matured could work in him, make use of his brain, his faculties and his will.—To this end the circumstances of the life of such a human being must be quite different from those otherwise prevailing in the development of an ordinary individual. The happening I shall now briefly describe must be thought of as belonging to the whole life of such a human being, not confined to the physical realm of sense. Although the symptoms will not be perceptible to the ordinary senses, it will be clear to anyone with finer powers of observation that from the very beginning there is evidence of conflict between the soul-forces of such a child and the external world; that in this child there is a will and an inner driving power at variance with what goes on in the environment. But such is the destiny of a personality thus filled with a divine-spiritual Being. He grows up as a stranger, for those around him have no insight or feelings which would help them to understand him. Generally there are only very few—perhaps only one—with any inkling of what is developing in such a child. On the other hand, conflicts with the world around will easily arise and in such a case what I described to you in the story of the temptations accompanying Buddha's descent into his own being, will take place at an earlier age of life.

In the normal way the individuality of a human being is born into the sheaths provided by his parents and his people. These sheaths do not always entirely conform with the individuality and on this account such men feel a certain dissatisfaction with destiny. A conflict of such force and intensity as was associated, for example, with Zarathustra, could not be endured by an individuality developing in the normal way. When a child such as Zarathustra is observed clairvoyantly he will be found to have feelings, faculties and forces of thought which will be quite different from those developing in the people around him. Above all it will be evident—it is in fact always evident but it passes unheeded because little attention is paid nowadays to the life of soul-and-spirit—that those around such a child know nothing about his real nature; on the contrary, they feel an instinctive hatred of him; they can make nothing of what is developing within him. There is no sharper conflict visible to clairvoyance than that between a child born to be a saviour of mankind and the storms of hatred that are unleashed around him. This is inevitable, for it is just because such a child is different that the great impulses can be given to humanity. Similar stories are also told about personalities other than Zarathustra.

The story goes that as soon as he was born, Zarathustra could smile—something that is usually not possible for several weeks. We are told that Zarathustra's smile came from his consciousness of the harmony of the world. The smile was said to be the first sign of the difference between this child and all the others around him.

There is a second story, to the effect that an enemy, as it were another Herod, named Duransarun, lived in the region where Zarathustra was born and that when the birth of the child was divulged to him by Chaldean Magi, he tried to kill the infant with his own hands. The legend tells that as he raised the sword his arm was paralysed and he was obliged to give up the attempt.—These are pictures of spiritual realities which could have been revealed only to supersensible consciousness. We are further told how this enemy of the infant Zarathustra then caused him to be carried by a servant out into the desert to become the prey of wild beasts. But when a search was made it was found that no wild beast had touched the child and that he was sleeping peacefully. This attempt having also failed, the child's enemy caused him to be laid where a herd of cows and oxen would pass and trample him to death. Instead, so the legend tells, the first beast took the child between its legs, carried him off and set him down when the whole herd had passed by. The same thing was repeated with a herd of horses. And the enemy's final attempt was to expose the child to wild animals robbed of their young. But when the parents sought news of the child they found that again the animals had done him no harm: indeed according to the legend he had been suckled by the ‘heavenly cows’.

These indications are to be understood as showing that through the presence of the spiritual Being, of the Individuality who passes into such a soul, very special forces are called into play. Such a child is brought into disharmony with his environment. This is necessary in order that evolution may be given an upward impetus. Disharmonies are always inevitable if there is to be real progress towards perfection. It must also be realised that these forces help to bring such a child into his destined relationship with the spiritual world. But how does the child himself experience all these conflicts?

Try to think of this penetration of a man's soul into his own being, as an awakening. When the soul can experience the physical body and etheric body it achieves the development we saw in the Buddha. But now imagine going to sleep in full consciousness. As things are to-day, a man loses consciousness when he goes to sleep and the Void engulfs him. But if he were to retain consciousness he would be surrounded by a spiritual world into which his being pours. But here again there are obstacles. When we go to sleep, before the portal through which we must pass there also stands a Guardian. This is the Greater /Guardian of the Threshold, who denies us entrance into the spiritual world as long as we are not ready for it. The reason for this is that if without being inwardly strong enough we attempt to pour our Ego over the spiritual world into which we pass on going to sleep, we face certain dangers.

The dangers are these.—Instead of perceiving objective reality in the spiritual world we should perceive only the effect of the fantasies which we ourselves take into that world; we take into it the worst that is in us—everything that is not in keeping with truth. Hence any premature entry into the spiritual world would mean that instead of reality, a man would see grotesque, fantastic images and forms, said by Spiritual Science to be a sight that does not belong to his humanity. Whereas if he had objective vision of the spiritual world he would reach a higher stage and would see what is human. It is always a sign that what are seen are fantasies if on rising into the spiritual world, animal forms appear. These animal forms are indications of our own irresponsible play of fancy; they appear because inwardly we have not a firm enough foundation. Faculties in us which at night are unconscious must be strengthened if we are to have a really objective vision of the outer spiritual world. Otherwise we see it subjectively and we take our fantasies into it. They do, of course, accompany us, but the Guardian of the Threshold protects us from sight of them. To be surrounded by animal forms which attack us and try to force us into error as we ascend into the spiritual world is all a purely inner process. To enter the spiritual world safely we need only develop greater and greater strength.

When an infant such as the Zarathustra-child is filled by a higher Being the little body is naturally immature and has to develop to maturity. The organic system of intellect and sensory activity is also disturbed. Such a child is in a world in which he may truly be said to be ‘among wild beasts’. I have often emphasised that in descriptions of this kind the historical and pictorial elements represent two aspects of the same thing. The happenings take place in such a way that when the spiritual forces work from outside in the form of hostility, as in the case of the Zarathustra-child, they are personified in the figure of King Duransarun. Everything also exists in archetype in the spiritual world and the external events correspond to what is taking place in that world. It is not easy for the modern mind to grasp such a thought. If we say that the events occurring around Zarathustra have significance in the spiritual world, people think that they cannot be real. If we show that the events are authentic history, we then incline to regard the personality concerned as being no more highly developed than anyone else. Thus the liberal theologians of to-day tend, for instance, to regard the figure of Jesus of Nazareth as on a par with, or not greatly excelling, what they may picture as their own ideal. It disturbs the lazy materialism of men's souls if they have to picture a really great Individuality. There must not be anything in the world superior to the professor or theologian seeking to attain his own ideal! In dealing with great events, however, we are concerned with something that is both historical and symbolic; the one aspect does not exclude the other. Those who do not understand that external events have a significance other than their surface appearance will never grasp their essential reality.

The soul of the infant Zarathustra was actually exposed to great dangers; but at the same time, as the legend relates, the ‘heavenly cows’ stood at his side to succour him and give him strength.

Similar stories can be found over the whole area from the Caspian Sea, through our own region, and into Western Europe, in connection with all great founders of world-conceptions. Such personalities, without having risen to lofty heights through their own development, are indwelt by a spiritual Being in order to become leaders of men. There were a number of such traditions among the Celts. It is related of Habich, an important figure in Celtic religion, that he too was exposed to dangers and suckled by heavenly cows; that he was attacked by hostile animals who had to give way before him. The descriptions of the perils confronting Habich, the Celtic leader, read just as if extracts had been made from the seven ‘miracles’ of Zarathustra—for Zarathustra is to be regarded as the greatest personality among leaders of this kind. Certain features of his miracles are to be found all through Greece and on into the Celtic regions of the West. As a well-known example you have only to think of the story of Romulus and Remus.

This is the second way in which leaders of mankind arise. Certain deeper features of the two great streams of culture in the post-Atlantean epoch have now been characterised. After the great Atlantean catastrophe, one of these streams of civilisation spread and developed through Africa, Arabia and Southern Asia; the other spread in a more Northerly course through Europe, to Northern and thence to Central Asia. There the two streams united; and the outcome is our post-Atlantean culture. The Northern stream had leaders such as I have described in the figure of Zarathustra; in the Southern stream, on the other hand, there were leaders of the type revealed in its loftiest form by the great Buddha.

If you now recall what you already know about the Christ-event, you will want to understand what really happened at the Baptism by John in the Jordan. As in the case of all the leading figures and founders of religious thought in the Northern stream—of whom Zarathustra had been the greatest—a diving-spiritual Being, the Christ, descended into a human being. The process was the same but carried out at the highest level. Christ descended into a human being in his thirtieth year, not in his childhood, and the personality of Jesus of Nazareth was specially prepared for this event. In the Gospels the secrets of both types of leadership are shown us in synthesis, in harmony with each other. Whereas the accounts of the Evangelists St. Matthew and St. Luke are mainly concerned to show how the human personality into whom the Christ entered had been evolved, the Gospel of St. Mark describes the nature of the Christ Himself, the element in this sublime Individuality which could not be confined within the human vehicle. That is why the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke describe with wonderful clarity a story of temptation different from that related by St. Mark. He is describing the Christ who had entered into Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel of St. Mark relates the story of temptation which occurs in other cases already in childhood—the encounter with wild animals and the help given by spiritual powers. Thus it can be regarded as a kind of repetition of the Zarathustra-miracle when St. Mark's Gospel narrates in simple and impressive words: ‘And immediately the spirit driveth him into the solitude (wilderness) ... and he was with the wild beasts; and the Angels’—that is, spiritual Beings—‘ministered unto him.’ St. Matthew's Gospel describes a quite different process, one which seems like a repetition of the temptations of Buddha, that is to say the tests and allurements confronting the soul of a man who is penetrating into his own inner being.

The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke describe the path taken by the Christ when descending into the sheaths He received from Jesus of Nazareth. St. Mark's Gospel describes the kind of temptation which the Christ was obliged to undergo when He confronted the environment—as happens with all great founders of religion who had been inspired from above by a spiritual Being. Christ Jesus experienced both these kinds of temptation, whereas earlier leaders of humanity had experienced only one. Christ united in Himself the two ways of entering the spiritual world.—That is the all-important point. What had formerly taken place in two separate streams into which smaller streams then flowed, was now united in one.

It is only from this point of view that we can understand the apparent or real contradictions in the Gospels. The writer of St. Mark's Gospel had been initiated into Mysteries which enabled him to describe the temptation presented in his Gospel, namely the encounter with wild beasts and the help of spiritual Beings. St. Luke was initiated into the other aspect. Each of the Evangelists writes of what he knew and understood. Hence their Gospels present different aspects of the events in Palestine and of the Mystery of Golgotha.

In all this I have been wanting to indicate from a point of view we have not hitherto adopted, how we have to understand the course of the evolution of humanity and the intervention of particular Individualities: whether those who rise from the rank of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha, or those whose significance lies not so much in themselves as in what has come down into them from above. It is in the figure of Christ alone that these two types unite; and it is only when we know this that we can rightly understand the Christ.

It will now be clear why incongruities are apparent in mythical personalities. When we are told that one of them behaved in a matter of right or wrong as, for instance, Siegfried behaved, someone will certainly protest that after all, he was said to have been an Initiate! But in the case of a personality such as Siegfried, through whom a spiritual Being was working, the individual development is not a factor that comes into consideration. Siegfried may well have had faults. What really mattered was that an impetus should be given to the evolution of humanity, and for this purpose it was a question of choosing the most suitable personality. The same standard cannot be adopted universally and Siegfried cannot be judged as you would judge a leader arising from the Southern stream of culture, for a figure such as Siegfried differs radically in character and type from men who penetrate into their own inner self.

It can therefore be said that the leading figures belonging to the Northern stream are permeated by a spiritual Being who drives them out of themselves, enabling them to rise into the Macrocosm. Whereas in the Southern cultures a man sinks into the Microcosm, in the Northern stream his being pours into the Macrocosm and in this way he comes to know all the spiritual Hierarchies, as Zarathustra came to know the spiritual essence of the Sun.

We may therefore sum up all that has been said, as follows.—The mystical path, the path of the Buddha, leads to such depths in a man's inmost being that in breaking through to them he comes into the spiritual world. The path of Zarathustra draws a man out of the Microcosm and his being is diffused over the Macrocosm so that its secrets become transparent to him. The world has as yet little understanding of the great spirits whose missions are to unveil the secrets of the Macrocosm. There is very little understanding, for example, of the essential nature and being of Zarathustra. And we shall find how greatly what we have to say of him differs from what is usually said at the present time.

This again is a digression intended to convey to you the intrinsic character of St. Mark's Gospel.

The verses in St. Mark's Gospel which we were endeavouring to elucidate in the last lecture are followed by remarkable words in many ways similar to those found in the other Gospels, although their full significance can best be studied in that of St. Mark. The words are to the effect that after the Baptism and the experiences in the ‘wilderness’, Christ Jesus went into the synagogue and taught the people there.

The sentence is usually translated: ‘And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught as one that had authority, and not as the scribes.’—To a man of the present age, however orthodox a believer in the Bible, this sentence conveys little more than that His teaching was powerful and impressive—unlike that of the scribes. But in the Greek text the sentence translated ‘as one that had authority and not as the scribes', is: ὴν γαρ διδἁσχῳv αὐτοὐς ώς ἐξουαίχν ἕχων, χαὶ οὐχ ώç οί γραμματῑç

(ēn gar didamaskōn autous hōs exusiān echōn, kai ouch hōs hoi grammateis)

If we try to grasp the meaning of this significant passage we shall be led a step further towards understanding the secrets of Christ's mission. I have already called your attention to the fact that like other genuinely inspired writings, the Gospels are not easy to understand and that to grasp their real meaning we must bring together all the thoughts and ideas about the spiritual world acquired in the course of many years. Such ideas alone can give us insight into what is meant when it is said in the Gospel that He taught in the synagogue as one of the Exousiai, as a Power and Revelation, and not as those who are here called: γραμματῑç (scribes).

To understand a passage such as this we must remind ourselves of what we have learnt about the higher, supersensible worlds. We have learnt that man, as he lives in our world, is the lowest member of a hierarchical Order, that his place is at the lowest step of the ladder of this Order. Immediately above him in the supersensible world, at the first level, are the Beings called in Christian esotericism, Angeloi, Angels. They are the supersensible Beings of the rank immediately above man, who influence his life. Above them come the Archangeloi or Archangels, then the Archai or Spirits of Personality; then the Exousiai, Dynameis and Kyriotetes, and finally the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim.

Thus above man there are nine ranks of hierarchical Beings. And we shall now try to picture how these different supersensible Beings intervene in human life.

The Angeloi are the Beings who as messengers of the spiritual world to the individual man in his life on Earth, are nearest of all to him. They exercise a perpetual influence upon the destinies of individuals on the physical plane. The Archangeloi are spiritual Beings whose activities embrace a wider sphere. They are the Beings whom we may call ‘Folk-Spirits’, who regulate and guide the affairs of whole groups of peoples. When a man of the present day speaks of a ‘Folk-Spirit’ he thinks, purely in terms of number, of so many thousands of individuals who happen to populate the same territory. But in Spiritual Science we mean by a Folk-Spirit the actual Folk-Individuality, not such and such a number of people but a real individuality just as we speak of an individuality in the case of a single man. The spiritual guidance of a whole Folk lies in the hands of the Archangelos. All these higher Beings are supersensible entities having their own spheres of activity. The Archai, Spirits of Personality or the ‘Primal Beginnings’, are again different from the Archangeloi or Folk-Spirits. If we speak of the French, the German, the English Folk-Spirit and so on, this points to different regions of the Earth. But there is something that is common to all men to-day, at least to all Western peoples, and affords them a basis for mutual understanding. In contrast to the single Folk-Spirit we speak here of the Time-Spirit: there is a Time-Spirit in the period of the Reformation, another in our own day. The Time-Spirits, the Archai, rank above the individual Folk-Spirits, and are the leaders of successive epochs.

At a still higher level we come to the Exousiai. They are supersensible Beings of an essentially different order. To form an idea of how the Beings of these still higher Hierarchies differ from the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai, let us remind ourselves that there is no essential difference between a member of one Folk and a member of a different Folk as regards his outer, physical make-up and what he eats and drinks. It cannot be said that, except as regards soul and spirit, the peoples differ essentially from each other. The guiding spiritual Beings (the Time-Spirits) of the successive epochs are concerned with things of the soul and spirit only. Man does not, however, consist only of soul and spirit. It is the human astral body that is essentially influenced by whatever is of the nature of soul and spirit. There are also denser members of man's being which do not differ greatly from each other as far as the activities of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai are concerned. But creative influences are exercised upon these denser members of man's nature by spiritual Beings belonging to ranks from that of the Exousiai upwards. Language and current modes of thought belong to the sphere of the Folk-Spirits and the Time-Spirits—Archangeloi and Archai. But men are also influenced by the light and air and climate of a particular region. One type of human being thrives below the Equator, another in the regions nearer to the North Pole. We shall not agree with a German professor of philosophy whose view, presented in a very widely read book, was that civilisations of essential importance would have to develop in the Temperate Zone because the human beings responsible for such culture would freeze at the North Pole and scorch at the South Pole! But we can certainly speak of the different effects of food upon human beings living in different climates. External conditions are by no means without influence upon the character of a people—for example, whether they live in mountain valleys or on plains. We see there how the forces of nature penetrate into and affect the whole of man's constitution. Knowing from Spiritual Science that supersensible Beings are active in all the forces of nature and work upon men through these forces, we can make a distinction between Archai and Exousiai, and say: The Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai influence man through what concerns the soul and spirit only—language, current modes of thought, ideas, and so on, but they do not work through the forces of nature; their operations do not directly affect the etheric body or the physical body, which are the lower members of man's organism.

On the other hand, spiritual Beings from the rank of the Exousiai upwards work not only upon man but also in the forces of outer nature; they are the ‘Directors’ as it were of air and light, of the different ways in which foodstuffs are produced in the kingdoms of nature. They are the Beings who hold sway in these kingdoms of nature. The phenomena of thunder and lightning, rain and sunshine, how one kind of foodstuff grows in one region, other kinds in another, in short the whole ordering of earthly conditions we ascribe to spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies higher than the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. We see the effects of the activity of the Exousiai, for example, in the light that works upon us as well as upon the plants, not only in the invisible effects which are the manifestations of the Time-Spirits.

Let us now consider what it is that civilisation gives to men, what they have to learn in order to make progress. Every individual has at his disposal what is yielded by his own epoch, but also, to a certain extent, the fruits of earlier epochs. Now it is only what derives from the lowest Hierarchies up to and including the Time-Spirits that can be preserved as history and be taught and studied as such. What streams directly from the kingdoms of nature cannot be preserved in tradition. Nevertheless, men whose powers of knowledge enable them to penetrate into the supersensible worlds can pass beyond the Time-Spirits to still higher forms of revelation. Such revelations are recognised as belonging to a realm higher than that of the Time-Spirits, as having greater weight than anything deriving from the Time-Spirits, and as affecting men in a very special way. Every rational human being should ask himself now and then whether his soul is affected more profoundly by what can be learnt from the traditions of the several peoples and Time-Spirits of historical epochs, or by a glorious sunrise, which is a direct manifestation of nature and of the supersensible worlds. Individuals may well become conscious that a sunrise in all its glory can stir the soul infinitely more deeply than all the science, the learning and the art of the ages. Suppose we have been deeply moved by the works in the Italian Galleries of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and others, and later on climb some Swiss mountain and contemplate the spectacle there presented, we shall be vividly conscious of what nature can reveal. We shall ask: Who is the greater artist: Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, or the Powers who have painted the sunrise to be seen from the Rigi?—And the answer can only be that wonderful as are the achievements of men, what comes before us as a revelation of divine-spiritual Powers is far greater.

Now when the spiritual leaders of mankind, the Initiates, appear before the world, their teachings are not based upon or drawn from tradition but flow from original sources, and their revelations are like the revelations of nature herself. What is merely repeated by others can never have an effect as powerful as that of a sunrise. Compared with what tradition has handed down of the teachings of Moses or Zarathustra and what the Time-Spirits and Folk-Spirits have communicated through forms of external culture, the effect made by nature herself is far the greater. It was only when the revelations of Moses and Zarathustra sprang from immediate experience of the supersensible worlds that their effect was as powerful as that of the revelations of nature. The wonderful thing about these original revelations to mankind is that they are like the revelations of nature herself. We should remember here that the Exousiai are the lowest Hierarchy of Beings who work in the forces and powers of nature.

What, then, was experienced by those who were gathered in the synagogue when Christ Jesus came among them? Hitherto they had been taught by the ‘Scribes’, by men who were cognisant of what the Time-Spirits and Folk-Spirits had communicated. To such teaching the people were accustomed. But now there came One who did not teach as the Scribes taught, whose words seemed like a revelation from the realm of the supersensible powers in nature, in thunder, or in lightning. Knowing that the higher the rank of the Hierarchies the greater are their powers, we can understand in all their depth these words in the Gospel of St. Mark.

If we can feel the supersensible reality behind the creations of men such as Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and others of their calibre, we can still glimpse in the relatively small number of pictures that have come down to us, something of the original inspiration. Great works of art, works of spiritual genius, are always echoes of what was originally revealed. And if we can perceive something of what Raphael, for example, expressed in his pictures, or form a living idea of the work of Zarathustra, we shall be able to hear something of what comes from the Exousiai.

But in the teachings given in the synagogues by the Scribes, that is to say, by men whose knowledge stemmed from the Folk-Spirits and Time-Spirits, there was nothing that could even faintly echo direct revelations of nature. Hence these words in St. Mark's Gospel are an indication that in men living in those days an inkling was beginning to dawn that something entirely new was speaking to them; that through this man who came among them something revealed itself which was like a power of nature herself, like one of the supersensible Powers behind the phenomena of nature. Men began gradually to divine what it was that had entered into Jesus of Nazareth and was symbolised in the Baptism by John. The people in the synagogue were very near the truth when they said: When he speaks it is as though the Exousiai were speaking, not merely the Archai, the Time-Spirits, or the Folk-Spirits.

It is only through knowledge of Spiritual Science that we shall be able again to instil a full and living content and meaning into the barren abstractions abounding in modern translations of the New Testament, and to realise what is involved when efforts are made to penetrate to the core of the Gospels. Generations must pass before there can be any prospect of fathoming, even approximately, the deep meanings which our own times can dimly surmise. Actual investigation of a great deal in the Gospels will be possible only in the future.

Fundamentally, what the writer of St. Mark's Gospel wished to present was an elaboration of the teaching of Paul, one of the first to recognise the nature and essential being of the Christ through direct supersensible perception. We must understand what Paul actually taught and what he experienced through the revelation that came to him on the road to Damascus. Although the event is described in the Bible as a sudden revelation, those conversant with the real facts know that this kind of illumination can come at any moment to one who is striving to reach the spiritual world and that as a result of his experiences he becomes a changed man. And in the case of St. Paul it is abundantly evident that through the revelation at Damascus this was what happened.

Even a superficial study of the Gospels and of the Pauline Epistles will make it clear that St. Paul regards the Event of Golgotha as the central point of the whole evolution of humanity and that he links this Event directly with what is described in the Bible as the creation of Adam, the first man. St. Paul's teaching is to somewhat the following effect: The being we must call the spiritual man, the real man, of whom in the world of maya there is only an illusory image, came down in ancient Lemurian times to this world of illusion, facing the experiences he was to undergo in the flesh during successive incarnations. He became man in the form assumed throughout the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs and in post-Atlantean times until the coming of Christ. Then came the Event of Golgotha.

Paul was unshakably convinced after his vision near Damascus that in the Event of Golgotha something occurred that was exactly comparable with the descent of man into the flesh. For therewith the impulse was given gradually to overcome those forms of earthly existence into which man had entered through Adam. Hence Paul calls the Being who appeared in the Christ, the ‘new Adam’, whom every man can draw to himself through union with Christ.

Thus from Lemurian on into pre-Christian times we have to see the gradual descent of man into matter—whether we call him Adam or by some other name. Then he was given the power and the impulse to ascend again so that he might eventually return, enriched by the fruits of earthly existence, to the original, spiritual state that had been his before he descended into matter.

Now if we are to understand the essential meaning of evolution, we must not ask: Could man not have been spared this descent into matter? Why was it necessary for him to pass through different incarnations in order to re-ascend into the state that was his at the beginning? Such questions could spring only from complete misunderstanding of the spiritual meaning of evolution. For man takes with him from Earth-existence all the fruits of his experiences and is enriched with the content of his incarnations—a content that was not previously his.

Think, hypothetically, of a man descending and passing through his first incarnation: there he learns certain things. In his second incarnation he learns more; and so on through all the incarnations. Their course, to begin with, is one of descent: man becomes more and more deeply entangled in the physical world. Then he begins an ascent and can rise to the extent to which he receives the Christ Impulse into himself. One day he will find his way again into the spiritual world; but he will then take with him whatever he was able to acquire on the Earth.

And so Paul sees in the Christ the central point of the whole process of man's earthly evolution, the power that gives him the impulse to rise into the supersensible world enriched with all the experiences of life on the Earth.

But from this standpoint, how does Paul regard the sacrifice on Golgotha, the actual Crucifixion? It is not easy to relate to our modern ideas the way in which St. Paul—and also the writer of St. Mark's Gospel—understood the sacrifice on Golgotha, this most essential fact of human evolution. Before this can be attempted we must familiarise ourselves with the thought that man as he stands before us is a Microcosm, and we must study all the implications of this fact.

Two periods of development, each very different from the other, are apparent in man's life between birth and death in every incarnation. In various ways I have already called attention to the difference between the two periods—for our study of Spiritual Science is more systematic than people usually imagine. One of these periods lies between birth and the point at which an individual's memory begins. If you follow your memories back, you reach a certain point beyond which they cease. You were already in existence then and may have heard from your parents or relatives about your doings; hence you have some knowledge of them but you yourself remember nothing beyond a certain point of time. Normal remembrance breaks off at this point, the most favourable age for which is somewhere about the third year of life. Before that point of time a child is highly impressionable. Just think how much is taken in during the first, second and third years of life; yet modern man has no remembrance at all of how the impressions were made.—Then follows the period through which the thread of memory runs continuously.

We must pay careful attention to these two periods of development for they are very important in man's life as a whole. We must observe the development of the human being closely and accurately and avoid the prejudiced views of modern science. The facts of science confirm what I have to say, but we should not attach too much weight to biased views that deviate widely from the truth. Close observation of man's development makes it evident that his life as an individual in society is conditioned by whatever forms part of the thread of memory which begins, approximately, in the third year. Within the span of this thread of memory lies every principle by which we consciously direct our life; it embraces whatever rules of conduct we consciously accept as worthy to be followed. Our Ego has no consciousness of what lies before this point; of that, nothing finds its way into the thread of our conscious life.

Thus before our conscious life begins there are certain years during which our relation with the surrounding world is quite different from what it is later.

The difference is radical. Penetrating observation of a child before the period back to which memory extends when he is older, would show that in those first years he feels himself to be within the universal, macrocosmic, spiritual life. He does not separate or isolate himself from that life but feels part and parcel of the whole environment. He even speaks of himself as others do. He does not say: ‘I want’, but, ‘John wants’. It is only later that he learns to speak of himself as ‘I’. Modern child psychologists pick holes in this explanation but the truth is not controverted by their arguments which are just evidences of their lack of insight. In his earliest years a child still feels part of the world around him; it is only at the point from which his memories begin that he gradually detaches himself from his environment as an independent being.

It can therefore be said that the principles a man may accept for the guidance of his life and the whole content of his consciousness belong to the second phase of development beginning at the point of time referred to. In the first phase he has a quite different relation to the environment; he feels much more closely connected with it. The only way to understand this thoroughly is to imagine what would happen if the form of consciousness which has produced this feeling of direct connection with the surrounding world in early childhood were to remain in later years. If that were the case human life would take a very different course. Man would not feel so isolated; even in later years he would feel himself to be an integral part, a member, of the Macrocosm, the Great World. As things are he loses his feeling of oneness with the Great World and believes himself to be isolated from it. In ordinary life this isolation comes into a man's consciousness in an abstract form only, for instance, in his egoisms, or in a tendency to shut himself off more and more within his own skin. The view that man's life is enclosed within his skin is complete nonsense. Whenever he exhales he becomes part of the outer world for the breath previously indrawn is now outside. Man's picture of himself is pure maya but his form of consciousness makes this inevitable. Human beings nowadays are neither particularly inclined nor indeed mature enough to understand karma. If, for instance, anyone gets his windows broken he is apt to take this as an offence directed against himself, and he is annoyed by it because he feels himself to be an isolated being. But were he to believe in karma he would feel related to the whole Macrocosm and would know that in point of fact it is we ourselves who have broken the windows. For in truth we are interwoven with the whole Cosmos and it is sheer nonsense to imagine that we are enclosed by our skin. But it is only in very early childhood that this feeling of oneness with the Cosmos exists; in later life it is lost at the point to which memory reaches.

It was not always so. In earlier times, by no means very long ago, the consciousness belonging to early childhood extended, in some degree at least, into the later years of a man's life. This was in the times of the ancient clairvoyance; and with it went a very different kind of thinking and a different way of expressing facts. This is an aspect of human evolution about which the student of Spiritual Science must be quite clear.

When a male child is born nowadays he is simply regarded as the son of his father and mother: and if he has no birth or baptismal certificate bearing the names of his parents to identify him as a citizen, nothing is officially known about him and in certain circumstances his very existence is questioned. To the modern mind a human being is simply the physical offspring of his father and his mother.

This was not how people thought in a past not so very far distant. Scholars and researchers to-day do not, however, know that in earlier times not only was men's thinking different but the content and implications of the words and designations used were different. Hence interpretations of ancient legends do not convey their real meaning. We are told, for instance, of Orpheus, a Greek singer. I refer to him because he belongs to the period several centuries before the rise of Christianity. We may think of him as the one responsible for the organisation of the Greek Mysteries. This fourth post-Atlantean epoch of which he was an important figure in the opening stage, was a preparation for the Christ Event and what humanity was to receive through it. Thus in Greece Orpheus was the great Preparer.

If a man of the modern age were to encounter a figure such as Orpheus, he would simply say: he is the son of such-and-such a father and such-and-such a mother—and science might possibly look for inherited characteristics. There is, for example, a bulky tome in which all the hereditary characteristics of Goethe's families are set forth in an endeavour to present him as the sum-total of those characteristics. That is by no means how people thought in the days of Orpheus. The man of flesh and his physical attributes were not what really mattered to them. The essential qualities were those that enabled Orpheus to be the leader and organiser of pre-Christian Greek culture—certainly not the physical brain or nervous system. The essential thing was the fact that he had within him—in his own field of experience—a quality derived from the supersensible world and united with the material-physical element provided by his personality. The eyes of the Greeks were directed, not to the physical figure of Orpheus descending from father and mother, perhaps also from grandfather and grandmother; this figure was more or less unessential, being merely the outer expression, the sheath. The essential element was what had descended from a supersensible source and had united with a material entity on the physical plane. Hence a Greek would have said to himself: When Orpheus is before me, the fact that he descends from a father and a mother need hardly be taken into account; what is of importance is that his soul-qualities, which have made him what he is, stem from the supersensible, from a supersensible reality which has never hitherto had anything to do with the physical plane; a physical-material element has here been able to unite with the supersensible reality in his personality.—And because the Greeks regarded a purely supersensible quality as the hallmark of Orpheus, they said he was the offspring of a Muse, the son of Calliope, not of a physical mother but of a supersensible reality which had never had any previous connection with the physical and material.

But as the son of Calliope and nothing more than that, Orpheus could have given expression only to manifestations of the supersensible world. In keeping with the nature of the age in which he lived, it was also his mission to give expression to what would be of service to physical life in that epoch. Hence he was not only a mouthpiece for the Muse, for Calliope, as in much earlier times the Rishis were merely mouthpieces for supersensible Powers, but his own life gave expression to the supersensible in such a way that the physical world also was important to his life. His teaching was connected with and suited to the climate of Greece, to what was part of outer nature in Greece—and so Orpheus was made the son of Oeagrus, the Thracian River-God.

This shows us that to the Greeks what mattered most in their view was what was living in Orpheus’ soul. In those days men were characterised by the quality of their souls, by their spiritual value, not, as in later times, by saying: he is the son of so-and-so, or, he comes from such and such a town. It is very interesting to see how deeply involved the Greeks felt in the destiny of a man such as Orpheus, who descended on the one side from a Muse and on the other from a Thracian River-God. Unlike the ancient prophets, Orpheus was subject not only to supersensible influences but to material influences as well—to all the influences exercised by the physical-material world.

Now we know that man consists of several members: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego, the ‘I’. A man such as Orpheus, descended from a Muse—you now know what that means—was still able to see into the spiritual world; but on the other hand, his capacity for experiencing the spiritual world was weakened by the life he led on the physical plane as the son of his father, the Thracian River-God.

The Leaders in the second and third post-Atlantean culture-epochs who became mouthpieces for utterances of the spiritual worlds were able to perceive their own etheric body separated from the physical. In the civilisations where ancient clairvoyance prevailed—and it was the same even among the Celts—when a man was to be made aware of something he was called upon to communicate to his fellow-men, it was revealed to him in this way: his etheric body emerged from the physical body and became the bearer of forces which streamed down into it. If those who proclaimed the utterances of the spiritual worlds were men, their etheric bodies were female and they consequently saw in female form whatever communicated messages to them from the spiritual worlds.

Now it was also the purpose of the legend to show that although Orpheus was in direct contact with the spiritual Powers, as the son of a Thracian River-God there was always the possibility that he would be unable to retain what was revealed to him through his own etheric body. The more thoroughly he made himself at home in the physical world and lived his life as a son of his country, the more did his power of clairvoyance recede. The story relates that Eurydice, the transmitter of his revelations, his soul-bride, was torn away from him through the bite of an adder—a picture of his human failings—and carried off to the underworld. He could win her back only by passing through an Initiation.—Whenever we are told of a journey into the underworld, an Initiation is meant.—In order to win back his bride, Orpheus must pass through an Initiation. But he was already too closely enmeshed in the physical world. He had indeed acquired the capacity to make his way into the underworld, but on his return, when his eyes again encountered the sunlight, Eurydice vanished from his sight. Why was this? It was because on seeing the sunlight he did something that was forbidden him: he turned and looked back. That is to say, he disobeyed a strict command given him by the God of the underworld, namely, that physical man, living on the physical plane, must not look back beyond the point of time I have indicated, to the period of the macrocosmic experiences of childhood; if these experiences were to penetrate into the consciousness normal in later life, they would give rise to clairvoyance in its ancient form. Hence the command of the God of the underworld that no man may seek to penetrate the mysteries of childhood, to remember where the Threshold is fixed.—But this was what Orpheus did, and he consequently lost the faculty of clairvoyance.

Something of great delicacy and subtlety in connection with Orpheus is set before us in this story of the loss of Eurydice. One consequence is that man is sacrificed to the physical world. With a nature still deeply rooted in the spiritual he is also, partially, the sort of being which it is his destiny to become on the physical plane. And so all the forces of the physical plane press in upon him and he loses Eurydice, his own innocent soul—which it is the fate of modern man also to lose. These forces tear Orpheus to pieces; in a sense, he is sacrificed.

What is it, then, that Orpheus experienced as representative of the transition between the third and fourth epochs of post-Atlantean culture? In the first place he experienced the stage of consciousness which the child leaves behind—the connection with the Macrocosm. This does not pass over into his conscious life and therefore in his essential being man is torn to pieces and killed by life on the physical plane which in the real sense begins at the point of which we have been speaking.

And now keep in mind this man living on the physical plane; he is normally able to remember back only to a certain point of time; beyond this lie the three years of earliest childhood. With this thread of memory he is so enmeshed in the physical plane that, in his own being, he cannot endure it and he is torn to pieces. Thus it is with the true spirit of man to-day—here is a proof of how deeply he is enmeshed in matter. This is the spirit which in Pauline Christianity is called the ‘Son of Man’. Here is a concept which you must grasp—the concept of the Son of Man who can be found in a human being onwards from the point in his life to which his later memory extends, and includes everything he has acquired from the civilisation around him. Keep this ‘man’ in your mind, and then picture to yourselves what he might become if there were added to him all that presses in upon him from the Macrocosm in the first three years of his childhood. This could be a foundation only, because at that stage the developed human ‘I’ is not yet present. But if it did merge into the consciousness of a developed ‘I’, we should witness a happening comparable with what took place at the Baptism in the Jordan at the moment when the Spirit descended from above into Jesus of Nazareth: the three innocent years of early childhood merged with the rest of the human being. That is the immediate fact. And the consequence was that this innocent childhood-life, as it sought to develop on the physical Earth, could evolve for three years only—as is indeed always the case—and then met its end on Golgotha. It could not merge with what man becomes at the point in time from which in later life his memory normally begins.

Think what it would be like if; in one man, we saw mingled together all the interconnections with the Macrocosm which show themselves dimly and indistinctly in the early years of childhood but which cannot really light up in the child because he is as yet without Ego-consciousness. Think further, and picture to yourselves how, if the reality did dawn in this way in a later consciousness, something would take shape which has its origin, not in man's own nature but in the depth of those cosmic worlds out of which we are born. If you think of all this you will get an idea of the meaning of the words spoken in connection with the event portrayed as the descent of the Dove: ‘This is my beloved Son; this day have I begotten him.’ That means: Here the Christ is incarnated, begotten, in Jesus of Nazareth, born in him at the moment of the Baptism by John. In the Christ there was present, in its highest form, the consciousness otherwise belonging only to the early years of childhood; now, mingling with it, there was feeling of oneness with the Cosmos which a child would feel if it could be fully aware of its experiences during the first three years. In that case there would be still another meaning in the words: ‘I and the Father’—that is, the cosmic Father—‘are one’.

If you ponder deeply about these things you will get an inkling of what was experienced by St. Paul as a first, basic element in the revelation near Damascus and finds expression in the beautiful words: ‘Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven.’ Among many meanings of this saying there is the one indicated by St. Paul: Not I, but Christ in me—the Christ, that is, who has a macrocosmic consciousness such as a child would have if it could somehow combine the consciousness belonging to the first three years with the Ego-consciousness of later life. In the normal man of to-day these two forms of consciousness are separate: indeed they must be separate, for they are incompatible. Nor were they any more compatible in Christ Jesus Himself; after those three years, death was bound to supervene and to occur in the circumstances as they actually were in Palestine. These circumstances were not matters of chance but came about because these two lived within each other: the Son of God (which is man from the moment of his birth until the development of the Ego-consciousness) and the Son of Man (which is what he is after Ego-consciousness has been attained). The events which then culminated in the happenings in Palestine were the outcome of the living together of the Son of God and the Son of Man.

Let us take as a starting-point these words in St. Mark's Gospel: ‘Behold I send my Angel (messenger) before thee who shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one preaching (crying) in the wilderness.’ In the original text the words are: It is a voice of one crying in the solitude.

Anyone who reads these words with an open mind will at first be at a loss for an explanation. He will regard them more or less as a phrase or at most as allegorical. For what would be the point of preaching in a wilderness? It would be usual, surely, to go where there are plenty of people, not into a wilderness!

In the light of Spiritual Science the depth of the wisdom contained in every word of the Holy Scriptures is revealed in this passage. We shall find that every word in the original text is at its proper place, and moreover is only then intelligible.

What is meant by the words: ‘I send my Angel before thee, who shall prepare thy way before thee’? We know that the Bible is here referring to John the Baptist. But to understand why the word ‘Angel’ is used we must go back to conditions in an earlier period of our Earth's evolution and consider what ranks of Beings belonged to it. We know that on our physical Earth too there is a certain hierarchical order of which the mineral kingdom is the lowest stage; then come the plant and animal kingdoms and, at the highest stage, man. Beyond man is the hierarchy of the Angels, Archangels and Archai (Spirits of Personality, or Principalities); then the hierarchy of the Exousiai (Spirits of Form, or Powers), the Dynameis (Spirits of Movement, or Mights, also Virtues), and the Kyriotetes (Spirits of Wisdom, or Dominions); then the highest hierarchy of Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim.

All these hierarchies too are involved in a constant process of evolution. Just as we are nowadays passing through the human stage of evolution on the Earth, the Angels passed through the human stage (though in a different form from ours) during the Old Moon evolutionary period, the previous condition of our planet. They are therefore a stage ahead of us. Just as one of our tasks on Earth is to lead and guide our children, so the task of the Angels is to lead and guide humanity. But because it is impossible for them to incarnate in the forms of earthly existence, to be able to help us they must allow their wisdom to flow into the bodies of the purest, most highly developed men, in order that the divine truths may be proclaimed to humanity through their mouths. In such a case we may say: the Angels clothe themselves in maya.

This becomes still more intelligible if we go back to times of remote antiquity and picture the seven Rishis of India. If we had looked at their outer forms we should have seen simple men, perhaps peasants. The essential core of their being was concealed within them. Clairvoyantly, however, we should have seen them in flaming auras, from which warmth radiated into their surroundings. But in order that the greatest cosmic wisdom might penetrate into them it was necessary for all the seven to be together. Divinity played upon them as if they were a scale of seven tones. The language they spoke would have seemed to us nothing but unintelligible sounds.

It is hardly possible nowadays to form any idea of the nature of language in those ancient times because our own, by contrast, is a conglomeration of lifeless ideas which we employ to reach a logical conclusion. In the days of the Rishis it was the sound that caused pictures to rise up before the inner eye. What, then, was the original source of language? The wise men, the sages, of ancient times, brought it down from the stars. For them the Zodiac was the script of the Godhead in the heavens. The zodiacal constellations created the consonants, the planets created the vowels, and according to how the planets altered their courses in the Zodiac the sages interpreted the various meanings of the heavenly wisdom.

The bodies of the Rishis were maya, enshrining the inmost core of Divinity.

If we direct the light gained from Spiritual Science upon the words of the Bible, all the bleakness with which materialists are so prone to invest them, disappears. We understand the real meaning of the words which say that God sent an Angel in advance, to prepare the way of the one who was to come. The Angel is a more highly developed Being of the hierarchy of the rank immediately above man, a Being who sheathed his spirit in the maya of a human body—in this case in the body of John the Baptist, the reincarnated Elijah. If we are to understand the words of the Bible truly, it is only a matter of shedding the right light upon them and interpreting them literally.

Theologians are baffled by the words about the voice of a preacher in the wilderness, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. What can this mean?

John the Baptist baptised with water. In this baptism the whole body was plunged into the Jordan as part of the rites of Initiation. Why was this done? Because the etheric body of a spiritually developed man was to be loosened for a short time from the physical body; the man then experienced what one who is dying experiences when his etheric body is loosened from the physical. A picture of his present incarnation back to his birth is unrolled before him in all detail as a kind of panorama and he feels and knows that outside his body of flesh he is a spiritual being.

Anyone who had returned to his physical body after this experience during baptism was henceforth inwardly different from other men: he felt as if he were standing alone with this expansion of knowledge, separated from the rest of humanity; he felt that men could no longer understand him, that he was isolated, as it were in a ‘wilderness’, in solitude. And in this state of deepest inner isolation he became aware of the ‘voice of one crying’—his Angel. In this case the guiding Angel was clothed in the person of John the Baptist. That is the meaning of the passage in the Bible about the voice calling, or crying, in the wilderness.

Later in St. Mark's Gospel, where Christ is proclaiming the highest wisdom in the schools, the words are: ‘And they were astonished at His teaching: for He taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes.’ What does speaking ‘with authority’ mean? Just as Angels are the guides of individual men and Archangels of whole peoples, so there are other, still higher Beings who are the guides of the forces and powers of nature. These are the sources upon which men of genius draw to create their masterpieces. The works of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, give expression to the powers of nature.

To picture where these powers of nature are made manifest let us imagine that we are standing on the heights of a Swiss mountain. If we are fortunate enough to be there at sunrise, we shall be overwhelmed by the magic and sublimity of this spectacle of nature, and we shall feel pervaded through and through by the mighty forces radiating from it and revealing to us the power of Almighty God. We watch how from the glimmering grey of dawn the first delicate colours of the rising sun appear, how the peaks of the snowcapped mountains are suffused with rosy mauve, and our eyes are dazzled by this spectacle of greater and greater brilliance. We see how the rays call forth colours which seem to stream from every side, filling more and more of the space around us, until finally the sun appears in all its splendour, kindling life and radiating warmth into the lowest valleys. In this majestic manifestation of nature we are actually beholding the confluence of spiritual forces and these forces are the Beings of the Hierarchies we have learnt to know as the Exousiai, the Powers, or Spirits of Form. In the original text the words are: ‘He taught as the Exousiai teach.’ Christ spoke with the powers of these Beings. In John the Baptist it was the Angel, the Being of the rank immediately above man, who spoke. In Christ it was the Exousiai, who as I have said, speak through events of nature. It was their forces in the body of Christ which enabled Him to teach ‘with authority’.

John the Baptist had received the highest Initiation connected with the constellation of Aquarius. In old maps of the Zodiac the sign depicting Aquarius is a man stooping down with the arms held in a particular position. This illustrates the words in St. Mark's Gospel: ‘There cometh after me one mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.’

If, as I have have proposed, we are to continue our study of certain matters relating to St. Mark's Gospel, we shall have to give a very wide interpretation to this aim; and it may be only after a considerable time that we shall see where a particular line of study belongs. To-day we shall speak of matters which, although they may seem to be remote from the main theme, will be of great help later on.

In the first place I want to emphasise that those who are not actually Members of our Movement, as long as they have not to some extent familiarised themselves with the real trend of spiritual-scientific thought, will always fail to understand what meaning and value any investigation based upon clairvoyance can have for people who as yet have no such faculties. It may well be asked: How can any belief in or conviction of spiritual truths come to those who cannot see into the spiritual worlds? Here we must keep on repeating that although it is not possible to see into the spiritual worlds as long as the eyes of clairvoyance are unopened, nevertheless the effects and manifestations of what is within those worlds are continually in evidence. For instance, when it is stated on the basis of clairvoyant investigation that man consists of four members—physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego—someone to whom clairvoyant investigation means nothing, might say: I see only the physical body; how can I convince myself that what is said about the etheric and astral bodies is true before my karmas makes it possible for me actually to see them? Now it is easy enough, if you so wish, to deny the existence of the astral body and etheric body; but the consequences of processes taking place in those bodies cannot be argued away because they are quite apparent in life. And in order that you may gradually come to understand that the structure of man's being and constitution is taken for granted in many expressions used in the Gospels, I want to-day to show you how the consequences of processes in the etheric or the astral body, for example, are clearly evident in everyday life on the physical plane.

Let us first of all consider the difference between a man who is full of idealism, who sets himself high ideals, and one who, generally speaking, lacks any such inclination, who acts only in response to external stimuli, eating when he is hungry, sleeping when he is drowsy and allowing instinct or desire or passion to drive him to whatever action he may take. Naturally there are any number of intermediate stages between the two types of men—those of the kind last described and those others whose purposes, thoughts and ideals infinitely transcend anything they are able to achieve in everyday life. Idealists such as this are in a peculiar position. They have to learn and to accept as a fact that in life on the physical plane our actions can never wholly conform with our highest ideals. An idealist always has to accept the fact that actions must inevitably fall short of his ideals. Strictly speaking, then, it must be admitted that in ideals there is always something loftier than actual deeds. From the standpoint of Spiritual Science the mark of the idealist is that his thoughts are loftier than his deeds.

Of the other type of individual the opposite can be said, namely, that his thoughts are of less account than his actions. A man who acts only out of instincts, passions, desires or similar urges, lacks the quality of thought that would be capable of comprehending the results of his deed at any particular moment; happenings to which he gives no thought at all ensue from what he does on the physical plane. His purposes and thoughts are narrower in scope and more restricted than his actions, his deeds, on the physical plane.

The clairvoyant has something to tell us about these two types of men. When we perform a deed in life that is of greater importance than our thoughts, this deed always casts a reflected image, a mirror-picture, into our astral body: indeed after every single deed we perform an image, a picture, is left in the astral body. This image subsequently imprints itself on the etheric body and in that form remains perceptible in the Akasha Chronicle, so that a clairvoyant is able to see the reflected pictures of what a man has done during the course of his life. Similarly, when actions fall short of the fulfilment of the ideals, reflected pictures are left in the astral body and again impressed upon the etheric body. But there is one great difference between the reflected pictures of actions springing from instincts, desires and passions, and the reflected pictures of actions which are the outcome of idealism. The first contain something which endures as a destructive element in a man's whole life; they are images held in the astral body which react upon the whole human constitution and gradually undermine it; they are closely connected with the way in which a man in his life on the physical plane slowly undermines his forces until he dies. On the other hand, reflected pictures or images springing from thoughts that are loftier than our actions have life-giving properties. They are particularly stimulating for the etheric body and continually bring new life-giving forces into our whole constitution.

Thus according to the findings of clairvoyance we have within our constitution on the physical plane forces which destroy and also forces which continually impart new life. As a rule the effect of these forces in our lives can be easily observed. We meet human beings who are surly, hypochondriacal, morose in temperament, unable to come to terms with their own soul-life which in turn reacts upon their physical organism. They become apprehensive and uneasy, and anxiety, if it is persistent, manifestly undermines their physical health. In short, there are individuals who in their later years become melancholic, sullen, unable to adjust themselves inwardly and are in many respects unbalanced. If we were to look for the cause of bearing and conduct of this kind we should find that such individuals had little opportunity in earlier life to experience how idealistic thought can be loftier than action.

In everyday life these things are often unnoticed, although the effects cannot be denied. Many individuals feel the effects very strongly as the prevailing mood of their whole life of soul; they may even feel them in their bodily constitution. The existence of the astral body may be denied but not its consequences, for they are matters of actual experience. And when things of this kind can be observed in ordinary life, people ought to realise that it is not, after all, so very foolish to assert that although supersensible happenings and facts can be observed only by a clairvoyant, anyone can perceive their manifestations in actual life.

On the other hand, actions which inevitably fall short of their corresponding thoughts leave impressions which manifest themselves in later life as courage, confidence, balance. These qualities work right into the physical organism; but the connections will be perceived only if life is observed not in short sections but over a lengthy period. The error of many scientific observations is that conclusions about some effects are drawn on the basis of what happens in the course, say, of the next five years, whereas in many cases the effects show themselves only after decades.

But as well as individuals who are idealists, whose thoughts are loftier than a particular experience there are others whose thoughts always fail to keep pace with their experiences. There are very many experiences which can be grasped in thought only with the greatest difficulty. We eat and drink every day by instinct or as the result of desire: but it takes a very long time, even for one who is undergoing spiritual development, to relate these things too to the spiritual life. In point of fact, everyday things are more difficult than any others to bring into relation with the spiritual life. In the case of eating and drinking we shall have achieved this only when we have discovered why, in order to serve the course of the world's evolution, we have to take physical substances into ourselves in a rhythmic process, and what connection these physical substances have with spiritual life. We then find that metabolism is not a physical process only, but by virtue of its rhythm also has in it something essentially spiritual.

Now there is a way in which things not merely demanded by external necessity can be gradually spiritualised. When we are eating fruit, let us say, such spiritual knowledge as we possess enables us to form an idea of how the fruit—an apple, for instance—is related to the universe as a whole. Admittedly, however, this takes a long time. We can also train ourselves to regard eating as being something more than a merely physical activity and to remember how the spirit participates by way of the sun's rays in the ripening of the fruit. We can thus spiritualise the most material, everyday processes and learn to penetrate them with our thoughts. I can do no more than indicate here how thoughts and ideas can penetrate into processes of this kind. It is a long business and in our time very few people indeed can develop adequate thoughts about eating.

We shall therefore admit that there are individuals who act purely on the basis of instinct and others who act on the basis of ideals. The life of every human being divides itself in such a way that in some cases the thoughts cannot keep abreast of the actions and in others the range of the thoughts and ideals is greater than that of the actions. We have within us, on the one hand, forces which lead our life into decline and work in such a way that our physical organism matures through inner causes towards death. And we have within us other forces which bring life to our astral and etheric bodies and shine out within them like a new light. It is these latter forces which remain in our etheric body as life-giving forces. When at death the spiritual part of our being abandons its physical sheath, the etheric body is still around us during the first few days, making it possible for us to have the backward survey over our whole life of which I have often spoken.

The most valuable thing remaining to us as an inwardly formative, upbuilding power are these life-giving forces, originating from the fact that our ideas have transcended the bounds of our actions. These forces continue to work in us after death and actually provide further life-giving forces for the following incarnation.

Life-giving forces, then, implanted by ourselves, remain in the etheric body as an element that is always young. And although we cannot thereby prolong our life, we can enable the freshness of youth to remain for a longer period by ensuring that our thoughts transcend the range of many of our actions.

If we ask what is the best way of acquiring ideals which transcend our actions we shall find it possible if we devote ourselves to Spiritual Science. When, for instance, we learn from Spiritual Science of the evolution of man, forces are set astir in the higher members of our being and this gives rise to idealism in the most concrete, most balanced form. One of the achievements of Spiritual Science is to pour fresh, youthful, fertile forces into our astral and etheric bodies.

The very different attitudes to Spiritual Science adopted by individuals in this modern age are due not to the fact that these individuals have no clairvoyant faculties but that in everyday life their observation is not sufficiently exact. Otherwise they would see in what different ways the human soul and spirit manifest themselves in the physical organism. People who thoroughly disbelieve in Spiritual Science may hear that the physical body of man is somehow permeated by certain higher members. Let us take them together and simply call them the soul-and-spirit. But present-day materialists will not believe in the existence of this man of soul-and-spirit: they believe only in physical man and are in this respect particularly materialists. By ‘materialists’ people often mean simply the theoretical materialists, who believe only in matter. But as I have said again and again, these theoretical materialists are by no means the worst. A materialist may use his intellect just to create concepts; they will in any case be very limited in scope and this form of materialism is not so very harmful. But when materialism is reinforced by other factors it can be very detrimental to the man's life as a whole—especially if the inmost, spiritual core of his being becomes dependent upon his material constitution. And nowadays, especially, how dependent men are upon matter! Theoretical materialism leads thoughts astray and is fatal to the ties that link souls together. But external life too is greatly influenced by the fact that so many people put materialism into actual practice. I mean by that, individuals who are so dependent upon their physical constitution that they can spend only a few winter months in their offices and in summer find it necessary to go off to the Riviera. The fact is they are so utterly dependent upon what is material that the soul has to subject itself to the needs which life dictates to it. That again is a different kind of materialist from a man who is materialistic only in his thoughts and ideas. Theoretical idealism may lead to the conviction that theoretical materialism is all wrong. But to cure practical materialists, to cure complete dependence upon the substances of the physical body, is possible only through genuine absorption in Spiritual Science.

If people could bring themselves to think—that is if their thoughts came not just from their intellect but were connected with reality—they would recognise from perfectly ordinary, everyday facts that there is a great difference between the various parts of man's being, for example between the hands and other parts of the body—the shoulders, let us say. A purely external investigation of man's physical body reveals differences in the action of the nerves. But it must be remembered that we can exercise a certain influence here. If the behaviour of the nerves were decisive for the soul we should be dependent upon material effects, for the action of the nerves is a material effect. But we are certainly not dependent in this respect, for influences of every kind can be brought to bear on the action of the nerves. The reason, quite simply, is that the etheric and astral bodies—the soul-and-spirit part of man—work in such very different ways. It is not enough to say that the physical body is filled with the etheric and astral bodies, for there is a difference that varies with the part of the body under consideration. We can easily convince ourselves that spiritual influences acting upon different parts of the body produce different effects. But we must be quite clear that what happens in life is under the sway of necessity. When there is something unusual about the direction taken by a current of air the physicist can apply his laws to discover the reason. But why is it that people do not reflect about the significance of the fact that they wash their hands far more often than any other part of the body? You will think it strange to introduce such matters; but it is these everyday phenomena that confirm the communications of a clairvoyant. It is also a fact that there are individuals who enjoy washing their hands as often as possible, and others who do not. Understanding of such an apparently trivial fact actually demands very advanced knowledge. To a clairvoyant the hands of a man are remarkably different in a particular respect from all his other bodily members. Luminous projections of the etheric body stream out from the fingers, sometimes glimmering faintly, sometimes flashing far into the surrounding space. The radiations from the fingers vary according to whether the man is happy or troubled and there is also a difference between the back of the hands and the palm. For anyone able to observe clairvoyantly, a hand, with its etheric and astral parts, is a most wonderful structure. But everything in our environment, material though it be, is a revelation, a manifestation, of the spirit. You should think of matter as being related to spirit as ice is to water; matter is formed out of spirit—call it ‘condensed spirit’ if you like. Contact with any material substance means contact with the spirit in that substance. All our contact with anything of a material nature is in fact—to the extent that it is purely material—maya. In reality it is spirit with which we come into contact.

If we observe life with sensitivity, we shall realise that washing the hands—especially if it is done frequently—brings a man into contact with the spirit in the water and has a considerable effect upon his whole disposition. Some individuals have a great fondness for washing their hands; directly the least speck of dirt gets on their hands they must be washed! Such characters either have, or will develop, a very definite relation to their surroundings, a relation not entirely the outcome of material influences. It is as if delicate forces in matter were working upon such individuals when there is this relationship between their hands and the element of water. Even in everyday life you will find that these people have an entirely healthy kind of sensitivity and more delicate powers of observation than others. They are at once aware, for instance, whether someone standing near them has a brutal or a kindly disposition. On the other hand, individuals who do not mind their hands being dirty are actually of a coarser disposition and erect a sort of barrier between themselves and their environment. This is a fact and can actually be observed as being characteristic of certain groups. Travel through certain countries and observe their inhabitants. In regions where people tend to wash the hands more frequently, you will find that relations between friend and friend are very different from what they are in regions where people wash their hands less often and erect a sort of barrier between one another.

These things have the validity of natural law, though the details may be affected by various circumstances. If we throw a stone into the air the line of projection is a parabola; but if the stone is caught by a gust of wind there will no longer be a pure parabola. This shows that all the relevant facts must be known if certain relationships are to be accurately observed. As to the hands, clairvoyant consciousness reveals that they are permeated by soul and spirit—to such an extent, indeed, that a definite relationship of the hands to the water is established. This holds good less in the case of the human face and less still in the case of the other parts of the body. This must not, however, be interpreted as an objection to washing or bathing but rather that we must keep our attention fixed on the relevant circumstances.

The point here is to show how very differently the soul and spirit are related to and express themselves in the various parts of the body. You are not likely to find that anyone does harm to his astral body by washing his hands too often, but the point must be considered in its widest range. The relationship between hands and water may exercise a healthy influence on the relation between man and his surroundings, that is to say, between his astral body and his environment; and for this reason things will not readily be carried to extremes. But those who think materialistically and allow their thoughts to be attached solely to matter will say that what is good for the hands must be good for the rest of the body. This would show that differences depending on delicate perceptions entirely escape notice; the consequence and it is abundantly in evidence—is that for certain purposes the same treatment is applied to the whole of the body. For instance, frequent cold baths and constant cold water frictions are recommended as a particularly effective treatment, even for children. Fortunately, because of obvious effects on the nervous system, doctors have already begun to realise that these treatments have been carried to absurd extremes. What is right for the hands because of their particular relation to the astral body can become an injurious experiment when applied to parts of the body having a different relation to the astral body. Washing the hands may bring about a healthy sensitivity to the environment; but an excessive use of cold baths and the like may cause an unhealthy hypersensitivity which, especially if such treatment is applied in childhood, lasts for the whole of life.

It is therefore all-important to know the limits within which methods may be beneficially applied; and this will be possible only if there is willingness to acknowledge that higher members of man's being are incorporated in his physical body. It will then be recognised that some of the inner organs used by the physical body as instruments are very differently related to the being of soul-and-spirit. It will be found, for instance, that the glandular system is preeminently the instrument of the etheric body, whereas everything associated with the nerves, for instance the brain, is intimately related to the astral body.

If these things are not kept in mind certain phenomena will always remain unintelligible. Materialists make the fundamental mistake of confining their observations to what in every case is only the instrument. For everything we experience is experienced in the realm of the soul; and our consciousness of these experiences is due to the fact that we have in the physical body an instrument which reflects them. Our physical body is only an instrument for reflecting what is going on in the life of soul. Anyone versed in Spiritual Science is clear about this. But the physical body can serve as an instrument in different ways. I need only point to one thing: the unique significance of the thyroid gland. As you know, the thyroid gland used to be considered a useless organ and in certain illnesses was often totally removed. In such cases the patients became imbeciles. The danger is substantially reduced if even a small part of the gland is left. This is evidence that the thyroid secretions are necessary for the development of certain aspects of the life of the soul. The strange thing is this: that if a secretion of a sheep's thyroid gland is administered to patients who have lost the gland, their condition is improved; if, later on, this treatment is discontinued, they lapse again into imbecility.

Materialists might find considerable support for their views in this fact. But the spiritual scientist knows how to judge it correctly. We are concerned here with an organ, the product of which can be introduced directly into our organism and be effective. But this can apply only to organs such as the thyroid gland, which are definitely related to the etheric body. Such an effect is not possible if the organ is related to the astral body. I have known poorly gifted individuals who have eaten plenty of sheep's brains but have not thereby become intelligent! This again shows that there is a great difference between the several organs, the magnitude of the difference being due to the fact that one group of organs has an inner connection with the etheric body and another with the astral body.

This reveals another important fact to spiritual observation. It seems very strange that a man may become feebleminded if his thyroid gland is removed altogether but recovers his wits if he is given an extract of the gland. It is particularly strange because there is no evidence that his brain has been detrimentally affected. Here is another case where ordinary observation should be led on to spiritual-scientific observation. Spiritual Science shows that a man does not become an imbecile because his thyroid gland is removed. ‘But’, you will say, ‘facts show that he does!’ In reality, however, men do not become imbeciles because they cannot think, but because they are deprived of the possibility of using an instrument through which they become attentive to their environment. They are not imbeciles because they lack reasoning power but because they have no contact with their environment, and this insensibility is not the same as loss of reason. It does not necessarily follow that a man has lost his reason if he fails to exercise it because of lack of attentiveness to the environment. If you do not think about a thing you cannot express yourself about it; if you want to establish relationship with anything you must think about it. When the thyroid gland is removed a man's living interest in things is undermined—to such an extent indeed that he ceases to use his reasoning power.

Here you can see the subtle difference between using parts of the brain which are an instrument for the reasoning mind and using an instrument such as the thyroid gland. Light can thus be thrown on the ways in which the physical body is an instrument; and if we observe attentively we shall also be able to differentiate accurately between the several parts of man's constitution.

The ‘I’ is related to the surrounding world in the most varied ways. We shall be concerned here with certain facts which I have described elsewhere, showing that a man may endeavour to penetrate with his ‘I’ into his inner self, seeking to become aware of his own essential being; or he may turn to the external world, seeking to establish a connection with that world. We become conscious of the ‘I’ in a certain sense when we turn our attention inwards, when we reflect upon what life gives us or has in store for us. We can also become aware of the ‘I’ when, for example, we are brought into contact with the world outside by knocking against a stone, or perhaps when we cannot settle an account! We then become aware that our ‘I’ is unable to master the circumstances of external life. In short, we can become aware of our ‘I’ both in our inner life and when we are confronting circumstances of the external world. And we become aware of our ‘I’ in a very special way when the magical relationship we call sympathy or compassion is established with human beings or certain circumstances in our environment. There is clear evidence here of a magical process operating from soul to soul, from spirit to spirit. For we actually feel within ourselves something that is going on in the world outside, is being thought and felt there: we are experiencing in ourselves something that is of the nature of soul-and-spirit in the external world. We pass into the inner realm of our being in actual fact, for sympathy or compassion is an intimate experience in the life of soul. If our ‘I’ is not really equal to these experiences and needs to be inwardly strengthened, this comes to expression in the life of soul as sorrow, and physically as tears. Sorrow is an experience of the soul which gives the ‘I’ in the face of some external circumstance a feeling of greater strength than if it had remained indifferent. Sorrow always denotes an inner enhancement of the activity of the ‘I’. Sorrow enhances the content, the intensity, of the ‘I’ and tears are an expression of the fact that the ‘I’ is at a particular moment striving to experience more than would have been possible had it remained indifferent.

We cannot but wonder at the poetic imagination that was already apparent in the young Goethe and was deeply connected with cosmic mysteries. I am referring here to the passage where Faust's weakness leads him to the point where he desires the physical extinction of his ‘I’, and he feels driven to suicide. Then the Easter bells ring out and at the sound of them the ‘I’ gathers strength; tears—the sign of sorrow in Faust's soul—burst forth and he cries: ‘Tears start; earth holds me once more!’ This indicates that what belongs to the earth has been strengthened; tears well up into the eyes, giving expression to the increased intensity of the ‘I’.

Mirth and laughter too are connected with the strength or weakness of the ‘I’ in its relationship to the world outside. Mirth or laughter indicates that our ‘I’ feels more confident of its understanding and grasp of things and events. In laughter, our ‘I’ gathers such intensity that it pours itself out over the environment. This outpouring comes to expression in mirth, in the way we show amusement. Connected with this is the fact that—for the healthy-minded at all events—the cause of genuine sorrow must be a reality. Any reality in the external world which makes us feel as we participate in it that the inner activity of our ‘I’ must be enhanced, may induce a mood of sorrow. But if sorrow is associated with something unreal, for example, with some artificial representation given merely for the sake of arousing sadness, a man whose thinking is sound will require something more. He feels that what moves him to sorrow should arouse in him the surmise that what has caused the sorrow can be overcome.—I am merely hinting at this today and will deal with it more fully on another occasion.—A healthy soul feels the urge to rise to a higher level, to conduct itself worthily in the face of misery. Only a rather unhealthy soul will be satisfied with a mere representation of misery—unless in the representation there is implicit some prospect of victory. Thus we demand that in a drama there should be a prospect of victory for the victim of misery. No aesthetic can arbitrarily decree that only the trivial things in life shall be represented. But it will become evident that a man who follows his own healthy nature will not find that the demands of his ‘I’ are satisfied by an imitation of misery. The whole weight of reality is needed before the ‘I’ is roused to compassion.

And now think of this.—Is it not exactly the opposite as regards the comic? To laugh at real folly is in a certain respect inhuman. We cannot laugh at folly when it confronts us as reality. On the other hand it is thoroughly healthy to laugh at the representation of folly; and it was a very sound ‘folk-therapy’ to present to the people in comedy and burlesque how the folly of human action leads of itself to absurdity. When our ‘I’ is able in mirth or laughter to rise above what is recognised as folly in a given situation, it is strengthened by the spectacle of an artistic representation of folly, and there is no healthier laughter than this. On the other hand it is inhuman to laugh at a predicament in which a fellow human being finds himself, or at a real simpleton. Therefore different laws hold good if representation of these things is to have its proper effect.

If our ‘I’ is to be strengthened in an act of compassion, what moves us must confront us as reality. On the other hand, as healthy-minded men we demand, when misery is portrayed before us, that we should be able to feel the possibility of victory over it. In the dying hero of a tragedy, where death is enacted before our eyes, we feel that the victory of the spirit over the body is symbolised in this death. The very opposite is the case when the ‘I’ is brought into relation with the outside world. We feel then that we cannot fitly be moved to mirth or laughter when faced with reality, but rather that laughter is proper in cases that are removed from reality. We can certainly laugh when a man meets with a misfortune which does him no particular harm and is not closely related to life. But the more closely our experiences are related to reality, the less we laugh if we truly understand them.

From this it is clear that our ‘I’ is related to reality in different ways but the very variety of the facts testifies to the existence of a relationship even with what is most sublime. You have heard in many lectures that in ancient Initiation there were two paths leading into the spiritual world: the one path was a descent into the inmost being of man, into the Microcosm; the other path led out into the Macrocosm. Now everything that comes to expression in great things is revealed also in the smallest. In ordinary life a man's descent into his inner being finds expression in sorrow, whereas the manner of his life in the external world shows itself in his ability to grasp the connection between processes that are apparently unconnected. Herein the supremacy of the ‘I’ is made manifest. And you have heard that if the ‘I’ is not to lose itself, it must be guided by an Initiation leading into the outer world; otherwise it will lose its bearings and may be led into what can only seem to be a void.

The smallest is connected with the greatest. Hence in Spiritual Science, where our thoughts are so often lifted to the highest spheres, we also concern ourselves with the most everyday matters. In the next lecture we shall turn once more to the consideration of higher things, making use of what we have been considering to-day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then come the words:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Tr. by Owen Barfield)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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