The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Written answer to a written question ¹

Question: Are the various masters, so to speak, parts of one being, so that this being then contains twelve different masters within itself, of whom seven are always embodied in the physical and five remain in the spiritual realm?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Does one of them, for example, contain the qualities of the physical body developed to perfection, so that it represents the harmony of the physical organs; another expresses the harmony of the temperaments (i.e. the etheric body) in the physical body; another represents knowledge in a harmonious way (astral body); a fourth expresses the mentioned qualities in a sentient way, a fifth expresses or represents the mentioned qualities intellectually, a sixth expresses them completely consciously and rules over the other six (the words “and rules over the other six” were corrected by Rudolf Steiner to:

“and is ruled by the other six”

Manas as the 8th, Buddhi as the 9th, Atma as the 10th, Holy Ghost as the 11th and Son as the 12th, these five individualities are invisible at the moment?

Answer: The 7th is the servant of the other 6, is ruled by them and the 7th then rules the other 5, i.e. by embodying them. There are always seven incarnated. If the eighth incarnates, the first will not incarnate.²

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• 1The question was put to Rudolf Steiner by Alma von Brandis, a Berlin member who was then living in Dornach, on May 29, 1915, and answered and later sent to Marie Steiner-von Sivers by her. As an 'old' member, she was familiar with the ideas about the Masters as they had been living in the T.S. since Sinnett's 'The Occult World' and 'Secret Buddhism'. In his 'Secret Buddhism', Sinnett had already raised the question of the connection between the Mahatmas and the principles of man. The relevant passage reads:
  The nature of a Mahatma is difficult to grasp correctly and would hardly be understandable without reference to later sections of this book, so that it seems appropriate to go into it in more detail now. The dual nature within him is so pronounced that his higher powers and wisdom are accessible to those who have a special spiritual connection to him, without the Mahatma having to become aware of their invocation at the time. From this, our thinking opens up to the possibility that the relationship between the spiritual and the human Mahatma may sometimes become such that it is referred to in secret writings as “overshadowing” or influencing rather than as incorporation in the full sense of the word.
  Furthermore, to further complicate the understanding, we arrive at the fact that each Mahatma is not only a human being of exalted development, but, as it were, belongs to a realm of the great scheme of nature all its own. Each Mahatma must correspond to one or other of seven great fundamental forms, but though we might almost conclude that these fundamental forms could be traced to relationships with the seven fundamental parts in man, I refrain from attempting a full explanation of this assumption. It is sufficient to apply this thought to what we know, in vague outline, of the higher levels of the secret inner structure. It has been asserted in cipher for some time past that there are five Great Chohans or Higher Mahatmas, directing the whole Brotherhood of Mahatmas. When I wrote the foregoing portion of this book, I was under the impression that a supreme head, standing on a still higher plane, ruled over these five Chohans; but now the thought suggests itself to me that this personality is more likely to be a sixth chohan, the head of the sixth fundamental form of the Mahatmas; and this supposition leads immediately to the further conclusion that, to complete the recognized correspondences or relationships, there must be a seventh Chohan. But just as the seventh fundamental particle in nature or in man is a barely comprehensible concept that eludes our thinking and can only be described in vague phrases devoid of supersensible meaning, so the seventh Tschohan will certainly prove inaccessible to any untrained imagination. But he, too, undoubtedly occupies a place in the household of the spiritual world, and I am convinced that such a personality exists, who is occasionally visible to the other Mahatmas. However, pondering this brings little more benefit than greater clarity with regard to the above-mentioned thought that the Mahatmas must not be understood as merely extraordinary people of great spiritual sublimity, but as necessary phenomena in nature, without which a progressive development of humanity can hardly be imagined. 1
• 2. See also on pages 244/45 (lecture Berlin, July 3, 1904)

Excerpts from notes taken by Nanna Thorne from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner in Kristiania (Oslo) on December 4, 1921, translated by Agnes Steineger and Karl Engqvist in a letter dated November 27, 1966 from Karl Engqvist (Järna) to Edwin Froböse (Dornach)

Dear Mr. Froböse.

Unfortunately, I am writing this to you from my bed. I suddenly became quite ill yesterday.

Thank you very much for your kind words.

I would now like to add a few things that were not included in the translation by me, because they come from Miss Nanna Thorne, at least for the most part.

The title reads: “I entered this sense world”, Oslo, May 21, 1923. Then it continues like this:

“When Dr. Steiner was in Oslo for the first time in 1921, he spoke about the mantram: ‘I entered this sense world’, and likewise the last time he was up here, in May 1923. Today a report is to be given of this last lecture. It was therefore the last thing he entrusted to the esotericists here in Norway.”

Here, Miss Steineger has translated the first sentence incorrectly. It should probably read: “[...] he spoke for the first time about the mantram [...]”. - The heading was certainly added by Nanna Thorne. - It is also written at the top, in brackets: “(Is the mantram read?)”

Before the two lectures, there are three mantras on a left-hand page in the book: “I entered this world of the senses”, “First know the earnest guardian”, “O man, know thyself”.

---

The lecture from 1921 begins like this:

Everyone should realize that they are a spirit, come from the spiritual worlds and are only down here for a short time.

Why does the human spirit have to come here to Earth, where it has to go through so much?..

An infinite desire for earthly life, to bring new life germs, fills the human spirit. That is why it descends again and again...

A person creates their karma through their thoughts...

There is also another inheritance that man must take with him into earthly life: original sin... Lucifer... Ahriman, the lord of death...

Another consequence of man's dried-up, killing thinking is the point of view of science regarding the laws of nature... Thoughts and ideas essentially revolve around machines, mechanics and the like. The life of thought has become earthbound, poor and dried up; Ahriman, the god of death, now has the power, and to such an extent that not only the human soul perishes, but the physical human organism is also damaged, it becomes paralyzed and is killed, the material dies. ...

And not only man will stiffen and go towards death, but all of nature. ...

And just as nature here on earth is heading towards death, so too is the universe... It is not enough to know about the new life-force of Xri; if it is not worked into people through the will, one will nevertheless face spiritual death.... this new life-force that is given to man by grace...

... Ex Deo Nascimur

If the esotericist is to see into the spiritual worlds, he must first meet the “guardian of the threshold”... Before he lets the esotericist in, he takes away the use of the physical senses; therefore, the esotericist must have developed occult organs in advance to replace them.

Likewise, the Dweller takes from him everything he has absorbed through the mind. ... This, that one takes the sense world for reality, also makes it impossible to get clarity about oneself, to get to know one's own nature.

Everything seen in space is dead. Once the gods created it. Now they have abandoned it, they have moved away. It is the work of the gods, but they themselves are gone; matter is dead, it is permeated by Ahriman, and here in this dead man does not find his true being. Nor can one find one's true nature as long as one allows oneself to be deceived by the spirits of the age. ... It is important to see the errors of one's own time (that is, epoch, Karl Engqvist), to rise above them and then to try to live in time, with time and for time.

In Christo morimur.

In this struggle to arrive at one's true self, these words will resound:

O man, know thyself.

It is Xri (short for Karl Enggvist), the world word, that makes these words resound through everything that life on earth has to give.

You do not find your own being just by looking into yourself, but by seeing everything that is in the cosmos, everything that is around us in space. There the image of one's own self is spread out.

It is not only in space that you get to know your higher self. Space belongs to the physical world. But behind space, time is at work through everything that lives in time. There one must also find one's self (which was awakened to conscious life in man through Xri[s] (abbreviation by Karl Enggvist) death), learn to understand how this higher self has fought its way out... through what happens in time. One must direct one's attention to the fact that time is a creative being that incessantly sends its impulses among people so that they may develop their ego here on earth, may find their ego. ...

When man recognizes his ego as that which stands behind things in space and behind what he has experienced in time, and when he sees the meaning of it all, then the ego is consciously born in him, and then he himself will one day become a creative word of the world... But the living, fully conscious spirit lives among the divine beings.

Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus

The lecture is 19 pages long in Fräulein Steineger's handwriting. The one from May 21, 1923 is 21 pages long.

Since the class existed before the Christmas Conference, it follows, I think, that the institutions and agreements that existed before the Christmas Conference were not destroyed by the Christmas Conference, and thus neither was Rudolf Steiner's will to Mrs. Marie Steiner. I feel tremendously uplifted and inspired to have been able to contribute to this fact. Very warm greetings, also from my wife,

Karl Engqvist

The Vidar group tried to get Fräulein Steineger's inheritance after her death, but my friends explained to them that she had given me testamentary power of attorney to dispose of it. What luck!

It was said at the outset why such a group is possible again now. Clear consciousness is necessary. In the past, people approached the institutions of anthroposophy with too little consciousness, too little spiritual awareness.

If what had been given in those old esoteric contexts had been published, many cults would have arisen in the world as a result. But because it was not published, hatred and betrayal of the cause resulted.

These people here have not been summoned by him, they have gathered together themselves. He has refused to continue forming such groups himself in the face of the spiritual world. - Don't be proud! There are more people who would be considered, including those who are further along! Here are just those who have found each other.

From meditation.

It is not only a personal matter, but has world significance. The cosmos is interested in whether we do it or not.

Oh man, know thyself!
Thus sounds the word of the world.
Thou hearest it with the strength of soul
Thou feelest it with the strength of spirit.
Who speaks with such world-embracing might?
Who speaks with such heartfelt sincerity?
Does it work through the radiance of space
In the experience of your mind?
Does it resound through the weaving of the waves of time
In the stream of your life?
Is it you yourself who, In the feeling of space, in the experience of time
The word creates, feeling yourself a stranger
In the soul-emptiness of space,
Because you lose the power of thought
In the stream of time's destruction.

Legend... new attachment, two directions - in Johannes the center. Recognizing what comes from the two directions. Fire, because both united against the center. Hate against continuation of this center.

Wake up! Wake up to these two directions, but also in general. Wake up through proper meditation! Goethe was fully awake, Schiller only half awake, Herder and Lessing slept completely.

In the face of the mystery of Golgotha, the words of an initiate were: Salem. Now the reversal: Melas... the circle is complete.

Addendum. Before that, Mach ben ach - son of the earth of suffering, or: the physical body has separated from the soul and spirit.

Vocal exercise – pilgrimage to the self.

O A J A O: I in the midst of light and space
A J O J A: Space for me and light
J O A O J: Light through space and me
I am

Now only that of the two directions and the fire.

First, the Indian mantram was given for the first time, the translation for the first time. After this Indian mantram, the regular invocation was made:

"Brothers of the past: Your work will become our
wisdom, we take the perimeter and the
plumb line of the height from your hands; your
work done by you shall be strength to our souls, strength to our hands.

Brothers of the present: if you are wiser than
we, let your wisdom shine in our
souls, so that we may become revealers
of your thoughts of God.

Brothers of the future: If you bear the plan of the world's construction
in your will, let your strength flow
into our limbs, so that we may
become the body for the great souls.

True esotericism is initially incomprehensible. As an example, imagine a living person who expresses absolutely no spiritual life on the outside. His spiritual life is directed entirely inwards, yet it is an intense inner life.

About the vowels: hierarchies are involved:

J A O Seraphim, Cherubim and partly Thrones are involved.
U Kyriotetes, Exusiai, Dynamis
E Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi.

The whole together means the ancient-holy word of Yahweh instead of the ego-I-am. To create this word out of the hierarchies means an act. The execution of this act on earth: the butterfly meditation.

Catch the moth
Send it to icy heights
Where the world's dreams prevail.
It becomes a bird
Then you have done half the work
Halfway there.
Dip the bird
In the depths of the sea J A O U E
Where the will of the world works.
the bird drowns,
then you still have to do,
the bird's corpse
purifying in the fire to burn.
Then consume the ashes
and you are
the light in the darkness of the world.

The imagination of this butterfly meditation has an ethereal effect. Just a simple interpretation. Searching in the memory with the three and a half years following the butterfly meditation. The ethereal effect is connected with the fact that it causes one to occupy oneself with one's own will, and in the retrospective examination of one's own will, one can find a point in one's life where this will has had a very specific impulse for certain tasks. It is often the case that when searching for such moments of volition, the non-fulfillment of which has caused dissatisfaction, one comes to a point about three and a half years ago. (Prevention by external circumstances, for example, threefolding.)

Once this point has been reached, the task is to cultivate the content of this longing, not to try to carry out the deed, but to cultivate the content as much as possible, in the highest way. Then, three and a half years after the moment of realization, the opportunity to act will present itself again. And then it will be a matter of performing a selfless act that has nothing to do with the starting point seven years ago. This can also be a very inconspicuous act outwardly.

Description of the time, the situation, the abyss.

The present lectures and this hour are, in comparison to the prevailing fanaticism and the culmination of democracy outside, just the opposite; they signify the culmination of aristocracy and hierarchy. An enormous abyss that development must leap across in order to overcome these contradictions. Descriptions of this abyss, over which some leap courageously, others are dragged, others are torn. The whole is a heroic tragedy in the history of humanity.

Faltering Meditation
Invocation
Indian Mantram

"Brothers of the past: your work becomes our
wisdom; we take the circumference and the
plumb line of the height from your hands; your
achievement be strength for our souls, be
strength for our hands.

Brothers of the present: if you are wiser than
us, let your wisdom shine in our
souls, so that we may become revealers
of your thoughts of God.

Brothers of the future: As you carry the plan of the world's construction
in your will, let your strength flow
into our limbs, so that we may
become the body of the Great Souls.

Indian mantram

Indication to the new society that the reasoning was given without mentioning the esoteric reason. (He had said before that the reasoning had esoteric reasons.) Esotericism cannot tolerate any gimmickry; everything so far has been playful. Now, esotericism must be brought openly and seriously into life, from Dornach, as the center. But now one really must not play with esotericism anymore. For this, modesty is necessary, above all modesty before the ego.

Therefore, wake up! Realize that we are asleep! With every waking we enter into a new sphere of the world, for we live surrounded by spheres of the world, but we sleep and know it not. So far, everything happens only in dreams for humans. The importance of the Falter meditation (of which he had said the previous time that everything he said about the effect of this meditation and its connection with the two times three and a half years only applies to people over 28).

Read to them - I A O U E

Something should be added to enhance the effect of this Falter meditation: Four stages of sleeping: in thinking, feeling, willing, in the I. Four stages of waking up: in thinking, feeling, willing, in the I.

Thinking: The head is like a fruit, the heart like a glowing chalice. We should experience our head as self-illuminating all the way to our heart. We should experience our thinking as an etheric organ that feels its way towards everything it is meant to grasp. The difference between the occultist and the non-occultist is that the occultist is aware that this organ radiates out into the etheric. We should experience ourselves as a snail that extends its feelers. Thinking must become a feeling process! Help with this:

Awaken in thinking: you are in the spiritual light of the world.
Experience yourself as luminous, feeling the luminous.

Through such thinking, all of nature becomes luminous. Stones and plants shine forth in the earthly, as animals and humans in the moral. Through experiencing thinking as touching, we develop something like a sense of touch: we see a dandelion blossom and experience it as sand; we see chicory and experience it as silk, a sunflower as a spiky animal...

Feeling: this is still a deep dream. We should experience our heart as glowing, but in such a way that it absorbs light from our entire environment and reflects it back outwards in a moon-like way. Through our awakening feeling, we must experience the world quite differently; the earth as a sentient being that laughs and cries. In the weather of autumn there is a crying of nature, but joy of the ahrimanic beings, in spring joy of the luciferic beings. Natural processes as acts of spiritual beings! Trees - in winter they are only their physical body, the etheric is outside. One can come to see how the trees solve tasks in the etheric. When one awakens in thinking, one expands into infinity. When one awakens in feeling, one sets oneself in motion, leaves oneself.

Awaken in feeling: you are in the spiritual deeds of the world.
Experience yourself, feeling the spiritual deeds.

Wanting: In this respect, the people of the present are still in a deep sleep. But in wanting, man is completely on his own. He has his thinking only in this embodiment, takes none of it with him into the after-death life. The gods need our thinking, but they do not need our feelings and our will. A person may be ingenious, but only because the gods need it that way. Geniuses are the lamps that the gods need. Our thinking abilities return to the gods after death. (My idea on this: The legend of Albertus Magnus, that he was untalented as a boy, but was inspired by the Madonna one day to become highly talented. When he was already teaching as an old man in the large circle of students, he experienced her coming to take back her gift. He broke off in the middle of the lecture, retired and spent the rest of his life in childish senility - as people call it.

Our will, on the other hand, goes with us through our embodiments; it is a result of our embodiments, and we work on it through our earthly lives. In our cooperation in shaping the world, our will is the essential characteristic. Our will is our own property, while our thinking belongs to the gods.

— Envy of the gods! In our volition, we have a life of our own. But people are still asleep in their volition. They love their volition because they always believe that what they want is already the right thing. But with our volition, we are helping to shape the world. We wake up in our volition by becoming aware that we are not alone, but are responsible for the actions of others. For example, Kully: What he does, especially what upsets us the most, is our fault, we are actually involved; Goesch affair [!] = Maya / [well...]. When we no longer feel separate as individual beings, but so connected in the general activity, then we awaken in the will, only then do we come to the living will, then we think the spiritual beings.

In the will awakens: thou art in the spirit-beings of the world.
The spirit-beings experience thee thinking.

Awakening in the I: We sleep in the I. We use the word “I” only because the gods once spoke it for us - our angeloi - and imitatingly now humans speak it. But we must awaken in the I! Imagination for this: altar, above it the sun. We approach the altar and experience ourselves completely as shadows, completely as insubstantial. So far we have said: I am. Now we consciously say: I am not. - Then a deity rises out of the sun above the altar and animates the shadow. We are like a bowl that receives the light of the deity that rises from the sun. - By grace we receive this deity, it gives itself to us. - Fichte experienced this, but only in a shadowy way. Therefore, what he says about it is completely abstract.

In the I awakens: you are in your own spiritual being.
Experience yourself as being received by the gods and giving yourself to yourself.

Then it was said:

The stones are mute...
Brothers of the...
Indian saying.

To the Executive Council of the... branches in...

This year's Annual General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland will take place on Sunday, April 22... at noon... at noon, this year's General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland will take place in the lecture hall of the carpentry workshop at the Goetheanum, to which every member is warmly invited. In addition to the reports of the board on the work of the past year, a discussion will take place regarding the consolidation and revitalization of the Society, for which we may certainly expect an open mind and active participation on the part of those present. We are convinced that Dr. Steiner can make his relationship with the Society all the more fruitful the more inner activity shines in souls. We therefore hope to hear positive suggestions from the meeting.

Please pass this on to the members of your branch. Furthermore, please note that an anthroposophical lecture by Dr. Steiner will take place at 8 p.m.

With warm regards,
Dornach, April 10, 1923
Albert Steffen