The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear attendees! Every winter I have been able to give a few lectures in different European cities, including here in Munich, on topics in the field of spiritual science. I believe it is a legitimate sentiment that the lectures I am giving this winter should take their starting point from what is so close to us in these fateful days. The impulses that these days stir in our hearts and souls will be the subject of today's introductory lecture. Do we not have the feeling that in these trying times of ours, no word can be spoken that is not accompanied by an intense feeling, which looks towards those fields in the east and west, where powerful judgments are being written into the course of human development, not by words, but by deeds? One could see how, since the days of August, what lives in the deepest impulses of the German people has been drawn out like a mighty breath of the spirit; one could see how, in our time, courage to make sacrifices, selflessness, devotion, and an infinite love have grown out of the depths of souls. All this has given rise to a unified feeling, the like of which we have not seen for a long time. It is not for me, in these reflections, to transgress Bismarck's 1870 warning to those whom fate has left behind from the fields of battle, that they must not, above all, anticipate events with words and reflections until something decisive has happened. I will not deal with what lies in the impulses of the day, but with what runs through these impulses of the day and what can, must occupy the spiritual researcher in particular - albeit in complete harmony with the feeling that has seized everyone.

Dear attendees! In recent times, there has been much talk of heredity in schools of thought that are more or less influenced by materialism. By this heredity one means something that is fundamentally quite external to the spiritual contemplation of things and entities: the survival of the qualities of preceding beings in subsequent beings. I do not intend to discuss the essence of this idea of inheritance today; but I would like to draw attention to how something similar to this inheritance is present in the lower spheres in the entire progress of the spiritual development of humanity, and in particular in the life of a nation, as a kind of spiritual inheritance, but more comprehensive and universal than what is usually called by that name.

What is it that holds the souls of a people together, that can pour fire into the souls of a people, as it now passes through the spiritual veins of the people? One can say: It flows down like a real, actual stream, like a stream [from] the spiritual world; in this stream live the impulses of the best leading spirits, the best leading geniuses of a people. Not only in the sense of the Greek fairy tale is it real for the spiritual researcher that the forces that were connected in the leader-geniuses with a people remain with this people, in that the same forces live on in this people, and that one can truly say that out there in the fields to the east and west, the same forces live in those who have to enter the scene of events with blood and soul, the same forces live as they lived in the best leadership geniuses of the people.

Two of these leading geniuses shall be singled out today. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” says a weighty word; by the fruits one can also recognize what is contained in the deepest forces of the national soul, and these fruits, these highest fruits, which grow out of the roots and trunk of the national soul, these are the deeds of the leading geniuses of a nation. Therefore, one can say: Let the forces blow over our fields in the east and west, which we can also perceive in such spirits as those who are to be singled out today from the culture of Central Europe, in Schiller and Fichte.

And let us start from a moment that is particularly suitable for these two guiding geniuses, to bring them close to our feelings. I do not want to evoke sentimental feelings by starting with the last moments of Schiller and Fichte, with those moments when they passed through the gateway of death, but because I believe that the symbolic and the symptomatically significant of these geniuses are indeed characteristically expressed in the moment of their death.

Here we turn to Schiller. It is indeed remarkable that we have grown so fond of spirits like Schiller that literature, to our great satisfaction, gives us the means to observe the most intimate personal side of these geniuses as well. And so we can almost step in front of Schiller's sickbed and dying bed from the accounts of the younger Voß, Schiller's friend, and let the fact have its effect on us, in which the victory of the soul over the external body has been expressed in this spirit.

We can follow the last days of this genius, can follow how his body was visibly dedicated to death and only maintained itself through the tremendous power of his soul. Then we accompany him into the death chamber, see how this spirit, in the hour of death, is directed towards the highest things, see how he has his youngest child brought to him, how he takes it and looks deeply into its eyes, how he gives it back and turns away. We can guess, as the younger Voß suggests, what thoughts may have crossed his mind: how much he, as a father, could and should have been for this child. And it is truly not a sentimental feeling when one says: this looking into the eyes of the child, one feels it as a symbolic looking into the eyes of the German people. When one allows the whole personality of Schiller to take effect on oneself, then one says to oneself: He had to go through the gate of death with the feeling of how much should have emerged from the seeds he had sown in the cultural field of the German people. That is why we, with a deep interest in the development of German culture, are looking closely at the living Schiller, at the Schiller who is still alive today, at the Schiller from whom radiate the forces that can still be effective in our souls today.

A similar moment is the moment of death in Fichte, in Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great German philosopher, one might say the most energetic philosopher who has ever walked through the history of philosophy. When the German people had experienced the deepest humiliation, Johann Gottlieb Fichte spoke to them the most invigorating words in his “Discourses to the German Nation,” and when the time came for the German people to seek liberation from their humiliation, Fichte took the most heartfelt interest, interest with his whole personality, and we feel this interest most keenly when we look at his last days. His wife was a nurse. She brought the military hospital fever home with her. She recovered, but passed it on to the philosopher himself. And now we see him: a kind of victim of the war in his last days and hours. The philosopher who had found the most powerful words to characterize the inner life of the human soul in its strength, the philosopher who, in his “Speeches to the German Nation,” sought to understand and proclaim the German essence, as he himself always said, from the “roots of life's stirrings,” where did his thoughts dwell in his last hours? Oh, it is very characteristic: in the feverish delirium of his last hours, he felt - Johann Gottlieb Fichte - his soul at the battlefields, at the crossing of the Rhine, which was just taking place under Blücher. His thoughts were absorbed in the feverish fantasy of participating in the war. When his son approached his bedside and offered him a medicine, Fichte said that he could not have experienced anything more satisfying than this upsurge of his people. He pushed the medicine away and said, “I know that I will recover.” These were his last moments. A philosopher, ladies and gentlemen, bearing in mind the saying: “You shall know them by their fruits.”

What Schiller and Fichte can be to their people expresses what also lives in this people today, what this people fights and bleeds for. That which is real in the world reveals itself outwardly in the most diverse stages of transformation; but one can recognize that which lives in the national instincts, in the subconscious soul stirrings of the members of this nation, by the fruits, where it is expressed at its highest peak.

It was in a time of great difficulty that Fichte delivered his “Speeches to the German Nation” to his oppressed people. Right at the beginning, he raised three questions, three questions that can be said to have only limited significance today. The first question is: Is there a German nation in truth and reality and is its existence in danger? Regarding the last words, however, the question can still be asked today. The second question is: Is it worth the effort to devise the means for this German nation to continue to exist and to exist in what way? Well, I think one need only look at Schiller and Fichte and the others related to them and one will find: The nineteenth century answered this question through the facts of its German cultural development. And the third question that Fichte raises is: what means are suitable for helping the German people to achieve a future that corresponds to them? Today, we should be particularly concerned with what Fichte sought as the sources from which he spoke at that time about these means for his people, what occupied him as the sources from which he tried to hint at the essence of Germanness, as he said.

It must be admitted that what he said about Germany, what he indicated as the means for developing this Germanness, did not find its expression in the nineteenth century, and today we must think differently about things than Fichte did, differently about the significance of a nation's language than Fichte thought at the time, differently about the effectiveness of precisely the kind of educational method that Fichte indicated, because in it he saw the means to secure the future of the German people. What matters is not that, but rather the soul-germs out of which Fichte spoke his powerful words at that time; for out of these soul-germs the German people still live today.

And I believe I am not saying anything unjustified when I say that in particular what I have meant from this place as spiritual science has often been discussed, and may be linked to Johann Gottlieb Fichte , for even if what he spoke in his time sounds different from the results of spiritual science today, the same soul-germs gave rise to Fichte's science in his time and to spiritual science in our time, as I believe. This can be shown in detail. For those of the honored listeners who in past years have heard much of what has been said from this place about spiritual science, it will be clear without further ado what I want to suggest briefly and in general terms about spiritual science.

What is the essence of spiritual science? In relation to the search for spiritual results, it consists in the fact that spiritual science, unlike the other sciences, the external sciences, does not merely go to what presents itself to the external senses and shines to the mind when it devotes itself to the external world, but that it goes to what arises in the soul when it remains passive to things, but that it goes to what can only be can be recognized and experienced when the soul - allow me to use this word of Johann Gottlieb Fichte - goes to the deepest roots of its life impulses, when it actively seeks to recognize inwardly, when it not only allows the world to flow into it, but when it tries to embrace the world in its innermost core by invoking the deepest forces lying within the soul.

And so, one could say, without being presumptuous about respect to conventional science, spiritual science is a kind of science that relies on the inner courage of the soul, on being inwardly stirred, on grasping the world in one's activity. And here we may say: in all the impulses of the development of German culture – this is particularly evident in minds such as Fichte and Schiller – in all these impulses of the development of German culture, it is found, either in a germinal or more or less explicitly suggested form, that man finds knowledge of the world by seeking knowledge of the soul in his innermost being. We need only recall what is so epigrammatically presented to us in Goethe's Faust, where Faust encounters the spirit and speaks to it:

Exalted spirit, thou hast given me, given me everything
I asked for. Thou didst not in vain
turned Thy face to me in fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature of a kingdom,
the power to feel and enjoy it. Not
only dost Thou permit cold, wondering visit,
but givest me the right to look into her deep breast,
as into the bosom of a friend.
Thou leadest the line of the living
before me, and teach me to know my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.

And then, after this suggestion of how the spirit – the spirit that lives and moves in all things – reveals the secrets of nature to him, Faust draws attention to how this knowledge is connected to the living comprehension of one's own soul.

And when the storm rages and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce topples, crushing neighboring branches
And neighboring trunks, sweeping down
And the hill thunders hollowly with its fall,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Then myself, and to my own chest
open up to me, and the deep, secret wonders of my own breast are revealed to me.

The one - and this is more or less the meaning of the whole spiritual cultural development of Central Europe - the one who is able to recognize himself in the deepest soul as a spiritual being, does not get involved in setting the boundaries of knowledge, because he knows: wherever he goes, the spiritual part of his soul goes with him. And he will find spiritual essence everywhere. And so arises (I can only hint at this today) from this spiritual science, living in the activity of the soul, a knowledge of the human being, the human being that goes through its temporal existence in the body between birth and death, but which belongs to eternity, which enters through birth into physical existence, which through the gate of death again emerges into the spiritual world and there experiences its further destiny. And it is not only in a theoretical sense that the nature of the soul is spoken of in spiritual science, but spiritual science, in its active recognition, brings to life that which lives in man as an eternal being; it makes this recognizable by showing that one can look from the spirit, which is free from the body, at that which lies between birth and death in the human body.

Spiritual science does not merely want to provide theories, but rather an expansion of spiritual experience. And so it comes to the conclusion that it is possible for those who apply the spiritual research method to their own soul to experience the moment that a person experiences in the natural progression when they pass through the gate of death: to look at what the body and bodily laws are from the being that is outside of the body. The retrospective view of the bodily and the sense of oneself in the spiritual as a real inner experience is one of the foundations of spiritual-scientific knowledge.

Now we turn to Fichte, to something that he gave right at the beginning of his “Speeches to the German Nation”. And from what he gave there, one can see what he meant by what he often emphasized: to make human wisdom out of the innermost “roots of the stirrings of life.” Fichte wants - I have to say this so that his words can be understood - to indicate how it seems to him when someone comes to him and says: Oh, what you tell us about a special education, , about rejuvenating the nation, that can no longer make an impression on us; because it is all so contrary to what we have experienced so far that we lack the possibility of having confidence in this completely different thing. And then Fichte says, as it were, as an objection: He who speaks in this way seems to him to be a person whom he now characterizes in the following way. Fichte says:

Time

— he means his time —

seems to me like a shadow that stands over its corpses, from which an army of diseases has just driven it, and laments and cannot tear its gaze away from the formerly so beloved shell and desperately tries all means to get back into the dwelling of the plagues. Although the invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the departed has entered, have already taken her in and surround her with a warm breath of love, although she is greeted by the [joyful, secret] voices of her sisters and welcomed, although she is already stirring and expanding [within herself] in all directions, to develop the more glorious form into which it is to mature, but as yet it has no feeling for these [breezes] or no hearing for these voices, or if it did have it, it is absorbed in pain over its loss, with [which] it believes itself to have been lost.

Fichte rejects one objection and characterizes the person who wants to look back at the old that is facing the new, as well as the spiritual researcher who comes to the certainty: When the soul has gone through the gate of death, it stands as a truly observing being in front of its corpse and looks at it like an external object.

Now, esteemed attendees, I do not believe that anyone can doubt that Fichte could only arrive at such a symbol because the seeds of spiritual science were already alive in him, just as they were able to live in the energetic philosopher in his time. And was it not Fichte who, time and again, at every opportunity, tried to make clear how all being of the outer sense is rooted in the spiritual?

Only a few characteristic words from his penetrating “Speeches to the German Nation” will be mentioned here:

Time and eternity and infinity beholds

– and he means his philosophy –

in its emergence from the appearance and becoming visible of that One, which is absolutely invisible in itself, and only in this invisibility of it is grasped, correctly grasped. (..)

All persistent existence appearing as non-spiritual life

- says Fichte —

is only an empty shadow, cast out of seeing and mediated many times over by the Nothing. In contrast to this and through the recognition of this as a many times mediated Nothing, seeing itself is to be elevated to the recognition of its own Nothing and to the acknowledgment of the Invisible as the only true thing.

One grasps Fichte, as it were, at the very root of his being when one hears such words from him, and when did he utter such words? They came to him at a time when he wanted to speak about the essence of Germanness, as he coined the word. But what is it that this essence expresses? For Fichte, it is that which does not lead to a philosophy of death, to a philosophy of matter, to a philosophy of outer sensuality or observation of the senses, but which leads to the knowledge of that world in which the eternal is rooted in the human soul as in the universal cosmic eternal. And out of the energy of his being, out of the deepest 'roots of life impulses', Fichte tried to grasp in its cosmic significance that which gives the human being within him the guarantee of his eternal being. Fichte opposes everything that can be sensually perceived in its highest forms, everything that confronts man in the outer sun and planets and in other outer beings; and he opposes all this with what he believes he knows to be the essence of the self rooted in man, the eternal self that passes through birth and death.

And in his writing, which he was compelled to write because of the charge of atheism, he spoke in a wonderful way about this energetic consciousness of the eternal nature of the human soul. He also addresses what is external reality, and in contrast to this external reality, he sets the spiritual, which can be grasped in the innermost inner human being. It is as if he were addressing what passes before us as sun and planets, to which Fichte says:

You are changeable, not I. All your transformations are only my spectacle, and I will always hover unscathed above the ruins of your forms. That the forces which are to destroy the inner sphere of my activity [which I call my body] are already in effect now does not surprise me; this body belongs to You and is transient like everything that belongs to You, but this body is not I. I myself will hover over its ruins, and its dissolution will be my spectacle. That the forces are already at work which will destroy my outer sphere [that has only now begun to become so in the next points] - which will destroy you, you shining suns all, and the thousand times thousand world bodies [that roll around you], cannot alienate me; you are [by your birth] doomed to death. But [when, among the millions of suns that shine above my head, the youngest will have long since exhausted their last spark of light,] then I will still be the same, unharmed and unchanged, as I am now; and when [from your ruins, new solar systems will have converged as many times as there are of you, all of you shining above my head, and the] youngest of all her [last] sparks of light [will have long since been exhausted], then I will still be, unharmed and unchanged, the same as I am today.

Dear attendees, these are words that may be said – as the spiritual researcher may mean – one might claim that Fichte's soul sought the body within the Central European people in order to find the language with this corporeality, thus to speak of the eternity of the human self, of its triumph over the external world of the senses. Everything that Fichte, one might say, out of this consciousness, also transferred into his “Discourses to the German Nation” as their deepest inner forces, all this is basically for Fichte always the basis for answering another question, the question that can be characterized as the question: How does man find what he is supposed to be in the highest sense of the word? And there we stand, one might say, before the peculiarity of how German culture actually wants to understand this humanity.

Fichte, with powerful words, has indicated how it is basically in the nature of Germanness to transcend Germanness precisely through Germanness, to represent humanity in its generality, to seek out in the human soul that which is elevated above all nationality, above all limitations of space and time. Therefore, one can say: the Englishman is English, the Frenchman is French; the same cannot be said for the German, fundamentally, if one wants to grasp the essence of his Germanness in the spirit of such geniuses as Fichte and Schiller were. The Englishman is English, the Frenchman is French, the German has at his innermost being the question: How can I become German? And this German is always standing before him like an ideal, which he wants to approach, which he first wants to become. And when he believes he has grasped it, which lies in the innermost stirrings of human life, in order to become such, then, precisely through his Germanness, he rises above the narrow bounds of nationality.

Fichte's statement is characteristic in this regard:

The principle according to which she

- he means German philosophy -

to conclude this, is presented to her what spirituality and freedom [this spirituality believes] and the eternal development of this spirituality through freedom wants, that wherever it is born and in whatever language it speaks, it is of our kind, it belongs to us and it will join us.

It is certainly legitimate to point to this ideal of becoming German in our own day, when the word “German barbarism” has arisen from all corners of the compass and when, as it seems and as we shall shortly will be shown, the judgments that are passed on Germanness today are based on nothing other than the necessary misunderstanding that must arise when there is no sense of what Schiller and Fichte, for example, understood to be the essence of their people.

Let us now turn our gaze away from Fichte and towards Schiller! One could cite many things about Schiller; one could go into this or that of his poetry and writings! But to grasp what connects him to Fichte and what connects him to the essence of German culture, one must point to a work by Schiller that unfortunately is appreciated very little, and basically, but which, if it is appreciated properly, shows how this striving for becoming German, which for Schiller is identical with becoming human, how this striving has been expressed in Schiller. And this writing is the one in which Schiller expresses himself in a very general, human, non-philosophical way: the “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man”. What does he want to present to his fellow human beings in these letters?

Oh, Schiller is deeply convinced that the outer man who stands before us, who goes through birth and death, is only the outer shell of man, and that man's endeavor must be to seek the higher man in man. Schiller seeks it in his own way, according to the peculiarities of his own time, but he seeks it characteristically. On the one hand, he says to himself: out there is the world of the senses, sensory forces that have an effect on people. Schiller summarizes everything that is brought about in man under the concept of external natural necessity, also in man. Can man truly be human if he is subject to this natural necessity, he asks. No, is the answer, then he is a slave to this natural necessity. There is something else, there is the rigid concept of reason; everything that can be understood by theory, everything that reason can think up, can man, if he devotes himself to it, be fully human? No, says Schiller, because then man is subject to the compulsion of the necessity of reason, he is its slave. How do you free the true human being from himself, as it were? Then we release him, when we come to feel what reason inspires in us in the same way that we feel the sweetness of a sensual impression, when we lovingly feel what higher spirituality is in the same meaningful way that we can lovingly feel through the senses what makes an impression on them. Schiller seeks to elevate what is sensual into the sphere of spirituality, and to grasp what is spiritual with the freshness and liveliness of the senses. Then, in this middle state, man becomes free. When this thought is suggested, it cannot immediately make the impression it does when the human soul completely immerses itself in it. This is a thought that seeks to answer the question of what path of development a person should embark upon if they want to rise above themselves, if they want to redeem the person hidden within them and come to a higher conception of reality.

One could say that such thoughts arose at the pinnacle of human development. And how does Schiller seek to interweave his thoughts with everything that he is aware of as the essence of his people? In our days, Schiller's words have often been quoted – beautiful words – in which he, as it were, sees the essence of the German people, which he himself, as the highest human being, seeks to fathom in his aesthetic letters.

To

- says Schiller -

who forms and rules the mind,

must ultimately become the ruler, because

finally at the goal of time, if the

world has a plan, if human

life has any meaning, finally

must win the custom and reason,

the brute force of form must succumb

and the slowest people will catch up with

all the fast, fleeting ones.

[...]

He is destined for the highest,

and just as he is in the middle of

Europe's nations,

he is the core of humanity,

they are the flower and the leaf.

He is chosen by the world spirit, during

the struggle of time

to work on the eternal construction of human education

to preserve what time brings,

therefore he has appropriated what was previously foreign

and kept it within himself.

Everything that was valuable in other times

and peoples, which arose with time and vanished, he has preserved;

it is not lost to him, the treasures of

centuries.

Not to shine in the moment and

to play his role, but to win the great

process of time. Every people

has its day in history, but

the day of the German is the harvest of

all time.

And so one may say, when looking at these two geniuses, Fichte and Schiller, that the deepest German search and striving is to seek and fathom the most general human, the higher self in man - as spiritual science would say - and how one can live one's way into it. In this they stand, one might say, at the dawn of the development for which we seek the sun, of that development which a culture is capable of creating, which, whatever external undertakings it may pursue, to whatever flowering it may come in the external world, seeks only to use this external world to find the body for a soul, for that soul which we can best characterize when we look to such geniuses as Schiller and Fichte.

One may now raise the question: did the people of Schiller and Fichte live on after these geniuses had departed from the physical world? Is it disputable that the spirit that lived on a peak in Schiller and Fichte, that it also progresses in the plains of German intellectual life?

Well, esteemed attendees, I was reluctant to talk about this question when I should somehow be calling upon German judgment itself. This could very easily be taken as a kind of self-aggrandizement, as a kind of self-deception. So let another way be chosen to characterize the extent to which the belief can be justified that in the course of intellectual culture after Fichte and Schiller down to our time something of this Fichte and Schiller and all the geniuses related to them, above all also of Goethe, whether something of this lived. We need not dwell on what Germans can think about this survival of the soul in Fichte and Schiller and Goethe; we may first refer to a man who did not think and write in German, but who stood on the heights of nineteenth-century cultural development: Emerson.

What I want to present as an opinion about what survived of Schiller's, Fichte's, Goethe's soul, is presented with words that were originally written in English by the English American Emerson. He – not a German, but an English-speaking American – says:

One quality in particular that Goethe shares with his entire nation makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public: that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth. In England and America, people respect talent, but they are only satisfied when it works for or against a party of his conviction. In France, one is already delighted to see brilliant ideas going wherever they want. In all these countries, however, talented men write as far as their gifts reach. If what they present stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours.

He continues:

The German mind has neither the French liveliness nor the Englishman's practical understanding nor, finally, the American adventurousness, but what it does have is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: “Where does this lead?” The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and express himself in a way that is appropriate to them: intellectual activity is present, so what does it stand for? What is the man's opinion? Where does it come from? Where does he get all these thoughts?

At another point he says:

The English [...] see only the individual, they do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.

The Germans think for Europe.

The English do not grasp the depth of the German mind.

And now another of Emerson's judgments about this German character:

For this reason,

he says,

the distinctive terms used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and the French, who are honored for their acumen and learning, approach their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality, and their personal character is not too deeply connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves, is not too deeply connected, Goethe, the head and content of the German nation, speaks, not because he has talent, but the truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, even though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. No matter how excellent what he says is, he has something even better in mind [...] He has that fearsome independence that arises from dealing with the truth.

So judges, dear ladies and gentlemen, a nineteenth-century writer writing in English, one of the greatest, about those who are today called the German “barbarians”. What could be characterized as self-aggrandizement or something else, if only it could be taken out of German judgments, must be understood differently if it comes from such a place.

But now, esteemed attendees, is such a judgment only heard at such heights of humanity as Emerson's, and do others perhaps have a different judgment in general? We may point to a very recent judgment, as it were, juxtaposing it with that judgment about Germanness. Those who do not have the time or opportunity to read Miss Wylie's book 'Eight Years in Germany' can also take the very nice excerpts that Hofmiller has made of it and find important sayings from that book in them, getting an overview of an English-written judgment on the German character, written a few months before the outbreak of the war. But when and how was it written? Not written in the way that many people write today when they speak of the German “barbarians”, but written in such a way that the writer first spent eight years in Germany, got to know everything, delved deeper into the essence she wanted to describe. After visiting hospitals, schools, medical and other institutions, she wrote about the German character in English:

We read a lot [...] about the new Germany and its new spirit. But there is no new Germany and no new spirit. What exists is the mature work of generations, what has always been. Blinded by the sudden splendor of Germany's prosperity, we are inclined to forget that, except for prosperity, it has rarely occupied a place other than one of the very top among nations. In religion and philosophy, Germany shone at a time when everything around her was dark; in literature, she gave an epoch-making impetus; in music, she has always dominated [...].

German literature, German religion, German philosophy are

- to us Englishmen -

are books with seven seals. What we know is how many dreadnaughts Germany has and how much her trade has increased. What is really important is not the dreadnaught, but the brain of its builder, the courage and skill of its commander. What is really important is not the increase in sales, but the human qualities that prompted it. Forty years ago, Germany was fighting for its existence, and it is still fighting for it today. It is completely wrong to believe that Germany is already at its peak. It is fighting a quiet but determined battle against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago. [...]

At every border and across the water, opponents sit, commercially and politically, eagerly awaiting the moment when Germany slackens just a little, to pounce on it and overwhelm it. Germany knows this very well.

Many of the judgments, esteemed attendees, that are being read today, where are they being read? In newspapers, including English newspapers. Not so long ago, in 1912, a number of scholars in Manchester gave lectures on German nature, German politics, German history, German education, German economics, German literature. In the preface to the book, which was also translated into German and is called “Germany in the Nineteenth Century”, published by Herford, we are given a hint as to why these lectures were given. They were given, so we are told, to teach people from the press somewhat correct ideas about the German character.

We shall quote only a few of Herford's individual words, spoken in England and in English, about the German character:

On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Reich has contributed to world peace. This explanation will seem strange to those who know nothing but the events of the present and for whom history is nothing more than an ever-changing, dazzling cinematograph. But history should be something more. It is for history to shed light on the tangled web of the present, and in that higher light, things that seem hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For if we look to the past, we find that our ancestors looked at France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And our ancestors had good reason to fear them. [...]

To sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe and therefore also for Great Britain. For the events of the years 1866-1871 put an end once and for all to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the previously unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed a temptation to war that had so often often tempted into the wrong channels; they put the German people in a position to develop their hitherto stunted political abilities, and they helped to establish on a firm basis a new European system that has preserved the peace for forty years. This blessing resulted from the fact that German unity achieved in one fell swoop what Great Britain, despite all its expenditure of blood and money, had never been able to achieve, namely, to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a major war became the most dangerous of all ventures.

In 1912, these words were spoken in English in England, for the press, so that they would be better informed about German character. I leave it to each individual to decide what these press people learned from these lectures. When these lectures were printed, a man whose name may have also come up for discussion in recent days wrote a preface to them. In this preface, written by Lord Haldane, are the words:

The source of the stream of

—Germany's—

spiritual and political life lies in the Reformation. But at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a current unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as continuous as it has been characteristic since that time. Since the days of ancient Greece, the world has not seen such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of modern Germany is to a great extent material and practical.

And further:

Only the influence of true knowledge can dispel the clouds of mistrust and free us from the burden of arming ourselves against attacks that in reality none of us has in mind.

Dear attendees, in this book there is something else that is highly, highly remarkable, something quite unique. Something that was also spoken in English in Manchester in 1912: “No German words are more deeply imbued with the juice of national ethics than those that describe these things: true, thorough, loyal.”

I do not wish to express this as something that only sounds out of the German soul, but we have heard it across the Channel: “true, thorough, faithful” are words that, more than any other words, are “imbued with the juice of national ethics”.

Now, let us – without, of course, engaging in day-to-day politics or speaking about the events without authorization – let us tie what we are experiencing in our days to these words. In recent weeks, it has often been rightly pointed out how the current war originated in southeastern Europe, and how Austria's mission – one might say – in relation to Bosnia and Herzegovina is linked to these war events, all the way down to the Balkans.

I, esteemed attendees, lived in Austria during the aftermath of Austria's undertaking this mission. Those who lived in Austria at the time and tried to look into the course of events in the 1980s often heard a word that had been cleverly and humorously coined by Bismarck, but which, one might say, expressed something related to fate. “There are autumn crocuses in Austria,” he said. Autumn crocuses! You see, the Austrian liberals had a leader named [Eduard] Herbst. He was a great, important man. These liberals, under Herbst's leadership, had resisted what Bismarck considered to be Austria's advance into the east, which was in keeping with the times and his views. That is why Bismarck called them “Herbstzeitlose” (autumn crocus). Well, one does not need to cite human judgments everywhere, which arise very easily from feelings and passions, which come from sympathies and antipathies; but history is actually the real teacher of things.

What, then, did Austria do that led to the events that are intimately connected with what is happening today, with everything that is happening today? All of this goes back to its ultimate beginning, to the mission that was assigned to Austria at the Congress of Berlin to advance into the Balkans. Who was it that opposed Russia's intentions at the Congress of Berlin and advocated this mission for Austria? It was British policy. Above all, it was those who represented British policy at the time who assigned this mission to Austria. This put Germany in a difficult position with regard to Russia.

Everything that happened after that, up to the assassination of the Archduke, is only the consequence of what was conferred upon Austria at the Congress of Berlin, for anyone who looks back in history with understanding. Today Germany and Austria must take the stage for what England conferred upon Austria at that time, and England is among the enemies of Germany and Austria.

That, dearest present, is the consequence of history. When one speaks of loyalty, there is also a loyalty to what one has once done. When one is characterized from the English point of view, one cannot help but say: “No words are so deeply imbued with the ‘juice of national ethics’ as those that describe these things: ”true , thoroughly, faithfully” – one cannot help but take these words seriously, and one would like to ask: Is it inner truthfulness to act in 1914 against what one initiated decades earlier? Is it thorough, and above all, is it faithful? Such questions may be raised today.

And when you consider all of this, then yes, then you have to say: Is it really possible to discern from the most recent events what the German character is, how it is connected to its great geniuses, and how this German character must relate to today's events? It cannot truly be seen from the latter, no matter how many compilations are made about the very latest events. It must be seen from what ruled in the deeper forces of Europe and what ultimately led to today's events. But something ruled in these forces of Europe, that is what lived on in Fichte, Schiller, Goethe and the others in the German people, in the peoples of Central Europe.

One man whom I would always like to mention is Herman Grimm, whom I would always like to call Goethe's governor. He tried to express in beautiful artistic words what he had absorbed from the great German period, what had become a world view. And these words of Herman Grimm, which express a feeling, not a judgment, and may therefore be taken from the German essence itself – in contrast to the judgments of non-Germans cited above – are cited as a testimony to how the seeds of the spiritual way of thinking of Fichte, Schiller and Goethe have taken root in people. How beautifully this was expressed in Herman Grimm's words, which he wrote in his Homer book:

The solidarity of the moral convictions of all people is today the church that unites us all. We are looking more passionately than ever for a visible expression of this community. All truly serious aspirations of the masses have only this one goal. The separation of nations no longer exists here. We feel that no national distinction exists in the face of the ethical world view. We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland; but we are far from anticipating or bringing about the moment when this can happen through war. The assurance that keeping the peace is our [all's] most sacred wish is no lie. “Peace on earth and goodwill towards men” permeates us.

So Herman Grimm 1895 - since 1901 he is dead, and then how the look into the spiritual world of Herman Grimm's words:

Recognizing people as a totality, submitting to an invisible court enthroned as if in the clouds, before which not to be allowed to exist is considered by them as a misfortune, and whose judicial proceedings they seek to adapt to their internal disputes. With anxious eagerness they seek their right here. How the French of today are at pains to present the war against Germany that they are planning as a moral imperative, demanding that other nations, even the Germans themselves, recognize it.

Anyone familiar with the German character knows that these words are taken from the innermost being of the German people, that they were truly not a lie in the mood of the German character. But the Germans have never subscribed to an opinion that is different, which Herman Grimm expressed in 1895:

How the present-day French are endeavoring to present the war against Germany, which they are planning, as a moral imperative, demanding recognition of it from other nations, even from the Germans themselves.

Dear attendees, compared to what one could know by looking at the driving forces of Europe with a gaze that is strengthened by the essence that has reached its highest level in Schiller, Fichte and Goethe – looking at these forces means recognizing that the answer to what has recently been heard again from across the Rhine must be given in a completely different way: Who wanted this war, those of mine who want to answer this question themselves? I believe that, when faced with the deeper forces at work in European life, it can be said with certainty, if one wants to proceed with a certain external sophistry: this or that did not want the war. One can say perhaps: not everyone wanted it – this can be proven sophistically. But one can also ask a different question, because whether the answer is correct depends on the correct formulation of the question. Who would have been able to avoid the war? And here only one answer is possible: only the Petersburg politicians would have been able to avoid the war. But this too need not be proved from the most recent events, from Blue and Yellow Books; it can be proved from the effective forces at work in the last decades within the life of the nations of Europe. And I will try, in a way that may perhaps be felt to be peculiar, to draw attention to how one can find the thing that has come to expression in this terrible war today as competing effective forces.

Let us assume that someone had taken it upon themselves to observe how provocative press reports were coming from Russia this spring, as these hinted at a certain mood that became more and more intense during the spring. He would then have followed the events of July, the last days of July, and he would also have tried to talk to some well-meaning Russian friends who see the better sides of the Russian people and would like to overlook what was going on as a real will directed against peace. What could someone who had proceeded in this way have said today, that is, this summer? He could have characterized this summer as follows: He could have described how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, attacking German politics. These attacks intensified into strong demands for pressure that Germany should exert on Austria in matters where Germany could not easily attack Austrian rights. One could not lend a hand to this, because if one alienated Austria from Germany, then one would necessarily become dependent on Russia in Germany. Would such a dependency have been tolerable? One could have believed it earlier by saying to oneself that one had no conflicting interests with Russia, one could even ask Russian friends who would explain this or that to one, and one could not contradict them. But the process, in view of everything, shows, when one considers what is happening in Russia, that even a complete subordination of Germany to Russia cannot protect us against our striving not to come into conflict with Russia. With these words one can characterize what took place between Europe's center and east; the words fit our present situation.

But now I have done something strange; I have only slightly altered words; because I did not make these words myself, not for our present situation; they are altered from words that Bismarck spoke in the German Reichstag in 1888. Bismarck said in 1888:

[...] how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, attacking German politics and personally suspecting me of ulterior motives. These attacks intensified during the following year until 1879, with strong demands for pressure to be exerted on Austria in matters where we could not readily challenge Austrian law. I could not lend a hand to this; for if we estranged ourselves from Austria, we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such a dependency have been tolerable? I had previously believed it could be, by telling myself: We have no conflicting interests, there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. At least I had not directly contradicted my Russian colleagues who explained such things to me. The incident at the Congress disappointed me, and showed me that even the complete subordination of our policy (for a certain time) to the Russian policy did not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think that if the very same words can be applied to 1914, which were aptly applied by Germany's greatest statesman in 1888, then this is an extremely strong indication of the explosive elements that have always been present; that one must look for what is at stake in this war in terms of something other than merely the most recent events is proven by this. And do only people who are steeped in a certain spirituality say that it is the nature of the German to proclaim “peace on earth and goodwill toward men”? I said that anyone who looks into the German essence cannot perceive this as a lie. But those who would like to believe that such a thing only existed in the spiritual heights on which Herman Grimm stood, should look at the words with which Bismarck, in the same session of the Reichstag in 1888, characterized his attitude towards the German sentiment that Herman Grimm expressed when he said: “Peace on earth and goodwill towards men”. That is what is rooted in our deepest souls.

They are remarkable words that Bismarck spoke at the time; he said, roughly: “In a machine like the one we have, you don't wage wars of aggression.” And he concludes his deliberations in this sense, saying: Suppose I were to come before you – in the Reichstag that is – and explain that it is better that we attack, and demand that you grant so many millions of marks, would you have the confidence to grant it? Bismarck said: “I hope not.”

One must look at the moods, at the forces prevailing within the soul, if one wants to recognize the truth, the actuality in this regard. However, Bismarck recognized the truth; he knew that because he stood up for England's demands on Austria regarding the Balkans at the Congress of Berlin, he provoked Russia's antagonism towards Germany, but he also knew that he had had done everything that could mitigate this antagonism, so much so – he said himself – that he could have believed that he would have been awarded the highest Russian order for his services to Russia if he had not already had it. But that was precisely Bismarck's constant endeavor, to postpone for as long as possible what threatened from the east.

These are just a few examples, esteemed attendees, of what history says, what history says to those who delve into the fundamentals that can provide real answers to the question of who wanted this war.

Now, dear attendees, in German intellectual life, as it radiates from such geniuses as Fichte, Schiller, and Goethe, lies much that can, so to speak, give us a clue as to how we are to understand what now so often confronts us as a characteristic of what are called German “barbarians.” Then one could find some very peculiar tests.

There is a European spirit that has also made a great impression in Germany. He once spoke about this in one of his writings, in which he particularly expressed his inclination towards the spiritual life, towards mysticism; he spoke about what he owes to the three greatest mystics, whom he cites and as the third of whom he names a German spirit, Novalis; he speaks about Novalis and what he was to him. Novalis, he says, is like a spirit that leads to heights that are the real heights of humanity. It is basically a very, very beautiful and intimate characteristic of the German spirit Novalis. If an angel - so he says - or a genius from the cosmos descended to earth and wanted to experience on earth what is actually particularly important for the cosmos on earth - one would like to show him everything that Shakespeare has written, what happens between Hamlet and Ophelia and others - that may be very important for the Earth, he says, but even if it is important for the Earth, it would not be necessary for a genius who descended from another planet to Earth to learn something special. This characterization lists many other things that would be unimportant to someone who descended from the cosmos to Earth. But what lives in Novalis' soul, which – for anyone who knows Novalis – is clearly drawn from the deepest depths of the German national spirit, is characterized by this characterization with beautiful words:

But if he needed other evidence, it would lead him among those whose works almost stir to silence.

Because what can be spoken does not express the deepest human essence, he finds in Novalis:

She would open the gate of the realm where some loved her for her own sake, without worrying about the small [gestures] of their bodies. [They would climb together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness rises by one level] and where all those who are restless about themselves [feel] attentively circumvent the immense ring that connects the world of appearances with our [higher] worlds. They would go with him to the boundaries of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably [only] begins [and his most essential and inexhaustible parts are only in the] invisible, where he must be on his guard unceasingly. On these heights alone are thoughts that the soul can approve of, and ideas [that resemble it and are] as commanding [as she is.] There, humanity has ruled for a moment, and these dimly illuminated peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the earth in the realm of spirits: Their reflection is truly the color of our soul. We feel that the passions of the mind and body would resemble the tolling of bells in the eyes of a foreign reason; but the people I am talking about have come out of the small village of passions in their works and said things that are also of value to those who do not belong to the earthly community.

Such are the words of the Novalis critic in Novalis. He who once spoke of Novalis, who once characterized the German soul as giving experiences to the genius who descended from cosmic heights, is Maurice Maeterlinck.

Dear attendees, I have nothing to add to what Maurice Maeterlinck has said today, to what I have quoted, but I would like to say that Novalis spoke a wonderfully beautiful word from a truly German soul. “The only true temple” - says Novalis - “is the human body. In it lies a uniquely heavenly form. It is said to touch heaven when you feel the human body.” So Novalis at a perhaps tangible point.

It is the same as what Goethe says: “What would all the suns, all the stars in the sky, be, all the splendor of the stars, if it did not all shine in the human eye, flow into human hearts and a human soul could delight in it with admiration.”

Those who spoke like Goethe and Novalis felt this out of their spirituality: that there is a supreme work of art, a higher work of art than all human works of art: the human form, the work of divine art. However, only those who know that spiritual beings permeate the world and who see the greatest work of divine art in the human being will speak of the human form as Goethe did. Perhaps this may be recalled in an age when the German is accused of particular “barbarism” because it is said to have happened that some cannonballs also fell on the cathedral of Reims. Now, after seeing this cathedral in 1906, I know for sure that I am the equal of anyone in my admiration of this work of art – however, I have also gained the impression that it is fragile, so that it will not last for much longer will not last long, that it must be damaged by natural causes, but in many a judgment it depends not only on how one stands in relation to this judgment, how one perceives something, but whether one makes this judgment at all or not.

In view of the fact that, against the background of our fateful events, the human form, the work of the gods, is destroyed in countless cases when challenged by fate, then, yes, the judgment may be made that a human work of art can also be fired upon.

And I believe it is already apparent from what I have only been able to hint at, that this German character is intimately, intimately connected with humanity's search for spirituality, for the invisible, and that this search, which has found expression in the German leaders, , is also connected with this, even if only unconsciously, those who with blood and soul in our fateful days must make the sacrifices that must be made for the further development of humanity. And once you have delved into the essence of Central Europe, as expressed in the geniuses we have mentioned, you will no longer be able to object; you will no longer be able to doubt that this Central Europe is a body for a soul, that it contains an invisible power, which invisible power must have a perceptible impulsivity for a higher purpose in its own essence.

And when you look at things this way, then you can feel, no matter what may come: you can feel trust, strength, confidence when once again the German world is faced with the question of being or not being. Not a Hamlet answer, a Faust answer can give the German essence: “Whoever strives, we can redeem them.” One is always becoming German. When Germany has grown old, it can become young again. Goethe has one of the symbols in his “Faust” be the rejuvenating potion.

And where he talks about Goethe, not a German, again the English-speaking Emerson, says with reference to what has become of Goethe, the words:

The world is young, great men of the past call to us with a friendly voice. We must write sacred scriptures to connect the earthly and heavenly worlds. The secret of genius is not to tolerate a lie, to make [everything we are aware of] a truth, to inspire certainty and confidence in books and in people, and to honor every truth, as in the beginning and as in the end, as for endless times, by making it a guide to our actions.

Thus Emerson in reference to Goethe, whom he designates as the head and the content of the nation. And one can be mindful of the words of the American Englishman that it may lie precisely in the mission of the people of Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, to do something of what Emerson points out: “We must write sacred books to reconnect heaven and the earthly world. The secret of genius is not to tolerate that a lie should remain in existence for us."

To what extent this is connected with today's lecture, I leave to you to judge. But I believe that I have at least stammered out the one thing that this lecture has hinted at, which is about the essence of Central Europe, about this culture that, according to Schiller's words, is the heart of Europe - the other is the leaf and the flower - what “great men of the past” make us feel about this culture.

Emerson says: “They call to us with a friendly voice”. We want to hear something of these friendly voices, because perhaps it can be used in our time. How we can arrive at something that can be suggested for our present time by really listening to the living spirit of these minds will be discussed tomorrow. Today, as an introduction, I wanted to point this out, not so much what was in my words, but what emanates from certain German geniuses and can flow into our hearts as consolation, hope, confidence, as a support in our mental and physical life for the present. For it can, when one feels vividly what flows over from the spirits, whose essence lives on in the German national spirit, it can, what flows over, in the soul to a hope, to a confidence, but also to something dense, what one can feel as the deepest truth in Central Europe.

And it is peculiar that, as if from the same spirit in which Goethe, Schiller and Fichte worked, the German-minded Schleiermacher wanted to coin his word about the connection of all human striving with the invisible, who also fell upon it, one can say, to suggest the deepest German essence by pointing to the invisibility of this German essence. And this invisible, this spiritual essence, which Fichte spoke so energetically in times when the German nation was in decline, to encourage it, it still sounds to us today in the right way, even if not in times of humiliation, but in times when we experience a supreme, a wonderful thing, we can just point to what the German nation has always striven for as its most precious. Today, as if from the soul of this German people and for our own consolation, we can say with Schleiermacher, saying with him, still expressing our feelings today in the center of Europe, in the heart of Europe: “Germany is still there and its invisible power is still unweakened.” And today we may add, after all that has developed out of German strength, it may justifiably hope: this invisible strength of the German people is not only unbroken today, it is also indestructible for an incalculable time.

Goethe, who had such a penetrating insight into so many things, once said the following remarkable words about the fate of the Bible in more recent times: For many centuries, people did not actually get their hands on the Bible, but only got to know it indirectly. When wider circles began to take an interest in the Bible, people were more inclined to think critically about the Bible and its origin and much less to delve directly into its content and its effect, so that actually, as Goethe says, since the acquaintance with the Bible in wider circles, much less has been spoken out of the spirit of this document than has been spoken about it.

What Goethe felt a hundred years ago has intensified significantly over the course of this century. In research, it has become increasingly rare to immerse oneself in the spirit of this religious scripture without prejudice; instead, critical research is increasingly conducted to determine how the individual parts correspond, when and how each part originated, and what the external history of this work is. People are paying less and less attention to the spiritual content.

At the same time, Goethe remarks that basically the Bible is the book of books; so says Goethe, this so-called pagan. Yes, he says that it is not going too far to say that everything that lives in our attitudes and feelings, in our perceptions and ideas, in our way of thinking today, is based on the Bible. It is particularly noteworthy that even that in our civilization which has seemingly made us independent of the Bible is nevertheless, if you follow things closely, a result of the Bible. It is so easy to believe that modern science since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is merely an opponent of the Bible. But the power of thought, the direction of imagination, even if seemingly contrary to the Bible, are taken from the depths of the Bible.

Copernicus may have explored the heavens in a way that seemingly contradicted the Bible, but he drew the power of thought from the Bible. Yes, the thought forms of modern monism, of materialism, have gained their strength from the Bible. Those social parties that radically oppose biblical faith have also — this is recognized by anyone who understands the psychology of the soul — drawn the strength of thought and feeling from the Bible. This is most the case with so-called biblical criticism, which, after all, most strongly opposes the Bible. They have gone through this in the culture of the Bible. If one follows this intimate historical course of the new time, one could say in view of this:

Your good nature, in foreign veins,
will soon quarrel with you.

Goethe said this with reference to one of his students who, in certain views, opposed Goethe and became his critic. Thus, it is the thoughts that have taken root in people over the centuries in our Western culture that have made our thinking, feeling and willing strong, the thoughts of our ancestors that struggle with the ancestors in the veins of their descendants.

Among the parts of the Bible that have suffered the most from modern thinking is the Gospel of John, which for centuries was considered the most vivid source of Christianity. This is far less appreciated by modern Bible criticism than the first three, so-called synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The Bible critics try, to the best of their ability, to test the books of Scripture for their historical value. They say that if you examine the first three Gospels, which, if you ignore the details, agree, you will find a picture of Christ Jesus that turns out to be credible. If you add the Gospel of John, there are so many contradictions to the first three Gospels that it is impossible to reconcile it with the first three Gospels. The first three Gospels report historical facts that give a vivid picture of the one who walked around in Palestine. The fourth evangelist, they say, cannot be regarded as a presenter of historical truths. He is rather an enthusiast for the personality of Christ Jesus. His aim was to compose a significant hymn to Christ Jesus, to express in lyrical form what he felt to be the truth about this revered personality, and to merely wrap this in historical facts.

Thus, to many, the fourth gospel does not appear as a historical document, but as a teaching in which one can be edified, like a poem, but which is not suitable to say something about the one who was the founder of the Christian religion on earth. As this view became more and more widespread in the course of the nineteenth century, the scholar Bunsen said in the 1850s: If it were really the case that the Gospel of John could not be taken as a historical document, then it would be bad for historical Christianity.

It cannot be denied that in the first three gospels, Jesus is presented even more humanly than the personality that gradually unfolds in its greatness, but that in the fourth gospel, an accomplished being , who has descended from invisible heights, who has nothing more to learn from his surroundings, who is endowed with grace and truth from the very beginning, who himself carries the fullness of the Godhead within himself.

The first three gospels contain beliefs and doctrines. In the fourth gospel, the essence of Christ Jesus apparently speaks mostly of itself, of what he is supposed to be to humanity and his disciples. These are differences that everyone notices. Those who notice them are pushed to the question: How does this fourth gospel relate to the other three gospels? We must realize that these contradictions have actually always been present, but that through the centuries the wisest people have not taken offense at them. Anyone who does not subscribe to the view that only in the nineteenth century did people become wise knows that in the most ancient times the wisest people endeavored to establish a harmony between the Gospels and also thought that they had succeeded.

Every age understands every thing in the way that the age itself is characterized. In other ages, there was not this exclusively materialistic way of thinking, which has even crept into the criticism of religious writings. Another age did not have that preference for the “simple man from Nazareth”. The urge has arisen more and more to push Christ Jesus down to the level of humanity, to say more and more, “In Him there is indeed an ideal figure, but He is still human.” To measure Him against other people has increasingly become the thinking habit of our time. Other ages have not had this urge; throughout centuries of Christian development there was a different ideal, a different aspiration. In an inaccessible distance stood the Christ Being. All human learning, all depth of wisdom, all depth of feeling and sensing sought to lift themselves up to those heights where one could sense something of that Being. It was believed that only the purest, most refined knowledge could approach this Being. The urge of the older times was to lift oneself up in knowledge and feeling in order to sense the height of that being. Thus nothing other than the spirit of the age in which one thinks, feels and searches is reflected in the conception of the Gospels.

We are now once again in an epoch that wants to elevate people to a higher world. But even though it is only at the beginning, this epoch knows its goal precisely and also knows how to pursue it in detail. The aim of Theosophy is to grasp and understand the Gospel of John. It could well be that the Gospel of John will celebrate a kind of resurrection through the means of this research. Through spiritual research, we will come to understand the evangelist again, who so sublimely presents the essence of Christ Jesus. If we first immerse ourselves in the content using the means of spiritual research, this gospel indeed presents itself as the deepest book of humanity. This gospel has been taken as a book of life throughout many centuries. Perhaps it can become a book of life again.

Let us try to consider some of the things that arise for those who seek to understand in this area. It turns out that the Gospel of John is a writing that is in wonderful congruity with the Old Testament. The Gospel of John begins with the beginning of things, as does the Old Testament. There, the gods create heaven and earth from what was chaos at the beginning. The Gospel of John also begins with the words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

Thus both documents refer us to the beginning. In both cases, humanity's gaze is directed towards the same thing. There is a congruence here, but one that nevertheless reveals a remarkable difference. In the Gospel of John, there is something actually new. In the Old Testament, we are transported to the starting point of humanity. In grand and powerful images, the genesis of the world is shown, up to the human being, who appears to us as the companion of other beings in the world of minerals, plants and animals, presented as an external, visible being. His development is traced back to the development of a people, the Jewish people. It is not a particular human becoming that is described, but rather humanity as it arises in the world, and then ascends to a people. A people is described as a whole. Only those who appreciate the guiding thread in the right way understand the Old Testament correctly. The meaning of the Old Testament lived in the soul of every single Jew. The individual human being feels himself as a member of the whole people. When the Jew wanted to express his innermost feelings, he spoke of his common bond with Abraham. When he wanted to speak of his transcendental nature, which extends beyond death, he spoke of his transcendental self going to Abraham's bosom. He did not feel the separate self, but rather the great national self, and that the common blood connected him with the nation, which leads up to the father Abraham. When he looked up to the Highest, he looked up to a Being Who revealed Himself through the blood of the whole people. Not only was the memory of the patriarch Abraham sacred to him, but also the feeling of unity with him. Further up, the beginning of the world was taken up, how one blood flowed in a coherent human whole and how the cosmic order, God Himself, permeates and spiritualizes such a group of people.

Let us contrast this with the Gospel of John. This also takes as its starting point the beginning of our entire development. However, it does not begin where the Old Testament begins, but rather, in a certain way, before that. The Old Testament places the emergence of the material world, of what can be seen, of what is there for the outer senses, at the very beginning. “And God said, ‘Let there be light!’” (Genesis 1:3) The author of the Gospel of John takes us further back, to an even earlier time, to a point when nothing material yet existed, when only the spiritual was there: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God” (John 1:1), which is nothing other than the spiritual, of which all material things are the manifestation. He says: It is true that the visible world began as it is described in the Old Testament. But it was preceded by a spiritual world. All the laws that were lived out in that primeval beginning are expressed not in any individual, but in the common blood that connects him to the whole people. If we go back to the spirit that precedes this sensual beginning of the world, we also come to that in man which is exalted above all sensuality, above all national context and to that which is found in every human being, in every human individuality. If we put ourselves in the place of the Jew for the God principle, we find: He felt united with the father Abraham when he traced back the whole line of blood.

In John, we find a tremendous advance in relation to this view. What does the Christ of John's Gospel say? In what he says, there is tremendous progress compared to the spirit of the Old Testament. If you examine what appears to us as the deepest human essence, then you need not go beyond the individual human being. The individual human being can stand alone, by himself; he finds the Father within himself, that from which he emerged.

I, my innermost being, I and the Father are one. (John 10:30)

This is the meaning of the herald's call, the revelation of the individual human being. How did Christ Jesus relate to the Jews who went up to the Father Abraham? He said exactly: This human ego lives in you; when you find the human “I” or “I am” in yourselves, the power of individuality, then everyone may say: There is something living in me that is out of time.

Before Abraham was, the I AM was.

What can be experienced in the innermost core of a person's being is more eternal than anything that can be experienced in the external world. We no longer go up to Abraham; we go up to that which will be eternal in us.

I and the Father are one.

Every single person finds access to the eternal through themselves. Thus we ascend to the very beginning of that which lives eternally in each individual.

Thus, the Gospel of John is the significant continuation of what is written in the Old Testament. It presents itself as a revelation of what was before the very beginning of what is presented in the Old Testament. To understand what is meant in the Gospel of John, we have to engage with the use of words. What is meant by the Logos, the Word? One scholar says of the beginning of the Gospel of John that it is not found in the other gospels. They simply tell, albeit steeped in miracle stories, what happened externally. It is said that the writer of the fourth gospel, on the other hand, was a philosopher. John must have known Philo. It can be said of him that he expresses similar speculations to those in the Gospel of John. He also says that the Word stands between the Creator of the world and man. From Alexandrian and Greek education, John drew the elements of his writing. From this, John had conceived that he would tell the story in the Gospel in such a way that the Christ is the Word made flesh. This had not occurred to any other evangelist.

Let us read the beginning of the Gospel of Luke with this in mind:

Since many have undertaken to set in order an account of the same words that have been handed down to us, as they were delivered to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,

Here stands the exact same word or logos. It is said that one wants to retell it to those who have been “servants of the word”. In truth, something else is also there: “as those who have been eyewitnesses and servants of the word know”. — In Luke, there is also a way of speaking that John speaks of the word. He also says that those who know something from the beginning have been eyewitnesses of the word. Among the initiates, it was common at the time to speak of the being that lived in Christ as the Word and to call themselves servants of the Word. The author of the Gospel of John adopted the term “the Word” from the language of the initiates. Only spiritual science can explain what is actually meant by the “Word”. To understand this, we must consider the nature of man in terms of theosophy.

What is known from the external senses is only a part of the human being. Wherever spiritual science or theosophy has been present, there has been exactly the same division of the human being as is taught now. Spiritual science speaks of a second part of the human being, the etheric or life body. It says that the human physical body consists of the same substances as all of nature. But in the human body, these substances are combined in such a way that, if they followed their own laws, the physical body would disintegrate. However, the etheric body prevents this decay. The moment the ether body leaves the physical body, the physical body follows its own laws and decays. The fact that this does not happen during a person's lifetime is due to the fact that the physical body is imbued with the ether or life body.

If we consider that when we look at a person, we are not just looking at their physical and etheric bodies, but also at something that is much closer to them than their physical and etheric bodies, that they are permeated by a sum of pleasure and pain , joy and pain, drives and passions, wishes and desires, we have in it what spiritual science calls the astral body, the third part of the human being, which is much more original than the ether body and the physical body. Just as ice forms out of water, water in a different form, so the ether body and the physical body are a condensed astral body. Spiritual science shows that the etheric and physical bodies are denser astral bodies. The astral body is the cause of the etheric body and the physical body. The human being shares the physical body with all visible beings of nature, with minerals, plants and animals. The etheric body is shared with plants and animals, and the astral body with animals. But there is one thing that human beings have alone that makes them the crown of all beings. Everyone can only say a name to themselves, and that is the name 'I'. No one can pronounce the name 'I' if it is meant to refer to someone else. Everyone can only say this name to themselves. This is where the actual center of a person's nature is revealed; so that spiritual science imagines the human being as having four parts, with the 'I am' as the fourth. This is a power and entity of its own. Jean Paul describes in his biography how the thought first occurred to him: You are an I. He said: “There I looked into the most hidden sanctuary of my soul.” All religions based on spiritual wisdom have sensed this fact. The Hebrew people have also sensed it. Yahweh or Jehovah is nothing other than the “I am”. (Ex 3:14) He is the “I am” and points to the innermost core of human nature. In this ancient Hebrew people, the “I am” or Jehovah was felt to be something that expressed itself in the whole group. They applied this name to that which flowed down through the whole stream of Abraham's blood.

This “I am” – how was it seen? In those places of ancient times, which were called mystery schools, one can say that they were both church and school at the same time. In the mysteries, the mystery students sought to rise to the nature of the “I am”. There they were led from the sensual into the spiritual. A complete renewal of this fourth link of the human being occurred through the appearance of Christ Jesus. The term for this “I am” is the Logos or the Word. From the invisible worlds, the spiritual in the I announced itself, revealed itself in the I, permeated the I.

In terms of their physical body, human beings are an extract of the entire mineral world. This is why we call human beings a microcosm. Their etheric body is an extract of the life forces that live outside in the plant and animal kingdoms. Their astral body is an extract of all the astral forces that live in animals. The I is not related to the surrounding mineral, plant and animal world, but only to the invisible, divine spiritual world. It is an extract of the spiritual, a drop of the substance of the divine. A drop from the ocean of the divine is the I. Thus the Divine penetrates into man and sends its drop into the innermost part of man, and the expression of this Divine is the “I am”. This drop of the divine nature is even older than the astral body. It was in the bosom of the Divine before our astral body came into being.

“In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1), or the “I am”, that innermost power of the human being that represents the eternal. People should become educated so that everyone can find the drop of divinity within themselves if they seek this community within. Man should become educated so that he can find communion with God as an individual individuality within himself.

The knowledge of the Word penetrated into the world, it shone into the darkness of the astral, etheric and physical bodies. Only a few who were not born of the flesh understood it. They could reveal themselves as children of God. But now the eternal, all-embracing aspect of human nature, which was before Abraham, entered in, which every human individuality has. This supersensible power has become flesh in Christ Jesus. Thus, Christ Jesus is the power in the evolution of humanity that wants to lead humanity to the realization of its innermost being, of its “I am”. From this point of view, the Gospel of John and especially that most profound chapter in which so much is said about the “I am” becomes understandable. He says explicitly: “All I say of the ‘I am,’ I do not say of myself” (John 14:10), but He says that when people recognize the power of the “I am,” then they have something higher than all other powers. When you express the “I am,” you speak of the power that also lives in the Light of the world. “I am” lives in everything; it is what permeates the entire being of the earth in all realms. You can only properly explore what the earth gives you as food if you understand the ‘I am.’

I am the bread of life (John 6:48),
I am the vine (John 15:5),
I myself am planted by the Father, and the Father is the vinedresser (John 15:1).

Thus this chapter of John's Gospel presents itself as something that must give people strength and life. These powers are rooted in the Father, the spirit of the world: “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30)

If we go far back in time, we come to times when blood ties played an increasingly important role. They were the basis of what we call love. Love existed only between those in whose veins related blood flowed. In those days, close marriage prevailed. Later, distant marriage replaced close marriage. At that time, only shared blood brought about love. As humanity developed through later eras, the peoples became more and more mixed. The Jewish people felt even more the togetherness of the common blood. But in those days, when Christianity arose, the time began when the peoples were mixed up. That was also the beginning of the time of a new love that is not based on blood. Christ Jesus said: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:37). “If anyone comes to me and does not hate (leave) his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, he cannot be my disciple.” This saying must be interpreted in such a way that at the beginning of the development of the earth, those who were related loved each other; but at the end of the development of the earth, people will love and recognize each other in soul love. That brotherly love that goes from soul to soul, that comes from the spirit, that is the love that takes its starting point from the power of Christ Jesus, which will gain more and more ground in humanity. Where the same blood flowed, there one felt as a member of a group ego. At the end of human development, one will feel as a member of the whole of humanity. One will then seek the “I am” not in the blood of the tribe or people, but in the spirit and in the truth. The Old Testament worships the God in the foundations of nature; in the New Covenant, God will be worshipped in that which is prior to nature, in the spirit and in truth. Even for those who were intimately connected with the Lord, it was not readily understandable how that other love should take the place of the love of blood. Only the Lord's favorite disciple understood this. The other evangelists still tell the whole line of descent to the father Abraham. But the one who came into the world as the being that was embodied in Christ Jesus, he could say: “Before Abraham was, the I AM was.” (John 8:58) That the favorite disciple had understood. He goes up to the extra-temporal in his presentation. There is no external contradiction between the Gospel of John and the other Gospels. It is only the difference between a subordinate and a higher point of view. We are dealing here with different perspectives. If we know this, then we also understand the old Bible interpreters. They knew that one can describe the truth from different points of view.

We so often find the expression “one” and “we” in today's scientific writings: “one cannot see this,” “we cannot see this,” and so on. These “one”s and “we”s take the standpoint of the blind man who wants to judge what can be seen or not seen. Man can judge only what he knows, but not what he does not know. The higher man rises in the spiritual world, the deeper he also looks into the spiritual world. John's perspective may differ from that of the other evangelists, but not the content.

The task of Theosophy is to reawaken understanding of this neglected gospel and to show people its power. Because this gospel has the greatest power, it will also play the greatest role in the future of humanity. Those who delve into the gospel of John will find something that lifts them above all the doubts of science.

In modern times, the world has divided into two halves: the world of nature and the world of moral life. The law of nature is seen as something special, and the moral law as something special. This dichotomy in particular will not be able to exist in the long term. Man had to seek something deeper, something that encompasses both. He must not feel a dichotomy between inside and outside. He no longer feels this dichotomy if he understands the innermost core of the Gospel of John. We find the origin of the world within ourselves through the development of our innermost self. We come to something that encompasses the laws of nature and our innermost being. What the “I am” reveals to us was there as the original spiritual before the external world. The Logos, the Word was there before the outer world. — Thus there is a reconciliation between the external and the innermost nature of man. Especially the chapter of John's Gospel, where the “I am” is spoken of, will be an invincible conqueror of human nature. Only man has lost the thread of recognizing the purely spiritual in it.

Theosophy will again attempt to understand what was said by the one who gave the Gospel of John to mankind. When the revealed word is understood, all natural laws will be recognized as the revealed word, but the inner moral law will also appear as the revealed word. Whether one calls himself an idealist or not, if one judges the document of the spirit only according to what the senses see, then a materialistic attitude lives in us. This has been felt by deeper minds, and they sensed and longed for a time when humanity would learn to understand such things again, for example, Goethe and also Carlyle, who said: “We see in this day and age how external institutions have turned away from the spirit that originally emerged from the grasp of the spirit (religion), and how the spiritual seeks a refuge in the individual soul, or, where it does not find it, how it seeks it in external organizations and founds sect after sect and so on, in order to seek again ways to the original spirit.

But the future of humanity and of Christianity lies in learning to understand again a document such as the Gospel of John. We can follow different points of view in their relationship to the teachings about the world in the religious scriptures as humanity develops.

The first point of view is that of naive belief. The second is the point of view of clever people. When we arrive at the third point of view, people interpret the document of humanity in a mystical sense; they understand it as allegories, as symbols.

The fourth point of view is where we learn to recognize spiritual facts in their unambiguous nature through theosophy. Then one encounters such a document with the deep reverence that its inner greatness demands. This is how one will understand the Gospel of John in the future. In the future, spiritual science will again point the way to the true understanding of the Gospel of John and to the true form of Christianity.

The word initiation belongs to the field of theosophy. When one speaks of theosophy or spiritual science, one should not have the feeling of dealing with something that has only come into being recently. Theosophy is as old as thinking, the yearning of humanity for something eternal, something lasting, which, as a supersensible element, underlies everything that is transitory. In the course of his existence, man becomes more and more familiar with the things and beings around him, insofar as they make an impression on him, hindering or promoting his volitional impulses. He comes to a more or less clear understanding of these things through the forces that prevail behind them; he cannot get to know that which is hidden behind the visible in this way.

Spiritual science is now based on two solid pillars. They may seem like hypotheses to someone who has not yet penetrated spiritual science, but they are certain facts for someone who is increasingly immersed in it.

The first pillar is the belief that behind everything the mind can perceive as the visible world, there is an invisible world, and the second pillar is that man is able to penetrate into this world of the invisible and hidden. Those people who are completely fascinated by materialistic views will consider such a pursuit as fantastic. The judgment of our contemporaries says that in the childhood stage of humanity, people dreamt of something inexplicable behind appearances; because they could not see, they dreamt of gods, ghosts! But today, through science, man has penetrated into the laws of existence, he stands on the manly stage of his existence and could no longer hold on to such childish views.

It is absolutely true that our admirable science has offered us the opportunity to see everything that transcends the knowledge of the physical plane quite differently from how our ancestors saw it. But if, at the same time, it wants to replace the views of our ancestors about the knowledge of the invisible, if, for example, it presents only the most perfect knowledge of the physical as the ideal of natural science, then it is no longer true for us.

Anyone who, knowing the laws of mechanics, looks at a watch, for example, will be able to say, based on this law: This is how the wheels turn, this is how the entire mechanism of the clock moves. He can explain the clock completely from itself. But can we therefore say that the watchmaker is superfluous? If we should ever be able to explain the world like a clock from itself completely and utterly, that does not make what lies behind the world unnecessary.

Others say that there may well be something transcendental behind the sensual, but that we are limited in our knowledge and that human beings are not capable of penetrating into the knowledge of this transcendental. Therefore, they say, there is no need to concern ourselves with it. All this belongs to the realm of faith or belief, and should remain where it belongs.

Spiritual science, however, says the opposite. It says that it is possible for man to gain knowledge of these worlds, that he can make himself capable of penetrating into the supersensible. Admittedly not with the abilities and means that the naturalistic researcher applies in his research; with those one cannot penetrate into the realm of the supersensible. But there are dormant powers in man that he can develop. When he develops them, something occurs for him that can be compared to the operation of a person born blind. It is a tremendous event for a person born blind when the bleak darkness that has surrounded him until now disappears and the world of light and colors emerges for him out of the darkness. A world that has always been around him and that he could not perceive, he can now perceive. But it is an even more powerful, glorious, and higher event for a person when, through inner awakening, through rebirth, inner spiritual senses are awakened in him. Goethe was well informed in these matters. He says: There are many unrecognized and unacknowledged worlds around us, spiritual worlds, and no man today has the right to deny them because he does not recognize them. That would be just as logical as if the blind wanted to deny the world of colors and light around him because he cannot perceive them.

We can develop the ability to perceive the worlds around us. Goethe points this out when he says: Our eyes were indifferent, as yet non-seeing organs. The moment the elemental powers of light conjured up the eyes, a new world of light and color was there for the human being. The development is endless and goes on and on, and when man develops these non-sensory, these supersensible spiritual senses, then new, unknown, unrecognized worlds open up for him, but they were always around him.

Our contemporaries, however, are not inclined to recognize this. Spiritual science encounters much opposition, it is said that it deals with dreamt, fantastic objects. The spiritual scientist can best see how justified it is that people of the present day make this accusation against spiritual science. But it is necessary today to present this spiritual science to people. Humanity will recognize it, it just needs time.

When we speak about the development of such organs and abilities that lie within the human being and that open up new worlds for the human being, we are dealing with people who could be called “we-people” or “man-people”.

When we pick up newspapers or magazines that deal with these things, they say, “We cannot recognize,” or, “One cannot recognize.” They consider the spiritual scientist to be immodest when he says, “We can recognize.” But what is immodest? To want to decide something that one knows nothing about. It is logical to only talk about and decide something that one knows something about.

The source is already indicated, from where what spiritual science says is taken. It is taken from those worlds that can be entered when man develops his spiritual senses. The ordinary knowledge that man has consists of a series of judgments and so on, which man strings together, and this thread constantly slips out of his hand, constantly leaves him. It also leaves him when he sinks into sleep, when happiness and suffering, joy and pain, everything that surrounds him in his daily life, disappears for him. But no one can say, if he possesses logic, that this sum of joy and suffering, of pain and sorrow, etc., disappears in the evening and reappears in the morning. It survives the state of sleep, and man must ask himself: Where then is man's soul, that which we feel as our inner being, that which enchants and moves us, where are these inner powers while we sleep until the moment when they move back into man and become scouts for the world around us? Where is that which conjures up a world of dreams for us, of light, color, warmth and cold? Where is it during the state of sleep? There knowledge escapes man and it also escapes him when death occurs, when that mysterious hour occurs in which man leaves his physical cover forever. Has then the whole content of the soul gone with those physical organs when man no longer retains any physical organs? There it is again, where knowledge of the senses escapes man. Man can say: there must be something behind it, but the man who lives in the world has no need to know what death's gate closes, what sleep hides, we are here to create, to work in the visible world, what do we care about the invisible? But if man could develop his full activity in the sensual, then that could well apply, then he could say: may there be something after death! But the knowledge of what lies beyond death has the greatest significance for life. For the forces in the invisible continually extend into the world of the senses, and we can make use of them if we gain access to the supersensible world. The person who knows nothing of it will gradually, as he lives estranged, be weak and powerless in the knowledge of the supersensible world even in the sensual world. Every object, every being in our environment is permeated by the supersensible world, and we behave weakly and powerlessly if we know nothing of this supersensory. Take, for example, a piece of iron: it contains supersensible magnetic power. If we know nothing of this power, we can only use this iron halfway. And so, everywhere in the sensible, supersensible forces and entities lie dormant. Knowledge of the supersensible is necessary for the human being; it is not something that merely satisfies curiosity. The human being needs this knowledge for his work and activity in this world.

This supersensible world can be reached by developing the powers and abilities that lie dormant in people. Spiritual science points people to these powers and abilities and shows them how to develop them. Spiritual science is not new; there have always been initiates in humanity, and initiation is nothing more than the development of these supersensible powers in people. However, very few people know that there have always been initiated people who were prepared in initiation or secret schools and were able to use the powers and abilities developed there to have experiences in the supersensible worlds just like ordinary people in the sensual world. Such people were always called initiates.

Only those who had passed exact tests in moral, intellectual and spiritual respects could be admitted to such a school, so that they would be able to use those powerful experiences that open up to man when he has crossed the gates to the higher worlds in the right way for the benefit of his fellow human beings. Therefore man had to pass tests; he could only become a disciple if he passed such tests. Of course, people imagine them differently than they actually lie behind them. A person can become initiated if he is able to cross the great secret threshold that lies between the sensual and the supersensual. Initiation is nothing more than what in everyday life would be an operation for someone born blind, but even greater and more powerful, because the senses that make a person capable of perceiving the spiritual worlds are operated on for the person to be initiated. These senses are present in every human being in the germ, they only need to be developed, and that is what is called initiation.

The elementary knowledge that is imparted in Theosophy is only the foundation for a much, much higher knowledge. Even this elementary knowledge of Theosophy today is already one that could not be imparted to wider circles until recently. For it is not without danger for people when they approach this knowledge, although these dangers are often wrongly assessed and exaggerated. The abilities that lie dormant in every soul are those that must be developed: we call them thinking, feeling and willing. Every soul has these abilities. It is a fact that through the habitual exercise of these faculties, when man develops them in the right way, he becomes able to open up a whole range of worlds.

These three abilities can be trained to penetrate ever higher and further into the spiritual worlds if the person has patience and energy to devote to their training. When the person has risen to a certain level, only then are they ready to become an initiate.

We distinguish preliminary stages and actual initiation. However, there is something else associated with it that justifies keeping this knowledge secret from the general public. It still exists as a secret in the sense that for those who are not yet known, for those who have not yet penetrated, what Theosophy communicates initially seems strangely paradoxical; one must not associate anything magical with it. However, there is something else associated with it that justifies the fact that this knowledge still has to be kept secret from the general public. Even what is communicated gives the impression of being fantastic and strange, so that many consider it immature; the spiritual scientist is well aware of this and it cannot be otherwise. But when a person ascends to the sources that underlie everything here in the world of sense, then the human being's judgment about the world and life is so radically transformed that one can say it must seem completely and utterly paradoxical to the ordinary person, so that he cannot do anything with it.

One must be prepared slowly and gradually to be able to bear the truth, and a large part of the secret training consists of learning to bear the great, all-encompassing truths. Initiation comes to him who is prepared and developed to be able to bear these truths. The time must come when a larger number of people, for their good and further development, must have the opportunity to receive this initiation.

Thus we speak first of a preliminary training. In this training, there must be a development of thinking, feeling and will. The former is easily neglected. There is often a greed to be able to look into the supersensible worlds. But those who are to make such knowledge possible for people must first insist that firm, secure thinking be developed first, a thinking that is free of sensuality. What is sensuality-free thinking? If we recall how much of our thinking is built on sensuality: we see the world around us, we absorb its impressions through our senses. An image remains in the person, a memory remains of it, then we think about it; we calculate, everything that is reminiscences of external impressions in our thinking, if we disregard what has been ignited by the outside world, then so little remains that a philosopher says: “It is impossible for a person to develop a thought that is not fueled by the outside world.” Plato had a strange inscription placed above his Temple of Truth: “No stranger to geometry may enter here.” This is not to be taken literally, but rather to mean that one does not necessarily need to learn geometry in order to penetrate into the supersensible world, nor did Plato mean that with this inscription, but that everyone must think as one must think in geometry if one wants to penetrate into the higher worlds. A child, when it learns 2 x 3 = 6 with beans or on the fingers, learns the truth that 2 x 3 = 6. But it is not necessary for a person to learn thinking based on a number in this way. Using points instead of beans is much more useful. It is necessary to arrive at this truth through inner contemplation and to thus obtain contemplation that is free from the senses. For example, a circle is constructed through thinking that is free from the senses. A circle that I draw on the board is a series of chalk mountains when I look at it under the microscope; it is not a circle, the senses cannot give it, it must be there in the inner vision. One must seek the circle in a vision free of the senses.

There is such a thinking free of sensuality in all fields, even if it is denied by some people, for example, for the living beings around us. This has been proven by Goethe. He says in his “World View”: Just as man can construct a triangle, so he can also construct a plant, he calls this the original plant. The archetypal plant is a spiritual being and Goethe says: With this plant in mind, one can follow all plants in their becoming, growing and flourishing. People do not easily understand what Goethe means by this. Schiller was once with him at a lecture given by the naturalist Batsch. The subject was botany. As they were leaving, Schiller said to Goethe, “It is strange how we look at the world in a fragmented way, with no one pointing out the great unifying bond.” Goethe, who had already developed his morphology at the time, replied that there could be another way of looking at it, and drew his “primordial plant” in front of Schiller. Schiller said that this was just an idea, and Goethe replied to him quite sadly: “But then I have my idea in mind.”

He was clear that this was no mere idea. What he had grasped in the primal plant was not just a thought, but he was clear that the plants were created from the spiritual worlds according to this image of the primal plant. How the plants came into being has been grasped here by the human spirit. This is a living thinking into the world of thinking that is free of the senses. We have within us a source from which the whole material world has sprung, and we can resurrect this source. But we can only do so if we have the strength to let the spirit come forth from us. Man can also shape the evolution of history, the course of human development out of himself.

There have been thinkers of this kind. People thought they were fantasists, for example Hegel in his philosophy of history. That is a purely ideal history of humanity. Not all the details in it are to be represented by me, but the principle applies, this attitude underlies the work. There is a kind of mathematics of history, and those who allow themselves to be fertilized and inspired by it will see that it is possible to speak of inner mathematics in relation to history as well.

But all this is not necessary for today's man; but it was demanded in all secret schools in the first stage a thinking free of sensuality in all fields. Elementary Theosophy gives this. How it speaks about the various members of human nature, we do not see them when it presents the development of man, these are images from spiritual experience. Man must live into them with his whole thinking. This is done so that man learns to detach himself from sensuality with his thinking. Initiation is needed to explore the supersensible worlds, but understanding does not require it; only ordinary human logic is needed. For every simple mind, for the most uneducated, there is access to that which Theosophy gives in terms of sensuality-free thinking.

And we should not undervalue what is given to us in theoretical theosophy. The student who approaches the higher worlds is told: first familiarize yourself with what is communicated by those who know about man, his development, his past and future. You must become thoroughly familiar with it. Why is that? Because only those who have trained their thinking in these areas can be protected from certain dangers of supersensible knowledge. When a person enters these invisible worlds, he experiences feelings that are completely unknown to those who do not experience them. He feels in the depths of his soul as if he were standing on a sheet of ice. The ice melts away on all sides, and he sees that the ice has now melted and there is water under his feet. That is how the person feels, because everything he has known so far, his sensory experiences, prove to be a collection of illusions; they melt like ice that has become water. The person realizes that all the ideas he has known so far through his senses are not the real ones. He feels as if he has no grounding. There is a certain difference, the analogy is flawed, like all analogies. Nothing special is happening in the external world when the person who is being initiated undergoes this, but something tremendous is happening within the person. It is not what we see and hear that changes, but all the ideas we have had about it so far sink into the indefinite. It is as if everything we have previously considered to be truth is no longer truth.

This is heightened by another impression. When a person crosses the threshold of the higher worlds that separates the physical from the supersensible, they perceive something completely new. Things and experiences that they could not have dreamt of before approach them. This cannot be compared to anything that a person perceives in the sensory world. But there is one thing that is the same in both worlds and in all worlds that are accessible to man: it is thinking, the kind of thinking that man acquires when he thinks without sensuality. He needs this thinking up there to distinguish illusions from reality, deception from truth. Here in the physical, wrong thinking is corrected by the things themselves; if someone wanted to turn a machine, an incorrect crank, the machine would not work properly or would stand still. In the higher worlds, however, we are solely the beings who have to give ourselves our firm direction. There we cannot distinguish between illusion and reality, between deception and truth, if we are unable to give ourselves this fixed direction through our trained thinking; if we are incapable of doing so, we cannot find our way in these higher worlds. Our thoughts are what will guide us safely, for they are the same here in the physical and there in the spiritual worlds.

Only when the disciple has overcome this preliminary stage is he ready to cross the threshold that leads to the higher worlds, which he cannot see without the supersensible organs of perception that he has developed. Here too we must describe a field that is quite unknown to many: feelings must be developed by moving from mere thinking, from ideas, to what is called imagination, images. Through this imagination, true feeling is trained so that we can pass through things to their eternal, immortal essence, in the sense that Goethe says: “All that is transitory is but a parable.” We become accustomed to seeing things in this way, as a parable for the eternal, when we become students.

Today, we can hear the magic word “evolution” being bandied about everywhere. People talk about how man, a subordinate being, has risen, has become more and more perfect, and has evolved from a lower being to his present form. They put forward abstract ideas. Those who really want to penetrate the development of the world and of man must learn to transform their concepts into images. Only in this way can he penetrate behind the veil; we must learn this, the teacher makes clear to the pupil what is meant by it, in such a dialogue, which is never held, but which nevertheless belongs to a development of the pupil that lasts for months, sometimes years: 'Look at the plant, it thrusts its roots into the earth, stems rise from the earth, leaves, finally flowers and calyxes. The corolla rises towards the sun, and within it rests the fruit. By stretching its calyx towards the sunbeam, its innermost part is drawn out, so that it can produce new seeds and thus new plants. The plant owes its ripening to the kiss of the sunbeam, so that it can produce something similar. Now compare the human being with the plant, but in such a way that you compare the human being's head with the plant's root. What the plant extends purely and chastely toward the sunbeam, its organ of fertilization, the human being shamefully hides and extends toward the earth. The human being is the transformed plant; he freely extends the head, which represents the root of the plant, out into the cosmos to absorb those forces as the plant also absorbs them when it receives the power from the sunbeam to produce seeds. We thus understand a saying of the great Plato: 'The soul of the world is crucified on the cross of the body of the world'. The soul of the world develops through the living beings; it lives in plants, animals and human beings. These are its bodies, the kingdoms of nature. We find this symbolically indicated in the cross. The three kingdoms are in the downward-pointing beam, the plant with its roots in the earth, the upper beam is man, who freely stretches into the cosmos what is at the plant root, in the middle the animal, the crossbar, which corresponds to the horizontal position of the animal. That is the deepest meaning of the cross in all religions. This was made clear to the disciple. Man has risen from the plant. Look at the plant, why is it allowed to stretch freely towards the sunbeam? The whole substance of the plant is chaste, free from desire, but it has no consciousness through which it can perceive like man. It sleeps like man in the night. Man has bought the consciousness he now has by permeating the pure, chaste plant substance with passion and desire. The plant substance has become flesh in him. In this substantial that has become flesh, man lives in waking consciousness. Now look into the future, when the human being will have transformed himself. He will have purified the impure, desire-filled fleshly substance; human nature will become pure and chaste again. Then the lower organs of desire will have fallen away, he will be equipped with higher organs and a higher consciousness, and he will stretch out his pure, chaste organs of fertilization towards the spiritual sunbeam of the holy love lance. He who can look into the process of world evolution knows: There are organs in the human body that will wither away, that will wither away, and those that will be developed higher and higher, that will bring forth similar things in a pure and chaste manner, equipped with a higher consciousness. This real ideal, which stands before the eyes of the human being as a disciple, as something that will truly reach all of humanity, gives a different concept of development than abstract concepts. When we turn to this real ideal, which is called the Holy Grail, when we survey this development, then we pursue such a development not only with thoughts, not only with the mind, but our feelings are carried away. Shivers run through the one who follows the course of human development in this way, and what we then feel is something that passes like a breath through the soul. Then we develop inner organs in our soul and new worlds appear to us – through such intimate processes of the inner being, the spiritual organs are awakened. As thinking was developed before, so now feeling is developed.

If the student has the energy to go further and further, to experience the world in images within himself, then the world of the spiritual rises, the world of the astral. This is the preparation for crossing the threshold.

Then the will is developed through the so-called occult writing. What is found in the whole of the Apocalypse, in the Gospel of John, such images belong to the occult writing. When we immerse ourselves in it, we educate our will to enter the spiritual worlds. The first seal is one that brings to mind the beginning and end state of our becoming on earth. We are introduced to the state of the earth when the temperature was much higher than on today's earth. Even then, man was connected to the earth; even then, he was united with the earthly body in a different form. This is expressed in the man whose feet are in the metal flow. They consist of liquid metal. Just as other spiritual beings created in fire in the human being at that time, so will be the final state of man. The earth will be fire again, and man will be able to create with the power of fire. This is indicated by the fiery sword that comes out of the mouth. In these images, everything is of profound significance, every sign, every number. Such a seal refers to the deep secrets of existence. When man familiarizes himself with this writing, he penetrates into the spiritual essence behind the phenomena of our existence. In this way, the will of man becomes one with the will of nature; magical powers flow out from man into the cosmos, his will plunges into every being, he feels one with the whole cosmos, he merges into the whole cosmos. He gradually becomes one with the powers of the beings around us. If a person patiently works his way through occult writing, then his will, by penetrating the whole cosmos, becomes not only volitional, but also seeing and, in particular, hearing. Then it becomes truth what Goethe expresses when he speaks of the spiritual worlds, he speaks of the way the will is developed, as just described. Then it is truth:

The sun resounds in the ancient way
In brother spheres of song,
And its prescribed journey
she completes with a thunderclap.

Those who wanted to understand it have sought mystery in these words, but they are borrowed from reality. The spiritual sun resounds for those who have developed the spiritual ear, that is, who have a developed will and have expanded it to include spiritual hearing, which is higher than astral vision. And in the words: “The young day is already born for spiritual ears,” even the expression “spiritual ears” is true. This is not a mythical image; it is truer than one generally assumes.

Today we have been talking about the principle of initiation; tomorrow we want to talk about its so-called dangers.

The awakening of the individual can only be achieved through patient and energetic progress. Step by step, spiritual science reveals the lofty goal that man can achieve. Man should not merely reflect on his inner self, that is mere phrase. He must merge in the universe, in the cosmos, for that contains our ego.

By patiently absorbing the beings around us, we develop our inner selves in such a way that we learn to embrace the whole cosmos with love.

Then we may recognize our higher self. We have arisen in the womb of the world, we must connect with the secrets of the world's womb, we must recognize them. In the harmony between the inner and outer world, in the balance between the life that we feel as our deepest within us and what we recognize as the highest outside of us, we can find bliss, knowledge and peace. Initiation is something that not only reaches into the inner being of the human being, but also reaches far out into the world. Every step you take must be in harmony with the beings that belong to you, except for you. It is not by looking into your inner self, but by breaking away from your selfish ego, that you reach a higher level of being. As a guiding principle, as a motto for each person to be initiated, there are Goethe's words, which express that a person can only create harmony when he frees himself from his own ego. Only then can he find his own center when he aligns the inner and the outer in concepts.

For all power strives onward into the distance
To live and work here and there
But on every side the stream of the world
the stream of the world, and sweeps us along with it.

In this inner storm and outer battle, the spirit hears a word that is difficult to understand:
From the force that binds all beings, man frees himself who overcomes himself.

The sources of what we call spiritual science, which we visited yesterday, are, on the one hand, criticized by our contemporaries as fantastic and dreamy, if not even more severely, and on the other hand, they are criticized in a very specific way, which we shall deal with today. It consists in the fact that when the subject of initiation is broached, certain dangers are also mentioned that are said to be associated with what is called spiritual science. However, those who speak of these dangers usually have very dark, hazy ideas about what they are supposed to think about these dangers. This cannot be otherwise, because most of them do not have much concept of the content, the task and mission of spiritual science in our time. If we want to shed light on these dangers, we must first distinguish between the fear that our contemporaries have of the general proclamation of spiritual science; this must be distinguished from the dangers of spiritual science that really do exist in some cases, which arise for the one who wants to go to the higher worlds himself, who seeks access to knowledge in the invisible, supersensible.

Then there is talk of how it is dangerous to talk about such things at all, to spread such teachings and to twist people's minds. One reproach, which is made over and over again by a completely misleading view that remains on the surface, is made against Theosophy; it consists of the fact that by dealing with Theosophy, man is alienated from life. It is said that he is led into a world-unrelated, world-distant life, that he is deprived of interest and sympathy for true life. Many a family that sees one of its members turn to Theosophy because they believe they will find the satisfaction there that their previous life could not give their heart and soul says: Theosophy has taken that person from us. — It is dangerous when such people are driven into an ascetic, unworldly way of life, because then their relatives say it is Theosophy that has driven them into it. But there is a good deal of intolerance behind such an assertion. Such people believe that only the way they want to live is justified, and that it is asceticism not to live exactly the same way as they do; anyone who does not exactly share their idea and outlook on life practices asceticism. But when you look at the lives of some people, at what a man and woman do from morning till night – we are not talking here about those who are really involved in practical life – when you see how the lives of some people are exhausted in soupers and dinners and other trivial pleasures, then you understand that a person who seeks higher things cannot live this life. If someone withdraws from this life, people say that he has fallen into unworldly asceticism and that he is preoccupied with all kinds of abstract, confused ideas. They cannot imagine that for someone living their life must be the greatest asceticism. A person who has come to know the sources from which the life of reality flows that surrounds us would have to mortify himself greatly if he had to participate in what is called life in such circles. It would be a real asceticism for him. Not because he has become alienated from life, but because he knows life in its real form, so he does not mortify himself by participating in it.

However, people in such circles will think that a person who occupies himself with such complicated ideas is somehow deprived. They are not thinking correctly, because he is not denying himself anything. As long as a person finds pleasure and enjoyment in such trivial everyday things, such a way of life is not for him. It is not a matter of changing his life, but his feelings and perceptions must have changed. He must know that true life only flows where the higher reasons for existence are to be found.

Then some families see one of their members rush to the ways of life of Theosophy. They say: Theosophy has snatched this person from us. Is that so? Those who know how to examine the souls of people will find that this is not the case. The very member who turns to Theosophy was initially repelled by what was going on around him. Then it somehow became aware of Theosophy and found there exactly what it lacked in its circles. Is it now right to say that Theosophy has driven it out of its circles? Theosophy has given it what its circles could not give it. Longing souls, searching for a true purpose in life and not finding it where life has led them, they seek it where they can find it. While such souls have been driven away, one now thinks they have been taken! Theosophy does not agitate; there would be no Theosophical movement if there were not people who have been driven out of today's life and now go to what is offered to them from the other side.

However, a certain danger arises when such people come to Theosophy immaturely and are then literally blinded, literally crushed by what they encounter there. One must not forget that the basis of Theosophy is a coherent and strict thinking, a firmly structured logic that searches step by step for the structure of the world building. There is not much real logic in our lives, no matter how much we boast about how wonderfully far we have come! Even where man seeks advice in popular and other sciences about the questions of existence, one finds only a short-meshed logic. Anyone who is accustomed to rigorous thinking and examines the results of science, when he is forced to follow the lines of thought as science is usually disseminated today, will often feel physical pain from the brutal, rough conclusions. Because as admirable as what science has discovered through its instruments and methods is, the content of thought is usually an incredibly short.

Thus it happens that the man who stands in everyday life is as a rule little practiced, little prepared for real logical thinking. The importance of the collision of people with Theosophy is usually underestimated when the soul is accustomed to having the dull trains of thought that people have today, and then there is the collision with the penetrating sequences of thoughts that confront people in spiritual science. A person with a sensitive soul, when feeling rules in his heart, notices that true nourishment flows towards him, that a wonderful light shines towards him. When he realizes his inability to grasp it with his trains of thought, it has a devastating, debilitating effect on his soul. This affects the nervous system; especially when he can only rush into theosophy in festive moments, can only take a piece and then has to go back to life. There he feels the unhealthy contrast; there arise those dissatisfied, sick souls, which we see emerging today in many cases from contact with the spiritual teachings.

But we see even more. Those who understand the signs of the times see a bleak picture of the future. Humanity today lives in darkness and chaos in many ways; they judge life without knowledge of the driving forces of life, which have arisen solely as a result of human attitudes. Those who believe that attitudes have no effect on life do not know what real facts of thought are. They have an effect on life right down to the health of a nation. Anyone who is aware that materialism has held sway in the innermost depths of humanity for so long, at a time when great contemporary issues were being worked out, knows that it has produced something that is often wrongly judged. One admires many a writer who gives a dazzling account of many a discussion on the most varied areas of life; and one does not know that he speaks or writes empty phrases. The knowledgeable person could show in many cases what is behind this cleverness. Sometimes there is really something behind it that could be called idiocy. Today you can be idiotic and still be a clever writer. Decades ago, someone said that it is no longer considered special for someone to write long, beautiful poems, because today our language is so advanced that it thinks for people. The general level of education today is such that someone who has perhaps studied it since the age of sixteen and absorbed all the judgments that are bandied about can write wittily and yet be weak-minded. This is a seemingly paradoxical assertion, but factually it is true. This should be seen only as a symptom of how superficially life is lived today; how little there is in-depth power of judgment; how little they are able to grasp the forces that stand behind life. These are the leading spirits! And what about those who are the led? If we judge the state of mind of those who often experience this confrontation with what Theosophy gives, we have to say: if they had remained within their previous lives, they might have remained reasonably intelligent people; but now they come to Theosophy, and it is as if a mighty light shines into a room where there is much impurity.

This was not seen as long as it was dark. But now, when the knowledge of the true sources of life shines into the darkness, the contrast of the one with the other may cause someone who would otherwise have remained a sober, reasonably reasonable person to be unable to bear the light of knowledge and now go completely mad. There is a danger here! But can one say that Theosophy is to blame? Is it not rather the materialistic school of thought that has brought man to this state? And should not spiritual science bring this light to mankind because of these dangers? Even if one or the other may suffer harm, it must not be denied, because humanity must receive it for true progress and salvation.

However, there are also real dangers for those who seek access to the higher worlds. Unfortunately, we can only read too much about this in some theosophical writings, and they have been written far too blackly there. We do not want to gloss over anything, but we want to watch calmly and objectively to see what the situation is regarding these dangers.

There is a particular difficulty at the threshold, because there are difficult deceptions, hallucinations, to be distinguished from what is reality and truth: that which is most difficult for a person to overcome certain prejudices and premonitions that he brings with him from ordinary life. When people hear that there is a way to penetrate into higher worlds, they are often seized by an enormous greed and passion; but to strictly follow what was emphasized in yesterday's lecture, to strictly train thinking, feeling and willing, that does not seem necessary to them. But it must be said to those that today, just as a thousand years ago, this is an indispensable condition and must be strictly adhered to by all teachers of the mystery schools. Those who did not engage in thinking free of sensuality were not allowed to join the secret training. This cannot be followed so strictly today, because those who were the guardians of knowledge in the past gave humanity no opportunity at all to come to this knowledge without fulfilling this condition. Today, however, it is different. Through a thousand and one channels, knowledge flows to humanity. But it is amazing how even great minds in the field of science are completely unaware of this ancient knowledge of humanity!

What man cannot learn through science is the solution to the world's riddles. It is often only through science that questions arise for man. Questions are raised that have existed for man since time immemorial; and man would be consumed with longing for answers if theosophy did not provide the answers. A true leader of truth cannot, for example, put Haeckel's “Welträtsel” (World Mysteries) out of his hand without the feeling: here not only are no mysteries solved, but new ones are presented. Questions are raised that did not even exist for prehistoric man. People would have to burn with longing if Theosophy could not give them answers to all their questions. Today's science is more a questioner than an answerer.

Theosophy was not founded on some arbitrary basis, but out of the deepest knowledge of the needs of humanity, which will need more and more what only Theosophy gives. Humanity cannot do without it.

Many people believe, however, that they can be satisfied with the materialistic views of our environment. They say: I find explanations for everything in them, I do not need anything from spiritual worlds. But there is something in man that can never say so in the long run. The wish, the innermost longing of the soul will always say no and no again to such an intellectual knowledge of the world around us. This longing of the soul cannot be appeased; it grows; it makes the person weak, ill, unable to work in life. There are many derailed souls today who are searching for something but repel what they are seeking. If what the soul longs for is not met with what spiritual science can give, then doubt, hopelessness, even despair takes hold of the soul.

Thus, out of the necessity of the time, Theosophy had to be proclaimed to our world. Then you often see that people are seized by greed, but they shy away from the hard work that the preparation requires; they are too lazy. They say: We want to uplift our souls, we want to flow into bliss! But you only give again in terms of ideas, in concepts! We do not want the mind, we want the soul! If only people would realize how they are making themselves their own worst enemies through the things they foster within themselves! It is precisely the calm, step-by-step realization that can satisfy their soul's longings; it is only satisfied when it quietly surrenders to these insights. There are therefore many souls in the world that could be called derailed souls, but which really stand in opposition to themselves as their own enemies.

And there are souls who carry within them the desire for higher knowledge, as described above, but who do not want to break out of their customary logic. They cannot enter the higher worlds. An increasing number of souls are afflicted. They rave about all kinds of spiritual concepts. The basis of this illness is attributed to Theosophy, while in reality it is the materialistic attitude that makes the souls ill. It is only the final clash with Theosophy that conjures up the illness. One does intend to penetrate more seriously into the higher regions of existence, but very soon slackens, especially when a serious test approaches. This test consists in the fact that one must see the dangers that surround life from all sides at the threshold, and which the human being had not seen before. If someone has his home near a powder factory, he may have lived there contentedly and quietly for years, but then hears about the powder factory and fears for his life every hour. He does not realize that seeing a danger is no reason to fear. Something external has not changed, only his knowledge about it has changed. It is the same when a person approaches the supersensible worlds. In this world are the sources of bliss and sublimity that cannot be compared with anything that people can experience in the sensual world. But there are equally powerful enemies of human nature there, horrible things; everything that lives in the sensual world that is dreadful cannot be compared with the dangers that surround people in these worlds. If he takes a look inside, then he experiences worlds of bliss – but at the same time he must experience the dreadful, the terrible, and he must experience it with cold blood.

The actual facts have not changed, only his feelings and perceptions; the facts were already there before he could recognize them, only his perception of the facts has changed. A person must remain fearless and calm. As simple as it seems, it is difficult to carry out. But if it is not carried out, feelings of fear and terror of the spiritual worlds arise in a person. This is not a matter of indifference, because these are real forces. There are beings in the spiritual world for whom the feelings of fear that we radiate are welcome nourishment. They suffer from emaciation if they do not receive this nourishment. They surround the person like vampires; when you give them nourishment in the form of feelings of fear and anxiety, they fill themselves up with it. The human being must be firm; he must have thoroughly overcome all feelings of fear if he wants to enter. He must also discard other feelings that he takes with him from the sensual world long before, because they become disadvantages, terrible obstacles in these worlds. These are all negative feelings: ambition, vanity, anger, hatred, annoyance, selfishness. Those feelings that mean little in ordinary life become real monsters in terms of their dangerous side. The person who enters these higher worlds and has not yet discarded these feelings provides welcome nourishment for these beings. He does not need to see them, but they destroy his physical health; they ruin his nervous system, his sleep. All this is true!

Even worse dangers arise. When a person is to be initiated through the methods the teacher gives him, when he has undergone his exercises and then sees what is approaching him, sees the dangers – and then gives up the attempt, then what is called in spiritual science occurs: the reflection of the human spiritual work. At the moment when man gives up the attempt, grotesque figures of a dreadful, quite impossible kind appear to him in visions. Man is as if enclosed by these figures. It forms itself around him like a clamp, made of such figures of horror.

All this could deter a person from seeking the path; but it must not deter anyone. That would be selfish. Anyone who has the opportunity to penetrate into the higher worlds must not miss these opportunities. It is easy to say: I am afraid of it. But man must be aware that by doing so he harms not only himself but the whole world. He has no right to let these abilities lie fallow. Just as the finger is not an independent part of the human organism, we are not independent either. And just as the finger cannot live only for itself, we cannot live only for ourselves. The whole world is one organism. We should work on ourselves and develop our powers. If we do not do this, we neglect a sacred duty towards humanity. Each one of us must realize that obstacles must be overcome. They must be overcome! If a person follows the instructions he receives energetically and correctly, then it is impossible for anyone to be in danger. There is no place for scaremongering when it comes to conscientious guidance. You have to know the dangers, but you must not be afraid of them. That must be a firm principle.

Of course, certain dangers also come from another direction. For example, anyone who carries social prejudices into the higher worlds — they are of no use there — and cannot discard them, will not be able to ascend without danger. Therefore, man must acquire a high degree of inner freedom and independence. Those who cannot do so can only advance to a small degree. It is not a matter of external independence here; a person can be as dependent as he likes externally, but internally the soul can be completely free. We must beware of the numerous misunderstandings that we encounter. Anyone who really wants to walk the path of truth should realize that a sentence can contain worthless words and that the same sentence can carry profound truth. Those who seriously want to follow the path must beware of empty phrases and mere set expressions, for although the highest light prevails in Theosophy, so too does the most extreme phrase-mongering and hollowness. This is a bad habit of our time, but it contains a real danger for Theosophy.

If we go back to the earliest times, we see that the leading personalities who have guided life have attached great importance to a person's judgment at a certain age; today, the very youngest can give their authoritative judgments. Above all, people today do not know that although one can achieve a great deal in terms of intellect, science and art at an early age, only someone who has reached the middle of their life is able to convey the experiences of the spiritual worlds to his fellow human beings in a truly correct way. That is why no secret school sends out anyone who has not passed the age of 35. As long as man still needs certain powers to build up his organism, he does not have them freely to put them into service. It is not permitted to communicate the occult teachings authoritatively to anyone before the powers are no longer needed for building up; only when the physical is in the process of declining in life is it permitted. Anyone who examines life will see the justification for this rule. Even a spirit such as Goethe: What he achieved before this point was a revival of what he had gathered from here and there; what would not have been there if Goethe had not been there, that only came about after the middle of his life. It means the greatest danger when we see how great truths are spoken of as mere phrases. For example, you can hear over and over again: You must be unselfish, you must sacrifice your personality to the All! — This is a profound truth if it is really understood; but it can be the most absurd phrase if this truth is presented without understanding. Egoism is not given to man by a wise world government for nothing; it is a means of education, it makes man richer and fuller; through it many a person is prevented from doing something that could harm him. It is a healthy force, it fills the personality with strength and energy, it is something wholesome! To say that one should discard it is a morbid phrase. Nevertheless, it is true that a sacrifice of the personality is necessary if we want to find the way up into the higher worlds.

How should this be understood? Let us take an example. Someone is asked to sacrifice all their cash. One person sacrifices fifty pfennigs, another twenty thousand marks. But both sacrifice everything they have. If these sacrifices are to help, then it is clear that twenty thousand marks will help much more than fifty pfennigs. So one must compare the sacrifice of a personality who has nothing within him, who perhaps has no particular ego at all, with the sacrifice of a personality who has accumulated within himself enormous energy and strength. What good does it do humanity to sacrifice a human being who is still nothing? The personality must first make itself strong and energetic; it depends on how it is sacrificed, not what is sacrificed. Man must know that egoism is a healthy force; it drives man to obey the sentence:

When the rose adorns itself,
It also adorns the garden!

A personality who first learned to develop the forces within himself and then sacrificed himself is a valuable sacrifice in the great course of life. But if a personality without strength and energy takes this word: You shall sacrifice yourself, as a word of life, it becomes a phrase here and, because it is empty, will produce a life without content. In this sphere there is a vampire of life; it sucks out the forces of life. It is necessary to see clearly in this sphere. In no wise must there enter into this work that sense of well-being which a man so easily experiences when uttering fine phrases. Here the man who really wants to ascend into the higher worlds needs care and patience, for only little by little can he learn to distinguish aright.

Another thing must be considered by those who develop the forces slumbering within them into higher abilities that lead them up into the higher worlds. All human beings have them; they are within each person as a germ, only most people develop them over long periods of time. If the development of these forces is accelerated, then everything else in human life is accelerated as well. Let us assume that a 20-year-old person would reach the point that he would otherwise have reached at the age of 80 in just five years. All the things written in his karma are compressed into one twelfth. Everything he will experience in the way of adversity and obstacles in life will occur in five years. This acceleration of life acts like a locomotive that rushes through a snowy area at breakneck speed compared to a slow one. The latter pushes the snow aside slowly, while the former will quickly stir it up. That is really how it is in life. That which would otherwise be experienced over a longer period of time now comes together, and so it becomes apparent to the person who begins to walk the path of knowledge that he must experience many things that seem strange to him, especially at the beginning. Bad habits, vices, passions suddenly arise; everything that lies at the bottom of the soul must come out. At every opportunity, the person will find passions and desires that he believes he has long since overcome. But they must appear in order to be completely overcome, to disappear completely. For the one who truly comes to the threshold, there stands a mighty one that shows in a great image everything that is still base in the depths of his soul. All passions stand in one image before the soul. This is the Guardian of the Threshold. He meets the Pathfinder, and he must face him without fear. If he is not fearless, he turns back, then those hideous images arise that imprison man. All his lower passions imprison him in the mirror image of the spiritual as in a chamber. This is not described to deter anyone from seeking the path, but only to enable the seeker to find the path in the right way.

No one should let this deter them. One must know that the very sight of these dangers is the greatest purifying agent. People usually have no idea how wisely they are guided. It is a powerful healing agent for the soul when it has to experience fear and hope, tension and release, agitation and reassurance. These feelings are extremely important, even in all art. These are important medicines for the soul. It heals from the dangers it has to go through, and we should be grateful to these teachers; after all, we cannot escape them. There are no dangers other than those that are also there for man. Only in relation to knowledge does it change for him. He learns about the facts, but the facts themselves do not change. When we learn this, we can set out on the path to the higher worlds without worry, without danger. If a person does this, then he is following an important mission. Our time needs spiritual knowledge. If it were denied to humanity, then general materialism would fill the hearts of men with doubt, despair, and a lack of comfort and hope. It would make people gloomy and despairing; it would affect their temperament, make life dull and stunted, and ultimately also make the physical part of the human being fall ill. Materialism would completely enervate people. For physical recovery, people need what spiritual science offers.

Only he can be a truly useful member in the progress of the human race who allows himself to be seized by the spiritual current. And it is justified for a person to sometimes worry about his own development; he must first acquire the true powers for himself, with which he will be able to help people, and he must have patience to acquire them. This must be emphasized in Theosophy. What matters is not a theory, but that it flows into life; it has in itself a healthy, energetic life, and it must be a remedy for humanity!

Reasons can be given for and against all things; the true secret scientist is not interested in this, he knows. Theosophy is given to humanity as a remedy. No matter how much it is attacked, it is destined to make man whole in body and soul when it is introduced into life. And it is in this recovery of life that it will express its affirmation. Therefore, when a person works on himself, he does not work for himself; he works for the whole of human progress, for the true and right salvation of humanity. And that this is achieved, that this is experienced, will then be the only sure proof of spiritual or secret knowledge.

What is today referred to as the theosophical movement or the theosophical worldview did not come into existence as a result of recent cultural developments, as did many other movements. The theosophical movement did not arise out of the arbitrary will of a single agitator. Sometimes a movement comes into being through an individual who is able to make an impact on people and to inspire them with his words. The Theosophical movement as such, however, has a completely different basis. It arose out of the realization that humanity needs such a movement, out of the realization that the spiritual treasures that have given people hope and joy since time immemorial must be brought to humanity in a new form.

When we look into the soul of a growing child, who is to grow up to face life and be equipped with the powers that prepare him for a healthy life, we see how, from the earliest age, the harshest doubts must take hold in his soul under the impressions of today's education. We see how the child is led into the knowledge of a supersensible world, a world in which answers are to be given to the questions about the riddles of life, to the question of how it relates to death and other serious questions, to all the great riddles of existence, which every human being must have answered not only from a mere feeling.

In the face of all these questions, which point to the supernatural, man is plunged into anxious doubt and bitter disappointment, even as a child, when he experiences what today's natural science, seemingly so powerful, presents to man. Especially those people who are predisposed to have the best sense of truth come, in their earliest youth, to the harshest doubts through what comes to them in our time. Many are often dominated by a great sense of apprehension; they do not want to touch on anything that goes beyond the visible. Indifference to these questions is one thing that is found in some people; the other is the bitter division of the soul between what science seems to give on the one hand and religious truths on the other.

One may wonder what is better: if a person goes through life indifferently, or experiences the tragic fate of being broken mentally. Perhaps one can say that there are always those who do not fall prey to such doubts. But anyone who understands the signs of the times knows that what is happening now is only the beginning of what will intensify more and more. Something must be offered so that people who, as a result of the findings of science, no longer believe that they can hold on to their belief in the supernatural, can find a way to it again. A way must also be found for those who believe they must break with religious traditions. We see how the best minds of our time see religious creeds as something that was right for a child's age, in their opinion; they need something that satisfies their consciousness. The theosophical worldview is there to open up a path to the primary sources of existence for even the most modern consciousness.

Those who seek such a path may recall one of the great minds of modern times, who never uttered the word “theosophy”, but whose entire thinking, feeling and sensing expressed the spirit of theosophy. He said: “He who possesses science and art also has religion; he who does not possess these two, let him have religion.” We may recall the moment when Goethe stood in Italy before the great works of art he had longed for so much before coming to Italy. “There is necessity, there is God,” he said when speaking of them. When he wanted to explain why necessity and God shone out of artistic form for him, he said: “I suspect that the Greeks proceeded according to the laws by which nature itself proceeds, and which I am on the trail of.

Let us summarize how Goethe's view of nature, his worldview and religious feeling interacted. Goethe had something of what we want to learn as a theosophical basic feeling. As a child, he already had this feeling. He sought out all sorts of minerals and plants, laid them on a music stand, and then he placed an incense stick on top; he ignited it with a burning glass through the first rays of the sun. In this way, he believed that he was close to the God who emerged from all of nature's works through this sacrifice that he offered him. Are we surprised that such a powerful religious feeling also comes to light in his scientific endeavors later on?

Goethe tried to discern how the ancient artists allowed the divine order to shine through in their works of art. In what the old artists created, he saw necessity, God. For him, the genuine artist was the one who caught the spiritual light of God in his soul, as a burning glass catches physical light. When Goethe saw in colors and forms, it appeared to him as genuine art. He who looks into nature longs for its creative interpreter, art. Goethe recognized the close connection between nature and art, how the same laws prevail in both, and for him science is the right one if it leads to this realization. “He who possesses science and art also has religion,” he says. For a mind as high as his, this realization could only give rise to a feeling for God in His lawfulness permeating all of nature.

Human nature needs impulses whereby this feeling penetrates into every soul. — Let us take a look at the much-maligned Middle Ages, when a scientific fact had not yet been transmitted through a thousand channels to the simplest human soul. Let us place ourselves in the position of an aspiring, simple human heart, as it was in relation to its teachers, and let us place ourselves in the course of historical events, as it all gradually came about back then, how the new era began and the Copernican world view brought about such a great change in the development of mankind. We want to realize how what is now called Theosophy was not necessary for people of the older times, how the vast majority of humanity at that time received it out of feelings that arose from religious convictions in most of them. It is precisely the development into our time that makes theosophy necessary. If it were not for modern science with its doubts and scruples, which it itself generates, there would be no need for theosophy.

Those who are familiar with Theosophy know that in reality there is no contradiction between religious beliefs and scientific truths. Since modern science has been influencing the world, there has been a need for an instrument of knowledge that goes deeper than science, which only looks at the world on the surface. Theosophy is entirely consistent with science. If we delve deeper into Theosophy, we will find that it is completely in line with science. It just goes deeper. It deals with the supersensible, with the superphysical world. The way it deals with it is exactly the same as the way research is done in modern science. Only it has to do with the supersensible world. By dealing with the world in which man himself is a supersensible being, it becomes a kind of religious knowledge. Theosophy does not doubt the truth of real religious knowledge. It wants to give new means to man, who is no longer able to hold on to this religious conviction with the old means.

Now that we have seen that the Theosophical worldview does not just correspond to arbitrariness, we want to point out the places where Theosophy has an enlightening and illuminating effect. Natural science is concerned only with that which can be derived from external experience. Since Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Kirchhoff and [Bunsen], and all those who in our own time have shed light on the material world, with what could this natural science not agree? We could cite a long series of wonderful results of modern science. The theosophist has no reason to withhold his admiration for this world of facts. But modern science has risen to its present eminence precisely because it has limited itself to the periphery of the external world.

Du Bois-Reymond, in his Ignorabimus speech at the Natural Scientists' Convention in Leipzig in 1872, said something remarkable about human knowledge. He says that the natural scientist is actually only able to understand the sleeping person, but not the waking person. He says that the natural scientist has to investigate the material foundations of the human being, how the atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen combine in the human brain when any impulse or thought comes about. He says that nothing is yet understood about the actual soul. He quotes Leibniz, who says: Imagine that the brain is so enlarged that you could walk around in it as if it were a factory. Even so, you would not know how the movements arise, nor why they give rise to the sensations: I see red, I smell the scent of roses, I hear the sound of an organ. Du Bois-Reymond did not want to admit to science that it had the possibility of finding out the bridge between the physical movements of the atoms and the mental sensations. Quite right he said: “If we have a sleeping person in front of us, then we can recognize him, because then what we call the inner soul experiences is not there. It has vanished down into an indefinite darkness while man sleeps.

Yet something else disappears when we are asleep: what we can call the sense of self, that which is at the center of our being. During sleep, the human being does not feel the experiences of the soul in his ego, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, etc. It would be the most nonsensical thing imaginable to claim that what says “I” to itself, what smells the scent of roses, hears organ tones, sees colors, that this disappears completely in the evening and is recreated every morning. No explanation based on external sensual facts is capable of saying a word that can resolve this. This is why Du Bois-Reymond was also able to say: The natural scientist can recognize the sleeping human being, but not the waking human being. — When falling asleep, the true human being disappears from the scientific explanation.

Only spiritual science can shed light on the true process. The sleeping person leaves his outer cover in bed in the evening and moves back into this body in the morning. He himself disappears into another world in the evening. To study him is the task of theosophy or spiritual science. It is possible to follow this person, but it is not easy for the present person to come to believe in this possibility. The theosophical world view introduces the human being to another world. It speaks of supersensible and superphysical worlds, not in a magical or superstitious sense, but in a completely natural sense, in the sense in which Johann Gottlieb Fichte spoke of them. In the fall of 1813, he said to his audience: “Imagine a world of the blind and born blind, for whom only the things and their relationships that exist through the sense of touch are known. Enter this world and speak to them of colors and the other relationships that exist only through light and for the seeing. Either you talk to them about nothing, and this is the happier outcome, if they say so; for in this way you will soon notice the mistake and, if you are unable to open their eyes, you will stop talking in vain.

For the blind from birth, this world of colors and light does not exist. We now imagine that a blind person is operated on in this room, so a whole new world would appear to him, which was there before, but for which he lacked the organ. A world that was not there for him before, now becomes his possession, by receiving a new organ. There are as many worlds for us as we have organs to perceive them.

It is the worst kind of illogicality when man wants to limit existence to what is within his reach. — We cannot operate on everyone born blind, but every person has dormant powers and abilities in their soul that can be awakened, what Goethe calls the spiritual eye. Then there comes a moment when a new world opens up for that person. There have been such awakened or initiated ones at all times. When the spiritual organs are awakened, man perceives a new world; what he then perceives is explained to him by the world of the supersensible. Just as there is always light and color around the blind, there are spiritual worlds around people in which spiritual beings exist. Religions have always spoken of these worlds in terms that people could understand. Theosophy speaks of them in terms that are appropriate for the present time.

Only those who have glimpsed these spiritual worlds or who know about it from those who have glimpsed it can narrate, communicate and research in relation to these spiritual worlds. To research, looking into it is necessary, but to understand, the ordinary logical human understanding is enough. Many things that people are told about these spiritual worlds may seem fabulous and fantastic to them. But take it as a story. If you immerse yourself in it, you will see that common sense and ordinary human logic are enough to understand it.

Even the reports of science are largely accepted without people themselves having followed the path of the researcher and tested everything. How many of those people who consider Haeckel's “History of Creation” to be a gospel have convinced themselves of what is written in it? It is extraordinarily difficult to carry out such tests; for example, the experience of the development of the human germ from stage to stage is something so difficult that one very rarely finds the opportunity to do so. It all looks different when you read about it in a finished, popular work. But even if you can't verify it all yourself, you can still say that you understand and believe.

There are higher spiritual methods for exploring the world of the senses, just as there are natural scientific methods. When we apply these methods, it becomes apparent that in sleep the true human being emerges from the human being that our eyes see. The physical human being cannot see this with his physical sense organs. But the awakened eye of the seer sees the I, sees the bearer of desires and passions. Man is there, even in sleep, but his consciousness can only sprout up in him when he plunges back into what his eyes see of the physical body.

In the theosophical worldview, we are shown how the true human being exists, who, during sleep, leaves the outer shells, and how this consists of two parts, the actual self and the astral body, the carrier of desires and passions. Two parts of the human being are spiritual. During sleep, from evening until morning, they are in another world. In the morning they re-enter the physical body.

Is the physical body itself so simple? We cannot get by with a simple explanation of it either. The same being that sinks into unconsciousness when falling asleep in the evening says “I” to itself again in the morning. The thinking observer of the world must find it understandable when the spiritual researcher tells him: When we look at man from birth to death, we see his nature is by no means exhausted in the physical. Only if we surrender to the most shortsighted prejudice can we stop at what really appears to us as man from the sensual-physical world.

If we observe the human being from birth, we see the unfolding qualities of the child as something that is not limited to the physical; we recognize how something spiritual is at work. In the growing human being, too, we see something working its way out from within that was there before the physical forms were there. In the Bach family, about 29 more or less significant musicians lived within 250 years. One could say: There you can see how the disposition of father and mother is inherited. But that does not contradict the fact that a spiritual process is at work behind the physical process. The musical ear is only one particular physiognomy of the inner ear. One inherits the physical from one's ancestors, but one does not inherit that for which the physical is the instrument, the spiritual, from one's ancestors. The spiritual predispositions are bound to the individual.

When a person realizes this, he sees something similar in the developing human individuality as in a person waking up in the morning. He says to himself that the spiritual person grows and develops in the developing human being. He does not just see a physical connection, but just as he does not just see a physical process in the waking person, he also sees something spiritual unfolding in the growing person.

This other spiritual element that unfolds in the developing human being remains with the sleeping physical human being. The sleeping physical human being remains in bed, but is also still connected to a spiritual element. This spiritual element, which we see gradually unfolding from childhood onwards, what was there before birth, what was there before conception, we call the human etheric body. Just as we see the carrier of feelings, passions and desires in the astral body, we call that which we see growing in the human being the etheric or life body. No plant exists without an etheric or life body. In the plant, it is still limited to regulating the forces of growth and reproduction. But in the human being, it is the carrier of all spiritual abilities, of habits, of memory. In the human being, it increasingly becomes the carrier of a higher spiritual essence, increasingly becoming the spirit of life. Just as the I leaves the human being with the astral body when sleep occurs, so the etheric or life body leaves the physical body at death, and the physical body decays.

Thus, Theosophy leads us beyond the riddles of existence; it shows us the reality that is still there when a person passes through the gate of death. The theosophical world view gives us a glimpse of the realms that man passes through when he passes through the gate of sleep, through the gate of death. Through knowledge, through insight, we are introduced to those worlds that are also sought in religions. Modern humanity needs this harmonization, this balance. That is why this world view has been brought to the world. Mankind can now only be seized by such impulses as the young Goethe sought to feel before his altar, as they were alive in the old Goethe when he was inspired by the works of art, if they are again able to penetrate into the higher, spiritual worlds through the knowledge of the theosophical world view. The theosophical world view shows the modern man his connection with the supersensible world again. Without this connection, man cannot remain healthy.

The theosophist is aware that not only a world of the senses surrounds man, but also a world of the supersensible. He who knows only this world sensually, loses the sense for this world, and the hope that the physical world is supposed to bring him disappears.

Theosophy wants to bring man back to a correct, a strong view of the supersensible world, which not only satisfies curious or tired knowledge, but which makes man, especially in this world, fit for work, full of hope and joy, because he knows: The meaning of this physical world is an eternal one, and because he knows: Everything I do in this sense has an eternal meaning. This gives people joy in their lives, diligence in their work, and that is what makes people healthy for life.

The Gospel of John is not only a confessional writing, but it also presents a wonderful description of what makes it an extraordinarily important document for the world. The sending of the Spirit of Truth, first to the disciples, is dramatically presented to the soul. The promise of Pentecost, the outpouring of the Spirit, the Spirit of Pentecost upon the twelve.

There are four stages to the way we relate to the Bible.

1. the naive, naive believers,
2. the clever, the enlightened,
3. those who interpret allegorically,
4. the theosophists.

It is a refreshing experience for the theosophist to discover that spiritual beings are truly behind the scriptures of religion today. Theosophy seeks to develop and unravel the spirit contained in the scriptures. [Theosophy is not a new religion, but the most faithful instrument for understanding the Gospels.

Let us now consider the Gospel of John, especially the passage where the Spirit of Truth is mentioned.

I and the Father are one.

I am in you and you are in me (John 14:20). I must go to the Father, because if I do not go to the Father, the Spirit of Truth will not come to you.

So I must pass through death so that the Spirit of Truth can enter you. Only he who finds the way to the Father can proclaim the Spirit of Truth.

What I say is not mine, but the Father's.

He who keeps my commandments loves me, and he who loves me keeps my commandments.

[Gap in the transcript?] If we have understood the matter of the astral body, we are satisfied. But as for the etheric body, a prayer, a meditation, if one were to say that one has grasped the prayer or the meditation, that would mean: not being able to do anything with it. Always repeating the same prayer; it is as if a plant, which indeed has the etheric body but no astral body, repeatedly uses the same force to form a leaf again and again.

And when someone gains control over their physical body and can send their blood corpuscles wherever they want, then one says: This person is forming their seventh limb, Atma.

When man has transformed a large part of his etheric body into Budhi [spirit of life = Budhi], then he knows that death is nothing, that the spirit endures; because that which is transformed remains eternal, is something eternal. He becomes aware of the victory over death. Thus man is transformed. As much as he has transformed.

of the astral body is in him of the Holy [Manas],
spirit of the etheric body is in him, of the Son, the Christ [Budhi],
of the physical body is in him from the Father [Atma].

What people heard in religious writings and messages elevated them beyond themselves.

In earlier times, if you wanted to receive knowledge from the spiritual worlds, you had to undergo initiation. Just as light and color existed before our physical eyes were formed, so the spiritual worlds are around us, even though we have not yet developed spiritual eyes.

During the earlier development of spiritual vision, the student was brought into a death-like state for three and a half days. While the etheric body was out of the physical body, it was able to absorb what the astral body had already absorbed through prayer-like exercises.

When the person then returned to the physical body, he could tell of the spiritual worlds; he had experienced that life is eternal.

In the past, only a few were able to experience the mysteries for themselves, but now it is possible for everyone. [What had been experienced countless times in the mysteries now occurred as a historical event at Golgotha. This event was so much greater because here the body really died. In the mysteries, the body was only immersed in catalytic sleep for a few days.

You have to delve into the gospel of John to understand how the miracle at Golgotha defeated and overcame death.

One is a Jew because one believes what Moses gave his people, a Buddhist because of what Buddha left behind, and so on.

For a Christian, it is not the doctrine, the content, that is important, but rather that he believes in Christ Himself, in the exalted being who was incarnated at that time. Not only did Christ bring us doctrine, but also strength.

Among the ancient Jews: blood relationship = I-relationship. Through Christ came a spiritual conception of the I. The I is already there before it is in the physical body.

Before Abraham was, the I AM (John 8:58). I and the Father are one (John 10:30),

this is not the physical father, but the great community in every individual, which has descended into every individual ego.

Instead of blood ties or blood community, spiritual community had to arise. Only by developing the small individual ego can it become selfless.

With the preservation of the blood, man has received too much selfishness. With the blood that flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer on Golgotha, the superfluous, selfish blood of sinful humanity flowed away. [This is the redemption through the blood of Christ.] Thereby man received the claim to the great brotherhood. The ego could grow beyond itself. This is the mystery of Golgotha. This will transform the earth into a planet of love.

Not without the outer, historical Christ can there be a Christ in us. [Each one must experience this inner Christ within himself. Just as the eye owes its existence to the sun, so the inner Christ owes his awakening to the historical Christ.] The miracle of Golgotha is the greatest that has occurred during the entire evolution of the earth.

What happened as fact at Golgotha flowed as life, as the Spirit of Truth, into the disciples in the mystery of Pentecost, so that they could go out and teach what they themselves had seen.

Everything was shared by the henchmen under the cross, except for the rock, which cannot be shared. That is to say: the land, the continents were divided, everything that the ego can distribute, what it can force upon itself. But the rock cannot be divided: the Paraklet, the Spirit of Truth, that is the air circle around the continents, this Spirit of Truth cannot be divided.

The freest self, which can give love as a gift to the other self, will arise through the miracle at Golgotha.

Report in “The 17th May”, April 11, 1908

It was the Theosophical Society that had prompted him to speak about this subject, and it was from a Theosophical point of view that he wished to consider it.

The theosophical movement is hardly more than thirty years old, and yet it has now long since taken deep roots in the intellectual life of the present.

Nevertheless, most people misunderstand the theosophical movement. In many circles, theosophy is seen as a renewal of ancient, childish ideas about the world and existence in general – ideas that, in their eyes, naturally contradict all current science.

Others, in turn, see in Theosophy a new religion that is to replace the old ones. This, however, is also not correct. Theosophy is nothing but a new scientific method. Just as every branch of modern science has its scientific method, so does Theosophy. Theosophy is not a new religion. Theosophy is a tool, an instrument to help humanity to penetrate into the world of the spirit, into the spiritual foundation on which the physical world is built. However, religions are also a revelation of the spirit, and if Theosophy is to accomplish its task, it must also be in harmony with the core of all religions. And now an attempt should be made to consider the connection that exists between the Christian religion and in particular the Gospel of John, and Theosophy. This document in the New Testament is not held in high regard in our day. Modern people have virtually lost all understanding.

For a long time, we have been so busy with all kinds of historical research back and forth about the origin of this gospel and the context, or rather, the difference between this and the three other gospels, that the actual spirit of the work has almost disappeared.

The three Gospels in the New Testament describe Jesus Christ in vivid images, how he behaved, taught and healed, and laid the foundation for our own Western culture.

The Gospel of John, on the other hand, has its own special way of reporting on Christ and his act of redemption.

Mark, Luke and Matthew tell, and want to tell, of what happened in Palestine at the time – telling of the great historical drama that was played out at the great arena of life.

The fourth gospel, however, wants to give a picture of Christ and of the Christ idea as it grows in the human heart. Like a powerful hymn writer, the author of the Gospel of John describes the Christ, the wonderful ideal man, how he transforms and recreates the human heart.

This fourth gospel, as already mentioned, has been completely lost for many people. But if Theosophy is to rise to its great task, it must bring precisely this fourth gospel closer to people's hearts.

Listen to the introductory words. Everyone knows these monumental words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

It has been said that this introduction is purely philosophical and must have been written by a philosopher – that the author of the Gospel of John thus differs from the three other gospel writers in that he would have been well acquainted with all contemporary science.

But this opinion is not well founded. It is strange that someone should have come up with such thoughts through something as simple and straightforward as these introductory words. Whoever wrote the fourth gospel was truly not influenced by any particular philosophy. He just told the story in a completely different and intimate way. That is why it was said that this gospel was written by the apprentice whom the master loved the most, that is, understood him best.

The Gospel of John is the deepest, most spiritual account we have of the Christian mysteries, the account of the task of Christ, the mission of Christ here in the world. But if one is to understand this mission, one must look a little at all of humanity, for one's calling is most closely related to it.

If one single word is to be named for the path of development that the human race has followed on earth, then that word is love. Another aspect of this same love is wisdom. Wisdom and love are one.

One need not look far to realize that wisdom is the fundamental law in the world.

Consider a plant, a flower. How wonderfully cell upon cell is built until the whole plant stands there with leaf and blossom and fruit. Consider the bees. How wonderful their dwellings are. No building in the world, built by hands, can measure up to this.

And when you look at the human body and see how each limb has been given its appropriate task, how the skeleton supports the body with the greatest possible strength in the smallest possible space, and see how every thing in the human body is gloriously conceived and laid out, then you understand in truth that the human body is, as it were, crystallized wisdom.

Yes, wisdom is the primary law of the whole world. Not only on this earth, but in all the kingdoms of the world.

In human life, the law of wisdom changes and becomes a law of love that permeates everything. And here on earth we can see how this law of love has gradually transformed people.

The form of love that humanity knew exclusively in times long past was the blood bond, the love between those who were closely related by blood. It was the sex drive, the tribal bond, the feeling of the national community, which would be the first form of love. In and through the kinship bond, people learned their first lesson in loving others. How deep the roots of this primitive form of human love go can be seen from all the legends and myths, and from the tragic and sad fate that befalls those who marry into a foreign family or tribe.

As a modern person, it is difficult for us to find our way in these old circles of ideas. We have developed an individual ego, an independent sense of person. Each of us perceives that we hide our own self, our own self-awareness, in our innermost being.

But it was not so in the old days. If someone in those times had said “I”, they would have meant their gender, their relatives. Over time, the boundaries have been pushed further and further out. It would be the people, the national community, that has now become the higher unity into which the individual is absorbed. And this has found its most peculiar expression in the national feeling of the Old Testament. The Jew felt himself to be one with his people. For him, it was considered that he belonged to the entire line of his ancestors: father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so on down to the patriarch Abraham. The higher self of the Jew would be the people itself, if all these long lines were relatives by blood. He thought something like this: My life has an end, but in the blood that flows in the family, I live again. This is how people in all nations, in all the peoples of the earth, thought.

Only a few individuals think differently. For them, the whole human race, all creatures on earth, are relatives and blood friends. They have enough love in them to embrace the whole earth.

This small group are the “initiates”, who together form a school, the so-called mysteries.

What is the purpose of these mysteries? Truly, they should be a school where people learn to rise to a higher self-awareness.

When we speak of initiates, we mean people who have freed themselves from all earthly fetters, who have detached themselves from everything they used to love about sensual things. And in this way they have developed higher senses and powers within themselves.

Man is not just a body, but a complex being. And every single person has the ability to develop senses other than the physical ones.

Everyone is familiar with the alternation between sleep and wakefulness. When you fall asleep, your self-awareness fades away, at least for the time being. Pain, pleasure, all the thousands of composite feelings that fill our days disappear, because the soul, the self-awareness, has left the body and is gone until it descends back into the physical body in the morning. And in the evening, when the body sleeps, the soul goes out again; man is only spiritually human during this time, and all sensual things fade away.

Imagine a man who is blind, blind from birth. Everything the world possesses of light and color is not there for him because he has no organ with which to receive it.

But if someone with good eyesight were to describe to such a man all the wonderful things he sees, and if the man were to say that he is a poet, a dreamer, and that things like light and color do not exist, we would truly call that nonsense. We would know better.

And if the eyes of someone born blind were somehow opened, we could say that this person had been initiated into light, colors, and radiance.

So it is in the spiritual world. In the physical world we have our eyes open, but in the other worlds, in the spiritual world, we grope around blindly. In those worlds, almost all people are blind. They have no senses, no eyes, no ears.

These spiritual worlds are certainly there, but if people are to receive knowledge of them, the eyes of those who are blind must be opened, that is, they must be “initiated” or taught to acquire organs of perception themselves that are adapted to these worlds. In the old mysteries, there would be special methods for developing the soul in such a way that it would acquire spiritual senses. And when it had received these and descended again into the physical body, it could remember and make use of what it had learned and experienced in the spiritual worlds. In ancient times, anyone who wanted to become an initiate had to submit completely to a leader – the master. This master himself was a master who had long since been initiated and could therefore bear witness from his own experience to what he had seen and heard in those spiritual worlds. One such master was the Christ. His mission on earth was to draw all of humanity under the law of love. He had come to teach people that they no longer needed to cling to their gender or their people if they were to escape damnation. He taught them to rise above the sense of gender—up to a Father other than Father Abraham, up to the God hidden in their own innermost soul. Love of one's own sex and love of one's own people should be elevated to love of all people, to love of all living creatures in the world. In the past, love was particular, fragmented and divided, bound to a particular sex, people or nation. And the various mysteries or initiations of the peoples were always only for this one people. Hermes, Zarathustra, Buddha were masters and founders of faith, each for his own people. The old pagan mysteries taught people to develop the “self”, to build themselves up into spiritual human beings. But each of them was confined to his own people. They did not go beyond the feeling of nationality. But they served to prepare the world for the greatest event that has taken place so far, the coming of Christ into the world.

For with Christ it is different. He did not establish a popular religion, a popular faith; but a religion for all people. Christ is the one who was destined to teach the world, to expand popular love so that it encompasses the whole human race. He is the one who brought out the mysteries and gave them to everyone.

And this is particularly evident in the Gospel of John. If we read the introductory words correctly, we see that in the background of all physicality there is a spiritual world of origin, the divine Father-thought. And when Christ says, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), then with this Father he means precisely this divine spark, which is the breath of life in every human soul.

And through Christ, every soul has received an impulse, a revival, to release the eternal in human nature.

In the age of the Old Testament, the Jew alone had the blood bond to cling to – union in Abraham's bosom was his only hope if he wanted to escape damnation.

Jesus, on the other hand, is said to have said: “In my Father's house are many rooms.” (John 14:2) It is precisely this that matters: to break away from these family ties. “Whoever does not renounce father and mother is not worthy of me” (Luke 14:26; Matthew 19:29), he says.

No blood ties apply anymore, only the eternal father principle in every human soul. The Old Testament has been expanded by Christ and has been perfected in the Gospel of John. But even in the old scriptures, one need not search in vain for the same idea: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) and so on. If you compare these words with the introductory words of the Gospel of John, you understand the connection between the physical and the spiritual world. The words in Genesis concern the external material world, the words in the Gospel of John deal with the new creation that is needed in our own soul. The Gospel of John is therefore not just a book like other historical documents, but an initiation book, a book that should be brought to life for the soul. Above all, it is a book of devotion, a book of meditation. And every human soul that wants to be a disciple of Christ must live through these events itself, must go through them itself.

Christ had become the impulse, the driving force, for the individual soul to free itself. From now on, wisdom was to be drawn not only in the mysteries, for the few alone. It was no longer necessary to surrender to a “master” if one wanted to be initiated. Christ brought the Christian mysteries to all those who could accept them. The event at Golgotha is a great event in the world, and the blood that flowed there gives the impulse, releases forces that should lead the whole world to seek God in their own souls.

That is why Christianity is the greatest of all religions and can live longer than any of the others. And the Gospel of John is the very cornerstone of this teaching of Christ.

The Bible has been passed down through the centuries with a significance [for the human heart] that towers above everything. You could say that what is presented to counter the Bible comes from the Bible.

At the time of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, something similar was happening with regard to the natural world as is happening today with regard to the Bible. At that time, the old Greek writings of Aristotle et cetera were considered valid. Today, what has been studied in the chemical laboratory et cetera is accepted as correct; it seems logical today, and people believe what researchers say.

This was not the case in the past. What Aristotle, a great and comprehensive mind, wrote and taught was learned, not what was seen with one's own eyes, etc. When the first person dissected a corpse, there was initially opposition from those who swore by Aristotle.

One such reformer once said that Aristotle had something about nerves that was not quite right. A believer in Aristotle found it incredible. It was demonstrated to him in the body. “Yes, it's like that here,” he said, “but if nature is not as Aristotle says, then I believe Aristotle.” This belief weighed on humanity like a burden.

It seemed as if Aristotle's esteem would suffer by looking at nature. But that did not happen. Those who believed in Aristotle had only believed the letter. Gradually, people learned to recognize Aristotle correctly.

It is very similar with the Bible. [Until the eighteenth century, it was considered incontrovertible that it had a different origin than other books.] It was said that those who wrote the Bible were inspired by God and therefore infallible.

The first contradictions were found in the Old Testament. Not a theologian, but a French doctor found that different things were reported about Yahweh and Elohim. There must have been two writers, and that was compiled. It was finally accepted that, like other books, the Bible was written by several people and should be studied and examined like other books.

The same was true for the New Testament. John was one who still lived in higher worlds; that the spirit must always triumph over life – so one read in Paul's letters. How could the materialistic mind find anything in the Book of Revelation by John other than fantasy?

For the faithful, it is still the case that the Bible is a support in life and a consolation in death. But can it remain so if the tone-setters, the scientists, pick everything apart? With Aristotle, there were the faithful, then came those who could see and gradually understood Aristotle correctly. Can't the same happen with the Bible?

Aristotle saw in nature itself, and what he set down in his books is what he saw; likewise Kepler, et cetera. Might not a proper appreciation of the Bible arise from this, if a similar process takes place for the humanities as it did for the natural sciences in the time of Kepler?

Today there is a spiritual movement, Theosophy. Some may shake their heads or shrug their shoulders; but anyone who seriously engages with it will recognize the seriousness of this spiritual movement.

Just as there are researchers of nature, there have always been researchers or explorers of the spiritual worlds, who are called initiates. The natural scientist has the telescope, the microscope, and the human mind. Great things are found with these. — But for the spiritual researcher, these instruments are of no use. The only thing that exists is the human being itself. One must only have the right point of view. One must become aware that in every human soul there are dormant abilities, spiritual eyes and ears, which, when awakened, open up a world, just as it would be for someone who has undergone an operation and is born blind. A blind person must not say: There are no colors. No human being may say: There are no spiritual worlds around us. He who has the patience to develop these inner sense organs within himself becomes a seer, an initiate. The natural scientist must learn to use the telescope and all the instruments. [In the same way, the spiritual scientist must learn to use his higher organs.]

Great mysteries confront us when only the words sleep, waking, life, and death are presented to us. Just as Haeckel's books contain Haeckel's research, so the books of Theosophy contain spiritual facts of spiritual worlds.

Only a seer could have written the beginning of the Old Testament, for example, and only a seer can recognize such documents. It is seership that underlies the Bible.

The fact that the Gospel of John seems to have more contradictions than the other three Gospels is because John was a deeper initiate than the three synoptics.

If you approach the Bible from the standpoint of spiritual science, its value and depth become ever greater. Only wisdom can properly recognize the Bible, since it flowed from wisdom.

The Apostle Paul and Theosophy. Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, spoke on this topic at the Logenhaus on Sögestraße. The speaker's main points were as follows: The source of what we see is to be sought in the spiritual world, and to explore this is the task of theosophy. One of the greatest minds of all times is closely related to our modern understanding of theosophy: the Apostle Paul. He taught the knowledge of God (theosophy) and, through his correct recognition of the Christ Being, he has the merit of becoming the founder of the Christian worldview. The Apostle Paul's conviction is based on a supersensible experience. He looks beyond the world of the senses and recognizes its origins in the spiritual world. Only a worldview that is based on the supersensible can understand him. The theosophical worldview is such a worldview. It recognizes that there are forces in man that can develop in such a way as to enable him to penetrate into the world of the spirit. This was made possible for the Apostle Paul by grace. For modern-day theosophy, the human being is not just an external entity. In all living beings in which the “I” reveals itself, it is the same at its core, but very different in its degree of development. The highest “I” is embodied in Jesus, which was there before all people, and is therefore unique. As an all-encompassing divine being, it triumphs over death. These are also the thoughts of the Apostle Paul. Christ is the fulfillment of the law. He brings about through the impulse of his life what the outward law aims at: the harmony of men among themselves. To the Jews he was an abomination because they were bound by the law; to the Greeks he was foolishness because they believed that they could only attain knowledge of their divine essence through initiation into the mysteries. Paul, a representative of the true Christian philosophy of life, teaches that through union with Christ we are led back to the Father, to the Spirit from which we proceeded. The opponents of this philosophy of life should remember that they have learned the feelings with which they seek to combat Christianity from Christianity.

My dear attendees! If it is beyond doubt that we can learn something essential about the human being by observing humanity in its historical development, then it may well be said that, on the other hand, we can also learn something essential about the human soul by observing the religious life of humanity in human history. And if observations are to be made about the soul of human life, about the various religions, in the context of a cultural endeavor that is referred to as spiritual science – or as theosophy, as our time tends to call it – then it can only be done by considering the process of progress in religious life.

In the spiritual-scientific sense, we speak of a wisdom core of religions and are well aware that the religious element itself, that which can be designated as a religion, must not be confused with the wisdom core in the religions. This is the subject of Theosophy, which penetrates into the spiritual world with the opened eye of the seer.

Religious life unfolds the development of the soul through which we incline towards the spiritual world, the fire of the soul, the soul's perception of the spiritual world. This is what we have in mind. And we also have in mind what is going on in the spiritual world, what it contains. It is therefore the task of theosophy to speak about the content of wisdom. We do not want to speak about the content of the different religions, especially because even in theosophical circles misunderstandings upon misunderstandings have arisen among those who speak of a certain unity in religions.

It has become a catchword for many that the same wisdom and truth are contained indiscriminately in all religions. No attention is paid to the fact that humanity is in a state of constant development, and although human striving always includes a certain core of wisdom, one cannot speak in the abstract of unity in all religions because it is in a state of constant development.

We will start from a saying of Goethe's to further elaborate on this topic. Goethe, who knew how to grasp the essence of things in such a penetrating way, was the one who spoke of the fact that the one principle of action, which underlies the plant leaf, for example, runs through the whole plant as a unified whole. If you follow the plant up to the flower and the fruit, you will find that the leaves are formed everywhere as a unified plant organ. You find this in all the different plant forms.

But Goethe did not claim that it makes no difference whether one speaks of the green leaf or the flower leaf. Step by step, like the rungs of a ladder, the plant develops from leaf to leaf to the height of the flower.

In a similar way, we can speak of the unified core of religions, which runs from the distant past to our times, developing from the preceding to the succeeding, as in the plant from leaf to fruit. This is said by way of introduction to our topic.

If we want to look at development in a unified way, we have to go back to a very distant past to find a starting point. Everywhere we see the human being as a being that is connected to what is hidden behind the world of the senses. Therefore, we can never find the starting point if we base our search on material considerations. According to these, we would have to start from low forms of existence. We do not want to talk about this external doctrine of evolution today. It is not the one that corresponds to the results of spiritual science.

With its means, spiritual science also goes back to the distant past, but it sees not only the material, but also the spiritual and soul. While the natural scientist characterizes from the imperfect ancestral forms of man, the spiritual scientist can recognize — we can only touch on this today so as not to stray too far from our topic — that the further we go back in human development, the more we find that the soul of man shows completely different inner experiences. Man's primeval ancestor was much closer in soul and spirit to the world to which the modern man seeks to rise in his spiritual and religious feelings.

If we want to understand this relationship today, we have to recognize that prehistoric man, before he had clothed himself with the material shell, had developed as a spiritual-soul being from his spiritual-soul ancestors, that before he entered the physical world he was in the spiritual-soul world, and that in a relatively recent time he was closer to the beings from whose womb he sprang than he is at present.

The soul of the normal human being today depends on a physical and sensual environment. If it wants to recognize something, it does so through the intellect; it recognizes what the eyes can see, the ears can hear, and the hands can grasp. This external way of perceiving has only developed out of other forms of knowledge, out of a different kind of perception, out of the dark clairvoyance of primitive man. At this point, I must say something that may seem grotesque to those who have not yet delved deeply into the theosophical tenets; but what will soon become self-evident upon deeper penetration into them, as self-evident as the results of natural science.

We can go back to the area of our Earth where our ancestors lived and which science is also beginning to study, to the land that once existed between present-day Europe, Asia and Africa on the one hand and the American continent on the other, and from which the present-day Atlantic Ocean takes its name, the land of the Atlanteans, of which the Greek philosopher Plato also gives an account. We find that our ancestors lived in a form that was such that no remains could remain that paleontology could explore.

Today, when man reflects on his relationship to the outside world, we find that he lives in two sharply distinct states of consciousness. One fills his soul from morning, when he wakes up, until evening, when he falls asleep, the other from then until the next morning. The sensory impressions of the day gradually sink into the darkness of unconsciousness in the evening. In the morning, it is not at all the case that what is newly created again enables him to use the sense organs and the mind that is connected to the brain organ, but the altered form in which these are present brings with it the unconsciousness of the night and the consciousness of the day.

It was not like that for our Atlantic ancestors. It was quite different for them. When a person fell asleep at night – as I said, I am well aware that this must sound grotesque to material thinking – it was not the colorful, light-filled carpet of the sensory world that was transformed into unconsciousness, but rather the person lived themselves into a world of spiritual and soul perception, in which they had experiences. And just as people today speak of the world of the senses in minerals, plants, animals and their own kind in their environment, so did the Atlanteans speak of a spiritual world that they perceived at night. However, their perception during the day was not the same as it is today. When they woke up, everything was shrouded in mist, with objects showing few sharp contours. At that time, the consciousness of day and night was less distinct. Therefore, the word religion could not have had the same meaning for our Atlantic ancestors as it has today: the connection of the human soul with the invisible world. For them, the spiritual world was perception. The soul knew from experience: there is a spiritual world. It knew: I came from this spiritual world, descended into physical embodiment. Religion was there as an experience.

Now great upheavals occurred, not only those which science describes as the Ice Age, but which religion calls the Flood, although the truth about these events is much less accurately described in the former than in the latter. The face of the earth changed little by little. Europe, Asia and Africa on the one hand, and America on the other, developed.

Today we will only consider the stream of emigration that is of interest to our topic, which moved from west to east, gradually populating Europe, Asia, Africa and America, and creating the post-Atlantic cultures. Through leading personalities, the most valuable part of the Atlantic culture was established, in a completely different form than today's history teaches. Spiritual research shows us how the best was brought by great leaders to the center of Asia, from which the various colonies that underlie the various post-Atlantic cultures emanated.

The first major cultural influence went to northern India. The best of the traditions of those insights into the spiritual world, which were experiences of the Atlanteans, were given to the post-Atlantean population in the way that the individual peoples needed it. It was significant, highly developed people who founded the culture in India. We call these great founders the ancient Rishis, and we speak with tremendous reverence of these holy Indian Rishis.

But now, in order to get an idea of what they taught in times that preceded all Indian writing, we have to have some concept of the mood of this people. We speak of the ancient times of Indian culture. You may know that wonderful works of culture, full of the greatest wisdom and poetry, have been preserved in the Vedas. They are wonderfully beautiful, but they are only a faint echo of what the holy rishis originally taught; for only spiritual science can teach that. We have an echo of it in the Vedas, beautiful enough, but it does not come close to what the first great post-Atlantic teachers of humanity taught. What was the mood of the Indian people, these post-Atlantic people who had moved to India?

Those people who had most clearly preserved the memory of what could be experienced in the Atlantic period with the soul of a different nature had gone to India, the memory that man had reached into the spiritual world and had his real home there. This idea was lost when man was driven out into the physical world. There he had acquired logical thinking, but he had had to give up the old clairvoyance. Only the memory remained; with this in their soul these people looked at the surrounding physical world. The basic feeling was therefore that they had to leave the old clairvoyance. They looked up at the magnificent starry sky, at the sun, at the moon; the old Indian looked at the mountains, the blue vault of heaven, everything that makes up the beauty of the physical world, and at first none of this seemed to him to be a substitute for what the soul had once experienced in the spiritual realm. “Truth,” said the old Indian to himself, ‘exists only in the spiritual world; here in all the glories of the sensual world there is only Maya, only a veil that weaves itself over the spiritual world.’

Then it was natural for him when the Rishis came and told him that if man develops the potential of a spiritual eye or spiritual ear that is present in his soul, he can see into the spiritual world again. This development, which is similar to the appearance of light through an operation for those born blind, this development of the spiritual organs was called yoga development. This is what the holy rishis pointed out. They were the comforters of ancient India. They brought comfort from Maya and illusion.

This was the first religious wisdom in the post-Atlantean era. We must point out one particular point: the ancient holy rishis said: Even if you look at the starry sky, at the sun and moon, at the mountains and forests, everything is spiritual behind them. There are spiritual depths and spiritual beings behind them; only the spiritual eye and spiritual ear can perceive them. In death, man enters this spiritual world; but in the future, as they already taught, something of what is hidden behind all that is material and visible to our eyes will also appear within this material world, and will work as the forces through which all material things on earth can become visible. Beyond what we can tell, beyond the seven Rishis, there was still another entity; in ancient India it was called Vishva Karman. The old Rishis pointed to it by saying: “Look up at the sun, and in the light and rays flowing down, you see the source of all earthly growth.” Just as it is with man, that what you see with your eyes is only his physical body, the expression of an invisible, hidden within him, so in the whole world the physical is the expression of everything superphysical. With the light of the sun, spiritual energy also penetrates the earth. The outer physical garment is the sun of the spiritual, of Vishva Karman. There will come a time - so they said to the intimate disciples - when this central being of the sun will show itself in a completely different form. That was what grew out of the Indian mood.

Let us now turn to the second period of post-Atlantean culture, to ancient Persian culture. What is called historical in this context is only a later echo. In much earlier times, there was already something there that could connect people to the spiritual world. These Persian people had very different needs from the Indian people. The Indian culture was introspective and turned its gaze away from the world of the senses; it had no interest in the achievements of the senses. But it was the mission of the Persian people to conquer these. The first race to take an interest in the external world was the ancient Persian people, on whom the historical one is based. If the Indian culture had remained alone, we might have received wonderful achievements in... /gap; but all that industry and trade have gained for the good of humanity would not have come to us. This was the real mission of the Persians. They were the first to lay hands on the physical earth; the first traces of agriculture appeared.

These people also needed another proclamation. It received the same through that great individuality who is called Zarathustra or Zoroaster. We do not mean the personality that history designates and, in its manner, applies to a series of similar personalities following one another, and relatively late ascribes to the historical Zoroaster. Also... /gap] already names this leader of Persian culture 5000 years before the Trojan War. But we have to look even further back for this second founder of the post-Atlantic culture, who works for it just as the Rishis worked for the first. Only he had to speak quite differently. The Persian people had in their soul an inclination towards the physical world, therefore they were also exposed to its temptations and inclined to consider the external sensual as the only thing, not recognizing that behind it there is also a spiritual.

The ancient Persian people had little of the traditions that the Indian people possessed. Zarathustra also had to speak of the Sun in a similar way to the Rishis, of the Sun behind which is the Vishva Karman; but it had to be done much more vividly. He told them something like this: In that which appears to you as sunlight, there lives something that also lives in you as the excellent, that which you sense in the soul as your own inner being. The sun is the garment of a being of which there is something similar in your own life. — This inner essence of the physical was called the aura, and that which, as spirit, underlies the physical sun, he called the great aura, or Ahura Mazdao, from which the name Ormuzd was then derived. This is the god who lives in the sun and of whom an image lives in the human soul. Zarathustra pointed to him as the helper of man. When man lays hands on the physical world, cultivates it, draws fruit from it and gains nourishment from it, Ormuzd is the helper. He is your helper – this is how Zarathustra characterized the great sun spirit for his followers; and the spirit that deceives people, so to speak, about the fact that there is a spiritual aspect behind this material world, that incites people not to believe in it, he called the enemy of man: Ahriman, that is the opponent of the great sun aura.

In this way, he pointed out that a spiritual underlies all that is sensual. He pointed out that man is placed in the midst of this battle between light and darkness; that man is called to be a servant of the spirit of light by transforming the earth into an image of spiritual wisdom. He pointed to the physical world as something that not only hid but proclaimed the spiritual world. Zarathustra taught: But you must not seek for the spirit that is your helper only behind the world of sense; it is contained in all sense-world and when the time is ripe for it to show itself, to become manifest in a way that man can grasp and visualize, then it will appear. That was his teaching and he proclaimed it with wonderful words. Only a stammering is it, what one of it about so rendered:

I will speak, listen and hear me, you who long for it from far and near; I will speak, because he will be revealed in days to come. No longer shall the false teacher instill deception into the souls of men, the evil one who has confessed bad faith with his mouth. I will speak of that which is highest in the world, that which has taught Vishva Karman, the greatest of mankind. And he who does not want to hear my words will experience evil when in the course of time the spiritual will be proclaimed on earth.

We then come to the later post-Atlantean cultures and proceed to the third post-Atlantean – the Egyptian culture, in the time in which the ancient Egyptian culture flourishes. Today, we can only give a very small excerpt of it in terms of its spiritual and psychological content. For this culture, the question arose religiously: How does the individual soul that dwells in us, that has arisen from the spiritual and psychological home, relate to the spiritual that permeates the world?

In ancient times, man still partially reached into the spiritual world; now, however, man increasingly prefers to gain what external culture brings, and so we see in the third cultural epoch, in the Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian on the one hand and in the Egyptian on the other, how a further conquest of the physical world took place. We see how man no longer looked up at the starry sky to say: Maya lives in this one and behind the stars the actual spiritual, the Brahman —, but now people looked carefully at the course of the stars, and a wonderful science arose. In the movement of the stars, in their figures, man recognized an external realization of the intentions of the spiritual beings. Man gained interest in the sensory world in order to experience the divine through it. Now the sensory world had become the physiognomic expression of the divine for him. Thus, with geometry, the earth was also conquered. From the spiritual heights, man penetrated more and more into the sensory world with his knowledge. As a result, he became increasingly estranged from the spiritual world. The consequence was that completely different views had to arise about the connection between man and the spiritual.

The relationship between the human soul and the spiritual world is depicted in the Egyptian religion in the Osirissage. This recounts that Osiris ruled in the world. However, he was too good for his rule to remain on earth, so he was overcome by his hostile brother Typhon and placed in the coffin. His wife Isis could no longer save him and instead raised his son Horus. Osiris ascended into the spiritual world. The legend thus reports: This divine figure once lived on earth as a companion of men, but then had to withdraw into the spiritual world. This world was then given a kind of representative in the child Horus. — The ancient Egyptian was told that when he passed through the gate of death, he would not only be united with Osiris, but his soul itself would become Osirian, itself an Osiris, woven together with him. Man becomes spiritualized, becomes Osirian himself. If man had to say to himself: I belong with my innermost being to the spiritual world —, then he had to say to himself again: veiled is my connection with the spiritual world; but when it is taken from me, the veil, then I will be reunited with the spiritual world; because when the attempt was made with Osiris to put him in a box, he was transported to the spiritual world.

The Egyptian was aware that a Divine-Spiritual being lived in his soul, and that he could only be united with it after death. Only then would he become Osiris himself. The being that will be united with you as Osiris cannot take shape in this world, but it will take shape one day and exist in the physical world.

Thus we see in this third epoch how the prophecy continues. What the Rishis indicated to the Indians as Vishva Karman, what Zarathustra indicated to the Persians as Ahura Mazdao, that saw in Osiris the confessor of the Egyptian religion and predicted that this being would one day appear.

Let us now take a look at the fourth epoch, the Greco-Latin or Greco-Roman epoch. The conquest of the physical world goes even further there. Man has come so far that he is able to form a kind of marriage between what is experienced in the spirit and what becomes an event in the outer physical world. We see this in art, which is something for humanity, which is a reflection of the spiritual in all parts of matter at the same time. In Greek art, we see the spiritual connected to the external material as in a marriage. The greatness of the Greek temple is based on this. It is the direct imprint of what lived in the soul of the people of that time.

We can understand this principle of Greek art by observing the difference between a Greek temple and a Gothic cathedral. What is the difference? A lonely building, with the image of a god, far and wide no people, and yet a complete totality. This is how we find the Greek temple; its architecture speaks to us, and we say: It is the house of the god who dwells within, even when there are no people there. No people are needed in this temple.

With the Gothic church it is quite different. This is not meant as a criticism; each thing is in the right proportion to its purpose. With its pointed arches, its entire composition is only complete when the faithful multitude is inside. That is part of it. Such a comparison can truly symbolize how that marriage in Greek art between matter and spirit has been consummated.

And if we look at the Roman world, we see how the individual personality expresses the learning of the value of the physical world. And we can go even further back, to the Greek polis, to see how the concept of citizenship arose, which actually only comes to full expression in the Roman world and which can only be clearly recognized by going back comparatively to what the ancient Indian felt. While for him what was in the physical world was only a shadow of the real world and reality only existed in union with Brahman, just as for the Egyptian with Osiris - the Roman wanted to stand firmly in this physical world by feeling like a citizen.

An ancient Indian could never have understood a deity dwelling in the physical body, because the physical world was a shadow image of the spiritual one for him. The human personality only became fully understandable in the fourth epoch; therefore the predestined entity could only enter at this time. It was none other than the Christ, of whom the Rishis had spoken as the Vishva Karman, who at that time was only comprehensible in the spiritual world and who, in the epoch in which the physical world was most conquered, was realized here as a human being among humans.

This was prepared by the fact that people were sharply reminded of what constitutes the innermost nature of the person who actualizes such an entity. Hence the words: “If you do not believe Moses and the prophets...” (John 5:46-47, Luke 16:31). And anyone who understands John knows that in the “I am that I am” (Ex 3:14), the “ejeh asher ejeh” of Moses, nothing else should be proclaimed as the Christ, not should be talk not of the God of Yahweh, but of the prediction of the Christ: You shall acknowledge a God who can be grasped in the sensual world, who lives and weaves in everything around you, in lightning and thunder, in plants and minerals, in the whole world around you — If you want something that can be understood by you, how it lives and weaves, then you have to listen to that peculiar sound where the soul speaks to itself: “I am,” then you have to listen to your ego - that is the best expression at the same time for the image of the Godhead. What lives in every human being also lives as the all-pervading God; this also appeared in the greatest human being who walked the earth, the Christ. This divine essence appeared in the fourth cultural epoch.

Thus we see how the wisdom of the religions weaves and strives forward, like the leaf to the petal that holds the fruit, so we see that what the ancient Rishis taught is becoming more and more mature until it appears as the fruit in the man of God who walks the earth; and we see the necessity of progress in it. We see how, in certain respects, Christianity does indeed contain the same as the other religions; how it contains the unified, but again in a different form. Therefore, he is wrong who says that it depends on the same teaching being in it as in the other religions. As long as it depends on the content of the teaching, one can say that. But where the spiritual world-view is proclaimed as a teaching, as the ancient Rishis had to do, as Zarathustra and the leaders of the Egyptian Hermes religion, the leaders of the mysterious mysteries did, we have the same thing that we also prove in the commandments of Christ, yes! But to recognize that which the other religions only spoke of, that this is the Christ; to understand, to grasp a spiritual phenomenon as a personality, to understand the Christ, not just the teaching, that is what makes Christianity different.

When religions speak of the Logos that can be taught, Christianity must speak of the human Logos who has become the bearer of the religion. What previously could only be taught was now lived. The life itself of this teaching is the essence of Christianity. So those religious leaders could say of themselves: “I am the goal and the way.” Those leaders, a Zarathustra, a Moses could have said: “I am the way and the truth” — but only Christ could say: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” (John 14:6)

The wisdom at the core of all religions has become fruit in Christianity and thus seed. As we have now sought the origin of Christianity in the religions, tomorrow we want to talk about the future of Christianity, because it is as true that it contains the fruit of all other religions as it is that it contains the seed for a great development, because although almost two millennia have passed since the appearance of the personality of Christ on earth, we are only at the beginning of Christianity.

Thus we see how, in our age, people have gradually sought a connection with the Divine-Spiritual and look into what all peoples have felt to be the wisdom core of their religion. We recognize why this contains the power and strength that gives people the hope of achieving their goal.

Anyone who looks into the spiritual life of people in this way dares to add to the words of a great poet, Goethe's beautiful words:

Soul of man, how art thou like the water, Fate of man, how art thou like the wind,

evoking the idea that the life of the soul surges up and down like the waves of water whipped by the wind.

But he who contemplates the power that is in the life that flows through men adds: it is true that the wind whips the waves; but it is also true that the wind, the air, is permeated by light, and the light-filled air contains the element that conjures all sprouting life out of the earth. It is true that water, permeated by warmth, is driven up and becomes a cloud and comes down again as rain.

Man's soul is like water. It comes from heaven and rises to heaven. But it is also true that the blessing of prosperity comes from the fact that water, permeated by fire, has a blessing effect, and that in the same way, man's soul can be aglow with that fire of the ego, which feels akin to the light that rules through destiny and is comparable to the wisdom that permeates the world. Then the world of the soul will be filled with the feeling of divine wisdom. Thus the soul is something that may indeed fluctuate up and down, but is certain of its destiny and of its inner strength.